Anarchism is a political belief that no government is supposed to exist.
Anarchists also believe that participation should never be forced by other people.
A major question in Anarchism is, "What is consent"?
Anarchists often do not believe in the consent of the governed.
Anarchism is "a cluster of doctrines and attitudes centered on the belief that government is both harmful and unnecessary."
The word "anarchism" is from the Greek, which means "without rulers", not "without rule"; it is also occasionally translated as "without government".
In the common language, the word anarchy is often used to describe chaos or anomie.
However, anarchists usually do not want this.
Rather, they define "anarchy" as a way of relations between people.
They believe that, once put into place, these relations work on their own.
Individual freedom, voluntary association, and opposition to the state are important beliefs of anarchism.
There are also big differences between anarchist philosophies on things like whether violence can be used to bring anarchy; the best type of economy; the relationship between technology and hierarchy; the idea of equality; and the usefulness of some organization.
The word "authority" is not clear, but anarchists are not against some types of authority (eg.
the authority of someone skilled in self-defence over someone that wants to learn self-defence), they are only against human domination.
There are many anarchists who reject capitalism and support socialism or communism (but in another sense, without a totalitarian state or power), they are called anarcho-socialists and anarcho-communists.
Also, there are some people called anarcho-capitalists who oppose government, but support capitalism (but in another sense, neither corporatist government nor state capitalism), although many of them are okay with socialism between consenting participants, as long as they do n't force them into the socialist system.
Other anarchists say that they are not really anarchists, because anarchism is traditionally a socialist philosophy.
Finally, there are "anarchists without adjectives" who hold that because people will be free in an anarchy to pursue voluntarily any economic structures they want (including communes, worker co-ops, and capitalist-owned firms).
Anarcho-socialists and anarcho-communists believe that people can voluntarily participate in socialist\/communist systems without having to be forced to, unlike their authoritarian counter-parts that believe everyone should be forced into their system whether they like it or not.
Autism is a life-affecting disorder characterized by a profound withdrawal from contact with people; repetitive behavior; and fear of change in the environment.
The emotional disorder affects the brain 's ability to receive and process information.
People who have autism find it difficult to act in a way that other people think is "normal".
They find it difficult to talk to other people and to look at other people.
Often, they do not like being touched by other people.
A person who has autism seems to be turned inwards.
They may talk only to themselves, rock themselves backwards and forwards, and laugh at their own thoughts.
They do not like any type of change and may find it very difficult to learn a new behavior like using a toilet or going to school.
Autism is caused by the way that the brain develops, both before and after a baby is born.
Around the world, about 75 in every 160 children has an Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Autism is a "spectrum disorder".
This means that some people who have autism are only mildly affected.
These people may go to regular schools, go to work, and have partners and families.
Mild autism is called Asperger Syndrome or "High functioning Autism".
Some people are affected worse than others.
These people may be able to take care of most of their own needs at home like dressing and getting food, but not be able to have a regular job or travel alone.
A person who has severe autism may need to be cared for all their life.
Some people who have autism are extraordinarily gifted or talented.
These people are said to have savant syndrome.
They are often very good at just one thing in particular, like mathematics, playing the piano or remembering football scores.
All three may seem similar in symptoms, yet are not the same.
Over the past years, individuals have been using the terms "autism" and "autism spectrum disorder" like they mean the same thing, according to an article from UCLA Center for Autism Research & Treatment.
They may actually be referring to autistic disorder, or classic autism.
But autism is often used in a more general sense to refer to all autism spectrum disorders.
So if someone is talking about your child s autism, don t assume that he or she is implying that your child has autistic disorder, rather than another autism spectrum disorder.
A baby without autism will usually look at people talking, look at other people 's faces, smile, and be interested in other people.
Autistic babies, though, may like objects more than faces and other people.
They may look for a second at a face, but quickly turn.
They may not smile, or may just smile at what they are interested in.
Autistic children may usually like to be by themselves, without other people around.
They may not be interested in making friends.
They may also not react normally to hugging and other signs of love by their parents.
This does not mean that they do not love their parents, they just do not know how to say it.
They may also not see other people 's feelings; for example, they might not see much difference between whether a parent is smiling or feeling sad.
They may laugh and cry at the wrong times.
An autistic child might not try to talk, point, or otherwise try to get a message across by 1 year of age.
Some do not understand their language at all.
Some autistic people do not speak.
When young, many mute autistic children can be taught to speak by teaching them that talking is a way to communicate ideas.
However they may try to communicate using pictures in books, photos, signing or picture cards when they are non-verbal but have clear understanding of language.
Some autistic people spend a lot of time doing the same thing over and over again; some might spend a lot of time spinning in circles, chewing their toes, or putting things in order.
An autistic person might spend a huge amount of time putting toys in lines or patterns and may get angry if someone bumps something out of place.
Some do not want any change, and will do exactly the same things every day without change such as what they eat, when they eat, getting dressed, brushing their teeth, or going to school and may even get upset if anything changes.
Some may also be interested in unusual things, and may spend all of their time learning about their interests.
Scientists do not know exactly what causes autism.
There may be many different causes for the different types of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Scientists do know about some things that make a person more likely to have an Autism Spectrum Disorder.
These are called risk factors.
However, risk factors are not causes.
Not everybody who has a risk factor will have an Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Risk factors only make it more likely that a person will have one of these disorders.
Scientists do know for sure that vaccines do NOT cause autism.
Vaccines do not even make a person more likely to have autism - even if they are already at a high risk for autism before they get their vaccines.
Scientists also know that parents do not cause their children 's autism by not being loving enough.
Since autism runs a spectrum, every person with autism is different.
Different treatments help different people.
There are a few different categories of treatment:
Depending on what a child (or adult) with autism needs, they can get treatment from one of these categories, or many different treatments.
The word "autism" comes from the Greek word autos, meaning self.
The term describes conditions in which a person is removed from social interaction hence, an isolated self."
The term "autism" was first used by a psychiatrist named Eugen Bleuler in 1911 to describe a group of schizophrenic patients who seemed withdrawn.
Two researchers by the name of Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner were the pioneers of the research study for autism in the 1940s.
Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger both worked separately in their research, yet the information and their views on the children they studied became very helpful for physicians then and now.
Leo Kanner did a study of 11 children and found unusual things about them.
The children he studied had difficulties with many tasks, including changing environments, sensitivity to certain stimuli, difficulty with activities, speech problems, and allergies to food.
In 1944 Hans Asperger studied a group of children and found very similar things.
The children in Hans Asperger 's group did not repeat words or have speech problems like Kanner 's did.
However, the children did have problems with fine motor skills (things like holding a pencil).
The children he studied seemed to be more clumsy than other children.
Hans Asperger 's discovery is now called Asperger syndrome.
Leo Kanner 's discovery is called autistic disorder, childhood autism, infantile autism, or simply autism.
In 1943 and 1949, Kanner described the children he studied in scientific papers.
In these papers, he wrote that he thought the children 's parents were not loving enough.
He wrote that this might be part of the reason why the children had autism.
For example, in his 1949 paper, he wrote that the children 's parents showed "coldness" (meaning they did not show warmth, or love, to their children).
He thought these parents were so "cold" that he compared them to refrigerators: (The children) were left neatly in refrigerators which did not defrost.
Their withdrawal seems to be an act of turning away from such a situation to seek comfort in solitude.
This idea became known as the "refrigerator mother theory."
For decades after this, parents were blamed for causing their children 's autism by not being loving enough.
Niko Tinbergen, the ethologist, gave his Nobel Prize lecture on autism on 12 December 1973.
The albedo of an object is the extent to which it reflects light, defined as the ratio of reflected to incident electromagnetic radiation.
It is a unitless measure indicative of a surface 's or body 's diffuse reflectivity.
The word is derived from albus, a Latin word for "white".
This page is about the first letter in the alphabet.
For the indefinite article, see Article (grammar).
For other uses of A, see A (disambiguation)
A is the first letter of the English alphabet.
The small letter, a, is used as a lower case vowel.
However, the English long a (-RRB- is said as a diphthong of and y. The same letter of the Greek alphabet is named alpha.
Alpha and omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet, means the beginning and the end.
In musical notation, the letter A is the symbol of a note in the scale, below B and above G. In binary numbers, the letter A is 01000001.
A is the letter that was used to represent a team in an old TV show, The A-Team.
The earliest letter ` A ' has appeared was in the Phoenician alphabet 's aleph.
This symbol came from a simple picture of an ox head.
This Phoenician letter helped make the basic blocks of later types of the letter.
The Greeks later modified this letter and used it as their letter alpha.
The Greek alphabet was used by the Etruscans in northern Italy, and the Romans later modified the Etruscan alphabet for their own language.
The letter A has six different sounds.
It can sound like, in the International Phonetic Alphabet, such as the word pad.
Other sounds of this letter are in the words father, which developed into another sound, such as in the word ace.
In algebra, the letter "A" along with other letters at the beginning of the alphabet is used to represent known quantities.
In geometry, capital A, B, C etc. are used to label line segments, lines, etc..
Also, A is typically used as one of the letters to label an angle in a triangle
Alabama is a state in the United States.
Its capital city is Montgomery.
The largest city is Birmingham.
It became a state in 1819.
Alabama is the thirteenth largest state in the United States with 52,423 square miles (135,775 km) of total area.
3.19 % of the area is water, making Alabama twenty-third in the amount of surface water, also giving it the second largest inland waterway system in the United States.
About three-fifths of the land area is a plain with a general downward slope towards the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.
North Alabama has mostly mountains, with the Tennessee River cutting a large valley creating many creeks, streams, rivers, mountains, and lakes.
The states bordering Alabama are Tennessee to the north; Georgia to the east; Florida to the south; and Mississippi to the west.
Alabama has coastline at the Gulf of Mexico, in the very southern edge of the state.
Alabama ranges in elevation from sea level at "Mobile Bay" to over 1,800 feet (550 m) in the Appalachian Mountains in the northeast.
The highest point is "Mount Cheaha", at a height of 2,407 ft (734 m).
Alabama 's land has 22 million acres (89,000 km2) of forest or 67 % of total land area.
"Suburban Baldwin County", along the Gulf Coast, is the largest county in the state in both land area and water area.
The state is classified as subtropical Cfa under the Koppen Climate Classification.
The normal annual temperature is 64 F (18 C).
Temperatures are often warmer in the southern part of the state because it is close to the Gulf of Mexico, while the northern parts of the state, mostly in the Appalachian Mountains in the northeast, tend to be slightly cooler.
Most of the time, Alabama has very hot summers and mild winters with copious rain throughout the year.
Alabama receives an average of 56 inches (1,400 mm) of rainfall annually and enjoys a lengthy growing season of up to 300 days in the southern part of the state.
Summers in Alabama are among the hottest in the United States, with high temperatures averaging over 90 F (32 C) throughout the summer in some parts of the state.
Alabama also gets many tropical storms and even hurricanes.
Areas of the state far away from the Gulf can still feel the effects of the storms, which often dump big amounts of rain as they move inland and weaken.
The United States Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2008, estimated Alabama 's population at 4,661,900, which is an increase of 214,545, or 4.8 %, since the 2000 census.
This is a natural increase since the last census of 121,054 people (that is 502,457 births minus 381,403 deaths) and an increase because of net migration of 104,991 people into the state.
Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 31,180 people, and migration within the country got a net gain of 73,811 people.
The state had 108,000 foreign-born (2.4 % of the state population), of which an estimated 22.2 % were illegal immigrants (24,000).
According to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis, the 2008 total gross state product was $ 170 billion, or $ 29,411 per capita.
Alabama 's 2008 GDP increased (went up) 0.7 % from the past year.
The single largest increase came in the area of information.
In 1999, per capita income for the state was $ 18,189.
Alabama 's agricultural outputs are poultry and eggs, cattle, plant nursery items, peanuts, cotton, grains (such as corn and sorghum), vegetables, milk, soybeans, and peaches.
Although known as "The Cotton State", many reports say that Alabama is between eight and ten in national cotton making, with Texas, Georgia and Mississippi making up the top three.
Alabama 's company outputs are iron and steel products (like cast-iron and steel pipe); paper, lumber, and wood items; mining (mostly coal); plastic things; cars and trucks; and apparel.
Alabama also makes aerospace and electronic things, mostly in the "Huntsville" area, location of NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center and the US Army Aviation and Missile Command, headquartered at "Redstone Arsenal."
"Public primary and secondary education" in Alabama is under the review of the Alabama State Board of Education as well as local oversight by 67 county school boards and 60 city boards of education.
Together, 1,541 separate schools have education for 743,364 elementary and secondary students.
Alabama 's programs of higher education are 14 four-year public universities, two-year community colleges, and 17 private, undergraduate and graduate universities.
In the state are two medical schools, University of Alabama at Birmingham and University of South Alabama, two veterinary colleges, Auburn University and Tuskegee University, a dental school, University of Alabama, an optometry college, two pharmacy schools, Auburn University and Samford University, and five law schools, University of Alabama School of Law, Birmingham School of Law, Cumberland School of Law, Miles Law School, and the Thomas Goode Jones School of Law.
Public, post-secondary education in Alabama is overseen by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education.
Colleges and universities in Alabama offer degree programs from two-year associate degrees to 16 doctor level programs.
The governor of Alabama is Robert J. Bentley, a Republican.
The lieutenant governor of Alabama is Kay Ivey, a Republican, and the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court is Sue Bell Cobb, a Democrat.
Achilles (or Achilleus; Ancient Greek:) was a hero in Greek mythology.
In Homer 's Iliad, Achilles was the son of Peleus and the nereid Thetis.
He was the greatest warrior of the Achaean Greeks in their struggle against the Trojans in the Trojan War.
His story is at the center of the Iliad, which starts with the dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon, the Greek king.
Achilles, believing that Agamemnon had dishonoured him, did not wish to bow to the king 's leadership.
He sat out the battle until the Trojans had almost won the war.
Then he entered the battle.
He killed the great Hektor, the son of Priam, and the Trojans ' greatest hero.
The tide of battle turned against the Trojans, and many were slaughtered.
It is believed that Achilles was killed at the end of the war, but this is not said in the Iliad.
The Iliad ends with the funeral of Hektor.
Achilles could not be hurt.
In some versions of the myths, Thetis, his mother, dipped him into the river Styx, holding the baby by his left heel.
Because of that, his heel was still vulnerable.
However, the Iliad does not say this.
According to the legend, Achilles was killed by Paris, who shot his heel with a poisoned arrow.
He was very angry.
He cursed at Paris but Paris fled.
Achilles was alive over 2000 years ago.
Achilles was born to defeat the Trojans.
Achilles was shot many times by the arrows of Paris ' but the only arrow found on his body was through his heel.
Abraham Lincoln (February 12 1809 April 15 1865) was the 16th President of the United States.
He served as president from 1861 to 1865, during the American Civil War.
Just five days after most of the Confederate forces had surrendered and the war was ending, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln.
Lincoln was the first president of the United States to be assassinated.
Lincoln has been remembered as the "Great Emancipator" because he worked to end slavery in the United States.
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in Hodgenville, Kentucky, U.S..
His parents were Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks.
His family was very poor.
Abraham had one brother and one sister.
His brother died in childhood.
They grew up in a small log cabin house, with just one room inside.
Although slavery was legal in Kentucky at that time, Lincoln 's father, who was a religious Baptist, refused to own any slaves.
When Lincoln was seven years old, his family moved to Indiana.
Later on they moved to Illinois.
In his childhood he helped his father on the farm, but when he was 22 years old he left home and moved to New Salem, Illinois, where he worked in a general store.
Later, he said that he had gone to school for just one year, but that was enough to learn how to read, write, and do simple math.
In 1842, he married Mary Todd Lincoln.
They had four children, but three of them died when they were very young.
Abraham Lincoln was sometimes called Abe Lincoln or "Honest Abe" after he ran miles to give a customer the right amount of change.
The nickname "Honest Abe" came from a time when he started a business that failed.
Instead of running away like many people would have, he stayed and worked to pay off his debt.
Lincoln started his political career in 1832 when he ran for the IGA Illinois General Assembly, but he lost the election.
He served as a captain in the Illinois militia during the Black Hawk War, a war with Native American tribes.
When he moved to Springfield in 1837, he began to work as a lawyer.
Soon, he became one of the most highly respected lawyers in Illinois.
In 1837, as a member of the Illinois General Assembly, Lincoln issued a written protest of its passage of a resolution stating that slavery could not be abolished in Washington, D.C.
In 1841, he won a court case (Bailey v. Cromwell).
He represented a black woman who claimed she had already been freed and could not be sold as a slave.
In 1847, he lost a case (Matson v. Rutherford) representing a slave owner (Robert Matson) claiming return of fugitive slaves.
After he moved to Illinois, he worked as a shopkeeper and postmaster.
He rode the circuit of courts for many years.
When he was 21, he worked on a flatboat that carried freight.
He joined the Independent Spy Corp..
At first, he was a member of the Whig Party.
He later became a Republican.
Lincoln ran for senate against Stephen A. Douglas.
Douglas won.
In 1846, Lincoln joined the Whig Party and was elected to one term in the House of Representatives.
After that, he ignored his political career and instead worked as a lawyer.
In 1854, in reaction to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln became involved in politics again.
He joined the Republican Party, which had recently been formed in opposition to the expansion of slavery.
In 1858, he wanted to become senator; although this was unsuccessful, the debates drew national attention to him.
The Republican Party nominated him for the Presidential election of 1860.
Lincoln was chosen as a candidate for the elections in 1860 for different reasons.
Among these reasons were that his views on slavery were less extreme than those of other people who wanted to be candidates.
Lincoln was from what was then one of the Western states, and had a bigger chance of winning the election there.
Other candidates that were older or more experienced than him had enemies inside the party.
Lincoln 's family was poor, which added to the Republican position of free labor, the opposite of slave labor.
Lincoln won the election in 1860, and was made the 16th President of the United States.
He won with almost no votes in the South.
For the first time, a president had won the election because of the large support he got from the states in the North.
During his presidency Lincoln became well-known because of his large stovepipe hat.
He used his tall hat to store papers and documents when he was traveling.
When the United States refused to surrender Fort Sumter in South Carolina, the Confederates attacked the fort, beginning the American Civil War.
Later, four more states (Arkansas, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina) joined the Confederacy for a total of eleven.
In his whole period as President, he had to rebuild the Union with military force and many bloody battles.
He also had to stop the "border states", like Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, from leaving the Union and joining the Confederacy.
Lincoln was not a general, and had only been in the army for a short time during the Black Hawk War.
However, he still took a major role in the war, often spending days and days in the War Department.
His plan was to cut off the South by surrounding it with ships, control the Mississippi River, and take Richmond, the Confederate capital.
He often clashed with generals in the field, especially George B. McClellan, and fired generals who lost battles or were not aggressive enough.
Eventually, he made Ulysses S. Grant the top general in the army.
With the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, Lincoln ordered the freedom of all slaves in those states still in rebellion during the American Civil War.
It did not actually immediately free all those slaves however, since those areas were still controlled by the rebelling states of the Confederacy.
Only a small number of slaves already behind Union lines were immediately freed.
As the Union army advanced, nearly all four million slaves were effectively freed.
Some former slaves joined the Union army.
The Proclamation also did not free slaves in the slave states that had remained loyal to the Union (the federal government of the US).
Neither did it apply to areas where Union forces had already regained control.
Until the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865, only the states had power to end slavery within their own borders, so Lincoln issued the proclamation as a war measure.
The Proclamation made freeing the slaves a Union goal for the war, and put an end to movements in European nations (especially in Great Britain and France) that would have recognized the Confederacy as an independent nation.
Lincoln then sponsored a constitutional amendment to free all slaves.
The Thirteenth Amendment, making slavery illegal everywhere in the United States, was passed late in 1865, eight months after Lincoln was assassinated.
Lincoln made a famous speech after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 called the Gettysburg Address.
The battle was very important, and many soldiers from both sides died.
The speech was given at the new cemetery for the dead soldiers.
It is one of the most famous speeches in American history.
Lincoln was reelected president in 1864 and re-inaugurated March 4 1865.
Soon afterwards, it appeared likely that the Union would win the Civil War.
Lincoln proposed lenient terms for restoring self-government in the states that had rebelled.
On April 9 1865, the leading Confederate general, Robert E. Lee, surrendered his armies.
On April 11, 1865, Lincoln gave a speech in which he promoted voting rights for blacks.
On April 14th, Lincoln went to attend a play with his wife at Ford 's Theatre in Washington, D.C..
During the third act of the play, John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland, entered the presidential box and shot Lincoln at point-blank range, mortally wounding him.
An unconscious Lincoln was carried across the street to Petersen House.
He was placed diagonally on the bed because his tall frame would not fit normally on the smaller bed.
He remained in a coma for nine hours before dying the next morning.
Booth escaped, but died from shots fired during his capture on April 26.
Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated.
Lincoln has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as one of the greatest U.S. presidents.
He is often considered the greatest president for his leadership during the American Civil War and his eloquence in speeches such as the Gettysburg Address.
Aristotle (Stagira, Macedonia, 384 BC Chalicis, Euboea, Greece, 7 March 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher.
He was one of the most important philosophers in the history of Western civilization.
It is said that Aristotle wrote many books, but only a much smaller number survive.
Aristotle was the boyhood tutor of Alexander the Great, who later sent him plants and animals from parts of his new empire.
Aristotle 's father Nicomachus, was the doctor of King Amyntas of Macedonia.
From his eighteenth to his thirty-seventh year, Aristotle lived in Athens, as a metic and student of Plato.
At about the age of eighteen, he went to Athens to continue his education at Plato 's Academy.
Aristotle remained at the academy for nearly twenty years, not leaving until after Plato 's death in 347 BC.
He then traveled with Xenocrates to Asia Minor.
While in Asia, Aristotle traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where they researched the botany and zoology of the island.
Soon after Hermias ' death, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander the Great in 343 B.C.
Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon.
During that time he gave lessons not only to Alexander, but also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander.
Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his attitude towards Persia was ethnocentric.
In one famous example, he advises Alexander to be ' a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants '.
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By 335 BC he had returned to Athens, starting his own school there known as the Lyceum.
Aristotle taught courses at the school for the next twelve years.
It is during this period in Athens from 335 to 323 when Aristotle is believed to have written many of his works.
Aristotle wrote many dialogues, only fragments of which survived.
The works that have survived are in fairly rough form.
They are generally thought to be lecture notes for his students.
Aristotle 's combined works constitute a virtual encyclopedia of Greek knowledge.
It has been suggested that Aristotle was probably the last person to know everything there was to be known in his own time.
Near the end of Alexander 's life, he began to suspect plots, and threatened Aristotle in letters.
Aristotle was vocal about his dislike for Alexander 's claim of divinity, and the king executed Aristotle 's grandnephew Callisthenes as a traitor.
Alexander died in Babylon in 323 without ever having returned to his native land.
Upon Alexander 's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens once again flared up, and Aristotle fled the city.
However, he died in Euboea of natural causes that same year, 322 BC.
The three greatest ancient Greek philosophers were Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates.
Socrates taught Plato, then Plato taught Aristotle.
These three thinkers turned early Greek philosophy into the beginnings of Western philosophy as it is today.
Aristotle taught Alexander the Great, who later conquered the entire Middle East.
Plato 's main ideas were that knowledge from the senses was always confused and not pure.
True knowledge can be gotten from the thinking soul that turns away from the world.
Only the soul can have knowledge of "Forms", the real way things are.
The world is only a copy of these "Forms" and is not perfect.
Aristotle thought differently.
He thought that knowledge from the senses was more important.
These thoughts became some of the roots of the scientific method after hundreds of years.
Most of the things Aristotle wrote that we still have today are notes from his speaking and teaching.
Some of his important writings are Physics, Metaphysics, (Nicomachean) Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the Soul), and Poetics.
He also had problems with the atomic theory.
He did not believe in Democritus ' theories about the atomic theory.
He believed that all matter was continuous whereas Democritus stated the all matter was made up of tiny indivisible things called "atoms".
Democritus was proved right by physicist John Dalton in 1804.
Aristotle created a form of logic.
His logic is called sentential logic because it uses sentences for the syllogism.
Aristotle 's logic influenced the history of Western thought.
It was Aristotle 's logic which was copied and used in the Arabic and Latin mediaeval traditions.
It was dominant for two and a half thousand years, until the late 19th century.
Then modern logic was started by Gottlob Frege, Charles Sanders Peirce and others.
Aristotle is the earliest natural historian whose work has survived in some detail.
He certainly did research on the natural history of Lesbos, and the surrounding seas and neighbouring areas.
The works History of Animals, Generation of Animals and Parts of Animals have observations and interpretations, along with some myths and mistakes.
The most striking passages are about the sea-life round Lesbos.
As well as live observation, he got specimens from the catches of fishermen.
His observations on catfish, electric fish (Torpedo) and angler-fish are detailed.
His writing on cephalopods such as Octopus, Sepia (cuttlefish) and the paper nautilus (Argonauta argo) are accurate.
His description of the hectocotyl arm, used in sexual reproduction, was widely disbelieved until its rediscovery in the 19th century.
He separated the aquatic mammals from fish, and knew that sharks and rays were part of the group he called Selach (Selachimorpha).
Another good example of his methods comes from the Generation of Animals in which Aristotle describes breaking open fertilized chicken eggs at intervals to observe when visible organs were generated.
He gave accurate descriptions of ruminants ' four-chambered fore-stomachs, and of the ovoviviparous embryological development of the hound shark Mustelus mustelus.
Aristotle is still one of the most influential people who ever lived.
He contributed to almost every kind of knowledge in his day, and he started many new fields.
"It is doubtful whether any human being has ever known as much as he did".
Aristotle was the founder of formal logic, p156 pioneered the study of zoology, and helped to develop scientific method.
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Despite these achievements, Aristotle 's errors are thought by some, such as Peter Medawar, to have held back science considerably.
Bertrand Russell notes that "almost every serious intellectual advance has had to begin with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine".
Russell also refers to Aristotle 's Ethics as "repulsive", and calls his logic "as definitely antiquated as Ptolemaic astronomy".
Russell says these errors make it difficult to do historical justice to Aristotle, until one remembers what an advance he made on his predecessors.
The immediate influence of Aristotle 's work was felt as the Lyceum grew into the Peripatetic school of philosophers.
Aristotle 's influence over Alexander the Great is seen in the latter 's bringing with him, on his expedition, biologists and researchers.
The Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in movies.
The Academy Award for Best Production Design recognizes achievement in art direction on a movie.
The category 's first name was Best Art Direction.
It was changed to its current name for the 85th Academy Awards.
The Art Director 's category was renamed the Designer 's category.
In the lists below, the winner of the award for each year is shown first, followed by the other nominees.
Altruism (or selflessness) is concern for the well-being of others.
A truly altruistic act is something done completely for the benefit of another, without concern for the self.
It usually involves sacrificing something (time, effort or possessions), with no expectation of receiving anything in return (including recognition for the act of giving).
It is considered a virtue in many cultures and a basic aspect of most religions.
It is the opposite of selfishness.
Altruism is different from acts done out of responsibility, loyalty or moral obligation towards a specific individual (such as a god, a king or a government).
Whether "pure" altruism is possible has been debated by scholars for thousands of years.
One theory says that no act of giving, helping or sacrificing can be described as truly selfless, because the person will receive personal gratification from it (that is, a feeling of satisfaction that they have done something good for another).
Whether this theory is correct depends on whether such feelings qualify as a ` reward ' or ` benefit '.
The concept of altruism has long been studied in philosophy and ethics.
The term was originally used in the 19th century by sociologist and philosopher of science, Auguste Comte.
It has become an important topic for psychologists (especially those that study evolutionary psychology), evolutionary biologists and ethologists.
The scholars of each field have developed different ideas about altruism.
All agree that altruism is caring about the welfare of other people and acting to help them.
In the study of animal behavior, altruism is seen in social animals when an individual willingly sacrifices itself for the better survival of the group.
There are several theories about how this behavior has come about under evolution by natural selection.
These theories try to explain how evolution has shaped psychological mechanisms, such as emotions, that encourage altruistic behavior.
Most, if not all, of the world 's religions promote selflessness as a very important moral value.
It forms part of the central philosophies of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism and Sikhism, as well as many other religions.
Buddhism teaches love and compassion for all forms of life (ahimsa).
Love is the wish that all beings be happy, and compassion is the wish that all beings be free from suffering.
It considers all living things to be equal.
Unlike most other religions, Buddhists believe that the consequences of our actions come not from punishments based on moral judgment, but from the law of karma (kamma).
Karma is the natural law of cause and effect.
In this law, we experience the effects of what we cause: if you cause suffering, then as a natural consequence you will experience suffering; if you cause happiness, then as a natural consequence you will experience happiness.
Most types of karmas, with good or bad results, will keep one in the wheel of sams ra; others will liberate one to nirv na.
In Sufism, the idea of th r (selflessness) is defined as preferring others over yourself.
For Sufis, this means devotion to others and completely forgetting concern for oneself.
It teaches sacrifice for the sake of the greater good.
Islam considers those practicing th r as abiding by the highest degree of virtue.
In th r, attention is focused on everything that exists except for the self.
Ayn Rand (Alisa Zinov ` yevna Rosenbaum, February 2, 1905 March 6, 1982) was a Russian-born American writer, screenwriter, playwright and philosopher.
She published several popular books in the United States during the mid-1900s, including her two best-selling novels, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, plus We the Living and Anthem.
Her novels promoted a viewpoint of laissez-faire capitalism as a political and social goal.
It is a kind of political philosophy known in the U.S.A. as libertarian conservatism.
She called this philosophy ` objectivism '.
Her husband was American actor and artist Frank O'Connor.
Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and grew up during the Russian Revolution, in the years after World War I. She left Russia to visit relatives in Chicago in the United States when she was 21 years old.
She did not want to return to live under Communism, and stayed in the US.
She changed her name, partly to protect her family in Russia.
Rand moved to California to become a movie writer.
Movies at the time did not have sound, and stories were mimed on camera.
Dialogue was not important, so Rand could write simple stories while she improved her English language skills.
Rand met Frank O'Connor on a movie set, when they both appeared as extras.
When O'Connor married Rand in 1929, she could live permanently in America.
She later became an American citizen.
O'Connor gave up his acting career, to work full-time so Rand could write full-time.
Later he retired, when Rand 's work made a good income.
He began painting late in his life.
He died in 1979.
Rand was a longtime tobacco smoker.
She had lung cancer, but she recovered from the disease after surgery.
She died of cardiovascular disease in New York City on March 6, 1982.
Rand 's first book was We the Living.
It is about life in Russia during and after the Russian Revolution, and how life in the later Soviet Union destroys the dreams and hopes of its main characters, who are mostly young people.
Her second book was Anthem, which is a science fiction novella, a dystopian story about a man named Equality 7-2521 who lives in a future society.
In that place, everybody is given their name by the government, and nobody can use the words "I" or "me".
He escapes from this society with a partner, to live freely in a house in a hidden place.
Her stage play Woman on Trial (better known as Night of January 16th) used audience members as a jury, to decide the play 's outcome (by voting the lead character guilty or not guilty) each time it was performed.
Some celebrities, such as Helen Keller, appeared as jury members.
Her third novel was The Fountainhead.
It is about an architect, who wants to have control over his building designs, and does not like when he has to compromise his building designs.
The Fountainhead became a best-seller, and was made into a movie starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal.
Her fourth novel was Atlas Shrugged.
It is her longest book.
It was also a best-seller.
It tells a story about a worldwide economic crisis.
This is caused by the best minds in business, industry, and science, and after a while all thinking people, quitting their jobs and disappearing.
This is a protest against government regulations that get in the way of their work or make it harder to do.
The more that governments get in the way, the worse conditions become, until society collapses.
A new future begins when the people who disappeared return, and governments adopt laissez-faire principles, that do not try to control how businesses work, or misuse innovations.
After writing Atlas Shrugged, she wrote non-fiction books about her Objectivist ideas.
She published The Objectivist Newsletter, which then became The Objectivist magazine, with contributions by other writers.
She also published The Ayn Rand Letter, a later newsletter about her ideas.
Rand 's views are typical libertarian conservative views.
Freedom of the individual, the evils of ` large ' government, the economic benefits of low taxes and ` small ' government, the ` open ' society: these are values which run through all her work.
Rand invented a philosophy that she called "Objectivism".
She was against communism, socialism, and collectivism, which are political systems where a community or the government of a country takes charge of distribution of that country 's goods and products.
She opposed altruism, which she viewed as a form of self sacrifice.
She favored a form of rational selfishness.
She also thought that countries should have very small governments.
Rand did not think that welfare payments to poor people were a good thing, because this involves using force to take money away from others.
She believed that charity (giving money away) could be a good thing if the person giving the money wanted and chose to do it, but she did not think that people should be expected or forced to give away their money.
She was against religion, and was an atheist.
Algeria (official name: People 's Democratic Republic of Algeria) is a country in the Western part of North Africa.
The capital city is Algiers.
It is the largest country in Africa.
The name is from the city of Algiers.
It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea in the north, Tunisia in the northeast, Libya in the east, Niger in the southeast, Mauritania and Mali in the southwest, Western Sahara in the west and Morocco in the northwest.
Algeria has had people since 10.000 BC.
This can be seen in Tassili National Park.
By 600-BC, Phoenician were at Tipasa.
The first Muslim Arabs came to Algeria in the mid-7th century.
Many people chose this religion.
In the 11th century the Arab tribes of Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym were installed between Tunisia and eastern Algeria (Constantois).
The famous mathematician, Fibonacci (1170 1250) lived in Algeria as a teenager.
This is where he learned the Hindu-Arabic number system and realized it was simpler to use.
In the 1500s and 1700s the Spanish Empire ruled a lot of Algeria.
Algeria was made part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517.
Pirates worked from the Barbary Coast.
They took people to sell as slaves.
France ruled Algeria starting in 1830.
In 1954, the National Liberation Front (Front de Lib ration Nationale or FLN) wanted freedom from France.
They fought a war.
It became independent from France in July 5, 1962.
In 1963 Ahmed Ben Bella became the first President of Algeria.
The Algerian Civil War started in 1991.
It ended in 2002.
After many people protested, like in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, the government stopped the state of emergency on 24 February 2011.
A large part of southern Algeria is the Sahara Desert.
The Aures and Nememcha mountain ranges are in the north.
The highest point is Mount Tahat (3,003 m).
Official languages are Arabic and Berber.
French is widely spoken too.
Algeria 's population is about 39.5 million people.
There are over 40 cities with more than 100,000 people.
There are several UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Algeria including Al Qal ' a of Beni Hammad, the first capital of the Hammadid empire; Tipasa, a Phoenician and later Roman town; and Dj mila and Timgad, both Roman ruins; M ` Zab Valley, a limestone valley containing a large urbanized oasis; also the Casbah of Algiers is an important citadel.
The only natural World Heritage Sites is the Tassili n ` Ajjer, a mountain range.
Anthropology is the study of human beings.
(In Greek "Anthropos -" means "human", and" - logy" means "study of").
Anthropology is a biological and historical social science that helps us learn how groups of people are the same, and how they are different in all parts of the world.
Anthropologists do research in many places and study how people live now and how they may have lived in the past (using the study of Archaeology).
They research in modern cities, small villages, tribes, and in the countryside.
They study how groups of people consider time, space, life, etc.
Applied anthropology is a type of anthropology that uses information, discovered using science to help people.
One recent use of applied anthropology is the return of ancient ways of successful farming to people living in South America.
Another use of applied anthropology is the learning of languages close to dying out and the teaching of young people the language of their ancestors.
Most people who study anthropology have some schoolwork in all four big kinds of anthropology but later study one or two areas primarily.
Biological anthropology is sometimes taught as a separate subject, and sometimes as part of the discipline of biology.
Since 1993, the Biological Anthropology Section of the American Anthropological Association has awarded the W. W. Howells Book Prize in Biological Anthropology.
Alchemy is the very old study and philosophy of how to change basic substances (such as metals) into other substances.
It also studied how substances (and how they are changed into other substances) were related to magic and astrology.
People who studied alchemy were called alchemists.
Some things alchemists tried to do were change lead or mercury into gold, make the philosopher 's stone, and make the "elixir of life," which they thought could cure (make better) any disease and make someone young again.
Alchemists believed that substances, mind, philosophies, religion, magic and astrology were related to each other.
They tried to find connections between them.
They tried to understand one by understanding the other.
Some alchemists used metals (like gold or silver) to represent spiritual or occult ideas.
People in many different countries studied alchemy.
In the 1600 's and 1700 's people started to study only the properties of substances without trying to relate them to secret, old knowledge.
They did experiments and wrote down what they discovered so other people could learn from them.
One of the important people who did these experiments was Robert Boyle.
People called the new study of substances chemistry.
Scientists have since discovered how to change one kind of element (the simplest kind of chemical substance) into another.
In 1980, an American scientist named Glenn Seaborg discovered how to change a very tiny amount of bismuth into gold with a nuclear reactor.
Making gold this way is much more difficult and expensive (costs a lot of money) than mining or recycling it.
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/onlinestuff/people/glenn%20seaborg.aspx
An astronomer is a scientist who studies astronomy.
Most astronomers work in observatories with telescopes to collect information from what is in outer space specially planets, stars, or galaxies.
An astronomer analyses the collected information, and uses it to help us understand how the universe behaves.
ASCII (pronounced a-skee, rhymes with ` pass-key '), is a table of characters for computers.
It is binary code used by electronic equipment to handle text using the English alphabet, numbers, and other common symbols.
ASCII is an abbreviation for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
ASCII was developed in the 1960s and was based on earlier codes used by telegraph systems.
The code includes definitions for 128 characters: most of these are the printable characters of the alphabet such as abc, ABC, 123, and?
&!.
There are also control characters that can not be printed but instead control how text is processed, to start a new line for example.
Those are in the left column in the table below.
Most of the control characters are no longer used for their original purpose.
There is no real formatting control (for bold or Italics, etc.)
Sometimes a person will talk about a file or document in ASCII, it means it is in plain text.
ASCII uses 7 binary digits (bits) to represent characters: 1000001 (or 41 in hexadecimal or 65 in standard base-10 numbers) represents the upper-case letter A; 1000010 represents B; 1000011 represents C; and so on in sequence.
Seven bits allowed a parity bit to be included in each byte sent over a serial port or modems, this bit is used for avoiding errors.
This was more important years ago when connections were often noisy.
ASCII does not have diacritics (marks that are added to a letter, like the dots (umlauts) above vowels in German, or the tilde (~) above the 'n' for the ' ' used in Spanish).
It was only meant for English and does n't work well for most other languages.
Some English words borrowed from other languages use these marks as well, like resum (see Appendix: English words with diacritics).
This led to some systems using 8 bits (a full byte) instead of 7 bits.
The proper name for systems that use 8 bits is called extended ASCII.
Eight bits allows for 256 characters.
The first 128 characters must be the same as for ASCII and the rest are usually used for alphabetic letters with accents, for example like,, and.
This solves the problem for languages that are based on the Latin alphabet, although not all extended ASCII systems are the same.
Other alphabets, like the Greek alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet need a different set of characters.
And some systems like those using Chinese characters still do not work, as they use thousands of characters.
So unicode was created to have one common system for all languages.
Standard ASCII is still commonly used, particularly in computer software and HTML files.
Until 2010 it was the standard for URLs.
Often a web site that has fields for entering text will only take ASCII text.
Entering any special markups for bold or centered text, etc. will show up incorrectly.
Animation is a way of making a movie from many still images.
The images are put together one after another, and then played at a fast speed to give the illusion of movement.
Animation is a relatively new art form, and though the concept of moving images has been a theme throughout ancient civilizations, it was not until late into the 19th century that experimental animation truly began.
Today, the industry of animation is booming, making up a huge commercial enterprise.
However, among individual artists, it remains a sacred and unique form of art.
A person who makes animations is called an animator.
Because it is expensive to make, most animation comes from professional companies.
However, independent animators have existed since the 1950s in America, with many of those people entering the professional industry.
In Europe, the independent movement has existed since the 1910s, with animators like pre-revolutionary Russia 's Ladislas Starevich and Germany 's Lotte Reiniger.
On the internet, many people use a computer program called Adobe Flash to create animations.
Flash uses a combination of drawing and computer graphics to make animations.
Many animations on the internet are made in Flash.
Most animators on the internet do not work for professional companies.
Many television shows, especially those made for children, use limited animation.
Companies such as UPA and Hanna-Barbera Productions do this.
Simple, limited movement makes the images easier to draw, which allows quicker and cheaper production of animation.
Many people consider animation to be childish and unsophisticated.
However, animation has changed the course of art history by giving artists possibilities, not just normal, stationary art.
Many animated movies have been made, and some have made a big profit.
Apollon or Apollo was a god in Greek mythology, and one of the Twelve Olympians.
He was the son of Zeus and Leto and the twin brother of Artemis.
He lived in Greece.
He was the god of healing and medicine, and of music and poetry.
He was the leader of the Muses.
He also was a god of prophecy, and his Oracle at Delphi was very important.
He also was the god of justice.
During the 5th century BC, Apollo became also known as the god of the sun, becoming one with the god Helios, and getting the name Phoebus.
He is shown as a young man, wearing a laurel wreath and playing the kithara (lyre).
It was known as his symbol.
His other symbols included the raven.
Some times he is known as the god of fire but this title is also given to Vulcan or Hephaestus.
Apollo was one of the Twelve Olympians, the 12 most important gods in Greek mythology.
Because of this, there are many myths about him:
Apollo and his twin sister Artemis were the children of Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, and the goddess Leto.
When Leto became pregnant, Zeus already had a wife, the queen of the gods Hera.
Hera was angry that Zeus was having children with Leto, and cursed Leto so that she could not ever give birth to her kids anywhere on the earth where the sun shone.
Hera then sent a dragon called Python to eat her.
Python chased Leto to the edge of the sea, where Leto swam to the island of Delos.
Python could not swim, however, and had to leave her alone.
The island of Delos was at that time just a big rock floating on the sea, not really an island yet, so it was n't "on the earth".
So Leto climbed under the shade of a palm tree and gave birth to her daughter Artemis, and then her son Apollo.
When Apollo grew up, he went to his father Zeus and asked for a golden bow with arrows as bright and sharp as the sunshine.
Then he went looking for a place to build his temple.
He came to a spring that belonged to a nymph called Telephusa and tried to build his temple there, but Telephusa suggested he build his temple at Delphi instead, since there was already a shrine there to Themis, the goddess of telling the future.
Apollo went to Delphi, but found out it was taken over by Python, the dragon who had tried to eat his mother.
He killed the Python with a hundred arrows and claimed Delphi as his own temple.
He got two sailors to be his priests and then gave a girl the power of telling the future.
The girl became his priestess, or oracle.
The little god Eros, the son of the love-goddess Aphrodite, had watched Apollo kill Python and worshiped Apollo as his idol.
Apollo, however, was annoyed by Eros and insulted him.
Eros got angry and shot Apollo with his magic arrow, making him fall in love with a nymph named Daphne.
Daphne did n't love Apollo and shunned him.
Apollo chased her and she turned herself into a laurel tree to escape him.
Apollo still loved her and made the laurel one of his symbols.
Apollo looked after the cattle of the sun-god Helios while Helios was driving the sun through the sky.
While Apollo was chasing Daphne, the mischievous baby god Hermes stole the cattle and confused Apollo by making the cattle walk backwards as they left their pen.
When Apollo went looking for them, it looked like they had walked into the pen instead of out.
Hermes also told a nearby man that he would make him rich if he told no one about what he saw Hermes do.
The man, Battos, told Apollo anyway, and was later turned into a stone by Hermes as punishment.
Apollo took Hermes in front of all the gods to be judged.
Hermes acted innocent, though, and finally convinced Apollo to forgive him by giving him the lyre.
Apollo loved this lyre so much that he not only let Hermes keep the cattle, but also gave him the caduceus, a magic wand that could heal wounds and cause sleep.
Hermes tried the caduceus out on two dying snakes, who came back to life and curled around the wand for the rest of eternity.
Apollo, meanwhile, used his lyre to become the god of music and became the leader of the Mousai, the nine goddesses of the arts.
Andre Kirk Agassi (born April 29, 1970) is a retired professional tennis player from the United States.
He was the first tennis player to have won all Grand Slam tournaments on four different surfaces.
Later, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal did the same.
He is one of the most successful tennis players in history and was formerly ranked number 1 in the world.
He is married to former women 's number one tennis player Steffi Graf.
Andorra (officially called the Principality of Andorra) is a European country between Spain and France.
There are about 84,000 people living in the country.
The capital is Andorra la Vella.
It is ruled by a Spanish Bishop and the French President.
Andorra 's government is a parliamentary democracy.
Andorra is a rich country mostly because of tourism.
There are about 10.2 million visitors each year.
The official language is Catalan, although Spanish, Portuguese, and French are also used.
It is not a member of the European Union.
The euro is the money used.
It is said that Charles the Great (Charlemagne) gave the Andorran people their country in return for fighting against the Moors.
Before 1095, Andorra did not have any type of military protection.
The Lord of Caboet and the Bishop of Urgell decided to rule Andorra together.
In 1607 Henry IV of France said the head of the French state and the Bishop of Urgell would be co-princes of Andorra.
Andorra declared war on Imperial Germany during World War I. It did not do any fighting.
They stayed against Germany until 1957 because they were not in the Treaty of Versailles.
Andorra does n't have an Army.
France and Spain help to defend Andorra.
The country has a police force of 295.
Andorra is in the Pyrenees mountain range.
The highest mountain is Coma Pedrosa.
For other locations in Andorra, see List of cities in Andorra.
The population of Andorra is mostly (90 %) Roman Catholic.
Their patron saint is Our Lady of Meritxell.
Children between the ages of 6 and 16 must have full-time education.
Education up to secondary level is paid by the government.
The University of Andorra (UdA) is the state public university.
It is the only university in Andorra.
The American Football Conference (AFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the other being the National Football Conference (NFC).
Every year, the winner of the AFC Championship Game receives the Lamar Hunt Trophy and gets to play against the winner of the NFC Championship Game in the Super Bowl.
As of 2010, the Pittsburgh Steelers, who have won the AFC Championship Game seven times, have won the most AFC Championship Games.
Animal Farm is a short political fable by George Orwell based on Joseph Stalin 's betrayal of the Russian Revolution.
Orwell wrote it because he wished to destroy what he called the "Soviet myth".
Like Nineteen Eighty-Four, the story is one of the most famous political allegories in the world.
It is about a group of animals who rebel against the humans from the farm they live on and run it themselves with hopes of being equal, free, and happy.
In the end, however, the new rule becomes a cruel tyranny of its own led by the pigs.
Written during World War II and published in 1945, it was not well received at first, but is widely accepted as a classic today.
The animals of the Manor Farm lived badly because their farmer Mr. Jones, a mean and always drunk man, exploits them.
One day Old Major, the old pig who led the animals, called a meeting of all the animals and told them about a dream that he had had the previous night.
He had dreamed about an old song called, ` Beasts of England ' that started a resistance against the human beings.
When Old Major sang the song every other animal started to join in.
Everyone was very excited about rebelling.
Old Major died a few days later and two young pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, started leading the preparations for the Rebellion.
About three months later they revolted against Mr. Jones and they took over the farm.
The purpose of the revolution was to create a fair society made only by animals, or animalism and it was based on seven commandments such as Four legs good, two legs bad and most importantly: "All animals are equal".
They also changed the name of the farm to "Animal Farm" from Manor Farm.
Snowball, an inventive and vivacious pig and Napoleon, a big and cruel-looking pig, started to fight for leadership.
In the meantime Mr. Jones was planning to attack to get the farm back but when he did the animals won the battle called "The Battle of the Cowshed" and Mr. Jones was forced to stay out of the farm.
One day, when Snowball announced his plans to build a windmill, Napoleon arrived in the farm with nine big and cruel dogs that made Snowball run away bleeding.
From that day Napoleon was the real dictator of the farm; if an animal did n't agree with him, he was eaten up by his dogs.
If something went wrong (like when the windmill they 'd worked so hard on was wrecked), Napoleon blamed it on Snowball, who, according to him, was sneaking around Animal Farm ruining everything.
When Boxer, the strongest horse in the farm, lost his strength because of old age and fell while he was building a windmill, Napoleon sent him to be slaughtered.
Now Napoleon had pity on nobody.
He and the pigs were like Mr. Jones - they exploited the other animals, they took advantage of the foolishness of some animals and they came into contact with human beings for business although they had said it was forbidden.
In the end they became like human beings, they started to walk on their hind legs and they changed the old maxim with a new one: Four legs good, two legs better.
Nothing was changed and their resistance seemed to be useless.
Orwell, who was a socialist, wrote in the introduction of the 1947 Ukrainian translation of Animal Farm that he got the idea from seeing a young boy whipping a large cart horse.
He explained, "It struck me that if only such animals became aware of (knew) their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit (badly use) animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat (the poor, the lower class)".
There are many characters in the book who are based on real people.
They are grouped into pigs, horses, humans and other animals.
Animalism is a system of beliefs shared by the farm animals of Manor Farm.
The purpose is to ensure the farm animals behave like actual animals and not follow the footsteps of humans beings.
Therefore, any human behavior is considered contrary to the spirit of Animalism.
In the story, this song was sung by animals of England once upon a time.
It is named "Beasts of England".
It has a stirring tune, a cross between "Clementine" and "La Cucaracha".
This song became popular among the animals of England after Old Major recited it to the farm animals of Manor Farm.
It is the first national anthem of Animal Farm.
These are the original commandments laid down by the pigs.
"Four legs good, two legs bad."
which later changed to" Four legs good, two legs better."
"All animals are equal" which later changed to "All Animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."
Amphibians are members of the class Amphibia.
The living ones are frogs (including toads), salamanders (including newts) and caecilians.
They are four-legged vertebrates which are cold blooded.
Amphibians lay their eggs in water, usually in a foam nest.
After hatching they are tadpoles, which live in the water and have gills.
The tadpoles change into adults in a process called metamorphosis.
When they are adult, they have lungs to breathe instead of gills, and legs.
Adult amphibians also use their skin to take in oxygen, and some species of salamanders do not have lungs.
The earliest amphibians evolved in the Devonian from lobe-finned fish which had jointed leg-like fins with digits.
They could crawl along the sea bottom.
Some had developed primitive lungs to help them breathe air when the stagnant pools of the Devonian swamps were low in oxygen.
They could also use their strong fins to hoist themselves out of the water and onto dry land if necessary.
For quite a while, during the Carboniferous and early Permian, amphibia were top predators on land, especially in the low-lying tropical river systems.
In the drier conditions which followed, they were less effective, and the ancestors of mammals and reptiles (the Synapsids and Sauropsids) gradually took over the land.
They laid cleidoic eggs, which had hard shells, and could be laid out of water.
Most of the large, early, amphibians went extinct in the Triassic period; a few survived to the Lower Cretaceous.
The only living amphibiana today are the Lissamphibia.
These include the Anura (frogs and toads), Caudata (salamanders and newts) and Gymnophiona (caecilians).
They are all rather small, compared with mammals or reptiles.
The smallest frog and vertebrate in the world is the New Guinea frog (Paedophryne amauensis).
The biggest amphibian is the Chinese Giant Salamander (Andrias davidianus).
Amphibia are found everywhere in the world, except Antarctica, and there are about 5,565 different species: 88 % of them are in the Anura.
In number of species, they are more successful than mammals, though they occupy a smaller range of habitats.
However, it is said that amphibian populations have been declining all over the world.
Conservation is therefore an important concern.
Amphibians like to live near freshwater in warm weather.
There have also been species which live in forests, deserts and arctic conditions.
Adult amphibians use lungs, and they also get oxygen through their skin, so long as it is moist.
Amphibians may be camouflaged in brown and green, and if so they are prey for birds and reptiles.
Their color gives them camouflage, which is their main defense.
Alternatively, many other amphibia have toxic skin, which is harmful to predators.
These are poisonous to eat.
This is an important defense against predation.
Connected to this is the use of warning colouration.
They may be in vivid colors of red, black, and yellow.
Research into the Rough-skinned newt and the Garter snake shows this is a typical case of co-evolution.
Where they live in the same area, the newts get more poisonous, and the snakes develop more resistance to the poison.
Amphibians have color vision and depth of focus for clear sight.
They also have eye lids, glands and ducts which keep the eyes moist.
These are adaptations to life on land: amphibia were the first vertebrates to have these features.
Some amphibians, such as the common coqu, lay eggs out of water (in this case, on palm leaves).
The eggs develop directly into adult frogs, by-passing the tadpole stage.
Others, like mudpuppies and olms, have a different development.
In a process called neoteny, they become sexually developed as tadpoles, and continue to live in the water with gills.
The order Anura includes the frogs and toads.
There is no fundamental difference between frogs and toads.
Frogs have a short body, webbed digits (fingers or toes), protruding eyes, forked tongue and no tail.
They are exceptional jumpers: many of their features, particularly their long, powerful legs, are adaptations to improve jumping performance.
They often live in semi-aquatic or inhabit humid areas.
A popular distinction is often made between frogs and toads on the basis of their appearance.
Their warty skin is an adaptation for making their toxic slime.
Apart from these glands, their skin is dry, and that is an adaptation to drier habitats.
These features have evolved a number of times independently: convergent evolution.
The distinction has no taxonomic basis.
The only family exclusively given the common name "toad" is Bufonidae (the "true toads"), but many species from other families are commonly called "toads".
The order Caudata is the salamanders.
Newts are salamanders which spend their life in the water even though they are adults.
They are classified in the subfamily Pleurodelinae of the family Salamandridae.
Respiration differs between species of salamanders.
Species that lack lungs respire through gills.
In most cases, these are external gills, visible as tufts on either side of the head.
Some salamanders that are terrestrial have lungs that are used in respiration, although these are simple and sac-like, unlike the more complex organs found in mammals.
Many species, such as the Olm, have both lungs and gills as adults.
Some terrestrial species lack both lungs and gills and perform gas exchange through their skin.
Even some species with lungs also respire through the skin in this manner.
The skin of salamanders secretes mucus.
This helps to keep the animal moist when on dry land, keeps their salt balance while in water, and lubricates during swimming.
Salamanders also secrete poison from glands in their skin, and some additionally have skin glands for secreting courtship pheromones.
Axolotls, from the genus Ambystoma (or mole salamanders), are neotenic amphibians.
This means they get to sexual maturity and reproduce while still in a larval form.
Most salamanders and newts have some defense against predators, usually a poison which makes them uneatable.
Their bright colors are warning colouration.
If, instead, they are camouflaged, this means they are probably not protected by a toxin.
The second line of defense is to shed their tail, which can grow again.
The tail wriggles a bit, attracts the predator while the business part of the salamander moves off.
There are over 350 lungless salamanders.
Most of them are terrestrial and are active in daytime.
Lungless salamanders may communicate with their nose.
p168 Slender salamanders are found in the Pacific Coast.
They are sometimes called "worm salamanders".
This is because they have slimmer (skinny) bodies than most salamanders.
p182 If touched, slender salamanders will bounce on the ground and then run away.
The order Gymnophiona includes the caecilians.
These are long, cylindrical, limbless animals that look like snakes or worms.
Their skin has circular folds, increasing their similarity to the segments of earthworms.
Some are aquatic but most live underground in burrows they hollow out.
Many caecilians give birth to live young, and in the animals that do not do this, the eggs may undergo metamorphosis before they hatch.
Caecilians are found in tropical Africa, Asia and Central and South America.
There are 171 different species.
They are burrowing amphibians.
This means that they dig themselves in wet soil like worms.
Their heads are strong and have bones that help them dig.
p7 Because caecilians have a lot of vertebrae, they can bend easily.
Amphibians are the only vertebrates to go through metamorphosis.
This means that their young look different from their adult.
p8 Amphibians usually reproduce in early spring to late summer, though some reproduce in winter and fall.
p156 Most frogs and toads, such as the common frog (Rana temporalis), gather in large groups to ponds, rivers, swamps and lakes to breed.
p10 Male frogs and toads may croak to attract a female.
When a female frog has chosen a mate, the male frog hops on top of her.
They swim together as she lay eggs in the water.
p7 Sometimes, males fight to mate with a female.
p7 Frogs can lay up to 100 to 60,000 eggs in one clutch.
This is called "frogspawn".
It is a fundamental feature of amphibia that their reproduction is, one way or another, tied to water.
This is because their eggs, although covered by jelly, can not survive long in dry conditions.
Most female amphibians lays her eggs in water.
Males release sperm to fertilize them.
The eggs are laid one by one or in batches.
Batches of eggs can look like a long chain or a ball of foam.
They may wrap their eggs around plants in the water.
They do this so their eggs will not drift away.
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Tree frogs usually lay their eggs on a leaf in a rainwater pool.
Bullfrogs, such as the male American bullfrog and the male African bullfrog, stay with their tadpoles and protect them from predators.
They also move their tadpoles by using their nose to dig a channel to another place where there is more water.
p9 They do this so their tadpoles do not dry up.
Most amphibians leave their eggs to look after themselves.
Fish and other animals eat most of their eggs.
Male midwife toads carry their eggs on their backs.
When they are ready to hatch, the toad goes back to the water and release them.
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Tadpoles do not have lungs when they hatch and instead have gills.
Because gills have a large surface area, tadpoles can get more oxygen by using them.
Young tadpoles have their gills exposed.
When they get older, their gills are covered over by skin.
p6 When they hatch, tadpoles eat constantly.
The tadpoles eat what is left of their eggs, this is usually their first food.
p8
Frog, toad and newt tadpoles eat plants such as algae and pondweed or filter feed.
When they get older, they may start to feed on tiny animals in the water.
Salamander tadpoles and surinam horned toad tadpoles are carnivorous throughout their tadpole stage.
p9 Surinam horned toad tadpoles are very aggressive.
They eat other tadpoles if food is nowhere to be found.
The eggs of the spadefoot toad hatches in three days.
Their tadpoles complete their metamorphosis in six to eight days.
This is because spadefoot toads lay their eggs in places where water will dry up soon.
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Tadpoles of frogs and toads start to grow their back legs first.
They then grow front legs a few weeks later.
When tadpoles grow their limbs they are called "froglets".
This is because they look rather like a smaller version of adult frogs and toads.
Tadpoles will also start to grow a backbone after growing their front limbs.
After this, their mouths get bigger and their eyes will stick out more.
After a tadpole has grown its hands, their tails continue to get shorter until there is nothing left of them.
p11
Salamanders and newts can be found living in streams.
Salamanders can be found in rotten logs, holes or underground places that are wet such as under leaves.
p152 Web-toed salamanders live in habitats where there are a lot of rocks.
They like to hide under rocks and stones.
p195 The tailed frogs, like to live in cold water habitats.
p199 In their habitat, amphibians like to live where there are a lot of places to hide.
These include nearby small trees, logs and plants.
While underwater they like to hide near aquatic plants and rocks.
Tree and dart frogs like to live in forests on trees, plants and on the ground under leaves.
Some amphibia can be found living in the desert or the arctic.
p12 The desert froglet lives in the desert.
They are only active at night, when temperatures are much cooler.
It rarely rains in the desert and because of this, desert frogs will burrow to keep cool.
They use their mucus to keep them wet.
They will spread it all over their bodies.
The mucus will harden to keep the water it produces from escaping.
Once the desert frog has done this, it will stay in its cocoon and will not move.
They will stay like this for several months to years until a rainstorm.
Desert frogs and toads lose water more quickly.
The spadefoot toad will spit on the ground.
Once they have done this, they will lay on it.
Their bodies will take in the water.
Their bodies are thin and have a lot of blood vessels, this helps them to be able to take water through their skin.
The California newt can survive a fire by spreading its mucous over its body.
p12
Arctic frogs such as the wood frog, moor frog and the common frog has to live with freezing temperatures for a long time.
They will burrow in places where they can get into a cocoon.
Like every living organisms, amphibians must have water to survive.
Amphibians however, need freshwater.
Some frogs such as burrowing frogs can keep water in their bladders.
This allows them to stay underground without drying up.
The crab-eating frog lives near water that is somewhat salty.
They will eat saltwater crabs.
Torrent salamanders lives in cold waters.
Because of this they have shorter lungs.
Short lungs helps them to float easily.
Amphibia are world-wide, though restricted in distribution by their need for moist or watery habitats to reproduce.
Many amphibia have secretions in their skin which makes them toxic.
They do not produce toxins themselves.
They get toxins from what they eat.
They eat insects in their habitat.
These insects get the poison from a plant.
The toxin has been discovered in beetles.
This means that they are likely the cause of poisons found in amphibians.
Amphibians do not produce batrachotoxin in captivity, which means that it is not harmful to touch them.
The American Indian tribe comeching ns used the toxins of the arrow dart frogs when hunting.
Newts in the genus Taricha has a poison called tetrodotoxin, a neurotoxin.
Scientists believe that toxins in newts are caused by bacteria in the genera Pseudoalteromonas, Pseudomonas and Vibrio.
Because of this, the newts do not have a lot of predators.
However, some species of snakes have develop a resistance.
This means that they can eat newts without the toxin hurting them.
It is a case of co-evolution.
Amphibians ' eyes have lids, glands and ducts.
They have good color vision Caecilian eyes are small and dark.
Most of them are blind.
Most amphibians have a good sense of smell, even underwater.
The skeletal system of amphibians are similar to other four-legged animals.
They have a spine, rib cage, long bones such as the humerus and femur.
They also have short bones such as the phalanges, metacarpals, and metatarsals.
Most amphibians have four limbs, except for caecilians.
The bones in amphibians are hollow and do not weigh much.
Amphibians are predatory animals.
They mostly eat live invertebrates and animals that do not move too quickly.
These include caterpillars, earthworms, crayfish, water beetles, snails and dragon fly larvae.
p667 Many amphibians use their sticky tongues to catch their prey.
They will swallow the animal whole, but may chew it just a bit for it to go down their throats.
The Ranidae family and the Ceratophrys genus will eat almost anything they can fit into their mouths.
p668 These include rodents, birds, ducklings, small fish and small mammals.
Most frogs are cannibalistic, and will eat each other if food is no where to be found.
Some amphibians will even eat their own tadpoles and eggs if there is no food for them.
In captivity, pet frogs will be given crickets, worms, small fish, rodents and fruit flies.
Adult amphibians can help decrease the mosquito population by eating most of their larvae.
Caecilians eat earthworms, termites and beetle larvae, and also small lizards.
p31 Caecilians rely on their smell to find food.
They like to eat earthworms and will find them by picking up their chemical signals.
Salamanders and newts are fed a lot of different types of worms.
These include blood worms and earthworms.
They can eat small fish such as goldfish, fathead minnows and guppies.
Salamanders also eat crickets and pinkies, which are baby rats.
p771
The amphibian population have been decreasing from all locations in the world.
Scientists have said that the declining of amphibians is one of the most critical threats to global biodiversity.
A number of causes are believed to be involved.
These include habitat destruction, over-exploitation, pollution, introduced species, climate change, destruction of the ozone layer, and diseases like chytridiomycosis.
Ultraviolet radiation damages the skin, eyes and eggs of amphibians.
However, the declines of amphibian population are still not understood.
The Amphibian Conservation Action Plan (ACAP) have released a global strategy to help the amphibian population.
It was developed by over 80 leading experts.
The Amphibian Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) are working on another global strategy to help amphibian populations.
The Amphibian Ark (AA) is an organization that was created to help the public be aware of the decline in amphibian populations.
They have been working with zoos and aquaria around the world.
They try to encourage them to create a natural habitat for threatened amphibians.
Another project is the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project (PARCP) which are trying to spread awareness about chyridiomycosis.
The disease is spreading into eastern Panama and threatening all amphibians living there.
On January 21, 2008, Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) released a statement to the public.
It was created by Helen Meredith, who identified nature 's most endangered species.
Meredith explains that 85 % of the top 100 endangered amphibians list are receiving little to no conservation attention.
Bullfrog legs are a source of food for Southern United States and the Midwestern United States.
People hunt bullfrogs at night near rivers.
The bullfrogs ' legs are cooked, while their backs are fried.
p9 In China, bullfrogs are sold alive for eating.
However, they are later cooked dead with vegetables.
In the state of California, people must have a license to catch bullfrogs for food.
p256 In schools, bullfrogs are dissected in biology classes.
Usually, this is done in grammar school.
p85 The dissecting is a method for teaching students the anatomy of a bullfrog.
p85 The emperor newt is hunted in China for food.
They are also used there for medicine.
Burrowing frogs are able to hold water in their bladder, because of this indigenous Australians use them to drink water.
p13
Amphibians are also kept as pets.
p4 They are kept in aquariums or a terrarium.
A terrarium is a tank that is decorated with plants and soil on one side.
On the other side, there is water.
Most amphibians would need one place for land and another for water.
p8 Each type of amphibian should have its special needs taken care of.
Semi-aquatic amphibians need both land and water divided in the tank.
Tropical frogs would need mist and high humidity in their terrariums.
p7 Water for amphibia needs dechlorination.
The chlorine in tap water can kill amphibia.
Some amphibians popular exotic pets, and are found in pet stores that sell reptiles.
p22
Alaska is a state in the United States.
It is in the Northwest corner of the continent of North America.
Alaska does not touch any other US state.
It has borders with Canada, the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Bering Strait.
Alaska is the biggest state in the United States.
It is the 4th least populated state (there are 3 other states with fewer people living there.)
It has the lowest population density of all the states.
About half of the population of Alaska lives in the Anchorage metropolitan area.
722,718 people live in Alaska.
The United States bought Alaska from Russia on March 30, 1867.
This was called the Alaska Purchase.
It cost $ 7.2 million.
Today, that would be $ 120 million.
The price was about $ 0.02 per acre ($ 4.74 \/ km2).
Alaska became an organized (or incorporated) territory on May 11, 1912.
It became the 49th state on January 3, 1959.
The name Alaska comes from the Aleut word alaxsaq.
This means "the mainland" or "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed."
The land is also called Alyeska, which is another Aleut word that means "the great land."
The Russian name was.
The capital city is Juneau, but the biggest city is Anchorage.
Alaska is the biggest state in the United States, but it almost has the least people.
Alaska has almost 20 % of all the land in the U.S., but only about 0.2 % of the people.
It is not connected to any other states by American land, but it is connected to Canada.
Alaska has many glaciers, some of which are can be seen from passing cruise ships.
Some are coastal, and others are not by the ocean.
It is a popular tourist destination, as there is a very rich culture along with beautiful scenery.
There are many wild animals in Alaska.
Some of them are the brown bear, the moose, and the wolf.
There are some important industries in Alaska, like oil, fishing, mining, and forestry.
Oil is the biggest industry in Alaska.
Most of the oil is very far north in the Alaskan arctic.
A very long pipeline starts at the northern coast of Alaska and runs to the southern coast.
It is over 800 m long.
There were many gold rushes in Alaska.
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 - 22 November 1963) was an English writer, and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family.
He wrote a number of novels, on various themes.
Most of his books are about modern society, the effects of modern science and, later, on mysticism and psychedelic drugs like LSD.
Huxley is probably best known for his book Brave New World.
In the book, which was written in 1932, he writes about a world in the far future, where the whole social hierarchy is based on genetic traits, and not on the personal effort of individual people to learn and improve themselves.
Aberdeen is a city in Scotland, United Kingdom.
Algae (one alga, but several algae) are a type of plant-like living things that can make food from sunlight by photosynthesis.
The study of algae is called phycology or algology.
The term lumps together many different kinds of organisms.
They have in common only that they are autotrophic: they use natural sources of energy and simple inorganic materials to build their forms.
As non-vascular plants they do not have the kind of cell and tissue structure of land plants.
They are a convenient but very loose term.
Only in recent years has it become clear how different the many kinds of algae are.
Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms.
Some have one cell and others have many cells.
The largest and most complex marine algae are called seaweeds.
They are like plants, and "simple" because they lack the many distinct organs found in land plants.
For that reason they are not classified as plants.
Though the prokaryotic Cyanobacteria (formerly referred to as blue-green algae) were included as "algae" in older textbooks, it is not now.
The term algae is now used for eukaryotic organisms.
All true algae have a nucleus within a membrane and chloroplasts inside one or more membranes.
However, algae are definitely not a monophyletic group, as they do not all descend from a common algal ancestor.
Modern taxonomists propose splitting them up into monophyletic groups, but not everyone agrees how to do this.
Algae do not have the same structures that land plants do, such as leaves, roots, and other organs.
Nearly all algae have parts that do photosynthesis the same way as cyanobacteria.
They make oxygen, unlike other photosynthetic bacteria such as purple and green bacteria.
Some unicellular species use only external energy sources and have limited or no photosynthetic parts.
Fossilized filamentous algae from the Vindhya basin have been dated back to 1.6 to 1.7 billion years ago.
Algae are usually found in damp places or water, and are common on land and water.
However, algae on land are usually inconspicuous and are far more common in moist, tropical regions than dry ones.
Algae do not have vascular tissues and other adaptations to live on land, but they can endure dryness and other conditions in symbiosis with a fungus as lichen.
The various sorts of algae play significant roles in aquatic ecology.
Microscopic forms that live suspended in the water column are called phytoplankton.
They provide the food base for most marine food chains.
Kelp grows mostly in shallow marine waters.
Some are used as human food or harvested for agar or fertilizer.
Kelp can grow in large stands called kelp forests.
These forests prevent some of the damage from waves.
Many different species live in them, including sea urchins, sea otters, and abalone.
Some algae may harm other species.
Some algae may reproduce a lot, and make an algal bloom.
These algae may make protective toxins which can kill fish in the water.
Dinoflagellates make a compound that turns the flesh of fish into slime.
Then the algae eats this nutritious liquid.
Algae have evolved a number of symbiotic partnerships with other organisms.
The most famous is the plant-like lichen, which are each formed by a fungus with an alga.
It is a highly successful life-form, and twenty thousand ` species ' are known.
In all cases the lichen are quite different in appearance and life-style from either constituent; it is possibly the most complete symbiosis known.
Both constituents gain from their access to niches with low nutrient value, which is where lichen are found.
Less well known are the algal relationships with animals.
Reef-building corals are basically social Cnidarian polyps.
Corals are dependent on light, because the algae are important partners, and they require light.
Corals have evolved structures, often tree-like, which offer the algae maximum access to light.
The coral weakens the algal cell walls, and digests about 80 % of the food synthesised by the algae.
The corals ' waste-products provide nutrients for the algae so, as with lichen, both partners gain from the association.
The algae are golden-brown flagellate algae, often of the genus Symbiodinium.
A curious feature of the partnership is that the coral may eject the algae in hard times, and regain them later.
The ejection of the algal partner is called bleaching, because the coral loses its color.
p200
Other types of Cnideria, such as sea anemones and jellyfish, also contain algae.
Jellyfish with algae behave so that their partners get the best light during the day, and descend to depths at night, where the water is rich in nitrates and brown with decay.
Sea slugs and clams are also well known for harbouring algae.
Both groups are molluscs.
The sea slugs graze on coral, and are the same color as the coral they graze.
They are able to separate the algae from the polyp tissues they digest.
The algal cells are moved to its tentacles, where they continue to live.
The otherwise defenceless slug gains both camouflage and nutrition.
p204 The giant clam keeps algae in its mantle, which is revealed when the clam is open.
The colored mantle has places where the skin is transparent, and acts like a lens to concentrate light on the algae beneath.
When the algae get too numerous, the clam digests them.
p203
Various other marine invertebrate groups have members which symbiose with algae.
Flatworms (Platyhelminths) and Polychaete worms (Annelids) are two such groups.
Alkanes are chemical compounds, made of carbon and hydrogen.
The simplest alkane is methane, which is made of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms.
Larger alkanes have two or more carbon atoms connected or bonded together in a chain.
The carbon atoms of alkanes are joined together by single bonds, which is what makes them different from alkenes.
The Alkane 's general formula is CnH2n +2.
Alkanes come from crude oil.
Crude oil is a natural resource, a thick black fluid found by drilling underground.
Crude oil is a mixture of alkanes of different chain length - composed of different numbers of carbon atoms.
Fractional distillation is the method used to separate the different hydrocarbons in crude oil, used to get a purer sample of a single alkane.
An appellate court, commonly called an appeals court, court of appeals (American English), appeal court (British English), court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that hears an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal.
In most jurisdictions, the court system is divided into at least three levels.
The trial court, which initially hears cases and reviews evidence and testimony to determine the facts of the case.
There is at least one intermediate appellate court.
The top level is a supreme court (or court of last resort) which primarily reviews the decisions of the intermediate courts.
A jurisdiction 's supreme court is that jurisdiction 's highest appellate court.
Appellate courts nationwide can operate by varying rules.
The authority of appellate courts to review decisions of lower courts varies widely from one jurisdiction to another.
In some places, the appellate court has limited powers of review.
"Generally speaking, an appellate court 's judgment provides ` the final directive of the appeals courts as to the matter appealed, setting out with specificity the court 's determination that the action appealed from should be affirmed, reversed, remanded or modified '".
An abacus is a very old tool used for math.
It is still used in some parts of the world.
Sometimes blind people will use an abacus, because they can feel the numbers easily.
The most common abacuses work by moving beads on rods.
Abacuses can do addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and people can use them to find the square root of whole numbers.
Expert, or very good, abacus users can sometimes do math quicker than basic calculators.
There is a common Chinese abacus.
This abacus is split into two kinds of basic rows, the top is for the "5 "s, and the bottom is for the "ones".
There are one or two beads in the top rows, and four or five beads in the bottom ones.
For example, 8 is one bead on top and 3 below, because 5 + 3 = 8.
Every column represents a different digit.
The Abacus is really useful for math and is really fun to mess around with and just have fun with.
Good to get for young children as toys or to help them learn.
ACID is a concept used with Databases.
It is an abbreviation.
It stands for
Asphalt, or bitumen, is a sticky, black and highly viscous liquid or semi-solid, composed almost entirely of petroleum.
It is present in most crude petroleums and in some natural deposits.
It is the material which made the La Brea tar pits.
Its main use is in road construction.
Mixed with "aggregate" (sand, gravel, crushed stone, etc.) it makes a good road surface.
It has various other names: pitch, tarmac, blacktop, asphalt concrete, asphalt pavement (US), all mean roughly the same thing.
Asphalt which is liquid is often called tar.
Tar is also used for plant resin.
Solid asphalt is often called pitch.
Although a block of asphalt or pitch can look like a solid, it still flows, but very slowly.
There have been a few "pitch experiments" to see how long it takes for a drip to form and drop off a block of apparently solid pitch.
Apollo 11 was the first mission organised to send people to the moon.
It was done by NASA, an American space agency.
It launched on July 16, 1969, carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon successfully while Collins flew above them.
The mission was part of the Space Race.
It fulfilled the challenge John F. Kennedy made in 1961 to "land a man on the moon, and return him safely to the Earth", before the 1960s ended.
Millions of people around the world viewed the launch of Apollo 11 on television.
The launch was a global event.
Richard Nixon, who was then President, watched the launch from the White House.
A Saturn V rocket launched the mission from the Kennedy Space Center in America.
About two hours after leaving Earth the Lunar Command and Landing Modules separated from the main rocket.
3 days later the crew entered Lunar Orbit (orbit around the moon).
A day later the Landing section or Apollo Lunar Module separated from the command module.
The Landing Module landed safely on the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin aboard.
During the landing there were several problems with the mission computer and to avoid a crash Armstrong had to take manual control of the landing craft.
They eventually landed with only 25 seconds of fuel left.
The first thing Buzz Aldrin did upon touch down of the landing module was to pray.
He also read some words of Jesus Christ.
He did not reveal his intention to do this beforehand as someone had recently filed a lawsuit against NASA to stop astronauts from taking part in religious activity while in space.
Armstrong became the first human to walk and speak on the moon 's surface.
The first words he said were:
For the next two and a half hours Aldrin and Armstrong took notes, photographs and drilled core samples.
The landings were broadcast to over six million people on Earth via giant radio receivers in Australia.
They performed many scientific experiments including the collecting of Lunar rocks and dust.
An American flag was set up and photographed on the moon.
After finishing their activity, the two astronauts returned to the landing module and slept for seven hours before starting to leave.
While preparing for take off Aldrin accidentally broke the circuit breaker in the ignition.
Armstrong used a felt tip pen to bridge the gap and prevent them from being stranded on the moon.
Aldrin and Armstrong left many things on the moon: an American flag, a few experiments and a plaque bearing a statement from the human race.
The plaque read
Here Men From The Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D..
We Came in Peace For All Mankind.
The plaque also held a disc containing messages from 73 leaders of countries around the world, the word hello spoken in almost every language known to man and a picture of two humans.
On July 24 the astronauts returned to Earth and were immediately placed into quarantine (isolation), in case they brought back some unknown virus or disease from the moon that could be dangerous to humans.
The three astronauts stayed in quarantine for three weeks.
Upon their release they were treated as heroes around the world.
They had dinner with President Nixon, a parade in Mexico City and another in Washington.
The three also faced many television interviews and guest appearances.
Apollo 8 was a mission in the Apollo program in December 1968.
It was the first manned spaceflight to leave Earth orbit and first to orbit the Moon.
Commander Frank Borman, Pilot Jim Lovell and Bill Anders transmitted a television show while they were in orbit.
The kind of spaceship that could land on the Moon had not yet been built, so they photographed and studied the Moon from above.
After that, they fired their rockets and returned to Earth.
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person who goes into outer space.
The Soviet Union and countries that it was friends with used the word cosmonaut.
Western countries including the United States said astronaut.
Astronauts are also called "taikonauts" in China or "spationaute" in France.
The first person to go into space was a Russian from the Soviet Union.
His name was Yuri Gagarin.
This happened on April 12, 1961.
The first and second people to walk on the Moon were the Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
This happened on July 20, 1969.
No astronauts have gone to the moon since 1972.
No people have visited any other planets yet.
Astronauts used to go into space using many different ways, but now they only go on the Soyuz and Shenzhou.
Several countries have worked together to build an International Space Station where people stay and work in space for long periods of time.
A few countries and companies are trying to make more ways to get people into space.
The United States is building a very big rocket called the SLS.
Some American companies, like Boeing and SpaceX, are being paid by the United States to make ways for people to go to space.
A Modest Proposal is a famous work of satire by Irish writer Jonathan Swift.
It was written in 1729.
Alkali metals are the chemical elements in group one of the periodic system.
They are silver-coloured when pure, soft and have only one valence electron.
They like to make reactions in which they give up this single electron and then have a charge of +1.
They react strongly with water and because of this, they have to be stored in petrol.
Alkali metals are the first group in the periodic table.
They are never found in nature uncombined because they are unstable and they react fast to other elements.
They bond well with all elements except the noble gases.
When they are in air, they quickly turn black.
The alkali metals are lithium (Li), sodium (Na), potassium (K), rubidium (Rb), caesium (sometimes written cesium, although caesium is preferred) (Cs), and francium (Fr).
Lithium is the least reactive.
Although it was thought before that francium would be the most reactive, although it is very rare, it was more recently predicted that caesium is in fact more reactive than francium due to relativity.
Sodium is the most important alkali metal.
One of the most important salts of sodium is sodium chloride (NaCl) (common ` table salt ').
It also forms a hydroxide, sodium hydroxide (NaOH), which is commonly called ` caustic soda '.
It is a very strong base.
This article is about alphabets in writing.
The article about alphabets in computing is at Alphabet (computer science), and the company is at Alphabet Inc.
An alphabet is a writing system, a list of symbols for writing.
The basic symbols in an alphabet are called letters.
In an alphabet, each letter is a symbol for a sound or related sounds.
To make the alphabet work better, more signs assist the reader: punctuation marks, spaces, standard reading direction, and so on.
The name alphabet comes from Aleph and Beth, the first two letters in the Phoenician alphabet.
The alphabet in this article is the Roman alphabet (or Latin alphabet).
It was first used in Ancient Rome to write Latin.
Today many languages also use the Latin alphabet: it is the most used alphabet today.
It seems that the idea of an alphabet a script based entirely upon sound arose only once, and has been copied and adapted to suit many different languages.
Although no alphabet fits its language perfectly, it is flexible enough to fit any language approximately.
It was a unique invention.
p12
Our alphabet is called the Roman alphabet, as compared with the Cyrillic and other alphabets.
All of these come from the ancient Greek alphabet, which dates back to about 1100 to 800BC.
p167 The Greek alphabet was probably developed from the Phoenician script, which appeared somewhat earlier, and had some similar letter-shapes.
The Phoenicians spoke a Semitic language, usually called Canaanite.
The Semitic group of languages includes Arabic, Maltese, Hebrew and also Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus.
We do not know much about how the alphabetic idea arose, but the Phoenicians, a trading people, came up with letters which were adapted by the early Greeks to produce their alphabet.
The one big difference is that the Phoenician script had no pure vowels.
Arabic script has vowels which may, but do not have to be, shown by diacritics (small marks above or below the line).
The oldest Qu ` ran manuscripts had no diacritics, and Israeli children to about the third grade use texts with vowel ` dots ' added.
p89
No ancient script, alphabetic or not, had pure vowels before the Greeks.
The Greek alphabet even has two vowels for ` e ' and two for ` o ', to distinguish between the long and short sounds.
It is fairly clear from this that careful thought went into both the Phoenician invention and the Greek adaptation, but no details survive of either process.
Semitic scripts apparently derive from Proto-Sinaitic, a script of which only 31 inscriptions (plus 17 doubtful) are known.
It is thought by some researchers that the original source of this script was the Egyptian hieratic script, which by the late Middle Kingdom (about 1900BC) had added some alphabetic signs for representing the consonants of foreign names.
Egyptian activity in Sinai was at its height at that time.
A similar idea had been suggested many years previously.
Other writing systems do not use symbols that mean a sound, but symbols that mean a word or a syllable.
In the past such writing systems were used by many cultures, but today they are almost only used by languages people speak in Asia.
A syllabary is a system of writing that is similar to an alphabet.
A syllabary uses one symbol to indicate each syllable of a word, instead of one symbol for each letter of the word.
For example, a syllabary would use one symbol to mean the syllable "ga", instead of two letters of the alphabet "g" and "a".
The atomic number (symbol: Z) of an atom is the number of protons in the nucleus of the atom.
The atomic number of an atom identifies which element it is.
In a neutral atom, the atomic number is equal to the number of electrons orbiting the nucleus.
The elements of the periodic table are listed in order of increasing atomic number.
Atomic number is not changed by the number of electrons or neutrons; it is simply the proton number.
Anatomy is the study of the bodies of living beings.
This can be people, animals, or plants.
It is like taking the body apart, and looking at its parts (organs, muscles and bones).
People who study anatomy then look where a certain organ (or bone, or muscle) should be, or where it normally is.
The history of anatomy dates back to 1600 BCE when Egyptians began studying human anatomy.
They discovered the functions of many organs like the liver, spleen, kidneys, heart etc. and were the first to discover the structure and functions of the lymphatic system.
Academic human anatomists are usually employed by universities, medical schools or teaching hospitals.
They are often involved in teaching anatomy, and research into certain systems, organs, tissues or cells.
There are different systems, such as the cardiovascular system, also known as the circulatory system (the system that gets blood around the body), the muscular system (the system that contains muscles), the nervous system (the system that controls the nerves, and the brain) and the skeleton (the bones).
Human anatomy, physiology and biochemistry are similar basic medical sciences.
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (April 4, 1932 - December 29, 1986) was a Soviet movie director, writer and opera director.
Tarkovksy is listed as one of the 100 filmmakers best liked by movie critics.
He received critical acclaim for directing such movies as Andrei Rublev, Solaris and Stalker.
Tarkovsky also did a lot of work as a screenwriter, movie editor and theater director.
He was also important as a movie theorist.
He directed most of his movies in the Soviet Union, with the exception of his last two movies which were produced in Italy and Sweden.
His movies are characterized by Christian spirituality and metaphysical themes.
Other things that are typical for his movies are extremely long takes, the lack of conventional dramatic structure and plot, and memorable images of exceptional beauty.
Tarkovsky died of lung cancer in Paris, at age 54.
Ambiguity means that what a thing is, is not clear.
Literally, the word refers to a choice between two different things.
In the proper sense it should mean two different meanings because ambi comes from the Greek word for two.
We see things happen, and then we decide what they mean.
If we can not decide what is going on, the event is ambiguous.
This is an extension of the original use of the word.
Words or sentences that are ambiguous can lead to misunderstandings (people get the wrong meaning).
This can sometimes be serious, but it can also be funny.
Jokes often rely on ambiguity.
The British comedian Ronnie Barker said that he loved the English language because there are so many jokes you can make using ambiguity.
He gave this example:
A mother says to her little boy: Johnny, go over the road and see how old Mrs Jones is.
The boy comes back and says to his mother: Mrs Jones says it is none of my business.
The mother meant old in a friendly way (dear old Mrs Jones), but the sentence could also mean: find out Mrs Jones s age.
This is obviously how Johnny understood his mother 's instruction.
The opposite of ambiguous is unambiguous (meaning that something is perfectly clear and can only have one meaning).
The Aardvark (Orycteropus afer) is a mammal from Africa; its name means "earth pig" in the language Afrikaans.
It is the only living member in its order, though some fossil genera have been found
The Aardvark looks a bit like the South American anteaters but they are not related.
It is in a proposed clade Afroinsectiphilia, with the golden moles and tenrecs.
Another proposal is to out it in the Pseudungulata, with the elephants and Sirenia.
There is no consensus at present.
Adult aardvarks weighs about 60 kilograms (130 pounds) and a little more than one meter (45 inches) long.
Aardvarks eat mostly ants and termites.
They have a long sticky tongue which makes it easy to pick up many ants at once.
Aardvarks are nocturnal, which means they are awake at night and asleep during the day.
The aardwolf (Proteles cristata) is a small, insectivorous mammal, native to East Africa and Southern Africa.
Its name means "earth wolf" in the Afrikaans \/ Dutch language.
It is also called "maanhaar jackal" in Afrikaans, or civet hyena, based on the secretions (civet) from their anal glands.
The aardwolf is in the same family as the hyenas.
Unlike many of its relatives in the order Carnivora, the aardwolf does not hunt large animals, or even eat meat on a regular basis; instead it eats insects, mainly termites one aardwolf can eat about 250,000 termites during a single night by using its long, sticky tongue to capture them.
The aardwolf lives in the scrublands of eastern and southern Africa these are open lands covered with stunted trees and shrubs.
The aardwolf is nocturnal, resting in burrows during the day and coming out at night to eat.
An adventure is something exciting that happens to someone.
An adventure can be a made-up story, or it can be something that happens in real life.
People often like stories about a person or a group of people who go off and have an adventure.
There is often some danger in the story.
Enid Blyton and Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote stories about people who have exciting adventures.
Harry Potter has lots of adventures: he meets strange people and gets into lots of dangerous situations.
People in real life like to have adventures.
They may be explorers who like to go to far-away places where no one has ever been before.
Adventure sports are sports that are exciting and can be rather dangerous.
Skydiving, gliding and rock climbing are adventure sports.
An adventure playground is a playground for children where they can climb, swing and jump on things.
They have been made by adults for children to use and are normally quite safe.
An adventurer is someone who goes on adventures or does things that are risky.
Space travel is an example of a modern adventure.
An adventure game is a video game about adventures.
The word venture is a short form of "adventure".
A "business venture" is a business project in which there is a lot of risk.
"Venture" can also be a verb: "They ventured out into the storm".
Asia is the largest continent on Earth.
It is in the northern hemisphere.
Asia is connected to Europe in the west.
Together, Asia and Europe are called Eurasia.
Some of the oldest human civilizations began in Asia, such as Sumer, China, and India.
Asia was also home to some large empires such as the Persian Empire, the Mongol Empire, and the Ming Empire.
The Asian continent is the largest of all continents.
Covering about 30 % of the world 's land area, it has more people than any other continent with about 60 % of the world 's total population.
Stretching from the icy Arctic in the north to the hot and steamy equatorial lands in the south, Asia contains huge, empty deserts, as well as some of the world 's highest mountains and longest rivers.
Asia is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Indian Ocean.
It is separated from Europe by the Pontic Mountains and the Turkish Straits.
A long, mainly land border in the west separates Europe and Asia.
This line runs North-South down the Ural Mountains in Russia, along the Ural River to the Caspian Sea, and through the Caucasus Mountains to the Black Sea.
Some European countries are also partly in Asia.
About three-quarters of Russia is in Asia, while the rest is in Europe.
Small parts of four other Asian countries are in Europe; Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.
Aruba is an island in the Caribbean Sea, just a short distance north of the Venezuelan Paraguan Peninsula, and it forms a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Unlike much of the Caribbean region, it has a dry climate and an arid, cactus-strewn landscape.
This climate has helped tourism, because visitors to the island can reliably expect warm, sunny weather.
The island broke off from the Netherlands Antilles in 1986, hoping to gain its independence by 1996.
In 1990, that effort stopped at the request of the island people.
The island came into the news after U.S. high school senior Natalee Holloway disappeared on a graduation trip on May 30, 2005.
The Articles of Confederation, formally named the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was an agreement among all thirteen original states in the United States of America that served as its first constitution.
All thirteen states ratified the Articles in early 1781.
In 1789, the Founding Fathers replaced the Articles with the United States Constitution and a federal form of government.
Even though the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution were created by many of the same people, the two documents were very different.
The original five-paged Articles contained thirteen articles, a conclusion, and a section for signatures.
The following list contains short summaries of each of the thirteen articles.
(1) The name of the confederation will be "The United States of America."
(2) Each state will continue to rule itself, except for the specific things the Articles allow the confederation government to do: "Each state (keeps) its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not (given to the confederation government) by this Confederation..."
(3) The United States is a group of states that has come together to protect each other and help each other.
The states have united "for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general (well-being), (coming together) to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them..."
(4) People in the United States have freedom of movement: anyone can pass freely between states, except for "paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice."
When a person travels into one state, he gets all of the rights that state gives to people that live there.
If a person commits a crime in one state and runs away to another state, he will be extradited to the state where the crime happened, and tried there.
(5) Each state gets one vote in the Congress of the Confederation (called the "United States in Congress Assembled").
Each state can bring a group of two to seven delegates to the Congress.
Each state 's legislature chooses its Members of Congress.
Members of Congress can not serve for more than three out of any six years.
(6) Only the confederation government is allowed to conduct foreign policy (work with other countries) and to declare war.
Without Congress 's permission, no states may have navies or full-time armies, and no states may fight in any war.
However, the Articles encouraged each state to have militias.
(7) When an army is raised for common defense, the state legislatures will choose Colonels and military ranks below Colonel.
(8) The United States will pay for things using money that the state legislatures will raise.
Not every state will have to pay the same amount.
States with higher property values will pay more.
(9) The confederation government has these powers: to declare war; to set weights and measures (including coins); and for Congress to serve as a final court for disagreements between states.
(10) A Committee of the States will be the government when Congress is not meeting.
(11) Nine states must agree before a new state is accepted into the Confederation.
Canada is already approved, if it applies for membership.
(12) The Confederation accepts war debt from before the Articles.
(13) The Articles can only be changed if Congress and all of the state legislatures agree.
The Atlantic Ocean is the world 's second largest ocean with a total area of about 106,400,000 square kilometres (41,100,000 sq mi).
It covers approximately 20 percent of the Earth 's surface.
"Atlantic" refers to Atlas of Greek mythology.
The Atlantic formed when the Americas moved west from Eurasia and Africa.
This began sometime in the Cretaceous period, roughly 135 million years ago.
It was part of the break-up of the supercontinent Pangaea.
The east coast of South America is shaped somewhat like the west coast of Africa, and this gave a clue that continents moved over long periods of time (continental drift).
The Atlantic Ocean is still growing now, because of sea-floor spreading from the mid-Atlantic Ridge, while the Pacific Ocean is said to be shrinking because the sea floor is folding under itself.
The Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by North and South America.
It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea.
It connects with the Mediterranean Sea though Strait of Gibraltar.
In the southeast, the Atlantic merges into the Indian Ocean.
The 20 East meridian defines its border.
In the southwest, the Drake Passage connects it to the Pacific Ocean.
Panama Canal links the Atlantic and Pacific.
The Atlantic ocean is second in size to the Pacific.
It occupies an area of about 106400000 k. The volume of the Atlantic with its adjacent seas is 354,700,000 cubic kilometers.
The average depth of the Atlantic with its adjacent seas, is 3339 m. The greatest depth is Milwaukee Deep with 8380 m
The Atlantic Ocean has important ocean currents.
One of these, called the Gulf Stream, flows across the North Atlantic.
Water gets heated by the sun in the Caribbean Sea and then moves northwest toward the North Pole.
This makes France, Ireland, Britain, Iceland, and Norway in Europe much warmer in winter than Newfoundland and Nova Scotia in Canada.
Without the Gulf Stream, the climates of northeast Canada and northwest Europe might be the same, because these places are about the same distance from the North Pole.
There are currents in the South Atlantic too, but the shape of this sea means that it has less effect on South Africa.
The main feature of the seabed of the Atlantic Ocean is a large underwater mountain chain that runs through it from north to south, called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
This is at the boundary of four tectonic plates: Eurasian, North American, South American and African.
The ridge extends from Iceland in the north to about 58 south.
The amount of salt in the surface waters of the open ocean ranges from 33-37 parts per thousand and varies with latitude and season.
Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher.
He was influenced by Kant, Plato and eastern teachings, especially Buddhism and the Upanishads.
Schopenhauer believed that the primary characteristic, or essence of all things - including human beings - is not intelligence, rationality or spirit, but will.
By "will" he means a wanting and craving like that which we know in ourselves as our "will."
It is the source of immense amounts of suffering in the world.
He also believed that a "better consciousness" could be attained by denying the fulfilment of our desires, taking time to think about who we really are and what we should do to avoid suffering - but also, in doing something few philosophers of his day spoke of: in making and looking at works of art, especially music, which he considered a way to escape from the world 's pain and suffering.
Schopenhauer was a huge influence on Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, Leo Tolstoy, Carl Jung and many other important artists and thinkers of the 20th Century.
Angola (officially called Republic of Angola) is a country in Africa.
The capital is Luanda.
Angola is in the south of the continent.
Angola is a member state of the African Union, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, the Latin Union, South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone and the Southern African Development Community.
There was a civil war from 1975 to 2002.
Angola is the world 's twenty-third largest country.
Angola is bordered by Namibia to the south, Zambia to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north-east, and the South Atlantic Ocean to the west.
Angola 's average temperature on the coast is 60 F in the winter and 70 F in the summer.
It has two seasons; dry season (May to October) and hot rainy season (November to April).
Angola 's population is estimated to be 18,498,000 (2009).
Angola is divided into eighteen provinces.
See List of settlements in Angola for the cities and towns in the country.
Albert Sidney Johnston (February 2, 1803 April 6, 1862) was a Confedeate general during the American Civil War.
He was born in 1803 in Tennessee.
He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1826.
He resigned from the U.S. army in 1834 after his wife died.
He then joined the Texas army during the Texas Revolution and continued serving in it after Texas became a republic.
In 1840 he resigned from the Texas army and moved to Kentucky.
Johnston rejoined the U.S. army for the Mexican American War.
By 1860 he was in charge of the U.S. army in California.
He resigned in May 1861 after Texas joined the Confederate States of America.
He was made a four star general in the Confederate army and put in charge of the Confederate units in Kentucky and Tennessee.
He was killed at the Battle of Shiloh on April 6, 1862.
An android is a robot that looks very similar to humans.
In TV shows and movies, androids are usually represented by human actors without special effects, while robots are usually shown in clunky suits or in makeup.
In real life, androids do exist -- but they are inhuman and tend to look scary, falling into the uncanny valley.
Alberta is a province in Canada.
It lies in the western part of Canada.
The province of British Columbia is west of Alberta.
The province of Saskatchewan is east of Alberta.
It is north of Montana, one of the states in the United States.
Alberta is the fourth largest Canadian province.
It has an area of 642,317 km.
Alberta has 3,305,800 people.
There are three provinces in Canada that have more people.
The capital of Alberta is Edmonton.
Edmonton is close to the middle of Alberta.
Calgary is another city in Alberta.
It is south of Edmonton.
Canada became a country in 1867, but it was much smaller than it is now, and did not include the parts of the country to the west.
From 1670 to 1870, the southern part of Alberta was included in "Rupert 's Land," land owned by the Hudson Bay Company.
The land was owned by the company so that they could catch animals to kill for fur, which they sold.
The northern part of Alberta was called the "Northwest Territories."
Today, the Northwest Territories still exist but they are north of Alberta.
Alberta was made a province of Canada in 1905, at the same time as Saskatchewan.
Some parts of Alberta gets a lot of snow in the winter.
Alberta is very cold in the winter.
There is a dry part of Alberta in the south.
Alberta has a huge amount of oil (in the Athabasca Oil Sands) and natural gas.
There are also a lot of farms in Alberta.
Farmers grow several different types of crops Farmers mainly grow wheat.
There are also a lot of cows on Alberta farms, and Alberta beef is exported.
There is diesel fuel in Alberta.
The Actinopterygii is the class of ray-finned fishes.
The ray-finned fishes get their name from the fact that they have lepidotrichia or "fin rays".
Their fins are webs of skin held by bony or horny spines ("rays").
This is different from the fleshy fins of the fish in the Sarcopterygii.
Actinopterygians are the largest class of vertebrates.
There are nearly 25,000 species.
They can be found in both fresh water and marine environments from the deep sea to the highest mountain streams.
Most of the living species are teleosts.
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics).
He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, but not for relativity.
His theories of special and general relativity are of great importance to many branches of physics and astronomy.
They have been given experimental confirmation by many experiments and observations.
Einstein is well known for his theories about light, matter, gravity, space, and time.
His most well known equation is.
It means that energy and mass are different forms of the same thing.
Einstein published more than 3 scientific papers and over 5 non-scientific works.
He received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities.
Near the beginning of World War II, he warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany might be developing an atomic weapon, and recommended that the U.S. begin nuclear weapons research.
That research, begun by a newly established Manhattan Project, resulted in the U.S. becoming the first and only country to have nuclear weapons during the war.
Einstein was born (at Ulm) in W rttemberg, Germany, on 14 March 1879.
His family was Jewish, but was not very religious.
However, later in life Einstein became very interested in his Judaism.
Einstein did not begin speaking until after age two.
According to his younger sister, Maja, "He had such difficulty with language that those around him feared he would never learn".
When Einstein was around four, his father gave him a magnetic compass.
He tried hard to understand how the needle could seem to move itself so that it always pointed north.
The needle was in a closed case, so clearly nothing like wind could be pushing the needle around, and yet it moved.
So in this way Einstein became interested in studying science and mathematics.
His compass inspired him to explore the world of science.
When he became older, he went to a school in Switzerland.
After he graduated, he got a job in the patent office there.
While he was working there, he wrote the papers that first made him famous as a great scientist.
Einstein had two severely disabled children with his first wife Mileva.
His daughter "Lieserl" (her real name may never be known) was born about a year before their marriage in January 1902.
She spent her very short life (believed to be less than 2 years) in the care of Serbian grandparents where it is believed she died from scarlet fever.
Some believe she may have been born with the disorder called Down syndrome but it has never been proved.
Her very existence only became known to the world in 1986 when a shoe box containing 54 love letters (mostly from Einstein), exchanged between Mileva and Einstein from late 1897 to September 1903, was discovered by Einstein 's granddaughter in an attic in California.
Their son, Eduard, was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
He spent decades in hospitals, and died in the Zurich sanatorium in 1965.
In 1917, Einstein became very sick with an illness that almost killed him.
His cousin Elsa Lowenthal nursed him back to health.
After this happened, Einstein divorced Mileva, and married Elsa on 2 June 1919.
Just before the start of World War I, he moved back to Germany, and became director of a school there.
He lived in Berlin until the Nazi government came to power.
The Nazis hated people who were Jewish or who came from Jewish families.
They accused Einstein of helping to create "Jewish physics," and German physicists tried to prove that his theories were wrong.
In 1933, under death threats from the Nazis and hated by the Nazi-controlled German press, Einstein and Elsa moved to Princeton, New Jersey in the United States, and in 1940 he became a United States citizen.
During World War II, Einstein and Le Szil rd wrote to the U.S. president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to say that the United States should invent an atomic bomb so that the Nazi government could not beat them to the punch.
He was the only one who signed the letter.
He was, however, not part of the Manhattan Project, which was the project that created the atomic bomb.
Einstein, a Jew but not an Israeli citizen, was offered the presidency in 1952 but turned it down, stating "I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I can not accept it."
Ehud Olmert was reported to be considering offering the presidency to another non-Israeli, Elie Wiesel, but he was said to be "very not interested".
He taught physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey until his death on 18 April 1955 of a burst aortic aneurysm.
He was still writing about quantum physics hours before he died.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The theory of special relativity was published by Einstein in 1905, in a paper called "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies".
It says that both distance measurements and time measurements change near the speed of light.
This means that as you get closer to the speed of light (nearly 300,000 kilometres per second), lengths appear to get shorter, and clocks tick more slowly.
Einstein said that Special Relativity is based on two ideas.
The first is that the laws of physics are the same for all observers that are not moving in relation to each other.
All the people on a jet airplane would not be moving much in relation to each other, but the people in two different jet airplanes that come toward each other would be moving toward each other very fast.
The people who are all going in the same direction at the same speed are said to be in an "inertial frame."
The second idea is that any observer, no matter how fast that observer moves in relation to us, is always the same.
A vacuum is a volume without any matter in it.
People who are in the same "frame" (think of them as being in a big box so that they all go places together and at the same speed) will measure how long something takes to happen in the same way.
Their clocks will keep the same time.
But people moving in another "frame" will look over at them and see that their clocks were moving at a different rate.
The reason that this happens is actually quite simple.
It is the consequence of two ideas.
One idea we have seen already.
No matter what you are doing, even if you are moving toward a distant star at half the speed of light, or if you are moving away from it at half the speed of light (or any other speed, it does not matter), if you measure the speed of the light coming from that star it will always be the same number.
The other idea goes against our ordinary ideas.
The other idea says that who is standing still and who is moving is whoever you say is standing still or moving.
How can that be?
Imagine you were all alone in a different universe.
That universe has no suns, planets, or anything else.
It just has you and your spaceship.
Are you moving?
Are you standing still?
Those questions do not mean anything.
Why?
Because when we say we are moving we mean that we can measure our distance from something else at one time and measure the distance at another time and the numbers will not be the same.
If the numbers get bigger we are moving away.
If the numbers get smaller we are moving closer.
Suppose a sailor is standing on the edge of a very long boat with a flat top.
Her boyfriend is standing on the dock.
They are still very close together, so they shout to each other.
The boat starts to leave.
The sailor runs toward the back of the boat at the same speed that the boat moves forward so she and her boyfriend can keep talking.
As far as her boyfriend is concerned, she is not moving.
So to have movement you must have at least two things.
We do not think about it because when we sit on the earth in a park, which is moving very fast around the sun, we think we are not moving because we do not get any closer or farther away from the trees in the park.
Now imagine that another spaceship appears in this other universe.
On your spaceship you say that their spaceship is coming closer to yours.
After all, you do not feel yourself moving.
On their spaceship they say that your spaceship is coming closer to theirs.
They do not feel themselves to be moving either.
Somebody on an airplane can be moving at several hundred kilometers per hour, but they say, "I am just sitting here."
Let us try to stretch our minds a bit.
Imagine that a basketball player is on a glass airplane on the ground.
People outside can see him very easily.
He begins to walk from the back of the airplane toward the front of the airplane, bouncing his basketball as he goes.
Maybe the distance between the places where his basketball hits the floor of the airplane is about one meter or one yard.
If some people are under the airplane they can mark the place directly under the airplane where the ball hits the floor.
Those marks are a meter or maybe a yard apart.
So everybody agrees that the bounces are about a meter or a yard apart.
Later the plane takes off.
People still watch it from on the ground.
But this time bounce number 5 is over a place in Gibraltar and bounce number 6 is over a place in Spain.
The distance between bounces is measured in kilometers or miles on the ground, but the people on the plane get the same answers they did while the plane was on the ground.
Now suppose some people are on a big spaceship and they want to make a very accurate clock.
So they make a long tunnel between decks from what would be like the top of an airplane to what would be the bottom of an airplane.
At one end they put a mirror, and at the other end they put a simple machine.
It shoots one short burst of light toward the mirror and then waits.
The light hits the mirror and bounces back.
When it hits a light detector on the machine, the machine says, "Count = 1," it simultaneously shoots another short burst of light toward the mirror, and when that light comes back the machine says, "Count = 2."
Of course since light is very fast the count changes very fast.
They decide that a certain number of bounces will be defined as a second, and they make the machine change the seconds counter every time it has detected that number of bounces.
Every time it changes the seconds counter it also flashes a light out through a porthole under the machine.
So somebody out taking a space walk will see the light flashing every second.
Every grade school child learns the formula d = rt (distance equals rate multiplied by time).
We know the speed of light, and we can easily measure the distance between the machine and the mirror and multiple that to give the distance the light travels.
So we have both d and r, and we can easily calculate t. The people on the spaceship compare their new "light clock" with their various wrist watches and other clocks, and they are satisfied that they can measure time well using their new light clock.
Now this spaceship happens to be going very fast.
It is not coming to Earth to visit, but it does happen to fly over the North Pole.
There is a science station with a telescope at the North Pole.
They see a flash from the clock on the space ship, and then they see another flash.
Only the flashes do not come a second apart.
They come at a slower rate.
The reason is that the situation is like the basketball player on the airplane.
The ball is pushed downward by the player 's hand.
That is the light in the spaceship 's machine firing off a burst toward the mirror.
The ball hits the floor and bounces.
That is like the light hitting the mirror and being reflected.
The ball returns to the player 's hand.
That is like the light hitting the machine and triggering a new burst of light.
Note that the distance between the place on the ground where the basketball is seen to hit the floor and the distance on the ground where the basketball is seen to return to the basketball player 's hand is some great distance.
Depending on how fast the plane is going, it might be a kilometer or even a mile away.
So the man on the North Pole sees the light flash on the side of the spaceship when it is thousands of miles away, and then sees the next flash when the spaceship has gotten thousands of miles closer.
The way the North Pole man sees it, the light started out, let 's say, 100,000 miles away and hit its return point when it was perhaps 90,000 miles away.
So instead of just traveling twice the diameter of the space ship (perhaps several hundred meters or yards) the light has traveled 10,000 miles.
Light always goes at the same speed, d = rt, and so the time this trip took is going to be much greater as seen by the man on the North Pole.
That is why the clock on the spaceship is not flashing once a second for the Earth observer.
Special relativity also relates energy with mass, in Albert Einstein 's E = mc2 formula.
E = mc2, also called the mass-energy equivalence, is one of the things that Einstein is most famous for.
It is a famous equation in physics and math that shows what happens when mass changes to energy or energy changes to mass..
The "E" in the equation stands for energy.
Energy is a number which you give to objects depending on how much they can change other things.
For instance, a brick hanging over an egg can put enough energy onto the egg to break it.
A feather hanging over an egg does not have enough energy to hurt the egg.
There are three basic forms of energy: potential energy, kinetic energy, and rest energy.
Two of these forms of energy can be seen in the examples given above, and in the example of a pendulum.
A cannon ball hangs on a rope from an iron ring.
A horse pulls the cannon ball to the right side.
When the cannon ball is released it will move back and forth as diagrammed.
It would do that forever except that the movement of the rope in the ring and rubbing in other places causes friction, and the friction takes away a little energy all the time.
If we ignore the losses due to friction, then the energy provided by the horse is given to the cannon ball as potential energy.
(It has energy because it is up high and can fall down.)
As the cannon ball swings down it gains more and more speed, so the nearer the bottom it gets the faster it is going and the harder it would hit you if you stood in front of it.
Then it slows down as its kinetic energy is changed back into potential energy.
"Kinetic energy" just means the energy something has because it is moving.
"Potential energy" just means the energy something has because it is in some higher position than something else.
When energy moves from one form to another, the amount of energy always remains the same.
It can not be made or destroyed.
This rule is called the "conservation law of energy".
For example, when you throw a ball, the energy is transferred from your hand to the ball as you release it.
But the energy that was in your hand, and now the energy that is in the ball, is the same number.
For a long time, people thought that the conservation of energy was all there was to talk about.
When energy transforms into mass, the amount of energy does not remain the same.
When mass transforms into energy, the amount of energy also does not remain the same.
However, the amount of matter and energy remains the same.
Energy turns into mass and mass turns into energy in a way that is defined by Einstein 's equation, E = mc2.
The "m" in Einstein 's equation stands for mass..
Mass is the amount of matter there is in some body.
If you knew the number of protons and neutrons in a piece of matter such as a brick, then you could calculate its total mass as the sum of the masses of all the protons and of all the neutrons.
(Electrons are so small that they are almost negligible.)
Masses pull on each other, and a very large mass such as that of the Earth pulls very hard on things nearby.
You would weigh much more on Jupiter than on Earth because Jupiter is so huge.
You would weigh much less on the Moon because it is only about one-sixth the mass of Earth.
Weight is related to the mass of the brick (or the person) and the mass of whatever is pulling it down on a spring scale which may be smaller than the smallest moon in the solar system or larger than the Sun.
Mass, not weight, can be transformed into energy.
Another way of expressing this idea is to say that matter can be transformed into energy.
Units of mass are used to measure the amount of matter in something.
The mass or the amount of matter in something determines how much energy that thing could be changed into.
Energy can also be transformed into mass..
If you were pushing a baby buggy at a slow walk and found it easy to push, but pushed it at a fast walk and found it harder to move, then you would wonder what was wrong with the baby buggy.
Then if you tried to run and found that moving the buggy at any faster speed was like pushing against a brick wall, you would be very surprised.
The truth is that when something is moved then its mass is increased.
Human beings ordinarily do not notice this increase in mass because at the speed humans ordinarily move the increase in mass in almost nothing.
As speeds get closer to the speed of light, then the changes in mass become impossible not to notice.
The basic experience we all share in daily life is that the harder we push something like a car the faster we can get it going.
But when something we are pushing is already going at some large part of the speed of light we find that it keeps gaining mass, so it gets harder and harder to get it going faster.
It is impossible to make any mass go at the speed of light because to do so would take infinite energy.
Sometimes a mass will change to energy.
Common examples of elements that make these changes we call radioactivity are radium and uranium.
An atom of uranium can lose an alpha particle (the atomic nucleus of helium) and become a new element with a lighter nucleus.
Then that atom will emit two electrons, but it will not be stable yet.
It will emit a series of alpha particles and electrons until it finally becomes the element Pb or what we call lead.
By throwing out all these particles that have mass it has made its own mass smaller.
It has also produced energy.
In most radioactivity, the entire mass of something does not get changed to energy.
In an atomic bomb, uranium is transformed into krypton and barium.
There is a slight difference in the mass of the resulting krypton and barium, and the mass of the original uranium, but the energy that is released by the change is huge.
One way to express this idea is to write Einstein 's equation as:
The c2 in the equation stands for the speed of light squared.
To square something means to multiply it by itself, so if you were to square the speed of light, it would be 299,792,458 meters per second, times 299,792,458 meters per second, which is approximately
About 60 terajoules were released by the atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima.
So about two-thirds of a gram of the radioactive mass in that atomic bomb must have been lost (changed into energy), when the uranium changed into krypton and barium.
The idea of a Bose-Einstein condensate came out of a collaboration between S. N. Bose and Prof. Einstein.
Einstein himself did not invent it but, instead, refined the idea and helped it become popular.
The concept of zero-point energy was developed in Germany by Albert Einstein and Otto Stern in 1913.
When Einstein generalized classical physics to include the increase of mass due to the velocity of the moving matter, he arrived at an equation that predicted energy to be made of two components.
One component involves "rest mass" and the other component involves momentum, but momentum is not defined in the classical way.
The equation typically has values greater than zero for both components:
E2 = (m0c2) 2 + (pc) 2 where E represents the energy of a particle m0 represents the mass of the particle when it is not moving p represents the momentum of the particle when it is moving c represents the speed of light.
There are two special cases of this equation.
A photon has no rest mass, but it has momentum.
(Light reflecting from a mirror pushes the mirror with a force that can be measured.)
In the case of a photon, because its m0 = 0, then: E2 = 0 + (pc) 2 E = pc p = E\/c
The energy of a photon can be computed from its frequency or wavelength.
These are related to each other by Planck 's relation, E = h = hc \/, where h is the Planck constant (6.626 10 34 joule-seconds).
Knowing either frequency or wavelength, you can compute the photon 's momentum.
Therefore, the quantity "m0" used in Einstein 's equation is sometimes called the "rest mass." (The "0" reminds us that we are talking about the energy and mass when the speed is 0.)
This famous "mass-energy relation" formula (usually written without the "0 "s) suggests that mass has a large amount of energy, so maybe we could convert some mass to a more useful form of energy.
The nuclear power industry is based on that idea.
mv2 = m02 \/ (1 v2\/c2 -RCB- In this case, we can say that E = mc2 is also true for moving particles.
The General Theory of Relativity was published in 1915, ten years after the special theory of relativity was created.
Einstein 's general theory of relativity uses the idea of spacetime.
Spacetime is the fact that we have a four-dimensional universe, having three spatial (space) dimensions and one temporal (time) dimension.
Any physical event happens at some place inside these three space dimensions, and at some moment in time.
According to the general theory of relativity, any mass causes spacetime to curve, and any other mass follows these curves.
Bigger mass causes more curving.
This was a new way to explain gravitation (gravity).
General relativity explains gravitational lensing, which is light bending when it comes near a massive object.
This explanation was proven correct during a solar eclipse, when the sun 's bending of starlight from distant stars could be measured because of the darkness of the eclipse.
General relativity also set the stage for cosmology (theories of the structure of our universe at large distances and over long times).
Einstein thought that the universe may curve a little bit in both space and time, so that the universe always had existed and always will exist, and so that if an object moved through the universe without bumping into anything, it would return to its starting place, from the other direction, after a very long time.
He even changed his equations to include a "cosmological constant," in order to allow a mathematical model of an unchanging universe.
The general theory of relativity also allows the universe to spread out (grow larger and less dense) forever, and most scientists think that astronomy has proved that this is what happens.
When Einstein realized that good models of the universe were possible even without the cosmological constant, he called his use of the cosmological constant his "biggest blunder," and that constant is often left out of the theory.
However, many scientists now believe that the cosmological constant is needed to fit in all that we now know about the universe.
A popular theory of cosmology is called the Big Bang.
According to the Big Bang theory, the universe was formed 15 billion years ago, in what is called a "gravitational singularity".
This singularity was small, dense, and very hot.
According to this theory, all of the matter that we know today came out of this point.
Einstein himself did not have the idea of a "black hole", but later scientists used this name for an object in the universe that bends spacetime so much that not even light can escape it.
They think that these ultra-dense objects are formed when giant stars, at least three times the size of our sun, die.
This event can follow what is called a supernova.
The formation of black holes may be a major source of gravitational waves, so the search for proof of gravitational waves has become an important scientific pursuit.
Many scientists only care about their work, but Einstein also spoke and wrote often about politics and world peace.
He liked the ideas of socialism and of having only one government for the whole world.
He also worked for Zionism, the effort to try to create the new country of Israel.
Einstein 's family was Jewish, but Einstein never practiced this religion seriously.
He liked the ideas of the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza and also thought that Buddhism was a good religion.
Even though Einstein thought of many ideas that helped scientists understand the world much better, he disagreed with some scientific theories that other scientists liked.
The theory of quantum mechanics discusses things that can happen only with certain probabilities, which can not be predicted with better precision no matter how much information we might have.
This theoretical pursuit is different from statistical mechanics, in which Einstein did important work.
Einstein did not like the part of quantum theory that denied anything more than the probability that something would be found to be true of something when it was actually measured; he thought that it should be possible to predict anything, if we had the correct theory and enough information.
He once said, "I do not believe that God plays dice with the Universe."
Because Einstein helped science so much, his name is now used for several different things.
A unit used in photochemistry was named for him.
It is equal to Avogadro 's number multiplied by the energy of one photon of light.
The chemical element Einsteinium is named after the scientist as well.
In slang, we sometimes call a very smart person an "Einstein."
Most scientists think that Einstein 's theories of special and general relativity work very well, and they use those ideas and formulas in their own work.
Einstein could not agree that phenomena in quantum mechanics can happen out of pure chance.
He believed that all natural phonomena have explanations that do not include pure chance.
He spent much of his later life trying to find a "unified field theory" that would include his general relativity theory, Maxwell 's theory of electromagnetism, and perhaps a better quantum theory.
Most scientists do not think that he succeeded in that attempt.
Afghanist n (officially called Islamic Republic of Afghanistan;,) is a country in South Asia.
It has borders with Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast.
In early times people passed through it with animals and other goods as it connected China and India with Central Asia and the Middle East.
More recently, Afghanistan has been damaged by many years of war and there not being enough jobs.
The country is around 251,826 square miles (652,230 square kilometers) in size or area.
There are 30 million people in Afghanistan.
There are about 3 million Afghan refugees (people who had to leave the country) who are in Pakistan and Iran for some time.
Kabul, its capital, had about 3,691,400 people living in it in 2011.
Afghanistan has many mountains.
The mountains are called the Hindu Kush and Himalayas.
The big mountain in Afghanistan is Mount Nowshak.
There are plains (which have soil that is good for growing plants) and foothills.
Part is also dry and called the Registan Desert.
Afghanistan has snow and glaciers in the mountains.
Amu Darya is the big water stream, or river.
Afghanistan is dry and cold in winter and hot in summer.
Having no water sometimes causes problems for farmers.
Sandstorms happen a lot in the desert.
The country has a lot of a valuable stone called lapis lazuli, which was used to decorate the tomb of the Egyptian king Tutankhamun.
Southern Afghanistan has not many plants because it is dry.
There are more plants where there is more water.
Mountains have forests of pine and fir.
cedar, oak, walnut, alder, and ash trees.
Afghanistan 's animals are in the mountains.
There are wolves, foxes, jackals, bears, and wild goats, gazelles, wild dogs, camels, and wild cats such as the snow leopard in the country.
The birds are falcons, eagles and vultures.
The Rhesus Macaque and the red flying squirrel are also in Afghanistan.
Many years of war, hunting, and years of no water have killed animals in Afghanistan.
There used to be tigers in Afghanistan, but now there are n't any.
Bears and wolves are almost gone.
Many different cultures have moved through or invaded the land of Afghanistan.
Today the people of Afghanistan, known as Afghans, have many traits passed down from these groups.
The largest ethnic group (group of people considered the same in some or multiple ways) is the Pashtuns (or ethnic Afghans), who make up about half the Afghan people.
Tajiks are the second-largest group, making up about one-fifth of the population.
Before the 20th century, Tajiks were called Sarts and some come from the Iranian peoples.
Most Pashtuns are also related to the Iranian peoples, and some Pashtuns and Tajiks marry each other but at the same time they are rivals.
The country 's other ethnic groups include the Hazara, Uzbek, Aimak, Turkmen, Nuristani, Baloch, Pashai and a few others.
The Hazaras live in the mountains of central Afghanistan, many people believe that they have connection to the 13th century Mongol invaders, because their language has many Mongol words.
Pashto and Dari are the official languages of Afghanistan; bilingualism is very common.
Both are Indo-European languages from the Iranian languages sub-family.
They are usually written with the Arabic alphabet.
Uzbek and Turkmen are widely spoken in the north and Nuristani and Pashai are spoken in the east.
Almost all Afghans follow the religion of Islam.
Afghanistan is a largely rural country, which means that there are only few major cities and much spaced-apart land.
Only about one fifth of the population lives in cities.
Kabul, the capital, is the largest city.
It is along the Kabul River south of the Hindu Kush range.
Other cities in Afghanistan include Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e Sharif, and Jalalabad.
The rural population is made up of farmers and nomads (people who move or travel from place to place).
The farmers live mainly in small villages along the rivers.
The nomads live in tents while moving from place to place with their animals and belongings.
Some Afghan people live in the high central mountains or the deserts in the south and southwest.
Millions of people escaped from Afghanistan in order to not get involved in the wars that happened in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Most of them lived in neighboring Pakistan and Iran.
Afghanistan is in the path of important trade routes that connect southern and eastern Asia to Europe and the Middle East.
Because of this, many empire builders have decided to rule over the area.
Signs that these emperors were near Afghanistan still exist in many parts of the country.
Afghanistan is near what used to be the Silk Road, so it has many cultures.
From up to 8,000 years ago, the peoples of Afghanistan helped develop (create) major world religions, traded and exchanged many products, and sometimes controlled politics and culture in Asia.
Archaeologists digging a cave in what is now northeastern Afghanistan (in Badakhshan), discovered that people lived in the country as early as 100,000 years ago.
They found the skull of a Neanderthal, or early human, as well as tools from about 30,000 years ago.
In other parts of Afghanistan, archaeologists uncovered pottery and tools that are 4,000 to 11,000 years old evidence that Afghans were among the first people in the world to grow crops and raise animals.
Farmers and herders settled in the plains surrounding the Hindu Kush as early as 7000 B.C..
These people may have grown rich off the lapis lazuli they found along riverbeds, which they traded to early city sites to the west, across the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia.
As farms and villages grew and thrived in Afghanistan, these ancient people eventually invented irrigation (digging ditches for water so it flows to crops) that allowed them to grow crops on the northern Afghanistan desert plains.
This civilization (advanced state of organization) is today called BMAC (Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex), or the "Oxus civilization".
The Oxus civilization expanded as far east as western edge of the Indus Valley during the period between 2200 and 1800 B.C..
These people, who were the ancestors of the Indo-Aryans, used the term "Aryan" to identify their ethnicity, culture, and religion.
Scholars know this when they read the ancient texts of these people; the Avesta of Iranian people and the Vedas of Indo-Aryans.
According to the Avesta, Aryans settled in sixteen districts in the area, beginning with Airiana vaejo (land of Aryans), and following with B x = Bactria or Balkh; Nis ya = a district between Margiana and Bactria; Har iva = Areia or Her t; Va k r ta = Gandh ra; Urv = Ghazni region; Harax ait = Arachosia or Kandahar; Ha tumant = Helmand region; Ra a = a district north of Harax ait and Ha tumant; axra = arx between Ghazni and Kabul, in the valley of Logar.
The old Greek writers knew them and called the land of these Aryan settlers Ariana.
Zoroaster, the founder of the Zoroastrian religion, the world 's earliest monotheistic religion, (meaning a religion believing in one god) lived in the area (somewhere north of today 's Afghanistan), around 1000 B.C.
By the middle of the sixth century BC, the Achaemenids took over control of the land, which was previously held by the Medes, and made it part of the Persian empire.
Alexander the great defeated and conquered the Persian Empire in 330 BC.
He founded some cities in the area and Greek culture and language continued to influence the people for a long period, right up to the Islamic conquest in the 7th century A.D..
After Alexander, Greco-Bactrians, Scythians, Kushans, Parthians and Sassanians ruled the area.
Kushans spread Buddhism from India in the 1st century B.C., and Buddhism remained an important religion in the area until the 7th century.
The Buddhas of Bamiyan were the remainder of Buddhism in Afghanistan.
Those giant statues were destroyed by the very religious Taliban in 2001, despite international protests in defense of the priceless art.
The Taliban believed that those ancient statues were un-Islamic and a curse on Afghanistan.
Arabs introduced Islam in the 7th century and slowly began spreading the new religion.
In the 9th and 10th centuries, many local Islamic dynasties rose to power inside Afghanistan.
One of the earliest was the Tahirids, whose kingdom included Balkh and Herat; they established independence from the Abbasids in 820.
The Tahirids were succeeded in about 867 by the Saffarids of Zaranj in western Afghanistan.
Local princes in the north soon became feudatories of the powerful Samanids, who ruled from Bukhara.
From 872 to 999, north of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan enjoyed a golden age under Samanid rule.
In the 10th century, the local Ghaznavids turned Ghazni into their capital and firmly established Islam throughout all areas of Afghanistan, except the Kafiristan region in the northeast.
Mahmud of Ghazni, a great Ghaznavid sultan, conquered the Multan and Punjab region, and carried raids into the heart of India.
Mohammed bin Abdul Jabbar Utbi (Al-Utbi), a historian from the 10th century, wrote that thousands of "Afghans" were in the Ghaznavid army.
The Ghaznavid dynasty was replaced by the Ghorids of Ghor in the late 12th century, who reconquered Ghaznavid territory in the name of Islam and ruled it until 1206.
The Ghorid army also included ethnic Afghans.
Afghanistan was recognized as Khorasan, meaning "land of the rising sun," which was a prosperous and independent geographic region reaching as fast as the Indus River.
All the major cities of modern Afghanistan were centers of science and culture in the past.
The New Persian literature arose and flourished in the area.
The early Persian poets such as Rudaki were from what is now Afghanistan.
Moreover, Ferdowsi, the author of Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran, and Rumi, the famous Sufi poet, were also from modern-day Afghanistan.
It has produced scientists such as Avicenna, Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni, Omar Khayy m, Al-Khwarizmi, and many others who are widely known for their important contributions in areas such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, geography, and geology.
It remained the cultural capital of Persia until the devastating Mongol invasion in the 13th century.
Timur, the Turkic conqueror, took over in the end of the 14th century and began to rebuild cities in this region.
Timur 's successors, the Timurids (1405 1507), were great patrons of learning and the arts who enriched their capital city of Herat with fine buildings.
Under their rule Afghanistan enjoyed peace and prosperity.
Between south of the Hindu Kush and the Indus River (today 's Pakistan) was the native land of the Afghan tribes.
They called this land "Afghanistan" (meaning "land of the Afghans").
The Afghans ruled the rich northern Indian subcontinent with their capital at Delhi.
From the 16th to the early 18th century, Afghanistan was disputed between the Safavids of Isfahan and the Mughals of Agra who had replaced the Lodi and Suri Afghan rulers in India.
The Safavids and Mughals occasionally oppressed the native Afghans but at the same time the Afghans used each empire to punish the other.
In 1709, the Hotaki Afghans rose to power and completely defeated the Persian Empire.
Then they marched towards the Mughals of India and nominally defeated them with the help of the Afsharid forces under Nader Shah Afshar.
In 1747, after Nader Shah of Persia was killed, a great leader named Ahmad Shah Durrani united all the different Muslim tribes and established the Afghan Empire (Durrani Empire).
He is considered the founding father of the modern state of Afghanistan while Mirwais Hotak is the grandfather of the nation.
During the 1800s, Afghanistan became a buffer zone between two powerful empires, British India and Russia.
As British India advanced into Afghanistan, Russia felt threatened and expanded southward across Central Asia.
To stop the Russian advance, British tried to make Afghanistan part of its empire but the Afghans fought wars with British-led Indians from 1839 to 1842 and from 1878 to 1880.
After the third war in 1919, Afghanistan under King Amanullah gained respect and recognition as a completely independent state.
The Kingdom of Afghanistan was a constitutional monarchy established in 1926.
It was the successor state to the Emirate of Afghanistan.
On 27 September 1934, during the reign of Zahir Shah, the Kingdom of Afghanistan joined the League of Nations.
During World War II, Afghanistan remained neutral.
It pursued a diplomatic policy of non-alignment.
The creation of Pakistan in 1947 as its eastern neighbor created problems.
In 1973, political crises led to the overthrow of the king.
The country 's new leader ended the monarchy and made Afghanistan a republic.
In 1978, a Communist political party supported by the Soviet Union seized control of Afghanistan 's government.
This move sparked rebellions throughout the country.
The government asked the Soviet Union for military assistance.
The Soviets took advantage of the situation and invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.
Most people in Afghanistan opposed the sudden Soviet presence in their country.
For nearly a decade, anti-Communist Islamic forces known as Mujahideen were trained inside neighboring Pakistan to fight the Soviets and the Afghan government.
The United States and other anti-Soviet countries supported the Mujahideen.
In the long war, over one million Afghan civilians were killed.
The Soviet Army also lost more than 15,000 soldiers in that war.
Millions of Afghans left their country to stay safe in neighboring Pakistan and Iran.
In 1989 the Soviet Army withdrew the last of its troops.
After the Soviets left, different Afghan warlords began fighting for control of the country.
The warlords received support from other countries, including neighboring Pakistan and Iran.
A very conservative Islamic group known as the Taliban emerged in an attempt to end the civil war.
By the late 1990s the Taliban had gained control over 95 % of Afghanistan.
A group known as the Northern Alliance, based in northern Afghanistan near the border with Tajikistan, continued to fight against the Taliban.
The Taliban ruled Afghanistan according to their strict version of Islamic law.
People whom the Taliban believed violated these laws were given cruel punishments.
In addition, the Taliban completely restricted the rights of women.
Because of such policies, most countries refused to recognize the Taliban government.
Only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) accepted them as the official government.
The Taliban also angered other countries by allowing suspected terrorists to live freely in Afghanistan.
Among them were Osama bin Laden and members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
In September 2001, the United States blamed bin Laden for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C..
The Taliban refused to hand him over to the United States.
In response, the United States and its allies launched a bombing campaign against al-Qaeda in October 2001.
Within months the Taliban abandoned Kabul and a new government led by Hamid Karzai came to power, but fighting between the Taliban and US-led armies continued.
The Taliban are coming into Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan, Afghans accuse Pakistan 's military of being behind the Taliban militants but Pakistan has rejected this and stated that a stable Afghanistan is in Pakistan 's own interest.
In December 2004, Hamid Karzai became the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan.
NATO began rebuilding Afghanistan, including its military and government institutions.
Many schools and colleges were built in the last ten years.
Freedom for women improved, and they can now study, work, drive and run for offices.
Many Afghan women work as politicians, some are ministers while at least one is a mayor.
Others have opened businesses, or joined the military or police.
Afghanistan 's over-all economy has also improved dramatically and NATO states had agreed in 2012 to help the country for at least another 10 years after 2014.
In the meantime, Afghanistan improved diplomatic ties with many countries in the world and continues to establish new ties with other states.
Afghanistan is a newly formed democracy.
Under the new constitution, the president and two vice presidents are elected every five years.
The International Security Force Assistance (ISAF) helps the government maintain peace and rebuild the country.
The government still faces problems with the Taliban, internal security, and public services.
As of 2004, there are thirty-four provinces.
Each province is divided into districts.
(For cities see List of cities in Afghanistan.)
Albania (officially called Republic of Albania;) is an independent republic in Southeastern Europe, with an area of 28748 k. The capital is Tirana, and other important cities are Durr s, Elbasan and Vlora.
Over 3 million people live in Albania.
The most Albanians are Muslims with 55 %, 23 % Eastern Orthodox and 15 % Roman Catholics.
Albania is next to Kosovo, Montenegro, Greece and Macedonia.
It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea in the west, and a coast on the Ionian Sea in the southwest.
The official language is Albanian.
The national anthem is Hymni i Flamurit.
Albania was the southern part of Illyria during the Roman Empire.
In the Middle Ages the Albanians were ruled by many foreign countries, including the Byzantine and Venetian Empires and during the 16th century resistance to the Ottoman Empire 's rule was led by the Albanian national hero Skanderberg.
After four centuries of Turkish domination, finally in the 20th century an independent Albania was created.
In 1939 Albania was conquered by fascist Italy and was part of the Kingdom of Italy until 1943.
After World War II Albania became independent again, under communist rule.
It was ruled by Enver Hoxha, who died in 1985.
Ramiz Alia took over and also later became President when, in 1992, Albania returned to democracy, and it now has friendly relations with the European Union, which it has applied to join.
Albania is divided into 12 counties.
These counties include 36 districts and 373 municipalities
This is a list of the largest cities in Albania.
The Albanian Armed Forces were first formed after independence in 1912.
Albania reduced the number of active troops from 65,000 in 1988 to 14,500 in 2009.
The military now is mostly a small fleet of aircraft and sea vessels.
Albania has a total area of 28,748 square kilometers.
Albania 's coastline length is 476 k. It goes along the Adriatic and Ionian Seas.
On the coast there are mild, wet winters and warm, sunny, and rather dry summers.
70 % of the country is mountains.
The highest mountain is Korab.
Albania is bordered by Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo, which is a state not recognized by Serbia and some other countries.
A short stretch of sea separates Albania from the far southeast of Italy.
Although a small country, Albania has a lot of variety in plants and animals.
The total number of plants is over 3250 species.
There are over 350 bird species, 330 freshwater and marine fish and 80 mammal species.
The Golden Eagle is the national symbol of Albania.
The word Allah is the Arabic term for God.
It usually refers to the Islamic God, but in the Middle East, other religions sometimes use the same term for their God.
In Islam, Allah is the main word for "God."
Muslims use 99 Names of God to describe God, but "Allah" is the most common of these and means all of them.
This is because in Arabic, "al" is an article (word for "the"), so al-Lah means "the God".
This is monotheism.
When a Muslim says "Allah," all of the other names of God are thought of as part of it.
Muslims also believe that this word tells about God 's being a single entity and as being without wrong or defect and of God having no partner.
In Arabic, the name "Allah" is composed of four letters, (or Alif Lam Lam Ha, from right to left), which when brought together make.
"Allah" is often used by Muslims when they are praying.
Muslims have a faith in one God.
They believe that God is the one who made everything, the one judge, and the only one who has power over all things.
They also believe that Allah created the heavens and the Earth just by saying "Kun, ' which means "Be".
Most Arab Christians believe that Allah is made up of three divine beings - the Father, Son and Spirit - and that together they make up God.
Azerbaijan (; officially called Republic of Azerbaijan) is a country in South Caucasus region of Eurasia.
It is next to Russia in the north, Georgia, Armenia, in the west, Iran in the south, and Caspian Sea on the east.
Its capital city is Baku.
Azerbaijan became independent from the Soviet Union when it ended in 1991.
Azerbaijan also includes Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, an enclave, which is next to Armenia to the north and east, Iran to the south and west, and Turkey to the northwest.
Most of Azerbaijan 's land is in Western Asia.
It is called an Asian country by the United Nations.
However, because it is close and its history is related to Europe, Azerbaijan is also a member of a number of European groups, including the Council of Europe since 2001.
Azerbaijan has diplomatic relations with 158 countries.
They have membership in 38 international organizations.
On May 9, 2006 Azerbaijan was elected to membership in the newly made Human Rights Council by the United Nations General Assembly.
More than 90 % of the people are ethnic Azerbaijanis.
Minorities include Russians, Georgians and other minorities.
The Constitution of Azerbaijan does not say there is an official religion.
But, Shia Islam, is by far the largest religion in the country, followed by Sunni Islam.
There are also a small amount of Christians (mainly Eastern Orthodox), Jews (mainly Ashkenazi), agnostics and atheists.
The name of Azerbaijan comes from Atropates.
It was a Persian satrap under the Achaemenid Empire.
Ancient Azerbaijan was named "Caucasian Albania" and was relatively independent under Roman\/Byzantine (Roman Azerbaijan) and Persian control.
After the Arab conquest in the 7th century the country has been always under Muslim influence, when its people became Muslim, until the Russian Empire entered the Caucasus region.
From 1920 to 1991, Azerbaijan was a Communist country as a member of the Soviet Union.
Since the early 19th century many Russians settled in Azerbaijan, but after the end of the Soviet Union with the independence of Azerbaijan which is back in control, most Russians and other minorities have left the country and are continuing to leave the country.
There are 106 species of mammals, 97 species of fish, 363 species of birds, 10 species of amphibians and 52 species of reptiles which have been recorded and classified in Azerbaijan.
The national animal of Azerbaijan is the Karabakh horse.
It is a mountain-steppe racing and riding horse native to Azerbaijan.
It is one of the oldest breeds, with ancestry dating to the ancient world.
However today the horse is an endangered species.
Azerbaijan 's flora is more than 4,500 species of higher plants.
Due the unique climate in Azerbaijan, the flora is much richer in the number of species than the flora of the other countries of the South Caucasus.
About 67 percent of the species growing in the whole Caucasus can be in Azerbaijan.
Many Azerbaijanis have some form of higher education, most notably in scientific and technical subjects.
According to Soviet data, 100 percent of males and females (ages nine to forty-nine) were literate (able to read) in 1970.
In 2009, the literacy rate in Azerbaijan was 99.5 percent.
The culture of Azerbaijan has come about as a result of many influences.
Today, Western influences, including globalized consumer culture, are strong.
National traditions are well kept in the country.
Some of the main parts of the Azerbaijani culture are: music, literature, folk dances and art, cuisine, architecture, and movies.
Music of Azerbaijan builds on folk traditions that goes back nearly a thousand years.
Among national musical instruments there are 14 string instruments, eight percussion instruments and six wind instruments.
Mugham, meykhana and Ashiq are some of the many musical traditions of Azerbaijan.
Mugham is music with poetry and instrumental interludes.
When performing Mugham, the singers have to bring their emotions into singing and music.
Mugham singer Alim Qasimov is one of the five best singers of all time.
Meykhana is a song with no music.
It is usually done by several people.
They make up the words about a particular subject.
Ashiq joins poetry, storytelling, dance and vocal and instrumental music.
It is as a symbol of Azerbaijani culture.
Azerbaijan was at the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time in 2008.
They will host the contest in 2012, in Baku.
There are dozens of Azerbaijani folk dances.
They are performed at formal festivals.
The dancers wear national clothes like the Chokha.
Most dances have a very fast rhythm.
Azerbaijani architecture typically joins East and West.
Many ancient treasures such as the Maiden Tower and Palace of the Shirvanshahs in the Walled City of Baku survive in modern Azerbaijan.
Plans have been shown for the building of the Azerbaijan Tower.
It will reportedly replace the Burj Khalifa as the tallest building in the world.
The planned height is 1050 m.
The movie industry in Azerbaijan dates back to 1898.
In fact, Azerbaijan was among the first countries involved in making movies.
In 1991, after Azerbaijan gained its freedom from the Soviet Union, the first Baku International Film Festival East-West was held in Baku.
The traditional food is famous for many vegetables and greens used seasonally in the dishes.
Fresh herbs, including mint, cilantro (coriander), dill, basil, parsley, tarragon, leeks, chives, thyme, marjoram, green onion, and watercress, are very popular.
They are often served with main dishes on the table.
National dishes show the variety of the landscape.
They are based on fish from the Caspian Sea, local meat (mainly mutton and beef), and the many seasonal vegetables and greens.
Saffron-rice plov is the flagship food in Azerbaijan and black tea is the national beverage.
The earliest known person in Azerbaijani literature was Hasanoghlu or Pur Hasan Asfaraini.
He made a divan of Persian and Turkic ghazals.
Classical literature in Azerbaijani was formed in 14th century.
Among the poets of this period were Gazi Burhanaddin and Haqiqi.
The famed Book of Dede Korkut has two manuscripts copied in the 16th century.
It is a collection of 12 stories showing the oral tradition of Oghuz nomads.
In the span of the 17th century and 18th century, Fizuli 's unique types as well Ashik poetry were taken up by poets and writers such as Qovsi of Tabriz and Shah Abbas Sani.
The first newspaper in Azerbaijani, Akinchi was published in 1875.
Sport in Azerbaijan is very old.
Even now, both traditional and modern sports are still practiced.
Freestyle wrestling has been traditionally said to be Azerbaijan 's national sport.
The most popular sports in Azerbaijan are football and chess.
The national football team does not do well in international competitions.
On March 19, 2010, Azerbaijan won the bid to host the 2012 FIFA U-17 Women 's World Cup.
Futsal is another popular sport in Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan national futsal team got fourth place in 2010 UEFA Futsal Championship.
Backgammon plays a major role in Azerbaijani culture.
This game is very popular in Azerbaijan and is widely played by the local public.
Out of 9,165,000 people (July 2011), nearly 52 % were urban.
The remaining 48 % were rural.
51 % of the people were female.
About 3 million Azerbaijanis, many of them guest workers, live in Russia.
The biggest reason for death in 2005 was from respiratory diseases.
Azerbaijan is divided into 10 economic regions; 66 rayons and 77 cities.
11 cities are under the direct authority of the republic.
Azerbaijan includes the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
The President of Azerbaijan picks the governors of these units.
The government of Nakhchivan is elected and approved by the parliament of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
Note: The cities under the direct authority of the republic in italics.
The economy of Azerbaijan is based on industry, agriculture, and on services including tourism.
The energy sector based on the large reserves of crude oil and natural gas, is the main source of economic growth in Azerbaijan today, though half of the Azerbaijani people earn their income directly or indirectly through services and a third earn their income through agriculture.
The energy boom has led to massive foreign direct investment and the growth rate of the Azerbaijani economy is one of the world 's highest.
After gaining independence in 1991 with the end of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan made the long and difficult change from a command economy to a market economy.
The government has largely completed privatization of agricultural lands and small, medium and large state-owned companies.
Azerbaijan is continuing making economic reforms, and old economic ties and structures have been slowly replaced.
With independence, Azerbaijan became a member of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Islamic Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
Azerbaijan 's currency is the Azerbaijani manat (AZN) which is divided into 100 q pik.
It became the national currency in 1992 and replaced the old Soviet ruble.
The Central Bank of Azerbaijan was created in 1992.
The Central Bank serves as Azerbaijan 's central bank, and is responsible for printing and distributing the national currency, the Azerbaijani manat, and to control all commercial banks.
Aikido is a Japanese martial art.
It was developed by Morihei Ueshiba.
Aikdo is based on Ueshiba 's philosophy, martial arts training and religious beliefs.
The word "aikido" is often translated as "the way of unifying (with) life energy" or as "the way of harmonious spirit."
Ueshiba wanted to create an art where people could defend themselves without harming their attacker by using the attackers "ki" against them.
He wanted each practitioner of aikido to develop both physically and spiritually.
Aikido is performed by blending with the way the attacker moves, using the force of the attack rather than coming against it.
This is achieved by using the attackers "ki" against them.
This takes very little physical strength, as the aikid ka (person who does aikido) uses the force of the attacker 's own momentum using stepping and turning movements.
The techniques are completed with many different throws or joint locks which can be combined with different defenses.
Aikido is one of many grappling arts.
Aikido is based on the martial art of Dait - ry Aiki-j jutsu, but began to separate from it in the late 1920s, partly due to Ueshiba 's involvement with the moto-ky religion.
Ueshiba 's early students ' records use the name aiki-j jutsu.
Many of Ueshiba 's senior students have different approaches to aikido, depending on when they studied with him.
Today aikido is found all over the world in a number of styles, with different groups placing importance on different things.
However, they all share techniques learned from Ueshiba and most have concern for the safety of the attacker.
Art is an activity or creation by people that has importance because of an attraction to the human senses.
Art is made when a human expresses himself or herself.
Some art is useful in a practical sense, such as a sculptured clay bowl that one can put things in.
Many people disagree on how to define art.
Many people say people are driven to make art due to their inner creativity.
Art includes drawing, painting, sculpting, photography, performance art, dance, music, poetry, prose and theater.
Art is divided into the plastic arts, where something is made, and the performing arts, where something is done by humans in action.
The other division is between pure arts, done for themselves, and practical arts, done for a practical purpose, but with artistic content.
Some people say that art is a product or item that is made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind, spirit and soul.
An artwork is normally judged by how much impact it has on people, the amount of people who can relate to it, and how much people appreciate it.
The first and broadest sense of "art" means "arrangement" or "to arrange."
In this sense, art is created when someone arranges things found in the world into a new or different design or form; or when someone arranges colors next to each other in a painting to make an image or just to make a pretty or interesting design.
Art can also be a form of expression of emotion.
The artist may feel a certain emotion and feels there is no other way to express it than to create something that means something to them.
Most of the art created in this case is made for the artist rather than an audience.
Though if an audience is able to connect with the emotion as well, then the art work will become publicly successful.
There are sculptures, cave painting and rock art dating from the Upper Paleolithic era.
All of the great ancient civilizations, such as Ancient Egypt, India, China, Greece, Rome or Arabia had works and styles of art.
In the Middle Ages, most of the art in Europe showed people from the Bible in paintings, stained glass windows, and mosaic tile floors and walls.
Islamic art includes geometric patterns, Islamic calligraphy, and architecture.
In India and Tibet, painted sculptures, dance, and religious painting were done.
In China, arts included jade carving, bronzework, pottery, poetry, calligraphy, music, painting, drama, and fiction.
There are many Chinese artistic styles, which are usually named after the ruling dynasty.
In Europe, after the Middle Ages, there was a "Renaissance" which means "rebirth".
People rediscovered science and artists were allowed to paint subjects other than religious subjects.
People like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci still painted religious pictures, but they also now could paint mythological pictures too.
These artists also invented perspective where things in the distance look smaller than things close up in the picture.
This was new because in the Middle Ages people would paint all the figures close up and just overlapping each other.
In the late 1800s, artists in Europe, responding to Modernity created many new painting styles such as Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, and Impressionism.
The history of twentieth century art includes Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and Minimalism.
In some societies, people think that art belongs to the person who made it, such as Indigenous Aboriginal Australian Art.
They think that the artist put his or her "talent" into the art.
In this view, the art is the property of the artist.
In other societies, people think that art belongs to no one.
They think that society has put its social capital into the artist and the artist 's work.
In this view, society is a collective that has made the art, through the artist.
Works of art let us know about what the author knew, and about what the surrounding of the author were like.
Works of art are more or less harmonic and bring pleasure, a sensation of beauty.
Some artists draw what they see the future like, and some of them are right, but most are not...
Art makes us think about it, not about reality; we have a rest.
What did the artist value?
What aims did he like\/dislike in human activity?
This usually is clearly seen in artists ' works.
What message, criticism or political change did the artist wish to achieve?
An abortion is when a pregnancy ends early without the birth any live children.
A developing human takes about thirty-eight weeks to grow and be born.
Normally, this occurs about forty weeks after the mother 's last menstrual period.
This developing human is called an embryo for the first eight weeks of the pregnancy, and fetus for the rest of the pregnancy.
An abortion takes place when the embryo\/fetus is too young and small to survive without its mother.
When an abortion occurs naturally, it is often called a miscarriage.
Humans can also end chose to end the pregnancy before birth takes place.
This is called an induced abortion.
Often, the term abortion often refers only to an induced abortion.
In both types of abortion, the embryo or fetus usually comes out of the womb.
This is called a complete abortion.
In some cases, the embryo or fetus remains inside the womb.
This is called a missed abortion.
Surgery is needed to remove the embryo or fetus from the womb so the woman does not get an infection.
Different countries have different laws regarding induced abortion.
While abortion is illegal in many countries, there are often exceptions that permit it in cases such as family incest, rape, the fetus having severe disabilities or the mother 's health being at risk.
People speak of spontaneous abortion or miscarriage when the embryo or fetus is lost due to natural causes before the 20th week of pregnancy.
A pregnancy that ends this way, but that is between 20 and 37 weeks old is known as "premature birth" if the baby is born alive.
If the fetus dies in the womb after 20 weeks, or while it is born, this is known as "stillbirth".
Premature births and stillbirths are generally not considered to be miscarriages.
Spontaneous abortions (miscarriages) are common.
About fifteen percent of pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion.
In many cases, the woman is not even aware she was pregnant.
The pregnancy is only a few days or weeks old and the woman believes the miscarriage is just her menses.
About twenty-five percent of all women will have a spontaneous abortion during their lives.
Most miscarriages occur very early.
Between ten and fifty percent of pregnancies end with a miscarriage, where the mother or the doctors are aware of it.
These figures depend on the age and health of the pregnant woman.
Most spontaneous abortions occur so early in the pregnancy that the woman is not even aware that she was pregnant.
One particular study showed that 61.9 % of pregnancies end in miscarriage before 12 weeks.
In 91.7 % of these miscarriages, the woman did not know she was pregnant.
The risk of spontaneous abortion decreases sharply after the 10th week of pregnancy, with a loss rate between 8.5 weeks LMP and birth of about two percent; pregnancy loss is virtually complete by the end of the embryonic period."
Those people who have already had several spontaneous or induced abortions run a greater risk of having a spontaneous one.
Those with certain diseases, and those over the age 35 also run a greater risk.
Other causes for abortions can be the infection of either the woman or embryo\/fetus, or their immune response.
Certain diseases or an accidental trauma can also cause a spontaneous abortion.
Putting the woman under trauma or stress to cause miscarriage is considered induced abortion.
Some countries call this feticide.
Most miscarriages are due to problems with the copying of chromosomes, but some are caused by environmental factors.
When a human is conceived, it gets 23 chromosomes from its mother and 23 from its father.
If it does not get the right number its development happens wrong (it does not grow right.)
It may have many bad birth defects.
Most embryos and fetuses with chromosome problems will not live for a long time.
They die very early.
There are a few chromosome problems that babies can sometimes be born with.
For example, Down syndrome happens when there are three copies of chromosome # 21.
(Usually people have 2 of every chromosome.)
This is called trisomy 21 (tri - means 3.)
The most common symptom is bleeding from the vagina.
This can be very little blood (less blood than a normal menses.)
It can be very much blood (much more than a normal menses.)
Some women have bad pains in their low abdomen when they have a miscarriage.
This is sometimes like the pain of menses.
It can be much worse.
Or a woman may have no pain at all.
If the pregnancy is many weeks old, the woman may see the embryo or fetus when it comes out.
But if it is less than 12 weeks old a woman may not see anything but blood.
Usually, no treatment is needed for a miscarriage.
However, sometimes some pregnancy tissue remains in the womb after the miscarriage and must be removed.
Sometimes doctors do a surgical abortion.
This is the same kind of surgery that is done for induced abortions.
Doctors can also prescribe women medicines that can help the miscarriage finish without needing surgery.
An induced abortion is when things are done to end the pregnancy on purpose.
These things are normally done by doctors.
In countries where abortion can be done legally, it is often done by specialists who know a lot about women 's bodies (gynecologists).
Abortions done illegally are often performed by people without this special knowledge.
This makes them more dangerous.
Such abortions are usually called unsafe abortions, back-alley abortions or DIY abortions, mainly because the risk to the health of the mother is much higher than with abortions carried out by skilled doctors.
There can be medical reasons, why an abortion is performed.
These include:
There are two different kinds of induced abortions.
The type of abortion that is done depends on a few different things, like what the woman wants, what her doctor thinks is best, and how far along a woman is in her pregnancy (how long she has been pregnant).
One type of induced abortion is called a "medical abortion" or a "medication abortion".
In this type of abortion, a doctor gives the woman one or two medications that will end her pregnancy.
A medication abortion can only be done early on in the pregnancy.
This is because the medications that are used work best when they are started as early as possible, and after a woman has been pregnant for about two months, the medications usually do not work very well.
Because of this, medication abortion usually is not used after a woman has been pregnant for 9 weeks.
Some of the benefits (or reasons why some women choose this type of abortion) are that it can be started as soon as a woman realizes she is pregnant; it does not require anesthesia; and the woman does not have to have a procedure in a hospital or clinic to have the fetus removed, like with the other kind of abortion that is done.
After a woman is given the medication or medications that end her pregnancy, the abortion happens like a "spontaneous" abortion or a miscarriage.
(The woman passes the fetus, along with the blood and tissue that have built up in the uterus, from her vagina.)
The most common medications that are used for medication abortions are mifepristone and misoprostol.
First, a doctor gives the woman mifepristone, which is sometimes also called "RU-468" or "the abortion pill".
This drug blocks the hormone progesterone in the body.
Without progesterone, the embryo can not survive.
The lining of the uterus becomes thinner, and the embryo can not grow or stay attached to the lining of the uterus.
After a few days, a doctor gives the woman misoprostol.
This makes the uterus contract (or get smaller) and the embryo is expelled from (or pushed out of) the uterus through the woman 's vagina.
Sometimes, another medication, called methotrexate, is used along with misoprostol in medication abortions.
A woman is given methotrexate, usually as a shot in a doctor 's office, and the drug stops the embryo from staying attached to the lining of the uterus.
Then misoprostol is given a few days later.
With the second type of abortion - called "surgical abortion" or "in-office abortion" - a doctor does a procedure that removes an embryo or fetus from the woman 's uterus.
This kind of abortion can be done in different ways, depending on how long the woman has been pregnant.
Surgical abortion is simpler, and there are fewer problems that can happen, if it is done earlier on in the pregnancy.
The most common form is called an "aspiration abortion" or a "suction curettage."
This can be done in a doctor 's office or clinic.
First the woman 's cervix (the top part of the uterus) is dilated (or made bigger).
A medical tool is used to suction out everything inside the woman 's uterus, including the fetus.
If the woman has been pregnant for more than 12 weeks, the doctor first has to dilate the cervix (or make the cervix bigger), usually by putting small sticks into the cervix to help it open up.
If another tool, called a curette, has to be used to scrape out tissue that is still inside the uterus, then this form of abortion is sometimes called a "dilation and curettage" (or "D&C").
A pregnancy that ends without a child being born also may cause some problems to the woman this happens to.
There are two broad groups of things that can happen:
Abortion is safer than childbirth if it is done before the 16th week of pregnancy and it is done by a professional.
Certain methods of abortion are pretty safe, and complications are rare.
Generally, stopping a pregnancy that has gone on longer is riskier.
Women usually feel a small amount of pain during first-trimester abortion.
In a 1979 study of 2,299 patients, 97 % reported having some amount of pain.
Patients rated the pain as being less than earache or toothache, but more than headache or backache.
Local and general anesthesias are used during the abortion.
Few studies have been done to see if an abortion affects the woman psychologically, or mentally.
Those that have been done give contradictory results.
One study looked at 13.000 women who had become pregnant even though they did not want to.
The study found that having an induced abortion does not increase the risk of getting mental health problems; the group that was compared were women who also did not want to have a baby, but who did not have an abortion.
Other studies showed similar results: women who had an abortion did better in school or at work after the abortion.
Another study showed that women who had an abortion had a higher self-esteem and felt better than those who did not.
Many women who had an abortion felt better afterwards, they also felt relieved.
They would do it again in a similar situation.
A study done in New Zealand in 2006 showed that many women who had an abortion developed severe depressions up to 4 years after they had the abortion.
They were also more likely to have problems with alcohol and illegal drugs than those women who did not have an abortion.
The person who oversaw the study later told media that given these results it would be very hard to say that having an abortion has no psychological effects on the woman who has it.
He called the abortion "a traumatic experience".
Both spontaneous and induced abortions have some risk for the woman.
If a bad thing happens because of a surgery or medicine that a doctor gives, or because of a miscarriage, it is called a complication.
Complications of abortions can be infection, bleeding, pain.
There may or may not be problems getting pregnant again; this is still being researched.
In places where induced abortions are legal less than 1 % of induced abortions have a bad complication.
If doctors do induced abortions, the risk to the woman is less than the risk of complications of childbirth (giving birth to a baby).
In places where induced abortions are legal, less women have complications of induced abortion than in places where induced abortion is illegal.
This is because induced abortions that are not done by doctors have much more risks.
For example, after induced abortions became legal in the United States in 1973, less women died from having abortions.
In the United States in 2000, 11 women died from the complications of legal abortion.
The risk of death from a legal abortion is 1\/100 of the risk of an appendectomy.
The risk of death from an injection (shot) of penicillin (an antibiotic) is bigger than the risk of death from a legal abortion.
There can be emotional problems for the woman after a spontaneous or induced abortion.
She may feel sad, angry, or guilty that she had a miscarriage or asked for an abortion.
She may think she has done something that made the miscarriage happen, or that having an abortion was the wrong thing to do, and because of this she may feel intense grief.
There are many places where women can get help dealing with these feelings.
Some women who have induced abortions may get criticism from friends or family who have different beliefs.
When scientists look at this in research studies, however, they do not usually see that women have emotional problems after induced abortions.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan told the Surgeon General of the US to look at this question.
Both president Reagan and the Surgeon General C. Everett Koop did not think abortion was right.
Dr Koop looked at 250 papers that scientists wrote in scientific journals.
Dr Koop said that the science we know does not show that induced abortions cause emotional problems for women who have them.
The number of induced abortions done are different for different parts of the world.
This is also true for the reasons why women decide to have an abortion.
Estimates are that about 46 million induced abortions are done worldwide, every year.
26 million of them occur in places where abortion is legal, 20 million happen in countries where it is illegal to have an abortion.
Some countries, like Belgium (11.2 per 100 known pregnancies) and the Netherlands (10.6 per 100) have a low rate of induced abortion.
Others, like Russia (62.6 per 100) and Vietnam (43.7 per 100) have a comparatively high rate.
Overall, there are 26 induced abortions per 100 known pregnancies.
The WHO estimated in 2001 that every year about 210 million women get pregnant, and that there are about 135 mililon live births.
The remaining 75 million cases are miscarriages or induced abortions.
About forty percent of pregnancies are unplanned, and about a fifth of the pregnant women decide to end the pregnancy early.
This results in about 42 million abortions per year.
About 20 million of these are legal, the rest are agains the law.
Most of the illegal abortions is performed by medically unqualified people, often with poor hygiene, which often threaten the lives of the women.
The WHO estimated that about 47.000 women died in 2008 because of illegal abortions.
This number was lower than the estimate of 1990, mainly because in South America, women opted to take drugs to end the pregnancy.
Abortion rates vary.
The length the pregnancy has gone on, and the method used to do the abortion influence these rates.
According to data collected in the United States, 88.2 % of abortions were done in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, 10.4 % between week 13 and week 20 of the pregnancy.
The remaining 1.4 % were done in week 21 or later.
90.9 % were done by curettage, 7.7 % were medical abortions (using drugs, mifepristone in most cases), 0.4 % by "intrauterine instillation" (saline or prostaglandin), and 1.0 % by "other" (including hysterotomy and hysterectomy).
The Guttmacher Institute estimated there were 2,200 intact dilation and extraction procedures in the U.S. during 2000 - 0.17 % of the total number of abortions performed that year.
Similarly, in England and Wales in 2006, 89 % of terminations occurred at or under 12 weeks, 9 % between 13 and 19 weeks, and 1.5 % at or over 20 weeks.
64 % of those reported were by vacuum aspiration, 6 % by D&E, and 30 % were medical.
Later abortions are more common in China, India, and other developing countries than in developed countries.
In 1998, a study was done in 27 countries.
This study wanted to find the reasons, why women wanted to end their pregnancy.
It found that women often gave one of the following reasons:
A different study, done in the United States in 2004 came to similar conclusions.
Women who had an abortion in Finland and the United States usually did not state that the pregnancy posed a risk to their health.
In Bangladesh, India and Kenya, however, more such women thought the pregnancy was a risk to their health.
1 % of women in the 2004 survey-based U.S. study became pregnant as a result of rape and 0.5 % as a result of incest.
Another American study in 2002 concluded that 54 % of women who had an abortion were using a form of contraception at the time of becoming pregnant.
Inconsistent use was reported by 49 % of those using condoms and 76 % of those using the combined oral contraceptive pill; 42 % of those using condoms reported failure through slipping or breakage.
The Guttmacher Institute estimated that "most abortions in the United States are obtained by minority women" because minority women "have much higher rates of unintended pregnancy."
Some women have an abortion because the society they live in pressures them to.
Any of these factors might force a pregnant woman to have an abortion.
Induced abortion is not legal in every place.
In some countries, a doctor who does an induced abortion is committing a crime.
In the United States, Canada, and many countries in Europe abortion is legal (not a crime).
In some countries like Ireland and Somalia it is legal only to save the life of the woman.
If a woman is raped in Ireland and becomes pregnant, she can not get an induced abortion.
In some countries like Chile and El Salvador, abortion is never legal, including in cases where the woman risks dying from continuing the pregnancy.
In countries where induced abortion is not legal many more women die from abortion.
Women still get induced abortions, but they can not get them in safe hospitals and clinics.
These induced abortions have more complications than abortions done by doctors.
Women who live in places where abortion is illegal, or heavily frowned upon sometimes travel to other places where an abortion can be done legally, so they can have an abortion.
This is a form of medical tourism.
Spontaneous abortions occur in various mammals.
In sheep, it may be caused by crowding through doors, or by being chased by dogs.
In cows, abortion may be caused by contagious diseases, such as Brucellosis or Campylobacter.
This can often be controlled by vaccination, though.
Abortion may also be induced in animals, in the context of animal husbandry.
For example, abortion may be induced in mares that have been mated improperly, or that have been purchased by owners who did not realize the mares were pregnant, or that are pregnant with twin foals.
Feticide can occur in horses and zebras.
Usually this is done because males harass pregnant mares or force copulation.
Scientists have raised the question, how often this occurs in the wild, though.
Male Gray langur monkeys may attack females following male takeover, causing miscarriage.
Induced abortion is a subject that is controversial.
Each person has a system of moral values.
Based on their system of morals, people have different opinions about it.
Religion can also influence this opinion.
A number of opinion polls have been carried out around the world.
They have tried to find out what people think about abortion.
Results were different for different countries, but also varied with the questions that were asked.
In May 2005, a survey was done in ten European countries.
The people were asked, if they could agree with the statement: "If a woman does not want children, she should be allowed to have an abortion".
The highest level of approval was 81 % in the Czech Republic; the lowest was 47 % in Poland.
A poll was done in November 2001.
The poll asked people in Canada in what circumstances they believed an abortion should be permitted.
32 % responded that they believe abortion should be legal in all circumstances, 52 % that it should be legal in certain circumstances, and 14 % that it should never be legal.
A similar poll in April 2009 surveyed people in the United States about abortion; 18 % said that abortion should be "legal in all cases", 28 % said that abortion should be "legal in most cases", 28 % said abortion should be "illegal in most cases" and 16 % said abortion should be "illegal in all cases".
In a Gallup poll taken in July of 2011, however, 47 % of Americans identified themselves as pro-life and the same percentage of Americans identified themselves as pro-choice.
A November 2005 poll in Mexico found that 73.4 % think abortion should not be legalized while 11.2 % think it should.
Of attitudes in South America, a December 2003 survey found that 30 % of Argentines thought that abortion should be allowed in Argentina "regardless of situation", 47 % that it should be allowed "under some circumstances", and 23 % that it should not be allowed "regardless of situation".
A March 2007 poll about abortion in Brazil found that 65 % of Brazilians believe that it "should not be modified", 16 % that it should be expanded "to allow abortion in other cases", 10 % that abortion should be "decriminalized", and 5 % were "not sure".
A July 2005 poll in Colombia found that 65.6 % said they thought that abortion should remain illegal, 26.9 % that it should be made legal, and 7.5 % that they were unsure.
Some people feel very strongly about abortion.
People who think think the law should let women choose to have abortions are called pro-choice.
People who think that abortion is wrong and that the law should not allow it are called pro-life.
People who are pro-choice believe that women should be allowed to have control over their own bodies when it comes to ending or continuing a pregnancy.
They believe that, because the embryo or fetus is inside the woman 's body and does not have developed enough organs to survive on its own until later in the pregnancy, it is not yet a person with rights.
Pro-choice people also make the argument that abortion needs to be legal in order to protect women, because when abortion is illegal, it does not completely stop abortions from happening, but makes it so that women try to do abortions on themselves or get them done by people who are not trained doctors, which puts those women in danger of death or injury.
Pro-choice people believe the way to prevent abortion is to make sure women only get pregnant when they want to.
In addition to advocating the legality of abortion, pro-choice groups like Planned Parenthood often try to improve people 's access to things used to prevent pregnancy (called contraception), and try to teach young people about sex to reduce the number of teen pregnancies.
People who are pro-life believe that all humans, including the unborn, have a right to life.
For this reason, they believe abortion is wrong and that it is murder.
They think the law should make abortion a crime in order to protect innocent life within the womb.
However, though pro-life people think abortion is wrong, there are special cases in which some pro-life people will sometimes support allowing an abortion to happen, like if the pregnancy puts the woman 's life at risk or if she got pregnant from rape.
Pro-life people think women who are pregnant and do not want to raise a child should look for alternatives to abortion such as giving the baby up for adoption.
There are many crisis pregnancy centers pro-lifers have started to help women in these situations.
They have also started advocacy groups, like the American Life League, Feminists for Life and Live Action, to try to convince more people to think abortion is wrong and to try to get governments to make laws to restrict abortion.
Sometimes, people who are against abortion have used violence to try to stop abortions from happening, like bombing the clinics that do abortions or shooting the people who work inside them.
However, most people who are against abortion do not do such things and believe that they are wrong, and so they try to stop abortions from happening through peaceful activism.
Many religions have a view on abortion.
These views span a broad spectrum from acceptance to rejection.
Most religions generally oppose abortion.
Generally, when there is a debate about whether abortion laws should be changed in a country, there are advocacy groups.
Some of the arguments these groups often have are outlined below.
There is a hypothesis that induced abortion raises the risk of getting breast cancer.
People who support this, call it a link, rather than a hypothesis.
The subject has been controversial, but currently, scientists agree that there is no link between abortion in the first trimester, and increasing the risk to get breast cancer.
In early pregnancy, levels of estrogen increase.
This causes the breast to grow, and to prepare for lactation.
In the 1890s, studies were done on rats, before this hypothesis was put forward.
It is currently unclear from what moment the embryo or fetus can feel pain.
This is also used in the debate about abortion.
Many researchers think that a fetus is unlikely to feel pain until after the seventh month of pregnancy.
Others disagree.
At about twenty-six weeks of pregnancy, certain connections are made in the thalamus of the growing fetus.
Developmental neurobiologists suspect that these connections may be critical to perception of pain by the fetus.
However, legislation has been proposed by pro-life advocates requiring abortion providers to tell a woman that the embryo or fetus may feel pain during an abortion procedure.
Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study analyzed data from dozens of medical reports and other studies.
The researchers concluded that fetuses are unlikely to feel pain until the third trimester of pregnancy.
However a number of medical critics have since disputed these conclusions.
There are certain connections in the thalamus of the fetuse.
These connections develop at about twenty-six weeks of pregnancy.
At the end of the 20th century there was an emerging consensus among developmental neurobiologists that these connections are very important when it comes to the perception of pain in the fetus.
Other researchers such as Anand and Fisk have challenged this late date, positing that pain can be felt around twenty weeks.
Pain can have many different aspects: It might be purely relying on sensory input, but it might also involve emotions and thought.
For this reason, it is perhaps impossible to know exactly when the embryo or fetus feels pain, even if it has developed the links in the thalamus.
The American Revolutionary War was a war fought between Great Britain and the original 13 British colonies in America.
The war took place from 1775 to 1783.
The Continental Army (Army of the colonies), led by George Washington, defeated the armies of the British Empire.
The colonies became independent, which meant that the British Empire was no longer in charge of them.
The war started after years of problems between the British Empire and the colonists of North America, especially Roanoke after the French and Indian War.
There were 13 colonies, and the colonists (people living in the colonies) did not like many of the actions of the British Government.
For many years the British government decided which countries could trade with the colonies, instead of the colonies deciding it themselves.
Many colonists wanted free trade.
In 1765, the British Parliament, needing money for the French and Indian War, passed a Law called the Stamp Act.
This law said that colonists had to buy stamps for legal papers, newspapers, and even playing cards, as other British people did.
The money from the stamps went to the King.
The colonies did not follow this law.
The colonies kept refusing to do what the King wanted.
The Boston Tea Party and Boston Massacre caused people to become more angry about the situation.
The British sent more soldiers to keep control of the colonies.
In 1774, the British passed the Intolerable Acts.
Other battles were also fought before the war started.
Not all colonists wanted to leave the British Empire.
The Loyalists, or Tories, stayed loyal to Great Britain.
They were not going to change their views.
The Patriots, or Whigs, wanted independence.
Before the Revolutionary War, most people in America were Loyalists; but after it, most people were Patriots.
Many colonists wrote letters showing how they felt.
Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, a famous pamphlet about independence from Britain.
Other colonial leaders, such as Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson wanted independence.
The first battles of the American Revolutionary War were Lexington and Concord.
One, of the first major battles was the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775.
After that, the British controlled Boston.
Around that time, the Second Continental Congress sent an Olive Branch Petition to King George III (which he rejected) and named George Washington head of the army.
Early in 1776, Washington drove the British out of Boston.
A few months later the Continental Army and British troops under William Howe fought the New York and New Jersey Campaign.
During the New York battles, the British started using Hessian troops, who were from Germany.
Though the colonists lost New York (the British would hold it for the rest of the war), Washington was able to hold onto most of his army.
Over Christmas, 1776-77, Washington crossed the Delaware River and defeated the Hessians at Trenton and the British at Princeton.
In 1777, the British attacked the city of Philadelphia, then the American capital.
Two battles were fought over Philadelphia: Brandywine and Germantown.
Again, the Americans lost a major city, but Washington was able to keep most of his army.
Around this time, the Frenchman Lafayette joined the American Army.
In 1778, the British left Philadelphia.
Between 1778 and 1781, most battles between Washington and the British were inconclusive (they did not have any major effect militarily).
One of the most important battles was the Battle of Saratoga in 1777.
American soldiers under Horatio Gates forced a British surrender under John Burgoyne.
This led to France and Spain joining the war on the side of Americans.
These powerful countries fought the British around the world.
From 1778 to 1780, there was fighting in the West.
The American commerce raider John Paul Jones also won several naval battles over the British, but the French navy did most of the fighting at sea.
The Americans tried to capture Canada several times.
In 1779 major fighting shifted to Georgia and South Carolina.
As fighting spread northward, General Nathanael Greene led the Rebel campaign.
He caused many people in the South to be Patriots instead of Loyalists, and won several battles against the British.
In 1781, Washington and French general Jean Rochambeau led an offensive against British troops in Yorktown, Virginia.
This was called the Battle of Yorktown.
When their soldiers lost this battle, the British surrendered.
The British continued to fight the French and Spanish for two years, winning in India, Gibraltar and elsewhere.
In the Treaty of Paris (1783) the British King, George III accepted the independence of the colonies.
The treaty also gave all the land Britain said it owned which was west of the Appalachians as far as the Mississippi River to the new country.
The ampere or amp (Symbol: A) is the standard unit of electric current.
For instance, an electric current of one amp is one coulomb per second.
The amp is named after Andr - Marie Amp re who studied electromagnetism.
The amp is defined using two parallel wires placed one metre apart in a vacuum.
The wires are very long and very thin.
One amp is defined as the current producing an attractive force of 2 10 7 newtons per metre of length between these wires.
An algorithm is a step-by-step list of directions that need to be followed to solve a problem.
The instructions should be simple enough such that each step can be done without thinking about it.
Algorithms are often used to describe how a computer might solve a problem.
But there are algorithms in the real world too.
A recipe can be considered a type of algorithm.
It tells what ingredients are needed to make the dish and what steps to follow.
If the recipe tells exactly what to do without too much confusion, then it is an algorithm.
There is usually more than one way to solve a problem.
There may be many different recipes to make a certain dish which looks different but ends up tasting the same when all is said and done.
The same is true for algorithms.
However, some of these ways will be better than others.
If a recipe needs lots of complicated ingredients that you do not have, it is not as a good as a simple recipe.
When we look at algorithms as a way of solving problems, often we want to know how long it would take a computer to solve the problem using a particular algorithm.
When we write algorithms, we like our algorithm to take the least amount of time so that we can solve our problem as quickly as possible.
In cooking, some recipes are more difficult to do than others, because they take more time to finish or have more things to keep track of.
It is the same for algorithms, and algorithms are better when they are easier for the computer to do.
The thing that measures how hard an algorithm is called complexity.
When we ask how complex an algorithm is, often we want to know how long it will take a computer to solve the problem we want it to solve.
These are examples of algorithms for sorting a stack of cards with many different numbers, so that the numbers are in order.
Players start with a stack of cards that have not been sorted.
This algorithm goes through the stack of cards, one card at a time.
This card is compared to the next card in the stack.
Please note that this position only changes in step 3.
This algorithm is called bubble sort.
It is slow.
...
Let us take a stack of the cards with the numbers "5 1 4 2 8", and sort it from smallest number to biggest one using this algorithm.
In each step, the algorithm compares the elements written in bold.
The top of the stack of cards is on the left-hand side.
(5 1 4 2 8) (1 5 4 2 8) Here, the algorithm compares the first two elements, and swaps them.
(1 5 4 2 8) (1 4 5 2 8) (1 4 5 2 8) (1 4 2 5 8) (1 4 2 5 8) (1 4 2 5 8) These elements are already in order, so the algorithm does not swap them.
(1 4 2 5 8) (1 4 2 5 8) (1 4 2 5 8) (1 2 4 5 8) (1 2 4 5 8) (1 2 4 5 8) (1 2 4 5 8) (1 2 4 5 8) Now, the stack of cards is already sorted, but our algorithm does not know this.
The algorithm needs one whole pass without any swap to know it is sorted.
(1 2 4 5 8) (1 2 4 5 8) (1 2 4 5 8) (1 2 4 5 8) (1 2 4 5 8) (1 2 4 5 8) (1 2 4 5 8) (1 2 4 5 8) Finally, the array is sorted, and the algorithm can stop.
This is an easy-to-understand algorithm for sorting.
Computer scientists called it Bubble sort, because smaller elements will rise to the top, changing their position in each run.
Unfortunately, the algorithm is not very good, because it needs a long time (many passes through the stack of cards) to sort it.
This algorithm uses another idea.
Sometimes solving a problem is difficult, but the problem can be changed so it is made of simpler problems that are easier to solve.
This is called recursion.
It is more difficult to understand than the first example, but it will give a better algorithm.
This works with two stacks of cards.
One of them is called A, the other is called B. There is a third stack that is empty at the start, called C. At the end, it will contain the result.
John von Neumann developed this algorithm in 1945.
He did not call it Sorting by numbers, he called it Mergesort.
It is a very good algorithm for sorting, compared to others.
The first algorithm takes much longer to sort the cards than the second, but it can be improved (made better).
Looking at bubble sort, it can be noticed that cards with high numbers move from the top of the stack quite quickly, but cards with low numbers at the bottom of the stack take a long time to rise (move to the top).
Rather than comparing two cards that are next to each other, at the start a ` special ' card is picked.
All the other cards are then compared to this card.
This algorithm was developed by C. A. R. Hoare in 1960.
It is one of most widely used algorithms for sorting today.
It is called Quicksort.
If players have cards with colors and numbers on them, they can sort them by color and number if they do the "sorting by colors" algorithm, then do the "sorting by numbers" algorithm to each colored stack, then put the stacks together.
The sorting-by-numbers algorithms are more difficult to do than the sorting-by-colors algorithm, because they may have to do the steps again many times.
One would say that sorting by numbers is more complex.
In Botany, an annual plant is a plant that usually germinates, flowers and dies in one year.
True annuals will only live longer than a year if they are prevented from setting seed.
Some seedless plants can also be considered annuals even though they do not flower.
In gardening, annual often refers to a plant grown outdoors in the spring and summer and surviving just for one growing season.
Many food plants are, or are grown as, annuals, including most domesticated grains.
Some perennials and biennials are grown in gardens as annuals for convenience, particularly if they are not considered cold hardy for the local climate.
Carrot, celery and parsley are true biennials that are usually grown as annual crops for their edible roots, petioles and leaves, respectively.
Tomato, sweet potato and bell pepper are tender perennials usually grown as annuals.
Ornamental annuals are often called bedding plants.
Annuals are often used in gardens to provide splashes of color, as they tend to have a longer season of bloom than hardy herbaceous perennials.
Examples of true annuals include corn, lettuce, pea, cauliflower, watermelon, bean, zinnia and marigold.
Summer annuals sprout, flower and die within the same spring\/summer\/fall.
The lawn weed, crabgrass, is a summer annual
Atlas, most commonly means a collection of maps, traditionally bound into book form.
Asteroids is an arcade video game released by Atari in 1979.
In this game, the player controls a spaceship in an asteroid field.
Every once in a while, a flying saucer comes on the field.
The goal is to destroy the asteroids and flying saucers, while not being hit by them.
The game was very popular, selling 70,000 arcade cabinets.
It has been released on many video game consoles, including the Atari 2600, Game Boy Color, and Xbox 360.
Asparagales is an order of flowering plants.
The order must include the family Asparagaceae, but other families included in the order have varied markedly between different classifications.
No one is sure, but it is supposed that this group of plants evolved between the late and early Cretaceous.
But because of the difficult classification of the families, it is not entirely certain when they evolved.
Alismatales is an order of flowering plants with 14 families.
They are Monocots which live in marshy and aquatic (water) habitats.
The Apiales are an order of flowering plants.
The families given at right are typical of newer classifications, though there is some slight variation, and in particular the Torriceliaceae may be divided.
These families are placed within the asterid group of dicotyledons.
The Asterales are an order of flowering plants which include the composite family Asteraceae (sunflowers, daisies, thistles, etc.) and its related families.
An asteroid is a small object in the Solar System that travels around the Sun.
It is like a planet but smaller.
They range from less than 1 km (over 1000 feet) to 600 miles (1000 km) across.
A few asteroids have asteroid moons.
The name "asteroid" means "like a star" in the ancient Greek language.
Asteroids may look like small stars in the sky, but they really do move around the Sun, while stars only seem to move because the Earth spins.
Like planets, asteroids do not make their own light.
Because of this, some people think "asteroids" is not a good name, and think that the name "planetoid" ("like a planet") would be a better name.
Giuseppe Piazzi found the first asteroid, in 1801.
It was named 1 Ceres, and is the biggest object in the asteroid belt.
Other asteroids in the asteroid belt, like Juno, 2 Pallas, and 4 Vesta were found later.
Today, astronomers using computerized telescopes find thousands of asteroids every month.
Asteroids are the leftover rock and other material from the formation of the Solar System.
These rocks were too small to make a planet, and could not collide but some are made of carbon or metal.
Depending on what 's on the surface, they are classified into various kinds in including Type M (metal), Type S (stone), and Type C (carbon).
Most asteroids in our Solar System are in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Many are not in the main asteroid belt.
The ones that come close to Earth are called Near-Earth asteroids.
Many scientists think asteroids striking the Earth killed off all the dinosaurs and caused some of the other extinction events.
Aries is one of the constellations of the zodiac.
It is in the Northern Hemisphere.
Aries is Latin for ram - a male sheep.
Its symbol is (Unicode), which represents a ram 's horns.
Aries had the meaning of a ram four thousand years ago in Babylonia.
It represents the ram whose fleece (hair) became the Golden Fleece in Ancient Greek Mythology.
The astronomer Ptolemy listed Aries when he made a list of 48 constellations.
Aquarius is a constellation of the zodiac.
It sits between Capricornus and Pisces.
Its name is Latin for "water-carrier" or "cup-carrier", and its symbol is (Unicode), which represents water.
The astronomer Ptolemy listed Aquarius when he made a list of 48 constellations.
It is also one of the 88 modern constellations.
Aquarius is a constellation also known as the Water Bearer and was a servant to the gods.
He was also a human at one time.
He was the son of King Tors.
When he was human, his name was Ganymede.
Usually when you see him in the sky, you can see him pouring water into the mouth of a fish; or Pisces.
There is a story of Ganymede when he was watching over his father s sheep, he was captured and held captive by the Goddess of the Dawn.
In another version of the story, Zeus is captured by Ganymede.
Than Zeus calls over his pet eagle to grab Ganymede and take him to the top of Mount Olympus and serve as a servant to the gods.
One man named Robert Graves thought that the origin of Aquarius was in Egypt.
He thought that Aquarius represented the Nile River.
He also thought that Aquarius was the God of the Nile.
The Nile is just a river, but Robert thought that the river was water pouring out of Aquarius jar to make the Nile.
As a constellation, he comes after the constellation Capricornus just by one month and is south of the constellation Pegasus and north of Pisces, the brightest star in the night sky.
Aquarius, the Water Bearer.
Pepperdine University, n.d. Web.
20 Dec. 2012..
Lesikar, Arnold V. "Constellation List."
Constellation List.
St. Cloud State University, n.d. Web.
15 Nov. 2012..
Anime (-RRB- is Japanese for "Animation" or Cartoon.
In Japan, anime is the word used for all animation.
Outside of Japan, the term anime refers to Japanese Animation or Animation similar in style to Japanese Animation.
This article is about Japanese animation.
Some anime is drawn by hand, but anime can also be made with computers.
There are many types of anime; you can find anime about sports, magic, or romance.
These are just some examples.
Anime are shown on television, on DVD and VHS, and are used in video games.
Also, some anime cartoons are just movies, but they have cartoon characters and animation instead of real people and places.
Anime is often based on Japanese comics that are called manga and graphic novels.
Sometimes live action (not animation) movies and television series are based on an anime.
The history of anime begins around 1900, when Japanese filmmakers tried out ways of animation at the same time as the United States, Russia, Germany and France.
The filmmakers in Japan did not have a lot of money to make their movies and not a lot of places where they could film their movies.
The people that the filmmakers could use as actors in their movies was also a problem for making Japanese movies.
Japanese people look different from people in other places in the world, and it was hard for filmmakers to make a movie about places other than Japan with Japanese actors.
Movie makers liked animation because then they could have animator draw other places and people that could not be filmed in a normal movie, and the animators could be very creative with the cartoons they made.
During the 1970s, more and more people started to like manga.
At the same time, manga were used as the starting point to make anime with the same characters and stories.
Animators would take the drawings done by a manga artist and the stories the manga artist wrote, and turn them into the stories and characters of a similar anime.
At that time Osamu Tezuka became very popular.
Now he is called a "legend" and the "god of manga".
Tezuka and other pioneers of anime made a lot of types of stories and styles that are common to anime today.
The giant robot genre (known as "mecha" outside Japan) began with manga and anime from Tezuka 's ideas.
Robot anime like Gundam and Macross became classics in the 1980s.
Today, the robot genre is still very popular in Japan and worldwide.
In the 1980s, anime became very popular in Japan, and saw an increase in production.
(Manga is much more popular than anime in Japan).
There are a lot of different kinds of anime that many different kinds of people like besides Mecha, and there are types of anime based on the age of the people who might like it or the subject of the anime.
Very popular stories in anime and manga are often translated into other languages, and the words used in the anime or manga will be put into another language where they mean the same thing.
That way, people who live outside of Japan and who do not understand Japanese (the language used for dialogue in anime and manga in Japan) can also understand the stories.
If a manga or anime is not translated by a company in another country, sometimes people in that country will translate the story to share with other people for free before a company translates it for the general public.
This is good because it allows more people to watch animes, but some companies think it is stealing.
In the late 1980s, lots of people in countries other than Japan started to like anime too.
In the United States, giant robot anime became popular.
In Europe, anime for children became popular.
Today, many different kinds of anime are popular all around the world.
Anime helped spread in popularity thanks to the internet.
Ankara is the capital city of the country of Turkey.
It is in the center of Anatolia.
Ankara is the second largest city after Istanbul.
The city has a population of 4,319,167 (2005) (Province 5,153,000), and an elevation of 938 meters (3080 feet).
It was formerly known as Angora or Eng r, and in Roman as Ancyra, and in classical and Hellenistic periods as nkyra.
The city is also the capital of Ankara Province.
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (August 13, 1899 - April 29, 1980) was a British movie director who later became an American citizen but still kept his British citizenship.
He mostly made mystery and suspense movies.
Despite having a successful career, Hitchcock never won an Academy Award.
Hitchcock started his career in England, starting with silent movies in the 1920s.
In the 1930s, he made some successful movies like The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938).
He then moved to the United States, to work in Hollywood.
His first American movie was Rebecca (1940), which won an Academy Award.
Some of his best known movies from the 1940s are Spellbound (1945) and Notorious (1946), which were inspired by psychoanalysis.
His first movie in color was the experimental Rope (1948).
Strangers on a Train (1951) was based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith.
In the 1950s, he made three popular movies with Grace Kelly: Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955).
In 1956 he made a new version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, starring James Stewart and Doris Day.
He returned to black-and-white, briefly, with The Wrong Man (1957).
Then came Vertigo (1958), which some consider his best suspense movie.
It was followed by three more successful movies: North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963).
After that he only made 5 more movies: Marnie (1964), Torn Curtain (1966), Topaz (1969), Frenzy (1972) and Family Plot (1976).
In 1971 he became the very first winner of the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award.
This is an award for lifetime achievement.
In 1945 Hitchcock made a documentary about the Holocaust.
It will be shown on British television in 2015.
Hitchcock appeared very quickly in small roles in most of his movies.
He also hosted a TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Hithcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex.
He was a Roman Catholic.
He was married to Alma Reville, who helped write some of his movies.
They had a daughter, Patricia.
He died in Bel Air, Los Angeles.
The Anaconda or green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) is the one of biggest snakes in the world.
It is a non-venomous boa species from South America.
It is the largest, heaviest, and second longest known living snake (behind the reticulated python).
The term "anaconda" usually means this species.
This giant snake (which is called the water boa) lives in swampy areas of tropical South America.
It spends a lot of time in shallow water, hidden from unsuspecting prey.
Anacondas give birth to live young; 20 to 40 baby snakes are born at one time.
The largest specimens measured 17.1 feet long and weighed 215 pounds.
All snakes are carnivores (meat-eaters).
Anacondas mostly hunt at night.
Anacondas kill by constricting (squeezing) the prey until it can no longer breathe.
Sometimes they drown the prey.
Like all snakes, they swallow the prey whole, head first.
The anaconda 's top and bottom jaws are attached to each other with stretchy ligaments, which let the snake swallow animals wider than itself.
Snakes do not chew their food, they digest it with quite strong acids in the snake 's stomach.
Anacondas eat pigs, deer, caiman (a type of crocodilian), birds, fish, rodents (like the capybara and agouti), and other animals.
After eating a large animal, the anaconda needs no food for a long time, and rests for weeks.
The young (called neonates) can care for themselves soon after birth, including hunting (but are pretty much defenseless against large predators).
They eat small rodents (like rats and mice), baby birds, frogs and small fish.
Altaic is suggested as a language family.
It would include 66 languages that are spoken by about 348 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and northeast Asia.
According to the best-known classification of Altaic, it consists of the Turkic languages, Mongolic, and the Tungusic languages.
It is probably fair to say that this is the meaning attributed to "Altaic" by most general linguists.
However, since the publication of Gustaf John Ramstedt 's Einf hrung in 1952 1957, most Altaicists have included Korean in Altaic.
Since the publication of Roy Andrew Miller 's Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages in 1971, most have also included Japanese (Nicholas Poppe) or better Japonic, consisting of Japanese and Ryukyuan.
A few linguists even count Ainu with the Altaic languages, but as part of a node including Korean and Japanese, in contradistinction to a Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic node, with Korean-Japanese-Ainu and Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic in turn forming a node at a higher level (e.g. Street 1962).
The core version of Altaic, consisting of Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic, is sometimes referred to as "Micro-Altaic" while the expanded version, including Korean or Korean and Japanese, is referred to as "Macro-Altaic".
In mathematics the axiom of choice, sometimes called AC, is an axiom used in set theory.
The axiom of choice says that if you have a set of objects and you separate the set into smaller sets, each containing at least one object, it is possible to take one object out of each of these smaller sets and make a new set.
You do not always need to use the axiom of choice to do this.
You do not need to use the axiom of choice if the starting set is finite, or if the starting set is infinite and has a rule built in for how it can be divided.
For example, for any (infinite or finite) sets of pairs of shoes, one can pick out the left shoe from each pair, but for an infinite collection of pairs of socks, the axiom of choice is needed.
The Aegean Sea is part of the Mediterranean Sea.
It is between the Greece and Anatolia.
It is connected (attached) to the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus.
It is not known how the sea got its name.
In ancient times two groups of people lived near the sea - the Minoans of Crete, and the Myceneans of the Peloponnese.
The city-states of Athens and Sparta came later and were part of Ancient Greece.
Persians, Romans, the Byzantine Empire, the Venetians (people from Venice, the Seljuk Turks, and the Ottoman Empire later started around the Aegean Sea.
The people near the Aegean were very advanced (powerful and clever) in Ancient history and they sailed across it to talk to each other.
There are seven groups of Aegean islands: the Thracian Sea group, the East Aegean group, the Northern Sporades, the Cyclades, the Saronic Islands (or Argo-Saronic Islands), the Dodecanese and Crete.
The word archipelago used to mean these islands.
Many of the Aegean islands, or chains of islands, are part of the mountain ranges on the mainland.
One chain goes across the sea to Chios, another one goes across Euboea to Samos, and a third one goes across the Peloponnese and Crete to Rhodes.
This one divides (splits, cuts) the Aegean from the Mediterranean.
Many of the islands have safe harbors and bays, but sailing in the sea is difficult.
Many of the islands are volcanos, and marble and iron are mined on other islands.
The bigger islands have some green valleys and plains.
Two big islands on the Aegean Sea are part of Turkey: Bozcaada and G k eada.
A Clockwork Orange is an English dystopian novella written by Anthony Burgess and published in 1962.
Through the exploits and experiences of a teenage boy, Alex, it explores mankind 's violent nature.
The novel is set in a not-so-distant future society with a culture of extreme youth rebellion and violence.
It satirizes trends in youth culture that were around in the 1960s in the West, and to some extent still present today.
The dramatic events throw a light on human free will to choose between good or evil, and the weakness of free will as a solution to evil.
Alex and his gang steal, rape and beat people up.
He is sent to prison for murdering a woman whilst burgling her house.
Burgess experiments with language by writing in a Russian-influenced argot (slang) called "Nadsat" which is used by the novel s teenage anti-hero in his first-person narrative, and the younger characters.
According to Burgess, the novel was a jeu d'esprit written in just three weeks.
In 2005, A Clockwork Orange was included on Time magazine 's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, and it was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
The original manuscript of the book was bought by McMaster University.
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1971.
The best known adaptation of the novel to other forms is the 1971 movie A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick, starring Malcolm McDowell as Alex. A 1965 film by Andy Warhol entitled Vinyl was also an adaptation of Burgess ' novel.
Amsterdam is the capital and largest city in the European country of the Netherlands.
Amsterdam is famous for its canals and dikes.
Unlike most other countries, the national government is not in Amsterdam, but in The Hague.
Amsterdam has about 800,000 inhabitants, two universities and an international airport "Schiphol Airport".
About 2.2 million people live in the metropolitan area.
The city of Amsterdam is the world 's most multi-cultural city.
It has people living there from 175 different countries.
Also the largest forms of criminalities have been seen in the Netherlands because of Dutch Law gouverment system, the faces of criminals are not shown on the Dutch television.
A dam was built in 13th century in the river Amstel (that 's why the city is called Amsterdam).
The old harbor of the city, Damrak, is now one of the busiest streets in the city.
The city was for the first time mentioned in 1275 by count Floris V, count of Holland and Zeeland who gave the people of Amsterdam some more freedom.
The city got its city rights probably in 1306; at least soon after the year 1300.
The city became a major trading port pretty soon, with a successful trading route to the Baltic Sea.
The city grew fast in the 15th century.
Because the city basically lies in swamp, the builders of the city had to dig canals to use the digging-ground for getting the living-ground higher.
Homes were built on wooden poles, and the canals served as a pretty effective primitive sewer.
The city was one of the first cities in Western Europe to be fairly democratic: Wealthy citizens chose the leaders of the city.
Amsterdam declared war on the Spanish in 1578, during the Eighty Years ' War.
When the city of Antwerp fell to the Spanish in 1585, many people of Antwerp fled to Amsterdam.
Antwerp was also a major trading city, and when its people moved to Amsterdam, they took their trading-networks with them.
That 's why Amsterdam became an even more important trading city after that.
This launched the Dutch Golden Age.
The number of people living in Amsterdam during the War rose from less than 30,000 in 1570 to over 100,000 in 1622.
That number would even rise to 200,000 near the end of the 17th century, making the city a very large city for its time (only London and Paris also had that many people).
In the 18th century, the number of people living in Amsterdam fell back to 140,000, ending the Golden Age.
The 19th century was the time for the first trains and trams in Amsterdam.
The first train ran from Amsterdam to Haarlem in 1839.
The number of people was rising, with about 250,000 living in Amsterdam in 1850, and more than 500,000 in 1900.
Amsterdam was a heavy industrialised city by then.
Before the Second World War, there were about 140,000 Jews living in Amsterdam.
Most of those people did not survive the war.
After the war, Amsterdam became a center of tolerance and culture; to be different is not abnormal in Amsterdam.
It is expected that Amsterdam will grow 12.6 % until 2025.
It will then hold almost 900,000 people, and the metropolitan area will hold almost 2.5 million people by then.
Audi AG is a German automobile manufacturer with headquarters in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, and has been an almost wholly owned (99.7 %) subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group since 1964.
Audi AG was founded by August Horch and the current CEO of Audi AG is Rupert Stadler.
They also used to make cars like the Audi A2 or the Audi quattro.
An aircraft is a flying machine.
There are many different kinds of aircraft.
Some aircraft keep in the sky by moving air over their wings.
Examples are aeroplanes, helicopters, and gliders.
Some aircraft keep in the sky by floating.
Examples are balloons and airships.
Most aircraft use engine power.
Examples are aeroplanes, helicopters, and airships.
Gliders and balloons use no power.
A few aircraft use muscle power.
Big aeroplanes for transporting people are called airliners.
Airliners fly at more than 850 km\/h (530 mph).
Less than 100 years ago, the quickest ships needed more than seven days to travel across the Atlantic Ocean because it is 4,800 km (3,000 miles) wide.
Now airliners need less than seven hours to travel across the Atlantic Ocean.
Airliners are the quickest way to travel.
Airliners can fly over mountains and bad weather.
Airliners have complex technology to make them fly quickly, safely and for less money.
A few fighter aircraft can fly at 3,200 km\/h (2,000 mph).
The person who drives an aircraft is called the pilot.
Alfred Nobel (October 21, 1833 December 10, 1896) was a Swedish scientist, engineer, and weapons manufacturer.
He is well known for the invention of dynamite and for creating the Nobel Prize.
He left instructions in his will that his money should create the Nobel Prize after reading an article in a French newspaper that called him the "merchant of death" and said that he would be remembered for his invention of dynamite and its ability to kill more people than ever before.
Nobel left 31 million kronor (the Swedish currency) to the awards after his death on December 10, 1896.
Nobel was born on October 21, 1833.
His father, Immanuel Nobel, was an engineer and inventor.
His mother was Andriette Ahlsell Nobel.
In 1833, Immanuel Nobel was forced into bankruptcy due to losses in his construction company.
Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 - August 2, 1922) was a teacher, scientist, and inventor.
He was the founder of the Bell Telephone Company.
Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland.
His family was known for teaching people how to speak English clearly (elocution).
Both his grandfather, Alexander Bell, and his father, Alexander Melville Bell, taught elocution.
His father wrote often about this and is most known for his invention and writings of Visible Speech.
In his writings he explained ways of teaching people who were deaf and unable to speak.
It also showed how these people could learn to speak words by watching their lips and reading what other people were saying.
Alexander Graham Bell went to the Royal High School of Edinburgh.
He graduated at the age of fifteen.
At the age of sixteen, he got a job as a student and teacher of elocution and music in Weston House Academy, at Elgin in Morayshire.
He spent the next year at the University of Edinburgh.
While still in Scotland, he became more interested in the science of sound (acoustics).
He hoped to help his deaf mother.
From 1866 to 1867, he was a teacher at Somersetshire College in Bath, Somerset.
In 1870 when he was 23 years old, he moved with his family to Canada where they settled at Brantford, Ontario.
Bell began to study communication machines.
He made a piano that could be heard far away by using electricity.
In 1871 he went with his father to Montreal, Quebec in Canada, where he took a job teaching about "visible speech".
His father was asked to teach about it at a large school for deaf mutes in Boston, Massachusetts, but instead he gave the job to his son.
The younger Bell began teaching there in 1872.
Alexander Graham Bell soon became famous in the United States for this important work.
He published many writings about it in Washington, D.C..
Because of this work, thousands of deaf mutes in America are now able to speak, even though they can not hear.
In 1876, Bell was the first inventor to patent the telephone, and he helped start the Bell Telephone Company with others in July 1877.
In 1879, this company joined with the New England Telephone Company to form the National Bell Telephone Company.
In 1880, they formed the American Bell Telephone Company, and in 1885, American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), still a large company today.
Along with Thomas Edison, Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company on January 25, 1881.
Bell married Mabel Hubbard on July 11, 1877.
He died of diabetes at his home near Baddeck, Nova Scotia in 1922.
Bell 's genius is seen in part by the eighteen patents granted in his name alone and the twelve that he shared with others.
These included fifteen for the telephone and telegraph, four for the photophone, one for the phonograph, five for aerial vehicles, four for hydrofoils, and two for a selenium cell.
In 1888, he was one of the original members of the National Geographic Society and became its second president.
He was given many honors.
His past experience made him ready to work more with sound and electricity.
He began his studies in 1874 with a musical telegraph, in which he used an electric circuit and a magnet to make an iron reed or tongue vibrate.
One day, it was found that a reed failed to respond to the current.
Mr. Bell desired his assistant, who was at the other end of the line, to pluck the reed, thinking it had stuck to the magnet.
His assistant, Thomas Watson complied, and to his surprise, Bell heard the corresponding reed at his end of the line vibrate and sound the same - without any electric current to power it.
A few experiments soon showed that his reed had been set in vibration by the changes in the magnetic field that the moving reed produced in the line.
This discovery led him to stop using the electric battery current.
His idea was that, since the circuit was never broken, all the complex vibrations of speech might be converted into currents, which in turn would reproduce the speech at a distance.
Bell, with his assistant, devised a receiver, consisting of a stretched film or drum with a bit of magnetised iron attached to its middle, and free to vibrate in front of the pole of an electromagnet in circuit with the line.
This apparatus was completed on June 2, 1875.
On July 7th, he instructed his assistant to make a second receiver which could be used with the first, and a few days later they were tried together, at each end of the line, which ran from a room in the inventor 's house at Boston to the cellar underneath.
Bell, in the room, held one instrument in his hands, while Watson in the cellar listened at the other.
The inventor spoke into his instrument, "Do you understand what I say?"
and Mr. Watson rushed back into the upstairs and answered "Yes."
The first successful two-way telephone call was not made until March 10, 1876 when Bell spoke into his device, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."
and Watson answered back and came into the room to see Bell.
The first long distance telephone call was made on August 10, 1876 by Bell from the family home in Brantford, Ontario to his assistant in Paris, Ontario, some 16 km (10 mi.)
away.
On March 7, 1876, the U.S. Patent Office gave him patent # 174465 for the telephone.
Bell is also credited with the invention of an improved metal detector in 1881 that made sounds when it was near metal.
The device was quickly put together in an attempt to find the bullet in the body of U.S. President James Garfield.
The metal detector worked, but did not find the bullet because of the metal bedframe the President was lying on.
Bell gave a full description of his experiments in a paper read before the "American Association for the Advancement of Science" in August, 1882.
Bell was an active supporter of the eugenics movement in the United States.
He was the honorary president of the "Second International Congress of Eugenics" held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1921.
He did not want deaf people to be allowed to teach in schools for the deaf.
He was also against the use of sign language.
These things mean that he is not appreciated by some deaf people in the present day.
Apple is a multinational company that makes computer hardware (the Macintoshes), software (OS X, iOS, watchOS and tvOS), and mobile devices (iPod, iPhone and iPad) like music players.
Apple calls its computers Macintoshes or Macs, and it calls its laptops MacBooks.
Their popular line of mobile music players is called iPod, their smartphone line is called iPhone and their Tablet line is called iPad.
Apple sells their products all around the world.
Apple Inc. used to be called Apple Computer, Inc., but Apple changed their name after introducing the original iPhone.
Apple Inc. is a public company and trades on the NASDAQ under the stock ticker AAPL.
On 19 March 2015, it became one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Apple was started in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
Before they made the company, they sold "blue boxes", which had telephone buttons on them.
People could use them to make telephone calls from pay phones without paying any money.
It did this by pretending to be a telephone operator.
The company 's first product is now called the Apple I computer.
They were almost ready to sell it, but a problem happened.
Steve Wozniak was working for the computer company Hewlett-Packard, and the papers that said he could work there said he had to give everything he invented to the company before he could do what he wanted to do with it.
He showed the first Apple I to the boss at Hewlett-Packard, but they did not want his computer.
Wozniak was then free to do what he wanted to do with the Apple I. It began selling in 1976.
In 1977, they made their second computer, called the Apple II, which later became very successful compared to Apple I.
One of the most popular products made by Apple is the iPod.
It was first sold in 2001, and Apple sold over 100 million in six years.
All iPods can play music with good quality.
Recent iPod Touches have a high quality LED screens, can take and show good pictures, record, view and edit high definition videos, use the Internet for features such as e-mail, gaming, and blogging, record word and voice memos, and even get office work done.
The latest iPod Touch is even made with a 64-bit architecture.
The red iPod shuffle, iPod nano, and iPod touch models, and a few more products, are part of the" (PRODUCT) RED" program.
This means that some of the profits from these iPods goes to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa.
Apple is most well known for computers.
Computers by Apple run the OS X operating system, which is included with every new Mac.
Apple also makes software for their computers.
Some of the software that Apple makes is:
Most computer users in the world use Microsoft Windows, the rival to Mac OS X. About 10 % of computer users use Apple 's Macintosh computers.
It is not legal to run Apple 's Mac OS X on a Windows computer.
However, it is allowed to run Windows on modern Macintosh computers.
Even though Apple makes their computers to run Mac OS X, they also make software that allows you to install Windows.
This software is called Boot Camp.
Apple is perhaps most famous for its mobile devices, which are small computers that are easy to carry around.
They have touchscreens with multi-touch technology instead of a separate keyboard and mouse.
Most of these products run an operating system called iOS.
It is very similar to the Android software made by Google.
iOS can do a lot of different things, and it does so by running "apps", which are programs similar to those on a PC.
Users can download and buy more apps for their device from Apple 's App Store.
The iPhone is a mobile phone that can make calls, send text messages, play games and music, show photos and videos (like an iPod), browse the Internet, and do much more.
It was one of the first smartphones in the world when the first version was announced in 2007.
Apple usually makes and sells a different model every year, with new models being faster and more powerful and having a newer version of iOS than those that come before them.
The newest iPhones released are the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus, which came out in October 2015, and the iPhone SE in March 2016.
All of these run iOS 9.
Many cellular carriers around the world sell iPhones, including Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile in the US.
The iPad is a tablet computer, similar to the iPhone and iPod Touch but with a much larger display - while a typical iPhone has a screen about 4 to 5 inches in size, iPads have screens from 8 to 12 inches big.
The first iPad was introduced in 2010 and along with the iPhone, new and better models are made and sold every year.
The newest iPads, the iPad Air and iPad Pro came out in 2015.
They have new designs and features such as a front and back camera, true tone flash and a new 64-bit processor.
They, too, ship with the latest iOS 9 software.
The Apple Watch is an example of "wearable technology", because it is worn around the wrist in the same way as a traditional wristwatch.
However, it is much more than a wristwatch as not only does it tell the time and date but also tracks the fitness of the person wearing it and monitors the person 's health.
It can also do many of the same things that an iPhone can do, such as use Apple 's Siri personal assistant, but it needs to be "paired" with an iPhone for it to do these things.
The Apple Watch has a number of different designs: there is the standard version, a "Sport" version designed for athletes, and an "Edition" version which is made as a fashion product.
These all run "Watch OS", a modified version of iOS.
The Apple TV is a box that plugs into a TV.
It can connect wirelessly to any computer that has the Apple program iTunes on it.
The Apple TV can play music, and show photos or videos from iTunes on the TV.
Like other Apple products, Apple TV is regularly updated with new software and features.
The most recent version comes with a new remote control and includes the Siri voice assistant.
It uses tvOS, a TV version of iOS.
Following several campaigns (for example, Green my Apple), Apple has made their products greener.
Recently, the new notebook line removed many toxins and improved the products battery life and recharge cycles.
Since formation of the Apple Computer Company in 1977, Apple has employed over 75,000 people worldwide.
The majority of Apple 's employees have been located in the United States but Apple has substantial manufacturing, sales, marketing, and support organizations worldwide, with some engineering operations in Paris and Tokyo.
Apple employees include employees of companies Apple owns, and less important, but still relevant companies such as FileMaker Inc. and Braeburn Capital.
Apple Corps has sued Apple Inc. many times for trademark infringement.
In the first case, Apple Inc. agreed not to go into the music industry.
Apple Corps believes this agreement was broken when Apple Inc. launched the iTunes Store, Apple 's online music store.
The two companies had trouble in the past, over the use of the Apple name.
They made a deal that Apple Computers would not act as a music company.
When Apple Computer Inc. began to sell their iPod, and set up their iTunes music store, Apple Corps believed they had broken their agreement, and took them to court.
Apple Computers won the case, but the two companies later worked out a new deal.
This deal now means that the Beatles music is now on the iTunes store, whereas it was not there before.
Apple Computers was then renamed as Apple Inc. because of their mobile technology business.
Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, Inc., has said in the past that he loves music from The Beatles, which can be considered to be very ironic.
Aberdeenshire is the name of both a county and of one of the 32 unitary council areas in Scotland.
The two are not the same area.
Aberdeenshire stretches from the east coast of Scotland up into the mountains.
It is between Kincardineshire and Angus (south) and Banffshire (west).
Aberdeen is the county town.
Aberdeenshire is mainly countryside and mountain, except in Aberdeen.
Aberdeen is one of Britain 's richest towns because it serves the North Sea oil rigs.
Fraserburgh is a large fishing port.
The Aberdeenshire council area takes in the historic counties of Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire and half of Banffshire.
It does not include Aberdeen City though, which is a Council Area in its own right.
However, Aberdeenshire Council does have its headquarters at Woodhill House, in Aberdeen; the only Scottish council whose headquarters are based outside its area 's border.
Aberdeenshire borders Angus and Perth and Kinross to the south, and Highland and Moray to the west.
The American Civil War (1861 1865) was a civil war in the United States of America.
It is sometimes called "The War Between the States".
Eleven Southern states in which slavery was legal wanted to leave the United States of America.
They formed the Confederate States of America, also called "the Confederacy".
They wanted the Confederate States of America to be its own country, separate and independent from the United States.
Jefferson Davis was chosen as president of the Confederacy.
The U.S government and the states that remained loyal to it were called the Union.
The Union is sometimes called "the North".
Every state where slavery was illegal supported the Union.
Most of these states were in the North.
Five states where slavery was legal also supported the Union.
These were called the "border states".
War began on April 12, 1861 when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter held by a Union garrison.
The Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, won the 1860 presidential election.
The Republican Party was against spreading slavery to places where it was not already legal.
After the election seven Southern states declared their independence from the Union.
They formed the Confederate States of America, even before Lincoln became president on March 4, 1861.
The outgoing U.S. president, James Buchanan, said this was against the law, but did nothing to stop them.
Lincoln and his Republican party treated this secession as a rebellion.
No country ever recognized the Confederacy as its own, separate nation.
This was because of diplomacy on the part of the Union, anti-slavery feelings in Europe, and the northern blockade of southern ports.
Fighting started when the Confederates bombarded Fort Sumter, a Union Army fort.
Lincoln then asked the Union states to raise soldiers to fight the Confederates.
The war was fought mostly in the Southern states.
After four years of fighting, the Union won the war.
After the Union won, slavery was made illegal everywhere in the United States.
The Confederate States claimed that they owned all forts and other federal buildings in the South.
Fort Sumter was in South Carolina - one of the Confederate States.
However, the fort was controlled by the Union.
On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces attacked the fort.
They forced the Union soldiers inside the fort to surrender.
After this, President Lincoln asked every Union state for volunteers to join the Union Army.
Quickly, four more southern slave states joined with the Confederates instead of supplying forces to fight them.
The blockade by the United States Navy stopped the Confederacy from selling its cotton and other goods.
It also made it harder for them to buy weapons and military supplies.
The American Civil War was fought in three important land areas, or "theaters".
The Eastern theater included all land east of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Western theater included everything between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River and along the river.
The Trans-Mississippi theater included territory west of the Mississippi river.
Both the United States and the Confederacy had their capital cities in the Eastern theater.
Washington D.C. had been the capital of the U.S. since 1800.
When the South seceded, it named Richmond, Virginia as the capital of the Confederate States.
These two cities are only about 90 miles (145 km) apart.
One of the first battles of the war was fought in Virginia.
This First Battle of Bull Run happened on July 21st, 1861.
The Confederates won the battle.
The Union Army of the Potomac then tried to capture Richmond in the Peninsula Campaign during the spring of 1862.
At this time, Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia and defeated the Union army.
He then won the Second Battle of Bull Run in August 1862.
Lee tried to win the war by invading Maryland.
When he lost the Battle of Antietam, he retreated back to Virginia.
There was much naval warfare in the American Civil War.
Lincoln put the Confederates under a blockade, which meant the Union navy would not let any ships into or out of southern ports.
The Confederates used ships called blockade runners to bring things from Europe.
The things the Confederates brought included weapons.
The navies of each side also fought on the rivers.
The ships included ironclads, which were protected by iron on their sides, and cottonclads, which used cotton along its sides.
During the Battle of Hampton Roads, the Confederate ironclad Virginia fought against the Union ironclad Monitor.
This was the first time in world history that two ironclads fought each other.
In the Western theater, much of the fighting happened along the Mississippi River.
Ulysses S. Grant was an important Union general in the west.
The Confederates tried to send their soldiers into the state of Kentucky during the summer of 1861.
During the early months of 1862, the Union army made the Confederates retreat from Kentucky and from western Tennessee.
The Confederates tried to recapture western Tennessee by attacking Grant 's army at the Battle of Shiloh.
Grant won the battle.
The Confederates then tried to send their soldiers into eastern Kentucky during the fall of 1862.
They left Kentucky after losing the Battle of Perryville.
The North won control of almost all of the Mississippi River.
This was by capturing the cities along the river during the fall of 1862 and spring of 1863.
However, the Confederacy still held Vicksburg, an important city and fort.
If they held the city, the Confederates could move soldiers and supplies from one side of the river to the other.
Grant started the Siege of Vicksburg during the month of May 1863.
The siege continued for a long time.
On the 4th of July, 1863, the Confederates in Vicksburg surrendered to Grant.
This was one of the turning points in the war, because it divided the Confederacy into two parts.
There were also battles west of the Mississippi river valley, in the Trans-Mississippi theater.
For example, two important battles were the Battle of Wilson 's Creek and the Battle of Pea Ridge.
The Confederates tried to invade New Mexico during February and March 1862 but they were defeated at the Battle of Glorieta Pass.
After the Union captured Vicksburg, this area became separated from the rest of the Confederate states.
Other battles happened in this area after the capture of Vicksburg.
During the siege of Vicksburg in the west, another turning point came in the east.
After winning some battles, Lee decided to invade the North again.
Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia went into Pennsylvania.
The Confederate Army met the Union Army near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
The two armies fought the Battle of Gettysburg.
This battle lasted for three days: July 1 to 3, 1863.
More soldiers died at Gettysburg than in any other Civil War battle.
The Union won the battle.
This stopped the Confederate Army 's invasion into the North.
Lee and his troops were pushed back into the South.
After this, President Lincoln decided that Grant was his best general.
He put Grant in control of all the Union armies.
Lincoln also made William T. Sherman the general in charge of the Union troops in Georgia.
Grant led many attacks on Lee 's army.
These battles were made up the Overland Campaign.
Meanwhile, Sherman burned Atlanta and Savannah.
He did this to try to make the South weaker and to make it harder for Southern people to supply the Confederate Army with food and other necessities.
Sherman then marched north through South Carolina and North Carolina.
Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston attacked Sherman at the Battle of Bentonville.
Sherman won the battle.
Lee held out as long as he could in Virginia.
Eventually he decided that he had too few soldiers to keep on fighting the Union, which had more soldiers and supplies.
Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1865, near Appomattox Court House.
After Lee surrendered, many other Confederate armies surrendered also.
The last Confederate general to surrender was Brigadier General Stand Watie.
He surrendered on June 23, 1865, in Oklahoma.
After the war ended, President Lincoln pardoned all of the Confederate soldiers.
This meant the Confederate soldiers would not be arrested or punished for fighting against the Union.
The southern states would be allowed to rejoin the United States again.
However, some Confederates did not want to return to the United States.
Some of these people moved to M xico or Brazil.
During the war, inflation was a problem in both the Union and the Confederacy.
This meant that prices went up, and everything became more expensive.
Many people in the North and the South could not afford the higher prices.
Many went hungry because of this.
This was one thing that helped lead to the Confederacy 's surrender.
Many soldiers on both sides died during the war.
Most of the war was fought in the South.
Many railroads, farms, houses and other things were destroyed and most people there became very poor.
The period after the war, called Reconstruction, lasted from the end of the war until 1877.
The Union Army stayed in some Southern states, making them occupied territory.
Three important amendments were added on to the United States Constitution.
The amendments were proposed (or suggested) by the U.S. government.
Although not every American supported them, the amendments got enough support to pass.
The 13th Amendment says that slavery is not allowed anywhere in the United States.
This officially ended legal slavery everywhere in the country.
During the war, President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
This said that all of the slaves in the Southern states were free.
However, some slaves were not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.
Also, because the Confederacy saw itself as its own country, many Southerners did not obey the Emancipation Proclamation.
So until the 13th Amendment was passed, slavery was still practiced in many parts of the United States.
The 14th Amendment makes it clear that all people born in the United States are citizens with equal rights.
It also says that these rights can not be taken away unless a person breaks the law.
Before this, African-American people were not seen as citizens.
They did not have the same rights as white people.
The 14th Amendment gave every American equal rights under the law.
The 15th Amendment says that people in the United States can not be kept from voting because of their race.
Citizens could be stopped from voting because of their gender, however.
Women could not vote until the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920.
After the war, some of the Union Army 's leaders went into politics.
Generals Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley became presidents.
Others were elected to other offices.
Andy Warhol (Andrew Warhola, Jr.; August 6, 1928 February 22, 1987) was one of the most famous American artists of the latter half of the 20th century.
Many people think that Warhol is the "bellwether of the art market".
Warhol was born Andrew Warhola, Jr. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 6, 1928.
He graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology before moving to New York.
His first big break was in August 1949 when he was asked to illustrate an article in Glamour Magazine.
He dropped the ` a ' from the end of his name when the credits read "Drawings by Andrew Warhol".
Warhol was also famous for painting Campbells ' and Watties ' soup cans.
He painted about 300 different paintings..
He originally worked as a commercial artist.
He designed things like advertisements and window displays for stores.
He soon became famous as an artist in the Pop Art movement, in which everyday objects and media images were used.
One of his most famous paintings is his colourful portrait of American movie star, Marilyn Monroe.
After she died he was deeply moved, and wanted to create some sort of memorial.
In 1968, Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas.
In 1987, Warhol was in a hospital in New York City after an operation on his gallbladder.
He died in his sleep from a sudden post-operative cardiac arrhythmia, aged 58.
His family sued the hospital for inadequate care, saying that the arrhythmia was caused by improper care and water poisoning.
The American Film Institute (AFI) is an independent, organization that is designed not to make money created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was started in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act.
George Stevens, Jr. was the first CEO.
Since 1980, Jean Picker Firstenberg has been CEO.
Older figures in AFI 's Conservatory train newer people.
The institute also wants to keep old film, which could soon be destroyed.
Even though its name only mentions film, AFI also works on television and video.
In 1973, the AFI began handing out Life Achievement Awards.
In 1998, when American cinema had existed for 100 years, AFI began its 100 Years Series, which helped people become interested in the history of movies.
Recently, it built and started the AFI Silver theater in Silver Spring, Maryland near Washington, D.C.
Akira Kurosawa (March 23, 1910 September 6, 1998) was a Japanese movie director.
Kurosawa 's movies are liked in Japan.
Kurosawa 's movies are also liked by people in other countries.
He made 30 movies in 50 years.
He is thought to be one of the most important movie directors.
In many of his famous movies, including Rashomon and The Seven Samurai, he worked with the actor Toshiro Mifune.
Kurosawa started in the Japanese movie industry in 1936.
Before he worked a little bit as a painter.
After years of working on many movies as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he became a director in 1943.
This was during World War II with the popular action movie Sanshiro Sugata (a.k.a. Judo Saga).
Rashomon, was first shown in Tokyo in August 1950.
On September 10, 1951 it was the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
It then was shown in Europe and North America.
Because the movie was so well liked, it made people in the western world want to see more Japanese movies.
This helped make other Japanese movie makers become successful.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Kurosawa directed about one movie each year.
In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Ancient Egypt, or the Egyptian Empire, was a society that began about 3150 BC, and lasted until 20 BC when it was invaded by the Roman Empire.
It grew along the River Nile and was at its most powerful in the second millennium BC.
Its land went from the Nile delta to Nubia, a kingdom which today is mostly in the Sudan.
For most of its history, Egypt was prosperous, since the water from the Nile made sure that the Egyptians would have good crops.
Crops were grown after the Nile flood water went down.
The Egyptians created a way of writing using hieroglyphs, built huge temples and tombs, traded with other areas, and had a powerful army.
Their religion had many gods, and its priests were powerful and rich.
Their rulers, called Pharaohs, were thought to be close to the gods.
Archaeologists, who study objects left by ancient people, have found that people have lived along the Nile for a very long time.
The fertile flood plains of the Nile allowed people to begin farming.
By the 10th millennium BC, the people in Egypt had begun growing cereal grains like wheat and barley.
Because they were farming, they stayed in one place, and because they were settled, their society became more complex.
This was an important step in the history of human civilization.
This period in Egyptian history is called predynastic, as it happened before the large dynastic kingdoms were formed.
By about 5500 BC, small tribes living in the Nile valley had developed into a series of cultures.
Each had begun farming crops and animals.
Each had their own types of pottery and personal items, such as combs, bracelets, and beads.
In Upper Egypt, the south part of the country, the Badarian was one of the earliest cultures.
It is known for its high quality pottery, stone tools, and its use of copper.
They were followed by the Amratian and Gerzian cultures.
They had better tools and other new ideas.
In Gerzian times, the people were making contact with Lower Egypt, Palestine and the Byblos coast (now Lebanon).
The Intermediate periods included times when the traditional system broke down, the country was split, or invaded by foreign rulers.
Egypt 's culture and climate was relatively stable, compared to other parts of the Middle East.
Nevertheless, they had some periods when their government was challenged and sometimes overthrown.
Ancient Egypt was split up into many different districts called sepats.
The first divisions were created during the Predynastic Period, but then, they were small city-states that ruled themselves.
When the first pharaoh came to power, the sepats remained and were much like the counties in many countries today.
They stayed basically the same for a long time there were 42 of them, and each was ruled by a governor chosen by the pharaoh.
In later years the districts were called nomes and the governor was called a nomarch.
Ancient Egypt had a lot of different taxes, but there was no real money, so people paid each other with goods or work.
The person who watched the tax collection was a scribe, and every tax collector in Egypt had to tell him every day how many taxes they had collected.
Each person paid different taxes based on the work that they did: craftsmen paid in goods, hunters and fishermen paid with food, and every single household in the country had to pay a labor tax every year by helping with work for the country like mining or for canals.
A lot of rich Egyptians paid poorer people to do this for them.
Egypt had writing called hieroglyphics, which is one of the two oldest written languages (the other is Sumerian cuneiform).
Hieroglyphic writing dates to c. 3200 BC, and is composed of some 500 symbols.
A hieroglyph can represent a word, a sound, or a silent determinative (which makes clear what the sign means).
The same symbol can serve different purposes in different contexts.
Hieroglyphs were for public purposes, used on stone monuments and in tombs.
It was art, and often it was political propaganda.
The script used by priests for everyday writing on papyrus, wood or cloth.
In day-to-day writing, scribes used a cursive form of writing, called hieratic, which was quicker and easier.
While formal hieroglyphs may be read in rows or columns in either direction (though typically written from right to left), hieratic was always written from right to left, usually in horizontal rows.
The script used by ordinary people.
A new form of writing, Demotic, became the main writing style.
It is this form of writing - and formal hieroglyphs - which accompanies the Greek text on the Rosetta Stone.
The Coptic script is a modified Greek alphabet.
The Coptic language is the last stage of the Egyptian language (modern Egyptians speak a dialect of Arabic).
Some ancient Egyptian literature has survived to the present day.
There are teaching texts, such as the Maxims of Ptahhotep, the Instructions of Amenemope, and the Ebers papyrus.
The Ebers papyrus is one of the earliest medical texts ever found.
There are also poems and stories.
An Ancient Egyptian murder mystery written around 1800 BC.
A poem about the ruin of Egyptian society -- some think it is about the story in Exodus, a book in the Jewish\/Christian Bible.
A series of stories about the Pharaoh Khufu told by his sons.
The longest papyrus ever found in Egypt.
An ancient adventure story about a priest who goes to collect gifts from a king.
Religion was very important to Ancient Egyptians.
To Egyptians, animals were holy and were worshipped.
Because of this, Egyptians domesticated, or made pets of, animals very early and took very good care of them.
The center of any Egyptian town was the temple, and this building was used for everything from the town hall to a university in addition to its religious services.
Because they were so religious, Egyptians created a lot of art of their gods.
This art shows all different kinds of divine, or holy, creatures including the pharaoh, who was thought to be a god.
The afterlife was also very important to Egyptians and they are known for mummifying their dead.
These mummies are important to scientists today because they tell them about how the Egyptians lived.
All the gods were important but some were more important than others.
The rich fertile soil came from annual inundations of the Nile River.
The ancient Egyptians were thus able to produce an abundance of food, allowing the population to devote more time and resources to cultural, technological, and artistic pursuits.
In ancient Egypt taxes were assessed based on the amount of land a person owned.
Farming in Egypt was dependent on the cycle of the Nile River.
The Egyptians recognized three seasons: Akhet (flooding), Peret (planting), and Shemu (harvesting).
The flooding season lasted from June to September, depositing on the river 's banks a layer of mineral-rich silt ideal for growing crops.
After the floodwaters had receded, the growing season lasted from October to February.
Farmers plowed and planted seeds in the fields, which were irrigated with ditches and canals.
Egypt received little rainfall, so farmers relied on the Nile to water their crops.
p514 From March to May, farmers used sickles to harvest their crops, which were then threshed with a flail to separate the straw from the grain.
Winnowing removed the chaff from the grain, and the grain was then ground into flour, brewed to make beer, or stored for later use.
p506
Flax plants were grown for the fibers of their stems.
These fibers were split along their length and spun into thread, which was used to weave sheets of linen and to make clothing.
Papyrus growing on the banks of the Nile River was used to make paper.
Vegetables and fruits were grown in garden plots, close to habitations and on higher ground, and had to be watered by hand.
Vegetables included leeks, garlic, melons, squashes, pulses, lettuce, and other crops, in addition to grapes that were made into wine.
p577; 630
The Egyptians believed that a balanced relationship between people and animals was an essential element of the cosmic order; thus humans, animals and plants were believed to be members of a single whole.
p117 Cattle were the most important livestock; livestock were taxed; the size of a herd reflected the prestige and importance of the estate or temple which owned them.
In addition to cattle, the ancient Egyptians kept sheep, goats, and pigs.
Poultry such as ducks, geese, and pigeons were captured in nets and bred on farms, where they were force-fed with dough to fatten them.
p381 The Nile provided a plentiful source of fish.
Bees were also domesticated from at least the Old Kingdom, and they provided both honey and wax.
p409
The ancient Egyptians used donkeys and oxen as beasts of burden.
They plowed the fields and trampled seed into the soil.
The slaughter of a fattened ox was part of an offering ritual.
p381 Horses were introduced by the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period, and the camel, although known from the New Kingdom, was not used as a beast of burden until the Late Period.
There is also evidence to suggest that elephants were briefly used in the Late Period, but largely abandoned due to lack of grazing land.
Dogs, cats and monkeys were common family pets, while more exotic pets imported from the heart of Africa, such as lions, were reserved for royalty.
Herodotus observed that the Egyptians were the only people to keep their animals with them in their houses.
During the Predynastic and Late periods, the worship of the gods in their animal form was extremely popular, such as the cat goddess Bastet and the ibis god Thoth, and these animals were bred in large numbers on farms for the purpose of ritual sacrifice.
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Ancient Egyptians had some advanced medical knowledge for their time.
They performed surgery, set broken bones and even knew about medicines.
Some medicines the Ancient Egyptians used are honey and breast milk or gazelle 's milk.
Not only did they have medicinal values, they also are believed to have been used to ward off evil spirits and demons.
The easiest way to see how good they were at medicine is to look at the medical papyri which have survived to the present day.
The Edwin Smith papyrus is the world 's oldest surviving surgical document, from about 1600 B.C..
The text describes anatomy, and the examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of 48 types of medical problems in detail.
Ancient Egyptian pyramids are shaped stone masonry structures.
They are the best known pyramid structures, and are some of the largest ever buildings.
Over 130 pyramids have been discovered in Egypt.
Most were built on the western side of the River Nile in desert areas.
Egyptian pyramids are often contain chambers and passages.
The pyramids were built as the burial places of the Egyptian kings before the start of the old kingdom until the end of the middle kingdom.
Because the Egyptians kept written records, we know about the building of some pyramids.
The Great Pyramid at Giza is the largest and most famous pyramid.
It was built for Pharaoh Khufu.
It is over 140 metres high and took 20 years to build.
It is listed as one of the seven wonders of the world.
The step pyramid at Saqqara is the earliest pyramid which is still standing today.
This was built in 2630 BC.
It was a burial place of the Pharaoh Djoser.
The architect of the step pyramid was Imhotep.
Engineering was an important activity in Egypt.
Engineers were able to measure and survey the distance between two points.
They designed and made the pyramids, which are nearly perfect geometrically.
They could make cement, and developed large irrigation networks.
Science was also important.
Mathematics was used in Egypt, and the golden ratio was used in the construction of the Pyramids.
Another ability of the Egyptians was glass making.
Archaeologists have found many pieces of beads, jars, figures and ornaments in tombs across the nation.
In 2005, the remains of an ancient glassmaking factory was found.
An abjad is an alphabet in which all its letters are consonants.
Even though vowels can be added in some abjads, they are not needed to write a word correctly.
Well-known examples of abjads are the Arabic alphabet and the Hebrew alphabet.
Abjads are the first writing systems that were made only to show a word 's pronunciation instead of its meaning, unlike ideographs or ideograms, and have been created before full alphabets that had letters for both consonants and vowels, like the Greek alphabet.
The earliest known abjad in the world is the Phoenician alphabet.
Since Afro-Asiatic languages have a feature where the root meaning of the word is found in the word 's string of consonants, abjads are widely-used for those languages.
There are even languages that do n't have consonant roots that use abjads, such as Persian and Urdu, which both use the Arabic alphabet.
An Abugida is a writing system which is between syllabic and alphabetic scripts.
In such systems, sequences of consonants and vowels are written as a unit: Each unit is based on the consonant letter.
Vowels need to be written down as well, but are secondary.
This is different from a truly alphabetic script, where vowels and consonants have the same status, and an abjad, where vowels are absent, or can be left out.
Examples, where Abugidas are used are Ethiopic, and some languages found on the Indian subcontinent.
Certain forms of Shorthand use diacritics for vowels.
ABBA was a Swedish pop music group, who had many hits in the 1970s in Stockholm and early 1980s.
ABBA was the most commercially successful pop group of the 1970s.
The name "ABBA" is made from the first letter of each member 's first name:
ABBA became very popular after they won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974.
They had many hits.
These included "Dancing Queen", "SOS", "Mamma Mia", and "Waterloo".
Most of their songs were written by Ulvaeus and Andersson.
They broke up in 1982, but their music is still popular.
It has appeared in movies (including the Australian movies The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel 's Wedding) and the musical Mamma Mia!.
All 4 ABBA members had local music careers before ABBA even formed.
Frida and Agnetha were both solo singers.
Benny and Bjorn both had their own individual bands.
In 1966, Benny and Bjorn both met and decided to write songs together.
In 1969, Bjorn met Agnetha and Benny met Frida.
All four friends met together and decided to work together to record songs.
By 1970, they were known as "Bjorn & Benny (With Svenska Flicka)".
Later they were called Bjorn & Benny, Agnetha & Frida.
Their first hit was a song called "Hej, gamle man".
By 1971, Bjorn and Agnetha were married and Benny and Frida were engaged.
"Ring Ring" in 1973 was when the group achieved success throughout much of Europe and Africa.
It was n't until 1973 that the group became officially known as ABBA.
The name was suggested by their manager, Stig Anderson.
In 1974, ABBA was given a chance to perform in the Eurovision Song Contest.
With "Waterloo", they won and soon got global success.
In 1976, ABBA released Dancing Queen, which is often known as ABBA 's "signature song" and "one of the greatest pop songs ever written".
During 1977, their huge popularity became known as "Abbamania".
In Australia, ABBA played in huge concerts that usually always sold out.
"ABBA: The Movie" was also released in 1977 during the height of the group 's popularity.
Throughout the mid and late 1970 's ABBA performed in Europe, The United States, Japan and Australia.
In early 1979, Agnetha and Bjorn divorced.
In early 1981, Frida and Benny also got divorced.
This led to many sadder and more mature songs over the next few years.
By 1981, ABBA 's popularity was declining.
Their last album, "The Visitors" a not a big success like previous albums.
The Day Before You Came was the last song ABBA ever recorded together, while Under Attack was the last song ever released, both in 1982.
ABBA broke up shortly before 1983 and all members continued on their independent music careers, just like before they had met.
ABBA recorded eight albums between 1973 and 1981, as well as some compilation albums.
Anna Sergeevna Kournikova (born June 7, 1981, in Moscow, Russia, then USSR) (Russian:) is a Russian model and retired professional tennis player.
She won two Grand Slam doubles tournaments, both with Swiss player Martina Hingis.
In 1999, the Women 's Tennis Association (WTA) said she was the best doubles player in the world.
She also played tennis for Russia in an international competition called the Fed Cup.
Kournikova played in her last Grand Slam tournament in 2009.
Since then, she modeled clothes and played in exhibition tennis matches.
Although she was born in Russia, she lives in Miami, Florida, in the United States.
She appeared in several advertisements mainly about tennis.
As of July 2008, her boyfriend is Spanish singer Enrique Iglesias.
Kournikova was born in Moscow, Russia, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1981.
Her mother is called Alla, and her father is called Ser She first picked up a tennis racket when she was five years old and joined the Spartak Tennis Club.
She improved very much and when she was 10 years old she moved to Florida to train at an academy.
In 2000, it was reported that she was going to marry Russian NHL player Pavel Bure.
Another Russian ice hockey player, Sergei Fedorov, who played for the Detroit Red Wings said he married Kournikova in 2001, but they divorced later that year.
In 2002, she was in a music video with Enrique Iglesias for his song Escape.
She was Iglesias 's girlfriend after this video, but she later said she did not want to get married.
Iglesias said Kournikova kept saying no when he would ask her to marry him.
He said "I always try, but she does n't want to."
Kournikova has said that she is not interested in getting married: "I 'm never getting married.
Everything is good."
In 2002, she was the second most popular athlete searched for on Google, and was voted the "Sexiest Woman In The World" by FHM readers.
However, some experts working for ESPN voted her the 18th biggest sports failure from 1979 to 2004.
It is estimated Kournikova earned about 50 million in her career as of 2007, but most of this did not come from tennis.
She said "You can not just be a great tennis player or just be a beautiful person to succeed in the game any more.
You have to have it all: the talent, the looks, the brains and the drive."
Kournikova holds her racket in her right hand but uses both hands when she play backhand shots.
She is a good player at the net.
She has several different types of shots, some of which are her hard shots from the back of the court and drop shots which land just over the net.
Kournikova became a professional tennis player in October of 1995 when she was 14 years old.
In 1996, the WTA gave her a prize for being the best new player in the world.
She won the first of her 16 WTA tour doubles titles in September of 1998 in Tokyo, in Japan.
Her partner for the victory was American player Monica Seles.
After this, Kournikova would often play her doubles matches with Swiss player Martina Hingis.
She finished the year in the top 20 women tennis players in the world.
In 1999, the pair won five doubles tournaments, one of which was the Australian Open, and they came second in the French Open.
That year, the WTA gave them an award for being the best doubles pair in the world.
Kournikova won six doubles tournaments in 2000, four of them with Hingis.
In 2001, Kournikova suffered an injury to her foot which meant she was unable to play in many tournaments that year.
She got better and won the doubles tournament at the Australian Open in 2002, again with Hingis.
Other injuries like a bad back meant that in 2003, Kournikova played very few tournaments and said "I do not want to go on playing unless I can participate 100 %".
Kournikova also played tennis for Russia in the Fed Cup.
She played both singles and doubles and won 12 out of 19 matches between 1996 and 2000.
The following table shows how far Kournikova progressed in each of the Grand Slam singles tournaments she has played in.
Kournikova won two doubles tournaments.
She won the 1999 Australian Open with Swiss player Martina Hingis when they defeated Lindsay Davenport and Natasha Zvereva.
Kournikova and Hingis won the 2002 Australian Open, when they defeated Daniela Hantuchov and Arantxa S nchez Vicario.
They were also runners-up in the 1999 French Open where they lost to the American pair Venus and Serena Williams.
At the end of 1999, Kournikova was the best doubles player in the world.
Kournikova has also played mixed doubles.
She was runner-up with Swede Jonas Bj rkman in 1999 at the Wimbledon Championships.
She also finished runner-up with Max Mirnyi from Belarus in the 2000 US Open.
The following table is a summary of the Women 's Tennis Association and Grand Slam tournaments won by Kournikova.
Kournikova began to be a model while she was still playing tennis.
When she lost in the first round at Wimbledon in 2002, she had an interview with a reporter from the BBC.
The reporter suggested that her modeling was making her concentrate less on tennis.
This upset her and she nearly walked out of the interview.
She said she was "100 % committed to tennis".
Kournikova sponsored a video game called "Anna Kournikova 's Smash Court Tennis" for the Sony PlayStation in 1999.
She was also sponsored by sportswear manufacturer Adidas and sports bra manufacturer Berlei.
She made more than ten times as much money from her sponsors than from playing tennis that year.
She made a 7 million agreement to be in an advertising campaign for the internet company Lycos.
In 2002, Adidas said they were worried she was not concentrating on tennis enough.
As of July 2008, she is sponsored by sportswear manufacturer K-Swiss.
Alfons Maria Jakob (2 July 1884, Aschaffenburg\/Bavaria 17 October 1931, Hamburg) was a German neurologist who worked in the field of neuropathology.
He was one of the scientists who discovered Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Agnosticism is the philosophical view that it is unknown (or even, unknowable) whether any deities (god or gods) exist or not.
Some people who call themselves "agnostic" say that it is not possible for anyone ever to know if there are any deities or not.
Other agnostics, though, say only that they themselves currently do not know if there are any deities.
People often have difficulty telling agnosticism and atheism apart.
Atheists do not believe in the existence of deities, and some say that they are sure that no deity exists.
Some (perhaps most) atheists, though, say that it is up to theists (people who believe in a deity) to give the evidence for a god or to show why someone should believe in a god.
They state that there is neither enough evidence nor a strong enough argument to believe any gods exist, and so they reject belief that any exist.
While agnostics think we can not know for sure whether any deities exist, some agnostics do believe at least one deity exists.
These people are both agnostic and theistic they believe at least one deity exists, but do not claim to know that to be true.
Some people are both atheist and agnostic they reject belief in any deities without claiming to know that deities do not exist.
Some agnostics just can not themselves decide whether to believe any deities exist or not.
Argon is a chemical element.
The symbol for argon is Ar, and its atomic number (or proton number) is 18.
It is a noble gas and no electrons or protons can be lost or gained from this atom.
Argon atoms are found in air.
About 1 % of the Earth 's atmosphere (the air around us) is argon.
Arsenic is chemical element 33 on the periodic table.
Its symbol is As.
Its atomic number is 33 and its atomic mass is 74.02.
It is in the pnictogen group on the periodic table.
Arsenic is found in three allotropes.
Gray arsenic is the most common.
It is a brittle, somewhat soft metalloid that is a little shiny.
It has a density of 5.73 g\/cm3.
It is a semiconductor.
Yellow arsenic is unstable and rare.
It is the most toxic allotrope.
It is a soft and waxy nonmetal, similar to white phosphorus.
It turns into gray arsenic in light.
Its density is 1.97 g\/cm3, much lighter than gray arsenic.
It is created when arsenic vapor (made by heating arsenic very hot) is cooled very fast by something like liquid nitrogen.
Black arsenic is similar to red phosphorus.
It is a brittle, black, and shiny nonmetal.
It does not conduct electricity.
Since gray arsenic is the most common, it is usually referred to as arsenic.
Arsenic is found as one stable (nonradioactive) isotope, 75As.
There are about 33 radioactive isotopes found.
The longest lasting one is 73As, which has a half life of about 80 days.
Arsenic is a moderately unreactive element, similar to copper in reactivity.
It burns in air to make garlic-smelling arsenic trioxide.
Arsenic, as well as some of its compounds, do not have a liquid state; they sublime.
Arsenic reacts with fluorine to make arsenic pentafluoride.
It reacts with the rest of the halogens to make the arsenic trihalides.
Arsenic does not dissolve in hydrochloric acid.
It dissolves in concentrated nitric acid to make arsenic acid and in dilute nitric acid to make arsenious acid.
It reacts with concentrated sulfuric acid to make arsenic trioxide.
Arsenic burns with a pale lavender flame.
Arsenic forms chemical compounds in three oxidation states: -3, +3, and +5.
-3 compounds are reducing agents.
They are the main form of arsenic in the ground (as arsenides).
Arsine is a colorless, highly toxic gas with a garlic odor.
The +3 state is the most common.
They are weak oxidizing agents.
Arsenic trioxide is a white solid.
It dissolves in water to make a solution of arsenious acid.
The arsenic trichlorides are low melting covalent solids.
The +5 state is common, too.
They are strong oxidizing agents.
Arsenic pentafluoride, a colorless and highly reactive gas, is the only stable arsenic pentahalide.
Arsenic pentoxide dissolves in water to make arsenic acid, which can make arsenate salts.
; +3 compounds +3 compounds are weak oxidizing agents.
Many are colorless, although some are orange.
; Arsenites Arsenites are salts of arsenious acid.
; +5 compounds +5 compounds are strong oxidizing agents.
; Arsenates Arsenates are salts of arsenic acid.
Arsenic is found sometimes as an element in the ground, but is normally found in minerals.
Some arsenic minerals have a metal and sulfur along with arsenic.
Arsenopyrite is iron arsenic sulfide.
It is the same as pyrite with arsenic added.
Other arsenic minerals have a metal and arsenic.
Erythrite, a cobalt arsenide mineral, is an example.
Other arsenic minerals are simple.
Realgar and orpiment (arsenic sulfides), simple arsenic minerals, are ores of arsenic.
Arsenic is found as a less toxic variety in fish and mushrooms.
Some people think that humans need very small amounts of arsenic to be healthy.
Some bacteria can use arsenic instead of phosphorus for some things; they are called arsenic bacteria.
Most arsenic is made from the waste products after other metals are processed.
Only China actually mines arsenic.
Arsenic is made from arsenopyrite by heating it.
This makes arsenic trioxide which sublimes (along with sulfur dioxide), while the iron oxide stays behind.
The arsenic trioxide is condensed, while the sulfur dioxide does not condense.
The arsenic trioxide can be reduced with carbon.
Another way is to heat the arsenopyrite without air.
Then gray arsenic is made.
Realgar can be heated to make arsenic trioxide as well.
Arsenic was known since antiquity.
It was alloyed with bronze to make the bronze harder.
Some people used arsenic as make-up, although it was toxic.
Arsenic was well known as a poison.
Since people used it to kill royalty and it was hard to detect, it was called the "Poison of Kings" and the "King of Poisons".
An arsenic compound could have been the first organometallic compound (a metal bonded to an organic compound).
Arsenic compounds were used as a preservative for wood.
Once people saw how toxic arsenic was, they stopped using it to preserve wood.
Some feed for animals had arsenic in it to prevent disease.
Lead arsenate was used as an insecticide in orchards but damaged the brains of those who put the insecticide on the trees.
Arsenic was used in medicines in the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s.
Arsenic trioxide was used to treat cancer.
Very tiny doses of arsenic compounds can act as stimulants.
Some arsenic compounds are used as poison gases.
Arsenic as an element is used in alloys.
The lead in lead acid batteries has some arsenic in it to make it stronger.
Some semiconductors have arsenic in them.
Copper arsenate was used as a coloring for sweets.
Paris green, a green pigment having arsenic in it, made many people sick.
Some bullets have arsenic in them.
Arsenic is sometimes added to brass to prevent the zinc from coming out.
Arsenic was used in optical glass but was taken out because it was toxic.
Arsenic and its compounds are highly toxic.
They are carcinogens.
Water near arsenic mines is normally contaminated with arsenic.
Wood that was preserved with arsenic compounds can leach arsenic into the soil.
Emissions from coke ovens have arsenic in them.
Antimony is a chemical element.
It has the chemical symbol Sb.
The symbol Sb is from the Latin name of ` stibium ' for the element.
It has the atomic number 51.
Its atomic mass is 121.8.
It is a blue-gray element that is somewhat toxic.
Antimony has four allotropes.
The common allotrope of antimony is a blue-white metalloid.
It looks black when powdered.
It is brittle, soft, and shiny.
Yellow and black antimony are unstable nonmetals.
Yellow antimony is only found at very cold temperatures.
It is made by oxidation of stibine.
It turns into black antimony when light is shined on it or when it is warmer.
Black antimony is normally made by heating metallic antimony until it boils and then cooling the vapors very quickly.
It can ignite spontaneously (without any ignition source like a spark or a flame).
It also corrodes easily.
There is another explosive form of antimony that is made by electrolysis of antimony trichloride.
This antimony explodes when changing into the metallic form.
There is no chemical reaction; the atoms in the antimony crystal are rearranging themselves.
When antimony is talked about it normally means the blue-white metalloid form, since it is most common.
Antimony is found as two stable (not radioactive) isotopes naturally.
Sb - 123 and Sb-121
Antimony is a rather unreactive element.
It does not dissolve in acids easily.
It can dissolve in oxidizing acids like nitric or sulfuric acid.
It does not corrode easily in air, although the black allotrope can corrode.
Antimony burns in air to make antimony trioxide.
In excess air, it burns to antimony tetroxide.
Antimony forms chemical compounds in three oxidation states: -3, +3, and +5.
-3 compounds are called antimonides.
They are made by reacting antimony with other metals.
They react with acids to make the toxic and unstable gas stibine.
+3 compounds are the most common.
They are weak oxidizing agents.
They are somewhat covalent, having low melting points.
Antimony trichloride is a colorless and soft solid that has a strong odor.
Antimony trioxide is a white solid that dissolves a little in water.
The other antimony (III) halides all react with water except for antimony trifluoride.
+5 compounds are strong oxidizing agents.
Antimony pentafluoride is highly reactive, as well as antimony pentoxide.
; +3 compounds +3 compounds are weak oxidizing agents.
They are covalent.
Most of them are colorless or light yellow solids.
They are the most common antimony compounds.
; Mixed oxidation state Antimony tetroxide has antimony in both its +3 and +5 oxidation state.
; +5 compounds +5 compounds are strong oxidizing agents.
They are rare.
Antimony sulfide was known for a long time.
Some things plated with antimony and made out of antimony were found in Egypt and Chaldea.
The first time antimony was mentioned in Europe was in the 1540.
The first native antimony was found in Sweden in 1783.
Antimony sulfide and antimony were confused sometimes in antiquity.
There is a question over what "stibium", the original name of antimony, meant.
Antimony is not common.
It is found about as often as thallium.
It is quite easy to get, though and is in many minerals.
Antimony is sometimes found as an element, but normally it is found as stibnite, an antimony sulfide mineral.
Stibnite is the main ore of antimony.
China is the biggest maker of antimony; it makes 84 % of all antimony.
Other countries that make antimony are South Africa, Bolivia, and Tajikistan.
Antimony is not used in the human body.
Antimony is made from stibnite by heating it with air.
This makes antimony trioxide.
Since it gets so hot, the antimony trioxide is evaporated.
Other metal oxides in the stibnite ore do not evaporate.
The antimony trioxide gas is condensed in a container.
The antimony trioxide is then heated with carbon to make carbon dioxide and antimony.
Another way to make antimony is to heat stibnite with scrap iron.
This makes iron (II) sulfide and antimony.
The antimony is separated and used.
About half of all antimony is used to make antimony trioxide for flame proofing.
It makes an alloy with lead.
This alloy, 5 % antimony and 95 % lead, is harder than pure lead.
It is used in lead acid batteries, as well as some other things.
It is used as an alloy with lead in the pipes of pipe organs.
Pewter has antimony in it.
Some lead-free solder has antimony in it.
It is used as an alloy with lead in ammunition for small arms and in covering of cables as well.
It is also used in some alloys that have very little friction like Babbitt metal.
Another use is in a catalyst for making some plastics.
Antimony (III) oxide is added to some glass to remove bubbles for things like television screens.
Antimony is used as a dopant in electronics.
Some antimony compounds were used as medicines to kill protozoans.
The antimony pill was a chunk of antimony that was supposed to heal diseases.
It is used in medicines for pets.
Antimony sulfide is used in matches.
Antimony is toxic.
Its toxicity is similar to arsenic, although it is less toxic than arsenic.
Breathing in antimony dust can be very dangerous.
Antimony reacts with strong oxidizing agents.
Small amounts of antimony come out of plastic bottles where antimony was used as a catalyst.
Some people were concerned that too much antimony was coming out.
Actinium is chemical element 89 on the periodic table.
Its symbol is Ac.
Actinium 's mass is 227 g\/mol.
Actinium is a silver radioactive, solid metal.
It is so radioactive that it glows in the dark.
Even a small amount of actinium is dangerous to people.
Actinium was discovered in 1899 by Andr - Louis Debierne, a French chemist.
In 1899, Debierne described the substance as similar to titanium and (in 1900) as similar to thorium.
Americium is a chemical element.
It is a radioactive metal.
It has the chemical symbol Am.
It has the atomic number 95.
In chemistry it is placed in a group of metal elements named the actinides.
Americium is a transuranic element (transuranic means after uranium.
All the elements used after uranium are man made).
It is a radioactive element that does not exist in nature.
Americium has to be made.
It has a silver color.
Americium is made by bombarding a plutonium target with neutrons.
It was the fourth transuranic element to be discovered.
It was named for America, like Francium was named for France.
The longest half life of any type of americium is 7370 years.
Americium is used in most smoke detectors.
The level of radioactivity is not enough to cause cancer, so it is safe to for the people in an area where smoke detectors with americium are in use.
Astatine is a chemical element.
Its atomic number (which is the number of protons in it) is 85, and its atomic weight (which is approximately the number of protons plus the number of neutrons in it) is 210.
It is part of the Group 7 (halogens) on the periodic table of elements.
Some of its isotopes may be in nature.
But because it is extremely unstable (roughly speaking, the atoms fall apart), only about an ounce exists in the Earth 's crust at one point in time.
It is radioactive.
The longest-living isotope 210At has a half-life of a bit over eight hours.
An atom is the basic unit that makes up all matter.
There are many different types of atoms, each with its own name, mass and size.
These different types of atoms are called chemical elements.
The chemical elements are organized on the periodic table.
Examples of elements are hydrogen and gold.
Atoms are very small, but the exact size changes depending on the element.
Atoms range from 0.1 to 0.5 nanometers in width.
One nanometer is around 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
This makes atoms impossible to see without special tools.
Equations must be used to see the way they work and how they interact with other atoms.
Atoms come together to make molecules or particles: for example, two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom combine to make a water molecule, a form of a chemical reaction.
Atoms themselves are made up of three kinds of smaller particles, called protons (which are positively charged), neutrons (which have no charge) and electrons (which are negatively charged).
The protons and neutrons are in the middle of the atom.
They are called the nucleus.
They are surrounded by a cloud of electrons which are attracted to the nucleus ' positive charge.
This attraction is called electromagnetic force.
Protons and neutrons are made up of even smaller particles called quarks.
Electrons are elementary or fundamental particles; they can not be split into smaller parts.
The number of protons, neutrons and electrons an atom has determines what element it is.
Hydrogen, for example, has one proton, no neutrons and one electron; the element sulfur has 16 protons, 16 neutrons and 16 electrons.
Atoms move faster when in gas form (as they are free to move) than liquid and solid matter.
In solid materials, the atoms are tightly next to each other so they vibrate, but are not able to move (there is no room) as atoms in liquids do.
The word "atom" comes from the Greek (-RRB-, indivisible, from (-RRB- -, not, and, a cut.
The first historical mention of the word atom came from works by the Greek philosopher Democritus, around 400 BC.
Atomic theory stayed as a mostly philosophical subject, with not much actual scientific investigation or study, until the development of chemistry in the 1650s.
In 1777 French chemist Antoine Lavoisier defined the term element for the first time.
He said that an element was any basic substance that could not be broken down into other substances by the methods of chemistry.
Any substance that could be broken down was a compound.
In 1803, English philosopher John Dalton suggested that elements were tiny, solid spheres made of atoms.
Dalton believed that all atoms of the same element have the same mass..
He said that compounds are formed when atoms of more than one element combine.
According to Dalton, in a compound, atoms of different elements always combine the same way.
In 1827, British scientist Robert Brown looked at pollen grains in water and used Dalton 's atomic theory to describe patterns in the way they moved.
This was called brownian motion.
In 1905 Albert Einstein used mathematics to prove that the seemingly random movements were down to the reactions of atoms, and by doing so he conclusively proved the existence of the atom.
In 1869 scientist Dmitri Mendeleev published the first version of the periodic table.
The periodic table groups atoms by their atomic number (how many protons they have.
This is usually the same as the number of electrons).
Elements in the same column, or period, usually have similar properties.
For example helium, neon, argon, krypton and xenon are all in the same column and have very similar properties.
All these elements are gases that have no color and no smell.
Together they are known as the noble gases.
The physicist J.J. Thomson was the first person to discover electrons.
This happened while he was working with cathode rays in 1897.
He realized they had a negative charge, unlike protons (positive) and neutrons (no charge).
Thomson created the plum pudding model, which stated that an atom was like plum pudding: the dried fruit (electrons) were stuck in a mass of pudding (protons).
In 1909, a scientist named Ernest Rutherford used the Geiger Marsden experiment to prove that most of an atom is in a very small space called the atomic nucleus.
Rutherford took a photo plate and surrounded it with gold foil, and then shot alpha particles at it.
Many of the particles went through the gold foil, which proved that atoms are mostly empty space.
Electrons are so small they make up only 1 % of an atom 's mass.
In 1913, Niels Bohr introduced the Bohr model.
This model showed that electrons orbit the nucleus in fixed circular orbits.
This was more accurate than the Rutherford model.
However, it was still not completely right.
Improvements to the Bohr model have been made since it was first introduced.
In 1925, chemist Frederick Soddy found that some elements in the periodic table had more than one kind of atom.
For example any atom with 2 protons should be a helium atom.
Usually, a helium nucleus also contains two neutrons.
However, some helium atoms have only one neutron.
This means they are still helium, as the element is defined by the number of protons, but they are not normal helium either.
Soddy called an atom like this, with a different number of neutrons, an isotope.
To get the name of the isotope we look at how many protons and neutrons it has in its nucleus and add this to the name of the element.
So a helium atom with two protons and one neutron is called helium-3, and a carbon atom with six protons and six neutrons is called carbon-12.
However, when he developed his theory Soddy could not be certain neutrons actually existed.
To prove they were real, physicist James Chadwick and a team of others created the mass spectrometer.
The mass spectrometer actually measures the mass and weight of individual atoms.
By doing this Chadwick proved that to account for all the weight of the atom, neutrons must exist.
In 1937, German chemist Otto Hahn became the first person to create nuclear fission in a laboratory.
He discovered this by chance when he was shooting neutrons at a uranium atom, hoping to create a new isotope.
However, he noticed that instead of a new isotope the uranium simply changed into a barium atom.
This was the world 's first recorded nuclear fission reaction.
This discovery eventually led to the creation of the atomic bomb.
Further into the 20th century physicists went deeper into the mysteries of the atom.
Using particle accelerators they discovered that protons and neutrons were actually made of other particles, called quarks.
The most accurate model so far comes from the Schr dinger equation.
Schr dinger realized that the electrons exist in a cloud around the nucleus, called the electron cloud.
In the electron cloud, it is impossible to know exactly where electrons are.
The Schr dinger equation is used to find out where an electron is likely to be.
This area is called the electron 's orbital.
The complex atom is made up of three main particles; the proton, the neutron and the electron.
The isotope of Hydrogen Hydrogen-1 has no neutrons, and a positive hydrogen ion has no electrons.
These are the only known exceptions, all other atoms have at least one proton, neutron and electron each.
Electrons are by far the smallest of the three, their mass and size is too small to be measured using current technology.
They have a negative charge.
Protons and neutrons are of similar size to each other, protons are positively charged and neutrons have no charge.
Most atoms have a neutral charge; because the number of protons (positive) and electrons (negative) are the same, the charges balance out to zero.
However in ions (different number of electrons) this is not always the case and they can have a positive or a negative charge.
Protons and neutrons are made out of quarks, of two types; up quarks and down quarks.
A proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark and a neutron is made of two down quarks and one up quark.
The nucleus is in the middle of an atom.
It is made up of protons and neutrons.
Usually in nature, two things with the same charge repel or shoot away from each other.
So for a long time it was a mystery to scientists how the positively charged protons in the nucleus stayed together.
They solved this by finding a particle called a gluon.
Its name comes from the word glue as gluons act like atomic glue, sticking the protons together using the strong nuclear force.
It is this force which also holds the quarks together that make up the protons and neutrons.
The number of neutrons in relation to protons defines whether the nucleus is stable or goes through radioactive decay.
When there are too many neutrons or protons, the atom tries to make the numbers the same by getting rid of the extra particles.
It does this by emitting radiation in the form of alpha, beta or gamma decay.
Nuclei can change through other means too.
Nuclear fission is when the nucleus splits into two smaller nuclei, releasing a lot of stored energy.
This release energy is what makes nuclear fission useful for making bombs and electricity, in the form of nuclear power.
The other way nuclei can change is through nuclear fusion, when two nuclei join together, or fuse, to make a heavier nucleus.
This process requires extreme amounts of energy in order to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between the protons, as they have the same charge.
Such high energies are most common in stars like our Sun, which fuses hydrogen for fuel.
Electrons orbit or go around the nucleus.
They are called the atom 's electron cloud.
They are attracted towards the nucleus because of the electromagnetic force.
Electrons have a negative charge and the nucleus always has a positive charge, so they attract each other.
Around the nucleus some electrons are further out than others.
These are called electron shells.
In most atoms the first shell has two electrons, and all after that have eight.
Exceptions are rare, but they do happen and are difficult to predict.
The further away the electron is from the nucleus, the weaker the pull of the nucleus on it.
This is why bigger atoms, with more electrons, react more easily with other atoms.
The electromagnetism of the nucleus is not enough to hold onto their electrons and they lose them to the strong attraction of smaller atoms.
Some elements, and many isotopes, have what is named an unstable nucleus.
This means the nucleus is either too big to hold itself together or has too many protons, electrons or neutrons.
When this happens the nucleus has to get rid of the excess mass or particles.
It does this through radiation.
An atom that does this can be called radioactive.
Unstable atoms continue to be radioactive until they lose enough mass\/particles that they become stable.
All atoms above atomic number 82 (82 protons) are radioactive.
There are three main types of radioactive decay; alpha, beta and gamma.
Every radioactive element or isotope has what is named a half-life.
This is how long it takes half of any sample of atoms of that type to decay until they become a different stable isotope or element.
Large atoms, or isotopes with a big difference between the number of protons and neutrons will therefore have a long half life.
Ernest Rutherford was the first to discover two of the three types of ionising radiation, alpha and beta particles, being emitted from the natural isotope radium.
When he put radium in a light bulb to watch it decay, suddenly helium (which consists of 2 protons and 2 neurons) appeared inside the glass bulb.
Marie Curie discovered the first form of radiation.
She found the element and named it radium.
She was also the first female recipient of the Nobel Prize.
Frederick Soddy conducted an experiment to observe what happens as radium decays.
He placed a sample in a light bulb and waited for it to decay.
Suddenly helium (containing 2 protons and 2 neutrons) appeared in the bulb, and from this experiment he discovered this type of radiation has a positive charge.
James Chadwick discovered the neutron, by observing decay products of different types of radioactive isotopes.
Chadwick noticed that the atomic number of the elements was lower than the total atomic mass of the atom.
He concluded that electrons would not of had contributed to the atomic mass because they barely have mass.
Enrico Fermi, used the neutrons to shoot them at uranium.
He discovered that uranium decayed a lot faster than usual and produced a lot of alpha and beta particles.
He also believed that uranium transmutated into a new element he named hesperium.
Otto Hanh and Fritz Strassmann repeated Fermi 's experiment to see if the new element hesperium was actually created.
They discovered two new things Fermi did not observe.
By using a lot of neutrons the nucleus of the atom would split the nucleus producing a lot of heat energy.
Also the fission products of uranium were already discovered: thorium, palladium, radium, radon and lead.
Fermi then noticed that the fission of one uranium atom let off more neutrons which then split other atoms creating chain reactions.
He realized that this process is called nuclear fission and could create crazy amounts of heat energy.
That very discovery of Fermi 's lead to the development of the first nuclear bomb code-named ` Trinity '.
Nuclear energy is harnessed to create electricity and soon becomes the most popular way to generate energy.
Aluminium (American spelling: aluminum) is a chemical element.
The symbol for aluminium is Al, and its atomic number is 13.
Aluminium is the most abundant metal.
Aluminium is a very good conductor of electricity and heat.
It is light and strong.
It can be hammered into sheets (malleable) or pulled out into wires (ductile).
It is a highly reactive metal, although it is corrosion resistant.
Aluminium prevents reducing by forming a small, thin layer of aluminium oxide on its surface.
This layer protects the metal by preventing oxygen from reaching it.
Corrosion can not occur without oxygen.
Because of this thin layer, the reactivity of aluminium is not seen.
Pure aluminium is made from bauxite, a kind of rock that has aluminium oxide and many impurities.
The bauxite is crushed and reacted with sodium hydroxide.
The aluminium oxide dissolves.
Then the aluminium oxide is dissolved in liquid cryolite, a rare mineral.
Cryolite is normally produced artificially though.
The aluminium oxide is electrolyzed to make aluminium and oxygen.
Aluminium was once considered a precious metal that was even more valuable than gold.
This is no longer true because, as technology improved, it became cheaper and easier to make pure metal.
Aluminium forms chemical compounds in the +3 oxidation state.
They are generally unreactive.
Aluminium chloride and aluminium oxide examples.
Very rarely are compounds in the +1 or +2 oxidation state.
Aluminium has many uses.
Much of it is used in overhead power cables.
It is also widely used in window frames and aircraft bodies.
It is found at home as saucepans, soft drink cans, and cooking foil.
Aluminium is also used to coat car headlamps and compact discs.
Pure aluminium is very soft, so a harder metal is almost always added.
The harder metal is usually copper.
Copper\/aluminium alloys are to make ships, because the aluminium prevents corrosion, and the copper prevents barnacles.
Aluminium compounds are used in deodorants, water processing plants, food additives, and antacids.
Since aluminium needs to be made by electrolysis, it requires a very large amount of electrical power.
Recycling aluminium would be much cheaper.
That 's why recycling plants were opened.
The cost of recycling aluminium is much less than the cost of making it from bauxite.
Aluminium is not used in the human body, although it is very common.
People debate whether its use in deodorants and water treatment is healthy.
Aluminium ions slow down plant growth in acidic soils.
Aluminium may be a factor in Alzheimer 's disease (a disease when the brain stops working and the patient is confused).
But the Alzheimer 's Society says overwhelming medical and scientific opinion is that studies have not convincingly demonstrated a causal relationship between aluminium and Alzheimer 's disease.
The Anglican Communion is an association of all Anglican churches in full communion with the Church of England.
There is no single "Anglican Church" with universal authority, because each national or regional church has full autonomy.
With over seventy seven million members, the Anglican Communion is the third largest communion in the world, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
The status of full communion means that all rites conducted in one church are recognized by the other.
Some of these churches are known as Anglican, explicitly recognizing the link to England (Ecclesia Anglicana means "Church of England").
The Archbishop of Canterbury, religious head of the Church of England, has no formal authority outside that jurisdiction, but is recognized as symbolic head of the worldwide communion.
All thirty-eight provinces of the Anglican Communion are independent, each with its own primate and governing structure.
These provinces may take the form of national churches (such as in Canada, Uganda, or Japan) or a collection of nations (such as the West Indies, Central Africa, or Southeast Asia).
They are, in alphabetical order:
In addition, there are six extraprovincial churches, five of which are under the metropolitical authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
An archipelago is a chain or group of islands.
The word archipelago means "chief sea", from Greek arkhon (arkhi -) ("leader") and pelagos ("sea").
Archipelagos are usually found in the open sea; less commonly, a big land mass may neighbor them, an example being Scotland which has more than 700 islands surrounding the mainland.
Archipelagoes are often volcanic, forming along mid-ocean ridges or hotspots, but there are many other processes involved in their construction, including erosion, deposition, and land elevation.
The four biggest countries that are mainly archipelagos are Japan, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and Indonesia (the world 's biggest archipelagic country according to the CIA World Factbook).
The biggest archipelago in the world by size is in Northern Canada, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, which is in the Arctic Ocean.
An author is a person who writes a book, story, poem, or other written work.
Their writing can be truth or fiction, short or long.
Often, author is a word for a person whose job is to write.
(A person whose job is writing is also called a writer.)
Sometimes, a person who creates something but is not a writer is called an author.
Someone who writes music may be called the author of that piece of music, though we would usually call that person a composer.
In the film world, the French word for author, auteur, is often used about someone who has been both the writer and director of a movie.
In biology, the first person to write an article that gives a name to and describes a type of living thing is the author of that name.
Anxiety is an unpleasant emotional state.
It can include fear.
Very often, people with anxiety also feel worries.
There can also be physical symptoms, like having a headache or an upset stomach.
Some people suffer a lot of anxiety over a long period of time which controls them and makes their lives difficult.
These conditions are called anxiety disorders and can be treated by therapy and medicine.
General anxiety is a disorder in which the victim is constantly worried or fearful about situations or things that normally wouldn t bother them or others.
When this continual anxious state starts to interfere with their social, family and work life, and prevents them functioning in a normal fashion, they may be said to have a General Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
General anxiety symptoms are things such as; continual tiredness \/ exhaustion, inability to relax, lack of confidence, low self-esteem, fear of public places, fear of socializing, frequent feelings of irrational anxiety \/ fear, compulsive behavior, worrying about making mistakes, regular nightmares, disturbed sleep patterns, excessive crying, headaches, stomach problems, diarrhea, nausea, aching muscles, and so on.
Symptoms of anxiety attacks are things like; sweating, shaking and tremors, palpitations, shortness of breath, hyperventilating, racing heart beat, tingling in hands and feet, feeling of impending doom, feeling you are having a heart attack.
There are more, but these are the usual ones.
These symptoms, more or less, define anxiety but they can also be signs of other problems, so your first port of call has to be your doctor or other health care professional.
They will be able to define what your problem is exactly, and propose the appropriate treatment.
Since the theme of this article is defining anxiety, we ll assume that your doctor has diagnosed you with anxiety
Your doctor s first line treatment is usually through drug-based medication; for example antidepressants, anti-anxiety tablets and beta-blockers.
These can be very effective, but they all have their side effects, some worse than others.
This can tend to put folks off continuing with them.
However, no matter how bad you feel, never, ever discontinue treatment unless advised by your doctor to do so.
There are other non-drug therapies which are becoming very popular such as; self-hypnosis, meditation, yoga, cognitive behavioral therapy, counseling, acupuncture, etc..
These are therapies to help you manage or cope with your anxiety and \/ or anxiety attacks.
But what about the underlying cause (s) of anxiety?
The two treatment types above focus on either reducing the symptoms of anxiety, or, helping you cope with your disorder.
They don t seem to do anything about the underlying condition (s) that are causing your anxiety.
And the very fear of another anxiety attack can bring one on.
As long as this irrational fear exists it s very difficult to stop attacks and resolve your general anxiety.
If you can eliminate this fear, you can prevent further attacks and get rid of your general anxiety much more effectively.
An axiom is a concept in logic.
It is a statement which is accepted without question, and which has no proof.
The axiom is be used as the premise or starting point for further reasoning or arguments, usually in logic or in mathematics.
This means it can not be proved within the discussion of a problem.
So inside some discussion, it is thought to be true.
There are many reasons why it has no proof.
For example,
Logic can be used to find theorems from the axioms.
Then those theorems can be used to make more theorems.
This is often how math works.
Axioms are important because logical arguments start with them.
Euclid of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician.
Around the year 300 BC, he made a list of axioms:
Alpha, a letter in the Greek alphabet.
may be used as the symbol for:
Antigua and Barbuda is an island nation in the eastern Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the Atlantic Ocean.
Antigua and Barbuda are part of the Lesser Antilles archipelago.
In 2011, about 81,800 people lived there.
The capital and largest port and city is St. John 's, on Antigua.
The country used to be a part of the British Empire.
The nation still belongs to the British Commonwealth.
Note: Though Barbuda and Redonda are called dependencies, they are important parts of the state.
Dependency is simply a title.
Below is a list of the ten largest cities.
For other cities see List of cities in Antigua and Barbuda.
Below is a list of the islands of the country.
Tourism is the main part of the economy.
It is more than half of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Antigua is famous for its many luxury resorts.
Investment banking and financial services are also important.
The Royal Antigua and Barbuda Defense Force has 285 members.
English is the official language, but many of the locals speak Antiguan Creole.
The Barbudan accent is slightly different from the Antiguan.
Azincourt is a commune.
It is found in the region Nord-Pas-de-Calais in the Pas-de-Calais department in the north of France.
Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (19 March 1905 in Mannheim, Germany 1 September 1981 in London, England) was a leading German architect in the Third Reich.
Speer was born in Mannheim, Baden.
Adolf Hitler 's chief architect before he became the minister for munitions and armaments in 1942.
He was also a member of Hitler 's Cabinet.
Speer died of a stroke.
The family Asteraceae or Compositae (known as the aster, daisy, or sunflower family) is the largest family of flowering plants, in terms of number of species.
They are distinguished by having flower heads (capitula) which are made of hundreds or thousands of tiny individual flowers.
This is a pseudanthium ("false flower").
The Apiaceae or Umbelliferae is a family of usually aromatic plants with hollow stems, commonly known as umbellifers.
It includes cumin, parsley, carrot, coriander\/cilantro, dill, caraway, fennel, parsnip, celery, anise, Queen Anne 's Lace and other relatives.
It is a large family with about 300 genera and more than 3,000 species.
The family includes a number of food plants, and a number of poisonous plants.
Several poisonous plants go by the name of hemlock, and have rather similar paralysing effects.
The axon is the part of a neuron that sends the signal.
Axons are long, thin and tendril-like.
Axons are much like a highly developed dendrite.
The axon carries an electrical signal from the cell body (soma) to the synapse.
There the signal passes to other neurons or to muscle fibers.
An axon can be over a meter long in humans.
Or even longer in longer animals like elephants and whales.
The electrical signal of an axon is made by ions that flow in and out of the cell in a chain reaction producing an electric impulse called an action potential.
The speed at which the signal travels depends on how thick the axon is, and how much insulation it has.
Insulation is provided by specialized cells called myelin that wrap around the axon.
Together this insulation is called the myelin sheath.
The axon was discovered by Otto Deiters.
The Aramaic alphabet was originally adapted from the Phoenician alphabet about the 8th century BC.
It was first used to write the Aramaic language.
It was also used to write several other languages and alphabets including the Hebrew square script.
It was also developed into the Nabataean, Syriac and Mongolian writing systems, among others.
The modern Arabic language is also descended from the Aramaic alphabet.
The Aramaic alphabet contains 22 characters used mainly to indicate consonants.
However, some symbols can be used to indicate long vowels.
By comparison the later Hebrew and Arabic scripts use only consonants.
Hebrew uses 22; Arabic 28.
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, was an English writer who became the world 's first computer programmer.
She wrote the program for Charles Babbage 's mechanical computer, the analytical engine.
She wrote the first algorithm that was meant to be processed by a machine.
She was the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabella Milbanke.
She had no relationship with her father, who died when she was nine.
As a young adult she took an interest in mathematics, and in particular Babbage 's work on the analytical engine.
Between 1842 and 1843 she translated an article by Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea on the engine.
She added her own notes on the engine.
These notes contain what is considered the first computer program, that is, an algorithm encoded for processing by a machine.
Though Babbage 's engine was never built, Lovelace 's notes are important in the early history of computers.
She realized that computers would be able to do more than just calculating or number-crunching.
Others, including Babbage himself, worked only on the possibilities of calculating.
The Alps is the greatest mountain range of Europe.
It reaches from Austria and Slovenia in the east; through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany; to France in the west.
The original meaning of the word was ` white '.
The highest mountain in the Alps is Mont Blanc, at 4808 m, on the Italian French border.
The Alps stretch from Austria and Slovenia in the east, through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west.
The mountains are divided into the Western Alps and the Eastern Alps.
The division is along the line between Lake Constance and Lake Como, following the Rhine.
The Western Alps are higher, but their central chain is shorter and curved; they are located in Italy, France and Switzerland.
The highest peaks of the Western Alps are Mont Blanc, 4,808 metres (15,774 ft), Mont Blanc de Courmayeur 4,748 metres (15,577 ft), the Dufourspitze 4,634 metres (15,203 ft) and the other summits of the Monte Rosa group, and the Dom, 4,545 metres (14,911 ft).
The highest peak in the Eastern Alps is Piz Bernina, 4,049 metres (13,284 ft).
Perhaps the most famous location for tourist to the Alps are the Swiss Alps.
The main chain of the Alps follows the watershed from the Mediterranean Sea to the Wienerwald, defining the northern border of Italy.
It then passes over many of the highest and most famous peaks in the Alps.
From the Colle di Cadibona to Col de Tende it runs to the west before turning to the northwest and then, to the north, near the Colle della Maddalena.
Upon reaching the Swiss border, the line of the main chain goes about northeast, a heading it follows until its end near Vienna.
The Alps do not make an impassable block; they have been traveled by for war and commerce, and later by pilgrims, students and tourists.
Crossing places by road, train or foot are called passes.
These are depressions in the mountains into which a valley leads from the plains and hilly pre-mountainous places.
The Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme (UIAA) has defined a list of 82 "official" Alpine 4,000-meter (13,123 ft) peaks.
The list has many sub-peaks with little prominence, but good for mountaineering.
Here are the twelve four-thousanders with at least 1 km prominence.
Karl Blodig was the first person to climb all the main four-thousand meter peaks, round 1900.
The reason mountains form is usually the moving together of continental plates of the Earth 's crust.
The Alps rose as a result of the slow but gigantic pressure of the African plate as it moved north against the stable Eurasian landmass.
This all took place in the Tertiary period, mostly in the Miocene and Pliocene.
That 's about 35 to 5 million years ago.
The Alps are just a part of a larger orogenic belt of mountain chains, called the Alpide belt.
It reaches through southern Europe and Asia from the Atlantic Ocean most of the way to the Himalayas.
A gap in these mountain chains in central Europe separates the Alps from the Carpathians off to the east.
Subsidence is the cause of the gaps in between.
A great and ancient ocean was once between Africa and Europe, the Tethys Ocean.
Now sediments of the Tethys Ocean basin and its Mesozoic and early Cenozoic strata sit high above sea level.
Even metamorphic basement rocks are found high on Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and other high peaks in the Pennine Alps and Hohe Tauern.
The formation of the Mediterranean Sea is a more recent development.
The Alps are popular both in summer and in winter.
The Alps as a place for sightseeing and sports.
Winter sports (Alpine and Nordic skiing, snowboarding, tobogganing, snowshoeing, ski tours) can be learned in most regions from December to April.
In summer, the Alps are popular with hikers, mountain bikers, paragliders, and mountaineers.
There are also alpine lakes which attract swimmers, sailors and surfers.
The lower places and bigger towns of the Alps are well served by motorways and main roads, but higher passes and by-roads can be bad even in the summer.
Many passes are closed in winter.
Many airports around the Alps (and some within), as well as long-distance rail links from all bordering countries, afford large numbers of travelers easy access from abroad.
The Alps normally has more than 100 million visitors a year.
The Alps is split into five climate zones, each with a different kind of environment.
The climate, plant life and animal life vary on different sections or zones of the mountain.
The Alps is a classic example of what happens when a temperate area at lower altitude gives way to higher land.
A rise from sea level into the upper regions causes the temperature to decrease.
The effect of mountain chains on winds is to carry warm air belonging to the lower region into an upper zone, where it expands and loses heat, and drops snow or rain.
The typical trees oak, beech, ash and sycamore maple have a natural height limit: the ` tree line '.
Their upper limit matches the change in climate which comes with increasing height.
The change from a temperate to a colder climate is also shown true by a change in the wild flowering plant life.
This limit normally lies about 1200 m above the sea on the north side of the Alps.
On the southern slopes, it often reaches to 1500 m, sometimes even to 1700 m.
The Alps do not always have the typical trees.
People have felled them in many places.
Except for the beech forests of the Austrian Alps, forests of the typical deciduous trees are hardly found.
Where such woods were, Scots pine and Norway spruce now grow.
These trees are less sensitive to the attacks of goats who eat the saplings of deciduous trees.
Above the tree line, there is often a band of dwarf pine trees (Pinus mugo), which is taking place of dwarf shrubs.
These shrubs are Rhododendron ferrugineum (on acid soils) or Rhododendron hirsutum (on non-acid soils).
Above this is the alpine meadow.
Above the alpine meadow is where plant life becomes less and less common.
At these great heights, the plants are likely to make separate groups.
In the Alps, many species of flowering plants have been recorded above 4000 m. These are like Ranunculus glacialis, Androsace alpina and Saxifraga biflora.
Species common to the Alps.
Albert Camus (7 November 1913 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher and writer.
Camus wrote novels and plays.
Camus was born in Algeria, a country in North Africa.
He had French parents.
Camus was an existentialist philosopher.
Existentialism is a philosophy that is very different from other ways of thinking.
Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.
He was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Rudyard Kipling, and the first African-born writer to receive the award.
He is the shortest-lived of any Nobel literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident just over two years after receiving the award.
Albert Camus was born in Algeria to a poor working class family.
His mother was Spanish and his father was French.
His father died in battle and he was left to live with his grandmother.
When he was 17 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which was very impactful on him at that point in his life.
It limited him greatly in his athletics as well as in his career opportunities, due to the fact that tuberculosis is quite contagious.
For this reason he claimed that his disease set him free because he would have done something else with his life had he seen the opportunity.
He went to the University of Algiers, where he graduated with a degree in 1935.
In the 1930s, Camus became interested in politics.
In 1935, Camus joined the French Communist Party, a political group.
In the late 1930s, Camus was a writer for the socialist newspaper, the Alger-Republicain.
In 1941, Camus wrote his first novel, which was called The Stranger.
During World War II, Camus joined the French Resistance to fight against the Nazi army.
After World War II, Camus became friends with another writer called Jean-Paul Sartre.
Camus and Sartre often talked about philosophy and politics in small restaurants called caf s.
Camus wrote books about philosophy (ways of thinking) which said that life was "absurd" (makes no sense, or has no meaning).
In the 1950s Camus tried to improve human rights.
In 1960, Camus died in a car crash.
He had two children, Catherine and Jean.
Agatha Christie, in full Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie (15 September 1890 12 January 1976) was an English writer of crime stories.
Her books are very famous all over the world, and she sold a lot of books.
Her stories are about murders and finding out who did them.
The most well-known characters in her books are Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.
Miss Marple is an old lady, and she talks to everyone.
She uses logic to find out who is guilty of the murder.
Hercule Poirot is a private detective from Belgium who lives in London.
He likes to find out who did the murder by thinking about all the evidence.
Christie was born in Torquay.
She was married twice; she had a daughter called Rosalind Hicks.
She worked in a hospital and in a pharmacy during World War I. She also wrote romance novels and plays.
They were very successful too.
In 1971, she was honored by the Queen with the title Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Christie died on 12 January 1976 at age 85 from natural causes at her Winterbrook House in the north of Cholsey parish, adjoining Wallingford in Oxfordshire (formerly part of Berkshire).
She is buried in the nearby churchyard of St Mary 's, Cholsey.
The Guinness Book of World Records ranks Christie as the best-selling novelist ever.
Her novels have sold about 4 billion copies.
Her works are the world 's most-widely published books after those of William Shakespeare and the Bible.
Her books have been translated into at least 103 languages.
Christie 's best-selling novel is And Then There Were None.
It has sold 100 million copies.
It is the world 's best-selling mystery novel.
In mathematics, the absolute value or modulus of a real number is the number without the sign.
The absolute value of 2 is 2, the absolute value of -2 is also 2.
This notation is to express a number 's distance from zero on a number line.
The absolute value of 10 would be 10 since the number 10 is 10 numbers away from zero, same follows with negatives.
The absolute value of is always either positive or zero, but never negative.
From an analytic geometry point of view, the absolute value of a real number is that number 's distance from zero along the real number line.
The absolute value of the difference of two real numbers is the distance between them.
In calculus, the absolute value function is differentiable except at 0.
It is everywhere continuous.
Compare the norm of a vector.
The square-root notation without sign represents the positive square root.
So, it follows that
which is sometimes used as a definition of absolute value.
These relations may be used to solve inequalities involving absolute values.
For example:
An analog or analog signal is any continuous signal.
The difference from a digital signal is that also very small fluctuations in the signal are meaningful.
When one speaks of analog one often means an electrical context, however mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic, and other systems may also convey analog signals.
An analog signal uses some property of the medium to convey the signal 's information.
Any information may be conveyed by an analog signal, often such a signal is a measured change in physical phenomena, such as sound, light, temperature, position, or pressure.
For example, in sound recording, changes in air pressure (that is to say, sound) strike the diaphragm of a microphone which causes related changes in a voltage or the current in an electric circuit.
The voltage or the current is said to be an "analog" of the sound.
See digital for a discussion of digital vs. analog.
Hercule Poirot is a fictional detective.
He was created by Agatha Christie.
He was in 33 novels and 51 short stories.
The stories were published between 1920 and 1975.
Poirot has been portrayed on radio, on screen, for films and television.
Some of the actors who played him are John Moffatt, Albert Finney, Sir Peter Ustinov, Sir Ian Holm, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina and David Suchet.
Miss Jane Marple is a British fictional character, that appeared in twelve of Agatha Christie 's crime novels and in twenty short stories.
She is an elderly spinster who lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur detective.
She is one of the most famous characters of crime fiction and murder mystery.
Many movies and television series have been made about her investigations.
April is the fourth month of the year, and comes between March and May.
It has 30 days.
April begins on the same day of week as July in all years and also January in leap years.
April 's flowers are the Sweet Pea and Daisy.
Its birthstone is the diamond.
The meaning of the diamond is innocence.
April comes between March and May, making it the fourth month of the year.
It also comes first in the year out of the four months that have 30 days, as June, September and November are later in the year.
It starts on the same day of the week as July every year, and starts on the same day as January in leap years.
In a common year, April starts on the same day of the week as October of the previous year, and in leap years starts on the same day as May of the previous year.
April ends on the same day of the week as December every year.
In a common year, it ends on the same day as July of the previous year.
In a leap year, it ends on the same day as October of the previous year.
April is a spring month in the Northern Hemisphere and an autumn\/fall month in the Southern Hemisphere.
In each hemisphere, it is the seasonal equivalent of October in the other.
It is unclear as to where April got its name.
A common theory is that it comes from the Latin word "aperire", meaning "to open", referring to flowers opening in spring.
Another theory is that the name could come from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.
It was originally the second month in the old Roman Calendar, before the start of the new year was put to January 1.
Quite a few festivals are held in this month.
In many Southeast Asian cultures, new year is celebrated in this month (including Songkran).
In Western Christianity, Easter can be celebrated on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25.
In Orthodox Christianity, it can fall between April 4 and May 8.
At the end of the month, Central and Northern European cultures celebrate Walpurgis Night on April 30, marking the transition from winter into summer.
Poets use April to mean the end of winter.
For example: April showers bring May flowers.
August is the eighth month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, coming between July and September.
It has 31 days, the same number of days as the previous month, July, and is named after Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar.
This month was first called Sextilis in Latin, because it was the sixth month in the old Roman calendar.
The Roman calendar began in March about 735 BC with Romulus.
October was the eighth month.
August was the eighth month when January or February were added to the start of the year by King Numa Pompilius about 700 BC.
Or, when those two months were moved from the end to the beginning of the year by the decemvirs about 450 BC (Roman writers disagree).
In 153 BC January 1 was determined as the beginning of the year.
August is named for Augustus Caesar who became Roman consul in this month.
The month has 31 days because Julius Caesar added two days when he created the Julian calendar in 45 BC.
August is after July and before September.
August, in either hemisphere, is the seasonal equivalent of February in the other.
In the Northern hemisphere it is a summer month and it is a winter month in the Southern hemisphere.
In a common year, no other month begins on the same day of the week as August, though in leap years, February starts on the same day as August.
August always ends on the same day of the week as November.
August 's flower is the Gladiolus with the birthstone being peridot.
The astrological signs for August are Leo (July 24 - August 22) and Virgo (August 23 - September 23).
Aaron is a person described in the Bible and the Qu ` ran.
He was the older brother of Moses.
He helped Moses lead the Hebrews out of Egypt.
In the Bible, he appeared very much in Exodus.
Aaron spoke for Moses, when he went to tell Pharaoh the King of Egypt everything God wanted Moses to say.
The Lord said to Moses (Exodus 7:1 to 3), "See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.
You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country...".
Aaron 's staff was used by the Lord a few times when trying to persuade the Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.
The Lord ordered Moses and Aaron, "When Pharaoh says to you, ` Perform a miracle, ' then say to Aaron, Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh ', and it will become a snake."
So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and Aaron did so.
Aaron 's staff, according to the Bible, really became a snake and ate up all the other snakes that the Pharaoh 's magicians had made.
Also, Aaron 's staff was used to make the Nile River all turn into blood.
He "stretched it out", and the fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled; and the Egyptians could not drink the water, as it was recorded in the Bible.
This article is only about the chemistry of the alcohols.
The alcohol used in drinks is ethanol; more information can be found at alcoholic drink and alcoholism.
In chemistry, alcohol is a general term which refers to many organic compounds used in industry and science as reagents, solvents, and fuels.
Alcohols are carbohydrates which are made of an alkyl group with one or more hydroxyl (- OH) groups bound to its carbon atoms.
Alcohol is colorless, and also transparent.
There are two ways of naming alcohols: Common names, and IUPAC names.
The hydroxyl (OH) group makes alcohols polar.
Alcohols are very weakly acidic.
Most alcohols are highly flammable.
IUPAC nomenclature is used when describing more complex alcohols.
In common usage, "alcohol" often means ethanol or "grain alcohol".
(See also: alcoholic proof).
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 April 5, 1997) was an American poet and author, who was part of the Beat Generation movement of poets in the 1950s.
He was a friend of writers Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, and later made friends with musicians Bob Dylan, Donovan, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and many other celebrities.
Ginsberg 's most famous work was called Howl, and was a long poem about the social conditions of the United States in the 1950s.
It began with the words "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness."
It went on to describe the frustration felt by many Americans, young people and minorities in particular.
There were problems in the country, such as prejudice and intolerance, that needed to be spoken about.
Ginsberg published the poem, and also performed it at public poetry readings.
A few people did not like Howl, or the graphic language Ginsberg used.
They tried to have Howl banned, and Ginsberg prosecute (given a court trial, then either fined or put in jail).
Ginsberg went to trial, and the judge decided Howl was an important work, and told the truth about America at the time.
The judge rejected the ban and cleared Ginsberg, who could then continue to publish and perform the poem.
Ginsberg became involved in social causes through his work, and through the famous people he met.
He grew up in the Jewish faith, but later became a Buddhist.
He was a homosexual, and his longtime partner was another poet, Peter Orlovsky.
He also had a long relationship with Neal Cassady, who appeared as "N.C., secret hero of these poems" in Howl.
Ginsberg died in 1997 of liver cancer.
Anatoly Karpov (born Zlatoust, Russia, 23 May 1951) is a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion.
He was official world champion from 1975 to 1985, played three more matches for the title from 1986 to 1990, then was FIDE World Champion from 1993 to 1999.
His tournament successes include over 160 first-place finishes.
He had a peak Elo rating of 2780, and his 90 months at world number one are second only to the record of Garry Kasparov.
Since 2005, he has been a member of the Public Chamber of Russia.
He has recently involved himself in several humanitarian causes, such as advocating the use of iodised salt.
Auto racing (also known as automobile racing, autosport or motorsport) is a sport involving racing automobiles.
Auto racing began in France in 1895 and is now one of the world 's most popular spectator sports.
Formula One is the top level racing championship worldwide.
Formula One cars have no fenders or quarter panels.
At the front and back of each car there is a spoiler, or wing, which causes the car to have more grip and allows it to go faster.
Each Formula One race takes place in a different country.
These are called Grands Prix.
Indy Cars look very similar to Formula One cars, but race on some oval tracks with two to four sweeping curves that are usually banked and have only left hand turns, and road courses which have both left and right hand turns.
Anarcho-capitalism is a political philosophy that says that governments are not needed but that property rights are needed.
Anarcho-capitalism says that governments are not needed because governments either do not work or are bad.
Governments are said to be bad because they use force to get things done.
Examples of government force include:
Anarcho-capitalists say that society would be better off if the few good things that governments do were instead done on the free market by private individuals, private companies, charities, mutual aid societies, and voluntary unions.
Anarcho-capitalists think that people will still be safe without armies and police that are paid for with taxes.
Anarcho-capitalists say that people will be able to protect themselves by paying people or "private defense agencies" to defend them, or by setting up neighborhood watches.
They also think that when people get into fights or arguments about who owns what, people should be able to get together and decide what kind of court to go to and what kind of rules they should be judged by, instead of being forced to go to a court that the government sets up.
The term anarcho-capitalism was coined by Jarret B. Wollstein.
It is called anarcho-capitalism because it is a mix of (1) the individualist anarchist idea that governments are bad and unnecessary, and (2) the capitalist idea that private property is good when it has been gotten in a legitimate way instead of through force.
Anarcho-capitalists say that the government is a thief, because it takes people 's money away against their will.
Governments also keep people from making trades between themselves.
Most libertarians are minarchists, which means they think that there needs to be a very small government whose only purpose is to protect people 's property.
Anarcho-capitalists are different because they believe society would be better off without any government, even though they are still a kind of libertarian.
Like other anarchists, anarcho-capitalists are against the whole idea of hierarchy.
But, unlike other anarchists, anarcho-capitalists do not define hierarchy as something that exists when one person is simply seen as being more important than another person.
Anarcho-capitalist believe hierarchy exists only when a person is given the authority to use force against a nonviolent person person or that person 's legitimate property.
Only when no one is allowed to use force against nonviolent people or their legitimate property are people truly equal.
Only then is hierarchy no more.
Some classical anarchists oppose anarcho-capitalism because they do not believe any private property is legitimate.
These anarchists would say that all property is founded on the theft of the commons (unowned land and stuff).
Many anarchists do n't even think that anarcho-capitalism counts as a real form of anarchism, as this critique of property goes back to some of the earliest people calling themselves anarchists.
Anarcho-capitalists, like other libertarians and classical liberals, only believe property is legitimate when it has been gotten in the right sort of way.
If you steal (take something from someone without her permission), or hire someone to steal on your behalf, or ask the government to steal on your behalf, the property you get is not really yours.
The real owner is still the person or people it belonged to before it was stolen.
Anarcho-capitalists say that governments do not legitimately own anything, since governments get all of their wealth through force, including taxation and counterfeiting.
In the eyes of anarcho-capitalists, property can only be legitimately gotten in one of three ways.
The first way is through John Locke 's "homestead principle," which means that something owned by no one becomes your legitimate property when you "mix your labor" with the thing.
In other words, if you come across an unowned field, and you start farming it, then the land you farm becomes your property, along with all of the crops you grow.
If someone else comes along and steals all of the crops you worked on growing, that person has committed a form of force called "theft."
The second and third ways to legitimately get property is through voluntary trade or gift.
If someone has gotten something in an illegitimate way, it is not theft to take the thing back, as long as you harm no innocent person in the process.
Some anarcho-capitalists are also anarcho-pacifists, but most anarcho-capitalists are not.
Anarcho-pacifists, like Robert LeFevre, believe one may never use any force at all, not even in self-defence.
Most anarcho-capitalists, however, believe it is okay to use defensive force as long as it is only directed against those who have used non-defensive force, and as long as it is proportional to the non-defensive force.
In other words, one may not legitimately shoot a person for stealing a stick of gum, because shooting someone is a lot more forceful than stealing the gum.
The following is a list of some notable nonfiction works discussing anarcho-capitalism.
An outline of how an anarcho-capitalist society could work.
Originally written as one long book, it was published as two separate works because the publishers feared the second half seemed too radical.
This is Rothbard 's magnum opus.
Moral justification of a free society.
An essay explaining the left-wing origins of anarcho-libertarian thought.
An explanation of why the results of anarchism are better for society than the results of statism.
A long defense of philosophical and political anarchism.
Radical classical liberalism that influenced anarcho-capitalism.
Historians look at technology and its implications.
Nock takes Franz Oppenheimer 's positions and applies them to early U. S. history
Explains how agorism can be used to bring about a market anarchy.
Includes the essay "The Right to Ignore the State."
Spencer was not an anarcho-capitalist, however many of his ideas, including the Law of Equal Freedom, influenced modern anarcho-capitalism.
Looks at the role of justice agencies.
An influential defense of anarchism within philosophy today.
Wolff is not an anarcho-capitalist and has said he does not agree with this interpretation of his work.
He instead favors social anarchism; however, his book is often cited by anarcho-capitalists.
Anarcho-capitalism has been looked at in certain works of literature, particularly science fiction.
An early example is Robert A. Heinlein 's 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, in which he explores what he calls "rational anarchism."
A contemporary anarcho-capitalistic work of science fiction is John C. Wright 's The Golden Age.
In The Illuminatus!
Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson, the Discordian Society, headed by the character Hagbard Celine, is anarcho-capitalist.
The manifesto of the society in the novel, "Never Whistle While You 're Pissing," contains Celine 's Laws, three laws regarding government and social interaction.
Cyberpunk and postcyberpunk authors have been interested by the idea of the breakdown of the government.
Some stories of Vernor Vinge, including Marooned in Realtime and Conquest by Default, feature anarcho-capitalist societies, sometimes made to look good, and sometimes not.
Neal Stephenson 's Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, Max Barry 's Jennifer Government, Cory Doctorow 's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and L. Neil Smith 's The Probability Broach all explore anarcho-capitalist ideas.
Anarchy in cyberpunk fiction ranges from the very bad to the very good.
Ken MacLeod 's Fall Revolution series looks at the future results of the breakdown of today 's political systems during a revolution.
The second novel of the series, The Stone Canal, deals with an anarcho-capitalist society and looks at issues of self-ownership, privatisation of police and courts of law, and the results of a contractual society.
In Matt Stone 's (Richard D. Fuerle) novelette On the Steppes of Central Asia, an American graduate student is invited to work for a newspaper in Mongolia, and finds out that the Mongolian society is stateless in a way similar to anarcho-capitalism.
The novelette was originally written to advertise Fuerle 's 1986 economics book, The Pure Logic of Choice.
J. Neil Schulman 's novel Alongside Night shows a society using agorism to successfully becoming a market anarchist society.
Sharper Security: A Sovereign Security Company Novel, part of a series by Thomas Sewell, is "set a couple of decades into the near-future with a liberty view of society based on individual choice and free market economics" and shows a society where individuals hire a security company to protect and insure them from crime.
The security companies are sovereign, but customers are free to switch between them.
They behave as a combination of insurance\/underwriting and para-military police forces.
Anarcho-capitalist themes in the book include a look at what would happen if sovereign immunity is not forced onto people, and a look at privately-owned road systems, a laissez-faire market, and competing currencies.
Sandy Sandfort 's, Scott Bieser 's, and Lee Oaks 's Webcomic, Escape from Terra, looks at a market anarchist society living on Ceres and its interaction with the violent statist society on Terra.
Anarcho-capitalist or libertarian anarchist symbols include the gold-black bisected flag, the Libertatis quilibritas, the Voluntary V, and other anarchist symbols like the Circle A and the black flag.
A revolutionary form of libertarian anarchism that says we should fight the state through what it calls "counter-economics."
Agorists include Samuel Edward Konkin, III and Brad Spangler.
An anarcho-pacifist is a type of libertarian that believes that no force is ever legitimate, not even in self defense.
Although Robert LeFevre did not call himself an "anarcho-pacifist" (or even an "anarchist"), he was one.
A viewpoint that holds that the things that happen in an economy are a result of the way individuals act and interact with one another.
The Austrian School of economics stresses the "subjective theory of value" (the idea that things do not have value in and of themselves, things only have "value" insofar as people believe things are valuable to them), the "economic calculation problem" (the idea that a socialist state can not calculate how to best divvy up scarce things because one needs a price system to make those calculations and because a price system only comes about when people compete to own things, including capital goods), and the Austrian business cycle theory (the view that the business cycle is a result of "monetary inflation" (changes in the amount of money in the economy) causing "malinvestment" (bad investing)).
These views lead Austrian School economists to say that most or all government interference in the economy causes problems for society, and most anarcho-capitalists are students of the Austrian School.
Austrian School anarchists include Murray N. Rothbard and Robert P. Murphy.
Another word for libertarian anarchism.
It means "self-rule."
Robert LeFevre used this word to describe himself.
Anarcho-capitalism is a form of individualist anarchism, although not every individualist anarchists wants to be called an anarcho-capitalist.
Individualist anarchists who avoid calling themselves capitalists include Lysander Spooner, Benjamin R. Tucker, and Brad Spangler.
Some, such as Tucker and Spangler, go so far as to call themselves socialists.
Libertarian anarchists who believe that a free market system will lead to more equality, not less.
They are often very open to ideas such as "worker self-management" and feminism.
Left-libertarians include Benjamin R. Tucker and Roderick T. Long.
A society with no state.
Another term for libertarian anarchism.
Voluntaryists believe that only voluntary actions are legitimate.
This means that all government force is illegitimate.
The first libertarian to call himself a voluntaryist was Auberon Herbert.
Aristophanes (born around 450\/445 BC died around 385 BC) was a Greek writer who wrote 40 plays.
However, only 11 of his plays survive in their entirety.
He is famous for writing comedies.
They were biting satires aimed at famous men of his day, and the all-too-human weaknesses of ordinary people.
His most famous play, Lysistrata, is about a group of women who protest against a war by not having sexual intercourse with their husbands until the war is ended.
Ancient Greek theater was first presented in competitions at the festival of Dionysia, dedicated to the god Dionysus.
The interesting thing is that Aristophanes did not always win first prize.
The plays which won ahead of his have been lost, so we can not make any comparisons.
"Never probably will the full power of unshackled comedy be so exhibited again... the unsparing licence of attack upon the gods, the institutions, the politicians, philosophers, poets, private citizens... and even upon the women of Athens"."
(Athenians) bore with good-humoured indulgence the full outpouring of ridicule... upon those democratic institutions to which they were sincerely attached... The democracy was strong enough to tolerate unfriendly tongues either in earnest or in jest.
p450\/452
Albert Schweitzer, MD, OM, (14 January 1875 4 September 1965) was a German theologian, musician, philosopher and physician.
He was born in Alsace, at the time a part of the German Empire.
He wrote books about music and religion.
He started a famous hospital in Lambarene, Africa.
He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize.
Albert Schweitzer was born in Alsace, Germany on 14 January 1875.
He lived in the village of Gunsbach, where his father was a local pastor.
His father taught him how to play music.
In 1893, Schweitzer passed his Baccalaureat.
After this, Schweitzer went to Paris to learn philosophy and music, before returning to his birthplace to study theology.
He spent nine years studying medicine and surgery.
He would dedicate his life to helping people and curing diseases.
Schweitzer was a famous organist and was extremely interested in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
He developed a simple style of performance, which he thought to be closer to what Bach had meant.
In 1908, he completed the final version of his book "Johann Sebastian Bach".
In the book, he argued for the new style, which has had great influence on the way Bach s music is now treated.
When Schweitzer was in Lambarene, his main recreation was to play Bach s music.
He also gave musical performances to raise money for medical supplies in Gabon.
Recordings of Schweitzer playing the music of Bach are available on CD.
Between 1934 and 1935, he had a trial recording for HMV on the organ of the old Queen 's Hall in London.
In mid-December 1935, he began to record for Columbia Records on the organ of All-Hallows-by-the-Tower, Barking, London.
Schweitzer became well known for his books on Jesus and Christianity.
He was not so much interested in the historical study of Jesus, as in the Christian idea of the end of the world, which can be found in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus.
Schweitzer also served as a minister for Saint Nicholas Church in Strassburg.
In the philosophy of Albert Schweitzer, the most important idea is the respect for life.
In his book "The Philosophy of Civilization", he wrote that "true philosophy" begins with the idea that: "I am a life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live."
Albert Schweitzer s ethical principles meant that he tried to have a personal and spiritual relationship with the universe.
It also meant that he was vegetarian.
Albert Schweitzer spent most of his life in Lambarene, Africa.
In 1904, he was inspired to help sick people in the world, so he studied medicine.
After his medical studies in 1913, he went to Lambarene with his wife to establish a hospital that would serve thousands of Africans.
During World War I, the French made Schweitzer and his wife, both Germans, leave Africa.
In 1924, he returned to Lambarene and managed to rebuild the destroyed hospital, where he served as a physician.
From 1939-1948, he stayed in Lambarene since he could not go to Europe during the war.
Three years later he resumed his medical practices.
But he was no longer just a medical doctor and whenever possible he went to Europe to lecture at universities.
Slowly his ideas become known, not only in Europe but worldwide.
In 1952 Dr Albert Schweitzer was awarded The Nobel Prize for peace.
He gave a famous speech "The Problem of Peace".
He died on 4 September 1965 at his hospital in Lambarene.
The Austrian School is a school of economic thought based on the actions of the individual person.
It started in late 19th and early 20th century Vienna, Austria.
It is referred to as Austrian economics, because the primary economists were Austrian although its followers are from all over the world today.
Followers of the Austrian school criticize central planning, government price controls and other state regulations.
They say that it is impossible for government bureaucrats to make decisions about production or the prices of goods and services because they do not have the knowledge that millions of individual consumers have.
Followers of the Austrian school also criticize government inflation of the money supply.
An abscess is pus that has built up within the tissue of the body.
Signs and symptoms of abscesses include: redness, pain, warmth, and swelling.
This swelling feels like it is filled with fluid if it is pressed.
The area of redness is often bigger than the area of swelling.
Carbuncles are an abscess in the hair follicles.
An abscess is usually caused by a bacterial infection.
Often many different types of bacteria can be part of a single infection.
In the United States and many other areas of the world the most common bacteria present is MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).
Rarely parasites can cause abscesses and this is more common in the developing world.
Diagnosis of a skin abscess is usually made based on what it looks like and is proved by cutting it open.
Ultrasound imaging may be useful in cases in which the diagnosis is not clear.
In abscesses around the anus, computer tomography (CT) may be important to look for deeper infection.
Treatment for most skin or soft tissue abscesses is to cut it open and drain out the pus.
Antibiotics are usually not needed for healthy people.
New studies have found that it is better to close the wound after draining, instead of packing it with gauze.
This can speed healing and not increase risk of the abscess returning.
Sometimes simply sucking out the pus with a needle is not enough.
Skin abscesses are common and have become more common in recent years.
As many as 65 % of people who take intravenous drugs get abscesses In 2005 in the United States 3.2 million people went to the emergency department for an abscess.
In Australia around 13,000 people were put in hospital in 2008 for the disease.
Abscesses can form in any kind of solid tissue.
They are usually on the skin surface (such as a boils, or deep skin abscesses), in the lungs, brain, teeth, kidneys and tonsils.
The condition can become more complicated if the pus and the infection spread to other parts of the body.
This can lead to gangrene, where areas of body tissue die.
The main symptoms and signs of a skin abscess are redness, heat, swelling, pain and loss of function.
There may also be high temperature (fever) and chills.
Internal abscesses are more difficult to find.
The abscess can be painful, and a person will have a high temperature, and generally feel unwell.
Internal abscesses do not usually heal without medical treatment.
In some cases an abscess could even cause death, for example where an abscess in the neck put pressure on the trachea.
If abscess is on the surface, it may be "fluctuant", that is it feels like it is full of fluid, when touched.
This is a wave-like motion caused by movement of the pus inside the abscess.
Abscesses are caused by bacterial infection, parasites, or foreign substances.
Bacterial infection is the most common cause.
Often many different types of bacteria are involved in a single infection.
In the United States and many other areas of the world the most common bacteria present is MRSA.
Among spinal subdural abscesses, methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus is the most common organism involved.
Rarely parasites can causes abscesses and this is more common in the developing world.
Specific parasites known to do this include: dracunculiasis and myiasis.
Aarhus is the second biggest city in Denmark.
It has about 307,000 inhabitants.
The metropolitan area has more than 1.200.000 inhabitants
The settlement of Aarhus started about 770.
Oldest documentation of Aarhus is from 951.
It started as a trading place of the Vikings.
In the 16th century, the city grew.
Its second era of expansion was during the Industrial Revolution.
Aarhus ' climate is on the boundary between humid continental (Dfb in the Koeppen climate classification) and oceanic (Cfb in the Koeppen climate classification).
The word amateur is normally used to mean: somebody who does something (e.g. a job) without being paid for it, or without having had training or education for it.
The opposite of an amateur is a professional.
A professional is someone who has had formal training for something.
He (or she) will expect to be paid a professional fee for the job.
The word amateur comes from a French word meaning: "lover of".
An amateur is someone who does something (e.g. play the piano, football) because they enjoy doing it.
They are not doing it in order to be paid.
It is not how they earn money to live.
People often forget the real meaning of the word amateur.
It is often used to mean: someone who is not good at something.
Someone s performance might be described as amateurish, i.e. not very good.
On the other hand, they might be described as having done a very professional job, i.e. a very good job.
Although one might expect a professional to be better than an amateur, this is not always the case.
Someone might be a very good amateur pianist, possibly better than some professionals.
In some jobs it would be impossible for amateurs to be allowed to work.
One can not have amateur doctors or lawyers.
In some areas, however, amateurs have been very useful, e.g. in computer programming or astronomy or birdwatching.
For example, Wikipedia is written by amateurs.
In some sporting events, all players are professional or all are amateur.
Many events mix professional and amateur participants.
In some sports (e.g. tennis or football) in the past, amateurs and professionals would not compete against one another.
This was not always because amateurs were thought to be not as good as professionals.
In some countries, such as Great Britain in Victorian times, this was because of social class distinction.
Amateur cricketers were rich gentlemen from the upper classes who did not want to associate with people from lower classes.
This attitude took a long time to change during the 20th century.
Until the 1970s most Olympic events were for amateurs.
Athletes were disqualified if they received money for the event, or in some cases even if they had been paid for sporting events outside the Olympics.
Alexis Carrel (28 June 1873 - 5 November 1944) was a French surgeon.
He won the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for his work on joining blood vessels and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs.
Anatole France, born Fran ois-Anatole Thibault (16 April 1844, Paris - 12 October 1924, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire), was a French poet, critic, and novelist.
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921.
He was a member of the Acad mie fran aise.
Anatole France was a son of a bookseller.
He studied at the Coll ge Stanislas.
He got married in 1877 but he get divorced in 1892.
He was librarian for the French Senate in 1876 - 1890.
Anatole France start his career as a parnassianism poet.
Later he became an impressionist and he was an atheist.
From 1867 he was a journalist.
In 1881 he became famous with the novel Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, membre de l'Institut.
It 's about an old scholar Sylvester Bonnard, Bonnard wants to make good, but he commits a crime.
This novel won France a prize from the French Academy.
In 1893 he captured the atmosphere of the fin de si cle in Les Opinions de J r me Coignard.
France took a part in the Dreyfus Affair.
He signed mile Zola 's manifesto supporting Dreyfus.
Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer and he was charged with high treason.
In 1901 France wrote Monsieur Bergeret about this affair.
He stood out against colonialism.
In 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
He died in 1924 and he is buried near Paris in the Neuilly-sur-Seine community cemetery.
Andr Paul Guillaume Gide (22 November 1869 19 February 1951) was a French writer.
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947.
Gide was born in Paris into a middle class Protestant family.
During a trip to Alegeria Gide realized that he was gay.
His first novel The Notebooks of Andre Walter was published in 1891.
Gide met Oscar Wilde in 1894.
In October 1895 Gide married his cousin Madeleine.
When Gide was 47 15-year-old Marc All gret became his lover.
The almond, Prunus dulcis, is a small tree in the family Rosaceae.
"Almond" is also the name of the edible and widely cultivated ` nut ' of this tree.
The fruit of the almond has an outer hull and a hard shell with the seed or nut inside.
Shelling almonds means removing the shell to get the seed.
Almonds are sold either shelled or unshelled.
The almond is a small tree.
It grows from four and 10 meters tall.
It has a trunk 30 centimetres wide.
The young twigs are green at first.
When they are in their second year, they turn gray.
The leaves are three to five inches long.
The flowers are white or light pink, 3 5 cm wide with five petals.
Antisemitism is the hatred of or prejudice against Jews.
Antisemitism has a long history, but the most well known act of anti-semitism is the Holocaust, also known as the Final Solution, a genocide which happened between 1933 and 1945.
The plan was to totally get rid of the Jewish people in Europe, but only 60-75 % of them were killed.
Around six million European Jews were killed because of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
He said that Jews were a racial group with naturally bad features.
Antisemitism is still common today.
In a 2011 survey by the Pew Research Center, all of the Muslim-majority Middle Eastern countries polled had very bad opinions of Jews.
Only 2 % of Egyptians, 3 % of Lebanese Muslims, and 2 % of Jordanians reported having a good view of Jews.
In a 2013 survey of 5,847 Jewish people in Europe, 76 % thought that antisemitism has increased in the past five years and 29 % had thought about moving countries because they felt unsafe.
Some related words include Judeophobia and Israelophobia.
The Economy of Azerbaijan is based on industry, agriculture, and on services including tourism.
The energy sector based on the large reserves of crude oil and natural gas, is the main source of economic growth in Azerbaijan today, though half of the Azerbaijani people earn their income directly or indirectly through services and a third earn their income through agriculture.
The energy boom has led to massive foreign direct investment and the growth rate of the Azerbaijani economy is one of the world 's highest.
After gaining independence in 1991 with the end of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan made the long and difficult change from a command economy to a market economy.
The government has largely completed privatization of agricultural lands and small, medium and large state-owned companies.
Azerbaijan is continuing making economic reforms, and old economic ties and structures have been slowly replaced.
With independence, Azerbaijan became a member of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Islamic Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
Azerbaijan 's currency is the Azerbaijani manat (AZN) which is divided into 100 q pik.
It became the national currency in 1992 and replaced the old Soviet ruble.
The Central Bank of Azerbaijan was created in 1992.
The Central Bank serves as Azerbaijan 's central bank, and is responsible for printing and distributing the national currency, the Azerbaijani manat, and to control all commercial banks.
Azerbaijan is rich in natural resources which provide energy, especially in crude oil and natural gas, and hydroelectricity and wind power.
Other natural resources include minerals such as gold, silver, iron, copper, titanium, chromium, manganese, cobalt, molybdenum, complex ore and antimony which are mined.
Crude oil and natural gas, are the most imortant products of Azerbaijan 's economy and the main sources of export contributing to its economic growth.
They are also the basis for an widespread system of refineries, which produce gasoline, herbicides, fertilizers, kerosene, synthetic rubber, and plastics.
The oil and natural gas are carried through pipelines from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea ports of Novorossiysk in Russia and Suspa in Georgia and to the Mediterranean Sea port Ceyhan in Turkey.
Hydroelectric power plants supply 20 % of the country 's electric capacity and wind power production is slowly increasing.
Other major industries include cement, fertiliser, steel, chemicals, automobiles, and machinery.
Agriculture is a small part of the economy which contributes only 6 % of the GDP of Azerbaijan but employs 38.3 % of the workforce.
21.78 % of the total land area is arable land (land where crops can be cultivated (grown)) and 2.1 % are used for permanent crops (crops which last for many seasons, rather than being replanted after each harvest).
16.45 % of the total land area, which makes up the majority of Azerbaijan 's cultivated lands, is irrigated.
The major crops for are agricultural cash crops, grapes, cotton, tobacco, citrus fruits, rice, tea and vegetables.
Livestock, dairy products, and wine and spirits are also important farm products.
Farms in Azerbaijan are organized as state and cooperative farms which employ many farmers, and small private farms which are owned and run by one farmer and his\/her family.
A leading caviar producer and exporter in the past, Azerbaijan 's fishing industry today is concentrated on the dwindling supply of sturgeon and beluga in the Caspian Sea.
Tourism is an important part of the economy of Azerbaijan.
The country was a well-known tourist spot in the 1980s, yet, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Nagorno-Karabakh War during the 1990s, damaged the tourist industry and the image of Azerbaijan as a tourist destination.
It was not until the 2000s that the tourism industry began to recover, and the country has since experienced a high rate of growth in the number of tourist visits and overnight stays.
In the recent years, Azerbaijan has also becoming a popular destination for religious, spa, and health care tourism.
During winter, the ski resorts such as Shahdag Winter Complex are popular with foreign visitors.
The Azerbaijani Armed Forces is the military of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
The armed forces have three branches: the Azerbaijani Land Force, the Azerbaijani Air Force, and the Azerbaijani Navy.
Related forces which are not part of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, include the paramilitary Azerbaijani National Guard, the Internal Troops of Azerbaijan, and the State Border Service of Azerbaijan (who patrol Azerbaijan s borders with Georgia, Russia, Iran, Turkey and Armenia), which can be involved in state defense.
The Commander-in-Chief of the military is the President of Azerbaijan, currently Ilham Aliyev.
The Ministry of Defense is in charge of political leadership.
It is currently headed by Safar Abiyev.
Military command is in the hands of the General Staff, headed by the Chief of Staff, who is Colonel-General Najmaddin Sadigov.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan has been trying to further develop its armed forces into a professional, well trained, and mobile military.
Based on 2007 statistics the country has about 66,940 troops, and a paramilitary force of 15,000 troops.
There are 300,000 former service personnel who have had military service in the last fifteen years.
Azerbaijan had actually established the Azerbaijani Armed Forces and a Ministry of Defense on June 26, 1918 with the first independence of Azerbaijan, as the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, after the collpase of the Russian Empire in 1918 until it was invaded and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1920 which came after the Russian Empire.
The Azerbaijani Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defense were established again in 1991 with the second and final independence of Azerbaijan, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the Azerbaijani Armed Forces were formed out of the former Soviet forces in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.
The Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia is the Army, Air Defense, and Border Guard.
Some parts were formed out of the former Soviet forces in the Armenian SSR.
The Commander-in-Chief of the military is the President of Armenia, currently Robert Kocharyan.
The Ministry of Defense is in charge of political leadership.
It is currently headed by Mikael Harutyunyan.
Military command is in the hands of the General Staff, headed by the Chief of Staff, who is Lieutenant-General Seyran Ohanyan.
Armenia established a Ministry of Defense on 28 January 1992.
The Border guards purpose is to patrol Armenia 's borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan, while Russian troops continue to watch its borders with Iran and Turkey.
Avicenna (980 1037) was a Persian Muslim polymath and the most important doctor and Islamic philosopher of his time.
He was also an astronomer, chemist, Hafiz, logician, mathematician, poet, psychologist, scientist, Sheikh, soldier, statesman and theologian.
He is also commonly known as Ibn S n.
His full name in Arabic is '.
In English, he is most commonly called Avicenna, his Latinized name.
Avicenna had very wise insights on the Islamic and Western religions.
He lived in an environment with other very wise people, and he learned a lot from the conversations between his father and other scholars.
He learned so much, that he outsmarted his teachers and many scholars.
It was difficult for Avicenna to find a tutor to teach him.
Avicenna was born near Bukhara, which at the time was ruled by Samanid dynasty.
His family were ethnic Persians.
His father was a government official and his home served as a meeting place for men of learning.
Avicenna had educated teachers while growing up.
By age 14 he had mastered many subjects and had already memorized the Quran.
From the age of 14 to 18 he taught himself because he could not find a tutor to provide more information that he already knew.
He began to practice and learn about medicine at 16.
He also learned about law and natural sciences.
He was good at all of the subjects but he had a talent for medicine.
Sometime before he turned 18 years old, he cured a Samanid chief.
Because of what he did he was allowed into the libraries that were taken care of by the Samanid dynasty princes.
By the age of 18 he had become a master of the most important works of science in his time.
Also, his reputation as a doctor had grown.
At 20 he was regarded as one of the wisest people of his time.
Avicenna wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects.
Of these, around 240 survive today.
In particular, 150 of his surviving treatises concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine.
He wrote a book called The Canon of Medicine.
This was used as medical text for over 600 years.
His major work in philosophy was a book called The Book of Healing.
It included his interpretation of the work of Aristotle.
From 1015 to 1022, Avicenna was a high official and doctor to the ruler of Hamedan.
After the ruler of Hamedan died Avicenna was put in prison.
He was released four months later when Hamadan was captured by Al al-Dawla, the ruler of Isfahan.
Al al-Dawla only captured Hamadan for a short period of time.
He escaped as a dervish (a member of the Muslim society known for dancing) to Isfahan to work for Al al-Dawla as a doctor.
In 1030, the Ghaznavids attacked Isfahan and some of Avicenna 's work was lost and possibly stolen.
He died during an attack on the city of Hamedan.
The Ashes is how to describe a "series" or group of cricket matches played by England and Australia.
The name comes from a small pot (known as an "urn") of ashes, which was made and presented to a former England captain in 1882, following a joke printed in The Sporting Times, an English newspaper, in 1882: Australia beat England in a series and someone placed an advertisement in the pages of the paper, describing how English cricket had died and its body had been cremated.
Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it.
The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (384 322 B.C.), though analysis as a formal concept is a relatively recent development.
The word comes from the Ancient Greek (analusis, "a breaking up", from ana - "up, throughout" and lysis "a loosening").
In this context, Analysis is the opposite of synthesis, which is to bring ideas together.
Amplitude Modulation, usually shortened to AM, is a simple way to send a radio signal.
The signal can travel long distances, and appear in faraway places, because of the earth 's ionosphere.
Amplitude is the height of a wave.
A carrier wave is modulated (changed) by adding audio.
The combined signal is transmitted over a frequency.
AM signals can be received by a crystal-powered radio set, that needs no batteries or electrical power source.
Many early radios were homemade, and used earphones.
AM signals are mostly sent out on medium wave and shortwave frequencies.
They do not carry high fidelity sound, but the sound is good enough to hear most things.
Analog signals can fade in and out, or have interference from power lines and power stations.
Sunspot activity can also weaken signals.
In the early years of commercial broadcasting in the 1920s, medium wave AM (from 540 to 1600 kilocycles) was the only kind of radio widely used.
Radio programs were much like today 's television programming, with news, sports, drama, music, comedy, and other entertainment.
Later Frequency Modulation (FM) radio was developed.
It had better fidelity, but the signals could not travel as far, so AM was still important.
After television became common in the 1950s, AM became a major format for popular music.
As FM became common in the 1970s, AM stations featured more news, and talk shows.
Shortwave radio signals (from 3000 to 30,000 kilocycles) can travel around the world, and are used by countries to send programs to distant places.
These programs feature news about the country, examples of their native culture and history, and sometimes foreign language lessons.
Abbot, meaning father, is a religious title given to the head of a monastery.
A female abbot is an abbess.
Ardipithecus is a very early hominid genus, which lived during the late Neogene.
Two species are known: A. kadabba, dated to about 5.6 million years ago (late Miocene), and A. ramidus, which lived about 4.4 million years ago during the early Pliocene.
Because this genus shares several traits with the African great ape genera (Pan and Gorilla), some place it on the that branch rather than human branch.
Most consider it a proto-human because of a likeness in teeth with Australopithecus.
Ardipithecus had bipedalism and reduced canines, like the Australopithecines.
An assembly line is a manufacturing process which is a very important part of industry.
In an assembly line, parts are added to a product in a sequence.
Each worker and machine does one part, and the parts are put together to make the finished object.
This makes a product much faster than with handcrafting-type methods, where one person made the whole object.
The division of labor was discussed by Adam Smith in his book The Wealth of Nations (1776).
He used the manufacture of pins as an example.
The assembly line developed by Ford Motor Company between 1908 and 1915 made assembly lines famous as an example of mass production.
The result was a cheaper car, the Ford Model T, and higher wages for Ford workers.
Henry Ford was the first to master the moving assembly line, and was able to reduce labor hours needed to make a car, and increased numbers of cars and parts.
Ford was the first company to build large factories around the assembly line concept.
Mass production by assembly lines was the catalyst which started the modern consumer culture by making possible low unit cost for manufactured goods.
It is often said that Ford 's production system was ingenious because it turned Ford 's own workers into new customers.
The lower prices turned a huge potential market into a reality.
The greater demand allowed further economies of scale to be exploited.
This bootstrapping quality of growth made Ford famous and set an example for other industries.
The idea was not invented by Ford.
Its use in America may have started with the production of cars by Ransom E. Olds in 1901.
The earliest example of an assembly system is the Terracotta Army of the 3rd century BC.
The terracotta army figures were made in workshops.
The head, arms, legs and torsos were created separately and then assembled.
Studies show that eight face moulds were most likely used.
Once put together, features such as facial expressions were added.
It is thought their legs were made the same way that terracotta drainage pipes were made at the time.
This would make it an assembly line production, with specific parts manufactured and assembled after being fired, as opposed to crafting one solid piece and subsequently firing it.
In those times, each workshop had to write its name on items produced.
Once they were completed, the terracotta figures were placed in the pits in precise military formation according to rank and duty.
Adelaide is a city in Australia.
It is the capital city of the state of South Australia, and it has an approximate population of 1.2 million people.
It is the fifth biggest city in Australia, behind Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.
Adelaide was founded in 1836 by Colonel William Light, who named it after Queen Adelaide.
Adelaide is near the Southern Ocean and is north of the Fleurieu Peninsula.
It has a river going through it called the River Torrens.
Many festivals are held there.
Adelaide has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate.
Grapes for wine production are grown in the Barossa Valley about 50 kilometres (30 miles) northeast of Adelaide.
in abstract algebra an automorphism is an isomorphism from a group, or set of elements onto itself.
An accordion is a musical instrument that has keys similar to a piano, but is small enough for a person to hold.
It makes sounds using air pushed and pulled through reeds using a bellows.
The accordion can also have buttons instead of keys.
The 6-plus-6-system with three rows has the same fingering in all twelve scales.
The accordion was invented in 1822 in Germany by Friedrich Buschmann.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer program or a machine to think and learn.
It is also a field of study which tries to make computers "smart".
John McCarthy came up with the name "artificial intelligence" in 1955.
The goal of AI research is to create computer programs that can learn, solve problems, and think logically.
AI involves many different fields like computer science, mathematics, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy.
Eventually researchers hope to create a "general artificial intelligence" which can solve many problems instead of focusing on just one.
Researchers are also trying to create creative and emotional AI which can possibly empathize or create art.
Many approaches and tools have been tried.
Objects that look and act like humans are called robots.
Myths about robots exist in every major civilization.
Their first appearance is in Greek myths, like Talos of Crete or the bronze robot of Hephaestus.
Humanoid robots were built by Yan Shi, Hero of Alexandria, and Al-Jazari.
Sentient machines became popular in fiction during the 19th and 20th centuries with the story of Frankenstein.
"Formal" logic and mathematics was developed by ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians.
The first computer, however, was mechanical, and invented by Charles Babbage in the 19th century.
It used metal gears to do calculations.
Mathematician Alan Turing 's theory of computation said that any mathematical problem could be solved by processing 1 's and 0 's.
Advances in neurology, information theory, and cybernetics convinced a small group of researchers that an "electronic brain" was possible.
The first computer was made using thermionic valves at Bletchley Park during World War II.
It was used to run through possible settings of the Enigma coding machine.
AI research really started with a conference at Dartmouth College in 1956.
It was a month long brainstorming session attended by many people that are important in AI today.
At the conference they wrote programs that were amazing at the time, beating people at checkers or solving word problems.
The U.S. Department of Defense started giving a lot of money to AI research and labs were created all over the world.
Unfortunately, researchers really underestimated just how hard some problems were.
The tools they had used still did not give computers things like emotions or common sense.
Mathematician James Lighthill wrote a report on AI saying that "in no part of the field have discoveries made so far produced the major impact that was then promised", and U.S and British governments wanted to fund more productive projects.
Funding for AI research was cut, starting an "AI winter" where little to no research was done.
AI research revived in the 1980s because of the popularity of expert systems, which simulated the knowledge of a human expert.
By 1985, 1 billion dollars were spent on AI.
New, faster computers convinced U.S and British governments to start funding AI research again.
However, the market for Lisp machines collapsed in 1987 and funding was pulled again, starting an even longer AI winter.
AI revived again in the 90s and early 2000s with its use in data mining and medical diagnosis.
This was possible because of faster computers and focusing on solving more specific problems.
In 1997, Deep Blue became the first computer program to beat chess world champion Garry Kasparov.
Faster computers and access to more data have made AI popular throughout the world.
In 2011 IBM Watson beat the top two Jeopardy!
players Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, and in 2016 Google 's AlphaGo beat top Go player Lee Sedol 4 out of 5 times.
Ancient philosophy is a historical classification that is used for the philosophy in Europe, namely that of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
Diogenes La rtius, a 3rd century scholar wrote Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, which summarized the position of many Ancient Greek philosophers.
This work was translated into Latin and meant that Ancient Greek philosophy remained known even after Library of Alexandria lost its influence.
Most of Ancient philosophy was forgotten after the 6th century.
After this, it was mainly through Islamic thinkers such as Avicenna (11th century), Averro s (12th century), or the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (12th century) that Ancient philosophy became known again.
Medieval philosophy, such as that of Albertus Magnus (13th century) or Thomas Aquinas meant that the works of thinkers such as Aristotle were well known.
Anaximander (; Anaximandros; c. 610 c. 546 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia.
He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales.
He succeeded him and became the second master of that school where he counted Anaximenes and Pythagoras amongst his pupils.
Little of his life and work is known today.
According to available historical documents, he is the first philosopher known to have written down his studies, although only one fragment of his work remains.
Fragmentary testimonies found in documents after his death provide a portrait of the man.
An architect is a person who designs buildings and prepares plans to give to a builder.
What he or she designs is called architecture.
Architects make drawings with pens, pencils, and computers, and this is also called drafting.
Sometimes they first make small toy-sized buildings called models to show what the building will look like when it is done.
Some of these models survive for hundreds of years, such as St Paul 's Cathedral, London.
Architects decide the size, shape, and what the building will be made from.
Architects need to be good at math and drawing.
They need imagination.
They must go to university and learn how to make a building 's structure safe so that it will not collapse.
They should also know how to make a building attractive, so that people will enjoy using it.
Although there has been architecture for thousands of years, there have not always been architects.
The great European cathedrals built in the Middle Ages were designed by a Master Builder, who scratched his designs on flat beds of plaster.
Paper did not exist in Europe at this time and vellum or parchment were very expensive and could not be made in large sizes.
Some cathedrals took hundreds of years to build, so the Master Builder would die or retire and be replaced and often plans changed.
Some cathedrals were never finished, like Notre Dame in Paris or Sagrada Fam lia in Barcelona.
An architect has a very important job, because his or her work will be seen and used by many people, probably for a very long time.
If the design, materials and construction are good, the building should last for hundreds or even thousands of years.
This is rarely the case.
Usually building cost is what limits the life of a building, but fire, war, need or fashion can also affect things.
As towns and cities grow, it often becomes necessary to make roads wider, or perhaps to build a new train station.
Architects are employed again and so the city changes.
Even very important buildings may get knocked down to make way for change.
An abbreviation is a shorter way to write a word or phrase.
People use abbreviations for words that they write a lot.
The English language occasionally uses the apostrophe mark ' to show that a word is written in a shorter way, but some abbreviations do not use this mark.
More often, they use periods, especially the ones that come from the Latin language.
Common Latin abbreviations include i.e. (id est) that is, e.g. (exempli gratia) for example, and et al. (et alia) and others.
Some new abbreviations have been created by scientists, by workers in companies and governments, and by people using the Internet.
People often think words are abbreviations when in fact they are acronyms.
Here are examples of common acronyms: The word "radar" is an acronym for "Radio Detection and Ranging".
The name of the large computer company IBM comes from the words "International Business Machines".
The name of the part of the United States government that sends rockets into outer space is NASA, from the words "National Aeronautics and Space Administration".
When people using the Internet think that something is very funny, they sometimes write "LOL" to mean "Laughing Out Loud".
People sometimes write "ASAP" for "As Soon As Possible".
Aphrodite (Greek ` risen from sea-foam ') is the goddess of love and beauty in Greek mythology, and one of the Twelve Olympians.
Many artists chose to portray her as a naked woman, or with very little clothing.
The major theory of Aphrodite 's birth was that she was the daughter of Zeus and Dione.
Another theory states that Aphrodite was born from sea-foam near Paphos, Cyprus.
She appeared from the sea.
Aphrodite was very beautiful, which made Zeus, the god of the gods, afraid that she would be the cause of fights between the other gods.
He therefore married Aphrodite to Hephaestus.
Hephaestus was happy to be married to Aphrodite and gave her many pieces of jewelry in order to please her.
Aphrodite, however, did not care for him due to his deformities.
Looking for other, more attractive men, she spent most of her time with Ares, but was also linked with Adonis and Anchises.
Aleister Crowley (12 October 1875 1 December 1947) was a British mystic, occultist, writer, poet, mountain climber and nicknamed "The Wickedest Man In the World.".
He was an influential member in some occult organizations, such as the Golden Dawn, the A A, and Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), and is better known today for his occult books and papers.
He was bisexual.
Crowley also started a mystical philosophy known as Thelema, the Abbey of Thelema, and revived the term magick.
Edward Alexander Crowley was born at 36 Clarendon Square in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England, between 11:00 pm and 11:59 p.m. on 12 October 1875.
In 1895, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge after going to Malvern College and Tonbridge School.
In his three years at Cambridge, his father died and left him a large sum of money.
In December 1896, Crowley took interest in occultism and by the next year, he began reading books on alchemy and mysticism.
A year later, he published his first book of poetry (Aceldama), and left Cambridge, only to meet Julian L. Baker who introduced him to Samuel Mathers and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
In November 1899, Crowley bought Boleskine House in Foyers on the shore of Loch Ness in Scotland.
Samuel Mathers, acting leader of the Golden Dawn organization, acted as his early mentor in western magic.
Crowley lost faith in his mentor 's abilities in 1900 but did not officially break with Mathers until 1904.
Crowley died of a respiratory infection in a Hastings boarding house on 1 December 1947 at the age of 72.
He had been addicted to heroin after being prescribed morphine for his asthma and bronchitis many years earlier.
Readings at the cremation service in Brighton included Hymn to Pan, and newspapers referred to the service as a black mass.
The afterlife is what some people believe happens after death.
Different religions teach different things about the afterlife.
Some religions believe in reincarnation (to come back to life as a different person or even animal).
These religions include mainly Buddhism and Hinduism.
Hinduism specifically believes that at death the soul leaves the physical body.
But the soul does not die.
It lives on in a subtle body called the astral body.
The astral body exists in a nonphysical dimension called the astral plane.
Here the soul continues to have experiences until it is born again in another physical body as a baby.
Most people in the world believe you go to another place after you die, such as heaven or hell.
Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Jainism are religions that believe in this.
For example, those that follow Christianity believe that if you accept the Christ (Jesus of Nazareth, the son of the Virgin Mary) as your savior, you will spend eternity in heaven after death; if you do not accept him, you will be separated from him after death.
Ancient Egyptians also believed in an ` afterlife `.
Others (like African animists) believe that some people change into spirits called ghosts.
There are also those who do not believe that there is an afterlife, and that you simply cease to exist once you die.
Atheism is based on refusal of the existence of a God and even in an afterlife.
Astrometry is a part of astronomy that has to do with measuring the motion of objects in space such as stars.
Two main ways to measure these objects are proper motion and parallax.
Proper motion is an object s change in position over time when seen from the Earth.
Just like anything else that moves, a star 's proper motion is measured by looking towards the same place at different times and seeing how far the star has moved.
The difference with stars is that, from Earth, they seem to move very slowly so we have to measure in arcseconds per year.
When a star has a large proper motion, it usually means that it is nearby.
Barnard s Star, the star with the largest proper motion, only moves 1 degree across the sky (3600 arcseconds) in 348 years.
Parallax is the apparent difference in position of an object when seen from two or more different places.
When an object is seen from a new place, there is a new line of sight going from the viewer to the object showing a different background in the distance.
Parallax is measured using the angle between two lines of sight.
Parallax can also be used to measure distances to the nearest few thousand stars.
These distances are measured in parsecs which are equal to about 3.26 light years.
Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom and strategy.
She is one of the Twelve Olympians.
Athena 's symbol is the owl, the wisest of the birds.
She also had a shield called Aegis, which was a present given to her by Zeus.
She is often shown with her helmet on and with her shield, which has Medusa 's head on it.
This was a present to her from Perseus.
Athena is the protector of Athens, Greece, a city named after her.
The Parthenon, which is on the Acropolis in Athens, is her most famous temple.
She also helped many heroes, including Heracles, Jason, and Odysseus, and is always seen with Nike, the goddess of victory.
There are many stories about Athena 's birth.
In Hesiod 's Theogony, Zeus had sexual intercourse with Metis, but Zeus was scared of Metis giving birth to a child because the Oracle of Delphi had said that she will give birth to Athena, and a son that would overthrow Zeus, just like Zeus overthrew Cronus.
To stop Metis giving birth to her son, Zeus swallowed her whole.
This was when she turned herself into a fly as Zeus and Metis were playing a game.
However, Zeus was too late, as Metis was already pregnant.
While she was inside Zeus 's head, Metis made a helmet, armor, and a robe for Athena.
The hammering noise caused Zeus to have a major headache.
To help Zeus in pain, Hephaestus cut his head open with a Minoan axe.
Athena then came out of Zeus 's head.
She was fully grown and had her armor on.
Athena is the goddess of knowledge, purity, arts, crafts, learning, justice and wisdom.
She also plays a tough, clever and independent role.
People think She helped them win the Trojan war.
Athena often helped heroes, like Jason and Perseus.
People worship her, because they think she can give their victory.
Athena was given many other cult titles.
She has the epithet Ergane as the patron of craftsmen and artisans.
With the epithet Parthenos she was especially worshipped in the festivals of the Panathenaea and Pamboeotia where both militaristic and athletic displays took place.
With the epithet Promachos she led in battle.
With the epithet Polias, Athena was the protector of not only Athens but also of many other cities, including Argos, Sparta, Gortyn, Lindos, and Larisa.
An alloy is a uniform mixture.
It is made up of two or more chemical elements, of which at least one is a metal.
An alloy has properties different from the metals it is made of.
Most alloys are made by melting the metals, mixing them while they are liquid to form a solution, then leaving them to cool and turn solid again.
Combining a pure metal with one or more other metals or non-metals often makes it better.
For example, steel is an alloy made from iron but it is stronger than iron.
Physical properties like density, reactivity and electrical and thermal (heat) conductivity may not be much different than the elements (substances) which make the alloy.
But, properties like strength can be very much different.
The first alloy to be discovered was Bronze.
Bronze is made from copper and tin.
Bronze was discovered a very long time ago in the prehistoric period.
Then, bronze was being used for making tools and weapons.
This period was known as Bronze Age.
But, later better alloys were discovered which replaced bronze for making tools and weapons.
Now, bronze is used for making ornaments, statues, and bells.
Brass is another alloy made from copper and zinc.
Melting point is the temperature at which a solid changes to liquid.
Most alloys do not have a single melting point.
They have a melting range in which the alloy is a mixture of solid and liquid stages.
The temperature at which melting just starts is called solidus and the temperature at which the melting is just finished is called liquidus.
The term alloy means a mixture of atoms in which the main substance or the primary constituent is a metal.
This primary metal is called the base or matrix.
If an alloy has only two types of atoms, like copper-nickel alloy, then such an alloy is called binary alloy.
If an alloy has three types of atoms, like iron, nickel and chromium, then it is called a ternary alloy.
An alloy with four types of atoms is called a quaternary alloy and an alloy with five types of atoms is called a quinary alloy.
Different varieties or forms of alloys can be made from the same constituent materials (substances from which the alloy is formed).
These different forms or varieties can be formed by using different amounts of the constituents.
The whole range of possible varieties of an alloy is called a system.
All the forms of alloy having only two constituents are called a binary system.
All forms of an alloy having three constituents are called a ternary system.
An angle is the space between two lines that meet each other.
When two lines meet at a point, an angle is formed.
The two lines are called the arms of the angle.
To measure the size of an angle, we use degree.
Degree is a standard unit.
Degree is denoted by the symbol ' '.
A degree can be divided into 60 minutes (1 = 60 '), and a minute can be also be divided into 60 seconds (1 ' = 60").
In mathematics, angles are usually measured in radians.
An acute angle is an angle less than 90.
A right angle is an angle equal to 90.
An obtuse angle is an angle greater than 90 but less than 180.
A straight angle (or straight line) is an angle equal to 180.
A reflex angle is an angle greater than 180 but less than 360.
Supplementary angles are two angles with the sum equal to 180.
Two angles that sum to one right angle (90) are called complementary angles.
Two angles that sum to one full circle (360) are called explementary angles or conjugate angles.
People usually use a protractor to measure and draw angles.
Sometimes, people use an angle ruler or a 360 protractor to measure angles.
Acoustics is a science.
It studies the mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids.
These waves can make vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound.
A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician.
Someone who works with acoustics technology may be called an acoustical engineer.
Atomic physics is the field of physics that studies atoms as an isolated system of electrons and an atomic nucleus.
It is primarily concerned with the arrangement of electrons around the nucleus and the processes by which these arrangements change.
This includes ions as well as neutral atoms and, unless otherwise stated, for the purposes of this discussion it should be assumed that the term atom includes ions.
The term atomic physics is often associated with nuclear power and nuclear bombs, due to the synonymous use of atomic and nuclear in standard English.
However, physicists distinguish between atomic physics which deals with the atom as a system consisting of a nucleus and electrons and nuclear physics, which considers atomic nuclei alone.
As with many scientific fields, strict delineation can be highly contrived and atomic physics is often considered in the wider context of atomic, molecular, and optical physics.
Physics research groups are usually so classified.
Atomic physics always considers atoms in isolation.
Atomic models will consist of a single nucleus that may be surrounded by one or more bound electrons.
It is not concerned with the formation of molecules (although much of the physics is identical), nor does it examine atoms in a solid state as condensed matter.
It is concerned with processes such as ionization and excitation by photons or collisions with atomic particles.
While modelling atoms in isolation may not seem realistic, if one considers atoms in a gas or plasma then the time-scales for atom-atom interactions are huge in comparison to the atomic processes that are generally considered.
This means that the individual atoms can be treated as if each were in isolation, as the vast majority of the time they are.
By this consideration atomic physics provides the underlying theory in plasma physics and atmospheric physics, even though both deal with very large numbers of atoms.
Electrons form notional shells around the nucleus.
These are naturally in a ground state but can be excited by the absorption of energy from light (photons), magnetic fields, or interaction with a colliding particle (typically other electrons).
Electrons that populate a shell are said to be in a bound state.
The energy necessary to remove an electron from its shell (taking it to infinity) is called the binding energy.
Any quantity of energy absorbed by the electron in excess of this amount is converted to kinetic energy according to the conservation of energy.
The atom is said to have undergone the process of ionization.
In the event the electron absorbs a quantity of energy less than the binding energy, it will transition to an excited state.
After a statistically sufficient quantity of time, an electron in an excited state will undergo a transition to a lower state.
The change in energy between the two energy levels must be accounted for (conservation of energy).
In a neutral atom, the system will emit a photon of the difference in energy.
However, if the excited atom has been previously ionized, in particular if one of its inner shell electrons has been removed, a phenomenon known as the Auger effect may take place where the quantity of energy is transferred to one of the bound electrons causing it to go into the continuum.
This allows one to multiply ionize an atom with a single photon.
There are rather strict selection rules as to the electronic configurations that can be reached by excitation by light however there are no such rules for excitation by collision processes.
The majority of fields in physics can be divided between theoretical work and experimental work, and atomic physics is no exception.
It is usually the case, but not always, that progress goes in alternate cycles from an experimental observation, through to a theoretical explanation followed by some predictions that may or may not be confirmed by experiment, and so on.
Of course, the current state of technology at any given time can put limitations on what can be achieved experimentally and theoretically so it may take considerable time for theory to be refined.
One of the earliest steps towards atomic physics was the recognition that matter was composed of atoms, in the modern sense of the basic unit of a chemical element.
This theory was developed by the British chemist and physicist John Dalton in the 18th century.
At this stage, it was n't clear what atoms were although they could be described and classified by their properties (in bulk) in a periodic table.
The true beginning of atomic physics is marked by the discovery of spectral lines and attempts to describe the phenomenon, most notably by Joseph von Fraunhofer.
The study of these lines led to the Bohr atom model and to the birth of quantum mechanics.
In seeking to explain atomic spectra an entirely new mathematical model of matter was revealed.
As far as atoms and their electron shells were concerned, not only did this yield a better overall description, i.e. the atomic orbital model, but it also provided a new theoretical basis for chemistry (quantum chemistry) and spectroscopy.
Since the Second World War, both theoretical and experimental fields have advanced at a rapid pace.
This can be attributed to progress in computing technology, which has allowed larger and more sophisticated models of atomic structure and associated collision processes.
Similar technological advances in accelerators, detectors, magnetic field generation and lasers have greatly assisted experimental work.
American Sign Language (old names: Amslan, Ameslan) is the most popular sign language for the Deaf in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in parts of Mexico.
Although the United Kingdom and the United States share English as a spoken and written language, British Sign Language (BSL) is different from American Sign Language.
ASL actually comes from French Sign Language, as Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet went to England for help learning sign language to teach to his deaf neighbors.
He could not find anyone willing to teach him the British Sign Language, but did find some French people who were willing to help, he convinced one of them to travel back to the United States with him to set up the first deaf school in the U.S.
ASL is also used (sometimes with other sign languages) in the Philippines, Singapore, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, C te d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Chad, Gabon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Mauritania, Kenya, Madagascar, and Zimbabwe.
Like other sign languages, its grammar is different from any spoken language.
ASL includes fingerspelling.
Fingerspelling is a way to show any letter of the English alphabet using one hand.
Fingerspelling is also used to express numbers.
Names of people and names of places can be fingerspelled.
Counting the number of ASL speakers is difficult because ASL users have never been counted by the American census.
ASL use in the general American population has not been directly measured.
The ultimate source for current estimates of the number of ASL users in the United States is a report for the National Census of the Deaf Population (NCDP) by Schein and Delk (1974).
Based on a 1972 survey of the NCDP, Schein and Delk provided estimates consistent with a signing population between 250,000 and 500,000.
The survey did not distinguish between ASL and other forms of signing.
Incorrect figures are sometimes cited for the population of ASL speakers in the United States based on misunderstandings of statistics.
Demographics of the deaf population have been confused with those of ASL use.
This accounts for cited estimations which are greater than 500,000.
Such mistaken estimations can reach as high as 15,000,000.
ASL is sometimes incorrectly cited as the third - or fourth-most-spoken language in the United States.
These figures misquote Schein and Delk (1974), who said ASL speakers constituted the third-largest population requiring an interpreter in court.
An applet is a type of program for computers.
It is software.
Very often, applets are written in Java.
People run them in their Web browser.
They are used to display a scrolling menu on a website, for example, the applet is also used to show some applications.
In Java, there is a class called "Applet," which is extended when writing applets.
Atomic orbitals are the places surrounding the nucleus of an atom where the electrons are most likely to be at any given time.
It used to be believed that electrons behaved similarly to the solar system, where the nucleus is like the sun and the electrons orbit like the planets.
However, electrons do not go in circles, they move in many different directions.
The number of atomic orbitals in an element is defined by the period the element is in.
Electrons move between orbitals depending on how fast they are moving and how many other electrons there are.
Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins.
In eukaryotes, there are 20 standard amino acids out of which almost all proteins are made.
In biochemistry, an amino acid is any molecule that has both amine (NH2 + R) and carboxyl (C = O) functional groups.
In biochemistry, this term refers to alpha-amino acids with the general formula H2NCHRCOOH, where R is one of many side groups (see diagram).
About 500 amino acids are known.
For animals, the most important thing that amino acids do is to make proteins, which are very long chains of amino acids.
Every protein has its own sequence of amino acids, and that sequence makes the protein take different shapes, and have different functions.
Amino acids are like the alphabet for proteins; even though you only have a few letters, if you connect them, you can make many different sentences.
Nine of the 20 standard amino acids are "essential" amino acids for humans.
They can not be built (synthesised) from other compounds by the human body, and so must be taken in as food.
Others may be essential for some ages or medical conditions.
Essential amino acids may also differ between species.
Herbivores have to get their essential amino acids from their diet, which for some is almost entirely grass.
Ruminants such as cows get some amino acids via microbes in the first two stomach chambers.
An amino acid consists of an - carbon atom that is covalently bonded to four groups.
Every amino acid has at least one amino group (- NH2) and one carboxyl group (- COOH), except proline.
These are the proteinogenic amino acids, which are the building blocks for proteins.
They are produced by cellular machinery coded for in the genetic code of any organism.
The stop codon is not an amino acid, but is included for completeness.
UAG and UGA do not always act as stop codons (see above).
An essential amino acid can not be synthesized in humans.
It must be supplied in the diet.
Conditionally essential amino acids are not normally required in the diet, but must be supplied to populations which do not make enough of it.
Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS (London, 23 June 1912 Wilmslow, Cheshire, 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician and computer scientist.
He was born in Maida Vale, London.
Alan Turing was born in Maida Vale, London.
His father was part of a family of merchants from Scotland.
His mother, Ethel Sara, was the daughter of an engineer.
Turing went to St. Michael 's, a school at 20 Charles Road, St Leonards-on-sea, when he was six years old.
Turing was one of the people who worked on the first computers.
He was the first person to think of using a computer to do things that were too hard for a person to do.
He created the Turing machine in 1936.
The machine was imaginary, but it included the idea of a computer program.
Turing was interested in artificial intelligence.
He proposed the Turing test, to say when a machine could be called "intelligent".
A computer could be said to "think" if a human talking with it could not tell it was a machine.
During World War II, Turing worked to break German ciphers (secret messages).
Using cryptanalysis he helped to break the codes of the Enigma machine.
After that, he solved other German codes.
From 1945 to 1947, Turing worked on the design of the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) at the National Physical Laboratory.
He presented a paper on 19 February 1946.
That paper was "the first detailed design of a stored-program computer".
Although it was possible to build ACE, there were delays in starting the project.
In late 1947 he returned to Cambridge for a sabbatical year.
While he was at Cambridge, the Pilot ACE was built without him.
It ran its first program on 10 May 1950.
Turing was a homosexual man.
In 1952, he admitted having had sex with a man in England.
At that time, homosexual acts were illegal.
Turing was convicted.
He had to choose between going to jail and taking hormones to lower his sex drive.
He decided to take the hormones.
After his punishment, he became impotent.
He also grew breasts.
In May 2012, a private member 's bill was put before the House of Lords to grant Turing a statutory pardon.
In July 2013, the government supported it.
A royal pardon was granted on 24 December 2013.
In 1954, after suffering for two years, Turing died from cyanide poisoning.
The cyanide came from either an apple which was poisoned with cyanide, or from water that had cyanide in it.
The reason for the confusion is that the police never tested the apple for cyanide.
It is also suspected that he committed suicide.
The treatment forced on him is now believed to be very wrong.
It is against medical ethics and international laws of human rights.
In August 2009, a petition asking the British Government to apologise to Turing for punishing him for being a homosexual was started.
The petition received thousands of signatures.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown acknowledged the petition.
He called Turing 's treatment "appalling".
Area is the amount of space a two dimensional (flat) surface takes up.
It is useful because it is how much of a material is needed to make a hollow container; for example, how much wood is needed to make a wardrobe.
You can use different formulas to find the area of different shapes.
The area of a flat object is related to the surface area and volume of a three-dimensional object.
The area under a curve can be found using integration, from calculus.
Some units used to measure area are square mile and square kilometre.
The astronomical unit (AU) is a unit of length got from the Earth 's orbit.
It is the average distance the Earth gets from the Sun on the long axis of the ellipse.
Its definition is: the length of the semi-major axis of the Earth 's elliptical orbit around the Sun.
"Semi-major" means half the long axis.
The AU is about 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles.
Astronomers usually measure distances within the Solar System in astronomical units.
Mars is about 1.4 AU from the Sun, Jupiter lies at roughly 5.2 AU, and Neptune is roughly 30 AU from the Sun.
Light travels an AU in about 8.317 minutes.
From 1976 to 2012 the AU was defined as the radius of an unperturbed circular Newtonian orbit about the Sun of a particle having infinitesimal mass, moving with a mean motion of 0.01720209895 radians per day (known as the Gaussian constant).
In 2012, the IAU redefined it to be simply.
In the IERS numerical standards, the speed of light in a vacuum is defined as c0 =, in accordance with the SI units.
The time to cover an AU is A =, resulting in the astronomical unit in metres as c0 A =.
It is very roughly the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
An artist is a person who creates art.
This word is used most often for persons and activities of ` high culture '.
That is for example drawing, painting, sculpture, acting, dancing, writing, filmmaking, photography, and music.
Sometimes a person who is very good at their job is called an artist, even if it is not considered as art.
A scientist or mathematician can be called an artist.
In ancient Greece there was the word "Techne" which is often translated as art.
From this word comes "technical" and America is now the root of words such as technical, technology, etc..
The seven muses were the gods of artists in the seven fields of human excellence: Epic and lyric History Choral singing and poetry of love Music Tragedy Religious Hymns Gay poetry, poetry and rustic comedy Dance Astronomy and Geometry.
The word comes from Latin art "ars", that literally means skill method or technique, combined with the beauty of the objects produced.
In the Middle Ages already existed the word artist, although its meaning is closer to what we now call the craftsman.
Concept art expresses a series of creations, called classical arts (painting, sculpture, literature, dance, music, architecture and cinema).
However, considering someone as an artist is not limited to a series of works or concrete creations.
An artist is a person exercising the arts and produce artistic works.
The artist is someone who has a special sensitivity to create a work or activity.
There is no specific classification of what are an artist 's own activities.
In any case, the concept artist implies knowledge of art and at the same time, is a craft that can be professional but not necessarily.
The artist seeks to create an object or activity that has a component of beauty.
Very beautiful is one aspect cherished by the creators, but not only that.
It also seeks to communicate feelings and ideas and form their own world.
An artist is a person able to put their point of view, their way of seeing the world and feel things on a canvas, a sheet or paper.
An artist is a dreamer, is a poet, he is a speaker, is someone provided with sensibility sufficient or necessary to make us see things through their eyes.
Anglicanism is a denomination within the Christian religion.
It is made up of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion (a group of Anglican churches from many other countries).
The term at its broadest includes those who have accepted the work of the English Reformation as embodied in the Church of England or in the offshoot Churches which in other countries have adhered, at least substantially, to its doctrines, its organization, and its liturgy.
It is sometimes seen as being the middle way, between Roman Catholicism and extreme Protestantism.
And that is why it is not always included as part of Protestantism.
This is because, in the English Reformation, the English Church kept the early Catholic ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, and most of the doctrine and liturgy.
The critical point which led to the Anglican Church was the outright rejection of the Pope, and so of the Catholic Church as an organization.
The term Anglican comes from the phrase ecclesia anglicana.
This is a Medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246.
It means ` the English Church '.
The noun Anglican is used to describe the people, institutions and churches as well as the liturgical traditions and theological concepts developed by the state established Church of England and the Anglican Communion, a theologically broad and often divergent affiliation of thirty-eight provinces that are in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Anglicans can have many different beliefs.
For example, there are a range of beliefs about Holy Communion.
Some Anglicans believe that the bread and wine becomes the actual Body and Blood of Christ.
Other Anglicans think that Holy Communion is about remembering the life of Jesus Christ and his death on the Cross.
The first (` High Church ') is in the minority.
It is similar to the belief of Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
The second (the majority ` Low Church ') is like the belief of most Protestants.
It is fundamentally a Protestant church because the Bible is the source of authority, not the Pope.
The name Anglican for this Church comes from the Latin word for English because the Church started in England.
In the British Isles, Anglicanism has been the official or State religion in all parts at one time or another.
Anglican Church leaders, and the State, worked together in what is called the alliance of Throne and Altar or Church and State.
Together, they tried to make the Anglican denomination as broad and welcoming as possible to a wide range of Christian believers.
They did this to try to get as many citizens as they could to worship in the official church.
When Henry VIII wanted to divorce from Catherine of Aragon, the Pope refused to divorce him.
As a result, King Henry split from the Roman Catholic Church and started the Church of England.
The English Parliament, through the Act of Supremacy, declared King Henry VIII to be the "Supreme Head of the Church of England" in order to fulfill the "English desire to be independent from continental Europe religiously and politically."
This act stated that the king, not the pope was the head of the Church of England.
With this act, Henry VIII was not only free to divorce his wife and remarry, he also made England free from the interference of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church.
Although now separate from Rome, the English Church, at this point in history, continued to maintain the Roman Catholic theology on many things, such as the sacraments.
Over the years the Church of England was reformed even more, in what is known as the English Reformation, which it gained a number of characteristics which has finally formed the modern day Anglican Communion.
In the British Isles, and early British colonies, this was done to try to defeat both the followers of the Roman Catholic Church and all the kinds of Protestants too by including their best ideas, traditions, and practices in the Anglican Church.
Now, the only place in the United Kingdom where Anglicanism is still the official religion is England, where the monarch, Queen Elizabeth II is the Supreme Governor on Earth of the Church of England.
The effective government of the Church is by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the legal Church Parliament known as the General Synod.
In the rest of the world, Anglicanism was spread by overseas colonisation, settlement, and missionary work.
It functions there as an ordinary denomination of Christianity without special status.
Anglicans around the world join together in a group of national churches in countries where there are Anglican Churches to make the world-wide Anglican Communion.
There are more than 80 million Anglicans in the world today.
Most live in Africa and Asia and are not of British ethnic heritage anymore.
The Anglican Communion is struggling today with questions about the role of women and gay people in the Church.
There is a great chance that the Anglican Communion will not survive the stress of these serious issues, and will split into liberal and conservative groups.
Already, there are Anglicans who have broken from the main Churches to form their own separate groups of believers.
Some use the term Anglican combined with the word Catholic, Christian, Reformed, or Episcopal.
At the same time, leaders from the Anglican Communion hold talks with the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches to try to work toward Christian unity.
At times, there has been some progress.
Also, the Anglican and Lutheran Churches have agreed to a high level of shared beliefs, leadership, and practices called intercommunion.
Athens is the capital city of Greece.
It is one of the most famous cities in the world.
The city is named after Athena, a goddess in Greek mythology.
Athens has a population of approximately 4 million people and is growing.
It is in the prefecture, or division of the country, of Attica.
Athens was a powerful city in Classical times.
It was known for the amount of learning that happened there.
The city was home to Plato 's Academy and Aristotle 's Lyceum.
It also had its own Constitution.
Athens also created the world 's first known democracy.
The city started to decline in 529, when the Emperor Justinian I closed its philosophical schools.
The Parthenon was made a Christian church.
That act saved it later from destruction of non Christian temples, in times of deep Theocracy.
The Ottoman Turks took control of Athens in 1458.
The Turks made the Parthenon into a Muslim mosque.
The Parthenon was later damaged in 1687 when gunpowder exploded inside it.
Athens was freed from the Turks during the Greek War of Independence (1821-1833).
It was then made into the capital of Greece.
Anguilla is a group of five islands in the Caribbean Sea.
The islands are ruled by Great Britain.
Anguilla was once part of what is now Saint Kitts and Nevis, but broke away in 1980.
Anguilla wanted to still be a part of Great Britain, and Saint Kitts and Nevis wanted to be independent.
It is named after the Spanish word for "eel", because it has such a shape.
The queen of the United Kingdom is the ruler of Anguilla, but she works through a governor.
She names, or appoints the governor, and he is just working there in her place.
The legislature is elected by the people, has 11 members, and is called the House of Assembly.
Anguilla gets most of its money from fishing and tourism.
Most people in Anguilla are Protestants, and speak English.
The Territory of Ashmore and Cartier Islands is the collectibe name for two groups of small low-lying uninhabited tropical islands.
The islands are in the Indian Ocean north-west of Australia and south of the Indonesian island of Roti.
The Australian mainland is about 340 k to the southwest, the island of Timor (and Roti next to it) is about 160 k to the north.
The territory includes Ashmore Reef (West, Middle, and East Islets) and Cartier Island 70 k east with, a total area of 199.45 k within the reefs and including the lagoons, and 114400 m of dry land.
They have a long coastline, over 74 k, but there are no ports or harbors, only offshore anchorage.
Nearby Hibernia Reef, 42 k northeast of Ashmore Reef, is not part of the territory, because it has no permanently dry land area, although large parts of the reef become exposed during low tide.
The territory is administered from Canberra by the Australian Department of the Environment and Heritage.
Therefore, it is a dependency within the commonwealth.
The islands are visited by seasonal caretakers.
The word American is used to mean a person or a thing from the United States or any country in the Americas - North America, Central America, or South America.
In English, the most common use of this word is to mean a person or a thing from the United States.
Even though the islands in the Caribbean Sea are close to the Americas, people who speak English do not usually use the word "American" for people or things from these islands.
A Native American is someone who is mostly descended from the people who lived in the Americas before the Europeans arrived.
Native Americans are also called First Nations and Indians.
There is no language "American".
Some important languages used in the Americas are English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Some people still use Native American languages.
Quechua is the largest.
Ada is a computer programming language.
It was invented by Jean Ichbiah during the 1980s.
It is very similar to the programming language Pascal.
Ada offers various features to make a program as safe as possible.
That is why it is often used in systems, where an error can be very dangerous.
Ada is an international standard.
Alfonso Cuar n Orozco (; born 28 November 1961) is a Mexican movie director, screenwriter, producer and editor.
He is best known for his movies A Little Princess (1995), Y Tu Mam Tambi n (2001), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Children of Men (2006), and Gravity (2013).
Alfonso Cuar n was born in Mexico City.
He has been married twice.
He is now in a relationship with Sheherazade Goldsmith.
Arianism is a form of Christianity.
It has come from Arius.
Arianism has stopped being practiced today, but was important during the Roman era, into the Middle Ages.
Arianism opposed the dogma of the holy trinity.
The main difference between the beliefs of Arianism and other main Christian denominations is that the Arians did not believe in the Holy Trinity, which is a way that other Christian churches use to explain God.
The information that we have today comes from the writing of people who were against Arianism and said the beliefs were wrong.
These writings say that Arianism believed:
Between the First Council of Nicaea in 325, and the First Council of Constantinople in the year 381 there were no less than 18 different Creeds used by Arianists.
In the 16th century there was again a movement against the belief in Trinity.
A well-known person teaching this was Fausto Sozzini (1539-1604).
Another one was Ferenc D vid (1510s - 1579).
These movements developed into what is called Unitarianism today.
Unitarians believe that there is only one person in god, not the three-in-one dogma of trinity.
Some of the teachings of Jehovah 's Witnesses are close to some of the things Arians believed.
It is different only in that Arians believed the holy spirit is a person and Jehovah 's Witnesses teach it is not a person, but a force God uses to do His will.
It would however be false to call them Arians, as they reject many Arian teachings.
Mormons and Oneness Pentecostalism also reject the Trinity but for different reasons other than Arianism.
Antoninus Pius (Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus, 19 September 86 7 March 161), or simply Antoninus, was Roman Emperor from 138 to 161.
As a private citizen between 110 and 115, he married Annia Galeria Faustina the Elder.
They are believed to have enjoyed a happy marriage.
Faustina was a beautiful woman, renowned for her wisdom.
She spent her whole life caring for the poor and assisting the most disadvantaged Romans.
Faustina bore Antoninus four children, two sons and two daughters.
They included Faustina the Younger, a future Roman Empress, who married her maternal cousin, future Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
When Faustina died in 141, Antoninus was greatly bereaved and had a temple built in the Roman Forum in her name, had coins with her portrait struck in her honor, and created a charity called Girls of Faustina, which assisted orphaned girls.
Having filled with success the offices of quaestor and praetor, he was consul in 120.
He was appointed by Hadrian as one of the four proconsuls to administer Italia, then Asia.
The Emperor Hadrian adopted him as his son and successor on 25 February 138, after the death of his first adopted son Lucius Aelius.
The condition was that Antoninus would in turn adopt Marcus Annius Verus, the son of his wife 's brother, and Lucius, son of Aelius Verus, who afterwards became the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus
There are no records of any military related acts in his time.
One modern scholar has written "It is almost certain not only that at no time in his life did he ever see, let alone command, a Roman army, but that, throughout the twenty-three years of his reign, he never went within five hundred miles of a legion".
His reign was the most peaceful in the entire history of the Principate.
Unrest in Britannia is believed to have led to the construction of the Antonine Wall from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde, although it was soon abandoned.
He was virtually unique among emperors in that he dealt with crises without leaving Italy once during his reign.
He dealt with provincial matters through their governors or through imperial letters to the cities such as Ephesus (of which some were publicly displayed).
This style of government was highly praised by his contemporaries and by later generations.
Those twenty-two years were not remarkably eventful in comparison to those before and after his reign.
We might think that he wisely cut the activities of the Roman Empire to a careful minimum.
Perhaps he was uninterested in events away from Rome, and his inaction contributed to the troubles which faced Marcus Aurelius and other emperors of the third century.
German historian Ernst Kornemann, in his R mische Geschichte (roman history) (2 vols., ed.
by H. Bengtson, Stuttgart 1954), said that the reign of Antoninus comprised "a succession of grossly wasted opportunities", given the upheavals that were to come.
There is more to this argument, given that the Parthians in the East were themselves soon to make no small amount of mischief after Antoninus ' passing.
Kornemann 's brief is that Antoninus might have waged preventive wars to head off these outsiders.
After the longest reign since Augustus (surpassing Tiberius by a couple of months), Antoninus died of fever about twelve miles (19 km) from Rome, on 7 March 161.
The last word that he uttered when the tribune of the night-watch came to ask the password was "aequanimitas" (equanimity).
In cryptography, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which is also known as Rijndael, is a block cipher algorithm used as an encryption standard by the U.S. government.
It has been looked at a lot and is now used all over the world, as was the case with its predecessor, the Data Encryption Standard (DES).
AES was announced by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as U.S. FIPS PUB 197 (FIPS 197) on November 26, 2001 after a 5-year standardization process in which fifteen competing designs were presented and evaluated before Rijndael was selected as the most suitable.
It became effective as a standard May 26, 2002.
As of 2008, AES is one of the most popular algorithms used in symmetric key cryptography.
It is available by choice in many different encryption packages.
This marks the first time that the public has had access to a cipher algorithm approved by NSA for top secret information.
This cipher algorithm was developed by two Belgian cryptographers, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, and submitted to the AES selection process under the name "Rijndael", a portmanteau of the names of the inventors.
(Rijndael is).
"The design and strength of all key lengths of the AES algorithm (i.e., 128, 192 and 256) are sufficient to protect classified information up to the SECRET level.
TOP SECRET information will require use of either the 192 or 256 key lengths.
The implementation of AES in products intended to protect national security systems and\/or information must be reviewed and certified by NSA prior to their acquisition and use."
Many AES public products use 128-bit secret keys by default; it is possible that the NSA may assume that 128-bit secret keys are weak and they may prefer longer keys for top secret documents.
Unlike DES (the predecessor of AES), AES is a substitution-permutation network, not a Feistel network.
AES is fast in both software and hardware, is relatively easy to implement, and requires little memory.
As a new encryption standard, it is currently being deployed on a large scale on various platforms.
Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, 23 September 63 BC 19 August AD 14) was the first and one of the most important Roman Emperors.
He led Rome in its transition from a Republic to a great Empire.
Octavian, as he was originally called, was the adopted son of the dictator of the Roman Republic, Julius Caesar.
Octavian came into power in the Second Triumvirate.
This was three men ruling over the Roman Republic: Mark Antony, Lepidus and Octavian.
All three were loyal to Julius Caesar, the assassinated dictator, killed in 44 BC.
Following his death a civil war broke out across Rome, between those loyal to Caesar, and the conspirators, led by two of Caesar 's assassins, Brutus and Cassius.
At first, Octavian was the junior partner in the triumvirate.
Lepidus was more experienced in government, and Mark Antony was a fine military leader.
The triumvirate defeated Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi, 42 BC, largely due to Antony 's leadership.
Then they split the leadership of the Republic three ways.
Antony took the east, Lepidus took Spain and part of North Africa, and Octavian took Italy.
Antony followed in Caesar 's footsteps by going to Egypt and becoming Cleopatra 's lover.
They had three children together.
His absence from Rome allowed the intelligent Octavian to build up support.
The triumvirate broke up in 33 BC, and disagreement turned to civil war in 31 BC.
Antony was defeated by Octavian at the naval Battle of Actium and then at Alexandria.
He committed suicide, as did his lover, Cleopatra VII of Egypt, in 30 BC.
After winning this bloody power struggle, Octavian was voted as Emperor by the Roman Senate in 31 BC.
He took the name "Augustus" (which meant ` exalted ').
He ruled until AD 14, when his stepson and son-in-law Tiberius became Emperor in his place.
During his reign, some of those who were against his government were murdered (especially those senators who wanted to keep the Roman Republic).
He promised to make Rome a Republic again, but instead proclaimed himself High Priest (Pontifex Maximus).
Many temples in the provinces set up statues of him as one of their gods.
The name of the month "August" in English (and most other European languages) comes from him.
His main accomplishment was the creation of the Roman Empire, a political structure that lasted for nearly five centuries more.
He first recruited and set up the Praetorian Guard.
Historians often use the Res Gestae Divi Augusti as a source for Augustus.
It was written by him as an inscription on his tomb which recorded all his achievements.
The historian Tacitus is often used by historians.
He gives an anti-Augustan perspective, whereas many other sources and histories were written to flatter Augustus (propaganda).
Some examples of writers like these are Velleius Paterculus, Virgil, Ovid.
The most famous work of Augustan propaganda is the Virgil 's Aeneid
Cassius Dio presents a quite impartial account of Augustus as emperor: he was writing in the reign of a later emperor.
This is list of the Governors of U.S. state Alabama
The Apocrypha are religious texts that are in some versions of the Bible.
Other versions omit them.
The word comes from Ancient Greek ' (apokrypha).
Apocrypha means those that were hidden.
Generally, the term is applied to writings that were not part of the canon.
There are several reasons why these texts were not included in the canon.
The texts might only have been known to few people, or they might have been left out because their content does not fit well into that of the other books of the Bible.
Some of the apocrypha were written at a later date, and were therefore not included.
The Authorized King James Version called these books Apocrypha.
It separated them, because the Bible said so in 2 Esdras 14:46, But keep the seventy last, that thou mayest deliver them only to such as be wise among the people: For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the stream of knowledge.
Roman Catholic Bibles have these books in the Old Testament.
They do not call them Apocrypha.
They call them deuterocanonical, which means that they belong to the second canon.
Canon just means an official list of literary works accepted as representing a field.
The first list is of books first written in Hebrew.
This second list is of books first written in Greek.
These books were kept in Catholic Bibles because it is believed that the Bible Jesus read was a Bible that included the books of the "Apocrypha," the deuterocanonical books.
It is known that the most popular Bible at the time of Jesus was the Greek Septuagint version - which includes these extra books.
That is why early Church fathers quoted from Bibles including these books.
Christians disagree about the Apocrypha.
Others point out that the Apocrypha was in every Christian Bible until 1828.
In 1828 these books were taken out of some Bibles.
The translators of the King James Bible said that these books were written to prepare the people for Jesus, in the same way as John the Baptist did.
They said that the apostles used these books.
And modern day Mormons also have hints in the book of Mormon.
There is no question that these books have always been part of the Bible in Oriental Orthodox Churches, so they were definitely not added in the 1500s.
Around the year 80 AD, the Jewish Council (Sanhedrin) decided to cut the books from the Hebrew Bible, but they stayed in the Christian Bible.
Then soon after Christianity became the only religion of Roman Empire in the 4th century, the Romans decided to cut out all of the same books that the Sanhedrin had cut out, and they moved some of them to the "apocrypha".
Note: Other candidates for Apocryphal scriptures include supposedly lost portions of Esther and Sirach.
The Antarctic Treaty System is a set of agreements about the continent of Antarctica.
It was signed in 1959 and took effect in 1961.
So far, it has been signed by 46-48 countries.
The ATS is used for governing the continent.
The main idea of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) is to make sure that Antarctica is:
Ames is a city of Iowa in the United States.
In 2006 there were 54,181 people living in the city.
It is was built between Skunk River and Squaw Creek, 35 miles north of the state capital, Des Moines.
The town was first settled in 1864 as a railway town at a spot where the Skunk River could be crossed easily.
It was named after Oakes Ames, a member of the US Congress who supported building the railway.
Ames is the home of the Iowa State University.
It is also famous for being the home of the United States Department of Agriculture 's National Animal Disease Center.
Abalone (from Spanish Abul n) are a type of Gastropod shellfish.
Abalone are known by their colorful inside shell.
This is also called ear-shell, ormer in Guernsey, perlemoen in South Africa, and p ua in New Zealand.
The meat of this shellfish is thought to be delicious in some parts of Latin America (especially Chile), South East Asia, and East Asia (especially in China, Japan, and Korea).
Abalones live all over the world.
They can be seen along the waters of every continent, except the Atlantic coast of South America, the Caribbean, and the East Coast of the United States.
Most abalones are found in cold waters, along the coasts of New Zealand, South Africa and Australia, and Western North America and Japan in the Northern Hemisphere.
In the Chilean Pacific coast, the species called loco (Concholepas Concholepas, Brugui re, 1789) has a hard, black shell, and is eaten by many people.
Abalone have unique features: the shell is round, with two to three spirals.
The last spiral is grown into a large "ear" - like shape, which explains the name ` ear-shell '.
The inside of the shell is shiny, from silvery white to green-red mother-of-pearl.
Abalones can start to give birth at a small size.
Their fertility is high and increases with size (from 10,000 to 11 million eggs at a time).
Young albalones, called larvae, feed on plankton.
The adults eat plants and feed on algae.
They like to eat red algae.
Their size can be as small as 20 mm to as big as 200 mm.
The shell of the abalone is known for being very strong.
It is made of very tiny calcium carbonate tiles stacked like bricks.
Between the layers of tiles is a sticky protein substance.
Allergic skin reactions and asthma attacks can happen when breathing the dust made when these tiles are broken down.
The colorful inside part of the abalone shell can be used for decorative inlays, in guitars, for example.
Sport harvesting of Red Abalone is allowed with a California fishing license and an abalone stamp card.
Abalone may only be taken using breath-hold techniques: freediving or shorepicking.
SCUBA diving for abalone is strictly not allowed.
Abalone harvesting is not allowed south of the mouth of the San Francisco Bay.
There is a size minimum of seven inches measured across the shell and a limit of three per day and 24 per year that can be taken.
Transportation of abalone is only legal while the abalone is still attached to the shell.
Sale of sport-caught abalone is illegal, including the shell.
Only Red Abalone may be taken; black, white, pink, and flat abalone are protected by law.
An abalone diver normally uses a very thick wetsuit, including a hood, booties, and gloves.
He or she would also wear a mask, snorkel, weight belt, abalone iron, and abalone gauge.
It is common to take abalone in water a few inches up to 10 m\/28 ' deep.
Freedivers who can work deeper than 10 m\/28 ' are less common.
Abalone are normally found on rocks near food sources (kelp).
An abalone iron is used to pry the abalone from the rock before it can fully clamp down.
Visibility is normally five to ten feet.
Divers commonly dive out of boats, kayaks, tube floats or directly off the shore.
An eight inch abalone is considered a good catch, a nine inch would be very good, and a ten inch plus (250 mm) abalone would be an excellent catch.
Rock - or shore-picking is a different method from diving where the rock picker feels below rocks during low tides for abalone.
There has been a trade in diving to catch abalones off parts of the United States coast from before 1939.
In World War II, many of these abalone divers were recruited into the United States armed forces and trained as frogmen.
There have been a number of attempts to artificially grow (farm) abalone for the purpose of consumption.
In the Christian religion, an abbess (Latin abbatissa, feminine form of abbas, abbot) is the female superior of a community of nuns, which is often an abbey.
Arminianism is a school of soteriological thought in Protestant Christian theology founded by the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius.
An aromatic hydrocarbon, or arene, is a hydrocarbon ring compound.
It has alternating double and single bonds between carbon atoms forming rings.
Many of the compounds have a sweet scent, hence the term ` aromatic '.
The ring of six carbon atoms in aromatic compounds is known as a benzene ring, after the simplest possible hydrocarbon ring, benzene.
Aromatic hydrocarbons can be monocyclic (MAH) or polycyclic (PAH).
Some non-benzene-based compounds called heteroarenes, which follow H ckel 's rule, are also aromatic compounds.
In these compounds, at least one carbon atom is replaced by one of oxygen, nitrogen, or sulfur.
Benzene, C6H6, is the simplest aromatic hydrocarbon and was recognized as the first aromatic hydrocarbon, with the nature of its bonding first being recognized by Kekul in the 19th century.
Each carbon atom in the hexagonal cycle has four electrons to share.
One goes to the hydrogen atom, and one each to the two neighboring carbons.
This leaves one to share with one of its two neighboring carbon atoms, which is why the benzene molecule is drawn with alternating single and double bonds around the hexagon.
The structure is also illustrated as a circle around the inside of the ring to show six electrons floating around in delocalized molecular orbitals the size of the ring itself.
This also represents the equivalent nature of the six carbon-carbon bonds each equivalent to ~ 1.5.
The electrons are visualized as floating above and below the ring with the electromagnetic fields they generate acting to keep the ring flat.
The circle symbol for aromaticity was introduced by Sir Robert Robinson and his student James Armit in 1925 and popularized starting in 1959 by the Morrison & Boyd textbook on organic chemistry.
The proper use of the symbol is debated; it is used to describe any cyclic pi system in some publications, or only those pi systems that obey H ckel 's rule on others.
A reaction that forms an arene compound from an unsaturated or partially unsaturated cyclic precursor is simply called an aromatization.
Many laboratory methods exist for the organic synthesis of arenes from non-arene precursors.
Aromatic compounds play key roles in the biochemistry of all living things.
The four aromatic amino acids histidine, phenylalanine, tryptophan, and tyrosine each serve as one of the 20 basic building blocks of proteins.
Further, all 5 nucleotides (adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine, and uracil) that make up the sequence of the genetic code in DNA and RNA are aromatic purines or pyrimidines.
As well as that, the molecule heme contains an aromatic system with 22 electrons.
Chlorophyll also has a similar aromatic system.
Aromatic compounds are important in industry.
Key aromatic hydrocarbons of commercial interest are benzene, toluene, ortho-xylene and para-xylene.
About 35 million tonnes are produced worldwide every year.
They are extracted from complex mixtures obtained by the refining of oil or by distillation of coal tar.
They are used to produce a range of important chemicals and polymers, including styrene, phenol, aniline, polyester and nylon.
Almost all aromatic compounds are compounds of carbon, but they need not be hydrocarbons.
In heterocyclic aromatics one or more of the atoms in the aromatic ring is of an element other than carbon.
Examples include pyridine, pyrazine, imidazole, pyrazole, oxazole, thiophene, for example).
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are molecules with two or more simple aromatic rings fused together by sharing two neighboring carbon atoms.
Examples are naphthalene, anthracene and phenanthrene.
Many chemical compounds are aromatic rings with other things attached.
Examples include trinitrotoluene (TNT), acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), paracetamol, and the nucleotides of DNA.
Antimatter is a term in particle physics.
Antimatter is a material composed of antiparticles.
These have the same mass as particles of ordinary matter but have opposite charge and properties, such as lepton and baryon number.
Encounters between particles and antiparticles lead to the destruction of both.
This gives rise to high-energy photons (gamma rays), neutrinos, and lower-mass particle antiparticle pairs.
In physics, all the elementary particles, or the basic building blocks of the things we can touch, come in pairs.
Each particle has what is called an antiparticle.
This may look and act just like the regular particle, except for one major difference.
An example is the electron and the positron.
They both weigh the same, and act the same, but the electron has a negative electrical charge, while the positron has a positive electrical charge, which is where the positron (positive + electron) gets its name.
Other antimatter particles are the same way, where they have the same weight, and look and act the same as regular particles, but their electrical charge is the opposite of regular particles.
Antihydrogen, for example, has the positron, which is positively charged, orbiting around an antiproton, which is negatively charged, which is the opposite way regular hydrogen looks, which has the electron (negative charge), orbiting around a proton (positive charge).
Albert Einstein found a formula that can show how much energy a certain amount of something has, whether it is matter or antimatter.
This formula is, and is one of the most well known equations.
In simple terms, if you take the mass of something and then multiply it by the speed of light, and then multiply it by the speed of light again, you will get how much pure energy a given piece of something has.
Since the speed of light is such a big number, this means that even a small amount of matter can have a lot of energy (it has been projected to be 4 times more effective per mass than nuclear fission).
Antimatter was predicted from the expanded form of, which is.
You can take the square root of each side of the equation, since it is equal.
However, any real square root has two answers.
You can think of the negative root as being antimatter.
The reason this is important to understand antimatter is because scientists found that when matter and antimatter touch each other, the amount of energy that is released comes very close to the amount of energy says should be all together in those two pieces.
The reason is that each particle of matter, when it touches its antiparticle in the antimatter world, both change over into pure energy, or annihilate each other.
This release of such a high amount of energy is why a lot of science fiction writers use antimatter for fuel in their stories.
For example, author Dan Brown uses antimatter in "Angels and Demons" as a very powerful weapon.
It is also being looked at as a fuel source for real-life missions to outer space in the future.
Many scientists think that in the first few moments after the Big Bang, which created the universe a very long time ago, both matter and antimatter were mixing together.
Since there was just a little bit more matter than antimatter (scientists still have not figured out why this happened yet), whatever was left over after most of the matter and antimatter annihilated into energy became the Universe we see today.
Physicists do not yet know for sure that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created, and because of this, they are also wondering where the antimatter went, and if any was left over from the beginning of the universe.
Another theory is that there is lots of antimatter on the other side of the universe, hidden far beyond our vision.
They could have formed their own galaxies and solar systems too.
Because antimatter can make so much energy, it can be used for a lot of things, such as fuel for going into outer space, or in our cars.
The problem is that antimatter is very expensive to make, and is almost as expensive to store, since it can not touch regular matter.
It takes several hundred million dollars to make less than one-millionth of a gram of antimatter.
In fact, it is the most expensive and the rarest substance on Earth.
Since it is so expensive, this means that antimatter is not practical to use as a weapon or as an energy source, because so little of it is obtainable.
Recently, however, scientists have trapped antimatter for over 16 minutes (1000 sec.
total).
It does have a use in medicine, because a special kind of scanner called the PET, which stands for positron emission tomography, uses positrons to go into the human body.
Doctors can look at the way the positron changes into energy inside a person 's body, and be able to tell if something is wrong inside a person.
This kind of machine works differently than an X-ray machine or a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, and can help doctors see things that those other machines can not see.
The Park G ell (Catalan: Parc G ell) is a public park system of gardens and architectonic elements.
It is located on Carmelo Hill, in Barcelona (Spain).
Carmelo Hill belongs to the mountain range of Sierra de Collserola the Parque del Carmelo (Catalan: Parc del Carmel) is located on the northern face.
Park G ell is located in La Salut, a neighborhood in the Gr cia district of Barcelona.
With urbanization in mind, Eusebi G ell gave the design of the park to architect Antoni Gaud.
He designed the park in the Catalonian modernism style.
The park was built between 1900 and 1914.
It opened as a public park in 1926.
In 1984, UNESCO declared the park a World Heritage Site under Works of Antoni Gaud.
Park G ell was one of 100 finalists for the 12 Treasures of Spain in 2007.
There is an antiparticle corresponding to most kinds of particle.
It has the same mass and opposite electric charge.
Even electrically neutral particles, such as the neutron, are not identical to their antiparticle.
In the example of the neutron, the ` ordinary ' particle is made out of quarks and the antiparticle out of antiquarks.
Particle-antiparticle pairs can annihilate each other if they are in appropriate quantum states.
They can also be produced in various processes.
These processes are used in particle accelerators to create new particles and to test theories of particle physics.
High energy processes in nature can create antiparticles.
These are visible in cosmic rays and in certain nuclear reactions.
The word antimatter properly refers to (elementary) antiparticles, composite antiparticles made with them (such as antihydrogen) and to larger assemblies of either.
In 1932, soon after the prediction of positrons by Paul Dirac, Carl Anderson found that cosmic-ray collisions produced these particles in a cloud chamber - a particle detector in which moving electrons (or positrons) leave behind trails as they move through the gas.
The antiproton and antineutron were found by Emilio Segr and Owen Chamberlain in 1955 at the University of California, Berkeley.
Since then the antiparticles of many other subatomic particles have been created in particle accelerators.
In recent years, complete atoms of antimatter have been assembled out of antiprotons and positrons, collected in electromagnetic traps.
Apatosaurus is a sauropod dinosaur which lived in the Upper Jurassic period.
It is in the same family as Diplodocus.
Brontosaurus was once thought a later name for Apatosaurus, but is now proved to be a separate genus.
Apatosaurus grew as big as 21 meters long, 4.5 meters tall at the hip, and weighed up to 23 metric tons.
It ate plants.
Its bones have been found in Wyoming, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Utah.
When it was first found, scientists thought that Apatosaurus lived partly under water, since it could not hold its own weight on dry land.
Now they think it lived on dry land, probably in herds.
The cervical vertebrae were less elongated and more solid than those of Diplodocus.
The bones of the leg were much stockier (despite being longer), implying a more robust animal.
The tail was held above the ground during normal locomotion.
Like most sauropods, Apatosaurus had only a single large claw on each forelimb, with the first three toes on the hind limb possessing claws.
It was believed throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries that sauropods like Apatosaurus were too massive to support their own weight on dry land.
It was theorized that they lived partly submerged in water, perhaps in swamps.
Recent findings do not support this.
Sauropods are now thought to have been fully terrestrial animals.
A study of diplodocid snouts showed that the square snout, large proportion of pits, and fine, subparallel scratches of the teeth of Apatosaurus suggests it was a ground-height, nonselective browser.
It may have eaten ferns, cycads, seed ferns, horsetails, and algae.
Important issues like heat control, metabolic rate and respiration are still unclear.
Some scientists state that the heart would have had trouble sustaining sufficient blood pressure to oxygenate the brain.
Others suggest that the near-horizontal posture of the head and neck would have eliminated the problem of supplying blood to the brain because it would not have been elevated.
James Farlow calculates that an Apatosaurus-sized dinosaur about 35 t would have had 5.7 t of fermentation contents (food being digested).
"The heat of fermentation may have been a significant source of thermoregulatory heat for these reptiles".
Allosaurus was a large theropod dinosaur from the Jurassic period, a predatory carnivore.
Allosaurus averaged 8.5 metres (28 ft) in length, though some remains suggest it could reach over 12 meters (39 ft).
Its three-fingered forelimbs were smaller than its large hind legs, and the body was balanced by a long, heavy tail.
It weighed 2\/3 tons.
It is the most common large predator found in the Morrison Formation of North America.
This formation was laid down 155 to 145 million years ago, in the Jurassic.
Allosaurus was at the top of the food chain.
It probably preyed on large herbivorous dinosaurs and perhaps even other predators (e.g. Ceratosaurus).
Potential prey included ornithopods, stegosaurs, and sauropods.
Some paleontologists think Allosaurus had cooperative behavior, and hunted in packs.
Others believe they may have been aggressive toward each other.
Groups have been found together in the fossil record.
This might be evidence of pack behavior, or just the result of lone individuals feeding on the same carcass.
Remains of many individuals have been found, including some which are almost complete.
Over sixty individuals from one species have been found.
Sauropods, live or dead, seem to be likely candidates as prey.
Sauropod bones with holes fitting allosaur teeth, and the presence of shed allosaur teeth with sauropod bones have been found.
There is dramatic evidence for allosaur attacks on Stegosaurus.
An Allosaurus tail vertebra has been found with a partially healed puncture which fits a Stegosaurus tail spike.
Also, there is a Stegosaurus neck plate with a U-shaped wound that correlates well with an Allosaurus snout.
Allosaurus was probably not a predator of fully grown sauropods, unless it hunted in packs.
It had a modestly sized skull and relatively small teeth, and was greatly outweighed by adult sauropods.
Another possibility is that it preferred to hunt juveniles instead of fully grown adults.
Researchers have made other suggestions.
Robert T. Bakker compared the short teeth to serrations on a saw.
This saw-like cutting edge runs the length of the upper jaw, and could have been driven into prey.
This type of jaw would permit slashing attacks against much larger prey, with the goal of weakening the victim.
Another study showed the skull was very strong but had a relatively small bite force.
The authors suggested that Allosaurus used its skull like a hatchet against prey, attacking open-mouthed, slashing flesh with its teeth, and tearing it away without splintering bones.
They suggested that different strategies could be used against different prey.
The skull was light enough to allow attacks on smaller and more agile ornithopods, but strong enough for high-impact ambush attacks against larger prey like stegosaurs and sauropods.
Their ideas were challenged by other researchers, who found no modern examples of a hatchet attack.
They thought it more likely that the skull was strong to absorb stresses from struggling prey.
The original authors noted that Allosaurus itself has no modern equivalent, so the absence of a modern ` hatchet attacker ' was not significant.
They thought the tooth row was well-suited to such an attack, and that articulations (joints) in the skull helped to lessen stress.
Another possibility for handling large prey is that theropods like Allosaurus were ` flesh grazers ' which could take bites of flesh out of living sauropods, sufficient to sustain the predator so it did not need to kill the prey outright.
This strategy might have allowed the prey to recover and be fed upon again later.
Another idea is that ornithopods, the most common available prey, could be subdued by Allosaurus grasping the prey with their forelimbs, and then making bites on the throat to crush the trachea.
The forelimbs were strong and capable of restraining prey, and the articulation of the claws suggests that they could have been used to hook things.
The shape of the Allosaurus skull limited binocular vision to 20 of width, slightly less than that of modern crocodilians.
As with crocodiles, this may have been enough to judge prey distance and time attacks.
The similar width of their field of view suggests that allosaurs, like modern crocodiles, were ambush hunters.
Finally, the top speed of Allosaurus has been estimated at 30 to 55 kilometers per hour (19 to 34 miles per hour).
The fossil site known as the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in Emery County, Utah was known in 1927, but major operations did not begin there until 1960.
An effort from nearly 40 institutions got thousands of bones between 1960 and 1965.
The quarry is notable for the many Allosaurus remains, the condition of the specimens, and our ignorance of its ancient origin.
It is estimated that the remains of at least 46 A. fragilis have been found there, out of at least 73 dinosaurs.
The fossils found there are disarticulated (separate) and well-mixed.
Suggestions as to how it arose include animals getting stuck in a bog, to becoming trapped in deep mud, to falling victim to drought-induced mortality around a waterhole, to getting trapped in a spring-fed pond or seep.
Regardless of the cause, the great quantity of well-preserved Allosaurus remains means the animal is one of the best-known theropods.
Individuals of almost all ages and sizes are found, from less than 1 meter (3.3 ft) to 12 meters (39 ft) long.
Allosaurus, like Tyrannosaurus, has come to represent the quintessential large, carnivorous dinosaur in popular culture.
It is a common dinosaur in museums.
A number of museums cooperated in excavations at the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry.
By 1976, museums in eight countries on three continents had Cleveland-Lloyd allosaur material or casts.
Allosaurus is the official ` state fossil ' of Utah.
Allosaurus is top predator in both Arthur Conan Doyle 's 1912 novel, The Lost World, and its 1925 film adaptation, the first full-length motion picture to feature dinosaurs.
Allosaurus was used as the starring dinosaur of the 1956 film The Beast of Hollow Mountain, and the 1969 film The Valley of Gwangi.
Gwangi is billed as an Allosaurus, though Ray Harryhausen based his model for the creature on Charles R. Knight 's depiction of a Tyrannosaurus.
Allosaurus appeared in the second episode of the 1999 BBC television series Walking with Dinosaurs and the follow-up special The Ballad of Big Al, which speculated on the life of the ` Big Al ' specimen, as revealed by the numerous injuries and pathologies in its skeleton.
The AK-47 is a Russian assault rifle designed in 1947 by Mikhail Kalashnikov and first used in 1949.
It and an updated version called the AKM were used by the Soviet Union 's Military (which was called the Soviet Army).
It was later replaced by the AK-74.
The AK-47 quickly became famous and spread all around the world because it was simple to fire, clean and maintain, and also because of its reliability, meaning that it can be used a long time without jamming.
The AK-47 and its successors continue to be used by many of the world 's armies.
Many terrorist and insurgent groups also use the AK-47.
It is a cheap, reliable, and easy-to-use weapon.
The AK-47 was also available with a folding stock, the AKS-47, and a shortened version with the AKS74 folding stock, the AKMSU (used by armored vehicle crews), although this was soon replaced by the AKS74U, which fires the 5.45 cartridge of the AK-74.
There was also a light machine gun variant with a longer barrel and different shaped stock called the RPK.
The AK-47 uses Gas-operated reloading.
When the bullet is moved down the barrel, a little bit of the gas behind the bullet is made to go up a small tube that pushes away the bolt.
This is special because the person who is shooting the gun does not have to reload with their hand every time that they want to shoot - the gun reloads by itself.
When you pull the trigger, the chambered bullet fires.
You then release and then pull the trigger again to fire another round.
This is called Semi-Automatic.
The AK-47 used many simple ideas that were first invented for the German Sturmgewehr-44 WW2 assault rifle.
The AK-47 is a common gun used by many groups because it is so cheap and available.
One of the reasons it is so common is that the Soviets left many behind when they left Afghanistan in 1989 after invading it in 1979.
The letters AK stand for Avtomat Kalashnikova, which is Russian for Kalashnikov 's Automatic Rifle.
It shoots the Soviet 7.62 x39mm cartridge.
It is only accurate up to 300 meters, and beyond that range the bullet starts to tumble and drop.
However, this is what Mikhail Kalashnikov intended, since most firefights (fights fought using guns) in WWII happened within 300 m. He wanted a weapon that was useful within that kind of range, since bolt-action rifles, despite having longer effective ranges (range where the gun is accurate), were too slow-firing and too big to be a good weapon in close-quarters combat (fighting that happens in tight spaces).
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was one of the first computers.
It was designed in 1937.
It was not able to be programmed, and it was designed only to solve groups of linear equations.
It was successfully tested in 1942.
It was very amazing technology for the time.
It was the first machine to use many important things used in modern computing.
The Andes are a mountain range along the western coast of South America.
They stretch over 7,000 km \/ 4,400 miles from the south of Argentina and Chile to the north of Colombia.
They are also found in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.
The Amazon river system has its sources in the eastern flanks of the Andes.
The Andes are the longest exposed mountain range of the world, and the second-highest after the Himalayas.
The Andes mountain range is the highest mountain range outside Asia.
Aconcagua, the highest peak, rises to 6,962 m (22,841 ft) above sea level.
The top of Mount Chimborazo in the Ecuadorean Andes is the point on the Earth 's surface most distant from its center.
Mount Chimborazo is an inactive volcano in Ecuador, which last erupted over a thousand years ago.
The northern part has two parallel ranges.
They are the Cordillera Occidental (western) and the Cordillera Oriental (eastern).
The term cordillera comes from the Spanish word meaning ` rope '.
In Colombia, north to the border with Ecuador, the Andes split in three parallel ranges, western, central and eastern.
In the north the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Snowy Mountain Range of Saint Martha) is an isolated mountain range apart from the Andes chain that runs through Colombia.
Reaching an altitude of 5,700 metres above sea level just 42 km from the Caribbean coast, the Sierra Nevada is the world 's highest coastal range.
The western range of the eastern Cordillia Oriental is the only one which reaches Colombia.
The Andes range is about 200 k wide throughout its length, except in Bolivia where it is 640 k wide.
The islands of the Dutch Caribbean Aruba, Bonaire, and Cura ao, which lie in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela, represent the submerged tops of the northern edge of the Andes range.
The Andes are a Mesozoic Tertiary orogenic belt of mountains along the Pacific Ring of Fire.
The Andes are the result of plate tectonics processes, caused by the subduction of oceanic crust beneath the South American continental plate.
South America, like North America, has been moving west since the Cretaceous period.
The formation of the modern Andes began with the events of the Triassic and Jurassic when Pangea begun to break up and several rifts developed.
It was during the Cretaceous period that the Andes began to take their present form, by the uplifting, faulting and folding of sedimentary and metamorphic rock of the ancient cratons to the east.
The rise of the Andes has not been constant and different regions have had different degrees of tectonic stress, uplift, and weathering.
The climate in the Andes differs depending on which area, the altitude, and how close it is to the sea.
The southern section is rainy and cool.
The central Andes are dry.
The northern Andes are normally rainy and warm, with an average temperature of 18 C in Colombia.
The climate is known to change very much in rather short distances.
Rainforests exist just miles away from the snow covered peak Cotopaxi.
The mountains have a large effect on the temperatures of nearby areas.
The snow line depends on the location.
It is at between 4,500 and 4,800 m (14,800 15,800 ft) in the tropical Ecuadorian, Colombian, Venezuelan, and northern Peruvian Andes, going up to 4,800 5,200 m (15,800 17,060 ft) in the drier mountains of southern Peru south to northern Chile south to about 30 S, then going down to 4500 m on Aconcagua at 32 S, 2000 m at 40 S, 500 m at 50 S, and only 300 m in Tierra del Fuego at 55 S; from 50 S, many of the bigger glaciers go down to sea level.
The Andes of Chile and Argentina can be put in two climatic and glaciological zones; the Dry Andes and the Wet Andes.
Rainforests used to hold much of the northern Andes but are now mostly diminished, especially in the Choc and inter-Andean valleys of Colombia.
As a direct opposite of the humid Andean slopes are the mostly dry Andean slopes in most of western Peru, Chile and Argentina.
Along with many Interandean Valles, they are normally ruled by deciduous woodland, shrub and xeric vegetation, reaching in the slopes near the mostly lifeless Atacama Desert.
About 30,000 species of vascular plants live in the Andes.
About half of those are endemic to the region, going past the difference of any other hotspot.
The small tree Cinchona pubescens, a source of quinine which is used to treat malaria, is found widely in the Andes as far south as Bolivia.
Other important crops that came from the Andes are tobacco and potatoes.
The high-altitude Polylepis forests and woodlands are found in the Andean places of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile.
These trees, by locals are called Que ua, Yagual and other names, can be found at altitudes of 4500 m above sea level.
It is still unclear if the patchy distribution of these forests and woodlands is natural, or the result of clearing which began during the Incan time.
Regardless, in modern times the clearance has had a faster pace, and the trees are now thought to be highly endangered, with some thinking that as little as 10 % of the original woodland is still here.
The Andes has a lot of wildlife.
With almost 1,000 species, of which about 2\/3 are endemic to the region, the Andes is the most important region in the world for amphibians.
Animal diversity in the Andes is high, with almost 600 species of mammals (13 % endemic), more than 1,700 species of birds (1\/3 endemic), more than 600 species of reptiles (45 % endemic), and almost 400 species of fish (1\/3 endemic).
The Vicu a and Guanaco can be found living in the Altiplano, while the closely related domesticated Llama and Alpaca are commonly kept by locals as pack animals and for their meat and wool.
The nocturnal chinchillas, two threatened members of the rodent order, live in the Andes ' alpine regions.
The Andean Condor, the largest bird of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, lives throughout much of the Andes but mostly in very low numbers.
Other animals found in the mostly open habitats of the high Andes are the huemul, cougar, and foxes in the genus Pseudalopex.
And for birds, some species of tinamous (they are members of the genus Nothoprocta), are the Andean Goose, Giant Coot, flamingos (mainly associated with hypersaline lakes), Lesser Rhea, Andean Flicker, Diademed Sandpiper-plover, miners, sierra-finches and diuca-finches.
Anchors are used to stop boats from moving.
Today, anchors are usually made of metal, and they are made to catch the ocean floor (the seabed).
There are two main types of anchors: temporary and permanent.
A permanent anchor is called a mooring block and is not easily moved.
A temporary anchor can be moved and is carried on the boat.
When people talk about anchors, they are usually thinking about temporary anchors.
An anchor works by either weight (mass) or shape.
Shape is more important to temporary anchors, and design is very important.
Anchors must resist wind and tide, and also the up-and-down movement of waves.
The oldest anchors were just rocks, and many rock anchors have been found from a long time ago.
Many modern moorings still use a large rock as the mooring block.
A simple anchor which uses two arms made of wood, and a rock weight, is an anchor which is still used today.
The wood arms are sharp to enter the seabed, and the weight will hold normal movement.
The English language uses several special words to describe parts of anchors.
This is because England has a rich marine and naval history, and so the language gives a large number of words to boat and ship terminology.
A modern temporary anchor usually has a middle bar called the shank, attached to a flat surface (traditionally called fluke) which holds the seabed.
The place where the shank meets the fluke is called the crown, and the shank is usually fitted with a ring or shackle to attach it to the rode (cable, chain, or rope joining the anchor to the boat).
Some old anchors have attached to the shank a stock, which is a bar that places the anchor in a certain way when it falls on the seabed.
Old anchors are often named "stocked" or "stockless" anchors depending on whether they have this, or not.
There are many designs.
Over the last 20 years, many new anchor designs have appeared.
These anchors are usually designed for small vessels, and are usually not for large ships.
See modern designs.
The Fisherman has a traditional design that has not changed much over time.
It is less useful than a good modern design, and its holding power for its weight is among the worst of all anchor types.
The most common type of fluke anchors is the Danforth.
The Danforth style uses a stock at the crown (see above), to which two large flat flukes are attached.
The stock can rotate, so the flukes can move toward the bottom.
It can hold very well but has difficulty setting (entering the seabed) on its own.
It is efficient for its weight.
Fluke anchors have difficulty penetrating kelp and weed seabeds, as well as very hard sand or clay seabeds.
Once set, the anchor can come free and fail to reset on its own.
A traditional design, the grapnel style is simple to design and build.
It is a simple hook that is good for rock or reefs.
It is useless for most other seabeds.
The original CQR was invented in 1933 in the United Kingdom.
Many copies of it now exist.
Plows used to be popular with sailors and private boaters.
They are good but not excellent in most seabeds.
Another more recent design is the Delta which is better.
Plows use a special weight in the tip of the fluke (the toe) for them to work properly.
This makes them heavy.
The genuine CQR and Delta brands are now owned by Lewmar.
The genuine Bruce was invented in the 1970 's and to try to solve some problems of the plow.
Many copies are now made.
This type of anchor is now called a "claw-type".
Claw anchors can set quickly in some seabeds, but do not hold well for their weight, and can let go very suddenly.
Bruce Anchor Group no longer make the genuine Bruce.
Most copies are lower quality than the genuine Bruce.
Modern anchors are designed to be better than the plow and claw types.
Many are new, still under patent and owned by commercial companies or tied to certain brands.
Many modern designs are better than the older types.
This chart shows tests done by West Marine (an American marine shop) in 2006.
The anchors were tested on three different sandy seabeds, at three different scopes (pull angles).
Six of the seven best anchors on this chart are "modern", but several modern anchors did very badly.
This shows that ` newer ' is not always better.
Permanent anchors are used when a floating thing must be kept in place for a long time.
They are used to anchor Lightships, navigation buoys, and moorings.
The anchor must hold in all weather, even the worst storm.
A deadweight anchors is a heavy weight.
It can be used when the bottom is too hard for other types of anchors.
It can be made of a large rock or a concrete block.
Mushroom and pyramid anchors are good where the seabed is soft.
This type of anchor needs time to dig into the seabed.
It can be smaller and lighter than a deadweight anchor.
The mushroom anchor is shaped like a mushroom, and the pyramid anchor is shaped like a pyramid with the apex pointing down.
The sand screw must be screwed into the seabed before it is used.
It can be very light.
An anagram is a puzzle where the player has to move all the letters in a word to make a new word.
An example would be The Morse Code and Here Comes Dots.
Anagrams are often used in fiction when a character wants to use a different name.
For example, the Harry Potter character named Tom Marvolo Riddle made an anagram based on his name, "I Am Lord Voldemort", and began calling himself "Lord Voldermort".
Andr - Marie Amp re (20 January 1775 10 June 1836) was a French physicist and mathematician who helped discover electromagnetism.
An electrical unit called the ampere is named after him.
Ampere was born in Lyon, France in 1775.
During his childhood, Ampere 's father taught him Latin, until he found out that his son was talented in mathematical studies.
However, young Ampere continued his study on Latin, so that he could understand and master the works of Euler and Bernoulli.
In his later life, Ampere began to distinguish himself in mathematics, but also he studied history, travels, poetry, philosophy, and the natural sciences.
During the French Revolution, a great sorrow came to Ampere 's life; he lost his father who was executed by revolutionaries.
The death of his father brought a huge impact to Ampere.
In 1796, he met the daughter of a blacksmith living near Lyon named Julie Carron, and married her in 1799.
Afterward, Ampere worked as a professor in Lyon, giving lessons in mathematics, chemistry, languages, and physics.
He continued working as a professor even after the death of his wife in 1803.
However, her death bothered Ampere for the rest of his life.
Ampere died at Marseille and buried in the Cimetiere de Montmartre, Paris.
In his work Journal et correspondence, we can see his amiability and childlike simplicity of his character.
Ampere is most known for establishing the relationship between electricity and magnetism, and combining them into a new field called electromagnetism, or electrodynamics.
On September 11, 1820, Ampere heard from the discovery of H.C. Orsted that a magnetic needle can be activated by a voltaic current.
Only a week later, he came up with a much more advanced version of that kindred phenomena.
It was such an amazing development.
On the same day, he also discovered like charges repel and different charges come towards each other.
Ammonia is a chemical.
Its formula is NH3 (not to be confused with Ammonium that has a formula of NH4 +).
It is made from nitrogen and hydrogen atoms.
Ammonia is toxic.
If a goldfish tank is dirty from their waste, the fish can suffer from ammonia burns which cause black spots or patches on their body.
The tank must be large enough and have a filter.
Because of its many uses, ammonia is one of the most highly produced inorganic chemicals.
Dozens of chemical plants worldwide produce ammonia.
The worldwide ammonia production in 2004 was 109 million metric tonnes.
China produced 28.4 % of the worldwide production (increasingly from coal as part of urea synthesis) followed by India with 8.6 %, Russia with 8.4 %, and the United States with 8.2 %.
About 80 % or more of the ammonia produced is used for fertilizing agricultural crops.
Today, the typical modern ammonia-producing plant first converts natural gas (i.e., methane) or liquefied petroleum gas (such gases are propane and butane) or petroleum naphtha into gaseous hydrogen.
The process used in producing the hydrogen begins with removal of sulfur compounds from the natural gas (because sulfur deactivates the catalysts used in subsequent steps).
Catalytic hydrogenation converts organosulfur compounds into gaseous hydrogen sulfide:
The carbon dioxide is then removed either by absorption in aqueous ethanolamine solutions or by adsorption in pressure swing adsorbers (PSA) using proprietary solid adsorption media.
To produce ammonia, the hydrogen then reacts with nitrogen (derived from process air) using a magnetite catalyst under high pressure to form anhydrous liquid ammonia.
This step is known as the ammonia synthesis loop (also referred to as the Haber-Bosch process):
Hydrogen required for ammonia synthesis could also be produced economically using other sources like coal or coke gasification, less economically from the electrolysis of water into oxygen + hydrogen and other alternatives that are presently impractical for large scale production.
At one time, most of Europe 's ammonia was produced from the Hydro plant at Vemork, using electrolysis.
An amethyst is a mineral that comes from quartz.
It is usually transparent.
It is a type of rock.
It is valued because of its violet color.
Even though it is from quartz, it has more iron oxide (Fe2O3) than any other kind of quartz.
Because of this, some experts think that its color comes from the iron in it.
Heating the amethyst either takes away its color or changes it to a yellow hue.
Amethysts are found in Brazil, Uruguay, Ontario, and North Carolina.
The rock amethyst is the birthstone of the month February.
Many people believe amethysts protect one from poison, evil, and getting drunk.
This is where the name of this rock came from, The Greek word amethustos, means "without being drunken".
Also they are thought to be good for hearing, recovering from headaches, good dreams, and more.
Some Catholic popes also wear a rosary of amethyst around their necks.
Some Roman women thought gems could keep their husbands faithful to them.
Amethysts are also worn because people think it makes them look gentle.
The powers of an amethyst also include healing, peace, love, more spirituality, courage, protection from robbers, and happiness.
In the Mohs scale, it is included as the number seven.
In the New Testament, according to the Bible, the amethyst became part of the foundation of Jerusalem.
This was written in the Book of Revelations.
Each gemstone was a symbol of something.
The amethyst stood for being a gift of tongues and being filled with the desire to please God.
The amethyst is worn and used for fashion in a number of different ways.
It is polished and shaped for rings, earrings, and cufflinks.
It may be also used for brooches, sometimes being carved into a cluster of grapes.
People like the way amethysts look, especially when they are put in gold and diamonds.
In the legends, there are many stories about amethysts.
One of them tells how amethysts were supposedly created.
According to the story, Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and partying, was angry because of something against him and wanted to get revenge.
He ordered that the first person who was mortal to come across his path would be eaten by tigers.
Just at that moment a beautiful maiden named Amethyst came, on her way to worship the goddess Diana.
Diana saw what was going to happen and she quickly made Amethyst a stone to save her from the tigers.
When Bacchus saw this, he repented and poured wine over the stone, making its color purple.
The amethyst is worn by royalty and nobility.
This is because its royal color was purple.
When it was found in the Minoan period in Greece (c. 2500 B.C.), it was polished and shaped into cabochons (dome-shaped stones).
Then, it was set in gold.
During the 15th century, the French fleur-de-lis brooch could only be worn by the Royal family on special times.
The fleur-de-lis design on it is put in with sapphires and amethysts.
Albertosaurus was a relative of Tyrannosaurus.
Albertosaurus was smaller than T. rex and lived a few million years earlier.
Albertosaurus walked on two legs and had a large head with sharp, saw-toothed teeth.
It had two-fingered hands on short arms.
Its long tail provided balance and quick turning.
It had powerful back legs with clawed, three-toed feet.
It was about 30 feet (9 m) long, about 11 feet (3.4 m) tall at the hips, and up to 3 tons in weight (averaging roughly 2500 kg).
The lower jaw of Albertosaurus had from 14 and 16 teeth; the upper jaw had 17-19 teeth.
It had one row of teeth in each jaw but had at least one replacement tooth growing up from under each tooth.
Albertosaurus was more lightly built than Tyrannosaurus, and therefore probably a faster mover in open spaces.
An assembly language is a programming language that can be used to directly tell the computer what to do.
An assembly language is almost exactly like the machine language that a computer can understand, except that it uses words in place of numbers.
A computer can not really understand an assembly program directly.
However, it can easily change the program into machine code by replacing the words of the program with the numbers that they stand for.
A program that does that is called an assembler.
Programs written in assembly language are usually made of instructions, which are small tasks that the computer performs when it is running the program.
They are called instructions because the programmer uses them to instruct the computer what to do.
The part of the computer that follows the instructions is the processor.
The assembly language of a computer is a low-level language, which means that it can only be used to do the simple tasks that a computer can understand directly.
In order to perform more complex tasks, one must tell the computer each of the simple tasks that are part of the complex task.
For example, a computer does not understand how to print a sentence on its screen.
Instead, a program written in assembly must tell it how to do all of the small steps that are involved in printing the sentence.
Such an assembly program would be composed of many, many instructions, that together do something that seems very simple and basic to a human.
This makes it hard for humans to read an assembly program.
In contrast, a high-level programming language may have a single instruction such as PRINT "This is a sentence" that will tell the computer to perform all of the small tasks for you.
When computer scientists first built programmable machines, they programmed them directly in machine code, which is a series of numbers that instructed the computer what to do.
Writing machine language was very hard to do and took a long time, so eventually assembly language was made.
Assembly language is easier for a human to read and can be written faster, but it is still much harder for a human to use than a high-level programming language which tries to mimic human language.
To program in machine code, the programmer needs to know what each instruction looks like in binary (or hexadecimal).
Although it is easy for a computer to quickly figure out what machine code means, it is hard for a programmer.
Each instruction can have several forms, all of which just look like a bunch of numbers to people.
Any mistake that someone makes while writing machine code will only be noticed when the computer does the wrong thing.
Figuring out the mistake is hard because most people can not tell what machine code means by looking at it.
This hexadecimal machine code tells an x86 computer processor to add 42 to the accumulator.
It is very difficult for a person to read and understand it even if that person knows machine code.
With assembly language, each instruction can be written as a short word, called a mnemonic, followed by other things like numbers or other short words.
The mnemonic is used so that the programmer does not have to remember the exact numbers in machine code needed to tell the computer to do something.
Examples of mnemonics in assembly language include add, which adds data, and mov, which moves data from one place to another.
Because ` mnemonic ' is an uncommon word, the phrase instruction type or just instruction is sometimes used instead, often incorrectly.
The words and numbers after the first word give more information about what to do.
For instance, things following an add might be what two things to add together and the things following mov say what to move and where to put it.
Assembly language also allows programmers to write the actual data the program uses in easier ways.
Most assembly languages have support for easily making numbers and text.
In machine code, each different type of number like positive, negative or decimal, would have to be manually converted into binary and text would have to be defined one letter at a time, as numbers.
Assembly language provides what is called an abstraction of machine code.
When using assembly, programmers do not need to know the details of what numbers mean to the computer, the assembler figures that out instead.
Assembly language actually still lets the programmer use all the features of the processor that they could with machine code.
In this sense, assembly language has a very good, rare trait: it has the same ability to express things as the thing it is abstracting (machine code) while being much easier to use.
Because of this, machine code is almost never used as a programming language.
When programs are finished, they have already been transformed into machine code so that the processor can actually run them.
Sometimes, however, if the program has a bug (mistake) in it, programmers will want to be able to tell what each part of the machine code is doing.
Disassemblers are programs that help programmers do that by transforming the machine code of the program back into assembly language, which is much easier to understand.
Disassemblers, which turn machine code into assembly language, do the opposite of assemblers, which turn assembly language into machine code.
An understanding of how computers are organized, how they seem to work at a very low level, is needed to understand how an assembly language program works.
At the most simplistic level, computers have three main parts:
In most computers, memory is divided up into bytes.
Each byte contains 8 bits.
Each byte in memory also has an address which is a number that says where the byte is in memory.
The first byte in memory has an address of 0, the next one has an address of 1, and so on.
Dividing memory into bytes makes it byte addressable because each byte gets a unique address.
Addresses of byte memories can not be used to refer to a single bit of a byte.
A byte is the smallest piece of memory that can be addressed.
Even though an address refers to a particular byte in memory, processors allow for using several bytes of memory in a row.
The most common use of this feature is to use either 2 or 4 bytes in a row to represent a number, usually an integer.
Single bytes are sometimes also used to represent integers, but because they are only 8 bits long, they can only hold 28 or 256 different possible values.
Using 2 or 4 bytes in a row raises the number of different possible values to be 216, 65536 or 232, 4294967296, respectively.
When a program uses a byte or a number of bytes in a row to represent something like a letter, number, or anything else, those bytes are called an object because they are all part of the same thing.
Even though objects are all stored in identical bytes of memory, they are treated as though they have a ` type ', which says how the bytes should be understood: either as an integer or a character or some other type (like a non-integer number).
Machine code can also be thought of as a type that is interpreted as instructions.
The notion of a type is very, very important because it defines what things can and can t be done to the object and how to interpret the bytes of the object.
For instance, it is not valid to store a negative number in a positive number object and it is not valid to store a fraction in an integer.
An address that points to (is the address of) a multi-byte object is the address to the first byte of that object the byte that has the lowest address.
As an aside, one important thing to note is that you can t tell what the type of an object is - or even its size - by its address.
In fact, you can t even tell what type an object is by looking at it.
An assembly language program needs to keep track of which memory addresses hold which objects, and how big those objects are.
A program that does so is type safe because it only does things to objects that are safe to do on their type.
A program that doesn t will probably not work properly.
Note that most programs do not actually explicitly store what the type of an object is, they just access objects consistently - the same object is always treated as the same type.
The processor runs (executes) instructions, which are stored as machine code in main memory.
As well as being able to access memory for storage, most processors have a few small, fast, fixed-size spaces for holding objects that are currently being worked with.
These spaces are called registers.
Processors usually execute three types of instructions, although some instructions can be a combination of these types.
Below are some examples of each type in x86 assembly language.
In this assembly language, square brackets around a number (or a register name) mean that the number should be used as an address to the data that should be used.
The use of an address to point to data is called indirection.
In this next example, without the square brackets, another register, bx, actually gets the value 20 loaded into it.
Because no indirection was used, the actual value itself was put into the register.
Here, the memory at address 1000h gets the value of ax.
If this example is executed right after the previous one, the 2 bytes at 1000h and 1001h will be a 2 byte integer with the value of 20.
Here, 42 and ax are added together and the result is stored back in ax.
In x86 assembly it is also possible to combine a memory access and mathematical operation like this:
This instruction adds the value of the 2 byte integer stored at 1000h to ax and stores the answer in ax.
This instruction computes the or of the contents of the registers ax and bx and stores the result back into ax.
Usually, instructions are executed in the order they appear in memory, which is the order they are typed in the assembly code.
The processor just executes them one after another.
However, in order for processors to do complicated things, they need to execute different instructions based on what the data they were given is.
The ability of processors to execute different instructions depending on something 's outcome is called branching.
Instructions that decide what the next instruction should be are called branch instructions.
In this example, suppose someone wants to calculate the amount of paint they will need to paint a square with a certain side length.
However, due to economy of scale the paint store will not sell them any less than amount of paint needed to paint a 100 x 100 square.
That algorithm can be expressed in the following code where ax is the side length.
This example introduces several new things, but the first two instructions are familiar.
They copy the value of ax into bx and then subtract 100 from bx.
One of the new things in this example is called a label, a concept found in assembly languages in general.
Labels can be anything the programmer wants (unless it is the name of an instruction, which would confuse the assembler).
In this example, the label is ` continue '.
It is interpreted by the assembler as the address of an instruction.
In this case, it is the address of mult ax.
Another new concept is that of flags.
On x86 processors, many instructions set ` flags ' in the processor that can be used by the next instruction to decide what to do.
In this case, if bx was less than 100, sub will set a flag that says the result was less than zero.
The next instruction is jge which is short for ` Jump if Greater than or Equal to '.
It is a branch instruction.
If the flags in the processor specify that the result was greater than or equal to zero, instead of just going to the next instruction the processor will jump to the instruction at the continue label, which is mul ax.
This example works fine, but it is not what most programmers would write.
The subtract instruction set the flag correctly, but it also changes the value it operates on, which required the ax to be copied into bx.
Most assembly languages allow for comparison instruction that do not change any of the arguments they are passed, but still set the flags properly and x86 assembly is no exception.
Now, instead of subtracting 100 from ax, seeing if that number is less than zero, and assigning it back to ax, ax is left unchanged.
The flags are still set the same way, and the jump is still taken in the same situations.
While input and output are a fundamental part of computing, there is no one way they are done in assembly language.
This is because the way I\/O works depends on the set up of the computer and the operating system its running, not just what kind of processor it has.
In the example section the Hello World example uses MS-DOS operating system calls and the example after it uses BIOS calls.
It is possible to do I\/O in assembly language.
Indeed, assembly language can generally express anything that a computer is capable of doing.
However, even though there are instructions to add and branch in assembly language that will always do the same thing there are no instructions in assembly language that always do I\/O.
The important thing to note is that the way that I\/O works is not part of any assembly language because it is not part of how the processor works.
Even though assembly language is not directly run by the processor - machine code is, it still has a lot to do with it.
Each processor family supports different features, instructions, rules for what the instructions can do, and rules for what combination of instructions are allowed where.
Because of this, different types of processors still need different assembly languages.
Because each version of assembly language is tied to a processor family, it lacks something called portability.
Something that has portability or is portable can be easily transferred from one type of computer to another.
While other types of programming languages are portable, assembly language, in general, is not.
As a result of these drawbacks, high-level languages like Pascal, C, and C + + are used for most projects instead.
They allow programmers to express their ideas more directly instead of having to worry about telling the processor what to do every step of the way.
They 're called high-level because the ideas the programmer can express in the same amount code are more complicated.
Programmers writing code in compiled high level languages use a program called a compiler to transform their code into assembly language.
Compilers are much harder to write than assemblers are.
Also, high-level languages do not always allow programmers to use all the features of the processor.
This is because high-level languages are designed to support all processor families.
Unlike assembly languages, that only support one type of processor, high-level languages are portable.
Even though compilers are more complicated than assemblers, decades of making and researching compilers has made them very good.
Now, there is not much reason to use assembly language anymore for most projects, because compilers can usually figure out how to express programs in assembly language as well or better than programmers.
adosseg.
model small.
stack 100h
.
data hello_message db ` Hello, World! '
,0 dh,0 ah, ' $ '
.
code main proc mov ax, @ data mov ds, ax
A function that prints a number to the screen using BIOS interrupts written in NASM x86 assembly.
Modular code is possible to write in assembly, but it takes extra effort.
Note that anything that comes after a semicolon on a line is a comment and is ignored by the assembler.
Putting comments in assembly language code is very important because large assembly language programs are so hard to understand.
gloop: inc si; length of string mov dx, 0; zero dx div cx; divide by base cmp dx, 10; is it ge 10?
jge num add dx, ' 0 '; add zero to dx jmp anum num: add dx, (` A ' - 10); hex value, add ` A ' to dx - 10.
anum: push dx; put dx onto stack.
cmp ax, 0; should we continue?
jne gloop
In Greek mythology, Ambrosia is the food of the gods or demigods.
It gives them immortality.
Saint Ambrose (c. 330 4 April 397) was an Archbishop of Milan.
He is an important figure in the Catholic church, and the patron saint of Milan.
Amber is the common name for fossil resin.
It occurs in different colors, and is widely used for making jewellery and other ornaments.
Although not mineralized, amber is sometimes considered as a gemstone.
Most of the world 's amber is in the range of 30 90 million years old.
Semi-fossilized resin or sub-fossil amber is called copal.
Baltic amber was called ` Freya 's tears ' by the Norse and the ` tears of the Heliades ' by the ancient Greeks.
Amber consists of several resinous bodies that can mostly dissolve in alcohol, ether and chloroform, associated with a bituminous substance that does not dissolve.
Amber is formed from sap coming out of certain trees.
The sap soon becomes a sticky gum, and fossilises as amber.
The amber can look different depending on its origin, and its later geological history.
To end up as amber, the starting resin must resist decay.
Many trees produce resin, but usually it is broken down by physical and biological process.
Exposure to weather tends to disintegrate resin, assisted by microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi.
For resin to survive long enough to become amber, it must resist such forces, or be produced under conditions that exclude them.
Baltic amber (historically called Prussian amber) is found as irregular nodules in a marine sand, known as blue earth, in the Lower Oligocene strata of Sambia in Kaliningrad Oblast, where it is now systematically mined.
Agathis amber comes from the conifer Agathis, a tree that used to grow over a much wider area.
Amber from America and Africa often comes from the Hymenaea, a genus of flowering plants.
The resin can contain, in addition to the beautifully preserved plant-structures, remains of insects, spiders, annelids, frogs, crustaceans and other small organisms that became trapped while it was fluid.
In most cases the organic structure has disappeared, leaving only a cavity, with perhaps a trace of chitin.
Amber is found along the shores of a large part of the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.
The greatest amber-producing country is the promontory of Sambia, now part of Russia 's Kaliningrad Oblast.
About 90 % of the world 's extractable amber is in the Kaliningrad region of Russia on the Baltic Sea.
Amber was deposited in the late Eocene and early Oligocene in a delta of a prehistoric river, in a shallow part of a marine basin.
In addition to the coast near Kaliningrad, amber is also found elsewhere in the Baltic Sea region.
Small amounts of Baltic amber can even be found outside the Baltic region, for example on the coastline of the south east of England.
On the evidence of Fourier-transform infrared microspectroscopy (FTIR) analysis of amber and resin from living trees, that conifers of the family Sciadopityaceae were responsible.
The only living representative of this family is the Japanese umbrella pine, Sciadopitys verticillata.
Amber is extensively used for beads and other ornaments, and for cigar-holders and the mouth-pieces of pipes.
The Amber Room in the Catherine Palace near Saint Petersburg is notable.
It is a reproduction of the original Amber Room, destroyed in WWII.
When gradually heated in an oil-bath, amber becomes soft and flexible.
Two pieces of amber may be united by smearing the surfaces with linseed oil, heating them, and then pressing them together while hot.
Cloudy amber may be made clearer in an oil-bath, as the oil fills the numerous pores to which the turbidity is due.
Small fragments, formerly thrown away or used only for varnish, are now used on a large scale in the formation of "ambroid" or "pressed amber".
The pieces are carefully heated with exclusion of air and then pressed into one mass by intense hydraulic pressure, the softened amber being forced through holes in a metal plate.
As mentioned, the product is extensively used for making cheap jewellery and articles for smoking.
Amber was much valued as an ornamental material in early times.
The army is the part of a country 's military that fights on the ground.
People in the army are called soldiers.
Many modern armies have vehicles such as tanks, airplanes, and helicopters to help soldiers fight on the ground.
A soldier may be a volunteer (someone who joins something because they want to), or he may be forced by the government to join the army.
Forcing men to join the army is called conscription or draft.
Voluntary armies tend to be small by numbers, but high in confidence and quality.
Drafted armies are large, but often lacking in confidence and in quality: it may be very difficult to force someone to risk his life against his will.
Sometimes an army is made up from mercenaries, who fight just for pay and have little loyalty to the country which they serve.
Soldiers do many things, from shooting enemies, to digging defensive trenches.
They are used to defend their country, or attack another country 's army.
It is difficult, and soldiers must be in good shape, both physically and mentally.
They almost always move together, and that way the team can do more things, in a safer way.
They may be assigned to certain places to guard, or they may be told to search a place, or even attack it.
That is up to their commander.
Every soldier answers to someone else, so that way, everything is organized.
Sometimes, when a country 's army is busy in different places, and there are not enough soldiers to do more work, a country can hire civilians who are not members of the military to do some of the army 's jobs, like protecting buildings and important people and groups of trucks traveling from one place to another.
This lets the country use their military for other jobs.
Usually, they hire Veterans who used to be members of the military before leaving and working for other people, companies and countries.
Working in the army and wearing the uniform is called service.
A soldier will never say "I work as a Sergeant in the signal corps" but always "I serve as a Sergeant in the signal corps", or other rank, specialty and unit.
Only civilian workers who do not wear uniform speak about "working" in the army.
The function of the army is based on discipline.
That means that every soldier will unquestionably carry out the orders which he or she has received and will obey his or her superior officer or non-commissioned officer.
There is only one exception: orders which violate the human rights or international law must not be obeyed as it is considered a war crime.
The chain of command is expressed by the military rank system and hierarchy.
A soldier is supplied with weapons, such as guns, knives, and other simple gear for surviving in the battlefield, such as food, water, clothes, and tents.
They must keep good care of the items.
Some soldiers train to be a doctor for the army, or other civilian duties.
Before a soldier joins the army, he must qualify to be in it first.
The person is put through tests, so that the army will know if the recruit can do it or not.
This is sometimes called ` boot camp '.
He must complete mental tests, and physical tests.
It depends on where he is testing that will tell him how hard it will be.
He will also take tests to determine what job he will do in the military.
For instance, he may work with computers and be a member of the signal corps or be a cook for the soldiers, he may have been a construction worker in civilian life and be a military engineer, he may become a truck driver and serve in logistics, or he may be very good with a rifle and be a sniper in the infantry.
There are a lot of jobs that a person can choose to do in the army.
Alligators and Caimans make up the second largest family of the crocodilians, Alligatoridae.
There are 4 genera and about 7 known species of Alligatorids.
Alligatorids range in size depending on species.
The Chinese alligator (Aligator sinensis) is usually about 1.5 m while the American Alligator (A. mississippiensis) is usually 4 m. The largest American alligator was 5.79 m long.
The Black Caiman of the Amazon can reach as much as 6 m.
Alligatorids live in the southern United States, Central America, northern South America and near the Yangzee river in China.
There are several differences between alligators and crocodiles.
Alligators have shorter and wider snouts.
They prefer fresh water to saltwater.
Crocodiles have a gland that removes much of the salt.
Alligators do not have this gland.
In alligators, the fourth tooth of their lower jaw fits into a pit in the upper jaw.
In crocodilians this tooth fits into a groove on the outside of the jaw.
Alligators are also less aggressive than crocodilids.
Usually only the largest of the species are a threat to humans.
Alder is the common name for about 30 kinds of trees and shrubs of the Alnus genus.
They are a part of the birch family (Betulaceae).
Most of them are smaller in size.
Leaves are mostly deciduous, only very few alders are evergreen.
Alder trees are found in all parts of the northern hemisphere and they are often found on poor and\/or wet soil.
Alders have alternate simple leaves with a toothed edge.
The male flowers are in the form of hanging catkins and the female flowers are much smaller catkin-like structures (see image).
The pollen is transferred from the male to the female flower by the wind.
The female flower parts develop into little, green, rounded cone-like fruits which turn brown in autumn and open to release the seeds.
The best known species are the Black Alder, which can be seen throughout Europe.
The largest is probably the Red Alder, native to North America.
It reaches about 32 35 metres in height.
The widespread Green Alder is a shrub, rarely more than 5m high.
The commonest alder in the UK is the Black Alder, also called the Common Alder or European Alder.
Alder is a preferred tree for bees, especially in spring.
It is also used to make charcoal.
Arachnophobia is a fear of spiders.
It is a very common phobia - many people suffer from it.
People who have it often feel uncomfortable in areas where there may be spiders.
The usual way of treating this is using behavior therapy.
People will be confronted with spiders; they may be required to touch spiders as big as a tarantula.
This article is about the mineral.
For other uses, see Alabaster (disambiguation)
Alabaster is a name applied to varieties of two distinct minerals.
Gypsum is a hydrous sulfate of calcium, and calcite is a carbonate of calcium.
Gypsum is the alabaster of the present day; calcite is generally the alabaster of the ancients.
Both are easy to work.
They are attractive to look at.
Both have been used for making a variety of artworks and objects, especially small carvings.
The two kinds are easy to tell apart.
One is harder than the other.
Calcite is hard (Mohs hardness 3).
Gypsum is soft (Mohs hardness 1.5 to 2).
It can be easily scratched by a fingernail.
Also, calcite effervesces when it is treated with hydrochloric acid.
Gypsum does not.
Ahab or Ach ` av or Achab in Douay-Rheims was King of Israel and the son of Omri.
He is written about in the Books of Kings and the Books of Chronicles.
Ahab son of Omri did "more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him" (1 Kings 16:30), as it is written in the Bible.
Many think - and say - that it is probably because of his evil wife, Queen Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians.
She was even more sinful than Ahab, and comes out in the Bible, commanding Ahab to do most of the things she wants.
She serves the idol Baal and tries to make Ahab and all the Israelites worship it as well.
One of Ahab 's most famous enemies is an old prophet (a man of God) named Elijah.
He continually rebukes Ahab for being so disobeying to the Lord, and when Ahab summoned all the prophets of Baal against Elijah at Mount Carmel, and set two altars for them, Elijah won by calling on God and letting fire come and burn the sacrifice, and the prophets of Baal were immediately killed by the Israelites.
Importantly, even here Ahab does nothing, either to stop or help Elijah.
Once, there was a quite well-known war between Ben-Hadad king of Aram and King Ahab.
Ben-Hadad came and, "with thirty-two kings with horses and chariots" (1 Kings 20), he attacked Samaria.
He said to King Ahab: "Your silver and gold are mine, and the best of your wives and children are mine."
This King Ahab agreed with but after that, Ben-Hadad sent another more demanding command: "I sent to demand your silver and gold, your wives and children.
But about this time tomorrow I am going to send my officials to search your palace and the houses of your officials.
They will seize everything you value and carry it away."
and King Ahab grew annoyed.
He rejected that command, and so Ben-Hadad decided to battle against Ahab.
And after that the Lord sent a prophet and said, "Do you see this vast army?
I will give it into your hand today, and then you will know that I am the Lord."
And he also added that the young officers of the commanders will do it, and that King Ahab would start the battle.
Encouraged by this, Ahab took the young officers of the commanders, 232 men.
Then he assembled the rest of the Israelites, 7,000 in all.
They set out at noon while Ben-Hadad and the 32 kings with him were in their tents getting drunk, and defeated them all.
Later at spring, as a prophet prophesied to Ahab, Ben-Hadad came again, with all his army.
They came to the valleys, declaring triumphantly that God was a "gods of hills" and that was why the Israelites were strong; and now that they were in the valleys, they would surely win the battle.
But God wanted to prove that he was the God of everything and not only of the hills, so he helped Ahab defeat them there, too.
Ahab then spared Ben-Hadad 's life.
This caused God to get angry at Ahab and say through a prophet (1 Kings 20:42) -- "This is what the Lord says: ` You have set free a man that I had determined should die.
Therefore it is your life for his life, your people for his people. '"
Ahab also once did a great sin that the Lord was very angry at, and it included a vineyard of Naboh the Jezreelite.
He wanted a vineyard belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite, because it was in Jezreel and close to his palace.
So Ahab said to Naboth (1 Kings 21:2), "Let me have your vineyard to use for a vegetable garden, since it is close to my palace.
In exchange I will give you a better vineyard or, if you prefer, I will pay you whatever it is worth."
But Naboth was unwilling because "the Lord forbid" that he should give Ahab "the inheritance of his fathers".
So Ahab was very angry and sulky, and when he was at home he would n't eat, and pouted on his bed.
Then Jezebel came over and asked (1 Kings 21:5), "Why are you so sullen?
Why wo n't you eat?"
And Ahab explained to her the situation.
Jezebeel told him to get up, and said that she would get him the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.
So she wrote some letters in Ahab 's name, placed his seal on them, and sent them to the elders and nobles who lived in Naboth 's city.
It said: (1 Kings 21:9 -10) "Proclaim a day of fasting and seat Naboth in a prominent place among the people.
But seat two scoundrels opposite him and have them testify that he has cursed both God and the king.
Then take him out and stone him to death."
So the elders and nobles did as she told him to, and Naboth died a bitter, meaningless death.
Then Jezebel declared to Ahab that Naboth was "no longer alive, but dead" and Ahab got up and took possession of Nahab 's vineyard.
The Lord was very angry at Ahab for this, and said to Elijah the Tishbite, a prophet -- (1 Kings 21:18) "Go down to meet Ahab the king of Israel, who rules in Samaria.
He is now in Naboth 's vineyard, where he has gone to take possession of it.
Say to him, "This is what the Lord says: ` have you not murdered a man and seized his property? '
Then say to him, ` This is what the Lord says, in the place where dogs licked up Naboth 's blood, dogs will lick up your blood - yes, yours! '"
King Ahab said to Elijah, when he met him (1 Kings 21:20), "So you have found me, my enemy!"
Elijah replied, "I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord. '
I am going to bring disaster on you.
I will consume your descendants and cut off from Ahab every last male in Israel - slave or free.
I will make your house like that of Jeroboam son of Nebat and that of Baasha son of Ahijah, becauase you have provoked me to anger and have caused Israel to sin. '
And also concerning Jezebel the Lord says: ` Dogs will devour Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. '
Dogs will eat those belonging to Ahab who die in the city, and the birds of the air will feed on those who die in the country."
At hearing this, Ahab grew afraid, and humbled himself by tearing his clothes, putting on sackcloth, and fasting.
He ` lay in sackcloth and went around meekly. '
The Lord felt compassionate, and said to Elijah, "Have you noticed how Ahab has humbled himself before me?
Because he has humbled himself, I will not bring this disaster in his day, but I will bring it on his house in the days of his son."
According to the Bible, for three years there was no war between Aram and Israel.
But in the third year, when Jehoshaphat king of Judah went down to see Ahab (who was now his father-in-law, since Jehoshaphat had married Athaliah, his daughter), Ahab said, "Let 's go retake Ramoth Gilead from the king of Aram!
Will you go with me?"
Jehoshaphat replied, "I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses."
For this, he would later be rebuked by the prophet Jehu.
But he added: "First seek the counsel of the Lord."
King Ahab called together the prophets "about four hundred men" and asked them, "Shall I go to attack Ramoth Gilead or not?"
And they said, "Go."
These prophets were not really prophets, but simply did their "job" by saying things that they thought would make the king happy - not what the Lord really said.
King Jehoshaphat saw that the 400 prophets were not to be trusted, and asked to see a real prophet of the Lord, saying, "Is there not a prophet of the Lord here...?"
King Ahab said that there was Micaiah son of Imlah, but"... he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad."
Jehoshaphat wanted to see him, so Ahab called him.
Meanwhile, Zedekiah son of Kenaanah, one of the 400 prophets, had made iron horns and he cried, "This is what the Lord says: ` With these you will gore the Arameans until they are destroyed. '"
All the other prophets said the same thing.
Even the messenger who had gone to call Micaiah said to him, "Let your word agree with theirs..."
When Micaiah came, he said, "Attack, and be victorious (win)."
But Ahab probably saw that Micaiah was not being serious, and he said,"... tell me nothing but the truth..." So Micaiah said that he saw the Lord sitting on his throne in heaven, and that the Lord had put a "lying spirit" in the mouths of all the prophets, because they did not love the truth and had chosen to speak out of their own hearts.
At this, one of the prophets, Zedekiah son of Kenaanah was so enraged he went to Micaiah and slapped him in the face, saying sarcastically, "Which way did the spirit from the Lord go when he went from me to speak (talk) to you?"
(1 Kings 22:24, NIV) Micaiah replied, "You will find out... (when) you go to hide in an inner room."
King Ahab put Micaiah and prison and went to battle in disguise, thinking that this way nobody would know who he was and so Micaiah 's prophecy would not be fulfilled (come true).
But one of the soldiers shot him by mistake, and he had a deep wound and died in his chariot, watching the battle sadly.
As in the prophecy of Elijah, the dogs licked up his blood.
After him, his sons succeeded as king, Ahaziah and Jehoram.
Algol, also known as the Demon Star, is a bright star in the Perseus constellation.
It is one of the best known double stars that can only be seen in spectroscopes, the first star of its type discovered, and one of the first variable stars to be discovered before it explodes.
Algol is made of three stars (Beta Persei A, B and C) and the brightest is Persei A. These stars partly eclipse each other every 2 days, 20 hours and 49 minutes for 10 hours.
"Amazing Grace" is a poem written in 1772 by Englishman John Newton.
The poem named, "Faith 's Review and Expectation", was where the song came from.
It was set to music.
A seventh stanza, by an unknown author, has been added to most versions since 1829, beginning with the words, "When we 've been there ten thousand years".
In some versions, stanzas five and six to the song are cut and go directly to the seventh.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound That sav d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.
Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears reliev d; How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believ d!
Thro many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promis d good to me, His word my hope secures; He will my shield and portion be, As long as life endures.
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease; I shall possess, within the veil, A life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, The sun forbear to shine; But God, who call d me here below, Will be forever mine.
(Anonymous 1829 addition:) When we ve been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We ve no less days to sing God s praise Than when we d first begun.
AOL Inc. (previously America Online) is a U.S.-based online service provider and Internet service provider.
It has been in business since 1985.
They changed their name to AOL Inc. in 2009 after a spin-off from Time Warner.
It was announced in May 2015 that Verizon Communications purchased AOL.
AOL Instant Messenger is a service which allows to communicate with any user currently online.
AIM has millions of users worldwide.
There are also other computer programs that can be used to talk with your AIM account, for example Trillian, Pidgin, Digsby, and AIM +.
Other AOL products are AOL Spyware Protection, AOL Safety and Security Center, ICQ, AOl Computer Check-Up, AOL Explorer, AOL TopSpeed, AOL Dialer, AOL One-Click Fixes and AOL Openride.
Anno Domini (Latin: "In the year of (our) Lord"), shortened as AD or A.D., is used to refer to the years after the birth of Jesus.
AD is also a shortening for Christian Era.
Similarly, Before Christ, shortened as BC or B.C., is used in the English language to refer to all years before the start of the time period Anno Domini.
Usually, AD comes before the year but comes after a century or millennium.
For example, a person would write AD 2014 but 21st century AD or 3rd millennium AD.
There is no zero year in this system.
This means that the year A.D. 1 follows the year 1 B.C.
This dating system was meant to signal the year of Christ 's birth, but modern scholarship has decided Jesus was actually born a few years earlier.
The system for working out the years was invented by Dionysius Exiguus in about AD 525.
He fixed the point Anno Domini, which is used to number the years of both the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calendar.
He used it to identify the several Easters in his Easter table.
He did not use it to date any historical event.
When he devised his table, Julian calendar years were identified by naming the consuls who held office that year he himself stated that the "present year" was "the consulship of Probus Junior (Flavius Probus)", which he also stated was 525 years "since the incarnation (conception) of our Lord Jesus Christ".
How he arrived at that number is unknown.
He invented a new system of numbering years to replace the Diocletian years that had been used in an old Easter table because he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians.
The Anno Domini era became dominant in Western Europe only after it was used by the Venerable Bede to date the events in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731.
The French emperor Charlemagne made it popular in mainland Europe.
Some parts of Europe did not use the Anno Domini system until the 15th century.
For example, Portugal used a different system called the Spanish era until 1422.
An amine is a molecule which has a nitrogen atom that can behave as a base.
An amine can be thought of coming from ammonia.
The difference is that the three hydrogens in ammonia are changed to any group or atom.
If only one of the hydrogens is changed, the amine is called primary.
If two are changed, the amine is called secondary.
If all three are changed then it is called tertiary.
Sometimes, a fourth group can be added to the nitrogen.
This is called a quaternary ammonium cation.
This is not amine but is a salt.
If one of the groups on the nitrogen is a carbonyl group, then the molecule is called amide.
This has very different properties.
Amines are used a lot in chemistry.
Since the nitrogen has a lone pair, it can do many reactions.
It can take protons away from some acids.
It can also be a nucleophile.
It can be changed into imines and other functional groups.
Amines are also found in many proteins.
They are a part of every amino acid.
In theory, absolute zero is the temperature at which the particles of matter (molecules and atoms) are at their lowest energy points.
It is a common misconception that at absolute zero particles lose all energy and stop moving.
This, however, is false.
In quantum physics there is something called zero point energy, which means that even after all the energy that can be extrapolated from particles is extrapolated, particles still have some energy.
This is due to the Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty, which states that the more you know about a particles position, the less you know about it 's momentum, and vice versa.
Therefore you can not have a particle that is stopped, because then you would know both its exact position and momentum.
In practice, it is impossible, because, much like reaching the speed of light, the amount of energy required is too vast.
Some people have created temperatures very close to absolute zero: the record temperature was 100 pK (one hundred picokelvin, equal to 10 10 kelvin) above absolute zero.
Even getting close to absolute zero is difficult because anything that touches an object being cooled near absolute zero would give heat to the objects.
Scientists use lasers to slow atoms when cooling objects to very low temperatures.
The kelvin and Rankine temperature scales are defined so that absolute zero is 0 kelvin (K) or 0 degrees Rankine (R).
The Celsius and Fahrenheit scales are defined so that absolute zero is 273.15 C or 459.67 F.
At this stage the pressure of the particles is zero.
If we plot a graph to it, we can see that the temperature of the particles is zero.
The temperature can not go down any further.
Also, the particles can not move in "reverse" either because as the movement of particles is vibration, vibrating in reverse would be nothing but simply vibrating again.
The closer the temperature of an object gets to absolute zero, the less resistive the material is to electricity therefore it will conduct electricity almost perfectly, with no measurable resistance.
The Third Law of Thermodynamics says that nothing can ever have a temperature of absolute zero.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that all engines that are powered by heat (like car engines and steam train engines) must release waste heat and can not be 100 % efficient.
This is because the efficiency (percent of energy the engine uses up that is actually used to do the engine 's job) is 100 % (1-Toutside\/Tinside), which only is 100 % if the outside temperature is absolute zero which it can not be.
So, an engine can not be 100 % efficient, but you can make its efficiency closer to 100 % by making the inside temperature hotter and\/or the outside temperature colder.
An adiabatic process is a thermodynamic process where heat is not passed into or from the liquid.
This heat instead makes small clouds in the container.
Adiabatic cooling is the energy exchanged when clouds form.
For example, the hot air rises (because it is less dense and is moving faster) and the cold air sinks (also because the cool air typically contains the ice crystals, which are brought closer to the Earth thanks to gravity).
Amide can refer to two different things.
An amide ion is different from an amide in organic chemistry.
The amide ion is made by deprotonating ammonia.
This is ammonia acting as an acid, although a very weak one.
Amides made by deprotonating ammonia are very strong bases.
Sodium amide is an example.
Amides are also chemical compounds.
They are made by reacting carboxylic acids like acetic acid with amines.
There are many ways to make them.
They are also used in many chemical reactions.
Animism is a belief common in many different religions and philosophies.
It is the belief that there are spiritual beings in plants and animals.
Many animistic religions also believe that acts of nature, for example - the wind and rain, and geographic features, for example - mountains and rivers, have spirits in them.
Antonio Vivaldi (born Venice, 4 March 1678; died Vienna, 28 July 1741) was an Italian composer.
He was the most important composer in Italy at the end of the Baroque period.
Vivaldi wrote more than 400 concertos for various instruments, especially for the violin.
The scores of 21 operas, including his first and last, are still intact.
His most popular work is the group of four violin concertos called The Four Seasons.
Each concerto describes a season: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.
He is believed to be the inventor of the ritornello form.
He was very famous for his piccolo compositions, such as Il gardellino.
Vivaldi probably was taught to play the violin by his father, who was also a professional musician.
He trained to be a priest, and because of his red hair, he became known as "il prete rosso", which means "the red priest."
He did not work as a priest for very long, and in 1703 he began teaching violin to girls at an orphanage in Venice, the Pio Ospedale della Piet.
The name means "Devout Hospital of Mercy."
The girls were chosen because they showed exceptional musical abilities.
They gave regular concerts, so as part of his duties Vivaldi wrote music for them to play.
He lost the job between 1709 and 1711, when he was reappointed.
he also took on the extra job of writing sacred music for the girls ' choir.
He continued teaching until 1716 when he was put in charge of all the music events.
Vivaldi 's music was becoming well known.
During his break from teaching between 1709 and 1711 he wrote a large number of works including violin sonatas and concertos.
In 1711 a collection of 12 concertos, L'estro armonico op.3, for one, two and four solo violins was published by Etienne Roger in Amsterdam.
This made him famous throughout Europe, and musicians coming to Venice would visit Vivaldi for lessons.
Further new publications of his music made him even more famous.
The first of his many operas, Ottone in villa, was performed in 1713..
His first oratorio, Juditha Triumphans devicta Holofernis barbaric, was performed by the girls from the Piet in 1716.
In 1718 Vivaldi left Venice and moved to Mantua, where he became the director of music for the governor, Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt.
He composed his famous "Four Seasons" as well as several operas during this time.
He went to Rome in about 1721, where he performed on several occasions for the Pope.
While he was traveling, he continued to write music for the girls at the Piet, over the years he sent them about 140 concertos.
He went to a number of cities in Europe to have his operas performed including Vienna, Verona, and Prague.
He often went back to Venice to rehearse his music with the girls.
Even though his music was popular, Vivaldi did not make a lot of money from his music.
As newer musicians, and more modern styles became popular, he found it more difficult to earn a living.
He died, a poor man, in Vienna, on 28 July 1741.
Abbotsford House in Scotland is the house of the writer Sir Walter Scott, where he lived from 1812 to 1832.
Today this is a museum dedicated to Scott 's life and works.
It is a category A listed building.
Abraham (originally Abram) is a man in the Book of Genesis and the Qu ` ran.
There, he is said to be the father of all Jews.
This is because he is their ancestor.
Abraham is part of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions.
Abraham is considered the father of these three religions, which are called Abrahamic religions.
Abraham is the father of Isaac with his wife Sarah.
He also has Ishmael with Hagar, Sarah 's handmaid, and he has other children with Keturah, whom he marries after Sarah 's death.
He is the grandfather of Jacob and Esau.
Abraham is believed to be the founding patriarch of the Israelites, Ishmaelites and Edomites.
Abraham was the third son of Terah and the grandson of Nahor.
Abraham 's older brothers were named Nahor and Haran.
Acapulco is a town and sea port on the Pacific coast of Mexico, 300 km (190 miles) southwest from Mexico City.
Acapulco is on a deep, semi-circular bay.
It is a stop for shipping and cruising lines running between Panama, and San Francisco, California, USA.
In 2005, about 722,499 people lived there.
Its name is a Nahuatl word, meaning "plain of dense reeds".
The city has been a port since the 16th century.
Algol, also known as the Demon Star, is a bright star in the Perseus constellation.
It is one of the best known double stars that can only be seen in spectroscopes, the first star of its type discovered, and one of the first variable stars to be discovered before it explodes.
Algol is made of three stars (Beta Persei A, B and C) and the brightest is Persei A. These stars partly eclipse each other every 2 days, 20 hours and 49 minutes for 10 hours.
In Norse mythology, Asgard is the home of the gods (the sir and the Vanir).
It is a different place than the home of the mortals, Midgard.
Odin rules Asgard as the All-Father.
The plain of Idavoll is the centrer of Asgard.
The sir meet there talk about important issues.
The male gods meet in a hall called Gladsheim.
The female goddesses in a hall called Ving lf.
It is also an advanced alien race in the science fiction series Stargate SG-1.
The Apollo program (or Project Apollo) was a project by the United States ' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The goal was to send a human to explore the Moon and bring him home to earth safely.
It was started by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
The first person to walk on the Moon was Neil Armstrong of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969.
One reason the program started was that the Soviet Union was the first country to send a person into outer space.
Since this was during the Cold War, many in the U.S. thought that the U.S. needed to stay ahead of the USSR in space exploration.
The Apollo program ended in 1972.
After that, NASA began to work on the Space Shuttle program, the International Space Station, and many unmanned space exploration projects.
There was a movie made about the problems that happened on the Apollo 13 mission.
In September 1967, Owen Maynard of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas came up with a series of Apollo missions that would lead to landing a person on the Moon.
There were seven types of mission, each testing a specific set of parts and tasks.
Each step would need to be completed successfully before the next mission type could begin.
These were:
The first manned Lunar Module, LM-3, was not ready for the December 1968 launch date of Apollo 8.
It was flown as a lunar orbital mission using just the CSM and the E mission was canceled.
The Apollo flights were carried into space by the huge Saturn V rockets.
Details of the flights are:
An assault is when a person attacks another.
In law, it is considered a crime or tort.
In common law, it is when somebody threatens or tries to physically hurt someone else.
In order to be considered assault, the act must involve the ability to cause the harm.
It does not necessarily have to involve touching the other person; that is called battery.
In criminal law, an assault can be an attempted but unsuccessful battery.
In some states or legal codes, the words "assault" and "battery" may mean the same thing.
There are several different kinds of assault.
Each legal system has their own definitions.
A stronger form of assault is aggravated assault.
This usually involves using a weapon that could easily be used to kill.
Alfred Russel Wallace OM, FRS (8 January 1823 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, biologist and social activist.
He is best known for proposing a theory of natural selection.
This was published in 1858 together with Charles Darwin 's idea.
Wallace did extensive natural history exploring.
He went first to the Amazon River basin with Henry Walter Bates, and later to Malaya and Indonesia.
He wrote books on both these adventures.
While in Indonesia he drew the Wallace Line which divides Indonesia into two parts.
On one side are animals of Australasia.
On the other side are species mostly of Asian origin.
He wrote a wonderful book on the distribution of animals.
After a few years of working as a railway surveyor with his brother, Wallace 's life was changed by meeting Henry Walter Bates in Leicester in 1847.
Wallace and Bates discussed the idea of an expedition to the Amazon.
The plan was to defray expenses by sending specimens back to London, where an agent would sell them for a commission.
Also, for the travellers to "gather facts towards solving the problem of the origin of species", as Wallace put it in a letter to Bates.
The two friends, who were both by now experienced amateur entomologists, met in London to prepare themselves by viewing South American plants and animals in the main collections.
Bates and Wallace sailed from Liverpool in April 1848, arriving in Par (now Bel m) at the end of May.
For the first year they settled in a villa near the city, collecting birds and insects.
After that they agreed to collect independently.
Wallace continued charting the Amazon for four years, collecting specimens and making notes on the peoples, the languages, the geography, flora, and fauna.
On 12 July 1852, Wallace embarked for England on the brig Helen.
After twenty-eight days at sea, balsam in the ship 's cargo caught fire and the crew was forced to abandon ship.
All of the specimens Wallace had on the ship, most of his collection, were lost.
He could only save part of his diary and a few sketches.
Wallace and the crew spent ten days in an open boat before being picked up by the brig Jordeson.
From 1854 to 1862, age 31 to 39, Wallace traveled through the Dutch East Indies (now Malaysia and Indonesia), to collect specimens for sale and to study nature.
Wallace collected more than 125,000 specimens in the Dutch East Indies (more than 80,000 beetles alone).
More than a thousand of them represented species new to science.
His observations of the clear zoological differences across a narrow strait in the archipelago led to his proposing the zoogeographical boundary now known as the Wallace Line.
Bali and Lombok were two islands in the archipelago only 17 miles apart at the widest (28 km), roughly the same size and with the same climate, soil, elevation and aspect.
Yet their flora and fauna were so different.
"In this archipelago there are two distinct faunas rigidly circumscribed, which differ as much as do those of Africa and South America... yet there is nothing on the map or on the face of the islands to mark their limits.
The boundary line passes between islands closer together than others belonging to the same group.
I believe the western part to be a separated portion of continental Asia, while the eastern is a fragmentary prolongation of a former west Pacific continent".
Why was it, he wondered, that the animals and plants on the Bali side of the channel were of Asian types, while those on the Lombok side were Australasian in type?
This had to mean that the western group had evolved from common western stock, while the eastern group had evolved from a common eastern stock.
While he was exploring the archipelago, he refined his thoughts about evolution and had his famous insight on natural selection.
In 1858 he sent an article outlining his theory to Darwin; it was published, along with a description of Darwin 's own theory, in the same year.
Accounts of his studies and adventures there were eventually published in 1869 as The Malay Archipelago.
It became one of the most popular natural history travel journals of the 19th century.
It was praised by Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell and by others, such as the novelist Joseph Conrad, who called it his "favorite bedside companion".
Unlike Darwin, Wallace began his career as a traveling naturalist already believing in evolution.
Both he and Bates had read Vestiges, a controversial work of popular science, published anonymously in 1844.
This advocated an evolutionary origin for the solar system, the earth, and living things.
He also read Malthus 's Principle of population, which he says "twenty years later gave me the long-sought clue to the effective agent in the evolution of organic species".
He meant by that the struggle for existence, which led Wallace to natural selection.
Wallace wrote his ideas on the small isle of Ternate, in what was then the Dutch East Indies.
He was suffering from malaria.
While the natives looked after him, his thoughts turned to Malthus 's book.
"I thought of (Malthus 's) clear exposition of the ` positive checks to increase ' disease, accidents, wars, famine which keep down the population... It then occurred to me that the same causes, or their equivalents, are continually acting in the case of animals also... Why do some die and some live?
And the answer came clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live... Then it suddenly flashed upon me, that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race..." This was the origin of his letter to Darwin, which set out the idea of natural selection.
In 1864, Wallace published a paper, The origin of human races and the antiquity of Man deduced from the theory of natural selection, applying the theory to human beings.
Huxley had already published his view that evolution applied to mankind as it did to other living things.
Wallace thought that natural selection could not account for mathematical, artistic, or musical genius, as well as metaphysical musings, and wit and humor.
He eventually said that something in "the unseen universe of Spirit" had interceded at least three times in history.
The first was the creation of life from inorganic matter.
The second was the introduction of consciousness in the higher animals.
And the third was the generation of the higher mental faculties in mankind.
He also believed that the purpose of the universe was the development of the human spirit.
Many, including Huxley, Hooker, and Darwin himself, were highly critical of these ideas.
As one historian of science has pointed out, Wallace 's views in this area were at odds with two major tenets of Darwinism.
These are: evolution does not have a goal, and it is not aimed at or centered around mankind.
It is thought by most biographers that his thinking on the evolution of man was influenced by his adoption of spiritualism, which happened at the same time.
Wallace was not a believer in revealed religion of any kind, but he did believe in spiritualism.
This has puzzled biographers, who struggle to think why such a man would believe in spirits.
Early in his life, he experimented with hypnosis, which was then doubted and criticised.
He used some of his students in Leicester as subjects, with considerable success.
Apparently, this persuaded him not to reject ideas which were doubted.
Even when Huxley told him that one of his favorite mediums was a proven fraud, he refused to believe it.
He preferred the evidence of his own experience.
Wallace 's public support of spiritualism, and his defense of spiritualist mediums against allegations of fraud, damaged his scientific reputation.
It strained his relationships with friends such as Bates, Huxley and Darwin, who felt he was overly credulous.
Others became openly hostile to Wallace over the issue.
Wallace and other scientists who defended spiritualism were subject to much criticism from the press, with The Lancet, the leading English medical journal, being particularly harsh.
The controversy affected the public 's idea of Wallace for the rest of his career, though he was always respected in other ways.
Wallace had a wide range of interests, and wrote books about all of them.
He wrote against vaccination, for phrenology, for spiritualism, for land nationalisation, against the moon having canals, and for social change and the progress and improvement of mankind.
He did not believe in religion, but he did believe in spiritualism.
He was a radical in politics, economics and social reform.
He was a kind and honorable person, but he could be a tough opponent if he thought something unfair was going on.
Even the titles of some of his books were sensational, as for example:
Wallace wrote about 22 books, depending on how one counts them.
The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is one of the two major political parties in Australia.
The party was formed in 1891, and is the oldest political party in Australia.
It is a social democratic party with strong links to the Trade Union movement.
Since 1944, their main opponents have been the Liberal Party.
The Labor Party most recently formed the Government from 2007 to 2013.
This was under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, who became the first female Prime Minister of Australia.
Labor lost the election heavily to the Liberal Party in September 2013.
It currently holds 54 seats in the House of Representatives and 25 seats in the Senate.
In the state and territory parliaments, Labor governs in South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory.
In the 1860s the trade unions in Australia began to try to get better wages and working conditions for their members.
They were defeated by employers, the legal system, and the governments of the Australian colonies.
Workers soon decided that they needed to become active in politics, and make changes through parliament.
The first meeting of the ALP is said to have taken place in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891.
A group of shearers, who were involved in a big strike action, held a meeting in the shade of a large ghost gum (eucalyptus) tree, Corymbia aparrerinja.
This tree became known as the "Tree of Knowledge".
The name Albert is a masculine given name.
It comes from the Germanic words adal and beraht, meaning "bright" and "noble".
The Spanish version of this name is Alberto.
This name has been used for many famous people, including Albert Finney and scientist Albert Einstein.
As Alberto, this name has been used for Atlantic cyclones every six years since 1982.
Aachen is a German city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
It has about 260,000 inhabitants and a well-known university, the Rheinisch-Westf lische Technische Hochschule (RWTH).
The Romans built a spa over hot water springs here in ancient times.
In the Middle Ages, it was the capital city of the Frankish emperor, Charlemagne.
The city was called Aix-la-Chapelle by the French.
Charlemagne ordered the building of a cathedral in 786 AD.
He was buried in a tomb in this cathedral.
German emperors were crowned in the cathedral in Aachen until 1531.
European countries made two important peace agreements in Aachen.
In 1668, the first treaty (agreement) ended the War of Devolution between France and the alliance of England, Holland and Sweden.
The treaty allowed France to keep most of the towns it had captured in Flanders the year before.
In 1748, the second treaty ended the War of the Austrian Succession.
In this war, France, Prussia, and other nations tried to take territory from the Austrian Empire.
The treaty said that Maria Theresa of Austria was the ruler of these territories.
It also gave Prussia the territory of Silesia.
Since 1972, Aachen has been part of the Cologne Government Region.
Agate is a kind of quartz and it is a mineral.
Agate can come in many different kinds and colors.
Agate deposits are primarily found in large rocks such as boulders.
agates take 50 million years to form.
It is characterized by colored band patterns inside various rocks.
Often, agates are also accompanied by Amethyst deposits inside as well as Quartz-like crystals occurring in larger deposits.
Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) is a drug.
It is most commonly used as a pain killer, or to reduce fever or inflammation.
It also has an anti-platelet effect - it reduces the number of platelets in the blood which reduces blood clotting - in that function it is used to prevent heart attacks.
Aspirin is one of the most-used medical drugs in the world.
There are some possible side-effects to this drug.
For example, large amounts can damage the kidneys.
Children taking aspirin can develop Reye 's syndrome which causes the liver to become fatty and not work properly and also the brain to become enlarged.
Reyes syndrome can be fatal, but most children survive it with treatment.
People with lung, kidney disease, gout, hyperuricemia (high amounts of uric acid in the blood), hemophilia (a blood clotting disorder), diabetes or high blood pressure should not take aspirin except on the advice of a qualified medical professional.
Nor should people who are allergic to it, to ibuprofen or to naproxen.
People with asthma where attacks are brought about by aspirin should avoid using any anti-inflammatory drugs based on it.
Aspirin was invented in Germany in 1897.
Bayer has a trademark on the brand name "aspirin" in 80 countries.
But in other countries, "aspirin" is the common name for the drug.
The Ainu is a term for a Japanese ethnic group and culture and language.
in the Ezo region
The word acropolis (Greek acron, edge + polis, city) means the edge of a town or a high city.
The term acropolis is also used to describe the central complex of overlapping structures, such as plazas and pyramids, in many Mayan cities, including Tikal and Cop n.
Acupuncture is an ancient kind of medical treatment developed in China about 5000 years ago.
Thin metal needles are pushed into the body at certain places called "acupuncture points".
It is a form of alternative medicine, and a key part of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
It uses the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang.
There is no general agreement as to whether acupuncture is effective.
It is difficult to do good research on this issue.
A 2014 review article said "researchers usually find that it generally does not matter where the needles are inserted, how often (that is, no dose-response effect is observed), or even if needles are actually inserted.
In other words, ` sham ' or ` placebo ' acupuncture generally produces the same effects as ` real ' acupuncture and, in some cases, does better".
A 2013 analysis found little evidence that the effectiveness of acupuncture on pain (compared to sham) was modified by the location of the needles, the number of needles used, the experience or technique of the practitioner, or by the circumstances of the sessions.
Using the principles of "evidence-based medicine" (~ scientific research) to research acupuncture is controversial, and has produced different results.
Some research suggests acupuncture can alleviate pain but the majority of research suggests that acupuncture 's effects are mainly due to placebo.
Evidence suggests that any benefits of acupuncture are short-lasting.
There is insufficient evidence to support use of acupuncture compared to mainstream medical treatments.
Acupuncture is not better than mainstream treatment in the long term.
Chinese doctors have claimed to perform surgery with acupuncture as the only anesthetic.
This is a claim which is difficult to test.
In some cases at least, the claim has been fraudulent, because morphine, or other sedatives were delivered through a drip.
In 2006, a BBC documentary Alternative Medicine filmed a patient undergoing open heart surgery allegedly under acupuncture-induced anesthesia.
It was later revealed that the patient had been given a cocktail of anesthetics.
Recently, acupuncture has begun to be used more frequently in the West.
In the United States acupuncture has often been used to help control pain and drug and alcohol addiction.
It is also often used to treat headaches, asthma, and arthritis.
It is widely agreed that acupuncture treatment is safe when done by well-trained doctors using clean needles.
Guidelines from the NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) is that "The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) only recommends considering acupuncture as a treatment option for chronic lower back pain, chronic tension-type headaches and migraine".
Aeneas was a Trojan prince and hero.
His father was Anchises, his mother was the Greek goddess Aphrodite (Venus in the case of Roman sources).
Both Homer and Vergil mention him in their stories.
Vergil wrote a whole series of books about him.
These books are called Aeneis in their original Latin.
The usual English translation of the title is Aeneid.
The books are the story of" "pious Aeneas".
and about how the city of Rome came to be.
The tale starts with Aeneas carrying his father out of the burning Troy, and end with Romulus and Remus founding Rome (after Aeneas landed on the coast, after sailing the Mediterranean Sea for a long time).
Aeneas also appears in Book 5 of the Iliad written by Homer.
William Shakespeare also wrote a story mentioning Aeneas.
Christopher Marlowe wrote a play about Aeneas and Dido, the queen who fell in love with him.
There is also an opera about Dido and Aeneas, written by Henry Purcell.
Amaranth (Amaranthus spp.)
is a cosmopolitan genus of herbs.
Approximately 60 species are recognized, with flower clusters and foliage ranging from purple and red to gold.
Although several species are often considered weeds, people around the world value amaranths as leaf vegetables, cereals, and ornamentals.
Agamemnon was King of Mycenae, a figure in Greek mythology, and possible an actual person.
He lead the Mycenaean Greeks who took part in the Trojan War (Siege of Troy).
Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus of Mycenae and Aerope.
He was the brother of Menelaos.
His wife was Klytaimnestra, and their children were Iphigenia, Elektra, Orestes and Chrysothemis.
After the Trojan War he took Troy 's Kassandra as a slave.
She warned him that his wife Klytaimnestra would kill him, but he would not believe her.
At home, Agamemnon was killed by Klytaimnestra and her lover Aegisthus.
The story featured in Homer 's Odyssey (3.266).
Sir Sultan Muhammed Shah, Aga Khan III, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, GCVO, PC (2 November 1877 11 July 1957) was the 48th Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims.
He became Imam at a very young age.
He was seven years old when his father, Aga Khan II, died in 1885.
He was one of the founders and the first president of the All-India Muslim League, and served as President of the League of Nations from 1937-38.
He was born in Karachi, in what was British India.
He was given a religious education, and also a European education.
He attended Eton and Cambridge University, and was a frequent visitor to Britain.
His followers celebrated his anniversaries as Imam in 1937, 1946 and 1954 by weighing him in gold, diamonds and platinum.
The proceeds were spent on welfare and development in Asia and Africa.
Girls schools were set up in the remote northern areas of what is now Pakistan.
He was knighted by Queen Victoria, and later made a member of the Privy Council.
At the end of his life, Sir Sultan Mohammed did a remarkable thing.
In his will, he disinherited his son, Aly Khan, in favor of his grandson, Karim.
So the next Khan, Aga Khan IV, was a younger man better suited to the modern world.
The Aga Khan 's mausoleum is near the Nile at Aswan, Egypt.
Ahmad Shah Durrani (c.1723-1773) (Pashto:), also known as Ahmad Shah Abdali (Pashto:) and born as Ahmad Khan, was the founder of the Durrani Empire in 1747.
He united the different Afghan tribes and conquered what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, eastern Iran and The Punjab in north western India.
He is recognized as the Founding Father of the modern state of Afghanistan.
His mausoleum is located in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, adjacent to the mosque where Muhammad the Prophet 's sacred cloak is kept as memorabilia.
It is not worshiped.
Ajax the Lesser (Ancient Greek:) was a Greek hero from the Trojan War, who was the son of O leus.
Alaric I, also Alaricus, (reigned 394 410 AD) was a leader of the Visigoths.
He is famous as the Gothic leader who sacked the city of Rome in 410 AD.
Very little about his family is known.
As a young man he received much of his military training in the Roman army.
He next appears as a war leader of Gothic forces fighting along with Roman troops at the Battle of the Frigidus in 394.
In January 395 the emperor Theodosius I died dividing his empire between his two sons.
Alaric revolted and as the leader of the Visigoths he attacked parts of the Eastern Roman Empire.
He later attacked the Western Roman Empire.
In 408 he attempted to attack Rome but was bribed to leave.
He returned two years later, defeated and occupied the city.
He died in 411.
Alaric was born on an island on the delta of the Danube River.
He was a member of the noble Balti dynasty of Visigoths.
He was first mentioned in 394 AD as a commander under the Roman Emperor Theodosius I in his war against Eugenius.
He became the leader or king of the Visigoths in the mid 390s.
Alaric rebelled against Emperor Arcadius in 395 and invaded Greece.
When he came to the walls of Athens, the city paid a heavy ransom so he left them unharmed.
He then defeated (Corinth, Argos and Sparta.
He continued to lay waste to Greece until 397 when the Roman general Stilicho surrounded Alaric 's army at Arcadia.
They cut off the water to the Gothic camp and thought it was impossible for Alarc to escape.
But Alaric broke through their lines and marched 30 m to the north over very difficult terrain.
Alaric then made a treaty with Arcadius.
Stilicho returned to Italy without having defeated Alaric.
In 401-402 AD Alaric entered Italy.
He tried the same tactics he used earlier but was unsuccessful against the Roman army.
At the Battle of Pollentia in 402, the Roman army defeated the goths.
Alaric 's wife was one of those captured by the Romans.
However, the Visigoth losses were very few and Alaric 's army left in good order.
Alaric crossed the Po River intending on attacking Rome but was met and defeated again by Stilicho at the Battle of Verona.
Alaric 's army attacked across the Danube and Rhine Rivers again in 405 and 406 AD.
Stilicho, who was now ruling in the name of the Emperor Honorius, made a treaty with Alaric.
But Stilicho was killed in 408.
Alaric invaded Italy again and demanded Stilicho 's promises to him be kept.
From late 408 AD, the Visigoth army camped outside Rome.
Alaric demanded payment from Honorius, who was safe in Ravenna, which the emperor refused to pay.
On August 24, 410 AD, Rome 's city gates were opened by slaves.
Alaric 's Visigoths began three days of murdering and plundering.
They damaged buildings and stole from tombs of former emperors.
It was the first time in 800 years that Rome was sacked.
But the Visigoths continued their destruction further south in Italy.
The casualties were high on both sides.
The Romans lost an estimated 15,000 men while the Visigoths lost about 17,000.
Alaric planned to move his army into Sicily and then on to Africa.
But he died soon after Rome fell in 410 AD.
Ataulf succeeded Alaric as king and took the army into Gaul.
Albertus Magnus, O.P. (1193\/1206 November 15, 1280), also known as Albert the Great and Albert of Cologne, is a Catholic saint.
He was a German Dominican friar and a bishop who achieved fame for his comprehensive knowledge of and advocacy for the peaceful coexistence of science and religion.
James A. Weisheipl and Joachim R. S der have referred to him as the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages, an opinion supported by contemporaries such as Roger Bacon.
Magnus was born into a rich German family, in Swabia, in about 1200.
He attended Padua University, in Italy.
He was very knowledgeable about Sciences, and he wrote about chemistry, geometry, astronomy, physiology.
He promoted Aristotle s writings.
He later became Master of Theology, which is the study of religion and God, in the University of Paris.
He also created a school in Cologne, in 1248.
Magnus died on November 15, 1280, in Cologne, Germany.
250 years after his death, he was named a Saint because he helped and contributed to the Catholic Church.
Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov (Alexander III, 10 March 1845 1 November 1894), was Emperor of Russia from 13 March (O.S. 1 March) 1881 until his death on 1 November (O.S. 20 October) 1894.
He changed some of the liberal laws made by his father, Alexander II.
Alexander III had six children.
His son Nicholas II of Russia became the next Tsar.
Alexander I of Scotland (c. 1078 - 23 April 1124) was the son of Malcolm Canmore and Saint Margaret of Scotland.
He became the King of Scotland in 1107.
In the same year, he married Sybilla, who was an illegitimate daughter of Henry I of England.
Alexander III (Mediaeval Gaelic: Alaxandair mac Alaxandair; Modern Gaelic: Alasdair mac Alasdair), King of Scots, was born at Roxburgh on 4 September 1241 and died on 19 March, 1286.
He was the only son of Alexander II with his second wife, Marie de Coucy.
Alexander 's father died on 6 July 1249 and he officially became king at the age of eight.
This happened at Scone on 13 July, 1249.
Alexios I Komnenos or Alexius I Comnenus (;; 1048 August 15, 1118), Byzantine emperor (1081 1118), was the son of John Komnenos and Anna Dalassena.
He was the nephew of Isaac I Komnenos (emperor 1057 1059).
The military, financial and territorial recovery of the Byzantine Empire known as Komnenian restoration began in his time.
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 June 8, 1845) was a General in the War of 1812 and was considered to be a war hero.
He became the seventh President of the United
As a boy Andrew Jackson was a messenger for the Continental Army.
The British caught him and mistreated him.
He was the first U.S. President who was not born into a rich family.
He was not a rich man and did not have a college education.
For these reasons, Jackson stood for the common man (people who worked hard and did not make a lot of money, like farmers).
In 1791, he fell in love with Rachel Donelson Robards.
They went through a marriage ceremony.
However, the marriage was not legal because she had not been granted a divorce from her first husband.
Therefore, they married legally three years later.
They had no children, but they adopted several.
He became rich and owned a large plantation.
Andrew Jackson reorganized the Democratic Party and was its leader.
In 1828, he defeated John Quincy Adams in the Presidential Election of 1828, he became President on March 4th, 1829, and four years later he was re-elected to a second term as President.
Jackson supported a popular democracy where the people directly elect the President instead of what we have now, the Electoral College where the people elect people who elect the President.
During his Presidency, he signed the Indian Removal Act which allowed the U.S. government to violently force the Native Americans to move from their land and go west.
Many Native Americans were killed and the path they walked to get to the west was called the Trail of Tears.
Andrew Jackson was against the national bank of the United States because he felt that it was run by rich powerful people and that it did not serve the interests of the common man.
The national bank expired during Jackson 's Presidency.
Jackson chose not to continue the bank.
On March 4th, 1837, Andrew Jackson finished his second term.
After that, Vice-President Martin Van Buren became President (because he was elected) and continued many of the things Jackson did.
Jackson was a big influence on other Democrats during the 1800 's.
Jackson 's legacy among historians is mixed.
On one hand, Jackson became a rich man and owned many slaves.
He had many Native Americans killed or kicked out of their homes.
Most people now disagree with him and believe that a national bank is necessary for a country to do well.
On the other hand, Jackson was a successful General in war and led a powerful political movement in peacetime.
He stood for the common man, and changed the country.
Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 July 31, 1875) was the 16th Vice-President and 17th President of the United States.
Before becoming Vice-President, he was a Governor and U.S. Senator from Tennessee.
When Tennessee and ten other Southern slave states declared they were no longer part of the United States, he was the only member from such a state to not quit his seat in the U.S. Congress.
A southern Democrat, he was elected as Abraham Lincoln 's vice-president on a "National Union" ticket in 1864.
He became president in 1865 after Abraham Lincoln was killed.
Congress was then run by Republicans, and after Lincoln 's assassination, they wanted stricter terms than Johnson did for the Reconstruction of the Southern states that had rebelled.
As a result, he vetoed 29 bills passed by Congress, and is the president to have the most vetoes overridden (15) by Congress.
He was also the first President to be impeached, but was later acquitted by one vote, and finished the rest of his term.
The only U.S. president never to have gone to school, he was later taught to read by his wife, Eliza McCardle Johnson.
The U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia for $ 7.2 million (the price was 2 cents per acre) while he was president.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (11 December 1918 3 August 2008) was a Russian writer.
He was the winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in literature.
Solzhenitsyn was a novelist, dramatist, and historian.
With his works, the Gulag, a Soviet labor camp, became well known.
Due to this, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, but also was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974.
In 1994, Solzhenitsyn went back to Russia.
After he died (of heart failure) he received a state funeral.
He was very significant for revealing what life was like in the Soviet days.
Much of Solzhenitsyn 's work is autobiographical, based on things he saw and experienced in his own life.
Solzhenitsyn was himself imprisoned in the Gulag for many years, and later was in a cancer ward (he recovered from the cancer).
After Khrushchev 's Secret Speech in 1956 Solzhenitsyn was freed from exile and exonerated (cleared of all charges).
The manuscript of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published in edited form in 1962, with the explicit approval of Nikita Khrushchev.
Khrushchev defended it at the Praesidium of the Politburo hearing on whether to allow its publishing, and added: "There 's a Stalinist in each of you; there 's even a Stalinist in me.
We must root out this evil".
Thus the lines between autobiography, reportage, fiction and political observations are tied up together, more so than with most writers.
This is a long poem.
Solzhenitsyn was a captain in the Soviet Red Army during the Second World War.
Prussian Nights describes the Red Army 's march across East Prussia, and focuses on the traumatic acts of rape and murder that Solzhenitsyn witnessed as a participant in that march.
The title is an allusion to Dante 's first circle of Hell in The Divine Comedy, where the philosophers of Greece, and other non-Christians, live in a walled green garden.
They are unable to enter Heaven, as they were born before Christ, but enjoy a small space of relative freedom in the heart of Hell.
The story is about prisoners (zeks) who are technicians or academics.
They have been arrested under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code in Joseph Stalin 's purges after the Second World War.
The novel tells the story of a small group of cancer patients in Uzbekistan in 1955, in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union.
It explores the moral responsibility symbolized by the patients ' malignant tumors of those responsible for the suffering of their fellow citizens.
During Stalin 's Great Purge millions were killed, sent to labor camps, or exiled.
Apart from officials who took the decisions, many more stood by and did nothing.
They, too, were implicated.
Others did worse: they denounced innocent people in order to gain advantages for themselves.
The novel tells of how patients come to realize their part in these tragic events.
This is about Imperial Russia 's defeat at the Battle of Tannenberg in East Prussia.
The novel is an unusual blend of fiction narrative and historiography.
It caused extensive and bitter controversy, both from the literary and the historical point of view.
In 1984 a new version of the novel, much expanded, was published.
By this time Solzhenitsyn had lived in the USA for some years.
He was able to publish chapters previously suppressed, and new parts written after research at the library of the Hoover Institution.
These included chapters on Vladimir Lenin which were published separately as Lenin in Zurich.
The story is set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s, and describes a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.
The book 's publication was an extraordinary event in Soviet literary history; never before had an account of Stalinist repression been openly distributed.
In a provincial town, the students of the local college help to build new college premises by doing most of the work themselves.
When it is built, Soviet authorities order that the building should be handed over to a research institute; the students are told that this is "for the good of the cause".
The story is an open criticism of the lack of democracy the prevailed at the time, and the lack of integrity of political leaders.
This is Solzhenitsyn 's most read short story.
The narrator, a former prisoner of the gulag, longs to return to live in the Russian provinces.
He takes a job at a school on a collective farm.
Matryona offers him a place to live in her tiny, run-down home.
They share a single room where they eat and sleep; the narrator sleeps on a camp-bed and Matryona near the stove.
The narrator finds the farm workers ' lives little different to those of the pre-revolutionary landlords and their serfs.
Matryona works on the farm for little or no pay.
Helping others one night, she is killed by a train.
Her character has been described as "the only true Christian (and) the only true Communist" and her death symbolic of Russia 's martyrdom.
A history of the entire process of developing and administering a police state in the Soviet Union.
It was circulated in samizdat (underground publication) form in the Soviet Union until its official publication in 1989.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the formation of the Russian Federation, The Gulag Archipelago became required reading in Russian high schools.
The Arkhipelag GuLag (its Russian title), is both a rhyme and a metaphor used throughout the work.
The word archipelago describes the system of labor camps spread across the huge Soviet Union as a vast chain of islands, known only to those who were fated to visit them.
Aberdeen is a city on the north east coast of Scotland where the rivers Dee and Don flow into the North Sea.
It was the capital of the Grampian region of Scotland, but it is now one of Scotland 's Unitary Authorities.
Aberdeen is the third largest city in Scotland.
Its population is nearly 200,000.
It is the coldest city in the UK.
The city 's motto is Bon Accord.
Aberdeen is famous for its buildings made from granite.
Because of the silver-grey color of the stone, Aberdeen is called the "Silver City by the Golden Sands".
Aberdeen has two universities, the University of Aberdeen which was founded on 10 February 1495 by Bishop William Elphinstone and Robert Gordon University which was founded in 1910 but has a history dating back to the 1800s.
The local people sometimes speak in a dialect called Doric.
They are called Aberdonians.
Aberdeen has its own football team, Aberdeen F.C..
The team plays in the Scottish Premier League.
Each year in August, Aberdeen hosts the Aberdeen International Youth Festival.
This is one of the most important annual events in Scotland.
Hundred of groups of young performing artists come to Aberdeen each year for the festival.
Aberdeen shares its name with Aberdeen, Idaho and Aberdeen, Washington in the United States.
Antipope is a term of the Roman Catholic Church in the context of its official list of popes.
An antipope is not included in the list of popes in the Vatican 's annual directory, Annuario Pontificio
An antipope is a pretender who falsely claims to be pope or who wrongly opposes the legitimate and recognized pope.
The existence or claims of an antipope produces a schism in the Roman Catholic Church.
A conflict is caused by those who are opposing the authority of the pope.
Aquaculture is the farming of fish, shrimp, and algae, and other seafood.
Aquaculture supplies fish, such as catfish, salmon, and trout.
Aquaculture was developed a long time ago in China and aquaculture supplies over 20 % of all the seafood harvested.
Aquaculture is quite a new activity in Canada as it only began in 1879.
Alfred the Great (c. 849 - 26 October 899) was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.
He was the first monarch from the British Isles to style himself as ` King of the Anglo-Saxons ' and so he is sometimes considered the first English king.
Alfred started the Royal Navy in the 9th century.
Alfred was the youngest son of King thelwulf of Wessex and Osburga.
She was the daughter of Oslac, Athelwulf 's butler.
Alfred was born in 849 in the royal village of Wantage then in Berkshire.
In the world he grew up in there was constant talk and fear of Viking raiders.
For fourteen years they had been raiding but a year after Alfred 's birth they remained all winter.
The Viking menace was now settled on the island of Thanet in Kent.
When he was about four Alfred 's mother, Osburga, died.
At age twelve Alfred had difficulty finding a qualified teacher to help him learn to read and write.
He finally overcame the problem and learned to read and write by using the writings of the church.
At some point in his childhood Alfred was made a consul (a high rank in Anglo-Saxon England styled on the Roman office of consul).
The ceremony involved him receiving a red cloak, a jeweled belt and a sword.
This ceremony meant he was not destined to join the church, as the younger sons typically were.
His life as an adult would be as a nobleman and possibly, if he survived his four older brothers, as king someday.
Before he was seven years old he had traveled to Rome twice.
In 853 Alfred was sent with an escort and met Pope Leo IV.
In 855 King thelwulf traveled to Rome taking his young son Alfred with him.
They stayed in Rome a year and returned through France.
There king thelwulf and his son Alfred stayed at the court of Charles the Bald.
thelwulf became engaged to Charles 's eldest daughter, Judith, then about aged twelve.
That same October they were married at Verberie in northern France.
While Alfred and his father were in Rome and France, 855-856, his older brother Athelstan had died.
On the king 's return his son Ethelbald, with his followers.
was threatening a civil war.
To prevent this from happening thelwulf stepped down as king.
He gave the rule over Wessex to his son Ethelbald.
He took over the rule of Kent, Essex, Sussex and Surrey ruling Wessex as the under-king with his child bride Judith sharing his throne.
In 858 king thelwulf died.
Ethelbald, now the undisputed king, next did the unexpected.
He married his and Alfred 's stepmother Judith.
According to Asser, all men in England were horrified.
Two years later in 860, Ethelbald was dead.
Alfred 's third brother, Ethelbert, succeeded to the throne.
He united all of Wessex into one kingship.
Queen Judith sold all of her extensive holdings in England and returned to France.
The next brother to rule Wessex was Ethelbert.
In the same year he succeeded his brother there was a great Viking raid on the south coast of England.
The Vikings plundered Winchester the chief city of Wessex and obtained a great deal of plunder.
As they returned to their ships they were ambushed by Anglo-Saxons from Hampshire and Berkshire.
A few survived and returned to their ships.
For the next three years Southern England was free of Viking raids.
But the year 865 saw the arrival of the Great Heathen Army in East Anglia.
For a time they were more interested in Northumbria.
They gained control of York and moved south into Mercia then made their winter camp in Nottingham.
Meanwhile King Ethelbert died in early 866.
So far all the brothers had been childless and so the succession was passed from brother to brother.
The fourth brother in line was Ethelred.
He became king in 866.
It was at this time Alfred was given the title of Secundarius (Latin for secondary).
In effect it meant he was given regal power over part of the kingdom or limited joint authority over the entire kingdom.
in 868 Burgred, the King of Mercia, asked King Ethelred and Alfred for their help against the Danes (Vikings).
But their forces together could not defeat the Danes.
By 871 the Mercians and East Anglians had been defeated.
Only Wessex could mount an army against the Vikings.
That year Wessex was invaded by a large Danish army.
After many battles the Anglo-Saxons were able to slow the Danes ' progress.
Ethelred died.
He left a young son named Ethelwald who later rebelled against Edward the Elder.
Alfred became king in the middle of this conflict.
But before the end of the year he succeeded in effecting a peace, probably by paying a sum of money to the invaders.
Alfred earned the name ` the Great ' by defending the kingdom from Viking invasions.
Alfred was a scholar and encouraged education in the kingdom as well as improving the legal system.
By the close of the ninth century the four independent kingdoms of England had been reduced to just one.
Wessex was the only remaining kingdom not destroyed by the Vikings.
Beginning about 886 Alfred claimed to be the king of all the English.
The exception was those parts of England that were under Danish rule.
This was the beginning of unifying England under a single king.
For many Alfred was the first king of the English.
But he did not technically rule all of England.
That distinction was given to Athelstan (ruled 924 939).
King Ethelstan was Alfred 's eldest grandson.
In the 880s Alfred formed a marriage alliance with Mercia, still a powerful kingdom.
his daughter, Ethelflaeda, married king Ethelstan (II), of Mercia.
After his death Ethelflaeda ruled as Queen of Mercia.
By 890 Alfred was making literacy among his people a priority.
There were still Viking attacks and Alfred was still telling his people to continue fighting and not give up.
Alfred died in 899.
He was succeeded by his son, Edward the Elder who was crowned on Whitsunday (8 June) 900.
In 868 Alfred married Ealhswith, daughter of Ethelred, surnamed Mucill, Ealdorman of the Gainas.
Together they had several children:
Algiers is the capital city of Algeria, which is a country in northern Africa.
It is on the northern coast of the country.
The population of the city is 1,519,570.
Alhazen or Alhacen or ibn al-Haytham (965 1039) was a pioneer of modern optics.
Some have also described him as a "pioneer of the modern scientific method" and "first scientist", but others think this overstates his contribution.
Alhazen 's Risala fi l-makan (Treatise on Place) discussed theories on the motion of a body.
He maintained that a body moves perpetually unless an external force stops it or changes its direction of motion.
He laid foundations for telescopic astronomy.
He was an Arab or Persian Muslim polymath who made contributions to the principles of optics, as well as to anatomy, engineering, mathematics, medicine, ophthalmology, philosophy, physics, psychology, Muslim theology, visual perception.
He is sometimes called al-Basri (Arabic:), after his birthplace in the city of Basra in Iraq (Mesopotamia).
Alhazen lived mainly in Cairo, Egypt, dying there at age 74.
Over-confident about practical application of his mathematical knowledge, he thought he could regulate the floods of the Nile.
When he was ordered by Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, the sixth ruler of the Fatimid caliphate, to carry out this operation, he realized he could not do it, and retired from engineering.
Fearing for his life, he pretended to be mad, and was placed under house arrest.
For the rest of his life he devoted himself entirely to his scientific work.
The Almoravids were a Berber dynasty from the Sahara that ruled over a wide area of northwestern Africa and the Iberian peninsula during the 11th century.
Under this dynasty the Moorish empire included present-day Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Gibraltar, Tlemcen (in Algeria) and a great part of what is now Senegal and Mali in the south, and Spain and Portugal to the north in Europe.
At its greatest extent, the empire stretched 3,000 kilometres north to south (an all-time latitude spanner until Spanish America).
Aloe is a genus of succulent plants, with over 500 species.
The best-known of these is probably Aloe vera, which is widely cultivated.
A. vera is probably extinct in the wild.
The age of consent is the age at which a person can legally consent to have sexual intercourse.
This is also the minimum age of the other person legally permitted to engage in sexual activity.
Having sex with a person who is younger than the age of consent (but who agrees to have sex) is called statutory rape.
The person below the minimum age is regarded as a victim, and their sex partner as the offender.
Different countries have different laws regarding the age of consent.
Some are as low as 12 or as high as 21.
Most countries have ages set between 13 and 16.
But worldwide, the average age of consent is 16 years of age.
Most jurisdictions allow minors above a certain age to marry with parental and\/or government permission.
In jurisdictions which allow this, a minor who is married is an exception to the law.
For example, in Wisconsin the age of consent for sex is 18.
Marriage is an exception.
Marriage usually prevents a party to the marriage from being charged under sexual assault laws, as long as both husband and wife are at least 16 years, although not if one of the parties is younger than this age and one is older.
This varies from country to country.
In some places kissing is considered a sexual activity.
Other places only count sexual intercourse.
Most countries have laws that say what the legal age of consent is.
This is usually a fixed age.
For example, in France the age of consent is set at 15, which means having sex with anyone below that age by anyone over that age is illegal.
However, some jurisdictions use sexual maturity instead of age to determine capacity for consent.
For example, when Russia was a part of the Soviet Union, its age of consent was having reached "sexual maturity".
There are exceptions to age of sexual consent laws.
Although most jurisdictions have a fixed age set as the law, where no one over that age can be with anyone under that age, some states have close in age exceptions.
For example, in Indiana the age of consent for sex is 16, but there is a close in age exception that makes it legal for a person younger than 18 but above 16 to still be able to have sex with a 14 year old without being guilty of a crime.
Indiana also allows a defense against the law in court if the victim is married or was married in the past, and allows pregnant females who are 15 or older to marry the man who impregnated.
This is with parental and government approval as an alternative to prosecuting the defendant.
The age of consent varies between states and countries.
The laws in different areas range as low as 13 yrs old to 20 yrs.
The laws are almost always affected by a nation 's culture.
Nations with Islamic law tend to have lower ages.
European countries generally range from 14yrs to 16yrs.
In the United States, the age varies from 16 to 18.
In many areas, there is a "close-in-age" part of the laws.
This allows for people under of consent but above a certain age to have sex with people as long as there older partner is either less than a certain age or the difference in age is a certain amount of years.
The age of consent may also vary if one of the people is in a position of authority over the other.
For example, if the older person was a teacher of the "victim", the age may be higher than for other people, an example of this is Indiana where the age where a person can have sex is 16 except if the older partner is a teacher at the "victim 's" high school, in which case the age limit is 18.
If the two people are married, the age is often lower.
Age of consent can also be affected by the type of sex or the sex of the person.
Many areas have different ages for homosexual sex as well as anal sex.
There are areas which also have different ages depending on if the person is male or female.
For example, in Victoria, Australia, the age of consent is 16.
The law says that the minimum age is 12 and that there is a two year "close-in-age" exception.
It is against the law to have sex (or any other sexual act) with a person under the age of 12, even if they said yes.
If one of the people having sex is between the age of 12 and 15, the other can not be more than two years older than that person.
A 13yr old can have sex with a 15 yr old.
A 15 yr old (still a minor) can have sex with a 17 yr old (an adult).
It is against the law for a person to have sex with someone aged 16 or 17 if they are responsible for their care.
If a person is caught having sex, or any other sexual act, with someone who is below the age of consent, the person may be punished as a sex offender.
The violator may be sent to prison, or jail, or fined.
In Wisconsin having sex with a person beneath 16, a felony (serious crime), carries prison time, but having sex with a minor who is 16 or over but under 18, which is a misdemeanor (a non-serious crime), carries jail time and a fine.
An example of punishing age of consent violations occured in 2011, an American swimming teacher was sent to prison for 16 months for having sex with a 15 year old student.
The law usually applies to both males and females having sex with a minor.
Amalasuntha (c. 495 30 April 534\/535) was a queen of the Ostrogoths, a branch of Goths, from 526 to 534.
She was a Gothic princess and daughter of the Italian king, Theodoric the Great.
Amalasuntha had been married to Eutharic, an unknown Gothic nobleman.
She gave birth to a son named Athalaric in 518.
Her husband later died, leaving Amalasuntha a widow to raise their young son.
After her son Athalaric died, she fought for the kingdom, which was very difficult, but it increased her support of the Romans.
Amalasuntha was an extremely well educated woman.
She studied Greek and Latin and she became a lifelong contributor of writings and arts.
Theodoric (her father) supplied her with a Roman education because he had an interest in creating peaceful Roman-Gothic relations.
Her husband Eutharic was assigned Theodoric 's heir, which excluded Theodoric 's nephew from inheritance and power.
Her husband Eutharic died in 522, and Theodoric followed in 526.
As a result, Athalaric inherited the throne.
Athalaric was still very young so Amalasuntha became the regent Her accomplishments over her years of being a regent, were applauded by many people like the historian Procopius who spoke of her bravery and knowledge.
She pursued her goal of creating good connections between the Romans and the Goths, which had been torn down in the years of her father s rule, mostly during the imprisonment of Theodoric and the killing of Boethius, a Roman political figure.
She gave Boethius back his captured estates and began to look for the Roman Senate and then sent a letter to the emperor of Constantinople, asking him to forgive her and gave a Roman education to her son.
All of this to get on the emperors good side.
Amalasuntha attempted to improve relations with barbarian people to make peace with the Gothic nobility.
Amalasuntha improved relations with the Burgundians, but the alliance ended.
Alphonse I or Alphonzo I (25 July 1109 - 6 December 1185), in Portuguese Afonso I, was the first king of Portugal.
He is best known by his prince name Afonso Henriques.
Afonso Henriques was the son of Henry of Burgundy, Count of Portugal and Teresa of Le n.
He became King on 25 July 1139, after winning the Battle of Ourique.
He doubled the area of Portugal with the Reconquista and was nicknamed the Conqueror (Port.
o Conquistador).
He died on 6 December 1185 in Coimbra.
Afonso IV (f su; 8 February 1291 28 May 1357), called the Brave, was the seventh king of Portugal and the Algarve from 1325 until his death.
He was the only son that King Denis of Portugal had with his wife Elizabeth of Aragon.
Afonso married Beatrice of Castile (1293 1359) in 1309, daughter of Sancho IV, King of Castile and Mar a de Molina, and had four sons and three daughters by her.
He also had another daughter.
Amati is the name of a family of Italian violin makers.
Between about 1549 to 1740 they made some of the most wonderful violins that were ever produced.
They worked in Cremona in Italy, the town which is famous for violin making.
famous member of the family was Andrea Amati who was born some time before 1511 and died in Cremona on 24 December 1577.
He can be thought of as the inventor of the violin in its modern form.
He made violins, violas and cellos.
A small number of his instruments are still in existence.
They are dated between 1564 and 1574 and they have the coat of arms of Charles IX of France on the back.
Andrea Amati s two sons were Antonio Amati who was born about 1540 in Cremona and died there on 14 February 1607 and Girolamo Amati who was born about 1561 in Cremona and died of the plague there on 21 October 1630.
They are known as "The Brothers Amati", but they did not work much together.
However, they both produced some great instruments.
They made the shape of the f holes perfect and gave their instruments more strength.
They also made some large violas and cellos.
They had an enormous influence on all other violin makers.
Nicol Amati was the son of Girolamo Amati.
He is now the most famous member of the family.
He was born on 3 December 1596 and died on 12 April 1684) He was the most eminent of the family.
He had become a very skilled violin maker by 1630 when his father died.
During the next few years there was a lot of suffering because of the plague and not many people could afford to buy instruments.
Then, after 1640, there was more demand again and Nicol made many great instruments.
Those that have survived are among the most sought-after and expensive violins today.
He made instruments that were slightly wider and were known as the Grand Pattern.
Many other violin makers learned from him.
These pupils include Andrea Guarneri and possibly also Antonio Stradivari.
The last maker of the family was Nicolo 's son, Girolamo Amati, known as Hieronymus II.
He was born on 26 February and died on 21 February, 1740.
Although he made some improvements to his father 's instruments, they are not as good.
Antonio Stradivari became the greatest violin maker at this time.
For other uses, see Amazon.
The Amazons (in Greek,) were a mythical ancient nation of all-women warriors.
Herodotus placed them in a region around Scythia in Sarmatia.
The histories and legends in Greek mythology may be inspired by warrior women among the Sarmatians.
The Amazon River (also named Rio Amazonas in Portuguese and Spanish) is the largest river in the world by the amount or volume of water it carries.
It flows through the tropical forests of South America, mainly in Brazil.
Its headwaters are in the Andes Mountains in Peru, on the western edge of South America and flows eastward into the Atlantic Ocean near the equator.
The Amazon moves more water than the next eight largest rivers of the world combined and has the largest drainage basin in the world.
It accounts for about one fifth of the world 's total river flow.
During the wet season, parts of the Amazon exceed 120 m in width.
Because of its size, it is sometimes called The Sea.
It is the world 's largest river system, even though it is not the world 's longest river system.
The world 's longest river is the Nile River, with the Amazon being second-longest.
It is one of the longest rivers in the world.
There have been different studies that have tried to measure its exact length.
As the studies have come up with different numbers, it is therefore difficult to give an exact number.
The length also changes in the rainy season.
Several studies from Brazil, Spain and Chile say it is the longest river in the world, longer than the Nile.
The Nile has a length of 6,571 km.
The Amazon may have a length of 6,937 kilometres.
The Spanish daily newspaper El Pa s gives its length at 6.850 kilometres.
In 2007, scientists from Peru and Brazil calculated a length of 6,800 km.
A study done in 1969 says that the Amazon has a length of 6,448 km.
This was measured from a part of the River Apurimac.
Until the 1970s, it was thought that the Mara n River was the source of the Amazon.
In 2001, an expedition found that Nevado Mismi was in fact the source of the Amazon.
Another document of the Geographic society of Lima gives the length of the Amazon at over 7,000 km.
The source of the Amazon is in the Andes Mountains of western South America.
It flows east from there to the Atlantic Ocean.
Most of the huge river and its many tributaries are in the country of Brazil.
There are many places on the Amazon where a person on one side of the river can not see the other side.
The Brazilians call the Amazon the "River Sea."
The Amazon is navigable from the ocean to Peru.
Ocean ships can travel on the Amazon all the way across Brazil, and most of South America, to the city of Iquitos in Peru.
One characteristic of the Amazon river is the Brazo Casiquiare, a water connection to the Orinoco river, that connects the two basins.
The estuary of the Amazon is about 330 k wide.
The width of the mouth of the river is usually measured from Cabo do Norte to Punto Patijoca.
Generally, the outlet of the Para River is included.
It is 60 k wide, and forms the estuary of the Tocantins.
The estuary also includes the island of Maraj, which lies in the mouth of the Amazon.
This means that the Amazon is wider at its mouth than the entire length of the Thames in England.
Along the coastline, near Cabo do Norte, there are many islands partially covered with water.
There are also sandbanks.
The tides of the Atlantic generate a wave that reaches into the Amazon river.
This wave goes along the coast for about 160 k. The phenomenon of this wave generated by the tides is called tidal bore.
Locally it is known as pororoca.
The pororoca occurs where the water is less than 7 m deep.
It starts with a loud noise, and advances at a speed of.
The bore is the reason the Amazon does not have a delta.
The ocean rapidly carries away the large amount of silt brought by the Amazon.
This makes it impossible for a delta to grow past the shoreline.
It also has a very large tide, that can reach 6 m. The place has become popular for river surfing.
A phenomenon that is very similar occurs at the mouth of the Orinoco.
There are no bridges across the entire width of the river.
This is not because the river would be too wide to bridge; for most of its length, engineers could build a bridge across the river easily.
For most of its course, the river flows through the Amazon Rainforest, where there are very few roads and cities.
Most of the time, the crossing can be done by a ferry, so there is no need to build a bridge.
The Manaus Iranduba Bridge linking the cities of Manaus and Iranduba spans the Rio Negro (a tributary of the Amazon).
The river is the main route of traffic in the region.
Most cities are on the banks of the river.
The biggest city on the river is Manaus, which is also the capital of the Brazilian State of Amazonas.
Many native people live in the Amazon, such as the Urarina who live in Peru.
Big ocean boats can get up the river until Manaus, which is almost 1500 kilometers from its mouth.
Smaller ocean ships of 3,000 tons and 7.9 m (26 ft) draft can reach as far as Iquitos in Peru, 3,700 km (2,300 miles) from the sea.
Smaller riverboats can reach 780 km (486 mi) higher as far as Actual Point.
Beyond that, small boats frequently go up to the Pogo Ode Escherichia 's, just above Actual Point.
Abdullah ibn Abi Qhuhafah, better known by his nickname Ab Bakr (c. 573 August 23? 634\/13 AH), was the first Muslim ruler after the Prophet Muhammad (632 634).
While Sunnis regard him as his rightful successor (caliph), chosen by the people, the Shias insist that he violated Muhammad 's direct orders and made a coup d' tat.
International lists have him as the first Muslim Caliph.
His nickname means father of the foal in reference to his fondness for camels.
Ambrosius Aurelianus was a powerful Romano-British leader in Sub-Roman Britain around mid-5th century.
He has been identified with the legendary King Arthur by historians like John Morris.
Ambrosius Aurelianus was born in Roman Britain in the years when Roman legions withdrew from the British isles and started the Anglo-saxon conquest.
He seems to be born in a noble Roman family, resident in Britain for many generations.
He also appeared independently in the legends of the Britons, beginning with the 9th-century "Historia Brittonum", written by Nennius.
His importance comes from the fact that he is the only Romano-british leader named by Gildas, who was the only historian who lived during Sub-Roman Britain times: this fact makes Ambrosius Aurelianus an historical and "real" personality in the King Arthur legends.
He was renowned for his campaigns against the Anglo-Saxons, and there is some speculation that he (or his son, according to the historian Gildas) may have commanded the Romano-british forces at the Battle of Badon Hill, where the barbarians were won around 500 AD.
After this battle for fifty years the Anglo-Saxons were stopped fron conquering all Britain.
Ambrosius Aurelianus is one of the few people that Gildas (a sixth century historian who lived in South-west Britain and wrote "De Excidio Britanniae", which focused largely on the history of Christian Britain) identifies by name in his sermon De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, and the only one named from the 5th century.
Following the destructive assault of the Saxons, the survivors gather together under the leadership of Ambrosius, who is described as:
''... a gentleman who, perhaps alone of the Romans, had survived the shock of this notable storm.
Certainly his parents, who had worn the purple, were slain by it.
His descendants in our day have become greatly inferior to their grandfather 's (avita) excellence."
We know from Gildas that he was of high birth, and had Roman ancestry; he was presumably a Romano-Briton, rather than a Roman from elsewhere in the empire, though it is impossible to be sure.
It also appears that Ambrosius was a Christian: Gildas says that he won his battles "with God 's help".
According to Gildas, Ambrosius organised the survivors into an armed force and achieved the first military victory over the Saxon invaders.
However, this victory was not decisive: "Sometimes the Saxons and sometimes the citizens (meaning the Romano-British inhabitants) were victorious."
The Book of Amos is one of the books of the Nevi ` im (Hebrew: "prophets") and of the Christian Old Testament.
Amos is one of the minor prophets.
Anaxagoras (Greek:, c. 500 BC 428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher.
He introduced the concept of Nous (mind), the ordering force.
He has also done some research on pi.
Anastasius is a male given name.
It is from the Greek ' (anastasis) meaning "resurrection".
Its female form is Anastasia.
Anaximenes of Miletus (c. 585 BC-c.
525 BC) was a Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher from the latter half of the 6th century, probably a younger contemporary of Anaximander, whose pupil or friend he is said to have been.
Anaximenes, like others in his school of thought, practiced material monism, the idea that underlying reality is one single thing.
For him, the primary substance was air.
To us, this is obviously wrong, but it was an attempt to find a natural way to explain the world.
Apollo 13 was the seventh mission of NASA 's Project Apollo and the third manned lunar-lander mission.
The flight was commanded by Jim Lovell.
The other astronauts on board were Jack Swigert and Fred Haise.
The craft was launched successfully toward the Moon, but two days after launch a faulty oxygen tank exploded, and the Service Module became damaged, causing a loss of oxygen and electrical power.
There was a very large chance that the astronauts would die before they could return to Earth.
They were very short of oxygen.
Oxygen is not just used to breathe, on the Apollo spacecraft it was used in a device called a Fuel cell to generate electricity.
So they conserved their remaining air by turning off almost all their electrical equipment, including heaters.
It became very cold in the spacecraft.
In order to stay alive the astronauts also had to move into the Apollo Lunar Module and make it work as a sort of "lifeboat".
When they approached the Earth they were not sure that their parachutes, needed to slow the Command Module down, would work.
The parachutes were thrown out by small explosive charges that were fired by batteries.
The cold could have made the batteries fail, in which case the parachutes would not work and the Command Module would hit the ocean so fast that all aboard would be killed.
Apollo blasted off on the 11th April 1970 at 19:13 UTC from Cape Canaveral and went into temporary low Earth orbit.
Two hours later they fired the rocket motor again to go toward the Moon.
They wanted to land at Fra Mauro.
Despite the hardships, the crew made it back to Earth.
Though the crew did not land on the Moon, the flight became very well known.
Some people regarded it as a failure because they did not land on the Moon.
However, others thought it was possibly the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations ' (NASA 's) greatest accomplishment in returning three men in a very damaged spacecraft back to Earth safely.
Coming up to re-entry, it was thought that the electrical equipment would short circuit because the water in the astronauts ' breath had turned back into a liquid all over the computers.
However, the electronics were fine.
Books were written about the event, including one by Jim Lovell, the commander of the mission.
A movie was also made about it, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks.
Apollo 7 was a mission in the NASA 's Apollo program.
It was the first manned mission in the Apollo program and the first manned US space flight after Apollo 1 disaster.
The mission was a C type mission.
Apollo 7 was launched on October 11, 1968 and stayed in space for 10 days, 20 hours, 9 minutes and three seconds.
It orbited the Earth.
Apollo 7 was the first manned launch of the Saturn IB launch vehicle and the first three-person US space mission.
The crew were Commander Walter M. Schirra, with Command Module Pilot Donn Eisele and Lunar Module Pilot R. Walter Cunningham.
The mission was designed to test the re-made Block II Apollo Command\/Service Module.
The crew orbited in Earth orbit so that they could check life-support, propulsion and control systems.
The mission was a success.
It gave NASA the confidence to launch Apollo 8 later.
Apollo 9 was a mission in NASA 's Apollo program.
It was the third manned mission in the Apollo program and was the first flight of the Command\/Service Module (CSM) with the Lunar Module (LM).
The crew was Commander James A. McDivitt, Command Module Pilot David R. Scott, and Lunar Module Pilot Russell L. Schweickart.
The mission was launched on March 3, 1969.
The mission tested several things which were important for landing on the Moon, including the LM engines, backpack life support systems, navigation systems, and docking maneuvers.
Arthritis is a group of diseases where a person or animal 's body joints are damaged.
"Arthritis" means inflammation of bone or body joint.
Arthritis can cause pain, swelling, and stiffness.
It can hurt to move with arthritis.
Arthritis is a condition that lasts for a long time.
There are more than 100 kinds of arthritis.
The three most common kinds are osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and gout.
Other kinds of arthritis include psoriatic arthritis and septic arthritis (when an area is invaded by bacteria).
Osteoarthritis is when the cartilage in between two bones breaks down.
This condition causes the bones to rub together.
This kind of arthritis is more common in elderly people.
The most common places for this arthritis are the hips, knees, lower back, and neck.
There are medicines that can relieve the pain and prevent disability.
Rheumatoid arthritis is caused by autoimmunity.
Autoimmunity is when the body 's immune system attacks its own tissues.
The most common places for this arthritis is in the wrists and the knuckles.
It usually starts between the ages of 20 and 40.
Children and elderly people can also get this kind of arthritis.
There are medicines to slow down the process of this disease.
There are also some medicines to relieve pain.
It is important to treat this kind of arthritis early.
Gout causes severe pain and swelling.
Gout normally affects the big toe.
It can also affect heels, ankles, hands, wrists or elbows.
Gout is from high levels of uric acid that is in the blood.
Gout can cause urate crystals to settle in tissues of joints.
Gout creates stone-like shapes.
The stone-like shapes build in joints, ligaments and tendons.
Arthritis is more common in older people.
Both osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis affect women more often than men.
Animals, including dogs and cats, can also get arthritis.
Acetylene is a hydrocarbon, belonging to the alkyne group.
It is the simplest type of alkyne, as it has only two hydrogen atoms and two carbon atoms.
Acetylene is an unsaturated organic compound because its four atoms are triple bonded through a covalent bond.
It was discovered in 1836 by Edmund Davy.
The chemical symbol is C2H2.
80 % of all acetylene produced yearly in the United States is used for chemical synthesis.
It is a toxic chemical; breathing the substance causes dizziness, headache and nausea.
Apuleius was a philosopher and rhetorician tried for using magic to win an older and richer bride.
He 's better known for his novel about the cult of Isis, the tale of Cupid and Psyche, and the adventures of its hero, Lucius.
Apuleius was born in about 125, in Madauros, Numidia.
It is not known what his first name was, although writers in the Middle Ages often called him "Lucius Apuleius" because the hero of his novel was called Lucius.
Apuleius was educated in Carthage and Athens, and then traveled around the Mediterranean learning about religious cults.
In 158 he delivered a speech recorded as Apologia Apuleii ` The Apology of Apuleius ' in the town of Sabratha, Tripolitania (modern Libya), as a defense against the charge of using magic to win a richer and older bride called Pudentilla.
Apuleius, in his Apology, provides a glimpse into second century Roman law, the economic and social conditions of Roman North Africa, and the attitude towards magic.
Apuleius died in about 175 A.D., having written his novel, known as either The Golden Ass or The Metamorphoses (also Transformations of Lucius), and the Apology, as well as books on Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle.
Alexander Selkirk, (1676 - 13th December 1721) also known as Alexander Selcraig, was a Scottish sailor.
He became famous for his amazing story of survival and is likely to have inspired Daniel Defoe to write the book Robinson Crusoe.
He was on an expedition when the captain of the ship, Captain Stradling, left him on an island off the coast of Chile.
Selkirk 's job on board was the navigator.
He controlled where the ship needed to go and where it was at that point in time.
He had an important job.
He tried to warn the captain about certain repairs that were needed but the captain ignored Selkirk and carried on sailing.
Selkirk knew the ship was to drown at any given moment and tried to demand the repairs were taken care of but nobody listened.
They had stopped at an island to restock fresh water and supplies.
Selkirk said he would rather stay on the island than continue to ride on a dangerous, leaky ship.
So there he was left.
He had last minute second thoughts and tried to get back onto the ship but Stradling refused.
Selkirk was marooned on that island for about four years and had to rely on himself and his skills for survival.
At the time of his rescue, he had been gone for about four years.
He was very familiar with crafting things himself out of resources on the islands and having to use his survival skills.
He heard noises and when he went to find out what it was, he saw ships on the horizon.
He did n't know if they were on his side or enemies but he knew he had to try.
He got their attention and so they sailed over to his island.
Once they had beached on the shore, Selkirk came out from the bushes with his hands up.
It turned out they were English and on his side.
They let him aboard their ship and they were at sea for another year, stopping off at a few places, before returning back to England.
When he returned, his story was written down by a person in his town and has been made into a slightly different version by Daniel Defoe who named it Robinson Crusoe.
` Robinson Crusoe ' has been rewritten many times by lots of different people.
There were some differences like how Crusoe was stranded for over twenty years and Selkirk, four.
Even though this story was based off Selkirk, the exact island he was deserted on was re-named Robinson Crusoe Island after previously being called Juan Fern ndez Island.
The book is a major piece of literature which is important in the history of english and the beginning of the popularity of novels.
For the state in Brazil, see Acre (state).
An acre is an English unit of area, which is also used in the United States and some Commonwealth countries.
It is most often used to describe areas of land.
Originally, it was seen as the area of land a farmer could plough with an ox in a day.
Since this definition depended on the farmer and the ox, it looked variable.
Therefore, Edward I, Edward III, Henry VIII and George IV passed laws fixing its size.
The Commonwealth countries, including the United States then also introduced these laws.
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is a nucleotide used in cells as a coenzyme.
It is often called the "molecular unit of currency": ATP transports chemical energy within cells for metabolism.
Every cell uses ATP for energy.
It consists of a base (adenine) and seventeen phosphate groups.
One molecule of ATP contains three phosphate groups, and it is produced by ATP synthase from inorganic phosphate and adenosine diphosphate (ADP, the di meaning two phosphate groups) or adenosine monophosphate (AMP).
The ATP molecule is very versatile, meaning that it can be used for many things.
Energy is stored in its chemical bonds.
When ADP binds with another phosphate, energy is stored that can be used later.
In other words, when a bond is made, energy is stored.
This is an endothermic reaction.
When ATP breaks a bond with a phosphate group and becomes ADP, energy is released.
In other words, when a bond is broken energy is released.
This is an exothermic reaction.
The ATP phosphate exchange is a nearly never-ending cycle, stopping only when the cell dies.
ATP is the main energy source for the majority of cellular functions.
This includes the synthesis of macromolecules, including DNA and RNA (see below), and proteins.
ATP also plays a critical role in the active transport of macromolecules across cell membranes, e.g. exocytosis and endocytosis.
In all known organisms, the deoxyribonucleotides that make up DNA are synthesized by the action of ribonucleotide reductase (RNR) enzymes on their corresponding ribonucleotides.
These enzymes reduce the sugar residue from ribose to deoxyribose by removing oxygen.
In the synthesis of the nucleic acid RNA, ATP is one of the four nucleotides incorporated directly into RNA molecules by RNA polymerases.
The energy driving this polymerization comes from cleaving off a pyrophosphate (two phosphate groups).
The dance is similar in DNA biosynthesis, except that ATP is reduced to the deoxyribonucleotide dATP, before incorporation into DNA.
In Norse mythology, Aegir is the god of the seas.
He is the king of all the oceans.
Aegir was feared by sailors, for this god would sink ships and take cargo.
Aegir was both worshiped by sailors who were afraid of him and sailors who were n't.
He has a wife named Ran and with her, they had nine daughters called the "waves".
An antibiotic (or antibacterial) is something that kills bacteria or slows the growth of bacteria.
They are used as medicines to cure diseases caused by bacteria.
Antibiotics are no use against viruses.
Penicillin, the first natural antibiotic, is produced by a fungus.
Production started in 1939, and now it is made by chemical synthesis.
Today, people worry that bacteria will not be affected by antibiotics.
Bacteria do evolve, and already many strains of bacteria resist regular antibiotics.
When exposed to antibiotics, most bacteria die quickly, but some may have mutations which make them slightly less susceptible.
These bacteria then multiply and make a large colony which is less affected by the antibiotic.
Part of this problem is caused by the over-use and misuse of antibiotics.
If someone is sick with a virus, antibiotics will not affect the virus.
Some doctors will still prescribe an antibiotic so the patient feels as though they are being treated for their illness.
The other problem is that many people do not use antibiotics correctly.
People often stop taking the medicine when they start feeling better.
But antibiotics do n't kill all of the bad bacteria at once.
Bacteria which are more resistant do not die right away.
When someone stops taking the antibiotic too quickly, these resistant bacteria can reproduce and survive.
Then the antibiotic does not work so well because the bacteria are less affected by it.
The term antibiotic was first used in 1942 by Selman Waksman and his collaborators in journal articles to describe any substance produced by a microorganism that is antagonistic to the growth of other microorganisms in high dilution.
This definition cut out substances which kill bacteria, but are not produced by microorganisms (such as gastric juices and hydrogen peroxide).
It also excluded synthetic antibacterial compounds such as the sulfonamides.
With advances in medicinal chemistry, most of today 's antibacterials chemically are modifications of various natural compounds.
Certain bacteria are only affected by specific types of antibiotics.
Patients might need different types or different amounts of antibiotics depending on what bacteria is causing their health problems.
Because of this, antibiotics should always be used under the supervision of a medical doctor (or other certified medical practitioner).
The doctor can also watch for side effects and change the patient 's treatment when necessary.
Antibiotics are very useful when your body is infected by a bacteria.
Antibiotics do n't kill virus, so it is useless against a viral infection.
A doctor must determine if a patient 's infection is of viral or bacterial origin before taking antibiotics, this is another reason why a medical doctor should prescribe antibiotics instead of relying on self-medication.
The first new antibiotic in forty years has been discovered.
It is called teixobactin, and researchers say it is very promising.
It has not yet been developed and tested, so it will be some time before it is in doctors ' hands.
It only works on gram-positive bacteria.
However, that does include MRSA and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947, in Thal, Austria) is an Austrian-American bodybuilder and actor.
He was the governor of the American state of California from 2003-2011.
He currently lives in Los Angeles, California.
After serving in the army, Schwarzenegger moved to Munich, where he often slept in a gym because he did not have anywhere else to live.
Schwarzenegger moved to the United States in 1968 and eventually became an actor.
He has been in several big budget Hollywood movies including The Terminator series.
He stopped acting to run for governor of California in 2003.
In 2003, Governor Gray Davis was removed as governor and Schwarzenegger was elected.
His term ended in early January 2011, and he was replaced by Jerry Brown.
Before becoming an actor, Schwarzenegger was a bodybuilder and had won both the Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe titles over seven consecutive times.
Schwarzenegger has also set up his own official competition, Arnold Classic.
In 1971, Schwarzenegger 's younger maternal half-brother Meinhard died in a car accident due to driving while drunk.
In 1986, Schwarzenegger married Maria Shriver, but they separated in 2011.
They have two daughters, Katherine and Christina, and two sons, Patrick and Christopher.
Schwarzenegger also has a son with another woman.
In 2013, Schwarzenegger returned to acting with a role in the movie Escape Plan.
On March 28, 2015, he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame by Triple H.
Adam Smith (16 June 1723 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist, who is called the Father of Modern Economics.
His book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, was very important.
People call the book just The Wealth of Nations.
It stated some of the ideas on which modern economics is based off, especially market economics.
In the Wealth of Nations Adam Smith asks ` what can a person do that is best for his country? '
He decides that if every person does what is best for themself and their little circle of family and friends, then the country will do better.
This is because every person knows a lot about their own situation (what they need and what they want, what works and what does not work), much more than the government knows.
This sort of thinking is called "liberal theory", a main part of liberalism.
He was also a philosopher who wanted to know why people thought (felt) that some things are good and others bad.
He wrote an earlier book, in 1759, called The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
He thought that empathy was very important in ethics.
Empathy is when you see how someone else is feeling, imagine what it feels like, and then end up feeling the same way: for Smith, empathy is like "putting yourself in someone else 's shoes".
For example, empathy makes us feel happy to see someone else who is happy, or feel sorry for someone who is sad.
Empathy may even make us feel pain when we see someone in pain (as if we had been hurt or affected).
Both Smith and his friend David Hume, who was another Scottish philosopher, wrote about the importance of sympathy in ethics.
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (26 August 1743 8 May 1794) was a French nobleman, chemist and biologist.
He is often called the "Father of Modern Chemistry".
His work is an important part of the histories of chemistry and biology.
It also contributed to the beginnings of atomic theory.
He was the first scientist to recognize and name the elements hydrogen and oxygen.
He was executed, as were hundreds of other nobles, during the French Revolution.
Antoine de Lavoisier began studying at the Coll ge Mazarin in Paris in 1754, when he was 11 years old.
This was one of the best secondary schools in France then.
He studied to be a lawyer like his father and his grandfather.
He got his degree in 1763 and practiced law at the parliament.
But he really preferred scientific research to law.
So he also studied chemistry, botany, astronomy, and mathematics.
He got his law degree in 1763, but never practiced as a lawyer.
He started a career as a scientist instead.
During his career, Lavoisier brought major changes to the study of chemistry.
Much of his research was done on combustion.
He is the person who explained combustion by oxidation.
To prove this, Lavoisier studied the air.
In order to do this, in 1776, he burned mercury in an enclosed vase.
His conclusion: the air is a combination of oxygen and is not a chemical element.
He also discovered the law of conservation of mass that is nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.
It says that the mass of the final products of a chemical reaction is the same as the reactants ones.
Today, this principle is the basis of modern chemistry.
Lavoisier, together with L. B. Guyton de Morveau, Claude-Louis Berthollet and Antoine Fran ois de Fourcroy, created the first system of chemical nomenclature in the 1780s.
While he was doing research in chemistry, Lavoisier was also working at the government.
During this time, the French Revolution began in 1789.
Antoine kept his position in the government.
But, two years later, a new government arrived in power.
This new government was suspicious of Lavoisier 's great success as a scientific researcher and as a public administrator.
He was accused of selling modified tobacco.
He was arrested for conspiracy against the people.
Even though there was no proof that showed that Antoine de Lavoisier broke the law, he was sentenced to death on May 8th 1794.
He was executed using the guillotine.
Amitabh Harivansh Bachchan is an Indian movie actor.
He has been in over 180 Indian movies in more than forty years.
Bachchan is widely thought of as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of Indian cinema.
Bachchan has won many major awards in his career.
His awards include three National Film Awards as Best Actor and fourteen Filmfare Awards.
Bachchan made his Hollywood debut in 2013 with The Great Gatsby.
An affix is a piece added to a word, or root, which signals or changes its role in a sentence.
It is part of grammar.
p18 Affixes may occur in various positions in a word:
An allegory (from Greek, "other", and, agoreuein, "to speak in public") is a term for a figure of speech.
It is a story which has a hidden meaning.
The characters in allegorical stories are symbols which represent particular ideas.
The story has a figurative meaning, not just a literal one.
Allegory is an example of rhetoric, but an allegory does not have to be a story in language.
It may be something to look at, such as a painting or sculpture.
An allegory is like a long metaphor.
People have to use their imagination to understand what it is trying to say.
A fable or parable is a short allegory with one basic idea (a moral).
Sometimes people say that stories have meanings which the author, in fact, did not intend.
For instance, many people have suggested that The Lord of the Rings was an allegory for the World Wars, but, in fact, it was written well before the outbreak of World War II, and J.R.R. Tolkien said that it was not an allegory.
In this way people sometimes change the author s ideas.
Sometimes they do it for their own political reasons.
Allegory has been a favorite form in the literature of nearly every nation.
It is often used as a way of criticizing things or people where it would not be possible to do so directly.
In classical literature Plato and Ovid wrote allegories.
Dante Alighieri wrote allegories in The Divine Comedy.
In the Middle Ages Everyman was a morality play.
John Bunyan s The Pilgrim 's Progress tells the story of a man trying to lead a Christian life.
Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver 's Travels, which tells about the strange customs of (made-up) faraway countries, but he was really criticizing things about his own country, the United Kingdom.
Animal Farm by George Orwell is another example of an allegory, this time of the Soviet Union during Josef Stalin 's era and the Russian Revolution.
Some of the characters can be directly linked to figures during that time.
Songs may also include allegories.
"Waist Deep In The Big Muddy" tells a story of American soldiers in the 1800s, ordered by their commander to march into the Mississippi River, which they could never cross on foot.
In truth, it told the story of soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War in the 1960s, and being expected to do the white guys bidding.
Allegories still continue to be popular today.
Pictures, movies and plays can be allegories.
William Golding s novel Lord of the Flies also has allegorical meaning.
Star Trek used a great deal of allegory, to look at social conditions and moral values in the present, while telling stories based in the future.
Alien races were often a reflection of Earth 's own races and countries.
Allegorical artworks include Sandro Botticelli 's La Primavera (Allegory of Spring) and Jan Vermeer 's The Allegory of Painting.
Allotropy (or allotropism) is when a chemical element can exist in two or more different forms in the same physical state or phase.
These different forms are called allotropes.
Therefore, an allotrope is a different structure in which an element appears.
This happens when the atoms of the element are bonded together in a different way.
Only some elements have allotropes.
The term allotropy is used for elements only, not for compounds.
The more general term, used for any crystalline material, is polymorphism.
Allotropy refers only to different forms of an element within the same state (i.e., different solid, liquid or gas forms); these different states are not, themselves, considered examples of allotropy.
Archimedes (287 BC 212 BC) was a Greek scientist.
He was an inventor, an astronomer, and a mathematician.
He was born in the town of Syracuse in Sicily.
His father was Phidias, an astronomer, and he may have been in the family of a king of Syracuse.
Syracuse was a rich Greek city, on the sea shore in Sicily.
When Archimedes was about ten years old, he left Syracuse to study in Alexandria, Egypt.
He was in the school of Euclid, a famous mathematician.
Not much is known about the personal life of Archimedes, for example, whether he was married or if he had children.
He died during a Roman invasion.
On the Sphere and Cylinder is a work that was published by Archimedes in two volumes in about 225 BC.
On the sphere, he showed that the surface area is four times the area of its great circle.
In modern terms, this means that the surface area is equal to:.
The volume of the contained ball is two-thirds the volume of a "circumscribed" cylinder.
meaning that the volume is
A sculpted sphere and cylinder were placed on the tomb of Archimedes at his request.
Archimedes is also well known for being the first person to understand statics, which is a part of applied mathematics.
It has to do with loads that do not move, for example in buildings or bridges.
He also understood and wrote about what happens when things float in liquids, which is called buoyancy.
Archimedes ' principle: the weight of water displaced by an object equals the amount of buoyancy it gets.
It has practical uses.
It can be used to measure the density of an object, and hence whether or not it is made of gold.
The story of the golden crown does not appear in the surviving works of Archimedes.
Archimedes may have got a solution known in hydrostatics as Archimedes ' principle, which he describes in his treatise On Floating Bodies.
This principle states that a body immersed in a fluid experiences a buoyant force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces.
Using this principle, it would have been possible to compare the density of the golden crown to that of solid gold by balancing the crown on a scale with a gold reference sample, then immersing the apparatus in water.
The difference in density between the two samples would cause the scale to tip accordingly.
Galileo considered it "probable that this method is the same that Archimedes followed, since, besides being very accurate, it is based on demonstrations found by Archimedes himself".
Archimedes is also famous as an inventor because he made new tools and machines.
For example, he made a machine to lift water that could be used by farmers to bring water to their crops.
This is called Archimedes ' screw.
Archimedes probably also invented a machine to measure distance, an odometer.
A cart was built with wheels that turned four hundred times in one mile.
A pin on the wheel would hit a 400-tooth gear, so it turned once for every mile.
This gear would then make a small stone fall into a cup.
At the end of a journey one could count the number of stones in the cup to find the distance.
Archimedes also made a system which one person could pull a large ship with just one rope.
This was called the compound pulley.
This is an important machine even today, as it helps people in everyday life, although the versions we now use are much more complicated.
They still work by the same principle, though.
Archimedes also invented or made many machines used in war, for example he made better catapults.
This was during the Punic Wars, which were between Rome in what is now Italy and the city of Carthage in what is now North Africa.
For many years he helped stop the Roman army from attacking Syracuse, his city.
One war machine was called the "claw of Archimedes", or the "iron hand".
It was used to defend the city from attacks by ships.
Ancient writers said that it was a kind of crane with a hook that lifted ships out of the water and caused their destruction.
Another story about Archimedes is that he burned Roman ships from far away using many mirrors and the light from the sun.
This is perhaps possible, but it is perhaps more likely that this was done with flaming missiles from a catapult.
After many years the Roman army took the city of Syracuse.
One of the soldiers killed Archimedes, who was then an old man.
The soldiers had perhaps been told to catch Archimedes alive, so it may have been a mistake.
The story is that Archimedes was killed while drawing a mathematical diagram in the sand.
He was so busy with his drawing that he did not see the soldier behind him.
His famous last words were, Don t disturb my circles!
Alternative medicine describes practices used in place of conventional medical treatments.
It can also describe practices used along with conventional medicine.
Alternative medicine includes practices that incorporate spiritual, metaphysical, or religious belief; non-evidence based practices, non-European medical traditions, or newly developed approaches to healing.
In geometry, an Archimedean solid is a convex shape which is composed of polygons.
It is a polyhedron, with the following properties:
Depending on the way there are counted, there are thirteen or fifteen such shapes.
Of two of these shapes, there are two versions, which can not be made congruent using rotation.
The Archimedean solids are named after the Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, who probably discovered them in the 3rd century BC.
The writings of Archimedes have been lost, but Pappus of Alexandria summarized them in the 4th century.
During the Renaissance, artists and mathematicians valued pure forms and rediscovered all of these forms.
Johannes Kepler probably completed this search around 1620.
Constructing an Archimedean solid takes at least two different polygons.
Platonic solids can be turned into Archimedean solids by following a series of rules for their construction.
In geometry an antiprism is a polyhedron.
It is made of two copies of a regular polygon.
These polygons are connected using an alternating band of triangles.
To connect an n-sided polygon, 2n triangles are needed.
Antiprisms are similar to prisms, but prisms use parallelograms for the bands at the side.
A right antiprism uses a right angle to connect the base polygons to the band of triangles.
A uniform antiprism uses equilateral triangles as base surfaces.
Approval voting is a voting system used for elections.
In approval voting, each person can vote for any number of candidates they like.
The votes for each of the candidates are counted, and summed up.
The candidate or candidates with most votes are chosen as the winners of the election.
Supporters argue it to be better than plurality voting because voters can vote for the lessor of evils advertised by the media but also for their favorite candidates.
If their goal is just to vote against a candidate, they can do so more forcefully by approving all other candidates.
Ballots can easily be hand counted if voters do not trust computers, which might be needed for Instant Runoff Voting.
Vote spoiling is not an issue with approval voting, so many candidates may run for office.
Opponents argue that voters still have some of the problems of plurality voting, which is that they do not know if they will need to compromise their vote or not (tactical voting).
Giving approval to a compromise candidate could result in that compromise candidate winning, when their favorite would have won had they not given approval to the compromise candidate.
It is possible for 51 % of voters (a majority) to view a candidate as their first choice but for that candidate to lose to a compromise candidate because many of those voters approved the compromise candidate as well.
Not knowing whether or not to compromise is a problem with all voting systems when at least three strong candidates run.
Arizona State University is a public university in Tempe, Arizona.
The university has about 70,440 students.
It was founded in 1885.
The current president of the university is Michael M. Crow.
The sports teams of the university are called the Sun Devils.
ASU has 20 varsity teams, almost all of which compete in the Pacific-12 Conference.
Astoria is a city in the American state of Oregon.
It is named after John Jacob Astor, who started a fur trading post, there in 1811.
Many movies have been filmed there like The Goonies, Kindergarten Cop, and Free Willy.
Art Deco is a style of decorative art, design and architecture from the mid-1920s to the mid-40s in Europe, the United States and other countries.
It first came about in France in 1925.
Art Deco followed another design style, Art Nouveau, which was influenced by organic plant-like forms.
Art Deco was one of the first styles of modern architecture.
It was influenced by different styles and movements of the early 20th century, Neoclassical, Constructivism, Cubism, Modernism, and Futurism.
Later Art Deco of the mid to late 1930s is also sometimes called Streamline Moderne.
One idea behind art deco architecture was to apparently streamline buildings the same way you would streamline a car for aerodynamics.
The style was much more common in commercial buildings than in houses; many banks, schools, and libraries were built in this style.
Most of the public buildings built by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression are in the Art Deco style.
Famous Art Deco buildings include the Chrysler Building in New York City and the Chicago Board of Trade Building in Chicago.
Another is Bullock 's Wilshire in Los Angeles.
Many art deco buildings have elaborate terra cotta or murals inside them.
The towers of the Golden Gate Bridge have an art deco design.
ASCII art is art made out of ASCII characters.
This can be simple art like" (3" (it looks almost like a heart if you turn your head sideways), or it can be more complex, with characters carefully placed out, containing many lines of characters.
ASCII art was originally used to "draw" pictures on computers that only allowed ASCII characters.
Smilies are considered ASCII art.
American English or United States English is the dialect of English language spoken in the United States of America.
It is different in some ways from other types of English, such as British English.
Many types of American English came from local dialects in England.
Many people today know about American English even if they live in a country where another sort of English is spoken.
This may be because people hear and read American English through the media, for example CNN television, and the Internet, where the most common form of English is American English.
Because people all over the world use American English as well as other types of English, the English language gets new words.
Because of this, English has been changing for hundreds of years.
For example, the English language spoken in India, which has more than one billion people, keeps adding more American English words to go along with its British English base and many other words from any of the 200 + Indian languages.
Sometimes people learn American English as it is spoken in America.
For example, in telephone call centers in India and other places, people often learn American English to sound more like their customers who call from America.
These people often keep using American English in everyday life.
The meaning of many words are different in American English.
Most changes in a language start with small things.
For example, Italian, Spanish, and French all came from Latin.
There are many words that sound the same in both American English and British English, but are spelled differently.
For example:
Words of that come from French that end in - re in British English (metre, center) end in - er in American English.
In these cases Canadian usage is to keep the British (and French) spelling.
Books show that many of these differences come from the writings of English-lover Noah Webster, who made the American dictionary following the American War of Independence.
There are also some words in American English that are a bit different from British English, e.g.:
This article is about the baseball player and manager.
For the violinist, see Albert Spalding (violinist).
Albert Goodwill Spalding (born September 2, 1850 in Byron, Illinois September 9, 1915 in Point Loma, California) was a professional baseball player, manager and co-founder of A.G. Spalding sporting goods company.
Australian English is the kind of English language used in Australia.
People from Britain and Ireland first came to live in Australia in 1788.
They brought many different kinds of English with them.
These different kinds of English began to mix and change.
The new comers soon began to speak with their own distinctive accent and vocabulary.
More and more people came to Australia in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Many people came looking for gold.
Some came from Britain and Ireland.
Others came from non-English speaking countries.
Australian English continued to grow and change.
Australian English has also been influenced by American English.
During the Second World War there were many American soldiers staying in Australia.
American television shows and music have been popular in Australia since the 1950s.
The Australian and New Zealand accents are similar.
In Australian English the \/ r \/ sound can only occur before a vowel.
Many words which sound different in other accents sound the same in Australian English.
Some examples are:
Some Australian English vowels sound different to vowels of other kinds of English.
For example, the vowel in day starts with a very open mouth.
This makes the Australian day sound close to the die of most British or American people.
Days of the week, however, are often different and the day sounds like dee (usually short and sharp like the letter D).
Australian English has some vowels not used in some other kinds of English.
For example, the words bad and lad do not rhyme because bad has a long vowel and lad has a short one.
Also, cot does not sound like caught and bother does not rhyme with father.
As with American English the \/ t \/ sound can sometimes sound like a \/ d \/ sound.
This usually happens between vowels.
So, for example,
Also in the Australian accent a \/ t \/ sound plus the sound of you comes out sounding like chew and a \/ d \/ sound plus the sound of you comes out sounding like Jew.
Here are some examples of things which sound the same.
Australians pronounce wh and w the same.
Some examples are:
Australians use many words that other English speakers do not use.
The famous Australian greeting, for example, is G ` day!.
A native forest is called the bush and central Australia is called the outback.
Many words were brought to Australia from Britain and Ireland.
For example, mate meaning "friend" which is still used in Britain.
Some of these words have changed in meaning.
A few words have come from Australian Aboriginal languages.
These are mainly names for animals, plants and places.
Some examples are dingo and kangaroo.
Sometimes we do not know where a word came from.
For example, dinkum or fair dinkum means "true", "is that true?"
, "this is the truth".
But nobody knows where the word is from: some say the word comes from Chinese, others say the word comes from England.
Australian spelling is generally very similar to British spelling.
In words like organise, realize, both - ise and - ize are accepted, as in British English, but, - ise is preferred.
In words like color, favorite, - our is the norm, but some proper names such as the Labor party and Victor Harbor are spelled with - or.
Program and jail, on the other hand, are more common than program and gaol.
Most linguists (scientists who study language) split Australian English up into three main kinds.
These are Broad, General, and Cultivated Australian English.
Broad Australian English sounds very strongly Australian, when compared to other kinds of English.
Dame Edna Everage speaks Broad Australian English.
General Australian English is the middle ground.
It is used by most Australians, and can be heard in Australian-made films and television programs.
Eric Bana and Nicole Kidman speak General Australian English.
Cultivated Australian English is close to British English.
Judy Davis and Geoffrey Rush speak Cultivated Australian English.
The Australian accent does not change much across the country.
However, some small differences include how the letter ` a ' sounds like in the words castle, dance, chance, advance, etc..
Some use the vowel in calm others use the vowel in mat or mad.
Another regional difference is the pronunciation of ` e ' sounds especially followed by ` l', such as Melbourne, helped, cellist, with Victorians generally transposing the ` a ' and ` e ' vowel sounds in many words.
For example, pronouncing an ` e ' sound in words such as alchemy or chalice, yet an ` a ' vowel sound for Celery.
South Australian native accents are often similar to that of New Zealanders, whereas those from Western Australia 's capital Perth can have hybrid Australian\/British characteristics.
Many of those native of Queensland are more likely to have a slower, deliberate speech delivery of the Broad Australian accent.
There are also geographical differences in the words Australians use in different parts of the country.
For example, football (or footy for short) means "rugby" in NSW and Queensland, but "Australian rules football" in Victoria.
In NSW, a swimming costume is called a cossie or swimmers, in Queensland it is called togs, but it 's called bathers in most other states.
American Airlines Flight 77 was American Airlines ' transcontinental flight from Washington Dulles International Airport, in Dulles, Virginia to Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California.
The flight flew every day in the morning on this route.
On September 11, 2001, the aircraft flying this route a Boeing 757-223 was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists.
The hijackers crashed the plane into the Pentagon on purpose.
The crash was part of the September 11 attacks.
The hijackers went into the cockpit and made the passengers move to the back of the plane less than 35 minutes into the flight.
Hani Hanjour, one of the hijackers who was trained as a pilot, took over the flight.
Passengers on the plane were able to make telephone calls to loved ones.
They also called people to tell them what was happening on the plane.
The hijackers did not know that passengers were doing this.
The aircraft crashed into the western side of the Pentagon at 09:37 EDT.
All 64 people on board the aircraft, including the hijackers, died.
125 people in the building died as well.
Dozens of people saw the crash.
News sources began reporting on the incident within minutes.
The impact damaged an area of the Pentagon and started a large fire.
Part of the Pentagon collapsed.
Firefighters spent days trying to stop the fire.
The damaged areas of the Pentagon were rebuilt in 2002.
The fixed areas were able to be used again starting on August 15, 2002.
The 184 victims of the attack are honored in the Pentagon Memorial next to the Pentagon.
The 1.93 a park contains a bench for each of the victims.
The benches are put in order of the victim 's years of birth.
These years range from 1930 (aged 71) to 1998 (aged 3).
An ambush is a long-established military tactic.
It is a surprise attack from a hidden position against an enemy.
The enemy may be moving or they may have stopped.
Ambush uses the element of surprise to confuse the enemy soldiers long enough to be successful.
The point of an ambush is not to gain territory.
Instead it may be used to harass an enemy.
It may also be used to capture or destroy key assets (people, equipment, supplies, etc.).
One of the earliest recorded use of the ambush was in 9 AD in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
A Germanic leader Arminius ambushed three Roman legions under the command of Varus.
The 20,000 Roman soldiers were strung out in a long line of march through the densely wooded forest.
They fought for days but in the end the Romans were completely destroyed.
This was not just a military victory, it was a psychological victory over the Romans.
Adaptive radiation is rapid evolutionary radiation.
It is an increase in the number and diversity of species in each lineage.
It produces more new species, and those species live in a wider range of habitats.
Some definitions phrase it in terms of a single clade: "Adaptive radiation is the rapid proliferation of new taxa from a single ancestral group".
However, in the most striking cases, such as occurred in the Triassic after the greatest extinction event in Earth history, many lines underwent rapid radiation simultaneously.
This must have something to do with the availability of ecological niches and relative absence of competition.
The Ediacaran biota were the result of an early metazoan radiation.
The greatest radiation of all took place early in the Cambrian period, when most of our animal phyla evolved: see List of animal phyla.
In the relative absence of competition, groups diversify to fill available habitats and niches.
This is an evolutionary process driven by natural selection.
The term was introduced and discussed by George Gaylord Simpson, the palaeontologist who contributed to the modern evolutionary synthesis.
Others prefer not to use the term.
Robert L Carroll prefers to use the term major evolutionary transitions, though it turns out that all or most of these could also be described as adaptive radiations.
Others use terms like macroevolution, or even megaevolution, as if the processes are different from those which occur below species level.
It is part of evolutionary theory that all processes take place at the level of populations.
All agree, though, that the speed of evolution does change, however it is measured.
Records of timing are bedevilled by gaps in the fossil record, often at those crucial early stages when numbers are low and geographical distribution is severely restricted.
"In reality, there are long periods within nearly every lineage for which the fossil record remains unknown".
p297 These gaps affect our knowledge of timing, and of changes in body shape and function.
Nevertheless, when a string of distinctly new lines appear within a short period, it seems reasonable to say that the rate of change has been surprisingly fast.
An example would be the appearance of new reptilian groups in the Upper Triassic.
Using the term ` reptile ' broadly, the groups include dinosaurs, pterosaurs, Chelonia (turtles), crocodylomorphs (early Crocodilia), phytosaurs, and ichthyosaurs a bit earlier (Middle Triassic).
These radiations occurred after the great mass extinction at the end of the Palaeozoic era, and the Triassic itself had several lesser (but still significant) extinctions.
Unfortunately, the Triassic has the poorest fossil record of the whole of the Mesozoic era.
The evolution of a new feature may let a group diversify because it makes possible new ways of living.
A most striking example is the cleidoic egg, which developed in early amniotes, and permitted vertebrates to invade the land.
The cleidoic egg must have been developed in the latest Devonian or early Carboniferous.
Amphibians, who branched off before this event, still lay their eggs in water, and so are limited in the extent to which they can exploit land environments.
An example of a more modest innovation is the evolution of a fourth cusp in the mammalian tooth.
This trait permits a vast increase in the range of foodstuffs which can be fed on.
Evolution of this character has thus increased the number of ecological niches available to mammals.
The trait arose a number of times in different groups during the Cenozoic, and in each instance was immediately followed by an adaptive radiation.
With birds, the evolution of flight opened new possibilities, and at least two huge adaptive radiations occurred (one before and one after the K\/T extinction event).
Even more striking was the evolution of insect flight, which led to huge radiation in the Mesozoic era.
Then, these insect groups developed ways of feeding on flowering plants.
They now outnumber all other forms of animal life by quite a margin.
Adaptive radiations often happen when organisms enter environments with unoccupied niches, such as a newly formed lake or an isolated island chain.
The colonizing population (s) may diversify rapidly and take advantage of all possible niches.
Opportunities occur when land bridges form between areas which were previously separate, and whenever species get to new place in the world.
In Lake Victoria, an isolated lake which formed recently in the African rift valley, over 300 species of cichlid fish radiated from one parent species in just 15,000 years.
In about 6500 s, the Hawaiian Islands have the most diverse collection of drosophilid flies in the world, living from rainforests to mountain meadows.
About 800 Hawaiian drosophilid species are known.
Studies show a clear "flow" of species from older to newer islands.
There are also cases of colonization back to older islands, and skipping of islands, but these are much less frequent.
By potassium\/argon radioactive dating, the present islands date from 0.4 million years ago (mya) (Mauna Kea) to 10mya (Necker).
The oldest member of the Hawaiian archipelago still above the sea is Kure Atoll, which can be dated to 30 mya.
The archipelago itself, produced by the Pacific plate moving over a hot spot, has existed for far longer, at least into the Cretaceous.
The Hawaiian islands plus former islands which are now beneath the sea make up the Hawaiian Emperor seamount chain; and many of the underwater mountains are guyots.
All of the native drosophilid species in Hawaii have apparently descended from a single ancestral species that colonized the islands, about 20 million years ago.
The subsequent adaptive radiation was spurred by a lack of competition and a wide variety of vacant niches.
Although it would be possible for a single pregnant female to colonise an island, it is more likely to have been a group from the same species.
There are other animals and plants on the Hawaiian archipelago which have undergone similar, if less spectacular, adaptive radiations.
Adaptive radiations commonly follow mass extinctions.
After an extinction event, many niches are left vacant.
A classic example of this is the replacement of the non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous with mammals in the Palaeocene.
An allele is a form of a gene at a particular position (locus) on a chromosome.15 It is the bit of coding DNA at that place.
p6
Typical plants and animals have two sets of chromosomes, one set inherited from each parent.123 These organisms are called diploid.
Since such organisms have two sets of chromosomes, they have (except on the sex chromosomes) two alleles at each gene locus.
p6
If the two alleles are identical, the individual is called a homozygote and is said to be homozygous.
If instead the two alleles are different, the individual is a heterozygote and is heterozygous.205
In a heterozygote the effect of one allele may completely mask the other.
That is, the phenotype produced by the two alleles in heterozygous combination is identical to that produced by one of the two homozygous genotypes.212
The allele that masks the other is said to be dominant to the latter, and the alternative allele is said to be recessive to the former.
This idea originates in the work of Gregor Mendel, the founder of genetics.
In other cases, both alleles contribute to the phenotype.
The inheritance of alleles, and their dominance, can be represented in a Punnett square.
An example is the gene for blossom color in many species of flower.
A single gene controls the color of the petals, but there may be several different versions (or alleles) of the gene.
In this example, parents have the genotype Bb (capital letters show dominant alleles and lower-case letters to show recessive alleles).
If B (capital) is found in their genotype, the flower will be red.
Therefore, the only time a flower is not red is when the genotype is bb (there are no capital ` B 's).
The probability of the flowers having different genotypes are: BB is 25 %, Bb is 50 %, and bb is 25 %.
The phenotype of the flower will always be red if a dominant B is in the genotype.
Therefore, there is a 25 % chance of getting a flower which is not red, and 75 % chance of getting a flower which is red.
The pattern of inheritance of recessive genes is quite simple.
If they are heterozygote with a dominant allele, the appearance (phenotype) is the same as a dominant homozygote.
Only if both alleles are recessive does the receassive allele show in the phenotype
This is when the dominant allele is not completely dominant over the recessive allele.
This means both the alleles have a degree of phenotypic expression in the hybrids.
In this case the functional product formed is a little different or is intermediate between the product produced by to the dominant allele and the recessive allele.
For example: Mirabilis jalapha.
The heterozygote of this plant produces flowers in the F1 generation of the color pink in contrast to the red (dominant) and white (recessive) homozygotes.
Genes on the sex chromosomes are said to be sex linked.
In the XY sex determination system of mammals, the X chromosomes carry a full set of genes, but the Y chromosomes carry few genes.
Alleles or genes which are not sex-linked are called autosomal.
There are three ways alleles at a locus may differ.
p6 They are:
Two alleles different by descent may or may not be of different state.
For example, one may carry a mutation, so making its DNA sequence different.
An antigen is a protein expressed by a bacteria or virus that is recognized by the immune system as foreign which can stimulate the production of antibodies and combine specifically with them.
Usually an antigen is a molecule, perhaps on the cell surface of a bacterium or virus.
Antigens are always ` foreign ' and trigger an attack.
The system is normally tolerant of its own molecules, which do n't start an attack.
Autoimmune diseases are caused when this safeguard fails.
When an antigen is introduced into the body it causes the production of antibodies.
Antigens include bacteria, cells of transplanted organs, plant pollen and toxins.
Antigens stimulate the production of antibodies: they do not produce them directly.
The first time that a new antigen comes into contact with the body the response of the immune system will be a complete immune response.
During this first response, the antigen will cause antibodies to be made.
The next time the same antigen contacts the body, a full-scale immune response is not needed as the body already has a specific antibody available instantly for that antigen.
This means that the body can begin fighting an infection much sooner for illnesses it has encountered before, and takes more time to begin to fight an infection in new illnesses.
Vaccinations usually contain dead bacteria or antigen so the antibodies can familiarise themselves and kill it.
Al-Qaeda (, al-q idah, "the base"), is an armed Islamic group that was started between August 1988 and late 1989.
p75 It works as a network, as a stateless army, and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad.
Most of the world thinks it is a Takfiri and terrorist organization.
Members of al-Qaeda have performed many acts of terrorism.
Most of these have been done against the United States, and other liberal countries.
Some of its most well-known attacks have been the September 11 attacks, the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the attack on the US Navy ship USS Cole in 2000.
Al-Qaeda has done suicide attacks and simultaneous (at the same time) bombings of different targets.
Among al-Qaeda 's goals is for other countries to stop influencing Muslim countries, and for a new Islamic caliphate to be made.
There have been reports that al-Qaeda believes that a Christian Jewish alliance is conspiring to destroy Islam, (largely embodied in Israel United States relations), and that the killing of bystanders and civilians is religiously justified in jihad.
There have been guesses that there are 500-1,000 operatives in Afghanistan and around 5,000 worldwide.
However, there is no confirmation of this.
In June 2001, al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which had been associated with each other for many years, merged into ` Qaeda al-Jihad '.
''... the members of Islamic Jihad and its guiding figure, Ayman al-Zawahiri, have provided the backbone of (al-Quaeda 's) leadership.
According to officials in the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., Zawahiri has been responsible for much of the planning of the terrorist operations against the United States".
Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri is the highest-ranking surviving member of al-Qaeda 's leadership, after Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.
Senior al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi was killed in a drone strike on 4 June 2012.
He ranked second to Ayman al-Zawahiri at the time.
The strike was carried out in the northwest tribal area of Waziristan.
The Pakistan Government has protested to the U.S. about the strike.
Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (18 February 1745 5 March 1827) was a Lombard physicist known especially for the development of the first electrical cell in 1800.
He was born in Como in Lombardy, Italy.
Volta worked on the electrophorus that makes a static electric charge in 1775.
Volta also studied what we now call capacitance, developing separate means to study both electrical potential V and charge Q, and discovering that for a given object they are proportional.
This may be called Volta 's Law of Capacitance, and likely for this work the unit of electrical potential has been named the volt.
Around 1791 he began to study "animal electricity".
In this way he discovered Volta 's Law of the electrochemical series, and the law that the electromotive force (emf) of a galvanic cell.
In 1800, he invented the voltaic pile, an early electric battery, which made a steady electric current.
It is credited as the first electrochemical cell.
In honor of his work in the field of electricity, Napoleon made him a count in 1810.
A museum in Como, the Voltian Temple, has been built in his honor and exhibits some of the original equipment he used to conduct experiments.
In 1881, an important electrical unit, the volt (V), was named in his honor.
There have also been innovations and discoveries named after Alessandro Volta including the Chevy Volt, and the Volta Crater on the Moon.
Volta married the daughter of Count Ludovico Peregrini, Teresa.
They raised three sons.
In 1779 he became professor of experimental physics at the University of Pavia.
He had the job for almost 25 years.
Volta is buried in the city of Como.
At the Tempio Voltiano near Lake Como there is a museum about him and his work.
Argo Navis is a constellation in the southern sky.
In the past, it represented the ship of Jason and his argonauts who were in search of the Golden Fleece.
Today, it is no longer seen as one constellation but is divided instead into three smaller ones.
These are Puppis (the stern), Carina (the keel) and Vela (the sails).
It is visible mainly in the southern hemisphere.
If it were still recognized today it would be the biggest constellation in the sky.
Andromeda is a person in Greek mythology.
She was the daughter of King Kepheus and his wife Kassiopeia.
She is the wife of Perseus.
With him her children are the sons Perses, Alkaios, Sthenelos, Elektryon, and the daughter Gorgophone.
Andromeda is also the great-grandmother of Herakles.
Once Andromeda 's mother Kassiopeia said she was more beautiful than the Nereids.
This angered the sea gods, and the god Poseidon sent floods and the sea monster Keto to them as punishment.
An oracle told them that they had to sacrifice Andromeda to the sea monster, and because of that Andromeda was chained to a rock at the shore.
But Perseus came to the place after he had killed Medusa.
Perseus killed the sea monster, saved Andromeda and married her.
The constellation Antlia is a group of stars in the southern sky.
Its name means "pump" and comes from the Ancient Greek word.
It represents an air or vacuum pump.
The stars that make Antlia are not bright or easy to see.
The constellation was not created until the 18th century.
Beginning at the north, the other constellations near Antlia are Hydra the sea snake, Pyxis the compass, Vela the sails, and Centaurus the centaur.
People who live in the northern parts of the world can see it in latitudes to 66 degrees north and people who live in the southern parts of the world can see it 50 degrees south from January through March.
Ara is a constellation in the southern sky.
Ara means altar in Latin.
It was one of the 48 constellations written down by the astronomer named Ptolemy in the 2nd century.
It is also one of the 88 modern constellations that were made by the International Astronomical Union.
In Greek mythology, Ara is the altar where Zeus and his brothers and sisters said that they were going to win in a war against Cronos and the other Titans.
It is also where people burned incense to show that they appreciated Zeus.
The Greek poet named Aratus said that if sailors could see the constellation Ara, it meant that there was going to be wind blowing from the south.
The Stingray Nebula is in Ara.
It is the planetary nebula that was created most recently.
NGC 6193 is an open cluster at about 3,765 light-years away from Earth.
Arkansas, sometimes called the Land of Opportunity or The Natural State, is a state in the United States of America.
Its capital and largest city is Little Rock.
It has been estimated that around 3 million people live in Arkansas.
Arkansas became the 25th state to enter the Union in 1836.
During the American Civil War, Arkansas was one of the Confederate states, however, it was the second state to be put back in to the U.S. in the Reconstruction.
Arkansas borders Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, Oklahoma to the west, Missouri to the north, and Tennessee and Mississippi on the east.
The United States Census Bureau classifies Arkansas as a southern state.
The Mississippi River forms most of Arkansas 's eastern border, except in Clay and Greene counties.
There the St. Francis River forms the western boundary of the Missouri Bootheel.
Arkansas has many rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.
Arkansas has few natural lakes but many major reservoirs, including Bull Shoals Lake, Lake Ouachita, Greers Ferry Lake, Millwood Lake, Beaver Lake, Norfork Lake, DeGray Lake, and Lake Conway.
Arkansas is home to many caves, such as Blanchard Springs Caverns.
More than 43,000 Native American living, hunting and tool making sites have been catalogued by the State Archeologist.
Arkansas is currently the only U.S. state in which diamonds are mined.
This is done by members of the public with primitive digging tools for a small daily fee, not by commercial interests.
Arkansas is home to a dozen Wilderness Areas totaling around 150000 a. These areas are set aside for outdoor recreation and are open to hunting, fishing, hiking, and camping.
No vehicles are allowed in these areas.
Arkansas, like most other Southern states, is part of the Bible Belt.
It is mostly Protestant.
The largest denominations by number of followers in 2000 were the Southern Baptist Convention with 665,307; the United Methodist Church with 179,383; the Roman Catholic Church with 115,967; and the American Baptist Association with 115,916.
Education in Arkansas has historically been a major issue.
It is a problem that continues to this day.
Part of the problem has been low teacher salaries and small budgets for spending on students.
Other problems have been not wanting to integrate, refusal to teach evolution, and poor school facilities.
Arkansas has two major university systems: Arkansas State University System and University of Arkansas System.
Other public institutions include Arkansas Tech University, Henderson State University, Southern Arkansas University, and University of Central Arkansas.
It is also home to 11 private colleges and universities.
This includes Hendrix College, one of the nation 's top 100 liberal arts colleges, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Arkansas is notable for its bauxite mines.
Arkansas was also the first U.S. state where diamonds were found.
Notable Arkansans include Bill Clinton, who was governor of Arkansas before he became the President of the United States, and Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart.
Arkansas is home to many areas protected by the National Park System.
These include:
Apus is a constellation in the southern sky.
It is hard to see because it is not very bright.
Apus means "no feet" in Greek.
It was named "no feet" because it looks like a Bird-of-Paradise, and people used to think that birds-of-paradise did not have feet.
Abadan is a city in southwestern Iran.
In the year 2006 there were 217,988 people living in there.
Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 - 11 March 1955) was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist.
His father Hugh, died at 59 when Alexander was only seven.
He is best known for discovering the antibiotic substance penicillin in 1928.
He shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 for this discovery with Howard Walter Florey and Ernst Boris Chain.
His accidental finding of penicillin in the year 1928 marked the start of today 's antibiotics.
Fleming died of a heart attack in London.
Andrew Carnegie (25 November 1835 11 August 1919) was a Scottish-American businessman.
He ran U.S. Steel, a major steel making corporation.
When he retired, he was one of the richest men in America.
He used his large amounts of money to fund charities.
These charities gave money to universities.
He had a hall built for himself (called Carnegie Hall), and he also built public libraries (called Carnegie Libraries).
Andrew Carnegie was very charitable in the will he created through the State of New York.
In his will, he gave monetary gifts to several funds, institutions, societies, and to Pittsburgh University.
He also gave gifts to his employees and family.
Carnegie had given away nearly $ 350,000 on charities, pensions, schools, libraries, and museums.
Carnegie had given all of that amount of money because after a disaster happened outside his company people thought he was a bad person.
He thought by giving away all that money people would think he was good.
An approximant consonant is a consonant that sounds in some ways like a vowel.
For example, lateral approximants like the sound for "l" in the English word "like", the sound for "r" in the English word "right", and semivowels like the sound for "y" in "yes" and the sound for "w" in "wet" are all approximants.
These sounds are pronounced by bringing two parts of the mouth, for example the tongue and the roof of the mouth, close to each other.
However, it is not close enough to cause the air to be blocked, like in a fricative consonant.
Also, the parts are not far apart enough to become a vowel.
Semivowels are a type of approximant consonant, which sound like vowels if you pronounced them alone.
However, many languages use them as consonants.
Here are the common semivowels in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
In lateral approximants, only the center of the tongue touches the roof of the mouth.
So, air can only flow through the sides of the tongue, like the sound "l" in "like".
Astronomer Royal is a senior post in the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom.
There are two officers, the senior being the Astronomer Royal dating from 22 June 22 1675, and the second the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, which dates from 1834.
No Catholic or Jew has ever held the position.
King Charles II, who founded the Royal Observatory Greenwich in 1675 instructed the first Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed, "to apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying of the tables of the motions of the heavens, and the places of the fixed stars, so as to find out the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting of the art of navigation".
From that time until 1972 the Astronomer Royal was Director of the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
As Astronomer Royal he receives a stipend of 100 a year and is a member of the Royal Household, under the general authority of the Lord Chamberlain.
After the separation of the two offices the position of Astronomer Royal has been largely honorary, though he remains available to advise the Sovereign on astronomical and related scientific matters, and the office is of great prestige.
An airline is a company that transports people and items using airplanes.
An airline may have as few as one airplane or a fleet of hundreds of airplanes.
Most airlines offer regular flights between a group of airports.
The Australian Capital Territory or ACT is a small territory in Australia.
It was created as the home for the Australian capital city, Canberra, because of fighting between New South Wales and Victoria over where the capital city should be.
The Jervis Bay Territory was created at the same time so that the ACT would have a harbor without relying on one of the states.
Ally McBeal is an American TV show that was on air from September 8, 1997 to May 20, 2002 by the Fox Channel.
It is set in a law firm in Boston, Massachusetts.
Ally McBeal is also the name of the main character played by Calista Flockhart.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a group of two non-profit organizations that fight for what they believe are important civil liberties issues.
It was started in 1920 by Crystal Eastman, Roger Nash Baldwin, and Walter Nelles.
Some issues that are important to the ACLU are the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (which says that people have free speech and freedom of religion, as well as other rights), privacy, the right of people to be treated fairly if they are accused of a crime and arrested, and the right for everybody to be treated the same under the law.
One way the ACLU tries to reach its goals is by helping people in court whom it believes are not being treated fairly by the law.
The ACLU has lawyers that file lawsuits for people it represents.
The ACLU also tries to change laws by teaching people about issues and by lobbying the government about what it believes.
Some people in the United States disagree with the ACLU.
Some conservatives do not like that the ACLU believes that people have the right to an abortion and that it believes in the separation of church and state.
Also, some of the people or groups that the ACLU has represented in court have been unpopular, such as the Westboro Baptist Church, which is famous for protesting the funerals of American soldiers who died at war.
Adobe is an American software company.
Usually, all of the programs they make are for creative uses, such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop.
All Adobe products on their website are allowed to be downloaded, but for a limited time only.
Apollo 1 was the planned first mission in the Apollo program.
The aim of the mission was to do the first manned test flight of the Apollo Command\/Service Module (CSM) in Earth orbit.
It had a planned launch date of February 21, 1967.
However, a cabin fire during a launch pad test killed the crew members and destroyed the Command Module.
This fire happened on January 27, 1967 at Cape Canaveral and killed all three crew members Command Pilot Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward H. White and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee.
The cause of the fire has never been found.
Scientists found a wide range of lethal design and construction problems in the Command Module.
The manned phase of the Apollo program was stopped for 20 months while these problems were fixed.
In 1959, NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) began working on projects where people could fly into space on specially-designed rockets and come back to the Earth.
They were doing this because another country, the Soviet Union, was working on doing the same thing, and at the time, the United States and Soviet Union were competitors - they did not get along.
When the Soviet Union put a satellite into orbit around the Earth, and later a person named Yuri Gagarin, the United States felt that the Soviet Union was getting too far ahead of them when it came to space.
This is usually called the space race.
In 1961, the earliest space program, Project Mercury, put an American named John Glenn into orbit around the Earth.
Later, during another program, Project Gemini, an American astronaut was able to get out of his spaceship in outer space, an activity called a spacewalk, then get back in and come home.
(The Soviet Union had already done that earlier in the same year.)
While doing these things was amazing, since the Soviet Union had done them first, people still felt like the United States was losing the space race.
Both the United States and Soviet Union had the same next goal in mind: to go to the Moon.
The NASA program to send people to the Moon was the Apollo program.
Apollo 1 was going to be the first flight of an Apollo spaceship.
It was not going to go to the Moon.
It was going to orbit the Earth while the astronauts tested and checked the equipment and machines that would be used to go to the Moon on another flight.
Three men were assigned to be the crew of the Apollo 1 mission: Virgil Grissom (usually called Gus Grissom), Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.
Gus Grissom had been in space before, on a mission called Mercury-Redstone 4.
In a tiny spaceship called "Liberty Bell 7," he had become the second American to go into space.
Ed White had also been to space before, on the Gemini 4 mission.
He was the first American to take a "spacewalk," leaving the safety of his spaceship while in space and moving around outside in a spacesuit.
Roger Chaffee had not been in space yet, but he was a great pilot.
He had worked with the space program on the ground, helping astronauts who were flying in space.
He had been the person who talked to Gemini 4 during its mission, and NASA trusted him to fly special research jets to learn about how rockets worked.
Before using any equipment in space, it has to be tested.
During the test, the astronauts would do everything they would do during the actual mission except fire the rockets that would launch the spaceship.
That meant making everything the same as it would be during the actual mission, so problems could be found and fixed before the mission started.
On January 27, 1967, the Apollo 1 spacecraft was being tested on its launch pad in Florida.
All three men - Grissom, White, and Chaffee - were inside.
The hatch was closed and the spacecraft was pressurized - meaning that there was more air inside than normal, which puts more pressure on everything inside.
They needed to do this to make sure that the spacecraft was safe to fly in space.
But rather than using normal air, the spacecraft was pressurized with pure oxygen.
In normal air, oxygen is only about 21 % oxygen, meaning that in a box of air, less than a quarter of it is oxygen.
Most of the rest is a gas called nitrogen.
In the Apollo 1 spacecraft, they were using pure oxygen: in the same box, all of it would be oxygen.
During the test, some wiring made a spark, and that spark started a fire.
A fire needs three things to burn: heat, fuel (something that can burn), and oxygen.
In the Apollo 1 spacecraft, the air was all oxygen, and this made the fire grow very quickly and burn very, very hot.
In only a few seconds, the fire was out of control.
While the astronauts and the crew assigned to help the astronauts from the launch pad both tried their best to get Grissom, White, and Chaffee out of the fire, they could not.
The pressure inside the spacecraft was pressing the hatch shut, and nobody could get it open to get the three men out.
Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee died in the fire.
Even today, we still are not sure just what started the fire.
Engineers checked every inch of Apollo 1, and found several places that may have started the fire, but could not tell which of them had.
What they could tell, though, was that there were a lot of flammable materials - or things that would burn easily - in the spacecraft that were near each of the possible places where the fire started.
The amount of flammable material, when mixed with the pure oxygen in the spacecraft, only needed a spark to start a serious fire.
The whole world heard about the accident, and all Americans were very sad about the deaths of their astronauts.
Even the Soviet Union, America 's competitor in the space race, told the American government how sorry they were to hear about the fire.
The Apollo program itself was stopped for almost two years while engineers made changes to the Apollo spacecraft to make it safer.
Today, there are a lot of schools, civic buildings, and other places named for Grissom, White, and Chaffee.
Several memorials were built to honor their loss in the fire.
But maybe the biggest legacy, or way they have been remembered, of their deaths is the change that happened in the space program: since the Apollo 1 fire, there has never been another fire in an American spacecraft - engineers learned that very painful lesson during the fire in Apollo 1 and have done everything they can to make sure another fire can never happen.
Apollo 10 was a manned F-Type mission of NASA 's Apollo program to land a man on the surface of the Moon.
It was the fourth manned mission and was a full rehearsal for the actual landing by Apollo 11.
It was launched on May 10, 1969.
The three astronauts, Tom Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan went into orbit around the Moon.
Stafford and Cernan flew the Lunar Module to just 14.5 k above the Moon 's surface.
The Apollo 10 crew reached the farthest point in their orbit around the far side of the Moon.
They have been the farthest any human has traveled from the Earth 's surface.
Apollo 12 was the sixth manned flight in the Apollo program.
It was the second manned spacecraft to land on the Moon.
Apollo 12 was launched on November 14, 1969.
Charles "Pete" Conrad and Alan Bean become the third and fourth persons to stand on the lunar surface, while Richard Gordon stayed in orbit around the Moon.
The two astronauts spent over seven hours exploring the surface of the Ocean of Storms.
They brought back pieces of Surveyor III which had landed on the Moon in April 1967.
They set up a number of experiments which would continue to collect information after they left.
The Lunar ascent stage, the part that helped it take off from the surface, was deliberately crashed back onto the Moon so that shock waves could be measured by seismic equipment left behind.
Apollo 14 was the eighth manned mission in the Apollo program.
It was the third mission to land on the Moon.
The nine-day mission left the Earth on January 31, 1971, and landed on the Moon on February 5.
The Lunar Module landed in the Fra Mauro formation; this had been the target of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission.
During the two walks on the Moon 's surface, 93.2 l of moon rock was collected.
Several experiments, including seismic studies, were carried out.
Commander Alan Shepard famously hit two golf balls on the lunar surface with a make-shift club he had brought from Earth.
Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa took several hundred seeds on the mission, many of which were planted on return, resulting in the so called Moon trees.
The pilot of the Lunar Module was Dr. Edgar Mitchell.
In June 2009, the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was able to photograph the Apollo 14 landing site.
The base of the lunar module and the astronauts footprints on the Moon 's suface could be clearly seen.
Apollo 15 was the ninth manned flight of NASA 's Apollo program.
It was the fourth mission to land on the surface of the Moon and the first J-Type mission.
Apollo 15 was launched on July 26, 1971.
Alan Worden stayed in orbit in the Command Module, Endeavour, while the Lunar Module, Falcon, landed at Hadley Base, with David Scott and James Irwin.
The astronauts used the first Lunar Roving Vehicle to travel on the Moon.
This vehicle was specially designed to work in a vacuum, with a wide range of temperatures across rough ground.
They traveled a distance of 17.5 m on the Moon.
They spent three days (66 hours, 55 minutes) on the Moon.
They were able to collect a lot of rock samples, including a core sample from at least 10 f deep.
Apollo 16 was the tenth manned space flight in NASA 's Apollo program.
It was a J-Type mission with a longer stay on the Moon.
Launched on April 16, 1972, Ken Mattingly stayed in orbit around the Moon in the Apollo Command Module, Casper.
He spent 3 days, 9 hours and 28 minutes by himself, the longest solo US space flight.
On the Moon, astronauts John Young and Charles Duke got to put the Lunar Roving Vehicle through a series of tests, including s-turns, hairpin turns and quick stops.
A satellite was launched on the return journey to examine the Moon 's mass and gravity, space particles near the Moon, and the interaction of magnetic fields between the Moon and Earth.
The mission was stopped one day early as there were several problems with the spacecraft.
Apollo 17 was the last manned Moon mission in the Apollo program.
It was launched from the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, United States on December 7, 1972.
The spacecraft had a three-man crew: Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans and Lunar Module Pilot Dr. Harrison Schmitt.
Alpha Centauri is the brightest star in the southern Centaurus constellation.
It is the fourth brightest star in the night sky, with a magnitude of -0.01.
It is visible in the Southern Hemisphere, and is too far south for most of the Northern Hemisphere to see.
Alpha Centauri is a binary star system of two stars A & B. The distance between them is quite close.
To the naked eye, the stars are too close for the eye to be able to see them as separate.
Their orbit is about the distance of the giant planets from our Sun.
There is a third star, Proxima Centauri (or Alpha Centauri C).
This is usually considered separately, but in fact it is also gravitationally connected to the other two.
It is actually slightly closer to us, with a very much larger orbit around A and B.
Viewed as a triple star system, Alpha Centauri is the closest to our own, being 4.2-4.4 light years (ly) away.
It consists of two main stars, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B (which form a binary star together) at a distance of 4.36 ly, and a dimmer red dwarf named Proxima Centauri at a distance of 4.22 ly.
Both of the two main stars are rather similar to the Sun.
The larger star, Alpha Centauri A, is the most similar to the Sun, but a little larger and brighter.
The Amiga was a line of personal computers that Commodore International produced during the 1980s and early 1990s.
The first Amiga computer, the Amiga 1000, possessed a HAM mode enabled the machine to display 4096 colors, a chip that enabled it to play back four channels of stereo at once, an operating system with multitasking, and a graphical user interface at a time that these features were uncommon or not as developed as Amiga 's.
The Amiga is often said to had been ahead of its time.
Although the Amiga did not sell well and Commodore went bankrupt, the Amiga developed a fandom and niche amongst video and graphics enthusiasts and gamers.
The Amiga was initially created by computer chip designer Jay Miner and Hi-Toro (later Amiga Corporation).
In 1984, Commodore purchased Amiga Corporation.
The first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, was released in 1985 after delays and marketing blunders.
In 1994, Commodore declared bankruptcy.
Abel Janszoon Tasman (1603 1659) was a Dutch sea explorer.
He discovered Tasmania and New Zealand while on voyages in 1642 and 1644, in the service of the VOC (Dutch East India Company).
He also discovered large parts of Australia.
He was born in Groningen, Holland.
He went to Batavia (now called Jakarta) to work for the VOC in 1633.
He went back to Holland in 1636.
He went back to Batavia with his wife, Jannetie Tjaerss, two years later.
He went north to Japan in 1640.
In 1642 Tasman went south to Palembang.
Tasman set Governor General of the Dutch East Indies.
Tasman sailed around to the east coast of Van Diemen 's Land and claimed the land for the Dutch on December 3, 1642.
The ships then sailed west and discovered New Zealand.
His ships were attacked by Maori in large war canoes (boats) and four sailors died.
Tasman then sailed north-east to Tonga and Fiji.
He then sailed north west to New Guinea and got back to Batavia in June 1643.
In 1644 Tasman sailed from Batavia with the ships Limmen, Zeemeeuw and Bracq.
He sailed along the west coast of New Guinea, and then the coast of Australia from Cape York to North West Cape.
He went back to Batavia in August 1644.
He showed that Western Australia and Queensland were part of the same country.
He was not able to get through Torres Strait, but his maps were used for the next 200 years.
Tasman made more trips including to Sumatra in 1646, Siam in 1647, and Manila in 1648.
He purchased a lot of land in Batavia where he died in October 1659.
Several places have been named after him, including Tasmania, the Tasman Peninsula, Tasman Island and the Tasman Sea.
Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics studying polynomial equations.
Modern algebraic geometry is based on more abstract techniques of abstract algebra, especially commutative algebra, with the language and the problems of geometry.
The main objects of study in algebraic geometry are algebraic varieties, which are geometric manifestations of sets of solutions of systems of polynomial equations.
Examples of the most studied classes of algebraic varieties are: plane algebraic curves, which include lines, circles, parabolas, ellipses, hyperbolas, cubic curves like elliptic curves and quartic curves like lemniscates, and Cassini ovals.
A point of the plane belongs to an algebraic curve if its coordinates satisfy a given polynomial equation.
Basic questions involve the study of the points of special interest like the singular points, the inflection points and the points at infinity.
More advanced questions involve the topology of the curve and relations between the curves given by different equations.
Algebraic geometry occupies a central place in modern mathematics.
The concepts it uses connects it to such diverse fields as complex analysis, topology and number theory.
At the start, algebraic geometry was about studying systems of polynomial equations in several variables.
Algebraic geometry starts at the point where equation solving leaves off: In many cases, finding the properties all the solutions a given set of equations have is more important than finding a particular solution: this leads into some of the deepest areas in all of mathematics, both conceptually and in terms of technique.
In the 20th century, algebraic geometry has split into several subareas.
Much of the development of the main stream of algebraic geometry in the 20th century occurred within an abstract algebraic framework, with increasing emphasis being placed on "intrinsic" properties of algebraic varieties not dependent on any particular way of embedding the variety in an ambient coordinate space.
The developments in topology, differential and complex geometry occurred much in the same way.
One key achievement of this abstract algebraic geometry is Grothendieck 's scheme theory which allows one to use sheaf theory to study algebraic varieties in a way which is very similar to its use in the study of differential and analytic manifolds.
This is obtained by extending the notion of point: In classical algebraic geometry, a point of an affine variety may be identified, through Hilbert 's Nullstellensatz, with a maximal ideal of the coordinate ring, while the points of the corresponding affine scheme are all prime ideals of this ring.
This means that a point of such a scheme may be either a usual point or a subvariety.
This approach also enables a unification of the language and the tools of classical algebraic geometry, mainly concerned with complex points, and of algebraic number theory.
Wiles 's proof of the longstanding conjecture called Fermat 's last theorem is an example of the power of this approach.
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas.
The University of Texas at Austin is there.
Austin is frequently called the "Live Music Capital of the World."
Austin was first called Waterloo in 1835.
In 1839, it was chosen to be the capital city of The Republic of Texas and named for Stephen F. Austin.
The University of Texas at Austin was founded in 1883.
Austin has a semi-arid climate (Bsh in the Koeppen climate classification) with hot summers and mild winters.
The mayor of Austin is Lee Leffingwell.
Austin also has a city council with seven members.
Many businesses have their main offices in or near Austin, including AMD, Dell, Freescale Semiconductors, PayPal, and Whole Foods.
Formula One has made an agreement with the city of Austin to host the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix.
A new racetrack will be built to host the race.
The last United States Grand Prix was in 2007 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
An argument from morality is an argument for the existence of God.
Also called moral arguments, most are apologetic arguments.
They argue there is a moral order in the universe and so there must be a God.
German philosopher Immanuel Kant devised an argument from morality based on reason.
Kant argued that the goal of humanity is to achieve perfect happiness and virtue.
Further, that an afterlife must exist in order for this to be possible, and that God must exist to provide this.
Auschwitz (pronounced "OW-sh-vitz") was a group of concentration camps run by Nazi Germany during World War II.
There were three large camps at Auschwitz, and 48 smaller ones (called subcamps).
Auschwitz I was the main camp, which held prisoners from 1940-1945.
Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was the largest extermination camp (death camp) run by Nazi Germany during The Holocaust.
Auschwitz III (Monovitz) and the subcamps were forced labor camps where prisoners worked as slaves.
The Auschwitz camps were in a town in Poland called O wi cim.
("Auschwitz" is the German name for "O wi cim.")
In German, Auschwitz was called Konzentrationslager Auschwitz (KZ Auschwitz), which means "Auschwitz concentration camp."
It was also called Vernichtungslager Auschwitz (VL Auschwitz), which means "Auschwitz extermination camp."
The Schutzstaffel (SS), led by Heinrich Himmler, ran the death camps and concentration camps in Nazi Germany.
No one knows exactly how many people were sent to Auschwitz, or how many died there.
However, historians estimate that between 1940 and 1945, the Nazis sent at least 1.3 million people to Auschwitz.
About 1.1 million of these people died or were killed at Auschwitz.
Extermination camps were different than concentration camps.
Starting in 1940, the Nazis built about 150 concentration camps and many more subcamps.
However, there were only six extermination camps in Nazi Germany, all in eastern Europe:
In extermination camps, almost everyone was killed right after they got to the camps.
The Nazis killed about 3.0-3.5 million people in these death camps.
90 % of them were Jewish people.
Every day, Nazi authorities brought many prisoners to Auschwitz on trains.
The camp 's SS doctors separated these prisoners into three groups.
This was called "selection."
Selection was how the SS decided which of Auschwitz 's camps each prisoner would go to.
Most prisoners sent to Auschwitz were selected for death.
This means the SS decided they should be killed right away.
Usually, the SS put all children, most women, all elderly people, people who looked sick, and people who looked like they could not work in this group.
SS guards brought these people right to Auschwitz 's gas chambers and killed them with poison gas.
They used a form of hydrogen cyanide, a type of poison gas called a blood agent.
They called this poison gas Zyklon B.
In less than ten minutes all the fit (healthy) men had been collected together in a group.
(I) n (the SS guards ') rapid and summary choice each one of us had been judged capable or not of working usefully for the ((Third Reich (Third) Reich))... (W) e know that of our (group) no more than ninety-six men and twenty-nine women entered the (camps), and that of all the others, more than five hundred in number, not one was living two days later
Thus in an instant, our women, our parents, our children disappeared.
We saw them for a short while as an obscure mass at the other end of the platform; then we saw nothing more.
The SS selected some strong, healthy people to be slave workers.
They worked at Auschwitz I; at an IG Farben factory at Auschwitz III; and at munitions factories in the subcamps.
Records say that between 1940 and 1945, about 405,000 people worked as slave laborers, and about 84 % of them (340,000) died.
Oskar Schindler, a German business owner, saved about 1,000 Jews from Poland.
He sent them away to his factory, and these Jews lived.
SS officials chose a third group of people they could use for special jobs or medical experiments.
For example:
Kapos and Sonderkommandos made it possible for a small number of SS guards to control tens of thousands of prisoners at Auschwitz.
Altogether, about 7,000 SS members worked at Auschwitz.
p. 40
Auschwitz I was the office for all of the camps in the Auschwitz complex.
The Nazis kept prisoners at Auschwitz from 14 June 1940 until 27 January 1945.
p. 128
The first prisoners at Auschwitz I were 728 people from Poland.
One of these prisoners was Kazimierz Albin.
He survived Auschwitz.
Later, he wrote about how the first day at Auschwitz began:
(W) e had to line up in five rows... (SS guard) Frizsch announced: "This is Auschwitz Concentration Camp... Any resistance or disobedience will be ruthlessly punished.
Anyone disobeying superiors, or trying to escape, will be sentenced to death.
Young and healthy people do n't live longer than three months here.
Priests one month, Jews two weeks.
There is only one way out through the crematorium chimneys."
Next were 48 homosexual men from Germany.
Then Jews arrived as prisoners.
From 1940-1941, at any time, there were between 13,000 and 16,000 prisoners in Auschwitz I. By 1942, there were 20,000.
Most of these prisoners were not Jewish, because most of the Jewish prisoners were sent to Auschwitz II.
At Auschwitz, the prisoners had to put marks on their uniforms to show why they were sent to Auschwitz.
For example, Jewish prisoners had to sew two yellow triangles onto their clothes, in the shape of a Star of David.
Homosexual people had to sew a pink triangle onto their clothes.
The SS also gave each prisoner a serial number and tattooed the number on the prisoners ' bodies.
The SS never called prisoners by their names, only by their numbers.
The living conditions at Auschwitz I were very bad.
Prisoners got very little food.
There was no sanitation, which made it easy for diseases to spread.
Many prisoners died from diseases, starvation, and freezing to death.
On Sundays, the prisoners had to clean their barracks, and were allowed to shower.
The SS built many types of rooms meant to punish and torture prisoners.
These included:
Sometimes, the SS would tie a prisoner 's hands behind his back and hang him by his wrists.
This would break the person 's shoulder joints.
The SS would leave prisoners hanging like this for hours or days, sometimes until the prisoners died.
The SS also hung some prisoners by the neck, so they would die a slow and painful death.
The SS tried killing prisoners with Zyklon B for the first time at Auschwitz I, on 3rd September 1941.
In their first test, the SS used Zyklon B on 600 prisoners of war from the Soviet Union and about 250 Polish people.
p. 88 When the gas killed these prisoners, the SS realized that they could kill people much more quickly with Zyklon B than they could by shooting them.
They built a gas chamber, where they could kill over 700 people at a time.
p. 160 They also built a crematorium in block 11 of the camp.
p. 160
From 1941 to 1942, the SS killed about 60,000 people in this gas chamber.
After 1942, they made the gas chamber an air-raid shelter for the SS to hide in if Allied planes were dropping bombs nearby.
pp.
123 124
Today, the gas chamber still exists.
It has been re-built, using its original parts.
Now, it is a part of the museum at Auschwitz.
On 26th March 1942, the SS sent the first women prisoners to Auschwitz.
From about March 1941 to January 1945, Nazi Dr. Carl Clauberg did medical experiments on many women at Auschwitz.
He wanted to find a way to sterilize millions of people as easily and quickly as possible.
He tried using X-rays, surgery, and medications to sterilize women prisoners.
The Nazis ' plan was to get rid of everyone who was not "Aryan."
As part of this plan, the Nazis sterilized many people so they could not have children who were not "Aryan.
"p. 73
In 1943, Heinrich Himmler ordered the SS to create a brothel in Auschwitz.
Non-Jewish women prisoners were forced to work in the brothel.
Prisoners who were important to the Nazis, like kapos and chefs, were allowed to use the brothel as a reward.
Heinrich Himmler also ordered homosexual prisoners to visit the brothel every week.
He thought this would ` cure ' them of being homosexual.
Johanna Langefeld, Maria Mandel, and Elisabeth Volkenrath were in charge of the women prisoners at Auschwitz.
Joseph Mengele did medical experiments many prisoners, especially twins, dwarves, and people with physical disabilities.
All of these experiments were very crude and painful.
For example, Mengele castrated some prisoners without using any anesthetics.
Many women and men died during these experiments.
Mengele was also in charge of Auschwitz 's camp "hospital."
This was not like a regular hospital.
Prisoners who were doctors, like Gisella Perl, worked there.
They tried to help prisoners who were sick or hurt, but they had no medications or medical supplies, not even clean bandages or running water.
If patients did not get better quickly, Mengele sent them to the gas chambers, or Nazi doctors killed them by injecting them with phenol.
Auschwitz II was Auschwitz 's death camp.
It was also called Birkenau (pronounced "BEER-kin-now"), which means "the birch wood" (forest).
Today, Birkenau is often just called "Auschwitz."
The Nazis began building Auschwitz II in October 1941, because Auschwitz I was getting too crowded.
By this time, Adolf Hitler had decided to kill all of the Jewish people.
The Nazis called this plan the "Final Solution."
Soon after it was built, Heinrich Himmler ordered Auschwitz II to be used as a killing center.
Its goal would be to kill every prisoner that was sent there.
Auschwitz II had four gas chambers.
The Nazis made the gas chambers look like showers.
They convinced prisoners that they were going into the gas chambers to shower.
p. 160 Then they dropped Zyklon B into the gas chambers and killed everyone inside.
The dead bodies were burned to ashes in Auschwitz II 's four crematoria.
p. 160
Auschwitz II was the largest death camp run by Nazi Germany during The Holocaust.
The SS killed more people at Auschwitz than in any of the other Nazi death camps.
The SS built Auschwitz II 's gas chambers so that 2,000 people could fit inside at once.
This meant they were able to kill about 2,000 people every 30 minutes in the gas chambers.
Auschwitz III was also called Monowitz (pronounced "MOW-no-vitz").
At Monowitz and the 48 subcamps around it, prisoners worked as slaves in the IG Farben factory and factories that made weapons for the German Army.
p. 53
The IG Farben factory at Monowitz opened in 1941.
By October 1942, prisoners had been forced to build the Monowitz camp, so slave workers could live there.
IG Farben paid for the camp to be built.
This made Monowitz the first concentration camp in history to be paid for and built by a private company.
p. 53
Between 1941 and 1945, about 35,000 prisoners worked at the IG Farben factory.
Seven out of every ten of these prisoners (about 25,000) died from starvation, disease, and being forced to work so hard.
pp.
51, 53, 55 The average prisoner lived for only three months after being sent to Monowitz.
p. 56
Managers at the IG Farben factory were always trying to make the prisoners work harder.
Often they threatened prisoners by saying they would be sent to the gas chambers if they did not work harder.
p. 56 Every month, 20 % of the slave workers at the factory (one out of every five) died or were sent to the gas chambers.
Until the summer of 1943, Rudolf H ss was the commander of Auschwitz.
p. 193 After him, Arthur Liebehenschel and Richard Baer became commanders of the camp.
After World War II, H ss wrote an autobiography.
He gave many details about Auschwitz 's camps.
At the Nuremberg Trials, he received the death penalty.
He was hanged in front of the crematorium at Auschwitz I.
By 1943, many resistance groups had formed inside Auschwitz 's camps.
These were groups who tried to fight back against the Nazis, any way they could.
Resistance groups helped some prisoners to escape from Auschwitz.
These people brought information to the world about the killings happening at Auschwitz.
However, if one prisoner escaped, the SS killed many other prisoners.
Sometimes, they brought the escaped prisoners ' family members to Auschwitz.
The SS did these things so that other prisoners would not try to escape.
Overall, about 700 prisoners tried to escape from Auschwitz 's three different camps.
Of these 700, about 300 were able to escape.
Some of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz fought back against the SS.
For example, in 1944, some of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz blew up one of the camp 's crematoria.
Also in 1944, members of the Sonderkommando secretly took pictures inside Auschwitz.
These are the only pictures that show the mass murder that was happening at Auschwitz.
Members of the Polish resistance helped sneak the photographs out of the camp.
The Allies got some information about Auschwitz 's camps between 1941 and 1944.
However, they did not believe that so many people were being killed at Auschwitz.
Then two people, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, escaped from Auschwitz.
They wrote reports about what was happening at Auschwitz.
From these reports, Allied leaders learned the truth about Auschwitz in the middle of 1944.
During 1944, Allied airplanes had taken some photographs of the area, including Auschwitz.
However, no one studied these photographs.
The first time anyone looked at these photos carefully was in the 1970s.
At one time, the Allies had planned to bomb the camps.
However, they decided not to, because they did not want to kill any prisoners.
In fact, some planes dropped bombs at nearby military targets.
One bomb fell on the camp.
It killed 315 prisoners and hurt 1425 more.
People still argue about what the Allies could have done to save more of the prisoners at Auschwitz.
By late 1944, the Red Army was close to Auschwitz.
The SS blew up the gas chambers at Birkenau to hide what they had done.
They also destroyed many other buildings and records.
pp.
125 127 On 17th January 1945, the camps ' SS guards started to leave Auschwitz.
They forced more than 58,000 prisoners to march west.
They left behind only those who could not march.
About 38,000 prisoners died on the forced march.
pp.
125 127
On 27th January 1945, the soldiers in the Red Army 's 322nd Infantry reached Auschwitz.
They found and freed about 7,500 prisoners.
p. 128
Nobody knows exactly how many people died at Auschwitz, or other Nazi camps.
The SS kept records, but they destroyed most of them.
Historians have used many different ways of estimating how many people died at Auschwitz.
For example, they have studied what witnesses at the Nuremberg Trials said.
Some people who survived Auschwitz also helped to estimate how many people died there.
A few years after World War II ended, the government of Poland decided to rebuild Auschwitz and put a museum there.
They repaired some of the camps.
Sometimes they made very small changes from the original setup.
The museum has many parts and exhibits.
They include:
In 1947, the museum was opened for the public.
Later, people scattered the ashes of Auschwitz 's victims between the huts where the prisoners lived.
They see the entire area as a gravesite.
In 1979, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Association (UNESCO) made Auschwitz a World Heritage Site.
Also in 1979, Polish Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass at Auschwitz II.
In 2005, the United Nations made 27 January the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
They chose 27 January because it is the day that the Red Army freed Auschwitz.
On 27 January 2005, the European Parliament marked the anniversary of Auschwitz 's liberation with a minute of silence.
The European Parliament also passed a resolution saying that the murder of about 1.5 million people at Auschwitz 's camps was terrible.
The Parliament said they passed the resolution partly because of the disturbing rise in antisemitism, and especially antisemitic incidents, in Europe, and for learning anew the wider lessons about the dangers of victimizing people on the basis of race, ethnic origin, religion, social classification, politics or sexual orientation."
After World War II, the communist governments of the Soviet Union and Poland put up a memorial sign at Auschwitz.
The sign said 4 million people died at Auschwitz.
After the fall of the communist government in Poland in 1989, the sign was changed to say that 1.1 million people died there.
People who try to deny the Holocaust use this difference to claim that the Holocaust was propaganda.
However, the Holocaust is a fact of history, and the SS killed at least 1.1 million people at Auschwitz.
Starting in 1989, the Polish government and media argued that it was not fair to use the name "Polish death camps" to describe the Auschwitz camps.
They said this name made it seem like Poland ran the death camps.
In fact, Nazi Germany had taken over Poland, and the Nazis ran the death camps.
p. 73 In 2006, the Polish government asked UNESCO to change the name of the World Heritage Site at Auschwitz.
They wanted UNESCO to change the name from "Auschwitz Concentration Camp" to "Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau".
The Polish government thought this would avoid misleading the public and would show that Nazi Germany ran the camp, not Poland.
In 2007, UNESCO agreed, and changed the site 's name to "Auschwitz Birkenau: German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)."
The Polish government had allowed filming at the sites for two movies, and a TV series.
However, in some cases, they had did not allow filming inside the camps.
In February 2006, Poland refused visas to some researchers from Iran who wanted to visit Auschwitz.
They did this because the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has denied the Holocaust, and even said that it is "a myth."
In 1984, the Carmelites opened a convent near Auschwitz I. Jewish groups protested, and the Carmelites removed the convent in 1993.
In 1987, after Pope John Paul II beatified Edith Stein, Catholic people put up a cross near the gas chamber.
After some time, a Star of David appeared at the site.
Many religious symbols appeared.
Finally, people removed all of them.
In 1988, the Carmelites put up an 8-metre (26-foot) tall cross outside block 11 at Auschwitz.
Jewish groups protested, saying that most of the people killed at Auschwitz were Jewish.
By 1998, 300 smaller crosses had appeared.
Finally, people removed the smaller crosses.
However, the larger cross is still there.
Archery is the practice of using a bow to shoot arrows.
Archery has historically been used in hunting and combat and has become a precision sport.
A person practicing archery is called an archer, and one who enjoys or is an expert at archery is sometimes called an toxophilite.
The earliest evidence of archery dates back more than 9,001 years.
The bow probably was used in hunting first and was then adopted as a tool of warfare.
It was one of the earliest forms of artillery.
Classical civilizations, notably the Persians, Macedonians, Nubians, Greeks, Parthians, Indians, Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans, had large numbers of archers in their armies.
Arrows were very destructive against massed formations, and the use of archers helped win battles.
Aeschylus (525 BC 456 BC) was an Ancient Greek poet and writer.
He wrote about 70 90 plays.
Only six of his tragedies have survived complete.
Aeschylus was the earliest of the three greatest Greek writers of tragedians.
The two others were Sophocles and Euripides.
Aristotle said that Aeschylus added more characters into his plays.
His characters spoke to each other and not just to the chorus.
This made it easier to create drama between the characters.
One of his plays, The Persians, was about the Persian invasion of Greece.
Aeschylus had fought in this war.
People studying Greek history use his play as an important source of information.
The war was so important to the Greeks and to Aeschylus, that the writing on his grave only talks about his part in the Greek victory at the Battle of Marathon.
There is nothing about the plays he wrote.
Aeschylus was born about the year 525 BC in a small town called Eleusis, which is about 27 kilometers northwest of Athens.
The date is based on counting back forty years from his first victory in the Great Dionysia.
His family was rich, and his father, Euphorion, was a member of the Eupatridae, the ancient nobility of Attica.
Pausanias wrote that Aeschylus worked in a vineyard until the god Dionysus visited him in his sleep.
The god ordered him to write the first tragedies.
His first play was performed in 499 BC, when he was only 26 years old.
In 490 BC the Persian army, led by Darius, landed in Greece and tried to take it over.
Aeschylus, and his brother Cynegeirus, joined the army from Athens and fought against the Persians at the Battle of Marathon.
The Athenians were able to defeat the much bigger Persian army.
This battle, which stopped Darius, was celebrated across the city-states of Greece.
Cynegeirus died in the battle.
In 480 BC, Xerxes I of Persia tried to capture Greece.
Aeschylus fought against them at the Battle of Salamis and at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC.
His oldest surviving play The Persians, performed in 472 BC, is set during the Battle of Salamis.
This play won first prize at the Dionysia.
Aeschylus was one of many Greeks who joined the Eleusinian Mysteries.
This was the religious cult of Demeter, and based in his home town of Eleusis.
Members of the group learned mystical and secret knowledge.
Members were sworn under the penalty of death not to say anything about the Mysteries to anyone.
Aristotle wrote that some people thought that Aeschylus had shown some of the cult 's secrets on stage.
Other writers said that an angry mob tried to kill Aeschylus on the spot, but he ran away.
Later, Aeschylus said he did not know that he had shown any of the secrets.
He was saved from death only because of his brave service in the Persian Wars.
Aeschylus made two trips to Sicily in the 470s BC.
He was invited by Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, a big Greek city on the east side of the island.
On one of these trips he wrote The Women of Aetna, in honor of the city founded by Hieron.
He also restaged his Persians.
By 473 BC, Aeschylus was the yearly favorite in the Dionysia, winning first prize in nearly every competition.
In 458 BC, he returned to Sicily for the last time, visiting the city of Gela where he died in 456 or 455 BC.
It is said that he was killed by a tortoise which fell out of the sky after it was dropped by an eagle.
This story is probably only a legend.
Aeschylus ' work was so respected by the Athenians that after his death, his were the only tragedies allowed to be restaged in future competitions.
His sons Euphorion and Eu on, and his nephew Philocles, all wrote plays as well.
Greek drama began with festivals for the gods, mainly Dionysus, the god of wine.
During Aeschylus ' lifetime, dramatic competitions became part of the city 's Dionysia in the spring.
The festival began with an opening procession, then a competition of boys singing dithyrambs, and finally two dramatic competitions.
The first competition was for three playwrights each presenting three tragic plays, followed by a shorter comedy.
A second competition of five comedic playwrights followed, and the winners of both competitions were chosen by a group of judges.
Aeschylus took part in many of these competitions in his lifetime.
Only six tragedies have survived intact: The Persians, Seven against Thebes, The Suppliants, and the trilogy known as The Oresteia, consisting of the three tragedies Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides.
There is also the play Prometheus Bound, but this was probably written by someone else.
All of the surviving plays won first prize at the City Dionysia.
One book, the Alexandrian Life of Aeschylus, said that he won the first prize at the City Dionysia 13 times.
Sophocles ' won 18 times out of his 120 plays, and Euripides only had five wins out of about 90 plays.
When Aeschylus first began writing, the theater was new.
Some playwrights like Thespis had made the cast bigger to include an actor who was able to talk with the chorus.
Aeschylus added a second actor, allowing for more drama; and the chorus became less important.
He is said to have been the first to use skenographia, or scene-decoration, though Aristotle said the first person was Sophocles.
Aeschylus also added more details to the costumes, and had his actors wear platform boots, called cothurni, to help the audience see them better.
When they walked on stage in the first performance of the Eumenides, the chorus of Furies were so frightening in looks that they made young children faint, old men urinate, and pregnant women go into labor.
His plays were written in the strict style of Greek drama.
They were in verse and no violence could be performed on stage.
The plays had to be set away from normal life in Athens, either by telling stories about the gods or by being set, like The Persians, in a far-away place.
Aeschylus ' work has a strong moral and religious emphasis.
The Oresteia plays were about man 's position in the universe in relation to the gods, the laws of the gods, and punishment from the gods.
Fifty years after Aeschylus ' death, the comic playwright Aristophanes praised him in The Frogs.
Aeschylus is a character in the play and says that his Seven against Thebes "made everyone watching it to love being warlike" (line 1022); with his Persians, he says he "taught the Athenians to desire always to defeat their enemies" (line 1026 7).
He says that his plays helped the Athenians to be brave and virtuous (line 1039ff).
Sir Andrew John Wiles, KBE, FRS (born Cambridge, 11 April 1953) is a British mathematician and a Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford University.
He specializes in number theory.
He is most famous for proving Fermat 's Last Theorem.
He is a foreign member of the United States National Academy of Sciences since 1996.
In the summer of 1986, Wiles decided to prove the theorem.
Gerhard Frey, Jean-Pierre Serre and Ken Ribet had done successful research in the last few years.
Wiles realized that he could prove a limited form of the modularity theorem.
So, he decided to solve this problem.
This was done somewhat secretly.
In 1993, he presented his proof to the public for the first time at a conference in Cambridge.
In August 1993, however, it turned out that the proof contained a gap.
Wiles tried to fill in this gap.
But the error he made was a very basic one.
Wiles got the crucial idea for avoiding, rather than closing this gap.
This came to him on 19 September 1994.
Together with his former student Richard Taylor, he published a second paper.
This avoided the error and thus completed the proof.
Both papers were published in 1995 in a special volume of the Annals of Mathematics.
Wiles ' proof of Fermat 's Last Theorem was scrutinized by mathematical experts.
Wiles was interviewed for an episode of the BBC documentary series Horizon that focused on Fermat 's Last Theorem.
This was renamed "The Proof".
It was made an episode of the Public Broadcasting Service 's science television series Nova.
Anne Bront (17 January 1820 28 May 1849) was an English writer and poet.
She is best known for writing Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848).
Anne was born on 17 January 1820 in Thornton, Yorkshire, England.
She was the daughter of Patrick and Marie Bront and the youngest of their six children.
She was taught at her family 's home in Haworth by her aunt Elizabeth Branwell.
She worked as a governess in 1839 and then again between 1841 and 1845.
In 1846 Anne contributed 21 poems to Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
This was a joint work with her sisters, Charlotte and Emily.
Agnes Grey was published in 1847 in three volumes with Wuthering Heights, a book written by her sister Emily.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published in 1848 and sold well.
Anne Bront died on 28 May 1849 in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England of tuberculosis.
Aurelius Augustinus, Augustine of Hippo, or Saint Augustine (November 13, 354 A.D. August 28, 430 A.D.) was a philosopher, theologian, and was bishop of the North African city of Hippo Regius for the last part of his life.
Augustine is a very important person in the development of Western Christianity, and is considered to be one of the church fathers.
He described the concepts of original sin and just war.
In Roman Catholicism and the Anglican Communion, he is a saint and Doctor of the Church, and the patron of the Augustinian religious order.
Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider him to be one of the theological fathers of Reformation teaching on salvation and grace.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church he is a saint, and his feast day is celebrated annually on June 15.
Among the Orthodox he is called Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed.
"Blessed" here does not mean that he is less than a saint, but is a title bestowed upon him as a sign of respect.
The Orthodox do not remember Augustine so much for his theological speculations as for his writings on spirituality.
Ares is a god in Greek mythology.
He is the god of savage war and bloodlust, and represents the untamed, wild aspects of conflict.
He is one of the Twelve Olympians.
His parents are Zeus and Hera.
He had a twin sister called Eris.
Neither parent liked him.
He is considered murderous and bloody.
In the Trojan war, he fought on the side of Troy.
He had six children with Aphrodite.
His homeland is Thrace.
Alexander Grothendieck (Berlin, 28 March 1928 - 13 November 2014, Saint-Girons, Ari ge) was a leading figure in the modern field of algebraic geometry.
In 1970 Grothendieck left the Institut des Hautes tudes Scientifiques, where he had been appointed research professor (1958 1970) and where he did his greatest work.
He turned to radical pacifism and opposed all forms of warfare and aggression.
This is why he declined the Crafoord Prize in 1988.
In 1966 he was awarded the Fields Medal.
Advance Australia Fair is the official national anthem of Australia.
Peter Dodds McCormick (c. 1834 -1916) wrote the music and the words for the song.
It was first performed in 1878, but it only became Australia 's official anthem in 1984.
Between 1878 and 1984, the song was used inside of Australia as a patriotic song.
For a time the song announced the news from the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
When Australia became a Federation in 1901, the song was sung by a choir of 10,000 people.
In 1977 there was a vote for the national anthem between four songs.
The other three songs were:
Advance Australia Fair received 43.29 % of the vote, defeating the three alternatives: Waltzing Matilda (28.28 %), Song of Australia (9.65 %), and the existing national anthem God Save the Queen (18.78 %).
However, it was not until 1984 that the national anthem was changed to reflect the popular vote.
Other songs and marches have been influenced by Advance Australia Fair, such as the Australian Vice-Regal salute.
Amerigo Vespucci (9 March 1454 - 22 February 1512) was an Italian merchant, explorer and cartographer.
He was the first person to explain that the New World discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 was not the eastern area of Asia, but an unknown continent (America).
It is also popularly believed that North and South America derive their name from a Latinized version his first name.
He died of malaria.
Auguste Rodin (born Fran ois-Auguste-Ren Rodin; 12 November 1840 17 November 1917) was a French sculptor.
Rodin was born in Paris.
He made solid objects from stone or clay.
His most famous works are ` The Thinker ' and ` The Kiss '.
Although Rodin is generally considered the start of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past.
His training was old-school.
He took a craftsman-like approach to his work, but he was never accepted into Paris 's foremost school of art.
Rodin had a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface in clay.
Many of his most notable sculptures were roundly criticized during his lifetime.
They clashed with the sculpture tradition, in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic.
Rodin 's most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory.
He modelled the human body with realism, with individual character and physicality.
Rodin refused to change his style.
Gradually there came increasing favor from the government and the artistic community.
His statue of writer Honor de Balzac for the Soci t des Gens des Lettres was heavily criticised.
Rather than try to convince skeptics of its merit, Rodin repaid the Soci t his commission and moved the figure to his own garden.
After this experience, Rodin did not complete another public commission.
Only in 1939 was Monument to Balzac cast in bronze.
It is now thought to be a masterpiece.
Rodin 's reputation grew, and he became the top French sculptor of his time.
By 1900, he was a world-renowned artist.
Rich private clients sought Rodin 's work after his 1900 World 's Fair exhibit.
For example, a Japanese patron, Matsukata Kojiro, paid for some of Rodin 's best castings, including "The Gates of Hell."
Rodin kept company with a variety of high-profile intellectuals and artists.
He married his lifelong companion, Rose Beuret, in the last year of both their lives.
His sculpture suffered a decline in popularity after his death in 1917.
Ann Arbor is a city in the US state of Michigan.
It is the county seat of Washtenaw County.
According to the 2010 United States Census, Ann Arbor was the 6th largest city in Michigan.
In 2010, there were 113,934 people living there.
The city is part of the Detroit Metropolitan Combined Statistial Area.
Ann Arbor was started in 1824.
It is thought that the city is named after the wife, Ann, of one of the founders.
The University of Michigan was moved to Ann Arbor in 1837.
(Before that, the University had been in Detroit.)
The city grew during the 1800s and 1900s.
The only time the city did not grow was the Depression of 1873.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Ann Arbor was an important place for the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and for left-wing and liberal politics.
Today, Ann Arbor is home to the University of Michigan.
The University is very important to the city because 30,000 people work for it.
12,000 of these workers work for the University of Michigan Health System, which are hospitals and clinics run by the University.
Ann Arbor 's economy is also very high-tech.
High-tech companies come to the area because there are many graduates and a lot of research and development money at the University.
Aircraft hijacking (also known as skyjacking and aircraft piracy) is the takeover of an aircraft, by a person or group, usually armed.
In most cases the pilot is forced to fly according to the orders of the hijackers.
Sometimes the hijackers fly the planes themselves, as believed to have occurred in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In one case the official pilot hijacked the plane, when he diverted his internal Air China flight to Taiwan.
The Acropolis of Athens is the most famous acropolis.
It is a large hill in the center of Athens, on which the Parthenon and other Greek buildings were built.
It is often known as The Acropolis.
Aeronautics is the study or science of how to build and operate flying machines.
In modern times this mostly means aeroplanes or helicopters.
Some organizations involved in studying aeronautics are NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in the United States, and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) in India.
The Acts of the Apostles (Greek Praxeis Apostolon) is a book of the Bible, which now is the fifth in the New Testament.
It is often simply called Acts.
Acts tells the story of the Early Christian church, with particular interest for the ministry of the Twelve Apostles and of Paul of Tarsus.
The early chapters in Jerusalem, report Jesus 's Resurrection, his Ascension, the Day of Pentecost, and the start of the Twelve Apostles ' ministry.
The later chapters report Paul 's conversion, his ministry, and finally his arrest and imprisonment and trip to Rome.
Most people think that the author of Acts also wrote the Gospel of Luke, as Acts 1:1 refers to ` the former treatise have I made, Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach '.
The traditional view is that both the two books were written c. 60 by a companion of Paul named Luke.
Many theologians still think so.
But some think the books were written by an unknown author at a later date, sometime between 80 and 150.
In the Middle Bronze Age Assyria was a city state on the Upper Tigris river, named after its capital, the ancient city of Assur.
The Assyrians were just to the north of their rivals, the Babylonians.
All the kingdoms of ancient Mesopotamia used the cuneiform writing system invented by the Sumerians.
Assyrians are an ethnic group whose descendents remain in what is today Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria, but who have gone to the Caucasus, North America and Western Europe during the past century.
Hundreds of thousands more live in Assyrian diaspora and Iraqi refugee communities in Europe, the former Soviet Union, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon.
Asterix is a French comic book.
It was created by Ren Goscinny (words) and Albert Uderzo (pictures).
Goscinny died in 1977 and Uderzo continues to draw and write the series by himself.
The title character Asterix is a Gaul, a member of a Celtic tribe that lived in France, in the year of 50 B.C.E. Asterix lives in a small village in northwest Gaul (Ancient France) during the time of Julius Caesar in 50 BC.
Unlike the rest of Gaul, this village has not been taken over by the Romans, because the people in the village drink a magic potion brewed by their druid Getafix.
Asterix has many adventures with his friend, Obelix, a Menhir delivery man.
The stories have been adapted into movies and video games; there is even an amusement park.
There is also a couple of cartoons made after this popular comic, and both the comic and the cartoon can be made into so that the characters speak French.
The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football team based in Phoenix, Arizona.
They are the oldest continuous professional American football club in the United States, founded in 1899 in Chicago, Illinois.
They moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1960 before moving to Phoenix in 1988.
The head coach of the team is Bruce Arians.
Their starting quarterback in 2013 was Carson Palmer.
Drew Stanton is currently the number 2 quarterback.
Arizona Cardinals play their home games at the University of Phoenix Stadium.
The Arizona Cardinals played in Super Bowl XLIII, but lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The Atlanta Falcons are an American football team in Atlanta, Georgia.
They are a member of the NFC South of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL).
The Falcons joined the NFL as a 1966 expansion team.
Their stadium is called the Georgia Dome.
It is located in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Falcon 's quarterback is Matt Ryan.
Their uniform is a red jersey with white pants.
An old nickname for the Falcons is Red Birds.
In their 42 years in the NFL, the Falcons have a record of 262-386-6 with division championships in 1980, 1998, 2004, 2010 and 2012.
They have only played once in the Super Bowl.
This was in 1999 in Miami in which they lost to the Denver Broncos.
Appletalk is a suite of protocols for computer networking.
It allowed Apple Macintosh computers to connect one another.
It also allowed a computer to use a printer connected to the network.
Apple has switched from Appletalk to TCP\/IP.
Astrology is the study of how the positions of the stars and movements of the planets have a supposed influence on events and on the lives and behavior of people.
An astrologer looks at the planets ' positions and tries to understand a person 's character or tries to predict the future.
Modern astrologers see astrology as a symbolic language.
It is also seen as an art, or a kind of divination.
Astrologers often say that the position of the stars help them know the future, but they can not really do it.
Astrology and astronomy started out as the same thing, but today they are very different.
Newspapers will often print horoscopes trying to guess persons future based on their birth sign.
A person 's astrological sign (usually referring to Sun sign) is based on their birthday.
A list of astrological signs is below.
Ani DiFranco (born September 23 1970) is an American guitarist and singer-songwriter.
She has had over 20 albums.
Her songs usually about feminism and political issues.
Although DiFranco 's music has been classified as both folk rock and alternative rock, she has created songs in many different music genres since her earliest albums.
Her albums have used first punk, then funk, hip hop, and jazz influences.
She was one of the first independent musicians to create her own record label (Righteous Babe).
By creating her own record label, this has given her significant creative freedom.
In 2012 DiFranco released her seventeenth album, Which Side Are You On?.
DiFranco was born in New York.
She started doing classes at Buffalo State College when she was 16.
DiFranco is bisexual.
She lives in New Orleans with her husband.
DiFranco has made two albums with Utah Phillips.
DiFranco released her first album in 1990.
After this she released a new album every year until 1997 when she did not release an album.
In 1999 DiFranco released two albums.
DiFranco has released three EPs.
In 2013 people wrote posts on Twitter, Tumblr, etc, criticizing DiFranco after she said that she was going to hold a Righteous Retreat at Nottoway Plantation.
On December 29, 2013 DiFranco canceled the event.
The Arizona Diamondbacks are a Major League Baseball team based in Phoenix, Arizona.
They were started in 1998.
They play their home games at Chase Field.
In 2001, they beat the New York Yankees to win their first (and only, so far) World Series, becoming the fastest new team to do this.
The team is also called the "D-Backs".
They are named for the Diamondback Rattlesnake.
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy.
It is the study of art and beauty.
Together with ethics it is part of axiology which is the philosophy of what people like.
Aesthetic philosophers ask what people like to look at, hear, feel, smell or taste, and why they like these things.
Aesthetic philosophers also ask if art has any value.
For example they may ask if some art that nobody likes and that nobody wants is art at all, or if it is something else.
Plato, Aristotle, and Immanuel Kant are some important philosophers of aesthetics.
One theory in aesthetics is called subjectivism.
Subjectivism says that each person has their own sense of beauty.
So, the only way of judging something 's beauty is if people say it is beautiful.
A common way of describing this is "Beauty in the eye of the beholder".
Subjectivism also says, for the same reason, that something is art simply because someone says it is art.
This is backed up by the experience that, even though people feel they find something beautiful, they may not be able to explain why.
Many objectivist theories of beauty have been offered, going from the ancient ideas of Plato and Aristotle (e.g., the golden mean,) which still have great appeal in their own way to neuroscience research into the brain 's response to images and other sense information.
At the moment, even though we do not know what people are thinking, brain-scan technology can identify when people are responding pleasurably to images, providing some clue as to how certain images affect some people.
The Ark of the Covenant (in Hebrew: aron hab ` rit) is described in the Bible as a holy container where the Ten Commandments and other holy Israelite objects are held.
According to the Bible, Yahweh commanded the ark be built when Moses had a prophetic vision at Sinai (Exodus 25:9 -10).
Some people believe the Ark contained Aaron 's Rod, a jar of Manna, and the first Torah Scroll written by Moses, based on their reading of Book of Exodus, Book of Numbers, and the Letter to the Hebrews.
The first of the Books of Kings says that during the time of King Solomon, the Ark held only the Ten Commandments.
The Hebrew word aron is used in the Bible to designate any type of ark or chest, for any purpose (Genesis 50:26; 2 Kings 12:9, 10).
The Ark of the Covenant is distinguished from all others by such titles as "Ark of God" (1 Samuel 3:3), "Ark of the Covenant" (Josh.
3:6; Hebrews 9:4), "Ark of the Testimony" (Ex.
25:22).
The Ark (aron kodesh in Hebrew meaning holy cupboard) is a raised cupboard found in Jewish Synagogues which contains the holy Torah scrolls.
These are all written by hand and can take years to make.
It is always on the wall of the Synagogue which faces towards Jerusalem.
When the Ark is opened and the Torah removed for reading everyone stands in respect of God.
During some prayers and services the Ark doors an inner curtain (parochet) are kept open.
The Bible describes the Ark as made of acacia or shittah-tree wood.
It was a cubit and a half broad and high, and two and a half cubits long (about 130 cm 78 cm 78 cm or 4.29 2.57 2.57 feet, for Egyptian royal cubit was most likely used).
The Ark was covered all over with the purest gold.
The Angles were a Germanic people of unknown origin.
Their name seems to be connected with Angeln, a modern district in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
The Angles, together with the Jutes, Saxons and Frisians, were among the Germanic tribes who sailed across the North Sea in the 5th century to invade Britain.
The various tribes were later called "Anglo-Saxon".
The Atlanta Braves are a Major League baseball team in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Braves ' home stadium is Turner Field where they have been playing since 1997.
From 1991 to 2005 the Braves, with the exception of 1994 because of a strike, won their division.
They won the World Series in 1995 against the Cleveland Indians.
One famous player that was on the Braves was Hank Aaron, from 1954 to 1976.
The Braves are the oldest team in major league baseball.
They began in 1871 in Boston, Massachusetts.
They were originally called the "Boston Red Stockings".
Later they were known as the "Boston Beaneaters".
In 1912 they were renamed as the "Boston Braves".
They moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1953, where they were known as the "Milwaukee Braves".
They moved to Atlanta in 1966.
Aaliyah Dana Haughton (better known simply as Aaliyah; January 16, 1979 August 25, 2001) was an American recording artist and actress.
Aaliyah was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Detroit, Michigan.
From her youth, she began to sing: she did singing competitions, castings and shows.
Her career began in 1994 with the release of her first album Age Ai n't Nothing But A Number.
She continued going to the High School of the Performing Arts after this.
In 1996, Aaliyah 's second album, One in a Million, was released with R. Kelly as producer.
Aaliyah always wanted to act and she got the leading role in Romeo Must Die (2000).
Then she starred in Queen of the Damned in 2002.
In 2001, she returned to music with her third album called Aaliyah, She put a lot into it, as a singer and as an executive producer.
She worked on it with her uncle.
She died on August 25, 2001 in a plane crash in the Bahamas.
She was going to be in the movie The Matrix Reloaded, but the filmmakers had to use another person after she died.
Aaliyah Dana Haughton was born in Brooklyn, New York.
She was of African American descent, with Native American heritage from her grandmother.
She was the second and younger child of Diane and Michael Haughton.
Aaliyah was enrolled in voice lessons by her mother, and she would perform at weddings, church choir and charity events.
When she was five years old, her family moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she was raised along with her older brother, Rashad.
She attended a Catholic school, Gesu Elementary, where she received a part in the stage play named Annie in first grade.
From then on, she was determined to become an entertainer.
Aaliyah 's mother was a vocalist.
Her uncle, Barry Hankerson, was an entertainment lawyer who had been married to Gladys Knight.
As a child, Aaliyah traveled with Knight and worked with an agent in New York to audition for commercials and television programs, including Family Matters; she went on to appear on Star Search at the age of ten.
She then auditioned for several record labels and appeared in concerts alongside Knight at age 11.
Aaliyah attended the Detroit High School for the Performing Arts, where she majored in drama and graduated in 1997.
Aaliyah began her acting career that same year.
After Hankerson signed a distribution deal with Jive Records, he signed Aaliyah to his label named Blackground Records when Aaliyah was 12 years old.
She released her debut album Age Ai n't Nothing but a Number in 1994.
Rumors circulated that she and her mentor R. Kelly were not only romantically involved, but had also married.
Aaliyah admitted to a friendship with R. Kelly, which had developed while recording Age Ai n't Nothing but a Number.
She said they would go out together and watch a movie or eat somewhere when they went on breaks from recording the album and said they were "rather close".
She dismissed the rumors about her relationship with him as people taking it "the wrong way."
Jamie Foster Brown wrote about R. Kelly 's recollection of the time he had spent working with Aaliyah, writing, "R. Kelly told me that he and Aaliyah got together and it was just magic."
Brown reported hearing Aaliyah being a frequent guest at R. Kelly 's home and walking his dog 12 Play.
Along with this, he heard that she was pregnant.
There were complaints about Aaliyah being in the studio recording with a bunch of older men.
Aaliyah went on to admit that she had lied about her age in court documents and filed suit in Cook County to have the records erased since she was not old enough at the time (being fifteen when the marriage took place) to get married without having the go-ahead by her parents.
Reports indicate that Aaliyah had a crush on R. Kelly at some point, but after the marriage was ended, she ceased professional and personal contact with him.
Jomo Hankerson later said that Aaliyah was treated bad over the marriage and that she had a hard time getting her second album to have a producer because of what had happened between her and R. Kelly.
With the exception of Sean Combs, he said, there were not too many producers seeking to work with her because people were upset with her, which he did not understand given her age at the time.
After the marriage ended, she stopped answering questions about R. Kelly and would often change the subject whenever it was brought up.
This was noted by several organizations that did interviews with her.
Aaliyah indicated that she would never again work with R. Kelly during an interview with Christopher John Farley, who went on to write a biography of the singer titled Aaliyah: More Than a Woman.
R. Kelly would go on to have more allegations about relationships with underage girls and the relationship with Aaliyah was brought up or mentioned most of the time as a starting point.
He refused to discuss his relationship with her and explained his reason for doing this:" "Out of respect for her, and her mom and her dad, I will not discuss Aaliyah.
That was a whole other situation, a whole other time, it was a whole other thing, and I 'm sure that people also know that."
According to her mother Diane Haughton, everything "that went wrong in her life" began with her relationship with R. Kelly.
The allegations were dismissed as having little effect on her image or career.
In 1996, Aaliyah left Jive Records and signed with Atlantic Records.
She worked with record producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott, who contributed to her second studio album, One in a Million.
She developed friendships with the pair.
Timbaland was in love with her, but did not act out on it due to her being years younger than him.
Instead he wanted to be a bigger brother figure for her, similar to her own brother Rashad Haughton.
However, he struggled with keeping his feelings at bay.
During her last days, the pair had an argument and it would be the last time they would speak to each other, as he next learned that she had passed.
She played as herself in the police drama television series New York Undercover.
During this time, Aaliyah participated in the Children 's Benefit Concert, a charity concert that took place at the Beacon Theatre in New York.
Aaliyah 's first major movie role was in Romeo Must Die.
Aaliyah starred opposite martial artist Jet Li, playing a couple who fall in love amid their warring families.
It grossed US$ 18.6 million in its first weekend, ranking number two at the box office.
Aaliyah was scared about bad reviews so she did not look for them.
She heard good things about her role in the movie, but there were critics that did not like her role because of her relationship with Jet Li 's character not having any realism along with the rest of the movie.
Before she died, she talked to the Isley Brothers about working together, having recorded one of their songs when she was younger during her tenure with Jive Records and was signed to appear in more movies.
One of them was Honey, which came out in 2003 Some Kind of Blue, a romantic movie and Sparkle, a movie produced by Whitney Houston that was the remake of the 1976 film of the same name.
Houston said after Aaliyah passed that she wanted to be in the movie.
Studio officials from Warner Brothers said she and her mother read the script and Aaliyah was passionate about appearing in the movie.
Aaliyah had a vocal range of a soprano.
With the release of her first single "Back & Forth", Dimitri Ehrlich of Entertainment Weekly expressed that Aaliyah 's "silky vocals are more agile than those of self-proclaimed queen of hip-hop soul Mary J. Blige."
Aaliyah described her sound as "street but sweet", which featured her "gentle" vocals over a "hard" beat.
Though Aaliyah did not write any of her own material, her lyrics were described as in-depth.
She incorporated R&B, pop and hip hop into her music.
Her songs were often uptempo and melancholy, revolving around "matters of the heart".
Her songs have been said to have "crisp production" and "staccato arrangements" that "extend genre boundaries" while containing "old-school" soul music.
When she experimented with other genres, such as Latin pop and heavy metal, critics did not like the attempt.
As her albums progressed, writers felt that Aaliyah acted more older, calling her progress a "declaration of strength and independence".
Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic described her eponymous album, Aaliyah, as "a statement of maturity and a stunning artistic leap forward" and called it one of the strongest urban soul records of its time.
She portrayed "unfamiliar sounds, styles and emotions", but managed to please critics with the contemporary sound it contained.
Ernest Hardy of Rolling Stone felt that Aaliyah reflected a stronger technique, where she gave her best vocal performance.
Others felt that she was "satisfying rather than extraordinary", stating that she added little to modern R&B.
On August 25, 2001, at 6:45 pm (EST), Aaliyah and various members of the record company boarded a twin-engine Cessna 402B (registration N8097W) at the Marsh Harbour Airport in Abaco Islands, The Bahamas, to travel to the Opa-locka Airport in Florida, after they completed filming the music video for the single "Rock the Boat".
They had a flight scheduled the following day, August 26, but with filming finishing early, Aaliyah and her entourage were eager to return to the United States and made the decision to leave immediately.
The designated airplane was smaller than the Cessna 404 in which they had originally flown.
The whole party and all of the equipment were accommodated on board.
As a result, when the aircraft attempted to depart, it was over its maximum takeoff weight by 700 l and was carrying one excess passenger, according to its certification.
The plane crashed shortly after takeoff, about 200 f from the runway.
Aaliyah and the eight others on board, pilot Luis Morales III, hair stylist Eric Forman, Anthony Dodd, security guard Scott Gallin, video producer Douglas Kratz, stylist Christopher Maldonado, and Blackground Records employees Keith Wallace and Gina Smith, were all killed.
According to findings from an inquest, conducted by the coroner 's office in The Bahamas, Aaliyah suffered from "severe burns and a blow to the head", in addition to severe shock and a weak heart.
The coroner theorized that, even if Aaliyah had survived the crash, her recovery would have been virtually impossible given the severity of her injuries.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report stated that "the airplane was seen lifting off the runway, and then nose down, impacting in a marsh on the south side of the departure end of runway 27 and then exploding in flames."
It indicated that the pilot was not approved to pilot the plane he was attempting to fly.
Morales falsely obtained his Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) license by showing hundreds of hours never flown, and he may also have falsified how many hours he had flown in order to get a job with his employer, Blackhawk International Airways.
Additionally, an autopsy performed on Morales revealed traces of cocaine and alcohol in his system.
The NTSB reported that the maximum allowed gross weight of the plane was "substantially exceeded" and that the center of gravity was positioned beyond its rear limit.
John Frank of the Cessna Pilots Association stated that the plane was "definitely overloaded".
The day of the crash was Morales ' first official day with Blackhawk International Airways, an FAA Part 135 single-pilot operation.
Morales was not registered with the FAA to fly for Blackhawk.
As a result of the accident, Aaliyah 's parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the company, which was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.
Barry & Sons, Inc., a corporation formed in 1992 to develop, promote and capitalize Aaliyah and to oversee the production and distribution of her records and music videos, brought an unsuccessful lawsuit in the New York Supreme Court against Instinct Productions LLC, the company that was hired in August 2001 to produce the music video for "Rock the Boat".
The case was dismissed because of New York 's wrongful death statute only permitting certain people to recover damages for wrongful death.
Aaliyah 's funeral was held on August 31, 2001, at the Saint Ignatius Loyola Church in Manhattan.
Her body was set in a silver casket, which was carried in a glass hearse and was drawn by horse.
An estimated 800 mourners were in attendance of the procession.
Among those in attendance at the private ceremony were Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Gladys Knight, Lil ' Kim and Sean Combs.
After the service, 22 white doves were released to symbolize each year of Aaliyah 's life.
She was interred in a crypt in a private room in the Rosewood Mausoleum at the Ferncliff Cemetery.
The week after Aaliyah 's death, her third studio album, Aaliyah, rose from number 19 to number one on the Billboard 200.
"Rock the Boat" was released as a posthumous single.
The music video premiered on BET 's Access Granted; it became the most viewed and highest rated episode in the history of the show.
The song peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two on the Billboard Hot R&B \/ Hip-Hop Songs chart.
It was also included on the Now That 's What I Call Music!
8 compilation series; a portion of the album 's profits was donated to the Aaliyah Memorial Fund.
The following two singles from Aaliyah, "More than a Woman" and "I Care 4 U", peaked within the top 25 of the Billboard Hot 100.
The album was certified double Platinum by the RIAA and sold 2.95 million copies in the United States.
"More than a Woman" reached number one in the UK singles chart making Aaliyah the first deceased artist to reach number one in the UK single chart.
"More than a Woman" was replaced by George Harrison 's "My Sweet Lord" which is the only time in the UK singles chart history where a dead artist has replaced another dead artist at number one.
She won two posthumous awards at the American Music Awards of 2002; Favorite Female R&B Artist and Favorite R&B \/ Soul Album for Aaliyah.
Her second and final movie, Queen of the Damned, was released in February 2002.
Before its release, Aaliyah 's brother, Rashad, re-dubbed some of her lines during post-production.
It grossed US$ 15.2 million in its first weekend, ranking number one at the box office.
On the first anniversary of Aaliyah 's death, a candlelight vigil was held in Times Square, where millions of fans observed a moment of silence.
Throughout the United States, radio stations played her music in remembrance.
In December 2002, a collection of previously unreleased material was released as Aaliyah 's first posthumous album, I Care 4 U. A portion of the proceeds was donated to the Aaliyah Memorial Fund, a program that benefits the Revlon UCLA Women Cancer Research Program and Harlem 's Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
It debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, selling 280,000 copies in its first week.
The album 's lead single, "Miss You", peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Hot R&B \/ Hip-Hop Songs chart.
In August of the following year, clothing retailer Christian Dior donated profits from sales in honor of Aaliyah.
Aaliyah was signed to appear in several future movies, including Honey (recast to Jessica Alba).
Some Kind of Blue and a Whitney Houston-produced remake of the 1976 movie Sparkle were canceled due to Aaliyah 's death.
Before her death, Aaliyah had filmed part of her role in The Matrix Reloaded and was scheduled to appear in The Matrix Revolutions as Zee.
The role was later recast to Nona Gaye.
Aaliyah 's scenes were later included in the tribute section of the Matrix Ultimate Collection series.
In 2005, Aaliyah 's second compilation album, Ultimate Aaliyah was released in the UK by Blackground Records.
Ultimate Aaliyah is a three disc set, which included a greatest hits audio CD and a DVD.
Andy Kellman of Allmusic remarked "Ultimate Aaliyah adequately represents the shortened career of a tremendous talent who benefited from some of the best songwriting and production work by Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and R. Kelly."
A documentary movie Aaliyah Live in Amsterdam was released in 2011.
, shortly before the tenth anniversary of Aaliyah 's death.
The documentary, by Pogus Caesar, contained previously unseen footage shot of her career beginnings in 1995 when she was appearing in the Netherlands.
In 2012 music producer Jeffrey "J-Dub" Walker via twitter said "Just got great news today; the smash unreleased song called "Steady Ground" I produced on # Aaliyah is gonna be on her upcoming album".
Walker co-wrote "I Refuse" and "What if" from Aaliyah 's third self-titled album and produced the song "Steady Ground" for her ` One in a Million ' album.
This second proposed posthumous album would feature this song using demo vocals since Walker claims the originals were somehow lost by his sound engineer.
However, Walker 's original tweet announcing this event has since been removed, and Aaliyah 's brother, via Twitter, has stated that "no official album (is) being released and supported by the Haughton family."
Armour is a protective covering or clothing used to try to prevent injury when being attacked.
Armour can be worn by a person, or it can be used to protect machines, animals, even buildings.
Armour has always been made from the strongest materials available at the time, but weight has always been a problem.
Early body armor was made from leather, then later metals were used (e.g. mail or plate armor).
Some modern armor, like bullet-proof vests, are made from plastics that do not stretch or break, such as Kevlar.
These plastics may be woven into a cloth and used in layers, which makes them even stronger.
Armour put on vehicles is usually made of metal and can include one layer over another with open spaces in between (spaced armor) or multiple layers of metal; ceramics (baked clay), and other materials.
Another type of armor uses blocks of explosive that explode when another explosion goes off near it.
This explosive armor protects by pushing against the other explosion.
Vehicle armor is often angled to increase the amount of armor that must be shot through to get inside and to make the shot bounce off rather than piercing the armor.
Tanks have the heaviest armor of all land vehicles.
Other military vehicles have armor, but not as much as a tank.
Sometimes armor is put in non-military vehicles, such as limousines used by leaders of a country or by anyone who thinks they might be attacked, e.g. film stars or presidents of major companies.
In the past, armor has also been used in wars to protect animals such as dogs, elephants, and horses.
Today, police dogs and horses sometimes wear woven plastic bullet-proof vests.
Many sports involve violent physical contact and may be highly dangerous if the players are unprotected.
Such sports include ice hockey, American football and kendo.
Sports armor is usually made from hard plastic.
Anton Drexler (13 June 1884 24 February 1942) was a German far-right political leader of the 1920s.
He was instrumental in the formation of the pan-German and anti-Semitic German Workers ' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - DAP), the antecedent of the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - NSDAP).
All Quiet on the Western Front (original German title: Im Westen nichts Neues, literally: "Nothing New on the Western Front") is a famous book by the German author Erich Maria Remarque.
It was first published in 1929.
It is about a German soldier named Paul B umer as he fights together with his classmates in World War I. Troops are changed every couple of weeks; they are either sent to the front line or a few miles back.
At the beginning, Baumer and his fellow soldiers are very full and satisfied because a very heavy bombardment killed off half of the company.
A number of soldiers and Baumer are injured one night, and all are taken to the local hospital.
In there, when a nurse gives Baumer a temperature gauge, he uses a light and makes his temperature seem much higher than it really is.
This is so he can go into critical care with his friends.
While there, the nurses sing a hymn, which annoys the men.
Baumer throws and breaks a bottle to make them shut the door.
One night, Baumer and his friends find two live pigs.
They put together a feast.
Baumer cooks some kind of cakes.
They smoke cigarettes and drink coffee from the officer 's dump and then roast the pigs.
The meal is very good, but the pig meat sticks to their bowels and makes them go to the bathroom all night.
As the war draws to its end in 1918, the Germans are suffering.
The food is bad and the men must keep going to the bathroom.
The Americans have joined the war and are pushing back all of the ground that the Germans gained.
During this time, many of Baumer 's classmates die.
At the end of the novel, Baumer dies.
The day was so quiet that the field commander described the day as "all quiet on the Western Front."
The book sold 2.9 million copies in 50 languages in eighteen months.
It is published by Ballantine Books in 1929.
This book and its sequel, The Road Back, were banned and burned in Nazi Germany.
The film version won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1930.
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia.
It was originally the dialect that developed among the Afrikaner Protestant settlers, the unfree workers, and slaves brought to the Cape area in southwestern South Africa by the Dutch East India Company (- VOC) between 1652 and 1705.
Most of these first settlers were from the United Provinces (now Netherlands), though there were also many from Germany, some from France, a few from Scotland, and various other countries.
The unfree workers and slaves were Malays, and Malagasy in addition to the native Khoi and Bushmen.
Research by J. A. Heese says that until 1807, 36.8 % of the ancestors of the White Afrikaans speaking population were Dutch, 35 % were German, 14.6 % were French and 7.2 % non-white (of African and\/or Asian origins).
Heese 's figures are questioned by other researchers, however, and especially the non-white component quoted by Heese is very much in doubt.
A sizeable minority of those who spoke Afrikaans as a first language were not white.
The dialect became known as "Cape Dutch".
Later, Afrikaans was sometimes called "African Dutch" or "Kitchen Dutch".
Afrikaans was considered a Dutch dialect until the early 20th century, when it began to be widely known as a different language.
The name Afrikaans is simply the Dutch word for African, and the language is the African form of Dutch.
Aeolus or Eolus was the king of winds in Greek mythology.
Although he varied from story to story, he was sometimes said to have had all the winds in a bag.
In the Odyssey, he gave that bag to Odysseus to help him get home.
Aeolus was the son of Hellen and a nymph named Orseis.
Aeolus ' brothers were Dorus, Xuthus and Amphictyon.
ABC are the first three letters in the Latin alphabet.
Arsenal Football F.C. is an English football club that plays in the English Premier League.
The club was founded in 1886 and was originally called Dial Square F.C. named after a sundial on the side of a factory.
The team plays in a traditional red and white kit.
They played at Highbury in north London from 1913 - 2006, but now they play at the Emirates Stadium.
The current captain of the side is Laurent Koscielny.
Their biggest rivals are Tottenham Hotspur, and the two play against each other in what is called the North London Derby.
Arsenal won the First Division and Premier League 13 times and the FA Cup 10 times.
They are the only British club to have been the subject of a feature film.
in 2003\/04 season Arsenal broke the record for the longest unbeaten run in all competitions spanning over a season with over 38 games.
they were hailed as the ` New Invincibles '.
The Evelina approach was the main reason arsenal were able to achieve this, first implemented by manager Arsene Wenger.
Arsenal are also the team who have gone the longest in the premier league without being relegated.
They were last relegated during WW1 over 90 years ago.
They have a golden away kit.
The current manager of Arsenal F.C. is Ars ne Wenger, the most successful manager in the club 's history.
The assistant manager is Steve Bould.
Their new Emirates Stadium was opened on the 27th of October 2006, by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Arsenal also has a women 's team called Arsenal Ladies F.C..
The ladies team is the only team in women 's football history to have ever won four trophies in one season.
The most famous, and successful, Arsenal manager before Wenger is thought to be Herbert Chapman.
Chapman won the First Division with Arsenal twice and the FA Cup once.
The cuisine of the United States refers to food prepared in the United States.
The European Colonization of the Americas gave way to introduction of many ingredients and cooking styles.
These styles extended to the 19th and 20th centuries.
Seafood have been in the United States since pre-Colonial times.
Native American ate fish and other seafood in those times.
Pizza is based on the traditional Italian dish which was brought to the U.S. by Italian immigrants.
It varies, however, based on the style and development region.
In the Southern United States, fried chicken is extremely popular, though it is eaten everywhere.
Atlantis is a name for a fictional large island or small continent that supposedly had been in the Atlantic Ocean many years before it sank into the depth of the sea and vanished within a day and a night.
The story of Atlantis first appears in the stories Timaeus and Critias by the Greek philosopher Plato.
In all of his books, Plato used many interesting stories to help explain his ideas about government and philosophy.
No other ancient writer gave specific details about Atlantis until after Plato wrote, so most people today think that Plato just made up this story.
After Plato, the idea of Atlantis was mostly forgotten until 1882, when a writer named Ignatius Donnelly wrote a book saying that Atlantis was real and that the culture of Atlantis had started many other ancient cultures, such as the Egyptian and Mayan.
After Donnelly 's book, many people became interested in Atlantis and began to say that it had aircraft, submarines, powerful energy crystals, and other things that are not known from ancient times.
By studying the types of rock that are found in the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, scientists are sure that there was never really any large island or small continent there, so many people today think that Plato may have heard a story about another place and moved it to the Atlantic Ocean in his book.
Different people have thought that many places all over the world have been the place of the "real Atlantis".
It is also said that Atlantis sunk to the bottom of the ocean by the gods as punishment for its bad deeds and its inhabitants immorality.
An autobiography is a biography in which the author writes about his or her own life.
The word comes from the Greek stems "auto" (meaning "self"), "bio (meaning "life"), and "graph" (meaning "write").
Armadillos are in the Cingulata, an order of New World placental mammals.
The living ones have a leathery armored shell.
The word armadillo is Spanish for "little armored one".
There are about 10 living genera and about 20 species of armadillo.
Their average length is about 75 centimeters (30 in), including the tail.
The Giant Armadillo grows up to 100 cm (39 in) and weigh 30 kg (66lbs).
All species live in the Americas.
Most of the 20 species are found in open areas, such as grasslands, but some also live in forests.
Armadillos species are mostly found in South and Central America, especially around Paraguay.
Many species are endangered.
The nine-banded armadillo has an unusual reproductive system, in which genetically identical quadruplets are born in each litter.
Because they are always genetically identical clones, the group of four young is a good subject for scientific, behavioural or medical tests.
They provide the same biological and genetic makeup, and then get different treatment.
This is the only regular case of ` polyembryony ' in the class Mammalia, where one fertilised egg splits into four embryos.
It only happens in the genus Dasypus, and not in all armadillos.
Other animals which have this reproductive method are parasitoid wasps, certain flatworms and various aquatic invertebrates.
Abdulaziz al-Omari (, also transliterated Abdul Aziz Alomari May 28, 1979 September 11, 2001) was named by the FBI as one of the hijackers of the first plane which was crashed into the World Trade Center in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The Arabic alphabet is an abjad that is used to write several languages of the Middle East; amongst others, the Arabic language.
Persian, Pashto, and Urdu are examples of languages that use a writing system that is based on the Arabic one.
They have changed it to better fit the needs of their own languages.
The Arabic script is the third most widely used script in the world, after Latin and Chinese.
The script is written from right to left.
When it is used to write the Arabic language, the script consists of 28 characters.
In an abjad only consonants are written.
Vowels are omitted most of the time.
The Arabic script is a cursive script.
This means that letters of a word are joined together, both in handwriting and in print.
Each letter can have up to four different forms.
Which of the forms is used depends on the letters before and after it.
The form for uppercase letters and lowercase letters is the same.
There are two basic modern variants of the Arabic script.
One is called Naskh, it is the one commonly used for printing.
The most common script in everyday life is called Kufic, after the city Kufa, in Iraq, where it was developed.
There are several variants of both scripts.
The alphabet can also be used to write numbers.
This was common in the Middle Ages.
Today it can be found more rarely.
Usually, Latin-alphabet (Arabic) numbers are used.
When the alphabet is used to write numbers, the letter ' is 1, ' is 2, ' is 3, and so on until ' = 10, ' = 20, ' = 30,, ' = 200,, ' = 1000.
This is sometimes used to produce chronograms.
For dictionaries, it is necessary to put the letters into a predefined sequence.
This is usually called sort order, or collation.
For the Arabic script, there are two sort orders: The one called abjid derives from the position of the letters in the Phoenician alphabet.
The other, called hij, sorts letters by similarity of shape.
As Islam spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia, the Arabic language spread along with it.
Islam requires all its followers to learn Arabic because Islam states that Gabriel (Jibril) spoke the words of Allah to Muhammad in Arabic.
The language is used for Muslim rituals such as prayer and the reciting of Quranic verses.
As the language of Islam spread, the script the Quran is written in also spread.
The Arabic alphabet replaced the Pahlavi writing systems as it conquered Persia.
Another alphabet, the Uighur alphabet, was based on the shapes of Arabic letters.
However, the Uighur alphabet has vowel letters, unlike the abjad 's optional vowel markings.
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in WWI, use of the Arabic language, and especially the Arabic alphabet, became less acommon in the Muslim world.
The Turkic states and other Muslim-majority states controlled by the Soviet Union did not favor Arabic script.
In 1928, Turkey passed a law that banned the use of the Arabic alphabet for writing Turkish.
Turkish is now written in the Latin alphabet.
Around the same time, the USSR created a Latin alphabet for the Central Asian states it occupied, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, to replace the Arabic alphabet.
This decision was made to remove religious influence in Central Asia, and to modernize it.
For a time, Soviet leaders believed the Latin alphabet was the "world alphabet" because it was the writing system of most developed countries.
However, the USSR then required the Central Asian states to write only in Cyrillic, as Russian is.
This was to influence local cultures to become more like that of Russia.
Although the USSR fell, none of the Central Asian nations returned to using the Arabic alphabet.
They either kept using Cyrillic, like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, or adopted a new Latin alphabet, like Azerbaijan.
Only Tajikistan is considering switching back to using the Arabic alphabet.
Tajik was once a dialect of Persian.
In Southeast Asia, the nations of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Brunei, have adopted the Latin alphabet for Malay (which is called Rumi in Malay).
The British and Dutch colonizations introduced the Latin alphabet.
The Arabic alphabet (Jawi in Malay) is still used in Malaysia on a much smaller scale than Rumi.
Brunei is the only Southeast Asian country where both the Latin and Arabic alphabets are co-official.
The Arctic fox, (or ` white fox ', ` polar fox ', ` snow fox '), is Vulpes lagopus.
It is a small fox which lives in the Arctic.
The fox is about 10-12 inches high (25 30 cm) and it weighs from 6 to 10 pounds (2.7-4.5 kg).
The Arctic fox has a round body shape, short nose and legs, and short, fluffy ears.
It has a deep thick fur which is brown in summer and white in winter.
Arctic foxes live for about 3 to 6 years.
This fox can live in the cold north even when it is -50 C. Their thick fur keeps them warm.
The fur of the Arctic fox provides the best insulation of any mammal.
Its broad, fluffy paws let it walk on ice and snow to look for food.
The Arctic fox has very good ears so that it can hear small animals under the snow.
When it hears an animal under the snow, it jumps and punches through the snow to catch its victim.
The Arctic fox eats any meat it can find.
They eat lemmings, arctic hares, eggs and dead bodies of animals.
The foxes also eat plants sometimes.
Arctic foxes do not hibernate.
They grow thicker fur in the Autumn, and put on more than 50 % of their body weight as fat for insulation and as energy reserves.
It takes 53 days for the pups to grow in the mother before they are born.
The mother can produce 5-8 cubs but sometimes as many as 25.
Both the mother and the father help to raise their young pups.
The young females leave the family and form their own groups and the males stay with the family.
Arctic foxes form pairs in the breeding season.
Litters are born in the early summer.
The parents raise the young in a large den under the ground.
The pups are born with brown fur and as they grow older it turns white.
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language, spoken by Armenians.
It is the official language of Armenia and the region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities all over the world.
It has its own alphabet, the Armenian alphabet.
There are two standard forms of Armenian: Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian.
Aircraft carriers are warships that carry airplanes and other aircraft like helicopters.
They are used by navies to allow aircraft to fight along with naval warships.
Aircraft carriers are usually very large, carrying hundreds or thousands of sailors and tens or hundreds of aircraft.
The top of an aircraft carrier is called the flight deck and looks like a very small airport.
Old aircraft carriers carried airplanes that could takeoff and land in the short distance of the flight deck without help.
Similarly, small modern aircraft carriers only carry helicopters or specially designed airplanes that can take off and land straight up and down or in the short distance of the flight deck.
The flight deck of a large, modern aircraft carrier has a landing area and a take-off area.
The landing area is in the back and has a short runway.
Airplanes stop by using a hook on the back of the airplane to grab wires stretched across the runway.
In the front, the flight deck has a steam-powered catapult that connects to the front wheel of an airplane.
The catapult throws the airplane off the deck, helping it take off quickly.
So, aircraft carriers are basically floating, mobile airports.
Because they are so big, modern aircraft carriers often have on-board nuclear power plants.
Other aircraft carriers are powered by diesel engines.
Except for their airplanes, aircraft carriers usually have few weapons, so other warships escort them.
Together, the aircraft carrier and these warships form a carrier group.
The Apicomplexa are a large group of protists (protozoa) which are parasitic.
They have developed some extraordinary adaptations which fit them in their parasitic life.
They are all single-celled, they are all parasites of animals, and they all form spores.
They have a unique organelle, a plastid called an apicoplast, and an apical complex structure which gets them into a host 's cell.
They do not have structures such as flagella or pseudopods except in certain gamete stages.
Body movement is by flexing or gliding.
The group were once called the Sporozoa, but this name is now discouraged.
Apicomplexans have complex life cycles, and there is much variation among different apicomplexan groups.
Both asexual and sexual reproduction occur.
Cell nuclei are haploid.
This is a diverse group including organisms such as coccidia, gregarines, piroplasms, hemogregarines, and malarias.
Diseases caused by apicomplexan organisms include:
Most members have a complex life-cycle, with both asexual and sexual reproduction.
A host is infected by an active invasion by the parasites.
The parasites divide to produce sporozoites which enter its cells.
Eventually, the cells burst, releasing merozoites, which infect new cells.
Eventually, gametes are produced, and they fuse to create new cysts.
There are many variations on this basic pattern, however, and many Apicomplexa have more than one host.
The apical complex includes vesicles which open at the front of the cell.
They secrete enzymes that allow the parasite to enter other cells.
The tip is surrounded by a band of microtubules, called the polar ring, and among the Conoidasida there is also a funnel of tubulin proteins called the conoid.
The presence of alveoli and other traits place the Apicomplexa among a group called the alveolates.
Several related flagellates, such as Perkinsus and Colpodella, have structures similar to the polar ring and were formerly included here, but most appear to be closer relatives of the dinoflagellates.
They are probably similar to the common ancestor of the two groups.
Another similarity is that many apicomplexan cells contain a single plastid, called the apicoplast, surrounded by either 3 or four membranes.
Its functions are thought to include tasks such as lipid and haem biosynthesis.
It appears to be necessary for survival.
The plastids are thought to have a common origin with the chloroplasts of dinoflagellates, and evidence points to an origin from red algae rather than green.
Ad hominem is a Latin word for a type of argument.
It is a word often used in rhetoric.
Rhetoric is the science of speaking well, and convincing other people of your ideas.
Translated to English, ad hominem means against the person.
In other words, when someone makes an ad hominem, they are attacking the person they are arguing against, instead of what they are saying.
The term comes from the Latin word homo, which means human.
Hominem is a gender neutral version of the word homo.
In ancient Rome it referred to all free men, or in other words, all free human beings.
Ad hominem can be a way to use reputation, rumors and hearsay to change the minds of other people listening.
When a social network has already excluded or exiled one person, or applied a negative label to them, this can work more often.
It is most of the time considered to be a weak and poor argument.
In courts and in diplomacy ad hominems are not appreciated.
Ad hominems are not wrong every time.
For example, when people think that someone ca n't be trusted, things that they have said previously can be doubted.
In logic, a proof is something that starts with premises, and goes through a few logical arguments, to reach a conclusion.
In this example it can be seen that the (completely unrelated) fact that person A is uneducated and poor is used to prove that abortion should not be illegal.
Analgetics (one analgetic) (or analgesics) is a term for some drugs that are used to stop pain.
These are also known as painkillers.
There are several kinds of painkillers.
All act on the nervous system.
Most painkillers can make people addicted (not want to stop taking them) if they are taken over longer periods of time.
The accusative case is part of the description of the grammar of a language.
The accusative case is used where something happens to a pronoun or a noun in a sentence, so when it is the direct object.
In the sentence "He sees the woman", "he" is the subject of the sentence.
In the sentence "The woman sees him", "him" is the object.
In English we use different forms of the pronoun: he\/him.
"Him" would be the accusative case.
If we use a noun, there is no difference in English.
We use the same word "man": The man sees the woman and The woman sees the man.
In many other languages different forms of the word are used, depending on what function it has in the sentence - subject or object.
For example, in Latin.
"The man sees the woman" = "Vir feminam videt", while "The woman sees the man" = "Femina virum videt".
For "man", Latin uses "vir" for the subject, and "virum" for the an object.
Also, in the same sentences, we have "femina" for a subject and "feminam" for object.
The form used for the direct object ("him", "virum", "feminam") is known as the "accusative case", while the form used for the subject ("he", "vir", "femina") is known as the nominative case.
In some languages, like German, the accusative case is applied to the definite article and not to the noun.
In German, "the car" as the subject of a sentence may be "der Wagen".
This is the form in the nominative case.
When "the car" is used as the object in a sentence, it becomes "den Wagen", the accusative.
Ascorbic acid is a sugar acid.
It is white to light-yellow crystals or powder, and it is water-soluble.
Ascorbic acid is one form of vitamin C, and was historically the first chemical compound to be synthesized, and identified, as vitamin C. The name is derived from a - (meaning "no") and scorbutus (scurvy), the disease caused by a deficiency of vitamin C.
The adrenal gland is a gland in most mammals.
It is near the kidneys.
Its name tells its position (ad "near", and renes "kidneys").
The adrenal gland makes hormones which control stress.
It is involved in the production of steroid hormones.
Among these hormones are cortisol and adrenaline.
The gland is made up of two types of tissues: the centrally located tissue is called the adrenal medulla and outside this lies the adrenal cortex.
The adrenal glands are known as "suprarenal glands" in humans.
In many animals the glands are next to the kidneys, but they are cap-like structures on top of the kidneys in humans.
The hormones secreted from the cortex region are called adrenocorticosteroids or corticoids.
These are the hormones it makes:
Aramaic is a language that is 3000 years old, or even more.
Words are made up from the 22 characters of the Aramaic alphabet.
It is part of a group of languages called the Semitic languages.
This group has Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic and many other languages in it.
Some old kingdoms used Aramaic language for business.
Some religions use Aramaic for their meetings.
Aramaic is the language of big parts of the two Bible books of Daniel and Ezra.
It is the language of the Jewish Talmud.
Aramaic was the language of Jesus Christ.
Aramaic is spoken today by small groups of people, particularly by Assyrians.
In the 12th century BC, Aramaeans, the first speakers of Aramaic started to make their homes in today 's countries of Syria, Iraq and east Turkey.
Their language became more important.
It became the most important language in the Middle East.
Jewish speakers of Aramaic took the language with them to north Africa and Europe.
Christian speakers of Aramaic took the language with them to Persia, India and even China.
In the 7th century AD, Aramaic stopped being the most important language in the Middle East.
The Arabic language became the new important language.
But, Aramaic is still the language of writing and religion for Jews, Mandaeans and some Christians.
Small groups of people still speak Aramaic in different parts of the Middle East.
The wars of the last two centuries made many Aramaic speakers leave their homes and go to live in many, different places around the world.
Places such as America, France, Netherlands, Canada, and many more areas of the world.
There may not be a very big presence of Aramaic around the world but in some countries there are large communities in small areas that fluently speak the modern Aramaic.
Aramaic is not one language without any changes.
Because many different people over many centuries spoke and wrote it, there are many different types of Aramaic languages.
These different types are called dialects, but some of them are so different that they are like different languages.
The different dialects make two groups: an Eastern group and a Western group.
The division between them is around the line of the river Euphrates.
We also divide up the dialects by their place in time.
Old Aramaic is the name of the oldest dialects.
Only special teachers learn Old Aramaic.
Middle Aramaic is the group of dialects that people do not speak every day, but they use them for special things like writing and religion.
Modern Aramaic is the group of dialects that people use every day.
They are living languages and are spoken by Assyrians.
The actinide series is the 15 chemical elements between actinium and lawrencium on the periodic table.
They have the atomic numbers between 89 - 103.
The actinide series is named after actinium.
All of the elements are radioactive.
Arthur Miller (October 17, 1915 February 10, 2005) was an American playwright.
His best known plays are All My Sons, Death of a Salesman and The Crucible.
He also wrote for the movie The Misfits while he was married to Marilyn Monroe.
She acted in this movie.
Arthur Miller 's family was a rich family from New York.
During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the family lost all their money.
Because Miller wanted to go to university, he had to work in a warehouse.
He studied economics and history at the University of Michigan, and also learned how to write plays.
He married Mary Slattery in 1940.
In 1944, Miller had his first play in a theater on Broadway in New York, called The Man Who Had All the Luck.
Not many people liked it so this play was stopped after one week.
However, three years later, his play All My Sons became very popular.
This play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
In 1949, he wrote Death of a Salesman, a story about the American Dream.
In 1953, he wrote The Crucible, a story about the Salem Witch Trials.
He wrote this because of the McCarthyism of the 1950s, the fear that communism would take over America.
A few years later, Miller was accused of being a communist himself.
He had to answer questions from the House Un-American Activities Committee, a group that Senator Joseph McCarthy made.
Miller was an atheist.
In 1956, Miller divorced Mary Slattery so he could marry the actress Marilyn Monroe.
During this marriage, he wrote for the movie The Misfits.
Monroe acted in this movie.
After five years of marriage, Monroe divorced him.
The following year, Miller married again.
The photographer Inge Morath was his third wife, and they were together until she died in 2002.
They had two children.
His son, Daniel, was born with Down Syndrome.
Miller put him in a hospital and did not want to see him again.
His daughter, Rebecca, married actor Daniel Day-Lewis, who asked Miller several times to contact his hospitalised son.
Arthur Miller died in Roxbury, Connecticut in 2005.
Area 51 is a military base, and a remote detachment of Edwards Air Force Base.
It is in the southern portion of Nevada in the western United States, 83 miles (133 km) north-northwest of downtown Las Vegas.
At its center, on the southern shore of Groom Lake, is a large military airfield.
The base 's primary purpose is to support development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems.
The base is in the United States Air Force 's Nevada Test and Training Range NTTR, formerly called the Nellis Air Force Range NAFR.
Although the facilities at the range are managed by the 99th Air Base Wing at Nellis Air Force Base, the Groom facility appears to be run as an adjunct of the Air Force Flight Test Center AFFTC at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, around 186 miles (300 km) southwest of Groom, and as such the base is known as Air Force Flight Test Center Detachment 3.
Though the name Area 51 is used in official Central Intelligence Agency documentation, other names used for the facility include Dreamland, Paradise Ranch, Home Base, Watertown Strip, Groom Lake, and most recently Homey Airport.
The area is part of the Nellis Military Operations Area, and the restricted airspace around the field is referred to as R - 4808N, known by the military pilots in the area as "The Box" or "the Container".
The facility is not a conventional airbase, as frontline operational units are not normally deployed there.
It instead appears to be used for highly classified military\/defense Special Access Programs SAP, which are unacknowledged publicly by the government, military personnel, and defense contractors.
Its mission may be to support the development, testing, and training phases for new aircraft weapons systems or research projects.
Once these projects have been approved by the United States Air Force or other agencies such as the CIA, and are ready to be announced to the public, operations of the aircraft are then moved to a normal air force base.
There was intense secrecy surrounding the base.
The U.S. government did not acknowledge its existence until July 14, 2003.
This secrecy made it the frequent subject of fiction and conspiracy theories and a central component to unidentified flying object (UFO) folklore.
Testing the U-2 plane in the 1950s at altitudes much higher than commercial aeroplanes then flew provoked "a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs)".
Alkaloids are chemical compounds that can be made naturally.
They contain basic nitrogen atoms.
The name comes from the word alkaline and was used to describe any alkaline containing nitrogen.
Alkaloids are made by a large variety of organisms, such as bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals and are part of the group of natural products (also called secondary metabolites).
Many alkaloids can be purified from basic substances by acid-base extraction.
Many alkaloids are toxic to other organisms.
Some alkaloids have a bitter taste.
All of the following alkaloids are produced by flowering plants.
They are one of the main ways plants reduce or avoid being eaten by herbivores.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual leader of the Church of England and in the Anglican Communion the leader of its mother church.
He is the head of the Church, and lives in the English city of Canterbury.
The Archbishop is chosen by the English monarch (the church 's "supreme governor"), under guidance from senior bishops, acting in cooperation with the prime minister of the UK.
The office of Archbishop of Canterbury was founded in the year 597.
In that year, Saint Augustine came to England, to the area called Kent.
He had been sent by the Pope to convince the local people to become Christians.
The people accepted him and Christianity when their King (Ethelbert of Kent) became a Christian.
Augustine became the first bishop in the kingdom of Kent and was later recognized as archbishop when a second diocese was created.
Since then, there has been an Archbishop at Canterbury in Kent.
The Archbishop of Canterbury used to be head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, but in the early 16th century the English church broke away from the Roman church.
The new church called itself the Church of England, and now the Archbishop is the leader of that church.
The current Archbishop is Justin Welby (from 2013).
The archbishop oversees the Province of Canterbury that is all the Church of England dioceses in the south and midlands of England.
The dioceses of Wales were also within the Province of Canterbury until 1920 when the Church in Wales became independent.
In the north of England another archbishop has the Diocese of York and other northern dioceses (including the diocese of Sodor and Man) to oversee.
Both archbishops are members of the House of Lords and rank very high in the official English order of precedence.
When a new monarch is crowned the placing of the crown on his head is done by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The principal home of the archbishops is at Lambeth Palace in the south of London rather than at Canterbury itself.
Within the Diocese of Canterbury (which consists of eastern Kent and a small enclave in Surrey) the archbishop has at least two assistant bishops.
Justin Welby (formerly the Bishop of Durham) became Archbishop on 21 March 2013.
Anointing of the Sick is a sacrament (a sacred ceremony) in Roman Catholicism and other Christian denominations.
It is given to people who are "in danger due to sickness or old age".
A person does not have to be dying to receive the Anointing of the Sick.
It can be done for anyone with a medical problem which they could die from.
Anointing of the Sick is also called Unction.
In the past, it was called Extreme Unction.
("Anointing" and "Unction" are both words for putting oil on a person.
Oil is an important part of the ceremony.)
All four Gospels in the Bible say that Jesus healed many people.
Catholics believe that even after his death, Jesus is still able to heal people through the power of the sacraments.
The main part of the Bible that talks about anointing of the sick is: "Are any among you sick?
They should call for the elders of the Church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.
And their prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make them well.
And if they have committed sins, these will be forgiven."
, and also talk about the anointing of the sick.
The Anointing of the Sick sacrament is done by a priest.
The priest brings oil, which he has blessed.
Usually, the oil is olive oil or another pure plant oil.
The priest rubs the blessed oil on the patient 's forehead, and sometimes other parts of the body.
While he does this, he says special prayers that are meant for the Anointing of the Sick sacrament.
Several other Christian churches have similar rituals.
The Anointing of the Sick is one of the three sacraments that make up the last rites.
In Catholicism, last rites are a set of sacraments that are given to people who are dying.
A.S. Roma is a football club which plays in Italy.
The club formed from a merger of three clubs; Alba-Audace Roma, Fortitudo-Pro Roma and Roman in 1927.
The current captain of the club is Francesco Totti.
Antibodies (also called immunoglobulins) are large Y-shaped proteins.
They are found in the blood or other body fluids of vertebrates.
Antibodies are the key element in the adaptive immune system.
The antibody recognizes a unique part of the foreign target called an antigen.
Each tip of the "Y" of an antibody contains a structure (like a lock) that fits one particular key-like structure on an antigen.
This binds the two structures together.
Using this binding mechanism, an antibody can tag a microbe or an infected cell for attack by other parts of the immune system, or can neutralize its target directly.
The production of antibodies is the main function of the humoral immune system.
Each antibody is different.
They are all designed to attack only one kind of antigen (in practice, this means virus or bacteria).
For instance, an antibody designed to destroy smallpox is unable to hit the bubonic plague or the common cold.
Though the general structure of all antibodies is very similar, that small region at the tip of the protein is extremely variable.
This allows millions of antibodies with different tip structures to exist.
Each of these variants can bind to a different antigen.
This enormous diversity of antibodies allows the immune system to recognize an equally wide variety of antigens.
Although a huge variety of different antibodies is made in a single individual, the number of genes available to make these proteins is limited by the size of the genome.
There are a vast number of microbe strains, and so vertebrates need millions of different antibodies.
Actually, humans generate about 10 billion different antibodies, each capable of binding a distinct antigen site.
This must be done with a very much smaller number of genes: the total human genome has only about 20,000 genes.
Several complex genetic mechanisms have evolved.
These allow vertebrate B cells to generate a huge pool of antibodies from a relatively small number of antibody genes.
The full details are not presented here, just a summary.
The variety of antibodies is got by combining segments from a pool of genes in many different ways.
Then, hyper-mutations occur in the binding site area of the antibody gene.
This creates further diversity.
Antibodies are glycoproteins belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily; the terms antibody and immunoglobulin are often used interchangeably.
Antibodies are typically made of basic structural units each with two large heavy chains and two small light chains.
There are several different types of antibody heavy chains, and several different kinds of antibodies, which are grouped into different isotypes based on which heavy chain they possess.
Five different antibody isotypes are known in mammals.
They help direct the appropriate immune response for each different type of foreign object they encounter.
Though the general structure of all antibodies is very similar, a small region at the tip of the protein is extremely variable, allowing millions of antibodies with slightly different tip structures, or antigen binding sites, to exist.
This region is known as the hypervariable region.
Each of these variants can bind to a different antigen.
This enormous diversity of antibodies allows the immune system to recognize an equally wide variety of antigens.
The large and diverse population of antibodies is generated by random combinations of a set of gene segments that encode different antigen binding sites (or paratopes), followed by random mutations in this area of the antibody gene, which create further diversity.
Antibody genes also re-organize in a process called class switching, which allows a single antibody to be used by several different parts of the immune system.
Alessandro Scarlatti (born Palermo, 2 May 1660; died 24 October 1725) was an Italian composer.
He lived in the Baroque period.
He is especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas.
He is thought of as the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera.
He was the father of the famous composer Domenico Scarlatti.
Scarlatti was born in Palermo.
At that time it was part of the Kingdom of Sicily.
We know nothing about his musical education.
When his opera Gli Equivoci nell sembiante was produced in Rome in 1679 the Queen of Sweden, who was living in Rome at the time, was very impressed and gave him the job of being her Maestro di cappella.
In February 1684 he became Maestro di Cappella to the viceroy of Naples.
He wrote many operas for him, as well as some music for important state occasions.
In 1702 Scarlatti left Naples and went to Florence where he composed operas for Ferdinando de ' Medici and for Cardinal Ottoboni, who made him his maestro di cappella.
In 1703 he also got a similar job in Rome at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.
After visiting Venice and Urbino in 1707, Scarlatti went back to Naples in 1708, and stayed there until 1717.
However, the audiences in Naples no longer seemed interested in his music.
They liked their serious operas to include comic music.
Some of his best operas were written for Rome where they were produced at the Teatro Capranica.
He also wrote some church music and music for royal weddings.
He died in Naples.
Scarlatti 's music forms an important link between the early Baroque Italian vocal styles of the 17th century and the classical period of the 18th century, which led to the music of Haydn and Mozart.
Perhaps his greatest work is Mitridate Eupatore.
Many of his later operas are full of music which allows the singers to show off.
In his opera Teodora (1697) he was the first composer to use the orchestral ritornello (a tune which keeps coming back after sections of solo singing).
Some of his later operas written for Rome make the orchestra sound much more modern.
He uses horns in the orchestra.
This was a new idea.
As well as operas, Scarlatti composed at least five hundred chamber-cantatas.
These are works for solo voice accompanied by orchestra.
Hardly any of them were published, but they contain a lot of good music.
He also wrote masses including the St Cecilia Mass (1721).
Aston Martin Lagonda Limited is a luxury car company that was started in 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford.
The company name is derived from the Aston Clinton hill climb and one of the company 's founders, Lionel Martin.
The company went in and out of business a few times between World War I and World War II.
Lionel Martin left the company in 1926.
The company was sold from one person to another many times until 1947, when David Brown bought it.
David Brown also bought Lagonda, and used Lagonda engines in his cars.
Aston Martin cars built when David Brown owned the company had the letters "DB" in the name.
An Aston Martin won the 24-hour race at Le Mans in 1959.
David Brown sold the company again.
The company was having trouble staying open in the 1970s.
Victor Gauntlett bought part of the company and kept it going with help from buyers of other parts of the company.
In 1991 the Ford Motor Company bought Aston Martin and started making DB cars again.
Ford owned Aston Martin until 2007 when they sold it to Investment Dar and Adeem Investments.
Andhra Pradesh is a state in the Republic of India.
About 75,727,000 people lived there as reported in census of 2001.
The eastern boundary is a 600 m coastline along the Bay of Bengal.
The state has an area of 106195 m. It is bigger than Burkina Faso but smaller than Ecuador.
In traditional Indian geography it falls under the South Indian zone.
The capital city is Hyderabad.
Andhra Pradesh has a gross domestic product (GDP) of 123,560 (in millions of US dollars).
That makes it number 3 in India in terms of GDP, afer Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.
It holds a position in the provinces of the world with more than a billion dollars in GDP.
Andhrapradesh is also called rice bowl of India.
The latitude and longitude is 17.3660 N and 78.4760 E.
Aalen (pronounced (a l n)) is a town in the German state of Baden-W rttemberg.
It is the capital of the Ostalbkreis district, and its largest town.
Alois Alzheimer (14 June 1864 19 December 1915) was a German psychiatrist.
He is credited with the first published case of "presenile dementia", which Emil Kraepelin would later identify as Alzheimer 's disease.
On 25th of November 1901, Alzheimer started treating a new patient, called Auguste Deter.
Auguste was married, and her husband brought her to the clinic, because within a year she had changed very much.
She had started to become jealous, and was unable to perform simple household tasks.
Alzheimer found out that the patient had little knowledge of where she was or about the time of day or the week.
She also remembered few things about her life.
When she was asked a question, the answer often had little to do with the question.
Auguste Deter 's mood changed rapidly.
Alzheimer had seen similar symptoms with other patients he treated, but generally these were over 70 years old; Auguste Deter was only 51.
Several times, Auguste Deter stated that she knew that she "had lost herself" and that she "was helpless".
For this reason, Alzheimer originally said that this was the "disease of forgetting".
Deter died in 1906.
American Airlines, Inc. (AA) is the largest airline of the United States.
It is based in Fort Worth It was founded in 1930 with the name American Airways.
82 small airlines were combined in 1930 to form American.
In 1934, the name was officially changed to American Airlines.
American was the first airline to have computerized reservations, a frequent-flyer program and an airline lounge.
In 1999, American helped start Oneworld.
In 2001, American bought TWA.
In 2011, American filed for bankruptcy.
American was combined with US Airways in 2013.
In 2016, American will introduce a new no-frills fare.
This is to compete with many low-cost carriers.
An antidepressant is a type of medication that is used to treat people with mood disorders including depression.
There are different types of antidepressant, called monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), tetracyclic antidepressants (TeCAs), selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs).
Antidepressants work to improve the mood.
Doctors think that when someone is depressed, the chemicals in their brain are not working properly.
Antidepressants balance these chemicals, lifting the depression.
Analog television is broadcasting television programming using analog signals.
Before digital television, all broadcasters used analog signals.
Analog television can be wireless or can be over a cable television network with cable converters.
Many countries have changed from analog to digital television.
An adhesive is a compound that sticks or bonds two items together.
Adhesives may come from either natural or man-made material.
Some modern adhesives are extremely strong, and are becoming increasingly important in modern construction and industry.
Examples of adhesives include adhesive tape, glue, and sticky-tac.
Some adhesives are for temporary use, like sticky-tac or the adhesive on sticky notes.
Others are for more permanent bonding of small items like gluing paper or building large pieces of furniture using construction adhesive.
The first adhesives were natural gums and other plant resins.
Archaeologists have found 6000-year-old ceramic vessels that had broken and been repaired using plant resin.
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins CBE (born 31 December 1937) is a Welsh actor of movies, theater and television.
He is very famous for many roles in movies, especially as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.
He has won an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Emmys and the Cecil B. DeMille Golden Globe Award.
Hopkins was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1993 for services to the arts.
He gained US citizenship in 2000, whilst retaining his British citizenship.
He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003, and was made a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2008.
AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) is a large American company from Sunnyvale (California) that makes computer hardware.
It makes many different computer parts, but it is most famous for its central processing units, or CPUs.
Another important product are motherboard chipsets.
It started as a company that made products for Intel, another large hardware company.
Today 's most common CPU made by AMD is the Phenom II and the Athlon II.
They have from 1 up to 8 cores (up to 16 cores in server CPUs), at speeds of up to 4 GHz with air cooling (5 GHz with water cooling).
In 2006 they bought the company ATI.
Albrecht D rer (21 May 1471 6 April 1528) was a German painter, engraver and mathematician.
He was born and died in Nuremberg, Germany and is best known as a maker of old master prints.
His prints were often in a series, so that there is a group of different prints about a subject.
The most famous series are the Apocalypse (1498) and his two series on the passion of Christ, the Great Passion (1498 1510) and the Little Passion (1510 1511).
D rer 's best known individual engravings (that is, ones that are not part of a series) include Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514).
His most iconic images are his woodcuts of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1497 1498) from the Apocalypse series, the Rhinoceros, and numerous self-portraits in oils.
D rer possibly did not cut his own woodblocks but may have employed a skilled carver who followed his drawings faithfully.
He painted a number of religious works in oils and made many brilliant watercolors and drawings, which through modern reproductions are now perhaps his best known works.
D rer 's prints made him famous across Europe before he was 30, and many people say he is the greatest artist of the Renaissance in Northern Europe.
D rer was the third child and second son of his parents, who had between fourteen and eighteen children.
His father was a successful goldsmith from Ajt s, near Gyula in Hungary.
D rer 's godfather was Anton Koberger, who left goldsmithing to become a printer and publisher in the year D rer was born.
He quickly became the most successful publisher in Germany, and owned twenty-four printing presses and had many offices in Germany and abroad.
His most famous publication was the Nuremberg Chronicle, published in 1493 in German and Latin.
It had 1,809 woodcut pictures by the Wolgemut workshop.
D rer may well have worked on some of these, as the work on the project began while he was with Wolgemut.
D rer had started to learn goldsmithing and drawing from his father.
His father wanted him to continue his training as a goldsmith, but he was so good at drawing that he started as an apprentice to Michael Wolgemut at the age of fifteen in 1486.
A self-portrait, a drawing in silverpoint, is dated 1484 (Albertina, Vienna).
Wolgemut was the leading artist in Nuremberg at the time, and had a large workshop making different types of works of art, in particular woodcuts for books.
Nuremberg was a rich city, a center for publishing and many luxury trades.
It had strong links with Italy, especially Venice, a relatively short distance across the Alps.
After completing his term of apprenticeship in 1489, D rer followed the common German custom of taking a wanderjahre in effect a gap year.
D rer was away nearly four years, traveling through Germany, Switzerland, and probably, the Netherlands.
D rer wanted to meet Martin Schongauer, the best engraver of Northern Europe, but Schongauer died shortly before D rer 's arrival.
He stayed at the house of Schongauer 's brother, and got some pictures that Schongauer owned.
His first painted self-portrait is now in the Louvre.
It was painted in Strasbourg, probably so that D rer could send it back to his fianc e in Nuremberg.
In fact, very soon after he got back to Nuremberg, on 7 July 1494 D rer was married to Agnes Frey.
She was the daughter of a well known brass worker (and amateur harpist) in the city.
He was 23, and the marriage was arranged while D rer was away traveling.
his absence.
They had no children, and most people think that they did not marry for love, but because it was good to link the two families.
Also, a single man could not set up in business for himself in Nuremberg.
D rer painted some portraits of his wife, but experts say that they "lack warmth".
The experts think that if D rer loved his wife he would have taken more time over those pictures to make her look more beautiful and friendly.
Within three months D rer left for Italy.
The start of plague in Nuremberg was one reason for his leaving.
In Italy, he went to Venice where artists were working in a more modern style.
D rer wrote that Giovanni Bellini was the oldest and still the best of the artists in Venice.
On his return to Nuremberg in 1495, D rer opened his own workshop.
He started to use what he learned in Italy more and more, so his work was quite different from the other artists in Nuremberg who used only the traditional German style.
D rer 's father died in 1502 and his mother died in 1513.
D rer probably did not cut any of the woodblocks himself.
This was a job for experts.
But he had designed and cut woodblocks for woodcut as part of his training in Wolgemut 's studio, and he had seen many carved and painted altarpieces made in the studio.
This means he knew what could be made into a woodblock print, and how to work with the expert block cutters.
D rer either drew his design directly onto the woodblock itself, or glued a paper drawing to the block.
Either way his drawing was destroyed when the block was cut.
His famous series of sixteen great designs for the Apocalypse are dated 1498.
He made the first seven scenes of the Great Passion in the same year, and a little later, a series of eleven on the Holy Family and saints.
Around 1503 1505 he produced the first seventeen of a set illustrating the life of the Virgin, which he did not finish for some years.
Neither these, nor the Great Passion, were published as sets until several years later, but prints were sold individually in considerable numbers.
The Venetian artist Jacopo de ' Barbari, whom D rer had met in Venice, visited Nuremberg in 1500, and D rer said that he learned much about the new developments in perspective, anatomy, and Body proportions from him.
de ` Barbari did not want to tell D rer everything he knew, so D rer began his own studies, and he kept studying for the rest of his life.
This is a series of drawings show D rer 's experiments in human proportion, before he made his famous engraving of Adam and Eve (1504).
This is the only existing engraving signed with his full name.
D rer made large numbers of other practice drawings, especially for his paintings and engravings, and many survive, most famously the Praying Hands (1508 Albertina, Vienna).
He also continued to make images in watercolor and bodycolor (usually combined), including a number of very beautiful still lives of meadow sections or animals, including his "Hare" (1502, Albertina, Vienna).
In early 1506, he returned to Venice and stayed there until the spring of 1507.
By this time D rer 's engravings were very popular and were being copied.
In Venice he was given a valuable commission from the emigrant German community for the church of San Bartolomeo.
This was the altar-piece known as the Adoration of the Virgin or the Feast of Rose Garlands.
It includes portraits of members of Venice 's German community, but shows a strong Italian influence.
Later, the Emperor Rudolf II took it to Prague.
Other paintings D rer made in Venice include, The Virgin and Child with the Goldfinch, Christ disputing with the Doctors (supposedly produced in just five days), and a number of smaller works.
D rer was admired by the Venetians, but he was back in Nuremberg by mid-1507.
He stayed in Germany until 1520.
His reputation had spread throughout Europe.
He was on friendly terms with most of the major artists of Europe, and exchanged drawings with Raphael.
The years between and his journey to the Netherlands are divided according to the type of work he made.
During the first five years, 1507 1511, after his return from Venice D rer mostly painted.
He made his four best paintings, Adam and Eve (1507), Virgin with the Iris (1508), the altarpiece the Assumption of the Virgin (1509), and the Adoration of the Trinity by all the Saints (1511).
During this period he also completed the two woodcut series, the Great Passion and the Life of the Virgin.
He complained that painting did not make enough money, so from 1511 to 1514 he concentrated on printmaking.
The famous works he made in this period were the thirty-seven woodcuts for the Little Passion, published first in 1511, and a set of fifteen small engravings on the same theme in 1512.
In 1513 and 1514 he created his three most famous engravings, The Knight, Death, and the Devil (or simply, The Knight, as he called it, 1513), Melencolia I, and St. Jerome in his Study (both 1514).
` Melencolia I ' has a magic square which is believed to be the first seen in European art.
The two numbers in the middle of the bottom row give the date of the engraving, 1514.
In 1515, he created his woodcut of the Rhinoceros.
The rhinoceros was in Lisbon, but Durer never saw it.
He made it from a sketch and description from another artist.
It was not very lifelike, but still being used in some German school science text-books early last century.
The rhinoceros was from an extinct Indian species.
Up to 1520 he produced a wide range of works, including portraits in tempera on linen, experiments in etching on plates of iron, and parts of the Triumphal Arch and the Triumphs of Maximilian which were huge woodcut projects ordered by Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor.
In the summer of 1520 D rer made his fourth and last major journey.
He wanted to renew the Imperial pension Maximilian had given him.
Maximilian had died in 1519, so the city of Nuremberg stopped paying it.
D rer also needed new patrons following the death of Maximilian, and to avoid an outbreak of sickness in Nuremberg.
He took his wife and her maid and left Nuremberg for the Netherlands in July 1520, to be at the coronation of the new emperor, Charles V. He traveled by the Rhine to Cologne, and then to Antwerp, where he made many drawings in silverpoint, chalk, and charcoal.
In Brussels he saw "the things which have been sent to the king from the golden land" the Aztec treasure that Hern n Cort s had sent home to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V following the fall of Mexico.
D rer wrote that this treasure trove "was much more beautiful to me than miracles.
These things are so precious that they have been valued at 100,000 florins".
D rer appears to have been collecting for his own cabinet of curiosities, and he sent back to Nuremberg various animal horns, a piece of coral, some large fish fins, and a wooden weapon from the East Indies.
D rer took many prints with him.
He wrote in his diary to whom he gave, exchanged, or sold them, and for how much.
This is some of the few times the price of prints was recorded, so historians think it very important to show the values of prints compared to paintings at that time.
D rer returned home in July 1521.
He had an unknown illness which stayed with him for the rest of his life, and slowed his rate of work.
Back in Nuremberg, D rer started work on a series of religious pictures.
There are many practice sketches and studies (practice paintings for a bigger painting) but no big paintings from this time.
This was partly because of his illness, but more because of the time he spent preparing to write books about geometry and perspective, the proportions of men and horses, and fortification.
His writings show that D rer was highly sympathetic to Martin Luther, and he may have been influential in the City Council declaring for Luther in 1525.
However, he died before religious divisions had hardened into different "Catholic" and "Protestant "churches.
D rer probably thought of himself as a reform-minded Catholic.
D rer died in Nuremberg at the age of 56.
He left money and goods worth 6,874 florins - a considerable sum.
His workshop was a part of his large house.
His widow lived there until her death in 1537.
The house is now a museum.
Australian rules football is a sport created in Australia.
It is the national sport and is the most popular sport in Australia.
The main league of Australian rules football is the Australian Football League.
In 1858, Tom Wills, a former student of the Rugby school and Cambridge College, created a set of football rules that were like a cross between rugby, soccer and Gaelic football.
He made up the game for cricketers to keep in shape during the off-season (winter).
Wills had help in making up the game from other people like his cousin H.C.A. Harrison, and W.J. Hammersly and J.B. Thompson.
Wills grew up with Indigenous Australians.
He spoke the language of the people who lived near him and played with the children.
It has been suggested that Australian Rules Football is based in part on Marn Grook, an Aboriginal game with some similar rules to Australian Rules Football.
Because the indigenous people Wills played with as a child would have played Marn Grook, Wills would have been influenced by this game when creating the rules for Australian Rules Football.
The Melbourne Football Club was founded on 14 May 1859; the Melbourne Football Club is one of the oldest surviving football clubs in the world.
A game of football was played between Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar School.
It was played over three days on an oval next to the present day Melbourne Cricket Ground, and the two schools have played an annual game ever since.
This game became known as Melbourne Rules Football, one of many local varieties of football that existed at that time, another notable one being Sheffield Rules Football.
Then following its decision to not join either the association rules (1863) or rugby rules (1871), it became known as Victorian Rules, although it closely resembled the two former rule sets.
Then in the 1880s as rugby and association rules began to diverge in a much greater way, Victorian Rules which resembled the 1850s type of football that both rugby and the association had based their rules on remained much the same except for moving to oval fields from rectangular fields and eventually introducing more posts.
After the sport became popular in other states, people started calling it "Australian Rules".
The Victorian Football League (VFL) was created in 1896.
The next year, the first official games were played.
The first clubs were Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne, St Kilda, and South Melbourne.
In 1908, Richmond and University joined.
University left after the 1914 season.
In 1925, Footscray, Hawthorn and North Melbourne joined the VFL.
In 1990 the Victorian Football League was changed to the Australian Football League (AFL).
Footscray changed its name to the Western Bulldogs in 1997.
North Melbourne changed its name to the Kangaroos in 1999, but changed back in 2008.
Football is the most popular sport in Australia, with crowd attendances of 50-80,000 people common to normal home and away matches and capacity crowds of 100,000 people at the home of football the MCG during the finals and special matches.
The record crowd still remains at 121,696, who watched that most history-making of all Grand Finals in 1970, between Carlton and Collingwood, where Carlton came from a 44 point deficit at half-time to win the game by implementing an entirely new system of play, handballing out of the backline, which changed the game forever, and marked the beginnings of the transition of the game from one of a ` territorial ' base to ` possession football '.
There are 16 teams in the AFL.
Each team has 22 players during game day with team lists of 40-45 players.
During the game, each team has 18 players on the field, consisting of 6 forwards, 3 centres, 6 backmen, and 3 followers.
The 4 remaining players are reserves three of which can be interchanged with any other player in the team as often as the coach wants.
The forth can replace a player but the replaced player can not come back on to the field of play.
Every game consists of 4 quarters, being 20 minutes and overtime (stoppage time, time-keepers acting upon central umpire signals to determine how long).
After every quarter the teams swap direction.
The quarter is started when the umpire blows his whistle and bounces the ball in the middle of the field (similar to a basketball "tip") and opposing players try to tap or punch the ball to their team-mates.
The idea of the game is to kick more goals than the other team.
At each end of the field are 4 poles.
Players score points by kicking the ball between the poles.
A goal is a kick between the centermost posts.
It is worth 6 points.
A Behind (worth 1 point) is a kick that goes between the outer posts.
Players can bounce the ball and hit it with their hand (handball it) to other players.
If a player catches a ball after the ball has been kicked in the air by another player, then this is a "mark" and the player can not be tackled until he plays on.
It is the only "football" code where the major score can ONLY be scored with the foot.
Alban Berg (born Vienna, 9 February 1885; died Vienna 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer.
Alban Berg and Anton Webern were both pupils of Arnold Schoenberg.
All three composers in their own way changed the style of musical composition in the early 20th century.
They grew up at a time when most composers were still writing Romantic music, but Schoenberg and his pupils started to write atonal music (music which is not in any key) and then twelve-tone music in which all 12 notes in an octave are of the same importance.
Although Berg wrote a lot of twelve-tone music he still managed to make it sound quite Romantic at times, more so than Schoenberg or Webern.
His most important works are his two operas Wozzeck and Lulu and his Violin Concerto.
Berg was brought up in the center of Vienna.
His family had plenty of money, but when Berg s father died in 1900 life became much harder for them.
He did not do very well at school.
He also had a love affair with a kitchenmaid, with whom he had a daughter.
He was interested in music, played the piano and had started to compose, but he had not done well enough in his school exams to get into the music conservatory.
He was not interested in business like his father had been.
He got an unpaid job.
Then, in 1904, he started to study with Schoenberg.
This was the first time he had been given proper music lessons.
Two years later, his mother inherited some money, and Berg was then able to give up his unpaid job and concentrate on music.
Schoenberg taught him harmony, counterpoint and music theory, all the things one needs to know to compose well.
Berg had lessons from him from 1904 until 1911.
His first proper pieces include a Piano Sonata and a String quartet.
Here he had already found the modern style which suited him.
He wrote harmonies which seemed to float.
He often wrote pieces with several movements which are all linked by a common theme.
He also liked themes which are heard upside down, or palindromes, where the tune sounds the same forwards as backwards.
He met a girl called Helene and they married in 1910.
Berg liked to listen to all kinds of music.
In this way he was different to Schoenberg or Webern.
Berg was interested in French composers such as Debussy, as well as jazz.
He liked the modern theater and the political works of the playwright Bertolt Brecht and the composer Kurt Weill.
Berg was very grateful to Schoenberg for all that he had learned from him, but he still continued to be quite afraid of him.
Schoenberg wrote many letters to him asking him to do things for him (e.g. making piano arrangements of his orchestral pieces) and often criticising him.
Only in the 1920s, when Berg had become well-known, did Schoenberg start writing to him more like an equal friend.
Berg wrote Five Orchestral Pieces.
It is one of the first important works he wrote without Schoenberg s help.
The music has some modern chords which must have sounded very shocking to the Viennese audience.
On 31 March 1913 Schoenberg conducted a concert in Vienna which included some songs by Berg.
People in the audience started to fight and the police had to be called.
When Schoenberg wrote to Berg criticising his music, Berg lost all his self-confidence.
Slowly he started to get more confidence again.
He wrote Three Orchestral Pieces op 6.
The music sounds quite like Mahler.
There are a lot of musical ideas which grow into one another and make a rich sound.
During World War I Berg spent some time in an army training camp.
This experience must have been in his mind when he wrote his opera Wozzeck.
This opera became very famous.
There were a lot of new ideas in it.
It is not about a great hero, but about a simple man who is mistreated by people.
The music, too, is very different from opera music up to that time.
Although it was so modern it was a great success and made Berg world-famous.
It gave him more money which, together with a little teaching, allowed him to spend most of his time composing.
Wozzeck has a little twelve tone music in it, but in his next works the twelve tone system is much more important.
He wrote Lyrical Suite for String Quartet and a Kammerkonzert (Chamber Concerto) in which the form is made up by mathematical rules.
He liked to hide things in his music e.g. favorite numbers or letters from people s names.
These are like secret codes and, in later years, musicians have spent a lot of time trying to work out what Berg was trying to do.
In 1928 Berg started work on his second and last opera: Lulu.
He had thought about the opera for many years.
He had seen a play called Die B chse des Pandora (Pandora s Box) in 1905.
Wedekind had played the part of Jack the Ripper.
People thought the play was obscene, but it still became very popular, especially after 1918 when there was no more censorship in Germany.
He worked on the opera until 1934.
He then stopped work on it to write his Violin Concerto.
When he heard about the sad death from poliomyelitis of a young girl he knew called Manon Gropius, he dedicated the concerto to her memory.
He wrote: To the memory of an angel.
Manon s mother, Alma, had been the wife of Gustav Mahler.
Soon after he had finished the Violin Concerto, Berg was stung by an insect.
This formed an abscess and he was rushed to hospital but he died.
The concerto had not yet been performed.
He had not finished Lulu.
The third act was only sketched in short score (showing the main notes, but not exactly what each instrument plays).
When the opera was first performed, Act III was just acted out in mime while some other music by Berg was played.
Berg s widow Helene did not want anyone else to finish the opera, so Act III was never performed until after Helene died in 1976.
It was finished by Friedrich Cerha and performed in 1977, although a court action had tried to stop it from being performed.
Analytical chemistry is a branch of chemistry.
It tries to analyze chemicals in different things.
A sample job would be trying to see how much zinc is in a piece of brass.
There are several tools, like chromatography, that analytical chemists use.
Flame tests can be used for a basic analysis.
More formally: it is the study of the chemical components of natural and artificial materials.
Qualitative analysis finds what chemical species are in the sample.
Quantitative analysis finds out how much there is of each component in the substance.
Components are often separated before this analysis.
A cappella music is music where people sing without instruments.
In a choir, there are up to 5 parts: soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass.
A cappella can also have those 5 parts.
A difference is with percussion.
With musical instruments, percussion is done with musical instruments that you hit, such as drums.
In an a cappella performance, a person makes the percussion sound.
For a beatbox performance, performers make sounds like electric drums, synthesizer and electric guitar.
Another part of percussion in a cappella performance is making classical drum sounds for tapping the beat.
The word a cappella is Italian for "in the manner of the church" or "in the manner of the chapel".
It was first used in religious music.
Gregorian chant is an example of a cappella singing.
For the first 1000 years of Christianity, all hymns in the church were sung without instrumental accompaniment.
This style of singing came to be known as acappella (also spelled a cappella), meaning "of the church" or "in the style of the church".
There are several kinds of music in a cappella, such as barbershop, classical, contemporary, gospel, doo-wop, jazz, and world.
A barbershop group has 4 people.
The name of this genre came from the tradition that when many men gathered in a barbershop they would sing with no musical instruments.
A barbershop quartet has four male voices or four female voices.
Mixed barbershop quartets are also possible, usually with two male and two female voices.
The voices parts are called bass, baritone, lead, and tenor.
In music in the barbershop style, the melody (the "tune") is sung by the lead part.
In classical a cappella, people perform classical music such as ' a Turkish march ', ` Overture William Tell ', madrigal, etc.
Contemporary is the most popular kind of a cappella these days.
For this kind, the "bass" line should be stronger, and the "chorus" (all the singers except for bass, percussion, and solo) should have variety.
The percussion should make their sound more like drums.
This genre is similar to ` doo-wop ' but the "chorus" part is more complex and has a variety of sound effects.
Doo-wop is also getting more popular because of its simple style.
Even though it has simple moto (Italian for "progression of music"), it can be interesting with great vocal and chorus.
The Athanasian Creed is a Christian statement of faith.
It is also often referred to as Quicumque vult (can be translated as Whoever wants, the first two words of the statement).
It is the first known creed to talk about trinity.
It has been in use since the 6th century, mainly in the western part of the Church.
It is not used very much today, the Nicene Creed has largely replaced it.
From about the 9th century people thought that St. Athanasius had written it.
Athanasus lived in the 4th century in Egypt.
Today, this view is largely seen as false.
This is because of the following:
Today, most people think it came from Gaul around the year 500.
Its positions are similar to those taken by St. Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo or Vincent of L rins.
J.N.D. Kelly, a contemporary patristics scholar, believes that St. Vincent of L rins was not its author, but suggests that it may have come from the same bacground, namely the area of Lerins in southern Gaul.
Caesarius of Arles is one of the possible authors.
The oldest surviving manuscripts of the Athanasian creed date from the late 8th century.
Martin Luther said there were three statements of faith, the Nicene Creed (Credo in unum deum, I believe in one god..)
, the Te Deum (Te Deum Laudamus,..., Thee, O Lord, we praise), and the Athanasian Creed.
It explains Trinity, in such a way to stand against positions such as Arianism.
It has the filioque.
It is the capital of the province of Alicante.
It is in the southern part of the Valencian Community.
It is also a historic Mediterranean port.
The population of the city of Alicante proper is about 332,067, as of 2014, ranking as the second-largest Valencian city.
Including nearby municipalities, Alicante was populated by 458,843 residents.
Population of the metropolitan area (including Elche and satellite towns) was 795,034 as of 2009.
Based on population it is the eighth-largest metropolitan area of Spain.
The city is a sea port and a tourist center.
It has a hot semi-arid climate (BSh in the Koeppen climate classification).
The avenue Maisonnave is the principal commercial street in the city of Alicante.
In fact, Maisonnave is the sixth most expensive avenue in the whole of Spain, which gives an idea of the importance that this street has.
The Corte ingl s has in this central street both branches that it possesses in Alicant, one at each end of the avenue.
Santa Barbara 's Castle is 166 metres up the Benacantil mountain.
It 's very strong with great strategic value.
It 's called Santa Barbara 's Castle because the 4th of December is Santa Barbara 's day and the 4th of December in 1248 is when it was taken from the Arabs by Alfonso of Castilla.
Ann Noreen Widdecombe (born 4 October 1947 in Bath, Somerset, England) is a British former politician.
She was the Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Maidstone and The Weald from 1987 to 2010.
Widdecombe is the daughter of a Ministry of Defense civil servant James Murray Widdecombe and Rita N Plummer.
She attended the Royal Navy School in Singapore, and a convent school in Bath.
She then read Latin at Birmingham University and later attended Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE).
She worked for Unilever (1973 75).
She was then an administrator at the University of London (1975 87) before entering Parliament.
She was first elected to the House of Commons at the 1987 General Election.
From 1995 to 1997, she was the Minister of State for Prisons.
Ann Widdecombe served in William Hague 's shadow cabinet from 1997 to 2001.
Widdecombe retired from politics at the 2010 general election.
Throughout her political career, Widdecombe was socially conservative and converted from the Church of England to Roman Catholicism in 1992 after the Church of England voted to allow female priests.
She is a committed animal lover.
She is one of the few Conservative MPs to have consistently voted for the ban on fox hunting.
Widdecombe was a contestant in the 2010 series of Strictly Come Dancing.
In 2002 she took part in a Louis Theroux television documentary.
It showed her life, both in and out of politics.
She was cast as herself in an episode of the science-fiction drama Doctor Who.
On 23 April 2012, Widdecombe presented an hour-long documentary for BBC Radio 5 Live.
It was Drunk Again: Ann Widdecombe Investigates, looking at how the British attitude to getting drunk has changed over the last few years.
Aurangzeb (4 November 1618 3 March 1707) was the sixth emperor of the Mughal Empire.
He ruled over most of the Indian subcontinent.
His reign lasted for 49 years from 1658 until his death in 1707.
During this time, Aurangzeb greatly expanded the territory of the Mughal Empire.
He was constantly at war.
Victories in the south expanded the Empire to more than 3.2 million square kilometres.
He was the last great ruler of the Mughal dynasty.
After his death, the power of the Mughal Empire declined quickly.
Aurangzeb was well educated and ambitious.
His full name was Abul Muzaffar Muhi-ud-Din Mohammad Aurangzeb.
His imperial title was Alamgir.
An analog computer is a device that uses continuous processes, lengths or signals to perform a computation.
The main difference from digital computers is that there is no count or measurement of distinct events.
Examples of analog computers are the abacus, and the slide rule,
An anthem is a piece of music written for a choir to sing at an Anglican church service.
The difference between an anthem and a motet is that an anthem is sung in English.
Also most anthems are accompanied by an organ.
The word anthem has come to mean a song of celebration.
This is why we also talk about National Anthems.
Anthems for the church have been composed ever since King Henry VIII argued with the Pope and did not want to be Roman Catholic any more.
He founded (started) the English Anglican church.
Church composers were told to write music in English.
The words usually come from the Bible.
We know that as early as 1502 the composer Fayrfax was paid 20 shillings for composing an anthem.
After the Reformation many anthems were composed.
At first they were like motets, but in English.
Soon the English anthem developed differently from the continental motet.
Two kinds of anthem developed: the Full Anthem in which the whole anthem was sung by the full choir, and the Verse Anthem which was usually longer and had several verses which would be sung by soloists, with choruses for the full choir in between.
Almost every music director of cathedrals or large churches has written anthems.
A few of the most famous composers of anthems are:
Thomas Tallis (1505-1585) William Byrd (1543-1623) Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) Henry Purcell (1659-1695) George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) William Boyce (1710-1779) Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-1876) Edward Bairstow (1874-1946) William H. Harris (1883-1973) Herbert Howells (1892-1983) William Mathias (1934-1992) John Tavener (b. 1944) John Rutter (b. 1945)
Albrecht Altodorfer was a German painter, engraver and builder of the Renaissance.
He was probably born around the year 1480, in Altdorf, Lower Bavaria, or Regensburg.
He died on 12 February 1538 in Regensburg.
Together with Wolf Huber, he is seen as one of the main people in the Danube school.
The danube school was an art movent that spread along the Danube, in Germany and Austria.
With Albrecht D rer he founded the Little Masters (original: Kleinmeister) of Nuremberg.
He sold millions of marble paintings before he got killed on thanksgiving.
he got killed because he stole someone 's turkey.
it was a small turkey with little ear swabs inside.
they tasted good and so did the turkey.
he died from the turkey stealing part.
his daughter mary ate grass from a donkeys mouth!
you smell good donkey!
Acceleration is a measure of how fast velocity changes.
Acceleration is the change of velocity divided by the change of time.
Acceleration is a vector, and therefore includes both a size and a direction.
Acceleration is the rate of change of the velocity of an object.
Acceleration can be found by using:
Sometimes the change in velocity is written as.
Sometimes the change in time is written as t.
In difficult situations, the acceleration can be calculated using mathematics: in calculus, acceleration is the derivative of the velocity (with respect to time),.
Acceleration has its own units of measurement.
For example, if velocity is measured in meters per second, and if time is measured in seconds, then acceleration is measured in meters per second squared (m\/s2).
Acceleration can be positive or negative.
When the acceleration is negative (but the velocity does not change direction), it is sometimes called deceleration.
For example, when a car brakes it decelerates.
Physicists usually only use the word "acceleration".
Newton 's laws of motion are rules for how things move.
These rules are called "laws of motion".
Isaac Newton is the scientist who first wrote down the main laws of motion.
According to Newton 's Second Law of Motion, the force something needs to accelerate an object depends on the object 's mass (the amount of "stuff" the object is made from or how "heavy" it is).
The formula of Newton 's Second Law of Motion is, where is the acceleration, is the force, and the mass..
This formula is very well-known, and it is very important in physics.
Newton 's Second Law of Motion, in short "Newton 's Second Law", is often one of the first things that physics students learn.
Deceleration is the opposite of acceleration.
This means that something slows down instead of speeding up.
For example, when a car brakes, it is decelerating.
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (January 29, 1860 - July 15, 1904) was a Russian writer who wrote short stories and plays.
Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, which is a city in Russia.
His father, Pavel, was the owner of a grocery store.
His mother, Yevgeniya, sometimes told Anton stories about her childhood.
In 1876, Chekhov 's father went bankrupt.
From then on, Chekhov 's family was very poor.
Anton Chekhov had to pay for his own education.
He paid for it by tutoring (teaching) other students, catching birds and selling them, and writing short stories for newspapers.
When he had extra money, he sent it to his family.
While he was at school, he read many books by famous authors, for example Miguel de Cervantes and Arthur Schopenhauer.
In 1879, Chekhov went to Moscow University.
While he was at Moscow University, Chekhov wrote many short stories to pay for his schooling and to help his family.
In 1886, one of the most famous newspapers in Russia, New Times, asked him to write stories for them.
Soon, his stories started to get famous, and other writers read his work and liked it.
He wrote a book of stories called At Dusk that won the Pushkin Prize, an award for good writing.
In 1887, Chekhov wrote a play called Ivanov.
Chekhov did not like the play, but critics loved it.
In 1890, Chekhov went to Sakhalin Island, a penal colony (prison).
He talked to many prisoners and found out that they were treated very badly.
The prisoners were often beaten.
There were also children there.
He was angry, and wrote about it in a book called The Island Of Sakhalin and in a short story called The Murder.
In 1892, he bought a house and some land near Moscow called Melikhovo.
While he was there, he helped the people who lived nearby.
He brought them food and clothing, and medicine when they were sick.
Since he was trained as a doctor, he knew how to take care of them.
While at Melikhovo, he started to write a play called The Seagull.
When it was first performed, it went very badly, and the audience did not like it.
Later, it was performed at another theater, the Moscow Art Theater, where the performances went better.
Soon after this, he had another play performed, called Uncle Vanya.
He later wrote two more great plays: Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.
All four plays are still often performed today.
In 1897, he became sick.
Doctors told him that he had tuberculosis, a lung disease, and that he should change his life to be healthier.
He moved to Yalta and bought a house there.
In 1901 he married a woman named Olga Knipper.
At Yalta, he wrote some of his most famous stories, including a story called The Lady With The Dog.
By 1904, Chekhov was very sick.
He died on the 2nd of July in Germany.
Thousands of people were very sad when he died.
He was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery.
Chekhov influenced many important writers, including George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf.
His short stories are still read by many people around the world.
Apoptosis is the controlled death of a cell.
It plays an integral part of tissue development.
During limb development in a foetus, apoptosis allows body digits (fingers and toes) to separate from each other.
The process is most prevalent until puberty begins.
The rate of apoptosis should be balanced by the rate of cell production via mitosis.
The phenomenon of programmed cell death was first described by Carl Vogt in 1842.
However, it was only in 1965 that John Foxton Ross Kerr researched the idea extensively.
Using electron microscopy, he was successfully able to distinguish between necrosis and apoptosis.
He then joined the research team of Professor Currie and Andrew Wyllie who, in 1972, published a report on their findings in the British Journal of Cancer.
They used the term "apoptosis" as used by Hippocrates to mean "bones falling off".
When a cell dies by apoptosis, surrounding tissue is not harmed.
1.
Enzymes break down the cytoskeleton of the cell.
2.
Cytoplasm becomes dense, with organelles tightly packed.
3.
Cell surface membrane forms "blebs".
4.
Chromatin condenses and the nuclear envelope breaks.
DNA breaks into fragments.
5.
The cell breaks down into vesicles, taken up by phagocytosis.
Apoptosis is the normal end of a cell 's life.
At any point in time, there may be too many cells in one area, and the DNA coding for apoptosis will activate in some of those cells and they will die safely.
This is important to the overall functioning of the organism.
If, for example, the making of liver cells were to speed up and they never died, the liver would no longer function properly.
The liver cells would eventually take over the organism 's body.
Apoptosis takes place by the help of lysosomes.
Lysosomes rupture when the cell is old or damaged, this lets out digestive enzymes all over the cell and digests it, therefore killing the cell.
Cancerous cells do not undergo apoptosis, and that is why they are such a problem.
They continuously multiply until the host organ or the organism 's body can not function anymore.
This occurs because the apoptosis coding has mutated and so has other coding.
This causes rapid mitotic division of the unwanted cells.
This is a cancerous growth.
Anal sex is a sex act performed on the anus.
Anal sex can involve a penis inserted in the anus, oral stimulation of the anus, using fingers for penetration and using different objects for stimulation.
The anus is a part of the body that is tight and can not lubricate itself.
Because of this, a person should be careful when inserting something without damaging the walls of this organ.
Lubrication is often used which can be oil or water-based and is sold commercially.
For a man, pleasure can come from the stimulation of the prostate that is found near the anus.
For women, it can come from indirect stimulation of the clitoral legs\/G-Spot or the cervix.
Both men and women can get pleasure from anal sex because the anus has a lot of nerve endings.
Aarau is the capital of the northern Swiss canton of Aargau.
The city is also the capital of the district of Aarau.
Most of the people in the municipality speak German.
To the west of Aarau is the canton of Solothurn.
It is the third-largest city in Aargau after Wettingen and Baden.
The old city of Aarau lies on a rocky cliff where the Aar river valley narrows at the southern foot of the Jura mountains.
Newer parts of the city can be found farther south of the river valley.
The neighboring municipalities are K ttigen to the north, Rohr and Buchs to the east, Suhr to the south-east, Unterentfelden to the south, and Eppenberg-W schnau and Erlinsbach to the west.
Aarau and the other municipalities have merged over the years.
The only exceptions are Unterentfelden and Eppenberg-W schnau to the south, whose places are divided from Aarau by the large forests of G nhard and Zelgli.
A few artifacts from the Neolithic period were found in Aarau.
Near the location of the present train station, the ruins of a settlement from the Bronze Age (about 1000 BC) have been excavated.
The Roman road between Salodurum (Solothurn) and Vindonissa passed through the area, along the route now covered by the Bahnhofstrasse.
In 1976 divers in the Aar found part of a seven-meter wide wooden bridge from the late Roman times.
Aarau was founded around 1240 A.D. by the counts of Kyburg.
The first certain reference to the city dates to 1256.
The town was ruled from the "Rore" tower, which has been incorporated into the modern city hall.
In 1273 the counts of Kyburg died out.
Agnes of Kyburg, who had no male relations, sold the family 's lands to King Rudolf I von Habsburg.
He granted Aarau its city rights in 1283.
In the 14th Century the city was expanded in two stages, and a second defesive wall was constructed.
A deep ditch separated the city from its "suburb;" its location is today marked by a wide street named "Graben" (meaning Ditch).
In 1415 Bern invaded lower Aargau with the help of Solothurn.
Aarau capitulated after a short resistance, and was forced to swear allegiance to the new rulers.
In the 16th Century, the rights of the lower classes were abolished.
In March 1528 the citizens of Aarau allowed the introduction of Protestantism at the urging of the Bernese.
A growth in population during the 16th Century led to taller buildings and more dense construction methods.
Early forms of industry developed at this time; however, unlike in other cities, no guilds were formed in Aarau.
Starting in the early 18th century, the textile industry was established in Aarau.
German immigration contributed to the city 's favorable conditions, in that they introduced the cotton and silk factories.
These highly educated immigrants were also responsible for education reform and the enlightened, revolutionary spirit that developed in Aarau.
On December 27, 1797, the last Tagsatzung of the Old Swiss Confederacy was held in Aarau.
Two weeks later a French envoy continued to foment the revolutionary opinions of the city.
The contrast between a high level of education and a low level of political rights was particarly great in Aarau, and the city refused to send troops to defend the Bernese border.
By Mid-March 1798 Aarau was occupied by French troops.
On March 22, 1798 Aarau was declared the capital of the Helvetic Republic.
It is therefore the first capital of a unified Switzerland.
Parliament met in the city hall.
On September 20, the capital was moved to Lucerne.
In 1803, Napoleon ordered the fusion of the cantons of Aargau, Baden and Fricktal.
Aarau was declared the capital of the new, enlarged canton of Aargau.
In 1820 the city wall was torn down, with exception of the individual towers and gates, and the defensive ditches were filled in.
The wooden bridge, dating from the Middle Ages, across the Aar was destroyed by floods three times in thirty years, and was replaced with a steel suspension bridge in 1851.
This was replaced by a concrete bridge in 1952.
The city connected to the Swiss Central Railroad in 1856.
The textile industry in Aarau broke down in about 1850 because of the protectionist tariff policies of neighboring states.
Other industries had developed by that time to replace it, including the production of mathematical instruments, shoes and cement.
Beginning in 1900, numerous electrical enterprises developed.
By the 1960s, more citizens worked in service industries or for the canton-level government than in manufacturing.
During the 1980s many of the industries left Aarau completely.
In 1802 the Canton School was established; it was the first non-parochial high school in Switzerland.
It developed a good reputation, and was home to Nobel Prize winners Albert Einstein, Paul Karrer, and Werner Arber, as well as several Swiss politicians and authors.
The purchase of a manuscript collection in 1803 laid the foundation for what would become the Cantonal Library, which contains a Bible annotated by Huldrych Zwingli.
More newspapers developed in the city, maintaining the revolutionary atmosphere of Aarau.
Beginning in 1820, Aarau has been a refuge for political refugees.
The urban educational and cultural opportunities of Aarau have been extended through numerous new institutions.
A Theater and Concert Hall was constructed in 1883, which was renovated and expanded in 1995-96.
The Aargau Nature Museum opened in 1922.
A former cloth warehouse was transformed into a small theater in 1974, and the alternative culture center KIFF (Culture in the fodder factory) was established in a former animal fodder factory.
The earliest use of the place name was in 1248 (in the form Arowe), and probably referred to the settlement in the area before the founding of the city.
It comes, along with the name of the River Aar (which was called Arula, Arola, and Araris in early times), from the German Au, meaning floodplain.
The historic old city forms an irregular square, consisting of four parts (called Stoecke).
To the south lies the "suburb", that is, the part of the town formerly outside the city wall.
One special characteristic of the city is its painted gables, for which Aarau is sometimes called the "City of beautiful Gables".
The buildings in the old city originate, on the whole, from building projects during the 16th century, when nearly all the Middle Age period buildings were replaced or expanded.
The architectural development of the city ended in the 18th century, when the city began to expand beyond its (still existing) wall.
Most of the buildings in the "suburb" date from this time.
The "Schl ssli" (small Castle), Rore Tower and the upper gate tower have remained nearly unchanged since the 13th century.
The "Schl ssli" is the oldest building in the city.
It was already founded at the time of the establishment of the city shortly after 1200; the exact date is not known.
City hall was built around Rore Tower in 1515.
The upper gate tower stands beside the southern gate in the city wall, along the road to Lucerne and Bern.
The jail has been housed in it since the Middle Ages.
A Carillon was erected in the tower in the middle of the 20th century, the bells for which were provided by the centuries-old bell manufacturers of Aarau.
The town church was built between 1471 and 1478.
During the Reformation, in 1528, its twelve altars and accompanying pictures were destroyed.
The "Justice fountain" (Gerechtskeitbrunnen) was built in 1634, and is made of French limestone; it includes a statue of Lady Justice made of sandstone, hence the name.
It was originally in the street in front of city hall, but was moved to its present location in front of the town church in 1905 due to increased traffic.
The people that give the most jobs in Aarau is the canton government; most of their offices can be found throughout the city.
One of the two head offices of the Aargauer Zeitung, Switzerland 's fifth largest newspaper, can be found in Aarau.
Kern & Co., founded in 1819, was an internationally known geodetic instrument manufacturer based in Aarau.
However, it was taken over by Wild Leitz in 1988, and was closed in 1991.
More than half of the workers in Aarau live in the city 's suburbs, or on the outskirts of the city.
Aarau gets some jams of cars and buses sometimes during rush hour (the time of day when everyone leaves work to get home).
Things made in Aarau are: bells, mathematical instruments, electrical goods, cotton textiles, chemicals, shoes, and other products.
(,,,; anglicized Argovia) is one of the more northerly cantons of Switzerland.
It is near the lower course of the river Aare, which is why the canton is called Aargau (meaning Aare district).
The cantons of Basel Landschaft, Solothurn and Bern lie to the west.
Lucerne is to the south Zug and Z rich are to the east.
To the north is Germany.
About 580.000 people live in the canton.
Its capital is Aarau.
Abadeh is a city in southwestern Iran.
In the year 2006 there were 52,042 people living in there.
The city is also capital of Abadehy County.
The Arc de Triomphe (meaning arch of victory), at the center of the place de l' toile and the western end of the Champs-Elys es, is a very famous monument in Paris.
Emperor Napol on Bonaparte commissioned it in 1806 after victory in the Battle of Austerlitz.
It is a large arch, but it is not possible to drive underneath it.
Jean-Fran ois Chalgrin designed it, and it has roughly 300 steps that lead to the top.
It has four main sculptures and six reliefs.
Just beneath the vault of the arc there is the tomb of the unknown soldier.
The names of French generals and battles are engraved on the walls.
Anthroposophy is a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner.
The philosophy teaches that through inner development a person can better know the spiritual world.
Anthropos is a Greek word that means "human being".
Sophos means "wise".
Steiner believed every human being had the wisdom to understand the mysteries of existence.
He left the German Theosophical Society in 1912 trading divine wisdom for human wisdom.
Anthroposophy does not have a rigid set of beliefs.
It is said to be a philosophy of freedom.
Each person connects to the world through an individual path.
The path to wisdom is based on research.
The research leads to knowledge.
This is similar to teachings of Thomas Aquinas.
Anthroposophy is different in that it pursues knowledge of science, the arts and spirituality all together.
The philosophy also teaches respect of other humans.
It encourages support of others in their interest and learning of the spiritual world.
To support this, Steiner created The Anthroposophical Society in 1923.
It is now called the General Anthroposophical Society.
The society has groups and national societies in over 75 countries.
The Aurochs, or urus, (Bos primigenius) was a large species of cattle, once common in Europe but now extinct.
It was a wild animal, not a domesticated animal.
The extinct aurochs\/urus is a completely separate species from the wisent (the European bison).
According to the Paleontologisk Museum, University of Oslo, aurochs developed in India some two million years ago, came into the Middle East and farther into Asia, and reached Europe about 250,000 years ago.
They were once thought a different species from modern European cattle (Bos taurus), but today not any more.
Modern cattle have become much smaller than their wild ancestors: the height of a large domesticated cow is about 1.5 meters (5 feet, 15 hands), while aurochs were about 1.75 meters (5.75 feet, 17 hands).
Aurochs also had several features not often seen in modern cattle, such as lyre-shaped horns set at a forward angle, a pale stripe down the spine, and different color according to the gender.
Males were black with a pale stripe down the spine, while females and calves were reddish (these colors are still found in a few domesticated cattle breeds, such as Jersey cattle).
Aurochs were also known to have very aggressive behavior, and killing one was seen as an act of courage in ancient cultures.
At one time there were three aurochs subspecies, namely Bos primigenius namadicus (Falconer, 1859) that occurred in India, the Bos primigenius mauretanicus (Thomas, 1881) from North Africa and the Bos primigenius primigenius (Bojanus, 1827) from Europe and the Middle East.
Only the European subspecies survived until recent times.
Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a set of protocols used for computer networks.
It is mostly used for Wide Area Networks (WAN).
It splits the data, and encodes it into packets of a fixed size.
Each packet can be routed differently, along virtual paths set up in the network.
ATM has been very successful in WANs, as well as in Local Area Networks (LAN).
Today, many ADSL implementations use ATM technology.
Standards like Ethernet (which is used for LANs) usually are quite simple.
When there is little traffic on the network they work well.
However, when there is a lot of traffic it is difficult to predict how an Ethernet network will behave.
For this reason, Ethernet can not give any service guarantees.
It is not possible to say that an Ethernet packet will take a maximum delay, but after that time it is guaranteed to arrive.
ATM is more complex, but this complexity allows to give guarantees as to data rate, maximum delay, and jitter.
These are usually called Quality of Service.
The anus is the opening in the human body that is between the buttocks.
It is at the end of the gastrointestinal system (including the organs that digest food), where feces or stool comes out of the body.
Sometimes it is quite smelly due to flatulence or feces coming through.
The African National Congress (ANC), supported by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), has been South Africa 's governing left-wing political party since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994.
It defines itself as a "disciplined force of the left".
Members founded the organization as the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) on 8 January 1912 in Bloemfontein to increase the rights of the black South African population.
John Dube, its first president, and poet and author Sol Plaatje are among its founding members.
The organization became the ANC in 1923 and formed a military wing, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) in 1961.
It has been the ruling party of post-apartheid South Africa on the national level since 1994.
It gained support in the 1999 elections, and further increased its majority in 2004, with 69.7 % of the votes.
In 2009 its share of the vote reduced slightly, but it remained the dominant party with 65.9 % of the votes.
The ANC was founded in direct response to what was seen as injustices against black South Africans at the hands of their white, mostly Afrikaner government.
The ANC had its origins in a pronouncement by Pixley ka Isaka Seme who said in 1911 Forget all the past differences among Africans and unite in one national organization.
The ANC was set up the next year on 8 January 1912.
The government of the newly formed Union of South Africa began a systematic oppression of black people in South Africa.
The Natives ' Land Act was issued in 1913.
The effect of these laws was to force many non-whites from their farms into the cities and towns to work, and to restrict their movement within South Africa.
By 1919, the ANC led a campaign against passes, and in 1929 the ANC supported a militant mineworkers ' strike.
The ANC became dormant in the mid-1920s.
During that time, black people were also represented by the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union and the once white-only Communist party.
By 1927, J.T. Gumende (president of the ANC) proposed cooperation with the Communists in a bid to revitalise the organization, but he was voted out of power in the 1930s.
This led to the ANC becoming largely ineffectual and inactive, until the mid-1940s when the ANC was remodelled as a mass movement.
The ANC responded militarily to attacks on the rights of black South Africans, as well as calling for strikes, boycotts, and defiance.
This led to a later Defiance Campaign in the 1950s, a mass movement of resistance to South Africa under apartheid.
The government tried to stop the ANC by banning party leaders and enacting new laws to stop the ANC, however these measures failed.
In 1955, the Congress of the People officially adopted the Freedom Charter, stating the core principles of the South African Congress Alliance, which consisted of the African National Congress and its allies the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats and the Coloured People 's Congress.
The government claimed that this was a communist document, and consequently leaders of the ANC and Congress were arrested.
1960 saw the Sharpeville Massacre, in which 69 people were killed when police opened fire on anti-apartheid protesters.
Whites eventually joined the fight against apartheid, leading many black supremacists to break away from the ANC.
Umkhonto we Sizwe (or MK), translated "Spear of the Nation", was the military wing of the ANC.
Partly in response to the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, individual members of the ANC thought violence was needed because peaceful passive protest had failed.
There was a significant portion of the ANC who therefore turned to violence in order to achieve their goals.
A significant portion of ANC leadership agreed that this violence was needed to combat increasing backlash from the government.
Some ANC members were upset by the actions of the MK, and refused to accept violence as necessary for the ending of Apartheid, but these individuals became a minority as the militant leaders such as Nelson Mandela gained significant popularity.
Many consider their actions to be criminal, but the MK said violence was justified by the goal of ending apartheid.
Some members of MK committed terrorist acts to achieve their aims, and MK was responsible for the deaths of both civilians and members of the military.
In cooperation with the South African Communist Party, MK was founded in 1961.
The ANC calls itself a force of national liberation in the post-apartheid era; it officially defines its umbrella agenda as the National Democratic Revolution.
The ANC is a member of the Socialist International.
It also sets forth the redressing of socio-economic differences stemming from colonial - and apartheid-era policies as a central focus of ANC policy.
The National Democratic Revolution (NDR) is described as a process through which the National Democratic Society (NDS) is achieved; a society in which people are intellectually, socially, economically and politically empowered.
The ANC holds a historic alliance with the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), known as the Tripartite Alliance.
The SACP and COSATU have not contested any election in South Africa, but field candidates through the ANC, hold senior positions in the ANC, and influence party policy and dialogue.
During Mbeki 's presidency, the government took a more pro-capitalist stance, often running counter to the demands of the SACP and COSATU.
Following Zuma 's accession to the ANC leadership in 2007 and Mbeki 's resignation as president in 2008, the Mbeki faction of former ministers led by Mosiuoa Lekota split away from the ANC to form the Congress of the People.
The ANC flag is composed of three stripes black, green and gold.
Black symbolizes the native people of South Africa, green represents the land and gold represents the mineral and other natural wealth of South Africa.
This flag was also the battle flag of the Umkhonto we Sizwe.
The official party flag also has the emblem of the party incorporated onto the flag.
Politicians in the party win a place in parliament by being on the Party List, which is drawn up before the elections and enumerates, in order, the party 's preferred MPs.
The number of seats allocated is proportional to the popular national vote, and this determines the cut-off point.
The ANC has also gained members through the controversial floor crossing process.
Although most South African parties announced their candidate list for provincial premierships in the 2009 election, the ANC did not.
It is not required for parties to do so.
The ANC was the main opposition to the government during apartheid and played a major role in resolving the conflict through the peacemaking and peace-building processes.
Initially members of the National Party met in secret with ANC leaders, including Nelson Mandela, to see if peace was possible.
Discussions and negotiations took place leading to the eventual unbanning of the ANC and other opposing political parties by then President de Klerk on 2 February 1990.
These initial meetings were the first crucial steps towards resolution.
The next official step towards rebuilding South Africa was the Groote Schuur Minute where the government and the ANC agreed on a common commitment towards the end of violence and intimidation, as well as a commitment to stability and to a peaceful process of negotiations.
The ANC negotiated the release of political prisoners and the immunity from prosecution for returning exiles and moreover channels of communication were established between the Government and the ANC.
Later the Pretoria Minute was another step towards resolution where agreements at Groote Schuur were reconsolidated and steps towards setting up an interim government and drafting a new constitution were established as well as suspension of the military wing of the ANC the Umkhonto we Sizwe.
This step helped end much of the violence within South Africa.
Another agreement that came out of the Pretoria Minute was that both parties would try and raise awareness that a new way of governing was being created for South Africa, and that further violence would only hinder this process.
However violence still continued in Kwazulu-Natal, which violated the trust between Mandela and de Klerk.
Moreover, internal disputes in the ANC prolonged the war as consensus on peace was not reached.
These measures ensured no one could claim, or be deprived of any rights on the basis of race.
In December 1991 the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) was held with the aim of establishing an interim government.
But in June 1992 there was the Boipatong massacre.
Negotiations stopped as the ANC pulled out.
Only Cyril Ramaphosa of the ANC, and Roelf Meyer of the National Party carried on talking.
In over 40 meetings the two men discussed and negotiated over many issues including the nature of the future political system, the fate of over 40,000 government employees and if\/how the country would be divided.
The result of these negotiations was a temporary constitution that meant the transition from apartheid to democracy was a constitutional continuation and that the rule of law and state sovereignty remained intact during the change, which was vital for stability within the country.
A date was set for the first democratic elections on 27 April 1994.
The ANC won 62.5 % of the votes and has been in power ever since.
The most prominent corruption case involving the ANC relates to a series of bribes paid to companies involved in the ongoing R55 billion Arms Deal saga, which resulted in a long term jail sentence to former Deputy President Jacob Zuma 's legal adviser Schabir Shaik.
Zuma, now the State president, currently faces 7 813 charges relating to alleged fraud, bribery and corruption in the Arms Deal.
The ANC has also been criticised for its subsequent abolishment of the Scorpions, the multidisciplinary agency that investigated and prosecuted organised crime and corruption, and was heavily involved in the investigation into Zuma and Shaik.
Other recent corruption issues include the sexual misconduct and criminal charges of Beaufort West municipal manager Truman Prince, and the Oilgate scandal, in which millions of Rand in funds from a state-owned company were allegedly funneled into ANC coffers.
Links between factions in the ANC, specifically the ANC Youth League leadership, and businessman Brett Kebble gained media attention following Kebble 's murder in September 2005.
In December 2007 the ANC elected their new National Executive Committee (NEC), the highest structure in the party.
Out of the 80 member committee, 9 % are (post-apartheid) convicted criminals.
Most of these members have been convicted of fraud, while one member, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, was convicted of the kidnapping of a 14-year-old boy, James Seipei (1974 1988), also known as Stompie Moeketsi (who was also murdered).
According to an article in the Mail & Guardian, "by adding those who have been disciplined or moved, and those with dark clouds of unanswered questions hanging over their heads, the figure shifts to 29 %."
The ANC has also been accused of using government and civil society to fight its political battles against opposition parties such as the Democratic Alliance.
The result has been a number of complaints and allegations that none of the political parties truly represent the interests of the poor.
This has resulted in the "No Land!
No House!
No Vote!"
Campaign which becomes very prominent each time the country holds elections.
The main thrust behind this reporting is the official opposition in the country, the Democratic Alliance (DA).
They have kept a tally of the expenditure called ` The Wasteful Expenditure Monitor '
Amphetamine is a synthetic drug.
The drug is a stimulant: it can help people keep the focus and stay awake.
It also decreases appetite and fatigue.
Chemically, it is similar to methamphetamine.
These drugs increase the level of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain, which can create euphoria.
The class of drugs containing amphetamine includes prescription drugs commonly used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
It is also used to treat symptoms of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and the daytime drowsiness symptoms of narcolepsy, amongst others.
Initially, amphetamine was more popularly used to reduce appetite and to control weight.
Sometimes, the drug is used for fun or to boost performance.
There are many different names that are used for amphetamines, a common one is speed.
The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction reports the typical retail price of amphetamine in Europe varied between 3 and 15 ($ 4 to $ 21.55 USD) a gram in half of the reporting countries.
The name amphetamine is derived from its chemical name: alpha-methylphenethylamine.
Artillery is a word for the big guns used in an army, for example cannons and howitzers.
Such guns are used to shoot targets far away.
Artillery is often used to stop enemy troops using an area, to bombard trenches and buildings with enemies in it and to support friendly units.
There are many different weapons that are called artillery.
They may shoot shells or missiles.
Newer systems can even drop mines over a big area, making the area uncrossable.
Anti-aircraft warfare includes the use of artillery to fight planes and other aircraft.
In most cases someone else, called a "spotter" must see the enemy, because artillery often shoots in high angles and over terrain.
The artillery crews do not have to see the enemy to damage them.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a regional development bank established on 22 August 1966 to facilitate economic development of countries in Asia.
The President of the Asian Development Bank is Takehiko Nakao
Aswan (, population 200,000) is a city in the south of Egypt and the capital of the Aswan Governorate.
It is on the east bank of the Nile and is a busy market and tourist center.
Aswan is one of the driest places in the world where people actually live; as of early 2001, the last rain there was 6 years earlier.
As of October 13, 2007, the last rainfall was a thunderstorm on May 13, 2006.
In Nubian settlements, the people often do not put a roof over all of the rooms in their houses.
The Airbus A300 is a jet airliner which was made by Airbus.
Airbus Industrie launched the plane in 1972, and it was the first plane with two engines to have more than one row of seats (the first twin-engined wide-body aircraft).
The A300 can hold 266 passengers in two classes.
It can fly for a maximum of 4070 n when it is full, but this depends on the type of A300.
Air France was the first airline to get an A300.
Air France began to use its A300s on 30 May 1974.
Airbus stopped making A300s in July 2007.
When Airbus stopped making A300s, it also stopped making A310s.
The freighter version of the A300 has been replaced by the A330-200F.
In 1966, Frank Kolk, a member of American Airlines, asked for a plane to replace the Boeing 727.
He wanted a plane which could hold 250 to 300 passengers, with two engines.
American plane makers made planes with three engines, like the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, because the FAA had banned planes with two engines from flying on certain routes.
In September 1967, the British, French, and German governments agreed to begin designing the Airbus A300, which would have 300 seats.
After this agreement, both the French and British governments were worried about the plane.
The plane needed a new type of engine from Rolls-Royce, the RB207.
In December 1968, the French and British companies (Sud Aviation and Hawker Siddeley) thought of a different design: the Airbus A250, which would have 250 seats.
This design had its name changed to the A300B, and it did not need a new type of engine, which saved money.
To get more U.S. airlines to buy the plane, American General Electric CF6-50 engines were used for the A300 instead of Rolls-Royce engines.
The British government was upset and decided to stop supporting the A300.
However, Hawker-Siddeley did not leave, and designed the wings for the A300.
In 1972, the A300 flew for the first time.
The first type of A300 to be made, the A300B2, began to be used by airlines in 1974.
The A300B4 began to be used one year later.
At first, Airbus Industrie did not sell many planes.
However, by 1979, 81 aircraft were being used.
It was the A320 which made Airbus the very big company that it is today.
Parts of the A300 were made by many different companies from all over Europe.
These were taken to Toulouse-Blagnac by some Aero Spacelines Super Guppy aircraft so that the parts could all be put together to make the plane.
This method turned out to be much better than simply building the aircraft in one place.
Some of the technology used for the Airbus A300 was taken from Concorde.
When it began being used in 1974, the A300 was an advanced plane.
Some advanced features were:
The A300 did not sell very well at first.
Most of the orders were from airlines of countries which made up Airbus Industrie, like Air France and Lufthansa.
In 1974, Korean Air ordered 4 A300s.
This made it the first airline outside of Europe to order an Airbus Industrie plane.
Airbus Industrie thought that South-East-Asia was a good place to sell planes.
It also thought that Korean Air was the ` key ' to selling planes in that area.
Airlines which used the A300 to fly on short flights needed to have less flights ao that the aircraft could be filled, so these airlines lost customers to other airlines which used smaller aircraft and had flights more often.
Eventually, Airbus had to make the A320 to rival the Boeing 737 and McDonnell Douglas DC-9 \/ MD-80.
In 1977, Eastern Air Lines leased four A300s.
Frank Borman, who was the CEO of Eastern, was happy that the A300 used much less fuel than the planes the airline already had.
He ordered 23 A300s.
After this, Pan Am also ordered some A300s.
From then on, many A300s were sold, and 878 planes were given to airlines.
The body of the A300 was made longer (on the A330 and A340), shorter (on the A310), or was changed (for the A300-600ST Beluga Super Transporter).
In March 2006, Airbus said that it was no longer making the A300\/A310.
The last A300 first flew on 18 April 2007.
It was delivered to FedEx on 12 July 2007.
Only two of these were built: the prototype, and a second aircraft.
It can hold 300 passengers or 323 passengers, and it has two General Electric CF6-50A engines.
The first version to be made for airlines.
It had General Electric CF6 or Pratt & Whitney JT9D engines.
Air France was the first airline to use it, in May 1974.
The version which was made the most.
The first A300B4 made its first flight on 25 December 1974.
Germanair got the first one on 23 May 1975.
This type 's official name is the A300B4-600.
It has more powerful CF6-80 or Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines, and it has the Honeywell 331-250 auxiliary power unit (APU).
The A300-600 began being used in 1983 by Saudi Arabian Airlines The A300-600 also has a different cockpit (similar to the A310), so the flight engineer was not needed for this type.
This type is shorter and does not need a flight engineer.
It can also be used as a military plane.
It is currently being used by the Canadian Forces and German Air Force.
260 of these planes were sold, but five of these were never made.
As of 2010, the A300 has had 54 accidents.
There have been 26 hull-losses.
1,434 people have died on A300s.
A hull-loss accident is an accident where the plane is completely destroyed, or if it is damaged so much that it can not be fixed.
Only two A300s still exist today.
There are:
Data until the end of December 2007.
Agostino Carracci (sometimes also spelled Agostino Caracci, August 16, 1557 March 22, 1602) was an Italian painter and printmaker.
His brother Annibale and cousin Lodovico Carracci were more famous than he was.
He thought nature was an ideal.
He founded a school that was competing with that of Caravaggio.
Together with his brothers, he founded the Accademia degli Incamminati.
The academy helped painters of the School of Bologna to become famous.
Alexander Kerensky (4 May 1881 11 June 1970) was a major political leader before and during the Russian Revolution.
Kerensky served as the Second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin in the October Revolution.
He spent the rest of his life in exile.
He died in New York City in 1970 at the age of 89.
Agent Orange is a very powerful herbicide that was used in the Vietnam War.
It is a defoliant that destroyed forests.
It was used by the United States military so their enemies had no place to hide.
The problem with Agent Orange is that when it is released, some dioxins are also generated.
Dioxins have many problems: It takes a long time until they are eliminated from the environment.
They are very toxic, and cause genetic modifications and cancer.
Ab urbe condita is a way to measure time.
The phrase is Latin.
It literally means from when the city was founded.
The city talked about is the city of Rome.
This way of measuring time was not used in Classical antiquity.
The first to have used it was the historian Orosius, about 400 AD.
Marcus Terentius Varro found out that the city of Rome was founded 440 years after the fall of Troy.
Romulus and Remus founded it.
Varro thought that was in the spring of 753 BC.
Marcus Porcius Cato Censorius thought that Rome was founded one year after the 7th Olympic Games.
That would have been in 752 BC.
Ab urbe condita is also the main work of Titus Livius, a Roman historian.
Administrative law (also called regulatory law) covers a wide range of procedures by administrative agencies.
These agencies include city, county, state or federal government bodies.
They may be called commissions, departments, divisions or boards.
Each may have its own rules and regulations which are usually not found in statutes.
These are based on laws passed by a government.
Agencies also have the power to enforce these rules and regulations.
Congress or state legislatures pass laws, sometimes on complicated issues.
The details of how these laws are to be enforced is left to administrative agencies.
For example, a government agency, the Social Security Administration (SSA) was created August 14, 1935 by an act of Congress.
They were given the authority to administer Social Security benefits and disability laws.
They have passed a body of rules and regulations that determine how benefits will be handled.
The rules created by the European Union are carried out by an ad hoc collection of agencies.
These rules may be for a particular treaty or for things such as trade policy.
These agencies evolve on a policy-by-policy basis.
Admiral Arthur Phillip RN (11 October 1738 31 August 1814) was a British naval officer.
Phillip was made Governor of New South Wales, the first European colony in Australia, which is now the city of Sydney.
Arthur (Kriddler) Phillip was born in Fulham, London, in 1738.
His father was a German-born language teacher, Jacob Phillip.
His mother, Elizabeth Breach, was English, and the widow of a navy captain.
Phillip went to a school for poor boys at the Greenwich Hospital.
At the age of 13 he joined the merchant navy.
Phillip joined the Royal Navy at 15.
He saw action during the Seven Years ' War in the Mediterranean at the Battle of Minorca in 1756.
In 1762 he was promoted to Lieutenant.
When the war ended in 1763 he was put on half pay.
He married and became a farmer in Lyndhurst, Hampshire.
He separated from his wife about six years later.
In 1774 Phillip joined the Portuguese Navy as a captain.
He served in the Spanish-Portuguese War, 1776 1777.
Phillip took a group of convict ships from Portugal to Brazil.
This trip was a success because not many people died.
This may have been one of the reasons Phillip was asked to lead the expedition to Australia.
In 1778 England was at war again, and Phillip was recalled to active service.
In 1779 he was given his first command, the ship Basilisk.
He was promoted to captain in 1781, and given command of the Ariadne.
In 1782 he was captain of the Europe with his friend Philip Gidley King as his lieutenant.
They sailed to India.
In 1784 he was back on half pay in England.
He spent time in southern France and in 1786 was doing survey work for the Royal Navy.
In October 1786, Phillip was made Governor of New South Wales.
The British government wanted to start a penal colony (prison) on the east coast of Australia.
Phillip knew about farming, and had taken prisoners to Brazil for the Portuguese.
This made him a good choice to be leader.
Phillip had a very hard time getting the ships ready for the eight month sea voyage to Australia.
He had to take everything that the new colony might need.
Phillip had no real idea of what he might find when he got there.
There was n't much money to buy things.
He wanted people who knew about farming, building and making things, but this was rejected.
Most of the 772 convicts (prisoners) were thieves from the city area of London.
Phillip also took a group of marines (soldiers) and small group of officers who were to help him run the new colony.
The First Fleet, of 11 ships, sailed on 13 May 1787.
The first ship, HMS Supply, reached Botany Bay on 18 January 1788.
Phillip soon decided that this site, picked by Sir Joseph Banks, was not suitable.
It had poor soil, no safe place to leave the ships, and no drinking water.
Phillip decided to go north to Port Jackson.
On 26 January 1788 (this day is now called Australia Day the marines and convicts landed at Sydney Cove.
It was a successful trip, as only 40 convicts had died.
Phillip named Sydney after Lord Sydney.
((Image: Sketch of Sydney Cove.
jpg thumb (width in number of pixels) px right Sketch of Sydney Cove, July 1788)) The first years of the settlement were very hard.
They only had the supplies they brought with them.
They had to start growing their own food, but the soil around Sydney was poor.
They did n't know about the climate, how much rain or when it would fall for example.
Very few of the convicts knew anything about farming or growing food.
They did not have enough farming tools.
The convicts did not want to be farm workers.
The colony was in danger of starvation for long time.
The soldiers, who did n't like being given orders in many cases, did not think it was their job to make the convicts work.
Phillip had to put some convicts in charge (overseers) to get the other convicts working.
This was the start of the process of making some convicts free which led to the reforms of Lachlan Macquarie after 1811.
As Governor of the new settlement, Phillip had complete power over the eastern half of Australia.
Phillip had respect from the Aboriginal people because he was missing a front tooth.
This tooth was the same tooth that they knocked out as part of their initiation ceremonies.
Phillip soon had problems with the soldiers in the penal colony.
Life in Sydney was difficult, without proper houses and not enough food.
The officer in charge of the soldiers, Major Robert Ross, wanted to give up the settlement and go back to England.
Ross complained about Phillip and wrote letters to the government in England about him.
The soldiers thought they should be given land and other benefits.
They thought they should be given more food than the convicts, but Phillip believed everyone should have an equal share.
Ross and the soldiers believed that they were in Australia to protect the settlement from being attacked by other countries.
They did not think that their work included guarding the convicts.
Ross who was a soldier, did not think he should have to take orders from Phillip, who was a navy man.
In March 1790, Phillip finally sent Ross to be in charge of the colony on Norfolk Island.
The British government continued to send out convicts, there were over 4000 in Sydney by 1792.
Food still needed to be brought in as the colony could not yet grow enough.
Phillip began giving small grants of land to ex-convicts to start farms around Parramatta, New South Wales.
On 11 December 1792 Phillip left to go back to England.
He needed medical treatment for a pain in his side.
The pain was kidney pain from eating so much salted food.
He planned to return to Australia, but on medical advice he resigned as Governor and stayed in England.
He married Isabella Whitehead in 1794.
He eventually got better and in 1796 returned to the navy as a captain.
He was in charge of the Alexander, and later the 74 gun battleship, Swiftshore.
In January 1799 he was made a Rear Admiral of the Blue, and put in charge of the Sea Fencibles.
Their job was to defend England against Napoleon.
He retired from active service in 1805.
He had a number of strokes which left him partly paralysed.
He died at Bath, on 31 August 1814, after falling from a third floor window.
He was buried at the church of St. Nicholas, Bathampton.
In 2007 Geoffrey Robertson QC found that Phillip 's remains are no longer in the church.
It is not known where they are.
It is believed they were lost while the church was being repaired in the 1970s.
Robertson believes that it is an insult to Phillip that he was n't buried in one of England 's cathedrals.
He wants the remains of Phillip found and brought back to Australia.
Angus is a county on the North Sea and on the northern shore of the Firth of Tay in Scotland, United Kingdom.
Angus is also the name of a council area.
The county town of Angus is Forfar, but its largest town is Dundee.
Dundee is not part of the council area but is a council area on its own.
Angus is also well known for its breed of cattle much used in beef production.
The Angus cattle were developed from cattle native to the counties of Aberdeenshire and Angus, and are now found in most parts of the world.
Andr Ren Roussimoff (19 May 1946 27 January 1993) better known by his ring name, Andr the Giant, was a French professional wrestler and actor.
He was best known for wrestling with World Wrestling Federation (WWF).
His size was caused by gigantism, that was caused by excess growth hormone and would later result in acromegaly.
His size led to him being called "The Eighth Wonder of the World".
During his professional wrestling career, he was a one time WWF champion and a one time WWF World Tag Team champion with Haku.
In 1993, He became the first superstar to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
His best know acting role was as Fezzik in the 1987 movie The Princess Bride.
On January 27, 1993, he died of congestive heart failure while he was sleeping in his Paris hotel room.
He was in Paris to go to his father 's funeral.
Adrastea or ', is the second closest moon to Jupiter.
It was found by David C. Jewitt and G. Edward Danielson in Voyager 2 probe photographs taken in 1979 and received the designation '.
In 1983, it was named after the mythological Adrastea, who was a daughter of Jupiter and Ananke.
Adrastea was the first moon to be found from images taken by an interplanetary spacecraft, rather than through telescopic photography.
Adrastea is non-spherical and measures 20x16x14 km across.
What Adrastea is made of and the mass of Adrastea are not known, but assuming that its mean density is like that of Amalthea (~ 0.86 g\/cm) its mass can be estimated at ~ 2 1015 kg.
Amalthea 's density implies that moon is composed of water ice with a porosity of 10-15 %, and Adrastea may be similar.
No surface details of Adrastea are known, due to the low resolution of available images.
Adrastea is the smallest and second closest member of the closer moons to Jupiter.
It orbits Jupiter at ~ 129,000 km (1.806 Jupiter radii) within the planet 's Main Ring.
The orbital eccentricity of ~ 0.0015 and inclination of ~ 0.03 relative to the equator of Jupiter are very small.
Adrastea was found in Voyager 1 and 2 images, but appeared only as a dot.
The Galileo spacecraft was able to see its shape, but the images remain poor.
Apache HTTP Server, also called Apache, is a web server notable for helping the growth of the World Wide Web.
Ants are social insects of the family Formicidae.
Like wasps and bees, ants are in the order Hymenoptera.
There are about 22,000 species of ants.
More than 12,500 have been classified.
They have a thin waist and elbowed antennae.
Ants form colonies that vary greatly in size.
Some species have a few dozen predatory individuals living in small natural cavities.
Some highly organised colonies may cover large territories and have millions of individuals.
Ants are usually small, but can carry the weight of twenty ants.
Worker ants carry food back to the colony so that other ants and the queen can eat.
The following account is mainly about ants which live in large colonies.
A colony has a female reproductive ant, called a queen, who lays eggs.
Those eggs will hatch into worker ants.
Larger colonies of ants having millions of ants mostly have female ants making groups of workers, soldiers, or other special castes.
Almost all ant colonies also have some fertile male ants called drones.
These colonies are sometimes described as ` superorganisms ' because the ants appear to operate as a unified entity, collectively working together to support the colony.
Ants have colonies almost everywhere on planet Earth.
Places that do not have ants are Antarctica, and certain far away places or islands hard to live on.
The family Formicidae belongs to the order Hymenoptera, which also includes sawflies, bees and wasps.
Ants evolved from a lineage within the vespoid wasps.
Phylogenetic analysis suggests that ants arose in the Lower Cretaceous period about 110 to 130 million years ago, or even earlier.
One estimate from DNA studies places the origin of ants at 140 million years ago (mya).
Another study puts it in the Jurassic at 185 36 mya (95 % confidence limits).
After the rise of flowering plants about 100 million years ago ants diversified.
They became ecologically dominant about 60 million years ago.
In 1966 E.O. Wilson and his colleagues identified the fossil remains of an ant (Sphecomyrma freyi) from the Cretaceous period.
The specimen, trapped in amber dating back to more than 80 million years ago, has features of both ants and wasps.
Sphecomyrma was probably a ground forager but some suggest that primitive ants were likely to have been predators underneath the surface of the soil.
During the Cretaceous period, a few species of primitive ants ranged widely on the Laurasian super-continent (the northern hemisphere).
They were scarce in comparison to other insects, representing about 1 % of the insect population.
Ants became dominant after adaptive radiation at the beginning of the Cainozoic.
By the Oligocene and Miocene ants had come to represent 20-40 % of all insects found in major fossil deposits.
Of the species that lived in the Eocene epoch, approximately one in ten genera survive to the present.
Genera surviving today comprise 56 % of the genera in Baltic amber fossils (early Oligocene), and 92 % of the genera in Dominican amber fossils (apparently early Miocene).
p23
Termites, though sometimes called white ants, are not ants and belong to the order Isoptera.
Termites are actually more closely related to cockroaches and mantids.
Termites are eusocial but differ greatly in the genetics of reproduction.
The similar social structure is attributed to convergent evolution.
Velvet ants look like large ants, but are wingless female wasps.
The life of an ant starts from an egg.
If the egg is fertilised, the progeny will be female (diploid); if not, it will be male (haploid).
Ants develop by complete metamorphosis with the larval stages passing through a pupal stage before emerging as an adult.
The larva is fed and cared for by workers.
Food is given to the larvae by trophallaxis, a process in which an ant regurgitates liquid food held in its crop.
This is also how adults share food, stored in the ` social stomach ', among themselves.
Larvae may also be given solid food brought back by foraging workers, and may even be taken to captured prey in some species.
The larvae grow through a series of moults and enter the pupal stage.
The differentiation into queens and workers (which are both female), and different castes of workers, is influenced in some species by the food the larvae get.
Genetic influences, and the control of gene expression by the feeding are complex.
The determination of caste is a major subject of research.
p351, 372
A new worker spends the first few days of its adult life caring for the queen and young.
It then does digging and other nest work, and later, defends the nest and forages.
These changes are sometimes fairly sudden, and define what are called temporal castes.
An explanation for the sequence is suggested by the high casualties involved in foraging, making it an acceptable risk only for ants that are older and are likely to die soon of natural causes.
Most ant species have a system in which only the queen and breeding females can mate.
Contrary to popular belief, some ant nests have multiple queens (polygyny).
The life history of Harpegnathos saltator is exceptional among ants because both queens and some workers reproduce sexually.
The winged male ants, called drones, emerge from pupae with the breeding females (although some species, like army ants, have wingless queens), and do nothing in life except eat and mate.
Most ants produce a new generation each year.
During the species specific breeding period, new reproductives, winged males and females leave the colony in what is called a nuptial flight.
Typically, the males take flight before the females.
Males then use visual cues to find a common mating ground, for example, a landmark such as a pine tree to which other males in the area converge.
Males secrete a mating pheromone that females follow.
Females of some species mate with just one male, but in some others they may mate with anywhere from one to ten or more different males.
Mated females then seek a suitable place to begin a colony.
There, they break off their wings and begin to lay and care for eggs.
The females store the sperm they obtain during their nuptial flight to selectively fertilise future eggs.
The first workers to hatch are weak and smaller than later workers, but they begin to serve the colony immediately.
They enlarge the nest, forage for food and care for the other eggs.
This is how new colonies start in most species.
Species that have multiple queens may have a queen leaving the nest along with some workers to found a colony at a new site, p143 a process akin to swarming in honeybees.
A wide range of reproductive strategies have been noted in ant species.
Females of many species are known to be capable of reproducing asexually through parthenogenesis, and one species, Mycocepurus smithii is known to be all-female.
Ant colonies can be long-lived.
The queens can live for up to 30 years, and workers live from 1 to 3 years.
Males, however, are more transitory, and survive only a few weeks.
Ant queens are estimated to live 100 times longer than solitary insects of a similar size.
Ants are active all year long in the tropics but, in cooler regions, survive the winter in a state of dormancy or inactivity.
The forms of inactivity are varied and some temperate species have larvae going into the inactive state (diapause), while in others, the adults alone pass the winter in a state of reduced activity.
It may seem strange that ants have uses, but there are some.
Some people use ants for food, medicine and rituals.
Some species of ants are used for pest control (they eat pests that destroy food for humans).
They can damage crops and enter buildings, though.
Some species, like the red imported fire ant, live in places where they came to by complete accident.
The adversarial system or adversary system is a legal system used in the common law countries.
It is a system where two advocates represent their parties ' positions before an impartial person or group of people.
This is usually a jury or judge who attempt to determine the truth of the case.
It is in contrast to the inquisitorial system used in some civil law systems (i.e. those deriving from Roman law or the Napoleonic code).
This is where a judge or group of judges opens an official inquiry and decides the case.
The adversarial system is the two-part system under which criminal law courts operate.
On one side is the prosecution who usually represents the government.
The other side is the defense who represents the defendant.
Each party may call witnesses and ask questions.
Each party may present evidence based on legal ethics and that is approved by the court.
For example, legal ethics prevent a lawyer from calling a witness they know will lie on the witness stand.
Justice is served when the most effective adversary is able to convince the jury or judge that his or her case is the correct one.
Adware is an advertising computer program that can be put there by other people on someone 's computer, sometimes without their permission.
It is controversial because sometimes businesses put the program there so they can see what people are doing or what web pages they are browsing.
They then put an advertisement that is of the same subject as the web-page the person is looking at.
This can be good if the person is trying to buy something, but many people do not want advertisements.
Many people also do not want other people to find out what they are doing or what web pages they are looking at.
An example is in the popular peer-to-peer file sharing program, Kazaa.
When someone downloads it, it installs adware on their computer that then sends advertisements to the computer.
Some people do not like this so they use an illegally changed version of this program called Kazaa Lite.
Removal tools have been developed to assist users in clearing out these unwanted programs.
Like many programs that people use for security, the program must be changed often.
Updating allows the removal tool to recognize new types of adware.
This can be done by downloading files over the internet using the ` update ' option in the program.
Aegis was the shield that Athena used.
It had the face of the gorgon Medusa on it.
Ajaccio (Latin: Ajax; French: Ajaccio; Corsican: Aiacciu), pronounced "ah-YAH-cho", is a town in France.
It is the capital of the territorial collectivity of Corsica and the prefecture of the department of Corse-du-Sud.
Ajaccio is on the west coast of the island of Corsica in a sheltered position at the foot of wooded hills on the northern shore of the Gulf of Ajaccio.
The harbor is to the east of the town and is protected on the south by a peninsula.
Ajaccio has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Csa in the Koeppen climate classification).
Afyonkarahisar is a city in western Turkey.
The city is in the Central Anatolia Region.
In 2013, 268,461 people lived there.
Antacids (or indigestion tablets) are used to help stop indigestion.
You may get indigestion if you have eaten too much or if you have eaten too fast.
If you have indigestion, the liquid in your stomach will become more acidic.
The reaction that is happening is called neutralisation.
This is because the tablets are alkaline and the liquids in your stomach are acidic.
This reaction between the stomach acids and the antacid will make the acid that causes the problem (s) change into harmless substances such as water or salt.
An example of an antacid is milk of magnesia.
Amy Lee Grant (November 25 1960) is an American singer and songwriter.
She is known for her Contemporary Christian music, as well as pop music hits.
Grant is the best-selling contemporary Christian music singer ever.
She released her first album in 1977 at the age of 16.
Grant was born in Augusta, Georgia.
Aberdeen is a city in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of South Dakota.
It is the third largest city in the state; 26,091 people lived there at the 2010 census.
The city is home to Northern State University, a major college in the state of South Dakota.
Aberdeen became a city in 1882.
Aberdour is a town in Fife, Scotland.
It is between Dalgety Bay and Burntisland.
Aberfoyle is a village in Scotland.
It is in the Stirling council area.
Anders Celsius (27 November 1701 25 April 1744) was a Swedish astronomer.
Celsius was born in Uppsala in Sweden.
He developed the Celsius temperature scale as the international temperature standard when he worked on meteorology (a science about weather conditions).
One of his good friends Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the Fahrenheit scale for the thermometer.
Adam Carolla (born May 27, 1964) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, voice artist, and comedian.
He is the voice of Birchum in Crank Yankers.
Andalusia is the first in population among the 17 Autonomous communities in Spain and the second, after Castile and Le n, in area.
The territory is divided into eight provinces: Almer a, C diz, C rdoba, Granada, Huelva, Ja n, M laga and Seville.
Its capital is the city of Seville (Spanish: Sevilla).
Andalusia is in the south of the Iberian peninsula, just to the south of the autonomous communities of Extremadura and Castile-La Mancha; west of the autonomous community of Murcia and the Mediterranean Sea; east of Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean; and north of the Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar.
The small British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar shares a land border with the Andalusian province of C diz at the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar.
The name Andalusia is the modern version of the Arabic language Al-Andalus (-RRB-, name used by the Muslims for all of the territory of the Iberian Peninsula under their control.
During that period, northern Iberian Peninsula was controlled by Christian kings and the southern Iberian Peninsula was controlled by Muslims.
In 711 CE, the Muslims invaded the Iberian Peninsula, then controlled by Christians of Visigothic origin.
By 719 the Muslims conquered all of the peninsula except for a small area in the northern Pyrenees Mountains.
The Muslims used the name Al-Andalus for all of the territory of the Iberian Peninsula under their control.
Christians in the north waged war for more than seven centuries against the Muslims, gradually taking over more and more of the southern areas.
This process of war is called the Reconquista (a Spanish and Portuguese word meaning "to conquest again").
In the year 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain retook the last stronghold in the southern area at Granada.
In that same year, the Muslims and Jews were forced to leave Spain.
The Andalusian coat of arms shows the figure of Hercules and two lions between the two pillars of Hercules that tradition puts on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar.
The words below read Andaluc a por s, para Espa a y la Humanidad ("Andalusia by herself, for Spain and Humanity").
Over the two columns is an arch in the colors of the flag of Andalusia, with the Latin words Dominator Hercules Fundator.
The official flag of Andalusia has three equal horizontal stripes, colored green, white, and green respectively; the Andalusian coat of arms is on the central stripe.
It was approved in a meeting in 1918 of Andalusian nationalists at Ronda, a city in the province of M laga.
The anthem of Andalusia was composed by Jos del Castillo D az with lyrics by Blas Infante.
The music was inspired by Santo Dios, a religious folk song sung at harvest time by peasants.
The national holiday, the D a de Andaluc a, is celebrated on 28 February.
Andalusia is one of the 17 Spanish autonomous communities and is in the southwestern region of the European Union.
It has a surface area of 87597 k, 17.3 percent of the territory of Spain.
By area, it is the second Spanish autonomous community.
The natural limits of Andalusia are: to the south, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea; to the north, the Sierra Morena, mountain range that separates Andalusia from the autonomous communities of Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha; to the west is Portugal; and to the east is Murcia.
Andalusia has the Iberian peninsula 's highest mountains and nearly 15 percent of its terrain over 1000 m. The picture is similar for areas under 100 m (with the Baetic Depression), and for the variety of slopes.
The Atlantic coast is mostly beach and gradually sloping coasts; the Mediterranean coast has many cliffs.
These differences divide the region naturally into Upper Andalusia (two mountainous areas) and Lower Andalusia (the broad basin of the Guadalquivir).
In general, Andalusia has a Mediterranean climate, except in the Valley of Granada, with occasional heavy rains and extremely hot temperatures.
Rainfall decreases from west to east.
The place in Andalusia with the highest rainfall is in the Sierra de Grazalema (2138 m per year) and the driest place is Cabo de Gata, the place with the least amount of rainfall in Europe with only 117 m of rain per year.
The average temperature in Andalusia throughout the year is over 16.
Averages in the cities range from 15.1 in Baeza to 18.5 in M laga.
Much of the Guadalquivir valley and the Mediterranean coast has an average of about 18.
The coldest month is January when Granada at the foot of the Sierra Nevada experiences an average temperature of 6.4.
The hottest are July and August, with an average temperature of 28.5 for Andalusia as a whole.
C rdoba is the hottest provincial capital, followed by Seville.
The mountain ranges are cooler than the plains and have a higher rainfall with some snow in winter.
The Sierra Nevada, above 3000 m, is snow covered for most of the year.
Andalusia has rivers that flow into both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
Flowing to the Atlantic are the Guadiana, Odiel-Tinto, Guadalquivir, Guadalete, and Barbate.
Flowing to the Mediterranean are the Guadiaro, Guadalhorce, Guadalmedina, Guadalfeo, Andarax (also known as the Almer a) and Almanzora.
Of these, the Guadalquivir is the longest in Andalusia and fifth longest on the Iberian peninsula, at 657 k.
Andalusia consists of eight provinces.
Each of the Andalusian provinces bears the same name as its capital:
The Andalusians are the inhabitants of Andalusia of the southern region in Iberian Peninsula.
They are generally considered an ethnically distinct peoples because of the two of the most important markers of distinctiveness: their own language and an awareness of a presumed common origin.
Andalusian is said to be a distinct dialect of Spanish, although it is debatable, according to the nationalists.
The Andalusians have a rich culture which includes the famous flamenco style of music and dance, even though it was adopted by the Spanish gypsies who have changed it and monopolized into their own culture.
Abigail is a feminine given name.
The name is from the Hebrew name Avigail, which indicates "father rejoice".
The name can be shortened to Abbie or Abby.
People with the name include Abigail Breslin, Abigail Adams and Abbie Cornish.
The shorthand Abby was used for several Atlantic hurricanes in the 1960s.
The State of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, also called Azad Kashmir is a self governing region of Pakistan.
Together with Gilgit Baltistan it makes up Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
In terms of land area it is bigger than Trinidad and Tobago but smaller than Brunei.
Gilgit Baltistan is to the north, while the Indian occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir is to the east which is the region of dispute between Pakistan and India.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is west of it, and the Pakistani province of Punjab is south of it.
The capital city of Azad Kashmir is Muzaffarabad.
Azad Jammu and Kashmir has an area of 5,134 mi (13,297 km).
The inhabitants of this region are Kashmiri citizens of ethnic Punjabi and Pahari origin.
About 4 million people live there.
Azad Kashmir is a self-governing state under Pakistan.
It has its own elected president, prime minister, legislature, high court, emblem and official flag.
However, the highest body in the state is the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Council.
This council has six members from the government of Azad Kashmir (including the President and the Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir) and five members from the government of Pakistan, including the President of Pakistan who is the chairman\/chief executive of the council.
Azad Kashmir is administratively divided into three divisions which, in turn, are divided into ten districts.
The Government of Azad Kashmir and Jammu is based in Muzaffarabad, the interim state capital of the Azad Kashmir disputed territory.
The state is divided into three divisions.
The divisions are further divided into districts.
There are 10 districts.
The northern part of Azad Jammu and Kashmir encompasses the lower area of the Himalayas, including Jamgarh Peak (4734 m).
However, Hari Parbat peak in Neelum Valley is the highest peak in the state.
Fertile, green, mountainous valleys are characteristic of Azad Kashmir 's geography, making it one of the most beautiful regions of the subcontinent.
The region receives rainfall in both the winter and the summer.
Muzaffarabad and Pattan are among the wettest areas of Pakistan.
Throughout most of the region, the average rainfall exceeds 1400 mm, with the highest average rainfall occurring near Muzaffarabad (around 1800 mm).
During the summer season, monsoon floods of the rivers Jhelum and Leepa are common due to extreme rains and snow melting.
The Arabian Sea is a sea between Arabian Peninsula and the Indian peninsula.
It covers around 4,600,000, km.
The Arabian Sea one of the warmest seas.
Aspartame (also known as E951 or NutraSweet) is an artificial sweetener.
It was discovered in 1965 by James M. Schlatter.
It can be used to replace some kinds of sugar.
It is not based on sugars.
It is not like saccharin.
Asexual reproduction is reproduction without sex.
In this form of reproduction, a single organism or cell makes a copy of itself.
The genes of the original and its copy will be the same, except for rare mutations.
They are clones.
The main process of asexual reproduction is mitosis.
This type of reproduction is common among some single-cell organisms, for example, amoeba.
Many plants also reproduce asexually.
Some organisms like bacteria reproduce using binary fission.
They split in two, so one bacterium becomes two bacteria.
This always leads to daughter cells, and the offspring will be identical to the parent.
Budding is similar to binary fission, but it is used by plants and some animals, which can not simply split in half as bacteria can.
It is when a small part of a plant or animal breaks off and then, while they are separated from their "mother", they start to grow until both the "parent" and the "offspring" are the same size and both are capable of budding again.
This may happen many more times.
Fungi (for example, mushrooms) produce spores, which may be asexual or sexual.
The asexual spores have the genetic material inside, which allows them to make a whole new organism identical to its parent.
They are produced by mitosis.
Different fungi make different kinds of asexual spores, conidia, oidia, and pycniospores.
The shape and color of the spores can be helpful to identify the species of fungus.
In organic chemistry, an alkene, olefin, or olefine is an unsaturated chemical compound containing at least one carbon-to-carbon double bond.
The simplest alkenes, with only one double bond, no rings, and no other functional groups, are hydrocarbons with the general formula CnH2n.
Aromatic compounds are often drawn as cyclic alkenes, but their structure and properties are different and they are not considered to be alkenes.
The double bond in the middle makes them more reactive because the molecule is not saturated.
An alkene 's unsaturation means that it will take the color out of bromine.
The names of alkenes always end with - ene.
The physical properties of alkenes are comparable with those of alkanes.
The main differences between the two are that the acidity levels of alkenes are much higher than the ones in alkanes.
The physical state depends on molecular mass (gases from ethene to butene - liquids from pentene onwards).
The simplest alkenes, ethene, propene and butene are gases.
Linear alkenes of approximately five to sixteen carbons are liquids, and higher alkenes are waxy solids.
An alkyne is a molecule that has a triple bond between two carbon atoms.
They have general formula CnH2n-2.
They are also called acetylenes.
The smallest alkyne is acetylene, also called ethyne.
Alkynes are hydrophobic: this means they dissolve well in organic solvents but not in water.
Alkynes are more reactive than usual hydrocarbons.
For example, they are more reactive than alkenes in many reactions.
If the alkyne is at the end of a molecule, it is easy to remove the proton with a strong base.
Then, the alkyne can be used in addition reactions.
For example, it can be added to a ketone.
Alkynes are also easy to reduce to double bonds.
They can be made into both trans and cis double bonds.
Alkynes are also used a lot in pericyclic reactions.
Alkynes have a 180 degrees angle between the two carbon atoms.
For this reason, they do not like to be in a cyclic compound.
Some examples of alkynes are shown below.
AbiWord is a free word processor that can be downloaded for free, it is open source and is much smaller in size than a proprietary alternative, Microsoft Word.
It is available for FreeBSD, Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and QNX.
Its mascot is Abi the ant.
It is much smaller than many other commercial word-processors of its time, only using about 15Mb on a computer 's hard drive under Microsoft Windows.
It is easy to use.
Parallel ATA is a way to connect storage devices, such as Hard disks, solid-state drives, and CD-ROM drives inside personal computers.
The standard is maintained by X3\/INCITS committee T13.
It used to be called Advanced Technology Attachment with Packet Interface (ATA\/ATAPI).
ATA\/ATAPI is the result of a long history of development.
It is an evolution of the AT Attachment Interface, which was itself evolved in several stages from Western Digital 's original Integrated Drive Electronics interface.
As a result, many near-synonyms for ATA\/ATAPI and its previous incarnations exist, including abbreviations such as IDE which are still in common informal use.
With the market introduction of Serial ATA in 2003, the original ATA was retroactively renamed Parallel ATA (PATA).
Parallel ATA standards allow cable lengths up to only 18 inches (46 centimeters).
Because of this length limit the technology normally appears as an internal computer storage interface.
For many years ATA provided the most common and the least expensive interface for this application.
As of 2007, it has largely been replaced by Serial ATA (SATA) in new systems.
The Atari 2600 is a video game console.
It was first released in the United States in October 1977.
The Atari 2600 uses game cartridges which can be changed in and out to change games, which was a new idea in video games at the time.
Before the 2600, people had to buy a different system for each game they wanted to play.
Over 30 million Atari 2600 consoles were sold.
While Atari designed their console, they code-named it Stella.
When released in 1977, they called it the Video Computer System (VCS for short).
There was also a version that was sold at Sears called the Sears Video Arcade.
It was not called the Atari 2600 until the Atari 5200 released in 1982.
The 2600 is called this because that is the part number the company used to tell the difference in versions.
When the Atari 2600 came out, it usually came with two joystick controllers, a pair of paddle controllers, and a game cartridge.
There were initially nine games available at launch, featuring Combat (packaged with the console), Air-Sea Battle, Basic Math, Blackjack, Indy 500, Star Ship, Street Racer, Surround, and Video Olympics.
The 2600 originally sold for $ 199.
When the Atari 2600 was released nine games were available.
Those games were Combat (which came with the console), Air-Sea Battle, Basic Math, Blackjack, Indy 500, Star Ship, Street Racer, Surround, and Video Olympics.
Later more games came out, including Pac-Man, Missile Command and Space Invaders.
The best-selling Atari 2600 game was Pac-Man, which sold 7 million copies.
Combat was chosen to be included in the box with the Atari 2600.
It contained 27 games in one cartridge.
Each game involved tanks, bi-planes, or jets.
Space Invaders began as an intensely popular Japanese arcade game.
In 1980 a version of the game was released for the Atari 2600.
The pixelated aliens from this game are still used as a popular symbol for video games today.
Pac-Man began as an arcade game developed by Namco.
In 1982 a version was released for the Atari 2600.
It sold the most copies of any game released for the Atari 2600 (7 million copies).
Despite this, the game was not popular with critics and consumers, because of the major differences in gameplay between the 2600 version and the arcade version.
See List of Atari 2600 Games for a bigger list of games.
In 1980 the Atari 2600 was at the middle of an important development in video games, the beginning of third-party developers for console video games.
In 1980 a group of four dissatisfied Atari employees founded the company Activision, who then released four games: Dragster, Fishing Derby, Checkers, and Boxing.
This was an important moment in video game history as now every video game console on the market depends on some third-party game support.
Today those who want to play the games designed for the 2600 do not have to try to find the original console and cartridge as many of the games have been recreated in video game emulators.
One such emulator, Stella, will function on most any operating system.
After downloading this emulator users can download games from other websites and use this program to play them.
In 1986, a cheaper version of the Atari 2600 was released.
Some people called this the Atari 2600 Junior.
It was smaller than the original version.
This Atari cost $ 50.
The Atari 5200 SuperSystem, or simply the Atari 5200, was a video game console which came out in 1982.
It was made by Atari Inc. and was supposed to replace the popular Atari 2600.
Atari wanted the 5200 to compete with the Intellivision, but it competed more closely with the ColecoVision.
The 5200 was based on Atari Inc. 's 400\/800 computers.
Even though the internal hardware was almost identical, the software was not.
Design mistakes meant that the 5200 had problems with its use.
These problems made it a poor seller.
The game 's Atari 400-based design made for a design which Atari Inc. could quickly build and sell.
While it was being designed, the Atari 5200 called the "Atari Video System X - Advanced Video Computer System."
Atari protected the design with a codename, "Pam," after a female employee at Atari.
A rumor said that "Pam" or "PAM" actually stood for "Personal Arcade Machine."
This was because most games for the system were based on existing arcade games.
Actual working Atari Video System X machines, whose hardware is 100 % identical to the Atari 5200 do exist, but they are extremely rare.
The first 1982 release had four controller ports, where nearly all other systems of the day had only two.
The 5200 also featured a very special new controller with an analog joystick, numeric keypad, two fire buttons on both sides of the controller and game function keys for Start, Pause, and Reset.
Another special thing was the first automatic TV switchbox.
Older game systems which attached to a television 's antenna leads required the user to slide a switch on the adapter by hand.
This RF box was also where the game 's power supply connected in a unique dual power\/television signal setup similar to the RCA Studio II 's.
A single cable coming out of the 5200 plugged into the switch box and was used for both electricity and the television signal.
The 1983 version of the Atari 5200 has two controller ports instead of four.
Atari changed back to the a simpler separate power supply and manual RF switch.
It also had changes in the cartridge port to allow for the Atari 2600 adapter released that year.
While the adapter was only made to work on the two-port version, modifications can be made to the four-port to make it compatible.
In fact, towards the end of the four-port model 's production run, there were a limited number of consoles produced which included these modifications.
These consoles can be identified by an asterisk in their serial number.
The prototypes used to design the controller 's electrical systems used a so-called "yoke and gimbal" taken from a radio control system used to fly model airplanes.
This simple design gave very nice control and was highly reliable.
The actual controllers sold with the game were quite different and a great disappointment to the development teams.
The design of the analog joystick, which used a weak rubber boot rather than springs to center the stick, proved to be hard to use and unreliable.
Another major flaw of the controllers was that the design did not provide smooth control through the travel of the stick.
This made controlling games awkward.
The controllers did, however, include a pause button.
This was a novelty at the time, but would become standard on almost all future game systems.
Replacement joysticks were also released by other manufacturers.
Atari Inc. released the Pro-Line Trak-Ball controller for the system, which was used for titles such as Centipede or Defender.
A paddle controller and an updated self-centering version of the original controller were also being worked on, but never made it to market.
The controller was ranked the 10th worst video game controller by IGN editor Craig Harris.
Although the Atari 5200 's insides were very much like that of the 400\/800 home computers, the differences were enough so that games designed for one would not run directly on the other.
One of the most obvious differences was the 5200 's lack of a keyboard.
However, there were several others:
Atari Corp. 's later XE Games System revisited the idea of a console based on the 400\/800 hardware.
However, as this was essentially just a 65XE computer with a keyboard which could be removed, it was able to run most of the home computer titles directly.
The Atari 5200 could not run software for the still-popular Atari 2600.
An adapter was later released in 1983 allowing it to play all Atari 2600 games, using the more reliable controllers from the 2600.
Another problem was the lack of attention that Atari Inc. gave to the console; most of its attention went to the older Atari 2600.
It faced an uphill battle competing with the ColecoVision 's head start and a video game market which was beginning to fade.
At one point, Atari Inc. planned on developing a smaller, less expensive version of the Atari 5200 which would have gotten rid of the controller storage bin.
Code-named the "Atari 5100" (a.k.a. "Atari 5200 Jr."), only a few fully-working prototype Atari 5100s were made before the project was canceled.
On May 21, 1984, during a press conference at which the Atari 7800 was introduced, company executives revealed that the 5200 had been discontinued.
Total sales of the 5200 were reportedly in excess of 1 million units.
Note: These descriptions are very technical.
They are meant to be understood by people with lots of computer experience.
The Atari 7800 is a 8-bit video game console.
It was competing with the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Master System.
It was Atari 's third-to-last attempt to create another video game system that would be a successor to the Atari 2600.
It was a short-lived success.
The Atari 7800 is backwards compatible with Atari 2600 games, but not Atari 5200 games.
The Atari 7800 is also compatible with Atari 2600 controllers, such as the Atari Paddle controller and the Atari Joystick controller.
The Atari Jaguar was a video game machine released by Atari in 1993.
It was not a successful product and was Atari 's last console.
It also had a CD-based accessory called the Atari Jaguar CD.
The Atari Jaguar was sold at about the same time as the PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64, but it was not very popular as it did not have as many popular games as these other consoles.
The graphics of Atari Jaguar games look a lot like the Sega Genesis, Sega Mega Drive or SNES games as it did not run 3D games as well as the Sega Saturn or PlayStation.
The Atari Lynx is a handheld video game console made by Atari.
It was released in September 1989.
The Atari Lynx was the first handheld video game system to have color graphics.
It was also the first to have a backlit display, which allows it to be played in a dark room.
The system failed due to low sales.
It did not sell as well as Nintendo 's Game Boy and Sega 's Game Gear.
The Atari Lynx had a new design model called the Atari Lynx 2 which was a smaller version of the Atari Lynx.
Ahimsa (also ahi s, ahinsa, Sanskrit:) is a Sanskrit word which means "non-violence or "non-injury".
The practice of ahimsa is an important aspect of religions like Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.
A person who practices ahimsa generally eats vegetarian foods.
A religious person who practices ahimsa does not take part in animal sacrifice.
In twentieth century, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Martin Luther King each followed a path of Ahimsa, though in different ways.
They struggled without fighting, while asking for the rights of their followers.
The concept of ahi s forms the base of Jainism.
In Jainism, both homeless ascetic and householder (r vaka) have to follow five major vows (vrata).
Ascetics observe these vows more strictly.
In Jainism, killing any living being out of passions is considered ` hi s ' (injury) and abstaining from such act is ` ahi s ' (noninjury or nonviolence).
Jainism prescribes non-consumption of wine, flesh, honey, and the five udumbara fruits (Gular, Anjeera, Banyan, Peepal, and Pakar, all belonging to the fig class).
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (Russian:, May 21 1921 December 14 1989), was a Soviet nuclear physicist.
He was also a well-known dissident and human rights activist.
Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union.
Sakharov was a very clever scientist.
He graduated from college during World War II but was kept out of the army to do scientific research for the government.
Sakharov helped the Soviets develop the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s.
But he also made many peaceful uses of nuclear power.
The bomb he had helped make started Sakharov to be a dissident.
He argued with Nikita Khrushchev against unneeded nuclear tests.
He was afraid that these tests put people 's lives and healths in danger without need.
He began asking, too, for more freedom of speech.
The government removed him from his secret work and his special job as a scientist.
Sakharov began to see what unhappy lives most Soviet citizens led.
Persecution only made him speak out more.
He asked for more freedom of religion and defended others who had spoken out and been put into jail.
The secret police began to watch him and to make files of information against him.
After Sakharov criticized activities of the USSR 's Arab allies, Arab terrorists came to his apartment and held him, his wife, and his stepson hostage for an hour.
"Do you want to kill us?"
cried Sakharov 's wife.
"We can do worse things than kill you," they replied.
After the terrorists left without doing anything, Sakharov tried to tell the police about it.
The police did not really care.
The only thing that protected Sakharov was many people knew about him outside the Soviet Union.
The Communists were afraid that if something happened to him, it would give the world a bad image of the USSR.
But when Sakharov criticized the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, they became very angry and took him to the city of Gorky.
There he was watched by the police outside his apartment.
He tried to go on a hunger strike, not eating anything.
The Soviet Union was afraid he might die, so they force-fed him (forcing him to eat).
Sakharov kept on asking for glasnost (openness).
In 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev, who agreed with Sakharov and thought there should be glasnost, let the dissident scientist return home.
Sakharov continued to call for reform, and in December 1989, he died, at the age of 68..
But two years later his wish became true with the dissolution of the Soviet Union..
Astrobiology is the study of life in outer space.
The field of astrobiology looks for conditions necessary for life, like liquid water, a good temperature, or the presence of oxygen.
Some possible places to find life in the solar system are Europa and Ganymede, moons of Jupiter, or Titan and Enceladus, moons of Saturn.
These places may have liquid water.
They are may be too cold to support life on their surfaces, but if they have liquid water, the water must be warm enough to support life.
Astrobiologists suggest that there may be a liquid water ocean under its surface.
An air show is an event at which aviators display their flying skills and the capabilities of their aircraft to spectators in aerobatics.
Air shows without aerobatic displays, having only aircraft displayed parked on the ground, are called "static air shows".
The anthropic principle says that the universe is how it is because it must allow for the eventual creation of us, as observers.
The anthropic principle was thought of in 1974, by the astronomer Brandon Carter.
Douglas Adams explains this concept quite well using a puddle as an analogy: If you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ` This is an interesting world I find myself in an interesting hole I find myself in fits me rather neatly, does n't it?
In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"
There are two different kinds of anthropic principles: the weak anthropic principle, and the strong anthropic principle.
Weak anthropic principle: "We must be prepared to take into account the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers."
Strong anthropic principle: "The Universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be such as to admit the creations of observers within it at some stage."
Akihabara is a district of Chiyoda, Tokyo.
It is known for its stores which feature electronics and anime products.
It is also famous for Yodobashi Camera.
In 2009, Akihabara was recognized as one of the 100 Landscapes of Japan which best show contemporary Japan and its culture in the Heisei period..
Its name is often shortened to Akiba in Japan.
Akihabara is a major shopping area for electronic, computer, anime, games and otaku goods.
In this place, new and used items can be gotten.
New items are mostly to be found on the main street, Ch d ri, with many kinds of used items found in the back streets of Soto Kanda 3-ch me
As mentioned, Akihabara is famous as electric town.
After World War II, a black market at Kanda developed.
And what began as a host of electrical stores selling radio goods or some electronic component has today come to be known as Electric Town.
Consumer electronics such as a TV or washing machine is one of the products sold in Akihabara for a long time.
These days, because of intense price competition, mid or small-scale electrical appliance shops have decreased and large retail electrical appliances store came to be outstanding.
However, the shops treating a lot of consumer electrionics for foreign countries are prosperous by foreign tourists.
The Aragonese language is spoken in the north of Aragon.
The Aragonese is similar to other near languages: Spanish language, Catalan and Occitan.
Also there are a lot of words in Aragonese similar to Basque words.
About 10,000 people speak Aragonese.
Aragonese is a Romance language.
Aerodynamics means studying how air (or gas) travels around something moving through it.
Streamlining to reduce drag in vehicles is a major field in aerodynamics.
Aircraft design is another.
The study of gases that are not in motion is called aerostatics.
Aerodynamics comes from Aero (Air), and Dynamic (Moving).
Antidifferentiation (also called indefinite integration) is a part of mathematics.
It is the opposite of differentiation.
Antidifferentiation is integration with no limits (which is why it is called indefinite).
The answer to an antiderivative is an equation.
(This only works if the parts are being added or taken away.)
If you want to integrate a bracket like, we need to do it a different way.
It is called the chain rule.
It is like simple integration.
It only works if the in the bracket has a power of 1 (it is linear) like or (not or).
The Antigonid dynasty was a Macedonian dynasty.
The kings were part of the family of Alexander the Great 's general Antigonus I Monophthalmus ("the One-eyed").
The dynasty ended when the Roman Empire conquered the area after the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects is a book written by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792.
Today, it is known as one of the first books about feminism.
In the 18th century, some people thought that women should not get a formal education.
Wollstonecraft wrote this work as a reply to them.
She says that women should have an education that fits their position in society.
She says women are very important to the nation, because it is women who usually educate their children.
She says that an educated woman can also be companions to their husbands, rather than just uneducated wives.
Wollstonecraft does not see women as ornaments to society, or property to be traded in marriage.
She argues that they are human beings, and therefore deserve the same basic rights men have.
In 1791, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-P rigord wrote a report to the French National Assembly.
In this report, he argued, that women should only receive a very basic education.
Wollstonecraft used this report to write her reply.
She also led an attack on the sexual double standards the society of the day had.
She also indicted men for encouraging women to indulge in lots of emotion.
Wollstonecraft wrote the Rights of Woman quickly so that she could directly respond to ongoing events; she wanted to write a more thoughtful second volume, but died before doing so.
Wollstonecraft calls for equality between the sexes in particular areas of life, such as morality, but she does not write that men and women are equal in all things.
This has made it difficult to classify Wollstonecraft as a modern feminist as they believe men and women are equal in all things.
She could not use either the word or the concept of feminism, because they were only developed later.
Today, many people believe that her work was not received well, but this may be wrong.
People who believe this also believe that Wollstonecraft was as reviled during her lifetime as she became after the publication of William Godwin 's Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798).
However, the Rights of Woman was actually well-received when it was first published in 1792.
One biographer has called it "perhaps the most original book of (Wollstonecraft 's) century".
An Afghan Hound is a dog from Afghanistan.
Other names for them are Kuchi Hound, T z, Balkh Hound, Baluchi Hound, Barutzy Hound, Shalgar Hound, Kabul Hound, Galanday Hound, or sometimes, incorrectly, African Hound.
This is a very old dog breed, believed to have existed for thousands of years.
It is a type of sighthound, a hunting dog which uses its eyes to spot and chase small animals, like rabbits.
They are closely related to other sighthounds, like the Greyhound.
Afghan Hounds can run very quickly, and can run short distances at up to 75 kilometers per hour.
Nowadays, they are kept as pets, compete as show dogs, and participate in a dog sport called lure coursing, which is similar to rabbit hunting.
Afghan Hounds have hair instead of fur, from the top of their legs and down to their toes.
It can be many colors, including black, brown, white and gray.
They often have a dark mask on their face: the hairs on their snout are black.
Afghan Hounds that compete in dog shows are required to have very long hair, but many owners who keep them for pets choose to cut their hair short.
Their face is long and skinny, with ears that drop down on the sides of their head.
The Afghan Hound is tall and thin, with a long tail that curls and is held high up in the air.
The Afghan Hound is one of the most difficult types of dogs to train.
Unlike many kinds of dogs, they do not like to listen to commands, and would rather make their own choices.
In The Intelligence of Dogs, the Afghan Hound came in last place for "working intelligence."
This does not mean that the Afghan Hound is stupid; it means that it is easier to encourage other dogs to follow instructions than the Afghan Hound.
They like to run, and because they can run very fast, they need to be kept on a leash or in a fenced area.
Fences need to be very high to keep the Afghan Hound from escaping, because they can easily jump several meters in the air.
Afghan Hounds can not live in the same house as a cat or any other small animal, as they will try to chase or hunt it.
This is a quiet dog for indoors, but needs to have regular exercise and play time.
They need to have the chance to run in a safe, fenced area at least once a week.
If an Afghan gets bored, it can tear things up.
This is a friendly dog that is not shy with people or other dogs.
Many people who own Afghan Hounds say that they are "clownish" and silly, because they are very playful.
Afghan Hounds are known to be very sensitive to injuries and complain a lot when they have them.
Afghan Hounds are mostly very healthy dogs, but do get some diseases more often than others.
Because their tails are very long and thin, they can hurt them quite easily.
These dogs are very sensitive to anesthetic, so if they are getting an operation, the vet must be very careful with the amount of anesthetic given.
Their eyes can develop cataracts, which will make the dog blind if they are not removed.
Acrylic paint is a fast-drying paint containing pigment in an acrylic polymer emulsion.
Acrylic paints can be diluted with water, but are water-resistant when dry.
Depending on how much the paint is diluted (with water) or modified with acrylic gels, media, or pastes, the finished acrylic painting can resemble a watercolor or an oil painting, or have its own unique appearance.
Acrylic paint can give a much brighter, more vivid color than oil paints.
It has been much used in modern art, and is cheaper than oil paint, which is rather an expensive material.
When dry, acrylic paint usually can not be removed from a solid surface.
In 1934, a German chemical company created acrylic resin.
It was first used in the 1940s.
Acrylics were commercially available as paint for artists in the 1950s.
Later, many advances were made to acrylic paint as more and more people began using it.
where is the moment of inertia (resistance to angular acceleration or deceleration, equal to the product of the mass and the square of its perpendicular distance from the axis of rotation); is the angular velocity.
Angular momentum is a conserved quantity an object 's angular momentum stays constant unless an external torque acts on it.
In chemistry and physics, the atomic theory explains how our understanding of the atom has changed over time.
Atoms were once thought to be the smallest pieces of matter.
The first idea of the atom came from the Greek philosopher Democritus.
A lot of the ideas in the modern theory came from John Dalton, a British chemist and physicist.
The theory applies to solids, liquids and gases, but it does not apply in quite the same way to plasmas or neutron stars.
Democritus thought that if you cut something in half again and again, you would at last have to stop.
He said that this last piece of matter could not be cut any smaller.
Democritus called these small pieces of matter atoms, which means "indivisible".
He thought that atoms would last forever, never change and could not be destroyed.
Democritus thought that there was nothing between the atoms and that everything around us could be explained if we could understand how atoms worked.
Dalton defined the atom as the basic unit of an element that can take part in a chemical combination.
In 1850, Sir William Crookes constructed a ` discharge tube ', that is a glass tube with the air removed and metallic electrodes at its ends, connected to a high voltage source.
When creating a vacuum in the tube, a light discharge can be seen that goes from the cathode (negatively-charged electrode) to the anode (positively-charged electrode).
Crookes named the emission ` cathode rays '.
After the cathode ray experiments, Sir Joseph John Thomson established that the emitted ray was formed by negative charges, because they were attracted by the positive pole.
Thomson knew that the atoms were electrically neutral, but he established that, for this to occur, an atom should have the same quantity of negative and positive charges.
The negative charges were named electrons (e -).
According to the assumptions established about the atoms neutral charge, Thomson proposed the first atomic model, that was described as a positively-charged sphere in which the electrons were inlaid (with negative charges).
It is known as the plum pudding model.
In 1906, Robert Millikan determined that the electrons had a Coulomb (C) charge of -1.6 \* 10 19, something that allowed calculation of its mass as tiny, equal to 9.109 \* 10 31 kg.
In the same time, experiments by Eugene Goldstein in 1886 with cathode discharge tubes allowed him to establish that the positive charges had a mass of 1,6726 \* 10 27 kg and an electrical charge of +1,6 \* 10 19 C. Lord Ernest Rutherford later named these positively charged particles protons
In 1910, the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford suggested that the positive charges of the atom were found mostly in its center, in the nucleus, and the electrons (e -) around it.
Rutherford showed this when he used an alpha radiation source (from helium) to hit the very thin gold sheets, surrounded by a Zinc sulphide lampshade that produced visible light when hit by alpha emissions.
This experiment was called the Geiger Marsden experiment or the Gold Foil Experiment
By this stage the main elements of the atom were clear, plus the discovery that atoms of an element may occur in isotopes.
Isotopes vary in the number of neutrons present in the nucleus.
Although this model was well understood, modern physics has developed further, and present-day ideas can not be made easy to understand.
Some idea of present-day atomic physics can be got from the links in the table below.
Atoms are not elementary particles, because they are made of subatomic particles like protons and neutrons.
Protons and neutrons are also not elementary particles because they are made up of even smaller particles called quarks joined together by other particles called gluons (because they "glue" the quarks together in the atom).
Quarks are elementary because quarks can not be broken down any further.
Aung San Suu Kyi (born 19 June 1945, Yangon, Burma) was elected in 1990 as the Prime Minister of Burma.
The Burmese military, who have governed Burma since 1962, did not let her political party, the National League for Democracy join the government.
Suu Kyi was arrested and forced her to stay in her house and not have any visitors.
Since then she has brought democracy to her country using nonviolence.
She is the leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma and a famous prisoner.
Suu Kyi won the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize in 1990, and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.
In 1992, she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru peace prize by India for her culture of personality.
After elections in Burma in 2010, she was released from house arrest in November 2010.
Suu Kyi was not allowed to take part in the 2010 election as the government banned anyone who had been arrested.
She is sometimes called Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Daw is not part of her name, but a title for older women.
This name shows respect for her.
Aung San Suu Kyi was the third child in her family.
Her name "Aung San" comes from her father, who is also named Aung San; "Kyi" comes from her mother; and "Suu" comes from her grandmother.
Her father helped to make Burma independent from the United Kingdom in 1947.
He was killed in the same year.
She grew up with her mother, Khin Kyi, and two brothers, Aung San Lin and Aung San Oo in Yangon.
Her favorite brother, Aung San Lin, drowned in a pool accident when Suu Kyi was eight.
Her other brother lives in San Diego, California and is an American citizen.
Suu Kyi went to Catholic schools for much of her childhood in Burma.
She learned English in school.
Khin Kyi became famous as a politician.
She became the Burmese ambassador to India in 1960.
Aung San Suu Kyi went to college in India at the Lady Shri Ram College for Women in New Delhi.
She continued her education at St Hugh 's College, Oxford, and learned about philosophy, politics, and economics.
She also went to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in the 1980s.
She moved to New York and worked at the United Nations.
In 1972, Aung San Suu Kyi married Michael Aris (1946-1999), a professor of Tibetan culture who lived in Bhutan.
She had met Aris when they were both students at Oxford.
In 1973, she gave birth to her first son, Alexander, in London; and in 1977 she had her second son, Kim.
Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to take care of her sick mother.
That year, the long-time leader of the socialist ruling party, General Nay Win, stopped being a politician.
Many Burmese people wanted a democracy after the military ruled the country for several years.
She admired Mohandas Gandhi 's philosophy of nonviolence.
She was also inspired by Buddhism.
Aung San Suu Kyi tried to work for democracy and helped make the National League for Democracy on 27 September 1988.
She was offered freedom if she left the country, but she refused.
She was arrested in 1989 and placed in prison in 1990.
This was after an election in which her party, then National League for Democracy, won, but was not allowed to be in charge of the country.
Between 1990 and 2010, she was always in prison or at her home, which is called house arrest.
Burma released her in November 2010.
This made many countries and groups around the world very happy.
She was then arrested for violating her house arrest.
At all times, her dedication to her beliefs is evident.
Her morals and beliefs are kept closely to her and used whenever confronted by a situation.
Asked what democratic models Myanmar could look to, she said: "We have many, many lessons to learn from various places, not just the Asian countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia and Indonesia."
She also cited "the eastern European countries, which made the transition from communist autocracy to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s, and the Latin American countries, which made the transition from military governments.
"And we can not of course forget South Africa, because although it was n't a military regime, it was certainly an authoritarian regime."
She added: "We wish to learn from everybody who has achieved a transition to democracy, and also... our great strong point is that, because we are so far behind everybody else, we can also learn which mistakes we should avoid."
Advertising is how a company encourages people to buy their products, services or ideas.
An advertisement (or "ad" for short) is anything that draws good attention towards these things.
It is usually designed by an advertising agency for an identified sponsor, and performed through a variety of media.
Ads appear on television, as well as radio, newspapers, magazines and as billboards in streets and cities.
They try to get people to buy their products, by showing them the good rather than bad of their products.
Advertisers influence our emotions by techniques that include stereotyping and targeting the audience according to who we are.
Emotions are influenced by things such as this our occupation, beliefs, personality, self esteem, lifestyle, relationships, friends, how we look and what we wear.
Advertisers use methods that attract attention.
For example, to make a burger look tasty in advertising, it may be painted with brown food colors, sprayed with waterproofing to prevent it from going soggy and sesame seeds may be super-glued in place.
Advertising can bring new customers and more sales for the business.
It can be expensive but can help make a business make more money.
Commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia.
Lost and found advertising on papyrus was common in Ancient Greece and Rome.
Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America.
The tradition of wall painting can be traced back to Indian rock art paintings that date back to 4000 BC.
Londoner Thomas J. Barratt (1841 1914) has been called "the father of modern advertising".
He worked for the Pears Soap company, eventually becoming its Chairman.
Barratt created an advertising campaign for the company products.
It used targeted slogans, images and phrases.
One of his slogans, "Good morning.
Have you used Pears ' soap?"
was famous in its day and into the 20th century.
Barratt introduced many of the crucial ideas that lie behind successful advertising and these were widely circulated in his day.
He constantly stressed the importance of a strong and exclusive brand image for Pears and of emphasizing the product 's availability through saturation campaigns.
He also understood the importance of constantly reevaluating the market for changing tastes and mores, stating in 1907 that "tastes change, fashions change, and the advertiser has to change with them.
An idea that was effective a generation ago would fall flat, stale, and unprofitable if presented to the public today.
Not that the idea of today is always better than the older idea, but it is different it hits the present taste."
As the economy expanded across the world during the 19th century, advertising grew alongside.
In the United States, the success of this advertising format eventually led to the growth of mail-order advertising.
Very important was the growth of mass media, with mass circulation illustrated newspapers in the later 19th century followed by film, radio and television.
Advertising happens in many different ways.
Many products are advertised on television, although not all channels permit advertising.
The advertisements usually appear during breaks between a television show.
They are usually for products, other television shows or movies and are not normally much longer than 30 seconds.
Some radio stations have audio advertisements that play between programs.
An advertisement for a movie is called a trailer.
It shows a short collection of clips from the movie, and shows the date it will be released in cinemas.
Advertising also takes place on websites.
These may appear as "banner ads" or "popups".
They are often still images or flash animations.
The owner of the website will get money when a user clicks on the advertisement.
Sometimes they will get a percentage of the money if they buy a product.
Billboards advertise products on highways and city streets.
These may simply be freestanding billboards or may be part of street furniture such as a bus shelter.
Buses and taxis are often covered in adverts, while budget airlines sometimes allow advertising inside their planes.
Adverts also appear in newspapers, magazines and sports programs.
Many stadiums have adverts set around them.
Sports teams, tournaments, television programs and public events may have a sponsor who is the main or sometimes only advertiser.
Advertisers use many different techniques to get people to notice their adverts, often using deliberately shocking or provocative images.
Once they have managed to make people notice their advert, they need to ` sell ' the product or brand.
They may try to make the product look appealing, however often advertisers use humor in such a way that get people to remember the brand without actually promoting the product.
Poor adverts can damage sales or spoil a brands identity.
Advertising is often strictly regulated, for instance in the United Kingdom it is illegal to advertise tobacco, except in the shop where it is sold and this is also restricted.
In France it is illegal to advertise alcohol, meaning that when many European football teams play in France, they can not play in their usual shirts as breweries often advertise on sports shirts.
It is also illegal to advertise on some television channels, the BBC in the United Kingdom and RTE in the Republic of Ireland are not allowed to permit advertising and instead make their revenue from selling a compulsory television licence.
Andrzej Sapkowski (born June 21, 1948 in d) is a well-known Polish fantasy writer.
He is probably one of the most popular Polish writers today.
His best known work is The Witcher (Wied min) Saga (takes place in a fictional universe).
Before starting his career in the late 1980s, he worked in foreign trade.
An ammeter is a measuring tool used to measure the flow of electric current in a circuit.
The electric current is measured in amperes; for this reason, some people call the ammeters as ampmeters, by mistake.
It can measure ` resistance ' of a current, speed of a current and force of a current (the units used are ohms, amperes, and volts).
Anxiolytics are drugs that are used for the treatment of anxiety, and anxiety-related disorders.
The common drugs can be classified:
In addition to these drug classes, there are also certain plants that have such properties.
Many of the drugs listed above have side-effects.
For this reason, they are only available on prescription.
Certain forms of therapy have also been used to treat anxiety disorders.
Antipsychotic drugs or Neuroleptics are drugs that act on the central nervous system, and that usually have sedating properties.
The name neuroleptic was introduced in 1955, from the 1990s, the term antipsychotic is used more frequently.
Neuroleptics make the patient calm.
Today, they are mostly used for the treatment of psychosis, as it occurs in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
They can also be used to treat depression and mood swings.
Very strong antipsychotics can be combined with an opioid to produce a special analgesic; the patient will be conscious, but heavily sedated, and feel very little pain.
The main inventor of this drug was Andrew J. Smith whom at the time was 16 when he made it.
He created this drug that has saved hundreds of people with schizophrenia.
An amorphous solid does not have a definite geometric or crystalline shape.
It is a solid in which there is no long-term order in the positions of the atoms.
Most classes of solid materials can be found or prepared in an amorphous form.
For instance, common window glass is an amorphous ceramic, many polymers are amorphous, and even foods such as cotton candy are amorphous solids.
An amorphous solid is any noncrystalline solid in which the atoms and molecules are not organized in a definite lattice pattern.
Such solids include glass, plastic, and gel.
Solids and liquids are both forms of condensed matter; both are composed of atoms in close proximity to each other.
But their properties are, of course, enormously different.
While a solid material has both a well-defined volume and a well-defined shape, a liquid has a well-defined volume but a shape that depends on the shape of the container.
Stated differently, a solid exhibits resistance to shear stress while a liquid does not.
Externally applied forces can twist or bend or distort a solid s shape, but (provided the forces have not exceeded the solid s elastic limit) it springs back to its original shape when the forces are removed.
A liquid flows under the action of an external force; it does not hold its shape.
These macroscopic characteristics constitute the essential distinctions: a liquid flows, lacks a definite shape (though its volume is definite), and can not withstand a shear stress; a solid does not flow, has a definite shape, and exhibits elastic stiffness against shear stress.
A Wizard of Earthsea, written in 1968, is the first of a series of books that are written by Ursula K. Le Guin and set in the fantasy world called Earthsea.
The series is about a wizard named Ged.
This book won the 1979 Lewis Carroll Shelf Award.
A mini-series based on A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan was created on the Sci Fi Channel.
Le Guin has said that she was not happy with the mini-series.
Alex Lifeson, OC (born Aleksandar ivojinovi; August 27, 1953) is a Canadian musician.
He is best known as the guitarist and co-founder for the Canadian rock band Rush.
Lifeson has been a member of the band since 1968.
In Rush, Lifeson plays electric and acoustic guitars.
He also plays other instruments including: mandola, mandolin and bouzouki.
Along with his music career, Lifeson is part owner of a Toronto restaurant called "The Orbit Room."
He is also a licensed airplane pilot.
Artemis is a goddess in Greek mythology, and one of the Twelve Olympians.
She is the daughter of Zeus and Leto and the twin sister of Apollo.
She is the goddess of hunting, wild animals and the wilderness.
During the 5th century BC, Artemis became also known as the goddess of the moon, becoming one with the goddess Selene.
She is known as a goddess of childbirth as well because she helped Leto give birth to Apollo.
She is also known as the goddess who asked Zeus to remain chaste and unmarried.
She was also the patroness of Sparta the city-state where a the warriors came from in ancient Greece.
In Greek mythology, Artemis is the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo.
Leto had to find a place where she could give birth to the two.
This was because of a curse set by Hera, Zeus ' wife, because she was very angry with Zeus.
For this, Zeus raised an island that had been floating underwater and had not yet been touched by the sun 's rays.
The island was Delos.
Leto gave birth there, while grasping hold of a palm-tree.
Albinism is a condition some people and animals are born with.
This condition is caused by a lack of pigment (color) in their hair, eyes, and skin.
A person or animal with albinism is called an albino.
Many albino people prefer to be called a "person with albinism".
There are ten different types of albinism.
People with albinism can have white or light blonde hair.
They can have very pale skin.
Their eyes are blue, or rarely pink-ish.
People with albinism can have problems such as bad vision and getting sunburnt easily.
This is because people with albinism have less pigments in their eyes, skin and hair.
Albinism is rare in the United States.
One out of every 20,000 people in the United States has albinism.
There are about 15,945 people in the United States who have albinism.
Vision problems in albinism include nystagmus (irregular fast movements of the eyes), strabismus (where the eyes fail to balance) and refractory errors (like being near-sighted or far-sighted).
In most environments, Albino animals are more easily seen and so may be attacked by predators.
They lack the camouflage that the non-albino members of their species have.
Also, where color is a factor in mate selection, they may be at a disadvantage there, too.
Albinism is a hereditary condition.
It is usually inherited in a recessive pattern; it means, both parents have to give the albinism gene to a child to cause albinism.
Parents pass on pairs of genes to their children.
One of the pairs of genes is in charge of making melanin.
If both of these genes are flawed, then little or no pigment is made.
If only one gene if flawed then pigment can still be made.
Amr Abdul-Basset Abdul-Azeez Diab (, born 11 October 1961) is an Egyptian singer-songwriter.
Ana s Nin (February 1903 January 14, 1977) was a French novelist whose books were published into movies, including Henry & June (1990).
She was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris.
She later moved to the United States and died there of cancer in Los Angeles.
The Antarctic is the area around the Earth 's South Pole.
It is opposite the Arctic region which is around the North Pole.
The Antarctic includes the continent of Antarctica and the ices, waters and islands in the Southern Ocean.
Southeast Alaska, sometimes called the Alaska Panhandle is the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of Alaska.
It is west of the northern half of the Canadian province of British Columbia.
A lot of the panhandle is part of the Tongass National Forest, which is the biggest national forest in the United States.
This part of Alaska is known for its mild rainy climate and beautiful scenery.
Southeast Alaska is the end of the Inside Passage.
The Inside Passage a way to get to Alaska by boat or ship without having to go out in the open ocean.
It begins all the way down in Puget Sound in Washington state.
This was a way for native canoeists to get around.
Later during the gold-rush steam ships used it.
Today it is used by ferries and cruise ships.
The Panhandle has a land area of 35138 m. This is only 6.14 % of Alaska 's land area, but the Panhandle is bigger than Maine, and almost as big as the state of Indiana.
The 2000 census population of the Panhandle was 72,954 people.
About 42 % of them live in the city of Juneau.
There are lots of parks and forests in Southeast Alaska, and many islands.
The largest islands are, Chichagof Island, Admiralty Island, Baranof Island, and Prince of Wales Island.
On August 20, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt opened the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve, which became the Tongass National Forest later.
Southeast Alaska is a rain forest within what is called the Pacific temperate rain forest zone.
The most common trees are evergreens called the sitka spruce and the western hemlock.
Wildlife you might see on land there include brown bears, black bears, wolves, and deer.
In the ocean there are humpback whales, orcas, five species of salmon and many other kinds of fish.
Some of the birds in the area are Bald Eagles, and many kinds of gulls, ducks, and other seabirds and waterfowl.
The big cities in Southeast Alaska are Juneau, Ketchikan, and Sitka.
Some other towns are Petersburg, Wrangell, Angoon, Craig, Klawock and Skagway.
There are also many very small towns and villages, with less than 100 people in them.
Many tribes of Natives have lived in Southeast Alaska for a long time.
This biggest group are called the Tlingit people.
A long time ago another people called the Haida lived there.
Today people called the Tsimshian live there too.
The region is close to Seattle and the American Pacific Northwest and has a lot in common with that area.
A lot of people in Southeast Alaska work in commercial fishing or tourism.
Logging also used to be done a lot there.
Because of all the mountains, glaciers, and towns on islands in Southeastern Alaska, almost all the towns except Hyder, Skagway, and Haines have no roads that go to other places.
Airplanes and boats are the major means of transport.
The Alaska Marine Highway passes through Southeast Alaska.
The Alaska Interior covers most of the U.S. state 's territory.
It is largely wilderness.
Mountains include Mount McKinley (Denali) in the Alaska Range, the Wrangell Mountains, and the Ray Mountains.
The largest city in the interior is Fairbanks, which is Alaska 's second-largest city.
Other towns include North Pole, Eagle, Tok, Glennallen, Delta Junction, Nenana, Anderson, Healy and Cantwell.
Temperatures in Interior Alaska change a lot between the seasons.
Winter temperatures in Fairbanks are usually around 12 F (24 C) and summer temperatures are around 62 F (17 C).
Temperatures there can get as low as 65 F (54 C) in mid-winter, and as high as 99 F (37 C) in summer.
Both the highest and lowest temperature records for the state were set in the Interior, with 100 F (38 C) in Fort Yukon and 80 F (64 C) in Prospect Creek.
Temperatures within a given winter can ghange a lot also.
Long cold snaps can be followed by sudden warmth with temperatures above freezing.
this is because of changes in the wind.
Summers can be warm and dry for a long time.
This can make it easy for wildfires to start.
Weak thunderstorms can produce lightning that starts a fire.
These fires are often left to burn if they are far away from where people live.
The 2004 season had the most fires.
Over 6600000 a were burned.
The average annual precipitation in Fairbanks is 11.3 inches (28.7 cm).
Most of this is snow during the winter.
Most storms in the interior of Alaska originate in the Gulf of Alaska.
Most of these storms are blocked or weakened by passing over the mountains.
The months from May to July in the summer have no darkness at night.
They only have a twilight during the night hours.
The months of November to January are the other way around.
They have little daylight.
It is light for about 21 hours every day between May 10 and August 2.
It is light less than four hours each day between November 18 and January 24.
On clear winter nights, the aurora borealis, or "Northern lights" can often be seen dancing in the sky.
A lot of the ground in the Interior has permafrost, meaning that there is a layer of soil that is always frozen.
"And did those feet in ancient time" is a short poem by William Blake.
It comes in the introduction to a long poem called Milton: a Poem (1804).
Today it is best known as the hymn Jerusalem, sung to music written by C. Hubert H. Parry in 1916, more than a century after Blake had written the poem.
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England 's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God On England 's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear!
O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England 's green and pleasant land.
There is a legend that the young Jesus went to England with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, to England and visited Glastonbury.
The poem connects this legend to an idea in the Book of Revelation (3:12 and 21:2) describing a Second Coming in which Jesus builds a new Jerusalem.
Some Christians thought that a new Jerusalem would be like Heaven, somewhere of love and peace.
The poem asks if Jesus visited England and if Heaven was created in England.
Blake lived in the time of the early Industrial Revolution when there was a lot of poverty and misery.
Many people think the dark Satanic mills were the factories where many people worked in horrible conditions.
This contrasts with the country with its beauty and clean air: England s green and pleasant Land.
The second half of Blake 's poem says people should try to establish "Jerusalem" once more.
Blake s poem was not very well known during the 19th century, but in 1916 a collection of poems was published which included Jerusalem.
Britain was fighting a terrible war (the First World War), and so the people needed some strong, patriotic music to give them courage.
Robert Bridges, the Poet Laureate asked Parry to put it to music at a Fight for Right campaign meeting in London 's Queen 's Hall.
He wanted Parry to write a tune that the audience would be able to sing easily.
At first Parry wanted verse one to be sung by a solo female voice, but the version sung nowadays is the arrangement for orchestra made in 1922 by Sir Edward Elgar.
When King George V heard it for the first time he said that he preferred "Jerusalem" to "God Save the King", the National Anthem.
England (as distinct from Britain) does not have an official anthem and so the British National Anthem "God Save the Queen" is used for national occasions, for example before English international football matches or at the Last Night of the Proms.
The song is also the unofficial anthem of the British Women 's Institute.
It is often sung as a hymn in churches, although people in some churches think it is not a hymn.
It is also sung in many schools.
The Bush is a term for the portions of Alaska that are not connected to North America 's road network.
Most of Alaska 's native populations live in the Bush.
They live off the land as their ancestors did.
Places in the Bush include Bethel, Dillingham, King Salmon, Nome, Barrow, Katmai National Park, Kodiak Island, Kotzebue, and Unalaska-Dutch Harbor.
Most parts of Alaska that are off the road system can only be reached by small airplane.
Travel from place to place is usually by snowmobile or snow machine, boat, or sometimes dog sled.
Ariel Sharon (February 26, 1928 January 11, 2014) was an Israeli politician.
Sharon was Prime Minister of Israel from 2001 to 2006.
Sharon was born on February 27, 1928 in Kfar Malal, British-Palestine.
Sharon was in the Israel Army for many years.
He fought in numerous battles, and in 1974 he left the army as General.
After the army he decided to go to politics.
In 1977, he became Minister of Agriculture.
In 1981 he became the Minister of Defense.
In 1983, he was sent away from the government as Minister of Defense after he was found to be guilty for not preventing a massacre in Lebanon where many hundreds of civilians were killed by other civilians.
In 2001, he was elected for Prime Minister after the war between Israel and Palestine started.
In 2004, he surprised many people when he said that Israel will get out of the Gaza Strip, which is the place where many Palestinian people live.
In December 2005, Sharon was taken into hospital.
On January 4, 2006, Sharon was again taken to the hospital.
He had a big stroke (bleeding in the brain).
Rumours spread immediately of his death, though these were denied by his physicians.
It was soon reported and later confirmed that Sharon was in a coma.
Ehud Olmert, another member of Sharon 's newly formed Kadima party, was acting Prime Minister until elections were held in Israel, after which Olmert became Prime Minister of Israel.
Sharon died on 11 January 2014.
He died from kidney failure and stroke complications at the hospital in Ramat Gan.
He had been in a coma at the time.
He was aged 85.
His state funeral was held on 13 January.
He was buried in line with Jewish burial customs.
It was held as soon after death as possible.
The day before the funeral, Sharon 's body and coffin were placed in the Knesset building for people to see.
His funeral began with an official ceremony held in the Knesset chamber.
Politicians from Israel and other countries attended.
His funeral was then held at his family 's farm in the Negev desert.
Sharon was buried there beside his wife, Lily.
Leaders attended his funeral service included U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Czech Prime Minister Ji Rusnok and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Romantic orientation, also called affectional orientation, indicates the sex or gender that a person is most likely to have a romantic relationship with.
It is compared to the term sexual orientation.
Romantic orientation is based on the idea that sexual attraction is one component of a larger picture.
For example, although a pansexual person may feel sexually attracted to multiple genders, they may be predisposed to romantic intimacy with females.
For asexual people, romantic orientation is often considered a more useful measure of attraction than sexual orientation.
The known romantic orientations are aromantic, homoromantic, heteroromantic and biromantic.
In chemistry, an alkali is an aqueous (from water) solution with a pH value of more than seven.
The word ` Alkali ' comes from the Arabic ` qali ' meaning ` from the ashes ' since ashes mixed with water used as cleaning products (such as soaps) are made of alkali materials
An alkali is where a base is dissolved in water.
Often it is the salt of an Alkali metal An alkali is the opposite to an acid and can be neutralised (brought down to pH 7) by adding acid.
Like acids, alkalis can be weak or strong, depending on the nature and the concentration of the ionic salt composing it.
The strength of an alkali can be found using universal indicator.
Also like acids, the strength of an alkali is rated using the pH scale.
For example, soap and toothpaste contain weak alkalis, while cleaning products often contain strong ones.
Metal oxides and metal hydroxides are two types of base.
When neutralised (an acid is added) they produce a salt and water.
The type of salt produced depends on the acid and base.
Assassination is the murder of an important or popular person.
Usually the person is a political leader, like the head of a country or a political party.
Assassinations are usually done for political reasons or for payment.
A person who assassinates someone is called an assassin.
Throughout history, assassinations have happened for many different reasons.
Sometimes assassinations have been used to take over governments.
Other times, assassinations have been used to kill military leaders during wars, or for religious reasons.
Some assassins want revenge, or just want to be famous.
Assassinations have happened ever since people started living in group societies.
The Old Testament of the Bible talks about assassinations in the Books of Judith, Kings, Samuel, and Chronicles.
An ancient Indian writer named Chanakya, who lived from about 350 - 283 BC, wrote a lot about assassinations in a book called Arthashastra.
One of his students later assassinated some of his enemies, including two of Alexander the Great 's generals.
Famous victims of assassinations include Philip II of Macedon (336 BC), Alexander the Great 's father, and Julius Caesar (44 BC).
Emperors of the Roman Empire were often assassinated so that a different leader could take their place.
In the Middle Ages, many kings in the Eastern Roman Empire were killed by assassinations so that new kings could take power.
During the Renaissance, assassinations became more common in Western Europe.
Kings William the Silent of the Netherlands (1584), Henry III of France (1589),, and Henry IV of France (1610) were all assassinated.
The first American use of state assassination (where a government planned to assassinate someone) happened in 1620.
It happened in Plymouth in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where the Pilgrims had landed.
Native Americans had lived there before the Pilgrims landed, but the Pilgrims wanted the land to themselves.
Myles Standish invited a local Native American tribal chief, the chief 's 18-year-old brother, and two other Native Americans to a feast.
Then they locked the door, killed the three older men, and hanged the teenager in public as a warning to the other Native Americans to stay away.
Assassinations have been common in modern history.
This section does not list every assassination that has happened in modern history.
It lists some examples of world leaders who were assassinated, and explains some of the reasons why these assassinations happened.
In Imperial Russia, two emperors were assassinated within 80 years: Paul I (1801) pp.16-17 and Alexander II (1881).
p. 419
In the United States, four presidents were assassinated within 100 years.
They were Presidents Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kennedy (1963).
After Abraham Lincoln was killed, Andrew Johnson became President.
He was President for four years.
During that time, 12 people who held important political jobs were assassinated.
The next president, Ulysses S. Grant, led the United States from 1869-1877.
During that time, 11 government leaders were assassinated; another 9 were attacked, but survived.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in 1914.
Some historians say this assassination started World War I.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Josef Stalin 's NKVD assassinated many people outside of the Soviet Union, including Leon Trotsky.
These were mostly people who Stalin thought were against him or could take power from him.
He wanted to make sure to keep the power he had, so he killed many of his opponents.
Between 1934 and 1944, different individuals and groups tried 27 different times to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany during The Holocaust and World War II.
These people wanted to stop Hitler from taking over so many countries and killing so many people.
However, he always survived.
Some famous human rights activists were also assassinated in the next few decades.
They were assassinated by people who did not like the things they were doing to work for human rights.
The most famous activists who were assassinated include:
Between 1960 and 1965, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tried at least eight times to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
p. 71 Around this time, the CIA also made plans to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the only democratically elected leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. pp.19 -24
Between 1960 and 1970, the CIA also encouraged - and in some cases helped with - assassination plans against: p. 256
In 1979, the Iranian Revolution turned Iran into an Islamic Republic.
A group called Iran Human Rights Documentation Center says that between 1979 and the 1990s, leaders of the Iranian government had 162 people assassinated, in 19 different countries.
The group says Iran stopped the assassinations because a German court put out an arrest warrant for the head of Iranian military intelligence.
Anwar Sadat, the President of Egypt, was assassinated in 1981 at a parade.
He was killed by people who wanted to take over the country and make it into an Islamic Republic.
In 1983, Benigno Aquino, Jr. was assassinated.
Aquino was against Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator who ruled the Philippines.
The people of the Philippines were so upset that they started the non-violent People Power Revolution.
This led to the end of Marcos 's government.
Aquino 's widow, Corazon Aquino, became President of the Philippines.
In India, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984.
Her son Rajiv Gandhi became the next Prime Minister.
He was assassinated in 1991.
(They were not related to Mohandas Gandhi.)
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995.
The Israelis and Palestinians were working on a peace agreement.
Rabin was killed by an Orthodox Jew who did not agree with the peace treaty.
Many historians think Rabin 's murder is one of the main reasons the peace talks fell apart.
In Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in 2007.
Bhutto had been the first woman ever elected to lead a Muslim country.
An Al-Qaeda leader said that Al-Qaeda assassins had killed Bhutto.
He said they did this because Bhutto was trying to get rid of violent Jihadist militia groups in Pakistan.
He said this made her important to the United States, so Al-Qaeda killed her.
One research study looked at assassinations of national leaders (leaders of countries, like presidents or prime ministers).
The study showed that:
Another study looked at all assassinations between 1946 and 2013.
It included not just national leaders, but also other members of government (including local governments), and people who were against the government.
This study found that between 1946 and 2013, a total of 954 people were assassinated in 758 different attacks.
This study also looked at who was most likely to be assassinated.
Of those 954 people who were assassinated:
Alcoholism is addiction to alcohol.
People who have alcoholism are called alcoholics.
Alcoholism is a disease.
It often gets worse over time, and can kill a person.
However, alcoholism can be treated.
Alcohol is the most commonly used drug in the world.
Around the world, there are at least 208 million people with alcoholism.
Alcoholism is a condition with a social stigma.
Because of this, alcoholics often feel ashamed of their drinking.
They may try to hide their drinking, avoid getting help, or refuse to believe that they are alcoholics, because they are too ashamed.
Being an alcoholic does not mean that a person just drinks a lot of alcohol.
It means that they can not control how much alcohol they drink.
No matter how badly they want to, once they take one drink, they can not stop drinking.
There is no medical test, like a blood test, that can say whether a person is an alcoholic.
There are some questionnaires (lists of questions) that can help tell whether a person may be an alcoholic.
These questionnaires include the CAGE questionnaire (for adults) and the CRAFFT Screening Test (for teenagers).
Alcoholism can cause many health problems.
For example, it can cause:
If a person drinks too much at one time, they can get alcohol poisoning.
This can cause breathing problems, coma, and even death.
In 2012, alcohol use caused 3.3 million deaths around the world.
This means that in 2012, about 3 out of every 50 deaths in the world were caused by alcohol use.
Alcoholism can also cause many problems in alcoholics ' lives.
These include:
If an alcoholic stops drinking suddenly, they can get alcohol withdrawal.
The most serious form of alcohol withdrawal is delirium tremens (often called "DTs").
Delirium tremens is a medical emergency.
Many people who get the DTs die from them.
This does not mean that alcoholics should not stop drinking.
It means that alcoholics should talk to a doctor or go to a hospital before they stop drinking.
Doctors can give medications to make sure that a person is safe while they stop drinking.
In 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that there were 208 million people with alcoholism around the world.
(This is 4.1 % of the world 's population over age 15.)
In 2001, the WHO estimated that there were about 140 million alcoholics around the world.
This means that in the nine years between 2001 and 2010, about 68 million people became alcoholics.
People in developed countries drink the most alcohol.
p. 4
Alcoholism is more common in some areas than others.
Here is a list of all the areas in the world.
It is in order from the areas where alcoholism is most common to the areas where it is least common: p. 21
There are many reasons why alcoholism is more common in some areas than others.
Some of these reasons include religion, culture, laws, and people 's attitudes about drinking.
For example, on average, people in Northern Africa, the Middle East, and islands in the Indian Ocean drink less than people anywhere else in the world.
p. 4 These are areas where many people are Muslims.
Many Muslims in these areas do not drink any alcohol, because the Koran says not to.
p. 4 In some of these countries, drinking alcohol is illegal.
However, in other areas, like Western Europe, alcohol is a part of daily life.
It is legal and easy to get.
People very commonly drink alcohol with meals.
Very few people drink no alcohol.
People 's attitudes about alcohol are very different than attitudes in mostly Muslim countries.
This is an example of how differences in religion, culture, laws, and attitudes about drinking can affect the amount of alcohol use and alcoholism in different areas.
Alcoholism is more common in men than in women.
However, in the past few decades, the number of female alcoholics has increased.
Female alcoholics are most common in the Americas and Europe.
In the United States and Western Europe, five to ten percent of women will become alcoholics at some point in their lives.
In the Southeast Asian and Western Pacific areas, less than 1 % of women are alcoholics.
In Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean area, almost no women are alcoholics.
p. 21
In many countries, young people are using more and more alcohol.
In a 2008 WHO survey, underage drinking had increased in 71 % of countries.
Drinking by young adults (ages 18-25) had increased in 80 % of countries.
p. 10
Alcoholism can be treated.
There are many forms of treatment for alcoholism.
Detoxification (detox) is often the first step in treating alcoholism.
"Detoxification" means "getting toxins out of the body."
Alcohol detoxification means that the alcoholic stops drinking, so that alcohol (a toxin) can get out of their body.
The alcoholic also needs to give their body time to recover from not having alcohol any more.
It is not safe for an alcoholic to suddenly stop drinking on their own.
The safest way to stop drinking is to go to a hospital that specializes in alcohol detoxification.
These hospitals are often called "detoxes" or "rehabs."
These places can make sure that an alcoholic has a safe detox.
They can also give medications to make the alcoholic more comfortable, and to prevent symptoms of alcohol withdrawal.
The most common medications that doctors give during alcohol detox are benzodiazepines.
p. 35
Once a person stops drinking alcohol, they are called sober.
Most people need other treatments to help them stay sober.
Psychotherapy and group therapy can help alcoholics stay sober.
For example, they can help alcoholics learn how to:
Some medications can help alcoholics stay sober.
These medications include: pp.130 -144
Many alcoholics do not have enough vitamins in their body.
This can cause serious problems.
For example, if an alcoholic does not have enough thiamine, they can get brain damage.
Often, alcoholics are treated with thiamine to prevent brain damage.
They may also be given other vitamins if needed.
p. 144
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is the biggest support and mutual aid group for alcoholics in the world.
This means that in AA groups, alcoholics come together to support each other and help each other recover.
AA uses a twelve-step program.
This program is meant to help alcoholics fix the problems their alcoholism has caused.
Abstraction is a process of removing or hiding details about something.
It concerns the ways by which higher, less real concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal ("real" or "concrete") data or other information.
Abstractions may be formed by reducing the information content of a concept or a phenomenon as viewed, often to keep only the information which is needed for a particular purpose.
For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to the more general idea of a ball will keep only the information on general ball attributes and behavior, omitting the traits of that particular ball.
Compare with word: generalizing.
The opposite of the adjective "abstract" is commonly the word "concrete".
The first symbols of abstract thinking in humans can be traced to fossil objects dating between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago in Africa.
In philosophical terminology, abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objects.
Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification, where formerly concrete details are left ambiguous, vague, or undefined; thus effective communication about things in the abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between the communicator and the communication recipient.
For example, many different things can be the color red.
Likewise, many things sit on surfaces (as in picture 1, to the right).
The property of redness and the relation sitting-on are therefore abstractions of those objects.
Specifically, the conceptual diagram graph 1 identifies only three boxes, two ellipses, and four arrows (and their six labels), whereas the picture 1 shows much more pictorial detail, with the scores of implied relationships as implicit in the picture rather than with the nine explicit details in the graph.
Graph 1 details some explicit relationships between the objects of the diagram.
For example, the arrow between the agent and CAT: Elsie depicts an example of an is-a relationship, as does the arrow between the location and the MAT.
The arrows between the gerund SITTING and the nouns agent and location express the diagram 's basic relationship; "agent is SITTING on location"; Elsie is an instance of CAT.
Although the description sitting-on (graph 1) is more abstract than the graphic image of a cat sitting on a mat (picture 1), the delineation of abstract things from concrete things is somewhat ambiguous; this ambiguity or vagueness is characteristic of abstraction.
Thus something as simple as a newspaper might be specified to six levels, as in Douglas Hofstadter 's illustration of that ambiguity, with a progression from abstract to concrete in G del, Escher, Bach (1979):
An abstraction can thus encapsulate each of these levels of detail with no loss of generality.
But perhaps a detective or philosopher\/scientist\/engineer might seek to learn about some thing, at progressively deeper levels of detail, to solve a crime or a puzzle.
Abstractions sometimes have ambiguous referents; for example, "happiness" (when used as an abstraction) can refer to as many things as there are people and events or states of being which make them happy.
Likewise, "architecture" refers not only to the design of safe, functional buildings, but also to elements of creation and innovation which aim at elegant solutions to construction problems, to the use of space, and to the attempt to evoke an emotional response in the builders, owners, viewers and users of the building.
Things that do not exist at any particular place and time are often considered abstract.
By contrast, instances, or members, of such an abstract thing might exist in many different places and times.
Those abstract things are then said to be multiply instantiated, in the sense of picture 1, picture 2, etc., shown above.
It is not sufficient, however, to define abstract ideas as those that can be instantiated and to define abstraction as the movement in the opposite direction to instantiation.
Doing so would make the concepts "cat" and "telephone" abstract ideas since despite their varying appearances, a particular cat or a particular telephone is an instance of the concept "cat" or the concept "telephone".
Although the concepts "cat" and "telephone" are abstractions, they are not abstract in the sense of the objects in graph 1 above.
We might look at other graphs, in a progression from cat to mammal to animal, and see that animal is more abstract than mammal; but on the other hand mammal is a harder idea to express, certainly in relation to marsupial or monotreme.
A physical object (a possible referent of a concept or word) is considered concrete (not abstract) if it is a particular individual that occupies a particular place and time.
Abstract things are sometimes defined as those things that do not exist in reality or exist only as sensory experiences, like the color red.
That definition, however, suffers from the difficulty of deciding which things are real (i.e. which things exist in reality).
For example, it is difficult to agree to whether concepts like God, the number three, and goodness are real, abstract, or both.
An approach to resolving such difficulty is to use predicates as a general term for whether things are variously real, abstract, concrete, or of a particular property (e.g. good).
Questions about the properties of things are then propositions about predicates, which propositions remain to be evaluated by the investigator.
In the graph 1 above, the graphical relationships like the arrows joining boxes and ellipses might denote predicates.
Different levels of abstraction might be denoted by a progression of arrows joining boxes or ellipses in multiple rows, where the arrows point from one row to another, in a series of other graphs, say graph 2, etc.
Abstraction in philosophy is the process (or, to some, the alleged process) in concept-formation of recognizing some set of common features in individuals, and on that basis forming a concept of that feature.
The notion of abstraction is important to understanding some philosophical controversies surrounding empiricism and the problem of universals.
It has also recently become popular in formal logic under predicate abstraction.
Another philosophical tool for discussion of abstraction is thought space.
The way in which physical objects, like rocks and trees, have being differs from the way that properties of abstract concepts or relations have being.
For example, the way the concrete, particular, individuals pictured in picture 1 exist differs from the way the concepts illustrated in graph 1 exist.
That difference accounts for the ontological usefulness of the word "abstract".
The word applies to properties and relations to mark the fact that, if they exist, they do not exist in space or time, but that instances of them can exist, potentially in many different places and times.
Perhaps confusingly, some philosophies refer to tropes (instances of properties) as abstract particulars.
E.g., the particular redness of a particular apple is an abstract particular.
Akin to qualia and sumbebekos.
If an abstract concept, such as "society" or "technology" is treated as if it were a concrete object, that is a fallacy (an error).
In linguistics, it may happen that abstract concepts are used as if they were nouns that signify concrete objects: 1805: Horatio Nelson (Battle of Trafalgar) "England expects that every man will do his duty"
This is called metonymy.
It can blur the distinction between abstract and concrete things.
An abstraction can be seen as a process of mapping multiple different pieces of constituent data to a single piece of abstract data based on similarities in the constituent data, for example many different physical cats map to the abstraction "CAT".
This conceptual scheme emphasizes the inherent equality of both constituent and abstract data, thus avoiding problems arising from the distinction between "abstract" and "concrete".
In this sense the process of abstraction entails the identification of similarities between objects and the process of associating these objects with an abstraction (which is itself an object).
For example, picture 1 above illustrates the concrete relationship "Cat sits on Mat".
Chains of abstractions can therefore be constructed moving from neural impulses arising from sensory perception to basic abstractions such as color or shape to experiential abstractions such as a specific cat to semantic abstractions such as the "idea" of a CAT to classes of objects such as "mammals" and even categories such as "object" as opposed to "action".
For example, graph 1 above expresses the abstraction "agent sits on location".
This conceptual scheme entails no specific hierarchical taxonomy (such as the one mentioned involving cats and mammals), only a progressive exclusion of detail.
A recent meta-analysis suggests that the verbal system has greater engagement for abstract concepts when the perceptual system is more engaged for processing of concrete concepts.
This is because abstract concepts cause greater brain activity in the inferior frontal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus, compared to concrete concepts when concrete concepts cause greater activity in the posterior cingulate, precuneus, fusiform gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus.
Other research into the human brain suggests that the left and right hemispheres, of the brain, differ in their handling of abstraction.
For example, one meta-analysis reviewing human brain lesions has shown a left hemisphere bias during tool usage.
Typically, abstraction is used in the arts as a synonym for abstract art in general.
Strictly speaking, it refers to art unconcerned with the literal depiction of things from the visible world it can, however, refer to an object or image which has been distilled from the real world, or indeed, another work of art.
Artwork that reshapes the natural world for expressive purposes is called abstract; that which derives from, but does not imitate a recognizable subject is called nonobjective abstraction.
In the 20th century the trend toward abstraction coincided with advances in science, technology, and changes in urban life, eventually reflecting an interest in psychoanalytic theory.
Later still, abstraction was manifest in more purely formal terms, such as color, freed from objective context, and a reduction of form to basic geometric designs.
In music, the term abstraction can be used to describe improvisatory approaches to interpretation, and may sometimes indicate abandonment of tonality.
Atonal music has no key signature, and is characterized the exploration of internal numeric relationships.
Carl Jung 's definition of abstraction broadened its scope beyond the thinking process to include exactly four mutually exclusive, opposing complementary psychological functions: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking.
Together they form a structural totality of the differentiating abstraction process.
Abstraction operates in one of these opposing functions when it excludes the simultaneous influence of the other functions and other irrelevancies, such as emotion.
Abstraction requires selective use of this structural split of abilities in the psyche.
The opposite of abstraction is concretism.
Abstraction is one of Jung 's 57 definitions in Chapter XI of Psychological Types.
There is an abstract thinking, just as there is abstract feeling, sensation and intuition.
Abstract thinking singles out the rational, logical qualities... Abstract feeling does the same with... its feeling-values.
... I put abstract feelings on the same level as abstract thoughts.
(Jung, (1921) (1971): par.
678).
Computer scientists use abstraction to understand and solve problems, such as organizing data to be stored in a database.
Abstraction in mathematics is the process of extracting the underlying essence of a mathematical concept, removing any dependence on real-world objects with which it might originally have been connected, and generalizing it so that it has wider applications or matching among other abstract descriptions of equivalent phenomena.
The main disadvantage of abstraction is that highly abstract concepts are more difficult to learn, and require a degree of mathematical maturity and experience before they can be assimilated.
In group theory, an abelian group is a group that is commutative.
An abelian group is a set, A, together with an operation"".
It combines any two elements a and b to form another element denoted.
For the group to be abelian, the operation and the elements must follow some requirements.
These are known as the abelian group axioms:
; Closure: For all a, b in A, the result of the operation a b is also in A.; Associativity: For all a, b and c in A, the equation (a b) c = a (b c) is true.
; Identity element: There exists an element e in A, such that for all elements a in A, the equation holds.
; Commutativity: For all a, b in A, a b = b a.
An abelian group is a commutative group.
A group in which the group operation is not commutative is called a "non-abelian group" or "non-commutative group".
Austria-Hungary or the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a state in Central Europe from 1867 to 1918.
It was the countries of Austria and Hungary ruled by a single monarch.
The full name of the empire was "The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen".
The dual monarchy replaced the Austrian Empire (1804 1867).
It started with the compromise between the ruling Habsburg dynasty and the Hungarians.
It was an empire made up of many different peoples and great power.
It found its political life full of arguments between the eleven main national groups.
It had great economic growth through the age of industrialization.
It also saw social changes with many liberal and democratic reforms.
The Habsburg dynasty ruled as emperors of Austria over the western and northern half of the country and as kings of Hungary over the Kingdom of Hungary.
The Kingdom of Hungary had some ability to govern itself.
It also had a say in things that affected both it and the rest of the empire.
This was mainly foreign relations and defense.
The empire 's capital was Vienna.
Austria-Hungary was the second largest country in Europe (after the Russian Empire).
It had the third most people (after Russia and the German Empire).
The Ausgleich or compromise of February 1867 created the Empire 's dualist structure.
The Austrian Empire (1804 67) had lessened in strength and in power.
This was because of the Austro Sardinian War of 1859 and the Austro Prussian War of 1866.
Also, the Hungarian people were not happy with how Vienna treated them.
This had been going on for many years and it led to Hungarian separation.
This included the Hungarian liberal revolution of 1848 49.
Emperor Franz Joseph tried to reach an agreement with the Hungarian nobility.
He needed their support to keep the empire together.
The Hungarian nobility would not accept anything less than equality between themselves and the Austrian elites.
Hungary and Austria had different parliaments.
Each had its own prime minister.
The monarch kept the two working together.
He had absolute power in theory but very little in reality.
The monarch s central government had charge of the army, navy, foreign policy, and the customs union.
For main article, see World War I The deaths of Franz Joseph 's brother, Maximilian I of Mexico (1867), and his only son, Crown Prince Rudolf, made the Emperor 's nephew, Franz Ferdinand, next in line to the crown.
On June 28 1914, the heir visited the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.
Bosnian Serb militants of the group Mlada Bosna attacked Franz Ferdinand 's motorcade and assassinated him.
Some members of the government, such as Conrad von H tzendorf had wanted to fight the Serbian nation for many years.
The leaders of Austria-Hungary decided to attack Serbia before it could start a revolt.
They used the assassination as an excuse.
They gave Serbia a list of ten demands called the July Ultimatum.
They expected Serbia would not accept.
Serbia accepted nine of the ten demands but only partially accepted the other one.
Austria-Hungary declared war.
These events brought the Empire into conflict with Serbia.
Russia moved its army to help Serbia.
This set off troop movements on both sides and started World War I.
Near the end of the war, it was understood that the allied powers would win.
Part of the empire started declaring independence from the monarch.
They formed their own countries.
Some Austro-Hungarian lands were also given to Romania and Italy.
The Acts of Union were a pair of Parliamentary Acts passed in 1706 and 1707 by, respectively, the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland, to make effective the Treaty of Union which had been negotiated between the two countries.
The Acts joined the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland which had been separate states before, with separate legislatures but with the same monarch into a single Kingdom of Great Britain.
The two countries had shared a monarch for about 100 years (since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne from his cousin, Queen Elizabeth I).
The Acts took effect on 1 May 1707.
The Admiralty was the name of the ministry which controlled the British Royal Navy.
In 1963 the independent War Office, Admiralty and Air Ministry were joined to create the Ministry of Defense which controls all of the British Armed Forces.
Amputation is the act of cutting off a part of the human body, sometimes because of medical reasons.
In some countries, amputation of the hands, feet or other body parts was used as a form of punishment for people who committed crimes.
A person who has had an arm or leg removed is known as an amputee.
An anemometer is a device used to measure wind speed.
It is found in most weather stations.
The word comes from the Ancient Greek word, meaning wind.
It describes any airspeed measurement instrument used in meteorology or aerodynamics.
Leon Battista Alberti described an anemometer for the first time around 1450.
Archaeopteryx is one of the most important fossils ever discovered.
It is a bird from the Upper Jurassic, about 150 million years ago.
It shows the evolutionary link between theropod dinosaurs and birds.
The first Archaeopteryx was found in 1860 near Solnhofen in Bavaria, Germany.
Today, ten skeletons and one feather of Archaeopteryx have been found.
Archaeopteryx looked like a small carnivorous dinosaur with wings and feathers.
It had a mouth with teeth, claws on the hands and a long tail.
Today, it is known that dromaeosaurs, and possibly most theropods, looked like birds and that many had feathers.
When they are born, today 's South American hoatzin have claws on their wings when they are young, just like Archaeopteryx.
Thomas Henry Huxley ("Darwin 's bulldog"), who was a comparative anatomist, made a study of this nearly 150 years ago.
He compared Archaeopteryx with a small theropod dinosaur, Compsognathus.
These two fossils came from the same place: Solnhofen in Bavaria, Germany.
The strata come from the end of the Jurassic period, about 144 million years ago.
He showed that the two were very similar, except for the front limbs and feathers of Archaeopteryx.
Huxley 's study showed the basic relationship between birds and reptiles.
He united them under the title of Sauropsida.
His papers on Archaeopteryx and the origin of birds were of great interest then and still are.
Huxley concluded that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs.
Only one dinobird has been found from a time before Archaeopteryx.
It is called Anchiornis huxlei, from 160 to 155 million years ago.
It had feathers on both front and rear legs, and could certainly glide.
It may or may not have had some ability to fly.
This discovery means we can not say Archaeopteryx is the first known bird, but its contribution to science has been huge.
We now know for sure that a whole group of small theropod dinosaurs had feathers, and that flight was a later, secondary, use of feathers.
The first use of feathers was temperature regulation, and probably also signalling (see Epidexipteryx).
It may be that Archaeopteryx is not directly ancestral to all birds, but it is still a fine transitional fossil.
"Archaeopteryx, for example, is not necessarily directly ancestral to birds.
It may have been a species on a side-branch.
However, that in no way disqualifies it as a transitional form, or as evidence for evolution.
Evolution predicts that such fossils will exist, and if there was no link between reptiles and birds then Archaeopteryx would not exist, whether it is directly ancestral or not".
Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States are the members of the Supreme Court of the United States other than the Chief Justice of the United States.
The number of Associate Justices is ruled by the United States Congress and is currently set at eight by the Judiciary Act of 1869.
Associate Justices, like the Chief Justice, are nominated by the President of the United States and are approved by the United States Senate by majority vote.
This is provided for in Article II of the Constitution, which states that the President "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint... Judges of the supreme Court."
Although the Constitution refers to them as "Judges of the Supreme Court," the title actually used is "Associate Justice," introduced in the Judiciary Act of 1789.
Associate justices were traditionally styled "Mr. Justice" in court opinions, but the title was shortened to "Justice" in 1980, a year before the first female justice was appointed.
Each of the Justices of the Supreme Court has a single vote in deciding the cases argued before it; the Chief Justice 's vote counts no more than that of any other Justice.
Under 28 USC 3, when the Chief Justice is unable to discharge his functions, or that office is vacant, his duties are carried out by the most senior Associate Justice until the disability or the vacancy ends.
Alex y Leon dovich P jitnov (born 14 March 1956) is a Russian computer engineer who lives in the United States.
He is best known for creating the popular video game Tetris.
He was born in Moscow, Soviet Union.
Pajitnov created Tetris in 1985.
The game was first sold in the Soviet Union.
In 1986, the game began being sold in the West.
Since then, it has become a very successful series.
In 1996, he started The Tetris Company, which owns the trademark to Tetris.
In 1996, GameSpot named him the fourth most influential computer game developer of all time.
` Abdu ` l-Bah was a Persian man who was born on May 23, 1844 and died on November 28, 1921.
His father was Bah ` u 'll h who founded the religion known as the Bah ' Faith.
` Abdu ` l-Bah spent most of his adult life in prison or under arrest, because of his father 's new religion.
Bah ` u 'll h called him the "Expounder" of his word, meaning that only ` Abdu ` l-Bah had the right to say what Bah ` u 'll h 's writings mean.
This was to prevent different people from splitting the religion up because they thought Bah ` u 'll h meant different things, the way many other religions have split up.
Anubis is the Guardian of the gates to the underworld, Osiris replaced him as the god of the dead.
He ls who looks like a man with the head of a jackal.
A jackal is a scavenging and hunting animal, native to Africa, that is closely related to wolves.
Anubis is the God of the dead.
Anubis, as the god of the dead, was closely associated with mummification and burial rites.
Egyptian jackals had an association with the dead, as well.
They were often found digging up buried bodies and eating them, which may be why Anubis was depicted as part jackal.
The priests who mummified the dead kings (called pharaohs) wore costumes to make them appear like jackals.
The Egyptian people believed that Anubis helped decide the fate of the dead in the afterlife.
The heart of the dead was weighed against the feather of truth (representing the goddess Ma ` at), to see if the deceased was worthy of entering the afterlife.
If the person had lived a bad life, his or her heart would weigh heavy, and he or she would be eaten by Ammit (the Devourer).
If a person was kind and good, the heart weighed light, and he did not have sins, he or she could continue on to the afterlife uneaten to meet Osiris.
In later times, during the Ptolemaic period, as their functions were similar, Anubis came to be identified as the Greek god Hermes, becoming Hermanubis.
The center of this cult was in uten-ha\/Sa-ka \/ Cynopolis, a place whose Greek name simply means "city of dogs".
In Book XI of "The Golden Ass" by Apuleius, we find evidence that the worship of this god was maintained in Rome at least up to the 2nd century.
Indeed, Hermanubis also appears in the alchemical and hermetical literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Although the Greeks and Romans typically scorned Egypt 's animal-headed gods as bizarre and primitive (they mockingly called Anubis the "Barker"), Anubis was sometimes associated with Sirius in heaven, and Cerberus in hell.
An acid-base reaction is a chemical reaction between an acid and a base.
The products of such a reaction are a salt and water.
The reaction can be simplified to ((hydroxide (aq))) + (aq) ((water (molecule))) The other ions remain constant because they are not affected by the reaction.
They are called spectator ions.
Autumn is the season after summer and before winter.
In the United States this season is also called fall.
In the Northern Hemisphere, it begins with the autumnal equinox in September and ends with the winter solstice in December.
In the Southern Hemisphere, it runs from the autumnal equinox in March to the winter solstice in June.
In many places in the temperate zone, autumn is a time for harvesting most crops.
Deciduous trees (trees that lose their leaves every year) lose their leaves, usually after turning yellow, red, or brown.
In many countries, autumn is the time a new school year starts.
In the UK, the period of school between the start of September and the end of December is known as the ` Autumn Term '.
When it is autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, it is spring in the Southern Hemisphere.
When it is autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, it is spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
On the Equator, autumn is very much like spring, with little difference in temperature or in weather.
Autumn is a time when most animals are looking for food so they can store up for winter, because they soon will be going into hibernation.
The weather gets colder and more windy.
In Autumn the hours of daylight and the hours of night are the same.
In autumn the weather changes all the time.
The weather turns cooler and often windy and rainy.
Alameda is a city in California.
The city was founded in 1853 as 3 smaller towns.
At the west end it was called Woodstock.
The east end was called Fernside.
In the 1940s the land was filled to make Bay Farm Island.
.
An alpha helix (- helix) is a twisted part of a protein.
It is one of the two most common parts of the secondary structure, or shape, of a protein.
The other is the beta sheet.
An alpha helix is created by alternating groups of atoms.
There is a carbonyl group, created by a carbon atom double bonded to an oxygen atom, and an amine group, created by a nitrogen atom bonded to a hydrogen atom.
Each section containing one of each of these groups is called a residue, a general term for a small part of a molecule.
Each amine group forms a hydrogen bond with the carbonyl group four residues earlier.
A prion is a protein that causes disease by changing the shape of another protein.
It does this by changing some of the alpha helices, which are more common in normal cells, to beta sheets, which are more common in prions.
The alpha helix consists of 3.6 residues per turn.
All hydrogen bonds face in the same direction.
If two or more alpha helices come together, they become a tertiary structure.
(Ex.
Five alpha helices arranged into a barrel shape)
Accrington is a town in Lancashire, England.
It is in North West England.
The town had a population of 35,203 in the 2001 census.
The Accrington Stanley Football Club play here.
Armageddon (Harmaged n,, Har Megiddo,,) is the place where the great war of the end of day will start.
Christians that believe that Jesus Christ will someday come back to earth, translated the sentences of the Messiah and the Lamb of God, are the symbolism of Jesus, that will return to the earth to fight the Antichrist (or the Beast) in the battle of Armageddon.
After that war Satan (or the Antichrist) will be thrown to the bottomless pit, or Abyss for a 1,000 years, known as the Millennium Age.
After Satan will be out of the pit, he will gather one man called Gog and Magog (In the texts he is named God and Magog but also named Gog kind of Magog, in Jewish texts, the war of Gog and Magog means the attack of Gog kind of Magog to kill all the Jewish people, and God will kill him and his army.
In Christianity, Gog and Magog are two separate people that are Evil.)
from the Four corners of the Earth.
They will trap the Holy Ones (means Christians) in the Beloved City, (means Jerusalem).
Then Fire will come from God and from the Heavens, and it will destroy Gog and Magog and will trap the Devil in Gehenna (Gehinom, Valley of Hinom, a place near Jerusalem, lake of fire and brimstone, also known as Hell).
The word Armageddon appears only once in the Greek New Testament.
This word comes from the Hebrew Har Megiddo, which means - Mountain of Megiddo.
In Israel there is a small city, that is in the Azrieli Vally, called Megiddo.
The Mountain of Megiddo is a small mountain which had a big Roman fort.
The Amu Darya (, m dary;, Jih n or Jayhoun;, Gozan), also called Oxus and Amu River, is a major river in Central Asia.
It is formed by the junction of the Vakhsh and Panj.
In ancient times, the river was regarded as the boundary between Iran and T r n.
In antiquity, the river was known as Vaksu to Indo-Aryans.
In ancient Afghanistan, the river was also called Gozan, descriptions of which can be found in the book "The Kingdom of Afghanistan: a historical sketch By George Passman Tate".
In classical antiquity, the river was known as the xus in Latin and Oxos in Greek.
The name Amu is said to have come from the medieval city of mul, (later, Chahar Joy\/Charjunow, and now known as T rkmenabat), in modern Turkmenistan.
Darya is the Persian word for "river".
Amu Darya is a river almost in reverse.
It gets its water from a powerful glacier fed stream high in the Pamir Knot at the eastern end of Afghanistan 's Wakhan Corridor, and does not end at the sea but spreads out into the sands of Turkmenistan 's Kyzyl Kum desert instead of the inland Aral Sea as it did in former times.
In the traditions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (ahadith), the river is called by the name Jayhan (Arabic form of its ancient name Gozan).
Historians tell us that one of the most ancient names for the Oxus or Amu in ancient Afghanistan was Gozan.
A name used by Greek, Mongol, Chinese, Persian, Jewish and Afghan historians.
However, this name is no longer used.
"Hara (Bokhara) and to the river of Gozan (that is to say, the Amu, (called by Europeans the Oxus)...".
"the Gozan River is the River Balkh, i.e. the Oxus or the Amu Darya...".
''... and were brought into Halah (modern day Balkh), and Habor (which is Pesh Habor or Peshawar), and Hara (which is Herat), and to the river Gozan (which is the Ammoo, also called Jehoon)...".
The river 's total length is 2400 k and its drainage basin totals 534739 k in area.
The river is navigable for over 1450 k. All of the water comes from the high mountains in the south where annual precipitation can be over 1000 m. Even before large-scale irrigation began, high summer evaporation meant that not all of this discharge reached the Aral Sea - though there is some evidence the large Pamir glaciers provided enough melt water for the Aral to overflow during the 13th and 14th centuries A.D.
Historical records state that in different periods, the river flowed into the Aral Sea (from the south), the Caspian Sea (from the east) or both, similar to the Syr Darya (Jaxartes, in Ancient Greek).
About 1385045 k of land is drained by the Amu Darya into the Aral Sea endorheic basin.
This includes most of Tajikistan, the southwest corner of Kyrgyzstan, the northeast corner of Afghanistan, a long narrow portion of western Turkmenistan and about half of Uzbekistan.
About 61 % of the drainage lies within Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, while 39 % is in Afghanistan.
Of the area drained by the Amu Darya, only about 200000 k actively contribute water to the river.
This is because many of the river 's major tributaries (especially the Zeravshan River) have been diverted, and much of the river 's drainage is dominated by outlying desert and steppe.
The abundant water flowing in the Amu Darya almost entirely comes from glaciers in the Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan, which, standing above the surrounding arid plain, collect atmospheric moisture which otherwise would probably have escaped somewhere else.
Without its mountain water sources, the Amu Darya would not contain any water because it rarely rains in the lowlands that characterize most of the river.
Throughout most of the steppe, the annual rainfall is about 300 m.
The Amu Darya was called the Oxus by the ancient Greeks.
In ancient times, the river was regarded as the boundary between Ir n and T r n. The river 's drainage lies in the area between the former empires of Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great, although they occurred at much different times.
One southern route of the Silk Road ran along part of the Amu Darya northwestward from Termez before going westwards to the Caspian Sea.
It is believed that the Amu Darya 's course across the Kara-Kum Desert has gone through several major shifts in the past few thousand years.
Much of the time, the most recent period being in the 13th century to the late 16th century, the Amu Darya emptied into both the Aral and the Caspian Seas.
Sometimes, the flow through the two branches was more or less equal, but often, most of the Amu Darya 's flow split to the west and flowed into the Caspian.
People began to settle along the lower Amu Darya and the Uzboy in the 5th century A.D., establishing a thriving chain of agricultural lands, towns, and cities.
The first British explorer who reached the region was a naval officer called John Wood.
He was sent on an expedition to find the source of the river in 1839.
He found modern day Lake Zorkul, called it Lake Victoria and proclaimed he had found the source.
Then, the French explorer and geographer Thibaut Vin collected a lot of informations about this area during five expeditions between 1856 and 1862.
The Soviet Union became the ruling power in the 20th century.
The Soviet Union fell in the 1990s and Central Asia split up into the many smaller countries that lie within or partially within the Amu Darya basin.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya were first used by the Soviets to irrigate extensive cotton fields in the Central Asian plain.
Before this time, water from the rivers was already being used for agriculture, but not on this massive scale.
The Qaraqum Canal, Karshi Canal, and Bukhara Canal were among the larger of the irrigation diversions built.
The Main Turkmen Canal was a proposed project that would have diverted water along the dry Uzboy River bed into central Turkmenistan, but was never built.
The Oxus river, and Arnold 's poem, provide a literary background for the 1930s children 's book The Far-Distant Oxus.
The Durrani Empire (actually Afghan Empire) was established in 1747 by Ahmad Shah Durrani at Kandahar, Afghanistan.
It included the land that is now called Afghanistan, Pakistan, eastern Iran and western India.
The Durrani Empire is considered the foundation of the modern state of Afghanistan, with Ahmad Shah Durrani (Ahmad Shah Baba) being the "Father of the nation".
The Durrani dynasty diminished in the early 19th century when Afghanistan was fighting defensive wars with Persia on one side and British India on the other side.
The Barakzai dynasty took over control of the kingdom but lost many of Afghanistan 's territories by the end of the 19th century.
It became to what is now Afghanistan after the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919 when the state became officially recognized by all the major countries in the world.
Arcturus (or Boo, Bo tis, Alpha Bo tis) of the constellation Bo tes is the brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere.
With an apparent magnitude of 0.04, it is the fourth brightest star in the night sky, after 1.46 magnitude Sirius, 0.86 magnitude Canopus, and 0.27 magnitude Alpha Centauri.
It is a relatively close star at only 36.7 light-years from Earth, and, together with Vega and Sirius, one of the most luminous stars in the Sun 's neighborhood.
Arcturus is a type K1.5 IIIpe orange giant star, with an absolute magnitude of 0.30.
It has likely exhausted its hydrogen from the core and is now in its active red giant phase.
It will continue to expand before entering the horizontal branch stage of its life cycle.
Albert Lawrence Brooks (born Albert Lawrence Einstein; July 22, 1947) is an American actor, voice actor, writer, comedian, and director.
He was known for his roles in Modern Romance (1981), Lost in America (1985), Defending Your Life (1991), Finding Nemo (2004), The Simpsons Movie (2007), and Drive (2011).
Brooks was born in Beverly Hills, California.
Antares (Scorpii, Alpha Scorpii) is a red supergiant star in the Milky Way galaxy and the sixteenth brightest star in the nighttime sky.
It is sometimes listed as 15th brightest, depending on how the two brighter components of the Capella quadruple star system are counted.
Antares is the brightest and most massive star in the Scorpius-Centaurus Association.
The Scorpius-Centaurus Association contains thousands of stars with a mean age of 11 million years.
Antares has a secondary, or companion star, Antares B. The orbit of the companion star is poorly known, with an estimated period of 1,200 to 2,562 years.
Antares has a radius of about 883 times that of the Sun.
If placed in the center of our solar system, its outer surface would lie between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Antares is about 550 light-years (170 parsecs) from the Earth.
Its visual luminosity is about 10,000 times that of the Sun.
Because the star radiates much of its energy in the infrared part of the spectrum, the bolometric luminosity is about 65,000 times that of the Sun.
The mass of the star is in the range of 15 to 18 solar masses.
Aldebaran (Tau, Tauri, Alpha Tauri) is an orange giant star.
It is about 65 light years away in the zodiac constellation of Taurus.
With an average apparent magnitude of 0.87 it is the brightest star in the constellation and is one of the brightest stars in the nighttime sky.
The name Aldebaran is Arabic (' ') and means "the Follower", presumably because it rises near and soon after the Pleiades.
In 1993 a companion body was reported.
A paper recently accepted shows evidence for a planetary companion.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, known as "the ABC", is Australia 's national public broadcaster.
It has a yearly budget of A$ 1.18 billion.
The ABC provides television, radio, online and mobile information services throughout Australia, as well as overseas through the Australia Network and Radio Australia.
It began in 1929 as the Australian Broadcasting Company.
It became a government owned corporation on 1 July 1932, called the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 changed the name of the organization to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, from 1 July 1983.
Although funded and owned by the government, the ABC remains editorially independent.
This independence part of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983.
The ABC has 46 local radio stations, four national networks and international service Radio Australia.
It also has three digital radio stations.
ABC Local Radio has 46 individual stations, each with a similar format.
This format is locally presented light entertainment, news, talk back, music, sport and interviews.
It also has some national programs such as AM snd PM (current affairs), The World Today, sporting events and Nightlife.
ABC Radio National broadcasts more than 60 special interest programs every week.
These cover a range of topics including music, comedy, book readings, radio dramas, poetry, science, health, the arts, religion, social history and current affairs.
ABC NewsRadio is a continuous news service.
It was known as the Parliamentary and News Network.
It was set up to broadcast sittings of the Australia Federal Parliament, and to provide a news service at other times.
The network broadcasts news on a 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with updates on the quarter-hour.
Much of the news content is produced by the ABC itself, however many programs come from the BBC World Service, NPR, Deutsche Welle, Radio Netherlands and CNN Radio.
ABC Classic FM was the ABC 's first FM radio service.
It was originally called "ABC FM".
Its format was based on community stations and BBC Radio 3.
Triple J is a national youth radio network.
It plays contemporary alternative and independent music.
Its audience is people aged 18 35.
While the network plays music from around the world, it has a strong focus on local artists.
Triple J was formerly known as "Double Jay" when it launched in Sydney on 19 January 1975.
The ABC operates four TV channels.
ABC1, the Corporation 's original television service, receives most of funding for television and shows new comedy, drama, documentaries, and news and current affairs.
In each state and territory a local news bulletin is shown at 7.00 p.m. nightly.
In 2001 ABC TV began its digital service.
ABC2 which began in 2005, is a digital-only channel that shows mainly repeated programs from ABC1.
It does have some original content including news programs, children 's shows, animation, and music shows.
ABC3 is a children 's TV channel which began in December 2009.
t
ABC News 24 is a 24 hour news channel which began on 22 July 2010.
Alexandria is the second largest city in Egypt.
It was founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BC.
It is on the Mediterranean Sea, only 225 km (140 miles) northwest of Cairo.
Alexandria has 3.8 million people.
It is the main port of Egypt.
It has two airports and three big stadia: Alexandria stadium, Harras el hadoud stadium and Borg el-Arab stadium in the Borg el-Arab industrial city.
The fourth Wikimania was hosted in this city in 2008.
Alexandria, named after Alexander the Great, was founded in the year 332 BC.
For nearly 300 years, it was the capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt.
Some famous ancient Greek scientists, such as Euclid of Alexandria and Eratosthenes, lived there or studied there.
It was home to the largest library in the ancient Western world, the Library of Alexandria.
It was a wealthy city in its heyday, and remained the main way Egyptian grain went by sea to Ancient Rome.
Rome depended greatly on Egyptian grain.
Alexandria city fell in to the sea after Rome conquered the city and some of her history is in the Mediterranean.
After the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641 AD, they did not want to have their capital at Alexandria, because it was too far away from Arabia.
So the Islamic invaders made a new capital on the east side of the Nile, and called it Fustat.
Alexandria became less important.
Alexandria is a city in the state of Indiana, in the United States.
It was settled during the 1830 's and 1840 's by people who thought it would be linked by the planned 296 mile long Indiana Central Canal.
The canal was never completed, and Alexandria did not really grow until the discovery of natural gas in 1887.
The number of people living in the town grew from only 491 in 1887 to 7,221 in 1900.
The world 's largest steel mill was built, but the gas did not last.
The mill was taken down and moved without ever producing steel.
In 1943 the United States Office of War Information decided Alexandria was the typical American town.
It published a book about the town called Small Town, U.S.A..
This was to show what typical American people were like, how they lived, their beliefs and their values.
Alexandria celebrates this choice with its annual "Small Town USA Festival."
Alexandria is a city in Rapides Parish in central Louisiana.
It is the county seat.
Alexandria was incorporated in 1818, and its 2010 population is near 48,000.
Akira Toriyama (born on April 5, 1955, in Kiyosu, Aichi Prefecture, Japan) is the creator of many popular anime and manga series, most notably the Dragon Ball franchise.
It has many media adaptions, and is now one of the most popular series of all time.
Arithmetic is a name for working with numbers.
It is a part of mathematics.
The four basic arithmetic operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Harder arithmetic includes working with signed numbers, fractions, and decimals, and taking powers and roots.
Most people learn arithmetic in primary school, but some people do not learn arithmetic and others forget the arithmetic they learned.
Many jobs require a knowledge of arithmetic, and many employers complain that it is hard to find people who know enough arithmetic.
A few of the many jobs that require arithmetic include carpenters, plumbers, auto mechanics, accountants, architects, doctors, and nurses.
Arithmetic is needed in all areas of mathematics, science, and engineering.
A calculator can be used to do arithmetic.
Computers can do it more quickly, which is one reason Global Positioning System receivers have a small computer inside.
Antoine-Joseph (known as Adolphe) Sax (November 6, 1814 February 4, 1894) was a Belgian inventor and musician who played the flute and clarinet.
He is best known for inventing the saxophone.
Adolphe Sax was born in Dinant in Wallonia, Belgium.
Adolphe began to make his own instruments at an early age.
He entered two of his flutes and a clarinet into a competition at the age of fifteen.
He studied those two instruments at the Royal School of Singing in Brussels.
Adolphe 's first important invention was an improvement of the bass clarinet design.
He patented this at the age of twenty-four.
In 1841, Sax moved to Paris.
Around this time he invented the saxophone.
He got a job teaching at the Paris Conservatoire starting in 1867.
Sax suffered from lip cancer between 1853 and 1858 but made a full recovery.
He died in 1894 in Paris.
Atlanta is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Georgia.
It is one of the South 's largest cities.
Atlanta is known as a major business city.
It is the home of Coca-Cola Company, CNN, AT&T, and Home Depot, as well as many other Fortune 500 companies.
Coca-Cola, which is made in Atlanta, is drunk all over the world and its factory is a favorite tourist destination.
CNN is also a big tourist attraction.
Atlanta 's airport, called Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, is the busiest airport in the world.
Atlanta is near the center of Georgia and is on the Chattahoochee River.
Atlanta was built on Cherokee Native American land.
It was called Terminus until 1843, when the name was changed to Marthasville.
In 1845 the name was changed again to Atlanta.
During the American Civil War, Atlanta was where several battles happened.
Some of the battles were the Battle of Peachtree Creek, the Battle of Atlanta, and the Battle of Ezra Church.
The city was burnt down and almost entirely destroyed.
After the war, the city was built again, and got a nickname because it was built so fast: "the Phoenix City", after the bird which burns itself then rises from the ashes in old myths.
A picture of the bird is on the city seal.
Atlanta became the state capital in 1868.
There have been racial problems in Atlanta.
During riots in 1906, at least 12 people died and more than 70 other people were hurt.
In 1913, a Jewish man named Leo Frank was tried in court for raping and killing a girl in a factory where he worked.
He was found guilty, but then the government decided not to execute him because not everyone was convinced he had done it.
This upset people who thought he had killed the girl, and there were more riots in 1915 and Frank was lynched (hanged with a rope until he died).
In the 1930s, the Great Depression came to Atlanta.
Many people did not have jobs and were hungry.
The city government was almost out of money and the Coca-Cola company gave the city some money to help.
In 1935, the government built the first federal housing project in the United States.
Atlanta 's airport is named Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
It is the busiest airport in the world.
Delta Air Lines is an airline that has its main office in Atlanta, and it uses Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport for many of its flights.
Turner Broadcasting, which broadcasts CNN, has their main office in Atlanta.
The Coca Cola Company also has their main office in Atlanta.
Atlanta 's public school system has about 100 schools and 48,000 students.
It tests the academic performance of students.
The job performance of teachers and administrators are based on the results of these tests.
In 2009, 178 teachers and administrators seem to have cheated to raise their student 's test scores.
Of the 178, 82 admitted to cheating.
As a result, several area superintendents and school principals lost their jobs.
The school board hired Erroll Davis Jr., a retired energy executive, as an interim school superintendent in July 2011.
The Atlanta cheating scandal is one of the biggest in the nation.
ACF Fiorentina (Associazione Calcio Fiorentina e Florentia Viola), often called Fiorentina, is an Italian professional football club from Florence, Tuscany, and was founded in 1926.
Fiorentina have won the Serie A twice, first in 1955\/56 then again in 1968\/69, as well as winning six Coppa Italia trophies.
On the European stage Fiorentina have won the UEFA Cup Winners ' Cup in 1960\/61, they finished runners-up in the UEFA Cup 1989\/90 and they also came close to winning the biggest European prize, finishing as runners-up in the European Cup during 1956\/57.
Fiorentina is known by the nickname La viola; a reference to their distinctive purple colors.
August 26 1926 - With the fusion of Palestra Ginnastica Fiorentina (P.G.F.) Libertas and Club Sportivo Firenze, Fiorentina was born.
1939 - 1940 - Fiorentina wins their first cup, the Coppa Italia.
1955 - 1956 - FIorentina win their first "Scudetto", (the Italian championship).
1920 - 1961 - 2th "Scudetto" is won by Fiorentina.
After the second "Scudetto", Fiorentina won the Cup Winners ' Cup.
1974 - the Viola win the Anglo-Italian League Cup.
1975 - the team won another "Coppa Italia".
1993 - 1994 - Fiorentina were relegated to the Serie B (second division).
1996 - Fiorentina gained their 3rd "Coppa Italia".
2000 - Fiorentina win the "Italian Super Coppa".
2001 -2005 - The team is struck by financial problems, and are moved to the bottom of Italian Football.
They then work their way back up to the Serie A.
The Alien and Sedition Acts were acts signed by United States president John Adams during a naval (sea) conflict against France.
It was made of four acts.
The first three acts were about immigration.
They made it required time for an immigrant to become a citizen and also allowed the president to send illegal immigrants back to their home country if their home country is at war with the United States or they are considered to be dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.
The fourth act made it illegal to publish bad things about the government.
The acts were very controversial (many people did not like them because they felt that they violated the First Amendment).
The acts made many people not like John Adams.
For that reason, Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party were able to defeat John Adams and the Federalist Party.
Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone (January 17, 1899 January 25, 1947) was an Italian-American gangster.
He led a crime syndicate in the Prohibition-era that was known as the "Capones".
The Capones were known for smuggling, bootlegging liquor and prostitution in Chicago, Illinois from around the 1920s until 1931.
Capone 's organized crime reign ended in June 1931, when he was indicated for federal income tax evasion.
Found guilty, Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Capone was released from his sentence in 1939, suffering from an advanced case of syphilis.
Capone died on January 25, 1947 after he suffered a stroke.
He regained consciousness and caught pneumonia and later had a fatal cardiac arrest.
On January 25, 1947 Al Capone died in his home, surrounded by his family.
Michael Jackson made a song called "Al Capone" for his 1987 album Bad.
It was not put on the album.
The song was released on the second disc of the 25th Anniversary re-release of Bad.
The Azores is an archipelago of nine volcanic islands in the North Atlantic Ocean; they are about 1500 k west of Lisbon and about 1900 k southeast of Newfoundland.
The islands, and their Exclusive Economic Zone, form the Autonomous Region of the Azores, one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal.
There are nine major Azores islands and several very small islands (islets), in three main groups.
They extend for more than 600 k and lie in a northwest-southeast direction.
The archipelago is part of the Macaronesia.
Officially, the first islands were "discovered" in the 15th century (in 1431) by Gon alo Velho Cabral a Captain in the service of Infante Dom Henrique, though credit is also given to the explorer Diogo de Silves (in 1427).
The archipelago was settled over the centuries largely from mainland Portugal.
Portuguese settlers came from the provinces of Algarve, Minho, Alentejo and Ribatejo as well as Madeira.
In 1976, the Azores became the Autonomous Region of the Azores, an autonomous regions of Portugal.
The archipelago is in the Atlantic Ocean between 36 and 43 latitude North and between 25 and 31 longitude West.
They have a very humid oceanic climate with relatively small annual variations.
The nine islands are in three natural geographic groups, each group separated by more than 160 k of water.
These groups are:
The eastern group also has, to the northeast of Santa Maria, a group of very small islands (islets) and reefs that are named Ilh us das Formigas (Islets of the Ants), or just Formigas ("Ants"); these smalls islands, together with the Dollabarat reef, form the Reserva Natural do Ilh u das Formigas.
The nine islands have a total area of 2333 k. Their individual areas vary between 759 k of the largest island (S o Miguel) to 17 k of the smallest (Corvo).
All the islands have volcanic origins, although some, such as Santa Maria, have had no recorded activity since the islands were settled.
The last volcano to erupt in the archipelago was the Capelinhos Volcano in 1957, in the western part of the island of Faial.
Earthquakes are common on most of the islands.
The Azores are on place where three of the world 's large tectonic plates (the North American Plate, the Eurasian Plate and the African Plate) meet.
The westernmost islands of the archipelago, (Corvo and Flores), are in the North American Plate, while the remaining islands are located within the region where the Eurasian plate is separated from the African Plates.
The volcano Mount Pico, on the Pico island, is the highest point in Portugal, at 2351 m.
Daily maximum temperatures usually range between 15 and 25.
The average annual rainfall increases from east to west, and it ranges from 700 to 1600 annual millimetres (27.6 63 in) on average, reaching 6300 m on Mount Pico.
The sea around the Azores is warmed by the Gulf Stream and sea water temperature varies from 14 to 22.
A total of 11 tropical or subtropical cyclones have affected the region in history.
Most of them were either extratropical or tropical storms when they impacted the region, although several hurricanes of Category 1 have reached the Azores.
When the Azores became an Autonomous Region of Portugal, the cities of Ponta Delgada, Angra and Horta were considered capital\/administrative cities to the regional government: homes to the President (Ponta Delgada), the Judiciary (Angra) and the Regional Assembly (Horta).
The Azores are divided into 19 municipalities; each municipality is further divided into parishes, of which there is a total of 156 in all of the Azores.
The municipalities, by island, are:
According to the 2011 Census, the total population in the Azores was 246,746: 121,533 men and 125,213 women.
The density for the whole Archipelago is 106 persons\/km2.
The Azores economy is based mainly on agriculture, fisheries and tourism.
In the agriculture sector, cattle-raising is very important.
Some of the most important crops in the Azores are pineapples, grapes, potatoes, tobacco and tea.
Fisheries are an important economic activity on all islands.
Fishing methods are highly traditional among Azorean fishermen.
Industry in the Azores is based mainly on the production of dairy products (milk, cheese) and transformation of fisheries products, such as tuna.
It is tourism, however, that has been growing more in recent years.
It is far less developed than those industries of its Macaronesian neighbors, Madeira and Canary Islands.
The outback is the remote areas of Australia.
The outback is not a defined area, it is only a term used to refer to locations that are far away from big cities.
The fertile parts are known as Rangelands and have been traditionally used for sheep or cattle farming.
Agriculture, tourism and mining are the main economic activities in this vast and sparsely settled area.
Because of the expanses and remoteness in the outback a unique service, The Flying Doctor, was created in 1928.
The aim of the service is to provide medical care to people who can not reach hospitals or other doctors.
Consultations are carried out via radio or telephone and for serious situations, doctors are flown out to the patients.
Organised travels with a guide to the outback is popular, although some Australian and international tourists travel in their own cars.
Such a trip, especially off the few big roads in the outback, requires very good planning and a suitable vehicle (usually four wheel drive).
On remote routes considerable supplies and equipment are required.
Some big trips can not be undertaken safely without a convoy of several vehicles.
Deaths of tourists are a regular occurrences because many people are not well-prepared for their outback trip.
Ansbach is a city in Middle Franconia, Germany.
The Arno is a river in the Tuscany region of Italy.
It is one of the important rivers of central Italy.
The river begins on Mount Falterona in the Casentino area of the Apennines.
It first takes a curve to the south.
The river turns to the west near Arezzo.
It passes through Florence, Empoli and Pisa, then flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea at the Marina di Pisa.
At a length of 241 k, it is the longest river in the region.
A flood on November 4, 1966 collapsed the embankment in Florence.
This killed at least 40 people.
It also damaged or destroyed millions of works of art and rare books.
40 years later, hundreds of works have still not been restored.
The Apostles ' Creed (Latin: Symbolum Apostolorum), sometimes titled Symbol of the Apostles, is an early statement of Christian belief, a creed or "symbol."
It is commonly used by many Christian denominations, during religious ceremonies and as a summary of Christian beliefs.
It is most commonly used during ceremonies at churches of Western tradition, including the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church, Lutheranism, the Anglican Communion, and Western Orthodoxy.
It is also used by evangelical Protestant denominations such as Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, and many Baptists.
The Creed is named the Apostles ' Creed because it is made of twelve articles.
People believed that after Pentecost, God inspired each of Jesus ' Twelve Apostles to write one article.
Many hypotheses exist about when and how the Apostles ' Creed was created.
Many suppose it comes from "the Old Roman Symbol" of the 1st or 2nd century, and was influenced later by the Nicene Creed (325\/381).
This creed seems to have been made as an argument against Gnosticism.
Gnosticism was a heresy in the early days of the Church.
Gnostics believed things that were very different than what the Catholic Church taught.
The Apostles ' Creed, and other creeds, were made to be like examples of Catholic teachings, and to defend Catholic beliefs.
This can be seen in almost every phrase.
For example, the creed states that Christ was born, suffered, and died on the cross.
This seems to be an argument against Gnostic beliefs, which said that Christ only seemed to become a man, and that he did not truly suffer and die, but only seemed like he did.
Because it was written very early in history, it does not talk about some issues that later Christian creeds, like the Nicene Creed, brought up.
This makes it acceptable to many Arians and Unitarians.
For more information on the origin of the Apostles ' Creed, see the detailed discussion in the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et terrae.
Et in Iesum Christum, Filium Eius unicum, Dominum nostrum, qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine, passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus, descendit ad nferos, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis, ascendit ad caelos, sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis, inde venturus est iudicare vivos et mortuos.
Credo in Spiritum Sanctum, sanctam Ecclesiam catholicam, sanctorum communionem, remissionem peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem, vitam aeternam.
Amen.
(Triglot Concordia, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921, p. 12)
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
and the life everlasting.
Amen.
In the Church of England there are currently two authorized forms of the creed.
One is in the Book of Common Prayer (1662).
The other is in Common Worship (2000).
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried, He descended into hell; The third day he rose again from the dead, He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost; The holy Catholick Church; The Communion of Saints; The Forgiveness of sins; The Resurrection of the body, And the life everlasting.
Amen.
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
Amen.
The United Methodists commonly include the Apostles ' Creed in their worship services.
Their version of the Creed is special because it does not have the line "he descended into hell."
Except for this, it is very similar to the version in the Book of Common Prayer.
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
Amen.
The United Methodist Hymnal also contains (at # 882) what it calls the "Ecumenical Version" of the Creed.
This version is identical to the one in the Episcopal Church 's current Book of Common Prayer.
This form of the Apostles ' Creed is included in the Hymnal to be used during the Eucharist and baptisms.
Because of this, it is getting more popular.
The English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC) is an international group whose goal is to provide texts that can be used and accepted by people of any Christian denomination.
In 1988, it created a translation of the Apostles ' Creed.
One major change in this version is that it does not use the word "his" when talking about God.
The text is as follows:
I believe in God, the Father almighty,: creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God 's only Son, our Lord,: who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,: born of the Virgin Mary,: suffered under Pontius Pilate,: was crucified, died, and was buried;: he descended to the dead.
: On the third day he rose again;: he ascended into heaven,: he is seated at the right hand of the Father,: and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,: the holy catholic Church,: the communion of saints,: the forgiveness of sins,: the resurrection of the body,: and the life everlasting.
Amen.
The word agar comes from the Malay word agar-agar (meaning jelly).
Chemically comes from agarose.
It is obtained from red algae Gellidium and Gracillaria.
It is used as a place to grow bacteria in an microbiology laboratory, and to make some foods thicker, like soup.
Acid rain is rain that is unusually acidic.
It is rain with high levels of hydrogen ions (low pH).
Acid rain can have harmful effects on plants, animals and humans.
It is caused when gaseous compounds of ammonium, carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur are released into the atmosphere.
The wind carries the gases high into the sky.
There the compounds react with the water in the atmosphere and acids are made.
In 1852, Robert Angus Smith showed the relationship between acid rain and atmospheric pollution in Manchester.
He coined the term "acid rain" in 1872.
Acid rain is caused by acids mixing with air.
The largest source of acid is sulfur dioxide.
Carbon dioxide and various oxides of nitrogen also make acid in the atmosphere.
These chemicals are both natural and artificial.
There are various natural causes, such as gases from volcanoes.
However, it is thought that mankind now causes most acid rain.
People started producing more acidic gases when they started building factories and power stations.
These buildings as well as houses and vehicles burn coal or oil that have sulfur in them.
This releases gases into the air that produce acid rain.
Governments have tried since the 1970s to reduce the amount of sulfur being released into the Earth 's atmosphere, and have had good results so far.
However, it is expensive to clean the smoke from factories and power stations.
In 2001 Great Britain still produced about five million tonnes of these gases every year; and China produced 18 million tonnes.
The United States produced more than 20 million tonnes then, which declined to 8.1 million in 2010.
Acid rain can also be caused naturally.
For example, acids can be made by nitrogen compounds made by lightning, and volcanic eruptions can release sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere.
Acid rain has been shown to have a bad impact on forests, freshwater and soil.
It kills insect and aquatic life-forms as well as causes damage to buildings and having impacts on human health.
Acid rain poisons rivers and lakes.
Fish and other animals can not live in acid water.
It is also bad for buildings as the acid damages calcium carbonate stone.
The acid dissolves it.
Many buildings and monuments have been damaged by acid rain.
Arlo Guthrie (born 1947) is an American musician and songwriter, and is the son of folk music legend Woody Guthrie.
His most famous song is "Alice 's Restaurant", which was also the title of his first album.
Guthrie learned music from his father, who wrote songs for him like "Goodnight Little Arlo".
When the young Guthrie became thirteen years old, his father gave him a Bar Mitzvah, and invited many folk musicians.
It was called "the first hootenanny bar mitzvah in history."
Guthrie met Bob Dylan when Dylan came from Minnesota to meet his father Woody.
Dylan taught Guthrie a new way to play the harmonica.
Guthrie started college after high school, but dropped out.
During 1965, Guthrie visited his friends Alice and Ray Brock in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, who lived in an old church, and owned a restaurant.
He recorded a musical commercial for the restaurant.
When Thanksgiving came that year, they invited many people, and afterwards there was a lot of garbage to be picked up and thrown away.
Guthrie and another friend tried to take the garbage to a dump, but it was closed.
They found a large trash pile not far away, and unwisely decided to throw their garbage onto the same pile.
(Dumping trash where it does not belong is called ` littering ' and is a crime in most places.)
When local police found out, they arrested Guthrie and his friend.
Since the young men had long hair and looked like hippies, the police wanted to prosecute them and make an example of them to other young people.
They prepared a big court case against Guthrie and his friend, with many photographs of the litter pile.
It turned out the local judge was blind, could not look at the photographs, and was not interested in the case.
He fined Guthrie and his friend fifty dollars, and ordered them to clean up the pile.
Not long after, Guthrie received a draft notice.
The United States Army wanted him to become a soldier.
Guthrie went for a physical examination by a doctor, and had to fill out a questionnaire giving information about himself.
When asked if he had ever been arrested, he talked about the littering incident.
He soon found himself sitting on a bench together with criminals, some of which were violent or dangerous.
He could not believe the way he was treated by the Army.
He began to complain and protest his treatment.
The Army officers decided he would not make a good soldier, but might become a threat to the American government.
They fingerprinted Guthrie, and let him go.
Guthrie decided later the two incidents would make a good protest song and he built one around the jingle he had written.
He called the song "Alice 's Restaurant Massacree", and recorded it in front of a live audience.
He did not want other young men to be drafted, and suggested in the song that they might get out of the draft by doing like he had.
The recording became half of his first album, and the rest was filled out with other music, like "The Motorcycle Song".
The album became a hit record.
Guthrie later recorded other albums and songs.
His cover of the Steve Goodman song, "The City of New Orleans", about a famous train named after the city, became another hit.
He bought a farm with the money he earned from his music, and lived there between recording sessions and performing tours.
In time, he became interested in charity work.
He noticed people of different religious beliefs did not always work well together for the same causes, because their beliefs kept them apart.
He tried to work around the differences, and help people find ways to work together to solve the same problems.
He started the Guthrie Center, as a place for people to work together.
He later bought the old church where his friends had lived, and made it the headquarters for the Guthrie Center.
An antioxidant is a molecule that can slow or stop the oxidation, or electron transfer, of other molecules.
Antioxidants can be found in food.
Antioxidants are molecules that relieve oxidative stress by preventing the formation and oxidation of free radicals.
Antioxidants donate one of their electrons or hydrogen to free radicals, stopping their chain reaction.
Found in our diet (for example, in vitamins) or formed inside our body (like enzymes), antioxidants can protect us from the damaging effects of free radicals.
The best way to combat free radicals is to have a diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, red wine, and green tea.
These functional foods are rich in phytochemicals with antioxidant properties.
Health supplements enriched with antioxidants are also now widely available.
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc.
Some types of brass are called bronzes.
Brass has a golden appearance.
It is harder than pure metals.
It costs more than zinc.
Bonn is a city near Cologne.
It is in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Bonn was founded on an old Roman settlement.
Today it has about 310,000 inhabitants.
Following World War II Bonn was in the British occupation zone.
In 1949 Bonn was chosen as the provisional capital of West Germany.
Bonn was the choice of Konrad Adenauer, a former Cologne Mayor and the first Chancellor of West Germany after World War II, who came from that area.
Frankfurt am Main had most of the needed facilities already, so using Bonn meant spending about 95 Million DM to building new roads and building.
However, Frankfurt am Main had been an important city during the war, and choosing Bonn was to symbolise a new start for the new Germany.
Because of its relatively small size for a capital city, Bonn was sometimes jokingly called the Bundesdorf (Federal Village).
Bonn was the capital of West Germany from 1949 until 1990 it.
The Bundestag voted to move to Berlin on 20 June 1991, after a heated debate.
The Federal President had already decided to make Schlo Bellevue in Berlin his main official residence.
The extra building work needed meant it was 1999 before the government 's move was completed.
Beethoven 's birthplace is located at Bonngasse.
Next to the market place is the Old Town Hall, built in 1737 in Rococo style, under the rule of Clemens August of Bavaria.
It 's used for receptions of guests of the town, and as a bureau for the mayor.
Close by is the Kurf rstliches Schloss, which has been built as a residence of the prince-elector, and nowadays is the main building of the University of Bonn.
The Poppelsdorfer Allee, an alley flanked by chestnut trees, connects the Kurf rstliches Schloss with the Poppelsdorfer Schloss, a palace that was built as a resort to prince-electors in the first half of the 18th century.
This axis is interrupted by a railway line and Bonn Central Station, a building erected in 1883\/84.
The three highest buildings in the city are the radio mast of WDR in Bonn-Venusberg (180 m), the headquarters of the Deutsche Post called Post Tower (162.5 m) and the former building for the German members of parliament Langer Eugen (114.7 m) which nowadays is the new location of the UN-Campus.
Ballroom dance is the name for a number of dances done in ballrooms.
It usually means pairs (mostly a man and woman) dancing separately from other pairs.
The most important difference in style is between the modern or standard dances and the Latin dances.
The modern dances are the waltz, quickstep, foxtrot, tango and Viennese waltz.
The Latin dances are the cha-cha-cha, samba, rumba, paso doble and jive.
However, there are also sequence dances, where dancers move together in a pre-set pattern.
All these dances can be danced socially, more or less any way people want to.
As competition dances, they are organised under the rule of the World Dance Council.
These competitions are danced in the International style; the techniques were developed by English dancers in the 20th century.
All major international competitions are conducted within detailed regulations.
There are other systems of dance regulated by national bodies.
American style is one; Scottish dancing is another; Greek classical dance is another.
Although the most famous dancers were Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, they did not dance in ballrooms.
Their career together was entirely on film.
Astaire danced also on the stage, and on television.
The most famous American pair of ballroom dancers was Vernon and Irene Castle, who were national figures until Vernon 's death in 1918.
Later, Arthur Murray 's chain of dance schools taught many Americans to dance.
The most famous English ballroom dancer was probably Victor Silvester, who was a professional dancer and a very successful bandleader.
Most of these are dances that started in other places, but were developed in their modern form by English dancers and dance teachers.
Most people do these dances for fun.
When people compete against each other, the women wear formal dresses (gowns) for standard competition and short skirts for Latin.
Men wear formal evening wear (` white tie and tails ') for standard and informal shirts for Latin.
Some people earn medals to show how they are improving.
They dance in front of a judge to earn a medal at the Bronze, Silver, or Gold levels.
Ballroom dance teaching and medal awards is done by Dance Teacher organizations, such as the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD) or the International Dance Teachers Association (IDTA).
These organizations also do ballet, stage dancing (or ` theater dance ' or ` jazz dance ') and several other types of dance.
Their qualifications and exams are held world-wide, even though they are English in origin.
Street dance, as the name suggests, does not need a ballroom.
Nevertheless, it is being taught in ballrooms, as are some other kinds of non-traditional dance.
There are also some line dances, in which people dance as a group instead of with a partner.
Some line dances are done to Mambo, Waltz, Paso Doble, and Samba.
Some people dance in couples, but also as a group, with everyone doing the same steps.
This is called formation dancing.
People compete at many levels, but the basic division is between amateurs and professionals.
Then, amongst amateurs, there are age grades (British regulations):
In the USA, competitions may be divided according to dancing ability: Newcomer, Pre-Bronze, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Pre-Championship, and Championship.
The best-known competition is the Blackpool Dance Festival, England.
This has been going annually since 1920 (except for war years), and its events, like most English events, are open to the world.
American style ballroom dancing is sometimes called Social style.
It includes smooth and rhythm dances:
The Birth of a Nation is a 1915 silent movie.
It was directed by D. W. Griffith.
It was based on the book The Clansman by Thomas Dixon, Jr..
It stars Lillian Gish.
The movie is about two families during the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era.
The Northern Stoneman family is pro-Union.
The Southern Cameron family is pro-Confederacy.
The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth is dramatized.
The movie was a great success.
It was very controversial though.
It showed African American men (played by white actors in blackface) as stupid and sexually aggressive towards white women.
It also showed the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic force.
There were protests.
The movie was banned in several cities.
The outcry of racism was great.
The movie is also credited in part with the formation of the "second era" Ku Klux Klan the same year.
The Birth of a Nation was used as a recruiting tool for the KKK.
In 1915, it was the first movie to be shown at the White House.
The Baltic Sea is a sea in northern Europe between Scandinavia, Finland, Russia, the Baltic countries, Poland, and Germany.
Many big rivers in the surrounding countries drain into the Baltic Sea.
The Baltic Sea is connected to the ocean through the narrow and shallow Danish straits and belts.
For this reason, the water has a low amount of salt, so the northern parts of the sea freeze over in the winter.
The ice can carry cars, and roads are established every winter between the islands in the archipelagos between Sweden and Finland.
For several thousand years, the Baltic Sea has connected the countries at her shores.
For that reason there are many cultural similarities in these countries.
Since all of these countries are European, this sea is also considered European.
Brackish water (less commonly brack water) is salt water and fresh water mixed together.
It is saltier than fresh water, but not as salty as seawater.
It may result from mixing of seawater with fresh water, as in estuaries, or it may occur in brackish fossil aquifers.
Some human activities can produce brackish water, mostly certain civil engineering projects such as dikes and the flooding of coastal marshland to produce brackish pools for freshwater prawns.
Technically, brackish water contains between 0.5 and 30 grams of salt per litre more often expressed as 0.5 to 30 parts per thousand (ppt or).
Thus, brackish covers a range of salinity regimes and is not considered a precisely defined condition.
It is characteristic of many brackish surface waters that their salinity can vary considerably over space and\/or time.
The term brackish water comes from the Low German word Brack, which is a small lake made when a storm tide breaks a dike and floods land behind the dike.
The most important brackish water habitats are estuaries, where a river meets the sea, mixing salt and fresh water.
The River Thames flowing through London is one of the most familiar of river estuaries.
Another important brackish water habitat is the mangrove swamp or mangal..
Some seas and lakes are brackish.
The Baltic Sea is a brackish sea adjoining the North Sea..
The Caspian Sea is the world 's largest lake and contains brackish water with a salinity about one-third that of normal seawater.
The Caspian is famous for its peculiar animal fauna, including one of the few non-marine seals (the Caspian seal) and the great sturgeons, the source of caviar.
The Bronx is the northern part of New York City, United States.
The name came from Bronck 's Farms, owned by a settler called Jonas Bronck.
The Bronx River flows south out of Yonkers and Mount Vernon, New York, through the middle of The Bronx, and into Long Island Sound.
The Bronx was once the southern part of Westchester County, New York.
The New York Yankees baseball team plays there.
Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe.
It is a founding member of the European Union.
It has the headquarters of the European Union, NATO and some other famous organizations.
The capital city of Belgium is Brussels.
Belgium has an area of 30528 k. There are about 11 million people.
There are three regions in Belgium: Flanders (where the Flemish speak Dutch) in the northern half of Belgium, Wallonia (where most people speak French) in the southern half and the Brussels-Capital Region in the middle (where French is mostly spoken, with some Dutch).
The population is about 60 % Dutch-speaking (Flemish people), 39 % French-speaking (Walloons) and 1 % German-speaking (so called Deutschbelgier) on the border with Germany.
To look after these groups, Belgium has a complicated system of government.
The name ` Belgium ' comes from Gallia Belgica.
This was a Roman province in the northernmost part of Gaul.
Before Roman invasion in 100 BC, the Belgae, a mix of Celtic and Germanic peoples, lived there.
The Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings.
A slow shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to change into the Carolingian Empire.
The Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the region into Middle and West Francia.
They were vassals either of the King of France or of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries.
The Eighty Years ' War (1568 1648) divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands.
Southern Netherlands were ruled by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs.
This made up most of modern Belgium.
After the campaigns of 1794 in the French Revolutionary Wars, the Low Countries were added into the French First Republic.
This ended Austrian rule in the area.
Adding back the Low Countries formed the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
This happened at the end of the First French Empire in 1815.
The Belgian Revolution was in 1830.
Leopold I became king on 1831.
This is now celebrated as Belgium 's National Day.
The Berlin Conference of 1885 gave control of the Congo Free State to King Leopold II.
This was for him personally and not for the country of Belgium.
Starting in about 1900 many people did not like how he treated the Congolese people.
In 1908 the Belgian state took control of the colony.
It was then called the Belgian Congo.
Germany invaded Belgium in 1914.
This was part of World War I. The opening months of the war were very bad in Belgium.
During the war Belgium took over the of Ruanda-Urundi (modern day Rwanda and Burundi).
After the First World War, the Prussian districts of Eupen and Malmedy were added into Belgium in 1925.
The country was again invaded by Germany in 1940 and under German control until 1944.
After World War II, the people made king Leopold III leave his throne in 1951.
This is because they thought he helped the Germans.
In 1960 the Belgian Congo stopped being under Belgian rule.
Two years later Ruanda-Urundi also became free.
Belgium joined NATO as a founding member.
Belgium has a system of government known as a constitutional monarchy, meaning that it has a monarch, but that the monarch does not rule the country, and that a government is elected democratically.
Belgium has had its own monarchy since 1831.
King Albert II left the throne on July 21, 2013 and the current king is Philippe.
In Belgium, the government is elected.
Between mid-2010 and late 2011, after no clear result in the election, Belgium had no official government, until Elio Di Rupo became Prime Minister.
Flanders and Wallonia both also have their own regional governments, and there is a notable independence movement in Flanders.
Charles Michel is currently the Prime Minister.
Belgium is next to France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
Its total area is 33,990 square kilometers.
The land area alone is 30,528 km.
Belgium has three main geographical regions.
The coastal plain is in the north-west.
The central plateau are part of the Anglo-Belgian Basin.
The Ardennes uplands are in the south-east.
The Paris Basin reaches a small fourth area at Belgium 's southernmost tip, Belgian Lorraine.
The coastal plain is mostly sand dunes and polders.
Further inland is a smooth, slowly rising landscape.
There are fertile valleys.
The hills have many forests.
The plateaus of the Ardennes are more rough and rocky.
They have caves and small, narrow valleys.
Signal de Botrange is the country 's highest point at 694 metres (2,277 ft).
Belgium is divided into three Regions.
Flanders and Wallonia are divided into provinces.
The third Region, Brussels is not part of any province.
The Belgian Armed Forces have about 46,000 active troops.
In 2009 the yearly defense budget was $ 6 billion.
There are four parts: Belgian Land Component, or the Army; Belgian Air Component, or the Air Force; Belgian Naval Component, or the Navy; Belgian Medical Component.
Adding to science and technology has happened throughout the country 's history.
cartographer Gerardus Mercator, anatomist Andreas Vesalius, herbalist Rembert Dodoens and mathematician Simon Stevin are among the most influential scientists.
Chemist Ernest Solvay and engineer Zenobe Gramme gave their names to the Solvay process and the Gramme dynamo in the 1860s.
Bakelite was formed in 1907 1909 by Leo Baekeland.
A major addition to science was also due to a Belgian, Georges Lema tre.
He is the one who made the Big Bang theory of the start of the universe in 1927.
Three Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine were awarded to Belgians: Jules Bordet in 1919, Corneille Heymans in 1938 and Albert Claude together with Christian De Duve in 1974.
Ilya Prigogine was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977.
Two Belgian mathematicians have been awarded the Fields Medal: Pierre Deligne in 1978 and Jean Bourgain in 1994.
In February 2014, Belgium became the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia without any age limits.
There have been many additions to painting and architecture.
Several examples of major architectural places in Belgium belong to UNESCO 's World Heritage List.
In the 15th century the religious paintings of Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden were important.
The 16th century had more styles such as Peter Breughel 's landscape paintings and Lambert Lombard 's showing of the antique.
The style of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck was strong in the early 17th century in the Southern Netherlands.
During the 19th and 20th centuries many original romantic, expressionist and surrealist Belgian painters started.
These include James Ensor and other artists in the Les XX group, Constant Permeke, Paul Delvaux and Ren Magritte.
The sculptor Panamarenko is still a remarkable figure in contemporary art.
The artist Jan Fabre and the painter Luc Tuymans are other internationally known figures in contemporary art.
Belgian contributions to architecture were also in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde were major starters of the Art Nouveau style.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were major violinists, such as Henri Vieuxtemps, Eug ne Ysa e and Arthur Grumiaux.
Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in 1846.
The composer C sar Franck was born in Li ge in 1822.
Newer music in Belgium is also famous.
Jazz musician Toots Thielemans and singer Jacques Brel have made global fame.
In rock\/pop music, Telex, Front 242, K 's Choice, Hooverphonic, Zap Mama, Soulwax and dEUS are well known.
In the heavy metal scene, bands like Machiavel, Channel Zero and Enthroned have a worldwide fan-base.
Belgium has several well-known authors, including the poet Emile Verhaeren and novelists Hendrik Conscience, Georges Simenon, Suzanne Lilar and Am lie Nothomb.
The poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1911.
The Adventures of Tintin by Herg is the best known of Franco-Belgian comics.
Many other major authors, including Peyo, Andr Franquin, Edgar P. Jacobs and Willy Vandersteen brought the Belgian cartoon strip industry a worldwide fame.
Belgian cinema has brought a number of mainly Flemish novels to life on-screen.
Belgian directors include Andr Delvaux, Stijn Coninx, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne.
Well-known actors include Jan Decleir and Marie Gillain.
Successful films include Man Bites Dog and The Alzheimer Affair.
Belgium is famous for beer, chocolate, waffles and french fries.
French fries were first made in Belgium.
The national dishes are "steak and fries with salad", and "mussels with fries".
Other local fast food dishes include a Mitraillette.
Brands of Belgian chocolate and pralines, like C te d'Or, Guylian, Neuhaus, Leonidas, Corn and Galler are famous.
Belgium makes over 1100 varieties of beer.
The Trappist beer of the Abbey of Westvleteren has repeatedly been rated the world 's best beer.
The biggest brewer in the world by volume is Anheuser-Busch InBev, based in Leuven.
Since the 1970s, sports clubs are organised separately by each language community.
Association football is one of the most popular sports in both parts of Belgium, together with cycling, tennis, swimming and judo.
With five victories in the Tour de France and many other cycling records, Belgian Eddy Merckx is said to be one of the greatest cyclists of all time.
Jean-Marie Pfaff, a former Belgian goalkeeper, is said to be one of the greatest in the history of football (soccer).
Belgium and The Netherlands hosted the UEFA European Football Championship in 2000.
Belgium hosted the 1972 European Football Championships.
Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin both were Player of the Year in the Women 's Tennis Association.
The Spa-Francorchamps motor-racing circuit hosts the Formula One World Championship Belgian Grand Prix.
The Belgian driver, Jacky Ickx, won eight Grands Prix and six 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Belgium also has a strong reputation in motocross.
Sporting events held each year in Belgium include the Memorial Van Damme athletics competition, the Belgian Grand Prix Formula One, and a number of classic cycle races such as the Tour of Flanders and Li ge Bastogne Li ge.
The 1920 Summer Olympics were held in Antwerp.
The blues is a form of music that started in the United States during the start of the 20th century.
It was started by former African slaves from spirituals, praise songs, and chants.
The first blues songs were called Delta blues.
These songs came from the area near the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Many afro-Americans migrated to the north esp.
in the northwest of the United States, to find work.
They took the blues with them and developed it into new styles.
The most important is the Chicago Blues, which is played with electric amplified instruments.
But other cities and states have their own form of Blues developed from the Delta Blues (f. e. Texas Blues, West Coast Blues and others).
Blues is based on a simple pattern.
Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel - Jimi Hendrix.
A common form for the blues is a repeating 12 bar form (each bar has 4 beats).
This is put together as 3 phrases or sections, each being 4 bars long.
The basic blues only needs 3 chords, one based on the first note of the scale - the tonic chord, one based on the fourth note of the scale - the subdominant chord, and one based on the fifth note of the scale - the dominant chord.
The first section or phrase of 4 bars only uses the tonic chord.
A common variation is to use the subdominant chord in the second bar.
The second phrase has 2 bars (8 beats) of subdominant chord then 2 bars of tonic chord.
The third phrase has 1 bar (4 beats) of dominant chord, 1 bar of subdominant chord and finishes with 2 bars of tonic chord.
The melody of the simplest blues scales are based on the minor pentatonic scale for example C Eflat G A Bflat C, with extra notes (called "blue notes") added like this C Eflat Gflat G A Bflat C. Blue notes do not normally fit a scale, but they give the music a special feeling.
The lyrics (words) are usually about life, more specifically, the bad things in life.
They are simple blues songs that are also based around the form of 3 phrases.
The first phrase is set over the first 4 bars of music.
The second phrase words are a repetition of the first phrase, this always happens and emphasises the message.
The third phrase completes the "story" and rhymes (ends with the same sound) as the first line.
This verse from Robert Johnson 's "Crossroad Blues" shows how these phrases work in a song:
The blues have made a difference in newer American and Western popular music, such as jazz, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, hip-hop, and country music, as well as common pop songs.
Berlin is the capital city of Germany.
It is also the biggest city in Germany.
About 3,400,000 people lived there in November 2008.
(In the year 1943 there were over 4,500,000 people).
The city is in the eastern part of Germany.
It is about 70 k west of Poland.
Berlin has an area of 891 k. The rivers Havel, Dahme and Spree run through Berlin.
It has an oceanic climate (Cfb in the Koeppen climate classification).
Berlin is home to many famous buildings and monuments, like the Siegess ule, the Brandenburger Tor, the Reichstag and the boulevard Unter den Linden.
On the boulevard are the Humboldt University and the State Opera of Berlin.
The Governing Mayor of the city is Michael M ller (SPD).
Berlin was divided into West Berlin and East Berlin after World War II.
After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 very few people were allowed to cross from East Berlin into West Berlin.
The wall divided the city until 1989 when the East German government (SED) decided to allow anyone to cross, and people decided to destroy the wall.
The Berlin Zoo has some Giant Pandas; which are native to China.
Berlin has partnerships with 17 cities.
Each of the 12 boroughs also has their sister cities, sometimes called twin cities.
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III; August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served from 1993 to 2001 as the 42nd President of the United States.
He was 46 years old when he was elected and the third youngest president.
He took office at the end of the Cold War.
Clinton was the first president from the baby boom generation.
Before he was president, Clinton was governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992 and attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979.
His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton is the former United States Secretary of State and Senator of New York.
Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe in Hope, Arkansas.
His biological father, William Jefferson Blythe died in a car accident, three months before Clinton was born.
His mother, Virginia Clinton Kelley was a Nurse anesthetist.
He took the last name Clinton because it was his stepfather, Roger Clinton, Sr. 's name.
Clinton grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
In high school, Clinton played the saxophone.
Clinton went to college at Georgetown University.
During his college years, Clinton worked under several politicians.
He later went to Oxford University and Yale Law School.
Clinton did not fight in the Vietnam War because he was in the ROTC for a short time.
Clinton married Hillary Rodham in 1975.
In 1980, their daughter, Chelsea Clinton, was born.
After law school.
Clinton was elected Attorney General of Arkansas in 1976 and governor of Arkansas in 1978.
At 32, he was the youngest governor in the country at that time.
Clinton served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1993.
Clinton was known for being a "New Democrat" while governor.
During his time as governor, Clinton changed the state 's school system.
There was also a scandal called Whitewater during Clinton 's term.
In the 1992 presidential election, he beat Republican George H. W. Bush.
During the early part of Clinton 's first term, he put in place a tax code which would increase taxes on the rich and decrease taxes on the poor.
In 1994, during Clinton 's first term in office, the Congress switched to a Republican majority.
However, Clinton still beat Republican Bob Dole in the 1996 election.
The Republicans defeated Clinton 's proposal for the U.S. government to adopt universal health care.
The Republicans proposed many new ideas to Congress to limit the size of government such as requiring the budget to be balanced and to stop people from abusing the welfare system.
Clinton was sued by Paula Jones for sexual harassment, but the lawsuit was officially dismissed after Jones failed to prove damages.
This made him the first sitting United States president to be sued.
President Clinton was accused of wrongdoing by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 1998 during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Although he lied that they did not engage in sexual activity, he was found to have done nothing wrong by the U.S. Senate in February 1999.
The country faced very few challenges during his term.
The Cold War was over and there was very little need for the U.S. military to get involved in the world 's affairs, so defense spending was significantly lowered.
The economy was doing very well during his term, though there is a debate whether the economy was well because of Clinton 's policies or because of the Republicans ' policies.
The decade ended with the being the first time the United States did not have to borrow money to pay for its budget.
Clinton left office with high approval ratings and was succeeded by George W. Bush.
After his presidency, he wrote some books and traveled around the world helping out the United States.
He is married to former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and now lives in New York.
He has written My Life, a book about his life, and several other books.
Clinton has received two Grammy Awards, both for books he read on tape.
He is now the U.N. 's envoy to Haiti.
He also became a vegetarian.
In 2013, Clinton started following Buddhist meditation to help him relax.
On November 20, 2013, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor of the United States, by President Barack Obama.
Beer is an alcoholic drink.
It is made with water, hops, barley (types of cereal grains), and types of yeast (a fungus that produces alcohol).
A process called fermentation turns sugar into alcohol, using yeast.
Another product of the fermentation is carbon dioxide.
In general, all alcoholic drinks where yeast turns sugar into alcohol are called beer.
In these cases, distillation is not used.
The difference to wine is that with wine, sugars from plants, such as fruit sugar, or that made by animals is used.
As an example, mead is a wine made from honey.
Japanese sake is made from rice, and uses yeast for fermentation; so even if some people call it rice wine, sake is really a kind of beer.
The act of making beer is called "brewing".
Beer is made by adding warm water to malted barley and other grains.
The enzymes in the barley change the malted barley and other grains into simple sugars.
This is called the mash.
The water is then sparged (drained) from the grain.
The water is now called wort.
The wort is boiled and hops are added.
Hops provide flavor and preserve the beer.
After boiling the wort is cooled and yeast is added.
The yeast turns the sugars into alcohol and the wort into beer.
Different beers can have different natures, depending on the ingredients used; for example, an ale uses top fermenting yeast.
Top fermenting yeasts eat more sugar and produce more alcohol.
A lager uses bottom fermenting yeast.
Bottom fermenting yeasts eat less sugar and produce a crisper, cleaner taste.
Adding hops makes the beer more bitter and aromatic.
Specialty malts (different types of cooked barley) produce different flavors and colors.
These flavors and colors are most notable in dark beers like Porter and Stout.
Different countries have different ways to make beer.
In Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia, beer is usually made from just hops, malt, water, and yeast.
This is because of the Reinheitsgebot.
The Reinheitsgebot was a law that said says that beer can only be made from hops, malt, and water.
Yeast was discovered after the Reinheitsgebot.
The law was overturned by the European Union in 1992.
In Belgium, however, beers have always been made with wheat, sugar, fruit, and other ingredients.
The earliest records of beer were written around 7000 years ago by the Sumerians.
It is said that the Sumerians discovered the fermentation process by accident.
It is not known exactly how this happened, but it could be that a piece of bread or grain became wet, and a short time later, it began to ferment and made a pulp that caused people to become drunk.
A seal around 4,000 years old is a Sumerian "Hymn to Ninkasi", the goddess of brewing.
This "hymn" is also a recipe for making beer.
A description of the making of beer on this ancient engraving in the Sumerian language is the earliest account of what is easily recognized as barley, followed by a pictograph of bread being baked, crumbled into water to form a mash, and then made into a drink, that is recorded as having made people feel"... wonderful and blissful".
It could even be possible that bread was first baked to be a way to make beer that is easy to carry around.
The Sumerians were probably the first people to brew beer.
They had found a "divine drink" -- they felt it was a gift from the gods.
Normal beers have around 3-5 % alcohol (for the volume, i.e. in 100ml beer there is 3-5ml alcohol).
In brewing beer, the amount of alcohol can be made more or less quite easily.
The Belgian types of beer are made by adding more sugar.
Through the fermentation, this will then turn to alcohol.
Today, there are beers with between 2 % and about 16 % of alcohol (about the same alcohol content as wine).
Spirits can have up to 80 % alcohol.
Some beer labels say there is no alcohol in them because it was taken out later.
This is not completely true, though.
Beers "without alcohol" usually do have less than 1 % of alcohol.
A bit is a part of a horse bridle, and there are also tool bits.
When talking about storage space, 8 bits are usually called a byte.
A byte is a unit of measurement of the size of information on a computer or other electronic device.
A single typed character (for example, ` x ' or ' 8 ') measures one byte.
A single byte generally holds eight bits (bits are, in turn, the smallest unit of storage on a computer, meaning what atoms mean for matter).
Bytes are often represented by the letter B.
Historically, bytes have been used to encode text characters.
Most of the time, this was done using eight bits per byte, but other numbers of bits were also used.
To describe the byte that uses 8 bits, computer scientists talk about octet.
EBCDIC is a character encoding used mainly on mainframe computers that uses 8 bits per byte, ASCII is another encoding that uses only seven bits.
When used as a measurement, the byte is basically measuring how many numbers a computer (or electronics device) can hold.
This is useful for things like RAM in a computer, or storage devices like USB drives and other types of Flash memory.
Sending of data (for a modem or wi-fi) is usually measured in bits, not bytes.
One byte is usually equal to eight bits.
Some very early computers had bytes with different numbers of bits.
An octet is always eight bits.
In modern usage, an octet and a byte are the same.
The symbol for "byte" is "B".
Sometimes a lowercase "b" is used, but this use is incorrect because "b" is actually the IEEE symbol for "bit".
The IEC symbol for bit is bit.
For example, "MB" means "megabyte" and "Mbit" means "megabit".
The difference is important because 1 megabyte (MB) is 1,000,000 bytes, and 1 megabit (Mbit) is 1,000,000 bits or 125,000 bytes.
It 's easy to confuse the two, but bits are much smaller than bytes, so the symbol "bit" should be used when referring to "bits" and an uppercase "B" when referring to "bytes".
According to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), who sets many computer standards, these charts show how bytes should be referred to.
People who refer to 1 kilobyte as 1,024 bytes, for example, are technically incorrect; 1,024 bytes should be referred to as 1 kibibyte, according to the IEC.
However, using 1024 for kilo and 1048576 for mega, etc. was widely practiced before the IEC standards were set in 1998.
There is some confusion and mixing of terms in the marketplace.
= = = "kilo -" = 1,000 = = = When using standard metric names like "kilo -", "mega -" and "giga -", they should follow the same measure that other metric measurements use, like kilometer (1 kilometer = 1,000 meters) for example.
= = = "kibi -" = 1,024 = = = Since computers are very complex digital devices that are based on the binary numeral system rather than the commonly-used decimal numeral system or binary coded decimal system, there are many situations where the standard metric system does not work well, particularly with memory sizes for a computer or storage device.
If a memory or storage device uses a binary number for addresses, the number of different positions to be accessed (the size of the memory) can be expressed as a power of 2, rather than a power of 10.
Beryllium is in group 2 of the periodic table, so it is an alkaline earth metal.
It is grayish (slightly gray) in color.
It has an atomic number of 4 and is symbolized by the letters Be.
It is toxic and should not be handled by anyone without proper training.
Beryllium has 4 electrons, 4 protons, and 5 neutrons.
Beryllium is most likely known for the chemical compounds it forms.
Some of these are emeralds and aquamarines.
Beryllium has one of the highest melting points of the light metals.
It is added to other metals to make stronger alloys.
At standard temperature and pressures beryllium resists oxidation when exposed to oxygen.
Beryllium combines with aluminium, silicon and oxygen to make a mineral called beryl.
Emerald and aquamarine are two varieties of beryl which are used as gemstones in jewelry.
Britney Jean Spears (born December 2, 1981), is an American recording artist and entertainer.
She has recorded several albums and has received several entertainment industry awards.
Britney Jean Spears was born on December 2, 1981.
Her parents are Lynne Irene (n e Bridges and James Parnell Spears.
She grew up in Kentwood, Louisiana.
Her maternal grandmother, Lillian Portell, was English (born in London), and one of Spears 's maternal great-great-grandfathers was Maltese.
Her siblings are Bryan James and Jamie Lynn.
She was the middle of three children.
She prepared early for a career in entertainment.
She took music and dance lessons.
She often performed for family and friends.
On January 3, 2004, Spears married her childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The marriage was annulled 55 hours later.
On September 18, 2004, Spears married Kevin Federline.
They had a son on September 14, 2005 named Sean Preston Spears Federline.
On September 12, 2006, Britney gave birth to their second son, Jayden James Spears Federline.
In November 2006, Spears filed for divorce from Federline.
In September of 2007, Spears lost some custody of her two children, Sean Preston and Jayden James, to her ex-husband, Federline.
At the beginning of January 2008, Spears lost full custody of her children after a mental breakdown.
In February 2008, her father took control of her estate.
Spears currently has 50\/50 custody of her two sons.
Spears stated in 2012 that she has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Spears appeared on the 1993-1994 season of the children 's television series, The All New Mickey Mouse Club.
In 1997, she signed with Jive Records.
Her first and second studio albums... Baby One More Time (1999, the best-selling album by a teenage solo artist) and Oops!
... I Did It Again (2000) became great successes.
Their title tracks broke sales records around the world.
In 2001, Spears released her third album Britney and starred in the profitmaking but critically panned movie, Crossroads.
She developed a more sexualized image, dancing in little clothing with an albino python at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards.
She took creative control of her fourth album In the Zone (2003).
The song "Toxic" was a huge success.
In 2003, she shared a kiss with Madonna at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards that raised eyebrows in the entertainment industry and fan magazines.
Spears ' fifth album Blackout was released in 2007.
On September 17, 2013 "Work Bitch" was released as the first single from Spears ' eighth album Britney Jean.
Spears has one Grammy, three MTV Video Music Awards, and her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
She has had five # 1 songs:"... Baby One More Time", "Womanizer", "3", "Hold It Against Me" and "S&M (remix)"
Brazil (officially called Federative Republic of Brazil; how to say:) is a country in South America.
It is the world 's fifth largest country.
The country has about 209 million people.
The capital of Brazil is Bras lia.
Brazil was named after brazilwood.
Brazilwood is a tree that once grew very well along the Brazilian coast.
The first people to come to Brazil came around 9,000 B.C..
That group of people is often called the South American Indians.
They probably came from North America.
Some of them were hunters and gatherers, but others were farmers.
Pedro lvares Cabral was the first European to see Brazil.
He saw it in 1500.
He was from Portugal and the Portuguese government claimed Brazil.
Soon, explorers explored the whole coastline of Brazil and colonies were set up.
In the late 1500s and early 1600s the Dutch and the French would sometimes try to take land in Brazil.
Brazilians started moving inland farther than the Treaty of Tordesillas said they could.
This caused some fights with the Spaniards and native people in the area.
In 1822, Brazil claimed to be its own country and not a part of Portugal anymore.
Soon there was civil war.
But the emperor Pedro II improved the economy, and in 1888, he freed the slaves.
In 1889, there was a military coup and Pedro II had to leave the country.
In 1889, Brazil became a republic.
It was not very democratic, because the only people who could vote were people who owned land.
There were some uprisings in the 1920s because some people thought the government was unfairly helping coffee growers.
Brazil joined the Allies during World War II.
During the 1960s, the leader Castelo Branco made the government like a dictatorship.
Since then, the country has become more democratic, but some people feel that there are still big problems in health and education.
Brazil will be hosting the 2016 olympics in Rio de Janeiro during August 5-21.
Most people in Brazil speak Portuguese.
Brazil is the only country in Latin America that speaks Portuguese.
Some people in Brazil speak German dialects.
That came from German immigrants.
0.8 % of Brazilians speak German as their first language.
Other people in Brazil speak indigenous Brazilian languages, Italian, Japanese, French, or Spanish.
Guaran and Aymar are the first languages of a small number of Brazilians.
Brazil has the world 's largest rainforest, the Amazon Rainforest.
It makes up 40 % of the country 's land area.
Brazil also has other types of land, including a type of savanna called cerrado, and a dry plant region named caatinga.
The most important cities are Bras lia (the capital), Bel m, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Florian polis, Fortaleza, Goi nia, Manaus, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, S o Paulo (the biggest city) and Vit ria.
Other cities are at List of largest cities in Brazil.
The country is the fifth largest in the world by area.
It is known for its many rainforests and jungles.
It is next to every country in South America except Chile and Ecuador.
Brazil is the largest country in South America.
Its people are called Brazilians or Brasileiros (In Brazilian Portuguese).
The people include people of Portuguese or other European descent who mainly live in the South, Africans, Native Americans and people of Mixed ancestry.
Brazil also has the largest Japanese community outside Japan.
The Black Forest (German: Schwarzwald) is a world famous forest in Baden-W rttemberg, Germany.
Important towns are (from north to south): Pforzheim, Calw, Baden-Baden, Offenburg, Freudenstadt, Horb, Villingen-Schwenningen, Titisee-Neustadt and Waldshut-Tiengen.
The highest mountain is the Feldberg (1492m).
The Black Forest is quite popular for hiking, skiing and Nordic walking.
In Triberg, at the lake Titisee and in other places you can buy the famous cuckoo clocks.
A good way to get known to the Black Forest is to travel on the Deutsche Uhrenstra e, a "National Scenic Byway."
The Black Sea is a sea in Eurasia between Europe, Caucasus, and Anatolia.
Many big rivers connect to the Black Sea, like Don, Danube, and Dnieper rivers.
It is connected to the Atlantic ocean through the Mediterranean Sea, Aegean Sea, and many straits.
90 % of the sea has no oxygen.
The water is saltwater but less salty than the ocean.
During the last ice age, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake.
In Greek mythology, the Argonauts traveled on the sea.
Greeks set up colonies around the sea because it was important to trade for many countries in ancient history.
The Gallipoli Campaign during World War I was a fight for access to the Black Sea.
It was also important in World War II.
The Black Sea sits on continental plates which have subsided.
It is a geologic basin, and therefore is a genuine inland sea.
Its maximum depth is about 2000 metres.
The Black Sea is the world s largest basin where the deep waters do not mix with the upper layers of water that receive oxygen from the atmosphere.
As a result, over 90 % of the deeper Black Sea volume is anoxic water.
The upper layers are generally cooler, less dense and less salty than the deeper waters, as they are fed by large river systems, whereas the deep waters come from the warm, salty waters of the Mediterranean.
The Crimean Peninsula divides this sea.
The Bosporus and Dardanelles connect the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.
The Bible, also known as Holy Bible is a group of religious texts of Judaism or Christianity.
The word Bible comes from the Greek word (biblia) which means "books" in English, because it is many books in one book.
It includes laws, stories, prayers, songs, and wise words.
A number of texts are both in the Hebrew Bible, used by Jews, and this Christian one.
The Islamic name for the Bible is the Injil.
When talking about the Bible, a book is used to speak about a number of texts.
All the texts that make a book are believed to belong together.
Most of the time, people believe they were written or collected by the same person.
The Bible contains different kinds of such books.
Some are history, telling the stories of the Jews, Jesus, or Jesus ' followers.
Some are collections of wise sayings.
Some are God 's commands to His people, which He expects them to obey.
Some are songs of praise to God.
Some are books of prophecy, messages from God that He gave through chosen people called prophets.
The Bible is really one great story of salvation.
Christian Bibles range from the 66 books of the Protestant canon to 81 books in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible.
The oldest surviving Christian Bible is the Codex Sinaiticus, a Greek manuscript from the fourth century AD.
The oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts date from the Middle Ages.
For a long time the texts were passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation.
The Bible was written long ago in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek.
Translations were made later into Latin and some other languages.
Now there are translations in English and many other languages.
The books of the Hebrew Bible what Christians call the Old Testament were not all written at the same time.
It took hundreds of years (about 1200 years).
The process of putting it all together began around 400 B.C..
The New Testament, which was originally written in Greek, began to be put together in about 100 A.D.
A translation is when a scribe takes the source in one language and writes it in another language.
Most texts of the Bible were written in Ancient Greek or in Aramaic or Hebrew.
The first to provide a translation into Latin was Jerome, in the 5th century.
He started what is known as the Vulgate today.
Wufila translated the Bible into the Gothic language.
In the early Middle Ages, people such as Petrus Valdes, and Jan Hus provided translations.
The New Testament was first translated into English in 1382 by John Wycliffe, and his associates translated the Old Testament.
The translation was made from the Vulgate Latin bible.
Wycliffe did this so that people could see for themselves what the Bible said.
The translation was completed in 1382.
There were some later editions by other people to the Wycliffe bible, as it is called.
It was translated into Middle English, the language of his day.
Wycliffe did not have Church permission to do this, but he was protected by John of Gaunt, one of the most powerful men in the kingdom.
After both Wycliffe and his protector were dead, the Church declared Wycliffe a heretic in 1415, and banned his writings.
The Council of Constance decreed Wycliffe 's works should be burned and his remains exhumed (dug up).
Why was the Church so opposed?
The translations challenged the Church 's authority over the people.
In church, explaining the Bible was the priest 's work.
Whatever he said could not be challenged.
Once the ordinary people could read the Bible, they might have other opinions.
The next step in translation was done in 1525 by William Tyndale.
His translation was into Early Modern English, which we can just about understand today.
Tyndale also did it without Church permission.
His was the first translation to be printed, and several thousand copies were made.
He had no protector, and his fate was terrible.
He fled to Europe, but the agents of Thomas More (Chancellor of England at the time) eventually found him.
Both Tyndale and his printer were executed by burning at the stake.
Another well known translation is the 1611 King James translation (commonly known as the Authorized King James Version of the Bible).
Some texts were written by historians who tried to show what Ancient Israel was like.
Other texts are poems about God and his work.
And others were used to make laws.
Followers of Judaism and Christianity consider the Bible sacred but they do not all agree about what belongs in the Bible.
What is considered part of the Bible changed with history.
Different denominations include certain parts or leave out other parts.
There is not one single version of the Bible; both the content of the books and their order may change.
Languages do not match.
When a translation is done, the translator has to decide between translation word for word, or capturing the sense of the text.
When he decides to capture the sense, he will choose other words in the target language.
This is called paraphrasing.
Today there are dozens of versions of the Bible.
Some are translations and some are paraphrases.
A paraphrased version is where people take a translation and put it in their own words.
As the Bible has been translated into modern languages, it is also possible that there are different translations of the same texts.
The Bible is the best selling book of all time.
2.5 billion to more than 6 billion copies of the Bible have been sold to date.
A complete version of the Bible exists in 471 languages.
Parts have been translated in 2225 languages.
Most Bibles can be found in the British Museum in London.
The Christian Bible is a collection of 66 books.
The first 39 books are the Old Testament.
It is the first part of the God 's story of salvation.
"Salvation" is God 's long work of saving us from our sins.
"Sin" is what happened when people decided to live their own way instead of God 's way in the world that God created.
That was when God began His great work of saving us from our sins.
To prepare the way, God had to destroy the whole world by a great flood, except for the family of Noah.
Then God raised up a new people for Himself.
They were the ancient Hebrews.
God promised the Hebrews they would bring His salvation to the whole world.
The first five books of the Old Testament are mostly the story of how God chose the ancient Hebrews and taught them his laws.
Following these are the twelve books that tell the history of the Hebrews.
The next five are books of poetry and wisdom.
One of these five books, the "Psalms", is a book of songs showing mainly how God wants to be worshiped.
The last seventeen books of the Old Testament were written by Hebrew prophets.
These books tell about God 's disappointment with the ancient Hebrews and His promise to bring them back to friendship with Him.
The prophets also foretell a great surprise God was planning for the world-He was going to send His very own Son, the Messiah (the "Anointed One"), the Saviour, to save us from our sins.
You can read about this Messiah in the New Testament.
In the Old Testament, Tanakh was mostly written in Hebrew; a few parts were written in Aramaic.
This part of the Bible is considered to be holy by Jews as well as Christians.
There are also a few books of the Old Testament 's time called Deuterocanonical by those Churches that accept them as part of the Bible, and Apocrypha by those that do not.
The second part is called the New Testament.
The main part of this book is the story of the life of Jesus Christ.
The four different versions of this story in the New Testament are called the Gospels.
After the Gospels, there is also the story of what happened to the Church after Jesus 's death.
Part of this is told through letters by early Christian leaders, especially Saint Paul.
One of the most quoted verses in the Bible is John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish (die) but have eternal life."
NIV
People have different ideas about the Bible.
Christians believe it is God 's Word to people.
The Jews believe that only the Old Testament is from God.
Protestants and Catholics believe that the Old and New Testaments are God 's Word.
Catholics also believe that the books called Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical are part of the Bible.
Sometimes different denominations disagree over exactly what the Bible means.
According to Islam, much of the Bible is true, but the Koran is better.
Atheists do not believe that gods exist, so the Bible is only an ancient book.
Deists believe in God, but they believe that the Bible was written by people, so they do n't see it as important.
British Columbia (fr: Colombie-Britannique) is the westernmost province in Canada.
It was originally two separate colonies of Great Britain, the colony of Vancouver Island, and the colony of British Columbia.
British Columbia joined the Canadian Confederation In 1871.
The capital of British Columbia is Victoria.
The largest city is Vancouver.
Prior to European contact, British Columbia was home to large numbers of indigenous peoples.
These people, for the large part, still remain in the province.
Because BC has a substantial amount of resources, the native people who dwelled here lived comfortably enough.
The abundance of resources, in particular, resulted in the creation of highly complex hierarchical societies in British Columbia, well preceding the government of the Europeans.
The Oregon dispute was an important factor in determining the physical shape of British Columbia, and as the political impetus for British investment in protecting her lands in British Columbia.
During the middle of the 19th century, the Democratic Party of the United States, appealing to the public attraction to the Manifest Destiny (a philosophy preaching American Supremacy and expansionism), declared that the United States had a claim over the entirety of Columbia District\/Oregon Territory.
This attitude was reflected even further, as 54 \* -40 ' or fight, referring to the end of Columbia District, and the start of Russian Territory of Alaska.
This alarming attitude, caused many in London to fear that yet another war, in less than a century, was brewing.
Ultimately, however, it was resolved, at the 49th parallel.
British Columbia lost Fort Vancouver (now Vancouver, Washington), and lots of the gulf islands.
To this day, the Oregon Treaty is criticized by historians, as being too lenient for the Americans.
While British Columbia was technically a British colony, it was the private corporation, the Hudson 's Bay Company that really ran the place.
The first Governor of Vancouver Island (then a separate colony), actually resigned over the fact that the Queen, had no say, above the interests of the Colony.
After him, the next governor of the Island, was also, coincidentally, the head of the HBC 's operations in British Columbia and Vancouver Island.
The first major gold rush in British Columbia started in 1858, after gold was discovered, on the upper reaches of the Fraser River.
The sudden onslaught of uncouth Americans, lead to the declaration that British Columbia shall be a crown colony, instead of the unincorporated region it was, after the Oregon spat.
James Douglas was appointed the governor of the newly formed colony, as well as the Colony of Vancouver Island, and for military convenience, the Capital of British Columbia was declared Queensboro, then renamed New Westminster.
As massive amounts of Americans came, fears that the Americans would try to bluster themselves another chunk of territory became more and more concrete.
Thus, a contingent of Royal Engineers and Marines were deployed to New Westminster.
To this day, the neighborhood of Sapperton, is known, for its history as a site of the barracks for the Engineers, nicknamed the Sappers.
The infrastructure ordered by James Douglas, to support the vast amount of capital flowing from the gold industry, caused high debt for British Columbia.
By 1864, British Columbia was 200,000 in debt, plus an additional 18,000, from various spats with natives, and constant policing required to maintain law and order.
Its vast amount of gold was useless, while BC was in debt.
British Columbia amalgamated with Vancouver Island, forming one super-colony.
Vancouver Island would undertake the debt, and British Columbia 's capital would be in Victoria.
British Columbia at the middle of the 19th century, had 3 options: Remain a colony of Britain, Annex with the United States, or join the Dominion of Canada.
The option of remaining a colony was undesirable, for Britain had long adopted a policy of "the little Briton", where the key to economic efficiency, and reduction of bloat was to cut off connections to its various colonies.
The option of joining with Canada was also viewed as impractical, and unlikely to occur; the closest Canadian neighbor lay more than a thousand kilometers away, to the east.
For most of the British Columbians, annexation with the United States seemed most logical.
In fact, the only people who opposed this, was a set of quacks, including Amor De Cosmos, the owner of the discredited paper, The Colonist, Robert Beaven, a crackpot politician, and John Robson, the most creditable politician of them all.
Ultimately, however, British Columbia did confederate.
The advocacy of the Confederation League, resulted in British Columbian 's demanding that BC join Canada.
On July 20, 1871, British Columbia joined Canada.
In return, BC was absolved of its debt, which became Canada 's responsibility, and Canada promised to build a railway to BC within 10 years.
British Columbia 's industry is primarily, and has always been, resource centered.
For large parts of its history, including the entire time it was a colony, BC was dominated by the big 4: Forestry, Mining, Logging, and Agriculture, which have shaped British Columbia 's culture, and society.
British Columbia 's forestry industry has always been booming.
BC had a bonanza of massive trees, thanks to its location in the Pacific Rainforest region.
This provided ample opportunity for entrepreneurs to build businesses.
Massive sawmills sprung up, all over British Columbia, especially in what is now Vancouver and surrounding regions.
However, this required massive amounts of human capital - which was surprisingly in short supply.
To overcome this, massive amounts of immigrants were invited to Vancouver, and places like so.
This changed BC 's demographic makeup so much, that to try to stop it, the government passed several acts, to try and limit the amount of immigrants.
However, the change was already underway - BC subsequently became one of the most diverse places on North America, with people calling it home, from places like Asia, Europe, and even the Pacific Islands.
British Columbia 's large mineral resources also lead to a large mining industry.
For the most of the 19th century, and well into the 20th century, mining was highly profitable.
For the immigrants, once again, this was another opportunity to exploit.
Large numbers of immigrants, skilled from their experience mining at home, filled up the labor demands, and quickly, new towns were formed.
The city of Nanaimo, for instance, was founded thanks to a large amount of coal found in its harbor.
Coal especially, was the fuel of the industry, as Coal was required for everything it the time, from ships, to trains, to the heater in everyone 's homes.
Thanks to BC 's location on the coast, Fishing has been very prevalent in British Columbia.
Before agriculture had developed very far in BC, and well before farming fish was even a viable option, fishing was the only reliable way to get food.
The native people of BC already had a very active fishing industry, with large hauls of salmon, and other creatures sustaining them.
When civilization came, the fishing industry took off, as everybody needed to eat, and there was not enough agricultural goods to go around.
In fishing, once again, it was the immigrants that pulled it off.
Mostly Japanese workers, and their families, came.
Using their rich heritage of industrialized fishing, they were able to out compete every other fisherman, that by the turn of the century, the dockyards, canneries, and fishing fleets were filled to the brim with the Japanese.
Only the forced Japanese internment in WW2 put a halt to the monopoly the Japanese had on Fishing in British Columbia.
Today, fishing is still a powerful force, although fettered by ordinances to prevent overfishing.
The agriculture industry in BC is, and always has been humble.
However, as they say, good things come in small packages, and the agricultural goods of BC, are about as good as they come.
Due to the fact that BC has only about 2 % arable land, the remainder being too dry, or too cold, or too remote, or a plethora of other reasons, BC has never been able to sustain a primary food agricultural industry.
Even today, BC can not grow enough food to feed its entire population, and imports foods instead, from the eastern provinces, such as Alberta, and Saskatchewan.
However, where BC does grow food, the food is scrumptious, and award-winning.
The Okanagan valley, is known for its award winning fruits, and wine-related products.
However, that is not where all the food is produced.
In the Fraser valley delta, large amounts of other food crops are grown, such as wheat, and berries.
British Columbia is generally considered very liberal.
Its premier is Christy Clark, leader of the Liberal Party.
The provincial NDP is also very active in British Columbia, as well as recently, the Conservative Party, lead by John Cumins.
The flag of British Columbia was adopted in 1960.
It is based on the provincial arms and the union jack.
Gautama Buddha was born in Nepal.
His family name is Siddh rtha.
Gautama was the person who began the religion of Buddhism.
He lived from about 563 BC to about 483 BC.
He is also called Sakyamuni or Tath gat.
Siddh rtha Gautama (Sidaaha) was born in the kingdom of Kapilvastu in Nepal.
At present this birthplace is called Lumbini, in Nepal.
At that time, a clan called the Shakya 's ruled Kapilvastu.
His father was a king named Suddodana Tharu, and his mother was the beautiful Mayadevi.
Siddh rtha lived in luxury; his father kept trouble and hard work far from him.
A seer predicted that if Siddh rth stayed inside his palace his whole life, then he would become a great king.
However, if he left the palace, then he would become a great religious leader.
The king did not want his son to become a religious leader.
He kept Siddhartha in the palace for his whole childhood.
When he was older, his father found a woman for Siddh rtha to marry at the age of 16.
He married the woman named Yashodhara, and they had a son, Rahul.
Although Gautama had everything he could want, he still was not happy.
He wanted to learn the meaning of his existence.
He got out of the castle against his father 's orders.
He saw the "Four Passing Sights": an old crippled man, a sick man, a dead man, and a holy man with no home.
Right then, Gautama knew that nothing can stop people from being born, becoming old, getting sick, and dying.
He decided to give up his worldly life.
He would not keep his wives, his children, his wealth, or his palace.
He would become a holy man with no home.
He would look for the answer to the problem of birth, old age, sickness, and death.
He left his home in the middle of a dark and stormy night.
At that time, holy men were usually ascetics.
They hurt their bodies in order to help their spiritual beings.
They do not do things they like so they can defeat their desires.
The most ascetic kinds of holy men were called Jains.
They practiced self-denial and made themselves suffer very much.
They believed this would free the tman (soul) from pain and sadness.
Siddh rth did these things well.
Eventually he was better than his teachers.
He still found no answer, and he left his teachers, some friends and he went even farther.
He ate only six grains of rice a day.
He tried holding his breath.
He became just skin and bones, and he nearly died.
Still, he had no answer.
Siddh rth started to think again about this path.
He thought there might be a better way than hurting himself.
He found a fig tree (now called the Bodhi tree) and started to meditate.
He told himself that he would not get up until he had found enlightenment.
He meditated under the tree for 49 days.
His mind is said to have become pure, and then, six years after he began his path, he said he found Enlightenment, and became the Buddha.
When the Buddha became enlightened, he knew the answer to suffering, and he knew how to defeat suffering.
This answer was called the Four Noble Truths.
He was not sure if he should teach his new ideas or not.
He asked himself if the world was ready for such a deep teaching.
But in the end, he decided to travel to a town called Sarnath to teach the people his new way.
He taught about the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.
The people listened to him.
When he taught, he did not pretend to be a god.
He said he was just a man who had found the meaning of life (enlightenment), and that any person can also find the meaning of life.
For the rest of his life, he walked all over Southern Nepal and parts of India to teach people what he believed.
He started a Sangha, which is a group of Buddhist monks and nuns.
Many people became enlightened because of him.
At the age of 80, Gautama Buddha died of food poisoning.
The teachings of the Buddha are known as Buddhism.
Buddhism is mostly about ending the feeling of pain that all people feel inside.
Gautama Buddha taught that pain is a part of all life.
He taught that pain is because of desire.
And he showed that there is a way to end desire and end pain by doing good things, not doing bad things, and training one 's mind.
This is done to end pain and gain enlightenment.
Buddhism teaches non-harm and balance not going too far one way or the other.
The Buddha taught people to meditate, or think deeply, while sitting in the lotus position.
Some Buddhists chant and meditate while walking.
Buddhists sometimes do these things to understand the human heart and mind.
Sometimes they do these things to understand the way the world works.
Sometimes they do these things to find peace.
The Buddha would not say if gods exist or not.
He taught that people should not look to gods to save them or bring them enlightenment.
The gods may have power over world events and they might help people, or they might not.
But Buddha believed that it is up to each person to become enlightened.
For other meanings of "bridge" see bridge (disambiguation) A bridge is a structure to cross an open space or gap.
Bridges are mostly useful for crossing rivers, valleys, or roads by vehicles but people have also used bridges for a long time for walking.
Bridges called highway overpasses are used to avoid traffic control.
Bridges also have uses in the military.
Military bridges have to be portable, so that they may be easily moved to the front lines, and so they are much more complex than regular civilian bridges.
The first man-made bridges were probably made from cut wood or stones.
A board game is a game usually played with pieces on a board, or some area with marked spaces.
Many board games use pieces that may be moved, placed, or traded depending on the rules of the game.
These pieces may be money, chips, pawns, or other objects.
Board games may also involve some random chance with dice or cards, for example.
There are many board games with a long history in some cultures.
Examples of these games are chess, checkers, backgammon, parqu s, and go.
There are also a great number of popular board games that have been created more recently, in the past hundred years.
Among these games are Scrabble and Monopoly.
Chess, and most versions of checkers, are played on a 8x8 square board with 32 white squares and 32 black squares.
International checkers is played on a 10x10 square board.
A bead is a small item with a hole in it for stringing.
Beads can be threaded together on a string.
Beads can be made from many different things including wood, glass, and gemstones.
The oldest known beads are over 100,000 years old.
Beads, made from stones, have been found in the graves of the kings of Egypt.
Clay beads have always been made in abundance.
They were first painted in patterns similar to those used on bowls or pots.
Making beads in clay is a skill which is easy to learn.
The clay material presents a design opportunity limited only by the imagination and expertise of the maker.
During the last century in the western hemisphere, the wearing of beads has become the prerogative of woman.
Yet throughout history, men have worn great quantities of beads to show their masculinity and virility.
As early as 5000 BC men and women alike valued wearing strands of shell, stone, teeth and bone beads.
Faience and Carnelian beads found in an Egyptian tomb date back to 4000 BC.
Phoenician trade ships carried beads to and from Egypt as early as 2500 BC so it is impossible to know for sure how long beads were really in circulation.
The graves of Egypt reveal the development of the craft of bead making better the those of other civilizations due to the trade routes established in continental Europe.
From 3000-1900 BC, the Amber Routes ran from Moravia, France and Austria to Russia, England and Spain.
Ancient trade routes went to the Far East as well as Africa.
Today, there are many types of the beads including silver beads, stone beads, fire polish, and swarovsky crystal beads.
Stringing beads on beading wire is one of the most popular methods for making beaded jewellery and motifs.
This can be worn as bracelets, necklaces, and anklets.
In Japan, beads making came into fashion when Crown Princess Masako made her swarovski beads necklace by herself.
Bead art shows are held in November every year, and beads lovers publish their work.
They often become trendsetters.
Branchiopoda is a class of crustaceans.
It is the sister group to the remaining crustaceans, and comprises fairy shrimp, clam shrimp, Cladocera and Notostraca.
They are mostly small, freshwater animals that feed on plankton and detritus, with the exception of the Cladocera, many of which are marine.
Baruch Spinoza (24 November 1632 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin.
He is considered to be one of the great Rationalist philosophers of the 17th century.
Other famous rationalists include Gottfried Leibniz and Ren Descartes.
Spinoza 's ideas were not cherished by the Jewish community in Amsterdam of the time, and Spinoza was excommunicated in 1656.
An important idea in Spinoza 's philosophy is God and Nature (everything that exists) are the same thing.
Opposing Dualism, Spinoza said that the body and the mind (soul) are two of God 's infinite attributes.
There is no good or evil in Nature, and that these words only have meanings for human beings.
For a person, an event that leads to happiness is good, and an event that leads to suffering is bad.
The goal of every person is to intellectually love God (that is, understand Nature as much as humanly possible).
The word being means a living person or animal.
"Human being" means the same as "person".
Men, women, and children are human beings.
Some people write stories or make movies about beings from other planets.
Most religions talk about supernatural beings, for example spirits, angels, devils, gods, or God.
Birds are a class of vertebrates, the Aves.
They are warm-blooded and lay eggs.
Their bodies are covered with feathers and they have wings.
Feathers have three functions: flight, temperature regulation and display.
Most birds have hollow main bones with air sacs in them.
This makes them lighter and makes flight easier.
Birds are bipedal: they have two legs which are often covered with scales (small, flat plates which over-lap in the same way as feathers).
They have a hard beak with no teeth.
Because birds keep a high body temperature, they use lots of energy.
So, they need to eat a lot of food compared with their weight.
More than 9000 different species of birds are known.
Birds are found on every continent of the world.
Birds of different types can live in freezing cold environments, and others can live in hot deserts.
Birds live in forests, in grasslands, on cliff faces, in river banks, on stony sea shores, down mine shafts and in the roofs of houses.
Different types of birds eat different foods.
Most birds are carnivorous meaning that they eat flesh, at least some of the time.
Many birds live on insects or on fish.
Some eat small reptiles and mice.
Birds of prey eat mammals and other birds.
Some birds are scavengers and eat the bodies of creatures that have died.
Many birds such as parrots and finches live on seeds and fruit.
Some birds that eat mainly seeds feed their young on insects.
A few types of birds eat green plants, but only one species lives on leaves (the hoatzin).
Hummingbirds and honeyeaters live on the nectar or honey in flowers.
Birds come in many sizes from the bee hummingbird that is only 60 mm long to the ostrich which stands 2.5 metres high.
The bird with the widest wingspan is the wandering albatross many of which measure 3 metres from tip to tip.
All this applies to living birds.
Birds are the descendants of theropod dinosaurs, and the early birds looked much like small carnivorous dinosaurs.
Much is now known about the origin of birds.
From fossils we know that these dinosaurs had feathers, and early birds had teeth.
Because birds live on every continent and have adapted to all sorts of conditions, different types of birds look very different from each other.
The most noticeable differences are the size, the shape of the beak, the length of the legs, the length of the neck and the color.
The smallest types of birds are tiny birds that feed on nectar, honey and insects.
The biggest birds are flightless birds with long legs - ostriches, emus and cassowaries.
However, very large birds are also found soaring high in the sky - eagles, vultures, albatross and pelicans.
One way to understand the living habits of a bird is to look at its legs and feet, its beak, its neck and its wings.
If a bird has very long legs, then it probably spends most of its time walking, like a crane, or wading (walking in water), like a flamingo.
Birds with long legs need long necks to match, so they can reach their food.
Birds with short legs and long necks like pelicans, geese and swans are birds that swim well and dive their heads into the water for food.
Their beaks are often flat for scooping up water weeds.
A pelican 's beak can change into a shape like a huge bucket for catching fish.
Birds that are shaped like torpedoes are good at diving.
Albatross, seagulls and kingfishers all have long strong beaks for catching fish.
Some birds, such as eagles, owls vultures and hawks, have beaks which are hooked and very large claws (also called "talons") with which they can tear and carry meat.
Some birds have very long thin beaks that they use for dipping into flowers or poking into holes in the ground.
These include hummingbirds, bee eaters and avocets.
Some birds have short beaks but wide mouths that are perfect for catching insects in the air, like swallows, swifts and nightjars.
Some birds that eat fruit, like toucans and hornbills, have beaks which are enormous, but are very light in weight.
The curved beaks of parrots are good for eating large seeds and cracking nuts, while birds that peck small seeds and food from the ground have short beaks like pigeons.
Birds come in a huge range of colors.
These colors can be useful to a bird in two ways.
Camouflage colors help to hide the bird, and bright colors identify the bird to others of the same species.
Often the male is brightly colored while the female is camouflaged.
Many birds are brown, green or gray.
These colors make a bird harder to see; they camouflage the bird.
Brown is the most common color.
Brown birds include sparrows, emus, thrushes, larks, eagles, falcons and the female birds of many species such as wrens, ducks, blackbirds and peacocks.
When a brown bird is in long grass or among tree trunks or rocks, it is camouflaged.
Birds that live in long grass often have brown feathers streaked with black which looks like shadows.
A bittern is almost invisible in long reeds.
Other birds, including starlings and minahs, are quite dark in color, but are flecked with little spots that look like raindrops on leaves.
Many birds from hot countries are green or have some green feathers, particularly parrots.
Birds that live in green trees often have green backs, even if they have bright-coloured breasts.
From the back, the birds are camouflaged.
This is very useful when sitting on a nest.
The bird 's bright-coloured breast is hidden.
Budgerigars are bred in different colors such as blue, white and mauve, but in the wild, they are nearly all green and yellow.
Even though they fly very well, they normally spend a lot of time on the ground, eating grass seeds.
Their yellow and black striped back helps to hide them in the shadows made by long dry grass, while their green breasts are a similar color to the leaves of gum trees.
Grey birds include most pigeons and doves, cranes, storks and herons.
Grey birds are often rock-living birds like pigeons, or birds that sit on dead tree trunks looking like a broken branch.
Water birds like herons often have a pale gray color which makes it harder for a fish to notice that the bird is standing, looking down for something to catch.
Water birds, no matter what color they are on top, are often white underneath, so that when a fish looks up, the bird looks like part of the sky.
Black birds include crows, ravens and male blackbirds.
Some birds that are dark colors spend quite a lot of time on the ground, hopping around in the shadows under bushes.
Among these birds are the male blackbird and the Satin Bowerbird which is not black but very dark blue.
Crows and ravens often perch high on bare trees in the winter, where their black shape against the sky looks like the dark bare branches.
Many birds are not camouflaged, but stand out with vivid colors.
They are usually male birds whose females are dull and camouflaged.
The function of the colors is two-fold.
First, the colors help them get mates, and second, the colors identify them to other males of the same species.
Many birds are territorial, especially in the nesting season.
They give out territory sounds and are easily seen.
This lets other males know they will defend their territory.
It sends out a "look elsewhere" signal to their competitors.
Some birds are famous for their color and are named for it, such as the bluebird, the azure kingfisher, the golden pheasant, the scarlet macaw, the violet wren and the robin.
Many other birds are very brightly colored, in countless combinations.
Some of the most colourful birds are quite common, like pheasants, peacocks, domestic fowl and parrots.
Colourful small birds include blue tits, the gold finches, humming birds, fairy wrens and bee eaters (which are also called rainbow birds).
Some birds, like those of the bird of paradise in Papua New Guinea have such beautiful feathers that they have been hunted for them.
The peafowl is the best example of a display of color to attract a mate.
Also the male domestic fowl and junglefowl have long shiny feathers above his tail and also long neck feathers that may be a different color to his wings and body.
There are only a very few types of birds (like the eclectus parrot) where the female is more colourful than the male.
` Pied birds ' are black and white.
Black and white birds include magpies, pied geese, pelicans, and Australian magpies (which are not really magpies at all).
Pied birds often have brightly colored beaks and legs of yellow or red.
The silver pheasant, with its long white tail striped with fine bars of black, has a brightly colored face.
Most birds can fly.
They do this by pushing through the air with their wings.
The curved surfaces of the wings cause air currents (wind) which lift the bird.
Flapping keeps the air current moving to create lift and also moves the bird forward.
Some birds can glide on air currents without flapping.
Many birds use this method when they are about to land.
Some birds can also hover and remain in one place.
This method is used by birds of prey such as falcons that are looking for something to eat.
Seagulls are also good at hovering, particularly if there is a strong breeze.
The most expert hovering birds are tiny hummingbirds which can beat their wings both backwards and forwards and can stay quite still in the air while they dip their long beaks into flowers to feed on the sweet nectar.
Different types of birds have different needs.
Their wings are adapted to suit the way they fly.
Large birds of prey, such as eagles, that spend a lot of time soaring on the wind have wings that are large and broad.
The main flight feathers are long and wide.
They help the eagle to stay on rising air currents without using much energy, while the eagle looks at the ground below, to find the next meal.
When the eagle sees some small creature move, it can close its wings and fall from the sky like a missile, opening its great wings again to slow down as it comes to land.
The world 's largest eagle, the Philippine eagle has a wingspan of about 2 metres (6.7 ft) wide.
Birds that live in grassland areas or open forests and feed on fruit, insects and reptiles often spend a lot of time flying short journeys looking for food and water.
They have wings that are shaped in a similar way to eagles, but rounder and not as good for soaring.
These include many Australian birds like cockatoos.
Birds, such as geese, that migrate from one country to another fly very long distances.
Their wings are big and strong, because the birds are large and they stock up on food for the long flight.
Migrating water birds usually form family groups of 12-30 birds.
They fly very high, making use of long streams of air that blow from north to south in different seasons.
They are very well organised, often flying in a V pattern.
The geese at the back do not have to flap so hard; they are pulled on by the wind of the ones at the front.
Every so often, they change the leader so that the front bird, who does most work and sets the pace, can have a rest.
Geese and swans are the highest-flying birds, reaching 8,000 metres or more when on migration.
Geese often honk loudly while they are flying.
It is thought that they do this to support the leader and help the young ones.
Birds that fly very quickly, such as swifts and swallows, have long narrow pointed wings.
These birds need great speed because they eat insects, catching most of them while they are flying.
These birds also migrate.
They often collect in huge flocks of thousands of birds that move together like a whirling cloud.
Birds that live in bushes and branches have triangular wings that help the bird change direction.
Many forest birds are expert at getting up speed by flapping and then gliding steadily among the trees, tilting to avoid things as they go.
Members of the kingfisher family are expert at this type of flying.
Birds such as owls that hunt at night have wings with soft rounded feathers so that they do not flap loudly.
Birds that are awake at night are called nocturnal birds.
Birds that are awake during the day are diurnal.
A wandering albatross and Arctic tern might spend several years without coming to land.
They can sleep while gliding and have wings which, when they are stretched right out, look like the wings of a jet plane.
Bird like chickens that feed mainly on the ground and only use their wings to fly to safety have small wings.
Flocks of birds can be very highly organised in a way that takes care of all the flock members.
Studies of small flocking birds like tree sparrows show that they clearly communicate with each other, as sometimes thousands of birds may fly in close formation and spiral patterns without colliding (or flying into each other).
Two common behaviors in flocking birds are guarding and reconnaissance.
When a flock of birds is feeding it is common for one bird to perch on a high place to keep guard over the flock.
In the same way, when a flock is asleep, often, one bird will remain awake.
It is also common for large flocks to send one or two birds ahead of them when they are flying to a new area.
The look-out birds can spy the lie of the land to find food, water and good places to perch.
Some birds do not fly.
These include running birds like ostriches and emus and ocean-living birds, the large penguin family.
Ostriches and emus do not need to fly because although they feed and nest on the ground, their great size and their speed is their protection.
Some other ground-feeding birds have not been so lucky.
Some birds such as the dodo and the kiwi were ground-feeding birds that lived in safety on islands where there was nothing dangerous to eat them.
They lost the power of flight.
Kiwis are endangered because European settlement to New Zealand brought animals like cats, dogs and rats which kill kiwis and eat their eggs.
However, kiwis and also the rare New Zealand ground parrot have survived.
In the case of dodos, they were fat and delicious.
They were killed and eaten by sailors until there was none left.
Other flightless birds which have disappeared are the great auk and the moa.
Penguins spend a great deal of time at sea, where they are in danger from seals.
On land, they usually live in areas where there were few dangers, until the arrival of European settlers with dogs and cats.
Their wings have adapted to life in the sea and have become flippers which help them in swimming very fast.
Although birds are warm-blooded creatures like mammals, they do not give birth to live babies.
They lay eggs like lizards do.
Unlike most reptiles, the shell of a bird 's egg is hard.
The baby bird grows inside the egg and after a few weeks, breaks out, or hatches.
Birds in cold climates usually have a breeding season once a year in the spring.
Migratory birds can have two springs and two mating seasons in a year.
So can birds that live in hot climates.
When the breeding season arrives, the birds choose partners.
Some birds are mated for life, like married couples.
These birds include pigeons, geese, and cranes.
Other birds look for new partners each year and sometimes a male bird or cock will have several wives.
For birds that choose new mates, part of the breeding season is display.
The male bird will do all sorts of things to attract females.
These include singing, dancing, showing off the feathers and building a beautiful nest.
Some male birds have splendid feathers for attracting females.
The most famous is the peacock who can spread the feathers above his tail into a huge fan.
Once the birds have found partners, they find a suitable place to lay eggs.
The idea of what is a suitable place differs between species, but most build bird nests.
Robins will make a beautiful little round nest of woven grass and carefully line it with feathers, bits of fluff and other soft things.
Swallows like to nest near other swallows.
They make nests from little blobs of clay, often on a beam near the roof of a building where it is well sheltered.
Many birds like a hollow tree to nest in.
Eagle 's nests are often just piles of dead wood on the top of the tallest tree or mountain.
Scrub turkeys scratch together a huge pile of leaves that may be 10 metres across.
Guillemots lay their eggs on rock shelves with no nest at all.
Their eggs are shaped so that they roll around in circles and do not fall off cliffs.
A cuckoo does not make its own nest.
It lays its egg in the nest of another bird and leaves it for them to care for.
The cuckoo eggs are camouflaged to look like the host 's eggs.
When the nest has been prepared, the birds mate so that the eggs are fertilised and the chicks will start growing.
Unlike mammals, birds only have one opening as the exit hole for body fluids, and for reproduction.
The opening is called the cloaca.
A female bird, called a hen, has two ovaries, of which the left one usually produces eggs.
Most male birds have no sex organs that can be seen.
But inside the male are two testes which produce sperm which is stored in the cloaca.
Birds mate by rubbing their cloacas together, although with some birds, particularly large water birds, the male has a sort of a penis inside the cloaca.
Once the hen has mated, she produces fertile eggs which have chicks growing inside them.
She lays the eggs in the nest.
There might be just one egg or a number of them, called a clutch.
Emus might lay as many as fifteen huge dark green eggs in a clutch.
After the eggs are laid, they are incubated, or kept warm so the chicks form inside.
Most birds stay together for the whole nesting season, and one advantage is that the work is shared.
Many birds take turns sitting on the eggs, so that each adult can feed.
This is not always the case.
With emus, the male does all the sitting and all the baby-minding.
With emperor penguins it is also the male that cares for the egg.
There is only one egg, which he keeps on his feet and under his feathers, standing in a big group of males without feeding until the chick is hatched.
While the eggs are hatching, the females are at sea, feeding, so that they can care for the chicks when they return.
Some birds put the eggs inside or on top of the mound of leaves and twigs.
The mound acts like a compost heap.
The decomposition of the rotting leaves causes the temperature to rise.
This is heat released by the chemical action of bacterial and fungal respiration.
It is the same reaction as that which keeps mammals and birds at a high temperature.
The parents leave the mound.
When the chicks hatch, they are able to feed themselves.
Many small birds take 2 4 weeks to hatch eggs.
Albatrosses take 80 days.
During this time the female loses a lot of her body weight.
The quickest hatching time is for the cuckoo.
Some types of cuckoos take only 10 days.
This means that when they hatch in the nest of their ` foster parents ', the eggs that the parents have laid are not yet ready.
Newborn cuckoos are naked, blind and ugly, but they are strong.
They get under any eggs that are in the nest and throw them out before they hatch.
That means that the cuckoo has the whole care of both parents.
Baby cuckoos grow fast and often get bigger than the parents who feed them.
When baby birds hatch, in most types of birds, they are fed by both parents, and sometimes by older aunties as well.
Their mouths are open all the time and are often very brightly colored, which acts as a ` releaser ', a trigger which stimulates the parent to feed them.
For birds that eat grain and fruit, the parents eat and partly digest the food for the babies.
It is then vomitted carefully into the baby 's mouth.
Many birds, particularly those that mate for life, are very sociable and keep together in a family group which might be anything from 4 or 6 adult birds and their young to a very large flock.
As chicks grow they change the fluffy down that covers them as babies for real feathers.
At this stage they are called fledglings.
Other family members may help care for fledgling chicks, feeding them, and protecting them from attack while parents are feeding.
When the fledglings have their new feathers, they come out of the nest to learn to fly.
In some types of birds, like pigeons, the parents watch over this and as the young ones get stronger, will give them flying lessons, teaching them how to glide, how to fly in spirals and how to land like an expert.
Most birds are social animals, at least part of the time.
They communicate to each other using sounds and displays.
Almost all birds make sounds to communicate.
The types of noises that vary greatly.
Some birds can sing, and they are called songbirds.
Examples are robins, larks, canaries, thrushes, nightingales and crows.
Birds that are not songbirds include pigeons, seagulls, eagles, owls and ducks.
Parrots are not songbirds, even though they can be taught to sing human songs.
All birds make noises (` bird vocalisation '), but not all sing.
Songbirds are passerines, many of which have beautiful melodic songs.
Songs have different functions.
Danger cries are different from territorial songs, and mating calls are a third type.
Fledgling may also have different calls from adults.
Recognition calls for partners are quite common.
Most singing birds that are kept as pets, like canaries, have several tunes and some variations.
The same species of bird will sing different songs in different regions.
A good example of this is the currawong.
This is an Australia bird which is like a black and white crow.
In the autumn, families get together in large flocks and do a lot of singing.
Currawongs from some areas sing much more complex songs than others.
Generally, currawongs from the Blue Mountains are the finest singers.
The song of the currawong can be sung as a solo, but is often performed as a choir.
One bird will take the lead and sing "Warble-warble-warble-warble!"
All the other birds will join in and sing "Wooooooo!"
When all the birds know the song, the choir will sing the "Warble" part and the soloist will sing the "Woo!".
The song changes from year to year and from place to place.
The Austrian naturalist Konrad Lorenz studied the way in which birds communicate, or talk to each other.
He found that each type of bird had a number of sounds which they made automatically, when ever they felt a certain way.
Every sound had an action that went with it.
So, if the bird was frightened, it acted frightened and made a frightened sound.
This told the other birds around it that something frightening was happening.
If a flock of birds were flying over a field, they would be calling "Fly!
Fly!"
But a hungry bird, seeing something good to eat down below might start calling "Food!
Food!"
If other birds were also hungry, they would make the same call until more birds were calling "Food!
Food!"
than "Fly!
Fly!".
At this point, the mind of the flock would be changed.
Some of the birds would start to yell "Fly downwards!
Fly downwards!"
as they sank from the sky, until the whole flock was all noisily calling the same thing.
These communication sounds are often short hard sounds like chirps, squeaks, squawks.
and twitters.
Sometimes the calls are longer and more musical.
They include the "Rookety-coo" sound of a pigeon and the "Cockadoodledoo!"
of a rooster.
The bird can not change these sounds.
They always make them in the same way.
The bird is locked into making each sound every time a particular idea comes into its head.
The connection between how they feel and how they call is innate: they are born with it.
Some calls in some species are learned.
Then, it is the tendency to learn which is inherited.
Konrad Lorenz noticed that when birds sing, they often use a lot of their regular calls as part of the song.
Lorenz had a flock of jackdaws which were scattered during World War II.
One day, an old bird returned.
For many months she sat on the chimney singing her song, but in the song she kept making the call which Lorenz knew meant "Come home!
Come home!"
One day, to the great surprise of Lorenz, a male bird flew from a passing flock and joined her on the chimney.
Lorenz was sure that it was her long-lost "husband" who had found his way home at last.
Palaeontologists have found some exceptional places (lagerst tten) where fossils of early birds are found.
The preservation is so good that on the best examples impressions of their feathers can be seen, and sometimes even the remains of meals they have eaten.
From these remains we know that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs (theropods) in the Jurassic period.
They radiated into a huge variety in the Lower Cretaceous.
At the same time, their direct competitors, the pterosaurs, dwindled in numbers and variety, and became extinct at the end of the Mesozoic.
Birds are classified by taxonomists as ` Aves ' (Avialae).
Birds are the only living descendants of dinosaurs (strictly speaking, they are dinosaurs).
Birds and Crocodilia are the only living members of the once-dominant Archosaur reptiles.
The class Aves is now defined as all the descendants of the most recent common ancestor of modern birds and Archaeopteryx lithographica.
Archaeopteryx, from the Upper Jurassic (some 150 145 million years ago), is the earliest bird which could fly.
It is famous, because it was one of the first important fossils found after Charles Darwin published his ideas about evolution in the 19th century.
By modern standards, Archaeopteryx could not fly very well.
Other early fossil birds are, for example, Confuciusornis, Anchiornis huxlei, and other Paraves.
Many fossils of early birds and small dinosaurs have been discovered in the Liaoning Province of Northeast China.
The fossils show that most small theropod dinosaurs had feathers.
These deposits have preserved them so well that the impressions of their feathers can be clearly seen.
This leads us to think that feathers evolved first as heat insulation, and only later for flight.
The origin of birds lies in these small feathered dinosaurs.
Palaeontologists now agree that birds evolved from Maniraptora group of dinosaurs.
This explains why some consider birds to be living dinosaurs.
Some birds are eaten as food.
Most usually it is the chicken and its eggs, but people often also eat geese, pheasants, turkeys and ducks.
Other birds are sometimes eaten are emus, ostriches, pigeons, grouse, quails, doves, woodcocks, and even songbirds.
Some species have died out because they have been hunted for food, for example the dodo, and the passenger pigeon.
Many species have learned how to get food from people.
The number of birds of these species has grown because of it.
Seagulls and crows find food from garbage dumps.
The feral pigeon (Columba livia), sparrows (Passer domesticus and starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) live in large numbers in towns and cities all over the world.
Sometimes people also use working birds.
For example, homing pigeons carry messages.
Nowadays people sometimes race them for sport.
People also use falcons for hunting, and cormorants for fishing.
In the past, people in mines often used a canary to see if there were bad gas methane in the air.
People often have colorful birds such as parrots and mynahs as pets.
These intelligent birds are popular because they can copy human talking.
Because of this, some people trap birds and take them to other countries to sell.
This is not usually allowed these days.
Most pet birds are specially bred and are sold in pet shops.
People can catch some bird diseases, for example psittacosis, salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis, Newcastle 's disease, mycobacteriosis, influenza, giardiasis, and cryptosporiadiosis.
In 2005, there was an epidemic of bird influenza spreading through some parts of the world, often called avian flu.
Some people have birdboxes in their gardens to give birds a place to nest and bird tables where birds can get food and water in very cold or very dry weather.
This lets people see some small birds close up which are normally hidden away in bushes and trees.
Bulgaria (officially called the Republic of Bulgaria) is a country in southeastern Europe.
The capital and the biggest city is Sofia.
Their money is called the lev.
The Bulgarian government is a member of the European Union and NATO.
The current president is Rosen Plevneliev.
The population of Bulgaria is a little more than 7 million people.
Bulgaria has its own language, called Bulgarian.
It is a type of Slavic language.
It is related to languages like Serbian and Russian.
Bulgaria became independent in 1908 from the Ottoman Empire.
Bulgaria borders Romania, Serbia, the Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, and the Black Sea.
One of the national heroes of Bulgaria is Vasil Levski who led the fight for independence in the late 1800 's.
Bulgaria is an ancient country, some places have had people living there for over 6,000 years.
In what is now Bulgaria, many different people and different cultures lived over time.
This includes Neolithic, Hamangia culture, Vin a culture, eneolithic, Varna culture (5th millennium BC) and the Bronze Age Ezero culture.
The Thracians lived in the area of modern Bulgaria.
King Tere united the people in Odrysian kingdom around 500 BC.
Alexander the Great had influence over the people on the 4th century and later by the Roman Empire during the time of Christ.
Eurasian Avars, South Slavs and Huns settled all over the territory of modern Bulgaria during the 6th century.
The first Bulgarian empire was established in 681 AD.
But the first Bulgarian Empire came to fall under the pressure of the Byzantine Empire (se also Battle of Kleidion).
The second Bulgarian empire started about 1185 AD, with Turnovo as the capital.
But it only lasted about 70 years and there was too much fighting with their neighbors and with themselves.
After a while the country separated into three parts.
Then the Ottoman empire took over in 1396, and ruled Bulgaria for about 500 years.
The Ottomans had very strict rules and the Bulgarians suffered.
The Bulgarians rebelled several times against the Turkish rulers but did not win.
After the first Balkan war (1876), Bulgaria pulled away from Ottoman Empire 's influence with the help of the Russian Empire who were already fighting the Ottomans.
But it was not until 1908 that the whole country of Bulgaria was united as modern Bulgaria.
Bulgaria joined the side of Germany in World War I and lost.
During the first year of World War II Bulgaria said it was neutral and refused to join sides with Germany, Balkan or the Soviet Union.
But the increased tension in the war made the leaders sign the three-powers pact with Germany in March 1941.
This let German forces to go through Bulgaria to reach Greece.
But Bulgaria did not follow Hitler 's wishes.
Bulgaria 's troops refuse to participate in the military coups and also refused to send Jews to concentration camps in the Holocaust.
This made Adolf Hitler very suspicious, and the king of Bulgaria, Tsar Boris III, died one day after talking to Hitler.
In 1944 when it became clear that the Allied Powers will win the war, Bulgaria had to find another solution.
Their leaders declared that they withdrew from the Axis forces and they let the Soviets come in.
But the Soviet Union did n't respect Bulgaria 's wish to be neutral.
They replaced the royal monarchy with Communism in 1947 before they withdrew from Bulgaria.
For 40 years, under their leader Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria was very close to the Soviet Union and followed their instructions.
Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, on 10 November 1989, the Communist party gave up their rule and allowed the country to elect leaders of their own choice.
But in a few years Bulgaria had serious money problems under the new socialist government.
Since that time Bulgaria has recovered in many ways, and is much more stable.
But it it is still one of the poorest countries in Europe.
Problems in the administration, a weak court system and organized crime are the biggest issues for Bulgaria.
Bulgaria 's economy was dependent on the COMECON market.
This was a group of communist countries (Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania) that agreed to work together.
This group fell apart in 1989 with the fall of communism in Europe.
While this was good for personal freedom, it was too much of a change for the businesses and jobs.
Also Yugoslavia, their neighbor, fell into a civil war as their country broke apart, and that did not help Bulgaria.
Living standards fell by 40 percent as people lost their jobs and their savings were not worth much, and even some newborn babies were sent to orphanages when their parents could not take care of them.
In 1994 Bulgaria had a short economic boom.
But that slowed down in 1996 from bad finance deals and other banking problems.
In 1997 there was high inflation (the money could not buy as much as it did before.
Retired people had little income (their pension did not go up as fast as inflation did) and their savings were not worth very much.
Many retired people were begging in the streets for food.
But since then the economy has grown steadily.
People from outside the country started putting money into businesses and houses, and Bulgarians learned how to make their own businesses.
Today Bulgaria has Europe 's lowest income and corporate tax, 10 percent for both individuals and businesses.
This makes Bulgaria a very good place for business.
Bulgaria also has skilled and educated workers.
The average monthly salary in Bulgaria is still cheap at 400 euro or $ 541 USD.
The state no longer has free health care.
This system has been replaced by an insurance plan that people pay for, and drug costs are based on income.
Private health care is encouraged nowadays.
Help for people who lose their jobs is no longer automatic, but some help is available, based on family status and length of unemployment.
The retirement age for men is 63 years and for women 60 years.
Since 1999, Bulgaria has been divided into 28 provinces or regions.
Each province is named after its local capital.
The provinces are divided into municipalities, there are 264 in total.
There are 6 Bulgarian development regions of 27 smaller provinces.
See List of settlements in Bulgaria for a list of all large locations.
In Bulgaria there are 5,664,624 citizens of Bulgarians, 1,200,000 citizens of Turks and 800,000 Citizens of Roma\/Gypsies.
Bulgaria is classified as an development country by the EU.
Bryozoans, or Ectoprocta, are a phylum of small aquatic animals living in colonies.
The colonies usually have a skeleton of calcium carbonate.
Bryozoans have a long fossil history, starting in the Ordovician.
In their life-style they resemble the polyps which form coral.
Bryozoa are known informally as moss animals or sea mats.
They generally like warm, tropical waters but live all over the world.
There are about 5,000 living species, and 15,000 fossil species are known.
The colonies are formed by tiny (~ 0.2 mm) members called zooids.
They secrete tubes, usually of lime (CaCO3), sometimes of chitin, an organic compound.
The zooids in a colony are all clones, produced by asexual reproduction.
Despite this, most species produce different morphs: zooids with different functions.
All bryozoa have a lophophore.
This is a ring of ten tentacles surrounding the mouth, each tentacle covered with cilia.
When feeding, the zooid extends the lophophore outwards; when resting it is withdrawn into the mouth to protect it from predators.
Bryozoan skeletons grow in a variety of shapes and patterns: mound-shaped, lacy fans, branching twigs, and even corkscrew-shaped.
Their skeletons have many tiny openings.
Each opening is the home of zooid.
They have a body with a U-shaped gut, opening at the mouth and at the anus.
They feed with their lophophore.
The tentacles of the bryozoans are ciliated.
The beating of the cilia creates a current of water which drives food (mainly phytoplankton) towards the mouth.
In some groups, notably some ctenostomes, a gizzard may be formed.
Bryozoans do not have a respiratory, or a blood system, because their small size allows diffusion of gases and nutrients.
However, they do have a simple nervous system, and muscles, which together can quickly take the zooid down into its shelter.
One species of bryozoan, Bugula neritina, is of interest as a source of chemicals, bryostatins, which are under investigation as anti-cancer agents.
Bryozoans can reproduce both sexually and asexually.
All Bryozoans, as far as is known, are hermaphrodite (meaning they are both male and female).
All members of a colony are clones: they are genetically identical, produced by asexual reproduction.
This occurs by budding off new zooids from the first zooid.
So the colony grows; this is the way a colony expands in size.
If a piece of a bryozoan colony breaks off, the piece can continue to grow and will form a new colony.
All zooids in a colony are linked by strands of epithelial cells.
The individual members of a colony, the zooids, are in some species generalised: they feed, and they can reproduce on occasion.
But in most species the zooids are specialised to diffent functions.
In this case the feeding zooids are called autozooids, and the non-feeding members are called heterozooids.
Functions done by heterozooids include sexual reproduction, protection, locomotion, plumbing, structural support.
The functions of some heterozooids is still unknown.
The commonest function is that eggs are developed in brooding chambers (ovicells) on female or hermaphrodite heterozooids.
There are variations in the details: sometimes a little complex of heterozooids produce larvae in a cooperative effort.
p4
Another way to describe the bryozoa which develop heterozooids is to say they are polymorphic.
This term is used in biology to describe the way a genetically unified population develops into clearly distinct forms.
The polymorphism is usually controlled by genetic switching mechanisms, but in bryozoa there is little knowledge of their genetics.
Most species of Bryozoan live in marine environments.
There are about 50 species which inhabit freshwater.
In their aquatic habitats, bryozoans live on all types of hard substrates: sand grains, rocks, shells, wood, blades of kelp, pipes and ships may be heavily encrusted with bryozoans.
Some bryozoan colonies, however, do not grow on solid substrates, but form colonies on sediment.
While some species live at depths of 8,200 m, most bryozoans live in much shallower water.
Most bryozoans are sessile and immobile, but a few colonies are able to creep about, and a few species of non-colonial bryozoans live and move about in the spaces between sand grains.
One remarkable species makes its living while floating in the Southern Ocean.
Several bryozoan species live in the Midwestern United States, especially in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky which was once a part of a large ocean, the Western Interior Seaway.
Their diet consists of small microorganisms, including diatoms and other unicellular algae.
In turn, bryozoans are preyed on by grazing organisms such as sea urchins and fish.
Bryozoans are almost entirely colony-forming animals.
Many millions of individuals can form one colony.
The colonies range from millimeters to meters in size, but the individuals that make up the colonies are tiny, usually less than a millimeter long.
In each colony, different individuals have different functions.
Some individuals gather up the food for the colony (autozooids), others depend on them (heterozooids).
Some individuals are devoted to strengthening the colony (kenozooids), and still others to cleaning the colony (vibracula).
There is only a single known solitary species, Monobryozoon ambulans, which does not form colonies.
Fossil bryozoans first appear in the early Ordovician and had a huge adaptive radiation.
They were abundant throughout the Palaeozoic era: they were one of the most dominant groups of Palaeozoic fossils.
They were major components of seabed communities and, like modern-day bryozoans, played an important role in sediment stabilization and binding.
They were food sources for many other benthic organisms.
During the Lower Carboniferous (Mississippian) 354 to 323 million years ago, bryozoans were so common that their broken skeletons form entire limestone beds.
After a crash at the Permian\/Triassic boundary, when almost all species went extinct, bryozoans recovered in the later Mesozoic to become as successful as before.
The bryozoan fossil record has more than 15,000 species.
Most fossil bryozoans have mineralized skeletons.
The skeletons of individual zooids vary from tubular to box-shaped and contain a terminal aperture from which the lophophore is protruded to feed.
No pores are present in the great majority of Ordovician bryozoans, but skeletal evidence shows that epithelia were continuous from one zooid to the next.
One of the most important events during bryozoan evolution was the acquisition of a calcareous skeleton and the mechanism of tentacle protrusion.
The rigidity of the outer body walls gave protection against predators, a greater degree of zooid connection, and the evolution of massive colony forms.
Bay leaf (plural bay leaves), (Greek Daphni, Romanian Foi de Dafin) is the aromatic leaf of several species of the Laurel family (Lauraceae).
Fresh or dried bay leaves are used in cooking for their distinctive flavor and fragrance.
The leaf of the California bay tree (Umbellularia californica), also known as ` California laurel ', ` Oregon myrtle ', and ` pepperwood ', is similar to the Mediterranean bay but has a stronger flavor.
The leaf of the Cinnamomum tejpata (malabathrum) tree is similar in fragrance and taste to cinnamon bark, but milder.
In appearance, it is similar to the other bay leaves but is culinarily quite different, having an aroma and flavor more similar to that of Cassia.
It is inaccurately called a bay leaf as it is of a different genus (though the same family) as the bay laurel.
The Burgess Shale Formation in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia is one of the world 's most celebrated fossil fields, and the best of its kind.
It is famous for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of its fossils.
It is ~ 505 million years old (Middle Cambrian), one of the earliest soft-parts fossil beds.
The rock unit is a black shale, and crops out at a number of localities near the town of Field in the Yoho National Park.
The Burgess Shale was discovered by palaeontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott in 1909, towards the end of the season 's fieldwork.
He returned in 1910 with his sons, and established a quarry on the flanks of Fossil Ridge.
The fact that fossils were of soft-bodied forms, and the range of organisms new to science, led him to return to the quarry almost every year until 1924.
At this point, aged 74, he had amassed over 65,000 specimens.
Describing the fossils was a vast task, pursued by Walcott until his death in 1927.
Walcott, led by scientific opinion at the time, attempted to categorise all fossils into living taxa.
As a result, the fossils were regarded as little more than curiosities at the time.
It was not until 1962 that a first-hand reinvestigation of the fossils was attempted, by Alberto Simonetta.
This led scientists to recognize that Walcott had barely scratched the surface of information available in the Burgess Shale.
A second quarry (in the same geological formation) was opened.
A thorough reassessment of the Burgess Shale showed that the fauna were much more varied and unusual than Walcott had realized.
The Royal Ontario Museum now has the largest collection of Burgess Shale material in the world with over 150,000 specimens.
Many of the animals present had bizarre anatomical features and only the slightest resemblance to other known animals.
Examples include Opabinia, with five eyes and a snout like a vacuum cleaner hose; Nectocaris, and Hallucigenia.
This last was originally reconstructed upside down, walking on its spines.
Beavis and Butt-head is an animated American television series by Mike Judge which began on March 8, 1993 and ended on November 28, 1997 on MTV.
In 1996 the series was adapted into a movie titled Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.
The title characters are hard rock\/heavy metal loving teenagers from the fictional town of Highland, Texas.
In 2010 it was announced the series would return in 2011.
The Brassicales are an order of flowering plants.
They are in the eurosids II group of dicotyledons under the APG II system.
A bomber is a type of airplane that is used to attack ground targets, mainly by dropping bombs.
The first bombers were made at the start of World War I.
Bombers often fly low to the ground to confuse enemy radar.
Most can not fly very fast.
Because of this, bombers are not outfitted to fight other airplanes.
To make up for this, bombers in the past had many machine guns.
Strategic bombing became important in World War II.
Bombers had large crews, sometimes as many as 12 people.
Usually a bomber had a pilot, a bombadier, a co-pilot\/navigator, and many machine gunners all around to shoot at enemy fighter aircraft defending the target.
Friendly fighters often came along to help fight the defenders.
Bombers now have one or two people in them.
The other positions have been replaced by computers.
Bombers have very few guns on them partly because they are much faster.
In bombing missions now, the pilot drops a bomb and leaves as quickly as possible.
During the cold war, a few bombers were made that could travel supersonic, so a nuclear bomb could be dropped without killing the people in the airplane.
They were not used that way, however.
Cue sports are games played with balls on a cloth-covered table that has rubber railings (called "cushions") around it to keep the balls on the table.
Two or more people use sticks (called cues) to make one ball (the cue ball) hit other balls.
In the past, all cue sports were called billiards, but that term has various different meanings in different areas.
Big Dipper is the American name for the seven brightest stars of Ursa Major.
It is called the Plough in Britain.
Bursa is a city in northwestern Turkey and the seat of the Bursa province.
The population of city is about 2 million.
Bursa is the fourth largest city, and also one of the most industrialized cities in the country.
Sometimes the city is called "Ye il Bursa" which means "Green Bursa" because of the large parks, forests and gardens in the urban area of the city.
Bursa is home of Uluda University.
Uluda is an important ski resort in Turkey.
The city has a national park in Uluda to protect the nature life in the mountainous area.
The Bahamas (officially called Commonwealth of The Bahamas) is a group of islands in the West Indies.
The country 's capital, Nassau, is on New Providence Island.
The Taino were the first people living there.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus found the Americas by landing on another of the islands, San Salvador.
The Eleutheran Adventurers soon came along, making a home in Eleuthera.
The islands ' mostly black population speaks English, the country 's main language.
The Bahamas are a popular place for people to visit for holidays, the 700 islands and cays attract a large number of visitors from nearby America, as well as Europe and other countries.
Ta nos were the first people to arrive in the Bahamas.
They moved into the southern Bahamas from Hispaniola and Cuba around the 11th century AD, having come there from South America.
They came to be known as the Lucayan.
About 30,000 Lucayan lived the Bahamas when Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492.
Columbus ' first landfall in the New World was on an island named San Salvador, which some scholars believe to be present-day San Salvador Island.
The Spanish forced much of the Lucayan population to move to Hispaniola.
They were used for forced labor.
This and the exposure to foreign diseases led to most of the population of the Bahamas dying.
Smallpox alone wiped out half of the population in what is now the Bahamas.
In 1670, King Charles II rented out the islands to the Carolinas, along with rights of trading, tax, and governing the country.
During this time, the Bahamas became a haven for pirates, including the infamous Blackbeard.
To restore proper government, Britain made the Bahamas a crown colony in 1718.
The first governor was Woodes Rogers.
After the American War of Independence, the British resettled some 7,300 Loyalists and their slaves in the Bahamas from New York, Florida, and the Carolinas.
The first group of loyalists left St. Augustine in East Florida in September 1783.
These Loyalists established plantations on several islands.
British Americans were outnumbered by the African-American slaves they brought with them, and ethnic Europeans remained a minority in the territory.
Nearly 500,000 people live in the Bahamas.
The ethnic groups of the population is: 82.1 % African descent 15.4 % European descent 2.5 % Asian and other.
The official language of the Bahamas is English, but they also speak a local dialect called Bahamianese.
The Bahamian dialect is based based on the West Country England accents along with South Hiberno English dialects with strong influences from West African languages.
In 1864 the Governor of the Bahamas reported that there were 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 rocks in the colony.
The closest island to the United States is Bimini.
The southeasternmost island is Inagua.
The largest island is Andros Island.
Nassau, capital city of The Bahamas, is on the island of New Providence.
All the islands are low and flat.
The highest point in the country is Mount Alvernia on Cat Island.
It is 63 m high.
The climate of The Bahamas is subtropical to tropical.
The Gulf Stream can be very dangerous in the summer and autumn.
This is when hurricanes pass near or through the islands.
Hurricane Andrew hit the northern islands during the 1992 Atlantic hurricane season.
Hurricane Floyd hit most of the islands during the 1999 Atlantic hurricane season.
There has never been a freeze reported in The Bahamas.
The temperature can fall as low as 2.
The Bahamas are divided into 32 districts and the town of New Providence.
The Bahamas does not have an army or an air force.
The Royal Bahamas Defense Force (RBDF) is the navy.
The Defense Force has a fleet of 26 coastal and inshore patrol craft along with 2 aircraft and over 850 personnel including 65 officers and 74 women.
Baker Island is a small coral island, or atoll, in the North Pacific Ocean.
It is just above the equator.
It belongs to the United States.
The United States Department of the Interior is in charge of the island.
It is called the Baker Island National Wildlife Refuge.
The island has no trees.
The island is surrounded by a coral reef.
This makes the atoll hard to approach in a boat.
Bangladesh (officially called People 's Republic of Bangladesh) is a country in South Asia.
It is next to the North-east Indian provincial regions of India, which converges with Southeast Asia to the east.
Its full name is The People 's Republic of Bangla-Desh.
The capital and the largest city is Dhaka (also spelled ` Dacca ').
Bangladesh is surrounded on all three sides by the Republic of India (Bharat), and Myanmar (Burma) on the south-eastern corner, it is near the People 's Republic of China, Bhutan, Sikkim and Nepal.
Its independence was fully realized after it declared it self as independent most of 1971 from Pakistan after a bloody war in which over a million people died.
Later by Indian military intervention, by that time the provisional government went into exile in Calcutta, Bengal (India) which they considered their homeland to be under Pakistani military occupation.
After the Instrument of Surrender, the Bengali peoples became a sovereign nation and when its founder was released from political imprisonment had returned in 1972.
Present-day Bangladesh has an area of 56,977 mi or (147,570 km).
The local currency is called Taka.
The official language is Bengali.
There are two main rivers in Bangladesh, the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers are holy to Hindus.
There are often floods because of these two rivers.
The delta and surrounding hills has been inhabited for hundreds of generations (thousands of years).
The area supported agriculture very early on.
About 500 BC there was a shift to growing rice.
This led to the development of urban areas.
Because there were no stone quarries in the area houses were built of wood and mud (including adobe).
Because of the monsoon climate very little evidence of the earliest inhabitants remains.
From about 300 BC to the 1700s AD the Bengal delta saw the development of writing, the Bengali language, religions and the rise and fall of states.
By the 1500s, the area was prosperous and even peasants had plenty to eat.
For much of its history the area was simply called "Bengal" and was considered a part of India.
The last few centuries several foreign powers involved themselves with the area resulting in several wars.
The 20th century brought more wars, genocide, and political states.
Bengal was under British rule from 1757 1947.
It was a part of British India.
In 1947 East Bengal and West Pakistan separated from India and formed a new country called Pakistan.
But the east and west provinces were on either side of India and separated by 930 m. In 1949 the Bangladesh Awami League formed to favor separation between east and west Pakistan.
In 1955 East Bengal was renamed East Pakistan.
Dacca was then the legislative capital of Pakistani Bengal provincial region.
The peoples of East Pakistan were mostly ethnic Bengalis who had a different language and culture to the people of western Pakistan.
These differences eventually led to the Bangladesh Liberation War.
On 16 December 1971, Bangladesh gained independence, with the help of allied forces against West Pakistani forces.
The East Bengal Legislative Assembly was the law-making body of the province of East Bengal.
It was later renamed the East Pakistan Legislative Assembly and would be succeeded by the Jatiyo Sangshad in 1971.
After the birth of Bangladesh, Bangla replaced Urdu and English as the sole national and official language, and was the language taught in schools and used in business and government.
The Bangla Academy was important in this change.
In the 1980s, British-style education was maintained through private English-language institutions attended by upper class children.
English continued to be taught in higher education and was offered as a subject for university degrees.
At first, Arabic also lost ground in independent Bangladesh.
This trend ended in the late 1970s, however, after Bangladesh strengthened its ties with Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich, Arabic-speaking countries.
An unsuccessful attempt was made in 1983 to introduce Arabic as a required language in primary and secondary levels.
Arabic is widely studied in Madrassas and Islamic institutions around the country for better understanding of the Quran, Hadith and any other Islamic texts.
Despite 30 years of independence, Bangladesh is still a poor country and has problems with corruption and political troubles as the other country have.
Presently more than half of the people can read and write.
Bangladesh has heavy cyclones and natural disasters, due to this many lives are often lost.
The country is one of the most densely populated in the world.
Cyclones are very common in the Bay of Bengal during the middle of the year, particularly in the south of country in areas like Sundarban, Chittagong, Cox 's Bazaar, or in neighboring Myanmar and Republic of India.
Despite the many storms, Bangladesh does not have a very effective storm prevention system, and cyclones usually inflict heavy damage.
Bangladesh is in the Ganges Delta.
This is where the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna come together.
Most parts of Bangladesh are less than 12 m above the sea level.
The highest point in Bangladesh is in Mowdok range at 1052 m in the Chittagong Hill Tracts to the southeast of the country.
Cox 's Bazar, south of the city of Chittagong, has a beach that is uninterrupted over 120 k.
A large part of the coastline is a marshy jungle, the Sundarbans.
They are the largest mangrove forest in the world.
Bangladesh is divided into seven administrative divisions,: Barisal (-RRB-, Chittagong (-RRB-, Dhaka (-RRB-, Khulna (-RRB-, Rajshahi (-RRB-, Sylhet (-RRB-, and Rangpur (-RRB-.
Divisions are divided into districts.
There are 64 districts in Bangladesh.
Dhaka is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh.
Other major cities include Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi, Sylhet, Barisal, Bogra, Comilla, Mymensingh and Rangpur.
For more locations see List of settlements in Bangladesh.
The main religion in Bangladesh is Islam (85 %).
Many people also follow Hinduism (14 %).
Most Muslims are Sunni.
Islam was made the state religion in the 1980s.
Christians make up less than 1 % of the population.
The earliest literary text in Bengali is the 8th century Charyapada.
Medieval Bengali literature was often either religious or from other languages.
The 19th century had poets such as Rabindranath Tagore, Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Kazi Nazrul Islam.
The musical tradition of Bangladesh is lyrics-based with little instruments.
Folk music is often accompanied by the ektara, an instrument with only one string.
Bangladeshi dance forms are from folk traditions.
Bangladesh makes about 80 films a year.
Mainstream Hindi films are also quite popular.
Around 200 daily newspapers are published in Bangladesh, along with more than 500 magazines.
Rice and fish are traditional favorite foods.
Biryani is a favorite dish of Bangladeshis.
The sari is by far the most widely worn dress by Bangladeshi women.
The salwar kameez (shaloar kamiz) is also quite popular among espcially the younger females, and In urban areas some women wear western attire.
Among men, western attire is more widely worn.
Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha have major festivals.
Buddha Purnima, which marks the birth of Gautama Buddha, and Christmas, called B odin (Great day), are both national holidays.
The most important non-religious festival is Pohela Boishakh or Bengali New Year, the beginning of the Bengali calendar.
Cricket is the most popular sport in Bangladesh.
Next is football (soccer).
The national cricket team was in their first Cricket World Cup in 1999.
In 2011, Bangladesh successfully co-hosted the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 with India and Sri Lanka.
Hadudu (kabaddi) is the national sport in Bangladesh.
Other popular sports include field hockey, tennis, badminton, handball, basketball, volleyball, chess, shooting, angling, and carrom.
Barbados is an island country in the Caribbean Sea.
The island has an area of about 430 km.
Its capital and largest city is Bridgetown.
The official language of Barbados is English.
Barbados is a popular tourist destination.
In 2008, the island had a population of about 284,000 people.
About 80,000 live in or around Bridgetown.
The island is in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres (62 mi) east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea.
It is about 168 k east of the islands of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and 400 k north-east of Trinidad and Tobago.
Barbados is outside of the main Atlantic hurricane belt.
The island 's only airport is the Grantley Adams International Airport.
Barbados was first visited by the Spanish around the late 1400s to early 1500s.
It first was on a Spanish map in 1511.
The native Arawaks may have fled or become slaves.
The Portuguese visited in 1536.
They brought wild hogs for a good supply of meat whenever the island was visited.
The first English ship, the Olive Blossom, came in 1624.
They said the island belonged to the British king James I. Two years later in 1627 the first permanent settlers arrived from England.
Barbados has been an independent country since 30 November 1966.
Elizabeth II, Queen of Barbados is the head of state.
The Queen is represented locally by the Governor-General.
The Prime Minister is the local head of the government.
The Barbados Defense Force has roughly 600 members.
The Barbados Defense Force (BDF) is the name given to the combined armed forces of Barbados.
The BDF was established August 15, 1979, and has responsibility for the territorial defense and internal security of the island.
The headquarters for the Barbados Defense Force are in the St. Ann 's Fort area at The Garrison, Saint Michael.
Force Headquarters provided administrative and logistical support for the entire force The Barbados Regiment this is the main land force component, and encompasses both regular and reserve units.
Barbados Coast Guard this is the maritime element, with responsibility for patrolling Barbados ' territorial waters as well as drug interdiction and humanitarian and life-saving exercises.
It too encompasses both regular and reserve units.
Barbados Cadet Corp Military youth organization.
Includes Infantry and Sea Cadets.
This organization was started in 1904.
The first females joined the cadet corps in 1970s to 1980s.
The Cadet Corps has a pledge and also a song.
It started with 3 normal units but today has expanded to 22.
These units are grouped into Zones.
There are also a band, sea cadet and medical units along with a shooting program.
In 1981 a Cessna 402C entered service as part of the air wing.
Barbados is the easternmost island in the Lesser Antilles.
It is flat in comparison to its island neighbors to the west.
The highest point of the nation is Mount Hillaby.
The country usually has two seasons.
The "wet season" is from June to November.
The "dry season" is from December to May.
St. George and St. Thomas in the middle of the country are the only two parishes without coastlines.
The population of Barbados is about 300,000 people, nearly 90 % of that is predominantly of African and Mixed descent, 6 % are Asian and 4 % Whites.
There is also an East Indian minority on the island and Chinese and other ethnic groups.
Most Barbadians are Christians (95 %).
The most common Christian church is Anglicans (40 %).
Other Christian churces in Barbados are the Catholic Church, Pentecostals (Evangelicals) Jehovah 's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventist and Spiritual Baptists.
The Church of England was the official state religion.
It was ended by the Parliament of Barbados after independence.
Other religions include Hindus, Muslims, the Baha ` i Faith, Jews and Wiccans.
The influence of the English on Barbados is more noticeable than on other islands in the West Indies.
A good example of this is the island 's national sport: cricket.
Barbados has had several great cricketers, including Sir Garfield Sobers and Sir Frank Worrell.
Citizens are officially called Barbadians.
In the music business, Rihanna (born Robyn Fenty) is one of Barbados ' best-known Grammy winning artists.
In Barbados, the official language is English.
But they also speak an English-African Creole language known as Bajan.
Cricket is very popular on the island.
Barbadians play on the West Indies cricket team.
The country hosted the final of the 2007 Cricket World Cup.
Obadele Thompson is a world class sprinter from Barbados.
Ryan Brathwaite, a hurdler, reached the 2008 Olympic semi-finals in Beijing.
Polo is very popular with the rich on the island.
In golf, the Barbados Open is an annual stop on the European Seniors Tour.
Belarus (officially called Republic of Belarus) is a country in Eastern Europe.
About nine million people live there.
Its capital is Minsk.
It was part of the Soviet Union until 1991.
The president of Belarus has been Alexander Lukashenko since 1994.
It is bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
Over forty percent of its 207600 k is forested.
The State is a member of the UN, the CIS, Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic Community, the Union State of Russia and Belarus (from 2 April 1997), as well as a member of other international organizations.
Until the 20th century, the lands of modern-day Belarus belonged to several countries.
These included the Principality of Polotsk, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire.
After the Russian Revolution, Belarus became part of the Soviet Union.
It was renamed the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR).
The borders of Belarus took their modern shape in 1939.
Some lands of the Second Polish Republic were added into it after the Soviet invasion of Poland.
The nation and its territory were devastated in World War II.
Belarus lost about a third of its population and more than half of its economic resources.
In 1945 the Belorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian SSR.
The parliament of the republic declared the sovereignty of Belarus on 1990.
During the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus became independent on 1991.
Over 70 % of Belarus 's population of 9.49 million live in the urban areas.
More than 80 % of the population are ethnic Belarusians.
Most of the rest are Russians, Poles and Ukrainians.
The country has two official languages: Belarusian and Russian.
The main religion in the country is Russian Orthodox Christianity.
The second most popular, Roman Catholicism, has a much smaller following.
Both Homo erectus and Neanderthal remains have been found in the region.
From 5,000 to 2,000 BCE, Bandkeramik cultures lived here.
Cimmerians were in the area by 1,000 BCE.
By 500 BCE, Slavs moved in.
The Huns and Avars came through around 400 600 CE.
They were unable to move the Slavs.
The region that is now Belarus was first settled by Slavic tribes in the 6th century.
They came into contact with the Varangians, who were bands of Scandinavian warriors and traders.
They formed Kievan Rus ' in 862.
When Kievan Rus ' ruler Yaroslav I the Wise died, the state split.
Later some were added into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Lithuania made a union with Poland.
The union ended in 1795.
The land of Belarus went to the Russian Empire.
The land stayed with Russia until going to the German Empire during World War I.
Belarus said they were free from Germany on 1918.
They formed the Belarusian People 's Republic.
Then the Polish Soviet War started.
A part of Belarus under Russian rule became the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1919.
Then it added to the Lithuanian Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Other lands were divided between Poland and the Soviet Union after the war ended in 1921.
The Belorussian SSR became a founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922.
The western part of modern Belarus stayed part of Poland.
In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland.
This was the beginning of World War II.
Parts of Poland were added to the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
They are now West Belarus.
Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
BSSR was the hardest-hit Soviet republic in World War II.
During that time, Germany destroyed 209 out of 290 cities in the republic, 85 % of the republic 's industry, and more than one million buildings.
Casualties were between two and three million.
The population of Belarus did not come back to its pre-war level until 1971.
Joseph Stalin wanted Belorussian SSR to be more Russian.
Russians were sent from other parts of the Soviet Union to be in the government.
The use of the Belarusian language was limited.
After Stalin 's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev continued the plan.
In 1986, the Belorussian SSR had nuclear fallout from the explosion at the Chernobyl power plant in neighboring Ukrainian SSR.
Belarus said it was free on 1990.
With the support of the Communist Party, the country 's name was changed to the Republic of Belarus on 1991.
Belarus is landlocked and mostly flat.
It has a lot of marshy land.
Many streams and 11,000 lakes are found in Belarus.
Three major rivers run through the country: the Neman, the Pripyat, and the Dnieper.
The highest point is Dzyarzhynskaya Hara at 345 m. Belarus has a hemiboreal humid continental climate (Dfb in the Koeppen climate classification).
Natural resources include peat deposits, small amounts of oil and natural gas, granite, dolomite (limestone), marl, chalk, sand, gravel, and clay.
About 70 % of the radiation from neighboring Ukraine 's 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster entered Belarusian territory.
The farmland continues to be affected by radiation fallout.
Belarus is a presidential republic.
It is governed by a president and the National Assembly.
Lukashenko has described himself as having an "authoritarian ruling style".
Western countries have described Belarus under Lukashenko as a dictatorship.
The Council of Europe has stopped Belarus from membership since 1997 for undemocratic voting.
The Armed Forces of Belarus have three branches: the Army, the Air Force, and the Ministry of Defense joint staff.
Lieutenant General Yuri Zhadobin heads the Ministry of Defense.
Alexander Lukashenko (as president) is Commander-in-Chief.
Belarus is divided into six regions.
They are named after the cities that are their administrative centers.
Most of the Belarusian economy is state-controlled.
It has been described as "Soviet-style."
The country relies on Russia for some imports, including petroleum.
As of 1994, Belarus 's main exports included heavy machinery (especially tractors), agricultural products, and energy products.
According to 2009 census, the population is 9,503,807.
Ethnic Belarusians are 83.7 % of Belarus ' total population.
The next largest ethnic groups are: Russians (8.3 %), Poles (3.1 %), and Ukrainians (1.7 %).
Minsk, the nation 's capital and largest city, is home to 1,836,808 residents as of 2009.
Gomel, with 481,000 people, is the second-largest city and is the capital of the Homiel Voblast.
Other large cities are Mogilev (365,100), Vitebsk (342,400), Hrodna (314,800) and Brest (298,300).
For other places in Belarus see List of settlements in Belarus.
Belarusian literature began with 11th - to 13th-century religious scripture.
By the 16th century, Polotsk resident Francysk Skaryna translated the Bible into Belarusian.
The modern era of Belarusian literature began in the late 19th century.
One important writer was Yanka Kupala.
Several poets and authors went into exile after the Nazi occupation of Belarus.
They would not return until the 1960s.
The last major revival of Belarusian literature was in the 1960s with novels published by Vasil Byka and Uladzimir Karatkievich.
In the 19th century, Polish composer Stanis aw Moniuszko made operas and chamber music pieces while living in Minsk.
At the end of the 19th century, major Belarusian cities formed their own opera and ballet companies.
The National Academic Theatre of Ballet, in Minsk, was awarded the Benois de la Dance Prize in 1996 as the top ballet company in the world.
Rock music has become more popular in recent years, though the Belarusian government has tried to limit the amount of foreign music aired on the radio.
Since 2004, Belarus has been sending artists to the Eurovision Song Contest.
The traditional Belarusian dress is from the Kievan Rus ' period.
Due to the cool climate, clothes were made to keep body heat and were usually made from flax or wool.
Belarusian cuisine is mainly vegetables, meat (especially pork), and breads.
Foods are usually either slowly cooked or stewed.
A typical Belarusian eats a light breakfast and two hearty meals, with dinner being the largest meal of the day.
Wheat and rye breads are eaten in Belarus.
Rye is more plentiful because conditions are too harsh for growing wheat.
To show hospitality, a host will give an offering of bread and salt when greeting a guest or visitor.
Popular drinks in Belarus include Russian wheat vodka and kvass, Kvass is a drink made from fermented malted brown bread or rye flour.
Kvass may also be added with sliced vegetables to create a cold soup called okroshka.
Belarus has four World Heritage Sites: the Mir Castle Complex, the Nesvizh Castle, the Belovezhskaya Pushcha (shared with Poland), and the Struve Geodetic Arc (shared with nine other countries).
Belize is a country in Central America.
It used to be called British Honduras, but changed its name in 1973.
Long before that it was part of the Mayan Empire.
Some people in Belize speak Spanish or Kriol, but English is the official language and the most commonly spoken.
This is because Belize is a former colony of the United Kingdom, while its neighbors were once colonies of Spain.
Many people speak two languages.
More than three hundred and thirty thousand people live in Belize.
Kriols make up about 21 % of the Belizean people.
Three Maya groups now live in the country: the Yucatec, the Mopan, and Kekchi.
The Garinagu are a mix of African, Arawak, and Carib ancestry.
There are also Mestizos.
Belmopan, which is near the center of the country, is its capital.
Other towns and cities include Belize City, Corozal Town, Orange Walk Town and Punta Gorda.
Belize is on the coast of the Caribbean Sea.
There are about 450 islands.
The largest island, Ambergris Caye, is forty kilometres long.
Many other islands are very small.
In the water around the islands are coral reefs.
The temperature along the coast is warm all year round.
It typically ranges from 20 C to 32 C. Sometimes hurricanes hit, causing great damage.
In 1955 Hurricane Janet leveled the northern town of Corozal.
The most recent hurricane to affect Belize directly was the Category 2 Hurricane Richard.
It struck land about 20 miles south-southeast of Belize City at on 25 October 2010.
On the mainland bananas and sugar cane are grown.
Many tourists come to Belize each year.
They like to snorkel or dive, to visit pyramids built by the Mayans, or simply to relax on a beach.
Belize is on the Caribbean coast of northern Central America.
It shares a border on the north with the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, on the west with the Guatemalan department of Pet n, and on the south with the Guatemalan department of Izabal.
To the east is the Caribbean Sea.
The Belize Barrier Reef is along most of the 386 k of predominantly marshy coastline.
The area of the country totals 22960 k. There are many lagoons along the coasts and in the northern part of the country.
This makes the actual land area smaller at 21400 k.
The Hondo and the Sarstoon River make the northern and southern border.
The north of Belize is mostly flat, swampy coastal plains.
In some places it is heavily forested.
The south has the low mountain range of the Maya Mountains.
The highest point in Belize is Doyle 's Delight at 1124 m. The Caribbean coast is lined with a coral reef and about 450 islets and islands.
The islands are locally called cayes (pronounced "keys).
Three of only four coral atolls in the Western Hemisphere are off the coast of Belize.
Over 60 % of Belize 's land surface is covered by forest.
20 % is covered by cultivated land (agriculture) and human settlements.
There are also important mangrove ecosystems across Belize 's landscape.
Belize is divided into 6 districts.
The districts are shown below with their areas (in km2) and number of people at the 2010 Census:
These districts are further divided into 31 constituencies.
The Belize Defense Force (BDF) is the military.
It is responsible for protecting Belize.
In 1997, the regular army had over 900 people, the reserve army 381, the air wing 45 and the maritime wing 36.
This amounts to an overall strength of about 1400.
In 2005, the maritime wing became part of the Belizean Coast Guard.
In the same year, the government spent $ 1.2 million on the military.
This is 1.87 % of the country 's gross domestic product (GDP).
After Belize became independent in 1981 the United Kingdom kept some military in the country to protect it from invasion by Guatemala.
The main British force left in 1994.
This was three years after Guatemala said Belize was independent.
The United Kingdom still keeps some military people in the country.
In 2011 the base was only 10 soldiers due to British budget cuts.
They hope to reopen the base later.
Belizean cuisine is inspired by British, Mexican and Western Caribbean cooking.
The basic ingredients are rice and beans.
These are often eaten with chicken, pork, veal, fish or vegetables.
Coconut milk and fried plantains are added to the dishes to create a truly tropical taste.
Exotic ingredients include armadillo meat, venison, iguana, iguana egg, and fried paca.
Conch soup is a traditional dish.
It has a characteristic taste and thick consistency due to added okra, potatoes, yams, cassava flour and a touch of toasted habanero.
Belizean food is almost always served alongside white rice in coconut milk.
The major sports in Belize are football, basketball, volleyball and cycling.
There are smaller followings of boat racing, track & field, softball and cricket.
Fishing is also popular in areas of Belize.
The Cross Country Cycling Classic is one of the most important Belize sports events.
This one-day sports event is meant for amateur cyclists but has also gained a worldwide popularity.
On Easter day, citizens of Dangriga participate in a yearly fishing tournament.
First, second, and third prize are awarded based on a scoring combination of size, species, and number.
The tournament is broadcast over local radio stations.
Prize money is awarded to the winners.
Belize 's National Basketball Team is the only National Team to have major victories internationally.
The National Flower of Belize is the Black Orchid (Prosthechea cochleata).
The National Tree of Belize is the Mahogany Tree (Swietenia macrophylla), one of the magnificent giants of the Belize rain forest.
It rises straight and tall to over a hundred feet.
In the early months of the year, when the leaves fall and new red-brown growth appears, the tree can be seen from a great distance.
The tree puts out a many small whitish flowers.
The flowers blossom into dark fruits, which are pear-shaped capsules about six inches long.
The mahogany tree matures in 60 to 80 years.
The Keel Billed Toucan (Ramphastos sulfuratus) is the National Bird of Belize.
It is noted for its great, canoe-shaped bill and its brightly colored green, blue, red and orange feathers.
There are toucans in open areas of the country with large trees.
It is mostly black with bright yellow cheeks and chest, red under the tail and a distinctive white patch at the base of the tail.
They make a monotonous frog-like croak.
Toucans like fruits.
They eat by cutting with the serrated edge of their bills.
Belize 's National Animal is the Baird 's Tapir, the largest land mammal of the American tropics.
It is also known as the mountain cow, although it is actually related to the horse and the rhinoceros.
It is protected under Belizean law.
Benin (officially called Republic of Benin) is a country in Africa.
The capital of Benin is Porto-Novo.
The seat of government is in Cotonou, the country 's largest city.
Most people live on the small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin.
The official language of Benin is French.
Languages such as Fon and Yoruba are commonly spoken.
The largest religious group in Benin is Roman Catholicism.
This is followed closely by Islam, Vodun and Protestantism.
Benin is a member of the United Nations, the African Union, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone, La Francophonie, the Community of Sahel-Saharan States, the African Petroleum Producers Association and the Niger Basin Authority.
From the 17th to the 19th century, Benin was ruled by the Kingdom of Dahomey.
It was called the Slave Coast from as early as the 17th century.
This is because of the large number of slaves shipped to the New World.
After slavery ended, France took over the country.
They renamed it French Dahomey.
In 1960, Dahomey gained full independence from France.
From 1972 to 1990 a Marxist-Leninist state called the People 's Republic of Benin existed.
The current Republic of Benin was formed in 1991.
Benin is a narrow country in west Africa.
The country measures about 325 k at its widest point.
It is between the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer.
Benin is bordered by Togo to the west, Burkina Faso and Niger to the north, Nigeria to the east, and the Bight of Benin to the south.
The highest point is Mont Sokbaro at 658 m.
Reserve du W du Niger and Pendjari National Park attract tourists who want to see elephants, lions, antelopes, hippos, and monkeys.
Historically Benin has been a home for the endangered Painted Hunting Dog, Lycaon pictus;
Benin 's climate is hot and humid.
Yearly rainfall in the coastal area averages 1300 mm or about 51 inches.
Benin has two rainy and two dry seasons per year.
The main rainy season is from April to late July, with a shorter less strong rainy period from late September to November.
The main dry season is from December to April, with a short cooler dry season from late July to early September.
In Cotonou, the average maximum temperature is 31; the minimum is 24.
Benin is divided into 12 Departments.
Then it is divided into 77 communes.
Beninese literature had a strong oral tradition long before French became the main language.
Felix Couchoro wrote the first Beninese novel, L'Esclave in 1929.
Singer Ang lique Kidjo and actor Djimon Hounsou were both born in Cotonou, Benin.
Composer Wally Badarou and singer Gnonnas Pedro are also from Benin.
In the 2010 census, 27.2 % of the population of Benin were Christian, 24.4 % were Muslim, 17.3 % practiced Vodun, 6 % other traditional local religious groups, 1.9 % other religious groups, and 6.5 % have no religious affiliation.
The literacy rate in Benin is one of the lowest in the world.
In 2002 it was said to be 34.7 %.
At one time the education system was not free.
Beninese cuisine is known in Africa for its exotic ingredients and flavorful dishes.
Beninese cuisine has lots of fresh meals with a variety of sauces.
In southern Benin cuisine, the most common ingredient is corn.
It is often used to prepare dough which is mainly eaten with peanut - or tomato-based sauces.
Fish and chicken are the most common meats used in southern Beninese cuisine.
Beef, goat, and bush rat are also eaten.
The main food in northern Benin is yams.
The northern provinces use beef and pork meat which is fried in palm or peanut oil or cooked in sauces.
Cheese is used in some dishes.
Couscous, rice, and beans are commonly eaten, along with fruits such as mangoes, oranges, avocados, bananas, kiwi fruit, and pineapples.
Meat is usually expensive.
Meals are usually light on meat and generous on vegetable fat.
Smoked fish is commonly prepared in Benin.
Many people have outdoor mud stoves for cooking.
Bermuda (\/ b r mju d \/ "Ber-myu-dah"; officially, the Bermudas or Somers Islands) is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean.
The land has one main island and 180 smaller islands.
Bermuda is a popular tourist place, with mild weather during the winter months.
Off the east coast of the United States, Bermuda 's nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about 1,030 kilometres (640 mi) to the west-northwest.
It is about 1,373 kilometres (853 mi) south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and 1,770 kilometres (1,100 mi) northeast of Miami, Florida.
Its capital city is Hamilton.
in 1505 by Spanish navigator Juan de Berm dez (who said it to be inhabited only with pigs), after whom the islands are named.
Berm dez claimed it for the Spanish Empire.
Unoccupied, the island was settled by England in 1609, making it the oldest and most populous remaining British overseas territory.
Its first capital, St George 's, was founded in 1612 and is the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the Americas.
The country is in the Atlantic Ocean, near the western edge of the Sargasso Sea.
It is about 580 nautical miles (1070 km, 670 mi) east-southeast of Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and about 590 nautical miles (1100 km, 690 mi) southeast of Martha 's Vineyard.
The island is due east of Fripp Island, South Carolina.
It has 103 km (64 mi) of coastline.
The territory has 181 islands.
The total area is 53.3 square kilometres (20.6 sq mi).
The largest island is Main Island, sometimes itself called Bermuda.
Bermuda has a subtropical climate.
The weather is humid and, as a result, the summertime heat index can be high, even though mid-August temperatures rarely exceed Winters are mild, with average daytime temperatures in January and February around The temperature rarely drops below 10 C
Bermuda is very likely to be affected by hurricanes.
The island 's small size means that direct landfalls are rare.
The last hurricane to cause significant damage to Bermuda was category 3 Hurricane Fabian on 5 September 2003.
The only source of fresh water in Bermuda is rainfall.
It is collected on roofs and catchments and stored in tanks.
Each home usually has at least one of these tanks forming part of its foundation.
When discovered, Bermuda had no people.
It was mostly covered by forests of Bermuda cedar, with mangrove marshes along its shores.
Only 165 of the island 's current 1000 vascular plant species are considered native.
Of those 15, including the cedar, are endemic.
Many species of palm trees have been introduced to Bermuda.
Coconut palms grow there, making it the furthest north place for the natural growth of this species.
While coconuts grow on Bermuda, the lack of heat does not usually let them properly set fruit.
The only indigenous mammals of Bermuda are five species of bats.
All of these bats are also in the eastern United States Lasionycteris noctivagans, Lasiurus borealis, Lasiurus cinereus, Lasiurus seminolus and Perimyotis subflavus.
Other commonly known fauna of Bermuda includes its national bird, the Bermuda Petrel, and the Bermuda Rock Skink.
The skink was long thought to have been the only indigenous land vertebrate of Bermuda.
It has recently been discovered, however, that a species of terrapin predated the arrival of humans on the archipelago.
Bermuda is divided into nine parishes and two municipalities.
Despite their names, Jones Village (in Warwick), Cashew City (St. George 's), Claytown (Hamilton), Middle Town (Pembroke) and Tucker 's Town (St. George 's) are merely neighborhoods.
Dandy Town and North Village are sports clubs and Harbour View Village is a small public housing development.
Bermuda has a wealthy economy, with finance as its largest sector, followed by tourism.
In 2005, Bermuda was even claimed to have the world 's highest GDP per capita, yet these statistics are hard to verify as Bermuda is not classified as a country but rather as a territory of the U.K.
Bermuda 's pink sand beaches and clear, cerulean blue ocean waters are popular with tourists.
Many of Bermuda 's hotels are along the south shore of the island.
In addition to its beaches, there are a number of sightseeing attractions.
Historic St George 's is a World Heritage Site.
Scuba divers can explore many wrecks and coral reefs in shallow water (typically 30 - in depth) with nearly unlimited visibility.
Many nearby reefs are easy to access from shore by snorkellers, especially at Church Bay.
Bermuda 's most popular visitor attraction is the Royal Naval Dockyard.
It includes the Bermuda Maritime Museum.
Other attractions include the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo, Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute, the Botanical Gardens, lighthouses, and the Crystal Caves with its impressive stalactites and underground saltwater pools.
It is not possible to rent a car on the island.
However, visitors can hire scooters for use as private transport, or use public transport.
Bermuda has produced, or been home to, actors such as Oona O'Neill, Earl Cameron, Diana Dill, Lena Headey, Will Kempe, and most famously, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Other movie and television personalities who were born, or have lived, in Bermuda include producer Arthur Rankin, Jr., and cartoonist and Muppet man Michael Frith.
Music and dance are important in Bermuda.
Noted musicians have included local icons The Talbot Brothers, who performed for many decades both in Bermuda and the United States, and were on Ed Sullivan 's televised variety show.
Other musicians are jazz pianist Lance Hayward, singer-songwriter Heather Nova and her brother, Mishka, tenor Gary Burgess, classical musician and conductor Kenneth Amis, and more recently, dancehall artist Collie Buddz.
In 1979, Gina Swainson was crowned "Miss World".
Bermuda 's national cricket team was in the Cricket World Cup 2007 in the West Indies.
Their most famous player is Dwayne Leverock.
Also very well known is David Hemp.
The yearly "Cup Match" cricket tournament between rival parishes St George 's in the east and Somerset in the west is the time for a popular national holiday.
In 2007 Bermuda hosted the 25th PGA Grand Slam of Golf.
The event returned to Bermuda again in 2008 and 2009.
Bermudian Quinn Talbot was once the World one-armed golf champion.
The Government said in 2006 that it will provide substantial financial support to Bermuda 's cricket and football teams.
Bermuda 's most famous footballers include Clyde Best, Shaun Goater, Reggie Lambe, Sam Nusum and Ralph Bean.
In 2006, the Bermuda Hogges were formed as the nation 's first professional football team.
The team plays in the United Soccer Leagues Second Division.
Sailing, fishing, and equestrian sports are popular with both residents and visitors alike.
The Newport Bermuda Yacht Race is a more than 100-year old tradition.
A sport unique to Bermuda is racing the Bermuda Fitted Dinghy.
International One Design racing also started in Bermuda.
At the 2004 Summer Olympics, Bermuda competed in sailing, athletics, swimming, diving, triathlon and equestrian events.
In those Olympics, Bermuda 's Katura Horton-Perinchief made history by becoming the first black female diver in the Olympic Games.
Bermuda has had one Olympic medallist, Clarence Hill,.
Hill won a bronze medal in boxing.
Bermuda also was in Men 's Skeleton at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
Jillian Teceira was in the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Bermuda also competes in the biennial Island Games.
It will host in 2013.
Bermuda has a proud Rugby Union community.
The Bermuda Rugby Union team won the 2011 Caribbean championships defeating Guyana in the final.
Bermuda is the easternmost point of the so-called "Bermuda Triangle" a region of sea in which a number of aircraft and ships have allegedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Some people think there is a pattern to the disappearances, while other people think it is only coincidence.
Bolivia (officially called Plurinational State of Bolivia) is a country in South America.
It is land locked by Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Peru, and Chile.
Evo Morales became the president of Bolivia in January 2006.
The population of Bolivia is 10.67 million (2013).
Bolivia is named after Sim n Bol var.
The main languages are Spanish and Quechua, but there are other languages too.
Bolivia used to be a colony of Spain.
The silver mines in Bolivia made most of Spain 's money, and Spain used Bolivians as slaves to work in the mines.
After many wars, Sim n Bol var helped Bolivia to be an independent country.
Bolivia is 424,135 mi (1,098,581 km).
This means that Bolivia is the world 's 28th-largest country (after Ethiopia).
It is the same sort of size as Mauritania.
Bolivia is a landlocked nation, which means every border of Bolivia is a border with another country, and so it does not have a sea.
It used to own some of the Pacific coast, but it lost it in 1879 in the War of the Pacific.
The west of Bolivia is on the Andes mountain range.
The highest mountain in Bolivia is called Nevado de Sajama and it is near the city of Oruro.
Although this part of the country is very high with lots of mountains, there are also parts of Bolivia which are very flat, and parts of the country which are very near sea level.
There is also a bit of Bolivia covered by the Amazon rainforest, and a big lake which is the highest lake in the world.
This lake is called Lake Titicaca.
The major cities are La Paz, El Alto, Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Cochabamba.
For other places in Bolivia see List of cities in Bolivia.
The population of Bolivia is approximately 10,907,778 people.
The ethnic composition of the country is like the following:
Bolivia suffers from poverty, with 75.7 % of the population living below the poverty line.
Bolivia is divided into nine departments.
The departments are divided into 112 provinces.
The provinces are divided into 339 municipalities and into native community lands.
Bolivian culture has many Inca, Aymara and other native influences in religion, music and clothing.
There is a big festival in Oruro, which is called "El carnaval de Oruro".
People in Bolivia like playing football, and football, which is often played in the street.
Zoos are also very popular, but they do not have much money.
The Cantuta (often spelled kantuta or qantuta) (Cantua buxifolia or Fuchsia buxifolia) is a flower found in the Yungas, and is the national flower of Bolivia along with the patuj (Heliconia rostrata) found in the tropical regions of Bolivia.
Bosnia ~ Herzegovina or Bosnia-Herzegovina (locally: Bosna i Hercegovina \/, most commonly abbreviated as BiH \/) is a country in Southeastern Europe, with an area of 51,197 km2 and 4,600,000 people.
Countries around Bosnia and Herzegovina are Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro.
The capital is Sarajevo, and other important cities are Banja Luka, Mostar, Zenica and Tuzla.
The first state in Bosnia and Herzegovina was in the Middle Ages.
During the Ottoman Empire, it was a very important province in the Balkans and the capital, Sarajevo, had 100,000 people.
In 1878, it became a province of Austria-Hungary when the Empire took over Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908.
In 1914 the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo, leading to World War I. From 1918 until 1992, the country was a part of the former Yugoslavia.
After a 3-year long war, Bosnia and Herzegovina proclaimed independence as a country consiting mostly of Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims.
This is a list of the ten largest towns in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Only Sarajevo and Banja Luka have more than 200,000 people.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has produced many athletes.
Many of them were famous in the Yugoslav national teams before Bosnia and Herzegovina 's independence.
The most important international sporting event in the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina was the hosting of the 14th Winter Olympics, held in Sarajevo.
The Borac handball club has won seven Yugoslav Handball Championships, as well as the European Championship Cup in 1976 and the International Handball Federation Cup in 1991.
The Bosna basketball club from Sarajevo were European Champions in 1979.
The Yugoslav national basketball team medaled in every world championship from 1963 through 1990.
The team included Bosnian players such as Dra en Dalipagi and Mirza Deliba i.
Bosnia and Herzegovina regularly qualifies for the European Championship in Basketball.
Jedinstvo Aida women 's basketball club, based in Tuzla, has won the 1989 European Championships in Florence.
Bosnia has many world-class basketball players, notably Mirza Teletovi, the first Bosnian in the NBA.
Among others are, Elmedin Kikanovi, Nihad edovi, Ognjen Kuzmi, Jusuf Nurki, Ned ad Sinanovi, and Nemanja Mitrovi.
The Tuzla-Sinalco karate club from Tuzla has won the most Yugoslav championships, as well as four European Championships and one World Championship.
The Bosnian chess team has been Champion of Yugoslavia seven times.
In addition the club K Bosna Sarajevo won four Chess Club Cup: 1994 in Lyon, 1999 in Bugojno, 2000 in Neum, and 2001 in Kallithea Elassonos.
Chess grandmaster Borki Predojevi has also won European Championships: Under-12 years Litochoro (Greece) in 1999, and Under-14 years Kallithea Elassonos (Greece) in 2001, and in 2003 won World Championship Under-16 years Halkidiki (Greece).
Middle-weight boxer Marijan Bene has won several Championships of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslav Championships and the European Championship.
In 1978 he won the World Title against Elisha Obed from the Bahamas.
Another middle-weight boxer, Anton Josipovi won the Olympic Gold in Los Angeles, 1984.
He also won Yugoslav Championship in 1982, the Championship of the Balkans in 1983, and the Belgrade Trophy in 1985.
Association football is the most popular sport in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It dates from 1903, but its popularity grew significantly after World War I. At the local level, FK Sarajevo (1967 and 1984), eljezni ar (1972) have both won the Yugoslav Championship.
The former Yugoslav national football team has included a number of Bosnian players, such as Josip Katalinski, Bla Sli kovi, Du an Bajevi, Enver Mari, Mehmed Ba darevi, Ivica Osim, Safet Su i, Vahidin Musemi and Mirsad Fazlagi.
Today, the team of Bosnia and Herzegovina has modern footballers like Edin D eko, Zvjezdan Misimovi, Vedad Ibi evi, Emir Spahi, Asmir Begovi, Miralem Pjani, Sejad Salihovi, Senad Luli and others.
The independent Bosnia and Herzegovina national football team has not qualified for a European or World Championship but has played twice in the play-off stages.
Bosnian national teams have struggled to draft the best national players.
Many players born in Bosnia and Herzegovina choose to play for other countries because of their ethnic identification.
For example Nikica Jelavi and Vedran orluka were both born in Bosnia and Herzegovina but play for Croatia.
Other internationally famous players from Bosnia and Herzegovina, who have made similar choices, are: Dejan Lovren, Mladen Petri, Mario Stani, Neven Suboti, Zlatan Ibrahimovi, Marko Marin, Boris ivkovi, Zlatko Junuzovi, Savo Milo evi, and Zdravko Kuzmanovi.
Bosnia and Herzegovina was the world champion of volleyball at the 2004 Summer Paralympics and 2012 Summer Paralympics.
Many among those on the team lost their legs in the Bosnian War.
Bosnian cuisine uses many spices, in moderate quantities.
Most dishes are light, as they are cooked in lots of water.
The sauces are fully natural, with little more than the natural juices of the vegetables in the dish.
Typical ingredients include tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, spinach, zucchini, dried beans, fresh beans, plums, milk, paprika and cream called Pavlaka.
Bosnian cuisine is balanced between Western and Eastern influences.
As a result of the Ottoman administration for almost 500 years, Bosnian food is closely related to Turkish, Greek, and other former Ottoman and Mediterranean cuisines.
However, because of years of Austrian rule, there are many influences from Central Europe.
Typical meat dishes include mostly beef and lamb.
Some local specialties are evapi, burek, dolma, sarma, pilaf, goulash, ajvar and a whole range of Eastern sweets.
Local wines come from Herzegovina where the climate is suitable for growing grapes.
Herzegovinian loza (similar to Italian Grappa but less sweet) is very popular.
Plum or apple alcohol beverages are made in the north.
In the south, distilleries used to produce vast quantities of brandy.
Brandy is the base of most alcoholic drinks.
Coffeehouses, where Bosnian coffee is served in d ezva with rahat lokum and sugar cubes, are in many places in Sarajevo and every city in the country.
Coffee drinking is a favorite Bosnian pastime and part of the culture.
Bosnians are believed to be some of the heaviest coffee drinkers in the world.
Botswana (officially called Republic of Botswana) is a country in southern Africa.
The capital of Botswana is Gaborone.
The countries next to Botswana are Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia.
It is also possible to travel from Botswana directly into Zambia by crossing the Zambezi River by ferry.
Botswana is landlocked.
All of Botswana 's trade must be brought in over land, or by airplane.
The two most important geographical features in Botswana are the Okavango Delta and the Kalahari Desert.
People from Botswana are called Batswana.
The population of Botswana is about 1.8 million.
This is only 2.7 persons per km, a small number for a country of this size.
This is because most of the country is desert and very dry.
Botswana has two official languages.
One is English.
The other is a local language called Setswana (also called Tswana).
Botswana is a democracy.
The people vote for their political leaders.
Those leaders vote for the president.
The current president of Botswana is Ian Khama.
The economy of Botswana has been growing very fast since it became an independent country in 1966.
The people of Botswana have had the world 's fastest growth in standard of living since that time.
Botswana 's economy comes mostly from mining.
This includes diamonds, metals (including copper) and minerals (including salt).
Botswana is the highest producer of diamonds by value in the world.
In 1999, Botswana produced over 30 million carats (6,000 kg) of diamonds from the three Debswana mines.
That is about 25 % of worldwide production.
Tourism is also important to the country.
Many people come to Botswana each year to see its wildlife.
The currency of Botswana is called the pula (which means rain).
It is made up of 100 thebe (which means shield).
One US dollar is about 6.8 Pulas.
Brunei (officially called State of Brunei, Abode of Peace) is a country in Southeast Asia.
It is north of Malaysia (Borneo).
The country is rather landlocked by Malaysia.
To the north is the South China Sea and the Philippines to the northeast.
The capital of Brunei is Bandar Seri Begawan.
The country has a small area and not many people live there.
The leader of the country is the Sultan of Brunei.
He is one of the richest people in the world, because he owns a lot of oil.
The main religion in Brunei is Islam there are also many people who follow Buddhism or Animism.
The native languages of Brunei is Malay and English as second language.
From the 14th to the 16th centuries Brunei Darussalam was the seat of a powerful sultanate extending over Sabah, Sarawak and the southern Philippines.
Thus, the current Sultan represents one of the oldest continuously ruling dynasties in the world.
By the 19th century, the Brunei Darussalam Empire had been whittled away by wars, piracy and the colonial expansion of European powers.
In 1847, the sultan ended a treaty with Great Britain and in 1888 Brunei Darussalam officially became a British protectorate.
In 1906, the Residential System was established in Brunei Darussalam.
A British Resident was nominated as a representative of the British government to advise the sultan in all matters except Malay customs, traditions and Islamic religion.
The 1959 Agreement established a written constitution which gave Brunei Darussalam internal self-government.
In 1971, the agreement was amended and revised to assert full internal independence except defense and external affairs.
In 1967 His Highness Sultan Haji Sir Muda Omar Ali Saifuddien abdicated in favor of his son Pengiran Muda Mahkota Hassanal Bolkiah.
On January 1, 1984 Brunei Darussalam resumed full independence and the Sultan took office as Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Home Affairs Minister, presiding over a cabinet of six.
In October 1986, the cabinet was expanded to 11 members, with His Majesty relinquishing the portfolios of Finance and Home Affairs and taking over the Defense portfolio which his late father had held since 1984.
In 1988 another reshuffle brought about the elevation of the deputy minister to a full minister and the creation of the Ministry of Industry and Primary Resources designed to boost the country 's development.
In spite of the sizable non-Muslim population (about 1\/3 of the population) and criticism by the international community, the Sultan still announced Brunei 's adoption of Sharia law in 2013 to fully enforce on the Muslim majority and partially enforce on non-Muslims.
Is is expected to take full effect in 2016 after 3 phases, and had begun partial enforcement in its first phase in 2014.
It is the first country in East and Southeast Asia to practice Sharia law.
Officially, there are no places in Brunei that have "city" status.
Some of the important places are:
Given that Brunei is an oil-rich country, Brunei gets most of its income from selling natural resources.
Brunei uses the Brunei Ringgit to trade.
However, the Singapore dollar can be used here as both currencies are of the same value.
The British Virgin Islands are part of the Virgin Islands, which are chain of islands in the Caribbean.
The British Virgin Islands are the Eastern half of the island chain, and they are a British Overseas Territory.
The British Virgin Islands has sixteen inhabited and more than twenty uninhabited islands.
Over 22,000 people live there, which is many fewer than the neighbouring United States Virgin Islands.
The capital city, Road Town, is on Tortola, one of the islands in the group.
Most of the people live on Tortola, but the other main inhabited islands are Anegada, Virgin Gorda and Jost Van Dyke.
The islands were originally inhabited by Caribbean indians called Arawaks.
But by the time the first European explorers discovered the British Virgin Islands all of the Arawaks had left.
The first Europeans to try and settle in the British Virgin Islands were the Dutch, but the English came soon after and the English and the Dutch settlers used to fight.
The Spanish also claimed the islands, but no Spanish people ever tried to settle there.
But the Spanish did attack the British and Dutch settlers.
In 1672 the British took control of the islands during a war against the Dutch and they have held on to them ever since.
During the early years after European settlement the British Virgin Islands was a plantation economy which relied heavily upon slave labor.
After slavery was abolished in the British Virgin Islands there was a long period of decline and many people left.
Those who remained were mostly descended from African slaves, although many of them also left to try and find better lives elsewhere.
In the 1950s the British Virgin Islands got its own government, and the economy of the islands began to get better with the introduction of tourism and financial services.
The British Virgin Islands are mostly indepependent, but some parts of the Government is run by the United Kingdom.
A new constitution was introduced in 2007.
It grants more control over everyday life to the Islanders, and lists the protection a person can expect from the government.
The head of Government in the British Virgin Islands is called the Premier, and he is in charge of a group of ministers of Government which is called the Cabinet.
Laws are passed by a group of elected politicans in the House of Assembly.
Most of the international relations are still dealt with by the British Government in London on behalf of the people of the British Virgin Islands.
Most people in the British Virgin Islands work in the tourist trade or in financial services.
There are also a small number of farmers and fishermen.
Burkina Faso (officially Republic of Burkina Faso) is a country in West Africa.
It used to be called Upper Volta and the name was changed to Burkina Faso in 1984.
The country was once ruled by France, but it has been independent since 1960.
The capital is Ouagadougou.
In 2005, about 13,228,000 people lived in the country.
It is next to Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana and C te d'Ivoire.
It does not have any coast with an ocean or sea.
People from Burkina Faso are called Burkinab (pronounced burr-KEE-na-bay).
People have lived in the area of Burkina Faso for thousands of years.
At first they were hunter-gatherers, hunting animals and collecting fruits and vegetables.
Later they became farmers.
People called the Mossi arrived between the 11th and 13th centuries.
They ruled the area until the end of the 19th century.
In 1896 France beat the Mossi kingdom and became the colonial rulers of Burkina Faso.
After World War I, the country was called Upper Volta.
In 1960, Upper Volta became independent from France.
The first president of the new country was Maurice Yam ogo.
After he became the president, Yam ogo banned other political parties.
For several years the people of Upper Volta were very unhappy with the government and in 1966 the military took over in a military coup.
In 1983 the government was taken over again by military men called Thomas Sankara and Blaise Compaor.
Sankara became president.
In 1984, he changed the name of the country to Burkina Faso.
It means "land of honest people".
In December 1985, Burkina Faso went to war for five days with near-by country Mali.
In 1987, there was another military coup and Sankara was assassinated (murdered).
Blaise Compaor became the president.
On 28 October 2014 protesters began to march and demonstrate in Ouagadougou.
Compaor was ready to change the constitution and extend his 27-year rule.
On 30 October 2014, some protesters set fire to the parliament.
They also took over the national television headquarters.
On 31 October 2014, President Compaor, resigned after 27 years in office.
Burkina Faso is divided into thirteen regions, forty-five provinces, and 301 departments.
The regions are:
Below is a list of the largest cities in Burkina Faso.
For other cities see List of cities in Burkina Faso.
Burkina Faso is made up of two major types of countryside.
The larger part of the country is covered by a peneplain.
It has a gently undulating landscape with a few isolated hills.
The southwest of the country forms a sandstone massif.
The highest peak, T nakourou, is found at an elevation of 749 m. The area is bordered by sheer cliffs up to 150 m high.
The average altitude of Burkina Faso is 400 m. The difference between the highest and lowest terrain is no greater than 600 m. Burkina Faso is a mostly flat country.
Burkina Faso has a tropical climate with two distinct seasons.
In the rainy season, the country receives between 600 a of rainfall.
In the dry season, the harmattan a hot dry wind from the Sahara blows.
The rainy season lasts about four months, from May\/June to September.
It is shorter in the north of the country.
Burkina Faso 's natural resources include manganese, limestone, marble, phosphates, pumice, salt and small deposits of gold.
Burkina Faso 's fauna and flora are protected in two national parks and several reserves.
Literature in Burkina Faso is based on the oral tradition, which remains important.
Since the 1970s, literature has developed in Burkina Faso with many more writers being published.
There is also a large artist community, especially in Ouagadougou.
Much of the crafts produced are for the growing tourist industry.
The food of Burkina Faso, typical of west African cuisine, is based around staple foods of sorghum, millet, rice, maize, peanuts, potatoes, beans, yams and okra.
The most common sources of protein are chicken, chicken eggs and fresh water fish.
The Armed Forces of Belarus are the Ground Forces and the Belarusian Air Force.
All are under the command of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Belarus.
Lieutenant general Yurij Viktorovich Zhadobin is the Minister of Defense since December 4, 2009.
Being a landlocked country, Belarus has no navy.
The Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Belarus is the government group that has the duties of raising and maintaining the Armed Forces of Belarus.
The formation of the ministry began in 1992.
This was a year after the end of the Soviet Union and Belarus becoming an independent state.
Brussels is the capital city of Belgium and the European Union.
In 2007, 145,917 people lived there.
But the area around it, known as the Brussels-Capital Region, had 1,031,215 people (which makes it the largest city area in Belgium).
The people of Brussels speak mainly French and Flemish (a type of Dutch).
But there are lots of other languages spoken as well, because the European Union offices are there.
The city is at 50 50 North, 04 21 East.
Many popular European comics came from Brussels, such as (Tintin, The Smurfs, Snorks, Lucky Luke).
It is also well known for a style of building known as Art Nouveau.
The vegetables Brussels sprouts are named after the city, and Brussels is also famous for its waffles and its chocolates.
A lot of tourists visit Brussels for "Manneken Pis".
Bjarne Stroustrup (pronounced Jah-ney Stra-w-soup born 30th December 1950 in rhus, Denmark) is an American-Danish computer scientist, most famous for creating the C + + programming language.
The brain is the part of the body which lets us, and other animals, make sense of the world.
It gets input from sense organs, and changes behavior in response to this information.
In humans, the brain also controls our use of language, and is capable of abstract thought.
The brain is the control center of the whole body.
The brain is made up of a special type of cells.
They are connected with each other and with the nerves in our body.
In all animals the delicate brain is protected in some way.
In ourselves, and all vertebrates, it is protected by the bones of the skull.
The brain does the thinking, learning, and feeling for the body.
For humans, it is the source of consciousness.
The brain also controls basic autonomic body actions, like breathing, digestion, heartbeat, that happen automatically.
These activities, and much else, are governed by unconscious functions of the brain and nervous system.
All the information about the world gathered by our senses is sent through nerves into the brain, allowing us to see, hear, smell, taste and feel things.
The brain processes this information, and we experience it as pictures, sounds, and so on.
The brain also uses nerves to tell the body what to do, for example by telling muscles to move or our heart to beat faster.
All vertebrates have brains and, over time, their brains have evolved to become more complex.
Some simple animals, however, like sponges, do not have anything like a brain.
Segmented invertebrates have ganglions in each segment, and a ring of nervous tissue around the alimentary canal at the front.
This acts to bring sense data from the front into play with the movement of the body.
In mammals, the brain is made of three main parts: the cerebrum, the cerebellum and the brainstem.
The surface of the cerebrum is the cerebral cortex, which all vertebrates have.
Mammals also have an extra layer, the neocortex.
This is the key to the behavior which is typical of mammals, especially humans.
The cortex has sensory, motor, and association areas.
The sensory areas are the areas that receive and process information from the senses.
The motor areas control voluntary movements, especially fine movements performed by the hand.
The right half of the motor area controls the left side of the body, and vice versa.
Association areas produce a meaningful experience of the world, and supports abstract thinking and language.
This enables us to interact effectively.
Most connections are from one area of the cortex to another, rather than to subcortical areas; The figure may be as high as 99 %.
The cerebellum coordinates muscles so they work together.
It is also the center of balance, a vital part of movement.
The brain stem is at the back of the brain (actually underneath it in humans).
It joins the rest of the brain with the spinal cord.
It has lots of different parts that control different jobs in the body: for instance, the brain stem controls breathing, heartbeat, sneezing, eye blinking, and swallowing.
Body temperature and hunger are also controlled by parts of the brain stem.
The volume of the human brain (relative to the size of the whole body) is very large, compared to that of most other animals.
The human brain also has a very large surface (called cortex) for its size, which is possible because it is very wrinkled.
If the human cortex were flattened, it would be close to a square meter in area.
Some other animals also have very wrinkled brains, such as dolphins and elephants.
Here is a rule of thumb: the larger an animal is, the larger its brain will be.
p15 Even allowing for that, the human brain, and in particular the neocortex, is very large.
We know it increased in size four-fold over the last several million years of evolution.
p79 There are ideas about why this happened, but no-one is quite sure.
Most theories suggest complex social activity and the evolution of language would make a larger brain advantageous.
p80 As an additional note, Einstein 's brain weighed only 1,230 grams, which is less than the average adult male brain (about 1,400 grams).
The detailed organization of a brain obviously matters, but in ways which are not understood at present.
A human brain accounts for about 2 % of the body 's weight, but it uses about 20 % of its energy.
It has about 50 100 billion nerve cells (also called neurons), and roughly the same number of support cells, called glia.
The job of neurons is to receive and send information to and from the rest of the body, while glia provide nutrients and guide blood flow to the neurons, allowing them to do their job.
Each nerve cell has contact with as many as 10,000 other nerve cells through connections called synapses.
This article is about the city.
See also Byzantine Empire.
The name "Byzantium" is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion.
The city became the center of the Byzantine Empire, (the Greek-speaking Roman Empire of late Antiquity and the Middle Ages), but at that time it was already called Constantinople.
The origins of Byzantium are not clear.
There is only a legend.
It tells a certain Byzas from Megara (a town near Athens), founded Byzantium, when he sailed northeast across the Aegean Sea.
He had askeed the Oracle at Delphi where he should found his new city.
The Oracle told him to find it "opposite the blind."
At the time, he did not know what this meant.
But when he came upon the Bosporus he realized what it meant: on the Asiatic shore was a Greek city, Chalcedon.
It was they who must have been blind because they had not seen that obviously superior land was just a half mile away on the other side of the Bosporus.
Byzas founded his city here in this "superior" land and named it Byzantion after himself.
Byzantion was mainly a trading city due to its strategic location at the Black Sea 's only entrance.
Byzantion later conquered Chalcedon, across the Bosporus.
When it fought with Pescennius Niger against the victorious Septimius Severus, the city was besieged by Roman forces and suffered extensive damage in 196 AD.
Byzantium was rebuilt by Septimius Severus, when he had become emperor, and quickly regained its earlier prosperity.
When Roman Emperor Constantine I decided to move his capital to the Eastern part of the Roman Empire he chose the place of Byzantion because of its strategical value.
He refounded it, in 330 AD, as Nova Roma.
After his death the city was called Constantinople (` city of Constantine ').
It remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was later called the Byzantine Empire by historians.
Following the legend the citizens of Byzantium claimed the crescent moon as their state symbol, after an important victory in 670 BC.
However, the origin of the crescent moon and star as a symbol dates back much earlier - to ancient Babylon and ancient Egypt.
But Byzantium was the first city that used the crescent moon as its symbol.
In 330 AD Constantine I added the Virgin Mary 's star to the flag.
Biotic means anything living.
Plants, animals and microbes, for example, are all living organisms so they are considered biotic parts of the environment.
The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) separated the city of Berlin in Germany from 1961 to 1989.
It separated the eastern half from the western half.
Many people thought it was a symbol of the Cold War.
The Berlin Wall was taken down on November 9, 1989.
The Berlin Wall was about 168 km (104 miles) long.
It was built to prevent people from escaping from the eastern half of Berlin.
After World War II ended, Germany was divided into four zones, one zone for each of the main Allied countries: France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union.
Its capital Berlin was also divided into four zones, so that it was an enclave, like an island inside the Soviet zone.
In May 1949, the French, United Kingdom and US zones were made into West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany, Bundesrepublik Deutschland, BRD) and West Berlin.
The Soviet zones were made into East Germany and East Berlin.
East Germany (German Democratic Republic, Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR) was founded on October 7, 1949.
Europe, Germany and Berlin were divided by an iron curtain.
After Germany split into West and East Germany in 1949, 2.6 million East Germans left to go to West Germany.
In Berlin alone, 1.6 million people fled to the west.
To stop this, on August 13, 1961, the Communist government of East Germany built a wall separating East and West Berlin.
The wall was built to keep the country 's people in.
But the Soviets and East German government said it was to keep capitalism out.
They said that West Germany refused to recognize East Germany as an independent country because they wanted to take over North-East Germany just like Hitler took over Poland.
People still tried to escape even though the Berlin Wall was there.
They used many methods to get around the guards and barbed wire on the Berlin Wall.
In the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev said that the Soviet Union would not use the Red Army to stop the people of Eastern and Middle Europe from changing their government.
After he said that, several countries began to change the way they governed their people.
Hungary opened its border and people from East Germany began moving to the west through Hungary.
In October 1989 mass demonstrations against the government in East Germany began.
The long-time leader, Erich Honecker, resigned and was replaced by Egon Krenz a few days later.
Honecker had predicted in January 1989 that the wall would stand for a "hundred more years" if the conditions which had caused its construction did not change.
This did not turn out to be true.
In November, 1989, the Central Committee of East Germany decided to make it easier for East Germans to pass through the wall.
A mistake by the press officer meant the border was opened several hours before it should have been.
Millions of East German citizens celebrated the opening of the wall.
Many collected souvenirs with chisels and some television stations filmed people hitting the wall with sledge hammers.
This image of people in West Berlin hitting the wall is often said to be East Berliners breaking out.
This is not true.
The eastern side of the wall had no graffiti on it.
All pictures of people chipping away at the wall show people hitting graffiti covered walls.
Less than one year after the Berlin Wall was broken down, Germany again became one country.
In the 28 years of its existence, between 125 and 206 people were killed when trying to cross the Berlin Wall.
At least 800 more people were killed outside Berlin, trying to cross from East Germany to the west.
The East Germans did not record all of the deaths, so the real number of how many people died may never be known.
Those people who were caught alive in an attempt to flee, had to go to jail for at least five years.
The first victim of the Wall was Ida Siekmann.
She was fatally injured after jumping out of the window of her apartment.
She fell onto the pavement on the west side.
The first victim of the Wall to be shot at was G nter Litfin.
He was 24 years old and was shot by police, near the railway station of Berlin Friedrichstrasse, when he tried to get into the West.
This was on 24 August, 1961, only eleven days after the border had been closed.
Peter Fechter bled to death in the death strip, on 17 August, 1962.
This led to a public outcry.
American troops watched him, but could not help him.
The East-German border policemen, who had wounded him, did not help him either.
In 1966, two children, aged ten and thirteen years, were killed in the border strip.
This is unusual because the East German border police had orders to not shoot on pregnant women, children or mentally ill people.
The last death took place on 6 February, 1989, when Chris Gueffroy died trying to escape into West Berlin.
"Tear down this wall!"
was a speech made by United States President Ronald Reagan to Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev to destroy the wall.
The speech was made at the Brandenburg Gate near the Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987.
It was made to honor the 750th anniversary of Berlin.
His speech eventually led to the wall 's demolition.
By late 1989 the GDR was suffering from many problems such as a struggling economy, and large-scale protests.
The Hungarian regime had collapsed and was dismantling its border fences with Austria by August 1989.
Since the Warsaw Pact allowed citizens to travel within the Soviet bloc, many East German tourists fled to the west via Hungary.
When the Hungarian government refused the GDR 's demand to stop defectors, East Germany banned all travel to Hungary; prompting demonstrations and protest.
This began the GDR 's isolation within the bloc.
Erich Honecker, leader of the GDR since 1971, was forced to resign on October 18, 1989.
He was replaced by Egon Krenz after an unanimous vote by the politburo.
Under Krenz 's regime, East Germans could still escape to Hungary via Czechoslovakia.
The number of defectors grew and caused tensions between East Germany and Czechoslovakia.
The Krenz regime decided to allow people to leave directly to the west through border checkpoints in East Berlin.
This prompted many East Germans, who learned about it broadcast from West German media, to go to the border crossings and demand to be let through immediately.
Border guards at each checkpoint told the people to go back home as they had no orders that the wall would open that night.
As time passed, the number of people arriving at the checkpoint was increasing and the guards were becoming alarmed.
They began taking the more aggressive people aside and stamped their passports with a special stamp that allowed them access to West Berlin however, the people were n't aware that they were effectively revoking their East German citizenship and were shocked to be refused entry back into the GDR.
The Chief Guard of the checkpoint frantically telephoned his superiors hoping to get answers as to why so many people thought that the wall was to open.
By 22:45, it was clear that the outnumbered and overwhelmed border guards would not use their weapons to supress the crowds.
The Chief Guard surrendered and ordered the gates to West Berlin to be opened.
The crowds of East Berliners were met with crowds of West Berliners in a happy scene as the Berlin wall had just fallen.
Many people even climbed up onto the wall by the Brandenburg Gate in protest and began to chisel away at the wall.
The GDR authorities responded to this initially by blasting the people with water cannons; this proved to be ineffective.
The East German army later climbed up onto the wall to prevent others from standing on the wall.
The government began demolishing the wall the next day.
The fall of the wall destroyed the SED, the ruling party of the GDR, and caused many of its officials to resign.
The German Democratic Republic would cease to exist less than a year later; reuniting with the Federal Republic of Germany on October 3, 1990.
The wall was changed and added to several times.
It was not really a wall, but a collection of walls and fences and other devices.
This is what the border fence was made of, starting from the east, going west
The whole was done in an a zone of between 30 and 500 m wide.
The official (civil border) began before the first fence.
Entering the installation required a special permit.
The real border was about one or two metres in front of the concrete wall, so that the whole of the wall complex was inside East Germany (only the East Berlin part of the wall was inside East Berlin).
The border between East Germany and West Germany was also heavily defended with fences and mines.
East Germans needed a special permit to live close to the border.
After the Reunification of Germany in October 3, 1990, the Berlin Wall was demolished and taken away.
A few sections of the wall remain; some of the sections became a museum.
The East Berlin special police who guarded the wall had the order to shoot if this was necessary to stop people fleeing.
East German leaders such as Egon Krenz were arrested after German reunification because guards were ordered to shoot to kill.
However, after the Wall was built, many people were no longer able to leave East Berlin using normal border posts.
The only way they could do so was to race through the Wall or try to dig a tunnel underneath.
After the unification of Germany, border guards who had shot people were convicted by West German Courts.
The judges said, that some of the laws of the border police (about shooting) were against human rights.
They therefore should have refused to shoot.
The same was of course applied to those people who had shot border police on their flight.
Border guards who did shoot, and stop someone from fleeing could get a reward of up to 500 Marks.
Some of those guards were sentenced after the unification.
The other choice was to not shoot, or to miss badly.
Such guards risked losing their well-paid jobs.
Another strip of land was given to West Berlin.
This strip was only the width of a road which joined West Berlin with a tiny exclave.
The Beastie Boys were an American rap group.
According to an interview with Charlie Rose, the word "Beastie" is the backronym of Boys Entering Anarchic States Towards Internal Excellence.
They formed in 1981 as punk rock band, and are still performing music today.
Their most famous albums are probably Licensed To Ill (1986) and Paul 's Boutique (1989).
Licensed To Ill is their first album, and it is an album that is given credit for starting the type of music "rap rock", which is rapping done over rock guitar or beats.
Paul 's Boutique is an album famous for its use of samples, or snippets of music, and the fact that the samples were put together in creative, interesting ways.
Adam Yauch (1964-2012) was one of the founding members of the band until his death on May 4, 2012 after a near 3 year battle with cancer of the parotid salivary gland.
Former original guitarist, John Berry (1963-2016), died on May 19, 2016 from dementia at 52.
The British Isles are an archipelago (a group of islands) in north-western Europe.
They have a long geographical and geological history.
The first men were in Britain by 800,000 years ago (Happisburgh footprints).
The biggest islands are called Great Britain and Ireland, followed by the Isle of Man.
Great Britain, the biggest island, is home to three countries.
These are England, Wales and Scotland.
The island of Ireland is divided into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Great Britain is the biggest island in Europe and Ireland is the third biggest.
England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland join together to make the United Kingdom.
Some people include the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Sark in the term "British Isles", but they are a lot closer to France than to Great Britain.
In politics, they are British islands but in geology they are French islands.
The term tends not to be used in the Republic of Ireland because many people feel it implies that Ireland is politically British.
Basque (in Basque: ') is the language spoken by the Basque people in the Basque Country and diaspora.
The standard Basque name for the language is Euskara.
Although it is surrounded by Indo-European languages, Basque is a language isolate.
It is not related to the Indo-European languages.
The ancestors of Basques are among the oldest residents of Europe, and their beginnings are unknown, as are the origins of Basque itself.
Many scholars have tried to link Basque to Etruscan, African languages, Caucasian languages and so on, but most see Basque as a language isolate.
A connection with the Iberian language gave some hope, but it is unclear whether similarities are due to genetic relations or mere vicinity.
It was spoken long before the Romans brought Latin to the Iberian Peninsula.
The region where Basque is spoken is smaller than what is known as the Basque Country, or Euskal Herria in Basque.
Basque used to be spoken over a larger area, but Latin took over in some places.
Historically, Latin or Romance has been the official language.
Today Basque holds co-official language status in the Basque regions of Spain: the full autonomous community of the Basque Country and some parts of Navarre.
Basque has no official standing in the Northern Basque Country of France and French citizens are barred from using Basque in a French court of law.
There are six main Basque dialects, comprising Biscayan, Guipuzcoan, and High Navarrese (in Spain), and Low Navarrese, Labourdin, and Souletin (in France).
The dialect boundaries are not however congruent with political boundaries.
One of the first scientific studies of Basque dialects, in particular the auxiliary verb forms, was made by Louis-Lucien Bonaparte (a nephew of Napoleon).
There is now a unified version of Euskara called Batua ("unified" in Basque), which is the language taught in schools.
Batua is based largely on the Gipuzkoa regional dialect.
Basque is an ergative-absolutive language.
It is very complicated, having many different cases for nouns.
The vowel system is the same as Spanish for most speakers.
It consists of five pure vowels, \/ i e a o u \/.
By contact with neighbouring peoples, Basque has borrowed words from Latin, Spanish, French, Gascon, among others, but accepted relatively few compared to many Indo-European languages.
Some claim that many of its words come from Latin, but phonetic evolution has made many of them appear nowadays as if they were native words, e.g. lore ("flower", from florem), errota ("mill", from rotam," (mill) wheel"), gela ("room", from cellam).
Basque is written using the Latin alphabet.
The universal special letter is, which is pronounced like the n in onion; sometimes and are also used.
Basque does not use c, q, v, w, y except for loan words; they are not considered part of the alphabet.
The X is pronounced as a sh, as in shine.
Bluetooth is a protocol for wireless communication over short distances.
It was developed in the 1990s, to reduce the number of cables.
Devices such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras and video game consoles can connect to each other, and exchange information.
This is done using radio waves.
It can be done securely.
Bluetooth is only used for relatively short distances, like a few metres.
There are different standards.
Data rates vary.
Currently, they are at 1-3 MBit per second.
Typical Bluetooth applications are to connect a headset to a mobile phone, or to connect a computer mouse, keyboard or printer.
Bluetooth devices use the ISM Band around 2.4 GHz.
This can be used worldwide, without the need to pay license fees, but many other devices, like DECT telephones (wireless phones), smart tags with RFID, baby phones use it too.
Bluetooth uses the same bands as some WLANs, but the modulation technique is different.
Bluetooth uses Frequency-hopping spread spectrum.
There are many situations today where either Bluetooth or Wireless LANs can be used.
Examples include setting up networks, printing or transferring files and data from a PDA to a computer.
Both are versions of unlicensed wireless technology.
WLANs can span bigger distances and offer higher throughput.
Bluetooth does not require expensive hardware.
It also needs less power to operate.
Both use the same radio frequency range, but their modulation techniques are different.
Both have been developed to replace cabling.
Bluetooth wanted to get rid of the peripheral equipment cables, WLANs wanted to get rid of the cables needed to set up a LAN.
Bluetooth exists in many products, such as telephones, the Wii or PlayStation 3.
It has recently been built into some electronic watches, modems and headsets.
The technology is useful when transferring information between two or more devices that are near each other in low-bandwidth situations.
Bluetooth is commonly used to transfer sound data with telephones (i.e. with a Bluetooth headset) or byte data with hand-held computers (transferring files).
Bluetooth uses protocols that make it easy to discover devices that are nearby, and to set up a connection between these devices.
Bluetooth devices can advertise all the services they offer.
Using services becomes easier; a lot of the setup related to security, networking or permissions is automatic.
WLANs are more like traditional LANs.
More configuration is needed to set up the network, and to make resources accessible by other devices in the network.
WLAN devices also consume more power than Bluetooth ones.
Sometimes WLANs are called wireless Ethernet.
WLAN needs more resources to be set up, but it also offers faster transfer speeds.
The security is also better than that offered by Bluetooth.
Boney M. is a pop and disco group created by West German record producer Frank Farian.
They were very successful in the 1970s.
Singles chart peaking in various countries.
Includes U.S. Hot Dance Club Play chart entries.
Blade Runner is a 1982 American dark science fiction movie directed by Ridley Scott and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples.
It was based on the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick.
Blade Runner 's main actors are Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos and Daryl Hannah.
The movie takes place in humid rainy climate changed Los Angeles in November 2019 when artificial human adults called "replicants" come to Earth.
As replicants are not allowed on Earth anymore after some of them had attacked humans, police officers called "Blade Runners" hunt down and kill them on Earth.
Rick Deckard is forced to hunt down some replicants in Los Angeles.
Some movie critics did not like Blade Runner because they thought it was slow, but others liked its many ideas.
The movie did not sell many tickets in North American movie theaters but was more popular in other countries.
Even though it did not make much money, it was liked very much by teachers and science fiction fans.
Blade Runner looked good and made the future look very dark and old.
The movie showed important ideas of the 21st century such as globalization and genetic engineering.
Blade Runner is an important example of cyberpunk and people believe it has changed the world and affected many cultures.
Blade Runner made Hollywood interested in stories written by Philip K. Dick.
Seven versions of Blade Runner exist because of changes made by different people.
The producers took Scott 's cut and changed some things about it, which Scott did not like.
In 1992, Scott released a Director 's Cut version, which was made very fast.
It cut the ending of the movie and removed the voice-over.
Warner Bros. released the Final Cut, a new 25th anniversary version of the movie, in October 2007.
It features some new scenes and removes some of the visible special effect.
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955), commonly known as Bill Gates, is the co-founder and chairman of Microsoft.
He is the richest person in world.
Bill Gates was born in Seattle.
He is of British and German ancestry.
His father was a lawyer.
His mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way.
His parents wanted him to be a lawyer.
At the age of 13, Bill went to Lakeside High School.
He was a freshman at Harvard University in 1973.
He left Harvard to make software.
Bill Gates saw an opportunity to transform the personal computer, which used to be a hard-to-use and expensive device.
He saw that computers could be made less expensive and more easy to use.
Gates started Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen.
In 2006, Gates announced he was going to quit his job at Microsoft.
This was so he could do more charity work with his wife, Melinda.
Their charity is called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gates ' philanthropy projects have included vaccination of children in sub-Saharan Africa, scholarship programs in the United States, and leadership to help organize other billionaires to redistribute their wealth.
He likes to give money and support to human rights, education and technological innovation.
Gates stepped down from his CEO position in Microsoft in 1998 and Steve Ballmer did the job instead.
On June 16, 2007, Microsoft said that Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, will come in on a day-to-day schedule to continue working with his charity organization full time for the years to come.
On 2014, Satya Nadella became the new CEO of Microsoft and Bill Gates came back as the Chief Technology Adviser.
Boron is a chemical element.
It has the chemical symbol B. It has the atomic number 5.
It is a metalloid (it has properties of a metal and a non-metal).
Much boron is found in chemical compounds in its ore borax.
Boron is never found free in nature.
Two types of boron are found (allotropes).
Amorphous boron is a brown powder and metallic (crystalline) boron is black and hard and a weak conductor at room temperature.
Pure boron is used as a dopant (a substance added to semiconductors to change how it behaves with electricity) in the semiconductor industry.
Chemical compounds of boron are important as to make strong materials not weigh very much, as nontoxic insecticides and preservatives, and for chemical synthesis.
Plants need boron in them to live.
Very small amounts of boron are needed in animal 's bodies so that they are very healthy.
How it keeps animals healthy is not known in a lot of detail.
Boron was discovered by Sir Humphry Davy, an English chemist, in 1808.
Boron melts at 2075 C (3767 F), and boils at 4000 C (7232 F).
Bromine (Br) is a chemical element.
Its atomic number (which is the number of protons in it) is 35, and its atomic weight is 80.
It is part of the Group 7 elements (halogens) on the periodic table.
It is diatomic, which means that two atoms are stuck together to make a molecule in any bromine sample.
Bromine is a red-brown liquid.
Liquid elements are rare; only bromine and mercury are liquid at room temperature.
It easily evaporates to make suffocating brown fumes.
It has a bad smell.
Its name means "stench of he-goats".
It can become a metal at very high pressures.
It has two stable isotopes.
They are 79Br and 81Br.
There are about 29 other radioactive isotopes.
Bromine is quite reactive.
Its reactivity is between chlorine, which is more reactive, and iodine, which is less reactive.
It reacts with metals and nonmetals.
Phosphorus reacts violently with bromine.
Aluminum reacts in a similar way.
It can bleach things like chlorine.
It reacts better in the light.
It dissolves a little in water.
Hot water makes it disproportionate into hydrobromic acid and hypobromous acid.
Bromine can form compounds with substances such as sodium to form sodium bromide.
Bromine forms compounds in many oxidation states: 1, +1, +3, +5, and (sometimes) +7.
1 is the most common.
It is found as bromide.
Bromides are not reactive.
They are colorless solids that dissolve in water easily.
Covalent bromides can be liquids or gases.
The other compounds are all strong oxidizing agents.
Their chlorine cousins are more common.
+1 has the hypobromites, which are unstable.
+3 has the bromites.
Bromine dioxide is the only common bromine compound found in the +4 oxidation state.
+5 has the bromates, which are more common than all the other ones except the bromides.
Bromates are strong oxidizing agents and are sometimes added to flour.
+7 has the perbromates.
Perbromates are very unstable.
Bromine is found as bromide in the ocean and in brine pools.
The Dead Sea has a lot of bromide in it.
Bromine is not an important part of our body, unlike its relatives chlorine and iodine.
Bromine is made by bubbling chlorine gas through a solution of a bromide.
The bromide is oxidized to bromine, while the chlorine is reduced to chloride.
It is mainly used to make organobromine compounds, organic compounds with bromine in them.
Organobromines are used to put out fires.
They used to be added to gasoline.
Some were used as pesticides.
Some inorganic bromides were used as sedatives.
Bromine can also be used as a disinfectant.
Silver bromide is used in film.
Bromine is toxic and corrosive to skin.
Bromine gas is irritating when it is breathed in, too.
Bromine can react violently with many things.
Barium is chemical element 56 on the periodic table.
Its symbol is Ba.
It contains 56 protons and 56 electrons.
Its mass number is about 137.3.
It is a metal.
Barium is part of a group of elements known as the alkaline earth metals.
It is a silvery metal that easily turns black.
It is soft and ductile.
It can form alloys with some metals that are partially alloys and partially chemical compounds.
Barium is reactive, and if you put pure barium metal in the air, it will react with oxygen.
At first it will turn black, then white as barium oxide is formed.
Barium reacts with water to make barium hydroxide and hydrogen gas.
Barium also reacts very fast with acids to make a barium salt and hydrogen.
Barium can form barium peroxide if it is burned in air.
Barium reacts with many other metal oxides and sulfides to make barium oxide or sulfide and the metal.
It also reacts with carbon and nitrogen at a high temperature to make barium cyanide.
Barium is too reactive as a metal, so it is not found in the earth as a metal.
It is found in chemical compounds.
Barium only occurs in one oxidation state: +2.
Most barium compounds are colorless.
The ones that dissolve in water or stomach acid are very toxic.
Barium sulfate is well known because it does not dissolve in water or acids.
Barium compounds are quite heavy.
Barium compounds put out a greenish flame when heated red-hot.
Barium is found as barium sulfate (barite) and barium carbonate (witherite) in the ground.
Both of these minerals do not dissolve in water.
Barium sulfate hardly dissolves in anything.
Barium is found mainly in China, Germany, India, Morocco, and the US.
It is very hard to get barium from barium sulfate.
So barium sulfate is reduced by carbon to make barium sulfide and carbon dioxide.
The barium sulfide is dissolved in hydrochloric acid.
This makes hydrogen sulfide and barium chloride.
The barium chloride is melted and electrolyzed to get liquid barium metal.
The barium metal is solidified and stored in oil.
Barium carbonate, the other ore of barium, is dissolved in hydrochloric acid to make barium chloride and carbon dioxide.
The barium chloride is melted and electrolyzed, making barium metal.
Barium is used to remove oxygen from cathode ray tubes and vacuum tubes.
It is placed inside and reacts with all of the oxygen, using it up.
Barium is also used in spark plug wire.
Certain compounds of barium, such as barium sulfate, are not toxic and can be put in the body.
We can see where the barium travels in the body by X-rays and this can tell us whether there are problems, such as blockages.
The barium sulfate builds up inside the body accumulating in organ systems.
Barium sulfate absorbs the X-Rays as they pass through the body and an image is formed from the points where the rays have not passed through.
It is useful because it provides a reasonably detailed image from very limited radiation exposure, compared with a CT scan for instance.
Barium sulfate can be used as a pigment, too.
Other barium compounds have several other uses.
Barium is a very toxic element, though, and is dangerous.
There is a really small amount of barium in our food, and this does not cause problems.
If we get barium from other places, though, it can cause many problems.
Even 1 gram of barium can kill you.
It is dangerous because it acts like other really important elements, such as calcium and magnesium.
If barium replaces these elements, it messes up the body.
Berkelium (IPA: \/ b ki li m \/) is a chemical element in the periodic table.
Berkelium has the symbol Bk and atomic number 97.
It is a radioactive metallic element and an actinide.
Berkelium was invented by scientists and does not exist in nature.
Berkelium was first made by hitting americium with alpha particles or helium ions.
It is named after Berkeley, California and the University of California, Berkeley.
<!-- 19 radioisotopes of berkelium have been characterized, with the most stable being 247Bk with a half-life of 1380 years, 248Bk with a half-life of > 9 years, and 249Bk with a half-life of 330 days.
All of the remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives that are less than 5 days, and the majority of these have half-lives that are less than 5 hours.
This element also has 2 meta states, with the most stable being 248mBk (t 23.7 hours).
The isotopes of berkelium range in atomic weight from 235.057 u (235Bk) to 254.091 u (254Bk).
--)
Bauxite is the main ore of aluminium.
It is mostly aluminium oxide.
Bauxite is the most important aluminium ore..
It is largely made up of the minerals Gibbsite Al (OH) 3, Boehmite - AlO (OH), and Diaspore - AlO (OH), together with the iron oxides Goethite and Hematite, the clay mineral Kaolinite and small amounts of Anatase TiO2.
It was named after the village Les Baux-de-Provence in southern France, where it was first discovered in 1821 by geologist Pierre Berthier.
There are two main kinds of bauxite ores: carbonate bauxites (karst bauxites), and silicate bauxites (lateritic bauxites).
Carbonate bauxites were discovered earlier, and occur mainly in Europe and Jamaica above carbonate rocks such as limestone and dolomite.
The lateritic bauxites occur in many countries of the tropical belt.
They were formed from various silicate rocks such as granite, gneiss, basalt, syenite, and shale.
For bauxite to be created there must be intense weathering conditions and very good drainage.
Bauxite deposits with highest aluminium content are frequently located below an iron-bearing surface layer.
In lateritic bauxite, the aluminum hydroxide contained in lateritic bauxite deposits is almost entirely a form called gibbsite.
Bavaria is a State (Bundesland) of Germany.
The territory of this state is the largest of the 16 German states.
The state capital is Munich with 1.3 million people.
About 12.5 million people live in Bavaria.
Like many German states, Bavaria was once independent.
Ludwig II of Bavaria was its last independent king.
Bavaria has seven parts: Oberbayern (Upper Bavaria), Niederbayern (Lower Bavaria), Schwaben (Swabia), Mittelfranken (Middle Franconia), Unterfranken (Lower Franconia), Oberfranken (Upper Franconia) and Oberpfalz (Upper Palatinate).
Bavaria has 71 districts and 25 free cities.
The highest point is the Zugspitze, which is also the highest mountain in Germany.
Munich is the largest city, the second biggest city is Nuremberg (N rnberg), which is famous for its gingerbread, a kind of Christmas bread that is often shaped like a Christmas tree, a snowman or Santa Claus.
Pope Benedict XVI was born in Bavaria.
Brandenburg is a state (Bundesland) in Germany.
It has been a state since 1990.
It is 29,056 km in area.
It has about 2.6 million inhabitants.
Until 1945 it was the biggest province in Prussia, with 38,278 km and 3 million inhabitants.
From 1949 to 1952 it was a state in the German Democratic Republic.
In 1952 it became divided into three Bezirke (Potsdam, Frankfurt and Cottbus).
The capital of Brandenburg is Potsdam.
Berlin is in the middle of Brandenburg.
But it is not part of Brandenburg.
It is a city state.
The Bundestag is the legislature of Germany.
It meets in Berlin, in the Reichstag building, which was specially rebuilt ready for the Bundestag to move from Bonn.
The Bundestag has at least 598 members.
Every 4 years the German people vote.
A party gets seats when it gets at least 5 % of the votes.
Every voter has two votes, one for a person and one for a party.
299 members each represent a constituency, just as in the British House of Commons or the US House of Representatives.
The other half are elected from a party list in each Land.
The total number of seats a party gets depends on the number of the second "party votes" it gets.
But if a party wins more constituency seats than its share of the party votes, then it keeps those extra seats.
These extra seats, or extra mandates, are the reason the Bundestag sometimes has more than 598 members.
If a party gets extra mandates, the other parties get some extra seats too to make sure every party gets exactly its share of party seats.
This system of giving extra mandates was changed in 2013.
Before 2013, if a party won extra mandates, then it got to put more members in the Bundestag, which gave the party more influence over the Bundestag than it won in the elections.
The Bundestag president is named Norbert Lammert.
He oversees the sessions of the body.
BMW or Bayerische Motoren Werke is a German car and motorcycle maker founded on 7 March 1916.
It is one of the most famous car makers in the world.
The headquarter is located in Munich, Bavaria.
BMW is part of the "German Big 3" luxury car manufacturers, along with Audi and Mercedes-Benz.
BMW 's cars are tuned and modified by several German Tuning Companies such as AC Schnitzer, Motorsport, ALPINA and G-Power.
Bornholm is a small, rocky island in the Baltic Sea.
Bornholm is a Danish island.
The island is a popular holiday resort for Scandinavians, Germans and Poles.
Many yachters come here in the summer.
At the end of World War II, the island was "liberated" by the Soviet red army, and held for several months after the German surrender.
The island lies far east of the demarcation line between the allied forces in Europe.
For some time the Soviet presence looked like an occupation.
It was not until April 5th, 1946 that the island at last was free.
But then the Danish government took over and the island is today a Danish colony.
But the struggle for a free island still goes on as it can be seen on this page Free Bornholm
A book is a set of printed sheets of paper held together between two covers.
The sheets of paper are usually covered with a text: language and illustrations: that is the main point of a printed book.
A writer of a book is called an author.
Someone who draws pictures in a book is called an illustrator.
Books can have multiple authors or illustrators.
A book can also be a text in a larger collection of texts.
That way a book is perhaps written by one author, or it only treats one subject area.
Books in this sense can often be understood without knowing the whole collection.
Examples are the Bible, the Illiad or the Odyssey all of them consist of a number of books in this sense of the word.
Encyclopedias often have separate articles written by different people, and published as separate volumes.
Each volume is a book.
Hardcover books have hard covers made of cardboard covered in cloth or leather and are usually sewn together.
Paperback books have covers of stiff paper and are usually glued together.
The words in books may be read aloud or recorded on tapes (audiobooks) and compact discs.
Books can be borrowed from a library or bought from a bookstore.
People can make their own books and fill them with family photos, drawings, or their own writing.
Some books are empty inside, like a diary, address book, or photo album.
Most of the time, the word "book" means that the pages inside have words printed or written on them.
Some books are written just for children, or for entertainment, while other books are for studying something in school such as math or history.
Many books have photographs or drawings.
People who can not read books, or any type of writing are called illiterate (= ` unlettered ').
There are two main kinds of book text: fiction and non-fiction.
These books are novels, about stories that did not happen, and have been imagined by the author.
Some books are based on real events from history, but the author has created imaginary characters or dialogue for the events.
Books of non-fiction are about true facts or things that have really happened.
Some examples are dictionaries, cookbooks, textbooks for learning in school, or a biography (someone 's life story).
Between the written manuscript and the book lie several inventions.
A book is an industrial product, but manuscripts are hand-made.
A common type of manuscript was the scroll, which was a long sheet rolled up.
The sheet could have been made of papyrus (made by the Egyptians, by weaving the inner stems of the papyrus plant and then hammering them together), or parchment or vellum (very thin animal skin, first used by the ancient Greeks), or paper (made from plant fibers, invented by the Chinese).
Turning the manuscript into a book required several developments.
The Romans were the first people to put separate pieces of manuscript between covers, to form a codex.
This was more convenient to handle and store than scrolls, but was not yet a book as we understand it.
Scrolls and codices were written and copied by hand.
The Chinese invented woodblock printing, where shapes are carved out of a block of wood, then ink is applied to the carved side, and the block is pressed onto the paper.
This way of making books was very slow, and so very few people had these kinds of books.
Johannes Gutenberg was the first to invent a machine for printing, the printing press, in the 15th century.
This involved more than just a press, it involved the production of movable metal type suitable for the machine process.
Initially, the machines were slow, and needed a printer to work with them.
Fast and automatic machines did not arrive until the 19th century.
Paper had been invented in the 8th century, but hand-made paper was expensive and in short supply.
In the 19th century, automated or semi-automated making of paper from wood pulp was invented.
Also, there was the invention of inks for various purposes, and machines driven by electricity.
The common cheap supply of paper fed the faster prining machines, and books became cheaper.
Only then could ordinary people afford to buy books.
Along with these inventions in the 19th century came the idea of public libraries, so poorer people could get access to the best books.
Also, widespread free (or nearly free) education swelled the number of literate people.
Printing was done on large sheets of paper, which were then folded, guillotined (cut) and sewn in sections, and finally placed into the covers.
All these processes became done by machines during the 19th century.
Today some of the technologies have been changed, especially those involving illustration and typography.
However, books look much the same as they did, with more illustration in color, but basically the same.
That is because experience has shown that readers need certain things for pleasurable reading.
Graphic design and typography are the practical arts used to make books attractive and useful to readers.
Bitola is the second-largest city in the Republic of Macedonia.
It is located in the southwestern part of the country, near the border with Greece.
The Battle of Bosworth or Bosworth Field was an important battle during the Wars of the Roses in 15th century England.
It was fought on 22 August 1485 between the Yorkist King Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet dynasty, and the Lancastrian Henry Tudor, 2nd Earl of Richmond, who wanted to become king.
It ended in the defeat and death of Richard and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty.
Historically, the battle is thought to have marked the end of the Wars of the Roses, although further battles were fought in the years that followed as Yorkists unsuccessfully tried to become king again.
The Battle of Bosworth is an important part of William Shakespeare 's play Richard III.
The action of the play ends with this battle.
Brassicaceae is a family of plants including mustard, wasabi, and horseradish.
They are also called the mustard family, or cabbage family.
Some plants in this family are hot when you eat them, so they are used as spices.
All of them disturb the nose more than the tongue.
Another group includea the cabbages, where there are broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage.
Another name for this family is Cruciferae.
The flowers of this family have four petals and look like a cross.
The name comes from the genus in it, Brassica.
The Books of the Bible are the different sections of the Bible.
Each book has a different name.
Most of the time the book is named after the person who maybe wrote the book.
Although that is not always the case.
Different religions, and different denominations of Christianity, have different books or sections in the Bible.
These different groups accept different books.
These groups also use different names for the same books.
The stories in the "Books of the Bible" are very similar for all religious groups.
Some people use a trick and ideas to memorize the Bible.
Below, there is a list or table that compares the Books of the Bible in Judaism and in the Catholic, Protestant, Greek Orthodox, Slavonic Orthodox, Georgian, Armenian Apostolic, Syriac, and Ethiopian Churches.
The table covers both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
For a detailed discussion of the differences, see "Biblical canon".
The Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Catholic churches may have small differences in the lists of books that they accept.
If at least one Eastern church accepts a book, then that book is listed in this table.
The Eastern churches accept all of the books that the Roman Catholic Church accepts.
If a table cell has an asterisk (\*), it means that a book is used, but in a different order.
Empty cells mean that the book is not used.
These books are often called apocrypha.
This word is sometimes used specifically (and possibly negatively) to describe the books in the Catholic and Orthodox canon that are not in the Protestant Bible.
Orthodox and Catholic Christians call these books deuterocanonical, which means second canon.
Most Christian groups agree about the New Testament canon (the list of books in the New Testament) but some groups put books in a different order (place).
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a few other books in its canon (list of books): Jubilees, Book of Enoch, and The Rest of the Words of Baruch (4 Baruch).
The Peshitta does not have 2-3 John, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation, but Bibles of the modern Syriac Orthodox Church do have later translations of those books.
They also have the Letter of Baruch (Baruch, is called a deuterocanonical book of the Bible).
Today the Syrian Orthodox Church only uses lessons from the twenty-two books of Peshitta in its official lectionary (list of Church readings).
Third Epistle to the Corinthians was once part of the Armenian Orthodox Bible, but it is not in modern editions (printed versions).
The Anglican Church accepts the same order of books as the Vulgate (Catholic 16th Century) Bible.
The 39 Articles (an Anglican list of doctrines or important beliefs) says that these Books of the Bible are Apocrypha:
I. Esdras II.
Esdras Tobit Judith The Rest of Esther The Wisdom of Solomon Ecclesiasticus (:) Baruch, with the Letter of Jeremiah The Song of the Three Jews, with the Prayer of Azariah The Story of Susanna Bel and the Dragon The Prayer of Manasseh I. Maccabees II.
Maccabees III.
Maccabees
In baseball, an at bat (AB) or time at bat is used for certain statistics.
These statistics include batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage.
It is a more narrow definition of a plate appearance.
A batter starts with an at bat every time he faces a pitcher; however, the batter gets "no time at bat" in the following cases:
Section 10.02.
A base on balls (BB) is given to a batter and against a pitcher in baseball statistics when a batter receives four pitches that the umpire calls balls.
It is also known as a walk.
Another version of base on balls is called intentional base on balls (IBB) or intentional walk.
This is when the pitcher deliberately pitches the ball away from the batter in order to issue a base on balls.
As with any other walk, an intentional walk entitles the batter to first base without being able to be put out, and entitles any runners to advance if forced.
Intentional walks are a strategic defensive maneuver, usually done to bypass one hitter for one the defensive team believes is less likely to initiate a run-scoring play (e.g., a home run, sacrifice fly, or RBI base hit), or to set up a double play or force out situation for the next batter.
They do carry an inherent risk, however, as they give the offensive team another runner on base, without any effort on their part, who could potentially score a run.
In baseball, a hit is when a player (called the batter or batsman) who is trying to hit the ball that is thrown (or pitched) by the thrower (called the pitcher) hits the ball in such a way as to let him move forward at least one base.
The pitcher throws the ball towards the batter standing at home plate (or home base), who tries to hit the ball and score a run.
After the batter hits the ball he runs as fast as he can around the bases and tries to get to a base before he is called out by an umpire.
If he gets to a base before he is called out he is safe and the next batter comes forward and tries to hit a ball from the pitcher.
The old batter who is on base becomes a runner.
There are other kinds of hits, but these are the major ones.
These hits can be made by many ways.
For example; a single can come from a hit that traveled along the ground (called a grounder) or that traveled in the air (a fly ball).
A grounder can often be harder for the other team to stop than a fly ball.
This is because when it moves along the ground it has more chance of hitting bumps and the glove or foot of the other teams player than it does if it moves in the air.
There are also more ways in which hits can happen but these are the two major ways.
A no-hitter is a baseball game in which the other team does not get any hits during the whole game.
The winning pitcher who has stopped the losing team from getting a hit is said to have "thrown a no-hitter".
Because of the skill of the players, a no-hitter does not happen very often.
In baseball, a stolen base is when a baserunner advances to the next base while the pitcher is throwing the ball to home plate.
In baseball statistics, stolen bases are displayed as SB.
It is possible to steal second base, third base, or home plate, but not to steal first base.
If the defense does not try to put the baserunner out (for example, if the catcher does not even look his way), the play is called defensive indifference (also called fielder 's indifference).
No stolen base is credited to the runner in this case.
Defensive indifference is usually only scored instead of a stolen base when the game is in a late inning and the team with the stealing baserunner is down by more than one run.
MLB Rule 10.07 (g) defines defensive indifference.
A player who is good at stealing bases needs not just running speed, but also good base-running instincts, quickness, and split-second timing.
The scoring and guidelines for awarding a stolen base to a runner are covered by rule 10.07 of the Major League Baseball rule book.
If a player is good at stealing bases, his manager may let him try to steal a base whenever he thinks he can.
A player who is allowed to try to steal whenever he wants is said to have the "green light".
Players who do not have the green light may only be allowed to steal when a coach or manager tells him to.
Games played (abbreviated as G or GP) is a statistic.
It is used in team sports to show the total number of games in which a player has participated in.
In baseball, the statistic also applies to players who are included on a starting lineup card whether they play or not.
Bauhaus is the common term for the Staatliches Bauhaus, an art and architecture school in Germany that operated from 1919 to 1933 in Germany and in the United States from 1937-1938.
The most natural meaning for its name (related to the German verb for "build") is Architecture House.
It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem.
It is not known who wrote it, and there is no agreement as to when it was written.
Estimates for the date range from AD 608 right through to AD 1000, and there is no consensus.
The poem has only one manuscript source, written about 1010.
Beowulf is 3182 lines long.
Tolkien describes and illustrates many of the features of Old English poetry in his 1940 essay On translating Beowulf.
The protagonist of the poem is Beowulf.
In the poem, Beowulf fights three monsters: Grendel and Grendel 's mother, and later in his life an unnamed dragon.
Hrothgar, a Danish king, has built a big mead hall, which is called Heorot.
Hrothgar and his people live a good life and celebrate in Heorot.
But then they are attacked by Grendel, who comes to Heorot every night and kills some of Hrothgar 's people.
Beowulf is a warrior from Geatland (modern southern Sweden).
He hears of Hrothgar 's troubles with Grendel.
Beowulf and his men leave Geatland to help King Hrothgar.
Beowulf and his men stay the night in Heorot.
When Grendel comes to kill them, Beowulf fights him.
Beowulf tears Grendel 's arm off from his body and sticks it on the wall as a trophy.
Grendel runs to his home in the marshes, where he dies.
Everyone is happy that Grendel is killed and celebrates.
But the next night, Grendel 's mother comes to Heorot and kills many people for revenge and grabs Grendel 's arm.
Beowulf then goes to the marshes where Grendel and his mother lived.
Beowulf fights Grendel 's mother and kills her.
Beowulf later becomes a king.
He fights a dragon that was living in a barrow.
With the help of the young man Wiglaf, Beowulf kills the dragon.
Beowulf is wounded in the final battle and dies.
The story of Beowulf has often been told in books, plays, and films.
Sometimes the full story is told, sometimes just parts of the story.
Sometimes the plot is altered.
Sometimes only ideas or themes are taken from the story.
Blazing Saddles is a 1974 comedy western movie directed by Mel Brooks starring Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder and Harvey Korman.
It tells the story of a black Sheriff, played by Little, who is appointed Sheriff of a small Western town and how he must try to make friends with the racist towns people and stop a ruthless businessman from knocking down the town to make way for a railway line.
While the movie is widely said to be a classic comedy today, critical reaction was mixed when the movie was first released.
In the scene where Lamarr talks to his band of bad guys, he says, "You men are only risking your lives, while I am risking an almost-certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor!"
Harvey Korman did not, in fact, get an Oscar nomination.
The movie did receive three other Academy Awards nominations in 1974: Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Madeline Kahn, Best Film Editing, and Best Music, Original Song.
The movie also earned two BAFTA awards nominations, for Best Newcomer (Cleavon Little) and Best Screenplay.
The movie won the Writers Guild of America Award for "Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen" for writers Mel Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, and Alan Uger.
In 2006, Blazing Saddles was chosen by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry.
Brigitte Bardot (French IPA: (b i ' it ba ` do)) (born 28 September 1934) is a French actress, former fashion model, singer, animal rights activist, and considered one of the most important sex symbols of the 1950s and 1960s.
She was one of the few actresses from Europe to which the American media paid attention.
Born in Paris, into a well to do family, her father was an industrialist and her mother a housewife.
She received a strict education but was allowed to take ballet lessons hoping to become a professional classical dancer.
In 1949, at the suggestion of a family friend, she began working as a fashion model and ended up making the cover of Elle magazine in May 1950.
This led to her being noticed by movie director Yves Allegret who offered her a role in one of his movie.
The movie was never made but during the audition she met his young assistant Roger Vadim.
Her family was strongly against the relationship but finally gave in and they married in 1952.
That same year, she began her acting career and appeared in two films; Le trou normand and Manina, fille sans voile.
In the ensuing years, she appeared in small parts in various movies in France, Italy and England.
Her career really took off in 1956, when she appeared in Vadim 's movie Et Dieu cr a la femme (An God created Woman), written especially for her, which made her an instant star and an international sex-symbol.
From then on, her every move made headlines around the world.
In 1958, she bought a house "La Madrague" in Saint Tropez, then a quiet fishermen village, which has since then become a highly touristic destination.
Other notable movies have included; En cas de malheur (1958), La v rit (1960), considered by many her best role, Vie Priv e (1962), Le m pris (1963), Viva Maria (1965), etc..
She also enjoyed success as a singer but mostly through recordings and television appearances.
In 1973, she decided to retire from entertainment and devote herself to her real passion the animal rights, which she continues today.
She created her own foundation in 1986.
During the 1990s, she published her autobiography and other books in which she spoke openly about her political views on such things as immigration and Islam in France, mixed marriages and homosexuality, which created considerable controversy.
She has angered many people who are part of these groups and was fined for incitation to racial hatred.
Bardot had four husbands and many other romantic partners.
After her divorce from Vadim in 1957, she married actor Jacques Charrier in 1959, with whom she had her only child, a son Nicolas, born on 11 January 1960.
They divorced in 1962.
Her third husband, from 1966 1969, was German millionaire Gunter Sachs.
She has been married to Bernard d'Ormale, a right-wing political organizer, since 1992.
The banjo is a string instrument, that was first played by African slaves a few hundred years ago in the United States.
The idea came from other African instruments.
The name banjo may have come from a Kimbundu word: mbanza, but it could have also come from a Senegambian word for the bamboo stick used for the banjo 's neck.
Baseball is a sport played by two teams, each team has nine players.
In baseball, one team throws a small round ball called a baseball and the other team tries to hit it with a club called a bat.
Teams score points by running and touching markers on the ground called bases, until they reach the last one called home plate.
Baseball started in United States in the 1700s and 1800s, but historians are not sure who invented it.
Many people in North America, South America, and East Asia play baseball.
In the United States, baseball is called the national pastime, because so many people in the United States used to spend a lot of time playing or watching baseball games.
Today, though, most Americans follow football more than baseball, especially when it comes time for the Super Bowl.
A game of baseball is played by two teams on a baseball field.
Each team has nine players.
There are also umpires.
Umpires watch everything carefully to decide what happened, make calls about a play, and make sure everyone follows the rules.
On a baseball field, there are four bases.
The bases form a diamond that goes around the field to the right from the starting base.
The starting base is called home plate.
Home plate is a pentagon, which is a shape that has five sides.
First base is on the right side of the field, second base is at the top of the infield, third base is on the left side of the field, and home plate is at the back of the field, where the catcher plays.
The game is played in innings.
Professional and college baseball have nine innings.
In an inning, each team has one turn to bat and try to score runs worth one point.
When one team bats, the other team plays defense and tries to get three players on the other team out.
The team that is playing defense always has the ball.
This is different from other team sports.
When the team on defense gets three players out, it is their turn to try and score runs.
Then the team that was batting starts playing defense, and the team that was playing defense starts batting.
After nine innings, the team that has the most runs is the winner.
If the teams have the same number of runs, they play more innings until one team wins.
At the start of the game, the home team pitches, while players on the visiting team bat.
Only one player can bat at a time.
The baseball field, or diamond, has two main parts, the infield and the outfield.
The infield is where the four bases are.
The outfield is beyond the bases, from the view of home plate.
The lines from home plate to first base and home plate to third base are the foul lines, and the ground outside of these lines is called foul territory.
A ball that is hit with a bat and flies between the foul lines is a fair ball, and the batter and runners can try and run around the bases and score.
A ball that is outside the foul lines is a foul ball.
If the ball hits the ground in the foul area rather than being caught in the air, the batter continues to bat, and any runners must return to the base that they were on before the ball was hit.
If the batter has fewer than two strikes, a foul ball counts as a strike.
If the batter already has two strikes, and the foul ball is not caught in the air, then the batter continues to hit.
If a ball is caught by a fielder in fair or foul ground, the batter is out.
The most important part of the game is between the pitcher and the batter.
The pitcher throws, or pitches, the ball towards home plate.
The pitcher normally throws the ball close enough for the batter to hit it.
If the pitcher throws the ball in the strike zone, which is the area over home plate and between the hitter 's knee and chest, the pitch is a "strike", unless the batter hits the ball.
The pitch is always a strike, regardless of where it is, if the batter swings the bat and misses, so the batter must have good aim with the bat.
Three strikes are a "strikeout", and this is one way to make an "out".
A pitch that the batter does not swing at, and which is not called a strike, is a "ball."
On the fourth "ball" thrown by a pitcher, the batter "walks" to first base, so it is important to pitch well.
The catcher for the pitcher 's team waits behind the batter, and catches any ball that the batter does not hit.
The catcher uses signals to tell the pitcher where to throw the ball.
If the pitcher does not like what the catcher says, he will shake his head, which signals "no".
If he agrees with what the catcher has signaled, he will nod his head, which signals "yes".
There are many ways to get batters out, and runners can also be gotten out.
Some common ways to get batters out are catching a batted ball in the air, whether in fair or foul territory, throwing the ball to the defensive player at first base (an out if it gets there before the batter), and a strikeout.
A runner can be put out by tagging the runner while the runner is not on a base, and by "forcing him out" (when a base is touched before a player can get there, with no base for the runner to go back to).
When the fielding team has put out three of the batting team 's players, the half-inning is over and the team in the field and the team at bat switch places.
The batting team wants to get runs.
In order to get a run, a player must bat, then become a base runner, touch all the bases in order, and then touch home plate without being called out.
So first, the batter wants to make other players get to home plate, or to run the bases himself.
Runners can not pass each other while running the bases.
A base runner who touches home plate after touching all previous bases in order, and without getting out, scores a run.
If the batter hits the ball over the fence (between the foul lines) without touching the ground, it is a home run.
The batter, and any base-runners, are allowed to advance to the home plate and score a run.
The fielding team can do nothing to stop them.
The team on the field tries not to let the team who 's batting get any runs.
The fielding team has a pitcher and a catcher.
The remaining seven fielders can stand anywhere in the field.
However, there are usually four people that stand around the infield close to the bases and three outfielders who stand around the outfield.
The four infielders are the first baseman, second baseman, shortstop, and third baseman.
The first baseman and third baseman stand close to first base and third base.
The second baseman and the shortstop stand on either side of second base.
The first baseman 's job is to make force plays at first base.
In a force play, another infielder catches a ball that has touched the ground, and throws it to the first baseman.
The first baseman must then touch the batter or the base with the ball before the batter can touch first base.
Then the batter is out.
First basemen need to have quick feet, stretch well, be quick and know how to catch wild throws.
First base is one of the most important positions as a significant number of plays happen there.
The second baseman 's job is to cover the area to the right of second base and to back the first baseman up.
The shortstop 's job is to cover the area between second and third bases.
This is where right-handed batters usually hit ground balls.
The shortstop also covers second or third base and the near part of left field.
The shortstop is usually the best fielder on the team.
The third baseman needs to have a strong throwing arm.
This is because many times the batter will hit a ball toward third base.
The third baseman must throw the ball very quickly to the first baseman, to get the runner out.
Because the balls that go to third base are usually hit very hard, the third baseman must also be very quick.
The three outfielders are called the left fielder, the center fielder, and the right fielder, because they stand in left field, center field and right field.
Left field and right field are on the left and right sides, if you look out from home plate.
Center field is straight ahead from home plate.
Center field is very big, so the center fielder is usually the fastest.
The team can decide where to put the infielders and outfielders.
Players often stand at slightly different places on the field between some plays.
These changes are called "shifts".
The fielders may shift at any time.
Players can shift for many reasons.
One of the more popular ones is the defensive shift, where players move in the infield.
They do this because they know that some batters can only hit a ball a certain direction.
It can also be easier to make a double play when fielders are moved a certain way.
Teams can change pitchers during a game.
Teams change their pitchers often because it is hard for a pitcher to throw a full game of nine innings.
A pitcher can sometimes throw a no-hitter where no one on the opposite team gets an earned hit.
A team can use as many pitchers as it wants to, but it is rare to use more than eight in a game.
The ways that a pitcher throws the ball are called pitches.
Many professional pitchers use two or more different pitches.
Pitchers change which pitch they throw so that the batter will be tricked and not know what pitch to expect.
This makes it more difficult for the batter to hit the ball.
Pitchers can make the ball move differently: faster or slower, closer or farther from the batter, higher or lower.
There are also many types of pitches, such as the slurve, curve, slider, splitter, sinker, screw, 2-seam cut, 2-seam screw, knuckle, knuckle curve, change-up, circle change-up, palm ball, and others.
When throwing the ball, the pitcher must touch the pitcher 's rubber with his foot.
The pitcher 's rubber is on top of the mound.
The pitcher can not take more than one step forward when he throws the ball.
That makes the pitcher throw the ball slower.
Many major-league pitchers can throw the ball up to 100 miles per hour (145 km\/h).
Throwing a baseball that fast can be bad for the body.
Pitchers can end up with a lot of injuries.
Doctors often will perform Tommy John surgery on a pitcher with an elbow injury.
The operation is named after Tommy John, the first pitcher to have the surgery.
Today, pitchers are able to recover from their injuries much more often than before Tommy John surgery.
The batting team wants to get runs.
The batting team sends its players up to home plate in a special order.
This order is called the lineup.
Each team chooses its lineup at the start of the game.
After the game starts, the team can not change the order.
But the team can use a player who was not on the lineup.
The new player has to change with an original player.
The new player 's name is written in the lineup where the original player 's name was.
After the ninth player has batted, the first player in the lineup starts again.
If a runner comes to home plate, he scores a run.
Then he is not a base runner.
After scoring a run, the player must leave the field until it is his turn again.
So a player can only score one run for each time he bats.
Since people began to have more free time, baseball has become the national pastime of America.
About 12 million people play baseball in the United States.
See the image above for a diagram of the playing field.
The Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) is a Major League Baseball (MLB) award given each year to one outstanding player in the American and National Leagues.
Since 1931, it has been awarded by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA).
The winner receives the Kenesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award.
The award is named in honor of the first MLB commissioner.
Landis served from 1920 to 1944.
MVP voting takes place before the postseason.
The results are not announced until after the World Series.
The BBWAA began asking three writers in each league city in 1938.
They made that number two per league city in 1961.
First basemen, with 34 winners, have won the most MVPs among infielders.
This is followed by second basemen (16), third basemen (15), and shortstops (15).
Of the twenty-four pitchers who have won the award, fifteen are right-handed while nine are left-handed.
Walter Johnson, Carl Hubbell, and Hal Newhouser are the only pitchers to win more than once.
Newhouser won his in back-to-back seasons, 1944 and 1945.
Stan Musial, Alex Rodriguez, and Robin Yount have won at different positions.
Rodriguez is the only player to win the award with two different teams at two different positions.
Barry Bonds has won the most often (seven times).
He has also won it the most times in a row (2001 2004).
Jimmie Foxx was the first player to win more than once.
Nine players have won three times and 19 have won twice.
The award 's only tie occurred in the National League in 1979 when Keith Hernandez and Willie Stargell received the same amount of points.
There have been 17 unanimous winners, meaning they received all the first-place votes.
The New York Yankees have the most winning players with 22.
The St. Louis Cardinals have the second most with 17 winners.
Five teams have not had a winner.
The most recent winners are Mike Trout in the American League and Clayton Kershaw in the National League.
Before the 1910 season, Hugh Chalmers of Chalmers Automobile announced he would present a Chalmers Model 30 automobile to the player with the highest batting average in Major League Baseball at the end of the season.
The 1910 race for best average in the American League was between the Detroit Tigers ' widely disliked Ty Cobb and Nap Lajoie of the Cleveland Indians.
On the last day of the season, Lajoie overtook Cobb 's batting average with seven bunt hits against the St. Louis Browns.
American League President Ban Johnson said a recalculation showed that Cobb had won the race anyway.
Chalmers ended up giving cars to both players.
The following season, Chalmers created the Chalmers Award.
A committee of baseball writers were to come together after the season to determine the "most important and useful player to the club and to the league".
Since the award was not as useful at advertising as Chalmers had hoped, it was discontinued after 1914.
In 1922 the American League created a new award to honor "the baseball player who is of the greatest all-around service to his club".
Winners, voted on by a committee of eight baseball writers chaired by James Crusinberry, received a bronze medal and a cash prize.
Voters were required to select one player from each team.
Player-managers and prior award winners were could not win.
These problems resulted in the award 's being dropped after 1928.
The National League award, without these restrictions, lasted from 1924 to 1929.
The BBWAA first awarded the modern MVP after the 1931 season, took the format the National League used to distribute its league award.
One writer in each city with a team filled out a ten-place ballot.
Ten points were given for the recipient of a first-place vote, nine for a second-place vote, and so on.
In 1938, the BBWAA raised the amount of voters to three per city and gave 14 points for a first-place vote.
The only significant change since then happened in 1961, when the number of voters was lowered to two per league city.
In Major League Baseball, the Rookie of the Year Award is given each year to one player from each league as voted on by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA).
The award was start in 1940 by the Chicago chapter of the BBWAA.
They selected a winner every year from 1940 through 1946.
The award became national in 1947; Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodgers ' first baseman, won the first award.
One award was presented for both leagues in 1947 and 1948; since 1949, the honor has been given to one player each in the National and American League.
At first, the award was known as the J. Louis Comiskey Memorial Award, named after the Chicago White Sox owner of the 1930s.
The award was renamed the Jackie Robinson Award in July 1987, 40 years after Jackie Robinson broke the baseball color line.
Of the 128 players named Rookie of the Year, 14 have been selected for the National Baseball Hall of Fame Jackie Robinson, five American League players, and eight others from the National League.
The award has been shared twice: once by Butch Metzger and Pat Zachry of the National League in 1976; and once by John Castino and Alfredo Griffin of the American League in 1979.
Members of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers have won the most awards of any team (with 16).
This is twice the total of the New York Yankees (eight), who have won the most in the American League.
Fred Lynn and Ichiro Suzuki are the only two players who have been named Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the same year.
Fernando Valenzuela is the only player to have won Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young Award in the same year.
Sam Jethroe is the oldest player to have won the award, at age 32, 33 days older than 2000 winner Kazuhiro Sasaki (also 32).
Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants and Neftali Feliz of the Texas Rangers are the 2010 winners.
From 1947 through 1956, each BBWAA voter had their own rules for decide who was a rookie.
In 1957, the BBWAA first defined the term as someone with fewer than 75 at bats or 45 innings pitched in any Major League season before the current season.
This guideline was later changed to 90 at bats, 45 innings pitched, or 45 days on a Major League roster before September 1 of the last year.
The current rule is 130 at bats, 50 innings pitched or 45 days on the active roster of a Major League club (except for time in military service or on the disabled list) before September 1 was first used in 1971.
Since 1980, each voter names three rookies: a first-place choice is given five points, a second-place choice three points, and a third-place choice one point.
The award goes to the player who receives the most total points.
Edinson Volquez received three second-place votes in 2008 even though he was not a rookie under the award 's definition.
Some baseball writers have criticized the voting in recent years because several players who played in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) have won the award.
These winners include Hideo Nomo in 1995, Kazuhiro Sasaki in 2000, and Ichiro Suzuki in 2001.
The current definition of rookie for the award is based only on Major League playing.
Some writers feel that past NPB players are not true rookies because of their past professional playing.
This issue came up in 2003 when Hideki Matsui lost the AL award to ngel Berroa in a close vote.
Jim Souhan of the Minneapolis Star Tribune said he did not think Matsui was a rookie in 2003 because "it would be an insult to the Japanese league to pretend that experience did n't count."
The Japan Times had a story in 2007 on calling Daisuke Matsuzaka, Kei Igawa, and Hideki Okajima as rookies, saying" (t) hese guys are n't rookies."
Past winners such as Jackie Robinson, Don Newcombe, and Sam Jethroe had professional experience in the Negro Leagues.
In Major League Baseball, the National League Championship Series (NLCS), played in October, is a playoff round that decides the winner of the National League pennant.
The winner of the series moves on to play the winner of the American League Championship Series in baseball 's championship, the World Series.
In Major League Baseball, the American League Championship Series (ALCS), played in October, is a playoff round that decides the winner of the American League pennant.
The winner of the series moves on to play the winner of the National League Championship Series in baseball 's championship, the World Series.
It is a "best-of-seven" series, meaning the first team to win four games
From 1969 to 1993,.
Since 1995, the winners of the American League Division Series have gone on to be in the Championship series.
Click the link on the far left for detailed information on that series.
Denotes wild-card team (since 1995).
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (21 December 1804 19 April 1881), born Benjamin D'Israeli, was a British politician.
He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1852, from 1858 1859 and from 1866 1868 He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1868 and from 1874 1880.
His mainopponent was William Ewart Gladstone.
Disraeli was also a novelist and biographer.
Disraeli was born into a Jewish family which converted to Anglicanism.
He is the only Prime Minister of Jewish heritage in British history.
He followed his father, and converted to Anglicanism at the age of 12.
Disraeli invented the idea of "One Nation" conservatism, designed to appeal to all ranks in society.
This is conservatism that values paternalism and pragmatism.
Paternalism means looking after people, and pragmatism means it was practical not ideological.
Disraeli wanted it to appeal to working class men as a solution to worsening divisions in society.
This idea was opposed to the Liberals (or "Whigs"), which was the party of the urban elite (moneyed and well-educated people in towns and cities).
Disraeli made the Conservatives the party that supported the British Empire and the military action to go with it.
This was partly in reaction to Gladstone, who disliked the expense of empire, and partly because Disraeli knew it would be popular.
As well as Disraeli 's One Nation idea, the Tories were also the party of the Church of England and most of the aristocracy.
They were supported by the "Young England" group.
This Victorian era political group was born on the playing fields of Cambridge University and Eton College.
It was a group of Tory aristocrats who had attended public school together.
Balancing such widely different groups ("constituencies") is a problem faced by almost all political leaders.
Lord John Manners in 1843, at the time of Young England, wrote "could I only satisfy myself that D'Israeli believed all that he said, I should be more happy: his historical views are quite mine, but does he believe them?"
A binomial distribution is a method that can be used to solve a certain type of problem related to probability.
In order to use the binomial distribution, the following must be true about the problem:
The binomial distribution is a probability distribution.
It has discrete values.
It counts the number of successes in yes\/no-type experiments.
There are two parameters, the number of times an experiment is done (n) and the probability of a success (p).
A bass guitar (also called an "electric bass" or "bass") is a string instrument which is related to the electric guitar.
The bass guitar is shaped like an electric guitar, except that it is longer than an electric guitar.
The electric bass has many of the same parts as an electric guitar.
However, the bass guitar produces lower tones than the electric guitar.
The bass guitar is used to play low musical sounds called "bass lines" in many styles of music such as rock, pop, country, jazz fusion and many more.
The bass guitar was first made in the 1930s by inventor Paul Tutmarc from Seattle, Washington.
However, very few musicians were interested in the instrument that Tutmarc made.
The need for a new instrument developed in the 1950s.
At that time, the double bass was the main bass instrument in jazz, blues, folk, early rock music and bluegrass.
The problem was that the double bass was big, heavy, hard to carry around, hard to play precise notes on, and it was hard to make it louder with a bass amplifier.
Musicians wanted a smaller instrument that weighed less and was easier to play and amplify.
Inventors tried to think of ways of building a smaller and lighter bass instrument.
One of these inventors was a man named Leo Fender in the United States.
Leo Fender developed a bass guitar in the 1950s using the ideas developed by Tutmarc.
Leo Fender used many parts for the bass guitar that are similar to the parts of an electric guitar.
Leo Fender called the instrument the "Fender Precision Bass".
He used the word "Precision" in the name because his instrument had metal frets on the neck.
The double bass did not have frets on its neck.
The frets on the bass guitar made it easier for musicians to play precise notes.
The bass guitar developed by Leo Fender became very popular.
In the 2000s, many bass guitars are still designed to look like his Fender Precision Bass.
Bass guitars are normally made out of wood.
Bass guitars have a few main pieces such as a body, neck, fingerboard, frets, and strings.
The body is made out of wood.
A wooden neck is glued or bolted onto the body.
A wooden fingerboard is then glued onto the neck.
Then, thin metal strips called frets are glued onto the fingerboard.
Frets are placed at specific locations along the fretboard, with each fret representing one half step in the Western tonal scale.
At the bottom of the body is an assembly called the bridge, a large metal assembly into which one end of the strings are fitted.
On some designs, the strings are fasted through the back of the body into the bridge; on others, the strings fit into the front side of the bridge.
Inside the body is a cavity that contains the electrical components of the bass.
The bridge often has adjustments that allow the height of the strings to be changed.
In addition to the bridge, the other components found on the body include one or more pickups and various knobs or switches that control the sound of the bass.
The pickups are magnetic devices that sit below the strings.
As the strings vibrate, an electrical signal is produced which is routed via an instrument cable to an amplifier.
Pickups are either "passive", which means they send the signal with no additional amplification, or "active", which process the signal through a pre-amplifier.
Some basses feature pickups that can be set to passive or active mode.
Basses that have two pickups (generally referred to as bridge and neck pickups) often have a switch that enables the player to select neck-only, bridge-only, or a blended signal.
Each pickup may have different tonal qualities that results from its placement relative to the bridge and its components.
At the other end of the fretboard from the body sits the headstock, which generally holds the tuners that permit the player to adjust the tuning of the strings.
At the very end the fretboard, where the strings pass from the fretboard to the tuners, we find the nut, a piece made of metal or plastic, with grooves to hold the strings off the fretboard.
Inside most fretboards is a long metal rod, called a trussrod, that is used to adjust the tension on the neck.
It is generally desirably to have the neck bowed slightly concave, so that the strings will clear all frets without "buzzing."
The amount of bow, along with adjustments made on the bridge, will determine the height of the strings along the fretboard.
The scale of an electric bass - the length of the strings from the nut to the bridge - is generally 34 inches (84 centimeters), although shorter and longer basses are produced.
In earlier decades, short-scale basses were more common, since many designers adapted guitar parts for early models.
Because in some styles of music, such as heavy metal, the strings are tuned down, longer scaled basses are sometimes favored for such styles, since string tension is higher.
Standard bass guitars have four metal strings, but models with five, six or eight strings are also made.
The strings themselves are manufactured in different ways and with different materials to change their tonal qualities.
In the 1960s and 1970s some musicians took the frets off their bass guitars: taking the frets off a bass guitar changes the sound of the bass, particularly as the player slides their fingers along the strings.
A bass guitar without frets is called a fretless bass guitar, and are favored by some bassists: for instance, Pino Palladino, whose performance on the fretless bass during the 1980s made him a highly desirable session player backing high profile musicians like Eric Clapton and David Gilmour.
While fretless basses are common with jazz and jazz fusion, bassists from other genres use fretless basses, such as metal bassist Steve DiGiorgio and Colin Edwin of modern\/progressive rock band (Porcupine Tree).
The standard design for the electric bass guitar has four strings, generally tuned E, A, D and G (low to high).
It is not uncommon for players to tune strings to a lower pitch, particularly in styles, such as heavy metal, that favor deeper sounds.
Five string basses add a lower string, usually tuned to B, while six-string-basses add a higher string tuned to C. In standard tunings, each string is tuned a perfect fourth interval above the next lower string (e.g. E to A).
Sounds are produced from the strings in a number of ways.
The most common form of playing is called fingerstyle, in which the player plucks the fingers upwards with the ends of the fingers.
It is common to use the index and middle fingers as the plucking fingers, but players may use more fingers or even employ their thumb to pluck downwards.
Other finger-based techniques include slap-and-pop, in which the player strikes the lower-pitched strings firmly with their thumb, and pulls higher-pitched strings upwards and lets them snap against the fretboard, and tapping, in which the player hammers downward with their fingertips on the fretboard.
Picks made of metal or plastic may also be used, and yield a sharper sound than plucking with fingers.
Picking is sometimes combined with muting techniques to create distinctive sounds.
The bridge of the bass guitar may be fitted with a tremolo, which enables the player to vary the pitch of their strings while playing.
Where the strings are struck relative to bridge changes to the tone of the sound considerably.
Plucking or picking close the bridge generally produces a more muted note, while sounding the string closer to the neck produces a fuller, more resonant tone.
Bass guitars also have magnetic pickups mounted on the body underneath the strings.
A musician plucks the strings with their fingers.
This makes the strings vibrate.
The magnetic pickups detect the vibrations.
Then the vibrations from the strings are converted into an electronic signal which is sent with a metal cable to an electronic amplifier and a loudspeaker.
The musician rotates a volume control knob that is located on the body of the bass to make the sound
Basketball is a handball team usually played by two teams of five players.
The objective is to get the ball through a hoop mounted high up on a backboard at each end.
It is a very popular sport worldwide, played with a round, orange ball that bounces.
The game is played between men 's teams or between women 's teams.
Basketball has been played in the Summer Olympic Games since 1936.
The shot clock rule started in 1954.
In early December 1891, James Naismith, a Canadian physical education teacher at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts invented an indoor game called basketball.
He invented the sport to keep his students from becoming bored during the winter.
Naismith wrote the basic rules and then nailed a peach basket onto a 10-foot tall pole.
Unlike modern basketball hoops, the bottom of the peach-basket was still there, so after a point was scored, somebody had to get the ball out of the basket with a long stick.
Over time, people made a hole at the bottom of the basket so the ball could go through more easily.
The score of the first game of basketball ever played was 1 - 0.
There is a sculpture in Springfield, outside where the first game was held.
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is also in Springfield.
Since the rules had n't been formally written, there was no maximum number of players back then unlike today.
This also meant that there was no set rules to the game; Naismith only observed and changed the rules accordingly.
The aim of basketball is to score more points than the other team, by shooting the ball in the basket.
Baskets can be worth 1, 2, or 3 points.
You get points by shooting the ball into the opponents ' basket.
The team with the most points at the end of the game wins.
The court, where the game is played, is a rectangle shape, and at both end lines there is a goal called a "hoop" in the shape of a circle basket with the bottom cut out.
Basketball is played with two teams, with 5 players from each team on the court at one time.
The maximum number of players on the bench differs by league.
In international play, a maximum of 7 players are allowed on the bench, resulting in a roster of 12 players.
The NBA has 13-player rosters; college and high school teams have 15-player rosters.
When a player wants to substitute for another player on the court they let the score bench know.
The referees will signal for the player waiting to come into the court.
The player that went into the game is now playing and the player that was playing is sitting on the bench.
A game of basketball is made up of four quarters, each ten (or in the National Basketball Association 12,) minutes long.
At the start of every game the referee throws the basketball up in the air, and one player from each team tries to hit it to their teammates, that is called a "jump ball."
At the start of each quarter the team who has the possession arrow pointing towards their hoop gets the ball.
Then the arrow is switched, and the next team gets the ball next quarter.
After four quarters, the team who scores the most points wins.
If the two teams score the same number of points, there is a five-minute "overtime" to see who can score more points.
"Overtime" can be played over and over until one team finally scores more points.
While playing the game, players on one team try to stop players on the other team from scoring.
Each normal score is worth two points; however, if a player throws the ball into the hoop from behind the large arced line on the court, called the "3-point line," the score is worth three points.
If you do something illegal in the game, it is called a "foul."
If you foul someone on the other team while he is shooting the basketball, the player who was fouled gets to shoot "free throws" from the "foul line.
A free throw is a shot that no one is allowed to try to block.
Each successful free throw is worth one point.
If you foul a player who is not shooting, the other team gets the ball, and can throw it in bounds from the sideline.
Players can do three things with the ball: "dribble" (bounce) the ball, "pass" the ball to a teammate, or "shoot" the ball at the hoop.
The player with the ball tries to keep the ball and not let the other team get it.
Once a player commits five fouls, he is no longer allowed to play in the game, and a player on the bench must go in the game immediately.
Are very simple!
In a game of basketball there are a number of people who are not from either team, that are there to help.
They are called officials.
Officials are very important because without them the game would not run as efficiently.
Here is a list of some of these people:
It should also be noted that fans and media in North America will often use "referee" to describe all on-court officials, whether their formal titles are "referee", "umpire", or "crew chief".
There are some basketball terms which players have to understand when playing the game.
Here are some terms:
In professional basketball teams, each player has a position.
A position is a job or role that a player has to take part in to play the game.
If everyone is doing their job correctly, the team is usually successful.
Other positions, more usual in professional basketball teams, are used in basketball.
If a basketball player becomes extremely good at the sport and well known for playing, coaching, or helping the game of basketball somehow, he or she is "elected" to be in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.
This is the goal for the greatest basketball players in the world, like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Magic Johnson, and coaches like Phil Jackson, Mike Krzyzewski, Bob Knight, and Pat Summitt.
If you are "enshrined" in Springfield, it is the greatest honor a basketball player, coach, official (referee), or contributor can have.
It means you are the best of the best at basketball.
There are many types of basketball.
Some are for people with disabilities, others are played more by a specific group.
The most common type is able body basketball and that is the one that has been described in this article.
In this variation the players are all seated in a wheelchair.
This is often played by people who can not walk or are unable to play able body basketball properly.
The rules are altered slightly but the game follows the same general concepts.
The Braille system is a way of writing things.
It is named after Louis Braille, the French man who invented it.
The system is used by blind people to read and write.
The Braille system uses a set of raised bumps or dots that can be felt with a finger.
Each set of dots is a character in an alphabet, and the numbers and some punctuation.
Louis Braille was not the first person to think about how to let the blind read and write.
In the 17th century the Italian Jesuit Francesco Lana thought about different systems of writing for the blind.
He invented a system of dashes that could be felt.
Valentin Ha y was one of the first French who was interested in the problems the blind had when they wanted to communicate.
Ha y was born in Picardie in 1745, and studied languages at the university in Paris.
First he studied deaf people who could not speak, then blind people.
In his opinion the biggest problem of the blind was that they could not read.
He then invented a system which allowed them to read and write sentences and to do mathematics.
Later he started a school for blind children.
His writing system used two columns which had between one and six positions each.
Vowels had a dot in the left column, for example.
Charles Barbier used a similar system, because Napoleon wanted a code that soldiers could use to exchange messages silently and without light at night.
Barbier called it night writing.
Night writing uses two columns of six dots.
It uses phonemes (separate sounds), not letters.
Barbier 's system was too hard for soldiers to learn, and the military did not use it.
From the year 1821, he started to test his system in the school Ha y had founded.
There it became very successful.
Even though the system was difficult to learn, it did help the blind to read better than earlier systems.
Barbier had understood that it was better to use a system that used dots over one that used lines.
Barbier met Braille when he visited the National Institute of the Blind.
Braille saw the biggest problem of the code: The human finger can not feel the whole symbol at one time.
This makes it impossible to move rapidly from one symbol to the next.
Braille 's change was to use a 6 dot cell the braille system which completely changed how the blind would read and write.
Braille can be seen as the world 's first binary way of character encoding.
The system as originally invented by Braille has two parts
Braille is used with different languages today.
In each language, the letters are encoded differently, depending on the alphabet.
The list of codes is known as braille code, or code page.
There are also different braille codes in use for special purposes, like writing shorthand, mathematics or music.
To make it possible to read faster, certain transcriptions of Braille use shortened words, or contractions.
This is known as Grade 2 Braille.
Braille uses cells of six raised dots, in two columns of three dots.
The dot positions on the left are numbered one, to three, the ones on the right four to six, as shown in the picture.
Each symbol is coded with certain dots present, and others absent.
The dots are approximately 0.02 inches (0.5 mm) high; inside the cell, the dots are about 0.1 inches (2.5 mm) apart.
The space between the dots of two cells is about 0.15 inches (3.75 mm) horizontally and 0.2 inches (5 mm) vertically.
A standard braille page is 11 inches by 11 inches and typically has between forty and forty-two braille cells per line and twenty-five lines.
As first made by Louis Braille, the first group of characters, using just the top 4 dots of the braille cell, represents letters "a" through "j" (this group of ten characters is called a decade).
Dot 3 (bottom left) is added to each of the "a" through "j" symbols to give letters "k" through "t".
Both of the bottom dots (dots 3 and 6) are added to the first decade to give letters "u", "v", "x", "y", and "z".
The letter "w" is left out of this group because French did not use the letter "w" when Louis Braille made his alphabet.
The fifth decade is the same as the first decade, but shifted down by a row (dots 1 and 4 are blank).
English braille has codes for the letters and some punctuation, and some double letter signs and word signs directly, but capitalization and numbers need a prefix symbol.
In practice, braille produced in the United Kingdom does not use capital letters.
There are braille codes for representing shorthand (produced on a machine which embosses a paper tape) and for representing mathematics (Nemeth Braille) and musical notation (braille music).
Braille can be made using a "slate" and a "stylus" in which each dot is created from the back of the page, writing in mirror image, by hand, or it may be produced on a special braille typewriter or "Perkins Brailler", or produced by a braille embosser attached to a computer.
It may also be made using a refreshable braille display.
The six bit braille code is very limited, it only allows 64 different possible combinations.
This means that many things need more than one braille character to be coded.
One example for this is how numbers are coded in English braille: First there is a symbol that says the next symbol is a number, and then there is the symbol for the number.
The symbol for number is usually given only once; every symbol that follows is treated as a number, until there is a space.
Braille has been extended to an 8 dot code, particularly for use with braille embossers and refreshable braille displays.
In 8 dot braille the added dots are added at the bottom of the cell, giving a cell 4 dots high by 2 dots wide.
The additional dots are called 7 (for the lower-left dot) and 8 (for the lower-right dot).
8-dot braille has the advantages that capital and lower cases of the letters are directly coded in the cell, a capital letter does not need two cells.
All the printable ASCII characters can be represented in a single cell, and all 256 possible combinations of 8 bits are encoded by the Unicode standard.
Braille with six dots is frequently stored as braille ASCII.
It is possible to transcribe braille by replacing each letter with the braille code for the letter.
This is usually known as Grade 1 Braille.
Grade 1 braille is mostly used by beginners.
The basic problem of Grade 1 braille is that braille letters are much larger than printed ones.
The standard page is 11 "x11" (28 cm by 28 cm) in size and only has room for twenty-five lines of forty characters.
This means a book would need to be very thick compared to a standard printed book.
For this reason almost all English braille books use a transcription known as Grade 2 braille.
Grade 2 braille uses contractions, which allows to save space and increase reading speed.
Grade 2 braille was developed by linguists (people who study languages), who also looked at customs, styles and practices.
Transcribing a text into Grade 2 braille is difficult, and the people doing the transcription need to have a special education.
In English, there are 23 words which are replaced with a single letter.
That way, the word but is contracted (shortened) to the single letter b, can to c, do to d, and so on.
Even this simple rule has exceptions and special cases, which must be thought of.
As an example, only the verb to do is replaced by d, the noun do (which stands for a note in music) is a different word, and is written in full.
Sometimes, part of words are contracted, and a character can mean different things in different parts of a word.
There are many rules for this process.
For example, the character with dots 2-3-5 (the letter "f" lowered in the braille cell) stands for "ff" when used in the middle of a word.
At the beginning of a word, this same character stands for the word "to" although the character is written in braille with no space following it.
At the end of a word, the same character represents an exclamation point.
The contraction rules can not be used when it would make a problem with a prefix or suffix on the word.
Also, some rules are flexible and may depend on the situation.
So when the rules permit the same word to be written in more than one way, preference is given to "the contraction that is closer to the correct pronunciation."
Grade 3 Braille is a system that includes many additional contractions.
It is almost like a shorthand.
It is rarely used for books, but people use it to be able to write and read fast, for themselves.
It can be used for taking notes.
Only very few people can use grade 4 braille.
It uses many rules to shorten grade 3 even further.
It allows a blind person to use shorthand to follow spoken conversation.
Very often, systems of seven or eight dots are used.
The current Canadian paper money has raised dots on the bills that shows its value.
This helps blind people who might otherwise be cheated.
This ` tactile feature ' does not use standard braille but, instead, a system developed by working with blind and visually impaired Canadians after they found that not all people who needed it could read braille.
Though braille is thought to be the main way blind people read and write, in Britain (for example) out of the reported 2 million visually impaired population, it is estimated that only around 15-20 thousand people use Braille.
Younger people are turning to electronic text on computers instead which can be read aloud by computer programs; a more portable communication method that they can also use with their friends.
A debate has started on how to make braille more attractive and for more teachers to be available to teach it.
There are many extensions of Braille for additional letters with diacritics, such as,,.
When braille is adapted to languages which do not use the Latin alphabet, the blocks are generally assigned to the new alphabet according to how it is transliterated into the Latin alphabet, not the alphabetic order of the national script.
This is the case with Russian (Cyrillic alphabet), Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese.
In Greek, for example, gamma is written as Latin g, even though it is the third letter of that alphabet (like the Latin c).
Hebrew beth, the second letter of the alphabet and cognate with the Latin letter b, is instead written v, as it is commonly pronounced.
Esperanto letters with circumflexes,,,, and, are written as those letters without circumflexes with a filled sixth dot.
More differences are in Chinese braille.
In Mandarin Braille, which is based on Zhuyin rather than the Latin Pinyin alphabet, the Latin braille values are used for the first consonants and the simple vowels.
There are additional blocks for the tones, diphthongs, and any following vowel + consonant combinations.
Cantonese Braille is also based on Latin braille for many of the initial consonants and simple vowels, but the blocks also have different values depending on whether they are in a leading syllable or following syllable position.
For instance, the block for Latin k represents old-style Cantonese k (g in Yale and other modern Romanizations) when initial, but aak when final, while Latin j represents Cantonese initial j but final oei.
However, at least two adaptations of Braille have completely reassigned the Latin sound values of the blocks.
These are:
In Japanese Braille, alphabetic signs for a consonant and vowel are combined into a single syllable block; in Korean Braille, the consonants have different leading and following syllable forms.
These changes made Braille much more compatible with Japanese kana and Korean hangul, but meant that the Latin sound values could not be kept.
Trained readers of Braille can read about 100 words per minute; trained readers who do not have sight problems can get to around 250 to 300 words per minute.
In cryptography, Blowfish is a keyed, symmetric block cipher, made in 1993 by Bruce Schneier and since 1993 has been included (put together) in a large number of encryption products.
Blowfish has a good encryption rate in software and until 2008 no cryptanalytic attack model of it has been found.
However, the AES block cipher algorithm now has more attention.
Schneier made Blowfish as a general-purpose algorithm, to be used as a replacement for the old DES algorithm and to remove the problems and difficulties of other encryption algorithms.
At the time Blowfish was released, many other algorithms were proprietary, or were secrets.
Schneier has said that, "Blowfish is unpatented, and will remain so in all countries.
The algorithm is hereby placed in the public domain, and can be freely used by anyone."
Main features of the design include key-dependent S-boxes and a very complex key schedule.
Blowfish is one of the fastest block ciphers used by many people, except when changing keys.
Each new key needs to be pre-processed which takes the same time as encrypting about 4 kilobytes of text, which is very slow compared to other block ciphers.
This stops its use in certain applications (such as in the smallest embedded systems like the early smartcards), but it is not a problem in other applications.
In one of the applications, it is actually good: the password-hashing method used in OpenBSD uses an algorithm that comes from Blowfish which makes use of the slow key schedule; the idea is that the extra computational effort required gives protection against dictionary attacks.
See key strengthening.
Blowfish has a 64-bit block size and a variable key length from 0 up to 448 bits It is a 16-round Feistel cipher and uses large key-dependent S-boxes.
It is similar in structure to CAST-128, which uses fixed S-boxes.
In 1996, Serge Vaudenay found a known-plaintext attack needing 28r + 1 known plaintexts to break, where r is the number of rounds.
Moreover, he also found a class of weak keys that can be detected and broken by the same attack with only 24r + 1 known plaintexts.
This attack can not be used against the regular Blowfish; it assumes knowledge of the key-dependent S-boxes.
Vincent Rijmen, in his Ph. D. papers, introduced a second-order differential attack that can break four rounds and no more.
Still there is no known way to break the full 16 rounds, apart from a brute-force search.
A sign extension bug in one of the published C code has been found in 1996.
There is no good cryptanalysis on the full-round version of Blowfish known publicly till 2008.
However in 2007, Bruce Schneier noted that while Blowfish is still in use, he recommended using the new Twofish algorithm instead
In mathematics, a binary operation, often denoted \*, on a set is a way of combining a pair of elements in that set that results in another element of the set.
For example, if we take a pair of natural numbers and let the operation \* be addition, then their sum is also a natural number, and is the result of applying this particular binary operation.
Another example of an operation on the natural numbers is multiplication.
For instance, take the natural numbers 2 and 3.
When multiplied together they give 6, another natural number.
Others: The sum between matrices.
The composition of functions.
The union and the intersection of sets are also two different binary operations on the set of all sets, or on subsets in a power set.
The bagpipes are a musical instrument.
They are sometimes just called "pipes".
They have a bag that holds air.
The player keeps the bag full of air by blowing into it with a tube or pumping it with a bellows.
To make music, the bag is pressed and the air comes out through a kind of flute or "chanter".
There are usually one or more other tubes coming from the bag that make sounds whenever the bag is squeezed, called "drones".
Each drone normally plays a different note, and stays on the same note the whole time it is playing, to play a harmony with the "chanter".
The sounds are made by a single or, more commonly, double reed which vibrates when air is blown over it.
Scotland is traditionally linked to the bagpipes, and many pipe tunes come from there.
Many, many other places, however, also have different types of bagpipes: over all of Europe, some of North Africa, and into the Middle East.
The Scottish pipes, the Great Pipe, or piob-mohr, first had only one drone pipe.
The second pipe was added in the mid 1500s and the third pipe was added in the 1700s.
Biochemistry is the study of chemical reactions in living beings, and of biological molecules in general.
It is important to cell biology and physiology.
The study of biochemistry involves enzymes, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, sugars, proteins, and lipids.
In the body, most of the molecules are polymers built of long chains of carbon atoms with hydrogen, oxygen and other atoms added.
The four types of large biological molecules (called macromolecules) are listed here.
Nucleic acids are long-chain carbon molecules which make DNA and RNA.
Their building blocks are called nucleotides.
DNA is a common type of nucleic acid, which is usually joined up in a double helix.
It is the substance of heredity and holds the information for life which passes from generation to generation.
RNA is the other main type of nucleic acid.
It acts to make the information from DNA work inside the cells of the body.
There are many different types of RNA, each of which has a function inside cells.
Proteins are polymers of amino acids.
There are twenty different common types of amino acid.
Broadly speaking, they have two kinds of function.
The first is structural: they make up many of the body 's key structures in cells and tissues.
Muscle, for example, is mainly made of protein.
The second is as enzymes, which are long-chain proteins which may include an inorganic group as a co-enzyme.
Enzymes are special types of protein which greatly speed up the chemical reactions in a living thing.
Their function is to speed up and help chemical reactions, by lowering the enzyme 's activation energy.
There are a few enzymes that are not proteins but instead made of RNA, which are called ribozymes, and are in fact nucleic acids.
Carbohydrates include sugars and starches.
The simplest carbohydrates are the monosaccharides, meaning "single sugar".
Examples of monosaccharides are glucose and fructose.
Polysaccharides are long molecules made from many units joined together.
Examples are starch, glycogen, and cellulose.
Carbohydrates have a number of functions, but the most important is to act as a ready source of energy for the body 's metabolism.
By breaking the chemical bonds in carbohydrates, energy is released and can be used by the body.
Lipids are fats, and waxes.
Saturated lipids contain single bonds, and are found in butter and lard.
Unsaturated lipids have one or more double bonds, and are often found in oils.
The human body stores lipids as an energy source.
When the body needs a large amount of energy, lipid molecules are broken down to release that energy.
Badminton is a sport for two or four people.
In this way, the game consists of either one player against one player or a team of two players against another team of two players.
Players use rackets to hit a shuttlecock over a net.
The aim of the game is to hit the shuttlecock over the net in a way that the other player or pair can not hit it back properly before it hits the floor.
Every time this is done, the player or pair gets one point.
The winner of the rally gets to serve.
The first player or pair to reach 21 points wins a game.
The winner of the match is the first to win 2 sets.
Badminton traces its history to a game called Poon, which was played in Pune, India in the 19th century by British military officers stationed there.
This game was taken by retired officers back to England where it developed and quickly grew in popularity.
In 1877, the first set of written rules were arranged by the newly formed Bath Badminton Club.
The All England Open Badminton Championships, the first badminton competition in the world, was held in 1899.
Badminton has been an Olympic sport since 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
Although badminton originated in England, it is mainly played in countries of Asia such as China, Indonesia and the Republic of Korea that now dominates this sport.
Baroque is a style in art.
It was between the styles (or epochs) of Renaissance and Neoclassicism.
This means it lasted from about 1575 to about 1770.
At that time, there were absolutist monarchs in Europe.
Baroque art is usually very playful and has many ornaments.
The movement started in Italy.
It then spread to the Catholic countries in Europe.
Finally, it also spread to the Protestant ones.
The word Baroque comes from Portuguese.
There, barocco means something like strange.
In Portuguese, it was first used for irregularly-shaped pearls.
It was first used in France to mean works of art that did not follow the current trend.
The baroque period was from 1600s to the 1750s.
Famous composers in the baroque era were Alessandro Scarlatti and Handel.
A bodhisattva according to Buddhism is a Buddhist who has attained enlightenment, but who as a selfless act, delays his or her entry to Nirvana (non-existence) for the sake of others.
The word Bodhisattva can also refer to certain specific bodhisattvas such as Chenrezig, Manjushri and Vajrapani.
Buckingham Palace is the official London residence and principal workplace of the British monarch.
It is in the center of London, in the City of Westminster.
The palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality.
It has been a focus for the British people at times of national rejoicing and crisis.
It was built in 1703 by John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normandy, as a town house (a residence in London).
It was bought by the British royal family in 1761.
It became the official London home of the family in 1837.
It is owned by the State.
Buckingham Palace has 775 rooms.
It is one of few working palaces in the world.
Leading up to it is a ceremonial road, The Mall.
British Airways (sometimes known as just "BA") is the United Kingdom 's largest airline, and is the UK 's flag carrier.
It was formed in 1974 when the UK 's two government owned airlines, the British Oversea Airways Corporation and British European Airways were joined together.
It is now owned by a company called International Airlines Group, which also owns Iberia Airlines, and is one of the largest companies in the United Kingdom.
It operates domestic flights within the UK as well as international flights to Europe and the rest of the world.
British Airways has a large fleet of aircraft, including planes built by Boeing, Airbus and Embraer.
They are now operating the Airbus A380, the largest passenger plane ever built.
For a while during the 1990s British Airways ' planes had tails each painted in a design to symbolise a country of the world.
This was called the World Tails scheme, and it was n't very popular.
However, they now have tails that are based on the Union Jack.
British Airways also flew the Concorde, one of only two aircraft types that could fly faster than the speed of sound.
However, this plane was taken out of the fleet in 2003 after the crash of Air France flight 4590, after being used for 27 years.
British Airways has its own terminal at Heathrow Airport in London called Terminal 5 or T5.
It was opened on 14 March 2008 by the UK monarch Queen Elizabeth II, and cost 4.3 billion ($ 6.2 billion) to build.
It is inbetween Heathrow 's two runways - 27L\/09R and 27R\/09L.
The site is 260 hectares in size, and has its own train station.
It also has over 100 shops and restaurants.
The only airlines to use terminal 5 are British Airways and Iberia Airlines.
Not all of British Airways ' flights go through T5.
Some flights, such as those to Thailand, Singapore and Sydney in Australia depart from Terminal 3, and some flights leave from Terminal 1 - such as those to Rotterdam in The Netherlands, and to Hanover in Germany.
In 2011, 26.3 million passengers and 184,616 flights departed from Terminal 5.
British Airways also has many flights from Gatwick Airport, and London City Airport which are both in London.
These two airports, along with Heathrow Airport, are British Airways ' main airports.
British Airways also owns two other smaller airlines called BA CityFlier and OpenSkies, which run different services than the large airline.
BA CityFlier runs flights from London City Airport to other major cities in the UK (such as Edinburgh and Glasgow) and the rest of Europe (such as Nice in France, Dublin in Ireland, Frankfurt in Germany, Madrid in Spain and Zurich in Switzerland).
It began flying passengers in March 2007.
It is also a much smaller airline than British Airways, and has 14 Embraer E-Jet family planes.
OpenSkies in an even smaller airline with only two aircraft - old Boeing 757s from that used to belong to British Airways.
At the moment, the airline only flies to\/from Paris in France and New York in the United States of America.
The two Boeing 757s have enough room for 110 passengers, and have 20 Business class seats, 24 Premium Economy class seats and 66 Economy class seats.
British Airways is a member of Oneworld.
Oneworld is a partnership between 12 airlines: Air Berlin, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia Airlines, Japan Airlines, LAN, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Royal Jordanian Airlines, S7 Airlines and British Airways.
Smaller airlines that are owned by these 12 member airlines are also part of Oneworld - for example BA CityFlier.
There is one exception - OpenSkies however is not part of Oneworld.
Being part of Oneworld means that the airlines sell tickets for their own flights as well as for other members ' flights (for example, British Airways sells tickets for American Airlines flights).
This is good for the airlines because the customers can get their tickets in one place and it lets the airlines use flights that they would n't normally have.
Also, Oneworld has a frequent flyer program, where all the separate member airlines ' airmiles can be used, so they can be used across all the member airlines.
The three levels are Oneworld Ruby (lowest), Oneworld Sapphire (middle) and Oneworld Emerald (highest).
It is up to the airlines to decide how many airmiles a passenger needs to get rewards from their own scheme.
A passenger is awarded one airmile for each mile that they fly with the airline for.
A bicycle, or bike, is a small, human powered land vehicle with a seat, two wheels, two pedals, and a metal chain connected to cogs on the pedals and rear wheel.
A frame gives the bike strength, and the other parts are attached to the frame.
The name comes from these two wheels - the prefix "bi -" meaning two, and the suffix" - cycle" meaning wheel.
It is powered by a person riding on top, who pushes the pedals around with his or her feet.
Riding bicycles, which is also called cycling, is an important way to travel in several parts of the world.
It is also a common recreation, a good form of low-impact exercise, and a popular sport.
Road bicycle racing is the second most popular spectator sport in the world.
Bicycling uses less energy per mile than any other human transport.
In 1817 a German professor, baron Karl von Drais, created the first two wheeled bicycle.
It was made of wood and had two wheels.
The front wheel could be turned using the handlebars in order to steer the bike.
However, it did not have pedals, so the rider would have to push their feet on the ground to make it move.
In the 1860s, French inventors added pedals to the front wheel.
However, it took a lot of effort to turn the pedals.
Later inventors made bikes out of metal only, and made the front wheel very big, giving higher speed.
This design was called the penny-farthing bicycle.
However, it was difficult to ride, since it could fall easily and the rider would fall far.
Several improvements were made in the 1880s and '90s.
In 1885, the safety bicycle was invented.
This had two wheels the same size so that the rider could sit at a lower height.
It was called the safety bicycle because it much easier to ride than the penny-farthing.
When stopping, the rider can simply put down a foot instead of completely dismounting.
Instead of pedaling and steering with the front wheel, the safety bicycle steers with the front wheel while the pedals turn the back wheel using a chain.
Brakes operated by hand levers on some bikes also increased safety.
In 1888, Scottish inventor John Boyd Dunlop re-invented a type of tire which was filled with air, and this made cycling far more comfortable.
Soon, the freewheel was invented.
This was a device inside the hub of the back wheel that allowed the wheel to spin even if the rider was n't pedalling.
However, this meant the rider could no longer stop the bike by backpedalling.
As a result, a different type of brake was invented which could stop the bike if the pedals were turned backwards.
Later inventions included better brakes, and gears which made cycling over hills much easier.
During this time the bicycle became very popular.
Basic components common to most bikes include a seat, pedals, gearing, handlebar, wheels, and brakes, all mounted on a frame.
The majority also have a gear shifter.
The cyclist 's feet push the pedals to make them go around in circles, which moves the chain, which turns the back wheel of the bike to make the bike move forwards.
The front wheel is connected to the handlebar, so turning the handlebar from side to side swivels the front wheel which steers the bike.
When riding on streets, it is safest to ride on the same side of the street that cars drive (which would mean riding on the right side of the road in countries where people drive on the right side of the road, and riding on the left in countries where people drive on the left).
To avoid hitting people, riders must obey signs that say "no bicycling", even if it does not seem to make sense at the time.
Low light makes bicycle lighting important.
It may not be safe to ride when it is dark.
Riders wear reflective clothing to be safer in low light.
Wearing a helmet makes bicycle riding safer.
More than 300,000 people children alone to go to a hospital every year because they were hurt riding a bicycle.
Wearing a helmet does not mean that somebody can not be hurt if they crash their bicycle, but it makes being hurt less likely.
Some bicycles have bells or horns that the rider can use to warn other people that they are riding by them.
The United Kingdom general election, 2001 was held on Thursday 7 June 2001 to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons.
It was called "the quiet landslide" by the media, as the Labor Party was re-elected with another landslide result and only suffered a net loss of 5 seats, with lower turnout of 59.4 %, compared to 71.3 % in the previous election.
Tony Blair went on to become the first Labor Prime Minister to serve a second full term in as Prime Minister.
The Book of Mormon is a book that Latter Day Saints believe is the word of God along with the Bible.
The original English version of the Book of Mormon was published in March 1830 by a man named Joseph Smith, Jr. who claimed to be a prophet like the ones in the Old Testament.
Joseph Smith said that he translated the book into English from gold plates given to him by an angel.
The book claims that the language it was first written in was made from "the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians."
The story contained in the Book of Mormon is a shortened version written by a man named Mormon of the record of two groups of people called the Nephites and the Lamanites.
Their ancestors left Jerusalem with their father Lehi about 600 years before the birth of Christ, sailed across a very big ocean, and settled in the New World.
It gives an account of their families, cities, wars, systems of government, spiritual experiences and religious beliefs among other things.
The main purpose of the Book of Mormon is to teach about Jesus Christ.
It also contains the Book of Ether (a very old book discovered by the Nephites) which told the story of another people (called the Jaredites) who had lived in some of the same areas shortly after the time of the Tower of Babel, but died out because of wars.
Usually, Book of Mormon stories show the Nephites as the more righteous, industrious and peaceful people and the Lamanites as wicked, lazy and warlike.
Wars happen all the time between the two groups.
But, near the end of the book, the Nephites become more wicked than the Lamanites, and all the Nephites die in their last war, except for one named Moroni who was directed by God to bury the Book of Mormon in a hill so that Joseph Smith Jr. could find it.
The central theme of the book revolves around Jesus Christ visiting the people described, performing miracles and showing them the right way to live.
Blackjack (Twenty-one, pontoon or Vingt-et-un) is a kind of card game which usually involves gambling.
It is often played in casinos.
There is a dealer, who deals cards from a special device called a ` dealer 's shoe ' or a ` shuffling machine '.
It is a ` dealer versus players game '.
Each player has their own game against the dealer.
Cards are dealt in succession, and bets placed at each stage.
Players win if their card numbers add up to more than the dealer 's to a limit if 21.
Hands which add up to more than 21 lose.
Face cards count as 10.
` Blackjack ', an ace and a face card, is the top scorer.
Five cards adding to 21 or fewer is the next ranking hand.
Apart from that, unbusted hands rank by total add-up.
All hands below the dealer 's lose; hands equal to the dealer 's keep their chips.
Players have a choice whether or not to get extra cards.
To mean ` no more cards ' players may say ` stick ' or knock the table or put their chips on top of the cards.
The dealer has set rules as to when he takes extra cards for himself (or herself).
In the UK, the bank must stand on 16.
These rules never vary, and it would be illegal to do so.
The rules are usually built into the gambling regulations of the state or country.
Blackjack has an element of skill, because the odds change as the cards are dealt.
The critical information is the numbers of tens (including face cards) which have been dealt.
This is because they are the common cause of ` busting ', or breaking 21.
This is called ` card counting ', and though it is legal (if done mentally, without aid), casinos have been know to bar players they think are doing it.
This is an example of a Blackjack game.
Players are named by gambling chip color: white, brown, blue and black.
The dealer has given two cards each to the four players who are betting.
One of the dealer 's two cards is face-up so all the players can see it (an Ace), and the other is face down.
The dealer turns their card over and gets a 6, together with the Ace takes them to 17, and stands because the dealer must stand on 17.
(In this case the dealer must stand on a "soft" 17).
Results:
Bicarbonate is an anion (a negatively-charged ion).
Its chemical formula is HCO3.
It reacts with acids to produce carbon dioxide.
A sample compound is sodium bicarbonate.
It forms carbonate when heated.
Buffalo is a city in the U.S. state of New York.
Buffalo is the second-biggest city in New York State.
There are about 280,000 people in the city of Buffalo.
There are more than a million people in the surrounding area.
Buffalo is on the eastern side of Lake Erie near the Niagara River.
It is close to Niagara Falls, and to Canada.
Buffalo has an NFL team called the Buffalo Bills (who play in the suburb of Orchard Park, NY) and an NHL team called the Buffalo Sabres.
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 April 17, 1790) was an American statesman and scientist.
He has also been known as "the First American".
He was a very important person in the American Revolution and helped make the Thirteen Colonies one nation.
As a leader of the Enlightenment, he influenced European scientists.
He even was the first thing many Europeans associated with America at the time.
His successful diplomacy in France was an important factor in the United States ' win over Great Britain.
Franklin was born in Boston.
After two years of school he stayed home as an apprentice in his father 's candle-making shop.
Two years after starting to work at his father 's shop, he went to work at his brother James ' printing shop.
While working there, Franklin secretly wrote articles for the newspaper and labeled them as being by "Mrs. Silence Dogood".
He quarrelled with his brother and ran away to Philadelphia, then to London and then back to Philadelphia.
Franklin loved books and reading.
Franklin, at the age of 21, established the colonies ' first circulation library for all interested citizens.
He became rich and famous as a printer, publisher and writer.
Later, he sold his businesses and became busy with science and politics.
Benjamin Franklin was a very important person in early American politics.
He was a leader in the city of Philadelphia, where he did many important things.
He was the President of the Academy and College of Philadelphia.
Later he became a councilman, a Justice of the Peace, later a representative of the city.
In 1757 he went to live in London as agent for Pennsylvania and later for other colonies.
He also started one of the first public libraries in Philadelphia.
He was in the Continental Congress, which led the country during the Revolutionary War, and he helped write the United States Declaration of Independence.
He controlled the postal service as Postmaster General.
As ambassador to France he helped persuade the French to join the war against Great Britain.
He helped negotiate the peace, too.
Later, he was part of the group that made the Constitution of the United States.
Franklin called himself a printer, but is also known for his writings.
Among some of the more well known are Poor Richard 's Almanack, and the Pennsylvanian.
Franklin was a scientist who studied experiments in an effort to improve or correct them.
One of his greatest contributions was in the theory of electricity.
Most people see Franklin as one of history 's greatest inventors.
He invented the lightning rod and bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other things.
Franklin died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from pleurisy, aged 84.
Although Franklin owned slaves, towards the end of his life he freed them, and became an abolitionist.
The city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (where he lived) marked his three hundredth birthday in 2006.
Many streets and a few towns are named for him.
A picture of Franklin has been on the United States ' hundred-dollar bill since 1928.
He was also on the fifty-cent coin for a short time.
Abraham "Bram" Stoker (8 November 1847 20 April 1912) was an Irish writer, best remembered as the author of the influential vampire novel Dracula.
He was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent then as now called "The Crescent" in Clontarf, a coastal suburb of Dublin, Ireland.
His parents were Abraham Stoker (born in 1799; married Stoker 's mother in 1844; died on 10 October 1876) and the feminist Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley (born in 1818; died in 1901).
Stoker was the third of seven children.
Abraham and Charlotte were members of the Church of Ireland and attended the Clontarf parish church (St. John the Baptist) with their children where both were baptised.
Until he started school at the age of seven when he made a complete, astounding recovery Stoker was an invalid.
Of this time, Stoker wrote, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years."
After his recovery, he became a normal young man even excelling as an athlete at Trinity College, Dublin (1864 70), from which he was graduated with honors in mathematics.
He was auditor of the College Historical Society and president of the University Philosophical Society, where his first paper was on "Sensationalism in Fiction and Society".
In 1876, while employed as a civil servant in Dublin, he wrote theater reviews for The Dublin Mail, a newspaper partly owned by fellow horror writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
His interest in theater led to a lifelong friendship with the English actor Henry Irving.
In 1878 Stoker married Florence Balcombe, a celebrated beauty whose former suitor was Oscar Wilde.
The couple moved to London, where Stoker became business manager of Irving 's Lyceum Theatre, a post he held for 27 years.
The collaboration with Irving was very important for Stoker.
Through him he became involved in London 's high society, where he met, among other notables, James McNeil Whistler and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
In the course of Irving 's tours he got the chance to travel around the world.
They had one son, Irving Noel Stoker, who was born 31 December 1879.
He supplemented his income by writing a large number of sensational novels, his most famous being the vampire tale Dracula which he published in 1897.
Before writing Dracula, Stoker spent eight years researching European folklore and stories of vampires.
Dracula is an epistolary novel, written as collection of diary entries, telegrams, and letters from the characters, as well as fictional clippings from the Whitby and London newspapers.
Stoker 's inspiration for the story was a visit to Slains Castle near Aberdeen.
The bleak spot provided an excellent backdrop for his creation.
Dracula has been the basis for countless movies and plays.
The first was Nosferatu directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and starring Max Schreck as Count Orlock.
Nosferatu was produced while Florence Stoker, Bram Stoker 's widow and literary executrix, was still alive.
Represented by the attorneys of the British Incorporated Society of Authors, she eventually sued the filmmakers.
Her chief legal complaint was that she had been neither asked for permission for the adaptation nor paid any royalty.
The case dragged on for some years, with Mrs Stoker demanding the destruction of the negative and all prints of the movie.
The suit was finally resolved in the widow 's favor in July 1925.
Some copies of the movie survived, however, and Nosferatu is now widely regarded as an innovative classic.
The most famous movie version of Dracula is the 1931 production starring Bela Lugosi and which spawned several sequels that had little to do with Stoker 's novel.
Stoker wrote several other novels dealing with horror and supernatural themes, but none of them achieved the lasting fame or success of Dracula.
His other novels include The Snake 's Pass (1890), The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), and The Lair of the White Worm (1911).
Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game which is played by two pairs of players, one pair against the other pair.
Partners sit opposite each other at a table.
Millions of people play bridge worldwide in clubs, tournaments, online and with friends at home.
It is one of the world 's most popular card games.
The World Bridge Federation is the governing body for international competitive bridge.
The game consists of a number of "deals".
Each deal goes through four phases: dealing the cards, the auction (also referred to as bidding), playing the cards, and scoring the results.
Most club and tournament play uses duplicate bridge, where the cards are not re-dealt during a session.
The same deals are played by most or all players, to allow comparative scoring.
It is played with the standard 52 cards in four suits.
The game developed out of whist, which is a relatively old card game.
Whist is played with the trump suit chosen by chance, whereas in bridge it is chosen by a process called "bidding".
A trump is a card which can beat any card from the other three suits.
In whist, the winners had to get most of the tricks (a trick is a round of four cards), that is, seven or more tricks.
However, in bridge the players bid in sequence to decide what the "contract" shall be.
The contract is decided by the last bid, and will be in one of the four suits, or in "no trumps", without a trump suit.
The set-up for playing the cards is also different from whist.
The side which wins the bidding sequence plays with only one partner ("declarer") controlling both hands.
His or her partner is called "dummy", and that hand is played face up on the table so all players can see it.
The scoring system for bridge is very much more complicated than it is for whist.
Fundamentally, it depends on whether or not declarer makes his contract or not.
If he does not, the defending side collect penalty points.
If he does make the contract his side wins points.
How many points are won or lost depends on the scoring table (not shown here).
The other factor which was not present in whist is the bidding process.
Bids at the one level are offers to make at least seven tricks.
Bids at the seven level are offers to make all thirteen tricks.
The lowest bid one can make is "one club" and the highest bid is "seven no trumps".
Like much else in the game, the idea of duplicate play was invented for whist.
At "whist drives" North\/South pairs sat in the same positions throughout, East\/West pairs moved up the series of tables and boards moved down.
This simple movement was invented in the 19th century.
The first game of duplicate whist was organised by "Cavendish" in London 1857, but it was not followed up.
It was played in Chicago in 1880, and the first book about it was written in 1891 by John T. Mitchell.
His simple method is known as the Mitchell movement.
In the example on the right, West was the dealer and first to bid.
The bidding goes as shown with South becoming the declarer in a 4 spades contract, he being the first to bid spades.
East-West become the defenders and West becomes the opening leader, North becomes the dummy and spades the trump suit.
Ten tricks are required by North-South, six tricks plus the 4-level bid.
In competitions, and in some clubs, boards are pre-dealt by electro-mechanical dealing machines.
The instructions to the machine are input by computer software.
This is used to generate the random distributions of cards in the four hands.
The cards are delivered straight into the boards used by the players.
This has many advantages over hand-dealing.
First, there is on the computer a record of all the hands, which can be made available to players after the competition.
Second, the deals are a better fit to ideal random hands than is possible with dealing by hand.
Thirdly, the system makes it easy to run multi-venue competitions, which previously required a great deal of work.
A boat is a vehicle used to travel on water.
It is smaller than a ship and can be lifted out of the water and carried on a ship.
Some boats have sails, some are powered by rowing with oars, and some use motors.
These boats are usually made of wood.
However, some parts are made of metals like steel and aluminium.
Expensive boats may have parts from fiberglass or composite materials and some even have helicopter pads.
There are some boats that can even go underwater.
They are called submarines.
Blood is a liquid in humans and many animals except insects.
Blood is pushed through the organism by the heart, and brings nutrients and oxygen to our tissues.
It also takes away waste and carbon dioxide from tissues.
Blood of vertebratess is made up of blood plasma and various cells red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets.
Platelets help blood to clot.
Hemoglobin is in red blood cells.
White blood cells help fight infections and heal wounds.
Blood plasma is the yellow liquid in which blood cells float.
Plasma is made up of nutrients, electrolytes (salts), gases, non-protein hormones, waste, lipids, and proteins.
These proteins are albumin, antibodies (also called immunoglobulins), clotting factors, and protein hormones.
Plasma that does not have the protein fibrinogen is called serum and can not clot.
Adults have about 3 liters of plasma.
Plasma is a liquid, mostly water (90 %).
Plasma takes up 55 % of volume.
Another name for red blood cell is erythrocyte.
` Erythro ' means red; ` cyte ' means cell.
RBC is an acronym for red blood cells.
RBCs carry oxygen and carbon dioxide around our body.
Cells in our body need oxygen to live.
Cells also make carbon dioxide as a waste.
RBCs bring more oxygen around the body.
They also take away the carbon dioxide.
RBCs are filled with hemoglobin.
This is a protein.
It is made to carry a large amount of oxygen.
Haemoglobin has iron in it.
The iron and oxygen gives hemoglobin its red color.
This is why blood is red.
Erythropoietin promotes the creation of RBCs.
Blood type antigens are carried on the surface of red cells.
RBCs also help the blood stay normal pH..
The blood needs a to be at a pH of 7.4.
If it is much more or less than 7.4 a person can get very sick or die.
RBCs are a buffer for the blood pH..
Buffer means that it stops changes in pH..
The proteins and the carbon dioxide in the RBC are buffers for the blood.
If you do not have enough RBCs, you will die.
White blood cells are a big part of the immune system.
They attack things that do not belong in the body.
They kill germs such as bacteria and viruses.
They kill cancer cells.
White blood cells also help to fight other toxic substances.
White blood cells find where the germs are, and start to destroy them.
WBCs arrive in the blood.
They also go out of the blood in places where there is infection.
WBCs do this to fight the germs that make the infection.
If they go out of the blood to fight an infection, they may return in the lymphatic system.
So WBCs are in lymph nodes.
Another name for white blood cell is leukocyte.
Leuko means white.
- cyte means cell.
WBC is an acronym for white blood cell.
There are three main kinds of WBCs.
They are lymphocytes, granulocytes and monocytes.
Some of the WBCs mature into cells which do similar work in the tissues.
The different WBCs work in different ways.
Some WBCs kill and eat germs and cancer cells.
Some WBCs make antibodies.
These are proteins that stick to a cell and tell other WBCs to kill it.
Some WBCs make chemicals.
They release these chemicals to fight things that do not belong in the body.
These chemicals cause inflammation in a part of the body.
When a germ makes someone sick, the body shows it.
If a bacteria gets under someone 's skin and causes an infection, the skin gets red, hot, and painful.
This redness, heat, and pain are signs of inflammation.
This shows that WBCs are fighting the infection and killing the bacteria.
Platelets help make blood clot.
A clot is when the liquid blood becomes solid.
The body makes blood clot when the skin is cut.
This stops blood from going out of the skin too much.
For blood to be able to clot is essential.
But, rarely, some blood clots are bad.
If a blood clot happens in a blood vessel going to the brain, it can cause a stroke.
If it happens in a blood vessel going to the heart, it can cause a heart attack.
This does not usually happen to young, healthy people.
Platelets are not the only things that make clots.
There are proteins in the blood that help make clots.
Both platelets and clotting proteins are needed to make good clots.
Blood cells are made in the bone marrow and in the spleen.
The bone marrow is the soft material in the middle of bones.
Special cells in the bone marrow make most of the blood cells in your body.
Plasma proteins are made mostly by the liver.
The water and electrolytes in plasma come from the food and water that you eat.
Although blood is a fluid, in some respects it is a kind of connective tissue.
Its cells originate in bone marrow and the spleen, and in the blood there are potential molecular fibers in the form of fibrinogen.
These are activated when a blood clot forms.
Bedenict of Nursia was the founder of the Benedictine order.
He was born around 480, in Nursia (in Perugia, south of Italy), and died on the 24th of March 547, in Montecassino, about 140 k south of Rome.
Around 521, he founded the monastery at Montecassino which became the first Benedictine abbey.
The Battle of Pharsalus was the decisive battle of Caesar 's Civil War.
On 9 August 48 BC at Pharsalus in central Greece, Gaius Julius Caesar and his allies formed up opposite the army of the republic under the command of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus ("Pompey the Great").
Pompey had the backing of a majority of senators, and his army significantly outnumbered the experienced Caesarean legions.
Although Pompey had a larger army, he knew that Caesar 's troops were more experienced, and might win in a pitched battle.
Instead, Pompey waited Caesar 's troops out, attempting to starve them by cutting off Caesar 's supply lines.
Caesar made a near disastrous attack on Pompey 's camp, and was forced to pull away to regroup.
Pompey did not immediately follow up on his success.
An indecisive winter (49 48 BC) of blockade and siege followed.
Pompey eventually pushed Caesar into Thessaly and, urged on by his senatorial allies, he confronted Caesar near Pharsalus.
Pompey 's allies disagreed with Pompey over whether to fight at Pharsalus.
Pompey, who wanted to starve Caesar 's soldiers, had his hand forced by his allies.
There was significant distance between the two armies, according to Caesar.
Pompey ordered his men not to charge, but to wait until Caesar 's legions came into close quarters.
The idea was to tire Caesar 's men before the battle started.
Seeing that Pompey 's army was not advancing, Caesar 's men, without orders, stopped to rest and regroup before continuing the charge.
Caesar, in his history of the war, would praise his own men 's discipline and experience, and questioned Pompey 's decision not to charge.
When the lines joined, Labienus (Pompey 's cavalry leader) ordered the cavalry to attack.
At first they did well, then Caesar ordered his cavalry to withdraw.
Light troops fiercely attacked Pompey 's cavalry.
The first line of the Pompeiian horse were panicked by the cohort 's javelins and caused the entire cavalry to fall into disorder.
When the cavalry retreated, Caesar 's men slaughtered the light troops who supported them.
They attacked Pompey 's left flank and, rejoined by their cavalry, were able to get behind and attack Pompey 's army from the rear.
Caesar raised the pressure further by ordering his as yet uninvolved third line to relieve the front ranks.
The remaining Pompeiian soldiers fled and soon the main battle was done.
Pompey retreated to his camp and ordered the garrison to defend it.
Caesar urged his men to capture the enemy camp.
They furiously attacked the walls.
The Thracians and the other auxiliaries who were left in the camp defended bravely, but they were not able to fend off the enemy assault.
Pompey fled with a group, claiming that he had been betrayed.
Caesar had won his greatest victory, having lost only about 200 soldiers and 30 centurions.
Pompey fled from Pharsalus to Egypt, where he was assassinated on the order of Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII.
Ptolemy XIII sent Pompey 's head to Caesar in an effort to win his favor, but Caesar was not pleased with the gift.
Pompey was the widower of Caesar 's only daughter.
Nor did Ptolemy take into account that Caesar was granting amnesty to many of the senators and their men, men who once considered him an enemy.
The Battle of Pharsalus ended the wars of the First Triumvirate.
The Roman Civil War, however, was not ended.
Pompey 's two sons and the Pompeian faction led now by Labienus, survived and fought their cause in the name of Pompey the Great.
Caesar spent the next few years ` mopping up ' remnants of the senatorial faction.
After finally completing this task, he was assassinated in a conspiracy arranged by Brutus and Cassius.
Bigfoot, also called Sasquatch, is a rarely-seen primate that some people say lives in remote areas of Canada and the United States.
Even though many people claim to have seen a Bigfoot, or seen their tracks, no one has ever captured one, or found a dead body.
For this reason, some people do not believe in Bigfoot.
Some also believe Bigfoot is a dangerous monster, because of some scary stories told about them.
Most people who study Bigfoot, however, agree that the species is probably gentle and intelligent, just like humans.
Bigfoot is said to be very tall, from 7 to 9 feet (about 2 to 2.75 meters) and covered in brown, black, red, or sometimes even white fur or hair.
They are said to have very big feet, about 13 inches long (0.3 meters), which is why they are named Bigfoot.
Bigfoots are mostly seen in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, but sometimes people see them in the Great Lakes area, the Midwest, or even in swamps in the Southern United States.
It is thought that Bigfoot may be related to the Yeti of the Himalayas.
The name Sasquatch comes from the Halkomelem language, a Central Salish language in the Salish language family.
Stories of this type of creature are known among a number of First Nations groups in south-western British Columbia.
Sometimes, people who see a Bigfoot are able to take a picture or a movie of it.
The most famous of these is the "Patterson-Gimlin movie."
It was named this because the last names of the men who took the movie were Patterson and Gimlin.
In the movie, a large, ape-like creature can be seen walking from a lake to a forest.
Because this is the best movie so far of a creature that may be a Bigfoot, scientists argue about it a lot.
Some think that the creature is a real Bigfoot, while others think that it is just a person in a gorilla costume.
Because of this, people have done experiments with men in gorilla costumes who try to move like the creature in the movie.
So far, none has been able to move just like it.
This is why there are many Bigfoot hoaxes.
He can also be mistaken for a grizzly bear.
The evidence obtained from the movie is startling though many have questioned about it.
Some experts believe if the movie is played slightly faster it could have been a man wearing a rubber costume.
However aspects of the footage are amazing.
For example, biotechnology scientists have said that for Bigfoot to walk upright it would need an extended heel.
The creature in the movie too has an extended heel.
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (May 3, 1903 - October 14, 1977) was an American singer and actor.
His singing career was around fifty years long and more than 500 million records of his have been sold worldwide.
Crosby is known for creating the style of music that Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin would later copy.
Crosby said that he was inspired by Al Jolson.
He sang "White Christmas" and it became "the best-selling record of all time."
Irving Berlin wrote this song.
In 1962, Crosby became the first person ever to receive the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Crosby was a Roman Catholic.
He died of a heart attack in Madrid, Spain.
BASIC is one of the first programming languages ever to be created.
It was first used as a programming language on console computers.
The name is an acronym (a word made from other words) that spells Beginner 's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
A specialized version of Basic is Bliz basic.
It is specially for coding games.
It was designed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz in 1963.
It was made to follow these eight principles:
The creators made the compiler free of charge to make programmers interested in using the language.
Since the creation, a large number of compilers have been made so users can make their programs.
code prints number 36 to screen.
This is a list of the Emperors of the late Eastern Roman Empire, called Byzantine by modern historians.
This list does not include many of the emperors that rules with someone else.
The title of all Emperors before Heraclius was Augustus, but other titles such as Dominus were also used.
After Heraclius, the title was changed to the Greek Basileus.
This title used to mean "king", "sovereign" but now was used in place of Augustus.
The emperors of the 15th century called themselves "Basileus ton Hellinon" ("Emperor of the Greeks") but they were still "Roman" Emperors.
This list begins with Constantine I the Great, the first Christian emperor reigning from Constantinople.
1.
St. Constantine I (Constantinus Pius Felix Invictus Augustus Pontifex Maximus Pater Patriae Proconsul; 272 - 337; ruled 306 - 337) son of Constantius Chlorus 2.
Constantius II (Flavius Iulius Constantius; 317 - 361; ruled 337 - 361) son of Constantine I 3.
Julian (Flavius Claudius Iulianus; 331 - 363; ruled 361 - 363) son-in-law of Constantine I, brother-in-law and first cousin of Constantius II, grandson of Constantius I
4.
Jovian (Iovianus; 332 - 364; ruled 363 - 364) soldier, restored Christianity
5.
Valentinian I (Flavius Valentinianus; 321 - 375; ruled 364) soldier 6.
Valens (Flavius Iulius Valens; 328 - 378; ruled 364 - 378) brother of Valentinian I 7.
Gratian (Flavius Gratianus; 359 - 383; ruled 378 - 379) son of Valentinian I 8.
Theodosius I (Flavius Gratianus; 346 - 395; ruled 379 - 395) soldier 9.
Arcadius (Flavius Arcadius; 377 - 408; ruled 395 - 408) son of Theodosius I, brother of Honorius 10.
Theodosius II (Flavius Theodosius; 401 - 450; ruled 408 - 450) son of Arcadius 11.
Pulcheria (Aelia Purcheria; 399 453; ruled 408 - 441, 450) sister of Theodosius II 12.
Marcian (Flavius Marcianus; 392 - 457; ruled 450 - 457) soldier; married Pulcheria after Theodosius 's death
13.
Leo I the Thracian (Valerius Leo) (401-474, ruled 457 - 474) soldier 14.
Leo II (467 - 474, ruled 474) grandson of Leo I, son of Zeno 15.
Zeno (425 - 491, ruled 474 - 475) son-in-law of Leo I 16.
Basiliscus (?
- c. 477, ruled 475 - 476) usurper; brother-in-law of Leo I
17.
Anastasius I (430 - 518, ruled 491 - 518) son-in-law of Leo I
18.
Justin I (Flavius Iustinius; 450 - 527; ruled 518 - 527) 19.
Justinian I the Great (Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus; 482 - 565; ruled 527 - 565) nephew and adoptive son of Justin I 20.
Justin II (Flavius Iustinius Iunior; 520 - 578; ruled 565 - 578) nephew of Justinian I 21.
Tiberius II Constantine (Flavius Tiberius Constantinus; 540 - 582, ruled 574, 578 - 582) adopted by Justin II 22.
Maurice (Flavius Mauricius Tiberius; 539 - 602, ruled 582 - 602) son-in-law of Tiberius II
23.
Phocas (Flavius Phocas;?
- 610; ruled 602 - 610)
24.
Heraclius (575 - 641, ruled 610 - 641) 25.
Constantine III (Heraclius Constantine) (612 - 641, ruled 641) son of Heraclius; coemperor with Heraklonas 26.
Heraklonas (Constantine Heraclius) (626 - 641?
, ruled 641) son of Herakleios 27.
Constans II (Herakleios, later Constantine, called the Bearded) (630 - 668, ruled 641 - 668) son of Constantine III 28.
Mezezius (668 - 669) 29.
Constantine IV (649 - 685, ruled 668 - 685) son of Constans II 30.
Justinian II the Slit-nosed (668 - 711, ruled 685 - 695) son of Constantine IV
31.
Leontios (ruled 695 - 698) 32.
Tiberios III (ruled 698 - 705)
33.
Philippikos Bardanes (ruled 711 - 713) Armenian soldier 34.
Anastasios II (?
- 721, ruled 713 - 715) 35.
Theodosios III (ruled 715 - 717)
36.
Leo III the Isaurian (675 - 741, ruled 717 - 741) 37.
Constantine V Kopronymos (the Dung-named) (718 - 775, ruled 741) son of Leo III 38.
Artabasdus the Icon-lover (ruled 741 - 743) Leo III 's son-in-law
39.
Leo IV the Khazar (750 - 780, ruled 775 - 780) son of Constantine V 40.
Constantine VI the Blinded (771 - 797 or 805, ruled 780 - 797) son of Leo IV 41.
Irene the Athenian (755 - 803, ruled 797 - 802) wife of Leo IV, mother of Constantine VI
42.
Nikephoros I (?
- 811, ruled 802 - 811) 43.
Staurakios (?
- 812, ruled 811) son of Nikephoros I 44.
Michael I Rangabe (ruled 811 - 813) son-in-law of Nikephoros I
45.
Leo V the Armenian (775 - 820, ruled 813 - 820)
46.
Michael II the Stammerer or the Amorian (770 - 829, ruled 820 - 829) son-in-law of Constantine VI 47.
Theophilos (813 - 842, ruled 829 - 842) son of Michael II 48.
Theodora (ruled 842 - 855) wife of Theophilus 49.
Michael III the Drunkard (840 - 867, ruled 842 - 867) son of Theophilos
50.
Basil I the Macedonian (811 - 886, ruled 867 - 886) - married Michael III 's widow 51.
Leo VI the Wise (866 - 912, ruled 886 - 912) 52.
Alexander (870 - 913, ruled 912 - 913) son of Basil I 53.
Constantine VII the Purple-born (905-959, ruled 913 - 959) son of Leo VI 54.
Romanos I Lekapenos (870 - 948, ruled 919 - 944) father-in-law of Constantine VII 55.
Romanos II the Purple-born (939 - 963, ruled 959 - 963) son of Constantine VII 56.
Nikephoros II Phokas (912 - 969, ruled 963 - 969) married Romanos II 's widow 57.
John I Tzimiskes (925 - 976, ruled 969 - 976) brother-in-law of Romanus II 58.
Basil II the Bulgar-slayer (958 - 1025, ruled 976 - 1025) son of Romanos II 59.
Constantine VIII (960-1028, ruled 1025 - 1028) son of Romanos II 60.
Zoe (c. 978 - 1050, ruled 1028 - 1050) daughter of Constantine VIII 61.
Romanos III Argyros (968 - 1034, ruled 1028 - 1034) Zoe 's first husband 62.
Michael IV the Paphlagonian (1010 - 1041, ruled 1034 - 1041) Zoe 's second husband 63.
Michael V the Caulker (1015 - 1042, ruled 1041 - 1042) Michael IV 's nephew, Zoe 's adopted son 64.
Theodora (980 - 1056, ruled 1042) daughter of Constantine VIII, coempress with Zoe 65.
Constantine IX Monomachos (1000 - 1055, ruled 1042 - 1055) Zoe 's third husband
66.
Michael VI the General (ruled 1056 - 1057) chosen by Theodora
67.
Isaac I Komnenos (c. 1007 - 1060, ruled 1057 - 1059) soldier
68.
Constantine X Doukas (1006 - 1067, ruled 1059 - 1067) 69.
Michael VII Doukas Quarter-short (1050 - 1090, ruled 1067 - 1078) son of Constantine X 70.
Romanos IV Diogenes (1032 - 1072, ruled 1068 - 1071) married Constantine X 's widow 71.
Nikephoros III Botaneiates (1001 - 1081, ruled 1078 - 1081)
72.
Alexios I Komnenos (1057 - 1118, ruled 1081 - 1118) nephew of Isaac I, married Constantine X 's grandniece 73.
John II Komnenos the Handsome (1087 - 1143, ruled 1118 - 1143) son of Alexios I 74.
Manuel I Komnenos the Great (1118 - 1180, ruled 1143 - 1180) son of John II 75.
Alexios II Komnenos (1169 - 1183, ruled 1180 - 1183) son of Manuel I 76.
Andronikos I Komnenos (1118 - 1185, ruled 1183 - 1185) nephew of John II; married Alexios II 's widow
77.
Isaac II Angelos (1156 - 1204, ruled 1185 - 1195) great-grandson of Alexios I 78.
Alexios III Angelos (1153 - 1211, ruled 1195 - 1203) brother of Isaac II
79.
Alexios IV Angelos (1182 - 1204, ruled 1203 - 1204) son of Isaac II 80.
Nikolaos Kanabos (ruled 1204) 81.
Alexios V Doukas the Bushy-eyebrowed ((1140 - 1204, ruled 1204) son-in-law of Alexios III
82.
Constantine Laskaris (ruled 1204) not officially crowned 83.
Theodore I Laskaris (1174 - 1222, ruled 1204 - 1222) son-in-law of Alexios III 84.
John III Doukas Vatatzes (1192 - 1254, ruled 1222 - 1254) son-in-law of Theodore I 85.
Theodore II Doukas Laskaris (1221 - 1258, ruled 1254 - 1258) son of John III 86.
John IV Doukas Laskaris (1250 - 1305, ruled 1258 - 1261) son of Theodore II
At around this time the emperors began using the title, that is, King of Kings, ruling over Kings.
87.
Michael VIII Palaiologos (1224 - 1282, ruled 1259 - 1282) great-grandson of Alexios III Angelos 88.
Andronikos II Palaiologos the Elder (1258 - 1332, ruled 1282 - 1328) son of Michael VIII 89.
Andronikos III Palaiologos the Younger (1297 - 1341, ruled 1328 - 1341) grandson of Andronikos II 90.
John V Palaiologos (1332 - 1391, ruled 1341 - 1347) son of Andronikos III 91.
John VI Kantakouzenos (1295 - 1383, ruled outright 1347 - 1354) father-in-law of John V
92.
Andronikos IV Palaiologos (1348 - 1385, ruled 1376 - 1379) son of John V
93.
John VII Palaiologos (1370 - 1408, ruled 1390) son of Andronikos IV
94.
Manuel II Palaiologos (1350 - 1425, ruled 1391 - 1425) son of John V
95.
John VIII Palaiologos (1392 - 1448, ruled 1425 - 1448) son of Manuel II 96.
Constantine XI Palaiologos Dragases (1405 - 1453, ruled 1449 - 1453) son of Manuel II, not crowned in Constantinople
In 1453 Mehmed II overthrew the Byzantine Empire and claimed the title of Kaisar; his successors continued this claim.
See Ottomans for the complete list of Ottoman sultans.
97.
Marian Joniak (1633-1699)
The butterfly effect is an idea that says that a small change can make much bigger changes happen.
The idea started from weather prediction.
Now the term is used for many things, some are scientific, and some are not.
The butterfly effect usually works good for small things like rolling a dice.
Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller (July 12, 1895 July 1, 1983) was an American architect, engineer, author, designer, inventor, systems theorist, and futurist.
Fuller published more than 30 books, inventing and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", and "Synergetics".
He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs.
The best known of which is the geodesic dome.
Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres.
William B. Watterson II (born July 5, 1958) is an American artist and cartoonist.
He is most famous for his comic strip, "Calvin and Hobbes" which was published between 1985 and 1995.
He is a very private person and not much is publicly known about him.
He also did not want people to sell things with the pictures of his characters on them, and the only things he allowed to be made using his characters were books with collections of Calvin and Hobbes strips.
In light, black is lack of all color.
In painting, however, the black pigment is the combination of all colors.
In heraldry, black is called "sable".
The word black comes from Old English bl c ("black, dark", also, "ink"), from Proto-Germanic \* blakkaz ("burned"), and from Proto-Indo-European \* bhleg -.
In many languages, black has the same meaning as ink.
In science, an object that is black absorbs the light that hits it.
Because these objects do not reflect any light, the human eye ca n't see any color coming from that object.
The brain then sees these objects as black.
A way to create black objects is to mix pigments.
A pigment works by reflecting only the color of the pigment.
For example, a blue pigment absorbs all colors except blue.
By mixing pigments in the right quantities, black can be made.
Because black objects absorb light, they become warmer faster.
Black is associated with power, elegance, formality, anarchy, death, evil, and mystery.
Black is a dark color, the darkest color there is.
Black, along with gray and white, is a neutral color.
This means that it is not a hot color or a cool color.
Black is a color seen with fear and the unknown (black holes).
It can have a bad meaning (blacklist, ` black death ', black cat) or a good meaning (` in the black ', ` black is beautiful ').
Black can stand for strength and power.
It can be a formal, elegant, and high-class color (black tie, black Mercedes, black taco).
Black clothing is common in emo and goth subculture.
Bletchley Park is an estate in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, England.
It was the site of the United Kingdom 's main codebreaking team during World War II.
Now, Bletchley Park is home to the National Codes Centre and the National Museum of Computing.
The Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and Station X, a secret radio interception station, were also at Bletchley Park.
The information gained by workers at Bletchley Park was very important for the Allied war effort.
In 1939, in Warsaw, the Polish military showed French and British intelligence agents their cryptanalysis of the Enigma.
They promised each delegation a Polish-built Enigma.
Having an actual Enigma machine, along with how to use it, was a much needed start for the British work at Bletchley Park by Alan Turing, Dilly Knox and other mathematicians.
The high-level intelligence produced at Bletchley Park, codenamed Ultra, provided crucial help to the Allied war effort.
It was vital during the Battle of the Atlantic, when the German U-boat submarine fleet sank merchant shipping in an attempt to starve Britain of supplies.
Winston Churchill was later to state: The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war.
Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome.
Sir Harry Hinsley (a Bletchley veteran and the official historian of British Intelligence during the Second World War) said that Ultra shortened the war by two to four years.
The outcome of the war would have been uncertain without it.
Bede (also Saint Bede, or the Venerable Bede) (673 735), was a monk and an early historian of the Church in England.
He was a member of the sister Northumbrian monasteries of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow.
He spent a great deal of time at Jarrow with its large library.
Both were in the English county of Durham (now Tyne and Wear).
He is well known as an author and scholar, whose best-known work, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) gained him the title "The father of English history".
Bede became respectfully known as Venerable Bede soon after his death, but this was not linked to consideration for sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church.
Bede himself said he was born in 673 and on the lands of the monastery of Wearmouth.
At age seven he was presented by his family to the Abbot of Wearmouth, Benedict Biscop, to be educated.
Bede does n't say if his family was noble or not.
Bede was ordained a deacon when he was nineteen and at age thirty he was ordained a priest.
While he was active in his community Bede found study, writing and teaching his favorite activities.
He studied the Bible and Latin.
He learned Latin because that was the language of the Bible and other books in the monastery library.
His teaching would have been very basic and his opinions were very conventional (not radical in any way).
At the end of his life, Bede became ill and had difficulty breathing.
He went about the tasks of finishing some writings and giving away the few things that he owned.
Bede died on Ascension Day, 26 May 735.
Bede wrote many scientific, historical and theological works in his time.
Many were copied and used by other monasteries in England and Western Europe.
He had one work in particular that he is famous for.
One of the most valuable and important sources on Anglo-Saxon history is Bede 's Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation.
Bede spent most of his life at Jarrow and this is where he wrote his history.
The Ecclesiastical History is made up of five books and about 400 pages written in Latin.
It contains 800 years of the history of England from the time of Caesar to the date of its completion (731).
The last chapter is about Bede himself.
One man who made Bede 's work possible was Benedict Biscop.
He founded the Wearmouth and Jarrow monasteries.
More importantly he created the library that Bede 's got most of his information from.
By the time of his death in 689 he had completed four trips to Rome and the south and brought back large collections of books each time.
Bede 's work would still not be possible if not for Ceolfrid, the fourth abbot.
He doubled the size of the library left by Benedict Biscop.
Bede himself traveled no farther than York and Lindisfarne.
There is no record of his ever visiting libraries in distant places.
Bede says the following about his sources:
Bubble tea, also called pearl tea or Boba, is a drink which comes from Taichung, Taiwan.
It is made by mixing black tea with non-dairy creamer or milk and adding round "pearl" tapioca.
There are many flavors other than the original one.
Green tea can be used instead of black tea.
Extra items such as honey, coffee or cocoa can be added.
Pudding or coconut cubes can be used instead of pearl tapioca.
When it was first invented, not many people were interested in it.
But after a bubble tea maker was interviewed on a Japanese TV program, it became popular among people of all ages.
Bubble tea has now arrived in England and the rest of Europe.
Most bubble tea recipes contain a tea base mixed with fruit or milk, to which chewy tapioca balls or fruit jellies are added.
Ice - mixed versions are usually mixed with fruit or syrup, resulting in a slushy softness.
There are many varieties of the drink with a huge range of ingredients like coconut or mango.
The two most popular types are bubble milk tea with tapioca and bubble milk green tea with tapioca.
At first, people made bubble tea without tapioca pearls.
But Taiwanese people started to find substances to make the sweetened flavor.
Tapioca came form the cassava plant, which is a root of the trees from South America.
This plant is now farmed and enjoyed around the world
Four positive nutrients that tapioca provide are carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and organic compounds.
These include a very low level of fat, cholesterol, and sodium.
It is also known as the source of fiber, good cholesterol, and protein.
But bubble tea has Cyanogen that are transformed in humans and animals after the plant tissue has been weakened.
The blood remains oxygenated after it passes through your body and back to the lungs.
Bubble tea is found in Taiwanese restaurants and commonly prepared by shaking ice, milk, tea, and sugar in a cocktail shaker which resulted in a lot of tapioca bubbles.
People use the same preparation to make bubble tea, just now with the added Pearls.
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns.
Battleships are larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers.
As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a nation 's naval power from about 1875 up until World War II.
With the rise of air power, guided missiles, and guided bombs, large guns were no longer deemed necessary to establish naval superiority and as a result battleships faded from use.
Battleships are well protected and have good armor, big cannons and heavy anti-aircraft defences.
They also are very suitable for amphibious support gunnery (that is: shooting targets on coast or inland) as they can shoot accurately and far.
They also make good flagships.
That is why United States Navy used the battleships until 2004, when the last battleships were made museums.
In Norse mythology, Bifr st is the bridge between the land of mortals, Midgard, and the land of the gods, Asgard.
The gods cross it every day to meet and decide things at Urdarbrunn (Well of Urd) under the tree Yggdrasill.
The bridge is a rainbow.
It was built by the sir and is guarded by the god Heimdall.
Only the thunder god Thor was not allowed to use the rainbow, because he may break it.
The bridge will be destroyed at the end of the world, Ragnar k, when the army of giants and the dead run on it to attack Asgard.
Alternative names: Bilr st, sbr, Bifrost.
Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke (born 9 December 1929) was the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia as leader of the Australian Labor Party.
He was the third longest serving Prime Minister of Australia.
He was a union leader before he entered parliament in 1980.
He became leader only a little while before the 1983 election but he defeated Malcolm Fraser.
His government made many changes, like the Whitlam government, but did it more slowly and with more planning.
His government moved Labor to the right economically.
His leadership was challenged twice by Paul Keating.
He lost the second time and retired.
Hawke has been married twice.
During office, he was married to Hazel Hawke n e Masterson, a respected "first lady".
Just before Hawke became prime minister, author Blanche d'Alpuget wrote a biography about him.
Hawke married d'Alpuget in 1995.
Bragi was one of the newest gods in the mythology of the Vikings.
He was often seen with a harp.
He was shown as an old man with long gray hair and a long gray beard.
He died at the tusks of the Dwarven battle-boar at Ragnarok.
His wife was I unn, keeper of the apples of the Gods.
Bragi was also the god of music and the harp.
He woke the world up in the morning with his harp music.
Blaise Pascal (1623 1662) was a French mathematician.
He was born in Clermont-Ferrand, France.
His mother died when he was three years old.
His father 's name was tienne.
He had two sisters, Jaqueline and Gilberte.
Pascal was completely educated by his father.
Pascal was considered a child prodigy.
Though best known for his works in math, including the creation of Pascal 's Triangle, which is named after him, and developments in the field of probability, Pascal was also a scientist.
He wrote in support of the scientific method and also contributed to physics.
Later he wrote two books about Christianity.
Also, the Pascal unit was named after him.
Pascal died in Paris, France at 39.
He had several illnesses; it is not known which of them caused his death.
Pascal invented a form of counting machine which helped inventors create the calculator in the 20th century.
The Baseball Hall of Fame is a museum in Cooperstown, New York that shows the history of baseball and some of the most famous baseball players and other people, especially in North America.
The Hall of Fame opened in 1939.
It was started by the Clark Foundation.
The Hall of Fame was started to help bring visitors to Cooperstown which had been poor for a long time.
Some people tell a story that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown, but the story is not true.
But the baseball leagues and teams decided that it did not matter, and helped make the Hall of Fame popular.
The museum has a lot of information on the history of baseball, and a lot of old baseball things, like bats, balls, and uniforms of famous baseball players or important baseball games.
It also has a baseball art collection and a library.
Next to the museum is Doubleday Field, where a baseball game is played every year as part of a party about adding new people to the museum 's stories.
When someone is "in the Hall of Fame," it means they have a story of their life in baseball shown in the museum.
Every year new people are chosen to be added to the Hall of Fame.
These people can be baseball players, baseball team managers, and other people who work with the game of baseball.
Awards are also given for baseball sports reporters.
As of 2012, there are a total of 297 people in the Hall of Fame.
Two groups pick people to add to the Hall of Fame.
One group is the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA).
This group can pick players who have been retired from Major League Baseball for five years, and played in MLB for at least 10 years.
Each member of the group writes down their 10 top choices, and anyone who is on at least three-fourths of the members ' lists is added to the Hall of Fame.
The other group that chooses people to add to the Hall of Fame is called the Veterans Committee, which since 2011 has been split into three separate groups (or subcommittees).
The Veterans Committee votes on people who are not eligible for the BBWAA ballot players who have been retired for 20 or more years, managers, team and league executives, and umpires.
Each of the three groups is made up of Hall of Famers, baseball executives, media members, and baseball historians, and votes on people who made their greatest contributions in a different era of baseball:
Each of these three groups votes once every three years, and they rotate in the order listed above.
The Expansion Era Committee chooses from among 12 people, while the other committees choose from among 10.
Each committee member can vote for four people, and anyone who gets at least three-fourths of the votes is also added to the Hall of Fame.
Some people did not like how the Veterans Committee picked people for the Hall of Fame.
For a while, it seemed like the Committee liked to only pick people who they had worked with before.
This meant some people who might have been good enough for the Hall of Fame were missed, because they never worked with the people on the Committee.
The Committee was changed in 2001, but in the three times it voted, it did not choose anyone for the Hall.
It was changed again for the 2008 elections; in three election cycles, it voted in two managers and three executives, but only one player.
The Committee was changed yet again for the 2011 elections; so far, the new Committee has elected one executive and one player.
In 1982, some of the museum 's collection of baseball items were loaned to the head of the American baseball leagues, and one of his workers sold them for money.
Even though the money was paid back, it made the Hall of Fame look bad.
There are some players who are not allowed to work in baseball anymore because they broke some very important rules, but were still very good players.
The Hall of Fame does not allow people who were kicked out of baseball to be in its museum, but some people do not agree with keeping some of these people out.
Bishop is the title of a rank in the clergy of a Christian Church.
The diocese which a bishop governs is called a bishopric.
A Bishop may be given the rank of Archbishop in an Archdiocese.
Usually, there are priests, then there are bishops.
However, some Protestant churches have no bishops or archbishops.
The Presbyterian church is an example.
The Church of Scotland is headed by a Moderator, who is elected by the General Assembly each year.
Other Christian movements have neither bishops nor priests: Quakers are a good example.
In the Catholic church, the Pope is chosen by all the cardinals from amongst their number.
According to church law, this does not have to be the case: any male, unmarried, baptized Christian who is judged fit for the office can become pope.
However, the last pope who was not a bishop was Urban VI (elected in 1378).
The pope is also the called ` the Bishop of Rome '.
In fact he rules an independent state within Rome, called the Vatican.
All Roman Catholic bishops answer to the pope (or to patriarchs in some orthodox churches).
In the Anglican church, bishops are governed by Archbishops.
Usually a bishop can be identified by a special hat, called a mitre.
Bordeaux is a city in France, the prefecture of the Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes region and the Gironde department, on the Atlantic Ocean.
About 1,150,000 people live in the area around the city.
Bordeaux has a temperate oceanic climate (Cfb in the Koeppen climate classification).
It is famous for wines made in the region near the city.
Bordeaux is also famous for its art.
Bones are parts of the human or animal skeleton of vertebrates.
They are stiff organs which make up the endoskeleton.
Our body is made of flesh and blood built on a framework of bones.
Without our bones, we could not stand up or move about.
They also protect organs inside our body.
The skull protects the brain and the ribs protect the heart and lungs.
The jaw and cheekbones support the facial muscles, which help us smile.
The number of bones in a human 's neck is the same as a giraffe 's.
The bones are the framework of the body.
Without them we would be a pile of skin on the floor and would not be able to move.
The bones are also very important for our protection, that is, the rib cage protects the heart and lungs, cranium (skull) protects the brain, pelvis protects the reproductive organs.
Bones need to be maintained by taking regular exercise and by having lots of calcium from foods like cheese, milk, and dark leafy greens such as spinach.
The red bone marrow in the middle of the bigger bones is what makes the red blood cells that we need.
Osteons are the parts of the haversian system.
They are found in the bone in most mammals, and many reptiles, birds and amphibians.
Inside the osteons are bone cells called osteocytes, each living in its own small space.
Osteocytes make contact with each other by cytoplasmic processes through a network of tiny canals.
This allows the exchange of nutrients and metabolic waste.
Collagen fibers in each ring of cells (` lamellae ') give them structure.
Osteons have a hole down the middle, called the haversian canal.
This canal contains the bone 's blood supply.
It contains capillaries, and nerve fibers.
Inside long bones is a central core which is not there to give strength and structure.
It contains the bone marrow, one of the most important tissues in the vertebrate body.
It produces blood cells for the blood system, and lymphocytes for the immune system.
Blythe Katherine Danner (born February 3, 1943) is an American actress.
She is the widow of movie director Bruce Paltrow.
She is the mother of actress Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jake Paltrow.
She has starred in many Broadway plays and movies.
Danner was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
She is the daughter of Katharine (nee Kile) and Harry Earl Danner, a bank executive.
She has a brother, opera singer\/actor Harry Danner, a sister, performer-turned-director Dorothy (Dottie) Danner, and a half-brother, violin maker William Moennig.
Danner is of part Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry, and one of her great-grandmothers was born in Barbados (a White Barbadian).
Bioleaching is getting metals from their ores by using living organisms.
This is much cleaner than the traditional method using cyanide.
Bioleaching is one of several methods used to recover copper, zinc, lead, arsenic, antimony, nickel, molybdenum, gold, silver, and cobalt.
Bioleaching uses certain types of bacteria to produce a solution called a "leachate".
By leaving these bacteria with a low-grade metal ore, they can produce leachates which have a compound of that metal.
Because this is in a solution it can be used in electrolysis to make the pure metal.
This only produces small amounts each time, and is repeated to make it economically viable.
Bouldering is a type of rock climbing.
It is climbing without rope and harness.
It is climbing heights at which the climber does not usually suffer serious injuries in case of a drop.
To protect from injuries there are usually special bouldering mats underneath the climber.
It is usually practiced on large natural boulders and in climbing gyms.
Boulder routes are called "problems", because this style is like solving climbing-problems.
The height of boulder problems is rarely higher than 3-5 meters.
Otherwise the risk of injuries is too high.
Often other climbers, who stand on the ground, spot the climbers to protect them from hitting the ground with the head or the spine.
The equipment used by boulderers is not much.
They use special climbing shoes, a bouldering mat, some brushes to clean the grips and sports tape.
Bouldering was invented in the late 19th century.
It has been first documented in France, England and Switzerland.
It has been practiced for a long time but in the 1930s and 1940s it was practiced for its own sake in Fontainebleau in France.
Today many rock climbers are specialized boulderers and it is their favorite style of climbing.
The boiling point of a substance is the temperature at which the substance boils, or enters a state of rapid evaporation.
For pure water this is 100 Celsius or 212 Fahrenheit.
This is measured at one atmosphere, that is, the air pressure at sea level.
Boiling points can be changed in several ways.
The addition of solutes or other substances usually changes the boiling point.
Changing the pressure on a liquid changes its boiling point.
The boiling point of a liquid depends on the pressure of the surrounding air.
An increase in air pressure increases the boiling point; a decrease decreases the boiling point.
In the low pressure environment at the top of Mt Everest for example, water boils at only 69 C. (156.2 F).
It can also be defined in terms of vapor pressure as the temperature at which vapor pressure of liquid becomes equal to atmospheric pressure
If you add sugar, salt or any other impurities to the water, it will usually make the boiling point higher.
An exception is alcohol, which will have a lower boiling point.
The Big Bang is a scientific theory about how the universe started, and then made the groups of stars (called galaxies) we see today.
The universe began as very hot, small, and dense, with no stars, atoms, form, or structure (called a "singularity").
Then about 14 billion years ago, space expanded very quickly (thus the name "Big Bang"), resulting in the formation of atoms, which eventually led to the creation of stars and galaxies.
The universe is still expanding today, but getting colder as well.
As a whole, space is growing and the temperature is falling as time passes.
Cosmology is the name given to how the universe began and how it has developed.
Scientists that study cosmology agree the Big Bang theory matches what they have observed so far.
Fred Hoyle called the theory the "Big Bang" on his radio show.
He did not believe the Big Bang was correct.
Scientists who did not agree with him thought the name was funny and decided to use it.
Since then, Fred Hoyle 's reasons for not agreeing with the theory have been proven wrong.
Scientists base the Big Bang theory on many different observations.
The most important is the redshift of very far away galaxies.
Redshift is the Doppler Effect occurring in light.
When an object moves away from earth, it looks reddish because the movement stretches the wavelength.
The reddish color occurs because red is the longest wavelength on the visible spectrum.
The more redshift there is, the faster the object is moving away.
By measuring the redshift, scientists proved that the universe is expanding and can even work out how fast the object is moving.
With precise observation and measurements, scientists believe that universe was a singularity approximately 13.8 billion years ago.
Because most things become colder as they expand, the universe is assumed to have been very hot when it started.
Other observations that support the Big Bang theory are the amounts of chemical elements in the universe.
Amounts of hydrogen, helium, and lithium seem to agree with the theory of the Big Bang.
Scientists also have found "cosmic microwaves background radiation".
This radiation is known as radio waves, and they are everywhere in the universe.
Even so, it is now very weak and cold, but a long time ago it was very strong and very hot.
The Big Bang might also have been the beginning of time.
If the Big Bang was the beginning of time, then there was no universe before the Big Bang, since there was no concept of "before" without time.
Other ideas state that the Big Bang was not the beginning of time 13.8 billion years ago.
Instead, some believe that there was a different universe before and it may have been very different from the one we know today.
The Bantu languages (or Narrow Bantu languages) are a branch of the Niger-Congo languages.
There are about 520 languages in the Bantu family, 670 languages in the Southern Bantoid branch which includes Bantu, and 1,532 in Niger-Congo.
Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of the present day country of Cameroon; i.e., in the regions commonly known as central Africa, east Africa, and southern Africa.
Parts of the Bantu area include languages from other language families (see map).
The Bantu language with the largest total number of speakers is Swahili.
The Bantu language with the largest number of native speakers is Shona with 13.8 million speakers in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana and Zambia.
Zulu comes second with 10.3 million speakers.
The Bantu languages came from the region of eastern Nigeria or Cameroon.
About 2000 years ago the Bantu people spread southwards and eastwards, introducing agriculture and iron working and colonizing much of the continent.
Some words from various Bantu languages have been borrowed into western languages.
These include:
A bus is a large wheeled vehicle meant to carry many different persons along with the driver.
It is larger than a car.
The name is a shortened version of omnibus, which means "for everyone" in Latin.
Buses used to be called omnibuses, but people now simply call them "buses".
Buses are an important part of public transport in places all over the world.
Many people who do not have cars, especially the third world countries, use buses to get around.
Buses make it easy for them to get to where they want to go.
A place on a sidewalk\/pavement where people wait for a local bus is called a bus stop.
A building where people wait for a long-distance bus or where lots of buses meet is called a bus station.
There are many types of bus around the world.
Bali is an island and a province in Indonesia.
The province includes the island of Bali and a few other islands.
The island is known as an island of a thousand temples.
There are about 3,100,000 people in Bali.
Bali 's most important city is Denpasar.
Hinduism is Bali 's largest religion.
More than 90 % of its people are Hindus.
Textiles and garments are 45 % of their exports.
The currency in Bali is the Indonesian rupiah (IDR).
Bali 's food mainly consists of rice and mostly spicy foods.
Tourists often enjoy a local specialty called babi guling (roast pig).
Bali has many fruits, such as pineapples, mangos, passionfruits, bananas, coconuts, rambutans, selaks, durians, mangosteens and different kinds of oranges and grapefruits.
Bali is also known for its folk music which is played on a group of instruments called a gamelan.
The literacy rate for Bali is 45.55 %.
Bali is a popular place for tourists.
They have lots of historic temples.
Bali is known for its great views and its beautiful beaches and volcanoes.
Bali has cool days between April and October and hot days from November to March.
Bali had a major terrorist bombing on October 12, 2002 killing more than 200 people.
The attacks were at a local nightclub in the tourist town of Kuta.
Bali is famous for its many lovely rice fields (sawah) and Hindu ceremonies.
While half of the tourists never get farther than Kuta, the towns of Padang Bai and Amed are quite popular.
Bali is a volcanic island.
The two main volcanos are Mount Agung and Mount Batur.
Mount Agung is sacred to the Balinese people.
A number of tourists are in prison in Bali.
Australians Schapelle Corby and a group known as the Bali Nine are serving long terms in Kerobokan Prison and several of the Nine have been sentenced to death.
Bulgarian (', (b l arski zik)) is an Indo-European language.
It is spoken mainly in Bulgaria and parts of Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine and Moldova.
The Bulgarian language is similar to the Macedonian and the Serbian languages, which are part of the South Slavic branch of Slavic languages.
There are nearly 7 million people in 2011 who use Bulgarian as their main language.
Bulgarian is a part of the so-called Balkan "Sprachbund" or linguistic group, which also includes Greek, Macedonian, Romanian, Albanian and Torlakian dialect of the Serbian language.
This does not mean the languages are necessarily related, but that they share certain loanwords and grammatical characteristics due to frequent contact over the years.
Brown University is an American private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States and is a member of the Ivy League.
It was founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, early in the reign of King George III (1760 1820) and before American independence from the British Empire.
Brown is the third oldest institution of higher education in New England and seventh oldest in the United States.
Brown is ranked as the 14th national university behind Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, University of Chicago, Duke, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Cal Tech, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, and Northwestern.
Brown was the first college in the country to accept students of any religion.
It is the second last ranked Ivy League University with Cornell being the last.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS, (18 May 1872 2 February 1970), was one of the world 's best-known intellectuals.
He was a philosopher, logician, and mathematician.
He was born in Wales, but spent most of his life in England.
He worked mostly in the 20th century.
Bertrand Russell wrote a lot.
He also tried to make philosophy popular.
He gave his opinion on many topics.
He wrote the essay, "On Denoting", which has been described as one of the most influential essays in philosophy in the 20th Century.
He wrote on very serious issues as well as everyday things.
Continuing his family 's tradition of being involved in politics, he was a well known liberal as well as a socialist and anti-war activist for most of his long life.
Millions looked up to Russell as a prophet of the creative and rational life.
At the same time, his stances on many topics were extremely controversial.
Born at the height of Britain 's economic and political ascendancy, he died of influenza nearly a century later when the British Empire had all but vanished, its power dissipated in two victorious, but debilitating world wars.
Russell 's voice carried enormous moral authority, even into his early 90s.
Russell supported nuclear disarmament a lot, but did not support the American war in Vietnam even when it was popular.
In 1950, Russell was made a Nobel Laureate in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".
He died of influenza.
"Bertrand Russell would not have wished to be called a saint of any description; but he was a great and good man."
: A.J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell, NY: Viking Press, 1972.
"It is difficult to overstate the extent to which Russell 's thought dominated twentieth century analytic philosophy: virtually every strand in its development either originated with him or was transformed by being transmitted through him.
Analytic philosophy itself owes its existence more to Russell than to any other philosopher."
: Nicholas Griffin, The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
"Russell 's prose has been compared by T.S. Eliot to that of David Hume 's.
I would rank it higher, for it had more color, juice, and humor.
But to be lucid, exciting and profound in the main body of one 's work is a combination of virtues given to few philosophers.
Bertrand Russell has achieved immortality by his philosophical writings."
: Sidney Hook, Out of Step, An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century, NY: Carol & Graff, 1988.
"Russell 's books should be bound in two colors, those dealing with mathematical logic in red and all students of philosophy should read them; those dealing with ethics and politics in blue and no one should be allowed to read them."
: Ludwig Wittgenstein quoted in Rush Rhees, Recollections of Wittgenstein, Oxford Paperbacks, 1984.
Of the Principia:"... its enduring value was simply a deeper understanding of the central concepts of mathematics and their basic laws and interrelationships.
Their total translatability into just elementary logic and a simple familiar two-place predicate, membership, is of itself a philosophical sensation."
: W.V. Quine, From Stimulus to Science, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
"Oh, Bertrand Russell!
Oh, Hewlett Johnson!
Where, oh where, was your flaming conscience at that time?"
: Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Harper & Row, 1974.
In other words, it was specifically not for his incontestably great contributions to philosophy The Principles of Mathematics, ` On Denoting ' and Principia Mathematica that he was being honored, but for the later work that his fellow philosophers were unanimous in regarding as inferior.
: Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell, The Ghost of Madness, p. 332.
"He was the most fascinating man I have ever known, the only man I ever loved, the greatest man I shall ever meet, the wittiest, the gayest, the most charming.
It was a privilege to know him, and I thank God he was my father."
: Katharine Tait, My Father Bertrand Russell, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975, p. 202.
The Boeing 767 is a passenger airplane manufactured by Boeing.
The Boeing 767 is a large airplane; however, it is Boeing 's smallest widebody (an aircraft which has two aisles), larger than the Boeing 757 but smaller than the 777.
The passengers sit two across, aisle, three across, aisle, and then two across.
It can seat a maximum of 375 to 410 passengers.
The first airplane, American Airlines, Flight 11 to hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was a Boeing 767.
The 767 can have engines supplied by Rolls-Royce, General Electric or Pratt and Whitney.
The Boeing 767 was produced from 1981 and remains in production today.
Boeing will replace the 767 with the 787.
Bronze is a metal alloy.
Bronze is mostly copper, with some tin added (usually between 5 % and 20 % tin).
Bronze was the first alloy that was used by humans.
The first nation that used Bronze was Egypt about 3500 years B.C..
This gave the name for the Bronze Age.
Bronze is stronger than copper or tin alone.
Bronze lasts longer than copper.
Pure copper can be oxidized by air and also by water.
When copper is oxidized by air or water, it turns green (the color of "copper oxide"), and falls apart.
When people learned how to make and work iron, the Bronze Age ended, and the Iron Age started.
Iron can be made harder than bronze, but is susceptible to corrosion (see rust).
Iron also wears away faster than bronze, when different pieces are moving against each other.
Iron is very common, and easy to make.
For this reason, iron costs less than bronze.
This is the reason why iron is now used where bronze used to be used.
Bronze is still used to make many parts of machines.
We choose to make a part out of bronze when it is important that the part last for a long time around water and air, or that the part not wear away.
The main things that are made out of it are pump parts, bearings, bells, electrical components, gears, valves, and other things.
Bronze parts are usually cast in a foundry.
After they are cast, bronze parts can also be worked in a lathe or milling machine, or drilled.
Bronze is not normally worked with a hammer like iron.
When an alloy is called Bronze, it usually means the alloy of copper and tin.
When two words are used to name an alloy, and one of the words is Bronze, this means that the alloy is made mostly from copper.
The other word tells us what other metal was combined with copper to make this alloy.
Bronze should not be confused with Brass which is a different alloy of copper and Zinc.
The Benelux is an economic union in Western Europe.
It includes three neighboring monarchies, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
They are in the north western European region between France and Germany.
The name is formed from the beginning of each country 's name.
The Benelux region has a total population of about 27,562,220 and occupies an area of about 74,640 km (28,819 sq mi).
The treaty establishing the Benelux Customs Union was signed on 5 September 1944, by the governments in exile of the three countries in London, and entered into force in 1948.
It ceased to exist on 1 November 1960, when it was replaced by the Benelux Economic Union after a treaty signed in The Hague on 3 February 1958.
It was preceded by the (still existent) Belgium-Luxembourg Economic Union, established on 25 July 1921.
Its founding contributed to the founding of the European Union (EU).
A Benelux Parliament (originally referred to as Interparliamentary Consultative Council) was created in 1955.
This parliamentary assembly is composed of 21 members of the Dutch parliament, 21 members of the Belgian national and regional parliaments, and 7 members of the Luxembourgish parliament.
The treaty establishing the Benelux Economic Union (Benelux Economische Unie\/Union conomique Benelux) was signed 3 February 1958 and came into force in 1960 to promote the free movement of workers, capital, services, and goods in the region.
Its secretariat-general is located in Brussels.
In 1965, the treaty establishing a Benelux Court of Justice was signed.
It entered into force in 1975.
The Court, composed of judges from the highest courts of the three States, has to guarantee the uniform interpretation of common legal rules.
This international judicial institution is in Brussels.
The Benelux is particularly active in the field of intellectual property.
The three countries established a Benelux Trademarks Office and a Benelux Designs Office, both situated in The Hague.
In 2005, they concluded a treaty establishing a Benelux Organisation for Intellectual Property which replaced both offices upon its entry into force on 1 September 2006.
Dutch and French are the official languages of the Benelux and its institutions.
Out of the total of 27.2 million people living in the member states 22.5 million (83 percent) speak Dutch and 3.9 million (14 %) speak French, of whom 3.4 million are Walloons and 0.5 million are Luxembourgians (that speak German and Luxembourgish), whereas 3 % is bilingual Dutch-French.
In 2000, Belgium and the Netherlands jointly hosted the UEFA European Championship.
In June 2007, representatives of the three countries announced they would be, as a "single country", bidding for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
The treaty establishing the Benelux Economic Union will expire in 2010.
It will probably be replaced by a new legal framework.
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper published in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area.
It was started in 1846.
It is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States.
It has been awarded eight Pulitzer Prizes in its history, including four for editorial writing and three for photography.
In 1981, it became a tabloid newspaper.
George Herman "Babe" Ruth, Jr. (February 6, 1895 August 16, 1948) was a famous baseball player during the 1920s and 1930s in Major League Baseball.
He played with the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, and the Boston Braves, and hit 714 home runs in his career.
Only two players, Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds, have hit more.
Babe Ruth has been called by many nicknames.
Some of the most common are: "The Great Bambino", "The Sultan of Swat", "The colossus of Clout", and "The King Of Crash".
Ruth learned to play baseball while growing up in Baltimore, Maryland.
His first Major League Baseball (MLB) team was the Boston Red Sox.
Ruth began playing as a pitcher.
He had some of the best pitching statistics in baseball.
The Red Sox won the World Series in 1915, 1916, and 1918.
At that time, there was no designated hitter rule in the American League, where the Red Sox played, so Ruth got chances to hit as a pitcher.
The team realized that he was also good at hitting.
In 1918, Ruth began hitting more and pitching less.
He became an outfielder.
Ruth was becoming a star player.
However, by 1919, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee was having problems with money.
In 1920, the Red Sox sold Ruth to the New York Yankees for cash.
Even though the Red Sox had won several World Series in the years before this, they would not win another one until 2004.
Many baseball fans believed that the Red Sox had become "cursed" by trading Ruth, and called this the "Curse of the Bambino".
(When the Red Sox finally did win a World Series in 2004, they beat the Yankees in the American League Championship to get there.)
Ruth spent most of the rest of his career with the Yankees, where he became one of the most famous players in baseball history.
Ruth helped the Yankees win World Series championships in 1923, 1927, 1928, and 1932.
He left the Yankees after the 1934 season and played one last season with the Boston Braves in 1935.
In 1927, Ruth hit 60 home runs, which was then a record for the most home runs in one season.
The record was broken by Roger Maris in 1961.
Ruth died of throat cancer on August 16, 1948.
He also had a.474 career on-base percentage, which is second all-time to Ted Williams '.482.
A barge is a boat with a flat bottom, mostly built to transport heavy goods along rivers and canals.
Some barges can not move themselves, and must be pushed or pulled by towboats.
British English is the kind of English language which is used in the United Kingdom, and in most countries which were in the British Empire.
In the United Kingdom, many different people say words in different ways.
For example: a man from a place near London may not say his "r "s the same as a man from Scotland or a man from Northern Ireland.
Across the country the accent is different.
For instance in Liverpool one speaks with a "scouse" accent or in London one speaks with a "cockney" accent.
Different variations on all of British English exist from the manner in which words are pronounced to the manner in which they are spelt.
One place people speak English in a different way is Cornwall, where the Cornish dialect is spoken.
Britain, like other countries, has languages other than English.
In Wales many speak Welsh; in Scotland some people speak Gaelic, and in Ireland a few people speak Irish.
However, that is not the subject of this particular article.
British English often keeps more traditional ways of spelling words than American English.
In British English, "dock" refers to the water in the space between two "piers" or "wharfs".
In American English, the "pier" or "wharf" could be called a "dock", and the water between would be a "slip".
American English is only an official language in the United States.
In Canada, American English spelling is sometimes used, but traditionally, British English is used.
Although Commonwealth English is the most spoken, American English is seen more often on the internet.
American English vocabulary dominates the visual media: "movies" (British: "films") and television.
All Commonwealth nations and Africa learn Commonwealth English, while American English is often learned in the Americas and China.
Z pronounced ` Zee ' is only seen in the U.S.A and less commonly in Canada, while Z pronounced ` Zed ' is spoken almost everywhere else.
The United Kingdom and Ireland use British layout keyboards, while Australia, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S.A use American layout keyboards.
In continental Europe English as a second language is nowadays sometimes even taught in American English, except perhaps in Scandinavia and the Netherlands.
A battle is a fight between two or more groups where each group is trying to defeat (beat) the others.
Battles are most often fought during wars, military campaigns, or two or more people fighting.
If two armies fight many battles over period of time it is called a war.
The ground on which a battle is fought is called a battlefield.
Battles can very important, for example the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, which was a draw in military terms, changed the history of the Balkans, Europe, and the entire world.
The outcome changed Ottoman politics and had influence in the region for well over 500 years.
Botany is the study of plants.
It is a science.
It is a branch of biology, and is also called plant biology.
It is sometimes called phytology.
Scientists who study botany are called botanists.
They study how plants work.
A bacteriophage is a virus that infects bacteria.
The term is commonly shortened to phage.
Bacteriophages are similar to viruses that infect eukaryotes (plants, animals, and fungi) in that there are many different kinds of structures and functions.
Bacteriophages are typically made of an outer protein hull that has genetic material inside it.
The genetic material can be ssRNA, dsRNA, ssDNA, or double-stranded DNA between 5 and 500 kilo base pairs long with either circular or linear arrangement.
Bacteriophages are usually between 20 and 200 nanometers in size.
The common buzzard (Buteo buteo) is a bird of prey, very widespread in the Old World.
It lives in most of Europe and into Asia.
It is between 51 and 57 cm in length.
The wings are between 110 150 cm (48 60 inch) when spread out.
They can have a lot of different colors, from almost pure white to black.
Usually, they are brown.
It breeds in woodlands.
It hunts over open land.
It eats mainly small mammals like pheasant, rabbit and also lizards.
It can be seen walking over recently ploughed fields looking for worms and insects.
Buzzards do not normally form flocks, but several may be seen together on migration or in a good habitat.
Pairs mate for life.
Bohrium is a chemical element.
At the periodic table of the elements it is at position 107.
It is named after Niels Bohr.
Barnard 's Star, also known as Barnard 's Runaway Star, is a very low-mass red dwarf star approximately six light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Ophiuchus (the Snake-holder).
It is very old, and moving relatively fast.
In 1916, the American astronomer E. E. Barnard measured its proper motion as 10.3 arcseconds per year.
This is the largest-known proper motion of any star relative to the Sun.
At a distance of about 1.8 parsecs from the Solar System, or just under six light-years, Barnard 's Star is the nearest known star in the constellation Ophiuchus, and the fourth-closest known individual star to the Sun, after the three components of the Alpha Centauri system.
Despite its proximity, Barnard 's Star, at a dim apparent magnitude of about nine, is not visible with the unaided eye; however, it is much brighter in infrared light than it is in visible light.
Barnard 's Star has been the subject of much study, and it has probably received more attention from astronomers than any other class M dwarf star due to its proximity and favorable location for observation near the celestial equator.
Barnard 's Star is also notable as the target for Project Daedalus, a study on the possibility of fast, unmanned travel to nearby star systems.
At seven to 12 billion years of age, Barnard 's Star is considerably older than the Sun, and it might be among the oldest stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
Barnard 's Star rotates just once every 130 days (compared with just over 25 days for the Sun).
In 1998 astronomers saw an intense flare, showing that Barnard 's Star is a ` flare star '.
Barnard 's Star has the variable star designation V2500 Ophiuchi.
The proper motion of Barnard 's Star is ` sideways ' relative to our line of sight to the Sun of 90 kilometers per second (km\/s).
The 10.3 seconds of arc it travels annually amount to a quarter of a degree in a human lifetime, roughly half the angular diameter of the full Moon.
The radial velocity of Barnard 's Star towards the Sun can be measured by its blue shift.
These measurements, combined with proper motion, suggest a true velocity relative to the Sun of about 140 km\/s.
While Barnard 's Star has the largest proper motion, the largest known true velocity of another star in the Milky Way belongs to Wolf 424 at 555 km\/s.
Barnard 's Star will make its closest approach to the Sun around AD 11,700, when it approaches to within about 3.8 light-years.
However, at that time, it will not be the nearest star, since Proxima Centauri will have moved even closer to the Sun.
Barnard 's Star will still be too dim to be seen with the naked eye at the time of its closest approach, since its apparent magnitude will be about 8.5 then.
After that it will gradually recede from the Sun.
The Bayer designation for stars uses Greek letters to assign names to stars.
For example:
It usually starts with the letter alpha (-RRB- assigned to the brightest star in the constellation, then going down the Greek alphabet to assign letters for other stars (beta, gamma, delta, etc.) in order of decreasing brightness.
Bo tes, pronounced with both ` O 's as ` bo tez ', is a constellation in the northern sky.
The name is from the Greek word, which means herdsman - someone who takes care of animals.
The constellation 's shape is like a kite.
Bo tes has the fourth brightest star in the night sky, called Arcturus.
The astronomer Ptolemy listed it in the 2nd century when he made a list of 48 constellations.
The Cloverleaf quasar is in the direction of Bootes.
The bassoon is the lowest of the four main instruments of the woodwind family.
Like the oboe, it has a double reed.
The reed is attached to a curved metal mouthpiece called a "crook" or "bocal" which is joined to the main part of the instrument.
This consists of two parts called bass joint and wing joint (or tenor joint).
These two are joined at the bottom by a U-shaped piece called the boot.
At the top of the instrument is the bell joint.
The instrument is quite heavy.
Some players have a neckstrap around their neck to support the weight, but usually they use a seat strap that connects at the bottom of the boot and the strap goes across the floor.
The bassoonist, a person who plays a bassoon, then sits on that strap.
The bassoon is held to the right side of the bassoonist and the top of the boot joint is usually level with the players hip.
The bassoon, when played right, can sound very beautiful.
The bassoon has one of the largest note ranges, going from low B flat to a high F on the top line of the treble clef.
The bassoon can also play in tenor clef, but usually plays bass clef.
Some bassoons have a white, ivory ring round the top of the bell joint.
These are German bassoons (called Heckel).
French bassoons (called Buffet) do not have this ring, and also sound quite different to German bassoons.
Bassoons have keys to help the player to cover all the holes, but these keys do not use the Boehm fingering system like the other woodwind instruments.
German bassoons use a system called the Heckel system, and French bassoons use the Buffet system.
To play the bassoon, it is very important to have lots of breathing support.
Like with the oboe, fast passages can be played using double tonguing (single tonguing is like saying tu-tu-tu-tu-tu, double tonguing is like saying te-ke-te-ke-te-ke).
In most music, the bassoon will spend a lot of time playing a bass line, perhaps the same notes as the cello or tuba.
It can sometimes sound quite amusing when playing an um-cha-um-cha accompaniment like in the Dance of the Cygnets from Tchaikovsky s Swan Lake.
It can sound very tuneful and sad as in the second movement of Rimsky Korsakov s Sheherazade.
Listen to the opening of Stravinsky s Rite of Spring where it plays some quite high notes to fool people that it is the Cor anglais or the English Horn.
Even a famous composer, Saint Sa ns, did not know what the instrument was.
Prokofiev uses the bassoon for grandfather s tune in Peter and the Wolf.
Also, to play the bassoon, a player needs big hands because the bassoon 's keys and holes are quite wide.
The holes are drilled in at an angle so that the upper register is not overblown and produces an unpleasant sound.
Whisper keys were also invented to prevent overblowing.
The bassoon is known for its reedy sound.
Its upper register is shrill and sometimes scary.
Middle register could be used for lullabies because of its majestic and soothing tone.
Its lower register is deep, dark, and could be used for scary movies and such.
The bassoon developed from a Renaissance instrument called the curtal or dulcian.
These were double reed instruments which often played with shawms.
In the Baroque period the bassoon became popular as an instrument to play the bass line, perhaps playing the same as the cello.
A man named Hotteterre made many parts of the modern bassoon.
In the late Baroque period composers like Antonio Vivaldi wrote concertos for bassoon and orchestra.
Some more famous bassoon concertos include one by Mozart, and in more recent times by Peter Maxwell Davies.
The bassoon was a very important instrument in the orchestra.
Mozart and Beethoven gave the bassoon important parts in the music.
In some pieces with a large orchestra a contrabassoon is used.
This plays an octave lower than a bassoon, taking it right down to bottom B flat or C on the piano.
Some contrabassoons are made to play a note lower, i.e. the very lowest note of the piano (A).
One might expect to see the contrabassoon sticking up high above all the other instruments in the orchestra, but in fact the tube keeps doing U-turns, making four parallel rows of tubing.
They are usually made with the bell pointing downwards.
The weight is supported by a peg to the floor.
The contrabassoon used to be shaped like a bassoon.
The contrabassoon adds richness to the sound of a full orchestra.
Listen carefully for the contrabassoon in the hymn-like introduction to the last movement of Symphony no 1 by Brahms.
It can be clearly heard, growling away, in the opening of the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand by Ravel.
Bipedalism is a form of movement on the ground.
Some species have evolved the ability to move on two limbs.
Those that do use their rear limbs.
Some animals move on two limbs all the time, they are called habitual bipeds.
Optional bipeds have an alternative (moving on four legs).
The Baltic languages are part of the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family.
Baltic languages are mostly spoken in the Baltics, around the Baltic sea.
Examples of Baltic languages spoken today are:
Bioinformatics or Computational biology is the study of large amounts of biological information.
Mostly, it focuses on molecules like DNA.
It is done mostly with the help of computers.
As species of living things change over time, the DNA contained in their cells change, from evolution.
If we can extract the information from living things today, and compare them to each other, we can see which living things are most closely related, much like comparing two editions of a book, the most similar can be thought to be the most closely related in time.
Doing this, biologists can construct family trees, or phylogenies.
By stitching together all the trees, a grand tree connecting all living things can be made, this is called the "Tree of Life".
Bioinformatics is integration of mathematical, statistical and computational method to analyze biological, biochemical and biophysical data.
Anything a cell could possibly want is stored in its DNA.
When a cell wants to build a protein, it finds the appropriate piece of DNA, makes a copy of it (called RNA), and uses the instructions in the copy to make the protein.
Proteins are the ` machinery ' of a cell.
They can perform many functions like transportation, structural support, movement and metabolism.
Proteins are made from amino acids.
There are twenty different amino acids that are used to build millions of different protein molecules.
The principle of bioinformatics is that these molecules can be studied by using computers to analyze the DNA, RNA, and amino acid sequences from which they are created.
Because there are so many different molecules, the best way we have of understanding how the entire system works is to use bioinformatics.
Chemists have developed ways to understand the shape and behavior of small molecules, using mathematical analysis.
They might use computers (or even just a pencil and paper) to study these molecules.
Also, the DNA contained in just one cell of an organism is far too large to be read by any person, and to compare the DNA between two (or more) organisms, be they in the brother and sister, or of a completely different species, requires comparing large amounts of information for small (or large) differences.
Computers are far better suited to such comparisons, and computer programmers have worked with biologists to create very very large databases to store all the DNA information that has ever been learned.
Brian Russell De Palma (born September 11, 1940) is an American movie director, producer and screenwriter.
He was born in Newark, New Jersey to Italian American Roman Catholic parents Anthony De Palma (1904-2005) and Vivienne (n e Muti).
He was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and in New Hampshire.
De Palma directed Carrie, The Fury, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Scarface, Body Double, Wise Guys, The Untouchables, Casualties of War, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Raising Cain, Carlito 's Way, Mission: Impossible, Snake Eyes, Mission to Mars, Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia.
Bobby Charlton (born 11 October 1937) is a retired English footballer who played for the England national team.
He played over 600 times for Manchester United.
He also played for England over 100 times and scored more goals than any other player.
He played for England when they beat Germany in the World Cup final in 1966.
His elder brother is Jack Charlton.
Barter is trading one thing for another without using money.
Usually the things that are traded are worth the same amount of money, but no money is used in the trade.
Barter is useful when two people each have something the other wants, so they agree on an amount of stuff and then swap it.
This can also happen with services, for example a plumber can fix a tap in a winery and be given a crate of wine.
The problem with barter is one person may not want what the other person has.
For instance, Bob needs a new pair of shoes and John has those shoes.
But Bob has eggs and John needs milk.
This is where money becomes useful because anything can be traded for a set amount of money.
Bob could pay John for the shoes and John could go to the store and buy some milk.
Berthe Morisot (14 January 1841 - 2 March 1895) was an Impressionist painter.
She was born in Bourges, France, and died in Paris.
In the 1860s, she studied with Camille Corot.
She exhibited at the 1865 Salon.
Morisot met artist douard Manet in 1868.
Manet painted her portrait several times.
The two had great influence on one another 's work.
In 1874, she married his brother, Eug ne.
She exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.
Morisot worked in oils, pastels, and watercolor.
Her pictures are light and delicate.
They typically depict women and children in everyday domestic life.
Many critics ridiculed the Impressionists.
Morisot was not spared.
She was never commercially successful during her lifetime.
During her lifetime however, she outsold prominent Impressionists Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley.
Boxing is one of the world 's oldest combat sports.
It is usually held in a ring and two boxers (people who participate in the sport) wear special gloves and try to hit one another.
There are a few different ways to win in boxing.
One is by a way of a knockout, which is when a fighter is knocked to the ground and can not get back up within ten seconds.
Another way is by a technical knockout, which is when the fighter can not continue fighting or the referee stops the fight.
Another possibility is winning on points, which a boxer gets by outboxing his or her opponent by hitting the opponent more often, harder, and more accurately.
There are also draws in boxing.
A referee can announce a technical draw due to an accidental cut or an accidental wound like a headbutt.
Generally, it is considered a "no contest" (NC).
However, from the second round, or four in some places, if the score cards for both fighters are equal, the fight could be called a draw.
Boxing is very popular around the world.
It is a way to defeat your enemy by physical bad behavior.
Boxers punch and just non stop fight.
Bollywood is a word given by Indian Media, it refers to the Hindi language movie industry in India.
It is often used to describe Indian cinema as a whole, but that is not correct.
Bollywood only refers to Hindi language movies.
The term Bollywood combines Bombay and Hollywood (where most American movies are made).
Bollywood makes many movies each year.
Many Bollywood movies are called Masala movies.
In Hindi, Masala means spice.
These movies usually have higher levels of emotions, songs, sex, revenge and differences between rich and poor in them.
The movies made in Bollywood are usually in Hindi.
Hindustani, the part common to both Hindi and Urdu is probably a more correct description.
Bollywood makes movies in the languages of Hindi, Urdu and English.
Often, poetic Urdu words are used; see also Lollywood (Pakistan Cinema).
The number of dialogues and songs in English has increased lately.
There are movies now where parts of the dialogue are in English.
There is also a growing number of movies which are in English.
Some movies are also made in more than one language.
This is either done with subtitles, or by using several soundtracks.
In general, Bollywood movies are like musicals.
The audience expects to hear music.
There are usually song-and-dance numbers as a part of the script.
Often, the success of a movie depends on the quality of these musical numbers.
Very often, the movie music is released before the movie.
It helps make the audience bigger.
A good entertainer is generally referred to as paisa vasool.
This means money 's worth.
Songs and dances, love triangles, comedy and thrills are all mixed up.
Such movies are called masala movies, after the Hindustani word for a spice mixture, masala.
Like masalas, these movies are a mixture of many things.
Bollywood movies are often longer that those made in Hollywood.
A normal Bollywood movie is about 3 hours long.
Bollywood movies are movies made for the masses.
Other Indian movies are made inside or outside of the Bollywood tradition.
They sometimes try to set higher standards.
They often lose out at the box office to movies with more mass appeal.
Bollywood plots are usually melodramatic.
They often use common ideas such as star-crossed lovers and angry parents, love triangles, family ties, sacrifice, corruption politicians, kidnappers, scheming villains, Hookers with a heart of gold, long-lost relatives and siblings separated by fate, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient coincidences.
Bollywood songs are called Hindi film songs or filmi songs.
Most of the movies have songs in them.
Bollywood songs along with dances are a characteristic part of Hindi cinema.
They give these movies their popular appeal, cultural value and context.
Songs are sung by playback singers which actors and actresses lip sync on screen.
Bollywood ways of doing things are changing, however.
A large Indian diaspora in English speaking countries, and increased Western influence at home, have moved Bollywood movies closer to movies made in Hollywood.
Kisses in the movies are now allowed.
Plots now tend to show Westernised urbanites dating and dancing in discos instead of arranged marriages.
Movie critic Lata Khubchandani writes,"..
our earliest movies... (had) liberal doses of sex and kissing scenes in them.
Strangely, it was after Independence the censor board came into being and so did all the strictures."
In 2001 five percent on Indian movies were shown in Britain.
The Bah ' Faith is an Abrahamic religion started in the 1800s by an Iranian person called Bah ` u 'll h who was born in Tehran, Iran.
Followers of this religion call themselves Bah ' s. The name Bah ` u 'll h is Arabic for "The Glory of God".
"Glory" is a word that means "importance", "power", and "beauty".
Bah ' s believe Bah ` u 'll h is a representation of God, or speaks for God, and he shows people God 's importance, beauty, and brightness.
Bah ' s are monotheists (which means that they believe in one God).
They believe Bah ` u 'll h carried a message from God.
Bah ` u 'll h said he was not the only person to carry a message from God, and he was not the last to carry a message from God.
He taught that the people who started the other major religions also represented and carried messages from God, such as Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Muhammad, Krishna, the Buddha and others.
He called these people "Manifestations of God."
They believe the messages from the Manifestations of God get more and more difficult to understand.
They say the ones that came earlier on had a more simple message than the ones that came later.
Because God is greater than the whole universe, Bah ` u 'll h said that human beings can not completely know God.
He said that God wants people to know as much about him as they can.
Bah ` u 'll h wrote God sends special people to manifest (show) himself to ordinary humans.
Without the Manifestations of God we could not know God.
Bah ' s believe the God they pray to is the same God Abraham spoke to, Jesus talked about, and Krishna said in Gita.
Since Bah ` u 'll h was born in a Muslim family, Bah ' s are sometimes mistaken as Muslims.
Bah ` u 'll h is considered the prophet\/manifestation of the present day.
Bah ' s say that he is not the last prophet\/manifestation of God.
They think there will not be another prophet for 1,000 years after Baha ` u ` llah 's death.
The Bah ' Faith began on 1844 when a man called the B b said he had a message from God.
He said that it was his job to make sure that people were ready for the most important message from God who would be sent soon.
This started a religion, followers of this religion were called B b s. Many people became B b s in the country of Iran, which was called Persia at the time, and this made the government of Persia and the Muslim priests angry.
They arrested and killed the Bab and his followers.
Even though this happened, people still followed this religion.
Before Bah ` u 'll h said he had a message from God, he was a member of the religion that was started by the B b. He became very famous among the B b s. When the B b was killed, some B b s got very angry and tried to kill the king of Persia, even though Bah ` u 'll h told them not to kill him.
When the Babis were caught, the government put many B b s in jail, including Bah ` u 'll h. While in jail at Tehran, Bah ` u 'll h said he saw an angel that he called the "maid of heaven".
The angel told him that he had to teach a message from God to the people of the world.
The angel said that God would rescue and protect him so that he could teach this message.
Eventually, he was released from jail and the government of Persia made him move to Baghdad, which was then controlled by the king of the Ottoman Empire.
While Baha ` u ` llah was in Baghdad, he had many problems, but he also made many friends.
The government of Persia was unhappy that he seemed to be doing well in Baghdad, and so they asked the Ottoman Empire to move him further away from Persia.
When he was about to leave, in 1863, he held a festival for 12 days on a small island in the Tigris river, which he called Ridvan, which means paradise.
There he told some of his closest friends and family that he was the promised one of all of the major religions, and that eventually the whole world would know his message.
Eventually the Ottoman Empire sent him to many different cities, including Constantinople, Adrianople, Alexandria, and eventually Akka.
He was in different jails this whole time, and the city of Akka had a big wall around it, and it was one big jail.
While he was in Baghdad, and after, he wrote many books and letters to answer questions that his friends and followers asked him.
At one point he was poisoned, so that he could not write anymore because his hands shook so badly.
After that, he had someone write down what he said.
When he was even older, his oldest son, ` Abdu ` l-Bah arranged to have him move into a house near Mount Carmel, and he stayed there until he finally died in 1892.
After he died, people followed ` Abdu ` l-Bah.
Bah ` u 'll h had written that ` Abdu ` l-Bah had special powers, and that God would make sure that if ` Abdu ` l-Bah explained anything that Bah ` u 'll h said, then the Bah ' s should believe that explanation.
` Abdu ` l-Bah also wrote a lot of letters and gave talks, and eventually visited Paris, London, Montreal, New York City, San Francisco and other cities in the west.
This helped the Bah ' Faith to spread in Europe and North America.
He died in 1921.
He left a will, where he told the Bah ' s to follow his grandson, Shoghi Effendi.
Shoghi Effendi was born in 1900 and was only a young man when his grandfather died and he became the leader of the Bah ' s. He helped make the different agencies and councils that run the Bah ' Faith today, and organized the religion in many ways.
He also wrote many books and letters to explain the teachings of his grandfather and great-grandfather.
He lived until 1957 and died in England.
After Shoghi Effendi died, the Bah ' s did not have leaders for six years, because Shoghi Effendi had not left a will.
Shoghi Effendi did have helpers, who did not think they were allowed to lead the Bah ' s, so they helped the Bah ' Community follow the last plan that Shoghi Effendi left them, and at the end of that plan, in 1963, they organized an election to form the Universal House of Justice, which Bah ` u 'll h wrote about.
The Universal House of Justice has led the Bah ' s ever since.
Bah ` u 'll h wrote many books and letters, and ` Abdu ` l-Bah (whose name means "Servant of Glory") also wrote many books and letters which Bah ' s see as special.
Finally, Bah ` u 'll h 's great-grandson Shoghi Effendi wrote lots of books and letters which Bah ' s use to better understand the writings of Bah ` u 'll h and ` Abdu ` l-Bah.
The most important of these books is the Aqdas.
Bah ' s also believe that the Bible, the Qur ` an, the Gita and other books from other religions are special.
There are eight or nine million Bah ' s in the world, of all peoples and languages.
The Bah ' Faith looks different in different countries, because there are few rituals, so Bah ' s can include their own culture in the way they celebrate Bah ' events, say prayers, etc.
Bah ' s meet every nineteen (19) days in a meeting called a "Feast".
There does not have to be food, but there usually is.
These meetings start with prayers and usually someone reads aloud some holy writings.
Sometimes there is music and song, sometimes plays, sometimes just quiet time or meditation.
After this time, which Bah ' s call the "devotional" time in a feast, they have a community discussion.
All sorts of topics can be discussed here that are important to the members.
Bah ' s say that this is a "consultative" time, where Bah ' s can consult with each other.
After this, there is a social time, where people can share food, drink (not alcohol), and sometimes here there is also music, or plays, or presentations, or other entertainment.
This time is just so that the Bah ' s in that city can get to know each other and become better friends.
Bah ' s often do not have one place they get together, except in large cities.
In smaller places they usually get together in each other 's houses.
Some larger cities have "Bah ' Centers" which can be used for community meetings, classes, or for meetings of committees and other councils.
(see Institutions below)
In a very few cities in the world, there are Bah ' temples.
These temples are on each continent.
Bah ' s are organized in a worldwide community.
They do not have priests.
Everyone is responsible for their own prayers.
Bah ' s are also responsible for reading their holy books for themselves and for learning about their religion.
Baha ` is elect leaders for their community, to help organize their activities, and to deal with problems between members, and to decide things that are not obvious from the scriptures.
These are called Spiritual Assemblies, but will one day be called Houses of Justice.
There is one House of Justice, which Bah ' s call the Universal House of Justice, which leads the whole worldwide Bah ' community.
Bah ' s elect this House of Justice every five years, but only once each year for National and Local Spiritual Assemblies.
The Battle of Stalingrad was fought during the Second World War between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
They were fighting for control of the city of Stalingrad.
The battle was fought between 17 July 1942 and 2 February 1943.
It was one of the most important battles of the war because it marked the end of Germany 's advances.
Hitler even blamed his defeat partly on Stalingrad.
The Battle of Stalingrad has often been recorded as an example of how brutal a war can be.
It is reported that, due to limited supplies, soldiers and civilians had to resort to eating rats, possibly even cannibalism.
Stalingrad, now Volgograd, was a city on the Volga River.
It was an important industrial city.
If the Germans won the battle then they would control the Caucasus area of Russia, and its oil.
Hitler also wanted to capture Stalingrad because it was named after Josef Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, thus it would embarrass him.
In June 1942, Adolf Hitler launched an attack in southern Russia.
By the end of July the German army had reached Stalingrad.
With bombs and fire the German air force, the Luftwaffe, turned the city into ruins.
However, the rubble gave the Russians hiding places from which they could attack the Germans, using snipers.
Hitler and Stalin sent in large numbers of soldiers.
They both ordered that there was to be no retreat.
Those that deserted or retreated would be shot on the spot for treason.
On 19 November 1942, the Red Army launched an attack which cut off and surrounded the Germans in the Stalingrad area.
Adolf Hitler ordered that the army stay in Stalingrad and make no attempt to escape.
The German air force tried to supply food and ammunition by air.
By February 1943, the German forces in Stalingrad had no ammunition and food, they did not want to starve or freeze, so they surrendered.
The Soviets had a reputation for being cruel to their prisoners.
The battle lasted five months, one week, and three days.
1.6 million people dead or wounded in battle were reported.
There were more Russian deaths than German, but strategically it was a victory for the Russians.
They had killed so many Germans that Hitler 's overall plan to conquer the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, was seriously weakened.
Also, the Germans failed to get control of the oil which a key objective.
One of the unusual things about the battle was that about one quarter of the German Sixth Army 's soldiers were Russian volunteers called HIWIs.
By the spring of 1942, the German Operation Barbarossa did not defeat the Soviet Union.
The war was still going well for the Germans: the U-boat offensive in the Atlantic had been very successful and Rommel had just captured Tobruk.
In the east, they had captured land including Leningrad in the north and Rostov in the south.
There were a number of places where Soviet attacks had pushed the Germans back (to the northwest of Moscow and south of Kharkov) but this did not threaten the Germans.
Hitler was confident that he could beat the Red Army after the winter of 1941.
Even though Army Group Centre had heavy losses near Moscow the previous winter, 65 % of its infantry had not fought and had been rested and given new equipment.
Army Groups North and South had also not had a hard time over the winter.
Stalin was expecting German summer attacks to again be directed against Moscow.
The Germans decided that their summer campaign in 1942 would be directed at the southern parts of the Soviet Union.
The Germans wanted to destroy Stalingrad 's industries.
The Germans also wanted to block the Volga River.
The river was a route between the Caspian Sea and northern Russia.
Capturing the river would make it hard for the Soviets to use the river to transport goods.
The German operations were initially very successful.
On July 23, 1942, Hitler changed the goals for the 1942 attack.
He made occupying Stalingrad one of the goals.
The city was important, because it was named after Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union.
The Germans thought that if they captured Stalingrad, it would help the northern and western parts of the German armies to attack Baku.
The Germans wanted to capture Baku because it had a lot of oil.
The Soviets were aware of the German plan to attack.
The Soviets ordered that anyone strong enough to hold a rifle be sent to fight.
On the 23 of August the 6th Army reached the edge of Stalingrad.
They were following the 62nd and 64th Armies, which had gone back into the city.
Kleist later said after the war: The capture of Stalingrad was (a place) where we could block an attack... by Russian forces coming from the east.
The Soviets had enough warning of the Germans attack to move all the city 's grain, cattle, and railway cars across the Volga.
But most civilian residents stayed in the city.
The city lacked food even before the German attack.
The Luftwaffe air attacks made the Soviets unable to use the River Volga to bring supplies into the city.
Between 25 and 31 July, 32 Soviet ships were sunk in the River Volga.
The battle began with the heavy bombing of the city by Luftflotte 4.
A 1,000 tons of bombs were dropped.
Much of the city turned to rubble.
Some factories continued to produce goods.
Stalin moved troops to the east bank of the Volga.
All the regular ferries were destroyed by the Luftwaffe.
The Luftwaffe also attacked troop barges.
Many civilians were moved out of the city across the Volga.
Stalin prevented most civilians from leaving the city because he thought that this would make the Soviet armies fight harder.
Civilians, including women and children, were told to dig trenches.
A massive German sbombing on 23 August caused a firestorm.
It killed thousands and turned Stalingrad into rubble and ruins.
Between 23 and 26 August, 955 people were killed and another 1,181 wounded from the bombing.
The Soviet Air Force, the Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily (VVS), was destroyed by the Luftwaffe.
The Soviets lost 201 aircraft between 23 and 31 August.
They brought in another 100 aircraft in August.
The Soviets continued to bring new planes into Stalingrad in late September, but they were destroyed by the Germans.
The city was briefly defended by the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment, an all-women 's regiment that was actually able to halt an entire German division due to their massive firepower.
The Germans eventually swarmed and killed them, but were shocked to discover that this whole time they were being held back by young women that seemed fresh out of high school..
In the battle, the NKVD organized "Workers ' militias" who were often sent into battle without rifles.
By the end of August, Army Group South (B) had reached the Volga.
By 1 September, the Soviets could only supply their forces in Stalingrad by crossing the Volga under constant bombing by artillery and aircraft.
On 5 September, the Soviet 24th and 66th Armies organized an attack against XIV Panzer Corps.
The Luftwaffe helped stop the attack by attacking Soviet artillery and soldiers.
The Soviets had to pull back.
Of the 120 tanks the Soviets had sent into battle, 30 were lost to air attack.
The Soviets were always being attacked by the Luftwaffe.
On 18 September, the Soviet 1st Guards and 24th Army attacked VIII Army Corps.
VIII.
Fliegerkorps sent Stuka dive-bombers to prevent the Soviets from advancing.
The Soviet attack was stopped.
The Stukas destroyed 41 of the 106 Soviet tanks that were destroyed that morning.
German Bf 109s destroyed 77 Soviet aircraft.
In the wrecked city, the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, which included the Soviet 13th Guards Rifle Division, used houses and factories to hide in.
Fighting in city was very violent.
Stalin 's Order No. 227 of 27 July 1942 decreed that all commanders who retreated without being told to do so would have to go to a military tribunal.84-5 "Not a step back!"
was the slogan.
The Germans attacking Stalingrad had many dead and wounded.
After three months of slow advance, the Germans finally reached the river banks.
The Germans captured 90 % of the ruined city and split the Soviet forces into two parts.
Ice on the Volga river made it impossible for the Soviets to bring in supplies by boat.
German troops were not ready for fighting during the winter of 1942.
The Stavka did a number of attacks between November 19, 1942 and February 2, 1943.
These operations started the Winter Campaign of 1942-1943 (19 November 1942 3 March 1943), which involved 15 armies.
In autumn, the Soviet generals Georgy Zhukov and Aleksandr Vasilevsky, gathered their soldiers in the north and south of the city.
The northern side was defended by Hungarian, and Romanian troops.
The Don river, had never been defended well by the German side.
The armies did not have good anti-tank weapons.
The Soviet plan was to attack and surround the German forces in the Stalingrad region.
The operation was code-named "Uran".
It started with Operation Mars, aimed at Army Group Center.
On 19 November 1942, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus.
The attacking Soviet units under the command of Gen. Nikolay Vatutin consisted of three armies.
This included a total of 18 infantry divisions, eight tank brigades, two motorized brigades, six cavalry divisions and one anti-tank brigade.
The Soviets pushed past the Romanian Third Army.
The response by the Wehrmacht was disorganized.
Bad weather prevented air attacks against the Soviets.
On 20 November, a second Soviet offensive (two armies) was launched to the south of Stalingrad against the Romanian 4th Army Corps.
The Romanians were overrun by large numbers of tanks.
The Soviet forces moved west and made a ring around Stalingrad.
About 265,000 German, Romanian, Italian soldiers, the 369th (Croatian) Reinforced Infantry Regiment, and other troops including 40,000 Soviet volunteers fighting for the Germans.
were surrounded.
There were 210,000 Germans on 19 November 1942.
There were also around 10,000 Soviet civilians and several thousand Soviet soldiers the Germans had taken captive during the battle.
Not all of the 6th Army was trapped; 50,000 were not surrounded.
Of the 210,000 Germans surrounded, 10,000 remained to fight, 105,000 surrendered, 35,000 left by air and the remaining 60,000 died.
The Red Army formed two defensive groups.
Field Marshal Erich von Manstein told Hitler not to order the 6th Army to break out.
Manstein thought that he could break through the Soviet troops and free the 6th Army.
p451 After 1945, Manstein says he told Hitler that the 6th Army must break out.
The American historian Gerhard Weinberg said that Manstein lied.
p1045
Manstein was told to attack Stalingrad in Operation Winter Storm (Unternehmen Wintergewitter).
He thought that this attack could work if the 6th Army was supplied through the air.
Adolf Hitler had said on 30 September 1942 that the German army would never leave the city.
At a meeting shortly after the Soviets formed a ring around the Germans, the German army chiefs wanted to try to escape to the west of the Don.
Hitler thought that the Luftwaffe could supply the 6th Army with an "air bridge".
This would allow the Germans in the city to fight while a new force was assembled.
A similar plan had been used a year earlier at the Demyansk Pocket.
The director of Luftflotte 4, Wolfram von Richthofen, tried to get this decision stopped.
The forces under 6th Army were almost twice as large as a regular German army unit, plus there was also a corps of the 4th Panzer Army trapped in the city.
The maximum 117.5 S they could deliver a day was far less than the minimum 800 S needed.
To add to the limited number of Junkers Ju 52 planes the Germans used other planes like the Heinkel He 177.
General Richthofen told Manstein on 27 November that the Luftwaffe could not supply 300 tons a day by air.
Manstein now saw the problems of a supply by air.
The next day he made a report which said that the supply by air would be impossible.
He said the Sixth Army should try to escape.
He said that giving up Stalingrad would be a difficult loss, but that it would keep the Sixth Army intact.
Hitler said that the Sixth Army would have to stay at Stalingrad and that the air force would supply it until the Germans could attack the Soviets.
The Luftwaffe was able to deliver an average of 94 S of supplies per day.
The most successful day, 19 December, delivered 289 S of supplies in 154 flights.
In the early parts of the operation, more fuel was shipped than food and ammunition because the Germans thought they could escape from the city.
Transport airplanes also flew out sick or wounded men from the city.
The German attack did not reach the 6th Army.
The air supply operation continued.
The 6th Army slowly starved.
160 German transport aircraft were destroyed and 328 were heavily damaged.
Some 266 Junkers Ju 52s were destroyed.
Soviet forces grouped together around Stalingrad.
Violent fighting to attack the Germans began.
Operation Winter Storm (Operation Wintergewitter), the German attempt to rescue the trapped army from the south, was at first successful.
By 19 December, the German Army had pushed to within 48 km (30 mi) of Sixth Army 's positions.
Some German officers asked Paulus go against Hitler 's orders and try to escape out of the Stalingrad.
Paulus refused.
On 23 December, Manstein 's forces had to defend themselves from new Soviet attacks.
On 16 December, the Soviets launched Operation Little Saturn.
It attempted to make a hole through the Axis army (mainly Italians) on the Don and capture Rostov.
The Germans set up a defense of small units.
15 Soviet divisions supported by at least 100 tanks attacked the Italian Cosseria and Ravenna Divisions.
The Soviets never got close to Rostov because of the Italian defense.
The German attempt to break through to Stalingrad was stopped and Army Group A was told to come back from the Caucasus.
The 6th Army could no longer hope to escape.
The 6th Army did not have enough fuel.
As well, the German soldiers have found it very hard to break through the Soviet lines on foot in the cold winter conditions.
The Germans retreated from the suburbs of Stalingrad to the city itself.
The loss of the two airfields, at Pitomnik on 16 January 1943 and Gumrak on the night of 21\/22 January, meant an end to air supplies and to the flying out the wounded.
The third and last runway was at the Stalingradskaja flight school, which had the last landings and takeoffs on the night of 22 23 January.
After daybreak on 23 January, there were no landings except for air drops of ammunition and food.
The Germans were now not only starving, but running out of ammunition.
They continued to fight because they thought the Soviets would execute any Germans who surrendered.
A Soviet group (Major Aleksandr Smyslov, Captain Nikolay Dyatlenko and a trumpeter) carried an offer to Paulus: if he surrendered within 24 hours, he would receive a guarantee of safety for all prisoners, medical care for the sick and wounded, prisoners allowed to keep their personal belongings, food rations, and getting sent to any country they wanted ti after the war.
Paulus was ordered not to surrender by Hitler, so he did not respond.
On 30 January 1943, the 10th anniversary of Hitler coming to power, Goebbels said "The heroic struggle of our soldiers on the Volga should be a warning for everybody..." Also on that day Hitler promoted Paulus to Generalfeldmarschall.
Since no German Field Marshal had ever been taken prisoner, Hitler assumed that Paulus would fight on or kill himself.
The next day, the southern group in Stalingrad was defeated by the Soviets.
Soviet forces reached the entrance to the German headquarters.
General Schmidt surrendered the headquarters.
Paulus said he had not surrendered and refused to order the remaining German forces to surrender.
Four Soviet armies attacked the remaining northern group.
On 2 February, General Strecker surrendered.
Around 91,000 tired, ill, wounded, and starving prisoners were taken, including 3,000 Romanians (the survivors of the 20th Infantry Division, 1st Cavalry Division and "Col. Voicu" Detachment).
The prisoners included 22 generals.
Hitler was angry and said that Paulus could have killed himself, but instead "he prefers to go to Moscow."
The German public was not officially told of the loss until the end of January 1943, though positive media reports had stopped in the weeks before the announcement.
Stalingrad marked the first time that the Nazi government publicly admitted a failure in its war effort.
It was a major defeat where German losses were almost equal to those of the Soviets.
Prior losses of the Soviet Union were generally three times as high as the German ones.
On 31 January, German state radio played the Adagio movement from Anton Bruckner 's Seventh Symphony, followed by the announcement of the defeat at Stalingrad.
On 18 February, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels gave the Sportpalast speech in Berlin, encouraging the Germans to accept a total war.
Out of the nearly 110,000 German prisoners captured in Stalingrad, only about 6,000 ever returned.
They were sent to prisoner camps and later to labor camps all over the Soviet Union.
Some 35,000 were eventually sent on transports, of which 17,000 did not survive.
Some were kept in the city to help rebuild.
Some senior officers were taken to Moscow and used for propaganda purposes.
Some of them joined the National Committee for a Free Germany.
Some, including Paulus, signed anti-Hitler statements that were broadcast to German troops.
Paulus testified for the prosecution during the Nuremberg Trials.
He remained in the Soviet Union until 1952, then moved to Dresden in East Germany.
General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach offered to raise an anti-Hitler army from the Stalingrad survivors, but the Soviets did not accept.
It was not until 1955 that the last of the 5-6,000 survivors were repatriated (to West Germany).
During the defense of Stalingrad, the Red Army used six armies (8th, 28th, 51st, 57th, 62nd and 64th Armies) in and around the city.
An additional nine armies in the final attack on the Germans.
The nine armies used for the final attack were the 24th Army, 65th Army, 66th Army and 16th Air Army from the north as part of the Don Front offensive and 1st Guards Army, 5th Tank, 21st Army, 2nd Air Army and 17th Air Army from the south as part of the Soviet Southwestern Front.
Counting how many people were killed and wounded in the battle of Stalingrad is hard.
One way is to only count the fighting within the city and suburbs.
Another way of counting is to count all the fighting on the southern part of the Soviet-German front from the spring of 1942 to the winter of 1943.
Different scholars have made different estimates depending on how widely you consider the battle.
The Axis had from 500,000 to 850,000 casualties (killed, wounded, captured) among all branches of the German armed forces and its allies and only 5-6,000 returned to Germany by 1955.
The remainder of the POWs died in Soviet captivity.
On 2 February 1943, the fighting of Axis troops in Stalingrad stopped.
Out of the 91,000 prisoners taken by the Soviets, 3,000 were Romanian.
The Red Army had a total of 1,129,619 total casualties; 478,741 men killed or missing and 650,878 wounded.
These numbers are for the whole Don region; in the city itself 750,000 were killed, captured, or wounded.
Anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000 Soviet civilians died in Stalingrad and its suburbs during a single week of aerial bombing by Luftflotte 4 as the German 4th Panzer and 6th Armies got close to the city; the total number of civilians killed in the regions outside the city is unknown.
In all, the battle resulted in an estimated total of 1.7-2 million Axis and Soviet casualties, making it possibly the bloodiest battle in all of human history.
In the original 1942 plan, the occupation of Stalingrad had not been a goal.
Based on the military successes of the Germans in the first month of the attacks, Hitler decided to expand the military goals.
Hitler thought that the Soviet forces across the Don river were weak.
The new goals included Stalingrad and even capturing the Volga.
Once the Armies began to fight in the for the city, both sides began to feel that it was very important to win.
The Germans sent a lot of troops into the city.
This meant that their side did not control the Don river and the Soviet bridges.
The German side made steady progress in the fighting and eventually held about 90 % of the city.
The German focus on the city made them not think of the weakness of their defenses along the Don and the massive buildup of Soviet forces on their sides.
After the Soviet breakthrough, the Germans were very disorganized.
The 6th Army was eventually reorganized in time for the Battle of Kursk, but was made up mostly of new soldiers and was never as strong as it had once been.
Germany failed at Stalingrad because they expanded the goals in the second half of July.
After one month of success, the Germans started believing they could win the battle.
Hitler ordered too many goals and he did not think Soviet reserves were as strong as they were.
To the south of Stalingrad, Army Group A was trying to capture the oilfields.
Then its goals were expanded to include the whole of the Black Sea coast.
Stalingrad was a turning point in the war.
It also showed the discipline and determination of both the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army.
The Soviets first defended Stalingrad against a strong German attack.
Newly arrived Soviet soldiers often died in less than a day.
Soviet officers often died in three days.
Historians have talked about how much terror there was in the Red Army.
Beevor noted the bravery of the Soviet soldiers.
Richard Overy says that some people think that in the "summer of 1942 the Soviet army fought because it was forced to fight, but he says this is not true A historian talked to Soviet veterans about terror on the Eastern Front.
Many soldiers said they were relieved at the order not to retreat.
Infantryman Lev Lvovich s said he felt better.
For the heroism of the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad, the city was awarded the title Hero City in 1945.
Twenty-four years after the battle, in October 1967, a monument, The Motherland Calls, was built on Mamayev Kurgan, the hill overlooking the city.
The hill actually used to be much larger, but had been flattened due to constant artillery fire.
The statue forms part of a war memorial that includes ruined walls from the battle.
The Grain Silo, as well as Pavlov 's House can still be visited.
Many women fought on the Soviet side, or were under fire.
At the beginning of the battle there were 75,000 women and girls from the Stalingrad area who had finished military or medical training, and all of whom were to serve in the battle.
Women staffed a great many of the anti-aircraft batteries that fought not only the Luftwaffe but German tanks.
Soviet nurses not only treated wounded men under fire but brought wounded soldiers back to the hospitals under enemy fire.
Many of the Soviet wireless and telephone operators were women who often suffered heavy injuries and deaths.
Though women were not usually trained as infantry, many Soviet women fought as machine gunners, mortar operators, and scouts.
Women were also snipers at Stalingrad.
Three air regiments at Stalingrad were entirely female.
At least three women won the title Hero of the Soviet Union while driving tanks at Stalingrad.
The German Army showed a lot of discipline after being surrounded.
Many German soldiers starved or froze to death.
Yet, discipline was continued until the very end.
General Friedrich Paulus obeyed Hitler 's orders and did not attempt to escape out of the city.
German ammunition, supplies, and food became scarce.
Generals from both sides suffered from massive stress because of the battle and also because of the fact that they had to report to the most brutal leader in their nation 's history.
Many generals suffered health problems because of their stress.
Paulus followed his orders and fought to the very end.
He asked for permission to surrender, but it was denied.
Hitler promoted him to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall.
No German field marshal had ever surrendered, and the implication was clear.
Hitler believed that Paulus would either fight to the last man or commit suicide.
Paulus was taken prisoner.
After his capture, Paulus told the Soviets that he had not surrendered.
He refused to issue an order for the Germans to surrender.
The events of the battle for Stalingrad have been shown in several films of German, Russian, British and American origin.
The battle is described in many books.
In the novel The Book Thief, one character was presumed to have died or been captured in The Battle of Stalingrad.
In the 2011 video game Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad, the game portrays famous locations of the battle, such as Pavlov 's House, the Red October Factory and Mamayev Kurgan, among others.
The 2013 game, Company of Heroes 2, portrayed the battle in certain missions.
It was criticized by Russian players for being untrue and on August 7 sales in Russia were stopped.
In molecular biology, two nucleotides on opposite complementary DNA strands that are connected by hydrogen bonds are called a base pair (often abbreviated bp).
In DNA pairing, adenine (A) forms a base pair with thymine (T), to form an A\/T base pair.
Guanine (G) pairs with cytosine (C) in DNA, to form a G\/C base pair.
The Baltimore Ravens are a professional American football team in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
They play in the AFC North Division of the National Football League (NFL).
The team is named after the poem, The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe.
The Ravens are rivals with the Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers and Washington Redskins.
The Ravens have won twice Super Bowl title, Super Bowl XXXV, in the 2000 NFL season against the New York Giants and Super Bowl XLVII in the 2012 NFL season against the San Francisco 49ers.
As of 2013, the Ravens ' quarterback is Joe Flacco.
They play at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, MD.
Baltimore has long been known for their great defense.
In 2000, the Ravens had one of the best defenses in NFL history.
Some major Ravens defenders include middle linebacker Ray Lewis, outisde linebacker\/defensive end Terrell Suggs, defensive tackle Haloti Ngata, cornerback Chris McAlister, outside linebacker Peter Boulware, cornerback Lardarius Webb, defensive tackle Tony Siragusa, and defensive back Rod Woodson.
Several Ravens defensive coodinators (Marvin Lewis, Mike Nolan, Rex Ryan, and Chuck Pagano) have gone to be NFL head coaches.
The offense has been considered mediocre.
The Ravens have had many different quarterbacks, including Trent Dilfer, Vinny Testaverde, Kyle Boller, and Joe Flacco, with limited success.
The Ravens have gotten good results from players like Todd Heap, Derrick Mason, Flacco, Jamal Lewis, and some others on offense.
The Ravens special teams has also been praised.
Notable players include kicker Matt Stover, punter Sam Koch, and returner Jermaine Lewis.
In 1996, the Ravens ' logo had a seal with a "B" for Baltimore.
That logo was featured on the Ravens ' helmets.
In 1999, the logo changed to the head a purple Raven with the Baltimore B. That has been on team helmets since.
The Baltimore Ravens uniform combinations are: purple jersey and white pants (standard, introduced in 1999), white jersey with white pants (introduced in 1996, often worn for away games), white jersey with black pants (introduced in 2008, often worn in away games and at the season-home opener), purple jersey and black pants (alternate, ` not often worn, ' introduced in 1996), black jerseys and white pants (alternate, introduced in 2008), and black jersey and black pants (alternate, introduced in 2004).
Purple jerseys are most often worn during day-time home games.
The black jerseys are worn only at home games, usually games that are played at night.
The white jersey combinations are worn at most away games.
However, the black pants and white jersey combination is usually worn by the Ravens for their first home game of every season.
That tradition was started under head coach John Harbaugh in 2008.
See main articles: Memorial Stadium (Baltimore) and M&T Bank Stadium.
The Ravens played their first two seasons in Memorial Stadium, where the Baltimore Orioles Major League Baseball team and the Baltimore Colts played.
Before the 1998 season, the Ravens moved to what is now M&T Bank Stadium.
The stadium was called "PSI Net Stadium" up until 2001 when the PSI Net company went bankrupt.
The stadium was referred to as "Ravens Stadium" in 2002.
Many fans signed a letter asking that the Ravens officials name the stadium "Johnny Unitas Stadium" after Baltimore Colts Hall of Fame quarterback Johnny Unitas.
The request was unsuccessful.
Before the 2003 season, the Ravens, Maryland Stadium Authority, and M&T Bank signed a long term contract for the stadium to be called "M&T Bank Stadium."
The stadium 's official holding is listed at 71,008 people, but can hold more.
The official headquarters of the Baltimore Ravens (commonly referred to as "The Castle," or "Baltimore Ravens Training Complex ') is located in Owings Mills, Maryland, USA.
See also: http://www.baltimoreravens.com/News/History/Ring_of_Honor.aspx
The Ravens induct personnel that they feel meat up to set standards on and off the field into the team Ring of Honor (presented by Smyth Jewlers).
The Baltimore Colts played in Baltimore from 1953 to 1984.
In 1995, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell announced that his struggling team could no longer compete financially or on the field.
He then announced a highly criticized move to go to Baltimore.
In 1996, the Ravens drafted future stars Jonathan Ogden, Ray Lewis, and Jermaine Lewis.
Four years later, head coach Brian Billick led the Ravens to a 34-7 Super Bowl XXXV victory over the New York Giants.
The next few years were filled with mediocrecy.
In 2004, Baltimore businessman Steve Bisciotti bought the team from Modell.
The Ravens fired Billick in 2007 after a 5-11 season and replaced him with John Harbaugh, who got the Ravens to the playoffs through the next four years.
The British National Party (or BNP for short) is a far-right political party in the United Kingdom.
The party 's policies promote an end to Third World immigration, right-wing populism and Third position economics.
They are British nationalists.
They want to "keep Britain British" by not letting people from other countries move to the UK.
The party was led by Nick Griffin from 1999 until 2014 and the current leader of the BNP is Adam Walker.
In 2009, the party had 2 MEPs (Members of European Parliament) out of 73 British seats in the European Parliament.
Those two seats were held by Griffin and Andrew Brons.
It has no seats in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom or the devolved assemblies.
The BNP was started in 1982 by John Tyndall.
In November 2012 the British Democratic Party was started by Brons.
Brons started the party after leaving the BNP in October 2012.
Brons wants the BDP to end the BNP.
He does not like the BNP because he thinks its ideology is not extreme enough.
Griffin lost his seat in the European Parliament in 2014.
Christians who belong to Baptist churches are known as Baptists.
Baptism is a rite or ceremony performed by most Christian churches and denominations.
It is done as a cleansing symbol; showing that the person being baptised has become a follower of Jesus.
Roman Catholicism do it to infants to mark their becoming members of the church.
It is a sacrament usually performed by a priest.
In most other churches, it is when the person is old enough to decide that they are ready.
Some churches sprinkle water on the person.
Other churches use immersion or dunking in the water.
In the Old Testament, a similar washing ceremony was done when priests were ordained.
Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist before he began his ministry.
The usual form of baptism among the earliest Christians was for the person to be immersed totally or partially.
But sprinkling, or pouring, was also practiced at an early day with sick and dying persons when total or partial immersion was not practical.
Bethlehem is a city on the West Bank in Palestine.
It is most famous as the place where Jesus was born.
(See Gospel of Matthew chapter 2.)
It is five miles from Jerusalem in Israel.
Black Sabbath is an English heavy metal band.
They are considered to be an influential heavy metal band which helped start the genre in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
They have sold over one hundred million albums worldwide.
The original line up was Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Terence "Geezer" Butler (bass) and Bill Ward (drums).
Black Sabbath formed in 1968.
The band was originally named Earth and they played blues-rock music.
In the band 's early days Tony Iommi had a work accident that cut off the tips of his middle and ring finger on his right hand.
He began tuning his guitar lower to slacken his strings to make playing easier on his wounded fingers.
The result was a darker, deeper tone to his guitar sound which the band felt made their music sound dark and scary.
They released their first album Black Sabbath in 1970.
Their most successful single, titled "Paranoid", produced by Rodger Bain, came off their second album of the same name, also released in 1970.
The third album in 1971 was called ` Master of Reality ' and sounded even more doomy than the previous two albums.
After that album, the band members became addicted to cocaine, and wrote a song called ` Snowblind ' to celebrate this.
Their fourth album in 1972 was meant to be named after the song, but their label did not want to release an album named after an illegal drug, so they gave it the name ` Black Sabbath Vol.
4 ' instead.
Their fifth album ` Sabbath Bloody Sabbath ' came out in 1973 and was the first of their albums to get good reviews from critics, although their opinion of the first four albums also changed to become much more positive over time.
In 1975, Sabbath released ` Sabotage ', which featured some longer more progressive songs, and had a less doomy feel.
This change in direction continued with 1976 's ` Technical Ecstasy ' which received mixed reviews.
Ozzy lost some interest in the band and left for a short time, but decided to rejoin in time for an eighth album, ` Never Say Die! '
which received bad reviews.
Ozzy Osbourne was fired from the band in 1979 because of his drug and alcohol addiction.
American vocalist Ronnie James Dio was hired to replace him.
The band recorded two studio albums and one live album with him.
The first studio album of the two, ` Heaven And Hell ' was considered a return to success and musical form, with ` Mob Rules ', recorded with drummer Vinny Appice after Bill Ward left, also getting a good reaction.
Dio and Vinny parted with Black Sabbath in 1982 over different musical ideas.
Bill rejoined and the band hired Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan for the critically unsuccessful ` Born Again '.
Over the next few years after Bill left again along with Geezer, Iommi would hire several different singers to front the band, such as Glenn Hughes and Tony Martin, along with a variety of bassists (Dave Spitz, Neil Murray etc.) and drummers (Eric Singer, Cozy Powell etc).
Many of the albums released during this time were not meant to be released as Black Sabbath, with Tony Iommi wanting them to be his solo albums.
In 1991 Ronnie James James Dio and Vinny Appice rejoined the band again for one album and tour.
After that, Tony Iommi once again hired Tony Martin alongside other different musicians.
In 1997 the original line up reformed and continued to perform occasionally until 2006, when the band members were busy focusing on individual projects.
In 2005, Black Sabbath were inducted into the "UK Music Hall of Fame".
In 2006 the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In 2011, the original line up announced they were getting back together to tour and record a new album.
However, Tony Iommi was diagnosed with cancer, forcing the band to cancel most tour dates, and Bill Ward left after being unsatisfied with the contract.
Tony Iommi has since been recovering, and Sabbath hired drummer Tommy Clufetos to tour with them.
However, Brad Wilk is drumming on the new album, which is called ' 13 ' and was released in June 2013.
The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team in Buffalo, New York.
They are members of the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL).
The Bills started playing in 1960 as an original member of the American Football League and joined the NFL as part of the AFL-NFL merger.
The Bills won two American Football League titles in 1964 and 1965, but the team has not won a league championship since the merger.
Buffalo is also the only team to win four consecutive AFC Championships (1990-93), though they did not win any of the four following Super Bowls.
Ralph Wilson, the longtime owner who had established the Bills in 1959, died on March 25, 2014.
On September 9, 2014, Wilson 's family announced that it had sold the team to Terry Pegula and his wife, Kim.
The Pegulas also own the Buffalo Sabres of the NHL.
The Bills team name is based on the famous "wild west show" star known as Buffalo Bill.
The American bison is the team symbol.
The term "buffalo" is often, though incorrectly, used as a synonym for "bison".
The First and Second Chronicles are history books in the Old Testament.
They tell the history of Israel differently from the Books of Kings.
Using Biblical books (like Samuel and Kings) and other sources, the "Chronicler" encourages the Jews who returned from exile in Babylon.
He goes back over Israel 's history to explain why they have had all their troubles and how they can live right to become better in the future.
Originally, the First and Second Chronicles were one book.
They were later split apart into two different books.
The Hebrew title (dibre hayyamim) means "what happened in the days (or years)".
The Septuagint translators (who translated the Old Testament into Greek) called the book "the things left out".
This showed that they thought of it as an addition to Samuel and Kings.
Jerome (A.D. 347 420), who translated the Latin Vulgate, said that a better title would be "chronicle of the whole sacred history".
Luther used this idea in his German version, and others have followed him.
Chronicles was first divided into two books by the Septuagint translators.
Old Jewish tradition says that Ezra wrote Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah.
However, people are still not sure.
Many people say that Chronicles was written in the later half of the 5th century B.C..
Backgammon is a game played by two players.
Each player moves pieces around a board.
Players roll two dice to find out how far their pieces can move in one turn.
The winner of one game is the first to get all pieces all the way around, and off, the board.
The game is laid-out asymmetrically.
White 's direction of travel is counter-clockwise, whereas black 's direction of travel is clockwise.
(There is no advantage whatsoever to either side due to this asymmetry.)
White moves from white 's far right to white 's home area on white 's close right, in the shape of a right-hand "C" from white 's point of view.
Black moves along the same "C", beginning from black 's far left and ending at black 's home area on black 's close left.
(The "C" is the same for both sides - the "C" points to the right for white and points to the left for black.)
As shown in the image, some pieces (for each side) begin already in the home quadrant, and some pieces must make their way all the way around.
Pieces can be sent backwards to their starting position during play.
The roll of two dice introduces a random component in the game, but Backgammon is basically a game of strategy.
Usual playing time is around 15 30 minutes, for a single game (which could be thought of as something like one particular long "hand" of a card game).
An overall championship or round of backgammon involves a number of ongoing single games, with the involvement of points, a "doubling cube," and other complications.
The game has a long history.
Games that resemble it have been played for thousands of years.
Archaeologists doing excavations at a place called Burnt City in modern-day Iran have found parts of a game that resembled backgammon.
They have found 60 pieces to play with, and two dice.
They could show that the game utensils date from around 3000 BC.
These pieces around 100 200 years older than another set, found in Ur, in Mesopotamia.
The Book of Joshua is the sixth book of the Christian Bible, and also the sixth book of the Hebrew Tanakh.
It is clear who wrote the book, because most of the Jewish tradition believe it was Joshua, son of Nun.
It is the first of the books of the Tanakh (Old Testament) covering the history of Israel from the arrival in the Promised Land to the Babylonian captivity.
It is thought that the book was written around the 15th century B.C.
After the death of Moses, God put Joshua in charge of the people.
Joshua sent two spies to spy on the city of Jericho.
A women hid these two men and said they had already left.
She hid them on top of her roof, underneath stalks of flax.
The spies later promised that they would keep the oath that Joshua made with them.
Jericho fell when the people of Israel, instructed by God, circled around the wall of Jericho seven times and blew their ram 's horns, and on the seventh time, they all shouted with a great shout, causing the wall to fall.
Joshua told the spies to go to Rahab 's house and bring out her family and belongings.
The spies did as they were told, as they kept the oath.
Joshua saved Rahab 's life, and she went to live in Israel.
Later, God told Joshua to invade the city of Ai.
After they did this, the people of Gibeon tricked Joshua into a treaty.
However, three days later, the people of Israel realized that they really made a treaty with Gibeon 's neighbors, the Hivites.
The Hivities became cursed, but the people of Gibeon promised that they would do whatever the Israelites say.
After making peace with the Hivites, they went to lay siege to Gibeon.
The Gibeonites sent a message to Joshua saying he needs to save the people of Gibeon.
So, God killed many of the Amorites by making large hailstones.
Then Joshua made the sun stay over Gibeon, and the moon over Ajalon.
Joshua later got very old and died.
Decide today whom you will serve, the gods your ancestors worshipped in Mesopotamia or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are now living.
As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD.
(24:15)
The Book of Ezra is a book of the Bible in the Old Testament and Hebrew Tanakh.
The words that start Nehemiah 1:1, "The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah", shows that Ezra and Nehemiah were at first two different works.
However, they were put together as one in the earliest Hebrew manuscripts.
Josephus and the Jewish Talmud talk about the book of Ezra but not a different book of Nehemiah.
The oldest manuscripts of the Septuagint also treat Ezra and Nehemiah as one book.
Origen (A.D. 185 253) is the first writer to treat the books as different works.
He called them I Ezra and II Ezra.
In translating the Latin Vulgate, Jerome called Nehemiah the second book of Esdrae (Ezra).
The English translations by Wycliffe (1382) and Coverdale (1535) also called Ezra "I Esdras" and Nehemiah "II Esdras".
The same separation first came out in a Hebrew manuscript in 1448.
The Book of Daniel (-RRB-, originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, is a book in both the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the Christian Old Testament.
The book says that Daniel is its writer in several places, such as 9:2 and 10:2.
Jesus agreed when he spoke about" ` the abomination that causes desolation ', spoken of through the prophet Daniel".
The book was probably completed c. 530 B.C..
This was shortly after Cyrus captured Babylon in 539.
Batman is a fictional character created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger for DC Comics.
He is one of the most famous and popular superheroes.
Batman began in comic books and was later used in several movies, TV programs, and books.
There are also many toys and other merchandise dealing with Batman and other characters and items from the world he lives in.
Batman lives in the fictional city of Gotham City.
Batman is named Bruce Wayne when not in costume.
Bruce Wayne is a very rich businessman.
Batman was first named "Bat-Man" by Kane.
Batman made its first appearance in 1939 in Detective Comics No. 27.
He was the second superhero to be created.
The first was Superman.
Batman 's origin story is that as a young child, Bruce Wayne saw a robber named Joe Chill murder his mother and father after the family left a theater.
Bruce decided that he did not want that kind of violence to happen to anyone else.
He dedicated his life to protect his city, Gotham City.
Wayne learned many different ways to fight as he grew up.
As an adult, Wayne used a costume to scare criminals so that there would be less crime in Gotham.
He called himself Batman.
Batman uses many different tools to help fight crime.
These include his car which he calls "the Batmobile", a special belt full of tools called a "utility belt" and bat-shaped boomerangs called "batarangs."
Batman is also helped from other people in Gotham.
Some of these people also put on costumes and become superheroes when they help him.
Some of the people who help him are his sidekick, Robin (Dick Grayson), his butler Alfred Pennyworth, police commissioner James Gordon, Wayne Enterprises CEO Lucius Fox, and Gordon 's daughter Barbara Gordon.
Barbara Gordon became a superhero named Batgirl (and later used the name Oracle) Commissioner Gordon uses the Bat-Signal that shines a light into the sky with a shadow in the shape of a bat on it to tell Batman that he needs help.
This light is called the Bat signal.
He is often, but not always, shown being friends with Superman.
When Batman teams up with other superheroes, their teams are called the Justice League of America or JLA for short.
Sometimes, Batman will team up with a JLA member without it being a JLA story.
For example, Green Arrow.
Some of the villains that Batman fights, called his Rogues Gallery are the Joker, Penguin, Ra 's al Ghul, Scarecrow, Talia al Ghul, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, Bane, Riddler, Two-Face, and Clayface.
Because of the way Batman deals with criminals, he is often seen as not being a hero by police.
Once he has even took on the full justice leauge.
In the 1960s, a live-action television series was made of Batman.
In Batman, Adam West was the actor who was Batman and Burt Ward was the actor who was Robin.
There are also many of cartoons with Batman as a character.
These include Superfriends, Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and Justice League.
There are other cartoons and programs where Batman is a character but he is not the most important part of the story, such as "Birds of Prey".
This was a live-action series that is about Batman 's daughter, the Huntress.
The newest show is Beware the Batman.
The Boston Red Sox are an American baseball team from Boston, Massachusetts that play in Major League Baseball.
They became the World Series Champions in 2013.
The Red Sox are a member of Major League Baseball 's American League East Division and of the American League itself.
The Red Sox have played at Fenway Park since 1912
One of the American League 's eight charter franchises, the club was founded in Boston in 1901.
They had no real nickname, but were often called the Boston Americans because they played in the American League.
Their first home field was the Huntington Avenue Grounds.
They met the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first modern World Series, and defeated the Pirates in an upset.
In 1907, the Boston National League team stopped using red as their team color.
The Americans team color had been blue.
The next year, 1908, the Americans adopted red as their color, and officially became the Boston Red Sox.
In 1918, the team won its fifth World Series, and then went into one of the longest championship droughts in baseball history.
The Red Sox won the World Series in 1903, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918, 2004, 2007, and 2013, and won the pennant but lost the World Series in 1946, 1967, 1975, and 1986.
Many thought their championship drought between 1918 and 2004 was caused by the "Curse of the Bambino", said to have been caused by the trade of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1920.
The drought was ended, and the "curse" reversed in 2004, when the team won their sixth World Series Championship.
To get to the 2004 World Series, they beat the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series; they lost the first three ALCS games to the Yankees, but then, when one more loss would have eliminated the Red Sox and sent the Yankees to the World Series, won the next four games and thereby won the ALCS.
That was, and still is, the only time a team has won a seven-game playoff series after losing the first three games.
After the ALCS, the Red Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first World Series since 1918 (86 years) in 2004.
They share a large and very famous rivalry with the New York Yankees.
They also share a notably smaller rivalry with the Tampa Bay Rays because of the 2008 American League Championship Series and because of various on-field fights and disputes.
The Baltimore Orioles are a Major League Baseball team from Baltimore, Maryland.
They compete in the American League 's AL East division.
They began play in the early 1900s as the St. Louis Browns, a rival to the St. Louis Cardinals.
They moved to Baltimore in 1954 and became the Orioles.
The "Baltimore Oriole" is an orange-and-black bird which is often seen in Maryland.
"Orioles" has been a traditional nickname for Baltimore baseball teams.
There was a Baltimore Orioles (19th century) in the major leagues.
There was also a minor league baseball team called the Orioles which played from the early 1900s until the Browns moved to Baltimore.
The Browns were not a very successful team.
They only won one league championship, in 1944.
The Orioles have won several league championships and also won the World Series in 1966, 1970 and 1983.
Bohemia is one of the regions of the Czech Republic.
Poland is to the north, Germany to the west, Austria to the south, and the Czech province of Moravia to the East.
The capital city of Prague lies in Bohemia.
Bohemia is well known for its glasswares (and other handicrafts), its beer, but also its cuisine.
BBC Radio 1 (often known as Radio 1) is an international radio station that is based in the United Kingdom.
It is owned by BBC and BBC Radio.
Radio 1 started broadcasting at 7.00 am on September 30, 1967.
Tony Blackburn presented the first program on the station.
Radio 1 mainly plays popular music throughout the day, and often plays alternative music genres after 7 pm.
This includes electronic dance, rock or just interviews.
The station is meant to be listened to mainly by people aged 15 29.
Before the launch of Radio 1, the BBC ran three radio stations (the BBC Light Programme, the BBC Home Service and the BBC Third Programme), but these were considered old fashioned and were closed down in 1967.
They were replaced with Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4.
The launch of Radio 1 in 1967 was because of the popularity of pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline.
They had been outlawed by Act of Parliament, and the BBC needed to provide alternative radio stations.
Radio 1 also has a sister station, BBC Radio 1Xtra.
The Battle of Waterloo was a battle that was fought mostly between French and British forces.
Napoleon was crowned as Emperor of France in 1804.
Then he launched many successful attacks on other countries in Europe.
France soon had an empire that stretched from Spain to the Russian border.
The only country that was still not captured was Great Britain.
The Royal Navy had many ships, so invasion by France was not possible.
However, Great Britain was not strong enough to stop Napoleon and his army from taking over most of mainland Europe.
Napoleon seemed unstoppable until two separate campaigns caused his empire to fall apart.
He gathered a huge army to invade and conquer Russia once and for all in 1812.
However, he did not think that he would have very many difficulties and it turned out he did.
His army was caught by the Russian winter and destroyed by the weather and lack of food.
Now that Napoleon was much weaker, the countries of Eastern Europe, led by Austria and Prussia, began to ally against him, forcing his troops back towards France.
Meanwhile, a small British army in Portugal and Spain, led by Arthur Wellesley (later to become Duke of Wellington) began to win victories over the French armies and to push Napoleon s troops out of Spain.
By 1814, he faced total defeat, with the Austrians and Prussians invading from the east and the Duke of Wellington and the British army in the west.
A peace treaty was arranged.
Napoleon would abdicate (give up the throne) and be exiled to a small Mediterranean island called Elba, with a small army.
He was replaced as ruler of France by Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI.
Once he was on the island of Elba, Napoleon was really not happy.
He had been promised money by the new French government, but the money did not come.
His wife (an Austrian princess) and his sons were forbidden to visit him.
Messages from France showed that the new French King was unpopular because he was trying to ignore many events that had taken place during the revolution.
The allies that had united against Napoleon were arguing in Vienna over the lands that they had recaptured.
He seized his opportunity, going by ship in February 1815 and landing in France again.
His welcome was very mixed.
Many French were tired of war and the death and suffering that it led to.
However, there were others who wanted a return to the power and glory of the old days and saw Napoleon as their best hope.
His first days were tense but, by personal leadership and persuasion, Napoleon managed to gain the support of the army.
When the king panicked and fled the country, there was little to stop Napoleon returning to Paris and resuming his title of Emperor.
What Napoleon needed now was a period of time to organize himself and the French army.
The allies were caught completely by surprise and their only chance to stop him lay with two small armies in Belgium: a British and Dutch army commanded by the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian (German) army commanded by Marshall Blucher.
Napoleon decided on a further gamble.
He gathered an army and prepared a surprise attack on Wellington and Blucher, hoping to catch them unprepared.
His plan was successful at first and he crossed the Belgian border before Wellington and Blucher could join forces.
His first battle was at Ligny and, after a fierce day s fighting, he defeated the Prussian army, forcing it to retreat.
Thinking that Blucher would retreat back to Prussia, Napoleon turned his attention towards Wellington.
There had already been a small battle at Quatre Bras, as Wellington tried to delay the French advance.
This had given Wellington enough time to prepare a full defensive position across the road leading to Brussels, near the village of Waterloo.
The French army advanced towards them and set up their camp on a ridge facing the combined British and Dutch (Anglo-Dutch) army.
Heavy rain caused delays and confusion and both armies settled down for the night in the mud to await the dawn and the forthcoming battle.
Napoleon s army faced the Duke of Wellington s Anglo-Dutch army near Waterloo on 18th June 1815.
Wellington s troops were deployed behind a low ridge, partially protecting them from the French massed artillery.
At 11.00 Napoleon ordered his guns to open fire.
French infantry began an attack against the Ch teau of Hougoumont, defended by the British Foot Guards.
This was intended to draw Wellington s reserves away from the center, where Napoleon s main attack would fall.
And according to records this battle was considered to be a vital key to who will win the Battle Of Waterloo.
At 13.30 Napoleon launched an infantry attack against Wellington s center.
Men of the King s German Legion resolutely defended the farm of La Haye Sainte.
This disrupted the French attack.
British artillery and musketry succeeded in repulsing the French assault and the British Household and Union heavy cavalry brigades charged after the retreating Frenchmen.
Elated by their success, the British cavalry pursued their enemy too far and in turn suffered terrible casualties at the hands of the French lancers.
At 15.00 Marshal Ney, believing the Anglo-Dutch army to be retreating after the heavy bombardment they had received all day, led a massed French cavalry attack against Wellington s center.
However, the British infantry, forming squares to defend themselves from cavalry attack, held firm.
The French took terrible casualties as they circled these impregnable formations of infantrymen.
The situation further deteriorated for Napoleon as Blucher 's Prussian troops launched an attack at Plancenoit to his rear at 16.30.
By early evening the French attack at Hougoumont, intended as a diversion, was now having the opposite effect.
The French committed more and more troops to the bitter fighting around the ch teau, which was held by only a small force of British Guardsmen.
More French reserves were being sent to meet the Prussian threat to the rear of Napoleon s army at Plancenoit.
However, the French had at last succeeded in capturing the farm of La Haye Sainte, only a short distance from Wellington s center.
At approximately 19.30 Napoleon committed his last reserves in a final effort to obtain victory.
As Prussians arrived to bolster Wellington s flank, veterans of the French Imperial Guard advanced to ` finish the job '.
The British infantry, exhausted from the continuous cannonade they had received all day, rose to meet them.
The musketry of the British Guards Brigade defeated Napoleon s finest troops.
They fled, and the whole French army joined them in retreat.
Wellington ordered his entire line to advance and the French were chased from the field.
A boomerang is a flying tool that is best known for its ability to return to the thrower.
In the past, it was made of wood, but most of the modern boomerangs are made of other materials.
Most people know that Australian Aborigines used boomerangs for hunting.
But the oldest boomerang was found in a cave in Poland and is more than 20,000 (twenty thousand) years old.
This kind of boomerang does not return to the thrower, but it can fly longer distances and more stably than other things which can be thrown.
These days (returning) boomerangs are usually used for recreation.
Most of the boomerangs do not have the classical "L" - shape.
The modern boomerang is special in that it will return to the one who threw it, if it is thrown correctly.
However, some boomerangs do not return because their wings do not have the right profile.
Most of the boomerangs are made for right-handed use.
Left-handed people have to use other boomerangs that are mirror-inverted, or have to throw with their right hand.
A boomerang is not thrown like a frisbee.
It has to be thrown almost vertically, with an inclination of about 10 20 degrees and with a lot of rotation (spin).
When facing the wind, throw with an angle of 30 45 degrees to the right (left-handed: to the left) of the wind.
Be sure to choose a field that is big enough.
Watch out for passers-by, and do not throw when people are standing in the range of the boomerang.
See also the link provided in the section below.
There are a lot of boomerang clubs in many countries all over the world.
These clubs organise workshops and tournaments.
The best boomerang-throwers come from Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland and the United States of America.
A few years ago, the International Federation of Boomerang Associations (IFBA) was founded to help to spread knowledge about boomerangs.
Bodybuilding is an activity where people build big muscles.
It is a form of human body modification which uses intensive muscle hypertrophy.
An individual who engages in this activity is referred to as a bodybuilder.
In competitive bodybuilding, bodybuilders display their physiques to a panel of judges, who assign points based on their appearance.
The muscles are revealed through a process known as the "cutting phase" - a combination of fat loss, oils, and tanning which, combined with the lighting, make the definition of the muscle group more distinct.
Some people do bodybuilding full time as a career choice.
Bodybuilders train their body and then they pose when the competition starts.
Bodybuilders do not show their power or strength.
They only show their muscular body.
It is important to have every muscle build up.
The person with the best muscles and pose will win the contest.
When Bodybuilders train they use very complex diet and training systems that will help them to achieve best results.
Some popular bodybuilders that were taking part in competitions include Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charles Atlas.
Biological warfare (or germ warfare) is when pathogens are used as a weapon.
This is called a biological weapon.
Pathogens are microorganisms that can cause disease.
If non-living things (like toxins) are used, this is called chemical warfare.
Biological warfare has been used throughout history.
The first form of biological warfare may have been when the plague hit the Mongols.
During battle, they were said to have thrown plague victims ' bodies at their enemies.
Before the 20th century, it took some of the following forms:
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, biological weapons were used by the Japanese army against China.
The Japanese army usually launched contaminated fleas or food from planes.
Today, pathogens for diseases like anthrax or smallpox could be used as agents for biological weapons.
The production, and stockpiling of such weapons was forbidden in the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972.
The Book of Nehemiah is a book of the Hebrew Bible, thought to be a continuation of the Book of Ezra, and is sometimes called the second book of Ezra.
It is thought to be written by Nehemiah.
It is about the return from exile and the rebuilding of Jerusalem.
The Book of Jeremiah, or Jeremiah (, Yirm y h), is part of the Hebrew Bible, Judaism 's Tanakh, and later became a part of Christianity 's Old Testament.
The Book of Isaiah (, Sefer Y ` sha ` yah) is a book of the Bible thought to be written by the Prophet Isaiah, who lived in the second half of the 8th century BC.
The Book of Isaiah contains many prophecies about ancient Israel, its people, and its enemies.
Tradition says that all 66 chapters of the book were written by Isaiah, but other theories say that some chapters were written by one or more other people.
Brian Charles Lara (born 2 May 1969 in Santa Cruz, Trinidad and Tobago) is a former West Indian cricketer.
The Beagle is a breed of small to medium-sized dog.
It is a Hound, and it has short legs and long, soft ears.
Beagles are mostly developed for hunting and finding hare, rabbit, and other kinds of game.
They can do this because they can smell well and have very quick instincts.
They are also popular as pets because of their good size, sweet temper, and health.
This kind of character also makes them be used very much for animal testing.
Beagles can have coats of different colors.
Some variations can be tri-colored, orange, red, or lemon, although they are widely known for sporting the tri-colored look (Black, brown, and white).
They usually have brown eyes.
Although beagle-type dogs have existed for over 2,000 years, the modern kind came from Great Britain around the 1830s.
Beagles have been included in popular culture since the times when Queen Elizabeth began to rule, in literature and paintings, and more recently in movie, television and comic books.
Snoopy of the comic strip Peanuts has been picked as "the world 's most famous beagle".
Dogs that look almost the same as the modern Beagle can be traced in Ancient Greece back to around the 5th century BC.
In the Treatise on Hunting or Cynegeticus, written by Xenophon, who said there was a hound that hunted hares by scent and was followed by foot.
Small hounds were mentioned in the Forest Laws.
If these laws were true, it would be enough proof that beagle-type dogs lived in England before 1016, but it is likely that the laws were written in the Middle Ages for tradition.
In the 11th century, William the Conqueror brought the Talbot hound to Britain.
The Talbot was a white, slow hound.
Once, English Talbots were crossed with Greyhounds to make them faster in running.
They are extinct now, but once they had made the Southern Hound more popular, which helped the Southern Hound descend to the Beagle.
From medieval times, beagle was used as a general description for small hounds, even though they are actually very different from the modern breed.
Small breeds of beagle-type dogs were living even from the times of Edward II and Henry VII.
Edward and Henry both had packs of Glove Beagles, who were named because of their small size.
Also, Queen Elizabeth I kept a breed known as a Pocket Beagle, which stood 8 t at the shoulder.
It was named so because it could fit in a "pocket" or saddlebag, when they rode along on the hunt.
Elizabeth I called the dogs her singing beagles and often entertained guests at her royal table by letting her Pocket Beagles cavort amid their plates and cups.
Ever since then, it is possible that the name was used to refer to the same kind of small hounds.
In George Jesse 's Researches into the History of the British Dog from 1866, Gervase Markham is quoted referring to the Beagle as small enough to sit on a man 's hand and to the:
Barry Bonds (born July 24, 1964, in Riverside, California) is an American Major League Baseball player.
He holds the Major League Baseball career home run record with 762 home runs.
He is currently a free agent.
He is not signed with any team and is currently not playing baseball.
The book of Numbers in the Bible is the fourth book in the Old Testament.
It is called a book of Moses because it contains the story of Moses and the Israelites when they wander throughout the wilderness before ending up at Israel (also known as Canaan or Palestine), where God promised they will settle.
The book is called Numbers because at the start God ordered a counting of the people (a census) in the twelve tribes of Israel.
After counting all the men who are over twenty and fit to fight, the Israelites began to travel in well-ordered divisions, with God in the middle of the Ark of the Covenant.
In Hebrew, the book is called Bmidbar, which means ` In a desert, ' because it is the account of their 40 years of wandering therein.
When the people found that the place God promised them was filled with strong and powerful people of other races, they became scared and rebelled against God and Moses.
Therefore God punished them by making the Israelites travel forty years before they could settle on the promised land.
The Book of Judges is the seventh book in both the Christian Bible (Old Testament), and the Hebrew Tanakh.
It was originally written in Hebrew, to the people in Israel.
The Hebrew word for the book is Shaptiym, which means, ` people of judgment. '
The Books of Samuel (, Sefer Shmuw ` el) are part of the Tanakh (part of the Hebrew Bible) and also of the Christian Old Testament.
The first book of Samuel tells the history of Israel from the birth of Samuel until Saul 's death.
Samuel was a Jewish priest, prophet, and judge over Israel in the Old Testament.
He is found in 1 Samuel.
His name suggests "Heard of God" (1 Samuel 1:20).
We can not be sure when exactly Samuel was born.
However, we do know from the Old Testament that his father was "a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite."
His mother was Hannah.
Hannah did not have any children, but Elkanah 's other wife, Peninnah, had children, and this made her so sad she wept.
Hannah prayed to God, "O Lord Almighty... if you will only... remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life..." God gave her a son, and naming him Samuel, she kept her promise to God by giving him to the Lord (making him serve in the temple).
There,"... the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord."
At that time there was a priest named Eli: his sons were not good and sinned, but Samuel"... continued to grow in stature (height) and in favor with the Lord and with men."
One day, when Samuel was a young boy still in the temple, he heard someone calling.
He thought it was Eli, but Eli told him that God was talking to him.
So Samuel went back and listened, and when he heard God calling, "Samuel!
Samuel!"
he said, "Speak (talk), for your servant is listening."
Then the Lord told Samuel that he would destroy Eli 's family because of Eli 's sinful sons.
Samuel told everything to Eli, and"... all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized (realized) that Samuel was... a prophet of the Lord.
The Lord... revealed himself to Samuel through his word."
Samuel made the people in Israel be sorry for their sins until he died.
He also anoint both Saul and David, Israel 's first two kings, and also told Israel what the new order of God was when kings began ruling over Israel.
The Book of Revelation, which is sometimes called Revelation to John, Apocalypse of John, or Revelation of Jesus Christ is the last book of the New Testament in the Bible.
The last book of the New Testament is usually called the Book of Revelation or simply Revelation.
Some of the earliest manuscripts have the title of "The Revelation of John".
Later manuscripts usually have the title of "The Revelation of the Theologian".
This is why the Authorized King James Version calls Revelation the Revelation of Saint John the Divine (divine was a seventeenth century word for theologian.
In Greek, the word apocalypse means revealing or unveiling.
Some people consider Revelation to be the most difficult book in the Bible.
Over the course of the book the author has two visions.
There are many different ways to interpret these visions, and there have been many arguments over which way is right.
There is some disagreement over whether the John who wrote the letters of John, the John who wrote The Gospel of John, and the John who wrote the Book of Revelation are the same person.
The person writing Revelation called himself "John".
He also wrote that he was on Patmos, an island in the Aegean Sea, when he saw his first vision.
The Books of Kings are a set of books in the Old Testament.
Both Judaism and Christianity see it as a part of the Bible.
The Books of Kings describes the history of Israel 's kings from the end of the rule of David until the time of the Babylonian exile (so it writes about a time of about 453 years).
After a long description of Solomon 's rule, 1,2 Kings writes of how the kingdom of Israel was divided and then shows how the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah developed.
1 and 2 Kings, like 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Books of Chronicles) are actually one book.
It was simply called "Kings."
However, it was divided into two books by the translators of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), and so it was written as 1 and 2 Kings by the Latin translation and many other versions.
The division between 1 and 2 Kings was made after the death of Ahab in the northern kingdom (22:37) and Jehoshaphat in the southern kingdom (22:50).
It is not known for sure who is the author (writer) of 1,2 Kings.
Jewish tradition says that Jeremiah wrote 1,2 Kings, but people do not usually think so today.
Whoever the author was, he knew the book of Deuteronomy, like many of Israel 's prophets.
He also used lots of sources, like "the books of the annals of Solomon" (11:41, NIV), "the book of the annals of the kings of Israel" (14:19 NIV), and "the book of the annals of the kings of Judah" (14:29 NIV)".
Probably other sources were used, like those inside Chronicles).
1,2 Kings gives lots of chronological information.
The length of time each king rules is given, and often other information is given, such as the age of the ruler at the time of becoming king.
By putting in Biblical data with those given from Assyrian chronological records, the year 853 B.C. is probable as the year of Ahab 's death, and the year 841 as the year Jehu began to reign.
So, it can be known that the division of the kingdom happened in 930 B.C., and that Samaria was defeated by the Assyrians in 722-721, and that Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 586.
The information about the connection between the reigns of the kigns of Israel and Judah have some problems, which have, for a long time, been wondered at.
Recently, though, most of these problems have been solved by recognizing things like possibilities of reigns that overlap, sons ruling with their fathers, differences in the time of the year in which the rule of a king officially began, and differences in the way a king 's first year was seen.
1,2 Kings does not exactly say its purpose or theme, but it is most probable that the author wanted to write his material as a sequel, the next book after the books of Samuel: a history about the kings by covenant.
The writer was not trying to show a social, or political, or economical history of Israel 's kings like most histories today.
He writes about Omri, who was a very powerful king and an important political person, in only six verses (16:23 -28), simply saying that he "did evil in the eyes of the Lord" (16:25, NIV).
Also, Jeroboam the second, who was king over northern Israel when it was most powerful, is written about very shortly (2 Kings 14:23 -29).
He also writes nothing about the first years of Josiah king of Judah, but says a long description of how they begin again to keep the covenant in his 18th year as king (2 Kings 22:3 -23:28).
Nothing is said about why Josiah fought with Pharaoh Neco of Egypt at Megiddo.
The kings who is most written about in the books of Kings are the kings who either kept the covenant well, broke it very badly, or had an important encounter with one of God 's prophets.
Ahab son of Omri and Manasseh broke the covenant so that it was dangerous to Israel, so the author wrote a lot about them both; Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:1 -20:21) and Josiah (2 Kings 22:1 - 23:29) are written a lot about because they tried to remind the people of their covenant promises.
They are the only two kings who the writer is really happy with for their loyalty to the Lord.
Another important part of 1 and 2 Kings is that the writer shows the relationship between prophecy and how it is fulfilled (comes true) in history.
At least 11 prophecies are written to be true.
The writer also shows the importance of the prophets as messengers from God to tell the kings and people of Israel to come back to God.
Uusally, nobody listened to their warnings (for example, Ahijah, Shemaiah, Micaiah, Jonah, Isaiah, Huldah), but the writer writes very much about Elijah and Elisha.
The Book of Ruth (meaning pity or compassion) is the eight book of the Old Testament (Christian), and the Tanakh (Jewish).
It is one of the shortest books in both the Jewish and Christian holy books, consisting of only four chapters.
It is unknown who wrote the book.
Some think that it was written by Samuel, but there is no evidence for that.
According to many scholars, this book was originally part of the Book of Judges, and was later taken from that book and made independent.
It was probably written around 900 BC.
The book tells the story of the family of Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their sons Mahlon and Chilion.
Because of a famine, they were forced to leave Bethlehem and go to the land of Moab.
Once there, Elimelech died, and his sons married two Moabite women.
Mahlon married Ruth, and Chilion married Orpah.
After some time there, Mahlon and Chilion both died.
Naomi was forced to return home because her husband and sons were dead.
She then told Ruth and Orpah to return home to their families and find new husbands.
Orpah returned home but Ruth promised she would follow Naomi wherever she went.
They returned to home and Ruth decided she would go into the fields to pick up grain the wealthy people would drop on the ground (a common practice in that time).
A kind man named Boaz, who was the owner of the field, noticed her and her beauty.
He told his workers to drop extra grain for her.
When she went home to tell her mother-in-law how much she received, they found out that Boaz was a close relative of theirs.
After an even closer relative said he would not marry her, Boaz and Ruth were happily married.
She would bear him a son named Obed, who was the father of Jesse, who was the father of David, who was, according to the New Testament, the ancestor of Jesus.
Esther is the name of a book in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) and the Old Testament, and also its title heroine.
It is the basis for the Jewish celebration Purim.
Although it is never said who wrote the book of Esther, from inside evidence it is possible to make some guesses about the author and when it was written.
The author was a Jew, because he emphasize where the Jewish festival came from and from the Jewish nationalism inside the story.
The author probably lived in a Persian city, because he knew Persian customs well, and does not say anything about the land of Judah or Jerusalem.
The earliest date of the book would be a little while after the events were told, for instance, about 460 B.C. (before Ezra 's return to Jerusalem).
It is also thought that the festival of Purim had been celebrated some time before this book was written.
The author 's main purpose was to write about how the yearly festival of Purim started and to make people remember the saving of the Jewish people during King Xerxes ' reign.
The book shows both the start of the festival and why it should continue to be celebrated.
In the book, the author repeatedly talks about the conflict between Israel and the Amalekites, a conflict that began during the exodus and continued through Israel 's history.
The author of Esther views them as the symbol of all the powers of the world against God 's people.
Now that Israel has been released from captivity, Haman 's dangerous edict is the final try in the Old Testament time to get rid of them.
When Haman is defeated, Israel enjoys a time of rest.
Feasting is another important theme in Esther, as seen in the picture on the left.
Banquets are the setting for important parts of the story.
There are ten banquets.
Repeating is one of the main features of the style of the book of Esther.
The three groups of banquets come in pairs; there are two lists of the king 's servants; two reports that Esther hid who she was; two gatherings of women; two houses for the women; two fasts; two talks of Haman with his wife and friends; two sudden visits to the king by Esther; two coverings of Haman 's face; two royal commands; two cooling of the king 's anger; two days for the Jews to protect themselves and take vengeance; and two letters about how Purim started.
Another important feature of this book that has been often wondered at is that it never directly talks about God, worship, prayer, or sacrifice.
This has made some people think the book is not as religious as other books.
However, it is possible that the author purposefully did not say anything about God or anything religious to show more clearly that it is God who controls all the "unimportant" coincidence that are in the story and end in saving the Jews.
The Book of Esther is about a Jewish girl, adopted by her uncle Mordecai after her parents had died.
Xerxes, the Persian king, who rejected his other wife (Queen Vashti), fell in love with Esther in the beauty contest.
He took in Esther as the new Persian Queen, not knowing she was an Israelite.
Meanwhile Haman, the king 's prime minister, creates a grudge against Esther 's uncle Mordecai because he does not bow down to him, and only to the God of Israel.
He despises Mordecai because he is a Jew, and tries to trick the king into making a law to kill all of the Jews.
He, too, does not know that the Queen is a Jew herself.
Later, Queen Esther finds out the plot by Mordecai, and tries to stop it.
She goes to the king and invites him to dine with her, and with Haman, so that she may tell him.
But when he comes, she loses bravery and does not tell him.
Later she invites him and Haman again, and this time she tells him.
The king, furious, storms out, and Haman asks Esther for mercy.
When the king comes back in, he mistakes Haman for ` molest ` ing his Queen, and hangs him on the gallows that Haman had prepared for Mordecai.
Then Mordecai comes into the presence of the king and receives the signet ring of the king.
The King then changes the law and saves the Jews because of Esther 's pleas.
British Rail was the national railway company in the United Kingdom, from 1948, when the railways were nationalised, until 1997, when it was privatised.
The rail transport system in Great Britain started to grow in the 19th century.
It was very close together, had many small ` branch lines ', and many competing firms.
Four of these lines were London 's Staines and West Drayton Railway, the Sheppey Light Railway in Sussex, the Welsh Cambrian Railways and Welsh Highland Railway.
During World War One, the railways were run by the government, until 1921.
Railways Act 1921 merged most of the minor lines, like the Cambrian Railways, into the four biggest firms, who took them over.
Complete nationalisation had been considered but was rejected until the Transport Act 1947.
The Cambrian Railways joined the Great Western Railway (GWR).
The Staines and West Drayton Railway had already been taken over by the GWR many years earlier.
Some of the lines were to be under shared ownership and jointly run by some of the Big Four railway firms.
These lines included the jointly owned Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway (M&GN) between the LMS and the LNER in eastern England, and the LMS and LNER owned Cheshire Lines Committee in Cheshire and Lancashire.
The Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway (S&DJ) became owned by the LMS and the SR in south-western England.
GWR and LMS also jointly ran some lines in outer London.
The London area railway firms, such as the Metropolitan Railway, which become part of London Underground in 1933, were not merged.
Industrial lines like the Oxfordshire Ironstone Railway, narrow-gauge railways like the Ffestiniog Railway, and some light railways like the West Sussex Railway were also excluded.
The London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB), who run London Underground, was a state-run firm.
After the smaller firms were merged in 1923 under the Railways Act 1921, there were four large regional railway companies.
The Big 4 were the Great Western Railway (GWR), the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) and the Southern Railway (SR).
The Transport Act 1947 made provision for the nationalisation of the network.
The Welsh Highland Railway had been deemed unnecessary and too costly to run.
It was closed in 1937.
The Second World War had caused damage to all the railways.
They had lost a large part of their trains, buildings and equipment.
The Transport Act 1947 set out the nationalisation of the rail network, as part of a plan by Clement Attlee 's Labor Government to nationalise public transport.
The London Underground, some industrial lines and some remaining light railways like Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Railway were again excluded.
For a short time, during World War II, the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Railway line was taken over by the military.
After the war the line re-opened to public use in 1946.
The Bicester Military Railway had been built by the government in 1941.
The Transport Act 1947 took effect on 1 January 1923.
By that date most of the mergers had taken place, some from the previous year.
The Railway Magazine in its issue of February 1923 dubbed the new companies as "The Big Four of the New Railway Era".
See also a list of railway companies involved in the 1923 grouping.
The nationalised Ulster Transport Authority (UTA) ran the railways in Northern Ireland from 1948 until 1966.
They were then taken over by Translink and called NI Railways, also known as Northern Ireland Railways.
The government of Northern Ireland and Ireland ran the former Great Northern Railway jointly under a Great Northern Railway Board until 1958.
Most of the lines in Northern Ireland were closed in the 1960s.
In 1955, a major modernisation program costing 1.2 billion was authorised by the government.
The period of nationalisation saw sweeping changes occur as steam trains were scrapped 1968, in favor of diesel trains and electric trains.
Freight now replaced passengers as the main source of business.
One third of the network was closed by the highly critical Beeching report of the 1960s.
A major railway survey in April 1961 was used in the writing of a government report on the future of the network.
This report was called The Reshaping of British Railways.
It was published by the BRB in March 1963 as ("the Beeching Axe").
A third of all passenger trains would be scrapped and more than 4,000 of the 7,000 stations would be closed.
InterCity (or, in the earliest days, the hyphenated Inter-City) was introduced by British Rail in 1966 as a brand-name for its long-haul express passenger services (see British Rail brand names for a full history).
Passenger levels fell steadily from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, but experienced a sharp increase after the introduction of the high-speed Intercity 125 trains in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Between 1934 and 1975 the Northern line ran the Northern City Line as its Highbury Branch.
London Underground gave it to British Rail in 1975,
Before the sectorization of BR in 1982 the system was split into regions.
Working around London, they were London Midland Region (Marylebone, Euston, St Pancras and Broad Street), Southern Region (Waterloo, Victoria, Chairing Cross, Holborn Viaduct, Cannon Street and London Bridge), Western Region (Paddington) and Eastern Region (King 's Cross, Moorgate, Broad Street, Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street).
This was perceived to be a source of inefficiency, so sectorization made the regions into a single organization covering all commuter services.
At the same time InterCity took over express services and Regional Railways took over regional services.
The group was originally called Provincial.
BR built 2537 steam locomotives from 1948 to 1960, some to pre-nationalisation designs and some to its own, new, standard designs.
Eventually BR chose to end the use of steam trains in 1968.
The official report known as the "Modernisation Plan" of December 1954 was intended to bring the railway system into the 20th century.
The aim was to increase speed, reliability, safety and line capacity, by making the railways more attractive to passengers and freight operators.
The important areas were:
Long-distance trains from Marylebone began to be cut back from 1958 after the line was given from BR Midland Western to the BR Midland Region.
Then BR Midland Region thought it was an unnecessary rival of their Midland Main Line.
By 1960 there were no daytime trains running to destinations north of Nottingham and only a few still ran at night.
Many Express services were cut.
By 1963, local stopping services beyond Aylesbury were cut.
In 1965 freight services were ended.
Between 1963 and 1966 only a few remaining long distance services stayed in use.
A large part of the former Great Central Railway was closed as part of the ` Beeching axe '.
This meant that Marylebone was now used only by local trains to Aylesbury and High Wycombe.
After the 1960s, lack of investment meant the station itself became run down.
Some of the early models were of poor quality and design, but many later kinds proved their worth in time.
British Rail Class 127 diesel trains were chosen to operate on the services from Marylebone usually to places such as High Wycombe, Aylesbury and Banbury which are on the Chiltern Main Line and Great Central Main Line (now the London to Aylesbury Line).
Strangely, the 115 were under Table 115 in the British Rail timetable.
They were similar to British Rail Class 127, but were superior as the class had larger windows, better seats, lights and wall surfaces.
Both classes were made in the early 1960s.
The British Rail Class 47 (originally Brush Type 4) is a class of British railway diesel-electric locomotive that was developed in the 1960s by Brush Traction.
Their reliable and trusted service lasted well in to the 2000s.
British Rail gave Class 52 to the class of 74 large Type 4 diesel-hydraulic locomotives built for the Western Region of British Railways between 1961 and 1964.
All were given two-word names, with the first word being Western, and so the type was nicknamed Westerns.
Some of the early models were of poor quality and design, but many later kinds proved their worth in time.
The British Rail Class 207 (or 3D) versatile diesel-electric multiple units were built by BR at Eastleigh in 1962.
The British Rail Class 423 (or 4Vep) electrical multiple units were built by BR at York Works from 1967 to 1974.
They feature manually opening doors next to every seating row and mostly found working outer suburban services in South London, and rural services in Kent and Sussex, up to replacement in 2005.
The British Rail Class 303 is a type of electric multiple unit.
They are also known as Blue Train units, since they were originally painted blue all over.
They were first used in 1960 for the electrification of the North Clyde and the Cathcart Circle lines in Strathclyde.
The British Rail Class 73 electro-diesel locomotives are very unusual in that they can operate from a 750 V DC third-rail supply, but also have a diesel engine to allow them to work on non-electrified routes.
The British Rail Class 86 was the standard electric locomotive built during the 1960s.
It was made after the repeated testing of the earlier classes like the 81 and 85.
The tests led to a much improved loco design.
The British Rail Class 312 is a type of alternating current (AC) electric multiple unit (EMU) built in 1966 1974 intended for use on outer-suburban passenger services.
It was the last class of multiple unit to be constructed to the British Rail Mark 2 body shell, and also the last with slam doors.
Their passenger seats were an improvement on former types.
British Rail Class 313 electric multiple units were built by BREL at York Works from 1976 to 1977, thus the first second-generation EMUs to be constructed for British Rail.
They were capable of both drawing power via 25 kV AC overhead, or 750 V DC third-rail.
They were the first units in Britain to have fully automatic couplers which allowed both physical coupling and also the connection of control electric and air supplies to be carried out without the driver 's need to leave the cab.
Their passenger seats were also an improvement on former types.
During the late 1950s, railways continued to worsen, and in 1959 the government acted, limiting the amount the BTC could spend on British Rail.
The government proposed that many services could be provided more cheaply by buses, and said that most abandoned rail services would have their places taken by bus services.
Only main lines would be untouched.
Many other minor lines would be cut back or scrapped.
The business man Lord Beeching saw South Wales as a failing industrial region.
So it lost the majority of its network.
Since 1983 it has experienced a major rail revival, with new stations such as Llanharan reopening.
Four lines reopened within 20 miles (32 km) of each other: Abercynon Aberdare, Barry Bridgend via, Bridgend Maesteg and the Ebbw Valley Line via Newbridge.
The station at Laurencekirk on the mainline between Arbroath and Aberdeen was shut in 1967, but 42 years later in May 2009 it reopened.
Other reopened stations include, and all closed in the mid-1960s.
Haddenham in Buckinghamshire lost its little-used station in 1963, but a more popular station opened in 1987 as the town grew.
A major part of the report proposed that British Rail electrify some major main lines and the use of containerised freight traffic instead of outdated and uneconomic wagon-load traffic.
Some of these plans were eventually adopted, however, such as the creation of the Freightliner concept and further electrification of the West Coast Main Line from Crewe to Glasgow in 1974.
Also the staffs ' terms and conditions were improved over time.
Since the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, road traffic levels grew heavily in some areas.
This has come close to gridlock.
Furthermore, in recent years there have been record high levels of passengers on the railways.
A modest number of the railway closures have therefore been reversed.
In addition a small but significant number of closed stations have reopened, and passenger services been restored on lines where they had been closed or removed.
Many of these were in the urban metropolitan counties and towns where Passenger Transport Executives have a role in promoting local passenger rail use.
A notable reopening was the Robin Hood Line in Nottinghamshire, between Nottingham and Worksop via Mansfield, which reopened in the early 1990s.
Before the line reopened, Mansfield had been the largest town in Britain without a railway station.
Profits from the railways began to fall in the early 1980s.
In 1983, the civil servant Sir David Serpell wrote what became known as the Serpell Report.
He wanted even more cutbacks.
In the early 1980s there was a proposal to close Marylebone and divert British Rail services via High Wycombe into nearby Paddington.
There was also a plan to extend the Metropolitan Line to Aylesbury, so London trains via Amersham would be sent to Baker Street.
Marylebone station was to be converted into a bus and coach station.
London Underground said the Metropolitan Line could not cope with any more trains and was full up.
However these plans were deemed stupid and clumsy, and were quietly dropped.
The funding of BR was reduced so they created the cheaper Pacer trains.
The British Rail Class 143 is a diesel multiple unit, part of the Pacer family of trains introduced between 1985 and 1986.
They originally worked around North East England but were later transferred to Wales.
It was made out of bus parts put on to lorry chassis and train wheels.
Earlier units proved to be unreliable, but later units were of a better design.
The British Rail Class 156 "Super-Sprinter" diesel multiple unit were built from 1987 to 1989 to replace elderly First Generation "Heritage" DMUs (like the Class 127 units) and locomotive-hauled passenger trains.
As funding increased before privatisation the successful British Rail Class 158 Express Sprinter was made.
It is a type of diesel multiple unit (DMU) train.
They were built for British Rail between 1989 and 1992 by BREL at their Derby Works.
On 12 December 1988, three commuter trains crashed, just south-west of Clapham junction station, in London.
35 people died and more than 100 were injured.
British Rail 's 30-year-old vintage Mark 1 carriages were found out to be dangerous and the broken signalling equipment was fixed and improved.
The British government under John Major said that privatisation would help passenger services, but this did not happen until much later.
The Scottish Assembly Government have re-opened the lines between Hamilton and Larkhall, Alloa and Stirling and is working on a link from Airdrie to Bathgate.
The biggest line-reopening project is the former Waverley railway Edinburgh to Borders line.
The Welsh Assembly Government has re-opened the Vale of Glamorgan Line between Barry Bock and Bridgend in 2005.
The Ebbw Valley Line reopened between Ebbw Vale and Cardiff in the year 2008.
It will later go on to services to Newport in Gwent in 2011.
The Barry Bridgend route was closed after the Beeching report of March 1963.
The line 's passenger service was officially shut down in June 1964, but freight continued until the late 1990s.
Some English stations like Corby and Mansfield were reopened after privatisation.
Yet more stations were reopened by British Rail in Scotland, England and Wales before privatisation when the railway was run properly.
Train fares cost more than under British Rail.
Regional Railways was one of the three passenger sectors of British Rail.
It was created in the year 1982.
It finished operation in 1996, two years after privatisation.
In the privatisation of British Rail, InterCity trains were divided up into several franchises.
The Caledonian Sleeper are transferred to ScotRail, now First ScotRail.
Since privatisation, the number of companies has changed a number of times as rules have changed and the areas covered altered.
The companies that took over passenger rail services include:
The British Rail "double arrow" logo was said to show direction of travel on a double track railway on a railway map and was nicknamed "the arrow of indecision".
It is now employed as a general symbol on street signs in Great Britain, but not in Northern Ireland, denoting railway stations, and as part of the Association of Train Operating Companies (A.T.O.C.) 's joint-managed National Rail brand, still being printed on railway tickets.
Sometimes strikes happened among British Rail staff, over staff pay, safety, working hours and alike.
There were several strikes in the late 1970s, but decreased after privatisation.
There were also several other strikes in the late 1970s.
Other firms like the UK 's coal mines also struck at this time.
The Book of Job is the 18th book in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament.
It is one of the books in the class of poetry.
The Bible says "In the land of Uz" there lived a man whose name was Job.
He feared God and shunned evil.
He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven-thousand sheep, three-thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants.
He was the greatest man among all the people of the East."
"When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified.
Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, "Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.
This was Job 's regular custom."
The Bible also says that Job was a pious, rich, loyal and a man who loved God.
One day Satan and the Angels of God went to God.
God tells Satan about his servant Job and how good he is.
Satan says that the only reason why he is like that is because God was good to him and gave him sons and daughters and many animals.
Satan asks if he can test Job and God lets him.
God tells Satan not to kill Job.
The first test Satan did was to take away all of Job 's animals, killing the servants that were with the animals, and killing all of Job 's sons and daughters while they were eating together.
Even though Satan did these things to Job, Job did not curse God like Satan wanted Job to do.
Satan and the Angels went to meet God again.
Like before, God talked about how good his servant Job is.
Satan says that Job will curse God if he makes Job sick, which he did.
This is the last meeting with Satan, the Angels.
Satan afflicted sores all over Job 's body.
Job 's wife told him to curse God and die.
Job told her that if he said that, that would be foolish.
Even though Job lost everything he had and suffered from painful sores all over his body, he did not sin against God by cursing him.
Satan had failed in trying to make him sin.
This is the final time Satan is mentioned in the Book of Job.
When Job 's friends heard about the things that happened to him they went to comfort him.
Most of the book tells about Job and his friends talking.
The names of his friends are Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.
Towards the end of the book, Job 's friends start to think that Job is not good because a lot of bad things are happening to him.
Job keeps on saying that he is good but he starts to wonder if God really is good.
After God speaks to Job and his three friends, God asks Job where he was when He created the earth and filled it with amazing things (meaning that it is not possible for man to understand God 's ways).
God gets very angry at Job 's friends for thinking that Job was not a good man and for saying things about God they did not know about, and Job prays for his friends: God answers his prayer.
God blesses Job because he did not curse Him.
God gives him more than he had before.
The Book of Proverbs is a book in both the Tanakh (Judaism), and the Old Testament (Christianity).
The book contains some of the most important teaching and instructions in each of their respective Religions.
Most scholars believe that Solomon was the writer of at least part of the book.
Other authors are mentioned as well, but these references are missing in the Greek Septuagint.
The Septuagint sees King Solomon as the author of the whole Book of Proverbs.
In the Middle Ages, scholars thought the Vulgate was a more faithful rendering of 30:1 and 31:1.
In their eyes the words "Agur" and "Lamuel" were only other names for Solomon.
Dates for the writing of the book are unclear.
Because of suggested authorship of Solomon, and the workings of Hezekiah 's men, there are some dates that can be worked with.
However there are not enough to give specific timing to the completion of the book, though it could have been as late as third century BC
The Book of Lamentations (Eikha, (h)) is a book of the Bible Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh.
It is traditionally read by the Jewish people on Tisha B ` Av, the fast day that commemorates the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
The Book of Ezekiel is a book of the Hebrew Bible (of the Books of the Bible) named after the prophet Ezekiel.
Bristol City F.C. are an English football club.
They are based in the city of Bristol and play at a stadium called Ashton Gate.
They were formed in 1897.
Bioterrorism refers to the use of biological agents with the intent to cause panic, illness, or death.
There are biological agents in nature, but they can be changed artificially in order to make them more effective.
There are many methods of spreading biological agents.
Biodefense is defense against bioterrorism, often in the form of a vaccine or medicine.
There are three categories of biological agents.
The first is category A, the highest priority agents.
Biological agents in category A pose a high risk to national security.
These include anthrax and smallpox.
The second, category B, includes biological agents such as brucellosis and melioidosis.
These are a risk to national security.
Category C, the third, includes emerging diseases that could be a risk in the future, such as hantavirus.
The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit, also called the Stealth Bomber, is an American strategic bomber.
It has a lot of stealth technology, and it is designed to get through many anti-aircraft defenses.
It can drop both conventional and nuclear weapons.
Two people fly the bomber, and it can drop up to 80 500 l-class JDAM GPS-guided bombs, or sixteen 2400 l B83 nuclear bombs.
The bomber began being designed as the "Advanced Technology Bomber" (ATB) during the Carter administration.
The designing of the ATB continued during the Reagan administration.
The bomber was designed and is made by Northrop Grumman, with help from Boeing.
Each aircraft cost US$ 737 million (in 1997 dollars).
Because the bomber is very expensive, the project was controversial in the U.S. Congress.
The end of the Cold War meant that the bomber was not really needed anymore.
Congress wanted to buy 132 bombers, but during the late 1980s and 1990s, Congress reduced this to 21.
In 2008, a B-2 was destroyed in a crash shortly after takeoff.
The crew got out safely.
20 B-2s are being used by the United States Air Force.
Although the B-2 was supposed to be a mainly nuclear bomber, it was first used in combat to drop normal bombs on Serbia during the Kosovo War in 1999.
It was used during the Iraq War and it is being used in the war in Afghanistan.
A beaver is a kind of rodent.
It is semi-aquatic, meaning some of the time it lives in water, some of the time it lives on land.
Beavers can only be found in North America and Europe.
In Europe, they almost became extinct (died off), but they are returning.
There are beavers living in the Elbe and Rhone rivers, as well as in Bavaria, Poland and Scandinavia.
Beavers are known for building and keeping dams in rivers.
Currently there are two different species of beaver, the American beaver (C. canadensis) and the European beaver (C. fiber).
This beaver can be found in North America, in Canada, the United States and in Northern Mexico.
It is the second largest rodent in the world, and the largest found in North America.
The largest rodent of the world is the capybara from South America.
The European beaver is currently an endangered species.
It was hunted almost to extinction.
This was done because of its fur, and because of castoreum.
Castoreum is made by a certain gland, which is also responsible for the smell of the animal..
People are currently (2007) reintroducing the beaver, because the important role of the beaver for the ecology of rivers was discovered.
Beaver dams (or the small lakes that form) provide a habitat for many species.
Early visitors that met Native Americans saw them wearing animal skin blankets.
The fur on these blankets were good for felting.
The Europeans wanted felt hats, and the Native Americans wanted metal: so, fur trading began.
Beaver was the most popular fur for hats.
At that time in North America, there were about sixty million beavers.
Only the soft inside fur was used for felting.
The best time for collecting the beaver 's fur was winter, when the fur was thickest.
It was also a good time to hunt, since the beaver stayed close to its home in the winter and was easy to catch.
The fur trade gave money to the European traders.
The Indians who caught the beavers got the metal tools and other high technology items they wanted, until the beavers were mostly gone.
Bears are a group of large mammals.
They form the family Ursidae, in the suborder Caniformia of the order Carnivora.
There are 9 living bear species.
Bears usually have a big body with short and thick legs.
They only have a very short tail.
They have small eyes and round ears.
They usually have longer, shaggy fur.
On each foot they have five claws, which they can not pull back.
They have very good senses of smell and hearing.
They can stand up on their back legs.
Usually bears can climb and swim very well.
They are mostly active at night (except for the Polar Bear).
Some bears hibernate, that means they sleep during the winter to save energy.
Bears are usually omnivorous, which means that they eat plants and meat.
They eat berries, grass, and fish.
An exception is the polar bear, which eats mostly meat.
The bald eagle (Latin name: Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is a bird of prey that lives in North America.
It is the national bird of the United States of America.
The bald eagle is a kind of sea eagle.
It can be found in most of Canada, all of the United States, and the northern part of Mexico.
It lives near big areas of water, where there are trees to nest in and there is much food to eat.
It is called bald because of its white head and neck.
(There is more information on the bald eagle 's name in the section below called "Name.")
The species almost died in the United States (while its numbers were growing in Alaska and Canada) late in the 20th century.
Now it has a more stable population.
The bald eagle is a large bird.
It is usually as tall as 70 t and its wingspan is 2.44 m. Female eagles are about 25 percent larger than males.
Adult females weigh 5.8 k, while males weigh 4.1 k. The adult bald eagle has a brown body, and its head and tail are white.
It also has yellow feet with large talons, and a hooked yellow beak.
The males and the females ' wings have the same colors.
Before bald eagles become adults, their wings are brown.
Their wings are usually speckled with white dots until the fifth year.
The size of the bird depends on where it lives.
The smallest birds are in Florida, where an adult male is only about 2.3 k. The largest Bald Eagles are in Alaska, where large females may be as much as 7.5 k.
The bald eagle is closely related to a species called the golden eagle.
The
bald eagle is physically different from the golden eagle.
The bald eagle has a bigger head and a bigger beak, and its legs do not have feathers.
When bald eagles "call," (make sounds), they chirp weakly and whistle.
The young birds whistle more shrilly than adults.
Bald eagles usually live for around 20 years if they live in nature.
The oldest ones sometimes live for 30 years.
When bald eagles live in captivity, such as in zoos, they can live much longer.
This sea eagle gets both its common and scientific names from its head.
Bald in the English name is from the word piebald, which means, "one with a white head".
The scientific name is from Haliaeetus, which is Latin for "sea eagle".
The bald eagle was one of the many species written in Carolus Linnaeus 's 18th century book Systema Naturae.
Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who made the binomial nomenclature system.
The bald eagle 's natural home is in most of North America, including most of Canada, all of the United States, and northern Mexico.
The most bald eagles live near seas, rivers, large lakes, oceans, and other large places with open water and a lot of fish.
Bald eagles need old trees with hard wood to live, sleep, and make nests.
They like trees that have holes and are safe from predators.
However, the height or kind of tree is not as important as its distance from a body of water.
Bald eagles need to live near water.
The bald eagle does not like to be near humans.
It is are found mostly in places where there are no humans, or very few of them.
However, a few bald eagles live in places with trees inside of big cities.
They may live in city parks.
Bald eagles live in a city in Oregon.
A family of bald eagles recently moved into Harlem, which is a place in the middle of New York city.
The bald eagle flies very fast.
It can move at speeds of 56 70 kilometers per hour (35 43 mph) when gliding or flapping its wings.
However, when it is carrying fish, it flies about 48 kilometers each hour.
Its dive speed is 120 -, though it does not dive a lot.
The bald eagle is usually migratory, which means that it travels (migrates) between homes which are very far away from each other.
In some places, bald eagles are not migratory.
If a bald eagle 's territory has water near by, it will remain there all year.
But if the water where it lives freezes in the winter, it must migrate to the south or to the coast to find something to eat.
The bald eagle eats mostly fish.
In the Pacific Northwest, spawning trout and salmon are the main food of the Bald Eagle.
Sometimes, eagles may eat a lot of carrion, especially in winter.
They will also scavenge dead bodies up to the size of whales.
However, eagles eat more large dead fish than whales.
They also sometimes eat the leftover food from campsites or garbage dumps.
The mammals they eat include rabbits, hares, raccoons, muskrats, beavers, and deer fawns.
Some of the birds they eat include grebes, ducks, gulls, and geese.
Reptiles, amphibians and crustaceans (especially crabs) are also eaten.
To hunt fish the eagle swoops down over the water and snatches the fish out of the water with its talons.
They eat by holding the fish in one claw and tearing the flesh with the other.
Eagles have special things on their toes called spiricules that help them hold the fish more easily.
Bald eagles have powerful talons.
They have been seen flying with a 7 kg fawn.
Sometimes, when the fish is too heavy, the eagle will be dragged into the water with it.
Sometimes, eagles swim back to the shore and live, but sometimes they may drown or die because of hypothermia (a condition when one s body gets so cold the body temperature drops below normal).
Other times, bald eagles steal fish and other kinds of food away from other animals.
Healthy adult bald eagles are not eaten anywhere in the wild.
This makes them thought as one of the top animals of the food chain.
Bald eagles become adults when they are four or five years old.
When they are old enough to mate, they usually come back to the place where they were born.
It is thought that bald eagles mate for life.
However, if one of the pair dies or disappears, the other will choose a new mate.
A pair which can not get a chick after trying for a long time, may split up and look for new mates.
When bald eagles court, they call and show their flying skills.
When they do so, two mates may fly high, and then lock their talons together, and fall, parting again right before hitting the ground.
The nest of the bald eagle is larger than any other nest in North America.
This is because it is used again and again, and every year more is added to the nest until it may soon become as large as 4 m deep, 2.5 m across and weigh 1 tonne.
One nest in Florida was found to be 6.1 m deep, 2.9 m across, and to weigh 3 S. The nest is built out of branches, usually in large trees near water.
If there are no trees, the bald eagle will make its nest on the ground.
Eagles have between one and three eggs per year.
Both the male and female take turns incubating the eggs.
The other parent will hunt for food or look for more to add onto the nest.
The eggs are about 73 m long.
Once easily seen on the continental United States, the bald eagle was close to becoming extinct because of the use of the pesticide DDT.
The DDT destroyed an adult bird 's calcium, and it would become unable to lay more healthy eggs.
Female eagles laid eggs that were too weak to withstand the weight of its parents.
In the early 1700s, the number of bald eagles were 300,000 500,000, but by the 1950s there were only 412 nesting pairs in the United States.
Other things that stopped bald eagles from producing well was the loss of habitat and illegal hunting of bald eagles.
Also, oil and lead were other big reasons why bald eagles began to die out.
The species was first protected in the United States and Canada by the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty.
The 1940 Bald Eagle Protection Act in the United States also tried to stop the killing of the bald eagle and the golden eagle.
The bald eagle was an endangered species in 1967, and the penalties for people who killed the species grew more and more.
Also, in 1972, DDT was banned in the United States.
DDT was completely banned in Canada in 1989.
Because of all this hard work, the bald eagle 's population began to rise again.
It was officially taken out from the United States list of endangered species on July 12, 1995.
To keep bald eagles in captivity, the workers had to be experienced in caring for eagles.
The bald eagle can live a long time in captivity if well cared for, but does not mate well, even under the best care.
The bald eagle is the national bird of the United States.
It appears on most of its seals, including the Seal of the President of the United States.
The Continental Congress made the design for the Great Seal of the United States with a bald eagle holding thirteen arrows and an olive branch with thirteen leaves in its talons on June 20, 1782.
The bald eagle can be found on both national seals and on the back of several coins (including the quarter dollar coin until 1999).
Between 1916 and 1945, the Flag of the President of the United States showed an eagle facing to its left.
There is a popular legend that Benjamin Franklin once supported the wild turkey as a symbol of the United States instead of the bald eagle.
However, there is no evidence that this is true.
The legend comes from the letter Franklin wrote to his daughter in 1784 from Paris.
However, this letter was about the Society of the Cincinnati, and it did not say anything about the bald eagle or the wild turkey.
The Bald Eagle is a holy bird in some North American cultures.
Its feathers are thought to be special.
They are used very much in spiritual customs among the Native Americans.
Eagles are thought as messengers between gods and humans.
Eagle feathers are often used in traditional things, especially in fans.
The Lakota people, for instance, give an eagle feather as a symbol of honor to a person who achieves a task.
In modern times, it may be given on an event such as a graduation from college.
The Pawnee people thought eagles as symbols of nature and fertility.
This is because their nests are built high off the ground, and because they protect their young very bravely.
The Choctaw explained that the bald eagle, who can see the sun more directly, is a symbol of peace.
During the Sun Dance, which is danced by a lot of Native American tribes, the eagle is included in many different ways.
A whistle made from the wing bone of an eagle is used during the dance.
Also during the dance, a medicine man may direct his fan, which is made of eagle feathers, to people who need healing.
The fan is then held up toward the sky, so that the eagle may send all the sick prayers to the god.
However, Native American tribes can not use bald or golden eagle feathers for their religious or spiritual use anymore.
This is because of a law called the eagle feather law.
The eagle feather law usually defends Native Americans by providing many exceptions to wildlife laws, but it presently does not yet allow Native American tribes to use them yet.
This made the Native American groups angry because they insisted that it was stopping their ability to use their religion freely.
The brown bear (Ursus arctos) is a large bear living in much of northern Eurasia and North America.
It is smaller than the polar bear, but is the largest carnivore which lives entirely on the land.
There are several recognized subspecies.
The brown bear 's range has shrunk, but it is still listed as a least concern species by the IUCN.
Its total population is about 200,000.
As of 2012, this and the American black bear are the only bear species not classified as threatened by the IUCN.
However, many of the southern Asian subspecies are highly endangered.
The smallest subspecies, the Himalayan brown bear, is critically endangered.
It lives in just 2 % of its former range, and poachers hunt it for its parts.
The Marsican brown bear in central Italy is believed to have a population of just 30 to 40 bears.
The brown bear 's main range includes parts of Russia, Central Asia, China, Canada, the United States (mostly Alaska), Scandinavia and the Carpathian region (especially Romania), Anatolia, and Caucasus.
The brown bear is a national and state animal in several European countries.
It is the most widely distributed of all bears.
Biathlon (not to be confused with duathlon) is a term used to describe any sporting event made up of two disciplines.
However, biathlon usually refers specifically to the winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting.
Another popular variant is summer biathlon, which combines cross-country running with riflery.
Charles Hardin Holley or Buddy Holly (September 7, 1936 February 3, 1959) was an American rock and roll singer, songwriter, and musician.
He was from Lubbock, Texas.
Buddy Holly is thought to be an important person in the history of Rock and Roll music and rockabilly music.
Holly played several different types of instruments.
Buddy Holly died on February 3, 1959 when an airplane he was on crashed into a field near Mason City, Iowa.
Also killed in the crash were Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson.
Singer Don McLean 's popular 1971 song "American Pie" made February 3 known as "The Day the Music Died."
Brewing is the process of making beer.
It is usually made in a brewery, though it can be made at home.
It is made by adding bacteria that ferment malt, barley or sugar into a large vat.
Ethanol is produced by bacteria using up the energy from the mixture (which the bacteria digest into glucose) because there is no oxygen in the vat.
BASE jumping is a fringe sport in which a person jumps from a fixed place and uses a parachute to slow down before the ground is reached.
"BASE" is an acronym that stands for each of the four jump location categories: from buildings, antennas, spans (bridges) and the earth.
This last is similar to jumping off a cliff.
BASE jumping is an extreme sport.
This means it involves speed, height, danger or spectacular stunts.
The idea for BASE jumping came from skydiving.
BASE jumping is much more dangerous than skydiving from aircraft.
BASE jumps are usually made from much lower altitudes than skydives.
Also, the jumper leaps closer to the platform or standing space.
BASE jumpers fall through the air at slower speeds than skydivers, because they begin the jump closer to the ground.
As a skydiver falls, he accelerates while falling and gains speed with each second.
So a BASE jumper does not always reach terminal velocity.
Because faster speed while falling through the air gives jumpers more control of their bodies, and a quicker parachute opening, the longer the delay in the air, the safer.
Another danger is that most BASE jumpers have very small areas in which to land.
A beginner skydiver, after the parachute opens, may have about three minutes or more of a parachute ride to reach the ground.
A BASE jump from 500 feet will only have a parachute ride of 10 to 15 seconds.
BASE jumping has a death rate averaging about one fatality for every sixty jumpers.
It is one of the most dangerous sporting activities in the world.
It has a fatality and injury rate 43 times higher than parachuting from a plane.
As of the end of July 2015, at least 264 people have died during a BASE jump.
Dean Potter and Graham Hunt were killed in a BASE jump attempt at Yosemite National Park in California on May 16, 2015.
Potter was a well known rock climber.
They jumped at dusk from about 3000 feet up.
They both quickly smashed into the rocks of the cliff on the way down.
Neither jumper used a parachute that might have saved them.
American BASE jumper Ian Flanders died in Kemaliye, Turkey on July 21, 2015.
His parachute got tangled in his feet after he jumped and did not open.
He fell 900 feet into the Karasu river at a high speed.
The jump was being shown live on a local television station.
After the death in Turkey, a fellow jumper said to People Magazine, "There 's just this very thin margin of how things can go from ` totally fine ' to ` it 's over '.
And it 's really hard to do this sport a lot and have that margin not catch up with you."
In September 2013, three men jumped off the incompletely built One World Trade Center in New York City.
They filmed their jump using cameras on their heads and later showed the video on YouTube.
In March 2014, the three jumpers and one helper on the ground were arrested after turning themselves in.
Beauty is a property of certain things.
Something is beautiful if it is nice to look at it, hear it, feel it, taste it, smell it or think about it.
The opposite of beautiful is ugly.
It is also the name of a feeling that is hard to describe.
The nature of this feeling varies from person to person and culture to culture.
It is not known if only humans can feel it.
There are many ideas about what beauty is.
Some people say that beauty is:
There are many other theories.
Some things that people say are beautiful are not explained by any of these ideas.
Brownian motion is the random motion of particles in a liquid or a gas.
The motion is caused by fast-moving atoms or molecules that hit the particles.
Norbert Weiner also was involved with the process.
Barcelona is a city in Spain.
It is the capital city of Catalonia, which is a section of Spain.
Barcelona is on the Mediterranean coast.
The city is between the rivers of Llobregat and Bes s, and south of the Pyrenees mountains.
In 1992 Barcelona organised the Summer Olympic Games.
It was a great opportunity to improve the city.
Many new parks were opened and other significant changes to the city were made.
One example is opening the new beaches in the Poble Nou area.
In 2007, about 1.6 million people lived in Barcelona.
Around 3.1 million people live in the Metropolitan Area and 4.9 million people live in the Urban Region.
Barcelona is the second most populated city in Spain, and the tenth in the European Union.
Barcelona is home to one of the best football teams in the world F.C. Barcelona.
Barcelona is one of the most important tourist destinations in Europe, with millions of people visiting every year.
The city is famous for its 19th century modernist architecture.
The best known of those buildings was designed by Antonio Gaudi.
It is the unfinished church Sagrada Familia, which is the symbol of Barcelona.
It is known for its tapas food, a delicious meze.
Bandy is a sport like ice hockey but with a ball instead of a puck and on a larger field.
It is played on ice.
The rules are much like the rules for association football.
There are 11 players on each team.
The game is 90 minutes long with 45 minutes in each half, like association football (soccer).
The size of the bandy field is the same as in association football.
The rules are set by the Federation of International Bandy.
There are 32 countries in the Federation of International Bandy.
Bandy World Championship for men has been played recurringly since 1957.
The Book of Joel is part of the Jewish Tanakh, and also the Old Testament of the Christian Bible.
Joel describes a plague of locusts in Palestine.
The Book of Hosea is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible and of the Christian Old Testament.
The Book of Obadiah is found in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament of the Christian Bible where it is the shortest book, only one chapter long.
It is thought to have been written by a person named Obadiah, which means servant (or worshipper) of the Lord.
The Old Testament book of Jonah, contains four chapters, and forty-eight verses.
The book tells the story of the Prophet Jonah, who was called by God to the heathen city of Nineveh, which God would soon destroy if they did not repent.
After his first rejection, Jonah was swallowed by a great fish (probably a whale).
He repented of his sin of running away from God through prayer for three days and nights.
God then made the great fish spit Jonah onto the dry land.
He obeyed God and went to tell the people of their sins to God.
They nearly had him killed.
But that was before their hearts were changed and they saw their evildoing.
They prayed for God to deliver them from the upcoming destruction to their city.
God saw their change and had mercy on them, but Jonah still did not believe it.
He would than wait upon a high up rock and await God 's wrath.
God was not pleased with that and sent a small worm to bite down the small gourd plant, which was Jonah 's only shade from the heat of the sun.
He was very angry and said it was better for him to die than live.
God, in turn, said that he cared more about the little plant than all the people of Nineveh!
The Book of Micah (Hebrew:) is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament.
Scholars believe it was written by Micah the prophet, about 700 years before Jesus was born.
(chapter 5 verse 2, Good News version).
The Book of Nahum is a book in the Bible 's Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh.
The Book of Haggai is a book of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and of the Old Testament, written by the prophet Haggai.
It was written in 520 BCE.
The Book of Malachi, is the last of the books of the Old Testament.
The book is made up of four chapters and a total of fifty-five verses.
The word Malachi means my messenger.
It is thought that the book was written by the Prophet Isaiah.
The date of the book would then be sometime around 740 to 690 BC.
The Book of Zechariah is a book of the Bible found in the Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh thought to be written by the prophet Zechariah.
The Book of Zephaniah is a book of the Bible and is thought to be written by Zephaniah son of Cushi son of Gedaliah son of Amariah son of Hezekiah, in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah.
The Book of Habakkuk is the eighth book of the 12 minor prophets of the Hebrew Bible.
It is thought to be written by the prophet Habakkuk, and was probably composed in the late 7th century BC.
Backward compatibility refers to hardware or software that can successfully use interfaces and data from earlier versions of the system or with other systems.
For example, Perl, the scripting language, was designed to be backward compatible with awk, an earlier language that Perl was designed to replace.
Backward compatibility is more easily accomplished if the previous versions have been designed to be forward compatible, or extensible, with built-in features such as hooks, plug-in, or an application program interface (API) that allows the addition of new features.
The term backward combatible (notice the "b") is sometimes used to describe hardware or software that is designed without regard for compatibility with earlier versions, causing the two versions to fight (or combat) each other.
In this case, the two versions can not share data easily and may have features that cause errors or crashes when they are installed on the same computer, often because the computer does not understand which version is being referred to.
Even if the earlier version is removed, remaining vestiges of it may cause problems in running the newer version.
Bacterial conjugation is the transfer of genetic material between bacterial cells by direct cell-to-cell contact or by a bridge-like connection between two cells.
Conjugation is a mechanism of horizontal gene transfer, as are transformation and transduction, though these two other mechanisms do not involve cell-to-cell contact.
Bacterial conjugation was discovered by Nobel Prize winners Joshua Lederberg and Edward Tatum.
They showed that the bacterium Escherichia coli entered a sexual phase during which it could share genetic information.
Bacterial conjugation is often incorrectly regarded as the equivalent of sexual reproduction, since it involves the exchange of genetic material.
During conjugation the donor cell provides a conjugative or mobilizable genetic element that is most often a plasmid or transposon.
Most conjugative plasmids have systems ensuring that the recipient cell does not already contain a similar element.
The genetic information transferred is often beneficial to the recipient.
Benefits may include antibiotic resistance, xenobiotic tolerance or the ability to use new metabolites.
Such beneficial plasmids may be considered bacterial endosymbionts.
Other elements, however, may be viewed as bacterial parasites and conjugation as a mechanism evolved by them to allow for their spread.
The basic conjugative plasmid is the F-plasmid, or F-factor.
The F-plasmid is an episome (a plasmid that can integrate itself into the bacterial chromosome) with a length of about 100,000 base pairs.
There can only be one copy of the F-plasmid in a given bacterium, either free or integrated, and bacteria that possess a copy are called F-positive or F-plus (denoted F +).
Cells that lack F plasmids are called F-negative or F-minus (F -) and can function as recipient cells.
The nitrogen fixing Rhizobia are an interesting case of inter-kingdom conjugation.
For example, the tumor-inducing (Ti) plasmid of Agrobacterium and the root-tumor inducing (Ri) plasmid of A. rhizogenes contain genes that are capable of transferring to plant cells.
These genes turn plant cells into factories producing chemicals used by the bacteria for nitrogen and energy.
Infected cells form crown galls or root tumors, respectively.
The Ti and Ri plasmids are thus endosymbionts of the bacteria, which are in turn endosymbionts (or parasites) of the infected plant.
Conjugation is a convenient means for transferring genetic material to a variety of targets.
In laboratories successful transfers have been reported from bacteria to yeast, plants, mammalian cells, and isolated mammalian mitochondria.
Conjugation has advantages over other forms of genetic transfer.
In plant engineering, Agrobacterium-like conjugation complements other standard vehicles such as tobacco mosaic virus (TMV).
While TMV is capable of infecting many plant families these are primarily herbaceous dicots.
Agrobacterium-like conjugation is also primarily used for dicots, but monocot recipients are not uncommon.
Billy Bob Thornton (born August 4, 1955) is an American actor, screenwriter, director, singer and musician.
Thornton first became known for his acting on the CBS sitcom Hearts Afire and in a number of early 1990s movies.
These movies included On Deadly Ground and Tombstone.
In the mid-1990s, after writing, directing, and starring in the independent movie Sling Blade, he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
He had many large movie roles after Sling Blade 's success.
These included 1998 's Armageddon and A Simple Plan.
During the late 1990s, Thornton began a career as a singer-songwriter.
He has released three albums.
Thorton was the singer in a blues rock band.
Thornton was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
He is the son of Virginia Roberta (n e Faulkner), a psychic, and William Raymond "Billy Ray" Thornton, a high school history teacher and basketball coach.
His father died when Thornton was 18.
He has two younger brothers, Jimmy Don and John David.
During his childhood, Thornton lived in both Alpine, Arkansas, and Malvern, Arkansas.
He was raised a Methodist.
Thorton grew up in a large family in a shack.
It did not have electricity nor plumbing.
Thornton graduated from high school in 1973.
He was good high school baseball player.
He tried out for the Kansas City Royals, but was let go after an injury.
In the mid 1980s, Thornton moved to Los Angeles to become an actor.
At first, Thornton had a hard time becoming an actor.
He worked in telemarketing, offshore wind farming, and fast food management while trying to get acting jobs.
He also played drums and sang with South African rock band Jack Hammer.
While Thornton worked as a waiter for an event, he served movie director and screenwriter Billy Wilder.
Wilder is known for movies that include Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard.
Thornton talked with Wilder, who told Thornton to think about a career as a screenwriter.
Billy Bob 's first role was in 1980 's South of Reno.
He played a small role as a man in a restaurant.
Billy Bob was also in a 1987 episode of Andy Griffith 's series Matlock.
Another one of Thornton 's early roles was on the CBS sitcom Hearts Afire with John Ritter and Markie Post.
His role as the villain in the 1992 movie One False Move got him noticed by the critics.
He also had small roles in the early 1990s movies Indecent Proposal, On Deadly Ground, Bound by Honor, Grey Knight, and Tombstone.
Thornton did what Wilder told him to do.
He wrote, direct and star in the independent movie Sling Blade.
The movie was released in 1996.
The movie was an expansion of a short named Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade.
It told the story of Karl Childers, a mentally handicapped man imprisoned for murder.
Sling Blade was well liked internationally.
Thornton 's screenplay earned him an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, a Writers Guild of America Award, and an Edgar Award.
His acting in the movie earned him an Oscar and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Actor.
In 1998, he played the James-Carville-like Richard Jemmons in Primary Colors.
Thornton wrote the movie version of the book All the Pretty Horses as a 2000 movie with the same name.
The movie starred Matt Damon and Pen lope Cruz.
After he was forced to cut more than an hour of the movie, he decided to never direct another movie.
Also in 2000, an early script he had written was made into The Gift.
It starred Cate Blanchett, Hilary Swank, Keanu Reeves, Katie Holmes, Greg Kinnear, and Giovanni Ribisi.
In 2000, he also appeared in Travis Tritt 's music video for the song "Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde".
The press usually describe Thorton as a "tattooed, hirsute man 's man".
He had many large movie roles after Sling Blade 's success.
These include 1998 's Armageddon with Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis, A Simple Plan, Monster 's Ball, Bandits and The Man Who Was n't There.
He played a mall Santa Claus in 2003 's Bad Santa.
It was a black comedy that did very good at the box office.
The movie made Thornton notable as a leading comic actor.
Thornton has said that, after Bad Santas success, audiences "like to watch (him) play that kind of guy," and "they (casting directors) call (him) up when they need an asshole.
It 's kinda that simple... you know how narrow the imagination in this business can be."
In 2004 he played Davy Crockett in The Alamo.
He was in the comic movie School for Scoundrels in 2006.
More recent movies include The Astronaut Farmer and the comedy, Mr. Woodcock.
In September 2008, Thornton starred in the action movie Eagle Eye with Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan.
Thornton has also said he may want to direct another movie.
He may direct a period piece about cave explorer Floyd Collins.
The movie would be based on the book Trapped!
The Story of Floyd Collins by Robert K. Murray and Roger Brucker.
Thornton got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on October 7, 2004.
Thornton has been married five times.
Each marriage ended in divorce.
He has four children by three women.
From 1978 to 1980, he was married to Melissa Lee Gatlin.
They have a daughter, Amanda.
Thornton married actress Toni Lawrence in 1986.
They divorced in 1988.
From 1990 to 1992, he was married to actress Cynda Williams.
In 1993, Thornton married Playboy model Pietra Dawn Cherniak.
They have two sons, Harry James and William.
The marriage ended in 1997.
Cherniak said Thornton abused her.
Thornton was engaged to be married to actress Laura Dern, whom he dated from 1997 to 1999.
Instead of marrying Dern, in 2000, he married actress Angelina Jolie.
The marriage became known for the couple 's strange shows of affection.
These were said to include wearing vials of each other 's blood around their necks.
Thorton later said that the "vials" were actually two small lockets.
Each had only a single drop of blood in it.
Thornton and Jolie said they were adopting a child from Cambodia in March 2002.
Later it was learned that Jolie had adopted the child as a single parent.
They separated in June 2002 and divorced the following year.
Since 2003, Thornton has been in a relationship with Connie Angland.
They have a daughter, Bella.
The family lives in Los Angeles, California.
Thornton has said that he likely will not marry again.
He has said that he thinks that marriage "does n't work" for him.
Thornton is the cousin of professional wrestling legends Terry Funk and Dory Funk, Jr.
BIOS, computing, stands for Basic Input\/Output System.
The BIOS is a computer program embedded on a chip on a computer 's motherboard that recognizes and controls various devices that make up the computer.
The purpose of the BIOS is to make sure all the things plugged into the computer can work properly.
It brings life to the computer, and the term is a pun on the Greek word, bios meaning "life".
"Booting up" is the process that the computer completes to get it ready to use when it is first turned on.
When the computer turns on, the BIOS starts up and performs a Power-On Self Test (POST).
During the POST, the BIOS will check various devices in the computer like the computer processor, memory, the video card and others to make sure they are present and functioning.
Once the POST has completed successfully, the BIOS looks for an operating system to load, which is usually located on the computer 's hard drive.
When it finds one, it starts to load it.
At this point, the operating system takes over control of the system.
Some people try to configure their computer to run faster than it was designed to do.
This is called "overclocking".
Since the BIOS controls the computer processor, entering the BIOS setup screen while it is booting up gives people access to advanced computer settings.
For most computers, pressing the delete or F 12 button while the computer is booting up will bring up the BIOS setup screen.
There are many ways a computer can be overclocked to run faster, but most involve simply turning up the speed of the computer processor.
Doing this will usually make your computer run much hotter, though, and can sometimes break your computer, which is why overclocking will usually void your computer 's warranty.
Only people who are computer hardware experts should attempt to overclock their computers.
Bose Einstein condensate (BEC) is what happens to some things when they are made very cold.
It forms when the particles that make up something are made to have very low energy.
Only special particles called bosons can make a Bose Einstein condensate and they can only do this if they are very close to the coldest temperature possible, to 0 K (or - 273 C, or 459.67 F); or near to absolute zero.
A Bose Einstein condensate is a type of change of state, like when water turns into ice.
And like when water turns to ice, it gets slippery; things that are Bose Einstein condensates have 0 viscosity.
This means they are as slippery as possible.
Particles can only have a set amount of energy.
They either have the energy to bounce around in gases or just the energy to flow like a liquid or be fixed like a solid.
If you take enough of the particle 's energy away you get to the tiniest or the smallest amount of energy possible.
This is a Bose Einstein condensate.
This makes all of the particles exactly the same and instead of bouncing around randomly in all different directions, they all bounce up and down in exactly the same way, forming something called a ` giant matter wave '.
The Bose-Einstein Condensate was first thought up by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein in 1924 25, but we then had to wait seventy years for somebody to prove that it existed.
Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman made the first Bose Einstein condensate in 1995 at the University of Colorado.
Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle at MIT were then given the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Usually to get anything cold enough to make a Bose Einstein condensate you have to first trap the stuff using magnets and then, by bouncing lasers off them, take all of their energy away through red shift.
This still does not get things quite cold enough.
Some of the particles will still be bouncing around a lot and only some will be lying down nicely.
The magnetic field is then slowly lowered bit by bit to let the faster bouncing particles out.
This just leaves us with the coldest and slowest atoms inside.
The Beach Boys are an American pop\/surf rock group from Hawthorne, California.
They formed in 1961, and the original members were Brian Wilson (keyboards, bass guitar), his brothers Dennis Wilson (drums) and Carl Wilson (lead guitar), their cousin Mike Love (lead vocals), and close friend Al Jardine (rhythm guitar).
David Marks replaced Jardine when he went away to school; after Jardine 's return, Marks left the band.
Bruce Johnston (keyboards) later became a regular band member, first replacing Brian Wilson on tour, then joining in on recording sessions.
Many of the band 's songs were about life in southern California, the beach, girls, cars, and surfing (though Dennis Wilson and Bruce Johnston were actually the only members in the group who surfed).
Reunions with some of the original band members still occur from time to time.
Helen Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866 22 December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, mycologist and conservationist.
She is famous for writing children 's books with animal characters such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Potter was born in Kensington, London.
Her family was quite rich.
She was educated by governesses.
She did not have many friends, but she had many pets, including Benjamin and Peter, two rabbits.
She spent her holidays in Scotland and the Lake District.
There, she began to learn to love nature, plants, and animals, which she carefully painted.
When she was around 30, Potter published The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
It was very popular.
She also became engaged to her publisher Norman Warne.
Her parents became angry and separated with her because of this.
They did not want her to marry someone who was socially lower than her.
However, Warne died before he and Potter could marry.
Potter began writing and illustrating children 's books full time.
She did not have to ask her parents for money anymore because she had money from her books.
In time, she bought Hill Top Farm and more land.
In her forties, she married William Heelis, a local solicitor.
She also began raising sheep and became a farmer, though she continued writing.
She published 23 books.
Potter did not have any children.
She died of heart disease and pneumonia in Near Sawrey, Lancashire on 22 December 1943.
Almost all of her money was left to the National Trust.
Her books continue to sell well around the world, in many different languages.
Her widower died in August 1945.
The Liberal Party was a liberal political party.
It was one of the two big political parties in the United Kingdom in the 19th and early 20th century.
The party came from an alliance of Whigs and free-trade Peelites and radicals in the 1850s.
In the next 50 years it formed four governments under William Gladstone.
The party split over the issue of Irish Home Rule.
It returned to power in 1906 with a landslide victory.
They introduced the welfare reforms that created a basic British welfare state.
H. H. Asquith was Liberal Prime Minister between 1908 and 1916.
He was followed by David Lloyd George, whose premiership lasted until 1922.
At that time the coalition the party had formed with the Conservative Party in World War I came to an end.
By the end of the 1920s, the Labor Party had replaced the Liberals as the Conservatives ' main rival.
The party went into decline.
By the 1950s, it won no more than six seats at general elections.
Apart from notable by-election victories, the party 's fortunes did not improve significantly until it formed the SDP Liberal Alliance with the newly formed Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981.
At the 1983 General Election, the Alliance won over a quarter of the vote, but only 23 of the 650 seats it contested.
At the 1987 General Election, it won less than 23 % of the vote.
The Liberal and Social Democratic parties merged in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats.
Prominent intellectuals associated with the Liberal Party include the philosopher John Stuart Mill, the economist John Maynard Keynes and social planner William Beveridge.
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom.
It is the model on which most modern central banks have been based.
It was set up to act as the government 's banker, and is still the banker for the British Government.
The Bank was privately owned from 1694 the Government took it over in 1946.
It is the second oldest central bank in the world (after the Swedish Riksbank), and the world 's 8th oldest bank.
In 1998 it became an independent public organization.
Though wholly owned by the government, it has independence in setting monetary policy.
The Bank is one of eight banks authorised to issue banknotes in the United Kingdom.
It has a monopoly on the issue of banknotes in England and Wales, and regulates the issue of banknotes by commercial banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The Bank 's Monetary Policy Committee manages money supply and interest rates.
The Treasury has reserve powers to give orders to the committee "if they are required in the public interest and by extreme economic circumstances" but such orders must be endorsed by Parliament within 28 days.
The Bank 's headquarters have been in London 's main financial district, the City of London, on Threadneedle Street, since 1734.
It is sometimes known as The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street or The Old Lady.
There will be a change in Governor on 1 July 2013.
Mark Carney will assume the post of Governor of the Bank of England on 1 July 2013.
He will succeed Sir Mervyn King, who took over on 30 June 2003.
Carney will serve an initial five-year term, and will seek UK citizenship.
He is the first non-Briton to hold the post.
Bakelite, or polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, is an early plastic.
It is a thermosetting phenol formaldehyde resin, formed from an elimination reaction of phenol with formaldehyde.
It was made in 1907 by Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland.
Bakelite was used for its electrically nonconductivity and heat-resistant properties in electrical insulators, radio and telephone casings.
It was also in products as kitchenware, jewelry, pipe stems, and children 's toys.
Bean is the name used for the seeds of several plants.
Most of these plants are known as legumes.
Their scientific name is Fabaceae.
Common beans, lentils, soybeans, Kidney beans, peas.
Beans contain a lot of fiber.
They are also high in protein.
Vetches and lupins are all in that group of plants but not all legumes are edible.
Laburnums for example are very poisonous as are some lupins.
The seeds of other plants (which are not Fabaceae), are sometimes also called beans.
This is mostly because look like true beans.
Example for such beans are Coffee beans, Cocoa beans, and Vanilla beans.
The breast is an organ on the lower chest region of humans and other primates.
Humans have two breasts.
Both boys and girls have breasts at birth, but during puberty, the breasts on women become larger and visible.
The breasts have mammary glands that produce milk.
Breastfeeding is letting an infant drink breast milk.
Men also have breasts.
They are built the same way as those of women but are much smaller and underdeveloped.
Men can not use their breast for breastfeeding.
Their breasts will usually not produce milk, but might become larger and produce milk during some diseases or with some hormonal medical treatments.
Girls develop breasts during puberty due to sex hormones, mainly estrogen.
The appearance and size of the breasts of a woman may vary due to genetic factors, and the amount of fatty and connective tissue.
Hormones also play a role.
Estrogen promotes the growth of mammary glands and ducts, while progesterone induces milk-producing cells to develop.
Prolactin and oxytocin stimulate milk production.
Oxytocin also causes milk to be spurted from a lactating breast.
The two breasts usually are not equal in size one may be larger than the other, but this is common.
During menopause, as levels of estrogen decrease, tissue in the breasts reduce as well, and the breasts may start sagging.
A study showed that breastfeeding does not cause sagging.
Factors that do influence sagging are the size of the breast (before the first pregnancy), number of pregnancies, body mass index, smoking, and age.
The center of the breast is the nipple.
The areola is a circular area around the nipple.
The breast contains mammary glands.
Ducts carry the milk produced by these glands to the nipples.
After a woman has a baby, her breasts undergo lactation the production of natural milk.
Feeding babies milk is called breastfeeding or nursing.
The breasts of a woman also play a role in human sexual behavior.
They are one of the most visible or obvious female secondary sex characteristics.
They play an important role in sexual attraction of partners.
They can also give pleasure to the individual.
When sexually stimulated, the size of the breasts increases, venous patterns across the breasts become more visible, and nipples grow harder.
During sexual intercourse, it is common practice to press or massage breasts with hands.
Breasts are sensitive to touch as they have many nerve endings.
Oral stimulation of nipples and breasts is also common.
Some women can achieve "breast orgasms".
In the ancient Indian work the Kama Sutra, marking breasts with nails and biting with teeth are explained as erotic.
Baghdad (, transliterated Baghd d) is the capital city and largest city in Iraq.
It is the second-largest city in Southwest Asia after Tehran.
It is the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo.
It has 5,772,000 people (2003).
Baghdad is on the Tigris River at 33 20 N 44 26 E. The city was once the center of Dar al-Islam, Muslim civilization.
Baghdad used to be one of the largest learning centers in the world, during the post classical era.
Bugatti is a French supercar company currently owned by Volkswagen.
They made cars all the way back in the early 1900s.
They made cars such as the Bugatti Veyron.
Unlike the regular Veyron, with 300 produced, there are only 20 supersport versions, which currently holds the record for world 's fastest car.
All Bugattis have a 16 cylinder engine and all cost between $ 1.8 million to $ 2.2 million (not counting the extras).
The Black Death was a pandemic (an epidemic spreading over a large area) that killed millions of people.
It started in Europe in 1347, and lasted until 1351.
Almost one out of every three people in Europe died from the disease, so about 25 million people.
Today, people think that the disease started in Asia.
Most people think that the disease was the bubonic plague.
This disease is carried and spread by fleas living on rats.
Traders from the Silk Road may have brought the infected fleas to Europe.
Another disease that could have been the Black Death is Anthrax.
Anthrax could have been spread by cattle.
Looking at the quick spread of the disease, Viral hemorrhagic fevers are other ideas for what specific disease the Black Death might have been.
Fleas started the problem; the infected fleas were carried by black rats.
Rats that were carrying the fleas would go into cities.
When the fleas bit somebody, they would inject a little bit of the bacteria into the wound.
This would cause the person to be infected.
Rats were often on ships.
This meant the disease spread extremely quickly, all over Europe.
In humans, the disease caused swelling in the groin, under the arms and behind the ears.
These swellings were a black and purple color, hence the name ` The Black Death '.
The dark swellings were called buboes.
People were in pain and victims died a horrible death.
The symptoms could be seen 3-7 days after victims were bitten by a flea.
It killed between a third and two-thirds of Europe 's population.
Including in the Middle East, India and China, it killed at least 75 million people.
The same disease is thought to have returned to Europe every generation with different degrees of intensity and fatality until the 1700s.
Later outbreaks include the Italian Plague of 1629-1631, the Great Plague of London (1665 1666), the Great Plague of Vienna (1679), the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720 1722 and the 1771 plague in Moscow.
There is some controversy over the identity of the disease, but in its virulent form seems to have disappeared from Europe in the 18th century.
The Black Death had a very big effect on Europe 's population.
It changed Europe 's social structure.
It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in widespread persecution of minorities such as Jews, Muslims, foreigners, beggars and lepers.
The uncertainty of daily survival influenced people to live for the moment, as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353).
The initial fourteenth-century European event was called the "Great Mortality" by contemporary writers and, with later outbreaks, became known as the ` Black Death '.
The Black Death has been used as a subject or as a setting in modern literature and media.
Edgar Allan Poe 's short story The Masque of the Red Death (1842) is set in an unnamed country during a fictional plague that bears strong resemblance to the Black Death.
Albert Camus uses this theme too.
His novel, The Plague is set against an outbreak of the plague, in Algeria and how people handle it.
It was published in 1947.
Sufferers of the bubonic plague develop fevers, severe flues and buboes that could swell to the size of an average apple.
These buboes appear mainly in the groin, armpit and apparently sometimes on the thighs.
The medical knowledge of the time was based on Hippocrates ' theory.
According to Hippocrates, the body consists of different fluids.
If they are in harmony, the person is healthy.
If they are not, disease results.
Very often, diseases were also seen as a punishment of God.
Such a theory can of course not account for the spreading of a disease from one person to another one.
Spreading of disease was said to occur from bad winds (called Miasma).
The bad air could also come from within the earth, and thereby cause the disease.
Remedies against the disease included to only open windows towards the north, to not sleep during the day, and not to work too hard.
The Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris concluded that the Black Death was caused by a bad constellation of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.
This constellation had occurred on 20 March, 1345.
They had been asked by Philipp VI about the cause of the disease in 1348.
Since the answer was scientifically founded, it was soon taken to be the real cause, and translated into many languages.
Therefore, the doctors often limited their actions to telling people to go to Confession, so that their sins would be forgiven if they died.
In the long run, the pandemics caused the doctors to change their ideas on how the human body worked, to get away from the theories of Hyppocrates and Galenos, more towards empirical science.
Only 200 years later did Girolamo Fracastoro discover that diseases spread through infection.
Biotechnology is a technology that involves the use of living organisms.
Biotechnology is mainly used in agriculture, food science, and medicine.
In biotechnology, living organisms are used to make useful chemicals and products or to perform an industrial task.
An example of biotechnology is the use of the fermentation reaction in yeast to make beer and other alcoholic drinks.
Another example is the use of carbon dioxide produced by yeast to make bread rise.
Biotechnology is often used to refer to genetic engineering technology of the 21st century.
However, the term is used for many ways of modifying biological organisms for the needs of humanity.
It started with modifications of native plants into improved food crops through artificial selection and hybridization.
Bioengineering is the science upon which all biotechnological applications are based.
With the development of new approaches and modern techniques, traditional biotechnology industries are also acquiring new horizons enabling them to improve the quality of their products and increase the productivity of their systems.
Biotechnology has also made cloning (the process duplicating organisms) possible.
A lot of people think that this is morally wrong while others think it could solve many diseases.
Biotechnology can be used to solve a great number of problems, ranging from product efficiency to reducing global warming.
The Bongo (tragelaphus eurycerus) is a nocturnal antelope.
It has two subspecies: the western or lowland bongo, and the eastern or mountain bongo.
The western bongo is near threatened and the mountain bongo is critically endangered.
Bongos eat plants.
They live in forests in Africa.
Kenya is the only place eastern bongos live in the wild.
Like the west African giraffe, the eastern or mountain bongo is one of the most threatened animals in Africa.
Bongos live in both captivity and the wild.
As bongos grow their horns appear.
Both male and female bongos have horns.
The bunyip is a mythical creature from Australian mythology.
It is said to live in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes.
The bunyip is found in traditional aboriginal beliefs and stories from many parts of Australia, although it is called by several different names in different language groups.
These include kianpraty along the Murrumbidgee, wowee in the Hunter Valley, wee waa in the Narrandera region, as well as many other names.
The name bunyip comes from the Wemba-Wemba language of southeastern Australia.
It is normally translated today as "devil" or "evil spirit".
During the early settlement of Australia by Europeans, the idea that the bunyip was an actual unknown animal that had yet to be discovered became common.
A large number of bunyip "sightings" by settlers were recorded during the 1840s and 1850s, especially in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.
Various written stories of bunyips were made by Europeans in the early and mid-19th century.
Stories were commonly told to children to make them stay away from dangerous areas of water.
There are many different descriptions of what the bunyip looks like.
Features that were often reported in newspapers in the early 19th-century included dark fur, a face like a dog, sharp teeth and claws, flippers, tusks or horns, and a duck-like bill.
One writer, Robert Brough Smyth, recorded many different descriptions of the bunyip.
But he concluded that most people did not really know much about what it looked like or its behavior, and that they were too afraid of the creature to be able to take note of its appearance.
Scholars have suggested that the story of the bunyip may have been passed down from a time when megafauna still existed in Australia.
Comparisons have been made to extinct marsupials like the Diprotodon or Thylacoleo.
Other scholars have suggested that people finding the fossilised remains of such animals would identify them as the bunyip.
The first written account of the bunyip was in July 1845.
A newspaper reported on the finding of some fossils near Geelong.
When the bones were shown to an Aboriginal man, he was said to have immediately recognized it as the bunyip.
He was asked to draw a picture of the bunyip.
The newspaper described it as having a head like an emu and the body and legs of an alligator.
Its legs were said to be strong, with thick and short hind legs and long legs in front.
It was said to have long claws.
When in the water, it was said to swim like a frog, but when on shore it would walk on its hind legs, standing 12 o high.
In January 1846, a weird-looking skull was taken from the banks of Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales.
The person who found it said that all the natives it had been shown to had called it a bunyip.
The skull was put on display in the Australian Museum in Sydney.
Crowds came to see it, and The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that many of the visitors told stories about their "bunyip sightings".
Another early story about the bunyip was written in 1852 by an escaped convict named William Buckley.
He wrote that in many of the lakes he had visited, there lived an "amphibious animal, which the natives call Bunyip".
He wrote that he only ever saw the back of the animal, which he said was covered in gray feathers.
He described it as being the size of a small cow.
He claimed the bunyip was believed to have supernatural powers.
Boudica (born about 25 AD, died 60\/61 AD) was the queen of the Celtic Iceni people in Norfolk in the eastern part of Roman Britain.
A statue of Boudica was put up in the Westminster area of London in 1902.
Her husband Prasutagus ruled as an independent ally of Rome.
When he died, he left his kingdom jointly to his daughters and the Roman Emperor.
It was normal Roman practice to allow allied kingdoms their independence only for the lifetime of their client king.
For example, the provinces of Bithynia and Galatia, were made part of the Empire in just this way.
Also, Roman law allowed inheritance only through the male line.
When Prasutagus died, his will was ignored by the Governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, and his kingdom was annexed just as if it had been conquered.
To make matters worse, Roman money-lenders called in the debts which Prasutagus had borrowed during his life.
The lands and property of the Iceni were confiscated and their nobles treated like slaves.
When Boudica protested, Paulinus had her flogged, and her two daughters raped in public.
Tacitus reports: "Prasutagus, the late king of the Icenians... by his will he left the whole to his two daughters and the emperor in equal shares, conceiving, by that stroke of policy, that he should provide at once for the tranquility of his kingdom and his family.
"The event was otherwise.
His dominions were ravaged by the centurions; the slaves pillaged his house, and his effects were seized as lawful plunder.
His wife, Boudicca, was disgraced with cruel stripes; her daughters were ravished, and the most illustrious of the Icenians were, by force, deprived of the positions which had been transmitted to them by their ancestors.
The whole country was considered as a legacy bequeathed to the plunderers.
The relations of the deceased king were reduced to slavery".
Choosing a good moment, when the Governor was attacking Anglesey and another legion was in Bristol, Boudica led the Iceni and their associates, the Trinovantes, to war.
They destroyed Camulodunum (modern Colchester), and moved towards Londinium.
There was only the 9th legion (Legio IX Hispana) to defend it.
The tribes burnt and destroyed both Verulamium (St Albans) and Londinium and massacred all they could lay their hands on.
An estimated 70,000 80,000 Romans and British were killed in the three cities by those led by Boudica.
The final battle took place near Watling Street in the English Midlands.
Watling Street was an old trackway between Canterbury and St Albans.
The Romans rebuilt it their way, and took it through the Midlands into Wales.
While Boudica 's army assaulted in Verulamium, Suetonius put together a force with his own Legio XIV Gemina, some detachments of the Legio XX Valeria Victrix, and any available auxiliaries.
Down near Exeter, The Prefect of Legio II Augusta, Poenius Postumus, ignored the Governor 's call to arms.
Nonetheless the Governor was able to call on almost ten thousand men.
The Romans were heavily outnumbered.
However, the tribes lacked manoeuvrability.
They had no way to direct these numbers, which put them at a disadvantage to the Romans.
The Romans were skilled at open combat, and had better equipment and discipline.
Also, the narrowness of the field meant that Boudica could put forth only as many troops as the Romans at any given time.
First, the Romans stood their ground and used volleys of pila (heavy javelins) to kill thousands of Britons who rushed toward the Roman lines.
The Roman soldiers engaged Boudica 's second wave in the open.
As the Romans advanced in a wedge formation, the Britons attempted to flee, but were impeded by the presence of their own families.
They had put their people in wagons at the edge of the battlefield, and were slaughtered.
Tacitus reports that "according to one report almost eighty thousand Britons fell" compared with only four hundred Romans.
Boudica fled, and her time and place of death is not known.
The Prefect Postumus, on hearing of the Roman victory, fell on his sword.
Fearing Suetonius ' actions would provoke further rebellion, Nero replaced the governor with the more conciliatory Publius Petronius Turpilianus.
The historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus tells us the crisis had almost persuaded Nero to abandon Britain.
Borneo is the third largest island in the world and can be found at the center of maritime southeast Asia.
Administratively, this island is divided between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
Indonesia 's region of Borneo is called "Kalimantan" (although Indonesians use the term for the whole island), while Malaysia 's region of Borneo is called East Malaysia or Malaysian Borneo.
The independent nation of Brunei occupies the remainder of the island.
Borneo is surrounded by the South China Sea to the north and northwest, the Sulu Sea to the northeast, the Celebes Sea and the Makassar Strait to the east, and the Java Sea and Karimata Strait to the south.
It has an area of 743,330 km (287,000 square miles).
Borneo is home to a few of the oldest rainforests in the world.
Borneo is home to a vast array of wildlife, including the endangered orangutan, as well as other animals such as monkeys, elephants, snakes, parrots, clouded leopards, hornbills, tarsiers and deer.
A ballpoint pen (also called a biro - pronounced "BY-roe" - in British English after its inventor L szl B r), is a modern kind of pen for writing.
The ink is inside a long, thin unit inside the pen.
When a person writes with it, the ink comes onto the small, ball-shaped tip of the unit.
The ink dries almost as soon as it is on the paper.
Before the ballpoint pen was invented people usually wrote with pens which were dipped into ink, or fountain pens which were filled with ink whenever the ink was all used up.
When the ballpoint pen was invented, many people thought they were bad things to use because people 's handwriting was not so good.
Children in schools had to continue to use ordinary ink pens.
However, ballpoint pens were improved, and they are much easier to use than pens that need to be dipped in ink, so almost everybody writes with them now.
Galileo Galilei were working on a draft for an invention similar to the ballpoint pen in the early 1600s.
The inventor L szl B r registered his invention of the ballpoint pen in 1938.
A brick is a man-made building material used to make walls and make places to walk.
It is a single unit of a kneaded clay-bearing soil, sand and lime, or concrete material, fire-hardened or air-dried, used in masonry construction.
Bricks are made mostly of clay.
They are put into molds or cut with wires, and then baked in an oven.
The color of a brick depends on the clay from which it was made.
Masons build brick walls.
They join bricks together using mortar.
Bricks can be assembled into many different patterns.
The most common pattern is called "running bond".
A row of bricks is called a course.
A wall that is just one brick thick has one wythe.
Bricks used outdoors on the ground are called "pavers".
Engineering bricks are used for high load-bearing walls, and for damp = proof courses.
They are more expensive, and are made of better clays and fired at a higher temperature.
The oldest shaped bricks found date back to 7500 B.C..
They have been found in ay n, a place located in the upper Tigris area in south east Anatolia close to Diyarbakir.
A bit later, between 7000 and 6395 BC, bricks come from Jericho and Catal H y k.
Fired bricks are one of the longest-lasting and strongest building materials.
They have been used since about 3000 BC in early Indus Valley cities.
Sun-dried mud bricks are much older, and quite satisfactory in hot, dry climates.
Fired bricks are much more resistant to cold and moist weather conditions.
They allow permanent building in regions where the harsher climate prevents the use of mud bricks.
Most bricks from all places tend to be about the same size: ~ 9 x ~ 4 x ~ 2 inches or 250 120 65 mm.
This is because they are picked up by the brickie in one hand, while in his other hand is a trowel with cement on it.
B la Bart k (b. Nagyszentimikl s, Hungary, 25 March 1881; d. New York City 26 September 1945) was a famous Hungarian composer and pianist.
He was one of the most important and original composers of the 20th century.
He showed great talent as a pianist at an early age.
He became very interested in folk music and traveled a lot in Hungary and other countries, including Romania, listening to the folk songs which the country people sang.
He often used the style of these songs in his music.
He is famous for his piano music, string quartets and several pieces for orchestra including one called Concerto for Orchestra.
Bart k s harmonies and lively rhythms were sometimes quite new to classical music and some audiences found them difficult to understand at first.
B la Bart k was born in the small town of Nagyszentmikl s. In those days it was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but today it is in Romania.
When he was very small he showed great musical talent, and his mother taught him to play the piano.
B la was often ill when he was a child.
When he was seven his father died, and his mother took him and his sister to live in Nagysz l s (today it is called Vinogradiv and is in the Ukraine), and then to Pozsony (today it is Bratislava in Slovakia).
There he gave his first public recital when he was eleven.
He included some music which he had composed himself.
Soon he was studying the piano with Istv n Thoman who had studied with the famous Franz Liszt.
He had lessons in composition from J nos Koessler at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest.
There he met the composer Zolt n Kod ly, who was a great influence on him and who became a lifelong friend.
He soon started to compose longer pieces of music.
He liked the music of Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy and these influenced his style of music.
He started to be interested in folk music.
This can be heard in the first of his six string quartets.
Bart k and Kod ly traveled together into the countryside to collect and study old Hungarian folk melodies.
People in those days thought that real Magyar (old Hungarian) folk music was Gypsy music.
Bart k and Kod ly showed that there were other traditions beside these.
They found music which used pentatonic scales similar to those used in some parts of Asia.
The two composers started to use these folk ideas in their own compositions.
Kod ly often quoted (copied) actual folk songs in his own music, while Bart k preferred to compose music which sounded like folksong without actually copying it.
In 1909, Bart k married M rta Ziegler.
Their son, also named B la, was born in 1910.
In 1911, Bart k wrote his only opera, Bluebeard 's Castle.
There are only two singers in the opera: Bluebeard and his wife Judith.
He also wrote a ballet called The Wooden Prince.
This started to make him famous abroad.
Another ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin, is even more famous today.
It shows the influence of Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, as well as Richard Strauss.
He wrote a lot of chamber music including a total of 6 string quartets, 2 violin sonatas and a Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion.
He wrote some pieces for smaller orchestras: Divertimento for strings and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.
Bart k divorced M rta in 1923, and married a piano student, Ditta P sztory.
His second son, P ter, was born in 1924.
When World War II broke out Bart k criticized the Nazis.
After they came into power in Germany, he refused to give concerts there and did not use his German publisher.
His political ideas gave him a great deal of trouble in Hungary.
Having first sent his manuscripts out of the country, Bart k felt he had to emigrate to the USA with Ditta P sztory.
They lived in New York City.
Their son P ter joined them in 1942 and later joined the United States Navy.
Bart k s older son B la stayed in Hungary.
Bart k did not feel comfortable in the USA, and found it very difficult to compose.
He was also not very well known in America, and not many people were interested in his music.
He and his wife Ditta gave concerts, and for a while, they were given some money to work on a collection of Yugoslav folk songs.
They did not have very much money, although he had some friends who gave them enough to live on.
Serge Koussevitsky asked him to write the Concerto for Orchestra.
This soon became Bart k 's most popular work, and brought him some money.
He was also asked by Yehudi Menuhin to write a Sonata for Solo Violin.
This seemed to make him interested again in composing, and he went on to write his Piano Concerto No. 3 and began work on his Viola Concerto.
Bart k died in New York City from leukemia on 26 September 1945, aged 64.
He left the Viola Concerto unfinished at his death; it was later finished by his pupil Tibor Serly.
Bart k s music has many modern techniques such atonality, bitonality and modern harmonies.
He often uses different kinds of scales (not just major and minor ones), and very complicated rhythms.
A lot of these are inspired by the folk music he heard.
He wrote a lot of piano music, including some easy pieces for people who are learning the piano.
This includes a collection of pieces in six volumes called Mikrokosmos which are very popular with young musicians today.
Bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression) is a severe mental illness where a person will have repeated, long-lasting feelings (episodes) of elevated (mania) and lowered mood (depression).
It may occur with or without cycles of normal mood, called euthymia.
A mixed episode occurs when both mania and depression are present at the same time.
"Bipolar" literally means "two poles" or two extremes in how much energy the brain has.
Sometimes, a person can experience something called mania.
Mania is when a person 's brain goes into a high-energy state.
When in a high-energy state, mania can cause extreme emotions such as panic attacks or extreme happiness such as euphoria.
This feeling is often followed by a period of depression, which is a low-energy state.
A person who is depressed may act sad or hopeless.
People with bipolar disorder switch between these two states.
People who are in a manic state are often over-confident and very optimistic.
This can cause them to take large risks and do things that are not normal for them to do.
Manic episodes last for at least a week, but can last as long as three to six months.
They are usually followed by a depressive episode.
A person who is manic may talk very quickly with no pauses, have thoughts that change very quickly, or act without thinking.
They may also experience psychosis, where they can not tell what is real and what is not.
They may think that they are unstoppable or that they are on a mission for God.
Mania may become so severe that it can affect the person s ability to work or interact with others.
Every person is different, so it is important to remember that these things do not happen to all people with bipolar disorder.
Hypomania is a less extreme version of mania.
Someone who is hypomanic will have symptoms similar to mania.
They may have increased energy and may deny that anything is wrong.
A hypomanic episode may last from a few days to a few months.
People who are in a depressive state are often sad and pessimistic.
They may lose interest in activities they usually like, or become isolated and lonely.
Other symptoms include anxiety, hopelessness, changes in sleep, and suicidal thoughts.
A depressive episode can last from a few weeks to several months.
When bipolar disorder develops at a young age, the first few episodes are usually depressive.
Because a manic or hypomanic episode is needed to diagnose bipolar disorder, some people are diagnosed with major depression at first.
Bipolar disorder is an illness that can show in different ways.
It is often diagnosed in adolescents or young adults.
A few subtypes have been identified; these subtypes mostly describe the nature of the "episodes" of the disease:
The exact cause of bipolar disorder is unknown.
It is estimated that there is a 71 percent chance of bipolar disorder passing from parent to child.
If one identical twin has bipolar disorder, there is a 40 to 70 percent chance that the other will develop bipolar disorder in their lifetime.
MRI studies have shown that certain parts of the brain responsible for mood regulation are larger in bipolar patients.
It is also possible for bipolar disorder to develop after a stroke, brain injury, or certain infections.
Like most mental illnesses, there are ways to treat bipolar disorder.
The most common way to treat bipolar disorder is by using medications called mood stabilizers.
These medicines prevent and control the manic and depressive episodes.
One of the most common mood stabilizers is lithium.
Therapy can also be used to control the symptoms.
The same treatments and medicines do not work for everyone, and it is not uncommon for people to have symptoms return if they stop taking medication.
Things like this can make bipolar disorder a difficult illness to live with, but educating patients about it makes it easier.
Sometimes, people need to be treated against their will.
Patients may be thinking about or have tried to commit suicide, or they may be unable to see their situation properly.
In many cases, teaching people about their disease helps.
When they have gone through the phases of the illness a few times, they often see that treatment can make their life easier.
Burt Lancaster (November 2, 1913 - October 20, 1994), was an American actor and director.
Lancaster was born in New York.
After working in a circus, he began his career in Hollywood with The Killers (1946), with Ava Gardner.
Next was Brute Force (1947), in which he played Joe Collins, an inmate who plans to rebel against the prison authorities.
In the 1950s, he continued to have success in films such as The Flame and the Arrow (1950), Jim Thorpe -- All-American (1951), The Crimson Pirate (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), The Rose Tattoo (1955), and The Devil 's Disciple (1959).
The decade of the 1960s was one of the best for Lancaster.
He starred in Elmer Gantry (1960), and won an Oscar for his role.
In Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), he played Dr. Ernst Janning, a Nazi doctor on trial for crimes against humanity.
In Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), he played Robert Franklin Stroud, a man who spent most of his life in prison.
Other major films were Il gattopardo (1963), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), The Swimmer (1968), Airport (1970), and Scorpio (1973).
In The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), he played the evil scientist Dr. Paul Moreau who experiments with human beings.
He won two Academy Awards.
One of them was for his leading role in Elmer Gantry.
Lancaster had various jobs in European film and television.
They included Gruppo di famiglia in un interno (1974), Novecento (1976), The Cassandra Crossing (1976), La pelle (1981), with Marcello Mastroianni, Il giorno prima (1987), La bottega dell ` orefice (1989), and the TV mini-series V ter und S hne - Eine deutsche Trag die (1986).
Titles included Hollywood productions as Apache (1954), Vera Cruz (1954), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Unforgiven (1960), The Professionals (1966), Lawman (1971), and Valdez Is Coming (1971).
He also had few starring roles in television including Marco Polo (1982) (mini-series), Barnum (1986), and the TV miniseries On Wings of Eagles (1986).
In On Wings of Eagles, he played Lieutenant Colonel Arthur E. ` Bull ' Simons, a retired military officer who led the rescue of kidnapped civilians in the Middle East.
His three last jobs were in TV films The Phantom of the Opera (1990), Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair (1990), and Separate But Equal (1991), with Sidney Poitier.
Blue is one of the colors of the rainbow that people can see.
It is one of the three primary colors, along with red and yellow.
It has the shortest wavelength of these colors (about 470 nanometers).
Blue is the color of the Earth 's sky and sea.
Earth looks blue when seen from outer space by astronauts.
Blue is a color used to show coldness.
It is also one of the colors your lips can turn if you are chilly.
Blue is the color of a bluebird.
A blue jay is the color blue.
The color blue is sometimes associated with sadness, which may be where the name of the music style The Blues comes from.
In Western cultures since the 1940s, blue is associated with boys, while pink is associated with girls.
Before the 1940s, it was the other way around, so blue was for girls and pink was for boys.
Nobody knows exactly why it changed.
BDSM is an initialism for bondage\/discipline (BD), dominance\/submission (DS), and sadism\/masochism (SM).
It means some kinds of sex play, sometimes these are called kink or fetish.
They all have to do with trying to get sexual happiness out of things that are often painful or upsetting.
People try to do this in a safe way by agreeing on a "safe word".
If someone says this word the whole play stops.
This is to stop the play from going too far and causing real physical or emotional hurt.
BDSM is thought about as a safe thing to do if it does some things.
These things are often said in one of two different ways.
The first way they are said is to say Safe, Sane, and Consentual (SSC).
The second way they are said is Risk Aware Consentual Kink (RACK).
What those sayings mean is that both people have to agree on what to do.
They also have to be safe, which means that they have to know the risks and be careful.
People who do BDSM play are very careful to follow those rules because they can hurt or kill their partner if they do not.
Safe words are used to make sure BDSM is safe.
Sometimes one person thinks they are playing in an ok way, but the other person does not.
The person who does not think the play is ok will use a safe word or gesture to stop playing.
This means that the play stops as soon as they do so nobody gets hurt or injured.
Bondage is the use of items like handcuffs, ropes or chains to keep a willing person from moving.
Bondage often has to do with sex, but not always.
Bondage is done because some people like the feeling of being not able to move while having sex.
In this case, bondage sometimes has to do with BDSM, as often in the case of rope bondage and bondage of the female breasts.
The letter "B" in BDSM stands for "bondage".
Bondage may also be done just because people may like the feelings it creates.
Some couples include bondage as foreplay in their otherwise traditional sex lives at some time during their relationship.
These bedroom bondage games are often with one partner willingly being restrained with rope or cuffs.
Sometimes they can also be blindfolded or gagged.
Domination and submission is a lifestyle.
Often it is seen as a form of erotic play.
Usually two people do this.
With this lifestyle or context, one of the two people has the dominant role.
He or she can tell the other (called submissive) to do things.
The submissive has to obey.
The roles are usually agreed on beforehand.
The submission is voluntary.
Sadomasochism may be seen as a variation of domination and submission.
A person who plays both roles is called a switch.
A blizzard is a large winter storm.
It brings low temperatures, strong winds, and a lot of blowing snow.
Blizzards start when a high pressure system touches as low pressure system.
The word blizzard is sometimes used incorrectly by news media to talk about big winter storms, even if the storm is not a blizzard.
Some areas are more likely to be hit by blizzards than others, but a blizzard can occur in any place where snow falls.
In North America, blizzards happen often in the northern-east states, and in the provinces of Canada.
In this region, blizzards can happen more than twice each winter.
They also occur often in the mountain ranges of western North America.
Because these regions have low populations, blizzards sometimes are not reported.
A very dangerous type of blizzard is a whiteout.
In a whiteout, downdrafts and snowfall are so thick that people can not tell the ground and sky apart.
People caught in a whiteout lose their sense of direction very fast.
This is a large danger to pilots when they are flying airplanes, because they can not tell how close they are to the ground, and may crash.
The Great Blizzard of 1888 was very damaging for the Northeastern United States.
In that blizzard, 400 people died, 200 ships sunk, and snowdrifts were 10 or 15 feet high.
In the Great Plains, states were hit by the Schoolhouse Blizzard that trapped children in schools and killed 235 people.
In 1880 1881 there was a winter that people in the Dakotas called the "Hard Winter".
The author Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her book The Long Winter about that winter 's story.
It talks about one blizzard after another, and how it changed Laura 's family and everybody around her.
The book is almost all true.
Her story of two men from the town of DeSmet, South Dakota, going after some wheat stored some miles south of DeSmet in February 1881 is true, and Ingalls later married one of the men, Almanzo Wilder).
If the two men had not found and brought back the wheat, the people would have starved.
The snow and ice thawed in April, and the railroads could start again.
The train picture above was photographed on March 29, 1881, not far from DeSmet.
34 people died during a 3-day spring blizzard on March 1920 in North Dakota.
One of the people who died was Hazel Miner, a teenage girl who died of freezing to death when she got lost on her way home from her one-room-school.
The Armistice Day Blizzard in 1940 surprised many people with how fast the temperature dropped.
It was 60 in the morning, but by noon, it was snowing.
Some of the people froze to death in the snow.
154 people died in the Armistice Day Blizzard.
105 years after the Great Blizzard of 1888, a giant blizzard, named the Storm of the Century, hit the U.S in 1993.
It dropped snow on 26 states and reached as far north as Canada and as far south as Mexico.
In many southern U.S. areas, such as parts of Alabama, more snow fell in this storm than ever fell in an entire winter.
Highways and airports closed across the U.S..
The blizzard also made 15 tornadoes in Florida.
When the storm was over, 270 people died and 48 were reported missing.
A Bikini is a type of swimsuit for women.
It consists of two parts; pants and a bra top, leaving an uncovered area between the two.
The bikini is an ancient invention, reinvented after the Second World War.
The bikini is perhaps the most popular female beachwear around the globe.
"This is due to "the power of women, and not the power of fashion... The emancipation of swimwear has always been linked to the emancipation of women".
Olivier Saillard.
By the mid 2000s bikinis had become a US$ 811 million business annually, according to the NPD Group, a consumer and retail information company.
The bikini has boosted spin-off services like bikini waxing and the sun tanning industries.
Predecessors of the bikini date back to antiquity, in atalh y k and the Greco-Roman world.
Artwork dating back to the Diocletian period (286-305 AD) in Villa Romana del Casale, Sicily depicts women in garments resembling bikinis in mosaics on the floor.
The images of ten women, dubbed the "Bikini Girls", exercising in clothing that would pass as bikinis today, are the most replicated mosaic among the 37 million colored tiles at the site.
Archeological finds, especially in Pompeii, show the Roman goddess Venus wearing a bikini.
A statue of Venus in a bikini was found in a cupboard in the southwest corner in Casa della Venere, others were found in the front hall.
By the early 1940s two-piece swimsuits were frequent on American beaches.
Hollywood stars like Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner tried similar swimwear or beachwear.
Finally, the modern bikini was introduced by French engineer Louis R ard and fashion designer Jacques Heim in Paris in 1946.
R ard was a car engineer but by 1946 he was running his mother 's lingerie boutique near Les Folies Berg res in Paris.
Heim was working on a new kind of beach costume.
It comprised two pieces, the bottom large enough to cover its wearer 's navel.
R ard named his swimsuit the "bikini", taking the name from the Bikini Atoll, one of a series of islands in the South Pacific where testing on the new atomic bomb was occurring that summer.
R ard could not find a model to wear his design.
He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris.
That bikini, with a g-string back, had 30 s of cloth with newspaper type printed across.
It introduced on July 5 at Piscine Molitor, a public pool in Paris.
Heim 's design was the first worn on the beach, but the clothing was given its name by R ard.
Zahiruddin Babur or Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur (14 February 1483 26 December 1530) was a chieftain and prince from Fergana who became the first Mughal Emperor.
He defeated Hindu and other Muslim kings many times using new technology.
He founded the Mughal Empire in the Hindustan.
He was descended from both Genghis Khan and Tamerlane.
Many people consider him to have been a great emperor.
Babur (1483 1530) was a descendant of Timur from his father 's side and Chingez Khan from his maternal side, and was destined in turn to be the first ruler or founder of the Mughal Empire.
Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur was born at Fargan state in Turkistan in February 14th, 1483.
His name, ` Babur ' meant lion and he proved the justification of his name, as he had courage and audacity just like a lion.
When Babur was only eleven (11) years old, his father, Omar Sheikh Mirza, died.
As soon as the old chief, or Mirza had died, Babur s cousins and uncles turned against him and he had to run away.
He returned three years later and took control of the city Samarkand.
But one day, while he was out on an expedition to Fargana to regain the city, his enemies won back the city, Samarkand.
As Babur went wandering around mountains, he slowly assembled a small army and entered what is now Afghanistan and attacked Kabul in 1504 A.D..
He then came to be known as Ameer (King\/Ruler) of Kabul.
In 1525 Babur set out to attack and conquer India.
He had only about twelve thousand men with him but he had been promised help by Daulat Khan Lodi, the governor of Punjab.
They planned to march together against the ruling Sultan Ibrahim Lodi, who was the king of Delhi at that time.
When Babur reached India, Daulat was afraid to help him, and eventually backed out, and so Babur started off to Delhi by himself with his small army of men.
Ibrahim Lodi was reported to have one hundred thousand men and one hundred elephants.
But Babur had something which Ibrahim did not have heavy guns and cannons, the first proper Turkic style artillery seen in medieval India.
There were hardly any guns at that time in India and Babur had managed to get hold of some in Kabul.
He had cannons and some rifles as well.
The two armies met at the famous First battle of Panipat, at a small village near Delhi.
Both armies remained in position opposite each other for a week before the battle began.
Babur was an excellent general and he planned the battle very carefully as conquering Delhi was indeed very important to him.
After the battle about fifteen thousand men of the enemy were killed including their commander Ibrahim Lodi.
Before the enemy could recover from their defeat, Delhi was captured.
Babur had to fight more major battles, the battles of Khanua and Gogra.
In 1527 A.D. he had to face a fierce enemy of his at Khanua, the Rajput hero, Rana Sangram (or Sanga) of Mewar.
A ferocious battle was fought between the two in the field of Khanua and Babur won the battle magnificently.
In 1529 A.D., Babur got into a battle with the Afghans.
Babur won, but the Afghans were not totally weakened.
They joined hands with Mahmud Lodi, the brother of Ibrahim Lodi, to fight Babur again.
But Babur approached forward and was a successful winner of this Battle in Gogra.
After all these victorious battles, Mughal Rule started under Babur.
But, unfortunately, Babur could not enjoy it for long.
When his son Humayun fell ill, Babur prayed to God to spare his son at the cost of his life.
Soon after that, Humayun recovered miraculously and Babur fell ill..
He died in 1530.
He was buried in Kabul.
As a person, Babur was very emotional and affectionate towards his family, his people, his empire and his servants and workers.
He believed that peace can only be obtained by accepting and tolerating other races and religions and not creating any sort of difference.
He told Humayun that Islam can better be preached by the arms of love and affection, rather than the sword of tyranny and persecution.
Giving love to his people would be the only way of uniting everyone, was one of Babur s central beliefs, which became the foundation of Mughal success and reached its highest point under his grandson, Akbar the Great.
Apart from his liberal, tolerant personality, Babur was also a fine poet and prose-writer.
His famous memoirs, the Tuzk i Baburi are ranked amongst the world 's great autobiographies.
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) was a French theologian.
He is a Roman Catholic saint.
He was an Abbot in the Cistercian order.
He was also the patron of the Knights Templar.
Bishkek (-RRB- is the capital city of Kyrgyzstan.
It has a population of 900,000 (2005).
Originally founded in 1878 as the Russian fortress of Pishpek (-RRB-, between 1926 and 1991 it was known as Frunze (-RRB-, after the Bolshevik military leader Mikhail Frunze.
In Kyrgyz, a Bishkek is a churn used to make stirred horse milk (kumis), the Kyrgyz national drink.
Braveheart is an American historical war drama movie starring Mel Gibson.
It is loosely based around the life of 13th century Scottish warrior William Wallace, who fought against the English when they occupied Scotland.
Bambara is a language from Mali.
More than 6 000 000 people (including second language users) speak it.
It is called Bamanankan in Bambara.
Bambara is very similar to Dioula.
Dioula is not spoken by as many people, but it is used in Burkina Faso, C te d'Ivoire, and Gambia.
The Bambara language is spoken mainly by people in the Bambara racial group.
About 2,700,000 people are in this group, but Bambara is also used by other racial groups in Mali.
Bambara is in the Manding language family.
These languages are similar to each other.
This family of languages is in a larger language group.
This group is called the Mand group.
It is an SOV language (Subject-Object-Verb) and it has two tones (pitches).
There are seven vowels: a, e,, i, o, and u.
Writing started during the period of French rule.
There is not much written work, but there is a lot of oral literature, which is often stories about kings and heroes.
The people who tell these stories are called Griot.
They also sing religious songs.
Many of their songs are very old and some people think the songs are as old as the old Mali Empire.
Bambara is a national language of Mali, and it is also the most widely understood language in Mali.
Bambara has many local dialects.
Baku is the capital and the largest city of Azerbaijan.
It is on the southern shore of the Apsheron Peninsula.
Modern Baku has three parts: the Old Town (ri h r), the boomtown and the Soviet-built town.
About 3 million people live in the metropolitan area.
There are large numbers of refugees and internally displaced persons.
In Baku area there is a lot of oil.
There are a lot of state and private universities.
Baku is hosted the 57th Eurovision Song Contest in May 2012.
They also bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics.
The city 's three main football clubs are Neftchi Baku, FC Baku and Inter Baku.
Baku is one of world 's leading chess centres.
Today, Baku is divided into 11 raions (administrative districts) and 5 settlements of city type.
The balalaika is a musical instrument from Russia.
The Balalaika family includes the piccolo balalaika, prima balalaika, sekunda balalaika, alto balalaika, bass balalaika and contrabass balalaika.
They all have three strings.
There are many ways to tune balalaika; the most common tuning is E-E-A.
The prima balalaika is played with the fingers, the sekunda and alto either with the fingers or a pick depending on the music being played.
The basses and contrabasses, which have legs that rest on the floor, are played with leather picks.
Early pictures of the balalaika show it had between two and six strings, like some Central Asian instruments.
Frets on earlier balalaikas were made of animal gut and tied to the neck so that they could be moved around by the player.
The balalaika was improved by a Russian, Vasily Vasil ` yevich Andreev.
He had heard peasants on his farm playing badly made instruments.
Andreev wanted to improve the instrument and use it for concerts.
He spent the rest of his life working on this instrument with help from two violin makers and a carpenter.
They improved the soundboard, which made it louder.
He came up with the idea of the prima balalaike, sekunda, alto, bass and controbass balalaika.
He then spent several years writing and arranging music for groups of balalaikas to play.
The first public performance by the Ensemble of Balalaika Players took place in 1888.
After the Russian Revolution, the Communist Party encouraged the playing of the instrument and large balalaika orchestras were started.
Bugzilla is an internet software for recording bug reports.
It is coded in CGI and is used by many programmers.
It is free for everyone to use without having to pay any money.
A ballad is a form of verse.
It is often a story set to music.
Ballads were popular in British and Irish poetry and music until the 19th century from the late medieval period.
It was also used in Americas, Australia and North Africa.
Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides.
Poets and composers from the 18th century used this form.
In this way, they produced lyrical ballads.
In the later 19th century, ballads were slow form of popular love song.
The term is now often used as synonymous with any love song, particularly the pop or rock power ballad.
Power ballad is a name given to love songs that were predictably included in heavy metal albums in the 1980s.
The power ballad was usually slower in tempo and much less aggressive in lyrics than the other music on the album.
The songs were often made in a hope of scoring a Top Forty hit, and were particularly associated with bands in the hard metal genre.
Examples include Poison 's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" and Bon Jovi 's "Wanted Dead Or Alive".
Blue yster Cult is a psychedelic rock band that formed in Long Island, New York in 1971.
They have many well-known songs like (Do n't Fear) The Reaper, and Burnin ' For You.
The group 's best known songs are probably: The 1976 single" (Do n't Fear) The Reaper" from the album Agents of Fortune (featured in the movie Halloween, and in the TV movie The Stand based on Stephen King 's novel of the same name, and in the credits of Peter Jackson 's 1996 movie The Frighteners) and the 1981 single "Burnin ' for You" from the album Fire of Unknown Origin and "Godzilla" (1977).
Battery Park City is a 92-acre (0.4 km) planned community at the southwestern tip of Lower Manhattan in New York City, United States.
The land upon which it stands was created on the Hudson River using 1.2 million cubic yards (917,000 m3) of dirt and rocks excavated during the construction of the World Trade Center and certain other construction projects, as well as from sand dredged from New York Harbor off Staten Island.
The neighborhood, which is the site of the World Financial Center along with many housing, commercial, and retail buildings, is named for adjacent Battery Park.
Battery Park City is owned and managed by the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA), a public-benefit corporation created by New York State under the authority of the Urban Development Corporation.
Excess revenue from the area was to be contributed to other housing efforts, typically low-income projects in the Bronx and Harlem.
Bison are a type of even-toed ungulate bovines.
They are the biggest mammals in North America.
They are often called buffalo, but are not closely related to African buffalo or water buffalo.
They used to wander around the prairies of North America in huge herds.
American bison are large, plant-eating mammals that are similar to cows.
There used to be as many as 30 million bison in the United States, but because of hunting, by 1890, only 1,000 bison were left.
Through conservation efforts, there are now more American bison than there used to be, but still far fewer than there were before the 1800s.
European bison (wisent) tend to live in lightly wooded to fully wooded areas and areas with increased shrubs and bushes, though they can also live on grasslands and plains.
Bison live in the northern part of the world.
The American bison lives in North America, and the wisent lives in Europe.
They can also live in rugged areas.
They live to be about 20 years old and are born without their "hump" or horns, which both males and females have.
After shedding their light colored hair, and with their horns, they are grown at 2 to 3 years of age, but the males keep growing slowly until about age seven.
Adult bulls are very dominant in mating season.
Adult bison usually have one or two baby bison.
Baryons are composite particles which are made of three quarks.
Since all quarks have a spin of 1\/2, a baryon will always have a spin of either 1\/2 or 3\/2 (the spins can cancel out).
The 3\/2 spin baryons are extremely unstable, and only live for 10-23 seconds.
After that, they will jump down to a lower energy state by releasing photons containing energy.
These 3\/2 spin baryons are known as higher energy resonances.
the lowest energy state of a baryon is a simple 1\/2 spin.
All particles with 1\/2 spin (or 3\/2 spin) are called fermions, which obey Fermi-Dirac statistics.
This basically means that no two fermions can be in the same point in space at the same time.
This is not true for the other type of subatomic particle, called a boson.
More than one boson -- like a photon -- can exist in the same point in space at the same time.
Baryons are part of a larger collection of subatomic compounds called Hadrons.
Hadrons are simply particles made of quarks.
The other type of Hadron is called a meson.
The name baryon comes from Greek "barys," meaning heavy.
In cryptography, a block cipher is a symmetric key cipher which operates on a groups of bits of fixed length, called blocks, using an exact transformation.
During encryption, a block cipher algorithm might take (for example) a 128-bit block of plaintext as input, and output a corresponding 128-bit block of ciphertext.
The exact transformation is controlled using a second input the secret key.
Decryption is similar: the decryption algorithm takes, in this example, a 128-bit block of ciphertext together with the secret key, and output the original 128-bit block of plaintext.
One of the early block cipher designs was the Data Encryption Standard (DES), developed at IBM and published as a standard in 1977.
A successor to DES, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES); also using block cipher, was adopted in 2001.
Bj rn Borg (born June 6, 1956) is a retired professional tennis player from Sweden.
He won Wimbledon five years in a row, more than any other player until Roger Federer did the same.
Borg also won six French Open titles, which was later also done by Rafael Nadal, who in the 21st century won nine titles.
He is seen as one of the best tennis players of all time.
Borg was famous for his unusual and exciting playing style.
He also set many records.
Since retiring, Borg has run a clothing line.
He has two sons, Robin (born 1985) and Leo (born 2003).
Bj rn Borg has given the name to the fashion brand Bj rn Borg.
Besides underwear, it includes other clothing, shoes, bags, glasses and fragrance for both men and women.
This table shows Borg 's performance in each Grand Slam tournament in singles competition.
The Battle of the Nile was an important naval battle (fought by ships) between the British and the French.
It happened in 1798.
The British Royal Navy, led by Horatio Nelson, defeated the French who were led by Napoleon Bonaparte.
It is called the Battle of the Nile because it was fought in an estuary of the River Nile, off the coast of Egypt.
Britain took control of the eastern Mediterranean.
Napoleon 's army was cut off from France.
Burhanuddin Rabbani (1940 20 September 2011) was the President of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996.
He had been a Mujahideen leader who fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
He was removed as President when the Taliban took over in 1996.
He then became the leader of the Northern Alliance which took over in Kabul when the Taliban were removed.
He became the head of Afghanistan 's High Peace Council which was trying to find a way to end the fighting in Afghanistan.
He was killed in a suicide attack on his home.
A man who claimed to be a Taliban leader met with Rabbini, and then exploded a bomb, which he had hidden in his turban.
The Boeing 747 is a jet airliner.
It is made by Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
The Boeing 747 has more than one aisle, which means it is a wide-body aircraft.
It is often called the Jumbo Jet or Queen of the Skies.
The Boeing 747 is one of the easiest planes in the world to recognize.
It was the first wide-body aircraft ever made.
The first type of 747 was two and a half times the size of the Boeing 707.
The Boeing 747 made its first flight for an airline in 1970.
The 747 could carry more people than any other aircraft for 37 years, until the Airbus A380 was made.
The 747 is a double deck plane.
It can carry people, cargo and many other things.
Boeing designed the 747 's upper deck to be a first class lounge or just extra seats.
They also designed the upper deck so that the aircraft could be changed into a cargo plane easily.
This was done by removing seats and putting in a cargo door at the front of the plane.
Boeing did this because they thought that supersonic airliners would become much more popular than the 747 and other subsonic airliners.
However, they thought that subsonic cargo planes would always be popular.
It was thought that the 747 would become unpopular after 400 were sold.
However, 1,000 planes had been made by 1993, so it stayed popular.
By September 2012, 1,448 aircraft had been built.
81 747-8s were still waiting to be built.
The 747-400 is one of the fastest airliners being used today.
It usually flies at Mach 0.85 0.855 (up to 570 m).
It can fly for 7,260 nautical miles (8,350 mi or 13,450 km).
The newest version of the 747, the 747-8, is now being made.
The 747 will be replaced by the Boeing Y3 (part of the Boeing Yellowstone Project) eventually.
In 1963, the United States Air Force began to look for a very big plane to transport things.
At that time, the C-141 Starlifter was being used.
However, the Air Force thought that a much bigger plane which could carry more cargo was needed.
The Air Force called the big plane the CX-Heavy Logistics System (CX-HLS).
It needed to be able to carry 180000 l of cargo and travel at Mach 0.75 (500 m).
It also had to be able to fly for 5000 n while carrying 115000 l of cargo.
The cargo bay had to be 17 f wide, 13.5 f high and 100 f long.
There had to be doors for the bay at the front and the back of the plane.
The Air Force also wanted the plane to have only four engines.
This meant that new engines had to be made.
On May 18, 1964, Boeing, Douglas, General Dynamics, Lockheed and Martin Marietta designed a plane.
General Electric, Curtiss-Wright and Pratt & Whitney designed the engines.
The Air Force liked Boeing, Douglas and Lockheed 's designs.
They also liked General Electric and Pratt & Whitney 's engine designs.
In 1965, Lockheed 's plane and General Electric 's engines were used for the C-5 Galaxy.
At that time, it was the biggest military cargo plane in the world.
The idea for the 747 was thought of in the 1960s.
Jets like the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 had made it easy to travel long distances.
Juan Trippe from Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), asked Boeing to build a plane which was more than two times bigger than the Boeing 707.
At this time, airports were very busy.
Trippe thought that a big plane could help make them quieter.
In 1965, Joe Sutter was told to design this new plane.
It was called the 747.
Sutter asked Pan Am and other airlines what they would like from the plane.
At the time, it was thought that supersonic aircraft would replace the 747.
Because of this, Boeing made the 747 so that it could easily be turned into a cargo plane if the passenger version became less popular.
In April 1966, Pan Am bought 25 747-100 planes.
The order cost US$ 525 million.
Since Pan Am was the launch customer, Pan Am had a big say in the design and making of the 747.
No other airline before then or since then has been able to have so much influence over a plane.
The design that Boeing made for the Air Force in 1963 was not used for the 747.
However, Boeing made some new things for the Air Force which were used in the 747.
The first design had two full decks.
However, in 1966, this was changed to only one deck.
The cockpit was put above the deck, which made a "bulge".
There was a small space behind the cockpit which people could sit in.
At first, it was a "lounge" area with no seats.
Planes as big as the 747 needed high-bypass turbofan engines.
High-bypass turbofans could make twice the power of turbojets.
It also used a lot less fuel.
General Electric made the first of these engines.
However, it was making the engines for the C-5 Galaxy.
It did not make engines for airliners until later.
Pratt & Whitney was also working on this type of engine.
In 1966, Boeing, Pan Am and Pratt & Whitney designed a new engine, the JT9D, for the 747.
Boeing used some special devices to make the plane make more lift.
This was done so that the 747 could take off from shorter runways.
The 747 has a lot of flaps on the wing.
The flaps make the wings bigger by 21 percent.
They also make 90 percent more lift when they are used.
Boeing tried to give the 747 to Pan Am by the end of 1969.
This meant that Boeing only had 28 months to design the aircraft.
The people who worked on the 747 had the nickname "The Incredibles".
Boeing did not have a factory big enough to make the new plane.
Boeing thought about putting their factory in 50 different cities.
They eventually decided to build their factory in Seattle, near Everett, Washington.
Boeing bought the factory in June 1966.
Designing the 747 was very difficult.
Building its factory was also not easy.
Boeing 's president, William M. Allen, asked Malcolm T. Stamper to be in charge of the building of the Everett factory.
He was also asked to begin building the 747.
The factory is the biggest building ever built (by volume).
It has been made bigger many times so that Boeing can build even bigger planes.
Before the first 747 was put together, parts and systems were being tested.
In one important test, 560 volunteers evacuated a replica of a 747 cabin using the emergency chutes.
The first evacuation took two and a half minutes.
However, the FAA says that the maximum time for an evacuation is 90 seconds.
Many of the volunteers were hurt.
More evacuations happened, and they eventually reached the 90 seconds.
However, they also caused a lot of injuries.
Evacuating from the top deck of the plane was difficult.
Instead of using the usual slides, the volunteers had to leave the plane using a harness.
The plane 's taxiing also had to be tested.
Boeing made "Waddell 's Wagon" (named after a 747 test pilot, Jack Waddell) to train the pilots.
"Waddell 's Wagon" was a replica of a 747 cockpit which was put on the roof of a truck.
This helped pilots to learn how to taxi the plane.
On September 30, 1968, the first 747 was finished.
People from the 26 airlines that had ordered the 747 were also there.
The 747 first flew on February 9, 1969.
Its pilots were Jack Waddell and Brien Wygle.
There was a small problem with the flaps, but the 747 handled well.
The testing was delayed because of some problems with the JT9D engines.
For example, the engines stalled if the throttles were moved too quickly.
This meant that 747s could not be delivered for many more months.
20 planes were stuck at the factory while they were waiting on engines.
On December 13, 1969 the test plane was being taken to have some changes made to it.
The pilot, Ralph C. Cokely landed too early and did not reach the runway.
One of the landing gears was ripped off, and two of the engines were damaged.
However, Boeing took the 747 to the 28th Paris Air Show in mid-1969.
There, the public saw the 747 for the first time.
Designing the 747 and building the new factory cost a lot of money.
This meant that Boeing had to borrow a lot of money from a bank.
Just before the first aircraft was finished, Boeing had to keep asking for more money.
If Boeing was not given this money, the company could have collapsed.
Boeing was in over $ 2 billion in debt.
Allen said, "It was really too large a project for us."
However, the 747 program was a success.
Boeing was the only company to make very big planes for many years.
The very first time a 747 was used by an airline was on January 22, 1970.
Pan Am used it to fly from New York to London.
The flight was supposed to happen on the evening of January 21.
However, the engines on the aircraft overheated.
Pan Am had to find another plane, which took six hours.
The 747 did quite well when it first began to be used.
Some people thought that airports would not be able to handle such a big plane.
However, they could.
There were some problems, but they were quite small and they were fixed quickly.
After Pan Am began to use the plane, other airlines began to use their 747s.
Boeing thought that a lot of 747s would be sold because airlines wanted a plane which could fly for a long time, not because it was so big.
The recession of 1969-1970 was very bad for Boeing.
For over a year after September 1970, it only sold two 747s.
None were sold to an American airline for over three years.
Some airlines did not have enough passengers to fly the 747.
Therefore, they replaced them with the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and Lockheed L-1011 TriStar.
American Airlines eventually only used its 747s to carry cargo.
In 1983, AA gave its 747s to Pan Am.
Pan Am gave American Airlines some smaller planes.
Delta Air Lines also stopped using its 747s after many years.
Delta would later merge with Northwest Airlines, which operates 747s.
Flights which landed in smaller cities became quite usual in the 1980s.
This was bad for the 747.
However, many airlines still used the 747 to fly across the Pacific.
The first type of 747 was called the 747-100.
After this, Boeing made the, which has a higher MTOW (maximum takeoff weight), and the (Short Range).
The -100 SR could carry more passengers.
A higher MTOW means that the plane can carry more fuel and fly further.
In 1971, Boeing made the.
It had better engines and a higher MTOW.
Airliner and cargo versions of the were made.
The 747SP (special performance) was also made.
It began being used in 1976.
In 1980, Boeing made the 747-300.
The first 747-300 was made in 1983.
Its upper deck was longer, it flew faster and it could hold more passengers.
The 300 was first called the 747SUD for "stretched upper deck".
Then it was called the 747-200 SUD, then the 747EUD, and finally it was called the 747-300.
In 1985, Boeing began to design the 747-400.
This type has a glass cockpit.
This meant that only two people were needed in the cockpit.
It also had new engines and a new cabin.
The workers who made the 747-400 were not very experienced and Boeing wanted them to work for longer than they needed to.
This meant that there were some problems with the first 747-400s.
The 400 began being used by airlines in 1989.
In 1991, 1,087 passengers were taken to Israel on a 747.
This was a part of Operation Solomon.
The Antonov An-225 cargo transport is the world 's biggest plane.
The Hughes H-4 Hercules has the biggest wingspan, but it only flew once.
Since the 747-400 was made, many more types of 747 have been suggested.
Boeing said that they would make the 747-500X and in 1996.
These new planes would have cost more than US$ 5 billion to design and make.
Airlines did not like it enough, so Boeing decided not to make the planes.
In 2000, Boeing said it would make a 747X to rival the Airbus A3XX.
However, airlines did not like the 747X enough, so it was canceled.
A year later, Boeing began concentrating on the Sonic Cruiser.
The Sonic Cruiser was stopped, so Boeing then focused on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Some of the ideas that Boeing had for the 747X were used on the 747-400ER.
In 2004, Boeing said that it might work on the 747 Advanced.
Boeing decided to go ahead with this.
The 747 Advanced used some things from the 787 to make the 747 's design more modern.
The 747 was the world 's biggest passenger plane until the Airbus A380 was finished in 2007.
On November 14, 2005, Boeing said it had changed the name of the 747 Advanced to the Boeing 747-8.
The last 747-400s were made in 2009.
On February 8, 2010, the 747-8 Freighter made its first flight.
Cargolux got the first 747-8 in 2011.
Eventually, the 747 will be replaced by "Y3".
The Boeing 747 is a big, wide-body airliner.
It has four engines on the wings, and the wings are swept at 37.5 degrees, so the 747 can fly very fast.
The sweep also means that the 747 does not need any special hangars.
Since the cockpit is above the main deck, it makes a "hump", and because it is so high, the plane can have a cargo door installed at the front.
The 747-100 can fly for 5,300 nautical miles (6,100 mi, 9,800 km), and the 747-8i can fly for 8,000 nmi (9,200 mi, 14,815 km).
The 747 has special flaps, which allow the 747 to fly slowly and land on normal runways.
A 747 can carry a fifth engine on the wing, but it can not be used.
The 747-100 was the very first type of 747, which was made in 1966.
The 747-200, the next version, was made in 1968.
The 747-300 was made in 1980 and the 747-400 was made in 1985.
The newest version, the 747-8, was announced in 2005.
These types also have smaller sub-types.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) names these planes by combining the model number of the plane with its type number.
For example, the 747-100 is "B741" and the 747-400 is "B744".
The first 747-100s had six windows on the upper deck.
Later, airlines began to use the upper deck to hold more people instead of using it as a lounge.
Boeing then made an upper deck with ten windows.
Some 100s had the new ten-window upper deck installed after the plane was made (retrofitted).
The 100 had Pratt & Whitney JT9D-3A engines.
Boeing did not make a freighter version of the 747-100, but some airlines have turned some 747-100s into freighters.
167 747-100s were made.
After Japanese airlines requested an aircraft to fly routes between major cities in Japan, Boeing produced the -100 SR..
This model flies shorter distances, but is able to carry more passengers.
The first -100 SR started flying with Japan Air Lines (JAL) on October 7, 1973.
The -100 SR had four General Electric CF6-45A2 or Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7A engines.
A total of 7 -100 SR were produced.
Later, Boeing designed a type of -100 SR with the ability of taking off with greater weight.
This was the -100 BSR.
It was first delivered to All Nippon Airways (ANA) on 21 December 1978.
20 -100 BSR were delivered to JAL and ANA.
In 1986, 2 -100 BSR with stretched upper deck (SUD) from the -300 series were delivered to JAL.
It was the last -100 SR\/BSR ever built.
The last delivery was to JAL, in September 1986.
There were a total of 29 -100 SR\/BSR made.
The 747SP (SP means special performance) is designed as Pan Am and Iran Air both wanted a wide-body plane that can fly long distances; from New York to the Middle East (for Pan Am) and Tehran to New York (for Iran Air).
The first 747SP was produced on 19 May 1975.
Its first flight was on 4 July.
On this flight, it flew at a top speed of Mach 0.92 (1127 k).
It started flying people on 25 April 1976, after being delivered on 5 March.
Now, it is not often used.
A total of 45 747SP were made and used by airlines like Qantas, China Airlines, Air China and South African Airways.
After the -100 were made, Boeing started making -200.
The -200 has a longer range, but still carries the same number of people.
This is because airlines said the -100 could not fly long distances.
The -200 is made in passenger type (-200 B), freighter type (-200 F), Combi type (A plane that carries both cargo and people; -200 M) and convertible type (a plane that can be easily changed to carry cargo; -200 C).
The first -200 B was finished on 10th September, 1970 before its first flight on 11th October and finally, it started being used by KLM.
Boeing then started making the other types of -200.
The -200 F first flight was on November 30, 1971, 7 days after it was finished.
It was then delivered to Lufthansa.
The -200 C first flew on March 23,1973 before being delivered to World Airways in May the same year.
Finally, the -200 M had its first flight on November 11, 1974 before being delivered to Air Canada.
There was a total of 393 -200 series ever made, which includes 225 -200 B, 78 -200 M, 73 -200 F, 13 -200 C and 4 military.
The Battle of Agincourt was fought on 25 October 1415 and was a major win for England against France in the Hundred Years ' War.
Henry V of England led the English army and Constable of France Charles d'Albret led the French.
The longbow was an important weapon for killing and winning this battle.
The Bronze Age is the time period when people made tools from an alloy (a mixture of metals) called bronze.
Bronze is a mixture of mainly copper and tin: usually nine parts copper to one part tin.
Materials like wood and stone were also used for tools, but bronze was better for cutting and chopping, and was easy to shape.
The Bronze Age was not at the same time everywhere, because different groups of people began to use bronze at different times.
In Western Europe, the Bronze Age lasted from about 2000 BC until 800 BC.
In the Middle East, it started about a thousand years earlier.
For example, bronze was first used in Mesopotamia around 3300 BC.
The people had great creativity and skills.
Archaeologists think that people became more organised in the Bronze Age, because the making of metal tools was difficult and needed certain skills.
The people who had these new skills would have been important.
The new metal tools were bought, sold, or traded across larger distances.
Later, when iron tools spread, the Bronze Age ended and the Iron Age started.
A reason for iron replacing bronze is that tin ore, a rock in which tin may be found, is much more rare than iron ore..
Copper tools were not useful because they were too soft.
By the Bronze Age, wild food was no longer a main part of the diet.
The title "inventors of agriculture" might go to the Sumerians, starting c. 5500 BC.
Farming allows more people in an area than can be supported by hunting and gathering.
Crops can be stored for off-season use, or to sell or barter.
Farmers could feed people to do other things than agriculture.
This was a crucial factor in the rise of full-time armies.
Sumerian agriculture allowed them to win battles and land.
This made them early empire builders.
Not long after, the Egyptians, farming in the fertile Nile valley, increased their population.
There were now enough warriors for a territorial expansion more than tripling the Sumerian empire in area.
In Sumer, barley was the primary crop; wheat, flax, dates, apples, plums, and grapes were grown as well.
Mesopotamian agriculture was both supported and limited by flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Floods came in late spring or early summer from snow melting from the Anatolian mountains.
Sheep and goats were domesticated, kept mainly for meat, milk, butter and cheese.
Ur, a large town that covered about 50 acres (20 hectares), kept 10,000 animals; 3,000 were slaughtered every year.
The city 's population of 6,000 included a labor force of 2,500, cultivated 3,000 acres (12 km) of land.
The labor force included storehouse recorders, work foremen, overseers, and harvest supervisors as well as labourers.
The land was plowed by teams of oxen pulling light unwheeled plows and grain was harvested with sickle.
Wagons had solid wheels covered by leather tires kept in position by copper nails and were drawn by oxen.
As many as four animals could pull a wagon at one time.
The horse was domesticated in Ukraine around 4000 BC, and was in use by the Sumerians around 2000 BC.
William Edgar (Bill) Oddie OBE (born 7 July 1941) is a British comedian, actor, writer and television personality.
Oddie was born in Rochdale, Lancashire and grew up in Birmingham.
He read English Literature at Pembroke College, Cambridge where he gained an MA.
He is most famous for his birdwatching and conservation work.
In the 1970s, he was a member of the BBC One television comedy series, The Goodies.
Doctors found that his mother, Lilian, had schizophrenia.
Oddie says that he does not remember her living at home because she spent a lot of her life in mental hospitals.
Oddie has bipolar disorder.
British Telecommunications Group plc which trades as BT, (sometimes known as British Telecom and still occasionally referred to by that name) is the privatised UK state telecommunications operator.
BT Group is the largest communications service provider in the United Kingdom.
Balmoral Castle is a royal residence in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
It was purchased by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria 's husband, in 1848.
Victoria and Albert paid 30,000 for full ownership of the house in 1852.
Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone in 1853, signed a parchment recording the date, and placed it in the hole prepared for the stone.
Today, Balmoral is owned privately by the royal family, and is one of Queen Elizabeth II 's favorite summer retreats.
Breton (', in Breton) is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany, in the north-west of France.
Breton is closely related to the Cornish language of Cornwall spoken in south-west Great Britain.
It is less closely related to Welsh, and the Goidelic languages of Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
The Breton language has approximately 240,000 speakers,111 but this number is falling very quickly due to the French government 's policy of using French.
As such, Breton is considered to be an endangered language.
Billy Crystal (born March 14, 1948) is a Golden Globe Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning American actor, writer, producer, comedian, singer, movie director and television host.
He became famous in the 1970s for playing Jodie Dallas on the ABC Comedy-drama, Soap.
Crystal was a castmember of Saturday Night Live.
He became a Hollywood movie star during the late 1980s and the 1990s, appearing in the box office successes When Harry Met Sally... and City Slickers.
A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, including light, can escape.
According to the general theory of relativity, it is the result of the curving of spacetime caused by a very dense mass.
Around a black hole there is a position of no return, called the event horizon.
It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.
Under the theory of quantum mechanics black holes have a temperature and emit Hawking radiation, which makes them slowly get smaller.
A black hole is found by its interaction with matter.
A black hole can be inferred by tracking the movement of a group of stars that orbit a region in space.
Alternatively, when gas falls into a black hole caused by a companion star or nebula, the gas spirals inward, heating to very high temperatures and emitting large amounts of radiation.
This radiation can be detected from earthbound and Earth-orbiting telescopes.
Astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates, and have also found evidence of supermassive black holes at the center of every galaxy.
After observing the motion of nearby stars for 16 years, in 2008 astronomers found compelling evidence that a supermassive black hole of more than 4 million solar masses is located near the Sagittarius A \* region in the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
In 1783, an English geologist named John Mitchell wrote that it might be possible for something to be so big and heavy that the escape speed from its gravity is equal to the speed of light.
Gravity gets stronger as something gets bigger or more massive.
For a small thing, like a rocket, to escape from a larger thing, like Earth, it has to escape the pull of our gravity or it will fall back.
The speed that it must travel upward to get away from Earth 's gravity is called escape velocity.
Bigger planets (like Jupiter) and stars have more mass, so have stronger gravity than Earth, so the escape velocity is much faster.
John Mitchell thought it was possible for something to be so big that the escape velocity would be faster than the speed of light, so even light could not escape.
In 1796, Pierre-Simon Laplace promoted the same idea in the first and second editions of his book Exposition du syst me du Monde (it was removed from later editions).
Some scientists thought Mitchell might be right, but others thought that light had no mass and would not be pulled by gravity.
His theory was forgotten.
In 1916 Albert Einstein wrote an explanation of gravity called general relativity.
It is a very complicated theory, but there are two important things about it:
A few months later, while serving in the war, the German physicist Karl Schwarzschild used Einstein 's equations to show that a black hole could exist.
In 1930, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar predicted that stars heavier than the sun could collapse when they ran out of hydrogen or other nuclear fuels to burn and died.
In 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and H. Snyder calculated that a star would have to be at least three times as massive as the sun to form a black hole.
In 1967, John Wheeler gave black holes the name "black hole" for the first time.
Before that, they were called "dark stars".
In 1970, Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose proved that black holes must exist.
Although the black holes are invisible (they can not be seen), some of the matter that is falling into them is very bright.
The gravitational collapse of high-mass (` heavy ') stars is assumed to be responsible for the formation of "stellar mass" black holes.
Star formation in the early universe may have resulted in very massive stars, which upon their collapse would have produced black holes of up to 103 solar masses.
These black holes could be the seeds of the supermassive black holes found in the centers of most galaxies.
While most of the energy released during gravitational collapse is emitted very quickly, an outside observer does not actually see the end of this process.
Even though the collapse takes a finite amount of time from the reference frame of infalling matter, a distant observer sees the infalling material slow and halt just above the event horizon, due to gravitational time dilation.
Light from the collapsing material takes longer and longer to reach the observer, with the light emitted just before the event horizon forms is delayed an infinite amount of time.
Thus the external observer never sees the formation of the event horizon; instead, the collapsing material seems to become dimmer and increasingly red-shifted, eventually fading away.
Most black holes are made when a supergiant star dies, and leaves behind a mass that is at least one solar mass..
Stars die when they run out of hydrogen or other nuclear fuel to burn and iron is produced.
Iron does not give off energy and therefore the star has no fuel and in a short amount of time the star collapses.
A supergiant star 's death is called a supernova.
Stars are usually in equilibrium, which means they are making enough energy to push their mass outward against the force of gravity.
When the star runs out of fuel to make energy, gravity takes over.
Gravity pulls the center of the star inward very quickly (so quickly that it would have to be repeated several thousand times before it took up a single second), and it collapses into a little ball.
This results in the restart of thermonuclear reactions.
The star starts expanding again, but again the nuclear fuel goes out.
This continues until the star can not make any more energy and then comes the final collapse.
The collapse is so fast and violent that it makes a shock wave, and that causes the rest of the star to explode outward.
As the gravity pushes the star inward, the pressure in the center of star reaches to such an extreme level that it enables heavier molecules like iron and carbon to interact to release nuclear energy.
The release of the energy from the star during a very short period of time (about one hour) is with such a high rate that it outshines an entire galaxy.
The ball in the center is so dense (a lot of mass in a small space, or volume), that if you could somehow scoop only one teaspoon of material and bring it to Earth, it would sink to the core of the planet.
If the remaining mass is of below one solar mass it forms a white dwarf.
If it is from 1-3 solar mass it forms a neutron star and if it is above 3 solar mass it forms a black hole.
Even without a supernova, a black hole will form any time there is a lot of matter in a small space, without enough energy to act against gravity and stop it from collapsing.
If supernovas are so bright, why do we not see them often?
Actually, there are usually hundreds of years between naked-eye super nova sightings.
It is because the period of being a super nova in a star life cycle is only a few hours out of the billions of years in a star 's life span.
The probability (chance) of looking at a star in sky and that being in super nova state is equal to the ratio of an hour over several billion years.
It is worth mentioning that all of the heavier materials like carbon, oxygen, all the metals, etc., that make the life on the earth possible and are ingredients of all living creatures, can only form in the extreme pressure at the center of a super nova.
So we are all a remnant ash from one exploding star several billion years ago.
Supernovas replenish the interstellar medium for the next generation of stars also.
Black holes have also been found in the middle of almost every galaxy in the universe.
These are called supermassive black holes (SBH), and are the biggest black holes of all.
They formed when the Universe was very young, and also helped to form all the galaxies.
Quasars are believed to be powered by gravity collecting material into SBHs in the centers of distant galaxies.
Since light can not escape the SBHs are at the center of quasars, the escaping energy is generated outside the event horizon by gravitational stresses and immense friction on the incoming material.
Huge central masses (106 to 109 solar masses) have been measured in quasars.
Several dozen nearby large galaxies, with no sign of a quasar nucleus, contain a similar central black hole in their nuclei.
Therefore it is thought that all large galaxies have one, but only a small fraction are active (with enough accretion to power radiation) and so are seen as quasars.
At the middle of a black hole, there is a gravitational center called a singularity.
It is impossible to see it because the gravity prevents any light escaping.
Around the tiny singularity, there is a large area where light which would normally pass by gets sucked in as well.
The edge of this area is called the event horizon.
The gravity of the black hole gets weaker at a distance.
The event horizon is the place farthest away from the middle where the gravity is still strong enough to trap light.
Outside the event horizon, light and matter will still be pulled toward the black hole.
If a black hole is surrounded by matter, the matter will form an "accretion disk" (accretion means "gathering") around the black hole.
An accretion disk looks something like the rings of Saturn.
As it gets sucked in, the matter gets very hot and shoots x-ray radiation into space.
Think of this as the water spinning around the hole before it falls in.
Most black holes are too far away for us to see the accretion disk and jet.
The only way to know a black hole is there is by seeing how stars, gas and light behave around it.
With a black hole nearby, even objects as big as a star move in a different way, usually faster than they would if the black hole was not there.
Since we can not see black holes, they must be detected by other means.
When a black hole passes between us and a source of light, the light bends around the black hole creating a mirror image.
That effect is called gravitational lensing.
Hawking radiation is black body radiation which is emitted by black holes, due to quantum effects near the event horizon.
It is named after the physicist Stephen Hawking, who provided a theoretical argument for its existence in 1974.
Hawking radiation reduces the mass and the energy of the black hole and is therefore also known as black hole evaporation.
Because of this, black holes that lose more mass than they gain through other means are expected to shrink and ultimately vanish.
Micro black holes (MBHs) are predicted to be larger net emitters of radiation than larger black holes and should shrink and dissipate faster.
In nuclear physics, beta decay is a type of radioactive decay where a beta particle (an electron or a positron) is made and sent away, or emitted.
When it is an electron, it is called beta minus, but when it is a positron, it 's called a beta plus.
The weak force makes Beta decay possible.
Blitzkrieg is a German word which means lightning war, referring to the high velocity of a lightning bolt.
In a blitzkrieg the attacking armies move very quickly, and are helped by tanks and by aircraft.
Enemy slower moving units are overrun or surrounded.
They are often captured with little fighting.
Often the slower units might not be ready to fight when they are captured.
It was used by the German army in World War II during the invasions of Poland, France, and the Soviet Union.
The Blitz refers to the German bombing of Britain, particularly London, during World War II, which destroyed over a million homes and killed over 40,000 people.
The bombing was supposed to quickly destroy industry and morale (happiness) and make it easier for the German Army to invade.
But the RAF (Royal Air Force) was able to stop The Blitz, and regain the control of the British airspace.
Towards the end of the war, the Allies learned to defeat German blitzkrieg attacks by attacking the sides of the attackers with reserve forces.
The Beano is a weekly British children 's comic.
The first issue was on July 30, 1938.
Annuals are released each year.
Bees are flying insects of the Order Hymenoptera, which also includes ants, wasps and sawflies.
There are about 20,000 species of bees.
Bees collect pollen from flowers.
Bees can be found on all continents except Antarctica.
The European honey bee (called Apis mellifera by biologists), is kept by humans for honey.
Keeping bees to make honey is called beekeeping, or apiculture.
The earliest animal-pollinated flowers were pollinated by insects such as beetles, long before bees first appeared.
Bees are different because they are specialized as pollination agents, with behavioral and physical modifications that make pollination easier.
Bees are generally better at the task than other pollinating insects such as beetles, flies, butterflies and pollen wasps.
The appearance of such floral specialists is believed to have driven the adaptive radiation of the angiosperms, and, in turn, the bees themselves.
Bees, like ants, are a specialized form of wasp.
The ancestors of bees were wasps in a family which preyed on other insects.
The switch from insect prey to pollen may have resulted from the capture of prey insects that were covered with pollen when they were fed to the wasp larvae.
Similar behavior could be switched to pollen collection.
This same evolutionary scenario has occurred within the vespoid wasps, where the group known as "pollen wasps" also evolved from predatory ancestors.
A recently reported bee fossil, of the genus Melittosphex, is considered "an extinct lineage of pollen-collecting Apoidea, sister-group to the modern bees", and dates from the Lower Cretaceous (~ 100 mya).
Features of its morphology place it clearly within the bees, but it retains two unmodified ancestral traits of the legs which betray its origin.
The issue is still under debate, and the phylogenetic relationships among bee families are poorly understood.
Like other insects, the body of a bee can be divided into three parts: the head, thorax (the middle part), and abdomen (the back part).
Also like other insects, bees have three pairs of legs and two pairs of wings.
Many bees are hairy and have yellow and black or orange and black warning colors.
Many bees have stings (like a hollow needle) on the rear of their bodies.
If they get confused, angry, or scared they may sting, and inject venom, which hurts.
Once a worker bee has stung it dies after a short while, but other types of bee and wasp can sting again.
Some people are allergic to bee stings and can even die from them.
Some bees are eusocial insects; this means they live in organized groups called colonies.
Honey bees, the kind of bee used in beekeeping, are eusocial.
The home of a bee colony is called a hive.
There are three kinds of bees in a honey bee colony.
A queen bee is the most important bee in the colony because she will lay the eggs.
The queen bee only uses her stinger to sting other queen bees.
The queen is usually the mother of the worker bees.
She ate a special jelly called royal jelly from when she was young.
Worker bees are females too, and they are the bees that collect pollen from flowers and will fight to protect the colony.
Workers do a waggle dance to tell the others where they have found nectar; Karl von Frisch discovered this.
Drone bees (males) mate with the queen bee so that she can lay eggs.
The only function of the male drone is to mate.
They do no other work in the hive.
Bookkeeping is the recording of financial transactions.
Transactions include sales, purchases, income, and payments by an individual or organization.
The persons who do this job are called bookkeepers.
They use one of several methods, such as single-entry and double-entry bookkeeping.
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator.
In his native Russia, Pasternak 's anthology My Sister, Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language.
Furthermore, Pasternak 's translations of plays by Goethe, Schiller and Shakespeare are deeply popular with Russian audiences.
Outside Russia, Pasternak is best known as the author of Doctor Zhivago, a novel which takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War.
Due to its independent minded stance on the socialist state, Doctor Zhivago was refused publication in the USSR.
The typescript of Doctor Zhivago was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957.
Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year, an event which humiliated and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In the midst of a massive campaign against him by the CPSU and the Union of Soviet Writers, Pasternak reluctantly agreed to decline the prize.
In his letter to the Nobel Committee, Pasternak stated the reaction of the Soviet State was the only reason for his decision.
He is still listed as the winner for that year.
By the time of his death from lung cancer in 1960, the campaign against Pasternak had damaged the international credibility of the U.S.S.R..
He is still a major figure in Russian literature.
Furthermore, the samisdat methods were later continued, expanded, and refined by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and other Soviet dissidents.
Bruce Lorne Campbell (born June 22, 1958) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director.
He is known for his starring role in the 1981 horror movie Evil Dead.
He has since become a B-movie icon.
He starred as Sam Axe in Burn Notice on the USA Network.
He played Ronald Reagan in season 2 of the FX original series Fargo in late 2015.
A boy band is a type of musical group with three or more young male singers.
Usually, the singers are able to perform as dancers as well.
Most singers in boy bands do not play musical instruments.
Boy bands usually perform pop or R&B music.
The British Museum in London is one of the world 's largest and most important museums of human history and culture.
It has more than seven million objects from all continents.
They illustrate and document the story of human culture from its beginning to the present.
As with all other national museums and art galleries in Britain, the Museum charges no admission fee.
The British Museum set up in 1753 and opened in 1759.
It was the first museum in the world to be open to everyone.
The museum gradually grew over the next two hundred years.
It has nearly six million visitors a year and is the third most popular art museum in the world.
Some of the museum 's most popular and important exhibits include the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles.
The history of the British Museum began with the English physicist Hans Sloane, who died aged 93 in 1753.
During his life, he had collected many important things from all around the world.
When he died, he did not want his collection to be split up between his relatives.
He sold his collection to the parliament of King George II.
The parliament set up the British Museum to hold the collection.
By the time he died, Sloane had collected over 80,000 objects from all over the world including Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Americas.
The collection was mostly books and manuscripts.
There were many important archaeological pieces included as well.
The government looked at many possible places to build the new museum, including Buckingham House, which later became Buckingham Palace.
Eventually a building called Montagu House was chosen.
The Museum opened on the 15th of January 1759, although all visitors had to be shown around by stewards.
Over the years the museum began to concentrate more and more on historical objects and sculptures.
For this reason they were given the Rosetta Stone by King George III in 1802.
The Rosetta Stone had previously been important to French historians trying understand the Hieroglyph language written by the Ancient Egyptians.
In 1816 the Museum acquired the Elgin Marbles from Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin.
Elgin had taken them from the Parthenon in Athens, Greece several years earlier.
Many people disagreed with the way Elgin took them from Greece.
They compared his acts to looting and vandalism.
People still argue about this issue today.
In 1822 King George III donated the entire Royal Library to the museum.
This contained over 65,000 books and pamphlets.
In 1823 the original building was demolished and work began on new buildings to hold the ever growing collection.
Some of the space was freed up when the National Gallery opened in 1824, as many of the Museum 's paintings and drawings were moved there.
The Museums collection continued to get bigger over the following years, and more and more buildings were added to hold the new objects.
Important discoveries by people working for the British Museum included the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus by Charles Newton in 1857 and the Temple of Artemis in 1869.
Many things found at these sites were taken to the Museum, where they have remained ever since.
In 1852 the British Museum 's famous round Reading Room was opened.
It had enough space to display a million books at once.
The collection continued to get bigger and bigger.
Eventually the Natural History Museum was set up in 1887 to hold the natural parts of the Museum 's collection.
It was around this time that electric lights were first put in the Museum.
It was one of the first public places in England to do so.
In the early 1900s the Museum 's board of directors bought all the houses surrounding it, knocked them all down and built over them.
In 1939, just before the start of World War II, most of the Museum 's exhibits were taken to other places because the directors were worried the Nazis might bomb the Museum during the Blitz.
The exhibits were stored in old London Underground stations, as well as other places.
The evacuation proved to be a good idea, as parts of the Museum were destroyed by bombs in 1940.
Much of the 1950s was spent fixing the parts of the Museum destroyed by the bombing, and bringing back the pieces that had been taken away.
During all this time the collection continued to get bigger, although space was slowly running out for all the books being brought in.
The British Library was set up in 1973 to deal with this problem.
In 1972 the Museum was loaned the Tutankhamun collection from the Museum of Cairo.
They held a big exhibition called ` The Treasures of Tutankhamun ' and it attracted over 1.5 million people to come and see it.
In 1998 the central courtyard, which had been unused before, was turned into the Great Court with the Reading Room at its center.
The Great Court has over 2 acres of space under its roof.
This makes it the largest covered public space in Europe.
It was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in January 2000.
Since then the Museum has collected more things to do with history, rather than more modern pieces.
They now have a large collection of Roman British, Ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian artefacts, as well as objects from many other cultures and times around the world.
Because of its extremely large size the Museum 's collection is split into many parts, called departments.
The departments have changed many times over the years.
They are sometimes merged together, split into smaller departments or renamed and changed altogether.
The British Museums department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan is one of the biggest collections of Ancient Egyptian art in the world.
Only the Egyptian Museum in Cairo has a bigger collection.
They cover Egyptian and Sudanese history from around 10000 BC all the way to the 12th century AD, a period of around 12,000 years.
Around 150 of the objects in the Egyptian department were part of the first collection which was given to the Museum by Hans Sloane in 1753.
In 1801 the British defeated the French, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, at the battle of the Nile.
After the battle, British forces took lots of Ancient Egyptian artifacts from the defeated French.
They were given to the British Museum in 1803.
These objects included the famous Rosetta Stone.
The department continued to get bigger, paying for archaeologists to go to Egypt and Sudan.
They did this until 2001 when the Egyptian government made it much harder for Museums to take historical artefacts back to their own country.
The collection now has over 110,000 exhibits.
The British Museum 's department of Greece and Rome is one of the biggest collections of Ancient Greek and Roman objects in the world.
The objects come from nearly 4000 years of European history, from 3200 BC all the way to the 4th century AD.
It contains parts of two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos.
It also had many pieces taken from the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.
Like the rest of the Museum the department gets most of its collection from excavations or the acquiring of private collections.
Some of the earliest objects in the collection were bought from the collection of Sir William Hamilton in 1772.
In recent years the Museum 's rules on how it can get objects have become much stricter.
Other countries rules on allowing Museums to take objects away have also got stricter.
This has meant the British Museum has gradually taken fewer items each year in recent times.
The British Museum Department of the Middle East has the largest collection of Mesopotamian art in the world, outside Iraq.
It has some 300,000 objects, covering the Neolithic period until present.
It has objects from all over the Middle East including Mesopotamia (Iraq), Anatolia (Turkey), Levant (Syria, Lebanon and Jordan) and some pieces from central Asia.
The Assyrian and Sumerian collections are also some of the biggest in the world.
Boxing Day is a public holiday in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
It is also a holiday in many other countries in the Commonwealth of Nations.
It is based on a long custom of giving gifts to poor people.
It is usually celebrated on 26 December, the day after Christmas Day; In some countries the public holiday is moved to the next weekday if 26 December is a Saturday or Sunday.
In some countries, stores have sales on Boxing Day, similar to Black Friday sales in the United States.
In the United Kingdom, many association football and rugby league games are played on Boxing Day.
The King George VI Chase horse race in Surrey is also ran on this day.
The IIHF World U20 Championship usually starts on this day.
Boxing Day is an old custom going back to the Middle Ages.
The main feature is the giving of gifts to workers or to poor people.
The name has many different histories.
The term might have started in England.
There, servants would get money or gifts on the day after Christmas.
These gifts were called "Christmas boxes".
The Berber languages \/ Tamazight are a group of closely related languages mainly spoken in Morocco and Algeria.
Kabyle is a Berber language.
Bankruptcy is a legal process which happens when a person or an organization does not have enough money to pay all of its debts.
Legally they are insolvent.
Where it is a person who can not pay their debts, the person 's creditors may ask the court to appoint a trustee in bankruptcy.
This is a professional accountant who is appointed by the court, and they will take control of the bankrupt person 's assets.
Some assets are protected by law, but the trustee in bankruptcy will sell off all of the other assets and use the proceeds to pay as much of that person 's debts as possible.
After the process is complete the person is discharged from bankruptcy, and the person is free from any further liability to pay those claims, but normally that person will be limited in their ability to borrow money again because their credit rating will be damaged.
Where it is an organization who can not pay their debts, the creditors may ask the court to appoint a liquidator.
The liquidator does a very similar job to the trustee in bankruptcy except that there are no assets which are protected so the liquidator can sell everything.
Once all of the assets of the organization have been sold, the organization is then dissolved and no longer exists.
Organisations do not get discharged from bankruptcy in the same way that a living person does.
People often confuse the terms bankruptcy and insolvency, and sometimes they use one word when they really mean the other.
Insolvency usually just means that a someone does not have enough money to pay their debts or (sometimes) that the total amount of their debts is worth more than the total amount of their assets.
Bankruptcy is a formal legal process in front of the courts.
Although the two terms are connected, just because a person is insolvent does not necessarily mean that they will go into bankruptcy.
Many countries have alternatives to bankruptcy to try and allow people and businesses to try and avoid the bankruptcy process.
In various countries, individual people can try and reach individual voluntary arrangements (or IVAs) with their creditors.
This means that the creditors agree to take less money to discharge their debts.
There are similar processes for companies and other organizations, and they go by various different names in different countries, but in many countries they are called schemes of arrangement.
In many countries a company or business can ask the courts for bankruptcy protection to try and protect the business so that the creditors can not destroy all of the physical capital and goodwill by breaking it apart and moving it away.
The aim of this is provide is more time for the business to reorganise itself and to work out a new deal between the owners and the people the business owes money.
In many countries this is called going into administration, although in the United States it is usually referred as going into Chapter 11.
However, not all countries have bankruptcy protection laws for businesses.
Often a creditor threatens a debtor with debt slavery in many parts of the world.
In some cases the debtor does not know that they have a right to go bankrupt.
This is a human rights problem in some countries.
Also, some creditors continue to harass a debtor even though bankruptcy laws say they should not, hoping that the debtor will pay them money that they do not deserve.
Chapter 7 of the Title 11 of the United States Code (Bankruptcy Code) can be filed by businesses or individuals.
It is also called liquidation bankruptcy because some of a debtor 's property may be sold (liquidated) to satisfy creditors.
Chapter 13 is the most popular form of bankruptcy in the United States.
When a business is in debt and can not pay it, it may ask or be forced to file bankruptcy in court under Chapter 7.
A chapter 7 usually makes a company stop doing business.
Employees often lose their jobs when company files for chapter 7.
When chapter 7 is filed, the trustee is chosen.
The trustee is in charge of managing the business and selling its assets to pay the creditors.
The Brahui or Bravi language, spoken by the Brahui, it is the only Dravidian language mainly spoken in Pakistan, although it is also spoken in Afghanistan and Iran.
The 2005 edition of Ethnologue reports some 2.2 million speakers, 90 % of whom live in Pakistan.
In Pakistan it is mainly spoken in the Kalat region of Balochistan.
Although it is a Dravidian language, it has been heavily influenced by the Iranian languages spoken in the area such as Balochi.
Brahui is often considered to be a remnant of a formerly more widespread Dravidian language family that was speculated to have reduced during the Indo-Aryan migration.
It is also sometimes speculated that Brahui might be a direct legacy of the Indus Valley Civilisation.
However, one polar opposite view is that Brahuis migrated up to Baluchistan in the 13 or 14th century or by a late immigration that took place after 1000 CE.
The Boolean satisfiability problem is a kind of problem.
It is from math-based logic.
In propositional logic, a formula is satisfiable if the variables it uses can be given values so that it becomes true.
It is important to know that for a given formula, no numbers exist so that the formula becomes true.
In other words, the formula will always be false no matter what values its variables have.
The formula is called "satisfiable" in the first case.
It is called "unsatisfiable" in the second case.
This problem is also known as Boolean or propositional satisfiability.
Computer scientists usually call it SAT.
Complexity theory believes that the formula should be in a special form, known as conjunctive normal form.
A formula that is in this form has clauses.
Clauses are joined by a "logical and".
Each clause has several literals.
They are joined by a "logical or".
A literal and its complement can not appear in the same clause.
The problem may also have other names.
The names depend on what the logical formula looks like.
The names also depend on how many variables are used per clause.
(A1 OR B1 OR C1) AND (A2 OR B2 OR C2) AND (A3 OR B3 OR C3) AND...
In this case (A1 OR B1 OR C1) is an example for a clause, and B1 is one of the literals of this clause.
At the beginning of the 1970s, Stephen Cook and Leonid Levin showed that the problem is NP-complete.
This is known as the Cook Levin theorem.
The problem 3SAT uses three variables per clause.
It is one of the 21 NP-complete problems.
They were defined by Richard Karp in 1972.
Bob Jones University (BJU) is a private Protestant Christian university in Greenville, South Carolina.
The university was founded in 1927 by Bob Jones, Sr. (1883-1968), an evangelist.
The school has around 3,000 students attending it, and there are 2,755 undergraduate students attending.
The British Empire was made up of the colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories which were controlled by the United Kingdom.
It began with the overseas colonies and trading posts set up by England between the late 16th and early 18th centuries.
At its height, it was the largest empire in history, and the world 's most powerful superpower for more than a century.
By 1922, more than 458 million people lived in the British Empire, which was more than one fifth of the world 's population at that time.
The empire was larger than 33700000 k, almost a quarter of the Earth 's total land area.
p15 Since it was so large, the British Empire has left a large legal, linguistic and cultural legacy.
Like the Spanish Empire before it, the British Empire was often said to be "the empire on which the sun never sets" because it was so large that the sun was always shining somewhere in the empire.
During the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain were the first countries to begin exploring.
This allowed them to create large and rich colonial empires.
Jealous of how rich Spain and Portugal became because of their empires, England, France, and the Netherlands began to make colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia.
p2 England fought and won some wars in the 17th and 18th centuries against the Netherlands and France.
After these wars, England (and then, after the union between England and Scotland in 1707, Great Britain) became the main colonial power in North America and India.
After the Thirteen Colonies became independent in the American War of Independence, the British Empire lost some of its oldest and most important colonies.
Britain then began focusing on Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.
After defeating Napoleonic France in 1815, Britain became the world 's only superpower for more than a century and made its empire even larger.
By the start of the twentieth century, the economies of Germany and the United States had begun catching up to Britain, especially in their industrialisation.
The First World War damaged all of Europe.
Having taken most of the German overseas colonies, the British Empire was at its largest after World War I, but by now the United States was the greatest industrial power.
In the Second World War, Britain 's colonies in South-East Asia were taken over by Japan.
The allies (principally the U.S. forces) eventually defeated Japan.
Britain 's prestige in Asia was damaged.
This caused the empire to decline more quickly.
The British Raj included the whole of the Indian subcontinent.
The independence of the two states of India and Pakistan in 1947 was the first and most important step in decolonisation.
Britain also gave independence to most of the territories of the British Empire.
After the UK transferred Hong Kong back to China in 1997, the British Empire was essentially over.
However, Britain still controls some overseas territories.
After they were given independence, many countries which used to be British colonies joined the Commonwealth of Nations.
Sixteen Commonwealth countries have the same head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, and are Commonwealth realms.
Batman Returns was the second (and last) Batman movie directed by Tim Burton.
It was released on June 19, 1992 worldwide to critical and financial success although a backlash criticized the movie 's dark and mature undertones.
A couple throws their child into the sewers because he is deformed.
33 years later, the child becomes the supervillain, Penguin.
He kidnaps businessman Max Shreck, blackmailing him into helping him become a citizen of Gotham City using evidence of his corporate crimes.
Meanwhile, Max finds out his secretary, Selina Kyle, has found out he is planning to build a power plant which will drain Gotham City of its electricity.
Max pushes her out of a window, ensuring that she will not tell anyone.
However, a flock of alley cats lick her semi-corpse, reviving her.
She returns home, suffering a mental breakdown, becoming the supervillain, Catwoman.
Penguin makes one of his costumed henchman to kidnap the mayor 's baby while he "saves" him, becoming a hero in the eyes of the people however, billionaire Bruce Wayne is suspicious of the Penguin and finds out that he is the leader of the Red Triangle Circus Gang who commits crimes throughout Gotham.
As Batman, Bruce decides to protect Gotham from the gang.
After Penguin finds out his parents are dead and his name is Oswald Cobblepot, Max decides to make Penguin the mayor of Gotham City because the current mayor will not approve Max 's power plant.
To do this, Penguin makes the Red Triangle Circus Gang create a riot, making the people lose all faith in the mayor but Batman stops it.
During the riot, Catwoman vandalizes Shreck 's Department Store.
When Batman and Penguin confront each other, she intervenes, saying "Meow" before the store blows up (she rigged it to blow).
Penguin escapes but Catwoman fights Batman.
Batman pushes her off a rooftop but a sandbox on a truck saves her.
The next day, Penguin and Catwoman work together to destroy Batman.
Bruce and Selina also have a romantic relationship.
Penguin and Catwoman kidnap the Ice Princess, an actress chosen to turn on the Gotham City Christmas Tree Lights, framing Batman for it.
Batman finds her but Catwoman takes her to a rooftop where Penguin releases a swarm of flying bats which make the Princess retreat backwards, falling off, making the people believe Batman killed her.
Catwoman rejects Penguin 's advances, prompting him to kill her, unsuccessfully though.
Batman enters the Batmobile and finds out that Penguin has control over it.
Penguin takes it on a devastating rampage but Batman regains control over it, escaping death.
During the rampage, Batman recorded Penguin 's evil plans and plays it during Penguin 's election speech, turning the people against him.
Penguin goes mad with rage and kidnaps all the first-born sons of Gotham City and Max too.
Batman saves all the babies and pushes Penguin into toxic liquid.
Catwoman tries to kill Max but Batman stops her.
Max shoots Batman, knocking him out and Catwoman claims that she has six of her nine lives left but Max shoots her four times, leaving her with two lives.
Catwoman kisses Max with an electrical taser between their lips and connects it to a broken wire, creating an explosion which kills Max but Batman can not find Selina 's corpse.
Penguin emerges from the water but the heat kills him.
Afterwards, Alfred, Bruce 's butler, drives Bruce home.
Suddenly, Bruce spots Selina 's shadow in an alley.
He investigates the area, only finding her black cat, Miss Kitty, taking her with him.
He and Alfred exchange Christmas wishes.
Finally, Batsignal lights up in the night sky and Catwoman rises up, staring at it, confirming that she is alive.
Tim Burton was not willing to direct a second Batman.
However, when the studio told him if it was a Burton movie, not a Batman movie, it got his attention and he agreed to direct it.
They cast Michael Keaton as Batman, Danny DeVito as Penguin and Annette Bening as Catwoman.
However, Bening dropped out due to pregnancy and every actress from 20-45 on the plant wanted to be Catwoman.
When Michelle Pfeiffer expressed an interest, something clicked to the producers thinking "You know, she 's perfect.
She also could be both Selina Kyle and Catwoman."
The final shot of Catwoman staring at the Batsignal was shot during post-production and cost US$ 250 000.
The movie was released on June 19, 1992 worldwide.
It received a score of 81 % approval on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed $ 266,822,354 worldwide, being the sixth highest grossing film of 1992.
It is then and now, the best reviewed Batman movie from the Burton\/Schumacher movie series.
Batman Forever is a 1995 American action-adventure starring Val Kilmer as Batman.
Tommy Lee Jones and Nicole Kidman also act.
This was released June 16, 1995 across the United States.
It grossed over $ 330 million at the box office.
It got mixed reviews from the critics.
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures is an organization that is based in S vres near Paris in France.
Its name in French is "Bureau international des poids et mesures".
The abbreviation of its name in all languages is BIPM.
These are the letters of the name in French.
It was established in 1875 and has laboratories and offices.
Scientists use the laboratories to compare measurements that are made in different countries.
The offices are used for meetings where scientists discuss the best way to make sure that all countries use the same measurements.
Bayonne (Gascon Baiona;;) is a city and commune in southwestern France at the confluence of the Nive and Adour rivers, in the Pyr n es-Atlantiques department, of which it is a sub-prefecture.
Bayonne has an area of 21.68 k and its average altitude is 28 m; at the city hall, the altitude is 4 m.
Bayonne is surrounded by the communes Boucau, Tarnos (in the Landes department), Lahonce, Mouguerre, Saint-Pierre-d ` Irube, Villefranque, Bassussarry and Anglet.
With a population of 45,855, Bayonne has a population density of inhabitants\/km2.
The inhabitants of Bayonne are known, in French, as Bayonnais (women: Bayonnaises).
Bayonne is a sous-pr fecture in the Pyr n es-Atlantiques department since 1800.
It is also the capital of three cantons:
Black people is a term that is used for a racial group of people with a dark skin color.
The meaning of the word is mainly used for people of Sub-Saharan African descent.
A meaning that also includes certain groups in Oceania and Southeast Asia.
Black people in the United Kingdom are called Black British.
They make up 3.3 % of the people in the UK.
During apartheid people in South Africa were classified into four main races:: Black, White, Asian (mostly Indian), and Coloured.
Under apartheid black people were treated the mostly badly.
Coloured people were treated slightly less badly.
In South Africa Chinese people who lived there during apartheid are classed as black.
About 80 % of people in South Africa are Black African.
The income of the average white South African household is six times as much as that of the average black South African household.
14 % of black South Africans have HIV.
0.3 % of Indians and whites do.
In India and Pakistan there are Siddi people.
In the United States the one-drop rule is sometimes used to decide whether a person is black.
This is one of the reasons that black people do not all have dark skin.
For example, the American singer Mariah Carey is black because she has a black father.
Black people can also have light skin because of illness.
Michael Jackson, another American singer, was born with brown skin but his skin became light because of a disease called vitiligo.
A black person may be called white by other black people if they do not associate themselves with black culture.
White people may also be called black.
Bacillus is a genus of rod shaped bacteria.
They are Gram-positive, meaning they have an extra outside cell layer.
Bacilli are partly or wholly aerobic.
They do aerobic respiration.
They are everywhere in nature.
Bacillus includes both free-living (non-parasitic) and parasitic pathogenic species.
Under stressful conditions, they produce endospores.
These are not true spores, but like survival pods.
They can stay in a dormant state for long periods.
Bras lia (b a zili) is the capital city of Brazil.
The name is commonly spelled Brasilia in English.
The city and its District are in the Central-West region of the country.
It is on a plateau known as Planalto Central.
Bras lia has a population of about 2,557,000 (3,599,000 in the metropolitan area) as of the 2008 IBGE estimate.
It is the fourth largest city in Brazil.
But the Bras lia metropolitan area is the sixth largest in the nation.
It is listed as a World Heritage Site.
Bras lia hosts 124 foreign embassies.
Viewed from above, the main portion of the city resembles an airplane or a butterfly.
The Monumental Axis goes east-west and holds government buildings and monuments.
The other axis is curved in a north south direction.
The city is commonly referred to as Capital Federal, or simply BSB.
As the national capital, Bras lia is the seat of all three branches of the Brazilian government.
The city also hosts the headquarters of many Brazilian companies.
Planning policies place residential buildings around expansive urban areas.
The plan includes large avenues.
It divides the city into sectors with different purposes, including accommodation and tourism.
The city is built around an artificial lake, Lake Parano.
Residents of Bras lia are known as brasilienses or candangos.
(The candangos are people who moved to Bras lia when the city was established).
In local usage, the word "Bras lia" usually refers only to the First Administrative Region within the Distrito Federal (Federal District), where the most important government buildings are.
Bras lia has a unique status in Brazil, as it is an administrative division rather than a legal municipality like nearly all cities in Brazil.
In the rest of Brazil, Bras lia is almost always means the Brazilian Federal District.
There are several "satellite cities," which are also part of the Federal District.
The city was planned and developed in 1956 with L cio Costa as the principal urban planner and Oscar Niemeyer as the principal architect.
Roberto Burle Marx was the landscape designer.
They created the Plano Piloto de Bras lia.
Bras lia was built in 41 months, from 1956 to April 21, 1960.
The Bras lia subway system (Metr de Bras lia) has 24 stations on two lines 42 k long.
The subway currently covers the south half of the metropolitan area.
In 2010, a light rail line was added.
By 2014, the light rail line will go from the end of the north wing of the city to the airport in the south.
Bras lia International Airport is the main airport in Bras lia, connecting the capital to all major Brazilian cities and many airports in other countries.
It is the third most important airport of Brazil, in terms of passengers and aircraft movements.
Borzoi is a type of Russian dog.
It used to be called a Russian Wolf Hound.
This breed of dog was brought to the United States in 1889.
It was approved by the American Kennel Club one year later.
The breed is beautiful and has a gentle personality.
It makes it a good pet.
The breed was approved and the descriptive standard was written in 1650.
It has not changed much since then.
It is about 30 t tall at the withers (its back near the shoulders).
It weighs from 75 t. Borzois have a long coat.
They can be any color from solid white to brown and white, gray and white or brindle.
They can also be all black.
People who take care of Borzois have done a good job of stopping health problems.
Borzois do not have many of the problems other breeds have with health.
In Russia, they were well liked by the royalty.
It was illegal to sell them.
They were given to those who did something special for the Tzars.
They feature in Russian novels e.g. in Tolstoy 's "Anna Karenina".
During the Russian revolution, most of the breed were killed because they were a symbol of royalty.
A few were taken from the country.
They have been used in advertising for luxury cars and jewelry.
This is because of their elegant looks.
Brit milah is the Jewish ritual circumcision ceremony performed on eight-day-old male babies.
The foreskin is cut off from the end of the penis.
The operation is carried out by a person called a "mohel", a ritual circumciser.
The Branch Davidians (also known as "The Branch") are a religious group that split in 1955 from the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists ("Davidians"), The movement is also known as "The Branch".
The Davidians divided (schism) from the Seventh-day Adventist Church ("Adventists") around 1930.
Most of them had been removed from membership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church because of their beliefs.
The reform movement believed themselves to be living in a time when Bible prophecies of a final divine judgment (Christ 's second coming).
The name "Branch Davidian" is widely known for the Waco Siege of 1993 on their property near Waco, Texas.
The 51-day siege, by the ATF, FBI, and Texas National Guard, resulted in the deaths of the Branch Davidians ' leader David Koresh, 82 other Branch Davidian men, women, and children, and four ATF agents.
Benzodiazepines are organic chemical substances, made of two carbon rings.
Certain benzodiazepines can be used as drugs that increase the effect of the neurotransmitter GABA.
The resulting drug has sedative effects.
Depending on the drug, the effect may be stronger or weaker.
The first benzodiazepine, chlordiazepoxide (Librium), was discovered accidentally by Leo Sternbach in 1955, and made available in 1960 by Hoffmann La Roche.
In general taking benzodiazepines is safe and effective in the short term.
Longer term use is controversial: In the long term, the drug may become less effective and problems of dependency may show.
Benzodiazepines may not be safe to be taken during pregnancy.
They are not teratogens, which cause birth defects, but they may cause cleft palate in a small number of babies.
Benzodiazepines can be taken in overdoses and can cause dangerous deep unconsciousness.
However, they are much less toxic than the drugs they replaced, the barbiturates.
Death rarely results when a benzodiazepine is the only drug taken.
When combined with other central nervous system depressants such as alcohol and opiates, the potential for toxicity increases.
Benzodiazepines are commonly misused and taken in combination with other drugs of abuse.
The body mass index (or BMI) is a measure which shows whether people have the right weight for their height.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), governments and health workers use it.
It is also sometimes called the Quetelet Index.
The BMI was invented by Adolphe Quetelet between 1830 and 1850.
A scientist named Ancel Keys first used the term body mass index in 1972.
He wrote that governments should measure the BMI of adults to find out whether they are too fat or too thin.
For example, a man whose weight is 78 kg and height is 1.83 m has a BMI of:
Health organizations, including the World Health Organisation (WHO), use the BMI to help decide whether people are too fat or too thin.
The WHO uses these numbers for adults:
Some people disagree with these numbers.
Some experts think the Overweight range for people with Asian body types should be 23 27.49, not 25 29.99.
Some experts think the lowest Normal BMI should be 20 for men, and 18 for women.
The old BMI definition of overweight was 27.
This changed in 1998.
BMI is useful for governments who want to know about the health of their people.
For example, in the United States in 2007, 74 % of adults had a BMI above 25 (Overweight or Obese) and 27 % of adults had a BMI above 30 (Obese).
Many of these people will become ill because they are too fat.
This information helps the United States government decide what to do about the health of its people.
BMI is less useful for finding out whether one person is too fat or too thin.
BMI does not say how much weight is fat, how much is muscle and how much is bone.
For example, many athletes have a high BMI.
They are not fat.
Their BMI is high because they have lots of heavy muscle.
Other people have lots of fat and not much muscle.
They are too fat but their BMI is normal.
Another way to measure body weight and size is the Body Volume Index.
Even so, BMI is popular.
It is easy to use and easy to understand, and it gives useful information for people with "normal" bodies.
The Ponderal Index is similar to the body mass index, but the height is cubed, not squared.
The formula is:
Some experts suggest that the exponent should be between 2.3 and 2.7.
The best formula might be:
Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 - May 29, 1998) was a conservative politician from the United States.
He represented Arizona in the United States Senate.
He ran for President of the United States in 1964 against Lyndon B. Johnson.
He did not win.
Goldwater was a member of the Republican Party.
He was a Freemason.
He wrote The Conscience of a Conservative.
He was born in Phoenix, Arizona.
He was a commentator on the Cable News Network (CNN) in its early years.
Goldwater died from a stroke in Paradise Valley, Arizona, aged 89.
He was suffering from Alzheimer 's disease.
Goldwater was called "Mr. Conservative" during his political career.
He was a Senator from Arizona.
In 1960, he wrote The Conscience of a Conservative.
The book was a best seller.
In 1964, he was the Republican candidate for President.
He ran against Lyndon Johnson.
Goldwater 's most famous quote (which he said in July 1964 in San Francisco) was "Extremism in the Defense of Liberty is no vice, and Moderation in the Pursuit of Justice is no virtue."
He meant that people should always do what was necessary to make the world freer and more just even if it was hard or made them unpopular.
Goldwater lost to Johnson by a large number of votes.
Goldwater went back to the Senate after losing the election.
His run for president helped start the conservative movement of today, which agrees with many of Goldwater 's ideas.
He did n't agree with the social conservatives who were against abortion and gay rights.
Goldwater stayed in the Senate until 1987.
He helped Sandra Day O'Connor get on the Supreme Court.
He passed a military reform law.
Goldwater retired to Arizona after being in the Senate.
He died in Arizona in 1998.
Goldwater enjoyed photography, airplanes, and radio.
He collected Native American Kachina Dolls, which are made by the Native Americans of Arizona.
He donated his collection to a museum.
Goldwater had four children.
BeOS was an operating system made by Be Inc. and designed for multimedia and personal desktop use.
It made good use of multiprocessor technology.
Palm, Inc. bought Be Inc. in 2001 and new versions of BeOS were not made.
In ecology, a biome is a major regional group of distinctive plant and animal communities best adapted to the region 's physical natural environment, latitude, elevation, and terrain.
A biome is made up of ecoregions or communities at stable steady state and all associated transitional, disturbed, or degraded, vegetation, fauna and soils, but can often be identified by the climax vegetation type.
The biodiversity characteristic of each biome, especially the diversity of fauna and subdominant plant forms, is a function of abiotic factors and the biomass productivity of the dominant vegetation.
Terrestrial biomes with higher net primary productivity, moisture availability, and temperature.
Biomes are often given local names.
For example, a temperate grassland or shrubland biome is known commonly as steppe in central Asia, savanna or veld in southern Africa, prairie in North America, pampa in South America and outback or scrub in Australia.
Sometimes an entire biome may be targeted for protection, especially under an individual nation 's Biodiversity Action Plan.
Climate is a major factor determining the distribution of terrestrial biomes.
Among the important climatic factors are:
Biodiversity generally increases away from the poles towards the equator, and increases with humidity.
The most widely used systems of classifying biomes correspond to latitude (or temperature zoning) and humidity.
In 1975, Miklos Udvardy published a system of biogeographic provinces that were divided into 12 terrestrial biomes.
Robert G. Bailey developed a biogeographical classification system for the United States in a map published in 1975.
Bailey subsequently expanded the system to include the rest of North America in 1981, and the world in 1989.
The Bailey system is based on climate, and is divided into four domains (Polar, Humid Temperate, Dry, and Humid Tropical), with further divisions based on other climate characteristics (subarctic, warm temperate, hot temperate, and subtropical, marine and continental, lowland and mountain).
A team of biologists developed an ecological land classification system for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) that identified 14 biomes, called major habitat types, and further divided the world 's land area into 867 terrestrial ecoregions.
This classification is used to define the Global 200 list of ecoregions identified by the (WWF) as priorities for conservation.
The WWF major habitat types are as follows:
The Endolithic biome, consisting entirely of microscopic life in rock pores and cracks, kilometers beneath the surface, has only recently been discovered and does not fit well into most classification schemes.
Behaviour (or behavior) is what an animal or plant does or how it acts.
Behaviours may be conscious or unconscious.
They may be inherited or learned.
In experiments, behavior is the observed reaction which occurs when an organism is given a stimulus.
Some organisms are more complicated than others and may be more aware of their surroundings.
If their behavior is conscious it means that they know what they are doing.
If they are not aware of what they are doing this is unconscious behavior.
Humans will pull their hand back without thinking if they accidentally touch something hot.
This is done because we (and other animals) inherit nervous system reflexes which cause us to pull away from the thing that is causing the pain.
Behaviour is linked to the nervous system as well as the endocrine system.
The nervous system reacts, and notices what happens.
The hormone system is much slower.
It makes some kinds of behavior more, or less, likely.
A simple example is the change from being a child to an adult.
This involves a whole range of hormones which affect growth and behavior.
Behaviour is also linked to learning.
Organisms which are more complicated can learn better than those that are simpler.
However, even the simplest animals show habituation, which is a primitive kind of learning.
For organisms, learning means that they change their behavior because they remember having been in that situation before and know how to react.
People often use the word "behavior" to mean the way people interact with (behave towards) one another.
Children are taught what is good behavior and what is bad behavior.
Good behavior is about being polite and thoughtful to other people.
It is the kind of behavior that people in a society expect from others.
The Battle of Marathon took place in September 490 BC on the plain of Marathon.
It was fought between the Athenians and the Persians.
Athens was supported by a small force from the city of Platea.
The battle was the end of the first attempt by Persia, under King Darius I, to conquer Greece.
It was part of the first Greco-Persian war.
The Persian invasion was a response to Greek involvement in the Ionian Revolt.
Then, Athens and Eretria had sent a force to support the cities of Ionia, who were trying to overthrow Persian rule.
The Athenians and Eretrians succeeded in capturing and burning Sardis, but were forced to retreat with heavy losses.
In response to this raid, Darius swore to burn Athens and Eretria to the ground.
Once the Ionian revolt was crushed by the Persian victory at the Battle of Lade, Darius began planning to conquer Greece.
In 490 BC, he sent a naval task force under Datis and Artaphernes across the Aegean, to subjugate the Cyclades, the group of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.
The next step was to attack Athens and Eretria.
After a successful campaign in the Aegean, the Persians defeated, captured and burnt Eretria.
The Persian force then sailed for Attica.
They landed on Schinias beach on the east end of Marathon bay.
The broad field, called the plain of Marathon, was flat, level and ideal for battle.
The Athenians, joined by a small force from Plataea, marched to Marathon, and blocked the two exits from the plain of Marathon.
Stalemate ensued for five days.
Then, for reasons that are not clear, the Athenians decided to attack the Persians.
Despite the numerical advantage of the Persians, the Greek hoplites proved very effective against the more lightly armed Persian infantry.
They routed the Persian wings before turning in on the center of the Persian line.
The defeat at Marathon marked the end of the first Persian invasion of Greece.
The Persian force retreated to Asia.
Darius then began raising a huge new army with which he meant to completely subjugate Greece.
However, in 486 BC, his Egyptian subjects revolted, postponing any Greek expedition.
After Darius died, his son Xerxes I re-started the preparations for a second invasion of Greece, which finally began in 480 BC.
The Battle of Marathon was a watershed in the Greco-Persian wars, showing the Greeks that the Persians could be beaten.
The eventual Greek triumph in these wars began at Marathon.
The next two hundred years saw the rise of the Classical Greek civilization, which has been so influential in western society.
This is why the Battle of Marathon is often seen as a key moment in European history.
John Stuart Mill suggested that "the Battle of Marathon, even as an event in British history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings".
The Battle of Marathon is perhaps now more famous as the inspiration for the Marathon race.
Although historically inaccurate, the legend of a Greek messenger running to Athens with news of the victory became the inspiration for this athletic event, introduced at the 1896 Athens Olympics, and originally run between Marathon and Athens.
When the Athenian line was ready, according to one source, the simple signal to advance was given by Miltiades: "At them".
p191 Most likely, they marched until they reached the limit of the archers ' effectiveness, the "beaten zone", (roughly 200 meters), and then broke into a run towards their enemy.
p66 Herodotus suggests that this was the first time a Greek army ran into battle in this way; this was probably because it was the first time that a Greek army had faced an enemy composed mainly of missile troops (archers, spear-throwers).
All this was evidently much to the surprise of the Persians.
Passing through the hail of arrows, protected for the most part by their armor, the Greek line finally collided with the enemy army.
Holland provides an evocative description: "The enemy directly in their path... realized to their horror that (the Athenians), far from providing the easy pickings for their bowmen, as they had first imagined, were not going to be halted... The impact was devastating.
The Athenians had honed their style of fighting in combat with other phalanxes, wooden shields smashing against wooden shields, iron spear tips clattering against breastplates of bronze... in those first terrible seconds of collision, there was nothing but a pulverizing crash of metal into flesh and bone; then the rolling of the Athenian tide over men wearing, at most, quilted jerkins for protection, and armed, perhaps, with nothing more than bows or slings.
The hoplites ' ash spears, rather than shivering... could instead stab and stab again, and those of the enemy who avoided their fearful jabbing might easily be crushed to death beneath the sheer weight of the advancing men of bronze.
"194 197
The Athenian wings quickly routed the inferior Persian levies (conscripted troops) on the flanks, before turning inwards to surround the Persian center, which had been more successful against the thin Greek center.
The battle ended when the Persian center then broke in panic towards their ships, pursued by the Greeks.
Some, unaware of the local terrain, ran towards the swamps where unknown numbers drowned.
p71 The Athenians pursued the Persians back to their ships, and managed to capture seven ships, though most were able to launch.
Herodotus records that 6,400 Persian bodies were counted on the battlefield.
It is unknown how many more died in the swamps.
The Athenians lost 192 men and the Plataeans 11.
The biosphere includes everything living on Earth, including humans, animals, plants, and insects.
In other words, the biosphere is everything that is alive on the Earth.
It simply mean anywhere organisms are found on Earth.
Currently the biosphere has a biomass (or amount of living things) at around 1900 gigatonnes of carbon.
It is not certain exactly how thick the biosphere is, though scientists predict that it is somewhere around 12,500 meters.
The biosphere extends to the upper areas of the atmosphere, including birds and insects.
A board of directors is a group of people.
They normally oversee the actions of a corporation or other business.
There are laws called bylaws that the board follows.
They organize the business, appoint the CEO, organize budgets and take care of financial matters.
Within a board, directors commonly organize themselves into several committees, such as: audit committee, compensation committee, and human resource committee.
Usually once a year, the board of directors invite shareholders to a meeting to talk about the company.
The Balkan Wars were a series of wars fought in the Balkan Peninsula in 1912 (First Balkan War) and 1913 (Second Balkan War).
The First Balkan War was fought by Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria (the Balkan League) against the Ottoman Empire.
The main objective of the Balkan League was to annex the European territories of the Ottoman Empire, because large numbers of the people of the Balkan League lived under Ottoman rule.
The war was a success and the Ottoman Empire lost almost its entire European territories.
The Second Balkan War was fought by Greece, Serbia, the Ottoman Empire and Romania against Bulgaria.
Because Bulgaria felt that Greece and Serbia got more lands than they deserved, Bulgaria declared war on Greece and Serbia, which repelled the attacks.
The Ottoman Empire and Romania declared war on Bulgaria, because they wanted to gain Bulgarian territories, and by the end of the Second Balkan War Bulgaria had lost almost all its gains from the First Balkan War.
Biomedical engineering is the study of medical equipment used in an environment of care or training and how this equipment interfaces with the human body.
Biomedical engineers design, test, modify, recommend modification of, and evaluate all medical equipment used to interface or interact with the human body.
In addition to these functions, clinical engineers usually supervise the biomedical equipment maintenance function within an environment of care.
The medical devices include man-made hands, arms, and legs to replace lost ones and, also, Dialysis machines which clean the blood of a person with damaged kidneys.
The Balkans is the historic and geographic area, a peninsula in southeastern Europe.
The region has a combined area of 550,000 km and an approximate population of 55 million people.
The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains which run through the center of Bulgaria into eastern Serbia.
The Balkans are connected by water on three sides: the Black Sea to the east and branches of the Mediterranean Sea to the south and west (including the Adriatic, Ionian, Aegean and Marmara seas).
The identity of the Balkans is dominated by its geography; historically the area was known as a crossroads of several cultures.
It has been a meeting point between the Latin and Greek parts of the Roman Empire.
It became an area where Orthodox and Catholic Christianity met, as well as the meeting point between Islam and Christianity.
Many Jewish people fled here from Inquisition.
The region 's principal religions are (Eastern Orthodox and Catholic) Christianity and Islam.
A variety of different traditions of each faith are practiced, with each of the Eastern Orthodox countries having its own national church with its own patriarch.
In quantum mechanics, a branch of physics, the Bohr model is the model of the atom proposed by Neils Bohr.
Bohr 's model is useful only when discussing the behavior of a hydrogen atom.
Bohr 's model is extremely useful in describing the hydrogen emission spectrum.
The Bohr model says that the angular momentum of an electron within a hydrogen atom can only be integer multiples of a certain number.
Where h is Planck 's constant, is pi, and n is the multiples (1,2,3,...).
This formula says that an electron will only be found on the energy levels predicted by the formula, and not anywhere in between.
This means that if an electron jumps from one energy level to the next, it will never be in between energy levels, but will instantaneously be transported from one level to the other.
Bohr 's model is also useful because it explains the cause of light.
Bohr agreed with classical theory that light has a wave-particle duality (meaning that it is made of both electromagnetic waves and particles called photons), but he said that light was given off when an electron in a hydrogen atom jumps from a higher energy level to a lower one.
Basically, if an electron with x amount of energy goes to a lower state of energy and loses y energy, then a photon with energy y is emitted by the atom and either becomes light or some other form of radiation.
The Battle of Gettysburg (locally t sb r, with an ss sound), was fought July 1 3, 1863.
The battle took place in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
It was the battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War.
Gettysburg is often called the war 's turning point.
Union Major General George Gordon Meade 's Army of the Potomac stopped attacks by Confederate General Robert E. Lee 's Army of Northern Virginia.
This ended Lee 's invasion of the North.
Lee 's army won an important battle at Chancellorsville in Virginia in May 1863.
He then led his army through the Shenandoah Valley.
His plan was to start his second invasion of the North (named the Gettysburg Campaign).
Lee hoped to change the area of the summer from northern Virginia.
He hoped to force Northern politicians to give up the war by going as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or even Philadelphia.
President Abraham Lincoln told Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker to have the Union army follow Lee 's army.
Lincoln took Hooker 's job away three days before the Battle of Gettysburg.
Gen. Meade replaced Hooker.
Parts of the two armies first fought at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863.
Lee quickly moved much of his army there.
He hoped to fight the Union army and destroy it.
Union Brig. Gen. John Buford defended low ridges in the northwest of town at first.
Two corps of Union infantry came to defend this area as well.
However, two large Confederate corps attacked them from the northwest and north.
This broke apart the weaker Union lines.
The defenders retreating through the streets of town to the hills just to the south.
On the second day of battle, most of both armies had arrived.
The Union line was put in a defensive formation that looked like a fishhook.
In the late afternoon of July 2, Lee started a heavy attack on the Union left side.
Fights were held at Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, Devil 's Den, and the Peach Orchard.
On the Union right, demonstrations became big attacks on Culp 's Hill and Cemetery Hill.
All across the battlefield, the Union defenders held their lines, but lost a lot of soldiers.
On the third day of battle, July 3, fighting took place on Culp 's Hill.
Cavalry battles occurred to the east and south.
The main part of the battle was an infantry assault by 12,500 Confederates against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge.
This attack is known as Pickett 's Charge.
The charge was stopped by Union rifle and artillery fire.
Many Confederate soldiers died in this attack.
Lee led his army on a tough Retreat back to Virginia)).
Between 46,000 and 51,000 soldiers from both armies were casualties in the three-day battle.
That November, a cemetery for the dead Union soldiers was opened at the Gettysburg National Cemetery.
President Lincoln spoke the Gettysburg Address at the ceremony to open the cemetery and honor the dead soldiers.
Confederate infantry attacked the Union cavalry, commanded by John Buford, around 5:30 am on Herr Ridge.
Buford would run back to McPherson Ridge and Seminary Ridge as the Confederate forces marched in more men.
Buford would get more men later in the day and would be allowed to leave with his division.
Buford slowed down the Confederate attack long enough for Union forces to set up a defense on Cemetery Ridge.
That night, Confederate General Richard Ewell was given orders to take Culp s Hill if possible.
Ewell was too careful and decided not to take the hill.
The Union took the hill and set up defense.
This was the first major mistake of the battle for South.
The Army of the Potomac would end the day with around 21,900 men on Culp s Hill and Cemetery Ridge.
The Army of Northern Virginia would have around 27,000 men from Benner s Hill to Seminary Ridge.
Both armies got more men over the night to begin the second day of action.
General James Longstreet, commander of the I Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, set his troops on the right of the Confederate line.
Around 4 pm, his forces attacked the Union left.
Earlier in the day, Major General Daniel Sickles, commander of the III Corps of the Army of the Potomac, moved his Corps forward to the Peach Orchard without orders to do so.
When attacked in this position, they were killed.
Sickles fell back to the Wheatfield.
Meade quickly rushed 20,000 men to his left to aid Sickles and fight off Longstreet.
Meade s men would take up position in Devil s Den.
They would fall back and run the Union left on Cemetery Hill to Little Round Top.
The Confederate forces drove back the Union left, but were unable to break it.
They would have to fall back.
They formed the Confederate right and ran the line from Seminary Ridge to Devil s Den.
At 7 pm, Ewell attacked Union forces commanded by General Henry Slocum on Culp s Hill on the Union right.
Ewell was forced to fall back because Union forces were too strong.
The night of July 2, Longstreet s largest division commanded by General George Pickett arrived and was placed in the center of the Confederate line.
Lee s plan was to attack on both the Union right and left as the day before.
Around 4 am, fighting broke out on the Union right as Slocum attacked Ewell s forces that had taken some ground on Culp s Hill the day before.
This fighting ended around 11 am with no winner.
This changed Lee s plans.
Now he was going to attack the union center with cannons and move across three quarters of a mile across open ground.
He would use three divisions; General George Pickett, General Isaac Trimble, and General James Pettigrew.
The three divisions amounted to around 13,000 men.
At 1 pm, around 170 Confederate cannons opened fire.
After two hours, the attack began.
Confederate forces broke the Union center, commanded By General Winfield Hancock, for a just a moment at The Angle.
This was the closest the Confederacy ever got to winning the war.
This point of the battle is called the High Water Mark for this reason.
Hancock would get more men and drive back the attack.
Pickett s division was killed.
At the end of the battle, Lee ordered Pickett to gather his division and get ready to fight against a Union attack.
Pickett said, General Lee, I have no division.
Lee knew he was defeated and took his men back to Virginia on July 4.
Both the Confederate and Union forces had more than 23,000 casualties apiece.
The battle took more American lives than any other battle in United States history.
Gettysburg is still the largest battle to ever be fought on American soil.
The Union victory over the Confederacy ended Lee s invasion of the north.
Lee would never try to invade the Union again.
The Army of Northern Virginia would never get their strength back.
Lee never had more than 51,000 men the rest of the war.
Numbers from the Union forces wore down Lee and his army.
This is why Gettysburg is said to be the turning point of the American Civil War.
The word Budweiser has several uses.
The Bermuda Triangle, sometimes called the Devil 's Triangle, is an area in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean.
Aircraft.
Some people think this is because of paranormal or extraterrestrial beings.
Many of the incidents were false.
Some people believe that insurance companies charge higher premiums for shipping in this area, but that is not true.
A borough is an administrative division in many countries.
It is a kind of local government.
The term borough can means a self-governing township.
In medieval times, boroughs were settlements with some self-government.
Boroughs were particularly common in England, Germany and Scotland.
In medieval England, boroughs had also the right to elect members of parliament.
(The Borough in Southwark, London is thought to have been the original ` borough ' of which all others come from.)
Usually a borough is a single town with its own local government.
But in some cities it is a sub-division of the city (e.g. London, New York City, Toronto, Montreal).
In such cases the borough will normally have either limited powers delegated to it by the city 's local government or no powers at all.
At certain times London has had no overall city government and London boroughs were the main unit of local government for Londoners.
In other places, such as Alaska, a borough does not mean a single township, but a whole region.
In Australia borough can mean a town and its surrounding area, e.g. the Borough of Queenscliffe.
Boroughs exist in United Kingdom, more specifically in England and Northern Ireland, in the Canadian province of Quebec, in some states of the United States, in Israel, and formerly they also existed in New Zealand.
At the end of a word, - borough (or - brough) is found in the name of many towns and cities in England; in southern England it is usually spelt - bury.
The suffix - bury is also used in the New England region of the United States, while - burg (or - burgh) is more common in Scotland and the American South and West.
Bodmin is a town on the A30 road, in Cornwall, United Kingdom.
It is situated in the center of the county southwest of Bodmin Moor.
The neighbouring parishes are Cardinham, Lanhydrock, Lanivet and Helland.
In 2001 there were 12,881 people living in Bodmin.
In the Middle Ages Bodmin was one of the most important towns in Cornwall and the site of a monastery founded by Saint Petroc.
The parish church of Bodmin was built in the 15th century and is the second largest church in the county after Truro Cathedral.
Bodmin Moor is a granite moorland in northeastern Cornwall, United Kingdom.
It is 208 k in size, and originally dates from the Carboniferous period of geological history.
Bodmin Moor is one of five granite plutons (underground masses of igneous rock) in Cornwall.
The name ` Bodmin Moor ' is fairly recent, invented in 1813.
It was formerly known as Fowey Moor after the River Fowey which rises within it.
Since the mid 18th century Bodmin Moor has been crossed by the trunk road now known as the A30.
Dramatic granite tors rise from the rolling moorland: the best known are Brown Willy, the highest point in Cornwall at 417 m, and Rough Tor at 400 m. Considerable areas of the moor are poorly drained and form marshes (in hot summers these can dry out).
The rest of the moor is mostly rough pasture or overgrown with heather and other low vegetation.
The Moor contains about 500 farm holdings with around 10,000 beef cows, 55,000 breeding ewes and 1,000 horses and ponies.
Most of the moor is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and has been officially designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), as part of Cornwall AONB.
Bodmin Moor is the source of several of Cornwall 's rivers: they are mentioned here anti-clockwise from the south.
Inland waters on the moor include Dozmary Pool (Cornwall 's only natural inland lake) and three reservoirs, Colliford Lake, Siblyback Lake and Crowdy reservoir which supply water for a large part of the county 's population.
Berkeley is a city in the U.S. State of California.
It is a suburb of San Francisco.
It is famous for the college, University of California, Berkeley, where many political protests were held in the 1960s.
It is also famous for its gourmet food and art scenes.
Also, it is the native city of the punk band Green Day.
BOINC or the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing was created at the University of California in Berkeley.
Bengal is a divided region in South Asia that is split between two countries - Bangladesh and India.
Both parts used to be united, although historically part of India; today West Bengal is part of India and East Bengal is Bangladesh.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 August 18, 1990) was a leading American psychologist and author.
Skinner was the leading behaviorist in psychology; he built on the work of John B. Watson, and added the idea of operant conditioning.
These two American psychologists paid no attention to mental states and ` thinking ' (terms they thought were unscientific), but dealt only with visible behaviors.
Skinner 's work had effects on education (programmed learning) and on behavior therapy for various psychological problems.
He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974, and then Emeritus Professor until 1990.
Skinner was also an social philosopher who wanted to change society, and wrote a eutopian novel, in which the science of human behavior is used to eliminate poverty, sexual oppression, government as we know it, and create a lifestyle without war.
He wrote poetry, and three volumes of autobiography.
Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania to Grace and William Skinner.
His father was a lawyer.
Skinner became an atheist after a liberal Christian teacher tried to assuage his fear of the Hell that his grandmother described.
"Within a year I had gone to Miss Graves to tell her that I no longer believed in God. '
I know, ' she said, ' I have been through that myself. '
But her strategy misfired: I never went through it".
Skinner attended Harvard University after receiving his B.A. in English literature in 1926.
After graduation, he spent a year at his parents ' home in Scranton attempting to become a writer of fiction.
He tried to become a writer in Greenwich Village.
He soon became disillusioned with his literary skills and concluded that he had little world experience and no strong personal perspective from which to write.
His encounter with John B. Watson 's Behaviorism led him into graduate study in psychology and to the development of his own operant behaviorism.
Skinner received a PhD from Harvard in 1931, and remained there as a researcher until 1936.
He then taught at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and later at Indiana University, where he was chair of the psychology department from 1946 1947.
He returned to Harvard in 1948, and stayed there for the rest of his career.
In 1936, Skinner married Yvonne Blue.
The couple had two daughters, Julie (m. Vargas) and Deborah (m. Buzan).
He died of leukemia on August 18, 1990, and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Bill is a male name.
Bill Macy (born Wolf Mavin Garber; May 18, 1922) is an American actor and comedian.
He was in many comedy shows during the 1980s.
He is best known for his role as Walter in Maude.
Macy was born on May 18, 1922 in Revere, Massachusetts.
He has been married to Samantha Harper since 1975.
Robert Montgomery "Bob" Knight (born October 25 1940) is a retired American basketball sports coach.
He won over 900 NCAA Division I men 's college basketball games.
Knight is well known as the head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers from 1971-2000.
He also coached for the Texas Tech from 2001-2008.
Knight was born in Massillon, Ohio.
He studied at Ohio State University.
He has been praised for having a clean program.
None of his teams was ever sanctioned by the NCAA for any recruitment violations.
He has, however, attracted some controversy for throwing a chair across the courts during a game.
He was once arrested for assault.
He was fired from Indiana in mid September of 2000.
In April 2015, it was announced that ESPN would not sign Knight 's contract for another season.
Black metal is an extreme style of Heavy metal that started in the early 1980s.
Lyrics are often for religions such as Satanism.
Various black metal bands have relations to satanism in their lyrics and even in outlook.
Lyrics may also have subjects such as Paganism.
The majority of black metal vocalists are male, although there are a few notable exceptions for example Cadaveria, Astarte and Lucifugum.
Black metal is often divided into two waves.
The first wave began in the early 1980s by bands such as Venom, Bathory, Hellhammer, Celtic Frost and Mercyful Fate.
Venom 's first albums, Welcome to Hell and Black Metal are usually said to be the first black metal records.
Second wave is the most popular wave of black metal and it started in the early 1990s.
It started from Norway and includes bands such as Darkthrone, Enslaved, Burzum, Satyricon, Mayhem, Gorgoroth, Immortal, and Emperor.
Black metal is also very controversial, especially in Norway.
During the early 1990s, certain black metal musicians burned old churches in Norway.
One of the people who was found guilty for burning churches, Varg Vikernes, was also found guilty for murdering ystein Aarseth, a fellow black metal musician.
Blizzard Entertainment is an American video game maker and publisher.
The company headquarters is in Irvine, California.
The company makes the Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft games, including the Warcraft spinoffs Heathstone and Heroes of the Storm.
Their next and most waited game is World of Warcraft: Legion, the next expansion pack of World of Warcraft.
A bachelor is a man who has not been married and is not cohabiting.
He lives on his own or with a flatmate\/housemate.
A woman in this situation is sometimes known as a bachelorette.
A bachelor can not have been married, as a man who married but then divorced is called a divorc.
A man whose wife is dead is a widower.
Sometimes, when a bachelor is going to be married, a bachelor party is organized to celebrate the last day that the person will be a bachelor for.
Background radiation is the natural radiation we get by living on Earth.
There are many naturally occurring radioactive isotopes which decay over time.
They release radioactive particles or radiation into the surroundings.
We call this "background radiation".
The biggest source of natural background radiation is radon in the air.
This radioactive gas comes from the ground.
Radon and its isotopes, parent radionuclides, and decay products make up most of the radiation we get.
Radioactive material is found throughout nature.
It occurs naturally in soil, rocks, water, air, and vegetation, from which it is taken into the body.
Humans also get radiation from radioactive materials outside the body and from cosmic radiation from space.
The worldwide average natural dose to humans is about 2.4 millisievert (mSv) per year.
This is four times the worldwide average artificial radiation exposure, which in 2008 amounted to about 0.6 mSv per year.
In addition there are X-rays and other forms of medical imaging.
In Europe, average natural background exposure by country ranges from under 2 mSv annually in the United Kingdom to more than 7 mSv annually for some groups of people in Finland.
Banquo is a character in William Shakespeare 's 1606 play Macbeth.
He was a friend of the play 's villain Macbeth.
Banquo was the thane of Lochaber.
He was killed by murderers hired by Macbeth so that he does n't get in the way of Macbeth 's reign as king.
His son, Fleance was with him during the attack and lives.
The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces.
It came into being with unification of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.
The new British Army included Regiments that had already existed in England and Scotland.
It was administered by the War Office from London.
Since 1963 it has been managed by the Ministry of Defense.
From roughly 1763 the United Kingdom has been one of the leading military and economic powers of the world.
The British Empire expanded in this time to include colonies, protectorates, and Dominions throughout the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australasia.
Although the Royal Navy is widely regarded as having been vital for the rise of Empire, and British dominance of the world, the British Army played important roles in colonisation.
The British army was heavily involved in the Napoleonic Wars in which the army served in Spain, across Europe, and in North Africa.
The war between the British and French Empires stretched around the world.
The British Army finally came to defeat Napoleon at one of Britain 's greatest military victories at the battle of Waterloo.
Under Oliver Cromwell, the English Army had been active in the conquest, and the settlement, of Ireland since the 1650s.
The Cromwellian campaign was characterised by its uncompromising treatment of the Irish towns that had supported the Royalists during the English Civil War.
Bayesian probability figures out the likelihood that something will happen based on available evidence.
This is different from frequency probability which determines the likelihood something will happen based on how often it occurred in the past.
Robert Quinlan "Bob" Costas (born March 22, 1952 in Queens, New York City, New York) is a Sports commentator.
He currently works with NBC Sports and MLB Network.
Costas has hosted nine Olympic Games.
He has won 26 Emmy Awards.
He used to work with HBO hosting Inside the NFL, Costas Now, and On the Record with Bob Costas.
He called games for the American Basketball Association 's Spirits of St. Louis, Missouri Tigers men 's basketball, Chicago Bulls telecast on WGN-TV, and NFL and National Basketball Association games for CBS.
He has hosted and did play-by-play for these sports Sports on NBC:
Costas is a play-by-play announcer for MLB Network.
Bamberg is a town in the region of Upper Franconia, Bavaria, and the seat of the district administration Bamberg.
The town has about 70,000 inhabitants.
Bamberg is an university city and administrative city.
Its Lord Mayor is Andreas Starke (SPD).
Beside being a modern regional center, the city also has a cultural and historical side.
Bamberg is a famous town because it has many buildings which are very old.
The basic structure of the town remained untouched through the centuries.
Unlike most other German towns (such as N rnberg), it was little damaged in World War II.
Only 4.6 % was totally ruined.
The town center is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Bamberg is like Rome because it is built on seven hills, each one with a church at the top.
The cathedral (Dom) is on the main hill.
For hundreds of years the prince-bishops of the cathedral ruled over the land.
This continued until the beginning of the 19th century after which they just continued in their religious function as archbishops.
The town center below is built by the banks of the river Regnitz which splits into two parts.
The left arm of the river is where the old town center lies.
The right arm is the Main-Danube canal (Main-Donau-Kanal) which allows big ships to travel from the river Main to the Danube.
Many tourists visit the beautiful city of Bamberg.
A good place to start is by the statue of Neptune in the pedestrian precinct.
The Bambergers call this statue Gabelmann because Neptune is holding his three-pronged fork (Gabel).
The area here is called the Gr ner Markt (Green Market).
This place became center of the bourgeois settlement which developed around it.
Very close by is a big square called Maximiliansplatz.
It is very lively here on market days.
People eat the traditional sausages which are cooked at the sausage stall, and drink Bamberg beer.
There used to be a church at the north-west end, but it was destroyed in 1806 at the time when the archbishops lost their political power.
The patronage of St. Martin was taken over by the former Jesuit church which was built by the architect Georg Dientzenhofer until 1693, situated at the Green Market.
The names of nearby streets tell a lot about the town history.
There is the Fischstrasse (Fish Street) where fishermen used to live.
This leads down to the left arm of the river Regnitz where one can see the place where the boats used to stop to load and unload their goods.
There is an old slaughterhouse.
The Old Canal (Alter Kanal) runs along the east side of town, making a large island on which there are some very old buildings.
The oldest buildings, dating from the 16th century, were built by tanners who became quite rich through their trade of making leather.
Bamberg s Old Town Hall was built in the middle of the river Regnitz.
It is not on the island, but it is was built by the people who drove huge beams of wood into the riverbed.
Their town hall therefore stood between the south-west bank where the bishops ruled and the north-east bank where the ordinary tradespeople lived.
The Old Town Hall is the most-often photographed building of Bamberg.
There are two bridges here for pedestrians: the Upper and Lower Bridge.
The ancient Lower Bridge passes through the archway of the town hall.
On one side there are beautiful Baroque paintings.
On the other side one can still see the medieval black-and-white walls.
This side was also plastered over with paintings in the Baroque times, but when a bridge nearby was blown up in World War II the plaster fell off, so it is now kept with the original medieval walls showing.
Up a steep climb on a cobbled street is the Cathedral Square (Domplatz).
All the buildings around the square are made from the local sandstone, although they date from different periods.
Bamberg Cathedral (called Kaiserdom i.e. Emperor Cathedral) shows Romanesque and Gothic architecture.
Everyone should have seen the world-famed Rider or Bamberg horseman inside and many other medieval sandstone figures as well.
The Ratsstube is built in the Renaissance style.
The Alte Hofhaltung is medieval.
It is a 15th century courtyard with a long row of two-storey buildings with a wooden gallery.
Across the street from there is the New Residence (Neue Residenz) which is a Baroque palace.
A walk through here leads into the famous Rose Garden (Rosengarten).
From here one can see Abbey Church of St Michael at the very top of the hill.
Just below, going back towards the river, is the Sandstrasse famous for its pubs and night life.
Bamberg is home to the world-famous Bamberger Symphoniker who perform in a new concert hall a short distance from the town center.
There are also many other music groups, including the Musica Canterey Bamberg who perform old music in some of the historical buildings.
The 19th century German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann lived in Bamberg.
There is a new theater in the town center which is named after him.
There is also an important library, the Bamberg State Library.
Bamberg has a railway station from where one can travel to other large towns such as W rzburg, Munich, Nuremberg, Leipzig, Berlin and Hamburg as well as to other towns in eastern Upper Franconia such as Forchheim, Lichtenfels, Coburg, and Kronach.
Bamberg is served by Bamberg-Breitenau Airfield.
At "Flugplatz Bamberg-Breitenau" are operating mostly public aircraft, although it is classificated as a military airport (IATA-Code: ZCD, ICAO-Code: ETEJ).
It is also possible to charter public flights to and from this airport.
Most international tourists who travel by plane arrive at Frankfurt International Airport or Munich Airport.
The nearest bigger airport is Nuremberg Airport which can be reached within half an hour by car or one hour by train.
Bamberg has a problem with road traffic because, although there is a bypass, it can not go all the way round the town because of the hills.
Traffic is not allowed in many streets in the town center.
There is no parking allowed in the beautiful Domplatz except on Sundays.
Because Bamberg is on a river, transport by boat has always been important.
The Rhine-Main-Danube Canal begins near Bamberg.
It was completed in 1992 and makes it possible for boats to travel from the North Sea to the Black Sea.
In the town itself many people travel by bus.
There is also a Park-and-Ride system.
There is a University in Bamberg.
About 9000 students study there.
The university is spread over lots of buildings in the town center.
It is a good way to make use of many of the large, historical buildings.
There are good schools in Bamberg including 8 Gymnasien.
Pupils often choose which one to go to according to the subjects they are good at, because each school is strong in a particular area: science, music, language etc.
Bamberg is famous for its beer.
There are ten breweries in the town, of which the most famous is Schlenkerla which makes smoked beer (Rauchbier).
The House of Bonaparte is an imperial and royal European dynasty founded by Napoleon I of France in 1804, a Corsican military leader who rose to power and transformed the French Republic into the French Empire.
The dynasty ruled from 1804 to 1815 and again from 1852 to 1870.
Current head Jean-Christophe Napol on is ironically from a Bourbon mother.
Napoleon Bonaparte is the most significant person associated with the Bonaparte family because he created the First French Empire that conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century.
He was elected as first consul of France on November 10, 1799 with the help of his brother, Lucien Bonaparte, speaker of the Council of Five Hundred.
He later crowned himself Emperor of the French in December 2, 1804 and King of Italy in May 26 1805.
He then made his elder brother Joseph (1768 1844) king of Naples (1806 1808) and then of Spain (1808 1813), his third brother Louis, king of Holland (1806 1810), and his youngest brother Jerome Bonaparte, king of Westphalia (1807-1813).
Napoleon 's son Napoleon Fran ois Charles Joseph (1811 1832) was created king of Rome (1811 1814) and was later styled Napoleon II by loyalists of the dynasty, though he only ruled for two weeks after his father 's abdication.
Charles Louis Napol on (1808 1873), son of Louis Napol on, was president of France in 1848 and emperor in 1852 until 1870, reigning as Napol on III.
A political movement for Corsican independence surfaced in the 1990s which included a Bonapartist restoration in its program.
Beryl is a silicate mineral, and is the main ore of beryllium metal.
It is sometimes found as very, very large crystals, as much as 18 m. (59 ft.) long.
Colored clear beryl is often used for jewelry, including emerald (green), aquamarine (bluegreen), bixbite (red), morganite (pink), and heliodor (golden).
Basel (French: B le) is a city in the north of Switzerland.
It is sometimes called Basle in English.
Basel is the capital of the Swiss canton of Basel Stadt.
It is surrounded by the Basel-Land canton.
The city has a population of about 170,000 people.
Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in Great Britain at high.
It is in Scotland, near Fort William and it is part of the Three Peaks Challenge and attracts an estimated 100,000 climbers per year,
The name comes from the Gaelic, Beinn Nibheis, meaning poisonous or terrible.
The summit of Ben Nevis is a large stony plateau of about 40 h. The highest point is marked with a large stone mound which sits an Ordnance Survey trig point.
The ruined walls of an observatory are also on the summit.
An emergency shelter has been built on top of the observatory tower for people caught out by bad weather, and, although the base of the tower is slightly lower than the true summit of the mountain, the roof of the shelter is higher than the trig point by several feet, making it the highest man-made structure in the UK.
A war memorial to the dead of World War II is located next to the observatory.
On 17 May 2006, a piano that had been buried under one of the cairns on the peak was uncovered by the John Muir Trust, which owns much of the mountain.
The piano is believed to have been carried up for charity by removal men from Dundee over 20 years earlier.
The view from the UK 's highest point can reach to over 190 k, and mountains such as the Torridon Hills, Morven in Caithness, Lochnagar, Ben Lomond, Barra Head and Knocklayd in County Antrim, Northern Ireland can be seen.
Bacardi is a spirits company that was founded February 4, 1862 in Cuba.
It is named after the founder Facundo Bacard, a wine merchant.
Facundo use to filter the rum through charcoal, which removed impurities.
In addition to this, He aged the rum in oak barrels, which had the effect of "mellowing" the drink.
The Black and Tans was a group of soldiers who suppressed the revolution in Ireland from 1920 to 1921.
It was mainly made of British veterans from World War I. Its main purpose was to target the Irish Republican Army.
However, it also did many attacks on the Irish civilian population.
A Bunsen burner is a common piece of laboratory equipment.
It is commonly used for heating chemical substances, sterilization, and combustion.
It works by burning flammable gas.
It is named after Robert Wilhelm Bunsen.
Bunsen was a German chemist.
Bunsen did not invent the burner, he made it better.
Originally, Michael Faraday developed the Bunsen burner.
A Bunsen burner has different types of flames, with each having a different color.
Bunsen burners can be very hot.
The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine mammal of the suborder of baleen whales (called Mysticeti).
They grow to be about 30 meters long.
The biggest blue whale found was 190 tons and measured 98 feet long.
Larger specimens have been measured at 110 feet, but never weighed.
This makes blue whales the largest animals ever to be on Earth, even bigger than the largest dinosaurs.
The blue whale eats mostly very tiny creatures, like krill.
These inch-long, shrimp-like crustacean swim in swarms.
In the Antarctic summer, there are so many of these krill that they turn the waters orange.
A blue whale can eat eight to ten tons of krill every day.
The blue whale 's body is long and slender.
It can be various shades of bluish-grey above and somewhat lighter underneath.
There are at least three distinct subspecies: B. m. musculus of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, B. m. intermedia of the Southern Ocean and B. m. brevicauda (also known as the pygmy blue whale) found in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean.
B. m. indica, found in the Indian Ocean, may be another subspecies.
As with other baleen whales, its diet consists almost exclusively of small krill.
Blue whales were once abundant around the world.
In the nineteenth century, they were hunted almost to extinction by whalers.
They were finally protected by the international community in 1966.
A 2002 report estimated there were 5,000 to 12,000 blue whales worldwide, located in at least five groups.
More recent research into the Pygmy subspecies suggests this may be an underestimate.
Before whaling, the largest population was in the Antarctic, numbering approximately 239,000 (range 202,000 to 311,000).
There remain only much smaller (around 2,000) concentrations in each of the eastern North Pacific, Antarctic, and Indian Ocean groups.
There are two more groups in the North Atlantic, and at least two in the Southern Hemisphere.
Basic English (Business Academic Scientific International Commercial) is a constructed (made-up) language to explain complex thoughts.
It has 850 basic English words chosen by Charles Kay Ogden.
Some articles in the Simple English Wikipedia use only Basic English.
In 1936 Ogden commissioned Otto and Marie Neurath to produce International Picture Language as part of a series of eight books in Basic English.
The word use of Basic English is simpler and more regular than the word use of the normal English.
In normal English, words often have a number of different meanings.
To make Basic English easier, not all the meanings of a word are allowed.
Ogden 's rules of grammar for Basic English help people use the 850 words to talk about things and events simply.
A brass instrument is a musical instrument that you play by blowing through a mouthpiece to change the pitch, or note.
With brass instruments, the sound starts at the lips.
Their mouthpieces just help your lips buzz.
It does not matter if the instrument is really made of brass, as long as it works that way.
It is not important what the instrument is made of.
Some brass instruments are really made of wood, but are still called brass instruments, like the serpent.
Other instruments are made of brass but do not work like this, like the saxophone.
They are not called brass instruments although they are made of brass.
There are also parts of the instrument that change the resonance and thus the pitch, like slides or valves.
A brass band is a group of brass instruments and drums that play music together.
They are often used to play for parades and processions because the players can march and play at the same time.
Brass bands were very popular in England.
Many factories and coal mines had their own bands.
The workers would play in the bands after work.
One famous band is the Grimethorpe Colliery Band.
Bagpuss is a popular children 's television series shown on BBC television.
It was shown in 1974.
Although only 13 episodes were made, it was so popular that it was repeated regularly until 1987.
The series was made by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate through their company Smallfilms.
The character Bagpuss was a toy cat.
Bagpuss was described in each program as "an old, saggy cloth cat, baggy, and a bit loose at the seams".
Each program began in the same way.
It started by looking through old sepia photographs.
There was a shop called Bagpuss & Co.
The cat sat in the shop window.
The owner of the shop was a little girl named Emily.
The shop did not sell anything.
Instead, Emily would find things that were broken and lost.
She fixed them and put them in the shop window.
Emily hoping that the owners of the things would come and get them.
She would leave the fixed thing in front of her favorite toy: the stuffed cat Bagpuss.
Each program began with these words:
"Bagpuss, oh, Bagpuss Oh, fat, furry cat puss, Wake up and look at the thing that we bring Wake up, be bright, be golden and light."
When Emily had left, Bagpuss would wake up.
The program changed from sepia to color film, and the toys in the shop would come to life.
There was Gabriel the toad, a rag doll called Madeleine, and a wooden woodpecker which was a bookend (something to stop a row of books falling over) called Professor Yaffle.
Professor Yaffle spoke like a clever professor.
He had a German accent and wore a pince-nez.
He would look at the object and tell the audience what it was used for.
There were also some mice.
They lived in the mouse organ (a pun on the word mouthorgan).
The mouse organ played music and the mice squeaked in high voices.
All the voices except those of Madeleine and Gabriel were done by Oliver Postgate who also wrote the stories.
At the end of the program, Professor Yaffle would yawn again and fall asleep.
The color changed back to sepia and the toys became toys again as these words were spoken:
"And when Bagpuss was asleep All his friends were asleep.
The mice were ornaments on the mouse organ, Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls.
Professor Yaffle was just an old wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker.
Even Bagpuss himself, once he was asleep, was just an old, saggy cloth cat, and a bit loose at the seams, but Emily loved him."
The Blue Angels are a group of special pilots who work for the US Navy.
They fly F\/A -18 fighter jet airplanes that are painted to look different from regular Navy planes.
They are very famous.
Almost every American has heard of them.
The pilots of the Blue Angels are very good at what they do.
They are able to fly very close to each other and do very difficult tricks.
They are most famous for the flyovers they do at many American sporting events.
The Rockwell B-1 Lancer is a strategic bomber in the service of the US Air Force.
It is a four-turbojet aircraft that uses a variable-sweep wing.
It can carry nuclear weapons or classic bombs.
It is only used by the USA.
The Book of Common Prayer is an old Anglican prayer book.
The book was first published in 1549 during the reign of Edward VI of England.
It was the first prayer book to contain the forms of service for daily and Sunday worship in English and to do so within a single volume.
The Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA) was a British company that started making guns and bicycles in the 19th century.
From 1910 the company started making motorcycles.
At one time, It was the most popular maker of motorcycles in the world.
Over half a million of the company 's most popular model, the Bantam, were sold.
The company went out of business in the 1970s.
It has started again as a gun making company.
Bill Bixby (born January 22, 1934 in San Francisco, California - November 21, 1993), was an American actor, director, and producer.
He is known for the role of David Banner in the TV series The Incredible Hulk.
Bill Bixby made the most of his career in television.
His credits on the big screen include: Irma la Douce (1963), with Jack Lemmon, and directed by Billy Wilder; Ride Beyond Vengeance (1966), western starring Chuck Connors; and two movies starring Elvis Presley, Clambake (1967) and Speedway (1968).
His first television series was My Favorite Martian, playing the role of Tim O'Hara, and co-starring Ray Walston.
The show aired on CBS from 1963 to 1966.
Bixby continued to have success on television as the star of the ABC sitcom The Courtship of Eddie 's Father (1969 1972), where he played a widower who cares for his young son played by Brandon Cruz.
He also played in The Magician (1973 1974), as a famous magician Anthony Blake, who is also a detective.
The biggest hit of his career would come in the late 1970s, playing the role of David Banner in CBS TV series The Incredible Hulk with Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk.
The show is based on the character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
After the success of the series, there were three movies filmed for television: The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988), directed by Nicholas Corea; The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989); and The Death of the Incredible Hulk, directed by Bixby.
Bill Bixby was nominated for three Emmy Awards for his work in The Courtship of Eddie 's Father (1969), The Streets of San Francisco (1972), and Rich Man, Poor Man (1976).
Boer (IPA: \/ bur \/) is the Dutch word for farmer which is used to call the descendants of the Dutch farmers of Southern Africa during the 1700s, as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 1800s to live in the Orange Free State, Transvaal.
They did this to escape the British rule, and the wars between the British imperial government and the native tribes on the eastern frontier.
In 1657, vrybriewe was granted to 9 burgers, the first farmers or Boers (Boere) at the Cape.
Although they were not known as Afrikaners, they did not regard themselves as living in a European country.
As more and more immigrants from Europe arrived at the Cape the more international marriages took place.
Soon their language and culture was lost and transformed into the Dietse nation.
They regarded themselves as a new nation.
Paul Heyns, born in 1696 christened his son Michiel Afrikanus (the Afrikaner).
One Hendrik Bieslow in 1707 proclaimed in public Ik ben een Afrikaander.
The Boer later created the Boer Republics, which were deafeated in the 1880-1881 and 1899 1902 Anglo-Boer wars (Anglo-Boere-oorlog).
After that, many Boers emigrated to other countries, but many still live in modern South Africa, Swaziland and Rhodesia.
The Bronze Star Medal is the fourth-highest individual military award.
It is the ninth-highest award by order of precedence in the US Military.
It may be awarded for acts of heroism, acts of merit, or meritorious service in a combat zone.
When it is awarded for acts of heroism, the medal is awarded with the "V" device attached.
The medal is sometimes called the Bronze Star.
Foreign soldiers, as well as officers from the other federal uniformed services are also eligible to receive the decoration.
They must be serving with a service branch of the United States Armed Forces.
The Bronze Star Medal was an idea by Colonel Russell P. "Red" Reeder in 1943.
He believed it would aid morale if there was a medal which could be awarded by captains of companies or batteries to deserving people serving under them.
Reeder felt another medal was needed for ground forces that was equivalent to the Air Medal.
He proposed that the new award be called the "Ground Medal".
The idea eventually gained support.
General George C. Marshall wrote a memorandum (note) to President Franklin D. Roosevelt dated 3 February 1944.
He wrote:
The Air Medal had been adopted two years earlier to raise airmen 's morale.
President Roosevelt authorized the Bronze Star Medal by Executive Order 9419 dated 4 February 1944.
The order was made retroactive to 7 December 1941.
The Executive Order was amended by President John F. Kennedy.
The Executive Order 11046 dated 24 August 1962 expanded the authorization to include those serving with friendly forces.
This allowed for awards where US service members might be involved in an armed conflict where the United States was not a belligerent.
At the time of the Executive Order the US was not a belligerent in Vietnam.
So any US advisers serving with the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces would not have been eligible for the award.
A study was conducted in 1947.
The outcome was the policy was changed to make the retroactive award of the Bronze Star Medal (without the "V" device) to all soldiers who had received the Combat Infantryman Badge.
It also included those who received the Combat Medical Badge during World War II.
The reason for doing this was that the badges were awarded to soldiers who experienced the hardships described in General Marshall 's memorandum.
Both badges required a recommendation by the commander and a citation in orders.
The Bronze Star is worn on the uniform after the Soldier 's Medal or the Airman 's Medal.
It is to be worn before the Purple Heart.
When a second (or more) award is given for the Silver Star, an oak leaf cluster is added to the ribbon.
The "V" device (for valor) is worn on the center of the ribbon.
Any oak leaf clusters are worn to the right or left of the "V".
The Battle of Okinawa was a great battle of World War II.
It took place on Okinawa Island in the Ryukyu Islands (south of the four big islands of Japan).
The battle was between the military forces of the Empire of Japan and the Allies.
It was the second biggest amphibious battle (from sea to land) of World War II, after the Battle of Normandy.
It was also one of the longest battles in history, from April to June 1945.
The Allies won the battle and occupied Okinawa.
Today, Okinawa is Japanese territory, but there are still American military bases there.
Nobody thought it was to be the last great battle of the war, but it was.
The Americans were planning Operation Downfall, the invasion of the four great islands of Japan.
This never happened, because the Japanese surrendered after the American use of the atomic bomb in August 1945 (first in Hiroshima, and a second time in Nagasaki) and the Soviet Union declaring war on Japan.
The battle has been called "Typhoon of Steel" in English, and "tetsu no ame," "tetsu no b f" by the people of Okinawa, which mean "rain of steel" and "violent wind of steel", because of the very heavy firing of guns and bombs at this battle.
At some battles, such as Battle of Iwo Jima, there had been no civilians, but Okinawa had a large civilian population.
The civilians dead or injured in the battle were at least 150,000.
American deaths were 18,900 killed or missing and 53,000 injured, more than double of the soldiers killed at Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal put together.
Several thousand soldiers who died from wounds and other causes, after the battle had finished, are not included.
About a third of the civilian population of the island were killed.
There were about 100,000 Japanese soldiers killed and 7,000 captured.
Some of the soldiers committed seppuku or simply blew themselves up with grenades.
Some of the civilians, convinced by Japanese propaganda that the Americans were barbarians who did terrible things to prisoners, killed their families and themselves to avoid capture.
In 1945, Winston Churchill called the battle "among the most intense and famous in military history." '
Overall Allied command authority for battle was Fifth Fleet (under Admiral Raymond A. Spruance).
Fifth Fleet was divided into several task forces and groups.
TF 56 was the largest force within TF 50 and was built around the 10th Army.
The army had two corps under its command.
In all, the Army had over 102,000 Army (of these 38,000 + were artillery, combat support and HQ troops, with another 9,000 service troops), over 88,000 Marines and 18,000 Navy personnel (mostly Seabees and medical personnel).
At the start of the Battle of Okinawa the 10th Army had 182,821 men under its command.
The U.S. Navy had greater casualties in this operation than in any other battle of the war.
The Japanese land campaign (mainly defensive) was had 67,000 men (77,000 according to some sources).
As well, there were 9,000 Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) troops at Oroku naval base.
There were also 39,000 local Ryukyuan people who were forced to fight.
The United States Navy 's Task Force 58 was east of Okinawa.
It had 6 to 8 destroyers and 13 carriers.
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz gave his naval commanders time to rest.
Japanese air attacks had been light during the first few days after the landings.
However, on 6 April, there was an attack by 400 planes from Kyushu.
From 26 March-30 April, 20 American ships were sunk and 157 damaged.
The Japanese had lost up to 30 April more than 1,100 planes in the battle.
Between 6 April and 22 June, the Japanese flew 1,465 kamikaze aircraft attacks.
Several fleet carriers were severely damaged.
Operation Ten-Go (Ten-g sakusen) was the attack by ten Japanese ships.
In all, the Imperial Japanese Navy lost 3,700 sailors, including Admiral It.
The US lost just 10 U.S. aircraft and 12 airmen.
The British Pacific Fleet was ordered to attack Japanese airfields in the Sakishima Islands.
The land battle took place over about 81 days beginning on 1 April 1945.
The first Americans ashore were soldiers of the 77th Infantry Division, who landed west of Okinawa on 26 March.
On 31 March, Marines of the Fleet Marine Force Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion landed without opposition on Keise Shima.
The main landing was made by XXIV Corps and III Amphibious Corps on the western coast of Okinawa on 1 April.
The 10th Army moved across the south-central part of the island.
They captured the Kadena and the Yomitan airbases.
Six days later on 13 April, the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Marine Regiment reached Hedo Point (Hedo-misaki) at the northern part of the island.
Japanese forces in the north were on the Motobu Peninsula.
The 77th Infantry Division attacked Ie Island (Ie Shima) on 16 April.
The U.S. Army 96th Infantry division and 7th Infantry Division went south across Okinawa.
The 96th Infantry Division had violent fights with Japanese troops in fortified positions.
They had 1,500 battle casualties, while killing or capturing about 4,500 Japanese.
The next American goal was Kakazu Ridge.
The Japanese soldiers hid in caves.
There were many casualties on both sides.
On the evening of 12 April, the 32nd Army attacked U.S. positions.
The attackers retreated.
A final attack on 14 April was again stopped.
The launched a new attack on 19 April with 324 guns, the largest ever in the Pacific Ocean war.
Then 650 Navy and Marine planes attacked with napalm, rockets, bombs, and machine guns.
A tank attack failed with the loss of 22 tanks.
XXIV Corps lost 720 men KIA, WIA and MIA.
On 4 May, the 32nd Army launched another attack.
This time, Ushijima tried to land troops on the coasts behind American lines.
Japanese artillery fired 13,000 rounds.
The attack failed.
Buckner launched another American attack on 11 May.
By the end of May, monsoon rains turned hills and roads into mud..
On 29 May, Maj. Gen. Pedro del Valle ordered Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines to capture Shuri Castle.
The Japanese retreat moved nearly 30,000 men into its last defense line on the Kiyan Peninsula.
The 4,000 Japanese sailors including Admiral Minoru Ota all committed suicide.
On 18 June, Gen. Buckner was killed by enemy artillery fire.
The last Japanese stopped fighting on 21 June, although some Japanese stayed hidden.
The Brezhnev Doctrine was a policy promoted by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
It said that the Soviet Union had the right to use military force to maintain the strict rule of the Communist Party in nearby socialist countries.
The Brezhnev Doctrine was used to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 after Alexander Dub ek introduced political reforms there.
The policy was maintained through 1989.
A bain-marie (or water bath) is a piece of equipment used in science, industry, and cooking to heat materials gently and gradually to fixed temperatures, or to keep materials warm over a period of time.
The bain-marie comes in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and types, but traditionally is a wide, cylindrical, usually metal container made of three or four basic parts: a handle, an outer (or lower) container that holds the working liquid, an inner (or upper), smaller container that fits inside the outer one and which holds the material to be heated or cooked, and sometimes a base underneath.
Under the outer container of the bain-marie (or built into its base) is a heat source.
Typically the inner container is immersed about halfway into the working liquid.
The smaller container, filled with the substance to be heated, fits inside the outer container, filled with the working liquid (usually water), and the whole is heated at, or below, the base, causing the temperature of the materials in both containers to rise as needed.
The insulating action of the water helps to keep contents of the inner pot from boiling or scorching.
When a bain-marie is filled with water the maximum temperature of the material in the lower container will not exceed 100 degrees Celsius (the boiling point of water at sea level).
Using different working liquids (oils, salt solutions, etc.) in the lower container will result in different maximum temperatures.
A contemporary alternative to the traditional, liquid-filled bain-marie is the electric "dry-heat" bain-marie, heated by element below both pots.
The dry-heat form of electric bains-marie often consumes less energy, requires little cleaning, and can be heated more quickly than traditional versions.
They can also operate at higher temperatures, and are often much less expensive than their traditional counterparts.
Electric bains-marie can also be wet, using either hot water or vapor, or steam, in the heating process.
The open, bath-type bain-marie heats via a small, hot-water tub (or "bath"), and the vapour-type bain-marie heats with scalding-hot steam.
Bains-marie were originally developed for use in the practice of alchemy, when alchemists needed a way to heat materials slowly and gently.
In that early form of chemical science, it was believed by many that the best way to heat certain materials was to mimic the supposed natural processes, occurring in the Earth 's core, by which precious metals were believed to be germinated.
The name comes from the medieval-Latin term balneum (or balineum) Mariae literally, Mary 's bath from which the French bain de Marie, or bain-marie, is derived.
There are many theories as to how the name Marie came to be associated with this equipment:
Motor Racing Developments Ltd., commonly known as Brabham, was a British company that built racing cars.
It also ran a racing team in Formula One.
It was founded in 1960 by two Australians, driver Jack Brabham and designer Ron Tauranac.
The team won four drivers ' and two constructors ' world championships in its 30-year Formula One history.
As of 2008, Jack Brabham 's 1966 drivers ' championship remains the only victory by a car bearing the driver 's own name.
Brabham was the world 's largest manufacturer of customer open wheel racing cars in the 1960s, and had built more than 500 cars by 1970.
During this period, teams using Brabham cars won championships in Formula Two and Formula Three and competed in the Indianapolis 500.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Brabham introduced innovations such as the controversial but successful ` fan car ', in-race refuelling, carbon brakes, and hydropneumatic suspension.
The team won two more Formula One drivers ' championships in the 1980s with Brazilian Nelson Piquet, and became the first to win a drivers ' championship with a turbocharged car.
British businessman Bernie Ecclestone owned Brabham during most of the 1970s and 1980s, and later become responsible for administering the commercial aspects of Formula One.
Ecclestone sold the team in 1988.
Its last owner was the Middlebridge Group, a Japanese engineering firm.
Midway through the 1992 season, the team collapsed financially as Middlebridge was unable to make repayments against loans provided by Landhurst Leasing.
The case was investigated by the UK Serious Fraud Office.
The Boeing 17 Flying Fortress was a heavy bomber, that was used by the United States Eighth Air Force during World War II.
It first flew in 1935, and was introduced in 1938.
It had a shorter range, and a smaller bomb load, then its sister bomber the B-24 Liberator, but it had more defensive arment.
It dropped large amounts of bombs, and was also used during air raids against Germany, such as the raid on Dresden.
The B-17 was also used in the Pacific, at the Battle of Midway.
The flying fortress had its name for a good reason, it could take the hits and dish them out, being able to fly while under intense enemy fire.
the B-17 was a heavy duty bomber plane that carried 2 tons of bombs.
Not many B-17 's survived WWII.
It was the result of the lack of escortations of fighters.
Although the Flying Fortress took down many opposing fighters they also took a beating.
Later in WWII, the U.S. air force decided to add escortations to the bombers giving them more protection.
The escortations lasted till the end of WWII.
The Battle of Actium decided the final war of the Roman Republic.
It was fought between the forces of Octavian and the combined forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra.
The battle took place on 2 September 31 BC, on the Ionian Sea near the Roman colony of Actium in Greece.
Octavian 's fleet was commanded by Agrippa, while Antony 's fleet was supported by the ships of his lover, Queen Cleopatra of Egypt.
Octavian 's victory enabled him to consolidate his power over Rome and its dominions.
To that end, he adopted the title of Princeps ("first citizen").
As a result of the victory he was awarded the title of Augustus by the Roman Senate.
As Augustus, he would keep the trappings of a restored Republican leader.
However, historians view this as the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire.
The Brisbane Broncos are an Australian professional rugby league team.
The team is based in Brisbane, Queensland.
They were founded in 1987.
They currently play in the National Rugby League competition.
They have won six premierships, most recently in 2006.
Bloody Sunday sometimes called the Bogside Massacre happened on 30 January 1972, in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland.
In this event, 26 unarmed civil-rights protesters and people who were watching were shot by soldiers of the British Army.
Thirteen males, seven of whom were teenagers, died immediately or soon after.
A fourteenth man died from his injuries four-and-a-half months later.
Two protesters were also run down by army vehicles.
Five of the wounded were shot in the back.
The incident happened during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march.
The soldiers involved were members of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (1 Para).
Two investigations have been held by the British government.
The Widgery Tribunal, held soon after the event, said that the soldiers and British authorities were almost reckless.
Critics said the report made it seem like the British did nothing wrong.
The Saville Inquiry was held in 1998 to investigate the events a second time.
The inquiry took 12 years.
The report was made public on 15 June 2010.
The report said that some soldiers were wrong to have shot the protesters.
The report found that all of the people shot were unarmed, and that the killings were "unjustified".
When the Saville report was published, the British prime minister, David Cameron, said sorry to the victims.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army 's (IRA) war against the partition of Ireland had begun in the two years before the incident.
The incident helped the IRA to recruit new members.
Bloody Sunday remains among the most important events in the Troubles of Northern Ireland.
The reason it is seen as so important is because those who died were shot by the British army rather than paramilitaries.
Bo Diddley (born Ellas Bates, December 30, 1928 in McComb, Mississippi, died June 2, 2008 in Archer, Florida) was an American singer, guitarist and songwriter.
He was one of the original rock and roll musicians; he, along with others, created rock music.
In 1955, he recorded and released his first songs.
He is most famous for the rhythm which he has made popular in many of his recordings.
The rhythm has become known as the Bo Diddley beat.
Some of the most popular songs which feature the Bo Diddley beat include "Not Fade Away" and "I Want Candy", George Michael 's song "Faith" and U2 's song "Desire".
Bo Diddley is also famous for the unusual shapes of many of his guitars, for his exciting stage shows and for his use of female musicians.
Bo Diddley made many appearances on radio, television and in the movies.
In 1956, he co-wrote the popular song "Love Is Strange" for the singing duo Mickey and Sylvia.
Some of his most popular songs are: "I 'm A Man" (1955), "Pretty Thing" (1955), "Bring It To Jerome" (1955), "Diddy Wah Diddy" (1955), "Who Do You Love" (1956), "Mona (I Need You Baby)" (1957), "Before You Accuse Me" (1957), "Crackin ' Up" (1959), "Say Man" (1959), "Say Man, Back Again" (1959), "Road Runner" (1960), "Pills" (1961), "You Ca n't Judge A Book By The Cover" (1962) and "I Can Tell" (1962).
Bo Diddley often sang simple or amusing songs about himself.
Some of these songs are "Bo Diddley" (1955), "Diddley Daddy" (1955), "Hey Bo Diddley" (1957), "Bo Meets The Monster" (1958), "Bo Diddley 's A Gunslinger" (1960), "Just Like Bo Diddley" (1989), "Bo Diddley Is Crazy" (1996) and "Oops!
Bo Diddley" (1996).
His songs have been recorded by many other popular recording artists, including Aerosmith, The Animals, Eric Clapton, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dr. Feelgood, The Doors, Buddy Holly, Chris Isaak, New York Dolls, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Rolling Stones, Bob Seger, George Thorogood and The Destroyers, The Who and The Yardbirds.
In 2003, U.S. Representative John Conyers paid tribute to Bo Diddley in the United States House of Representatives when he described him as "one of the true pioneers of rock and roll, who has influenced generations".
In 2005, Bo Diddley celebrated his 50th anniversary in music with successful tours of Australia and Europe and with coast-to-coast shows across North America.
Bride of the Monster is a 1956 sci-fi horror movie.
It was produced and directed by Ed Wood.
It was co-written by Wood and Alex Gordon.
The movie opened in Hollywood in May 1955 with the title Bride of the Atom.
A sequel titled Night of the Ghouls was completed in 1959.
It was not released until 1987.
Dr. Vornoff and Lobo are experimenting with nuclear power in an old house.
The house is guarded by a giant octopus living in a nearby swamp.
The octopus has killed local people.
Lawton arrives at the house to investigate (check it out).
Vornoff keeps her a prisoner.
Lt. Craig comes looking for Lawton.
Professor Strowski arrives to ask Vornoff to return to their homeland.
Strowski is killed.
Lobo accidentally turns Vornoff into an atomic-powered super-human being.
A fire in the laboratory kills Lobo.
Vornoff, Craig, Lawton, and the police escape the fire.
A bolt of lightning kills Vornoff.
It forms a mushroom cloud.
Belfast (Irish: B al Feirste) is the capital of Northern Ireland.
It is the second largest city in Ireland, after Dublin.
About 270,000 people live in the city.
It became capital of Northern Ireland when Northern Ireland was created in 1921.
A lot of famous ships were built by the Belfast shipyard Harland and Wolff.
In 1911 they built the RMS Titanic.
Brigham Young (June 1, 1801 August 29, 1877) was the second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the first Governor of the American state of Utah.
Young was born in Vermont.
He took over as president of the Mormon church in 1847 after the death of Joseph Smith, Jr in 1844.
Brigham Young University is named after him.
John Taylor replaced Young as leader of the church three years after the death of Young.
Bentley is a British car maker.
It is based in Crewe, Cheshire.
Bentley is famous for their fast, luxury vehicles.
In 1998, the German Volkswagen Group purchased Bentley for 430 million.
Chordata is a phylum (group) of animals which have a notochord.
The group includes vertebrates, with some closely related invertebrates.
Note: Lines show likely evolutionary relationships.
Extinct groups are marked with a"".
Extinct animals are ones that are not around anymore, but around in the past.
A long-standing theory is that in transformed larvae of sea-squirts (tunicates) lies the origin of chordates.
Adult tunicates are sessile, but their larvae are motile, and have some features found in early vertebrates.
The process of paedomorphosis, where juvenile features are retained in the adult, is the proposed mechanism.
Genome analysis does show that the tunicates are the closest living relatives of vertebrates.
Charlize Theron (born 7 August 1975) is a South African-American actress.
She won an Academy Award for her role in the movie Monster.
She was nominated for her role in the movie North Country.
Theron can speak three languages, her first being Afrikaans.
Theron was born in Benoni near Johannesburg in Gauteng.
Her ancestry is French, German and Dutch.
She attended a boarding school at the age of thirteen.
At the age of fifteen, she saw her alcoholic father being killed by her mother as an act of self-defence.
No charges were pressed against her mother.
At the age of sixteen, she won a local modelling competition and went to Milan, Italy for a one-year contract.
After her modelling contract was over, she moved to New York, United States, and became a ballet dancer.
She injured her knee at the age of eighteen, ending her career of being a ballet dancer.
She did star in a few movies, but only really became noticed when she portrayed the life of serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, in the movie Monster.
She won an Oscar for her role in this movie.
After this, she got a lot of attention from the perfume label, Dior, and appeared in some of their advertisements.
She also does a lot of community work, including for PETA, for their anti-fur ads.
She also works with animal rights activists and supports same-sex marriage.
She has become one of Hollywood s most acclaimed actresses.
Theron became an American citizen in 2007.
Chess is a board game for two players.
It is played on a square board, made of 64 smaller squares, with eight squares on each side.
Each player starts with sixteen pieces: eight pawns, two knights, two bishops, two rooks, one queen and one king.
The goal of the game is for each player to try and checkmate the king of the opponent.
Checkmate is a threat (` check ') to the opposing king which no move can stop.
It ends the game.
During the game the two opponents take turns to move one of their pieces to a different square of the board.
One player (` White ') has pieces of a light color; the other player (` Black ') has pieces of a dark color.
There are rules about how pieces move, and about taking the opponent 's pieces off the board.
The player with white pieces always makes the first move.
Because of this, White has a small advantage, and wins more often than Black in tournament games.
Chess is popular and is often played in competitions called chess tournaments.
It is enjoyed in many countries, and is a national hobby in Russia.
Most historians agree that the game of chess was first played in northern India during the Gupta Empire in the 6th century AD.
The game changed greatly between about 1470 to 1495.
The rules of the older game were changed in the West so that some of the pieces (queen, bishop) had more scope, development of the pieces was faster, and the game more exciting.
The new game formed the basis of modern international chess.
Historians of chess consider this as the most important change since the game was invented.
The rules of chess are governed by the World Chess Federation, which is known by the initials FIDE, meaning F d ration Internationale des checs.
The rules are in the section Laws of Chess of the FIDE Handbook.
FIDE also give rules and guidelines for chess tournaments.
Chess is played on a square board divided into eight rows of squares called ranks and eight columns called files, with a dark square in each player 's lower left corner.
This is altogether 64 squares.
The colors of the squares are laid out in a checker (chequer) pattern in light and dark squares.
To make speaking and writing about chess easy, each square has a name.
Each rank has a number from 1 to 8, and each file a letter from a to h. This means that every square on the board has its own label, such as g1 or f5.
The pieces are in white and black sets.
The players are called White and Black, and at the start of a game each player has 16 pieces.
The 16 pieces are one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights and eight pawns.
Definitions: vertical lines are files; horizontal lines are ranks; lines at 45 are diagonals.
Each piece has its own way of moving around the board.
The X marks the squares where the piece can move.
Most pieces capture as they move.
If a piece lands on an opponent 's piece, the opposing piece is taken off the board.
There are three special cases:
If a move is made which attacks the opposing king, that king is said to be ` in check '.
The player whose king is checked must make a move to remove the check.
The options are: moving the king, capturing the threatening piece, or moving another piece between the threatening piece and the king.
If the player whose king is in danger can not do any of these things, it is checkmate, and the player loses the game.
Once in every game, each king can make a special move, known as castling.
When the King castles, it moves two squares to the left or right.
When this happens, the Rook is moved to stand on the opposite side of the King.
Castling is only allowed if all of these rules are kept: p120
En passant (` in passing ' in French) is a special capture.
It is only available when a pawn moves forward two squares past an opposing pawn on an adjacent file.
The opposing pawn must be on the 5th rank from its own side.
Then the opponent 's pawn can capture the double-mover as if it had only moved one square forward.
This option is open on the next move only.
For example, if the black pawn has just moved up two squares from g7 to g5, then the white pawn on f5 can take it by en passant on g6.
The en passant rule was developed when pawns were allowed to make their double move.
The rule made it more difficult for players to avoid pawn exchanges and blockade the position.
It kept the game more open.
When a pawn moves to its eighth rank, it must be changed for a piece: a queen, rook, bishop, or knight of the same color (player 's choice).
Normally, the pawn is queened, but in some advantageous cases another piece is chosen, called ` under-promotion '.
Checkmates are rare in competitive chess.
The most common ends are decisions made by one or both players.
The FIDE rules for competitive chess include all the above rules, plus several others.
p92 et seq
If players wish to adjust a piece on the board, they must first say "J' adoube" (I adjust) or the equivalent.
Apart from that, if a piece is touched it must be moved if possible.
This is the ` touch and move ' law.
Competitive games of chess must be played with special chess clocks which time a player only when it is his\/her turn to move.
The essence is that a player has to make a certain number of moves in a certain total time.
After moving, the player presses a button on the clock.
This stops the player 's clock, and start 's the opponent 's clock.
Usually the clocks are mechanical, but some are electronic.
Article 6p92 et seq Electronic clocks can be set to various programs, and they can count moves made.
chapter 8
The moves of a chess game are written down by using a special chess notation.
This is compulsory for any competitive game.
Article 8 & Appendix E Usually algebraic chess notation is used.
In algebraic notation, each square has one and only one name (whether you are looking from White 's side of the board or Black 's).
Here, moves are written in the format of: initial of piece moved file where it moved rank where it moved.
For example, Qg5 means "queen moves to the g-file and 5th rank" (that is, to the square g5).
If there are two pieces of the same type that can move to the same square, one more letter or number is added to show the file or rank from which the piece moved, e.g. Ngf3 means "knight from the g-file moves to the square f3".
The letter P showing a pawn is not used, so that e4 means "pawn moves to the square e4".
If the piece makes a capture, "x" is written before the square in which the capturing piece lands on.
Example: Bxf3 means "bishop captures on f3".
When a pawn makes a capture, the file from which the pawn left is used in place of a piece initial.
For example: exd5 means "pawn captures on d5."
If a pawn moves to its eighth rank, getting a promotion, the piece chosen is written after the move, for example e1Q or e1 = Q. Castling is written by the special notations 0-0 for kingside castling and 0-0-0 for queenside.
A move which places the opponent 's king in check normally has the notation" +" added.
Checkmate can be written as # or + +.
At the end of the game, 1-0 means "White won", 0-1 means "Black won" and - is a draw.
In print, figurines (like those in diagrams, but smaller) are used for the pieces rather than initials.
This has the advantage of being language-free, whereas the initials of pieces are different in every language.
Typefaces which include figurines can be purchased by chess authors.
Also, basic notes can be added by using a system of well-known punctuation marks and other symbols.
For example:!
means a very good move,?
a very bad move (sometimes called a blunder),!?
a creative move that may be good, and?!
a doubtful move.
The purpose of these methods is to make publications readable in a wider range of countries.
For example, one kind of a simple "trap" known as the Scholar 's mate, as in the diagram to the right, may be recorded:
1.
e4 e5 2.
Qh5?!
Nc6 3.
Bc4 Nf6??
(3... Qe7 would prevent the mate, with 4... Nf6 next move) 4.
Qxf7 # 1-0
With figurines in place of the initials, this would be understood by players everywhere.
Players may not smoke in the playing area, but only in areas designated by the organiser.
Mobile phones may not be used or even switched on.
Players may not use any sources of advice, and may not analyze on any device.
These and other matters are covered by the FIDE Laws on the conduct of the players.
Article 12
Chess is an easy game to learn the moves, but a difficult game to master.
Strategy is an important part of the game.
First of all comes the openings, about which a great deal is now known.
The best-known move, the King 's Pawn opening, is the white player moving his king 's pawn on e2 forward two spaces to e4.
Black can reply to that move in various ways.
The first moves of a chess game are called the opening.
A chess opening is a name given to a series of opening moves.
Recognized patterns of opening moves are openings and have been given names such as the Ruy Lopez or Sicilian defense.
They are listed in reference works such as the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings.
There are dozens of different openings.
They range from gambits, where a pawn, say, is offered for fast development (e.g. the King 's Gambit), to slower openings which lead to a manoeuvring type of game (e.g. the R ti opening).
In some opening lines, the sequence thought best for both sides has been worked out to 20 30 moves, but most players avoid such lines.
Expert players study openings throughout their chess career, as opening theory keeps on developing.
Players think, and chess databases prove, that White, by virtue of the first move, begins the game with a better chance.
Black normally tries to equalise, or to get some counterplay.
The middlegame is the part of the game after most pieces have been developed.
It is where most games are won and lost.
Many games will end in resignation even before an endgame takes place.
A middlegame position has a structure.
That structure is determined by the opening.
The simplest way to learn the middlegame is to select an opening and learn it well (see examples in English opening and French defense).
Here is an example from the borderline between opening and middlegame.
In the diagram to the left, White will operate mainly on the Q-side, and Black on the K-side.
White, to play, may wish to cope with Black playing 10... Nf4.
He can do this by playing 10.
g3, or by playing 10.
Re1 so that if 10... Nf4 11.
Bf1 will preserve the bishop (in this position an important defensive piece).
Or maybe White will plough ahead with 10.
c5, the key move on the Q-side.
10.
Re1 2198 10.
g3 419 10.
c5 416
The data base also shows that the overall results were significantly better for 10.
Re1.
What the player does is note the features on the board, and formulate a plan which takes the features into account.
Then the player works out a sequence of moves.
Of course, in practice, the opponent is interfering with the plan at every step!
The endgame (or end game or ending) is the part of the game when there are few pieces left on the board.
There are three main strategic differences between earlier parts of the game and endgame:
All endgame positions can be put into two camps.
On the one hand are positions which may be won by force.
On the other hand are positions which are drawn, or which should be drawn.
The ones that are drawn for certain may be legally drawn (mate could not happen) or drawn by chess experience (no sane defense could lose).
All endgames in master chess revolve around the borderline between winning and drawing.
Generally, once a ` textbook ' drawn position is reached the players will agree a draw; otherwise they play on.
Endgames can be studied according to the type of pieces that remain on board.
For example, king and pawn endgames have only kings and pawns on one or both sides and the task of the stronger side is to promote one of the pawns.
Other endings are studied according to the pieces on board other than kings, e.g. rook and pawn versus rook endgame.
Shredder, also a ChessBase product, is claimed to be the strongest engine at present.
Rybka, a product by Vasik Rajlich, is Shredder 's main rival.
Chess databases do not actually play.
They give access to the recorded history of master chess.
There are two components.
First, there is the software, which lets one search and organise the database material.
Then there is the actual database, typically one to four million games.
In practice, databases are used for two purposes.
First, for a player to train his\/her ability at specific openings.
Second, to look up specific opponents to see what they play, and prepare against them beforehand.
The existence of chess databases is one of the reasons young players can achieve mastery at an early age.
ChessBase is the biggest database, and widely used by masters.
Although it can be used online, most users download the software and data onto their laptop.
Then they take the laptop to tournaments, to help prepare for games.
Players may not use computers or any other aid during games, but much preparation goes on behind the scenes.
ChessBase has to be purchased, and it is not cheap.
This is a Dutch magazine for advanced players, which runs an on-line database called NicBase as part of its services.
NicBase is free, and has over a million games.
Chessgames.com runs an on-line database of games.
It is partly free, but requires registration.
Full access to all its facilities is by a fairly modest subscription.
It has over half a million games on its database.
There are websites which a player can join (for a fee) and play on line.
In this case, the subscriber will play against other subscribers, not a computer.
All standards of players are amongst the members, and various events are on offer at different rates of play.
The two leaders in this market are: Internet Chess Club Playchess
These are endgames for improvers, based on reviews by John Watson.
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin (April 16, 1889 December 25, 1977) was a famous English actor, comedian, movie maker, screenwriter, editor, musician, and author.
He was very famous in silent movies (where there was no talking or sound).
He acted, directed, scripted, and produced most of them.
Charlie Chaplin was a performer for almost 70 years.
He started working when he was 5, and worked until he was 80.
The character that Charlie Chaplin played most was called "the Little Tramp".
The "Tramp" was a man of good manners, who wore a coat, a pair of big trousers, shoes, and a black hat.
Charlie first started acting at age five.
He acted in a music hall in 1894, standing in for his mother.
When Charlie was a child, he was kept in bed for many weeks from a bad illness.
At night, his mother would sit at the window and act out what was going on outside.
His first important work came when he joined The Eight Lancashire Lads.
In 1900, his brother Sydney helped him get the role of a comic cat in the pantomime Cinderella.
In 1903 he was in a play called Jim: A Romance of Cockayne.
Chaplin was in Casey 's ` Court Circus ' variety show.
The next year, he became a clown in Fred Karno 's ` Fun Factory ' comedy company.
Chaplin won two special Oscars.
Chaplin had first been chosen for both "Best Actor" and "Best Comedy Directing".
But then, instead, he was given a special award "for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing".
Chaplin 's second special award came 44 years later, in 1972.
When getting this award, Chaplin had the longest standing ovation (people standing up and clapping) in Academy Award history.
In 1976 he was given the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, a lifetime achievement award.
Chaplin became the first actor to have appeared in the cover of Time in 1925.
Chaplin once entered in a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest.
Chaplin lost the contest.
On March 9, 1975, Charlie Chaplin was knighted in England by Queen Elizabeth II.
Chaplin died on Christmas 1977, in Switzerland.
He died of a stroke in his sleep, at the age of 88.
On March 1, 1978, his body was stolen by a small group of Swiss people.
They were trying to get money from Chaplin s family.
This plan didn t work.
The perpetrators were caught, and Charlie s body was found 11 weeks later near Lake Geneva.
He was buried under concrete to prevent further incidents.
The World Factbook, also known as the CIA World Factbook, is a book that contains the Central Intelligence Agency 's information about the world 's countries.
A new book is published every year.
The Factbook provides a two - to three-page summary of the demographics, geography, communications, government, economy, and military of 272 countries, dependencies, and other areas in the world.
The World Factbook is designed to be used by people that work for the United States government, but it is also used by students, on websites, and in other publications that are not made by governments.
Because the U.S. Government made it, it is in the public domain.
In geography and politics, a country is a political division.
It is often a sovereign territory.
The term is most commonly used for both state and nation, and also with government.
For example, Liechtenstein is a country.
The United Nations recognizes lots of countries.
There are around 206 countries in the World with 193 that are members of the UN.
Copenhagen is the capital city of Denmark.
It is also the largest city in Denmark with 1,246,611 people living in the urban area in 2014.
Copenhagen is on the islands of Zealand and Amager.
Founded as a Viking fishing village.
Copenhagen was built in the 12th century A.D. and got City rights in 1254.
A few years later, it was destroyed nearly completely.
In 1443, Copenhagen became the capital of Denmark.
In 1801, there were more than 100,000 inhabitants in Copenhagen for the first time.
In the 1960 's, more than 700,000 people lived in Copenhagen Municipality, and today there are 528,000 inhabitants in the municipality.
Near the city center there is the famous Freetown Christiania.
Combinatorics is a branch of mathematics.
It is concerned with finite or countable infinite sets.
Combinatorics is part of discrete mathematics.
Combinatorics are about graph theory, or Partitions of sets.
According to George P lya, combinatorics looks at counting the number of possibilities, and about the questions whether certain configurations exist, and how to get to them.
Calculus is a branch of mathematics which helps us understand changes between values that are related by a function.
For example, if you had one formula telling how much money you got every day, calculus would help you understand related formulas like how much money you have in total, and whether you are getting more money or less than you used to.
All these formulas are functions of time, and so that is one way to think of calculus -- studying functions of time.
There are two different types of calculus.
Differential calculus divides things into small (different) pieces and tells us how they change from one moment to the next, while integral calculus joins (integrates) the small pieces together and tells us how much of something is made, overall, by a series of changes.
Calculus is used in many different areas of study such as physics, astronomy, biology, engineering, economics, medicine and sociology.
In the 1670s and 1680s, Sir Isaac Newton in England and Gottfried Leibniz in Germany figured out calculus at the same time, working separately from each other.
Newton wanted to have a new way to predict where to see planets in the sky, because astronomy had always been a popular and useful form of science, and knowing more about the motions of the objects in the night sky was important for navigation of ships.
Leibniz wanted to measure the space (area) under a curve (a line which is not straight).
Many years later, the two men argued over who discovered it first.
Scientists from England supported Newton, but scientists from the rest of Europe supported Leibniz.
Most mathematicians today agree that both men share the credit equally.
Some parts of modern calculus come from Newton, such as its uses in physics.
Other parts come from Leibniz, such as the symbols used to write it.
They were not the first people to use mathematics to describe the physical world Aristotle and Pythagoras came earlier, and so did Galileo, who said that mathematics was the language of science.
But they were the first to design a system that describes how things change over time and can predict how they will change in the future.
The name "calculus" was the Latin word for a small stone the ancient Romans used in counting and gambling.
The English word "calculate" comes from the same Latin word.
Differential calculus is the process of finding out the rate of change of a variable compared to another variable.
It can be used to find the speed of a moving object or the slope of a curve, figure out the maximum or minimum points of a curve, or find answers to problems in the electricity and magnetism areas of physics, among many other uses.
Many amounts can be variables, which can change their value unlike numbers such as 5 or 200.
Some examples of variables are distance and time.
The speed of an object is how far it travels in a particular time.
So if a town is 80 kilometres (50 miles) away and a person in a car gets there in one hour, they have traveled at an average speed of 80 kilometres (50 miles) per hour.
But this is only an average they may have been traveling faster at some times (on a highway) and slower at others (at a traffic light or on a small street where people live).
Imagine a driver trying to figure out a car 's speed using only its odometer (distance meter) and clock, without a speedometer!
Until calculus was invented, the only way to work this out was to cut the time into smaller and smaller pieces, so the average speed over the smaller time would get closer and closer to the actual speed at a point in time.
This was a very long and hard process and had to be done each time people wanted to work something out.
A very similar problem is to find the slope (how steep it is) at any point on a curve.
The slope of a straight line is easy to work out it is simply how much it goes up (y or vertical) divided by how much it goes across (x or horizontal).
On a curve, though, the slope is a variable (has different values at different points) because the line bends.
But if the curve was to be cut into very, very small pieces, the curve at the point would look almost like a very short straight line.
So to work out its slope, a straight line can be drawn through the point with the same slope as the curve at that point.
If it is done exactly right, the straight line will have the same slope as the curve, and is called a tangent.
But there is no way to know (without very complicated mathematics) whether the tangent is exactly right, and our eyes are not accurate enough to be certain whether it is exact or simply very close.
What Newton and Leibniz found was a way to work out the slope (or the speed in the distance example) exactly using simple and logical rules.
They divided the curve into an infinite number of very small pieces.
They then chose points on either side of the range they were interested in and worked out tangents at each.
As the points moved closer together towards the point they were interested in, the slope approached a particular value as the tangents approached the real slope of the curve.
They said that this particular value it approached was the actual slope.
Let 's say we have a function y = f (x).
f is short for function, so this equation means "y is a function of x".
This tells us that how high y is on the vertical axis depends on what x (the horizontal axis) is at that time.
For example with the equation y = x, we know that if x is 1, then y will be 1; if x is 3, then y will be 9; if x is 20, then y will be 400.
If we use y = x, the derivative produced using this method is 2x, or 2 multiplied by x. So we know without having to draw any tangent lines that at any point on the curve f (x) = x, the derivative f ' (x) (marked with an apostrophe) will be 2x at any point.
This process of working out a slope using limits is called differentiation, or finding the derivative.
Leibniz came to the same result, but called h "dx", which means "with respect to x".
He called the resulting change in f (x) "dy", which means "a tiny amount of y".
Leibniz 's notation is used by more books because it is easy to understand when the equations become more complicated.
In Leibniz notation:
Mathematicians have grown this basic theory to make simple algebra rules which can be used to find the derivative of almost any function.
The main idea in calculus is called the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus".
This main idea says that the two calculus processes, differential and integral calculus, are opposites.
That is, a person can use differential calculus to undo an integral calculus process.
Also, a person can use integral calculus to undo a differential calculus method.
This is just like using division to "undo" multiplication, or addition to "undo" subtraction.
In a single sentence, the Fundamental Theorem runs something like this: "The derivative of the integral of a function f is the function itself".
The method integral calculus uses to find areas of shapes is to break the shape up into many small boxes, and add up the area of each of the boxes.
This gives an approximation to the area.
If the boxes are made narrower and narrower, then there are more and more of them, and the area of all the boxes becomes very close to the area of the shape.
One of the main ideas of calculus is that we can imagine having an infinite number of these boxes, each infinitely narrow, and then we would have the exact area of the shape.
Calculus is used to describe things that change, like things in nature.
It can be used for showing and learning all of these:
Communication is when information is passed from a sender to a recipient using a medium.
There are different media that can be used:
Communication can be good spoken (a word) or non-spoken (a smile).
Communication has many ways, and happens all the time.
Not only humans communicate, most other animals do too.
Some communication is done without thinking, such as by changing in posture.
Another form of communication tries to change somebody 's mind.
In an extreme case it can be propaganda.
Communication works by exchanging information or messages.
In very basic terms
Besides the content of the message, there are other things that are important.
These are not part of the message itself, but rather of its context
For a message exchange to be successful, the sender and the recipient must have agreed on a vocabulary.
The word hedge can mean completely different things based on the context.
In biology a hedge is a row of shrubs or trees that make a barrier or form a border.
In finance, a hedge is an investment made to reduce the risk of another investment.
In linguistics a hedge is a word or set of words that make other words less important.
Without any information it is therefore very difficult to know which hedge is really meant by the speaker.
Classics refers to the branch of the Humanities that includes languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world (Bronze Age ca.
BC 3000 Late Antiquity ca.
AD 300 600); especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity (ca.
BC 600 AD 600).
Initially, study of the Classics (the period 's literature) was the principal study in the humanities.
Humanism also means the "Classics".
It also involved Civic Humanists is the modern term for the moral, social and political philosophy that in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries began to be articulated in Italian city-states and most notably in Florence.
Chemistry is a branch of science that deals with chemical elements and compounds, and how these things work together.
It is the study of the materials (things) that make up our bodies and everything in the world around us.
Before 1600, people studied substances to figure out how to do things such as turn lead into gold, but no one managed to do that.
This was called alchemy.
Alchemists (people that did alchemy) did discover some useful things, though.
Sulphuric acid and nitric acid were two substances that they discovered.
Only a few elements were known.
Some of them are mercury, silver, gold, and carbon.
Chemistry began as a true science during the 1600s.
This is when chemists discovered the simplest substances that make up all other substances.
These simple substances are called elements.
One of the things that they learned is that gold and lead are two different elements, so you can not change one into the other by a chemical reaction.
The first element discovered after 1600 was phosphorus, a strange white glowing solid.
Elements were discovered more and more rapidly.
People separated the air into many parts and isolated the noble gases from it.
They also processed special minerals from a mine in Sweden to get rare earth metals.
Radioactivity was also discovered.
Today chemists have discovered 118 different elements.
Some are very common, like oxygen.
Many are very rare and expensive, like platinum.
Some can not be found on earth and can only be made in labs, like rutherfordium.
Since the 1920s, the increased understanding of physics has changed chemists ' theories about chemical reactions.
With smaller and faster computers, chemists have built better tools for analyzing substances.
These tools have been sent to study chemicals on Mars.
Police also use those tools to study evidence from crime scenes.
There are several types of chemistry.
Analytical chemistry looks at which chemicals are in things.
For example, looking at how much arsenic is in food.
Organic chemistry looks at things that have carbon in them.
For example, making acetylene.
Inorganic chemistry looks at things that do not have carbon in them.
One example is making an integrated circuit.
A large area of chemistry is polymer chemistry.
This looks at plastics.
One example is making nylon.
Because plastics are made of carbon, polymer chemistry is part of organic chemistry.
Another area is biochemistry.
This looks at the chemistry of living things.
An example would be seeing how arsenic poisons people.
Biochemistry is also part of organic chemistry.
There are many other small branches of chemistry.
The basic unit of an element is called an atom.
An atom is the smallest building block that you can cut an element into without the element breaking down (turning into a lighter element, for example through nuclear fission or radioactive decay).
A chemical compound is a substance made up of two or more elements.
In a compound, two or more atoms are joined together to form a molecule.
The tiniest speck of dust or drop of liquid, that one can see is made up of many millions or billions of these molecules.
Mixtures are substances where chemicals are mixed but not reacted.
An example would be mixing sand and salt.
This can be undone again to produce salt and sand separately.
Chemical compounds are changed by a chemical reaction.
An example would be heating sodium bicarbonate, common baking soda.
It will make water, carbon dioxide, and sodium carbonate.
This reaction can not be undone.
A mole is a very large amount of atoms (602,214,150,000,000,000,000,000 atoms).
The atomic mass of an element can be used to see how much of the element makes a mole.
For example, the atomic mass of copper is about 63.55.
That means about 63.55 grams of copper metal has a mole of atoms.
The atomic mass of chlorine is about 35.45.
That means 35.45 grams of chlorine has a mole of atoms in it.
Moles can be used to see how many molecules are in chemical compounds, too.
Copper (II) chloride is an example.
CuCl2 is its chemical formula.
There is one copper atom (63.55) and two chlorine atoms (35.45 2 = 70.90).
Add all the molar masses of the elements together to get the molar mass of the chemical compound (63.55 + 70.90 = 134.45).
That means in 134.45 grams of copper (II) chloride, there is one mole of copper (II) chloride molecules.
This concept is used to calculate how much chemicals are needed in a chemical reaction if no reactants (chemicals that are reacted) should be left.
If too much reactant is used, there will be some reactants left in the chemical reaction.
Acids and bases are common chemicals.
Acids release H + ions when in water, and bases release OH ions when in water.
Acids can react with bases.
The H + ion is taken from the acid by the base.
This makes water, H2O.
A salt is also made when an acid and a base react together.
An example would be reacting hydrochloric acid (HCl) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH).
Hydrochloric acid releases H + and Cl - ions in water.
The base releases Na + and OH - ions.
The H + and the OH - react to make water.
There is a solution of sodium chloride (NaCl) left.
Sodium chloride is a salt.
Chemistry is very useful in everyday life and makes up the foundation of many branches of science.
Most objects are made by chemists (people who do chemistry).
Chemists are constantly working to find new and useful substances.
Chemists make new drugs and materials like paints that we use every day.
Many chemicals are harmless, but there are some chemicals that are dangerous.
For example, mercury (II) chloride is very toxic.
Chromates can cause cancer.
Tin (II) chloride pollutes water easily.
Hydrochloric acid can cause bad burns.
Some chemicals like hydrogen can explode or catch fire.
To stay safe, chemists experiment with chemicals in a chemical lab.
They use special equipment and clothing to do reactions and keep the chemicals contained.
The chemicals used in drugs and in things like bleach have been tested to make sure they are safe if used correctly.
The cytoplasm (also known as cytosol) is the protoplasm of a cell outside the cell nucleus.
It is the gel-like material plus the organelles outside the nucleus, and inside the cell membrane.
Many important functions of a cell take place in organelles, which are like bits of machinery for doing jobs.
The cytoplasm is highly structured: it is not some kind of soup, even though it is made out of 75-80 % water.
The cytosol contains a complex mixture of cytoskeleton filaments, including the endoplasmic reticulum and the Golgi apparatus.
It includes dissolved molecules, and water that fills much of the cell.
Due to this network of fibers, membranes and the many dissolved macromolecules such as proteins, the cytosol does not act like a simple liquid
Central Europe is the region around the Alps and Carpathian Mountains lying between the areas of Eastern and Western Europe.
In addition, Northern, Southern and Southeastern Europe mean different regions, but in some way they may overlap Central Europe as well as each other.
The term has come back into fashion since the end of the Cold War, which had divided Europe politically into East and West, with the Iron Curtain splitting "Central Europe" in half.
The understanding of the concept of Central Europe varies considerably from nation to nation, and also has from time to time.
The states of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia are also often included in Eastern Europe.
Alternatively, Romania and Slovenia are often placed in Southeast (or Southeastern) Europe.
When using these definitions, the countries of Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein and Switzerland are considered Western Europe instead.
Some experts consider such definitions outdated, but many still use them.
Supranational organizations like the UN and EU also make use of them.
Christianity is an Abrahamic religion.
People who believe in Christianity are called Christians (Greek).
It is a monotheistic religion, meaning it has only one God..
It is the largest religion in the world and is based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus was a carpenter and preacher in ancient Judea.
He was executed by being nailed to a cross (or crucified), under Pontius Pilate, the local Roman governor at the time.
His life and followers are written about in the New Testament, part of the Bible.
Christians see the Bible, both the Old Testament and New Testament as sacred.
The Gospels or "The Good News" are the first four books of New Testament that are about Jesus ' life, death and rising from the dead.
Christians believe in the Trinity, which means that there are three different persons of the Godhead.
The three persons of the Godhead are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
God created the world.
Jesus is the name of God the Son.
Christians believe Him to be the Son of God.
They believe that He was the human son of the Virgin Mary and the divine Son of God.
They believe He suffered and died to free humans from their sin, and was later raised from the dead.
He then went up into heaven.
Christians believe that Jesus will come back to Earth to judge all mankind, both alive and dead, giving everlasting life to those who believe in him.
The Holy Spirit is the spirit of God on the Earth that spoke through prophets.
Christians believe that the prophets foretold in Old Testament of Jesus as the Savior.
Christians think of Jesus Christ as a teacher, a role model and someone who revealed who the Christian God was.
Just like Judaism and Islam, Christianity is an Abrahamic religion.
Christianity started out as a Jewish sect in the eastern Mediterranean.
It quickly grew in number of believers and influence over a few decades, and by the 4th Century it had become the dominant religion in the Roman Empire.
The Kingdom of Aksum became the first empire to adopt Christianity.
During the Middle Ages, the rest of Europe mostly was Christianized.
At that time, Christians were mostly a religious minority in the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of India.
Following the Age of Discovery, through missionary work and colonization, Christianity spread to Africa, the Americas and the rest of the world.
Christianity has been an important part of the shaping the world.
As of the early 21st century, Christianity has approximately 2.2 billion followers, which is about a third of all people of Earth.
The most basic part of Christianity is the belief in Jesus as the Son of God and Messiah (Christ).
The title "Messiah" comes from the Hebrew word (m i) meaning anointed one.
The Greek translation (Christos) is the source of the English word "Christ".
Joshua is English for the Hebrew word Yeshua.
Christians believe that, as the Messiah, Jesus was anointed by God as ruler and savior of all people.
Christians also believe that Jesus ' coming was the fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament.
The Christian belief of the Messiah is much different than the contemporary Jewish concept.
The main Christian belief is that, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, sinful humans can be reconciled to God.
Through this, they believe they are given salvation and the promise of eternal life.
There have been many theological disagreements over the nature of Jesus over the first centuries of Christian history.
But Christians generally believe that Jesus is God incarnate and "true God and true man."
Jesus, having become fully human, suffered the pain and temptations of a mortal man, but he did not sin.
As fully God, he defeated death and came back to life again.
According to the Bible, "God raised him from the dead," he ascended to heaven, is "seated at the right hand of the Father" and will return again to fulfill the rest of Messianic prophecy such as the Resurrection of the Dead, the Last Judgment and the final creation of the Kingdom of God.
The gospels of Matthew and Luke say that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary.
Only a little of Jesus ' childhood is written in the canonical gospels, but infancy gospels were popular in antiquity.
However, the time of Jesus ' adulthood the week before his death is written much about in the gospels.
Some of the Biblical writings of Jesus ' ministry are: his baptism, miracles, preaching, teaching, and deeds.
Christians believe the resurrection of Jesus to be the main part of their faith (see 1 Corinthians 15) and the most important event in human history, because it would show that Jesus has power over death and has the authority to give people eternal life.
Among Christian beliefs, the death and resurrection of Jesus are two main events of Christian doctrine and theology.
From what the New Testament says, Jesus was crucified, died a physical death, was buried in a tomb, and rose from the dead three days later.
The New Testament writes that several times Jesus appeared many times before his Twelve Apostles and disciples, and one time before "more than five hundred brethren at once," before Jesus ' Ascension to heaven.
Jesus ' death and resurrection are remember by Christians in their worship services, and most commonly during Holy Week, which has Good Friday and Easter Sunday in the week.
Protestantism teaches that eternal salvation is a gift that is given to a person by God 's grace.
It is sometimes called "unmerited favor."
This would mean that Salvation is God bringing humans into a right relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.
It is the belief that one can be saved (rescued) from sin and forever death.
Many Protestants believe in the "assurance of salvation" that God can put confidence in a believer that he has truly received salvation from Jesus Christ.
Catholicism teaches that although in most cases someone must be baptized a Catholic to be saved, it is sometimes possible for people to be saved who have not fully joined the Catholic Church.
Catholics normally believe in the importance of works and sacraments in getting salvation.
The Catholic Church teaches that faith is important, but it also believes that salvation also requires good works and piety, such as obedience to commands, taking the sacraments, going to church, doing penance and giving alms, saying prayers, and other things, to receive eternal life.
The formal study of theology of salvation is Soteriology.
Different denominations and traditions of Christianity believe in forms divine grace.
Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy teach the complete importance of the free will to work together with grace.
Reformed theology teaches the importance of grace by teaching that a person is completely incapable of self-redemption, but the grace of God overcomes even the unwilling heart.
Arminianism believes in a synergistic view, while Lutheran and most other Protestant denominations teach justification by grace through faith alone.
Christianity uses the Bible, a collection of many canonical books in two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament.
It is believed by Christians that they were written by people who were inspired by the Holy Spirit, and therefore it is most often believed to be the word of God.
There are some differences in Bible versions and editions throughout Christianity.
Creeds (from Latin credo meaning "I believe") are direct doctrinal statements or confessions, usually of religious beliefs.
They started as formulas used when someone was baptised.
During the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries they became statements of faith.
Many Christians accept the use of creeds, and often use at least one of the creeds given above.
A smaller number of Protestants, notably Restorationists, a movement formed in the wake of the Second Great Awakening in the 19th century of the 19th century United States, oppose the use of creeds.
Trinitarianism is the teaching that God is three different beings; the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit.
In the words of the Athanasian Creed, "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God."
Trinitarianism is the group of Christians who believe in the doctrine of Trinity.
Today, most Christian denominations and Churches believe this.
Churches have different teachings about the Trinity.
Some say the Spirit comes only from the Father.
Others say the Spirit comes both from the Father and the Son.
This is known as filioque.
Nontrinitarianism (also called Oneness) is the beliefs systems that do not believe in the Trinity.
Many different nontrinitarian views, such as adoptionism or modalism, existed in early Christianity, leading to the disputes about Christology.
Most Christians believe that human beings will receive judgement from God and are given either eternal life or eternal damnation.
This includes the "Last Judgment" as well as the belief of a judgement particular to the soul after death.
There are also some differences among Christians in this belief.
For example, in Roman Catholicism, those who die in a state of grace, go into purgatory, where they are cleansed before they can go into heaven.
Christians believe that at the second coming of Christ at the end of time, all who have died will be raised up from the dead for the Last Judgment, when Jesus will establish the Kingdom of God.
There is also the belief of Universal Reconciliation.
That is the belief that all people will someday be saved, and that hell is not forever.
Christians who believe in this view are known as Universalists.
Worship is thought by most Christians to be a very important part of Christianity all through its history.
Many Christian theologians have called humanity homo adorans, which means "worshipping," and so the worship of God is at the very center of what it means to be human.
This would mean that because God created all humanity, Christians should worship and give praise to God.
Most Christian worship has Scripture reading, talk about Scripture from a leader, singing, prayer together, and a small time for Church work.
Christians may meet in special buildings, also called Churches, or outdoors, or at schools, or anywhere Christians feel they are needed.
The main worship service in Catholic Churches is the Mass and the main worship service in many Orthodox Churches is called the Divine Liturgy.
In both of these Churches, along with the other parts of worship, the Eucharist or Communion is central.
Here a priest by prayer asks God to change a small amount of bread and wine into what Catholics and Orthodox believe is Jesus 's real body and blood, but without changing the accidents (appearance, taste, color, etc.) of the bread and wine.
Then the people each may receive a portion.
Many Protestant churches have worship services similar to the Mass, some every week, others a few times a year.
Some Protestants believe Jesus is really present at the Communion service, and some believe the bread and wine are symbols to help them remember what Jesus did
The Catholic Church has developed a short ceremony, Eucharistic Benediction, worshipping Jesus present in the Eucharist.
They also may visit a Church building to pray in the presence of the Eucharist, Eucharistic Adoration.
The Orthodox and Catholic Churches spirituality place importance on the use of human senses such as sight and on the use of beautiful things.
Catholic spirituality often involves the use of statues and other artistic representations, candles, incense, and other physical items as reminders or aids to prayer.
The Orthodox Churches also use candles, incense, bells, and icons, but not statues.
Orthodox and Catholic worship also makes use of movements, such as the Sign of the Cross, made by each person touching first the forehead, then chest, one shoulder, then the other shoulder.
There is also bowing, kneeling, and prostration in Catholic and Orthodox worship.
In Catholic belief and practice, a sacrament is a religious symbol or often a rite which shows divine grace, blessing, or sanctity for the Christian who receives it.
Examples of sacraments are Baptism and the Mass." The word is taken from the Latin word sacramentum, which was used to translate the Greek word for mystery.
The two most regularly used sacraments are Baptism and Eucharist (communion).
Most Catholics use seven Sacraments: Baptism, the ritual immersion of a candidate to welcome them into the church; Confirmation, the sealing of the Covenant; the Eucharist, a ritual where consecrated bread (discs of unleavened, toasted bread) and wine representing Jesus ' body and blood are consumed; Holy Orders, Reconciliation of a Penitent (confession), Anointing of the Sick, and Marriage.
Some Christian denominations prefer to call them ordinances.
These are the Orders from Christ to all believers found in the New Testament.
Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Eastern Christians, and traditional Protestant groups center their worship around a liturgical calendar.
Some events that are part of this calendar are the "holy days", such as solemnities which honor an event in the life of Jesus or the saints, times of fasting such as Lent, and other events, such as memoria.
Christian groups that do not follow a liturgical tradition often keep some celebrations, such as Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.
A few churches do not use a liturgical calendar.
Christianity has had a large history from the time of Jesus and his apostles to the present time.
Christianity began in the 1st century AD as a Jewish sect but quickly spread throughout the Greco-Roman world.
Although it was originally persecuted under the Roman Empire, it later became the state religion.
In the Middle Ages it spread into Northern Europe and Russia.
During the Age of Exploration, Christianity expanded throughout the world, and is now the largest religion of the world.
The religion had schisms and theological disputes that had as result three main branches: the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the Protestant churches.
People who call themselves Christians may show or live their faith in different ways.
They may also believe different things.
Through history the three main groups or "denominations" of Christianity have been the Orthodox, the Catholic and the Protestant churches.
Not all Christians use these titles.
Some believe Christianity is bigger and includes others.
Some believe Christianity is smaller and does not include all these churches.
Some of these groups could not agree on certain points about Christian teaching (called doctrine) or practice.
The first split was in the 5th century after the Church Council of Ephesus.
The council agreed Nestorianism was wrong.
The Assyrian Church of the East did not agree and split from the rest.
The argument was about the nature of Jesus.
Should he be regarded as God and human in one combined nature, or in two separate natures?
Most of the bishops, following the Pope (the Bishop of Rome), refused to stay in communion with any bishop who would not say "two separate natures".
This was also discussed at the Council of Chalcedon, about 20 years later.
The Christians who did not agree with the decision of the Council to excommunicate them, became the Non-Chalcedonian Orthodox.
The largest Non-Chalcedonian Churches are the Coptic Orthodox in Egypt, the Ethiopian Orthodox, the Armenian, and some Lebanese Orthodox Churches.
In general, these churches are known as Oriental Orthodox Churches.
Recent discussions between the Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II and the Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenouda III concluded that they believe many of the same things after all, even though the Coptic Church does not recognize the Pope of Rome as its leader.
The third split happened in the 11th century.
It is called the Great Schism.
It was mostly based on personal disagreements between the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople.
The disagreements were made worse because the two cultures often did not understand one another.
Also, many Crusaders from Western Europe behaved badly.
The Christians in Western Europe were led by the Bishop of Rome, known also as the Pope.
They are called the Catholic Church.
Most Christians in Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East belong to the Orthodox Churches, led by the Bishops of other cities or areas.
In the 15th century the invention of the printing press made it easier for more people to read and study the Bible.
This led many thinkers over the years to come up with new ideas and to break away from the Catholic Church.
They started the Protestant or Reformed Churches.
The most important Protestant leaders were Jan Hus, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.
Later some of these groups disagreed amongst themselves so that these denominations split again into smaller groups.
The main Protestant denominations today are the Baptist, Lutheran, and Calvinist Presbyterian Churches.
In England, a similar protest against the Pope, first political and later religious, led to the Church of England which has bishops and officially calls itself Reformed Catholic but is often referred to as Protestant.
The Anglican communion of churches includes several churches called "Episcopal" or "Episcopalian" because they have bishops.
Some Anglican Churches have a style of worship that is closer to the Protestant services, others worship more like Catholics, but none of them accept the Pope, or are accepted by him.
In general, the Protestant denominations differ from the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in having given up some of the traditional sacraments, having no ordained priesthood, and not having the same fondness for Mary, the mother of Jesus, that the Catholic and Orthodox churches have.
In the last two centuries, the rise of atheism and scientific challenges to the traditional Christian story of creation have caused some to believe in Creationism, as described in the Bible, and others to argue that the Bible is not literally true, but more like poetry.
With an estimated number of Christians being somewhere around to 2.2 billion, split into around 34,000 different denominations, Christianity is the world 's largest religion.
The Christian share of the world 's population has been around 33 % for the last hundred years.
This has caused Christianity to spread throughout the world, mainly in Europe and North America.
It is still the main religion of Europe, the Americas, the Philippines, and Southern Africa.
However it is becoming smaller in some areas, some of them are; Oceania (Australia and New Zealand), Northern Europe (with Great Britain, Scandinavia and other places), France, Germany, the Canadian provinces of Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec, the Western and Northern parts of the United States, and parts of Asia (especially the Middle East, South Korea, Taiwan and Macau).
In most countries in the developed world, the number of people going to church who claim to be Christians has been dropping over the last few decades.
Some believe that this is only because many no longer use regular membership in places, for example, churches, while others believe it is because people may be thinking that religion is no longer important.
Most churches have for a long time showed that they want to be tolerant with other belief systems, and in the 20th century Christian ecumenism (the uniting of Christians from different backgrounds), advanced in two ways.
One way was more cooperation between groups, such as the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of Protestants in 1910, the Justice, Peace and Creation Commission of the World Council of Churches started in 1948 by Protestant and Orthodox churches, and similar national councils, for example the National Council of Churches in Australia with Roman Catholics.
The other way was creating unions for different churches to join together.
Congregationalist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches joined together in 1925 to form the United Church of Canada, and in 1977 to form the Uniting Church in Australia.
The Church of South India was formed in 1947 by the union of Anglican, Methodist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, and Reformed churches.
And other such formations have been done by different Christian groups throughout the years.
In modern English, casinos are places associated with gambling.
These are often built on or around hotels, cruise ships, restaurants and certain other places.
There are lots of casinos in the US state of Nevada and especially in the area of Las Vegas called the "Strip".
Other places famous for their casinos is Monte Carlo in Monaco and Macau in China, but they are also prevalent in certain other parts of the world.
Khmer is the official language of Kampuchea\/Cambodia.
Its script was the base for the Thai script, although Thai does not use subscript consonants.
One thing that makes it particularly difficult for many foreigners to learn is that Khmer words are not separated in a sentence and the sounds are quite hard for foreigners to replicate.
But still each word in the sentence can be distinguished.
Also, there is not much material on Khmer, although this situation is changing.
The Khmer script is based on an ancient Indian alphabet.
It is written from left to right.
There are 35 consonants, some of which are written under other consonants.
Vowels are combined with the consonants.
The language has a subject-verb-object order.
Pronouns change based on who you are speaking to.
"Do you want to go to Siem Reap?"
A central processing unit (CPU) is an important part of almost every computer.
The CPU sends signals to control the other parts of the computer, almost like how a brain controls a body.
The CPU is an electronic machine that works on a list of things to do, called ` instructions '.
It reads the list of instructions and does (executes) each one in order.
A list of instructions that a CPU can run is a computer program.
The speed that a CPU works at is measured in hertz (Hz).
Modern processors often run so fast that gigahertz (GHz) is used instead, which means a billion cycles per second.
The CPU market for desktop (home) computers is controlled by two companies: Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (usually shortened to AMD).
There are other CPU manufacturers like ARM, IBM, VIA, MCST, ELVEES, SRISA, NTC Module, and Sun Microsystems, but their CPUs usually have more specific uses (for example in mobile phones, cars, game consoles, or in the military).
In the 20th century engineers invented many different computer architectures.
Nowadays most desktop computers use either 32-bit CPUs or 64-bit CPUs.
The instructions in a 32-bit CPU are good at handling data that is 32 bits in size (most instructions "think" in 32 bits in a 32-bit CPU).
Likewise, a 64-bit CPU is good at handling data that is 64 bits in size (and is often good at handling 32-bit data too).
The size of data that a CPU handles best is often called the word size of the CPU.
Many older CPUs from the 70s, 80s and early 90s (and some modern small CPUs) have an 8-bit or 16-bit word size.
When CPUs were invented in the middle 20th century they had many different word sizes.
Some had different word sizes for instructions and data.
The less popular sizes eventually stopped being made.
Most CPUs are microprocessors, including those that are part of a microcontroller.
When the CPU runs a computer program, it needs somewhere to store the data that the instructions operate on (the data that they read and write).
This storage is called a register.
A CPU usually has many registers.
Registers must be very fast to access (to read and write).
Therefore they are part of the CPU chip itself.
Storing all data in registers would usually make the CPU too complicated (and very expensive).
Therefore, registers usually only store the data that the CPU is working on "right now".
The rest of the data used by the program is stored outside the CPU in RAM (memory) in separate chips.
When the CPU wants to read or write some data in RAM, it outputs an address to that data.
Each byte in RAM has an address.
The size of addresses is often the same as the word size: A 32-bit CPU uses 32-bit addresses, etc. (However, smaller CPUs, like 8-bit CPUs, often have an address size that is larger than the word size.
Otherwise the maximum program length would be too short.)
Because the size of addresses is limited, the maximum amount of memory is also limited.
The 32-bit processor can usually only handle up to 4 GB of RAM.
This is the number of different bytes that can be selected using a 32-bit address (each bit can have two values - 0 and 1 - and 232 bytes is 4 GB).
A 64-bit processor might be able to handle up to 16 EB (16 exabytes, around 16 billion GB, or 16 billion billion bytes) of RAM.
The maximum amount of memory that programs can use also depends on the operating system used.
On modern computers, RAM is much slower than registers, so accessing RAM slows down programs.
To speed up memory accesses, a faster type of memory called a cache is often put between the RAM and the main parts of the CPU.
The cache is usually a part of the CPU chip itself, and is much more expensive per byte than RAM.
The cache stores the same data as RAM, but is usually much smaller.
Therefore all the data used by the program might not fit in the cache.
The cache tries to store data that is likely to be used a lot.
Examples include recently used data and data close in memory to recently used data.
Often it makes sense to have a "cache for the cache", just as it makes sense to have a cache for RAM.
In multi-level caching, there are many caches, called the L1 cache, the L2 cache, and so on.
The L1 cache is the fastest (and most expensive per byte) cache and is "closest" to the CPU.
The L2 cache is one step away and is slower than the L1 cache, etc..
The L1 cache can often be viewed as a cache for the L2 cache, etc.
The information that is stored in the cache is ` volatile '.
This means that it will disappear if the computer is turned off.
Computer buses are the wires used by the CPU to communicate with RAM and other components in the computer.
Almost all CPUs have at least a data bus - used to read and write data - and an address bus - used to output addresses.
Other buses inside the CPU carry data to different parts of the CPU.
An instruction set (also called an ISA - Instruction Set Architecture) is a language understood directly by a particular CPU.
These languages are also called machine code or binary.
They say how you tell the CPU to do different things, like loading data from memory into a register, or adding the values from two registers.
Each instruction in an instruction set has an encoding, which is how the instruction is written as a sequence of bits.
Programs written in programming languages like C and C + + ca n't be run directly by the CPU.
They must be translated into machine code before the CPU can run them.
A compiler is a computer program that does this translation.
Machine code is just a sequence of 0s and 1s, which makes it difficult for humans to read it.
To make it more readable, machine code programs are usually written in assembly language.
Assembly language uses text instead of 0s and 1s: You might write "LD A,0" to load the value 0 into register A for example.
A program that translates assembly language into machine code is called an assembler.
Even very complicated programs can be made by combining many simple instructions like these.
This is possible because each instruction takes a very short time to happen.
Many CPUs today can do more than 1 billion (1,000,000,000) instructions in a single second.
In general, the more a CPU can do in a given time, the faster it is.
One way to measure a processor 's speed is MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second).
Flops (Floating-point operations per second) and CPU clock speed (usually measured in gigahertz) are also ways to measure how much work a processor can do in a certain time.
A CPU is built out of logic gates; it has no moving parts.
The CPU of a computer is connected electronically to other parts of the computer, like the video card, or the BIOS.
A computer program can control these peripherals by reading or writing numbers to special places in the computer 's memory.
Each instruction executed by a CPU is usually done in many steps.
For example, the steps to run an instruction "INC A" (increase the value stored in register A by one) on a simple CPU could be this:
To run these steps, the CPU could have a separate module (separate electronics inside the CPU) that runs each step.
The output from one module (for example, the bits of the instruction) would be the input to the next module (for example, the instruction decoder).
A set of modules connected like this is called a pipeline.
Pipelines can be found in many other places in electronics too, not just in CPUs.
Often it is possible to run some steps from different instructions at the same time, which makes the CPU faster.
For example, we can read an instruction from memory at the same time that we decode another instruction, since those steps use different modules.
This can be thought of as having many instructions "inside the pipeline" at once.
In the best case, all of the modules are working on different instructions at once, but this is not always possible.
Modern CPUs often use a memory management unit (MMU).
An MMU is a component that translates addresses from the CPU to (usually) different RAM addresses.
When using an MMU, the addresses used in a program are (usually) not the "real" addresses where the data is stored.
This is called virtual (the opposite of "real") memory.
A few of the reasons why it is good to have an MMU are listed below:
Some newer processors have multiple cores.
This means that they have many processors built on to the same chip so that they can run many instructions at once.
While the individual cores might be slower than a single core processor, all the cores can work together to go faster.
This means that the GHz might be lower, however the overall speed of the processor will be higher.
In today 's modern computers, some processors may have up to eighteen cores and are available to all consumers, like the Intel Xeon E5-2699.
The order Carnivora is a group of mammals.
The group is divided into the "cat-like" Feliformia and the "dog-like" Caniformia.
Animals of the order Carnivora are carnivores, a term which applies to all flesh-eaters.
If one needs to refer to members of the order, then carnivorans is used.
Many species of Carnivora are actually omnivores, and a few of them, like the Giant Panda, eat mostly plants.
The order includes aquatic relatives in the superfamily Pinnipedia, the walruses and seals.
The carnivores known as Creodonts have some relation to these groups, but are placed outside the Carnivoramorpha.
The Mesonychids are another extinct group of early carnivores, which are also not in the Carnivoramorpha.
Colombia (officially called Republic of Colombia), is a big country in South America.
It is in the northwest part of that Continent and it has an area of 1.141.748 km (440,839 sq mi).
It is the only South American country with coasts on both oceans (Pacific and Atlantic).
Colombia has an extension of 9m in those oceans.
The countries that have borders on the continent with Colombia are: Venezuela (east), Brazil (southeast), Peru (south), Ecuador (southwest) and Panama (west).
The countries that have borders with Colombia on the sea are: Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti and Dominican Republic.
42,888,592 people live in Colombia.
It is the third most populated country of Latin America after Mexico and Brazil.
The capital of Colombia is Bogot.
The second major city is Medell n, a big industrial center.
The third largest city is Cali, home of many multinational companies.
The most important city of the country on the Caribbean coast is Barranquilla.
It was also the first national port.
Cartagena de Indias has a great Spanish wall of the 17th Century and an old town with buildings aged 500 years.
After these cities comes Bucaramanga, a large city near Venezuela 's border, which holds the center of the textile industry in Colombia.
The word "Colombia" is named after Christopher Columbus, the explorer who discovered the Americas.
In 1819, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama declared independence from Spain, and formed a country called "Gran Colombia".
Venezuela and Ecuador separated in 1830.
Panama continued to be part of Colombia until 1903, at which point it proclaimed independence.
The official language is Spanish, but there are many dialects spoken by minorities.
Colombia 's temperature changes with the altitude, and the temperature is different by region.
The regions around the Andes are colder than the coast, which is lower.
Because of the many altitudes, Colombia has many different fruits, vegetables and kinds of animals.
It has many valleys, beaches, plains, mountains and forests like the Amazon Rain Forest.
The top of some of the mountains in Colombia are so cold that people can ski over the equator.
The lower mountains have warmer climates.
The seashores are cooled by ocean breezes.
At sea level near the equator it is hot.
Rivers are important as waterways in the land for shipping things.
One of the most important rivers in Colombia is the Magdalena-Cauca.
The Magdelena River divides the eastern and center mountains.
It makes a fertile valley.
The Cauca River divides the center mountain range and the western ridge, making another great valley.
The Cauca is really a part of the Magdalena.
However, the two do not meet until a few miles before the Magdalena goes into the Caribbean Sea.
The population of Colombia was approximately 43 million as of 2005.
The ethnic groups of the population are:
Up to 49.6 % of the population is living below the poverty line.
There are several guerilla groups in Colombia, the FARC being the most powerful, a guerilla group responsible for kidnappings, murders, attacks, and drug-dealing.
Drug dealing is a problem the government has been trying to fight.
This creates violence in the cities.
With Operation: Jaque, Ingrid Betancourt, three Americans, and 11 soldiers were rescued from the FARC.
Most parts of Colombia are modern and the country has many roads.
All major Colombian cities have airports and there are many ports on both oceans (Pacific and Atlantic).
Because Colombia is a huge country and there are many mountains, airports are very important in the country.
There are some regions like the Amazon Forest and Dariend, where the most important way of transportation is by the rivers.
Colombia also has some very well known cities.
Colombia has made many advances in medicine.
Many foreigners come to the country to get health services, such as organ transplants or plastic surgery.
Doctor Manuel Elkin Patarroyo of Colombia discovered a medicine against malaria.
He donated his discovery to be used in Africa and Latin America.
He did not want to make business of it, instead he wanted to use it to help people.
The land where Colombia now stands has been home to people for more than 20,000 years.
The first people had many groups, cultures, and languages.
There are many tools, caves, and things of those peoples.
In Colombia, the peoples were similar to those of Asia, because the scientists say that the first men came to America from Siberia or South East Asia more than 50,000 years ago.
The peoples of Colombia were called Arawak, Caribe, and Chibcha.
But they have many other groups.
The most famous were the Muiscas.
El Dorado legend comes from the Muiscas: the king of the Muiscas used to bath in the Guatavita Lake and he used a lot of gold for it.
The Spaniards heard about and the people told them that there was a great golden city somewhere.
Since then they started to look for El Dorado.
The International Airport of Bogot is called El Dorado International Airport, because the legend was born in Colombia.
The descendants of the first peoples of Colombia live integrated with others.
Some groups live in the forest, but many live in countryside and in the cities.
The Spaniards lead by Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492.
Columbus saw the coasts of Venezuela, Colombia and Panama and he gave them his own name.
But it was Alonso de Ojeda the first to do an exploration in the area of Gulf of Dari n. After that the Spaniards founded the first European cities in the American continent: Santa Marta in 1525 and Cartagena de Indias in 1533.
It was from Colombia that the Spaniards conquered the Incas of Peru.
They founded the city of Popay n in 1536 and they conquered the Confederation of the Muiscas.
In Bacat, the capital of the Muiscas, the Spaniards founded the city of Santa Fe in 1538.
In 1550 the Spaniards declared the territory as a colony and its capital was Santa Fe de Bogot, but in the first decades it depended from Peru.
Soon after, it was declared a Viceroyalty.
Antonio Nari o was one of the most important persons to lead a movement for the independence of Colombia.
He was a politician, journalist and soldier.
Simon Bolivar was also another one of the most important person to lead a movement for the independence of Colombia.
He was a president and a colonel.
On November 11, 1810, the city of Cartagena de Indias declared its dependence from Spain.
In May 2006, President lvaro Uribe was re-elected.
His term lasted until 2010.
Uribe was the first President in Colombia to win a second election in over 100 years.
On Saturday, August 7, 2010, Juan Manuel Santos became Colombia 's latest elected president.
Santos won the election on June 20 by a landslide.
He promised to "preside over a government of national unity that will bring social prosperity for all Colombians"
Colombia is divided into 32 departments and one capital district.
The capital district is treated as a department.
Departments are divided into municipalities.
Municipalities are divided into corregimientos.
Each department has a local government with a governor and assembly directly elected to four-year terms.
Each municipality is headed by a mayor and council.
Each corregimiento by an elected corregidor, or local leader.
Colombia is known for its coffee, coal, and emeralds.
It is also the biggest supplier of plantains to the United States.
There are a few armed conflicts in Colombia.
Most rebel groups finance their operations with the trade of illegal drugs (mostly cocaine).
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama movie, starring Orson Welles in his first full-length movie.
There are rumors that the story of the movie is based on the life of famous businessmen William Randolph Hearst, Howard Hughes and Samuel Insull.
Welles said that his character, Kane, is based on more than one famous person.
In 1974 's F for Fake, he said that Kane was going to be based on Hughes, but he was later inspired by Hearst.
For this movie Orson Welles worked closely with his cinematographer Gregg Toland.
The cinematographer is the person in charge of the camera and the lights.
Together, they worked on a new style called "deep focus."
Usually, if something close to the camera is in focus, something that is far away is out of focus.
In the deep focus style, every object is in focus at the same time.
Its working title (the name of a movie used before it is finished) was RKO 281.
Many have called Citizen Kane the best movie of all time.
In 1998, it was number one on the American Film Institute 's list of 100 Years... 100 Movies.
The movie in some ways is like 1933 's The Power and the Glory.
The last living crew member was director Robert Wise (also known for making 1965 's The Sound of Music).
He died on September 14, 2005.
A code is a way of changing information into something else.
Sometimes this is done as a way of keeping a message secret.
This is called encryption or cryptography.
One source gives this explanation: a code is "a word, number or some other symbol used to represent a word, phrase or syllable in plaintext".
It is one of the earliest forms of cryptography.
Contrast code with cypher, in which the individual letters are encrypted (changed).
Sometimes it is done as an easier way of sending a message.
For example, when people on two different boats want to send a message, they may be too far away to shout, but they can send messages with a flag code.
Another code that people use is called Morse code, which changes letters to dots and dashes, like this:
Computers use codes, by changing letters into 1 's and 0 's.
This is called an ASCII code.
Some people write codes as a kind of game.
They think it is fun to make ciphers, and fun to break them.
Breaking a code means taking it apart to understand how it works, and then you can understand messages that are written in that code.
Cryptanalysis is also serious business.
Nations and other organizations have been breaking each others ciphers for many centuries.
The algorithm (code) for making a message secret is called the encryption algorithm.
To change a secret message back a decryption algorithm is needed.
Chondrichthyes or cartilaginous fishes are jawed fish with paired fins, paired nostrils, scales, two-chambered hearts, and skeletons made of cartilage rather than bone.
They are divided into two subclasses: Elasmobranchii (sharks, rays and skates) and Holocephali (chimaera, sometimes called ghost sharks).
The coast is where land meets the sea.
The coast also means the land next to the sea, which can also be called the shore, or sea-shore.
However, coast is not used to describe where rivers or lakes meet the land - it is only used to describe the sea meeting the land.
If a house is near to the coast we say it is "on the coast".
When we talk about a long part of the coast we call it "the coast-line".
Sometimes, ` coast ' can be part of a place name or the description of a large area.
For instance, the East Coast of the United States describes the all of the Eastern side of the United States that is next to the Atlantic Ocean.
In some countries like England or Australia the people sometimes use the word sea-side for the coast.
Coasts often have many living things living there and provide habitat for many animals and plants.
An example of a coast in Great Britain is the Holderness Coast near Bridlington.
This is one of Europe 's fast eroding coasts.
Catatonia means a person is awake, but does not move, talk, or react to anything but pain.
The person can stay stiff and still for hours.
A person with catatonia may look to be in a stupor (being mentally numb and in a daze).
The cause is in the nervous system; the brain and nerves.
This problem was first written about in 1874 in Die Katatonie oder das Spannungsirresein.
Catatonia can sometimes happen with mental disorders.
It can be a symptom of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression.
Catatonia may also happen when a person abuses illegal drugs or overdoses by taking too much of a drug.
Catatonia can also be caused by many different medical disorders.
Some causes are infections, such as encephalitis; autoimmune diseases; damage to the brain from strokes; and metabolic problems.
A person can also get catatonia from benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome, which happens if the person quickly stops taking benzodiazepine medications.
Catatonia can also be a bad reaction to illegal drugs.
Doctors can treat catatonia.
They usually start with medicines such as benzodiazepines.
If those medicines do not work; doctors may use shock therapy.
Antipsychotic medicines can also be used, but with safety in mind.
Sometimes they can make catatonia worse or have bad side effects.
A group of anesthetic drugs called NMDA antagonists may be helpful when benzodiazepines do n't work.
Country music (sometimes called Country & Western) is a form of music that has been enjoyed by people all over the United States for decades.
Famous singers from this genre include Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, the Judds, Dolly Parton, Glen Campbell, George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Kenny Rogers, Loretta Lynn, Randy Travis, Tanya Tucker, Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks and Toby Keith.
Country music 's strongest appeal is with American rural and small-town populations, but many American cities have a large audience.
The music also has listeners in Canada, in England, and worldwide.
The popularity of Country comes and goes with each decade.
Sometimes a new movie (like Midnight Cowboy or Urban Cowboy), hit record (like "She Believes In Me" by Kenny Rogers), or new performer (like Randy Travis in the 1980s) raises new interest.
Country music has its roots and beginnings in folk music.
The old cowboy and pioneer songs of the American frontier were popular in the early twentieth century, and so were arrangements of pop music songs by rural (or rural-sounding) performers.
Country musicians also adapted new musical instruments, like the Hawaiian steel guitar.
Modern-day Country music started in the years after World War II.
The Sons of the Pioneers and The Carter Family performed old and new songs, in a way that reminded people of singalongs and jamborees of the past.
Hank Williams is often called the first songwriter of country music.
His songs were easy to learn and remember, and their lyrics said things felt by many people.
His music is still performed today.
Some of the early rock and roll musicians, like Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley, began as country performers.
Nashville, Tennessee became the center of Country music, much like New Orleans became the center of Jazz.
The Grand Ole Opry broadcast performances by The Carter Family and others, and became an important breaking ground in Country music.
A television series, Hee-Haw, was a long-running showcase for Country performers, and was hosted by musicians Buck Owens and Roy Clark.
When cable television became popular in the United States, The Nashville Network (TNN) and Country Music Television (CMT) brought Country music videos and related programming to nationwide audiences.
(In later years, as interests changed, TNN changed its programming.
It also changed names, first to "The National Network", then to Spike TV, which is its name today.)
Country music began in the Southern United States at 1920.
And Bob Wills had developed the Western Swing.
Country-styled comedy is also popular, with writers and performers like Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, Larry the Cable Guy, and others.
Many comedians have appeared with Country acts, including Andy Griffith, Ray Stevens, and George Lindsey.
Lindsey, Lulu Roman and Junior Samples were cast members of Hee-Haw, and so were Grandpa Jones and Minnie Pearl.
Homer and Jethro and Pinkard & Bowden were duos of musicians who made parodies of Country and pop songs.
The Beverly Hillbillies, a CBS television series, included music by Flatt and Scruggs.
Members of the cast appeared in character at Country concerts, and on other television shows, to entertain audiences.
The constitution of a country (or a state) is a special type of law document that tells how its government is supposed to work.
It tells how the country 's leaders are to be chosen and how long they get to stay in office, how new laws are made and old laws are to be changed or removed based on law, what kind of people are allowed to vote and what other rights they are guaranteed, and how the constitution can be changed.
Limits are put on the Government in how much power they have within the Constitution (see Rule of Law).
On the other hand, countries with repressive or corrupt governments frequently do not stick to their constitutions, or have bad constitutions without giving freedom to citizens and others.
This can be known as dictatorship or simply "bending the rules".
A Constitution is often a way of uniting within a Federation.
The UK 's constitution is not written in one single document like many other countries ' are.
In fact, the UK 's constitution is not completely written down at all.
Some of it can be found in writing, starting with the Magna Carta of 1215 and the Bill of Rights Act 1689 and including more modern Acts of Parliament.
Other parts of it are considered common law and are made up of the decisions of judges over many hundreds of years in a system called legal or judicial precedence.
Because of this, some people say that the United Kingdom has a de facto or "unwritten" constitution.
The United States in 1787 began a trend in the writing of constitutions.
The United States Constitution is also the shortest that people are still using, and it has been changed (amended) many times over the years.
It was made after the colonists won their independence from Britain.
At first they had the Articles of Confederation but the Articles were replaced with today 's Constitution.
The Indian constitution of 1950 is the longest ever written constitution in the world.
It has 395 Articles and 12 Schedules in it, divided into 22 parts.
It has been amended more than 100 times.
The common law is a kind of legal system.
Under the common law, the law is not just made by legislation (laws created by the government) but also by the courts.
As a result, some laws and legal ideas may be created through the courts without the government playing a role.
Common law courts use the precedent of earlier courts to help them make decisions.
The common law is used in the United Kingdom and most countries that used to be colonies of the British Empire, including the United States.
Many other countries use a system called civil law, where people say that legislation is the only kind of law.
In common law countries, courts usually have more power than in civil law countries.
Common law started in England when courts decided to use tradition, custom, and precedent to help them make decisions.
A precedent is something that another court has done in the past.
By looking at decisions by earlier court, a common-law court tries to make decisions that will not surprise people and that fit in with the rest of the law.
In common law countries, when people like lawyers and judges want to know what the law is, they also look at what courts have written.
When a court decides a case, it makes a decision and then usually delivers a judgment or an opinion about what the law is.
A judgment or court 's opinion explains how the court reached its decision, and it is a guide for later courts that need to decide similar cases.
The case sets a precedent.
The judgments of higher courts will commonly tell lower courts how they must decide a case on the same or very similar facts - if so, the precedent is said to be "binding".
Even if the facts are different, the reasoning in the case may still be considered by the court as "persuasive".
Even though courts follow precedent, legislation is still important in common-law countries.
In fact, it is usually more powerful than precedent.
For example, if legislation and precedent say different or opposite things, a court will usually have to follow the legislation.
In common-law countries, many important areas of law are mostly made by precedent.
For example, in England and Wales and in most states of the United States, the law of contracts and torts is mostly made by precedent.
In a common-law country, sometimes the words common law are used to mean the law that the courts have made.
For example, a lawyer or judge might say that a case can be decided using "only common law."
This means that no legislation helps decide the case.
The words common law also sometimes mean the system of law that existed in England in the 1700s and 1800s.
At that time, England had two different court systems.
One was called equity and one was called common law.
Law was mostly for ordering people to pay money, and equity was mostly for other kinds of cases.
Today, in most places, there are not two separate systems, and courts sometimes say that they work with both common law and equity.
In evolutionary biology, a group of organisms have common descent if they have a common ancestor.
"There is strong quantitative support, by a formal test" for the theory that all living organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor.
Charles Darwin proposed the theory of universal common descent through an evolutionary process in On the Origin of Species, saying, "There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one".
p490
The last universal ancestor (LUA) (or last universal common ancestor, LUCA), that is, the most recent common ancestor of all currently living organisms, is believed to have appeared about 3.9 billion years ago.
In the 1740s, Pierre-Louis Maupertuis made the first known suggestion that all organisms may have had a common ancestor, and that they had diverged through random variation and struggle for existence.
In Essai de Cosmologie, Maupertuis noted:
Could one not say that, in the fortuitous combinations of the productions of nature, as there must be some characterized by a certain relation of fitness which are able to subsist, it is not to be wondered at that this fitness is present in all the species that are currently in existence?
Chance, one would say, produced an innumerable multitude of individuals; a small number found themselves constructed in such a manner that the parts of the animal were able to satisfy its needs; in another infinitely greater number, there was neither fitness nor order: all of these latter have perished... The species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced...
All known forms of life are based on the same fundamental biochemical organization.
Genetic information is encoded in DNA, and transcribed into RNA, then translated into proteins by (highly similar) ribosomes, with ATP, NADH and others as energy sources, etc.
The similarities include the energy carrier adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and the fact that all amino acids found in proteins are left-handed (chirality).
Furthermore, the genetic code (the "translation table" according to which DNA information is translated into proteins) is nearly identical for all known lifeforms, from bacteria to humans.
The universality of this code is generally regarded by biologists as definitive evidence in favor of the theory of universal common descent.
Analysis of the small differences in the genetic code has also provided support for universal common descent.
A statistical comparison of various alternative hypotheses has shown that universal common ancestry is significantly more probable than models involving multiple origins.
Another important piece of evidence is that it is possible to construct detailed phylogenetic trees (that is, "genealogic trees" of species) mapping out the proposed divisions and common ancestors of all living species.
In 2010 an analysis of available genetic data, mapping them to phylogenetic trees, gave "firm quantitative support for the unity of life.
... there is now strong quantitative support, by a formal test, for the unity of life.
Traditionally, these trees have been built using morphological methods, such as appearance, embryology, etc..
Recently, it has been possible to construct these trees using molecular data, based on similarities and differences between genetic and protein sequences.
All these methods produce essentially similar results.
That phylogenetic trees based on different types of information agree with each other is strong evidence of a real underlying common descent.
Some things are deduced about LUA.
It was not the very first cell, but one whose descendents survived beyond the very early stages of microbial evolution.
On the basis of their presence in eubacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes, about 325 proteins were present in the LUA.
These amino acids were probably the first to be built into proteins: alanine, asparagine, aspartic acid, glycine, histidine, isoleucine, serine, threonine, and valine.
These amino acids were also found in spark tube simulations, and analysis of the Murchison meteorite.
The other amino acids, later additions to the genetic code, include several of the most complex amino acids.
Celtic music is the name for a collection of types of music that evolved out of the folk musical traditions of the Celtic people of Western Europe.
A constellation is a group of stars, usually in a recognizable shape or pattern.
When watched together at the same time, the stars look like a picture.
The word constellation comes from Latin: con -, meaning together and stella - meaning stars.
Some examples of constellations are Ursa Major, Orion, and Andromeda.
There are only 88 constellations discovered so far by astronomers.
People used constellations to tell the difference in the colors.
Constellations were also used to group stars.
Different places in the world may have different constellations, but today astronomy has a fixed set of 88 constellations.
This set is based on the Greek set and later some southern constellations were added, for example Antlia - the air pump.
Most constellations have names that come from Greek mythology, like Orion or Andromeda.
There are 12 constellations in the Zodiac.
The Sun travels through the Zodiac once each year.
There is also a thirteenth constellation Ophiuchus - the carrier of a serpent, which the Sun goes through.
However, most people do not think that it is in the Zodiac.
A copyright is a law that gives the owner of a written document, musical composition, book, picture, or other creative work, the right to decide what other people can do with it.
Copyright laws make it easier for authors to make money by selling their works.
Because of copyright, a work can only be copied if the owner of the copyright gives permission.
When someone copies or edits a work that is protected under copyright without permission, the owner may sue for the value of the violation.
Most such cases are handled by civil law.
In more serious cases, a person who copies a work that is protected under copyright could be arrested, fined or even go to prison.
In most countries, authors automatically own the copyright to any work they make or create, as long as they do not give the copyright to someone else.
In most countries, there is no need to register the copyright, and some countries do not even have procedures to register copyrights.
But, where registration is available, many authors register anyway, especially for works that are sold for money.
That is because registration helps to prove that the copyright of a work belongs to a certain author.
If an author gets paid to make a work for someone else, the person who pays for making the work (for example, the author 's employer) will often get to own the copyright instead of the author him\/herself.
For example if a person working for a company like Microsoft creates a new computer software program at work, the Microsoft company would own the copyright.
Copyright laws usually protect owners of copyright beyond their lifetime, such as until 50 years after the author 's death.
In some countries this period has been extended to 70 years.
When the period of copyright protection has ended, the written document, musical composition, book, picture, or other creative work is in the public domain.
This means that no one owns the copyright and everyone is free to copy, use and change them without having to ask for permission or pay the owner.
There is an exception to the rules of copyright, called fair use.
This means that people can copy a very small amount of a work to use in reviews or in research reports.
An example of fair use is when newspaper writers quote several sentences from a copyright-protected document to tell the story.
Another example of "fair use" is when a university professor quotes several sentences from a copyright-protected book in a review of the book, or in a research report.
Different countries have different copyright laws.
Most of the differences are about:
Because of these differences, a certain piece of work may be under copyright in one country, and in the public domain in another.
Some people argue that copyright laws make it easier for people to make new works and think of new ideas.
After all, if authors get to make money for the time, effort and money they put in, then they will want to make more works later, and make more money.
But others believe that copyright laws make it harder to be creative.
Without copyright, other people could reuse existing work, and copyright law often stops that.
If an author wants to sell a work, it 's often easiest to give the copyright to a publisher.
The publisher will do all the selling, and in return for that service, will keep part of the money.
But the publisher has many different things to sell, and they may not want to sell the work the author made.
Authors often find it very hard to find a publisher willing to sell their work.
But without a publisher, it can be even harder for an author to sell his or her work.
In many markets, a few big publishers own the copyrights to almost everything available, and stores will not want to sell works published by small authors themselves.
Many people say copyright law helps big publishers stay in control, and keeps smaller authors out of the market.
(tragedy of the anticommons).
As a solution to these problems, groups of authors have come up with the idea of open content.
With open content, authors give everyone permission to copy, change and give away or sell their works, as long as they follow certain rules.
These rules are explained in an open content license.
Some possible open content rules are:
The term for Open Content is sometimes Copyleft.
The Catalan language is a Romance language spoken in Catalonia, Valencian Community, the eastern part of Aragon, the Balearic Islands, a small zone of Murcia (all of them in Spain), Andorra, North Catalonia (in France) and in the Italian city of L'Alguer.
These places are often called the Catalan Countries.
The language most like Catalan is Occitan.
It is also a bit similar to Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese.
There are about 6 million Catalan native speakers and about 10 million people who can speak Catalan.
The Catalan language is the 6th most spoken romance language and also is the most spoken language of the European Union that is not official.
The classical period in music was from about 1750 to 1820.
The renaissance or baroque eras included many important composers and trends.
However, the choral music of the classical era was dominated by three composers: Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).
Carbon is a very important chemical element, with a chemical symbol of C. All known life on Earth is made from it.
Carbon has atomic mass 12 and atomic number 6.
It is non-metallic, meaning that it is not a metal.
Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and some other elements like sulfur and phosphorus together form most life on earth (see Organic chemistry and List of biologically important elements).
Carbon forms a very large number of organic compounds because it can form strong bonds with itself and with other elements.
Because of the amounts of carbon living things have, all organic things are considered "carbon-based".
Also, each carbon atom can form 4 single covalent bonds.
Many carbon atoms linked together with hydrogen atoms form plastic.
Also, Carbon is the only element that can form long chain-shaped molecules.
When iron is heated up with carbon, hard steel is formed.
The name of carbon comes from Latin carbo, meaning charcoal.
In many foreign languages the words for carbon, coal and charcoal are synonyms.
Carbon in nature is found in three forms called allotropes: diamond, graphite, and fullerenes.
Graphite, with clay, is in pencils.
It is very soft.
The carbon atoms in it make rings, which are on top of each other and slide very easily.
Diamonds are the hardest natural mineral.
Fullerenes are a "soccer ball" shape of carbon.
They are mostly of interest to science.
A special, man-made, tube-shaped allotrope of carbon is the carbon nanotube.
Carbon nanotubes are very hard, so they might be used in armor.
Nanotubes might be useful in nanotechnology.
There are 10 million known carbon compounds.
A whole type of Chemistry, organic chemistry, is about carbon and its compounds.
Carbon makes many types of compounds.
Hydrocarbons are molecules with carbon and hydrogen.
Methane, Propane, and many other fuels are hydrocarbons.
Many of the substances that people use daily are organic compounds.
A radioactive isotope of carbon, carbon-14, can be used to figure out how old some objects are or when something died.
As long as something is on the surface of the earth and taking in carbon, the amount of carbon-14 stays the same.
When an object stops taking in carbon, the carbon-14 amount goes down.
Because the half-life (how long it takes for half of a radioactive isotope to go away) of carbon-14 is 5730 years, scientists can see how old the object is by how much carbon-14 is left.
Carbon is in many places in the universe.
It was first made in old stars.
Carbon is the fourth most common element in the sun.
Almost all of the atmosphere of Mars is Carbon dioxide.
Carbon is important to the human body and other living things, and it is the second most common element in the human body, at 23 % of all body weight.
It is also a key part of many biological molecules (molecules used in life).
Most of the carbon on Earth is coal.
Graphite is in many (typically desert) areas, including Sri Lanka, Madagascar, and Russia.
Diamonds are rare and are found largely in Africa.
Carbon is also in some meteorites.
Computer data storage is the name for a number of components of a computer.
The main purpose of these components is to store data.
The central processing unit is then able to fetch and change the data.
In most computers, there is a computer memory hierarchy: Memory that is "closer" to the CPU is usually faster to access, but it is also smaller; data that is stored in this kind of memory usually needs electrical power to keep the data.
Memory that is farther away is usually slower to access, but also bigger.
Examples for this kind of data are classical storage media, such as hard drives or USB flash drives.
Some media offer even more capacity, but accessing them is very slow.
Examples for such media are tape drives.
Modern CPUs have registers that can store data, they also often have several levels of cache.
Finally, there is the main memory the CPU can access.
These three are usually referred to as Primary data storage.
Secondary storage is usually not directly accessible by the CPU, and data needs to be transferred to primary storage to be available.
Secondary storage includes hard drives and non-volatile random-access memory.
Tertiary storage is used for archival and backup; very often it is copied to secondary storage before use.
Software is sometimes distributed by tertiary media such as magnetic tape and CD-ROM.
Computer software (often called just software) is made of one or more computer programs.
Sometimes it means one specific program, or it can mean all the software on a computer, including the applications and the operating system.
Applications are programs that do a specific thing, such as a game or a word processor.
The operating system (Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, Linux, etc.) is software that helps the applications run, and controls the display and the keyboard.
The word software was first used in the late 1960s to show the difference from computer hardware, which are the parts of a machine that can be seen and touched.
Software is the instructions that the computer follows.
Before compact discs (CDs) or Internet downloads, software came on various computer data storage media like paper punch cards, magnetic discs or magnetic tape.
If you compare computers to music and musical instruments you can think of hardware as being the instruments and software being the musical notes.
The word firmware is sometimes used to describe a style of software that is made specially for a particular type of computer (or other electronic device) and is usually stored on a Flash memory or ROM chip in the computer.
Firmware usually refers to a piece of software that directly controls a piece of hardware, for example the firmware for a CD drive or the firmware for a modem.
Computer software can be put into categories based on common function, type, or field of use.
There are three broad classifications:
Programming is telling a computer how to do certain things by giving it instructions.
These instructions are called programs.
A person who writes instructions is a computer programmer.
These instructions come in different languages; they are called programming languages.
Sometimes programmers use special software, such as IDEs, which have many features to help them to make programs, and sometimes they use simpler software, called a text editor, which only gives them a place to type.
There are many types of programming languages.
A program is a set of instructions for the computer to follow.
Making these instructions in "computer form" would be tedious and difficult, so instructions are written in a language similar to English, which has to be turned into "computer form" instructions so the computer can follow them.
A compiler is what we call the translator from the half-English language to the computer language.
Some languages, called interpreted languages, use interpreters instead of compilers.
Once a program has been compiled, the instructions in "machine form" are written into a file that contains a series of numbers that the computer can understand.
These files are generally called "executables".
These machine-instructions will be loaded into the computer 's memory so that the CPU can run them when the executable is opened.
In the event that data is not transferred correctly, it can result in data loss.
A variable is a piece of the program that can be changed.
Variables can include information added by the user, or answers that are found as a result of a calculation.
Conditionals are parts of the program that work if something about the program is true.
If that part is not true, then the program wo n't have it work.
A common way for a conditional to be done is with an "If Statement."
Here is an example of an if statement in the Perl programming language.
What it does is it checks to see if the name variable is Bill.
If the name variable is Bill, then it will print out the words "Hi Bill!".
Sometimes, a programmer might want to have the if statement do something else if the first part of it is not true.
This is known as an else block.
Here is an example of an else block in the Perl programming language.
And sometimes, the programmer might want to have multiple things for the if statement to do.
For example, they may have the if block run if something is true, but will have parts of the if statement known as else if blocks that will run if the first part does n't work, but if it works somewhere else.
In the Perl programming language, else if is spelled like this, "elsif."
Other languages might have it spelled like "else if" however.
But for Perl, it is spelled like "elsif."
Else If blocks will only run if their condition is true, just like the first if block.
An if statement can have as many else if statements as the programmer needs.
If the if block, and none of the else if blocks are true, then the plain "else" statement will be used by the program.
In the program, a comment is information that is meant to be read by people who are reading the program.
Comments have a special symbol in front of them that tells the computer that they are comments and should not be read as code.
Comments are used to explain how a certain part of a program works.
This is helpful when multiple people are working on the same program, and if they need to work on a section where someone else was working on.
If the programmer that was working on it first left behind comments for any other programmer that works on it later, it will help them know faster what is going on in the program.
Here is an example of programming comments in the C (programming language).
In C, the two slash symbols" \/ \/" known as a forward slashes, are used.
With the comments, a person can read the code and know what is going on.
Sometimes, a programmer may need to remove something from the code, but for many different reasons, they may not want to just simply delete it.
An easy solution is to use the comment symbol.
The computer will think that the code is just comments, rather than actual code, but the programmer will still be able to see it and read it.
Here is an example of that in the Perl programming language.
In Perl, the" #" symbol is used for comments, instead of forward slashes" \/ \/" like in the C (programming language).
Charlemagne (Latin: Carolus Magnus, English: Charles the Great, German: Karl der Gro e, Dutch: Karel de Grote) (ca.
742 or 747 28 January, 814) was the king of the Franks who started the Holy Roman Empire.
He was crowned as the Emperor in 800.
He was the older son of King Pippin III of the Carolingian dynasty.
When Pippin died, Charlemagne and his brother Carloman ruled together.
When Carloman died in 771 Charlemagne became the only ruler of the Franks.
In 800, on Christmas Day, Pope Leo III made him an emperor.
The Franks one of the Germanic peoples who had moved their homes over the River Rhine into the Roman Empire as it was falling apart were, by the year 700, the rulers of Gaul, and a lot of Germania east of the Rhine.
They also protected the Papacy and the Roman Catholic faith.
When their king Pepin the Short died, his sons, Charlemagne and Carloman were chosen to share the kingdom.
They divided it into two parts: one half for Charlemagne, and the other for Carloman.
Carloman died on December 4, 771, leaving Charlemagne as the leader of the whole Frankish kingdom.
He was king of the Franks from 768, and king of the Lombards from 774.
He was crowned Imperator Augustus (Emperor) in Rome on Christmas Day by Pope Leo III in 800, starting the Holy Roman Empire, that they hoped would be a kind of second Western Roman Empire (while the Byzantines in Constantinople were still keeping up the Eastern Roman empire).
With many wars, Charlemagne spread his empire across much of Western Europe.
Charlemagne fought in many wars over the course of his reign.
He is known for using his sword, Joyeuse, in each of the thirty years of war and the 18 battles he fought in.
He also finally managed to conquer Saxony, something the Roman Emperor Augustus could not do 800 years earlier.
He was able to convert the Saxons to Catholic Christianity.
He also had many schools built so his people could learn.
However, he also killed thousands of those who failed to convert.
Charlemagne 's politics and plans failed, which led to low self-esteem.
His last years were spent in bed in deep depression.
He died in 814, leaving his kingdom to his only son, Louis the Pious.
The descendants of Charlemagne are called Carolingians.
His family line died out in Germany in 911 and in France in 987.
A carbon nanotube is an allotrope of carbon that is shaped like a tube of carbon atoms.
Carbon nanotubes are very tough and hard to break, but still relatively light.
Because of their high strength, carbon nanotubes may one day be used for bulletproof armor and other uses needing hard, lightweight materials.
Some carbon nanotubes also let electricity through them.
Certain nanotubes may be up to 1,000 times better at conducting electricity than metals like copper and silver.
Czech Republic is a country in Central Europe, sometimes also known as Czechia.
The capital and the biggest city is Prague.
The currency is the Czech Crown (koruna esk - CZK).
1 is about 27 CZK.
The president of the Czech Republic is Milo Zeman.
The Czech Republic 's population is about 10.5 million.
The local language is Czech language.
The Czech language is a Slavic language.
It is related to languages like Slovak and Polish.
In 1993 the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that the name Czechia be used for the country outside of formal official documents.
This has not caught on in English usage.
Czech Republic has no sea; its neighbor countries are Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and Poland.
Its history dates from the 9th century AD, for a long time it was one of the most powerful countries in Central Europe.
Later on it was the biggest, most populated and richest country of the First Reich, where many Emperors started their career.
Under the conditions of the Treaty of Vienna 1515 parts of the Czech Republic, then in the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary came under Habsburg rule after the death of Louis the Jagiellon in 1526.
They stayed a part of the Habsburg dynasty rule until 1918.
The area of the today 's Czech Republic was a part of Czechoslovakia (current area of Czech republic and Slovak republic) from 1918 to 1992.
Czechoslovakia became independent in 1918 from Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The first Czechoslovakian president was Tom Garrigue Masaryk.
In 1968 invasion arrived by Warsaw pact and for the next 41 years Czechoslovakia was Communist state.
In November 1989 Czechoslovakia returned to a liberal democracy through the peaceful "Velvet Revolution".
Czechoslovakia peacefully split into two countries (Czech Republic and Slovakia) in 1993.
Czech Republic has been a member of the European Union since May 1, 2004 and a member of NATO since March 12, 1999.
The highest point in the country is Sn ka at 1602 m.
There are four national parks in the Czech Republic.
The oldest is Krkono e National Park.
The others are umava National Park, Podyj National Park, Bohemian Switzerland.
In 1949 communist government created 13 centralized regions instead of historical countries.
In 1960 was regions recreated and there were only 8 regions.
In 2000 was created 14 regions with their own regional self-government.
The Czech Republic has one of the least religious populations in the world.
According to the 2011 census, 34.2 % of the population stated they had no religion, 10.3 % was Roman Catholic, 0.8 % was Protestant (0.5 % Czech Brethren and 0.4 % Hussite), and 9.4 % followed other forms of religion both denominational or not (of which 863 people answered they are Pagan).
45.2 % of the population did not answer the question about religion.
Czechoslovakia (Czech: eskoslovensko, Slovak: eskoslovensko\/after 1990 esko-Slovensko) was a country in Europe that existed from 1918 until 1993.
In mid 1938 Nazi Germany took over Czechoslovakia and split off Slovakia.
After World War II the USSR kept part of eastern Czechoslovakia so that they could have a border with Hungary.
The USSR also kept parts of Poland and Romania.
All four of these countries were in the USSR 's sphere of influence.
The USSR thought that this meant they could make sure the countries did what they wanted.
In 1968 the USSR thought that the government of Alexander Dubcek was moving away from communism and leaving the Warsaw Pact, and invaded Czechoslovakia.
In 1989 Czechoslovakia peacefully removed the Communist dictatorship in the Velvet Revolution.
On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Both countries separated in peace.
Computer science is the study of how to manipulate, manage, transform and encode information.
There are many different areas in computer science.
Some of the areas consider problems in an abstract way.
Some areas need special machines, called computers.
A person who works with computers will often need mathematics, science, and logic in order to make and use computers.
This is so that they can find new and easier ways to do things, and the way to approach problems with this information.
Computers can do some things easily (for example: simple math, or sorting out a list of names from A-to-Z).
But computers can not answer questions when there is not enough information, or when there is no real answer.
Also, computers may take too much time to finish long tasks.
For example, it may take too long to find the shortest way through all of the towns in the USA - so instead a computer will try to make a close guess.
A computer will answer these simpler questions much faster.
Algorithms are complicating steps of instructions describing how to complete a task, such as solving a problem.
Think about playing cards, for example.
A computer scientist wants to sort the cards.
First he wants to sort them out by color.
The computer scientist may see different ways to sort the playing cards.
He must now think about of how he will do it.
When he decides, he has created an algorithm.
After making the algorithm, the scientist needs to test whether the algorithm always does what it should.
Then, the scientist can see how well his program sorts the cards.
A simple but very slow algorithm could be: drop the cards, pick them up, and check whether they are sorted.
If they are not, do it again.
This method will work, but it will often take a very long time.
A person may do this better by looking through all the cards, finding the first card (2 of diamonds), and putting it at the start.
After this, he looks for the second card, and so on.
This works much faster, and does not need much space.
This sorting algorithm is a selection sort.
Computer science began during World War II and separated from the other sciences during the 1960s and 1970s.
Now, computer science uses special methods of doing things, and has its own special words.
It is related to electrical engineering, mathematics, and language science.
Computer science looks at the theoretical parts of computers.
Computer engineering looks at the physical parts of computers (hardware), and software engineering looks at the use of computer programs and how to make them.
Creationism is the belief that the universe was created in the way described in religious books.
According to Genesis, God directly created life from the nothingness that was before, by fixing the chaos that was.
Other religions have different Creation myths.
The first approach is known as creatio ex nihilo, which is the Latin name for creation from nothing.
The idea that God created the world has been taught for thousands of years by writers such as Augustine of Hippo.
Creationism as it is known today started in the 19th century by fundamentalist Protestants who were opposed to the theories that scientists began to put forward about geology and evolution.
In the 20th century, creationist movements also started in Islam and Judaism.
Creationists usually do not believe that all of today 's living things came about from simple organisms changing or evolving slowly over time.
They believe that life was created much as it is today, and that one form of life can not change into another.
While biologists and paleontologists say that fossils (the remains of living things that died long ago) are different from the life we see today, and can be put into order to show changes over time, Creationists argue that life was created during a short time in its current form.
They point to the Flood of Noah to account for most rock formations and most fossils.
Young Earth Creationism is the belief that God created the earth roughly 6,000 or 10,000 years ago as told in Genesis.
Young Earth Creationists believe that God created the world in six days (with God resting on the seventh) as the Book of Genesis says.
Young Earth Creationism says that Noah 's flood is important to creationism.
They argue that "the first buried fossils of each group are complete and complex (complicated), strong support for the biblical concept (idea) that each kind of life was created well designed to multiply after its own kind."
They think that the Bible is literally true (see Biblical inerrancy).
Some people say a problem with this is that fossils appear in layers called strata.
If fossils were of animals drowned in the flood scientists think they would be mixed together.
Christian creationists say this happened because of the Noahic Flood, and point to fossils of animals that died quickly.
They offer many defenses.
Some of these are:1.
Fossils that were buried quickly, as in Lagerst tten.
One fossil Creationists talk about is where on fish is eating another fish when it was buried.2.
Polystrate fossils are fossils that go through multiple rock layers.
Christians say this ca n't happen if the rock layers were formed quickly3.
Bent rock layers are rock layers that are bent in a way that Christians say can not happen over millions of years.
Christians say there are a lot of these.
Other creationists believe God created everything between 13,000 and 14,000 million years ago.
This is called Old Earth Creationism.
Creationists point to the perfection of Earth 's size, shape, and distance as designed by God, and Earth 's imperfections as proofs that the Earth is dirtied by humans ' sin.
The term creationism can be used with more than one meaning.
Liberal Christians do not believe in Biblical inerrancy and say God used evolution to create mankind and other life.
This idea is called theistic evolution.
Islamic creationism is the belief that the universe (including humanity) was directly created by Allah as in the Qur ` an.
Currently, Islam takes religious texts literally.
Many scholars say that Genesis is a corrupted version of God 's message.
There is also a creation myth in the Qu ` ran, but it is more vague than Genesis.
This allows for more interpretation.
Several liberal movements within Islam generally accept the scientific positions on the age of the earth, the age of the universe and evolution.
Islam also has its own form of Theistic evolution, which says that mainstream scientific analysis of the origin of the universe is supported by the Qur ` an.
Many liberal Muslims believe in evolutionary creationism.
Khalid Anees, president of the Islamic Society of Britain attended a conference called ` Creationism: Science and Faith in Schools '.
During that conference, he made points including the following: There is no contradiction between what is revealed in the Koran and natural selection and survival of the fittest.
However, some Muslims, such as Adnan Oktar, do not agree that one species can develop from another.
Other Muslims do believe that one species can develop from another.
But there is also a growing movement of Islamic creationism.
Like the movement in Christianity, Islamic creationists are concerned that the findings of evolutionary theory might contradict what is written in the Qu ` ran.
"Do not the Unbelievers see that the skies (space) and the earth were joined together, then We clove them asunder and We created every living thing out of the water.
Will they not then believe?"
"Then turned He to the sky (space) when it was smoke, and said unto it and unto the earth: Come both of you, willingly or loth.
They said: We come, obedient."
"And it is We Who have constructed the sky (space) with might, and it is We Who are steadily expanding it."
"On the day when We will roll up the sky (space) like the rolling up of the scroll for writings, as We originated the first creation, (so) We shall reproduce it; a promise (binding on Us); surely We will bring it about."
The Bah ' Faith considers the creation narratives in previous Abrahamic religions to be symbolic and not literal.
Bah ' Faith also accepts that the Earth is ancient.
Baha ` ullah existed at the same time as Charles Darwin, so was aware of Darwin 's works.
Religious communities in the United States encourage the inclusion of supernatural explanations of the origins of both life and the universe as a whole.
Evolution was not included in school textbooks until the 1960s.
In 1987, the United States Supreme Court decided creationism was not scientific, and should not be taught in public schools.
A colloid may be a mixture of one substance that may spread out evenly inside another substance.
They may be in two different phases or states of matter.
One substance can be the dispersion medium, such as water or gas.
The other is kind of dispersed medium, sometimes called the ` internal phase '.
This is never tiny solid particles.
Otherwise, if the dispersion medium is a gas, then the internal phase may be either tiny particles or tiny droplets of a liquid.
Definition: A colloid is a substance microscopically dispersed evenly throughout another substance.
The dispersed-phase particles have a diameter between about 5 and 200 nanometers.
Cooking is a process to make food ready to eat by heating it.
The place where people do it is a kitchen.
The heat can be made by fire using wood or charcoal, with a stove that uses propane or natural gas, or with a stove that uses electricity.
An oven is a part of a stove that is like a box.
People also build ovens out of clay or bricks.
There are several different ways to cook food.
We boil food by cooking it in water.
We fry food by cooking it in hot butter, fat or oil.
We bake food by keeping it hot in an oven.
We roast or grill food by holding it over a hot fire.
People often cook meat by boiling, roasting or grilling it.
People bake bread.
Some breads are fried.
Usually we cook the food in some kind of pot or pan.
Sometimes people cook food by putting it directly into the fire, by wrapping the food in leaves before they put it into the fire, or holding it over a fire with a piece of wood.
Before foods are cooked, we say they are raw.
Some foods are good to eat raw.
Other foods are not good for the body when they are raw, so they must be cooked.
Some foods are good to eat either raw or cooked and can be used in different recipes.
A person whose job it is to cook food may be called a cook or a chef.
However, the word cooker means a machine or tool that a cook might use to cook food, such as a rice cooker.
To many people, cooking is an art.
To many other people, it is a job.
Cooking as an art is preparing the food so it tastes and looks really good.
There is a large economy for cooking in the world.
Restaurants hire skilled cooks for amounts of money and customers pay for meals.
A card game is any game played with playing cards.
Some common card games are poker, bridge, blackjack, and solitaire.
There are trading card games like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!
that use special packs.
These games often involve fighting role-play.
Video games are electronic games played on a video screen (normally a television, a built-in screen when played on a handheld machine, or a computer).
There are many types, or genres, of these games: role-playing games; shooters, first-person shooters, side-scrollers, and platformers are just a few.
Video games usually come on CDs, DVDs or digital download.
Many games used to come on cartridges.
A specialised device used to play a video game at home is called a console.
There have been many types of consoles and home computers used to play video games.
Some of the first were the Atari 2600, the Sega Master System and Nintendo Entertainment System in the 1980s.
Newer video game consoles are the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Wii U. The best selling video game console of all time is the PlayStation 2, made by Sony.
People can also use PCs to play games, which are sometimes called PC games.
The older consoles do not have new games developed for them often, although console games are emulated for PCs (see emulator).
This means that new computers can play many old console games along with games made just for new computers.
Older games are often more popular emulated than when they were first on sale, because of the ease of download.
People can play portable video games anywhere.
Mobile devices (running operating systems such as iOS or Android) also can download games, making them portable game machines.
Mobile phones have many games, some of them using a mobile emulator for games from consoles.
Competitions of video game players are called electronic sports.
Sony 's PlayStation Portable (PSP) came out in 2004.
Along with Nintendo 's Dual Screen (DS) in 2004, and now the new Nintendo DSi XL, which is an advancement from their original Nintendo DSi.
Nintendo also released the 3DS, which is the first handheld 3D console, and the 2DS.
PlayStation Vita has had its first release in Japan on November 18, 2012 and in the North-America on February 4, 2013.
The first video game ever is often said to be a computer game called Spacewar!.
In fact, some ideas of video games can be found before people made Spacewar!.
In the 1950s, when the first computers began to be made, three people had some ideas to create the basis of actual video games.
In 1951, Ralph Baer, an American engineer of Loral Electronics, tried to create "the best television", proposing to add a gaming module, but his employer did not like his idea.
Even if his idea was never realized, he is the first man to have thought of the idea of video games, later creating the first video game console, the Odyssey.
Later, in 1952, A.S Douglas, of the Cambridge University in the UK, made a video game on a computer in order to illustrate one of his speeches.
The game, called OXO, was a tic-tac-toe game, with two players (the person itself and the opponent, the computer).
In 1953, Willy Higinbotham made a game called Tennis For Two, similar to the later Pong, to entertain visitors to Brookhaven National Laboratory.
One of the most famous and one of the earliest video games ever is called Space Invaders.
Space Invaders was made in 1978 as a coin operated arcade game but a version has been made for almost every game console and home computer ever available.
The Cambrian is the first geological period of the Palaeozoic era.
It lasted from 541 million years ago to 485.4 million years ago.
Before it came the Ediacaran, and after it the Ordovician.
Biologists have learned quite a lot about the soft parts of Cambrian animals.
This is because places have been found where soft parts of organisms are preserved as well as their more resistant shells.
This means our understanding of the Cambrian biota is better than that of some later periods.
Life on Earth changed greatly during the Cambrian period.
Before the Cambrian, life was mostly small and simple.
Complex organisms (metazoa) evolved during the Proterozoic era.
But during the Cambrian period, some organisms used carbonate minerals for shells, so they had hard parts which could become fossils.
There were many different kinds of life during the Cambrian period.
This diversification of lifeforms was relatively rapid, and is called the Cambrian explosion.
This adaptive radiation produced the first members of the main groups of animals, called phyla.
Almost all of this new life was in the oceans.
There was little life on land except a layer of microbes.
There were shallow seas near several continents, because a supercontinent called Pannotia had broken into smaller pieces.
The seas were warm, and there was no ice at the North and South Pole.
Many animals with hard shells appeared for the first time during the beginning of the Cambrian.
At the start of the Cambrian, the earlier animals (the Ediacaran biota) may have become extinct.
It seems these older life forms were affected by new types which burrowed into the sea floor.
This changed the conditions of life for the older types.
The burrowing must have disturbed the mat of bacteria and algae which covered the sea-floor.
About this time we find the first examples of many phyla.
There are also some fossil traces on what was land at the time, so perhaps a few Cambrian organisms did leave the water.
Fossils from the Cambrian period sometimes show what the soft parts were like, unlike most fossils where the soft parts disappear.
Fossils from the Burgess Shale in Ontario, Canada are examples of fossils with soft parts.
Here are some life forms that first appeared in the Cambrian period, with the oldest ones first:
It is not always clear which phylum a fossil should be put into.
So there are some fossils which are still being discussed, years after they were discovered.
Concrete is an important material for making different buildings and structures.
It is a composite made of Portland cement, sand, gravel or aggregate, and water in varying proportions depending on the task.
Concrete is used more than any other man-made material in the world.
As of 2006, about 7.5 billion cubic meters of concrete are made each year more than one cubic meter for every person on Earth.
The ingredients are mixed together into a paste, a bit like making dough for bread.
The concrete is then poured into a frame.
After a few hours it sets hard.
Concrete solidifies due to a chemical reaction known as hydration.
The water reacts with the cement, which bonds the other components together, eventually creating a strong stone-like material.
Concrete is used to make pavements, pipe, architectural structures, foundations, motorways, bridges, multi-story parking, walls, footings for gates, fences and poles and even boats.
Its biggest advantage is that it bonds together bricks and stones better than any other method known to mankind.
Concrete is strong in compression but weak in tension.
For some purposes it needs to be reinforced with steel rods.
Reinforced concrete buildings can be made to link all the parts together, the foundations, walls, floors and roofs, but concrete construction does not make buildings earthquake-proof.
Concrete is as old as 5600 BC.
It was not invented by Romans, but much used by them.
Some kinds of concrete are waterproof, and some kinds even set underwater.
There are many additives to make concrete set faster, set slower, set stronger, reduce corrosion and so on.
The Romans discovered that adding volcanic ash produced a concrete which would set under water.
The Romans also knew that adding horse hair made concrete less liable to crack as it set, and that adding blood made it more frost-resistant.
Modern concrete was made in 1756 by British engineer John Smeaton.
He added pebbles and powdered brick to the cement.
In 1824, English inventor Joseph Aspdin invented Portland cement, which has remained the main cement used in concrete production.
He burnt ground-up limestone and clay together.
The burning process changed the chemical properties of the materials and Aspdin created a stronger cement than plain crushed limestone alone could produce.
The 19th century saw the invention of reinforced concrete by French gardener Joseph Monier in 1849 (patented in 1867).
with improvements by Fran ois Coignet.
This is concrete with steel bars in it, called rebars (reinforcing bars).
Glass fiber or plastic fiber is beginning to replace steel bars.
Many modern chemicals can be added to the mixture to achieve special objectives.
` Superplasticizers ' are chemicals which improve workability, which means the ability to shape the concrete before it has set.
Pigments can change the dull gray color.
Corrosion inhibitors can reduce rusting on the steel bars.
` Air entrainment ' is blowing little bubbles in the concrete before it sets.
This helps the concrete survive the freezing and thawing of a cold climate.
Blast furnace slag can be mixed with concrete.
It turns the color into almost pure white and makes the concrete stronger.
A condom is a thin cover that is put on a man 's penis and used during sexual intercourse.
It is normally made of latex.
Condoms are a form of birth control, they can prevent a pregnancy.
They can also prevent the spread of certain sexually transmitted infections, such as gonorrhea, syphilis, or HIV.
Another name for a condom is prophylactic sheath.
In 2009, most condoms were made of latex.
For people with latex allergy, plastic condoms are available.
The first condoms were made of tissue paper.
Later models were made of the intestines of animals, such as sheep.
Such condoms can still be found sometimes.
Certain people prefer sheepskin condoms over latex ones, because sheepskin condoms can transfer body warmth better.
However they do not prevent diseases as effectively as regular condoms.
Condoms are rolled up when they are packaged, and are meant to be rolled over an erect penis.
They are most commonly made of latex, but are available in other materials.
Condoms normally have an expiration date on them.
Condoms weaken after this date, and may not work properly.
Condoms are also not designed to be used more than once.
It is important to know how to use a condom before using one.
If a mistake is made, the condom may not work.
This happens a lot.
When using a condom for the first time, it could help to try using it alone to get familiar with condoms without any danger.
Nowadays women also can use condoms.
Like male condoms, they increase protection for partners from pregnancy and STD 's.
Female condoms look like a sheath with a flexible ring on both sides of this sheath.
With these rings the condom is attached to the vagina.
It covers the vagina and cervix to prevent sperm from getting inside the woman 's uterus.
It is necessary to know that female and male condom should not be used at the same time.
In this case both condoms may rub against each other and this will result in failure.
The oldest condoms ever found were from the 1640s.
They were made from animal and fish intestines.
There are two ways to see how effective condoms are.
They are method effectiveness, where how many couples that use the condom every time they have sex properly do not get pregnant are looked at; and actual effectiveness, where the number of people that use condoms either correctly or incorrectly and do not get pregnant are looked at.
Most studies show results of effectiveness over a year.
The method failure rate of condoms is 2 % per year.
The actual failure rate is different in different places, and the rates can be anywhere between 10 and 18 % per year.
Other sexually-transmitted infections may be affected as well, but they could not draw definite conclusions from the research they were working with.
In particular, these include STIs associated with ulcerative lesions that may be present on body surfaces where the condom does not cover, such as human papillomavirus (HPV), genital herpes simplex (HSV), chancroid, and syphilis.
If contact is made with uncovered lesions, transmission of these STIs may still occur despite appropriate condom use.
Additionally, the absence of visible lesions or symptoms can not be used to decide whether caution is needed.
An article in The American Journal of Gynecologic Health showed that "all women who correctly and consistently used Reality were protected from trichomonas vaginalis" (referring to a particular brand of female condom).
The most common reason for a condom failing is that the user has not put it on properly.
A condom can also fail because it has been damaged, because the latex has weakened, or because it has come off the penis during sexual intercourse.
Something else that can cause a condom to not work as it should, is sabotage.
This is when one of the partners wants a baby, but the other one does not.
Usually they pierce a condom with a sharp object, making the condom useless.
Some people see it as not ethical, because one of the two sex partners does it without the other one 's knowledge.
There are websites that show how to do it, if the woman wants a baby, but the man does not.
One method of testing condoms for microscopic holes involves placing the condom being tested over one conducting form with another on the other side of the condom.
If the condom does not prevent an electric current from flowing between the two conducting forms, it fails the test.
Holes in condoms are unlikely if proper handling conditions (see below) are followed.
Country codes are in mostly times created by few letters or numbers that represent geographical codes (geocodes) of countries that use certain country code, it is in use in data processing and communications.
There are few different systems created for this.
The most known is ISO 3166-1.
The term country code in many times refers to international dialing codes, the E. 164 country calling codes.
Cladistics is the method of classifying organisms into groups called clades.
A clade (Greek = branch) is a group of organisms with a common ancestor and all its descendants (and nothing else).
Such a clade is monophyletic.
The term ` clade ' was coined by English biologist Julian Huxley.
Birds, dinosaurs, crocodiles, and all other descendants (living or extinct) of their most recent common ancestor form a clade.
In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single branch on the tree of life, a monophyletic group.
Biological classification needs such a natural group of organisms to be put together and given a taxonomic name.
This brings classification in line with phylogeny (how living things evolved).
In cladistics, clades are the only acceptable units.
Some versions of cladistics have been the subject of controversy.
p226
The term clade was introduced in 1958 by Julian Huxley, cladistic by Cain and Harrison in 1960, and cladist (for an adherent of Hennig 's school) by Mayr in 1965.
Hennig referred to his own approach as phylogenetic systematics.
From the time of his original formulation until the end of the 1980s cladistics remained a minority approach to classification.
In the 1990s it rapidly became the dominant method of classification in evolutionary biology.
Computers made it possible to process large quantities of data about organisms and their characteristics (traits).
At about the same time the development of effective sequence analysis techniques made it possible to apply cladistic methods of analysis to biochemical and molecular features of organisms as well as to anatomical ones.
For some decades in the mid to late twentieth century, a commonly used methodology was numerical taxonomy.
p221 This made no attempt to resolve phylogeny, only similarities.
The weakness of this approach was that it left out the connection between classification and evolution.
Phylogenetic nomenclature is a way of giving names to the groups (clades) that have been decided on by cladistic methods.
It differs in many ways from Linnaean nomenclature.
Critics of phylogenetic nomenclature include Ashlock, Mayr, and Williams.
Monophyly is defined differently in evolutionary biology and cladistics.
In evolutionary biology, the term monophyletic refers to a group of organisms descended from its most recent common ancestor.
A monophyletic group may include all or only a part of the descendants of the common ancestor.
The ancestor may be a taxon of various ranks.
In cladistics, by contrast, a monophyletic group is a group consisting of all the inferred descendants of an ancestral species.
In cladistics, a group that includes only some of the descendants of the ancestral species is not monophyletic but paraphyletic.
The objective of cladistics is to block out monophyletic clades.
Therefore the elements of a paraphyletic group must be rearranged so that they do form one or several clades.
Degree of similarity is not a criterion in grouping organisms into clades.
A calendar is a tool used to decipher the time of an event and for planning things that have not happened yet.
This is done using days, called calendar dates.
The dates are usually made based on how things in the sky seem to move.
The year and month are based on motions of the Sun and moon.
By knowing what day something happened or will happen, people have an easier life.
Calendar systems have a beginning time or era.
The era is often a religion-based event, such as the birth of Jesus, but it may be a political event such as a coronation or the founding of a state.
Dates that are counted from the coronation are called "regnal".
The Japanese calendar for example uses both a state era and a monarch era.
The calendar most used today is the Gregorian calendar.
There are roughly 15 20 calendar systems in use today, from many different parts of the world.
Physical cosmology is a branch of astronomy.
It looks at large structures in the universe.
It wants to explain how the universe came to be what it is today by using axioms of our current astronomy knowledge.
In physical cosmology, the idea of inflation is a proposed theory that would explain many features of the present-day universe, including the existence of large-scale structures such as galaxies.
The theory was proposed by Alan Guth in the 1970s.
Based on the Standard Model of Cosmology, the universe has been and is expanding.
The classical Big Bang theory assumes that the universe expanded at the same rate throughout universal history.
Inflation says that the universe has not always expanded at the same rate, and that the universe has experienced many periods of brief but immense expansions in which the size of the universe nearly doubled.
These periods, as said, were extremely short, lasting less than a second.
After a single period, the expansion slowed down until the next rapid inflation came and, again, massively increased the size of the universe.
The main problem solved by inflation is the origin of large-scale structures, such as galaxies.
Inflation theory says that in a slow expansion of the universe, quantum fluctuations were only on the tiny distance scales; when the universe experienced a brief period of inflation, however, these quantum fluctuations are "stretched" much larger to cause density fluctuations.
The places of higher density later caused matter to clump in those locations and form large-scale objects.
Another problem is that of temperature uniformity in the universe: why is the temperature so evenly distributed?
Inflation says that objects that were previously in close proximity to one another were separated very quickly during a period of inflation, so the temperature balance was still held.
In the classical Big Bang theory this was a problem because the uniform expansion would mean that objects would have to travel many times the speed of light to maintain temperature balance.
Another problem that inflation possibly solves is the problem of magnetic monopoles.
Why do we no longer see magnetic monopoles in our universe?
Inflation says that the few existing monopoles were so dispersed during periods of inflation that it is virtually impossible to find them now.
Inflation theory uses General relativity to model the inflation mathematically.
The metric of inflation theory is
The main prediction of inflation theory is that particles called inflatons are created from a scalar field from Quantum field theory.
These inflatons would drive the inflation periods of the universe, but they quickly decay so the inflation periods are not very long at all.
It was initially thought that the Higgs boson was an inflaton, but that has recently been discredited.
Inflation theory also suggests that there might be other universes.
If inflation caused our universe, could it not also cause many other universes as well?
This prediction has no empirical basis, but it has been explored in modern physics.
A candela measures how bright something is.
It is one of the basic units of science.
A light bulb is bright, but the Sun is much brighter, so the Sun has more candelas than the light bulb.
Candelas are measured using green light, which human eyes are very sensitive to.
A candela sometimes has the name ` candle '.
Condensed matter physics is a branch of physics which talks about matter that has its molecules packed together very closely.
This usually means it deals with solids (solid matter).
The term "conversion of units" refers to changing an amount of a measurement unit into another unit.
There are many different systems of units, so some conversions can be very complex.
Most conversions involve a conversion factor (named "m"), and a shift amount (such as "b"), to change from a unit x into a unit y by the general equation: y = m ' x + b. That type of conversion is known as a linear transform or a mathematical translation.
A conversion factor is a ratio that lets you convert a measured quantity to a different unit of measure without changing the amount.
When a conversion factor is multiplied by the item you are converting, it cancels out the units you do not want and leaves those that you do.
Because the top and bottom of conversion factors are the same, conversion factors always equal 1.
For example, a conversion factor of (1 day) \/ (24 hours) equals 1, because 1 day = 24 hours.
One of the most common conversions is to change meters (or "metres") into feet, by multiplying the amount in meters by about 3.28 feet per meter (ft\/m):
Typically, conversion amounts are rounded to the same precision as the original input amount, such as 10 meters being 33 feet (when 32.8 feet is rounded to 2 digits as "33").
There is no rule that is used all over the world to decide why some places are called "city" and other places are called "town".
In American English, people often call all places cities.
(See below: Size of cities)
The sizes of cities can be very different.
This depends on the type of city that it is.
Cities that were built hundreds of years ago and which have not changed much, are very much smaller than modern cities.
There are two main reasons.
One reason is that old cities often have a city wall, and most of the city is inside it.
Another important reason is that the streets in old cities are often narrow.
If the city got too big, it was hard for a cart carrying food to get to the market place.
People in cities need food, and the food always has to come from outside the city.
Cities that were on a river like London could grow much bigger than cities that were on a mountain like Sienna in Italy, because the river made a transport route for carrying food and other goods, as well as for transporting people.
London has been changing continually for hundreds of years, while Siena, which was a very important city in the 1300s has changed very little in 700 years.
Modern cities with modern transport systems can grow very large, because the streets are wide enough for cars, buses and trucks, and there are often railway lines as well.
In the US, the word city is often used for towns that are not very big.
When the first European people went to America, they gave the name "city" to new places.
They hoped the places would be great cities in the future.
For example, Salt Lake City was the name given to a village of 148 people.
When they started building the town they made street plans and called it Great Salt Lake City (for the nearby Great Salt Lake).
Now, 150 years later, it really is a big city.
In modern times many cities have grown bigger and bigger.
The whole area is often called a "metropolis" and can sometimes includes several small ancient towns and villages.
The metropolis of London includes the City of London, the City of Westminster and many old villages such as Notting Hill, Southwark, Richmond, Greenwich and etc..
The part that is officially known as the "City of London" only takes up one square mile.
The rest is known as "Greater London".
Many other cities have grown in the same way.
These giant cities can be exciting places to live, and many people can find good jobs there, but modern cities also have many problems.
Many people can not find jobs in the cities and have to get money by begging or by crime.
Cars, factories, and waste create a lot of pollution that makes people sick.
Urban History is history of civilization.
The first cities were made in ancient times, as soon as people began to create civilization.
Famous ancient cities which fell to ruins included Babylon, Troy, Mycenae and Mohenjo Daro.
Benares in northern India is one among the ancient cities which has a history of more 3000 years.
Other cities that have existed since ancient times are Athens in Greece, Rome and Volterra in Italy, Alexandria in Egypt and York in England.
In Europe, in the Middle Ages, being a city was a special privilege, granted by nobility.
Cities that fall into this category, usually had (or still have) city walls.
The people who lived in the city were privileged over those who did not.
Medieval cities that still have walls include Carcassonne in France, Tehran in Iran, Toledo in Spain and Canterbury in England.
In the United Kingdom, a city is a town which people have always called a city, or which has got the name "city" status by royal charter (a special paper from the king or queen).
Cities usually get this because they have a special number of people or are important.
In the past, cities got that name if they had a cathedral or a university.
Some cathedral cities, for example St David 's, are small, and people do not normally think of them as cities.
Cities that became cities because of their university generally grow because more people move there to be educated at the university colleges.
The university cities of Oxford and Cambridge are famous throughout the world.
The largest city is Shanghai, while the fastest growing is Dubai.
Chervil, or Anthriscus cerefolium is a herb that is related to parsley.
It is sometimes called garden chervil.
Sometimes called "gourmet 's parsley", chervil is put in poultry, seafood, and small vegetables.
It is particularly famous in France, where it is added to omelettes, salads and soups.
More delicate than parsley, it has a small taste of liquorice.
Chervil had several traditional uses.
Pregnant women were washed in an infusion of it; a lotion of chervil was used as for cleaning skin; and it was used medicinally as a blood purifier.
It was also said to be useful for curing hiccups.
Chives are herbs which are related to the onion.
Its leaves are used for flavoring.
Colorado is a state of the United States.
Its capital and largest city is Denver.
Other big cities are Colorado Springs and Aurora.
It became a state in 1876.
Colorado recently legalized the use and possession of the drug marijuana, and it is the first state in US history to have done so.
The state was named after the Colorado River by Spanish explorers.
US Army officer and amateur explorer Zebulon Pike was recruited by the United States government in 1806 to locate the source of the Mississippi River and to check out Spanish settlements in New Mexico.
Even though his recorded location for the source of the Mississippi was extremely inaccurate and allegedly got lost in his expedition, he did explore much of what would become the American Southwest.
When he reached what is now Colorado Springs, he named a mountain after himself, Pikes Peak, which remains a symbol for the city as well as the state to this day.
Colorado has a long history of mining and digging for gold.
It is the place where the Pike 's Peak Gold Rush took place.
When gold in California was becoming harder and harder to find, people came to Colorado in large numbers when gold was discovered there in 1859, ten years after the California Gold Rush began.
Many mining camps set up in Colorado would later become cities, such as Denver City and Boulder City.
The motto for the gold rush was "Pike 's Peak or Bust".
In 1971, the Libertarian Party was formed in the state.
The State of Colorado is shaped like a rectangle.
The borders are latitude and longitude lines.
The four borders are at 37 N, 41 N, 102 03 ` W, and 109 03 ` W. (The east and west borders are 25 W and 32 W from the Washington Meridian.)
Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah are the only three U.S. states that have only lines of latitude and longitude for boundaries and that have no natural borders.
When government surveyors made the border markers for the "Territory of Colorado", minor surveying mistakes made many small kinks along the borders, most seen along the border with the "Territory of Utah."
The tip of Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet (4,401 m) elevation in Lake County is the state 's highest point and the highest point in the entire Rocky Mountains.
Colorado has more than 100 mountain peaks that reach over 4,000 meters (13,123 ft) in height.
Colorado is the only U.S. state that lies entirely above 1,000 meters (3,281 ft) in height.
Colorado has the highest average elevation of any state at 6,800 ft..
It touches New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming.
The land area of Colorado is roughly the same size as New Zealand.
The weather and temperatures in Colorado are quite different compared to most of the United States.
In most other states, the southern part is warmer than the northern part, southern Colorado is not noticeably warmer than northern Colorado.
Mountains and surrounding valleys greatly affect local climate.
As a normal rule, with an increase in height comes a decrease in temperature and an increase in rain.
There exists a phenomenally severe change in climate in Colorado between the Rocky Mountains on the west and the Great Plains on the east, both of which are separated by a lesser range known to Colorado citizens and primarily Boulderites as "the Foothills".
The state 's largest city, and capital, is Denver.
The "Denver-Aurora-Boulder Combined Statistical Area", is home to 2,927,911 people, it has more than two-thirds of the state 's population.
As of 2005, Colorado has an estimated population of 4,665,177, which is an increase of 63,356, or 1.4 %, from the last year and an increase of 363,162, or 8.4 %, since the year 2000.
This has a natural increase since the last census of 205,321 people (that is 353,091 births minus 147,770 deaths) and an increase because of migration of 159,957 people into the state.
Immigration from outside the United States makes a net increase of 112,217 people, and migration within the country made a net increase of 47,740 people.
Colorado 's most common religion is Christianity, and its most common denomination is Catholicism.
Colorado, and mostly the city of Colorado Springs, serves as the headquarter of many Christian groups, many of them Evangelical.
"Focus on the Family" is a big conservative Christian organization headquartered in Colorado Springs.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that the total state product in 2007 was $ 236 billion.
Per capita personal income in 2007 was $ 41,192, ranking Colorado eleventh in the United States.
Early companies were based on the extraction and getting minerals and agricultural things.
Today 's agricultural things are cattle, wheat, dairy products, corn, and hay.
On January 1 2014 Colorado became the first state to make marijuana legal.
In the first week of this $ 5 million of marijuana was sold.
The marijuana industry is expected to make Colorado 's economy $ 359 million by the end of 2014.
The Carboniferous was the geological period after the Devonian and before the Permian.
It lasted from about 359 to about 299 million years ago.
In the U.S.A. the Carboniferous is divided into the Mississippian (lower part, 359 323.2 mya) and the Pennsylvanian (upper part, 323.2 299 mya).
In Europe the terms lower, middle and upper are used.
The early tetrapods split first into two major groups: the amphibians, which laid their eggs in water, and the amniotes, who laid their cleidoic eggs on land.
The amniotes gave rise to two groups both of which became dominant at different times.
They were the Synapsids, which eventually gave rise to the mammals, and the Sauropsids, which gave rise to the dinosaurs and other reptiles.
These momentous events took place in the lower part of the Carboniferous, the Mississippian.
The Carboniferous is named after the Coal Measures, the remains of peat formed by dense tropical wetland forests.
New kinds of vascular plants with thick bark grew in the forests.
Much of the coal came from this bark.
This biota occurred in the upper part of the period, the Pennsylvanian, from 315 300 million years years ago.
These forests were on the equator, and the wetlands, which are always low-lying, stretched from America in the west, through what is now Europe to China in the east.
The continents were all together at the time (Pangea).
The river plain which was the heart of the wetland stretched 5000 km from eastern Canada to the Ukraine, and was 700 km wide.
p6
This kind of climate and geography has no exact parallel today, but the peat swamp forests in Indonesia and Malaysia, the Amazon Basin, the Mississippi River system and the Okefenokee swamp give some idea.
The swamps were dominated by giant clubmosses, including Lepidodendron.
They were the earliest trees, later replaced by conifers and flowering plants.
Sometimes other plants from the levee got swept down by the river, such as horsetails, ferns and tree-like pteridosperms.
The wetland forests ended when the land level was raised by the pressure of the Gondwana continent against Laurussia.
This caused the zone of contact to rise.
The end of the Coal Measures marks the end of the Carboniferous period.
China was too far away to be affected.
There, the wetland forests continued for another 50 million years, into the early Permian.
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Comoros (officially called Union of the Comoros) is a small island nation in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and mainland Africa.
The capital is Moroni on Grande Comore.
The population (except for Mayotte) is about 798,000 people.
The Comoros Islands are in the Indian Ocean, between Mozambique and Madagascar.
It is the southernmost member state of the Arab League.
There are 4 islands from west to east: Grande Cormore, Moheli, Anjouan and Mayotte.
All the islands are of volcanic origin.
Mayotte is French overseas territory.
The other islands form the independent state of Comoros.
The country has a history with many coup d' tat since independence in 1975.
As of 2008 about half the people live below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25 a day.
Mount Karthala, an active shield volcano on Ngazidja, is the country 's highest point.
It had a minor eruption in May 2006.
China (Pinyin: Zh nggu) is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and a nation in East Asia.
China has one of the world 's oldest civilizations and has the oldest continuous civilization.
It has archaeological evidence over 5,000 years old.
It also has one of the world 's oldest writing systems (and the oldest in use today), and is viewed as the source of many major inventions.
The first recorded use of the word "China" is dated 1555.
It is derived from ch n, a Persian adjective meaning ` Chinese ' which was popularized in Europe by Marco Polo.
Ancient China was one of the first civilizations and was active since the 2nd millennium BC as a feudal society.
Chinese civilization was also one of the few to invent writing, with the others being Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley civilization, the Maya civilization, the Minoan civilization of ancient Greece, and Ancient Egypt.
It reached its golden age during the Tang Dynasty (c. A.D. 10th century).
Home of Confucianism and Daoism, it had great influence on nearby countries including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam in the areas of political system, philosophy, religion, art, and even writing and literature.
China is home to some of the oldest artwork in the world.
Statues and pottery, as well as decorations made of jade, are some classic examples.
Before the Qin Dynasty united China, there were hundreds of small states that fought each other for hundreds of years in a war to control China.
This is known as the Warring States Period.
Although the continuing wars made people suffer, it was at this time when many great philosophies were born, including Confucianism and Daoism.
Confucianism and Daoism alone have been the foundation of many social values seen in modern eastern-Asian cultures today.
Its geography mostly looked like that of modern China, except with northern and western edges that varied.
It was often attacked by northern nomadic people such as the Turkics, the Mongols lead by Genghis Khan, and Kublai Khan.
During the history of ancient China, the northern nomadic people and the Chinese people had been fighting each other and taking turns to rule the land and the people of China.
However, when the northern people beat the Chinese people and came to rule the kingdom, they also Incorporated the Chinese way of living and became like the Chinese.
Many of the strongest dynasties of China were ruled by the northern people, including the Qin, Tang, Yuan (Mongolian), and Qing.
Each time, they also brought new elements into the Chinese culture.
While China achieved many things in the First millennium and early 2nd millennium, it became an isolationist country in the 15th century C.E..
This was because Spain found enormous silver in the new continent, which was the main currency (money) in China and Eruope at the time, and China did not want to be bought by the foreigners.
By the time of the Renaissance, European powers started to take over other countries in Asia.
While China was never actually taken over, many European countries, such as Britain and France built spheres of influence in China.
Since China had cut itself off from the world over the previous few centuries, by the Qing Dynasty, it had fallen behind other countries in technology, and was helpless to stop this from happening.
This had become clear when it lost the Opium Wars to Britain in the 19th century.
In 1911, the Republic of China was founded by Sun Yat-sen, but its government was very weak.
Warlords controlled many areas.
Chiang Kai-shek led wars against them, and he became President and dictator.
In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, a place in the northeastern part of China.
On July 7, 1937, the Japanese attacked the rest of the country, starting what was called the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The war later became part of World War II.
The war was fought for eight years and millions of Chinese people were killed.
However, the Chinese Civil War later started between the Kuomintang (Nationalists) of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Communists of the People 's Republic of China (PRC).
The Communists wanted to make China like the Soviet Union, whereas the other side wanted to keep China in its current state at the time.
The Communists were led by Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi and others.
Later Liu lost influence with Mao and his death to this day remains unresolved.
The Communists eventually won the war.
The Nationalists (led by Chiang Kai-shek) fled to the island of Taiwan and set up their new capital city in Taipei.
After the Chinese Civil War, the Communist leader Mao Zedong declared a new country, the People 's Republic of China (PRC), in Beijing on October 1, 1949.
Under Mao the country stayed poor while Taiwan became richer.
His attempt at industrialization and collectivization with the Great Leap Forward led to the deaths of many people from famine.
The Cultural Revolution caused great social upheaval.
After 1976, China underwent market economy reforms under Deng Xiaoping, and experienced rapid economic growth.
China is now one of the largest economies in the world, relying mainly on exports.
In recent history, China has had problems with protests, blocking of information on the Internet, and censorship of news.
1989 was notable for the controversial Tian An Men Massacre.
China is the origin of Eastern martial arts, called Kung Fu or its first name Wushu.
China is also the home of the well-respected Spa Monastery and Wudang Mountains.
Martial art started more for the purpose of survival, defense, and warfare than art.
Over time some art forms have branched off, while others have retained their distinct Chinese flavor.
China has had renowned artists including Wong Fei Hung (Huang Fei Hung or Hwang Fei Hung) and many others.
Art has also co-existed with a variety of paints including the more standard 18 colors.
Legendary and controversial moves like Big Mak are also praised and talked about within the culture.
China has many traditional festivals, such as Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-autumn Festival and so on.
The most significant is Chinese New Year.
People in China will have holidays to celebrate these festivals.
Spring Festival is the Chinese New Year.
It lasts fifteen days.
It starts with the first day of the Chinese lunar year and ends with the full moon fifteen days later.
On the first day of the Spring Festival, people call on friends and relatives.
Because most of people watch the Spring Festival Celebrations on CCTV all the night on New Year 's Eve and do n't go to bed until 12:00 AM, they usually get up later in the next day.
The fifth day of the Spring Festival is the day to welcome the god of Wealth (Chinese:), many people make and eat dumplings (Chinese:).
They believe that dumplings can hold the god of Wealth and bring luck.
The last day of the Spring Festival is the Lantern Festival.
On this day, the moon becomes the full moon.
People go out and watch the lantern festivals everywhere.
After that, they eat sweet dumpling (Chinese:,), a kind of dumpling which is round and looks like the full moon.
Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated to commemorate the death of Qu Yuan, a patriotic poet of the State of Chu during the Warring States period.
He persuaded his emperor not to accept Qin 's diplomats ' offers several times but his emperor did not listen to him.
He was very sad and ended up jumping into the river to end his life.
The people loved him so much that they did not want the fish to eat his corpse.
They made and threw rice dumplings into the river.
They hope the fish eat these dumplings instead of the poet 's corpse.
They also rowed dragon boats in the river to get rid of the fish.
Such practices, eating rice dumplings and holding dragon boat races, become what Chinese do in this festival nowadays.
Held on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, Mid-Autumn Festival is a festival for families.
Now when the festival sets in, people would sit together to eat moon cakes, appreciate the bright full moon cakes, appreciate the bright full moon, celebrate the bumper harvest and enjoy the family love and happiness.
To the Chinese people, the full moon symbolizes family reunion, as does the "moon cakes."
Hence the Mid-Autumn Festival is also called the Family Reunion Festival.
California is a state in the western United States.
It is the third largest state in size.
It is the state with the most people living in it.
Popular cities are Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco.
The capital is Sacramento.
It became a state on September 9, 1850.
It is bordered by Arizona to the southeast, Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east and the Mexican state of Baja California to the south.
The geography of California varies depending on region.
Southwestern California has small mountain ranges and the cities of San Diego and Los Angeles.
Southeastern California has desert and Death Valley, the lowest place in the United States.
The eastern part of the state has the highest point in the United States outside of Alaska, Mount Whitney, in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
The cities of Sacramento, Bakersfield, and Fresno are in the central valley, a nickname given to the central part of the state.
The west-central part of the state has some small mountains and the cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.
Northern California has the Cascade Mountains, the Klamath Mountains, and the Modoc Plateau.
Far northern California does not have many people, but the San Francisco region and the Sacramento region are often thought of as part of northern California.
The state is a leader in three businesses: farming, movie-making, and high technology, mostly software and Web sites.
Aerospace used to be a large industry there, but it has been downsized in the last 20 years.
There are many earthquakes in California.
They happen when two earth crusts shift underground.
Californians need to be prepared for earthquakes and often store extra food, water, flashlights, and first aid supplies in case of such an emergency.
California has more people than any other state in the United States.
If California was a separate country, it would have the sixth largest economy in the world.
California is probably the state with the most ethnic groups.
It also has many different geographic features mountains, deserts, and coasts.
It is often called The Golden State.
The state flower is the golden poppy.
The post office uses "CA" as a shorthand for California, and the Associated Press uses "Calif." or "Cali."
In 2010, Jerry Brown became the governor of California.
Before him, the governor was Arnold Schwarzenegger.
On November 4, 1992, Dianne Feinstein became one of California 's United States senators.
On January 3, 1993, Barbara Boxer became the other one.
California was more conservative during the 1960s and 1980s when its former governor, Ronald Reagan, ran for president as a Republican.
Today, California is more liberal and less conservative.
California is a big power in American culture as well as the business life of the nation.
Many of the great changes in technology and law came from California, and the state pays more to the U.S. government than it gets back.
It also has some of the country 's largest cities, such as Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco.
In the past, the area that was called "California" was not just today 's California.
This area covered the Mexican lands south of it, as well as Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona and Wyoming.
The Spanish called the part of the land that later became part of the United States Alta California (Upper California) when it was split from what became Baja California (Lower California).
In these early times, the borders of the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific coast were not well known, so the old maps wrongly showed California to be an island.
The name comes from Las sergas de Espladi n (Adventures of Spladian), a 16th century book by Garci Rodr guez de Montalvo, where there is an island paradise called California.
The first European who visited parts of the coast, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, came from Portugal in 1542.
The first European who saw the entire coast was Sir Francis Drake, in 1579, and he decided that the British owned it.
But starting in the late 1700s, Spanish religious leaders of the Roman Catholic Church ("missionaries") got large gifts of land in the area north of Baja California, from the Spanish king and queen.
These religious people set up small towns and villages, the famous California Missions.
When Mexico was no longer controlled by Spain, the Mexican government took over the villages, and they soon became empty.
In 1846, as the Mexican-American War was starting, some Americans in California hoped to create a California Republic.
These men flew a "Bear flag" that had a golden bear with a star on it.
This Republic ended suddenly, however, when Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into San Francisco Bay.
He said that California was now part of the United States.
After the war with Mexico ended, California was split between the two countries.
The Mexican portion became the Mexican states of Baja California Norte (north) and Baja California Sur (south).
("Baja" means "lower" in Spanish.)
The western part of the part given to the United States became today 's state of California.
In 1848, there were about 4,000 Spanish-speaking people in today 's California on the American side.
(Today the state has a total of nearly 40,000,000 people.)
In 1849, gold was suddenly found and the number of people went up very fast as the Gold Rush took hold.
In 1850, California became a state in the Union (the United States).
During the American Civil War (1861-1865), many people in California, especially in the southern part of California, thought the South was right.
Some people in Southern California even wanted Southern California to leave the rest of the state and join the Confederate States of America.
However, this did not happen.
California joined the war to and helped the North (the Union) and sent many troops east to fight the Confederacy.
At first, travel between the far west and the east coast of the United States was dangerous and took a lot of time.
Going by land was very difficult, because there were no roads and no trains, and many Native Americans were attacking American people heading West in wagons.
The only other way was to travel by boat around the Cape Horn, at the southern end of South America.
This took months, since the trip was thousands of miles long and the Panama Canal had not yet been built either.
But in 1869, the connection got better quickly, because the first railroad across the continent was finished.
Meanwhile, more people in California were learning that the land there was very good to grow fruit and other crops.
Oranges were grown in many parts of California.
This was the beginning of the huge farming business that California has today.
In 1900, there were only a million people in California and 105,000 in Los Angeles.
Today, California has more people than any other U.S. state.
Starting in 1965, the variety of people became much greater as many different people from around the world came to the United States and often decided to live in California.
California is thought to be a very liberal state, but there are still a lot of people who are Republicans and view Ronald Reagan as a hero.
Technology is very advanced and many new cultural trends begin there.
Engineering and computers play a big part in the state 's life.
For over a hundred years, film has been one of the most important businesses in California.
By the 1950s, television had also become an important business in California.
The Columbia River is a river in British Columbia, Canada, and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon.
The Columbia River is about 1,243 miles long.
Its largest tributary is the Snake River, which flows west from the state of Idaho.
The lower part of the Columbia forms the border between the states Washington and Oregon.
The Columbia drains 254,000 square miles (657,857 km2) of land, beginning in the Canadian Rockies and flowing west through the Cascade Range, to where it empties into the Pacific Ocean.
There are 14 dams on the Columbia River.
Three are in Canada, and the other 11 are in the United States.
The dams generate hydroelectricity and provide flood control and water for farms.
There are also dams on the Snake River and many other tributaries.
These dams have, along with their benefits, caused salmon populations in the river to go down.
Commelinales is the botanical name of an order of flowering plants.
It 's considered that the Commelinales together with Zingiberales evolved in the Late Cretaceous around 80 millions of years ago.
Two of the best-known genera in the order are Commelina and Tradescantia.
The Cucurbitales is an order of flowering plants, included in the rosid group of dicotyledons.
This order mostly belongs to tropical areas, with limited presence in subtropic and temperate regions.
The order includes various shrubs and trees, together with many herbs and climbing plants.
One of major characteristics of the Cucurbitales is the presence of unisexual flowers, with thick pointed petals (whenever present).
The pollination is usually performed by insects, but wind pollination, where flowers use the wind to move pollen from one flower to the next, is also present (in Coriariaceae and Datiscaceae).
The order consists of roughly 2600 species in eight families.
The largest families are Begoniaceae (begonia family) with 1400 species and Cucurbitaceae (gourd family) with 825 species.
The large families of Cucurbitales include several economically important plants.
Specifically, the Cucurbitaceae are responsible for some food species, such as squash, pumpkin (both from Cucurbita), watermelon (Citrullus vulgaris), melon and cucumber (both Cucumis).
The Begoniaceae are known for their horticultural species, of which there are over 130.
Coin collecting is the hobby of keeping different coins.
Some people do it just for pleasure, while others collect coins for the history of the coins.
People can collect coins that are old, rare, beautiful or just interesting.
Coin collecting is a very old hobby.
Even Julius Caesar collected coins.
Some coins are very expensive, because more people want them than there are copies of the coin.
Some coin collectors like to collect one coin of each date, or one coin of each King or Queen of a country.
The condition of a coin is very important in finding the price of the coin.
Some coins which cost almost nothing in poor condition can be worth thousands of times as much in new condition.
The largest group of American coin collectors is the American Numismatic Association, while the Royal Numismatic Society, which was started in 1826, is one of the largest societies outside the US.
Many catalogs are produced around the world, generally for the coins of the country where the catalog is produced.
In the U.S., one guide, the "Red Book" has been produced annually since 1946.
In the U.K., the coin dealer Seaby produced catalogs on U.K. coins as well as ancient coins.
The catalogs were purchased by Spink 's in 1996 and are continuing under the Spink 's name.
Spink 's was founded in 1666.
Capitalism is an economic system.
In it the government plays a secondary role.
People and companies make most of the decisions, and own most of the property.
Goods are usually made by companies and sold for profit.
The means of production are largely or entirely privately owned (by individuals or companies) and operated for profit.
Most property, for example, is owned by people or companies, not by the government.
People work for money so they can buy things they need or want, including food.
Capitalism has a more or less free market economy.
That means prices move up or down according to the demand for products.
People buy and sell things by their own judgment.
In most countries there is some regulation (trade laws) and some planning done by the government.
They are sometimes called "mixed economies" to indicate this.
Some people disagree on whether capitalism is a good idea, or how much of capitalism is a good idea.
The word comes from "capital", meaning something of value.
This can be money ("financial capital") or any other goods that can be traded.
The word "capital" originally comes from the Latin word caput, meaning "head."
It was used to mean how many "head" of cattle a rich person owned, in days long ago when cattle were used as money.
In fact, the words "capital" and "cattle" both come from caput.
The philosopher Adam Smith 's book, The Wealth of Nations, was an important book that developed the ideas of capitalism and the free market.
The word "capitalism" was not used until the 19th century.
The greatest invention of capitalism is often said to be the joint stock company.
A joint-stock company is a business where different stocks can be bought and owned by shareholders.
Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion to the number of their shares.
In capitalism, people may sell or lend their property, and other people may buy or borrow it.
If one person wants to buy, and another person wants to sell to them, they do not need to get permission from higher power.
People can have a market (buying and selling with each other) without anyone else telling them to.
People who own capital are sometimes called capitalists (people who support capitalism are called capitalists, too).
They can hire anyone who wants to work in their factories, shops or lands for them for the pay they offer.
The word capital can be used to mean things that produce more things or money.
For example, lands, factories, shops, tools and machines are capital.
If someone has money that can be invested, that money is capital too.
In capitalist systems, many people are workers (or proletarians).
They are employed to earn money for living.
People can choose to work for anyone who will hire them in a free market.
This is different from many older economic systems.
In feudalism, most people were serfs and had to work for the people who owned the land they lived on.
In mercantilism, the government makes it hard to buy things from other countries.
In many countries with mixed economies (part capitalism and part socialism) there are laws about what you can buy or sell, or what prices you can charge, or whom you can hire or fire.
An investment is when people invest (give) their money in things.
People can put their money together to buy or build things, even if they are too big for one person to make alone.
The people who invest get to be the owners of what they buy or build together.
The stock market lets people buy and sell investments.
Investing is important to capitalism.
The word "capitalist" can mean two things: it can mean someone who likes capitalism; but it can also mean someone who invests.
For example, a venture capitalist invests in new businesses.
People who start businesses, or invest in businesses, can make a lot of money.
A business sells things that people want.
The investors make extra money, which is called profit.
Investors can take their profit and invest it in more businesses, or in making the business bigger.
The investors can get more and more profit if the businesses are successful.
Socialists and communists are people who do not support capitalism.
They say it hurts workers, because businesses make more money by selling things than they pay the workers who make the things.
Business owners become rich while workers remain poor and exploited (taken advantage of).
They also argue society would be more efficient if people thought less about competing against one another for their own interests and thought more of working together for the overall good of society.
Another argument is that each person has a right to basic needs (such as food and shelter).
Within capitalism, sometimes people might not get everything they need to live.
Karl Marx was a famous communist philosopher from Germany.
He wrote a famous book called The Capital (or Das Kapital in German).
He said that capitalism would go away after workers decided to take over the government in a revolution.
There were violent communist revolutions in many countries.
Many people were killed because of this.
But capitalism did not go away, and most of these communist systems have collapsed and do not exist today, or else they have become more capitalist.
Some people think that communism in those countries did not work because Marx 's ideas, though nice in thought, did not really work.
Others think that communist countries collapsed because of the attacks (military, political and economic) from capitalist countries.
Anarchists (that are not anarcho-capitalists) do not support capitalism either.
They do not think workers should take the government, but that there should be no government at all.
They think that communism failed because the communists set up dictatorships that said that they would rule in the name of workers, instead of letting workers organize themselves freely.
There are different words for people who support capitalism.
In many parts of the world, these people are called either conservatives or liberals (especially market liberals).
In the United States, the word "liberal" can mean someone whose beliefs lean toward socialism - what other countries might call a social liberal.
Libertarian is a word that in America and some other countries means someone who wants the government to have little or no power to tell people what to buy or sell.
The reasons for capitalism are not just economic.
They are political.
They believe that government control of the economy leads to loss of liberty by the citizen.
The argument was put best by Friedrich Hayek, who connected the open society with respect for the individual, and tolerance for the differences between people.
People who support capitalism also have disagreements.
Most people agree that capitalism works better if the government keeps people from stealing other people 's things.
If people could steal anything, then nobody would want to buy anything.
In most countries, the government does more than that.
It tries to make sure that people buy and sell fairly and that employment is fair.
Because the government takes a lot of money in taxes, it also buys a lot of things and gives a lot of money away.
It spends money on guns and ships for the military, on science research in universities, and on schools and libraries.
It also gives money to people who do not have jobs, and to businesses that the political leaders think are important.
When the government is in charge of part of the economy, this is called a" (mixed economy)."
A few people think that people can protect themselves without any government.
Instead of having laws against stealing, people could protect their own things, or agree to pay other people such as arbitrators, insurers, and private defenders to protect them.
This belief is called "anarcho-capitalism."
These people think that the government is a thief, because it takes taxes away from people against their will and keeps them from making agreements between themselves.
Cardiology (from Greek, kardi, "heart"; and, - logia) is a medical field that deals with disorders of the heart and blood vessels.
Physicians in this field are called cardiologists.
Cardiologists are different from cardiac surgeons who do cardiac surgery.
Capcom Co., Ltd. -RCB- -RCB- is a Japanese video game company.
They are most known for the Mega Man series, Resident Evil series, and Street Fighter series.
They were founded on May 30, 1979.
Capricornus is one of the constellations of the zodiac.
It is often called Capricorn, especially when referring to the corresponding astrological sign.
Its name is Latin for "horned male goat" or "goat horn", and it is commonly represented in the form of a sea-goat: a mythical creature that is half goat, half fish.
Its symbol is (Unicode).
Capricornus is one of the 88 modern constellations, and was also one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy.
Under its modern boundaries it is bordered by Aquila, Sagittarius, Microscopium, Piscis Austrinus and Aquarius.
The constellation is in an area of sky called the Sea or Water, consisting of many water-related constellations such as Aquarius, Pisces and Eridanus.
Capricornus is the second faintest constellation in the zodiac after Cancer.
Its brighter stars are on a triangle whose corners are 2 Capricorni (also known as Giedi), Capricorni (Deneb Algiedi), and Capricorni.
Capricorn has several galaxies and clusters.
Messier 30 is a globular cluster that is one degree south of the galaxy group NGC 7103.
The constellation also harbors the wide spiral galaxy NGC 6907.
Despite it being very faint, Capricornus has one of the oldest mythological associations.
It has consistently been represented as a cross of a goat and a fish since the Middle Bronze Age.
The earliest picture of Capricornus is on a cylinder-seal dating c. 21st century BCE,.
From the mid second Millennium it became a popular motif on boundary stones.
It was explicitly recorded in the Babylonian star catalogues as "The Goat-Fish" before 1000 BC.
The constellation was a symbol of Ea and in the Early Bronze Age marked the winter solstice.
Because of the precession of the equinoxes the December solstice no longer takes place while the sun is in the constellation Capricornus.
The astrological sign called Capricorn now begins with the solstice.
The sun 's most southerly position is now called the Tropic of Capricorn.
This term also applies to the line on earth where the sun is directly overhead at noon on that solstice.
The planet Neptune was discovered in this constellation by German astronomer Johann Galle, near Deneb Algedi (Capricorni) on September 23, 1846, which is reasonable as Capricornus can be seen best at 4:00 am in September.
In Chinese astronomy, constellation Capricornus is in The Black Tortoise of the North (, B i F ng Xu n W).
Capricorn the sea goat was a goat that decided to take over the world.
The gods of Greece looked down upon that and sent there wrath and killed him with one of Zeus thunderbolts.
Then they hung him in the sky to humiliate him.
As of 2002, the Sun appears in the constellation Capricornus from January 19 to February 15.
In tropical astrology, the Sun is considered to be in the sign Capricorn from December 22 to January 19, and in sidereal astrology, from January 15 to February 15.
Ptolemy 's method of connecting the stars of Capricornus has been influential.
H. A. Rey has suggested an alternative way to join the stars, which graphically shows a goat.
The goat 's head is formed by the triangle of stars Cap, Cap, and Cap.
The goat 's horn sticks out with stars Cap and Cap.
Star Cap, at the tip of the horn, is of the third magnitude.
The goat 's tail consists of stars Cap and 2 Cap: star Cap being of the third magnitude.
The goat 's hind foot consists of stars Cap and Cap.
Both of these stars are of the fourth magnitude.
USS Capricornus (AKA-57) is once of United States navy ship.
Cameroon (officially called Republic of Cameroon) is a country in west Africa.
Its capital is Yaound.
The largest city in Cameroon is Douala.
The population of Cameroon is about 20 million.
Cameroon 's president is Paul Biya, and the Prime Minister is Phil mon Yang.
At 475442 k, Cameroon is the world 's 53rd-largest country.
It is about the size of Papua New Guinea.
The country is in Central and West Africa on the Bight of Bonny, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean.
The country 's neighbors are Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south.
The constitution divides Cameroon into 10 regions.
On 12 November 2008 the President changed the divisions from provinces to regions.
Each region is headed by a presidentially appointed governor.
The regions are divided into 58 divisions.
These are headed by presidentially appointed divisional officers.
The official languages of Cameroon are French and English.
It is part of both the British Commonwealth and La Francophonie.
The Cayman Islands are a territory of the United Kingdom in the Caribbean Sea.
The three islands are Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, and Cayman Brac.
Its capital, George Town, is on the main island (Grand Cayman).
The Central African Republic (CAR) (,, or Centrafrique (s t af ik); Sango K d r s se t B afr ka), is a landlocked country in Central Africa.
It is mostly a plateau or high, flat piece of land about 941 metres above the sea.
The CAR covers a land area of about 240,000 s, and has an estimated population of about 4.4 million as of 2008.
Bangui is the capital city.
There are thick forests in the south, and these are home to rare gorillas.
This part of Africa also has Pygmies.
Other important towns are Bouar, Zinga, and Ouadda.
Its southern border is the Ubangi River.
There are 3.8 million people in the C.A.R. Most of them belong to the Banda and Baya tribes.
The main language is French but some people speak the national language of Sango.
The people mostly grow their own food, but sometimes droughts (long spells without any rain) make this difficult.
The C.A.R. also has diamond and uranium mines.
It sells these, as well as cotton, coffee and timber to other countries to make money.
The Currency (type of money they use) is the CFA Franc.
1 US Dollar is worth 424.05 CFA Francs.
The country was ruled by France until 1960 when it became independent.
The Central African Republic is a landlocked nation.
It is bordered by the countries of Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo.
Much of the Central African Republic is flat, or rolling plateau savanna.
It is typically about 500 m above sea level.
Most of the northern half is in the World Wildlife Fund 's East Sudanian savanna ecoregion.
In the northeast are the Fertit Hills.
There are scattered hills in the southwest part of the country.
To the northwest is the Yade Massif, a granite plateau with an altitude of 1,143 f.
At 622,941 k, the Central African Republic is the world 's 42nd-largest country.
It is about the size of the Ukraine, and is somewhat smaller than the US state of Texas.
Much of the southern border is formed by tributaries of the Congo River.
The Mbomou River in the east merges with the Uele River to form the Ubangi River.
In the west, the Sangha River flows through part of the country.
The eastern border is along the edge of the Nile River watershed.
Forest covers up to 8 % of the land.
The densest parts are in the south.
The forest is highly diverse.
It includes commercially important species of Ayous, Sapelli and Sipo.
The deforestation rate is 0.4 % per year, and lumber poaching is commonplace.
The Central African Republic is divided into 14 administrative prefectures.
There are also 2 economic prefectures and one autonomous commune.
The prefectures are further divided into 71 sub-prefectures.
the two economic prefectures are Nana-Gr bizi and Sangha-Mba r.
The commune is Bangui.
Chad (;, officially called Republic of Chad), is a landlocked country in Central Africa.
The capital is N ` Djamena.
(A capital is the city where the government is.)
It was owned by the French until 1960.
It suffers from poverty, illness, drought, and armed conflicts.
In 2011, the population of Chad was 11,525,000.
Arabic and French are the official languages.
Islam and Christianity are the most widely practiced religions.
Chad is the world 's 21st-largest country.
It is slightly smaller than Peru and slightly larger than South Africa.
To the north is Libya, to the south is the Central African Republic, to the east is Sudan, and to the west are Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger.
The country 's capital is 1060 k from the nearest seaport Douala, Cameroon.
Due to this distance from the sea and the country 's largely desert climate, Chad is sometimes called the "Dead Heart of Africa".
Lake Chad is the largest wetland in Chad and the second largest in Africa.
Lake Chad was 330000 k 7000 years ago.
Now it is 17806 k. Chad 's highest peak is the Emi Koussi in the Sahara.
The region 's tall grasses and large amount of marshes make it good for birds, reptiles, and large mammals.
Chad 's major rivers are the Chari and Logone.
Since February 2008, Chad is divided into 22 regions.
Before it was divided into 14 prefectures.
Chile (officially called Republic of Chile) is a country on the south-western side of South America.
The majority of people there speak Spanish.
Chile, which claims a part of the Antarctic continent, is the longest country on earth.
The Atacama Desert, in the north of the country, is the driest place on earth.
The average rainfall there is less than 0.05 mm per year.
The center of Chile, with the two cities Santiago and Valpara so, has a Mediterranean climate with an average temperatures of 28 C in January and 11 C in July.
In the middle of Chile, the country is very fertile.
There are about 16.9 million people living in Chile in 2009.
About 10 million people live in the center of Chile around Valpara so and Santiago, on about 20 % of the total territory.
Chile is a well educated country.
Only 2.7 % are not able to read or write.
Some believe that Chile has one of the best school systems in South America.
About 95 % of Chileans are Caucasian (including some people of Arab ancestry), or people with a combination of European descent, mostly (Spanish, Basque, Italian and German).
Around 2 % of the population is Native American, about 2 % European immigrants and around 1 % have a strong degree of Asians descent.
The majority of people are Roman Catholic (62.8 %).
About 10 % are Protestant, and there are some Jews as well.
The country 's official language is Spanish.
Chili peppers, first cultivated by Native Americans from other Latin American countries and the United States, did not come from this country, although it has a similar name.
Chile 's currency is the Chilean peso.
Chile borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far south.
It is over 4,630 kilometres (2,880 mi) north to south, but only 430 kilometres (265 mi) at its widest point east to west.
The northern Atacama Desert has great mineral wealth, mostly copper and nitrates.
Chile is the largest producer of copper.
The Andes Mountains are on the eastern border.
Chile controls Easter Island and Sala y G mez Island, the easternmost islands of Polynesia.
Only a few of the many distinctive South American animals are found in Chile.
Among the larger mammals are the puma or cougar, the llama-like guanaco and the fox-like chilla.
In the forest region, several types of marsupials and a small deer known as the pudu are found.
There are many species of small birds, but not most of the larger common Latin American types.
Few freshwater fish are from Chile, but North American trout have been successfully introduced into the Andean lakes.
It is close to the Humboldt Current, so ocean waters have many fish and other forms of marine life.
This in turn supports a rich variety of waterfowl, including several penguins.
There are many whales, and six species of seals in the area.
Just over 3,000 species of fungi are recorded in Chile.
This number is far from complete.
The true total number of fungal species in Chile is likely to be far higher.
The generally accepted estimate is that only about 7 percent of all fungi worldwide have so far been discovered.
The northernmost coastal and central region is largely empty of vegetation.
It is the most close to an absolute desert in the world.
On the slopes of the Andes, besides the scattered tola desert brush, grasses are found.
The central valley has several species of cacti, the hardy espinos, the Chilean pine, the southern beeches and the copihue, a red bell-shaped flower that is Chile 's national flower.
In southern Chile, south of the Biob o River lots of rain has made dense forests of laurels, magnolias, and various species of conifers and beeches, which become smaller and more stunted to the south.
The cold temperatures and winds of the extreme south make it impossible for heavy forestation.
Grassland is found in Atlantic Chile (in Patagonia).
Much of the Chilean flora is different from that of neighboring Argentina.
This shows that the Andean barrier existed during the formation of Chile.
Chile is divided into 15 regions.
The regions are then divided into provinces.
Each province is divided into communes.
Chileans call their country pa s de poetas-country of poets.
Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature (1945).
Chile 's most famous poet, however, is Pablo Neruda.
He also received the Nobel Prize for Literature (1971).
Among the list of other Chilean poets are Lily Garafulic, Vicente Huidobro, Pablo Simonetti, and Paulo Coloane.
Isabel Allende is the best-selling Chilean novelist, with 51 millions of her novels sold worldwide.
Novelist Jos Donoso 's novel The Obscene Bird of the Night is said by critic Harold Bloom to be one of the important works of 20th century Western literature.
Another internationally recognized Chilean novelist is Roberto Bola o. His translations into English have had an excellent reception from the critics.
Chilean cuisine shows the country 's topographical variety.
There is an assortment of seafood, beef, fruits, and vegetables.
Traditional recipes include asado, cazuela, empanadas, humitas, pastel de choclo, pastel de papas, curanto and sopaipillas.
Crudos is an example of the mixture of culinary additions from the various ethnic groups in Chile.
Onions were brought by the Spanish colonists, and the use of mayonnaise and yogurt was introduced by German immigrants, as was beer.
Chile 's most popular sport is association football.
Chile has been in eight FIFA World Cups which includes hosting the 1962 FIFA World Cup.
Other results by the national football team include four finals at the Copa Am rica, one silver and two bronze medals at the Pan American Games, a bronze medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics and two third places finishes in the FIFA under-17 and under-20 youth tournaments.
The top league in the Chilean football league system is the Chilean Primera Divisi n. It was named by the IFFHS in 2011 as the ninth strongest national football league in the world.
Tennis is Chile 's most successful sport.
Its national team won the World Team Cup clay tournament twice (2003 & 2004).
They played the Davis Cup final against Italy in 1976.
At the 2004 Summer Olympics the country took gold and bronze in men 's singles and gold in men 's doubles.
Marcelo R os became the first Latin American man to reach the number one spot in the ATP singles rankings in 1998.
Anita Lizana won the US Open in 1937.
She was the first woman from Latin America to win a grand slam tournament.
Luis Ayala was twice a runner-up at the French Open and both R os, Nicolas Massu Friedt and Fernando Gonz lez Ciuffardi reached the Australian Open men 's singles finals.
Gonz lez also won a silver medal in singles at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
At the Summer Olympic Games Chile has a total of two gold medals (tennis), seven silver medals (athletics, equestrian, boxing, shooting and tennis) and four bronze medals (tennis, boxing and football).
In 2012 Chile won its first Paralympic Games medal (gold in Athletics).
Rodeo is the country 's national sport.
It is practiced in the more rural areas of the country.
A sport similar to hockey.
Skiing and snowboarding are practiced at ski centers in the Central Andes.
Surfing is popular at some coastal towns.
Polo is professionally practiced in Chile.
In 2008 Chile won top prize in the World Polo Championship.
Basketball is a popular sport.
Chile earned a bronze medal in the first men 's FIBA World Championship held in 1950.
They won a second bronze medal when Chile hosted the 1959 FIBA World Championship.
Chile hosted the first FIBA World Championship for Women in 1953 finishing the tournament with the silver medal.
Other sports such as marathons and ultramarathons are also increasing in popularity.
San Pedro de Atacama is host to the yearly "Atacama Crossing," a six-stage, 250-kilometer footrace which has about 150 competitors from 35 countries each year.
The Dakar Rally off-road automobile race has been held in both Chile and Argentina since 2009.
A few European immigrants settled in Chile during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mainly from Spain.
The general picture is as follows:
The national flower is the copihue (Lapageria rosea, Chilean bellflower), which grows in the woods of southern Chile.
The coat of arms shows the two national animals: the condor (Vultur gryphus, a very large bird that lives in the mountains) and the huemul (Hippocamelus bisulcus, an endangered white tail deer).
It also has the saying Por la raz n o la fuerza (By reason or by force).
The flag of Chile has two equal horizontal bands of white (top) and red.
There is a blue square the same height as the white band.
The square has a white five-pointed star in the center.
The star is a guide to progress and honor.
Blue is for the sky, white is for the snow-covered Andes, and red stands for the blood spilled to get independence.
The National Anthem of Chile, also known as Canci n Nacional (National Song) is the national anthem of the Republic of Chile.
Chorus Dulce Patria, recibe los votos con que Chile en tus aras jur que o la tumba ser s de los libres o el asilo contra la opresi n.
I Ha cesado la lucha sangrienta; ya es hermano el que ayer invasor; de tres siglos lavamos la afrenta combatiendo en el campo de honor.
El que ayer dobleg base esclavo hoy ya libre y triunfante se ve; libertad es la herencia del bravo, la Victoria se humilla a su pie.
II Alza, Chile, sin mancha la frente; conquistaste tu nombre en la lid; siempre noble, constante y valiente te encontraron los hijos del Cid.
Que tus libres tranquilos coronen a las artes, la industria y la paz, y de triunfos cantares entonen que amedrenten al d spota audaz.
III Vuestros nombres, valientes soldados, que hab is sido de Chile el sost n, nuestros pechos los llevan grabados; los sabr n nuestros hijos tambi n. Sean ellos el grito de muerte que lancemos marchando a lidiar, y sonando en la boca del fuerte hagan siempre al tirano temblar.
IV Si pretende el ca n extranjero nuestros pueblos, osado, invadir; desnudemos al punto el acero y sepamos vencer o morir.
Con su sangre el altivo araucano nos leg, por herencia, el valor; y no tiembla la espada en la mano defendiendo, de Chile, el honor.
V Puro, Chile, es tu cielo azulado, puras brisas te cruzan tambi n, y tu campo de flores bordado es la copia feliz del Ed n. Majestuosa es la blanca monta a que te dio por baluarte el Se or, y ese mar que tranquilo te ba a te promete futuro esplendor.
VI Esas galas, oh, Patria!
, esas flores que tapizan tu suelo feraz, no las pisen jam s invasores; con su sombra las cubra la paz.
Nuestros pechos ser n tu baluarte, con tu nombre sabremos vencer, o tu noble, glorioso estandarte, nos ver, combatiendo, caer.
The Territory of Christmas Island is a small island that belongs to Australia.
It is in the Indian Ocean, 2600 kms northwest of Perth in Western Australia and 500 km south of Jakarta, Indonesia.
Christmas Island is far from other islands.
That is why many of the plants and animals are only found on that Island.
Much of it is undisturbed by humans.
There used to be mining on the island, but now 65 % of Christmas Island is National Park.
Captain William Mynors of the British East India Company ship, the Royal Mary, gave the island its name because they arrived on Christmas Day, 25 December 1643.
The earliest recorded visit was in March 1688 by William Dampier of the British ship Cygnet.
Dampier was blown away from the direction he wanted to go, and he got lost.
After 28 days he arrived on Christmas Island.
Two of his crewmen were the first recorded people to set foot on Christmas Island.
There were several visits and explorations of the island, but it was only when valuable phosphate of lime was discovered that the island was annexed to (claimed by) the British Crown on 6 June 1888.
Soon afterwards, a small settlement was started in Flying Fish Cove by G. Clunies Ross, the owner of the Keeling Islands (some 900 kilometres to the south west) to collect timber and supplies for the growing industry on Cocos.
Phosphate mining began in the 1890s using indentured workers from Singapore, China, and Malaysia.
The island was ruled jointly by the British Phosphate Commissioners and District Officers from the United Kingdom Colonial Office through the Straits Settlements, and later the Crown Colony of Singapore.
Japan invaded and occupied the island in 1942, as the Indian garrison mutinied, and they interned the residents (made them stay where they were) until the end of World War II in 1945.
Australia asked the United Kingdom to allow them to rule the island; in 1957, the Australian government paid the government of Singapore 2.9 million in compensation.
This amount of money was decided by guessing how much the phosphate given up by Singapore was worth.
The first Australian Official Representative arrived in 1958 and was replaced by an Administrator in 1968.
Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands together are called the Australian Indian Ocean Territories and since 1997 share one Administrator who lives on Christmas Island.
Since the late 1980s boatloads of refugees have gone to Christmas Island, mostly from Indonesia.
During 2001, Christmas Island received a large number of asylum seekers traveling by boat, most of them from the Middle East and intending to apply for asylum in Australia.
The Norwegian cargo vessel MV Tampa rescued people from a sinking Indonesian fishing-boat Palapa.
The ship had 420 asylum seekers from Afghanistan, 13 from Sri Lanka, and five from Indonesia.
The captain of the ship asked to let the refugees leave the ship at Christmas Island.
The Australian SAS boarded and took control.
The asylum seekers were sent to Nauru.
Another boatload of asylum seekers was taken from Christmas Island to Papua New Guinea.
It was said that many of the adult asylum seekers threw their children into the water in protest at being turned away.
This was later proved to be untrue.
Many of the refugees were accepted by New Zealand.
The Australian Parliament later passed a law to ban people who arrive on Christmas Island from being able automatically to claim refugee status.
This allows the Australian navy to move them to other countries (Papua New Guinea 's Manus Island, and Nauru).
In 2005, the Department of Immigration began to build an "Immigration Reception and Processing Centre", completed in 2007 at the cost of $ 210 million.
It has 800 beds.
Christmas Island is a non-self governing territory of Australia.
The Queen of Australia is represented by an administrator appointed by the Governor-General.
Neil Lucas was appointed administrator on 28 January 2006.
Federal government services are provided through the Department of Transport and Regional Services and the Christmas Island Administration.
The Western Australian Government and other contractors provide state government services, but because Christmas Island is a territory the Commonwealth (federal) Australian Government pay the costs.
The local government is the Shire of Christmas Island.
This council has 9 members, half the members are elected every two years.
Christmas Island residents who are Australian citizens also vote in Commonwealth elections for the Northern Territory 's Lingiari constituency of the House of Representatives.
They are represented in the Senate by Northern Territory Senators.
In early 1986 the Christmas Island Assembly held a design competition for an island flag; the winning design was adopted as the informal flag of the territory for more than ten years, and in 2002 it was made the official flag of Christmas Island.
The annual red crab mass migration (around 100 million animals) to the sea to spawn has been called one of the wonders of the natural world and takes place each year around November; after the start of the wet season and in synchronisation with the cycle of the moon.
The Christmas Island National Park covers 63 % of the island.
This means that for the visitor interested in plants and animals there is a great deal to see.
There is also lots of amazing marine life in the sea.
The Territory of Cocos (Keeling) Islands, also called Cocos Islands and Keeling Islands, is a territory of Australia.
There are two atolls and twenty-seven coral islands in the group.
The islands are in the Indian Ocean, about one-half of the way from Australia to Sri Lanka.
Captain William Keeling was the first European to see the islands, in 1609, but they remained uninhabited until the nineteenth century, when they became a possession of the Clunies-Ross Family.
Slaves were brought to work the coconut plantation from Indonesia, the Cape of Good Hope and East Asia by Alexander Hare who had taken part in Stamford Raffles ' takeover of Java in 1811.
A Scottish merchant seaman called Captain John Clunies-Ross, who had also served under Raffles in the takeover, set up a compound and Hare 's severely mistreated slaves soon escaped to work under better conditions for Clunies-Ross.
On November 23 1955, the islands were transferred to Australian control under the Cocos (Keeling) Islands Act 1955.
In the 1970s, Australian government dissatisfaction with the Clunies-Ross feudal style of rule of the island increased.
In 1978, Australia forced the family to sell the islands for the sum of AU$ 6,250,000, using the threat of compulsory purchase.
By agreement the family retained ownership of Oceania House, their home on the island.
However, in 1983 the Australian government moved to dishonor this agreement, and told the former last ruler, John Clunies-Ross, that he should leave the Cocos.
The following year the High Court of Australia ruled that the government could not buy Oceania House.
Instead the Australian government ordered that no government business was to be given to his shipping company, an action which contributed to his bankruptcy.
John Clunies-Ross lives in exile in Perth, Australia, but his successors still live on the Cocos.
In 2004 there were 629 people living on the Cocos (Keeling) islands.
There are about 120 Europeans on West Island and 500 Malays on Home Island.
A Cocos dialect of Malay and English are the main languages spoken and 80 % of Cocos Islanders are Sunni Muslim.
India does not recognize Anglo annexation of these Cultural Indo-Indian\/Indies islands as part of Australia and disputes it 's status to counterbalance regional hegemonic sea power.
The capital of the Territory of Cocos (Keeling) Islands is West Island while the largest settlement is the village of Bantam (Home Island).
Governance of the islands is based on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands Act 1955
A conspiracy theory is a story that says that a group of people ("conspirators") have agreed ("conspired") to do illegal or evil things and hide them from the public.
Conspiracy theories usually have little or no evidence.
Many conspiracy theories say that certain historical events were actually caused by such conspirators.
Some conspiracy theories are about the: Apollo moon landing, the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks, the assassination of JFK and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Other examples not relating to specific events are the Illuminati, Freemasonry-related conspiracy theories, and chemtrails.
The Coral Sea Islands (or Coral Sea Islands Territory) is a group of islands on the Great Barrier Reef, in the country of Australia.
Some islands have automatic weather stations or lighthouses on them.
Willis Island is the only island where people live; four people there run a weather station.
They are in the Coral Sea, northeast of Queensland.
Costa Rica (officially called Republic of Costa Rica), is a country in Central America.
It is bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and the Caribbean Sea to the east.
The official language of Costa Rica is Spanish.
The official currency is the col n. It has enjoyed a long period of peace since the 1948 civil war.
Because of its natural beauty and political stability, it is nicknamed the "Switzerland of Latin America".
Costa Rica has had no army since December 1, 1948.
Instead of spending money on the military, the government spends money on education and health.
4,301,712 people live in Costa Rica.
The capital city is San Jos.
The current President is Luis Guillermo Sol s. He was elected in 2014.
The indigenous people of Costa Rica belong to the Intermediate Area.
This Intermediate Area is where the Mesoamerican and Andean indigenous cultures mixed together.
The country was influenced by various Chibcha speaking indigenous people.
The impact of indigenous peoples ' culture on modern Costa Rica has been small.
The country did not have a strong native civilization to begin with.
Most of the indigenous population was absorbed into the Spanish colony.
There are still some small indigenous groups.
The largest is the Bribri and Boruca tribes in south Costa Rica.
Christopher Columbus sailed to the eastern shores of Costa Rica during his last trip in 1502,.
He reported large amounts of gold jewelry among the indigenous people.
During the colonial period, Costa Rica was the southernmost province of the Captaincy General of Guatemala.
But it was operated as a largely autonomous region of the Spanish Empire.
Costa Rica 's distance from the capital in Guatemala, its legal prohibition to trade with the Viceroyalty of New Granada, and the lack of gold and silver made Costa Rica into a poor, little populated region of the Spanish Empire.
Costa Rica was called "the poorest and most miserable Spanish colony in all America" by a Spanish governor in 1719.
Costa Rica 's poverty was also because there were not enough indigenous people available for slavery.
Most of the Costa Rican settlers had to work on their own land.
There were no large haciendas (plantations).
For all these reasons, Costa Rica was unappreciated and forgotten by the Spanish Crown.
It had to develop on its own.
Costa Rica became a "rural democracy" with no oppressed mestizo or indigenous class.
It was not long before Spanish settlers turned to the hills, where they found rich volcanic soil and a better climate.
Costa Rica never fought for independence from Spain.
On September 15, 1821, after the last Spanish defeat in the Mexican War of Independence (1810 21), the authorities in Guatemala declared the independence of all of Central America.
That date is still celebrated as Independence Day in Costa Rica.
Costa Rica joined the First Mexican Empire of Agust n de Iturbide.
After its collapse in 1823, Costa Rica became a province of the new Federal Republic of Central America.
it existed from 1823 to 1839.
It had a very loose authority over its provinces, especially the poor and remote Costa Rica.
In 1824, the Costa Rican capital was moved to San Jos.
This lead to a brief battle with the old capital, Cartago.
While civil wars were common in the Federal Republic of Central America, Costa Rica was largely peaceful.
In 1838, Costa Rica formally proclaimed itself an independent country.
The local population had little allegiance to the federal government in Guatemala.
From colonial times to now, Costa Rica 's reluctance to become politically tied with the rest of Central America has been a major obstacle to efforts for greater regional integration.
Coffee was first planted in Costa Rica in the early 19th century.
It was first shipped to Europe in 1843.
It became Costa Rica 's first major export.
Coffee would remain Costa Rica 's biggest export until the 20th century.
Most of the coffee exported was transported by oxcart to the Pacific port of Puntarenas.
Since the main market for the coffee was in Europe, it soon became a high priority to develop a transportation route from the Central Plateau to the Atlantic Ocean.
For this purpose, in the 1870s, the Costa Rican government asked U.S. businessman Minor C. Keith to build a railroad to the Caribbean port of Lim n. Despite enormous difficulties with construction, disease, and financing, the railroad was completed in 1890.
Most Afro-Costa Ricans come from Jamaican immigrants who worked on the railway.
United States convicts, Italians and Chinese immigrants also worked in the construction of the railroad.
In exchange for making the railroad, Costa Rican gave Keith large amounts of land and a lease on the train route, which he used to produce bananas and export them to the United States.
As a result, bananas became the largest export.
The United Fruit Company began to hold a major role in the national economy.
Costa Rica has enjoyed greater peace and political stability than other Latin American nations.
But in 1917 19, General Federico Tinoco Granados ruled as a military dictator until he was overthrown.
The unpopularity of Tinoco 's government led to a considerable decline in the size, wealth, and political influence of the Costa Rican military.
In 1948, Jos Figueres Ferrer led an armed uprising between the previous president Rafael ngel Calder n Guardia (he served as president between 1940 and 1944) and Otilio Ulate Blanco.
With more than 2,000 dead, the 44-day Costa Rican Civil War was the bloodiest event in Costa Rica during the 20th century.
The victorious rebels formed a government that abolished the military.
It oversaw the drafting of a new constitution by a democratically elected assembly.
Having enacted these reforms, the junta relinquished its power on November 8, 1949, to the new democratic government.
After that, Figueres became a national hero, winning the country 's first democratic election under the new constitution in 1953.
Since then, Costa Rica has held 14 presidential elections, the latest in 2014.
All of them have been widely regarded by the international community as peaceful and transparent.
Costa Rica is on the Central American isthmus.
It is between latitudes 8 and 12 N, and longitudes 82 and 86 W. It borders the Caribbean Sea to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west.
It has a total of 1290 k of coastline.
Costa Rica also borders Nicaragua to the north (309 k of border) and Panama to the southeast (639 k of border).
In total, Costa Rica has 51100 k plus 589 k of territorial waters.
The highest point in the country is Cerro Chirrip, at 3819 m. The largest lake in Costa Rica is Lake Arenal.
Costa Rica is located between 8 and 12 degrees north of the Equator.
The climate is tropical all year.
The country has many microclimates depending on elevation, rainfall, and the geography of each region.
Costa Rica 's seasons are defined by how much rain falls.
It does not have the four seasons other countries have.
The year can be split into two seasons: the dry season (known as summer), and the rainy season (known as winter).
The "summer" starts in December and ends in April.
"Winter" starts in May and ends in November.
During this time it rains constantly in some regions.
The location receiving the most rain is the Caribbean.
Annual rainfall is over 5000 m. Humidity is also higher here.
The mean annual temperature on the coast is around 27.
20 in the main populated areas, and below 10 on the highest mountains.
There are many national parks in Costa Rica, including Manuel Antonio National Park.
Costa Rica is home to many plants and animals.
The country has only about 0.25 % of the world 's landmass, but it has 5 % of the world 's biodiversity.
Almost 25 % of Costa Rica 's land area is in national parks and protected areas, This is the largest percentage of protected areas in the world.
Costa Rica successfully reduced deforestation.
It had one of the worst deforestation rates in the world from 1973 to 1989.
But it was almost zero by 2005.
The Corcovado National Park is internationally known by ecologists for its biodiversity.
Visitors can see many different types of animals.
An example is the big cats and tapirs.
Corcovado is the only park in Costa Rica where all four Costa Rican monkeys can be found.
These include the white-headed capuchin, the mantled howler, the endangered Geoffroy 's spider monkey and the Central American squirrel monkey.
The squirrel monkey is found only on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and a small part of Panama.
Tortuguero National Park is home to spider, howler, and white-throat Capuchin monkeys.
It is also the home of three-toed sloth and two-toed sloth.
It has 320 species of birds.
It has many reptiles.
There is an annual nesting of the endangered green turtle, and is the most important nesting site for the species.
Giant leatherback, hawksbill, and loggerhead turtles also nest here.
The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve is home to almost 2,000 plant species.
Including many orchids.
It is also home to more than 400 types of birds.
There are more than 100 species of mammals here.
Costa Rica is a center of biological diversity for reptiles and amphibians.
They have the world 's fastest running lizard, the spiny-tailed iguana (Ctenosaura similis).
Article 168 of the Constitution of Costa Rica says the political divisions are classified into 3 groups: provinces, cantons, and districts.
Costa Rica has seven provinces.
The provinces are divided into 81 cantons.
The canton is directed by a mayor.
Mayors are chosen democratically every four years by the canton 's people.
There are no provincial legislatures.
The cantons are further divided into 463 districts.
Croatia is a country in Southeastern Europe.
Its capital city is Zagreb.
The Republic of Croatia is a small country between the Mediterranean Sea and Central Europe.
It was one of the republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
It became independent in 1991.
It joined the European Union on 1 July 2013.
A very long time ago, in this territory lived Illyrian people and they were ruled by Rome.
In the seventh century AD, northern Slavic people came to live in the Balkan peninsula.
Austria-Hungary makes the Croatia free from Ottoman empire and was ruled in today 's Croatia until 1918.
In 1918 it became a part of Yugoslavia which was taken over in World War II.
After a small war with Italy a fascist dictatorship formed the Independent State of Croatia in 1941.
It was not independent for long.
Like all other countries in Central Europe the Nazi Germany had strong influence (see also Jasenovac concentration camp).
In 1945, Croatia became a part of new, communist Yugoslavia (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) which collapsed in 1991.
Croatia is now independent for the second time.
Dalmatia is part of Croatia.
Today Croatia is popular for tourists.
The country 's reliable economy makes it possible for Croatia to join the European Union on 1 July 2013.
Croatia is one of the richest countries of the Balkan Peninsula and of the former Yugoslavia 's countries.
But Croatia had also the highest cost prices of the whole Central Europe.
The average monthly salary\/wages in Croatia standing on 739 euro or nearly $ 1000 USD.
The retirement age for men is 65 years and for women 60 years.
The health care enjoys relative strong protection for the country 's inhabitants.
The education is free and required until the child reaches the age of 15.
Many choose to continue their studies in high school until the age of 18.
This article is about the island.
For the country, see Republic of Cyprus and Northern Cyprus.
Cyprus is a Mediterranean island off the coasts of Syria and Turkey.
It is the third-largest island in the Mediterranean; Sicily and Sardinia are larger.
It is slightly larger than Puerto Rico.
Geographically, it is part of Asia and in the Middle East, but for political reasons, it is sometimes counted as being part of Europe.
There are two states on the island:
These states are separated by a buffer zone, which is controlled by the United Nations.
In addition to the two countries, there are Akrotiri and Dhekelia, two territories which are under British control, and which are used as military bases.
In its thousands of years of recorded history, many empires have ruled Cyprus.
They include Assyria, ancient Egypt Persia, Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, the Byzantines, Arab caliphates for a short period, France, the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire.
The Cretaceous period was the longest period in the Phanerozoic eon, lasting 80 million years from 145 to 66 million years ago (mya).
It followed the Jurassic period, and is the latest period of the Mesozoic era.
After it came the Cainozoic era.
Though famous for its land fauna, the Cretaceous sea level rose much higher than today.
North America was partly covered by an epicontinental sea, and half of Britain was under water.
In the Upper Cretaceous, chalk, a type of limestone, was laid down in warm shallow seas.
Chalk is 95 % to 99 % made up of coccoliths, the calcium carbonate (CaCO3) plates which tiny single-celled algae (coccolithophorids) produce.
At its end came the famous meteorite strike which, with the volcanic flood basalts spewed out in the Deccan (India), ended so many of the dominant life-forms: see K\/T extinction event.
The Lower Cretaceous at ~ 45 million years, is the longest epoch in the Phanerozoic eon.
A canal is a waterway made by humans.
For many centuries, canals have been built as a way of transporting heavy goods in barges or boats.
Canals usually connect lakes, rivers, or oceans.
The Panama Canal is a famous canal that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean.
Many canals are reinforced with clay or concrete on the sides.
Other canals are used for irrigation or hydropower.
Cognitive science studies how people make their ideas and what makes thoughts logical.
It is often seen as the result of several different scientific fields working together.
These fields are psychology (a study of the mind), neuroscience (biological study of the brain), computer science (the creation of programs and computers), and linguistics (the study of language).
It does not refer to the sum of all these disciplines.
It refers to their intersection on specific problems.
Christopher Columbus (1451 1506) was a Genoese trader, explorer, and navigator.
He was born in Genoa, Italy, in the year 1451.
"Christopher Columbus" is the English version of Columbus 's name.
His real name in Italian was Cristoforo Colombo; his name in Spanish was Crist bal Col n.
In 1492, Columbus was trying to sail to Asia.
Instead he landed in the Bahamas.
Because of this, people often say that Columbus discovered America.
Historians know now that this is not true.
When the Spanish learned that Columbus had found a "New World," many other people, called conquistadors, went there too.
This led to the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Columbus died on May 20, 1506, in Valladolid, Spain.
Columbus is often wrongly considered the first European person to have discovered the Americas.
This idea is wrong for many reasons.
For example, the Caribbean is not on the American mainland.
Also, the first European to find America was the Viking Leif Erikson, around 1000 AD.
Finally, people do not agree that either Erikson or Columbus "discovered" America.
Native Americans had been living there for thousands of years before them.
Columbus wanted to find a shorter way to get to Asia.
He thought he could get to Asia by sailing west from Europe.
He did not know about the countries in the Western Hemisphere, so he did not realize they would block him from getting to Asia.
However, Columbus did not have enough money to pay for this voyage on his own.
He was able to get the King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand II and Isabella I of Castile, to pay for the voyage.
He promised to bring back gold and spices for them.
In August of 1492, Columbus and his sailors left Spain in three ships: the Santa Mar a (the Holy Mary), the Pinta (the Painted), and the Santa Clara (nicknamed the Ni a: the Little Girl).
The three ships were very small.
Historians think that the largest ship, the Santa Mar a, was only about 60 f long, and about 16 to 19 feet (4.8 to 5.8 metres) wide.
Columbus 's other ships were even smaller.
Historians think they were about 50-60 f long.
On October 12, 1492, after sailing for about four months, Columbus landed on a small island in the Bahamas.
The natives called it Guanahani; Columbus renamed it San Salvador Island ("Holy Savior").
He met Arawak and Ta no Native Americans who lived on the island.
They were friendly and peaceful towards Columbus and his crew.
Not knowing where he was, and thinking that he had reached Asia, the "Indies," he called them "Indians."
He claimed their land as Spain 's.
Columbus then sailed to what is now Cuba, then to Hispaniola.
On Hispaniola, Columbus built a fort.
This was one of the first European military bases in the Western Hemisphere.
He called it Navidad (Spanish for "Christmas").
He left thirty-nine crew members there, and ordered them to find and store the gold.
Columbus noticed that some of the Arawaks had gold earrings.
He took some of them as prisoners and ordered them to lead him to the gold.
However, they could not.
On September 24, 1493, Columbus left Spain with enough ships, supplies, and men to invade and make Spanish colonies in the New World.
He had 17 ships and 1,200 men.
These men included soldiers and farmers.
There were also priests, whose job was to convert the natives to Christianity.
On this voyage, Columbus explored some of the islands of the Lesser Antilles.
He also sailed around most of Hispaniola and explored the sides of Jamaica and Cuba he had not seen on his first voyage.
Then he went back to the Navidad fort.
He found the fort burned down.
Eleven of the 37 soldiers Columbus left at the fort were buried there.
The rest had disappeared.
Historians think this happened because of disease and fights with the Arawak people.
While Columbus was away from Navidad exploring Jamaica and Cuba, his soldiers stopped working on building a new fort and farms.
They made the Arawaks give them food.
They also stole things from the Arawaks and raped Arawak women.
This made the Arawaks decide to fight back against the Spaniards.
However, Spain had many weapons that the Arawaks had never seen, including steel swords, pikes, crossbows, dogs, and horses.
This made it much easier for Spain to win fights against the Arawaks.
Columbus also took revenge against the Arawaks for killing his soldiers at Navidad.
He made every native older than 14 give him a certain amount of gold every three months.
If a person did not do this, Columbus 's men would cut off their hands, and they would bleed to death.
Historian Carl Lehrburger says that about 10,000 natives died this way.
Columbus also led his soldiers to many different villages in Hispaniola to take them over and make them pay him gold also.
If they could not pay the gold, people would be made into slaves or killed.
Unfortunately, there really was not that much gold on the parts of the island Columbus took over.
To avoid getting their hands cut off, many Arawaks tried to run away from Columbus and his men.
However, Columbus 's soldiers used dogs to hunt them down and kill them.
Bartolom de las Casas said that the Spanish killed two out of every three native people in the area (though he may have been exaggerating).
In February 1495, Columbus started the transatlantic slave trade.
He and his soldiers captured about 1,500 Ta no..
Only 500 could fit on Columbus 's ships, so Columbus told his men they could take any of the rest as slaves.
They took 600 and let 400 go.
Of the 500 natives that Columbus shipped to Spain as slaves, about 200 died on the trip.
Half of the rest were very sick when they arrived.
This was the first time people had ever been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to be sold as slaves.
Michele da Cuneo, a friend of Columbus 's, helped capture natives as slaves.
In a letter, da Cuneo later wrote that Columbus gave him a captured native woman to rape:
Columbus made another voyage in 1498.
King John II of Portugal had said there was a continent to the southwest of the Cape Verde islands.
On his third voyage, Columbus wanted to find this continent.
Before the voyage, Queen Isabella reminded Columbus that he should treat all of the native people well and make them into Christians.
On this voyage, Columbus sent three ships straight to the West Indies (the Caribbean).
He led another three ships: first to two Portuguese islands, then to the Canary Islands, then Cape Verde.
From Cape Verde, they sailed to the northern coast of South America and landed in Trinidad.
He also explored part of South America and the islands now called Tobago and Grenada.
On August 19, 1498, Columbus returned to Hispaniola.
He found that many of the Spanish settlers there were unhappy.
They thought there would be more gold in the New World.
Some of them had rebelled while he was gone.
Columbus had five of the rebellion 's leaders hanged.
He also tried to make the rest of the settlers happy by giving them land in Hispaniola.
However, the settlers kept sending complaints to Spain.
In 1499, Queen Isabella sent a man named Francisco de Bobadilla to Hispaniola.
She gave him the power to do whatever he thought he should do.
When he arrived in 1500, the first thing he did was to have Columbus arrested and sent back to Spain in chains.
When he was trying to make Spanish settlers happy, Columbus started the Encomienda system in Hispaniola.
Under this system, Columbus would give a piece of land in Hispaniola to an individual Spanish settler.
Sometimes, he would give away a whole native village.
Any natives that lived in that area had to work for that Spanish settler.
Natives had lived on this land for centuries.
Columbus was giving their land away, and then forcing them to work on that land.
Columbus was arrested in Hispa ola, now called Santo Domingo, on August 23, 1500.
He was sent to Spain in chains in October 1500.
He was released on December 12, 1500, and taken to court.
Luckily, Columbus had important friends, like Dukes, other noblemen, and powerful Italian merchants.
These friendships helped him get out of trouble.
Columbus died of heart failure and arthritis in Valladolid, Spain, at the possible age of 54.
Columbus 's relatives said that Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy.
Today, no historian can say for sure where Columbus was born.
Most experts think the best evidence says he was born in Genoa.
However, other historians think Columbus was born somewhere else, like Spain or Portugal.
Some think he was originally a Jew who converted to Christianity.
Columbus wrote that he first went to sea when he was 14 years old.
In 1477, Columbus married Felipa Moniz Perestrelo.
She was from a semi-noble family with connections to sailing.
She died around 1479 or 1480 while giving birth to their son, Diego.
In 1485, while in C rdoba, Spain, Columbus met Beatriz Enr quez de Trasierra.
They lived together for a while.
They had one child named Fernando.
Columbus had a few different goals for his journeys to the New World.
First, he believed he could find a shorter and easier route to Asia, which made things Europe did not.
He believed he could find a shorter route to China.
Other people had called this belief absurd.
Columbus wanted to prove these people wrong.
Second, Columbus wanted to find gold.
Gold was the main kind of money used in Columbus 's times.
In his letter to Spain 's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Columbus wrote: Gold is most excellent; gold is treasure, and (the person) who (has) it does all he wishes to in this world."
This means that someone with gold can do anything he wants to do.
Many historians believe that Columbus wanted to become a powerful person - and to become powerful, he needed to find gold.
When the Spanish learned about the New World, many conquistadors, or conquerors, went there.
This led to the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
The Spanish conquistadors first settled on the islands of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
They grabbed as much gold as they could.
The Spanish also brought priests and forced the Native Americans to convert to Christianity.
In the United States, Columbus Day is a holiday that celebrates Columbus 's arrival in the New World on October 12, 1492.
The World 's Columbian Exposition, which happened in 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, was held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus visiting the Americas.
A chemist is a scientist who studies chemistry.
In England can also mean a pharmacist (person who dispenses medicines that doctors prescribe for people).
Chemistry is the study of elements, atoms, molecules, and how they react together.
Chemists research and test medicines, explosives, and a lot of other things.
Chemistry is a very important science because it is how we got almost all of the newer, more powerful medicines.
Combustion (or burning) is a chemical process in which fuel reacts with an oxidant to produce heat.
The release of heat can produce light in the form of flame.
A car engine and a rocket engine both work by combustion.
Combustion in a car motor is different from combustion in a rocket engine.
Car combustion is gas catching on fire and exploding in cylinders again and again to push them up and down, making the car move.
Rocket combustion is made by rocket fuel exploding out of the back of the rocket moving it up.
The burning of most substances is bad for the environment and the ozone layer because it can let off greenhouse gases such as Carbon dioxide.
Hydrogen burns cleanly and gives off a lot of heat, but it does not produce much power, and is hard to find.
Fuel reacts with oxygen and release energy.
Complete combustion happens in a plentiful supply of air.
Incomplete combustion occurs when the supply of air is limited.
Complete combustion releases more energy than incomplete combustion.
Incomplete combustion also creates carbon monoxide, and more soot.
Several factors must be considered when choosing the best fuel for a particular purpose.
Fuels are substances that react with oxygen to release useful energy.
Most of the energy is released as heat, but light energy is also released.
About 21 per cent of the air is oxygen.
When a fuel burns in plenty of air, it receives enough oxygen for complete combustion.
Complete combustion needs a plentiful supply of air so that the elements in the fuel react fully with oxygen.
Fuels such as natural gas and petrol contain hydrocarbons.
These are compounds of hydrogen and carbon only.
Combustion is a high-temperature reduction\/oxidation reaction.
All the letters in the alphabet are either consonants or vowels.
A consonant is a speech sound in which the air is at least partly blocked, and any letter which represents this.
Consonants may come singly or in clusters, but must be connected to a vowel to form a syllable.
Consonants have friction when they are spoken, mostly using the position of the tongue against the lips, teeth and roof of the mouth.
b and p are plosives, using the lips to produce a tiny sharp sound.
Phonetics texts give more details, with diagrams.
Consonants may be voiced or unvoiced.
The th in the is voiced, but in breath is not.
B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, (sometimes Y), and Z. "Y" is often used as a consonant, but it is sometimes used as a vowel.
For example, in the word yellow, y is a consonant.
But in the word happy, y is a vowel.
The Channel Islands are a group of islands near the coast of France.
The five largest islands are:
The main industries are tourism, horticulture (growing plants for food) and financial services (businesses to do with money).
Most people speak English, although some people in Guernsey, Jersey and Sark still speak the traditional language of their island.
Constitutionally, the islands are part of the British crown, but are not part of the United Kingdom.
Being part of the mediaeval duchy of Normandy, allegiance is owed to the Queen but not to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which can not pass laws for the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey except for defense and diplomatic matters, except if the bailiwicks ask it to.
In general, the bailiwicks are self-governing, but they often pass laws which are like United Kingdom laws.
However some of their laws are still based on Norman law.
Constantinople (Greek:, Konstantino polis, or, Polis) was the capital of the Roman Empire (330-395), the Byzantine\/East Roman Empire (395-1204 and 1261-1453), the Latin Empire (1204-1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453-1922).
In 1930 it was renamed Istanbul.
It is a city in present day Turkey.
For centuries the city was not very large, and was called Byzantium.
Constantine the Great renamed it for himself and made it his capital.
In medieval times different sides tried to conquer it including Crusaders.
In 1453 the Muslims won and made it their capital, calling it Istanbul.
Cornwall (Cornish: Kernow) is a county in the far south west of England in the UK.
Truro is the capital of the Unitary Authority that has administered Cornwall since 2009.
Truro is also the only city and has the cathedral of the Diocese of Truro.
The Duchy of Cornwall is an estate which belongs to the Prince of Wales (who is also the Duke of Cornwall), but only part of it is in Cornwall.
Cornwall is split from Devon by the River Tamar.
Some people in Cornwall have revived Cornish, a very old recently extinct Celtic language of the area of Britain which is called Cornwall, which is related to Breton and to Welsh.
There is also a dialect of the English language spoken in Cornwall.
Cornwall has a population of approx 550,000 and its population is divided almost equally between native Cornish and incomers from elsewhere in the UK, mostly England.
Many Cornish people consider themselves as descendents of the indigenous Britons, and not English, and are recognized by Celtic organizations worldwide as such.
Tintagel Castle is on the north coast of Cornwall.
Falmouth harbor is one of the largest natural harbors in the world.
Newquay is one of the larger holiday resorts and popular with surfers.
Since early times Cornwall has been an important area for the mining of tin.
Tin is no longer mined but china clay is still an important industry.
Bodmin Moor is the largest and highest of the granite moors of Cornwall.
The climate is generally mild, with much frontal rain.
The varied scenery and historical monuments attract many tourists to Cornwall.
The most important transport links between Devon and Cornwall are the Plymouth to Penzance railway line and the A30 and A38 major roads.
The Scilly Isles are a group of islands south west of Cornwall and forming part of the county.
The Scilly Isles have a long history of shipwrecks because of the rocky coasts.
There are 530 known ship wrecks around the isles.
Constitutional monarchy is a form of government.
It is also called limited monarchy.
A monarch is the head of state, but must follow a constitution.
Most constitutional monarchies use a parliamentary system.
Contemporary constitutional monarchies include the United Kingdom and Commonwealth realms, Belgium, Bhutan, Bahrain, Cambodia, Denmark, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, Lesotho, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Monaco, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, and Thailand.
The following is a list of reigning monarchies.
Except where noted, monarch selection is hereditary as directed by the state 's constitution.
Caspar David Friedrich (September 5, 1774 May 7, 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important of the movement.
He is best known for landscapes, which typically feature lonely figures against night skies, morning mists or Gothic ruins.
Courtney Michelle Love (born Courtney Michelle Harrison on July 9, 1964) is an American rock musician and Golden Globe-nominated actress.
Love is best known as lead singer, songwriter and lyricist for the now-defunct alternative rock band Hole and as the widow of Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain, with whom she had a daughter called Frances Bean Cobain.
Rolling Stone has called Love "the most controversial woman in the history of rock".
In the 90s there was a twee band who were called, ` Courtney Love ', named after her.
In 1981 Love started Sugar Babydoll.
In 1982 she went to a Faith No More concert.
She convinced the members to let her join as a singer.
She was kicked out of the band because they wanted "male energy".
In 1984 she started Pagan Babies.
In 1989 Love began Hole.
In 1999 Hole 's first single "Retard Girl" was released.
The band released its first album Pretty on the Inside in 1991.
On April 12, 1994 Hole 's second album Live Through This was released, four days after Love 's husband Kurt Cobain was found dead in their home.
The album got very good reviews.
On September 8, 1998 Celebrity Skin was released.
On February 10, 2004 Love released America 's Sweetheart.
Hole 's last album Nobody 's Daughter was released on April 27, 2010.
In 2006 she published a memoir, Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love.
Love sung on "Rat a Tat" on Fall Out Boy 's fifth album Save Rock and Roll, released April 12 2013.
She also wrote the song.
Love said that her next album would be released for Christmas 2013 along with Courtney Love: My Story, a book about her life so far.
In 2014 Love released her first single in ten years, "Know My Name".
Love is a feminist.
She is open about having had cosmetic surgery.
Love was married to Kurt Cobain from 1992 until his death in 1994.
They have one daughter born in 1992.
Cannibalism is where a person eats the flesh of another person.
It is also called anthropophagy.
Anthropologists are not sure how widespread it was, but it did happen in some societies.
The word ` cannibalism ' comes from the Island Carib people of the Lesser Antilles.
They got a long-standing reputation as cannibals when their legends were recorded in the 17th century.
Some controversy exists over the accuracy of these legends.
Cannibalism was widespread in the past among humans in many parts of the world, continuing into the 19th century in some isolated South Pacific cultures, and to the present day in parts of tropical Africa.
Cannibalism was certainly practiced in New Guinea and in parts of the Solomon Islands, and flesh markets existed in some parts of Melanesia.
Fiji was once known as the ` Cannibal Isles '.
Cannibalism has been well documented around the world, from Fiji to the Amazon Basin to the Congo to M ori New Zealand.
A chemical element is a substance that contains only one type of atom.
If a substance contains more than one type of atom, it is a compound.
An element can be a solid, liquid or gas.
The smallest particle of such an element is an atom.
Atoms are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons.
Each element contains only one kind of atom.
The number of protons in an atom is called the atomic number.
For example, all atoms with 6 protons are of the chemical element carbon, and all atoms with 92 protons are of the element uranium.
The number of protons in the nucleus causes its electric charge.
This fixes the number of electrons in its normal (unionized) state.
The electrons in their atomic orbitals determine the atom 's various chemical properties.
Elements are the basic building blocks for all types of substances.
When they are combined with each other, they can form molecules.
118 different chemical elements are known to modern chemistry.
92 of these elements can be found in nature, and the others can only be made in laboratories.
The human body is made up of 26 elements.
The last natural element discovered was uranium, in 1789.
The first man-made element was Technetium, in 1937.
Chemical elements are commonly arranged in the periodic table.
Where the elements are on the table tells us about their properties relative to the other elements.
Chemical elements are also given a unique chemical symbol.
Chemical symbols are used all over the world.
This means that, no matter which language is spoken, there is no confusion about what the symbol means.
Chemical symbols of elements come from their English or Latin names.
For example, carbon has the chemical symbol ` C ', and sodium has chemical symbol ` Na ', after the Latin natrium.
Tungsten is called ` W ' after its German name, wolfram.
` Au ' is the symbol for gold and it comes from the Latin word for gold, aurum.
Another symbol which comes from Latin is ` Ag '.
This is the element silver and it comes from the Latin argentum.
Lead 's symbol, ` Pb ', comes from the Latin plumbum and the English word plumber derives from this as pipes used to be made out of lead.
Others were named after famous people, like einsteinium, which was named after Albert Einstein.
Elements can join (react) to form pure compounds (such as water, salts, oxides, and organic compounds).
In many cases, these compounds have a fixed composition and their own structure and properties.
The properties of the compound may be very different from the elements it is made from.
Sodium is a metal that burns when put into water and chlorine is a poisonous gas.
When they react together they make sodium chloride (salt) which is harmless and edible.
Some elements, particularly metal elements mix together in any proportion to form new structures.
Such new structures are not compounds.
They are called mixtures.
Most elements in nature consist of atoms with different numbers of neutrons.
An isotope is a form of an element with a certain number of neutrons.
For example, carbon has two stable, naturally occurring isotopes: carbon-12 (6 neutrons) and carbon-13 (7 neutrons).
Carbon-14 (8 neutrons) is a naturally occurring radioactive isotope of carbon.
Of each element, except for Ununoctium, at least two isotopes are known.
Elements can be classified based on physical states.
At room temperature and pressure, most elements are solids, only 11 are gases and 2 are liquids.
Elements can also be classified into metals and non-metals.
There are many more metals than non-metals.
However, a few elements have properties in between those of metals and non-metals.
These elements are called semimetals (or metalloids).
The West African CFA franc is the currency of eight countries in West Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, S n gal and Togo.
CFA means Communaut Financi re d'Afrique ("Financial Community of Africa") or Communaut Financi re Africaine ("African Financial Community").
The Central African CFA franc has the same value as the West African CFA franc.
Consciousness means being awake, alert and responsive with the environment.
The definition of consciousness may differ in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and other related sciences.
Consciousness is a spectrum.
There are several states between a fully conscious state and a fully unconscious state.
In medicine, the degree of loss of consciousness is measured by using Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS); a score between 3 and 15 is given to each person at any time, to show how conscious he or she is.
Higher scores show more conscious states.
The opposite of consciousness is subconsciousness\/unconscious mind.
This means people do things that are instinctive and do not think about them like breathing and making one 's heart beat.
It is not known what causes consciousness.
So, it is difficult to know if another person or thing is indeed conscious.
For example, if a robot seems to react to its environment, how does one know if it has consciousness (see artificial life)?
Currency is the unit of money used by the people of a country or Union for buying and selling goods and services.
Certain currencies are said to be "pegged" or "fixed" to something, usually another currency.
A fixed or pegged currency is one that has a constant value compared to what it is pegged to.
For example, the Cape Verdian escudo is pegged to the Euro.
If the value of the Euro goes up 1 % compared to another form of currency, the value of the escudo also goes up 1 % compared to that same currency.
Many countries have used systems where their money was pegged to something other than currency, for example gold.
When they do this, as the value of gold increases, so does the value of their money.
Doing this is commonly called using the "Gold standard".
Most countries stopped using the Gold standard in the 20th century.
A central bank (or reserve bank) manages a state 's currency, money supply, and interest rates.
Central banks usually oversee the commercial banks of their country.
It issues the national currency, the nation 's money.
It controls the overall supply of money.
In contrast to a commercial bank, a central bank can increase or decrease the amount of money in the nation.
The oldest central bank is the Bank of England.
The largest banks are now the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Federal Reserve of the United States.
Central banks usually also have supervisory powers.
These powers are meant to prevent bank runs, and to stop commercial banks and other financial institutions doing reckless or fraudulent things.
The relation between central banks and governments varies from country to country.
The chief executive of a central bank is normally known as the Governor, President or Chairman.
Chlorine (chemical symbol Cl) is a chemical element.
Its atomic number (which is the number of protons in it) is 17, and its atomic mass is 35.45.
It is part of the 7th column (halogens) on the periodic table of elements.
Chlorine is a very irritating and greenish-yellow gas.
It has a strong smell like bleach.
It is toxic.
It can be made into a liquid when cooled.
It is heavier than air.
Chlorine is highly reactive.
It is more reactive than bromine but less reactive than fluorine.
It reacts with most things to make chlorides.
It can even burn things instead of oxygen.
It dissolves in water to make a mixture of hypochlorous acid and hydrochloric acid.
The more acidic it is, the more chlorine is made; the more basic it is, the more hypochlorous acid (normally turned into hypochlorite) and hydrochloric acid (normally turned into chlorides) are there.
Chlorine reacts with bromides and iodides to make bromine and iodine.
Chlorine exists in several oxidation states: -1, +1, +3, +4, +5, and +7.
The -1 state is most often in chloride.
Chlorides are not reactive.
Compounds containing chlorine in its +1 oxidation state are hypochlorites.
Only one is common.
They are a strong oxidizing agent, as are all + oxidation state compounds.
+3 is in chlorites.
+4 is in chlorine dioxide, a common chlorine compound that is not a chloride.
+5 is in chlorates.
+7 is in perchlorates.
Hypochlorites are most reactive, while perchlorates are the least reactive.
Many organic compounds have chlorine in them.
Freon has chlorine in it.
PVC (Poly-vinyl chloride), a common plastic, has chlorine in it.
Chlorine oxides can be made, but most of them are very reactive and unstable.
Chlorine is not found as an element.
Sodium chloride is the most common chlorine ore..
It is in the ocean (sea salt) and in the ground (rock salt).
There are some organic compounds that have chlorine in them, too.
It is made by electrolysis (the passing of electricity through a solution to make chemical reactions happen) of sodium chloride.
This is known as the chloralkali process.
It can also be made by reacting hydrogen chloride with oxygen and a catalyst.
It can be made in the laboratory by reacting manganese dioxide with hydrochloric acid.
It is made when sodium hypochlorite reacts with hydrochloric acid.
This is a dangerous reaction that can happen without anyone knowing.
Chlorine is used widely to purify water (usually in a swimming pool), as a disinfectant and bleach, and in the making of many important compounds including chloroform and carbon tetrachloride.
It was used as a poison gas in some wars.
It was discovered in 1774 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele who thought it had oxygen in it.
Chlorine was named in 1810 by Humphry Davy who insisted it was an element.
The US made all water chlorinated (added chlorine to water) by 1918.
It is poisonous in large amounts and can damage skin.
When it is inhaled, it irritates the lungs, eyes, and skin badly.
It can cause fire with some things because it is very reactive.
It is heavier than air, so it can fill up enclosed spaces.
Calcium is a chemical element.
Its symbol on the periodic table (a list of all the elements) is Ca.
Its atomic number is 20.
(The atomic number says where Calcium sits in the periodic table.)
It has 20 protons and 20 electrons (if is an atom, see ion).
The most common isotopes are Ca-40 and Ca-44.
Its mass number is about 40.08.
Calcium is very important in the human body, for making bones and for other purposes.
Calcium is a soft white-gray metal.
it is a solid and is opaque.
It is an alkaline earth metal.
It melts at a quite high temperature for a reactive metal.
It is a little harder than lead.
It has two allotropes.
It does not conduct electricity as well as copper, but is much lighter in weight.
It reacts with water to produce hydrogen and calcium hydroxide.
It reacts with water very fast when it is powdered.
When it is in a chunk, it starts reacting slowly because calcium hydroxide makes a coating that does not dissolve on the calcium.
If a little acid is added to calcium hydroxide, it dissolves it, making the calcium react very fast.
It burns when powdered to make a reddish flame.
This makes calcium oxide.
It also makes calcium nitride when heated.
It can react with halogens to make calcium halides like calcium chloride with chlorine.
Calcium forms chemical compounds in the +2 oxidation state.
Calcium compounds are colorless.
Most calcium compounds are not toxic.
They are needed in the human body, actually.
They are unreactive as far as calcium ions go.
Calcium oxide was used to make limelights, which have a flame heating calcium oxide and makes it glow very bright.
Calcium is not found as a metal in the ground; it is too reactive.
Calcium carbonate, also known as calcite, is the most common calcium mineral.
It is important to know how cells work.
Many cells have calcium channels on their surface.
These are openings where calcium ions can enter the cell.
The cell is told to act and it opens the channels.
Once in the cell calcium ions activates many proteins to do specific things.
For example, when it goes into muscle cells, it makes them contract (shorten so the muscle pulls.)
When it goes into nerve cells, it triggers electrical impulses that send a messages.
When it goes into white blood cells it makes them fight germs.
Calcium ions are important to cells, but too many calcium ions can be bad.
If a cell gets more calcium ion than it needs it can die.
This is why the amount of calcium ion in cells is highly regulated.
Conversely, not enough calcium ion is bad.
Cells must have the right amount to function properly.
Sometimes cells are unhealthy and need to die in for the body to replace them with new, healthy cells.
This keeps the whole organism healthy.
Cells know when they should die and can trigger reactions to end their life cycles in many ways.
When this happens it is called apoptosis, also known as a ` programmed cell death ' (planned cell death.)
One way cells accomplish apoptosis by taking in toxic levels of calcium ions.
Calcium is very important for the human body.
Bones contain most of the calcium ion in the human body.
If we need more calcium for our blood, muscles, or other tissue, it comes from the bones.
If we have extra calcium it goes into bones.
Calcium as an element is not found in the human body, just calcium ions in the form of chemical compounds.
Organisms need to keep calcium ion levels very well controlled.
High calcium levels are bad, and low calcium levels are bad.
The control of calcium in the body is called calcium metabolism.
Too little calcium can cause osteoporosis.
The body controls calcium levels with many hormones.
Calcitonin, Parathyroid hormone (acronym PTH), and Vitamin D are the most important hormones in calcium metabolism.
(Vitamin D works as a hormone but it is called a vitamin.)
Calcium metal is made by electrolysis of melted calcium chloride.
It has to be very hot to melt it.
The calcium metal is liquid.
Calcium is used in the reduction of other metals.
It can also be used to make alloys with other metals.
Calcium compounds are also important in chemistry.
It is important for making things.
It is a part of cement which is needed to make concrete (a hard substance that many buildings are made from.)
Calcium is part of calcium oxide.
Calcium oxide is used to make paper, pottery, food, and to purify water (make it good to drink.)
Calcium carbonate is used as a calcium supplement.
Calcium permanganate can be used as a rocket propellant.
Calcium is toxic as an element.
It reacts with water and makes a strong base, calcium hydroxide.
Calcium compounds are not toxic unless the anion is toxic.
Calcium permanganate is only toxic because of the permanganate, not the calcium.
Like other alkaline earth metals calcium burns easily and brightly.
Chromium is a chemical element.
Its symbol on the periodic table (a list of all the elements) is Cr.
It always has 24 protons, so its atomic number is 24.
Its mass number (number of protons and neutrons) is about 54.
Most of the times it has 28 neutrons, but different isotopes have more or fewer neutrons.
As a metal, it has 24 electrons.
Its ions have fewer electrons.
Chromium is a shiny metal.
It is reactive, but it reacts with air to produce a very thin coating of chromium (III) oxide, which prevents it from rusting any more.
Chromium occurs in several oxidation states; +2, +3, and +6 are most common.
It forms chemical compounds that are colorful.
There are two main types of chromium ions, which are found in chromium compounds.
One type of chromium ion (Cr3 +, trivalent chromium) is required by our body and by those of other animals.
If we do not get enough chromium, certain parts of our body may not work properly.
We get most of the chromium we need from our food we eat.
Chromium is also put into vitamins to make sure that we get enough.
If we get too much of this type of chromium, it can harm our body.
Another type of chromium (Cr6 + (chromate, hexavalent chromium), in the +6 oxidation state) can cause cancer or make people sick, even though most people do not get exposed to it much.
It is found in places that make chromium metal, which is why they need to be cleaned up when they close.
Hexavalent chromium can be destroyed by reacting it with reducing agents, turning it into Cr3 + (trivalent chromium).
They are strong oxidizing agents.
Chromates are generally yellow.
Dichromates are red or orange.
Chromium occurs as chromite.
Chromite is a mixture of iron (II) oxide and chromium (III) oxide.
Its chemical formula is FeCr2O4.
It is heated with sodium carbonate to make sodium chromate, iron (III) oxide, and carbon dioxide.
The sodium chromate is reacted with sulfuric acid to produce sodium dichromate.
The sodium dichromate is reduced by carbon to chromium (III) oxide.
The chromium (III) oxide is reacted with aluminum to make chromium metal.
The chromates and dichromates are what make chromium production areas toxic.
Chromium is used in different metal products.
Stainless steel is the most common use.
It is also used in "chrome plating", where it makes things shiny and stops corrosion.
Some chromates were used as pigments, but they are toxic so people do not want to use them anymore.
Chromium metal is nontoxic.
But hexavalent chromium is toxic and carcinogenic, and trivalent chromium is mildly toxic in large quantities.
Cymbals (pronounce like the word symbol) are percussion instruments.
They are discs made of copper, bronze or a special alloy.
They look rather like saucepan lids, but in the middle they jut out a little and they have straps there that pass through a hole.
There are two ways of playing cymbals.
One way is to use a pair of cymbals that are the same.
The player holds one cymbal in each hand, holding them by the strap.
He then bangs the cymbals together.
There are many ways of doing this depending on the sort of sound that is wanted.
For example, a very quiet sound can be made by rubbing the edges of the cymbals together.
A very loud sound can be made by hitting them together as the arms form a circle, and letting the cymbals vibrate for a long time by holding them in the air.
Another way of playing the cymbal is to use just one cymbal, and to hang it on a stand.
It can then be played with a beater, stick or wire brush.
It can be hit at the edge, in the middle, or half way between, depending on the sound that is wanted.
Cymbals are made in different sizes.
Some may be just 25 cm across, large ones may be up to 60 cm across.
Cymbals do not normally give any particular pitch.
There are, however, small ones based on an old form of cymbal which are called crotales.
There are also Chinese cymbals which have a turned-up edge.
Cymbals are used in many different musical groups.
They are heard in an orchestra, in jazz groups, percussion groups and bands, including marching bands.
A drum kit always has at least one cymbal.
This may be a crash cymbal (on the top of a stand) or a pair of hi-hats (a pair of small cymbals operated by pressing a pedal with the foot.
The word cymbal comes from the Latin cymbalum, which itself comes from the Greek word kumbalom, meaning a small bowl.
It was used in many ancient cultures including Egyptian civilisations.
Cymbals are often used in orchestras.
The first composer to use them was probably Joseph Haydn in his Military Symphony (1794).
They are often used when there is a big climax (for example in the Academic Festival Overture by Johannes Brahms, but they can also sometimes be played very quietly.
Sometimes players should let the cymbal vibrate for a long time after a big crash, but at other times he may have to hold the cymbals against his body quickly to stop the noise.
This is called damping the sound.
Cymbals have traditionally often been played together with the bass drum.
This makes a "crash-bang-wallop" noise.
Cadmium is a metal.
It is element 48 on the periodic table.
Its symbol is Cd.
Its atomic number is 48 and its atomic mass is 112.4.
It is found in Group 12 on the periodic table.
Cadmium is a blue-gray soft metal.
It can be considered a transition metal or a post-transition metal.
It is malleable and ductile.
It is similar to zinc.
It melts at 321 C.
Cadmium has 8 natural isotopes.
5 are radioactive, but 3 have very long half-lives so their radioactivity is almost nothing.
Cadmium is a moderately reactive metal.
It corrodes in moist air and dissolves in acids.
It burns in air when powdered to make the brown cadmium oxide.
Cadmium forms chemical compounds in two oxidation states: +1 and +2.
The +1 state is rare and unstable.
The +2 state is much more common.
Most +2 compounds dissolve easily in water and are white to yellow.
Cadmium oxide can be brown, red, or white.
Cadmium sulfide is bright yellow.
Cadmium chloride and cadmium sulfate are colorless solids that dissolve easily in water.
Cadmium fluoride is slightly soluble.
Cadmium compounds are toxic when inhaled.
Cadmium was found by two chemists, German chemist Friedrich Stromeyer discovered it in 1817, and Karl Herman also discovered it in 1818.
They were looking at an impurity in zinc carbonate and found cadmium.
For about 100 years, Germany made most cadmium.
Cadmium iodide was used as a medicine although it was toxic.
Cadmium ores are rare.
Greenockite, a cadmium sulfide mineral is the only main ore and it is found with sphalerite, a zinc sulfide.
Because of this, most cadmium comes from zinc processing.
Cadmium as a metal is very rare but is found in one place in Russia.
China makes the most cadmium.
South Korea and Japan also make cadmium.
Cadmium is taken from the zinc metal by heating the zinc metal in a vacuum.
Cadmium is boiled first.
The cadmium is condensed and used.
Cadmium is also taken by precipitating it from the solution of zinc sulfate used to make pure zinc by electrolysis.
In the 1930s and 1940s cadmium was mainly used to plate steel to prevent it from corroding.
Then cadmium sulfide was used as a pigment in paint.
Now, cadmium is mainly used in nickel cadmium batteries.
86 % of cadmium is used in batteries as of 2009.
Some people are trying to stop using nickel-cadmium batteries because cadmium is toxic.
Cadmium is still used to electroplate steel to prevent corrosion.
Only about 6 % of cadmium is used for this.
Cadmium is also used in lasers, nuclear reactors, phosphors, photoresistors, pigments, and semiconductors.
Wood 's metal, an alloy that melts very easily, has cadmium in it.
Cadmium is used in some solder.
Cadmium is not used in the human body or any other animal.
A diatom uses cadmium, though.
Cadmium is a highly toxic metal.
Dust of cadmium or its compounds is very dangerous and can kill.
Some countries have banned cadmium from electronics.
Cigarette smoking is the most important source of cadmium.
Smokers have about 4 times more cadmium in their blood than nonsmokers (people who do not smoke).
Cadmium is thought to be carcinogenic, although people still debate whether it is other things with the cadmium that cause cancer, like arsenic.
Curium is a chemical element.
It is a radioactive metal.
It has the chemical symbol Cm.
It has the atomic number 96.
In chemistry it is placed in a group of metal elements named the actinides.
Curium is a transuranic element.
It is a radioactive element that does not exist in nature.
Curium has to be made.
Curium has a silver color.
Curium is made by bombarding a plutonium target with alpha particles (helium ions).
Curium was named after Marie Curie and her husband Pierre.
Californium is a chemical element.
It is a radioactive metal.
It has the chemical symbol Cf. It has the atomic number 98.
Californium is a transuranic element.
It is in nature on Earth but is also in other parts of the universe.
Californium does not have many uses.
It was discovered by bombarding a curium target with alpha particles (helium ions).
Californium is named after the US State of California, where it was discovered, in the University of Berkeley.
Publicly and privately held for-profit corporations give corporate titles or business titles to company officials to identify their job.
Many colleges and universities also use corporate titles.
The top executives in senior management are usually the chief executive officer (CEO), chief operations officer (COO), and chief financial officer (CFO).
Cambridge is a city in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, just outside of Boston.
It is the home of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The second Wikimania was hosted in this city in 2006.
Cambridge is a city in England.
It might also mean:
Norman Colin Dexter, OBE, (born 29 September 1930) is an English crime writer.
He was known for his Inspector Morse novels, which were written between 1975 and 1999 and adapted as a television series from 1987 to 2000.
In 2000 Dexter was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to literature.
In 2001 he was awarded the Freedom of the City of Oxford.
College is a kind of school or university, a place where people go to learn skills for future jobs.
Most college students go to college right after high school but others choose to go later in life.
Most students are there because it will help them to earn more money and live better lives.
In some countries, for example the United Kingdom, college also means a house belonging to a university, where students and teachers live together.
A codex (plural codices) is a book-like object with writing on it.
On a codex there are separate pages, whereas a scroll is one continuous long document.
The term is used for book-type objects written by hand, and includes books written on vellum or parchment.
The codex transformed the shape of the book itself.
As an objects, books can last for centuries, and many codices are in the great modern libraries.
The codex was first described by the 1st-century AD Roman poet Martial, who praised it.
The codex was as common as scrolls by about AD 300.
It had completely replaced scrolls in the Greco-Roman world by the 6th century.
Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 - February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electronic engineer, and cryptographer.
He is known as the father of information theory.
Shannon founded the information theory with one landmark paper published in 1948.
A community is a group of living things sharing the same environment.
They usually have shared interests.
In human communities, people have some of the same beliefs and needs, and this affects the identity of the group and the people in it.
Community college is a type of public education institution.
It provides two-year college education at reasonable tuition fees.
Different forms of community colleges exist in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, the Philippines and etc.
Students enter community colleges to pursue their academics or receive a better job training.
After graduating from a community college, some choose to transfer to a four-year university.
First community college in the U.S. is Joliet Junior College in Illinois, which was founded in 1901.
The number of community colleges has grown continuously.
Currently, there are 1,166 community colleges in the U.S.
Community (TV series) is American TV series about community college students life.
Charles Babbage (26 December 1791 18 October 1871) was an English mathematician, analytical philosopher, mechanical engineer and computer scientist.
He was the first person to come up with the idea of a computer that could be programmed.
Unfinished parts of his mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum.
Charles Babbage was born in England, at 44 Crosby Row, Walworth Road, London.
Babbage 's father, Benjamin Babbage, was a banker in London who owned the Bitton Estate in Teignmouth.
His mother was Betsy Plumleigh Babbage.
In 1808, the Babbage family moved into the old Rowdens house in East Teignmouth.
Knowing that there were lots of errors in the calculation of mathematical tables, Babbage wanted to find a method by which they could be calculated mechanically, removing errors made by humans.
Three different factors seem to have influenced him: a dislike of untidiness; his experience working on logarithmic tables; and existing work on calculating machines carried out by Wilhelm Schickard, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz.
He first talked about the principles of a calculating engine in a letter to Sir Humphrey Davy in 1822.
Babbage 's engines were among the first mechanical computers.
His engines were not actually completed because he did not have enough money.
Babbage realized that a machine could do the work better and more reliably than a human being.
Babbage controlled building of some steam-powered machines that more or less did their job; calculations could be mechanized to an extent.
Although Babbage 's machines were large machines ther were organized in a way similar to modern computer architecture.
The data and program memory were separated, operation was instruction based, control unit could make conditional jumps and the machine had a separate I\/O unit.
Ada Lovelace studied how to program them.
Cross-dressing is when someone wears clothes that are commonly associated with the opposite sex.
Cross-dressing is often done to create a transgender identity.
It has also been used for disguise, comfort and in the performing arts in modern times and in history.
The Channel Tunnel (or Chunnel) (French: le tunnel sous la Manche) is a long underwater tunnel between England and France that runs under the English Channel at the Strait of Dover.
It is only for trains.
Some of the trains in the Channel Tunnel carry freight, including automobiles.
Others, like the Eurostar, carry only passengers.
The tunnel, which was once called the Eurotunnel, opened in 1994.
It is 50 km (31 miles) long and its deepest point is 75 m (250 feet) beneath the surface.
It connects Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom to Calais in northern France.
This has reduced travel time between London and Paris to a little over two hours with high-speed trains.
Cyberpunk is a kind of Science Fiction.
The Cyberpunk genre began in the early 1980s.
Bruce Bethke made this word for his 1980 short story "Cyberpunk" by putting together two words: "cybernetics" and "punk rock".
Soon, people used this word to describe William Gibson 's book, Neuromancer.
Cyberpunk authors put their stories in different settings.
The time is usually set in the near-future and the settings are often dystopian (characterized by misery).
These are often societies with very advanced technology.
Often, only a few huge corporations control the society.
These corporations control the technology.
Instead of being beneficial to all, technology is used by the few corporations for their own interests only.
Many cyberpunk novels are about individual computer users.
One hero fights a computer\/Internet controlled society.
These stories are often in the near future.
Common themes in cyberpunk include advances in information technology and especially the Internet, artificial intelligence and prosthetics and post-democratic societal control where corporations have more influence than governments.
Nihilism, post-modernism, and film noir techniques are common elements, and the protagonists may be disaffected or reluctant anti-heroes.
A comic strip is a series of panels with cartoon drawings in them that make a story.
Sometimes comic strips are humorous, and sometimes they are serious.
Famous examples of comic strips are:
There are comic strips in newspapers and on the web.
Comic strips on the web are called webcomics.
Penny Arcade and Xkcd are famous webcomics.
The continuum hypothesis is a hypothesis that there is no set that is both bigger than that of the natural numbers and smaller than that of the real numbers.
Georg Cantor stated this hypothesis in 1877.
There are infinitely many natural numbers, the cardinality of the set of natural numbers is infinite.
This is also true for the set of real numbers, but there are more real numbers than natural numbers.
We say that the natural numbers have infinite cardinality and the real numbers have infinite cardinality, but the cardinality of the real numbers is greater than the cardinality of the natural numbers.
This hypothesis is the first problem on the list of 23 problems David Hilbert published in 1900.
Kurt G del showed in 1939, that the hypothesis can not be falsified using Zermelo Fraenkel set theory.
The Zermelo Fraenkel set theory is the set theory commonly used in mathematics.
Paul Cohen showed in the 1960s that the Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory can not be use to prove the continuum hypothesis, either.
For this, Cohen was awarded the Fields Medal.
Nepeta is a genus of about 250 species of flowering plants in the family Lamiaceae.
Some members of this group are known as catnip or catmint because of their effect on house cats.
The oil in the leaves of some Nepeta species gives cats euphoria, that is, it makes them feel good.
They get a "high", roll around, and may cry out, jump and behave in an unusual way.
Cryptanalysis (from the Greek krypt s, "hidden", and anal ein, "to loosen" or "to untie") is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information, without access to the secret information which is normally required to do so.
Typically, this involves finding a secret key.
In non-technical language, this is the practice of codebreaking or cracking the code, although "break" can also mean just a part of a complete solution.
A Chicano is a man who has a mixed ancestry and\/or citizenship of the United States and usually Mexico.
Often, Chicano and Mexican-American are used to mean the same thing.
People from Central or South America and United States could also be called Chicano.
Chicana is the female version of Chicano.
The Canary Islands are a group of islands off the coast of Morocco.
They are an autonomous community of Spain (they make their own laws).
There are seven main islands.
The people who live there speak Spanish.
The autonomous community has two capital cities, of equal status: Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Every island has been created by volcanoes on the bottom of the sea.
Those volcanoes slowly rose above the water and made the islands.
This process lasted many thousands of years.
The islands have a very long and interesting history.
When Europeans first came to the Canary Islands, they found people already living there.
These people were called the Guanches.
Many of the Guanches were killed in 15th century battles with the Spanish, and the ones who remained adopted the Spanish way of life.
After the Spanish conquest many battles were also fought against pirates.
Most recently Morocco was interested in them.
After the Spanish conquest many Europeans settled there.
Portuguese and Spaniards, and also Belgians and Maltese were among the early settlers.
Recently many people from all over Europe, America, India and Africa have also become citizens or permanent residents.
People from La Gomera have a whistle language that children there learn at school.
Tenerife has the highest mountain in the Canary Islands and Spain too, the Teide.
The Teide is actually a volcano, but it has not been active in more than 300 years.
The islands are popular with tourists because of their warm climate and nice beaches.
The local farmers grow lots of exotic fruits including papayas and bananas.
The Canary Islands ' main exports include bananas and tobacco.
Coma is a medical term.
It is a state of deep unconsciousness.
People who are in that state can not be woken up.
They also do not react to pain or light.
Coma can result from various conditions.
Some of these are intoxication, poisons or damages or diseases of the nervous system.
It can also be the result of certain drugs.
Doctors sometimes put patients that have very bad injuries into a coma.
There are different levels of coma.
Comas usually do not last more than several weeks, but those several weeks could be disastrous.
Sometimes only basic bodily functions are left over.
Intensive hospital care is often needed to recover some of these functions.
Some comas can last years, but these are usually not woken up from.
The family of a coma victim (or whoever has the power of attorney) can sign papers so that they are taken off of life support and die.
Cape Breton Island (French: le du Cap-Breton - formely le Royale, Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Cheap Breatuinn, M kmaq: namakika, simply: Cape Breton) is an island on the Atlantic coast of North America.
It likely corresponds to the European word "Breton", referring to Brittany.
Consequentialism is a theory in the field of ethics.
The moral value of an action can be judged by looking at the consequences it has.
One of the big theories that can be called consequential is called utilitarianism.
Conscription, also called draft, is when a government forces people to join the armed forces.
Usually, only men are conscripted, but in Israel, women are as well.
A soldier who has been forced to serve in the army is called a conscript.
Conscription is a very old way to build up armies, but also usually very unpopular, since very few men enjoy fighting and killing other people.
Historically conscription was called levy, but it was so unpopular that it was used only when the country was in really dire danger.
18th century Prussia had a conscript army but the first large, modern conscript army was the French Grand Army in the French Revolution.
The leaders drafted all French men into the army.
The result was that the French army was five times larger than that of neighbor countries, and the sheer numbers often won battles.
While the French soldiers were less well trained and equipped than the soldiers of the neighbor armies, they were so many that they could win.
Conscription became the universal way of making up the armies after the French Revolution.
Almost all the powerful armies in the world except United Kingdom were conscripted armies.
Without conscription, the large armies of World War One and World War Two would have been impossible to form.
Conscription armies are large, but they are often poorly equipped and trained and have poor morale.
In combat they usually suffer many casualties.
Usually conscripts serve with little pay and many are treated little better than slaves.
Conscription can be considered as a form of forced labor.
In many countries, young men who refuse to join the army are sentenced to prison.
Many people "dodged" or illegally avoided conscription during the Vietnam War in the United States.
There are arguments for conscription.
Some see it as fair, since everyone shares the burden of service.
A small country with few people can make up a large enough army by conscription.
If a country is in the midst of hostile neighbors and war can break up at any time, or if the country is a buffer state (= is located between two military blocks), training all available young people as soldiers can be a good idea.
The alternatives for conscription are militia system, as in Switzerland, or professional army made up from volunteers.
The United States gave up conscription during the Cold War.
The Vietnam War proved so unpopular that the Army no longer wanted conscripts, but volunteers, which have better motivation to serve.
Most other Western World countries followed the American example and gave up conscription.
Some American countries now have all-volunteer army and in Europe universal conscription remains only in some countries like Finland, Russia and Turkey.
In Germany, conscription for the Bundeswehr has been removed in July 2011 after a long discussion in the German Bundestag.
People who oppose conscription because of pacifism idea are called conscientious objectors.
Some countries still draft conscientious objectors, but give them jobs where they will not have to fight.
The cervix is the part of the uterus which protrudes into the vaginal canal.
Its function is like that of a gate to the uterus, or womb, where the fetus develops during a pregnancy.
It also allows menstrual blood to escape the uterus during the normal reproductive cycle of the female, and allows sperm to access the uterus to fertilize an ovum, or egg.
A compiler is a computer program that translates instruction text into a different language of instruction text.
The first language is called the source language, which is why instruction text is called source code.
The second language, called the target, is usually for the computer to follow.
In that case, the instructions become machine code.
If a compiler can convert the same instruction text into machine code for different computers (like smartphones or video game machines), it is a ` cross-compiler '.
If the compiler can make instruction text that is easier for people to read, it is a ` de-compiler '.
People who write these instructions are called programmers.
Some even made programs that can translate the instructions that describe how a compiler should work, into a compiler.
That kind of program is called a compiler-compiler.
A compiler usually has three steps.
It reads the text and makes notes about how the words and sentences go together.
If the words do n't make sense, it will try to tell the programmer.
Then it will use what it knows about the target language to make the instructions fit better.
It then writes down the instructions in the target language.
If the source instructions are on different pages, it may have to compile several before it can write everything down.
A compiler has six parts to turn source code into target code.
The first piece, a lexical analyzer, will read a page of instruction text and split it into words and sentences.
It also marks what kind of word it is.
It might mark the word as a number, a word that might mean different things at diffent times (a variable), a verb, a math sign, or an adjective.
In the end, it will get a long list of marked words called tokens.
It hands the list to a parser.
That piece will look at the way that the words flow in each sentence.
It checks whether the sentences make sense in the source language.
Then it checks whether the sentences flow okay.
This is called semantic analysis.
For example, the parser might complain about the lexed example above, if it had n't already seen with its type adjetive.
The parser uses what it learned to make a web of all the text.
The web structure is typically called an AST.
The next piece, an optimizer will rearrange the web so the target language is better.
` Better ' might mean the target text uses fewer instructions to do the same work.
This could be important if we want the final program to check a lot of data.
(Like seeing how many people, in the whole country, are fifty years old and buy medicine.)
On the other hand, a ` better ' result might mean turning long instructions into more small instructions.
A programmer usually tries to write the instructions in small, related groups.
That way, he or she can keep track of fewer changes in the program.
But, that means the code may go on several pages.
When a compiler sees that the target program uses several pages to explain the whole recipe, it may use a linker.
The linker will put instructions that say where to find the code that 's next.
Finally, the compiler writes down the instructions in the target language.
If the programmer made a mistake, like a misspelled word, the compiler will try to tell him or her what went wrong.
But, since compilers are also programs, sometimes they were made with problems too.
When that happens, it 's hard to tell which is making trouble.
So, programmers who make compilers try very hard to make them perfect.
At the end of each compilation step the partial finished product could be stored and then only processed later on.
A language like Java uses this successfully, where they lack the final translation step to instructions the processor understands.
They only do the final translation step once the Java program is running on a computer.
This is either called "interpreting" or "JIT "ting, depending on the used technique.
For example, the source code might contain an equation, such as "x = 5 \* 10".
The lexical analyzer would separate each number and symbol (such as" \*" or" +") into separate tokens.
The parser would note the pattern of tokens, as being an equation.
The intermediate-code generator would write a form of coding which defines a storage variable named "x" and assigns the numerical product of 5 \* 10 plus 6 and 1.
The optimizer would simplify the calculation, of 5 \* 10 +6 +1, as being just 57.
Hence, the target machine-code generator would set a variable named "x" and put the value 57 into that storage place in the computer 's memory, using the instructions of whichever computer chip is being used.
A castrato (plural castrati) was a type of male singer with a very high voice.
The effect was produced either through castration, or because of some hormonal problems.
The word castrato literally means castrated.
Such singers were very sought after in the early days of the opera.
Most of the main soprano roles in operas by Handel and other composers of that time were written for castrati.
Nowadays they are almost always sung by female sopranos, since there are no castrati left.
The practice of castrating young boys who had good singing voices was quite common in Italy in the 17th century.
When castration is done before puberty, the usual effects of puberty will not happen.
These include the vocal cords enlarging and growing bigger, and the voice getting deeper as a consequence.
Even though castration was illegal in many parts of Italy, it was often performed.
Many families who were poor had their children castrated because it might give them a better future.
Once a boy was castrated he would go to a special music school where children learned singing and musical instruments.
The castrati pupils were given special treatment.
They were fussed over and kept warm to stop them from getting colds.
When they grew up they hoped to become famous opera singers.
A few of them had very successful careers in opera.
They were the great stars of their day, and audiences came to the opera to cheer on their favorite singers.
Those who were not good enough to make a career in opera joined church choirs instead.
It is impossible now for us to know what these great castrato voices sounded like, but they must have had very powerful voices and many of the singers were very skilled in singing and adding musical ornamentation to the songs.
In the 18th century Italian opera became very popular in England.
This was largely due to the German-born composer Georg Friderich H ndel who moved to England in 1709 and wrote lots of Italian operas.
Many singers who sang in London came from Italy, and many were castrati.
The most famous one was called Farinelli.
The popularity of castrato singers died out in the 19th century when operas became less artificial and more like real life.
By the mid-19th century they were no opera castrati left, although a few castrati still sang in church choirs.
The last one, a man called Alessandro Moreschi, died in 1922 aged 64.
There is a recording of his voice made in 1902 which can be heard online, but he may not have been a good singer and he was old when he made the recording, so we can not judge whether the castrato voice was beautiful by that recording.
In cryptography, key size or key length is the size (measured in bits or bytes) of the key used in a cryptographic algorithm (such as a cipher).
Typical key sizes in modern symmetric ciphers are 128, 192, and 256 bits.
Older symmetric ciphers used only 40, 56, or 64 bits, which can be broken by brute force.
The Chinese language is the group of languages used by Chinese in China and elsewhere.
It forms part of a language family called the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.
Chinese includes many regional language varieties, the main ones being Mandarin, Wu, Yue, and Min.
These are not mutually intelligible, and many of the regional varieties (especially Min) are themselves a number of non-mutually-intelligible subvarieties.
Jerry Norman estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese.
As a result, many linguists refer to these varieties as separate languages.
` Chinese ' can refer to the written or the spoken languages.
Although there are many spoken Chinese languages, they use only one writing system for the language.
Differences in speaking are reflected in differences in writing.
Official China adopts a similar policy to the one in the Soviet Union.
All official documents are written in Mandarin, and Mandarin is taught all over China.
They have one standard language for all of the schools in China and Taiwan.
It is also a standard for language teaching in some other countries.
In English we call it Mandarin.
In China they call it "P t nghu" or "common to everybody speech."
In Taiwan they call it "Gu y" or "language of the whole country".
They need a standard language because otherwise many people would not understand each other, despite being in the same country.
Chinese is used by the Han people in China and other ethnic groups who have come into China and are declared Chinese by the Chinese government.
Chinese is almost always written in Chinese characters.
They are symbols that have meaning, called logograms.
They also give some indication of pronunciation.
But just as "Xavier" sounds very different in English (ex-aye-vee-er), French (za-vee-aye), and Spanish (hah-veer), the same character can get very different pronunciations among the different kinds of Chinese.
Since Chinese characters have been around for at least 3500 years, it is no wonder that people in places far from each other would say them differently, just as "1, 2, 3" can be read differently in different languages.
Chinese people needed to write down pronunciations in dictionaries.
Chinese does not have an alphabet, so how to write down sounds was a big problem in the beginning.
Nowadays the Mandarin language uses Hanyu pinyin to represent the sounds in Roman letters.
All the Chinese languages (or dialects) use tones.
This means that they use high and low pitches to help make differences in meaning clear.
The Chinese language is like a big tree.
The base of the tree started thousands of years ago.
It now has several main limbs.
Some people call "just a branch" what other people call a main limb, so you can say there are six or seven main limbs.
Each of these main limbs splits off into branches about the way there are branches of English spoken in Great Britain, the United States, Australia, India, and so forth.
Line the Chinese limbs up by number of speakers and we get: Mandarin, the language spoken in an area centering on Shanghai, the language spoken in Guangdong province (Cantonese), the language spoken mostly in Fujian province (but also by many speakers in Taiwan), the language spoken mostly in Hunan province, a language that is historically that of a refugee group and so not so closely concentrated in any one area in south-east China (it is called "Hakka" or "guest family" speech), and a language spoken in an area that centers on Jiangxi province.
Just as the Romance languages all come from the area around Rome and are based on Latin, the Chinese languages all have some common source, so they keep many common things among them.
In 1956, the government of the People 's Republic of China made public a set of simplified Chinese characters to make learning, reading and writing the Chinese language easier.
In Mainland China and Singapore, people use these simpler characters.
In Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other places where they speak Chinese, people still use the more traditional characters.
The Korean language also uses Chinese characters to represent certain words.
The Japanese language uses them even more often.
These characters are known in Korean as Hanja and in Japanese as Kanji.
A Chinese person with a good education today knows 6,000-7,000 characters.
About 3,000 Chinese characters are needed to read a Mainland newspaper.
However, people who have learned only the 400 most frequently used characters can read a newspaper but they will have to guess some less-used words.
Here are some samples of some words and sentences in Mandarin Chinese.
Simplified Characters are on the left, and Traditional characters are on the right.
The pronunciation is given in the pinyin system, which may not always be as simple as it looks for those who have not studied it.
The Traditional Characters are now used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Chinese from Mainland China uses the Simplified Characters, but may recognize Traditional Characters.
Before 1956, Chinese was written using only Traditional Characters.
At that time most Chinese people could not read or write at all.
The government of the People 's Republic of China thought that the Traditional characters were very hard to understand.
They also thought that if they made the characters simpler more people could learn how to read and write.
Today, many people in China can read and write with the new Simplified Characters.
The History of China covers thousands of years.
It covers many periods and dynasties.
It may be divided into the following parts:
About a million years ago, living beings that were earlier forms of human beings had lived in China.
These beings were called Homo erectus.
Long after, about 65,000 years before, human beings (Homo sapiens) reached China from Africa.
For food, they hunted wild animals.
They also began to pick and gather fruits, eventually resulting in the Chinese learning to farm.
Prehistory means history of a time before any written record.
In such cases, it is very difficult to tell anything definite about the prehistory of China or any other country.
Even then, historians believe some facts about the China of that period.
By 5000 BC, people had learned farming.
They had started cultivating millet, a type of grain, and possibly other types of grains.
By 2500 BC, Bronze Age had come to China.
A ruling class with kings and queens had come into society.
Some scholars think that about 4000 years ago, the Xia dynasty ruled China.
Xia was the first ruler of this dynasty.
No one can say anything very definite about Xia, his time, and other rulers of his dynasty.
From the time of the Shang Dynasty (1700 BC), some written history is available.
Writings were done on Oracle Bones.
Several such bones and shells have been found.
Scholars believe that present day Henan was the last capital of kings of the Shang Dynasty.
Henan was the last and the ninth capital.
Most of the Chinese historians of that time think that one dynasty came after another.
But, it is possible that two dynasties were ruling in different parts of China at the same time.
Therefore, some scholars think that Xia dynasty and Shang Dynasty may be ruling at the same time, but in different areas of China.
About 3000 years before, Zhou Dynasty defeated Shang dynasty, and came to power.
They changed the capital from Henan to a place near present day Xi ` an, near the Yellow River.
The Zhou Dynasty also brought a new theory.
This theory told the people that kings had the order of the gods to rule the country.
Almost all dynasties of Chinese rulers continued to repeat this theory.
The kings of this dynasty won many new areas.
For the first time in the history of China, a large number of people also moved from one area to other area for settlement.
The Spring and Autumn Period was around the 8th century BC.
The Zhou dynasty continued, but it lost its power.
Many kings ruled different parts of China.
China became like several small countries, each ruled by a different king.
In some cases, a king ruled just a village with a small fort.
During this period of China, many new lines of thinking arose.
Some of them still continue to be important.
They are Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism and Mohism.
Spring and Autumn Period continued for about 300 years.
By the 5th century BC, only seven main Chinese rulers and states remained.
They had taken over all the smaller areas.
These states continued to fight each other.
Historians call this period as Warring States Period due to wars and fights among these states.
At last, a king named Ying Zheng united all the seven states.
He made himself the Emperor of China and founded the Qin Dynasty.
Qin Dynasty was a very important dynasty in the history of China.
They followed the philosophy of Legalism.
Their capital was at Xianyang (in modern Xi ` an).
Under the king of this dynasty, China became a powerful country.
Many new things were done for the first time.
A tight legal system was followed.
Written language was developed.
Common currency was used.
The building of the Great Wall of China was started.
The Han Dynasty came to power in 202 BC.
They followed the philosophy of Confucianism.
Under this dynasty, China made much progress in arts and science.
The empire also became larger and larger.
China started trading with a number of other countries.
Merchants used the Silk Road to reach China.
The Han dynasty is important.
(220-280 AD), the Three Kingdoms period (traditional Chinese:; simplified Chinese:; pinyin: S ngu) is a period in the history of China, part of an era of disunity called the Six Dynasties following immediately the loss of real power of the Han Dynasty emperors.
Kingdom Wu (222-280 AD) was a country built by Sunquan in the third century.
Jianye (Nanjing today) was the capital city.
In 222 AD, Sun became the king of Kingdom Wu and in April 229 AD, he became the emperor.
The three kingdoms period also terminated.
The kingdom 's economy was boosted quickly while Sunquan was the ruler of Kingdom Wu.
At that time, many people escaped from other country because of war and famine.
This increased the population of the kingdom and also improved the agriculture.
Furthermore, Sun let people build a new canal across the kingdom.
At that time, Kingdom Wu had shipbuilding, foundry industry and porcelain manufacturing.
The textile industry of Kingdom Wu also began.
The economic improvements boosted the culture of Kingdom Wu.
Many scholars appeared, such as Yufan, Luji, and Weizhao.
Buddhism began to spread in some areas of Kingdom Wu, and the influence of Daoism continued expanding.
In 230 AD, General Weiwen brought a big fleet to Yizhou (Taiwan today) and started to garrison there.
In 280 AD, the Kingdom was destroyed by the Jin Dynasty.
The Sui Dynasty (Su ch o; 581-618) was founded by Emperor Wen, or Yang Jian.
Its capital was Chang ` an (present-day Xi ` an).
The dynasty is important because it reunited Southern and Northern China and the Grand Canal was built in that time.
The Tang Dynasty was founded by the Li (-RRB- family, who came to power during the fall of the Sui Empire.
The dynasty was interrupted for a short time by the Second Zhou Dynasty (16 October 690 3 March 705) when Empress Wu Zetian managed to claim the throne, becoming the first and only Chinese Empress.
The capital of the Tang, Chang ` an (today Xi ` an), was the biggest city in the world at the time.
Many historians see the Tang dynasty as a high point in Chinese civilization and as a golden age of cosmopolitan culture.
The Yuan Dynasty was first ruled by Genghis Khan, a Mongolian leader who took control from the Song Dynasty.
He was considered a barbarian and not civilized.
His grandson, Kublai Khan, was one of the most famous and liked rulers of the Yuan dynasty.
He opened up China to many other cultures and improved life for the Chinese very much.
In 1368, a rebellion led by Zhu Yuanzhang broke out in southern China, and eventually overthrew the Yuan Dynasty.
Then Zhu Yuanzhang founded the Ming Dynasty at Nanjing, its capital until Emperor Yongle changed the capital to Beijing.
In the 15th century, a man named Zheng He took the majority of the Ming navy and explored the Indian Ocean, and brought wealth and power to the Ming Dynasty.
The empire experienced a prosperous period until 1449, when the Battle of Tumu Fortress broke out.
In the battle the Mongol descendants of Yuan captured the emperor and surrounded the capital.
After the war with the Mongols, the Ming started to decline.
During this time, the empire had two wars with the Japanese (the first against the Japanese pirates took place at southeastern China; the second against the armies of Toyotomi Hideyoshi that invaded Korea), and one war with the Portuguese of Macao.
These wars eventually weakened the declining empire.
In 1616, rebellions broke out at Manchuria and Shanxi.
Twenty-eight years later, the Manchus crossed the Great Wall, invaded the capital, and destroyed the Shanxi rebels.
In the 21st century China became the richest country in the world in terms of GDP.
Civil engineering is the term for the work of designing and building infrastructure.
It usually means large structures, like bridges, dams, buildings, and tunnels.
It also covers complicated networks such as water, irrigation and sewerage networks.
It also covers the construction of houses and homes.
Civil engineers can be involved in all stages in the life of infrastructure, from planning and construction to maintenance and demolition.
Civil engineering often overlaps with architecture.
Civil engineering is made up of many different areas or disciplines.
Some important areas are geotechnical, structures, environmental, construction management, hydrology, transportation, and materials.
It is important for civil engineers to have an understanding of all these disciplines as projects often involve many of them at the same time.
Civil engineers are responsible for lots of the things that are required for a society to function properly.
Safe water supplies, sewage treatment, roads, railways and buildings are all part of civil engineering.
To work in civil engineering requires training.
Construction workers will train at a center and ` on the job ' (training while doing the job), sometimes with apprenticeship.
To be a professional in civil engineering requires study at a university or college.
Civil engineers often study subjects like structures, materials, physics and calculus.
The profession of civil engineering is represented by professional bodies in various countries.
In the UK the Institution of Civil Engineers promotes civil engineering as a discipline and supports engineers throughout their careers.
The American Society of Civil Engineers performs a similar task in the USA.
Professional engineers often choose to become Chartered Engineers.
Chartership shows employers and clients that they are both qualified and experienced in their jobs.
Civil engineers usually have to write a big essay and take an interview with a panel of experienced engineers to gain chartership.
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC (3 January 1883 - 8 October 1967) was a British politician.
He was the first Labor prime minister with a majority in government, and was very important in the setting up of the welfare state.
He was prime minister from 1945 to 1951.
He was made a member of the House of Lords after he retired, and became the first Earl Attlee.
Attlee died of pneumonia in 1967.
He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Attlee was born in Putney.
Attlee was educated at Haileybury College.
He graduated from University College, Oxford with a Second Class Honours BA in Modern History in 1904.
Attlee began a career as a barrister after graduating from Oxford.
This lasted for two years.
He then worked as manager of Haileybury House in East London.
Attlee 's work at the House inspired him to become a socialist.
In 1907 he joined the Fabian Society.
In 1908 he joined the Independent Labor Party.
In 1911, he was employed by the UK Government.
In 1919 Attlee became Mayor of Stepney.
He was elected to Parliament in 1922 as the MP for Limehouse., In 1935 he was elected leader of the Labor Party.
From 1942 to 1945 he was deputy prime minister.
Attlee resigned as party leader after Labor lost the 1955 election.
He was made a member of the Order of Merit in 1951 and a Knight of the Garter in 1956.
In 1958 he started the Homosexual Reform Society with Bertrand Russell.
The following is a list of country calling codes.
These are area codes for telephone numbers.
Places in NANPA (North American Numbering Plan Area) have been given area codes as if they were all areas inside one country.
0 For more information please see nanpa.com
Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (1564 30 May 1593) was a major dramatist, poet, and translator of English Renaissance drama.
Many people believe he is the best Elizabethan tragedian before William Shakespeare.
Marlowe was the son of a shoemaker in Canterbury.
His intelligence won him scholarships, to King 's School in Canterbury at age 15, and two years later to the University of Cambridge.
Marlowe was well-educated; he earned a bachelor 's degree in 1584 and a master 's degree in 1587.
Marlowe 's plays were both very popular and very controversial, in his own era and later too.
His plays deal with disturbing subjects like devil worship (Doctor Faustus), homosexuality (Edward II), and anti-Semitism (The Jew of Malta).
In addition to seven plays, Marlowe wrote one long poem, Hero and Leander, and one famous shorter poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love."
Marlowe 's death was also highly controversial.
He was killed in a tavern brawl, stabbed in the head.
Yet there is some historical evidence that he was a secret agent.
Marlowe also was, or sometimes claimed to be, an atheist, at a time when atheism was a crime that could be punished by death.
Some people have wondered if his death was connected with these other issues.
Uncertainty about Marlowe 's death has lead some people to believe that Marlowe faked his death and continued to write plays using the name "William Shakespeare."
This is called the "Marlovian theory."
Caving (or spelunking) is the hobby or recreation of exploring caves.
People who explore caves are called spelunkers.
Wise spelunkers explore in groups, to prevent being lost or stranded in a cave.
Spelunkers need reliable equipment, because the descent into a cave is like mountain climbing in the opposite direction.
Basic spelunking equipment is similar to what mountain climbers use.
Strong ropes make climbing possible and special tools attach ropes to cave walls.
Special footwear makes it easier to explore hard to reach places, and hard hats protect spelunkers from falling rocks above.
Caves are extremely dark, so spelunkers have to carry at least three light sources (like torches and flares).
One torch attaches to a spelunker 's helmet so it is with him or her at all times.
Caves are also very cold, so most spelunkers wear heavy clothing for warmth.
Spelunkers tie their ropes with different kinds of knots, like the farmer 's hitch knot and the alpine butterfly knot.
Spelunkers choose different knots for different purposes.
Some knots work well to hold people as they climb.
Other knots are best for tying ropes together.
Caving today has become a hobby for many different reasons.
Some cavers are interested in conservation.
Others are interested in gathering hard data about caves (called speleology).
Geologists explore caves for the purpose of learning about the formation of rocks.
But, for most of the rest, the purpose of caving is just to have fun.
Caves can generally be explored during any season of the year.
Most caves remain at the same temperature year round.
The common rules of thumb apply:
A cave is a natural underground hollow space.
They can have narrow passageways (corridors) and chambers (caverns).
They are usually formed when underground acidic (sour) water wears away softer stones, such as limestone.
Only the hard rock, such as granite, is left.
Caves can also be formed during natural catastrophes, such as earthquakes, or by ice and glaciers.
Caves can have formations in them such as stalagmites and stalactites.
These are made over thousands of years by water dripping and leaving mineral deposits.
Many creatures live in the entrance areas of caves, for example snakes, mice, spiders & porcupines.
Only a few animals are found deep in caves.
Bats often live in caves.
Another common creature found in caves is cave crickets.
In the past, people lived in caves.
People used to live in many European caves in the Stone Age.
Caves still provide shelter for trekkers.
Some caves have beautiful paintings on the walls.
People who explore caves are called cavers or speleologists.
(The study of caves is called speleology.)
They go into caves for fun, exercise and to see the different formations.
This can be a dangerous sport because caves sometimes have deep holes.
Cavers also have to climb and crawl through the passages.
Cavers usually go into caves with four or more people.
Each person has 2 or 3 light sources.
One light is attached to each helmet.
People go into caves to try and explore more about the world.
A computer program is a list of instructions that tell a computer what to do.
Everything a computer does is done by using a computer program.
A computer program is written in a programming language.
A computer program is stored as a file on the computer 's hard drive.
When the user runs the program, the file is read by the computer, and the processor reads the data in the file as a list of instructions.
Then the computer does what the program tells it to do.
A computer program is written by a programmer.
It is very difficult to write in ones and zeroes, which is what the computer can read, so computer programmers write in a programming language, such as BASIC, C, or Java.
Once it is written, the programmer uses a compiler to turn it into a language that the computer can understand.
There are also bad programs, called malware, written by people who want to do bad things to a computer.
Some are spyware, trying to steal information from the computer.
Some try to damage the data stored on the hard drive.
Some others send users to web sites that offer to sell them things.
Some are computer viruses.
A crime (or misdemeanor or felony) is an act done by a person which is against the laws of a country or region.
A person who does this is called a criminal.
The basic idea of what things are called "crimes" is that they are thought to be things that might cause a problem for another person.
Things like killing another person, injuring another person, or stealing from another person are crimes in most countries.
Also, it can be a crime to have or sell contraband such as guns or illegal drugs.
When some criminals make money from crime, they try to stop the police finding out where the money came from by money laundering.
There are various levels of crimes.
In some jurisdictions they are:
Different countries have different ideas of what things are crimes, and which ones are the worst.
Some things that are crimes in one country are not crimes in other countries.
Many countries get their ideas of what things are crimes from religions or controversial events which cause a law to be quickly created.
For example, a religion might consider eating a particular food to be a crime.
When automobiles became numerous, they killed or hurt many people in road accidents, so new laws were made for them.
In many countries, if people say they made or wrote a book, movie, song, or Web page that they did not really make or write, it is a crime against copyright laws.
In many countries, helping to grow, make, move, or sell illegal drugs is a crime.
In most countries, police try to stop crimes and to find criminals.
When the police find someone who they think might be a criminal, they usually hold the person in a jail.
Then, usually, a court or a judge decides if the person really did a crime.
If the court or judge decides that the person really did it, then he or she might have to pay a fine or go to prison.
Sometimes the judge might decide that the criminal should be executed (killed).
This is called Capital punishment (or the Death Penalty).
There are countries in the world who execute criminals, and others who do not.
The California Institute of Technology (called "Caltech" for short) is a major American research university in the city of Pasadena in the state of California.
Caltech specializes - is especially good, or especially interested - in the study of engineering, computer science, and the physical sciences (some physical sciences are physics and chemistry, as well as others).
Caltech is also in charge of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also called JPL.
JPL is part of NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which is the part of the United States government that explores space.
Caltech is not owned or run by the United States, or NASA, but NASA pays Caltech to run JPL for them.
Caltech 's mascot is the beaver.
Many schools that specialize in engineering have beavers for their mascot, because in the wild, beavers are known for making dams, and so people think that they are the animal most like engineers.
A celebrity is a person who is well known and gets lots of public attention, or attention from other people.
A person whom the public knows such as a person in government might be well known but not a celebrity unless something else makes them interesting to other people.
Usually a person becomes a celebrity from entertainment such as people who are in movies, people who sing songs, and someone who plays a sport.
People who act in movies and television actors, people who sing are usually celebrities.
High-ranking politicians, people who tell people the news, television show hosts, people who go to outer space, major-league athletes and people who sing songs are also sometimes celebrities.
Sometimes people such as Mother Teresa have achieved fame because they help people who were in need and are saintly.
A "Television personality" is a person who is well known for being on television.
These people are often hosts or guests on television programs such as talk shows or discussion programs.
These people can be experts on a subject, comedians adding a comedic point of view to the subject or anyone else the producers of the program think would make the program better or more entertaining for the audience.
These people often have some level of celebrity status because of their main profession but some are just famous because they were on television.
Individuals can achieve celebrity, but there are also many celebrity families, such as various royal families (often interest in these will be highest when scandal is involved, as with the House of Windsor) and artistic ` dynasties ' e.g. the Barrymore, Cassidy (David and Shaun Cassidy), the Rockefellers, the Osmonds, Osbournes, Jackson and Baldwin families.
Celebrity families can also include political families such as the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, and the Reagans.
Because celebrities have fame similar to that of royalty or gods in the past, some people are curious about their private lives, and dislike celebrities for their rewards.
Many think that celebrities do not work as hard as non-celebrities and that celebrities do not deserve to be treated specially.
Since their failures are made public celebrities can been seen as having lower moral values than most people.
Not all celebrities exhibit bad behavior and sometimes they do things that are good and help people.
A recent phenomenon has occurred wherein intricate marketing plans are developed in order to lure adolescents into purchasing celebrity related goods.
Some have argued that the idea of celebrity is self-reinforcing and becoming empty: some celebrities are not famous for their actions, but simply famous for their fame and money.
For example, Paris Hilton would not be a public figure without her money, but her family 's importance has created and helps her be well known and a celebrity.
Hilton is a special celebrity; a part of her fame is for doing bad things other celebrities do.
People call people like Paris "famous for being famous."
Some believe she is doing it on purpose, but in many ways, people like Hilton and other 21st century celebrities are just doing what other celebrities did before.
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (April 9, 1821 August 31, 1867), was a French poet and art critic.
He is most known volume of poetry Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) in 1857.
Baudelaire was born in Paris, France, and studying law at the Lyc e Louis-le-Grand in Paris.
Baudelaire first published was his art review Salon of 1845.
A classical guitar, also called a Spanish guitar, is a musical instrument from the family of musical instruments called chordophones.
This instrument is most commonly used by classical guitarists playing classical music, but it is also used in other music genres.
It was first recognized 4 - 5 thousand years ago.
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 22 November 1963), usually called C. S. Lewis, was a British scholar who wrote about 40 books.
He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
He is famous for his fantasy works, essays, and writings on literature and theology.
Lewis ' theological works are usually apologetics, the defense of Christianity.
Some of his most popular Christian writings were Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters.
His works have been translated into more than 30 languages.
Lewis was a professor of literature at the University of Oxford.
Lewis was married to American writer Joy Davidman (1915-1960) from 1956 until her death from bone cancer.
He died of renal failure in Oxford.
His writing is popular with many people, and many of his books were made into movies.
His most famous and popular fantasy work is The Chronicles of Narnia, which is a series of seven books.
Confucianism is the philosophy based on the teachings of Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), who was an important Chinese philosopher.
Confucianism has a complex system of moral, social, political, and religious thought, and has had a large influence on the history of Chinese civilization.
However, there remains some controversy over whether or not it should be considered a religion.
Confucianism was made to stop the fall of Chinese society.
After the Zhou Dynasty fell, people cared only for themselves and did not have any respect for others.
Confucianism became a social order for China, teaching that social relationships are the most important.
People slowly started to believe in it, because they wanted to have peace, but they had to care for themselves too.
As a result, Confucianism brought the people love, harmony, and respect for one another.
Confucianism was started in Ch ` u-fu, Confucius 's birthplace.
Today, Confucianism is spread all the way around the world, but is still more pronounced in China.
The teachings of Confucius focus largely on the respect of one 's parents, elders, and ancestors.
Also, he taught that humans ` can never stop learning '; meaning that knowledge is infinite, therefore we will always learn, never stopping.
For example, he once asked a seven-year-old child to be his teacher, because the child knew something that he did not.
Confucius (born 551 BC, died 478 BC) was an important Chinese educator and philosopher.
His original name was Kong Qiu or Zhong Ni.
As a child, he was eager to learn about everything, and was very interested in rituals.
Once he grew up, he worked as a state official who handled farms and cattle.
Then he became a teacher.
Confucius lived in a time when many states were fighting wars in China.
This period was called the Spring and Autumn period of the Zhou Dynasty.
Confucius did not like this and wanted to bring order back to society.
Like Socrates, Confucius sometimes did not answer philosophical questions himself.
Instead he wanted people to think hard about problems and to learn from others, especially from history.
Confucius also thought that people should get power because they were good and skilled, and not just because they came from powerful families.
Confucius wanted people to think about other people more than about money or what they owned.
However he also felt that there should be strong rules in society and that people needed to obey them.
Confucius thought that there were five relationships people could have, and that they all had their own rules.
Two people could be
These were traditional relationships called the ` five prototypes '.
Confucius said that in all these relationships, both people must obey rules.
For example a subject must obey a prince, but also a prince must listen to a subject and must rule him well and fairly.
Confucius said that people should only do things to other people if they would be okay with other people doing those things to themselves.
This is sometimes called the Golden Rule and was also taught by Jesus Christ.
His students wrote down small stories about him, and things that he said.
These were put together to make a book called The Analects.
A complex number is a number, but is different from normal numbers in many ways.
A complex number is made up using two numbers combined together.
The first part is a real number.
The second part of a complex number is an imaginary number.
The most important imaginary number is called, defined as a number that will be -1 when squared ("squared" means "multiplied by itself").
All the other imaginary numbers are multiplied by a real number, in the same way that all real numbers can be thought of as 1 multiplied by another number.
Arithmetic functions such as, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division can be used with complex numbers.
They also follow commutative, associative and distributive properties, just like real numbers.
Complex numbers were invented to answer special equations that have exponents in them.
These began to pose real problems for mathematicians.
As a comparison, using negative numbers, it is possible to find the x in the equation for all real values of a and b.
With exponentiation, there is a problem.
There is no real number that gives 1 when it is squared.
In other words, 1 (or any other negative number) has no real square root.
To solve this problem, mathematicians introduced an imaginary number called i. That imaginary number will give 1 when it is squared.
The first mathematicians to have thought of this were probably Gerolamo Cardano and Raffaele Bombelli.
They lived in the 16th century.
It was probably Leonhard Euler who introduced writing for that number.
All complex numbers can be written as (or), where a is called the real part of the number (or), and b is called the imaginary part (or).
The complex number can also be written as a set.
Both a and b are real numbers.
Any real number can simply be written as or as the set.
The set of all complex numbers is usually written as.
Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division as long as the divisor is not zero, and exponentiation (raising numbers to exponents) are all possible with complex numbers.
Some other calculations are also possible with complex numbers.
The rule addition of complex numbers is pretty simple: let, then.
Multiplication is a bit different:
Another notable operation for complex numbers is conjugation.
A complex conjugate to is.
It is pretty simple, but is important for calculations, because belongs to the real numbers for all complex.
Complex numbers can be shown on a so-called complex plane.
If you have a number, you can go to a point on the real axis and to b on the imaginary and draw a vector from to.
You can calculate the length of this vector using the Pythagorean theorem and angle between the real axis and this vector, counting counterclockwise.
The length of a vector for a number is called modulus, and the angle is argument.
This is closely connected to De Moivre 's formula.
There exists even another form, called exponential.
With the addition of complex numbers to math, every root of a polynomial with complex coefficients is a complex number.
The successful addition of the complex numbers to math also help to open a path to the creation of another sorts of numbers that could resolve and help to explain many different problems, for example the: hypercomplex numbers, sedenion, hyperreal numbers, surreal numbers and many others.
See types of numbers.
Cryptozoology is the study of animals that people think might exist, but for which it can not be completely proved.
It also is the study of animals many scientists think are extinct, but which are still sometimes reported.
Those who study or search for such animals are called cryptozoologists, while the unproven creatures are called by some as cryptids, a term first used by John Wall in 1983.
The Mongolian Death Worm is a strange snake-like animal that lives in the Gobi Desert.
Scientists do not know if it really exists or not.
People who have seen it say it is like a red, fat worm around 2 4 feet long.
People who live in Mongolia call it allghoi khorkhoi.
These people also say the creature spits yellow poison that will kill you as soon as it touches you and it can produce electricity so powerful that it could kill large animals.
County Mayo is a county in the province of Connacht, in Ireland.
Castlebar and Ballina are the two towns with the most people living in them in the county.
The highest point in Mayo and Connacht is Mweelrea.
A Christian is person who believes in Christianity.
The Copenhagen interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics in physics.
It was developed by Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and Albert Einstein in Copenhagen in 1927.
It is based on an idea called Born 's law of the wave function by the Nobel Prize laureate Max Born.
It is one of the first usable models of quantum mechanics.
The Council of Europe is an international organization of 47 member states in the European region.
One of its first successes was the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950, which serves as the basis for the European Court of Human Rights.
The seat of the Council of Europe is in Strasbourg on the Franco-German border.
The original meeting place was in the city 's University Palace.
The Palais de l'Europe, about two kilometres from city center, has taken its place.
Membership is open to all European democracies which accept the principle of the rule of law and guarantee fundamental human rights, civil rights and freedoms to their citizens and respect of rights of minority groups.
The Council of Europe is not to be confused with the Council of the European Union or the European Council, as it is a separate organization and not part of the European Union.
But all member states of European Union are also the member states of Council of Europe.
The Council of the European Union (often called Council of Ministers or just Council) is one of the three organizations that manage the European Union.
Along with the European Parliament, it is responsible for law making for the European Union (EU).
Its members are the government ministers of the member countries who are responsible for the law that is being discussed.
As an example, suppose the law is going to be about farming, then the Agriculture Ministers are the Council for that day.
As well as making laws, they can meet to discuss their problems.
For example, the European Union does not decide on tax - each country decides on its own tax.
But the Finance Ministers meet anyway because sometimes they can help each other catch people who do not want to pay tax at all.
The Council is called different things in different countries, according to the language they speak (for exemple in French it is Conseil de l'Union Europ enne and in German it is Rat der Europ ischen Union).
It is also known internationally, and so it appears on its logo, with the Latin word Consilium.
A simple way of putting it, is that The ` Council of the Europeon Union ' is helped by most countries in the world and it is very important.
Continental Europe is the European mainland.
It is distinct from the various offshore islands such as Britain, the Canary Islands, Sicily and the Greek islands.
People in the islands also use it to refer to ways in which the customs and speech of mainlanders differ from their own.
Category theory is a type of mathematics.
Category theorists show how different ideas in mathematics are alike.
For example, some ideas from topology and abstract algebra are similar.
Ideas in category theory are written down in formulas or diagrams.
Category theory can be used to make computer programs more secure or easy to write.
A category is a mathematical object.
It can be drawn with dots and arrows.
Each arrow goes from one dot to one other dot.
There can be many dots, sometimes so many that you can not count them.
An arrow is the abstract idea of a function and the dots are the domain and codomain of the function.
Composition is a way to make a new arrow out of two arrows.
If two arrows form an elbow shape, then they have a composition arrow from the start of the first to the end of the second.
Composition obeys some axioms, or equations.
Many ideas in abstract algebra are examples of categories or can be used to make categories.
Often, this makes the ideas seem more similar.
Bradycardia (also called bradyarrhythmia) is a slow heart rate.
In adults, bradycardia is defined as a heart rate that is under 60 beats per minute (bpm) while the person is resting.
Bradycardia is a type of cardiac arrhythmia.
There are many types of bradycardia.
Some are caused by problems with the heart.
Bradycardia can also be caused by medicines, drugs, and many other things.
The symptoms of bradycardia depend on how slow the heart rate is and what kind of problem the heart is having.
For most people, bradycardia is not a serious problem.
But it can become a serious problem if it signals a major problem with the heart.
Also, if bradycardia gets very bad, the heart will be unable to pump enough blood and oxygen to the body.
Every part of the body needs blood and oxygen to survive.
If bradycardia is bad enough, it can cause organ damage, brain damage, and death.
Canada Day is a national and an official holiday in Canada celebrating its anniversary of Confederation.
It takes place annually on July 1st.
Caesium (or cesium) is the chemical element with the atomic number 55 on the periodic table.
Its symbol is Cs.
Caesium is an alkali metal.
Its melting point is low (28 C).
It is extremely reactive.
Because of its high reactivity, it is a dangerous chemical.
It may set itself on fire (ignite) in air.
It explodes on contact with water.
It reacts more violently than the other alkali metals with water.
Because of this, caesium is stored in mineral oil.
Caesium is a rare element.
Since there is little caesium on the Earth, it is rather expensive.
The human body does not need caesium.
In large amounts, it is mildly poisonous because it is close to potassium, which the body does need.
Caesium was first described in 1861, by Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and Robert Wilhelm Bunsen.
They were testing mineral water, from Bad D rkheim.
After they separated calcium, strontium, magnesium and lithium, they saw two lines in the "blue" range of the spectrum.
Because of these lines, they concluded that in addition to the elements already found, there must be another unknown substance in the mineral water.
They named this substance caesium, after the color blue.
Caesium has at least 39 known isotopes ranging in atomic mass from 112 to 151.
Only one of these, Cs, is stable.
Therefore, the naturally-occurring isotope of caesium is Cs, which is not radioactive.
Cs is used in atomic clocks, its vibration frequency used to define the length of the second.
Another isotope, Cs is not made naturally but is made after nuclear fission has been done.
It is very radioactive and used as an industrial gamma ray source.
Caesium forms compounds with many other chemical elements.
Caesium formate is used in oil drilling because of its high density.
A century is a way to describe a length of time.
One century is one hundred years.
The ancient Romans used the word century to describe a group of about one hundred soldiers, organized into a single unit.
The Roman numeral for 100 is "C".
The word for 100 in Latin is "centum".
Centuries in the Gregorian Calendar (the most-commonly used calendar with 365 days) begin at one instead of zero.
That means that in the year 2004, we were in the 21st century, rather than 20th century.
A centenary is a celebration of something that happened 100 years ago.
A bicentenary celebrates 200 years, a tercentenary 300 years.
A centenarian is someone who is 100 years old or more.
Centennial means something that happens every 100 years, or that lasts 100 years.
Cardiff is the capital and biggest city of Wales, in the United Kingdom.
Its name in the Welsh language is Caerdydd.
A 2011 census reports that around 346,100 people live in Cardiff.
It is the most important city in Wales for tourism, culture, government, sport, transport, nightlife and business.
Cardiff has a big port that used to be known as Tiger Bay.
It is now just called Cardiff Bay, and the Welsh government works there.
There are now lots of shops, pubs and restaurants in Cardiff Bay.
Cardiff has an international airport, and is twinned with Nantes in France and Stuttgart in Germany.
Cardiff has one of the largest stadiums in the United Kingdom, the Millennium Stadium, where important world sports matches and concerts happen.
Other big stadiums in the city are the Cardiff City Stadium, where the main football team play, Cardiff Arms Park where the main rugby team play, and the SWALEC Stadium where cricket is played.
To get around, there are lots of bus routes and train lines in the city.
There are two big train stations in Cardiff city center, called Central station and Queen Street station, but there are also 18 other smaller stations in the city for local areas.
There are lots of cycle paths in Cardiff on and off the road.
Three big rivers flow through Cardiff - the Taff, the Ely and the Rhymney.
Part of Cardiff is built on marshland.
Charles Dickens (7 February 1812 9 June 1870) was one of the great English writers of the 19th century.
Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England.
His parents were John Dickens (1785-1851), a naval pay clerk, and Elizabeth Barow (1789 1863).
At age twenty-five, Charles moved to Chatham.
When Charles was ten years old, his family moved to Camden, London.
He worked in a blacking factory there while his father was in prison for debt.
Dickens 's hard times in the factory served as a foundation of ideas for many of his novels.
Many like Oliver Twist soon became famous.
When his great-grandmother died and transmitted money, Charles ' father paid off his debts and was released from prison.
Charles did not like working and wished to stop working after his father was released.
However, his mother said that the family needed the money so Charles was forced to continue working.
Charles then finished his schooling, and got a job as an office boy for an attorney.
After finding that job dull, he taught himself shorthand and became a journalist that reported on the government.
Dickens was a Unitarian.
His first book was Sketches by Boz in 1836, a collection of the short pieces he had been writing for the Monthly Magazine and the Evening Chronicle.
This was followed by The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club in 1837.
Both these books became popular as soon as they were printed.
Charles Dickens died of a stroke on June 9th, 1870 and was buried in Poet 's Corner in Westminster Abbey.
He may have written more books than there are listed above.
A Carabiner is a metal loop, which can be opened on one side.
This side is called gate.
The other side is called spine.
Carabiners are often used for rock climbing, sailing and canoeing.
They also are used for construction of high buildings or window cleaning.
The word comes from the German word "Karabinerhaken", which means "hook for a carbine".
Climbing carabiners are very strong.
Many can hold loads greater than 20 kN.
Securing devices like a Grigri or an ATC must be used in combination with a carabiner with a locking feature to prevent the carabiner from opening accidentally.
The last two types exist with and without locking devices.
HMS carabiners usually are not produced without locking device.
Non-locking-carabiners are often used in quickdraws.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a chemical compound.
It is a gas at room temperature.
It is made of one carbon and two oxygen atoms.
People and animals release carbon dioxide when they breathe out.
Also, every time something organic is burnt (or a fire is made), it makes carbon dioxide.
Plants use carbon dioxide to make food.
This process is called photosynthesis.
The properties of carbon dioxide were studied by the Scottish scientist Joseph Black in the 1750s.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.
Greenhouse gases trap heat energy.
Greenhouse gases change the climate and weather on our planet, Earth.
This is called climate change.
Most scientists think that greenhouse gases are causing global warming, the rise of Earth surface temperature.
Carbon dioxide is an end product in organisms that obtain energy from breaking down sugars, fats and amino acids with oxygen as part of their metabolism.
This is a process known as cellular respiration.
This includes all plants, animals, many fungi and some bacteria.
In higher animals, the carbon dioxide travels in the blood from the body 's tissues to the lungs where it is breathed out.
In plants using photosynthesis, carbon dioxide is taken in from the atmosphere.
Dry ice, or solid carbon dioxide, is the solid state of CO2 gas below -109.3 F (-78.5 C).
Dry ice does not occur naturally on earth but is man made.
It is colorless.
We can use dry ice for making drinks fizzy, killing gophers, and freezing warts.
The vapor of dry ice causes suffocation and eventually, death.
Caution and professional assistance is recommended whenever dry ice is in use.
At usual pressure it will not melt from a solid to a liquid but instead changes directly from a solid to a gas.
This is called sublimation.
It will change directly from a solid to a gas at any temperature higher than extremely cold temperatures.
Dry ice sublimates at normal air temperature.
Dry ice exposed to normal air gives off carbon dioxide gas that has no odor and no color.
Carbon dioxide can be liquified at pressure above 5.1 atmospheres.
Carbon dioxide gas that comes off of dry ice is so cold that when it mixes with air it cools the water vapor in the air to fog, which looks like a thick white smoke.
It is often used in the theater to create the appearance of fog or smoke.
Chemists get carbon dioxide from cooling air.
They call this air distillation.
But this method is inefficient.
Chemists can also use several different chemical reactions to separate carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide is made in the reactions between most acids and most metal carbonates.
For example, the reaction between hydrochloric acid and calcium carbonate (limestone or chalk) makes carbon dioxide:
The carbonic acid (H2CO3) then decomposes to water and CO2.
Such reactions cause foaming or bubbling, or both.
In industry, such reactions are used many times to neutralize waste acid streams.
Quicklime (CaO), a chemical that has widespread use, can be made heating limestone to about 850 C. This reaction also makes CO2:
Carbon dioxide is also made in the combustion of all carbon-containing fuels, such as methane (natural gas), petroleum distillates (gasoline, diesel, kerosene, propane), coal or wood.
In most cases, water is also released.
As an example the chemical reaction between methane and oxygen is:
Carbon dioxide is made in steel mills.
Iron is reduced from its oxides with coke in a blast furnace, producing pig iron and carbon dioxide:
All aerobic organisms produce when they oxidize carbohydrates, fatty acids, and proteins in the mitochondria of cells.
The large number of reactions involved are exceedingly complex and not described easily.
(They include cellular respiration, anaerobic respiration and photosynthesis).
Photoautotrophs (i.e. plants, cyanobacteria) use another reaction: Plants absorb from the air, and, together with water, react it to form carbohydrates:
Carbon dioxide is soluble in water, in which it spontaneously interconverts between CO2 and (carbonic acid).
The relative concentrations of, and the deprotonated forms (bicarbonate) and (carbonate) depend on the acidity (pH).
In neutral or slightly alkaline water (pH) 6.5), the bicarbonate form predominates (-RRB- 50 %) becoming the most prevalent (-RRB- 95 %) at the pH of seawater, while in very alkaline water (pH) 10.4) the predominant (-RRB- 50 %) form is carbonate.
The bicarbonate and carbonate forms are very soluble.
So, air-equilibrated ocean water (mildly alkaline with typical pH = 8.2 8.5) contains about 120 mg of bicarbonate per liter.
Cheers is the name of a long-running sitcom made by Charles-Burrows-Charles Productions in association with Paramount Television for NBC.
The show premiered on September 30, 1982 and had its widely-watched series finale on May 20, 1993, followed by a long and ongoing run in syndication.
In eleven seasons, there were 270 episodes.
The show was set in a Boston bar, where a group of friends would come to sit, drink alcohol, complain, and make practical jokes on a rival bar in town.
The show also created the character Frasier Crane.
Frasier got his own show (Frasier) the season after Cheers ended.
The show 's main theme in its early seasons was the romance between Diane Chambers (Shelley Long) and ex-baseball pitcher and bar owner Sam Malone (Ted Danson).
Long 's departure from the show in 1987 shifted the emphasis to Sam 's relationship with a new character, Rebecca Howe (Kirstie Alley).
Diane returned for the finale.
The producers, not wanting the show to be construed as promoting drinking, had Sam 's character written as an ex-alcoholic.
Most of the early episodes took place entirely within the confines of the bar.
When the series became popular, some scenes were outside the bar.
The outer shots of the bar were actually the Bull and Finch pub, north of Boston Common, which has become a tourist attraction because of its association with the series.
It is said to be the bar that the series creators saw and wanted to model the bar in their show after.
It has now been renamed Cheers on Beacon Hill, though its interior is quite different from the TV bar.
The show was created by the team of James Burrows, Glen Charles, and Les Charles.
It was nearly canceled during its first season (in which it ranked dead last among 63 shows), but eventually became one of the most popular shows on TV, earning a top-ten rating during seven of its eleven seasons.
The show earned 26 Emmy Awards, out of a total of 111 nominations.
Counterpoint is the art of composing music by combining different parts (voices) in a way that sounds nice.
Music composed like this is called contrapuntal.
If the tune of Twinkle, twinkle little star is played on the piano and then some chords are added, this is harmony, not counterpoint.
Instead, if the tune of Twinkle, twinkle little star was played while another melody was played, this would be considered counterpoint.
A different way of playing it would be to start the tune with the right hand.
Then, in the second bar (measure), as the fifth note is played, the left hand starts to play the tune an octave lower.
This works well for a time, but in the fifth bar (on the word Up in the right hand part) it starts to get dissonant (sounding unpleasant), so changes need to made to the left hand to make it sound nicer.
This way of writing with a particular number of parts (in this case: two) is called "contrapuntal music".
In that example the left hand imitated the right hand at first.
This is called imitation.
If the second part had continued to imitate all the way through the piece it would have been a canon.
But Twinkle, twinkle does not work well as a canon.
One famous canon is by Thomas Tallis.
A canon that can be repeated is called a round.
This is all contrapuntal music.
Counterpoint does not have to have imitation, although it often does.
The important thing is that each part (i.e. each voice) is equally important.
It is not one part singing the tune and the rest just accompanying.
Counterpoint does not have to be one note against one note.
There can be two or more notes in one part against one in the other e.g. crotchets (quarter notes) in one part and quavers (eighth notes) in another.
There is a whole system for this called species.
Counterpoint can be varied by inverting it, i.e. putting the top part at the bottom.
When music is written so that the parts can be swapped round it is called "invertible counterpoint".
The word counterpoint comes from the Latin punctus contra punctum meaning point against point.
The word point meant note.
Several hundred years ago composers found how to write contrapuntal music.
They often took a main tune (called a Cantus Firmus) and then added one or two or more parts to it.
The more parts there were the harder it was to compose because it all had to fit so that it sounded good.
Music for several voices written in this way is called polyphonic music.
Polyphony was used in all church music in the Renaissance.
The greatest composer of polyphony was Giovanni da Palestrina (1525-1594).
Students learning the art of composition today still learn counterpoint by taking Palestrina s music as their model.
Cyanides are chemicals that contain the cyano-group.
In that group a carbon atom has three chemical bonds to a nitrogen atom.
This group is present in many substances.
Many of them are gases, but some are solids or liquids.
Those substances that can release the compound CN are highly poisonous.
Certain bacteria, fungi and algae are able to produce cyanides.
Cyanides are also found in certain foods or plants.
The cyanides serve as a defense against being eaten by herbivores.
In popular culture, cyanides are said to be highly toxic.
But there are many cyanides that really are, but many others that are not.
Prussian blue, a cyanide compound, is given as a treatment to poisoning with Thallium and Caesium, for example.
The poisons referred to are usually hydrogen cyanide (HCN), and the chemicals which are similar to it, like potassium cyanide (KCN), and sodium cyanide (NaCN).
(Such substances are called derivatives of hydrogen cyanide).
Organic compounds that contain the CN group are called nitriles.
Many of them are not as toxic.
Some of them are even used to produce drugs.
Some people think that glucose (sugars) may be an antidote against cyanide poisoning.
They think that sugar can bind the free cyano group, whereby some of the poison could be neutralized.
A carbonate is a chemical compound that is made of carbon and oxygen.
When added to an acid, a carbonate will produce carbon dioxide, water and a chemical salt.
It is found naturally in the earth.
Carbonate has the carbonate ion,.
The name may also mean an ester of carbonic acid, an organic compound containing the carbonate group C (= O) (O) 2.
Catalysis is the change in speed (rate) of a chemical reaction due to the help of a catalyst.
Unlike other chemicals which take part in the reaction, a catalyst is not consumed by the reaction itself.
A catalyst may participate in many chemical reactions.
Catalysts that speed the reaction are called positive catalysts.
Catalysts that slow the reaction are called negative catalysts, or inhibitors.
Substances that increase the activity of catalysts are called promoters, and substances that deactivate catalysts are called catalytic poisons.
A catalyst is something which changes the rate of a chemical reaction.
An example is when manganese oxide (MnO2) is added to hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), and the hydrogen peroxide starts to break up into water and oxygen.
Catalysts are either of natural or synthetic origin.
Catalysts are useful because they leave no residue in the solution they have speeded up.
A catalyst can also be used in a reaction again and again as it is not used up.
There are many catalysts in our body which play an important part in many biochemical reactions.
These are called enzymes.
Most catalysts work by lowering the ` activation energy ' of a reaction.
This allows less energy to be used, thus speeding up the reaction.
The opposite of a catalyst is an inhibitor.
Inhibitors slow down reactions.
Some of them are found in snake venom and are dangerous for our nervous system or heart.
In geometry, circumference is the distance around a closed curve; for example, a circle.
It is a special kind of perimeter.
(c = PI x diameter)
The Celtic languages are a language family inside of the Indo-European languages.
There are six Celtic languages still spoken in the world today, spoken in north-west Europe.
They are divided into two groups, the Goidelic (or Gaelic) and the Brythonic (or British).
The three Goidelic languages still spoken are Irish, Scottish, and Manx.
Scottish is the main language spoken in parts of north-west Scotland and Irish is the main language spoken in the Gaeltacht in Ireland.
Manx is spoken mainly by people interested in the language.
The three Brythonic languages are Welsh, Cornish, and Breton.
Of these Cornish became extinct in the 18th century but people have started speaking it again now.
Welsh is spoken everywhere throughout Wales, but is mainly the first language for people in the western part of Wales, in the area some people call the Bro Gymraeg.
Breton is spoken mainly in west Brittany, and is the only Celtic language not mainly spoken in the British Isles.
Because Brittany is part of France, the language is in danger of becoming extinct, just like Cornish, and there are ongoing efforts to prevent this from happening.
Scottish Gaelic also has a native community of speakers in Canada where it was once very widely spoken, and there are Welsh speakers in Patagonia, Argentina.
Computation is the act of determining (working out) something by processing information.
It involves using specific rules, either mathematical or logical.
It may or may not involve using numbers; the computation of numbers and arithmetic is generally called calculation.
The study of computation is called computer science.
The theory of computation involves determining whether a certain problem can be solved by computation.
A clown is a kind of entertainer, or performance artist, who performs physical comedy and stunts to amuse others.
They usually wear grease paint makeup that hides their real face, a large wig with brightly-colored hair, and baggy, padded clothing.
Clowns pretend to be clumsy, but must be agile and athletic in real life, to perform their job well.
Many clowns belong to a circus, while others freelance or have a talent agent who helps them find work.
Some clowns study at a clown college or clown school, where they learn acrobatics, juggling and other physical skills, and ways to interact with an audience.
Others learn from experienced clowns, or through study and practice.
Clowns are sometimes mentioned in other forms of entertainment.
Pagliacci is an opera by Ruggero Leoncavallo, about clowns.
This theme was borrowed by Smokey Robinson, when he wrote "The Tears of a Clown" working with Stevie Wonder.
Red Skelton was a popular entertainer, who performed clown routines on television.
Ronald McDonald is a clown character who is the mascot of McDonald 's restaurants.
(Jeff Giuliano, who performed Ronald for many years on television, later became a vegetarian.)
Coffea (coffee) is a genus of ten species of flowering plants in the family Rubiaceae.
They are shrubs or small trees, native to subtropical Africa and southern Asia.
Seeds of this plant are the source of the beverage coffee.
The seeds are called "beans" in the trade.
Coffee beans are widely cultivated in tropical countries in plantations for both local consumption and export to temperate countries.
Coffee is one of the world 's major commodity crops and is the major export product of some countries.
Carbohydrates are chemical compounds that contain only oxygen, hydrogen and carbon.
They are made up of joined-up sugars.
Sugars have the general formula Cm (H2O) n, and are also known as saccharides.
Certain carbohydrates are an important storage and transport form of energy in most organisms, including plants and animals.
There are four types of carbohydrates, named by the number of sugar molecules they contain.
Carbohydrates are the most common source of energy for the human body.
Protein builds tissue and cells in the body.
Carbohydrates are very good for energy, but, if a person eats more than needed, the extra is changed into fat.
If necessary, humans can live without eating carbohydrates because the human body can change proteins into carbohydrates.
People of some cultures eat food with very little carbohydrates, but they still remain healthy.
Research in the United States and Canada have shown that people get about 40 % to 60 % of their energy from carbohydrates.
However, studies suggest that some people get at least 55 % to 75 % of energy from carbohydrates.
It may depend on the amount of physical work done by people: the harder the work, the more energy they need.
The other need for energy is body temperature.
Living in a cold climate means a person needs more energy.
Some foods have high levels of carbohydrates including bread, pasta, potatoes, and cereals.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) is the largest group in the Mormon movement.
It was started in 1830 in New York by Joseph Smith.
They believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet who restored the church Jesus Christ set up on earth when he was alive.
They teach that they are the only church that has the full gospel.
They also believe that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three separate individuals, but all have the same purpose.
LDS scriptures include the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.
Members of the church, who are often called Mormons, are known for being active in missionary work.
They also believe in the importance of families.
The center of the Church is in Salt Lake City, Utah, but there are more than 15 million members living all over the world.
About six million of them live in the United States.
Four and a half million of them live in the Western United States and 1.8 million live in Utah.
It is the second-fastest growing church in the United States.
It is the fourth largest in the United States.
The leader of the Church is called the President of the Church, and Mormons respect him as a prophet.
Right now, the President of the Mormon church is Thomas S. Monson.
Mormons believe that God guides the prophet, just like Catholics believe God guides the Pope.
L.D.S. members or Mormons believe in the Holy Scriptures including the Bible and Book of Mormon - another Testament of Jesus Christ.
They also believe that it is important for families to spend a lot of time together, and that after they die, they can live together forever.
Mormons do not drink alcohol, coffee, or tea; smoke tobacco; or use other drugs.
They meet once a week on Sunday for church, where they have the sacrament and listen to short talks or sermons.
They also have Sunday School to learn more about their religion.
The Church also has activities during the week.
Mormons also have buildings called temples.
These are the most holy buildings in their religion.
After a temple has been dedicated, only Mormons that are living lives in accordance with the teachings of the church can go in the temple.
Mormons believe in helping poor and needy people all around the world.
Because of this, Mormons have given $ 1.2 billion, since 1985, in cash and assistance to other people.
They also believe it is important to learn their family history, often called genealogy.
They also help others to learn their family histories, and give access to all their family history records for free, through the internet, on the website Familysearch.org.
In 1842, Joseph Smith wrote 13 paragraphs describing what the Church and its members believe.
These are those 13 beliefs:
There are several divisions of the Church.
The biggest ones are areas.
An area might be a whole country, or part of a continent.
Another division is a temple district.
A temple district contains all the congregations served by one temple.
This often means a whole state, region, or large city.
Still another division is the mission, which is an area to which missionaries are assigned; almost all of the world is part of a mission, whether or not missionaries live or seek converts there.
Another division of the church is the stake.
Stakes contain all the Mormons in a geographic area (for example, the stake in Whittier, California serves all the Mormons in Whittier, Pico Rivera and La Mirada).
A stake often contains several thousand Mormons.
Stakes are divided into wards.
In areas where the church is less established and there are not enough members to form a stake, a district is formed.
Districts serve much the same role as stakes.
In turn, districts are divided into branches.
If the church membership grows large enough, a district will be changed into a stake and the branches into wards.
Each congregation is one ward (or branch).
A ward might contain only people who speak a language other than the local language of its area.
Examples include areas next to large U.S. military bases in foreign countries, where English-language wards may be organized, and major U.S. cities with many immigrants, where wards using Spanish, dialects of Chinese, or other languages are often formed.
In some places, there are special wards for deaf people, where the services are held in the local sign language (such as American Sign Language in English-speaking North America).
The church also has "singles wards", in which the congregation is made up only of single adults.
In turn, there are two types of singles wards Young Single Adult (YSA), for ages 18 to 30, and Single Adult (SA), for those over 30.
The church was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 in upstate New York.
It was probably due to the Book of Mormon, which Smith had translated from gold plates that were buried in a nearby hill.
Smith 's followers first went to Kirtland, Ohio in 1831.
The first Mormon temple was built in Kirtland, and by the mid-1830s, there were over 17,000 Mormons.
In 1838, the Mormons settled in Independence and Far West, Missouri.
Near here, Smith wanted to build a utopian (ideal) community.
The Mormons were driven out because people in Missouri did not trust Mormons.
This was called the Mormon War.
The Mormons then moved to Nauvoo, Illinois.
There, Smith started to practice polygamy and tried to start a "theodemocracy," which combined Mormon rule with American democracy.
In 1844, an attempt by Smith to shut down the Nauvoo newspaper led to Smith being accused of treason, followed by him being killed by a mob.
After Smith 's death, there was a controversy over who should replace Smith.
Brigham Young led most of the Mormons to Utah in 1847.
When Utah became a territory in 1850, it was somewhat of a theocracy.
Later in the 1850s, there was conflict between the Mormons and the U.S. government over control of the territory.
This was called the Utah War.
The Mountain Meadows massacre was part of the Utah War.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Mormons settled the Mormon Corridor in Utah and surrounding states in the Western United States.
Some of the places they settled were Mesa, Arizona; San Bernardino, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Cardston, Alberta.
By 1890, the Mormon church had built temples in three Utah cities.
Brigham Young died in 1877.
Around that time, the U.S. government made polygamy against the law.
Polygamy had been practiced by Young and the Mormon church since the 1840s.
Laws by the U.S. government led to many Mormon leaders going into hiding, and many polygamists being sent to jail.
In 1890, the church stopped polygamy.
This is thought to be the beginning of the modern era of the Mormon church.
In the early 20th century, the Mormon Church grew, and opened its first temples outside of Utah.
Soon into the 20th century, tithing (giving money to the Church) was made a part of being a good Mormon.
In 1995, Gordon Hinckley became President.
He got the church to build many temples in the United States and elsewhere around the world.
The current President, Thomas Monson, took office when Hinckley died in 2008.
Young people are encouraged to go on missions when they get old enough.
Men go from two years after they are 18 years old (as long as they have graduated from high school), and women go for 18 months after they are 19 years old.
Before an August 2012 change in church policy, men had to be 19 in most countries, and women throughout the world 21, before they could go on missions.
More men go on missions than women do.
These missionaries go to a "Mission Training Center" for a few months where they learn how to be good missionaries, and then live in another place for their mission.
The Church tells them where they need to go.
Then they work with one other missionary who is the same gender as they are (called a "companion"), and change companions sometimes so they are not always with the same person.
Missionaries will go to people who live near them and teach them about the Church, and baptize people who want to join the Church.
They also help people around them, even if these people are not in the Church.
Often they help by building houses for people who need them.
Older people sometimes go on missions after their children grow up.
They get to go with their spouse.
There are many different kinds of missions for "senior missionaries".
Some of them are only a few months, and some of them are a few years.
These missions can be "service missions", which means that they go to help people who live in the area.
Sometimes the senior missionary is a "mission president".
This means that they lead and help young missionaries in the place where they go to live.
The LDS church has been heavily criticized since its creation.
Some of the criticisms are listed below.
The Chicago White Sox are a Major League Baseball team who play on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois.
The club is in the Central Division of the American League.
They are managed by former team third baseman Robin Ventura.
The 2005 White Sox won the World Series sweeping Houston in 4 games.
The Chicago White Sox finished 2006 with a 90-72 record, four games out of first place after taking two of three from the Minnesota Twins in the final week of the season at the Metrodome in Minneapolis.
The Sox began major league play in 1901.
They took their name from the original name of the Chicago Cubs.
The Cubs had first been known as the Chicago White Stockings.
By 1901, they were being called the Colts.
That allowed the new American League team to adopt the old National League team colors.
The Sox first played at South Side Park.
In mid-season 1910, they opened Comiskey Park, which was just a few blocks north of South Side Park.
They played at Comiskey for over 80 years.
In 1991 they opened U.S. Cellular Field, just across the street to the south of Comiskey Park, and have played their home games there ever since.
Columbus is the capital city and largest city of the U.S. state of Ohio.
It is in the middle of the state.
The Ohio State Buckeyes and Columbus Blue Jackets play there.
In 2010 there were 787,033 people.
Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city in the United States of America.
It is the county seat of Franklin County.
The city has expanded and annexed portions of adjoining Delaware County and Fairfield County.
It is named for explorer Christopher Columbus.
The city was founded in 1812 at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers.
It became Ohio 's state capital in 1816.
The city has a diverse economy based on education, government, insurance, banking, fashion, defense, aviation, food, clothes, logistics, steel, energy, medical research, health care, hospitality, retail, and technology.
Columbus has many technology companies.
It has the world 's largest private research and development foundation, the Battelle Memorial Institute; CAS, or Chemical Abstracts Service, the world 's largest clearinghouse of chemical information; NetJets, the world 's largest fractional ownership jet aircraft fleet; and The Ohio State University, the nation 's largest campus.
In 2008, MarketWatch named Columbus as the 7th best place to do business in the nation.
In 2011, the city had five corporations named to the U.S. Fortune 500 list including Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, American Electric Power, Limited Brands, Momentive Specialty Chemicals, and Big Lots.
Major foreign corporations operating or with divisions in the city include Germany-based Siemens and Roxane Laboratories, Finland-based Vaisala, Tomasco Mulciber Inc., and A Y Manufacturing, as well as Switzerland-based ABB Group and Mettler Toledo.
The Church of England is the leading Christian church in England.
It is the church established by law, with its formal head being the English monarch (Elizabeth II).
It is the mother church of the Anglican Communion.
There are other Protestant churches in England which are not part of the Anglican Communion.
The Church of England was created by King Henry VIII in 1534.
Henry VIII was married to Catherine of Aragon, but asked the Pope to annul the marriage (say that there was a mistake and that Henry and Catherine were never really married).
He had wanted to annul the marriage because he wanted a male heir to his throne and Catherine could not produce one.
When the annulment was refused, Henry VIII used his position as King to break away from the Roman Catholic Church, and establish the Church of England, sometimes called the Anglican (English) Church.
Methodism broke away from the church in the 18th century.
The Oxford Movement brought Catholic beliefs back into the church in the 19th century.
In Greek mythology, Circe (; Greek K rk "falcon") is a minor goddess of magic.
Sometimes, she is described as a nymph, witch, enchantress or sorceress.
In the Odyssey Homer describes her as ` The loveliest of all immortals, ' living on the island of Aeaea, famous for her part in the adventures of Odysseus.
In most descriptions, Circe was the daughter of Helios, the god of the sun, and Perse, an Oceanid, and the sister of Aeetes, the keeper of the Golden Fleece, Perses, and Pasipha, the Wife of King Minos and mother of the Minotaur.
Other accounts make her the daughter of Hecate.
Circe transformed her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals through the use of magical potions.
She was known for her knowledge of drugs and herbs.
That Circe also purified the Argonauts for the death of Apsyrtus, as told in Argonautica, may be an early tradition.
Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology that looks at basic actions of the mind.
These are aspects of the higher brain, such as thought, feeling, problem solving, memory, and language.
Cognitive psychologists often look at mental changes that happen after a stimulus (things that can be felt by the five senses) and before a behavioral response (what a person does after sensing something).
Cognitive psychology had its beginnings in the Gestalt psychology of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang K hler, and Kurt Koffka, and in the work of Jean Piaget, who came up with a theory of "stages" or "phases" that describe children 's cognitive development.
A comet is a ball of mostly ice that moves around in outer space.
Comets are often described as "dirty snowballs".
They are very different from asteroids.
The orbital inclinations of comets are usually high and not near the ecliptic where most solar system objects are found.
Most of them are long-period comets and go further than Pluto.
Those are very far away from the Sun, but some comets come near enough to Earth for us to see at night.
They have long "tails", because the Sun melts the ice.
A comet 's tail does not trail behind it, but points directly away from the Sun, because it is blown by the solar wind.
The hard center of the comet is the nucleus.
It is one of the blackest things in the solar system.
When light shone on the nucleus of Halley 's Comet, the comet reflected only 4 % of the light back to us.
Periodic comets visit again and again.
Non-periodic or single-apparition comets visit only once.
Comets sometimes break up, as Comet Biela did in the 19th century.
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke up, and the pieces hit Jupiter in 1994.
Some comets orbit (go around) together in groups.
Astronomers think these comets are broken pieces that used to be one object.
In old times, people used to be scared of comets.
They did not know what they were, or where they came from.
Some thought that they were fireballs sent from demons or gods to destroy the earth.
They said that each time a comet appeared, it would bring bad luck with it.
Whenever a comet appeared, a king would die.
For example, the Bayeux Tapestry shows the return of Halley 's Comet and the death of a king.
Comets were also known to end wars and thought to bring famine.
During the Renaissance, astronomers started to look at comets with less superstition and to base their science on observations.
Tycho Brahe reasoned that comets did not come from the earth, and his calculations showed that comets must be six times farther than the earth is from the moon.
Edmond Halley reasoned that some comets are periodic, that is, they appear again after a certain number of years, and again and again.
This led to the first prediction of a comet 's return, Halley 's Comet, named after him.
Isaac Newton also studied comets.
He realized that comets make U-turns around the sun.
He asked his friend Edmond Halley to publish this in his book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
Before Newton said this, people believed that comets go in to the sun, then another comes out from behind the sun.
In later years some astronomers thought comets were spit out by planets, especially Jupiter.
All this new information and research gave people confidence, but some still thought that comets were messengers from the gods.
One 18th century vision said that comets were the places that hell was, where souls would ride, being burned up by the heat of the sun and frozen by the cold of space.
In modern times space probes have visited comets to learn more about them.
Compost is a type of fertilizer that is made from rotting plants.
It is easy and cheap to make, as all it really requires is vegetable waste.
The vegetable waste is broken down by bacteria (germs), and made into compost.
To make a compost heap, you need some space fairly far from anyone who might have a problem with the smell.
The bottom corner of a garden, or some other place a distance from the house is a good place.
Compost heaps should also be placed on soil, or grass: a paved yard or concrete are bad places.
The compost heap should not be in a dark or closed corner.
The best base for a compost heap is a layer of sand, bricks or gravel about 1m long by 1m wide.
This is not needed, but it can be a good idea.
If using bricks, leave spaces to allow the air to move through.
It also allows for the water to run away.
The best compost heaps have lots of little spaces inside, to allow air to move around.
Once the first layer is down, one can begin adding the waste.
Adding meat scraps is a bad idea, as they rot slowly, smell bad and attract rats and other vermin.
Human or pet feces is also a very bad idea, as this can transmit disease.
Waste from plants that have died of disease is also bad.
The disease can spread to the plants that the compost is used with.
When making a compost heap, different types of waste should be layered.
A layer of cut grass can be followed by a layer of vegetable waste and table scraps.
Watering the compost heap is a good idea, especially in dry areas.
The water helps encourage the waste to rot and turn into compost.
In anywhere from 3 to 6 months, the compost will be ready.
The compost is ready when it smells like thick earth, with no smell of decay or rot.
Of course, if you have been adding waste all this time, the compost will all be at the bottom of the heap, and will have to be dug out.
The stuff that has not rotted can be used as part of a new compost heap.
Corundum is a mineral.
It is very hard, with a Mohs hardness of 9 (diamond is 10).
It is clear.
Its chemical formula is aluminium oxide, Al2O3.
Sometimes some of the aluminium atoms get replaced with chromium atoms.
It then turns into ruby.
Capoeira is a combination of martial art, sport and popular culture that developed out in Brazil, by African slaves and Brazilian natives, starting in the 16th century.
It was made to give slaves a chance to escape and to survive.
Capoeira was illegal in Brazil until the 1930 's.
Capoeira uses strong and fast kicks, dodges and fast counter-attacks.
It also uses acrobatics and simple take-downs.
Capoeira 's history probably begins with the beginning of African slavery in Brazil.
When Portuguese colonists began exporting West African slaves, Brazil, with its vast territory, received most of the slaves, almost 40 % of all slaves sent through the Atlantic Ocean.
Although rebellions were rare, capoeira arose as a hope of survival if they managed to escape, as after an escape attempt, colonial agents were sent after the escapees.
The martial arts was incorporated into a dance, to escape detection - with music and rhythmic moves, no suspicion could be raised regarding potential martial art training.
Due to city growth, more slaves were brought to cities and so made capoeira more prominent and allowed it to be taught and practiced among more people.
In Rio the colonial government tried to suppress it and established severe physical punishments to its practice.
After slavery was abolished in 1888, free former people had nowhere to live, no jobs and were thought to the public as lazy workers.
Capoeira then found a new role - as a dance of criminals.
They used capoeiristas (capoeira dancers) as bodyguards and hitmen.
In 1890, the Brazillian government prohibited capoeira as police identified it as a advantage in fighting and they didn t want criminals to have this advantage.
After this, anybody caught practising capoeira for any reason would be arrested and tortured by the police.
Some practises still occurred in remote places with guards to warn of police.
By the 1920s, capoeira repression had declined.
Mestre Bimba from Salvador, a strong fighter in both legal and illegal fights, thought capoeira was losing its martial roots due to the use of its playful side to entertain tourists.
Bimba began developing the first systematic training method for capoeira, and in 1932 founded the first capoeira school and he called it Luta Regional Baiana as capoeira was illegal in name.
By 1940, capoeira was legalized.
Today, capoeira is viewed as one of the symbols of Brazilian culture all around the world and in 1970 it was taught outside of Brazil for the first time.
Capoeira presentations, normally theatrical and with little martiality, are common sights around the world.
The martial art part however, is still present and still disguised, just as it was in the time of slavery, and trickery is still present and expert dancers used.
An attack can be disguised even as a friendly gesture, such is the expertise gone into the research of new moves.
Capoeira is now a symbol of Brazilian culture, its ethnic amalgam, and of resistance to oppression.
Coal is a flammable black hard rock used as a solid fossil fuel.
It is mainly made up of 65-95 % carbon and also contains hydrogen, sulphur, oxygen and nitrogen.
It is a sedimentary rock formed from peat, by the pressure of rocks laid down later on top.
The harder forms of coal, such as anthracite, are metamorphic rocks because they were changed by higher temperature and pressure.
Peat, and therefore coal, is formed from the remains of plants which lived millions of years ago in tropical wetlands, such as those of the late Carboniferous period (the Pennsylvanian).
A similar substance made from wood by heating it in an airless space is called charcoal.
Coal can be burned for energy or heat.
About two-thirds of the coal mined today is burned in power stations to make electricity.
Coal is becoming less popular in new power plants as less expensive and less polluting technologies such as natural gas and hydroelectricity take over.
Coal can be dry-distilled (heated in high temperature in a place where there is no oxygen) to produce coke.
Coke is even better fuel than coal, and can be used in smelting to reduce metals from their ores.
Diamond is commonly believed to be the highest grade, but this is not true.
Diamond is carbon but is not formed from coal.
Coal contains impurities.
The particular impurities determine the use.
Coking coal has little ash or sulfur or phosphorus.
Those would spoil the iron made by the blast furnace.
After 50 or 60 years of decline, coal is back in fashion.
"Despite stringent carbon emissions targets in Europe designed to slow global warming and massive investment in renewable energy in China, demand for this most ancient source of energy is greater than ever.
Coal was recently the fastest growing form of energy in the world outside renewables, with production up 6 % on 2010, twice the rate of increase of gas and more than four times that of oil.
The world needs energy, and coal-fired power stations are the cheapest way to provide it.
Population growth, especially in Asia, and the growth of the middle classes in China, are forces driving the need for more energy.
To meet that need coal is required, because more favored sources fall short.
Here are the reasons:
Some of the world 's largest economies are turning to coal.
"Germany 's decision to scrap all nuclear power and build more coal-fired power stations can only boost production further".
On the other hand, coal burning is the most polluting form of energy.
Though carbon sequestration is possible, it is seldom done.
Since 1983 the world top coal producer has been China.
In 2011 China produced 3,520 millions of tonnes of coal 49.5 % of 7,695 millions tonnes world coal production.
In 2011 other large producers were United States (993 millions tonnes), India (589), European Union (576) and Australia (416).
In 2010 the largest exporters were Australia with 328 million tonnes (27.1 % of world coal export) and Indonesia with 316 millions tonnes (26.1 %), while the largest importers were Japan with 207 million tonnes (17.5 % of world coal import), China with 195 million tonnes (16.6 %) and South Korea with 126 million tonnes (10.7 %).
Chemical bonds are what joins atoms together.
When two or more atoms are in a chemical bond they stay together unless the needed amount of energy, or more, is transferred to the bond.
Something different can then happen.
Chemical bonds can be explained using different theories.
Some of these theories try to explain chemical bonds in a simple way that can be used by chemists to imagine what could happen when they try to make molecules.
Some explain how the atoms are bonded together with more detail and are used by chemists and physicists.
There are two types of bonds; covalent and ionic.
Covalent bonds form when atoms share electrons.
Ionic bonding is the attraction between oppositely charged ions.
Chemical bonds are negatively charged electrons that are pulling protons into each other.
A common way chemists describe chemical bonds is through the number of electrons each atom has on itself.
Each atom is drawn with the number of electrons as dots to form a maximum of eight.
The number of dots changes if there are less or more electrons.
If the electrons form a chemical bond then a line is drawn between the two electrons.
Climate means the usual condition of the temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, and other meteorological elements in an area of the Earth 's surface for a long time.
Climate is different from weather.
Weather is the condition of these elements right now, for shorter periods of time that are up to two weeks.
The latitude, ground, and height can change the climate of a location.
It is also important to note if oceans or other large bodies of water are nearby.
Climates are most commonly classified by temperature and precipitation.
The most commonly used classification was the K ppen climate classification, first made by Wladimir K ppen.
The Thornthwaite system, which was used from 1948, not only uses temperature and precipitation information, but evapotranspiration too.
This makes it useful for studying how many different kinds of animal species there are, and about the things that could happen when climates change.
The Bergeron and Spatial Synoptic Classification systems focus more on where the air masses which help make climates come from.
Climates can change after a long time.
Recently, the world may be becoming warmer, as is discussed in global warming.
The climate of a place is given names such as Temperate, Arid, Cold, Dry, Tundra, Tropical, Equatorial, Mediterranean, Savanna, etc.
A computer worm is a kind of malware that is able to copy itself, and spread.
Unlike a computer virus, this is done without changing files on a computer, and without affecting the boot sector of media.
Worms spread over networks, or on removable media like USB flash drives.
They almost always need a helper program that is able to access the network, or that executes when a new medium is inserted.
In that way, a worm could start a program to send electronic mail, and send itself on to all the addresses in the address book of the email application.
A very famous worm that appeared in 2000 was called ILOVEYOU (or Love Letter), it sent a simple mail with the subject ILOVEYOU, and an attachment of a document that contained the worm code.
The cathode ray tube or CRT was invented by Karl Ferdinand Braun.
It was the most common type of display for many years.
It was used in almost all computer monitors and televisions until LCD and plasma screens started being used.
A cathode ray tube is an electron gun.
The cathode is an electrode (a metal that can send out electrons when heated).
The cathode is inside a glass tube.
Also inside the glass tube is an anode that attracts electrons.
This is used to pull the electrons toward the front of the glass tube, so the electrons shoot out in one direction, like a ray gun.
To better control the direction of the electrons, the air is taken out of the tube, making a vacuum.
The electrons hit the front of the tube, where a phosphor screen is.
The electrons make the phosphor light up.
The electrons can be aimed by creating a magnetic field.
By carefully controlling which bits of phosphor light up, a bright picture can be made on the front of the vacuum tube.
Changing this picture 30 times every second will make it look like the picture is moving.
Because there is a vacuum inside the tube (which has to be strong enough to hold out the air), and the tube must be glass for the phosphor to be visible, the tube must be made of thick glass.
For a large television, this vacuum tube can be quite heavy.
The cathode ray tube was invented in 1897, and used as an oscilloscope (a machine to show waves).
Later, along with other inventions and improvements, it was used for the first modern electronic television by Philo T. Farnsworth in the 1920 's.
The CRT was the main type of television screen until the Liquid crystal display became popular in the early 2000 's.
A crystal is a solid whose molecules (or atoms) are arranged in a repeating pattern.
Crystals are made from fluids by phase change.
Usually the fluid is a liquid but snow is crystals precipitated from air.
Crystallization can be by freezing from a simple fluid or from a solution.
Sometimes heat and pressure needs to be applied to a substance for crystals to form.
Diamond is a carbon crystal formed under heat and pressure.
Crystals are found naturally or can be made artificially.
Different substances form different types of crystals.
The study of the various kinds is crystallography.
Well-known substances that form crystals are table salt (whose crystals are cubes), and quartz.
Cytosine is one of the 5 main nucleobases used in storing and transporting genetic information within a cell in the nucleic acids DNA and RNA.
In DNA and RNA, cytosine is paired with guanine.
However, it is unstable, and can change into uracil (spontaneous deamination).
This can lead to a point mutation if not repaired by the DNA repair enzymes such as uracil glycosylase, which cleaves a uracil in DNA.
Computational chemistry is a branch of chemistry that uses computer science to help solve chemical problems.
These programs calculate the structures and properties of molecules and solids.
Computational chemistry normally complements the information obtained by chemical experiments.
It can predict chemical phenomena that have not yet been observed.
It is widely used in the design of new drugs and materials.
Computational chemistry can predict structure (that is, the expected positions of the molecule 's atoms), absolute and relative (interaction) energies, electronic charge distributions, dipoles and higher multipole moments, vibrational frequencies, reactivity or other spectroscopic quantities, and cross sections for collision with other particles.
Computational chemistry looks at both static and dynamic systems.
In all cases, as the size of the system being studied grows, the computer time and other resources (such as memory and disk space) used also grows.
That system can be a single molecule, a group of molecules, or a solid.
Computational chemistry methods range from highly accurate to very approximate.
Highly accurate methods are typically feasible only for small systems.
The C programming language is a computer programming language that was developed to do system programming for the operating system UNIX and is an imperative programming language.
C was developed in the early 1970 by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie.
It is a procedural language, which means that people can write their programs as a series of step-by-step instructions.
C is a compiled language.
Because the ideas behind C are kept close to the design of the computer, the compiler (program builder) can generate instructions for the computer that will run very fast.
The reason its is so fast is because it builds the program in machine code\/native code.
This makes C a good language for writing operating systems.
Many operating systems, including Linux and UNIX, are programmed using this language.
The language itself has very few keywords, and most things are done using libraries, which are collections of code for them to be reused.
C is available for many different types of computers.
This is why C is called a "portable" language.
A program that is written in C and that respects certain limitations can be compiled for many different platforms.
The syntax of C has also influenced many other programming languages, such as C + +, C #, and Java, and many more programming languages we use nowadays.
Here is an example of a program written in C. When built and run, it will show "Hello world!"
, followed by a new line.
on the computer screen.
Cytology is the study of the cells, especially their appearance and structure.
Cells are the small parts that make up all living things, and their effects on each other and their environment.
There are two types of cells.
Prokaryotic cells do not have a clear and easy-to-see nucleus, and do not have a membrane, or wall, around them.
Eukaryotic cells have an easy-to-see nucleus where all of the cell 's functions take place, and a membrane around them.
The main organelles of a cell and their uses are:
Calvinism belongs to the Reformed tradition of Protestantism.
This tradition goes back to John Calvin and other theologians.
Important Calvinists from Europe include: Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Huldrych Zwingli, and from England, reformers Thomas Cranmer and John Jewel.
Because John Calvin had great influence and played an important role in the confessional and ecclesiastical debates throughout the 17th century, the tradition generally became known as Calvinism.
Today, this term also means the doctrines and practices of the Reformed churches, of which Calvin was an early leader, and the system is perhaps best known for its doctrines of predestination and total depravity.
John Calvin 's international influence on the development of the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation began at the age of 25, when he started work on his first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1534 (published 1536).
Together with his contributions to confessional documents for use in churches it founded the direct personal influence on Protestantism of Calvin.
He is only one of many to influence the doctrines of the Reformed churches, but he eventually became the most prominent.
The rising importance of the Reformed churches, and of Calvin, belongs to the second phase of the Protestant Reformation, when evangelical churches began to form after Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.
Calvin was a French exile in Geneva.
He had signed the Lutheran Augsburg Confession in 1540, but his importance came from the Swiss Reformation.
This was not Lutheran, but followed Huldrych Zwingli and then Calvin.
True Calvinism (historical Calvinism) does not teach that God chooses who will be saved and who will not be saved.
It teaches that for God 's own glory He recreates men with a new nature (a nature that loves God and hates sin) because with our old nature we would never seek God (Epistle to the Romans 3:10 -12).
If it was not for God choosing to save someone there would be no one saved.
Although much of Calvin 's practice was in Geneva, his publications spread his ideas of a correctly reformed church to many parts of Europe.
Calvinism became the theology of the majority in Scotland (see John Knox), the Netherlands, and parts of Germany and was influential in France, Hungary, Transylvania, and Poland.
Calvinism was popular as well for some time in Scandinavia, especially Sweden, but was rejected in favor of Lutheranism after the synod of Uppsala in 1593.
Most settlers in the American Mid-Atlantic and New England were Calvinists, including the Puritans and Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam (New York).
Dutch Calvinist settlers were also the first successful European colonizers of South Africa, beginning in the 17th century, who became known as Boers or Afrikaners.
Some of the largest Calvinist communions were started by 19th and 20th century missionaries; especially large are those in Korea and Nigeria.
If you can count the things in a set, it is called a countable set.
A set with one thing in it is countable, and so is a set with one hundred things in it.
A set with all the natural numbers (counting numbers) in it is countable too.
It 's infinite but if someone counted forever they would n't miss any of the numbers.
Sometimes when people say ` countable set ' they mean countable and infinite.
Georg Cantor coined the term.
Countable sets include all sets with a finite number of members, no matter how many.
Countable sets also include some infinite sets, such as the natural numbers.
Since it is impossible to actually count infinite sets, we consider them countable if we can find a way to list them all without missing any.
The natural numbers have been nicknamed "the counting numbers" since they are what we usually use to count things with.
The rational numbers are also countable, but it becomes tricky.
We ca n't just list the fractions as (0\/1, 1\/1, -1 \/ 1, 2\/1, -2 \/ 1...) since we will never get to 1\/2 this way.
However, we can list all of the rational numbers in the form of a table.
The horizontal rows are the numerators while the vertical columns are the denominators.
We can then zigzag through the list, starting at 1\/1, then 2\/1, then 1\/2, then 1\/3, then 2\/2, then 3\/1, then 4\/1, then 3\/2, then 2\/3 etc..
If we keep this up, we will get to all of the numbers on the table in due time!
Each time we hit a rational number that is new for us, we add it to the list of counted numbers.
We do n't want to count numbers twice, so when we hit 3\/6 we can skip it, because we already counted the rational number 1\/2.
In this way, we produce an infinite list with all the rational numbers.
Therefore, the rational numbers are countable.
Chemical engineering is a branch of engineering dealing with chemistry that came to existence in the early 20th century.
Before this time, chemical plants were designed by chemists, who were trained to work on a small scale only.
Chemical engineering combines the jobs of a chemist and that of industrial engineer.
This makes factories more efficient and chemicals much cheaper.
Chemical engineering uses physics (the science of moving objects and forces), chemistry (the science of substances), and mathematics.
There are many different types of jobs for people with degrees in chemical engineering.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (IPA: Classical Latin pronunciation: (` kikero), usually pronounced (s s r) in English; January 3, 106 BC December 7, 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, consul, lawyer, political theorist and philosopher.
He is often thought to be one of Rome 's greatest orators and prose stylists.
His Latin is thought to be the model of Classical Latin.
He introduced Greek philosophy to the Romans.
Continental drift is a historical theory.
The theory was first proposed by Abraham Ortelius in 1596.
It was fully developed by the German geologist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener in 1915.
The theory said that parts of the Earth 's crust move slowly on top of a liquid core.
The theory has now been included in the wider theory of plate tectonics.
The theory was supported by finding the same rocks and fossils in western Europe and the eastern North America.
There are also similar fossils on the western coast of Africa and the eastern South America.
The shapes of these continents nearly fits together.
The theory was plausible (believable), but there was no known mechanism to drive these great movements.
This problem was later solved by plate tectonics.
The pattern of volcanic activity, mountain building (orogeny) and earthquakes is explained by continental drift.
The existence of identical rocks widely apart supports the theory.
The basic machine driving continental movement is heat moving from the Earth 's mantle through the crust and out of the planet.
The effect of this it to cause convection, and plate movement.
The Commodores are an American funk and soul music group who were most popular in the 1970s and 1980s.
The band was formed in 1968 in Tuskegee, Alabama, and signed with Motown.
Their hit songs include Three Times a Lady, Easy and Brick House.
During the early times, Lionel Richie sang with the Commodores.
Collagen is a group of naturally occurring proteins.
In nature, it is found exclusively in animals, especially in the flesh and connective tissues of mammals.
It is the main component of connective tissue, and is the most abundant protein in mammals.
It makes up about 25 % to 35 % of the whole-body protein content.
Collagen, in the form of elongated fibrils, is mostly found in fibrous tissues such as tendon, ligament and skin, and is also abundant in cornea, cartilage, bone, blood vessels, the gut, and intervertebral discs.
Collagen constitutes 1 % to 2 % of muscle tissue, and accounts for 6 % of the weight of strong, tendinous muscles.
Gelatin, which is used in food and industry, is collagen that has been irreversibly hydrolyzed.
"Calvin and Hobbes" is a comic strip by Bill Watterson about a boy called Calvin and a tiger called Hobbes.
When Calvin looks at Hobbes, he sees a real tiger.
However, everyone else sees Hobbes as a toy.
This comic began in 1985 and has been in over 2,400 newspapers.
Readers bought almost 23 million Calvin and Hobbes books.
In the comic, Calvin spends a lot of time with Hobbes.
In pictures with only Calvin and Hobbes in them, Hobbes looks like a cartoon tiger.
He stands on two legs.
In pictures with any other person, Hobbes looks like a stuffed animal.
Calvin meets Hobbes in the first story.
Calvin catches him with a string and a tuna fish sandwich as bait.
Calvin and Hobbes have all sorts of trouble and adventures.
The comic strip continued from November 18, 1985 until December 31, 1995.
Calvin is a 6 year old boy.
He is named after a religious thinker, or theologian, John Calvin.
His last name is never in the comic.
Calvin often pretends, and he has a powerful imagination.
He also does things without thinking.
He is often very excited and is curious about everything.
Sometimes he is selfish and rude.
Calvin does not get good grades in school, but he knows very many complex words that usually only adults know.
"You know how Einstein got bad grades as a kid?"
he says.
"Well, mine are even worse!"
Calvin usually wears a shirt with red stripes on it.
He has blond hair that stands up on his head.
Watterson has described Calvin this way:
In classic comic tradition of sidekicks, Hobbes is like Calvin 's ` good side ' because he is more mature and makes smarter decisions than Calvin does.
When Calvin does something like throw a snowball at a girl, Hobbes will say "You think she 's cute, right?"
From most characters ' point of view, Hobbes is Calvin 's stuffed tiger.
However, from Calvin 's point of view, Hobbes is as alive and real just like other characters in the comic strip.
He is named after 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who had what Watterson called "a dim view of human nature."
Hobbes is much more alert and aware of the bad things that can happen than Calvin is.
But, he does not stop Calvin 's trouble making.
All that he really does is warn him.
Calvin will be the one to get in trouble for doing something wrong, not Hobbes.
Hobbes also likes to surprise Calvin.
He approaches him quietly and then jumping on Calvin.
Calvin hates this.
From Calvin 's point of view, Hobbes is a real, intelligent, loyal, and cunning tiger, much larger than Calvin and full of his own attitudes and ideas.
But when the view changes to any other character, readers see merely a little stuffed tiger.
Watterson explains it like this:
Although the first strips clearly show Calvin capturing Hobbes by means of a trap (with tuna fish as the bait), a later comic (1 August 1989) seems to imply that Hobbes is, in fact, older than Calvin, and has been around with him his whole life.
Watterson decided that it was not important to explain how Calvin and Hobbes had first met.
Calvin 's mom and dad are mostly American middle-class parents; like many other characters in the strip, their relatively realistic and sensible manners act as a contrast to Calvin 's childish and selfish behavior.
Both parents go through the entire strip without names.
They are only called "Mom" and "Dad", or nicknames such as "hon" and "dear."
Watterson has never given Calvin 's parents names "because as far as the strip is concerned, they are important only as Calvin 's mom and dad."
This ended up being somewhat problematic when Calvin 's Uncle Max was in the strip for a week and could not refer to the parents by name, and was one of the main reasons that Max never reappeared.
Susie Derkins, the only character in the strip with both first and last names, is a classmate of Calvin who lives in his neighborhood.
She first appeared early in the strip as a new student in Calvin 's class.
Unlike Calvin, she is polite and very smart and eager to improve in her studies and grades at school, and her imagination usually seems mild-mannered and calm, consisting of a standard young girls ' games such as playing house or having tea parties with her stuffed animals.
Her approach to these games is arguably more modern, however, some might say even skeptical.
(In a game of "house" she usually casts herself as the traditional working wife while Calvin is the lousy and useless husband or some version similar to that.)
"Derkins" was the nickname of Watterson 's wife 's family beagle, and he liked the name so much he named this character after it.
As much as either of them hate to admit, Calvin and Susie have quite a bit in common.
(Susie is shown on occasion with a stuffed rabbit known as "Mr. Bun," and Calvin always has Hobbes.)
Watterson admits that Calvin and Susie have a bit of a wild crush on each other (Said by Calvin, "It 's shameless the way we flirt.")
, and that Susie is inspired by the type of women Watterson himself finds attractive (which has led to speculation that Susie is based on Watterson 's wife).
Her relationship with Calvin, though, is frequently conflicted, and never really becomes sorted out, and the closest things are times when Calvin sends dead flowers and hate-mail as Valentine 's Day gifts for his own enjoyment.
(She feels he likes her enough to send her that gift, and he rejoices in her noticing.)
Sometimes Hobbes does something to attract Susie 's romantic attention.
He is often successful and this makes Calvin angry and jealous.
Although on the surface these events take the form of Hobbes teasing Calvin and showing off his charms, they may be Calvin 's way to disguise his own crush on Susie, by pretending that it is Hobbes ' crush instead.
Moe is a bully, "a six-year-old who shaves" who is always pushing Calvin against walls, forcing to give him to give away his lunch money, and calling him "Twinky."
Moe is the only regular character who speaks in an unusual font: his (frequently monosyllabic) dialogue is shown in rough, lower-case letters.
Watterson describes Moe as "every jerk I 've ever known."
And while Moe is not smart, he is, as Calvin puts it, streetwise.
That means, as Calvin says, "he knows what street he lives on".
Miss Wormwood is Calvin 's bored and depressed teacher, named after the apprentice devil in C.S. Lewis 's The Screwtape Letters.
She continuously wears polka-dotted dresses, and serves like others as a foil to Calvin 's rude behavior.
Calvin 's response to the boring studies of schoolwork is endless dreams of his imagination.
She is eagerly waiting to retire, taking a large amount of medication, and is apparently a heavy smoker and alcohol drinker.
Although time does change in the Calvin and Hobbes universe, which is mostly seen in the changing of the season, Calvin (and Susie) returns to Ms. Wormwood 's first-grade class every fall.
As usual, for an adult entering Calvin 's world, Miss Wormwood sees things differently from Calvin.
For example, when she talks to Calvin about his missing homework, Calvin 's Spaceman Spiff persona sees her as a large slimy threatening snarling alien.
"Slowly, carefully, Spiff draws his death-ray blaster".
Rosalyn is a teenage high school senior student and the person who watches Calvin whenever Calvin 's parents go on a night out together.
She is the only babysitter able to put up with Calvin 's bad behavior, which she uses to demand raises and advance payment from Calvin 's desperate parents.
She is also, according to Watterson, the only person Calvin truly fears certainly she is his equal in sneakiness, and is willing to play as dirty as he does.
Rosalyn has a habit of sending him to bed at 6:30, which he refuses to do, and only makes more trouble.
Rosalyn 's boyfriend, Charlie, never appears in the strip, but calls her on the telephone sometimes.
Calvin often cuts short these calls.
Originally, she was created as a nameless, one-time only character with no plans to appear again; however, Watterson decided he wanted to keep her unique ability to scare Calvin, which led to many more appearances.
At one time during the strip shown in the book collection "The Revenge of the Babysat", Calvin 's parents prepare to go out on a night with a dinner and a movie while leaving Calvin with Rosalyn.
When he finds out she is coming, Calvin runs up to Hobbes and explains the situation.
Later when Rosalyn appears, Calvin and Hobbes hear that Rosalyn needs to study for a big science test.
They decide to ruin her studying.
After Calvin 's parents leave, Calvin approaches Rosalyn, curious about what she 's doing.
After slyly talking her away from her science notes, he quickly grabs them, runs to the bathroom door with Hobbes, and locks the door while Rosalyn yells from he outside demanding her notes back.
Once they "flushed" her notes (in which they only pretended to and flushed an empty toilet).
Moments later when the wonder if Rosalyn has gone, Calvin opens the door only to find Rosalyn pounce upon him and throw him to bed at 7 o'clock which Hobbes notes that they went to bed 30 minutes later than usual.
The ending shows Calvin 's parents coming back home to find Rosalyn charge extra money for the job while Calvin 's parents argue if there 's another babysitter in town.
During the winter, Calvin likes to make ugly or frightening snowmen when once Calvin created the "Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons".
Also, his snowmen creations have had snowmen with missing or multiple heads, snowmen taking another 's head for a bowling ball, and snowmen being "knocked over" by his family 's car.
Also, Calvin frequently throws snowballs at Susie, most likely having himself being chased by Susie.
Once Calvin (while in his "Stupendous Man" alter-ego) also made a gigantic snowball and dropped it at Susie while on top of a tree, as where Susie 's mom described it as a "the size of a bowling ball".
The monsters under the bed are described as scary, octopus-tentacled shaped creatures that lived under Calvin 's bed every time he went to sleep.
Often, they would try to bribe Calvin to come under the bed by giving him a new toy or by urging Hobbes to push Calvin over in return for a fresh piece of salmon.
According to Calvin he 'd usually describe them as "all fangs and no brains".
They often lie to Calvin when he asks "how many monsters are under my bed?
, when they 'd usually reply there 's "only one" or "none and go to sleep".
Although various monsters were known to exist under Calvin 's bed, two named monsters "Maurice" and "Winslow" appeared and re-appeared during the strip 's middle times.
Get Rid Of Slimy Girls is Calvin 's anti-girl club.
The club 's goal is to annoy and bother girls, and Calvin 's main target is Susie Derkins.
The club has only two members, Calvin and Hobbes.
Calvin is "supreme dictator-for-life" and Hobbes is the "first tiger".
They two usually make plans like throwing water balloons or snowballs at Susie.
Often these plans have a bad ending.
However, every time G.R.O.S.S finishes a mission or meeting, they always get awards such as medals, honors, and promotions.
Of course, the word "gross" also means disgusting.
Calvin hates school and homework so much.
He usually tries to avoid them.
His Mom always makes him ride the school bus even though he does not want to, and sometimes tries to run home and not go to class.
In one Sunday comic strip, Calvin 's imagination became so wild and creative that he imagined getting in a F-15 Eagle airplane and blasting his elementary school to pieces with many missiles.
The following links were last verified August 27, 2006.
Craps is a game that uses dice.
It is a game of chance.
Players make bets on the outcome of the roll.
Players can bet other players or the casino.
Karl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz (July 1, 1780 November 16, 1831) was a Prussian soldier who wrote about war and the military.
He wrote the book On War, in which he said that "War is the continuation of politics by other means."
In his book, On War, Clausewitz wrote how to win a war, how to build an army, and what war is.
He did not think war was an art or a science.
Instead, war was about people, money, and land.
A color code is a system for displaying information by using different colors.
Color codes are often difficult or impossible for blind and color blind people to understand.
The Color Code is also the title of a book (References, Joseph et al., 2002) combined with a nutritional practice by the same name in another book publication (Heber, 2001).
The Color Code combines food science, medical knowledge and nutritional practices to encourage consumer intake of colourful plant foods for achieving optimal health.
In mathematics, a Cauchy sequence is a sequence where the distance between two consecutive elements of the sequence decreases.
Cauchy sequences are named after Augustin-Louis Cauchy.
Common Era (CE) is the calendar system commonly used in the Western world for the year number part of a date.
The year numbers are the same as those used for Anno Domini (AD); in both systems the current year is.
The CE and AD systems both started with the year 1.
Neither system uses a year zero (0).
Common Era is abbreviated as CE, and is also known as Current Era and Christian Era.
Before Common Era (BCE) is the system for the years Before the Common Era.
BCE uses the same numbering as BC or Before Christ.
"CE" and "BCE" are placed after the year number.
Thus we read "Right now our year is CE" or "Artaxerxes III of Persia was born in 425 BCE."
The year-numbering used in the Gregorian calendar is based on a sixth century estimate for the year Jesus was born.
The use of Anno Domini (Latin for "in year of the\/our Lord") has been used with the Western calendar since about that time.
The use of Before Christ and the abbreviations AD and BC came somewhat later.
The Gregorian calendar is an internationally recognized standard and has become the most widely-used calendar in the world, used by both Christians and non-Christians.
Use of Common Era notation (CE\/BCE) does not make use of religious titles (Lord and Christ) for Jesus that are part of in the AD\/BC notation.
Usage of Common Era notation began about 1615 among Christians in Europe, and has been growing among non-Christians and among Christians who desire to be sensitive to non-Christians.
Many faiths and countries have their own calendars, in which the year, the month, and the day may differ from the designation on the Gregorian calendar.
For example, Muslim countries use the Islamic calendar which counts years since the first Hijra (when the prophet Muhammad went from Mecca to Medina).
Late in CE, the year AH using the Islamic calendar will begin.
On the Hebrew calendar, a new year coincides with a day from September 5 to October 5, with the year beginning in.
Writing dates as "Common Era" makes it possible for non-Christian people and cultures to adopt the Gregorian calendar in common, without attaching an expression of faith in Jesus.
Chechnya (called Nox iy in the Chechen language) is officially a part of Russia, in the Caucasus region.
It has tried to leave Russia several times.
The issue is still being disputed, mainly because many people, both Russian and Chechen (people from Chechnya), died during fighting between them.
Most people of Chechnya are Muslims and are of ancient Hurrian roots who spoke a Caucasian language.
Most Chechens belong to Shafi ` i school of Sunni Islam.
Chechens speak their own language, not related to the Russian language.
Chechen is part of the Northeast Caucasian, or Vainakh, family, while Russian is a Slavic language.
Russia has claimed Chechnya as part of its country since the Russians invaded the Caucasus in the 18th century.
Canonisation is a statement by a church saying that someone is a saint.
This process is used by some Christian churches, most commonly in the Roman Catholic Church.
The person must be dead, because living people can not be canonised.
The process of canonisation involves proving that the person lived in a way that justifies this decision.
They must have loved others and loved God.
In the Catholic Church, at least two miracles by the saint 's intercession must be proven.
This means that, because the person is believed to be in heaven, someone must pray, or ask, for the saint to pray for them in heaven.
If the prayer is answered and a miracle happens, then they know that the person is a saint.
The miracles prove that the saint must be in heaven with God, and able to ask God for prayers to be answered.
These people then enter into the canon, or list, of saints.
It is not correct to say that the Church "makes" someone a saint.
The Catholic Church believes that anyone who is in heaven is already a saint.
The canonisation process just finds out for sure, or without a doubt, that someone is a saint.
A carboxylic acid is any molecule that has a COOH group.
This group contains a carbonyl (C = O double bond) together with an hydroxyl group (OH) on the same carbon atom.
Because it is easy to remove the proton with even a weak base, these compounds are called acids.
An example of a carboxylic acid is Acetic acid, which is also known as vinegar.
Carboxylic acids are found a lot in food.
Many types of fat molecules are actually carboxylic acids.
For example, chocolate and coconuts have these acids.
They are also used a lot in soaps and detergents.
The smaller carboxylic acids dissolve in water.
The bigger ones dissolve only in organic solvents.
Cyan is the color halfway between blue and green on the color wheel.
It is one of the primary (main) colors of ink in an inkjet printer, along with yellow and magenta.
Cyan is a secondary color of light, along with magenta and yellow.
The primary colors of light are: blue, red and green.
Cyan is made by mixing green and blue light.
Cream (also called milkfat, milk fat, and butterfat) is the fatty part of regular milk.
Skimmed milk (or skim milk) is milk sold with some or nearly all of the fat removed.
Cream is usually used in coffee to make it lighter in taste.
Chemical vapor deposition is a method of putting a thin layer of a materials on to a surface using very low heat.
It is specially useful for coating thin glass with metal without damaging the glass, using such a thin layer of metal that the glass can be seen through.
This technology was invented by the Head of the Chemistry Department of Harvard University, Professor Roy Gordon, in the 1970s and perfected by his team during the 1980s.
Chemical vapor deposition has a vast range of uses.
Hip replacement joints are coated using chemical vapor deposition to make them lighter, stronger, and longer lasting.
TFT displays (flat screen televisions and computer monitors) are made using chemical vapor deposition.
This technology is also used to prevent double glazing windows and supermarket freezers from steaming up.
The CN Tower is a telecommunications tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
It is 553.33 m tall and is the tallest free-standing structure (meaning it can not have wires to keep it standing) in Canada, North America, and the Western Hemisphere.
It is not the tallest building as there are no floors for people to work or live in.
That title goes to One World Trade Center in New York City, New York, United States, which is a bit shorter at 1776 f tall.
It is not the tallest structure of any kind in the Americas either, as the KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota, also in the United States, is taller at 2063 f, but that needs wires to keep it upright.
Construction of the concrete tower started on February 6, 1973.
In 1975, while it was still being built, it became taller than the Ostankino Tower in Moscow.
When it opened to the public on June 26, 1976, it became the tallest free-standing structure on land in the world.
It held this record for more than thirty years, until the Burj Khalifa, while it was still being built, became taller on September 12, 2007.
The CN Tower continued to be the world 's tallest tower until the Canton Tower became taller in 2010.
Now it is the world 's third-tallest tower behind the Canton Tower and Tokyo Sky Tree, and fifth tallest free-standing structure behind both of these, the Shanghai Tower, and the Burj Khalifa.
The "CN" in the tower 's name came from the Canadian National Railway, the railway company that built the tower.
In 1995, the railway sold the tower to the Canada Lands Company (CLC).
Local residents wanted to keep the name CN Tower, though, so the abbreviation is now a shortened form of Canada 's National Tower instead of the original Canadian National Tower.
Neither of these names are commonly used, though; the tower is usually called the CN Tower.
Today, the CN Tower is an important icon of Toronto and has more than two million tourists and visitors every year.
It has been one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World since 1995.
The chain rule is a way of finding the derivative of a function.
It is used where the function is in another function.
This is called a composite function.
1.
Find the derivative of the outside function (all of it at once).
2.
Find the derivative of the inside function (the bit between the brackets).
3.
Multiply the answer from the first step by the answer from the second step.
In this example, the cubed sign (3) is the outside function and is the inside function.
The derivative of the outside function would be, where the inside function is plugged in for x. The derivative of the inside function would be 2x, which is multiplied by to get.
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas and specifically part of the continent known as North America.
It goes from Guatemala and Belize in the north-west, to Panama in the south-east.
It is the area of land that sits south-east of Mexico and north-west of Colombia.
It is between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
Central America has an area of 524,000 k. It is almost 0.1 % of the Earth 's surface.
This is a list of the countries in Central America, from the largest to the smallest:
While Nicaragua is the largest country in area, of Central America, Guatemala has the largest population by country in Central America, with more than 14 million people and they also have the most populated city in Central America, being Guatemala City.
Six of the seven countries have Spanish as their official language, with Belize being the non-Spanish speaking country, as their official language is English, although there are now at least 195,597 (62.8 %) of people in Belize who speak Spanish.
Some people also speak indigenous or creole languages like the Maya languages.
Central America has a density of 77 people per square kilometer.
Central America has an area of 524,000 k. It is almost 0.1 % of the Earth 's total surface.
In 2009 the population was estimated at 41,739,000.
It has a density of 77 people per square kilometer or 206 people per square mile.
Central America has many unique features that go from the north-western borders of Belize and Guatemala to the Isthmus of Panama.
There it connects to the Colombian Pacific Lowlands in South America.
Central America is an area of some 524,000 square kilometres.
The Pacific Ocean is on the southwest, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, and the Gulf of Mexico to the north.
Most of Central America rests on the Caribbean Plate.
The region is geologically active.
It has volcanic eruptions and earthquakes from time to time.
The 1976 Guatemala earthquake killed 23,001 people.
Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, was devastated by earthquakes in 1931 and 1972.
The last one killed about 5,001 people.
Three earthquakes hit El Salvador.
The first one in 1986 and two in 2001.
An earthquake devastated northern and central Costa Rica in 2009.
It killed at least 35 people.
In Honduras a powerful earthquake happened in 2009.
Volcanic eruptions are common.
In 1968 the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica erupted.
This killed at least 87 people.
The 3 villages of Tabacon, Pueblo Nuevo, and San Luis were buried under ash.
Central America has many mountain ranges; the longest are the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, the Cordillera Isabelia and the Cordillera de Talamanca.
Most of the population of Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala live in valleys, between mountains.
Valleys are also suitable for the production of coffee, beans and other crops.
Central America is part of the Mesoamerican Biodiversity hotspot, boasting 7 % of the world 's biodiversity.
As a bridge between North and South America, Central America has many species from the Nearctic and the Neotropic ecozones.
However the southern countries (Costa Rica and Panama) of the region have more biodiversity than the northern countries (Guatemala and Belize), meanwhile the central countries (Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador) have least biodiversity.
The table shows current statistics for the seven countries:
In mathematics a function is said to be continuous if, roughly said, a small change in the input only causes a small change in the output.
If this is not the case, the function is said to be discontinuous.
Functions defined on the real numbers, with one input and one output variable, will show as an uninterrupted line (or curve).
They can be drawn without lifting the pen.
The definition given above was made by Augustin-Louis Cauchy.
Karl Weierstra gave another definition of continuity: Suppose that there is a function f, defined on the real numbers.
At the point the function will have the value.
If the function is continuous at, then for every value of no matter how small it is, there is a value of, so that whenever, that makes.
Intuitively: Given a point close to (called x), the absolute value of the difference between the two values of the function can be made arbitrarily small, if the point x is close enough to.
There are also special forms of continuous, such as Lipschitz-continuous.
A function is Lipschitz-continuous if there is a with for all x, y (a, b).
Carl Friedrich Gauss (pronunciation:, Latin: Carolus Fridericus Gauss) (30 April 1777 23 February 1855) was a famous mathematician from G ttingen, Germany.
Gauss contributed to many areas of learning.
Most of his work was about number theory and astronomy.
He was born in Braunschweig.
That city was then part of the duchy of Braunschweig-L neburg.
Today the city is part of Lower Saxony.
As a child, he was a prodigy, meaning he was very clever.
When he was 3 years old, he told his father that he had incorrectly measured something on his complicated payroll.
Gauss was correct.
Gauss also taught himself to read.
When he was in elementary school, his teacher once tried to keep the children busy, telling them to add up all the numbers from 1 to 100.
Gauss did it quickly, like this: 1 + 100 = 101, 2 + 99 = 101, 3 + 98 = 101, and so on.
There were a total of 50 pairs, so 50 101 = 5,050.
The formula is.
According to this website, the problem given to Gauss was actually more difficult to do.
The Duke of Brunswick gave Gauss a fellowship to the Collegium Carolinum, where he attended from 1792 to 1795.
This meant that the Duke paid for the education of Carl Friedrich Gauss at the Collegium.
After this, Gauss went to the University of G ttingen, from 1795 to 1798.
When Gauss was 23, scientists spotted the asteroid Ceres but they did not see it for long enough to know its orbit.
Gauss made calculations that let them locate it.
Later in life Gauss stopped working on pure math and turned to physics.
He did work in electromagnetism.
Gauss wrote Disquisitiones Arithmeticae which is a book about number theory.
In that book he proved the law of Quadratic reciprocity.
He also was the first mathematician to explain Modular arithmetic in a very detailed way.
Before Gauss, mathematicians had used modular arithmetic in some cases but did not know much about using it broadly.
Cornish is a very old language from the county of Cornwall in the southwest of England, UK.
Cornish is a Celtic language and is very similar to Breton and Welsh, all three having developed from a common ancient language.
A long time ago Cornish was the only language spoken in Cornwall, but more and more people began to speak English instead of Cornish.
In 1550, when the prayer book was written in English instead of Latin, the Cornish people got angry and there was a rebellion.
Because many Cornish speakers died and because they would now hear the Bible in English the language was used less and less.
By 1800 there were only a few people who could speak Cornish, and no-one spoke it to each other any more.
The language was then considered endangered.
Pople say that a woman called Dolly Pentreath was the last person who could speak Cornish.
This is not quite true, but she was one of the last people to use it instead of English.
Since her death, Cornish was considered an extinct language.
Some people learned about Cornish by traveling around talking to people who could still speak it and by reading old plays and books.
Some people wanted to learn the language and speak it, so in 1904 a learned man called Henry Jenner wrote a book to help people.
After this some people began to learn the language and speak it again.
No one knows how many Cornish speakers there are now.
People think there are probably about 3000 to 5000 people who speak Cornish.
Some young people have grown up speaking it.
Many other people in Cornwall know a few sentences or words in Cornish.
In a hundred years the Cornish language has grown from almost no speakers to many thousands which is very exciting for many people.
There are now many new books, films and songs in Cornish.
The Bible has now been translated into Cornish.
There is an event called the open Gorseth where there is a story and poetry competition.
Sometimes Cornish is used in churches.
There used to be a problem with Cornish, in that there were three different dictionaries with different spellings and people did not agree about how to write the words, or how to say them.
This was confusing for people when they have not been speaking long, so in 2008 people who used the different types of Cornish came together and agreed on a new standard form of Cornish to be used everywhere.
Charybdis is a sea monster in Ancient Greek mythology.
It was said that she was a daughter of Posiedon and that when she breathed in and out the sea would rise and fall.
She was also the sister of Scylla.
Carbon monoxide, with the chemical formula CO, is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas.
It consists of one carbon atom covalently bonded to one oxygen atom.
It is made when carbon compounds burn and there is not enough oxygen.
It is a good fuel and burns in air with a blue flame, making carbon dioxide.
It is very toxic, but it is useful for modern technology as well.
The most important use for carbon monoxide in industry is making iron from iron ore..
The carbon monoxide takes the oxygen from the iron ore when heated in a large oven called a blast furnace.
Liquid metal iron is left behind.
The carbon monoxide turns into carbon dioxide.
Carbon monoxide can accidentally form when there are too little air to burn all the fuel into carbon dioxide.
Such situation may happen if the oven shutters are closed too early or if a mobile cooker is used in a small tent with no ventilation (= fresh air coming in and smoke going out).
Many people have died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Carbon monoxide poisoning can cause feelings of paranoia and hallucinations, and has been determined to be a major cause of "haunted" houses.
Small amounts of it are found in coal gas, a fuel produced by heating coal without any air.
Despite that it is a poison, carbon monoxide is very useful in chemical industry so lots of ways of making it have been discovered.
Normally we burn coke at high temperature with not enough oxygen.
The chemical equation for this is:
Carbon monoxide can be used as heating fuel because it burns easily into carbon dioxide.
It can also be used as so-called "synthesis gas" for making man-made gasoline in the Fischer-Tropsch process.
During the World War II when petrol was rare and reserved for the military, many cars were converted to use wood gas.
It is carbon monoxide made by burning wood chips in insufficient amount of air.
The wood gas was made in a special oven called generator, which was carried on the car.
The resulting carbon monoxide was then used as fuel for the car itself.
Even today there are cars which use wood gas as fuel.
A conjecture is an idea in mathematics that appears likely to be true but that has not been proven to be true.
After a conjecture is proven to be true, it becomes a theorem.
Until recently, one of the most famous conjectures was Fermat 's Last Theorem.
The name was incorrect, because although Fermat said he had a proof for it, none could be found in his notes.
In 1992, British mathematician Andrew Wiles found a proof for it, making it a theorem and not a conjecture.
Not every conjecture can be proven true or false.
The continuum hypothesis, which describes the size of certain infinite sets, is an example.
It was shown to be independent of the generally accepted axioms of set theory, which means that it can not be proven true or false using those axioms.
It is therefore possible to take this statement, or its negation, as a new axiom in a consistent manner (much as we can take Euclid 's parallel postulate as either true or false).
In this case, if a proof uses this statement, researchers will often look for a new proof that does not require the hypothesis The one major exception to this in practice is the axiom of choice -- unless studying this axiom in particular, the majority of researchers do not usually worry whether a result requires the axiom of choice.
Claudius (Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, 11 August 10 BC 13 October 54 AD) was the fourth Roman Emperor.
He ruled from 24 January 41 AD to his death in 54 AD.
His uncle was the second Emperor Tiberius and Mark Antony was one of his grandfathers.
He had some kind of disability, in speech and walking, and his family kept him from public office until he was 38.
Claudius ' infirmity may have saved him from the purges of Tiberius ' and Caligula 's reigns; enemies did not see him as a serious threat.
His survival led to his being declared emperor (at the insistence of the Praetorian Guard) after Caligula 's assassination.
He was then the last adult male of his family.
Despite his lack of experience, Claudius proved a good administrator and a great builder of public works.
His reign saw an expansion of the Empire, and the conquest of Britain.
He took a personal interest in the law, and he presided at public trials.
Claudius suffered setbacks in his personal life, one of which may have led to his murder.
He married four times, and the marriages did not turn out well.
Claudius ' relative and adopted son Nero succeeded him as Emperor, and undid much of his good work.
On 24 January 41 AD, Caligula was assassinated by a broad-based conspiracy.
There is no evidence that Claudius had a direct hand in the assassination, although it has been argued that he knew about the plot.
In the chaos following the murder, Claudius witnessed the German guard cut down several uninvolved noblemen, including some of his friends.
He fled to the palace to hide.
According to tradition, a Praetorian named Gratus found him hiding behind a curtain and suddenly declared him Emperor.
A section of the guard may have planned to seek out Claudius, perhaps with his approval.
They reassured him that they were not one of the groups looking for revenge.
He was put under their protection.
The Senate quickly met and began debating a change of government.
When they heard of the Praetorians ' claim, they demanded that Claudius be delivered to them for approval.
He refused, sensing danger.
Eventually the Senate was forced to give in and, in return, Claudius pardoned nearly all the assassins.
Under Claudius, the empire expanded for the first time since the reign of Augustus.
The provinces of Thrace, Judea and three other provinces were annexed during his term.
The annexation of Mauretania, begun under Caligula, was completed after the defeat of rebel forces, and divided into two provinces.
The most important new expansion was the conquest of Britannia.
In 43 AD, Claudius sent four legions to Britain (Britannia).
Britain was an attractive target for Rome because of its wealth particularly mines and slaves.
It was also a haven for Gallic rebels and the like, and so could not be left alone much longer.
Claudius himself traveled to the island after the completion of initial offensives, bringing with him reinforcements and elephants.
The Senate granted him a Roman triumph for his efforts: in the Roman Empire only members of the imperial family were allowed such honors.
Claudius later lifted this restriction for some of his generals.
When the British general Caractacus was captured in 50, Claudius granted him his life.
Caractacus lived out his days on land provided by the Roman state, an unusual end for an enemy commander.
Claudius conducted a census in 48 AD that found 5,984,072 Roman citizens, an increase of about a million since the census conducted at Augustus ' death.
Claudius married four times.
His first marriage, to Plautia Urgulanilla, occurred after two failed betrothals.
During their marriage she gave birth to a son, Claudius Drusus.
Unfortunately, Drusus died of asphyxiation in his early teens, shortly after becoming engaged to Junilla, the daughter of Sejanus.
Claudius later divorced Urgulanilla for adultery and on suspicion of murdering her sister-in-law Apronia.
When Urgulanilla gave birth after the divorce, Claudius repudiated the baby girl, Claudia, as the father was one of his own freedmen.
Soon after (possibly in 28 AD), Claudius married Aelia Paetina, a relative of Sejanus, if not Sejanus 's adoptive sister.
During their marriage, Claudius and Paetina had a daughter, Claudia Antonia.
Some years after divorcing Aelia Paetina, in 38 or early 39 AD, Claudius married Valeria Messalina, who was his first cousin once removed and closely allied with Caligula 's circle.
Shortly thereafter, she gave birth to a daughter Claudia Octavia.
A son, first named Tiberius Claudius Germanicus, and later known as Britannicus, was born just after Claudius ' accession.
This marriage ended in tragedy.
Messalina was regularly unfaithful to Claudius and manipulated his policies in order to amass wealth.
In 48 AD Messalina married her lover Gaius Silius in a public ceremony while Claudius was at Ostia.
The result was the execution of Silius, Messalina, and most of her circle.
Claudius made the Praetorians promise to kill him if he ever married again.
Despite this declaration, Claudius did marry once more, his niece Agrippina the Younger.
The attempted coup d' tat by Silius and Messalina had probably made Claudius realize the weakness of his position since he did not have an obvious adult heir, Britannicus being just a boy.
Agrippina 's son Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (the Emperor Nero) was one of the last males of the imperial family.
Future coup attempts could rally around the pair, and Agrippina was already showing such ambition.
In any case, Claudius accepted Agrippina, and later adopted the newly mature Nero as his son.
Nero was made joint heir with the underage Britannicus, married to Octavia and heavily promoted.
Nero was popular with the public as the grandson of Germanicus and the direct descendant of Augustus.
The consensus of ancient historians was that Claudius was murdered by poison, and died in the early hours of 13 October, 54 AD.
Accounts vary greatly, but nearly all implicate his last wife, Agrippina, as the instigator.
Agrippina had motive in ensuring the succession of Nero before Britannicus could gain power.
Claudius was described as physically repulsive, weak, and easily manipulated by his wives and companions by Suetonius, but this historian can not be entirely trusted.
The surviving works of Claudius present a different view.
They paint a picture of an intelligent, scholarly, well-read, and conscientious administrator with an eye to detail and justice.
Thus, Claudius becomes an enigma.
Since the discovery of his letter to the Alexandrians in the last century, much work has been done to rehabilitate Claudius and determine where the truth lies.
Claudius wrote copiously throughout his life.
Besides the history of Augustus ' reign, his major works included an Etruscan history and eight volumes on Carthaginian history, as well as an Etruscan dictionary and a book on dice playing.
Claudius is the last person known to have been able to read Etruscan.
His first wife was Etruscan.
Finally, he wrote an eight-volume autobiography.
Unfortunately, none of these major works survive.
They do live on as sources for the surviving histories of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
Suetonius quotes Claudius ' autobiography once, and must have used it as a source numerous times.
Tacitus may have used him for some of the more antiquarian passages in his annals.
Claudius is the source for numerous passages of Pliny 's Natural History.
Pliny credits him by name in Book VII 35.
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Many of the public works instituted in his reign were based on plans first suggested by Julius Caesar.
Levick believes this emulation of Caesar may have spread to all aspects of his policies.
The best known fictional representation of the Emperor Claudius were the books I, Claudius and Claudius the God (published in 1934 and 1935) by the poet Robert Graves.
They were both written in the first-person, as if they are Claudius ' autobiography.
Graves ' plot suggested there were recently discovered, genuine translations of Claudius ' writings.
Claudius ' genuine surviving letters, speeches, and sayings were incorporated into the text (mostly in the second book, Claudius the God) in order to add authenticity.
Graves 's two books were the basis for an I, Claudius TV series by the BBC.
The series starred Derek Jacobi as Claudius and was broadcast in 1976 on BBC2.
It was a substantial critical success, and won several BAFTA awards.
The series was later broadcast in the United States on Masterpiece Theatre in 1977.
The DVD release of the television series contains The Epic that Never Was documentary.
Claudius has been portrayed in movies on several occasions.
I, Claudius (1937, Director Josef von Stromberg), unfinished; Charles Laughton as Claudius was a great performance.
The surviving reels were featured in the BBCtv documentary The Epic that never was (1965), revealing some of Laughton 's most accomplished acting.
Also, minor portrayals in Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) and Caligula (1979).
The Cantor set is a subset of real numbers with certain properties that are interesting to mathematicians.
These properties relate to topology, measurement, geometry, as well as set theory.
Some of them are:
The set is named after Georg Cantor.
Henry John Stephen Smith discovered it in 1875, and Cantor first described it in 1883.
The set is made by starting with a line segment and repeatedly removing the middle third.
The Cantor set is the (infinite) set of points left over.
The Cantor set is "more infinite" than the set of natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.).
This property is called uncountability.
It is related to the Smith Volterra Cantor set and the Menger Sponge.
The Cantor set is self-similar.
Cardinal numbers (or cardinals) are numbers that say how many of something there are, for example: one, two, three, four, five, six.
They are sometimes called counting numbers.
The cardinality of a set is the cardinal number that tells how many things are in the set.
In mathematics, people also study infinite cardinal numbers.
The first infinite cardinal number was named (pronounced Aleph-zero or Aleph-naught) by Georg Cantor.
is the amount of numbers that are in the group 0, 1, 2, 3,... keep going forever.
Cantor proved that there are many different infinite cardinal numbers that are bigger than.
A famous theorem of Cantor is that the cardinality of the real numbers is larger than the cardinality of the natural numbers.
In mathematics, the cardinality of a set means the number of its elements.
For example, the set A = contains 3 elements, and therefore A has a cardinality of 3.
Two sets have the same (or equal) cardinality if they have the same number of elements.
They have the same number of elements if and only if there is a 1-to-1 correspondence between the sets.
The cardinality of the set A is less than or equal to cardinality (or fewer than or equal members) set B if and only if there is an injective function from A to B. The cardinality of the set B is greater than or equal to (or more than or equal members) set B if and only if there is an injective function from A to B.
The cardinality of a set is only one way of giving a number to the size of a set.
Measure is different.
The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number.
The smallest cardinality is 0.
The empty set has cardinality 0.
If the cardinality of the set A is n, then there is a "next larger" set with cardinality n +1.
(For example, the set.
If then either or.)
There is no largest finite cardinality.
If the cardinality of a set is not finite then the cardinality is infinite.
An infinite set is considered countable if they can be listed without missing any.
Examples include the rational numbers, integers, and natural numbers.
Such sets have a cardinality that we call (read as: aleph null, aleph naught or aleph zero).
Sets such as the real numbers are not countable.
If given any finite or infinite list of real numbers, you can create a number not on that list.
The real numbers have a cardinality of c.
Cecil Blount DeMille (August 12, 1881 January 21, 1959) was an American movie director.
He was an Academy Award-winning producer of both silent and sound movies.
He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies.
Among his best-known films are Cleopatra, Samson and Delilah; The Greatest Show on Earth, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture; and The Ten Commandments, which was his last and most successful movie.
DeMille married Constance Adams on August 16, 1902 and had one child, Cecilia.
The couple adopted Katherine Lester in the early 1920s.
She married Anthony Quinn.
They also adopted two sons, John and Richard.
DeMille suffered a near fatal heart attack in 1956 during the shooting in Egypt of The Ten Commandments.
He never fully recovered.
He died on January 21, 1959 of heart failure.
He rests in Hollywood Forever Cemetery).
At the time of his death, he was planning to direct a movie about space travel.
He also wanted to do a movie about the Biblical Book of Revelation.
Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager (born February 13, 1923) is a former major general of the United States Air Force.
He was the first person to break the sound barrier.
This was accomplished on 14 October 1947 in a Bell X-1 aircraft.
Yeager also served in World War II.
Cologne (or sometimes K lle) is a city on the Rhine River in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.
About 970,000 people live there.
The city was founded by the Romans in the year 50.
Before that, it was a Roman castle ("castellum") and a town inhabited by a local German tribe named Ubier at least for 100 years.
Archaelogists have found out that the surrounding area was populated already during the stone age.
The most interesting thing to see there is Cologne Cathedral.
This church was built from about 1248 to about 1550, but completed only in 1880.
The United Nations list it as ` World Cultural Heritage '.
Cologne 's archbishop Rainald von Dassel brought the relics of the biblical Three Wise Men there in 1164.
They are kept in a very beautiful golden shrine in the cathedral.
Three golden crowns in the coat of arms of the city symbolize them.
They made Cologne a major place of pilgrimage.
Traditionally, the city was always Roman Catholic.
That changed only recently after the Second World War, as a result of massive immigration of Protestants from the East of Germany.
Still the largest number of people, 41.6 %, are Roman Catholic, compared to 17 % Protestant.
10 % of the people are Muslim.
Cologne is the biggest city in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Cologne is in the southern part of the ` Rhine-Ruhr agglomeration ' of cities with a combined total population of about 10 million people.
This is one of the most densely populated areas of the world.
The University of Cologne alone has more than 50,000 students.
It was founded 1919 and is one of the biggest universities in Germany.
There are several specialized Schools in addition to the university.
The Hochschule f r Musik is the biggest Academy of Music in Europe.
Cologne has two Colleges of Arts and the Sports College again is one of the biggest institutions of its kind worldwide.
Cologne has 31 museums.
Cologne has one of the busiest train stations in Europe.
It is the only train station located next to a big cathedral.
People in Cologne and nearby have their own dialect.
They call it K lsch.
During carnival time it even appears on nationwide broadcasts.
Cologne has a handful of broadcasting stations.
The Westdeutscher Rundfunk, part of the network ARD, is the biggest producer of television and radio programs in Germany.
Cologne is also famous for Eau de Cologne (K lnisch Wasser).
Cologne has an oceanic climate (Cfb in the Koeppen climate classification).
John Calvin Coolidge (July 4, 1872 - January 5, 1933) was the 30th President of the United States between 1923 to 1929.
He was the only President of the United States to be born on the 4th of July.
He was married to Grace Coolidge and had 2 children: John (born September 6, 1906 - died 31 May 2000) and Calvin Jr. (born 13 April 1908 - died 7 July 1924).
His younger son Calvin Jr. died at 16 while playing tennis at the White House.
His son was wearing tennis shoes without socks and died from a toe infection.
He was buried at the foot of Hill Cemetery.
Coolidge served as the Mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts.
He later served as the Governor of Massachusetts.
As governor, he became famous because of his response during the Boston Police Strike.
Coolidge fired the police who went on strike and gave the jobs to unemployed World War 1 veterans (he gave the same bonuses that the striking policemen asked for to the veterans).
In 1920, he was nominated Vice President under Warren G. Harding.
The Harding-Coolidge team won easily.
Harding died in 1923 and Coolidge became the next President.
Coolidge finished Harding 's term and was elected in 1924 to continue to be the country 's president.
Coolidge was president during a prosperous economy and the country did not face many challenges.
He believed that the federal government should be as small as possible.
He supported tax cuts and wanted the federal government to keep its hands off the economy.
Coolidge was criticized for refusing to give subsidies to farmers and when a giant flood happened in Mississippi during 1927, he did not want the federal government to be involved.
This was part of his belief of federalism, that the country 's problems should be solved mainly by state governments and local governments rather than the federal government.
He surprised many people by choosing not to run for re-election during 1928.
The legacy of Calvin Coolidge is mixed.
People who support more federal government involvement in the economy do not like him.
People who support less federal government involvement in the economy like him.
Calvin Coolidge was nicknamed "Silent Cal" because he did not talk much.
An electric current is a flow of electric charge.
The equation of current is:
The SI unit of electric current is the ampere (A).
This is equal to one coulomb of charge in one second.
Current can be found in wires, batteries, and lightning.
In conducting materials, some electrons are very loosely bound to the atoms of the material.
When large amounts of these atoms come together, there is a sort of electron cloud that "hovers" near the atoms of the material.
If you examine a cross-section of the piece of conducting material, the electrons will move very quickly through it.
This motion is caused by temperature, and electrons flowing in one direction tend to equal the electrons flowing from the other direction, so this is not what causes current to flow.
Electrons flow from one atom to another, a process has been compared to the passing of water buckets from one person to another in a bucket brigade.
When an electric field is put on the wire, the electrons respond almost instantly by drifting slightly in the opposite direction of the field.
They gain energy from the field, which is lost very quickly when they bump into other electrons in the material.
As long as the field is in place, however, the electrons will gain back that energy that they lost, and the process will continue.
This "jolt" that electrons receive from the electric field is the source of current, not the overall flow of electrons themselves.
From this discussion, we can see two things that current is not:
When current is flowing in a wire circuit, it accelerates when there is no resistance in the circuit.
Resistors are used to increase resistance in the circuit so it slows down the current.
The relationship between resistance, current, and voltage (another part of the circuit) is shown by Ohm 's law.
A circle is a round, regular, two-dimensional shape, shaped like the letter o.
The center of a circle is the point in the very middle.
The radius of a circle is a line from the center of the circle to a point on the side.
All points on the edge of the circle are at the same distance from the center.
In other words, the radius is the same length all the way around the circle.
Mathematicians use the letter r for the length of a circle 's radius.
The diameter (meaning "all the way across") of a circle is a straight line that goes from one side to the opposite and right through the center of the circle.
Mathematicians use the letter d for the length of this line.
The diameter of a circle is equal to twice its radius (d equals 2 times r).
The circumference (meaning "all the way around") of a circle is the line that goes around the center of the circle.
Mathematicians use the letter C for the length of this line.
The number (written as the Greek letter pi) is a very useful number.
It is the length of the circumference divided by the length of the diameter (equals C divided by d).
As a fraction the number is equal to about or 335\/113 (which is closer) and as a number it is about 3.1415926535.
The area, a, inside a circle is equal to the radius multiplied by itself, then multiplied by (a equals times r times r).
can be measured by drawing a large circle, then measuring its diameter (d) and circumference (C).
This is because the circumference of a circle is always times its diameter.
can also be calculated by only using mathematical methods.
Most methods used for calculating the value of have desirable mathematical properties.
However, they are hard to understand without knowing trigonometry and calculus.
However, some methods are quite simple, such as this form of the Gregory-Leibniz series:
While that series is easy to write and calculate, it is not easy to see why it equals.
An easier to understand approach is to draw an imaginary circle of radius r centered at the origin.
Then any point (x, y) whose distance d from the origin is less than r, calculated by the pythagorean theorem, will be inside the circle:
Finding a set of points inside the circle allows the circle 's area A to be estimated.
For example, by using integer coordinates for a big r. Since the area A of a circle is times the radius squared, can be approximated by using:
Cardinal is a clerical office in the Roman Catholic Church.
Cardinals are counselors of the pope.
Pope Innocent IV granted the use of the red hat to the cardinals in 1245.
The red had was a symbol of the cardinal 's readiness to shed their blood in the cause of the church.
The collective name for cardinals is college of cardinals.
The Pope is elected by the "college of cardinals".
When there is no pope, the cardinals directs the day-to-day affairs of the Church.
Claudio Monteverdi (b. Cremona, 1567; d. Venice November 29, 1643) was the most important composer of the early Baroque period.
He lived at a time of great change in musical style.
The first opera ever written was composed in 1597 by a composer named Jacopo Peri.
Just eleven years later Monteverdi wrote an opera Orfeo which was a really great work.
Other important operas of his are Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and Il ritorno d Ulisse in patria.
He wrote 9 books of madrigals.
He also wrote a lot of church music including the 1610 Vespers.
He was director of music at St Mark s, Venice, which was the most important musical job in Italy.
Monteverdi was the son of an apothecary and a doctor.
He was very talented as a young boy and was only 15 when he published his first pieces of music.
In the introduction to this music he says that his music teacher was Marc Antonio Ingegneri, the maestro di cappella of Cremona cathedral.
We can not find anything that shows that he sang in the cathedral choir.
He probably had private music lessons.
He learned composition, singing and how to play string instruments such as the viol and viola da braccio.
He got several compositions published in Venice.
By the time he got his first job he had already published two books of madrigals.
His first job was working at the court of the Duke of Mantua.
In Mantua there was a small band of excellent musicians.
The musical director was the famous Giaches de Wert.
Monteverdi got to know many famous poets, and there were famous singers at Ferrara which was not far away.
At first Monteverdi had a low-paid job.
He married the daughter of one of the court musicians in the string band.
Monteverdi soon became well-known.
He sent several of his compositions to be performed at Ferrara, and he went with the duke to when his army was fighting the Turks.
The young Monteverdi was developing a new musical style.
The old style was known as prima pratica (first practice) and the new style was called the seconda pratica (second practice).
The prima pratica continued to be used for church music.
In this style of writing the music was thought to be more important than the words.
This meant that the music could be very contrapuntal, with several things going on at once so that the words could not be clearly heard.
However, in the seconda pratica the words were more important than the music, i.e. it was important to be able to hear all the words clearly, and the music had to be simple enough for this to happen.
This was particularly important in opera and in madrigals.
There were a lot of arguments among musicians about these two styles of composition, and this is perhaps the reason why there was a gap of 11 years between Monteverdi s 3rd and his 4th book of madrigals.
His opera Orfeo (1608) was performed at least twice at court, and several times at Salzburg.
Monteverdi was becoming famous all over Europe.
Monteverdi went back to Cremona.
His wife died, leaving him with their three small children.
It was a terrible tragedy for Monteverdi, and he did not want to go back to Mantua, but the Duke wrote to him telling him he must come back to provide music for the wedding of Prince Francesco Gonzaga and Margharita of Savoy.
Monteverdi returned to Mantua, where he composed his opera Arianna.
The performance was a great success, and the audience were moved to tears by the music Arianna s lament.
This song is the only part of the opera that has not been lost.
Although Monteverdi s fame was increasing, there were a lot of arguments with his employer.
Eventually he found another job, this time as a church musician, in the biggest church in Venice.
Monteverdi had a difficult journey from Mantua to Venice.
The passengers were robbed by highwaymen on the way.
He arrived in Venice in October 1613.
The job of maestro (director of music) at San Marco (Saint Mark s church) in Venice was perhaps the most important job for a church musician in the whole of Europe.
However, the music was in a bad state because previous directors of music had not been very good.
Monteverdi started to reorganize the music there: he bought new music for the library and got some new musicians.
He had to compose music for many special feast days during the year.
He was doing a good job, and in 1616 his salary was increased to 400 ducats (about 44.28 ounces of gold, worth about $ 73,500 USD today).
The duke of Mantua was probably cross that he had lost such a good musician.
He still asked Monteverdi to write music for him.
Monteverdi probably had to obey, as he was still a Mantuan citizen (Italy did not become one country until more than two centuries later).
He wrote music for important events such as weddings and carnivals at Mantua.
By 1619 Monteverdi had published his seventh book of madrigals.
However, he then started to publish less music.
Perhaps it was because he was so busy, or perhaps because he no longer needed to look for fame.
He probably wrote a lot of church music which is now lost.
During the 1620s continued his work in Venice, although he may have tried to get other jobs.
His hobbies include alchemy.
He welcomed the composer Heinrich Sch tz who visited Venice for a second time.
After the Duke of Mantua died in 1626 Monteverdi wrote less music for Mantua.
He was supposed to receive an annual salary from them, but he often did not get it.
There was a war in Mantua, a lot of buildings were destroyed and the invading armies brought the plague.
Monteverdi became a priest in 1632.
It is not clear whether he did this because he really was religious or whether he thought it would help his career.
In 1637 public opera was started in Venice.
Monteverdi, who was now in his 70s, wrote operas for Venice.
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642) form a brilliant end to his career.
After the performance of this opera he made a six-month trip to Lombard and Mantua, where again he had to argue at the court about not being paid his pension.
After he returned to Venice he was ill for nine days and then died.
Colossus was the world 's first electronic, digital, programmable computer.
British codebreakers used Colossus to read secret German messages during World War II.
Colossus worked using vacuum tubes.
At Bletchley Park mathematician Max Newman had a problem.
It was how to build a machine which would help decoding encrypted messages.
Post Office engineers worked on the solution.
Colossus Mark 1 first worked in December 1943.
In February 1944 it was working at Bletchley Park.
Colossus Mark 2 was even better.
It first worked on 1 June 1944, just in time for the D-Day landings in Normandy.
Ten Colossus computers were in use by the end of the war.
The Colossus computers helped decipher teleprinter messages.
British codebreakers called the messages "Fish".
The messages had been encrypted by the German Lorenz machine.
They called the machine and its encryption "Tunny".
Colossus would read the encrypted message from a paper tape, and try many settings of the Lorenz machine.
Colossus looked at the setting and the tape.
It counted each time a letter was the same.
If it counted a lot, then it would write on an electric typewriter.
It kept trying other settings.
The Colossus was not meant to decrypt all of a message.
It just found close settings for the Lorenz machines.
The basic idea was that the frequencies of letters and numerals in German messages would give a start to translating the message itself.
In English, for example, the letter ` E ' is by far the most common letter.
Another idea is that German military messages all started with some preliminary information, such as, where the message was from, and who it was addressed to.
Of course, the machine disguised this by adding some meaningless symbols to the message, and sending the numbers in packets of five to disguise word length.
Even so, the signs of a message can be picked up.
The output from the Colossus was analyzed by staff who were fluent in the German language.
Until the 1970s Colossus computers were very secret.
After the war all the computers were broken into bits, so no one would find out about them.
The designs were destroyed.
No one knew the first people to make computers.
Then a working copy of a Colossus computer was made in 2007.
The Colossus computers were used in the cryptanalysis (code breaking) of high-level German communications.
It worked on messages which had been encrypted using the Lorenz SZ 40\/42 machine.
Part of what the fast electronic Colossus did was to work like the slow electromechanical Lorenz machine.
To encrypt a message with the Lorenz machine, the plaintext was mixed with groups of five key bits.
The keystream was made by twelve pinwheels.
The British called five of them ("chi") wheels, another five ("psi") wheels, and the remaining two the "motor wheels".
The wheels moved regularly as each letter was encrypted.
The wheels did not move regularly, they were controlled by the motor wheels.
Bill Tutte was a code breaker at Bletchley Park.
He found the keystream made by the Lorenz machine was not random.
This meant it was weak and could be broken, so messages could be read.
In order to read messages, there were two things that needed to be performed.
The first thing was wheel breaking, which was finding the pin patterns for all the wheels.
These patterns were set up once on the Lorenz machine and then used for a fixed period of time and for a number of different messages.
The second task was wheel setting, which could be tried once the pin patterns were known.
Each message encrypted using Lorenz was enciphered at a different start position for the wheels.
The process of wheel setting found the start position for a message.
Colossus was first used to help with wheel setting.
Later Colossus was found useful for wheel breaking too.
The mathematician Max Newman was in charge of the part of Bletchley Park for making machines to break Lorenz messages.
Before Colossus they made a machine called "Heath Robinson".
It was an opto-mechanical machine not electronic.
Heath Robinson was not a very good machine.
The electro-mechanical relays were slow.
The paper tapes did not work well.
The tapes would stretch when going at 2000 letters each second.
The machine had one tape for the enciphered message.
The second was for patterns made by the wheels of the Lorenz machine.
Sometimes they would not line up; then the counts were wrong.
Tommy Flowers worked for the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill.
He was called in to look into the design of the Heath Robinson.
He thought it was a bad machine.
Without being asked he designed an electronic machine.
It would store the letters from one of the tapes inside itself.
In February 1943 he show Max Newman this design.
The design had one to two thousand thermionic valves (vacuum tubes).
Not many people thought that many could work without breaking all the time.
Instead more Robinsons were ordered from Dollis Hill.
Flowers kept with the idea and got support from the person in charge of the Research Station.
Tommy Flowers spent eleven months from early February to December 1943 designing and building Colossus.
He did it at the Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill, in northwest London.
They tested it in December 1943.
Then they took Colossus apart and moved it to Bletchley Park.
It got there on 18 January 1944.
Harry Fensom and Don Horwood put it back together.
Colossus read its first message on 5 February.
After the first Colossus (Mark 1) were nine Mark 2 machines.
The first Mark 2 was started in June 1944.
The Mark 1 machine was changed into a Mark 2.
At the end of the war one more Colossus was almost done.
Mark 2 was designed while Mark 1 was being made.
Allen Coombs became in charge of making Colossus Mark 2 when Tommy Flowers went on to do other things.
Colossus Mark 1 had 1,500 electronic valves (tubes).
Colossus Mark 2 had 2,400 valves.
Mark 2 was 5x faster than the Mark 1.
It was much easier to start than the Mark 1.
Bletchley Park could decode many more messages.
Later stored-program computers like the Manchester Mark 1 of 1949 used about 4,200 valves; ENIAC (1946) used 17,468 valves.
Colossus did not have the second tape of the Heath Robinson design.
Colossus made the wheel patterns electronically.
Reading at 5,000 letters\/second, the paper tape moved at 40 f or 27.3 m. The work was synchronized by a clock signal made by the sprocket holes of the punched tape.
The speed of working was limited by the tape reader.
Tommy Flowers tested the tape reader up to 9,700 letters\/second (53 m) before the tape was destroyed.
He selected 5,000 letters\/second as the best speed for regular work.
Sometimes, two or more Colossus computers tried different wheel patterns at once.
This is now called parallel computing.
Decoding went much faster.
Colossus had the first ever use of shift registers and systolic arrays.
These allowed five tests at once.
Each test was doing up to 100 Boolean calculations, on each of the five channels on the punched tape.
Normally only one or two channels were looked at in any run.
At first Colossus was only used to find the starting wheel places used for a message (called wheel setting).
The Mark 2 has ways to help find pin patterns (wheel breaking).
Both models were programmable using switches and plugs in a way the Robinsons had not been.
Colossus used electronics that were new back then.
It used vacuum tubes (also called thermionic valves), thyratrons and photomultipliers.
It read a paper tape with light.
It then used a programmable logical function on every letter.
It counted how often this function was "true".
Machines with many valves were known to break a lot.
They knew that valves break most when turning on.
So the Colossus machines were never turned off unless there was a break.
Colossus was the first of the electronic digital machines that could have a program.
Today it is seems the program can only change a little:
It was not a general Turing-complete computer, even though Alan Turing was at Bletchley Park.
Back then there was no such concept as "Turing-complete", and most of the other early modern computing machines were not Turing-complete (for example: the Atanasoff Berry Computer, the Harvard Mark I electro-mechanical relay machine, the Bell Labs relay machines by George Stibitz and others, or the first designs of Konrad Zuse).
The idea of a computer as a general purpose machine that is, as more than a calculator only for the solution of one hard problem did not become common for many years.
What the Colossus computers were used for was very secret.
The Colossus itself was highly secret even for many years after the War.
This is why Colossus could not be included in the history of computing hardware for a long time.
Nobody knew how important that Flowers and the other people who helped make it were.
Not many people knew about this secret computer, so it had little direct effect on the new design of later computers; EDVAC was the early design which had the most effect on later computer design.
Once Colossus was made, some people now knew that high-speed electronic (no moving parts like electrical relays) digital computing devices could be made and they did not break too much.
Just this knowledge was enough to have a big effect on the designs of early computers in Britain and probably in the US.
People who knew about Colossus were important in the early computer field in Britain.
In 1972, Herman Goldstine wrote that:
In writing that, Goldstine did not know of Colossus.
He did not know what it left to projects of people who knew about it.
People such as Alan Turing (with the Pilot ACE and ACE), and Max Newman and I. J. Good (with the Manchester Mark 1 and other early Manchester computers).
Brian Randell later wrote that:
Colossus plans and machinary were secret from the when they were made.
They stayed so after the War, when Winston Churchill ordered the destruction of most of the Colossus machines into "parts no bigger than a man 's hand"; Tommy Flowers himself burned the designs in a fireplace at Dollis Hill.
Some parts, changed to look innocent, were taken to Newman 's Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester University.
The Colossus Mark 1 was taken apart and the parts were sent back to the Post Office.
Two Colossus computers, along with two copied Tunny machines, were kept.
They were moved to GCHQ 's new head office at Eastcote in April 1946.
They moved again with GCHQ to Cheltenham between 1952 and 1954.
One of the computers, known as Colossus Blue, was taken apart in 1959; the other in 1960.
In their later years, the computers were used for training.
Before that, there had been attempts to change them (sometimes well) for other purposes.
Jack Good was the first to use it after the war, getting NSA to use Colossus to do something for which they were planning to build a special purpose machine.
Colossus was also used to perform letter counts on one-time pad tape to test for non-randomness.
At this time the Colossus was still secret, long after any of its technical details were of any importance.
This was due to the UK 's intelligence agencies use of Enigma-like machines which they got other governments to purchase.
The agencies then broke the codes using different ways.
Had the knowledge of the codebreaking machines been widely known, no one would have accepted these machines; rather, they would have developed their own methods for encryption, methods that the UK services might not have been able to break.
The need for such secrets slowly went away as communications moved to digital transmission and all-digital encryption systems became common in the 1960s.
Colonel Winterbotham 's book The Ultra Secret came out in 1975.
This broke the secrecy around the Colossus.
After that, details about the computer began to become public in the late 1970s.
A 500-page technical report on the Tunny cipher and its code breaking entitled General Report on Tunny was given by GCHQ to the national Public Record Office in October 2000; the complete technical report is online.
Building of a working copy of a Colossus Mark 2 was done by a team led by Tony Sale.
The plans and machines had been destroyed, but a surprising amount of other material was not destoyed.
It was mostly in engineers ' notebooks, much of it in the U.S..
The optical tape reader might have been the biggest problem, but Dr. Arnold Lynch, its designer, was able to redesign it from his own first writings.
The rebuilt Colossus is on show at The National Museum of Computing, in H Block Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.
This is where the Colossus No. 9 was used in the war.
In November 2007, to mark both the end of the work and the start of fundraising (asking for money) they ran a competition.
The money would help The National Museum of Computing with a Cipher Competition where the rebuilt Colossus competed with radio amateurs all around the world.
The first to hear and decode three messages enciphered would win.
They would be enciphered using the Lorenz SZ42 and transmitted from the radio station in the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum computer museum in Germany.
The competition was easily won by radio amateur Joachim Sch th.
Sch th had gotten ready for the event.
He made his own signal processing and code-breaking program using Ada.
The Colossus team lost because they wanted to use World War II radios,.
They were a day late because of bad radio conditions.
The winner 's 1.4 GHz laptop, running his own program, took less than a minute to find the settings for all 12 wheels.
The German codebreaker said: "My laptop worked on ciphertext at a speed of 1.2 million letters per second 240x faster than Colossus.
If you compare the two computers, you could say Colossus had a speed of 5.8 MHz.
That is very fast for a computer built in 1944."
Comic books are books with comics, with pictures that make a story.
They have small pictures and words to tell a story.
Comics were started in the 1900s.
Some famous examples are Spider-Man and Batman.
Some comic companies are Marvel Comics and DC Comics.
Many comic books are about superheroes, but many others are about other things.
Very often, characters in books, video games, movies and television appear in comics, and sometimes comic book characters are used in movies, TV shows or video games.
There are three different kinds of comic books: single issues that are usually 32 pages long are called comic books.
These are printed like a magazine, with the pages folded and stapled together.
A bigger book that has several comics inside of it is called a trade paperback.
These have spines like a book and are glued together.
A bigger comic book that is bound like a trade paperback but is all new, instead of collecting older comics, is called a graphic novel.
In English speaking countries, you read the speech bubbles left to right.
Then you read the row below it left to right.
This is different from Japanese comics, called manga.
A cell nucleus (plural: cell nuclei) is the part of the cell which contains the genetic code, the DNA.
The nucleus is small and round, and it works as the cell 's control center.
It contains chromosomes which house the DNA.
The human body contains billions of cells, most of which have a nucleus.
All eukaryote organisms have nuclei in their cells, even the many eukaryotes that are single-celled.
Bacteria and Archaea, which are prokaryotes, are single-celled organisms of quite a different type and do not have nuclei.
Cell nuclei were first found by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in the 17th century.
Inside the nucleus there are no membrane-bound sub-compartments.
Its contents are not uniform, and a number of sub-nuclear bodies exist, made up of unique proteins, RNA molecules, and particular parts of the chromosomes.
The best-known of these is the nucleolus, which is mainly involved in the assembly of ribosomes.
After being produced in the nucleolus, ribosomes are exported to the cytoplasm where they translate mRNA into proteins.
When a cell is dividing or preparing to divide, the chromosomes become visible with a light microscope.
At other times when the chromosomes are not visible, the nucleolus will be visible.
Large molecules can not get through the double-layer nuclear membrane: it is impermeable to them.
However, nuclear pores exist.
They control the movement of molecules across the membrane.
The pores cross both nuclear membranes, providing a channel.
The larger molecules are actively transported by carrier proteins, and there is free movement of small molecules and ions.
Movement of large molecules such as proteins and RNA through the pores is required for both gene expression and the maintenance of chromosomes.
Within the nucleus is a structure called a nucleolus.
It is made at a nucleolus organizer region (NOR), which is a chromosomal region around which the nucleolus forms.
Inside the nucleolus ribosomes are made.
These are exported through the nuclear pore complexes to the cytoplasm, where they are work to build proteins and sometimes become attached to the endoplasmic reticulum if they are making membrane proteins.
Christmas (which means "Feast day of Christ") is a Christian holiday that refers to the birth of Jesus (whom Christians believe is the Son of God), and a cultural holiday for non-Christians.
The day known as Christmas Day is celebrated on the 25th day of December.
It is one of the most important days of the year for Christians, along with Easter when the death and resurrection of Jesus are celebrated.
The season of preparing for Christmas is called Advent and begins on a Sunday about four weeks before Christmas.
The Christmas Season (called Christmastide) ends on January 6 or the Twelfth Day of Christmas, in which Epiphany is remembered.
Christmas is celebrated all over the world, as a religious holiday or as a time of celebration by Christians and non-Christians alike.
The traditions are different from country to country, but they nearly always include a feast, giving gifts or cards, and enjoying church or public festivities such as singing Christmas carols and songs.
Santa Claus is a tradition in many countries of the world.
Christmastime, as it is often called, is in the winter of the Northern Hemisphere, at a time when there were already ancient festivals.
Some of the traditions that are used for Christmas are older than Christmas, or come from other non-Christian traditions such as Yule.
Modern traditions of Christmas often focus on the giving of gifts.
The season for retail stores to sell gifts, food, greeting cards, Christmas trees, and decorations begins the day about a month before Christmas Day.
Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus.
The story of how this happened is told in part of the Bible known as the Gospels.
There are four Gospels telling the life of Jesus.
The Gospel of Luke tells the most about his birth, and the Gospel of Matthew tells another part of the story.
The Gospel of John says that Jesus came from God to bring his "Word" or message to all people.
The Gospels say that many years before Jesus ' birth, prophets had told a promise to the Jewish people that God would send them a Messiah, or holy teacher.
Christians believe that the promised Messiah was Jesus.
His mother was a young woman called Mary, who was engaged, but not yet married to a carpenter called Joseph.
Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant and was upset.
He was wondering what he should do, when an angel came from God to tell him that the baby was the Holy One.
The angel said that he must name the baby.
This was a sign that he would take care of it like his own child.
At this time, the Middle East was ruled by the Romans.
An order came that all the people had to travel back to their home town, to put their names on the taxation lists.
Joseph took his new wife to Bethlehem.
There was nowhere for them to stay, except a stable where the animals slept.
This is where the baby was born.
Joseph called him Jesus, as the angel had said.
The baby Jesus had two lots of visitors.
On the night he was born, angels told some shepherds in the fields that they would find a newborn king lying in an animals ' feed bin (or manger).
Jesus ' other visitors were some wise men who saw a new star in the sky and followed it, until they found the house where the family was now living and gave the young child expensive gifts of gold, incense and a precious herb called myrrh.
(The wise men are often traditionally called the Three Kings, because there were three very expensive presents but the Bible does not say how many wise men there were.)
All these parts of the Christmas story are remembered and celebrated in different ways at Christmas: in pictures, songs, plays, stories and in models that are called "cribs", "creches" or "presepe".
Most Christian countries of the world use a calendar called the Gregorian Calendar, but some churches use a calendar called the Julian Calendar.
Most Christians, such as those of the Catholic and Protestant Churches, celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25.
The Eastern Orthodox Church still uses the Julian Calendar in some regions such as Russia.
In such regions, Christmas is celebrated on December 25 in the Julian Calendar, but because of the difference between the calendars it is the 7th of January in the modern Gregorian Calendar.
Some Christians, like Jehovah 's Witnesses, do not celebrate Christmas because there is no instruction from Jesus in the Bible which tells Christians to celebrate his birth.
Mormons celebrate Christmas on December 25 but they believe that Christ 's actual birth took place on April 6.
Some believe that Jesus was probably not born on December 25.
Some historians believe this date was used by the Catholic Church to replace the pagan rites that took place at that time of the year.
The Season of Advent, which begins on Sunday about four weeks before Christmas Day, is celebrated by the Catholic and Anglican Churches, as well as others.
It is a time for people to prepare themselves for two different things: for the coming of the baby Jesus and Christmas, and for the second coming of Jesus, when he shall rule over all the Earth in peace.
Not all Christian people remember Advent.
Some people use it as a time of fasting, study, meditation and prayer.
Special Advent Calendars are made for children, with pictures or treats for each day of Advent.
Generally, Advent is a time when many people are very busy in preparation for Christmas Day, cleaning and decorating, buying food and presents, writing cards and letters, and cooking the Christmas feast.
Before the 4th century AD, Christians could only worship and celebrate in secret.
The feast of Christmas probably began while Constantine was the Emperor of Rome, because it was he who made Christianity a legal religion and built some of Rome 's oldest churches.
Some old stone coffins or sarcophagi from this time are carved with pictures of Mary and baby Jesus and the Wise Men.
Through the Middle Ages Christmas was celebrated with feasting, singing and plays.
The plays were held in churches, and also in castles and in market places, where a big hay wagon was sometimes used as a stage.
Because Advent was a time of prayer and preparation, most parties were held after Christmas, rather than before it.
The main pre-Christmas celebration was the Feast of St. Nicholas on December 6.
In some countries, particularly the Netherlands, the tradition grew for children to receive presents on this day, rather than Christmas Day.
The name of Saint Nicholas is now remembered in many countries as Santa Claus.
Another festivity that takes place is the Feast of Saint Lucy (St. Lucia Day) on December 13th which is particularly celebrated in Scandinavia, where girls take part in candlelit processions, and the daughters of the house must rise early to bring coffee or chocolate to the family.
For many centuries, the celebration of Christmas often began with a church service or mass, which lasted from late at night to after midnight on Christmas morning.
Christmas Day was a time of feasting.
On the following day, the Feast of Saint Stephen people from rich households would carry boxes of food out to the street for the poor and hungry.
Many people would go back to work but employers would give gifts of money to their workers.
The Holy Days continued with the feast of Saint John and Holy Innocents ' Day.
The feasting and parties ended on the Feast of the Epiphany, the day of the Three Wise Men, often called the "Three Kings".
The season is nowadays remembered by the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas".
William Shakespeare wrote a play to be performed as part of the celebration, called "Twelfth Night".
For many, Christmas has become a time when having parties, sending messages to family and friends and giving presents has become more important than the celebration of Jesus ' birth.
Manufacturers and stores have responded to the feasting and present-giving with lots of advertising, decorations and displays.
In the US, the Christmas displays are put up right after Thanksgiving, late in November.
In some countries such as Australia, stores put up decorations at the beginning of November.
Given that Jesus himself called people making money in the Jewish Temple ` robbers ' (Matthew 21:13) many Christians are uneasy about profit instead of prophets at Christmas.
Town councils celebrate by decorating streets and squares, and providing Christmas entertainment for shoppers.
In countries of the Southern Hemisphere, where Christmas falls in Summer, there is a tradition of open-air Carol Services, often organised by the town council, which are attended by thousands of people.
Many Christians celebrate Christmas by attending church, and with prayers and singing.
And each year there are Bible readings from the Gospels that tell the story of the birth of Jesus.
Christmas traditions are of several types.
There are traditions of the church, traditions which are public celebrations and traditions that are kept by families.
These traditions are different in different times, places, cultures and even families.
The celebration of Christmas is a very important time for churches.
Almost every church has special services or celebrations.
Here are some of the ways that churches celebrate Christmas.
It is the custom in many churches to set up a Crib (or Creche) scene of the Nativity or birth of Jesus.
The first scene of this type was set up by St. Francis of Assisi in the 13th century.
They have been very popular in Italy ever since then, and the custom has spread to other countries.
Nativity scenes can be large with life-sized statues, or they can be tiny enough to fit in a matchbox.
They are made of many different things including carved and painted wood, brightly colored ceramics (pottery), painted paper glued to boards, and mixtures of material with clay, wood, cloth, straw and metal used for different parts.
The Advent wreath is a circle of leaves, usually pine boughs, ivy and holly, with 4 (or sometimes 5) candles in it which is hung up in a church.
The candles are lit on each Sunday in Advent, and the central candle is lit on Christmas morning.
Churches are often decked with green branches and leaves, and many churches also have a Christmas tree.
A popular tradition in many churches is the Carol Service which is often lit only by candles.
The carol service generally has lots of singing and Bible readings.
There is a tradition in England which began in the Temple Church in London and has now spread to many other places for a service of Nine Lessons and Carols.
The lessons are Bible readings.
Some carols are sung by a choir and others by the choir and people (the congregation).
Every year one of these services is recorded in a large English Church, often King 's College Chapel, Cambridge, and is broadcast on radio and television to be enjoyed by people who love good music and carol singing, but particularly for people who can not go to a Christmas service.
Many cities and towns celebrate Christmas by putting up decorations.
These may be banners and bunting which are strung from buildings or lampposts.
They may be Christmas lights which can also decorate buildings and street trees.
Many large cities put up a huge Christmas tree in a public place, such as those in Trafalgar Square in London, Times Square in New York and Martin Place in Sydney.
This is often combined with an appeal to the people of the city to give money or gifts to help the poor and needy.
In many cities, the usual shopping hours are made longer before Christmas so that workers have more time to buy Christmas food and presents.
Shop windows are often decorated with Christmas scenes, with large department stores often having animated scenes to entertain children.
Shopping malls and big stores often have a Santa Claus, who sits on a throne, while children tell him what they want for Christmas, and have their photos taken.
Many towns hold Christmas parades, street entertainment and concerts.
Some towns have a tradition of carols with a choir and entertainers in the town hall, while in Australia and New Zealand, these concerts of Christmas entertainment and carols are usually held outdoors, in parks or even on beaches, with families bringing picnics.
The arrival of Santa Claus at the end of the evening is accompanied by a firework display.
A traditional part of Christmas is the theater entertainment.
This includes the performance of classical music such as Handel 's Messiah as well as orchestral concerts and band recitals.
Pantomimes are often played at Christmas and favorites include "Peter Pan and Wendy" and "Cinderella".
Many children 's movies are released during the Christmas season.
Because many people feel very lonely, hungry and sad at Christmas, many cities, churches, charities and service organizations try to help the poor and lonely by providing Christmas food and gifts for poor families, and Christmas parties for people who are hungry or who are lonely and without any friends or family.
Family celebrations are often very different from each other, depending on where a family comes from, and the customs that have grown in particular families.
Most families think of Christmas as a time to get together with other members of the family.
People often travel from far away to be with other family members at Christmas.
Those people who can not travel often make long-distance phone calls on Christmas Day.
Many people also see Christmas as a time to reach out to others that they know might be lonely, and invite them to dinner on Christmas Day.
Christmas is seen as a time for people of all ages to have fun together, for cousins to get to know each other, for grandparents to see their grandchildren and for the family to admire the babies that have been born during the year.
Big family parties are usually a time of joy, but some families often talk about their disagreements and have big fights at Christmas time.
Family traditions are very different.
Some families might all go off to church together, to a Carol Service, a Midnight Mass, or a Christmas Morning service.
Some families are pulled out of bed very early by children who want to open their presents.
In other families, presents are given on St. Nicholas Day, on Christmas Eve or not until after church on Christmas morning.
The Christmas feast might start on Christmas Eve, with a special breakfast on Christmas morning, or at midday on Christmas Day.
Some families have a tradition of carol singing, and might go around the streets, to hospitals and other such places singing with members of their church.
Other families like to watch certain television programs together, which might include carol services and the Queen 's Message.
Some families use Christmas as a time to play music and sing together, or to read a favorite book such as "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens.
In countries in the Southern Hemisphere, a visit to the beach or a swim in a pool is often part of the Christmas Day tradition.
Christmas Dinner, usually eaten in the middle of the day, is an important part of the family celebration.
The food differs from country to country and also from family to family.
In the Northern Hemisphere, roasted meat and vegetables is generally the main course of the meal.
Often several types of meat are served, which may include turkey, ham, roast beef or lamb.
There are often several courses, with special treats that are usually only eaten at Christmas.
In English-speaking countries, the traditional dessert is Christmas plum pudding.
Nowadays these are often bought from bakers, but many people make their own to a family recipe.
The tradition came from the Middle Ages when the pudding was used to preserve some of the fruit from the Autumn until the mid-winter.
A traditional pudding is baked six weeks before Christmas and is left tied up in a cloth, in a cool place.
Stirring the pudding is sometimes a family tradition, with everyone making a wish as they stir.
Traditionally a silver coin would be stirred into the pudding, to bring luck to the person who found it.
Nowadays most coins can not be used because they taste horrible and may be poisonous.
Some families use old coins or silver charms.
On Christmas Day the pudding must be boiled in a pot for several hours.
When it is served, the cloth is cut off, brandy is poured onto the pudding, and is set on fire before it is carried to the table.
Many families have a Christmas Cake or a special bread instead of a pudding (or as well as a pudding).
These are very different depending on the country, but often have Marzipan which is made from almonds and is traditional in many countries at Christmas.
In France Buche de Noel or gingerbread men and women are decorated and hung on the Christmas tree.
In Scotland a pastry biscuit called shortbread is made and has become a popular tradition in many countries.
A German tradition is pfeffernuss, spiced cookies rolled in powdered sugar.
Other Christmas food includes raisins, sultanas, ginger, Turkish delight, almonds, chocolates, caramel toffee, candy canes and oranges.
Many families also prepare mulled wine which is warmed with cinnamon and nutmeg or egg nogs, a sweet drink made of milk, sugar, eggs, nutmeg and sometimes alcohol.
In the Southern Hemisphere, the traditional roast dinner is often replaced with cold cuts of meat, and served with salads.
The first course might be prawn cocktail or a cold soup like borsch.
The plum pudding might be served with ice cream.
White wine and beer are both served cold (beer is kept in a refrigerator).
Christmas dinner may be served on the veranda, or sometimes as a picnic.
In most homes when Christmas is celebrated, people set up a Christmas tree in the house.
This old Yuletide custom began in Germany as the "Tannenbaum" (German for Fir Tree).
These are traditionally evergreens, the best type being the Fir Tree which does not shed its needles or lose its fragrance.
The tree may be a cut tree that is bought from a plantation or taken from the forest.
Artificial trees are sometimes preferred to real trees.
The Christmas tree is decorated with lights, shiny colored balls, sparkly tinsel and other ornaments.
A wreath of leaves or pine is often put on the front door of a house as a sign of welcome.
Other plants that have special significance at Christmas are holly which is used as decoration and mistletoe which is hung in the center of a room.
The tradition is that people who meet under the mistletoe must kiss.
Many people decorate their homes at Christmas time.
These decorations and the Christmas tree are generally inside, but may be put where they can also be seen through a window by people passing by.
In the mid 20th century there grew up a custom for decorating the outside of houses as well.
These decorations may be just a few lights around the porch, or hundreds of lights and colourful Christmas figures decorating the whole house and garden.
Some neighborhoods hold competitions for the best-decorated house, and driving around the streets to look at them has become another family tradition.
The giving of gifts at Christmas comes from several different ideas.
One is that God gave his son, Jesus, to the world at Christmas.
There is also the story of the Wise Men who came to the baby Jesus with three gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
For many centuries it has been the custom for people to give small gifts at Christmas, and also to give generously to the poor and needy to help them through the winter.
Another tradition has become linked to this one, and the result is the tradition of Santa Claus, or Father Christmas as he is sometimes called, and who is nowadays thought by many children to be the bringer of presents and happiness.
In the 4th century, in a Greek village that is now part of Turkey, there was a good man who would secretly given presents to the poor to help them.
He became a bishop and is called Saint Nicholas.
Over the centuries, he became a very popular saint and lots of churches were named after him.
He was very popular in places where there were lots of sailors.
One of those places was the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands and many other European countries, presents are given on the feast of Saint Nicholas, December 6th.
Traditionally, the presents are not big, and are sometimes hidden, or have a funny joke or poem that must be read.
In many towns of Europe a man dressed in bishop 's robes comes on a horse or in a boat, acting as St. Nicholas.
His name was often shortened to Sante Claus, or Santa Claus in English.
In English speaking countries, where presents are usually given on Christmas Day, not December 6th, Santa Claus, (or Father Christmas) is usually thought of as coming on Christmas Night, when his magic sleigh is pulled across the sky by reindeer, and he comes into houses through the chimney.
While in Europe, children put out their shoes for St. Nicholas, the English tradition is to hang up stockings (or long socks) in front of the fireplace.
Santa Claus would traditionally fill the socks or shoes with nuts, raisins, chocolates and an orange.
Nowadays children usually get much more expensive presents, and hang up pillow cases or have the presents in a big pile under the Christmas tree.
Another Christmas tradition is the sending of cards to friends and relatives.
These contain warm greetings and may also have a letter telling all the things that have happened to the person or family during the year.
Covalent bonds are chemical bonds between two non-metal atoms.
An example is water, where hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) bond together to make (H2O).
As they are both non-metals which need to gain electrons they have to share, so their outer shells cross over in order to have a full outer shell.
A full outer shell has eight electrons.
The electrons in this outer shell are called valence electrons.
The number of valence electrons is decided by the size of the atom.
Electrons orbit an atomic nucleus in the same kind of way that planets orbit stars.
There are layers of paths around an atomic nucleus.
The first layer always contains only two electrons, while the layers after that usually contain up to eight.
For example, if an atom contained eight total electrons, the first two would orbit very close to the nucleus, the next 6 would orbit a little farther away.
Every atom wants a "full" outer shell.
That is to say, it wants the number of electrons in the outer-most layer to be as high as they can be.
Since most atoms ' outer shells can support up to eight electrons, this is the number of electrons most atoms want in their outer shell.
In this example, the atom had eight total electrons, and six in the outer shell.
Since there are fewer than eight electrons in the outer shell, the atom will want to "fill" the places for two electrons with electrons borrowed from another atom.
When an atom "borrows" electrons with another atom, a covalent bond is formed.
With water the oxygen atom shares one electron with each hydrogen atom and the hydrogens also share one: this means that the hydrogen atoms have two each and the oxygen atom has eight.
Types of Covalent bond Covalent bonds can be split into two groups.
Simple and Giant.
Although they are both similar, there are some quite large distinguishing factors.
For example, Giant Covalent bonds have relatively high melting and boiling points, whereas Simple Covalent bonds have a relatively low melting and boiling point.
This is because of the inter-molecular forces of attraction.
With giant Covalent bonds, the bonds between layers are very strong, Diamond is an example of Giant Covalent bond of carbon.
However, with a simple Covalent bond, the bonds between the atoms have a strong inter-molecular bond, but there are no bonds between the molecules, which is why it has a relatively low melting and boiling point.
Covalent bonds are weaker than ionic bonds, and have a lower melting point.
They are also thought to be poor conductors of electricity and heat.
Colorado Springs is a city in Colorado, United States.
With 369,815 people, it is the second largest city in Colorado and the 49th largest in the United States.
It is also the county seat of El Paso County.
It is the headquarters of Focus on the Family, which is a Christian group, and the United States Air Force Academy.
Tourist attractions like Pikes Peak, Garden of the Gods the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Seven Falls, Manitou Springs, the Broadmoor Hotel and the Air Force Academy are also in the city and its surrounding area.
Professional certification, trade certification, or professional designation, often called simply certification or qualification, is a certification a person gets to assure that he\/she is qualified to perform a job or task.
Certifications are very common in aviation, construction, technology and other industrial sectors, as well as health care and finance.
Civilization (or civilisation) comes from the Latin word civis meaning someone who lives in a town.
When people are civilised, they live in large well-organized groups like towns, not in small tribes or isolated family groups.
However, a civilization is something more than a town.
It is an advanced stage of organization.
That means it has laws, culture, a regular way of getting food and protecting the people.
Most civilizations have agriculture, and a system of government like monarchs or elections.
They speak a common language, and usually have a religion of some kind.
They teach their young the knowledge they need.
All civilizations since the Sumerians and the Egyptians have some kind of writing.
Writing lets people store and build up knowledge.
The Roman Empire is an example of a large civilization.
It was governed from Rome.
This empire once stretched from the Scottish borders to North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.
They had their own language, Latin.
Latin became the preferred method of communication among educated people until long after their civilization had vanished.
Today lawyers and politicians, doctors and scientists, scholars and others still use Latin in the course of their everyday work, even though the Roman civilization died out more than 1,500 years ago.
It is said that William Shakespeare excelled at Latin.
Latin is still taught in some schools.
We still admire and copy Roman architecture, use Roman numerals to count certain things, use the names of Roman gods to mark the days and months of our calendars, name the constellations in the sky by the same names that the Romans used and we model our Western political constitutions and structures on Roman models (Senate, Governor, election, tribunal, justice, vote, census, even the word Constitution, are all Latin words, their meaning unchanged in thousands of years).
The Roman civilization lasted almost 1000 years, but the Ancient Egyptian civilization was older and lasted longer.
The Romans and Egyptians fought each other in the Battle of Actium.
Rome won, and Egypt became part of the Roman Empire.
Achille-Claude Debussy (born St Germain-en-Laye, 22 August 1862; died Paris, 25 March, 1918) was a French composer.
He was one of the most important composers of the early 20th century.
Most of his compositions are for orchestra or for piano.
He also wrote some songs, chamber music and one opera.
He made his music very different from the Romantic style that other composers were using at the time.
He is often called an Impressionistic composer because he was influenced by the group of painters called Impressionists.
They were not so much interested in making their paintings look exactly like the real world, but preferred to paint things such as the effect of the sunlight shining on water.
Debussy often did this in his music, which creates a special atmosphere.
Claude Debussy did not have an easy childhood.
His father was a traveling salesman and his mother worked as a seamstress.
He learned the piano when he was young and was inducted into the Paris Conservatoire at age 11.
For a time it seemed that he would become a concert pianist, but he did not do well enough in his examination.
After winning an important prize, the Prix de Rome, he went to Rome for two years but he did not enjoy it.
He visited Bayreuth in 1888 and 1889 to hear Wagner s operas but he did not like them.
He preferred sounds like that of the Javanese gamelan which he heard in Paris at the World Exhibition.
In 1899 he married a young woman named Rosalie Texier.
He got a job as music critic of a journal called La revue blanche.
He wrote his opera P lleas et M lisande which was performed at the Op ra-Comique.
It was extremely successful and was performed 100 times there during the next ten years.
He wrote exciting music for orchestra: F tes galantes and a work called La Mer (The Sea) which he worked at while staying in Brighton on the south coast of England.
It is one of the most exciting pieces of music about the sea.
Debussy was now starting to become very famous.
His personal life changed.
He left his wife because he had fallen in love with Emma Bardac who was an amateur singer for whom Gabriel Faur had written a song cycle La Bonne Chanson.
Her husband was a banker.
She bought an apartment and Debussy lived with her there for the rest of his life.
They had a daughter called Chou-Chou, born in 1905.
They married in 1908.
Debussy s next orchestral work was called Images.
He began composing a set of preludes for piano.
Other works followed: Khamma, Le martyre de St S bastian and the ballet Jeux, which was produced in 1913 by Dyagilev s company.
People soon forgot about this work because only two weeks later the same ballet company produced Stravinsky s Rite of Spring which caused a riot.
By this time Debussy was ill with colorectal cancer.
His visit to London in 1914 was his last trip to another country.
He wrote more piano works: a set of tudes and a piano duet called En blanc et noir (In white and black).
He planned to write six sonatas, each for a different group of instruments, but he only wrote three of them: one for cello and piano, one for flute, viola and harp and one for violin and piano.
The Sonata for violin and piano (1917) was the last work he played in public (he played the piano part).
He died of colorectal cancer in 1918.
Saint-Sa ns, for example, did not understand the way that the musical ideas flowed gently into one another.
He was always an enemy of Debussy.
There is a lot of variety in Debussy s piano music.
Some of it is very difficult to play, e.g. the tudes and pieces such as L isle joyeuse (The happy island).
Other collections are much simpler, e.g. Suite bergamasque which includes the very popular piece called Clair de lune (Moonlight).
He wrote two books of preludes.
Each of the pieces has a title, but the titles are printed at the end of each piece, as if he did not want the listener to know what it was about until afterwards.
Debussy wrote wonderfully for the voice, making the music just right for the rhythm of the French language.
This can be heard in his songs and his opera.
Using melodies and harmonies which are often quite simple he creates a special kind of dream-world which can be very powerful.
He often uses the whole tone scale and the pentatonic scale which give the music a hazy feeling because it does not seem to be clearly in one particular key.
He liked to use unusual chords just for their own sake, not in order to make them lead to a particular key.
He also used the old scales known as the church modes.
Debussy s music had a great influence on many composers in the 20th century.
Cage, Messiaen, Boulez and Stockhausen all learned from listening to his music.
A chemical reaction happens when one or more chemicals are changed into one or more other chemicals.
Examples:
Some reactions are very fast, and others are very slow.
Some happen at different speeds, depending on temperature or other things.
For example, wood does not react with air when it is cold, but if it is made hot enough, it will start to burn.
Other reactions such as Nuclear Reactions differ in the way that Nuclear Reaction does not need a catalyst.
They also can not be stopped, sped up or slowed down.
Some reactions give out energy.
These are called exothermic.
In other reactions, energy is taken in.
These are called endothermic.
In a synthesis reaction, two or more simple substances combine to form a more complex substance.
"Two or more reactants giving one product" is another way to identify a synthesis reaction.
One example of a synthesis reaction is the combination of iron and sulfur to form iron (II) sulfide:
Another example is simple hydrogen gas combined with simple oxygen gas to produce a more complex substance, such as water.
A decomposition reaction is when a more complex substance breaks down into its more simple parts.
It is thus the opposite of a synthesis reaction, and can be written as:
In a double replacement reaction, the anions and cations of two compounds switch places and form two entirely different compounds.
These reactions are in the general form:
For example, when barium chloride (BaCl2) and magnesium sulfate (MgSO4) react, the SO42 anion switches places with the 2Cl anion, giving the compounds BaSO4 and MgCl2.
Here, A and B react to C and D in a chemical reaction.
This is an example of a combustion reaction.
The Capetian Dynasty includes any of the direct descendants of Hugh Capet of France.
King Juan Carlos I of Spain and the grand duke of Luxembourg are members of this family, both through the Bourbon branch of the dynasty.
The direct Capetians ruled France from the years 987-1328.
After that the junior House of Valois ruled France until 1589, and the House of Bourbon ruled until the revolution of 1792.
A cube is a block with all right angles and whose height, width and depth are all the same.
A cube is one of the simplest mathematical shapes in space.
Something that is shaped like a cube is sometimes referred to as cubic.
The basic difference between a cube and a square is, a cube is a 3D figure (having 3 dimensions) i.e. length, breadth and height while a square has only 2 dimensions i.e. length and breadth.
The 2-dimensional (2D) shape (like a circle, square, triangle, etc.) that a cube is made of is squares.
The sides (faces) of a cube are squares.
The edges are straight lines.
The corners (vertices) are at right angles.
A cube has 8 corners, 12 edges and 6 sides.
example dice having six number denotes 6 faces.
A tesseract carries this idea into the fourth dimension (4D) and is made of 8 cubes.
Cambridgeshire is a county in England.
The counties around Cambridgeshire are Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west.
The county town is Cambridge.
In Euclidean space, a region is a convex set if the following is true.
For any two points inside the region, a straight line segment can be drawn.
If every point on that segment is inside the region, then the region is convex.
The point is that a convex curve forms the boundary of a convex set.
So, any shape which is concave, or has a hollow, can not be a convex set.
Cairo (, usually transliterated as Al-Q hirah) is a city in Egypt.
The city name can be translated as the one who won.
Cairo is sometimes called "Mother of the World" (Um al Dunya).
The city is the capital and largest city in Egypt.
Cairo has 7,947,121 people.
About 17,290,000 people live in its urban area.
This makes it the biggest city of the Arab World.
It also is the city with the biggest urban area in Africa
The city is on the Nile River.
In 969, the Fatimids entered Egypt and they made Cairo the capital of their caliphate.
The Al Azhar mosque and university was made in 972.
This became the world 's oldest university.
It is the most widely known seminary in the Islamic world.
The great pyramids of Giza and the step pyramid of Sakkara are just outside of the city.
The Egyptian Museum holds the world s largest collection of antiquities from the time of the ancient Pharaohs.
Many treasures from the tomb of King Tutankhamun are in this museum.
People from Cairo are called ` Cairenes '.
Chaos theory is a part of mathematics.
It looks at certain systems that are very sensitive.
A very small change may make the system behave completely differently.
Very small changes in the starting position of a chaotic system make a big difference after a while.
This is why even large computers can not tell the weather for more than a few days in the future.
Even if the weather was perfectly measured, a small change or error will make the prediction completely wrong.
Since even a butterfly can make enough wind with its wings to do this, a chaotic system is sometimes called the "butterfly effect".
No computer knows enough to tell how the small wind will change the weather.
Some systems (like weather) might appear random at first look, but chaos theory says that these kinds of systems or patterns may not be.
If people pay close enough attention to what is really going on, they might notice the chaotic patterns.
The main idea of chaos theory is that a minor difference at the start of a process can make a major change in it as time progresses.
Quantum chaos theory is a new idea in the study of chaos theory.
It deals with quantum physics.
As an example, take a pendulum that is attached at some point, and swings freely.
Connecting a second pendulum to the first will make the system completely different.
It is very hard to start in exactly the same position again - a change in starting position so small that it can not even be seen can quickly cause the pendulum swing to become different from what it was before.
A very important part to the study of chaos theory is the study of mathematics functions that are known as fractals.
Fractal functions work like chaotic systems: a small change in the starting values can change the value of the function in ways that look random.
Due to the fact that they are mathematical, they are easy to study.
El Chupacabra (or El Chupacabras) is a cryptid said to live in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Texas to Florida, Michigan, Maine and even Oregon.
Its name comes from the Spanish translation of "goat sucker", because of its habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, including goats.
The legend was started in 1987 when there was a huge, gruesome massacre of livestock all over.
All the animals had two puncture wounds on their neck in which the blood had been drained.
Columbia University in the City of New York (commonly called Columbia University) is a research university in the United States.
It is mainly in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan, in New York City.
It is one of the eight Ivy League universities.
The university was created as King 's College by the Church of England.
It got a royal charter in 1754 from King George II of Great Britain.
It was the first college in New York, and the fifth college in the Thirteen Colonies.
After the American Revolution it was renamed "Columbia College" and run by the state from 1784-1787.
In 1787, the college was placed under a private board of trustees.
The college was located on Madison Avenue at 51st Street from 1857 to 1896 when it was renamed "Columbia University" and moved to the much larger Morningside Heights campus at 105th Street.
A board of trustees runs the university to this day.
Columbia is home to the Pulitzer Prize.
For over a century, the Pulitzer has been given to people for very good work in journalism, literature and music.
Columbia is where FM radio was created.
The school is where the foundation of modern genetics was discovered.
Its Morningside Heights campus was the first North American site where the uranium atom was split.
A cell wall is the wall of a cell in plants, bacteria, fungi, algae, and some archaea.
Animal cells do not have cell walls, nor do protozoa.
Cell walls protect the cells from damage.
It is also there to make the cell strong, to keep its shape, and to control the growing of the cell and plant.
The cell wall is the tough, usually flexible but sometimes fairly rigid layer that surrounds some types of cells.
It is outside the cell membrane and gives these cells support and protection, as well as acting as a filter.
The cell wall also acts as a pressure vessel, preventing over-expansion when water enters the cell by osmosis.
The material in the cell wall varies.
In plants and algae, the cell wall is made of long molecules of cellulose, pectin, and hemicellulose.
The cell wall has channels which let some proteins in and keeps others out.
Water and small molecules can go through the cell wall and the cell membrane.
The cell wall has mechanical strength, and supports cell shape.
This mechanical strength is its main function: "Think of the cell wall as a wicker basket in which a balloon has been inflated so that it exerts pressure from the inside.
Such a basket is very rigid and resistant to mechanical damage.
Thus the (organisms) cell that have a cell wall) gain strength from a flexible plasma membrane pressing against a rigid cell wall".
Although the plant cell wall is strong, it is not rigid or stiff.
The flexibility of the cell walls is seen when plants wilt, so that the stems and leaves begin to droop.
Some plants add stiffening material to some of their cell walls.
A secondary cell wall is an additional layer of cellulose which increases wall rigidity.
More layers may be added containing lignin in xylem cell walls, or containing suberin in cork cell walls.
These compounds are rigid and waterproof.
They make the secondary wall stiff.
Both wood and bark cells of trees have secondary walls.
Other parts of plants such as the leaf stalk may get reinforcement to resist the strain of physical forces.
Small molecules, including small proteins, can easily get through the primary plant cell wall.
Water and carbon dioxide are distributed throughout the plant.
The pH is an important factor in the transport of molecules through cell walls.
Around the outside of the cell membrane is the bacterial cell wall.
Bacterial cell walls are made of peptidoglycan, which is made from polysaccharide chains cross-linked by unusual peptides containing D-amino acids.
Bacterial cell walls are different from the cell walls of plants and fungi which are made of cellulose and chitin, respectively.
The cell wall of bacteria is also distinct from that of Archaea, which do not contain peptidoglycan.
The cell wall is essential to the survival of many bacteria.
The antibiotic penicillin is able to kill bacteria by preventing the cross-linking of peptidoglycan and this causes the cell wall to weaken and lyse.
The lysozyme enzyme can also damage bacterial cell walls.
The middle lamella gives the cell shape, support, and strength.
It is made of calcium and magnesium.
Even though it is called middle lanella, it is the outer part of the cell.
The middle lamella is the first wall of the cell to give protection.
Animal cells do not have cell walls.
They have microfilaments (the thinnest filaments of the cytoskeleton).
The Greek classical elements are fire, air, water, and earth.
In Greek philosophy, science and medicine, these make up a whole.
The image below has two squares on top of each other.
The corners of one are the classical elements.
The corners of the other are the properties.
Galen said these elements were used by Hippocrates to describe the human body.
The elements are linked to the four humors: phlegm (water), yellow bile (fire), black bile (earth), and blood (air).
In Chinese Taoism the elements are metal, wood, water, fire, earth.
: This page contains information about the TV channel Channel 4 which is broadcast in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland.
For the Welsh channel, see S4C
Channel 4 is a television channel which broadcasts to the United Kingdom.
It started on 2 November 1982.
On 10 December 2010 Channel 4 started a High Definition version of their channel on Sky + HD.
The Carolina parakeet is an extinct species of parrot.
It was the last parrot type to have lived before the European conquest in the eastern United States.
It was found from the Ohio Valley to the Gulf of Mexico, and lived in old woods along rivers.
The last wild Carolina parakeet was killed in Okeechobee County in Florida in 1904, and the last bird kept by people died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918.
This was the male bird called "Incas", who died within a year of his mate "Lady Jane".
It was not until 1939, however, that it was agreed that all the Carolina parakeets had died.
At some date between 1937 and 1955, three parakeets looking like this sort of bird were seen and recorded on videotape in the Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia.
However, the American Ornithologists Union thought that they had probably recorded escaped pets.
Additional sightings were recorded in Okeechobee County in Florida until the end of the 1920s.
The Carolina parakeet died out for a number of reasons.
To make space for more farms, large areas of forest were cut down, taking away its living space.
The colorful feathers (green body, yellow head, and red around the bill) were in demand as decorations in ladies ' hats, and the birds were kept as pets.
Even though the birds were bred easily in captivity, little was done to make sure enough birds were bred to avoid their dying out.
Finally, they were killed in large numbers because farmers thought they were pests.
Another reason that led to their extinction was that, unfortunately, they liked to return in large flocks to places where some of them had just been killed.
This led to even more being shot by hunters as they gathered about the wounded and dead members of the flock.
A cognate is a word derived from the same root as another word.
Cognates are words that have a common origin (source).
They may occur in a language or in a group of languages.
` composite ', ` composition ' and ` compost ' are cognates in the English language, derived from the same root in Latin ` componere ' meaning ` to put together '.
the word ` composition ' in English and the word ` composici n ' in Spanish and similar words in French, Italian and Portuguese are cognates because they all come from the same root.
The general rule is that cognates have similar meanings and are derived from the same root (origin).
Basic English uses cognates in different languages.
Example: animal, attention, night, apparatus, experience, brother, invention, metal, etc.
The word ` cognate ' is derived from the Latin word ` cognatus ' meaning ` to be born with '.
In reading Churchill 's History of the English Speaking Peoples, it would be well to keep in mind (remember) what George Bernard Shaw says: "England and America are two countries divided by a common language."
Speakers of British English and American English face this problem of meeting false friends.
As a rule, cognates have the same meaning but when they do not, they are called "false friends".
Example one: Spanish ` actual ' and English ` actual ' are cognates because they have the same root (origin) but they are "false friends" because Spanish ` actual ' means "of the present moment" while English ` actual ' means "real".
Example two: Spanish ` alias ' and English ` alias ' are cognates because they have the same root (origin) but they are "false friends ' because Spanish ` alias ' means "known also as" while English ` alias ' means "having the false name of".
Example three: German ` hell ', Norwegian ` hell ' and English ` hell '.
In German, ` hell ' means ` light ' and in Norwegian it means ` luck ', while in English it means hell.
Sometimes, two words look alike and it appears that they are cognates but they are not because they are not derived from the same root.
Example one: In the English language, the word ` light ' (something that makes things visible) is not a cognate of the word ` light ' (not heavy) because they are not derived from the same root.
Example two: The German word ` haben ' and the English word ` have ' mean the same thing and they appear to be cognates but they are not simply because they are not derived from the same root.
Chromatography is a method using mixed substances that depends on the speed at which they move through special media, or chemical substances.
It consists of a stationary phase (a solid) and a mobile phase (a liquid or a gas).
The mobile phase flows through the stationary phase.
Chromatography is much used in biochemistry and analytical chemistry.
The stationary phase is a flat plane, such as paper, or a substance on glass.
Paper chromatography is a technique for separating and identifying mixtures that are (or can be) colored.
It has been largely replaced by thin layer chromatography, but is still a powerful teaching tool.
Double-way paper chromatography, also called ` two-dimensional chromatography ', uses two solvents and rotates the paper 90 in between.
It is useful for separating complex mixtures of compounds having similar polarity, for example, amino acids.
The compounds used initially ensures you to know whether the color is pure, (one substance only) or mixtures (multiple substances.)
Thin layer chromatography (TLC) is a common laboratory technique similar to paper chromatography.
Instead of a stationary phase of paper, it uses a thin layer of adsorbent like silica gel, alumina, or cellulose on a flat substrate.
Compared to paper, it has the advantage of faster runs, better separations, and the choice between different adsorbents.
For even better resolution and to allow for quantification, high-performance TLC can be used.
Column chromatography separates compounds using many chemical actions between the chemical being tested and the chromatography column (a rod with a blending of special chemicals).
The column is run using either gravity or a pump.
The mixed substance to be tested is added in a small amount and is slowed by certain chemical or physical activity with the chemicals in the chromatography column.
The amount of slowing depends on the type of chemicals in the substance being tested and the different phases.
The time at which a certain chemical elutes (comes out of the end of the column) is called the "retention time" and there is thought to be only one for one chemical.
The most common stationary phase for column chromatography is silica gel, followed by alumina.
Cellulose powder has been used in the past.
The mobile phase is either a pure solvent or a mixture of solvents.
It is chosen make the time and amount of solvent used as little as possible, while still clearly separating the chemicals being tested.
High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is also sometimes referred to as high-pressure liquid chromatography.
It is column chromatography run under pressure to raise the speed of the process.
Common solvents used in HPLC are mixes of water or various organic liquids (the most common are methanol, ethanol or acetonitrile).
Cucurbitaceae is a plant family commonly known as melons, gourds or cucurbits.
It includes crops such as cucumbers, squashes (including pumpkins), luffas, melons and watermelons.
The family is predominantly distributed around the tropics.
Its edible fruits were amongst the earliest cultivated plants in both the Old and New Worlds.
Cell biology is the study of how living cells work.
This includes the structure and function of the cell organelles, and the carbon-based molecules which cells produce.
Cell biology is an interdisciplary subject, and uses ideas from genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, immunology, and other subjects and techniques.
The most important molecules in cell biology are DNA, RNA and proteins.
The most important structures in the cell are the nucleus and the chromosomes, but there are others.
The structure of eukaryotic cells is much more complex than prokaryotic cells.
This is because endosymbiosis has occurred: some or all of the eukaryote organelles are former prokaryotes.
Examples are mitochondria and plastids.
The most important function of cells is to divide by mitosis or meiosis.
Cells in a multicellular organism also specialise in different functions, and the different types may look quite to each other.
Canadian English is the type of English that is used by Canadians.
It is like American English in terms of vocabulary, but its grammar is like that of British English.
Canadian English is generally taught in schools using British ways of spelling, such as color, flavor, and so on.
However, the word themselves are usually American, in part because Canadians watch a lot of American TV shows and listen to a lot of American pop music.
Rarely, the British form of words may be replaced with American forms, such as plow, program, and so on.
The main exception to this rule is terms related to cars and the auto industry.
Because Canada 's auto industry has always been dominated by American firms, Canadians use American words and spelling for such terms.
Canadians and Americans spell the outer rubber portion of a wheel as tire instead of tyre, put gasoline or gas in their vehicles instead of petrol, store items in the trunk instead of the boot, and may drive a truck instead of a lorry.
Canadian English is different from other forms of English in its spoken form also.
The dialects vary from sounding overtly English to an indistinguishable form very similar to those spoken in the northern states.
The Czech language is a Slavic language.
People in the Czech Republic speak it.
Ten million people speak it.
It has three genders.
It is an inflected language like Latin.
It is very similar to the Slovak language, to the point of the differences between these two languages being smaller than differences between dialects of some other languages.
A capsid is the protein shell of a virus.
It is made of several protein subunits.
The observable 3-dimensional subunits are called ` capsomeres '.
The capsid encloses the nucleic acid of the virus.
Capsids are broadly classified according to their structure.
Some viruses, such as bacteriophages, have developed more complicated structures.
The icosahedral shape, which has 20 equilateral triangular faces, approximates a sphere, while the helical shape is cylindrical.
The capsid faces may consist of one or more proteins.
For example, the foot-and-mouth disease virus capsid has faces consisting of three proteins called VP1 3.
Most viruses (e.g. influenza and many animal viruses) have viral envelopes covering their protein capsids.
This means the capsid is coated with a lipid membrane.
The envelope is got by the capsid from an intracellular membrane in the virus ' host; such as the inner nuclear membrane, the golgi membrane, or the cell 's outer membrane.
The envelope may help viruses avoid the host immune system.
Glycoproteins on the surface of the envelope bind to receptor sites on the host 's membrane.
The viral envelope then fuses with the host 's membrane This allows the capsid and viral genome to enter and infect the host.
Council of Trent was the 19th Ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church.
Important members of the Catholic Church met in Trento three times between December 13, 1545, and December 4, 1563, as a reaction to the Protestant Reformation.
It stated current Catholic doctrines on salvation, the sacraments, and the Biblical canon, it answered all Protestant disputes.
The council often could not meet when they wanted to, and sometimes could not meet at all, because of resistance from the popes and revolt against the emperor.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor wanted the council to meet, and Pope Paul III summoned the council in 1537, but the plans fell through.
In 1538, ideas for a council again failed.
The pope asked for the council to meet in 1542, but it did not actually meet until 1545.
The council was not active from 1547 and 1551.
It again met from 1551 to 1552, when it was suspended due to a revolt against the emperor.
Pope Paul IV (1555-1559) strongly disliked Protestant ideas and the council could not start again until his succesor took office.
The council met for the last time from 1562 to 1563.
The Council of Trent was part of the Counter-Reformation.
It would be over 300 years until the next Ecumenical Council.
Pope Paul III saw that the Protestant Reformation was getting bigger.
Before, a small number of priests were part of the reformation, but soon many princes, particularly in Germany, supported its ideas.
Therefore Pope Paul III desired a council.
But the council could not meet until 1545, and met right before Martin Luther 's death.
The council was moved to Bologna in March, 1547 with the excuse of avoiding a plague; without any plans to meet again, September 17th, 1549.
The council was reopened at Trento, May 1, 1551, by Pope Julius III (1550 55); broken up 1552, recalled by Pope Pius IV (1559 65) for the last time, January 18, 1562, when it continued until December 4, 1563.
The doctrinal decisions of the council are divided into decrees (decreta), which contain the positive statement of the conciliar dogmas, and into short canons (canones), which condemn the differing Protestant views with the concluding "anathema sit" ("let him be anathema").
Chloroplasts are small organelles inside the cells of plants and algae.
They absorb light to make sugar in a process called photosynthesis.
The sugar can be stored in the form of starch.
Chloroplasts contain the molecule chlorophyll, which absorbs sunlight for photosynthesis.
In addition to chlorophyll, a chloroplast uses carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) to form sugar, and gives off oxygen (O2).
Chlorophyll is what gives green plants their green color.
Chloroplasts also contain various yellow and orange pigments to assist in photon capture for photosynthesis.
Each chloroplast is surrounded by a double walled semi-permeable membrane.
In the layered stacks are flat disk-shaped thylakoids.
They contain light-absorbing pigments, including chlorophyll and carotenoids, as well as proteins which bind the pigments.
Like mitochondria, chloroplasts also contain their own DNA and ribosomes.
Chloroplasts are one of the many different types of organelles in the cell.
They are thought to have originated as endosymbiotic cyanobacteria.
This was first suggested by Mereschkowsky in 1905 after an observation by Schimper in 1883 that chloroplasts closely resembled cyanobacteria.
Almost all chloroplasts are thought to derive directly or indirectly from a single endosymbiotic event.
Mitochondria also had a similar origin, but chloroplasts are found only in plants and protista.
In green plants, chloroplasts are surrounded by two lipid-bilayer membranes.
They are thought to correspond to the outer and inner membranes of the ancestral cyanobacterium.
Chloroplasts have their own genome, which is much smaller than that of free-living cyanobacteria.
The DNA which remains shows clear similarities with the cyanobacterial genome.
Plastids may contain 60 100 genes whereas cyanobacteria often contain more than 1500 genes.
Many of the missing genes are encoded in the nuclear genome of the host.
In some algae (such as the heterokonts), chloroplasts seem to have evolved through a secondary event of endosymbiosis, in which a eukaryotic cell engulfed a second eukaryotic cell containing chloroplasts, forming chloroplasts with three or four membrane layers.
In some cases, such secondary endosymbionts may have themselves been engulfed by still other eukaryotes, thus forming tertiary endosymbionts.
In the alga Chlorella, there is only one chloroplast, which is bell-shaped.
In some groups of mixotrophic protists such as the dinoflagellates, chloroplasts are separated from a captured alga or diatom and used temporarily.
These klepto (stolen) chloroplasts may only have a lifetime of a few days and are then replaced.
Camp David is an official residence of the President of the United States.
It is northwest of Washington D.C., in Catoctin Mountain park.
Staffing is provided by the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps.
Its official name is Naval Support Facility Thurmont.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt had it built to escape the hot summers in Washington, D.C..
At the time he called it "Shangri-La.
In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower renamed it Camp David after his grandson David Eisenhower.
During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, The Camp David Accords were signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on 17 September 1978.
This followed twelve days of secret meetings at Camp David.
Crux (IPA: \/ kr ks \/, Latin: cross), commonly known as the Southern Cross (in contrast to the Northern Cross), is one of the modern constellations.
It points to the directions of north, south, east and west.
It is the smallest modern constellation.
It was first described by the Italian navigator Andrea Corsali in 1515.
In the past, sailors used to use Crux as a means of navigation.
The Southern Cross was used on the flag flown by miners in Ballarat, Victoria, during the rebellion known as the Eureka Stockade.
The Southern Cross flag has been used as a symbol of protest in Australia since 1854.
Cetus is a constellation in the northern sky.
Carina is a constellation in the southern sky.
It means the keel of a ship in Latin.
Before, it was part of the constellation named Argo Navis.
Then, Argo Navis was split into three constellations.
The astronomer named Ptolemy listed Argo Navis when he made a list of 48 constellations.
Carina is one of the 88 modern constellations that were made by the International Astronomical Union.
The star named Canopus is in Carina.
Canopus is the second brightest star in the night sky.
The Carina Nebula is also in Carina.
It is very large emission nebula.
It is a region where stars form.
Camelopardalis is a constellation in the northern sky.
It is hard to see because it is not very bright.
It is also very large.
It was created and named by the Dutch astronomer named Petrus Plancius in 1612.
It represents a giraffe.
Its brightest star, Cam, has a magnitude of only 4.03.
This means that Camelopardalis is very dark.
People who live in cities can not see Camelopardalis.
Canis Major is a constellation that is in the southern sky.
It means "greater dog" in Latin (also called large dog).
There is also the constellation Canis Minor, which means "lesser dog" in Latin.
The astronomer named Ptolemy listed Canis Major when he made a list of 48 constellations.
It is also one of the 88 modern constellations that were made by the International Astronomical Union.
The star Sirius is in Canis Major.
Sirius has a magnitude of -1.44, which means that it is the brightest star in the night sky.
It is sometimes called the "dog star."
Also, Sirius is only 8.6 light years away from Earth, which is very close.
Canis Minor is a constellation in the northern sky.
It is Latin for "smaller dog" or "the lesser dog".
The astronomer Ptolemy listed it when he made a list of 48 constellations in the 2nd century.
Both Canis Minor and Canis Major (which means "larger dog" in Latin) represent dogs that follow the hunter named Orion in Greek Mythology.
The main shape of Canis Minor is made by two stars, which are named Procyon (Alpha Canis Minoris) and Gomeisa (Beta Canis Minoris).
These stars are the only stars in Canis Minor that have a magnitude that is brigher than 4.
Procyon has a magnitude of 0.39, which means that it is the seventh brightest star in the night sky.
It is also very close to Earth, since it is only 11.4 light years away.
Procyon is a binary star, which means that it actually has two stars that orbit each other.
It has a white dwarf star and a white type F5 main-sequence star.
Gomeisa has a magnitude of 2.9.
Its temperature is 11,500 K, which means that it is very hot.
It is a blue type B8 main-sequence star.
It is 3 times the mass of the sun and 250 times more luminous than the sun.
Centaurus is a constellation in the southern hemisphere of the night sky.
It is named after a centaur, which is a creature that is half man and half horse.
The astronomer named Ptolemy listed Centaurus when he made a list of 48 constellations.
Centaurus is also one of the 88 constellations that were made by the International Astronomical Union.
In the direction of Centaurus is the Shapley Supercluster or Shapley Concentration (SCl 124).
This is the largest concentration of galaxies in our nearby universe.
Impact craters are formed by meteorites or comets striking the Earth (or Moon, or planet).
There is now a system for recording and assessing craters.
There are some other suggested impact structures which are larger.
It is a feature of the Earth that climate, weathering and plate tectonics removes most of the older features and events.
In comparison, the Moon retains a nearly complete record of its past impact events.
The implication is that the Earth once suffered a similar bombardment in its early history.
This period is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, because it occurred after the Earth and Moon formed.
The distinctive mark of an impact crater is the presence of rock which has undergone shock-metamorphic effects, shattered or melted rocks, and crystal deformations.
Examples:
Corona Borealis is a constellation in the northern sky.
Cygnus is a constellation in the northern sky.
Cygnus means "swan" in Greek.
There is a pattern of stars in Cygnus that is called the Northern Cross.
This is because the pattern of stars looks like a cross.
The constellation Crux (constellation) has a pattern of stars that is called the Southern Cross.
The astronomer Ptolemy listed Cygnus in the 2nd century when he made a list of constellations.
This article is about the unit of energy.
See nutrition.
The calorie is a pre-SI unit of energy, most common in heat.
It is the amount of energy required to make one gram of water to increase in heat by one Kelvin.
When on a food label, the term "calorie" refers to kilocalories, or 1000 calories.
Corona Australis is a constellation in the southern sky.
A Compact Disc (CD) is a type of optical disc.
It is flat and round, and is used to store digital data.
It was first used to store music and other sounds (and is sometimes called an "audio CD").
The sound on a CD is played using a compact disc player.
It was developed by Philips and Sony.
Later, Compact Discs were made that could be used to store computer files in the same way as audio compact discs.
These are called CD-ROMs (Compact Disc Read-Only Memory).
The computer reads the disc using a CD-ROM drive.
Another use is to store MPEG videos cheaply; these CDs are called VCDs (Video CDs) and are especially popular in Asia.
For example, in Indonesia they are used instead of the more expensive DVD.
The quality of a VCD is about the same as a VHS tape.
The diameter of a normal CD is 120 mm.
The middle hole in a CD is about the size of a five cent coin (about 1.5 cm).
The person who decided the size was Dutch and used the size of an old Dutch coin (old because the Dutch now have switched to the Euro), called a "dubbeltje", or dime.
A CD usually holds a maximum of 74-80 minutes of sound or 650-700 megabytes of data.
CDs can be manufactured to hold up to 99 minutes of audio, or slightly under a gigabyte of data, by making the tracks smaller.
Discs with more than 74 minutes or 650 MB are non-standard, and some CD players are not able to play them.
Some CDs are smaller; they are 80mm in diameter.
They can store about 30 % of a normal disc.
Caelum is a constellation in the southern sky.
It is hard to see because it is not very bright.
It means "the chisel" in Latin.
Before, people called Caelum Scalptorium, which means "the engraver 's chisel".
It was created and named by the French astronomer named Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in the 1750s.
The brighest star in Caelum has a magnitude of 4.45.
This means that all of the stars in Caelum are too dark for people who live in cities to see.
The clarinet is a woodwind instrument.
The clarinet has one reed.
The reed is made of bamboo or plastic.
The reed is attached to the mouthpiece with a clamp called a ligature, which is usually made out of metal.
Blowing through the mouthpiece makes the reed vibrate, and therefore makes the noise.
The body of the clarinet is a cylindrical tube with holes.
The holes are covered by the fingers to make musical notes.
There are also buttons pressed by the fingers which allow pads over holes to open or close so all notes of the chromatic scale can be played.
One kind of keyed clarinet is called the Albert system.
Another kind is called the Boehm system.
The Boehm clarinet is much used by classical orchestras and by jazz musicians.
In North America and other Western countries, the most popular clarinet is the clarinet pitched in B flat.
This means that if a clarinet player plays a note that is written as a C, it sounds like a B flat on a piano.
The B flat clarinet is used in concert, marching, and school bands.
Musicians in orchestras also play the A-clarinet (a semitone lower), the sopranino E flat clarinet (a fourth higher) and the Bass_clarinet in B flat (sounding an octave lower).
A beginner clarinet player usually can play a note within the first minutes of a lesson.
Making a sound with the clarinet is easier than making a sound with many other wind instruments.
Most instrumental music teachers consider it to be a good instrument for young players as soon as the lower adult teeth have grown.
The fingering system is very similar to the flute and the saxophone, so changing from playing the clarinet to one of these instruments is not too difficult after the student is comfortable playing the clarinet and has reached a certain level.
A famous piece that features a clarinet is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 's Clarinet Concerto, which has the clarinet playing the melody with the rest of the orchestra playing along.
Written in 1791, it is often considered the first great composition for the instrument.
Chojn w is small city in Poland.
As of the year 2000, 14,900 people live in the city.
The city is on the river Skora.
The city belongs to the county Legnica.
It is in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship.
The average height of the city is 170 meters above sea level.
Chojn w is first mentioned in a note dated 1272 as a Haynow settlement.
In 1288 it 's called city (civitas) in documents of Prince of Legnica Henryk V Gruby.
In 1333 in gained the status of a city (civitas).
Every year in first days of June, Days of Chojn w (Dni Chojnowa) are celebrated.
The Whole-Poland bike race Masters has been organized in Chojn w once a year for the past few years.
Chojn w is an industrial and agricultural city.
Among products produced in Chojn w are: paperware, agricultural machinery, chains, metal furniture for hospitals, equipment for the meat industry, beer, wine, leather clothing, clothing for infants, children and adults.
The most interesting monuments of Chojn w are prince of Legnica 's castle from the 13th century (currently used as a museum), two old churches, Baszta Tkaczy (Weavers ' Tower) and preserved fragments of city walls.
The biggest green area in Chojn w is small forest Park Piastowski (Piast 's Park), named after Piast dynasty as part of Communist anti-German propaganda.
Wild animals that live around Chojn w are roe-deers, foxes, rabbits and wild domestic animals, especially cats.
Canes Venatici is a constellation in the northern sky.
It means "the hunting dogs" in Latin.
It was named and created by the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in 1687.
The astronomer named Ptolemy included it in Ursa Major when he made a list of 48 constellations in the 2nd century.
Canes Venatici is not a very bright constellation.
Chamaeleon is a constellation in the southern sky.
Cholesterol is a molecule that is found in animal cells and body fluids.
Cholesterol is not found in plant sources.
It is a type of lipid which is a fat or fat-like molecule.
Cholesterol is a soft waxy substance.
Cholesterol is a special type of lipid that is called a steroid.
Steroids are lipids that have a special chemical structure.
This structure is made of four rings of carbon atoms.
Cholesterol is found especially in animal fats.
Other steroids include hormone steroids like cortisol, estrogen, and testosterone.
In fact, all steroid hormones are made from changing the basic chemical structure of cholesterol.
When scientists talk about making one molecule from changing simpler ones, they sometimes call it chemical synthesis.
Hypercholesterolemia means that cholesterol level is too high in the blood.
High cholesterol levels show that heart disease may develop.
The chromosomes of a cell are in the cell nucleus.
They carry the genetic information.
Chromosomes are made up of DNA and protein combined as chromatin.
Each chromosome contains many genes.
Chromosomes come in pairs: one set from the mother; the other set from the father.
Cytologists label chromosomes with numbers.
Chromosomes are present in every cell nucleus with very few and special exceptions.
This means they are found in all eukaryotes, since only eukaryotes have cell nuclei.
When eukaryote cells divide, the chromosomes also divide.
When a somatic (body) cell (such as a muscle cell) divides, the process is called mitosis.
Before mitosis, the cell copies all the chromosomes and then it can divide.
When they duplicate, chromosomes look like the letter "X".
When they are doubled, the two halves are called chromatids (see diagram).
The chromatids are joined at the centromere.
There are 46 chromosomes in a human, 23 pairs.
Everyone has a set of chromosomes from their father and a matching set from their mother.
They include a pair of sex chromosomes.
The mother 's eggs always contain an X chromosome, while the father 's sperm contains either a Y chromosome or an X chromosome.
That determines the sex of the child.
To produce sex cells (gametes), the stem cells go through a different division process called meiosis.
This reduces the 23 pairs (diploid) to 23 singles (haploid).
These, when combined by fertilisation, produce the new set of 23 pairs.
Different animals have different numbers of chromosomes.
If a person does not have the usual number of chromosomes, they may die or have one or more peculiarities.
For example, they might get a genetic disorder like Down syndrome (extra chromosome 21) and Klinefelter syndrome (a male with two X chromosomes).
Some genetic disorders are more common than others.
Polytene chromosomes are over-sized chromosomes which have developed from standard chromosomes.
Specialized cells undergo repeated rounds of DNA replication without cell division (endomitosis).
This increases cell volume, forming a giant polytene chromosome.
Polytene chromosomes form when multiple rounds of replication produce many sister chromatids that remain stuck together in parallel.
Polytene chromosomes are found in Drosophila species and in nonbiting midges of the Chironomidae family.
Polytene cells have a metabolic function.
Multiple copies of genes allows a high level of gene expression.
In Drosophila melanogaster, for example, the chromosomes of the larval salivary glands undergo many rounds of endoreduplication.
This produces large amounts of glue before pupation.
Chromosome puffs (seen in diagram) are diffused uncoiled regions of the polytene chromosome.
They are sites of active transcription.
Ceuta is a Spanish city in North Africa, at the Strait of Gibraltar.
The City area is about 20 square kilometers, and there are over 82,000 people living in the city.
The city is surrounded by a border fence, which has been built to keep the Moroccans (and other Africans) from moving there unlawfully.
Ceuta is part of Spain (and therefore the European Union).
Until it became a self-governing city in 1994, it belonged to the Cadiz Province.
It was built by the Phoenicians at a strategic position.
Carcinogens are substances that cause cancer.
Sometimes radiation or radionuclide are also considered carcinogens.
A common example of a carcinogen is tobacco smoke.
Carcinogens come from both natural and man-made substances.
Several radioactive substances are considered carcinogens.
The carcinogens in them are caused by the radiation they release, such as gamma rays or alpha particles.
CERCLA says that all radionuclides are carcinogens.
How much of a carcinogen a radiation is depends on the type of radiation, the type of exposure to it and its penetration.
For example, alpha radiation has low penetration and is not a danger outside the body.
Alpha radiation is a carcinogen when breathed in or eaten.
Thorotrast, previously used in x-rays, is a human carcinogen.
Marie Curie, one of the pioneers of radioactivity, died of a cancer that was caused by the radiation she was exposed to during her experiments.
Not all types of electromagnetic radiation are carcinogenic.
Radio waves, microwave radiation, infrared radiation, and visible light are examples of this.
Higher-energy radiation, including ultraviolet radiation, usually is carcinogenic, if a person is exposed to it long enough.
Recent research has shown that when food is cooked at high temperatures, carcinogens may be formed in very small amounts.
Pre-cooking meats in a microwave oven for 2-3 minutes before broiling shortens the time on the hot pan.
This could help stop the carcinogens from being made.
Certain kinds of foods, like potato chips and French fries, may have higher levels of carcinogens than others.
The charred residue on barbecued meats is a carcinogen, too.
This does not mean eating cooked foods is dangerous.
The gastrointestinal tract sheds its outer layer continuously to protect itself from carcinomas.
Because of this, it has a good chance of shedding bad enzymes that could cause cancer.
Camouflage is a visual disguise.
Without it, an animal would be recognized easily.
If the natural color of an animal makes it look like its surroundings, that is camouflage.
A tiger 's stripes in the long grass, and the battledress of a modern soldier are examples.
Camouflage is a form of deception.
The word camouflage comes from the French word camoufler, which means "to disguise".
In nature, most animals blend into their environment or conceal their shape.
They are very hard to see.
This way they survive, and if they survive, then they can reproduce.
There are exceptions: animals which are dangerous to eat (e.g. wasps) advertise with warning colouration.
Prey animals hide from predators.
Predators must search for prey without being seen.
Natural camouflage is one way to do this: an animal can blend in with its surroundings.
Another way is for the animal to disguise itself as something harmless.
Some camouflaged animals also copy movements in nature, e.g., of a leaf blowing in the wind.
Other animals attach natural materials to their body for concealment.
A few animals change color in changing environments.
Seasonally: (many Arctic animals, such as the arctic fox, or arctic hare).
Or quickly, like the chameleon and the cuttlefish.
Some herd animals, like zebra, have a pattern which makes it difficult for the predator when they are running.
Mimicry is a special kind of camouflage, where an animal or plant looks like another, usually one which is unpleasant to eat or dangerous.
Most animals are dark on top and light underneath.
With light coming from the sky, this countershading makes them less visible.
That this is the correct explanation is proved by cases where the animal lives upside down.
A famous example is the Nile catfish, which swims belly uppermost.
In this case, the belly is dark, and the back is light in color.
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Transparent or partly transparent animals are common in the pelagic layer of the sea.
These are the layers into which light penetrates.
The effect of transparency or silvering works is better under water than above it.
This is because the amount of light which penetrates is less and less as the depth increases.
Also, the proportion of the light reflected is much less under water (0.001 0.6 %) than in air (2 5 %).
A clock is a device that tells the time.
Some clocks can give the date as well as the time and a few give other information.
There are different types of clocks.
A watch is a type of clock that is small and can be carried.
Watches are usually worn on a person 's wrist.
At one time, watches were commonly kept in the person 's pocket.
Clocks use different ways to measure time.
Clocks need some sort of steady beat or motion to track the change in time.
Ancient water clocks worked by the steady movement of water from a container with a hole in the bottom to another container without a hole.
Other clocks use pendulums, springs and gears to track the change in time correctly.
Digital clocks work by measuring the vibrations of quartz crystals when charged with electricity.
The vibration frequency of the crystal does not change.
Atomic clocks use the electromagnetic waves absorbed and emitted by atoms such as caesium to measure time.
They are the most precise clocks in the world.
There are many types of clocks and watches.
The two most common types of displays on clocks are "analog" and "digital".
Analog clocks use angles to tell time.
They have hands that rotate around the clock 's face.
The position of the hands shows the time.
The face of the clock is a flat disk.
It will often have the numbers one through twelve on the face to make it easier to read.
Analog clocks commonly have two or three hands.
If it has two, there is a large hand or minute hand and a smaller hand, the hour hand.
Clocks with three hands also have a second hand.
This hand is usually about as long as the minute hand, but much thinner.
Each hand shows the time it is named for and moves around the face of the clock one complete rotation for each movement to the next larger hand.
For example, the second hand moves around the face of the clock in 60 seconds.
It moves once each second.
When it moves all the way around the clock, the minute hand moves forward one space.
When the minute hand moves all the way around the face of the clock (which takes 60 minutes), the hour hand moves forward one section.
The second and minute hands take 60 movements to move all around the face of the clock, the hour hand only needs 12 movements to do the same.
Digital clocks use numbers to show the time.
LCDs and LEDs are common for digital clocks.
Unlike analog clocks which are based on 12 hours, digital clocks can use either a 12-hour clock (often with am for morning and pm for afternoon\/night) or a 24-hour clock.
Digital clocks are usually smaller and easier to both use and read than analog clocks but they can also be made much larger.
New digital clocks can even correct themselves using the internet or radio signals.
There are also clocks that use sound, usually along with a dial or some other means, to show the time.
The sound could be as simple as a bell or so complex that it sounds the same as a person.
Many clocks that do this are old and are driven by springs or weights rather than batteries or other forms of electric power.
Some special clocks are often used by people who are blind or can not see well enough to read an analog or digital clock.
They can also be used by people with mental problems that cause them to be unable to read other clocks.
There are many different types of clocks and watches.
They are different in what they are used for, what they can do or how they are made.
Examples include:
Charles Martel (c. 688 22 October 741) was a Frankish statesman and military leader who was Duke and Prince of the Franks.
He was also Mayor of the Palace.
Martel was the de facto ruler of Francia from 718 until his death.
Martel was the illegitimate son of the Frankish statesman Pepin of Herstal.
His mother was a noblewoman named Alpaida.
Martel successfully asserted his claims as successor to his father as Mayor of the Palace.
He continued and built on his father 's work.
He began the series of military campaigns that re-established Frankish power in Gaul.
In foreign wars, Martel defeated and ruled Bavaria, Alemannia, and Frisia.
He defeated the Saxons, and halted the Islamic advance into Western Europe at the Battle of Tours in 732.
Martel is considered to be the founding figure of the European Middle Ages.
He was skilled as an administrator and warrior.
Martel is often credited with a key role in the development of feudalism and knighthood.
He was a great patron of Saint Boniface.
Martel made the first attempt at reconciliation between the Papacy and the Franks.
The Pope wished him to become the defender of the Holy See and offered him the Roman consulship.
Martel refused the offer.
Although Martel never assumed the title of king, he divided Francia, like a king, between his sons Carloman and Pepin.
The latter became the first of the Carolingians, the family of Charles Martel, to become king.
Martel 's grandson, Charlemagne, extended the Frankish realms to include much of the West.
Charlemagne became the first Emperor since the fall of Rome.
On the basis of his achievements, Martel laid the groundwork for the Carolingian Empire.
Ceramic is the name for materials that are formed by the use of heat.
The word ceramic comes from the Greek word (').
The term covers inorganic non-metallic materials which are formed by the action of heat.
Up to the 1950s or so, the most important were the traditional clays, made into pottery, bricks, tiles and the like, also cements and glass.
Clay-based ceramics are described in the article on pottery.
A composite material of ceramic and metal is known as cermet.
The word ceramic can be an adjective, and can also be used as a noun to refer to a ceramic material, or a product of ceramic manufacture.
Ceramics may also be used as a singular noun referring to the art of making things out of ceramic materials.
The technology of manufacturing and usage of ceramic materials is part of the field of ceramic engineering.
Many ceramic materials are hard, porous, and brittle.
The study and development of ceramics includes methods to deal with these characteristics, to accentuate the strengths of the materials and investigate novel applications.
Each one of these classes can develop unique material properties.
Ceramic materials are usually ionic or covalent bonded materials, and can be crystalline or amorphous.
A material held together by either type of bond will tend to fracture before any plastic deformation takes place, which results in poor toughness in these materials.
Additionally, because these materials tend to be porous, the pores and other microscopic imperfections act as stress concentrators, decreasing the toughness further, and reducing the tensile strength.
These combine to give catastrophic failures, as opposed to the normally much more gentle failure modes of metals.
These materials do show plastic deformation.
However, due to the rigid structure of the crystalline materials, there are very few available slip systems for dislocations to move, and so they deform very slowly.
With the non-crystalline (glassy) materials, viscous flow is the dominant source of plastic deformation, and is also very slow.
It is therefore neglected in many applications of ceramic materials.
There are a number of ceramics that are semiconductors.
Most of these are transition metal oxides that are II-VI semiconductors, such as zinc oxide.
While there is talk of making blue LEDs from zinc oxide, ceramicists are most interested in the electrical properties that show grain boundary effects.
One of the most widely used of these is the varistor.
Semiconducting ceramics are also employed as gas sensors.
When various gases are passed over a polycrystalline ceramic, its electrical resistance changes.
With tuning to the possible gas mixtures, very inexpensive devices can be produced.
Under some conditions, such as extremely low temperature, some ceramics exhibit superconductivity.
The exact reason for this is not known, but there are two major families of superconducting ceramics.
Piezoelectricity, a link between electrical and mechanical response, is exhibited by a large number of ceramic materials, including the quartz used to measure time in watches and other electronics.
Such devices convert electricity to mechanical motions and back, making a stable oscillator.
The piezoelectric effect is generally stronger in materials that also exhibit pyroelectricity, and all pyroelectric materials are also piezoelectric.
These materials can be used to inter convert between thermal, mechanical, and\/or electrical energy; for instance, after synthesis in a furnace, a pyroelectric crystal allowed to cool under no applied stress generally builds up a static charge of thousands of volts.
Such materials are used in motion sensors, where the tiny rise in temperature from a warm body entering the room is enough to produce a measurable voltage in the crystal.
In turn, pyroelectricity is seen most strongly in materials which also display the ferroelectric effect, in which a stable electric dipole can be oriented or reversed by applying an electrostatic field.
Pyroelectricity is also a necessary consequence of ferroelectricity.
This can be used to store information in ferroelectric capacitors, elements of ferroelectric RAM.
The most common such materials are lead zirconate titanate and barium titanate.
Aside from the uses mentioned above, their strong piezoelectric response is exploited in the design of high-frequency loudspeakers, transducers for sonar, and actuators for atomic force and scanning tunneling microscopes.
Increases in temperature can cause grain boundaries to suddenly become insulating in some semiconducting ceramic materials, mostly mixtures of heavy metal titanates.
The critical transition temperature can be adjusted over a wide range by variations in chemistry.
In such materials, current will pass through the material until joule heating brings it to the transition temperature, at which point the circuit will be broken and current flow will cease.
Such ceramics are used as self-controlled heating elements in, for example, the rear-window defrost circuits of automobiles.
At the transition temperature, the material 's dielectric response becomes theoretically infinite.
While a lack of temperature control would rule out any practical use of the material near its critical temperature, the dielectric effect remains exceptionally strong even at much higher temperatures.
Titanates with critical temperatures far below room temperature have become synonymous with "ceramic" in the context of ceramic capacitors for just this reason.
Non-crystalline ceramics, being glasses, tend to be formed from melts.
The glass is shaped when either fully molten, by casting, or when in a state of toffee-like viscosity, by methods such as blowing to a mold.
If later heat-treatments cause this class to become partly crystalline, the resulting material is known as a glass-ceramic.
Crystalline ceramic materials are not amenable to a great range of processing.
Methods for dealing with them tend to fall into one of two categories either make the ceramic in the desired shape, by reaction in situ, or by "forming" powders into the desired shape, and then sintering to form a solid body.
Ceramic forming techniques include shaping by hand (sometimes including a rotation process called "throwing"), slip casting, tape casting (used for making very thin ceramic capacitors, etc.), injection molding, dry pressing, and other variations.
(See also Ceramic forming techniques.
Details of these processes are described in the two books listed below.)
A few methods use a hybrid between the two approaches.
The most common use of this method is in the production of cement and concrete.
Here, the dehydrated powders are mixed with water.
This starts hydration reactions, which result in long, interlocking crystals forming around the aggregates.
Over time, these result in a solid ceramic.
The biggest problem with this method is that most reactions are so fast that good mixing is not possible, which tends to prevent large-scale construction.
However, small-scale systems can be made by deposition techniques, where the various materials are introduced above a substrate, and react and form the ceramic on the substrate.
This borrows techniques from the semiconductor industry, such as chemical vapor deposition, and is very useful for coatings.
These tend to produce very dense ceramics, but do so slowly.
The principles of sintering-based methods is simple.
Once a roughly held together object (called a "green body") is made, it is baked in a kiln, where diffusion processes cause the green body to shrink.
The pores in the object close up, resulting in a denser, stronger product.
The firing is done at a temperature below the melting point of the ceramic.
There is virtually always some porosity left, but the real advantage of this method is that the green body can be produced in any way imaginable, and still be sintered.
This makes it a very versatile route.
There are thousands of possible refinements of this process.
Some of the most common involve pressing the green body to give the densification a head start and reduce the sintering time needed.
Sometimes organic binders such as polyvinyl alcohol are added to hold the green body together; these burn out during the firing (at 200 350 C).
Sometimes organic lubricants are added during pressing to increase densification.
It is not uncommon to combine these, and add binders and lubricants to a powder, then press.
(The formulation of these organic chemical additives is an art in itself.
This is particularly important in the manufacture of high performance ceramics such as those used by the billions for electronics, in capacitors, inductors, sensors, etc..
The specialized formulations most commonly used in electronics are detailed in the book "Tape Casting," by R.E. Mistler, et al., Amer.
Ceramic Soc.
(Westerville, Ohio), 2000.)
A comprehensive book on the subject, for mechanical as well as electronics applications, is "Organic Additives and Ceramic Processing," by D. J. Shanefield, Kluwer Publishers (Boston), 1996.
A slurry can be used in place of a powder, and then cast into a desired shape, dried and then sintered.
Indeed, traditional pottery is done with this type of method, using a plastic mixture worked with the hands.
If a mixture of different materials is used together in a ceramic, the sintering temperature is sometimes above the melting point of one minor component a liquid phase sintering.
This results in shorter sintering times compared to solid state sintering.
Connecticut is a state in the United States.
Its capital is Hartford, and its largest city is Bridgeport.
Connecticut is bordered on the south by Long Island Sound, on the west by New York State, on the north by Massachusetts, and on the east by Rhode Island.
In all, there are a total of 169 towns in Connecticut.
There is an ongoing civic pride and economic competition between Hartford and New Haven, which stems back to the days when the two cities shared the state 's capital, and even back to the rivalry between New Haven Colony and Connecticut Colony.
The highest peak in Connecticut is Bear Mountain in Salisbury in the northwest corner of the state.
The highest point is just east of where Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York meet (42 3 ' N; 73 29 ' W), on the southern slope of Mount Frissell, whose peak lies nearby in Massachusetts.
The Connecticut River cuts through the center of the state, flowing into Long Island Sound, Connecticut 's outlet to the Atlantic Ocean.
Further information: List of Connecticut rivers
The state, although small, has regional variations in its landscape and culture from the wealthy estates of Fairfield County 's "Gold Coast" to the rolling mountains and horse-farms of the Litchfield Hills of northwestern Connecticut.
Connecticut 's rural areas and small towns in the northeast and northwest corners of the state contrast sharply with its industrial cities, located along the coastal highways from the New York border to New Haven, then northwards to Hartford, as well as further up the coast near New London.
Many towns center around a small park, known as a "green," (such as the New Haven Green).
Near the green may stand a small white church, a town meeting hall, a tavern and several colonial houses.
Forests, rivers, lakes, waterfalls and a sandy shore add to the state 's beauty.
The northern boundary of the state with Massachusetts is marked by the distinctive Southwick Jog\/Granby Notch, an approximately 2.5 mile (4.0 km) square detour into Connecticut slightly west of the center of the border.
Somewhat surprisingly, the actual origin of this anomaly is not absolutely certain, with stories ranging from surveyors who were drunk, attempting to avoid hostile Native Americans, or taking a shortcut up the Connecticut River; Massachusetts residents attempting to avoid Massachusetts ' high taxes for the low taxes of Connecticut; Massachusetts ' interest in the resources represented by the Congamond Lakes which lie on the border of the jog; and the need to compensate Massachusetts for an amount of land given to Connecticut due to inaccurate survey work.
Perhaps the only suggested reason which can be safely ruled out is that the jog is necessary to prevent Massachusetts from sliding out into the Atlantic Ocean.
In any event, the dispute over the border retarded the development of the region, since neither state would invest in even such basic amenities as schools for the area until the dispute had been settled.
The southwestern border of Connecticut, where it abuts New York State, is marked by a panhandle in Fairfield County, containing Greenwich, Stamford, Fairfield, Westport, Wilton and Darien, housing some of the wealthiest residents in the world.
This irregularity in the boundary is the result of territorial disputes in the late 1600s, culminating with New York giving up its claim to this area, whose residents considered themselves part of Connecticut, in exchange for an equivalent area extending northwards from Ridgefield, Connecticut to the Massachusetts border as well as undisputed claim to Rye, New York.
Areas maintained by the National Park Service include: Appalachian National Scenic Trail; Quinebaug & Shetucket Rivers Valley National Heritage Corridor; and Weir Farm National Historic Site.
The name "Connecticut" comes from the Mohegan Indian word "Quinnehtukqut".
It means "Long River Place" or "Beside the Long Tidal River."
The first explorer from Europe to come to Connecticut was Adriaen Block, from the Netherlands.
After he explored this region in 1614, Dutch fur traders sailed up the Connecticut River (Named Versche Rivier by the Dutch) and built a fort near present-day Hartford, which they called "House of Hope" (Dutch: Huys de Hoop).
The first English settlers came in 1633.
They were Puritans from Massachusetts, who were led by the Reverend Thomas Hooker.
They founded the Connecticut Colony.
Colonies were also established at Old Saybrook and New Haven, which later became part of Connecticut.
Historically important colonial settlements included: Windsor (1633), Wethersfield (1634), Saybrook (1635), Hartford (1636), New Haven (1638), and New London (1646).
Because the Dutch were outnumbered by the English settlers, they left their fort in 1654.
Connecticut 's first constitution, the "Fundamental Orders," was adopted on January 14, 1639, while its current constitution, the third for Connecticut, was adopted in 1965.
Connecticut is the fifth of the original thirteen states.
The western boundaries of Connecticut have been subject to change over time.
According to a 1650 agreement with the Dutch, the western boundary of Connecticut ran north from the west side of Greenwich Bay "provided the said line come not within 10 miles (16 km) of Hudson River."
On the other hand, Connecticut 's original Charter in 1662 granted it all the land to the "South Sea," i.e. the Pacific Ocean.
This probably added confusion to the early forefathers because the Pacific Ocean is located on the west coast of the United States.
Agreements with New York, the "Pennamite Wars" with Pennsylvania over Westmoreland County, followed by Congressional intervention, and the relinquishment and sale of the Western Reserve lands brought the state to its present boundaries.
Canon law is the term used for the internal Ecclesiastical law of many churches, such as the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Anglican Communion of churches.
The Roman Catholic Church has the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the Western World.
It is older than the common and European civil law traditions.
What began with rules ("canons") adopted by the Apostles themselves at the Council of Jerusalem in the First Century led to a highly complex and original legal system that included norms of the New Testament, of the Hebrew (Old Testament), Roman, Visigothic, Saxon, and Celtic legal traditions with thousands of years of human experience.
Concord is the capital city of the U.S. state of New Hampshire.
The land which Concord now occupies along the banks of the Merrimack River was settled thousands of years ago by Native Americans.
The broad sweeps of the river valley, good soil for farming, and easy transportation on the Merrimack made the site of Concord equally inviting to English-speaking settlers in the eighteenth century.
Settled by immigrants from Massachusetts in 1725, the community grew in prominence during the eighteenth century.
Some of Concord 's earliest houses remain today at the north end of Main Street.
In the years following the American Revolution, the City 's central location made it a logical choice for the state capital, and in 1808 Concord was named the official seat of state government.
Today the 1819 State House is the oldest state capitol in which the legislative branches meet in their original chambers.
This area 's first settlement in 1659 was named Penacook, for the Indian name Pannukog, meaning crooked place or bend in the river.
The first land grant was in 1725, and the town was incorporated as Rumford in 1733.
The name was changed to Concord in 1765 upon resolution of a bitter boundary dispute between Rumford and Bow.
Its central location was the logical choice for state capital, and Concord was so named in 1808.
The State House, built in 1818 and first occupied in 1819, is the oldest in continuous use in the country.
In 1853, the State granted Concord a city charter.
It was in Concord that the Abbotts built the famous Concord Coach, modeled after the coronation coach for King George III.
Granite quarrying has been another major industry, and Concord 's quarries supplied granite for the US Library of Congress.
Concord was home to Franklin Pierce, 14th President of the United States, following his presidency.
Concord had the tenth largest numeric change in population, totaling 12,777 over 50 years, from 27,988 in 1950 to 40,765 in 2000.
The largest decennial percent change was a 22 percent increase between 1980 and 1990; all other decades increased by ten percent or less.
The 2005 Census estimate for Concord was 42,336 residents, which ranked third among New Hampshire 's incorporated cities and towns.
The cosmological argument is an attempt to prove the existence of God by the fact that things exist.
It assumes that things must have a cause, and that the chain of causes can only end by a supernatural event.
Other names for the argument are argument from universal causation, argument from first cause, causal argument and argument from existence.
The universe exists, so there must be something that caused the universe.
The first cause is claimed to be God.
Thomas Aquinas said that God is the only thing that was not caused by something else, and that God created the cause of existence.
The idea has been popular with many theologians and philosophers.
Cow tipping is the myth of tipping over a cow.
Cows do not sleep standing up, so cow tipping does not happen.
The British media Times Online has posted a document of the force needed to push over a cow.
Cassandra or Kassandra (Greek:, also ` Alexandra ') was a person in Greek mythology.
She was the daughter of King Priam of Troy and Hecuba, and twin sister of Helen.
She was famous for her prophesies of bad events.
The god Apollo gave her the gift of prophecy so that she would love him, but Kassandra did not want him.
This made Apollo angry, but he could only change his gift and not take it away.
So he made it that Kassandra could only foresee bad things, and that no one would ever believe her.
In the Trojan War Kassandra knew of the trick with the Trojan Horse, but no one believed her, and so Troy was destroyed.
After the Trojan War she became a slave of Agamemnon.
She warned him that his wife Klytaimnestra would kill him.
But he would not believe her, and so Agamemnon was killed, and Kassandra shortly after him.
There is a work called Alexandra by Lykrophon.
The poet is only known through this work which was done between 196 and 190 BC.
The work has 1474 lines, which are done in jambic trimeters.
This is what most Greek tragedies were written in.
Charlotte Bront (21 April 1816 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet.
She first published her works, including Jane Eyre, under the pseudonym (false name) of Currer Bell.
In 1846, Charlotte encouraged her sisters to print Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
They did not sell well.
Her first novel, The Professor, was rejected by many publishers.
It was not printed until 1857.
She is famous for her novel Jane Eyre (1847), which was very popular when it was printed.
Jane Eyre was a strong story of a plain, brave, clever woman struggling with her passions, reasons, and social condition.
She later wrote the books Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853).
She lived longer than her sisters, but she was only 38 when she died in pregnancy.
Charlotte Bront was the third child of Patrick Bront (formerly "Patrick Brunty"), an Irish Anglican clergyman, and his wife, Maria n e Branwell.
In April 1821, the family moved a few miles to Haworth.
Patrick had been appointed Perpetual Curate there.
Maria Branwell Bront died of cancer on 15 September 1821.
She left her five daughters and a son to be looked after by her sister Elizabeth Branwell.
In August 1824, Charlotte was sent with three of her sisters to the Clergy Daughters ' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire.
She described it as Lowood School in her novel Jane Eyre.
The sisters were Emily, Maria and Elizabeth.
The poor conditions of the school permanently affected Charlotte 's health according to her.
She thought it led to the early deaths of her two elder sisters, Maria (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born 1815).
They died of tuberculosis in June 1825 soon after their father took them from the school on 1 June.
At home in Haworth Parsonage, Charlotte and the other living children (Branwell, Emily and Anne) began writing about the lives and struggles of the dwellers of their imaginary kingdoms.
Charlotte and Branwell wrote Byronic stories about their country Angria Emily and Anne wrote articles and poems about theirs Gondal.
Charlotte went to school at Roe Head, Mirfield, from 1831 to 1832.
There she met her lifelong friends, Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor.
In 1833 she wrote her novella The Green Dwarf under the name of Wellesley.
Charlotte returned as a teacher from 1835 to 1838.
In 1839 she became a governess to various families in Yorkshire, a career she had until 1841.
In 1842 she and Emily traveled to Brussels to enroll in a pensionnat (boarding school) run by Constantin Heger (1809 1896) and his wife Claire Zo Parent Heger (1814 1891).
In return for this, Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music.
Their time at the pensionnat was cut short when Elizabeth Branwell, their aunt, died in October 1842.
Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to be a teacher at the pensionnat.
This stay was not happy.
She became lonely, homesick and deeply attached to Constantin Heger.
She finally returned to Haworth in January 1844 and later used her time at the pensionnat as the inspiration for some of The Professor and Villette.
Celery is a type of vegetable, often used in salad.
Cessna is a company that makes airplanes.
They are in Wichita, Kansas in the United States.
They make small aircraft that can hold 2 to 4 people.
For animals of the mammal order, see Carnivora.
A carnivore is an animal which eats mostly meat.
Predators commonly hunt and kill their own prey.
Scavengers are carnivores which eat animals they did not kill themselves.
Carnivores which eat mainly or only insects are called insectivores.
Carnivores which eat mainly or only fish are called piscivores.
The word "carnivore" describes more than just the scientific order Carnivora.
However, almost all animals in the Carnivora do eat meat, though a few do not.
The Celts were a large group of Caucasian tribes in Europe.
They first appeared in the early Iron Age, around 1200 B.C. in Austria.
It 's an interesting fact that the name ` Celt ' comes from the Romans, and in fact, the Celts would never have used that word themselves.
They came from the Hallstatt and La T ne cultures.
Their culture and genes spread through much of Europe, and by the time the Greeks and later the Romans started emerging, the British Isles and parts of western, southern and eastern Europe were Celtic - the most prominent Celtic tribes were in Gaul.
The Celts spoke Celtic languages.
Today, the Celtic languages that remain are the Breton, Cornish, Welsh and Gaelic languages.
Celtic society and technology, although not as advanced as the Romans, was far from being primitive for its time.
The Celts lived a way of life based on ethical codes and honor codes and had developed a culture of their own, full of unique drawings, sculptures, jewellery, folklore, and building designs and techniques.
They were also skilled in blacksmithing, farming and diplomacy.
Celtic warriors would wear war paint and try to scare their enemies by shouting war cries.
Tribes had different dress standards for battle; some warriors wore chainmail and\/or leather armor, some wore only clothes and some were known to fight fully naked.
They also had their own type of sword that was very strong and a shield that was very protective.
When the Roman Republic started expanding, the Gauls and the Romans became very hostile towards each other and clashed on many occasions; however, the Romans were eventually able to defeat them and ended up conquering most of the Celtic tribes in Europe and ruled them until the fall of the Roman Empire.
Celtic tribes also fought amongst each other.
After winning a battle, the Celts would cut off the heads of their enemies and take them home.
During the fall of the Roman Empire most of the old Celtic land ended up being ruled by migrating Germanic tribes and they merged with Romano-Celtic stock (people with both Roman and Celtic ancestry) to eventually form several European nations of today e.g. France.
Territories that are still considered Celtic are Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Isle of Man, Cornwall and Brittany.
Claude Monet (14 November 1840 5 December 1926) was a French impressionist artist.
One of his most famous paintings was called Water Lilies, which he repeated many times in various conditions.
Monet was born in Paris, France.
His father wanted him to help run the family 's grocery business.
However, Monet wanted to be an artist.
When he was young he met the painter Eug ne Boudin who taught him to use oil paints, and encouraged him to paint out of doors.
Monet joined the French Army in Algeria for two years from 1860-1862.
When he became ill he left the army to study art at university.
He did not like the way art was taught, and joined the painter Charles Gleyre in his studio.
He met other artists here, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley.
They shared their ideas about painting.
In 1866 Monet had a child with Camille Doncieux, who had been his model.
They married in 1870.
In 1870 he moved to England to escape the Franco-Prussian War, and in 1871 he moved to Argenteuil near Paris where he painted some of his most famous pictures.
In 1873 he painted Impression, Sunrise, showing the sea at Le Havre.
When this picture was shown in 1874 one critic took its title and called the group of artists "Impressionists".
He intended to make fun of the artists, but the name has stuck and this is what people today call this style of painting.
In 1879 Camille died of tuberculosis.
Alice Hosched decided to help Monet by taking care of his children as well as her own.
In 1883 they moved to a house in Giverny where Monet planted a large garden.
Monet married Alice in 1892.
Monet found that his garden inspired him to paint pictures of it, particularly the water lilies.
Alice died in 1911, and his son Jean was killed in World War I in 1914.
Monet used broad brush strokes to build up his pictures, and painted quite quickly to try and get the idea of the light he could see into his paintings.
If you go very close to one of his pictures it is hard to see what it shows, but if you stand back everything becomes clear.
His later paintings include series, in which he paints the same subject in different lights.
For example he painted a series of pictures of haystacks in a field, and another series of pictures of the west front of Rouen Cathedral.
Carthage is an ancient city-state in what is now Tunisia.
It began as a Phoenician colony.
In the Aeneid, an old story by Vergil, Aeneas visited Carthage.
He made the Queen of Carthage, Dido, angry and she killed herself as she loved him but he was going to leave her.
Carthage at the height of its power was the foremost power in the Mediterranean Sea, controlling parts of Spain, Sicily, North Africa, Sardinia, and the Balearic islands.
Carthage was a rival for Mediterranean Sea power for the Roman Republic, who wanted to take over the whole western Mediterranean Sea.
Carthage was a large obstacle to that.
So, in 264 BC, the Romans responded to a plea for help by some rebels in Messina, and landed an army in Sicily.
This started the First Punic War.
The Romans then invaded the Carthaginian holdings in Sicily, and the Carthaginian generals could not stop them.
Even at sea, the Romans were able to copy the Carthaginian bireme ships and win several major victories on the sea, even though the Carthaginians had long fought at sea and the Romans were new to this.
Finally, a general named Hamilcar Barca took up the Carthaginian defense in place of the decidedly older, less energetic Hanno.
Hamilcar immediately realized the futility of meeting the superior roman army in open battle, so he decided to use hit-and-run raids to wear down the Romans.
This tactic was slightly more effective against the slow, heavily armored roman troops.
Eventually, however the Romans were able to take lilybaeum, the Carthaginian 's main stronghold in Sicily, effectively ending Carthage 's power in Sicily and ending the First Punic War.
In the Second Punic War, Hannibal Barca led the Carthaginian army through Spain, southern Gaul, and across the Alps, into Italy in 218 BC.
There he clashed with the Roman Republic in 3 major battles: the battle of the River Trebia, the battle of lake Trasmine, and The battle of Cannae.
Hannibal defeated the Romans in stunning victories in each of these battles.
He failed, however, to take Rome, and eventually had to retreat back to Carthage, where he was defeated by Scipio Africanis in the battle of Zama.
The Romans destroyed Carthage in 146 BC, in the third Punic war.
The Carthaginians who survived, numbering about 50,000, were sold into slavery.
The control unit is a circuit inside of the Central Processing Unit (CPU).
It coordinates the activity of all other units in the computer system.
It gives direction to the other parts of computer.
Its main function is to fetch the code from the program, decode it and send the instructions to various units to perform the task.
All computer resources are managed by the CU.
It directs the flow of data between the CPU and the other devices.
The cello is an instrument used to play music.
Its name comes from the Italian language, so it is pronounced chello.
The full word is violoncello, but when speaking, people normally call it the cello.
A person who plays the cello is called a cellist.
The cello is a very popular instrument.
It belongs to the string family.
It has many uses: as a solo instrument, in chamber music and also in orchestras.
It is also occasionally used by pop musicians, e.g. by The Beatles, Bj rk and Jamiroquai.
The cello came into use in the 16th century.
At that time there was a family of instruments called the viols.
The instruments of the violin family were also developing and there were lots of experiments with instruments of different shapes and sizes.
The violone was popular as a bass instrument.
It was similar to a modern double bass.
The name violoncello, means "little violone".
The cello also has 4 strings.
The cello developed as the bass instrument in string groups (the double bass was added later, doubling the bass i.e. playing the same as the cello an octave lower).
It was used to accompany in basso continuo, playing the same as the left hand of the harpsichord player.
When composers started to write concerti grossi (pieces for orchestra and a small group of soloists), they started to give the cello small solos.
In this way the cello started to be used as a solo instrument as well.
Johann Sebastian Bach wrote six very famous suites for solo cello (unaccompanied).
They are among the most beautiful pieces written for the cello.
Other composers started to write works for solo cello.
Joseph Haydn wrote two solo concertos for the instrument.
King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia loved the cello, and he inspired Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to write music with interesting cello parts.
The cello was now an equal with the other string instruments, no longer just playing a simple bass line.
In the 19th century many famous composers wrote cello music.
A lot of them were cellists themselves e.g. Carl Davidov, David Popper and Julius Klengel.
Some very famous composers who wrote important cello music were: Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Dvo k, Faur, Saint-Sa ns, Elgar, Sergei Rakhmaninov.
Two famous pieces written more recently for cello and orchestra are the Cello Symphony by Benjamin Britten and The Protecting Veil by John Tavener.
The parts of the cello are similar to those of the violin.
The strings are tuned to C G D A, (low to high) exactly one octave lower than the viola.
The cello is played sitting down and holding the instrument between the knees.
There is an end-pin which rests on the ground.
This is adjustable in height so that the player can put it in a position to make himself\/herself comfortable.
The cello is normally played with a bow.
The cello has a deep, rich sound.
It starts two octaves below middle C, but can go very high.
For the highest notes the player can use thumb position (a violinist can not do this).
This means that the left thumb is pressing down on one or two strings high up over the fingerboard (high means nearer the bridge where the high notes are.
In fact, it is nearer to the floor).
Although cello music is most frequently written in the bass clef, cello music often goes quite high so that the tenor clef or treble clef are used especially in the solo repertory.
The most famous cellist of the early part of the 1900s was the Spanish cellist Pablo Casals.
He made the cello popular as a solo instrument today.
Casals also discovered the famous Suites for cello by J.S. Bach which had been lost.
Some other famous cellists of the last century include Emanuel Feuermann, Gregor Piatigorski, Paul Tortelier, Jacqueline du Pr and Mstislav Rostropovich.
He left Ireland in 563 AD on his mission to bring Christianity to D l Riata, now western Scotland.
He built the famous monastery on the Island of Iona which became known as a "holy island '.
Columba was born on December 7, 521 A.D. in Gartan, County Donegal.
His his father was Fedhlimidh, a great-grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages, 4th century High King of Ireland.
His mother was Eithne of the U N ill clan.
She was a member of the royal family of Leinster.
While still young he decided on a monastic life.
He was educated in Ireland at schools in Moville, Glasnevin and Clonard Abbey.
He founded the Irish monasteries at Derry and at Durrow, County Offaly.
In about 563 AD, Columba and his followers left Donegal by boat and traveled to the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland.
His mission to Scotland may have been more a case of penance for a battle he may have caused.
He refused to return a copy of the Gospels he had copied without permission.
He upset the king of Ireland by his refusal, which led to a battle won by his clan.
Columba felt remorse over the deaths this caused.
Once there he and his monks began the religious conversion of most of Scotland which at that time was pagan.
Their fame and influence spread to most of Europe.
It became a place of pilgrimage.
It also became known as a holy island where 48 kings of Scotland, 4 kings of Ireland and 8 kings of Norway are buried.
In 597 Comumba died on Iona.
Books on his life began being written a century later.
The best known of these was written by Adomn n sometime between 697 and 700.
He was proclaimed a saint before the modern process of canonization.
The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team in Cleveland, Ohio.
The team plays in the AFC North division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL).
The Cleveland Browns started playing in 1946 as a charter member of the All-America Football Conference and joined the NFL in 1950 after the AAFC folded.
The team has also won four NFL Championships.
It is one of two teams in Ohio after the Cincinnati Bengals.
A carbine is a lighter, shorter type of rifle.
The smaller size and lighter weight of carbines makes them easier to handle.
They are often issued to high-mobility troops such as special-ops soldiers and paratroopers.
Also they can be used by mounted or other non-infantry personnel who do not need full-sized rifles.
The U.S. M4 carbine is a classic example.
Continuous-fire versions may also be described as submachine guns
Crete is the largest of the Greek islands.
Like the Fertile Crescent, Crete had rich soil, a warm climate, and plenty of water.
With less time spent fighting to live, the Cretans began to make complicated things.
From the wild crocus flowers which covered their island, the Cretans collected saffron used in yellow dye, in food, and in medicine.
From the Egyptians, they received rich cloth and jewels.
From the Hittites, they learned how to use iron.
From the wealty Lydians, they learned to use money.
From Phoneicia, the Cretans received the alphabet which is used today.
Cretans chose kings to rule over them for seven years each.
The king was known as Minos, and the people Minoans.
The capital of Crete was Knossos (nos ' us).
Beautiful friezes (decorating bands) were on the walls.
The symbol of the double-ax was used, and is thought to represent the power of a king.
The throne was only a seat with a high back, and the nobles had only benches to sit on.
However, the benches were covered with red and white plaster.
On the walls were painted fish, dolphins, and seaweed.
The queen had her own private staircase so she could go upstairs without bothering the men.
Several rooms in the palace had jars which were six feet tall, and were used to keep wheat, oil, dye and other things.
On Crete the Minoan Culture started 4700 years ago.
The palace of Knossos is well-known and is a labyrinth.
Visitors were lost in the labyrinth unless they used a string behind them to find their way back.
In this place, it was said that a Minotaur, half bull and half man, lived.
Every year seven young men and seven girls were sacrificed to the Minotaur.
Many scholars think sacrifices to a bull were made because the Cretans thought the sound of an earthquake was an angry bull.
The Cretans also worshipped the Great Mother Cybele, or Snake Goddess.
Often, her picture was carved in statues with gold decorations and with snakes curled around the arms.
Snakes were thought to protect houses, so each home had a special room for snakes.
Sometimes a little table with groove cut into it was put in a comfortable place so snakes could sip some milk from a cup.
The Cretans loved games, food, athletics, music, and beautiful clothes.
They were the first people to build stone theaters where many people were amused by parades and music.
Girls could even help bullfighters.
In bullfighting, the Minoans did not kill the bull, but the male fighter had to grab the horns of an attacking bull, throw himself on the back of the animal, and then land on the ground; the girl helped the bullfighter keep his balance.
Women wore long, full skirts with very tiny waists, complicated hairstyles, and lots of jewelry.
The men wore small belts around their waists.
They shaved with stones, rubbed their teeth with pumice stone, and had their body hair burnt by a barber.
The Cretans ate fish, birds, and beef.
They had barley cooked in many ways and ate lots of cheese, nuts, and honey.
They thought only uncivilized people drank cow 's milk, so they drank goat 's milk instead.
The Cretans sang, played games, and guessed riddles.
Even though they ate with their fingers, they had the food cut into tiny pieces before it was served.
The Cretans were peaceful people without fortifications (something like a wall to stop or protect from an attack).
In about 1450 B.C., the Greek Mycenaeans captured Crete, after Knossos, Crete 's capital, had been shaken by an earthquake.
Cyclades is an island group in Greece.
The group of Cyclades includes many islands.
The larger islands of the group is Naxos, Andros, Tinos, Mykonos, Paros, Milos, Thira (or Santorini), Syros, Amorgos, Ios, Kythnos, Kea, Sifnos, Serifos, Sikinos, Folegandros and Anafi.
The group, also includes many others small islands and islets.
Also Cyclades is one of 51 prefectures of Greece.
The capital of Cyclades is the Ermoupolis in the island of Syros.
Computer vision is the science of computers that can see.
Computer vision learns how computers can find things in pictures.
The pictures can come from many places, like movies, cameras, or medical machines.
Computers are much worse at finding things in pictures than people are, so there are many scientists working on computer vision.
This science is like doctors who study how people see.
These doctors work with scientists who study computer vision.
Computer vision is the opposite of computer graphics.
Computer graphics makes new pictures from an idea, but computer vision makes an idea from pictures.
Curry (from Tamil kari) is the English word for any of a general variety of spiced dishes, best known in Indian, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Malaysian, Pakistani, Thai, and other South Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines, though curry has been adopted into many other cuisines.
Curry first came from India.
The idea of curry was later brought to the West by British colonialists in India from the 18th century.
Dishes that are often called curries in Europe and America are rarely called curries in the native language.
Camels are mammals of the Camelidae family.
Camels form the genus Camelus.
They are also called Afro-Asiatic Camelids.
There are two living species of camels.
Camels have existed on Earth since prehistoric times.
Camels live in desert, where it is hot and dry.
Camels have adaptations that help them live in deserts.
They have a thick coat of hair that protects them from the sun.
They have wide, soft feet, so they can walk a long time in the hot sand.
Several adaptations help a camel save water.
Their large feet spreads their weight on the sand when they are walking.
When there is food and water, a camel can eat and drink large amounts and store it as fat in the hump.
Then, when there is no food or water, the camel uses the fat for energy, and the hump becomes small and soft.
A camel s waste contains very little water.
Even the water from the camel s breath flows back into its mouth.
A camel has a naturally adapted temperature regulation - it can change its bodily temperature by six degrees Celsius either way.
It has two sets of eyelashes, closing muscles in the nasal passages with slited nostrils, hairy ears and tough, leathery skin to protect the camels skin in vital emergencies such as a sandstorm.
It has thick rubbery lips to eat dry, prickly plants and a large, haired tail to swat pests such as mosquitos and flies.
It has a long slender neck in order to reach high leaves such as palm trees, and rubbery patches on the belly and knees to protect the skin when kneeling and sitting on the hot sand.
These form after five years of age.
Camels live in groups, with one male, several females, and their young calves.
An unborn camel gestates about 9 to 11 months.
There is usually one calf per birth.
A camel calf can run only a few hours after it is born.
Calves are weaned when they are about 1 year old.
In the desert, people feed camels with grass, grains, wheat and oats.
When camels are traveling in the desert, food is often very hard to find.
So the animal might have to live on dried leaves, seeds, and thorny twigs (without hurting their mouths).
If there is not any regular food, camels will eat anything:, leather, even their owner 's tent.
Camels are ruminants but camels do not chew their food very well before swallowing.
The first stomach stores the food that is not completely chewed.
Later, this food (or cud) returns to the camel 's mouth, and the camel chews it again.
Then the camel swallows the cud and it goes to the other parts of the stomach to be completely digested.
Camels have been domesticated by humans for about 5000 years.
They are used for riding and to carry things, and for meat, milk and wool.
As domesticated animals they are used in Africa, Asia, and since the 19th century also in Australia.
About 900-1000 wild Bactrian Camels still live in China and Mongolia.
There are no wild Dromedaries anymore, but there are escaped domestic Dromedaries in Australia.
Today there are about 50,000 Dromedaries living wild in the Outback in Australia.
A Dromedary and a Bactrian Camel can have hybrid children that are called Tulus or Bukhts.
These hybrids are larger than the Dromedary or Bactrian Camel and have either one long hump or one small and one big hump.
When a camel calf reaches one year of age, the owner often teaches it to stand and kneel on command.
They also learn to carry small, light packs around.
As they grow older, the size of the pack also increases.
Currying is a technnique used in mathematics and computer science that consists of changing a function that takes several arguments into a number of functions that each take one argument.
Mathematicians Moses Sch nfinkel and Gottlob Frege laid the groundwork for this technique, which is named after Haskell Brooks Curry.
Currying is used in Lambda calculus.
Some programming languages, such as ML and Haskell say that functions can only have one argument.
The Carolina Panthers are an American Football team in Charlotte, North Carolina that play in the National Football League.
They play at Bank of America Stadium and played their first game in 1995.
The team has gone to the playoffs 7 times and to the Super Bowl twice.
The most recent appearance was in the 2015 NFL season.
The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team in the National Football League based in Chicago, Illinois.
The Bears were founded in Decatur, Illinois, by George Halas, in 1919.
They were first called the Decatur Staleys, after the A.E. Staley Starch Company which owned the team for its first two seasons.
The team has won nine NFL Championships, with the last being in 1985 (Super Bowl XX).
They also played in Super Bowl XLI in 2006 against the Indianapolis Colts, but they lost 29-17 to Peyton Manning.
The team is owned by Virginia Halas McCaskey, and the general manager is Phil Emery.
The team 's current head coach is Marc Trestman.
The Bears play their home games at Soldier Field.
They played there from 1974-2001 and then 2003-present (Soldier Field was being made new in 2002).
The Bears had played at Wrigley Field from 1921-1970.
Wrigley Field is the home of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, and the Bears were named after the Cubs.
The Cincinnati Bengals are a professional American football team in Cincinnati, Ohio.
They are currently members of the North Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL).
Their first season, 1968, was as an American Football League franchise, but they joined the NFL as part of the 1970 AFL-NFL Merger.
Their current quarterback is Andy Dalton.
The Bengals ' stadium is Paul Brown Stadium, in Cincinnati.
Their uniforms are an orange, black, or white jersey with tiger stripes and black or white pants.
The team chose its name for the fierce and dangerous big cat called the Bengal tiger.
Chrono Trigger is a role-playing video game made by Square Soft for the Super NES game console.
Chrono Trigger follows a young boy named Crono, who goes to see the Millennial Fair.
He meets a girl named Marle at the fair and she follows him.
Crono 's friend, named Lucca, tests a teleporter at the fair.
The machine goes wrong, and sends them back in time.
They soon meet new friends and discover more time periods to go to.
However, they find out an evil monster named Lavos is destroying the world.
It is up to Crono and his friends to stop it.
Chrono Trigger is a role-playing game.
It was one of the first games to let the player see the enemies on the world before they fight them, and when he or she goes into a battle, the enemies and characters fight without going into a separate battle screen like other RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest did at the time.
Chrono Trigger is thought to be one of the best Super NES games, and one of the best role-playing games too.
It got great reviews, praising it for its story, gameplay, and innovation.
Chrono Trigger was first re-released on the PlayStation with Final Fantasy IV on Final Fantasy Chronicles.
It was given good reviews, but reviewers were unhappy with the long load times whenever going into a menu or battle.
Chrono Trigger was re-released for the Nintendo DS as Chrono Trigger DS.
It has the same graphics and extras from the PlayStation version along with other extras such as new dungeons.
Cnidaria is a phylum with about 11,000 species of animals.
All of them are simple and aquatic, and most of them live in the sea.
Some are colonial, composed of zooids which may be clones.
Cnidarian zooids may take the form of polyps or medusae at different phases of their life.
Cnidaria take their name from special cells which have organelles that sting: the nematocysts.
This device is largely responsible for their success: it is their main specialised and distinctive cell type.
The word Cnidaria is spoken without the initial "C", and with a long "i".
So it sounds like "Naidaria".
In a similar way, the term Ctenophore is pronounced as "Teenophore".
Originally, a Greek kappa was in front of the words, and it was pronounced.
There are five classes in the group.
Jellyfish occur in four of the classes.
Unranked, but now known to be cnidarians, is the parasitic group Myxozoa.
The Cnidaria often have complex life cycles, with both sexual and asexual reproduction.
If this is the case, a generation that reproduces asexually will follow a generation that reproduces sexually.
Some Cnidarians, such as Polypodium hydriforme and the group Myxozoa are parasites.
Some live in symbiosis with algae that do photosynthesis.
Most of these algae are dinoflagellates, but sometimes they are green algae.
The algae take the carbon dioxide and produce oxygen and carbohydrates, which the cnidarian uses as source of food.
There is a long fossil record for the corals, and soft-bodied forms appear in some exceptional strata.
Some are believed to be among the Ediacaran biota.
In Conservative Judaism, Jewish values can be divided into ethical and ritual laws - the ethical laws do not change, while the ritual laws are used in different customs.
Because often times Jews have to be a part of the society they live in, some of the ritual laws must be adapted to it.
Such adaptations also allow modern lifestyles.
Another belief in conservative Judaism is that the texts that are the basis of Judaism should not be read literally, and that they can be analyzed and criticized like any other text.
In Conservative Judaism, women are seen as equal to men and are allowed to sit with the men when attending synagogue, whereas in Orthodox Judaism for example, women are expected to sit in a different area.
Women are also allowed to not wear head coverings when attending synagogue.
The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is a desktop environment for Unix.
It is based on the Motif widget toolkit.
HP uses CDE as the default desktop manager for OpenVMS which belongs to HP.
This means it will be run without making any changes.
The Cane Toad (Bufo marinus) is a species of toads.
They are also known as the Giant Neotropical Toad and the Marine Toad.
Cane Toads are love terrestrial amphibians.
This means that they only went back to the water to lay their eggs.
They live in Central America and South America.
However, they have been introduced to Oceania and the Caribbean.
Curling is a sport played on ice.
Players slide curling stones on the ice towards a target, called the house.
There are two teams with four players on each team.
Each team slides eight stones, this is called an end.
After an end the team with the stone closest to the center of the house (target) scores points.
The game is over after eight or ten ends.
The team with the most points is the winner.
The player sliding the stone can make it turn or curl slowly.
Two other players on the team sweep the ice in front of the stone with brooms.
This is to make the stone stop in the right place.
Curling is played at the Winter Olympics.
Curling was invented in Scotland in medieval times.
It was played outside in the winter because there was lots of ice.
Today curling is played all over Europe and in many other countries such as Canada, the United States, Japan and South Korea.
Curling was played at the Winter Olympics for the first time in 1998.
The ice is called a curling sheet.
It is a rectangular sheet of flat ice, between 146 and 150 feet (45-46 metres) long and 14.5 to 15.5 feet (4.4-5.0 metres) wide.
The house, or target, is marked at the end of the sheet by colored rings.
The rings help players to aim for the center of the house.
They are also useful to decide which stone is closest to the center when scoring.
There is also a hack at the end of the sheet which players push against when sliding a stone.
Curling stones are made of granite.
They are heavy, weighing 38-40 pounds (17-20kg).
There is a handle on the top of each stone to help slide and turn the stone.
The handles are different colors for each team.
The stones are usually red for one team and yellow for the other team.
Curling brooms or brushes are used to sweep the ice in front of the stone when it is sliding.
Players wear special shoes for curling.
One shoe has a smooth surface for sliding on the ice.
The purpose of the game is to score points by getting stones close to the center of the house.
Players from each team take turns to slide a stone towards the house.
This is called delivering or throwing a stone.
An end is completed when all stones have been delivered.
There are eight stones for each team.
The winner is the team with the most points after all ends have been played.
There are usually eight or ten ends.
The captain of the team is called the skip.
The skip chooses how hard the stone should be delivered, the direction of delivery, and the amount of turn (curl) that the stone should be given.
The skip can choose to aim the stone for the house, hit one of the other team 's stones out of play, or make a stone stop before the house as a guard if their team has a stone in a good position.
The player delivering the stone starts at the hack.
The skip stands at the other end of the curling sheet behind the house.
The skip shows where to aim the stone.
The other two players sweep the ice in front of the stone as it slides.
The players take turns to deliver stones.
When the skip is delivering a stone another player stands behind the house instead.
To deliver a stone the player puts one foot on the hack.
The player lines up towards the skip.
The stone is on the ice in front of the foot in the hack.
The player then slides the stone back before sliding forwards on their other foot.
The player lets go of the stone, gently turning the handle just before letting go to give the stone curl.
Then the other players can sweep the stone.
Sweeping helps the stone to travel faster, and makes it curl less.
The aim of sweeping is to help the stone stop in the right place.
Points are scored at when an end has finished.
The team with the stone closest to the center of the house wins the end.
The team scores one point for every stone that is closer to the center than the other team 's closest stone.
Only stones that are in the house count for scoring.
If it is difficult to see which stone is closest to the center of the house there are special measuring devices to help.
Sometimes neither team scores any points, this is called a blank end.
Craven Cottage is a football stadium in the Hammersmith area of London, England.
It is the home ground of Fulham F.C..
It is called Craven Cottage after the cottage in the corner of the stadium.
Cedar Falls is a city of Iowa in the United States.
It is part of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls region.
University of Northern Iowa was established in Cedar Falls.
The Cleveland Indians are a Major League Baseball team.
They are part of the American League Central Division.
The Indians won two World Series championships in 1920 and 1948.
In their early years, they were often called the Cleveland Naps, in honor of the player-manager Nap Lajoie.
After he retired, the team looked for a new nickname.
They settled on "Indians" for the 1915 season, partly in honor of the Boston Braves who had won the 1914 World Series.
In more modern times, their nickname is often thought to be a poor choice.
It is considered offensive to name a team for a race or ethnic group.
However, there has been no serious effort to change the name.
Cape Town is the legislative capital and the second biggest city of South Africa.
It is on the south-west coast.
It has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate.
It was originally called the "Cape of Storms" by Bartolomeu Dias in 1486, a Portuguese explorer but was changed by King John II of Portugal to "Cape of Good Hope".
The city 's most predominant feature is Table Mountain, a mountain with a flat top.
The Chicago Cubs are a Major League Baseball team that plays in Chicago, Illinois.
The Cubs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on October 12, 2009.
The Cubs were started in 1870.
They originally wore all-white uniforms and were called the Chicago White Stockings.
(The current Chicago White Sox got their nickname from the Cubs ' original nickname.)
By the 1890s the team was called the "Colts".
In the early 1900s, the nicknames "Colts" and "Cubs" were both used.
The name "Cubs" became official in 1906.
The team was very successful in its early years.
They won the first National League championship in 1876.
They won several pennants in the 1880s and then again in the early 1900s.
The won the World Series in both 1907 and 1908.
They have not won a World Series since then, and last appeared in the Series in 1945.
They played poorly for over 20 years after that.
During the early 1930s, future President Ronald Reagan broadcasted for the Cubs during his early years.
Since the 1980s they have been in several postseason series, but have not reached the World Series.
The Wrigley family, founders of the Wrigley Gum Company, owned the team from about 1920 to about 1980.
The Chicago Tribune bought the team and operated them for close to 30 years.
They were sold to the Ricketts family in 2009.
When playing home games in Chicago, the Cubs play at Wrigley Field.
The stadium was built in 1914 and has been the home playing field of the Cubs since 1916.
During games, the stadium is filled with Cubs fans, who are known for always cheering for their team, even if they are not winning.
Even though the Cubs currently hold the record for the longest championship dry spell in all of American professional sports, their fans remain loyal to them.
The name "Billy Goat" comes from a bar known to reporters as Billy Goat 's Tavern, located on lower Wacker drive in downtown Chicago.
By the time the story of this "curse" started to get out, all the main characters were conveniently dead.
During the 1945 World Series, a man by the name of Vasili "Billy Goat" Sianis attended Game 4 of the series with his pet goat.
During the 7th inning of the game, the Stadium 's security guards asked Sianis to leave the stadium because his goat was bothering other fans.
Sianis became angry and cursed the Cubs, saying that they would never win a World Series as long as they played at Wrigley Field.
Although the curse is often seen as a joke for most Cubs fans, some fans think it could be the reason why the Cubs have not won a World Series title.
Cuisine refers to any style of cooking, including its practices, traditions and recipes.
A cuisine is usually associated with a specific culture.
It is mainly influenced by the ingredients that are available to that culture.
Cooking methods, customs and ingredients together form meals that are unique to a particular region.
When people talk about Italian cuisine, they are referring to the food that Italians are famous for.
Cuisine is a French word that means "kitchen", but it originally comes from the Latin word coquere, which means "to cook".
Traditionally, cuisines are shaped by a number of things.
In some religious traditions, certain foods are forbidden by law (an example is in Judaism).
Climate and trade affect the what ingredients are available.
Climate may also affect the methods by which food is prepared.
Before the exploration of Asia and America by Europeans, certain foods were not known to European cuisine.
Tomatoes, maize, avocados and cacao, for example, did not enter European diets until merchants brought these ingredients back from the New World.
In modern times, cuisines are becoming more and more multicultural.
New cuisines continue to develop even today.
Clyde William Tombaugh (February 4, 1906January 17, 1997) was an American astronomer known for discovering Pluto in 1930.
Tombaugh was born in Streator, Illinois.
After his family moved to Burdett, Kansas, Tombaugh planned to attend college.
After a hailstorm ruined his family 's farm crops, he no longer had money for the expense of college.
After he discovered Pluto, he did go to college at the University of Kansas and graduated with two degrees in astronomy.
The Colorado Rockies are a Major League Baseball team in Denver, Colorado.
They are named for the Rocky Mountains, which are often called "The Rockies".
Denver itself is within the Rocky Mountains, a mile above sea level.
Cement is a brown or gray material that keeps other materials together.
Portland cement is a common kind, made from quicklime (heated limestone) and clay, and is used to make concrete..
The Cincinnati Reds are a Major League Baseball from Cincinnati, Ohio, are the oldest team in professional baseball, established in 1869.
The was knowns as the Cincinnati Red Stockings until 1878, when the team changed the name to the current Cincinnati Reds.
The Reds joined the National League in 1876 The Reds have won World Series championships in 1919, 1940, 1975, 1976 and 1990.
The strong Reds teams of the 1970s were nicknamed "The Big Red Machine".
From 1912 to 1970, the Reds home stadium was Crosley Field, from 1970-2002 home games were played at Riverfront Stadium.
Since 2003 the Reds have played home games at Great American Ballpark
The Central Powers were a group of nations fighting against the Allied Powers during World War I; the members included Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria and their territories.
They were also supported by Azerbaijan and Finland, as well as Lithuania in 1918 and co-belligerent Jabal Shammar.
They lost the war.
The Allied Forces include Great Britain, Canada, Newfoundland, Russia, France, later the United States, Greece, Portugal, Brazil, Georgia, Armenia, Australia and even Japan
Italy joined the allies in the midst of World War I, though all they wanted was to get some colonies.
This greed lasted till World War II, but Italy did not gain anything they wanted to.
In the middle of the war Germany gave up on them and took over Greece, so Italy joined the Alies, falling against their alliance with Germany once more They also wanted to destroy the Allies with tanks which were left on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
Conservatism is opposition to rapid changes, and promotes keeping traditions in society.
Gradualism is one form.
The first known use of the term in a political context was by Fran ois-Ren de Chateaubriand in 1818.
This was during the period of Bourbon restoration that sought to roll back the policies of the French Revolution.
The term is associated with right-wing politics.
It has been used to describe a wide range of views.
There is no single set of policies that are regarded as conservative, because the meaning of conservatism depends on a given place and time.
Conservatism tends to support the notion of faith, particularly in Abrahamic traditions in countries where those are the main religions.
In England, the publication of Edmund Burke s book Reflections on the revolution in France.
In his book, he suggested people should be satisfied, and advocated a caring government.
The two ideas go together.
Some conservatives seek to keep things as they are, while others want a return to the way things were at an earlier time.
A conservative party in England formed which wanted better co-operation between rich and poor, democracy, and some aspects of a welfare state.
This was also favored by conservatives in France and other parts of Europe.
In the United States, conservatives were wary of centralism, suspicious of the welfare state and considered businessmen trustworthy on wages and prices.
Classical liberalism is a type of liberalism.
It is a belief in economics and a political ideology.
It emphasizes civil and economic freedom.
Classical liberals believe in a small government, and believe that people will be ruled mostly by natural law.
They believe that people have inalienable rights.
They also believe in a free market and property rights.
Notable people who developed classical liberalism during the 18th and 19th century are Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus and Thomas Jefferson.
More recently, in the mid-20th century, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman were in favor.
Many of the beliefs of classical liberalism are similar to those of libertarianism.
Cats, also called domestic cats (Felis catus), are carnivorous (meat-eating) mammals, of the family Felidae.
Cats have been domesticated (tame) for nearly 10,000 years.
They are currently the most popular pets in the world.
Their origin is probably the African Wildcat Felis silvestris lybica.
Cats were probably first kept because they ate mice, and this is still their main ` job ' in farms throughout the world.
Later they were kept because they are friendly and good companions.
A young cat is called a kitten.
Cats are sometimes called kitty or pussycat.
An entire female cat is a queen, and an entire male cat is a tom.
Domestic cats are found in shorthair and longhair breeds.
Cats which are not specific breeds can be referred to as ` domestic shorthair ' (DSH) or ` domestic longhair ' (DLH).
The word ` cat ' is also used for other felines.
Felines are usually classed as either big cats or small cats.
The big cats are well known: lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, pumas, and cheetahs.
There are small cats in most parts of the world, such as the lynx in northern Europe.
The big cats and wild cats are not tame, and can be very dangerous.
In the past, people kept cats because the cats hunted and ate mice, rats, and insects.
The oldest evidence of cats kept as pets is from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, around 7500 BC.
Ancient Egyptians worshipped cats as gods, and often mummified them so they could be with their owners "for all of eternity".
(They also mummified mice so the cats would have something to eat in the afterlife.)
Today, people often keep cats as pets, but there are also cats that live without being cared for by people.
These kinds of cats are called "feral cats".
Today, special food for cats is widely available in the developed countries.
Proper feeding will make a cat live much longer compared to hunting or being fed table scraps.
Not correctly feeding a cat can lead to problems (see below for health concerns).
Cats can not taste sweet foods (with sugar) because of a mutation (change) in their ancestors which removed the ability to taste sweet things.
Cats have anatomy similar to the other members of the genus Felis.
The genus has extra lumbar (lower back) and thoracic (chest) vertebrae.
This helps to explain the cat 's spinal mobility and flexibility.
Unlike human arms, cat forelimbs are attached to the shoulder by free-floating clavicle bones.
These allow cats to pass their body through any space into which they can fit their heads.
The cat skull is unusual among mammals in having very large eye sockets and a powerful and specialized jaw.
Compared to other felines, domestic cats have narrowly spaced canine teeth: this is an adaptation to their preferred prey of small rodents.
Cats, like dogs, walk directly on their toes, with the bones of their feet making up the lower part of the visible leg.
Cats walk very precisely.
Unlike most mammals, when cats walk, they use a "pacing" gait; that is, they move the two legs on one side of the body before the legs on the other side.
This trait is shared with camels and giraffes.
As a walk speeds up into a trot, a cat 's gait will change to be a "diagonal" gait, similar to that of most other mammals: the diagonally opposite hind and forelegs will move at the same time.
Most cats have five claws on their front paws, and four on their rear paws.
On the inside of the front paws there is something which looks like a sixth "finger".
This special feature, on the inside of the wrists, is the carpal pad, also found on other cats and on dogs.
Cats are active carnivores, meaning they hunt live prey.
Their main prey is small mammals (like mice).
They will also stalk, and sometimes kill and eat, birds.
Cats eat a wide variety of prey, including insects, and seem especially to like house flies and bluebottles.
Their main method of hunting is stalk and pounce.
While dogs have great stamina and will chase prey over long distances, cats are extremely fast, but only over short distances.
The basic cat coat coloring, tabby (see top photo), gives it good camouflage in grass and woodland.
The cat creeps towards a chosen victim, keeping its body flat and near to the ground so that it can not be seen easily, until it is close enough for a rapid dash or pounce.
Cats, especially kittens, practice these instinctive behaviors in play with each other or on small toys.
Cats are quiet and well-behaved animals, making them popular pets.
Young kittens are playful.
They can easily entertain themselves with a variety of store-bought or homemade toys.
House cats have also been known to teach themselves to use lever-type doorknobs and toilet handles.
Cats are fairly independent animals.
They can look after themselves and do not need as much attention as dogs do.
Cats use many different sounds for communication, including meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling, squeaking, chirping, clicking and grunting.
Body posture is also important.
The whole shape of the body changes when a cat is relaxed, or when it is alert.
Also, the position of their ears and tail are used for communication, as well as their usual functions.
These ways of communication are very important.
They are used between a mother cat and her kittens.
They are also used between male and female cats; and between cats and other species, such as dogs.
A mother cat protecting her kittens will fight off the largest dog.
She gives good warning with a frightening display, hissing furiously, showing her claws, arching her back, and making her hair stand on end.
If that fails, she attacks the dog 's face with her claws.
It has been said that no dog ever tries such an attack a second time.
Cats only mate when the queen is "in heat".
Heat periods occur about every two weeks and last 4 to 6 days.
Mating in cats is a spectacular event.
Several toms may be attracted to a queen in heat.
The males will fight over her, and the victor wins the right to mate.
At first, the female will reject the male, but eventually the female will allow the male to mate.
The female will utter a loud yowl as the male pulls out of her.
This is because a male cat 's penis has a band of about 120-150 backwards-pointing spines, which are about one millimeter long; upon withdrawal of the penis, the spines rake the walls of the female 's vagina, which is a trigger for ovulation.
After mating, the female will wash her vulva thoroughly.
If a male attempts to breed with her at this point, the female will attack him.
After about 20 to 30 minutes.
once the female is finished grooming, the cycle will repeat.
Because ovulation is not always triggered, females may not get pregnant by the first tom which mates with them.
A queen may mate with more than one tom when she is in heat, and different kittens in a litter may have different fathers.
The cycle ceases when the queen is pregnant.
The gestation period for cats is about two months, with an average length of 66 days.
The size of a litter is usually three to five kittens.
Kittens are weaned at between six and seven weeks, and cats normally reach sexual maturity at 5 10 months (females) and to 5 7 months (males).
Females can have two to three litters per year, so might produce up to 150 kittens in their breeding life of about ten years.
Pregnant queens deliver their litters by themselves, guided by instinct.
The queen finds the safest place she can.
Then she will clean it thoroughly, with her tongue, if necessary.
Here she will quietly give birth.
She licks the newborn kits clean.
In the wild, leaving a scent is risking a dangerous encounter with other animals.
The kits are born blind and with closed eyes.
They suckle on her teats, and sleep a good deal.
After two weeks or so, their eyes open.
At that stage they have hair and blue eyes.
A bit later, the best developed kit will totter out of the nest.
The others follow.
They will soon recognize you as a living thing: that is a great moment.
At first, they go back to the nest to feed and sleep.
After some more days they leave the nest for good, but still they may sleep together in a ` kitten heap '.
The queen, meanwhile, has left the nest from time to time, to hunt, feed, and also to urinate and defecate.
Unlike the tom, she covers up her business to hide her scent.
Very soon, the kits will urinate anywhere they please unless one trains them.
This is done after they are weaned, when they are ready for some kitten food.
Here is how to do it: 1.
Prepare clean cat tray filled with absorbent grit.
2.
Give kittens their special kitten food.
3.
Take the lead kitten right after it has eaten, place it in your cat tray.
4.
Gently stroke its tummy with one finger.
5.
Watch as kitten sits down promptly and urinates.
Do same for other kits.
6.
Repeat next time if they need it.
They will not need a third time.
What you have done is exactly what the queen would do in the wild.
You have triggered a reflex which all kittens have.
The thing is, the tray is artificial, and your queen may do her business outside.
But at least when young, kittens need a tray.
Your next job is to call the vet, who will tell you when to bring the kits for their vaccination.
Kittens play endlessly.
It is how they do their learning.
They will play their favorite games, such as ` hide and pounce ', with almost anyone or anything.
Soft balls on strings are a standard toy; so is a scratching post.
With cats there is a limit to how far you can train them.
They are at least as intelligent as dogs, but they are not pack animals.
They like to do their own thing, and owners do best by fitting in.
Never hit a cat: if you do, the relationship will never be the same again.
If you really want to dissuade them, try hissing.
Also, a noise they do not like will make them leave.
It has been said that no one really owns a cat; many cats collect extra owners, and may change house if they do not like the treatment...
If your kitten was born in your home do not let it out of the house until it is two to three months old.
If you have the mother, she will look after the kit.
But if you have got the kit from a vet or dealer, keep it in for several weeks.
When it does go out, you need to watch over it.
The main problem is that it may easily get lost.
In time, the kit will learn every inch of the house and garden.
Then, you can happily let it roam.
Cats are very clean animals.
They groom themselves by licking their fur.
The cat 's tongue can act as a hairbrush and can clean and untangle a cat 's fur.
Still, owners may buy grooming products to help the cat take care of itself.
After licking their fur, cats sometimes get hairballs.
A hairball is a small amount of fur that is vomited up by animals when it becomes too big.
This is quite normal.
Owners brush their cats to try to prevent a lot of hairballs.
Many house cats eat food which their owners give them.
This food is manufactured, and designed to contain the right nutrients for cats.
There are many different types of cat food.
These come in many different flavors and costs are often very small.
There is moist canned food and also dry cat food which comes in different sized cans or bags and formulas.
There are kitten formulas, cat formulas, health formulas, formulas for reducing a cat 's weight, and many others.
These can even be organic (made from all natural ingredients), and have vegetables, salmon, tuna, meat, and milk essence.
Yet, it 's best if the food is at least 95 % meat, as that 's a cat 's diet.
Also, make sure the cat is not fed a daily diet of dog food.
It could make the cat blind, as it has no taurine, which is a nutrient for the eyes.
Cats do get diseases, and prevention is better than cure.
It is most important to get a young cat vaccinated against some of the most deadly diseases.
If a cat gets a disease, a veterinarian (animal doctor) can offer help.
Some cats, depending on breed, gender, age, and general health, may be more susceptible to disease than others.
Regular visits to a vet can keep a cat alive many extra years by catching sickness and disease early.
Cats that roam outside will get fleas at some time.
Cat fleas will not live on people, but fleas will not hesitate to bite anyone nearby.
Owners may choose to buy anti-flea collars, but any areas where the cat normally sleeps need to be cleaned up.
A vet or local pet-shop may offer advice about fleas.
It is recommended that people quickly take action when a cat gets fleas because fleas can make cats uncomfortable.
House cats can become overweight through lack of exercise and over-feeding.
When they get spayed or neutered ("fixed"), they tend to exercise less.
Spaying is done for queens, and neutering is done for toms.
It is important to fix cats, and here are some reasons.
First of all, if a female cat has kittens, they will need homes.
Finding homes for kittens is often quite difficult.
If a tom is not fixed, it develops a disgusting smell.
Breeders who have entire toms keep them in a special hut outside the house, for that reason.
Fixing also helps to avoid over-population.
Over-population means that there are too many cats, and some will be put to sleep (put down) in animal pounds (animal shelters).
Kittens are sometimes born with defects.
People who receive cats as gifts are recommended to get it examined for its health.
Some birth defects, like heart problems, require urgent vet attention.
Others are harmless, like polydactyly.
Polydactyly means many digits, or many "fingers" from poly (many) and dactyl (digit).
Sometimes, there is a mutation (change) in cat families.
Most cats have only four to five toes per paw, depending on whether it is the front or back paw.
These mutated cats have six, seven, and in rare cases even more.
All of these cats are called polydactyl cats.
They can also be called Hemingway cats because author Ernest Hemingway owned many of these cats.
There are quite a number of reference books on cats.
Look for titles like Encyclopedia of the cat, or Cat encyclopedia.
Coca-Cola, is a carbonated, sweetened soft drink and is the world 's best-selling drink.
Another name is Coke.
The Coca-Cola Company claims that the beverage is sold in more than 200 countries.
The company 's headquarters are in Atlanta, Georgia.
Coca-Cola 's main rival is Pepsi.
Coca-Cola was first made in the 1800s by John Pemberton.
The first sales were at Jacob 's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886.
They sold it there for five cents a glass, but it was very strong tasting because they did not mix it with water.
Coca-Cola was first made the way it is now in Columbus, Georgia.
It was called Pemberton 's French Wine Coca at first, and was sold as a medicine to help cure colds and give people more energy.
The drink used to be sold at soda fountains in the United States.
Coca-Cola was first sold in bottles in Atlanta on March 12, 1894 with actual cocaine content.
It was first sold in cans in 1955.
During the first year, sales were about only nine drinks per day.
Dr. Pemberton did not think he could make a lot of money with the drink he invented, so he sold parts of his business to different people.
Just before he died in 1888, he sold the rest of his Coca-Cola business to Asa G. Candler.
Mr Candler, together with some other businessmen, started the Coca-Cola Company.
The drink is called "Coca-Cola" because of the coca leaves and kola fruits that were used to add flavor.
Dr. Pemberton 's partner and bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, suggested the name "Coca-Cola" because he thought using the letter C twice would look better than if they used a K in the word "Cola".
He then wrote down the name to use as a logo that is now very famous.
Coca-Cola was the first ever sponsor of the Olympic Games.
This was for the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam.
The company sells many other products, including other sorts of Coca-Cola, such as Diet Coke (1981), Cherry Coke (1985), Diet Cherry Coke (1986), Diet \/ Coke with Lemon (2001), Diet \/ Vanilla Coke (2002), Diet \/ Coke with Lime (2004), Coke Zero (2006), Coca Cola with Orange (2007), Diet Coke Citrus Zest (2007).
Based on Interbrand 's best global brand 2011, Coca-Cola was the world 's most valuable brand.
A citadel is a large fortress mainly used to protect towns or castles from attacks or disaster, though citadels have been built for other reasons as well.
The oldest known citadels were built in the Indus Valley Civilization, where the citadel may have been used as a symbol of authority, no one is fully sure about their purpose.
In Ancient Greece, the Acropolis was important in the life of the people, serving as a refuge and stronghold in peril and containing military and food supplies, the shrine of the god and a royal palace.
The most well-known is the Acropolis of Athens, but nearly every Greek city-state had one - the Acrocorinth famed as a particularly strong fortress.
The Citadelle of Quebec still survives as the largest citadel still in official military operation in North America after more than two hundred years of existence.
Kerberos (Latin Cerberus) is a creature in Greek mythology, like a hound (dog) with three heads.
It belongs to Hades, and it guards the gate of the Greek underworld.
Cerberus is a Hellhound and is related to another mythical animal, the Chimera (part goat, part lion, part snake).
Cerberus makes sure the dead stay within the gates and the living stay away from them.
However, the Greeks did note in their myths that Cerberus was a fan of sweet things like honey cakes (The myth of Eros and Psyche) and music (The myth of Orpheus in the Underworld).
Another way to become friends with the animal was to talk to his owner, Hades, the Lord of the Underworld (The labors of Hercules).
Cerbus is the son of Typhon and echidna.
CamelCase (camel case, camel caps or medial capitals) is the practice of writing compound words or phrases so that each next word or abbreviation begins with a capital letter.
CamelCase usually starts with a capital.
When used in a programming language, it usually starts with a lowercase letter.
Common examples are PowerPoint or iPhone.
There are many variations of CamelCase.
A few important ones are:
The first use of medial capitals was the notation for chemical formulae invented by the Swedish chemist Berzelius in 1813.
He did this to replace the large amount of naming and symbol systems used by chemists at that time.
He suggested to show each chemical element by a symbol of one or two letters, the first one being capitalized.
The capitalization allowed formulae like ` NaCl ' to be written without spaces and still be read without confusion.
This system is still in use today.
Despite its unclear origins inside the computing world, the practice spread in the 1980s and 1990s, when the personal computer became popular and exposed hacker culture to the world.
CamelCase then became popular for business names.
By 1990, it was very common to see CamelCase used in this way:
During the late 1990s when the internet became far more popular and easily available, the lowercase prefixes "e" (for "electronic") and "i" (for "Internet", "information", "intelligent", etc.) became quite common, and we began to see names like Apple 's iMac and the eBox computer program.
The original name of the practice, used in media studies, grammars and the Oxford English Dictionary, was "medial capitals".
The fancier names such as "InterCaps", "CamelCase" and other variations are pretty recent and seem more common in computer-related communities.
The earliest known occurrence of the term "InterCaps" on Usenet is in an April 1990 post to the group alt.folklore.com puters by Avi Rappoport, with "BiCapitalization" appearing slightly later in a 1991 post by Eric S. Raymond to the same group.
The earliest use of the name "CamelCase" occurs in 1995, in a post by Newton Love.
"With the advent of programming languages having these sorts of constructs, the humpiness of the style made me call it HumpyCase at first, before I settled on CamelCase.
I had been calling it CamelCase for years," said Love, "The citation above was just the first time I had used the name on USENET."
The use of medial caps for identifiers is recommended by many organizations and software projects.
For some languages (such as Mesa, Pascal, Modula, Java and Microsoft 's.
NET) CamelCase is recommended by the language developers or by important manuals and has therefore become part of the language 's "culture".
Style guidelines often distinguish between upper and lower CamelCase.
They usually specify which one should be used for certain kinds of things: variables, record fields, methods, procedures, types, etc..
This is sometimes supported by static analysis tools that check source code to make sure it is following these guidelines.
CamelCase is used in some wiki markup languages for terms that should be automatically linked to other wiki pages.
This convention was originally used in Ward Cunningham 's original wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, and can be activated in most other wikis.
Some wiki engines such as TiddlyWiki, Trac and PMWiki use it in the default settings.
They also usually provide a option or plugin to disable it.
Wikipedia used to use CamelCase linking.
However, they have switched to explicit link markup using square brackets and many other wiki sites have done the same.
Some wikis that do not use CamelCase linking may still use the CamelCase as a naming convention, such as AboutUs.
The NIEM registry requires that XML data elements use upper CamelCase and XML attributes use lower CamelCase.
Most popular command-line interfaces and scripting languages usually ca n't handle file names that contain embedded spaces.
Because of this, users of those systems often use to CamelCase (or underscores, hyphens and other "safe" characters) for compound file names like MyJobResume.
pdf.
Microblogging and social networking sites that limit the number of characters in a message (most famously Twitter, where the 140-character limit can be quite restrictive in languages that rely on alphabets, including English) are usually outlets for medial capitals.
Using CamelCase between words reduces the number of spaces, and thus the number of characters in a given message.
This allows more content to fit into the limited space.
CamelCase has been used in languages other than English for several purposes.
Some examples are:
CamelCase is sometimes used in the writing or translation of certain scripts as a way to tell the difference between ceratin letters or markings.
An example is the rendering of Tibetan proper names like rLobsang: the "r" here stands for a prefix glyph in the original script that functions as tone marker rather than a normal letter.
Another example is tsIurku, a Latin transcription of the Chechen term for the capping stone of the characteristic Medieval defensive towers of Chechenia and Ingushetia; the capital letter "I" here showing a phoneme different from the one transcribed as "i".
CamelCase may also be used when writing proper names in languages that add prefixes to words.
In some of those languages, the custom is to leave the prefix in lower case and capitalize the root.
This convention is used in Irish orthography as well as Scots Gaelic orthography; e.g., ("in Galway"), from ("Galway"); ("the Scottish person"), from ("Scottish person"); ("to Ireland"), from ("Ireland).
Similarly, when translating the Hebrew language, haIvri means "the Hebrew person" and biYerushalayim means "in Jerusalem".
This convention is also used by several Bantu languages (e.g., kiSwahili = "Swahili language", isiZulu = "Zulu language") and several indigenous languages of Mexico (e.g. Nahuatl, Totonacan, Mixe Zoque and some Oto-Manguean languages).
Abbreviations of some academic qualifications are sometimes presented in CamelCase without punctuation, e.g. PhD or BSc.
In French, CamelCase acronyms such as OuLiPo (1960) were favored for a time as alternatives to initialisms.
CamelCase is often used to transliterate initialisms into alphabets where two letters may be required to represent a single character of the original alphabet, e.g., DShK from Cyrillic.
In several languages, including English, pronouns and possessives may be capitalized to show respect.
For example: when referring to the reader of a formal letter or to God.
In some of those languages, the capitalization is retained even when those words occur within compound words or suffixed to a verb.
For example, in Italian one would write ("offering to You respectful salutations") or ("adore Him").
In German nouns carry a grammatical gender which, for roles or job titles, is felt usually as masculine.
Since the feminist movement of the 1980s, some writers and publishers have been using the feminine title suffixes - in (singular) and - innen (plural) to help boost the inclusion of women; but written with a capital ` I ', to indicate that males are not excluded.
Example: ("co-workers, male or female") instead of ("co-workers", masculine grammatical gender) or ("female co-workers").
This use is analogous to the use of parentheses in English, for example in the phrase "congress (wo) man."
In German, the names to statutes are shortened using embedded capitals.
An example would be: StGB (Strafgesetzbuch) for criminal code, PatG (Patentgesetz) for Patent Act or the very common GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschr nkter Haftung) for Company with Limited Liability.
Cereal usually refers to a type of grass that is grown to be eaten.
It is a common breakfast meal.
The kind of cereal eaten for breakfast is called breakfast cereal.
This is made of grain, and usually eaten with milk in the United States.
It is often sweetened with sugar, syrup, or fruit.
There is a large variety of cereals.
Some types of breakfast cereal include Cheerios, Kellogg 's, Cocoa Puffs and various other brands.
Most breakfast cereals are targeted to be sold to kids, but there are many for adults as well.
Some adult cereals are made for diets or other health benefits.
The word "cereal" comes from ` Ceres ', the name of the Roman goddess of harvest and agriculture.
Grains are called corn in the United Kingdom and Ireland, but in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand corn means maize.
In the 19th century, Americans ate meat a lot for breakfast and usually did not eat grains and fiber.
But after that, people who were interested in eating more healthy foods began a push for healthy breakfasts.
This brought up the creation of Granula.
The name Granula comes from granulates, formed of grain.
In 1863 this became the first breakfast cereal and included heavy nuggets made from bran, the outer husk of a grain that is taken out when making flour.
The cereal had to be soaked overnight before being eaten.
Simply pouring milk over it was not enough to make it eatable.
The cereals eaten today grew out of a health campaign that began in the 1860s.
Thin baked dough served to patients in hospitals inspired two men, C.W. Post and W. K. Kellogg.
These two men started their own companies, named them after themselves.
Christendom or the Christian world, in the widest sense, means Christianity as a territorial phenomenon.
That means: those countries where most people are Christians and because of that are part of Christendom.
People have used the term Christendom for the medieval and renaissance understanding of the Christian world as one single Body of Christ with Christ as the head.
With the rise of Modernity and the Reformation during the early 16th century the understanding changed to a modern idea of a tolerant and diverse society that consists of many different communities.
Coyote (Canis latrans) is an animal of the Canidae family.
The word "coyote" comes from the N huatl (Aztec) word c yotl.
The color of the coyote 's fur is a grayish brown to yellowish gray on the upper parts, while the throat and underside are a more white color.
The forelegs, sides of the head, muzzle and feet are reddish brown.
Coyotes live only in North America and some areas of Central America.
They live in the countryside, but also in cities too.
The coyote is found throughout North America from California up to as far as Alaska.
They normally live in dens about 6 feet wide and four feet tall.
The coyote is an omnivore and can eat many kinds of food: fruits, grasses, and vegetables in the autumn and winter months along with small animals, for example rabbits, mice, shrews, voles, and foxes.
They also eat birds, deer, snakes, and lizards.
In the city, coyotes find food easily.
They dig up plants in gardens and eat food out of garbage cans.
Sometimes, they join small packs (groups), but normally hunt alone.
Coyotes live in dens.
They dig a tunnel under the ground and then dig out a larger area at the end of the tunnel where they sleep and have their babies or pups.
They can have six pups at a time.
Often a coyote den will have two entrances, with one that is hidden.
Sometimes they dig more than one den, so they can move if an enemy finds the den.
Coyotes do not have many enemies.
Wolves used to eat coyotes, but there are not many wolves left in North America compared to the number of coyotes.
The biggest enemy of the coyote is people.
They do not usually attack people, but sometimes eat small pets such as cats.
The coyote is a character of many myths from Native American peoples.
The coyote is often portrayed as a joker, and stories are told to explain things he does.
For example, why he barks at the moon.
Columbia is a city in the U.S. state of Missouri.
It is home to the University of Missouri.
Charlton Athletic Football Club, is an English football club.
The club plays in the Football League One.
Cross-country skiing (sometimes shortened to XC skiing) is a form of skiing where the participants ski across the terrain, rather than down a hill as in alpine skiing.
It has been an event during the Olympic Winter Games since the 1924 start.
In baseball, the Cy Young Award is an honor given to the best pitcher in the Major League Baseball.
The award was first introduced in 1956 by Commissioner Ford Frick in honor of Hall of Fame pitcher Cy Young, who died in 1955.
The award was given to the best pitcher in the major leagues.
In 1967, the year after Frick retired as Commissioner, the practice began of honoring one pitcher in each league, the American League, and the National League.
The 2015 American League Cy Young Award winner was Dallas Keuchel of the Houston Astros, and the 2015 National League Cy Young Award winner was Jake Arrieta of the Chicago Cubs.
Each league 's award is voted on by two members of the Baseball Writers Association of America in each league city, meaning 28 ballots are cast for the American League winner, and 32 for the National League.
Each places a vote for first, second, and third place among the pitchers of each league.
The formula used to calculate the final scores is a weighted sum of the votes: Score = 5F + 3S + T, where F is the number of first place votes, S is second place votes, and T is third place votes.
The pitcher with the highest score in each league wins the award.
If two pitchers receive the same number of votes, the award is shared between the two.
The current formula started with the 1970 season.
Prior to that, writers only voted for the best pitcher and used a formula of one point per vote.
Canidae is a family of carnivorous and omnivorous mammals of the order Carnivora.
Animals that belong to the family Canidae are called canids.
The family Canidae is divided into two tribes: Vulpini ("true foxes"), and Canini ("true dogs").
Canids of the tribe Vulpini (foxes) are called "vulpines".
Canids of the tribe Canini (wolves, dogs, coyotes and others) are called "canines".
Some people call all these canids "canines", but this is wrong.
Examples of canids are dogs, wolves, foxes, coyotes, and jackals.
Central Asia is a region in Asia.
The countries in Central Asia are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.
The United Nations also includes Afghanistan as part of Central Asia.
People have lived in the region of Central Asia since prehistoric times.
Most of the region was part of the Silk Road.
It was a part of the Persian Empire until Alexander The Great captured it.
When he died, the land was given to his general Seleucus.
Seleucus slowly lost it to the Parthians.
When the Parthians (the Parthians were Persians) lost power, the Sassanids added it to their own Persian empire.
However, a couple years later, during about the 600 's A. D, Arab armies spreading the faith of Islam quickly captured it.
A while later, an Iranian dynasty got semi - autonomy under the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad.
They were known as the Samanids.
The Samanids controlled most of Central Asia and Northwestern Iran.
They had power over this area during the 10th century.
With them, Central Asian cities, such as Bukhara and Samarkand, grew in culture.
However, Turkish armies from this area took the region away from them.
They were known as the Seljuk Turks.
At the same time, Timur captured it.
After his death, the Timurids (the name of the people of the dynasty Timur founded) could not hold unto their empire.
They lost it to the Mongols.
When the Mongols captured it, burned it to the ground.
A while later, some rulers decided to make their own empires under that of the Mongols.
These empires were known as Khanates.
During the 19th century the Russian Empire conquered these lands.
Many years later, in 1991, all of the countries of Central Asia declared independence.
Uzbekistan has much cotton.
Kazakhstan is rich because it has sold oil, gas and metals to Europe and China.
Turkmenistan has adjusted better to independence from the Soviet Union than the other Central Asian countries, but it has been run by a dictatorship.
Other than Kazakhstan, most of Central Asia are mostly underdeveloped.
Couscous is a kind of food, originally a bedouin dish which became famous in North Africa.
It has two related meanings:
Couscous is not cooked, but rather steamed over hot water.
Couscous is served as a side-dish, or as a main dish.
The stew must have plenty of liquid, or else a separate bowl of sauce must be provided.
This is because the couscous grain is rather dry, and absorbs plenty of liquid.
It is a definite fault to serve a couscous dish with too little liquid.
Spices such as ras el hanout and harissa are used for seasoning.
Couscous can also be served cold.
In this case, may be the base of a salad, with seafood, or it is used to make taboul, a kind of Persian salad.
Couscous can also be used for sweets, by adding milk, raisins or almonds.
It is the official food of Morocco.
The dish is extremely popular in other areas like southern France, Sicilia and the Middle East.
The couscous that is sold in most Western supermarkets has been pre-steamed and dried; the package directions are usually to add 1.5 measures of boiling water or stock and butter to each measure of couscous and to cover tightly for five minutes.
The couscous swells and within a few minutes it is ready to fluff with a fork and serve.
Pre-steamed couscous takes less time to prepare than regular couscous.
The Cheka was the first Soviet state security organization.
It was created on 20 December 1917, after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin.
Its first leader aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky.
By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had been created in the cities.
Many thousands of dissidents, deserters, or other people were arrested, tortured or executed by Cheka groups.
After 1922, Cheka groups underwent many reorganizations, as did the NKVD.
Its members were called Chekists well into the late 1980s.
With Vladimir Putin 's rise to power, the reference to the FSB members as "Chekists" arose, particularly by Putin 's political opponents, often with negative connotations.
From its start, the Cheka was an important military and security arm of the Bolshevik communist government.
In 1921 the troops of the Cheka numbered 200,000.
These troops policed and ran the Gulag system; "requisitioned" food; tortured and executed political opponents; put down rebellions and riots by workers or peasants, and mutinies in the desertion-plagued Red Army.
The full name of the Cheka in 1918 was (in Russian) the "All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption".
A member of Cheka was called a "chekist" throughout the Soviet period, despite various official name changes.
The term is still found in use in Russia today.
For example, President Vladimir Putin has been referred to in the Russian media as a "chekist" due to his career in the KGB.
Cryonics is when people (or animals) are made very cold after a doctor says they are dead.
When they are warmed again there might still be a cure for them because of better medicine that can be invented in the future.
Cold people like this are not awake at all as they have no brain activity.
The law also says they are dead.
Their body and its brain are made more like glass than ice because ice would harm their cells more.
To do this, their blood is replaced with chemicals called cryoprotectants, which act like anti-freeze.
Making them cold can stop cells from dying but can kill many of them.
Cryonics is not allowed unless you are already declared dead by law because this damage would make you dead by law.
To be dead in that way means you can not live with help from medicine we have today.
The idea of people who do cryonics is that better medicine from tomorrow may be used for a cryonics patient, so the person may be alive in a different sense than the law uses today.
Cryonics should work, even though it can not be demonstrated to work today.
That is, the scientific justification for cryonics.
It is a justification that grows stronger with every new advance in preservation technology.
A commonwealth is a group of people or of groups with a common aim to improve themselves, help each other and share knowledge and resources.
College football is American football played by teams of students from different American universities, colleges, and military academies.
Play between colleges first made American football popular in the United States.
College football is still popular today among students, alumni, and other fans of the sport.
American Football is variation of Rugby introduced by Walter Camp.
The very first match between two college teams using new "American" variation of Rugby was played between Princeton and Rutgers University in 1869.
First season of college football had only two matches played.
The game became popular quickly in coming years.
Chlorophyta are a division of green algae.
It includes about 7,000 species of mostly aquatic photosynthetic eukaryote organisms.
Like the land plants, green algae contain chlorophylls a and b, and store food as starch in their plastids.
Most species are flagellate in at least one stage of their life cycle.
They are related to the Charophyceae (also called Charophyta) and land plants, together making up the Viridiplantae.
The division contains both unicellular and multicellular species.
While most species live in freshwater habitats and a large number in marine habitats, other species are adapted to a wide range of environments.
Watermelon snow, or Chlamydomonas nivalis, lives on summer alpine snowfields.
Others live attached to rocks or woody parts of trees.
Some lichens are symbiotic relationships between fungi and green algae.
Members of the Chlorophyta also form symbiotic relationships with protozoa, sponges and cnidarians.
Some conduct sexual reproduction.
Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) is a semi-aquatic rodent of South America.
It weighs about a hundred pounds, and is about two feet tall at the shoulder.
The capybara is the world 's largest rodent.
Capybaras are closely related to guinea pigs and to chinchillas.
When they are full-grown, they weigh about 55 kg, or 100 pounds.
The capybara 's stocky body is about a meter, or 3 feet, long, and its shoulder is about 60 centimeters, or about two feet, high off the ground.
Females are usually bigger and heavier than males.
Capybaras have brown or reddish-brown fur.
When they are old their fur is thin, their skin can get sunburned easily.
Their eyes and ears and nostrils are high on their heads, so they can easily be kept above water when the capybara is swimming.
Capybaras live in grassy wetlands or close to rivers in many parts of South America.
In the morning, evening, and at night they eat grass, mostly on land.
They spend the hottest hours of the day in the water.
They are good swimmers and divers.
Webs between their toes help them swim.
They can only hold their breath under water for about five minutes at a time.
Sometimes they hide in water for much longer, with only their noses sticking out to breathe.
Many predators like to eat them.
They are a favorite food for jaguars, eagles, anaconda snakes, and many other animals.
Capybaras eat plants, mostly grass.
Their babies are usually born in litters of four at one time.
They can start to eat grass once they are about a week old, but they will also keep nursing from their mothers and even from other grown females until they are about four months old.
They live in large groups, usually 10-30 capybaras together.
Some groups have even had 100 capybaras.
They talk to each other using many sounds: clicks, grunts, whistles, and barks.
Capybaras are not endangered.
Their population is stable, not increasing or decreasing very much.
Sometimes humans eat capybaras.
They are hunted for meat, and sometimes they are raised on farms.
Also, their tough skin is sometimes used to make high quality leather, especially for gloves.
Computer animation (or CGI animation) is the art of using computer graphics for animation, creating moving images in either 2D or 3D.
Ceawlin (also spelled Ceaulin and Caelin) (593) was the King of the Gewisse, also called the King of Wessex.
He ruled from 560 to 592.
He was the second king to be overlord over all the English south of the River Humber.
Ceawlin was the son of Cynric.
He is mentioned as fighting alongside his father against the Bretons at Branbury in 556.
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Ceawlin became king of the West Saxons in 560.
Bede states Ceawlin was the second king to rule the southern English as overlord.
The informal term for a king that ruled over other kings was bretwalda.
The term comes from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and means ` Britain ruler '.
These overkings typically received tribute from other Anglo-Saxon kings in the south.
In 577 Ceawlin, with his son Cuthwine, led the Gewisse against the Britons at ` Deorham ' (Dyrham in Gloucestershire).
They reportedly killed three kings, Coinmail, Condidan, and Farinmail.
Ceawlin and Cuthwine captured Gloucester, Cirencester and Bath.
West Saxons then colonized the lower Severn valley.
The importance of this victory was that it gave the West Saxons access to the western sea.
This also divided the Britons so they could no longer communicate by land.
But it was territory later Wessex kings would not be able to hold.
In 584 Ceawlin defeated the Britons at Fethanlea (Oxfordshire) but his ally Cutha was killed there.
About 592 Ceawlin fought a battle at Woddesbeorg (or Wodnesbeorg) also called Adam 's Grave, east of Devizes in Wiltshire.
There was a ` great slaughter ' but nothing was said as to who he fought; Britons or Anglo-Saxons.
But it was over this loss that Ceawlin was driven out of power.
His nephew Ceol replaced him as king in 592.
Ceawlin died in 593.
At the end of his reign, the Gewisse or West Saxons held the lands of Berkshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire and much of Gloucestershire.
A CD-R (also called Compact Disc Recordable) is a compact disc that can be recorded once.
When people record a compact disc, they put either music or data on it.
A compact disc that can be recorded multiple times (and erased) is the CD-RW.
When you put data onto a CD, it is called burning a disc.
A laser "burns" pits into a dye layer on the disc, making them transparent.
These transparent pits can later be read back by the CD drive or audio CD player as data or music.
There are three types of dye used in CD-R discs.
The most common is phthalocyanine, and it is usually light green.
JVC (formerly Taiyo Yuden) uses cyanine dye.
It is usually teal or dark green.
Verbatim uses phthalocyanine dye on some discs, and AZO dye on others.
AZO dye is usually dark blue or blue-ish silver.
The metal layer on the disc is usually made of silver.
Archival discs and some professional audio discs use a gold top layer.
Verbatim UltraLife discs have a silver main layer, and a gold upper protective layer, providing the reflectivity of silver and the chemical stability of gold.
Early cyanine discs could decay and become unplayable within a few years.
Recent cyanine discs have preservatives added to the dye to prevent this from happening.
AZO and phthalocyanine dyes do not need preservatives and do not decay easily.
The cytosol (cf. cytoplasm, which also includes the organelles) is the internal fluid of the cell, and a part of cell metabolism occurs here.
Proteins within the cytosol play an important role in signal transduction pathways and glycolysis.
Cytosol mostly consists of water, dissolved ions, small molecules, and large water-soluble molecules (such as protein).
It contains about 20 % to 30 % protein.
Normal human cytosolic pH is (roughly) 7.0 (i.e. neutral), whereas the pH of the extracellular fluid is 7.4.
The texture of cytosol being described as granular can be attributed to the fact that in order to study the texture, an electron microsope must be used, which requires a process of dehydration prior to study.
Citizenship is a legal relationship between a person and a country.
Usually the country is the one he or she was born in, lives in, supports, and in return gets protection.
A person is usually a citizen of the country where he or she is born, but sometimes a person will apply to change his or her citizenship to become a citizen in another country.
There are countries which allow dual (two) citizenship, and countries which do not.
In most countries, citizens have civil rights such as being able to vote, and duties, such as keeping the laws.
An important right is being able to come back to your country after you have left it for a while.
A citizen is a member of a sovereign group of people that have certain rights.
Governments protect these rights or take advantage of them.
Some Governments may exile people from citizenship laws on such matter vary between countries.
Chiapas is the southernmost state of Mexico.
It is towards the southeast of the country.
Chiapas is bordered by the states of Tabasco to the north, Veracruz to the northwest, and Oaxaca to the west.
To the east Chiapas borders Guatemala, and to the south the Pacific Ocean.
Chiapas has an area of 28528 s. The 2005 census population was 4,293,459 people.
In general Chiapas has a humid, tropical weather.
In the north, in the area bordering Tabasco, near Teapa, rainfall can be more than 3,000 mm (118 in) per year.
In the past, natural vegetation at this region was lowland, tall perennial rainforest, but this vegetation has been destroyed almost completely to give way to agriculture and ranching.
Rainfall decreases moving towards the Pacific Ocean, but it is still abundant enough to allow the farming of bananas and many other tropical crops near Tapachula.
On the several parallel "sierras" or mountain ranges running along the center of Chiapas, climate can be quite temperate and foggy.
This allows the development of cloud forests like those of the Reserva de la Biosfera el Triunfo, home to a handful of quetzals and horned guans.
The state capital is Tuxtla Guti rrez.
Other cities and towns in Chiapas include San Crist bal de las Casas, Comit n, and Tapachula.
Chiapas is also home to the ancient Maya ruins of Palenque, Yaxchilan, Bonampak, Chinkultic, and Tonina.
Most people in Chiapas are poor, rural small farmers.
About one quarter of the population are of full or predominant Maya descent, and in rural areas many do not speak Spanish.
The state suffers from the highest rate of malnutrition in Mexico.
This rate is estimated to affect over 40 % of the population.
Other social issues involve the increasing presence of the Central American gangs known as Maras, and illegal immigration from Central America in general.
This migration is mostly directed towards the United States, but it makes local poverty even worse.
Many times, there are abuse and Human Rights violations that touch these migrants.
In 1994, there was an outbreak of violence between the Mexican Government and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (the EZLN or Zapatistas).
Today, the EZLN (Ej rcito Zapatista de Liberaci n Nacional, named in honor of Emiliano Zapata) has rejected the use of force and seek to be recognized as a voice of the poor.
There are currently 32 "rebel autonomous zapatista municipalities" (independent Zapatista communities, MAREZ in Spanish), controlled by the EZLN in Chiapas: examples of these communities are Ocosingo and Las Margaritas.
The Chrysler Building is a skyscraper in New York City, United States.
It is 319 meters (1046 feet) tall and has 77 floors.
It was built in 1931 and is one of the tallest buildings in the world.
The Chrysler Building was the tallest building in the world from 1930 to 1931.
Before it was built, the tallest building in the world was The Trump Building.
The Empire State Building became the tallest one year later.
The Chrysler Building is still the tallest brick building in the world.
The Chrysler Building was also the tallest structure in the world from 1930 to 1931.
Before it was built, the tallest structure in the world was Eiffel Tower.
The Empire State Building became the tallest one year later.
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was a comet.
It broke apart and crashed into Jupiter, in July 1994.
The event was special because people could see, for the first time, how objects in the Solar System, outside Earth, collided.
It caused a large amount of coverage in the media.
The comet was carefully watched by astronomers worldwide.
The crash gave new information about Jupiter.
It also showed up its role in reducing space debris in the inner Solar System.
The name came out of the discovers ' last names.
The comet was discovered by astronomers Carolyn and Eugene M. Shoemaker and David Levy on March 24, 1993.
It was found in a picture taken by the 40 c Schmidt telescope at the Palomar Observatory, in California.
When it was discovered, it was orbiting Jupiter.
It was the first comet seen to be orbiting a planet.
Scientists think that it had been orbiting the planet for 20 - 30 years before its discovery.
Calculations showed that its unusual broken up form was due to a previous closer approach to Jupiter in July 1992.
At that time, the orbit of Shoemaker-Levy 9 passed within Jupiter 's Roche limit.
Jupiter 's tidal forces had acted to pull the comet apart.
The comet was later observed as a series of pieces up to 2 k in diameter.
These fragments collided with Jupiter 's southern hemisphere between July 16 and July 22, 1994.
The pieces were moving at a speed of approximately 60 km\/s.
The impact scars were more easily seen than the Great Red Spot and they stayed for many months.
COBOL is a programming language that was developed in the year 1959.
It was one of the first computer programming languages.
The name COBOL stands for COmmon Business-Oriented Language.
COBOL was created because people wanted a language they could use to describe the problems in a way that is independent of the hardware used.
Like SQL COBOL uses a syntax that is close to that of natural languages.
As an example, ADD YEARS TO AGE is a valid expression.
There are several different versions of COBOL.
The newest is from 2002.
In general, versions of the language before 1985 are not compatible with the newer versions, from 1985 and later.
In his letter to an editor in 1975 titled "How do we tell truths that might hurt?"
, computer scientist and Turing Award recipient Edsger Dijkstra remarked that "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense."
In this letter, Dijkstra also criticised several other languages which were used at the time.
The computer scientist who was named Howard E. Tompkins disagreed, and defended structured COBOL: "COBOL programs with convoluted control flow indeed tend to ` cripple the mind '", but this was because "there are too many such business application programs written by programmers that have never had the benefit of structured COBOL taught well...".
In recent years, COBOL has been extended to allow object-oriented programming, user-defined functions, and user-defined data types.
A crew usually is a group of people that work within a common organization, and that have some activities in common.
The usual place where crews can be found are ships and airplanes.
On such ships and aircraft, some functions some people perform are very special.
It is therefore common that crews are organised in a hierarchy.
Every person, except the captain, at the top, has a person above them.
They will report to that person.
Teams who work backstage in theaters, on movie sets, and in television studios are also called crews.
Such crews are distinct from the cast.
The computer memory is a temporary storage area.
It holds the data and instructions that the Central Processing Unit (CPU) needs.
Before a program can be run, the program is loaded from some storage medium into the memory.
This allows the CPU direct access to the program.
Memory is a need for any computer.
A computer is usually an electrical device, which understands only electricity on and electricity off.
This is expressed by using two symbols 0 and 1 which are called binary digits or bits.
Numbers and text characters are represented as codes, which are made up of combinations of 0s and 1s.
Simple character codes are called ASCII (the American Standard Code for Information Interchange), and Unicode.
In ASCII, eight bits any combination of 0s and 1s form one character or symbol.
For example, the letter A is denoted by the code 01000001.
The basic working unit of the computer 's memory is a group of eight bits, which is called a byte.
The computer 's memory consists of many millions of bytes.
To make it easier, the unit K (for kilobytes) can be used to express memory capacity.
One K equals 1,024.
For example, 64K bytes of memory is the same as 65,536 (1,024 64 = 65,536) bytes.
For larger memory capacities, the units mega and giga can be used.
One megabyte of computer memory usually means 1024 kilobytes, which is 1,048,576 bytes, whereas one gigabyte means 1024 megabytes, which is 1,073,741,824 bytes.
The CPU calls instructions and data from the computer 's memory.
Because the same computer performs different tasks at different times, the memory is erasable much like an audio cassette.
But there are some programs and instructions which the computer will always need.
These programs often are permanently recorded in the memory.
So they can not be destroyed.
Read only memory (ROM) is the permanent memory which is used to store important control programs and systems software to perform a variety of functions, such as booting up or starting up programs.
ROM is non-volatile.
That means the contents are not lost when the power is switched off.
Its contents are written at the time of manufacture, but in modern (2012) computers may be changed using special software.
Random access memory (RAM) is used as the working memory of a computer system.
It stores input data, intermediate results, programs, and other information temporarily.
It can be read and\/or written.
It is usually volatile, that is all data will be lost when the power is turned off.
In most cases it is loaded again from hard disk which is used as data storage.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (or CDC) are a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services.
CDC main office is in Druid Hills, Georgia, in Greater Atlanta.
It works to protect public health and safety.
It provides information to enhance health decisions.
It promotes health as a partner with state health departments and other organizations.
When an infectious disease or bad food can cause health problems, the CDC will tell the nation how to fight it.
The CDC works on environmental health, occupational safety and health, health promotion, injury prevention and education activities designed to improve the health of the people of the United States.
The CDC Foundation is separate from CDC as a private, nonprofit 501 (c) (3) organization.
It is incorporated in the State of Georgia.
Section 399F of the Public Health Service Act created the foundation to help the CDC work with the private sector.
The Chandrasekhar limit is the maximum mass of a stable white dwarf star.
Building on work by others, the Indian physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar worked on the calculation.
He published series of papers between 1931 and 1935.
The Chandrasekhar limit is about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun.
The Chandrasekhar limit is the mass above which electron degeneracy pressure in the star 's core is not enough to balance the star 's own gravitational self-attraction.
Then, white dwarfs with masses over the limit would gravitationally collapse into a neutron star or black hole.
However, white dwarfs usually explode before they undergo collapse.
Those with masses under the limit remain stable as white dwarfs.
Historically, cavalry have been soldiers who fought while riding horses.
In modern times, "cavalry" means the fast branch of the military, as opposed to the slower infantry (soldiers on foot).
Soldiers have fought on horses ever since people have ridden horses.
Because horses are strong, cavalry members can wear more armor than infantry and carry heavier weapons.
Because horses are fast, cavalry members can ride into battle more quickly than infantry members.
Catalonia is a region in Spain.
It is south of the eastern Pyrenees, and has a northern border with France.
Catalonia is politically an Autonomous Community, as regions are known in Spain.
Its people have a separate nationality.
Catalonia is made up of four provinces: Barcelona, Tarragona, Girona and Lleida.
It has a population of over 7 million people.
In Catalonia, a large percentage of the people can speak Catalonia 's own language, Catalan, while everybody, or nearly everybody according to recent surveys, is also able to speak Spanish, the latter being the most spoken language in Catalonia.
There also is a small autonomous territory within Catalonia, which borders with France on the North, known in Occitan language as Val d'Aran, where some people also can speak a third language: Occitan.
All three of these languages are official and recognized by the Spanish Constitution and the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia.
The capital city of Catalonia is the city of Barcelona, which was home of the Olympic Games in 1992.
This city is on the Mediterranean Coast, between Costa del Garraf and Costa del Maresme, being very popular amongst tourists in summer, whether foreign or national.
The Catalan people have autonomy within Spain.
This means they have their own local government, their own police and some control over their own community.
In September 2005, the Catalan Parliament decided to call Catalonia a ` nation ' in the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia approved in 2006, according to the Spanish Constitution which says that Spain is a group of historical nationalities and regions.
But this declaration has no judicial status whatsoever though, as it only appears in the preamble to the law.
The president of Catalonia is Carles Puigdemont.
Catalonia is one of Spain 's most prosperous regions, mostly because industrialization began there earlier and took place faster than in other Spanish territories, above all the textile industry.
The region is also greener than Southern Spain as it gets more rain, and also different kinds of crops are grown there.
Catalonia, especially the North, is much less hot than the rest of Spain.
Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer.
He tried to make science popular.
He thought about what life from other planets would be like.
He said that people should look for life on other planets (SETI).
He is world famous for his popular science books and the television series Cosmos, which he co-wrote and presented.
He said people should use the scientific method.
Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York City where his father, Sam Sagan, was a Jewish clothes maker and his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was a housewife.
Sagan attended the University of Chicago earning two degrees in physics.
He followed with a doctorate in Astronomy in 1960 and taught at Harvard University until 1968, when he moved to Cornell University.
Sagan became a teacher and director at Cornell in 1971.
He helped many unmanned spacecraft to explore outer space.
He thought of the idea of putting a message on spacecraft which could be understood by any life from another planet that might find it.
The first message sent into space was a large gold-plated label on the space probe Pioneer 10.
He continued to make the messages better.
The last message he helped with was the Voyager Golden Record that was sent out with the Voyager space probes.
He was well known as a writer who warned of the dangers of nuclear winter.
He helped people learn about the atmosphere of Venus, seasonal changes on Mars, and Saturn 's moon Titan.
He showed that the atmosphere of Venus is very hot and dense.
He also said that global warming was a growing, man-made danger like the natural development of Venus into a hot and dangerous planet with greenhouse gases.
He suggested that the seasonal changes on Mars were due to dust storms.
Sagan was among the first to guess that Titan and Jupiter 's moon Europa might have oceans or lakes, which means that life could be there.
Europa 's underground ocean was later confirmed by the spacecraft Galileo.
Sagan thought the search for life on other planets was a good idea.
He said scientists should listen with large radio telescopes for signals from other planets.
He thought sending probes to other planets was a good idea.
Sagan was editor Icarus (a magazine about space exploration) for 12 years.
He helped start the Planetary Society and was a member of the SETI Institute Board of Trustees.
Sagan also believed that the Drake equation suggested that many kinds of intelligent life could form, but that the lack of evidence (the Fermi paradox) suggests that intelligent beings destroy themselves rather quickly.
This made him keen to talk about ways that humanity could destroy itself, in the hope of avoiding such destruction.
Under the name "Mr. X," Sagan wrote about pot smoking in the 1971 book Reconsidering Marijuana.
Lester Grinspoon (the book 's editor), told this to Keay Davidson, Sagan 's biographer.
Sagan said that marijuana helped him write some of his books.
Sagan was very good at helping people to understand the cosmos.
He gave the 1977\/1978 Christmas Lectures for Young People at the Royal Institution.
He wrote (with Ann Druyan, who became his third wife) and made the very popular thirteen-part PBS television series Cosmos; he also wrote books to help science become more popular (The Dragons of Eden, which won a Pulitzer Prize, Broca 's Brain, etc.) and a novel, Contact, that was a best-seller and was made into a film starring Jodie Foster in 1997.
The film won the 1998 Hugo Award.
After Cosmos, Sagan was linked with the catchphrase "billions and billions", which he never used in the television series (but he often used the word "billions").
He wrote Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, which was chosen as a notable book of 1995 by The New York Times.
Not all scientists agreed with him.
Although they all liked the way he made science popular, some were afraid that people would think that his personal opinions might be confused with real science.
What he said about the Kuwait oil well fires during the first Gulf War were shown later to be wrong.
Later in his life, Sagan 's books showed his skeptical, naturalistic view of the world.
In his book The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan gave a list of mistakes he had made as an example of how science is self-correcting.
The compilation Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the End of the Millennium, published after Sagan 's death, contains essays written by Sagan, such as his views on abortion, and Ann Druyan 's account of his death as a non-believer.
Some people thought Sagan had a big ego.
In 1994, Apple Inc. chose a code name "Sagan" when they developed the Power Macintosh 7100.
When Sagan heard this, he tried to make Apple Computer use another name.
Sagan lost the fight in court, but Apple engineers did what he asked anyway, and named the project "Butthead Astronomer".
Sagan tried to sue Apple again, saying they made him look stupid.
Sagan lost in court again, but the name of the project was changed to "LAW" (Lawyers Are Wimps).
Sagan is said to have been an atheist or agnostic, but some people have said he was a pantheist, because he said things like "The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous.
But if by ` God ' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God.
This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."
Sagan married three times; the biologist Lynn Margulis (mother of Dorion Sagan) in 1957, artist Linda Salzman in 1968, and author Ann Druyan in 1981, to whom he was married until his death.
Sagan purchased a house on the edge of Ithaca Falls which looked like an Egyptian crypt.
Before it was converted into a house, the building served as the lodge for a secret society, Sphinx Head.
After a long and difficult fight with myelodysplasia, Sagan died of pneumonia at the age of 62, on December 20, 1996, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.
Sagan was very important, because he made science popular, and changed the way science was organized, and because he defended humanism, and argued against seeing things from only one point of view.
The landing site of the unmanned Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station in honor of Dr. Sagan on July 5, 1997.
Asteroid 2709 Sagan is also named in his honor.
The 1997 movie Contact (see above), based on Sagan 's novel of the same name, and finished after his death, ends with the dedication "For Carl."
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a time of tension between the Soviet Union, the United States and Cuba during the Cold War.
In Russia, it is known as the Caribbean Crisis (, Karibskiy krizis).
Cuba calls it the October Crisis.
It was a proxy conflict around Cuba.
It happened when the Soviet Union (USSR) began building missile sites in Cuba in 1962.
Together with the Berlin Blockade, this crisis is seen as one of the most important confrontations of the Cold War.
It may have been the moment when the Cold War came closest to a nuclear war.
There was a coup in Cuba in 1959.
In it, a small group of people led by Fidel Castro took power.
The new government of Cuba took over some American businesses.
The American government refused to buy anything from Cuba after that.
The US embargo against Cuba began February 7, 1962.
In 1962, the American government was worried that the USSR would attack America from Cuba, because Cuba is near enough that the missiles could reach almost any city in America.
Cuba was then a Communist country, like the Soviet Union.
In October 1962, American ships blocked Soviet ships carrying missiles from going into Cuba.
The Soviets and Cubans agreed to take away the missiles if America promised not to attack Cuba.
America later removed some missiles from the country of Turkey, near the Soviet Union.
However, it is not decided if anyone "won".
The USSR lost China 's support over it.
The Americans feared that the Soviet Union would expand communism or socialism.
The United States and the USSR had been political enemies in the Cold War after the end of the Second World War in 1945.
The United States felt it was not right that a country in the Caribbean openly allied itself with the Soviet Union.
This would also make the Monroe Doctrine useless.
This doctrine kept powers in Europe from getting involved in South America.
The United States had been embarrassed publicly by the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961, which had been launched under President John F. Kennedy by CIA-trained forces of Cuban exiles.
Afterward, former President Eisenhower told Kennedy that "the failure of the Bay of Pigs will embolden the Soviets to do something that they would otherwise not do."
The half-hearted invasion left Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and his advisers with the impression that Kennedy was indecisive and, as one Soviet adviser wrote, "too young, intellectual, not prepared well for decision making in crisis situations... too intelligent and too weak".
In late 1961, President John F. Kennedy launched a number of covert operations against Castro 's government.
These operations were named Operation Mongoose.
They were unsuccessful.
In February 1962, the United States launched an economic embargo against Cuba.
In September 1961, the Cuban government thought the United States would invade.
They thought this because there was a resolution by the Congress of the United States.
This resolution allowed the use of military force if the interests of the United States in Cuba were threatened.
The United States also announced a military exercise in the Caribbean to be held the following month.
Castro and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to secretly place strategic nuclear missiles in Cuba to be ready if the United States invaded.
Like Castro, Khrushchev thought that the U.S. would invade Cuba soon, and that for Cuba to no longer be a Communist country would hurt his reputation around the world, especially in Latin America.
He said that he wanted to confront the Americans "with more than words... the logical answer was missiles."
Tensions were at their highest from October 8, 1962.
On October 14, United States reconnaissance saw the missile bases being built in Cuba.
The crisis ended two weeks later on October 28, 1962, when the President of the United States John F. Kennedy and the United Nations Secretary-General U Thant reached an agreement with the Soviets to destroy the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a no-invasion agreement.
Khrushchev requested that the Jupiter and Thor missiles in Turkey be removed, and the United States did remove them secretly.
In Cuba, Fidel Castro took power from General Batista on January 1, 1959.
From 1952 to 1959, Batista was a military dictator in Cuba, very right-wing with Mafia connections & the support of the Eisenhower administration.
The United States was interested in Cuba because of the many businesses that they had there, even though the country was a dictatorship.
The countries were also military friends.
This was shown by the US base at Guant namo Bay.
When Castro came to power in Cuba, he nationalized American companies in Cuba, meaning he took the private property from those companies and made it the property of Cuba, to use as Castro decided.
The United States decided to break off economic relations with Cuba (which means that they would stop buying things from them).
They stopped American foreign aid going to Cuba, and stopped buying Cuban sugar (which was Cuba 's main export).
This was a disaster for Castro, because America bought the most Cuban sugar.
However, Russia saved the Cuban economy by buying Cuban sugar for high prices.
Castro turned to the USSR, still powerful at that time.
He signed a contract with Nikita Khrushchev, the Russian chairman at the time.
The contract said that the USSR would buy 1 million tons of Cuban sugar per year, in exchange for Castro 's Communist support; he declared himself a Marxist-Leninist on December 2, 1961.
Castro wanted to feel safe from the United States.
He knew that if a second attack was made from the United States, Cuba might lose and he would be removed from power.
Castro asked Krushchev for missile sites to be built on Cuba so that he could defend himself against any American threat.
The USSR agreed to this and started building missile sites on Cuba.
These missiles could hit any major city in the United States.
When Kennedy found out about the missile sites on October 16, by sending a United States Navy U-2 Spy Plane to take pictures of Cuba, he saw the missile sites and thought the worst: that Cuba was preparing to attack the United States.
The United States was angry when they found out about the missile sites.
Kennedy 's advisers did not believe that the missiles were completely ready at the time they first saw the pictures, but they guessed that the missiles would be ready in less than two weeks (this is where the movie and book, 13 Days, get their name).
This meant that Kennedy had to act fast.
His options were not clear at first, so he started EXCOMM (Executive Committee of the National Security Council) so they would give him some options.
The options basically were:
On October 20, Kennedy chose to blockade Cuba to stop all ships going there rather than listen to his advisers (who wanted to attack).
The USSR 's first ships arrived at the blockade on October 25 and were turned away.
Nikita Khrushchev sent a letter to Kennedy on October 26.
Kennedy 's advisers said that the letter looked like it had been written by Krushchev himself and not his official writers who would normally do it.
They also said that it looked like it was written by a man who was under stress.
In a paper called "Forty Years After 13 Days," Robert McNamara quoted a part of the letter from Krushchev:
Khrushchev was saying that he would remove the missile sites if President Kennedy promised not to invade Cuba.
An invasion of Cuba would make Khrushchev look bad and could also lead to a nuclear war.
This was the reaction that Kennedy wanted.
The very next day, a second letter was sent from Russia to Kennedy.
This one looked more official than the first.
It also said that the US must take its nuclear missiles out of Turkey if they wanted Russia to take their missiles out of Cuba.
It would have been a fair trade because the US missiles in Turkey were close enough to Russia that they could reach most of the important cities and Cuba was close enough to the US that the Russian missiles would reach most of the important US cities.
The problem for Kennedy was that he could not publicly agree to remove the US missiles from Turkey because Turkey would then not be protected and would not be happy.
Another problem was that Kennedy and his advisers did not know if Khrushchev was still in power.
They thought that someone in the Russian government might have overthrown Khrushchev.
They thought this because the second letter was so much different than the first.
Kennedy decided to send a secret message to Khrushchev saying that they would remove the missiles from Turkey in a few months as long as they did not tell the public about it.
Kennedy then sent an official letter to Khrushchev agreeing to the conditions of the first letter and not mentioning the second.
Khrushchev agreed to the secret message.
On November 1, the missile sites were removed and the problems were over.
The United States saw Kennedy as the hero who had fought Communism and won.
Columbus is a city in the state of Indiana, in the United States.
Corinth is a city in Greece.
It gave its name to the Corinth Canal.
This is in the middle of the Isthmus of Corinth, a narrow strip of land which joins the Peloponnese peninsula with mainland Greece.
It has a castle called the acrocorinth.
Corinth is in the north of Peloponnese.
It is a coastal city.
It had 60,000 people at the 2011 census.
During antiquity, Corinth was one of the most important Greek cities.
It was often the opponent of Athens and these two cities competed with each other.
It founded many colonies in south Italy and Sicily such as Siracusa.
Corinth was conquered by Romans in 146 B.C. During Middle Ages, it was an important city with a fortification.
In 1460 it came under Turkish rule and it was liberated in 1830, after the Greek War of Independence.
Denton True "Cy" Young (March 29, 1867 November 4, 1955) was an American baseball player.
He was a pitcher for five different professional baseball teams from 1890 to 1911.
He set many pitching records during his 22-year career in Major League Baseball (MLB), some of which have stood for 100 years.
When Young retired from baseball, he had won a total of 511 games in his career, the most in MLB history and 94 more wins than Walter Johnson, who is second on the list.
In 1956, the MLB created the Cy Young Award.
The award is given each year to the pitcher who is voted the most effective in each of the two leagues.
Young was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939.
During his professional career, Young won 30 or more games in a season five times, with ten other seasons of 20 + wins.
He also pitched three no-hitters, including the first perfect game of baseball 's "modern era."
In addition to wins, Young holds the MLB records for most career innings pitched (7,355), most career games started (815), and most complete games (749).
He also retired with 316 losses, the most in MLB history (the only other pitcher with more than 300 career losses was Pud Galvin).
Young also had 76 career shutouts, the fourth most in history.
In 1999, 88 years after his final Major League appearance and 44 years after his death, editors at The Sporting News ranked Cy Young 14th on their list of "Baseball 's 100 Greatest Players".
That same year, baseball fans named Young to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
Young was born in Gilmore, Ohio, a farming community in eastern Ohio.
Young went by the name "Dent Young" in his early years.
He was raised on a farm and was sometimes called "Farmer Young" and "Farmboy Young".
Young stopped going to school after he finished 6th grade.
Young began his professional career in 1889 with the Canton, Ohio team of the Tri-State League, a professional minor league.
The catcher who warmed up Young gave him the nickname "Cyclone" because of the speed of his fastball.
Reporters then shortened the name to "Cy".
"Cy" became the nickname he used the rest of his life.
In 1890, Young signed for $ 500 with the Cleveland Spiders, which had moved up from the American Association to the National League the previous year.
Two years later, the National League moved the pitcher 's mound from fifty feet away from the home plate (where it had been since 1881) to sixty feet and six inches.
In the book The Neyer\/James Guide to Pitchers, sports journalist Rob Neyer wrote that the reason for the move was that pitchers like Cy Young, Amos Rusie, and Jouett Meekin threw too fast at the shorter distance.
On September 18, 1897, Young pitched the first no-hitter of his career in a game against the Cincinnati Reds.
Although Young did not walk a batter, the Spiders committed four errors while on defense.
Before the 1899 season, Frank Robison, the owner of the Spiders, bought the St. Louis Browns, thus owning two clubs at the same time.
Just weeks before the start of the season, most of the better Spiders players were transferred to St. Louis, including three future Hall of Famers: Young, Jesse Burkett and Bobby Wallace.
Despite the changes in the team members, St. Louis finished fifth in both 1899 and 1900.
The Spiders lost 134 games, the most in MLB history, before folding.
In 1901, Young left St. Louis and joined the American League 's Boston Americans for a $ 3,500 contract.
Young stayed with the Boston team until 1909.
Young was traded back to Cleveland before the 1909 season, this time to the Cleveland Naps of the American League.
He split 1911, his final year, between the Naps and the Boston Rustlers.
On September 22, 1911, Young shut out the Pittsburgh Pirates and their pitcher Babe Adams 1-0, for his last career win.
However, two weeks later, Young 's 906th and final game ended badly: the last eight batters of Young 's career combined to hit a triple, four singles and three doubles.
Young retired after the 1911 season with 511 career wins.
His win total set the record for most career wins by a pitcher.
At the time, Pud Galvin had the second most career wins with 364.
Walter Johnson, then in his fourth season, finished his career with 417 wins and is now second on the list.
However, Johnson broke Young 's career record for strikeouts.
Cy Young 's career is seen as a bridge from baseball 's earliest days to its modern era.
When Young 's career began, pitchers delivered the baseball underhand and fouls were not counted as strikes.
The pitcher 's mound was not moved back to its present position of 60 feet, six inches until Young 's fourth season.
He did not wear a glove until his sixth.
Particularly after his fastball slowed, Young 's success relied upon his great control.
Young said: "Some may have thought it was essential to know how to curve a ball before anything else.
Experience, to my mind, teaches to the contrary.
Any young player who has good control will become a successful curve pitcher long before the pitcher who is endeavoring to master both curves and control at the same time.
The curve is merely an accessory to control."
By habit, Young restricted his practice throws in spring training.
"I figured the old arm had just so many throws in it," said Young, "and there was n't any use wasting them."
Young once described his approach before a game: "I never warmed up ten, fifteen minutes before a game like most pitchers do.
I 'd loosen up, three, four minutes.
Five at the outside.
And I never went to the bullpen.
Oh, I 'd relieve all right, plenty of times, but I went right from the bench to the box, and I 'd take a few warm-up pitches and be ready.
Then I had good control.
I aimed to make the batter hit the ball, and I threw as few pitches as possible.
That 's why I was able to work every other day."
Young also said that his offseason farming chores, including wood chopping, kept his pitching arm in good shape until he was 44.
Even at the time of his retirement, his arm was healthy, but Young had gained weight and was unable to field his position anymore.
In three of his last four years, he was the oldest player in the league.
The first Cy Young Award was voted on in 1956, and was given to Brooklyn 's Don Newcombe.
Originally, it was a single award covering the whole of baseball.
The honor was divided into two Cy Young Awards in 1967, one for each league.
Y is for Young, The magnificent Cy; People batted against him, But I never knew why.
Coronation Street (commonly known as Corrie) is the longest-running television soap opera in the United Kingdom.
It is one of the two most popular soap operas in the UK, the other is EastEnders.
It has won many awards.
It is set in Weatherfield, a pretend part of Manchester.
It is currently filmed in Granada Studios in Manchester but will be made in Salford Quays from 2014.
William Roache has played Ken Barlow in it since it was first started in 1960 by Tony Warren.
He has acted in the show for longer than anyone else.
Eileen Derbyshire, who plays Emily Bishop, started in 1961.
Gail Platt played by Helen Worth, who was at first meant to be a very small character, has been in 1544 episodes, more than any other character.
There are five half-hour episodes a week: two on Monday, one on Thursday and two on Fridays.
There have been more than 5000 characters in the show 's history.
The soap opera is shown in many countries around the world.
In the UK it is on ITV, the third television channel.
Compare The Market is the show 's sponsor.
The video of the 1984 Queen single "I Want to Break Free" parodies the show 's characters.
Caligula (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, 31 August 12 24 January 41), was the third Roman Emperor.
He reigned from AD 37.
After only four years, he was assassinated by members of his bodyguard and the Roman Senate.
During his reign, many innocent people were killed without fair trials.
Even with all that, he was popular with the Roman public in his time.
Caligula 's father Germanicus was the nephew and adopted son of emperor Tiberius.
He was a very successful general.
He was one of Rome 's most beloved public figures.
When Germanicus died at Antioch in 19 AD, his mother Agrippina the Elder returned to Rome with her six children.
She had a bitter feud with Tiberius.
That eventually led to the destruction of her family.
Caligula was the only male survivor.
In 31, he joined the emperor on the island of Capri.
Tiberius had gone there five years earlier.
When Tiberius died in 37, Caligula became emperor.
There are few surviving sources on Caligula 's reign.
He is described as a noble and moderate ruler during the first two years of his rule.
After this, the sources focus upon his cruelty, extravagance, and sexual perversity, presenting him as an insane tyrant.
Caligula worked to give more authority to the emperor.
He put a lot of his effort into ambitious construction projects and luxurious dwellings for himself.
He started the construction of two new aqueducts in Rome: the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus.
During his reign, the empire took over the Kingdom of Mauretania and made it into a province.
In early 41, Caligula was assassinated.
There was a conspiracy involving officers of the Praetorian Guard, members of the Roman Senate and members of the imperial court.
After Caligula 's death, the conspirators ' tried to bring back the Roman Republic, but they were unsuccessful.
The Praetorian Guard declared Caligula 's uncle Claudius emperor in his place.
There are stories about Caligula that show cruelty and insanity.
He was accused of killing just for amusement.
He was accused of committing incest with his sisters and prostituting them with other men.
He was accused of turning the palace into a brothel.
Caligula appeared in public dressed as various gods.
He demanded to be worshipped as a god.
He appointed a horse to the priesthood.
It is difficult to know anything for certain about Caligula.
Only two sources from his time still exist.
Those are the works of Philo and Seneca.
They give mostly anecdotes.
At one time, there were detailed histories on Caligula.
Now they are lost.
Caligula 's sister, Agrippina the Younger, wrote an autobiography which certainly had a lot of information about Caligula 's reign.
It is also lost.
No surviving source paints Caligula in a favorable light.
It is not known whether Caligula was insane.
Chiang Kai-shek was a soldier and President of the Republic of China, born in Xikou on October 31, 1887.
He was an officer in the army of the Manchu empire, but supported the Chinese Xinhai Revolution of 1911 that converted China into a republic.
He led the Republic of China from 1930 to 1949 on mainland China until he was overthrown by Mao Zedong.
He then fled to Taiwan where he ruled from 1950 until his death in 1975, although his government was still officially called the Republic of China.
Caffeine is a drug (or chemical) found in plants.
It can be harmful for both humans and animals if a large amount is consumed.
If a person ate 10-13 grams of caffeine quickly, between 80-100 cups of coffee, it would kill them.
Caffeine is the main drug that is in coffee.
Coffee comes from a tree.
The seeds of the tree are roasted to make coffee.
Caffeine comes from other plants as well.
It is in guarana, yerba mat, cacao, and some plants used to make tea.
The plants use caffeine as a pesticide.
This is a chemical that kills insects if they eat the plant.
It is the way the plant protects itself.
It is called guaranine when it comes from the guarana plant and theine when it comes from a tea plant.
It is called mateine in the mate drink.
This drink is an infusion made with Yerba mate.
Caffeine is a stimulant drug.
A stimulant is a drug that increases body actions like heart rate, blood pressure, and metabolism.
It makes a person feel more awake and alert.
Caffeine also is a diuretic.
This means it makes a person make more urine (the waste liquid a person makes).
The caffeine chemical is called a xanthine alkaloid.
This is a group of chemicals that are stimulants.
Some xanthine alkaloids (like theophylline) are used to help asthma.
The biggest use of caffeine is as a stimulant.
People drink coffee and other drinks with caffeine to stay awake.
Doctors sometimes use caffeine as a medicine.
It is used for headaches (head pain).
It is sometimes used to help premature (born very early) babies to breathe.
The short-term risk of this treatment seems to be that the babies treated gain less weight than usual.
Caffeine is sometimes given to people after a lumbar puncture.
This is a test to see if someone has meningitis.
In the beginning caffeine was found to relieve hunger, so it was used for weight loss.
That did not last because people were using too much.
Caffeine can be a very dangerous drug when not used in the right way.
Caffeine also has medicinal properties.
It is used in many over the counter medicines, such as Excedrin, Midol and Anacin.
When combined with other analgesics, caffeine can help to alleviate headaches and cramps.
The largest problem with caffeine is addiction.
This is when people get bad symptoms when they do not have the drug.
When people have withdrawal (feel bad because they do not have the drug) they drink more.
This makes them feel better.
But if they can not get more, they are likely to feel some of the symptoms listed below:
Caffeine can also hurt people if they drink a lot at once.
If someone takes too much of a drug at once it is called an overdose.
Caffeine overdose is a medical diagnosis.
It is called: Caffeine-Induced Organic Mental Disorder or Caffeine Intoxication.
People with this can have these symptoms:
250 300 mg of caffeine a day is a moderate amount.
That is as much caffeine that is in three cups of coffee (8oz each cup).
More than 750 1000 mg a day is a significant amount, but is very unlikely to kill someone.
The Lethal Dose 50 of caffeine is 192 mg per kilogram, in rats.
In humans, it is between 150 and 200 mg per kilogram (70-90 per pound.)
Caffeine is in many drinks and foods.
This is approximate amounts of caffeine in some food and drink:
One ounce abbreviated oz - is 30ml.
A ` cup ' is 8 oz (240ml.)
Carlos Valderrama (born 2 September 1961) is a former Colombian football player.
He played for Colombia national team.
A Caesar salad is a salad that is made with romaine lettuce and croutons dressed with parmesan cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, egg, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, and black pepper.
Some of the most common variations to the salad include: grilled poultry (most often chicken), meat, shellfish, or fish, capers, Romano cheese, anchovies, and bacon.
Caesar dressing can be either creamy, like Ranch dressing, or more oily, like Italian dressing.
Its main flavourings are garlic and anchovies.
The salad is said to have been made and called after Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who had restaurants in Mexico and the United States.
Cardini was living in San Diego but also working in Tijuana.
The original Caesar salad did not have anchovy.
Cardini 's daughter said that the original recipe included whole lettuce leaves.
There are risks of infection by salmonella bacteria.
Salmonella is sometimes in raw eggs.
This is a concern with many similar dressings.
They are emulsified with eggs.
Later versions of the recipe call for briefly cooked coddled eggs or pasteurized eggs.
There are many variations of this salad.
The City of London is a district of Greater London.
The City 's boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages.
Although it is now only a small part of the metropolis, it is a notable part of central London.
The City holds city status in its own right, and is also a separate ceremonial county.
Often referred to as the City, or the Square Mile, it is just over one square mile, 1.12 s in area.
It is here in the City of London where most of the United Kingdom 's financial trade is done.
It is a very small area, covering only a square mile, and has a very small resident population (8,000).
However, many people come to work here and during the day it can be very busy, with some 300,000 people in it.
"London" now refers to Greater London, which is made up of 32 boroughs (including the City of Westminster and the City of London.
The City is in central London and is the oldest part of the city, dating back to Roman times.
The City of London has its own mayor, the Lord Mayor of London, an office separate from (and much older than) the Mayor of London.
There are other ancient features, dating back to medieval times.
The City has its own police force, the City of London Police.
The City vies with New York City as the financial capital of the world: many banking and insurance institutions have their headquarters there.
The London Stock Exchange (shares and bonds), Lloyd 's of London (insurance) and the Bank of England are all based in the City.
Over 500 banks have offices in the City, and the City is an established leader in trading in Eurobonds, foreign exchange, energy futures and global insurance.
The Alternative Investment Market, a market for trades in equities of smaller firms, is a recent development.
In 2008, the City of London accounted for 4 % of UK GDP.
London is the world 's greatest foreign exchange market, with much of the trade conducted in the City of London.
Of the $ 3.98 trillion daily global turnover, as measured in 2007, trading in London accounted for around $ 1.36 trillion, or 34.1 % of the total.
The Pound Sterling, the currency of the United Kingdom, is globally the fourth most traded currency and the third most held reserve currency.
Since 1991 Canary Wharf, a few miles east of the City in Tower Hamlets, has become a second center for London 's financial services industry and houses many banks and other institutions formerly located in the Square Mile.
This development does not appear to have damaged the City: growth has continued in both locations.
The City is the site of Roman Londinium, and the archaeological remains are on display in the Museum of London, City Wall.
The City has many churches designed by Sir Christopher Wren, including St Paul 's Cathedral.
The City was the site of the Great Fire of London in 1666.
The clitoris is a female genital organ.
It includes erectile tissue, glands, muscles and ligaments, nerves, and blood vessels.
Although the parts are placed differently, the clitoris is a match to the male penis.
The clitoris causes female sexual pleasure, arousal and orgasm.
Rubbing or applying other consistent pressure to it is usually needed to help the female have an orgasm.
During sexual arousal, erectile tissue fills with blood.
This causes the clitoris to grow.
It grows until orgasm happens.
Also during arousal, touching the clitoris and other sensitive areas of the female genitals makes a woman 's vagina change shape and release a lubricant.
The lubricant and change of shape makes it easier for a man to enter a woman and for sex to occur.
Most of the clitoris is hidden inside the body.
Only a small part of it is seen outside the body.
Adding the outside and inside parts, the clitoris is about the same size as the penis.
The clitoris and penis grow from the same tissue in the womb; they bear many similar parts.
The parts of the clitoris that can be seen from the outside are located from the clitoral junction (the point where the outer lips meet at the base of the pubic mound) to the fork (where the lower edges of the inner lips meet below the vaginal opening).
The outside parts include:
The parts of the clitoris inside the body include erectile tissue, glands, muscles, blood vessels, and nerves.
In both the clitoris and the penis, there are two types of erectile tissue.
These are corpus cavernosum (cavern-like body) and vestibular bulbs.
These tissues fill with blood during sexual arousal.
This causes an erection.
The clitoral shaft is connected to the glans.
It is just underneath the surface of the skin.
The shaft is a round spongy erectile tissue.
It is very sensitive like the glans.
It feels like a hard ridge.
The shaft is about 0.5 - long.
It moves toward the pubic mound for a short distance, then bends sharply and divides.
This forms two thin legs.
These legs are also made of spongy tissue.
The legs spread out like the wishbone of a chicken.
Chicago is the largest city in Illinois, USA.
It is the third largest city in the United States, although it used to be the second largest.
Chicago is next to one of the five Great Lakes, Lake Michigan.
In the 2000 census, almost 2,900,000 people lived there, with six million more people living nearby.
The city also has about 300 bridges.
Chicago is sometimes called the "Windy City".
The city was founded by Jean Baptiste Point du Sable.
Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837, near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed.
The name "Chicago" is the French version of the Miami-Illinois word shikaakwa ("Stinky Onion"), named for the plants common along the Chicago River.
Today, Chicago is listed as an alpha + global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, and ranks seventh in the world in the 2012 Global Cities Index.
The city is an international hub for finance, commerce, industry, telecommunications, and transportation, with O'Hare International Airport being the second-busiest airport in the world in terms of traffic movements.
The first skyscraper in the world was built in Chicago.
It was the Home Insurance Building.
In September 2013, the FBI named Chicago "The Murder Capital of the United States" with 550 murders recorded in 2012.
Chicago was founded in the early 1700s by Jean Baptiste Point du Sable.
The city was founded to create a canal that allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.
The city later became a trading center for food, crops, and fur.
The city grew very fast because of how the river back then was clean and healthy to drink.
In 1837, Chicago became a city.
The city grew until the Great Chicago Fire happened in 1871.
The fire lasted for almost a week.
Almost half the city and its population were lost in the fire.
After the fire Chicago grew faster than ever.
Also after the fire happened the city 's economy grew and also more people migrated here from parts of the world.
The immigrants include, Germans, Jews, Irish, Swedes, Poles, and Czechs.
The immigrants made almost two-thirds of the city 's population.
In 1889, Jane Addams had built the first Hull house in Chicago for children and the poor.
The city 's public health became better, so that the city would be healthy.
In 1893, the city hosted the World 's Columbian Exposition.
And later the University of Chicago was founded in 1892.
In 1919 the city later became known for its gangsters such as Al Capone, Dean O Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo.
Later the city also became known for one of the most infamous massacres, the Saint Valentine 's Day Massacre when Al Capone ordered many gangsters to be shot on St. Valentine 's Day in 1929.
Shortly after that the city became known for John Dillinger, a bank robber who could rob an entire bank under two minutes.
Dillinger was shot and killed at the Biograph Theatre in 1934.
During a Democratic party convention in 1933, the 44th Mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak was shot and killed when a man tried to shoot at Franklin D. Roosevelt when Cermak blocked the bullet so that the President would not be hurt.
Cermak died hours later.
In 1955, Mayor Richard J. Daley became one of the most powerful and well known Democrats in the country.
He also helped Martin Luther King and other activist share their thoughts and opinions without being arrested in Chicago.
In 1968, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention led to a massive protest and riots that happened where the convention was held.
Richard J. Daley helped create the construction sites for the Willis Tower, O'Hare International Airport, the McCormick Place, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Jane Byrne helped Chicago to become one of the most popular tourist attractions in the United States.
She was the first female mayor of Chicago.
In 1983, Harold Washington became the first African American mayor of Chicago and helped clean all dangerous and poor neighborhoods in the city.
He was later re-elected, but died of a heart attack.
He would become the second mayor of Chicago to die from a heart attack while in office, the first was Richard J. Daley.
Washington 's second full term was finished by Eugene Sawyer, the second African American Mayor of Chicago.
In 1989, Richard M. Daley, the son of Richard J. Daley, became the mayor of Chicago.
He helped fix the Chicago Loop, helped fix parks, and made the Chicago Skyline the second most beautiful skyline in the world, behind Hong Kong.
Daley was the longest serving Mayor of Chicago.
In 2011, Rahm Emanuel became the first Jewish Mayor of Chicago.
Emmanuel helped fix the Chicago Public School system and helped fix the Chicago Police Department.
In 2012, the NATO Summit was held here in Chicago and lasted for three days.
The city would also host the 38th G8 summit, but was moved to Camp David because the city was already hosting the NATO summit in Chicago.
Chicago has the fourth-largest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world, just behind Tokyo, New York City, and Los Angeles, and it is ahead of London and Paris.
Chicago is the largest city in the United States to have a female mayor since 2012.
Chicago has a very well-known culture.
Some of the many things Chicago is famous for are: Chicago-style hot dogs, Chicago-style (deep dish) pizza, Maxwell Street Polish Sausage, jazz music, and 1920s gangsters like Al Capone.
Chicago is also known for interesting architecture like the Sears Tower, many museums, and many loyal sports fans.
Chicago was home to the Bijou Theater, the longest-running gay adult theater and sex club in the United States.
It opened in 1970, and it permanently closed its doors in September 2015.
For many years, the Sears Tower was the tallest building in the world.
It is the second tallest building in the United States.
Chicago is home to the largest population of Poles in the world, outside of Warsaw.
Historic U.S. Route 66 starts in Chicago by Grant Park in front of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Chicago is a major world financial center, with the second largest central business district in the United States.
The city is the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (the Seventh District of the Federal Reserve).
The city is also home to major financial and futures exchanges, including the Chicago Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the "Merc"), which is owned, along with the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) by Chicago 's CME Group.
The CME Group, in addition, owns the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), the Commodities Exchange Inc. (COMEX) and the Dow Jones Indexes.
Perhaps due to the influence of the Chicago school of economics, the city also has markets trading unusual contracts such as emissions (on the Chicago Climate Exchange), and equity style indices (on the U.S. Futures Exchange).
Chase Bank has its commercial and retail banking headquarters in Chicago 's Chase Tower.
There are many museums in Chicago.
These include: Adler Planetarium - built in 1930, it is the oldest planetarium in the worldArt Institute of Chicago - has a large collection of American and Impressionist artField Museum of Natural History - has Sue, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus fossil knownMuseum of Science and Industry - has many exhibits including a real Boeing 727 jet plane which was given to the museum by United AirlinesPolish Museum of America - Museum haunted by famous piano player Ignace Paderewski, has large collection of Polish art in the biggest Polish city outside of PolandShedd Aquarium - at one time the world 's largest aquarium.
Has 19 million liters (5 million gallons) of water and 22,000 fish
Sports are a big part of the cultural life in Chicago.
Chicago is home to 15 sports teams.
All of the city 's major sports teams play within the city limits.
Chicago is one of only three cities in the United States to have two Major League Baseball teams: the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs.
The White Sox play at the U.S. Cellular Field and the Cubs play at Wrigley Field.
The White Sox won the World Series in 2005.
The Cubs won the World Series in 1908.
Chicago 's National Basketball Association (NBA) team is the Chicago Bulls.
For many years, Michael Jordan played for the Bulls and he helped them win six Championships during the 1990s.
At American football, Chicago is the home of the Chicago Bears (National Football League) and the Chicago Rush (Arena Football League).
Chicago has two ice hockey teams, the Chicago Blackhawks (who play for the National Hockey League) and the Chicago Wolves (who play for the American Hockey League).
Chicago also has a Major League Soccer team, the Chicago Fire.
Many people and things travel through Chicago to get to other places.
Chicago has a complex network of trains and buses, which help people who live in Chicago travel across the city.
Chicago 's commuter train system is called the Metra.
It runs within the city and also into the suburbs that are around Chicago.
The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is a system of buses and elevated trains (called the ` L') that run inside the city.
O'Hare International Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world, is a major center for air travel.
Chicago has another airport called Midway Airport.
Many trains use Chicago as a place to change loads and to change directions.
There is also a canal between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River called the Chicago River.
The Chicago River is the only river to travel backwards.
The city lies within the humid continental climate zone, and has four distinct seasons.
Summers are hot and humid, with a July daily average of 75.8 F. In a normal summer, temperatures exceed 90 F on 21 days.
Winters are cold and snowy with many sunny days, and with a January daytime average of 31 F. Spring and autumn are mild seasons with low humidity.
According to the National Weather Service, Chicago 's highest official temperature reading of 105 F was recorded on July 24, 1934, although it is unknown about the reading of 109 F was also recorded at Midway Airport during that month.
The lowest temperature of 27 F was recorded on January 20, 1985, at O'Hare Airport.
The city can experience extreme winter cold waves and summer heat waves that may last for several consecutive days.
There are also many mild winter and summer days.
Thunderstorms are usually common during the spring and summer months; sometimes they may produce tornadoes which are more likely in the far suburban areas than the city itself.
The heaviest snowfall record that Chicago had was in January 1999 when it snowed 18.6 inches.
Although Chicago is known as the Windy City, it is in fact less windy than many other major American cities.
Average wind speeds range from 8 miles per hour (13 km\/h) in late summer to 12 miles per hour (19 km\/h) in spring months.
The "Windy City" moniker is believed to actually be a reference to the boostering politicians of Chicago from the 1800s.
The phrase may have also been created by Chicago tourism boosters promoting the city, suggesting that the cool breezes from Lake Michigan make Chicago an ideal summer destination.
Some famous people who lived in or are from Chicago.
Chicago is the county seat of Cook County.
The government of the City of Chicago is divided into executive and legislative branches.
Civil and criminal law cases are heard in the Cook County Circuit Court of the State of Illinois court system, or in the Northern District of Illinois, in the federal system.
In the former, the public prosecutor is the Illinois State 's Attorney, in the latter, the United States Attorney.
The Mayor of Chicago is the chief executive, elected by general election for a term of four years, with no term limits.
The mayor appoints commissioners and other officials who oversee the various departments.
In addition to the mayor, Chicago 's two other citywide elected officials are the clerk and the treasurer.
The City Council is the legislative branch and is made up of 50 aldermen, one elected from each ward in the city.
The council enacts local ordinances and approves the city budget.
Government priorities and activities are established in a budget ordinance usually adopted each November.
The council takes official action through the passage of ordinances and resolutions.
Chicago had a murder rate of 14.5 per 100,000 residents in 2012.
This pales in comparison to smaller cities, including New Orleans, Newark, and Detroit, which saw 53 murders per 100,000 residents in 2012.
The total number of murders in the city peaked in 1974, with 970 murders when the city 's population was over 3 million people (resulting in a murder rate of around 29 per 100,000), and came close to peaking again in 1992 with 943 murders, resulting in a murder rate of 34 per 100,000.
Chicago, along with other major US cities, experienced a significant reduction in violent crime rates through the 1990s, eventually recording 448 homicides in 2004, the lowest total since 1965 (15.65 per 100,000.)
Chicago 's homicide tally remained steady throughout 2005, 2006, and 2007 with 449, 452, and 435 respectively.
Chicago is a major transportation hub in the United States.
It is an important component in global distribution, as it is the third largest inter-modal port in the world after Hong Kong and Singapore.
The Kennedy Expressway and Dan Ryan Expressways are the busiest state maintained routes in not only the City of Chicago and its suburbs, but also the entire state of Illinois.
The Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) coordinates the operation of the three service boards: CTA, Metra, and Pace.
Greyhound Lines provides inter-city bus service to and from the city, and Chicago is also the hub for the Midwest network of Megabus.
Amtrak long distance services originate from Union Station.
Chicago is one of the largest hubs of passenger rail service in the nation.
An attempt was made in the early 20th century to link Chicago with New York City via the Chicago New York Electric Air Line Railroad.
Parts of this were built, but it was ultimately never completed.
Chicago appeared in many movies such as The Blues Brothers; Ferris Bueller 's Day Off; Home Alone; The Fugitive; The Untouchables, I, Robot; Wanted; Batman Begins; The Dark Knight; Transformers: Dark of the Moon; and Man of Steel.
A census means getting information about every member of a population.
Usually used meaning a population of people, but can be used to mean a population of animals.
The United States has a census every 10 years, or decade.
The Cotswolds is a range of hills in central England, sometimes called the "Heart of England", a hilly area reaching over 300 m. The area has been designated as Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The highest point in the Cotswolds is Cleeve Hill at 330 m (1083 ft).
The Cotswolds lie within the current ceremonial counties of Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire.
The county of Gloucestershire forms the largest area of the Cotswolds.
The spine of the Cotswolds runs southwest to northeast through six counties, particularly Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and southern Warwickshire.
The northern and western edges of the Cotswolds are marked by steep slopes down to the Severn valley and the Avon.
These are a result of the broken edge of the limestone layer.
On the eastern boundary is the city of Oxford and on the west is Stroud.
To the south towns as Cirencester, Lechlade, Tetbury, Beverston and Fairford mark the southern limit of this region.
The area is characterised by attractive small towns and villages built of Cotswold stone (a yellow limestone).
This limestone is rich in fossils.
In the Middle Ages, the wool trade made the Cotswolds prosperous.
Some of this money was put into the building of churches so the area has a number of large, handsome Cotswold stone "wool churches".
The area remains rich and has attracted rich people who own second homes in the area or have chosen to retire to the Cotswolds.
The town of Chipping Campden is famous as the home of the Arts and Crafts movement, that was founded by William Morris at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.
The Cotswold Way is a long-distance footpath (approx 103 miles (166 km)) running the length of the AONB, mainly on the edge of the Cotswold escarpement with good views over the Severn Valley and the Vale of Evesham.
A context switch is the computing process of saving and restoring the state (context) of a CPU such that multiple processes can share a single CPU resource.
The context switch is an essential feature of a multitasking operating system.
Context switches are usually time consuming and much of the design of operating systems is to minimize the time of context switches.
A context switch can mean a register context switch, a task context switch, a thread context switch, or a process context switch.
What will be switched is determined by the processor and the operating system.
Context switching can be performed primarily by software or hardware.
Some CPUs have hardware support for context switches, else if not, it is performed totally by the operating system software.
In a context switch, the state of a process must be saved somehow before running another process, so that, the scheduler resume the execution of the process from the point it was suspended; after restoring its complete state before running it again.
A chakra is an energy center in the human body as taught in Indian yoga and some related cultures.
Chakras are also believed in by some New Age adherents.
Chakra means ` wheel ' in Sanskrit.
A chakra is an area in the body connected with life energy.
There are seven chakras in the body - each is an interface for the flow of life energy.
A chakra vitalizes a physical body and is associated with interactions of a physical or mental nature.
Current science is not able to detect or measure chakras.
The seven main chakras are described as being present in an ascending column from the base of the spine to the head.
The chakras are usually connected with a certain color.
Each chakra is also connected with some part of consciousness.
Cellulose is the main chemical that forms the main structure of plants.
It is the most abundant macromolecule on Earth.
Cellulose is made from a form of glucose and makes up most of the cell wall of plant cells.
This is what keeps a plant in shape.
Cellulose is not digestible by humans.
It is a polysaccharide, which is repeating units of a monosaccharide joined together by a glycosidic bond by a condensation reaction, there is a by-product of water, found in plants.
It is very tough because when you join beta glucose together, they are opposite ways up, the bonds are straight, forming straight chains.
There is hydrogen bonds between the polymers.
These fibers are in bundles of about 40, called microfibrils.
Microfibrils are embedded in a hydrated network of other polysaccharides.
The cell wall is assembled in place.
The parts are made inside the cell and then assembled by enzymes associated with the cell membrane.
A colony is a place controlled by another country.
The metropolitan state is the country that owns the colony.
Now the phrase Dependent territory is used instead of colony.
A country which has many colonies is often called an empire.
A colonist is a person from the metropolitan state who lives in a colony.
Colonial means having to do with a colony.
Colonial land is land that belongs to the colony.
A colonist is sometimes called a colonial.
The philosophy of having colonies is called colonialism.
There must be many people to start a colony.
There are many colonies, or countries that were once colonies, in the world.
Most countries that were once colonies of Britain are part of the British Commonwealth.
A column in architecture is a vertical element that transmits the weight of the structure above to the structure below.
Columns can be either a single piece or several pieces put together.
Columns are frequently used to support beams or arches on which the upper parts of walls or ceilings rest.
Stone columns were already used in the architecture of ancient Egypt as early as 2600 BC.
A cabal is a group of people who try to control things in a secret way.
Sometimes people say "There Is No Cabal", or use the abbreviation TINC to mean "There Is No Cabal" but since a cabal is necessarily secret, they can not know.
One new example of the use of the word Cabal is that the former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, of the Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the foreign policy of George W. Bush 's administration were run by a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal".
With this word he meant that the President had not really the power that he is given by the constitution and that the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense had more influence than they should have.
Cytochromes are hemoproteins (or proteins containing haem groups).
They make ATP by electron transport.
They are found either as single (monomeric) proteins (e.g., cytochrome c) or as part of bigger enzyme complexes which catalyze redox reactions.
The haem group does the redox reactions.
These include all chemical reactions in which atoms have their oxidation state changed.
In general, redox reactions involve the transfer of electrons.
Cytochromes were described in 1884 as respiratory pigments.
They include (hemoglobin, myoglobin, hemocyanin, hemoerythrin and chlorocruorin.
In the 1920s, Keilin rediscovered these respiratory pigments.
He called them the cytochromes, or cellular pigments, and classified them as haem proteins.
Several kinds of cytochrome exist and can be distinguished by spectroscopy.
Three types of cytochrome are distinguished by their prosthetic groups.
In mitochondria and chloroplasts, these cytochromes are often combined in electron transport and related metabolic pathways.
Crowded House are an Australian rock group.
They formed in 1985 in Melbourne, led by New Zealand singer-songwriter Neil Finn.
Finn is the main songwriter and creative director of the band.
He has led it through several changes.
The band has people from a few different countries: from New Zealand (Neil and his brother, Tim Finn and Eddie Rayner), Australia (Paul Hester, Nick Seymour, Peter Jones and Craig Hooper) and the United States (Mark Hart, and Matt Sherrod).
Crowded House are referred to as The Crowdies by Australian fans.
Originally active from 1985 to 1996, the band has had consistent commercial and critical success in Australia and New Zealand and international chart success in two phases, beginning with their self titled debut album, Crowded House, which reached number twelve on the US Album Chart in 1987 and provided the Top Ten hits, "Do n't Dream It 's Over" and "Something So Strong".
Further international success came in the UK and Europe with their third and fourth albums, Woodface and Together Alone and the compilation album Recurring Dream, which included the hits "Fall at Your Feet", "Weather with You", "Distant Sun", "Locked Out", "Instinct" and "Not the Girl You Think You Are".
Founding drummer Hester left in May 1994, citing family reasons, but returned for their Farewell to the World concerts in Melbourne and Sydney in 1996.
Neil Finn had decided to end the band to concentrate on his solo career and the Finn Brothers project with Tim.
On 26 March 2005 Hester committed suicide, aged 46.
In 2006, the group re-formed with new drummer Matt Sherrod.
They have since released two albums, which have both reached number one on Australia 's Album Chart.
The new albums are called "Time on Earth" (2007) and "Intriguer" (2010).
Chromatin is the complex combination of DNA and proteins that makes up chromosomes.
It is found inside the nuclei of eukaryotic cells.
Chromatin is divided into heterochromatin (condensed) and euchromatin (extended) forms.
Hetrochromatin is composed mostly of satellite DNA tandem repeats.
The active components of chromatin are DNA and histone proteins, although other proteins also occur.
The functions of chromatin are:
Cheddar is a type of hard cheese made from cow 's milk.
It originally was produced in the English village of Cheddar in Somerset.
Romans may have brought the recipe to Britain from the Cantal region of France.
The first record of cheddar cheese dates back to the 12th century.
In 1170, King Henry II bought 10240 l at a farthing per pound.
Charles I (1600 1649) also bought cheese from Somerset.
Cheddar cheese traditionally had to be made within 30 m of Wells Cathedral.
Cheddar cheese is different from other cheeses in how it is made.
After the curds are heated, they are cut and stacked.
The stacks are then turned periodically and re-stacked.
This process is called cheddaring.
Cheddar cheese is sometimes aged in caves for up to 30 months before it is ready to eat.
Cheddar cheese is the most popular cheese in the United Kingdom.
It accounts for 51 percent of the country 's 1.9 billion annual cheese market.
It is the second most popular cheese in the United States, behind mozzarella, with an average annual consumption of 10 l per person.
The United States produced 3,233,380,000 lbs in 2010, and the UK 258,000 tonnes in 2008.
The name "cheddar cheese" is widely used and has no protection within the European Union.
Only cheddar produced from local milk within four counties of South West England may use the name "West Country Farmhouse Cheddar."
Catherine of Aragon (16 December 1485 7 January 1536) was the daughter of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon.
Catherine was the wife of Arthur, Prince of Wales and later married his brother, Henry VIII.
It was decided that she would marry Arthur, Prince of Wales.
Catherine and Arthur were married on 14 November 1501.
They were sent to Ludlow Castle in Shropshire.
This was to take control of the Council of Wales.
Months later, Catherine and Arthur became ill, possibly from a sickness which was sweeping the area at the time.
Prince Arthur died on 2 April 1502, leaving after Catherine a widow at the age of 16.
Henry VIII married Catherine in 1509.
She was extremely popular with the people of England.
In 1513, when Henry VIII invaded France, she ruled as his Regent.
Despite Catherine 's popularity, she did not produce a surviving son.
Her only surviving child was a daughter, Mary I of England.
Henry 's need for a son caused him to try and divorce his wife.
At first, Henry tried to convince Anne Boleyn to be his mistress in 1527.
Anne refused, so Henry decided to marry her.
Divorce was not allowed in the Catholic faith.
Henry claimed that, as Catherine had been married to his elder brother Arthur, his was an invalid marriage.
He quoted a verse in Leviticus which states that "a man may not marry his brother 's wife and such a union would be without the blessing of God and fruitless", and used this as his case.
It became referred to as the kings "secret matter" and a special court was held with Cardinal Wolsey leading it.
An official from Rome was brought over and a trial was held.
The official stated that he could not come to a conclusion and the case would have to be referred to Rome for the Pope to make a decision.
The matter dragged on for quite some time, as the Pope would not agree to a divorce.
In 1532, Anne Boleyn became pregnant with the king 's child.
She was married to Henry on 25 January 1533 so that the baby could be a legitimate heir.
Henry 's marriage to Catherine of Aragon was finally annulled in the following May by Archbishop Cranmer, thus ending the first of Henry 's 6 marriages.
The divorce went against the Roman Catholic belief system, so Henry created his own church, the Church of England.
This was the beginnings of protestantism in England, with the King as the head of the church instead of the Pope.
Until the end of Catherine 's life, Catherine believed that she was the true wife of Henry VIII.
Her servants called her their queen, but Henry called her the "Dowager Princess of Wales".
In 1535, Catherine was transferred to Kimbolton Castle and was not allowed to see her daughter Mary.
Henry VIII told her that if they declared Anne their queen, they would be able to see each other.
Catherine nor Mary ever did.
Catherine died, most likely of heart cancer, in January of 1536, just five months before the execution of Anne Boleyn.
A cathode ray is a stream of electrons that are seen in vacuum tubes.
It is called a "cathode ray" because the electrons are being emitted from the positive charged element in the vacuum tube called the cathode.
A cathode ray tube aims the ray at a point on its screen.
They were first observed in 1869 by German physicist Johann Hittorf, and were named in 1876 by Eugen Goldstein Kathodenstrahlen, or cathode rays.
Electrons were discovered as the constituents of cathode rays in 1897 by British physicist J. J. Thomson.
He showed the rays were composed of a previously unknown negatively charged particle, which was later called the electron.
Cathode ray tubes (CRTs) use a focused beam of electrons deflected by electric or magnetic fields to create the image in a classic television set.
A cathode is a type of electrode through which electrons move.
Electrodes are an electrical conductor (usually a metal) that is connected to something that is not a metal.
The cathode type of electrode delivers electrons (negative charge) and the anode collects electrons (has the positive charge).
This lets an electrical current go into an electrical device such as a battery.
It can also end in a vacuum, like in a cathode ray tube.
In this case, the electrons may go into open space.
In other words, a cathode is a positive electrode on a battery and a negative electrode on an electrolytic cell.
Electric current is perceived as flowing in the opposite direction that the electrons are flowing.
So electrons go into the + terminal of a battery, but electric current goes out.
Electrons go into the - terminal of an electrolytic cell, but electric current goes out.
An electrode through which electrons flows out of the device is termed an anode because it is positively charged.
An anode is a negative electrode on a battery and a positive electrode on an electrolytic cell.
A campus is land where a college or university buildings are placed.
Campuses can have libraries, lecture halls, and parks.
Campuses can consist of both academic (school and studying-related) buildings and non-academic buildings.
The crossbow, or arbalest, is a weapon which consists of a bow-like arc called prod and cross-wise body called stock and trigger mechanism.
The crossbow is an invention in which the stock, a piece of wood is mounted on two other crossing pieces.
Crossbows shoot short arrows called bolts which are similar to arrows.
The crossbow was first created by the Chinese people in circa 6 B.C..
The Greeks invented crossbow separately in 4th century B.C..
The Romans called the weapon arcuballista.
Crossbow was a very popular weapon in the Middle Ages as it was strong and accurate and could be used as a sharpshooter weapon.
The Arabs call crossbow qaws Ferengi, "European bow", for this reason as the Crusaders used crossbow a lot.
A good crossbow can shoot the bolt with such immense power that it may pierce armor.
Against unarmoured light opponents, even a single bolt may be lethal.
Compared to the ordinary bow, the crossbows have good and bad sides to them.
They fire much stronger and much more accurately than ordinary bows, and shooting accurately with a crossbow is easier to learn than shooting with an ordinary bow.
On the other hand, because the prod is short and therefore very stiff, a crossbow will take much longer time to load, and a crossbow does not have as good accurate range than an ordinary bow.
Many crossbows have crank or windlass mechanisms to pull the string in drawn position.
Also many crossbows do have safety mechanisms to prevent an accidental shot.
Crossbow shooting is today a popular sport.
A conservation law is a statement used in Physics that says that the amount of something does not change in time.
That thing could be as simple as mass or charge, or something that has to be calculated, like energy, or angular momentum.
For example, the "law of conservation of mass" is the conservation law that says that the amount of mass is always conserved, even if it is changed into another form.
This means that if the mass of the universe could be measured right now, its mass would be known tomorrow because it will not change.
For a long time, people thought that these laws were true for the amount of mass and energy in the universe.
Later on, Albert Einstein said that they were not completely true.
He said that mass could change into energy (or the other way around).
If this happened, it would be against the conservation laws because if mass was changed into energy, the total amount of mass goes down, and the total amount of energy goes up.
Einstein said that conservation laws could still be used if all the mass and all the energy were combined.
He said that even though the mass changes or the energy changes, the sum when they are added together does not change.
So now there is just one conservation law for mass and energy together.
Of course, mass is measured in kilograms, and energy is measured in joules.
They can not be added together directly, but Einstein found a way to add them together.
He created the equation.
This equation means is that before adding the amount of mass to the amount of energy, the mass must be multiplied by the speed of light and then by the speed of light again.
Conservation laws are helpful for people when they do problems in Physics.
This is because if they know that a thing is conserved, it gives them more mathematical information about the thing they are doing the problem about.
Emmy Noether showed that conservation laws can be said to arise from symmetries in the laws of physics.
This theorem, called Noether 's theorem gives physicists an extremely powerful tool to try and solve complicated problems.
Conservation laws can come in two types, global, or local.
A global conservation law just says that the total amount of something in the universe does not change in time.
A local conservation law says a little bit more than that.
It says that if the amount of something changed in one place, it 's because it moved in to or out of that place, and we can measure that movement.
The Council of Chalcedon was an ecumenical council that took place from October 8 to November 1, 451, at Chalcedon (a city of Bithynia in Asia Minor).
Chalcedon is today part of the city of Istanbul on the Asian side of the Bosphorus.
For many people, these definitions were too dogmatic; The Oriental Orthodox Churches split from the main church (that would later become the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church).
Canadian football is football generally played in Canada and follows much the same general rules as American Football.
Compared to American football, the field is slightly longer and wider, 110 by 65 yards (101 by 59 m) rather than 100 by 53? 1\/3 yards (91 by 49 m), and the endzones are 10 to 15 yards deeper.
There are also only 3 downs instead of 4, and the field goal posts are at the front of the endzone instead of the back.
There are 12 players per team on the field during play.
More than one player may be in motion before the snap of the ball and the rules are less strict about players position relative to the line of scrimmage.
The Chinese calendar, also known as the "agriculture calendar" (\/), is a lunisolar calendar (yinyangli).
This is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes.
It was developed in part from a lunar calendar (yinli) and in part from a solar calendar (yangli).
The current version of the Chinese calendar was developed for the Chongzhen Emperor in the 17th century.
It has
Today in China the Gregorian calendar is used for most activities.
At the same time, the Chinese calendar is still used for traditional Chinese holidays like Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year.
A chipmunk is a small squirrel-like rodent.
About twenty-three species fall under this title, with one species in northeastern Asia, one in the eastern portions of Canada and the US, and all the rest native to the western part of North America.
The name may have originally been spelled "chitmunk" (perhaps from a Native American word meaning "red squirrel").
However, the earliest form comes from the Oxford English Dictionary (in 1842) as "chipmonk".
Other early forms include "chipmuck" and "chipminck".
Chip ` n Dale, two Disney cartoon characters, are famous chipmunks in pop culture.
Another such trio is Alvin, Simon and Theodore (created by Ross Bagdasarian).
A concept is an idea that is applied to all objects in a group.
It is the way people see and understand something.
The name used to identify a concept (the concept 's label) is a "term".
For example, the word "Dog" is the term to identify the concept of what a dog is.
Everything that a person knows about a dog is the concept of the term dog.
Different terms can be used to identify the same concept.
Car and Automobile are both terms for the same concept.
Different languages have different terms for the same concept.
This is what makes translation possible.
The terms may be different in each language, but the concept is the same.
The concept of jumping is the same to a person from England and a person from Italy, but one person uses the term "Jump" to mean the concept and the other person uses "Salto".
Colin Luther Powell, KCB (Honorary), MSC, (born April 5, 1937) is a retired General in the United States Army.
He was the 65th United States Secretary of State (2001-2005), serving under President George W. Bush.
He was the first African American appointed to that position.
As a General in the United States Army, Powell also served as National Security Advisor (1987 1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989 1993), holding the latter position during the Gulf War.
He was the first and, so far, the only African American to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He was born Colin Luther Powell on April 5, 1937, in Harlem, New York City, New York.
His father, Luther Powell, was a shipping clerk.
His mother, Maud Powell, was a seamstress.
Both had immigrated to the United States from Jamaica.
He grew up in south Bronx.
He joined the Reserve Officers ' Training Corps (ROTC) while he was a student at City College of New York.
He commanded his unit 's precision drill team and achieved the highest rank in ROTC, cadet colonel.
When he graduated in 1958, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army.
His first assignment was in West Germany.
He was promoted to the rank of Captain on 1 June 1962.
Powell then served two tours of duty during the Vietnam War.
He was wounded twice while in Vietnam.
Once by a Viet Cong booby trap.
He received a Purple Heart.
A year later he received a Bronze Star Medal.
He was wounded a second time in a helicopter crash where he saved two other soldiers.
For this action he was awarded the Soldier 's Medal.
Between his two tours in Vietnam, Powell was promoted to the rank of major in May of 1966.
Powell then earned an MBA degree at George Washington University in Washington, DC.
He received a White House fellowship and worked in the Office of Management and Budget during 1972 1973.
As a lieutenant colonel Powell served as a battalion commander in the 2d Infantry Division.
In 1975 Powell was promoted to full colonel and became a brigade commander in the 101st Airborne Division.
He was promoted to the rank of general in 1989.
He was appointed to the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President George H. W. Bush.
He oversaw a number of crisis situations including Operation Desert Storm.
In 1993 he retired from the military as a four-star general.
In 2001 he was nominated and confirmed as US Secretary of State.
After the September 11 attacks he took a leading role in aligning allies for military action in Afghanistan.
Powell dealt with a number of international crises including a near war between India and Pakistan (both of which had nuclear weapons) in 2001-2002.
In February 2003 he appeared before the United Nations Security Council.
He presented evidence that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
This conviced many in the US that Iraq was a threat.
In September 2004 he appeared before the United States Congress to testify that the intelligence used to show Iraq had WMDs was wrong.
Then, on November 15, 2004, Powell announced his resignation.
Chlorophyll is a chemical found in the chloroplasts of plants that allows the plant to absorb light.
Energy from the light is used in photosynthesis to make glucose.
This contains lots of stored energy which the plant needs to release.
It does this through respiration.
This energy is then used for lots of different things like growing or repairing damaged parts of the plant.
Chlorophyll is also what gives the stem and leaf of the plant its green color.
Chlorophyll is a green pigment found in almost all plants, algae, and cyanobacteria.
It absorbs light most strongly in the blue portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, followed by the red portion.
However, it is a poor absorber of green and near-green portions of the spectrum; hence the green color of chlorophyll-containing tissues.
Chlorophyll was first isolated in 1817.
Chlorophyll is vital for photosynthesis, which allows plants to obtain energy from light.
Chlorophyll molecules are arranged in and around the membranes of chloroplasts.
It serves two main functions.
The function of most chlorophyll (up to several hundred molecules per photosystem) is to absorb light and transfer that light energy to reaction centres.
These pigments are named after the wavelength (in nanometers) of their red-peak absorption maximum.
These chlorophyll pigments can be separated in a simple paper chromatography experiment.
The function of the reaction center chlorophyll is to use the energy transferred to it from the other chlorophyll pigments to undergo a specific redox reaction.
In this reaction the chlorophyll gives an electron to an electron transport chain.
This reaction is how photosynthetic organisms such as plants produce O2 gas, and is the source for practically all the O2 in Earth 's atmosphere.
Photosystem I typically works in series with Photosystem II.
The electron flow produced by the reaction center chlorophyll pigments is used to shuttle H + ions across the membrane, setting up a chemiosmotic potential used mainly to produce ATP chemical energy; and those electrons ultimately reduce NADP + to NADPH, a universal reductant used to reduce CO2 into sugars as well as for other biosynthetic reductions.
A green sea slug, Elysia chlorotica, has been found to use the chlorophyll it has eaten to perform photosynthesis for itself.
This process is known as kleptoplasty, and no other animal has been found to have this ability.
It still is unclear exactly why plants have mostly evolved to be green.
Green plants reflect mostly green and near-green light to viewers rather than absorbing it.
Other parts of the system of photosynthesis still allow green plants to use the green light spectrum (e.g. through a light-trapping leaf structure, carotenoids, etc.).
Green plants do not use a large part of the visible spectrum as efficiently as possible.
A black plant can absorb more radiation, and this could be very useful, notwitstandanding the problems of disposing of this extra heat (e.g. some plants must close their openings, called stoma, on hot days to avoid losing too much water).
More precisely, the question becomes why the only light absorbing molecule used for power in plants is green and not simply black.
The biologist John Berman has offered the opinion that evolution is not an engineering process, and so it is often subject to various limitations that an engineer or other designer is not.
Even if black leaves were better, evolution 's limitations can prevent species from climbing to the absolute highest peak on the fitness landscape.
Berman wrote that achieving pigments that work better than chlorophyll could be very difficult.
In fact, all higher plants (embryophytes) are believed to have evolved from a common ancestor that is a sort of green algae the idea being that chlorophyll has evolved only once (common ancestor).
Shil DasSarma, a microbial geneticist at the University of Maryland, has pointed out that species of archaea do use another light-absorbing molecule, retinal, to extract power from the green spectrum.
He described the view of some scientists that such green-light-absorbing archae once dominated the earth environment.
This could have left open a "niche" for green organisms which would absorb the other wavelengths of sunlight.
This is just a possibility, and Berman wrote that scientists are still not convinced of any one explanation.
Chlorophyll is a chlorin pigment, which is structurally similar to and produced through the same metabolic pathway as other porphyrin pigments such as haem.
At the center of the chlorin ring is a magnesium ion.
For the structures depicted in this article, some of the ligands attached to the Mg2 + center are omitted for clarity.
The chlorin ring can have several different side chains, usually including a long phytol chain.
There are a few different forms that occur naturally, but the most widely distributed form in terrestrial plants is chlorophyll a. The general structure of chlorophyll a was worked out by Hans Fischer in 1940.
By 1960, when most of the stereochemistry of chlorophyll a was known, Robert Burns Woodward published a total synthesis of the molecule.
In 1967, the last remaining stereochemical elucidation was completed by Ian Fleming, and in 1990 Woodward and co-authors published an updated synthesis.
In 2010, a near-infrared-light photosynthetic pigment called chlorophyll f might have been discovered in cyanobacteria and other oxygenic microorganisms that form stromatolites.
Chlorophyll Content meters measure the optical absorption of a leaf to estimate its chlorophyll content.
Chlorophyll molecules absorb in the blue and red bands, but not the green and infra-red bands.
Chlorophyll content meters measure the amount of absorption at the red band to estimate the amount of chlorophyll present in the leaf.
To compensate for varying leaf thickness, Chlorophyll Meters also measure absorption at the infrared band which is not significantly affected by chlorophyll.
The chlorophyll content of leaves can be non-destructively measured using hand-held, battery-powered meters.
The measurements made by these devices are simple, quick and relatively inexpensive.
They now have large data storage capacity, averaging and graphical displays.
In Angiosperms, the last step in the synthesis of chlorophyll is light-dependent.
Such plants are pale (etiolated) if grown in the darkness.
Non-vascular plants and green algae have an additional light-independent enzyme and grow green in the darkness instead.
Chlorosis is a condition in which leaves produce insufficient chlorophyll, turning them yellow.
Chlorosis can be caused by a nutrient deficiency of iron -- called iron chlorosis or by a shortage of magnesium or nitrogen.
Soil pH sometimes plays a role in nutrient-caused chlorosis; many plants are adapted to grow in soils with specific pH levels and their ability to absorb nutrients from the soil can be dependent on this.
Chlorosis can also be caused by pathogens including viruses, bacteria and fungal infections, or sap-sucking insects.
Cimabue, (c. 1240 - c. 1302), was a painter from Florence in Italy who worked in the Late Medieval period.
His real name was Cenni di Peppi.
He painted large icons in the Byzantine style and was the first great painter in the city of Florence.
The only works of art that are known to be definitely by Cimabue are the mosaic of Christ in Majesty in Pisa Cathedral and two very large ruined frescos in the Church of St Francis in Assisi.
The most famous painting that is believed to be by Cimabue is the "Madonna of Santa Trinita" which is an altarpiece that was done for the Church of the Holy Trinity.
It is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
He is also believed to have painted two large crucifixes which hung in the Church of St Domenic in Arezzo and the Church of the Holy Cross (Santa Croce, Florence).
The crucifix of Santa Croce was ruined in a flood and is now in the church 's museum.
The biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote about Cimabue 's life, 250 years after his death.
He wrote that one day Cimabue was walking in the country when he saw a little shepherd boy scratching a picture of a sheep onto a rock.
The drawing was so good that Cimabue went to the boy 's father and begged that he might take the boy as his apprentice and teach him to paint.
The boy was Giotto, who became a very famous painter, and who is thought of as the very first painter of the Italian Renaissance.
The Cauchy-Lorentz distribution (after Augustin-Louis Cauchy and Hendrik Lorentz) is a continuous probability distribution.
As a probability distribution it is usually called a Cauchy distribution.
Physicists know it as a Lorentz distribution.
It is used in spectroscopy to describe the spectral lines found there, and to describe resonance.
The Cauchy distribution is often used in statistics as the canonical example of a "pathological" distribution.
Both its mean and its variance are undefined.
Control engineering is the engineering field that focuses on mathematical modeling of systems of a various nature, analyzing their dynamic behavior, and using control theory to create a controller that will cause the systems to behave in a desired manner.
Modern control engineering is closely related to electrical, electronic and computer engineering, as electronic circuits can often be easily explained using control theory techniques.
And as engineering is developing, control engineering is often wanted.
In most of the cases, control engineers make use of feedback when designing control systems.
For example, in an automobile with sail control the machine 's speed is continuously checked and fed back to the system which adjusts the motor 's spin power accordingly.
Also recently, control system is used in nanotechnology.
And the field of control within chemical engineering is known as process control.
For example, we can change chemical process fast and easily.
Many developments were invoked by this process control.
Like this, control engineering has a lot if fields that include science, finance management, and even human action.
The important thing of control engineering is feedback.
But control engineers may also work on the control of systems without feedback.
This is called open loop control.
An open-loop controller, also called a non-feedback controller, is a type of controller which works out what to into a system using only the current condition and its model of the system.
An example of open loop control is a washing machine that works through a scheduled cycle without the use of units.
Chagas disease is a disease caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi.
The disease is also known as American trypanosomiasis.
It is common in Central and South America.
Carlos Chagas first described it in 1909.
Humans are usually infected because they are bitten by a blood-sucking bug of the subfamily Triatominae.
The disease can also be spread by blood transfusion, organ transplantation, or by eating food contaminated with the parasite.
Pregnant women may spread it to the fetus.
The disease has four stages.
It can be cured by anti-parasitic drugs.
Between eight and eleven million people may suffer from the disease, but many do not know they are infected.
Strategies of controlling the disease are mostly focused on eliminating the insect vector, and on preventing contamination from other sources.
Christiaan Neethling Barnard (8 November 1922 2 September 2001) was a South African heart surgeon.
He was born in Beaufort West, Cape Province, Union of South Africa.
He did the first successful heart transplant from human to human.
He died of asthma in Paphos, Cyprus.
His brother was Marius Barnard.
Concubinage is the state of a woman in a relationship with a man of higher social status that gives her less rights than a marriage.
In most of the cases the man has an official wife and one or more concubines.
Concubines have only limited rights of support from the man, and their children have lower status than children born by the official wife or wives; these legal rights distinguish a concubine from a mistress.
Historically, the family of a girl were in favor of a concubinage with an mighty man, as it meant economic security for the woman.
But concubinage could also mean sexual slavery of one member of the relationship, typically the woman, who was a pleasure slave to the man.
In the Western world there is no legal status of concubines, as only monogamous marriages are allowed.
Any other relationship does not enjoy legal protection; the woman is necessarily a mistress.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (28 September 1571 18 July 1610) was an Italian artist.
He worked in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily between 1593 and 1610.
He was a painter who did a type of art called Baroque style.
He was the first person to be really good at painting this way.
Even while he was alive, many people talked about Caravaggio.
Some people liked to see what he did, and how he lived, and thought he was a good person.
Other people thought he was very strange.
Some people thought he was bad.
He did not want to fit in, sometimes.
He started being a famous painter in Rome in 1600.
Many people gave him money to paint pictures for them, but he used all his money and sometimes got into trouble.
In 1604 someone wrote a note about him, and said that he was rude and a bad person.
This note tells us how he lived, in 1601: In 1606 he killed a young man in a fight and ran away from Rome.
He ran away because Rome said it would give money to people who caught Caravaggio.
In Malta in 1608 he got into a fight again.
He got into another fight in Naples in 1609, but this fight could have been enemies (people who hated him) trying to kill him.
In 1610, after making paintings for more than ten years, he died.
Huge new churches and palazzi were being built in Rome the last years of the 1500s and the first years of the 1600s.
These big churches needed paintings to hang on the walls.
The Counter-Reformation Catholic Church wanted to find painters who would paint beautiful art about God.
They wanted people to like the art so much that they would think Protestantism was ugly and boring, and would n't want to start being part of a Protestant church.
So the Catholic Church needed a new type of art, because Mannerism had been the most famous type of art for 100 years, and now it was boring.
Caravaggio 's paintings were new, and different from Mannerism.
He painted in a way called naturalism, which means that he painted things how they actually looked.
He painted pictures of people so that the people looked real, and he made his pictures look exciting by painting a lot of very dark shadows and very bright lights (which is called chiaroscuro).
While he was alive he was very famous, and many artists wanted to paint like he did.
But after he died, most people forgot about him, and did n't care about his paintings.
Hundreds of years later, in the 1900s, people looked at his art again, and saw that he had been very important.
They saw that many other famous artists had tried to paint like he did.
Because so many artists had seen his paintings, and liked how he painted, and tried to paint like he did, he made many artists paint in the Baroque style, too.
The Baroque style was very famous for hundreds of years.
Andre Berne-Joffroy, Paul Val ry s secretary, said that: "What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting."
The Confederate States of America (CSA) was a short-lived government that existed in the southern United States during the American Civil War.
It was established in 1861 by seven southern states in which slavery was legal, after Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the U.S., but before he took office.
South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas declared their secession (independence) from the United States.
After war began, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina joined them.
The first capital of the Confederacy was Montgomery, Alabama, but for most of the war the capital was Richmond, Virginia.
The government of the Confederacy was much like the United States government.
The Confederate States Constitution was similar to that of the United States; however, it emphasized states rights and clearly protected the enslavement of black Americans.
Jefferson Davis was chosen as president, and Alexander Stephens as Vice-President.
As in the United States, the CSA president had a cabinet of advisors.
The United States government (also known as the Union) did not agree that the states could leave and start a new government.
Thus, the Union government refused to abandon all its forts in the states that wanted to secede.
War began when the CSA attacked one of those forts, Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
This war is known as the American Civil War, and it lasted from 1861 to 1865.
After some of the deadliest battles in U.S. history, Union forces gradually regained control of southern states.
As Confederate forces surrendered, the Confederacy fell apart and the Civil War came to a close in 1865.
Following the war, slavery was outlawed everywhere in the United States.
The process of restoring the states of the CSA to the Union, called the Reconstruction of the United States, continued until 1877.
It is still undecided if the Confederate States of America was ever a country.
The Union never said that the Confederacy was really a country.
Although British and French companies sold ships and materials to the Confederacy, no nation officially recognized the CSA as an independent country.
The CSA was also called "the South", "the Confederacy", and "Dixie".
A cranberry is a fruit.
It grows on evergreen dwarf shrubs.
Cranberries are in the genus Vaccinium, and its subgenus Oxycoccus.
In some classification methods, they are regarded as a genus in their own right.
Cranberry plants grow in acidic bogs in cooler areas of the northern hemisphere.
They are low creeping shrubs up to seven feet long, from two to eight inches high.
They have slender and wiry stems with small leaves which are evergreen with dark pink flowers.
Cranberries are usually eaten during Thanksgiving in the United States.
They are also eaten in Europe and some parts of South America
Cranberries are strong commercial crops for certain U.S. states.
They are turned into juice, sauce or jam.
Since 2000, cranberries have been marketed as superfruit due to their antioxidant and nutrient qualities.
Chlamydia infection (from the Greek, meaning "cloak") is a common sexually transmitted infection (STI) in humans.
It is caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis.
It can be treated with antibiotics.
The term Chlamydia infection can also refer to infections caused by any species belonging to the bacterial family Chlamydiaceae.
C. trachomatis is only in humans.
Chlamydia is a major infectious cause of human genital and eye disease.
The infection is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections in people worldwide about 2.8 million cases of chlamydia infection occur in the United States each year.
It is the most common bacterial STI in humans.
C. trachomatis naturally lives only inside human cells.
Chlamydia can be transmitted during vaginal, anal, or oral sex.
It can also be passed from an infected mother to her baby during vaginal childbirth.
Many people with Chlamydia show no symptoms of infection.
Between half and three-quarters of all women who have chlamydia have no symptoms and do not know that they are infected.
Untreated, chlamydial infections can cause serious reproductive and other health problems with both short-term and long-term consequences.
Chlamydia conjunctivitis or trachoma is a common cause of blindness worldwide.
The World Health Organization estimates that it accounted for 15 % of blindness cases in 1995, but only 3.6 % in 2002.
Candidiasis, often called yeast infection or thrush, is a type of infectious disease.
It is a fungal infection (mycosis).
The disease is caused by any of the Candida species of yeast.
Candida albicans is the most common species.
Candida yeasts are common in most people.
The yeast is usually controlled in the body.
When the yeast grows without control, an infection happens.
A weakened, unhealthy, or young immune system may allow candidiasis to develop.
HIV\/AIDS, cancer treatments, steroids, stress and not enough nutrients may cause candidiasis.
Antibiotic and steroid use are the most common reason for uncontrolled yeast.
Antibiotic kills the good bacteria which control the yeast - the change you 'll get the yeast increases because of it.
The Candida fungus grows best in warm, moist and dark places.
Esophageal candidiasis is an infection of the esophagus by Candida albicans.
The disease happens in unhealthy people.
Sometimes people will get the infection when they are done with chemotherapy.
People with AIDS can also get this infection more often.
One sign of esophageal candidiasis is painful swallowing.
Weight loss can happen when a person has esophageal candidiasis for a long time.
Oral candidiasis is a yeast infection of the mouth.
It is located on the mucous membranes of the mouth.
It is caused by Candida albicans, Candida glabrata or Candida tropicalis.
Candida may appear as thick white or cream-coloured areas on mucosal membranes.
The infected mucosa of the mouth may look inflamed.
In babies the condition is called thrush.
For babies, it is usually painless and causes no pain.
Adults may experience discomfort or burning sensation.
In healthy persons, candidiasis is usually a very small infection of the skin or mucous membranes.
These areas include:
Candidiasis is a very common cause of vaginal irritation, or vaginitis.
It can also occur on the penis or scrotum.
In unhealthy patients, the Candida infection can affect the esophagus.
It could get everywhere in the body.
This would cause a much more serious health condition, a state called candidemia.
Control theory is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering and mathematics.
It deals with the behavior of dynamical systems.
The desired output of a system is called the reference.
In a control system a controller manipulates the inputs to a system.
In the control systems one or more output variables of a system need to follow a certain reference over time.
By manipulating the input, the controller wants to obtain the desired effect on the output of the system.
If we were to take a system without a controller it would simply have an input and an output.
As there is no way to track the output relative to the input then the system is practically useless.
If we add a controller, by feeding the output through the controller back to the input the output can be manipulated to meet the desired criteria.
For example, if a kettle did not have a controller and it were switched on it would continue to boil the water indefinitely.
By adding a controller, the boiling water (reference) is fed back to the input through the controller.
The controller then tells the input to turn off the power as the water is already boiling.
The system without the controller is called the open-loop system.
When you add a controller in a feedback loop you create a closed-loop system.
Open-loop systems are rarely ever consider stable as they can not be controlled.
Closed-loop systems incorporate a controller or series of controllers which, depending on the current output, configure the input such that the output will have the desired response.
Cracking joints consist of the action of moving joints to the point of producing popping or cracking sounds.
This commonly occurs during deliberate knuckle cracking.
This usually happens in the fingers, although it can also happen in hips, wrists, elbows, ankles, knees and toes, particularly if they are moved into unusual positions.
Cracking or popping usually happens due to cavitation within the joints, in particular cavitation related to synovial fluid.
A chemical formula is a way that chemists describe a molecule.
The formula says what atoms, and how many of each type, are in the molecule.
Sometimes the formula shows how the atoms are linked, and sometimes the formula shows how the atoms are arranged in space.
The letter shows what chemical element each atom is.
The subscript shows the number of each type of atom.
For example, hydrogen peroxide has the formula H2O2.
Methane has one carbon (C) atom and four hydrogen atoms; the chemical formula is CH4.
The sugar molecule glucose has six carbon atoms, twelve hydrogen atoms, and six oxygen atoms, so its chemical formula is C6H12O6.
Chemical formulas are used in chemical equations to describe chemical reactions.
The 19th-century Swedish chemist J ns Jacob Berzelius worked out this system for writing chemical formulas.
Chemical formulas are another way to represent the number of atoms.
Chemical formulas are used to represent kinds of atoms in a combination.
Chemical formulas use subscripts to tell how many of each atom are present in a combination.
Subscripts are small numbers to the lower right of a symbol.
They represent the number of atoms of that element in the equation.
Before writing Chemical formulas, write down the symbol of each atom present in your equation.
Writing chemical formula is a way of informing the chemical figure.
It is most easily found in the periodic table.
The periodic table is a chart of all well-known parts.
Use the periodic table to reference the figure that can not be remembered.
Different elements are found in the periodic table.
Each element has a family.
An element family is an arrangement of elements.
This element family has common properties.
They are sharing the same characteristics.
Elements are displayed in order.
Each element is put into families.
There are three main categories such as metals, nonmetals, and semimetals.
Each element family is displayed by the number of electrons in the outer shell.
They can also display the same properties and valence electrons.
Beetles, the order Coleoptera, are the largest group of insects.
There are 350,000 different species of beetles which have been named: about 40 % of all known insects.
There are an estimated 800,000 to a million living species.
Beetles live almost everywhere, though not in the ocean or in places that are very cold, such as Antarctica.
Beetles went through a massive adaptive radiation early in their evolutionary history.
The evolution of flowering plants helped drive the diversification of beetles.
Four of the six biggest families of beetles mainly eat flowering plants.
In common with other insects, there are three main parts to a beetle 's body: the head, the thorax (the middle part), and the abdomen (the back part).
On the head, beetles have antennae (feelers), eyes, and a mouth.
The legs and wings of the beetle are attached to the thorax.
The abdomen of a beetle does not usually have special parts on the outside, but it has the beetle s gut inside.
Like other insects, beetles have no internal bones, but instead have a hard exoskeleton on the outside of the body.
The exoskeleton is made of hard plates of chitin.
Beetles differ from other flying insects because their front wings have evolved into hard covers, or elytra.
The back wings are used for flying.
They are thin and are kept under the elytra when at rest.
Beetles lift their elytra out of the way in order to fly.
A few species of true bugs have a similar arrangement.
Not all beetles can fly.
Some beetles do not have back wings, and some can not lift their front wings out of the way.
A few beetles have no wings at all and can not fly.
Some beetles with no wings look like larvae, and are called "larviform".
An example is the family Phengodidae, glow-worms where the females are larviform throughout their lives.
The legs of beetles help them to walk, run, swim, and dig.
All beetles have six legs.
Each leg is made out of several parts.
The parts on the end of each leg are called tarsi.
The last tarsus (the singular of tarsi) of each beetle foot has one or two claws on the end of it.
Most beetles use their legs to walk or run.
Some beetle legs are flat and have long hairs on them.
These kinds of legs are found on water beetles.
Beetles that often dig in soil have flat legs with spines or horns at the edges.
Flat legs with horns are called fossorial legs.
A few beetles have large hind legs, similar to those of grasshoppers, which help the beetle to jump.
Flea beetles are an example of jumping beetle.
Beetles have compound eyes, which means the two big shiny eyes on the head are actually made out of many smaller parts.
Sometimes the two eyes are each divided in half so that it looks like there are four eyes.
One beetle family, the whirligig beetles, has divided eyes so that when they are swimming they can see on top of the water and under the water at the same time.
A few beetles have extra simple eyes (usually two) called ocelli.
The ocelli are on the top of the beetle s head.
Because beetles have no nose, they use their antennae to smell things.
Beetles also use their antennae to feel things around them.
Some beetles use their antennae to fight other beetles or even to fight larger animals that want to eat them.
Beetle antennae do not all look the same.
Some antennae are long and thin, while others are short and wide.
Thin antennae are called filiform antennae, and antennae that are wide on the end are called clavate antennae.
The mouth of a beetle is very different from the mouth of a person.
Most beetles have two hard mandibles at the front of their mouth which are a bit like teeth.
Mandibles help the beetle eat by crushing and cutting food.
In some beetles, the mandibles look like big pincers.
Beetles also have four fingers around their mouth that push food into the mouth of the beetle.
These fingers are called palpi.
Beetles do not breathe; instead they have holes called spiracles in the sides of their bodies which lead to trachea, which act like lungs.
Beetles do not have blood, but they have something like blood, called hemolymph.
It is a green color.
That 's because their hemoglobin molecule has a copper atom at its center, whereas ours has an iron atom there.
Beetles start out as eggs that a female beetle lays.
Some beetles can lay thousands of eggs during their lives.
A larva comes out when an egg hatches.
Most beetle larvae do not look like adult beetles.
A beetle larva eats and grows larger until it changes and becomes a pupa.
When the pupa opens, an adult beetle, sometimes called an imago, comes out.
This way of growing up is called complete metamorphosis.
Beetles eat the most when they are larvae.
Some beetle larvae eat the outside of plants; some eat inside plants.
Some beetle larvae are predators, which means they hunt for other insects to eat.
Other beetle larvae eat dead things, such as dead plants and dead animals.
Not all beetle larvae look the same.
Some beetle larvae are flat and move very fast.
To describe these larvae, scientists use the descriptive word campodeiform.
Some beetle larvae look similar to hard worms with tiny legs.
These have an elateriform shape.
Click beetle larvae have a special name: wireworms.
Other beetle larvae are short and very thick and are called grubs.
In a few beetles, the larvae change their shape after some time.
Blister beetle larvae start out moving fast, such as campodeiform larvae, but end up slow and thick.
Beetles eat many different things including living plants, rotting plants, animals that may be dead or alive, and animal faeces.
Some beetles can eat both plants and animals, while others eat just one type of food.
Beetles that can only eat one kind of thing are said to be host specific.
Many leaf beetles and longhorn beetles are host specific.
Beetles are tough animals for their size.
They are mechanically tough (the elytra), and have a variety of strategies to avoid being attacked by predators or parasitoids.
These include camouflage, mimicry, toxicity, and active defense.
Some beetles live in places that are hard for predators to find.
Some beetles, such as longhorn beetles, live in tunnels inside tree branches.
Only special predators that are small enough to use the long-horned beetle tunnels can eat the longhorn beetles.
Other beetles do not live in special places but they have colors or shapes that make them hard to find.
When beetles have colors so that predators can not see them, this is called camouflage.
Some leaf beetles are green so that they can not be seen when they are on green leaves.
Some beetles have very complex colors so that they look like bird droppings.
Sometimes beetles use color to warn predators (warning colouration).
Some beetles have black and yellow stripes so that they look similar to bees and wasps.
Some beetles even behave similar to bees to confuse predators.
Beetles have a wide range of chemical defences, mostly got from plants their larvae eat.
These chemicals make them taste bad when predators eat them.
Blister beetles are so poisonous that if a horse eats only a few of them, the horse may die!
Bombardier beetles squirt hot poisonous liquid at attackers.
Lady beetles put out a cyanide compound when molested.
Lady beetles also have colors that warn predators that they taste bad.
Insects which taste foul use warning colors which birds learn to avoid.
Also, other species which are tasty copy those warning colors.
This is a type of mimicry, and is quite common in insects.
Very large beetles sometimes fight predators.
Beetles that fight will often use their mandibles to injure their predators.
Beetles have sexual reproduction, which means males and females mate in order to make offspring.
Before reproduction, male beetles sometimes fight to claim a female.
This especially happens with stag beetles: males will fight using their long mandibles.
Some beetles give special care to their eggs or larvae.
Some scarab beetles, called dung beetles, roll balls of dung (faeces) and put them in a hole in the ground.
The female lays her eggs in the dung.
When the eggs hatch, the larvae will eat the dung that their mother supplied for them.
Different kinds of beetles can be divided into groups called families.
There are many beetle families.
The biggest families are listed here.
Popular names are often misleading; that is why biologists use scientific names in Latin.
People call some beetles by other names.
Fireflies (also called lightning bugs) are actually beetles; so are ladybirds or ladybugs, which biologists call lady beetles.
Some beetles cause trouble for farmers and people in forests because they eat crops or trees.
These beetles are called pests.
One beetle that hurts crops is the Colorado beetle; another is the Maize weevil.
One that destroys trees is the Emerald ash borer.
Other beetles help people; lady beetles (also called ladybirds and ladybugs) eat insects that hurt crops and trees.
People who study beetles are called coleopterists.
Concorde was a passenger airplane that flew faster than the speed of sound.
It was made by the French company A rospatiale and the British company British Aircraft Corporation.
Concorde carried passengers from 1976 to 2003.
Concorde flew across the Atlantic Ocean in a little less than 3.5 hours.
Other airplanes take about eight hours.
The first scheduled flights were on 21 January 1976.
Concorde flew between several different cities in Europe, North America, South America, and Asia.
Some people did not like the sonic booms caused by Concorde flying faster than the speed of sound.
At different times, Concorde was not allowed to fly over certain countries because of this.
A cannon is a type of artillery, or large gun.
They are made with a large tube called "barrel", and shoot projectiles.
Cannons were first made in China, and were used with another Chinese invention, gunpowder.
The gunpowder was put at the back of the tube, and the projectile, usually a cannonball, was placed in front.
The gunpowder was set on fire, and would explode.
This pushed the cannonball out the front of the tube towards the enemy.
Howitzers and mortars are similar to cannons but they have shorter barrels and shoot the balls higher.
A computer mouse is an input device that is most often used with a personal computer.
Moving a mouse along a flat surface can move the on-screen cursor to different items on the screen.
Items can be moved or selected by pressing the mouse buttons (called clicking).
It is called a computer mouse because of the wire that connects the mouse to the computer.
The people who designed the first computer mice thought that it looked like the tail on a mouse.
Today, many computer mice use wireless technology and have no wire.
In 1964 Douglas Engelbart (1925-2013), a researcher at Stanford Research Institute, wanted to find a way to make using computers easier.
In those days, computers were large and expensive.
Using them was very hard because everything had to be typed in by hand, and there was no way to alter things if you made a mistake.
After studying and designing for a long time, Engelbart succeeded in inventing an input device which he named ` XY index '.
At first, it needed two hands to use, but it was changed so that only one hand was needed to use it.
This model was more like the mouse that we use today.
Xerox Palo Alto Research introduced a GUI in 1981, using a mouse.
The mouse was used with Macintosh of Apple Inc. when it came out in 1984.
Microsoft Windows also used the mouse when it came out, so over time computer mice became used with many computers.
Modern mice have three buttons: left button, right button, scroll button.
On most computers, the user can move the mouse to move the cursor in the same direction.
To choose something that is on the screen, the user can move the cursor to it and "click" the left mouse button.
The right mouse button is used to open menus that are different depending on where the cursor is.
The other mouse buttons can do different things, depending on the software.
Most mice have two buttons to click.
Most mice also have a "scroll wheel" a small wheel found between the two main mouse buttons.
The user can move the wheel back and forth to "scroll" through things like a website or folder.
"Scrolling" means moving the words or pictures up or down on the screen, so another part of the page comes into view.
The wheel can also be pressed, to click it like another button.
A catapult is a type of machine used as a weapon to shoot rocks or other things such as hot tar, that would cause damage to something else.
Catapults use weights and levers to send the rocks or other things into the air.
They are simpler than other modern weapons and not useful in modern warfare.
Catapults were common in the past, especially the Middle Ages.
Nowadays catapults are used to study old weapons, and often as fun experiments (usually in physics classes).
Sometimes, instead of rocks, pitch or hot tar would be thrown to set the target on fire.
catapults were used in the 1600 's and are kept in museums.
Often, catapults were set on higher ground or on castle towers to let them shoot farther.
They were also used to shoot rocks to break castle walls.
The Cook Islands are a group of islands in the southern Pacific.
They form an independent state, but have strong ties with New Zealand.
The 15 small islands have a total land surface of 240 square kilometers.
About 18.000 people live on the islands, most of them from tourism.
The largest island, Rarotonga, also holds the territory 's capital, Avarua.
The nation also has a distinctive Polynesian language known as Cook Island Maori, which is closely related to the Maori language of New Zealand and to the Tahitian language.
A computer file is a means to store information that belongs together.
Computer files can be opened (read and written) by computer programs.
Usually they are stored on some kind of file system.
The way the information is organized in a file is called the file format.
A civil war is a war that takes place between two or more groups in one country.
While civil wars can take place for many of reasons, there are two common reasons.
The first is because the different groups disagree about who should be in charge, or how the country should be run.
If two political parties disagree about the result of an election, this might lead to a war if the two sides can not or would not come to an agreement.
The second is because one group of people does not want to be part of the country anymore.
This is known as a war of secession.
Lots of people living in a certain area might decide that they want independence to make their own country.
Very few national leaders would be happy to give up land that is part of that country, and a war could result.
Sometimes the people who want to break away do not necessarily want to form a whole new country, but they might want more autonomy over their affairs.
This happens sometimes when different ethnic groups belong to the same nation.
Civil wars can be just as destructive and damaging as international wars.
Civil wars can continue on for many years.
This is because civil wars tend to become complicated very quickly and differ.
A civil war might start between two sides, but groups might break up and the new, different sides could start fighting each other.
Groups of people who were not involved at the beginning can easily be sucked in, as they start getting weapons to defend themselves against both sides.
Civil wars with many different sides all fighting each other have occurred.
Sometimes foreign countries help one side.
Chocolate is a food made from the seeds of a cacao tree.
It is used in many desserts like pudding, cakes, candy, and ice cream.
It can be a solid form like a candy bar or it can be in a liquid form like hot chocolate.
The taste of chocolate is often described as sweet because chocolate makers usually add a lot of sugar and milk for taste.
This means that chocolate can be bad for your teeth and health.
It is best to eat chocolate in moderation.
There are three main types of chocolate: white chocolate, milk chocolate, and dark chocolate.
White chocolate tastes much sweeter than the other two types, because it has more of the sweeter ingredients in it.
White chocolate does not have any cocoa in it.
It is mostly made of cocoa butter.
Milk chocolate is sweet, but not as sweet as white chocolate.
Milk chocolate has some cocoa.
Dark chocolate is the least sweet and has the strongest chocolate flavor.
Dark chocolate has up to 60-85 percent cocoa.
Chocolate is safe to eat unless it is eaten in large amounts.
Some animals, like dogs, become sick if they eat chocolate.
People with diabetes can also get sick from eating chocolate.
Dark chocolate contains ingredients that lower blood pressure and fight disease.
Small amounts of dark chocolate have been found to lower the risk of heart disease because of polyphenol in chocolate.
It is necessary to eat moderate amount of chocolate.
Making chocolate is a process that has many steps.
First, the cocoa beans are collected and put in piles or containers to make them ferment.
Fermentation makes the sugar in the beans turn into alcohol.
Then the beans are dried and cleaned.
Chocolate makers must cook the beans, and then crush them to make the cocoa butter and the chocolate liquor come out of them.
Then the chocolate maker mixes different ingredients together to make the different kinds of chocolate.
Dark or bittersweet chocolate is made from sugar, cocoa butter, and chocolate liquor.
Milk chocolate uses all of those ingredients plus milk and vanilla.
White chocolate does not contain chocolate liquor, but only cocoa butter, along with sugar, milk and vanilla.
After these ingredients are put together, the chocolate maker is still not finished.
One of the last things to be done is something called conching.
Before chocolate is conched, it feels very rough in the mouth, instead of smooth.
Conching means crushing the chocolate very finely and keeping it warm so that it is liquid.
Conching for several hours makes good chocolate.
The last step in making chocolate is called tempering.
The chocolate is heated, and then shaken, and then cooled a few times.
There are a number of ingredients in chocolate.
The most notable of these are caffeine and theobromine.
These two chemicals are closely related and are found in all cocoa beans.
In any bean, the amount of each chemical varies depending on the genetics of the tree and the stresses placed on the tree during the growing season.
It takes two hours to make chocolate.
The cacao tree was first found to be useful for its seeds about two thousand years ago.
Early Central Americans and Mexicans used the seeds from the cacao tree to make a drink that tasted bitter, not sweet.
Only the important people could drink it.
The word for "chocolate" in almost every language comes from its name in the Nahuatl language of Mexico, chocolatl.
Later on, this drink was made sweeter and made into the treat that is known today as hot chocolate.
It was made popular by Spanish explorers who brought it from North America to Spain.
When chocolate was sweetened and made into candy, it became a very popular treat for many Europeans.
At first, only the rich could afford chocolate.
Now, many people enjoy it.
Most cocoa today is made in Africa.
A cornet is a brass instrument that is similar to the trumpet.
It is part of the higher-brass family, together with trumpets and French horns.
Cotton Mather (February 12, 1663 February 13, 1728) was a politically important Puritan minister and writer.
He lived in North America before the creation of the United States in the area that is now known as Boston, Massachusetts.
Cotton Mather was the son of minister Increase Mather.
He is most well known for his connection to the Salem witch trials.
Captain Kidd, or, by his real name, William Kidd, (c. 1645 23 May 1701) was a Scottish pirate and sailor.
It is heard that he buried a treasure chest on a deserted island.
The chest had a lot of gold and jewels in it.
He was found guilty of murder and was executed by hanging at ` Execution Dock ', Wapping, in London on 23 May 1701.
A Calendar date is a way to refer to a certain day in a calendar.
With the calendar date and the calendar, the exact day can be identified.
With a different calendar, the same calendar date may refer to a different day.
This can be seen easiest when comparing the Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar.
Calendar dates are important to refer to events (most holidays are fixed with reference to a particular event or calendar date.)
One example may be Easter.
In the Middle Ages, it has been fixed that Easter is to be the first Sunday that is (on or after) the 14th day after the spring equinox.
Most calendar systems have a date format that has three parts, the day of a certain month, the month and the year.
Sometimes the week is added.
The Commonwealth of England was the republican government which ruled first England and then Ireland and Scotland from 1649 to 1660.
After the execution of Charles I on January 30, 1649, the Commonwealth was declared (An Act declaring England to be a Commonwealth) by the Rump Parliament on May 19, 1649.
The government during 1653 to 1659 is properly called The Protectorate, and took the form of direct personal rule by Oliver Cromwell and, after his death, his son Richard, as Lord Protector.
The term Commonwealth is, however, loosely used to describe the system of government during the whole of 1649 to 1660, the years of the English Interregnum.
James Charles Evers (born September 11, 1922) is an American civil rights activist.
In 1969, he became the first African American since the Reconstruction era to have been elected as mayor in a Mississippi city.
He served as mayor of Fayette in Jefferson County.
Thereafter, he ran for governor in 1971 and the United States Senate in 1978.
He ran both times as an Independent candidate.
A collective noun is a noun that describes a group of things.
The carat is a unit of mass, which is used for gemstones and pearls.
One Carat is equal to 0.2 g. The current definition was adopted in 1907 at the Fourth General Conference on Weights and Measures.
Officially, the carat can be divided into 100 pointsof 2 milligrams each.
Tramlink (also called Croydon Tramlink) is a tramway system in south London in the United Kingdom which began operation in May 2000.
The service is operated by First London on behalf of Transport for London (TfL).
The TfL team responsible for Tramlink is called London Tramlink, matching London Buses, London Underground, and so on.
A cartoon is a drawing.
The word "cartoon" has been used in several different ways.
The oldest meaning is a drawing that is a full-sized design for a finished artwork.
The cartoon might be a drawing for a painting that was going to be put onto a wall or ceiling in fresco.
The cartoon would be pinned against the wall and its design marked onto the plastered of the wall.
Cartoons were also made to design tapestry.
The most famous cartoons are a set by Raphael which show the "Life of St Peter".
The cartoons are in the Victoria & Albert Museum.
The finished tapestries belong to the Vatican and were made for the Sistine Chapel.
In the 1700s, artists such as William Hogarth often made sets of humorous (funny) drawings that were about political subjects, such as poverty, elections, war and riots.
The drawings were made into prints and were sold cheaply.
These prints were not called cartoons at that time, but they led to the idea of modern political cartoons in newspapers.
Nowadays many newspapers publish a different political cartoon in the paper, every day.
The word "cartoon" was first used in this way in 1843 in an English magazine called Punch.
A political cartoon does not always show real people.
Sometimes it may use a personification of a country or organization as a person, an animal, or a monster.
For example, Britain might be shown as a woman holding a baby Australia in her arms.
Russia might be shown as a bear.
The United States might be shown as a Bald Eagle.
Political cartoons were often drawn to show several different stages of the same story.
Many of Hogarth 's famous political cartoons do this.
From this came the idea of telling funny stories in a series of pictures.
Comic strips are a type of "cartoon" that is published in newspapers, but they are usually just called "comic strips".
Some of the earliest comic strips are The Katzenjammer Kids (1897) and Ginger Meggs (1921).
Sometimes they represent animals like Garfield.
Later comic strips from the 1950s onwards show superheros such as Superman and The Phantom.
Comic strips posted on the internet are web comics.
Some use animation and sound for special effects.
Some web comics take up much more space than newspapers want to print, and most offer a large collection of earlier strips for new readers, so longer stories can be told.
Many webcomics are published (shown to people) by independent artists.
From the beginning of the movie industry, some artists began experimenting with making drawings that seemed to move.
These moving drawings also became known as "cartoons".
They often depict animals rather than humans.
They were often just for fun, but sometimes, particularly during World War II, were used for political reasons, just like the cartoons in newspapers.
Walt Disney and Warner Bros both made famous cartoons.
Famous cartoon characters are Felix the Cat (1922), Mickey Mouse (1928), Bugs Bunny (1940) and Popeye (1929).
At first, movie cartoons were quite short.
When a person bought a movie ticket, they would see a news program, two or three cartoons in black and white and a movie.
Walt Disney then got the clever idea of telling a long story as a "cartoon".
The first one that he made was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937).
Movie cartoons soon became a popular type of entertainment.
Modern movie cartoons are sometimes created using computer graphics, rather than hand-drawn cartoons.
They include Toy Story (1995) and Shrek (2001).
Chemotherapy is the use of chemical substances to treat diseases.
The word "chemotherapy" is used for a type of medicine used to help treat cancer.
The drugs are cytotoxic, which means: toxic to the body 's cells.
This kind of chemotherapy works by putting poison into the patient.
The fastest-growing parts of the patient will receive the most poison, and cancer grows very fast.
Unfortunately, so do other parts of the body, which can be harmed through chemotherapy (especially the hair, immune system, and digestive system).
This is why people who are getting chemotherapy often lose their hair and throw up a lot.
Their chemotherapy kills the cells in the hair, causing the hair to fall out, and the chemotherapy also kills cells in the lining of the stomach.
But not every chemotherapy causes these side effects.
Applying chemotherapy requires a careful balance, so that the patient does not die from it.
Chemotherapy can also be used to treat other diseases, though cancer is the most common.
The Communist Party of China (spelled as in Chinese, originally called the Chinese Communist Party) is the dominant political party and founder of the People 's Republic of China.
Originally, the party was led by Chen Duxiu, who was the General Secretary of the Central Committee.
From 1943-82 the most powerful position in the party was Chairman.
In 1982, members of the Central Committee voted to name the leader of the party General Secretary again.
The current General Secretary is Xi Jinping.
Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest (born February 5, 1948), better known as Christopher Guest, is an English-American screenwriter, composer, musician, movie producer and director, movie, television, stage, and voice actor, and comedian.
He is known for his works in This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and in For Your Consideration.
He has won an Emmy Award.
Guest was born on February 5, 1948 in New York City, New York.
He studied at The High School of Music & Art and at New York University.
Guest is married to Jamie Lee Curtis since 1984.
They have two adopted children.
Carolyn Laurie "Carol" Kane (born June 18, 1952) is an American actress.
On television, she won an Emmy Award for her acting on the series Taxi.
She has been in many movies including Annie Hall, Jumpin ' Jack Flash and The Princess Bride.
On Broadway, she worked on the musical Wicked.
Kane was born near Cleveland, Ohio.
The London Borough of Croydon is a London Borough.
It is in south London.
The borough is the farthest south of Greater London, with the M25 circle motorway touching it at the bottom.
In North Croydon the borough mainly borders the London Borough of Bromley to the east as well as the London Boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth to the north.
The boroughs of Sutton and Merton are west of Croydon.
Croydon 's main town center is Croydon itself.
The town offers the most office space in South East England apart from Central London.
There are two shopping centres in Croydon which are named Centrale and the Witgift Centre.
Croydon was named the 20th best shopping town in the UK.
Croydon is currently being modernized (meaning new buildings are being built).
Croydon College and John Ruskin College are the only schools for people over 16 years old.
The London Borough of Croydon asked the government for city status in 2000 and again in 2002 but it failed.
If the government said yes it would have been the third council in Greater London to hold that status, the others being the City of London and the City of Westminster.
The borough is the home of two football clubs, Crystal Palace F.C. who are in the championship and Croydon F.C. who are in the Ryman League.
Croydon is also known for having a lot of parks and open spaces like Mitcham Common and South Norwood Lakes.
Croydon is a tourist attraction in London.
One of the reasons is because it 's close to Gatwick Airport and another is because it has lots of entertainment and historic facilities these include the Fairfield Halls, Warehouse Theatre, Croydon Airport (disused), Shirley Windmill, Croydon Palace and the Croydon Clocktower.
Croydon has many places that people enjoy to visit.
There are a lot of places of interest such as Croydon Airport, which was the largest airport in London until its closure in September 1959.
It was closed because of it was too small to handle the growing amount of flights to Croydon so Heathrow and Gatwick took over.
It has become a great place for air plane shows and sometimes is hosts along with Biggin Hill.
Addington Palace is a 18th century mansion that was home of six archbishops.
Croydon Clocktower is an arts facility in Central Croydon that includes a cinema, library, museum and conference room.
The building links into the official Town Hall of Croydon Council and some areas of the building, most notably the Braithwaite Hall, are part of the original complex.
The Clocktower is the tower of the Town Hall.
New buildings were built alongside the Town Hall and were opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.
Croydon Palace is where Archbishops of Canterbury used to stay when it 's summer.
It has stood for over 500 years.
The Warehouse Theatre is a professional producing producing studio theater with up to a hundred seats in the center of Croydon based in an oak-beamed former Victorian cement warehouse.
The Fairfield Halls is an arts center in Croydon which opened in 1962.
It contains a concert hall, the Ashcroft Theatre (named for local actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft), the Arnhem Gallery civic hall (Croydon is twinned with Arnhem, a city in The Netherlands) and an art gallery.
The large concert hall is used by the BBC for recordings.
Carme is a retrograde non-spherical moon of Jupiter.
It was found by Seth Barnes Nicholson at Mount Wilson Observatory in California in July 1938.
It is named after the mythological Carme, mother by Zeus of Britomartis, a Cretan goddess.
Carme did not get its present name until 1975; before then, it was simply known as '.
It was sometimes called "Pan" between 1955 and 1975.
Note that Pan is now the name of a moon of Saturn.
It gives its name to the Carme group, made up of non-spherical retrograde moons orbiting Jupiter at a distance ranging between 23,000,000 and 24,000,000 km and at an inclination of about 165.
Its orbital elements are as of January 2000.
They are changing a lot due to Solar and planetary perturbations.
This page lists breeds of domestic cats.
The list includes breeds that are old traditional breeds, and also rare breeds or new breeds that are still being developed.
Please see individual articles for more information.
A class action, class suit, or representative action is a type of lawsuit.
One of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by one member of that group.
The class action originated in the United States.
It is still mainly a U.S. phenomenon.
However, several European countries with civil law have made changes to allow consumer organizations to bring claims on behalf of consumers.
In 1991 China passed the "Civil Procedure Law" that allows class actions.
In Brazil class action suits have been brought against industries, banks.
and other organizations.
They have been used against environmental damage, product defects and false advertising to name a few.
Unlike the US, Brazilian judges award much smaller amounts for damages.
The predecessor of the class action was called a "group litigation".
They were used in England from the 13th century.
It involved groups of people suing or being sued in a court.
Group cases were easier to handle than numbers of individual cases, because of the slow and difficult traveling at that time.
Judges traveled round a circuit, and might visit a town only once or twice a year.
By the 18th century individual lawsuits became the norm.
The Curtiss P-40 (also called the Tomahawk, Warhawk, and Kittyhawk) was a fighter aircraft that could also be used for attacking things on the ground.
It was made by Curtiss.
It first flew in 1938 and saw combat during World War II.
It was not as fast high up as the German Luftwaffe fighters, but was used a lot in other places.
It was used not only the United States Army Air Force, but also a mercenary air force called the "Flying Tigers."
They put the mouth of a shark on their P-40s.
It could fly to 360 miles per hour.
In 1948, the United States Air Force stopped using it.
A creed is a statement or confession of belief usually religious belief or faith.
The word comes from the Latin credo for I believe.
It is sometimes called symbol (Greek,), that means a "token" by which persons of like beliefs might recognize each other.
It is likely that the earliest creed of Christianity that deserves the title in full is the Apostles ' Creed.
The Apostles ' Creed seems to have been formulated to resist Gnosticism; it emphasizes the birth, physical death, and bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It reads:
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
The Nicene Creed is clearly derived from the Apostles ' Creed, and represents an elaboration of its basic themes.
The most important additions to this creed are much more elaborate statements concerning Christology and the Trinity.
Christians today probably use the Nicene Creed most widely, followed by the Apostles Creed.
The Jewish faith recognizes a single creed called the Shmah or Shema Yisrael, a statement of faith in strict unitarian monotheism, the belief in one God.
This creed is embodied in a single prayer recited twice a day: "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One", also translated as "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is unique (or alone)."
This is pronounced phonetically in Hebrew: Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.
The most basic attempt to put the religion of Islam in a brief statement of doctrine is the shahada, the proclamation that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet.
More detailed credal declarations of Islamic dogma constitute aqidah.
Also from the Aqidah of the Salaf is the belief that the faith (i.e. Eemaan) consists of (both) speech and action and that it increases and decreases.
This differs from the Murji ah a sect who uphold the belief of Irjaa - to hold that sins major and minor, do not affect the faith and that faith neither increases nor decreases.
And they uphold the belief that the Quran is the Speech of Allah, His Revelation and Light.
It is not created, since the Quran is from Allah and that which is from Allah is not created.
One of the attributes of Allah is his Speech.
Since His attributes have been with Him eternally, His Speech can not be created and therefore, the Quran is not created.
According to the Salaf, debating about it is disbelief.
It is not denied except by a Jahmee.
A Jahmee is one who denies Allah s attributes.
Claudius Aelianus was a teacher from Latium.
He was born around the year 170.
He died after 220.
Even though he was from Rome, he wrote in Greek.
In English, he is often referred to as Aelian.
A cookie is a sweet dessert made from flour.
Cookies are made in an oven.
They are also called biscuits in many English-speaking countries.
In the United States and Canada, many varieties of biscuit are called cookies as well.
Most cookies are flat and round like a disc.
Cookies often have flavors added to them, like spices, chocolate, butter, peanut butter, nuts or dried fruits.
Most cookies are very sweet.
Today, many people think of cookies with warmth and love.
Cookies may be used like chocolate and candy as a reward when children do good deeds.
Even though it is close to cakes and other sweetened breads, cookies usually do not use water for cohesion.
Water in cakes makes the base (in the case of cakes called "batter") as thin as possible, which allows the bubbles to form better.
Cookies do not have bubbles, so they do not need this.
In cookies, some form of oil or fat is used for cohesion.
Oils, like butter, egg yolks, vegetable oils or lard are much more viscous than water and evaporate freely at a much higher temperature than water.
So a cake made with butter or eggs instead of water is more dense when cooked.
Hard wafers have been made for as long as baking existed.
They were very popular because they last a long time and are not fragile, but they were normally not sweet enough to be called cookies today.
Cookies were made at first in 7th century AD Persia, just after the use of sugar became common there.
They spread to Europe through the Muslim conquest of Spain.
By the 14th century, they were common in all parts of Europe, and could be found anywhere from royal cuisine to street vendors.
People started to travel around the world at that time, and cookies made a good travel snack; a sweeter version of the travel cakes used throughout history.
One of the most popular early cookies, which traveled very well and became known on every continent, was the jumble, a hard cookie made mostly from nuts, sweetener, and water.
Cookies that are bought from the supermarket have a very large amount of fat and sugar.
The Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the southeastern United States.
Comet Hale Bopp (formerly called C\/1995 O1) is the biggest and brightest comet that has come by Earth in the last century.
It was called the Great Comet of 1997.
It is probably the most-seen comet in history - even more than the famous Halley 's comet.
Hale-Bopp was discovered by two astronomers, Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp.
This is a long-period comet (it will not return to earth for a long time).
It is so big that its coma (the steam burning off of it) is as big as the Sun.
It did n't come close enough to the sun to cross Earth 's orbital path, so we could not see a meteor shower from the dust trail.
Scientists found lots of organic chemicals in Hale-Bopp which they never saw before.
It was also the first comet that had the gas argon in it.
It also has a sodium tail.
See the picture on the left.
A person named Chuck Shramek saw a not very bright, "Saturn-like" thing following Hale-Bopp and called the Art Bell radio program and told them about it.
Lots of people thought a UFO was following behind the comet, even though many astronomers, including Alan Hale, tried to tell them it was just a star..
A few months later, the Heaven 's Gate cult said they had to join the alien spaceship by leaving their earthly bodies, and lots of people killed themselves.
Cholistan Desert (, also locally known as Rohi) sprawls thirty kilometers from Bahawalpur, Punjab, Pakistan and covers an area of 16000 k. It is next to the Thar Desert extending over to Sindh and into the Republic of India.
Constantine I (27 February 272 22 May 337 AD) was a powerful general who reigned over the Roman Empire as emperor, until his death.
He made the previously named city Byzantium (now Istanbul, Turkey) capital of the whole Roman Empire.
As emperor, he named the city Constantinople, which means "City of Constantine" in Greek.
Before Constantine became Emperor, he was fighting for the throne at the Battle of Milvian Bridge.
When he saw a cross in the sky with the words in hoc signo vinces (Latin for "in this sign you shall conquer"), he changed his deity from Apollo to Jesus and won the battle.
In pagan Rome before this, it had been against the law to believe in Christianity, and Christians had been tortured or killed, but Constantine protected them.
He went on to organize the whole Catholic Church at the First Council of Nicea, even though he himself did not get baptized until near the end of his life.
Constantine was also a big part of the beginning of the Orthodox religion, after changing the point from which he ruled from Rome to Byzantium.
Constantine is perhaps best known for being the first Christian Roman emperor.
His rule changed the Church greatly.
In February 313, Constantine met with Licinius in Milan where they made the Edict of Milan.
The edict said that Christians could believe what they wanted.
This stopped people from punishing Christians, who had often been martyred.
It also returned the property which had been taken away from them.
The edict not only protected Christians, but gave freedom of religion to all, allowing anyone to worship whatever they wanted.
In 311, Galerius had made a similar edict, though it did not return any property to them.
Constantine did not support Christianity alone.
After winning the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, he built the Arch of Constantine) to celebrate, but the arch was decorated with pictures of sacrifices to gods like Apollo, Diana, or Hercules.
It had no Christian symbolism.
In 321, Constantine said that Christians and non-Christians should all join the "day of the sun" (the eastern sun-worship which Aurelian had helped him introduce).
His coins also had symbols of the sun-cult until 324.
Even after pagan gods disappeared from the coins, Christians symbols never appeared on the coin, either.
Even when Constantine dedicated the new capital of Constantinople, he was wearing the Apollonian sun-rayed Diadem.
The ICC Cricket World Cup is an international cricket competition.
It is played in the One Day International (ODI) cricket format.
The event is organised by the sport 's governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC).
Cricket World Cup is the third largest sporting event in the world, behind soccer 's World Cup and the Summer Olympic Games.
The first Cricket World Cup contest was organised in England in 1975.
A separate Women 's Cricket World Cup has been held every four years since 1973.
The finals of the Cricket World Cup are contested by all ten Test-playing nations.
They are joined by other nations who qualify through the Cup Qualifying competition.
Australia has been the most successful team winning the title five times (in 1987, 1999, 2003 and 2007,2015).
West Indies (in 1975 and 1979) and India (in 1983 and 2011) have won the title 2 times each.
And Pakistan (in 1992) and Sri Lanka (in 1996) have won the title one time each.
The first ever international cricket match was played between Canada and the United States, on the 24 and 25 September 1844.
However, the first credited Test match was played in 1877 between Australia and England, and the two teams competed regularly for The Ashes in subsequent years.
South Africa was admitted to Test status in 1889.
Representative cricket teams were selected to tour each other, resulting in bilateral competition.
Cricket was also included as an Olympic sport at the 1900 Paris Games, where Great Britain defeated France to win the Gold medal.
This was the only appearance of cricket at the Summer Olympics.
The first multi team competition at international level was the 1912 Triangular Tournament.
It was a Test cricket tournament played in England between England, Australia and South Africa.
In subsequent years, international Test cricket has been generally been organised as bilateral series.
A multi team Test tournament was not organised again until the quadrangular Asian Test Championship in 1999.
In the early 1960s, English county cricket teams began playing a shortened version of cricket which only lasted for one day.
Starting in 1962 with a four-team knockout competition known as the Midlands Knock-Out Cup, and continuing with the inaugural Gillette Cup in 1963, one-day cricket grew in popularity in England.
A national Sunday League was formed in 1969.
The first One-Day International event was played on the fifth day of a rain-aborted Test match between England and Australia at Melbourne in 1971, to fill the time available and as compensation for the frustrated crowd.
It was a forty over match with eight balls per over.
The success and popularity of the domestic one-day competitions in England and other parts of the world, as well as the early One-Day Internationals, prompted the ICC to consider organising a Cricket World Cup.
The Test-playing nations qualify automatically for the World Cup main event, while the other teams have to qualify through a series of preliminary qualifying tournaments.
The One Day International playing nations automatically enter the final qualification tournament, the World Cup Qualifier, along with other nations who have qualified through separate competitions.
Qualifying tournaments were introduced for the second World Cup, where two of the eight places in the finals were awarded to the leading teams in the ICC Trophy.
The number of teams selected through the ICC Trophy has varied throughout the years; currently, six teams are selected for the Cricket World Cup.
The World Cricket League (administered by the International Cricket Council) is the qualification system provided to allow the Associate and Affiliate members of the ICC more opportunities to qualify.
The name "ICC Trophy" has been changed to "ICC World Cup Qualifier".
The format of the Cricket World Cup has changed greatly over the course of its history.
The first four tournaments were played by eight teams, divided into two groups of four.
The competition was held in two stages.
A group stage and a knock-out stage.
The four teams in each group played each other once in the group stage.
The top two teams in each group went through to the semi-finals.
The winners of the semi-finals played against each other in the final.
With the return of South Africa in 1992 after the ending of the apartheid boycott, nine teams played each other once in the group phase, and the top four teams progressed to the semi-finals.
The tournament was made bigger in 1996, with two groups of six teams.
The top four teams from each group progressed to quarter-finals and semi-finals.
A new format was used for the 1999 and 2003 World Cups.
The teams were split into two pools.
The top three teams in each pool went into the Super 6.
The "Super 6" teams played the three other teams that had made it through from the other group.
The teams carried their points forward from the matches played against the other two who were in their group.
The top four teams from the "Super 6" stage progressed to the semi-finals, with winners playing in the final.
The last format used in the 2007 World Cup, features 16 teams allocated into four groups of four.
Each team played each other once within the group.
Teams earn points for wins and half-points for ties.
The top two teams from each group move forward to the Super 8 round.
The "Super 8" teams play the other six teams that progressed from the different groups.
Teams earned points in the same way as the group stage.
Teams also carry their points forward from the match against the other team who qualified from the same group.
The top four teams from the "Super 8" round advance to the semi-finals.
The winners of the semi-finals play in the final.
The current format features 14 teams.
The 14 teams are split into two groups of seven.
Within each group each team will play each other once.
The top four teams from each group will proceed to the knock out stage playing quarter-finals.
Winners of the quarter-finals will play semi-finals and the winning semi-finalists will play in the final.
The ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy is presented to the winners of the World Cup finals.
The current trophy was created for the 1999 championships, and was the first permanent prize in the tournament 's history; prior to this, different trophies were made for each World Cup.
The trophy was designed and produced in London by a team of craftsmen from Garrard & Co over a period of two months.
The current trophy is made from silver and gild, and features a golden globe held up by three silver columns.
The columns, shaped as stumps and bails, represent the three fundamental aspects of cricket: batting, bowling and fielding, while the globe characterises a cricket ball.
The trophy is designed with platonic dimensions, so that it can be easily recognized from any angle.
It stands 60 cm high and weighs approximately 11 kilograms.
The names of the previous winners are engraved on the base of the trophy, with space for a total of twenty inscriptions.
The original trophy is kept by the ICC.
A replica, which differs only in the inscriptions, is permanently awarded to the winning team.
The tournament is the world 's third largest (with only the FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympics exceeding it), being televised in over 200 countries to over 2.2 billion television viewers.
Television rights, mainly for the 2011 and 2015 World Cup, were sold for over US$ 1.1 billion, and sponsorship rights were sold for a further US$ 500 million.
The 2003 Cricket World Cup matches were attended by 626,845 people, while the 2007 Cricket World Cup sold more than 672,000 tickets and recorded the highest ticketing revenue for a Cricket World Cup.
Successive World Cup tournaments have generated increasing media attention as One-Day International cricket has become more established.
The 2003 World Cup in South Africa was the first to sport a mascot, Dazzler the zebra.
An orange raccoon-like creature known as Mello was the mascot for the 2007 Cricket World Cup.
The International Cricket Council 's executive committee votes for the hosts of the tournament after examining the bids made by the nations keen to hold a Cricket World Cup.
England hosted the first three competitions.
The ICC decided that England should host the first tournament because it was ready to devote the resources required to organising the inaugural event.
India volunteered to host the third Cricket World Cup, but most ICC members believed England to be a more suitable venue because the longer period of daylight in England in June meant that a match could be completed in one day.
The 1987 Cricket World Cup was the first hosted outside England, held in Pakistan and India.
Previously, there was no tournament award, although Man of the Match awards have always been given for individual matches.
Winning the Man of the Match in the final is logically noteworthy, as this indicates the player deemed to have played the biggest part in the World Cup final.
To date the award has always gone to a member of the winning side.
The Man of the Match award in the final of the competition has been awarded to:
Charles Messier (June 26, 1730 April 12, 1817) was a French astronomer who is remembered for publishing a list of famous objects in space that came to be called the 103 "Messier objects".
Messier was born in Badonviller in the Lorraine region of France.
Six of his brothers and sisters died as children and in 1741, his father died.
Charles became interested in astronomy after he saw the great six-tailed comet in 1744 and by a solar eclipse on July 25, 1748.
In 1751 he started working for Joseph Nicolas Delisle, the astronomer of the French Navy, who told him to write down everything he saw.
The crankshaft, sometimes casually called the crank, is the part of an engine which changes the up and down motion of the pistons into rotation.
To convert the motion, the crankshaft has one or more offset shafts.
The pistons are connected to the crankshaft by these shafts.
When the piston moves up and down, it pushes the offset shaft.
This in turn rotates the crankshaft.
The pistons cause a pulsing affect in the rotation.
A crankshaft usually connects to a flywheel.
The flywheel smooths out the rotation.
Sometimes there is a torsion or vibration damper on the other end of the crankshaft.
This helps reduce vibrations of the crankshaft.
Large engines usually have several cylinders.
This helps to reduce pulsations from individual firing strokes.
For some engines it is necessary to provide counterweights.
The counterweight is used to offset the piston and improve balance.
While counterweights add a lot of weight to the crankshaft, it provides a smoother running engine.
This allows higher RPMs to be reached and more power produced.
The central nervous system (CNS) is the largest part of the nervous system.
It is made up of the brain and the spinal cord.
Together with the peripheral nervous system, it has an important role in the control of behavior.
The CNS is protected by bone in the dorsal cavity: the brain in the cranial subcavity, and the spinal cord in the spinal cavity.
The caste system is a system in India that was once mainly used by Hindus.
It started as a job system.
It later became a social class system.
There are four castes in this system.
There is also caste in other countries.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was the ruling political party in the Soviet Union, and the only legal one.
Before the creation of the CPSU, its members were part of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
They made up a group within that party, which was called the Bolsheviks.
The first leader of the CPSU was Vladimir Lenin.
The first General Secretary of the party was Stalin from 1922 52.
The party led the 1917 October Revolution that overthrew the Russian Provisional Government.
From 1918 25, the name of the party was Russian Communist Party.
From 1925 52, the name was All-Union Communist Party.
The Party took the name Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1952.
The Communist Party controlled all the government in the Soviet Union.
The party supported communist movements in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.
The CPSU was dissolved in 1991, and continued as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
The new CPRF has sometimes been the largest in the Russian parliament, the State Duma.
A controversy is a prolonged public dispute or debate, with people having different opinions.
There may be several groups of people who have different opinions and who can not agree.
Examples for controversial topics are the question of whether abortion should be legal, or whether research on embryonic stem cells should be permitted.
Any opinion that has opposing sides or points of view can become a controversy.
In the winter of 2015, consumers argued over the color and design of Starbucks Christmas cup.
Some suggested a boycott of the coffee brand to protest.
The centromere is a special region of a chromosome, usually near the middle.
It is where the two identical sister chromatids stay in contact as the chromosome attaches to the spindle in mitosis.
The region contains specific types of DNA, which are tandem repetitive sequences (satellite DNA).
These sequences bind specific proteins called "cen" - proteins.
During mitosis the centromeres can be seen during the metaphase stage as a constriction at the chromosome.
At this centromeric constriction the two halves of the chromosome, the sister chromatids, are held together until late metaphase.
The Commodore 64 was a bestselling, 8-bit home computer from the 1980s.
It was created by Commodore International, and it entered the market in 1982.
Around 17 million units are believed to have been sold.
The Commodore 64 is often credited with making personal computers popular amongst the masses.
This quality sparked comparisons with the Ford Model T. The Commodore 64 was offered at relatively low prices, and was available in malls, department stores, and toy stores instead of solely in the shops of authorized dealers.
Cartography is making maps.
Cartography is part of geography.
How people make maps is always changing.
In the past, maps were drawn by hand, but today most printed maps are made using computers.
Someone who makes maps is called a cartographer.
Making a map can be as simple as drawing a direction on a napkin, or as complicated as showing a census of a whole country.
Anyone can make a map, but there are people who spend their lives learning how to make complicated maps.
Old fashioned maps were usually carefully drawn onto a piece of paper.
The reason they look old is because they have been well used or have been through rough conditions.
Nowadays they are made on a computer because it means they look neater with accurate images.
Colonialism occurs when a country (nation) takes control of other lands, regions, or territories outside of its borders (boundaries of the country) by turning those other lands, regions, or territories into a colony.
Usually, it is a more powerful, richer country that takes control of a smaller, less powerful region or territory.
Sometimes the word "imperialism" is also used to refer to colonialism.
In the 1700s and 1800s, many of the richer, more powerful European countries (such as Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands) established colonies in the continents of Africa, South America, and the Caribbean.
Some countries use colonialism to get more land for their people to live in.
When countries are using colonialism to get more land for their people to live in, the country will help settlers move to the new area.
The local people living in the land or territories were usually moved away by using force and violence from armies.
To protect these settlers from the local residents who were pushed aside, colonial nations often set up a military fort or colonial police system.
Other countries use colonialism to get more land so that they can use the land for farming or to extract (take out) resources such as trees (wood), coal, or metals, or to create a local government or military fort.
Other countries use colonialism so that they can get workers from the poorer country to work in factories or farms (either in the richer country, or in the poorer country).
In the past, powerful countries that were colonizing poorer countries or regions often forced the people from the poorer countries to work as slaves.
The Phoenicians started many trade colonies around the Mediterranean.
Carthage was the largest and most famous, and also made colonies including Cartagenain Spain.
Later, the Ancient Greeks expanded their territories with colonies.
Ancient Greece was many cities.
Each city was independent with a government in place.
Some city-states were monarchies, others elected (part of) the people who governed by (part of) the people who were citizens of that city, and who lived there.
This is called democracy.
Those cities also fought wars against each other and traded goods.
To get more influence, or to secure a trade route, the city would send people called settlers to a new place.
These people would then make a new city called a colony.
The cities had to pay some form of taxes to the old city, in exchange for protection, for example.
If the settlers found a local tribe living in the new territory, they would wage war against it to force them to leave.
The local tribe was usually made into slaves.
The new colony would exploit the land it found, by growing crops or by raising cattle.
Ancient Rome invented the word "colonia" meaning a new town to which some Romans moved, including farmers.
Many of the settlers were veterans.
There are several different types of colonialism.
Some countries that expanded their territory used Settler colonies.
Some countries that started out as settler colonies include the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina.
In all of these countries, people from European countries moved to the new region, and forced the local people) (the indigenous peoples, such as Indians, Maori, etc.) to move.
When the local people or tribes had to move, it caused a lot of problems.
In some regions which were colonized, the settlers married the local people and had children with them.
An example is Mexico, where a new people called the mestizos came from the marriages of the settlers and the local tribes.
In other regions which were colonized, the settlers and the local people lived in separate areas, without living together or marrying.
An example of this situation is French Algeria (when France colonized the African country of Algeria) or Southern Rhodesia.
Another type of colonialism is when a powerful country sets up (establishes) dependencies.
With a dependency, the colonizing country does not send over thousands of settlers to the new territory.
Indstead, the colonizing country sets up administrators (a governing organization) that controls the existing local (native) populations or tribes.
Examples include the British Raj, (geraldine) in which the British government controlled India; the Dutch East Indies, in which the Netherlands controlled parts of the East Indies; and the Japanese colonial empire, in which Japan controlled Asian territories.
With the plantation colony, the powerful, rich country use the poorer country 's land to grow crops.
The local people are forced to become slaves and work on the farms.
Examples of plantation colonies include Barbados, Saint-Domingue and Jamaica.
Another type of colony is the trading post colony.
Rich and powerful countries set up trading post colonies so that there would be a territory where trading, selling, and business could be conducted.
The rich and powerful countries usually set up military forts or police forces to enforce the rules and laws of the colonizing country.
Examples of trading colonies include Macau, Malacca, Deshima and Singapore.
Casablanca (classical Arabic name:, "the white house"; Spanish: Casablanca, "whitehouse") is a city in western Morocco, on the Atlantic Ocean.
With 2.95 million people (September 2004 census), Casablanca is Morocco 's biggest city.
Casablanca has a Mediterranean Climate with hot dry summers and wet rainy winters.
A cross is a symbol, which is used for many things.
A coordination complex is an inorganic chemical compound where a central atom (usually a metal) has an electron shell which permits it to combine with one or more molecules.
These molecules, called ligands, have at least one pair of free electrons for binding.
The ColecoVision was a second generation home video game console known mostly for its expansion packs including the Expansion Module # 1 which gave it the largest library of games for its time by having compatibility with Atari 2600 games.
The ColecoVision offered arcade-quality graphics and gaming style, and the means to expand the system 's basic hardware.
River West Brands currently owns the ColecoVision brand name.
It was released in 1982 and was discontinued in 1985.
A creation myth or creation story explains how the universe started, how the earth came to be, and why there are humans.
Creation myths are usually part of religions and mythologies.
Very often, creation myths say that humans were made by a god, spirit or other supreme being.
In the beginning, there was just water.
All the animals lived above it and the sky was overcrowded.
They were all curious about what was beneath the water and one day Dayuni ` si, the water beetle, volunteered to explore it.
He explored the surface but could not find any solid ground.
He explored below the surface to the bottom and all he found was mud which he brought back to the surface.
After collecting the mud, it began to grow in size and spread outwards until it became the Earth as we know it.
In the beginning nothing existed, darkness was all around.
Suddenly from the darkness came a thin disc, one side yellow and the other side white, appearing suspended in midair.
Within the disc sat a small bearded man, Creator, the One Who Lives Above.
When he looked into the endless darkness, light appeared above.
He looked down and it became a sea of light.
To the east, he created yellow streaks of dawn.
To the west, tints of many colors appeared everywhere.
There were also clouds of different colors.
He also created three other gods: a little girl, a sun god and a small boy.
Then he created celestial phenomena, the winds, the tarantula, and the earth from the sweat of the four gods mixed together in the Creator 's palms, from a small round, brown ball, not much larger than a bean.
The world was expanded to its current size by the gods kicking the small brown ball.
Creator told Wind to go inside the ball and to blow it up.
The tarantula, who knew what to do, spun a black cord and, attaching it to the ball, crawled away fast to the east, pulling on the cord with all his strength.
Tarantula repeated with a blue cord to the south, a yellow cord to the west, and a white cord to the north.
With mighty pulls in each direction, the brown ball stretched to immeasurable size -- it became the earth!
No hills, mountains, or rivers were visible; only smooth, treeless, brown plains appeared.
Then the Creator created the rest of the beings and features of the Earth.
In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic story, it is believed that an entity referred to as God created the universe in six days.
Christians that believe God created the Universe in exactly the way described in the Bible are called creationists.
Other Christians think that the biblical creation story has fundamental truths and messages, but should not be taken literally.
Many cultures have stories describing the origin of the world, which may be roughly grouped into common types.
In one type of story, the world is born from a world egg; such stories include the Finnish epic poem Kalevala, the Chinese story of Pangu or the Indian Brahmanda Purana.
In related stories, the creation is caused by a single entity emanating or producing something by his or herself, as in the Tibetan Buddhism concept of Adi-Buddha, the ancient Greek story of Gaia (Mother Earth), the Aztec goddess Coatlicue myth, the ancient Egyptian god Atum story, or the Genesis creation myth.
In another type of story, the world is created from the union of male and female deities, as in the Maori story of Rangi and Papa.
In other stories, the Universe is created by crafting it from pre-existing materials, such as the corpse of a dead god as from Tiamat in the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish or from the giant Ymir in Norse mythology or from chaotic materials, as in Izanagi and Izanami in Japanese mythology.
In another type of story, the world is created by the command of a divinity, as in the ancient Egyptian story of Ptah or the Genesis creation myth as a part of Jewish and Christian mythology.
In other stories, the universe emanates from fundamental principles, such as Brahman and Prakrti, or the yin and yang of the Tao.
Although Heraclitus argued for eternal change, his quasi-contemporary Parmenides made the radical suggestion that all change is an illusion, that the true underlying reality is eternally unchanging and of a single nature.
Parmenides denoted this reality as (The One).
Parmenides ' theory seemed implausible to many Greeks, but his student Zeno of Elea challenged them with several famous paradoxes.
Aristotle resolved these paradoxes by developing the notion of an infinitely divisible continuum, and applying it to space and time.
The Indian philosopher Kanada, founder of the Vaisheshika school, developed a theory of atomism and proposed that light and heat were varieties of the same substance.
In the 5th century AD, the Buddhist atomist philosopher Dign ga proposed atoms to be point-sized, durationless, and made of energy.
They denied the existence of substantial matter and proposed that movement consisted of momentary flashes of a stream of energy.
The theory of temporal finitism was inspired by the doctrine of creation shared by the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The Christian philosopher, John Philoponus, presented the philosophical arguments against the ancient Greek notion of an infinite past.
Philoponus ' arguments against an infinite past were used by the early Muslim philosopher, Al-Kindi (Alkindus); the Jewish philosopher, Saadia Gaon (Saadia ben Joseph); and the Muslim theologian, Al-Ghazali (Algazel).
They employed two logical arguments against an infinite past, the first being the "argument from the impossibility of the existence of an actual infinite", which states:
"An actual infinite amount can not exist."
"An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.""
An infinite temporal regress of events can not exist."
"An actual infinite can not be completed by successive addition."
"The temporal series of past events has been completed by successive addition.""
The temporal series of past events can not be an actual infinite."
Both arguments were adopted by later Christian philosophers and theologians, and the second argument in particular became more famous after it was adopted by Immanuel Kant in his thesis of the first antinomy concerning time.
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149 1209) criticized the idea of the Earth 's centrality within the universe.
In the context of his commentary on the Qur ` anic verse, "All praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds," he raises the question of whether the term "worlds" in this verse refers to "multiple worlds within this single universe or cosmos, or to many other universes or a multiverse beyond this known universe."
He rejected the Aristotelian and Avicennian notions of a single universe revolving around a single world, and instead argued that there are more than "a thousand thousand worlds (alfa alfi ` awalim) beyond this world such that each one of those worlds be bigger and more massive than this world as well as having the like of what this world has."
He argued that there exists an infinite outer space beyond the known world, and that God has the power to fill the vacuum with an infinite number of universes.
Cowboy Bebop is a Japanese anime television show.
It first aired in Japan in 1998.
It was created by Sunrise and directed by Shinichiro Watanabe.
The show is about a group of bounty hunters who travel in outer space to catch criminals.
It has 26 episodes.
The series has received a TV-MA rating in the United States.
Cowboy Bebop first aired in the United States in 2001 on Cartoon Network 's Adult Swim.
It was the first anime to be aired on Adult Swim.
It was very successful.
It was so successful that Cartoon Network decided to put more anime on Adult Swim.
There is a movie, a manga, and two video games based on the show.
The movie is called Cowboy Bebop: Knockin ' on Heaven 's Door.
The video games are for Playstation and Playstation 2.
They were never released in the United States.
Cowboy Bebop is inspired by American culture.
Jazz music is mostly played in the show.
The episodes are called "Sessions."
Cowboy Bebop takes place in the year 2071.
The members of the space ship Bebop travel through outer space trying to catch criminals.
Bounty hunters are known as "Cowboys".
If they catch the criminals alive then they get a reward.
If the criminals die, the cowboys get nothing.
The criminals are called bounties.
Most episodes are about catching a bounty.
Some episodes are about the characters ' pasts and lives.
At the beginning there are two main heroes, Spike and Jet.
Later they would meet with others.
They had become the crew of the space ship Bebop.
Other members of the Bebop are Faye, computer hacker Ed, and a dog named Ein.
Carl Barks (March 27, 1901 - August 25, 2000) was a famous cartoonist.
He was the inventor of Scrooge McDuck, the Beagle Boys, Gyro Gearloose and many other Walt Disney characters.
He was often called the most important artist in Disney comics.
Carl Barks was born on March 27, 1901, near Merrill, Oregon, as part of a farming family.
At the age of 10, he became interested in art for the first time.
When he was 15, his mother died, and he began to help his father on the family 's farm.
In 1935, he took a contract with Disney and started as one of the studio 's artists.
Some months later, he become a part of Ted Sears "Story Department" at the Disney studios, where he wrote more than two dozen stories for short films with Donald Duck and other characters until 1942.
In 1942 he went to "Western Publishing".
There he started drawing comics with Donald Duck and later with other characters - most of them he created by himself.
He held this job until 1966, when he retired.
By the early 1990s, Carl Barks had become a comic legend.
In 1994, at the age of 93, for the first time in his long life, he traveled to Europe and visited around a dozen countries.
Some months earlier, his third wife, Margaret, called Gar, had died at the age of 75.
In 1999, leukemia began to destroy Barks ' body.
The Duck Man died, aged 99, on August 25, 2000, at his home in Grants Pass, Oregon.
Christology is a field of study of Christian theology.
It asks questions about the nature of Christ.
In particular, it looks at how the divine and the human relate to each other.
In legal terminology, a complaint is any formal legal document that establishes the facts and legal reasons for a lawsuit.
A complaint must list the reasons for the plaintiff 's case, and it must ask for a specific legal remedy.
Once a complaint is filed with the court a summons (an order from the court) is notifies the defendant a lawsuit has been filed against them.
Once a defendant receives notice of a complaint, they must reply within a specified period of time with an answer.
Complaints are pleadings that must be written carefully to properly state the facts and legal basis for the claim.
Usually this requires the help of an attorney.
In some jurisdictions, specific types of criminal cases may also be started by the filing of a complaint.
This is also called a criminal complaint or felony complaint.
All criminal cases are prosecuted in the name of the governmental authority.
This is the same authority whose criminal laws were broken and who enforces criminal statutes.
The government is sometimes called the state, the People or the Crown (in Commonwealth realms).
In the United States, the complaint is often associated with misdemeanor charges presented by the prosecutor without the grand jury process.
In most US jurisdictions, the document presented to and authorized by a grand jury is called an indictment.
Complexity is a property of something with many parts and a complicated arrangement.
It is also the state of being complex.
Its opposite is simplicity.
In science, complexity is also the name for systems science.
Chastity is the sexual behavior of a man or woman which is right and proper according to the moral rules of a culture or religion.
It has recently begun to mean sexual abstinence (not having sex at all), especially before marriage.
However, it can also be used for all kinds of people (even married people) with more meaning than simply not having sex.
The word chastity came from the Latin word castitatem, meaning "purity".
The Maritime provinces, or the Maritimes, is a region of Eastern Canada with three provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.
Along with Newfoundland and Labrador, they form Atlantic Canada.
Some people have proposed merging all three provinces into a single province called the Maritime Union.
Both Great Britain and France settled the area in the 17th century.
After the French and Indian War, the British ruled the entire area.
The Charlottetown Conference was held in 1864 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
The Conference was about the various colonies of British North America forming the Canadian Confederation.
Hanukkah is an eight-day Jewish holiday.
It traditionally celebrates the victory for the Maccabees over the larger Seleucid army.
It also celebrates a miracle that happened during this time, where in just a day 's supply of olive oil allowed the menorah in the rededicated Temple in Jerusalem to remain lit for eight days.
Therefore, Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah for eight days.
Hanukkah begins on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar.
Hanukkah begins in late November or December.
In 2013 it starts on November 27.
The Hebrew word ' means dedication.
The hanukiah (or hanukkah menorah) is an important Hanukkah candle holder.
It has nine candles.
Traditionally, one candle is separated from the rest, usually by being higher than the other eight.
On the first night, only one candle is lit, on the right side of the hanukiah.
On the second night, a second candle is added, and they are lit from right to left,.
This continues for all eight nights.
The candles are never lit directly - instead, the higher candle, (called a shamash, meaning "attendant") is lit first, and then used to light the rest of the candles.
Before the candles are lit, blessings are said over them.
Jewish children often play a game called dreidel.
That game is fun (-LRB-
Approximately 2,200 years ago, there was a war between the Greeks and the Jews.
The Greeks won and forced their culture on the Jews.
A group of Jewish people called the Maccabees revolted and liberated Jerusalem.
The Maccabees found their Temple defiled.
They sought to rededicate it to God, as the Greeks had been worshipping Zeus there.
As part of the rededication, they needed to relight the menorah, whose source of fuel was olive oil.
According to the Talmud, the Jewish people only found a single jar of undefiled oil, and that oil was only enough to last a single day.
The Jewish people took a leap of faith and relit the menorah.
To their surprise, the menorah stayed lit for eight days, which was seven more days than they expected.
The Jewish people attributed the surprising amount of time that the oil lasted to God (a miracle).
Hanukkah is an eight-day celebration, and each day commemorates each day that the oil lasted.
On each day, a branch of the nine-branch Hanukkah menorah is lit with the shamash ("helper" candle), which sits on the middle branch.
People with color blindness can not tell the difference between certain colors.
They may not see colors at all.
Most color blindness is heritable, usually as simple Mendelian inheritance.
Sometimes it is the result of damage to the eyes, nerves or the brain.
It can be caused by coming into contact with certain chemicals.
Most color blindness is permanent.
Some conditions can lead to temporary color blindness.
During certain kinds of migraine, some people are unable to tell the difference between certain colors.
There is no treatment cure for permanent color blindness.
Many more males are color blind than females.
Between five and eight percent of males, but less than one percent of females, are color blind.
Color blindness is usually thought of as a disability.
However, people who are color blind have an advantage: they are sometimes better at seeing through some types of camouflage.
In 1798, English chemist John Dalton published the first scientific article about color blindness.
That was after he found out that he was color blind.
The article was called "Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colors".
Because of this, the condition is sometimes called daltonism.
As of 2009, the word daltonism is used only for the type of color blindness called deuteranopia.
Inside the human eye is a part called the retina.
The retina receives the images that the eye sees.
It sends the images to the brain.
The retina has two types of cells: Rod cells and Cone cells.
They work in different types of light.
Parts of the thalamus and the visual cortex in the brain are involved in seeing, also seeing colors.
Color blindness can therefore also result if these areas of the brain, the optic nerve or the retina have been damaged.
These types of color blindness usually happen because of an accident.
They are not inherited.
Inherited forms of color blindness affect the retina only.
That way it is possible that only a part of the visual field is affected by color blindness, but in the rest, there is no color blindness.
Some types of color blindness, but not inherited color blindness, can be cured.
There are several different problems that can cause color blindness.
This condition is very rare.
People who suffer from it can only see in black, gray and white: They can perceive only differences in brightness and do not see color.
This is called monochromacy.
There are two kinds of red-green color blindness: protanopia or deuteranopia.
Deuteranopia is the most common form of color blindness; between five and ten percent of males suffer from it.
Those affected have trouble telling the difference between red and green.
As seen by protanopes (people suffering from protanopia), red is darkened.
Most often, this is because they lack the receptors for long (protanopia) or medium (deuteranopia) - length light waves or because these receptors have changed their sensitivity.
Although the name is Blue-yellow color blindness (tritanopia), people affected by this type of color blindness can usually tell the difference between blue and yellow.
Instead they can not tell the difference between blue and green, and also yellow and violet.
It is different from the other types of color blindness because it is not linked to sex.
It affects both sexes equally.
It occurs because those affected lack receptors for short wavelengths, or because these receptor changed their sensitivity.
Sometimes, people do not have problems seeing color, but their brain has trouble "telling" the color, and interprets it wrong.
It is also possible that only certain parts of the eye have color blindness; people may become color blind because of other diseases, but after the disease goes away, see normally again.
This seems to be the case with certain forms of migraine.
Males have one X and one Y chromosome; females have two X chromosomes.
Many of the genes involved in making color vision work are on the X chromosome: they are sex linked.
For this reason, men are more often affected by color blindness than women.
The "color blind" gene allows non-color blind people see the difference between red and green.
The gene is located on the X chromosome.
This means that a male will be color blind if the single X he inherits from his mother contains the color blind version of the "color blind" gene.
A female will inherit color blindness only if she inherits two X chromosomes containing defective (mutant) color gene alleles.
In other words, a female needs to inherit "color blind" genes from both parents in order to be color blind.
Special tests have been developed.
These usually have an image with dots of different size and color.
People will then see different images (most often Arabic numbers).
Those with certain types of color blindness will see different numbers from those not affected by color blindness.
Because many young children have not learned numbers yet, other tests have been developed.
They use symbols, like a square, a circle or a car instead of numbers.
A color code is when there is much information in the color of certain item.
Such codes can not be understood easily by those who are color blind.
For this reason, color should not be used alone to give information.
Good graphic design avoids using color coding or color differences alone to give information.
This does not only help color blind people, but also normally sighted people.
Cascading Style Sheets can be used on web pages.
They allow to give a different color scheme for color blind people.
Certain color scheme generators help graphic designers see color schemes as eight types of color blind people see them.
Color blindness is very sensitive to changes in material.
A red-green color blind person may be unable to see the difference between colors on a map printed on paper.
The same map on a computer screen or television may appear normally.
In addition, some color blind people find it easier to tell the difference between colors on artificial materials, such as plastic or in acrylic paints, than on natural materials, such as paper or wood.
Thirdly, for some color blind people, color can only be distinguish if there is enough color: thin lines might appear black, but a thicker line of the same color can be seen in the correct color.
In certain cases when it is important to understand information very quickly, the visual system may drop the colors, and only work in shades of gray.
This is important to know when designing the interfaces for objects that need to be used in an emergency situation, like emergency brakes, or emergency telephones.
Because color blind people may not see the difference between colors such as red and green, some countries, such as Romania have refused to give them driving licenses.
In Romania, people have started to change the laws so that color blind people will also be able to drive legally.
In the United Kingdom, electricity wires in houses used to be red, black and green.
They were changed to brown, blue and green\/yellow to help color blind people see the difference between the "live" and "earth" wires.
Many people do not understand color blindness.
People who are color blind never swap the colors they are blind to.
They may have trouble telling two colors from one another.
That way they may have a problem finding the right kind of apple in the supermarket.
The image below first shows the way that two apples look to a person with normal vision, and then the way it looks to a person with red-green color blindness.
The left apple is a Braeburn; it is red in color.
The apple on the right is a Granny Smith; it is green.
To someone with red-green blindness, the apples look like they are almost the same color.
Computer security is a branch of information technology known as information security which is intended to protect computers.
Computer security has three main goals:
Computer security involves telling computers what they are not to do.
This makes computer security unique because most programming makes computers do things.
Security takes much of a computers power.
An example of complexity and pervasiveness of the issue is vending machines, per Hackers Lurking in Vents and Soda Machines April 7, 2014 New York Times.
A centaur is a creature in Greek mythology.
It has the upper body of a human, but below the waist it has the body of a horse.
There are also female centaurs.
Famous centaurs are Chiron and Nessus.
Cheshire is a county in England.
It is the Northwest part of the country.
It is most famous for making salt and cheese.
Cheshire is made up of lots of little towns including the Borough of Macclesfield which covers a large area of plains the main attraction is in kerridge where there is the famous land mark ` White Nancy. '
A county town is the most important town of any county in Britain and Ireland.
In the United States the town is called the county seat.
It can be the place where the headquarters of the county council is based, or the place where the courts are.
It has usually been the county town for hundreds of years.
It could also be the biggest or most important town in the county.
There is often a university in or near the county town.
Cities can also be county towns, such as Hereford, or Durham City.
Crochet is a way of creating fabric from yarn or thread using a crochet hook to pull loops of yarn through other loops.
It is similar to knitting, except that usually only one loop is active at one time, and that a crochet hook is used instead of knitting needles.
Also, crochet can not be made by machine.
Crochet uses more yarn than knitting but is faster to make by hand.
Crochet is used to make clothing, household items like tablecloths, blankets and potholders, and toys.
Lace is often made by crocheting, though it can be made by knitting and weaving as well.
Crocheting is also a great craft for younger children.
The stitches are easy and their small hands are able to hold the crochet hook.
They are also able to see progress very quickly and that motivates them to continue.
It is very easy to start again after setting the project down, which will help to keep young people involved in the craft.
Charles I of England (19 November 1600 30 January 1649), was the monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649.
He was a son of James I of England.
He was married to Henrietta Maria of France.
Charles was born at Fife, Scotland, before his father came to the throne of England.
He had an elder brother, Henry, who was clever, handsome and popular, and who was next in line for the throne.
Henry died suddenly in 1612, and his brother Charles was made Prince of Wales in his place, showing that he was now the heir to the throne.
Charles was less suited to be king than Henry had been, because he was small and weak and not as clever.
After his brother died, the person he was closest to was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who was also his father 's best friend.
The Duke of Buckingham was very powerful and rich, but was not popular with most common gay people.
He took Charles to Spain in the hope of finding him a Spanish princess as a bride, but they had a lot of problems on the journey and could not persuade the Spanish king to give them his daughter as a wife for Charles.
On the way home, they went to France, and there Charles met the French royal family.
The youngest of the French princesses was called Henrietta Maria of France, and Charles later chose her to be his wife.
When Charles became king, he needed money for a war with Spain, but Parliament would n't give it to him.
Therefore, he dissolved parliament and did not call it again for eleven years, from 1629 to 1640.
This made him very unpopular with the people, who did not like the different taxes they had to pay directly to the king, since Parliament could not vote to give him any budget.
Many also did not like the King 's closest adviser, William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was trying to force everyone in England to use the same Anglican Prayer Book and stop the many other Protestant denominations that were becoming popular at that time.
When the king and the Archbishop then tried to force a Prayer Book on Scotland, which was even more Protestant (Calvinist), armed rebellion broke out there.
Now that the king was at war, he needed more money than ever, so he had no choice but to call Parliament again in 1640.
The members of Parliament, angry at the things that had been going on for 11 years, did not want to give him money to fight his war, instead, they spent the session complaining about what had been going on in the country for the last 11 years.
So after only three weeks, Charles dissolved Parliament again.
For this reason, it was known as the Short Parliament.
Without enough money, Charles lost the war badly, and had to pay the Scots even more money that he did not have.
This meant that once again he had to call a Parliament, much as he hated to do so.
One of the first things they did was vote that the King had to call Parliament, and could not shut them down again.
Charles had no choice but to agree.
This Parliament is known as the Long Parliament, because it ended up lasting for twenty years, until 1660.
The Parliament and the King then began to quarrel about who was in control of the army.
Each side ended up with their own army, and this led to the English Civil War that started in 1642.
The army of Parliament got the upper hand in this war, and Charles, after a crushing defeat in 1646, went to the Scots for protection.
But they decided to turn him over to Parliament in 1647.
Charles escaped at one point and went to the governor of the Isle of Wight for protection, but this was also a bad move because he too was on the side of Parliament and only captured the king again.
While he was being held in the castle, Charles made an agreement with the Scots who joined his side, and the fighting started again in 1648.
Because he was still making trouble for them even while he was captured, Parliament voted to put the king on trial.
This had never been done to a king of England before.
At the trial he was found guilty and was finally put to death by beheading in January 1649.
Some of the members of Parliament who were opposed to killing king Charles were purged, and from this time on, what was left of the Long Parliament became known as the Rump Parliament.
This Parliament took complete power in England, and there was no new king at all until 1660.
Camille Pissarro (10 July 1830 12 November 1903) was a French Impressionist painter.
He was born on Saint Tomas in the Virgin Islands.
Pissarro died in Paris.
He was the only artist to exhibit in both Impressionism and Post-impressionism forms.
Pissarro learned from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.
In 1873 he helped establish a society of fifteen aspiring artists, holding the group together and encouraging the other members.
Art historian John Rewald called Pissarro the dean of the Impressionist painters", not only because he was the oldest of the group, but also "by virtue of his wisdom and his balanced, kind, and warmhearted personality.
C zanne said "he was a father for me.
A man to consult and a little like the good Lord".
He was also one of Gauguin 's mentors.
Renoir referred to his work as revolutionary, through his artistic portrayals of the common man.
Pissarro insisted on painting individuals in natural settings without "artifice or grandeur".
Pissarro is the only artist to have shown his work at all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions, from 1874 to 1886.
He acted as a father figure to the Impressionists and, in varying degress, to all four of the major Post-impressionists including Georges Seurat, Paul C zanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 71 compelled Pissarro to flee his home in September 1870; he returned in June 1871 to find that the house, and along with it many of his early paintings, had been destroyed by Prussian soldiers.
By December 1870 he and his family had taken refuge in London and settled in Crystal Palace, southwest London.
Through the paintings Pissarro completed at this time, he records Sydenham and Norwood at a time when they were just recently connected by railways.
One of the largest of these paintings is a view of St. Bartholomew 's Church at Lawrie Park Avenue, commonly known as The Avenue, Sydenham, in the collection of the National Gallery, London.
Whilst in Upper Norwood Pissarro was introduced to the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who bought two of his ` London ' paintings.
Durand-Ruel subsequently became the most important art dealer of the new school of French Impressionism.
Returning to France, in 1890 Pissarro again visited England and painted some ten scenes of central London.
He came back again in 1892, painting in Kew Gardens and Kew Green, and also in 1897, when he produced several oils of Bedford Park, Chiswick.
Carson City is the capital city of the American state of Nevada.
At the 2010 United States Census, Carson City had a population of 55,274.
Settlers who lived present-day Carson City named the area "Washoe", after the Washoe Native Americans who lived there.
John C. Fr mont and his party of explorers were the first European Americans to visit the Carson City area in 1843.
Fr mont named a river flowing through the valley Carson River for Christopher "Kit" Carson, who served as a scout on Fr mont 's expedition.
When Nevada became a state in 1864 during the Civil War, Carson City was confirmed as Nevada 's permanent capital.
Abraham Curry, the founder of Carson City, reserved an area equivalent to four city blocks (10 acres or 4.04 ha) at the center of the town for the future state capitol building.
When the Capitol building was built ten years later, it was located there.
The fourth session of the state legislature met in the still-incomplete building at the beginning of 1871.
Construction was completed by May 1, 1871.
There are three major highways in the city US Route 395, US Route 50 and Interstate 580.
Carson City 's first bus system, called Jump Around Carson, opened in October 2005.
There is almost no ground public transportation to other cities.
Passenger train service stopped in 1948.
Greyhound Lines stopped bus service there in 2006.
Amtrak stopped their bus to Sacramento in 2008.
Greyhound and Amtrak have busses to Reno, Monday to Friday.
Carson Airport is in the northern part of the city.
Reno-Tahoe International Airport, 28 m away, has domestic commercial flights.
The Jewish belief of Jews as a chosen people is that Jews are the chosen people of God.
Jews believe that God has given them a special job to repair the world.
Their job is to make the world a better place with more good in it.
They must use the things in the world to increase good and come closer to God.
They call this tikkun olam repairing the world.
Jews see themselves as God s partner to repair the world in any way they can to find ways to lessen suffering of people and animals, to make more peace and respect between people, and to protect the earth s environment from destruction.
This idea is first found in the Torah (the first five books of the Tanakh, which are also included in the Christian Bible).
Much is written about these topics in rabbinic literature:
Jews believe that God made an agreement called a covenant with Abraham, the ancestor of the Jewish people.
The Bible says that God promised to bless Abraham and his descendants if they worshipped God and were faithful to him.
God made this covenant with Abraham 's son, Isaac, and with Isaac 's son, Jacob.
God also gave Jacob another name Israel.
This is how Jacob s descendants got the name the Children of Israel or Israelites.
God later gave the Israelites the Torah to the Israelites through their leader, Moses.
The Torah told the Israelites how to live and build their community.
God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments and other laws in the Torah.
The Jews are sometimes called the Chosen People.
This is because the Bible says God told them you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:6) and For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord chose you to be His own special nation out of all peoples on the earth (Deuteronomy 14:2).
Jews understand this means that they have special duties and responsibilities commanded by God.
For example, Jews must build a just society and serve only God.
Jews believe that this covenant works in two ways: if they follow God s laws, He will give them his love and protection, but they are also responsible for their sins bad actions and not doing what God told them.
Jews believe that they must teach other people that God exists and that God wants all people to do good actions.
Jews believe that their job in the world is to be "a light to the nations" (Isiah 49:6) by showing the people of the world ways to make the world a better place.
The idea of chosenness has traditionally been interpreted by Jews in two ways: one way is that God chose the Israelites, while the other is that the Israelites chose God.
Another opinion is that even though the Jews chose to follow God, the Kabbalah and Tanya teach that even prior to creation, the "Jewish soul" was already chosen.
Jews do not try to convince other people to believe in Judaism.
Jews believe they have a special job to show all peoples that God exists, but people do not have to be Jewish to follow God.
All people can serve God by following the Seven Commandments (rules) given to Noah.
But, Judaism accepts people who choose to change their religion to Judaism.
O children of Israel, remember my favor which I bestowed upon you, and that I favored you above all creation.
(Qur ` an 2:47).
2:122).
Many Christians also believe that the Jews were God 's chosen people, but because of Jewish rejection of Jesus, the Christians in turn received that special status.
This doctrine is known as Supersessionism.
Chaparral is a shrubland or heathland plant community.
It is found mainly in the U.S. state of California.
Also in the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula, Mexico.
It is caused by a Mediterranean climate (mild, wet winters and hot dry summers) and wildfire.
A chaparral has summer drought-tolerant plants.
They have hard sclerophyllous evergreen leaves.
Chaparral covers 5 % of the state of California.
Of the associated Mediterranean shrubland, it covers an additional 3.5 %.
The name comes from the Spanish word chaparro, referring to scrub oaks.
There are four other chaparral regions in the world.
Chaparral does not often have fires.
These are usually at intervals from 10 15 years to over a hundred years.
Mature chaparral often has dense thickets.
They are highly flammable.
A clipper was a very fast sailing ship of the 19th century.
The word "clipper" comes from a word meaning: "fast".
Clippers had several masts and a square rig.
They were quite narrow for their length.
Clipper ships were mostly made in British and American shipyards, but France, the Netherlands and other countries also made some.
Clippers sailed all over the world, especially on the trade routes between the United Kingdom and its colonies in the east, in trans-Atlantic trade, and the New York-to-San Francisco route round Cape Horn during the California Gold Rush.
Dutch clippers were built beginning in 1850s for bringing tea to Europe and taking passengers to and from Java.
Cold fusion is nuclear fusion at room temperature and normal pressure.
Nuclear fusion is the process by which many nuclei, the center of an atom, containing protons and neutrons, are forced to join together to form a heavier nucleus (singular of nuclei) and during that process, energy is released.
Some scientists hope that this may be Earth 's future energy source, but most scientists do not agree.
For nuclear fusion to take place, a large amount of energy is needed.
With this energy, the atoms are pushed together, which are repelled by the electrostatic force (a force between protons which are particles in the nucleus of the atom and have a positive electrical charge).
But once this force is overcome and the nuclei are pushed close enough together, another much more powerful force will take over: the strong nuclear force.
It only operates at short distances, so when the nuclei are close enough, they attract each other because of the strong nuclear force which is stronger than the electrostatic force.
It is hoped that the energy released by cold fusion is much greater than the energy used to push the atoms together.
In 1989 two scientists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, published a paper in Nature, an important science journal, claiming to have created cold fusion.
This was a very important story at the time.
Other scientists were not able to repeat their experiments.
This is why cold fusion is not generally accepted by scientists at the moment.
Several dozen scientists are still working on cold fusion research.
They publish in peer-reviewed journals and other academic sources regularly, but most are not convinced.
Saint Catherine of Siena (March 25, 1347 - April 29, 1380) was a saint.
She was born in Sienna and died in Rome.
She promoted peace in Italy and is one of the two patron saints of Italy; the other being Saint Francis of Assisi
She was born Katerina de Benincasa in western Italy, the 23rd of 24 children.
She was born at the time of the Black Death, or Bubonic Plague.
Although it probably killed many she knew, she herself did not contract the disease and survived the epidemic.
She had a twin sister, who died several months later.
Her family was part of the lower classes and she did not become literate until 1378.
At the age of six, Catherine had a vision of Jesus Christ.
She continued to receive many visions throughout her life.
At age 12, Catherine cut off her hair and was obligated to serve her family, living in small quarters in the basement.
At the age of 16, she entered the Third Order of Saint Dominic and later became a Dominican nun.
She wrote a book called Dialogue, which taught that if you love your neighbors it is loving God.
She also devoted her life to improving the Catholic church, helping the ill, poor, and spiritually underprivileged.
Catherine moved the pope from Avignon, France and back into Rome.
She also began the Crusades to the holy land, Jerusalem.
She died of holy anorexia, as she ate very little in the name of God.
She was later made a Doctor of the Church in 1970 by Pope Paul VI and a patron of Europe in 1999.
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, (14 November 1797 22 February 1875) was a British geologist.
He was the foremost geologist of his day, and an influence on the young Charles Darwin.
His work was rewarded with a knighthood, and later he was created a hereditary baronet.
The house of his birth is in the Scottish Lowlands.
it is in the valley of the Highland Boundary Fault, one of the great features of Scottish geology.
Round the house is farmland, but within a short distance to the north-west are the Grampian Mountains in the Scottish Highlands.
Charles would have seen this view from his house as a child.
He was also fortunate that his family 's second home was in a completely different area: at Bartley Lodge in the New Forest, England.
Both these places lit his interest in the natural world.
Lyell had private means, and earned more money as an author.
He came from a prosperous family, worked briefly as a lawyer in the 1820s.
He held the post of Professor of Geology at King 's College London in the 1830s.
From 1830 onward his books gave him both income and fame.
Lyell 's Principles of Geology was his most famous, most influential, and most important book.
It was first published in three volumes, in 1830 33.
The book was a development of the ideas of James Hutton, but with many additions, improvements and examples.
The book established Lyell 's credentials as an important geological theorist.
It was a work of synthesis, backed by his own personal observations on his travels.
The central argument in Principles was that the present is the key to the past.
This was called by William Whewell ` uniformitarianism '.
Geological remains from the distant past are explained by processes we can see operating now.
Lyell 's interpretation of geologic change as the steady accumulation of minute changes over enormously long spans of time was a big influence on the young Charles Darwin.
F.C Chelsea is an English football club that plays in England, starting in 1905.
The club plays in the Premier League, and they play at the Stamford Bridge Stadium in London.
Chelsea 's owner is Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.
Chelsea finished sixth in the Premier League (highest division) in the 2011 12 season, but won Europe 's club championship, the UEFA Champions League, in the same season.
Eden Hazard was their player of the year 2015 and Chelsea F.C also became Champions of the Premier League in the same year.
Chelsea started in 1905 and played the second division of the league.
They won their first trophy in 1955, when they became Champions of the First Division.
They won the FA Cup in 1970, 1997, 2000 and 2007.
They won the League Cup in 1965, 1998, 2005 and 2007.
In 1970s Chelsea failed to maintain their position of the first division, due to the financial difficulties.
In 1990s they challenged the title of Premier League.
They came close but did not win it until 2005 and 2006.
In 2003 the Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovich, purchased Chelsea and invested lots of capital to employ new football players.
He also employed Luiz Felipe Scolari, as the manager of the club.
Abramovich also employed Peter Kenyon as the chief executive to be responsible for the commercial strategies of the club.
This made Chelsea more and more powerful, and they won the Premier League in consecutive years.
A third straight FA Premier League title slipped through Chelsea 's fingertips after their failure to defeat Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium meant that Manchester United had won their ninth league title in fifteen tries.
On September 20, 2007, the very successful manager Jos Mourinho left the club by "mutual consent".
This exit came just days after a shockingly poor performance which saw them barely scrape out a 1-1 draw in a Champions League tie against Norwegian side Rosenborg B.K..
Following Mourinho 's exit, Chelsea made Director of Football Avram Grant, the former manager of the Israel side from 2002 to 2006, the new manager of the club, until May 2008.
Grant took over with Chelsea trailing in the Premier League "title race" behind Manchester United and Arsenal, and managed to keep Chelsea in the hunt for the league until the last game of the season.
He got Chelsea into the Champions League Final for the first time as well as the Carling Cup Final, but he was sacked at the end of the season, along with assistant Henk ten Cate.
Grant was sacked from the job after he lost in the final in a 5-6 penalty shootout loss to Manchester United and replaced by Luiz Felipe Scolari, the then-Portugal coach, in August.
However, after a poor run of results Scolari was sacked on February 9, 2009.
Guus Hiddink took over the club until the rest of the season.
In early June they played in the FA Cup final against Everton, where Chelsea won 2-1, after Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba scored goals.
In that final, Louis Saha of Everton scored the fastest goal in FA Cup history, in 25 seconds.
A week later, the former Milan manager Carlo Ancelotti was named as the new manager of Chelsea.
Guus Hiddink is the current manager.
In chelsea there is 31 people.
eden hazard was born on the 7 of January 1991.
Diego costa played for athletico madrid.
A corporation is a union of natural persons that has its own legal status that is independent from the persons involved.
It is a "creature" of statute; i.e., it is like a person created by law.
Because it is recognized by governments as such (as a separate creature) it must file tax returns and pay taxes and conform to state and federal law.
This separation of persons and corporation gives it special powers.
Its status and capacity is determined by the law of the place of incorporation.
Investors and entrepreneurs often form joint stock companies to make a business easier.
Therefore the term corporation often means such business corporations.
Corporations may also be formed for local government (municipal corporation), policial, religious, and charitable purposes (not-for-profit corporation), or government programs (government-owned corporation).
In common speech, the word "corporation" refers usually to limited responsibility corporation.
That is a business firm where each of the partners invest a sum of money in as the capital of the corporation.
They receive shares as recognition of the sum they have invested.
If the company goes bankrupt, the business partners are responsible of only the name value of their shares, not their whole own personal property, of the company 's debts.
Cola is a type of carbonated drink that was made from the kola nut in the past, although other foods are often used now.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi are types of cola.
120 years ago, only 9 glasses of cola were sold each day, but now, around 14 million cola drinks are drank in the world every day.
A chronicle (, from Greek, from, chronos, "time") is an account of historical events, arranged in order from earliest to latest.
A chronicle is different from a narrative or history, as events which are not believed to be important may be excluded from the latter; a chronicler is more concerned with documenting events in sequential order.
In chemistry, concentration is how much of a substance is mixed with another substance.
The substance that is dissolved (shown as the red dye in the example) is known as the solute.
The substance in which the solute is dissolved (shown as the water in the example) is known as the solvent.
To concentrate a solution, one must add more solute, or reduce the amount of solvent.
To dilute a solution, one must add more solvent, or reduce the amount of solute.
Calista Kay Flockhart (born on November 11, 1964) is an American actress.
She was nominated for an Emmy Award.
Flockhart won a Golden Globe award in 1998.
She was on soap operas and other television shows.
She is famous for her role as the main character in the 1997-2002 television show, Ally McBeal.
She played Sally Field 's daughter, Kitty Walker, on the successful ABC drama, Brothers & Sisters.
She played a political campaign adviser.
Charles Evans Hughes, Sr. (April 11, 1862 August 27, 1948) was an American statesman, lawyer and Republican politician from New York.
He served as the 36th Governor of New York (1907 1910), Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1910 1916), United States Secretary of State (1921 1925), a judge on the Court of International Justice (1928 1930), and the 11th Chief Justice of the United States (1930 1941).
He was the Republican candidate in the 1916 U.S. Presidential election, losing narrowly to Woodrow Wilson.
Hughes was a professor in the 1890s, a supporter of Britain 's New Liberalism, an important leader of the progressive movement of the 20th century, a leading diplomat and New York lawyer in the days of Harding and Coolidge, and was known for being a swing voter when dealing with cases related to the New Deal in the 1930s.
Historian Clinton Rossiter has hailed him as a leading American conservative.
On August 27, 1948, Hughes died in what is now the Tiffany Cottage of the Wianno Club in Osterville, Massachusetts.
His remains are buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York.
A concept album is a kind of album in which all the songs are about the same thing.
Most of the time, they tell a story.
A clavichord is a musical instrument like a small keyboard.
It was very popular for many years, especially in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.
To play a note on the clavichord a key is pressed down.
This makes the other end of the key (inside the instrument) comes up (like a see-saw).
That end has a thin metal blade called a "tangent" which hits the string.
The tangent stays on the string until the player takes his finger off the key.
=
Centripetal force (or acceleration) is a type of force that acts on any body that revolves around a center.
(circular motion).
This force contributes to keeping the body in circular motion.
This force is always directed towards the center.
The opposite force (by Isaac Newton 's third law of motion) is called centrifugal force.
This is the force that acts on the body in a direction away from the center, which contributes to making the body try to fly away.
When you hold a rope with a heavy object attached to it, and rotate it around, the rope becomes tight and keeps the body from flying away.
This is caused by centripetal force.
An example is a roller coaster which uses centripetal force to keep the carts going in a circular motion.
A checksum is a number.
It is a kind of redundancy check.
There are different ways to calculate it.
It serves as a check, that no errors have been made when writing down the number.
In its simplest form, the digits are simply added up.
This can however not detect errors of swapping digits around.
Better ways (algorithms) of calculating a checksum are to use a Hamming code, a cyclic redundancy check or modular arithmetic.
One of the uses of checksums is to check that account numbers have been entered correctly.
Portuguese bank account identifiers are a good example of how checksums work.
They have 21 digits.
The first 19 digits identify the bank, branch and account number.
The last two digits are "mod 97" checksum digits based on modular arithmetic.
A typical Portuguese bank account number is 0002.0123.12345678901.54.
The digits have the following meanings:
If 000201231234567890154 (the bank account number without the dots) is divided by 97, the answer is 207458809978249 remainder 1.
Since the remainder is "1", the bank account identifier is probably correct.
If the person writing down the number missed a digit, swapped two digits around or wrote a digit down incorrectly the remainder would not have been "1".
If this is the case then the computer should detect an error and give an error message.
Another place where checksums are used are serial numbers for computer software.
Computational complexity theory is a part of computer science.
It looks at algorithms, and tries to say how many steps or how much memory a certain algorithm takes for a computer to do.
Very often, algorithms that use fewer steps use more memory (or the other way round: if there is less memory available, it takes more steps to do).
Many interesting algorithms take a number of steps that is dependent on the size of the problem.
Complexity theory also looks at how a problem changes if it is done for more elements.
A problem of constant complexity class is the only class in which this is not true.
A problem with constant complexity takes the same number of steps to complete no matter the size of the input or the number of elements it is computed on.
Broadcasting a message can be thought of as a problem of constant complexity.
No matter how many people need to receive a message, all can listen on to one single broadcast with no extra broadcasts needed.
Mowing the lawn can be thought of as a problem with linear complexity.
Mowing an area that is double the size of the original takes twice as long.
Suppose you want to know which of your friends know each other.
You have to ask each pair of friends whether they know each other.
If you have twice as many friends as someone else, you have to ask four times as many questions to figure out who everyone knows.
Problems that take four times as long when the size of the problem doubles are said to have quadratic complexity.
This is often the complexity for problems that involve looking things up, like finding a word in a dictionary.
If the dictionary is twice as big, it contains twice as many words as the original to compare to.
Looking something up will take only one step more.
The algorithm to do lookups is simple.
The word in the middle of the dictionary will be either before or after the term that needs to be looked up, if the words do not match.
If it is before, the term needs to be in the second half of the dictionary.
If it is after the word, it needs to be in the first half.
That way, the problem space is halved with every step, until the word or definition is found.
This is generally known as logarithmic complexity
There are problems that grow very fast.
One such problem is known as the Travelling salesman problem.
A salesman needs to take a tour of a certain number of cities.
Each city should only be visited once, the distance (or cost) of the traveling should be minimal, and the salesman should end up where he started.
This problem has exponential complexity.
There are n factorial possibilities to consider.
Adding one city (from n to n +1) will multiply the number of possibilities by (n +1).
Most of the interesting problems have this complexity.
In the legends of King Arthur, Camelot is Arthur 's castle.
In fiction about the Middle Ages, Arthur rules England from Camelot and holds feasts at his round table.
The round table, which has no legs or head, symbolized the idea of a good king because every knight who sat at it had an equal place.
Since Camelot 's original place is still uncertain, the truth about it, if it ever existed, is still unknown.
Camelot once held many great things such as The Holy Grail and The Round Table, which brought Arthur 's best knights together.
The end of Camelot was caused by Sir Lancelot 's and Queen Guinevere 's love affair, which made Camelot plunge into civil-war.
The contras is the name given to the rebel groups that were active from 1979 through to the early 1990s.
They were against the Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction government in Nicaragua.
Among the separate contra groups, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) emerged as the largest by far.
In 1987, virtually all contra organizations were united, at least nominally, into the Nicaraguan Resistance.
From an early stage, the rebels received financial and military support from the U.S. government.
President Ronald Reagan supported the group.
After the U.S. support was banned by Congress, the Reagan administration secretly gave them money from profit they gained after selling weapons to Iran.
These secret activities soon became known as the Iran Contra affair.
John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American biotechnologist and entrepreneur.
He was one of the first to sequence the human genome, and led the team which made the first cell with a synthetic genome (2010).
Venter founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research and the J. Craig Venter Institute.
He now works at his Institute to create synthetic (artificial) biological organisms, and to record genetic diversity in the world 's oceans.
He was listed on Time magazine 's 2007 and 2008 Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.
In 2010, the British magazine New Statesman listed Craig Venter at 14th in the list of "The World 's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010".
Venter himself recognized his own ADHD behavior in his adolescence, and later found ADHD-linked genes in his own DNA.
In media interviews, Ventnor has several times said he is an atheist.
Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 February 4, 1987), was a 20th century humanistic (client-centered) psychologist.
His 1969 collection of essays, Freedom to Learn, was influential for a young generation in the late 1960s and through the 1970s.
Rebellions against college teaching methods, the deschooling movement, flower power and the alternative society often referred to Roger 's ideas in their various pamphlets.
Rogers is regarded as the second most influential therapist (clinical psychologist) of the 20th century (behind Freud).
Rogers was born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
His parents were Walter Rogers and Julia Cushing.
He was the fourth of six children.
Rogers was educated in a strict, religious environment.
He was first interested in studying agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a focus on history and religion.
His interest changed from agriculture to religion.
He received a bachelor 's degree in 1924.
After that, he entered a liberal Protestant seminary in New York City.
That went against the views of his conservative father.
Rogers spent two years in seminary.
He later transferred to Columbia University Teachers College, where he worked with John Dewey.
Rogers received his master 's degree in 1928.
In 1931, he received a PhD in clinical psychology from Columbia University.
After receiving his PhD, Rogers worked at Ohio State University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin.
During that time, he developed what was later known as client-centered therapy.
After his work at the University of Wisconsin, Rogers worked at the Western Behavioral Studies Institute in LaJolla, California.
From there he and several other people formed the Center for Studies of the Person (CSP).
He remained there until his death in 1987.
During the last ten years of his life, Rogers used his person-centered approach in a broader field of work.
He used helping relationships in the resolution of inter-group and international conflict.
He and his colleagues conducted many experiments in cross cultural communication and peacemaking in the Carl Rogers Peace Project.
For this work, Rogers was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The work is not widely known, but it puts Rogers ' contributions into a wider social and political context.
A coin is normally a round piece of metal that is used as currency, or money.
Coins have been made for about 2600 years; the first place to make coins was Lydia (modern Turkey).
Most people use coins as currency.
They usually have lower value than banknotes.
Many coins have unique or complicated decorations; one side often has the picture of a famous or important person 's head on it.
The different decorations on each side of a coin might be used to decide things randomly.
This is called "tossing a coin".
A person can throw the coin into the air and catch it.
You then look at which side is facing up.
If the head is facing up it is called "heads", if the other side is facing up it is called "tails".
Before tossing the coin someone has to decide what each side means.
Tossing a coin can be a type of gambling, which is illegal (against the law) in some countries.
Some people see coins as a sign of greed, such as some Communists and Puritans, who sometimes condemn over-hoarding of coins, and ascetics, who often keep little in the ways of money (coins), leading a "poor" - lifestyle.
Because coins have been made for a very long time, some people collect old coins.
They can be much cheaper than other old things, especially if they are made of cheap metals like copper.
Older coins normally cost more than newer ones, but rarity matters more-some coins from the 1920s cost vast sums, while some Roman coins cost very little.
The foreign policy of the United States is the way in which the United States acts towards other countries.
U.S. foreign policy also involves setting out how U.S. organizations, corporations, and individual citizens should act towards foreign countries.
The United States has a lot of power in the world for several reasons.
The U.S. has a $ 15 trillion economy and approximately a quarter of the global Gross Domestic Product.
The U.S. also has a defense budget of $ 711 billion.
This is about 43 % of military spending in the world.
The U.S. has a powerful military that it can send out to protect countries or locations that are considered important to U.S. foreign policy.
The U.S. Secretary of State is the same type of job as the job of foreign minister of other countries.
The Secretary of State is responsible for diplomacy with other countries.
Today, John Kerry is the U.S. 's Secretary of State.
The President of the United States has the highest authority over foreign policy.
The United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs aims to control nuclear technology and nuclear hardware; foster commercial relations with foreign nations; and safeguard American business abroad.
The Committee also watches over international agreements about commodities, international education, and the protection of American citizens abroad.
U.S. foreign policy includes defining what actions and choices are in the best national interest.
U.S. foreign policy also includes the strategies that are chosen to lead to policy goals.
The goals of the foreign policy of the United States are to create a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world.
The U.S. aims to achieve this goal for the benefit of the American people and the international community.
U.S. foreign policy and foreign aid have been the subject of much debate, praise and criticism both from within the U.S. and from other countries.
Carousel is a musical.
It is based on Ferenc Moln r 's 1909 play, Liliom, as adapted by Benjamin Glazer.
Oscar Hammerstein II wrote the musical 's book and lyrics.
Richard Rodgers wrote the music.
Carousel received the first New York Drama Critics ' Circle Award for Best Musical (1945-1946).
It opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre on 19 April 1945, and closed on 24 May 1947 after 890 performances.
The original production starred John Raitt as Billy and Jan Clayton as Julie.
Robert Mamoulian directed, Agnes de Mille choreographed the dances, and Jo Mielziner designed the scenery and lighting.
Carousel opened on the West End at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 7 June 1950 with Stephen Douglass and Iva Withers.
In 1956, it was released as a Twentieth Century-Fox movie starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones.
Clive Barker (born 5 October 1952) is an English author, movie director and visual artist.
He was born in Liverpool.
He is openly gay.
Corsican (' or Lingua Corsa) is a Romance language spoken on the island of Corsica (France), together with French, which is the official language.
Similar languages are also spoken on the near-by island of Sardinia (Italy), in the city of Sassari and the istorical region of Gallura.
Corsican is similar to the dialects of Central Italy, particularly in Tuscany.
Corsican is spoken by almost 35 % of people in Corsica.
According to its UNESCO classification, the Corsican language is now in danger of becoming extinct.
The language is separated into two dialects, "Northern Corsican", spoken in the Bastia and Corte areas, and "Southern Corsican", spoken around Sartene and Porto-Vecchio.
The dialect of Ajaccio has been described as in transition.
The dialects spoken at Calvi and Bonifacio are like the Genoa dialect, also known as Ligurian.
In the Sardinian region of Gallura, including the town of Tempio Pausania, and on the island of La Maddalena "Gallurese" is spoken.
The Corsican language is very important for the Corsican culture, because it is really rich in proverbs.
Commodore is the common name for Commodore International Limited, a U.S. computer and electronics manufacturing company.
Headquarters were in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
In the 1960s and 70s they made adding machines and calculators.
This company was important in the development of the home personal computer in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Commodore developed the first color computer sold under $ 300, known as the VIC-20 in 1981, and the world 's best-selling desktop computer, called the Commodore 64 (1982).
Commodore later released the Amiga computers in 1985.
The company went bankrupt in 1994.
Chaim Topol (; born September 9, 1935), sometimes known as Topol, is an Israeli theatrical and movie performer, actor, writer and producer.
Topol is known for his role as Tevye the milkman in the 1971 movie Fiddler on the Roof.
He has been nominated for an Oscar and a Tony Award.
He has won two Golden Globes Awards.
Topol was born on September 9, 1935 in Tel Aviv, British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel).
Some of Topol 's other notable movie appearances were the title role in Galileo (1975), Dr. Hans Zarkov in Flash Gordon (1980), and as Milos Columbo in the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only (1981).
Topol is married to Galia Topol.
He retired from acting in 1998 and now only appears on stage.
The Christadelphians are a Christian denomination that developed in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 19th century.
Other names for them include Brothers of Christ and Christ 's Brethren.
They were in effect founded by John Thomas, but do not consider him greater than any other teacher.
Today, there are about 55,000-60,000 Christadelphians.
Many of them live in Britain, Australia, Africa and the United States.
Their ideas are close to other Restorationist movements such as the Anabaptist movement.
They say that when Christianity came in contact with the Hellenic world, it was spoiled.
Therefore, they only accept teachings that can be found in the Bible.
They think that the Bible was inspired by God and they accept no other texts.
Today almost all Christadelphians belong to the main "Central" fellowship.
But, following some disagreements, there have been different groups of Christadelphians:
They do not have priests or pastors, instead each local church has a group of elders who are chosen by the members each year.
Most male members take turns to speak each week.
Cable television is a way of letting people watch television without having to get signals from an antenna.
The television signals are brought to the television through a coaxial cable.
People usually have to pay to subscribe to cable television.
With cable television, people can watch hundreds of television channels carrying many television shows.
Cable TV is provided by many carriers in across with world.
Some of those carriers in the United States are: AT&T U-Verse, CableVision, Comcast, Cox Communications, SuddenLink, Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS.
Another method of subscription television is by Satellite television, especially in places where cable TV is not available.
Cholera is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae.
It infects the small intestine.
There are many types (strains) of the Vibrio cholera bacteria.
Some of them cause more serious illnesses than others.
Because of this, some people who get cholera have no symptoms; others have symptoms that are not very bad, and others have very bad symptoms.
The most common symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea.
In the worst cases, diarrhea can be so bad that people can die in a few hours from dehydration.
Cholera is a very old disease.
Writings about cholera (written in Sanskrit) have been found from the 5th century BC.
Throughout history, there have been many outbreaks and epidemics of cholera.
Cholera still affects many people throughout the world.
Estimates from 2010 say that between 3 million and 5 million people get cholera every year, and 58,000 130,000 people die from the disease every year.
Today, cholera is called a pandemic.
However, it is most common in developing countries, especially in children.
People usually get cholera by eating food or drinking water that is unclean.
When people have cholera, they have a lot of diarrhea, and the cholera bacteria stays alive in their feces.
In developing countries, often there is not good sanitation.
Cholera can spread if this diarrhea gets into water that other people use.
For example, if sewage (human waste) gets into a river that many people use, people can get cholera if they:
Cholera is very rarely spread directly from person to person.
Cholera 's main symptoms are very bad diarrhea and vomiting clear fluid.
These symptoms usually start suddenly.
They start half a day to five days after the person gets infected.
(This is called cholera 's "incubation period".)
If they do not get treatment, about half of people with very bad cholera die.
People with very bad cholera can have so much diarrhea that they do not have enough water and electrolytes (salts) left in their bodies to survive.
Cholera has been nicknamed the "blue death" because a person dying of cholera may lose so many body fluids that their skin turns bluish-gray.
If people with cholera get good, quick medical treatment, less than 1 % die from the disease.
However, if cholera is not treated, at least half of people with the disease (50 % to 60 %) die.
Some strains of the Vibrio cholera bacteria have different genes than others, which make them more dangerous.
These more dangerous strains of cholera bacteria caused the 2010 epidemic in Haiti and the 2004 outbreak in India.
With these strains of cholera, a person can die within two hours of getting sick.
There is no cure for cholera.
However, there are different treatments that can help.
For example:
There is a cholera vaccine that can be taken by mouth.
It provides some protection from cholera for about six months.
People can also do some other things to prevent cholera.
For example:
It is possible for governments to stop outbreaks or epidemics from happening.
For example, cholera is very uncommon in developed countries because they have good sanitation and because they add chemicals to their water to kill germs.
Even after people start to get cholera, it is possible for governments to stop the disease from spreading, through:
Cholera probably started in the Indian subcontinent.
As early as the 5th century BC, people in the Ganges River delta area wrote about cholera.
The disease first spread to Russia in 1817 by trade routes (over both land and sea).
Later, cholera spread to the rest of Europe, and from Europe to North America and the rest of the world.
Seven cholera pandemics have happened in the past 200 years.
The latest started in Indonesia in 1961.
There have also been many serious outbreaks.
The worst outbreak in recent history happened in Haiti after the earthquake there in 2010.
Between October 2010 and August 2015, more than 700,000 Haitians got cholera, and over 9,000 died.
The outbreak was caused by a United Nations base where Nepalese soldiers were living.
The soldiers would dump human waste into the Artibonite River, which many Haitians used for drinking, cooking, and bathing.
Since cholera became common in the 19th century, it has killed tens of millions of people.
Just in Russia, between 1847 and 1851, more than one million people died of cholera.
During the second pandemic, which lasted from 1827-1835, the disease killed 150,000 Americans.
Between 1900 and 1920, in India, up to eight million people died of cholera.
in 1854, an English doctor named John Snow was the first person to realize that contaminated water caused cholera.
Today, countries in Europe and North America filter and add chlorine to their water supplies.
This has made cholera very uncommon in these countries.
A caldera is a volcanic feature formed by the collapse of land surface after a gigantic volcanic eruption.
In such an eruption the volcano 's magma chamber is empty enough for the ground above it to drop.
A caldera may look like a volcanic crater except that a crater is made by blasting outward, not by collapsing inward.
The word caldera comes from the Portuguese language, meaning "cauldron".
When Yellowstone Caldera last erupted some 650,000 years ago, it released about 1,000 km3 of material, covering much of North America in debris up to two metres thick.
By comparison, when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, it released 1000 times less material.
The ecological effects of the eruption of a large caldera can be seen in the record of the Lake Toba eruption in Indonesia.
About 75,000 years ago, this Indonesian volcano released about 2,800 km3 of ejecta.
This was the largest known eruption within the Quaternary period (last 1.8 million years), and the largest known explosive eruption within the last 25 million years.
In the late 1990s, anthropologist Stanley Ambrose suggested that a volcanic winter induced by this eruption reduced the human population to about 2,000 - 20,000, resulting in a population bottleneck.
Others suggested that the human race was reduced to about five to ten thousand people.
However, there is no direct evidence that the theory is correct.
And there is no evidence for any other animal decline or extinction, even in environmentally sensitive species.
There is evidence that human habitation continued in India after the eruption.
The theory in its strongest form seems to be incorrect.
Eruptions forming even larger calderas are known.
At La Garita Caldera in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, the 5,000 km3 Fish Canyon Tuff was blasted out in a single major eruption about 27.8 million years ago.
At some points in time, rhyolitic calderas have appeared in distinct clusters.
The remnants of such clusters may be found in places such as the San Juan Mountains of Colorado (formed during the Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods) or the Saint Francois Mountain Range of Missouri (erupted during the Proterozoic).
A calculator is a machine which allows people to do math operations more easily.
For example, most calculators will add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
Some also do square roots, and more complex calculators can help with calculus and draw function graphs.
Calculators are found everywhere.
A smartphone or other computer can also act as a calculator.
Some calculators, like the abacus, will work without batteries.
Others, like the electronic calculator, require batteries.
There are two types of electronic calculators: simple calculators, which can only add, subtract, multiply and divide, and sometimes take square roots; and scientific calculators, which can do many other things, such as calculate factorials and trigonometry functions.
There are different ways to write mathematics on a calculator.
For example, after pressing "3" and then" +" and then "2" and then" =" (or "ENTER") the number "5" will be displayed on the screen.
This is called infix notation.
Many more advanced calculators use postfix notation, that is, "3 4 +" instead of "3 + 4 =".
The third way of noting things," + 3 4", called prefix notation, is rarely found on calculators.
A pocket calculator is a small calculator that helps people do arithmetic.
It is so small that it can be put in a pocket.
Its most common use is for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Many pocket calculators are powered by solar cells.
They are commonly seen in schools and businesses around the world and can be used quickly and efficiently for simple mathematical problems.
Other names are ` miniature calculator ' or ` mini calculator '.
A scientific calculator can do more things.
It can often use exponents, pi, trigonometric ratios, and the order of operations.
Scientific calculators can also use bigger numbers.
They tend to cost more than pocket calculators.
Most are programmable.
The user can make a program directly with the calculator, or transfer one from a computer.
A cash register, or till, is a machine that holds money.
Cash registers are usually found in stores and restaurants.
Sometimes the cash register will only open if somebody is buying something.
This is to try to stop the customer from stealing money from the employees.
Most cash registers print a receipt for a proof of purchase.
A cocktail is a kind of mixed drink.
Usually, it is made with alcoholic drinks such as vodka, gin or rum.
Since such spirits do not have much taste of their own (at around 40 % alcohol), other ingredients are added.
Common ingredients are fruits, fruit juice, sugar, crushed ice, and ice cubes.
If the cocktail is served in a bar or nightclub, it often comes with a piece of fruit on top.
For example, a gin and tonic could have a lemon, a Pi a Colada could have a pineapple and a cherry.
Most cocktails were invented in the late 19th or early 20th centuries.
People began drinking a lot of cocktails in the United States in the 1920s due to Prohibition.
Around that time, cocktails from Cuba, such as the mojito, became popular around the world.
Cocktails made without alcohol are also made.
Because all the ingredients give their flavor to the finished drink, a cocktail is only as good as the worst ingredient.
There are many kinds of cocktails.
They include:
Family International, which had been called The Children of God, The Family of Love and The Family, is a New Age religion, and a cult.
It was started in the 1960s in California by David Brandt Berg (1919 1994).
Broadly, the Family are a Christian evangelical movement.
However, their beliefs are selective.
Their "spiritual revolution" is against the outside world, which the members called "the System".
After the death of the founder, his widow Karen Zerby became the leader of TFI, taking the title of ` Queen ' and ` prophetess. '
She married Steve Kelly, an assistant of David Berg whom Berg had chosen as her ` consort ' before his death.
Steve Kelly took the title of ` King Peter ' and became the public face of TFI, speaking in a more public capacity than either David Berg or Karen Zerby.
In 1974, the group began a method of evangelism called Flirty Fishing.
This meant using sex to "show God 's love" and win converts.
The method was apparently exrtemely successful.
According to TFI, as a result of Flirty Fishing, "over 100,000 received God 's gift of salvation through Jesus, and some chose to live the life of a disciple and missionary".
The group encouraged children to have sex with adults and each other.
The High Court of Justice, Family Division, in the UK found there to be "widespread sexual abuse of young children and teenagers by adult members of The Family".
According to data provided by TFI to researcher Bill Bainbridge, from 1974 until 1987, members had sexual contact with 223,989 people while practicing Flirty Fishing.
Flirty Fishing also resulted in the births of many children, including Karen Zerby 's son, Davidito (aka Ricky Rodriguez).
He committed suicide after murdering a female member of the cult who had sexually abused him as a toddler.
Children born as result of Flirty Fishing were referred to as "Jesus Babies".
By the end of 1981, more than 300 "Jesus Babies" had been born.
Flirty Fishing was officially abandoned in 1987.
After some complaints from people who had been abused as children by adults, a new rule, that sexual interactions should not occur between an adult and a minor, was encouraged and promoted, but not enforced.
In March 1989, TF issued a statement which stated that, in "early 1985" an urgent memorandum was sent to all of its members "reminding them that any such activities (adult-child sexual contact) are strictly forbidden within our group".
In January 2005, Claire Borowik, spokesperson for TFI, issued a statement that said, "Due to the fact that our current zero-tolerance policy regarding sexual interaction between adults and underage minors was not clearly stated in our literature published before 1986, we came to the realization that during a transitional stage of our movement, from 1978 until 1986, there were cases when some minors were subject to sexually inappropriate advances... This was corrected officially in 1986, when any contact between an adult and minor (any person under 21 years of age) was declared an excommunicable offense".
The Code of Hammurabi was a code of Babylonian law, written about 1700 BC.
It was written on a stele (a large stone monument), and put in a public place where everyone could see it.
The stele was later captured by the Elamites and taken to their capital, Susa.
It was found there again in 1901, and is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
The code of Hammurabi had 282 laws, written by scribes on 12 tablets.
Unlike earlier laws, it was written in Akkadian, the daily language of Babylonia.
The Code of Hammurabi is the longest surviving text from the Old Babylonian period.
The code is an early example of a law regulating a government: a kind of primitive constitution.
The code is also one of the earliest examples of the "presumption of innocence" (innocent until proven otherwise).
It suggests that both the accused and accuser have the opportunity to provide evidence.
The Code of Hammurabi was one of several sets of laws in the ancient Near East.
The code of laws was arranged in groups, so that everyone who read the laws would know what was required of them.
There were earlier laws, and later laws such as the Law of Moses in the Hebrew Bible.
These codes come from similar cultures in a relatively small geographical area, and they have passages which resemble each other.
Nearly half the Code deals with contracts.
It sets the wages to be paid to an ox driver or a surgeon.
Other passages set the liability of a builder for a house that collapses, for example, or property that is damaged while left in the care of another.
A third of the code concerns household and family matters such as inheritance, divorce, paternity and sexual behavior.
For each crime, a specific punishment is listed.
The punishments tended to be harsh by modern standards.
They included death, cutting off a body part, and the use of the "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth" - philosophy.
The penalties of his laws may seem cruel to modern readers, but the fact that he put into writing the laws of his kingdom is considered an important step forward in the development of civilization.
The Code of Hammurabi was one of many sets of laws in the Ancient Near East.
The Cuba Libre (IPA \/ ` ku a ` li e \/ in Spanish, kju b li b e \/ in English, "Free Cuba") is a cocktail made of Cola, rum, and lime.
Also referred as Rum and Coke in United States and Canada, it is usually served in a highball glass.
The exact recipe of the drink is 2 oz of light rum, juice of 1\/2 limes, and cola, although variation in rum is possible according to taste.
After pouring the lime juice into the highball glass, add rum, fill the rest of the glass with cola, and then stir.
The exact history of Cuba Libre is uncertain.
Generally accepted theory is that the drink was invented in Havana, Cuba around 1900, after Cuba s liberation and when Coke was first introduced to Cuba.
The order Cetacea are marine mammals that live in oceans, seas, and even a few rivers around the world.
Whales, dolphins, and porpoises are part of this group.
These common name refer to size: whales are the largest, porpoises the smallest.
How and what they eat is a better guide to their relationships.
The study of cetaceans is called cetology.
The Canterbury Tales is a book of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer.
It was written in the 14th century.
It was one of the first books to be written in the English language.
The book is about a group of pilgrims traveling from London to Canterbury.
As they travel along, each person tells a story to pass the time.
Chaucer planned to write 120 stories, with each person telling two stories on the way there and two of the way back.
However, only 23 were completed, and one was partially finished.
Two of the stories are written in prose.
The others are written in verse.
They were so popular that he was invited to read his stories to the king and royal court.
The Canterbury Tales is about a group of people who are pilgrims.
They are traveling to an important sacred site.
In the Middle Ages, many Christian people went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela and Canterbury.
Canterbury Cathedral was a famous pilgrimage site because it contained the shrine (a place for remembering) of Saint Thomas Becket.
Thomas Becket had been the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1100s.
He had an argument with his old friend, King Henry II, and in 1170 he was murdered by some of the King 's knights on order from the King.
The King felt very sad and guilty.
He had a magnificent tomb built for his old friend.
People began to visit the tomb.
Soon, some people said that Thomas Becket was a saint, and that his bones could work miracles.
He is regarded as a martyr for the Christian faith and as a saint by both the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches.
In the late Middle Ages his shrine made Canterbury one of the four most important pilgrimage places in Europe.
Many pilgrims used to meet together in London.
The Canterbury Tales tells of the meeting of a group at an inn in Southwark, which was a village south of the Thames River and now making up part of London.
This was a good place to meet because people from the north could cross the Thames River by London Bridge.
Canterbury is in the south-east of England.
Pilgrims used to gather in groups because it was dangerous to travel alone.
In the days before modern banking, every traveller had to carry a lot of money to pay for food and accommodation (a place to sleep).
Robbers often attacked people along the roads.
When pilgrims gathered in a group, the group could be made up of many different kinds of people, both rich and poor, noble and humble.
The groups often contained a number of religious people such as priests, monks and nuns.
In Chaucer 's story, the most noble person is a knight.
The Canterbury Tales begins with a Prologue (which means "a few words to begin").
In the prologue Chaucer describes the time of year, which is April, when the weather begins to get warmer after winter.
He says that it is at this time that people begin to go on pilgrimage.
Chaucer tells the reader about the people who are gathered at the inn.
He describes the people so clearly that many of them have become famous characters in English Literature, and have often been shown in paintings.
Chaucer describes how each person tells a story to entertain the other as they travel along.
Some of the tales (stories) are serious and others are funny.
Some of the funny stories are vulgar (sexually rude).
A lot of the tales talk about the Christian faith.
Sometimes the theme (main idea) of one story is followed into the next story, as a new story-teller responds (or answers) to a story they have just heard.
All of the tales are about the way that people think and behave towards each other.
The Canterbury Tales is written in the type of English that most ordinary people used in Chaucer 's day.
Chaucer was one of the first authors (writers) who wrote stories in English.
Before, stories were written in Latin or French.
Some other writers of Chaucer 's time also wrote in English.
Some of these writers were John Gower, William Langland, and the Pearl Poet.
Chaucer planned the stories before he wrote them but he did not finish his plan.
He planned that each character would tell four stories: two while going to Canterbury and two while returning to London.
If Chaucer had finished, he would have written 120 stories.
He only actually wrote 24.
Chaucer began to write the stories in the 1380s.
He stopped writing them in the 1390s.
Some think that he deliberately did not write the total 120 stories.
Chaucer was an important person in the royal court.
Some people think that, in the stories, Chaucer was saying things about court politics.
Some people think that Chaucer based his characters on people that he really knew and who were at the royal court.
Some people think that Chaucer copied ideas from others peoples writings because some of the stories in The Canterbury Tales are very similar to them.
The characters, however, are very different.
The characters have different occupations and personalities.
They all tell different types of stories and they tell them in different ways.
The big story is about many pilgrims traveling to Canterbury.
They are riding horses and the trip takes several days.
Chaucer does not say much about the big story and most of the writing is about the stories told by the pilgrims.
The two earliest manuscripts (hand-written copies) of The Canterbury Tales are the Hengwrt manuscript and the Ellesmere manuscript.
There are also 84 manuscript and four printed copies of The Canterbury Tales that were made before 1500.
There are quite a lot of differences in the different copies.
Some experts on Chaucer have started The Canterbury Tales Project.
The project is to read all these copies of The Canterbury Tales, find out the differences and write the most accurate copy.
Christine de Pizan, sometimes known as de Pisan, (Venice 1364 about 1430) was an Italian French late mediaeval author.
She spent most of her childhood and all of her adult life in Paris and then the abbey at Poissy.
She wrote only in her adopted language, Middle French.
She challenged the male-dominated realm of the arts.
She is known as Europe s first professional woman writer.
She wrote both poetry and prose works.
There were biographies and books of practical advice for women.
She wrote 41 works in her 30-year career from 1399 1429.
She married in 1380 at the age of 15, and was widowed 10 years later.
Her influence carried all throughout Europe.
It affected the social life for many Europeans because she gave confidence to women that they could rise beyond what men told them to do.
Some think this is misreading her intentions.
The Cathar faith was a version of Christianity.
They were usually considered Gnostics.
The word ` Cathar ' comes the Greek word katharos meaning ` unpolluted ' (from Tobias Churton, The Gnostics) or "the pure ones".
The Cathars believed that the world had been made by a bad god.
They believed that this bad god had taken them from the good god and put them in the world, but inside their bodies there was a spirit, and that spirit needed to return to the good god.
They were famous for a belief in a form of reincarnation and believed that when someone died the bad god would put that person 's spirit in a new body.
They believed this cycle of coming back to life could be escaped by a ritual cleansing.
They were opposed to the doctrine of sin.
Women were prominent in the faith.
They were pacifists.
They did n't eat anything that was made from other animals, including meat and cows milk.
The only exception to this was fish.
Fish was OK to eat because they believed fishes were not alive but just things that were sometimes produced from dirt and water.
They preached tolerance of other faiths.
They rejected the usual Christian rules of marriage and only believed in the New Testament.
An earlier 10th century Bulgarian heresy, Bogomilism and also Manichaeism started some of these trends.
They used a bible in the language people spoke.
Many other Christians used a Bible in Latin.
Latin was spoken only by the priests.
In 1145, open challenge to Catholic dominance began.
In about 1165, the first Cathars said that the Church was "full of ravening (starving) wolves and hypocrites" and "worshipping the wrong God", right in front of the most powerful Catholics.
In 1166, the Council of Oxford in England wiped out the English Cathars.
It was also suppressed in Northern France.
In 1167, Cathar bishops met to discuss organizing a counter Church - in the South of France, the Languedoc nobles protected it, and many noble women became "Perfects".
Parish clergy had low morale, or confidence.
The Catholic Church was against Catharism, seeing it as a heresy.
In the South of France there was tremendous religious fervor, and an economy that was starting to grow, and a social class of merchants and peasants was starting to grow.
Peasants owned their own land.
Meanwhile, in other parts of Europe, peasants were forced to give up their land to nobles and become serfs or slaves - the system of feudalism.
There was a strong central absolute monarchy that did not exist in the South of France.
The burghers and bankers had more power in this looser system.
R. I. Moore is a historian who believes that it was desire to crush this system and take over the land that drove the attack.
However, there was real cultural and religious difference to cause problems: Troubadors, who combined some of the traditions of the Bards of the Celts, and Jews, were both part of the multicultural society in the South of France.
Their influences were not appreciated by local or Roman Church figures.
The 12th century Roman Catholic Monks were founding their monasteries outside the towns, drawing the best people there.
The Cathars thus had little competition.
The Cathar "Perfects", the so-called Good Men or Good Women, lived restrained lives and spread their faith in towns - where the Catholics in general did not have their best agents.
Also, Cathars preached that only these Good leaders had to follow the regimens their whole lives - lay people could repent only on their deathbeds.
Many 20th century Christian sects have similar beliefs.
The Pope ordered a crusade against the Cathars in southern France.
He said any crusader who answered the call would be given the same rewards as a crusader who went to the Holy Land.
This was an absolution of all sin.
In the Launguedoc, on the 22nd of July 1209, a force of about 30,000 Crusaders arrived at the walls of Beziers bearing the cross pattee to mislead and create ease among the Cathars, thinking they were friend, not foe, and demanded that about 200 Cathars be surrendered.
The people of the town who were mostly Catholic, said that rather than turn over their friends and family, "we would rather be flayed alive."
A mistake by the defenders of Beziers let thousands of attackers in.
Arnauld Amaury made the famous quote "Kill them all, god knows his own" on being asked how to tell who were Cathars during the assault.
Everyone in the town was killed, some while taking refuge in the church.
It is guessed that 20,000 were killed, many of whom were Catholics and not Cathars at all.
The crusade became known as the Albigensian crusade after the town of Albi.
It was to wipe out the Cathars almost entirely over forty or so years.
The Crusaders wanted to go home, but were ordered by the Pope to continue until the whole South of France was controlled and all Cathars were dead.
In 1210, they attacked the fortress at Minerv and built "the first great bonfire of heretics" - beginning the practice of burning at the stake that would continue in the Inquisition of the Counter-Reformation.
It is interesting to note that at the siege of Montsegur when the fires were lit the Cathars ran down the hill and threw themselves on, as their beliefs were very strong.
Catharism disappeared from the northern Italian cities after the 1260s, pressured by the Inquisition.
The last known Cathar perfectus in the Languedoc, Guillaume B libaste, was killed in 1321.
Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) bathes and protects the central nervous system (the brain and the spinal cord).
"Cerebro" means "brain"; "spinal" is a short version of "spinal cord"; and fluid is a liquid.
CSF is made by networks of blood vessels called choriod plexuses in each of the brain 's four ventricles.
CSF flows through the subarachnoid space - the space between the two layers of meninges that are closest to the skull (the arachnoid layer and the dura mater).
CSF also fills the brain 's ventricles, and flows down the middle of the spinal cord (the central canal).
CSF is created from blood plasma (the liquid part of blood), so CSF 's contents are very similar to plasma 's.
CSF is 99 % water.
It carries:
There should be very few white blood cells in the CSF, or none at all.
There should be no red blood cells in the CSF.
Being surrounded by CSF helps the brain float inside the skull, like a buoy in water.
Because the brain is surrounded by fluid, it floats like it weighs only 2 % of what it really does.
If the brain did not have CSF to float in, it would sit on the bottom of the skull.
The brain 's weight would push the bottom of the brain against the skull.
Blood would not be able to get to the bottom of the brain because it the blood vessels would be getting crushed by the weight of the brain on top of them.
Without getting blood (and the oxygen it carries), the neurons in the bottom of the brain would die.
CSF protects the brain by acting like a cushion.
Without CSF, every time a person moved their head, their brain would hit the inside of their skull.
This could injure the brain.
When a person hits their head, CSF acts like the airbag in a car and can sometimes keep the brain from slamming into the inside of the skull.
However, when a person hits their head very hard - for example, in a car accident - the CSF can not protect the brain from hitting the skull.
This can cause concussions, bleeding in the brain, brain damage, or even death.
The brain 's cells do chemical reactions to change one chemical to another chemical that the brain needs.
Sometimes, after a chemical reaction, chemicals that the brain does not need are left over.
These chemicals are called "waste products."
For example, when the brain 's cells use oxygen and glucose (sugar) to create energy, carbon dioxide (CO2) is left over.
Too much carbon dioxide can poison the brain.
To keep waste products from building up in the CSF, the chorioid plexuses make new CSF about four times a day.
The old CSF drains out into the bloodstream, bringing waste products and toxins with it.
In this way, the CSF rinses things that could hurt the brain out into the bloodstream.
The bloodstream can then carry these chemicals to organs that can get rid of them, like the kidneys and the lungs.
For example, the bloodstream carries carbon dioxide to the lungs, where it can be breathed out.
Doctors can use samples of CSF to find out if a person has a brain infection, like meningitis, encephalitis, or syphilis.
CSF samples can also show bleeding from certain parts of the brain.
Swelling in the brain, caused by some inflammatory diseases like multiple sclerosis, can show in a CSF sample as well.
Usually, doctors take samples of CSF by doing a lumbar puncture (spinal tap).
Normal CSF should be clear and colorless, with no red blood cells, and very few white blood cells.
Protein levels that are higher than normal can be a sign of inflammation in the brain.
However, they can also be a sign of other problems, like a bleed in the brain; a brain tumor; epilepsy; and "acute alcoholism."
Cancer cells in the CSF are a sign that a person has brain cancer, or has cancer that started somewhere else and spread to the brain.
Head injuries and some diseases can make too much CSF build up in the brain.
This is called hydrocephalus.
The extra fluid puts pressure on (squeezes) the brain.
This is called increased intracranial pressure.
If the pressure gets high enough, the brain 's blood vessels get crushed, and blood can not get to the brain.
If a person 's brain does not get enough blood and oxygen, they will become unconscious and their brain cells will die.
Eventually, the person will die.
Without treatment, 6 out of every 10 people with hydrocephalus will die.
The rest will have physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and\/or other brain problems.
Some problems can cause CSF to leak out through a hole or tear in the dura mater (the layer of the meninges that is next to the skull and the bones of the spinal cord).
CSF leaks are usually a complication of a lumbar puncture or certain kinds of surgery on the head, neck, or brain.
However, an injury to the head or spine can also cause a CSF leak.
Sometimes, doctors can not find a cause for a CSF leak.
Most people with CSF leaks get better on their own, after the hole in the dura mater heals.
However, some CSF leaks can cause serious complications:
The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) is a private, non-profit foundation, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Institute is dedicated to increasing and disseminating mathematical knowledge.
It gives out various awards and sponsorships to promising mathematicians.
Boston businessman Landon T. Clay and his wife, Lavinia D. Clay started it in 1998.
Harvard University mathematician Arthur Jaffe was the first president of CMI.
While the institute is best known for its Millennium Prize Problems, it carries out a wide range of activities, including a postdoctoral program (ten Clay Research Fellows are supported each year) and an annual summer school, the proceedings of which are published jointly with the American Mathematical Society.
The Council of Constance was a council in the 15th century.
It was held between 1414 and 1418.
It took place in Constance (today known as Konstanz) in Switzerland.
The result of this ecumenical council by the Roman Catholic Church was a new Pope.
His name was Pope Martin V.
A centimetre (the American spelling is centimeter, symbol cm) is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI) measurement system.
It is equal to one hundredth of a metre.
Centi - is placed in front to say ' a hundredth '.
The centimetre is the base unit of length in the old centimetre-gram-second (CGS) system of units.
The centimetre is usually used to measure things that are too big for millimetres but too small for metres.
A centimetre is close to the length of a fingernail.
1 cubic centimetre is equal to 1 millilitre, under the SI system of units.
The centimetre has Unicode symbols so it can be written in Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters.
They are placed into one character, and it is mostly used with East Asian fonts.
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones (September 21, 1912 February 22, 2002) was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director.
He was known for his works in Looney Tunes and in Tom & Jerry.
He directed many of the Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons.
He won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short.
Jones produced 34 Tom and Jerry shorts from 1963 to 1967.
Jones was born on September 21, 1912 in Spokane, Washington.
He was raised in Los Angeles, California.
Jones studied at the Chouinard Art Institute.
He was married to Dorothy Webster from 1935 until her death in 1978.
Then he was married to Marian J. Dern from 1981 until his death in 2002.
He has a daughter with Webster, Linda Jones Clough.
Jones died on February 22, 2002 in Corona del Mar, Newport Beach, California from heart failure, aged 89.
Costume is a set of clothes that someone is wearing in order to look in a way that is not the same as another or as before.
Some costumes are special to countries or regions.
They are worn because people are proud of their country.
Actors in a theater wear costumes because they are pretending to be a person in a play or ballet.
Costumes can be worn for carnivals or parties.
National or regional costume is worn to show that people come from a country or region.
Many years ago, national costume was worn every day by many groups of people.
Today most people do not wear costumes.
Usually people dress up in national costume for special celebrations or for national dancing.
Some well known examples of national costume are the kilt which is worn by people in Scotland and the kimono worn in Japan.
When actors perform in the theater they usually wear a costume.
These are the special clothes they wear in order to pretend they are a particular character in the story which they act out.
They might be pretending to be any kind of person: a beggar, king, businessman, ancient god, etc..
Some theatrical costumes stretch the truth about characters.
Examples are Harlequin and Pantaloon in the Commedia dell ` arte.
Costumes are worn at festivals such as Mardi Gras and Halloween.
For example during Halloween children wear scary masks and costumes.
A computer monitor is an electronic device that shows pictures for computers.
Monitors often look similar to televisions.
The main difference between a monitor and a television is that a monitor does not have a television tuner to change channels.
Monitors often have higher display resolution than televisions.
A high display resolution makes it easier to see smaller letters and fine graphics.
The centriole is a cytoplasmic structure in most eukaryote cells.
It is involved in cell division and in the formation of cilia and flagella.
Centrioles are not found in vascular plants and in most fungi.
Most centrioles are nine sets of microtubule triplets, arranged in a cylinder.
A pair of centrioles, arranged perpendicularly and surrounded by a mass of dense material makes up the centrosome.
The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is a military transport aircraft.
The aircraft was first introduced (made available) in 1957.
It is still used today by over 60 countries worldwide in active service.
There are over 40 models and types of the C-130.
Cocaine (also cocaine) is a drug that is made from coca leaves.
Cocaine is usually a white powder.
Most cocaine is used as an illegal drug.
Because it is a stimulant, cocaine gives people energy.
It also makes people feel very happy when it is taken.
When used this way, cocaine is very addictive.
However, cocaine can also be used as a local anesthetic if it is applied topically (onto the skin or gums).
Cocaine is taken from the leaves of the coca plant.
Coca plants are mostly grown in South America, in countries like Brazil or Argentina.
When Spanish conquistadors (explorers) discovered coca plants, they sent them back to Europe.
People started using cocaine as a medicine, as well as in drinks and food.
This was because they did not know how damaging and addictive the drug could be when used.
In America, cocaine was used during surgery, or to treat toothaches.
It was also put into drinks.
When Coca-Cola was first made in 1885, it got the first part of its name from the "handful of coca leaves" added to the drink for energy.
(The caffeine in the drink came from the kola nut, so the name "Coca Cola" was chosen.)
Cocaine was taken out of Coca Cola completely by the 1920s because of pressure from groups in the United States.
When cocaine is applied topically (onto the skin or gums), it causes numbness.
When cocaine is chewed or eaten, inhaled into the nose ("snorted"), or injected into the veins, it causes people to feel euphoric (very happy), alert, very confident, and full of energy.
This feeling is called being "high."
Some people who take cocaine also have unpleasant feelings.
They may feel worried, anxious, or even paranoid.
They may also have physical symptoms, like shaking, a high heart rate, and high body temperature.
Cocaine can not be smoked in its normal form.
It must react with another chemical to form crack cocaine, which can be smoked.
This is because burning normal cocaine destroys it, so the user does not get the effect they want.
In most countries, it is illegal to make, sell, or use cocaine (unless it is being used for approved medical reasons).
As an illegal drug, cocaine can be used in its powder form, or it can be made into crack cocaine.
Usually, crack is made by adding baking soda and water to cocaine and then heating the mixture.
Crack is usually less expensive than the normal form of cocaine.
Crack is usually smoked.
It gives users a high that is very strong, but does not last as long as the high from regular cocaine.
Both forms of cocaine are addictive, although crack cocaine is thought to be more addictive as it is usually smoked.
If people use cocaine, they may take too much and get sick or even die.
This is called an "overdose".
When people take cocaine, they get intoxicated as well.
When a person is intoxicated, they may do dangerous things, such as having unsafe sex with a person they do not know, or getting into a violent fight with a person.
If a person uses cocaine for a long time, they can start to get strange feelings, like there are bugs crawling under their skin, or they can get paranoia (a feeling that there are people that want to hurt them).
Cocaine is a very addictive drug.
It can lead to psychological and\/or physical dependence.
When a person is addicted to a drug, they might do bad or criminal acts in order to get money for more drugs, such as crimes (for example theft, robbery, fraud, or prostitution).
If the person tries to stop using cocaine, they will go through cocaine withdrawal.
Another danger from using cocaine is the risk of infection when using unsafe ways of taking cocaine (like using dirty needles when injecting cocaine).
A person can get infectious diseases like HIV or Hepatitis C when they use cocaine in these ways.
Cocaine is also occasionally used as a legal medicine in Australia and some parts of Europe, if a person has a prescription from a doctor.
Doctors sometimes prescribe cocaine for people who want to lose weight, because cocaine decreases the appetite.
Dentists in countries like Australia sometimes use forms of cocaine in dental operations, as an anesthetic.
Anaesthetics are medicines or drugs which stop a person from feeling pain.
Doctors, surgeons, and dentists use anaesthetics when they are doing operations, so that the patient will not feel pain.
Dentists put the cocaine on the patient 's mouth so that the patient will not feel pain in their mouth during the operation.
In mathematics, the Cartesian coordinate system is a coordinate system used to place points on a plane using two numbers, usually called the x-coordinate and the y-coordinate.
To place the coordinates, two perpendicular lines, called axes (Singular: axis), are drawn.
Cartesian coordinates can be used in 3D, by adding a third number, the z-coordinate.
Each added coordinate represents a dimension.
Using the Cartesian coordinate system, simple shapes, like parabolas, can be made using algebraic equations.
The results of the equations can be plotted (drawn) on the Cartesian grid, and a shape appears.
For example, a circle can be made with the equation x + y = 4 (see Figure 2).
The name cartesian comes from the French mathematician and philosopher Ren Descartes (Latin: Cartesius), who worked to merge algebra and Euclidean geometry.
This work was important in creating calculus and cartography.
The idea of this system was developed in 1637 in two works by Descartes.
In part two of his Discourse on Method, Descartes explains plotting the position of a point or object on a surface, using two perpendicular axes as measuring guides.
In La G om trie, he further explores these ideas.
The Continuation War was a war between Finland and the Soviet Union.
It was fought between June 25, 1941 and September 19, 1944.
The ceasefire started on September 4 at 7.00 am in the Finnish side.
The Soviet Union 's ceasefire started on September 5.
The first peace treaty was signed on September 19 and the final one on February 10, 1947 in Paris.
The Chinese remainder theorem is a theorem from number theory.
It is about congruence.
The original form was: How many soldiers are there in Han Xin 's army?
If you let them parade in rows of 3 soldiers, two soldiers will be left.
If you let them parade in rows of 5, 3 will be left, and in rows of 7, 2 will be left.
The theorem says that many times there will be a solution to this question.
The Chinese remainder theorem is used in cryptography, for example for the RSA algorithm.
Coprophagia is the eating of faeces.
Many animals eat faeces, either their own or that of other animal groups.
It is particularly common in dogs and puppies of about six months old, but little is known why; lack of stimulus and variety in the lifestyle or diet have been cited as potential reasons.
Adding pineapple to their food is a well recognized solution for many dogs.
Humans do it only on rare occasions and it is looked down upon in society.
Eating one 's feces can also spread disease.
In number theory a Carmichael number is a composite positive integer, which satisfies the congruence for all integers which are relatively prime to.
Being relatively prime means that they do not have common divisors, other than 1.
Such numbers are named after Robert Carmichael.
All prime numbers satisfy for all integers which are relatively prime to.
This has been proven by the famous mathematician Pierre de Fermat.
In most cases if a number is composite, it does not satisfy this congruence equation.
So, there exist not so many Carmichael numbers.
We can say that Carmichael numbers are composite numbers that behave a little bit like they would be a prime number.
The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) is a United States federal law.
It controls what drugs American people and companies can have, make, import, and use.
It also controls what drugs doctors can prescribe.
"Controlled substances" include illegal drugs, chemicals that are used to make illegal drugs, and some medications.
If a government has rules or laws about a certain drug, then that drug is called a controlled substance.
The United States Congress passed the law as part of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970.
President Richard Nixon signed the bill into law on October 27, 1970.
The CSA does not include alcohol or tobacco as "controlled substances."
The CSA divides controlled substances up into five groups, called Schedules.
Drugs are put into these categories based mostly on:
Since the CSA was created in 1970, many new illegal drugs and medications have been developed.
Because of this, the Act has been amended many times to add on new types of drugs.
There are five different Schedules of controlled substances, numbered I-V (one through five in Roman numerals).
The CSA describes the different Schedules based on three things:
This table gives a summary of the differences between the different Schedules.
The CSA says that no doctor in the United States can write a prescription for a Schedule I drug.
Some states have passed laws allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana for diseases like cancer and AIDS.
Even though those prescriptions are legal in those states, they are still illegal under the CSA.
Schedule II drugs are the most-controlled type of drugs that a doctor can write a prescription for.
Some drugs that are usually illegal are on Schedule II.
They are on Schedule II instead of Schedule I because sometimes, they can be used for medical reasons.
For example, Schedule II includes cocaine, because it can stop bleeding and kill pain in the mouth, throat, and nose.
Schedule II also includes methamphetamine, because it is sometimes used to treat Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and severe obesity.
The CSA puts limits on prescriptions for Schedule II drugs.
For example, prescriptions for these drugs can not be refilled.
The patient can not get more of the medication at the pharmacy without getting a new prescription.
Also, the doctor must write the prescription - they can not call or fax the prescription to the pharmacy.
The pharmacy needs an original copy of the prescription.
Schedule III drugs are less controlled than Schedule II drugs.
Doctors can send these prescriptions to a pharmacy by fax or phone.
These prescriptions can be refilled five times in six months without the patient needing a new prescription.
Schedule IV drugs have the same rules for prescriptions and refills that Schedule III drugs do.
Examples of Schedule IV drugs include:
Schedule V drugs are the least strictly controlled of all the controlled substances.
A doctor can call or fax the prescription to the pharmacy.
There is no limit on the number of times a prescription can be refilled.
The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is in charge of enforcing the CSA.
The DEA is part of the United States Department of Justice.
Usually, only two government agencies can add or remove drugs from a Schedule.
These agencies are the (DEA) and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
However, sometimes Congress passes special laws to add a drug to the CSA.
Anyone can ask the DEA to add a drug, remove a drug, or change a drug to a different Schedule in the CSA.
Even a regular person can petition the DEA for a change.
After it gets a petition, the DEA starts an investigation of the drug.
During these investigations, the DEA gathers a lot of information, talks to different government agencies, gets the FDA 's opinion, and does research.
Because all of this takes time, a federal law allows the Attorney General of the United States to put a drug on Schedule I for a year.
The law only allows this when there is "an imminent hazard" (an immediate threat) "to the public safety."
For example, in 2011, the Attorney General used this law to put synthetic cannabinoids on Schedule I.
Captain America is a fictional superhero from the Marvel Comics.
He made his first appearance in the comic book Captain America Comics # 1 in 1940.
He wears a suit that is very similar to the American flag and has an indestructible shield with a bullseye and a star on the front of it.
He is also known as his alter ego Steve Rogers.
Captain America had a sidekick (friend), Bucky who later became the Winter Soldier.
He is a very good fighter, both hand-to-hand and using his shield to take care of his enemies easily.
Captain America has a enemy called Red skull.
He appeared in Marvel 's The Avengers movie, and Captain America: The First Avenger, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, played by Chris Evans.
power and abilities captain America has superhuman strength, superhuman stamina, nearly immortally and can live without eating, sleeping and resting.
Chiropractic is a form of alternative medicine.
A chiropractor is a doctor who went to school to learn chiropractic.
A chiropractor may diagnose and treat many conditions relating to muscles, joints, and nerves of the body.
He may give what is called an "adjustment" to the body.
An adjustment is a fast short push to an area of the patient 's spine or other joints to help their condition.
A chiropractor does not use drugs to treat patients.
They will look into using natural treatments such as nutrition, exercise, physical therapy, adjustments, and massage in order to help their patients.
Chiropractic has changed since it was created over 100 years ago as new facts and research are learned by chiropractors.
Today, chiropractors have many different ways to treat their patients.
They all have one thing in common.
This is to use drug free treatments.
Chiropractic is most famous for helping people with spine pain, but chiropractors can also help other problems.
Cluny is a city in eastern France.
It lies in the region of Burgundy.
The city grew around the Abbey of Cluny in the 10th century.
The town of M con is about 30 km to the southeast.
Lyon is about 60 km to the south.
Today, about 4,400 people live in the city.
The Cluniac Reforms started here.
Chester Burton "Chet" Atkins (June 20, 1924 June 30, 2001) was an American guitarist and record producer.
He helped create a smooth country music style known as the "Nashville Sound."
His guitar picking style was inspired by Merle Travis, Django Reinhardt and Les Paul and brought him admirers both in the United States and internationally as well as earning him the nickname "Mister Guitar."
Chet Atkins produced records for Perry Como, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves, Jerry Reed and Waylon Jennings along with many others.
Chet Atkins received many honors including 14 Grammy Awards as well as the "Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award."
He won nine Country Music Association "Instrumentalist of the Year" awards, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
He died from cancer on June 30, 2001, at his home in Nashville, Tennessee.
In 2002, Atkins was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The following year, Atkins was ranked # 28 in CMT 's "40 Greatest Men of Country Music."
The Christmas tree is a tradition associated with the celebration of Christmas.
It is normally an evergreen coniferous tree that is cut in the wild and brought into the home.
It is decorated with Christmas lights and colourful ornaments during the days around Christmas.
An angel or a star is often placed at the top of the tree.
Fir trees outside the home may be decorated in a similar fashion.
The custom of the Christmas tree has its origin among the Protestant peoples of Northern Europe.
It is not however a religious symbol.
Clara Petacci (28 February 1912 28 April 1945) was the last mistress of Benito Mussolini, who was 28 years older.
She was born in Rome.
Mussolini tried to escape to Switzerland, with some of his helpers.
After being captured Petacci was given an opportunity to flee, which she declined.
She was shot, with the other prisoners.
It is possible that Petacci was raped before her death.
The bodies were then hung head down in Milan.
Chianti is a kind of red wine.
It is producted in Tuscany in the famous area of "Chianti" inside the provinces of Arezzo, Florence, Pisa, Pistoia, Prato and Sienna.
The Political Chilean Constitution is the main source about the actual structure of the government and laws in Chile.
It was approved in a plebiscite in 1980 and effective in 1981.
The main editor of the constitutional text was Jaime Guzm n. The original text contains 120 articles, with 29 transitional provisions.
Now the actual text contains 129 articles and 21 transitory provisions.
Crystallography is the study of the arrangement of atoms in solids.
Before the development of X-ray crystallography, the study of crystals was based on their geometry.
This involves measuring the angles of crystal faces, and establishing the symmetry of the crystal in question.
Crystal structure is now found by analysis of the diffraction patterns of a sample targeted by a beam of some type.
The technique was jointly invented by Sir William Bragg (1862 1942) and his son Sir Lawrence Bragg (1890 1971), who jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1915.
Lawrence Bragg was the youngest to become a Nobel Laureate.
He was the Director of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, when the discovery of the structure of DNA was made by James D. Watson and Francis Crick in February 1953.
X-rays are most commonly used, but for some purposes electrons or neutrons are used.
Because of the different forms of interaction, the three types of radiation are suitable for different crystallographic studies.
Some materials studied using crystallography, proteins for example, do not occur naturally as crystals.
Such molecules are placed in solution and allowed to crystallize over days, weeks, or months.
Once a crystal is obtained, data can be collected using a beam of radiation.
Although X-ray equipment is commonplace, crystallography often uses special synchrotron light sources to make X-rays.
They produce purer and more complete patterns.
Synchrotron sources also have a much higher intensity of X-ray beams, so data collection takes a fraction of the time normally necessary at weaker sources.
Producing an image from a diffraction pattern requires sophisticated mathematics.
The mathematical methods for the analysis of diffraction data only apply to patterns, which in turn result only when waves diffract from orderly arrays.
Hence crystallography applies for the most part only to crystals, or to molecules which can be got to crystallize.
In spite of this, a certain amount of molecular information can be deduced from the patterns that are generated by fibers and powders.
For example, the double-helical structure of DNA was deduced from an X-ray diffraction pattern that had been got from a fibrous sample.
Electron crystallography is a method to determine the arrangement of atoms in solids using a transmission electron microscope (TEM).
The method was invented by Aaron Klug, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this, and his studies on virus structures and transfer RNA, in 1982.
The first electron crystallographic protein structure to achieve atomic resolution was bacteriorhodopsin in 1990.
Crystallography is a tool that is often employed in materials science.
The understanding of crystal structures is needed to understand crystallographic defects.
A number of other physical properties are linked to crystallography.
For example, the minerals in clay form small, flat, platelike structures.
Clay can be easily deformed because the platelike particles can slip along each other in the plane of the plates, yet remain strongly connected in the direction perpendicular to the plates.
Such mechanisms can be studied by crystallographic texture measurements.
Crystallography includes the symmetry patterns which can be formed by atoms in a crystal.
X-ray crystallography was the primary method for determining the 3-D molecular structure of biological macromolecules.
The most important of these are enzymes, and nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA.
In fact, the double helix structure of DNA was worked out from crystallographic data.
The first crystal structure of a macromolecule was solved in 1958 The Protein Data Bank (PDB) is a freely accessible repository for the structures of proteins and other biological macromolecules.
Computer programs can be used to help visualize biological molecular structures.
X-ray crystallography has now given way to electron crystallography for macromolecules which do not form large 3-D crystals.
Field Marshal Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck, GCB, GCIE, CSI, DSO, OBE (21 June 1884 23 March 1981), nicknamed "The Auk", was a British army commander during World War II.
He was a career soldier who spent much of his military career in India, where he developed a love of the country and a lasting affinity for the soldiers he commanded.
In July 1941 he was appointed Commander in Chief of the Middle East theater; after initial successes the war in North Africa turned against the British, and he was relieved of the post in 1942 during the crucial Alamein campaign.
He served thereafter as C-in-C India until his resignation in 1947.
He retired to Marrakesh, where he died at age 96.
Cernunnos (also spelt as Cernenus and Cern) is a Pagan Celtic God from the ancient Celtic lands of western Europe.
Cernunnos is linked with male animals with horns, especially stags (a type of animal).
Because of this, he is linked with fertility.
Cernunnos is also seen as God of the Underworld.
Everything that we know about Cernunnos comes from two pictures; one from France, and one from Germany.
For the use of "consumer" in biology, see Heterotroph.
Consumer means someone who consumes, or uses, something.
What they buy so they can consume it is called merchandise or goods and services.
These consumer goods are produced in the economy and selling them is called "retail".
An example of a consumer is someone buying a cake from a bakery.
A cactus is a kind of plant.
They are xerophytes, specializing in hot, dry climates.
Cacti are members of the plant family Cactaceae, in the order Caryophyllales.
Cacti are native to the Americas, ranging from Patagonia in the south to parts of western Canada in the north except for Rhipsalis baccifera, which also grows in Africa and Sri Lanka.
Many people like to grow cactus in pots or gardens.
Now cacti have spread to many other parts of the world.
They are part of an important food chain.
Many cacti live in dry places, such as deserts.
Most cacti have and sharp thorns (stickers) and thick skin.
There are many shapes and sizes of cacti.
Some are short and round; others are tall and thin.
Many cactus flowers are big and beautiful.
Some cactus flowers bloom at night and are pollinated by moths and bats.
Some cactus fruits are brightly colored and good to eat.
Goats, birds, ants, mice, bats and people eat cactus fruits.
An adaptation is anything that helps a living thing survive and make more of its own kind.
Cacti have many adaptations for living in places that are sometimes dry for a long time.
At other times these places can get lots of rain.
Cacti can have many small, thin roots near the top of the soil.
These roots take in water quickly after a rain.
The same cactus may have one long, thick root called a taproot.
The taproot grows deep in the soil.
It can reach water when the soil on top is dry.
Cacti store water in thick stems.
The stems are covered with tough skin, and the skin is covered with wax.
The thick waxy skin slows down loss of water.
The leaves of cacti are sharp spines (thorns, stickers).
Many animals want the water inside the cactus, but the sharp spines and thick skin protect the cactus.
Cacti are commonly grown as houseplants.
They are pretty and easy to grow.
Some cacti are grown in gardens, especially in dry areas.
Cactus can be used as a living fence.
The wood of dead cactus is sometimes used for building.
People eat the fruit of some kinds of cactus, such as dragonfruit and prickly pear.
Ciouvhiul insects also eat prickly pears.
These insects produce a red coloring used in food and lipstick.
The ancient Aztecs of South America held cactus to be very important.
Cactus can be found in many of their sculptures and drawings.
The national coat of arms of Mexico shows an eagle, a snake, and cactus.
Christopher Columbus brought the first cactus to Europe.
Scientists and gardeners became very interested in cactus.
Prickly pears were taken to Australia in the 19th century for use as a natural fence and for use in the cochineal industry.
The cactus spread out of control.
Now it has made 40,000 km of land useless for farming.
From the start of the 20th century interest in cactus has grown.
Every year, scientists discover new kinds of cactus.
A bad effect of this bigger interest has been the digging up of many cacti from the wild, making some kinds endangered.
A cactus does not have leaves because it lives in dry places.
Leaves transpire, and this can waste water.
So, the cactus saves water by having no leaves.
The green parts of the cactus are actually its stems.
Because the stems are green, they do the photosynthesis for the cactus.
They also grow prickly needles to protect the cactus from animals that want to eat it.
Family contains more than 100 genera.
Some of them:
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was started by Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression.
The CCC gave young men jobs such as fighting forest fires, digging ditches, and planting trees.
The CCC paid these men about thirty dollars a month.
At first, it was planned to get men out of the cities, but more men came from small towns and rural areas.
The Caribbean Sea is a tropical sea in the center of the Caribbean area.
The body of water is part of the Atlantic Ocean.
The sea is southeast of the Gulf of Mexico.
The Caribbean Sea has many islands, which are popular among North American tourists because of their tropical climate.
The Caribbean Sea is famous around the world as a tourist destination.
Christopher Columbus came across a group of islands in the Caribbean region.
When he did so, he thought he had reached another part of the world.
Because of this, he named the islands the West Indies.
However, later it was realized that he found an entire region.
It still had its natural resources.
The name Caribbean was later given to it by the Amerindian tribe, the Caribs.
That is how it got its name: the Caribbean Sea.
This entire region covers an area of 1,063,000 sq. miles.
It covers from Mexico to the boundaries of South America.
This sea is just as deep as it is wide.
Its deepest point is believed to be even lower than 25,220 ft, 7,686 m. That makes this point one of the lowest points on the surface of the earth, and the Caribbean Sea one of the deepest seas in the world.
Jeron Criswell King (August 18, 1907 October 4, 1982), born Jeron Criswell Konig, and known by his stage-name The Amazing Criswell, was an American psychic known for making wrong predictions.
In person, he went by Charles Criswell King, and was sometimes credited as Jeron King Criswell.
He was born in Princeton, Indiana.
Criswell was a friend of director Ed Wood and narrated in his famous movie Plan 9 from Outer Space.
Criswell died of cardiac arrest in Burbank, California, aged 75.
A corona is an aura of plasma which surrounds the sun and other stars.
The Sun 's corona extends millions of kilometres into space and is most easily seen during a total solar eclipse.
It is also observable with a device called a coronagraph.
The word "corona" is a Latin word meaning "crown", from the Ancient Greek (kor n, garland, wreath).
The Sun 's corona is much hotter (by a factor from 150 to 450) than the visible surface of the Sun.
The photosphere 's average temperature is 5800 kelvin compared to the corona 's one to three million kelvin.
The corona is 10 12 times as dense as the photosphere, and so produces about one-millionth as much visible light.
The corona is separated from the photosphere by the relatively shallow chromosphere.
The exact mechanism by which the corona is heated is still the subject of some debate.
The outer edges of the Sun 's corona are constantly being bloen away by the open magnetic flux generating the solar wind.
The common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), or robust chimpanzee, is a species of great ape.
The common chimpanzee is often called the chimpanzee (or "chimp"), though this can be used to refer to both species in the genus Pan: the common chimpanzee and the closely related bonobo.
Evidence from fossils and DNA sequencing show both species of chimpanzees are the closest living relatives to modern humans.
The common chimpanzee is more robust than the bonobo, weighing between 40 a and measuring approximately 1.3 t from head to tail.
Its gestation period is eight months.
The infant is weaned at about three years old, but usually maintains a close relationship with its mother for several more years; it reaches puberty at the age of eight to 10, and its lifespan in captivity is about 50 years.
The common chimpanzee lives in groups which range from 15 to 150 members, although individuals travel and forage in much smaller groups during the day.
The species lives in a male-dominated, strict hierarchy, so disputes can generally be settled without the need for violence.
Nearly all chimpanzee populations have been recorded using tools, modifying sticks, rocks, grass, and leaves and use them for acquiring honey, termites, ants, nuts, and water.
The species has also been found creating sharpened sticks to spear Senegal bushbabies out of small holes in trees.
The common chimpanzee is listed on the IUCN Red List as an endangered species.
Between 170,000 and 300,000 individuals are estimated across its range in the forests and savannahs of West and Central Africa.
The biggest threats to the common chimpanzee are habitat destruction, poaching and disease.
Jane Goodall discovered that chimps hunt and eat smaller primates such as Colobus monkeys.
Goodall watched a hunting group isolate a colobus high in a tree, block all possible exits, then one chimpanzee climbed up and captured and killed the colobus.
The others then each took parts of the carcass, sharing with other members of the troop in response to begging behaviors.
The chimps at Gombe kill and eat as much as one-third of the colobus population in the park each year.
This alone was a major scientific find which challenged previous conceptions of chimp diet and behavior.
"Goodall s Gombe data have also led researchers to take a closer look at the role that hunting plays in chimp feeding habits.
One recent Gombe study, for instance, concluded that the 45 members of one troop ate a ton of monkey meat per year.
During one hunting binge, chimps killed 71 colobus monkeys in 68 days; one chimp alone killed 42 monkeys over five years.
All told, chimps may kill and eat a third of the Gombe s colobus population each year.
Researchers have also found that lower-ranking males often trade the meat for mating privileges; such trades may help prevent inbreeding by keeping a single group of males from fathering the majority of a troop s children".
Also startling, and disturbing, was the tendency for aggression and violence within chimpanzee troops.
Goodall observed dominant females deliberately killing the young of other females in the troop in order to maintain their dominance, sometimes going as far as cannibalism.
She says of this revelation, "During the first ten years of the study I had believed (-RRB- that the Gombe chimpanzees were, for the most part, rather nicer than human beings.
(-RRB- Then suddenly we found that chimpanzees could be brutal that they, like us, had a darker side to their nature".
These findings revolutionized our knowledge of chimpanzee behavior.
They were further evidence of the social similarities between humans and chimpanzees, albeit in a much darker manner.
If they can, male chimpanzees try to kill the male members of neighbouring groups.
Males work together when they spot a chance to make a lightning raid on an isolated male from the other group.
They kill him.
In Gombe, Tanzania, a group in the 1970s was seen to kill seven of their neighbors one by one, until all were gone.
It can take years for this to happen but, when it does, the remaining females and the neighbouring territory are added to the now larger group.
Attacks like this are carefully planned, done only when success is likely, and carried out in silence.
Their behavior is quite different from any other behavior known in chimpanzees: "About every two weeks, males are drawn by some unknown signal to walk very quietly, single file, into a neighbouring territory to attack a vulnerable male... the overwhelming targets are other males".249
The advantage for the males that triumph is to breed more children.
Their tribe also holds a larger territory, and so has access to more food.
Several authors have drawn a connection between this behavior and the origins of human warfare.
Dance is when people move to a musical rhythm.
They may be alone, or in a group.
The dance may be an informal play, a part of a ritual, or a part of a professional performance.
There are many kinds of dances, and every human society has its own dances.
Dancing is not a sport, though it does have some athletic aspects.
Dance is an art.
Some people dance to express their feelings and emotions.
Other people dance to feel better.
Dance can be used to tell a story.
In some societies, dance goes with song as well as music.
People who want to learn to dance can go to dance schools.
It may take years of practice to become an experienced and flexible dancer.
To plan a dance is called choreography, done by a choreographer.
Often this goes with music, and fits into a certain style.
Dances may be planned in detail, or they may be whatever dancers feel like doing.
However, most dancing does follow some general style or pattern.
One style is the couple dance, where (usually) a man and a woman dance together.
Other dances need a whole group of people together to make it work.
People have always danced.
Every society has its own dances.
There are pictures, on pottery and stone, which show dances from several thousand years ago, in Egypt and Greece.
Chapter5
Sachs divides early dances into ` Imageless dances ' and ` Image dances '.
By ` imageless dances ' he meant dances which have no set form, but aim at getting the dancers into a state of ecstasy.
In this state the dancer (s) seem changed, in a trance, and are often thought of (by their society) as being ` possessed by spirits '.
These dances are done on certain occasions: marriage, war, famine, illness or death, and so on.
They are found in all early (` primitive ') societies.
p49; 62
The ` image dances ', according to Sachs, are to do with the world outside the dancer.
By imitating an animal or object, the dancer believes he can capture a power and make it useful.
To dance in imitation of the animal which is going to be hunted is to become one with them.
To imitate the act of sex is to achieve fertility.
This is the kind of thinking behind an image dance.
Sachs points out that societies of this kind do not really understand the connection between cause and effect.
They really believe the image dances work.
The dance type which is used in image dances is mime.
p49; 77
The two styles of dance may be joined together.
Fertility dances may involve both ecstatic states and mime.
The great dancer Nijinsky used some of these ideas in his choreography for the ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), a ballet about the sacrifice of a girl during a primitive celebration of Spring.
Coming to more recent times, the first dance school we know about was opened in 1661 in Paris.
Only men were accepted until 1681.
After 1681, women were accepted too.
Ballroom dances are forms of modern dance.
Ballroom dances such as the waltz are done by couples.
Until the 20th century, most ballroom dances were sequence dances.
The way people moved was planned in set formation.
These formations were usually lines or squares.
Everyone moved at the same time, and finished at the same time.
The music played for a set time, and then stopped.
After the invention of the waltz, around 1800, another style of dancing developed.
In the waltz, and later dances, people danced in couples, but they did so separately.
They did not dance in formation, but moved round the room as they pleased (but anti-clockwise).
Often, new dance styles arrive.
Some dance as individuals, separately, as they please.
Street dance is like that.
All these types of dance have music.
At the same time, round the world there are many traditional dances.
Some of them have been going for hundreds of years.
We call them folkloric dances.
The coming of popular music videos and DVDs led to a kind of dancer previously seen in some stage shows.
A backup dancer (or background dancer) is a performer who dances with or behind the lead performers in a live musical act or in a music video.
Drew Blyth Barrymore (born February 22, 1975) is an Emmy Award and Golden Globe-nominated American actress and film producer.
She was born in Culver City, Los Angeles.
She is the youngest member of the Barrymore family of American actors.
Lionel Barrymore was her great-uncle and John Barrymore was her grandfather.
She began acting when she was eleven months old.
Barrymore made her screen debut in Altered States in 1980.
Following her debut in Altered States, she starred in her breakout role in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
She quickly became one of Hollywood 's most recognized child actresses going on to establish herself in mainly comic roles.
She has worked with American actor Adam Sandler in three movies, The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates, and in Blended.
Barrymore is openly bisexual.
She has married three times.
In 1994 she married restaurateur Jeremy Thomas (b. 1963); they divorced in 1995.
She married actor Tom Green (b. 1971) in 2001; they divorced in 2002.
Since June 2, 2012, she has been married to art consultant Will Kopelman.
They have two daughters together, born in 2012 and 2014.
The couple said in 2016 that they have separated and are going to divorce.
David Llewelyn Wark "D. W." Griffith (January 22, 1875 July 23, 1948) was an American movie director.
He is best known as the director of the Ku Klux Klan 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation and the 1916 follow-up movie Intolerance.
The Birth of a Nation made early use of advanced camera and storytelling techniques.
It was a very popular movie.
It was also a very controversial movie.
The movie showed African Americans and White anti-racists in a bad way.
It also showed slavery and the Ku Klux Klan as good things.
The movie was praised by President Woodrow Wilson.
He said it was "history written in lightning".
The NAACP boycotted the movie.
Griffith responded to all the criticism with another movie, Intolerance.
This movie showed the dangers of prejudice.
The movie did not make as much money as The Birth of a Nation, but the critics liked it.
Many of Griffith 's later movies were critical successes.
They did not make a lot of money.
Even so, he is one of the most important figures of early movies.
Other famous movies by Griffith include Orphans of the Storm and Broken Blossoms.
In physical geography, a dune is a hill of sand built by eolian processes.
Sand dunes have different forms and sizes based on their interaction with the wind.
A "dune field" is an area covered by many sand dunes.
Sand dunes are found in desert regions.
David Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American movie director.
His movies include Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive.
He was also responsible for a television series called Twin Peaks, his overall most famous work.
Eraserhead, his first movie, is still his most famous theatrical movie.
It was recently deemed socially important by the United States Library of Congress.
He has done much work with Jack Nance, who has appeared been in all but two of his movies.
He has said that all his movies will be done using digital video from now on.
He is also famous for his early short movies.
The Alphabet and The Grandmother are two of his best known.
The Alphabet is about fear of education.
The Grandmother is about a lonely boy who grows a grandmother like a plant from a seed.
Over his career, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director and a nomination for best screenplay.
Lynch has twice won France 's C sar Award for Best Foreign Film, as well as the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
He also won a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival.
David Cronenberg (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian director, producer, screenwriter and actor.
He was born in Toronto, Ontario.
Cronenberg 's work includes: Rabid, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Crash, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method.
Ralph Dale Earnhardt, Sr. (April 29, 1951 February 18, 2001) was an American NASCAR driver.
He is the father of race car driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr..
He started Dale Earnhardt, Inc., also called DEI.
Earnhardt died in a crash during the Daytona 500 in 2001.
The accident happened a few seconds before his own son came second in that race, and a DEI car driven by Michael Waltrip won the race.
He died because he was trying to hold everybody back so his son (Dale Earnhardt Jr.) could maybe win the race.
While he was trying to do that, someone bumped his car, he lost control and crashed into the wall.
After that they took him to the hospital and he died.
Dale Earnhardt respected his father, who quit school in sixth grade, His father worked hard and started driving for NASCAR, eventually entering the NASCAR Hall-of-Fame.
A derivative is something created from a Primary source, and can mean different things.
The Dravidian languages are a language family spoken by Dravidian peoples.
The languages are mainly spoken in South India, western Bangladesh, northern Sri Lanka and southern Pakistan.
There are about 26 languages in this family.
There are about 30 more Dravidian languages spoken, with far fewer speakers.
Brahui, with 2,200,000 speakers, is a Pakistani Dravidian language.
Dracula is a horror novel written by the Irish writer Bram Stoker.
Bram Stoker published the novel in England in 1897.
Sir Henry Irving was an actor and friend of Bram Stoker.
The character ` Dracula ' may have been based in part on Irving, and on Vlad III the Impaler.
The story in the novel happens in England and Transylvania in 1893.
The young solicitor (a type of lawyer) Jonathan Harker goes to the country Transylvania to sell a house to a nobleman named Dracula.
He realizes that Dracula is a vampire.
Dracula traps Harker in his castle and goes to England, then bites the young woman Lucy Westenra and turns her into a vampire.
Then Dracula bites Jonathan 's wife Mina.
Because of this the other characters in the book, including Abraham von Helsing and Jonathan Harker, try to stop Dracula.
David Hume (7 May 1711 - 25 August 1776) was a philosopher and historian from Scotland.
When he was still alive, people thought of him as a historian.
He wrote a series of large books called The History of England.
But today, people think of Hume as an important philosopher.
In his books on philosophy, Hume said that many of our beliefs do not come from reason.
Instead, they come from our instincts or feelings.
For example, reason does not tell us that one thing causes another.
Instead, we see one thing and then we see another, and we feel a link between the two.
Similarly, reason does not tell us that someone is a good person.
Instead, we see that the person is kind and friendly, and we feel a special moral feeling.
Because Hume thought that these beliefs do not come from reason, people call him a "skeptical" or "anti-rationalist" philosopher.
Hume is famous for his ` Induction Fallacy '.
This draws attention to a common mistake people make.
People see something, and make claims that what they see will always be as they see it.
For example, people see only white swans and claim that all swans are white.
This is ` fallacious ' or mistaken, because it is always possible that they then will see a black swan.
Hume was also skeptical about religion.
He was not a religious person and religious people did not like his opinions.
He did not believe in miracles.
He said that suicide was n't always wrong, but never said whether or not he believed in God.
In 1776, when he was dying, he was very nice to his friends and very calm about death.
Many people were amazed about this, because they thought Hume was going to hell.
Today, Hume 's books are very important to philosophers who are interested in religion.
Today 's philosophers sometimes use the term ` Hume 's fork ' to refer to Hume calling everything we can think about either a relation of ideas (things like mathematics, that must be true) or a matter of fact (like science, where we have to look at things to tell whether or not they are true).
Another philosopher, Immanuel Kant, read some of Hume 's books and changed his mind about some important things.
Kant said Hume had made him wake up from a sleeping dogmatism, the traditional metaphysics.
In this large book, Hume talks about the human mind and tries to figure out how it works.
He talks about knowledge, cause and effect, emotions, right and wrong, and many other things.
In this small book, Hume talks about many of the same things from the Treatise, like knowledge and cause and effect.
He tried to make this book easy to read.
This is another small book, and again, Hume tried to make it easy to read.
The book is about right and wrong.
In this book, Hume has three characters who argue with each other about God.
James Dalton Trumbo (December 9, 1905 September 10, 1976) was an American screenwriter and novelist.
Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten, he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee 's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry.
Trumbo won two Academy Awards while blacklisted; one (for Roman Holiday) was originally given to a front writer, and one (for The Brave One) was awarded to "Robert Rich", Trumbo 's pseudonym.
Trumbo died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California on September 10, 1976 at the age of 70.
On December 19, 2011, the Writers Guild of America announced that Trumbo was being given full credit for his work on the screenplay of the 1953 romantic comedy Roman Holiday, almost sixty years after the fact.
Actor Bryan Cranston plays Trumbo in the 2015 biopic Trumbo directed by Jay Roach.
Delaware is a state in the United States.
It is sometimes called the First State because it was the first colony to accept the new constitution in 1787.
Its capital is Dover and its biggest city is Wilmington.
The Dutch first settled Delaware.
The Swedish then took over in the mid-1600s.
A dictionary is a book which explains the meanings of words or, more precisely, lexemes.
The words are arranged in alphabetical order so that they can be found quickly.
The word dictionary comes from the Latin dictio (saying).
There are several types of dictionaries: dictionaries which explain words and how they are used, dictionaries which translate words from one language to another, dictionaries of biography which tell about famous people, technical dictionaries which explain the meanings of technical words or words connected to a particular subject (sometimes called a thesaurus).
Some of these come close to being an encyclopedia, but an encyclopedia gives a lot of extra information about things (knowledge) and does not explain the use of the language.
An encyclopedic dictionary gives less information about the topic than a real encyclopedia does, but more than a simple dictionary.
Dictionaries which explain what words mean will give a clear "definition" of the word (e.g. hippopotamus: a hoofed mammal with thick skin, large mouth and short legs that lives in rivers and lakes of Africa.)
A big dictionary will also give more information about the word.
It will explain how it is pronounced.
Usually the International Phonetic Alphabet is used for this.
It will explain how the word is used.
This is not a problem for a word like "hippopotamus", but a word like "put" has so many different meanings that a large dictionary may have a whole page or more to explain how it can be used.
It will also explain what language the word comes from (e.g. Greek "hippos" horse and "potamus" river).
A dictionary may also give the form of the word in different tenses, plural form etc.
There are also dictionaries which translate words into foreign languages.
Very often one volume (one book) will translate both ways; for example, half the book might be translating from English to Dutch and the other half from Dutch to English.
When using a dictionary to find out how to say something in another language one has to be careful to choose the right word.
A word like right has two basic meanings in English: 1) correct, and 2) the opposite of left.
Other languages are not like English: they will have different words for these different meanings.
A word like put has many meanings.
A good dictionary will have a large list of these meanings to help people find the word they want.
In many languages, for example, the word put will be different according to whether something is being put onto something (e.g. a table) or into something (e.g. a cupboard).
Dictionaries need to be updated frequently because of the way language changes.
New words are often brought into a language (e.g. lots of computer terms) or words change their meanings (e.g. gay or cool).
The most famous English Dictionary is the Oxford English Dictionary (or OED).
Words are always being added to the OED.
They are never taken out even if they are obsolete (not used any more).
The OED can be accessed online (with a subscription).
Wikimedia, the same group that runs Wikipedia, has an online dictionary that can be updated by anyone at any time.
It is called Wiktionary, and it exists in many languages just like Wikipedia.
Dungeons & Dragons is a paper-and-pencil roleplaying game.
Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created Dungeons and Dragons in the year 1974.
Many people today think that role-playing games (RPG 's) are only played on a computer, but that is not true.
From the early 1970s, role-playing games have been played by people sitting together at the same table, using their imaginations and the written rules of the game to play (as well as dice to generate random numbers when needed).
Players of this type of role-playing game play as imaginary characters that go on heroic adventures.
The characters can be many types: a strong warrior, a wise wizard, a skilled thief.
One person in the group acts as a moderator, or referee (called the "dungeon master," or DM, in Dungeons and Dragons), of the game.
This person is responsible for making sure there is a fair use of the rules and is often also in charge of designing fun, interesting adventures for the other players.
There are now many types of fantasy role-playing games, both traditional paper-and-pencil games and computer games.
Many genres of games are played (fantasy, science fiction, horror, war, and so on), and there are hundreds of companies that produce their own written rules systems and software products.
Several versions of Dungeons and Dragons have been released.
The first version was just called "Dungeons & Dragons."
Several rule books were available, depending on the levels of the characters.
The first books dealt with characters from levels 1-3.
As characters got stronger, players had to move to the more advanced rule books to manage their characters.
After Dungeons and Dragons came Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.
This was a new ruleset that was unrelated to the original rules.
A second edition of AD&D was released, which is still popular today.
After Wizards of the Coast bought the rights to Dungeons and Dragons, a more streamlined version of the game was released, called Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition.
This version had simpler rules.
Most die-rolls were done with a 20 sided die, instead of different types of multi-sided dice.
The 3rd edition rules were eventually revised, and version 3.5 was released.
The 4th edition rules were published in June 2008.
The 5th edition rules were published, after a two year testing period, in late 2014.
Before playing the game, each player make his or her character and writes the details on a "character sheet."
First, players make their character 's six statistics called "ability scores": Strength (How strong you are), Dexterity (How skilled and fast you are), Constitution (How tough you are), Intelligence (How smart you are), Wisdom (How well you use your smarts), and Charisma (How well you control and influence people).
Each version has different methods to make the stats.
Each player then selects a race (species) such as human or elf, as well as a class (job or occupation) such as Fighter or Wizard, and their alignment (Their moral and ethical views).
Players also invest in a number of skills, feats and powers to make their characters stronger and better.
Adding details not covered by the rules like history and personality are used often to develop the character.
While playing Dungeons and Dragons, the players detail the actions of their characters to the referree, such as hitting an enemy or hiding from the guards, or talking to another character.
The referree describes the results of the characters ' actions or answers the players.
Actions that are really easy will always work, like when opening an unlocked door or picking up an apple.
The results of hard actions are decided by rolling dice.
As the game is played, the characters grow and increase in power.
Characters may gain experience, skills, wealth.
The main way that characters gain experience is through defeating powerful enemies or doing an important or hard work.
Getting enough experience allows a character to get a level, getting more job abilities, skills, and powers.
Hit points (HP) measure a character 's health.
When a character is harmed, s\/he loses hit points.
When a character loses all of his or her hitpoints, s\/he dies.
To avoid being harmed, most characters can wear armor of different types.
You might also use "Saving Throws" against indirect harm, such as poison, or magical effects.
The story is a combined effort of everyone who plays.
It can either be a story someone has made up.
So can the setting (Where the adventure takes place).
There are also books that give all that information as well.
A drum is a musical instrument that is struck with the hands or with a drum stick (a stick for hitting a drum).
A collection of drums and cymbals is called a drum kit, or drum set.
Drums are used to keep a steady beat in a song.
They give music of many kinds a sense of feeling.
For example, to make a song to be slow or fast, the drums play slower or faster.
A drum is a percussion instrument, which means it makes a noise by being hit.
There are many types of percussion such as cymbals and cowbells; even a simple piece of wood can be considered percussion.
The drum kit is a group of drums & cymbals to make beats for music.
Drum kits are used in most types of popular music, including rock, jazz, country, blues, and many others.
The Dead Kennedys were a hardcore punk band from San Francisco.
The band was led by Jello Biafra.
Other original members were Klaus Fluoride, D.H. Peligro, and East Bay Ray.
The band played songs with strong political messages.
During the 1980s, they had many fans in the punk rock music scene.
The Dead Kennedys formed in June 1978.
In 1980, one of their songs called "California ber Alles" became popular in the punk music scene.
In 1980, they recorded and released a song called "Holiday in Cambodia".
That same year, they made their first album, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.
In the early 1980s, the band toured all over the United States, Europe, and Australia.
In July of 1987, the band broke up.
After they broke up, they were charged with the crime of obscenity.
A person saw the band 's album Frankenchrist and complained to the Attorney General for the State of California and to Los Angeles prosecutors.
The album included a picture that showed nine penises.
In August 1987, the criminal trial ended but the jury could not make a decision.
The album was banned from many record stores in the United States.
On May 18, 2007, Dead Kennedys reunion show.
On late 2007, Dead Kennedys upcoming fifth full-length album tilted Milking the Sacred Cow in stores 10.09.07 released 21 years.
DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid, is the molecule that contains the genetic code of organisms.
This includes animals, plants, protists, archaea and bacteria.
DNA is in each cell in the organism and tells cells what proteins to make.
Mostly, these proteins are enzymes.
DNA is inherited by children from their parents.
This is why children share traits with their parents, such as skin, hair and eye color.
The DNA in a person is a combination of the DNA from each of their parents.
Part of an organism 's DNA is "non-coding DNA" sequences.
They do not code for protein sequences.
Some noncoding DNA is transcribed into non-coding RNA molecules, such as transfer RNA, ribosomal RNA, and regulatory RNAs.
Other sequences are not transcribed at all, or give rise to RNA of unknown function.
The amount of non-coding DNA varies greatly among species.
For example, over 98 % of the human genome is non-coding DNA, while only about 2 % of a typical bacterial genome is non-coding DNA.
Viruses use either DNA or RNA to infect organisms.
The genome replication of most DNA viruses takes place in the cell 's nucleus, whereas RNA viruses usually replicate in the cytoplasm.
DNA has a double helix shape, which is like a ladder twisted into a spiral.
Each step of the ladder is a pair of nucleotides.
The ` rungs ' of the DNA ladder are each made of two bases, one base coming from each leg.
The bases connect in the middle: ` A ' only pairs with ` T ', and ` C ' only pairs with ` G '.
The bases are held together by hydrogen bonds.
Adenine (A) and thymine (T) can pair up because they make two hydrogen bonds, and cytosine (C) and guanine (G) pair up to make three hydrogen bonds.
Although the bases are always in fixed pairs, the pairs can come in any order (A-T or T-A; similarly, C-G or G-C).
This way, DNA can write ` codes ' out of the ` letters ' that are the bases.
These codes contain the message that tells the cell what to do.
On chromosomes, the DNA is bound up with proteins called histones to form chromatin.
This association takes part in epigenetics and gene regulation.
Genes are switched on and off during development and cell activity, and this regulation is the basis of most of the activity which takes place in cells.
When DNA is copied this is called DNA replication.
Briefly, the hydrogen bonds holding together paired bases are broken and the molecule is split in half: the legs of the ladder are separated.
This gives two single strands.
New strands are formed by matching the bases (A with T and G with C) to make the missing strands.
First, an enzyme called DNA helicase splits the DNA down the middle by breaking the hydrogen bonds.
Then after the DNA molecule is in two separate pieces, another molecule called DNA polymerase makes a new strand that matches each of the strands of the split DNA molecule.
Each copy of a DNA molecule is made of half of the original (starting) molecule and half of new bases.
When DNA is copied, mistakes are sometimes made these are called mutations.
There are three main types of mutations:
Mutations may also be classified by their effect on the structure and function of proteins, or their effect on fitness.
Mutations may be bad for the organism, or neutral, or of benefit.
Sometimes mutations are fatal for the organism the protein made by the new DNA does not work at all, and this causes the embryo to die.
On the other hand, evolution is moved forward by mutations, when the new version of the protein works better for the organism.
A section of DNA that contains instructions to make a protein is called a gene.
Each gene has the sequence for at least one polypeptide.
Proteins form structures, and also form enzymes.
The enzymes do most of the work in cells.
Proteins are made out of smaller polypeptides, which are formed of amino acids.
To make a protein to do a particular job, the correct amino acids have to be joined up in the correct order.
Proteins are made by tiny machines in the cell called ribosomes.
Ribosomes are in the main body of the cell, but DNA is only in the nucleus of the cell.
The codon is part of the DNA, but DNA never leaves the nucleus.
Because DNA can not leave the nucleus, the cell makes a copy of the DNA sequence in RNA.
This is smaller and can get through the holes pores in the membrane of the nucleus and out into the cell.
Genes encoded in DNA are transcribed into messenger RNA (mRNA) by proteins such as RNA polymerase.
Mature mRNA is then used as a template for protein synthesis by the ribosome.
Ribosomes read codons, ` words ' made of three base pairs that tell the ribosome which amino acid to add.
The ribosome scans along an mRNA, reading the code while it makes protein.
Another RNA called tRNA helps match the right amino acid to each codon.
DNA was first isolated (extracted from cells) by Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher in 1869, when he was working on bacteria from the pus in surgical bandages.
The molecule was found in the nucleus of the cells and so he called it nuclein.
In 1928, Frederick Griffith discovered that traits of the "smooth" form of Pneumococcus could be transferred to the "rough" form of the same bacteria by mixing killed "smooth" bacteria with the live "rough" form.
This system provided the first clear suggestion that DNA carries genetic information.
The Avery MacLeod McCarty experiment identified DNA as the transforming principle in 1943.
DNA 's role in heredity was confirmed in 1952, when Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase in the Hershey Chase experiment showed that DNA is the genetic material of the T2 bacteriophage.
In the 1950s, Erwin Chargaff found that the amount of thymine (T) present in a molecule of DNA was about equal to the amount of adenine (A) present.
He found that the same applies to guanine (G) and cytosine (C).
Chargaff 's rules summarises this finding.
In 1953, James D. Watson and Francis Crick suggested what is now accepted as the first correct double-helix model of DNA structure in the journal Nature.
Their double-helix, molecular model of DNA was then based on a single X-ray diffraction image "Photo 51", taken by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling in May 1952.
Experimental evidence supporting the Watson and Crick model was published in a series of five articles in the same issue of Nature.
Of these, Franklin and Gosling 's paper was the first publication of their own X-ray diffraction data and original analysis method that partly supported the Watson and Crick model; this issue also contained an article on DNA structure by Maurice Wilkins and two of his colleagues, whose analysis and in vivo B-DNA X-ray patterns also supported the presence in vivo of the double-helical DNA configurations as proposed by Crick and Watson for their double-helix molecular model of DNA in the previous two pages of Nature.
In 1962, after Franklin 's death, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Nobel Prizes were awarded only to living recipients at the time.
A debate continues about who should receive credit for the discovery.
In 1957, Crick explained the relationship between DNA, RNA, and proteins, in the central dogma of molecular biology.
How DNA was copied (the replication mechanism) came in 1958 through the Meselson Stahl experiment.
More work by Crick and coworkers showed that the genetic code was based on non-overlapping triplets of bases, called codons.
These findings represent the birth of molecular biology.
How Watson and Crick got Franklin 's results has been much debated.
Crick, Watson and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 for their work on DNA Rosalind Franklin had died in 1958.
The Kennedys have been a famous family in American politics and have had several members chosen to important positions in the U.S. Government.
The Kennedys are Irish Catholic Democrats and mostly live in Boston and Hyannisport, Massachusetts
Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (1888-1969) was the son of Irish immigrant who were in the Democrats.
He married Rose Fitzgerald (1890-1995), the daughter of the mayor of Boston.
He was a businessman and made lots and lots of money.
He was friends with Franklin D. Roosevelt and served as the U.S. ' man in Great Britain.
He wanted to create a family of powerful politicians, and succeeded.
Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (1915-1944) was the oldest of the Kennedy children.
His father had wanted him to go into politics, but before that happened, he was killed in a plane crash in World War II
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) served in the Navy in World War II and then went to politics.
He served in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate before being elected President in 1960.
He was shot and killed in 1963.
Rose Kennedy (1918-2005) had mental illness.
Part of her brain was cut off and she was placed in a mental hospital.
Kathleen Kennedy (1920-1948) married an English nobleman, was widowed and died in a plane crash.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver (1921-2009) married Sargent Shriver, the head of the Peace Corps and the U.S. ' man in France.
In 1968, she started the Special Olympics to honor her sister Rose.
Patricia Kennedy (1924-2006) married an actor.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) was the third Kennedy son.
He also went into politics, and served as Attorney General, the top lawyer in the nation, and as a U.S. Senator.
In 1968, he tried to be President, but was shot while campaigning in California.
Jean Kennedy Smith (born 1928) is the last living of Joseph Kennedy 's children.
She used to be the U.S. ' woman in Ireland.
Edward Moore Kennedy (1932-2009) was the youngest of the Kennedys.
He served for many years as a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts
A democracy (Greek, demokratia) means rule by the people.
The name is used for different forms of government, where the people can take part in the decisions that affect the way their community is run.
In modern times, there are different ways this can be done:
To become a stable democracy, a state usually undergoes a process of democratic consolidation.
After people held an election, the candidates that won are determined.
The way this is done can be simple: The candidate with the most votes gets elected.
Very often, the politicians being elected belong to a political party.
Instead of choosing a person, people vote for a party.
The party with the most votes then picks the candidates.
Usually, the people being elected need to meet certain conditions: They need to have a certain age or a government body needs to determine that they are suitably qualified to perform the job.
Not everyone can vote in an election.
The right to vote is only given to people who are citizens of the country, and who are adult.
In addition, certain groups of people may be excluded, for example prisoners.
For some elections, a country may make voting compulsory.
Someone who does not vote, and who does not give a good reason usually has to pay a fine.
There are two kinds of democracy: direct and indirect.
In direct democracies, everyone has the right to make laws together.
One modern example of direct democracy is a referendum, which is the name for the kind of way to pass a law where everyone in the community votes on it.
Direct democracies are not usually used to run countries, because it is hard to get millions of people to get together all the time to make laws and other decisions.
There is not enough time.
In an indirect, or representative democracy, people choose representatives to make laws for them.
These people can be mayors, councilmen, members of Parliament, or other government officials.
This is a much more common kind of democracy.
Large communities like cities and countries use this method, but it may not be needed for a small group.
When democracy is mixed with sharia law, it has been called an Islamocracy.
This kind of government was developed long ago by the ancient Greeks in the city of Athens.
They had everyone who was a citizen (slaves, women, foreigners, and children could not vote) get together in one area.
The Assembly would talk about what kinds of laws they wanted and voted on them.
The Council would suggest the laws.
All citizens were allowed in the Assembly.
The Council were picked by draws (lottery).
The participants in the Council would change every year and the number of people in the Council was at the most 500.
For some offices the Athenian citizens would pick a leader by writing the name of their favorite candidate on a piece of stone or wood.
The person with the most votes became the leader.
In the Middle Ages, there were many systems in which there were elections, although only a few people could join in at this time.
The Parliament of England began from the Magna Carta, a document which showed that the King 's power was limited, and protected certain rights of the people.
The first elected parliament was De Montfort 's Parliament in England in 1265.
However, only a few people could actually join in.
Parliament was chosen by only a few percent of the people (in 1780, less than 3 % of people joined in).
The ruler also had the power to call parliaments.
After a long time, the power of Parliament began to grow.
After the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the English Bill of Rights made Parliament more powerful.
Later, the ruler became a symbol instead of having real power.
A definition is an exact word or phrase of the meaning, nature, or limits of something.
A definition usually answers the question what.
Defining means giving a definition.
Other words with this meaning are description and explanation.
It describes what a word means and explains to the person when and where it can be used.
In mathematics, a definition is an exact way of saying what something is.
It might not be the easiest way to say what it is, but it is used because it is exact.
It can be used in a mathematical proof about the thing.
Disco is a style of music that was most popular from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s.
People usually dance to disco music at bars called disco clubs.
The word "disco" is also used to refer to the style of dancing that people do to disco music, or to the style of clothes that people wear to go disco dancing.
Disco music was an up-tempo form of music which included elements of soul, funk and Latin music.
It had a strong beat meant for dancing, a steady four-on-the-floor rhythm, and a big bass line, and orchestral instrumentation often included string sections.
Disco is dance music too.
Disco was at its most popular in the United States and Europe in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Disco was brought into the mainstream by the hit movie Saturday Night Fever, which was released in 1977.
This movie, which starred John Travolta, showed people doing disco dancing.
Many radio stations played disco in the late 1970s.
By the early 1980s, disco had started to fall out of popularity, and other genres, such as dance, Hi-NRG and post-disco grew in popularity.
Nevertheless, disco still exerts an influence on modern day dance music, and still has occasional moments of popularity.
Additionally, a different form of disco arose in Europe, known as Euro disco, which obtained some popularity.
Disco music blends R&B with funk, soul and dance music.
Disco music usually consists of a singer, electric guitars, synthesizer keyboards, electric bass guitar, and a drummer or electronic drum machine.
Disco music is often very simple music, with a strong beat and a strong "bass line".
Disco music often has many electronic effects.
Disco dancing is often sexually suggestive.
When people go disco dancing, they usually wear tight trousers, leather shoes or boots, and glittery clothes.
Women going disco dancing often wore tight clothes that revealed body parts such as their thighs or the upper part of their chest.
Men going disco dancing often opened up the buttons of their shirts to show the upper part of their chest.
Disco music is played at disco clubs.
In the late 1970s, there were famous disco clubs such as Studio 54 in New York City.
Disco clubs have a large dance floor and a large pa system.
A Disk Jockey (or "DJ") plays records of disco music through powerful amplifiers with a number of high wattage speakers.
Disco music was usually played very loud, with lots of low bass frequencies.
Disco clubs usually had colored lights that flashed with the music called scanners, and mirror balls with hundreds of small mirrors, that reflect light onto the dancers and all corners of the room.
Most people who went disco dancing at disco clubs drank alcohol such as champagne and rum.
Many people consumed illegal drugs such as cocaine or marijuana, so that they would become intoxicated.
People who went disco dancing often had sex with people that they would meet at the disco club.
For the area of dry land see desert.
A dessert is a type of food that is eaten after lunch or dinner.
It is usually a sweet food, like ice cream, cookies, and cakes.
In some countries, cheeses such as Brie cheese and fruit are served as dessert.
Some desserts are decorated, like birthday cakes.
Others are simple, like pudding.
Many desserts are baked (cooked in an oven).
Some desserts are served with whipped cream as a topping.
Baked desserts are made by putting the ingredients in a hot oven.
Baked desserts include cakes and muffins (a mixture of flour, eggs, sugar, oil, baking powder, and flavorings); sweet breads such as banana bread and raisin bread (a mixture of flour, sugar, oil, baking powder, and flavorings); cookies such as chocolate chip cookies (a mixture of flour, eggs, sugar, oil, and flavorings).
Puddings and custards (a mixture of milk, eggs, sugar, and flavorings) can be made in the oven, Fried desserts are made using a cooking process called deep frying.
To deep-fry food, a large pot filled with oil is heated, and then the food is placed into the pot.
Deep-fried desserts include doughnuts.
Frozen desserts are made by blending the ingredients in a freezer.
Frozen desserts include ice cream (a mixture of cream, milk, sugar, and flavorings), milk shakes (a mixture of ice cream, milk, and flavorings), and sherbet (also spelled "sorbet") (a mixture of water, sugar, and flavorings).
Some desserts are made without using the oven or the freezer.
Trifle is an English dessert made by soaking ladyfinger biscuits in sherry, covering them with whipped cream, and then letting it chill in the refrigerator.
Some types of instant pudding and instant mousse desserts can be made without cooking; a person simply mixes the instant pudding powder with milk and chills it in the refrigerator.
The Data Encryption Standard is a 56-bit cipher that was once recommended by the U.S. Government.
In 1998, it was defeated by a machine built by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
It has been replaced by the Advanced Encryption Standard in most uses.
A drink or beverage is a liquid that you can take into your body, by using your mouth.
Typical drinks for humans include water, tea, milk, coffee, juice, soft drinks and alcoholic drinks.
All drinks are mainly water.
All life needs water to live.
Plants take in water through their roots, which are found underground.
Most animals get water by drinking.
To drink means to take a drink into your body.
Dill (Anethum graveolens) is a short-lived annual herb that is often used as a spice, to make food taste better.
Fresh and dried dill leaves (sometimes called "dill weed" to distinguish it from dill seed) are used as herbs.
Like caraway, its fernlike leaves are aromatic, and are used to flavor many foods, such as gravlax (pickled salmon), borscht and other soups, cream cheese and pickles.
Dill is said to be best when used fresh, as it lose its flavor rapidly if dried; however, freeze-dried dill leaves preserve their flavor relatively well for a few months.
Dill seed is used as a spice, with a flavor similar to caraway.
Dill oil can be extracted from the leaves, stems and seeds of the plant.
Dianetics is a practice created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.
It is about the way people think.
Hubbard also started the religion of Scientology, which uses Dianetics.
The photo at the right shows a person learning about Dianetics by doing a stress test.
The idea of the stress test is to show people something in their own minds.
Most psychologists think that Dianetics is a pseudoscience.
That means that it is not really a science, and it only looks like one.
The Devonian is the period of the Paleozoic era from about 419 million years ago (mya) to about 359 mya.
It is named after Devonshire, England, where rocks from this period were first studied.
Sea levels were high, and there was a great variety of fish and other marine organisms.
The Devonian fish included the Agnatha (jawless fish), the Acanthodii (spiny fish), the Placoderms (armored fish), the Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish), and the early Osteichthyes (bony fish).
The Devonian strata are divided into lower, middle and upper subdivisions.
During the Devonian the evolution of fish into tetrapods occurred.
Various terrestrial arthropods also became established.
The first seed-bearing plants spread across dry land, forming huge forests.
Tectonic and volcanic activity was high.
A series of extinction events occurred towards the end of the Devonian, including a major event at the Frasnian-Famennian boundary in the Late Devonian, about 364 mya.
The supercontinent Pangaea was just starting to form.
Dioscoreales is a botanical name for an order of flowering plants.
Of necessity it contains the family Dioscoreaceae.
Dentistry is a specialty in medicine, which is practiced by a dentist.
Dentists find out what 's wrong, fix, and help prevent problems with teeth.
A dentist has other people that help him with their job.
Dental hygienists help people keep their teeth clean.
A dental assistant helps the dentist when they are treating a patient.
Dental surgeons will perform surgery to fix large or dangerous problems with people 's teeth.
There are also dentists called orthodontists, who can move people 's teeth using braces.
Dental surgeons and orthodontists are called specialists.
In geometry, the diameter of a circle is a line from one side directly to the opposite side through the center.
It can also be defined as the longest chord of a circle.
These can both describe the diameter in a sphere too.
The letter d or the symbol are often used as a symbol for the diameter.
The diameter 's length is often called the diameter itself.
Data compression is a set of steps for packing data into a smaller space, while allowing for the original data to be seen again.
Compression is a two-way process: a compression algorithm can be used to make a data package smaller, but it can also be run the other way, to decompress the package into its original form.
Data compression is useful in computing to save disk space, or to reduce the bandwidth used when sending data (e.g., over the internet).
Lossless compression packs data in such a way that the compressed package can be decompressed, and the data can be pulled out exactly the same as it went in.
This is very important for computer programs and archives, since even a very small change in a computer program will make it unusable.
This type of compression works by reducing how much waste space is in a piece of data.
For example, if you receive a data package which contains "AAAAABBBB", you could compress that into "5A4B", which has the same meaning but takes up less space.
This type of compression is called "run-length encoding", because you define how long the "run" of a character is.
In the above example, there are two runs: a run of 5 A 's, and another of 4 B 's.
The problem with run-length encoding is that it only works on long pieces of the same value of data.
If you receive a package with "ABBAABAAB" inside, that can be compressed into "1A2B2A1B2A1B"; but that 's longer than the original!
In this case, there 's another method that can be used: checking how often a particular value comes up in the whole data package.
This is often called frequency compression.
The most common kind of frequency compression is called Huffman coding, after the scientist who came up with the idea.
The basic plan is to give each distinct value in a piece of data a code: values that crop up all the time get shorter codes, and values that only show up once or twice get longer codes.
For some types of data, lossy compression can go a lot further; this is most often the case with media files, like music and images.
Lossy compression throws out some of the data so that there 's less to store.
Beyond a certain level of fine-grain detail, or past a particularly high tone, people do not notice if the information is missing.
As a result, it can simply be removed from the data.
Of course, this will not work for computer programs and other such data where every piece is important; throwing away large pieces of a computer program is generally unhealthy for the program.
The Dominican Republic (Spanish: Rep blica Dominicana) is a country on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola; the other country on the island is Haiti.
Its capital, and largest city, is Santo Domingo.
The national language is Spanish.
The country was occupied by the United States from 1916 to 1924.
The Dominican Republic is a presidential democratic republic.
The country has a tropical climate but modified by elevation and the trade winds (winds that come from the northeast, from the Atlantic Ocean).
The island of Hispaniola was discovered by Christopher Columbus on 5 December 1492, but the first time that he saw part of the present Dominican Republic was on 4 January 1493 when he saw a headland that he named Monte Cristi ("Mountain of Christ").
That mountain is called now El Morro and is near the city of Monte Cristi.
From Monte Cristi, Columbus went east along the north coast of the island and on 6 January, after visiting the Saman Bay, he went back to Spain.
In his second trip to America, he founded the first European city in the continent, La Isabela, near the present city of Puerto Plata.
Later, Bartholomew Columbus founded the city of Santo Domingo, the oldest permanent European city in the Americas.
From here, many Spaniards went to conquer other islands (Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico).
Because Cuba was closer to the continent, many people moved there from Hispaniola, and then to the continent.
Because of that, the population of the island grew very slowly.
By the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697, Spain gave the western third of the island to France and kept the eastern part, and so the island had two different colonies: the French Saint-Domingue and the Spanish Santo Domingo.
In 1795, France got the whole island but they could only control the eastern part because Haiti became independent very soon.
In 1809, the French government gave back the old colony of "Santo Domingo" to Spain.
On 1 December 1821, the Spanish lieutenant governor Jos N ez de C ceres declared the independence from Spain.
The new country had the name Estado Independiente del Hait Espa ol ("Independent State of Spanish Haiti").
But on 9 February 1822, the Haitian army occupied the country and stayed for 22 years.
Juan Pablo Duarte founded a secret society, La Trinitaria, to fight for the Dominican independence.
The Haitian occupation ended on 27 February 1844, when the inhabitants of the eastern part of the Hispaniola made a new country named Rep blica Dominicana ("Dominican Republic").
From 1861 to 1865, the country was again a Spanish colony.
On 16 August 1863 began the Restoration War when the Dominicans fought to be free again.
That war ended in 1865 when the Spanish left and the Dominican Republic was again an independent country.
The country was occupied by the United States from 1916 to 1924.
In 1930, Rafael Trujillo became the president of the country through a coup d' tat.
Trujillo was a cruel dictator, killing thousands of persons, among them many Haitians.
Trujillo was killed in 1961.
After the death of Trujillo, Juan Bosch was elected in 1962 and became, in 1963, the first elected president since 1930.
But was Bosch was in power for only seven months.
In 1965, there was a civil war between those that wanted Bosch back on power and those that were opposed to him.
Then the country was invaded again by the United States.
The Dominican Republic is a presidential democratic republic.
The government is divided in three branches: the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary.
The Executive branch is made up of the President, the Vice President and the Ministers who are called Secretaries of State.
The President is chief of state and head of government and is elected every 4 years.
He nominates the cabinet.
The current president is Danilo Medina S nchez.
The Legislative branch makes the laws and is made up of the Congress, which is in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.
The Congress is divided into two groups: the Senate, with 32 members (one for every province and one for the National District), and the Chamber of Deputies with 178 members.
The Judicial branch is made up of the courts of the country, including the Supreme Court of Justice.
The Dominican Republic is a constitutional democracy ruled by a president.
The president is elected every 4 years.
The current president is Danilo Medina S nchez, of the PLD.
There are several mountain chains in the Dominican Republic.
The four main chains, from North to South, are:
There are other smaller valleys in the mountains: Constanza, Jarabacoa, Bonao, Villa Altagracia.
The four most important rivers of the Dominican Republic are Yaque del Norte, Yuna, Yaque del Sur and Ozama.
There are many lakes; the largest is the Lake Enriquillo, in the Hoya de Enriquillo.
The country has a tropical climate but modified by elevation and the trade winds (winds that come from the northeast, from the Atlantic Ocean).
At sea level, the average temperature is 25 C, with small changes from one season to another.
In the highest mountains, the temperature in winter can be as low as 0 C.
There are two wet seasons: April-June and September-November.
The most dry period is from December to March.
Rainfall varies greatly; eastern regions, like the Saman Peninsula, get an average of over 2,000 mm in a year, but less than 500 mm fall in the southwest (Hoya de Enriquillo).
From June to November, hurricanes are frequent and can do much damage in the island.
The Dominican Republic has a total population, estimated for July 2009, of 9,650,054 inhabitants, for a density of 236.30 inhabitants per km.
About 64 % of Dominicans live in cities and towns and 87 % of people that are 15 years old or more can read and write.
The two largest cities are Santo Domingo (the capital city) with 1,817,754 inhabitants, and Santiago, in the Cibao Valley and with 908,250 inhabitants.
The Dominican Republic is divided into 31 provinces.
The national capital Santo Domingo de Guzm n is in the Distrito National that is like a province and elects one Senator.
The Dominican Republic has a mixed economy based mainly on agriculture, services (including tourism and finance), trade and money sent from the many Dominicans that live in other countries (United States, Europe).
Agricultural production (mainly sugarcane, with smaller amounts of coffee, cacao, and tobacco) was the main economic activity but now is in third place after tourism and manufacturing in zonas francas ("free zones" where the industries do not pay taxes and all the production is sent to other countries).
Mining is also important, mainly ferronickel (nickel with iron) and gold.
The Dominican Republic suffers from poverty, with 83.3 % of the population living below the poverty line in 2012.
The wealth distribution is uneven: the richest 10 % gets nearly 40 % of national income.
The culture of the Dominican Republic, like in other Caribbean countries, is a mix of Ta no, African and European (mainly Spanish) cultures.
There are not many Ta no traditions in the modern Dominican culture; many places keep their Ta no names: Dajab n, B nica, Haina, Yaque, Saman, etc..
Also many objects, plants and animals have a Ta no origin and their names have been included in other languages; for example: canoa (canoe, a small boat), hamaca (hammock, a simple bed), ma z (maize, corn), yuca (cassava, that comes from the Ta no word casabe, a kind of cassava bread eaten in the Caribbean), and batata (sweet potato).
That mix of different traditions created a culture that is known as Creole (in Spanish: Criolla), common to all countries in the Caribbean, Louisiana and some parts of South America and Central America.
In the Dominican Republic, only Spanish is spoken, however; there are 3 major languages that are also spoken such as Haitian Creole, Samana English, and the West African Yoruba language known as Lucumi spoken by few.
There is a local dialect or patois which is spoken by all Dominicans - see Dominican Spanish Creole.
The official religion is Roman Catholicism but there is freedom of religion.
Protestant groups are important, representing about 15 % of the total population.
Each year major festivities called fiestas patronales are held.
They are Catholic festivities in honor of the Patron saints of the towns and villages; it is a Spanish tradition to associate every town with a Catholic saint.
The festivities includes church services, street parades, fire works, dance contests and other activities.
Dominican Voodoo or Santeria is also practiced in large numbers as well as Dominican Palo, Dominican Kongo religion, and others.
African influences have the strongest influences in Dominican culture, especially in language, religion, food, and music.
DIN Deutsches Institut f r Normung e.V. (DIN German Institute for Standardization) is the German national organization for standardization.
It publishes on average 2,000 standards per year in almost all fields of technology and increasingly in non-technical fields (e.g. services).
The Dominican Republic (Spanish: Rep blica Dominicana) is a country in the Caribbean.
It occupies the eastern five-eighths of Hispaniola; Haiti occupies the western three-eighths of the island.
The land border between these two countries is 388 km long.
The country has a total area of 48,671 km; the part on the Hispaniola has an area of 48,215 km and the small Dominican islands have an area of 159 km.
The maximum length, east to west, is 390 km from Punta de Agua to Las Lajas, on the border with Haiti.
The maximum width, north to south, is 265 km from Cape Isabela to Cape Beata.
The limits of the country are Haiti to the west, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the Caribbean Sea to the south.
Puerto Rico is to the southeast separated by the Mona Channel, of about 130 km wide.
The capital, Santo Domingo, is located on the south coast.
The country has a tropical climate but modified by elevation and the trade winds (winds that come from the northeast, from the Atlantic Ocean), which blow from the Atlantic all year long.
The average yearly temperature is 25 C with small changes from one season to another; the average temperatures change from one region to another, from 21 C in the center of the Cordillera Central to as high as 28 C on the coastal plains.
Temperatures very few times get above 32 C; temperatures get below 0 C only in the highest mountains in winter.
The average temperature in Santo Domingo in January is 25 C and 30 C in July.
The rain season is from May to November.
The average yearly rainfall is 1,346 mm, with extremes of 2,500 mm or more in the northeastern mountains and 500 mm in the southwestern valleys.
The western valleys, along the Haitian border, remain relatively dry, with less than 760 mm of annual precipitation.
The northwestern and southeastern extremes of the country are also very dry.
From June to November (mainly from August to October), tropical storms and hurricanes are frequent and can do much damage in the country.
There are several smaller islands and cays that are part of the Dominican Republic.
The largest islands are:
Some of the cays are Cayos Siete Hermanos (in English, "Seven Brothers Cays"), close to the northwestern coast, and the cays of Saman Bay.
The Dominican Republic is a country with many mountains; the highest peaks of the Caribbean are found here.
The chains of mountains show a direction northwest-southeast and they are separated by valleys with the same general direction.
The Artibonite River is the longest river of the island but only 68 km are in the Dominican Republic.
The largest lake of the Hispaniola, and of the Caribbean, is the Lake Enriquillo.
It is in the Hoya de Enriquillo with an area of 265 km.
There are three small islands within the lake.
It is around 40 meters below sea level and is a saline lake with a higher concentration of salt than the sea water.
Others lakes are Rinc n (fresh water, area of 28.2 km), Oviedo (brackish water, area of 28 km), Redonda, Lim n.
A disease or medical condition is an unhealthy thing happening to the body or mind.
Diseases can cause pain, feeling bad, or death to the person who has the disease.
The word disease is sometimes used to include:
A disease can be caused by many things.
Sometimes germs enter our body through food, water or air.
A person can be infected by infectious agents like bacteria, viruses or fungus.
Disease can also be caused by eating bad or old foods.
There are small germs in old foods that can cause diseases.
Sometimes the germs produce chemicals or toxins which causes the disease.
One of the most common causes of disease is poor sanitation and lack of clean water.
Some deadly diseases like malaria in tropical parts of the world are spread by a mosquito.
Animals that spread disease are called vectors.
There are many vectors, including snails, ticks, and fleas.
Some people are born with ` genetic diseases. '
These are diseases because of an error or mutation in a person 's DNA.
An example of a mutation is cancer.
Living or working in an unhealthy environment can also be a cause for diseases.
Diseases are more common in older people.
Some diseases can be helped with medicine.
Infections can often be cured by antibiotics, though resistance to antibiotics is a problem.
Some disease may be helped by surgery.
Not every disease can be helped with medicine or surgery, though.
Some diseases must be treated during the whole life; they are chronic (long-lasting) diseases.
An example of a chronic disease is diabetes mellitus.
Diabetes can be treated (made better) but it can not yet be cured (made to totally go away.)
People who usually treat diseases are called doctors or physicians.
Some diseases that are common or very bad are tested for even in people who are healthy.
If these diseases are found early they can be treated before they cause problems.
An example would be checking a woman for cervical cancer with a test called a pap smear.
If cervical cancer is found early it can be cured.
If it is found later it usually causes death.
Another example is immunization.
The basic of it is to make the body ready for a disease.
The body has its own defense against disease called the immune system.
One special characteristic of the immune system is its ability to remember.
If a person had been sick before and had recovered, the immune system produce a substance called antibodies which fight the disease if it comes back to the person.
The antibody is specific to a particular disease or antigen.
An example of this is measles which is a virus.
A person usually a child who had never been sick with measles is given a milder form of the virus, this cause the immune system to produce antibodies against the virus.
If this person is exposed to the same virus in the future, the person 's immune system will remember and will fight the virus.
Epidemiology is the study of the cause of disease.
Some diseases are more popular for people with common characteristics, like similar origins, sociological background, food or nationality.
Without good epidemiological research some diseases can be hard to track and to name.
Some diseases can be taken for something else.
This is why Epidemiology takes a huge part in understanding how to protect ourselves against viruses, toxins and bacteria.
Dardanelles is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara.
Dynamite is an explosive invented by Alfred Nobel.
Its main explosive component is nitroglycerin.
Nitroglycerin is very sensitive to movement.
It explodes very easily, when moved.
For this reason, diatomaceous earth is used to take away this sensitivity.
In dynamite, about one part of four is diatomaceous earth, the other three are nitroglycerin.
A little sodium carbonate is added to stabilise the mixture.
Even though the diatomaceous earth takes away some of the dangers of nitroglycerin, there are still problems because the mixture is not stable in damp environments.
Dynamite that is damp, or even wet slowly loses its nitroglycerin.
The nitroglycerin can build up, and explode unexpectedly.
For this reason, the formulation was changed.
Instead of diatomaceous earth, gelignite was used to hold the nitroglycerin.
Gelignite holds the nitroglycerin so that it can not dissolve in water.
Today, dynamite is no longer used commercially.
It has been replaced by explosives based on ammonium nitrate which use gelignite.
These explosives are cheaper to produce, and easier to handle than dynamite.
However, dynamite still used in movies and television.
David Andrew Leo Fincher (born August 28, 1962) is an American movie director.
Fincher was born in Denver, Colorado.
When he was two, he moved to San Anselmo, California.
When he was in his teens, he moved to Ashland, Oregon.
He directed Alien 3, Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl.
He won a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for directing The Social Network.
He also directed the first 2 episodes for the TV show "house of cards"
He has also directed music videos, including Love Is Strong by The Rolling Stones, which won a Grammy Award.
Douglas Carl "Doug" Engelbart (January 30, 1925 July 2, 2013) was an American inventor.
Engelbart was known for inventing the computer mouse in 1964.
Engelbart was born on January 30, 1925 in Portland, Oregon.
He studied at Oregon State College and at the University of California, Berkeley.
Engelbart was married to Ballard Engelbart from 1950 until her death in 1997.
They had four children.
Engelbart died on July 2, 2013 from kidney failure in Atherton, California, aged 88.
A diamond (from the ancient Greek ad mas "unbreakable") is a re-arrangement of carbon atoms; those are also called allotropes.
Diamonds have the highest hardness of any bulk (all one type) material.
Because of this, many important industries use diamonds as tools for cutting and polishing things.
Many of them are clear, but some of them have colors, like yellow, red, blue, green and pink.
Diamonds of a different color are called "fancies".
Big diamonds are very rare, and are worth a lot of money.
Only 20 % of diamonds are fit for jewelry.
The other 80 % are not pretty enough.
They are industrial diamonds, used to make things like drill bits and diamond saws.
This is because even a diamond that is not beautiful is useful because It is very hard..
There are natural and synthetic diamonds.
The earth makes natural diamonds.
People make synthetic diamonds but they are very small because they grow slowly.
Diamonds are the hardest natural substance known to man.
Diamonds are made of pure carbon, the same chemical element as graphite, fullerene, and coal.
But diamonds are very hard and in crystalline form.
It is commonly believed that diamonds are formed from coal, but this is not true.
Because many diamonds are beautiful, people make jewellery using them.
Diamonds are very effective electrical insulators, but also very good conductors of heat.
On mohs scale of mineral hardness, diamonds are scored as 10 (the highest score possible).
Diamonds are made deep in the earth, where there is an intense amount of pressure and heat that makes the diamond form.
The intense heat and pressure is forming the liquid ore to make volcanic eruptions which surfaces and becomes diamond crystals.
(This makes the diamond a metamorphic rock.)
Sometimes magma (very hot, liquid rock deep in the earth) having diamonds will come near the top of a volcano.
People find diamonds where volcanoes were a long time ago.
Sometimes people find diamonds on the top of the ground.
But in places like South Africa, they must dig deep down into a diamond mine to get diamonds.
Diamonds were first found in India.
For many decades the trading of diamonds has been controlled by the De Beers group of companies.
It is fairly well known that diamonds are not rare, but are stockpiled so that the price never goes down.
It is not quite a monopoly, because some mines are not owned by De Beers, but the group has companies all over the world which work together to manipulate the market.
Andre Romelle Young (born February 18, 1965), known as Dr. Dre is an American record producer, rapper, and entrepreneur.
He has had many records and songs throughout the years and is one of the most famous producers in hip-hop.
He has made albums for many rappers through their careers, including Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent and Game.
As of 2011, Dr. Dre is ranked as the third richest rapper by Forbes and is worth two-hundred & fifty million dollars ($ 250,000,000).
Dre began his career in music as a member of the World Class Wreckin ' Cru and he later found fame with the gangsta rap group N.W.A. with Eazy-E, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and DJ Yella which made the use of swear words in rap songs in rap to tell about the violence of street life popular.
During the 2000s, he produced music for other artists, while sometimes rapping with other artists ' on their songs.
Dr. Dre signed Eminem to his Aftermath record label in 1998 and 50 Cent in 2003 helping to make their albums with them.
Rolling Stone magazine said Dr. Dre was one of the richest performers in 2001 and 2004.
Dr. Dre was also in movies such as Set It Off, and the 2001 movies The Wash and Training Day.
Because he liked Grandmaster Flash, he often went to a club called The Eve After Dark to see a lot of DJs and rappers performing live.
He then became a DJ in the club, at first under the name "Dr. J", his favorite basketball player.
At the club, he met DJ Yella for the first time.
Soon afterwards he started using the name Dr. Dre, half his old nickname, and half his first name, also calling himself as the Master of Mixology.
He later joined the musical group World Class Wreckin ' Cru in 1984.
The group would become stars of the electro-hop scene that was really popular in early 1980s West Coast hip hop, and their first hit Surgery would feature Dr. Dre on the turntables and sell 50,000 tapes within Compton.
Dr. Dre and DJ Yella also did mixes for local radio stations, making the ratings for it 's show Afternoon Traffic Jam go higher.
Dr. Dre 's earliest songs were released in 1994 on a CD called Concrete Roots.
He was a diver in high school, but because he skipped school a lot, he was kicked off the team.
After high school, he went to Chester Adult School in Compton because his mother told him to get a job or go back to school.
After going to a broadcasting school for a little bit, he moved to his father 's house, and then his grandparents house before going back to his mother 's house.
He later dropped out of Chester to focus on performing at the Eve 's After Dark nightclub.
In 1986, Dr. Dre met Ice Cube, who with Dr. Dre, made songs for Ruthless Records, a rap record label run by local rapper Eazy-E.
N.W.A and fellow West Coast rapper Ice-T are normally said to be the creators of gangsta rap.
N.W.A favored themes and explicit lyrics, offering real descriptions of violent, inner-city streets.
With the hit Fuck tha Police, the group 's first full album Straight Outta Compton became a big hit, despite almost no radio airplay or concerts.
The FBI sent Eazy-E a warning letter for the song 's content.
After Ice Cube left N.W.A in 1989 over money issues, Dr. Dre produced and performed for much of the group 's second album Efil4Zaggin (Niggas for life).
He also produced tracks for other rap acts on Ruthless Records, including The D.O.C. 's 1989 album No One Can Do It Better.
In 1991, at a party in Hollywood, he slapped Dee Barnes of the TV show Pump it Up, feeling upset about a news report she did about the feud between them and Ice Cube.
Dr. Dre was fined $ 2,500 and given two years ' probation and 240 hours of community service, as well as a spot on an anti-violence public service announcement on television.
After an argument with Eazy-E over money, Dre left the group in 1991 under the advice of a friend, The D.O.C. and his bodyguard at the time, Suge Knight.
Knight, a known strongman, was able to have Eazy-E release Dre from his contract and, start Death Row Records.
In 1992 Dre released his first single with Snoop Dogg; Deep Cover.
Dr. Dre 's first album was The Chronic.
Dre brought a new style of rap, both in terms of style and words.
The Chronic became really popular and had lots of big singles.
Its sound was really popular with hip hop music for the early 1990s.
In 1993, Dr. Dre also won a Grammy Award for Let Me Ride.
That year, Billboard magazine Dr. Dre was the eighth best-selling musical artist, The Chronic was the sixth best-selling album, and Nuthin ' but a ` G ' Thang (the first single from the album) as the 11th best-selling single.
Besides working on his own music, Dr. Dre produced Snoop Dogg 's first album Doggystyle.
In 1994, Dr. Dre produced some songs on the soundtracks for the films Above the Rim and Murder Was the Case.
He rapped with fellow ex-N.W. A member Ice Cube for the song Natural Born Killaz in 1995.
For the film Friday, Dre recorded Keep Their Heads Ringin, which reached No. 10 in the charts.
In 1995, just as Death Row Records signed 2Pac, Young left the label because of a contract dispute and he was worried that Suge Knight was n't doing things legally.
In 1996, he made his own label, Aftermath Entertainment, with Interscope Records.
Death Row then suffered poor sales in 1997, after the death of 2Pac.
Dr. Dre released Dr. Dre Presents the Aftermath, released in 1996, with songs by Dr. dre new Aftermath Entertainment rappers.
Been There, Done That, was saying that he was bored of gangsta rap.
Despite selling a lot of copies of the album, it was not very popular among music fans.
In October 1996, Dre rapped Been There, Done That on popular American TV show, Saturday Night Live.
Despite the mixed reception to his label 's album, Dr. Dre was on two No. 1 singles in the charts in 1996, they were California Love by 2Pac and No Diggity by Blackstreet.
They were Dr. Dre 's first No. 1 songs since being with N.W.A. Aftermath gained more popularity in 1998, Dr. Dre signed Eminem, a rapper from Detroit.
Dre produced three songs and sung with him on two of them on Eminem 's first album The Slim Shady LP.
My Name Is, the first single from the album, made Eminem famous.
The album sold lots of copies.
Dr. Dre 's second album, 2001, released in 1999, was his return to gangsta rap.
It was at first called The Chronic 2000 as a sequel to his first album The Chronic, but was changed to 2001 after Death Row released an unrelated album called Chronic 2000: Still Smokin in 1999.
The album has also been called by fans ` The Chronic 2001 ' and ` The Chronic 2 '.
The album featured a lot of guests, including Devin the Dude, Hittman, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, Nate Dogg and Eminem.
The album was really good, charting at number two and has since sold millions of copies.
The album included popular hit singles Still D.R.E. and Forgot About Dre, both of which Dr. Dre performed on Saturday Night Live in 1999.
Dr. Dre won an award for Producer of the Year, in 2000, and joined the Up in Smoke Tour with Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and Ice Cube.
In 2001, Dr. Dre was sued a few times.
In 2002, Dr. Dre said he was going to release a new album: Detox.
The album has been being made since 2004 and was to be released in 2005.
After loads of delays, the album was to be released in 2010.
Producers confirmed to be working on the album are DJ Khalil, Nottz, Bernard "Focus" Edwards Jr., Hi-Tek, J.R. Rotem, RZA, Jay-Z, Warren G, and Boi-1da.
Snoop Dogg said the album was finished in 2008 but it still was n't released.
Detox was then to be released in 2010.
At the beginning of 2009, Dre was in the song "Crack a Bottle" by Eminem & 50 Cent.
In a Dr Pepper advert in 2009, he played a small clip from Detox.
50 Cent and Eminem said in an interview with BET that Dr. Dre had around 12 songs for Detox.
Detox is said to be released sometime in 2012.
The first two singles, "Kush" and "I Need a Doctor", were released in 2010 and 2011.
Kush has become a hit in the America and I Need a Doctor peaked at Number Four in the charts.
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers will honor Dr. Dre with its Founders Award for inspiring other musicians.
In 2010, Dr. Dre said that an album of just music called The Planets is in its first stages of production; each song being named after a planet.
Later that year, Dr. Dre showed support to long time friend Eminem, and appeared at his and Jay-Z 's Tour, performing songs Still D.R.E., Nuthin ' but a ` G ' Thang, and Crack a Bottle, with Eminem & 50 Cent.
Wearing an "R.I.P. Proof" shirt (proof was a rapper who died, he was also a friend of Dre, Eminem & 50 Cent).
The crowd the chanted "DEEE-TOX," to which he replied, "I 'm coming!"
As if to say the album 's release is not that long away.
Dr. Dre was featured on the cover of a magazine in a 2011 issue.
After Detox he will be one of the producers of Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins ' album Still Cool.
In 2012 Dre was announced to headline at a music festival called the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival taking place the weekends of April 13 15 and April 20 22 which featured a holographic 2Pac.
Dr. Dre has also founded the company Beats Electronics, LLC.
It primarily makes headphones under the brand Beats by Dr. Dre.
Douglas Adams (11 March 1952 11 May 2001) was a British writer.
He is most famous for his The Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy series.
Adams was born in Cambridge.
When he was a few months old he moved to East London and a few years later to Brentwood, Essex.
He originally received attention when he wrote for the popular TV shows Monty Python and Doctor Who in the 1970s.
In 1979, he wrote a science fiction radio play called The Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy.
It was later turned into a novel, then in the early 1980s, it became a TV miniseries, and in 2005, it became a film produced by Disney.
He also wrote several sequels.
Douglas was also known for his humorous detective novels starring Dirk Gentley, and for his efforts to conserve endangered species.
He was an atheist.
In 2001, Adams died of a heart attack while he was working out at the gym in Montecito, California, United States.
Drum and bass (also d & b, DnB, dnb, d' n ` b, drum n bass, drum & bass, dNb) is a form of electronic dance music.
It began in 1990s in the United Kingdom.
It has fast beats and heavy bass lines.
Disc jockeys play this music.
Dairy products are foods that are made from animal milk.
Usually, they are made from the milk of cows and goats, but they can be made from the milk of other animals as well.
Dairy products include milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream.
David Eric "Dave" Grohl (born January 14, 1969) is an American rock musician and singer.
He is best known as the lead singer of rock band Foo Fighters and the drummer of the grunge band Nirvana.
He has also been part of thirty different bands in his life.
These bands include Nine Inch Nails and Tenacious D.
Dave Grohl lived most of his early life in Springfield, Virginia.
He played in many local punk bands, on guitar.
By 15 years old he was a drummer in the hardcore punk band, Scream.
Scream toured all over the United States and Europe but broke up in 1989.
After they broke up he tried out to be a drummer in a small band called Nirvana.
Grohl joined Nirvana in 1990, along with Krist Novoselic and Kurt Cobain.
They went on to be one of the most successful bands of the decade, selling over 50 million albums worldwide.
Grohl joined shortly before the release of Nevermind.
Nevermind proved to be a classic album, one that is still a big influence on the alternative metal and alternative rock scene.
The band only recorded one more studio album though, In Utero in 1993.
On April 8, 1994, Kurt Cobain 's body was found at his home in Seattle.
He had shot himself in the head with a shotgun.
This basically ended Nirvana and Grohl started his own band Foo Fighters in 1995.
The original Foo Fighters album was recorded entirely by Grohl himself.
He recorded the parts for each instrument one at a time and then combined them.
Foo Fighters are now a multi Grammy Award winning rock band and sell out huge arenas when they go on tour.
A dollar is a type of currency.
Many countries have named their money the dollar, so it is important to say which dollar is being talked about.
The symbol for the dollar is a capital letter S, pierced by one or two vertical lines: $.
The dollar is named after the thaler.
The thaler was a large silver coin first made in the year 1518.
The thaler named after the Joachimsthal (Joachim 's valley) mine in Bohemia (Thal means valley in German).
The later Spanish Peso was the same size and was often called "Spanish dollar".
In the 18th century it became a world currency.
Many national currencies were originally Spanish dollars including the ones now called dollar or peso and the Japanese yen, Indian rupee and Chinese Renminbi.
Dysprosium is a chemical element with the symbol Dy and atomic number 66.
It has a very high melting temperature of 1,407 C. It can also absorb neutrons.
This makes it very suitable for use with nuclear reactors and lasers.
Dysprosium is a rare earth element that has a metallic, bright silver luster.
Dysprosium was first identified in Paris in 1886 by French chemist Paul mile Lecoq de Boisbaudran.
Deforestation is when forests are destroyed by cutting and not replanted.
Sometimes deforestation happens when people change the land into farms, ranches and cities.
A lot of deforestation is caused by the removal of all the trees from a forest for wood or fuel.
Without the forest, the habitats of the animals are lost and many animals die.
It also results in global warming (climate change).
Deforestation is the removal of trees for requirements of growing population.
They remove the trees and use the land to make farms.
They also use the wood from the trees to make buildings or to burn the trees for heat.
Sometimes, forests are lost because people want to make cities bigger: this means building roads and buildings on the land where the forests are.
Forests are often planted to protect against natural disasters.
When forests are lost, very often the soil they protected is also lost.
This loss of soil is often called erosion.
We give out carbon dioxide when we breathe and plants and trees take it in by photosynthesis.
Without forests rain falls scarcely on hot areas.
Trees are also important for storing carbon.
Deforestation causes the carbon in the trees to go into the air again, and this causes more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.
Since carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, deforestation causes global warming.
Tropical deforestation is responsible for about 20 % of world greenhouse gas emissions.
Desertification is the expansion of desert into the surrounding areas.
The desert area in the world is getting bigger.
Desertification usually happens on the edge of deserts.
It is caused by a variety of factors.
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American Football team from the Dallas, Texas, USA area.
Their stadium, AT&T Stadium, is in Arlington, Texas, which is just outside of Dallas County, Texas.
Before 1970 they played at the Cotton Bowl Stadium before 1971.
From 1970 to 2008 they played at Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas, which is just outside of Dallas.
They were started when they joined the NFL in 1960.
They have won 5 Super Bowls, and they are currently owned by Jerry Jones.
Their uniform is white silver and blue with a blue star on their helmet.
Troy Aikman was a great quarterback for the Cowboys.
Emmitt Smith and Tony Dorsett were notable runningbacks.
The Cowboys are often known as "America 's Team."
The team 's current starting quarterback is Tony Romo and their head coach is Jason Garrett.
The Denver Broncos are an American football team in the National Football League (NFL).
They play their home games in Denver, Colorado, USA at Sports Authority Field at Mile High.
The Broncos play in the West Division of the American Football Conference (AFC).
The Broncos won Super Bowl XXXII, Super Bowl XXXIII, and Super Bowl 50.
Their current head coach is Gary Kubiak.
In 2015, they had the the NFL 's best defense led by defensive coordinator Wade Phillips.
A "bronco" is a strong and powerful horse.
Five players who have played for the Broncos are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame: John Elway, Shannon Sharpe, Terrell Davis, Floyd Little, and Gary Zimmerman.
D is the fourth (number 4) letter in the alphabet.
Digamma or Wau (uppercase\/lowercase) was an old letter of the Greek alphabet.
It was used before the alphabet got its classical standard form.
It looked like a Latin "F", but it was pronounced like "w".
In the 5th century BC people stopped using it, because they could no longer pronounce the sound "w" in Greek.
However, they kept it as a sign for the number "6" in the system of Greek numerals.
It was originally called "Wau" because of its sound, but later, when the sound was lost, it was called "Digamma", which means "double Gamma", because it looks like a Gamma (-RRB- with two hooks.
The Latin letter F was also taken over from Wau.
A dialect is a variation of a standard language spoken by a group of people.
Sometimes people who live in the same place share a dialect.
Sometimes people who are similar in some other way, such as social class, share a dialect.
There is no absolute difference between a dialect and a language.
British English and American English are dialects of English.
They differ slightly in spelling, in pronunciation, and in vocabulary.
However, they are "mutually intelligible", which means speakers from both countries can understand each other.
On the other hand, Spanish and Portuguese are now different languages, but historically, Portuguese was once a dialect of Spanish.
Catalan is another dialect of Spanish, again, so different that some call it a different language.
English is definitely a language, but in the past it was a dialect of Old Saxon called Anglo-Saxon.
In past times, travel was difficult.
Because of this, dialects developed in quite small regions of a country.
In Britain there were dialects in the different parts of the country, and traces of this can be heard today.
Digitalis is a genus of about 20 species of herbaceous perennials shrubs, and biennals that are commonly called foxgloves.
The genus is native to Europe, western and central Asia, and northwestern Africa.
The term digitalis is also used for preparations containing cardiac glycosides, particularly digoxin, extracted from plants of this genus.
Dendrites are the branches of neurons that receive signals from other neurons and pass the signals into the cell body (or soma).
A cell may have hundreds or thousands of dendrites, but may have only one axon.
The dendrites carry signals from other neurons into the soma, whereas the axon carries a single signal from the soma to the next neuron or to a muscle fiber.
A dendrite from one neuron and an axon from another neuron meet at a synapse, which is a very narrow gap between the two cells.
When electrical impulses (action potentials) reach the end of an axon, the signal must pass over a synapse again.
There are two types of synapse: chemical or electrical.
If it 's a chemical synapse, the active potential triggers the release of special chemicals called neurotransmitters from the axon.
These chemicals cross the synapse to the dendrite, where they trigger the flow of ions into or out of the cell.
The movement of the charged ions in the dendrite causes an electrical current, which spreads to the soma briefly before being restored to normal.
If the current is positively charged, it will make the soma (which is normally negatively charged compared to its surroundings) become more positive.
If the current is negatively charged, then it will make the soma even more negative.
If a strong enough positive charge builds up in the soma quickly enough (caused by the dendrites receiving lots of signals from axons), then it will set off a chain reaction in a part of the soma called the axon hillock.
The axon hillock is the place where the soma connects to the axon.
The chain reaction that begins in the axon hillock is a strong electrical current called an action potential that flows down the axon to the next synapse.
The Dalai Lama is a religious figure in Tibetan Buddhism.
He is its highest spiritual teacher of the Gelugpa school.
A new Dalai Lama is said to be the re-born old Dalai Lama.
This line goes back to 1391.
The 14th and current Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso.
Between the 17th century and 1959, the Dalai Lama was the head of the Tibetan government.
During winter, the Dalai Lamas stayed in the Potala palace.
In summer they were in the Norbulingka palace.
These two palaces are both in Lhasa, Tibet.
In 1959, the Dalai Lama had to flee from Tibet to Dharamsala, India.
This is still his base today.
The current Dalai Lama is His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso.
Dalai Lama is the title of Tibetan Buddhism leader.
"Dalai" is original from Mongolian which means "ocean" and "Lama" is original from Tibetan which means "the highest principle".
In 1653, during the Qing Dynasty, this title was authorized to Dalai Lama V by the Chinese Emperor for the first time.
The 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, expelled all Chinese civilians from the country, and instituted many measures to modernize Tibet.
These included provisions to curb excessive demands on peasants and tax evasion by the nobles, setting up an independent police force, the abolishment of the death penalty, extension of secular education, and the provision of electricity throughout the city of Lhasa in the 1920s.
Thubten Gyatso died in 1933.
The 14th Dalai Lama was not formally enthroned until 17 November 1950, during the People 's Republic of China invasion of Tibet (1950 1951).
Fearing for his life, the 14th Dalai Lama fled to India where he has led a government in exile since.
With the aim of launching guerrilla operations against the Chinese, the CIA funded the Dalai Lama $ 1.7 million a year in the 1960s.
In 2001, he gave up his absolute power over the government to an elected parliament of selected Tibetan exiles.
His original goal was full independence for Tibet, but by the late 1980s, he was seeking high-level autonomy instead.
He is still seeking greater autonomy from China, although Dolma Gyari, deputy speaker of the parliament-in-exile has stated "If the middle path fails in the short term, we will be forced to opt for complete independence or selfdetermination as per the UN charter".
In law, damages are an award, usually of money.
It is to be paid to a person as compensation for loss or injury.
The rules for damages can and frequently do vary based on the type of claim which is presented (e.g., breach of contract versus a tort claim) and the jurisdiction.
Damages are not the same as court costs which includes the costs to bring a legal case to court.
The losing party may also have to pay court costs.
In common law countries, damages are usually categorized into compensatory (or actual) damages, and punitive damages.
Compensatory damages are further categorized into special damages and general damages.
Special damages include economic losses such as loss of earnings, property damage and medical expenses.
General damages are noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering and emotional distress.
Statutory damages are those required by statute.
Compensatory damages are paid to compensate the claimant for loss, injury, or harm suffered as a result of another 's negligence (tort law).
Expectation damages are used in contract law.
In civil law countries, these are called "ordinary damages" and may be limited to actual loss.
Generally, punitive damages, which are also termed exemplary damages in the United Kingdom, are not awarded in order to compensate the plaintiff, but in order to reform or deter the defendant.
They are also to intended to be an example to others not to do the same thing.
Punitive damages are awarded when it is determined that compensatory damages are not enough.
Punitive damages are awarded over and above the amount of compensatory damages, such as in the event of malice or intent.
Great judicial restraint is expected to be exercised in their use.
In the United States punitive damages awards are subject to the limitations imposed by the due process of law clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
Punitive damages in most civil law countries are not awarded.
Statutory damages are an amount stated within the statute rather than calculated based on the degree of harm to the plaintiff.
Lawmakers will provide for statutory damages for acts in which it is difficult to determine the value of the harm to the victim.
Someone breaking the law can entitle the victim to a statutory award.
This is even if no actual injury happened.
For example, United States Civil Code 18 USC 2520 provides for statutory damages to victims of various wiretapping offenses.
Dualism is the idea or theory that something (an object, an idea or the whole world) is split into two parts.
These parts are separate from each other, and the thing can not be divided up in any other way.
The idea or theory that something can not be split into any parts is called monism.
The idea that something can be split into many parts is called pluralism.
In philosophy there are many kinds of dualism.
Dualism is also a common sense idea.
For example it is a form of dualism to say that a thing is either hot or cold, good or bad, mine or somebody else 's, with no allowance for possible states in between.
In theology, dualism may also refer to duotheism, bitheism or ditheism.
This the doctrine or belief that there are two independent divine beings or eternal principles, one good and the other evil.
Examples of ditheism include Zoroastrianism, Wicca and Marcionism.
Although the Bible mentions Satan, this is not ditheism as he is not equal to God, but merely an angel.
(See Epistle of Jude, verse 6).
Ditheism is not the same as dualism, but they are similar.
Ditheism implies (at least) two gods, while moral dualism does not imply any - theism (belief in a god) whatsoever.
A disaster is something very bad that happens to people and almost always changes their lives completely.
Disasters can destroy homes and many kinds of work.
Disasters can be of different kinds, but most are caused by forces of nature.
Disasters caused by humans include aviation (flying) accidents, arson (lighting a fire to burn something), CBRNs (where a country has a powerful weapon), civil disorder (where people riot or do crimes), power outages (where electricity is interrupted), public relations crises where a company must tell bad news, radiation accidents, disasters in space, a telecommunications outage (not being able to communicate), terrorism (where a group attacks civilians or says they will attack to gain something), and war (fighting with weapons between large groups).
To live through a disaster, it is important that your family and your city prepare in advance.
This may be making a pack of things you need in an emergency, it may be a government sending soldiers to help, or it may be something in between.
Theories vary widely about the cause of world disasters, and while most are controversial, the amount of followers that they attract show that there is perhaps some merit behind them.
One notable theorist is named Fei Weixiang.
Fei 's theory centers around the idea that all world disasters stem from a single source.
He believes he has tracked the source to Beijing, where he currently resides.
Dino Zoff (born 28 February 1942) is a former Italian football player.
He has played for Italy national team.
The Dipsacales are an order of flowering plants, included within the asterid group of dicotyledons.
Under the APG II definition some well-known members of Dipsacales are honeysuckle, elder, viburnum, and valerian.
December is the twelfth and last month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 31 days, coming between November (of the same year) and January (of the next year).
With the name of the month coming from the Latin decem for "ten", it was the tenth month of the year before January and February were added to the Roman calendar.
December begins on the same day of the week as September, and ends on the same day as April, every year.
December 's flower is the Narcissus.
Its birthstone is the turquoise.
The meaning of the turquoise is prosperity.
Some of the holidays celebrated in December are Christmas, New Year 's Eve, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah.
December is the 12th and last month of every calendar year in the Gregorian calendar, and is one of seven months of the year to have 31 days.
December 31 is followed by January 1 of the following year.
It begins on the same day of the week as September every year, as September 1 and December 1 are exactly 13 weeks (91 days) apart.
It ends on the same day as April of the same year.
If the following year is a leap year, then March of that year would start and end on the same day of the week as December of the year that came before.
November of the following year would then start on the same day of the week as December of the current year.
If the following year is a common year, then December of the current year starts on the same day of the week as June of that year.
The month of December has a solstice, and in this month the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere is turned towards the Sun, meaning that December 21 or December 22 is the Northern Winter Solstice and the Southern Summer Solstice.
This means that this date would have the least daylight of any day in the Northern Hemisphere, and the most in the Southern Hemisphere.
There are 24 hours of darkness at the North Pole and 24 hours of daylight at the South Pole.
In each hemisphere, December is the seasonal equivalent of June in the other.
In mainly Christian countries, December is dominated by Christmas, which is celebrated on December 25 in most of those countries, though Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate it on January 7.
It marks the birth of Jesus Christ.
Epiphany, January 6, is also important in relation to Christmas.
Advent starts on the Sunday on, or closest to, November 30, and some countries have their own related celebration before the 25th.
Sinterklaas is celebrated on December 5 in the Netherlands and Belgium, and St. Nicholas Day on December 6 is also celebrated in some countries.
The Scandinavian countries, mainly Sweden, celebrate St. Lucia Day on December 13, while Iceland celebrates Thorlaksmessa on December 23.
The week after Christmas is spent preparing for New Year.
Judaism 's festival of light, Hanukkah, is also celebrated over eight days in this month.
Devon is a county in southwest England.
Sometimes, it is called Devonshire although this is not its correct name.
Devon is the second largest county in England, and has the longest road network of any county in England.
After the last ice age, Devon was one of the first places in England where people started to live.
Archaeologists have found many old places in Devon with ancient buildings.
For example, many ruins of old buildings have been found in an area called "Dartmoor", which is now a National Park.
Devon gets its name from the Dumnonii, a name that the invading Romans gave to the Celtic tribe in that area.
The Romans invaded Devon about AD 50.
The name Dumnonii means "a person who lives in a deep valley", and it comes from the hills and valleys of the area.
The Roman army stayed in Devon for about 25 years.
Their base was in the city of Exeter.
It was a long time before anyone else invaded Devon.
Saxons came to Devon in the 7th century, and the King of Wessex may have attacked in 614.
There was a conflict between Devon and Wessex for 200 years.
Some historians think that Wessex won the war by about 715 but others think this did not happen until at least 936.
Eventually Wessex took control, but the Kings of Devon still had some power.
A person living at the time called William of Malmesbury said that in Exeter both Britons and Saxons were equal in 927 but that King Athelstan of Wessex then chased the Britons from Exeter.
From place names and church dedications it seems that the British did not go far and later came back into Exeter because an area in the city was called "Britayne" until recently.
A large number of Devon placenames include (or are) the word "combe" (e.g. Ilfracombe).
This word comes from the Brythonic (Celtic) language and is like the Welsh word "cwm".
Another typical Devon word is "tor" which is also Brythonic, and like the Welsh word "twr".
Both of these words are often found in neighbouring counties, but Devon has the greatest number.
Overall Devon has a number of other placenames that are Brythonic and others that come from Old English, and a few that come from Norse.
Devon 's placenames are like those of western Somerset and eastern Cornwall which was also part of the old kingdom of "Dumnonia".
Starting in the 9th century, groups of Viking raiders tried to invade Devon.
This continued until the Norman Conquest.
The name of Lundy Island comes from the Viking language, which was called Norse.
The Vikings are remembered for moving the cathedral from Crediton to Exeter.
There are many famous (well known) people from Devon, especially seamen.
For example, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Richard Grenville and Sir Walter Raleigh all come from Devon.
Many other famous people were also born in Devon: for example, the author Agatha Christie was born in the town of Torquay.
Devon has its own flag.
It is linked to St Petroc, who is a local saint with links to Devon and nearby counties.
The flag was chosen after winning a competition on the BBC Devon website in 2003.
Devon is less wealthy than many parts of England, for example the south east.
This is because the traditional industries of Devon, for example fishing, mining and farming are declining.
The European Union has given parts of Devon help (Objective 2).
For example, grants of money have been given to help new industries grow.
Tourism has become more important recently as a part of the economy of Devon.
An epidemic of Foot and Mouth disease in 2001 led to many farmers losing their cattle, so they lost a lot of money.
Other industries also lost a lot of income because of this.
The main city of Devon is Plymouth.
Exeter is where the county council is based.
The county of Devon is split up into districts.
Each district is run by a district council.
Some things are the job of the county council and others are the job of the district council.
There are also smaller town and parish councils inside the districts.
Plymouth and Torbay are not run by the county council, but have their own special councils.
These councils do the jobs of both a county and a district council.
These type of areas are called unitary authorities.
The numbers on the map are linked to the numbers below.
Note: The links below are not in simple English.
Dartmoor is a national park in Devon, a county in England.
Its highest point is High Willhays, 621 metres high.
This is the highest point in the south of England.
It has a large area of moorland, and is very hilly.
There is much woodland on its lower slopes.
Dartmoor is famous for its tors outcrops of rock on top of many of its hills.
These are the remains of volcanic activity in the Carboniferous period.
Animal life on Dartmoor includes birds such as the ring ouzel and dunlin, and the endangered marsh fritillary butterfly.
Its bogs are home to many unusual plants such as the sundew.
Dante Alighieri, or simply Dante (May 14 \/ June 13, 1265 September 14, 1321), was an Italian poet from Florence.
His central work, the Commedia (Divine Comedy), is considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.
In Italian he is known as "the Supreme Poet" (il Sommo Poeta).
Dante and the Divine Comedy have been a source of inspiration for artists for almost seven centuries.
Dante, with Petrarch and Boccaccio are also known as "the three fountains".
Dante is also called "the Father of the Italian language".
The first biography written on him was by his contemporary Giovanni Villani.
The most famous section in La Divina Commedia is the first third of it, the first 34 cantos of the poem, called Inferno, which is Dante 's vision of hell.
Dante Alighieri was born in 1265, between May 14 and June 13, under the name "Durante Alighieri."
ca.
1450 (Uffizi Gallery).
His family was important in Florence, and supported the Papacy.
The poet 's mother was Bella degli Abati.
She died when Dante was seven years old, and Alighiero soon married again, to Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi.
Lapa had two children, Dante 's brother Francesco and sister "Tana" (short version of "Gaetana").
Dante fought in the front of the Guelph troops in the battle of Campaldino (June 11, 1289).
After the victory Dante gained an important part in public life.
When Dante was 12, in 1277, he married Gemma di Manetto Donati.
Dante had already fallen in love with another girl, Beatrice Portinari that is mentioned same in "Divine Comedy", (known also as Bice).
Years after Dante 's marriage to Gemma he met Beatrice again.
He had become interested in writing poems.
Dante had six children with Gemma: Jacopo, Pietro, Giovanni, Gabrielle Alighieri, and Antonia.
Not much is known about Dante 's education, and it is presumed he studied at home.
It is known that he studied Tuscan poetry.
His interests brought him to discover the Occitan poetry of the troubadors and the Latin poetry of classical antiquity (with a particular devotion to Virgil).
At 18, Dante met Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, Cino da Pistoia, and soon after Brunetto Latini; together they became the leaders of Dolce Stil Novo ("The Sweet New Style").
Brunetto later received a special mention in the Divine Comedy (Inferno, XV, 28), for what he had taught Dante.
According to his work, La Vita Nuova, when he was nine years old he met Beatrice Portinari, daughter of Folco Portinari, with whom he fell in love "at first sight", and apparently without even having spoken to her.
He saw her frequently after age 18, often exchanging greetings in the street, but he never knew her well he effectively set the example for the so-called "courtly love".
Dante gave his imprint to the Stil Novo.
Love for Beatrice (as in a different manner Petrarch would show for his Laura) would apparently be the reason for poetry and for living, together with political passions.
In many of his poems, she appears such as semi-divine, watching over him constantly.
When Beatrice died in 1290, Dante tried to find "help" in Latin literature.
He then dedicated himself to philosophical studies at religious schools like the Dominican one in Santa Maria Novella.
This "excessive" passion for philosophy would later be criticized by the character Beatrice, in Purgatorio, the second book of the Divine Comedy.
Boniface quickly dismissed the other delegates and asked Dante alone to remain in Rome.
At the same time (November 1, 1301), Charles de Valois entered Florence with Black Guelphs, who in the next six days destroyed much of the city and killed many of their enemies.
A new Black Guelph government was installed and Messer Cante dei Gabrielli di Gubbio was appointed Podest of Florence.
Dante was put in exile for two years, and ordered to pay a large hill of money.
Dante did not pay the money, in part because he believed he was not guilty, and in part because all his needs in Florence had been stolen by the Black Guelphs.
He was condemned to exile for life, and if he returned to Florence without paying the money, he could be burned at the stake.
In exile he began searching the foundation for the Divine Comedy, a work in 100 cantos, divided into three books of thirty-three cantos each, with a single introductory canto.
He went to Verona as a guest of Bartolomeo I della Scala, then moved to Sarzana in Liguria.
Later, he is supposed to have lived in Lucca with Madame Gentucca.
Some not sure sources say that he was also in Paris between 1308 and 1310.
In 1310, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg, marched 5,000 troops into Italy.
Dante saw in him a new Charlemagne who would restore the office of the Holy Roman Emperor for re-take Florence from the Black Guelphs.
He wrote to Henry and several Italian princes, demanding that they destroy the Black Guelphs.
Mixing religion and private concerns, he invoked the worst anger of God against his city, suggesting several particular targets that coincided with his personal enemies.
It was during this time that he wrote the first two books of the Divine Comedy.
When Dante died at Ravenna, the custodians of the body at Ravenna put the bones in a false wall of the monastery.
Nevertheless, in 1829, a tomb was built for him in Florence in the basilica of Santa Croce.
That tomb has been empty ever since, with Dante 's body remaining in Ravenna, far from the land he loved so dearly.
The front of his tomb in Florence reads Onorate l'altissimo poeta which roughly translates as "Honour the most exalted poet".
Dennis the Menace is the name of two different comic strips, which both debuted in 1951.
One is a British comic strip, that is featured in the UK comic magazine, The Beano.
The other is a daily newspaper comic strip from the United States.
This daily strip was a single panel, but the Sunday strip was longer.
The single panels were sometimes collected into small paperbacks.
Dennis also had a comic book.
In Britain, Dennis is usually drawn as wearing a red and black striped jumper, and spikey black hair.
He is normally with his black dog called Gnasher.
In the United States, Dennis the Menace (Dennis Mitchell) wore a red and white striped tee-shirt and bib overalls.
He had blond hair and a large cowlick.
His dog was a sheepdog called Ruff.
Dennis ' parents are Henry and Alice.
His neighbors are George and Martha Wilson.
Dennis wants to be helpful but his attempts often end in disaster.
Dennis ' friends are Tommy Anderson, Joey McDonald, and Margaret Wade.
In 1959, the comic strip was developed into a CBS television sitcom called Dennis the Menace.
It stars Jay North as Dennis and Joseph Kearns as George Wilson.
The series aired for four years and has been released to DVD.
Dye is a substance used to color materials.
It is often used to color the fabric used to make clothing.
A pigment wo n't do this because it wo n't stick to the fibers of the fabric and color them.
A dye can be natural, usually made from plant material such as berries, or artificial, meaning that it is made by humans from chemicals such as petrochemicals.
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 March 28, 1969) was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 to 1961.
He was known across the world for his help leading the Allied invasions in World War II.
Eisenhower was born into a family which did not have a lot of money.
He joined the military and he moved up the ranks.
During World War II, he rose his way up the ranks to become a 5-star general.
He became the Supreme Allied Commander who led Operation Overlord (an Allied attack on Germany which was one of the most important battles of the war).
After World War II ended, he was considered a war hero.
In the 1952 U.S. presidential election, the American public begged Eisenhower to run for President.
Eisenhower (whose political views were unknown at the time) joined the Republican Party.
He chose Richard Nixon as his vice-presidential candidate and won the election by beating Adlai Stevenson II.
He served two terms from 1953 1961.
Eisenhower was the first President of the United States to be president of all 50 states.
During the beginning of his first term, he oversaw a ceasefire (which stopped the fighting) during the Korean War.
He created NASA (the United States space program) which began a space race against the Soviet Union.
Eisenhower believed that the United States should not try to fight wars overseas, but instead that United States should make more nuclear weapons so it could have an advantage in the Cold War.
The United States was able to keep the Soviet Union in check without spending a lot of money.
For this reason, the U.S. government had balanced budgets during his presidency and did not have to borrow money.
He intimidated the Soviet Union by making them believe that the United States would respond to any act of aggression with the use of nuclear weapons.
That policy is called brinkmanship, new look, and massive retaliation.
He also authorized planes to spy on the Soviet Union, but when a U.S. spy plane accidentally crashed into the Soviet Union near the end of Eisenhower 's term, it hurt relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
McCarthyism (when Senator Joseph McCarthy was accusing hundreds of people of being communist spies without evidence) was also an issue during his presidency.
Eisenhower disliked Joseph McCarthy and tried to bring him down behind the scenes, but Eisenhower did not like to make enemies, so he did not talk about McCarthy much.
Domestically (in the country), the economy was doing very well and the nation was prosperous.
Eisenhower supervised the creation of the interstate highway system and created the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
Eisenhower was a moderate conservative (near the center of the political spectrum).
He wanted to continue some New Deal programs such as Social Security, but at the same time, he wanted the government to be limited.
At first, many criticized him for not doing enough to give civil rights to African Americans, but later during his presidency, he signed two civil rights acts and sent federal troops to Topeka, Kansas to make sure schools were desegregated.
When Eisenhower 's presidency ended he was not very popular with scholars.
Over time his reputation slowly improved and historians now generally consider him to be a good president.
Dejima, sometimes also written as Decima or Dezima -RCB- -RCB- was a small fan-shaped artificial island in the bay of Nagasaki.
It was built in 1634.
The island was made by digging a canal through a small peninsula.
It was the only place of direct contact and trade between Japan and the outside world during the Edo period.
Dejima was built to keep foreign traders out of Japan as part of "sakoku" self-imposed isolationist policy.
It was built at first for Portuguese traders.
It then changed to a Chinese and Dutch trading post from 1641 until 1853.
It covers an area of 120 m x 75 m (9000 square meters, or 0.9 hectares) and has now become part of the city of Nagasaki.
"Dejima Dutch Trading Post" is now a Japanese national historic site.
In 1543 Portuguese traders were the first to set foot in Japan, on the island of Tanegashima.
Six years later Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier came to the island of Kyushu at Kagoshima.
At first Portuguese traders were based in Hirado.
Then they started a search for better port.
In 1570 a powerful landowner or daimyo called mura Sumitada became a Catholic.
(He chose Bartolomeu as his Christian name.)
He made a deal with the Portuguese to make Nagasaki better for trading.
Soon the port was open.
In 1580 Sumitada gave the jurisdiction of Nagasaki to the Jesuits.
The Portuguese became the only ones trading silk with China through Macau.
Shogun Iemitsu ordered the creation of the artificial island in 1634.
He did this at first to keep the Portuguese merchants living in Nagasaki in one area.
After a rebellion of the mostly Christian population in the Shimabara-Amakusa region, the Tokugawa government banned all Western nationals except the Dutch employees of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC).
Without the yearly Portuguese ships from Macau, the economy of Nagasaki suffered heavily.
Since 1609 the Dutch had a trading post on the island of Hirado.
Government officials made the Dutch move from Hirado to Dejima.
From 1641 on, only Chinese and Dutch ships were allowed to come to Japan.
Every ship that came to Dejima was inspected.
The sails were taken off until that ship was ready to leave.
Religious books and weapons were taken away.
Religious services were not allowed on the island.
The island of Dejima was part of the city of Nagasaki.
Dejima was small, 120 by 75 meters.
25 local Japanese families owned the land.
They got a yearly rent rent from the Dutch.
The island was linked to the mainland by a small bridge with guards.
There were houses for about twenty Dutchmen and warehouses for goods.
The Dutch were watched by a number of Japanese officials, gatekeepers and night watchmen.
There was also a head supervisor (otona) who had about fifty people working for him.
There were a number of traders to sell the people on Dejima food and drink and other items they needed.
There were also about 150 ts ji ("translators").
They all had to be paid by the VOC.
Like the city of Nagasaki, Dejima was under direct supervision of Edo by a governor (Nagasaki bugy).
It was very expensive for the Dutch to pay for their trading post.
But their trade with Japan was very profitable for the VOC.
At first they made profits of 50 % or more.
Trade became less in the 18th century.
This was because only two ships per year were allowed to dock at Dejima.
The VOC had no more money in 1795, and went bankrupt.
After that, the Dutch government took over the trade with Japan.
Life on Dejima became especially difficult when the Netherlands (then called the Batavian Republic) was under French Napoleonic rule.
All contact with the homeland was broken off.
For a time Dejima was the only place in the world where the Dutch flag was flown because they were not ruled by France.
The most important Dutch official in Dejima was called the Opperhoofd by the Dutch.
The Japanese also called him Kapitan (from Portuguese capit o).
Descriptive statistics is a branch of statistics.
Its aim is to summarize a set of statistical data.
The data are usually taken by sampling a population.
To picture the way the data are distributed, a histogram may be drawn.
The data may be summarized by computing some characterising values, like the "center" of the dat, and the "spread".
In some cases the different items of data will be grouped and the groups will be described, in some way.
Denis Diderot (; 5 October 1713 31 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic and writer.
He was a known figure during the Enlightenment.
He is best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor and contributor to the Encyclop die along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert.
Diderot died from pulmonary thrombosis in Paris, aged 70.
The diatonic scale is one of the scales used in music.
It is also called heptatonic scale, because it uses seven distinct pitch classes, or tones.
For each octave there are five whole steps and two half steps.
The two half steps are separated by two or three whole steps.
The word "diatonic" comes from the Greek, meaning progressing through tones.
The seven pitches of any diatonic scale can be obtained using a chain of six perfect fifths.
An example of this would be the seven natural pitches which form the C-major scale.
It can be constructed from a stack of perfect fifths starting from F: F C G D A E B This property of the diatonic scale is called Pythagorean tuning.
It was historically relevant and contributed to the worldwide diffusion of diatonic scales, because it allowed musicians to tune musical instruments easily by ear.
Any sequence of seven successive natural notes, such as C-D-E-F-G-A-B, and all transpositions, are diatonic scales.
Piano keyboards are designed to play natural notes, which are diatonic scales, with their white keys.
A diatonic scale can be also described as two tetrachords separated by a whole tone.
The term diatonic originally referred to the diatonic genus, one of the three genera of the ancient Greeks.
In musical set theory, Allen Forte classifies diatonic scales as set form 7 35.
The sequence of eight white keys on the piano is not diatonic, because there is a third half step, which is usually between the seventh and eigth note.
This scale is called whole-tone scale.
Another example for scales that are not diatonic are the Gypsy scales, which are often used for folk music.
D ng Xi op ng (, in English also written Teng Hsiao-p ` ing; 22 August 1904 19 February 1997) was an important Chinese revolutionary, politician and reformer.
He was the leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Deng never held office as the head of state or the head of government, but was the de facto leader of the People 's Republic of China from 1978 to the early 1990s.
Deng has often been described as practical due to his open market policies after the death of Mao, whilst not deviating much from the original socialist elements of the People 's Republic of China.
Deng died of an infection and Parkinson 's disease in Beijing.
Dilation and Curettage (D&C) is a type of surgery used to diagnose and treat problems with woman 's uterus.
A D&C can be used for many reasons.
For example:
Doctor Who is a BBC science fiction television series.
The series is about an alien time-traveller known as "the Doctor".
In his space-and-time-ship, the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space), the Doctor and his companions travel through space and time.
The television series ran from 1963 1989 and started running again in 2005.
It is the longest running science fiction television series in the world.
There were also two Doctor Who movies made in the 1960s.
Peter Cushing played the Doctor in these movies, but he was not the Doctor in the television series.
In 1996, there was also a television movie starring Paul McGann.
There have been many print versions of Doctor Who in books, comics, etc.
The story is about a man who calls himself "The Doctor".
He travels in his space-time-ship TARDIS ("Time And Relative Dimension In Space"), with which he can go anywhere in time and space.
Because of an error in its chameleon circuit, the outside of the TARDIS always looks like a 1960s-style British police public call box (similar to a blue telephone box), but on the inside the TARDIS is much bigger.
The Doctor is an alien, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey.
At first, he traveled only with his granddaughter Susan Foreman.
Later, the Doctor took other people with him.
They are usually called "companions" or "assistants".
The Doctor and his companions travel through space and time, have a lot of adventures, and often save many people.
Some people think that it is not okay to call the Doctor "Doctor Who", but there is no mistake.
The character was named Doctor Who in the titles until the Fifth Doctor, and after the 2005 restart the Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, is called Doctor Who in the titles too.
The Second Doctor once signed a letter as "Dr W.".
Doctor Who was first shown in 1963, with William Hartnell as the Doctor.
When Hartnell left the show in 1966, the writers came up with the idea that the Doctor would regenerate (at the time called renewal) and transform into the Second Doctor, who was played by Patrick Troughton.
In 1970, when Jon Pertwee took over as the Third Doctor, the series switched from black-and-white to color.
Before 1978, the BBC would sometimes throw away episodes they did not need.
As a result, 97 of the 800 episodes are missing.
Seven actors played the Doctor from 1963 until 1989, when the series stopped.
In 1996, the BBC teamed with Fox Broadcasting Company and Universal Pictures to create a film version, in which Paul McGann played the Eighth Doctor.
It was hoped that the film would lead to a new series, but this did not happen.
Instead, the series started again in 2005, with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor.
He was replaced by David Tennant at the end of the series.
The actor who now plays the Doctor is Peter Capaldi, who joined the show in the 2013 Christmas episode.
In the Guinness World Records, Doctor Who is listed as the longest running science fiction television series in the world.
In 2013, it celebrated its 50th birthday with a special episode.
The Doctor is the central character of Doctor Who.
He is an alien, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey.
The Doctor often takes other people with him, who are usually called "companions" or "assistants" (or, due to a misunderstanding, "partners").
They are most often human.
The most recent companion was Clara Oswald, played by Jenna Coleman.
As a Gallifreyan, the Doctor looks human on the surface.
However, there are differences.
For example, he has two hearts.
Also, if badly injured or dying, he can regenerate.
During the regeneration, his body heals and renews itself.
Then, he takes on a different appearance and personality.
He is the same person (sort of) with the same memories and knowledge.
But, he looks different and has a new personality.
Because of this, the Doctor can be played by different actors.
And in nearly fifty years, this is why the character has not actually "changed".
Up until now, the Doctor has regenerated thirteen times, and each "incarnation" was played by a different actor (except for the Tenth Doctor, who used up two regenerations by using the regeneration energy from his hand that had been chopped of in The Christmas Invasion).
(Numbers refer to incarnations that used up regenerations)
The Doctor has been played by 11 actors in other media: theater plays, parodies, etc..
These are not officially part of the Doctor Who story.
The movies Dr. Who & the Daleks and Daleks ' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. star Peter Cushing as a human scientist named Doctor Who.
Shortly after it was announced that the series would return from its nineties hiatus, Richard E. Grant voiced The Doctor in an animated serial.
The BBC issued press releases identifying Grant as the "ninth Doctor" but this was later disregarded by the revived BBC television series.
Sometimes different incarnations of the Doctor meet each other.
Usually episodes with several Doctors are made when the program celebrates an anniversary.
In 1973, when the show was 10 years old, the episode "The Three Doctors" was shown.
It had the first three Doctors.
In 1983, there was the 20th anniversary special.
"The Five Doctors".
Patrick Troughton, John Pertwee, Peter Davison and Richard Hundall (replacing William Hartnell) played The Doctor.
Tom Baker refused to play in it, so they used the old footage of the incomplete "Shada" episode to show him.
In 1985, there was the episode "The Two Doctors", with the Second and the Sixth Doctors.
The fifth Doctor met the tenth incarnation in mini-episode named "Time Crash".
It was aired in 2007.
The Tenth, Eleventh, and War Doctors met each other in the 50th anniversary special in November 2013.
That was the first time the War Doctor was seen.
That special had short appearances by all the other Doctors with the use of old, recycled footage.
It also had a mysterious version of the Doctor from the far off future played by Tom Baker.
The Eighth Doctor also made a return in 2013 for a 50th anniversary special mini-episode.
On August 4, 2013, Peter Capaldi was revealed as the actor who would play the Twelfth Doctor.
The TARDIS is the Doctor 's time machine.
It can travel to any point in time and space, but the Doctor can never fully control it.
The Doctor explains that TARDISes are not built, but they are grown like plants.
The TARDIS is alive and has a mind of its own.
In the episode The Doctor 's Wife when the Doctor is able to communicate directly with its mind, the TARDIS explains that it did not always take him where he wanted to go, wanted to go but that "I always took you where you needed to go."
On the inside, the TARDIS looks like a giant spaceship, but on the outside it looks like a police telephone box.
These telephone boxes were still a common sight in many British cities when the series first began in 1963, but after the walkie-talkie was invented they were no longer needed.
They were used by the police as workstations - and people could also use them to call the police.
The Doctor stole the TARDIS from a Time Lord museum when he began his travels.
It was described as being a rather old "Type 40" model, whereas the best version is the "Type 70" used by the upper class Time Lords.
The TARDIS has a device called the chameleon circuit which is supposed to change its shape on the outside to allow it to disguise it.
In the very first story, this device stopped working and left the TARDIS stuck in the shape of a police box.
The farthest the Doctor has ever traveled in the TARDIS is to the Big Bang (the beginning of the Universe) and 100 trillion years into the future (the end of the Universe) (in the episode "Utopia").
The inside of the TARDIS is much bigger than its outside (it is "dimensionally transcendental").
It has a lot of different rooms.
The most important of which is the "console room" where the Doctor pilots the TARDIS.
TARDIS stands for "Time And Relative Dimension\/s In Space".
The Doctor usually takes other people with him, who are usually called "companions" or "assistants".
The Doctor and his companions travel through space and time, have a lot of adventures, and often save many people.
The character of the companion was there so that the people watching the series could identify and feel close to a character.
The companions were often present-time humans, so people could feel close to them, and they knew as much as the viewers.
Because of this, the Doctor could explain things to his companions, and at the same time to the viewers.
Almost all the Doctor 's companions have been human, or human-looking aliens.
Two companions were robots.
The Daleks are one of the most powerful races in the Doctor Who history.
They are the Doctor 's worst enemies.
They cry "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"
when they are about to kill someone.
They look like small tanks or very large pepper pots.
They first appeared in the first season episode "The Daleks".
A more recent episode was "Into the Dalek" (2014).
They are not robots, but horrible aliens kept in a metal casing.
They were mutated from Kaleds by their creator Davros during a war on their planet, Skaro.
They can not be easily hurt by guns because their casing reflects or destroys the bullets.
Cybermen are another enemy of the Doctor.
They are one of his worst enemies.
In the original series, they come from the planet Mondas.
In the new series, they come from a parallel universe.
Cybermen travel across the universe taking people and turning them into machines.
They stomp around saying "DELETE!".
They kill by electrocution.
They are vulnerable to the metal gold, and can be killed by gold bullets.
They change their look over time, but stay recognizable by "handlebars" on their heads.
The Doctor has faced them many times.
The first was in "The Tenth Planet" (William Hartnell 's final episode).
A more recent episode was "Death in Heaven" (a Peter Capaldi episode).
The Sontarans are a group of aliens that believe in war over anything else.
They must face their enemy in combat because of their weak spot on the back of their neck.
They have been said to look like baked potatoes.
The Doctor first met them in The Time Warrior (Jon Pertwee).
They have been on the show and its spinoffs repeatedly.
The Sea Devils and the Silurians lived in the time of the dinosaurs until the catastrophe of the Moon 's approach drove them into hibernation.
They slept longer than planned and emerged late in the 20th century.
The human scientist who discovered the Silurians estimated their era incorrectly.
A later Doctor Who story said that they should have been classified as the Eocines.
A second species of hibernating Earth reptiles lived primarily underwater.
They were labeled "sea devils" by a frightened, superstitious construction worker who encountered them.
The Time Lords are the alien race which the Doctor belongs to.
They have two hearts.
They can avoid dying by regeneration (transforming their bodies).
The Time Lords were in some episodes in the classic series.
Sometimes they were allies of the Doctor (at one point he became their president).
Other times they were enemies.
The Time Lords came from the planet Gallifrey.
When the series returned in 2005, the Time Lords had disappeared in the "Time War".
This was a very big war with the Daleks.
The Doctor explained that he stopped the war by destroying Gallifrey, killing all of the Time Lords and Daleks.
He believed he was the last of the Time Lords, until he discovered that the Master had also survived.
Jenny, who was created artificially in The Doctor 's Daughter, is not a true Time Lord.
For many years, the Doctor felt sorry for destroying Gallifrey.
In the 2013 episode The Day of the Doctor, the Doctor learns that he did not actually destroy his planet, but that he had moved it to another universe.
The Master is a renegade Time Lord.
He is the Doctor 's nemesis.
He was conceived as "Professor Moriarty to the Doctor 's Sherlock Holmes".
The character first appeared in 1971, played by Roger Delgado.
He continued in the role until his death in 1973.
The Master was briefly played by Peter Pratt and Geoffrey Beevers until Anthony Ainley took over.
He continued to play the character until Doctor Who 's "hiatus" in 1989.
The Master returned in the 1996 television movie of Doctor Who, played by Gordon Tipple in the ultimately unused pre-credits voiceover, then Eric Roberts.
The Master was in the three-part finale of the 2007 series, portrayed by Derek Jacobi.
He regenerated into John Simm at the end of the episode "Utopia".
Simm next appeared in the last (and two-part) episode of the Tenth Doctor in 2009\/2010.
He then regenerated off-screen into a Time Lady (Michelle Gomez), who returned for the Twelfth Doctor 's first series in 2014.
An ice warrior is a species of war-like alien.
They previously lived on the planet Mars and ate Martian fish.
When their home planet became too hot for them to live in, they moved to planets such as Peladon.
As of 2015, the Doctor has been played by thirteen actors.
When Time Lords are dying, they "regenerate."
This causes a Time Lord 's body to completely change, healing itself at the same time.
Each time this happens, Time Lords have a different appearance and a different personality.
Even with such big changes, Time Lords do not become different people, and will keep their memories each time they "regenerate."
This periodic change makes them live a very long time.
A Time Lord is believed to only be able to regenerate 12 times.
This means that Time Lords can have a total of 13 different incarnations.
This line became stuck in the public consciousness despite not often being repeated, and was recognized by producers of the show as a plot obstacle for when the show finally had to regenerate the Doctor a thirteenth time.
The episode "The Time of the Doctor" depicted the Doctor acquiring a new cycle of regenerations, starting from the Twelfth Doctor, due to the Eleventh Doctor being the product of the Doctor 's twelfth regeneration from his original set.
A criminal incarnation of the Doctor was somehow spawned between his 12th and final lives.
It tried to sacrifice the sixth Doctor so that he could obtain more "regenerations," allowing himself to live even longer.
The Master was already in his 13th life when he was introduced to the series.
His 14th and 15th (and possibly later) incarnations were obtained by taking over the bodies of innocent victims.
When the character returned to the show in 2007, the Master was in his 16th (or later) incarnation.
Soon, he regenerates into his (~) 17th incarnation.
Later, he explains that the Time Lords resurrected him to be a great soldier when the Time Lords were fighting the Daleks in the Time War.
It is likely that, having been resurrected, he had 12 more regenerations available to him.
A Time Lord can choose not to regenerate.
It appears that the process happens all on its own when a Time Lord is dying.
But, it can be stopped if the Time Lord does not want to regenerate.
This was seen when the (~) 17th incarnation of the Master chose to die from a gunshot wound instead of living on as a prisoner in the Doctor 's TARDIS.
A Time Lord 's body makes a huge amount of energy when regenerating.
There is so much of this "regeneration energy" that a Time Lord can regrow a body part that gets removed, as long as it happens soon enough after regenerating.
When the Doctor regenerated into his 10th incarnation, his hand was cut off in a sword fight.
Because it had been less than 15 hours since he had regenerated into this incarnation, he was able to quickly grow a new hand.
If a Time Lord has kept a part of his or her body that had been removed (like the 10th Doctor 's hand, from before), it can be used to keep a Time Lord from changing during regeneration.
The 10th incarnation of the Doctor kept the hand that was cut off in the sword fight in a jar on board the TARDIS.
Eventually, he was shot by a Dalek, and his body began the regeneration process.
After his body had finished healing, but before his body could change into a new one, the Doctor sent all of the extra energy into the hand in the jar.
460 BC - died ca 370 BC).
Democritus was a student of Leucippus and both believed that all matter is made up of tiny, indestructible bits which he called atoma or "indivisible units", from which we get the English word atom.
Democritus is well known for his atomic theory.
Democritus said that:
Democritus had no hard evidence.
He came to these ideas simply by thinking about them.
However, his ideas turned out to be somewhat close to what was discovered over 2000 years after his death.
The decimal is a way of managing numbers that has ten as a starting point, or base.
It is sometimes called the base ten or denary numeral system.
The word "decimal" is also used instead of the word "period" to point out the dot that is sometimes used to separate the positions of the numbers in this system.
Almost everyone uses this nowadays and prefers the convenience of it probably because it shows up most often in calculations in nature and has "one" as another starting point for the system.
The number one is usually the easiest to work with in calculations.
These digits are often used with a decimal separator which indicates the start of a fractional part, and with one of the sign symbols + (positive) or (negative) in front of the numerals to indicate sign.
There are only two truly positional decimal systems in ancient civilization, the Chinese counting rods system and Hindu-Arabic numeric system.
Both required no more than ten symbols.
Other numeric systems require more symbols.
Any rational number can be expressed as a unique decimal expansion ending with recurring decimals.
Ten is the product of the first and third prime numbers, is one greater than the square of the second prime number, and is one less than the fifth prime number.
This leads to plenty of simple decimal fractions:
1\/2 = 0.5 1\/3 = 0.333333... (with 3 repeating forever, also called recurring) 1\/4 = 0.25 1\/5 = 0.2 1\/6 = 0.166666... (with 6 recurring) 1\/7 = 0.142857... (with 142857 recurring) 1\/8 = 0.125 1\/9 = 0.111111... (with 1 recurring) 1\/10 = 0.1 1\/11 = 0.090909... (with 09 recurring) 1\/12 = 0.083333... (with 3 recurring) 5\/10 = 0.5 1\/81 = 0.012345679012... (with 012345679 recurring)
A straightforward decimal system, in which 11 is expressed as ten-one and 23 as two-ten-three, is found in Chinese languages except Wu, and in Vietnamese with a few irregularities.
Japanese, Korean, and Thai have imported the Chinese decimal system.
Many other languages with a decimal system have special words for teens and decades.
Incan languages such as Quechua and Aymara have an almost straightforward decimal system, in which 11 is expressed as ten with one and 23 as two-ten with three.
Some psychologists suggest irregularities of numerals in a language may hinder children 's counting ability.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is one of the most important papers of the French Revolution.
This paper explains a list of rights, such as freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and separation of powers.
All men have these rights.
It also talks about some rights many people have together.
This paper was written using some of the ideas of natural rights, these rights are for all men: they are supposed to be valid in all times and places.
They are said to be rights of human nature.
The last idea of the Declaration was accepted on 26 August 1789, by the National Constituent Assembly (Assembl e nationale constituante).
It was a very important first thing to do before the people could write a constitution.
The paper explained these basic rights, not only for French people but for all men without exception, it did not say anything about the rights or role of women.
It also did not talk about slavery.
People now think that it was an important step towards international human rights or Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"First Article Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.
Social distinctions can be founded only on the common utility."
The ideas written in the declaration are important in French law today.
They can be used to fight or change new laws or other government actions.
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (b. September 9, 1941; found dead October 12, 2011), was an American computer scientist who "helped shape the digital era."
He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the UNIX operating system.
Ritchie and Thompson received the Turing Award from the ACM in 1983, the Hamming Medal from the IEEE in 1990 and the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton in 1999.
Ritchie was the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he retired in 2007.
He was the ` R ' in K&R C.
Death is the end of life in an organism.
All biological and living activity of the living thing stop, including the mind and the senses.
The usual signal for death is that the heart stops beating and can not be restarted.
This can be caused by many things.
All living things have a limited lifespan, and all living things eventually die.
Living things which have died are normally described as being dead.
Death of humans is often investigated for the cause, in case of crime (such as murder) or disease that may continue to kill other humans.
About 150,000 people die every day around the world.
About two thirds of these people die because of age.
In addition to the physical body, some believe humans also have a soul and believe that the soul can continue without a body (afterlife), move into another body (reincarnation), or cease to exist (annihilationism).
Religions have different beliefs about this issue.
Many cultures have their own customs and rituals to respect the dead.
When people talk about things or events that lead to the death of a plant or animal, those things or events are usually described as being deadly, or fatal.
In the case of diseases, they are described as terminal.
Humans are no different from any other lifeform.
Our bodies have an ability for self-repair, but that ability is limited.
Finding the cause of death is a medical speciality called pathology.
In medicine, death is when the heart stops beating for more than several minutes.
There are special times in which people recover even though the heart has stopped for 30 minutes, such as near-drowning in very cold water.
If machines are used to help the heart and lungs work, then the moment of death is more difficult to know.
Death is commonly a sad or unpleasant thing to people.
It can make people think about their own death.
People might miss the person who has died.
They might also be sad for the family and friends of the person who has died.
In any society, human death is surrounded by ritual - a wake or funeral is normal.
In some places it was common to eat the dead in a form of ritual cannibalism.
But this is no longer common, in part because disease like kuru can be passed this way.
Human dead bodies are taboo in most societies and must be handled in special ways - for a combination of religious and hygiene reasons.
A human dead body must always be reported in law, to be sure it is disposed of properly.
Finding the cause of any human death and stopping a similar death from happening to someone else are the main reasons people look into human morbidity or let dead bodies be cut open and looked at in an autopsy.
Some religions do not allow autopsies, because they feel the body is holy.
Autopsies are usually required by the state if someone dies and people do not know why.
The autopsy helps find out if someone killed the person on purpose, tried to hurt them, or if they died from a sickness.
To prepare for their own death, humans can write a last will and testament to be clear about who gets their property.
A person will sometimes also volunteer to be an organ donor.
This might mean giving the whole body to medical research.
It can also save the lives of others by making organ transplants possible.
For a long time, many people have been afraid of death and a lot of people have wondered about what may happen to people after they die.
This is one of the largest questions of philosophy and religion.
Many people believe there is some form of afterlife.
Ancient rulers sometimes did insist not only that their own bodies, and much property, but even their servants and relatives be destroyed at their funeral.
In India this ritual still does sometimes occur.
Old women sometimes carry guns in case their husband 's relatives come to throw them on the funeral fire.
Christianity has a special focus on death because of the state killing of Jesus Christ by the Romans.
In Islam this is thought to demonstrate the injustice of human systems of dealing out death, and the ability of the best people to overcome it and even forgive it.
In Christianity itself it is thought to prove that Jesus himself was really God and so could lose his body and still have the power of resurrection.
In Buddhism reincarnation is believed to occur.
Reincarnation is an idea taken from Hinduism.
Confucianism advises respect for parents and forms of ancestor worship to respect both dead and living ancestors.
Every ethical tradition including the medical view of the body has some ritual surrounding death.
Often these excuse behaviors that might be hated if they did not have the ritual.
For instance, one may say that organ transplant is like cannibalism.
Very much of what happens at a human death is ritual.
People who wish theirs to be dealt with a certain way, and who wish a particular treatment like cremation of their body, should decide in advance and set up the necessary payments and agreements.
This makes it much easier for their family after they die, since there is no longer the ability to clearly communicate the wish.
For the same reason, saying goodbye is important.
Most of the stress of death seems to come for loved ones who "did not have a chance to say goodbye".
Maybe it is to relieve this stress that rituals are created, and to bring together those that knew someone so that the personal experience a person can no longer communicate for themselves, can be exchanged by others.
Some ritual, such as seances, claim to allow people to speak to the dead.
This is not claimed to be very reliable, both by scientists and even by those who do them very often.
Aside from wills, goodbyes, organ donations and funerals, there is important personal experience to decide to pass on, or not, when someone knows they may soon die.
Palliative care focuses on basic decisions people make when they are very close to the end of their lives, and it ensures someone is always available to talk to them.
It is a replacement for heroic medical intervention that may keep them physically alive but with no quality of life.
Human psychology must prepare for death if it is anything other than a quick surprise:
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote that there were several stages in dying, of which denial was the first, and acceptance was the last.
Recording one 's life is often something people with acceptance will do to leave a memoir or a full autobiography:
Because events leave living memory, and may only be part of oral tradition, there are projects to record everything that people remember about World War I and the Shoah.
The first of these was to record everything remembered about the U.S. Civil War.
This discipline has changed history since we have so many more first person accounts of the times, and made social history much more standard.
There are other terms for death.
Examples are, "to pass away", "to go to a better place", "to buy the farm" (generally used in the military), "to leave the earth", and "to kick the bucket".
the term gone may also be a term for describing death.
for example: if a person has died, they are also said to be gone, as in gone to a better place.
Danish is the Germanic language spoken in Denmark, the Faroe Islands, and parts of Greenland and Germany (Southern Schleswig).
Around 5.5 million people speak Danish.
It is used as a second language in Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
The Danish people, or Danes, call their language dansk.
Demeter is the goddess of farming in Greek mythology.
She is one of the Twelve Olympians.
She is the daughter of Kronos and Rhea, and also the sister of Zeus.
As a fertility goddess, she is sometimes identified with Rhea and Gaia.
She is the mother of Persephone.
Demeter brings forth fruits of the earth, particularly the various grains.
Her sacred animals were the snake and the pig.
She is also the sister of Hera, Zeus, Posiden and Hades.
Demeter was most often kind and generous.
Death metal is a style of heavy metal that is a very fast, brutal and energetic.
It has very harsh singing.
Most death metal has very fast guitar and drum beats.
Almost every death metal drummer plays with two bass drums (or a type of pedal that has two beaters on one bass drum), so that they can play the bass drum beats faster.
It is a music focused mainly on drums and guitars.
The lyrics in death metal sometimes involve topics such as death, war and pain.
Some bands choose to write about philosophy or religion.
Some bands try to write about things that other death metal bands do not write about such as ancient history.
Death metal vocalists usually grunt, growl or scream.
Don Quixote is a novel by Miguel de Cervantes.
The book, published in two parts (1605 and 1615) is considered to be the first modern novel.
It was first written in Spanish, and soon afterwards was translated to English by Thomas Shelton.
It is about Alonso Quixano, a rich middle-aged man.
Quixano, having read many tales about chivalry and knights, goes crazy and believes that he is a knight named Don Quixote.
He rides around the country with his squire, Sancho, having adventures.
He believes his adventures are real, but everyone else laughs at him.
One of the most famous stories in the book is Don Quixote 's fight with the windmills.
He sees some windmills and thinks they are giants.
When he rides to fight with them, he is knocked off his horse.
Sancho tells him they are only windmills, but Don Quixote does not believe him.
He is sure a magician changed windmills into the giants to hurt him.
At the end of the book, Alonso Quixano returns home, hurt badly.
He becomes sane again, then dies.
Debian is a free operating system.
It is a distribution of an operating system known as the GNU operating system, which can be used with various kernels, including Linux, kFreeBSD, and Hurd.
In combination with these kernels, the operating system can be referred to as Debian GNU\/Linux, Debian GNU\/kFreeBSD, and Debian GNU\/Hurd, respectively.
Debian GNU\/Linux is one of the most complete and popular GNU\/Linux distributions, on which many others, like Ubuntu, are based.
The Debian Project officially started on August 16th, 1993, led by Ian Murdock.
He was a computer programmer.
Today, in this project, Debian is developed by more than 1,000 computer specialists all over the world.
The name "Debian" was taken after Ian Murdock and his wife Debra.
Some people say or pronounce ` deb-ee-n ' but others also say ` de-bi-an ' or ` de-bai-an ' and in Japan ` de-bi-a-n ' and so on.
Software packages in development are either uploaded to the project distribution named unstable (also known as sid), or to the experimental repository.
Software packages uploaded to unstable are normally versions stable enough to be released by the original upstream developer, but with the added Debian-specific packaging and other modifications introduced by Debian developers.
These additions may be new and untested.
Software not ready yet for the unstable distribution is typically placed in the experimental repository.
After a version of a software package has remained in unstable for a certain length of time (depending on how urgent the changes are), that package is automatically moved to the testing distribution.
The package 's move to testing happens only if no serious (release-critical) bugs in the package are reported and if other software needed for package functionality qualifies for inclusion in testing.
Since updates to Debian software packages between official releases do not contain new features, some choose to use the testing and unstable distributions for their newer packages.
However, these distributions are less tested than stable, and unstable does not receive timely security updates.
In particular, incautious upgrades to working unstable packages can sometimes seriously break software functionality.
Since September 9, 2005 the testing distributions security updates have been provided by the testing security team.
After the packages in testing have matured and the goals for the next release are met, the testing distribution becomes the next stable release.
The latest stable release of Debian (Squeeze) is 6.0, released on February 6, 2011.
The next release is codenamed "Wheezy".
Due to an incident involving a CD vendor who made an unofficial and broken release labeled 1.0, an official 1.0 release was never made.
Debian 's official software package repository includes, for example, UNetbootin.
Dice are objects used in games when something random needs to be done, such as moving a piece a random number of places on a board.
Most dice are cubes that have the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 on the faces.
Dice are sometimes made in other shapes than cubes, but the six-sided die (die is the singular of "dice") is the most common.
A die is usually rolled by the player s hand.
When calculating together opposite sides of typical dice, result is always 7.
Some games are played with two dice and some use only one.
Some games that use dice are Monopoly, Yahtzee, Risk, Dungeons and Dragons, and many more.
Dice with different numbers of sides are called polyhedral dice.
Weights can be put inside a die to make it only land on a certain number once it is rolled.
Dayton is a large city in the American state of Ohio.
It is where Orville and Wilbur Wright grew up.
The Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, also near Dayton, gets part of its name from the Wright brothers.
The National Museum of the United States Air Force is inside the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
A diode is an electronic component with two electrodes (connectors).
It allows electricity to go through it only in one direction.
Diodes can be used to convert alternating current to direct current (Diode bridge).
They are often used in power supplies and sometimes to decode amplitude modulation radio signals (like in a crystal radio).
Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are a type of diode that produce light.
Today, the most common diodes are made from semiconductor materials such as silicon or sometimes germanium.
The first types of diodes were called Fleming valves.
They worked inside a glass tube (much like a light bulb).
Inside the glass bulb there was a small metal wire and a large metal plate.
The small metal wire would heat up and emit electricity, which was captured by the plate.
The large metal plate was not heated so electricity could go in one direction through the tube but not in the other direction.
Fleming valves are not used much anymore because they have been replaced by semiconductor diodes.
Thomas Edison also discovered this property when working on his light bulbs.
Semiconductor diodes are made of two types of semiconductors connected to each other.
One type has atoms with extra electrons (called the n-side).
The other type has atoms that want electrons (called the p-side).
Because of this, the electricity will flow easily from the side with too many electrons to the side with too few.
However, electricity will not flow easily in the reverse direction.
Silicon with arsenic dissolved in it makes a good n-side semiconductor, while silicon with aluminum dissolved in it makes a good p-side semiconductor, but other materials can also work.
The connector to the n-side is called the cathode, the connector to the p-side is called the anode.
If you give positive voltage to the p-side and negative voltage to the n-side, the electrons in the n-side will want to go to the positive voltage at the p-side and the holes of the p-side will want to go to the negative voltage at the n-side.
Because of this, current flow is able to exist, but it takes a certain amount of voltage to get this started (very small amount of voltage is not enough to get the electric current to flow).
This is called the cut-in voltage.
The cut-in voltage of a silicon diode is at about 0.7 V. A germanium diode needs a cut-in voltage at about 0.3 V.
If you instead give negative voltage to the p-side and positive voltage to the n-side, the electrons of the n-side want to go to the positive voltage source instead of the other side of the diode.
Same thing happens on the p-side.
So, current will not flow between the two sides of the diode.
Increasing the voltage will eventually force electric current to flow (this is the break-down voltage).
Many diodes will be destroyed by a reverse flow but some are made that can survive it.
When the temperature increases, the cut-in voltage goes down.
This makes it easier for electricity to pass through the diode.
There are many types of diodes.
Some have very specific uses and some have a variety of uses.
This changes A\/C (alternating current, like in a wall plug in a house) to D\/C (direct current, used in electronics).
The standard rectifier diode works like a normal diode, with specific requirements.
It should handle high current, not be affected by temperature, have a low cut-in voltage and support quick changes in the direction of current flow.
They are used in all of modern analog and digital electronics.
An LED produces light when electricity flows through it.
It is a longer lasting and more efficient way of creating light than incandescent light bulbs.
Depending on how it was made, the LED can make different colors.
LEDs were first used in the 1970 's.
The light-emitting diode may eventually replace the light bulb as developing technology makes it brighter and cheaper (it is already more efficient and lasts longer).
In the 1970 's the LEDs were used to show numbers in appliances such as calculators, and as a way to show the power was on for larger appliances.
A photodiode is a photo detector (the opposite of a light-emitting diode).
It responds to light that comes in.
Photodiodes have a window or optical fiber connection, which lets light in to the sensitive part of the diode.
Diodes usually have strong resistance; the light reduces the resistance.
A zener diode is like a normal diode, but instead of being destroyed by a big reverse voltage, it lets electricity through.
The voltage needed for this is called the breakdown voltage or Zener voltage.
Because it is built with a known breakdown voltage it can be used supply a known voltage.
The varicap or varactor diode is used in many appliances.
It uses the region between the p-side and n-side of the diode where electrons and holes balance each other.
This is called the depletion zone.
By changing the amount of reverse voltage, the size of the depletion zone changes.
There is some capacitance in this area, and it changes based on the size of the depletion zone.
This is called variable capacitance, or varicap for short.
It is used in PLLs (Phase-locked loops) which are used to control the high-speed frequency a chip runs at.
The symbol is the symbol of a diode with a kind of snag.
It is used in circuits with high frequencies up to GHz.
It turns off very quickly when the forward voltage stops.
It uses the current that flows after the polarity was reversed to do this.
The construction of this diode has an intrinsic (normal) layer between the n - and the p-sides.
At slower frequencies, it acts much like a standard diode.
But at high speeds it ca n't keep up with fast changes and starts to act like a resistor.
The intrinsic layer also lets it handle high power inputs, and can be used as a photodiode.
The symbol of this is the diode symbol, with an S at the peak.
Instead of both sides being a semiconductor (like silicon), one side is metal, like aluminum or nickel.
This reduces the cut-in voltage to about 0.3 volt.
This is about half of the threshold voltage of a usual diode.
The function of this diode is that no minority carriers are injected - the n-side only has holes, not electrons, and the p-side only has electrons, not holes.
Because this is cleaner, it can react faster, without diffusion capacitance that can slow it down.
It also creates less heat and is more efficient.
But it does has some current leakage with reverse voltage.
When a diode switches from moving current to not moving current, this is known as switching.
It takes dozens of nanoseconds in a typical diode; this creates some radio noise, which temporarily degrades radio signals.
The Schottky diode switches in a small fraction of that time, less than a nanosecond.
In the symbol of the tunnel diode there s a kind of additional square bracket at the end of the usual symbol.
A tunnel diode consists of a highly doped pn-junction.
Because of this high doping, there is only a very narrow gap where the electrons are able to pass through.
This tunnel-effect appears in both directions.
After a certain amount of electrons have passed, the current through the gap decreases, until the normal current through the diode at the threshold voltage begins.
This causes an area of a negative resistance.
These diodes are used to deal with really high frequencies (100 GHz).
It 's also resistant to radiation, so they are used in spacecraft.
They are also used in microwaves and refrigerators.
The symbol has at the end of the diode a sign that looks like a big I. It is made similar to the tunnel diode, but the n - and the p-layer aren t doped as high.
It allows current to flow backwards with small negative voltages.
It can be used to rectify low voltages (less than 0.7 volts).
Instead of two layers like a normal diode, this has four layers, it is basically two diodes put together, with a gate in the middle.
When voltage goes between the gate and the cathode the lower transistor will turn on.
This lets the current go through, which activates the upper transistor, and then the current will not need to be turned on by a gate voltage.
Drexel University is a university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States.
Daedalus was King Minos ' head architect in ancient Greece and son of Athena.
When King Minos of Crete was having some sovereignty problems, he asked Poseidon, god of the sea, for an offering to sacrifice to him as a sign as true kingship.
So Poseidon sent a snow-white bull straight out of the sea foam.
Once the people of Crete saw the bull, they all agreed that it was a sign of true kingship.
However, once King Minos saw the bull, he refused to sacrifice the bull, kept it for himself, and sacrificed another bull to Poseidon, thus angering him.
Poseidon put a curse on Minos wife, making her fall in love with the bull.
She loved it so much that she wanted to mate with it.
Minos called for the help of Daedalus, who built a wooden bull and put Queen Pasiphae inside it, thus calming her anxiety for mating with the bull.
She soon became pregnant with half-man, half-bull (also called the Minotaur).
King Minos was horrified and asked Daedalus to build some kind of prison to keep the Minotaur from destroying Crete.
So Daedalus built a labyrinth that was so complicated that the Minotaur could not get out.
Only Daedalus knew the course of the labyrinth.
Minos was afraid that Daedalus would tell the route through the labyrinth, and that he would tell that the Minotaur was the son of Minos ' wife, he imprisoned Daedalus and his son Icarus, in a high tower.
Daedalus made some wings that he strapped to his and Icarus arms and together they escaped from the tower.
However, Icarus, forgetting his father s words, flew too close to the sun, and the wax that held the feathers together melted.
Icarus fell into the ocean and drowned.
Daedalus landed safely on an island, and in grief, he named the sea that he and Icarus had flown across the Icarian Sea.
Dominoes is a game played with small tiles called dominoes.
A domino is a rectangular tile with a line in the middle that separates it into two sides.
Each side has a number of black spots.
The number of spots is different on each domino.
Some dominoes have a side that is blank.
The games possible with these objects resemble card games.
Dimensional analysis is a method used in chemistry, physics, and other sciences.
It is used to convert measurements and to find out something 's dimensions.
Sometimes it is called factor label method or unit analysis.
Any math done with numbers must also be done with their unit labels.
For example, when dividing 50 miles driven by 2 gallons of gas used, you not only divide 50 by 2 to get a result of 25, you also have to divide "miles" by "gallons", which gives the unit "miles\/gallon" or "miles per gallon".
The final answer is "25 miles per gallon".
Looking at the unit labels can help in choosing what to do with the numbers.
For example, to convert 2.3 miles to some number of meters, use the equation "1609.34 meters equals one mile" or 1609.34 meters per mile.
Using division, the unit labels will be miles\/meters\/mile, which ends up as miles2\/meter, which is not just the meters.
With multiplication, the unit labels will be miles meters\/mile.
The miles will cancel, leaving just meters.
Digital television is television broadcasting using digital signals.
With digital television, more than one program can be sent at a time in the same channel bandwidth.
Digital television has replaced analog television in many countries.
These countries include Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The Declaration of Arbroath is a declaration of Scottish independence, made in 1320.
It was a letter sent to Pope John XXII, dated 6 April 1320.
The declaration confirmed Scotland 's status as a independent, sovereign state and defended Scotland 's right to use military action when unjustly attacked.
The letter was signed at Arbroath by eight earls and thirty-one barons.
When King Alexander III of Scotland died in 1086, his heir was his granddaughter Margaret, Maid of Norway.
King Edward I of England negotiated to have his son, Edward II of England become her husband and share the crown of Scotland in 1289.
But Margaret died on her way from Norway to Scotland in 1290.
This began a period in Scotland called the First Interregnum (1290 1292).
Scotland was without a monarch.
Edward I stepped in to choose who would be king from among the candidates who had any claim to be king.
He chose John of Scotland.
But Edward treated the Scottish king badly.
When King John tried to break free, Edward put him in prison, then allowed him to live in France.
In 1296 Edward invaded Scotland with his army to take everything for himself.
Scotland remained without a king until 1306 when Robert the Bruce declared himself king of Scotland defying Edward I. Just before doing this Robert the Bruce had been involved in a dispute with John Comyn.
The two met before the altar in Greyfriars Church in Dumfries in 1306 and a fight broke out.
John Comyn was killed and Robert the Bruce was crowned king three weeks later at Scone.
Accused of murdering Comyn Bruce was excommunicated by the Pope.
During the wars that followed the Scots won a major battle at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.
In 1317 the pope called for a two year truce which Scotland ignored.
For failing to listen to him he excommunicated all of Scotland.
The Declaration was part of a larger plan to show the Pope and others that Scotland was an independent kingdom and had a right to rule itself.
The English king Edward I had written to the pope before confirming his right to rule Scotland.
For his part the pope refused to accept Robert the Bruce as the king of Scotland.
Dated April 1320 the Declaration of Arbroath was a letter to Pope John XXII at Avignon from fifty leading men of Scotland.
There were 39 names, (eight Scottish earls and thirty one barons), who signed the document with their seals.
On strips on the bottom of the letter are seals and names of eleven more who signed.
Bernard Linton, Chancellor of Scotland and Abbot of Arbroath is believed to be the author.
It was written at the monastery of Arbroath in Scotland.
The letter began by reminding the pope of Scotland 's conversion to Christianity by Saint Andrew.
That under the protection of the church Scotland had lived in peace until King Edward I of England pretended to be their friend.
He then invaded their country while it was without a king.
The letter then told of the hardships they faced under English rule.
Showing their resolution the letter stated:
The pope was impressed by the declaration and with the promise by the Scottish barons to support the pope 's crusade.
He encouraged Edward II to make peace with the Scots.
The pope sent two delegates.
The French king also wanted to see peace between England and Scotland and he sent two delegates.
Peace talks went on until 1321 without the English recognizing Scottish independence.
The English convinced the pope it was the fault of the Scottish that there was no progress.
The pope issued six rulings against the Scots stating all invaders of England would be excommunicated and re-issued the excommunication against Robert the Bruce.
Finally in October 1328 a peace treaty was agreed to between Scotland and England.
Edward III gave up all claims on Scotland.
The interdict on Scotland and the excommunication of its king were finally removed.
The second part of the treaty agreed that the son of Robert the Bruce, David II of Scotland and the sister of Edward III of England would marry.
The wedding took place on 12 July of 1338 when David II, then four years old married Joan of the Tower, aged six, at the church at Berwick, Scotland.
In 1998 The United States Congress resolved that the US Declaration of Independence has been modeled on the Declaration of Arbroath.
It was further resolved that April 6th was from that day on officially National Tartan Day in commemoration of that famous document.
A demon or daemon is a bad or powerful being in many world religions.
The word ` demon ' has different meanings all over the world, but often there is the idea that they are spirits that lived in a place, or went with a person.
The word is also used for a type of computer program that does useful things in the background of a computer, but this use is not related to the religious meaning.
A demon is usually thought to be a supernatural creature that is a evil spirit.
Demons are often described as being summoned by someone, and then either being sent to do works of evil, or to create chaos.
"To demonize" means to make someone appear evil.
In a few writings, there are also good demons, for example in stories by James Clerk Maxwell, Hesiod and Shakespeare.
In Indo-European mythology and traditions of Iranian Avestan and Vedic, the idea of "demons" was there for many years.
Ancient Egyptians thought of demons as "monsters" that ate souls of people when they went to the afterlife.
In ancient Greek mythology, there are also daemons but they were thought to be invisible protectors that they believed protect them.
In the book Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, a daemon is said to be a creature that everyone has as part of the body.
So if it is far away from someone, that person would feel hurt.
"Monotheistic" religions (that say there is one God) usually teach that demons are rebels and under God at all times.
The English poet John Milton describes Satan as rebelling against God but losing, and being allowed to survive only by God 's grace.
In some "polytheistic" religions, demons are equal to gods.
In Hinduism, the demon-goddess Kali represents destruction and thus from a human standpoint is "bad".
The grimoire (medieval book about magical beliefs) called Ars Goetia, writes about 72 demons that a king has called and put in a bronze container sealed by magical symbols.
The demons had to do whatever the king said.
This book is all about spirits and demons, good and evil, that were called by magic.
Christians believe that demons were angels that went bad.
They fought against God, who won the battle with Michael (see Book of Revelation chapter 12) God sent the bad demons into a prison called Hell and they could not see God now for the punishment.
Those demons are called the fallen angels.
In the Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament, demons are said to be bad.
In Hebrew, demons are called '.
In other Hebrew writings, they do not come from heaven, but came from another world and made much troubles.
They gave diseases too.
And they have a prince who is not God, but a demon.
In Islam, djinns are creatures that can not be seen by people most of the time, made of fire, with special powers to help and harm people.
Djinns must serve and obey God (Allah).
In Hinduism, demons are called asuras.
Patala is thought to be an underground place below the Earth, where humans live.
Asura means supernatural beings that were good or bad.
People who do evil and horrible things in their lives, by reincarnation, will turn into evil, ghost spirits called Vetalas, Pishachas, Bh tas.
In InuYasha, a fictional manga, yokai (Japanese for supernatural creatures and translated demon in English) can not die easily and they age more slowly than humans.
A daemon is a type of program found in computers running operating systems based on Unix like Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X. (In Windows these programs are usually called "services" instead.)
It usually starts when the computer starts, and does useful things.
Some daemons start other programs after waiting until a certain time of day, or wait for you to ask for a file from another computer.
The term is a reference to Maxwell 's Demon, not religion.
Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff (born April 3, 1922 or 1924) is an American singer, actress, and animal welfare activist.
All her grandparents were German immigrants.
She is known for her blonde, wholesome image.
She sang with the big bands.
She started with Les Brown & His Band of Renown.
Her first hit song was Sentimental Journey.
This song was popular with soldiers returning from World War 2.
She made many movies from 1948 to 1968.
Three of these movies also starred Rock Hudson.
Day was married to Al Jorden from 1941 until they divorced in 1943.
She was married to George Weidler from 1946 until they divorced in 1949.
She was married to Martin Melcher from 1951 until his death in 1968.
She was married to Barry Comden from 1976 until they divorced in 1981.
Day had a son, Terry Melcher (1942-2004), by Jorden.
Distillation is a chemical process where a mixture made of two or more liquids (called "components") with different boiling points can be separated from each other.
The mixture is heated until one of the components boils (turns to a vapor).
The vapor is then fed into a condenser, which cools the vapor and changes it back into a liquid that is called distillate '.
What remains in the original container is called the "residue".
A fractionating column (that is a distillation column with more than two outlets) can be used to improve the separation.
Fractional distillation can be used to purify crude oil so that it can become useful and can be used for various things.
This has been used for a long time, to distil alcohol and produce distilled beverages.
Distillation is a commonly used operation in oil industry, where it is used to separate various fuels and raw materials from crude oil.
Distillation can be done anywhere, whether it 's in a house or a laboratory, but in most countries it is illegal to distil alcohol without a license.
Illegally distilled alcoholic drinks are called moonshine.
Sometimes the desalination of water is called also "distillation", but this is a different process.
In fact water distillation is used to separate a liquid (water) from solids (salts), instead the alcohol distillation it is used to separate two liquids (alcohol and water).
David Hilbert (K nigsberg, Prussia, 23 January 1862 G ttingen, Germany, 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician, logician, and philosopher of mathematics.
He is widely considered to be one of the most influential and greatest mathematicians of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Hilbert discovered and developed a range of fundamental ideas in many areas.
He worked on invariant theory, the axiomization of geometry, and the notion of Hilbert space.
This is one of the foundations of functional analysis.
Hilbert and his students supplied much of the mathematics needed for quantum mechanics and general relativity.
He was one of the founders of proof theory and mathematical logic.
He was also one of the first people to make the distinction between mathematics and metamathematics, and warmly defended Georg Cantor 's set theory and transfinite numbers.
In 1895 Hilbert became Chairman of Mathematics at the University of G ttingen, at that time the best research center for mathematics in the world.
He remained for the rest of his life.
Among his students were: Hermann Weyl, the champion of chess Emanuel Lasker, Ernst Zermelo, and Carl Gustav Hempel.
John von Neumann was his assistant.
At the University of G ttingen, Hilbert was surrounded by a social circle of some of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century, such as Emmy Noether and Alonzo Church.
The text Grundlagen der Geometrie (Foundations of Geometry) was published by Hilbert in 1899.
It proposed a formal set, Hilbert 's axioms, instead of the traditional axioms of Euclid.
They avoid weaknesses in those of Euclid, whose works at the time were still used textbmathematics is his 1900 presentation of a set of problems that set the course for much of the mathematical research of the 20th century.
He put forward a number of unsolved problems at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris in 1900.
This is reckoned the most successful and deeply considered compilation of open problems ever to be produced by an individual mathematician.
Later he expanded his lit to 23 problems.
In 1920 he proposed explicitly a research project in metamathematics, which became known as Hilbert 's program.
He wanted mathematics to be formulated on a solid and complete logical foundation.
He believed that in principle this could be done, by showing that:
He seems to have had both technical and philosophical reasons for formulating this proposal.
After 1912, Hilbert turned his focus to physics.
At that time, he worked in general relativity and mathematical physics.
His work in these fields is also important.
Down syndrome (or Down 's syndrome or trisomy 21; old name mongoloid idiocy) is a genetic disorder.
People with Down syndrome have an extra copy of chromosome 21, or part of it.
Down syndrome causes a mental handicap.
It may be mild or severe.
The average IQ of a young adult with Down syndrome is 50, equivalent to the mental age of an 8 - or 9-year-old child.
This can vary widely, but most individuals need supervision if they are to live their lives in a satisfactory way.
Children who have this condition take more time to learn new things.
The condition is named after John Langdon Down, the British doctor who first described it in 1866.
He called it mongoloid idiocy because he thought that children with Down syndrome had faces like that of Blumenbach 's Mongolian race.
Idiocy meant intellectual disability.
People do not use the term "mongoloid idiocy" today.
It is a disparaging, or disrespectful, term.
There is sometimes discrimination against people with Down syndrome, both in the education system and in society in general.
Some people with the condition have average intelligence, but may have other problems with development instead.
People with Down syndrome often have a different shape of eyes than most people.
A few people with the condition have severe learning difficulties.
Of every 800 to 1000 babies that are born, one is diagnosed with Down syndrome.
Older women have a higher chance of having a baby with Down syndrome.
If they have a procedure known as amniocentesis, pregnant mothers can be told whether their foetus has Down syndrome.
Sound scans may also diagnose the presence of Downs.
Mothers whose foetus is diagnosed as having Downs syndrome may choose to have an abortion.
In the United Kingdom and Europe 92 % of such cases are aborted.
They also grow differently from other children.
Babies with Down Syndrome can be identified at birth because they may have a specific set of physical features.
These features include narrow eyes, a flat nose-bridge, smaller mouths and shorter fingers.
Smaller mouths can result in tongue protrusion or what looks like a large tongue.
Sometimes the little fingers curve inwards as well, and there is also often a space between the big toe and the others.
People with Down syndrome often have heart defects or Alzheimer 's disease when they are older.
About 90 % of people with Down syndrome live through their teens.
The lifespan of a person with Down syndrome averages between 50 and 55 years old.
So far there have been no treatments for Down syndrome.
Down syndrome comes from a problem with the genes.
Humans are diploid organisms.
This means that for each chromosome, there are two copies, one from the mother, and one from the father.
During meiosis the number is reduced to one set of chromosomes.
People with Down syndrome have an extra copy of chromosome 21, or part of it.
There are three ways that Down syndrome is caused.
The most common cause of Down syndrome is trisomy.
Trisomy is when the child receives two chromosomes from the mother and one from the father.
This makes it so there are three chromosomes of chromosome # 21.
Another way Down syndrome is caused is when new cells are made.
Sometimes even when the parent cells are normal chromosome 21 can be deformed when cells reproduce.
This makes it so some cells have 47 chromosomes and others have 46.
This is called a mosaic disorder.
Mosaic means that they have a third chromosome from the replication of cells.
The third way Down syndrome can be caused is called translocation.
This happens when a normal chromosome breaks into two pieces.
This results in three chromosomes.
The Down Syndrome Association of Los Angeles keeps a list of people with Down syndrome with roles in TV and movies.
Dyslexia is a very common problem and has an effect on the way our brain understands words.
The most common signs of dyslexia are reading and writing problems.
Estimates are that in the United States between five and nine percent of schoolchildren have dyslexia, though estimates go as high as fifty percent.
A person can have dyslexia even if he or she is very smart or educated.
Recent studies show that there are many small business owners that have dyslexia; between 35 and 50 percent of U.S. and British entrepreneurs are affected.
Researchers think that many dyslexic entrepreneurs are successful because they can delegate responsibilities (of writing letters) and still be good at speaking.
At the end of the 20th century, scientists did a lot of research about dyslexia and found some of the reasons that people are dyslexic.
A professor who did research in the 1980s and 1990s looked at the brains of dyslexic people who had died.
He found that some parts of the brain were not connected very well, and that this happened during the fourth month of pregnancy.
This problem has a big effect on the left half of the brain.
The newest research shows that three genes are the reason for dyslexia.
One thing that causes dyslexia is a problem with the central hearing nerve.
This problem can not be found with a normal hearing test, so a special doctor has to do special tests to find it.
It means that people with heavy dyslexia are sensitive to loud noise, may have problems speaking, and may not be able to concentrate.
It may also cause problems with rhythm and melody of music.
Many people who have dyslexia also have other mental disorders, especially attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
In order to tell if a child has dyslexia, he or she has to be seen by a doctor.
A child can be called dyslexic if he or she can not read or write well and there is no other reason for the problem.
Doctors are trying to create early tests to help find out whether a child has dyslexia before they are old enough to go to school.
If this happens, a child can start to be treated very early, and they may have fewer problems at school.
These people though continue to thrive with their work.
Children with dyslexia can be helped.
One way teachers help dyslexic students is to break words into different sounds.
The student must learn how to write the different sounds and create words.
This helps with reading and writing.
Some people believe that dyslexic children can read and write better if they put pieces of colored paper on top of what they are reading.
Delft is a city in the province South Holland in the Netherlands.
It is about halfway between Rotterdam and The Hague.
It is famous for its Delft Blue pottery and the Delft University of Technology.
It is the place where the royal family, the kings and queens, are buried.
It has about 94,000 inhabitants.
Delft is a city with typical Dutch canals, churches and large canal houses.
The largest church in Delft is the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church).
Dinosaurs, a type of Archosaur reptile, were the dominant land animals of the Mesozoic era.
Over 500 different genera of dinosaurs have been found.
Fossils of dinosaurs have been found on every continent, and there are still frequent new discoveries.
Dinosaurs appeared in the Upper Triassic, about 231 million years ago.
By the early Jurassic they were the top land vertebrates, and dominated most environments on land.
They continued until the sudden K\/T extinction event 66 million years ago.
Birds are the descendants of theropod dinosaurs; all the terrestrial dinosaurs are extinct.
Dinosaurs had adaptations which helped make them successful.
The first known dinosaurs were small predators that walked on two legs.
All their descendents had an upright posture, with the legs underneath the body.
This transformed their whole life-style.
There were other features.
Most of the smaller dinosaurs had feathers, and were probably warm-blooded.
This would make them active, with a higher metabolism than modern reptiles.
Social interaction, with living in herds and co-operation seems very likely for some types.
The first dinosaur fossils were found in the early 19th century.
They are major attractions at museums around the world.
Dinosaurs also became part of popular culture.
There have been many best-selling books and movies.
New discoveries are widely covered in the media.
Dinosaurs are united by at least 21 traits in their skulls and skeletons.
These common characters (called ` synapomorphies ') are the reason palaeontologists are sure dinosaurs had a common origin.
However, when definite dinosaur fossils appear (early in the Upper Triassic), the group had already split into two great orders, the Saurischia, and the Ornithischia.
The Saurischia keep the ancestral hip arrangement inherited from their Archosaur ancestors, and the Ornithischia have a modified hip structure.
A. Eoraptor, an early saurischian, B Lesothosaurus, a primitive ornithischian, C A saurischian pelvis (Staurikosaurus) D Lesothosaurus pelvis
The Archosaurs evolved into two main clades: those related to crocodiles, and those related to dinosaurs.
The first known dinosaurs were bipedal predators that were one to two metres long.
Spondylosoma, from the Middle Triassic, may or may not be a dinosaur.
The skull is not known, and the remains are dated at about 232 230 million years ago (mya).
The earliest confirmed dinosaur fossils include saurischian (` lizard-hipped ') dinosaurs Saturnalia 232 225 mya, Herrerasaurus 230 220 mya, Staurikosaurus possibly 230 225 mya, Eoraptor 231.4 mya, and Alwalkeria 230 220 mya.
Saturnalia may be a basal saurischian or a prosauropod.
The others are basal saurischians.
Among the earliest ornithischian (` bird-hipped ') dinosaurs is Pisanosaurus 230 220 mya.
Although Lesothosaurus comes from 199 189 mya, skeletal features suggest that it branched from the main Ornithischia line at least as early as Pisanosaurus.
It is clear from this figure that early saurischians resembled early ornithischians, but not modern crocodiles.
Saurischians are distinguished from the ornithischians by retaining the ancestral configuration of bones in the pelvis.
Another difference is in the skull, the upper skull of the Ornithischia is more solid and the joint connecting the lower jaw is more flexible; both are adaptations to herbivory.
Dinosaurs were a varied group of animals.
Adaptive radiation let them live in many ecological niches.
Paleontologists have identified over 500 different genera and 1,000 species of non-avian dinosaurs.
Their descendants, the birds, number 9,000 living species, and are the most diverse group of land vertebrates.
The largest dinosaurs were herbivores (plant-eaters), such as Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus.
They were the largest animals to ever walk on dry land.
Other plant-eaters such as Iguanodon had special weapons, to help them fight off the meat-eaters.
For example, Triceratops had three horns on its head shield, Ankylosaurus was covered in boney plates, and Stegosaurus had spikes on its tail.
The carnivores were bipedal (walked on their back legs), though not as we do.
Their body was more towards the horizontal, balanced at the back by their tail.
Some were very large, like Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus, but some were small, like Compsognathus.
It was the smaller sized meat-eaters that may have evolved into birds.
The first fossil bird, Archaeopteryx, had a skeleton which looked much like that of a dinosaur.
Dinosaurs were primitively bipedal: their probable ancestors were small bipedal Archosaurs.
The date of the early dinosaur genus Eoraptor at 231.4 million years ago is important.
Eoraptor probably resembles the common ancestor of all dinosaurs; its traits suggest that the first dinosaurs were small, bipedal predators.
The discovery of primitive, pre-dinosaur, types in Middle Triassic strata supports this view.
Analysis of their fossils suggests that the animals were indeed small, bipedal predators.
Those dinosaurs which returned to four-legged stance kept all four legs under their body.
This is much more efficient than the sprawling legs of a lizard.
The big sauropods could never have reached so large a size without their pillar-like legs.
A review surveys what we know about the mechanics of dinosaur movement.
A major change in outlook came in the 1960s, when it was realized that small theropods were probably warm-blooded.
The question of whether all theropods or even all dinosaurs were warm blooded is still undecided.
It is now certain (from fossils discovered in China: see Jehol biota) that small theropods had feathers.
This fits well with the idea that they were warm-blooded, and that the origin of birds can be traced to a line of small theropods.
Warm blooded animals have a high metabolic rate (use up food faster).
They can be more active, and for longer, than animals who depend on the environment for heating.
Therefore, the idea of warm-blooded dinosaurs insulated by feathers led to the idea that they were more active, intelligent and faster runners than previously thought.
Main-stream palaeontologists have followed this view for small theropods, but not for larger herbivores.
Since we know that the size of a Stegosaurs brain was about the size of a walnut, there is good reason to think its intelligence was limited.
Despite their great success over a long period, there were life-styles which the dinosaurs never evolved.
None ever evolved to live entirely in water, as many mammals do, though Spinosaurus was semi-aquatic.
And they never dominated the small terrestrial niche.
All through the Mesozoic that was dominated by the small mammals and lizards.
The extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous were caused by one or more catastrophic events, such as massive asteroid or meteorite impacts (like the Chicxulub impact), or increased volcanic activity.
Several impact craters and massive volcanic activity, such as that in the Deccan Traps in India, have been dated to the approximate time of the extinction event.
These geological events may have reduced sunlight and hindered photosynthesis, leading to a massive disruption in Earth 's ecology.
Did any terrestrial dinosaurs survive the great extinction event?
Several fossils have been found in the Hell Creek Formation about 40,000 years later than the K\/T extinction event.
Many scientists dismiss the "Paleocene dinosaurs" as re-worked, that is, washed out of their original places and then re-buried in much later sediments.
An associated skeleton (e.g. more than one bone from the same individual) found above the K\/T boundary would be convincing, but no such finds have been reported.
''... Dragons of the prime, that tare each other in their slime".
Tennyson, In Memoriam,1849.
Books about dinosaurs have been popular, especially with children, but adults have also enjoyed these kinds of books.
In Edwardian times, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a novel about a plateau filled with dinosaurs which he called The Lost World.
Jurassic Park in 1991 started a new phase in dinosaur popular culture when it was followed by the movie of the same name in 1993.
Diamagnetism is a type of magnetism.
They very weakly repel magnets.
Most substances are diamagnetic.
It was discovered in 1778 when someone saw that bismuth and antimony repelled a magnet.
Diamagnetic things can be levitated.
A frog was levitated in a very strong magnet.
Water can be repelled by a magnet because it is diamagnetic.
It is too weak to be noticed normally, though.
In mathematics, divergence is a differential operator that associates a vector field with a scalar field.
In a vector field, each point of the field is associated with a vector, in a scalar field each point of the field is associated with a scalar.
Divergence is used to formulate Maxwell 's equations and the Continuity equation.
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a system used to convert a computer 's host name into an IP address on the Internet.
For example, if a computer needs to communicate with the web server example.net, your computer needs the IP address of the web server example.net.
It is the job of the DNS to convert the host name to the IP address of the web server.
DNS is defined in RFC 1034 and RFC 1035 and use the UDP Port 53 or TCP Port 53.
Domain names are made up of one or more parts, or labels that are joined and kept separate by dots, such as.
David Michael Letterman (born April 12, 1947) is an American television host and comedian.
He hosts the late night television talk show Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS.
Letterman has hosted the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC.
In 2013, Letterman surpassed friend and mentor Johnny Carson as the longest-serving late-night talk show host in TV history, at 31 years.
Letterman 's ironic comedy is similar to comedians such as Andy Kaufman, Ernie Kovacs, and Tonight Show hosts Johnny Carson and Steve Allen.
Letterman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana.
His father, Harry Joseph Letterman, was a florist of English ancestry; his mother Dorothy Letterman, a church secretary of German ancestry, has been an occasional figure on the show, usually at holidays and birthdays.
He lived on the north side of Indianapolis, not far from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
He enjoyed collecting model cars, including racers.
In 2000, he told an interviewer for Esquire that, while growing up, he admired his father 's ability to tell jokes and be the life of the party.
Harry Joseph Letterman survived a heart attack at age 36, when David was a young boy.
The fear of losing his father was constantly with Letterman as he grew up.
The elder Letterman died of a second heart attack at age 57.
Delroy Lindo (18 November 1952 as Norman Flemming) is an English actor.
He has performed in many movies and stage acts.
He starred in the movies Malcolm X and Crooklyn.
He was born in London.
Docetism is an early Christian teaching that says that Jesus only appeared to have a human body.
The term comes from dokein: to seem.
Early Gnostics, whose teachings began to threaten Christian doctrine and theology, believed all matter was unclean.
For this reason, Christ could not have a physical body, as he was seen as the eternal Logos.
Today, it is unclear where this teaching came from.
It might have been influenced by the teachings of Plato.
Platon taught that only ideas mattered and that matter itself was inferior.
Many Gnostic teachings are docetic.
For a long time, people believed that docetism and Gnosticism were developed together.
This is however not the case, there are also some Gnost systems that are not docetic, as well as some docetic systems that are not gnostic.
Today, most Christian theolgians see docetism as a heresy.
The denarius was a small silver coin.
It was made by the Roman Empire and Roman Republic a very, very long time ago (about 2000 years to be precise).
The denarius weighed about 3 to 4.5 grams.
It was the main coin of Ancient Rome.
During the Empire the front side usually had a picture of the emperor on it.
The coin was sometimes made of copper and painted silver in color.
It was shiny but is less shiny now.
David Alan Mamet (; born November 30, 1947) is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and movie director.
Mamet has won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988).
A declaration of independence is a proclamation of the independence of an aspiring state or states.
Such states are usually formed from part or all of the territory of another nation or failed nation, or are breakaway territories from within the parent state.
Drag racing is a competition between specially prepared automobiles or motorcycles.
Racers compete, two at a time, to be the first to cross a finish line.
Races are run from a standing start, in a straight line, over a measured distance, usually a - mile straight track.
The race track, known as a dragstrip, usually uses an electronic timing system to decide the winner.
Before each race, each driver is allowed to perform a burnout by spinning the driving tires.
Burnouts heat the driving tires and lay rubber down at the beginning of the track to improve traction.
The drivers then line up at the starting line.
Races are started electronically by a system known as a Christmas tree.
Below the staging lights are three large amber lights, a green light, and a red light.
When both drivers are staged, the tree is set to start the race causing the three large amber lights to illuminate, followed by the green light.
If the front tires leave the starting line before the green light illuminates, the red light for that driver 's lane illuminates instead.
This indicates disqualification (unless a more serious violation occurs).
Once a driver commits a red-light foul (also known as redlighting), the other driver can also commit a foul start by leaving the line too early but still win, having left later.
Should both drivers leave after the green light illuminates, the one leaving first is said to have a holeshot advantage.
The first vehicle to cross the finish line wins the race.
The elapsed time is a measure of performance only; it does not determine the winner.
Because elapsed time does not include reaction time and each lane is timed separately, a car with a slower elapsed time can actually win if that driver 's holeshot advantage exceeds the elapsed time difference.
This is known as a holeshot win.
Several measurements are taken for each race: reaction time, elapsed time, and speed.
Reaction time is the period from the lighting of the green light to the vehicle leaving the starting line.
Elapsed time is the time from the vehicle leaving the starting line to crossing the finish line.
Speed is measured through a speed trap covering the final 66 f to the finish line, indicating the approximate maximum speed of the vehicle during the run.
In the standard racing format, the losing car and driver are removed from the contest and the winner goes on to race other winners.
This continues until only one is left.
The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) oversees most of drag racing events in North America.
The next largest organization, Feld Entertainment 's International Hot Rod Association (IHRA), is about one-third the size of NHRA.
Nearly all drag strips are associated with one sanctioning body or the other.
The NHRA is more popular with large, 1\/4-mile, nationally recognized, tracks., The IHRA is a favorite of smaller 1\/8-mile local tracks (and offers selected races on their national tour under the 1\/8-mile format).
One reason for this is the IHRA is less restrictive in its rules, such as rules on nitrous oxide (legal in Pro Modified) and oversized engines.
A day is the time it takes the Earth to spin around once.
It is day time on the side of the Earth that is facing the Sun.
When it is night time, that side of the Earth is facing away from the Sun.
It takes 24 hours for the Earth to spin once, so that is one day, including the day time and night time.
A database is a system for storing and taking care of data (any kind of information).
A database engine can sort, change or serve the information on the database.
The information itself can be stored in many different ways - before digital computers, card files, printed books and other methods were used.
Now most data is kept on computer files.
A database system is a computer program for managing electronic databases.
A very simple example of a database system would be an electronic address book.
The data in a database is organized in some way.
Before there were computers, employee data was often kept in file cabinets.
There was usually one card for each employee.
On the card, information such as the date of birth or the name of the employee could be found.
A database also has such "cards".
To the user, the card will look the same as it did in old times, only this time it will be on the screen.
To the computer, the information on the card can be stored in different ways.
Each of these ways is known as a database model.
The most commonly used database model is called relational database model; it uses relations and sets to store the data.
Normal users talking about the database model will not talk about relations, they will talk about database tables.
In databases, some data changes occasionally.
There may be problems when data is changed, an error might have occurred.
The error might make the data useless.
The database system looks at the data, it must fulfill certain requirements.
It does this by using a transaction.
There are two points in time in the database, the time before the data was changed, and the time after the data was changed.
If something goes wrong when changing the data, the database system simply puts the database back into the state before the change happened.
This is called rollback.
After all the changes are done successfully, they are committed.
This means that the data makes sense again; committed changes can no longer be undone
There are different ways how to represent the data.
Like in real life, the same data can be looked at from different perspectives, and it can be organized in different ways.
There are different things to consider, when organizing the data:
Dipole can mean two things in physics.
The first is an electric dipole which separates the positive charge from the negative charge.
A simple example of this dipole is a pair of electric charges with the same magnitude but with the opposite type of charge (positive and negative) and are separated by a small distance from each other.
The second is a magnetic dipole, a closed circulation of electric current.
A simple example is a single loop of wire with electric current flowing through it.
An important characeristic of dipoles is their dipole moment, which is a vector quantity with both a magnitude and direction.
An example of an electric dipole moment occurring is in a pair of electric charges with opposite signs.
The dipole moment would point from the negative charge towards the positive charge.
The magnitude of the moment is equal to the strength of each charge multiplied by the distance separating between the charges.
An example of a magnetic dipole moment occurring is in a wire loop with flowing current.
The magnetic dipole moment would point through the loop (according to the right hand rule), with a magnitude equal to the current in the loop times the area of the loop.
A bar magnet is an example of a magnetic dipole, with a magnetic dipole moment moving from its south pole to its north pole.
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of hunting, and in later times, the moon and chastity.
Cypress trees were sacred to her.
She was the daughter of Jupiter and the Titan Latona (or Leto).
In Greek mythology, Diana was called Artemis.
She is also associated with fertility and nature.
According to mythology Diana was born with her twin brother Apollo on the island of Delos.
Apollo was her only real brother but she had many half brothers and sisters from her Father.
They were Vulcan, Minerva, Apollo, Mercury, Bacchus, Mars and Proserpine.
Diana made up a group of three with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and midwife helper; and Virbius, the god of the woods.
Daniel Robert "Danny" Elfman (May 29, 1953 in Los Angeles, California) is an American singer-songwriter and composer.
He wrote music for many movies and television series.
From 1978 until 1995 Elfman was a member of the rock band Oingo Boingo.
In 2003, he married actress Bridget Fonda.
They have one child.
Elfmans has written music for dozens of movies, for video games and for television.
Some of his famous works include:
In 1985, Elfman met director Tim Burton.
Burton had seen Elfman perform as a member of Oingo Boingo.
Burton asked Elfman to work with him on his first full-length movie Pee-Wee 's Big Adventure.
Elfman worked with Burton on all but two of Burton 's movies.
The movies he worked on include:
Elfman has been nominated for many awards in the music and movie business.
Dimensions are a concept from mathematics and physics: One way to define a dimension is to look at the degrees of freedom a movement has in a specific space.
There are different concepts where the term dimension is used and there are also different definitons.
There is no definition that can satisfy all concepts.
In a vector space, a dimension is equal to the cardinality of the minimal generator.
It is also equal to the cardinality of the maximal set of linearly independent vectors of that space.
"Normal" objects in everyday life are specified by three dimenensions, which are usually called length, width and depth.
Mathematicians call this concept Euclidean space.
Dimensions can be used to measure position too.
The distance to a position from a starting place can be measured in the length, width and height directions.
These distances are a measure of the position.
Sometimes a fourth (4D) dimension, time, is used to show the position of an event in time and space.
In modern science, people use other dimensions.
Dimensions like temperature and weight can be used to show the position of something in less simple spaces.
Mathematicians also use dimensions.
In mathematics, dimensions are more general.
Dimensions in mathematics might not measure things in the world.
The rules for doing arithmetic with dimensions in mathematics might be different than usual arithmetic rules.
Vectors are used to show distances and directions.
Vectors are often used in engineering and science, and sometimes in mathematics.
A vector is a list of numbers.
There is one number for each dimension.
There are arithmetic rules for vectors.
For example, if Jane wants to know the position of Sally, Sally can give Jane a vector to show the position.
If Jane and Sally are in the world, there are three dimensions.
Therefore, Sally gives Jane a list of three numbers to show her position.
The three numbers in the vector Sally gives Jane might be:
Diving is a form of movement downwards, either from air to ground or to water.
Diving is also a sport.
Diving is often done from a springboard or an elevated platform.
Underwater diving includes Scuba diving.
Scuba diving, however, is typically not considered a sport.
Dives used for scuba diving are relatively simplistic.
An example of this is a giant stride entry, also known as a stride dive.
There are six different types of dives, and four different body positions that a person can use when diving.
There are six different types of dives.
Four of the types depend on whether the diver is facing towards the water or away from the water, and if they rotate towards or away from the water.
The other two dives can be a part of the first four.
For example, a diver can do a "inward twisting" or a "forward armstand" dive.
The basic types of dives are:
The four different body positions are tuck, pike, straight and free.
Dives are put into categories, based on the Direction the dive is in, and what Position it is in.
A dodecahedron is a solid shape that has twelve surfaces.
Each face is a pentagon (has five edges).
In total there are twenty corners (also called vertices) and thirty edges altogether.
A dodecahedron which looks exactly the same from all faces is also a platonic solid.
Darwin is the territorial capital of the Northern Territory in Australia.
The city has about 105,000 people living there.
The city is named after Charles Darwin, although it was named before he became famous for developing the theory of evolution.
A member of the crew of the ship that started a port there in 1839 named it Port Darwin in honor of Darwin, who had sailed on that same ship earlier.
Most of Darwin has been built since 1974, when Cyclone Tracy ripped through and destroyed the city.
Since then, the city has recovered.
It is a very important port, because it is on the coast closest to Indonesia and the rest of Asia.
Darwin also has a large military base.
Darwin also has many Indigenous Australians living in the city, about 9.7 % of the people.
This is more than any other state capital in Australia.
The word dictator or despot in modern times is used to describe the absolute ruler (other than a king) of a country, who uses force and fear to keep himself and his friends in authority, and can effectively make laws all by himself.
A country that is ruled by a dictator is called a dictatorship.
The word "dictator" is from the Roman Republic where a man would be given absolute power for one year to get the country out of an emergency.
Some dictators gained political power by winning an election and canceling new elections once they took power.
It is not always clear whether a leader is a dictator or not.
Some leaders got into power by elections, but sometimes they gave false election results.
Kings and emperors often use force and fear too, but usually they are not called dictators.
This is because those monarchs have some reason for being in power (usually their father was king or emperor), but a dictator gained power himself.
Also, when someone is king or emperor of a country, usually there were several kings or emperors before them.
A dictator often creates the job of dictator by gaining power.
Some people call leaders dictators because they simply do not like them and they seem powerful.
A decibel (or dB) measures ratios of power or intensity.
It expresses them as an exponential function.
One bel is a power ratio of 10:1, and is divided into ten decibels.
An increase of three decibels is approximately a doubling of power.
Decibels are often used in measuring telecommunication signals.
With electric audio signals, there are several decibel units, relative to several bases.
For example, dBm is relative to one milliwatt.
It 's been said that the smallest difference humans can hear is 1 dB and is related to the Absolute threshold of hearing, although this is very subjective at best.
The bel unit was named after Alexander Graham Bell.
This unit was so rough that it is more typical to use the decibel, which is one bel divided by ten.
Before bels, there was the Transmission Unit (TU).
Often, decibels are used to say how loud a sound is relative to the threshold of hearing.
The decibel is not an SI unit.
The table here uses dB as units of sound to indicate consensus on hearing protection.
Some examples of sounds are:
Hearing protection can also be used to shield from ear damage.
This table gives some safe limits for the level of sound so that the ears are not damaged.
Darwinism is a term used to talk about different ideas connected to those Charles Darwin had about evolution.
The meaning of Darwinism has changed over time, and depends on who uses the term.
The term was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in April 1860.
He used it to describe evolutionary concepts, including earlier concepts such as Malthusianism and Spencerism.
In the late 19th century it came to mean the concept that natural selection was the only mechanism of evolution, in contrast to Lamarckism.
Around 1900, Gregor Mendel 's work was rediscovered, Darwinism was the word used to classify the ideas.
Today, both theories have been unified.
As modern evolutionary theory has developed, the term has been associated at times with specific ideas.
Doraemon (-RRB- is a Japanese manga and anime series.
It was written by Fujiko F. Fujio.
It was started in a children s magazine in 1969.
Doraemon is the name of a robot cat that came from the future to help a boy named Nobita Nobi.
Doraemon is about the life of Nobita Nobi.
In a typical story Doramon uses a tool to solve a problem for Nobita, but Nobita goes too far and ends up being punished and learning a lesson.
Doraemon was turned into an anime television show in 1979.
It still is being shown on television.
As of 1996, about 100 million comic books have been sold.
A Japanese-to-English version of the original called Doraemon: Gadget Cat from the Future was published from 2002.
A local translation is published in each Asian country such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Vietnam.
Despite popularity amongst people who only speak English, such as tourists who buy VHS and DVD media of Doraemon, the show is not in most English-speaking countries.
Doraemon is endorsed by 7-11 in Thailand as a mascot.
Dartmouth College is a private, coeducational university in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Incorporated as "Trustees of Dartmouth College," it is a member of the Ivy League and one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution.
In addition to its undergraduate liberal arts program, Dartmouth has medical, engineering, and business schools, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences.
With a total enrollment of 5,848, Dartmouth is the smallest school in the Ivy League.
The college was established in 1769 by Congregational minister Eleazar Wheelock who wanted to use the college to Christianize the Native Americans.
In 2004, Booz Allen Hamilton selected Dartmouth College as a model of institutional endurance "whose record of endurance has had implications and benefits for all American organizations, both academic and commercial," citing Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward and Dartmouth 's successful self-reinvention in the late 1800s.
Dartmouth alumni, from Daniel Webster to the many donors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have been famously involved in their college.
Dartmouth is on a rural 269-acre (1.1 km) campus in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire.
Given the College 's isolated location, participation in athletics and the school 's Greek system is high.
Dartmouth 's 34 varsity sports teams compete in the Ivy League conference of the NCAA Division I. Students are also well known for preserving a variety of strong campus traditions.
In 2010 Dartmouth College joined the Matariki Network of Universities (MNU) together with University of T bingen (Germany), Durham University (UK), Queen s University (Canada), University of Otago (New Zealand), University of Western Australia (Australia) and Uppsala University (Sweden).
The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) is an extinct species of flightless bird.
Like many other island birds, they lost the power of flight because it was no advantage where they lived.
Dodos were in the same family as the pigeon, and were endemic (only lived on) the island of Mauritius.
The dodo is one of the first species known to have died because of humans, Dodos have been extinct since the late 17th century.
The history of the word ` dodo ' is not clear.
The Dutch captain Wybrand van Warwijck discovered the island and the bird in 1598.
He called the bird ` walgvogel ', meaning "disgusting bird" because the meat was unpleasant to eat.
Four years later, the Dutch captain Willem van Westsanen used the word ` Dodo ' for the first time.
The Encarta Dictionary and the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology say "dodo" is a Portuguese word, coming from doido.
It means "fool" or "crazy".
Another idea is that ` dodo ' was a copy of the bird 's own call, a two-note pigeon like sound, "doo-doo".
In 1606 Cornelis de Jonge wrote a description of the Dodo, and of other animal and plants on the island.
The dodo was a large bird and weighed about 50 l. They had gray feathers and yellow feet.
Their big hooked bill was a green\/yellow color.
It had short wings that were only stubs.
They ate fruit, seeds and nuts.
Portuguese sailors said that they saw the Dodos eating fish.
They also ate rocks and stones which might have helped them digest food.
The dodo was not scared of people which made it easy to hunt and kill.
Dogs, cats, rats and pigs remained behind on the island and also killed the dodos.
Because dodos built their nests on the ground, the new animals ate their eggs.
The forests were chopped down and the dodo lost its habitat.
Within 80 years, the dodo was extinct.
The last known stuffed bird was at Oxford University and was thrown out as rubbish.
Only a foot and a head are left.
The American Museum of Natural History in New York has a skeleton showing.
It was put together out of bones from several different Dodos.
The Natural History Museum of Mauritius has the only complete skeleton of a dodo, found in a swamp.
William Dwight Schultz (born November 24, 1947 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American stage, television and movie actor.
He is known for his roles as Captain "Howling Mad" Murdock on the hit 1980s action show The A-Team, and Reginald Barclay in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager and the movie Star Trek: First Contact.
At the moment, he hosts a conservative talk radio podcast called "Howling Mad Radio."
Density is a measurement that compares the amount, ratio of matter an object has to its volume.
An object with a lot of matter in a certain amount of volume has high density.
An object with a little matter in the same amount of volume has a low density.
Temperature has an effect on density.
When the temperature of a substance increases, density decreases because the atoms are moving all around the place having less matter in one space.
When the temperature of a substance decreases, the density increases because the atoms move slower making the atoms stay in one place.
Many substances follow this rule, but there are exceptions.
Water is one such exception.
vWhen water freezes, it makes ice that is less dense than liquid water.
Fresh water is often used as a standard of relative density.
This is called specific gravity.
The most common SI units for density are g\/cm3 and kg\/m3.
When the numerator is much larger than the denominator, that means the substance has a higher density.
When the denominator is much larger than the numerator, the substance has a lower density.
Sometimes scientists use the idea of density to talk about other properties instead of mass..
They 're trying to describe how much of a property can be found in a specific piece of what they are looking at.
For example, population density is how many people live within the same amount of space.
The population density in the city is higher than the country side because there are more people living closer to each other in the city.
In computers, storage density is how much data can fit on a data storage device in relation to its physical size.
A Blu-ray disc has a higher storage density than a DVD which has a higher storage density than a CD, even though they all have almost exactly the same volume.
David Lawrence Angell (April 10, 1946 September 11, 2001) was an American producer for television shows.
He was mostly known for his production work on Frasier, Cheers, and Wings.
He was friends with actor Kelsey Grammer.
He was born in Barrington, Rhode Island.
He was married to Lynn Edwards from 1971 until their deaths in 2001.
Angell died in the North Tower on September 11, 2001.
He died with his wife of thirty years, Lynn Angell.
Their names are on the National 9\/11 Memorial.
A diacritic (for example, an accent) is a mark put above, below, through or on a letter.
The word comes from the Greek word (transl.
diakritik s = ` distinguishing ').
Usually, it affects the way the word is said (pronounced).
Most diacritics concern pronunciation because most alphabets do not describe the sounds of words exactly.
Diacritics are rare in English, but common in many other languages.
Diacritics are not used much in modern English.
There are two types of diacritics that have become part of everyday English: the dot and the apostrophe.
But they are no longer commonly thought of as being diacritical.
The apostophe is used to show missing letters (elision, it 's to replace it is) and show possession (as in Mike 's car).
In most other cases, use of diacritics for native English words is considered old-fashioned (not used anymore).
Diaereses (similar to umlauts) can be used on words where two vowels next to each other are pronounced separately (rather than together as a diphthong), like no ne, re stablished, or co perate.
This method is still used sometimes, depending on the word.
Diacritics are sometimes used in loanwords (words of foreign origin), such as na ve, entr e, p t.
Letter e: common are the acute accent (rising voice, as in the French word n e), grave accent (lowering voice); l ve has (from the left) acute, grave and silent e. The cedilla denotes a soft c.
A different principle is illustrated by the circumflex.
This usually shows the loss of letter: e.g. maistre (Middle French)) ma tre (modern French).
Thus its function is historical.
Also, less often, the circumflex is used to distinguish between homophones.
These are words spelt the same, but with different meanings.
Example: sur = on, but s r = safe.
In those cases the pronunciation of the two words may be different.
In Spanish the acute accent simply signals stress, e.g. educaci n. There the stress is on the last vowel, not on the second to last.
Second to last vowel (syllable) is the usual position for stress in spoken Spanish.
It is usually not signalled by an accent.
The tilde is pronounced like ny, and counts as a letter in their dictionaries, coming after n.
The umlaut in German is pronounced ue, and is less used in modern German.
Historical name-spellings should always keep the umlaut if it was used for that name.
The Scandinavian languages treat the characters with diacritics, and as new and separate letters of the alphabet, and sort them after z. Usually is sorted as equal to (ash) and is sorted as equal to (o-slash).
Also, aa, when used as an alternative spelling to, is sorted as such.
Other letters modified by diacritics are treated as variants of the underlying letter, with the exception that is frequently sorted as y.
Scripts for semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew have a wide variety of diacritics.
This is partly because the semitic languages were originally formed without separate letters for vowels, and partly because some of the languages (Arabic in particular) are spoken in a number of dialects.
The diacritics in Hebrew and Arabic are not always used, however.
The didgeridoo (sometimes didjeridu) is an Australian Aboriginal wind musical instrument.
They were used by the Yolgnu people of Arnhem Land.
They can be quite long, anywhere from 1 t long.
Most are around 1.2 m long.
The longer the instrument, the lower the pitch or key of the instrument.
They are a hollow wooden tube, which can be either cylindrical or conical in shape.
It is best described as being a wooden trumpet or drone.
Musicologists say it is a brass aerophone.
It is difficult to know when didgeridoos were first used.
Studies of rock art in Arnhem Land show that it has been in use for more than 1,500 years.
A rock painting in Ginga Wardelirrhmeng, on the northern edge of the Arnhem Land plateau, dates from the freshwater period.
It shows a didgeridoo player and two singers playing in a ceremony.
"Didgeridoo" is said to be a word invented in the West, not an Aboriginal word.
It may come from the Irish words d daire or d idire.
This means ` trumpeter; constant smoker, puffer; long-necked person, eavesdropper; hummer, crooner ' and dubh, meaning "black" (or duth, meaning "native").
However, this theory is not widely accepted.
The earliest examples of the word in print was in a 1919 issue of Smith 's Weekly where it was called an "infernal didjerry" which "produced but one sound - (which sounded like) didjerry, didjerry, didjerry and so on".
It was also used the 1919 Australian National Dictionary, The Bulletin in 1924 and the writings of Herbert Basedow in 1926.
There are more than 45 names for this instrument among the Aboriginal people of northern Australia including Yirdaki.
Yirdaki, also sometimes spelt yidaki, is for the instrument made and used by the Yolngu people of north-east Arnhem Land.
Aboriginal didgeridoos are made in the traditional communities in Northern Australia or by makers who travel to Central and Northern Australia to get the materials.
They are usually made from hardwoods, usually eucalyptus species that are native to the area.
Sometimes a native bamboo, such as Bambusa arnhemica, or pandanus is used.
The main trunk of the tree is used, though a big branch may be used instead.
Aboriginal makers spend a lot of time looking for a tree that has been hollowed out by termites.
If the hollow is too big or too small, it will make a poor quality instrument.
When a tree is found and cut down, the part of trunk or branch that will be made into a didgeridoo is cut out.
The bark is taken off, the ends are trimmed, and there is some shaping of the outside.
It may be painted or left natural.
A rim of beeswax may be put on to the mouthpiece end.
Traditional instruments made by Aboriginals in Arnhem Land are sometimes fitted with a ` sugarbag ' mouthpiece.
This is black beeswax from wild bees and has a its own special smell.
Didgeridoos can also be made from PVC pipes, non-native hard woods (which are split, hollowed and rejoined), fiberglass, metal, agave, clay, hemp (a bioplastic named zelfo), and even carbon fiber.
These didgeridoos usually have an upper inside diameter of around 1.25" down to a bell end of anywhere between two to eight inches and have a length made to the needed key.
The mouthpiece can be made of beeswax, hardwood or simply sanded and sized by the craftsman.
In PVC, rubber stopper with a hole cut into it can be used.
Modern didgeridoo designs are different from the traditional Australian Aboriginal didgeridoo.
They are recognized as being a separate instrument.
Didgeridoo design changes started in the late 20th century using new materials and different shapes.
A didgeridoo is usually played sitting down because they are so long.
It is played with continuously vibrating lips to make the drone while using a special way of breathing called circular breathing.
This means a player breathes in through the nose at the same time as pushing air out of the mouth.
A skilled player can refill the air in their lungs.
With practice, the player can keep a note playing for as long as desired.
There are recordings of modern didgeridoo players playing without stopping for more than 40 minutes; Mark Atkins on Didgeridoo Concerto (1994) plays for over 50 minutes continuously.
The rhythm of the circular breathing, gives the instrument its readily recognizable sound.
Other changes in the didgeridoo 's sound can be made by adding vocal sounds to the drone.
Most of the sounds are related to the sounds of Australian animals, such as the dingo or the kookaburra.
To make these sounds, the players simply have to use their voice to make the sounds of the animals whilst continuing to blow air through the instrument.
The results range from very high-pitched sounds to very low sounds.
Adding vocal sounds increases the complexity of the playing.
Anthony Baines wrote that the didgeridoo is like"... an aural kaleidoscope of timbres".
He also said that the virtuoso skills used by the best performers were unlike those needed on any other instrument.
The didgeridoo was mainly played for ceremonial dancing and singing.
It was also common for didgeridoos to be played for entertainment outside of ceremonial life.
In northern Australia, the didgeridoo is still a very important as it plays for singers and dancers in surviving cultural ceremonies.
Today, most didgeridoo playing is for entertainment in both Indigenous Australian communities and elsewhere around the world.
Pair sticks, sometimes called clapsticks or bilma, set the beat for the songs during ceremonies.
The rhythm of the didgeridoo and the beat of the clapsticks use patterns that have been handed down for many generations.
Traditionally, only men play the didgeridoo and sing during ceremonies, but both men and women may dance.
There were female didgeridoo players, but they did not play in ceremonies and it was not encouraged.
Linda Barwick, an ethnomusicologist, says that traditionally women have not played the didgeridoo in ceremony, but in informal situations there is no prohibition in the Dreaming Law.
On September 3, 2008, the publisher Harper Collins issued a public apology for its book "The Daring Book for Girls", scheduled to be published in October, which openly encouraged girls to play the instrument.
The didgeridoo is now often used as an instrument in the experimental and avant-garde music scene.
Industrial music bands like Test Department - used sounds from this instrument in their performances, linking ecology to industry, influenced by ethnic music and culture.
It has also been an instrument used for the fusion of tribal rhythms with a black metal sound.
A music project called Naakhum used the paganism of the Australian tribes and many others as an approach.
Most didgeridoos made today are for souvenir purposes.
It is common to find didgeridoos made of non-native timbers, decorated incorrectly by non-indigenous artists with colourful designs or copied dot patterns.
These decorations do not use traditional dreamtime stories or designs.
These didgeridoos also often vary widely in size and shape, many being thinner and straighter.
As a result of the inadequate wood types, shapes and lengths, souvenir didgeridoos can rarely be used as musical instruments.
Decoration of souvenir didgeridoos is often seen by Aboriginal communities as offensive, inappropriate, inadequate, inaccurate and in many cases, misleading.
The copying of traditional artwork is also used to sell these didgeridoos to unsuspecting tourists.
A 2005 study in the British Medical Journal found that learning and playing the didgeridoo helped reduce snoring and sleep apnea.
It does this by making muscles in the upper airway stronger, and this helps them stay open during sleep.
This strengthening happens after the player has learned the circular breathing technique.
Developmental biology is the study of the process by which organisms grow and develop.
Modern developmental biology studies the genetic control of cell growth, differentiation and morphogenesis.
These are the processes which turn a zygote into an adult animal.
Differentiation is the formation of cell types, from what is originally one cell the zygote or spore.
The formation of cell types like nerve cells occurs with a number of intermediary, less differentiated cell types.
A cell stays a certain cell type by maintaining a particular pattern of gene expression.293-5 This depends on regulatory genes.
Embryogenesis is the step in the life cycle after fertilisation the development of the embryo, starting from the zygote (fertilised egg).
Organisms can differ drastically in the how embryo develops, especially when they belong to different phyla.
Growth is the enlargement of a tissue or organism.
Growth continues after the embryonic stage, and occurs through cell division, enlargement of cells or accumulation of extracellular material.
In plants, growth results in an adult organism that is strikingly different from the embryo.
The dividing cells tend to be distinct from differentiated cells (see stem cell).
In some tissues dividing cells are restricted to special areas, such as the growth plates of bones.467-482 But some stem cells move to where they are needed, from the bone marrow to form muscle, bone or adipose (fat) tissue.
Many animals have a larval stage, with a body plan different from that of the adult organism.
The larva abrubtly develops into an adult in a process called metamorphosis.
For example, caterpillars (butterfly larvae) are specialized for feeding whereas adult butterflies (imagos) are specialised for flight and reproduction.
When the caterpillar has grown enough, it turns into an immobile pupa.
Here, the imago develops from imaginal discs found inside the larva.575 -585
Regeneration is the reactivation of development so that a missing body part grows back.
This phenomenon has been studied particularly in salamanders, where the adults can reconstruct a whole limb after it has been amputated.
Researchers hope to one day be able to induce regeneration in humans.
There is little spontaneous regeneration in adult humans, although the liver is a notable exception.
Like for salamanders, the regeneration of the liver involves reversing some cells to an earlier state.592 -601
Dwight Lyman (D.L.) Moody (February 5, 1837 December 22, 1899) was an American evangelist and publisher.
He started the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts (now the Northfield Mount Hermon School), the Moody Bible Institute and Moody Publishers.
Dubnium is a chemical element.
It has been named eka-tantalum, hahnium and unnilpentium but is now named dubnium.
It has the symbol Db.
It has the atomic number 105.
It is a very radioactive element that does not exist in nature.
It has to be made.
The isotope that has the longest half-life only has a half life of 32 hours.
Dubnium is a transactinide element.
A disaccharide is a sugar (a carbohydrate) composed of two monosaccharides.
It is formed when two sugars are joined together and a molecule of water is removed.
For example, milk sugar (lactose) is made from glucose and galactose whereas cane sugar (sucrose) is made from glucose and fructose.
Maltose and cellobiose are hydrolysis products of the polysaccharides, starch and cellulose, respectively.
Some common Disaccharides are: Maltose, Lactose and Sucrose.
Draco (7th century BC) was the first legislator of the city of Athens in Ancient Greece.
He wrote laws that were to be enforced only by a court.
This constitution replaced the system of oral law and blood feuding that had governed Athens since the city was founded.
Draco 's laws were known for being harsh.
The word draconian has come to mean unforgiving rules or laws.
Draco established this legal system during the 39th Olympiad, in about 622 or 621 BC.
The laws (- thesmoi) he set formed the first written constitution of Athens.
They were displayed in public, so that nobody would be unaware of them.
The death penalty was the punishment for most crimes, even minor ones.
Plutarch states: "It was a lot for himself, when asked why he had fixed the punishment of death for most offences, answered that he considered these lesser crimes to deserve it, and he had no greater punishment for more important ones."
Not much is known about Draco 's life or who he was.
The 10th-century Suda text tells a legendary story of his death.
He was said to have died on the stage of the theater in Aegina.
In a traditional ancient Greek show of approval, his supporters threw so many hats and pieces of clothing onto his head that he suffocated.
All of Draco 's laws, except the law concerning murder, were abolished by Solon in the early 6th century BC.
Linear algebra uses matrices.
In that context, a determinant is a mathematical function that allows to associate certain matrices with a scalar.
Only square matrices have determinants.
That is to say that the matrix needs to have the same number of columns as it has rows.
Originally determinants were associated with Systems of linear equations: These scalars "determined" whether a system had a unique solution.
David Ricardo (18 April 1772 11 September 1823) was a British political economist.
He was one of the main thinkers behind Classical economics, together with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill.
Today, he is mostly known for his theory of comparative advantage.
This theory suggests that a nation should concentrate its resources only in industries where it is most internationally competitive and trade with other countries to obtain products not produced nationally.
Ricardo promoted the idea of extreme industry specialization by nations, to the point of dismantling internationally competitive and otherwise profitable industries.
In this thinking Ricardo assumed the existence of a national industry policy aimed at promoting some industries to the detriment of others.
For Ricardo some form of Central Economic Planning was a given.
Ricardo 's theory of comparative advantage has been challenged by, among others, Joan Robinson and Piero Sraffa.
Nevertheless, it remains the cornerstone of the argument in favor of international free trade as a means of increasing economic prosperity.
The theory of comparative advantage was the forerunner of the push towards globalization via increased international trade, the guiding theme in economic policy currently promoted by the OECD and the World Trade Organization.
Delphinus is a genus of dolphin, commonly known as the "Common Dolphin".
There are two species in this genus, the Short-beaked Common Dolphin (Delphinus delphis), and the Long-beaked Common Dolphin (Delphinus capensis).
But some studies say that there is a third species, the "Arabian Common Dolphin" (Delphinus tropicalis), which has a long, thin beak and is found in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.
Both, the Short-beaked Common Dolphin and the Long-beaked Common Dolphin are medium-sized dolphins.
Adults grow between the lengths of 1.9 to 2.5 meters (6.2 to 8.2 ft), and weigh around 80 to 235 kg (180 to 520 lb).
Males are longer and heavier than females.
They are dark gray on the back, the belly is white, and the sides are light gray, gold, or yellow in color.
Common Dolphins live in both, warm temperate and tropical waters from 40 N to 50 S. They eat many species of fish like sardines, herrings, and bonitos, octopuses and squids.
They are fast swimmers, swimming up to the speed of 60 km per hour.
They have made dives up to 200 meters (660 ft) deep.
Common Dolphins are pregnant for around 10 to 11 months before giving birth to young which are 70 to 100 centimeters (2.3 to 3.3 ft) long, and weigh around 10 kg (22 Ib).
They give birth to 1 young at a time.
Females mature between the age of 2 and 7 years old and males mature between the age of 3 and 12 years old.
They live for around 35-40 years.
At first it was thought that there was only one species of the Delphinus genus, the Short-beaked Common Dolphin (Delphinus Delphis).
But later, studies showed that there was another species, the Long-beaked Common Dolphin (Delphinus Capensis).
The difference between the Short-beaked Common Dolphin and the Long-beaked Common Dolphin, is that the Short-beaked Common Dolphin is smaller in size and has a smaller beak than the Long-beaked Common Dolphin.
Now scientist say there is a third species, the Arabian Common Dolphin (Delphinus Tropicalis) which has a long, thin beak and lives in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, but it is not confirmed.
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS (1 May 1769 14 September 1852) was a soldier and statesman.
He was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain.
His defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 put him in the top rank of Britain 's military heroes.
In 2002 he was number 15 in the BBC 's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.
Wellesley was born in Dublin into a wealthy Anglo-Irish aristocratic protestant family.
Wellington was twice Tory Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
He was one of the leading figures in the House of Lords until his retirement in 1846.
Starting as an ensign in the British Army, he served well in the Napoleonic Wars, eventually reaching the rank of Field Marshal.
Wellington is often compared to the 1st Duke of Marlborough.
They had many things in common, including being in politics after a highly successful military career.
He remained Commander-in-Chief of the British Army until his death.
Deus Ex is a video game available on the personal computer.
It is a first person shooter.
The game is about a conspiracy in the future that involves the Illuminati and artificial intelligence.
The player plays as J.C. Denton, a cyborg who has to deal with problems like robots, men, and bombs.
Denton has a brother and many employers.
He has skills in the game that increase when goals are completed.
For instance, if he needs to sneak up on men in the Army, the player might use a ventilation shaft and gain extra points, which can then be used like money to buy better aim with a pistol.
Deus Ex came out in 2000.
It tried to say things about philosophy, knowledge, terrorism, and other things, much like The Matrix.
It is widely regarded as one of the best computer games and video games of all time.
Diego Maradona (born 30 October 1960 in Lan s, Buenos Aires) is an Argentine football player.
He was nicknamed El Diez, Pelusa, El Diego and El pibe de oro, He won the World Cup in Mexico in the year of 1986.
He is regarded as one of the best footballers of all time.
At age 25, Diego Maradona was the main figure of Argentina 's drive to its 1986 World Cup.
His great skill and moves reserved him a spot in soccer history and as one of the best players.
Once he controlled the ball for more than half of the entire field, beating English defenders, he kicked the ball off his left leg into the net, juking out the goalkeeper.
The World Cup made Maradona the most famous soccer player after Pele from Brazil.
Even the British named him "athlete of the decade."
"Diego Maradona."
Encyclopedia of World Biography.
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Detroit: Gale, 2000.
Biography in Context.
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12 May 2014.
"Maradona, Diego Armando."
Hutchinson Encyclopedia.
2011.
eLibrary.
Web.
12 May.
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Deuterocanonical books means "second canon" in Greek.
It usually means the parts of the Bible that are only used by some Christian churches (mostly Roman Catholic and Orthodox).
The books have originally been written in Greek language and they date to era of some 250-150 years before Christ.
The books are not part of the Jewish Tanakh (also called the Hebrew Bible) since their original language is Greek and not Hebrew.
Some books considered deuterocanonical by Catholics are:
The Book of Daniel and the Book of Esther are longer in Catholic Bibles than in Protestant Bibles because they have more stories.
Most Protestant Christian churches do not think that the deuterocanonical books were inspired by God.
They call these books Apocrypha.
Martin Luther considered these book very good and useful reading; John Calvin considered them as work of Satan.
The discus throw is an event in athletics, where a heavy disc is thrown for distance.
It was invented in 708 BC in Ancient Greece.
The goal is to throw the discus farther than your opponents.
The discus throw is the subject of a number of well-known ancient Greek statues and Roman copies of them.
US thrower Al Oerter is one of only two athletes to win the same individual event at four consecutive Olympic Games.
Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that are discrete rather than continuous.
In contrast to real numbers that vary "smoothly", discrete mathematics studies objects such as integers, graphs, and statements in logic.
These objects do not vary smoothly, but have distinct, separated values.
Discrete mathematics therefore excludes topics in "continuous mathematics" such as calculus and analysis.
Discrete objects can often be counted using integers.
Mathematicians say that this is the branch of mathematics dealing with countable sets (sets that have the same cardinality as subsets of the natural numbers, including rational numbers but not real numbers).
However, there is no exact, universally agreed, definition of the term "discrete mathematics."
Many times, discrete mathematics is described less by what is included than by what is excluded: continuously varying quantities and related notions.
The set of objects studied in discrete mathematics can be finite or infinite.
The term finite mathematics is sometimes applied to parts of the field of discrete mathematics that deals with finite sets, particularly those areas relevant to business.
Research in discrete mathematics increased in the latter half of the twentieth century partly due to the development of digital computers which operate in discrete steps and store data in discrete bits.
Concepts and notations from discrete mathematics are useful in studying and describing objects and problems in branches of computer science, such as computer algorithms, programming languages, cryptography, automated theorem proving, and software development.
In turn, computer implementations are significant in applying ideas from discrete mathematics to real-world problems, such as in operations research.
Although the main objects of study in discrete mathematics are discrete objects, analytic methods from continuous mathematics are often employed as well.
DDT is a well-known pesticide.
The abbreviation stands for Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane, one of its names.
The Swiss chemist Paul Hermann M ller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948, for his discovery.
In the 1960s there was a study that questioned if it was good to spread large amounts of DDT indiscriminately.
The study also found that DDT could cause cancer.
DDT is also highly poisonous to birds and other animals further up the food chain.
This is why DDT was replaced by other pesticides.
The Stockholm Convention which took effect in 2004, restricts the use of DDT to vector control.
The convention does not affect the use of DDT for public health issues.
This is because there are very few affordable alternatives.
DDT is still widely used in India, North Korea and possibly elsewhere.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a guide to grouping mental disorders.
It is published by the American Psychiatric Association.
It is used in the United States and around the world by doctors, researchers, health insurance companies, companies which make medicine, and others.
There have been five revisions since it was first published in 1952.
Each time, more mental disorders were added, although some have been removed and are no longer seen as mental disorders.
An example of this is homosexuality.
The manual was developed from systems for collecting census and psychiatric hospital statistics, and from a manual written by the US Army.
A lot of changes were made to it in 1980.
The last time it was greatly changed was the fourth edition ("DSM-IV"), published in 1994, but small changes to text were made in a 2000 version.
The fifth edition ("DSM-5") was published May 2013.
The DSM has been criticized for being too influenced by the drug industry.
The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, ICD, has a section about mental and behavioral disorders which is different from the DSM.
The ICD, not the DSM, is the system used by the United States government.
Dar es Salaam (Arabic: D r as-Sal m) is the largest city in East Africa.
It has a population of about 2,500,000 people.
The city is also Tanzania 's richest city.
It is an important economic center.
Dar es Salaam was the capital city of Tanzania until 1996.
Even though the capital was moved to Dodoma, Dar Salaam is still the location of much of the country 's government.
It is also the capital of the Dar es Salaam Region.
The city 's name in Arabic means "Abode of Peace".
Dar es Salaam was at one time called Mzizima.
The population of Dar es Salaam is increasing at a rate of 4.39 % each year.
It is the 3rd fastest growing city in Africa and the 9th fastest in the world.
The metropolitan area population is expected to reach 5.12 million people by 2020.
This rate is far above the world average.
Globally, the growth rate of the human population has been declining since a peak in 1962 and 1963 of 2.20 % per annum.
In 2009 the estimated annual growth rate was 1.1 %.
Dar es Salaam 's rapidly expanding population presents both significant challenges and opportunities.
Infrastructure development has not kept pace with the population growth so there is significant resource pressure, especially on road networks and the national power grid.
However, a sizeable population with a growing middle class continues to attract investment in areas such as retail (shopping malls), entertainment (cinemas) and communication (high speed internet).
Dar es Salaam is located on a large harbor on the Eastern Indian Ocean coast of Africa.
Dar es Salaam has a tropical savanna climate (Aw in the Koeppen climate classification).
This is because it is very near the equator and the warm Indian Ocean.
The city usually has hot and humid weather during much of the year.
Each year the area has two rainy seasons.
These are called ` the long rains ' (in April and May) and ` the short rains ' (in November and December).
Nearly 1100mm of rain fall each year on the area.
In 1859, Albert Roscher of Germany became the first European to go to Mzizima ("healthy town").
In 1866 Sultan Seyyid Majid of Zanzibar gave it its current name.
It is an Arabic phrase meaning Haven of Peace.
Dar es Salaam had much growth starting in 1887, when the German East Africa Company created a station there.
The town 's growth was because it was the administrative and commercial center of German East Africa.
It was also helped by the growth of industry caused by the Central Railway Line in the early 1900s.
German East Africa was captured by the British during World War I and its name was changed to Tanganyika.
Dar es Salaam was still the territory 's administrative and commercial center.
After World War II, Dar es Salaam had a period of rapid growth.
Tanganyika became independent from colonial rule in December 1961.
Dar es Salaam continued to be its capital.
It remained the capital when in 1964 Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
However, in 1973, it was decided to move the capital to Dodoma.
This has not yet been completed, and Dar es Salaam is still Tanzania 's primary city.
Distributed computing is a word from computer science, about using many computers to solve a big problem.
One way to solve a big problem is to use a very fast computer called a supercomputer.
Supercomputers are very expensive, and many scientists can not buy them.
A cheaper way to solve a big problem is to split it into smaller problems, when possible.
These smaller problems can then be solved by different computers (or processors), which talk to each other over a computer network.
Because many computers work together, this makes them as powerful as a supercomputer.
One example where distributed computing is used is the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.
Dublin is the capital city of Ireland.
The Greater Dublin Area has a population of 1,187,176 people.
Dublin is also the biggest city on the island of Ireland.
Dublin was built by the Vikings and is built upon the river Liffey.
The river divides the city into two parts, North Dublin and South Dublin.
Many famous writers lived in Dublin.
Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw were born in Dublin.
James Joyce is probably Dublin 's best known and most international writer.
Dublin is home to Ireland 's largest stadium, Croke Park.
It can hold up to 85,000 people.
Croke Park is the usual venue for all Ireland hurling and football finals.
DirectX is a computer program by Microsoft made so the computer can have better graphics, and play games like on the Xbox with improved graphics.
Slalom skiing is a special event in the sport of Alpine skiing.
Slalom was first recognized as part of the Winter Olympic Games in 1936.
Slalom is the most technical event in alpine skiing.
A slalom race involves skiing between and around a series of obstacles made of poles which are placed on the snowy slope.
These poles are called "gates".
There are many gates in a slalom run.
Smaller turns than Super G or Downhill are made because distance between gates is short.
World Cup is the highest international competition of alpine skiing held by International Ski Federation (FIS).
Ingemar Stenmark (Sweden, his career 1973-1989) and Vreni Schneider (Switzerland, her career 1984-1995) are the record holder as the most World Cup titles in Slalom discipline.
Stenmark won 8 times and Schneider won 6 times.
These are necessary items for the alpine skiing competitions.
In slalom (SL), 165 cm for men, 155 cm for ladies.
In giant slalom (GS), 195 cm for men, 188 cm for ladies.
In Super G (SG), 210 cm for men, 205 cm for ladies.
In Downhill (DH), 218 cm for men, 210 cm for ladies.
(Rules apply to 2012-2013 World Cup and Europe Cup)
The dachshund is a breed of dog.
It is usually short (small in height), but long from front to back and with short legs.
Dachshund is a German word that is used in English, and it means badger dog.
(In German, dachshunds are called Dackel or Teckel.)
The breed was developed to use its sense of smell to find, chase, and hunt badgers and other animals that live in holes.
A dachshund has a long, narrow body, so it is sometimes called a wiener dog, hot dog, or sausage dog.
Some people believe that using those words does not show respect.
Today, dachshunds have crooked legs, loose skin, and a barrel-like chest.
Over time, breeders selected dogs so that those features would appear in puppies.
That way, dachshunds could do a better job of burrowing into tight spaces.
Another feature is a long tail.
The coat or fur of a dachshund comes in three kinds smooth or short-haired, long-haired, and wire-haired.
The wire-haired dachshund usually is shorter front to back than the other two.
A fully-grown dachshund weighs between 16 and 28 lb.
(7 to 12.7 kg), while the miniature dachshund may weigh less than 11 lb.
(5 kg).
The writer H. L. Mencken said that A dachshund is a half-dog high and a dog-and-a-half long.
Dachshund fur comes in many colors.
The colors that are most common are red (a brown color that looks a little reddish) and black-and-tan (black body with brown parts).
There are solid black and solid chocolate-brown dachshunds.
Many people think those dachshunds are handsome, but the colors are not standard or official that is, you can not enter those dogs in some dog shows.
Dachshunds are playful, fun dogs.
People know that dachshunds like to chase small animals and birds, and when they chase those animals they do it ferociously (without fear and very intensely).
Many dachshunds are strong-headed or stubborn, and that means they can be hard to train.
However; if trained in proper way and at an early age, these dogs can be a good family dogs.
These dogs should be trained for socialization and obedience.
Dachshunds are often very loyal to their owners (devoted to their owners, or very interested in their owners).
In fact, they can be much more loyal than other kinds of dogs.
But wire-haired dachshunds often do not show that kind of loyalty to their owners.
People know that dachshunds have deep and tender eyes, and that dachshunds have many facial expressions (dachshunds can communicate just with the look on their faces).
Dachshunds often have spinal problems, that is, their backbone can become injured.
That is because of the dog s very long spinal column and short rib cage.
The problems are usually hereditary (genetic), that is, they are passed down from parent dogs to puppies.
A dachshund that is obese (fat) can have a higher risk of getting injured.
That is because the extra weight puts more strain on the backbone (vertebrae).
To prevent injury, dachshunds should not climb stairs or jump unless they really have to.
It is also important to hold the dog the right way by holding up the front and the rear parts of the body at all times.
Some people have wondered if dachshunds go back to ancient Egypt.
People have found drawings and engravings from ancient Egypt that show hunting dogs with short legs.
But the dachshund of today was bred in Europe, and it has parts of German, French, and English hounds and terriers.
Kings and queens all over Europe have had dachshunds.
Queen Victoria especially liked dachshunds.
In computer science, a data structure is the organization of and implementing of values and information.
Where data structures are different from abstract data types is in the way they are used.
Data structures are the implementations of abstract data types in a concrete and physical setting using algorithms in the implementation process.
This can be seen in the relationship between the List (abstract data type) and the linked list (data structure).
The List is the containing of a sequence of values or bits of information.
The linked list implementation of a List is having a pointer or reference between each node of information allowing one to traverse forwards or backwards in the list.
Furthermore, data structures are often optimized for certain operations.
Finding the best data structure when solving a problem is an important part of programming.
The simplest type of data structure is a linear array.
This is also called one-dimensional array.
An array holds several values of the same kind.
Accessing the elements is very fast.
It may not be possible to add more values than defined at the start, without copying all values into a new array.
In computer science, an array data structure or simply an array is a data structure consisting of a collection of elements (values or variables), each identified by at least one array index or key.
An array is stored so that the position of each element can be computed from its index tuple by a mathematical formula.
For example, an array of 10 integer variables, with indices 0 through 9, may be stored as 10 words at memory addresses 2000, 2004, 2008, 2036, so that the element with index i has the address 2000 + 4 i.
Because the mathematical concept of a matrix can be represented as a two-dimensional grid, two-dimensional arrays are also sometimes called matrices.
In some cases the term "vector" is used in computing to refer to an array, although tuples rather than vectors are more correctly the mathematical equivalent.
Arrays are often used to implement tables, especially look up tables; the word table is sometimes used as a synonym of array.
Arrays are among the oldest and most important data structures, and are used by almost every program.
They are also used to implement many other data structures, such as lists and strings.
They effectively exploit the addressing logic of computers.
In most modern computers and many external storage devices, the memory is a one-dimensional array of words, whose indices are their addresses.
Processors, especially vector processors, are often optimized for array operations.
Arrays are useful mostly because the element indices can be computed at run time.
Among other things, this feature allows a single iterative statement to process arbitrarily many elements of an array.
For that reason, the elements of an array data structure are required to have the same size and should use the same data representation.
The set of valid index tuples and the addresses of the elements (and hence the element addressing formula) are usually, but not always, fixed while the array is in use.
The term array is often used to mean array data type, a kind of data type provided by most high-level programming languages that consists of a collection of values or variables that can be selected by one or more indices computed at run-time.
Array types are often implemented by array structures; however, in some languages they may be implemented by hash tables, linked lists, search trees, or other data structures.
A linked data structure is a set of records linked together by references.
The records are often called nodes.
The references are often called links or pointers.
From here on, the words node and pointer will be used for these concepts.
In linked data structures, pointers are only dereferenced or compared for equality.
Thus, linked data structures are different than arrays, which require adding and subtracting pointers.
Linked lists, search trees, and expression trees are all linked data structures.
They are also important in algorithms such as topological sort and set union-find.
A stack is a basic data structure that can be logically thought as linear structure represented by a real physical stack or pile, a structure where insertion and deletion of items takes place at one end called top of the stack.
The basic concept can be illustrated by thinking of your data set as a stack of plates or books where you can only take the top item off the stack in order to remove things from it.
This structure is used all throughout programming.
The basic implementation of a stack is also called a Last In First Out structure; however there are different variations of stack implementations.
There are basically three operations that can be performed on stacks.
They are:
A queue is an abstract data type or a linear data structure, in which the first element is inserted from one end (the tail), and the deletion of existing element takes place from the other end (the head).
A queue is a First In First Out structure.
The process of adding an element to a queue is called enqueuing and the process of removing an element from a queue is called dequeuing.
A graph is an abstract data type that is meant to implement the graph and hypergraph concepts from mathematics.
A graph data structure consists of a finite (and possibly mutable) set of ordered pairs, called edges or arcs, of certain entities called nodes or vertices.
As in mathematics, an edge (x, y) is said to point or go from x to y. The nodes may be part of the graph structure, or may be external entities represented by integer indices or references.
A graph data structure may also associate to each edge some edge value, such as a symbolic label or a numeric attribute.
The tree is one of the most powerful of the advanced data structures and it often appears in advanced subjects such as AI and design.
Surprisingly though the tree is important in a much more basic application - namely the keeping of an efficient index.
Whenever a tree is used there is a high chance that an index is involved somewhere.
The simplest type of index is a sorted listing of the key field.
This provides a fast lookup because you can use a binary search to locate any item without having to look at each one in turn.
The trouble with a simple ordered list only becomes apparent once you start adding new items and have to keep the list sorted - it can be done reasonably efficiently but it takes some juggling.
Additionally, a linear index is not easy to share because the whole index needs to be locked when one user edits it, whereas one branch of a tree can be locked, leaving the other branches editable by other users (as they can not be affected).
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (born St Petersburg, September 25 1906; died Moscow August 9 1975) was a Russian-Soviet composer.
Shostakovich s parents came from Siberia.
His father was a biologist and engineer, and his mother was a pianist.
They lived comfortably, although this was to change after the Revolution (1917).
Shostakovich studied the piano and composition at the Petrograd Conservatory (St. Petersburg was called Petrograd between 1914 and 1924, after which it became Leningrad until 1991, when it became St. Petersburg again).
After his mother died, the family were short of money, so young Dmitri had to earn money by playing the piano in cinemas for silent movies.
He worked extremely hard and with a lot of concentration.
He was very successful both as a pianist and a composer.
His Symphony No. 1 was very popular.
His music sounded very modern with lots of dissonant chords.
His first dramatic works include an opera called The Nose and a ballet called The Golden Age.
In 1930 he wrote an important opera called Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.
It was a huge success, and the critics said that it could only have been written by a Soviet composer brought up in the best traditions of Soviet culture.
One night in 1936 Stalin came to watch it.
He left before the end.
Two days later there was an article in the official government paper Pravda.
The title was Chaos instead of Music.
It said that this opera was primitive and vulgar, full of screaming and noise.
The politicians were criticizing not just Shostakovich but all modern Soviet music.
Shostakovich was denounced, and his friends were too frightened to defend him in case they were denounced as well.
Shostakovich suffered quietly and wrote his Fifth Symphony.
The politicians liked this symphony.
He was once more thought of as the leading Soviet composer.
He was supposed to have said that his new symphony was the creative reply of a Soviet artist to justified criticism, but it was actually a critic who said this.
Shortly afterward, he received the Stalin Prize for his Piano Quintet.
During World War II Shostakovich was evacuated with his wife and two children.
His next two symphonies, nos. 7 and 8, describe the war.
They were hugely popular in the West.
In the United States, the Seventh Symphony became the symbol of resistance against Nazism.
After the war, Soviet politicians again began to control and criticize artistic life very hard.
In 1948, there was a big meeting at which Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and several other composers were criticized.
Their music was called formalist, anti-democratic, and lots of other things which had nothing to do with music.
There was nothing the composers could do except to say how sorry they were.
For the next five years Shostakovich was careful not to write anything the politicians would not like.
He wrote songs such as "The Sun Shines on our Motherland".
Some of his other compositions in which he expressed his real feelings were kept in a drawer so that no one could see them.
In 1953, Stalin died and things became easier again.
Shostakovich wrote his Tenth Symphony.
The whole world now saw Shostakovich as the greatest Soviet composer.
He suffered less from official repression.
Surprisingly, articles criticizing the music of modern young composers carried his name, but a lot of these articles he had not written.
He was persuaded to sign them so that the politicians would leave him in peace.
He wrote more symphonies and quartets as well as concertos.
His opera Lady Macbeth was revised and given a different title: Katerina Izmaylova.
It was performed in many countries, and was made into a movie.
Yet in 1962, he wrote his very serious Symphony No. 13 using poems including one of the Babi Yar massacre, so he suffered from repression again.
In his later years, Shostakovich suffered from ill-health.
He had poliomyelitis, which made it difficult for him to use his hands and legs.
He suffered several heart attacks, and started to lose his sight.
He died of lung cancer in 1975.
Shostakovich is best known for his fifteen symphonies and fifteen string quartets.
His most important opera is Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.
He also wrote a lot of film music and music for plays including Hamlet.
Shostakovich read a lot of Russian literature.
His songs had words by famous Russian writers such as Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Alexander Blok.
He wrote twenty-four Preludes and Fugues for piano, a piano trio, two piano concertos, a piano quintet, a sonata for cello and piano, and a sonata for viola and piano (his last work).
He had lots of friends who regularly gave the first performances of his works.
Most of his symphonies were first performed by the Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Eugeny Mravinsky.
His string quartets were first performed by the Beethoven String Quartet.
The violinist David Oistrakh, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovitch, and the pianist Sviatoslav Richter were all close friends who played his music.
Shostakovich had an amazing musical memory and could play almost anything he knew by ear.
When he was young he spent hours improvising, composing, and playing.
Although he had small hands, he was a very gifted pianist.
He had no difficulty in playing any of his works on the piano, even music written for an orchestra.
He often played his music too fast and without much expression.
Shostakovich was a very nervous person.
He was shy and very self-critical.
He hated having to talk to people he did not know.
He did not sit still, always fidgeting and twitching his face nervously.
He was, however, always very polite and very kind to everyone he met.
He was very careful not to criticize musicians who asked him for advice.
He said very little, but what he said was carefully thought out.
He wrote lots of letters to the authorities to try to help his friends.
He was very reliable, and always tried to arrive on time.
In his last years, he found it very difficult to use his hands because of his illness, but he always insisted on writing down his music himself.
Denver is the capital and largest city in the U.S. state of Colorado.
It is located at the foot of the Rocky Mountains on the South Platte River, and was founded in 1858.
A nickname for Denver is The Mile High City, because Denver is very high above sea level.
It is at least 5,280 feet (or 1,609 meters) above sea level at a point in the city 's state capitol building.
The dome at the top of the capitol building is covered in gold.
Denver City was founded in November 1858 during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush as a mining town in western Kansas Territory.
That summer, a group of gold prospectors from Lawrence, Kansas, started a settlement on the banks of the South Platte River.
They called it Montana City.
This was the first settlement in what was later to become the city of Denver.
The settlement faded quickly.
By the summer of 1859 it was abandoned in favor of Auraria (named after the gold mining town of Auraria, Georgia), and St. Charles City.
The Colorado Territory was created on February 28, 1861, Arapahoe County was formed on November 1, 1861, and Denver City was incorporated on November 7, 1861.
Denver City served as the Arapahoe County Seat from 1861 until consolidation in 1902.
In 1867, Denver City became the Territorial Capital.
With its new-found importance, Denver City shortened its name to just Denver.
On August 1, 1876, Colorado was admitted to the Union.
Denver is the home of the Denver Broncos football team, the Denver Nuggets basketball team, the Colorado Rockies baseball team, and the Colorado Avalanche hockey team.
Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen, the first element.
Deuterium has one proton and one neutron.
Hydrogen does not have a neutron, only a proton.
Another isotope of hydrogen, tritium, has two neutrons.
The chemical symbol for Deuterium is 2H but D is also used often.
Two deuterium atoms combined with an oxygen atom is sometimes called "heavy water."
This is because it is like water (H2O), but heavier because deuterium has one more neutron in its nucleus.
Heavy water is sometimes used in nuclear reactors.
It is also used as a solvent for NMR spectroscopy.
This is because it will dissolve the sample, like normal water, but it will not be detected by the magnet in an 1H NMR.
Digital signal processing (DSP) is concerned with the processing of digital signals or analog signals after converting from analog to digital format.
DSP includes subfields like: communication signals processing, radar signal processing, sensor array processing, digital image processing, etc.
DSP is usually used with real-world analog signals found in our lives, the first step is usually to convert the signal from an analog to a digital form, by using an analog-to-digital converter.
Often, the required output signal is another real-world analog signal, which requires a digital-to-analog converter.
Discordianism is a postmodern religion in which disorder is as important as order, existing within chaos.
It was founded circa 1958 1959 by Malaclypse the Younger, who published its most important text: the Principia Discordia.
The Sacred Chao and Five fingered hand of ERIS are the most recognized symbols of Discordianism.
The Dead Sea is a lake between the West Bank and Jordan.
It is 418 m below sea level.
It is the lowest point on the surface of the Earth.
The Dead sea is almost nine times as salty as the ocean.
That makes it impossible for most life to exist in it.
This is the reason for its name.
However, it is not completely dead, because some types of bacteria are able to live in the water.
Because the water is so salty, it weighs more than fresh water.
That lets people float in the Dead Sea without any effort.
Tourists come from around the world to float in the water.
The dragon is a legendary creature belonging to the world of mythology, story telling and fantasy.
There are stories about dragons in Chinese culture, European culture, South American culture, and many others.
Dragons can look like dinosaurs and other extinct animals.
Because of that, it is easy to think that those animals might have been an example for dragons as they were thought of in the history of humankind.
There are many kinds of dragons in the different cultures.
In general:.
In stories such as The Hobbit or Beowulf, dragons are dangerous and attack humans.
Other stories, such as those by Anne McCaffrey, have dragons who are looking for help, or giving help.
A dragon also appears in the Book of Revelation chapters 12-13, where he is seen as the Devil.
Depeche Mode is an English band.
It formed in Basildon, Essex in 1980.
The band 's name was taken from French fashion magazine, D p che mode, which means "fashion update" or "fashion news dispatch".
Depeche Mode became famous in the 1980s.
The band has sold over 100 million records around the world.
Differential cryptanalysis is a general form of cryptanalysis applicable to block ciphers, but also can be applied to stream ciphers and cryptographic hash functions.
It is the study of how differences in the input can affect the resultant differences at the output.
In the case of a block cipher, it refers to a set of techniques and methods for tracing differences through the network of transformations, discovering where the cipher demonstrates non-random behavior, and extend such properties to recover the secret key.
Differential cryptanalysis attacks are usually chosen plaintext attacks, meaning that the attacker must be able to obtain encrypted ciphertexts for some set of plaintexts of his choosing.
In some religions, the devil is a bad spirit that tries to create problems for people.
Some people also use the words "the Devil" or "Satan" for the most powerful devil.
The word "devil" comes from the Greek word "diabolos" which means "someone who tells lies to hurt you".
("Diabolos" is translated to the English word "slanderer.")
The New Testament uses "diabolos" as a title for Satan, and so "The Devil" became another name for Satan in English.
In the Old Testament, there is the serpent and the shaitan, who may be two different characters.
"Shaitan" in Hebrew means "adversary", an enemy or opponent.
Shaitan is also the word used for the devil in the Koran, who often appears as an animal and tries to get people to do the wrong thing.
In Christianity the Devil was originally an angel in heaven called Lucifer.
But he wanted to be the ruler of heaven and so he revolted against God.
After a hard fight he was defeated and thrown out of heaven.
Some other angels who helped him were also thrown out.
After the Devil was thrown out of heaven, he started doing bad things on the earth.
He wants people to worship him instead of God.
Sometimes he tries to trick people by giving them false promises.
The other angels who were thrown out of heaven became evil spirits called demons.
They obey the Devil and help him do evil things.
The Book of Revelation says that God will punish the Devil and his demons by throwing them into a Lake of Fire that burns in Hell.
This will happen in the future.
Artists draw pictures of the Devil that show him as ugly and evil.
But nobody knows what he may look like.
Usually he is a spirit that nobody can see, but he can make himself look like a real person in order to trick people.
Many modern depictions of the devil portray him as a red human-like being with horns and a pointed tail, carrying a red pitchfork.
Not all religions believe in the devil.
For example, Buddhists do not believe in the devil.
Many satanists believe in the devil or Satan only as a metaphor, not an actual being or person.
The name diesel is given to an engine invented by a German named Rudolf Diesel in the late 19th century.
It is one of the most used kinds of internal combustion engine.
Most engines need a system called an ignition system one that uses an electric spark in order to burn the mix of fuel and air and make power.
Other types of ignition systems use compressed air from an outside source, such as an air compressor.
A diesel does not.
It burns a diesel fuel (similar to heating oil) through very high compression or pressing together of the mix.
A tiny bit of fuel is injected, or forced, into the engine 's cylinders at just the right moment.
Since gases heat when they are pressed together, the compression of the air and fuel mix cause the mix to explode within the cylinder.
Diesel engines make very good use of the fuel they burn.
They also make lots of torque (pronounced "tork"), or twisting power.
An engine with a lot of torque will be able to spin its shaft even if it is very hard to do so.
This makes a diesel engine a good choice in heavy equipment like trucks, trains and construction machines.
The very big trucks on the road have diesel engines in them.
So do train locomotives, unless they are electric or the old steam-powered kind.
Sometimes, even the torque of a diesel engine is not enough to run such big machines.
To boost power, large diesels often have a device called a turbocharger attached.
A turbocharger is a type of turbine something used to move a lot of air very quickly.
Jet engines also contain a turbine.
In the diesel, pressure from the exhaust spins the turbocharger at a very high speed.
Fresh air is then forced back into the engine.
Since the engine works by pumping air, the more air you can put through it, the more power it makes.
That is where the turbocharger helps.
A diesel engine that has a turbocharger is called a turbodiesel.
The whistling sound sometimes heard near one of these engines is caused by the turbocharger, or "turbo" for short.
A diesel engine can also be made to run on vegetable oil made from old cooking oil.
This type of fuel is called biodiesel.
Running a diesel engine on biodiesel fuel makes the exhaust smell like food.
Vegetable oil as fuel is not a new idea.
The engine that Rudolf Diesel used to demonstrate his new idea ran on peanut oil.
Drawing is a way of making a picture.
Drawings are created by making lines on a surface.
Long lines make up the shapes and small lines make the textures.
Drawings can be images of real life or abstract images showing ideas can not be seen in the real world.
A drawing is the art created this way.
Examples of things used to mark with are pencils, chalk, charcoal, crayons, pastels, pen and ink.
Artists have been drawing for many centuries.
They draw on paper or on other surfaces which the marks show up on.
Dedham is a town in the U.S. state of Massachusetts.
It is one of the oldest towns in the United States.
It was started in the 1600s.
David (meaning favorite) was an important King of Israel.
He is described in the Qu ` ran, Bah ' scripture and the Old Testament books of 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel.
He was the father of King Solomon, and an ancestor of Jesus.
David was the youngest of eight sons of Jesse, and the grandson of Ruth (Ruth 4: 17, 22).
He was a shepherd, like his father was.
While taking care of the sheep, he would use a sling to keep wild animals from hurting them.
He would also play his harp.
And he wrote many of the songs found in the book of Psalms.
When Saul, the first King of Israel, left the Lord, God sent an evil spirit in him to torment him.
He called David, the shepherd, to his palace because David was good at playing the harp, and the soft music soothed Saul when he was being tormented by the evil sprit.
Saul "liked him very much, and David became one of his armor-bearers."
So,"... whenever the spirit from God came upon Saul, David would take his harp and play.
Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him."
He unknowingly puts in his court the person God chose to replace him.
When David was about twelve years old, his brothers had to go fight for Israel, under the leadership of King Saul.
His father was worried about them, and sent David to check on them.
When David arrived, a giant Philistine enemy, Goliath, was mocking the Israelites and God, saying, Who will come and fight me?
If he wins, we will be your slaves, but if I win, then you will be our slaves!
All the Israelites were afraid.
When David saw this, he was very angry, and he said, I will go fight him!
His faith was very different from King Saul, who, not thinking about God, immediately said, "You are not able... you are only a boy..." But David said confidently, "The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver (save) me from the hand of this Philistine."
He was not confident of his own fighting skills, but of the power of God, whose honor has been hurt by the Philistines and whose covenant promises have been forgotten by the Israelites.
When King Saul saw that David was brave enough to fight Goliath, he sent him.
Now he not only needed David for his sanity (to keep him from being crazy) but also to protect his kingdom.
Saul gave David his armor and weapons, but they were too heavy for him.
David told Saul that he would use his slingshot instead.
He then used a smooth stone and hit Goliath in the forehead, killing him instantly.
Using Goliath s own sword, David cut off Goliath 's head.
Later, because of David 's excellent fighting skills and brave loyalty to God, King Saul appoints David in a high rank in the army.
Whenever David goes out to slay, he comes back in victory; and therefore all the people were pleased with him, and King Saul treasured him very much.
But one day, when King Saul was coming out to greet his people, the women of the town came out, singing and dancing, with tamberines and lutes.
And as they danced, they sang the famous song, that most Christians know well:
"Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands."
Saul, hearing this song, burst with fury and jealousy - and began to suspect that the people liked David more than him.
Saul 's jealousy then began to heat into hatred, and he wanted to kill David, but not yet with his own hand - and so he asked David to marry his daughter, Merab, but David refused politely, and Merab was married to Adriel of Meholah.
Then he asked, again, for David to marry Michal, who was in love with David.
David again refused.
Finally, he asked him to bring a hundred Philistine foreskins, and then he would give the bride over.
David was pleased to become Saul 's son-in-law when he heard this, and agreed.
Saul thought, "Now he will be killed by the Philistine 's hand!"
But God was with David, and he was not hurt.
Saul tells Jonathan and all the officials to kill David, but Jonathan loved David very much (and had made a covenant of friendship with him), and warned Saul not to.
Saul listened, but later he grew angry again, and keeps on trying to kill David.
Many times David does not kill Saul when he has a chance to, but instead says, "How can I kill the Lord 's anointed?"
and spares Saul, and many times Saul blesses David and repents, and determines to stop trying to kill David - but he always returns with a spear.
In battle with the Philistines, Saul 's sons Jonathan, Abinadab and Malki-Shua are killed (the surviving son, Ish-Bosheth or Esh-Baal, was later made king by Abner).
Saul is injured, and he said to his armor-bearer to kill him before"... these uncircumcised fellows will come and run me through and abuse me."
The armor-bearer is too afraid to do it, so Saul"... took his own sword and fell on it", killing himself.
The armor-bearer killed himself, too.
"So Saul and his three sons and his armor-bearer and all his men died together that same day."
An Amalekite came to David and lied that he had killed Saul, probably hoping that David would reward him.
David realizes that Saul is dead, and he ripped his clothes and wept.
He was not happy to hear that Saul was dead, and even killed the Amalekite, thinking that he was Saul 's murderer.
He was anointed again in front of everybody.
Meanwhile, Ish-Bosheth, the only son of Saul left, was made king by Abner, a relative of Saul.
"The war between the house of Saul and the house of David lasted a long time.
David grew stronger and stronger, while the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker."
, Later, Abner slept with one of Saul 's concubines, and Ish-Bosheth asked, "Why did you sleep with my father 's concubine?"
Ish-Bosheth suspected that Abner wanted to be king instead of him (sleeping with the concubine of a king was thought very important).
Abner became very angry and decided to help David instead.
However, Joab, the commander of David 's army, did not like Abner because Abner had killed his brother.
Maybe he also thought his job as the leader of the army would not be safe if Abner helped David, because Abner was very powerful in the northern tribes of Israel.
So, Joab killed him by stab him in the stomach.
David cursed Joab for murdering Abner and said that he did not join in the killing.
When Ish-Bosheth heard that Abner had died, he became very worried: the northern tribes were now without a strong leader.
Two men, Recab and his brother Baanah, killed Ish-Bosheth in his house and brought his head to David, saying, "This day the LORD has avenged my lord the king against Saul."
David was very angry, and killed them: cutting off the hands that had killed Ish-Bosheth and the feet that had run with the news.
They buried the head of Ish-Bosheth in Abner 's tomb.
All the tribes of Israel then came to David and made him king over Israel.
A few years after David had captured Jerusalem, he asked, "Is there anyone... to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan 's sake?"
remembering the promise he had made.
They found a servant of King Saul named Ziba, who said that there was still a son of Jonathan who was cripple in both feet named Mephibosheth.
David told Mephibosheth that he would get back all the land Saul had when he was king, and that Mephibosheth would always eat at his table - a mark of great honor.
Mephibosheth bowed down and cried, "What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?"
From then on, Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem and always ate at the king 's table like one of David 's sons.
One day, David was walking around on the roof of his palace when he saw a very beautiful woman bathing.
David found out that her name was Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite, who was one of David 's royal guards.
David "sent messengers to get her... and he slept with her."
Because of this, David eventually broke the sixth, seventh, ninth and tenth commandments She soon became pregnant.
The law said that both David and Bathsheba must die for their sin.
David made Uriah come back from battle and tried to make him go back home and sleep with Bathsheba, so everybody will think it is Bathsheba 's son.
But Uriah does not go home, saying, "The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents... How could I go to my house... and lie with my wife?"
His devotion shows how sinful David is.
Finally, when David could not make him go home, he decided to make Uriah die so he could marry Bathsheba himself quickly.
He said, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest (most violent).
Then withdraw (go away) from him so he will be struck down and die."
Because of this, Uriah died.
David married Bathsheba, but"... the thing David had done displeased the LORD."
So, Nathan the prophet went and told him that he had done a very bad sin.
David saw he was guilty and was very sorry.
He said, "I have sinned against the Lord."
Nathan told David that he was forgiven, and the LORD mercy did not make David die, as the law said he must.
However, Nathan said the son Bathsheba would give birth to would die.
After Nathan had gone home, the child became sick and died.
David was very sad, but humbly accepted the results of his sin.
Bathsheba had another son, and they named him Solomon.
The LORD loved him, and said to name him Jedidah (it means loved by the LORD) This name showed that the LORD loved Solomon from when he was born, and also showed that the LORD still loved David, even though he had sinned.
Diablo II is a fantasy action role-playing computer game.
The game was created by Blizzard Entertainment.
It sold more than 1 million copies in the first two weeks after its release.
It has sold over 15 million copies worldwide.
The game is divided into 4 acts.
Each act is one part of the story.
There are up to six quests in each act that must be completed before the player can go to the next act.
The last quest is always the one where the player has to beat a boss.
The bosses for each act are:
Quests are parts of the story where the player has to complete certain tasks in order to continue on with the game.
The game has five different types (or classes) of characters to chose from.
Each character has a set skill tree, which is listed below.
To increase a characters level in Diablo II, the player must run the character around killing the monsters that appear in the different areas.
Once a monster is defeated, it sometimes drops items or coins.
When a monster is killed, it will not come back until the game is saved and started again.
Each character has a certain amount of experience that they needs to gain before they can become the next level.
This number depends upon what level the character is.
The higher the level, the more experience is needed to level.
Design is a visual look or a shape given to a certain object, in order to make it more attractive, make it more comfortable or to improve another characteristic.
Designers use tools from geometry and art.
Design is sometimes divided to sub-categories: graphic design, buildings and nature design, consumer goods design.
Design is also a concept used to create an object (virtual or not).
Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter video game.
It was made by 3D Realms and sold by Apogee Software.
It was first sold on January 29, 1996.
Duke Nukem 3D is based on the main character from the platform games Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II which were also published by Apogee.
The character is voiced by Jon St. John.
In the game, players control Duke Nukem, an action hero from Earth.
Players must fight invading aliens that want to take over Earth.
The game is made up of 28 levels spread over three chapters.
An add-on pack called The Plutonium Pak, later added a fourth episode of 11 new levels, new enemies, and one new weapon.
The game is a first person shooter, so the player sees the game from Duke 's eyes.
Instead of following the character around like a third-person shooter, Duke Nukem is like being inside Duke, and the player can see Duke 's hands and weapons on the screen.
The player fights the aliens, most often by shooting at them with different guns, but Duke can also kick, and throw pipe bombs like grenades.
The player must also sometimes solve puzzles to find the way through the level.
Duke Nukem 3D is set "sometime in the early 21st century", starting in a badly worn down Los Angeles.
The game moves on to places such as lunar space stations.
An alien transgenic species has invaded Earth while Duke has been fighting in space.
Duke crash lands back on Earth and finds most humans are gone.
Only a few women remain as slaves for the aliens.
America has been turned into a wasteland, and pornography has become the only entertainment.
The levels of Duke Nukem 3D take the player outdoors and indoors, on the street, inside military bases, deserts, flooded cities, space stations, moon bases and Japanese villas.
Levels were designed with many routes so that players can climb through air ducts, back doors and sewers to avoid enemies or find hidden secrets.
This makes the levels well suited to multiplayer deathmatchs.
The secret items also include (light switches to make it easier to see, water fountains and broken hydrants provide some health points) or simply provide a touch of diversion and strippers who Duke tells jokes to and sometimes they open up their clothes.
The game includes a range of weapons, some of which, even today, are still unique to the Duke Nukem series.
They range from Duke 's foot for kicking, a pistol, a "Chain gun" (similar in design to the Nordenfelt gun), pipe bombs, freeze - and shrink-rays, and laser-trip-mines.
Aside from weapons, Nukem can also find ` medkits ' to heal himself whenever the player chooses.
Steroids make the player move faster, as well as removing the effects of the shrink-ray.
Nightvision goggles allow players to see enemies in the dark.
The "HoloDuke" device projects a fake hologram of Duke that can be used to trick enemies.
Protective boots allow the player to cross dangerously hot or toxic floors.
For underwater scenes, scuba gear (an aqua-lung) can be used to let Duke breathe.
One of the favorite items is the jetpack which allows the player to fly up in the sky, often to reach hidden weapons or extra health.
Many of the secret items such as the jetpack, the scuba gear and the night vision goggles only last for a short time.
Weapons also have a limited number of ammunition.
There are many monsters in the game.
Some of these are aliens, others mutated humans (the LAPD has been turned into monster pigs).
Similar to many first-person shooter games, Nukem encounters a large number of weaker enemies, and a small number of boss enemies (extremely powerful).
Like Duke, these "boss" enemies have a wide range of weapons and equipment (some weaker enemies have jet packs).
In 1996, at the time of the game 's release, Internet-based gaming was just beginning and Duke Nukem 3D could be played on IPX LAN or modem.
Duke Nukem 3D players often used the IPX network utility Kali or the Total Entertainment Network (TEN) online service.
Kali allowed users to join a chat room to find opponents.
The Total Entertainment Network had hundreds of Duke 3D players online at any time, but players had to pay money monthly for it.
The game 's levels are often used as the battlegrounds for these online players, bur users are able to create their own levels ("maps").
The game also features co-operative play (co-op) which allows players to fight against the aliens instead of each other.
In the "Atomic" version, a new game play mode was introduced: Duke Tag, a "capture the flag" style mode.
Ken Silverman 's Build engine allowed complicated levels.
The game could use slopes in the floors.
It also supports upwards and downwards mouse aiming (though aiming up and down distorts the graphics due to not having perspective correction).
Duke Nukem 3D Build engine had doors\/walls that can move sideways.
The Build scripting system allows a whole string of moving and sliding parts with sound effects, such as buildings falling down, earthquakes, and walls that break apart when hit with explosives.
One of the more advanced effects is the horizontal sliding platform that can move the player inside a small sliding room, which made it possible to create subway cars moving in a timed sequence around a ring-shaped track.
The Build engine makes horizontally moving platforms possible by allowing several objects to pass through the same 2D space.
While inside one of these spaces, it is not possible to see into the other space, and so the Byuild 2.5 D engine has no problem rendering one space or the other even though the map data literally shows the two areas to be occupying the same place.
Several Duke Nukem 3D maps use this feature to create bizarre mind-bending maps where multiple large rooms all seem to be occupying one 3D space.
One secret level in particular ("Lunatic Fringe" from episode 2, Lunar Apocalypse) has a map where the player can travel 720 degrees around a circle and not cross their path.
This would be much more difficult to duplicate with modern true-3D map editors and engines.
An early beta (testing) version of Duke Nukem 3D called LameDuke was released by 3D Realms as a "bonus" one year after the release of the official version.
It has been released as is, with no support.
LameDuke features four episodes.
Some weapons were removed and\/or altered from the original versions.
Duke Nukem 3D is often thought of as one of the first videogames to have adult humor and sexual themes, especially in the first-person shooter genre.
Jokes about American consumerism, Hollywood culture, and sex in the media are made all through the game.
Duke 's world is out of control and virtually all forms of entertainment in this future have been reduced to pornography by the aliens.
The game has been heavily attacked by some critics, who claim that it supports pornography and murder.
Media Watch made the following comments about the game.
"Duke Nukem 3D moves the ` shooter ' through pornography stores, where Duke can use XXX sex posters for target practice.
Duke throws cash at a prostituted woman telling her to ` Shake it, Baby ' his gun ever ready.
In the game bonus points are awarded for the murder of these mostly prostituted and partially nude women.
Duke blows up stained glass windows in an empty church or goes to strip clubs where Japanese women lower their kimonos exposing their breasts.
Duke is encouraged to kill defenseless, often bound women.
Media Watch, Teaching Boys To Kill
In reality, Duke Nukem 3D does not contain a "bonus points" system; even accidental shooting of innocents in the game is, sometimes, punished by a sudden group of enemies attacking.
Duke Nukem 3D was banned in Brazil, along with Quake, Doom and several other violent first-person shooters.
As a response to complaints, censored versions of the game were sold in some countries to avoid being banned.
In Germany, the BPjM placed the game on the List of Media Harmful to Young People.
Many spin-offs and modifications to the original Duke Nukem 3D were produced after the game 's initial launch.
Plutonium PAK\/Atomic Edition: The Atomic Edition of Duke Nukem 3D was first sold in November 1996, and contained the original 3 episode game as well as a new eleven-level fourth episode.
The Plutonium PAK was also sold as an upgrade package to convert the first available version of Duke Nukem 3D (v1.3 d) to the new Atomic Edition (v1.4, later upgraded again to v1.5).
It includes three new enemies: the Protector Drone, the Pig Cop Tank, and a new boss known as The Alien Queen.
It also includes a new weapon, the Microwave Expander, with its own special ammunition.
It also has several improvements to the software of the game, which allow the game 's players to create new enemies and items.
Also this version includes a computer controlled second player to simulate multiplayer games.
EDuke (Enhanced Duke Nukem 3D): created by Matthew Saettler was given away as a patch for Atomic Edition users on July 28, 2000.
On this version 3D Realms removed the copyrights from the software so that players could do anything they liked with it and included a demo mod made by several beta testers.
The demo included new Sector-Based Effects, Sprite-Based Elevators, Ladders, a Bouncing Particle Fountain, a Personal Teleporter, and a Sophisticated Translucent Water Effect.
Saettler has kept records of his original Eduke site hee for reference.
Duke Caribbean: Life 's a Beach: This is an add-on created by Sunstorm Interactive.
Duke relaxes on a tropical island when he discovers that the aliens are having their own "vacation" there.
This unofficial add-on has a sunny Caribbean atmosphere, nice beaches and hotels as well as some of the original Duke Nukem 3D stuff fit in.
It includes levels created by Charlie Wiederhold, who later worked for 3D Realms to work on Duke Nukem Forever, the upcoming sequel to Duke Nukem 3D.
Duke it out in D.C.: In this storyline, President Bill Clinton is captured by alien forces, and it is up to Duke to save him.
This pack has levels that are based on real locations of Washington DC, such as the White House, the FBI headquarters, the Smithsonian museum, and the Washington Monument and others.
This game was also developed by Sunstorm Interactive.
Duke: Nuclear Winter: This one was developed by Simply Silly Software.
In the storyline, Santa Claus is mind-controlled by aliens into causing trouble on Earth.
Several of the levels take place near the North Pole.
This game has sometimes been criticized for using content from the original Duke Nukem 3D.
Duke Xtreme: An add-on developed by Sunstorm Interactive and contained 50 levels and many items.
This version had many technical problems.
Duke!
Zone (Parts 1 and 2): Was sold by WizardWorks and had over 500 levels made by fans of Duke Nukem 3D.
Duke!
ZONE II, contained three episodes designed by WizardWorks.
Duke Nukem 3D has been included in several compilations.
A bundle called East Meets West included the full versions of Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition and Shadow Warrior.
A bundle called Duke Nukem: Kill-A-Ton Collection featured Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition, Duke Xtreme, Duke!
ZONE II, Duke Nukem I (Duke Nukum), Duke Nukem II, and various other utilities.
Both of these compilations are no longer sold.
Earlier packages of Duke Nukem 3D also included the complete versions of Duke Nukem I and II as a bonus.
In 1998, 3D Realms filed a lawsuit against Micro Star over its add-on pack Nuke It and won.
The source code to the Duke Nukem 3D v1.5 executable, which uses the Build engine, was released as free software under the GPL on April 1, 2003.
The artwork remains copyright protected.
Many programmers altered so that it can be played on modern computers.
As of 2007, these projects gave the game a second life in multiplayer games through the Internet and a growing community is still actively playing.
The first modern Duke Nukem 3D project was from icculus.org.
The icculus.org software would later be used in the Rancidmeat, and later, the xDuke projects.
One popular project is Jonathon Fowler 's JFDuke3D, which the original creator of Duke Nukem 3D, Ken Silverman, gave support to, in December 2003.
Fowler and Silverman produced a new version of JFDuke3D using Polymost, an OpenGL software product for Build, which uses much more advanced 3D models, and 32-bit color.
Another project JFDuke3D called xDuke (not related to the xDuke project by icculus.org/duke3d) was created for play on the Xbox.
Silverman has helped Fowler with a lot of other software work related to the game.
Projects such as the Duke Nukem 3D High Resolution Pack were started to give the game the same quality as modern games.
There are plans to continue enhancing the Duke Nukem 3D software but no new versions of JFDuke3D have appeared since 2005.
A few projects have been created from the EDuke version (most notably WinEDuke and EDuke 2.1.1), but it was not until the release of Richard Gobeille 's EDuke32 (a version of JFDuke3D using Saettler 's EDuke software) in 2004 that EDuke became a the most popular with programmers.
EDuke32 has been capable of playing OGG music since September 2007.
A pack of music was compiled is planned to be part of future versions of the High Resolution Pack.
In June 2008, EDuke32 became the first Duke Nukem 3D project to be played as 64-bit software thanks to the DOSBox team.
In 1997, Duke Nukem 3D versions were sold for all the major consoles of the time.
The PlayStation version, Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown, includes six extra areas and a secret level, which was also included in the PC version.
It has some music from the PC version, some from the original, in Streaming XA-Audio made by Mark Knight, new enemies and a new boss.
The Sega Saturn version was created by Lobotomy Software and sold by Sega.
It uses Lobotomy 's SlaveDriver software.
This version uses the Sega NetLink for online play, and is played with the Saturn 's analog pad.
It also includes a hidden multiplayer mini-game called Death Tank Zwei.
The Nintendo 64 version was named Duke Nukem 64 and can be played by four players on a split-screen.
There is no music in this version and many items have been renamed to avoid drug and sex references.
Other changes include a fully 3D model for the final boss.
In 1998, a Sega Mega Drive version was sold by Tec Toy.
The artwork is very simple and only one third of the original game was included.
This version was sold in Brazil only.
A version of Duke Nukem 3D was also released for the Game.com, Tiger 's handheld system.
A Duke Nukem 3D version has been sold for Xbox Live since September 24, 2008.
This version includes the ability to "rewind" the game to any point if Duke gets killed, video recording and online multiplayer games.
The music is slightly better quality using modern MIDI tools.
Tao Te Ching ((-RRB-) is the Chinese name of a book by a man named Laozi (or Lao Tzu, which literally means "old master").
Laozi was a sage (a wise man) and he was a record-keeper.
The title can mean "The Book of the Way and its Virtue."
People believe the book was written around 600 BC.
It is an important text to Chinese culture.
It is very important in Chinese philosophy (way of thinking) and religion.
It is the main book for Taoism, which is both a philosophy and part of Chinese folk religion.
It also influenced other philosophies in and around China.
The book is constructed of a series of poems, each containing a rule, way or belief to becoming successful.
The Tao Te Ching is a short book of about 5,000 Chinese characters.
It has 81 short chapters.
It has two parts: Part One is the Tao Ching (-RRB-, which is chapters 1 37; Part Two is the Te Ching (-RRB-, which is chapters 38 81.
The Tao Te Ching is one of the most translated books in history, alongside the Bible and the Quran.
Why are there thousands of translations?
The text is short, the meaning is difficult.
There are many interpretations, or ways to understand what the book says.
The Detroit Lions are a team in the National Football League and National Football Conference.
They are based in Detroit, Michigan.
They originally played in Tiger Stadium, the first home of the Detroit Tigers baseball club.
The Lions were named after the Tigers.
Both big cats are considered fierce and dangerous.
In 2008, the Lions went winless.
The Detroit Tigers are a Major League Baseball team in Detroit, Michigan.
The team plays at Comerica Park.
Their manager is Jim Leyland, and they are owned by Mike Ilitch.
The Tigers began as a minor league baseball team in the 1890s.
The league was reorganized as the American League, and became a major league in 1901.
The Tigers were one of the first teams to have an "official" nickname.
They obtained permission from a military group called the Detroit Light Guard, which was known as the "Tigers".
That group had fought in the Civil War and the Spanish-American War.
The Tigers have often lived up to their nickname, having great success from time to time.
Their most famous player was Ty Cobb, usually regarded as among the very greatest players of all time.
The Tigers have frequently played in baseball 's post-season games.
They have won several World Series, in 1935, 1945, 1968 and 1984.
They also played in the 2012 World Series against the San Francisco Giants, who won the series in four games.
Diocletian (Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus, approximately 245 to approximately 312) was Roman Emperor from 20 November 284 to 11 May 305.
Diocletian ended the period known as the Crisis of the Third Century (235 284).
He worked to return Rome to its former glory by making changes in key areas.
Religion: He persecuted Christians, crucifying more than any other emperor, and imposed the traditional polytheistic religion of the Romans.
Economy: Recognizing a gold drain from the western Mediterranean to the east, he tried to stop the inflation of the region by legislation.
He decreed that coins could only be made of gold or silver, stopping the trend of using lead in their creation.
Military: Diocletian changed the army from the traditional garrison defense to one that placed small ouposts of soldiers permanently at the border.
He recurited local soldiers from the border regions along the Rhine and Danube rivers.
These soldiers farmed and lived with their families in a village atmosphere, and lit signal fires on signal towers to warn other outposts of possible incursion of Germans from across the border.
They received regular pay from Rome for their services.
He allowed soldiers to move up through the ranks by the accrual of "military credits" earned by years of loyal service and by distinguishing one 's self on the field of battle.
Diocletian established a form of government known as the tetrarchy.
In this, the Empire was organised into four parts, each ruled by a co-emperor.
Diocletian took charge of the eastern empire.
The senior co-emperor was Maximian Augustus, a fellow officer.
He took charge of the western empire.
Later, two junior co-emperors were added: Galerius and Constantius Chlorus.
Finally, in 305, the two senior emperors abdicated and retired, and the two juniors rose to the rank of Augustus.
They in turn were supported by two juniors: Severus II in the west under Constantius, and Maximinus in the east under Galerius.
In this way, the Tetrarchy showed how it could reproduce itself.
These men were from the Roman province of Illyria, several in the city of Sirmium, which would become one of the four capitals under this system.
From the time of Domitian (81 96), when over half the Roman army was deployed in the Danubian regions, the Illyrian provinces had been the most important recruiting ground of the auxilia and later the legions.
In the 3rd century, Romanised Illyrians came to dominate the army 's senior officer echelons.
Ultimately, the Illyrian officer class seized control of the state itself.
The four Tetrarchs based themselves not at Rome but in other cities closer to the frontiers, mainly intended as headquarters for the defense of the empire.
They faced Persia and the Germanic tribes.
Also, there were many tribes from the eastern steppe which presented at the Rhine and Danube.
The four centres are known as the ` Tetrarchic capitals '.
Although Rome ceased to be the operational capital, it was still the nominal capital of the entire empire.
It had its own Prefect of the City, an idea later copied in Constantinople.
The four Tetrarchic capitals were:
Aquileia, a port on the Adriatic coast, and Eboracum (modern York, in northern England near the Scottish tribes), were also significant centres for Maximian and Constantius respectively.
In terms of regional jurisdiction there was no precise division between the four Tetrarchs, and this period did not see the Roman state actually split up into four distinct sub-empires.
Each emperor had his zone of influence within the Roman Empire, but little more, mainly high command in a ` war theater '.
Each Tetrarch was himself often in the field, while delegating most of the administration to the hierarchic bureaucracy headed by his respective Praetorian Prefect, each supervising several Vicarii, the governors-general in charge of another new administrative level, the civil diocese.
For a listing of the provinces, now known as eparchy, within each quarter (known as a praetorian prefecture), see Roman province.
In the West, the Augustus Maximian controlled the provinces west of the Adriatic Sea and the Syrtis, and within that region his Caesar, Constantius, controlled Gaul and Britain.
In the East, the arrangements between the Augustus Diocletian and his Caesar, Galerius, were much more flexible.
Diocletian 's reforms fundamentally changed the structure of Roman imperial government, and stabilized the empire economically and militarily.
This helped the empire to remain intact for another hundred years, despite having seemed near the brink of collapse in Diocletian 's youth.
Weakened by illness, Diocletian left the imperial office on 1 May 305, and became the first Roman emperor to voluntarily abdicate the position.
He lived out his retirement in his palace on the Dalmatian coast, tending to his vegetable gardens.
His palace eventually became the core of the modern-day city of Split.
Maximian attempted to return to power.
Diocletian ordered him to step down permanently.
Finally, Maximian was forced to commit suicide, and the tetrarchy began to unravel.
Diocletian died in despair.
Deism is the belief that a higher being (like the Christian God) exists but does not tell people what to do.
Deism says people should rely on logic and reason and not traditions of a religion based on a holy book.
People who follow Deism are called Deists.
Deists believe that a higher power created the world.
They do not believe that the creation of the universe happened because of a spontaneous event.
They usually reject supernatural events like miracles and believe that God has set up natural laws and does not interfere with them.
Most deists also see holy books, such as the Bible and Qur ` an, as writings made by people rather than the writings of God.
Famous Deists from history include the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, American political leader and scientist Benjamin Franklin, famed French conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte, the French writer and philosopher Voltaire, British philosopher Thomas Paine, and actor Marlon Brando.
A Dyson sphere is an idea about a structure that surrounds a star, first thought up by physicist Freeman Dyson, and then used in some science fiction works.
There are at least three types of Dyson spheres:
Domitian (Titus Flavius Domitianus, 24 October 51 18 September 96) was a Roman Emperor who reigned from 14 September 81 until his death.
Domitian was the last emperor of the Flavian dynasty.
which ruled the Roman Empire between 69 and 96, This included the reigns of Domitian 's father Vespasian (69 79), his elder brother Titus (79 81), and that of Domitian himself.
When Titus died (he was struck down by a fatal illness in 81) the next day Domitian was declared emperor by the Praetorian Guard.
This started a reign which lasted fifteen years longer than any man who ruled since Tiberius.
As emperor, Domitian strengthened the economy by revaluing the Roman coinage.
He expanded the border defenses of the empire, and started a massive building program to restore the damaged city of Rome.
Significant wars were fought in Britain, where his general Agricola attempted to conquer Scotland, and in Dacia, where Domitian was unable to get a decisive victory against king Decebalus.
Domitian 's rule was totalitarian.
He saw himself as the new Augustus, an enlightened despot destined to guide the Roman Empire into a new age.
Religious, military, and cultural propaganda fostered a cult of personality.
By nominating himself perpetual censor, he sought to control public and private morals.
As a consequence, Domitian was popular with the people and army but considered a tyrant by members of the Roman Senate.
Domitian 's reign came to an end in 96 when he was assassinated by court officials.
The same day he was succeeded by his advisor Nerva.
After his death, Domitian 's memory was condemned to oblivion by the Roman Senate, while senatorial authors such as Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Suetonius published histories showing Domitian as a cruel and paranoid tyrant.
Modern history has rejected these views.
Now we see Domitian as a ruthless but efficient autocrat, whose cultural, economic and political program provided the foundation of the peaceful second century.
Davenport is a city of eastern Iowa in the United States.
The city is on the Mississippi River next to Moline and Rock Island, Illinois.
Davenport is the largest of the Quad Cities.
Diffraction is a physics concept.
Diffraction occurs when waves bend around small obstacles, or when waves spread out after they pass through small openings.
Diffraction occurs with all waves, including sound waves, water waves, and electromagnetic waves such as light that the eye can see.
Diffraction also occurs with matter such as electrons.
Diffraction is caused by one wave of light being shifted by a diffracting object.
This shift will cause the wave to have interference with itself.
Interference can be either constructive or destructive.
When interference is constructive, the intensity of the wave will increase.
When interference is destructive, the intensity will decrease, sometimes to a point where it is completely destroyed.
These patterns of interference rely on the size of the diffracting object and the size of the wave.
The strongest examples of diffraction occur in waves where the wavelength is close to the same size of the object causing the diffraction.
Diffraction can be used to separate different wavelengths of light using a diffraction grating.
A diffraction grating can be a series of closely-spaced slits or a mirror with a series of small grooves.
Diffraction gratings work because different wavelengths of light will constructively interfere at different angles.
Diffraction gratings are used in many analytical chemistry tools, such as a spectrometer.
Diffraction can also be used to look at molecules using X-ray crystallography.
In X-ray crystallography, X-rays are aimed on a crystal.
The crystal diffracts the X-ray and makes a diffraction pattern.
This pattern is unique to the type of crystal and can be used to identify the molecule that makes the crystal.
A dolmen is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb.
It usually consists of three or more upright stones (megaliths) supporting a large flat horizontal capstone (table).
Most date from the early Neolithic period (4000 BC to 3000 BC).
Dolmens were usually covered with earth or smaller stones to form a barrow, though in many cases that covering has weathered away, leaving only the stone "skeleton" of the burial mound intact.
Declination (abbrev.
dec or) is a word used in astronomy to describe one of the two coordinates of the equatorial coordinate system, the other being either right ascension or hour angle.
Dec is comparable to latitude, projected onto the celestial sphere, and is measured in degrees north and south of the celestial equator.
Diaspora (, literally, "a scattering or sowing of seeds") is used (without capitals) to refer to any people or racial group living outside their traditional homelands, emigrating and being scattered in distant places and making a new community.
It was first used capitalized to mean the scattering of Jews after the capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BC.
People have carefully bred dogs for thousands of years.
Sometimes they inbreed dogs who have the same close ancestors, and sometimes they mix dogs from very different ancestors or even from different breeds.
This continues today, resulting in hundreds of dog breeds, some that are similar to each other, and others that are very different.
This list includes common breeds, rare breeds, and breeds that are still being developed into new breeds.
See each article for more information.
Dog breeds are also sometimes grouped into similar types, such as Mastiff types, spitz types, pit bulls, or Lurchers.
David Beckham (born 2 May 1975) is an English retired association football player.
The teams he played for were Manchester United, Real Madrid, Los Angeles Galaxy, Preston North End, AC Milan, Paris Saint-Germain, and the England national team.
Beckham 's parents insisted that he finish his secondary school education before he could join a professional team.
He grew up in the Manchester football youth system along with Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt, Phil Neville, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes who all turned out to be famous footballers.
Since his move from Manchester United to Real Madrid, Spain in 2003, he has been the highest paid footballer in the world.
In June 2003, Queen Elizabeth II gave Beckham an OBE.
In January 2005, Beckham became a UNICEF ambassador.
He retired from playing football at the end of the 2012\/13 season.
His most recent club was Paris Saint-Germain.
He played for England for 13 years.
He was dropped from the England team after giving up his England captaincy.
But regained his place in the England squad when Fabio Capello became the England manager.
From 1993 through 2003, he played for Manchester United in England.
After leaving Manchester United, he signed a four-year contract with Real Madrid which ended in June, 2007.
He played for Paris Saint-Germain in Ligue 1 until the end of the 2012\/13 season.
Beckham 's wife is singer Victoria Beckham.
Some people call her Posh Spice because she was a member of the Spice Girls.
The couple have three sons: Brooklyn Joseph Beckham (born 4 March 1999 in London), Romeo James Beckham (born 1 September 2002 in London), and Cruz David Beckham (born 20 February 2005 in Madrid, Spain), and a daughter Harper Beckham (born 2 July 2011).
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, is a protocol related to computers and networks of computers.
It is referred to as DHCP for short.
It was made so that computers could connect to other computers (on a network) automatically.
To be able to access the Internet (or any computer network), an IP address is needed.
DHCP allows for this IP address to be obtained automatically.
Other data, like a DNS Nameserver, or a time server can also be obtained that way.
Finally, computers that support it can even get a disk image they boot from over the network.
The address can be dynamic (it can change), or it can be static (it stays the same).
After a certain time, the address lease has to be renewed.
Differential geometry is a field of mathematics.
It uses differential and integral calculus as well as linear algebra to study problems of geometry.
The theory of the plane, as well as curves and surfaces in Euclidean space are the basis of this study.
Big discoveries were made in the 18th and 19th century.
In geometry, the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees.
Carl Friedrich Gau wondered whether triangle bearings of ships really has a sum of angles of exactly 180 degrees; with this question he was among the pioneers of modern differential geometry.
A long time ago, differential geometry was used for map projections.
Today, it is used for fields as diverse as general relativity theory, or satellite naviagation.
Grigori Perelman 's proof of the Poincar conjecture uses differential geometry.
The dhole (Cuon alpinus) is a canid from Asia.
It is related to dogs and foxes.
It is native to Central, South and Southeast Asia.
There are many common names for it: Asiatic wild dog, Indian wild dog, whistling dog, red dog, and mountain wolf.
During the Pleistocene time period, the dhole lived in Asia, Europe and North America, but 12,000 18,000 years ago it died out everywhere except where it lives now.
The dhole lives in big, loosely organised groups with several breeding females.
The groups usually have about 12 dholes, but some have over 40.
It is awake in the day and hunts in groups.
It usually eats medium sized to big hoofed animals.
In tropical forests, the dhole competes with tigers and leopards, targeting somewhat different prey species, but still with substantial dietary overlap.
It is listed as Endangered by the IUCN.
The population is getting smaller, and there are probably fewer than 2,500 adults left.
The reasons for this are lack of habitat, lack of food, competing with other animals, being hunted, and getting diseases from pet dogs.
Donald Hebb Rumsfeld (born 9 July 1932) is a United States businessman and politician.
Rumsfeld was the 13th United States Secretary of Defense under President Gerald Ford from 1975 to 1977, and the 21st Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006.
He is both the youngest (43 years old) and the oldest (74 years old) person to have held the position, as well as the only person to have held the position for two non-consecutive terms.
Rumsfeld is also the second longest serving Secretary of Defense, behind Robert McNamara.
Dimmu Borgir is a black metal band created in 1993 in Norway.
Its name is Icelandic for a "dark castle".
The band 's first recordings were in Norwegian, but today, most of the recordings are in English.
The newest studio album is "Abrahadabra" (2010).
The studio album In Sorte Diaboli (2007) entered the Norwegian album chart at No. 1 the first time a black metal band has ever got to the No. 1 position on a national album chart anywhere in the world.
Dimmu Borgir 's previous release, "Death Cult Armageddon", as well as Satyricon 's "Now, Diabolical" previously reached No. 2 position on the Norwegian album chart.
A week after "In Sorte Diaboli" reached No. 1 on the Norweigan album charts, the album attained No. 43 on The Billboard 200, making them the first Norwegian band since the 80 's pop group ` A-HA ' to enter the U.S. Top 50.
"In Sorte Diaboli" features the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Strangely, the album has been banned by the UK album charts for questionable reasons.
The Druze are an Arabic-speaking people of the Middle East.
There are more than 500,000 Druze.
About half of them live in the Hauran districts of Syria.
Most of the rest live in Lebanon and about 40,000 live in Israel.
Some have emigrated to the United States and Canada.
The Druze practice a religion related to Islam and Christianity but more based on philosophy.
Al-Hakim, a ruler of Egypt during the 11th century sponsored the religion which was created by Hamza bin Ali.
The name Druze probably comes from Darazi, a preacher who was expelled from the Druze movement, because he preached that Al-Hakim was literally God.
Although sometimes many Druze consider themselves part of Shia Islam, in Israel the are considered part of a different ethnic and religious group within the Arabic-speaking minority, kind of like the "minority within the minority".
The Druze in Lebanon had a major political influence and were the rulers of Lebanon before the 1860s.
After the 1860s, they shared the ruling of Mount Lebanon with the Maronites and were later considered the 4th major religious sect after independence.
They played a key role in fighting against the Lebanese Christian right during the early 1980s.
The Druze ended their fighting against the Lebanese Christian right in late 1990.
In 1990 and 1991, they gained representation in Lebanon 's government in accordance with a 1989 peace agreement.
A door is a hard, flat object a person can open and close so that person can go into a room or other place.
It is found in houses and other buildings.
Doors are also found in cars and cages.
A revolving door is a group of doors that turn in a circle as a person pushes one.
The person can go through, but wind and rain can not get in.
A blind door is a fake door that is really part of the wall.
People use them to make a room look nice.
An up-and-over door is often used in garages.
Instead of hinges, it rolls up on rails so that it stays above the opening.
A fire door is a door that does not let fire go through.
They are usually made of heavy steel.
A doggie door is a small door for dogs or other small pets.
They are usually on the bottom of people-sized doors.
Dark matter is a type of matter thought to be responsible for much of the mass in the universe.
The idea arose when astronomers found the mass of large astronomical objects got from their gravitational effects was much greater than the mass calculated from the "luminous matter" they contain: stars, gas, and dust.
Dark matter was first proposed by Jan Oort in 1932 to account for the orbital velocities of stars in the Milky Way.
Fritz Zwicky in 1933 used it to account for evidence of "missing mass" in the orbital velocities of galaxies in clusters.
Later, many other observations have suggested the presence of dark matter in the universe.
The rotational speeds of galaxies, gravitational lensing of background objects, the temperature distribution of hot gas in galaxies and clusters of galaxies: these are some of the reasons.
According to the Planck mission team, and based on the standard model of cosmology, the total mass energy of the known universe contains 4.9 % ordinary matter, 26.8 % dark matter and 68.3 % dark energy.
Thus, dark matter is estimated to constitute 84.5 % of the total matter in the universe, while dark energy plus dark matter constitute 95.1 % of the total content of the universe.
Because dark matter does not seem to give off or reflect light, x-rays, or any other radiation, the instruments which can find normal matter (like hot gas, stars, planets, and us) are unable to find dark matter.
It seems that dark matter is not made of the same thing as the matter we see every day on Earth.
The only way we can tell it is there is by how it affects things we can see by gravity.
In 2006, a group of scientists claimed they had found a way to observe dark matter.
Since dark matter is supposedly very different from normal matter, it is expected to act differently.
They observed two galaxy clusters that had crashed into each other at high speed: normal matter would have got stuck behind after the collision, while dark matter would not.
By measuring gravity they were able to detect what looks like two clouds of dark matter, with a cloud of normal matter (hot gas) in between them.
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) was a German physicist.
He became known for the precise instruments he made.
The degree Fahrenheit is named after him.
He was the first to be able to determine the temperature with precision.
His thermometers used Ethyl alcohol at first, but he later switched to using mercury.
When he read an article by Guillaume Amontons about using mercury in barometers, he got the idea of using that substance for his thermometers.
He calinbrated them to a temperature he could produce easily, -17.8 C.
In the year 1721 he discovered that water can be cooled below its freezing point without actually turning into ice.
Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT), known as Digital European Cordless Telephone until 1995, is an ETSI standard for digital portable phones and wireless data transfer.
DECT has been standardised as EN 300 175.
The systems in questions are made of two types of components: One component is connected to the phone network, and usually called base station.
The other component is a mobile handset.
To be able to communicate, each handset must be registered with the base station.
Once this is done, they are able to communicate and be used as normal "cordless" phones.
DECT uses a frequency band that is reserved for voice transmissions, called Unlicensed Personal Communications Services.
In Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and South America, the frequency band from 1880 MHz to 1900 MMHz is used.
In the United States, the band is 1920-1930 MHz.
To be sold in the US, only small changes need to be made to DECT equipment.
These channels are reserved exclusively for voice communication applications and therefore are less likely to experience interference from other wireless devices such as baby monitors and wireless networks.
A newer standard that is similar to DECT is called CAT-iq The DECT standard fully specifies how a portable unit, such as a cordless telephone, can access a fixed network using radio waves.
It is different from other standards like GSM in that it does not say how the fixed network is made.
The communication with the fixed network is done through a base station which is called "Radio Fixed Part", and terminates the radio waves.
The base station then uses a gateway to connect the calls to the fixed network.
In most cases, the connection will be to the telephone network.
Certain units also allow a connection to newer technologies, such as Voice over IP.
Some baby phones also use DECT technology.
Such baby phones do not have a gateway.
Many PABX systems installed in offices have a part that is capable of doing DECT.
Many system vendors now also offer hybrid systems, where communication with voice over IP, or with the classical phone network are possible.
In such systems, the communication with the handsets is done using DECT, and the PABX is capable of doing SIP.
Some vendors propose WLAN-based solutions to connect the handsets, but this solution is often more complex than using DECT.
DECT has different profiles.
A domesic DECT Generic Access Profile (GAP) system typically has the following abilities:
The DECT suite of standards has other interoperability profiles.
In particular the DPRS (DECT Packet Radio Services) bring together a number of prior interoperability profiles to use DECT as a wireless LAN and wireless internet access service.
With good range (up to 200 m indoors and 6 km using directional antennae outdoors), dedicated spectrum, high interference immunity, open interoperability and data speeds of around 500 kbit\/s, DECT appeared at one time to be better than Wi-Fi.
The protocol capabilities built into the DECT networking protocol standards were particularly good at supporting fast roaming in the public space, between hotspots operated by competing but connected providers.
The first DECT product to reach the market, Olivetti 's Net3, was a wireless LAN, and German firms Dosch & Amand and Hoeft & Wessel built niche businesses on the supply of data transmission systems based on DECT.
DECT came into use in the mid 1990s, too early to find wide application for wireless data.
Whilst contemporary providers of Wi-Fi struggled with the same issues, providers of DECT retreated to cordless telephones where they could make money immediately.
They could not sell in the United States, due to FCC spectrum restrictions at that time.
By the time mass applications for wireless Internet had emerged, and the U.S. had opened up to DECT, well into the new century, the industry had made Wi-Fi better, and DECT 's time as a wireless data transport was past.
Ironically, the failure of DECT as a data protocol became a strength when DECT 6.0 phones finally appeared in the U.S. in late 2005.
By this time, the ISM bands had become crowded in the U.S., especially the 2.4 GHz band which is used by both the most common variants of Wi-Fi, 802.11 b and 802.11 g, and many cordless phones; thus interference between unlicensed devices has become common in these bands.
However, because Wi-Fi does not operate in the UPCS band and DECT devices negotiate with each other for the available spectrum, not only are DECT 6.0 phones immune from this type of interference, their operation does not impair other nearby devices operating on the same frequency, which is a common issue with 2.4 GHz cordless phones.
DECT operates in the 1880-1900 MHz band and defines ten channels from 1881.792 MHz to 1897.344 MHz with a band gap of 1728 kHz.
Each base station frame provides 12 duplex speech channel with each time slot occupying any of channel.
DECT operates in multicarrier\/TDMA\/TDD structure.
DECT also provides Frequency-hopping spread spectrum over TDMA\/TDD structure.
If frequency hopping is avoided then each base station can provide up to 120 channels in the DECT spectrum before frequency reuse.
Each time slot can be assigned to a different channel in order to take advantage of frequency hopping and avoid interference from other users in asynchronous fashion.
A disc jockey (also called a DJ or deejay) is a person who plays recorded pop or dance music for dancers or listeners and introduces the names of the songs using a microphone.
There are several types of DJs.
A radio DJ plays music files (like mp3) or recorded CDs on a radio station and announces the names of the songs.
A club DJ plays music files or recorded CDs over a PA system (an amplifier and loudspeakers) at a nightclub, rave, or disco.
A hip hop DJ uses turntables and vinyl records to do scratching and make music while other hip hop musicians do rapping (rhythmic type of singing).
Reggae DJs play recordings of rhythm instruments and then rap or "toast" (made-up chanting and boasting) with a microphone.
Detroit is the largest city in the state of Michigan in the United States.
It was the 10th largest city in the United States at the time of the 2000 census.
As of 2004, it fell to 11th biggest as people have moved away, and San Jose, California, which is growing, moved to 10th.
The city of Detroit has a population of 912,062 as of 2008.
Nearly six million people live in Detroit and the surrounding counties that encompass Metro Detroit.
The city borders Windsor, Ontario in Canada.
The border between Detroit and Windsor is one of the most crossed in the world.
The person who started the city was Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac.
He was from France.
It was made a city in 1701.
From 1805 to 1847, Detroit was the capital of Michigan.
Detroit is a city where many automobiles are made and this is why it is sometimes called the "Motor City".
Many people call it the car capital of the world.
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have their offices and many of their plants in and around Detroit.
In 2006, the Super Bowl came to Detroit.
Detroit is home to one of the largest black communities in the United States, being over 91 % African-American.
Violent crime rate is one of the highest in the USA.
The state governor declared a financial emergency in March 2013, appointing an emergency manager.
On July 18, 2013, Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history.
Detroit has a humid continental climate (Dfa in the K ppen climate classification).
Divination (Greek, from "seer") is an attempt to get information through omens or supernatural things.
The verb form is to divine, but this should not be confused with the adjective divine.
Divining the outcome of things has been done by many different methods, such as the ones listed below.
Divination is different from fortune-telling.
Divination is more ritual, usually religious.
Fortune-telling is more for personal things.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (better known as only Dr. Strangelove) is a 1964 American black comedy movie directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick, and starring Peter Sellers.
During the movie 's ending, the world is blown up by atomic bombs.
Vera Lynn 's recording of "We 'll Meet Again" is played.
It was a famous song during World War II.
In 1989, the United States Library of Congress chose this movie to be kept in the National Film Registry.
This means the movie will be protected from damage that happens to older film that was used to make movies.
Dukkha is an important concept in Buddhism.
It is usually translated as "suffering".
It is about understanding why people are unhappy.
It is one of the Four Noble Truths.
Taiko means simply "drum" in Japanese.
Outside Japan, the word is used to refer to any of the different kinds of Japanese drums (, wadaiko, "Japanese drum" in Japanese) and to the more or less new art of taiko drumming bands (sometimes better called, "kumi-daiko",).
The taiko drum originated in the country of Japan.
This drum was created by Daihachi Oguchi in 1951.
The taiko drum makes a very loud, deep sound.
In a traditional Japanese village the odaiko (big drum) defined the extent of the village land.
In modern Japan, wadaiko has become more of a performance art, seen only during festivals or in concert.
The most famous Wadaiko performance group are ` Kodo ' (meaning heart-beat).
They are not only the worlds most respected Japanese drumming group, they also maintain many traditional art forms.
They group lives on the island ` Sado Higashima ' and live together as a community in a traditional way.
Many other cultures have adopted this style of drumming, from Germany and the United States to Australia.
Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American, Grammy Award-winning country music singer\/songwriter, composer, author, and actress.
She has become one of the most successful female country artists in history, with 25 number-one singles (a record for a female country artist) and 41 top-10 country albums (a record for any country artist).
Her 1967 song "Dumb Blonde" was heard by country singer Porter Wagoner, and he asked Parton to be a part of his television show.
Her single "Jolene" reached number one in 1974, becoming a solo artist, though still performed and recorded with Wagoner.
In the fifty-four years since her debut, Parton has become one of the most famous country artists in the world.
Diprotodon was the largest marsupial that ever lived.
it existed from about 1.6 million years ago until extinction some 46,000 years ago.
So it lived through most of the Pleistocene epoch.
Diprotodon looked like a rhino without a horn.
Its feet turned inwards like a wombat s, giving it a pigeon-toed appearance.
It had strong claws on the front feet, so it may have been able to dig up roots to eat.
Footprints of its hairy feet have been found, so we know it had fur like a horse rather than being bald like a rhino.
Diprotodon is found in sites all over Australia, but not in Tasmania.
Female skeletons have been found with babies located where the mother 's pouch would have been.
The largest specimens were hippopotamus-sized: about 3 m from nose to tail, standing 2 m tall at the shoulder and weighing about 2790 k.
Doppler effect is a change in frequency and wavelength of a wave.
It is caused by the change in distance between the thing creating the wave (causer) and whatever is measuring (watcher or observer), seeing or hearing the wave.
Another word for "causer" is "sender".
Another word for "change in distance" is "speed" or "relative velocity".
A common example is sitting in a car while another car goes by the watcher.
The watcher will hear a change in pitch, while the sender will not.
For waves read all the waves that can send out or reflected by a object.
And for reflection read change of direction of a wave.
If observer and creator of the wave get closer, the frequency is higher and the wavelength is shorter.
If the distance between the observer and creator gets longer, the frequency is lower and the wavelength is longer.
An extreme example of the doppler effect is an airplane flying at a faster speed than the speed of sound and how the wall of sound is heard on the ground.
The Document Object Model (DOM) is a representation of an HTML website 's properties.
By using DOM, an HTML page can be modified (elements of it can be removed, changed, or new elements can be added).
In Computer science, a Design pattern is an abstract solution to a certain problem.
Design patterns are used in object oriented programming.
They give a possible solution to a problem of designing software.
Design patterns became popular around the year 1995.
They also simplify the language between computer scientists.
Ideally, a design pattern should be reusable many times.
It is like a brick of a house, it can be used for many different problems.
One can also build bridges with bricks, not only houses.
These examples are actual examples of design patterns as they are in use.
They have not been simplified.
It is only the language used to describe them that has been made simpler.
The flyweight design pattern is used to minimize the use of many similar objects.
In a text-processing system each letter can have some attributes like formatting, typeface, and size.
While it would be possible to create a new object for each character in the document and give it these attributes, it is extremely expensive.
Instead it would be better to create one object for each type of formatting and link the letter to that information.
That needs a lot fewer objects.
The only extra information that would need to be stored is the word or letter 's position in the document.
All similar letters would use the same object to define font, size, and other properties.
Another easy to understand pattern is called Singleton.
It is used when there can only be one instance of a given class.
That class usually has some static method (e.g. getInstance) which returns a new instance.
It also saves the instance internally.
So if it already created the instance, it can simply return it.
public class Singleton
A dominatrix is a women who takes control over sexual pleasures or sexual positions in sexual activities.
A dominatrix wears tight black-leather clothing and sometimes carries a stick (as a paddle) to punish her partner; this is called a fetish to many people who engage in this type of activity.
The Flag of Denmark, the Dannebrog is red with a white Scandinavian cross.
It is the oldest flag in the entire world.
The flag is supposed to have fallen from the sky during a battle in 1219 in Estonia.
The Danes were about to lose the battle when this sign from above gave the warriors new energy, and made them win.
In reality the Dannebrog of 1219 was most likely a crusade banner - the war in 1219 was a crusade against the Estonians, who were not Christians.
The battle took place in the 15th of June, and every year the flags birthday is celebrated in this day.
In some countries the flag is a symbol of the state.
In Denmark the Dannebrog is very much a symbol of the people, and the flag is used for all kinds off private celebrations - such as birthdays, weddings and Christmas.
For Danes the Dannebrog is a sign of happiness and celebration and not of patriotism.
Dharma (or dhamma) is part of many religions or spiritual beliefs that began in India.
The oldest is Hinduism.
Buddhism, Ayyavazhi, Jainism, and Sikhism also believe in the same idea.
It means the law of spiritual growth of believers.
In Buddhism, the word "Dharma" also means the very old teachings of the Buddha.
For example, The Four Noble Truths.
In Hinduism, dharma is the spiritual law for human beings.
It is the way of goodness, truth and duty.
For example, for a youth, a big part of dharma is to be a good student.
Parents dharma is to raise and support their family.
Teacher s dharma is to teach and the dharma of the police to protect others.
Each age brings new responsibilities, so dharma will change.
It is everyone s dharma to be honest, kind and religious, to do no harm to others and to be a good citizen.
Hindus believe that following dharma fulfills the highest purpose on earth.
When people follow dharma, they feel good about themselves, and life is most rewarding.
Daniel Dennett is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, and cognitive scientist.
He is also an atheist.
Desi Arnaz (Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III, March 2, 1917 December 2, 1986) was a Cuban-American movie, stage, television actor, television producer and director, writer, comedians, and musician.
He is known for playing Ricky Ricardo in I Love Lucy.
He was born in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba.
He was married to Lucille Ball from 1940 until they divorced in 1960.
They had a son and daughter, Lucie and Desi Jr..
Then he was married to Edith Mack Hirsh from 1963 until her death in 1985.
Arnaz died in Del Mar, California on December 2, 1986 from lung cancer.
He was 69 years old.
DNA viruses use DNA for their genome.
An example of a DNA virus is Herpes simplex.
Viruses that are not DNA viruses use RNA for their genome and are called RNA viruses.
Jos Daniel Ortega Saavedra (; born November 11, 1945) is a Nicaraguan politician.
He has been President of Nicaragua since 2007.
He also served as President of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990.
Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 June 7, 1967) was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist.
She was best known for her epigrams, wit, wisecracks, and her eye for 20th century fads and conceits.
From an unhappy childhood, Parker rose to fame, both for her writing in The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table.
After the breakup of the circle, Parker went to Hollywood to do screenwriting.
She got two Academy Award nominations for this, but her involvement in left-wing politics put her on the Hollywood blacklist in the 1950s.
She disliked her reputation as a "wisecracker".
Nevertheless, her writing and reputation for her sharp wit have endured.
Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 - 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet.
He was born in the town of Swansea.
He published his first book of poetry in 1932.
In addition to writing poetry, he was an excellent speaker.
He toured the United Kingdom and the United States reciting his poems.
He wrote works for radio including "A Child 's Christmas in Wales" and "Under Milk Wood" Thomas is one of the famous people who appears on the cover of The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper 's Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
David Robert Jones (8 January 1947 10 January 2016), better known by his stage name David Bowie, was an English rock musician and actor.
Bowie was born in Brixton, London.
He grew up in Bromley, Kent.
He played the saxophone.
He was a singer in London blues bands.
He used the alias David Bowie because David Jones sounded too much like Davy Jones (of The Monkees).
He took the name Bowie from Jim Bowie, who invented the Bowie knife.
Bowie became known to the public with the 1969 song Space Oddity.
This was released when men first landed on the moon.
The song is based on the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick.
Bowie 's album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was released in 1972.
It is one of his best-known albums.
As a result of his performance, Bowie became a leader of glam rock.
Ziggy Stardust became Bowie 's second personality (alter ego).
For a press-conference, he would show up as Ziggy.
Bowie let Ziggy Stardust come to an end during a live concert in the Hammersmith Odeon theater on 3 July 1973.
In 1983, this show was released as movie and soundtrack (Ziggy Stardust The Motion Picture).
Bowie settled in Los Angeles.
He experimented with drugs, especially cocaine.
A new second personality was The Thin White Duke.
This was introduced on the Station to Station album in 1976.
The song single Golden Years scored high in the pop charts.
In 2003, the album was ranked No. 323 on Rolling Stone magazine 's "list of the 500 greatest albums of all time".
After releasing Station to Station, Bowie moved to Berlin.
He was interested in the German music scene.
He wanted to end his drug abuse.
In Berlin, he started to work with producer Brian Eno.
Bowie, in his turn, was producer for Iggy Pop.
The Berlin Albums are Low (1977), Heroes (1977) and Lodger (1979).
Bowie left Berlin in 1980.
The last album at that time was Scary Monsters... And Super Creeps.
In 1981, he had a big hit with Under Pressure, together with Queen.
In 1989, Bowie formed a new band.
This was his first real band since the 1970s.
The band was called Tin Machine.
With this band, Bowie recorded three albums: Tin Machine (1989), Tin Machine II (1991) and Oy Vey, Baby (1992).
By the 1990s, Bowie had become more interested in soul, jazz and hip hop.
This was first noticed on the album Black Tie, White Noise.
Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996.
In 2013, Bowie released his twenty-fourth album, The Next Day.
It was nominated for Best Rock Album at the 2014 Grammy Awards.
His last album, Blackstar, was released on 8 January 2016, his 69th birthday and two days before his death.
Bowie married Mary Angela Barnett in 1970.
Their son, Duncan Jones was born in 1971.
The couple divorced in 1980.
Bowie married Iman in 1992.
The couple 's daughter, Alexandria Jones, was born in 2000.
On 10 January 2016, Bowie died after an 18-month battle with liver cancer in Manhattan, New York City.
He was 69 years old.
His remains were later cremated on 14 January in a private ceremony in New York.
Bowie covered many genres including art rock, hard rock, glam rock, alternative rock, krautrock, protopunk, post-punk, electronica, Blue-eyed soul, New Wave, Industrial, Techno, Jazz, Dance music, Funk, Disco, Experimental rock, Folk, Instrumental, Ambient and house.
Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 - May 29, 2010) was an American television, movie, stage, and voice actor, artist, photographer, writer, movie director, and an art collector.
He has appeared in many movies and television shows, since the 1950s.
Hopper was born on May 17, 1936 in Dodge City, Kansas.
He spent his life in Kansas City, Missouri and in San Diego, California.
Hopper studied to be an actor at Helix High School and at the Actors ' Studio.
Hopper has two brothers.
Hopper is probably best known for directing, co-writing, and starring in the Oscar-nominated movie Easy Rider (1969).
In 1994, Hopper had a role in the thriller movie Speed.
He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Hopper was married to Brooke Hayward from 1961 until they divorced in 1969.
Hopper was then married to Michelle Phillips from 1970 until they divorced weeks later.
He was married to Daria Halprin from 1972 until they divorced.
He was later married to Katherine LaNasa from 1989 until they divorced in 1992.
Hopper was married to Victoria Duffy from 1998 until they divorced in 2010, months before his death.
Hopper had 3 daughters and a son.
Hopper once insulted actor Rip Torn after he said "Texans are hippie-hatting rednecks" and was sued for a total of $ 475,000 dollars.
On October 29, 2009, his manager announced that Hopper had prostate cancer.
He was terminally ill..
He died of the disease on May 29, 2010 in Venice, California.
He was 74.
He was buried at Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico.
Alpha and Omega was his last movie and was dedicated to his memory.
The Detroit Red Wings are an ice hockey team in the National Hockey League (NHL).
The Red Wings were formed in 1926.
The Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL) folded that year, and many of the players from the WCHL 's Victoria Cougars went to play for Detroit.
As a result, the team was first called the Detroit Cougars, then later it changed to Detroit Falcons, before becoming known as the Red Wings.
In the late 1940s, the line of Sid Abel, Gordie Howe, and Ted Lindsey became very important to the team.
Abel won the Hart Trophy in 1949, and Lindsey won the Art Ross Trophy as scoring champion in 1950.
Howe then won six Hart and six Art Ross Trophies between 1951 and 1963.
Terry Sawchuck was a star goaltender, who ended up with more career shutouts than any other goalie (103).
Red Kelly won the first ever Norris Trophy as best defense.
As a result of having such great players, the Red Wings won four Stanley Cups in six years: 1950, 1952, 1954, and 1955.
Two of these were very close: they were won in overtime of the 7th and deciding game in 1950 (against the New York Rangers) and 1954 (against the Montreal Canadiens).
These are the only two times the NHL championship has gone to overtime of game seven.
The Red Wings continued to be a strong team throughout the 1960.
They lost the NHL Finals five times between 1956 and 1966.
Norm Ullman was their star center in the 1960s.
They were not a strong team again until the late 1980s.
Steve Yzerman became a star at this time.
Sergei Fedorov became the first Russian to win the Hart Trophy in 1994.
The Red Wings won the President 's Cup as top team in the NHL regular season in 1995, 1996 (with a record number of wins), and 2002.
They won the Stanley Cup in 1997, 1998, and 2002.
Nicklas Lidstrom won the Norris Trophy as best defenceman three times beginning in 2001.
The team was one of the richest in the NHL, which helped them get many good players.
The Red Wings have won eleven Stanley Cups, the third most of any team, and the most of the United States teams.
They first won in 1936 and 1937, and again in 1943.
Ebbie Goodfellow won the Hart Trophy as the NHL 's most valuable player in 1940.
Sid Howe was also a star on the team at this time.
D. B. Cooper (also known as Dan Cooper) is an alias (false name) for a man who hijacked an airplane in November 24, 1971.
At that time, airline passengers were not searched before boarding their planes.
He carried a bomb onto a flight between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington.
He received the ransom payment of $ 200,000.
He jumped from the airplane, which was a Boeing 727.
When he jumped, the airplane was in the Pacific Northwest, perhaps over Woodland, Washington.
Hundreds of suspects have been named through the years, but no conclusive evidence has surfaced regarding who Cooper was, or where he lived.
The FBI believes he did not survive the jump.
Several people have tried to explain what happened after the jump.
Some of these explanations contradict each other.
Because no one expected he would jump and because little is known of what happened afterwards, people are still interested in the case.
The Cooper case (code-named "Norjak" by the FBI) remains an unsolved mystery.
The case is famous for its lack of evidence.
A few important clues have arisen, nevertheless.
In late 1978, a placard, which had instructions on how to lower the rear stairs of a 727 was found just a few flying minutes north of Cooper 's projected drop zone.
It is believed that this is from the rear stairway of the plane from which Cooper jumped.
In February 1980, eight-year-old Brian Ingram found $ 5,880 in decaying $ 20 bills on the banks of the Columbia River.
In October 2007, the FBI announced it was able to get a partial DNA profile of Cooper from the tie he left on the hijacked plane.
The FBI warehouse had lost other material with his DNA.
On December 31, 2007, the FBI revived the unclosed case: They published never before seen composite sketches and fact sheets online.
They did this because some people might remember them, and help identify Cooper.
In a press release, the FBI said that it still does not believe Cooper survived the jump, wanted to know who Cooper was.
In March 2008, the FBI announced that another possible clue was being investigated after a torn, tangled parachute was found within the bounds of Cooper 's probable jump site near the town of Amboy, Washington.
However, the FBI announced on April 1, 2008 that the parachute in question was not D. B. Cooper 's.
The man responsible for packing the four parachutes said that the recently discovered parachute was not Cooper 's, as his was nylon, and the newly discovered parachute was silk, dating from the 1940s.
Normally, the criminal laws can not work against people years after their crimes (statute of limitations).
In 1976, to prevent D. B. Cooper from escaping punishment, a Portland grand jury charged D. B. Cooper with crimes.
Since 1999, Ariel, Washington holds an annual D. B. Cooper celebration on the anniversary of his jump.
The double bass is a large stringed instrument used in orchestras, jazz bands, rockabilly bands, bluegrass music, and some country music bands.
It plays low-pitched musical notes in musical ensembles and bands.
In jazz bands, these low-pitched musical notes are called the "bass line."
The double bass looks like smaller instruments like the violin, viola, and cello.
The double bass is usually made from wood.
Double basses have a hollow wooden body which helps to amplify the sounds of the instrument ("amplify" means "to make louder").
A wooden neck is attached to the body, and a flat wooded fingerboard is glued onto the neck.
It usually has four metal strings which are strung with tension on the neck.
It has a peg at the bottom to stand it.
In an orchestra, double bass players bow the strings with a wooden bow strung with horsehair, or pluck the strings with their fingers (plucking the strings is called pizzicato).
In jazz the double bass is played pizzicato most of the time.
However some jazz players use the bow to play melodies on the double bass.
Double bass players hold down the metal strings against the fingerboard with their left hand and then bow the string or pluck it with their right hand.
To play different notes the double bass players move the left hand to different positions on the fingerboard.
Double bass players in jazz bands or rock bands often connect their double bass to an electronic amplifier and a loudspeaker, to make a louder, stronger sound.
This makes it easier for the double bass player, the other musicians, and the audience to hear the double bass 's musical notes.
The double bass is usually considered a member of the violin family, because it is constructed using many of the same techniques as violins.
The double bass also has influences from the viol family.
Viols are old string instruments from the 1400s and 1500s with sloping "shoulders" on the instrument 's body and flat backs.
Like the viols, the double bass also has sloping "shoulders" on its body and a flat back.
The double bass is generally tuned in fourths, in contrast to members of the orchestral string family, which are tuned in fifths.
Modern double basses are usually tuned, low to high, E-A-D-G, which is one octave lower than the four lowest-pitch strings on a guitar.
Throughout classical repertoire, there are notes that fall below the range of a standard double bass.
Notes below low E appear regularly in double bass parts in the Baroque and Classical eras, when the double bass was typically doubling the cello part an octave below.
In the Romantic era and the 20th-century, composers such as Mahler, Beethoven, Busoni, and Prokofiev also requested notes below the low E. There are two common methods for making these notes available to the player.
Major European orchestras generally use basses with a fifth string, tuned to B three octaves and a semitone below middle C. Players with standard double basses (E-A-D-G) typically play the notes below "E" an octave higher.
In the United States, Canada and United Kingdom, most professional orchestral players use four-string double basses with a "C extension," which extends the lowest string down as far as low C, an octave below the lowest note on the cello.
More rarely would one find a four-string double bass with a "B extension", extending the lowest string down to a low B. The extension is an extra section of fingerboard mounted up over the head of the bass.
There are several varieties of extensions.
In the simplest version, there are no mechanical aids attached to the fingerboard extension except a locking nut for the "E" note.
To play the extension notes, the player reaches back over the pegs to press the string to the fingerboard.
The advantage of this "fingered" extension is that the player can adjust the intonation of all of the stopped notes on the extension, and there are no mechanical noises from metal keys and levers.
The disadvantage of the "fingered" extension is that it can be hard to perform rapid alternations between low notes on the extension and notes on the regular fingerboard, such as a bassline that quickly alternates between "G" and the low "D".
The simplest type of mechanical aid is the use of wooden "fingers" that can be closed to press the string down and fret the C #, D, Eb, or E notes.
This system is particularly useful for basslines that have a repeating pedal point such as a low D, because once the note is locked in place with the mechanical "finger", the lowest string then sounds a different note when it is played "open" (e.g., a low D).
With the B extension, the "fingers" can fret the low C.
The double bass also has many other names.
Some bluegrass musicians call it a "bass fiddle" or a "bull fiddle."
Rockabilly bands often call it an "upright bass" or "Doghouse" Some orchestra musicians call it a "contrabass."
In a military concert band, it is often called the "string bass."
Sometimes the double bass is simply called a "bass."
b '
In ancient history, a division of labor (or specialisation) was when some people in a city stopped growing crops and took other jobs.
This usually happened because of a surplus of food.
This means that there was more than enough food for everyone, so some people did not have to grow crops anymore.
Xenophon was a philosopher of the 4th century BC.
In his book Cryopedia (The Education of Cyrus) he writes about the division of labor:
"Just as the various trades are most highly developed in large cities, in the same way food at the palace is prepared in a far superior manner.
In small towns the same man makes couches, doors, ploughs and tables, and often he even builds houses, and still he is thankful if only he can find enough work to support himself.
And it is impossible for a man of many trades to do all of them well.
In large cities, however, because many make demands on each trade, one alone is enough to support a man, and often less than one: for instance one man makes shoes for men, another for women, there are places even where one man earns a living just by mending shoes, another by cutting them out, another just by sewing the uppers together, while there is another who performs none of these operations but assembles the parts, Of necessity, he who pursues a very specialised task will do it best."
The Davy lamp is a safety lamp for use in mines.
It was invented in 1815 by Sir Humphry Davy.
It is a wick lamp with the flame enclosed inside a mesh screen.
It was created for use in coal mines, where explosions happened in the presence of methane and other flammable gases.
Those gases, called firedamp or minedamp, did not ignite a shielded flame.
The wire mesh put flames out.
The lamp also warned the men of carbon dioxide or methane.
The flame would burn higher, and with a blue tinge.
Modern versions of the lamp are still used to test mine gases, but the light for working is now electric.
The Docklands Light Railway (DLR) is a light metro or light rail system opened on 31 August 1987 to serve the redeveloped Docklands area of East London, England.
It currently covers several areas of London, reaching Stratford to the north, south to Lewisham, west to Tower Gateway and Bank in the City of London financial district, and east to Beckton, London City Airport and Woolwich Arsenal.
The DLR is fully computer operated.
Dundee is a city on the east coast of Scotland where the River Tay flows into the North Sea.
It is the fourth largest city in Scotland.
It was famous as the city of "Jute, jam, and journalism", because jute and jam were made there, and several newspapers were printed in the city.
Dundee has a population of 148,260 people.
It is the fourth largest city in Scotland.
There are two universities in Dundee.
They are called the University of Dundee and the University of Abertay Dundee.
It also is home to two professional football teams.
Dundee F.C. and Dundee United F.C., who both play in the Scottish Premier League.
Unusually, their stadiums (Dens Park and Tannadice) are very close together, in the same street.
Dundee Airport serves the area.
Donald Campbell Dewar (21 August 1937 11 October 2000) was the first First Minister of Scotland from 1999 until his death in 2000.
He was the first person to hold the position of First Minister following the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.
Dewar was born and raised in Glasgow.
After the 1997 General Election, Dewar was in a position which John Smith (leader of the Labor Party, 1992-1994 and a good friend of Dewar) would never have thought possible.
He was able to start the process to split Scotland from the United Kingdom, and worked endlessly on creating the Scotland Act, popularly known as Smith 's "unfinished business".
When ratified, this was to give Scotland its first Parliament for nearly 300 years.
The first elections to the Scottish Parliament were held on 6 May 1999, with Dewar leading the Scottish Labor Party against their main opponents, the SNP under Alex Salmond.
He was elected as the MSP for Glasgow Anniesland.
Although Scottish Labor won the most seats, they did not have a majority in Parliament to allow them to form an Executive without the help of a smaller party.
A deal was agreed with the Scottish Liberal Democrats to work together, with Dewar agreeing to their demand for the abolition of up-front tuition fees for university students.
On 13 May, Dewar was nominated as First Minister, and was officially appointed by the Queen on 17 May at a ceremony in the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
He later traveled to the Court of Session to be sworn in by the Lord President and receive the Great Seal of Scotland.
On 16 June, Dewar set out the legislative program for the Executive which included: an Education bill to improve standards in Scottish schools; land reform to give right of access to the countryside, a bill to abolish the feudal system of land tenure; and a bill to establish National Parks in Scotland.
In April 2000, Dewar was admitted to hospital for tests on his heart, following a previous test where a minor irregularity was discovered.
In May 2000, he later had surgery to repair a leaking heart valve, and was forced to take a three month break from Parliament, with Deputy First Minister, Jim Wallace taking over as Acting First Minister.
He returned to work on 14 August 2000.
Dewar dealt with the exams results fiasco and the lorry drivers strike, and attended the Labor party conference in Brighton in September, but at the end of September told the historian Tom Devine in Dublin that if there was no surge of the energy of old, he would have to reappraise the situation within a few months time.
On 10 October 2000 around lunchtime, Dewar sustained a fall.
He seemed fine at first but later that day suffered a massive brain hemorrhage which was possibly triggered by the medication he was taking after the heart surgery.
Donald Dewar died the following day, at 12.18 pm, in Edinburgh 's Western General Hospital.
He was 63 years old.
Dewar 's funeral service was held at Glasgow Cathedral, amid scenes of mourning unknown for a politician in Scotland 's largest city.
He was cremated on 18 October 2000, and his ashes were scattered at Lochgilphead.
Although he has become something of a political legend, Donald would have abhorred any attempt to turn him into some kind of secular saint.
He would have been horrified at a Diana-style out-pouring of synthetic grief at his untimely death.
-- Iain MacWhirter, Sunday Herald, October 15, 2000.
Digimon is a Japanese anime television series.
It is about digital creatures called Digimon (= Digital Monsters).
Digimon also has movies, manga, toys, video games and card games about these creatures.
Digimon was created by the Bandai company.
The Digimon are often used for evil by the main villain, depending on what season of Digimon.
In the first season, the digimon are controlled by Black Gears.
The DigiDestined, a band of kids chosen for their compatibility to Digimon, usually fight this evil.
A diesel multiple unit or DMU is a multiple unit train consisting of multiple carriages powered by one or more on-board diesel engines.
They may also be referred to as a railcar or railmotor, depending on country.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) (Traditional Chinese:; Simplified Chinese:; abbreviated to or; Pinyin: M nj nd ng) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan).
The party has been linked with the pan-green coalition and de jure Taiwan independence movementy.
The DPP is a member of Liberal International and a founding member of the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats.
The DPP represented Taiwan in the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation.
Theodor Seuss Geisel (; March 2, 1904 September 24, 1991) was an American writer and cartoonist from Springfield, Massachusetts.
He was better known by his pen name, Dr. Seuss.
He pronounced his name s s, but it is often said as su s.
In his long life Geisel wrote more than 60 books.
Though most of them were published as Dr. Seuss, he also wrote 13 books as Theo.
LeSieg and one as Rosetta Stone (a pun on the Rosetta Stone).
Theodor Seuss Geisel is one of the most popular children 's authors of all time.
His books have sold over 222 million copies and been translated into more than 15 languages.
In the years after his death in 1991, several books have been published based on his sketches and notes; these include Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!
and Daisy-Head Mayzie.
Though they were all published under the name Dr. Seuss, only My Many Colored Days, originally written in 1973, was entirely by Geisel.
Dr. Seuss died from oral cancer in La Jolla, California, aged 87.
A dandy (also known as a beau or gallant) is a man who dresses elegantly and fashionably.
He exaggerates his manners, including the way he stands and moves, and the way he speaks.
He promotes himself.
This is called dandyism.
The word ` Dandy ' was originally a version of ` Andrew '.
The female equivalent is a dandizette.
I 've heard my granny crack O ' sixty twa years back When there were sic a stock of Dandies O.
Dandies in the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States and Great Britain were often men from middle-class backgrounds who were trying to become people from high society.
The model, or archetype, of a dandy was Beau Brummell from the Regency period of George IVth.
He was a friend of the then Prince of Wales.
Lord Byron is also an example.
The writer Oscar Wilde is another, later example.
Less extreme versions were the American artist who lived in London, James McNeill Whistler, and the French composer Maurice Ravel.
The Scarlet Pimpernel is a famous example from literature.
Today, in the 21st century, the word dandy is often used as a joke word to mean "fine" or "great".
A defendant is the person or group of people who comes to court because of a complaint by a plaintiff.
A defendant may also be called a respondent, if a petition is used against them to make them come to court.
Dan Simmons (born April 4, 1948 in Peoria, Illinois) is an American writer.
He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning series called the Hyperion Cantos, and for his Locus Award-winning Ilium\/Olympos cycle.
He writes in genres such as science fiction, horror and fantasy.
Denis Colin Leary (born August 18, 1957 in Worcester, Massachusetts) is an American actor.
He is the star and co-creator of the television show Rescue Me.
His career as a comedian has been controversial because he allegedly stole not only material but his entire act from the dead comedian Bill Hicks.
Dance of Death is a late-medieval allegory on death: no matter who a person is, the dance of death unites all.
Deconstruction is a way of understanding how something was created, usually things like art, books, poems and other writing.
Deconstruction is breaking something down into smaller parts.
Deconstruction looks at the smaller parts that were used to create an object.
The smaller parts are usually ideas.
Sometimes deconstruction looks at how an author can imply things he does not mean.
It says that because words are not precise, we can never know what an author meant.
Sometimes deconstruction looks at the things the author did not say because he made assumptions.
One thing it pays attention to is how opposites work.
(It calls them "binary oppositions.")
It says that two opposites like "good" and "bad" are not really different things.
"Good" only makes sense when someone compares it to "bad," and "bad" only makes sense when someone compares it to "good."
And so even when someone talks about "good," they are still talking about "bad."
But this is just one thing it does.
Because of things like this, deconstruction argues that books and poems never just mean what we think they mean at first.
Other meanings are always there too, and the book or poem works because all of those meanings work together.
The closer we look at the writing, the more we find about how it works, and how meaning works for all things.
If we deconstructed everything, we might never be able to talk or write at all.
But that does not mean deconstruction is useless.
If we deconstruct some things, we can learn more about them and about how talking and writing work.
Words are made up of ` signifiers ', or the sounds\/spellings, and the ` signified ', or the meaning and concepts they are talking about.
However, the meaning of a word is naturally ambiguous; the word in itself and the meaning are not naturally linked.
The word ` band ' can refer to an elastic band, a pop music group, a gathering of brass musicians or a collection of people, each with separate connotations and mental images.
This means it is the reader who will choose the meanings of words.
In a similar way, reading is like trying to hold a wet fish, because there are a variety of meanings to each word.
Jacques Derrida calls this "slippage along the chain of signifiers."
The chain of signifiers is a long chain of words that are interrelated, for instance a chain might look like this: "band, brass, copper, police."
This chain really has no end, because each word connects to many others, and the more slippery a word, the more words it relates to.
Because it questions language and meaning, there is no way to explain what a deconstructionist is or does.
However, some people who were very close to Derrida are usually called deconstructionists.
These people include Helene Cixous and Jean-Luc Nancy.
If someone really deconstructed everything, he or she could not talk or think!
Instead there are people who deconstruct things (books, poems, writing, words - in short, texts).
Jacques Derrida began deconstructing things in the 1960s, but he was not the first.
Martin Heidegger had talked about deconstruction in 1927 with Being and Time but he used the word "Destruktion."
Heidegger might even say that he got the idea from Ancient Greek Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle.
Other important people who talked about it include Paul de Man and Judith Butler.
Discrimination is when someone is treated unfairly or differently.
Discrimination against is when a person is treated unfairly or badly because the person is one of a particular group.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that all persons must be protected any kind of discriminations, or even its inciting.
A person might be discriminated against because of their race, age, sex, politics, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, the way they look, a past criminal record, the person 's lifestyle, their choice of clothing, their age or their disabilities whether they are a member of or fit in with a social clique (group), social class, social status or caste, and many other reasons.
Discrimination against can take many forms.
It can include being fired from a job, not being able to be hired for a job, being paid less money than others at the same job, being refused a home or apartment, teasing, harassment, or simply being treated differently than other people.
Laws known as "equal opportunity legisation" protect people from discrimination.
They say people should be employed whatever their race, age, sex or religion.
There should be reasonable care for people with disabilities or accessibility.
Two people in the same position must be paid the same wage if they have do exactly the same job.
In some countries, discrimination against somebody on the basis of race, sex, or religion is illegal for jobs or housing.
Even in those countries where discrimination unlawful, it still takes place for reasons not covered by the law.
In some other countries, discrimination against somebody is legal or even official government policy.
This especially takes place in countries in which there is an official religion, and people of other religions are discriminated against.
Discrimination is also widespread in countries which have a culture in which castes or social classes are widely recognized.
In organic chemistry, a diene or diolefin is a hydrocarbon that contains two carbon pi bonds.
Conjugated dienes are functional groups, with a general formula of CnH2n-2.
Dienes and alkynes are functional isomers.
Dienes occur occasionally in nature but are widely used in the polymer industry.
Compounds that contain more than two double bonds are called polyenes.
Polyenes and dienes, share many of their properties.
An important reaction for conjugated dienes is the Diels Alder reaction.
Many specialized dienes have been developed to exploit this reactivity for the synthesis of natural products, e.g. Danishefsky s diene.
Dean Koontz (born July 9, 1945 in Everett, Pennsylvania) is a writer from the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.
He is known for writing in the suspense thriller genre and has had many books that have been New York Times Bestsellers.
In 1961, Frank Drake wrote down an equation for the chance of a contactable alien civilization from another planet in the Milky Way Galaxy.
This is known as the Drake Equation (sometimes called the Green Bank equation or the Green Bank Formula).
Carl Sagan mentioned the Drake equation often so it that has been mistaken for the ` Sagan equation '.
R \* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy f ' p = the fraction of those stars that have planets n ` e = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets f = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point f ' i = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life f ' c = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
We do n't know the solution to the equation.
Although written as an equation, Drake 's formulation is not particularly useful for getting a value of.
The last four parameters, and are not known.
They are very hard to guess, with values ranging over many orders of magnitude.
Therefore, the SETI League says the importance of the Drake equation is not in solving it, but in thinking about it.
It may be more useful to think of it as a series of questions framed as a numbers game.
Damascus (sometimes called the city of Jasmin) is the Capital city of Syria.
It is the largest city in Syria with about 4.8 million people living there.
Damascus is thought to be one of oldest cities in the world that still has people living in it.
It is believed that people started living in Damascus as long ago as 8000 BC to 10,000 BC (12000 years ago).
Damascus is about 50 miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea, sheltered by the Anti-Lebanon Mountains.
Damascus used to play an important role as an important trade center.
Now it is not because of political development in the region as well as the development of modern trade.
Most goods produced in Damascus, as well as in Syria, are distributed to Countries of the Arabian peninsula.
Damascus also holds an annual international trade exposition in the fall since 1955.
Damascus has many historical sites dating back to many different periods of the city 's history.
Since the city has been built up with every passing job, it has become almost impossible to dig out all the ruins of Damascus that lie up to 8 feet (2.4 m) below the modern level.
The Citadel of Damascus is located in the northwest corner of the Old City.
The Bab Sharqi street is filled with small shops and leads to the old Christian quarter of Bab Tuma (St. Thomas 's Gate).
Medhat Pasha Souq is also a main market in Damascus and was named after Medhat Pasha.
At the end of the Bab Sharqi street, one reaches the House of Ananias, an underground chapel that was the cellar of Ananias 's house.
The Umayyad Mosque, also known as the Grand Mosque of Damascus, is one of the largest mosques in the world and also one of the oldest sites of continuous prayer since the rise of Islam.
Diplomatic immunity is a special law that covers people who work in embassies or consulates.
The people are called diplomats.
The diplomatic immunity means that although they live and work as a visitor inside a "host country", they are not ruled by the law of that country.
They are only ruled by the law of their home country.
A diplomat can work without interference from the police and government of the country where he works.
Diplomatic immunity means that a diplomat can keep the secrets of his own country 's government, without the government of the host country being able to find out about them.
Police from the host country can not arrest a diplomat, or search a diplomat 's house or office.
They can not even give a diplomat 's car a parking ticket without the permission of the diplomat 's government.
Honorary consuls only work part-time as diplomats, so only have diplomatic immunity when working as diplomats.
Police may search their offices, but not the part where they keep their diplomatic work.
The Detroit River is a river in the Great Lakes system.
The river connects Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie.
It forms part of the border between Canada and the United States.
It is 24 n long.
It divides the cities of Detroit and Windsor.
It is one of the busiest waterways in the world.
The name comes from the French Rivi re du D troit, which means River of the Strait.
Dsungaripterus ("Wing of Junggar Basin") was a pterosaur with a wingspan of 10 feet (3 m).
It had an unusual bony crest running along its snout and long, narrow, curved jaws with a pointed tip.
The crest may have acted as a rudder when flying or may have been a secondary sex characteristic.
Dsungaripteruss head and neck were together almost a metre long.
Its most notable feature are its long, narrow, upcurved jaws with a pointed tip, making the animal look like a pair of flying tweezers.
It had no teeth in the front part of its jaws, which were probably used to remove shellfish and worms from cracks in rocks or from sandy, muddy beaches.
It had knobbly flat teeth more to the back of the jaw that were well suited for crushing shellfish.
Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC (born 23 January 1930) is a Saint Lucian poet and playwright.
He was awarded the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He is currently Professor of poetry at the University of Essex.
His works include the Homeric epic poem, Omeros (1990).
In besides to having won the Nobel, Walcott has won many literary awards over the course of his career including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen 's Medal for Poetry, and the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry, White Egrets.
Walcott was born on 23 January 1930 in Castries, Saint Lucia.
The Daily Planet is a fictional newspaper in the universe of DC Comics.
Superman 's ego Clark Kent works here with Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White.
The Daily Planet office building has a large globe on its roof.
Jerry Siegel said that the design of the building was based on the Old Toronto Star Building.
Future appearances of the building were soon inspired by the Chicago Board of Trade Building and the Empire State Building.
Devan gar is an abugida script used to write North Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri, Nepal Bhasa and Nepali from Nepal and sometimes Kashmiri.
A dagger is a knife which is used to stab people.
It has a double-edged blade, so it can not be used for normal cutting like a knife.
Daggers are small, so they can often be hidden under the attacker 's clothing and then suddenly produced.
Some people like Julius Caesar were assassinated with a dagger.
The Order of Preachers (Latin: Ordo Praedicatorum, OP) is a Roman Catholic religious order.
Its members follow the rules Saint Dominic gave them in the 13th century.
After the 15th century they are commonly known as Dominicans.
Don McLean (born October 2, 1945) is an American singer and songwriter.
He is most well known for the songs "American Pie" and "Vincent".
In his early career, Don McLean mainly played folk music.
He sang folk songs and played simple chords with acoustic guitar and harmonica.
In 1969, Don Mclean joined folk singer Pete Seeger in the environment campaign.
They gave talks and playing concerts to help people know some of the problems with the environment.
Also in the same year, Don McLean released his first album Tapestry.
This album was not very successful.
McLean continued to perform in many small places.
In 1971, Don Mclean released an 8-minute-long song named "American Pie".
The song was dedicated to Don McLean s music hero Buddy Holly.
Much of the song was about the deaths of Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. Richardson ("The Big Bopper") in 1959.
It also dealt with many important events in American history.
Quickly "American Pie" became the number 1 song in the United States.
Don Mclean became a superstar and drew many audiences to his concerts.
In 2005, "American Pie" was voted 5th in the "365 songs of the century" list.
His second single "Vincent", featuring Vincent Van Gogh 's masterpiece "Starry Night", also topped the UK and US charts in 1971.
The song is played in Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam every day.
In the later 1970s, Don McLean tried other styles of songs.
He was not as popular with these other styles.
Bad sales of albums caused him to change recording companies from one to another.
Finally, in 1980, Don McLean regained his popularity by playing "Crying", a song first sang by Roy Orbison.
The song reached the first place in UK chart.
Don McLean is not as popular today as he was before.
He is still writing and singing his own songs and performing in concerts.
The famous guitar player, Eric Clapton, spoke highly of Don McLean s guitar playing skill after listening to his guitar performance.
Also, Don McLean s performance on stage once inspired Lori Lieberman to write the 1974 Grammy-winning song "Killing me softly with his song".
Most of the successive folk singers entitled him with "US legend"
Duck Hunt is a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game system.
The game was made by Nintendo, and was released in 1984 in Japan.
In Duck Hunt, players use the NES Zapper to shoot ducks on screen to get points.
The ducks come onto the screen one or two at a time, and the player is given three shots to shoot them down.
Duck Hunt was one of the two first Pack-in games for the NES.
The game did not get many reviews, but many gamers enjoyed playing it, and many people said it was a good game.
Before Nintendo made the game, it also made a Duck Hunt game about the Laser Clay Shooting System released in 1976.
In Duck Hunt, players use the Nintendo Zapper Light Gun that must be plugged into their NES consoles.
Then they try to shoot down ducks or clay pigeons.
Duck Hunt was also released as an arcade game in 1984, and was also in the PlayChoice-10 arcade console.
The game has three modes: one-duck mode, with only one duck on the screen; two-duck mode, with two on the screen; and a third mode called "clay pigeon shooting".
The clay pigeons are much smaller than the ducks and are harder to hit.
Players need faster reaction time when playing this mode than when shooting ducks.
In Vs. Duck Hunt, Clay Shooting mode is the second mode after two-duck mode, because the arcade Duck Hunt games never had a one-duck mode.
During the game, there is a dog that laughs at the player if no duck is hit.
If the player hits a duck, the dog will congratulate them.
A popular urban legend is that players have found a way to shoot the dog.
This can not happen in Duck Hunt, but it can happen in a bonus round of the arcade game Vs. Duck Hunt.
Duck Hunt does not have a way for more than one person to shoot ducks, but a second player may plug in a NES controller in the other controller port and control the duck that appears.
This only can happen in one-duck mode, and can not be done with the clay pigeons.
Nobody knows much about the development of Duck Hunt, but Nintendo Research & Development 1 made the game.
They also created the Light Gun used in Duck Hunt.
Work on the game was led by Takehiro Izushi, and was produced by Gunpei Yokoi.
Duck Hunt has been placed in several cartridges with more than one game.
In the Action Set cartridge of the NES in the 1980s, Duck Hunt came with Super Mario Bros..
If a player bought the NES system with the Power Pad, then Duck Hunt came on a 3-in-1 cartridge that also had World Class Track Meet and Super Mario Bros.
The music was composed, or written, by Koji Kondo and Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka.
Both men made music for other Nintendo games at the time, such as Metroid.
Some people have called the sound effects, "pretty much what you 'd expect for a game from the early 1980s - that is, awful by today 's standards...", but the game 's music was played on the Video Games Live concert tour.
Because it was made in the 1980 's, Duck Hunt did not get very many reviews.
Most critics have not reviewed Duck Hunt.
All Game Guide called the game an "attractive but repetitive target shooter" and "utterly mindless... the game is fun for a short time, but gets old after a few rounds of play."
Video Game Critic, another website, gave the game a review in 2004, scoring the game a "D".
It said, "there 's really not much substance to it... overall Duck Hunt is pretty lame, and only worth playing for a trip down memory lane."
Video game players say that they like the game.
IGN users gave it an 8.7 out of 10, and the GameSpot users gave the Mario-Duck Hunt cartridge a 9.1 out of 10.
It was rated the 155th best game made on a Nintendo System in Nintendo Powers Top 200 Games list.
Duck Hunt, and the characters in it, have been in other video games since the game first came out in the 1980s.
The dog in Duck Hunt has appeared in Barker Bill 's Trick Shooting and can be shot in the "Balloon Saloon" game.
In Super Smash Bros..
Melee, a trophy shows the ducks from Duck Hunt.
Also, games in the WarioWare, Inc. series have games about Duck Hunt.
Level 19 in Tetris DS is also about Duck Hunt
One of the games in Wii Play for the Wii console is Shooting, a game that is similar to Duck Hunt.
The game replaces the light gun used in the NES game with the Wii controller, and it has a targeting reticle that Duck Hunt did not have.
The new game also has different things to shoot, such as UFOs and targets, and has a two player mode.
Das Boot (The Boat) is a 1981 German epic war movie directed by Wolfgang Petersen.
It stars J rgen Prochnow, Herbert Gr nemeyer, Klaus Wennemann, and Otto Sander.
It is set in the early 1940s.
It is based on the 1973 novel Das Boot.
The movie received many positive reviews from critics including Roger Ebert who gave the movie 4\/4 stars.
Distance education (or distance learning) is a form of education where the teacher and the student (s) are not at the same physical location.
It follows that the teaching must be done via some kind of medium or a collection of media.
Print, film, television, radio and computer web sources have been used.
Death of a Hero is a book by Richard Aldington.
It was his first novel, published in 1929.
It is thought to be partly about his own life.
The story is set during World War I.
Death of a Hero is the story of a young English artist named George Winterbourne who enlists in the army at the beginning of World War I. The story is told by an unnamed narrator, who speaks in the first person.
The narrator claims to have known and served with the main character.
The story is divided into three parts.
The first part details George 's family history.
His father, a middle-class man from England 's countryside, marries a poor woman who falsely believes she is marrying into a monied family.
After George 's birth, his mother has a series of lovers.
George is brought up to be a proper and patriotic member of English society.
He is encouraged to learn his father 's insurance business, but fails to do so.
After a disagreement with his parents, he relocates to London to become an artist and live a socialite lifestyle.
The second section of the book deals with George 's London life.
He ingrains himself in socialite society and engages a number of trendy philosophies.
After he and his lover, Elizabeth, have a pregnancy scare, they decide to marry.
Although they do not have a child, the marriage endures.
They decide to leave their marriage open.
George takes Elizabeth 's close friend as a lover, however, and their marriage begins to fall apart.
Just as the situation is becoming particularly heated, England declares war on Germany.
George decides to enlist.
George trains for the army and is sent to France.
(No particular location in France is mentioned.
The town behind the front where George spends much of his time is referred to as M --.)
He fights on the front for some time.
When he returns home, he finds that he has been so affected by the war that he can not relate to his friends, including his wife and lover.
The casualty rate among officers is particularly high at the front.
When a number of officers in George 's unit are killed, he is promoted.
Upon spending time with the other officers, he finds them to be cynical and utilitarian.
He loses faith in the war quickly.
The story ends with George standing up during a machine-gun barrage.
He is killed.
At the end of the book there is a poem written from the point of view of a veteran comparing World War I to the Trojan War.
Aldington was a veteran of World War I. He claimed that his novel was accurate in terms of speech and style.
It contains a lot of colloquial speech, including profanity, discussion of sexuality and graphic descriptions of the war and of life in the trenches.
There was extensive censorship in England and many war novels had been banned or burned as a result.
When Aldington first published his novel, he removed or changed a number of sentences in order to make sure the book was published.
He insisted that his publishers include a disclaimer in the original printing of the book with the following text:
To my astonishment, my publisher informed me that certain words, phrases, sentences, and even passages, are at present taboo in England.
I have recorded nothing which I have not observed in human life, said nothing I do not believe to be true.
(...) At my request the publishers are removing what they believe would be considered objectionable, and are placing asterisks to show where omissions have been made.
(...) In my opinion it is better for the book to appear mutilated than for me to say what I do n't believe.
Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky; January 18, 1911 March 3, 1987) was an American actor, singer, dancer and comedian.
He hosted his own television show, The Danny Kaye Show.
He has also starred in many movies.
Kaye died in Los Angeles, California from heart failure.
He was aged 76.
A debit card (also known as a bank card or check card) is a plastic card that is used as a payment method to cash when buying things.
It is similar to a credit card, but unlike a credit card, the money comes directly from the user 's bank account when using a debit card.
Dance Dance Revolution is a series of video games made by Konami in which players step on arrows on a large pad or mat to match the arrows on screen.
The arrows are in time with the music.
Because players are moving themselves along to the music, they look like they are dancing.
There is a large variety of music.
There is a bar at the top of the screen.
If players make mistakes, the bar gets smaller.
If players do not make mistakes, the bar grows.
The game ends if the player makes too many mistakes.
Players can choose between three levels.
They are called light, standard, and heavy.
Light is easy and heavy is hard.
On some of the newer games, there is a beginner mode, which is very easy, and a challenge mode, which is very hard.
Players are graded by their performance in letters (A, B, C, D, E) based on how well they played the song.
The better a player does on a song, the higher their grade is.
From DDR SuperNOVA to later versions, the levels are called beginner, basic, difficult, expert, and challenge.
If the player gets an "AA" on the last stage in "Expert", "Heavy", or "Challenge", they can play an extra stage.
This one is sudden death, meaning that one wrong step fails the game.
Some educators even believe DDR should be in schools as exercise.
Developmental psychology, also called human development, is the emotional study of how a person changes psychologically (mind and behavior) as they get older.
Developmental psychologists first studied infants and children, and later they also studied teenagers (or adolescents) and adults.
Developmental psychology studies human change in a lot of areas, including motor skills (and other processes that are both physical and psychological), problem solving abilities, understanding of concepts, learning language, moral understanding, and identity.
DNA replication is the process of copying a double-stranded DNA molecule.
Both strands serve as templates for the reproduction of the opposite strand.
The process is sometimes called "semi-conservative replication" because the daughter DNA from the original parent strand contains half of the original and half of the newly synthesized DNA.
This process occurs in all life forms with DNA.
There are some differences in the control of DNA replication in prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms.
In a cell, DNA replication begins at specific places in the genome, called origins.
As the DNA unwinds at the origin, the synthesis of new strands forms at a replication fork.
In addition to DNA polymerase, other enzymes at the fork help to start and continue the DNA synthesis.
DNA polymerases are a family of enzymes that carry out all forms of DNA replication.
However, a DNA polymerase can only extend an existing DNA strand paired with a template strand; it can not begin the synthesis of a new strand.
To begin synthesis, a short fragment of DNA or RNA, called a ` primer ', is created and paired with the template DNA strand.
In general, DNA polymerases are extremely accurate, making less than one mistake for every 107 (10 million) nucleotides added.
Even so, some DNA polymerases also have ` proofreading ' ability: they can remove nucleotides from the end of a strand in order to correct mismatched bases.
DNA in cells is constantly being damaged.
The nucleus of cells contains a number of repair mechanisms which fix almost all of this damage.
"A large set of DNA repair enzymes continuously scan the DNA and repair any damaged nucleotides".
Daisy Duck is a character of the duck produced by Walt Disney.
Daisy Duck is the girlfriend of Donald Duck.
She is characterized by her big ribbon on her head.
Her best friend is Minnie Mouse.
Minnie Mouse is Mickey Mouse 's girlfriend.
Daisy made her official debut (an earlier love interest for Donald called Donna was introduced in the 1937 short ` Don Donald ') in the 1940 short Mr. Duck Steps Out.
She likes shopping and she is a showboat.
Daisy Duck is popular among women though she has made relatively few appearances in media compared to Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck..
Dachau is a city in the south of Germany, about 20 k north-west of Munich.
It has about 40,000 inhabitants.
The town contains a historic town center with an 18th century castle.
Dachau was founded in the 8th century.
In 1933, a concentration camp was built in Dachau.
It was the first camp of the Nazis and became the prototype for all other camps.
More than 30,000 prisoners died, or were killed.
Drosophila is a genus of small flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "fruit flies".
There are many species in this genus.
Some do prefer places where there is rotting fruit.
The adults may feed on nectar, and may lay their eggs on or near decaying fruit.
The details differ greatly from species to species.
The largest number of species is in the Hawaiian Islands.
Some fruit flies can get drunk if they have a gene called "Happy Hour".
One species of Drosophila in particular, D. melanogaster, has been heavily used in research in genetics and is a common model organism in developmental biology.
The genus has more than 1,500 species, and has varied appearance, behavior, and breeding habitats.
Males of this genus are known to have the longest sperm cells of any organism on Earth.
One species, Drosophila bifurca, has sperm 58 m long.
The cells are mostly tail, and are delivered to the females in tangled coils.
Those Drosophila species with very long sperms make relatively few sperm cells.
D. melanogaster sperm cells are a more modest 1.8 mm long, although this is still about 300 times longer than a human sperm.
Several species in the D. melanogaster species group are known to mate by traumatic insemination, in which the male pierces the female 's abdomen with his penis and injects his sperm through the wound into her abdominal cavity (hemocoel).
Drosophila vary widely in their reproductive capacity.
Those such as D. melanogaster that breed in large, scarce resources have ovaries that mature 10 20 eggs at a time, and can be laid together in one place.
Others, which breed in common but less nutritious places (such as leaves), may only lay one egg each day.
The eggs have one or more respiratory filaments near the front end; the tips of these extend above the surface and allow oxygen to reach the embryo.
Larvae feed not on vegetable matter but on the yeasts and microorganisms present on the decaying surface of leaves or fruits.
Development time varies widely between species (between seven and more than 60 days) and depends on factors such as temperature, breeding substrate, and crowding.
A dictatorship is a country where one person or political party has the power to do whatever they want.
The ruler is called a dictator.
In a dictatorship, people usually do not have many rights or much freedom.
Dictators come to power for a number of reasons or social problems such as massive unemployment, inflation, and unrest among the population.
Dictators are normally backed by powerful groups, such as landowners, private company owners, bank owners and in some cases institutions like the Roman Catholic Church to put in place law and order by force.
This force is generally directed at the poorer parts of society, such as unemployed workers, ethnic minorities, working class areas and shanty towns.
Examples of this are the dictatorships in Latin America.
Dictators normally need to do a number of things to put in place their dictatorships: they need to get rid of their opponents (which may be political or religious) - some are imprisoned, exiled (sent outside their country) or killed.
Dictators will then need to prohibit (or not allow) political parties that oppose their rule.
They will confiscate the political parties ' property or offices and such things.
Dictators may suppress or persecute some religious groups or institutions.
Dictators will also need to undo or close down democratic institutions such as parliament and in some cases the congress.
Some social organizations, such as civil rights groups, human rights organizations, legal aid centers, students ' unions, teachers ' federations, trade or workers unions are also undone and those who persist with such activities may be killed.
Dictators will normally rewrite an existing constitution or put in place a completely new one.
This makes their power constitutional (which then can not be disputed).
Dictators then maintain their rule with state terrorism, which normally involves a secret police, death squads, random or night curfew, indefinite arrest without trial and a network of torture centers and concentration camps.
Some dictatorships create a fictional (or non existent) internal (inside their country) enemy which they claim to be at war with to justify (give reason for) their use of much military violence against a whole unarmed population.
A dictatorship that is ruled by soldiers is called a military dictatorship or junta.
An absolute monarchy (the system where there are Kings and Queens who have full power over their country) can be considered to be a dictatorship, but are usually not called dictators.
A dictatorship is usually not liked by the people, because most do n't like to be dictated around.
Most dictators are selfish and rule over the people just for power.
Dana Michelle Plato (November 7, 1964 May 8, 1999) was an American actress who was known for her role as Kimberly Drummond in the hit comedy show Diff ` rent Strokes.
After the show ended, her career went down and later posed for Playboy and committed robbery.
Plato was born Dana Michelle Strain on November 7, 1964 in Maywood, California.
She was adopted by Dean and Florine Plato and she legally changed her name from Strain to Plato.
She was raised in Los Angeles, California.
Plato was married to Lanny Lambert from 1984 until they divorced in 1990.
They had one son, Tyler Lambert.
Plato committed suicide when she had an overdose from pills in her home in Moore, Oklahoma, aged 34.
A drop kick is a type of kick in various rules of football.
It involves a player dropping the ball and then kicking it when it bounces off the ground.
It contrasts to a punt, wherein the player kicks the ball without letting it hit the ground first.
Dementia praecox is a term which B n dict Augustin Morel first used in 1860, to describe the condition of a teenager who retreated from society, and started to show symptoms similar to those of dementia.
Dementia is a mental illness which mostly occurs in old people.
Emil Kraepelin used the term to describe, and contrasted it with the mental illness called Bipolar disorder.
People with bipolar disorder often have episodes in which they seem normal, which people with dementia praecox do not.
This theory could not be proved.
In 1911, Eugen Bleuler said that dementia praecox was actually schizophrenia.
Dolphins are mammals in the order Cetacea.
They are part of the toothed whales.
Generally, they are among the smaller whales.
Most live in salt water oceans, but some live in rivers - there are oceanic dolphins and river dolphins.
Dolphins are from 1.5 to 4 metres (4.5 ft to 13 ft) long.
The Killer whale is the largest of the group, and can be about 8 m.
The name ` dolphin ' comes from the Ancient Greek (delphis) meaning "with a womb", because it was first thought to be a fish with a womb.
It is now known to be a mammal, and quite an intelligent mammal.
Dolphins breathe air.
A dolphin 's nose is on top of its head so the dolphin can easily breathe on the surface of the water.
The skin of a dolphin has no scales.
It is soft and smooth.
However, it is very firm, due to how much muscle they have.
Dolphins use echolocation to find their food.
Dolphins swim in ` pods '; a very large pod is called a herd.
They are very social and help each other fight off predators.
Dolphins have fought off sharks in this way.
They can kill large sharks by ram them over and over again with their snouts and heads.
They look after the young when the mothers that need to leave their calves to hunt for food.
The young need to breathe more often than the adults, and the food may be in deeper waters.
Oceanic dolphins are marine animals living in the sea.
They live in all of the oceans.
Three of the four species of river dolphins live in fresh water rivers.
The La Plata Dolphin lives in saltwater estuaries and the ocean.
Water pollution and the loss of habitat are a threat to some dolphins, especially those living in rivers and estuaries.
Dolphins do not sleep in a normal way.
They have two sides of their brain, which they use to sleep.
One side sleeps, while the other side stays awake.
They will keep one eye open to watch for predators while they sleep.
Dolphins (and other cetaceans) sleep in the water.
There is danger from sharks.
While sleeping in water, the animals go through different stages of sleep.
They do some behaviors during sleep: they come to the surface occasionally to breathe, and they have an eye open most of the time.
The details vary in different species or groups.
Predator detection is the obvious function of this behavior.
Similar adaptations are found in pinnipeds like seals.
The brain of a dolphin is like a human brain in size and development.
Dolphins have reasonable eyesight.
They can watch a thing in the water, and they can see colors, too.
They can also see in dark places.
A dolphin 's hearing is better than their sight.
There are small holes behind the eyes, and they are the ears of a dolphin.
Dolphins can hear a sound underwater.
They can know the direction of the sound very well.
Dolphins have long played a role in human culture.
Dolphins are common in Greek mythology and there are many coins from ancient Greece which feature a man or boy or deity riding on the back of a dolphin.
The Ancient Greeks welcomed dolphins; spotting dolphins riding in a ship s wake was considered a good omen.
In Hindu mythology, the Ganges River Dolphin is associated with Ganga, the deity of the Ganges river.
Dolphin meat is eaten in a few countries, including Japan and Peru (where it is referred to as chancho marino, or "sea pork").
Japan may be the best-known and most controversial example, but eating dolphin is not that common.
Dolphin therapy is sometimes used for people with mental or physical handicaps.
It involves contact with trained dolphins.
It is not agreed whether this is any better than the usual treatments.
Scientists continue to study dolphin therapy.
Jacques-Louis David (30 August 1748 29 December 1825) was both a politician and an artist who lived during the French Revolution.
As a politician, he is most famous for being one of the handful of leaders that governed France during the most violent part of the French Revolution.
David believed that France should not have a monarchy and instead it should be a Republic.
He voted to have the King of France Louis XVI killed with the guillotine.
When the French Revolution began to fail, David was happy that Napoleon Bonaparte became Emperor of France.
As a painter, Jacques-Louis David wanted artwork to be political.
He often painted heroes from myths or history that he believed represented good ideals such as strength, brotherhood, and virtue.
His paintings are very realistic and often portray heroes from Ancient Greece and Rome.
This is called the Neoclassical style of painting.
One of David 's most famous paintings is of his best friend Jean-Paul Marat who was killed during the French Revolution.
David 's painting helped make Marat into a popular martyred hero.
A drum kit (or drum set or trap set) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other percussion instruments that is used by a drummer in a musical group.
Other cymbals and drums can be added to the setup for a wider range of sounds like the Splash - a small cymbal around 10" \/ 25 cm giving a distinct crash sound with a quick decay.
Also a China cymbal, giving a oriental feel to beats and rhythms, solos and fills, it is like a crash cymbal just popped inside out with the screw and sponge holding it to the stand, inside it so its like a shallow bowl shape.
The drummer can attach a tambourine to the ` spine ' of the hit-hat so when he or her puts his or her foot down Cymbals can also have rivets inserted into them to give them a ` sizzling ' sound.
On the pedal the drummer gets the tambourine sound at the same time - same with hitting it with the Drum Stick - it gives the tambourine sound at the same time.
A Cow Bell can be attached to the top of the Bass Drum between the Snare and Floor Tom, used in fills, solos, grooves and riffs and in rudimental studies.
A driver is a program that lets the operating system communicate with specific computer hardware.
Computer parts need a driver because they do not use standard commands.
(Ex.: ATI and Nvidia graphic cards do the same jobs, but each requires its own driver as each driver sends different commands to the hardware).
Different operating systems also need different drivers, a driver written for Linux can not be used by Microsoft Windows (there are some exceptions to this, for example, Linux can use Windows Wi-Fi (NDIS) drivers using Ndiswrapper).
Some other computer parts do not need drivers (or the driver is built-in to the operating system) because they use a kind of standard; the operating system recognizes those parts and knows how to use those parts.
Using the wrong device driver can prevent hardware from working correctly.
For example, a HP printer will not work with a computer that only has a Canon driver.
Keeping drivers up-to-date avoids problems when using new programs (such as Windows Vista) with the piece of hardware.
DC Comics (founded in 1934 as National Allied Publications) is an American comic book company.
It is owned by Time Warner.
DC comics, short for Detective Comics, is best well known for making "superhero" comic books.
DC Comics are very famous in the modern art subject Graphics.
A Diophantine equation is an equation that only takes integer coefficients, and that can be written as, where f is a polynomial.
Diophantine analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, concerned with such equations.
Typical questions include:
Very often such problems were unresolved for centuries.
With time, mathematicians came to understand their depth (in some cases), rather than treat them as puzzles.
The equation is named after Diophantus of Alexandria, a mathematician, who described them first.
The restriction on integer coefficients makes sense, when one is concerned about finding Divisors, or in the case of modular arithmetic.
In everyday life, many equations solve problems where only whole numbers make sense: A product is composed of many parts, but only whole pieces can be produced.
Some diophantine equations are very famous.
These include the Pythagorean triple, Fermat 's Last Theorem and Pell 's equation.
Hilbert 's tenth problem was to find an algorithm to decide, whether a given Diophantine equation has an integer solution.
Duke Kahanamoku (August 24, 1890 January 22, 1968), was a Hawaiian athlete who is called the inventor of modern surfing.
He was also on the United States Olympic team as a swimmer, and won several silver and gold medals.
Contrary to some misinformation on the internet, Duke is not known as the Big Kahuna.
He himself rejected that term, because he knew its meaning.
The Big Kahuna is a character in the Gidget story, which is based on a portrayal of Tube Steak Tracy, a famous surfer of the '40s & '50s in Malibu.
Devo is an American new wave pop music band formed in Ohio.
Their best-known lineup consisted of Gerald Casale, Mark Mothersbaugh, Bob Mothersbaugh, Robert Casale, and Alan Myers.
They had popular songs in the 1970s and 1980s.
Devo had a big influence on the new wave music movement.
Devo often used various keyboards (called synthesizers) in their songs, including the Moog synthesizer.
Their most famous song was called "Whip It".
That song was released in 1980.
Devo occasionally performs concerts for the public.
In finance, a derivative is a special type of contract.
In it, the two parties agree to sell (or to buy) certain goods, at a given price, on a given date.
Derivatives can be used as an instrument of speculation: One party "bets" that the price of a certain good will be at a certain level, on a given date.
The other option is to use them as a form of insurance, which is also called hedge.
One of the oldest derivatives is rice futures, which have been traded on the Dojima Rice Exchange since the eighteenth century.
The divine right of kings, was a political and religious doctrine.
It meant that a monarch was given the right to rule by God alone.
His authority could not be questioned because he ruled in God 's name.
It gave a king absolute rule over his subjects.
Pharaohs and some other ancient Kings were thought to actually be gods or descendants of gods.
That concept went away when monotheism spread.
A medieval principle held that God gave the right in to rule in secular matters to political rulers.
God gave the right to rule over spiritual matters to the Pope as head of the Church.
This has been called the ` doctrine of the two swords '.
In 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as the Holy Roman Emperor.
From that time on the Emperor was the secular power while the Pope was the spiritual power.
This concept began to break down prior to the First Crusade.
Rather than have the Emperor provide the manpower for the crusade, the Pope called on the nobility of Europe directly.
In England, Henry VIII broke free of the Catholic church and the authority of the Pope.
By the Acts of Supremacy in 1534 Henry was both king and the head of the Church of England.
Following the Protestant Reformation the theory of divine right gave the king absolute authority as God 's representative on earth in both political and spiritual matters.
It made him accountable to no one but God.
James I of England in his speech to Parliament in 1609 said:
In France the theory had been considered from the 13th century.
While France remained Catholic, her kings gradually pulled away from papal rule.
By the 16th century the king replaced the pope as supreme authority over the French church.
After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 89 the divine rights theory was no longer popular in England.
In France, kings including Louis XIV of France (1643 1715) continued the divine rights doctrine.
That was until the French revolution in 1789.
By the 19th century it no longer had any credibility.
The Chinese culture had a similar but older concept called the ` Mandate of Heaven '.
A good ruler had the blessings of heaven.
But one who ruled badly would cause the mandate to be removed.
When the People 's Republic of China was formed in 1949, they claimed the Mandate of Heaven from the people.
The Daleks are a made-up alien race of mutants from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who.
Daleks are aliens from the planet Skaro, integrated within a tank-like metal casing.
The creatures are a powerful race who always wanted universal conquest and control, they have no pity, feelings or guilt (as all of their emotions were removed except hate).
The Daleks are one of the most powerful races ever in Doctor Who history and are the Doctor 's worst enemies.
They cry "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"
when they are about to kill someone.
They come in different colors, like bronze, black, red, white, gold, and silver.
They first appeared in the first season episode of the series (in "The Daleks") and they were last seen in the Series 7 episode "Asylum of the Daleks" (2012).
They are not robots, but horrible aliens kept in a metal casing, because they became mutated during a war on their planet, Skaro.
They were created by an evil scientist named Davros.
They can not be easily hurt by guns as their casing reflects the bullets that come from the gun and a shield melts bullets shot at them.
Daleks were created by writer Terry Nation and designed by BBC designer Raymond Cusick.
They were introduced in December 1963 in the second Doctor Who serial.
From their first appearance they became very popular with viewers.
They appeared in many later serials and two 1960s motion pictures.
The word "Dalek" has been put into the Oxford English Dictionary and other major dictionaries; the Collins Dictionary defines it rather broadly as "any of a set of fictional robot-like creations that are aggressive, mobile, and produce rasping staccato speech".
Although there is no meaning to their name, "Dalek" sounds like the Norwegian word "d rlig", which means "bad" or "evil".
It is also a trademark, having first been registered by the BBC in 1964 to protect its range of Dalek merchandise.
The Daleks were on a postage stamp celebrating British popular culture in 1999, photographed by Lord Snowdon.
On the outside, Daleks resemble human-sized salt and pepper shakers who are five to six feet (152 to 183 cm) tall.
On the top, they have a rotating dome with a telescope for seeing.
They have two arms.
One arm has an energy weapon (or "death ray"), which looks like an long egg beater or the framework of a paint roller.
In some episodes, this could also fire a gas or projectiles.
Their other arm is a telescope with a plunger on the end, which they use as a hand.
The actual Dalek creature inside the metal casing is very rarely seen.
It looks like an octopus or a squid.
Early versions of the Daleks were rolled around on castors or moved by wheels connected to hand cranks by bicycle chains.
Later versions of the prop had more efficient wheels (from shopping carts, according to a Blue Peter episode) and were simply moved by the seated operators ' feet, but they remained so heavy that when going up ramps they often had to be pushed by stagehands out of where the camera could not see.
The difficulty of operating all the prop 's parts at once contributed to the occasionally jerky movements of the Dalek.
The latest model of the costume still has a human operator within, but the movement of the dome and eyestalk are now remotely controlled so that the operator can concentrate on the smooth movement of the Dalek and its arms.
The Daleks have appeared on the show many times and their design has seen many changes.
This means that it can be difficult to make sure that the storylines line up.
When the Daleks first appeared in The Daleks, they were presented as the descendants of the Dals, mutated after a brief nuclear war between the Dal and Thal races.
However, in 1975, Terry Nation revised the Daleks ' origins in Genesis of the Daleks, where the Dals were now called Kaleds (of which Daleks is an anagram), and the Dalek design was attributed to one man, the crippled Kaled chief scientist Davros.
Instead of a short nuclear exchange, the Kaled-Thal war was portrayed as a thousand-year-long war, fought with nuclear and other weapons causing widespread mutations among the Kaled race.
Davros experimented on living Kaled cells to find the ultimate mutated form of the Kaled species and placed the subjects in "travel machines" whose design was based on his own life-support chair.
Genesis of the Daleks marked a new era for the depiction of the species, with most of their previous history either forgotten or barely talked about again.
A single Dalek appeared in "Dalek", written by Robert Shearman, which was broadcast on BBC One on 30 April 2005.
This Dalek appeared to be the sole Dalek survivor of the last Time War that had destroyed both the Daleks and the Time Lords.
The Doctor had guessed that this Dalek had "fallen" out of the time war.
The Dalek Emperor returned at the end of the 2005 series, having rebuilt the Dalek race with human subjects; it saw itself as a god, and the new Daleks were shown worshipping it.
This terrified the Doctor as "Daleks have no concept of blasphemy."
These Daleks and their fleet were erased from time itself in "The Parting of the Ways".
The 2006 series finale "Army of Ghosts" \/ "Doomsday" saw another squad of Dalek survivors from the old Empire, known as the Cult of Skaro, led by a black Dalek named "Dalek Sec", that had survived the Time War by escaping into the Void between dimensions.
They emerged, along with a Time Lord prison containing millions of Daleks, at Canary Wharf due to the actions of the Torchwood Institute and Cybermen from a parallel world, leading to a Cyberman-Dalek clash in London.
Eventually, the Tenth Doctor caused both factions to be sucked back into the Void.
However, the Cult members (Sec, Caan, Jast, and Thay; it is unusual for a Dalek to have a name) survived by "temporal shifting" away.
The two-part story "Daleks in Manhattan" \/ "Evolution of the Daleks" revealed they had escaped to 1930 New York, setting up base in the Empire State Building, which was being built at the time.
Experiments led by Sec attepted to force a Dalek evolution by combining their DNA with that of humans, and he is the first of the new "Human-Daleks".
However the three remaining Daleks rebelled and destroyed him because he was not a pure dalek.
The Cult also attempted to create a Human\/Dalek hybrid (fully human in appearance but with Dalek minds).
This attempt failed after the Doctor interfered.
Caan escaped via another temporal shift.
The Daleks returned in the 2008 series ' two-part finale, "The Stolen Earth" \/ "Journey 's End", accompanied once again by their creator Davros (now played by Julian Bleach).
It is revealved that Dalek Caan had forced himself back into the Time War, even though it was "time-locked" or prevented from entering by any means (the effort rendered him insane), where he rescued Davros; Davros then created a new army of Daleks from his own flesh.
The new Dalek army was led by a Supreme Dalek, who kept Davros imprisoned in a "Vault"; Davros said that he and the Supreme Dalek had reached "an arrangement".
Davros and the Daleks planned to destroy all creation with a ` reality bomb ', which failed due to the interference of the Doctor and his companions, and due to Caan himself who had been manipulating the events unknown to either side.
Though the Daleks were destroyed, the fate of Davros and Dalek Caan is unknown.
3 Daleks from this episode came back in Series 5 (Victory of the Daleks).
They created 5 new, different colored daleks.
These new Daleks escaped into space.
Later, they showed up in "The Pandorica Opens" and trapped the Doctor in the Pandorica, the ultimate prison.
After they were erased from time by the cracks, a stone Dalek showed up, which was an echo of the Dalek race.
It was brought alive by the Pandorica light, which could restore thing which had been erased by the cracks.
It was later shot in the eye by River Song.
Their race, along with the rest of the universe, was brought back by the Doctor.
Dolly (5 July 1996 14 February 2003) was a sheep, remarkable in being the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell.
A somatic cell is a regular body cell, not an egg cell.
The nucleus of the somatic cell was removed and put into an unfertilised egg cell.
The process is called somatic cell nuclear transfer.
She was cloned at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland.
It took 277 attempts to create Dolly.
The success rate when cloning animals is very low.
The cell used as the donor for the cloning of Dolly was taken from a mammary gland.
The production of a healthy clone therefore proved that a cell taken from a specific part of the body could recreate a whole individual.
She was cloned so she did not need any male cells to fertilize the egg and mature it.
She only has one parent.
Dolly lived for her life at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh.
There she was bred with a Welsh Mountain ram and had six lambs in total.
On 14 February 2003, Dolly was euthanised because she had a lung disease and severe arthritis.
De jure is an expression from the Latin words meaning "in law".
It is often used in contrast to de facto (which means "in fact", or "in practice") when talking about law, governance, or technique.
When talking about law, "de jure" is used to describe what the law says, and "de facto" is used to describe what actually happens.
This means that legally the territory of Abkhazia is a part of the country of Georgia, but that it is in effect independent.
The de jure name of Bill Clinton is William Jefferson Clinton.
This is his name according to official records.
His de facto name is Bill Clinton because this is what he is usually called.
Des Moines is the capital city of U.S. state of Iowa.
Des Moines was started in 1843 where the Raccoon River and Des Moines River meet.
Des Moines became the capital of Iowa in 1857.
Today, Des Moines is the largest city in Iowa with a population of 194,163 as of 2005.
Des Moines has many insurance companies in the city.
It is also the location of the Iowa State Fair that happens every year.
The band Slipknot is from Des Moines.
Men 's roller derby team Your Mom Men 's Roller Derby is based out of Des Moines.
For the drug sometimes referred to E, see Ecstasy.
E is the fifth (number 5) letter in the English alphabet.
Economics is the social science which studies economic activity: how people make choices to get what they want.
It has been defined as "the study of scarcity and choice" and is basically about individual choice.
It also studies what affects the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services in an economy.
Investment and income relate to economics.
The word comes from Ancient Greek, and relates to o kos "house" and nomos "custom" or "law".
The models used in economics today were mostly started in the 19th century.
People took ideas from the field of political economy because they wanted to use an empirical approach similar to the one used in the natural sciences.
The subjects in economic study are households, business companies, the government (the state), and foreign countries.
Households offer their "factors of production" to companies.
This includes work, land, capital (machines, buildings) and information.
They get income which they use to buy or ` consume ' goods.
Business companies produce and sell goods and buy factors of production from households and from other companies.
The state or public sector includes institutions and organizations.
The state takes some of the earnings from the business companies and households, and uses it to pay for "public goods" like streets or education, to be available for everyone.
The last subject is foreign countries.
This includes all households, business companies and state institutions, which are not based in one 's own country.
They demand and supply goods from abroad.
The objects in economic study are consumer goods, capital goods, and factors of production.
Consumer goods are classified as "usage goods" (for example, gasoline or toilet paper), as "purpose goods" (for example, a house or bicycle), and as "services" (for example, the work of a doctor or cleaning lady).
Capital goods are goods which are necessary for producing other goods.
Examples of these are buildings, equipment, and machines.
Factors of production are work, ground, capital, information, and environment.
Economists are strongly influenced by the times they live in.
For example, Karl Marx lived in a time where workers ' conditions were very poor, and John Maynard Keynes lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Today 's economists can look back and understand why they made their judgements, and try to make better ones.
The two main branches of economics are microeconomics and macroeconomics.
Macroeconomics is about the economy in general.
For example, if a country 's wealth goes up or if millions of people become unemployed, those are things that macroeconomists study.
Microeconomics is about smaller and more specific things such as how families and households spend their money.
Famous economists of the 19th and 20th century include L on Walras, Carl Menger, N. Gregory Mankiw and Friedrich August von Hayek.
Earth is the planet we live on.
It is the third planet from the Sun.
It is the only planet known to have life on it.
The Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago.
It is one of four rocky planets on the inside of the Solar System.
The other three are Mercury, Venus and Mars.
The large mass of the Sun makes the Earth move around it, just as the mass of the Earth makes the Moon move around it.
The Earth also turns round in space, so different parts face the Sun at different times.
The Earth goes around the Sun once (one "year") for every 365 times it turns all the way around (one "day").
The Moon goes around the Earth about every 27 days.
As the Earth goes round the Sun at the same time, the changing light of the Moon takes about 29 days to go from dark to bright to dark again.
That is where the idea of "month" came from.
However, now most months have 30 or 31 days so they fit into one year.
The Earth is the only planet in our Solar System that has a large amount of liquid water.
About 71 % of the surface of the Earth is covered by oceans.
Because of this, it is sometimes called the "Blue Planet".
Because of its water, the Earth is home to millions of species of plants and animals.
The things that live on Earth have changed its surface greatly.
For example, early cyanobacteria changed the air and gave it oxygen.
The living part of the Earth 's surface is called the "biosphere".
The Earth is part of the eight planets and many thousands of small bodies that move around the Sun as its Solar System.
The Solar System is moving through the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy now, and will be for about the next 10,000 years.
The Earth is generally 150,000,000 k away from the Sun (this distance is named an "Astronomical Unit").
The Earth moves along its way at an average speed of about 30 k a second.
The Earth turns all the way around about 365 times in the time it takes for the Earth to go all the way around the Sun.
To make up this extra bit of a day every year, an additional day is used every four years.
This is named a "leap year".
The Moon goes around the Earth at an average distance of 250,000 m. It is locked to Earth, so that it always has the same half facing the Earth; the other half is called the "dark side of the Moon".
It takes about 27 days for the Moon to go all the way around the Earth but, because the Earth is moving around the Sun at the same time, it takes about 29 days for the Moon to go from dark to bright to dark again.
This is where the word "month" came from, even though most months now have 30 or 31 days.
The Earth and the other planets formed about 4.6 billion years ago.
They were made of the leftover gas from the nebula that made the Sun.
The Moon may have been formed after a collision between the early Earth and a smaller planet (sometimes called Theia).
Scientists believe that parts of both planets broke off becoming (by gravity) the Moon.
Earth 's water came from different places.
Condensing water vapor, comets and asteroids hitting the Earth made the oceans.
Within a billion years (that is at about 3.6 billion years ago) the first life evolved, in the Archaean era.
Some bacteria developed photosynthesis, which lets plants make food from the Sun 's light and water.
This released a lot of oxygen, which was first taken up by iron in solution.
Eventually, free oxygen got into the atmosphere or air, making the Earth 's surface suitable for aerobic life (see Great Oxygenation Event).
This oxygen also formed the ozone layer which protects the Earth from bad ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.
Complex life on the surface of the land did not exist before the ozone layer.
The Earth was very different in the distant past.
Long ago, almost all land was in one place.
This is called a supercontinent.
The earliest known supercontinent was called Vaalbara.
Much later, there was a time (the Cryogenian) when the Earth was almost entirely covered by thick ice sheets (glaciers).
This is called the Snowball Earth theory.
The Earth is rocky.
It is the largest of the rocky planets moving around the Sun by mass and by size.
It is still much, much smaller than the gas planets such as Jupiter, though.
Over all, the Earth is made of iron (32.1 %), oxygen (30.1 %), silicon (15.1 %), magnesium (13.9 %), sulfur (2.9 %), nickel (1.8 %), calcium (1.5 %), and aluminium (1.4 %).
The 1.2 % left over is made of many different kinds of other chemicals.
Chemicals that are very uncommon (such as gold and platinum) can be very valuable.
The structure of the Earth changes from the inside to the outside.
The center of the earth (the Earth 's core) is mostly iron (88.8 %), nickel (5.8 %), sulfur (4.5 %), and less than 1 % other things.
The Earth 's crust is largely oxygen (47 %).
Oxygen is normally a gas but it can join with other chemicals to make compounds like water and rocks.
99.22 % of rocks have oxygen in them.
The most common oxygen-having rocks are silica (made with silicon), alumina (made with aluminum), rust (made with iron), lime (made with calcium), magnesia (made with magnesium), potash (made with potassium), and sodium oxide, and there are others as well.
The Earth 's shape is a spheroid: not quite a sphere because it is slightly squashed on the top and bottom.
The shape is called an oblate spheroid.
As the Earth spins around itself, the centrifugal force forces the equator out a little and pulls the poles in a little.
The equator, around the middle of the Earth, is about 40,075 k long.
The highest mountain above sea level the well-known Mount Everest (which is 8.8 k above sea level) is not actually the one that is the farthest away from the center of the Earth.
Instead, the sleeping volcano Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is: it is only 6.3 k above sea level but it is almost at the equator.
Because of this, Mount Chimborazo is 6,384.4 k from the center of the Earth, while Mount Everest is 2.1 k closer to it.
Similarly, the lowest point below sea level that we are conscious of is the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean.
It is about 10.9 k below sea level, but, again, there are probably places at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean that are nearer to the center of the Earth.
The deepest hole ever dug is only about 12.3 k. We know something about the inside of the Earth, though, because we can learn things from earthquakes and the times when volcanoes erupt.
We are able to see how quickly the shock waves move through the Earth in different places.
The inside of the Earth is very different from the outside.
Almost all of Earth 's liquid water is in the seas or close to the surface.
The surface also has a lot of oxygen, which comes from plants.
Small and simple kinds of life can live far under the earth, but animals and plants only live on the surface or in the seas.
The rocks on the surface of the Earth (the Earth 's crust) are well known.
They are thicker where there is land, between 30 t thick.
Under the seas they are sometimes only 6 k thick.
There are three groups of rocks that make up most of the Earth 's crust.
Some rock is made when the hot liquid rock comes from inside the earth (igneous rocks); another type of rock is made when sediment is laid down, usually under the sea (sedimentary rocks); and a third kind of rock is made when the other two are changed by very high temperature or pressure (metamorphic rocks).
A very few rocks also fall out of the sky (meteorites).
Below the crust is warm and almost-liquid rock that is always moving around (the Earth 's mantle).
Then, there is a thin liquid layer of heated rock (the outer core).
This is very hot: 7000.
The middle of the inside of the Earth would be liquid as well but all the weight of the rock above it pushes it back into being solid.
This solid middle part (the inner core) is almost all iron.
This is what makes the Earth magnetic.
The Earth 's crust is solid but made of parts which move very slowly.
The thin level of hard rock on the outside of the Earth rests on hot liquid material below it in the deeper mantle.
This liquid material moves because it gets heat from the hot center of the earth.
The slow movement of the plates is what causes earthquakes, volcanoes and large groups of mountains on the Earth.
There are three ways plates can come together.
Two plates can move towards each other ("convergent" plate edges).
This can form islands (such as Japan), volcanoes, and high mountain ranges (such as the Andes and Himalayas).
Two plates can move away from each other ("divergent" plate edges).
This gives the warm liquid rock inside the earth a place to come out.
This makes special mountain ranges below the sea or large low lands like Africa 's Great Rift Valley.
Plates are able to move beside each other as well ("transform" plate edges, such as the San Andreas Fault).
This makes their edges crush against each other and makes many shocks as they move.
The outside of the Earth is not even.
There are high places called mountains, and high flat places called plateaus.
There are low places called valleys and canyons.
For the most part, moving air and water from the sky and seas damages rocks in high places and breaks them into small pieces.
The air and water then move these pieces to lower places.
Plains are important for growing food and building towns.
Many people live in China and India, for example.
Because of this, the Earth would have all been very flat a long time before now, but the moving plates discussed above make most of these differences.
All places on Earth are made of or are on top of rocks.
The different kinds of these rocks was discussed above.
The outside of the Earth is usually not uncovered rock, though.
Over 70 % of the Earth is covered by seas full of salty water.
(This salty water makes up about 97 % of all Earth 's water.
The fresh water persons can drink is mostly ice.
Only a very small amount is at hand in rivers and under the earth for men and women to drink and use.)
The air above the Earth stops the water from going away into outer space.
As well, there have been so many living things for such a long time that much of the land on Earth is covered with plants or with what is left from earlier living things.
Places with very little rain are dry wastes named deserts; these normally have very few living things but life is able to grow very quickly when these wastes have an uncommon rainfall.
Places with large amounts of rain are almost always large woods; these sometimes have so many trees that their leaves stop all the Sun 's light from being able to get to the earth at all.
Lately, persons have also changed the outside of the Earth a great amount (see below).
All around the Earth is a large amount of air (the atmosphere).
The mass of the Earth pulls the gasses in the air down and does not let them go into outer space.
The air is mostly made of nitrogen (about 78 %) and oxygen (about 21 %) but there are a few other gasses as well.
Most living things need the air (or parts of the air gripped in the water) to breathe and live.
They use the gasses especially oxygen and carbon dioxide to make and use sugar and to give themselves power.
The air animals and plants use to live is only the first level of the air around the Earth (the troposphere).
The day to day changes in this level of air are named weather; the changes between places far away from each other and from year to year are named the climate.
Rain and storms are both in this level.
Both come about because this part of the air gets colder as it goes up.
Cold air becomes thicker and falls, and warm air becomes thinner and goes up.
The turning Earth moves the air as well and air moves north and south because the middle of the Earth generally gets more power from the Sun and is warmer than the north and south points.
At the same time, air over water (specially very warm water) gets water in it but, because cold air is not able to take in as much water, it starts to make clouds and rain as it gets colder.
The way water moves around in a circle like this is called the water cycle.
Above this first level, there are four other levels.
The air gets colder as it goes up in the first level; in the second level (the stratosphere), the air gets warmer as it goes up.
This level has a special kind of oxygen called ozone.
The ozone in this air keeps living things safe from damaging rays from the Sun.
The power from these rays is what makes this level warmer and warmer.
The middle level (the mesosphere) gets colder and colder with height; the fourth level (the thermosphere) gets warmer and warmer; and the last level (the exosphere) is almost outer space and has very little air at all.
It reaches about half the way to the Moon.
The three outer levels have a lot of electric power moving through them; this is called the ionosphere and is important for radio and other electric waves in the air.
It is also where the Northern Lights are.
Even though air seems very light, the weight of all of the air above the outside of the Earth (air pressure) is important.
Generally, from sea level to the top of the outer level of the air, a space of air one square centimeter across has a mass of about 1.03 kg and a space of air one square inch across has a weight of about 14.7 pounds.
The mass of the air also keeps the Earth safe when rocks (meteorites) hit it from outer space.
Without the air, the damage meteorites do would be much greater.
Because of the air, meteorites generally burn up long before they get to the earth.
The air also keeps the Earth warm, specially the half turned away from the Sun.
Some gasses especially methane and carbon dioxide work like a blanket to keep things warm.
In the past, the Earth has been much warmer and much colder than it is now.
Since people have grown used to the heat we have now, though, we do not want the Earth to be too much warmer or colder.
Most of the ways people create electric power use burning kinds of carbon especially coal, oil, and natural gas.
Burning these creates new carbon dioxide and can cause more warming.
A large discussion is going on now about what people should do about the Earth 's latest warming, which has gone on for about 150 years.
So far, this warming has been good for people: plants have grown better and the weather has been better than when it was colder before.
Some people who learn about science, though, say that many bad things will possibly come about if the warming goes on.
About seven billion people live on Earth.
They live in about 200 different lands called countries.
Some (like Russia) are large with many large cities.
Others (like the Vatican) are small.
The five countries with the most people are China, India, the United States, Indonesia, and Brazil.
About 90 % of people live in the north half of the world, which has most of the land.
Scientists think that people originally came from Africa.
Now, 70 % of all people do not live in Africa but in Europe and Asia.
People change the Earth in many ways.
They have been able to grow plants for food and clothes for about ten thousand years.
When there was enough food, they were able to build towns and cities.
Near these places, men and women were able to change rivers, bring water to farms, and stop floods (rising water) from coming over their land.
People found useful animals and bred them so they were easier to keep.
The English Channel is a body of water that separates the island of Great Britain from the rest of Europe.
People who live in the UK and want to visit Europe, or people from Europe who want to visit the UK, can take a ferry across or ride a train under the channel in a special tunnel called the Channel Tunnel (nicknamed the Chunnel).
Both the ferries and trains carry cars.
It is 563 km long, 246 km wide, and its narrowest part (34 km) is the Strait of Dover.
On a clear day, it is possible to see the cliffs of Dover from Calais on the French side.
In 1875, Matthew Webb became the first known person to swim the English Channel, crossing it in just under 22 hours.
The first woman to do this was Gertrude Ederle.
In 2004, over 600 people were recorded making the crossing.
The fastest time was achieved by Bulgarian swimmer Peter Stoychev in 2007, who managed it in 7 hours.
Recently, officials have outlawed swimming in the English Channel.
In France, it is known as La manche (The Sleeve).
The Eiffel Tower (,, IPA pronunciation: "EYE-full" English; "eh-FEHL" French) is a famous landmark in Paris.
It was built between 1887 and 1889 for the Exposition Universelle.
The Tower was the Exposition 's main attraction.
It cost 35 million to build.
It is 300 metres tall, but this height does not include the 24 m aerial (antenna) on the top; the total height of the structure is 324 m (1063 feet).
There are also 1,665 steps inside the Eiffel Tower.
It weighs 10,000 tons.
It consists of 18,038 pieces and 2? 1\/2 million rivets.
There are 20,000 sparkling lights and 80 kilometers of cables covering the structure.
The weight of paint used is 60 tons, and the surface to be painted - 250,000 m2.
The paper used to print the visitor 's tickets in a year weighs 2 tons.
Three separate colors of paint are used on the Tower in order to enhance the impression of height, with the darkest on the bottom and the lightest at the top.
The top of the tower leans away from the sun, as the metal facing the sun heats up and expands and it can move as much as 7 inches.
The Eiffel Tower was built by Gustave Eiffel for the 100th year of the French Revolution.
There were 107 bids submitted to construct the Eiffel Tower, 50 people worked on the design, and more than 100 built the parts.
132 workers assembled the parts on site.
At first, the Eiffel Tower was to be made in Barcelona, Spain, but the people of Barcelona did not want it.
Construction began on January 28, 1887 and was concluded on March 31, 1889.
When the tower was built, it was only meant to be kept for 20 years.
People did not like the Eiffel Tower and reckoned they wanted it taken down.
After the 20 years, the tower became the property of Paris again.
By this time, the city had learned that the tower could be used to help with communications.
The military used the tower to communicate during battle.
The tower was used in the capture of the spy, "Mata Hari".
Nobody wanted it to be taken apart.
Evolution is a scientific theory used by biologists.
It explains how living things change over a long time, and how they have come to be the way they are.
The Earth has been around for a very long time.
By doing research on the layers of rock, we can find out about its past.
That kind of research is called historical geology.
We know that living things have changed over time, because we can see their remains in the rocks.
These remains are called ` fossils '.
So we know that the animals and plants of today are different from those of long ago.
And the further we go back, the more different the fossils are.
How has this come about?
Evolution has taken place.
That evolution has taken place is a fact, because it is overwhelmingly supported by many lines of evidence.
At the same time, evolutionary questions are still being actively researched by biologists.
Comparison of DNA sequences allows organisms to be grouped by how similar their sequences are.
In 2010 an analysis compared sequences to phylogenetic trees, and supported the idea of common descent.
There is now "strong quantitative support, by a formal test", for the unity of life.
The theory of evolution is the basis of modern biology.
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution".
The evidence for evolution is given in a number of books.
Some of this evidence is discussed here.
The realization that some rocks contain fossils was a landmark in natural history.
There are three parts to this story:
The evolution of the horse family (Equidae) is a good example of the way that evolution works.
The oldest fossil of a horse is about 52 million years old.
It was a small animal with five toes on the front feet and four on the hind feet.
At that time, there were more forests in the world than today.
This horse lived in woodland, eating leaves, nuts and fruit with its simple teeth.
It was only about as big as a fox.
About 30 million years ago the world started to become cooler and drier.
Forests shrank; grassland expanded, and horses changed.
They ate grass, they grew larger, and they ran faster because they had to escape faster predators.
Because grass wears teeth out, horses with longer-lasting teeth had an advantage.
For most of this long period of time, there were a number of horse types (genera).
Now, however, only one genus exists: the modern horse, Equus.
It has teeth which grow all its life, hooves on single toes, great long legs for running, and the animal is big and strong enough to survive in the open plain.
Horses lived in western Canada until 12,000 years ago, but all horses in North America became extinct about 11,000 years ago.
The causes of this extinction are not yet clear.
Climate change and over-hunting by humans are suggested.
So, scientists can see that changes have happened.
They have happened slowly over a long time.
How these changes have come about is explained by the theory of evolution.
This is a topic which fascinated both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
When new species occur, usually by the splitting of older species, this takes place in one place in the world.
Once it is established, a new species may spread to some places and not others.
Australasia has been separated from other continents for many millions of years.
In the main part of the continent, Australia, 83 % of mammals, 89 % of reptiles, 90 % of fish and insects and 93 % of amphibians are endemic.
Its native mammals are mostly marsupials like kangaroos, bandicoots, and quolls.
By contrast, marsupials are today totally absent from Africa and form a small portion of the mammalian fauna of South America, where opossums, shrew opossums, and the monito del monte occur (see the Great American Interchange).
The only living representatives of primitive egg-laying mammals (monotremes) are the echidnas and the platypus.
They are only found in Australasia, which includes Tasmania, New Guinea, and Kangaroo Island.
These monotremes are totally absent in the rest of the world.
On the other hand, Australia is missing many groups of placental mammals that are common on other continents (carnivora, artiodactyls, shrews, squirrels, lagomorphs), although it does have indigenous bats and rodents, which arrived later.
The evolutionary story is that placental mammals evolved in Eurasia, and wiped out the marsupials and monotremes wherever they spread.
They did not reach Australasia until more recently.
That is the simple reason why Australia has most of the world 's marsupials and all the world 's monotremes.
In about 6500 s, the Hawaiian Islands have the most diverse collection of Drosophila flies in the world, living from rainforests to mountain meadows.
About 800 Hawaiian drosophilid species are known.
Genetic evidence shows that all the native drosophilid species in Hawaii have descended from a single ancestral species that colonized the islands, about 20 million years ago.
The subsequent adaptive radiation was spurred by a lack of competition and a wide variety of vacant niches.
Although it would be possible for a single pregnant female to colonise an island, it is more likely to have been a group from the same species.
The combination of continental drift and evolution can explain what is found in the fossil record.
Glossopteris is an extinct species of seed fern plants from the Permian period on the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana.
Glossopteris fossils are found in Permian strata in southeast South America, southeast Africa, all of Madagascar, northern India, all of Australia, all of New Zealand, and scattered on the southern and northern edges of Antarctica.
During the Permian, these continents were connected as Gondwana.
This is known from magnetic striping in the rocks, other fossil distributions, and glacial scratches pointing away from the temperate climate of the South Pole during the Permian.
p103
When biologists look at living things, they see that animals and plants belong to groups which have something in common.
Charles Darwin explained that this followed naturally if "we admit the common parentage of allied forms, together with their modification through variation and natural selection".
p402p456
For example, all insects are related.
They share a basic body plan, whose development is controlled by master regulatory genes.
They have six legs; they have hard parts on the outside of the body (an exoskeleton); they have eyes formed of many separate chambers, and so on.
Biologists explain this with evolution.
All insects are the descendants of a group of animals who lived a long time ago.
They still keep the basic plan (six legs and so on) but the details change.
They look different now because they changed in different ways: this is evolution.
It was Darwin who first suggested that all life on Earth had a single origin, and from that beginning "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved".
p490 Evidence from molecular biology in recent years has supported the idea that all life is related by common descent.
Strong evidence for common descent comes from vestigial structures.
p397 The useless wings of flightless beetles are sealed under fused wing covers.
This can be simply explained by their descent from ancestral beetles which had wings that worked.
p49
Rudimentary body parts, those that are smaller and simpler in structure than corresponding parts in ancestral species, are called vestigial organs.
Those organs are functional in the ancestral species but are now either nonfunctional or re-adapted to a new function.
Examples are the pelvic girdles of whales, halteres (hind wings) of flies, wings of flightless birds, and the leaves of some xerophytes (e.g. cactus) and parasitic plants (e.g. dodder).
However, vestigial structures may have their original function replaced with another.
For example, the halteres in flies help balance the insect while in flight, and the wings of ostriches are used in mating rituals, and in aggressive display.
The ear ossicles in mammals are former bones of the lower jaw.
"Rudimentary organs plainly declare their origin and meaning..." (p262).
"Rudimentary organs... are the record of a former state of things, and have been retained solely though the powers of inheritance... far from being a difficulty, as they assuredly do on the old doctrine of creation, might even have been anticipated in accordance with the views here explained" (p402).
Charles Darwin.
In 1893, Robert Wiedersheim published a book on human anatomy and its relevance to man 's evolutionary history.
This book contained a list of 86 human organs that he considered vestigial.
This list included examples such as the appendix and the 3rd molar teeth (wisdom teeth).
The strong grip of a baby is another example.
It is a vestigial reflex, a remnant of the past when pre-human babies clung to their mothers ' hair as the mothers swung through the trees.
This is borne out by the babies ' feet, which curl up when it is sitting down (primate babies grip with the feet as well).
All primates except modern man have thick body hair to which an infant can cling, unlike modern humans.
The grasp reflex allows the mother to escape danger by climbing a tree using both hands and feet.
Vestigial organs often have some selection against them.
The original organs took resources, sometimes huge resources.
If they no longer have a function, reducing their size improves fitness.
And there is direct evidence of selection.
Some cave crustacea reproduce more successfully with smaller eyes than do those with larger eyes.
This may be because the nervous tissue dealing with sight now becomes available to handle other sensory input.
p310
From the eighteenth century it was known that embryos of different species were much more similar than the adults.
In particular, some parts of embryos reflect their evolutionary past.
For example, the embryos of land vertebrates develop gill slits like fish embryos.
Of course, this is only a temporary stage, which gives rise to many structures in the neck of reptiles, birds and mammals.
The proto-gill slits are part of a complicated system of development: that is why they persisted.
Another example are the embryonic teeth of baleen whales.
They are later lost.
The baleen filter is developed from different tissue, called keratin.
Early fossil baleen whales did actually have teeth as well as the baleen.
A good example is the barnacle.
It took many centuries before natural historians discovered that barnacles were crustacea.
Their adults look so unlike other crustacea, but their larvae are very similar to those of other crustacea.
Charles Darwin lived in a world where animal husbandry and domesticated crops were vitally important.
In both cases farmers selected for breeding individuals with special properties, and prevented the breeding of individuals with less desirable characteristics.
The eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw a growth in scientific agriculture, and artificial breeding was part of this.
Darwin discussed artificial selection as a model for natural selection in the 1859 first edition of his work On the Origin of Species, in Chapter IV: Natural selection: "Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by his powers of artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change... which may be effected in the long course of time by nature 's power of selection".
p109
Nikolai Vavilov showed that rye, originally a weed, came to be a crop plant by unintentional selection.
Rye is a tougher plant than wheat: it survives in harsher conditions.
Having become a crop like the wheat, rye was able to become a crop plant in harsh areas, such as hills and mountains.
There is no real difference in the genetic processes underlying artificial and natural selection, and the concept of artificial selection was used by Charles Darwin as an illustration of the wider process of natural selection.
There are practical differences.
Experimental studies of artificial selection show that "the rate of evolution in selection experiments is at least two orders of magnitude (that is 100 times) greater than any rate seen in nature or the fossil record".
p157
Some have thought that artificial selection could not produce new species.
It now seems that it can.
New species have been created by domesticated animal husbandry, but the details are not known or not clear.
For example, domestic sheep were created by hybridisation, and no longer produce viable offspring with Ovis orientalis, one species from which they are descended.
Domestic cattle, on the other hand, can be considered the same species as several varieties of wild ox, gaur, yak, etc., as they readily produce fertile offspring with them.
The best-documented new species came from laboratory experiments in the late 1980s.
William Rice and G.W. Salt bred fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, using a maze with three different choices of habitat such as light\/dark and wet\/dry.
Each generation was put into the maze, and the groups of flies that came out of two of the eight exits were set apart to breed with each other in their respective groups.
After thirty-five generations, the two groups and their offspring were isolated reproductively because of their strong habitat preferences: they mated only within the areas they preferred, and so did not mate with flies that preferred the other areas.
Diane Dodd was also able to show how reproductive isolation can develop from mating preferences in Drosophila pseudoobscura fruit flies after only eight generations using different food types, starch and maltose.
Dodd 's experiment has been easy for others to repeat.
It has also been done with other fruit flies and foods.
Some biologists say that evolution has happened when a trait that is caused by genetics becomes more or less common in a group of organisms.
Others call it evolution when new species appear.
Changes can happen quickly in the smaller, simpler organisms.
For example, many bacteria that cause disease can no longer be killed with some of the antibiotic medicines.
These medicines have only been in use about eighty years, and at first worked extremely well.
The bacteria have evolved so that they are no longer affected by antibiotics anymore.
The drugs killed off all the bacteria except a few which had some resistance.
These few resistant bacteria produced the next generation.
The Colorado beetle is famous for its ability to resist pesticides.
Over the last 50 years it has become resistant to 52 chemical compounds used in insecticides, including cyanide.
This is natural selection speeded up by the artificial conditions.
However, not every population is resistant to every chemical.
The populations only become resistant to chemicals used in their area.
Although there were a number of natural historians in the 18th century who had some idea of evolution, the first well-formed ideas came in the 19th century.
Three biologists are most important.
Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744 1829), a French biologist, claimed that animals changed according to natural laws.
He said that animals could pass on traits they had acquired during their lifetime to their offspring, using inheritance.
Today, his theory is known as Lamarckism.
Its main purpose is to explain adaptations by natural means.
He proposed a tendency for organisms to become more complex, moving up a ladder of progress, plus use and disuse.
Lamarck 's idea was that a giraffe 's neck grew longer because it tried to reach higher up.
This idea failed because it can not be reconciled with heredity (Mendel 's work).
Mendel made his discoveries about half a century after Lamarck 's work.
Charles Darwin (1809 1882) wrote his On the Origin of Species in 1859.
In this book, he put forward much evidence that evolution had occurred.
He also proposed natural selection as the way evolution had taken place.
But Darwin did not understand about genetics and how traits were actually passed on.
He could not accurately explain what made children look like their parents.
Nevertheless, Darwin 's explanation of evolution was fundamentally correct.
In contrast to Lamarck, Darwin 's idea was that the giraffe 's neck became longer because those with longer necks survived better.
p177\/8 These survivors passed their genes on, and in time the whole race got longer necks.
An Austrian monk called Gregor Mendel (1822 1884) bred plants.
In the mid-19th century, he discovered how traits were passed on from one generation to the next.
He used peas for his experiments: some peas have white flowers and others have red ones.
Some peas have green seeds and others have yellow seeds.
Mendel used artificial pollination to breed the peas.
His results are discussed further in Mendelian inheritance.
Darwin thought that the inheritance from both parents blended together.
Mendel proved that the genes from the two parents stay separate, and may be passed on unchanged to later generations.
Mendel published his results in a journal that was not well-known, and his discoveries were overlooked.
Around 1900, his work was rediscovered.
Genes are bits of information made of DNA which work like a set of instructions.
A set of genes are in every living cell.
Together, genes organise the way an egg develops into an adult.
With mammals, and many other living things, a copy of each gene comes from the father and another copy from the mother.
Some living organisms, including some plants, only have one parent, so get all their genes from them.
These genes produce the genetic differences which evolution acts on.
Darwin 's On the Origin of Species has two themes: the evidence for evolution, and his ideas on how evolution took place.
This section deals with the second issue.
The first two chapters of the Origin deal with variation in domesticated plants and animals, and variation in nature.
All living things show variation.
Every population which has been studied shows that animal and plants vary as much as humans do.
p90 This is a great fact of nature, and without it evolution would not occur.
Darwin said that, just as man selects what he wants in his farm animals, so in nature the variations allow natural selection to work.
The features of an individual are influenced by two things, heredity and environment.
First, development is controlled by genes inherited from the parents.
Second, living brings its own influences.
Some things are entirely inherited, others partly, and some not inherited at all.
The color of eyes is entirely inherited; they are a genetic trait.
Height or weight is only partly inherited, and the language is not at all inherited.
Just to be clear: the fact that humans can speak is inherited, but what language is spoken depends on where a person lives and what they are taught.
Another example: a person inherits a brain of somewhat variable capacity.
What happens after birth depends on many things such as home environment, education and other experiences.
When a person is adult, their brain is what their inheritance and life experience have made it.
Evolution only concerns the traits which can be inherited, wholly or partly.
The hereditary traits are passed on from one generation to the next through the genes.
A person 's genes contain all the traits which they inherit from their parents.
The accidents of life are not passed on.
Also, of course, each person lives a somewhat different life: that increases the differences.
Organisms in any population vary in reproductive success.
p81 From the point of view of evolution, ` reproductive success ' means the total number of offspring which live to breed and leave offspring themselves.
Variation can only affect future generations if it is inherited.
Because of the work of Gregor Mendel, we know that much variation is inherited.
Mendel 's ` factors ' are now called genes.
Research has shown that almost every individual in a sexually reproducing species is genetically unique.
p204
Genetic variation is increased by gene mutations.
DNA does not always reproduce exactly.
Rare changes occur, and these changes can be inherited.
Many changes in DNA cause faults; some are neutral or even advantageous.
This gives rise to genetic variation, which is the seed-corn of evolution.
Sexual reproduction, by the crossing over of chromosomes during meiosis, spreads variation through the population.
Other events, like natural selection and drift, reduce variation.
So a population in the wild always has variation, but the details are always changing.
p90
Evolution mainly works by natural selection.
What does this mean?
Animals and plants which are best suited to their environment will, on average, survive better.
There is a struggle for existence.
Those who survive will produce the next generation.
Their genes will be passed on, and the genes of those who did not reproduce will not.
This is the basic mechanism which changes a population and causes evolution.
Natural selection explains why living organisms change over time to have the anatomy, the functions and behavior that they have.
It works like this:
There are now many cases where natural selection has been proved to occur in wild populations.
Almost every case investigated of camouflage, mimicry and polymorphism has shown strong effects of selection.
The force of selection can be much stronger than was thought by the early population geneticists.
The resistance to pesticides has grown quickly.
Resistance to warfarin in Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) grew rapidly because those that survived made up more and more of the population.
Research showed that, in the absence of warfarin, the resistant homozygote was at a 54 % disadvantage to the normal wild type homozygote.
p182 This great disadvantage was quickly overcome by the selection for warfarin resistance.
Mammals normally can not drink milk as adults, but humans are an exception.
Milk is digested by the enzyme lactase, which switches off as mammals stop taking milk from their mothers.
The human ability to drink milk during adult life is supported by a lactase mutation which prevents this switch-off.
Human populations have a high proportion of this mutation wherever milk is important in the diet.
The spread of this ` milk tolerance ' is promoted by natural selection, because it helps people survive where milk is available.
Genetic studies suggest that the oldest mutations causing lactase persistence only reached high levels in human populations in the last ten thousand years.
Therefore, lactase persistence is often cited as an example of recent human evolution.
As lactase persistence is genetic, but animal husbandry a cultural trait, this is gene culture coevolution.
Adaptation is one of the basic phenomena of biology.
Through the process of adaptation, an organism becomes better suited to its habitat.
Adaptation is one of the two main processes that explain the diverse species we see in biology.
The other is speciation (species-splitting or cladogenesis).
A favorite example used today to study the interplay of adaptation and speciation is the evolution of cichlid fish in African rivers and lakes.
When people speak about adaptation they often mean something which helps an animal or plant survive.
One of the most widespread adaptations in animals is the evolution of the eye.
Another example is the adaptation of horses ' teeth to grinding grass.
Camouflage is another adaptation; so is mimicry.
The better adapted animals are the most likely to survive, and to reproduce successfully (natural selection).
An internal parasite (such as a fluke) is a good example: it has a very simple bodily structure, but still the organism is highly adapted to its particular environment.
From this we see that adaptation is not just a matter of visible traits: in such parasites critical adaptations take place in the life cycle, which is often quite complex.
Not all features of an organism are adaptations.
p251 Adaptations tend to reflect the past life of a species.
If a species has recently changed its life style, a once valuable adaptation may become useless, and eventually become a dwindling vestige.
Adaptations are never perfect.
There are always tradeoffs between the various functions and structures in a body.
It is the organism as a whole which lives and reproduces, therefore it is the complete set of adaptations which gets passed on to future generations.
In populations, there are forces which add variation to the population (such as mutation), and forces which remove it.
Genetic drift is the name given to random changes which remove variation from a population.
Genetic drift gets rid of variation at the rate of 1 \/ (2N) where N = population size.
p29 It is therefore "a very weak evolutionary force in large populations".
p55
Genetic drift explains how random chance can affect evolution in surprisingly big ways, but only when populations are quite small.
Overall, its action is to make the individuals more similar to each other, and hence more vulnerable to disease or to chance events in their environment.
How species form is a major part of evolutionary biology.
Darwin interpreted ` evolution ' (a word he did not use at first) as being about speciation.
That is why he called his famous book On the Origin of Species.
Darwin thought most species arose directly from pre-existing species.
This is called anagenesis: new species by older species changing.
Now we think most species arise by previous species splitting: cladogenesis.
Two groups that start the same can also become very different if they live in different places.
When a species gets split into two geographical regions, a process starts.
Each adapts to its own situation.
After a while, individuals from one group can no longer reproduce with the other group.
Two good species have evolved from one.
A German explorer, Moritz Wagner, during his three years in Algeria in the 1830s, studied flightless beetles.
Each species is confined to a stretch of the north coast between rivers which descend from the Atlas mountains to the Mediterranean.
As soon as one crosses a river, a different but closely related species appears.
He wrote later:"... a (new) species will only (arise) when a few individuals (cross) the limiting borders of their range... the formation of a new race will never succeed... without a long continued separation of the colonists from the other members of their species".
This was an early account of the importance of geographical separation.
Another biologist who thought geographical separation was critical was Ernst Mayr.
One example of natural speciation is the three-spined stickleback, a sea fish that, after the last ice age, invaded freshwater, and set up colonies in isolated lakes and streams.
Over about 10,000 generations, the sticklebacks show great differences, including variations in fins, changes in the number or size of their bony plates, variable jaw structure, and color differences.
The wombats of Australia fall into two main groups, Common wombats and Hairy-nosed wombats.
The two types look very similar, apart from the hairiness of their noses.
However, they are adapted to different environments.
Common wombats live in forested areas and eat mostly green food with lots of moisture.
They often feed in the daytime.
Hairy-nosed wombats live on hot dry plains where they eat dry grass with very little water or goodness in it.
Their metabolic system is slow and they sleep most of the day underground.
When two groups that started the same become different enough, then they become two different species.
Part of the theory of evolution is that all living things started off the same, but then split off into different groups over billions of years.
This was an important movement in evolutionary biology, which started in the 1930s and finished in the 1950s.
It has been updated regularly ever since.
The synthesis explains how the ideas of Charles Darwin fit with the discoveries of Gregor Mendel, who found out how we inherit our genes.
The modern synthesis brought Darwin 's idea up to date.
It bridged the gap between different types of biologists: geneticists, naturalists, and palaeontologists.
When the theory of evolution was developed, it was not clear that natural selection and genetics worked together.
But Ronald Fisher showed that natural selection would work to change species.
Sewall Wright explained genetic drift in 1931.
Co-evolution is where the existence of one species is tightly bound up with the life of one or more other species.
New or ` improved ' adaptations which occur in one species are often followed by the appearance and spread of related features in the other species.
The life and death of living things is intimately connected, not just with the physical environment, but with the life of other species.
These relationships may continue for millions of years, as it has in the pollination of flowering plants by insects.
The gut contents, wing structures, and mouthparts of fossilized beetles and flies suggest that they acted as early pollinators.
The association between beetles and angiosperms during the Lower Cretaceous period led to parallel radiations of angiosperms and insects into the late Cretaceous.
The evolution of nectaries in Upper Cretaceous flowers signals the beginning of the mutualism between hymenoptera and angiosperms.
Charles Darwin was the first to use this metaphor in biology.
The evolutionary tree shows the relationships among various biological groups.
It includes data from DNA, RNA and protein analysis.
Tree of life work is a product of traditional comparative anatomy, and modern molecular evolution and molecular clock research.
The major figure in this work is Carl Woese, who defined the Archaea, the third domain (or kingdom) of life.
Below is a simplified version of present-day understanding.
Macroevolution: the study of changes above the species level, and how they take place.
The basic data for such a study are fossils (palaeontology) and the reconstruction of ancient environments.
Some subjects whose study falls within the realm of macroevolution:
It is a term of convenience: for most biologists it does not suggest any change in the process of evolution.
p87 For some palaeontologists, what they see in the fossil record can not be explained just by the gradualist evolutionary synthesis.
They are in the minority.
Altruism the willingness of some to sacrifice themselves for others is widespread in social animals.
As explained above, the next generation can only come from those who survive and reproduce.
Some biologists have thought that this meant altruism could not evolve by the normal process of selection.
Instead a process called "group selection" was proposed.
Group selection refers to the idea that alleles can become fixed or spread in a population because of the benefits they bestow on groups, regardless of the alleles ' effect on the fitness of individuals within that group.
For several decades, critiques cast serious doubt on group selection as a major mechanism of evolution.
In simple cases it can be seen at once that traditional selection suffices.
For example, if one sibling sacrifices itself for three siblings, the genetic disposition for the act will be increased.
This is because siblings share on average 50 % of their genetic inheritance, and the sacrificial act has led to greater representation of the genes in the next generation.
Altruism is now generally seen as emerging from standard selection.
The warning note from Ernst Mayr, and the work of William Hamilton are both important to this discussion.
Hamilton 's equation describes whether or not a gene for altruistic behavior will spread in a population.
The gene will spread if rxb is greater than c:
At first, sexual reproduction might seem to be at a disadvantage compared with asexual reproduction.
In order to be advantageous, sexual reproduction (cross-fertilisation) has to overcome a two-fold disadvantage (takes two to reproduce) plus the difficulty of finding a mate.
Why, then, is sex so nearly universal among eukaryotes?
This is one of the oldest questions in biology.
The answer has been given since Darwin 's time: because the sexual populations adapt better to changing circumstances.
A recent laboratory experiment suggests this is indeed the correct explanation.
"When populations are outcrossed genetic recombination occurs between different parental genomes.
This allows beneficial mutations to escape deleterious alleles on its original background, and to combine with other beneficial alleles that arise elsewhere in the population.
In selfing populations, individuals are largely homozygous and recombination has no effect".
In the main experiment, nematode worms were divided into two groups.
One group was entirely outcrossing, the other was entirely selfing.
The groups were subjected to a rugged terrain and repeatedly subjected to a mutagen.
After 50 generations, the selfing population showed a substantial decline in fitness (= survival), whereas the outcrossing population showed no decline.
This is one of a number of studies that show sexuality to have real advantages over non-sexual types of reproduction.
An important activity is artificial selection for domestication.
This is when people choose which animals to breed from, based on their traits.
Humans have used this for thousands of years to domesticate plants and animals.
More recently, it has become possible to use genetic engineering.
New techniques such as ` gene targeting ' are now available.
The purpose of this is to insert new genes or knock out old genes from the genome of a plant or animal.
A number of Nobel Prizes have already been awarded for this work.
However, the real purpose of studying evolution is to explain and help our understanding of biology.
After all, it is the first good explanation of how living things came to be the way they are.
That is a big achievement.
The practical things come mostly from genetics, the science started by Gregor Mendel, and from molecular and cell biology.
In 2010 the journal Nature selected 15 topics as ` Evolution gems '.
These were:
The idea that all life evolved had been proposed before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of species.
Even today, some people still discuss the concept of evolution and what it means to them, their philosophy and their religion.
Evolution does seem to explain some things about our human nature.
People also talk about the social implications of evolution.
In order to fit in the idea of evolution with their religious views, people have come up with ideas like guided evolution or theistic evolution.
They say that evolution is real, but is being guided in some way.
There are many different concepts of theistic evolution.
Many creationists believe that the creation myth found in their religion goes against the idea of evolution.
As Darwin realized, the most controversial part of the evolutionary thought is what it means for human origins.
In some countries, especially in the United States, there is tension between people who accept the idea of evolution and those who do not accept it.
The debate is mostly about whether evolution should be taught in schools, and in what way this should be done.
Other fields, like cosmology and earth science also do not match with the original writings of many religious texts.
These ideas were once also fiercely opposed.
Death for heresy was threatened to those who wrote against the idea that the Earth was the center of the universe.
Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake by the Holy Inquisition for teaching that the Earth moved around the Sun (and other ideas).
Evolutionary biology is a more recent idea.
Certain religious groups oppose the idea of evolution more than other religious groups do.
For instance, the Roman Catholic Church now has the following position on evolution: Pope Pius XII said in his encyclical Humani Generis published in the 1950s: "The Church does not forbid that research and discussions take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter."
Pope Pius XII Humani Generis
Pope John Paul II updated this position in 1996.
He said that Evolution was "more than a hypothesis": "In his encyclical Humani Generis, my predecessor Pius XII has already (said) that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation.
Today, more than a half-century after that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis.
In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines."
Pope John Paul II speaking to the Pontifical Academy of Science
The Anglican Communion also does not oppose the scientific account of evolution.
Many of those who accepted evolution were not much interested in biology.
They were interested in using the theory to support their own ideas on society.
Some people have tried to use evolution to support racism.
People wanting to justify racism claimed that certain groups, such as black people, were inferior.
In nature, some animals do survive better than others, and it does lead to animals better adapted to their circumstances.
With humans groups from different parts of the world, all evolution can say is that each group is probably well suited to its original situation.
Evolution makes no judgements about better or worse.
It does not say that any human group is superior to any other.
This amazing idea of eugenics was rather different.
Two things had been noticed as far back as the 18th century.
One was the great success of farmers in breeding cattle and crop plants.
They did this by selecting which animals or plants would produce the next generation (artificial selection).
The other observation was that lower class people had more children than upper-class people.
If (and it 's a big if) the higher classes were there on merit, then their lack of children was the exact reverse of what should be happening.
Faster breeding in the lower classes would lead to the society getting worse.
The idea to improve the human species by selective breeding is called eugenics.
The name was proposed by Francis Galton, a bright scientist who meant to do good.
He said that the human stock (gene pool) should be improved by selective breeding policies.
This would mean that those who were considered "good stock" would receive a reward if they reproduced.
However, other people suggested that those considered "bad stock" would need to undergo compulsory sterilization, prenatal testing and birth control.
The German Nazi government (1933 1945) used eugenics as a cover for their extreme racial policies, with dreadful results.
The problem with Galton 's idea is how to decide which features to select.
There are so many different skills people could have, you could not agree who was "good stock" and who was "bad stock".
There was rather more agreement on who should not be breeding.
Several countries passed laws for the compulsory sterilisation of unwelcome groups.
Most of these laws were passed between 1900 and 1940.
After World War II, disgust at what the Nazis had done squashed any more attempts at eugenics.
Some equations can be solved using algorithms that simulate evolution.
Evolutionary algorithms work like that.
Another example of using ideas about evolution to support social action is Social Darwinism.
Social Darwinism is a term given to the ideas of the 19th century social philosopher Herbert Spencer.
Spencer believed the survival of the fittest could and should be applied to commerce and human societies as a whole.
Again, some people used these ideas to claim that racism, and ruthless economic policies were justified.
Today, most biologists and philosophers say that the theory of evolution should not be applied to social policy.
Some people disagree with the idea of evolution.
They disagree with it for a number of reasons.
Most often these reasons are influenced by or based on their religious beliefs.
People who do not agree with evolution usually believe in creationism or intelligent design.
Despite this, evolution is one of the most successful theories in science.
People have discovered it to be useful for different kinds of research.
None of the other suggestions explain things, such as fossil records, as well.
So, for almost all scientists, evolution is not in doubt.
Ernst Walter Mayr (5 July 1904, Kempten, Germany 3 February 2005, Bedford, Massachusetts), was a German American scientist.
He was one of the 20th century 's leading evolutionary biologists.
He was also a well-known taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist.
He was a leading contributor to the modern evolutionary synthesis.
He was especially interested in how new species formed.
Mayr joined the faculty of Harvard University in 1953, where he also served as director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology from 1961 to 1970.
He retired in 1975 as emeritus professor of zoology, showered with honors.
After his retirement, he went on to publish more than 200 articles, in a variety of journals more than some reputable scientists publish in their entire careers; 14 of his 25 books were published after he was 65.
Even as a centenarian, he continued to write books.
Mayr was awarded the Linnean Society 's prestigious Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1958.
He was never awarded a Nobel Prize, because there is no Prize for evolutionary biology.
He commented that Darwin would not have received one, either.
Mayr did win a 1999 Crafoord Prize.
That prize honors basic research in fields that do not qualify for Nobel awards, and is administered by the same organization as the Nobel Prize.
Neither Darwin nor anyone else in his time knew the answer to the species problem: how multiple species could evolve from a single common ancestor.
Ernst Mayr approached the problem with a definition for the concept species.
He wrote that a species is not just a group of individuals that look similar, but a group that can breed only among themselves.
When populations of organisms get isolated, the sub-populations will start to differ by genetic drift and natural selection over a period of time.
This way, they will evolve into new species.
The most rapid genetic reorganization occurs in extremely small populations that have been isolated.
This happens if a species gets trapped on an island, for example.
Today, it is accepted that reproductive isolation is by far the most frequent cause of species splitting, and that geographical separation is the most frequent cause of this isolation.
This was Mayr 's most characteristic idea.
Debate continues over the extent to which speciation occurs when a population is not so isolated.
Europe is a continent, the western part of Eurasia.
It is not part of Asia, because of a traditional eastern boundary that includes the Ural Mountains in Russia and the Bosporus in Turkey, and from Africa by the Mediterranean Sea to Balkans.
The Atlantic Ocean is to the west of Europe.
There are over 50 countries in Europe.
Andreas M. Kaplan describes Europe as "embracing maximum cultural diversity at minimal geographical distances".
The European Union is made up of most of the countries in Europe.
The city with the most people in Europe is Istanbul.
Europe is named after a person in Greek mythology called Europa.
She was said to have been abducted to Crete by Zeus.
The name was later used for Greece.
Then as the rest of the area we call Europe started to have cities and empires, the whole area West of the Ural Mountains became known by the same name.
In Europe there are different climates in different places; for example, in the north like Finland it stays snowy in the winter for 5 6 months and is about -30 degrees Celsius.
However, during winter in Spain it is warmer and hardly snows, except on high mountains.
At this time, much of the continent shares some ruler ship in a body that is above any country, called the European Union.
The history of Europe is long and has many turns.
Individual specific ` eras ' - this is the term meaning long amounts of specific time - can be mentioned:
The Euglenozoa are a large phylum of flagellate protists.
They are part of the wastebasket taxon known as the Protozoa, which contained many obviously different protists.
Euglenozoa include a variety of common free-living species, and some important parasites, of which a few infect humans.
There are two main subgroups, the euglenids and kinetoplastids.
Euglenozoa are unicellular, mostly around 15-40 m in size, although some euglenids get up to 500 m long.
Most euglenozoa have two flagella, parallel to one another in an pocket-like structure.
In some there is a cytostome or mouth, used to ingest bacteria or other small organisms.
This is supported by a microtubule from the flagellar bases; two other tubules support the dorsal and ventral surfaces of the cell.
Some other euglenozoa feed through the absorption, and many euglenids possess chloroplasts and so obtain energy through photosynthesis.
These chloroplasts are surrounded by three membranes and contain chlorophylls A and C, along with other pigments, so are probably evolved from those of a captured green alga.
Reproduction occurs exclusively through cell division.
During mitosis, the nuclear membrane remains intact, and the spindle microtubules form inside of it.
The group is characterized by the ultrastructure of the flagella.
In addition to the normal supporting microtubules, each contains a rod (called paraxonemal), which has a tubular structure in one flagellum and a latticed structure in the other.
The euglenozoa are generally accepted as monophyletic.
They are related to Percolozoa; the two share mitochondria with disk-shaped compartments, which only occurs in a few other groups.
Both probably belong to a larger group of eukaryotes called the Excavata.
This grouping, though, has been challenged.
Epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge.
It seeks to answer the questions "What is knowledge?"
and "How is knowledge acquired?"
Epistemologists are philosophers who are interested in questions such as whether it is possible to have knowledge, what kind of knowledge there is, and how people come to know things.
One of the first philosophers to make a clear statement on these questions was Xenophanes (570 470 BC).
The following saying was, and still is, famous: "Certain truth has no man... for even if he ever succeeds in saying what is true, he will never know it".
This is an early kind of skepticism.
There are other debates of this kind.
Esperanto is a constructed language that was designed to make international communication easier, and to be easy to learn.
It was created in the nineteenth century by Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, a Polish eye doctor.
At first, Zamenhof called the language ', which means "The International Language" in Esperanto.
Soon, people began calling it the simpler name ', which means "a hopeful person."
That name comes from ' ("Doctor Hopeful"), which is what Zamenhof called himself in his first book about Esperanto.
There are people who speak Esperanto in many countries and in all the major continents.
No one knows exactly how many people now speak Esperanto in the world.
Most sources say that there are between several hundred thousand and two million Esperanto speakers.
A few people are alive who grew up speaking Esperanto as their first language.
There may perhaps be around 2,000 of these people.
Therefore Esperanto is the most used constructed language in the world.
A person who speaks or supports Esperanto is often called an "Esperantist".
Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof created Esperanto.
He grew up in Bia ystok, a town that was in the Russian Empire, but is now in Poland.
People in Bia ystok spoke many languages.
Zamenhof saw conflicts between individual ethnic groups (Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews) there.
He thought that lack of a common language caused these conflicts, so he began creating a language people could share and use internationally.
He thought this language should be different from national languages.
He wanted it to be culturally neutral and easy-to-learn.
He thought people should learn it along with national languages and use Esperanto for communication between people with different native languages.
First, Zamenhof thought about bringing Latin back into use.
He learned it in school, but he realized it was too difficult for normal use.
He also studied English and understood that languages did not need to conjugate verbs by person or number.
Once he saw two Russian words: (reception, derived from - receptionist) and (confectionery, derived from - confectioner).
These words with same ending gave him an idea.
He decided that regular prefixes and suffixes could decrease the number of word roots needed for communication.
Zamenhof wanted the root words to be neutral, so he decided to use word roots from Romance and Germanic languages.
Those languages were taught in many schools in many places around the world at that time.
Zamenhof did his first project Lingwe uniwersala (Universal Language) in 1878, but his father, a language teacher, regarded his son 's work as unrealistic and he destroyed the original work.
Between 1879 and 1885 Zamenhof studied medicine in Moscow and Warsaw.
In these days he again worked on an international language.
In 1887 he published his first textbook ' ("The International Language").
This was the birth of Esperanto.
According to Zamenhof 's pseudonym ' (Doctor who hopes), many people started calling the language as Esperanto.
Zamenhof received a lot of enthusiastic letters.
In the letters, people wrote their suggestions for changes to the language.
He noted all of the suggestions.
He published them in the magazine La Esperantisto.
In this magazine, Esperanto speakers could vote about the changes.
They did n't accept them.
The magazine had many subscribers in Russia.
It was banned there because of an article about Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy.
Publishing of the magazine ended after that.
The new magazine Lingvo Internacia replaced it.
In the first years of Esperanto 's life, people used it only in written form, but in 1905 they organized the first (1st) World Congress of Esperanto in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France.
This was the first notable use of Esperanto in international communication.
Because of the success of the congress, it is organized each year (except years of the World Wars) to this day.
In 1912 Zamenhof resigned his leading position in the movement during the eighth (8th) World Congress of Esperanto in Krak w, Poland.
The tenth (10th) World Congress of Esperanto in Paris, France, did n't take place because of the start of World War I. Nearly 4000 people signed up for this congress.
During World War I the World Esperanto Association had its main office in Switzerland, which was neutral in the war.
Hector Hodler 's group of volunteers with support of Romain Rolland helped send letters between the enemy countries through Switzerland.
In total, they helped with 200,000 cases.
After World War I there was new hope for Esperanto because of the desire of people to live in peace and Esperanto and its community grew in those days.
The first World Congress after the war took place in Hague, Netherlands, in 1920.
An Esperanto Museum was opened in Vienna, Austria, in 1929.
Today it is part of the Austrian National Library.
World War II stopped this progress and many Esperantists were sent into the battle and many others died in concentration camps.
Nazis had prosecuted Esperantists because they saw it as a part of the global Jewish conspiracy.
They also persecuted Esperantists in the Soviet Union during Stalin 's times.
After World War II many people supported Esperanto.
80 million people signed an petition supporting Esperanto for use in the United Nations.
Every year they organize big Esperanto meetings such as the World Congress of Esperanto, International Youth Congress of Esperanto and SAT-Congress (meeting of Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda - World Non-national Association).
In 1990 the Holy See published the document Norme per la celebrazione della Messa in esperanto, allowing the use of Esperanto in Masses without special permission.
Esperanto is the only constructed language which received such permission from the Roman Catholic Church.
Esperanto has many webpages, blogs, podcasts, and videos.
People also use Esperanto in social media and online discussions and in their private communication through e-mail and instant messaging.
Several (especially open source and free software) programs have their own language version in Esperanto.
Internet radio station Muzaiko has been broadcasting 24 hours a day in Esperanto since 2011.
Many people use Esperanto to communicate by mail, email, blogs or chat rooms with Esperantists in other countries.
Some travel to other countries to meet and talk in Esperanto with other Esperantists.
There are many annual meetings of Esperantists.
The largest is the ' ("World Congress of Esperanto"), which is held in a different country each year.
In recent years around 2,000 people have attended it, from 60 or more countries.
For young people there is ' ("International Youth Congress of Esperanto").
A lot of different cultural activities take place during Esperanto meetings: concerts of Esperanto musicians, dramas, discos, cultural presentations of the host country and culture of the untries of the participants, lectures, language-courses, and so on.
At the location of Esperanto meetings there is also a pub, a tearoom, a bookstore, etc. with Esperanto-speaking workers.
The number of activities and possibilities depends on the size or on the theme of the meeting.
There are books and magazines written in Esperanto.
Much literature has been translated into Esperanto from other languages, including famous works, like the Bible (first time in 1926) and plays by Shakespeare.
Works that are less famous have also been translated into Esperanto, and some of these do not have English translations.
Important Esperanto writers are for example: Trevor Steele (Australia), Istv n Nemere (Hungary) and Mao Zifu (China).
William Auld was a British writer of poetry in Esperanto and honorary president of the Esperanto PEN Centre (Esperanto part of International PEN).
People recommended him for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
There is music of different genres in Esperanto, including folk songs, rock music, cabaret, songs for solo singers, choirs and opera.
Among active Esperanto musicians such as for example Swedish socio-critical (make people think about bad things in the society) music group La Perdita Generacio, Occitan (from the south of France) singer JoMo, the Finnish group Dolchamar, Brazilian group Supernova, Frisian group Kajto or Polish singer-songwriter Georgo Handzlik.
Also some popular music writers and artists, including Elvis Costello and American singer Michael Jackson recorded songs in Esperanto, composed songs inspired by the language or used it in their promotional materials.
Some songs from the album Esperanto from Warner Bros., which released - all in Esperanto - in Spain, in November 1996, reached a high position in the Spanish record charts; similarly, in 1999, in Germany, hip-hop music group Freundeskreis became famous with their single Esperanto.
Classical works for orchestra and choir with texts in Esperanto are La Koro Sutro by Lou Harrison and The First Symphony by David Gaines (both are from the USA).
In Toulouse, France, there is Vinilkosmo, which produces Esperanto music.
The main internet Esperanto songbook KantarViki has got 3,000 songs in May 2013, both original and translated.
They play dramas from different writers such as Carlo Goldoni, Eug ne Ionesco and William Shakespeare also in Esperanto.
Filmmakers sometimes use Esperanto in the background of films, for example in The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin, in the action film Blade: Trinity or in comedy sci-fi television series Red Dwarf.
Feature films in Esperanto are not very common, but there are about 15 feature films, which have Esperanto themes.
The 1966 film Incubus is notable because its dialogues are only in Esperanto.
Today some people translate subtitles of different films to Esperanto.
The website Verda Filmejo collects these Esperanto subtitles.
Radio stations in Brazil, China, Cuba and Vatican broadcast regular programs in Esperanto.
Some other radio programs and podcasts are available on the Internet.
Internet radio station Muzaiko broadcasts Esperanto programs on the Internet 24 hours a day since July 2011.
Between 2005 and 2006 there was also a project of international television "Internacia Televido" in Esperanto.
Today Esperanto TV broadcasts on the Internet from Sydney, Australia, since 5th April 2014.
On the Internet there are many online discussions in Esperanto about different topics.
There are many websites, blogs, podcasts, videos and television and radio stations in Esperanto (see above).
Google Translate supports translations from and into Esperanto since 22th February 2012 as its 64th language.
Apart from websites and blogs of esperantists and Esperanto organizations, there is also Esperanto Wikipedia and other projects of Wikimedia Foundation has got also their Esperanto language version or they use Esperanto (Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata), people can also use Esperanto version of the social network Facebook and other sites.
Several computer programs also have an Esperanto version, such as web browser Firefox and office suite (set of programs for use in an office) LibreOffice.
Zamenhof wanted to make an easy language to increase international understanding.
He wanted Esperanto to be a universal second language.
In other words, although he did not want Esperanto to replace national languages, he wanted a majority of people around the world to speak Esperanto.
Many Esperantists initially shared this goal.
General Assembly of UNESCO recognized Esperanto in 1954.
Since then World Esperanto Association has got official relations with UNESCO.
However, Esperanto was never chosen by the United Nations or other international organizations and it has not become a widely accepted second language.
Some Esperanto speakers like Esperanto for reasons other than its use as an universal second language.
Some people like the Esperanto community and culture.
Developing the Esperanto culture is a goal for that people.
People who care more about Esperanto 's current value than about its potential for universal use are sometimes called ra mistoj in Esperanto.
The ideas of these people can together be called ', or "Raumism".
The names come from the name of the town of Rauma, in Finland.
The International Youth Congress of Esperanto met there in 1980 and made a big statement.
They said that making Esperanto a universal second language was not their main goal.
People who have goals for Esperanto that are more similar to Zamenhof 's are sometimes called ' in Esperanto.
The name comes from ', an Esperanto phrase which means "final victory."
It refers to a theoretical future in which nearly everyone on Earth speaks Esperanto as a second language.
The Prague Manifesto (1996) states the ideas of the ordinary people of the Esperanto movement and of its main organization, the World Esperanto Association (UEA).
German town Herzberg am Harz uses nickname die Esperanto-Stadt\/la Esperanto-urbo ("the Esperanto town") since 12 July 2006.
They also teach the language in the elementary schools and do some other cultural and educational events using the Esperanto language together with the Polish twin town G ra.
Esperanto is the only constructed language which the Roman Catholic Church recognizes as liturgical language.
They allowed to do Masses in the language and Vatican Radio broadcasts in Esperanto every week.
Esperanto uses grammar and words from many natural languages, such as Latin, Russian, and French.
Morphemes in Esperanto (the smallest parts of a word that can have a meaning) can not be changed and people can combine them into many different words, so the language have got common attributes with isolating languages such as Chinese, while inner structure of Esperanto words have got common attributes with agglutinative languages, such as Turkish, Swahili and Japanese.
The Esperanto alphabet has 28 letters.
These letters are:
There is no Q, W, X, or Y in the Esperanto alphabet.
The letters,,,,, have diacritics, or accent marks.
Since x is not used in Esperanto, they can write these letters as cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux.
They call this way of writing as the "x-sistemo" ("x-system").
Zamenhof invented a way of writing letters with diacritics which uses the letter h as a helping letter.
When people use this, they can write the letters as ch, gh, hh, jh, sh and u. They call this way of writing as the "h-sistemo" ("h-system").
There was problem with writing Esperanto diacritic letters on computers in the past.
People had to use either the h-system or the x-system.
Since today 's programs can use Unicode, there is no such problem anymore, but people still use these systems to write in Esperanto when they do not have Esperanto diacritic letters on their keyboards.
Grammar means the rules of a language.
Esperanto 's grammar is intended to be simple.
The rules in Esperanto never change and can always be applied in the same way.
Esperanto has only definite article la (the same thing as "the" in English) and no indefinite article (the same thing as "a" or "an" in English).
They use definite article when they talk about things, about which they have already told something.
Nouns end in - o. For example, patro means father.
To make a noun plural add - j. For example: patroj means fathers.
Adjectives end in - a, adverbs end in - e, for example granda means big, bona means good, bone means well.
The - n ending is the "mark" of the direct object (the Accusative case) in nouns and adjectives.
For example:
In adjectives and adverbs is comparison made by words pli (more) and plej (most).
For example:
Verbs end in - as when they are in present tense.
English uses I am, you are, he is.
But in Esperanto, there is just one word for am, are, is - estas.
Similarly, kuras can mean run or runs.
Infinitives end in - i. For example, esti means to be, povi means can.
It is easy to make past tense - always add - is ending.
To make future tense, add - os.
For example:
Many words can be made opposite by adding mal at the beginning.
To make a yes-or-no question, add u at the beginning.
For example:
Unlike in English, they can answer to a yes\/no question only jes (yes) or ne (no).
Numbers like twenty-one (21) are made by their compounding by order of magnitude.
For example: dek tri means thirteen (13), dudek tri means twenty-three (23), sescent okdek tri means six hundred eighty-three (683), mil na cent okdek tri means (one) thousand nine hundred and eighty-three (1983).
Esperanto has over 20 special words which can change meaning of another word.
People put them before or after the root of a word.
These words combined can make very long words, such as malmultekosta (cheap), vendredviandman malpermeso (that meat can not be eaten on Friday).
Prefixes are added before the root of the word.
Suffixes are added after the root of the word, but before the ending.
Some of the criticism of Esperanto is common for any project of constructed international language: a new language has little chance to replace today 's international languages like English, French or similar.
The criticism, which is specific for Esperanto, targets various parts of the language itself (the special Esperanto letters, the - n ending, sound of the language, and so on).
Some people say that use of the diacritics (the letters,,,,,) make the language less neutral than it would be using only the basic letters of Latin alphabet.
They do n't use the letters, and in any other language in the world.
They also say that the same ending of an adjective and a noun (such as"","","") is unnecessary.
They do n't have such a thing in English for example.
They also criticise that most of the words in Esperanto come from Indo-European languages.
One of the common criticism from the both, non-Esperanto-speakers and esperantists, is that there is language sexism in Esperanto.
This is because there are some words, which have their male meaning as default and they have to make their feminine counterparts by adding the - in - suffix.
Such a words are words like ' (father) and ' (mother), ' (son) and ' (daughter), ' (uncle) and ' (aunt), and so on.
The majority of all Esperanto words have no specific meaning on the basis of sex.
Some people proposed the suffix - i - with male meaning in order to make the meaning of the basic word neutral.
However this proposal is not widely accepted by Esperantists.
Criticism of some parts of Esperanto language was reason for creation of some new constructed languages like Ido.
Interlingua, Neoslavonic language and Lojban are examples how to make an international constructed language in a different way.
However, none of these constructed languages have as many speakers as Esperanto.
Simple English translation: All people are free and equal in dignity and rights.
They are reasonable and moral, and should act kindly to each other.
They sometimes use the word "Esperanto" in a metaphoric way (not in its literal sense) to express that something is or they plan it to be international, neutral or a mixture.
They say programming language Java is "independent on specific platform like Esperanto is independent on concrete nation" or they call the font Noto as "Esperanto of fonts".
Engineering is the use of science and math to design or make things.
People who do engineering are called engineers.
They learn engineering at a college or university.
Engineers usually design or build things that are sold.
Some engineers also use their skills to solve technical problems.
There are different types of engineers that design everything from computers and buildings to watches and websites.
Engineering is a big subject.
Here are a few of the many types of engineers:
Engineers do not only work with machines.
They also work a lot with other people.
Many engineering projects are large and very complicated.
Often different kinds of engineers work together and help each other.
As an example, computer engineers need help from electrical engineers to build a computer.
The computer needs programs written by software engineers.
The computer could be used by aerospace engineers to control an airplane.
An airplane is a big mechanical system with many parts, so a mechanical engineer and a systems engineer are also needed.
Most (but not all) engineers have had a years of training.
Much of their training involves working within a limited budget and materials.
In the United States, most engineers go to a college or university to get an engineering degree.
Most people go to school for four years to get a Bachelor 's degree in engineering.
A Master 's Degree is an advanced degree, usually requiring two more years of study after the Bachelors.
A person with a Master 's degree is eligible to enter a Doctoral program in engineering.
A graduate of a Doctoral program is awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree, which is commonly called a PhD.
A PhD in engineering requires three or four years of study after a Master 's degree, and includes the completion of a long research report called a dissertation.
After having gained enough work experience, one can sit for their Professional Engineer 's (PE) License, reinforcing their demonstrated proficiency in their speciality.
In the United Kingdom, engineering degrees at universities are either three year BEng (Bachelor of Engineering) or four year MEng (Master of Engineering).
In many universities it is common to take only one engineering discipline (e.g. aeronautical or civil engineering) although some universities have a general engineering degree.
British universities may also offer Doctoral programs as a doctor of philosophy (PhD) or a doctor of engineering (EngD).
Engineers can also get additional recognition in the form of becoming Chartered.
A chartered engineer is one who has his degree or doctorate has been recognized by a group of professionals such as the IET (Institute of Engineering and Technology), IMechE (Institution of Mechanical Engineers), IChemE (Institution of Chemical Engineers) or ICE (Institution of Civil Engineers).
Experience and responsibility enables a further step of recognition by becoming a Fellow of these institutions.
The best way to become an engineer in France is to take the CPGE (Classe Pr paratoire pour les Grandes coles is the French class for engineer 's school) for two years and then study for three years in an" cole d'Ing nieur" (Engineer 's school).
You can also study in an IUT (Institut universitaire technologique) for two years, and then study three years in an" cole d'Ing nieur".
Education is about teaching and learning skills and knowledge.
Education also means helping people to learn how to do things and encouraging them to think about what they learn.
It is also important for educators to teach ways to find and use information.
Through education, the knowledge of society, country, and of the world is passed on from generation to generation.
In democracies, through education, children and adults are supposed to learn how to be active and effective citizens.
More specific, education helps and guide individuals to transform from one class to other.
Empowered individuals, societies, countries by education are taking edge over individuals stand on bottom pyramid of growth.
There are different methods of categorizing types of education.
One way is to divide it into formal education, non-formal education, and informal education.
Formal education is usually in school, where a person may learn basic, academic, or trade skills.
Small children often attend a nursery or kindergarten but often formal education begins in elementary school and continues with secondary school.
Post-secondary education (or higher education) is usually at a college or university which may grant an academic degree.
Non-formal education includes adult basic education, adult literacy education or school equivalency preparation.
In nonformal education an adult (or a youth who is not in school) can learn literacy, other basic skills or job skills.
There are other possibilities.
Home education, individualized instruction (such as programmed learning), distance learning and computer-assisted instruction are some of these possibilities.
There is also informal education.
For example, a parent teaches a child how to prepare a meal or ride a bicycle.
People can also get an informal education by reading many books from a library or educational websites.
Informal education is when you are not studying in a school and do not use any particular learning method.
Many public schools provide a free education through the government.
Parents may send their children to a private schools, but they must pay for it.
In some poorer places, some children can not go to school, because their countries do not make education available in their countries, or because their families do not have enough money, or because the children have to work for money, or because the society have negative prejudice on education for girls.
There are primary schools and secondary schools.
In many places they are government funded.
Colleges and universities usually charge Tuition payments which may be very different in different countries..
An encyclopedia (or encyclop dia, cyclop dia, encyclopedia) is a collection (usually a book) of information about things humans know.
Whether it is published on paper or online, an encyclopedia is a collection of articles, each on a different subject.
Encyclopedias are a great source of knowledge on many different topics.
The first encyclopedias may have begun as lecture notes of teachers of ancient schools, such as Aristotle s school.
Each volume in the encyclopedia was for a different subject or course of study.
The word encyclopedia at first meant the teachings of the school.
The name "encyclopedia" is from the 16th century.
After the printing press was invented, dictionaries with long definitions began to be called encyclopedias.
For example, a dictionary of science, if it included essays, was thought of as an encyclopedia or knowledgeable book on the subject of science.
Some encyclopedias then put essays on more than one subject in alphabetical order instead of grouping them together by subject.
The word, encyclopedia, was put in the title of some encyclopedias.
Companies were started for the purpose of publishing encyclopedias for the public use in libraries, which is different from when an encyclopedia was the curriculum of a private school.
Like dictionaries, these publishers hired hundreds of experts to write articles and read and choose articles.
Some internet encyclopedias allowed their paying customers to submit articles.
Other internet encyclopedias accepted writing from non-paying users of the encyclopedia.
There are different types of encyclopedias.
Some are general and have pages on lots of topics.
The English language Encyclop dia Britannica and German Brockhaus are general encyclopedias.
Some are about specific topics.
For example, there are encyclopedias of medicine or philosophy.
There are also some encyclopedias that have lots of topics with one perspective or one cultural bias.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia is one of these.
Many dictionaries have similar information to encyclopedias.
Examples are the Dictionary of National Biography, the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, and Black 's Law Dictionary.
Some are called "encyclopedic dictionaries".
There are two main ways of organizing printed encyclopedias: from A to Z (the alphabetical way) or by categories.
Most encyclopedias go from A to Z.
All encyclopedias were printed, until the late 20th century when some were on CD-ROM.
21st century encyclopedias are mostly online by Internet.
The largest encyclopedia in the English language is English Wikipedia, which has more than 5 million articles.
The second largest is the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is the largest one that is printed.
Some languages have a larger printed encyclopedia and some have none.
Stacy Schiff, a writer, says that Wikipedia is not as good as other encyclopedias because anyone can change it, so some people may write things that are wrong or biased.
On the other hand, Tyler Cowen, an economist, says that other non-fiction writing may also have the same problems.
Enzymes are protein molecules in cells which work as catalysts.
Enzymes speed up chemical reactions in the body, but do not get used up in the process.
Almost all biochemical reactions in living things need enzymes.
With an enzyme, reactions work very much faster than they would without.
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The substances at the start of the reaction are called substrates.
The substances at the end of the reaction are the products.
Enzymes work on the substrates, and turn them into products.
Anselme Payen found the first enzyme in 1833.
Enzymes are large molecules made from many amino acids.
The amino acids link together in a long chain, which is folded up into a complex structure.
Enzymes have a part which holds the substrate: a "claw, cleft, hollow or knob to grasp, hold, stretch and bend the molecule it acts on, the substrate".
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There are thousands of different enzymes.
Enzymes have names which show what they do.
Enzyme names usually end in ase to show that they are enzymes.
Examples of this include ATP synthase.
It makes a chemical called ATP.
Another example is DNA polymerase.
It reads an intact DNA strand and uses it as a template to make a new strand.
One example of an enzyme is amylase, found in saliva.
It breaks down starch molecules into smaller glucose and maltose molecules.
Another kind of enzyme is lipase.
It breaks down fats into smaller molecules.
The proteases are a whole class of enzymes.
They break down other enzymes and proteins back into amino acids.
Nucleases are enzymes that cut DNA or RNA, often in specific place in the molecule.
Enzymes are not only for breaking large chemicals into smaller chemicals.
Other enzymes take smaller chemicals and build them up into bigger chemicals, and do many other chemical tasks.
The classification below lists the main types.
Biochemists often draw a picture of an enzyme to use as a visual aid or map of the enzyme.
This is hard to do because there may be hundreds or thousands of atoms in an enzyme.
Biochemists can not draw all this detail.
Instead, they use ribbon models as pictures of enzymes.
Ribbon models can show the shape of an enzyme without having to draw every atom.
Most enzymes will not work unless the temperature and pH are just right.
In mammals the right temperature is usually about 37oC degrees (body temperature).
The correct pH can vary greatly.
Pepsin is an example of an enzyme that works best when pH is about 1.5.
Heating an enzyme above a certain temperature will destroy the enzyme permanently.
It will be broken down by protease and the chemicals will be used again.
Some chemicals can help an enzyme do its job even better.
These are called activators.
Sometimes, a chemical can slow down an enzyme or even make the enzyme not work at all.
These are called inhibitors.
Most drugs are chemicals that either speed up or slow down some enzyme in the human body.
Enzymes are very specific, and it was suggested by Emil Fischer in 1894 that this was because both the enzyme and the substrate possess specific complementary geometric shapes that fit exactly into one another.
This is often referred to as "the lock and key" model.
However, this model fails to explain what happens next.
In 1958, Daniel Koshland suggested a modification to the lock and key model.
Since enzymes are rather flexible structures, the active site is reshaped by interactions with the substrate.
As a result, the substrate does not simply bind to a rigid active site.
The amino acid side-chains of the active site are bent into positions so the enzyme does its catalytic work.
In some cases, such as glycosidases, the substrate molecule also changes shape slightly as it enters the active site.
Enzymes lower the activation energy of a reaction by forming an intermediary complex with the substrate.
This complex is called an enzyme-substrate complex.
For example, sucrase, 400 times the size of its substrate sucrose, splits the sucrose into its constituent sugars, which are glucose and fructose.
The sucrase bends the sucrose, and strains the bond between the glucose and fructose.
Water molecules join in and make the cleavage in a fraction of a second.
Enzymes have these key features:
There are five main ways that enzyme activity is controlled in the cell.
Cofactors, or coenzymes, are helper molecules which are needed to make an enzyme work.
They are not proteins, and may be organic or inorganic molecules.
Both types of molecules sometimes contain a metal ion at the center, such as Mg2 +, Cu2 +, Mn2 + or iron-sulphur clusters.
This is because such ions may act as electron donors, and this is important in many reactions.
The need of enzymes for various little helpers is the basic reason why animals, including ourselves, need trace elements and vitamins.
Enzymes have been classified by the International Union of Biochemistry.
Their Commission on Enzymes has grouped all known enzymes into six classes:
The individual enzymes are given a four-figure number which classifies them in the database.
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Ethics is the part of philosophy that deals with good and evil.
Ethics tries to answer questions like:
Morality is what someone thinks or feels is good or bad.
There are many different moralities, but they share some things.
For example most people think that murder (killing somebody) is wrong.
(compare Exodus 20:13) Some philosophers have hope to find more things that moralities share.
They think that ethics should use the scientific method to study things that people think are good or bad.
Their work can be used to test the fairness of a situation, such as how people should treat each other.
An example of this kind of thinking is the categorical imperative.
Many countries have laws based on this idea of fairness.
Understanding ethics can help people decide what to do when they have choices.
Many philosophers think that doing anything or making any choice is a part of ethics.
Ethics is part of other fields of study in many ways.
Here are some ways:
Along with aesthetics ethics forms part of axiology the philosophy of what people like.
The equivalence relation is a mathematical relation that is symmetric, transitive and reflexive.
Using this relation, it is possible to partition a set into (non-empty) subsets, which are called equivalence classes.
As an example, look at the animals on a farm: We now define a relation: we say that two animals are related, if they belong to the same species.
That way, a cow is related to an ox, but not to a chicken.
The relation we just defined is an equivalence relation:
In this example, all cattle form an equivalence class.
Entertainment is something that gives pleasure, or distracts a person from daily life, like a sport or game that excites people and keeps their attention.
Some entertainment, like horror movies, can also make people feel sad or scared.
Other entertainment, like comedy shows, are funny.
The ecliptic is the apparent path that the Sun traces out in the sky during the year.
As it appears to move in the sky in relation to the stars, the apparent path aligns with the planets throughout the course of the year.
More accurately, it is the intersection of a spherical surface, the celestial sphere, with the ecliptic plane, which is the geometric plane containing the mean orbit of the Earth around the Sun.
The ecliptic plane should be distinguished from the invariable ecliptic plane, which is perpendicular to the vector sum of the angular momenta of all planetary orbital planes, to which Jupiter is the main contributor.
The present ecliptic plane is inclined to the invariable ecliptic plane by about 1.5.
The name ecliptic is derived from being the place where eclipses occur.
An ellipse is a shape that looks like an oval or a flattened circle.
In geometry, an ellipse is a plane curve which results from the intersection of a cone by a plane in a way that produces a closed curve.
Circles are special cases of ellipses, obtained when the cutting plane is perpendicular to the cone 's axis.
An ellipse is also the locus of all points of the plane whose distances to two fixed points add to the same constant.
A circle has one center, called a focus, but an ellipse has two foci.
An ellipse is simply all points on a graph that the sum of the distances from 2 points are the same.
For example, an ellipse can be made by putting two pins into cardboard and a circle of string around those two, then putting a pencil in the loop and pulling as far as possible without breaking the string in all directions.
The orbits of the planets are ellipses, with the sun at one focus and nothing at the other.
The equation of an ellipse is: where the center of the ellipse is (h, k).
2A is the length from each end of the longer skinnier side.
2b is the length of the 2 ends of the short side.
A - B = C for c is the length between the foci and the center.
Elephants are the largest living land mammals.
The largest elephant recorded was one shot in Angola, 1974.
It weighed 27,060 pounds (13.5 tons) and stood 13 feet 8 inches tall.
Their skin color is gray.
At birth, an elephant calf may weigh 100 kg (225 pounds).
The baby elephant develops for 20 to 22 months inside its mother.
No other land animal takes this long to develop before being born.
In the wild, elephants have strong family relationship.
Their ways of acting toward other elephants are hard for people to understand.
They "talk" to each other with very low sounds.
Most elephants sounds are so low, people can not hear them.
But elephants can hear these sounds far away.
There are two living genera of elephants.
These are African Loxodonta africanus, and Asian elephants Elephas maximus.
An elephant 's most obvious part is the trunk.
The trunk is a very long nose, made from the upper lip.
An elephant uses its trunk to grab objects such as food.
Though the rest of an elephant 's hide is strong and thick, its trunk is very soft and sensitive.
Elephants avoid Acacia trees with symbiotic ants because they can bite the inside of an elephant 's trunk.
Elephants also have tusks.
Tusks are large teeth coming out of their upper jaws.
A lot of ivory comes from elephant tusks.
Ivory traders killed many elephants, so now hunting them is illegal.
The trunk is also used when it trumpets.
The elephant usually stands still, raises its trunk, and blows.
This is a signal to other elephants and wildlife.
African elephants are larger and have bigger ears.
They are grazers who still do quite a lot of browsing: they eat leaves, branches and grass.
These big ears have many veins, which carry blood throughout the body.
Biologists think that the blood going through their ears helps African elephants to cool off.
The weather is hotter in Africa than in Asia, so it is hard for elephants to stay cool.
Female African elephants have tusks, but female Asian elephants do not.
African elephants have a low place in their back.
African elephants have two "fingers" at the end of their trunks, but Asian elephants only have one.
Indian elephants eat mainly grass.
Grass wears down their teeth because it has a high concentration of silica and is very abrasive.
Elephants use their teeth in sequence, not all at once.
This means that, at any time, they only have one tooth in each jaw, a total of four.
In total, they have 24 teeth: 12 front teeth, called premolars, and 12 back teeth, called molars.
When the last molar wears out, the elephant dies because it can not eat.
They can live for about 70 years.
But in a zoo or circus, people can keep elephants alive by feeding them soft food.
Some African elephants live on the savanna while others live in the forest.
Today, many people think these are different species.
Scientists named the forest group Loxodonta cyclotis and the savanna group Loxodonta africanus.
Elephants are distantly related to sea cows, which are large aquatic mammals.
Early ancestors in the Palaeocene and Eocene were small, semi-aquatic animals.
By the Miocene several groups of large mainly forest-dwelling elephants evolved, the gomphotheres and deinotheres.
Their teeth show little wear, indicating a diet of soft, nongritty, forest vegetation.
Modern elephants the actual family Elephantidae evolved from gomphotheres as the climate became cooler and drier in the Pliocene and Pleistocene.
This includes the mammoth and mastodon as well as modern elephants.
The gomphotheres lasted a long time, and were hunted by modern man.
There was a change in plant resources, with the reduced forests and extended grassland.
This favored specialist grass feeders over generalist eaters.
This change in the dietary supply was one of the factors which forced gomphotheres toward extinction in the late Pleistocene in South America.
The remaining population probably succumbed to climatic change and\/or human predation around the time of the Holocene margin.
The significant thing about modern elephants (especially Indian elephants) is that they eat grass: they are primarily grazers, rather than browsers.
Compared with gomphotheres, the teeth of modern elephants are quite different.
Humans have used elephants for different things.
The Carthaginian general Hannibal took some elephants across the Alps when he fought the Romans.
He probably used the North African elephant, a kind of elephant that does not live today.
It was smaller than other African elephants.
People have used Indian elephants to move around and to have fun.
Many circuses have them.
Siamese, Indians, and other South Asians used them for several things.
They fought in armies, and they crushed criminals.
They also did heavy work like lifting trees and moving logs.
However, people have never domesticated elephants.
Domesticated animals are tame and have babies under human control.
The male elephant in heat is dangerous and hard to control.
This state is called musth.
Most elephants used by people are female, except those used in war.
In a battle, female elephants run from males, so armies needed males.
Both African and Asian elephants are endangered species.
African elephants receive some legal protection in every country where they are found.
However, 70 % of their range exists outside protected areas.
Conservation efforts in some areas have led to more elephants.
Local numbers may be controlled by contraception or moving the elephants to other places.
Large-scale culling (legal killing) ceased in 1988, when Zimbabwe stopped doing it.
In 1989, trade in elephants and their products (ivory, meat) was made illegal.
Appendix II status (which allows restricted trade) was given to elephants in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe in 1997 and South Africa in 2000.
In some countries, sport hunting of the animals is legal: Botswana, Cameroon, Gabon, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have export quotas for elephant trophies.
The IUCN estimates a total of around 440,000 individuals for 2012.
The total population of Asian elephants is about 40,000 50,000 (a rough estimate).
Around half of the population is in India.
Although Asian elephants are declining in numbers overall, particularly in Southeast Asia, the population in the Western Ghats may be increasing.
A female elephant will have a single baby (called a "calf") every four or five years.
Calves are born 85 c tall and weigh around 120 k. An elephant 's gestation lasts about 22 months.
Another female elephant often stays with the new mother until its baby is born.
The newborn elephant can often stand within a half hour after it is born.
Mother elephants touch their babies gently with their trunks.
It takes a baby a year or more to control its trunk and learn its many uses.
Baby elephants nurse for the first two years of their lives.
After it is born, the first thing that the baby does is wobble in search of its mother 's milk.
It drinks about 10 liters of milk every day.
White elephants are considered holy in Thailand.
The most famous fictional elephant is Dumbo.
It is a flying elephant in a Disney movie.
The Elephant 's Child is one of Rudyard Kipling 's Just So Stories
Ganesha is the god of wisdom in Hinduism.
He has an elephant 's head.
The elephant is the symbol for the United States Republican Party.
It is like the Democratic Party 's donkey.
The first person to use the elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party was Thomas Nast.
He did that in a Harper 's Weekly cartoon in 1874.
A mathematical equation is an expression containing at least one variable (= unknown value) and an "equals sign" (=) with a mathematical expression on each side of it.
The equals sign says that both sides are exactly the same value.
An equation can be as simple as x = 0, or as hard as 4 (3y ^ 99) +76 = 42 3x or harder.
The second kind is often used to solve problems in which you have to know the value of some variables.
For example,
The second kind of equation is used in algebra.
For example, to solve the equation 2x = 8 by finding x you would follow an algebraic rule.
Then you can work out that x = 4.
Equations can be classified by the types of operations and quantities involved.
Some types of equations are:
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 August 16, 1977) was an American singer, musician and actor.
He was one of the first and most famous in rock and roll music.
He also starred in many movies.
His fame has lasted long after his death.
He is one of the most well-known people from the 20th century in the world.
He is so popular that some people know him as only "Elvis".
He is also referred to as "The King of Rock and Roll", or just "The King".
Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi.
He and his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, when he was 13 years old.
His music career began there in 1954.
He first started to work with Sam Phillips who was the owner of Sun Records.
RCA Records acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker.
Presley 's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel" was released in January 1956.
It was a number-one hit in the US.
He became the leading figure of rock and roll after many of television appearances and chart-topping records.
His energetic attitude towards his music and his sexy performance style, made him very popular and controversial.
In November 1956, he made his film debut in Love Me Tender.
In 1958, he was drafted into military service.
When he resumed his recording career two years later, he made some of his most successful work.
In the 1960s, Presley gave most of his time to making Hollywood movies.
After a long seven year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in 1968.
In 1973, Presley was featured in the first globally broadcast concert.
Several years of prescription drug abuse damaged his health, and he died in 1977 at the age of 42
Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi to 18-year-old Vernon Elvis Presley and 22-year-old Gladys Love Presley (nee Smith), in the two-room shotgun house built by Vernon 's father in preparation for the child 's birth.
Jesse Garon Presley, his identical twin brother, was delivered stillborn 35 minutes before him.
As an only child, Presley became close to both parents and formed an unusually tight bond with his mother.
The family attended an Assembly of God church, where he found his initial musical inspiration.
Presley 's ancestry was primarily a Western European mix: on his mother 's side, he was Scots-Irish, with some French Norman; one of Gladys ' great-great-grandmothers was Cherokee.
According to a third cousin of Presley 's, one of Gladys 's great-grandmothers was Jewish.
There is no evidence that Presley or his mother shared this belief in a Jewish heritage.
Syndicated columnist Nate Bloom has challenged the cousin 's account, which he calls a "tall tale".
Presley 's father 's forebears were of Scottish and German ancestry.
Gladys was regarded by relatives and friends as the dominant member of the small family.
Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evidencing little ambition.
The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance.
The Presleys survived the F5 tornado in the 1936 Tupelo-Gainesville tornado outbreak.
In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of altering a check written by the landowner.
He was jailed for eight months, and Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.
He moved to Memphis, Tennessee with his family when he was 13 years old.
Presley was one of the first musicians to play a type of music called rockabilly, which combined country music with rhythm and blues.
His first No. 1 hit, "Heartbreak Hotel", from 1955, and was one of the first popular rock and roll songs.
Presley entered the military in 1958, and was stationed in Germany.
He was honorably discharged from the military, and returned to the United States in 1960.
In Germany, he met Priscilla Beaulieu, whom he married in 1967.
They had a daughter which they named Lisa Marie (who was married to pop singer Michael Jackson).
In 1973, Priscilla and Elvis divorced.
By this point, he had become addicted to many prescription drugs.
He died on August 16, 1977 from a heart attack.
He was discovered dead in his bathroom.
Erasmus Darwin (12 December 1731 18 April 1802), was a English scientist, poet, inventor and medical doctor.
He was a member of the Lunar Society (a group of important scientists and businessmen who were friends).
Erasmus Darwin looked at how living things evolved (change over a long time).
His grandson, Charles Darwin, later wrote a book that explained evolution by natural selection.
Erasmus Darwin House, his home in Lichfield, is now a museum dedicated to Erasmus Darwin and his life 's work.
A school in nearby Chasetown recently converted to Academy status and is now known as Erasmus Darwin Academy.
Darwin was born in Elston, near Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire.
His father was a lawyer.
When Erasmus was a child, he was very interested in nature.
He liked clocks and electricity.
He understood nature well.
He said that people should eat meat during Lent, a Christian time of fasting before Easter when people eat only simple food.
He went to the University of Cambridge, and then studied to be a doctor in Edinburgh.
He became a doctor in 1756, and worked in Lichfield in Staffordshire.
He worked hard and learned a lot about medicine.
Soon, lots of people respected him, and the King, George III asked him to become the Royal Doctor, but Erasmus preferred to stay where he was.
Darwin married twice and had 14 children, including two illegitimate daughters by an employee, and, possibly, at least one further illegitimate daughter.
In addition to the five children of his first marriage to Mary Howard (1740 1770), and seven to his second wife, Elizabeth Pole, there are two daughters by the governess Mary Parker, and another probable with a married woman, Lucy Smith.
Darwin formed the Lichfield Botanical Society in order to translate the works of the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus from Latin into English.
This took seven years.
The result was two publications: A System of Vegetables between 1783 and 1785, and The Families of Plants in 1787.
In these volumes, Darwin coined many of the English plant names that we use today.
Darwin then wrote The Loves of the Plants, a long poem, which was a popular rendering of Linnaeus works.
Darwin also wrote Economy of Vegetation, and together the two were published as The Botanic Garden.
His last long poem, the Temple of Nature, was published after his death, in 1803.
This is considered his best poetic work.
It centers on his own newly-conceived theory of evolution, tracing traces the progression of life from microorganisms to civilized society.
Darwin 's most important scientific work is Zo nomia (1794 1796), which contains a system of pathology, and a treatise on generation, in which he anticipated some of Lamarck 's ideas on evolution.
Would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued (invested) with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!
This is a clear statement of the kind of evolutionary thinking which Lamarck is known for.
Darwin 's idea of evolution surfaced in several of his other works.
In the Loves of the Plants (1789), reprinted in several editions as The Botanic Garden, there occurs the comment: "Perhaps all the productions of nature are in their progress to greater perfection!".
All these natural history works are in the form of poems, and so they are not satisfactory from the point of view of modern science.
But the 18th century was a time when intelligent men made connections; the specialist types of scientist occurred first in the lifetime of his grandson Charles.
The last two leaves of Darwin 's A plan for the conduct of female education in boarding schools (1797) contain a book list, an apology for the work, and an advert for "Miss Parkers School".
The work probably resulted from his liaison with Mary Parker.
The school advertised on the last page is the one he set up in Ashbourne, Derbyshire for their two illegitimate children, Susanna and Mary.
Darwin translated the work of Carolus Linnaeus from Latin to English.
The books explain how plants are classified.
Darwin was friends with many important scientists and businessmen, in the Lunar Society.
Darwin wrote poems against slavery.
He was a generous man, he helped people who had no money.
He wrote poems explaining his ideas about evolution.
He also made many inventions and predicted that electricity and aeroplanes would be useful in the future.
He also made a sketch (simple drawing) of a hydrogen-oxygen rocket engine in 1779.
Erasmus Darwin died on 18 April 1802, and is buried in All Saints Church, Breadsall, north of Derby.
The Ediacaran period (about 635 541 million years ago), was named after the Ediacara Hills of South Australia.
It is the last geological period of the Proterozoic eon.
The Edicaran is followed by the Cambrian, the first period of the Palaeozoic.
The period is famous for the first larger-bodied fossils, which are probably the first recorded metazoans.
These were impressions or trace fossils, first found in England 's Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire.
Geologists did not know what they had found.
It was over 60 years later before fossils from the same period were found in South Australia.
The status of the Ediacaran as an official geological period was confirmed in 2004 by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).
This made it the first new geological period declared in 120 years.
The Ediacaran period was previously called the Vendian period.
The Vendian period was proposed in 1952 by Russian geologist\/paleontologist Boris Sokolov.
The term Vendian is still widely used.
The two terms are not the same.
The Vendian was a longer period: it included the whole of the Marinoan glaciation, of Snowball Earth fame.
In other words, the Vendian included the last part of the Cryogenian period.
The Ediacaran lasted for about 90 million years.
It began at the end of the Cryogenian Snowball Earth.
It ended with the first appearance worldwide of some kinds of trace fossils (Trichophycus pedum) at the base of the Cambrian.
The Ediacaran period 's start is defined at the base of a carbonate layer, referred to as a "cap carbonate".
This caps glacial deposits and shows a sudden climatic change at the end of the Marinoan ice age.
The period ended with the mass extinction of almost all the Ediacaran fauna.
No exact dating has been possible at the type section of the Ediacaran period in South Australia.
The Ediacaran biota include the oldest definite multicellular organisms.
The fossils are traces or impressions of soft-bodies forms with segments, fronds, disks, or bags.
Skeletons or shells are not found.
Existence usually means "the state or fact of being", but there are many different views on the meaning of the word existence, and what it means to exist.
In English, existence is usually connected with the verb "to be".
The first sentence can be understood to say "I exist as a human", and simply speaking, this is probably true.
The fourth sentence is more difficult to understand, because it can be understood to say "seven exists as the sum of four and three", but "seven" is not something that we can see or touch like a pen or a human.
The question "What is existence?"
is a very important one for philosophers, and many people think Aristotle is the first human being to have thought seriously about the question.
Endocrinology studies the working of the endocrine system and hormones.
It is the science of the endocrine system and hormones in a wide range of animals.
Endocrinology is also a medical specialty.
This means that when a doctor finishes studying medicine in general, they can choose endocrinology as the part of medicine they work in.
The endocrine system consists of several glands in different parts of the body.
They secrete hormones directly into the blood.
Hormones have many different functions and modes of action.
Hormones are active in metabolism, growth and development, tissue function, sleep, digestion, respiration, excretion, mood, stress, lactation, movement, reproduction, and perception.
Another field is behavioral endocrinology.
Medical understanding of hormones began in the 19th century with Graves ' disease, caused by a swelling of the thyroid gland.
Since the mid-19th century many medical conditions have been found caused by hormone imbalance, that is, too much or too little of a hormone.
An endocrinologist can help people who have diseases related to their endocrine system.
Diseases that an endocrinologist would treat include:
These are just examples; there are many other endocrine diseases.
An endocrinologist can find out if a person has one of these diseases by doing tests.
They can test a person 's blood to find out if they have too much or too little of a hormone.
An example of this is Type 1 diabetes.
People who have Type 1 diabetes do not have enough of a hormone called insulin.
Endocrinologists usually do not treat patients directly, but give advice to physicians about what how patients might be helped.
Most medical applications concern the lack of balance between hormones, and sometimes the complete lack of a necessary hormone.
For example, most forms of hyperthyroidism are associated with an excess of thyroid hormone and a low level of thyroid stimulating hormone.
Endocrinologists can advise on hormone treatment for transgender persons.
A transgender person might want their body to look different so that they look more like their chosen gender.
For example, a transgender woman might want less facial hair so that she looks less like a man to other people.
The endocrine system includes those organs of the body which produce hormones.
It helps to regulate metabolism, growth and development, tissue function, and plays a part also in mood.
The field of medicine that deals with disorders of endocrine glands is endocrinology.
In physiology, the endocrine system is a system of glands, each of which secretes a type of hormone directly into the bloodstream to regulate the body.
The endocrine system is in contrast to the exocrine system, which secretes its chemicals using ducts.
The endocrine system is an information signal system like the nervous system, yet its effects and mechanism are different.
The endocrine system 's effects are slow to start, and long-lasting in their response.
The nervous system sends information quickly, and responses are generally short lived.
Hormones are complex chemicals released from endocrine tissue into the bloodstream where they travel to target tissues and trigger a response.
Features of endocrine glands are, in general, they have no ducts, they have a good blood supply, and usually they have vacuoles or granules inside their cells, storing their hormones.
England is a country.
It is the largest of the four countries which make up the United Kingdom.
Over 53 million people live in England.
England is bordered by Wales and Scotland, which are both also on the island of Great Britain.
The capital city of England is London, which is also the largest city in England.
Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester are also large cities in England.
The English flag is white, with a red cross.
This cross is the cross of Saint George, who is the patron saint of England.
Some other symbols used for England are a red rose and three lions.
England is the largest part of the island of Great Britain, and also the largest constituent country of the United Kingdom.
Scotland and Wales are also part of Great Britain (and the UK), Scotland to the north and Wales to the west.
To the east and south, and part of the west, England is bordered by sea.
France is to the south, separated by the English Channel.
The Channel Tunnel, under the English Channel, connects England to northern France (and the rest of mainland Europe).
Ireland is a large island to the west, divided into Northern Ireland which is part of the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland.
London is the largest city and the capital.
Other large cities are Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, Nottingham and Liverpool.
The longest river in England is the River Severn.
Other large rivers are the Thames (which runs through London), the Trent and the Humber.
England was named after a Germanic tribe called the "Angles", who settled in Central, Northern, and Eastern England in the 5th century.
A related tribe called the "Saxons" settled in the south of England.
That is why that period of English history is called "Anglo-Saxon".
For the majority of this time, England did not exist as a united country.
The Anglo-Saxons lived in many small kingdoms, which slowly united.
The later countries of England and Wales were formed from the earlier Roman Britain.
England became one country in 937.
The first King of England was Athelstan, but he lost a lot of land to Danish invaders, who formed their own country in the East and North.
Many villages and towns in this area (particularly in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire), still have Danish names, and use some Danish-based words.
At one time Wessex (in the West of England) was the only English kingdom left.
After many battles, King Alfred the Great of Wessex became king of the whole of England, and the old kingdoms (Mercia, Northumberland, etc.) just became provinces, called "Earldoms" governed by an "Earl".
Soon after Alfred died, the king of Denmark (Knut or Canute) ruled England.
England soon had an English king again.
When King Edward the Confessor died, Harold (the Earl of Wessex) became king.
William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy (today part of northern France), said that Harold Godwinson had promised to make William the king, so he invaded England and fought King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
William won, and then became king of England.
The kings of England spoke French for the next 300 years (The present ruler, Queen Elizabeth II is a descendant of William, but not very directly).
England took over the country of Wales in the 13th century.
There were many wars, often against France and Scotland.
For many centuries the religion of England was Roman Catholicism.
The bishops (church leaders) of England and all their churches obeyed the pope and the church in Rome, Italy.
During the Protestant Reformation many of the bishops did not agree with this.
In the 1530s, the Pope told King Henry VIII that he could not divorce his wife.
King Henry VIII created the Church of England (a "Protestant" church) so that he could divorce his wife, and made it the official church in England.
For the next 200 years, there was fighting over whether the King (or Queen) of England should be "Roman Catholic" or "Protestant".
Queen Elizabeth I was Henry 's second daughter.
She was a powerful queen who ruled for more than 40 years.
When Queen Elizabeth I died, she had no children, and in 1603 James VI of Scotland (the son of Mary, Queen of Scots) became King James I of England.
He called his two countries "Great Britain", but they were still separate countries with their own parliaments and laws, even though they were in personal union.
James ' son, Charles I and the English Parliament fought each other in the English Civil War (Scotland and Ireland were involved as well, but the story is complicated!).
Oliver Cromwell became leader of the Parliamentary Army (the "Roundheads") and defeated the Royalist Army (the "Cavaliers").
King Charles was beheaded in 1649 and Oliver Cromwell became dictator ("Lord Protector").
When Cromwell died, his son Richard was not strong enough to rule, and King Charles II, the son of Charles I, was invited to come to England and be king in 1660.
When King Charles II died, his brother James II was the next king.
A lot of people did not like James because he was Roman Catholic.
England was invaded by William of Orange (ruler of part of the Netherlands and husband of Mary, the daughter of King James).
Many people welcomed William because he was a Protestant.
James left the country without a fight and Parliament asked William and Mary to become King and Queen together.
When Mary II of England died, William ruled alone.
Queen Mary 's sister Anne became the next queen.
While she was queen, England and Scotland were officially joined as one country.
This was called the Acts of Union 1707.
It also merged their separate parliaments.
The parliament in London now included Scottish Members of Parliament ("MPs"), and was called the Parliament of Great Britain.
After this, the history of England becomes the history of Great Britain and United Kingdom.
The United Kingdom was formed in 1800, when the Irish Parliament merged with the British one.
Later Ireland fought against this merging and the Republic of Ireland, which is not quite the whole island called Ireland, became a separate country.
The rest of the island, Northern Ireland, is now the only part of Ireland still in the UK.
England is the only state of UK not to have its own government, Parliament or Assembly, but to be Governed by Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The English language is a West Germanic language spoken in many countries around the world.
With around 380 million native speakers, it is the second most spoken language in the world, as a native language.
As many as a billion people speak it as a second language.
English is an influence on, and has been influenced by many different languages.
Some people in England speak other languages including Welsh.
All of Great Britain has a oceanic climate.
Even though it is only 360 miles (600 km) long, England has many kinds of weather.
There can be a temperature difference of 5-10 c between the north and the south (the north is generally colder), and there is often snow in the north before there is in the south.
There is more rain in the north because there are more mountains.
The North Atlantic current of the Gulf Stream brings moist, warm air to the country and lots of rain.
The English football team won the World Cup in 1966.
They came close in Italy 1990, closely losing in the semi-final against West Germany on penalties.
In the 2006 World Cup they got to the quarter finals, then lost to Portugal after penalty kicks.
In the 2010 FIFA World Cup, they were knocked out in the second round, losing 4-1 to the Germany national football team.
The European Union (abbreviation: EU) is a confederation of 28 member countries in Europe, started in 1957 as the European Economic Community (EEC).
It has created a common economic area with Europe-wide laws allowing people to move and trade in other EU countries almost the same as they do in their own.
Nineteen of these countries also share the same type of money: the euro.
The Treaty of Lisbon is the most recent treaty that says how the Union is run.
Every member state signed to say that they each agreed with what it says.
Most importantly, it says which jobs (` powers ') the Union should do for the members and which jobs they should do themselves.
The members decide how the Union should act by voting for or against proposals.
The objective of the EU is to bring its member states closer together with respect of human rights and democracy.
It does this with a common style of passport, common rules about fair trading with each other, common agreements about law enforcement, and other agreements.
Most members share a common currency (the euro) and most allow people to travel from one country to another without having to show a passport.
After World War II, the countries in Europe wanted to live peacefully together and help one another 's economies.
Instead of fighting for coal and steel, the first member countries (West) Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg created one European Coal and Steel Community in 1952.
In 1957 in the Italian city of Rome, the member countries signed another treaty and made the European Economic Community.
Now it was a community for coal, steel and for trade.
Later it changed the name to the European Community.
In 1993, with the Treaty of Maastricht it changed its name to the European Union.
Now the member countries work together not only in politics and economy (coal, steel and trade), but also in money, justice (laws), and foreign affairs.
With the Schengen Agreement, 22 member countries of the EU opened their borders to each other, so people can now travel from one country to the other without a passport or identity card.
Now already 16 member countries have replaced their national currencies with the euro.
10 new countries became members of the EU in 2004, 2 more became members in 2007, and 1 more in 2013.
Today there are 28 member countries altogether.
A person who is a citizen of a European Union country can live and work in any of the other 27 member countries without needing a work permit or visa.
For example, a British person can move to Greece to work there, or just to live there, and he or she does not need permission from an authority in Greece.
In the same way, products made in one member country can be sold in any other member country without any special permissions or extra taxes.
For this reason, the members agree rules on product safety - they want to know that a product made in another country will be as safe as it would be if it had been made in their own.
The Council of the European Union is the main decision-making group.
The cabinet ministers of the member countries meet (Ministers for Foreign affairs, for Agriculture, for Justice, etc...)
and discuss issues that are important to them.
Before the Treaty of Lisbon (written in 2007, implemented in 2008) each member state takes a turn at being President of the Council for six months.
For example, from January 2007 until July 2007, Germany held the presidency.
The six months before that, Finland held the presidency.
Now the President of the European Union chairs the council summits.
The President of the Council is the organiser and manager and is voted into office for a duration of two and a half years.
He or she does not have the power to make decisions about the European Union like the President of the United States does for that country.
Member countries with a large population (Germany, France, United Kingdom, etc.) have more votes than countries with small populations (Luxembourg, Malta, etc.) but a decision can not be made if enough countries vote against the decision.
Twice a year, the heads of government (Prime Ministers) and\/or the heads of state (Presidents) meet to talk about the main issues and make decisions on different issues.
This meeting is different and not as formal.
It is known as a European Council.
Note: This is not the same thing as the Council of Europe, which is not part of the European Union.
The European Commission runs the day to day running of the EU and writes laws, like a government.
Laws written by the Commission are discussed and changed by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union.
The Commission has one President and 27 Commissioners, selected by the European Council.
The Commission President is appointed by the European Council with the approval of the European Parliament.
The Commission operates like a cabinet government.
There is one Commissioner per member state, though Commissioners are bound to represent the interests of the EU as a whole rather than their home state.
The Parliament has a total of 785 members (called Members of the European Parliament, or MEP).
They are elected in their countries every five years by the citizens of the European Union member countries.
The Parliament can approve, reject or change proposed laws.
It can also sack the European Commission.
In that case, the entire commission would have to give up their jobs.
There are many discussions in the EU about how it should develop and change in the future.
In 1951, six countries made the European Coal and Steel Community, a basic version of what the EU is now.
These six then went further and in 1957 they made the European Economic Community and the European Coal and Steel Community.
The UK and others decided not to join, and then when the UK changed its mind it was stopped from joining by French President Charles de Gaulle.
When he was no longer President, the UK and others started to join.
Today there are 28 members but the idea that more should join is not seen as a good one by everyone.
Serbia, Montenegro, the Republic of Macedonia, Turkey and Iceland are "candidate countries", they are being considered for membership.
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are expected to follow.
United in diversity (or together with many types of people in Simple English), is the motto of the European Union.
The Ericales are a large and diverse order of dicotyledons, including for example azalea (Rhododendron), blueberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), grass tree (Dracophyllum), l cuma (Pouteria lucuma), kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa), and tea (Camellia sinensis).
The order includes trees and bushes, lianas and herbaceous plants.
Well known families with members include polemoniaceae, ericaceae, and sapotaceae.
Well known genera include polemonium (polemoniaceae), camellia (especially C. sinensis, Tea), and calluna.
The order also has the type genus Erica, also well known.
Many plants of this order (including blueberries) have mycorrhizal fungi in their roots to let them get nutrients out of the soil.
Mycorrhiza is a relationship of fungi and plants.
Most plants of this order can get aluminium out of the soil.
Plants of this order which can not get aluminium out of the soil are parasites, mostly in the ericaceae.
There is also a fossil called Paradinandra of unknown placement in this order.
Paradinandra fossils are found only in Sweden, where they are rare.
An Easter egg is an egg, eaten and used for decoration during the Easter holidays.
The egg was a symbol of the earth to celebrate spring.
It was used by early Christians as a sign of the resurrection (rising from the dead) of Jesus.
The use of painted and decorated Easter eggs was first recorded in the 13th century.
The church did not let people eat eggs during Holy Week, but chickens still laid eggs during that week.
Because there was nothing else to do with the eggs, they were used for Easter decoration.
In modern times, chocolate eggs with a colorful wrapping are given to children to be eaten.
In the United Kingdom, children receive on average 8.8 chocolate Easter eggs every year.
It is unclear where this tradition comes from.
Most likely, it comes from a pagan fertility ritual during spring.
Sometimes on Easter, children go on egg hunts to look for Easter eggs.
They can look for them indoors or outdoors.
An easter egg is also the name of something secret added in computer programs, such as a joke, a picture, or a message that can be uncovered.
Although there have been claims that Easter eggs came from the pagan symbols, there is no solid evidence for this.
At the Passover, a hard-boiled egg dipped in salt water is a symbol of both new life and the Passover sacrifice offered at the Temple in Jerusalem.
In Christian times, the egg was a symbol of new life just as a chick might hatch from the egg.
The Easter egg tradition may have celebrated the end of the privations of Lent.
In the Medieval Europe, people were not allowed to eat eggs on fast days.
It was traditional to use up all of the eggs that they had before Lent began, and this also made the tradition of Pancake Day.
Eggs were viewed as symbols of new life and fertility through the ages.
It is believed that for this reason many ancient cultures, including the Ancient Egyptians, Persians, and Romans, used eggs during their spring festivals.
In Eastern Christianity, both meat and dairy are still not allowed to be eaten during the fast, and eggs are seen as "dairy" too.
It was during Easter that everybody was trying to get rid of the eggs before the fast.
Eggs were given as gifts for children and servants, and used for decoration.
And this is probably the reason why eggs came to be associated with Easter.
Easter, also called Resurrection Day, is a holiday.
Among Christians, it is a celebration of Jesus Christ returning from the dead.
Christians believe that it is the holiest day in the year.
Some people who are not Christians celebrate it as the beginning of Spring.
Easter is not held on the same date every year.
This is called a moveable feast.
Currently all Christian churches agree on how the date is calculated.
Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon which is on or after March 21st.
This means it is celebrated in March or April.
It can occur as early as March 22 and as late as April 25.
Western churches, like the Roman Catholic Church, use the Gregorian calendar, while Eastern churches, like the Eastern Orthodox Church, use the Julian calendar.
Because of this the date of Easter celebrations is different for these two types of churches even though the way they calculate the date is similar.
In 2015 Easter was celebrated on April 5 for both the Gregorian calendar and Julian calendar.
The word "Easter" is derived from Eastre, the name of the ancient German Goddess of Spring.
Her festival occurred at the vernal equinox.
The French word for Easter, P cques, comes from the Greek word for Passover, which is the Jewish holiday celebrated at about the same time of the year.
Jesus died on the cross about 2000 years ago in a city called Jerusalem (most of Jerusalem is in the modern country of Israel).
The people who killed him did so because they believed that he was causing trouble for the government, and because he was claiming to be the Messiah.
When they crucified him (meaning they nailed him to a cross), they even hung a sign over his head, which said, "King of the Jews."
The day he was crucified is known by Christians as Good Friday.
The New Testament states that on the Sunday after Jesus was killed, his body was no longer in the tomb where he was laid.
Later, Jesus is said to have appeared to over 500 people and preached to them.
The New Testament teaches that the resurrection of Jesus is what Christianity is based on.
The resurrection made people believe that Jesus was the powerful Son of God.
It is also spoken of as proof that God will judge the world fairly.
Christians believe that God has given Christians "a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead".
Christians believe that through faith in God they are spiritually made alive with Jesus so that they may lead a new life.
Easter is celebrated in several ways in northern Europe and the United States.
Most of these celebrations have nothing to do with the Christian meaning of the holiday.
These celebrations are related more to the pagan festivals of ancient Germany.
Children are given baskets filled with candy.
Eggs are decorated and hidden for children to find.
People wear new clothes and go to church.
Greeting cards are exchanged.
An Easter Egg Roll is held on the lawn of the White House on the day after Easter.
Small leafless trees or branches are carried indoors and decorated with colored eggs, paper trims, and lights.
Some shopping malls offer children a chance to visit with an adult costumed as the Easter Bunny.
Forced tulips, hyacinths and lilies are given as gifts.
Week-long vacations are taken following Easter Day, giving families the chance to visit with distant relatives.
In America, many families leave the cold of northern states to visit amusement parks or sunny beaches in the south.
Spring break for American high school and college students usually occurs about Easter time.
Euclid of Alexandria (Greek:) (about 325 BC 265 BC) was a Greek mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt and worked at the Library of Alexandria.
Little is known about this person, but people think he lived there when Ptolemy I was Pharaoh.
It is not known where or when he was born.
Euclid collected together all that was known of geometry, which is part of mathematics.
His Elements is the main source of ancient geometry.
Textbooks based on Euclid have been used up to the present day.
In the book, he starts out from a small set of axioms (that is, a group of things that everyone thinks are true).
Euclid then shows the properties of geometric objects and of whole numbers, based on those axioms.
The Elements also includes works on perspective, conic sections, spherical geometry, and possibly quadric surfaces.
Apart from geometry, the work also includes number theory.
Euclid came up with the idea of greatest common divisors.
They were in his Elements.
The greatest common divisor of two numbers is the greatest number that can fit evenly in both of the two numbers.
The geometrical system described in the Elements was long known simply as geometry, and was considered to be the only geometry possible.
Today that system is referred to as Euclidean geometry to distinguish it from other so-called non-Euclidean geometries which mathematicians developed in the 19th century.
In addition to the Elements, at least five works of Euclid have survived to the present day.
They follow the same logical structure as Elements, with definitions and proved propositions.
Ecuador is a small country in South America.
It is along the equator.
Ecuador has jungles and mountains like the Andes mountains.
On the coast of the Pacific Ocean there are beaches.
The capital is Quito in the Andes.
Quito is at a high altitude.
This makes it hard for some new visitors to breathe.
The biggest city is Guayaquil on the coast.
Cuenca, Ecuador is famous for its old buildings and colonial architecture.
Peru borders Ecuador to the south, and Colombia borders it to the north.
The Gal pagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean are also part of Ecuador and are famous for lots of animals.
Charles Darwin traveled in Gal pagos.
As of 2011, 14,440,000 people lived in Ecuador.
The ethnic makeup of the country is: 65 % Mestizo, 25 % Amerindian, 7 % white, and 3 % black.
Some 27 % of the people live below the national poverty line.
The official language is Spanish.
Many other indigenous languages are spoken.
Most of the people in Ecuador are Roman Catholics, although Ecuador has religious freedom and people can follow any religion they choose.
Ecuador lies between the equator.
Ecuador has many active volcanoes and also one of the greatest densities of volcanoes in the world.
Ecuador is divided into 24 provinces.
Each has its own administrative capital.
The provinces are divided into cantons.
The cantons are divided into parishes.
The Historic Center of Quito, Ecuador is one of the largest, least-altered and best-preserved historic centers in the Americas.
This center was, together with the historic center of Krak w in Poland, the first to be declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO on 18 September 1978.
The Historic Centre of Quito is located in the center south of the capital on an area of 320 hectares (790 acres), and is considered one of the most important historic areas in Latin America.
There are about 130 monumental buildings (which hosts a variety of pictorial art and sculpture, mostly of religious inspired in a multi-faceted range of schools and styles) and 5,000 properties registered in the municipal inventory of heritage properties.
Carondelet Palace (Spanish: Palacio de Carondelet) is the seat of government of the Republic of Ecuador, located in the historical center of Quito.
Axis is the nerve of the public space known as Independence Square or Plaza Grande (colonial name), around which were built in addition the Archbishop 's Palace, the Municipal Palace, the Hotel Plaza Grande and the Metropolitan Cathedral.
The history of this emblematic building dating back to colonial times, around 1570, with the acquisition of the former royal houses located in the city of Quito
During the Republican era, almost all the presidents (constitutional, internees and dictators) have dispatched from this building, which is the seat of Government of the Republic of Ecuador.
In addition to the administrative units in the third level of the Palace is the presidential residence, a luxurious colonial-style apartment in which they live the President and his family.
Rafael Correa, president since 2007, considering that Carondelet Palace and its agencies are Ecuadoran heritages, converted the presidential compound into a museum accessible to all who wish to visit it.
To this end, areas were organized to locate objects within their cultural contexts to make them accessible to the world.
Several rooms and spaces within the palace are used for this purpose.
Construction began in 1605, with Mastrilli laying the first stone.
The building was not completed until 1765.
La Compa a is among the best-known churches in Quito because of its large central nave, which is profusely decorated with gold leaf, gilded plaster and wood carvings.
Inspired by two Roman Jesuit churches the Chiesa del Ges and the Chiesa di Sant ` Ignazio di Loyola La Compa a is one of the most significant works of Spanish Baroque architecture in South America.
Also known as Big Square (Spanish: Plaza de la Independencia, Plaza Grande).
Historic public square of Quito (Ecuador), located in the heart of the old city.
This is the central square of the city and one of the symbols of the executive power of the nation.
Its main feature is the monument to the independence heroes of August 10, 1809, date remembered as the First Cry of Independence of the Royal Audience of Quito from spanish monarchy.
The environment of the square is flanked by the Carondelet Palace, the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Archbishop 's Palace, the Municipal Palace and the Plaza Grande Hotel.
The Iglesia y Monasterio de San Francisco (English: Church and Monastery of St. Francis), colloquially known as El San Francisco, is a colonial-styled church and monastery located in Quito, Ecuador.
Construction of the building began a few weeks after the founding of the city in 1534 and ended in 1604.
The founder of the church was Franciscan missionary Jodoco Ricke.
The building 's construction began around 1550, sixteen years after Quito was founded by Spanish conquistadors, and was finished in approximately 1680.
The building was officially inaugurated in 1605.
It is not known who designed the original plans for the complex, though the most-accepted theory is that they were sent from Spain, based on the topographical study of Ricke and Gosseal.
It is also possible that architects came from Spain for the construction of the monastery, or that Ricke and Gosseal managed the entire construction.
In colonial times, the Church of El Sagrario was one of the largest architectural marvels of Quito.
The construction is of the Italian Renaissance style and was built in the late 17th century.
It has a screen that supports its sculptures and decorations.
This structure was built by Bernardo de Legarda.
Its central arch leads to a dome decorated with frescoes of biblical scenes featuring archangels, work by Francisco Alb n. The altarpiece was gilded by Legarda.
It is located on Calle Garc a Moreno, near the Cathedral.
Although they arrived in Quito in 1541, in 1580 the Dominicans started to build their temple, using the plans and direction of Francisco Becerra.
The work was completed in the first half of the 17th century.
Inside the church are valuable structures, such as the neo-Gothic main altar.
This was placed in the late 19th century by Italian Dominicans.
The roof of the Mud jar style church features paintings of martyrs of the Order of Saint Dominic.
The roof of the nave is composed of a pair and knuckle frame, coated inside by pieces of tracery.
In the museum located on the north side of the lower cloister are wonderful pieces of great Quito sculptors such as the Saint Dominic de Guzm n by Father Carlos, the Saint John of God by Caspicara, and the Saint Thomas Aquinas by Legarda.
Another Baroque piece that stands is the Chapel of Nuestra Se ora del Rosario, which is a recognizable feature of the architecture of Quito.
This chapel was built beside the church, in the gospel side.
In this was founded the largest fraternity in the city of Quito.
El Panecillo is a hill located in the middle west of the city at an altitude of about 3,016 metres (9,895 ft) above sea level.
A monument to the Virgin Mary is located on top of El Panecillo and is visible from most of the city of Quito.
In 1976, the Spanish artist Agust n de la Herr n Matorras was commissioned by the religious order of the Oblates to build a 41 metres (135 ft) tall aluminum monument of a madonna, which was assembled on a high pedestal on the top of Panecillo.
The Quito School originated in the school of Artes y Oficios, founded in 1552 by the Franciscan priest Jodoco Ricke, who together with Friar Pedro Gocial transformed the San Andr s seminary, where the first indigenous artists were trained.
As a cultural expression, it is the result of a long process of acculturation between indigenous peoples and Europeans, and it is one of the richest expressions of miscegenation (mestizaje) and of syncretism, in which the participation of the vanquished Indian is seemingly of minor importance as compared to the dominant European contribution.
The Quito School (Escuela Quite a) is an artistic tradition that developed in the territory of the Royal Audience of Quito, from Pasto and Popay n in the north to Piura and Cajamarca in the south, during the colonial period (1542-1824).
This artistic production was one of the most important activities in the economy of the Royal Audience of Quito.
The Basilica of the National Vow, a Roman Catholic church located in the historic center of Quito, Ecuador.
It is sometimes also called the Catedral Consagraci n de Jes s or the Bas lica de San Juan.
It is the largest neo-Gothic basilica in the Americas.
The basilica arose from the idea, proposed by father Julio Matovelle in 1883, of building a monument as a perpetual reminder of the consecration of Ecuador to the Sacred Heart, President Luis Cordero issued the decree on July 23, 1883, and it was carried out by president Jos Mar a Pl cido Caama o on March 5, 1884.
The congress, in accordance with the year 's budget, designated 12,000 pesos for the construction - 1,000 pesos per month, beginning in 1884.
By the decree of July 3, 1885, the fourth Quitense Provincial Council turned the construction of the basilica into a religious commitment in the name of the country.
The basilica remains technically "unfinished."
& local legend says that when the Bas lica is completed, the end of the world will come.
Construction began in 1562, seventeen years after the diocese of Quito was created (1545) and located in the heart of the historic city and its status as the main church of the city, is one of the largest religious symbols of spiritual value for the Catholic community in the city.
It is one of the seven monumental churches of the 16th and 17th centuries whose main portico was built on stone in the Spanish Baroque-architecture style.
The church includes a small atrium (decorated by a large stone cross), an inside yard with a large garden and a large session hall where the frayers held dissertations or "capitulations" of faith.
The cloister and convent have a separate entrance which leads to the garden.
The bell tower reaches a high of twenty-two meters (seventy feet) and houses two bronze bells of the period.
Ecuador is a country of variety.
Its climate and landscape varies from one end of the country to the other.
However, it is more hot and humid along the coast and in the Amazon jungle lowlands than it is in the mountains.
Ecuador is one of 17 megadiverse countries in the world.
In addition to the mainland, Ecuador owns the Gal pagos Islands.
This is what the country is best known for.
Ecuador has 1,600 bird species and 38 more endemic in the Gal pagos.
In addition to over 16,000 species of plants, the country has 106 endemic reptiles, 138 endemic amphibians, and 6,000 species of butterfly.
The Gal pagos Islands are famous as the place of birth of Darwin 's Theory of Evolution.
They are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Many different kinds of potatoes and corn are grown in Ecuador.
On the coast, many people eat seafood and fish.
Cuy is a famous indigenous food that means guinea pig.
Ecuador was part of the Spanish Empire.
Spain was interested in finding gold in Ecuador.
Before Spain, Ecuador was part of the Inca Empire.
There are large banana farms in Ecuador.
Oil is one of Ecuador 's natural resources.
Ecuador uses the United States dollar for money.
Its currency used to be the sucre.
The president of Ecuador is Rafael Correa Delgado.
The Egyptian Armed Forces are the military forces of Egypt.
The Egyptian Armed Forces are the largest in Africa, and the Middle East.
It was established in 1922.
It consists of the Egyptian Army, Egyptian Navy, Egyptian Air Force and Egyptian Air Defense Forces.
The Egyptian Armed Forces are the largest in Africa, and the Middle East.
They are the 13th most powerful armed forces worldwide.
Their combined strength is about 450,000.
According to the Egyptian Constitution, The Egyptian Armed Forces is led by the General command or by the Supreme Council formed in times of emergency and headed by the President who holds the title of the Supreme leader of the Egyptian armed forces, and consists of the 21 military officers who represent the different armies and departments of the armed forces.
El Salvador is the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America.
The country 's capital and largest city is San Salvador.
Other important cities are: Santa Ana and San Miguel.
El Salvador borders the Pacific Ocean on the south, and the countries of Guatemala to the west and Honduras to the north and east.
In 2010 El Salvador ranked in the top 10 Latin American countries in terms of Human Development Index.
It was in the top 3 in Central America (behind Costa Rica and Panama).
Also, tropical forests and overall forests have expanded by nearly 20 % from the year 1992 to 2010, making it one of the few countries experiencing reforestation.
In El Salvador there are only two seasons.
The dry season starts in mid-October and it lasts until mid May.
During the dry season, it hardly ever rains.
The wet season starts in mid-May and ends in mid-October.
In this season it rains every day.
The dry season is called summer and the rainy season is called winter.
Most of the population is mestizo, a mixture of European and American people.
El Salvador is divided into 14 departments (departamentos).
These are divided into 262 municipalities (municipios).
The Republic of Equatorial Guinea is a nation in west central Africa, and one of the smallest countries in Africa.
It borders Cameroon on the north, Gabon on the south and east, and the Gulf of Guinea on the west.
In the past, it was the Spanish colony of Spanish Guinea.
The country 's territory is both on the continent and on islands.
The continental part is known as R o Muni.
On one island, Bioko, is the capital, Malabo.
Equatorial Guinea is the only country in Africa where Spanish is an official language.
The provinces are further divided into districts.
Euclidean geometry is a system in mathematics.
People think Euclid was the first person who described it; therefore, it bears his name.
He first described it in his textbook Elements.
The book was the first systematic discussion of geometry as it was known at the time.
In the book, Euclid first assumes a few axioms.
These form the base for later work.
They are intuitively clear.
Starting from those axioms, other theorems can be proven.
In the 19th century other forms of geometry were found.
These are non-Euclidean geometry.
Carl Friedrich Gauss, J nos Bolyai, and Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky were some people that developed such geometries.
Very often, these do not use the parallel postulate, but the other four axioms.
Euclid makes the following assumptions.
These are axioms, and need not be proved.
Euclidean geometry is a first-order theory.
With it, statements like For all triangles... can be made, and be proven.
Statements like For all sets of triangles... are outside the scope of the theory.
Epic poetry is a form of poetry.
It is one of the main forms of poetry, with lyrics and drama.
Epic poetry is usually very long, and takes place in different settings.
There are characters in the story.
Well-known people who wrote epics were Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Edmund Spenser and Milton.
William Wordsworth 's Prelude plays with epic ideas though the poem is autobiography.
The Eocene was the second geological epoch in the Palaeogene.
It began 56 million years ago, and ended 33.9 million years ago.
Before it was the Palaeocene and, after it, the Oligocene.
The Eocene, like the Palaeocene before it, had a climate much warmer than today.
At the start of the Eocene the Palaeocene Eocene Thermal Maximum was reached.
This lasted for 100,000 years, and caused a large extinction event.
At the end of the Eocene another extinction event occurred, this time probably caused by meteorite strikes in Siberia and Chesapeake Bay.
The land was heavily forested, with temperate forests into the polar regions, and the many herbivorous mammals were browsers, not grazers.
Eindhoven is a city in the south of the Netherlands.
It is in the Noord-Brabant province.
It has about 210,000 inhabitants and a well-known football team.
Helsing r is a city in northern Denmark.
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior (U.S. behavior), and a sub-topic of zoology.
Ethology overlaps, to some extent, with psychology.
Psychology is a social science which studies human behavior, but many psychologists have done experiments on learning in animals.
Ethology studies animal behavior, but many ethologists have been interested in human behavior.
An American specialist on ants, William Morton Wheeler, first used the term ` ethology ' in English in 1902.
The study of animal behavior, which had been going on in an anecdotal way since Aristotle, had its roots in natural history.
It became more scientific during the 19th century.
The French zoologist tienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was the founder of ethology in Europe, and his son Isidore produced a three-volume encyclopedia Histoire Naturelle G n rale.
In the third volume he talked about animal behavior in almost modern terms.
The entomologist J.-H Fabre (1823 1915) was a remarkable observer of natural life.
His popular writing on natural history kept ethology alive in Europe.
Douglas Spalding (1841 1877) was a British biologist who was the first to notice the effect called imprinting.
Instinct and imprinting were the first scientific concepts in ethology.
He was able to prove that the behavior of chicks after hatching from the egg happened even when they had no experience, practice or even information from the senses.
Therefore the capacity was inherited.
Studies by Charles Otis Whitman, Oskar Heinroth and Julian Huxley set the tone in the 20th century.
This work was mostly on bird behavior, especially mating behavior.
The behavior of birds played a big part in early ethology, but there was a start to studying our nearest relatives.
Wolfgang K hler 's Mentality of Apes was a landmark in the study of primates.
The next generation began during the 1930s with the work of Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, and the Dutch biologist Niko Tinbergen.
The three men were joint winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1973.
Lorenz is famous for his ` longitudinal ' studies: he lived with the animals he researched, and made observations throughout their lives.
Then he wrote about what he had discovered in long, very readable papers.
He researched instinctual behavior, which he called ` fixed action patterns ' (FAPs).
Lorenz popularized FAPs as instinctive responses that would occur reliably in the presence of specific stimuli (called sign stimuli or releasing stimuli).
von Frisch worked on communication in honey bees: the famous ` bee dances '.
Tinbergen experimented with the stimuli which trigger fixed action patterns.
He found out that artificial super-stimuli could often work better than the natural stimuli.
Ethology is a combination of laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to certain other disciplines e.g., neuroanatomy, ecology, evolution.
Ethologists are typically interested in a behavioural process rather than in a particular animal group and often study one type of behavior (e.g. aggression) in a number of unrelated animals.
In the 1960s Nico Tinbergen set out a framework for research on behavior.
It involved four questions and their answers.
The only scientific explanation for an animal s behavior is that it is well adapted for survival and reproduction in its environment.
A trait is the result of its past contribution to survival.
In practice, this is simple.
For instance, birds fly south in the winter to find food and warmth, and mammalian mothers nurture their young, thereby having more surviving offspring.
Phylogeny explains why some adaptation is less than perfect.
From where it is, there are always some possibilities which a particular species can never get to.
This is because all stages in evolution must be viable, else extinction occurs.
Another reason is that not all traits of a species can be maximized at the same time.
Increase in armor, for example, is bound to slow down movement.
Teeth which are best for vegetation are much less good for meat.
The final result is a set of traits, most of which are sub-optimal.
Earlier phylogenetic stages and (pre -) conditions which persist often determine the form of more modern characteristics.
For instance, the vertebrate eye (including the human eye) has a blind spot, whereas octopus eyes do not.
Once the vertebrate eye had evolved, the only way it could improve was to minimize the effect of the blind spot.
We do n't notice it ordinarily, because with binocular vision what one eye misses, the other fills in.
All instances of behavior require an explanation at each of these four levels.
For example, the function of eating is to acquire nutrients (which ultimately aids survival and reproduction), but the immediate cause of eating is hunger (causation).
Hunger and eating are evolutionarily ancient and are found in many species (evolutionary history), and develop early within an organism 's lifespan (development).
It is easy to confuse such questions for example to argue that people eat because they 're hungry and not to acquire nutrients without realizing that the reason people experience hunger (causation) is because it causes them to acquire nutrients (function).
Electromagnetic waves are waves that contain an electric field and a magnetic field and carry energy.
They travel at the speed of light.
Quantum mechanics developed from the study of electromagnetic waves, which include visible light seen in the colors of the rainbow, but also other waves including the more energetic and higher frequency waves like ultraviolet light, x-rays, and gamma rays plus the waves with longer wavelengths including infrared waves, microwaves and radio waves.
Some types of electromagnetic radiation, such as X-rays, are ionizing radiation and can be harmful to your body.
Ultraviolet rays are near the violet end of the light spectrum and infrared are near the red end.
Infrared rays are heat rays and ultraviolet rays cause sunburn.
The various parts of the electromagnetic spectrum differ in wavelength, frequency and quantum energy.
Sound waves are not electromagnetic waves but waves of pressure in air, water or any other substance.
The problem now is to prove that Maxwell 's equations explicitly prove that the electric and magnetic fields create electromagnetic radiation.
Recall that two of Maxwell 's equations are given by
The equations above are analogous to the wave equation, by replacing f with E and B. The above equations mean that propagations through the magnetic (B) and electric (E) fields will produce waves.
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 - July 2, 1961) was an American writer.
He is generally thought to be a member of the Lost Generation.
Some people say that, of the many characters he created in his books, the author himself was his best creation.
Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899.
He grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, near the midwestern city of Chicago.
He was the second child in a family of six.
His father was a doctor.
His mother was a painter and a pianist.
Each summer, the family traveled to their holiday home in northern Michigan.
Ernest 's father taught him how to catch fish, hunt, set up a camp, and cook over a fire.
At home in Oak Park, Ernest wrote for his school newspaper.
He tried to write like a famous sports writer, Ring Lardner, and he made his writing skills better.
In 1917, Hemingway decided not to go to a university.
The United States had just entered World War I and he wanted to join the Army, but they rejected him because his eyesight was not good enough.
Ernest found a job with the Kansas City Star newspaper in Kansas City, Missouri.
He reported news that happened at the hospital, police headquarters, and the railroad station.
One reporter said: "Hemingway liked to be where the action was."
The Kansas City Star told its reporters to write short sentences, and to report unusual details of an incident.
Hemingway quickly learned to do both.
Hemingway worked for the newspaper for nine months.
He then joined the Red Cross to help on the battle fields of Europe.
His job was to drive an ambulance and to take wounded soldiers off the battlefield.
The Red Cross sent him to Italy.
There, he soon saw the first wounded.
This was when a weapons factory in Milan exploded.
Later, he was sent to the battle front.
He went close to the fighting to see how he could act in the face of danger.
Soon, he was seriously wounded.
Soon after healing, the war ended.
Hemingway returned to the United States.
After less than a year he had changed forever: he needed to write about what he had seen.
Hemingway wrote many short stories about people who experienced World War I.
Some time later, Hemingway left home for Chicago to prove to himself, and to his family, that he could earn a living from his writing.
But he ran out of money and began to write for a newspaper again.
The Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Star, loved his reports in Chicago.
They hired him and paid him well.
In Chicago, Hemingway also met Sherwood Anderson.
Anderson was one of the first American writers to write about common people.
Hemingway saw that Anderson 's stories showed life as it really was.
This was similar to what he wanted to do.
Anderson gave Hemingway advice about his writing.
He told Hemingway to move to Paris.
Life was less costly there.
Anderson said that Paris had many young artists and writers from many nations.
Hemingway decided to move to Paris.
Before he did, in America, he married a woman he had recently met.
Her name was Hadley Richardson.
Paris was cold and gray when Hemingway and his new wife arrived in 1921.
They lived in one of the poorer parts of the city.
Their rooms were small and they did not have water from pipes.
But the Toronto Star employed him as its European reporter, so they had enough money for the two of them to live.
That job gave Hemingway time to write his stories.
Hemingway enjoyed exploring Paris, learning French customs, and meeting friends.
Some of these new friends were artists and writers who had come to the city in the 1920s.
Among them were poet, Ezra Pound, and writers Gertrude Stein, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Seeing that Hemingway was a good writer, they helped him publish his stories in the United States.
He was thankful for their support at the time, but later denied that he had received their help.
Hemingway traveled all over Europe.
He wrote about politics, peace conferences, and border disputes, as well as sports, skiing, and fishing.
Later he would write about bullfighting in Spain.
The Toronto Star was pleased with his work, and wanted more of his reports, but Hemingway was busy with his own writing.
He said this: "Sometimes, I would start a new story and could not get it going.
Then I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think.
I would say to myself: ` All you have to do is write one true sentence.
Write the truest sentence you know. '
So finally, I would write a true sentence and go on from there.
It was a wonderful feeling when I had worked well."
Hemingway 's first book of short stories was called In Our Time.
One of its stories, "Big Two Hearted River," told of the effects of war on a young man who was taking a long fishing trip in Michigan.
Hemingway had learned from his father, when he was a boy, about living in the wild.
The story is about two kinds of rivers.
One is calm and clear, and is where the young man fishes.
The other is a dark, threatening swamp.
The story shows its main character trying to forget his past, as well as the war.
He does not talk much about the war.
The reader learns about the young man, not because Hemingway tells his readers what the man thinks, but because he shows that man learning about himself.
Many people believe it is one of the best modern American stories of all time.
Because of this, "Big Two Hearted River" is often published in collections of best writing.
After the book was published in 1925, Hadley and Hemingway returned to the United States for the birth of their son, after which they quickly returned to Paris.
Hemingway was working on a long story.
He wanted to publish a novel so he would be recognized as a serious writer.
And he wanted the money a novel would earn.
The novel was called The Sun Also Rises.
It is about young Americans in Europe after World War One.
The war had destroyed their dreams and had given them nothing to replace those dreams.
The writer Gertrude Stein later called these people members of "The Lost Generation."
The book was an immediate success.
At the age of 25 Ernest Hemingway was famous.
Many people, however, did not like Hemingway 's art because they did not like what he wrote about.
Hemingway 's sentences were short, the way he had been taught to write at the Kansas City Star newspaper.
He wrote about what he knew and felt.
He used few descriptive words.
His statements were clear and easily understood.
He had learned from earlier writers, like Ring Lardner and Sherwood Anderson, but Hemingway brought something new to his writing.
He was able to paint in words what he saw and felt.
In later books, sometimes he missed.
Sometimes he even looked foolish.
But when he was right he was almost perfect.
With the success of his novel, Hemingway became even more popular in Paris.
Many people came to see him.
One was an American woman, Pauline Pfeiffer.
She became Hadley 's friend.
Then Pauline fell in love with Hemingway.
Hemingway and Pauline saw each other secretly.
One time, they went away together on a short trip.
Years later, Hemingway wrote about returning home after that trip:
"When I saw Hadley again, I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.
She was smiling and the sun was on her lovely face."
But the marriage was over.
Ernest Hemingway and Hadley separated.
She kept their son.
He agreed to give her money he earned from his books.
In later years, he looked back at his marriage to Hadley as the happiest time of his life.
At twenty-five, Hemingway was living in Paris.
He was a famous writer.
But the end of his first marriage made him want to leave the place where he had first become famous.
Much later he said, "the city was never to be the same again.
When I returned to it, I found it had changed as I had changed.
Paris was never the same as when I was poor and very happy."
Hemingway and his new wife returned to the United States in 1928.
They settled in Key West, an island with a fishing port near the southern coast of Florida.
Before leaving Paris, Hemingway sent a collection of his stories to New York to be published.
The book of stories, called Men Without Women, was published soon after Hemingway arrived in Key West.
One of the stories was called "The Killers."
In it, Hemingway used a discussion between two men to create a feeling of tension and coming violence.
This was a new method of telling a story:
Nick opened the thingy and went into the room.
Ole Andreson was lying on the bed with all his clothes on.
He had been a heavyweight prizefighter and he was too long for the bed.
He lay with his head on two pillows.
He did not look at Nick.
"What was it?"
He asked.
"I was up at Henry 's," Nick said, "and two fellows came in and tied me up and the cook, and they said they were going to kill you."
It sounded silly when he said it.
Ole Andreson said nothing, "they put us out in the kitchen," Nick went on.
"They were going to shoot you when you came in to supper."
Ole Andreson looked at the wall and did not say anything.
"George thought I ought to come and tell you about it."
"There is not anything I can do about it," Ole Andreson said.
Any new book by Hemingway was an important event for readers.
But stories like "The Killers" shocked many people.
Some thought there was too much violence in his stories.
Others said he only wrote about gunmen, soldiers, fighters, and drinkers.
This made Hemingway angry.
He felt that writers should not be judged by those who could not write a story.
Hemingway was happy in Key West.
In the morning he wrote, in the afternoon he fished, and at night he went to a public house and drank.
One old fisherman said: "Hemingway was a man who talked slowly and very carefully.
He asked a lot of questions.
And he always wanted to get his information exactly right."
Hemingway and his wife Pauline had a child in Key West.
Soon afterwards, he heard that his father had killed himself.
Hemingway was shocked.
He said, "My father taught me so much.
He was the only one I really cared about."
When Hemingway returned to work there was a sadness about his writing that was not there before.
His new book told about an American soldier who served with the Italian army during World War One.
He meets an English nurse, and they fall in love.
They flee from the army, but she dies during childbirth.
Some of the events are taken from Hemingway 's service in Italy.
The book is called A Farewell to Arms.
"At noon we were stuck in a muddy road about as nearly as we could figure, ten kilometres from Udine.
The rain had stopped during the forenoon and three times we had heard planes coming, seen them pass overhead, watched them go far to the left and heard them bombing on the main highroad...
"Later we were on a road that led to a river.
There was a long line of abandoned trucks and carts on a road leading up to a bridge.
No one was in sight.
The river was high and the bridge had been blown up in the center; the stone arch was fallen into the river and the brown water was going over it.
We went up the bank looking for a place to cross... we did not see any troops; only abandoned trucks and stores.
Along the river bank was nothing and no one but the wet brush and muddy ground."
A Farewell to Arms was very successful.
It earned Hemingway a great deal of money.
It permitted him to travel.
One place he visited was Spain, a country he loved.
He said, "I want to paint with words all the sights and sounds and smells of Spain.
And if I can write any of it down truly, then it will represent all of Spain."
He wrote a book called Death in the Afternoon.
It describes the Spanish custom of bull fighting.
Hemingway believed that bull fighting was an art, just as much as writing was an art.
And he believed it was a true test of a man 's bravery, something that always concerned him.
Hemingway also traveled to Africa.
He had been asked to write a series of reports about African hunting.
He said, "Hunting in Africa is the kind of hunting I like.
No riding in cars, just simple walking and feeling the grass under my feet."
The trip to Africa resulted in a book called The Green Hills of Africa and many smaller stories.
One story is one of Hemingway 's best.
The story, called The Snows of Kilimanjaro, tells of Hemingway 's fears about himself.
It is about a writer who betrays his art for money and is unable to remain true to himself.
In 1936, the Civil War in Spain gave him a chance to return to Spain and test his bravery again.
He agreed to write about the war for an American news organization.
It was a dangerous job.
One day, Hemingway and two other reporters were driving a car near a battlefield.
The car carried two white flags to show they were not fighting.
But rebel gunners thought the car was carrying enemy officers.
Hemingway was almost killed.
Later he said that "bullets are all the same.
If they do not hit you, there is no story.
If they do hit you, then you do not have to write it."
The trip to Spain resulted in two works: a play called The Fifth Column, and a novel called For Whom the Bell Tolls.
The novel tells the story of an American who has chosen to fight against the fascists.
He realizes that there are lies and injustice on his side.
But he sees no hope except the victory of his side.
During the fighting, he escapes his fear of death and of being alone.
He decides that "he can live as full a life in seventy hours as in seventy years."
The book was a great success.
Hemingway enjoyed being famous.
His second marriage was ending.
He divorced Pauline and married reporter Martha Gellhorn.
He had met her while they were working in Spain.
They decided to live in Cuba, near the city of Havana.
Their house looked out over the Caribbean Sea.
But this marriage did not last long.
Hemingway was changing.
He began to feel that whatever he said was right.
Martha went on long trips to be away from him.
He drank heavily to forget his loneliness.
When America entered World War Two, Hemingway went to Britain as a reporter.
Later he took part in the invasion of Europe and the freeing of Paris.
During the war, Hemingway met another reporter, Mary Walsh.
In 1945, when his marriage to Martha was legally over, he married Mary.
After the war, Hemingway began work on his last important book, The Old Man and the Sea.
It is the story of a Cuban fisherman who refuses to be defeated by nature.
Hemingway said, "I was trying to show the experience of the fisherman so exactly and directly that it became part of the reader 's experience."
In 1954, Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
But he was too sick to take part in the ceremony.
Ernest Hemingway was 60 years old, but he said he felt like he was 86.
Even worse, he felt that he no longer was able to write.
He seemed to be living the story about the writer who had sold his writing skill in order to make money.
In 1961, Ernest Hemingway shot himself dead.
Among the papers he left was one that described what he liked best:
"To stay in places and to leave... to trust, to distrust... to no longer believe and believe again... to watch the changes in the seasons... to be out in boats... to watch the snow come, to watch it go... to hear the rain... And to know where I can find what I want."
Ernest Hemingway owned many cats, especially cats with extra toes.
Today these cats are sometimes called Hemingway cats in his honor.
His house in Key West, Florida is now a home for his cats and their kittens.
The electrical telegraph is a telegraph that uses electric signals.
In general the term electrical telegraph refers to a signalling system where an operator makes and breaks an electrical contact with a telegraph key which results in an audible signal at the other end produced by a telegraph sounder which is interpreted and transcribed by a human.
Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber installed a 1000m long wire above the town 's roofs.
They were allowed to do this on 6 May 1833.
Carl August Steinheil was able to build a telegraph network in 1835 1836.
He installed a telegraph line along the first German railroad in 1835.
The telegraph had a transmitting device which had a keyboard with 16 black-and-white keys.
These served for switching the electric current.
Dr. David Alter created it one year before the much more popular Morse telegraph was invented.
Alter demonstrated it publically.
In the United States, the telegraph was developed by Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail.
Morse created an electrical telegraph in 1837.
His version was a design that could transmit over long distances using poor quality wire.
Vail, his assistant, developed the Morse code signalling alphabet with Morse.
The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization in the ancient area of Etruria (modern Tuscany plus western Umbria and northern Latium) and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna (where Gauls took the place of Etruscans), in Italy.
Inscriptions have been found in north-west and west-central Italy, in the region that even now has a name that came from the Etruscans, Tuscany (from Latin tusc "Etruscans"), as well as in today 's Latium north of Rome, in today 's Umbria west of the Tiber, around Capua in Campania and in the Po valley to the north of Etruria.
This is probably the area in Italy where the language was once spoken.
An election is a way people can choose their candidate or their preferences in a democracy or other form of government.
Most democratic countries hold new elections for their national legislature every few years, but this differs from country to country.
Some democracies elect other national officials (such as a president).
In others, these are appointed.
Democratic countries also hold local (or municipal) elections.
Some democracies have regional, provincial or state elections too.
There are different ways to organize an election in different countries.
Voters might vote for an individual, or they might vote for a political party (party list).
This is because different countries use different voting systems.
Countries that are not democracies can also hold elections.
This is usually done to let the people choose a local representative (like a mayor).
Also many countries call themselves democracies, but behind the scenes have a more autocratic form of government.
Elections are done between the main person and the opposition.
Psephology is the study of elections.
Eric S. Raymond (often called ESR; born 4 December 1957) is an American writer and computer programmer.
He became famous when he picked up maintenance of The Jargon File.
Euro is the currency (money) of the countries in the eurozone.
One euro is divided into 100 cent (officially) (singular) or "cents" (unofficially).
Because of the number of different languages in the European Union, there are different, unofficial, names for this unit (the French call them "centimes" and the Spanish "c ntimos", for example).
It was created in 1999, but until 1 January 2002 it was used only for electronic payments.
In 2002, 12 countries of the European Union (EU) got rid of their national currencies completely and adopted euro notes and coins as their only money.
There was a change-over period, called the "transition period", when both the old national money and the euro were accepted, but by 28 February 2002, all 12 countries were using just euros.
In 2007, Slovenia became the 13th country to use the euro.
In 2008 Cyprus and Malta became the 14th and 15th countries to use the euro.
In 2009, Slovakia became the 16th country to use the euro.
In 2011, Estonia became the 17th country to use the euro.
In 2014, Latvia became the 18th country and in 2015, Lithuania became the 19th country to use the euro.
There are seven different banknotes, each one with a different color, size and face value: 5 (gray), 10 (red), 20 (blue), 50 (orange), 100 (green), 200 (yellow), 500 (purple).
Coins are of eight different amounts: 0.01, 0.02, 0.05, 0.10, 0.20, 0.50, 1, 2.
On every banknote, there is a picture of a different European building style.
All banknotes are the same throughout the entire eurozone - there are no different designs for different countries, unlike the euro coins.
One side of each coin is the same in all euro countries.
The other side is different since each country who mints the coins inserts a symbol relating to that country.
Today there are many different sets of coins.
Any of the coins can be used everywhere throughout the eurozone despite the country-specific symbol on the back.
The ten new European countries that entered the European Union in May 2004 are planning to adopt the Euro also.
First they must meet some conditions to show that they have stable economies.
The symbol for the euro is the Greek letter epsilon (E) with two horizontal lines:.
Some people see it as the Latin capital letter C with an equal sign (=).
It is also legal to simply write euro.
This is especially useful when the symbol can not be produced, or the result is not satisfactory.
These countries form the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).
The European Central Bank is the main bank of the European Union.
The European Central Bank is in Frankfurt am Main.
The main goal of the European Central Bank is to maintain price stability, in other words make sure inflation is below 2 %.
This is done by e.g. controlling the interest rates.
It is also the only bank allowed to issue euro banknotes (-RRB-, used by 16 of the 28 member states of the European Union (EU).
An electron is a very small piece of matter and energy.
Its symbol is e.
The electron is a subatomic particle.
It is believed to be an elementary particle because it can not be broken down into anything smaller.
It is negatively charged, and may move almost at the speed of light.
Electrons take part in gravitational, electromagnetic and weak interactions.
The electricity that powers radios, motors, and many other things consists of many electrons moving through wires or other conductors.
Electrons have the smallest electrical charge.
This electrical charge equals the charge of a proton, but has the opposite sign.
For this reason, electrons are attracted by the protons of atomic nuclei and usually form atoms.
An electron has a mass of about 1\/1836 times a proton.
One way to think about the location of electrons in an atom is to imagine that they orbit at fixed distances from the nucleus.
This way, electrons in an atom exist in a number of electron shells surrounding the central nucleus.
Each electron shell is given a number 1, 2, 3, and so on, starting from the one closest to the nucleus (the innermost shell).
Each shell can hold up to a certain maximum number of electrons.
The distribution of electrons in the various shells is called electronic arrangement (or electronic form or shape).
Electronic arrangement can be shown by numbering or an electron diagram.
(A different way to think about the location of electrons is to use quantum mechanics to calculate their atomic orbitals.)
The electron is one of a class of subatomic particles called leptons.
The electron has a negative electric charge.
The electron has another property, called spin.
Its spin value is 1\/2, which makes it a fermion.
While most electrons are found in atoms, others move independently in matter, or together as cathode rays in a vacuum.
In some superconductors, electrons move in pairs.
When electrons flow, this flow is called electricity, or an electric current.
An object can be described as ` negatively charged ' if there are more electrons than protons in an object, or ` positively charged ' when there are more protons than electrons.
Electrons can move from one object to another when touched.
They may be attracted to another object with opposite charge, or repelled when they both have the same charge.
When an object is ` grounded ', electrons from the charged object go into the ground, making the object neutral.
This is what lightning rods (lightning conductors) do.
Electrons in their shells round an atom are the basis of chemical reactions.
Complete outer shells, with maximum electrons, are less reactive.
Outer shells with less than maximum electrons are reactive.
The number of electrons in atoms is the underlying basis of the chemical periodic table.
Electric charge can be directly measured with a device called an electrometer.
Electric current can be directly measured with a galvanometer.
The measurement given off by a galvanometer is different from the measurement given off by an electrometer.
Today laboratory instruments are capable of containing and observing individual electrons.
In laboratory conditions, the interactions of individual electrons can be observed by means of particle detectors, which allow measurement of specific properties such as energy, spin and charge.
In one instance a Penning trap was used to contain a single electron for 10 months.
The magnetic moment of the electron was measured to a precision of eleven digits, which, in 1980, was a greater accuracy than for any other physical constant.
The first video images of an electron 's energy distribution were captured by a team at Lund University in Sweden, February 2008.
The scientists used extremely short flashes of light, called attosecond pulses, which allowed an electron 's motion to be observed for the first time.
The distribution of the electrons in solid materials can also be visualized.
The antiparticle of the electron is called a positron.
This is identical to the electron, but carries electrical and other charges of the opposite sign.
When an electron collides with a positron, they may scatter off each other or be totally annihilated, producing a pair (or more) of gamma ray photons.
The effects of electrons were known long before it could be explained.
The Ancient Greeks knew that rubbing amber against fur attracted small objects.
Now we know the rubbing strips off electrons, and that gives an electric charge to the amber.
Many physicists worked on the electron.
J.J. Thomson proved it existed, in 1897, but another man gave it the name ` electron '.
Europium is a chemical element.
It has the symbol Eu on the periodic table.
It has an atomic number 63 which means it has 63 protons in one atom.
It was named after the continent Europe.
Its compounds can fluoresce, or glow under ultraviolet light.
Erbium is an element on the periodic table.
Its symbol is Er.
Its atomic number is 68.
Einsteinium is a chemical element with the atomic number 99.
That means an Einsteinium atom has 99 protons and 99 electrons.
It is a synthetic element, so all isotopes are radioactive.
Einsteinium belongs to the actinoids, and it is the 7th of them.
The most stable isotope of Einsteinium has 99 protons and electrons and 153 neutrons.
There are 19 different (radioactive) isotopes.
Einsteinium is named after Albert Einstein.
It was found for the first time in 1952 by Albert Ghiorso and his team of scientists in the debree of the first hydrogen bomb explosion, and identified as an element at the University of California, Berkeley.
Einsteinium isotopes have a half-life between 40 and 471 days.
Einsteinium has been used to create the element Mendelevium for the first time, in 1955, although no practical uses are known.
Edmund R diger Stoiber, German pronunciation: tm nt t b, (born 28 September 1941) is a German politician.
He used to be the Minister-President of the state of Bavaria and the leader of the Christian Social Union party (CSU).
On 18 January 2007, he said he no longer wanted to be minister-president and party leader by 30 September, after having been criticize by his own party for weeks.
Edmund Stoiber was born in Oberaudorf in the district of Rosenheim, Bavaria.
Before he became a member of the Bavarian parliament in 1974, he was a lawyer and worked at the University of Regensburg.
Stoiber is married to Karin Stoiber.
They have three children: Konstanze (1971), Veronika (1977), Dominik (1980) and three grandchildren: Johannes (1999), Benedikt (2001) and Theresa Marie (2005).
Stoiber was a student at Ignaz-G nther-Gymnasium in Rosenheim, where he received his Abitur (high school diploma) in 1961.
He served the military with the mountain infantry division but had to leave because he hurt his knee.
After his military service, Stoiber studied political science and later law in Munich.
In 1967 he passed the state law exam and then worked at the University of Regensburg in criminal law and Eastern European law.
He became a doctor of jurisprudence, and then in 1971 passed the second state examination.
In 1978 Stoiber was elected secretary general of the CSU, which he stayed until 1982\/83.
From 1982 to 1986 he was a representative to the Bavarian secretary of the state and then a minister of state from 1982 to 1988.
From 1988 to 1993 he was the Bavarian Minister of the Interior and in May 1993, the Bavarian Landtag (parliament) elected him as minister-president.
As such he served as President of the Bundesrat in 1995\/96.
In 1998, he was made leader of the CSU.
In 2002, Stoiber removed the leader of the CDU, Angela Merkel, and was made the joint CDU\/CSU 's candidate for the office of chancellor, with Gerhard Schr der (SPD) as opponent.
Before the 2002 election, the CSU\/CDU was on top of the opinion polls and Stoiber said that"... this election is like a football match where it 's the second half and my team is ahead by 2-0", a quote that has become famous.
However, on election day things had changed.
The SPD had a huge comeback and the CDU\/CSU got less votes.
Both the SPD and CDU\/CSU had 38.5 % of the vote, but the SPD was ahead by 6,000 votes.
Gerhard Schr der was elected again as chancellor by the parliament.
He joined together with the Green party.
Many people think it was Stoiber 's reaction to the floods in eastern Germany, shortly before the election, that made his party lose the vote.
Also, Schr der made clear that he was against the Iraq war led by the United States.
He made the war the main topic in his campaign, which was seen by many people as the changing factor in the weeks before the election.
Stoiber is a great football fan and he supports the FC Bayern Munich.
Before the 2002 election FC Bayern 's manager Uli Hoene said he supported Stoiber and the CSU.
Football legend, FC Bayern President and Vice-President of the German Football Association, Franz Beckenbauer, on the other hand, showed his support for Stoiber by letting him join the German national football team on their flight home from Japan after the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
Erfurt is the Capital city of the state of Thuringia with an area of 269.17 k. It has a population of 202,450 people.
It has a humid continental climate (Dfb in the Koeppen climate classification).
The Erfurt massacre occurred on 26 April 2002.
Enya (born Eithne Patricia N Bhraon in on 17 May 1961 in Gweedore, County Donegal, Ireland) is an Irish singer.
She is famous for hits such as Orinoco Flow (1988) and Anywhere Is (1995).
She has also won four Grammy Awards and has become one of the world 's most successful female singers.
Her vocal range is mezzo-soprano.
She grew up speaking the Irish language, and did not speak English until she attended primary school.
Her first works were soundtracks for The Frog Prince movie by David Puttman and The Celts documentary by BBC.
Enya is very popular and has sold more than 75 million albums worldwide.
Her best selling album is A Day Without Rain (2000).
East Berlin was the name of the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990.
It was the Soviet sector of Berlin that was established in 1945.
The American, British and French sectors became West Berlin, a de facto part of West Germany.
Although it was always legally a part of an occupied city, East Berlin was claimed as the capital of East Germany.
From 13 August 1961 until 9 November 1989 it was separated from West Berlin by the Berlin Wall.
The East German government referred to East Berlin simply as "Berlin" or often" "Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR" (Berlin, capital of the GDR).
The term "Democratic Sector" was also used until the 1960s.
The Western Allies (the USA, Great Britain and France) only recognized the power of the Soviet Union in East Berlin in accordance with the occupation status of Berlin as a whole.
The three Western commandants regularly protested about the presence of the East German National People 's Army (NPA) in East Berlin.
Nevertheless, the three Western Allies eventually established embassies in East Berlin in the 1970s, although they never recognized it as East Germany 's capital.
Treaties instead used terms such as "seat of government."
In the 1960s the Western Allies sometimes said the capital of East Germany was Pankow.
Pankow is the borough where the main East German government buildings were built.
On 3 October 1990, West Germany and East Germany were united, and East Berlin ceased to exist.
Since reunification, the German government has spent lots of money on rejoining the two halves of the city and bringing services and buildings in the former East Berlin up to the standard in West Berlin.
There are still differences between eastern and western Berlin.
There are a lot more pre-war buildings in Eastern Berlin, some still show signs of wartime damage.
The style of architecture used in the whole of the GDR was very different from that used in rebuilding West Berlin too.
In many East German cities streets were named after socialist heroes.
Many were changed after reunification, but some, such as Karl-Marx-Allee, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and Karl-Liebknecht-Stra e have been kept.
One way anyone could tell if they were in the old East Berlin or in West Berlin was by looking at the traffic lights.
East Berlin used special designs on their pedestrian traffic lights, called "Ampelm nnchen".
The Berlin government wanted to abolish the East German signals, but lots of people objected, and now Ampelm nnchen are being seen in West Berlin too.
Epsilon (uppercase\/lowercase), is the letter of the Greek alphabet, used to represent the "e" sound in Ancient and Modern Greek.
In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 5.
Letters that came from it include the Roman E and Cyrillic.
It is also used in calculus to represent a very small number.
In set theory it can be used to represent the statement "x is a member of y." (A little ` know ': The Ypsilon is the only letter of the alphabet that you can divide into syllables: Y-psi-lon)
Ethernet is a way of connecting computers together in a local area network or LAN.
It has been the most widely used method of linking computers together in LANs since the 1990s.
The basic idea of its design is that multiple computers have access to it and can send data at any time.
This is comparatively easy to engineer.
If two computers send data at the same time, a collision will occur.
When this happens, the data sent is not usable.
In general, both computers will stop sending, and wait a random amount of time, before they try again.
A special protocol was developed to deal with such problems.
It is called Carrier sense multiple access with collision detection or CSMA\/CD.
There are different Ethernet standards.
Today, Ethernet cables look like thick telephone cables.
They connect to boxes called hubs or switches.
Each cable runs from a computer 's network interface card (NIC) to such a box.
This cable is called 10BaseT or 100BaseT, or 1000BaseT Cable.
Today, the cables for 10BaseT, 100BaseT, and 1000BaseT are the same.
They use unshielded twisted pair of Category 5 (UTP-Cat5) or 5e for that.
Shielded cable (STP-Cat5 or Cat5e) can be used when there is a lot of electrical noise, and Category 6 (UTP-Cat6 or STP-Cat6) works better with faster signals such as 1GBit or 10GBit.
Other devices, such as the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, can also be connected using the same kind of cabling.
Certain computer peripherals, for example printers and certain hard disks can be directly connected to the network with such cables.
Ethernet can go at different speeds.
In the beginning, Ethernet was at 10 MBits per second.
The Ethernet most often used today is at 100 MBits per second.
Most new computers now have the NIC built in, and can go at 1GBit per second.
There are also standards for 1GBit per second and 10 GBit per second.
100 MBit can usually talk to 10 MBit, and 1 GBit can talk to 100 MBit and usually to 10 MBit (both full and half duplex).
Elias Canetti (born July 25, 1905 died August 14, 1994) was an Bulgarian-Swiss Jewish author who wrote Crowds and Power.
A mountain in Antarctica is named for him.
Edward Jenner (17 May 1749 26 January 1823) was an English physician known for creating the vaccine for smallpox.
Vaccination as a concept was known long before Jenner.
In 1765, Dr John Fewster published a paper in the London Medical Society entitled "Cow pox and its ability to prevent smallpox", but he did not pursue the subject further.
After 1770, at least five investigators in England and Germany (Sevel, Jensen, Jesty 1774, Rendell, Plett 1791) successfully tested a cowpox vaccine in humans against smallpox.
For example, Dorset farmer Benjamin Jesty successfully vaccinated and presumably induced immunity with cowpox in his wife and two children during a smallpox epidemic in 1774.
Jenner may have been aware of Jesty 's procedures and success, but after Jenner 's work some 20 years later the procedure became widely understood at last.
It was a common observation that milkmaids were generally immune to smallpox.
Jenner thought that the pus in the blisters that milkmaids received from cowpox (a disease similar to smallpox, but much less virulent) protected them from smallpox.
He may already have heard of Benjamin Jesty 's success.
On 14 May 1796, Jenner tested his hypothesis on an eight-year-old boy, the son of his gardener.
He scraped pus from cowpox blisters on the hands of a milkmaid.
Jenner inoculated Phipps in both arms that day, subsequently producing in Phipps a fever and some uneasiness, but no full-blown infection.
Later, he injected the boy with a mild form of smallpox and he showed no sign of infection.
Jenner successfully tested his hypothesis on 23 more subjects.
"Jenner 's unique contribution was not that he inoculated a few persons with cowpox, but that he then proved (by subsequent challenges) that they were immune to smallpox.
Moreover, he demonstrated that the protective cowpox pus could be effectively inoculated from person to person, not just directly from cattle".
The Encyclop dia Britannica is a very big, famous encyclopedia.
It is now out of print in paper versions, but still in print digitally.
It is written in English, and is published by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., a private company.
It was originally only printed on paper, but late in the 20th century it expanded to have digital, or computer versions as well.
The encyclopedia is split into many books.
The articles in the books are arranged in alphabetical order.
There have been versions of it that are for children as well.
It is the largest printed encyclopedia, and the second largest encyclopedia.
The largest is Wikipedia.
Many people consider it to be the best encyclopedia, because it is accurate and has lots of detail.
The Encyclopedia was once very small, the first edition in 1768 only had 3 books.
Slowly it became bigger.
The latest edition, the 15th edition, now has 29 books in it, plus 2 indexes.
It includes an extra book called Propaedia, to classify knowledge.
The 29 books and made up of a Macropaedia and a Micropaedia.
The Macrop dia is a larger one, with more detailed articles that can be as long as 300 pages, made up of 17 books, while the Microp dia is the smaller one with shorter articles that are usually less than 750 words.
The Microp dia is used for fast-checking, but if you want more detailed information you have to use the Macrop dia.
Each book is very big, more than 1000 pages per book.
There are books of the year.
Every year, a book is published about that year.
The articles in the Britannica are for educated adults, not for children, and written by about 100 full-time editors and over 4,000 expert contributors.
Many people think it is the best encyclopedia, but Wikipedia is still more popular, being free to use.
The Britannica is the oldest English-language encyclopedia now.
It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland and grew very popular, with its third edition in 1801 comprising of 21 books.
The size of the Britannica is almost the same over the past 70 years, with about 40 million words on half a million topics.
The encyclopedia was once owned by the British.
It is now owned by the USA, but still written in British English.
Over time, the encyclopedia has had difficulties trying to earn money, which almost every encyclopedia is facing.
The Britannica has been owned by many different people, including Scottish publisher A & C Black, Horace Everett Hooper, Sears Roebuck and William Benton.
Encyclop dia Britannica, Inc. is owned by Jacqui Safra, a Swiss billionaire and actor.
Information technology has become better recently and more electronic encyclopedias such as Microsoft Encarta and Wikipedia have made people not want to buy encyclopedias in print anymore.
So that it still can survive, Encyclop dia Britannica, Inc. has kept on telling people that the Britannica is good and accurate, made the encyclopedia cheaper, and made electronic versions on CD-ROM, DVD and the World Wide Web.
Since the early 1930s, the company has also promoted spin-off reference works.
There are 15 official editions of the encyclopedia, with some extensions to the 3rd and 5th editions (see the Table below).
Actually, you can say that the 10th edition was only an extension to the 9th edition, and the 12th and 13th editions were extensions to the 11th edition.
The 15th edition was reorganised in 1985, and the updated, current version is the 15th edition.
Through the encyclopedia 's history, the Britannica wanted to be an excellent reference book and to provide learning materials for those who want to study.
In 1974, the 15th edition had a third wish: to put together all that everyone knows.
The history of the Britannica can be divided into five main eras, or lengths of time.
In its first years (1st 6th editions, 1768 1826), the Britannica was controlled by the people who first wrote it, Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, and by their friends and relations, such as Thomas Bonar, George Gleig and Archibald Constable.
The Britannica was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, a city in Scotland, called the Encyclop dia Britannica, or, A dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan.
It was written to replace the French Encyclopedie.
Its logo, which is the floral emblem of Scotland, shows that the Britannica was a Scottish business.
The encyclopedia being created is one of the most famous events that happened in the time when Scotland started inventing many things, or the Age of Enlightenment.
The Britannica started as three-book set (in the 1st edition) written by one young editor William Smellie Slowly, the Britannica changed, in the first era, to a 20-book set written by many people.
Although a few other encyclopaedias had been fighting with the Britannica, such as Rees 's Cyclopaedia and Coleridge 's Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, these encyclopedias either went bankrupt or were not finished because the people writing them argued.
When the first era was almost over, the Britannica had many people helping to write it, all having different types of skills.
The encyclopedia managed to get so many people by inviting their friends to help.
In the second era (7th 9th editions, 1827 1901), the Britannica was owned by the Edinburgh company, A & C Black.
Although some of the people who helped write the Britannica helped because they were friends of the most important editors, many other people wanted to help the Britannica because it was becoming very successful.
These people came from many other countries, and some of them were very famous for the things they wrote about.
An index of all the articles was written to add to the 7th edition of the encyclopedia, and they continued to make an index until 1974.
The first English chief editor was Thomas Spencer Baynes, who led the making of the famous 9th edition, which is also called the "Scholar 's Edition".
The 9th edition is considered to be the Britannica most meant for students ever written.
However, at the end of the 19th century, the 9th edition was already too old and the Britannica had many financial problems.
In the third era (10th 14th editions, 1901 1973), the Britannica was owned by American people, who started to advertise a lot to earn more money.
The American owners also slowly made the Britannica 's articles simpler, so it could serve more people.
The 11th edition is said by many people to be the best edition of the encyclopedia.
Its owner, Horace Hooper, worked extremely hard to make the 11th edition perfect.
When Hooper had financial problems, the Britannica was managed by Sears Roebuck for about 18 years (1920 1923, 1928 1943).
In 1932, the vice-president of Sears, Elkan Harrison Powell, owned the Britannica.
In 1936, he started to continuously revise the encyclopedia often (still done so today), in which every article is checked at least two times every ten years.
This was a big difference from before, when the articles were not changed until they wrote a new edition, about every 25 years, with some articles used again without revising them.
He also quickly made some educational products which made the encyclopedia even more well known by everyone.
In 1943, William Benton managed the Britannica until his death in 1973.
Benton also set up the Benton Foundation, which managed the Britannica until 1996.
In 1968, near the end of this era, the Britannica celebrated its 200 year anniversary.
Since 1985, the Britannica has had four parts: the Microp dia, the Macrop dia, the Prop dia, and a two-book index.
The Britannicas articles are found in the Microp dia and Macrop dia, which contain 12 and 17 books, respectively, each book having about one thousand pages.
The 2007 Macrop dia has 699 detailed articles, which can be as short as 2 pages and as long as 310 pages, and having references and named writers.
The 2007 Microp dia has about 65,000 articles, and about 97 % contain less than 750 words, no references, and no named contributors.
The Microp dia articles are supposed to be for quick fact-checking and to help in finding more information in the Macrop dia.
The Macrop dia articles are supposed to be well-written articles on their subjects and articles of information where you can not find anywhere else.
The longest article (310 pages) is on the United States, and came from putting the articles on the individual states together.
Information can be found in the Britannica by following the notes telling where people can find more information in the Microp dia and Macrop dia; but there are very little of this, with about only one of this every page.
So, readers are asked to try to use the indexes or the Prop dia, which organises what is in the Britannicas by topic.
The use of the Prop dia is its "Outline of Knowledge," which wants to organise all of everything people know.
The Outline is thought through by the Britannicas editors to decide which articles should be included in the Microp dia and Macrop dia.
The Outline is also intended to be a study guide, and to tell a student who wants to learn a topic in depth what articles to use.
However, libraries say that very few people use it, and reviewers recommend the encyclopedias to not print it anymore.
The Prop dia also has diagrams printed on transparent paper of big topics and a section which lists the people working together to make the encyclopedia.
Altogether, the Microp dia and Macrop dia have about 40 million words and 24,000 pictures.
The index has 2,350 pages, which lists all the 228,274 topics written about in the Britannica,.
The Britannica uses the British spellings and not American spellings.
For example, it uses color (not color), center (not center), and encyclopedia (not encyclopedia).
However, this rule is not always followed, for example defense and not defense.
The other spellings of the word is sometimes shown with a link, for example "Color: see Colour."
Since 1936, the articles of the Britannica have been revised often, with about 10 % of the articles brought to be re-written each year.
One Britannica website says that 46 % of the articles were revised in the past three years; but another Britannica web-site says only 35 % of the articles were revised.
The way the articles are arranged (in alphabet order) in the Microp dia and Macrop dia is very accurate.
Non-English letters are ignored and articles with numbers such as "War of 1812" are arranged as if the number had been written out ("War of Eighteen-twelve").
If the articles have the same names, articles about persons go first, then by places, then by things.
People with the same names are arranged first alphabetically by country and then by their time.
Similarly, places that have the same names are arranged by alphabet by the country they are in.
There are a few smaller versions of the Britannica encyclopedias.
The Britannica Concise Encyclop dia, written in one book, has 28,000 shorter articles.
Compton 's by Britannica, published in 2007, with the old Compton 's Encyclopedia, in it is written for teenagers who are 10 17 years old and has 26 books and 11,000 pages in it.
A Children 's Britannica was published by the company in 1960; this was edited by John Armitage and written for His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales; the writers were almost all British.
Other books are My First Britannica, written for children who are six to twelve years old, and the Britannica Discovery Library, written for children who are three to six years old (issued in 1974 to 1991).
Since 1938, Encyclop dia Britannica, Inc. has published a Book of the Year every year, with information about the past year 's events, which is written online since the 1994 edition (with the events of 1993).
The company also publishes a few books on special topics, such as Shakespeare: The Essential Guide to the Life and Works of the Bard (Wiley, 2006).
The Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006 DVD contains over 55 million words and over 100,000 articles.
It includes 73,645 Britannica articles, with the other articles from the Britannica Student Encyclop dia, the Britannica Elementary Encyclop dia and the Britannica Book of the Years (1993 2004), plus a few old articles from old editions of the encyclopedia.
The whole DVD also includes other bonus tools including maps, videos, sound clips, animations and web links.
It also has study tools and a dictionary and thesaurus from Merriam-Webster.
Encyclop dia Britannica Online is a web site with more than 120,000 articles and is updated often.
It has features, updates and links to news reports from The New York Times and the BBC every day.
People need to pay to use the website.
Special discounts are given to schools, colleges and libraries since these big groups of people are important in Britannica 's business.
Articles can be read online for free, but only the first few sentences can be seen.
Beginning in early 2007, the Britannica let people read the articles for free if they are linked to another website, since these links let the articles appear more often and easily in search engines.
On 20 February 2007, Encyclop dia Britannica, Inc. said that it was working with mobile phone search company AskMeNow to make an encyclopedia in phones.
Users can send a question by text message, and AskMeNow will search Britannicas 28,000-article encyclopedia to answer the user.
An idea to use a wiki-Britannica was announced on the June 3, 2008.
A lot of people will be involved, with the Britannica staff editing important parts.
; Earlier editions (in the public domain in the U.S.A.):
A comparison of the two encyclopedias by Panagiota Alevizou, published in the Educational Technology & Society journal.
The endometrium is the innermost membrane of the uterus in mammals.
During pregnancy, the endometrium develops a lot of glands and capillaries.
These all become interconnected and form a placenta when a fertilised ovum attaches itself to the uterus.
The capillaries supply the fetus with nutrients; they also take away waste products such as carbon dioxide.
Electronic music is music which is made with electronic equipment such as synthesizers or computers.
Sometimes electronic music artists create special sounds using tape recorders too.
After World War II, when tape recorders had been invented and were becoming popular, composers started to use them to make music.
The tape recorder was needed for the performance.
Composers used them to combine lots of different sounds.
Sometimes it was music played on ordinary (acoustic) instruments which was then changed in some way by the tape recorder.
Sometimes they took sounds from everyday life such as the sound of water, traffic noise or bird song.
All these noises were put together in the way the composer wanted by using the tape recorder.
Tapes of sounds were often cut into pieces, then the pieces were ` spliced ' put back together in a different order.
The results were often very interesting, but there were problems.
Some people asked: Is it music?
Others thought it was boring to just look at a tape recorder during a concert instead of being able to watch live musicians play.
Composers in Paris were experimenting with electronic music in the 1940s.
They called it Musique concr te because they used natural, concrete sounds.
(Concrete in this sense meant the opposite of abstract music which was written down for performance).
The sounds were played back at different speeds, combined in lots of ways, played backwards or played continuously (repeated in a ` loop '), or played into a mixer and re-recorded onto another tape recorder.
The sounds could be filtered.
Effects such as vibrato or echo could be added.
Sometimes composers used synthesizers which were machines that could make electronic music in real time.
They sounded more like normal instruments than the sound effects on a tape recorder.
Computers have often been used for composing electronic music.
Composers who have used these ways of making music include John Cage (1912-1992), Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (b. 1928).
Very often composers combined electronic music with ordinary instruments being played.
In popular music, the use of electronics to create new sounds began in the 1960s.
Producer Joe Meek and inventor Bob Moog both expanded the range of sounds that could be used in pop music, and by the end of that decade electronics had become accepted in the industry.
In the next few years the work of people like Giorgio Moroder, Jean-Michel Jarre, Brian Eno and Kraftwerk made electronic music famous.
In the early 1980s electronic music became fashionable, and bands like New Order, The Human League, Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode became famous.
Sometimes these bands would mix electronic music with rock music.
In the 21st Century electronics are so much a part of popular music that using it is no longer strange - in fact, many artists use nothing else.
A subgenre of electronic music is electronic dance music, or EDM.
Electronic dance music is a form of electronica which is generally made with the intention of being danced to, thus making it generally club-friendly and often (but not always) up-tempo in nature.
Whilst a lot of electronic genres are also classified as EDM, not all forms of electronic music fall within the specific category.
Examples of EDM genres include post-disco, house, techno, Eurodance, trance, trip hop, drum and bass and dubstep, as well as several others.
Edvard Grieg (born 15 June 1843 Bergen, Norway; died 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist who composed in the Romantic period.
He is Norway s most famous composer.
He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor and for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen 's play Peer Gynt which includes movements called Aubade and In the Hall of the Mountain King.
He was usually at his best when writing shorter pieces, such as the collection of piano pieces called Lyric Pieces.
He also wrote some very lovely songs to Norwegian and to German words.
Grieg was born in Bergen on 15 June 1843.
His ancestors were Scottish people who had moved to Norway around 1770.
The original family name was spelt "Greig".
Grieg came from a musical home.
His mother was his first piano teacher.
He went to several schools, and started composing when he was young.
He used to take his compositions to school, but the teacher did not show much interest in them.
In the summer of 1858 Grieg met the great Norwegian violinist Ole Bull, who was a friend of the family, and whose brother was married to Grieg 's aunt.
Bull noticed the 15-year-old boy 's talent and persuaded his parents to let him go to Leipzig in Germany to study music.
Grieg enrolled in the conservatory, concentrating on the piano, and enjoyed all the concerts and recitals given in Leipzig.
He did not like the discipline of the conservatory course of study, but he still got very good grades.
The first piano recital he gave was in Sweden.
In 1862 he finished his studies in Leipzig and went back to Bergen where he gave another recital.
In 1863 Grieg went to Copenhagen, Denmark, and stayed there for three years.
He met the Danish composers J. P. E. Hartman, and Niels Gade.
Gade told him to go and write a symphony.
Grieg did not feel happy writing a long symphony although he did try.
He also met the Norwegian composer Rikard Nordraak who had composed the Norwegian national anthem.
Nordraak showed Grieg how wonderful Norwegian folk music was.
Grieg had hardly heard any Norwegian folk music until then.
When Nordraak died, Grieg composed a funeral march in his honor.
On 11 June 1867, Grieg married his first cousin Nina.
The next year their only child, Alexandra, was born.
The following summer, Grieg wrote his Piano Concerto in A minor while on holiday in Denmark.
Edmund Neupert gave the concerto its first performance on 3 April 1869 in the Casino Theater in Copenhagen.
Grieg himself was unable to be there because he was conducting in Christiana (now called Oslo).
In the summer of 1869, Grieg 's daughter Alexandra became ill and died, at the age of 13 months.
In 1870, he met Franz Liszt in Rome.
Liszt had made it possible for Grieg to get a travel grant.
They played Grieg 's Violin Sonata No. 1 together, which Liszt liked very much..
On a second visit, in April, Grieg brought with him the manuscript of his Piano Concerto which Liszt played by sight.
Liszt gave him some advice about the orchestration.
Grieg spent most of his time conducting and playing the piano in concerts.
He often traveled, and in 1876 he went to Bayreuth to hear the first performance of Wagner s Ring cycle.
He wrote a review of the operas for a Norwegian newspaper.
In 1876, Ibsen asked Grieg to write some incidental music for the first performance of the play he had written about the Norwegian hero Peer Gynt,.
Many of the pieces from this work became very popular.
They are played by orchestras as well as in arrangements for piano or for piano duet.
In 1883 he and wife parted for a while, although friends managed to persuade the couple to come together again and they spent four months in Rome.
They built a house called Troldhaugen in Bergen, with a view of the fjord.
They moved into the house in 1885 and Grieg lived there for the rest of his life.
They continued to travel and give concerts.
Nina had a good voice and sang her husband s songs.
Grieg only performed his own works at concerts.
During his last years he received many honors.
In his later life Grieg became famous, although never rich.
The Norwegian government gave him a pension.
Grieg made some recordings of his piano pieces.
These are some of the very first gramophone recordings that were made.
The sound is not very good, but they show that Grieg was an excellent pianist.
He also recorded music rolls on a pianola.
Edvard Grieg died in the autumn of 1907, aged 64, after a long illness.
He had suffered from respiratory problems ever since he was very ill in 1860 as a student in Leipzig.
At his funeral thousands of people went out on the streets of his home town to honor him.
Following his wish, his own funeral march for Rikard Nordraak was played, as well as the funeral march by Frederic Chopin.
His and his wife 's ashes are buried in a mountain crypt near his house, Troldhaugen.
Grieg was often inspired by Norwegian folk music.
This can be heard in his songs and some of his instrumental music.
His chamber music includes 3 violin sonatas and a cello sonata as well as a piano sonata and many shorter piano pieces.
However, he has become very well known all over the world through his Piano Concerto and his music for Peer Gynt.
Another popular work is his Holberg Suite which was originally written for the piano but later arranged for string orchestra.
The famous opening of Grieg s Piano Concerto featured in a comedy sketch by Morecambe and Wise in the 1970s.
The conductor Andr Previn was their special guest in the sketch which has become a classic.
The Emancipation Proclamation was an order by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln to free slaves in 10 states.
It applied to slaves in the states still in rebellion in 1863 during the American Civil War.
It did not actually immediately free all slaves in those states, because those areas were still controlled by the Confederacy.
It did, however, free at least 20,000 slaves immediately, and nearly all 4 million slaves (according to the 1860 United States census) as the Union army advanced into Confederate states.
Until the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865, only the states had power to end slavery within their own borders.
Thus, Lincoln issued the Proclamation as a war measure in his role as commander-in-chief.
The Proclamation made emancipation a goal of the Civil War.
It also weakened efforts within England and France to officially recognize the Confederacy.
As Union troops advanced into Rebel (Confederate) territory, they freed thousands of slaves per day.
Many did not wait, but fled their owners to claim their freedom.
Five slave states (the Border States) had remained loyal to the Union and were not at war with the federal government.
Thus, Lincoln did not have authority to free slaves in those states, and so this Proclamation was not applied in those states.
The Proclamation also did not apply to Tennessee, nor to areas within Virginia and Louisiana which Union forces already controlled.
The Proclamation was issued in two parts.
On September 22, 1862, Lincoln said that in 100 days, he would free all slaves in areas not then under Union control.
The five border states where slavery was still legal were exempt, and so not named, because they had remained loyal to the Union and were not in rebellion.
Tennessee also was not named because Union forces had already regained control there.
Several counties of Virginia that were in the process of separating from that state to form the new state of West Virginia were specifically named as exemptions, as were several parishes around New Orleans in Louisiana.
Only a small number of slaves already behind Union lines were immediately freed.
As Union forces advanced, nearly all four million slaves were effectively freed.
Some former slaves joined the Union army.
Before the war was over, some of the exempted border states ended slavery within their own borders.
While the Proclamation had freed slaves, it had not made slavery illegal.
Thus, Lincoln sponsored a constitutional amendment to ban slavery.
The Thirteenth Amendment, making slavery illegal everywhere in the United States, was passed late in 1865, eight months after Lincoln was assassinated.
Desert fox can also refer to the Fennec fox Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel (The "Desert Fox"), (15 November 1891 14 October 1944) was an officer of the German Army in World War II.
He commanded the German Army in North Africa in a long struggle against the British 8th Army.
He was finally defeated at El Alamein.
Later in the war he commanded the German forces defending the French coast against the Allied Normandy invasion.
Rommel was well liked by the German public and respected by the Allies.
He was thought to be chivalrous and humane, when other German leaders were not.
His famous Afrikakorps was not accused of any war crimes.
Soldiers captured by his army were treated well and orders to kill captured Jewish soldiers and civilians were ignored.
Rommel knew of the plan by senior officers to assassinate Hitler in 1944.
When it failed, all concerned were tortured and executed.
Hitler offered him the choice of suicide or court-martial, and he committed suicide.
His death was announced as the death of a hero in battle.
Rommel was born in Heidenheim, Germany, 45 kilometers (28 mi) from Ulm, in the Kingdom of W rttemberg which was then part of the German Empire, on November 15, 1891.
He was baptised on 17 November 1891.
His father, Erwin Rommel (1860-1913) was a math teacher, and later a secondary school headmaster at Aalen.
His mother was Helene von Lutz, the daughter of a local government official.
Rommel was the second of four children; Karl, Gerhard, and Helene.
Rommel wrote that his "early years passed very happily."
At the age of 14, Rommel and a friend built a full-scale glider that was able to fly short distances.
Young Erwin thought about being an engineer and he showed a talent with technical work; however, because of his father, young Rommel joined the local 124th W rttemberg Infantry Regiment as an officer cadet in 1910 and, shortly after, was sent to the Officer Cadet School in Danzig.
He graduated on 15 November 1911, and was a lieutenant in January 1912.
While at Cadet School, early in 1911, Erwin Rommel met his future wife, 17-year-old Lucia Maria Mollin (also called Lucie) (b. 6 June 1894 in Danzig; d. 26 September 1971 in Stuttgart).
They married on November 27, 1916, in Danzig, and on December 24, 1928 had a son, Manfred, who would later become the mayor of Stuttgart.
Manfred died in 2013.
After having met Lucie, some historians think that Rommel also had an affair with a woman called Walburga Stemmer in 1913, and they had a daughter named Gertrud.
In World War I, Rommel fought in France, as well as in Romania and Italy, first as a member of the 6th W rttemberg Infantry Regiment, and then in the W rttemberg Mountain Battalion of the Alpenkorps.
While serving with that unit, he gained a reputation for making quick tactical decisions and taking advantage of enemy confusion.
He was wounded three times and awarded the Iron Cross; First and Second Class.
Rommel also received Prussia 's highest medal, the Pour le M rite after fighting in the mountains of west Slovenia Battles of the Isonzo Soca front.
The award came as a result of the Battle of Longarone, and the capture of Mount Matajur, Slovenia, and its defenders, numbering 150 Italian officers, 9,000 men, and 81 pieces of artillery.
His battalion used gas during the battles of the Isonzo and also played a key role in the victory of the Central Powers over the Italian army at the Battle of Caporetto.
While fighting at Isonzo, Rommel was taken prisoner by the Italians.
He escaped, and because he spoke Italian, he was back to the German lines within two weeks.
Later, when the German and Italian armies were allied during the Second World War, Rommel realized that their lack of success in battle was due to poor leadership and equipment, which when fixed, easily made them equal to German forces.
Rommel was a commander of the F hrerbegleithauptquartier (F hrer escort headquarters) during the Poland campaign, often moving up close to the front in the F hrersonderzug train, seeing much of Hitler.
After the Polish defeat, Rommel returned to Berlin to organize the F hrer 's victory parade, taking part himself as a member of Hitler 's entourage.
During the Polish campaign, Rommel was asked to help of one of his wife 's relatives, a Polish priest who had been arrested.
When Rommel asked the Gestapo for information, the Gestapo found no information about the man 's existence.
Rommel asked Hitler for command of a panzer division.
On 6 February 1940, three months before the invasion of France, Rommel was given command of the 7th Panzer Division, for "Fall Gelb" ("Case Yellow"), the invasion of France and the Low Countries.
Some other officers did not agree with his promotion.
Rommel 's initial request for command had been rejected by the Chief of Army Personnel, who cited his lack of previous experience with armored units and his extensive prior experience in an Alpine unit made him a more suitable candidate to assume command of a mountain division that had recent need to fill its commanding officer post.
Rommel had, however, emphasized the use of mobile infantry and recognized the great usefulness of armored forces in the Poland campaign.
He set about learning and developing the techniques of armored warfare with great enthusiasm.
The decision to place him in command of an armored division was borne out to be an excellent one.
In May, 1940 his 7th Panzer Division became known as the "Ghost Division" because its rapid advances and fast paced attacks often placed them so far forward that they were frequently out of communication with the rest of the German army.
Rommel 's reward for his success was to be promoted and appointed commander of the 5th Light Division (later reorganised and redesignated 21.Panzer-Division) and of the 15.Panzer-Division which, as the Deutsches Afrikakorps, were sent to Libya in early 1941 in Operation Sonnenblume to aid the Italian troops which had suffered a heavy defeat from British Commonwealth forces in Operation Compass.
It was in Africa where Rommel achieved his greatest fame as a commander.
Rommel was well known not only by the German people but also by his enemies.
Stories of his chivalry and tactical ability earned him the respect of many opponents, including Claude Auchinleck, Winston Churchill, George S. Patton, and Bernard Montgomery (who named a dog after him).
Rommel was also respectful of his enemies.
Hitler considered Rommel among his favorite generals.
The Afrika Korps was never accused of any war crimes, and Rommel himself referred to the fighting in North Africa as Krieg ohne Hass war without hate.
Numerous examples exist of this such as his refusal to carry out an order from Hitler to execute Jewish prisoners.
During Rommel 's time in France, Hitler ordered him to deport the Jews in France; Rommel did not.
Several times he wrote letters protesting the treatment of the Jews.
When British Major Geoffrey Keyes was killed during a failed commando raid to kill or capture Rommel behind German lines, Rommel ordered him buried with full military honors.
Also, during the construction of the Atlantic Wall, Rommel directed that French workers were not to be used as slaves but were to be paid for their labor.
Rommel was not one of the group who planned the attempt on Hitler 's life.
Actually, he was not in favor of assassinating Hitler.
Rommel believed an assassination attempt could spark civil war in Germany and Austria, and Hitler would have become a martyr for a lasting cause.
Instead, Rommel insisted that Hitler be arrested and brought to trial for his crimes.
Later, though, Rommel made up his mind to support the plot.
After the failed bomb attack of 20 July 1944, many conspirators were arrested.
Rommel was perturbed at this development.
It did not take long for his involvement to come to light.
Under Gestapo torture, one of that group revealed the names of several higher army officers who were consulted beforehand.
Rommel was one of those.
Even more damningly, Carl Goerdeler, the main civilian leader of the Resistance, wrote on several letters and other documents that Rommel was a potential supporter and an acceptable military leader to be placed in a position of responsibility should their coup succeed.
Nazi party officials in France reported that Rommel extensively and scornfully criticised Nazi incompetence and crimes.
That sealed his fate.
The release of the movie The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951) helped his reputation as one of the most widely known and well-regarded leaders in the German Army.
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; April 8, 1859, Prost jov, Moravia, Austrian Empire April 26, 1938, Freiburg, Germany) was a philosopher who is deemed the founder of phenomenology.
He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his time, believing that experience is the source of all knowledge.
Husserl studied mathematics under Karl Weierstra, completing a Ph. D. under Leo K nigsberger, and studied philosophy under Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf.
Husserl was born into a Jewish family in a town that was then in the Austrian Empire, after 1918 a part of Czechoslovakia, and since 1993 a part of the Czech Republic.
He initially studied mathematics but then started attending lectures on psychology and philosophy.
Husserl was so impressed by Brentano that he decided to dedicate his life to philosophy.
His major written work is Philosophie der Arithmetik (1891).
In these first works he tries to combine mathematics, psychology and philosophy with a main goal to provide a sound foundation for mathematics.
He analyzes the psychological process needed to obtain the concept of number and then tries to build up a systematical theory on this analysis.
To achieve this he uses several methods and concepts taken from his teachers.
From Weierstrass he derives the idea that we generate the concept of number by counting a certain collection of objects.
From Brentano and Stumpf he takes over the distinction between proper and improper presenting.
In an example Husserl explains this in the following way: if you are standing in front of a house, you have a proper, direct presentation of that house, but if you are looking for it and ask for directions, then these directions (e.g. the house on the corner of this and that street) are an indirect, improper presentation.
In other words, you can have a proper presentation of an object if it is actually present, and an improper (or symbolic as he also calls it) if you only can indicate that object through signs, symbols, etc.
Another important element that Husserl took over from Brentano is intentionality, the notion that the main characteristic of consciousness is that it is always intentional.
While often simplistically summarised as "aboutness" or the relationship between mental acts and the external world, Brentano defined it as the main characteristic of mental phenomena, by which they could be distinguished from physical phenomena.
Some years after the publication of his main work, the Logische Untersuchungen (Logical Investigations; 1900-1901) Husserl made some key conceptual elaborations which led him to assert that in order to study the structure of consciousness, one would have to distinguish between the act of consciousness and the phenomena at which it is directed (the object-in-itself, transcendent to consciousness).
Knowledge of essences would only be possible by "bracketing" all assumptions about the existence of an external world.
He called this procedure epoch.
Husserl then started to concentrate on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness.
The metaphysical problem of establishing what kind of reality we perceive was of little interest to Husserl in spite of his being a transcendental idealist.
Husserl proposed that the world of objects and ways in which we direct ourselves toward and perceive those objects is normally conceived of in what he called the "natural standpoint", which is characterized by a belief that objects materially exist and exhibit properties that we see as emanating from them.
Husserl proposed a radical new phenomenological way of looking at objects by examining how we in our many ways of being intentionally directed toward them, actually "constitute" them (to be distinguished from materially "creating objects or objects".
In a later period, Husserl began to wrestle with the complicated issues of intersubjectivity, specifically, how communication about an object can be assumed to refer to the same ideal entity (Cartesian Meditations, Meditation V).
Husserl tries new methods of bringing his readers to understand the importance of phenomenology to scientific observation: specifically he refers to psychology) and what he means for "bracketing natural attitude".
The Crisis of the European Sciences is Husserl 's unfinished work that deals most directly with these issues.
In it, Husserl for the first time attempts a historical overview of the development of Western philosophy and science, emphasizing the challenges presented by their increasingly (one-sidedly) empirical and naturalistic orientation.
Husserl declares that mental and spiritual reality possess their own reality independent of any physical basis.
Electrical engineers are engineers who develop (think and make) different things that use electricity in a helpful way.
They fix or design new and better ways of using devices that use electricity.
Big subjects in electrical engineering include power generation, automation and control, semiconductors, and information technology (radio waves and computer).
To meet new needs, electrical engineering produced new specialties, such as electronic engineering and software engineering.
Early universities taught philosophy and later science.
As the industrial revolution approached they had to start teaching new parts of these sciences.
When the industrial era began, we needed to study mathematics, physics and chemistry to help support it.
When electricity was used more, a new branch called electrical engineering was invented.
Electromagnetism is the study of the electromagnetic field.
The electromagnetic field pushes or pulls anything that has an electric charge.
The electromagnetic field affects all of space.
An electric field is an area where charged particles will feel an electric force.
The units used to measure electric fields are newtons per coulomb.
Electromagnetism is closely related to both electricity and magnetism because both involve movement of electrons.
Electric fields can be drawn as arrows.
The arrows point which way a positive particle, like a proton, will be pushed if it 's in the field.
Negative particles, like electrons, will go in the opposite direction as the arrows.
In an electric field, arrows will point away from positive particles, and towards negative ones.
So, a proton in an electric field would move away from another proton, or towards an electron.
A magnetic field is a part of the electric field that only exerts a force on moving charges.
Through electromagnetic induction, a changing magnetic field can produce an electric field.
This concept is used to make electric generators, induction motors, and transformers work.
Since the two types of fields were dependent on each other, the two are thought to be one.
Together they are called the electromagnetic field.
The electromagnetic force is one of the fundamental forces of nature.
The electromagnetic force is the force that causes an attraction between electrons and the positive nucleus.
All forces between atoms are caused by the electromagnetic force.
The electromagnetic radiation is thought to be both a particle and a wave.
This is because it sometimes acts like a particle and sometimes acts like a wave.
To make things easier we can think of an electromagnetic wave as a stream of photons (symbol).
A photon is an elementary particle.
It is the particle that light is made up of.
Photons also make up all other types of electromagnetic radiation such as gamma rays, X-rays, and UV rays.
The idea of photons was thought up by Einstein.
Using his theory for the photoelectric effect, Einstein said that light existed in small "packets" or parcels which he called photons.
Photons have energy and momentum.
When two electromagnetic fields act on each other, they switch photons.
So photons carry the electromagnetic force between charged objects.
Photons are also known as messenger particles in physics because these particles often carry messages between objects.
Photons send messages saying "come closer" or "go away" depending on the charges of the objects that are being looked at.
If a force exists while time passes, then photons are being exchanged during that time.
Fundamental electromagnetic interactions occur between any two particles that have electric charge.
These interactions involve the exchange or production of photons.
Thus, photons are the carrier particles of electromagnetic interactions.
Electromagnetic decay processes can often be recognized by the fact that they produce one or more photons (also known as gamma rays).
They proceed less rapidly than strong decay processes with comparable mass differences, but more rapidly than comparable weak decays.
In 1600, William Gilbert said that electricity and magnetism were two different effects in his book De Magnete.
The link between electricity and magnetism was found through the work of Hans Christian rsted.
A scientist named Amp re then used mathematics in electromagnetism.
Many physicists then developed a theory of electromagnetism now known as classical electromagnetism.
James Clerk Maxwell then brought everything together into one theory of electromagnetism.
This type of electromagnetism was based on Maxwell 's equations and the Lorentz force law.
Maxwell 's studies showed what light actually was.
Maxwell 's work did not work with classical mechanics because he said that the speed of light was always constant.
It only depended on the permeability of the substance it was traveling through.
This led to the development of the theory of special relativity by Einstein.
Albert Einstein 's work with the photoelectric effect and Max Planck 's work with black body radiation did not work with the traditional view of light as a continuous wave.
This problem would be solved after the development of quantum mechanics in 1925.
This development led to the development of quantum electrodynamics which was developed by Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger.
Quantum electrodynamics was able to describe the interactions particles in detail.
Euphemism is the use of a word (or phrase) that replaces another one that one thinks to be too offensive or vulgar.
It also may be a replacement of a name or a word, that could reveal a secret or holy and sacred names to the uninitiated.
It may also be used to obscure the identity of the subject of a conversation from potential eavesdropper.
A well known example for many is the replacement of Lord Voldemort 's name by "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" in Harry Potter.
Some euphemisms are intended to be humorous.
When a phrase is used as a euphemism, it often becomes a metaphor whose literal meaning is dropped.
Euphemisms may be used to hide unpleasant or disturbing ideas, even when the literal term for them is not necessarily offensive.
This type of euphemism is used in politics.
Edmund Spenser (; c. 1552 13 January 1599) was an important poet from England.
He is most famous for his poem The Faerie Queene, which talks about different knights who fight against evil.
The poem also praises Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Electricity generation is the making of electricity for use by people.
Most comes from rotary electrical generators turned by various engines.
Making electricity in one central place became useful when electric power distribution was possible.
This required power transformers which could change voltage.
Electricity could be sent as alternating current along electric power lines for great distances cheaply.
Electricity has been generated for powering human technologies for at least 120 years.
Different sources of energy have been used to run generators, including coal, nuclear, natural gas, hydroelectric, and petroleum power and a small amount from solar energy, tidal harnesses, wind generators, and geothermal sources.
The demand for electricity can be met in two different ways.
The main method is to build large centralized projects to generate and transmit the electricity required.
Many of these projects have caused unpleasant environmental effects such as air or radiation pollution and the flooding of large areas of land.
Distributed generation creates power on a smaller scale at locations on the electricity network.
These sites often generate electricity as a byproduct of other industry such as using gas from landfills to power turbines.
Rotating turbines attached to electrical generators produce most commercially available electricity.
Turbines are driven by a fluid which acts as an intermediate energy carrier.
The fluids typically used are:
Combined cycle gas turbine plants are driven by both steam and gas.
They generate power by burning natural gas in a gas turbine and use residual heat to generate additional electricity from steam.
These plants offer efficiencies of up to 60 %.
Small electricity generators are often powered by reciprocating engines burning diesel fuel, biogas or natural gas.
Diesel generators are often used for backup power, usually at low voltages.
Biogas is often combusted where it is produced, such as a landfill or wastewater treatment plant, with a reciprocating engine or a microturbine, which is a small gas turbine.
Unlike the solar heat concentrators, photovoltaic panels convert sunlight directly to electricity.
Although sunlight is free, solar panels cost a lot of money to make and have only a 10-20 % conversion efficiency.
Until recently, photovoltaics were most commonly used in remote sites where there is no access to a commercial power grid, or as an extra electricity source for individual homes and businesses.
Recent advances in manufacturing efficiency and photovoltaic technology, combined with subsidies driven by environmental concerns, have dramatically accelerated the deployment of solar panels.
Installed solar capacity is growing by 30 % per year in several regions including Germany, Japan, California and New Jersey.
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 October 7, 1849) was an American writer.
He wrote horror stories and poems.
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809.
His parents were two touring vaudeville actors, David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins.
David left the family under unknown circumstances whilst Poe was an infant.
When Poe was two his mother died of tuberculosis, leaving Edgar an orphan.
The wealthy John Allan took Edgar into his home in Richmond, Virginia.
In 1815, the Allan family moved to England.
Young Poe went to an English private school.
After five years, the family moved back to Richmond, Virginia.
After moving back to Virginia, Poe entered the University of Virginia in 1826.
While there, he gambled, lost money, and went into debt.
John Allan became angry, and cut off all contact with Poe.
In 1827, Poe published his first work, a collection of poetry titled, Tamerlane and Other Poems.
Poe did not have his name published in the book; it was attributed to "a Bostonian."
Poe enlisted in the army.
He used the name Edgar A. Perry and lied about his age.
He was successful as a soldier and quickly became a sergeant major.
While in the army his foster-mother Frances Allan died.
Poe attempted to mend his relationship with John Allan.
Poe soon left the army and enrolled at West Point in New York state.
Poe did not enjoy his time at West Point and got very bored.
He was expelled in March 1831.
At this point, John Allan disowned him.
Poe was well-liked by other cadets.
They contributed money to pay for Poe to publish a book of his poems called Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems.
He soon moved to Baltimore, Maryland.
In Baltimore, Poe lived with his aunt, Maria Poe Clemm.
She was the sister of Edgar 's real father.
Clemm also had a daughter named Virginia Clemm.
Virginia admired Poe very much.
In 1836, when Virginia was thirteen, she married Poe.
Poe was writing a lot by this time.
He sold his first short story in 1832.
His writing did not earn very much money.
He also worked as an editor for various magazines over the years, becoming very well known for his literary criticism.
Poe also was drinking off and on during these years.
In 1842, while Poe was living with Clemm and Virginia in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Virginia became sick with tuberculosis.
The family moved to the New York City area in 1843 before settling in The Bronx.
On January 29, 1845, Poe published his most famous poem, "The Raven", making him very popular.
Virginia died a couple years later on January 30, 1847.
Poe 's death is very mysterious.
On September 27 1849, Poe left Richmond after a short visit.
It is unknown what happened to him until October 3, when he was discovered outside of Gunner 's Hall by a man named Joseph W. Walker in Baltimore.
He was taken to Washington College Hospital.
While in the hospital he became delirious and started seeing hallucinations.
He died on October 7 1849, in the hospital.
Though it is not known what was his cause of death, there are several possible theories, including congestion of the brain, alcohol withdrawal, tuberculosis, and rabies.
Poe was buried in the grounds of the Westminster Church and Burying Ground after a small funeral with only a few people.
On May 17, 1875, Poe was reburied at the front of the churchyard after a city-wide campaign to raise money to build a large monument.
He is buried there alongside his wife Virginia, and Virginia 's mother Maria Clemm.
Electricity is the presence and flow of electric charge.
Its best-known form is the flow of electrons through conductors such as copper wires.
Electricity is a form of energy that comes in positive and negative forms, that occur naturally (as in lightning), or is produced (as in a generator).
It is a form of energy which we use to power machines and electrical devices.
When the charges are not moving, electricity is called static electricity.
When the charges are moving they are an electric current, sometimes called ` dynamic electricity '.
Lightning is the most known - and dangerous - kind of electricity in nature, but sometimes static electricity causes things to stick together.
Electricity can be dangerous, especially around water.
Static electricity occurs when there are fewer or more electrons for the atoms.
If the electrons stay where they are, the atom that has too many or too few electrons will attract or sometimes repel other atoms.
If the electrons move from where there are too many, to where there are too few, an electric current will flow.
Since the nineteenth century, electricity has been used in every part of our lives.
Until then, it was just a curiosity seen in a thunderstorm.
We can make electricity if we pass a magnet close to a metal wire.
This is a generator, which is the main way.
The biggest generators are in power stations.
We can put the right chemicals in a jar with two different kinds of metal rods.
This is a battery, often used for portable machines.
We can also make static electricity by rubbing two things - for instance a wool cap and a plastic ruler, together.
This may make a spark.
Some of our electricity comes from photovoltaic cells.
Electricity arrives at homes through wires from the places where it is made.
It is used by electric lamps, electric heaters, etc..
Many appliances such as washing machines and electric cookers use electricity.
In factories, electricity powers machines.
People who deal with electricity and electrical devices in our homes and factories are called "electricians".
Electricity works because electric charges push and pull on each other.
There are two types of electric charges: positive charges and negative charges.
Similar charges repel each other.
This means that if you put two positive charges close together and let them go, they would move apart.
Two negative charges also repel.
But different charges attract each other.
This means that if you put a positive charge and a negative charge close together, they would smack together.
A short way to remember this is the phrase opposites attract, likes repel.
Electric charges push or pull on each other if they are not touching.
This is possible because each charge makes an electric field around itself.
An electric field is an area that surrounds a charge.
At each point near a charge, the electric field points in a certain direction.
If a positive charge is put at that point, it will be pushed in that direction.
If a negative charge is put at that point, it will be pushed in the exact opposite direction.
All the matter in the world is made of tiny positive and negative charges.
The positive charges are called protons, and the negative charges are called electrons.
Protons are much bigger and heavier than electrons, but they both have the same amount of electric charge, except that protons are positive and electrons are negative.
Because "opposites attract," protons and electrons stick together.
A few protons and electrons can form bigger particles called atoms and molecules.
Atoms and molecules are still very tiny.
It is impossible to see them without a very powerful microscope.
Any big object, like your body, has more atoms and molecules in it than anyone could count.
Because negative electrons and positive protons stick together to make big objects, all big objects that we can see and feel are electrically neutral.
Electrically is a word meaning "describing electricity", and neutral is a word meaning "balanced."
That is why we do not feel objects pushing and pulling on us from a distance, like they would if everything was electrically charged.
All big objects are electrically neutral because there is exactly the same amount of positive and negative charge in the world.
We could say that the world is exactly balanced, or neutral.
This seems very surprising and lucky.
Scientists still do not know why this is so, even though they have been studying electricity for a long time.
In some materials, electrons are stuck tightly in place, while in other materials, electrons can move all around the material.
Protons never move around a solid object because they are so heavy, at least compared to the electrons.
A material that lets electrons move around is called a conductor.
A material that keeps each electron tightly in place is called an insulator.
Examples of conductors are copper, aluminum, silver, and gold.
Examples of insulators are rubber, plastic, and wood.
Copper is used very often as a conductor because it is a very good conductor and there is so much of it in the world.
Copper is found in electrical wires.
But sometimes, other materials are used.
Inside a conductor, electrons bounce around, but they do not keep going in one direction for long.
If an electric field is set up inside the conductor, the electrons will all start to move in the direction opposite to the direction the field is pointing (because electrons are negatively charged).
A battery can make an electric field inside a conductor.
If both ends of a piece of wire are connected to the two ends of a battery (called the electrodes), the loop that was made is called an electrical circuit.
Electrons will flow around and around the circuit as long as the battery is making an electric field inside the wire.
This flow of electrons around the circuit is called electric current.
A conducting wire used to carry electric current is often wrapped in an insulator such as rubber.
This is because wires that carry current are very dangerous.
If a person or an animal touched a bare wire carrying current, they could get hurt or even die depending on how strong the current was.
You should be careful around electrical sockets and bare wires that might be carrying current.
It is possible to connect an electrical device to a circuit so that electrical current will flow through a device.
This current will make the device do something that we want it to do.
Electrical devices can be very simple.
For example, in a light bulb, current flows through a special wire called a filament, which makes it glow.
Electrical devices can also be very complicated.
Electricity can be used to drive an electric motor inside a tool like a drill or a pencil sharpener.
Electricity is also used to power modern electronic devices, including telephones, computers, and televisions.
Electricity is mostly generated in places called power stations.
Most power stations use heat to boil water into steam which turns a steam engine.
The steam engine 's turbine turns a machine called a ` generator '.
Generators have wires inside which spin inside a magnetic field.
Electromagnetic induction causes electricity to flow through the wires.
Michael Faraday discovered how to do this.
There are many sources of heat which can be used to generate electricity.
Heat sources can be classified into two types: renewable energy resources in which the supply of heat energy never runs out and non-renewable energy resources in which the supply will be eventually used up.
Sometimes a natural flow, such as wind power or water power, can be used directly to turn a generator so no heat is needed.
Empedocles was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a person who lived in Agrigentum, a Greek colony in Sicily.
Empedocles ' philosophy is best known for being the origin of the cosmogenic theory of the four classical elements in the Western world.
He also proposed powers called Love and Strife which would act as forces to bring about the mixture and separation of the elements.
These physical speculations were part of a history of the universe which also dealt with the origin and development of life.
Influenced by the Pythagoreans, he supported the doctrine of reincarnation.
Empedocles is generally considered the last Greek philosopher to record his ideas in verse.
Some of his work still survives today, more so than in the case of any other Presocratic philosopher.
Empedocles ' death was mythologized by ancient writers, and has been the subject of a number of literary treatments.
Ericaceae is a family of flowering plants in the order Ericales.
Plants of this family grows both in Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere.
The common English name of Ericaceae is heath family.
Many plants of Ericaceae are shrubs, but there are also trees and herbs.
There are about 120 genera and about 4000 species in this family.
Many plants of Ericaceae are evergreen plants with small flowers in the shape of bells or tube.
The color of flowers may be white, pink, red, violet, rarely yellow.
It may be interest plants for gardens.
Fruits of some species are edible.
Some plants of Ericaceae have a poison in all their parts.
Another name for this family of flowering plants is Epacridaceae.
In mathematics, the empty set is the set that has no things in it.
For example, consider the set of integer numbers between two and three.
Since there are no integer numbers between two and three, the set of integer numbers between them is empty.
The European Coal and Steel Company was a union started in 1957.
Its purpose was to bring the western countries of Europe together during the Cold War so they would be harder to attack.
It was the forerunner of the European Union.
Its original purpose was to prevent war between France and Germany.
It created a market for coal and steel between all of the countries that signed it.
It was dissolved in 2002 and put into the European Community.
The European Economic Community was the predecessor of the European Union.
It existed from 1957 to 1992, when the Treaty of Maastricht led to more cooperation between the countries of the European Union.
The European Parliament (formerly European Parliamentary Assembly or Common Assembly) is the parliament of the European Union (EU).
EU citizens elect its members once every five years.
Together with the Council of Ministers, it is the law-making branch of the institutions of the Union.
It meets in two locations: Strasbourg and Brussels.
The Parliament is made up of its 785 members, called "MEPs".
Each member speaks for an area of Europe, for example London, Denmark or Scotland.
Anyone can be elected, they are elected by all the EU citizens, the people who are citizens of a country in the EU.
People have been elected to Parliament since 1979, before that they came from the Parliaments of each country.
Because MEPs come from lots of countries, they all speak different languages (23 in 2007).
This means that the Parliament has to have lots of interpreters.
Unlike other international groups of politicians, MEPs do not sit in groups of countries, but they sit next to people who they share ideas with.
The two largest groups are the "European People 's Party-European Democrats" and the "Party of European Socialists".
But these groups work together to agree, so they do not fight and try to make a law if the other does not like it.
The European Parliament 's power depends on which area of the EU it is working in.
The EU has three areas, the "Community", its representation to other countries, and things to do with police and courts.
In the last two areas, it can not do much as the Council takes care of those issues, but in the Community (which is the largest area) it can change or stop any law.
But the Council also has to agree, and sometimes they disagree and can not make a law.
While Parliament can change a law, it can not start a new one, it has to ask the European Commission to do that.
The European Commission works on everyday work and the Parliament has to make sure it does its job properly, if it does not Parliament can make them all leave their jobs or not allow them to spend the EU budget.
When the Parliament wants to make something a law, they all vote at the same time.
But before then they make lots of small changes while talking about with people who know lots about what it will change.
They do this in small meetings known as "Committees" which have between 28 to 86 MEPs in it.
The Parliament has a President.
The President is elected by the MEPs, two times every two and a half years, to organise the meetings and speak for the Parliament when meeting other leaders.
The president right now (2015) is a German called Martin Schulz.
The Parliament was made in 1952 and was then called the "Common Assembly".
At this time, it did not have any power, it was only asked to comment on laws made by the "European Coal and Steel Community".
In 1957, it was renamed the "European Parliamentary Assembly" and got to comment on the laws of the "European Economic Community" and the "European Atomic Energy Community".
Over the following years, it was given a few powers over laws and money and it called itself the "European Parliament" in the 1960s.
It wanted to be elected so it could do more, as if people voted for the people in Parliament, the Council and Commission would have to pay more attention to it (this is known as "Democratic Legitimacy", the idea that your voice is worth more if you have lots of people supporting from an election).
In 1979 it held its first election, and it gained more powers and also members because more countries joined the Communities and they elected people as well.
In 1993 it was given even more, and power over the Commission, when the European Union took the place of the Communities.
It is now known as one of the most powerful Parliaments in the world.
The European Council (referred to as a European Summit) is the highest political body of the European Union.
It is made of all the heads of state or government of the Union 's member states and with the President of the European Commission.
The country which holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union also leads its assemblies.
The Council has no formal executive or legislative powers.
It is an institution that deals with very important issues and any decisions made are "a major impetus in defining the general political guidelines of the European Union".
The Council meets at least twice a year; usually in the Justus Lipsius building, the quarters of the Council of the European Union (Consilium) of Brussels.
Many people have diseases that cause pain, or that make them suffer.
Ending the lives of these people to take away their suffering is called euthanasia.
This is sometimes regarded as different from assisted suicide, which is where someone helps another person to kill themselves.
It is also different to murder, where the intent is not to end the person 's suffering, but to kill them for the killer 's own ends.
Euthanasia can be voluntary, where the person who dies specifically asks for help in ending their life.
There are cases, where the person is not able to say that they do, or do not, wish to die.
These cases are usually called non-voluntary euthanasia.
Involuntary euthanasia, where someone is killed against their will, is generally regarded as murder.
Euthanasia is illegal in most countries.
It is permitted in a small number of countries, such as the Netherlands and Belgium.
Where it is permitted it is very tightly regulated, and it is only permitted in cases where the patient is terminally ill.
When discussing euthanasia, euthanasia is generally separated into active and passive euthanasia, and voluntary, non-voluntary and involuntary euthanasia.
Many people see important differences between these different types of euthanasia, so that they can accept some types but not others.
Passive euthanasia can be described as "letting die".
When passive euthanasia occurs, a terminally ill person is allowed to die, even though treatment could have allowed them to live longer.
Examples of passive euthanasia include removing life support from a patient, (such as a ventilator which is being used to keep the person alive), or not providing a patient with food or water.
Active euthanasia, on the other hand, involves deliberately acting to end a person 's life.
This may occur through giving them an injection of a drug that will kill them, or by giving them pills that will result in their death.
Some people see passive euthanasia as a more acceptable choice, because it does not involve a deliberate act to kill.
However, others argue that once someone has decided to allow another person to die, they should make it as fast and as painless as possible, and act to bring about their death.
If someone asks to be allowed to die, or if they ask to be killed, then they have asked for voluntary euthanasia.
Voluntary euthanasia is often seen as the best by people who believe in euthanasia, because it is clear that the person wants to die.
If the person can not say that they wish to die, but people think that they would ask to die if they could, then it is non-voluntary euthanasia.
Non-voluntary euthanasia is sometimes a choice for people who are in a coma or who are very young, as they can not say what they want to do.
Involuntary euthansia is when someone is killed even though they asked not to die, or when they could have asked to die but did not.
Many people do not think that this is euthanasia.
Instead they think that it is murder.
The types of euthanasia, active\/passive and voluntary\/non-voluntary\/involuntary can be put together.
If someone asks to die, and another person gives them an injection that will kill them, then it is active voluntary euthanasia.
But if someone is in a coma and is only alive because of a ventilator, and the doctors turn the ventilator off and they die, then it would be passive non-voluntary euthanasia.
Some people believe that euthanasia should be allowed, and some people think that it should not be allowed.
Even if euthanasia is not a bad thing, some people believe that allowing euthanasia will result in bad things happening.
If euthanasia is allowed to happen for people asking to die, people might then think that it is ok to allow euthanasia for people who are very sick but are not able to ask to die.
And if that was allowed, then maybe they would allow euthanasia for people who are very sick and will not recover, but do not want to die.
This is called the "slippery slope" argument.
People who believe in the slippery slope argument point to times when this seems to have happened.
In Germany, Adolf Hitler allowed disabled children to be killed, and called it euthanasia.
People today agree that what Hitler did was very wrong, but some people think that if euthanasia was allowed it would lead to similar things happening again.
So they think that it would be too big a risk to allow euthanasia at all.
Other people say that this is wrong.
There is a big difference between killing someone who is very sick, in pain, and asks to die, and killing a child just because they have a disability.
They say that it is not true that allowing euthanasia will lead to bad things.
They also say that what Hitler did was not euthanasia, and did not happen because they allowed euthanasia.
Palliative care is when people who are ill are given special care to make them more comfortable.
In regard to euthanasia, palliative care can be given to patients who are dying.
It may include hospice care, when the patient is sent to a special hospital that is just for people who are dying, and which is meant to make their death as comfortable as possible.
Palliative care can involve pain relief and help for the patient and family to come to terms with death.
In some cases, doctors will give patient drugs which make them stay asleep, so that they will not feel pain.
Palliative care is not perfect, and so it is not always seen as a replacement for euthanasia.
There is still some pain, and there can be other side-effects, where the patient can still feel very sick.
Palliative care is not available for all people, and not all people who wish to die through euthanasia are sick so that they will die soon some people have healthy bodies, but they are suffering in other ways, and palliative care will not always help them.
The principle of double effect was first described by Thomas Aquinas over 700 years ago.
It says that it is sometimes ok to do something even if a bad thing will happen if a good thing also happens, and if it was the good thing that they wanted.
Aquinas used the example of self defense: sometimes when they are attacked a person will kill the attacker, but the death of the attacker was not what the person was trying to do.
They only wanted to protect themselves.
So even though killing someone is bad, what they wanted to do protect themselves was not.
Some people say that doctors may treat a person in order to reduce the pain that they are suffering, but that as a result the person will die sooner.
If the doctor gives the treatment in order to help the patient die, then it is euthanasia.
But if the doctor gives the treatment in order to stop the pain, and does not intend for the patient to die, then it may not be euthanasia, even if the doctor knew that the treatment would kill the patient.
Suicide is when a person kills themselves.
Sometimes when a person is very sick they need help to die, and if someone helps them to kill themselves, it is called assisted suicide.
In some countries people are allowed to help someone to kill themselves, so long as they do not kill the person, and it can be seen as a more acceptable option because it must be the person 's own decision.
Because a second person did not kill the other person, it is not always considered to be euthanasia, as some people see an important difference between someone killing themselves and someone killing another person, and they believe that euthanasia is only when a second person kills the first.
Extraterrestrial life is life that is not from the planet Earth.
It is alien life.
It is reasonable that planets rather like ours exist, and that life might evolve there also.
So far none has been found, though it is possible that life once existed on Mars.
Searches have been made for signals from extraterrestrial life-forms.
No signals have been received.
It is not a new idea.
Quite a few philosophers have speculated on the existence of other planets like ours, with the idea that what happened here could also happen there.
One thing we do know is that many other star systems do have exoplanets.
Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 September 3, 1962) or best known as E. E. Cummings was an American poet.
He is also known for his works as a painter, essayist, author, and playwright.
He had created about 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays.
E. E. Cummings had done a lot of drawings as well as paintings.
He is best known as the preeminent voice of 20th century poetry.
The East River is a tidal strait in New York City.
It connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end.
It separates Long Island, including the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, from the island of Manhattan and the Bronx.
Several bridges and tunnels cross the East River.
The Brooklyn Bridge is the oldest and most famous.
Existentialism is a philosophical way of thinking.
It sees humans, with will and consciousness, as being in a world of objects which do not have those qualities.
The fact that humans are conscious of their mortality, and must make decisions about their life is what existentialism is all about.
It was started by the Danish philosopher S ren Kierkegaard (1813-1855).
As it developed in the 20th century, it was an atheistic philosophy, although existentialism 's founder, S ren Kierkegaard, was a deeply religious man.
Most of its main thinkers and writers were in Europe.
Sartre, for example, spent most of the Second World War in a German prison camp, reading the philosophy of Heidegger.
When he came out he gave a lecture called Existentialism and humanism.
This early lecture may be easier to read than his later work.
Many religions and philosophies (ways of thinking about the world) say that human life has a meaning (or a purpose).
But people who believe in existentialism think that the world and human life have no meaning unless people give them meaning: "existence precedes (is before) essence".
This means that we find ourselves existing in the world, and then we give ourselves meaning, or ` essence '.
As Sartre said, "We are condemned to be free".
This means that we have no choice but to choose, and that we have full responsibility for our choices.
Existentialists believe that our human ` essence ' or ` nature ' (way of being in the world) is simply our ` existence ' (being in the world).
More simply put, the ` essence ' of a human, or what makes a human a ` human ', is not due to nature or uncontrollable circumstances; rather, human essence is really just what we choose to make it.
This means that the only nature we as humans have is the nature we make for ourselves.
As a result of this, existentialists think that the actions or choices that a person makes are very important.
They believe that every person has to decide for themselves what is right and wrong, and what is good and bad.
People who believe in existentialism ask questions like "what is it like to be a human (a person) in the world?"
and "how can we understand human freedom (what it means for a person to be free)?"
Existentialism is often connected with negative emotions, such as anxiety (worrying), dread (a very strong fear), and mortality (awareness of our own death).
Existentialism is sometimes confused with nihilism.
It is different from nihilism, but there is a similarity.
Nihilists believe that human life does not have a meaning (or a purpose) at all; existentialism says that people must choose their own purpose.
Many of the main sources for existentialism were written in other languages and only later translated, mostly after the 1950s.
Ingmar Bergman made a movie called The Seventh Seal in 1957.
It shows the dooma and gloom of the late Middle Ages caused by the Black Plague, famine, the Hundred Years ' War between France and England, and papal schism.
The movie Taxi Driver (which has the actor Robert DeNiro) from 1976 has existential ideas in it.
The main character feels sad and lonely, because he can not understand the world.
Jean-Luc Godard 's "Vivre sa vie (film)" and Federico Fellini 's 8? 1\/2 are prime examples of the Existentialism fashion in the European early 50 's that influenced American films such as Easy Rider or The Graduate in the 1960s.
I Heart Huckabees is a 2004 film directed by David O. Russell.
The movie revolves around a man who hires two existential detectives to find out about his "coincidence."
He meets his "other" and is tempted with the dark side of existentialism.
An ellipsis is a type of punctuation mark.
In writing, it is a row of three points.
It is just three points; it is never acceptable to use two or four, even if one intends a shorter or longer pause.
Its name comes from the ancient Greek word (omission\/falling short).
Notice that the three dots are not spaced as full points: they are a separate special typographic sign.
Depending on context and place in a sentence, ellipses can indicate an unfinished thought, a leading statement, a slight pause, a mysterious or echoing voice, or a nervous or awkward silence.
An ellipsis can be used to trail off into silence for example: But I thought he was...
When text is quoted from a book or a newspaper, it stands for words that have been cut out to save space in a page.
For example:
When speaking, it can be referred to as "dot-dot-dot".
The Enola Gay is a B-29 Superfortress Bomber.
This plane is famous for dropping the first atomic bomb (named Little Boy) over the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II.
The Bomber is named after its Pilot, Paul Tibbets ' mother Enola Gay Tibbets.
The plane was used from 18 May 1945 to 24 July 1946, after which it was stored at Suitland, Maryland.
The electronvolt or electron volt, symbol eV, is used to measure energy.
It is defined as the amount of energy an electron gains after being accelerated by 1 volt of electricity.
Joules are used often for energy measurement, but it is sometimes useful to use electronvolts for very small amounts of energy.
To convert joules into electronvolts, divide joules by the charge of an electron, which is about 1.602
E.g. 5 J = 5\/1.602 5 J = 3.125 eV.
The electronvolt is often used in atomic, nuclear and particle physics.
For example, the energy of photons can be measured by the voltage necessary to overcome their photoelectric effect.
Electrochemistry is a kind of chemistry that studies chemical reactions that use or make electricity: Reactions like this happen at electrodes which are made from something that conducts electricity, and put in an electrolyte.
An electrolyte is a solution that has ions in it.
Electrochemistry was "invented" at the same time as the voltaic pile; the first kind of electric battery.
Edinburgh (Scottish Gaelic: D n ideann) is the capital city and second largest city in Scotland.
Edinburgh lies on the east coast, where the River Forth flows into the sea.
The central part is Edinburgh Castle, at the top of a steep hill.
The castle has a military display every year, called a tattoo, where soldiers show their skills at marching and competitions, and there are brass bands and bands of bagpipes.
Edinburgh has a very large festival every year, where thousands of performers come to put on shows.
The Edinburgh International Festival takes place in August and September.
At the same time there is the Edinburgh Fringe.
The shows are of all kinds, and range from large ones with famous people, to very small ones by new or unknown actors.
The city is served by Edinburgh Airport, and Haymarket and Waverley railway stations.
The Old Town of Edinburgh is the oldest part of the city, and with the 18th-century New Town, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It has preserved its mediaeval plan and many Reformation-era buildings.
The city 's main football teams are Heart of Midlothian F.C. and Hibernian F.C. Murrayfield stadium in the city is the home of the Scottish national rugby team.
The nearby Murrayfield Ice Rink is home to the city 's ice hockey team, the Edinburgh Capitals.
See also Leith Athletic F.C.
Edinburgh has lots of important buildings.
The Balmoral Hotel was opened in 1902 and designed by W. Hamilton Beattie.
Saint Giles ' Cathedral was built in Mediaeval times.
There was a big fire there in 1385.
The Royal Museum was designed by architect Francis Fowke and built between 1861 and 1888.
Its sister museum, the Museum of Scotland, was designed by Benson and Forsyth in 1998.
Holyrood Palace was once the home of the Scottish kings, and is open to the public.
Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone, was born in Edinburgh.
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM, PC, FRS (30 August 1871 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand scientist, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908, for his work on nuclear physics, and for the theory of the structure of the atom.
Rutherford was one of the first researchers in nuclear physics, after the discovery of radiation by a French physicist by the name of Antoine Henri Becquerel in 1896.
Rutherford discovered the three parts of radiation which he named Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.
Rutherford also discovered that alpha particles were helium nuclei.
Rutherford 's Geiger Marsden experiment led to what we know today about the atomic structure, where the atom is a nucleus and electrons orbit around it.
In 1919, Rutherford made the world 's first artificial nuclear reaction, where he put alpha particles with nitrogen gas and created particles of oxygen isotopes and protons.
The important thing about the experiment was the fact that he changed nitrogen gas into oxygen gas.
Rutherford was the leader of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.
He proved the existence of the nucleus and that is was composed of protons and neutrons.
In 1932 James Chadwick made an experiment at the Cavendish Lab that showed Rutherford was right.
Rutherford College, a school in Auckland, New Zealand, was named after him.
douard Manet (pronounced edwa man in French), 23 January 1832 30 April 1883, was a French Impressionist painter.
He was one of the first painters of the 19th century to paint subjects of everyday life in the modern world.
This made him very important for modern painting, especially for the change from Realism to Impressionism.
Some of his paintings were very controversial.
The paintings Lunch on the Grass and Olympia were a starting-point for a group of young painters to develop what would later be called Impressionism.
douard Manet was born in Paris on 23 January 1832, to a wealthy family.
As he grew up, his uncle encouraged him to paint and draw, but his father wanted him to join the navy.
Eventually he was allowed to be trained as a painter.
Manet worked from 1850 to 1856 in the studio of the academic painter Thomas Couture a painter of large historical paintings.
In his spare time he copied the old masters in the Louvre.
While he was a student he visited Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, looking at the paintings of Renaissance and Baroque masters such as Frans Hals, and Spanish painters such as Diego Vel zquez and Goya.
In 1856, Manet opened his own studio.
One of the best known French painters of that time was Gustave Courbet who painted in a style known as Realism.
Courbet, in his pictures, tried to show the life of the poor working people of the farms and villages.
Manet began to paint beggars, singers and people in cafes.
His style was not like Courbet 's because he used large brushstrokes without much detail.
Courbet 's paintings were dark and somber because he painted all his canvases brown before he put the figures in.
Manet 's paintings were brighter and lighter, with lots of white paint and often small parts painted in bright blue and red
In 1863 Manet married Suzanne Leenhoff, who had been employed by his father to teach piano to Manet and his younger brother Eugene.
Suzanne had an eleven year old son, Leon Koella Leenhoff who often posed as a model for Manet 's paintings.
Every year the academy in Paris would hold a big exhibition (art show) called the Salon de Paris.
In 1863 Manet put a picture into the show called Lunch on the Grass ("Le d jeuner sur l'herbe").
The judges at the Salon refused to hang this work in the gallery because it showed a naked woman sitting on the grass with two men wearing clothes.
If the painting had been about Ancient Greek mythology, this would not be a problem but these men were wearing ordinary suits, and the woman 's dress and hat were lying on the grass.
Perhaps she was a prostitute.
The judges said that the painting was indecent (very rude).
At this time there were a group of young artists who mainly painted landscapes.
They were Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Fr d ric Bazille, Camille Pissarro, Paul C zanne, and Armand Guillaumin.
Monet and his friends also had their paintings turned away.
They were angry and they met with Manet to discuss this.
The Emperor Napoleon III gave permission for another exhibition called the Salon des Refuses which showed all the pictures that had been "refused".
Many people went to see this exhibition and soon discovered that there was a new "movement" in art, quite different from the style that they were used to.
In 1874 thirty Impressionist artists held their first exhibition.
The main artists who are called "Impressionists" include Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Paul C zanne, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas and Berthe Morisot.
Manet became friendly with Berthe Morisot, who later married his brother Eugene Manet.
Manet encouraged Morisot with her painting.
Morisot, in turn, encouraged Manet to paint outdoors, in the way that Monet and the other Impressionist painters did.
Monet painted some landscapes, seascapes and city scenes in the Impressionist style.
However, most of his paintings are "figurative" (they are pictures of people).
Manet 's paintings usually show people going about their ordinary lives.
They show people at home and at work, or out and enjoying themselves.
One painting is very different.
It is a terrible scene showing the execution of the Emperor Maximillian of Mexico by a firing squad.
Manet died of syphilis in Paris.
An extremophile is an organism (a living thing) which lives best in extreme conditions that are harmful to most life on Earth.
They are different from organisms that live in normal places, called mesophiles or neutrophiles.
In the 1980s and 1990s, biologists found that microbes can survive in extreme environments.
These are niches that are extreme in some way.
They may be extremely hot, or cold, or dry, or under huge pressure, or very salty or acidic.
Complex orgamisms, such as animals or plants, can not live in these environments.
Some scientists suggest that life may have begun on Earth in hydrothermal vents far below the ocean surface.
Environments such as hot oceans, hot springs and deep ocean hydrothermal vents would have been common during the Archaean eon, about 3.9 billion years ago.
Early forms of life lived in those conditions.
Most known extremophiles are microbes.
The domain Archaea has well-known examples of extremophiles, but some bacteria are also extremophiles.
It is a mistake to use the term extremophile for all archaeans, since some of them are mesophilic.
Not all extremophiles are unicellular: some extreme environments have animals which are multicellular.
Some extremophiles fall under several categories.
For example, organisms living inside hot rocks deep under Earth 's surface are both thermophilic and barophilic.
; Acidophiles: An organism that grows best at pH levels of 3 or below.
; Alkaliphiles: An organism that grows best at pH levels of 9 or above; Endoliths: An organism that lives in microscopic spaces within rocks, fissures, aquifers, and faults filled with groundwater deep under the ground.
; Halophiles: An organism that needs a high concentration of salt to grow.
; Hyperthermophile: An organism that can live well at temperatures between 80 122 C, as in hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean.
; Hypoliths: An organism that lives inside rocks in cold deserts.
; Lithoautotrophs: An organism (usually bacteria) that only gets carbon from carbon dioxide and inorganic oxidation.
They are chemolithotrophs, such as Nitrosomonas europaea.
These organisms get energy from mineral compounds such as iron pyrites.
They act in geochemical cycling and wearing away of bedrock to form soil.
; Metalotolerant: These organisms are not harmed by high levels of dissolved heavy metals in solution, such as copper, cadmium, arsenic, and zinc.
; Oligotroph: An organism that can grow in environments with very few nutrients.
; Osmophile: An organism that can grow in environments with lots of sugar.
; Piezophile: An organism that lives best under high pressure, such as deep inside the Earth 's surface and in deep ocean trenches.
; Polyextremophile: An organism that is in more than one category of extremophiles.
; Psychrophile\/Cryophile: An organism that grows better at temperatures of 15 C or lower.
They are common in cold soils, permafrost, polar ice, cold ocean water, and under snow in high mountains.
; Radioresistant: Organisms that can live with high levels of ionizing radiation.
Usually this refers to ultraviolet radiation, but there are also some organisms not easily harmed by nuclear radiation.
; Thermophile: An organism that can live well at temperatures between 60 80 C.; Thermoacidophile: An organism that is both a thermophile and an acidophile.
It grows best in temperatures of 70 80 C and pH between 2 and 3.
; Xerophile: An organism that can grow in extremely dry places, such as the Atacama Desert.
Ellensburg is a city in the state of Washington.
Eugene is a city of Oregon in the United States.
It is the county seat of Lane County.
About 154,620 people were living in Eugene as of the year 2008.
The University of Oregon is in Eugene.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was an English poet who is famous for writing her love poems, Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850).
She was born in Kelloe, County Durham.
She was married to the poet and playwright Robert Browning.
She died in Florence, Italy.
Ecology is the science which studies the biota and the environment, and their interactions.
It comes from the Greek oikos = house; logos = study.
Ecology is the study of ecosystems.
Ecosystems describe the web or network of relations among organisms at different scales of organization.
Since ecology refers to any form of biodiversity, ecologists research everything from tiny bacteria in nutrient recycling to the effects of tropical rain forests on the Earth 's atmosphere.
Scientists who study these interactions are called ecologists.
Terrestrial ecoregion and climate change research are two areas where ecologists (people studying ecology) now focus.
There are many practical applications of ecology in conservation biology, wetland management, natural resource management (agriculture, forestry, fisheries), city planning (urban ecology), community health, economics, and applied science.
It provides a framework for understanding and researching human social interaction.
Ecology starts many powerful philosophical and political movements - including the conservation movement, wellness movement, environmental movement, and ecology movement we know today.
When these are combined with peace movements and the Six Principles, they are called green movements.
In general, these put ecosystem health first on a list of human moral and political priorities, as the way to achieve better human health and social harmony, and better economics.
People with these beliefs are called political ecologists.
Some have organized into the Green Parties, but there are actually political ecologists in most political parties.
They very often use arguments from ecology to advance policy, especially forest policy and energy policy.
Also, ecology means that it is the branch of biology dealing with the relations and interactions between organisms and their environment, including other organisms.
Ecological economics and human development theory try to separate the economic questions from others, but it is difficult.
Many people think economics is just part of ecology now, and that economics that ignores it is wrong.
"Natural capital" is an example of one theory combining both.
Sometimes ecology is compared to anthropology, because both use a lot of methods to study one thing we can not live without.
Anthropology is about how our bodies and minds are affected by our environment, while ecology is about how our environment is affected by our bodies and minds.
There is even a type of anthropology called ecological anthropology, which studies how people interact with the environment.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery stated: "The earth teaches us more about ourselves than all the books.
Because it resists us.
Man discovers himself when he measures himself against the obstacle."
An ecosystem is a large community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in a particular area.
The living and physical components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows.
Ecosystems can be of any size, but usually they are in particular places.
Each ecosystem has its own community.
A terrarium community, for example, can have small animals.
A desert community may have cacti, small snakes, and scorpions.
A pond community can have frogs, insects, snakes, and plants, and a forest community may have rabbits, foxes and pine trees.
The species in a community are divided into populations according to the particular habitats in the ecosystem.
Ecosystems are stable, but not rigid.
They react to major changes in the environment, especially climate changes.
For example, the major rainforests have lasted for a long time (perhaps 50 million years or more in some cases).
As the rainfall and temperature changes, they change.
We know that the Amazon rainforest shrank in size during ice ages, and expanded in the warmer periods.
What drives all ecosystems is the primary production.
Primary production is the production of organic matter from inorganic carbon sources.
This happens through photosynthesis.
It drives the carbon cycle, which influences global climate via the greenhouse effect.
Through the process of photosynthesis, plants capture energy from light and use it to combine carbon dioxide and water to produce carbohydrates and oxygen.
The photosynthesis carried out by all the plants in an ecosystem is called the gross primary production (GPP).
About 48 60 % of the GPP is consumed in plant respiration.
The rest is known as the net primary production (NPP).
Total photosynthesis is limited by a range of environmental factors.
These include the amount of light available, the amount of leaf area a plant has to capture light (shading by other plants limits photosynthesis), the supply of carbon dioxide and water, and suitable temperatures for carrying out photosynthesis.
e is a number, about 2.71828.
It is a mathematical constant.
e also has other names, like Euler 's number (because of the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler), or Napier 's constant (because of the Scottish mathematician John Napier).
It is an important number in mathematics, like and i. It is an irrational number, which means it is impossible to write as a fraction with two integers; but some numbers, like 2.71828182845904523536, come close to the true value.
The true value of e is a number that never ends.
Euler himself gave the first 23 digits of e.
The number e is very important for exponential functions.
For example, the exponential function applied to the number one, has a value of e.
e was discovered in 1683 by the Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli while he was studying compound interest.
There are many different ways to define e. Jacob Bernoulli who discovered e, was trying to solve the problem:
In other words, there is a number that the expression approaches if n is made very big.
This number is e.
::.
An engine, or motor, is a machine used to change energy into movement that can be used.
The energy can be in any form.
Common forms of energy used in engines are electricity, chemical (such as petrol or diesel) or heat.
When a chemical is used to produce energy it is known as fuel.
The difference of engine and motor is that an engine creates mechanical energy from heat, while motor creates mechanical energy from other kinds of energy, like electricity.
Typical engines are steam engine and internal combustion engine, while typical motors are electric motor and hydraulic motor.
"Engine" was originally a term for any mechanical device that converts force into motion.
Hence, pre-industrial weapons such as catapults, trebuchets and battering rams were called "siege engines".
The word "gin," as in "cotton gin", is short for "engine."
The word derives from Old French engin, from the Latin ingenium, which is also the root of the word ingenious.
Most mechanical devices invented during the industrial revolution were described as engines the steam engine being a notable example.
In modern usage, the term engine is typically restricted to heat engines, like steam engines and internal combustion engines, that burn or otherwise consume fuel to perform mechanical work by exerting a torque or linear force (usually in the form of thrust).
Examples of engines which exert a torque include the familiar automobile gasoline and diesel engines, as well as turboshafts.
Examples of engines which produce thrust include turbofans and rockets.
Early kinds of engine used heat that was outside of the engine itself to heat up a gas to a high pressure.
This was usually steam and the engines are called steam engines.
The steam was piped to the engine where it pushed on pistons to bring about motion.
These engines were commonly used in old factories, boats and trains.
Most cars use a chemical engine that burns fuel inside it.
This is called an internal combustion engine.
There are many different types of internal combustion engine.
They can be grouped by fuel, cycle and configuration.
Common fuel types for internal combustion engines are petrol, diesel, autogas and alcohol.
There are many other types of fuels.
There are 3 different types of cycle.
2-stroke engines produce power once every turn of the engine.
4-stroke engines cylinders make power once every two turns of the engine.
6-stroke engines cylinders make power twice in every six turns of the engine.
There are lots of different configurations of piston engines.
Their cylinders have pistons in them and a crankshaft.
Any number of cylinders can be used but 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 are common.
The cylinders can be arranged in many ways, in a straight line, at an angle to each other or in a circle.
A Wankel engine has no cylinders and uses a triangle shaped rotor spinning in an oval housing which mimics the movement of a piston.
Hot gas can also be made to push a turbine around rather like the way the wind turns a windmill.
Most electric power stations use big steam turbines.
Others use water or wind turbines.
Smaller turbines use internal combustion.
Jet engines used in aircraft are a kind of turbine engine.
A rocket causes movement by shooting jets of gas very fast out of a nozzle.
The gas may have been stored under pressure or be a chemical fuel that burns to make a very hot gas.
Although they are very simple, rockets are the most powerful engines we know how to make.
They will work in space where there is nothing to push against.
Electric motors do not use a fuel.
The energy is supplied to them by electricity carried along wires.
The energy may come from a fuel being burnt somewhere else a long way off.
The electricity is used to make powerful magnets inside the motor switch on and off at the right time to turn the shaft of the motor.
Electric engine is not a motor, but a railway locomotive which runs on electricity.
In science energy is something that can do work.
Energy can not be made or destroyed, it is changed from one form to another.
The amount of energy in a closed system is always the same.
This rule is called the "conservation law of energy".
Scientists now know that matter can be made into energy, and energy into matter, through processes like nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.
The law of conservation of energy has therefore been extended to become the Law of conservation of matter and energy.
Albert Einstein was the first to mathematically derive this in the formula E = mc2.
A stone is thrown upwards and falls to the ground.
Scientists have identified many types of energy, and found that they can be changed from one kind into another.
For example:
Energy can be measured.
That is, the amount of energy a thing has can be given a number.
As in other kinds of measurements, there are measurement units.
The units of measurement for measuring energy are used to make the numbers meaningful.
The SI unit for both energy and work is the joule (J).
It is named after James Prescott Joule.
1 joule is equal to 1 newton-metre.
In terms of SI base units, 1 J is equal to 1 kg m2 s 2.
The energy unit of measurement for electricity is the kilowatt-hour (kW h).
One kW h is equivalent to 3,600,000 J (3600 kJ or 3.6 MJ)
In probability theory and statistics, the expected value of a random variable in an experiment is the value the variable will take, if the experiment is repeated an infinite number of times and the mean (or weighted average) of all the values is calculated.
The Law of large numbers describes how this happens.
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was an American novelist.
He created the famous character Tarzan of the Apes in his novels.
He wrote 25 novels on Tarzan 's adventures starting from 1914 onwards.
He also wrote other novels and stories that became quite famous.
Tarzan and John Carter were some of his characters that became famous.
Endocarditis is an inflammation of the inner layer of the heart.
Endocarditis most often affects the heart valves.
The heart valves are a part of the human body that does not get blood.
This is odd because they are a part of the heart itself.
Because of this, if one of the valves gets infected with a bacteria or protozoa, the body can not defend itself against that bacteria.
This can cause the valve to not work the way it should.
Electronics is the study and use of electrical parts and circuits.
These "electronic components" control electricity for useful purposes.
Electronic devices have many electronic components such as - resistors, capacitors, coils of wire called inductors, integrated circuits, connection wires and circuit boards.
Older devices used glass or metal vacuum tubes to control the flow of electricity.
With these components a low power voltage can be used to change another, and that 's why they are useful in amplifiers and switches.
By the late 1960 's and early 1970 's the transistor and semiconductor began replacing vacuum tubes.
Transistors can be made much smaller than vacuum tubes and they can work using less energy.
At about the same time, integrated circuits (circuits that have a large numbers of very small transistors placed on very thin slices of silicon) became commonly used.
Integrated circuits made it possible to reduce the number of parts needed to make electronic products and made the products much cheaper in general.
People interested in physics study how and why these electronic components work, and in addition they discover, invent, or improve them.
People who design, construct and maintain electronic components and circuits are called electrical engineers.
They work in electrical, electronics and computer engineering.
A television set, for example, has as its input a broadcast signal received from an antenna, or for cable television, a cable.
Signal processing circuits inside the television set use the brightness, color, and sound information contained in the received signal to control the television set 's output devices.
The display output device may be a cathode ray tube (CRT) or a plasma or liquid crystal display screen.
The audio output device might be a magnetically driven audio speaker.
The display output devices convert the signal processing circuits ' brightness and color information into the visible image displayed on a screen.
The audio output device converts the processed sound information into sounds that can be heard by listeners.
Analysis of a circuit\/network involves knowing the input and the signal processing circuit, and finding out the output.
Knowing the input and output and finding out or designing the signal processing part is called synthesis.
Analog circuits are used for signals that have a range of amplitudes.
In general, analog circuits measure or control the amplitude of signals.
In the early days of electronics, all electronic devices used analog circuits.
The frequency of the analog circuit is often measured or controlled in analog signal processing.
Even though digital circuits are used more often, analog circuits will always be necessary.
Pulse circuits are used for signals that require rapid pulses of energy.
For example, aircraft and ground radar equipment work by using pulse circuits to create and send high powered bursts of radio energy from radar transmitters.
Special antennas (called "beam" or "dish" antennas because of their shape) are used to send ("transmit") the high powered bursts in the direction the beam or dish antenna is pointed.
The radar transmitter 's pulses or bursts of radio energy hit and bounce back (they are "reflected") from hard and metallic objects.
Hard objects are things like buildings, hills, and mountains.
Metallic objects are anything made of metal, like aircraft, bridges, or even objects in space, like satellites.
The reflected radar energy is detected by radar pulse receivers which use both pulse and digital circuits together.
The pulse and digital circuits in radar pulse receivers are used to show the location and distance of objects which have reflected the radar transmitter 's high powered pulses.
By controlling how often the rapid pulses of radar energy are sent out by a radar transmitter (called the transmitter 's "pulse timing"), and how long it takes for the reflected pulse energy to come back to the radar receiver, one can tell not only where objects are, but also how far away they are.
Digital circuits in a radar receiver calculate the distance to an object by knowing the time interval between energy pulses.
The radar receiver 's digital circuits count how long it takes between pulses for an object 's reflected energy to be detected by the radar receiver.
Since radar pulses are sent and received at approximately the speed of light, the distance to an object can easily be calculated.
This is done in digital circuits by multiplying the speed of light by the time it takes to receive the radar energy reflected back from an object.
The time between pulses (often called "pulse rate time", or PRT) sets the limit on how far away an object can be detected.
That distance is called the "range" of a radar transmitter and receiver.
Radar transmitters and receivers use long PRT 's to find the distance to objects that are far away.
Long PRT 's makes it possible to accurately determine the distance to the moon, for example.
Fast PRT 's are used to detect objects that are much closer, like ships at sea, high flying aircraft, or to determine the speed of fast moving automobiles on highways.
Digital circuits are used for signals that repeatedly turn on and off.
Active components in digital circuits typically have a constant amplitude when turned on, and zero amplitude when turned off.
In general, digital circuits count the number of times a component is switched on and off.
Computers and electronic clocks are examples of electronic devices that are made up of mostly digital circuits.
Ernst Haeckel (Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel, 16 February 1834 9 August 1919) was an influential German zoologist, naturalist, and artist.
He was also a philosopher and physician, but in those fields he is not regarded as particularly notable.
Haekel was professor of comparative anatomy at the University of Jena, where he worked for 47 years, from 1862 to 1909.
Haekel discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a tree of life relating all life forms.
He coined many terms in biology, including ecology, phylum, phylogeny, stem cell, and the kingdom Protista.
Haeckel promoted and popularized Charles Darwin 's work in Germany and developed the controversial recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny").
This clained that an individual organism 's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarises its species ' evolutionary development.
The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-colour illustrations of animals and sea creatures.
As a philosopher, Ernst Haeckel wrote Die Weltr tsel (1895 1899, The Riddle of the Universe, 1901), and Freedom in Science and Teaching to support teaching evolution.
Haekel wrote many books, some of them in multi-volumes.
Among the most notable are:
The Entscheidungsproblem (German, "decision problem") is a famous problem of mathematics.
David Hilbert formulated the problem in 1928: Is there an algorithm that will take a formal language, and a logical statement in that language, and that will output "True" or "False", depending on the truth value of the statement?
The algorithm does not tell how it reaches the answer, nor prove it, as long as the answer is always correct.
In 1936 and 1937, Alonzo Church and Alan Turing showed independently, that there can be no answer to the Entscheidungsproblem.
They showed that it is impossible for an algorithm to decide whether statements in arithmetic are true or false.
For this reason, there can be no solution for the Entscheidungsproblem.
An ester is a carbonyl with an ether group on the carbon atom.
The group can be written as COOR.
They can be made by reacting a carboxylic acid with an alcohol with some acid.
Esters are a very important functional group.
They can be found in many substances.
They are very common in fats and oils.
They sometimes have a very strong, nice smell.
They can be used to make perfumes.
Polyesters are found in plastics.
Esters can also do many reactions.
It is very easy to change the ether part of the molecule with another similar one.
It is also possible to reduce the ester to a ketone or an alcohol, which can do many different reactions.
Nucleophilic addition is also a good reaction, though a bit more difficult than with ketones.
There are many ways to find out if a molecule has an ester group.
Infrared spectroscopy gives very sharp signals, which are different from other carbonyls.
Carbon NMR spectroscopy has similar characteristics.
In mathematics, an exponential function is a function that quickly grows.
More precisely, it is the function, where e is Euler 's constant, an irrational number that is approximately 2.71828.
Because exponential functions use exponentiation, they follow the same rules.
Thus,.
This follows the rule that.
The natural logarithm is the inverse operation of an exponential function.
, not as it would follow the general rule of thumb (see differentiation) This means that the slope of an exponential function is an exponential function itself, and subsequently this means it has a slope of 1 at.
These properties are the reason it is an important function in mathematics.
The exponential function is among the most useful of mathematical functions.
It is used to represent exponential growth, which has uses in virtually all science subjects and it is also prominent in Finance.
One example of an exponential function in real life would be interest in a bank.
If a person deposits 100 into an account which gets 3 % interest a month then the balance each month would be (assuming the money is untouched):
Notice how the extra money from interest increases each month.
The greater the original balance, the more interest the person will get.
Two mathematical examples of exponential functions are shown below.
Even though the base can be any number bigger than zero, for example, 10 or 1\/2, often it is a special number called e. The number e can not be written exactly, but it is almost equal to 2.71828.
The number e is important to every exponential function.
For example, a bank pays interest of 0.01 percent every day.
One person takes his interest money and puts it in a box.
After 10,000 days (about 30 years), he has 2 times as much money as he started with.
Another person takes his interest money and puts it back into the bank.
Because the bank now pays him interest on his interest, the amount of money is an exponential function.
After 10,000 days, he does not have 2 times as much money as he started with, but he has 2.718145 times as much money as he started with.
This number is very close to the number e. If the bank pays interest more often, so the amount paid each time is less, then the number will be closer to the number e.
A person can also look at the picture to see why the number e is important for exponential functions.
The picture has three different curves.
The curve with the black points is an exponential function with a base a little smaller than e. The curve with the short black lines is an exponential function with a base a little bigger than e. The blue curve is an exponential function with a base exactly equal to e. The red line is a tangent to the blue curve.
It touches the blue curve at one point without crossing it.
A person can see that the red curve crosses the x-axis, the line that goes from left to right, at -1.
This is true only for the blue curve.
This is the reason that the exponential function with the base e is special.
The Epistle of James is a book inclused in the Christian Bible, the twentieth in the New Testament.
According to its opening verse, this epistle was written by James (often identified with the brother of the Lord who leaded the Jerusalem Church about 20 years and was killed around 62 AD).
The title servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ (which suggest a Church official), the courage to address the twelve tribes in the Dispersion (i.e. Jewish Christian communities outside Palestine, or all faithful living in a non-Christian environment), and the tone of authority throughout the letter, all indicate someone well known and respected.
The writer appears concerned in clarifying Paul s teaching on faith\/action, against Christians who deform it.
This indicates that the letter was written after those of Paul had begun to circulate diffusely, in the last decades of the 1st century.
This late dating, together with the quite elegant Greek style and the lack of any real emphasis on the Jewish legalism which was part of James approach to religion, have persuaded a growing majority of contemporary scholars that a Christian versed in both Hellenism and Judaism wrote using James name.
May be early tradition stemming from James was updated and published by an unknown Christian teacher of a later generation: possibly this is why the letter was not universally accepted by the Churches until near the end of the 4th century.
The author s two chief sources are OT Wisdom books and the teaching found in the Gospels, though he hardly ever uses direct quotations.
Reflecting Jewish Christian assemblies, he rethinks OT sayings in the light of Jesus teachings and re-presents them in an original way.
The epistle consists of a long series of exhortations, mostly brief and loosely connected, some developed at length.
The one common trait, which gives the letter its distinctive quality, is a concern that the faith be implemented in every aspect of life; otherwise it is useless.
The author takes for granted Jesus ' saving work, but is especially interested in Christians ' moral life.
So, there is no real contradiction between Paul 's and James ' teachings, for Paul was speaking of the impossibility of earning salvation by one 's own efforts, not of the works of charity and justice to which the Christians are called.
James used a friendly way of addressing his readers on the day-to-day problems we also meet and in which we must follow faith and love for others: community life, prejudice or discrimination, care for poor, widows and orphans, jealousy and selfish ambition, controlling the tongue, community concern for the sick, matters of justice, speaking evil against each other.
He said in effect: Love first and it will prove your faith.
The central theme is the true wisdom that comes from God as opposed to false wisdom.
The moral teaching revealed from on high, is not human but divine wisdom.
Humans can only analyze it, enter into it more deeply and put it into practice.
It is an objective ethics needed to see life in its proper perspective and to be guided in action.
Earthly wisdom, on the contrary, is a permanent temptation in people who want to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong, only to end in justifying wicked behavior.
The other main theme is God s preference for the lowly: so in this manifesto for social justice the author praises the poor and threatens the rich.
Respect for the dignity of every person is fundamental especially that of the poor, exposed to contempt by the powerful.
This evidently takes up the task undertaken by the prophets, but it also refers to Christ, whose glory guarantees the dignity of everyone redeemed by his blood, and excludes every kind of favouritism.
James insists much on bridling the tongue: in this respect, teachers have a special responsibility within the Church since their instructions (and their writings) can create dissent and division in her.
Those with a strong influence on public also have a similar responsibility.
Jas 1:1 -18: A series of short exhortations, linked together more by word connections than by concept, introduces topics to be developed in the letter.
Jas 1:19 -27: The Word in which we were given birth by God must be heard: any obstacles must be removed so to put it into practice.
Jas 2:1 -13: This explanation of the previous exhortations is a warning against partiality and leads to a fuller consideration of the poor in community.
Jas 2:14 -26: This part is unique for its unified and relatively long development of a single theme: that faith without works is dead i.e. can not save anyone for eternal life.
This is the heart of the letter, giving the theoretical basis for the practical exhortations.
Yet, the appearance of a contradiction of Paul s teaching on justification by faith has given excessive prominence to this section.
It was largely because of it that M. Luther wished to exclude this letter from the Bible.
Jas 3:1 -4:12: These are two clearly defined, closely developed sections.
Since faults of tongue and false wisdom lead to strife in the community, James considers the root causes and remedies thereof, concluding with a consideration of law and judgment.
Jas 4:13 -5:6: These two passages are parallel in that each is introduced identically and employs direct address.
The first is against mercantile arrogance, the second is a severe denunciation of unjust rich similar to those of OT prophets.
It is a useful warning to the faithful of the terrible fate of those who abuse riches.
Jas 5:7 -20: After an exhortation to patiently waiting for the Lord s coming, the letter ends with three topics: oaths, prayer and converting the sinners.
In the midst, James proclaims the anointing of the sick by Church leaders which is one of the seven sacraments.
The Epistle of Jude is the sixty-fifth book in the Christian Bible, and the twenty-sixth in the New Testament.
It is one of the shortest books in the Bible, at only 25 verses long.
This book is believed to be a letter from Jude the Apostle.
The writer warns of "people who change the message about the grace of God in order to excuse their immoral ways" (verse 4).
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (9 June 1836 17 December 1917) was an English medical doctor.
She is known for being the first woman to qualify as a doctor and surgeon in Britain and for starting a medical school for women.
She was also the first female mayor in Britain.
She had three children.
Erosion is a process where natural forces like water, wind, ice, and gravity wear away rocks and soil.
It is a geological process, and part of the rock cycle.
Erosion occurs at the Earth 's surface, and has no effect on the Earth 's mantle and core.
Most of the energy that makes erosion happen is provided by the Sun.
The Sun 's energy causes the movement of water and ice in the water cycle and the movement of air to create wind.
Erosion can cause problems that affect humans.
Soil erosion, for example, can create problems for farmers.
Soil erosion can remove soil, leaving a thin layer or rocky soil behind.
Erosion can also cause problems for humans by removing rocks or soil that support buildings.
Temperature changes cause pieces of rock to flake away from the surface.
Also, the acid in rainwater dissolves rocks containing calcium carbonate.
These processes are called weathering.
Water erosion happens when water moves the pieces of rock or soil downhill.
Waves also carry away small pieces of material.
A wave can wash up onto the surface of rock or soil and then carry away pieces of material as it flows back into the ocean or lake.
The size of earth materials that can be moved by water depends on how fast the water is moving.
A fast-flowing stream can carry large rocks while a slow moving stream might only be able to carry very small things like clay.
Canyons are among the most obvious features made by erosion.
Where a river meets the sea, it drops the solids, sometimes making a river delta.
Large tropical rivers like the Paran, Indus, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Zambezi, Mississippi and the Amazon carry huge amounts of sediment down to the sea.
The Nile, perhaps the world 's longest river, carries much less sediment than the others because, part of the way, it runs through less fertile regions than the other great rivers.
The Amazon has by far the largest waterflow, with an average discharge greater than the next seven largest rivers combined.
It has the largest drainage basin in the world, about 7050000 k. The Amazon accounts for about one-fifth of the world 's total river flow.
The sediment discharged by the gigantic mouth of the Amazon stains the sea brown for hundreds of miles out to sea.
Ice erosion happens when a glacier moves downhill.
As the ice of the glacier moves downhill, it pushes and pulls earth materials along with it.
Glaciers can move very large rocks.
Ice erosion can happen in another way.
Cold weather causes water inside tiny cracks in rocks to freeze.
As it freezes, the ice gets bigger, and pushes hard against the rock.
This can break the rock.
Wind erosion occurs when wind moves pieces of earth materials.
Wind erosion is one of the weakest kinds of erosion.
Small pieces of earth material can be rolled along the ground surface by wind.
Very small pieces can be picked up and carried by the wind.
Sometimes, wind can carry small pieces of earth materials over large distances.
Some sediment from the Sahara Desert is carried across the Atlantic Ocean by wind.
One of the most famous examples of wind erosion occurred in the Dust Bowl, when wind erosion severely damaged farming communities.
Gravity erosion is the simplest kind of erosion.
Gravity simply pulls loose earth materials downhill.
Landslides are dramatic examples of gravity erosion.
Tectonic effects on erosion has long been recognized.
For example, rivers form as a result of tectonic uplift (as Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau).
All of the Earth 's mountain ranges were created by the upward movement of the land by changes beneath the Earth 's surface.
When the ground rises the whole weather system can also be changed including local sea levels, wind strength and direction, rainfall and more.
The Earth 's landscape is a product of two factors.
Tectonics builds up height by surface and rock uplift, and climate controls the erosion.
Erosion wears away upland areas over time.
The interaction of these processes can form, modify, or destroy features of the Earth s surface.
Euclidean space is the space euclidean geometry uses.
In essence, it was described in Euclid 's Elements.
The Euclidean plane and the three dimensional space are part of Euclidean space.
Euclidian space is sometimes called Cartesian space.
A few other spaces and mathematical objects that are similar were added later.
Euclid based his work Elements on certain axioms.
Euclidean space can be described using such axioms.
Evolutionary psychology is a branch of psychology which investigates behavior which has evolved.
It is similar in this respect to ethology, which has always used ideas from evolutionary biology.
It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, functional products of natural selection or sexual selection.
Evolutionary psychology usually focuses on behavior most people share.
Some of the more common areas evolutionary psychology is focused on are sex, and social behavior.
Events like violent behavior need explanation in evolutionary terms.
Evolutionary psychology is related to other fields of science like sociobiology, social psychology, and sociocultural anthropology.
Evolutionary psychologists argue that much of human behavior is the result of adaptations which evolved to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments.
The adaptationist approach is steadily increasing as an influence in the general field of psychology.
Evolutionary psychologists hold that behaviors or traits which occur universally in all cultures are good candidates for evolutionary adaptations.
This includes our ability to infer others ' emotions, discern kin from non-kin, identify and prefer healthier mates, and cooperate with others.
They report successful tests of theoretical predictions related to such topics as infanticide, intelligence, marriage patterns, promiscuity, perception of beauty, bride price and parental investment.
"The recognition that psychological mechanisms are evolved adaptations connects evolutionary biology to psychology in the strongest possible fashion, allowing everything we know about the study of adaptations to be applied to the study of psychological mechanisms".
Electronegativity, symbol, is a chemical property that says how well an atom can attract electrons towards itself.
The electronegativity of an atom is influenced by the atom 's atomic number and the distance between the atom 's valence electrons (the outermost electrons that take part in chemical bonding) and its nucleus.
It was first theorised by Linus Pauling in 1932 as part of his valence bond theory, and is related to other chemical properties.
Generally, electronegativity increases from the bottom-left to the upper-right of the periodic table; this is known as a periodic trend.
There are many ways to calculate the electronegativity of an atom.
The most common way of calculation is the one suggested by Linus Pauling, and it gives the relative Pauling scale.
This scale gives elements dimensionless quantities (values) between 0.7 to 3.98, with hydrogen being at 2.20.
The opposite of electronegativity is electropositivity; the measure of how well an atom gives away electrons.
Pauling suggested the idea of electronegativity in 1932 to explain why the strength of a covalent bond between two different atoms (A-B) is stronger than the average of the strengths of the covalent bonds A-A and B-B.
His valence bond theory said that this stronger bond between different atoms is caused by the ionic effects to the bonding.
where the dissociation energies (that is, the energy needed to break the bond between the atoms), Ed, of A-B, A-A and B-B bonds are given in electronvolts, and the factor (eV) - is added to make sure the final answer has no unit.
With the above formula, we can calculate the difference in elecronegativity between hydrogen and bromine to be 0.73.
(dissociation energies: H-Br, 3.79 eV; H-H, 4.52 eV; Br-Br, 2.00 eV)
The above equation only calculates the difference in electronegativity between two elements.
To make a scale from the equation, a reference point has to be chosen.
Hydrogen was chosen as a reference point because it bonds covalently with many elements.
Hydrogen 's electronegativity was first fixed at 2.1, but was later changed to 2.20.
Another thing that need to be known to make an electronegativity scale is which element is more electronegative than the reference point, which is hydrogen.
This is often done with the so-called "chemical intuition": in the above example, hydrogen bromide (H-Br) dissolves in water and breaks into H + cation and Br - anion.
So, it can be assumed that bromine is more electronegative than hydrogen.
To calculate Pauling electronegativity for an element, the data on the dissociation energies of at least two types of covalent bonds created by the element is needed.
In 1961, A. L. Allred improved Pauling 's original data to include the thermodynamic data that is much more available.
These "revised Pauling" electronegativity values are used more often.
The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) is a European treaty that was adopted in 1992.
It was designed by the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe.
It only applies to languages traditionally used by the nationals of the State Parties which have a lot of differences from the majority or official language.
This means that the treaty does not protect languages used by recent immigrants from other countries.
Also, the treaty does not protect local dialects of (ways of speaking) the official or majority language)
National official languages are not covered by the treaty, but regional official languages can be.
For example, Catalan is only official within a region of Spain, so could benefit from the treaty but Irish can not because it is an official language in Republic of Ireland, even though it is a minority language.
However Irish is protected in Northern Ireland because it is not an official or national language of the United Kingdom.
France has signed the treaty, but the French constitution does not allow the government to support languages apart from French.
There are two levels of protection.
Every country which has signed the treaty must give all qualifying languages the lower level of protection.
Countries can also decide to give some languages the higher level of protection.
The higher level is a list of things countries should do.
A country giving higher protection must do at least 35 of these things.
English Civil War happened in the middle 17th century.
The term covers a period between 1642 and 1651 in England, Scotland and Ireland.
Some people consider all this fighting to be one big war, while others think it should be seen as several different wars that were linked.
Some of these wars and conflicts have been given their own names, such as:
A civil war is a war where the sides involved in the fighting are from the same country.
In the period of the English Civil War, the King ruled England and Scotland, but the fighting that took place in each of these countries broke out at different times and for several different reasons.
The Protestant Reformation had encouraged new ideas and struggles.
After a few years of quarrelling, the members of Parliament raised an army to fight against the King.
The King moved out of London and took the royal court to Oxford, where he had more loyal followers than in London.
The first war was fought between King Charles 's army and the army of Parliament.
King Charles 's army soldiers were called "Cavaliers", and the army of Parliament 's soldiers were called "Roundheads".
Parliament won the first war, and King Charles was put in prison, but he escaped and a second war broke out.
Parliament won the second war also, and they put King Charles on trial because they did not want any more fighting.
He was found guilty of treason and was executed in 1649.
This did not stop the fighting, however.
During the war, Parliament found a new leader, a man called Oliver Cromwell, who was very good at leading an army and also had ideas about how to rule the country.
Not everyone liked him, but he was the strongest leader and in time he became the ruler of the whole country.
Cromwell took the title of "Lord Protector" rather than King, because he did not think the country needed another king.
His government was called "the Protectorate".
In the meantime, King Charles I 's eldest son, the Prince of Wales, had left Britain and set up his own royal court in Holland, calling himself King Charles II of England.
He came back to fight another battle against the army of Parliament.
His father, King Charles I, had been born in Scotland, and Scots who were loyal to the royal family were among his most important supporters.
The Third Civil War (1649 - 1651) was fought between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament.
The Civil War ended when Parliament won the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.
Charles II had to disguise himself in order to escape.
Oliver Cromwell ruled the country until he died in 1658.
Cromwell 's son, Richard, took over as Lord Protector.
However, he was not as tough as his Father.
The People begged King Charles 's son to come back.
Charles II came back from Holland and became King of Britain again, with the support of the people.
Elementary algebra is the most basic form of algebra taught to students.
It is often one of the next areas of mathematics taught to students after arithmetic.
While in arithmetic only numbers and operators like +,,, and occur; in algebra, variables (like a, x, y) are used to stand for numbers.
This is useful because:
These three are the main strands of elementary algebra.
Elementary algebra is often used in many other subjects, like science, business, and building.
Abstract algebra, a much more advanced topic, is generally taught late in college.
If an equation has only one number that is unknown it is sometimes easy to solve.
The unknown number is called "x":
To solve a simple equation with one unknown amount add, subtract, multiply, or divide both sides of the equation by the same number in order to put the unknown amount, x, on one side of the equation.
Once x is by itself on one side, use arithmetic to determine the amount on the other side of the equation.
For example, by subtracting 4 from both sides in the equation above:
Excalibur is a legendary sword, in the mythology of Great Britain.
It was owned by King Arthur.
The sword and its name have become very widespread in popular culture, and are used in fiction and films.
The sword was obtained by the king with the advice of his wizard-adviser Merlin.
But it was considered that there existed two Excalibur swords.
The first was the one Merlin put into the stone and said that the throne will be taken by the one who will take the sword out of the stone.
Young Arthur was the one to do it.
The second Excalibur was the one to which Merlin took the King.
The sword was located at a magical lake where the Lady of the Lake gave it to Arthur.
The Excalibur was made by an Avalonian elf.
Later the sword was stolen by his sister and it was the time when the scabbard (sword coverage) was lost.
In the battle of Camlann, Arthur was hurt, and he told Bedwyzr (Griflet) to return the Excalibur to the lake.
One of the earliest names of King Arthur 's sword was Caladfwlch.
It is a Welsh word that comes from Calad-Bolg (Hard Lightning).
Later it was changed to Caliburn by Geoffrey of Monmouth.
And today we know it as Excalibur, due to French.
The legend of Excalibur is similar to the Irish hero, C Chulainn who had a sword named Caladbolg; or to Norse Legend of Sigurd.
All these swords were made by an elf.
Sometimes he is named Wayland (Saxon myth); and Gofannon (Celtic myth).
Clarent is one of King Arthur 's two mythic swords.
The first is Excalibur the sword of war, and the second Clarent the sword of peace.
Clarent sword is less known because it was used for peaceful acts, whereas the Excalibur was well known for it was used to defend Camelot.
But by the legend the Clarent Sword play a very important role.
It was stolen by the traitor Mordred, who later used it against Arthur and cut him to death.
In some versions of the story of Excalibur, it is said that the sword was forged in dragon fire, though it is not commonly told of.
A movie named Excalibur was made in 1981.
An electron microscope is a scientific instrument which uses a beam of electrons to examine objects on a very fine scale.
In an optical microscope, the wavelength of light limits the maximum magnification that is possible.
As electrons have a smaller wavelength, they can achieve a higher magnification, and can see very small objects - typically around 1,000 times smaller than those seen in an optical microscope.
The outline of objects, as revealed by the flow of electrons, is changed into a picture using visible light for people to see.
A beam of electrons is sent towards the specimen - some electrons are reflected, while some pass through.
Those that pass through are detected and used to form an image of the specimen at a magnification of about 500,000 times.
This microscope is more powerful than a light microscope.
Similar to a Transmission Electron Microscope, but the reflected electrons are detected.
By measuring the reflected electrons, some information about the surface of the specimen can be gathered.
A narrow beam of electrons is moved across the specimen and a picture is built up piece by piece by detecting how the electrons are reflected or absorbed as it moves.
It combines the high magnification of TEM with the better surface detail of SEM.
It can be used to perform complex analysis on the specimen, which can not be done using TEM alone.
Eli Whitney (December 8, 1765 January 8, 1825) was an American inventor.
He is known as the inventor of the cotton gin, an important invention in the Industrial Revolution.
He made it in 1794 March 14.
The Empire State Building is a skyscraper in New York City, United States.
It is 381 meters (1,250 feet) tall and has 103 floors, and the height to its pinnacle is 1,454 feet.
Named after the popular nickname for New York, The Empire State, it is one of the most famous landmarks in the US.
Designed by the architects named Shreve, Lamb & Harmon Associates, it was built at a time when many people were trying to make the world 's tallest building, but the Empire State Building won.
It was completed in 410 days and United States President Herbert Hoover turned on the lights on May 1, 1931.
The Empire State Building became the tallest building in New York City and the world, holding this record for forty-one years until the first World Trade Center tower opened in 1973.
When that tower was brought down in the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Empire State Building was again the tallest building in New York.
It lost this title in April 2013 when the new One World Trade Center surpassed it, which is now the tallest building in the US and the Western Hemisphere.
Eugenics is a social and political philosophy.
It tries to influence the way people choose to mate and raise children, with the aim of improving the human species.
Eugenics rests on some basic ideas.
The first is that, in genetics, what is true of animals is also true of man.
The characteristics of animals are passed on from one generation to the next in heredity, including mental characteristics.
For example, the behavior and mental characteristics of different breeds of dog differ, and all modern breeds are greatly changed from wolves.
The breeding and genetics of farm animals show that if the parents of the next generation are chosen, then that affects what offspring are born.
Negative eugenics aims to cut out traits that lead to suffering, by limiting people with the traits from reproducing.
Positive eugenics aims to produce more healthy and intelligent humans, by persuading people with those traits to have more children.
p85 In the past, many ways were proposed for doing this, and even today eugenics means different things to different people.
The idea of eugenics is controversial, because in the past it was sometimes used to justify discrimination and injustice against people who were thought to be genetically unhealthy or inferior.
Modern eugenics was first invented in 1865 by Sir Francis Galton, a British scientist who was the cousin of Charles Darwin.
Galton believed that intelligence and talent were hereditary and were passed from parent to their children.
Based on this, he thought that people could be bred to be smarter, just like animals were bred to be larger or smaller.
Galton thought the best way to do this was to learn more about heredity, and also to tell people that they should only marry people who were smart and strong.
Galton chose the name "Eugenics" because it was very similar to the Greek for "well born".
Galton developed the idea of eugenics throughout his life.
He understood the two types of eugenics, positive and negative eugenics.
One problem, which critics brought up, is the difficulty of agreeing on who is a healthy person, genetically speaking, and who is an inferior person.
Obviously, opinions might differ.
The rediscovery of the scientific work of Gregor Mendel in 1900 led to modern genetics, and an understanding of how heredity worked.
Mendel himself experimented on peas, and found that many characteristics of the pea plants, such as their color or their height, could be turned on and off through heredity like a switch.
For example, his peas could be either yellow or green, one or the other.
When applied to humans, people thought this meant that human characteristics, like being smart or not, could be influenced by heredity.
Another line of thought goes like this.
During their evolution, humans were subject to natural selection like any other form of life.
On average, healthy and intelligent people had a better chance of reproducing.
In modern civilisation, however, it often seems that this process does not apply.
Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin had discussed this very point, with concern.
p70 In countries where statistics were collected, those statistics showed that in many cases the poor had more children than the rich.
Also, statistics showed that the total population of some great nations was declining.
p73 One startling piece of information was produced by research directed by Karl Pearson, the Galton Professor of Eugenics at University College London, and the founder of the Department of Applied Statistics.
The finding was that half of each succeeding generation was produced by no more than a quarter of the previous generation, and that quarter was "disproportionately located amongst the dregs of society".
p74
The evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley was also a supporter of eugenics.
He used this argument several times:
"The agricultural analogy appears over and over again as it did in the writings of many American eugenicists".
Similarly, the American geneticist Charles Davenport was a lifelong promoter of eugenics, and wrote one of its first textbooks.
Chapter 3 There is no doubt of the support given to eugenics by professional scientists of undoubted repute.
In the United States, eugenics became a very popular idea in the early 20th century.
People thought it would cure society of all of its problems at the time, like crime and poverty, because they thought that all aspects of human behavior were probably hereditary.
Very important scientists and politicians supported eugenics, and most thought it was a very progressive and scientific philosophy.
But some of those who led the eugenics movement used it to justify racism and prejudice.
They used eugenics as an excuse to pass laws which to restrict immigration from countries that they did not like, saying that the people in them were genetically "unfit".
They also passed laws which said that people of different races could not get married to one another.
Most importantly, they passed laws which said that people who were thought to have mental illness or mental disability could be sterilised against their will.
Under these laws over 60,000 people were sterilised in the United States between 1907 and the 1970s.
Today we know that interpreting statistics of this type is a complex business, and that many of the studies published early in the 20th century have serious flaws.
Nevertheless, what stopped the eugenics movement was not better science.
It was the realization, after World War II, of the effects of Nazi policies on race in Germany and other countries occupied during the war.
Such war crimes were not, of course, advocated by any eugenicist.
All the same, there was a common theme.
This theme was the growing interest in the rights of individuals as against the rights of the state.
With the end of the Second World War, forced sterilisation ended in Germany.
It was continued in the United States until 1974.
The main targets were at first those that were ill or that had some physical or mental disabilities.
Later on, the focus shifted towards convicted criminals, as well as black people.
Only in 1985 was a law of the Swiss canton of Vaud abolished.
This law allowed for the forced sterilisation of a certain group of people.
It was replaced by a law on the national level, that tells under which circumstances people who are unable to consent, may be sterilised.
Though there are few people who openly advocate eugenics today, many people wonder what improvements in genetic technologies will mean in the future.
Genetic counselling exists, where parents can get information about their heredity and even prevent the birth of a child if it has a risk of hereditary illness.
Some people do not think the issue is so clear, though, and wonder if genetic screening, genetic counselling, and birth control, are all just another type of eugenics.
Some people wonder if it is bad because it infringes human dignity.
Some people oppose eugenics and genetic counselling for religious reasons.
The idea of eugenics is controversial today for these reasons.
Much of this concern is misplaced.
Genetic counselling is not going to change the genetic composition of the human population to any noticeable extent.
More relevant is the developing power to identify, and then to change directly, elements of the human genome (genetic engineering).
This does have the potential to change the genetic structure of human populations.
An emoticon is a written symbol, often as 2 or 3 punctuation characters, that stands for the writer 's mood or facial expression.
Some examples are: a smile": -)" or wink"; -)" or frown": ('' or dog nose": O" or le meme arrow")" (see many other examples in text below).
Emoticons are often used to tell a reader about the general tone of a statement, and can change or improve the reading of plain writing.
Over the years, many kinds of emoticons have been created, and now there are hundreds of known emoticons.
The word "emoticon" is a blend of the English words emotion (or emote) and icon.
In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small pictures, which came to be called emoticons as well.
Certain complex character combinations can only be accomplished in a double-byte language, giving rise to very complex forms, sometimes known by their romanized Japanese name of kaomoji.
The use of emoticons can be traced back to the 19th century, and they were commonly used in casual or humorous writing.
In 1912, a smiling mouth (or snigger point) was shown in typewriter text as" ___ \/!".
Digital forms of emoticons on the Internet were written in an email during 1982.
In April 1857, the National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide wrote about the use of the number 73 in Morse code to mean "love and kisses" (later changed to "best regards").
A few years later, Dodge 's Manual talked about a new way to show "love and kisses", the number 88.
A New York Times transcript of an 1862 speech given by Abraham Lincoln contains";)" (now known as a winky-face).
There is some debate as to whether it is a typo, a legitimate form of punctuation, or an emoticon.
Typographical emoticons were published in 1881 by the U.S. satirical magazine Puck.
In 1912, Ambrose Bierce created something called a "snigger point".
"It is written thus ___ \/!
and presents a smiling mouth."
Emoticons had already come into use in sci-fi fandom in the 1940s, although there seems to have been a lapse in cultural continuity between the communities.
In 1963 the "smiley face", a yellow button with two black dots representing eyes and an upturned thick curve representing a mouth, was created by freelance artist Harvey Ball.
This smiley probably inspired many later emoticons; the most basic picture that shows this is in fact a small yellow smiley face.
In a New York Times interview in April 1969, Alden Whitman asked writer Vladimir Nabokov: "How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?"
Nabokov answered: "I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question."
As early early as 1973 or earlier, teletype machine users used "emoticons" to express themselves.
Teletypes were limited to the keys of a standard typewriter keyboard plus a few special characters.
Teletype operators developed a sort of shorthand to communicate among themselves.
These shorthand notations became the foundation of "emoticons" as video terminals began to replace teletypes in general use.
By the early 1970s, people on the PLATO System were using emoticons.
They had many of the advantages of later character-based emoticons because they could be used anywhere that you could type text.
They also had many of the advantages of later graphical emoticons because they used character overstriking which created graphical images.
Several Internet websites such as BT 's Connected Earth assert that Kevin Mackenzie proposed -) as a joke-marker in April 1979, on the MsgGroup ARPANET mailing list.
The idea was to indicate tongue-in-cheek, with the hyphen represented a tongue, not a nose:
I am new here, and thus hesitate to comment, but I too have suffered from the lack of tone, gestures, facial expressions etc..
May I suggest the beginning of a solution?
Perhaps we could extend the set of punctuation we use, i. e:
"Of course you know I agree with all the current administration 's policies -)."
The" -)" indicates tongue-in-cheek.
This idea is not mine, but stolen from a Reader 's Digest article I read long ago on a completely different subject.
I 'm sure there are many other, better ways to improve our punctuation.
Any comments?
Others used: -) for tongue-in-cheek, with the colon representing teeth.
Also used was -:) to indicate sticking out your tongue, in derision or anger.
Although similar to a sideways smiling face, the intended interpretation was different and this does not appear to have inspired the later smileys.
In the late sixties, the APL programming language and timesharing environment, with its rich character set with backspace and overstrike capability provided a fruitful arena for interactive and creative symbol invention.
Union-backspace-dieresis (-RRB- was a recognized and upright smiley in the early seventies.
The first person documented to have used the emoticons: -) and: - (, with a specific suggestion that they be used to express emotion, was Scott Fahlman in the U.S. at Carnegie Mellon University; the text of his original proposal, posted to the Carnegie Mellon University computer science general board on 19 September 1982 (11:44), was thought to have been lost, but was recovered twenty years later by Jeff Baird from old backup tapes.
Read it sideways.
Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends.
For this, use
Within a few months, it had spread to the ARPANET (the early Internet) and Usenet.
Many variations on the theme were immediately suggested by Scott and others.
In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which also came to be called "Emoticons."
Similarly, in some versions of Microsoft Word, the Auto Correct feature replaces basic smileys such as: -) and: - (with a single smiley-like character.
Originally, these image emoticons were fairly simple and replaced only the most straightforward and common character sequences, but over time they became so complex that the more specialized emoticons are often input using a menu or popup windows, sometimes listing hundreds of items.
Emoticons have also expanded beyond simple cartoon facial expressions to a variety of still or moving images.
Some of these graphical emoticons do not actually represent faces or emotions; for example, an "emoticon" showing a guitar might be used to represent music.
Further, some instant messaging software is designed to play a sound upon receiving certain emoticons.
Many applications use text codes, which become replaced with a graphical emoticon.
For example,: dance: or (dance) could be replaced with a graphical dancing emoticon.
A web-forum software package which performed this transformation was Proxicom Forum, developed in 1996.
An August 2004 issue of the Risks Digest (comp.
risks on USENET) pointed out a problem with such features which are not under the sender 's control: It 's hard to know in advance what character-strings will be parsed into what kind of unintended image.
A colleague was discussing his 401 (k) plan with his boss, who happens to be female, via instant messaging.
He discovered, to his horror, that the boss 's instant-messaging client was rendering the" (k)" as a big pair of red smoochy lips.
Many sites use GIF or PNG graphic files, because of their transparency and small file size capabilities.
Files can be created using a raster graphics editor.
Many emoticon artists design their emoticons pixel by pixel.
Some emoticons are made in vector format, such as SVG, and automatically processed using a graphics library.
This allows SVG files to be automatically rendered as a GIF or PNG file, which is compatible with most browsers, which SVG is not.
Traditionally, the emoticon in Western style is written from left to right, the way one reads and writes in most Western cultures.
Thus, most commonly, emoticons have the eyes on the left, followed by the nose and mouth.
To more easily recognize them, tilt your head toward your left shoulder (or occasionally toward your right shoulder if the "top" of the emoticon is toward the right).
The most basic emoticons are relatively consistent in form, but each of them can also be transformed by being rotated (making them tiny ambigrams), with or a without hyphen (nose).
There are also some possible variations to emoticons to get new definitions, like changing a character to express a new feeling, or slightly change the mood of the emoticon.
For example: (equals sad and: ((equals very sad or weeping.
A:") blush can be expressed as: "u blushing for you or a surprised blush, o \/ \/ \/ o.
Others include wink;) a grin: D smug: -) and tongue out: P for disgust or simply just to stick the tongue out for silliness, such as when blowing a raspberry.
An often used combination is also (3 for a heart, and (\/ 3 for a broken heart.
A cute and sometimes gamine smile can be expressed like this::3
An equal sign is often used for the eyes in place of the colon, without changing the meaning of the emoticon.
In these instances, the hyphen is almost always either omitted or, occasionally, replaced with an ` o ' as in = O).
In most circles it has become acceptable to omit the hyphen, whether a colon or an equal sign is used for the eyes, e.g.:).
In some areas of usage, people prefer the larger, more traditional emoticon: -).
In general, similar-looking characters are commonly substituted for one another: for instance, o, O, and 0 can all be used interchangeably, sometimes for subtly different effect.
In some cases, one type of character may look better in a certain font and therefore be preferred over another.
Some variants are also more common in certain countries because of reasons like keyboard layouts, for example the smiley =) is common in Scandinavia where the keys for = and) are placed right beside each other.
Diacritical marks are sometimes used.
An O or U with an umlaut,, can be seen as an emoticon, as the upright version of: O (meaning that one is surprised) and: D (meaning that one is very happy).
nwn (Meaning one is super happy).
Users from East Asia popularized a style of emoticons that can be understood without tilting one 's head to the left.
This style arose on ASCII NET of Japan in 1986.
Similar looking emoticons were used by Byte Information Exchange (BIX) around the same time.
These emoticons are usually found in a format similar to (\* _ \*).
The asterisks indicate the eyes; the central character, commonly an underscore, the mouth; and the parentheses, the outline of the face.
Two separate studies, in 2007 at Hokkaido University and in 2009 at Glasgow University, showed that Japanese and other East Asians read facial expressions by looking mainly at the eyes, and the researchers noted that this is reflected in East Asian emoticons which put emphasis on the eyes, compared to Western emoticons which emote mainly with the mouth.
Different emotions such as ('') (- _ -) (''), are expressed by changing the character representing the eyes, for example ' T ' can be used to express crying or sadness (T_T).
The emphasis on the eyes is reflected in the common usage of emoticons that use only the eyes, e.g. ^ ^.
Looks of stress are represented by the likes of (x_x) while (- _ -;) is a generic emote for nervousness, the semicolon indicating sweat that occurs during anxiety.
Repeating the \/ \/ \/ mark (\/ \/ \/) can indicate embarrassment by symbolizing blushing.
Characters like hyphens or periods can replace the underscore; the period is often used for a smaller, "cuter" mouth or to represent a nose, e.g. (^.
^).
Alternatively, the mouth\/nose can be left out entirely, e.g. (^ ^).
The parentheses also can often be replaced with braces, e.g..
Many times, the parentheses are left out completely, e.g. ^ ^,).
(, o_O, O. O, (.
(;, though this is more likely in Western culture.
A quotation mark", apostrophe ', or semicolon; can be added to the emoticon to imply apprehension or embarrassment, in the same way that a sweat drop is used in anime.
Microsoft IME 2002 (Japanese) or later supports the use of both forms of emoticons by enabling Microsoft IME Spoken Language Dictionary.
In IME 2007, it was moved to Emoticons dictionary.
Further variations of emoticons may be produced by using Combining characters, e.g. and (-RRB-.
In South Korea, emoticons using Korean Hangul letters have been getting popular lately as well.
Korean styles of face emoticons are similar to those of Japan 's, but they contain Korean jamos (letters) instead of other characters.
There are countless number of emoticons that can be formed with such combinations of Korean jamos, but popular choices include letter or as the mouth\/nose component and,, for the eyes.
For example:,, - -,, 6.
Faces such as ' ',"", ' ', ' ', using quotation marks" and apostrophes ' are also commonly used combinations.
Vowel jamos such as, can be used in substitute to T, when depicting a crying face.
Example: \/ \/ \/ \/, _, _.
Sometimes the underscore is omitted, and the two letters can be mixed together, as in _, ^,.
Also, semicolons are used a lot in Korean emoticons.
Single or multiple; (Semicolons) are often used together with faces depicting embarrassment, for an added effect.
Also, other characters may be added to indicate hands, similar to the Japanese emoticons; but usually they are only attached on the right.
Example: - - a (scratching one 's head), ' ' b (Thumbs up), ' ' (The finger)
In some cases, like _, the emoticon can mean an emotion even when it is not depicting a face of any specific emotion.
Letters and are widely used in Korean internet as a sign of laughter (similar to the usage of "w" in Japanese Web) for example,,, -, _; and so the emoticons using those letters as the eye component can be interpreted as a laughing face.
Also, is a Korean version of Orz - although OTL is used more often - depicting a man kneeling down.
English-language anime forums adopted those emoticons that could be used with the standard ASCII characters available on western keyboards.
Because of this, they are often called "anime style" emoticons in the English-speaking Internet.
They have since seen use in more mainstream venues, including online gaming, instant-messaging, and other non-anime related forums.
Emoticons such as,,) also are often referred to as "Kirbies" in reference to their likeness to Nintendo 's video game character, Kirby.
The parentheses are usually dropped when used in the English language context, and the underscore of the mouth may be extended as an intensifier, e.g. ^ __________ ^ for very happy.
Usually on MSN, people use O.O or: ("Screw you" is represented by a smiley showing middle finger (s).!.
Exposure to both Western and East Asian style emoticons or emoji through web blogs, instant messaging, and forums featuring a blend of Western and Asian pop culture, has given rise to emoticons that have an upright viewing format.
The parentheses are similarly dropped in the English language context and the emoticons only use alphanumeric characters and the most commonly used English punctuation marks.
Emoticons such as - O -, -3 -, - w -, ' _ ',; _;, T_T,:), and.
V., are used to convey mixed emotions that are more difficult to convey with traditional emoticons.
Characters are sometimes added to emoticons to convey a anime or manga-styled sweat drop, for example: ^ _ ^ ' or!)
_ (!
or ^ 3 ^ ' or v3v; as well as: _________;;; O; and \* u \* The equal sign can also be used for closed, anime looking eyes, for example: = 0 =, = 3 =, = w =, = A =
There are also more faces along those lines like) o (; using the; as a sweat mark, and the "o" as a mouth, and the inequality signs as the eyes, it shows stress, or slight confusion.
The amount of emoticons that can be made are limitless, and all have their own meaning.
In Brazil, sometimes combining character (accent) are added to emoticons to represent eyebrows, like: _ or _ or _ o or _ u or o _.
They can also replace (or add)" =" or":" by")", example:) D or) = D or) P or): P or) 3 or):3.
The Japanese language is usually encoded using double-byte character codes.
As a result there is a bigger variety of characters that can be used in emoticons, many of which can not be reproduced in ASCII.
Most kaomoji contain Cyrillic and other foreign letters to create even more complicated expressions analogous to ASCII art 's level of complexity.
To type such emoticons, the input editor that is used to type Japanese on a user 's system has a dictionary of emoticons, after which the user simply types the Japanese word (or something close to it) that represents the desired emoticon to convert the input into such complicated emoticons.
Such expressions are known as Shift JIS art.
Users of 2channel in particular have developed a wide variety of unique emoticons using obscure characters.
Some have taken on a life of their own and become characters in their own right, like Mona.
Orz (also seen as Or2, on _, OTZ, OTL, STO, JTO, _ no,, rz, O7Z, _ 7O, Sto, and Jto) is a Japanese emoticon representing a kneeling or bowing person, with the "o" being the head, the "r" being the arms and part of the body, and the "z" being part of the body and the legs.
This stick figure represents failure and despair.
It is also commonly used for representing a great admiration (sometimes with an overtone of sarcasm) for someone else 's view or action.
It was first used in late 2002 at the forum on Techside, Japanese personal website.
At the "Techside FAQ Forum" (TECHSIDE BBS (BBS)), a poster asked about a cable cover, typing"" to show a cable and its cover.
Others commented that it looked like a kneeling person, and the symbol became popular.
These comments were soon deleted as they were considered off-topic.
However, one of the first corresponding reactions can be found on the thread on, on December 23, 2002.
By 2005, Orz spawned a subculture: blogs have been devoted to the emoticon, and URL shortening services have been named after it.
In Taiwan, Orz is associated with the phrase "nice guy" that is, the concept of males being rejected for a date by girls they are pursuing with a phrase like "You are a nice guy."
Orz should not be confused with m (_ _) m, which means an apology.
A portmanteau of emotion and sound, an emotisound is a brief sound transmitted and played back during the viewing of a message, typically an IM message or e-mail message.
The sound is intended to communicate an emotional subtext.
Many instant messaging clients automatically trigger sound effects in response to specific emoticons.
Some services, such as MuzIcons, combine emoticons and Adobe Flash music player in a widget.
In 2004, The Trillian chat application introduced an feature called "emotiblips", which allows Trillian users to stream files to their instant message recipients "as the voice and video equivalent of an emoticon".
In 2007, MTV and Paramount Home Entertainment promoted the "emoticlip" as a form of viral marketing for the second season of the show The Hills.
The emoticlips were twelve short snippets of dialogue from the show, uploaded to YouTube, which the advertisers hoped would be distributed between web users as a way of expressing feelings in a similar manner to emoticons.
The emoticlip concept is credited to the Bradley & Montgomery advertising firm, which hopes they would be widely adopted as "greeting cards that just happen to be selling something".
In 2008 an emotion-sequence animation tool, called FunIcons was created.
The Adobe Flash and Java-based application allows users to create a short animation.
Users can then email or save their own animations to use them on similar social utility applications.
In 2000 Despair, Inc. obtained a U.S. trademark registration for the "frowny" emoticon: - (when used on "greeting cards, posters and art prints."
In 2001, they issued a satirical press release, announcing that they would sue Internet users who typed the frowny; the joke backfired and the company received a storm of protest when its mock release was posted at technology news website Slashdot.
They subsequently issued another press release a month later in response to the reaction their claim had generated.
A number of patent applications have been filed on inventions that assist in communicating with emoticons.
A few of these have issued as US patents.
U.S. patent 6987991, for example, discloses a method developed in 2001 to send emoticons over a cell phone using a drop down menu.
The stated advantage over the prior art was that the user saved on the number of keystrokes though this may not address the obviousness criteria.
In Finland, the emoticons: -), =), = (,:) and: (were trademarked in 2006 for use with various products and services.
The emoticon: -) was also filed in 2006 and registered in 2008 as a European Community Trademark (CTM).
In 2008, Russian entrepreneur Oleg Teterin claimed to have been granted the trademark on the; -) emoticon.
A license would not "cost that much - tens of thousands of dollars" for companies, but would be free of charge for individuals.
In 2010 in the United Kingdom, the British chocolate company Meltwater Chocolate filed a trademark application for a series of two marks: D and: - D in class 30, covering chocolate and confectionery.
The Erd s number honors the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erd s. Erd s was one of the most prolific mathematical writers.
He worked with many mathematicians.
Paul Erd s 's number is 0.
Anyone who directly worked with Paul Erd s has an Erd s number of 1.
Anyone who works with those collaborators who have an Erd s number of 1, have an Erd s number of 2.
The chain continues like that.
Elwyn Brooks White (July 11 1899 October 1 1985) was an American writer.
He is most famous for his 1959 manual about how to write well in English, The Elements of Style (which was first written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918), and also for his three children 's books Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte 's Web (1952), and the Trumpet of the Swan (1970).
He also wrote for magazines and newspapers in the United States.
E.B. White won many awards, including a Pulitzer Prize.
The Trumpet of the Swan may be his best-selling book, but Charlotte 's Web was voted the top children 's novel in a 2012 survey, and not for the first time.
An exabyte (EB) is a unit of measurement for computers of the future.
One exabyte holds 1000 petabytes (PB) or a million trillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) bytes.
An exabyte is so large that it would take about one million powerful home computers to store this amount of data.
One thousand exabytes make one zettabyte.
An era in geology is a time of several hundred million years.
It describes a long series of rock strata which geologists decide should be given a name.
An example is the Mesozoic era, when dinosaurs lived on the Earth.
An era is made up of periods, and several eras make up an eon.
The Phanerozoic eon started about 541 million years ago (mya).
It is made up of the Paleozoic era (from the Greek for "oldest life"), the Mesozoic era ("middle life") and the Cainozoic era ("latest life").
Eschatology is the part of theology and philosophy that is concerned with what are believed to be the last events in history.
It also looks at the destiny of humanity as a whole.
An Ecumenical Council (also sometimes Oecumenical Council) or general council is a meeting of the bishops of the church of the whole world who have come together to discuss matters of Church doctrine and practice.
The word is from the Greek language"", which means "inhabited", and was originally an other name for the territory of the Roman Empire, because the earliest councils were all called in by Roman Emperors.
In later times it was used in the sense of "world-wide" or "general."
The period of Christianity from the First Council of Nicaea (325) to the Second Council of Nicaea (787) is called the period of the Seven Ecumenical Councils.
Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 May 14, 1940) was one of the most well-known anarchists from the late 1800s and early to mid 1900s.
Emma Goldman was an anarcho-communist who was an early supporter of atheism, gay rights and feminism.
She was born in modern-day Lithuania (at the time it was part of Russia).
She moved to Rochester, New York with her sister when she was 17.
At first she worked in a textile factory and married her co-worker Jacob Kersner.
Their marriage was short and Goldman moved to New York City and became a member of the anarchist community.
She became good friends with Alexander Berkman (another anarchist) and helped him plan the attempted-assassination of Henry Clay Frick, a rich man who treated his workers badly.
Berkman was unsuccessful and spent fourteen years in prison, but Goldman was not punished.
Goldman did face many legal troubles though.
In 1893 she was convicted of starting a riot and spent a year in prison.
She was arrested in 1901 for allegedly conspiring in the assassination of President McKinley, but was never found guilty.
In 1916 she was spent time in prison for giving out information on birth control (which was a crime at the time).
In 1917 she was arrested and spent two years in prison for not supporting World War I.
In 1919, Goldman and Berkman were deported (sent back) to Russia because the American government thought they were too dangerous.
The Russian Revolution had just happened and Goldman was hopeful that Russia might end up being a good place.
She ended up deciding that the revolution in Russia was not as good as she thought and that the Bolsheviks tricked many of the people in Russia.
She thought the Bolsheviks were too controlling and were too powerful.
She also did not like that the Soviet Union put lots of anarchists in jail for not agreeing with them.
She and Berkman left after two years and Goldman lived in many places in Europe, including England and France.
In 1936 she moved to Spain to help the anarchists fight the fascists during the Spanish Civil War.
She died in Toronto May 14, 1940 of a stroke.
She is buried near Chicago.
Equuleus is a constellation in the northern sky.
The Eucharist, also called holy communion, the sacrament, or the Lord 's supper, is a kind of religious ritual in many Christian churches.
It started when Jesus Christ told his followers to eat bread and drink wine in memory of him, at the Last Supper.
According to the Roman Catholic Church, the Eucharist is the true presence of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
During a Mass, through the act of transubstantiation, the bread and wine offered change, and are no longer bread and wine.
They become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.
The bread and wine do not change appearance, but they are the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, which Catholics in good standing (not in the state of mortal sin) come and receive Christ they consume Him.
This follows what was said by Christ "Eat my Body and Drink my Blood" (John ch.6).
Most Protestant denominations believe that this was meant as a symbol, while the Catholic Church bases its beliefs on the tradition handed down through the church.
First century St. Ignatius of Antioch, disciple of the beloved disciple John, in speaking of "the heretics plaguing the church" in their day, wrote: "They abstain from the Eucharist because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ" (Smyrnaeans, 7).
From the second century, St. Justin Martyr wrote: "This food we call Eucharist, which no one is allowed to share except the one who believes that our teaching is true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and so lives as Christ has handed down.
For we do not receive these as common bread and common drink; but just as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise we have learned that the food over which thanks has been given by the prayer of the word which comes from him, and by which our blood and flesh are nourished through a change, is the Flesh and Blood of the same incarnate Jesus" (The First Apology).
In most Protestant churches, not including Lutheranism, the sacrament of communion involves eating small wafers or Matzos and drinking wine or grape juice, and not believing that it is the actual body and blood of Jesus, but as a very important symbolic observance, and fulfillment of what Christ commanded.
Some churches offer it daily, some weekly, some monthly, and some a few times a year.
Unlike the Catholic teaching, Lutherans teach that the bread and wine is Jesus ' body and blood, but is bread and wine also (consubstantiation).
In the Latter Day Saints or "Mormon" Church, followers eat small pieces of bread and drink water.
They believe that this is a symbol of the body and blood of Jesus, and they call it the Sacrament.
They also believe that it helps them to make the promises of baptism all over again.
An eclipse is an astronomical event.
It is a process that develops slowly across time.
The eclipse is when one object in the sky moves into the shadow of another such object.
When an eclipse happens within a system of stars, like the Solar System, it makes a type of syzygy.
This means that three or more objects in the sky are lined up in a straight line in the same gravitational system.
The term eclipse is most often used to describe a solar eclipse, when the Moon 's shadow crosses the Earth 's surface, or a lunar eclipse, when the Moon moves into the shadow of Earth.
No solar eclipse can last longer than 7 minutes and 58 seconds because of the speed at which the Earth and Moon move.
When the Sun is not involved, the event is called occultation.
The word comes from the ancient Greek noun ('), which is from the verb (').
This means "to cease (stop) to exist (be there)".
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC) is an 8-bit character encoding.
It is used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems.
EBCDIC descended from the code used with punched cards.
It was also related to the six bit binary-coded decimal code used with most of IBM 's computer peripherals of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
EBCDIC is also used on various non-IBM platforms.
These include the Fujitsu-Siemens ' BS2000\/OSD, OS-IV, MSP, and MSP-EX, and Unisys VS\/9 and MCP.
Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is a cellular organelle.
It is the transport network for molecules going to specific places, as compared to molecules that float freely in the cytoplasm.
The endoplasmic reticulum is in cells that have a nucleus: in eukaryote cells but not in prokaryote cells.
It takes these forms:
Similar to the ER is the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) found only in muscle cells.
The SR stores and pumps calcium ions.
The SR contains large stores of calcium, which it releases when the muscle cell is stimulated.
Another type of cytoplasmic network is the plate-like Golgi apparatus.
The lacey membranes of the endoplasmic reticulum were first seen in 1945 by scientists using an electron microscope.
Executive Order 9066 was a presidential executive order.
It was signed and issued during World War II by the President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones.
The order cleared the way for the deportation of Japanese Americans to internment camps.
As a result, tens of thousands of Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals were interned during the war.
The same order was also applied to numbers of American residents of Italian or German descent.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was very suddenly at war.
Fear, outrage and hatred of the Japanese over the surprise attack was aimed at the Japanese Americans living in the U.S..
It became a common belief that the amount of destruction, including most of the U.S. Naval fleet, was because Japanese Americans helped plan the attack.
There was also the immediate fear that with the Pacific fleet severely damaged, the Japanese would invade the West Coast of the United States.
President Franklin Roosevelt issued the order on February 19, 1942.
It ordered the evacuation of all persons who could be considered a threat to national security from the West Coast to relocation centers further inland.
Over 100,000 Japanese American men, women and children were moved to assembly areas.
From there they were moved to camps which were isolated and guarded.
Edvard Munch (12 December 1863 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter and print-maker.
He was born in Adalsbruk.
He was an expressionist.
He is well known for his treatment of emotion such as fear.
His way of seeing things had a large influence on the expressionism of the 20th century.
People saw this treatment as being intense.
Edvard Munch was an expressionist who painted quite a few famous paintings.
He was born on the 12th of December 1863.
Munch, a Norwegian, had four brothers and sisters.
He had followed his mother and sister by being the best artists in their family.
While Edvard was still young, his mother and one of his sisters died.
But it was when he was thirteen that he really came to like art.
The first paintings he did were simple objects like medicine bottles and other object.
Later on, he drew oil paintings.
He soon went to technical college in 1879 where he learned how to draw paintings with perspective.
However in 1880, the following year he left the school to become a painter.
He went to the Royal School of Art and Design.
This is where he learned sculpturing and naturalistic painting.
This is where he drew his first important portrait of himself and his father.
Munch was ill very often.
Many scientists think that he suffered from bipolar disorder (manic depression).
He died at his house in Oslo.
The Scream (1893; originally called Despair).
This is Munch 's best-known painting, and is one of the best known images in the world.
It is one of the pieces in a series titled The Frieze of Life.
In the series Munch explored the themes of life, love, fear, death and melancholy.
As with many of his works, he made several versions of the painting.
One version was stolen from the Munch-museum in Oslo, Norway, on 22 August 2004, but on 31 August 2006 Norwegian police found it together with another picture that was stolen at the same time, Madonna.
The Frieze of Life themes come back throughout Munch 's work.
These themes can be seen in paintings such as The Sick Child (1886, portrait of his deceased sister Sophie), (1893 1894), Ashes (1894), and The Bridge.
The last-named shows limp figures.
Those figures have faces with no features, or they have no faces at all.
Threatening shapes of heavy trees and houses are above the figures.
Munch portrayed women either as frail, innocent sufferers or as lurid, life-devouring vampires.
Munch analysts say this reflects his sexual anxieties.
Extravehicular activity (EVA) is when an astronaut or cosmonaut gets out of a spacecraft in outer space, then gets back in.
"Extravehicular activity" usually refers to a spacewalk outside a spacecraft orbiting the Earth, but can also refer to a moonwalk on the surface of the Moon.
Three Apollo astronauts made spacewalks between the Earth and the Moon while their spacecraft were returning to Earth.
Astronauts from Russia, the United States and China have done EVAs.
Alexey Leonov, a cosmonaut from the Soviet Union, made the first spacewalk on March 18, 1965.
He spent 12 minutes outside the Voskhod 2 spacecraft.
The first American to make a spacewalk was Edward H. White, II, who spent 36 minutes outside the Gemini 4 spacecraft on June 3, 1965.
The first moonwalk was made by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 21, 1969 (UTC), during the Apollo 11 trip to the Moon.
This first Moon walk lasted for 2 hours and 32 minutes.
Twelve human beings have walked on the surface of the Moon.
In 1973, astronauts made spacewalks to repair Skylab, the first space station sent into space by the United States.
Skylab had been damaged while it was being launched into space.
Many spacewalks were made to build the International Space Station (ISS).
Spacewalks are still made to maintain the ISS and fix it when there is a problem.
Erin Brockovich (born 22 June 1960 in Lawrence, Kansas) is a legal clerk and an environmental activist.
Brockovich was important in making cases against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company in California.
It was the largest direct-action lawsuit in history at $ 333 million.
Since the 2000 movie Erin Brockovich, she has hosted Challenge America on ABC.
She presented the documentary series Final Justice with Erin Brockovich in 2003.
Electric charge is a basic property of electrons, protons and other subatomic particles.
Electrons are negatively charged while protons are positively charged.
Things that are negatively charged and things that are positively charged pull on (attract) each other.
This makes electrons and protons stick together to form atoms.
Things that have the same charge push each other away (they repel each other).
This is called the Law of Charges.
It was discovered by Charles Augustin de Coulomb.
The law that describes how strongly charges pull and push on each other is called Coulomb 's Law.
Things that have equal numbers of electrons and protons are neutral.
Things that have more electrons than protons are negatively charged, while things with fewer electrons than protons are positively charged.
Things with the same charge repel each other.
Things that have different charges attract each other.
If possible, the one with too many electrons will give enough electrons to match the number of protons in the one that has too many protons for its load of electrons.
If there are just enough electrons to match the extra protons, then the two things will not attract each other anymore.
When electrons move from a place where there are too many to a place where there are too few, that is called an electrical current.
When a person shuffles their feet on a carpet and then touches a brass doorknob, he or she may get an electrical shock.
If there are enough extra electrons then the force with which those electrons push each other away may be enough to make some of the electrons jump across a gap between the person and the doorknob.
The length of the spark is a measure of voltage or "electrical pressure."
The number of electrons that move from one place to another per unit of time measured as amperage or "rate of electron flow."
If a person gets a positive or negative charge, it may make the person 's hairs stand up because the charges in each hair push it away from the others.
Electric charge felt when one gets a shock from a doorknob or other object usually is between 25 thousand and 30 thousand volts.
However the amperage involved is incredibly low so the flow of electrons through the person 's body can not cause physical harm.
On the other hand, when clouds gain electrical charges they have even higher voltages and the amperage (the number of electrons that will flow in the lightning strike) can be very high.
That means that electrons can jump from a cloud to the earth (or from the earth to a cloud), and if those electrons go through a person then that person will be burned and may die.
The following experiment is described by James Clerk Maxwell in his work A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873).
Normally, glass and resin are both neutrally charged.
However, if they are rubbed together and then separated, they will become able to attract each other.
If a charged and an uncharged object are brought together, there will not be any attraction or repulsion.
Bodies that are able to attract or repel things in this way are said to be ` electrified ', or to be ` charged with electricity '.
When two different substances are rubbed together, an electrical charge is produced because one of them will give electrons to the other.
The reason is that the atoms in the two substances have unequal power to attract electrons.
So the one that is more able to attract electrons will take electrons from the one that has a lower attractive force.
If glass is rubbed against something else, it may either give or take electrons.
What happens depends on what the other thing is.
Things that have taken electrons are called "negatively charged", and things that have given up electrons are called "positively charged".
There is no special reason for these names.
It is just an arbitrary (random choice) convention (agreement).
Besides being electrified by friction, bodies may be electrified in many other ways.
Ellis Island is an island near New York City.
It was used for immigrants coming from other countries to the United States.
It is one of three islands in New York City.
it is located in the Upper New York bay, north to Liberty Island and east to Liberty state park.
Euripides (c. 480 BC 406 BC) was an Ancient Greek writer from Athens who wrote about 90 plays.
Only 18 of his tragedies have survived complete, more than all other surviving ancient Greek tragedies put together.
A nineteenth play, Rhesus is sometimes thought to be by Euripides, but not all classicists agree on this.
Euripides was the last of the three greatest Ancient Greek writers of tragedies, the others being Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Emily Bront (born July 30, 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire, England - December 19, 1848) was an English author and poet.
Her most famous book is Wuthering Heights.
Bront had two sisters, Charlotte and Anne, who were also writers.
She attended Cowan School with her sister Charlotte.
Bront died of tuberculosis in Haworth.
variste Galois (25 October 1811-31 May 1832) was a French mathematician.
He died from a gunshot wound he received in a duel.
Today, he is known for his theory about algebraic equations which is known as Galois theory.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 October 19, 1950) was an American playwright and poet.
She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923.
She was the third female to win the award.
Millay was also a feminist.
She used the name Nancy Boyd during her career.
Millay 's fame began around 1912 when she entered a poem, "Renascence", in a contest in The Lyric Year.
Millay was born in Rockland, Maine.
She died from a heart attack.
She was fifty-eight.
Ethnocentrism is when a person tries to judge the culture of other people from the point of view of their own culture.
Ethnocentrism can look at things like language, custom, religion and behavior.
An ethnocentric person will use their own culture as the basis for judging other cultures.
They see their own culture as the best and believe other cultures should change to be more like theirs.
The term was first used by sociologist William G Sumner.
He defined it as the technical name for the view of things in which one 's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it.
All people tend to use the values of the culture we were born in.
One of the main goals of anthropology is to not use ethnocentric ideas.
Anthropologists try to see other cultures from the point of view of a person from that culture.
This is also known as cultural relativism.
It is the idea that goes against the idea that some things are always the same in every human culture (human universals).
Cultural relativism says that all human action is relative to the culture where the action happens.
Anthropologists know that they have to not use the standards of their own culture if they want to understand another society correctly.
In computer engineering, an execution unit is a part of a CPU (not to be confused with the CPUs main control unit) that performs specific operations or calculations.
It may have its own internal control sequence unit, some registers, and other internal units such as a sub-ALU or FPU, or some smaller, more specific components.
Now modern CPUs have multiple parallel execution units, referred to as scalar or superscalar design.
The simplest arrangement is to use one, the bus manager, to manage the memory interface, and the others to perform calculations.
Additionally, modern CPUs execution units are usually pipelined.
Eskilstuna Municipality is a municipality in S dermanland County in central Sweden.
The seat is in Eskilstuna.
Countries, which are members of the Council of Europe agreed on certain points written in a document to ensure human rights written in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
These points became the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
In its shorter form it is European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The Convention also established the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and the sentence of this Court has a force legal power by its Article 46.
The ECHR has made many protocols, for example: protocol 2nd for right to education, 12th against all discrimination also by public authority and 13th for complete abolition of the death penalty.
Protocols are set of rules.
All member countries must follow these rules.
The ECtHR can give decisions on complaints or cases which come to it.
If a person thinks that a European country has abused his or her human rights, that person may take the matter to the judges of ECtHR.
The judges will listen to the complaint and give their decisions.
These decisions must be followed by the governments of the countries.
Escape from New York is a 1981 American science fiction movie.
It was released on July 10, 1981.
It was directed by John Carpenter.
The film 's total budget was estimated to be US$ 6 million.
It stars Kurt Russell.
The cast includes Donald Pleasence (as the President of the United States), Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, Harry Dean Stanton, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Tom Atkins, Charles Cyphers, Ox Baker, and Jamie Lee Curtis as introduction narrator (uncredited).
A following movie was released called, Escape from L.A..
Ethylene or ethene is a chemical compound with two carbon atoms and four hydrogen atoms in each molecule.
These molecules are put together with a double bond that makes it a hydrocarbon.
It is very important in industry and has even been used in biology as a hormone.
It is also the most made chemical.
About 75 million tons of it have been made each year since 2005.
Its biggest use is to make polyethylene.
Since 1795, ethylene was called an olefiant gas, or oil making gas.
This was because it came together with chlorine to make the oil of the Dutch chemists.
In 1866, the German chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann came up with a system for naming hydrocarbons.
The suffixes - ane, - ene, - ine, - one, and - une were used to call the hydrocarbons with 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8 fewer hydrogen atoms than the alkane it came from.
Because of this system, ethylene became ethene.
In 1979, the IUPAC decided that ethylene would stay ethylene.
Ethylene is made in the chemical industry by steam cracking.
Some of the parts of an ethylene plant can be:
There are other systems in an ethylene plant.
The systems listed above were the most important systems in an ethylene plant.
Since making ethylene uses a lot of energy, the people making the ethylene try very hard to keep the heat from the gasses from leaving the furnaces.
Ezra (;, Ezra; fl.
480 440 BC), is a highly respected figure in Judaism.
He is called Ezra the Scribe (, Ezra ha-Sofer) and Ezra the Priest in the Book of Ezra.
In an early Greek translation of the bible, the Septuagint, the name is written as Esdras, from which comes.
His name may be an abbreviation of ', "God-helps".
In Islam he is known as Uzair.
He was mentioned in the Qur ` an.
The Book of Ezra and Book of Nehemiah are the oldest sources for the history of Ezra,.
Many of the other books they say are written by Ezra (First Esdras, 3-6 Ezra) are written after that.
Those books take the story from the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
Ezra was a member of the family of Seraiah the high priest.
He lived in Babylon when in the seventh year (~ 457 BCE) of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, the king sent him to Jerusalem to teach the laws of God to any who did not know them.
Ezra led a large group of exiles back to Jerusalem.
He discovered that Jewish men had been marrying non-Jewish women.
He worked to stop this from happening again.
Some years later the king Artaxerxes sent a Jewish nobleman, Nehemiah, to Jerusalem.
He had to rebuild the city walls.
Once this was done, Nehemiah asked Ezra to read the Law of Moses (the Torah) to the people.
The people and priests agreed to keep to this law and to separate themselves from all other peoples.
The second book of Esdras was written a lot later, c. AD 100.
In this book, Ezra talks with an angel or God three times and has four visions.
At the end, he is taken up to heaven like Enoch and Elijah.
Ezra is seen as a new Moses in this book.
Judaism believes Ezra started the Great Assembly of scholars and prophets.
Later, this would become the Sanhedrin, the authority when it comes to religious law.
It is said that Ezra was the writer of the Books of Chronicles.
His tomb at Al - Uzair on the banks of the Tigris near Basra, Iraq, is a pilgrimage site for the local Marsh Arabs.
Elijah of Tishbe is a person in the Abrahamic religions.
His name means "Yahweh is God," was a prophet in Israel in the 9th century BC.
He appears in the Hebrew Bible, Baha ` i scripture, Mishnah, New Testament, and the Qur ` an.
He is best known for being Israel 's most famous prophet, his brave challenge to Baal 's prophets on Mt. Carmel, and going up to heaven in a whirlwind.
Elijah went to the king, Ahab, who rejected God because of his even more sinful wife, Jezebel of Tyre, who stood as a symbol of Israel 's unfaithfulness.
He went to Ahab and God said through his lips (1 Kings chapter 17, NIV), "As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word."
Then Elijah followed the Lord 's command and "went eastward and hid in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan."
He "drank from the brook, and God had ordered ravens to feed him there".
The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook (because it did not rain, as he prophesied).
But then the brook dried up because of so little rain, and Elijah received the message from the Lord: "Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon and stay there.
I have commanded a widow in the place to supply you with food" (1 Kings 17:9).
So Elijah went, and met the widow gathering sticks to make the last meal for her son and herself.
But when he called her and requested her to get himself some jar in a water and bread, she objected, (1 Kings 17:12) "As surely as the Lord your God lives, I do n't have any bread - only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug.
I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it - and die."
Then Elijah said to the widow, "Do n't be afraid.
Go home and do as you have said.
But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son.
For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says: ` The jar of flour will not be used up nd the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land. '"
So the widow did as Elijah told her to do, and there was enough food in the widow 's house for everybody.
But then the son of the widow grew ill..
He finally, after growing more and more worse, stopped breathing.
The widow became so very worried, and called Elijah -- "What do you have against me, man of God?
Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?"
And Elijah replied, "Give me your son."
He took him and carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed.
Then he cried out to the Lord, "O Lord my God, have you brought tragedy also upon this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?"
Then he stretched himself upon the boy three times (probably to give to the boy his body warmth, though his prayer shows that he expected the life of the child to come back as an answer to prayer, not by physical touch), and cried out to the Lord, "O Lord my God, let this boy 's life return to him!"
And the boy returned to life, making the woman admit that Elijah is "a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth": a confession the Lord 's own people Israel had not made.
This is the first example of raising the dead in the Bible.
Then Elijah went to "present himself to Ahab" as the Lord commanded him to, and he met Obadiah, the honorable man who had kept loyal to the Lord and had hidden 100 priests of God that King Ahab had tried to kill.
Obadiah recognized Elijah and respectfully bowed down to the ground, exclaiming, "Is it really you, my lord Elijah?"
Elijah replied yes, and ordered him to go and tell Ahab that he is here.
Obadiah refused, crying, "What have I done you wrong that you are handing your servant over to Ahab to be put to death?"
and declaring how he had "hid a hundred of the Lord 's prophets in two caves, fifty in each, and supplied them with food and water."
and that if Ahab came and saw that Elijah was gone and not here, he would surely kill him.
Elijah replied, the more the calmly, "As the Lord Almighty lives, whom I serve, I will surely present myself to Ahab today."
So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah.
They argued, and Elijah told Ahab to "summon the people from all over Israel" to meet him on the Mount Carmel, and to "bring the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel 's table".
And surprisingly, Ahab obeyed him.
Then, when all the Israelis and prophets of Baal were summoned, they prepared two altars - one for Elijah, and for the Lord the God of Israel - and one for the priests of Baal.
Then Elijah went to the people and said, "How long will you waver between two opinions?
If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him."
but the people did nor say anything, so he continued: "I am the only one of the Lord 's prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets.
Get two bulls for us.
Let them choose one for themselves, and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood but not set fire to it.
I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it.
Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord.
The god who answers by fire -- he is the God."
(1 Kings 18:20)
The people agreed to this, and they did as Elijah said.
Then the priests of Baal all prepared the bull, and called to Baal all morning till noon.
"O Baal, answer us!"
but the so-called "Baal" made no reply at all - and the prophets grew weary and discouraged.
Elijah, however, was pleased, and he teased them (1 King 18:27), "Shout louder!
Surely he is a god!
Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling.
Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened."
So they shouted even louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears wildly, as was their custom, until the blood flowed from their wounds.
After midday passed, it was Elijah 's turn - and nobody paid attention to the Baal prophets anymore - so he prepared the sacrifice, and ordered (1 Kings 18:33), "Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood."
(verse 34) And he said, "Do it again."
and they did it again, and a third time, as he said.
Then, after there was so much water it ran down the trench, he stepped forward and prayed (1 Kings 18:36 to 37): "O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command.
Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again."
Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.
All the people were awed, and they "fell prostrate" and repented.
Then they all seized the prophets of Baal, as Elijah had told them to, and slaughtered them at Kishon Valley.
And Ahab went off to eat and drink as Elijah told him to.
Then, after climbing the mountain of Carmel and asking his servant seven times if he saw anything above the ocean, the servant answered him at the seventh time -- "A cloud as small as a man 's hand is rising from the sea."
And Elijah told his servant to inform Ahab to go home, because a big rainstorm was coming.
Ahab rushed into his chariot and raced home, but the "Power of the Lord came upon Elijah and, tucking his cloak into his belt, he ran ahead of Ahab all the way to Jezreel".
After that, Ahab told to Jezebel about what had happened about Elijah and how the prophets of Baal had been killed by the people of Israel.
Jezebel got angry, and sent a message to Elijah that "by this time of the day tomorrow" she would make his "life like that of one of them", referring to the prophets of Baal.
Elijah became scared, and ran away to Beersheba in Judah, left his servant there, and went ahead for a day 's journey in the desert.
Finally, he came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die (1 Kings 19:4).
"I have had enough, Lord," he complained unhappily, "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors."
And he lay down and fell asleep.
But the Lord sent an angel to wake him up and feed him some water and a cake of bread "baked over hot coals".
Elijah ate and drank and lay down again, and the angel came back again and woke him, and gave him more food.
Strengthened by that food, Elijah got up and traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.
There he went into a cave and spent the night.
And the Lord appeared to him and asked, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
He replied not the answer to the Lord 's question, but instead of how he had "been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty" and how the Israelites were being unfair to him.
The Lord told him to go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord.
Then the Lord sent a great and powerful wind, and an earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in neither: and finally he came in a gentle whisper, and Elijah went out, pulling his cloak over his face.
The Lord had tried to show him through all those winds and earthquakes and fires that the Lord was not always harsh, but was more gentle.
The Lord asked once again, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
but Elijah again ignored the question and complained about how he had been "Zealous for the Lord God Almighty".
So the Lord told him to go anoint many new political and religious leaders, and he did.
And he took Elisha, for his next prophet and companion.
After Ahab died, Ahaziah was crowned king, and he became ill..
So he sent some people to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron, to see if he would recover.
However, God was very angry and told Elijah to prophesy against Ahaziah.
So on the way, Elijah went and met the servants, and told them (2 Kings 1:6) as the Lord had instructed him, "Go back to the king who sent you and tell him, ` This is what the Lord says: Is it because there was no God in Israel that you are sending men to consult Baal-Zebub, the god of Ekron?
Therefore (Because of this) you will not leave the bed you are lying on.
You will certainly (surely) die! '"
And the messengers did has he was told.
At King Ahaziah 's questions, they described Elijah as "a man with a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist".
Elijah 's cloak was probably of sheepskin or camel 's hair, like John the Baptist 's, and showed a big difference from the other rich, well-dressed people at that time.
He was protesting against the selfishness of the king and the upper classes.
The king recognized Elijah by that description (because Elijah had met Ahab, his father, many times), and sent a captain and fifty men to get him.
Maybe Ahaziah thought, like many people at that time who did not believe in God, that if he killed Elijah or forced him to change the curse, it would not happen.
The captain he sent said to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of a hill, "Man of God, the king says, ` Come down! '"
Ahaziah was trying to place Elijah, the prophet, under his, a king 's, power.
According to Israel 's covenant (promise) with God, the king was supposed to be under the power of the word of the Lord spoken by his prophets.
Then fire fell from heaven and consumed the captain and his men.
With this, Elijah was showing the king that in Israel, a king was only a servant of the real king, God.
Later, Jesus 's warning to his disciples when they were trying to call fire down to destroy the Samaritans was not to disapprove of what Elijah did, but to show his disciples that the problem between Elijah and the king and the unfaithfulness of the Samaritans was very different.
The king sent to Elijah another captain with his fifty men, and they, too, were burned up by fire.
Finally, the king sent a third captain with his fifty men, who"... fell on his knees before Elijah..." and bowed before him, humbly asking him to come.
Elijah was told by the angel of the Lord to go down, so he went down and told the king again, "You will certainly die!"
"So he died, according to the word of the Lord that Elijah had spoken".
(2 Kings 1:17, NIV)
After that, Elijah went to Elisha, and they both went on their way from Gilgal.
Elijah said to Elisha, "Stay here; the Lord has sent me to Bethel."
but Elijah insisted upon going, so they went down together to Bethel.
The company of the prophets at Bethel came out to Elisha and asked, "Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?"
Elisha said that he knew; but warned them not to speak of it.
Then Elijah said to him to stay there, and that the Lord had sent him to the Jordan by himself, but Elisha did not obey, and insisted on going with Elijah.
Elijah then asked, "Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?"
and Elisha replied: "Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit."
Elijah then agreed, but only if Elisha would see him be taken to heaven.
They were walking along when suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.
Elisha cried, "My father!
My father!
The chariots and horsemen of Israel!"
Elisha showed Elijah as a symbol of the true strength of Israel.
Elisha picked up Elijah 's cloak and used it to divide the water in the river of Jordan: so this cloak symbolized that Elisha had now taken Elijah 's place.
Ephesus was an ancient Roman city on the west coast of Anatolia.
It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League.
The Apostle Paul is said to have addressed an epistle to the Christians of the city., and it is now known as the Epistle to the Ephesians in the New Testament It is also located in the west of Turkey.
Site still possesses many well preserved ruins side by side with rich history.
Most significant ones are, the odeon, used as a concert hall and city council with the capacity of 1.500 people, Temple of Hadrian dating back to the second century where one of the best sculpture craftsmanship can be seen, Curettes Street hosting many monuments and countless colums on the sides of its marble paved ground, fountain dedicated Emperor Trajan where a part of a remaining statue shows us that Romans knew the round shape of the world in the first century AD long before than Galileo Galilei, Latrines (toilets) where it can be seen how they cared about public sanity.
Apart from the ones above two of Ephesus 's outstanding monuments holds an importance not just for their home city also for world 's cultural and architectural heritage.
The first one is library of Celsuswhich is located at the end of the Curettes Street.
Celsus library looks like a two storeyed building seen from the facade but as we know it used to have three stories inside.
Facade of the building shows us a rare found craftsmanship.
Also the library used to be the third biggest library of the ancient world, having after the libraries of Alexandria and Pergamon.
Anyone who stands in front of this monumental building can understand why did it take twenty years (115 AD to 135 AD) to complete it.
The second one is Ephesus ' grand theater which had the capacity of 25.000 spectators.
It was not just a place of art also as we know it was used for animal and gladiator fights.
With its great dimensions it makes one think about how miniscule my moment in time really is.
It 's one of the sacred ruins of Ephesus, according to the Acts of the Apostles (19:23 -41), the theater was the site of the "riot of the silversmiths" in which those who made silver figures of Artemis the pagan godess of the city rioted because Paul 's preaching was bad for business.
In the 1st century AD, the Apostle Paul spent over three years in Ephesus and he sermonized many times, disapproving pagan worship, in this theater.
JavaScript is a scripting language for computers.
It is often run in web browser applications to create dynamic content like a popup message or a live clock.
It is not related to the programming language Java.
This script writes "Example" on the screen.
The lines that start with are comments; they show someone reading the code what the code does.
The JavaScript is enclosed by tags, to tell that it is a script and not text to be put onto the web page the JavaScript is running on.
The loop makes whatever code is between the and the happen more than one time.
In this case, it keeps looping until is equal to 10, then it stops.
function sayHi sayHi = function sayHi; \/ \/ alerts "Bye!"
instead of "hi!"
without giving an error
Exile means being sent away from the country or area where you live.
People are usually exiled for political reasons or sometimes because they have committed a crime.
They may have said bad things about the rulers in that country or tried to get into power themselves.
People are not exiled in democratic countries, but many famous people in history have been sent into exile.
Exile may mean that someone is sent out of the country, but sometimes they are sent to another part of the country (this is called "internal exile").
Sometimes people have made their own decision to leave their country as a protest against the way it was being ruled.
This is called "self-imposed exile".
In the Old Testament the Jews were exiled to Babylon.
In Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome people were often sent into exile.
For several centuries Russia (in the 20th century the Soviet Union) sent many people into exile, often to labor camps in Siberia.
Thousands of people from Europe including many famous people went to the United States when the Nazis came to power in Germany in the 1930s.
One famous person who was sent into exile was Napol on Bonaparte who was exiled from France, first to Elba and then to Saint Helena after his defeat against the allied forces.
The cellist Pablo Casals went into self-imposed exile as a protest against the government of Spain.
He said he would not come back until Spain was a democracy.
Elblag is a city in the north of Poland in Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship.
It has about 127,000 people.
It was founded in 1237.
Ephesians, is the forty-ninth book in the Christian Bible, and the tenth in the New Testament.
This book was written by the Apostle Paul, and it was written to the people of Ephesus.
The letter was supposed to have been written while he was imprisoned in Rome, around 62 A.D.
The entropy of an object is a measure of the amount of energy which is unavailable to do work.
Entropy is also a measure of the number of possible arrangements the atoms in a system can have.
In this sense, entropy is a measure of uncertainty or randomness.
The higher the entropy of an object, the more uncertain we are about the states of the atoms making up that object because there are more states to decide from.
A law of physics says that it takes work to make the entropy of an object or system smaller; without work, entropy can never become smaller you could say that everything slowly goes to disorder.
The word entropy came from the study of heat and energy in the period 1850 to 1900.
Some very useful mathematical ideas about probability calculations emerged from the study of entropy.
These ideas are now used in information theory, chemistry and other areas of study.
Entropy is simply a quantitative measure of what the second law of thermodynamics describes: the spreading of energy until it is evenly spread.
An expert is an individual recognized as a reliable source of knowledge or skill in a particular field.
An expert s corresponding ability or expertise is, mostly, based on his\/her credential, training, education, profession, publication or experience.
Historically, an expert was referred to as a wise old man.
Such individual was usually a profound intellectual distinguished for wisdom and sound judgment.
An elf is a mythical creature of various origins that is usually regarded as a good being that helps to make trees and nature good.
It is therefore commonly associated with paganism and witchcraft (many modern witches today believe that elves are real creatures).
Elves are usually described as a taller human but with more firmer touch to them.
In the Lord of the Rings, however, elves were described as human sized (and if anything taller), hence changing the description of elves.
They are sometimes known to have long, pointy ears.
In most modern fantasy scenarios, elves are one of the 3 main races (Elves, Dwarves and Humans), although if these 3 are described as the good races, they then become one of 6 races, including orcs, goblins and trolls and\/or giants.
The Epistle to the Hebrews or Letter to the Hebrews is one of the letters of the New Testament.
Although it is believed by many to be written by the Apostle Paul, many others think it might have been written by one group of early Christians to a general group of Jews (also called Hebrews), or to a church with Jewish members.
The letter explains that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the perfect sacrifice for human sinners.
He is superior to angels and is our High priest in the order of Melchizedek.
Jesus is the Messiah whose coming gives us the superior New Covenant, as compared to the Old Covenant of Abraham and Moses.
The writers state that if the Old Covenant was faultless, God would not have sent his Son to start a new one.
By stating that people are called righteous through their faith and belief in God 's ways, the writers urge the readers to receive God 's grace by accepting Jesus Christ.
The England national football team are a team who play association football for England.
They play their matches in England at Wembley Stadium.
They won the football World Cup in 1966 when they beat West Germany by 4 goals to 2 at the old Wembley Stadium.
The manager at the moment is Roy Hodgson.
Eureka is a city of St. Louis County, Missouri.
Ecclesiastes is a book in the Old Testament of the Bible.
It is described as "the words of the Philosopher, David 's son, who was King in Jerusalem" (verse 1).
This is probably Solomon.
The book talks about the meaning of life and the best way to live.
People disagree about what the Book of Ecclesiastes means.
Some people think the book is very pessimistic, saying "all is vain", "there is nothing new under the sun."
(Chapter I), and "I looked again at all the injustice that goes on in this world.
The oppressed were weeping but no one would help them.
No one would help them, because their oppressors had power on their side.
I envy those who are dead and gone; they are better off than those who are still alive.
But better off than either are those who have never been born."
(Chapter 4) Other people think the book says that even though life is hard and we will all die someday, we should just enjoy God 's gifts.
The book finishes by saying:" "Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone" (12:13).
Some of the sayings and ideas in Ecclesiastes have become important in British and American culture.
For example, the saying "there is nothing new under the sun" is often used in the United States.
During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln used a quote from Ecclesiastes in a speech to Congress: "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever..." ("One generation of people dies, and another generation is born, but the world will be here forever.")
Famous American writer Thomas Wolfe once said: "Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound."
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."
The Byrds made a famous song named Turn, Turn, Turn!
that included lines from these verses of Ecclesiastes.
Ethnology is part of anthropology.
It studies different ethnic groups.
The word amplifier (sometimes called an amp) usually refers to an electronic amplifier.
Electronic amplifiers make a signal from a radio or electric musical instrument (such as an electric guitar or an electric bass guitar) louder and stronger.
Amplifiers are also hidden in any electronic thing that makes sound with loudspeakers.
This includes televisions, radios, computers, and mp3 players, to name a few.
Devices similar to the electronic amplifier are made in mechanical engineering.
The power assisted steering and braking on a motor car utilise mechanical amplifiers to multiply the amount of force applied by the driver.
Amplifiers ability to use low impedance speakers may vary.
Typical impedance is 8 ohms.
Classification can be done by current loss when amplifier is on but does not get signal.
Example: A-class amplifier takes more current without signal than B-class amplifier but A-class amplifier have smaller distortion.
There is also several distortion types.
Electronic amplifiers make a signal from the radio or electric instrument louder and stronger by using transistors or vacuum tubes.
Electronic amplifiers have to be connected to electrical current or a battery to work.
Once the signal from the radio or electric instrument has been made louder and stronger, the signal needs to be connected to a loudspeaker so that people can hear it.
When an amplifier tries to make the sound louder than it can, it adds distortion to the sound.
Some amplifiers are made to add controlled distortion.
Distortion from transistors sounds different than distortion from tubes.
Distortion from tubes is often said to be more musical.
Because of all this, more expensive amplifiers often add controlled distortion with tubes.
Many of these amplifiers use transistors for a "clean" sound (without distortion).
From the 1920s until the 1950s, electronic amplifiers used vacuum tubes.
However, electronic amplifiers with vacuum tubes were heavy, and they produced a lot of heat.
They also broke down a lot.
Since the 1960s, most electronic amplifiers have been built with transistors.
Transistors are lighter, cheaper, and more reliable.
Erwin Schr dinger (Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schr dinger, 12 August 1887, Vienna-Erdberg - 4 January 1961, Vienna) was an Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist.
He was one of the founding fathers of quantum theory and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933.
Schr dinger went to the Academic Gymnasium from 1898 to 1906.
Afterwards he studied mathematics and physics in Vienna and wrote his habilitation up from 1910.
He was a soldier in World War I. Afterwards he got professorships in Z rich, Jena, Breslau and Stuttgart.
In 1920 he married.
In 1927 he went to Berlin to fellow Max Planck.
After the take-over of power by the Nazis, Schr dinger left Germany and got a new professorship in Oxford.
In 1933 he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Three years later he returned to Austria and became professor in Graz.
In 1938 he had to leave Austria, because the Nazis had taken over government.
He went to Dublin and became director of the School for Theoretical Physics.
In 1956 he returned to Vienna and got a professorship for Theoretical Physics.
He died of tuberculosis in 1961.
Schr dinger 's most important work is the wave mechanics a formulation of quantum mechanics, and especially the Schr dinger equation.
He also worked on the field of biophysics.
He invented the concept of negentropy and helped to develop molecular biology.
Edward Vincent "Ed" Sullivan (September 28, 1901 October 13, 1974) was an American entertainment writer and television host.
He was best known as the presenter of the television variety show The Ed Sullivan Show.
The program was shown on television from 1948 to 1971 (twenty-three years).
It was one of the longest-running variety shows in United States history.
In 1996, Ed Sullivan was # 50 on TV Guides "50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time".
Sullivan was born in New York City, New York.
His mother was Elizabeth F. Sullivan (n e Smith) and his father was Peter Arthur Sullivan.
He was of Irish descent.
Sullivan used to be a boxer.
He began his media work as a sportswriter for The New York Evening Graphic.
Sullivan was engaged to swimmer Sybil Bauer, but she died of cancer in 1927 at the age of 23.
He was married to Sylvia Weinstein from April 28, 1930.
She died on March 16, 1973.
They had a daughter, Betty Sullivan.
Betty married the Ed Sullivan Shows producer, Bob Precht.
Sullivan used to call Sylvia after every program to hear what she thought about it.
Sullivan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6101 Hollywood Boulevard.
In September 1974, Sullivan had x-rays done.
They showed that Sullivan had esophageal cancer.
Only his family was told about it.
Because the doctors did not give Sullivan a lot of time, the family chose not to tell him about it.
Sullivan thought that his illness was because of ulcers.
He died five weeks later, on October 13, 1974, at New York 's Lenox Hill Hospital.
3,000 people went to his funeral.
It was held at St. Patrick 's Cathedral, New York.
Louise lisabeth Vig e Le Brun (Marie lisabeth Louise; 16 April 1755 30 March 1842) was a painter.
She is the most important female painter of the 18th century.
Her style is considered Rococo with an interest in Neoclassicism.
Sometimes, her name is spelled Vig e-Lebrun.
She painted more than 30 portraits of Marie Antoinette over a six year period.
She was accepted as a member of the Acad mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1783.
She left France after the arrest of the royal family during the French Revolution.
She lived and worked in Italy, Austria, and Russia.
Her work met great critical acclaim in Rome.
She was elected to the Roman Accademia di San Luca.
In Russia, she painted many aristocrats including Catherine the Great 's family.
She was made a member of the Academy of Fine Arts of Saint Petersburg.
Vig e Le Brun returned to France during the reign of Emperor Napoleon I. Her relationship with the new regime was not completely harmonious.
After all, she was a royalist and the former portraitist of Marie Antoinette.
She visited England and painted British notables including Lord Byron.
In 1807 she traveled to Switzerland where she was made an honorary member of the Soci t pour l'Avancement des Beaux-Arts of Geneva.
She published her memoirs in 1835 and 1837.
She lived in Paris, and died there on 30 March 1842.
Vig e Le Brun 's legacy includes 660 portraits and 200 landscapes.
The Epistle to the Galatians (or Galatians) is the forty-eighth book in the Bible (and ninth in the New Testament), written by the Apostle Paul.
The book was written to the people of Galatia, with whom Paul had, at a previous date, founded the Congregation in their area.
It is not known for sure, but most believe that the book was written around 57 A.D.
The book contains some of the most known Bible teachings, such as that all have need of Salvation (Galatians 3:28 -29), and the Fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22 -23).
The Epistle (or letter) to the Philippians is a short book in the New Testament.
It is a letter to the church at Philippi in Macedonia from Saint Paul.
Colossians is the fifty-first book in the Christian Bible, and the twelfth in the New Testament.
This book was supposed to have been written by the Apostle Paul to the people of Colossae.
The First Epistle to the Thessalonians is the fifty-second book in the Christian Bible, and the thirteenth in the New Testament.
This book is believed to a letter from the Apostle Paul to a church in Thessalonica.
The Epistle to Titus is the fifty-sixth book in the Christian Bible, and the seventeenth in the New Testament.
This book is believed to a letter from the Apostle Paul to Titus.
The Eurovision Song Contest is a song contest run by the European Broadcasting Union that started in 1956.
Different singers representing countries in Europe compete every year.
Famous past winners include ABBA (representing their native Sweden) and C line Dion (though Canadian, she represented Switzerland).
The latest winner of the Eurovision Song Contest is Jamala of Ukraine.
She won the 2016 contest in Stockholm, Sweden, with the song "1944".
Erik Satie (born Honfleur (France), 17 May 1866; died Paris, 1 July 1925) was a French composer.
He is mainly remembered today for the strange ways he behaved.
He often gave his music unusual titles such as Piece in the form of a pear.
His best known musical compositions are the three piano pieces which he called Gymnop dies.
The first of these pieces is a very famous piece of music: it is a simple tune over a gentle accompaniment.
Satie sometimes used unusual instruments such as sirens and typewriters.
Satie was more than just an unusual man.
He was very important in the development of music in France in the late 19th and early 20th century.
He was important because of the ideas he had, and many people were influenced by him.
Satie used ways of composing such as very chromatic music and Minimalism before many other people.
These ways of writing music became more common later in the century.
Satie was not a brilliant composer, but he was happy to compose well in a simple way.
He was also interested in other arts such as literature and painting and he was associated with the new ideas called esprit nouveau (new spirit) which was fashionable in France around the time of World War I.
He was born Alfred Eric Leslie Satie, but as a grown-up he always spelled his name Erik.
His father had been in the shipping business, but the family then moved to Paris.
He was still quite young when his mother died and he was sent back to his birthplace, Honfleur, to be brought up by his father s parents.
However, his grandmother drowned, so he was sent back to Paris again where his father taught him.
His father had married again.
His new wife was a pianist and sent young Eric to have piano lessons at the Paris Conservatoire.
Satie hated his piano lessons.
His teacher said that he was the laziest pupil in the Conservatoire.
He was bad at sight-reading, but he continued with his lessons because this would make it possible for him to do just one year of military service instead of five.
In fact, he did less than a year in the army because he deliberately got himself ill with bronchitis.
While he was getting better he started to compose.
His father published a few songs he had written.
However, he did not get on well with his family and he left home in 1887.
Satie soon got to know many people in the famous cabaret Chat Noir.
He grew his hair long and wore a frock coat and a top hat.
He wrote a ballet which most people found shocking.
He became friends with Debussy who was one of the only people who understood the serious reasons for Satie s unusual behavior.
In 1890 he moved to new rooms on a top floor of a house so that people to whom he owed money could not get at him.
He tried to compose in a simple style and became interested in mystical religion and Gothic art.
He inherited a small amount of money with which he bought himself seven velvet suits which were all exactly the same: one for each day of the week.
He started a church called glise M tropolitaine d Art de J sus Conducteur (Metropolitan Church of Art of Conductor Jesus), but nobody belonged to the church except himself.
At the end of 1898 he moved to Arceuil, a suburb of Paris.
He spent the rest of his life there.
He stopped performing in public and earned money by playing the piano in caf s and pubs.
Every morning he walked the 10 kilometres into Paris, stopping on the way at caf s to drink or compose.
He wore a bowler hat, wing collar and always carried a rolled-up umbrella.
If it was raining he kept his umbrella underneath his coat to keep it dry.
He also carried a hammer in case anyone attacked him.
Late at night he walked home again or took the last train back.
His flat was a terrible mess.
In 1905, at the age of 39, he became a student again and studied music at the Schola Cantorum.
He wanted to become a better composer.
He learned how to write fugues.
He still liked to use parody in his music.
In 1911 Maurice Ravel played some of Satie s piano pieces in public.
Suddenly people began to take notice of Satie.
They realized that he had been one of the first Impressionist composers.
Debussy conducted his Gymnop dies in his arrangement for orchestra.
Music critics started to write articles about Satie.
He was at last becoming famous.
He had some humorous piano pieces published.
He was earning some money from his compositions, so he was able to give up playing in cabarets.
He met Jean Cocteau who introduced him to Diaghilev for whom he wrote the music for Parade.
Some people loved it, some hated it, but people were taking notice of him.
He was asked to write more theater music.
He was a very important influence on the six composers who were known as Les Six.
He was asked to write a symphonic drama which he called Socrate.
Many musicians think it is his best piece.
In the 1920s he wrote many articles for newspapers and journals and became associated with the art movement known as Dada.
His ballets Rel che and Mercure both shocked the audiences when they were first performed.
Rel che is an early example of what later became the theater of alienation.
Satie drank a lot of alcohol and became ill..
He got cirrhosis of the liver and died in 1925.
When his friends entered his flat after he died, there was so much mess that they had to throw away two cartloads of rubbish before they could get at his papers and manuscripts.
Satie was involved with dance, theater and cabaret for most of his life and that is what much of his music is written for.
He was always trying out new ideas in his music.
He was capable of writing in a late Romantic style with chromatic harmonies, but he also wrote in more modern styles, often using very simple ideas.
He was always more interested in beautiful melodies than in writing complicated rhythms.
His three Gymnop dies are still extremely popular.
They seem to come from an old-fashioned world where there is great simplicity.
His three Gnossiennes (1890) sound more Oriental, and Satie wrote some very strange remarks in the music.
His piano piece Vexations (1893) is a short piece with strange, chromatic chords, which the pianist is then supposed to play 840 times.
Uspud was an early example of what later became the Theatre of the Absurd.
The text was all written in lower-case letters: the first time this had ever been done.
He wrote many cabaret songs.
Later, after he had studied at the Schola Cantorum, he became famous, and then wrote lots of piano pieces with funny titles and strange comments (e.g. like a nightingale with toothache).
Parade has strange instruments such as typewriters.
Socrate was his most serious work.
After his death all the people he had insulted wrote about Satie that he was a bad composer.
As a result he was almost forgotten until the 1960s when John Cage became interested in his music and made it popular again.
Many Surrealist artists were often inspired by Satie s music and ideas.
The Epistle to the Romans or Letter to the Romans, is one of the letters written by the Apostle Paul to churches in different cities.
Here, the letter is addressed to the early church in Rome, Italy.
Paul wrote the letter to the Romans to explain a very important point in Christianity.
He proves, by quoting the Old Testament, that all humankind is guilty of sin before God.
People whom God calls righteous can only do so by trusting in God 's ways, and not by their own effort.
Only by believing in Jesus, who is the Christ and who died for humanity for their sins, can people be saved.
Once this belief is had, the believer receives the Holy Spirit, who helps the believer live a new life.
Paul asks the Romans to observe Christian ethics and submit themselves to authorities.
The letter remains very influential in explaining to non-Christians and new Christians what their Christian belief is all about.
Eleanor of Aquitaine (c. 1122 March 31, 1204) was the daughter of William X of Aquitaine.
She had a younger sister called Petronilla of Aquitaine.
She brought the province of Aquitaine to England when she married Henry II of England.
It stayed under English control for 300 years.
Eleanor inherited land in France at the age of 15.
She married Louis VII of France on July 22, 1137, and had two daughters:
The marriage was later annulled, as there were no male children.
Eleanor was greatly known for her work in the Second Crusade, for she inspired many people to join.
Eleanor supported a revolt by her children against their father 's rule in 1173.
This revolt was unsuccessful, and King Henry II was so furious that he locked her away in a prison.
In 1189, after King Henry II died and her son, Richard, came to be the king, Eleanor was freed.
Shortly after, Richard died so she supported her son John to take the English throne against the claim of her grandson Arthur of Brittany.
In 1202 during the campaign at Mairebeau, she continued to thwart Arthur.
Emerging triumphant, Eleanor retired to a monastery.
She died there on April 1, 1204.
The Epistle to Philemon is the fifty-seventh book in the Christian Bible, and the eighteenth in the New Testament.
This book is believed to a letter from the Apostle Paul to Philemon.
The European Commission (officially called the Commission of the European Communities) is one of the seven organizations that manage the European Union (EU).
The Commission manages the day to day running of the EU and writes laws, like a government.
Laws written by the Commission are discussed and changed by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union.
The Commission sits in Brussels.
The Commission is made of 27 people, one from each of the countries in the EU.
One of these people is the President, who was chosen by the Council and Parliament, he decides (with each country) who the other members are and what they do.
Each one has a different job, such as looking after industry or trade.
If they do not do their job properly, the President can remove them.
If he does not, or if the President does not do his job, the Parliament can remove the whole Commission from their jobs (this only happened in 1999).
The name Commission can also mean the 25,000 people who work for the President and his team.
They follow the Commission 's instructions in looking after the EU or writing a new law.
It works in three languages, English, French and German.
The first Commission was created in 1952 and was called the "High Authority".
But the modern Commission was created in 1957 and since then has had eleven Presidents;
The Essenes were a Jewish group of holy people.
They were a smaller group than the Sadducees or the Pharisees.
The Essenes lived in various cities.
They lived in communal life dedicated to asceticism.
Many researchers believe the Essenes wrote the Dead Sea scrolls.
Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 drama movie directed by Stanley Kubrick.
It stars Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise and is set in New York City.
Edda or the plural Eddas or Eddur, including Poetic Edda (or Older Edda) and Prose Edda (or Younger Edda), are two collections of stories about Viking deities.
They were made in around 9th to 13th century by Icelandic Christian historians.
Although the Eddur are the most important written records remaining today about Norse mythology, they are not very reliable because Christians hated pagan religions, and they changed the original tales to make the Norse gods and goddesses look silly, lusty, and barbaric.
The term "Edda" most likely refers to Oddi, a place where both Saemund Sigfusson (a cleric who is rumored author of Older Edda), and Snorri Sturluson (a Christian politician, author of Younger Edda) lived.
EastEnders is a BBC television program, in the United Kingdom.
It has been running since February 1985, and has had over 4700 episodes, and is known as a soap opera.
The program is a rival of Coronation Street and Emmerdale.
It is usually shown on BBC One.
The program is in a pretend area of East London, called Walford.
It is filmed in Elstree, a village in Borehamwood.
Like Coronation Street, most action is around a local pub.
The pub in EastEnders is called The Queen Vic.
There are many story lines, including drug abuse, rape, racism, domestic violence, murder, kidnapping, prostitution, theft, senile dementia, arson, and runaway children.
Arguments between members of one family, or between different families, are often in the storyline.
It has won six BAFTA awards.
Embroidery is the art of decorating fabric or other materials with designs stitched in strands of thread or yarn using a needle.
Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as metal strips, pearls, beads, quills, and sequins.
Sewing machines can be used to create machine embroidery.
City and Guilds qualification in Embroidery allows embroiderers to become recognized for their skill.
This qualification also gives them the credibility to teach.
For example the notable textiles artist, Kathleen Laurel Sage, began her teaching career by getting the City and Guilds Embroidery 1 and 2 qualifications.
She has now gone on to write a book on the subject.
An electrode is an electrical conductor that can carry electricity.
It is used to touch a non-metal part of a circuit.
The two electrodes are anode and cathode
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters or other documents.
The word epistolary comes from the Latin form of the Greek word (epistol), meaning a letter (see epistle).
The epistolary form of writing can make the story seem more realistic to the reader.
This is because it is more personal, and is more like the workings of real life.
The end zone refers to the scoring area on the field, according to gridiron-based codes of football.
It is the area between the end line and goal line bounded by the sidelines.
There are two end zones.
Each one is on an opposite side of the field.
It is bordered on all sides by a white line indicating its beginning and end points.
Usually padded orange square markers are placed at each of the four corners as a visual aid.
Canadian rule books use the terms goal area and dead line instead of end zone and end line respectively.
But the latter terms are the more common in Canadian English.
In American football the end zone is 10 yards deep.
Canadian football end zones are 20 yards; 10 yards deeper than those in American football.
Sports like association football and ice hockey require the puck or ball to pass completely over the goal line to count as a score.
Canadian and American football merely need the nose of the ball to break the vertical plane of the outer edge of the goal line.
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (May 11, 1930 August 6, 2002;) was a Dutch computer scientist.
He received the 1972 Turing Award for fundamental contributions to developing programming languages, and was the Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin from 1984 until 2000.
Shortly before his death in 2002, he received the ACM PODC Influential Paper Award in distributed computing for his work on self-stabilization of program computation.
This annual award was renamed the Dijkstra Prize the following year, in his honor.
Edmund Burke (12 January 1729-9 July 1797) was an important Irish politician, and writer.
He became a member of the British Parliament in 1765.
Burke supported the American Revolution but made attacks against the French Revolution.
His most famous book was Reflections on the Revolution in France, which created many of the ideas in conservatism.
An emerald is a mineral rock and a variety of beryl.
It is the birthstone of someone whose birthday is in the month of May.
It is a green rock.
The emerald is one of the most valuable gems, along with the ruby, the opal, topaz, the diamond, and a sapphire.
The word emerald comes from Vulgar Latin.
The word was Esmaralda\/Esmaraldus, a different way of saying the Latin word Smaragdus, which came from the Greek, (smaragdos; "green gem").
It first came from a Semitic word, izmargad.
This meant "emerald" or "green".
The name could also be related to the Semitic word baraq (;; "lightning" or "shine") (c.f. bareqeth and, barq, "lightning").
It is where the Persian (zomorrod), Turkish, Sanskrit (maragdam) and Russian (; izumr d) words came from.
The Erie Canal is a canal in New York State.
It runs for 365 miles from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.
It connects the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean.
It was first thought of in 1808, and it was built between 1818 and 1825.
It was the first route between the eastern coast of the United States and the Great Lakes.
The Canal caused a burst of population in western New York.
It also helped New York City become a large port.
Today, the Canal is part of the New York State Canal System.
Ethanol, also known as ethyl alcohol or grain alcohol, is a flammable, colorless chemical compound.
Drinks with 0.5 % or more ethanol are called alcoholic.
When people talk about it, they often name it simply as alcohol.
Its chemical formula is C2H5OH, also written as C2H6O.
It is used as a solvent because it can dissolve many other chemicals and is not very toxic.
Ethanol fuel can be used instead of gasoline in cars and other engines.
Engines can use pure ethanol or ethanol mixed with gasoline.
In Brazil, ethanol fuel made from sugar cane provides 18 percent of the country 's fuel for cars.
Because of this, Brazil does not have to buy oil from other countries.
To do this, Brazil cut down much of the rain forests to grow more sugar cane, which is then fermented into Ethanol.
Most cars in the U.S. can run on fuels that have of up to 10 % ethanol in them.
Car makers like Ford, DaimlerChrysler, and GM also make vehicles run that run higher ethanol blends.
Some of their engines can run on up to 85 % ethanol (E85).
By mid-2006, there were about six million E85-compatible vehicles on U.S. roads.
Eric Patrick Clapton (born 30 March 1945, in The Green, Ripley, Surrey, England) is an English guitarist, singer and composer.
Clapton was the son of a sixteen-year-old, Patricia Clapton, and Edward Fryer, a Canadian soldier stationed in England.
Clapton 's father, who already had a wife, returned to Canada after World War II.
His mother, was not able to bear the shame of raising an illegitimate child (a child of unmarried parents) in post-war Britain.
She left Clapton with his grandparents Jack and Rose Clapp (Clapton by her first marriage) and moved to Germany where she married another Canadian soldier.
Clapton was raised believing his mother was his sister.
His grandmother did not tell him the truth until he was nine years old.
A polite and well-behaved boy, the young Clapton was an above-average student, though in 1956 he failed the eleven-plus and went to St. Bedes Secondary Modern School.
Two years later however, he passed the review and went to 13-plus on the strength of my art accomplishment and got a scholarship to a school in Tolworth, near Surbiton.
He liked art very much.
He wanted to learn to play the guitar after watching Jerry Lee Lewis on television.
Clapton 's obsession with playing blues music caused him to be expelled from Kingston College of Art because he was playing the guitar in class.
Working as a labourer to pay his way, Clapton spent most of his free time playing his electric guitar.
Eventually he joined a local band, The Roosters.
He later joined Casey Jones And The Engineers with fellow band member Tom McGuiness.
In 1963, Clapton was asked to join The Yardbirds.
It was in the Yardbirds that he earned his nickname of ` Slowhand '.
The name came from his forceful string-bending that often caused broken guitar strings.
He would replace the strings on stage while the crowd slowly clapped their hands.
After about 18 months with the Yardbirds, musical differences led Clapton to move on to John Mayall 's Bluesbreakers, where his talent grew even more.
It was at this part in his career that Eric 's fans gave him his second, and ultimate, nickname - "God"!
In mid-1966 he left the Bluesbreakers, whose members had grown to include Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.
The band he formed with bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker would become Eric 's best-known band, The Cream.
Cream became the "pre-eminent (best) rock trio of the Sixties"; the name came from its members being among the top session musicians in England.
They played both their own songs ("Strange Brew", "Sunshine Of Your Love", "White Room") and cover versions of other people 's songs ("I 'm So Glad").
Clapton became friends with Beatle George Harrison, who asked him to play guitar on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", for 1968 's "White Album".
Clapton also played on John Lennon 's "Yer Blues", in a filmed performance.
While Cream were popular and had several hit records, problems between Baker and Bruce, and the increasing drug use of all three caused tensions that eventually broke the band up in 1969.
George Harrison teamed with Clapton, to write and record "Badge" for Cream 's final album.
Clapton played again with John Lennon and his new wife Yoko Ono, as a member of the Plastic Ono Band.
He appeared with them onstage in Toronto that September, and played guitar on "Cold Turkey", Lennon 's song about heroin addiction.
At that time, the Beatles were getting ready to break up.
Lennon thought about asking Clapton to join his and Ono 's new band, but decided not to have a permanent lineup.
Clapton and Baker joined with Rick Grech and Steve Winwood to form rock 's first ever supergroup, Blind Faith.
Blind Faith lasted only a few months, and released one album.
After Blind Faith broke up, Clapton formed another band, called Derek and the Dominoes.
Their most popular song was "Layla".
He performed a concert at the Rainbow Theatre in London on 13 January 1973, thanks to his friend Pete Townshend of The Who.
He started work on a new album, 461 Ocean Blvd, which was released July 1974.
The inspiration for "Layla" was fashion model Pattie Boyd.
She was married to Clapton 's friend, George Harrison.
Clapton was in love with Boyd.
He was not happy because he could not be with her because she was married to his friend.
In time, Boyd and Harrison grew apart, and Clapton and Boyd got together.
They married in May 1979.
All three remained friends, and Clapton and Harrison called themselves "husbands-in-law", though for some years afterwards, the friendship between them was understandably strained.
Clapton and Boyd were divorced in 1989, after they also grew apart.
Along with his drug problems, Clapton had trouble with alcohol, sometimes drinking a whole bottle or more of liquor in a day.
In the 1990s, he was finally able to stop drinking alcohol.
He also found out more about his father, who had died, and about a half-brother (by his mother) he had never met, who was mentally challenged and lived in a hospital.
Clapton is still making music and performing, sometimes with other musicians such as B.B. King.
Clapton also enjoys fishing at Eastlodge fishing.
((Image: Elizabeth Gracen pic.
jpg thumb (512x768) px right Elizabeth Ward Gracen 2010)) Elizabeth Ward Gracen (3 April 1961) is a former Miss America Pageant winner and American actress who acted in movies and television programs before 2000.
She was crowned Miss America 1982, and Miss Arkansas before that.
Her acts included acting as Amanda in the TV show Highlander: The Series.
She was born near Ozark, Arkansas and graduated from Russellville High School in 1979.
Recently in 2012, Gracen formed Flapper Films; a company that produces inspirational content.
Epicurus (Samos, 341 BC Athens, 270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher.
He started a school of philosophy called Epicureanism.
As a boy he studied philosophy under the Platonist teacher Pamphilus for about four years.
At the age of 18 he went to Athens for his two-year term of military service.
Epicurus never married and had no children, so far as we know.
Epicurus helped in the development of science and the scientific method because he said that nothing should be believed except what we can test through direct observation and logical deduction.
His ideas about nature and physics hinted at scientific concepts developed in modern times.
Epicurus ' only surviving complete works are three letters, which can be found in book X of Diogenes Laertius ' Lives of Eminent Philosophers, and two groups of quotes: the Principal Doctrines, reported as well in Diogenes ' book X, and the Vatican Sayings, preserved in a manuscript from the Vatican Library.
Many pieces of his thirty-seven volume treatise On Nature have been found in the burnt papyrus fragments at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum.
Rodrigo D az de Vivar (AD.
1043 July 10, 1099), known as El Cid Campeador, was a Spanish general.
Exiled from the court, El Cid went on to command a Moorish force.
After the Christian defeat, El Cid was recalled to service.
He took command of a combined Christian and Moorish army.
He used this army to create his own fiefdom in Valencia.
He was a brave general that lead his country to victory.
El Cid was born in Vivar, also known as Castillona de Bivar.
The Muslims gave him the nickname "El Cid" from the Spanish Arabic word al-sid, meaning "lord."
After his father, Diego La nez was killed in 1058, El Cid was an orphan.
He was then taken to the court of King Ferdinand I of Castile, and Ferdinand s eldest son, Prince Sancho II became in charge of him.
El Cid studied alongside Sancho III, Prince Sancho II s son, and they soon became friends.
El Cid then proved to become a fantastic warrior.
When King Ferdinand (Ferdinand VI of Spain) of Castile died in 1065 the kingdom was divided into three parts, Castile for Sancho, Leon for Alfonso, and Galicia for Garc a. El Cid became Sancho s armiger regis, meaning standard bearer, and also became general of the army.
But King Sancho wanted to reunite all the three parts of his dead father 's kingdom.
He attacked his older brother Alfonso and defeated him and his army at Llantada in 1068.
In 1072, with the help of El Cid, Sancho defeated Alfonso again at Golpejera.
King Alfonso then sent his brother into exile.
A Zamora knight slaughtered Sancho in October.
After his brother 's death, Alfonso returned from exile attempting to claim his dead brothers throne.
El Cid then swore Alfonso to the throne and named him King.
Although, Alfonso feared that El Cid would not prove loyal, but with no proof.
In 1074, El Cid married Alfonso 's niece, Jimena.
Some believe the marriage was encouraged by Alfonso to bring El Cid under his watchful eye.
Alfonso never gave El Cid a chance to make a better name for himself in the military, and kept him from becoming famous.
El Cid soon became fed up, and in 1081, without Alfonso 's permission, he invaded the city of Toledo.
This made Alfonso very mad, and his advisors told him that El Cid had tried to betray him by attacking the city without his permission, false information.
Alfonso then banished him from the city of Castile.
El Cid then worked as a paid, professional soldier for the Muslim king of Saragossa.
During the time that had past, El Cid defeated Christian attacks and continued to make himself better known and more famous as a general.
This caused other kings and generals to fear that El Cid would overtake them with his power.
In October 1086, Alfonso had a battle with the Almoravids.
They attacked each other at Sagrajas, where Alfonso was defeated.
The loss made Alfonso reconsider banishing El Cid.
Alfonso called him back, hoping El Cid could defeat the Almoravids.
However, the trust issues led the two men to go their separate ways yet again.
The Alfonso and El Cid were meet together with their armies, but they failed to because of miscommunication.
People convinced King Alfonso that El Cid had planned to not show up, and let Alfonso and his army be defeated.
Once again, Alfonso exiled El Cid.
El Cid and his small army left, and invaded land in eastern Spain.
Four years later, he ruled a large, wealthy plot of land, it s capital being Valencia.
He ruled well, allowing Muslims and Christians to mingle.
King Alfonso begged for El Cid s help in his ongoing battle with the Almoravids.
Meanwhile, the kingdom El Cid had worked so hard to build was falling apart from Muslim revolts.
El Cid went back to Valencia and returned the city to peace.
El Cid continued to conquer many cities before his death on July 10, 1099 in Valencia.
El Cid 's life story inspired many playwrights and poems.
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO (2 June 1857 - 23 February 1934) was the most famous English composer of his time.
He composed in the late romantic era.
Elgar was born in Broadheath, Worcestershire.
His father owned a music shop.
Apart from having violin lessons Elgar taught himself about music.
He studied the printed music in his father s shop and often traveled with him when he went on his rounds to tune pianos.
He heard a lot of cathedral music and often practiced the organ.
He took over his father s job as church organist and soon became conductor of local orchestras and bands.
Worcester was a small town but the music there was good.
The Three Choirs Festival took place there every third year.
In 1884 he was playing the violin in the orchestra when the great Czech composer Dvo k was conducting.
In 1889 Elgar married.
His wife Caroline Alice Roberts came from a family who had more money than the Elgars, and she was 8 years older than he was.
Many people did not approve of the marriage, but she was a good wife to him and encouraged him in his efforts to be a successful composer.
In 1899 Elgar wrote an orchestral piece called the Enigma Variations.
There is a main tune, and then a series of variations on the tune.
Each variation describes one of his friends, but he did not say which friends they were: he only put their initials or nickname at the top of each variation.
This is why the piece is an enigma (a puzzle or secret).
People have managed to work out who each friend was, but the meaning of the main tune is still a puzzle.
This music made Elgar very famous.
The next work that he wrote is probably his greatest work: The Dream of Gerontius (1900).
It is an oratorio.
Gerontius is an old man who is dying and thinking about whether God will punish him for his sins or save him and take him to heaven.
Elgar wrote two other oratorios: The Apostles and The Kingdom.
He wrote two symphonies, a violin concerto, a cello concerto, Introduction and Allegro for Strings, Sea Pictures (five songs for mezzo soprano and orchestra) and chamber music including a violin sonata, a string quartet and a piano quintet.
Throughout his life his wife helped him by ruling neat manuscript lines on plain paper so that he could write his music.
After she died in 1920 Elgar was so sad that he stopped composing.
He died of colorectal cancer in Worcester.
Elgar s most popular piece is the first of his Pomp and Circumstance Marches.
It has the tune which is sung to the words Land of Hope and Glory and the audience always join in singing it at the Last Night of the Proms.
The East Caribbean dollar (sign: $; code: XCD) is the currency of eight of the nine members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (the exception is the British Virgin Islands).
It has existed since 1965, when it replaced the British West Indies dollar, and it is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $ or, alternatively, EC$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies.
The EC$ is subdivided into 100 cents.
It has been pegged to the United States dollar since 1976 and the exchange rate is currently at US$ 1 = EC$ 2.70.
Six of the eight countries which use the EC$ are independent (Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines).
The other two are British overseas territories: Anguilla and Montserrat.
All of the countries except Dominica are Commonwealth realms.
Eurostar is a high-speed train service in Western Europe connecting London and Kent in the United Kingdom with Paris and Lille in France, and Brussels in Belgium.
In addition, there are limited services from London to Disneyland Paris (Gare de Marne-la-Vall e - Chessy) and seasonal destinations in France.
All Eurostar trains cross the English Channel through the Channel Tunnel.
The service is operated by 18-carriage Class 373 trains at up to 300 km\/h (186 mph) on a network of high-speed lines.
Since Eurostar began in 1994, new lines have been built in Belgium (HSL 1) and Southern England (High Speed 1) to the same standard as the LGV Nord line originally used in France, reducing journey times.
The two-stage Channel Tunnel Rail Link project was completed on 14 November 2007, when the London terminus of Eurostar transferred from Waterloo International to St Pancras International station.
An equinox is when the sun passes directly over the equator.
There are two equinoxes each year.
Equinox can also mean either of the two days when this happens.
On these days, the nights are equal in length at latitudes L North and L South.
The word equinox comes from two Latin words meaning "equal" and "night".
Around the day of the equinox, the length of the day is a little over twelve hours and the length of the night is a little under twelve hours because the sun is not a point in the sky and because the sunlight bends as it comes to earth.
The exact day and time when this happens depend on how far away from the equator it is being measured.
They occur on or around March 21 and September 21.
Solstices fall around June 21st and December 21st at odd intervals.
The equinoxes are the beginning of spring, and autumn (or fall in the US).
The time of daylight is quite easy to measure.
This was done in many cultures where festivals were celebrated at the equinoxes.
An earthquake (or quakes, tremors) is shaking caused by sudden movements of rocks in the Earth 's crust.
They can be extremely violent.
Earthquakes are usually quite brief, but may repeat.
They are the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth 's crust.
This creates seismic waves, which are waves of energy that travel through the Earth.
The study of earthquakes is called seismology.
Seismology studies the frequency, type and size of earthquakes over a period of time.
There are large earthquakes and small earthquakes.
Large earthquakes can take down buildings and cause death and injury.
Earthquakes are measured using observations from seismometers.
The magnitude of an earthquake, and the intensity of shaking, is usually reported on the Richter scale.
On the scale, 3 or less is scarcely noticeable, and magnitude 7 (or more) causes damage over a wide area.
An earthquake under the ocean can cause a tsunami.
This can cause just as much death and destruction as the earthquake itself.
Landslides can happen, too.
Earthquakes are part of the Earth 's rock cycle.
The ancient Chinese used a device that looked like a jar with dragons on the top surrounded by frogs with their mouths open.
When an earthquake occurred, a ball fitted into each dragon 's mouth would drop out of the dragon 's mouth into the frog 's.
The position of the frog which received a ball indicated the direction of the earthquake.
This was one of the first tools to help figure out where an earthquake originated from.
Earthquakes are caused by tectonic movements in the Earth 's crust.
The main cause is that when tectonic plates collide, one rides over the other, causing orogeny (mountain building), earthquakes and volcanoes.
The boundaries between moving plates form the largest fault surfaces on Earth.
When they stick, relative motion between the plates leads to increasing stress.
This continues until the stress rises and breaks, suddenly allowing sliding over the locked portion of the fault, releasing the stored energy.
There are three main types of geological fault that may cause an earthquake: normal, reverse (thrust) and strike-slip.
Normal faults occur mainly in areas where the crust is being extended.
Reverse faults occur in areas where the crust is being shortened.
Strike-slip faults are steep structures where the two sides of the fault slip horizontally past each other.
Most earthquakes form part of a sequence, related to each other in terms of location and time.
Most earthquake clusters consist of small tremors which cause little to no damage, but there is a theory that earthquakes can recur in a regular pattern.
A foreshock is an earthquake that occurs before a larger earthquake, the mainshock.
A foreshock is in the same area of the main shock but always of a smaller magnitude.
An aftershock is an earthquake that occurs after a previous earthquake, the mainshock.
An aftershock is in the same region of the main shock but always of a smaller magnitude.
Aftershocks are formed as the crust adjusts to the effects of the main shock.
Earthquake swarms are sequences of earthquakes striking in a specific area within a short period of time.
They are different from earthquakes followed by a series of aftershocks by the fact that no single earthquake in the sequence is obviously the main shock, therefore none have notably higher magnitudes than the other.
An example of an earthquake swarm is the 2004 activity at Yellowstone National Park.
Sometimes a series of earthquakes occur in a sort of earthquake storm, where the earthquakes strike a fault in clusters, each triggered by the shaking or stress redistribution of the previous earthquakes.
Similar to aftershocks but on adjacent segments of fault, these storms occur over the course of years, and with some of the later earthquakes as damaging as the early ones.
Such a pattern occurred in the North Anatolian fault in Turkey in the 20th century.
Tsunami or a chain of fast moving waves in the ocean caused by powerful earthquakes is a very serious challenge for people 's safety and for earthquake engineering.
Those waves can inundate coastal areas, destroy houses and even swipe away whole towns.
Unfortunately, tsunamis can not be prevented.
However, there are warning systems which may warn the population before the big waves reach the land to let them enough time to rush to safety.
Some places, such as Japan or California, have many earthquakes and many inhabitants.
There, it is good practice to construct houses and other buildings which will resist collapse in an earthquake.
This is called seismic design or "earthquake-proofing".
Earthquake-proof buildings are constructed to withstand the destructive force of an earthquake.
This depends upon its type of construction, shape, mass distribution, and rigidity.
Different combinations are used.
Square, rectangular, and shell-shaped buildings can withstand earthquakes better than skyscrapers.
To reduce stress, a building 's ground floor can be supported by extremely rigid, hollow columns, while the rest of the building is supported by flexible columns inside the hollow columns.
Another method is to use rollers or rubber pads to separate the base columns from the ground, allowing the columns to shake parallel to each other during an earthquake.
To help prevent a roof from collapsing, builders make the roof out of light-weight materials.
Outdoor walls are made with stronger and more reinforced materials such as steel or reinforced concrete.
During an earthquake flexible windows may help hold the windows together so they don t break.
The Emperor is a symbol of the Japanese nation and the unity of its people.
The emperor is the head of the Imperial House of Japan.
He is a ceremonial figurehead.
In the Japanese constitutional monarchy, the emperor does not have any political power.
In world politics, he is the only current emperor.
The current emperor is His Imperial Majesty the Emperor Akihito.
He has been on the Chrysanthemum Throne since his father Emperor Sh wa (Hirohito) died in 1989.
The amount of power belonging to the emperor of Japan has changed a lot throughout Japanese history.
The Emperor of Japan has sometimes been a cleric with mostly symbolic powers and sometimes an actual ruler.
Some believe that the emperor is descended from gods.
Until 1945, the Japanese monarchs were always the leaders of the military.
Since the mid-1800s, the Imperial Palace has been located on the former site of Edo Castle in the heart of Tokyo.
Earlier emperors lived in Kyoto for nearly eleven centuries.
The earliest monarch listed as an emperor who is believed by historians to have existed in history was Emperor Ojin.
The imperial dynasty that rules Japan today began as a local kingship in Central Japan in the 500s.
It slowly increased its power over its neighbors.
This led to a more centralized state made up of almost all of the central areas of what is now Japan.
The remote areas were outside its borders.
The emperor 's role is defined in Chapter I of the 1947 Constitution of Japan.
The emperor of Japan has no reserve powers.
While the emperor does serve as head of state, many people question if the emperor is a true monarch in a political sense.
Efforts in the 1950s by conservative powers to change the constitution to actually name the emperor as head of state were rejected.
Regardless, the emperor does do all the diplomatic functions of a head of state and is recognized as one by foreign powers.
Succession is now controlled by laws passed by the Japanese Diet.
The current law does not let females take the throne.
A change to this law was considered until Princess Kiko gave birth to a son.
Until the birth of a son to Prince Akishino on September 6, 2006, there was a potential succession problem.
No male child had been born into the imperial family since Prince Akishino in 1965.
Following the birth of Princess Aiko, some felt they needed to change the current Imperial Household Law to allow women to succeed to the throne.
In January 2005 Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi created a group of judges, university professors, and civil servants to study the problem.
On October 25, 2005 they recommended changing the law to allow females of the male line of imperial descent to ascend the Japanese throne.
On January 20, 2006, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made an announcement that they would change the law to allow women to ascend the throne.
However, after finding out that Princess Kiko was pregnant with her third child, Koizumi decided to wait.
Her son, Prince Hisahito, is the third in line to the throne under the current law of succession.
Naming the emperors of Japan is difficult because of differences between Japan and the Western world.
The Japanese use" tenn" (for the past emperors) or "Kinj Heika" (for the current one).
Problems occur because emperors are named" tenn" after their death.
Some Japanese once thought it was rude to call a person of noble rank by their given names.
This belief is not commonly followed today, but still used for the imperial family.
The current emperor on the throne is almost always referred to simply as Tenn Heika (, lit.
"His Majesty the Emperor") or formally as Kinj Heika (-RRB-.
In English, the recent emperors are called by their personal names.
For example, the previous emperor is usually called Hirohito in English, but after his death he was renamed Sh wa Tenn and is now only called by this name in Japanese.
However, when he was in power, he was never called Hirohito or Sh wa Tenn in Japanese.
Rather, he was simply called Tenn Heika (meaning "His Majesty the Emperor").
An emperor is a male who rules an empire.
An emperor usually comes to power when one of his parents, or relatives, dies.
In some countries, people elected a new emperor from candidates.
The wife of an emperor is called an empress.
A woman who comes to power in an empire is also called an empress, for example Catherine the Great.
The only emperor in the world today is the Emperor of Japan (tenn), but he has very little power.
The true leaders of Japan are the Diet and its Prime Minister because the country is a constitutional monarchy.
The English word comes from Latin, the language of the old Roman Empire.
At first, an imperator was a powerful general (army leader) but, after Augustus, it was only used by their most powerful rulers.
There have been many countries in history whose leaders are called "emperor" in English.
The leaders of the Byzantine Empire (basileus, autokrator) in Greece, the Holy Roman Empire (imperator, Kaiser) in Germany, and the Ottoman Empire (sultan, padishah, khagan, kaysar) in Turkey all said they were just new parts of the old Roman Empire.
The leaders of other countries who said they ruled the whole world or called themselves "king of kings" are frequently also called emperors in English.
For example, the old rulers of China (huangdi), Russia (tsar), and Ethiopia (negusa negast) are all known as emperors in English.
There have also been emperors of France, Germany, and Mexico and the rulers of the United Kingdom called themselves the emperors and empresses of India for a while.
Egalitarianism is the belief that groups are, or should be, equal to one another.
The word is named for the French word gal, meaning equal or level.
There are many possible kinds of egalitarianism.
For example, legal egalitarianism is the belief that groups of people should be equal in law even if they are of different race or religion.
Gender egalitarianism is the idea that men and women are equally important, although they are different.
This word may be used when talking about philosophy in many slightly different ways.
We can best understand the different kinds of egalitarianism by asking, "Who is equal to whom?"
and "How are they equal?"
Elizabeth I of England (7 September 1533 24 March 1603) was the Queen of England, Ireland, and nominal claimant to Queen of France.
She reigned from 17 November 1558 until she died in March 1603.
She was the daughter of King Henry VIII of England and Anne Boleyn, his second wife.
Elizabeth was the last of the Tudor monarchs.
When Boleyn was disgraced at court and executed, Elizabeth 's life became one of tribulations, including imprisonment in the Tower of London.
Despite her tribulations, Elizabeth reigned with intelligence and diligence.
Her reign was distinguished with great achievements in the arts, trade, and exploration.
She ably defended her country through the days of the Spanish Armada.
She never married, but had several favorites, including the Earl of Leicester.
At her death in 1603, King James VI of Scotland was named her successor.
Elizabeth was born in 1533 at Greenwich, England.
She was the daughter of King Henry VIII of England and his second wife, Anne Boleyn.
She had an older half-sister Mary, and, in time, a younger half-brother Edward.
Elizabeth was given a good education.
She could speak and read six languages: her native English, as well as French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Latin.
When she was thirteen and a half years old, on 28th January, 1547 King Henry died.
Elizabeth 's half-brother, Edward, became King Edward VI of England.
He died age 15.
Mary succeeded him in 1553, and after Queen Mary 's death in 1558, Elizabeth became Queen.
Mary I had re-established the Roman Catholic religion in England.
Elizabeth returned the nation to the Protestant faith established by her father.
She did however retain some of the Catholic traditions.
She wanted her subjects to exhibit at least an outward show of conformity to the Protestant faith.
The years of Elizabeth 's reign were marked with many artistic achievements.
William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, and other writers created enduring drama and poetry.
Composers Thomas Tallis and William Byrd worked at Elizabeth 's court.
During her reign, many men sought adventure abroad.
Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Humphrey Gilbert, and other "sea dogs" looted Spanish ships.
They also sailed to the Americas.
In 1580, Drake became the first Englishman to sail around the world.
The expeditions of these men prepared England for an age of colonisation and trade expansion.
In 1600, Elizabeth herself established a trading company known as the East India Company.
England and Spain had long quarreled.
Elizabeth encouraged Protestants in the Spanish-held Netherlands to rebel against Spain.
She also encouraged her "sea dogs" to raid Spanish ships.
In 1588, King Philip II of Spain sent an armada (a large fleet of ships) to invade England.
Elizabeth met her troops at Tilbury telling them: "I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king - and of a King of England too."
The armada was met by England 's smaller, more maneuverable ships on 29 July 1588.
The armada was defeated not only by Englands troops and their smaller ships, but by bad weather over Scotland and Ireland as the remaining Spanish ships sailed for Spain.
Elizabeth never married, and she had no children.
However, she was fond of several noblemen in her court.
Prominent among these noblemen was Robert Dudley, the 1st Earl of Leicester.
Later, she turned to Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.
He wanted to overthrow the government of the Queen.
He was defeated and executed.
Elizabeth died at Richmond Palace on 24 March 1603.
The Protestant King of Scotland James VI became King of England.
He was the son of her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots.
Elizabeth I was the last Tudor monarch, and reigned for 44 years.
Her accession date was a national holiday for two hundred years.
Emperor Jimmu was the 1st emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Jimmu is known as the founder of the Imperial dynasty.
There are no certain dates for this emperor 's life or reign.
The names and sequence of the early emperors were not confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
Jimmu is almost certainly a legend.
His name and genealogy are recorded in the Kojiki and Nihonshoki.
Jimmu is regarded as a direct descendant of the Shinto sun goddess, Amaterasu.
During reign of Emperor Jimmu, the capital of Japan was at Kashiwabara, Yamato at the foot of Mt. Unebi.
The absence of information about Jimmu does not mean that he did or did not exist.
There is very little data about the rulers of Japan before the reign of Emperor Bidatsu
The traditional story is that Jimmu came from Kyushu to Yamato Province on the island of Honshu.
The story explains that he followed a falcon.
He established his reign at Kashihara near Osaka.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Jimmu.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) in Kashihara at Nara.
The mausoleum is located a short distance from Kashihara Shrine.
In 1872, the Meiji government declared that February 11, 660 BC was the exact date on which the reign of Jimmu began.
This was identified as the start of the Japanese nation.
This mythical date was commemorated as the holiday Kigensetsu ("Era Day").
This national holiday was celebrated from 1872 to 1948.
The Kigensetsu events in 1940 were special.
They celebrated what was believed to be 2,600 years since the start of Emperor Jimmu 's reign.
There has been a similar Japanese national holiday since February 11, 1966.
It is called National Foundation Day (Kenkoku Kinen no hi).
The electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is the range of all possible electromagnetic radiation.
Electromagnetic radiation can be divided into octaves as sound waves are adding up to eighty-one octaves.
Physicists have studied electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths from thousands of kilometres down to fractions of the size of an atom.
It is commonly said that EM waves beyond these limits are uncommon, although this is not known to be true.
The short wavelength limit is likely to be the Planck length, and the long wavelength limit is the size of the universe itself, though in principle the spectrum is infinite.
Nearly all objects in the universe emit, reflect or transmit some light.
(One hypothetical exception may be dark matter.)
The distribution of this light along the electromagnetic spectrum (called the spectrum of the object) is determined by the object 's composition.
Several types of spectra can be distinguished depending upon the nature of the radiation coming from an object.
Spectroscopy is the branch of physics that studies matter by its emitted or reflected spectra.
NOTE: The AUDIO entry in this graphic is there for comparison only.
Sound waves and light are two different things entirely.
An expert system is a program running on a computer.
Like a human expert, it knows a lot about a subject.
People can ask the expert system a question.
The expert system will then use a set of rules and give answers to the question.
This method of automated reasoning belongs to a field of computer science called artificial intelligence.
Different groups of people can have different kinds of access to an expert system.
The people managing the network of computers have different needs than the office worker or secretary.
When they are asked a question, they will filter the data with the rules they have.
They might give back a result, or ask an additional question.
The Erinyes (or Eumenides) were the goddesses of revenge in Greek mythology.
They forever followed the person who did a crime (even if the person had a good reason to do it), and they even could make the person go mad.
They are often shown with snakes on their heads, blood coming out of their eyes, and looking very horrific.
Very well known is the one time the Erinyes followed Orestes: Orestes ' mother Klytaimnestra and her lover Aegisthos had killed Orestes ' father Agamemnon.
The god Apollo told Orestes to kill the murderers of his father, which he did.
Orestes was then pursued by the Erinyes for his crime.
But with the help of Athena and Apollo Orestes went to a court in Athens.
It was decided that Orestes had acted right and nobody should hurt him.
Even the Erinyes accepted the decision, and from then on they were also called Eumenides, which means "the kind ones", because they could also let people go in peace if their crime was done for a good reason.
These three female divinities were named Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera, & were born from Mother Earth & the blood of Uranus.
They avenged family crimes such as matricide & parricide, & also tormented evil men in the "Hell" of the underworld, Tartarus.
Their true name was "The Erinnyes" Angry ones, but to the Greeks were known as "The Eumenides" Kindly ones to try to avoid bad luck which may have been brought on by speaking their name.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner (4 October 1903 in Ried im Innkreis - 16 October 1946 in Nuremberg) was a German jurist.
During World War II he was an official of the NSDAP.
He was the head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Head Office) and Interpol.
Kaltenbrunner was the highest SS officer who was charged at the Nuremberg Trials.
He was found guilty of war crimes and executed.
Engelbert Dollfuss (German: Dollfu) (October 4, 1892 July 25, 1934) was the Chancellor of Austria from 1932 until 1933.
He led the country as a dictator from early 1933 until 1934.
He studied law in Vienna, and Economics in Berlin.
During World War I, he served in the Alps and briefly became a Prisoner of War in 1918.
He became Chancellor on May 20, 1932 as head of a right-wing coalition government.
He wanted to solve the problems caused by the Depression.
He had problems finding majorities in parliament.
The measures he liked to take to deal with inflation were not well liked.
In March 1933, he suspended the Austrian parliament.
He then governed by decree.
With Adolf Hitler as Chancellor in Germany, Dollfuss feared that the influence of the NSDAP would grow.
This would then lead to a growth in popularity for its Austrian counterpart.
Because of this, he banned the NSDAP in June 1933.
He also banned the SDAP in February 1934.
In September 1933 he formed an umbrella grouping to support the regime, the Vaterl ndische Front (Fatherland Front) and merged the Christian Social Party with the para-military Heimwehr (Home Guard), a Nationalist paramilitary group.
The regime which was put into power by him and remained in power until 1938 is often called Austrofascism.
The form of state he employed was called the St ndestaat.
On July 25, 1934 eight Austrian Nazis entered the Chancellery building and shot and killed Dollfuss in an attempted coup, as a prelude to Anschluss.
The Nazis surrendered and were executed.
Kurt Schuschnigg became the new dictator of Austria.
An empire is a set of lands or regions that are ruled by an emperor.
Usually the emperor will have governors, viceroys or client kings who each rule one land or region.
An empire will usually also have many different cultures.
Well-known empires include the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the British Empire.
Today, the only monarch to use the title "emperor" is the Emperor of Japan, although his power is mostly ceremonial.
The Final Solution (German: Die Endl sung) was a plan made by the Nazi Germany to kill millions of Jews and Gypsies (Roma and Sinti people of Romania and many other European countries) during World War II.
On July 31 1941, Nazi leader Hermann Goering ordered the SS to make plans for a "complete solution of the Jewish question."
At first people were simply shot dead, but in the autumn of 1941 the SS and police began using mobile killing vans.
People were locked into the back of trucks which had been changed to allow the exhaust gases such as carbon monoxide to enter.
The people sealed in the back of the truck were gassed.
Heinrich Himmler brought in a plan known as Operation Reinhard, named after SS General Reinhard Heydrich, who had been killed by Czech soldiers.
Three camps were set up in Poland for the purpose of killing people.
These were at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.
In 1942 more death camps were set up in Poland at Majdanek, Chelmno, and Auschwitz.
By the end of World War II about six million people had been killed.
Enron Creditors Recovery Corporation (formerly Enron Corporation, NYSE ticker symbol ENE) was an American energy company based in Houston, Texas.
Enron used to have around 22,000 people before it went bankrupt in late 2001.
In 2001, it was revealed that people in Enron were involved in accounting fraud.
The company closed in 2007.
In philosophy, empiricism is a theory which believes that all knowledge comes from experience.
` Experience ' is sometimes translated as ` sense data ', i.e. we can not know anything except by information which comes through our senses.
The British philosophers John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume, clarified some of its basic ideas in the 17th and 18th century, building on the ideas of classical philosopher Aristotle.
Empiricism is one of several competing views about how we know things, part of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, or "study of knowledge".
Materialism and physicalism share some of attitudes of empiricism.
The Orthodox Church, officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, is a Christian church.
Their type of Christianity is also called Orthodox Christianity or Orthodoxy.
Their members are called Orthodox Christians, although there is another group of Churches called Oriental Orthodox that is not in communion with the Orthodox Church.
There are about 300 million Orthodox Christians in the world.
Most Orthodox Christians are found in Russia, Greece, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, but there are Orthodox Christians everywhere in the world.
In 395, the Roman Empire was split into a western part, and an eastern part.
The western part lasted to the 5th or 6th century, the exact dates are a point of debate.
The eastern part, which is commonly called Byzantine Empire, lasted until the 15th century.
The split of the Roman Empire also affected the church, which developed differently in both parts.
In 1054, there was the East West Schism.
The western part developed what is now the Roman-Catholic Church, the eastern part is now called Eastern Orthodox Church.
In the west, there is the Patriarch of Rome, who is commonly called the Pope.
In the east, there is the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Because of historical developments, many Eastern Orthodox churches also have a local Patriarch.
In the west, the Pope is an absolute leader.
The Patriarch of Constantinople is the "first among equals", his power is not absolute, as seen when meeting with other Patriarchs.
I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages.
Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not created, of one essence with the Father through whom all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man.
He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and he suffered and was buried.
On the third day he rose according to the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and dead.
His kingdom will have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who spoke through the prophets.
In One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
I expect the resurrection of the dead.
And the life of the ages to come.
Amen.
The many churches of the Orthodox Church are distinct in terms of administration and local culture, but for the most part exist in full communion with one another.
Most of these churches are led by patriarchs.
Most patriarchs recognize the Patriarch of Constantinople as their spiritual leader.
The following listing contains a selection of Eastern Orthodox Churches.
Unless otherwise stated, they are in communion:
In the 17th century a group of people split from the Eastern Orthodox Church, because they did not agree with some changes that were introduced.
These people are known as Old Believers today.
There are two big groups of Old Believers, and a few smaller ones.
Old Believers are not in communion with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches.
This article is about Edo.
For more information, see Tokyo (disambiguation).
Edo is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868.
During this period it grew to become one of the largest cities in the world.
The site of the city, on what is now known as Tokyo Bay, had been settled for several centuries, but first became historically significant with the building of Edo Castle in 1457 by order of ta D kan..
Kyoto was the site of the Japanese emperor 's residence and the capital of Japan for many centuries, until the Tokugawa shogunate was established in 1603 and Edo became its seat of government.
From that point Kyoto remained merely the formal capital of the country, while the de facto capital was now Edo, the center of real political power.
Edo consequently rapidly grew from what had been a small, virtually unknown fishing village in 1457 to a big city of 1,000,000 residents by 1721, the largest city in the world at the time.
In 1868, when the shogunate came to an end, the city was renamed Tokyo, meaning "eastern capital", and the emperor moved his residence to Tokyo, making the city the formal capital of Japan.
Explosives are chemical compounds that cause explosions; they flare up and burst with a loud sound.
Explosive material has many special characteristics: it is a chemically unstable material, it changes its form very fast and, while changing its form, it explodes by bursting and making loud sounds.
There are two types of explosives: low explosives and high explosives.
This classification depends on their rate of explosion.
Low explosives conflagrate (= burn very fast).
High explosives detonate (= explode with bursts).
A low explosive is a material, which burns very fast, but does not explode generally.
For exploding them, people mix them with high explosives.
Sometimes, even a low explosive may detonate.
A high explosive bursts and explodes very fast.
High explosives produce more pressure than low explosives but low explosives are more safe to use.
People use low explosives in fuses, rocket engines and fireworks, and high explosives in mining and demolition (destroying old bridges and buildings).
Military weapons use high explosives.
Gunpowder and ammonium nitrate are low explosives.
High explosives may belong to different groups: primary explosives and secondary explosives.
Primary explosives are very unstable and rapidly react to shock, friction, and heat.
Any shock, friction, or heat makes primary explosives to burn or blast fast.
Secondary explosives are much more safe to use and do not react very fast to shock, friction, and heat.
Any shock, friction, or heat may burn such explosives, but not make them to burst and blast.
Some people call secondary explosives as base explosives.
Some people also tell about another group of explosives.
These are tertiary explosives.
These explosives do not react to shock, friction, and heat.
For explosion, tertiary explosives may need a mixture with secondary explosives.
Primary explosives are used as detonators: that is, to cause the secondary explosives to explode.
Mercury fulminate, picric acid, lead azide, nitroglycerine and iodine nitride are examples of primary explosives.
TNT, dynamite, hexogen, HMX and Torpex are examples of secondary explosives.
While sending explosives from one place to another, the packs containing different types of explosives may have different types of markings on the boxes.
The United Nations has advised use of such markings.
Some examples are:
The Euphrates is the western of the two rivers that define the borders of Mesopotamia (the other is the Tigris).
The Estonian language (eesti keel) is a Finno-Ugric language.
It is mainly spoken in Estonia.
The Estonian language is similar to Finnish.
Estonian is one of the national languages of Europe that is not an Indo-European language.
Estonian uses the Latin alphabet.
It has many vowels, including,, and.
It has been influenced by and has got many words from German and Swedish.
Estonian language also has different dialects.
An elliptic curve is a plane cubic curve that does not have any sharp turns.
Equidae is a family of odd-toed ungulate mammals.
The family has only one surviving genus: Equus.
Horses, donkeys and zebras belong in this genus.
Animals of the Equus genus can have hybrid offspring, but they are usually sterile.
They can have many different colors.
ELIZA is an early program able to process natural language.
ELIZA operated by processing users ' responses to scripts.
The most famous script was called DOCTOR.
It was a simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist.
Eliza did n't know much about thought or emotion.
However, DOCTOR sometimes provided conversation like a human.
ELIZA was written at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 to 1966.
When the person used words that were not in the very small list, DOCTOR might say, for example, responding to "My head hurts", "Why do you say your head hurts?"
The response to "My mother hates me" might be "Who else in your family hates you?"
ELIZA was programmed using simple pattern matching techniques, but was taken seriously by several of its users, even after Weizenbaum explained to them how it worked.
It was one of the first chatterbots in existence.
Exponentiating by squaring is an algorithm.
It is used for quickly working out large integer powers of a number.
It is also known as the square-and-multiply algorithm or binary exponentiation.
It implicitly uses the binary expansion of the exponent.
It is of quite general use, for example in modular arithmetic.
The algorithm has been known for a long time.
It is already written down in a book called Chandah-s tra.
That book was published in India, around 200 BC.
This algorithm is much faster than the ordinary method to compute such a value.
Multipliying x by itself, n operations are needed to calculate x n. With the method shown above, only log2 (n) operations are needed.
The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a shipping accident that happened off the coast of the United States on March 24, 1989.
An oil tanker, the Exxon Valdez, hit a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska.
At the time of the disaster, the ship carried 53,094,510 U.S. gallons (44,210,430 imp gal\/200,984,600 L) of crude oil.
The accident caused a massive oil spill: 10.8 million U.S. gallons (9.0 million imp gal\/41 million L) were spilled into the Prince William Sound.
It was one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in the history of the United States.
The ship had left the shipping lanes because of icebergs.
The ship never returned to the shipping lane and hit Bligh Reef at around 12:04 AM.
Later, people looked at the causes, and found that the people on board were badly trained and overworked.
What made things worse was the fact that the government was not prepared to handle a disaster with such large consequences for the environment.
This disaster badly damaged the ecosystems of the area.
An estimated 21,300 fish died after being poisoned by the crude oil.
The birds that ate the fish got sick.
Some of the methods tried to clean up the oil were: burning, mechanical cleaning, and chemical dispersants.
Edward VI (12 October 1537 6 July 1553) was King of England and Ireland, from 28 January 1547, until his death.
Edward was the son of Henry VIII of England and Jane Seymour.
His mother died 12 days after his birth.
He became king at the age of 9 when his father died.
When their father died, Edward 's half-sister Elizabeth was 13 years old.
His other half sister, Mary was 31.
Despite being the youngest, Edward was the heir apparent because he was male.
Because he was such a young king, the realm was governed by a Regency Council.
He died when he was 15 and a half years old.
His successor was his cousin, Lady Jane Grey.
He had two advisers (or regents).
The first was his uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, who became Lord Protector.
For the first two-and-a-half years of Edward 's reign, Lord Somerset advised and guided the young king.
Somerset was replaced by John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.
Both men wanted major changes made to the Church of England.
As a result of their advice and his beliefs, Edward 's reign is mainly remembered for the changes made to religion while he was king.
Though his father, Henry VIII, had removed the Pope as Head of the Church in England, he had not changed much else.
Most of the major changes to the Church of England happened during Edward 's reign.
In February 1553, at age 15, Edward became sick.
Before he died, he and his Council wrote a "Devise for the Succession".
This was an attempt to prevent the country returning to Catholicism.
Edward named his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, as his heir and excluded his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth.
However, this was disputed after his death; Jane was deposed by Mary within 13 days.
Mary I reversed Edward 's Protestant reforms, which nonetheless became the basis of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement of 1559.
Laws were passed to make churches more plain.
Catholic churches were rich in decorations and color.
Now under Edward, stained glass windows and icons were removed from churches; the furniture within churches became very basic and plain.
The actual services became more plain and the common person could now understand what was being said at services now called Holy Communion were in English rather than Latin.
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer wrote the Book of Common Prayer also in English.
Priests did not have to dress in the bright clothing associated with the Catholic Church and under Edward.
They were also allowed to marry.
The king remained as Head of the Church.
All of these changes were a major break from the traditions of the Catholic Church.
In parts of Germany and Switzerland, religious groups had also broken away in protest against the wealth and corruption of the Catholic Church.
They became known as Protestant, and England under Edward, became a Protestant country with an independent Church of England.
Edward had never been a healthy boy and his health failed in 1553.
After the nine-day reign of Lady Jane Grey, his Catholic half-sister Mary became queen of England and the country went through another period of religious changes.
Epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, is a hormone and a medication.
The names "adrenaline" and "epinephrine" come from the Latin words ad - + renes and the Greek words epi - + nephros.
Both mean "into or onto the kidney" (adrenaline is made in the adrenal glands, which sit on top of the kidneys).
In medical jargon, epinephrine is shortened to just "epi" (pronounced eh-pee).
The hormone was first isolated and purified in 1901 by Japanese chemist Jokichi Takamine.
It was patented in the United States with the name "adrenaline."
Epinephrine is one of two chemical messengers that control the sympathetic nervous system and cause the "fight or flight" response.
Epinephrine makes the "fight or flight" response kick in, and causes changes in every part of the body.
For example, it:
Because epinephrine causes so many changes in the body, it can cause changes that make a person feel bad.
Sometimes, it can cause changes that could be dangerous.
These are called adverse effects.
They include:
Epinephrine is used to treat a few different medical problems.
Epinephrine can re-start a person 's heart when they are in cardiac arrest (their heart has stopped beating).
It can make the heart start pumping blood to the rest of the body again.
Epinephrine is the best medicine to treat anaphylaxis, which is a very bad allergic reaction.
During anaphylaxis, the bronchi (which bring air to the lungs) get narrower and narrower until the person can not breathe.
Epinephrine makes the bronchi get wider so air can get into the lungs and the person can breathe again.
It also treats some of the other symptoms of anaphylaxis.
People with allergies can get a doctor 's prescription for an epinephrine "auto-injector."
Anyone can learn to use an auto-injector.
If a person starts having anaphylaxis, they just press the auto-injector to the outside of their thigh, and the device will automatically inject the right dose of epinephrine into the person 's thigh.
Epinephrine can be given for asthma attacks, if regular asthma medications like albuterol do not work.
The epinephrine will relax the muscles around the lungs and widen the bronchi, making it easier to breathe.
Croup is a disease that mostly happens in children, and is caused by a virus.
It can cause swelling in the throat, which can make it hard to breathe.
Epinephrine can help bring this swelling down, which makes it easier for the child to breathe.
Epinephrine works best for croup if it is breathed in, so it is made into a special mist that can be inhaled.
Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer.
It was made by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England.
EDSAC was the first stored-program electronic computer.
It was also the first to run a computer game.
Later the project was supported by J. Lyons & Co..
Ltd., a British company.
They were rewarded with the first commercial computer, LEO I. LEO I was based on the EDSAC design.
EDSAC ran its first programs on 6 May 1949, when it calculated a table of square numbers and a list of prime numbers.
Enterobacteriaceae is a large family of bacteria commonly affecting the stomach.
The name is derived from the prefix "entero -", meaning intestine; "bacteria", meaning bacteria; and "ceae", meaning family or group.
It includes many of the more familiar pathogens, such as Salmonella and Escherichia coli.
On February 19, 2015, 179 people in Los Angeles, California may have been exposed to the bacteria.
At least two people have been reported dead.
The bacteria has been called a "superbug" by news reporters.
It was confirmed that the outbreak was caused by the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.
The Essendon Football Club, the Bombers, is an Australian Rules Football team which plays in the Australian Football League (AFL).
The club began in 1872, and played its first game in 1873 against Carlton.
In 1877, the team joined the Victorian Football Association.
Essendon was one of the original teams in the Victorian Football League (VFL) which began in 1897.
The other teams were Collingwood, Fitzroy, Melbourne, St Kilda, Carlton, South Melbourne and Geelong).
Its first home ground was the East Melbourne Cricket Ground, and at the end of the 1921 season the club moved to the Essndon Recreation Reserve, known as Windy Hill.
In 2000, the club moved its home ground to Etihad Stadium.
Enid Blyton (11 August 1897 28 November 1968) was an English author.
She was born in Dulwich, South London, England.
She was one of the world 's most famous children 's writers.
She is also one of the most prolific authors of all time.
(This means that she wrote a great number of books.)
Her most famous stories are the Famous Five stories, about a group of four children (Dick, Julian, Anne, and Georgina, who wanted to be called George) and their dog (Timmy) who have many adventures, and her Noddy books for small children.
Her parents wanted her to become a concert pianist (someone who plays the piano), but Enid wanted to be a teacher.
Her parents agreed to let her train as a teacher.
She began teaching in 1919 in Kent, not far from where she grew up in Beckenham.
As a child and teenager her main interest had been writing poems, stories and other items.
She had sent many of them to magazines but had never had any published.
As she worked as a teacher she began to have her articles, about children and education printed in a magazine called Teachers ' World.
Her first book, called Child Whispers came out in 1922.
It was a book of her poems with illustrations (drawings).
She was married soon after.
She left teaching and began to have more success with her books.
She wrote in and was the editor of magazine for children called Sunny Stories.
The stories she wrote for this magazine were so popular that the magazine was then called Enid Blyton 's Sunny Stories.
The magazine came out every two weeks.
Many of Enid 's most famous books were first printed in this magazine in parts.
Enid Blyton has been in The Guinness Book of Records as one of the world 's biggest selling writers.
She is also included because she wrote more books than almost any other writer (about 700).
Her books were published in many different languages.
She said that she found writing them easy.
In the last few years of her life she had a disease which damaged her mind, called presenile dementia.
Her books still sell in large numbers, and used to be owned by her family.
A few years ago her family sold them, and now her works belong to a private company.
Enid Blyton did a lot of work for charity and had a club for children which helped them to give money to charity.
She was married twice and had two daughters.
She died of Alzheimer 's disease in Hampstead, London.
Books: Enid Blyton: a biography (1974).
The official biography, telling the story of Enid Blyton 's life.
In political science and constitutional law, the executive is the branch of government that is responsible for the day-to-day management of the state.
Under the doctrine of the separation of powers, the executive is not supposed to make laws (role of the legislature), nor to interpret them (role of the judiciary).
The executive is supposed to put the laws into action.
The executive is led by the head of Government.
The Head of Government is assisted by a number of ministers, who usually have responsibilities for particular areas (e.g. health, education, foreign affairs), and by a large number of government employees or civil servants.
In a presidential system, this person (the President) may also be the head of State, but in a parliamentary system, he or she is usually the leader of the largest party in the legislature and is most commonly termed the Prime Minister (Taoiseach in the Republic of Ireland, (Federal) Chancellor in Germany and Austria).
In France, executive power is shared between the President and the Prime Minister and this system has been reproduced in a number of former French colonies.
Switzerland and Bosnia and Herzegovina have similar systems.
Enrico Fermi (September 29, 1901 November 28, 1954) was an Italian-American physicist who worked on the first nuclear reactor and helped make quantum theory.
He also was important to particle physics, and statistical mechanics.
Fermi won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for his work on induced radioactivity.
He built the world 's first nuclear reactor.
Fermi was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century.
Fermi was born in Rome and went to a local grammar school.
He was very good at maths and science and won a prize from Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa.
He went to the University of Pisa where he studied physics.
In 1923 he was given a scholarship from the Italian government and went to G ttingen for more study.
He was given a Rockefeller scholarship in 1924 and studied in Leyden.
He came back to Italy at the end of 1924 and became Lecturer in Mathematical Physics and Mechanics at the University of Florence.
In 1926, Fermi discovered the statistical laws, now called Fermi statistics.
These laws explain the actions of the particles which are subject to the Pauli exclusion principle, which are now called fermions.
These are different to the particles called bosons which are explained by Bose-Einstein statistics.
In 1927 he became Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome.
He spent time studying electrodynamics, and began to closely look at the atomic nucleus.
In 1934, using discoveries made by Wolfgang Pauli, Fr d ric Joliot, Ir ne Joliot-Curie, he was able to show changes in almost every element bombarded with neutrons.
This led to the discovery of slow neutrons, nuclear fission and making elements that were not in the Periodic Table.
The Electric guitar is a type of musical instrument.
It was made in 1931 by George Beauchamp.
It is a string instrument usually played with a pick and sometimes with the fingers.
It uses things called "electric pickups" which are wire-wound magnets that change the vibration of the strings into electric current.
This electric current is then sent to an amplifier that changes it to sound.
This electric current can also be changed to produce effects.
The main parts of an electric guitar are the neck, the pickups, the tuners, the bridge, the input, the body, the frets, the pick guard, the volume knobs and the tone knobs.
There may also be other parts that can change other sounds.
A normal electric guitar has one neck with 6 strings on it, although there are 12 string guitars and guitars with more than one neck.
Guitars are made and sold in many parts of the world by many companies.
They can be hand made or factory made.
Some companies that make electric guitars are Fender, Gibson, and Ibanez.
Many guitarists today share their music through a system called tablature (commonly known as ` tab ').
Tablature is a way of reading notes for a guitar.
It is much simpler than musical notes, but most tabs do not support rhythm.
Many tabs can be found online or in books and magazines.
Each line represents a string.
Tab is always read as if the player were holding the guitar on their lap, strings facing up.
Each number then represents what fret the finger is placed on.
The above diagram would be to play an open E chord, picking each string individually, and then strumming the chord.
If the notes are stacked directly above each other, it means to strum the chord.
Some guitar music is written in both musical note format and tablature.
The musical notes are written out, with the corresponding tablature under each line of notes.
Enthalpy is a concept used in science and engineering when heat and work need to be calculated.
When a substance changes at constant pressure, enthalpy tells how much heat and work were added to (or removed from) the substance.
Enthalpy is similar to energy, but not the same.
When a substance grows or shrinks, energy is used up or released.
Enthalpy accounts for this energy.
Because of this, scientists often calculate the change in enthalpy, rather than the change in energy.
The name comes from the Greek word "enthalpos" (-RRB-, meaning "to put heat into".
The idea and the word was made up by the Dutch scientist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1909.
When a chemical reaction happens, a substance can become warmer or colder.
As a result, heat will flow to things around it, or from things around it, until its temperature is the same again.
If the pressure stays the same, this amount of heat tells how much the enthalpy changed.
For example, if gasoline is burned in the open air, heat is released by the gasoline.
If we suppose 100 kilojoules of heat were released, then the enthalpy of the gasoline was reduced by 100 kilojoules.
Therefore the change in enthalpy for this reaction was H = 100 kJ.
If a chemical reaction gives off heat (warming its surroundings), then the enthalpy of the reaction is said to have decreased.
The value of H is negative.
This kind of reaction, like the example above, is called exothermic.
If a chemical reaction absorbs heat (cooling its surroundings), then the reaction 's enthalpy has increased.
The value of H is positive.
This is called an endothermic reaction.
Ennio Morricone (born November 10, 1928) is an Italian classical composer famous for making movie scores.
He has composed the scores for more than 500 movies and television programs.
He is well known for composing the scores to Western movies, particularly Spaghetti Westerns.
In 2007 he received the Honorary Academy Award for his many great movie scores.
In his career, the composer sold over 50 million records worldwide.
Enver Halil Hoxha (; 16 October 190811 April 1985) was the communist dictator of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985.
His title was First Secretary of the Party of Labor of Albania.
Hoxha was born in Gjirokast r, a city in southern Albania (then under the Ottoman Empire) that has been home to many prominent families.
He was the son of Halil Hoxha, a Bektashi Tosk cloth merchant who traveled widely across Europe and the United States and Gjylihan (Gjylo) Hoxha.
He was raised a member of a wealthy Muslim family of landowners and merchants.
He went to the best schools in Albania in the 1920s.
He was given one of the few scholarships to a foreign college.
In 1931 he attended the University of Montpellier in France.
He lost his scholarship in 1934 for poor performance and moved to Paris.
Near the end of World War II he became the Prime Minister of Albania.
Putting two or more liquids together creates an emulsion if the liquids do not mix.
Immiscible liquids do not mix together.
For example, if you add oil to water, the oil floats on the surface of the water.
And if you shake the two together then leave them to stand, tiny droplets of oil float upwards.
These droplets join together until eventually the oil is floating on the water again.
To stop the two liquids separating, we need a substance called an emulsifier.
a hydrophilic end (water-loving) that forms chemical bonds with water but not with oils, and a hydrophobic end (water-hating) that forms chemical bonds with oils but not with water.
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, (born Prince Louis of Battenberg; 25 June 1900 27 August 1979), known informally as Lord Mountbatten, was a British statesman and naval officer, an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and second cousin once removed to Elizabeth II.
In 1979, along with three other people, including a grandson Nicholas, he was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), which planted a bomb in his fishing boat, Shadow V, at Mullaghmore, County Sligo, in Ireland.
Elbridge Thomas Gerry (July 17, 1744 November 23, 1814) was an American politician from Massachusetts.
As a Democratic-Republican he was elected the fifth Vice President of the United States, serving under James Madison, from March 4, 1813, until his death a year and a half later.
Gerry was a member of the Continental Congress and was a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.
He was a delegate to the United States Constitutional Convention in 1787 but did not sign it.
Gerry was elected to the House of Representatives and served there from 1789 to 1793.
Gerry was elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1810 and served for two years.
While serving as governor, Gerry supported a plan that would re-create voting districts in Massachusetts to give more power to the political party that he belonged to.
The word gerrymander used today when a party tries to create more favourable voting districts was named for Elbridge Gerry.
Gerry was Vice President under James Madison and died in office on November 23, 1814.
Encryption allows information to be hidden so that it can not be read without special knowledge (such as a password).
This is done with a secret code or cypher.
The hidden information is said to be encrypted.
Decryption is a way to change encrypted information back into plain text.
This is the decrypted form.
The study of encryption is called cryptography.
Cryptanalysis can be done by hand if the cypher is simple.
Complex cyphers need a computer to search for possible keys.
Decryption is a field of computer science and mathematics that looks at how difficult it is to break a cypher.
A simple kind of encryption for words is ROT13.
In ROT13, letters of the alphabet are changed with each other using a simple pattern.
For example, A changes to N, B changes to O, C changes to P, and so on.
Each letter is "rotated" by 13 spaces.
Using the ROT13 cipher, the words Simple English Wikipedia becomes Fvzcyr Ratyvfu Jvxvcrqvn.
The ROT13 cipher is very easy to decrypt.
Because there are 26 letters in the English alphabet, if a letter is rotated two times by 13 letters each time, the original letter will be obtained.
So applying the ROT13 cipher a second time brings back the original text.
When he communicated with his army, Julius Caesar sometimes used what is known as Caesar cipher today.
This cipher works by shifting the position of letters: each letter is rotated by 3 positions.
Most kinds of encryption are made more complex so cryptanalysis will be difficult.
Some are made only for text.
Others are made for binary computer files like pictures and music.
Today, many people use the asymmetric encryption system called RSA.
Any computer file can be encrypted with RSA.
AES is a common symmetric algorithm.
Most types of encryption can theoretically be cracked: an enemy might be able to decrypt a message without knowing the password, if he has clever mathematicians, powerful computers and lots of time.
The one-time pad is special because, if it is used correctly, it is impossible to crack.
There are three rules that must be followed:
If these three rules are obeyed, then it is impossible to read the secret message without knowing the secret key.
For this reason, during the Cold War, embassies and large military units often used one-time pads to communicate secretly with their governments.
They had little books ("pads") filled with random letters or random numbers.
Each page from the pad could only be used once: this is why it is called a "one-time pad".
Encryption is often used on the Internet, as many web sites use it to protect private information.
On the Internet, several encryption protocols are used, such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), IPsec, and SSH.
They use the RSA encryption system and others.
The protocol for protected web browsing is called HTTPS.
URL encryption mostly uses the MD5 Algorithm.
Various algorithms are used in the internet market depending upon the need.
The EPR paradox is an early and strong criticism of quantum mechanics.
Albert Einstein and his co-workers, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, said that Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and the other scientists in Copenhagen were wrong about uncertainty.
Heisenberg claimed that you could never know, for any one time, both the position and momentum (or velocity, or trajectory) of any atom-sized or smaller particle.
The idea was that the two could not be measured at the same time, and that as soon as one was measured a change would occur and you would not get the same answer for the other one that you would have gotten if you had measured it first.
Einstein and his group said that Heisenberg should think again.
Suppose you had two very small particles.
You measured the weight of each of them and then stuck them together.
You gave them a little push.
Then something broke them apart.
They should have both positions and velocities that were related.
So if you measured the position of one of them, then even if you assumed that Heisenberg was right and you could not involve messing up its velocity in the process of measuring it, surely that did not mean that it never had a definite velocity.
For proof, Einstein said that you could next measure the velocity of the second particle and, since everything was mathematically related, you would then know the velocity of the first particle.
There was one way that Heisenberg could be right, a reason that Einstein thought was nonsense: What if measuring the position of the first particle would mess up the velocity of the second particle.
That would be like magic.
How could anybody explain such an influence?
Suppose that the two particles were moving away very fast and a long time had gone by.
If something that happened to the first particle somehow influenced the second particle, its influence would have to travel faster than the speed of light, which is impossible.
Physicists like Erwin Schr dinger suggested that maybe the relationship in position and velocity would just gradually go away somehow.
Schr dinger called the connection between the two particles (and anything like it that happened to other things) "entanglement."
"Spooky action at a distance," as Einstein called it, is one way of understanding this paradox.
Einstein had no way of knowing that future experiments would show that entanglement exists.
In the end, John Stewart Bell showed mathematically that there is no way that hidden variables could account for experimental results that show entanglement.
Evaporation is when a liquid becomes a gas without forming bubbles inside the liquid volume.
If bubbles are formed we are talking instead about "boiling".
For example, water left in a bowl will slowly disappear.
The water evaporates into water vapor, the gas phase of water.
The water vapor mixes with the air.
The reverse of evaporation is condensation.
When the molecules in a liquid are heated, they move faster.
This makes them full of energy and so the particles collide with each other, and eventually they become so far apart that they become a gas.
During evaporation only the molecules near the liquid surface are changing from liquid to vapor.
During boiling the molecules inside the volume of the liquid are also changing to vapor.
For this reason during evaporation no bubbles are formed, instead they are formed during boiling.
Evaporation can happen at any temperature, while boiling happens only at a specified temperature called the "boiling point".
Evaporation happens slowly, but boiling happens quickly.
Some liquids evaporate more quickly than others.
There are many factors that affect the evaporation rate.
The rate of evaporation depends on the liquid 's exposed surface area (faster when increased), the humidity of surroundings (slower when increased), the presence of wind (faster when increased) and the temperature (faster when increased).
Liquid with high boiling points (those that boil at very high temperatures) tend to evaporate more slowly than those with lower boiling temperatures.
Evaporation is a very essential part of the water cycle.
Edward Gibbon (8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English historian and Member of Parliament.
His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788.
The Decline and Fall is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its open criticism of Christianity.
He was educated at Westminster School.
He died of peritonitis in London.
His attack on Christianity caused several opponents to publish pamphlets against him.
Gibbon defended his work with the 1779 publication of, A Vindication... of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
In the mid-twentieth century one author said that "church historians allow the substantial justness of (Gibbon 's) main positions".
Edward Osborne Wilson (born June 10, 1929) is an American biologist, naturalist and author.
He is an entomologist who studies ants, but to the public he is known for sociobiology, biodiversity and conservation.
Wilson 's writing has been very influential.
He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction.
He is known for his role as "the father of sociobiology", his environmentalism, and his secular humanist and deist ideas on religion and ethics.
He holds the posts of Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology, Harvard University, and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism.
He was awarded the National Medal of Science (1977), and the Crafoord Prize (1990), which recognizes research in scientific fields not eligible for the Nobel Prize.
Human evolution is about the origin of human beings.
All humans belong to the same species, which has spread from its birthplace in Africa to almost all parts of the world.
Its origin in Africa is proved by the fossils which have been found there.
The term ` human ' in this context means the genus Homo.
However, studies of human evolution usually include other hominids, such as the Australopithecines, from which the genus Homo had diverged (split) by about 2.3 to 2.4 million years ago in Africa.
The first Homo sapiens, the ancestors of today 's humans, evolved around 200,000 years ago.
It was known for centuries that man and the apes were related.
At heart, their anatomy is similar, despite many superficial differences.
This was the reason why Buffon and Linnaeus, in the 18th century, put them together in one family.
Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution says that such basic structural similarity comes from the common origin of the group.
The apes and man are close relatives, and are primates: the order of mammals which includes monkeys, apes, lemurs and tarsiers.
The great apes live in tropical rainforests.
It is thought that human evolution started when a group of apes began to live more in the savannah.
Savannah is more open, with trees, shrubs and grass.
This group, the australopithecines, started walking on two legs.
They began to use their hands to carry things.
Life in the open was different, and there was a big advantage in having better brains.
Their brains grew larger, and they began to make simple tools.
This began at least 5 million years ago.
We have fossils of two or three different groups of walking apes, and one was the ancestor of humans.
The biological name for "human" or "man" is Homo.
The modern human species is called Homo sapiens.
"Sapiens" means "thought".
Homo sapiens means "the thinking man".
Paleoanthropology looks at ancient human fossils, tools, and other signs of early human life.
It began in the 19th century with the discovery of a skull of "Neanderthal man" in 1856.
By 1859, zoologists had known for a long time that humans were, in their anatomy, similar to the great apes.
There were also differences: humans can speak, for example.
But the similarities were more basic than the differences.
Humans also have features with a much older history, from early in the life of vertebrates.
The idea that species were the result of evolution had been proposed before Darwin, but his book gave much evidence, and many were persuaded by it.
The book was On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, published in November 1859.
In this book, Darwin wrote about the idea of evolution in general, rather than the evolution of humans.
Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history, was all Darwin wrote on the subject.
Nevertheless, the implications of the theory were clear to readers at the time.
Different people discussed the evolution of humans.
Among them were Thomas Huxley and Charles Lyell.
Huxley convincingly illustrated many of the similarities and differences between humans and apes in his 1863 book Evidence as to Man 's Place in Nature.
When Darwin published his own book on the subject, The Descent of Man, and selection in relation to sex, the idea of human evolution was already well-known.
The theory was controversial.
Even some of Darwin 's supporters (such as Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Lyell) did not like the idea that human beings have evolved their impressive mental capacities and moral sensibilities through natural selection.
Since the 18th century, scientists thought the great apes to be closely related to human beings.
In the 19th century, they speculated that the closest living relatives of humans were either chimpanzees or gorillas.
Both live in central Africa in tropical rainforests.
It turns out that the chimpanzee species are closest to us.
Biologists believed that humans share a common ancestor with other African great apes and that fossils of these ancestors would be found in Africa, which they have been.
It is now accepted by virtually all biologists that humans are not only similar to the great apes, but actually are great apes.
The issue was finally settled in modern times by studies on the sequences of proteins and genes in apes and man.
These studies showed that man shares about 98\/99 % of these structures with chimpanzees.
This is a much closer relationship than with any other type of animal, and fully supports the ideas put forward in the 19th century by Darwin and Huxley.
"Currently available genetic and archaeological evidence is generally interpreted as supportive of a recent single origin of modern humans in East Africa.
However, this is where the near consensus on human settlement history ends, and considerable uncertainty clouds any more detailed aspect of human colonization history".
Primates have diversified in habitats such as trees and bushes.
They have many features which are adaptations to this environment.
Here are some of those traits:
Not all primates have these anatomical traits, nor is every trait unique to primates.
Primates are frequently highly social, live in groups with ` flexible dominance hierarchies '.
Closely related animals almost always have closely related parasites.
This usually comes about because parasites evolve with their hosts, and when host populations split, their parasites split also.
It is also possible for parasites to get from one species to another.
Two of the most serious parasitic infections of humans in Africa have originated in apes.
Each may have been transferred to humans by a single cross-species event.
There are several species of mosquito, and several species of the malarial parasite Plasmodium.
The most serious type, P. falciparum, which kills many millions of people each year, originated in gorillas.
It is now virtually certain that chimpanzees are the source of HIV-1, the major cause of AIDS.
This information is got by the sequence analysis of ape and human viruses.
The relevance of this to evolution is that our physiology is so close to the apes that their parasites were able to transfer to humans with great success.
Humans have much less resistance to these parasites, which are ancient in origin, but comparatively new to our species.
It was not until the 1920s that hominid fossils were discovered in Africa.
In 1924, Raymond Dart described Australopithecus africanus.
The specimen was called the Taung Child, an australopithecine infant discovered in a cave deposit being mined for concrete at Taung, South Africa.
The remains were a remarkably well-preserved tiny skull and a cast of the inside of the individual 's skull.
Although the brain was small (410 cm), its shape was rounded, unlike that of chimpanzees and gorillas, and more like a modern human brain.
Also, the specimen had short canine teeth, and the position of the foramen magnum was evidence of bipedal locomotion.
All of these traits convinced Dart that the Taung baby was a bipedal human ancestor, a transitional form between apes and humans.
It took another 20 years before Dart 's claims were taken seriously.
This was after other similar skeletons had been found.
The most common view of the time was that a large brain evolved before bipedality, the ability to walk on two feet more or less upright.
It was thought that intelligence similar to that of modern humans was necessary for bipedalism.
This turned out to be wrong: bipedality came first.
The australopithecines are now thought to be immediate ancestors of the genus Homo, the group to which modern humans belong.
Both australopithecines and Homo sapiens are part of the tribe Hominini, but recent data has brought into doubt the position of A. africanus as a direct ancestor of modern humans; it may well have been a cousin.
The australopithecines were originally classified as either gracile or robust.
The robust variety of Australopithecus has since been reclassified as Paranthropus, although it is still regarded as a subgenus of Australopithecus by some authors.
In the 1930s, when the robust specimens were first described, the Paranthropus genus was used.
During the 1960s, the robust variety was moved into Australopithecus.
The recent trend has been back to the original classification as a separate genus.
It was Carolus Linnaeus who chose the name Homo.
Today, there is only one species in the genus: Homo sapiens.
There were other species, but they became extinct.
The figure shows where some of them lived and at what time.
Some of the other species might have been ancestors of H. sapiens.
Many were likely our "cousins", they developed away from our ancestral line.
Anthropologists are still investigating the exact line of descent.
A consensus on which should count as separate species and which as subspecies has not been reached yet.
In some cases this is because there are very few fossils, in other cases it is due to the slight differences used to classify species in the Homo genus.
The evolution of the genus Homo took place mostly in the Pleistocene.
The whole genus is characterised by its use of stone tools, initially crude, and becoming ever more sophisticated.
So much so that in archaeology and anthropology the Pleistocene is usually referred to as the Palaeolithic, or the Stone Age.
Homo habilils was likely the first species of Homo.
It developed from the Australopithecus, about 2.5 million years ago.
It lived until about 1.4 million years ago.
It had smaller molars (back teeth) and larger brains than the Australopithecines.
There are two proposed species that lived from 1.9 to 1.6 million years ago.
Their relation has not been clarified.
One of them is called Homo rudolfensis.
It is known from a single incomplete skull from Kenya.
Scientists have suggested that this was just another habilis, but this has not been confirmed.
The other is currently called Homo georgicus.
It is from Georgia and may be an intermediate form between H. habilis and H. erectus, or a sub-species of H. erectus.
Homo erectus was first discovered on the island of Java in Indonesia, in 1891.
The discoverer, Eugene Dubois originally called it Pithecanthropus erectus based on its morphology that he considered to be intermediate between that of humans and apes.
Homo erectus lived lived from about 1.8 million to 70,000 years ago.
The earlier specimens (from 1.8 to 1.2 million years ago) are sometimes seen as a different species, or a subspecies.
called Homo ergaster, or Homo erectus ergaster '.
In the Early Pleistocene, 1.5 1 mya, in Africa, Asia, and Europe, presumably, some populations of Homo habilis evolved larger brains and made more elaborate stone tools; these differences and others are sufficient for anthropologists to classify them as a new species, H. erectus.
In addition H. erectus was the first human ancestor to walk truly upright.
This was made possible by the evolution of locking knees and a different location of the foramen magnum (the hole in the skull where the spine enters).
They may have used fire to cook their meat.
A famous example of Homo erectus is Peking Man; others were found in Asia (notably in Indonesia), Africa, and Europe.
Many paleoanthropologists are now using the term Homo ergaster for the non-Asian forms of this group.
They reserve H. erectus only for those fossils found in the Asian region that meet certain requirements (as to skeleton and skull) which differ slightly from ergaster.
Homo neaderthalensis (usually called Neanderthal man) lived from about 250,000 to about 30,000 years ago.
Also, less usual, as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis: there is still some discussion if it was a separate species Homo neanderthalensis, or a subspecies of H. sapiens.
While the debate remains unsettled, evidence from mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomal DNA sequencing indicates that little or no gene flow occurred between H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens, and, therefore, the two were separate species.
In 1997, Dr. Mark Stoneking, then an associate professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University, stated: "These results (based on mitochondrial DNA extracted from Neanderthal bone) indicate that Neanderthals did not contribute mitochondrial DNA to modern humans Neanderthals are not our ancestors".
More investigation of a second source of Neanderthal DNA supported these findings.
A genetic analysis of a piece of finger bone found in Siberia has produced a surprise result.
It dates to about 40,000 years ago, at a time when Neanderthals and modern man were living in the area.
German researchers found its mitochondrial DNA did not match either that of our species or that of Neanderthals.
If this result is correct, the bone belongs to a previously unknown species.
The degree of difference in the DNA suggests this species split off from our family tree about a million years ago, well before the split between our species and Neanderthals.
Homo floresiensis, which lived about 100,000 12,000 years ago has been nicknamed hobbit for its small size.
Its size may be a result of island dwarfism, the tendency for large mammals to evolve smaller forms on islands.
H. floresiensis is intriguing both for its size and its age.
It is a concrete example of a recent species of the genus Homo that shows derived traits not shared with modern humans.
In other words, H. floresiensis share a common ancestor with modern humans, but split from the modern human lineage and followed a different evolutionary path.
The main find was a skeleton believed to be a woman of about 30 years of age.
Found in 2003 it has been dated to approximately 18,000 years old.
The living woman was estimated to be one meter in height, with a brain volume of just 380 cm3 This is small for a chimpanzee and less than a third of the H. sapiens average of 1400 cm3.
There is an ongoing debate over whether H. floresiensis is indeed a separate species.
Some scientists believe that H. floresiensis was a modern H. sapiens suffering from pathological dwarfism.
Modern humans who live on Flores, the island where the skeleton was found, are pygmies.
This fact is consistent with either theory.
One line of attack on H. floresiensis is that it was found with tools only associated with H. sapiens.
Stone artefacts have now been found on Flores which can be dated to a million years ago.
These artefacts are proxies; which means there were no skeletons of humans, but only a species of Homo could have made the artefacts.
The artefacts are flakes and other implements, 48 in all, some of which show signs of being worked to produce a cutting edge.
This means that humans were present on Flores by that date, but it does not tell us which species that was.
Homo sapiens has lived from about 250,000 years ago to the present.
Between 400,000 years ago and the second warm period in the Middle Pleistocene, around 250,000 years ago, its skull grew and more sophisticated technologies based on stone tools developed.
One possibility is that a transition between H. erectus to H. sapiens occurred.
The evidence of Java Man suggests there was an initial migration of H. erectus out of Africa.
Then, much later, a further development of H. sapiens from H. erectus in Africa.
Then a subsequent migration within and out of Africa eventually replaced the earlier H. erectus.
Studies of the human genome, especially the Y-chromosome DNA and mitochondrial DNA, have supported a recent African origin.
Evidence from autosomal DNA also supports the recent African origin.
The details of this great saga are not fully established yet, but by about 90,000 years ago they had moved into Eurasia and the Middle East.
This was the area where Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis, had been living for a long time (at least 500,000 years in western Europe).
By about 42 to 44,000 years ago Homo sapiens had reached western Europe, including Britain.
In Europe and western Asia, Homo sapiens replaced the Neanderthals by about 35,000 years ago.
The details of how this happened are not known.
At roughly the same time Homo sapiens arrived in Australia.
Their arrival in the Americas was much later, about 15,000 years ago.
All these earlier groups of modern man were hunter-gatherers.
Current research has established that human beings are genetically rather homogenous (similar).
The DNA of individuals is more alike than usual for most species.
This may have resulted from their relatively recent evolution or from the Toba catastrophe.
Distinctive genetic have arisen as a result of small groups of people moving into new environmental circumstances.
These adapted traits are a very small component of the Homo sapiens genome and include such outward ` racial ' characteristics as skin color and nose shape, and internal characteristics such as the ability to breathe more efficiently at high altitudes.
H. sapiens idaltu, from Ethiopia, about 160,000 years ago, is a proposed subspecies.
It is the oldest known anatomically modern human.
This list is in chronological order by genus.
Educational psychology is a branch of psychology.
It has ancient roots, but was mostly developed in the 20th century.
It has two "faces", the scientific and the humanistic.
Education as an objective science was strongly promoted around 1900 by Alfred Binet and Edward Thorndike.
Binet it was who invented the first intelligence tests, and they were extended and promoted in English by Louis Terman.
Binet 's ideas were sympathetic to Thorndike, who was above all interested in turning psychology into a real science by research, measurement and empirical evidence.
The arrival of World War I caused a huge conscription of men into the fighting services.
Sorting out men of all types was an urgent problem.
The intelligence tests proved to be very useful at helping get the right men into the right jobs.
Not surprisingly, the use of IQ tests continued in education, where a similar problem of sorting out occurs in unselected public school enrollments.
The other way to look at educational psychology is to notice that a child is a growing person.
Unlike most adults, the child is open to influence.
Education does change a child.
The emphasis on the child as a growing person is typical of humanistic psychology.
It has many supporters, especially at primary school level.
Examples of educators whose interest was humanistic include Johann Pestalozzi, Maria Montessori, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget.
This type of approach is called "child-centered" education.
How these two approaches are balanced varies in different countries.
Many countries have arrangements for certified psychologists to inluence schools and help children.
These posts are now called ` educational and child psychology ' in the United Kingdom.
Since a training overhaul in 2006, there is a 3 year taught doctorate similar to that of clinical psychology.
In the United States it is still called school psychology.
Educational and child psychology is the practice of applied psychology with children and families in the context of education and is usually based within a government local authority.
Extermination camps (death camps) were built by Nazi Germany during World War II.
The goal of the death camps was to kill millions of people as quickly as possible.
At the death camps, people were murdered mostly by being given poison gas in gas chambers.
However, the Nazis also killed many people in other ways at the death camps.
They killed some in mass executions (for example, by shooting many people at once).
They killed others through "extermination through labor."
This was by making prisoners do very hard forced labor without giving them the food, medical care, or other basic things they needed to survive.
Many other people died at the death camps from starvation, illness, and freezing to death.
The Nazis sent many different kinds of people to the death camps.
However, about 90 % of the people killed in the death camps were Jewish.
Nazi Germany wanted to ` exterminate ' the Jewish people (they wanted to kill all of the Jews, so they would not exist any more).
This plan was called the Final Solution.
It is now called the Holocaust.
The fascist Usta e government in the Independent State of Croatia also set up death camps during World War II.
At death camps like Jasenovac, they murdered many Serbs, Jews, and other people.
As many as 750,000 Serbs may have been killed at these death camps.
The Nazis believed that some groups of people were better than others.
They thought that the Aryan race was the best of all.
They believed that people who were not "Aryan" were "inferior".
They also believed that non-Ayrans were the cause of Germany 's problems.
They thought that some groups of people did not even deserve to live.
These groups included people with disabilities.
The Nazis called these people Lebensunwertes Leben - "life unworthy of life."
In 1939, the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) started a program to kill everyone who was "unworthy of life."
They called this secret program the Action T4 euthanasia program.
As part of this program, they killed 70,000 people with disabilities, using carbon monoxide gas.
This was the first time the Nazis had used poison gas to kill people.
Two years later, the Nazis built the first death camps.
Using the things they learned by gassing people with disabilities, the Nazis had decided to start the Final Solution - killing all of the Jewish people, mostly by gassing them.
Before the Nazis were ready to kill large numbers of people in gas chambers, the SS Einsatzgruppen started killing many people at a time by shooting them.
At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, the Nazis made it clear that they planned to kill all the Jews in Europe.
Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of this program.
After this, the Nazis built more death camps, with the goal of killing millions of Jewish people with poison gas.
The Nazis used death camps and concentration camps for different things.
The goal of the death camps was genocide.
Their purpose was to kill people who were sent to the camps on trains, thousands at a time.
At death camps like Be ec, Sobib r, and Treblinka, people were usually killed within a few hours after they got to the camps.
Concentration camps were different from death camps.
Some of the more infamous concentration camps were Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and Ravensbr ck.
These were prison camps which the Nazis set up before World War II started.
The Nazis sent people who they did not want in their society to these concentration camps.
The Nazis forced millions of people to do forced labor in the concentration camps.
Prisoners in concentration camps made up about 25 % of the workers in Nazi Germany.
Even though the concentration camps were not designed for mass murder, over 75 % of the people sent to these camps died because of starvation, illness, exhaustion, executions, and physical abuse.
In the early years of World War II, the Jews were mostly sent to concentration camps.
However, from 1942 onward, they were mostly deported to the death camps.
They were told they were being "resettled" - sent to other places to live.
The Nazis built many of the death camps in Poland, which the Nazis controlled.
They did this because most of the people they wanted to kill lived in Poland.
Poland had the most Jewish people in the parts of Europe that the Nazis controlled.
Also, since these death camps were not in Germany, the Nazis could hide what they were doing from the German people.
The Nazis created two types of death camps.
Some were "pure extermination camps."
Their only purpose was to kill people.
Others were a combination of concentration camps and death camps.
At these camps, the Nazis would kill some people right away.
They would force others to work as slaves until they died.
The first death camps were Treblinka, Be ec, and Sobib r. They were built during Operation Reinhard (October 1941 November 1943), whose goal was to kill all of Poland 's Jews.
Trains full of people were sent to these camps, and were murdered as soon as they got there.
At first, the camp 's guards used carbon monoxide to kill the prisoners.
They then buried their bodies in mass graves.
Later, when there were too many bodies to bury, they started burning the bodies.
So they could kill people and get rid of their bodies more quickly, the Nazis built gas chambers and crematoria in Treblinka and Be ec.
At Be ec, they also started using Zyklon-B poison gas to kill people.
On December 8, 1941, the Nazis opened another death camp called Che mno.
At first, they killed prisoners at Chelmno inside vans, using carbon monoxide exhaust fumes.
Later, like at the other death camps, the Nazis built gas chambers so they could kill more people at a time.
Almost all of the prisoners sent to Chelmno were killed right away.
However, the Nazis forced a few strong men into work units called Sonderkommando.
These prisoners were forced to help take dead bodies out of the gas chambers and burn them.
The death camps were small (only several hundred meters long and wide).
They also had very little housing or other buildings.
Because of this, the Nazis were able to trick the prisoners when they arrived.
The Nazis told them they would only be staying at the camp for a short time, before continuing to a work camp farther east.
This kept the prisoners from panicking or fighting back.
After they decided to start the "Final Solution," the Nazis built gas chambers and crematoria inside some of the concentration camps that already existed, like Auschwitz and Majdanek.
When people arrived at these camps, they would go through a process called "selection."
Nazi guards would choose which prisoners would be kept to work as slaves, and which would be sent right to the gas chambers to be killed.
Usually, the Nazis sent elderly people, sick people, and very young children right to the gas chambers.
Healthy people were often kept for slave labor, and were forced to work until they were too sick or starved to work as fast as the Nazis wanted.
Then the Nazis would "select" them for the gas chambers.
With the support of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, the Independent State of Croatia (ISC) was created on 10 April 1941.
It was ruled by the fascist Usta e government, which agreed with the Nazis ' ideas about race and politics.
The Usta e agreed with the idea that all Jews and Roma people should be killed.
They also agreed with the Nazis that socialists and communists were political enemies.
The Usta e built death camps in the Independent State of Croatia and helped with the Nazis ' "Final Solution" by killing many Jews and Roma.
However, their main goal was to kill all of the Serbian people in the ISC.
The Usta e treated the Serbian people so cruelly that even the Germans were shocked.
The first Usta e camp was Jadovno concentration camp.
It held thousands of Serbs and Jews from May to August 1941.
Prisoners were usually killed by being pushed into deep ravines near the camp.
The Jasenovac concentration camp replaced Jadovno.
Jasenovac was a very large group of many camps.
Many prisoners who arrived at Jasenovac were immediately scheduled to be killed.
Strong men who could work, and were sentenced to less than three years in the camp, were allowed to live.
However, all prisoners sentenced to three years or more were immediately scheduled for execution.
Some prisoners at Jasenovac were killed with poison gas or in mass shootings.
However, the Usta e guards killed many prisoners using their hands, or tools like knives and hammers.
In 1941, top Nazi official Heinrich Himmler went to see a group of Einsatzgruppen perform a mass shooting.
The group 's commanding officer told him that shooting so many people was psychologically harming the soldiers doing the shootings.
Himmler decided the Nazis needed to find another way of killing people.
After the war, the diary of Auschwitz 's Commandant, Rudolf H ss, showed that many Einsatzkommandos the killers either went mad or killed themselves.
He wrote that they did this because they were psychologically "unable to endure wading through blood any longer."
The Nazis had learned from their T-4 program that they could kill people using carbon monoxide.
However, they thought sending carbon monoxide to the death camps would be too expensive.
In August 1941, H ss ' deputy, Karl Fritzsch, tested out an idea.
At Auschwitz, clothes infected with lice were treated with crystals of prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide).
The crystals ' brand name was Zyklon-B.
They were made to order by the IG Farben chemicals company.
Once their container was opened, the Zyklon-B crystals in the air released a deadly cyanide gas.
Fritzch thought this gas could be used to kill prisoners.
To try out the effects, he locked some Soviet prisoners of war in the basement of a bunker and gassed them.
They died.
Gassing with Zyklon-B became Auschwitz 's way to exterminate people.
It would also be used at Majdanek and other camps.
Besides gassing, the camp guards continued to kill prisoners through mass shootings, starvation, torture, and abuse.
During the war, Nazi official Kurt Gerstein told a Swedish diplomat about life in a death camp.
On 19 August 1942, Gerstein arrived at Be ec extermination camp, which had carbon monoxide gas chamber.
At the time 45 railroad cars, filled with 6,700 Jews, were being unloaded.
Many of the Jews had died on the trip.
The rest were marched naked to the gas chambers.
There Gerstein said:
To keep people from panicking and fighting back, the Nazis told the prisoners they were going to shower and get deloused (get lice removed).
Prisoner Sonderkommando were forced to help in and around the gas chambers.
They encouraged the Jews to undress without a hint of what was about to happen.
(If the Sonderkommando warned the prisoners, they too would be killed.)
The gas chambers were designed to look like shower rooms (with fake water nozzles, and tile walls).
The Sonderkommando talked to the victims about life in the camp to keep people from getting suspicious.
They also helped the elderly and the very young to undress.
The Sonderkommando also comforted older children who might cry "because of the strangeness of being undressed in this fashion".
Once the gas chamber was full of people and the door was sealed, Nazi guards dropped Zyklon B through special holes in the roof.
As part of their training, some high-ranked Nazi Party leaders and SS officers were sent to Auschwitz Birkenau to watch the gassings.
H ss reported that "all were deeply impressed by what they saw... (but some)... who had previously spoken most loudly, about the (need) for this extermination, fell silent once they had actually seen the ` final solution of the Jewish problem '."
After the gassings, the Sonderkommando removed the corpses from the gas chambers, then took gold teeth out of the bodies.
At first, the victims were buried in mass graves.
Later, victims ' bodies were cremated.
The ashes were either buried, scattered, or dumped in a nearby river.
Hess wrote that he was impressed by how hard the Sonderkommando worked, even though they knew they would also be killed eventually.
Eventually, the Nazis were killing so many people at Auschwitz-Birkenau that they had three buildings with crematoria designed by specialists from Topf und S hne.
At Auschwitz, prisoners worked every hour of the day to destroy corpses.
However, people were being gassed so quickly that not every body could be destroyed in the crematoria.
Some corpses were also burned in an open air fire pit.
At Sobib r, Treblinka, Be ec, and Che mno, the corpses were burned on pyres.
When they realized they were going to lose World War II, the Nazis tried to destroy the death camps in order to hide the evidence of what they had done.
They wanted to hide evidence that so many people had been killed.
This meant they needed to destroy the camps, and also hide the corpses of their many victims.
The Nazis forced prisoners to destroy the camps and their records, and to dig up mass graves.
Some extermination camps were liberated (taken over and freed) by Soviet soldiers before the Nazis could destroy evidence of their war crimes.
For example, Majdanek was captured nearly intact before the Nazis were able to destroy very much.
This happened because the Soviet Red Army got to the camp very quickly, which prevented the SS from destroying most of the camp.
Excommunication is a religious act used to take off or suspend membership in a religious community.
The word literally means out of communion, or no longer in communion.
In some churches, excommunication includes the belief that the person who was exocommunicated is going to Hell.
Sometimes punishment follow excommunication; these include being banned, shunning, and shaming, depending on the group 's religion or religious community.
The Easter Rising was a rebellion in Dublin, Ireland at Easter in 1916.
It started on April 24, 1916 and ended on April 29, 1916.
It was carried out by members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and members of the Irish Citizens Army.
It was done to protest against British rule in Ireland.
It was the first uprising in Ireland since the 1798 rebellion.
At first, the Irish had planned to have a larger amount of men to attack the city.
But a man called Sir Roger Casement was captured on the way back from Germany with guns and the Irish had very few guns.
As a result, only about 1,250 men took part in the rising.
Out of these about 300 went into the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin led by Patrick Pearse and James Connolly.
Other groups took over different parts of the city, for example St. Stephen 's Green, Shelbourne Hotel, Boland 's Mills and Jacobs Factory.
At first the British put up no resistance because of Easter public holiday, but soon more of them came into Dublin to fight the Irish.
The biggest fighting happened at Bolands Mills where amon de Valera had his men open fire on British soldiers called Sherwood Foresters while they landed in the city.
The shootings here killed about 200 people and wounded several more.
St. Stephen 's Green was a big part of the fighting as well where the Irish lost a lot of men.
After six days the Irish were exhausted and were being shot at by huge artillery pieces mounted onto a British ship called HMS Helga.
The General Post Office was badly hit and soon the Irish surrendered.
Sixteen of the Irish leaders were shot by firing squad after the Rising.
The British admitted that they lost 155 men to Irish gunfire and 200 were wounded.
The Irish rebels lost at least 70 men and over 1,000 of them were wounded.
At least 100 Irish citizens were killed in the crossfire as well.
After the rising, Dublin was in very bad shape and several hundred people had been killed.
After the Easter Rising conflict, the leaders of the rebellion were given trials in British courts and were sentenced to death.
Fourteen were executed by British soldiers at Kilmainham jail in Dublin.
The prisoners eyes were covered with blindfolds and they were shot.
Among them were the leaders, Patrick Pearse and James Connolly.
Another leader, Thomas Kent was later shot in Cork, Ireland.
Roger Casement was hanged in London, England.
At first the people in Dublin were confused and angry, because many had died and food supplies were cut off.
But after the British shot the leaders, some of the Irish people began to follow and support them in sympathy for their cause.
The Easter Rising was a major reason for the creation of the Irish Republic and the Irish War of Independence.
Sir Earle Christmas Grafton Page (8 August 1880 20 December 1961) was the eleventh Prime Minister of Australia.
He became Prime Minister when Joseph Lyons died in office.
He remained until a new leader, Robert Menzies, was elected by the United Australia Party.
European Space Agency or ESA is an international organization with 22 member countries.
Its job is to explore space.
Its headquarters are in Paris, France.
ESA has a staff of more than 2,000 with an annual budget of about 4.43 billion \/ US$ 5.51 billion (2015).
The member countries of ESA are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The main European launch vehicle Ariane 5 is operated through Arianespace with ESA sharing in the costs of launching and further developing this launch vehicle.
The word evangelicalism mostly means religious practices and traditions which are found in conservative Protestant Christianity.
Evangelicalism is typified by an emphasis on evangelism, a personal experience of conversion, biblically oriented faith and a belief in the importance of Christian faith to cultural issues.
In the late 20th century and early 21st century, Protestant people, churches and social movements have often been called evangelical in contrast to Protestant liberalism.
In continental Europe the word Evangelical is often understood to mean Protestant or even Lutheran as a literal translation of the German "evangelisch".
In Germany, the Protestant religious group known as Lutherans in the USA and other places throughout the world are exclusively referred to as die Evangelischen or the Evangelicals belonging to the Evangelical Church in Germany.
The euphonium is a brass instrument.
It is very similar to the baritone horn, but it is different because the tubes are wider and it is bigger.
The euphonium makes low sounds, similar to the trombone.
The euphonium has 3 or 4 valves and 1-3 spit valves.
"Spit" valves do not really mean there is spit in the instrument, it means that there is condensation in the instrument.
The euphonium is seen in different sorts of bands in Europe and America.
The musicians make the sound by blowing into the instrument and "buzzing" with their lips.
Euphoniums are basically silver and brass in color.
An essay is a written text.
It is usually about the personal point of view of the author who wrote it.
The definition of an essay is vague.
Articles and short stories can be quite similar.
Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been called essays (e.g. Alexander Pope 's An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man).
People that write essays are called essayists.
Most essays are short.
This does not have to be the case.
John Locke 's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Thomas Malthus 's An Essay on the Principle of Population are long essays.
Essays can have all sorts of purposes.
For example, an essay can be very argumentative, it can talk about points for and against the essay question to give a balanced argument or opinion.
Error detection and correction is the name for a number of technologies that are used to make sure that information or data is not corrupted, that it still makes sense.
There are different ways to make sure an error can be detected.
This is done by adding more data or information to the data transmitted.
Adding more data than needed is called redundancy.
The Euclidean algorithm is an algorithm.
It can be used to find the biggest number that divides two other numbers (the greatest common divisor of two numbers).
Euclid solved the problem graphically.
He said If you have two distances, AB and CD, and you always take away the smaller from the bigger, you will end up with a distance that measures both of them.
Start out with two positive integers m and n.
Note: This pseudocode uses modular arithmetic instead of subtraction.
It does the same thing as above, but gets the answer faster.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), known in French as L'Union Europ enne de Radio-T l vision (UER), and unrelated to the European Union, was formed on 12 February 1950 by 23 broadcasting organizations from Europe and the Mediterranean at a conference in the coastal resort of Torquay in Devon, England.
In 1993, the International Radio and Television Organisation (OIRT), an equivalent organization of broadcasters from Central and Eastern Europe, was merged with the EBU.
The Boeing E-3 Sentry is a military aircraft.
It is used as AWACS by US Air Force, NATO and three foreign operators: France, Saudi Arabia, and the UK.
It is a military variant of the famous Boeing 707 's airliner.
This kind of aircraft was used in the Gulf War, and after in the Afghanistan War.
Econometrics is a branch of economics.
It is the use of statistical and mathematical methods to describe the relation between economic forces such as capital (any of the tools, work, or other things needed to make something useful), interest rates (the price of borrowing money), and labor.
Much of econometrics is making models which are simple pictures of the real world.
These models then can be used to predict what will happen in the real world.
An example of econometrics would be looking at the prices of houses in a town.
An economist (someone who studies economics) can try to make a simple picture of the house prices in the town.
This picture might show that houses close to the market are worth more.
An economist could then say that if a new market is made in another part of the town, home prices there might go up.
The economist also might say that the new market could make prices less than before near the old one, because the new market will make it so that more houses are near a market.
This would make the people who sell houses near a market sell them for less, since there could be more sellers than buyers.
Emotions are what people feel.
In terms of evolution, they are very ancient, and can be seen in all mammals.
Emotions are caused by a complex mixture of hormones and the unconscious mind.
Only with great difficulty can we control our emotions by conscious effort.
They cause mammals to change behavior according to changes in their situation.
In our case they sometimes run against our attempt to live our lives in a logical way.
A scientific definition is not simple; over 90 definitions have been offered by experts.
A definition of emotion needs to includes three things:
"Emotion is a complex psychological phenomenon which occurs as animals or people live their lives.
Emotions involve physiological arousal, appraisal of the situation, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience.
Emotion is associated with feeling, mood, temperament, personality, disposition, and motivation".
In physical terms, emotions involve body systems which have operated for hundreds of millions of years.
These are the hormone system, the autonomic nervous system and the ` lower ' brain centres (hindbrain and midbrain).
The study of emotions became one of Darwin 's books after The Descent of Man.
He published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals in 1873.
He had discovered, by sending letters and a list of questions worldwide, that in different societies emotions were expressed in almost the same way.
If so, the mechanisms which made the expressions must be inherited.
They must have been developed in the same way as all other features of man, evolution by natural selection.
It was already known from anatomy that the muscles and nerves of the face were the same or similar in all humans.
Darwin illustrated the expression of the emotions with a series of photographs and woodcut illustrations.
Ekman did the same thing on a research visit to New Guinea, where he asked villagers to identify the emotions shown in the photographs.
This was part of a long-term effort to test and extend Darwin 's insights into emotions.
Some of Ekman 's conclusions are:
Epictetus was an Ancient Greek philosopher.
He was born in Hierapolis in Phrygia around 55 AD.
presumably at Hierapolis, Phrygia.
The name his parents gave him is unknown; the word ep ktetos (-RRB- in Greek simply means "acquired."
He spent his youth as a slave in Rome to Epaphroditos, a rich freedman and secretary to Nero.
The city was near the modern-day town of Pamukkale in Turkey.
He died around 135 AD in Nikopolis in Epirus, in Greece.
He was one of the most influential philosophers of the late Stoa.
Epictetus founded a school of philosophy, where he also taught.
None of his writing survive, but one of his pupils, Arrian, wrote what he was taught.
Philosophy, Epictetus taught, is a way of life and not just a theoretical discipline.
To Epictetus, all external events are determined by fate, and are thus beyond our control; we should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately.
However, individuals are responsible for their own actions, which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline.
Suffering occurs from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power.
As part of the universal city that is the universe, it is our duty to care for all our fellow men.
Those who follow these precepts will achieve happiness and peace of mind.
Eve Arden (born Eunice Quidens; April 30, 1908 - November 12, 1990) was an American actress.
Her career lasted almost sixty years.
She acted in many movies and television programs.
She died from colorectal cancer and heart disease.
Arden was born in Mill Valley, California.
Emperor Bidatsu was the 30th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
The years of reign of Bidatsu start in 572 and end in 585; however, there are no certain dates for this emperor 's life or reign.
The names and sequence of the early emperors were not confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Bidatsu to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Bidatsu-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
He was the second son of Emperor Kimmei.
His mother, Ishi-hime, was a daughter of Emperor Senka.
His palace in Yamato Province was called Osada no Miya of Iware.
Although he had many children, none of them would ever become emperor.
According to Gukansh, Bidatsu had four empresses and 16 Imperial children (6 sons and 10 daughters).
In the 15th year of Kimmei 's reign, Bidatsu was named Crown Prince.
In the 32nd year of Kimmei 's reign (572), the emperor died; and his successor was Bidatsu.
This was confirmed in ceremonies.
Bidatsu 's reign was marked by power struggles about Buddhism.
The two most important men in the court of Bidatsu were Soga no Umako and Mononobe no Moriya.
Soga supported the growth of Buddhism, and Moriya wanted to stop it.
Bidatsu suffered from an unknown disease which afflicted him with sores.
Probably, he was the first royal victim of smallpox in Japan.
In the 14th year of Bidatsu 's reign (585), he died; and the succession (senso) were passed to his younger half-brother who became known as Emperor Y mei.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
Bidatsu is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Emperor Y mei was the 31st emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
The years of the reign of Y mei start in 585 and end in 587.
The names and sequence of the early emperors were not confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Y mei to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Y mei-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
Emperor Y mei was the fourth son of Emperor Kimmei.
His mother, Soga no Kitashihime, was a daughter of Soga no Iname.
His palace in Yamato Province was called Namitsuki no Miya at Ikebe.
Y mei had three Empresses and seven Imperial sons and daughters.
Y mei 's son, Prince Umayado, is also known as Prince Sh toku.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
Y mei is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Emperor Sushun was the 32nd emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
His reign started in 587 and ended in 592.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Sushun to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Sushun-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
Before he became the monarch, this prince 's personal name (imina) was Hatsusebe-shinn, also known as Hatsusebe no Waka-sazaki.
His name at birth was Hatsusebe no Miko (-RRB-.
Sushun was the twelfth son of Emperor Kimmei.
His mother was Oane-no-kimi, a daughter of Soga no Iname, who was the chief of the Soga clan.
Sushun had one Empress and two Imperial children.
The emperor 's first minister was his powerful uncle, Soga no Umako.
Sushun planned to remove the head of the Soga clan from his office.
When the plan was discovered, Umako ordered someone to murder Sushun.
In the early history of Japan, this is the second time that an emperor is murdered.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Sushun.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
Sushun is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Empress Suiko (554 628) was the 33rd Emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Her reign started in 593 and ended in 628.
Historians consider details about the life of Empress Suiko to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Suiko-tenn was created for her posthumously by later generations.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
In the history of Japan, Suiko was the first of eight women to be empress.
The seven others were: (a) K gyoku\/Saimei, (b) Jit, (c) Gemmei, (d) Gensh, (e) K ken\/Sh toku, (f) Meish, and (g) Go-Sakuramachi.
Suiko was the third daughter of Emperor Kimmei.
She was the half-sister of Emperor Y mei and Emperor Sushun.
Suiko was also a wife of Emperor Bidatsu.
When Suiko became empress, she ended a power struggle for the throne after the deaths of emperors who were her brothers.
Prince Sh toku was the most important man in Suko 's court.
In 599, an earthquake destroyed buildings in Yamato province which is now known as Nara Prefecture.
The reign of this empress was marked by the opening of relations with the Sui court in 600.
The use of the Sexegenary cycle calendar (Jikkan J nishi) in Japan is credited to Empress Suiko in 604.
Suiko ruled for 35 years.
She abdicated in 628.
Suiko died in 628.
This empress ' official name after her death (her posthumous name) was regularized only after death.
Her reign name means "to reason from antiquity."
The actual site of Suiko 's grave is known.
This empress is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Osaka.
The Imperial Household Agency designates this location as Suiko 's mausoleum.
It is formally named Shinaga no Yamada no misasagi.
Emperor Tenji, also known as Emperor Tenchi, was the 38th Emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
His reign started in 661 and ended in 671.
Before he became the monarch, his personal name (imina) was Prince Naka-no - e.
He was the son of Emperor Jomei.
Prince Naka no e was made heir apparent and Crown Prince in 661.
Prince tomo (tomo-shinn) was the favorite son of Emperor Tenji; and he was also the first to be accorded the title of Daij - daijin.
Tenji improved the military forces which had been established during the Taika reforms.
The actual site of Tenji 's grave is known.
This emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Yamashina-ku, Kyoto.
The Imperial Household Agency designates this location as Tenji 's mausoleum.
It is formally named Yamashina no misasagi.
Empress Jit was the 41st Emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Jit 's reign started in 686 and ended in 697.
Historians consider details about the life of Empress Jit to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Jit - tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
In the history of Japan, Jit was the third of eight women to be empress.
The two female monarchs before Jit were (a) Suiko and (b) K gyoku\/Saimei.
The five women monarchs after Jit were (c) Gemmei, (d) Gensh, (e) K ken\/Sh toku, (f) Meish, and (g) Go-Sakuramachi.
Before she became the monarch, this princess 's personal name (imina) was Unonosarara or Unonosasara, or alternately Uno.
Princess Uno was the daughter of Emperor Tenji and she was the wife of Emperor Temmu, who was Tenji 's brother.
In this period, the court and the government was centered at Fujiwara Palace in Yamato.
The actual site of Jit 's grave is known.
This empress is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
The Imperial Household Agency designates this location as Jit 's mausoleum.
It is formally named Ochi-no-Okanoe no misasagi.
After the death of the Emperor Temmu Oh, the autumn foliage Of the hill of Kamioka!
My good Lord and Sovereign Would see it in the evening And ask of it in the morning.
On that very hill from afar I gaze, wondering If he sees it to-day, Or asks of it to-morrow.
Sadness I feel at eve, And heart-rending grief at morn -- The sleeves of my coarse-cloth robe Are never for a moment dry.
Empress Gensh (683 May 22, 748) was the 44th monarch of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Gensh ruled during the years 715 to 724.
In the history of Japan, Gensh was the fifth of eight women to take on the role of empress regnant, meaning that she was the ruler in her own right and not a ruler because she was a married to a ruler.
Gensh was the only Japanese empress regnant to get her title from another empress regnant, rather than a previous male ruler.
Emperor Junnin was the 47th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
His reign started in 758 and ended in 764.
Before he became the monarch, this prince 's personal name (imina) was i-shinn (i-no -).
The posthumous name of Emperor Junnin was given by Emperor Meiji.
He was the seventh son of Prince Toneri, a son of Emperor Temmu.
His father died when he was at the age of three, and he was given no rank nor office of the court.
In the older Japanese documents, he was often referred as the "unthroned emperor".
His fate was changed in 757 when Empress K ken named him as her heir (crown prince).
Junnin caused grain storage centers (J heis) to be established in the provinces.
The government stored rice from the years of good harvests.
This rice was used to control higher prices when harvests of rice were not good.
The J heis were abolished during the Kamakura period.
The actual site of Junnin 's grave is known.
This emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Awaji.
The Imperial Household Agency designates this location as Junnin 's mausoleum.
It is formally named Awaji no misasagi.
In 1870, Emperor Meiji conferred the posthumous name and title by which he is now known.
The years of Junnin 's reign are identified by a single era name.
Emperor Heizei, also known as Heij - tenn.
was the 51st emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Heizei 's reign started in 806 and ended in 809.
Before he became the monarch, this prince 's personal name (imina) was Ate.
Heizei was the eldest son of the Emperor Kammu.
He had three empresses and seven sons and daughters.
Before he became the monarch, he was Crown Prince for over twenty years.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the mausoleum (misasagi) of Heizei is in Nara.
The emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine at this location.
The site can be visited by the public.
The years of Heizei 's reign are identified by only one era name (neng).
Emperor Saga was the 52nd emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Saga 's reign started in 809 and ended in 823.
Before he became the monarch, this prince 's personal name (imina) was Kamino.
He was the second son of Emperor Kammu, and he was the younger brother of Emperor Heizei by the same mother.
He had nine Empresses and consorts; and 47 Imperial sons and daughters.
Saga was known as a good calligrapher.
He sponsored the first imperial poetry competitions (naien).
According to legend, he was the first Japanese emperor to drink tea.
Before he became the monarch, he was Crown Prince for three years.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the mausoleum (misasagi) of Heizei is in Uky - ku, Kyoto.
The emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine at this location.
The years of Kammu 's reign are identified by more than one era name (neng).
In ancient Japan, there were four noble clans, the Gempeit kitsu (-RRB-.
One of these clans, the Minamoto clan are also known as Genji (-RRB-.
The Saga Genji (-RRB- are said to be descended from Emperor Saga.
Emperor Junna was the 53rd emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
His reign started in 823 and ended in 833.
Before he became the monarch, this prince 's personal name (imina) was tomo.
Junna had six Empresses and Imperial consorts and 13 Imperial sons and daughters.
Junna was Crown Prince for 13 years.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the mausoleum (misasagi) of Junna is in Nishiky - ku, Kyoto.
The emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine at this location.
The years of Junna 's reign are identified by more than one era name (neng).
Emperor Suizei was the 2nd emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider Emperor Suizei to be a legendary person, and the name Suizei-tenn was created for him after his death by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
The Gukansh records that Suizei ruled from the palace of Takaoka-no-miya at Katsuragi in what will come to be known as Yamato province.
Suizei is almost certainly a legend.
The Kojiki records only his name and genealogy.
The Nihonshoki includes Suizei as the earliest or first of "eight undocumented monarchs".
The Gukansh records that Suizei was one of the sons of Emperor Jimmu.
During reign of Emperor Suizei, the capital of Japan was at Kazuraki, Yamato.
The Kojiki includes a story about how Suizei attained the throne.
His older brother supported Suizei because of his courage.
The absence of information about Suizei does not imply that no such person ever existed.
Very little information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei (509?
-571).
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Suizei.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, this emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
Emperor Annei was the 3rd emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider Emperor Annei to be a legendary person, and the name Annei-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No firm dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
The Gukansh records that he ruled from the palace of Ukena-no-miya at Katashiro in Kawachi in what will come to be known as Yamato province.
Annei is almost certainly a legend.
The Kojiki records only his name and genealogy.
The Nihonshoki includes Annei as the second of "eight undocumented monarchs".
The Gukansh records that Annei was either the eldest son or the only son of Emperor Suizei.
During reign of Emperor Annei, the capital of Japan was at Katashiha, Kawachi.
The absence of information about Annei does not imply that no such person ever existed.
Very little information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei (509?
-571).
The spirit (kami) of Emperor Annei and the events of his life are enshrined at Annei-tenn - sha at Shirakashi in Yamato province.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Annei.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, this emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
Emperor K sh was the 5th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider Emperor K sh to be a legendary person, and the name K sh - tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
The Gukansh records that K sh ruled from the palace of Ikekokoro-no-miya at Waki-no-kami in what will come to be known as Yamato province.
K sh is almost certainly a legend.
The Kojiki records only his name and genealogy.
The Nihonshoki includes K sh as the fourth of "eight undocumented monarchs".
Emperor K sh was the oldest son of Emperor Itoku.
Jinn Sh t ki records that his mother was Amanotoyototsu-hime, and his grandmother by his mother 's side was Okishimimi-no-kami.
The absence of information about K sh does not show that he was not real.
Very little information is available for study before the rule of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei (509?
-571).
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to K sh.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, this emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
Emperor K an was the 6th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider Emperor K an to be a legendary person; and the name K an-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
The Gukansh ruled from the palace of Akitsushima-no-miya at Muro in what will come to be known as Yamato province.
K an is almost certainly a legend.
The Kojiki records only his name and genealogy.
The Nihonshoki includes K an as the fifth of "eight undocumented monarchs".
Emperor K an was the second son of Emperor K sh.
Jinn Sh t ki records that his mother was Yosotarashi-no-hime, who was the daughter of Okitsuyoso, and ancestress of the Owari.
The absence of information about K an does not imply that no such person ever existed.
Very little information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to K an.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, this emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
Emperor K rei was the 7th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider Emperor K rei to be a legendary person; and the name K rei-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
The Gukansh records that K rei ruled from the palace of Ihoto-no-miya at Kuroda in what will come to be known as Yamato province.
K rei is almost certainly a legend.
The Kojiki records only his name and genealogy.
The Nihonshoki includes K rei as the sixth of "eight undocumented monarchs".
K rei was the eldest son of Emperor K an.
Jinn Sh t ki records that his mother was Oshihime, who was the daughter of Ametarashihiko-Kunio-shihito-no-mikoto.
Some scholars question the existence of the first nine emperors.
These critics consider K rei 's great-grandson (Emperor Sujin) to be the earliest to have actually existed.
The absence of information about K rei does not imply that no such person ever existed.
Very little information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
The Kojiki notes that it was during K rei 's reign that Kibi Province was conquered.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to K rei.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, this emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
Emperor K gen was the 8th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider Emperor K gen to be a legendary person; and the name K gen-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
The Gukansh records that K gen ruled from the palace of Sakaihara-no-miya at Karu in what will come to be known as Yamato province.
K gen is almost certainly a legend.
The Kojiki records only his name and genealogy.
The Nihonshoki includes K gen as the seventh of "eight undocumented monarchs".
K gen was the eldest son of Emperor K rei.
Some scholars question the existence of the first nine emperors.
These critics consider K gen 's grandson (Emperor Sujin) to be the earliest to have actually existed.
The absence of information about K gen does not imply that no such person ever existed.
Very little information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
The Abe clan are said to have descended from a son of Emperor K gen.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to K gen.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, this emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
Emperor Kaika is the 9th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider Emperor Kaika to be a legendary person; and the name Kaika-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to the emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
The Gukansh records that Kaika ruled from the palace of Isakawa-no-miya at Kasuga in what will come to be known as Yamato province.
Kaika is almost certainly a legend.
The Kojiki records only his name and genealogy.
The Nihonshoki includes Kaika as the eighth of "eight undocumented monarchs".
Kaika was the second son of Emperor K gen.
Some scholars question the existence of the first nine emperors.
These critics consider K gen 's son (Suijin) to be the earliest to have actually existed.
The absence of information about Kaika does not imply that no such person ever existed.
Very little information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Kaika.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, this emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) in Nara.
Emperor Sujin was the 10th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider Emperor Sujin to be a legendary person; and the name Sujin-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
The Gukansh records that Sujin ruled from the palace of Mizogaki-no-miya at Shiki in what will come to be known Yamato province.
Sujin is almost certainly a legend; but the Kojiki and Nihonshoki record his name and genealogy.
He was the second son of Emperor Kaika.
Some scholars question the existence of the first nine emperors.
These critics consider Sujin to be the earliest to have actually existed.
The limited information about Sujin does not imply that no such person ever existed.
Very little information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
Sujin was interested in agriculture and irrigation.
He established a system of taxation.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Sujin.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, this emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
Emperor Suinin was the 11th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider Emperor Suinin to be a legendary person; and the name Suinin-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
The Gukansh records that Suinin he ruled from the palace of Tamaki-no-miya at Makimuku in what will come to be known as Yamato province.
Suinin is almost certainly a legend; but the Kojiki and Nihonshoki record his name and genealogy.
He was the third son of Emperor Sujin and Empress Sukulito Sakayamas.
The limited information about Suinin does not imply that no such person ever existed.
Very little information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
One of Suinin 's daughters was Yamatohime-no-mikoto.
She established a site for ceremonies honoring the Shinto sun goddess (Amaterasu Omikami).
In the region of Ise, she founded the Ise Shrine.
She became the first Sai at Ise.
The records of Asama Shrine at the base of Mount Fuji describe events in this time frame.
The earliest Shinto ceremonies in honor of Konohanasakuya-hime were in the 3rd year of the reign of Emperor Suinin (3).
Nihonshoki describes a wrestling match during his era.
This was the origin of Sumo wrestling.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Suinin.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, this emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
Emperor Keik was the 12th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider Emperor Keik to be a legendary person; and the name Keik - tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
Keik is almost certainly a legend; but the Kojiki and Nihonshoki record his name.
The limited information about Keik does not imply that no such person ever existed.
Very little information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
In Kojiki, Keik sent his one of his sons to Ky sh to fight battles on his behalf.
In Nihonshoki, Keik fought and won these battles against local tribes.
According to both sources, he sent Yamatotakeru to Izumo province and eastern provinces to expand his territory.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Keik.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, this emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
The kami of Emperor Keik is also venerated at Anaho jinja in Anaho, mi province.
Emperor Seimu was the 13th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider Emperor Seimu to be a legendary person, and the name Seimu-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
Seimu is almost certainly a legend; but the Kojiki and Nihonshoki record his name.
The limited information about Seimu does not imply that no such person ever existed.
Very little information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Seimu.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, this emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
Emperor Ch ai was the 14th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider Emperor Ch ai to be a legendary person, and the name Ch ai-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
Ch ai is almost certainly a legend; but the Kojiki and Nihonshoki record his name.
He was a grandson of Emperor Keik.
Ch ai 's wife is known as Empress Jing.
Her son would become known as Emperor jin.
The limited information about Ch ai does not imply that no such person ever existed.
Very little information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Ch ai.
The actual site of his grave is not known.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, this emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
Emperor Nintoku was the 16th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Nintoku to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Nintoku-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
According to Nihon Shoki, Nintoku was the fourth son of Emperor jin and the father of three emperors Rich, Hanzei, and Ingy.
Very little is known about the events of Nintoku 's life and reign.
Only limited information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
Nintoku 's reign is marked by Japan 's first large-scale engineering projects.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Nintoku.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun) at Sakai.
Nintoku is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Emperor Rich was the 17th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Rich to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Rich - tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
Some scholars identify him with King San in the Book of Song.
King San sent messengers to the Song Dynasty at least twice in 421 and 425; and this historical person was succeeded by his younger brother.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
According to Nihonshoki and Kojiki, he was the first son of Emperor Nintoku.
Rich had two sons; but he was followed on the throne by his brother, who would become known as Emperor Hanzei.
The enthronement of Hanzei by-passed Rich 's two sons.
Few other details have survived.
Two of Rich 's grandsons would attain the throne as Emperor Kenz and as Emperor Ninken.
Very little is known about the events of Rich 's life and reign.
Only limited information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
In his sixth year of his reign, Rich died.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Rich.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun) at Sakai.
Rich is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Emperor Hanzei was the 18th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Hanzei to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Hanzei-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
According to Nihonshoki and Kojiki, he was a son of Emperor Nintoku.
The eldest son would become known as Emperor Rich.
Hanzei was the brother of Rich.
Hanzei 's enthronement by-passed Rich 's two sons.
Few other details have survived.
Very little is known about the events of Hanzei 's life and reign.
Only limited information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
Hanzei 's reign is described as a time of peace.
He died quietly in his palace.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Hanzei.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun) at Sakai.
Hanzei is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Emperor Ingy was the 19th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Ingy to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Ingy - tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki record that Ingy was the fourth son of Emperor Nintoku.
He was the younger brother of Emperor Hanzei.
Ingy made one of his brothers his heir, but this plan did not unfold as planned.
Instead, his brother 's sons would attain the throne.
Ingy would be followed by his nephews, Emperor Ank and Emperor Y ryaku.
Very little is known about the events of Ingy 's life and reign.
Only limited information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
The earliest recorded earthquake in Japan was in 416.
The Imperial Palace in Kyoto was destroyed.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Ingy.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
Ingy is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) in Fujiidera, which is a city near Osaka.
Emperor Ank was the 20th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Ank to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Ank - tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki record that Ank was the second son of Emperor Ingy.
Some accounts report that Ank murdered his own father.
Very little is known about the events of Ank 's life and reign.
Only limited information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
It is believed that Ank was murdered in the third year of his reign.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Ank.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
This emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Emperor Y ryaku was the 21st emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Y ryaku to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Y ryaku-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
According to the Kojiki and Nihonshoki, Y ryaku was the fifth and youngest son of Emperor Ingy.
He was the brother of Emperor Ank.
Y ryaku was followed on the throne by his son, who would come to be known as Emperor Seinei.
Very little is known about the events of Y ryaku 's life and rule.
Only limited facts can be studied before the rule of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
After Ank 's death, Y ryaku overcame others in the struggle for power.
He became the new emperor.
Y ryaku is known as a patron of silk.
It is said that he encouraged growing mulberry bushes for silkworms to eat.
Poems that are said to be Y ryaku 's are included in the Many sh.
A number of his verses are kept in the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki.
He is credited with bringing many artisans from Korea to Japan.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Y ryaku.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
This emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Emperor Seinei was the 22nd emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Seinei to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Seinei-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
According to Kojiki and Nihonshoki, Seinei was a son of Emperor Y ryaku.
Seinei fathered no children.
He adopted two grandsons of Emperor Rich.
Each would attain the throne; and they would become known as Emperor Ninken and as Emperor Kenzo
Very little is known about the events of Seinei 's life and reign.
Only limited information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
After the death of his father, Seinei overcame others in the struggle for power.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Seinei.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
This emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Kenz was the 23rd emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Kenz to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Kenz - tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
Kenz was a grandson of Emperor Rich; and he was adopted as heir by the childless Emperor Seinei.
Very little is known about the events of Kenz 's life and reign.
Only limited information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Kenz.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, Kenz final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
This emperor is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Emperor Ninken was the 24th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Ninken to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Ninken-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
Ninken was a grandson of Emperor Rich; and he was adopted by the childless Emperor Seinei.
Very little is known about the events of Ninken 's life and reign.
Only limited information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Ninken.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
Ninken is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Emperor Buretsu was the 25th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Buretsu to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Buretsu-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
Buretsu was a son of Emperor Ninken.
Buretsu was childless; and he became been the last monarch of the first Imperial dynasty of Japan.
Very little is known about the events of Buretsu 's life and reign.
Only limited information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
As emperor, Buretsu is described as wicked in the Nihonshoki, but this assessment is not mirrored in the text of the Kojiki.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Buretsu.
The kami of Emperor Buretsu was venerated at a Shinto shrine in Takaichi, Yamato province.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
Buretsu is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Keitai, also known as Keitai okimi, was the 26th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Keitai to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Keitai-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
Some modern reference works of history call Keitai the King Ohoto of Koshi.
Koshi was a small regional entity in what would become Koshi Province in northern Japan.
According to the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, Ketai was a fifth generation grandson of Emperor jin.
When Emperor Buretsu died without a successor, Ketai attained the throne.
There was a period of disputes over the succession after Keitai 's death.
One branch of the Yamato clan supported sons who would become Emperor Ankan and Emperor Senka.
Another branch supported the third son who would become known as Emperor Kimmei.
Very little is known about the events of Keitai 's life and reign.
Only limited information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
Keitai confronted rebellion in Ky sh, which was then known as the Island of Tsukushi.
The emperor sent forces to calm the unrest.
It is not known how long Keitai lived after his abdication.
Keitai abdicated in his favor of his eldest son who would become known as Ankan.
Ankan died four years later, and Keitai 's next oldest son would attain the throne.
This son would come to be known as Emperor Senka.
Senka died after three years as emperor; and the throne would be vacant.
The third son of Ketai would attained the throne, and he would become known as Emperor Kemmei.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Keitai.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
Keitai is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Emperor Ankan was the 27th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Ankan to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Ankan-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
According to Kojiki Ankan was the elder son of Emperor Keitai.
Ankan died childless, and the throne passed to his brother, who would become known as Emperor Senka.
Very little is known about the events of Ankan 's life and reign.
Only limited information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
Ankan attained the Imperial throne when his father, Emperor Keitai, abdicated in his favor.
The construction of state granaries in large numbers throughout Japan was a demonstration of the broad reach of Imperial power and concerns.
His death ended his reign after only four years.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Ankan.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
Ankan is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Emperor Senka was the 28th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Historians consider details about the life of Emperor Senka to be possibly legendary, but probable.
The name Senka-tenn was created for him posthumously by later generations.
No certain dates can be assigned to this emperor 's life or reign.
The conventionally accepted names and sequence of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu, who was the 50th monarch of the Yamato dynasty.
According to Kojiki, Senka was a son of Emperor Keitai.
When Emperor Ankan died childless, the throne passed to his brother Senka.
Very little is known about the events of Senka 's life and reign.
Only limited information is available for study prior to the reign of the 29th monarch, Emperor Kimmei.
During this reign, Soga no Iname became the first verifiable "Great Minister" or Omi (also identified as - omi).
The reign of Emperor Senka lasted for three years.
This emperor 's official name after his death (his posthumous name) was regularized many centuries after the lifetime which was ascribed to Senka.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the emperor 's final resting place is in an earthen tumulus (kofun).
Senka is venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) which is associated with the burial mound.
Emil Theodor Kocher (August 25, 1841 - July 27, 1917) was a Swiss doctor.
He won the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for his work on the thyroid gland".
Eos is the goddess of the dawn and a Titan in Greek mythology.
She is the daughter of Hyperion and Theia.
She is the sister of Helios, the sun god, and Selene, the moon goddess.
Eos leaves her home, which was at the edge of ocean, every morning to wake her brother, Helios.
She opens the gates of heaven so that Helios can ride his chariot across the sky each day.
Elba is third largest island of Italy, after Sardinia and Sicily.
The land area of the island is about 224 square kms.
The coastline is about 147 km.
The highest mountain is Monte Capanne at 1018 metres (3340 feet).
Elba and the other islands (Gorgona, Capraia, Pianosa, Montecristo, Giglio and Giannutri) of the Tuscan Archipelago are protected in the National Park of the Tuscan Archipelago.
The French island of Corsica lies about 50 km to the west.
Recently, the island has become famous for its wine.
The island is divided into eight communes: Portoferraio, Campo nell ` Elba, Capoliveri, Marciana, Marciana Marina, Porto Azzurro, Rio Marina and Rio nell ` Elba.
The island has a population of about 30 000 people.
The island was well known in to the last century for the iron resources.
Mines were created by the Etruscans first and (after 480 BC) the Romans.
After the end of the Roman Empire, the island knew barbarians and Saracens.
In the early 11th century it became a part of the Republic of Pisa.
In 1398, was sold to the Visconti family of Milan.
After a few years, the island was acquired by the Appiani, Lords of Piombino, who kept it for two centuries.
In 1546 part of the island was controlled by Cosimo I de ' Medici.
He fortified Portoferraio and renamed it "Cosmopoli".
In 1577, the rest of the island was returned to the Appiani.
In 1603 Philip II of Spain captured Porto Azzurro and built two fortresses there.
In 1802 the island became a part of France.
Following the Treaty of Fontainebleau, French emperor Napoleon I was exiled to Elba after his forced abdication in 1814 and arrived at Portoferraio on May 3, 1814 to begin his exile there.
He was allowed to keep a personal guard of six hundred men.
Napoleon stayed on Elba for 300 days before he escaped and returned to France on February 26 for the Hundred Days.
Thanks to Napoleon Elba is well-known around the world.
In the Congress of Vienna the island was given to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.
In 1860 it became part of the new unified Kingdom of Italy.
French troops landed on Elba on June 17 1944, freeing the island from the Germans in World War II.
There is an airport on the island, the "Airport Marina di Campo", that can connect the island with the big cities of: Friedrichshafen, Munchen and Z rich.
Eli Herschel Wallach (December 7, 1915 June 24, 2014) was an American movie, television, voice, and stage actor who gained fame during the late 1950s.
For his performance as Silva Vacarro in Baby Doll, he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer, an Honorary Academy Award, an Emmy Award, a Tony Award, and a Golden Globe Award nomination.
Wallach was born on December 7, 1915 in Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York and studied at the University of Texas at Austin, City College of New York, and at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre.
Wallach 's famous roles are Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Calvera in The Magnificent Seven, and as Mr. Freeze in Batman.
Other roles includes; Don Altobello in The Godfather Part III, Cotton Weinberger in The Two Jakes, and Arthur Abbott in The Holiday.
He is still an active actor even in his nineties and being in films as in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and in The Ghost Writer.
Wallach was married to Anne Jackson since 1948.
They had three children.
His great nephew was movie critic A. O. Scott.
Wallach lived in East Hampton, New York.
Wallach, during a set of a movie he was in, accidentally drank from a bottle of acid that a technician had carelessly placed next to his soda bottle.
He spat it out quickly, but was angry because his vocal cords could have been damaged if he had swallowed any of it.
Wallach died at his home in New York City, New York from natural causes on June 24, 2014, aged 98.
The Electric Light Orchestra, also known as ELO, were a popular English rock band from the 1970s and early 1980s.
Their leader was musician and songwriter Jeff Lynne.
Lynne wrote and sang most of their songs.
He also produced their recordings.
Other members included Richard Tandy on keyboards, Bev Bevan on drums, Mike D'Albuquerque and later Kelly Groucutt on bass guitar.
Hugh McDowell, Mik Kaminski, and Melvyn Gale played violin and cello.
The orchestra 's name is a joke on "electric light" and a "Light Orchestra" (an orchestra that plays light music).
The band began as a side project of another band, The Move, by musicians Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne.
While The Move had added touches of classical music to their pop hits, Wood and Lynne wanted to blend rock music and classical music more closely.
Move drummer Bevan joined their project.
Wood played nearly all the non-rock instruments on their first album.
They made the most of recording studio technology, including multitrack recording and overdubbing.
Their first album was titled Electric Light Orchestra.
It was released with that name in the United Kingdom.
When the album was released in the United States, their American record label, United Artists, did not know the album was titled after the group.
They phoned ELO 's British label to ask for the title.
When nobody answered, "No Answer" was written down.
Mistaken later for the title, the album appeared in America as No Answer.
The band 's first single was titled "10538 Overture".
It became an FM radio favorite.
In time, ELO 's music became more popular than The Move 's had been.
The Move disbanded, and Electric Light Orchestra became a full-time group.
Roy Wood decided to leave ELO partway through the recording of the second album.
He started another band called Wizzard.
Jeff Lynne took over leadership, and McDowell, Kaminski and Gale joined.
The album, ELO 2, was finished and released, but was not as well liked as the first.
A single on the album was a cover version of Chuck Berry 's "Roll Over Beethoven".
It added parts of many Beethoven compositions to Berry 's song.
It became another radio hit.
Their third album, On the Third Day, included a rock interpretation of "In the Hall of the Mountain King".
The album had another hit single, titled "Showdown".
ELO began to tour the United States.
They started with small audiences.
They became more popular with time, and added theatrical touches to their shows.
New contact microphones made it possible for the classical musicians to move around and even dance on stage, as pop musicians did.
The audiences enjoyed watching them.
By their fourth album, Eldorado, ELO had gone from overdubbing their small membership to recording with real orchestras.
They had problems when they worked in their native England.
British classical musicians usually kept more to union rules than to the job of making music.
They sometimes walked out during recordings.
This hurt the process of making their records, so ELO tried a studio called Musicland in Munich, Germany.
They liked the way the studio worked, and the German musicians were more devoted.
ELO used Musicland many more times.
Their next album, Face the Music (1975), yielded two hit singles, "Strange Magic" and "Evil Woman".
ELO became even more popular.
A compilation album, Ol ELO, featured most of their early singles.
Three songs from their 1976 album, A New World Record, became worldwide hits.
These were "Telephone Line", "Livin ' Thing", and "Do Ya", which was a remake of a Move song.
ELO recorded a double album in 1977, Out of the Blue, which included "Turn to Stone", "Sweet Talkin ' Woman", and "Mr. Blue Sky", which also became hit records.
The band toured worldwide, with a stage set that looked like a UFO, which opened to reveal the band performing inside.
Their shows included lots of stage lighting, and laser effects.
Their next new album, Discovery, did not appear until 1979.
ELO 's record label, Jet Records, changed distributors from United Artists to Columbia Records, and this was part of the delay.
Discovery included two singles, "Shine a Little Love" and "Do n't Bring Me Down".
"Do n't Bring Me Down" was the first ELO single to not include any classical instruments.
Columbia issued a Greatest Hits album, which overlapped some of the Ol ELO songs with later ones.
ELO became less popular during the 1980s.
They had fewer hits.
They recorded the Xanadu soundtrack with singer Olivia Newton-John.
They also released the albums Time (with the title song and "Hold On Tight" as singles) in 1981, Secret Messages (with "Stranger") in 1983, and finally Balance of Power, which included "Calling America", in 1986.
By this time the classical musicians had left.
Lynne now was recording their parts with synthesizers or session players.
Jeff Lynne was now producing other recording artists, including The Everly Brothers, and stopped working with Electric Light Orchestra in 1986.
Most of the remaining members, though, wanted to continue working together and regrouped, first as a band named OrKestra, then later as "ELO Part II".
These lineups toured for years, playing ELO 's old hits and releasing two albums of new material, while Lynne continued his producing career.
Lynne also released a solo album, Armchair Theatre, in 1990, and formed the Traveling Wilburys with former Beatle George Harrison.
Lynne recorded an album, Zoom, in 2001, again using the ELO name, but with a new set of musicians.
He made a handful of television appearances with the new lineup.
They played both old and new songs.
He also planned to tour with them.
Interest in the band was not strong, though, and most of the shows were canceled.
Electric Light Orchestra 's music had only a weak presence in popular culture from the mid-1980s until the early 2000s.
Their blend of classical and rock music made their music hard to put in radio play lists.
ELO 's music has made a comeback in the 2000s through its use in movie soundtracks, and also in commercials such as for Monster.
Edwin Powell Hubble (November 20, 1889 September 28, 1953) was an American astronomer.
Hubble 's findings changed the scientific view of the universe.
In 1925 he showed that there are galaxies beyond our own, the Milky Way.
Also, he developed a method for classifying galaxies.
Then he proved the galaxies were moving away from each other.
Hubble found the degree of Doppler effect (redshift) from a galaxy increased in proportion to its distance from Earth.
Doppler effect is the change in pitch or color when an object or sound comes in (higher pitch, brighter color) or moves away (lower and darker).
Redshift is observed in the light spectrum
In 1929 Hubble formulated what is called Hubble 's law.
The law states that the greater the distance between any two galaxies, the greater their relative speed of separation.
Georges Lema tre, a Belgian priest and astronomer, had published the idea two years before in an obscure journal.
Nevertheless, the idea bears Hubble 's name to this day.
Today, the ` apparent velocities ' of galaxies are understood as an increase in proper distance which occurs due to the expansion of space.
Light traveling through stretching space experiences a Hubble-type redshift.
This work helped to establish that the universe is expanding.
Some have incorrectly said that Hubble discovered the Doppler shift in the spectra of galaxies, but this had already been observed earlier by Vesto Slipher, whose data Hubble used.
The Hubble Space Telescope was named for Hubble.
Hubble himself did not see his 1929 data as evidence for an expanding Universe.
Even six years later, Hubble wrote:
Hubble 's words were forgotten, and the notion of the expansion of the universe became the consensus.
Until the theoretical developments in the 1980s no one had an explanation for why this seemed to be the case.
The question "why is the universe expanding?"
is now answered by understanding the details of what happened in the first inflationary epoch (10 32 seconds) of the existence of our universe.
Emperor Ninmy was the 54th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
His reign started in 833 and ended in 850.
Before he became the monarch, this prince 's personal name (imina) was Masara.
Ninmy was the second son of Emperor Saga and the Empress Tachibana no Kachiko.
Ninmy had nine Empresses, Imperial consorts, and concubines (k i); and he had 24 Imperial sons and daughters.
Ninmy was Crown Prince for 10 years.
Emperor Ninmy is traditionally venerated at his tomb; the Imperial Household Agency designates Fukakusa Imperial Mausoleum, in Fushimi-ku, Kyoto, as the location of Ninmy 's mausoleum.
Ninmy was sometimes posthumously referred to as "the Emperor of Fukakusa," because that was the location of his tomb.
The years of Ninmy 's reign are identified by more than one era name (neng).
Emperor Montoku was the 55th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
His reign started in 850 and ended in 858.
Before he became the monarch, this prince 's personal name (imina) was Michiyasu.
He was also known as Tamura-no-mikado or Tamura-tei.
He was the eldest son of Emperor Ninmy.
Montoku had six Imperial consorts and 29 Imperial sons.
Before he became the monarch, he was Crown Prince for 8 years.
According to the Imperial Household Agency, the mausoleum (misasagi) of Montoku is in Kyoto.
The emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine at this location.
The site is formally named Tamura no misasagi.
The years of Montoku 's reign are identified by more than one era name or neng.
Emperor Seiwa was the 56th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
Seiwa 's reign started in 858 and ended in 876.
This prince 's personal name (imina) was Korehito before he became the monarch.
In the Imperial House of Japan, Korehito was the first to have the suffix" - hito" in his name.
Korehito was the fourth son of Emperor Montoku.
His mother was the daughter of Fujiwara no Yoshifusa (-RRB-, who was regent and great minister of the council of state.
Prince Korehito became emperor at the age of 8, but the real power was held by his grandfather, Yoshifusa.
The actual site of Seiwa 's grave is known.
This emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Kyoto.
The Imperial Household Agency designates this location as Seiwa 's mausoleum.
It is formally named Minooyama no misasagi.
From the site of his tomb, he was sometimes referred to as Mizunoo (-RRB-.
The kami of Emperor Seiwa is venerated at Seiwa-tenn - sha in Saga, Yamashiro province.
The years of Seiwa 's reign are identified by more than one era name or neng.
Emperor Y zei was the 57th Emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
His reign started in 876 and ended in 884.
Before he became the monarch, his personal name (imina) was Prince Sadaakira.
Y zei was the oldest son of Emperor Seiwa.
His mother was the Fujiwara no Takakiko.
She was the sister of Fujiwara no Mototsune.
Y zei was made emperor when he was a young boy.
Y zei was succeeded by his father 's uncle, who became known as Emperor Koko.
During the reign of K k 's son, Emperor Uda, the former emperor became dangerous again.
Y zei lived in retirement until the age of 81.
The actual site of Y zei 's grave is known.
This emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Kyoto.
The Imperial Household Agency designates this location as Y zei 's mausoleum.
It is formally named Kaguragaoka no Higashi no misasagi.
The years of Y zei 's reign are more identified by more than one Japanese era.
In ancient Japan, there were four noble clans, the Gempeit kitsu (-RRB-.
One of these clans, the Minamoto clan (-RRB- are also known as Genji, and of these, the Y zei Genji (-RRB- are descended from the 57th emperor Y zei.
Y zei fathered nine sons who were born after his abdication.
The earless seals or true seals are marine mammals of the family Phocidae, one of the three pinniped families.
Espionage or spying is a practice of getting information about an organization, society, or country that is meant to be secret or confidential, without permission.
Espionage involves having access to where the needed information is stored or to the people that know the information.
In wartime, espionage is a war crime.
The person who does it is called a "spy" or more vaguely an "agent".
A double agent is one who trades information to both sides, and is (without their knowledge) being employed by both sides.
Elvis Costello (born Declan Patrick MacManus, 25 August 1954) is an English singer and songwriter.
He was born in London.
He was an important musician in the late 1970s punk rock and new wave music styles.
In the 1980s, he played an original style of rock and roll.
Later he wrote and performed music in a number of different styles from classical to jazz.
Costello has won multiple awards in his career.
These include a Grammy Award.
He has twice been nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Male.
In 2003, Elvis Costello & the Attractions were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Costello number 80 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
After two earlier marriages he married jazz pianist Diana Krall in 2003.
Costello appeared with his friend Burt Bacharach in the 1999 Austin Powers movie The Spy Who Shagged Me.
They played "I 'll Never Fall In Love Again" during the scene where Mike Myers danced with Heather Graham.
In 2010, Elvis Costello appeared as himself in David Simon 's television series, Treme.
In 2011, Elvis Costello appeared as himself on Sesame Street.
He did a song with Elmo and Cookie Monster, titled "Monster Went and Ate My Red 2", a play on" (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes".
Costello has also released studio albums in collaboration with Richard Harvey, John Harle, Burt Bacharach, Anne Sofie Von Otter, Bill Frisell, Marian McPartland and Allen Toussaint, as well as five live albums: Live at the El Mocambo, Deep Dead Blue, Costello & Nieve, My Flame Burns Blue, and Live at Hollywood High.
There have also been many compilations, box sets, and reissues by labels such as Rykodisc, Demon, Rhino, and Universal Music Enterprises.
Epilepsy is a chronic condition of the brain.
It is characterized by seizures that do not seem to have an obvious cause.
To the outside viewer, these seizures show as episodes of heavy shaking.
Depending on the seizure, the shaking may be short and difficult to detect or it may be longer.
People with epilepsy are sometimes called epileptic, but it is the fit or seizure that is "epileptic".
Many people have died from seizures.
There are many different forms of seizures, and there are also many different forms of epilepsy.
Most forms of epilepsy can not be cured.
In most cases, drugs can make life easier for those suffering from it.
In very few cases, (which are difficult treat), surgery may help.
In some cases, only eating special things (called a diet) may help.
A special diet has been developed; it is called Ketogenic diet.
When it was developed, it was mainly used to treat certain children with epilepsy, before good drugs became available.
Today, it is used to treat certain cases where drugs do not seem to help.
Certain forms of the disease disappear after a time, they do e.g. only occur in childhood.
Epilepsy is not one condition.
Rather, it stands for a number of health problems that all show in the same ways.
The condition is very common; about one percent of people worldwide (65 million) have epilepsy.
Nearly eighty percent of all cases occur in developing countries.
Epilepsy becomes more common as people age.
In the developed world, onset of new cases occurs most frequently in infants and the elderly.
In the developing world this is in older children and young adults.
Between five and ten percent of all people will have an unprovoked seizure by the age of eighty.
The chance of having a second seizure is between forty and fifty percent.
In most cases, epilepsy is caused by scars in the brain.
Some forms of the condition are caused by genetic disorders, which may be passed on from the parents to the children.
Very often, the actual cause for an epileptic seizure is lack of sleep, too much alcohol, or other things that cause stress.
Many countries in the world say there are special rules for people who have epilepsy.
They need to be without a seizure for some time before they may drive a car.
They also need to take drugs to treat their illness.
In many countries, such people may not drive buses, taxis or trucks.
People having an epileptic seizure face a number of problems.
The most common ones are:
In many cases, risky behavior can provoke seizures.
Such risk factors include
In many cases, a person who is able to cope with stress, who sleeps enough, and who does not drink too much can reduce the risk of having a seizure.
Elie Wiesel (; born Eliezer Wiesel on September 30, 1928) is a Romanian-American Jewish writer, teacher, political activist, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and Holocaust survivor.
His most well-known book is Night which is about his life in several concentration camps during the Holocaust.
He is a humanitarian.
Wiesel won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised his message "of peace, atonement and human dignity".
Edward Davis "Ed" Wood, Jr. (October 10, 1924 December 10, 1978) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, actor, author, and editor who is known for his works in low-budget horror or fantasy movies and is also known for his works with Bela Lugosi.
Wood is considered one of the worst movie directors of all time.
His most famous were Plan 9 from Outer Space and Glen or Glenda.
Wood was born in Poughkeepsie, New York on October 10, 1924.
At a young age Wood had dressed up as a girl because his mother wanted a girl, so he was forced to dress up as a girl and would have that habit for the rest of his life.
Wood was married to Norma McCarthy from 1955 until they divorced in 1956.
The he married Kathleen O'Hara in 1959.
They were married until his death in 1978.
They had a daughter.
Wood died on December 10, 1978 in Los Angeles, California from a heart attack, aged 54.
A 1994 movie was released based on Wood 's life directed by Tim Burton.
Johnny Depp played Wood in the movie.
The Flute is a musical instrument.
A person who plays a flute is called a flautist.
There are many kinds of flutes.
The most common concert flute is on C tuning.
In addition, there are other flutes like piccolos, alto flutes, and bass flutes.
Flutes have changed over time.
The first flute was a primitive one called a "Renaissance flute".
In Baroque music ` flute ' means recorder, so flute was called traverso in order not to confuse them.
A Bavarian flute maker named Boehm reformed past flute largely to enlarge the volume and improve the way of using the chromatic scale.
Later improvements created the modern flute.
There is a large repertoire of music for the flute.
Baroque composers used them in their orchestras, usually in pairs, and composed concertos, chamber music and solo music for them.
This has continued to the present day.
Orchestras have at least 2 flutes each, sometimes three or four.
Sometimes there is 1 piccolo which plays an octave higher, or an alto flute which plays a fifth lower than the flute.
The flute sounds very bright and cheerful playing high notes.
Please listen, for example, to the Badinerie from Bach 's Orchestral Suite no 2.
It can also sound very thoughtful or sad when playing in its lowest register.
A good example is the opening of Debussy 's Pr lude l'apr s midi d'un faune.
Flutes can give microtonal music by using special fingering.
Flute has many variation of the sound.
Flute is one of the woodwind instruments, but flute is made of metal.
It was made of wood a long ago, and it does n't need lip 's vibration like brass instruments.
Flute players hold it flat, and make a sound by blowing their breath over the edge of the hole of flute 's head.
It sounds thanks to the vibration of air.
Although, flutes need the second most amount of air for an instrument, next to the tuba.
Flautists can change the pitch by pushing buttons or changing the direction of the breath.
These buttons are called keys.
The breath also can change the tone or the volume.
The sound of flute is high, so composers often express it as a bird.
And a flute matches with many instrument like violin and piano.
Flute is a key instrument in many ensembles.
There are many kinds of flute, so the material also varies.
Most flutes are made of silver.
Gold, platinum, and wood are also used.
The price of flute depends on the material, but there are many different playing situations, so not only expensive flutes are useful.
The oldest kind of side-blown flute was made in India.
In India, a flute called bansuri is used.
It has no keys and is often made of bamboo or cane.
In China, a simple flute is used, which has no keys.
The Chinese flute sometimes has a thin piece of paper over one hole, which adds a bright raspiness to the sound.
There are other kinds of flute that are played by blowing into the end, like a recorder.
Some of these are tin whistle, flageolet, tabor pipe, and ocarina.
In Japan there is a kind of flute called a shakuhachi, which is made from the bottom of a bamboo plant.
It is blown at the end, but is not like the recorder because it does not have an opening that guides the air across a hole that makes the sound.
In South America, there is a flute called a quena that makes its sound the same way as the shakuhachi.
The Pan pipes are a form of flute with no holes.
It has more than one pipe connected together, with the bottom closed.
The player blows across the top of one of the pipes to make a note.
The pipes are in different sizes, so that each one makes a different note.
They are named after Pan, who played this instrument in Greek myth.
There are flutes in many cultures.
The flute has been described as "a musical weed which springs up everywhere".
The band Jethro Tull was founded by a flute player (Ian Anderson) and it can be heard in many songs.
One of which is the hit Locomotive Breath.
For the American sport, see American football.
For other sports known as football, see Football
Association football is a sport, played between two teams.
There were various attempts to codify the rules of football in England in the mid-19th century.
The present laws date back to 1863 where a ruleset was adopted by the newly formed Football Association.
In its country of origin, United Kingdom, it is called football.
In other countries, such as the United States and Canada, it is called soccer.
In Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, and Japan, both words are often used.
Each team has 11 players on the field.
One of these players is the goalkeeper, and the other ten are known as "outfield players".
The game is played by kicking a ball into the opponent 's goal.
A match has 90 minutes of play, with a break of 15 minutes in the middle.
The 90 minutes of play also includes injury time.
The break in the middle is called half-time.
There are many competitions for football, for both football clubs and countries.
Football clubs usually play other teams in their own country, with a few exceptions.
Cardiff City F.C. and Swansea City F.C from Wales for example, play in the English leagues and in the English FA Cup.
Groups such as UEFA and FIFA organise international competitions between clubs and countries.
Clubs play in competitions such as UEFA Champions League or UEFA Europa League, and countries play for the World Cup or a continental trophy such as the UEFA European Football Championship.
The FIFA World Cup takes place every four years between national teams, and is the world 's most popular sporting event, even more popular than the Olympic Games.
In football, there are two main types of competitions.
In a "league", all of the teams play the same number of games, but in a "cup", teams leave the competition when they lose, until the last two teams play each other to decide the winner.
Football is the world 's most popular sport.
It is played in more countries than any other game.
In fact, FIFA (the Federation Internationale de Football Association) has more members than the United Nations.
It is played by both males and females.
In Europe, the main competitions to compete to be the best in Europe are the Champions League for the top teams from the top leagues in each country in Europe.
Then there is UEFA Europa League which is for the next best teams from each member of the UEFA.
The most successful club in the world, in terms of domestic league results, is Rangers F.C. from Scotland, who have won more domestic league titles than any other team in the world.
They have won the country 's league 51 times which is a world record.
Other successful clubs are FC Barcelona and Real Madrid from Spain, or Manchester United F.C. from England.
Francis Ford Coppola (born April 7, 1939) is an American director and producer of movies.
He is well known for directing the Godfather trilogy and the Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now.
He is part of the group known as the New Hollywood.
This group includes Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, William Friedkin, Philip Kaufman, and George Lucas.
In the 1970s they made movies in a different way.
He directed the 1986 movie Captain EO.
Coppola was born in Detroit.
At age two, he moved to Woodside, Queens, New York City.
Many of his relatives are famous.
Actor Nicolas Cage is his nephew.
He is the father of Sofia Coppola and Roman Coppola.
His first child Gian-Carlo Coppola died in 1986.
Finland (Suomi in Finnish) is a country in Northern Europe and is a member state of the European Union.
Finland is one of the Nordic countries.
It is also part of Fennoscandia.
Finland is between the 60th and 70th latitudes North.
Its neighbors are Sweden to the west, Norway to the north, Russia to the east and Estonia to the south, beyond the sea called Gulf of Finland.
Most of western and southern coast is on the shore of the Baltic Sea.
The capital of Finland is Helsinki.
The currency of Finland is the euro (EUR); before 2002 it was the markka, the Finnish mark (FIM).
The president of Finland is Sauli Niinist.
5.3 million people live in Finland.
Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of Finland.
Most people in Finland speak Finnish, but about six percent of Finland 's people speak Swedish as their mother tongue, living mostly in the western part of Finland and on land (Finnish Ahvenanmaa).
Finland became independent of Russia in 1917.
The most important cities and towns in Finland are Helsinki, Espoo, Tampere, Vantaa, Turku, Oulu, Lahti, Kuopio, Jyv skyl and Pori.
Finland is a highly industrialized First World country.
The most important Finnish industrial products are paper, steel products such as machines, and electronics.
Nokia (the mobile company) is originally a company of Finland, named after a small town called Nokia.
Finland has been top of the list of least corrupt countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index more times than any other country.
The people of Finland are called Finns.
Most Finns speak Finnish as their mother tongue; 6 % of Finns have the Swedish language as their mother tongue.
Finns also study mandatory English and Swedish in school.
Most Finns work either in services (that is: shops, banks, offices or businesses) or in factories.
Finns often like saunas and nature.
Many Finnish families have summer cottages, small houses where they go to relax on their summer holidays.
The most important festivals that Finnish people celebrate are Midsummer and Christmas.
Santa Claus is an old Finnish tradition, although later the Coca-Cola company introduced him to the world.
The most popular sports in Finland are ice hockey, skiing, track and field and association football (soccer).
Recently Finns have also won many events in swimming, motor sports and gymnastics.
There is a very small group (a minority) of a few thousand Samis (also called Lapps) in the most northern part of Finland, called Lapland.
Most of the Samis live in Norway and Sweden.
Many Sami people farm reindeers.
Originally Samis were hunter-gatherers.
In the past the Sami were nomads, but nowadays they live in regular houses.
Very few people in Finland, approximately 2 %, are from other countries, The number of foreigners in Finland has recently been growing rapidly.
Most of Finland is covered by pine forest.
The swan, which was considered holy long ago, is the national bird of Finland.
Wood is the most important natural resource of Finland.
It is estimated that up to one-third of all wood resources of the European Union are in Finland.
The national animal of Finland is the brown bear.
The largest animal is the elk, a type of moose, which is a member of the deer family.
There are hundreds of rivers and thousands of fresh water lakes.
Fishing is a popular sport.
It is estimated there are almost 180,000 lakes in Finland.
Many islands in the Baltic Sea belong to Finland, too.
Thousands of islands are part of the land archipelago.
Tourists from all over the world come to see the fells and the northern lights in Lapland.
The highest mountain of Finland is Halti, which is 1328 meters high.
The largest lake is Saimaa, 4,400 square kilometres.
The longest river of Finland is Tornionjoki.
The largest river (by watershed) is Kemijoki, 552 kilometres long.
The weather in Finland varies widely by season.
Summer usually lasts from May to early September, and temperatures can reach up to +35 C. Autumns are dark and rainy.
Winter snow usually begins to fall in Helsinki in early December (in Lapland it can fall as early as October) and in the winter the temperature can drop to -30 C. Winter usually lasts to mid-March, when the snow melts in Helsinki (in Lapland the snow usually does n't melt until early May), and Spring lasts till late May.
Spring can be erratic, and the weather can change from frost to sunshine wthin a matter of days.
The famed Northern Lights are common in Lapland.
People first came to Finland 10,000 years ago.
That was just after an ice age, after a glacier that covered the ground had receded.
Some think the first people in Finland already spoke a language that is related to Finnish that is spoken today.
It is known for sure that an early form of the Finnish language was spoken in Finland in the Iron Age.
(The Iron Age in Finland was 2,500 800 years ago).
The first residents in Finland hunted animals, as "hunter-gatherers".
Some people started to farm crops about 5,200 years ago.
Farming slowly became more and more popular and became the major way of life until the modern age.
The ancient Finns were pagans, like most Europeans, as well as most people everywhere.
The most important god of the Finnish pantheon was Ukko.
He was a god of sky and thunder, much like Odin, another Scandinavian god-king.
These powers were common among the pagan god kings in pantheons ranging from the Finnish Ukko, to the Scandinavian\/Germanic\/Saxon Odin, all the way east to Zeus of the Greeks and Jupiter of the Romans.
Around a thousand years ago when most of Europe were adopting Christianity, eventually Finland followed suit.
During the Reformation of Christianity in the 16th century, most Finns became Protestants.
Some pagan practices still remain amongst the now Christian Finns, such as bear worship.
From the Middle Ages Finland was a part of Sweden.
Then, in the year 1809, Russia took Finland from Sweden.
Finland was a part of Russia, but after a short period of time it became autonomous, which means that the Finns essentially controlled Finland, though the Tsar was in control officially.
Finns could create their own laws and had their own currency, (called the markka), their own stamps and own customs.
However, Finland did not have its own army.
On 6 December 1917, Finland became independent, which meant that it no longer was a part of Russia.
There was a communist revolution in Russia and after 1922 Russia was a part of the Soviet Union.
There were communists in Finland too, who tried to create a revolution in Finland.
This attempt at revolution caused the Finnish civil war.
The communists lost the civil war, and Finland did not change its old capitalist system.
Stalin, who was the leader of the Soviet Union, did not like having a capitalist country as its neighbor.
Stalin wanted Finland to become a communist state and be a part of the Soviet Union.
The leaders of Finland refused: they wanted to stay independent.
The Soviet Union sent many troops across the eastern border of Finland to try to make Finland join them, which resulted in the Winter War.
There were many battles, that eventually resulted in Finland losing areas along its eastern border to the Soviet Union.
Adolf Hitler was the dictator of Germany, and wanted to invade the Soviet Union.
Finland wanted to retrieve the areas that it had lost, so they joined the German invasion, which started in 1941.
This part of the Second World War is called the Continuation War in Finland.
However, Finland was not a fascist or an antisemitic country.
Finns were interested in freedom rather than dictatorship.
While Germany was losing the war, Finland had already progressed into the Soviet Union in order to regain the areas lost in the previous peace.
Finland wanted to end the war with the Soviet Union, which resulted in peace, but once again Finland had to relinquish the areas that they had conquered.
This time, the peace with the Soviet Union made Finland and Germany enemies.
Finns fought Germans, and Germans retreated to Norway, burning down all of Lapland behind them.
This is called War of Lapland.
Finland remained independent.
After the war, many factories were built in Finland.
Many people moved from farms to cities.
At that time, big factories manufactured products like paper and steel.
More and more people worked in more advanced jobs, like high technology.
Also, many people went to universities to get a good education.
Finland was one of the first countries where most people had Internet connections and mobile phones.
A well-known company that makes mobile phones, Nokia, is from Finland.
Finland joined the European Union in 1995.
The Finnish currency, the markka (mark), was changed to the European Union 's currency, the euro, in 2002.
Finland has a mixed economy.
Free market controls a lot of production and sales of goods, but public sector is involved in services.
In 2013, taxes were 44 % of gross national product.
This is 4th largest in Europe, after Denmark, France and Belgium.
In 2014 services were 70 % of the gross national product.
The largest company in 2014 was oil refinery Neste Oil.
Second largest was Nokia.
It is expected to be the argest one again, as soon as purchase of Alcatel-Lucent is finished.
Two forest industries Stora Enso and UPM-Kymmene, are numbers three and four.
Number five is Kesko which sellls everyday goods in K-supermarkets.
Elections are organized to select 200 members to the Parliament of Finland.
Also selected are the president of Finland, members of town and city councils and Finnish members to the European Parliament.
The elections are secret and direct.
People vote directly for the person they want to be elected.
In presidential elections votes are only cast for a person, not for a political party.
All the other elections are proportional.
The system is a combination of voting for individuals and parties.
The right to vote is universal and equal.
In general elections everybody has one vote.
Flagellates are cells with one or more whip-like organelles called flagella.
Some cells in animals may be flagellate, for instance the spermatozoa of most phyla.
Flowering plants and fungi do not produce flagellate cells, but the closely related green algae and chytrids do.
Many protists take the form of single-celled flagellates.
They are found in most lines of eukaryotes, and it is likely that all surviving eukaryotes developed from them.
Flavour or Flavor (US English) is the quality of anything which affects the taste.
When someone remarks on the flavor of something they are trying to describe the specific way something tastes.
Flavor can also be used to describe the act of adding a taste alteration (to change the taste) to something.
This is usually done by adding spices or sugars, though in processed food there are oftentimes artificial (fake) flavors.
The French language (French: ', pronounced "Fronce-eh") is a Romance language that was first spoken in France.
It is also spoken in Belgium (Wallonia), Luxembourg, Quebec (Canada), Switzerland (Romandy) and many different countries in Africa (Francophone Africa).
About 220 million people speak French as a native or a second language.
It has also been one of the roots of other languages such as the Haitian Creole language.
Like the other Romance languages, its nouns have genders that are divided into masculine (masculin) and feminine (f minin) words.
In ancient times, the Celts lived in what is now France.
In those days, the land was called Gaul (Latin: Gallia).
The Romans spread their power to Gallia and made Gallia one of their provinces.
Because the Romans spoke Latin, the local people learned Latin and began to speak it.
Their own language, Gaulish, tended to be spoken less often, although Breton is a language still spoken today in the part of France called Brittany, that came from the old Celtic language.
French pronunciation, more so than other Romance languages, became radically different from Latin.
After the Roman Empire fell and Germanic peoples swarmed the countryside, Vulgar Latin was changing quickly.
In medieval France it changed into two dialects or languages: langue d'oc and langue d' o l. They both mean "language of yes", because oc was the word for "yes" in the south, and o l meant "yes" in the north.
Today, the word for yes in French is oui, pronounced like "we".
In 1635, France established the French Academy in order to standardize the French language.
To this day, the academy establishes the rules for Standard French.
Langue d'oc is now called Occitan, and it is still spoken by many people in Southern France.
French uses the roman alphabet, like English.
There are a few differences, because vowels can have three types of diacritics added on to them.
These are the acute accent; grave accent and circumflex accent.
A cedilla can also be added onto a c to make.
If a word ends with a consonant, this will usually not be pronounced unless the next word starts with a vowel.
However, if the word is very short or the last consonant is a c, r, l or f, this is still pronounced.
Many French words are like English words, because English took many words from the Norman language, a dialect of French influenced by Old Norse.
This is despite the fact that scholars consider English to be a Germanic language like German.
Words in different languages with the same meaning which are spelled similarly are called cognates.
Most English words ending with "tion" and "sion" came from the French language.
See below for more examples:
In mathematics a field is a certain kind of algebraic structure.
In a field you can add, subtract, multiply and divide two numbers (with division only allowed if is not equal to zero).
A field is a special ring, in which you can divide.
As the field is always a ring, it consists of a set (represented here with the letter R) with two operations: addition (+) and multiplication (-RRB-.
The properties of a ring are:
The integers are not a field, because you can not always divide without a remainder.
n factorial (written n!)
is the number we get when we multiply every number from 1 to n. If n is 0, n factorial is 1.
n!
is not defined for negative numbers.
However, the related gamma function is defined over the real and complex numbers (but the integers it is defined over are positive).
It is used to find out how many possible ways there are to arrange n objects.
For example, if there are 3 letters (A, B, and C), they can be arranged as ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, and CBA.
That 's 6 choices because A can be put in 3 different places, B has 2 choices left after A is placed, and C has only one choice left after A and B have been placed.
That is 3 2 1 = 6 choices.
More generally, if there are three objects, and we want to find out how many different ways there are to arrange (or select them), for the first object, there are 3 choices, for the second object, there are only two choices left as the first object has already been chosen, and finally, for the third object, there is only one position left.
Therefore 3!
is equivalent to 3 2 1, or 6.
This function is a good example of recursion (doing things over and over), as 3!
can be written as 3 (2!)
, which can be written as 3 2 (1!)
N!
can therefore also be defined as N (N-1)!
with 0!
= 1.
The factorial function grows very fast.
There are 3,628,800 ways to arrange 10 items.
The word fiddle means a violin when used in folk music.
Many people also use it simply as a fun word for "violin".
Someone who plays the fiddle is a "fiddler".
The bow is sometimes called a "fiddling stick".
Fiddle playing, or fiddling, is a style of folk music.
The word fiddle is also used for instruments of several hundred years ago which developed into the violin.
These instruments varied a lot from one country to another and one time to another.
They were of different shapes and sizes, and even had many different names.
Often they were held against the chest instead of being tucked under the chin.
In the Middle Ages a small, narrow violin called a kit was often used by dancing masters.
It was small enough to be put in a pocket.
In south eastern Europe there was even a fiddle with a belly (the front of the instrument) made of skin.
Fiddle strings were usually made of gut.
Many fiddles have bridges which are flatter on top than those of classical violins.
The flatter bridges makes it easier to play chords and to bow quickly from one string to another.
The strings are tuned in a variety of ways.
A player might even change the tuning for playing different pieces of music.
Tunings other than the regular G-D-A-E tuning, such as G-D-G-D or A-E-A-E, are common.
One, two or three of the strings may have been used for a drone (continuous note) while playing the tune on the top string (s).
Many fiddlers have not received classical training but have learned by listening to other fiddlers and copying them.
The music they play is dance music.
Classical violin playing developed out of country fiddle playing.
Most fiddlers use bows which are the same as violin bows, but in some countries such as Hungary they use shorter, heavier bows with horse hair that is tied around the frog (the heel of the bow).
With this type of bow the player tightens the hair by squeezing it while playing.
Fiddles were played by people from all areas of society: from noble people to simple peasants.
Many of them were minstrels who entertained important people.
Some of them may have been able to read music, but many would have learned by copying other players and memorizing the music.
At important feasts the minstrels may have played music while walking up to the high table when the food was brought in.
They played to accompany dancers and singers, and even acrobats.
We can see from old paintings that they sometimes played with other instruments such as trumpets, drums or percussion.
We do not know the music they played because it was never written down, but some tunes we still hear today may have come from those old tunes, since some people still learn tunes by ear, from people who learned them by ear, and so on.
Some American "old-time" tunes, and some Breton tunes may have come to us in this way, for example.
A flugelhorn is a musical instrument, a part of the brass family.
It looks similar to the trumpet but the tubing is wider and more conical.
It is pitched in Bb like trumpets and cornets.
It can have three piston valves like a trumpet, or rotary valves like a French horn.
It has been described as being a bugle with valves.
The sound is more mellow, not as harsh as a trumpet.
The instrument was developed from German hunting horns, and became popular in brass bands in the 1850 's.
Performers such as Miles Davis have used the flugelhorn in jazz recordings.
Folk music is music that is played or sung by ordinary people (not professional musicians).
It is traditional music that people learn by listening to other people playing it and then copying them.
We say that the tradition is orally transmitted or handed down orally, meaning that the music is not written down but taught by speaking (oral means belonging to the mouth).
Every country has its own traditional music.
Folk song is part of folk music.
A folksinger is a person who sings folk songs.
In the 1960s a new type of music was started by a book Bob Dylan who mixed traditional folk song with rock and roll.
This music is sometimes called folk rock.
Folk music is music for everybody to play and listen to.
In this way it is different from classical music which is mainly developed by professional musicians for a smaller group of people.
Folk music is part of a popular culture, although the term popular music or pop music today refers to a kind of music which people can hear through television, radio and other means of recording.
In many parts of the world nearly all music is folk music.
The term folk music is usually used for European and American music which is part of an oral tradition.
Folk music as an oral tradition, is much less important than before, in part because of new technology (radio, television etc, and recordings of music).
Folk tunes are now often written down, and they have influenced other kinds of music, so that the differences between various types of music are harder to see.
In older times folk music was part of communal recreation.
This means that small communities such as villages or families would relax by playing and singing music together.
People would often make up a new song or new piece of music, or make changes to music that they already knew.
In this way music was always changing.
People would get musical ideas from other groups nearby.
This is why folk music from neighbouring countries often sound similar.
Ballads were a popular kind of folk music.
These were folk songs which told a story (they were narrative).
Sometimes they had a refrain after each verse so that everybody could join in.
Ballads told stories of love, myths or folklore.
This is how stories were handed down from one generation to another.
Instrumental folk music was used for dancing.
Some of the instruments may have been very simple, such as a pair of sticks, rattle or a simple drum.
Other instruments may include fiddle (the folk word for violin), bagpipes, harp, zither, or various wind instruments, depending on the time of history and the country.
Some singing was polyphonic, i.e. there were two or more parts (voices).
Very often two voices would sing in parallel (going up and down together).
In countries such as Russia people sang in three or four parts, e.g. in the tradition of podgolosnaya (underneath the voice).
In countries such as Britain this polyphonic tradition did not exist.
Folk songs there were sung by one singer, unaccompanied.
Folk music used different scales.
These are called modes.
The Ionian mode (like our major scale) was the most common in Western Europe.
In some parts of Eastern Europe modes with several semitones were used, but for the most part, half steps were avoided.
This results is the tunes being described as tetratonic (four notes per octave) or pentatonic (five notes per octave).
Folk music also includes simple children s songs and lullabies.
Folk music was sung by people as they worked.
In the early days of European immigration in America the pioneers sang as they traveled, cowboys sang as they worked, slaves sang in the cottonfields.
In the 18th century folk music started to have an influence on classical music (or art music).
People from the higher classes started to be interested in folk music because they were conscious of being part of a tradition.
Composers such as Mozart and Schubert wrote folk dances for orchestras or small groups of instruments.
Folk music was used by many composers in the Romantic period.
Gustav Mahler used folk song in a lot of his music.
In the early twentieth century some composers traveled around collecting folk music which was being played or sung by people in the country.
They often used some of these ideas in their music.
Bartok did this in Hungary as well as in Bulgaria and in the United States, and people such as Cecil Sharp and the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams collected folk music in England.
In the United States the influence of jazz on classical music is all part of the story of folk music.
A fullerene is any molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube.
Spherical fullerenes are also called buckyballs, and they resemble the balls used in association football.
Cylindrical ones are called carbon nanotubes or buckytubes.
They are usually made in the form of a hollow ball or tube.
The fullerene was found in 1985 by Robert Curl, Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley at the University of Sussex and Rice University, and was named after Buckminster Fuller because his famous Geodesic domes are similar in shape.
Fullerenes are made by the heating of graphite in an electric arc in the presence of inert gases such as helium or argon.
Free software is software that anyone may run, share, and change, at any time, for any reason.
The opposite of free software is proprietary software.
In 1984, Richard Stallman started the free software movement when he began the GNU project.
Free software is very similar, but different from open source software.
People who use the name open source more, say that they use it because the authors of such software allow others to look at the software and change it, so the others will then help the authors make the software better.
Because of how the name open source is used, all free software is open source software, and almost all open source software is free software.
If an author wants to make his computer program free, he must allow the people to whom he gives the program as a free program to use it for any reason and purpose, on any computer, in any place at any time, without limits.
That does not mean that the author must say "I allow you to delete files from the computers of other people without telling them", but he must not say "I prohibit you from deleting files from the computers of other people without telling them".
If deleting files from somebodies ' computer is illegal, it will be illegal even if it is prohibited only by law and not by the author of the program.
If it is legal (for example, if a user wants the program to delete his files without telling him about that), but the author has prohibited it, nobody can change the program to make a useful program which does that, and give it to others.
The author must not prohibit even things which are dangerous, because if the prohibition is not very very very complex and long, it may be used incorrectly.
For example, explosive materials can be used for war, but they can also be used to remove a big stone which has fallen on a road.
Some authors would want to prohibit eating meat, or saying bad words (or good words which are not allowed to be said in their culture), or something else.
If many authors prohibit many different things, then a program which is made of the programs of those authors will not be usable.
Prior knowledge affects how a student organizes new information.
A goal of learning is to incorporate new information into the existing organization of memory.
A student uses that existing structure to assimilate new information.
For example, while trying to explain how a gland works in a classroom of six grade, an instructor might say that the gland is like a thermostat.
Most students already know that a thermostat controls the temperature by monitoring the presence of heat.
They transfer this understanding to the functioning of a gland.
It monitors and controls the level of a hormone in the body in the same fashion.
If the analogy is a good one, the student can take it from there to intuit all sorts of properties of the gland which parallels the thermostat.
We could also use the prior knowledge of students in history class because a student in a history class is going to organize new historical information chronologically because that is the way history had been organized in earlier classes.
History instructors trying to organize around a different conceptual structure must fight against the students ' tendency to see everything as happening in a straight timeline.
There are also other things which must be allowed.
The word free in free software is about freedom, not price.
People are allowed to sell free software, but the person who buys the software may change it or give it away.
The name free software in English language is also often used for software, a copy of which people can download without paying money, and sometimes can give copies to others, but not do all the things with it that they can do with the other Free software.
In this case free means free of charge, freedom from paying money.
This software is called freeware; it is almost always proprietary software.
The free software movement is a software movement which aims to improve the user 's rights on software and reducing proprietary (non-free) software through the use of operating systems such as Ubuntu.
The movement is generally signified through open source software such as Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, FileZilla and open source operating systems such as Linux and ReactOS.
The movement is against non-free software that restricts the user 's rights.
Examples of non-free software include Microsoft Windows, Adobe Acrobat and UltraEdit.
Food is what people eat.
Food usually comes from animals or plants.
It is eaten by living things to provide energy and nutrition.
Food contains the nutrition that people and animals need to be healthy.
It contains protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals.
Liquids used for energy and nutrition are often called "drinks".
Food for humans is mostly made through farming or gardening.
It includes animal and vegetable sources.
Some people refuse to eat food from animal origin, like meat, eggs, and products with milk in them.
Not eating meat is called vegetarianism.
Not eating or using any animal products is called veganism.
Food produced by farmers or gardeners can be changed by industrial processes (the food industry).
Processed food usually contains several natural ingredients and food additives (such as preservatives, antioxidants, emulsifiers, flavor enhancers, etc.).
At home, food is prepared in the kitchen, by the cook.
The cook sometimes uses a cookbook.
Examples of cooking utensils are pressure cookers, pots, and frying pans.
Food can also be prepared and served in restaurants or refectory (in particular for kids in school).
The utensils used may be a plate, knife, fork, chopsticks, spoon, bowl, or spork.
Many people do not grow their own food.
They have to buy food that was grown by someone else.
People buy most of their food in shops or markets.
But some people still grow most or all of their own food.
People may buy food and take it home to cook it.
They may buy food that is ready to eat from a street vendor or a restaurant.
Food shortage is still a big problem in the world today.
Many people do not have enough money to buy the food that they need.
Bad weather or other problems sometimes destroy the growing food in one part of the world.
When people do not have enough food, we say that they are hungry.
If they do not eat enough food for a long time, they will become sick and die from starvation.
In areas where many people do not have enough food, we say that there is famine there.
Food and water can make people sick if it is contaminated by microorganisms, bad metals, or chemicals.
If people do not eat the right foods, they can become sick.
If people eat too much food, they can become overweight or obese.
This is also bad for people 's health.
Many cultures or religions have food taboos.
That means they have rules what people should not eat, or how the food has to be prepared.
Examples of religious food rules are the Kashrut of Judaism and the Halal of Islam, that say that pig meat can not be eaten.
In Hinduism, beef is not allowed to be eaten.
Some Christians believe to be vegetarian (Someone that does n't eat meat)
Real numbers in binary have to be stored in a special way in a computer.
There is no decimal point in the binary system so the computer has a method of understanding decimals.
This is called floating-point representation.
The decimal point in a real number is called a floating point because it can be placed anywhere - it is not fixed.
Because of this, a computer will divide a number into two parts.
These are called the mantissa and the exponent.
1101.
0111 would become 1101 0111
The exponent is the number of spaces the decimal point has moved.
In the example above, the decimal point moved 4 places to the left, so the exponent is 0000 0100 (this is binary for 4).
If the decimal point moves to right, the exponent is negative.
For example,
0000.
0111 (mantissa - 0000 0111) here, the exponent is -1.
The binary number for this is 1111 1111 (see Negative binary numbers)
The result is found by putting the Mantissa and Exponent together.
The results for the examples above are:
A tackle in football is a move in which someone brings an opposing player down to end the play.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 - 25 August 1900) was a German author and philosopher.
He wrote several books that he hoped would change the world.
His books are works of literature and philosophy.
Nietzsche wrote a lot about how people make decisions about how they live their lives.
He attacked most of the moral ideas that were popular at the time because he did not believe that there are any real facts about what is right or wrong.
He thought people should create their own facts about morality.
He also often attacked the ideas of the Christian religion.
He believed that the Christian idea that one should feel pity when one sees weakness was unhelpful.
According to him, weak people rely on other people 's love as a way of protecting themselves.
Nietzsche believed that people should be stronger than that.
He thought that people should be very aware of their body and of the real world in which they actually live.
He told his readers not to live in a daydream or make decisions based on unrealistic thoughts.
He believed that ideas of heaven came from an inability to cope with life in the world.
Nietzsche considered the world to be one connected thing, including mankind and nature.
He invented the idea of the "will to power".
This idea is that everyone and everything is trying to overcome itself, or defeat or take control from itself.
Therefore, if the world is just one thing, this is the force that makes the world.
Nietzsche thought that human beings would be successful at overcoming themselves, and he thought that when they did, they would be different and better.
He named the person who would do this someday a "superman" (or bermensch" in German).
He thought that the supermen would be stronger than normal humans, and not restricted by other people 's ideas of right and wrong.
Adolf Hitler, the German Chancellor and leader of the Nazis in World War II, read Nietzsche 's work.
Some people say that Hitler did not understand Nietzsche 's ideas, but he used them to try to show that his actions were right.
Hitler and Benito Mussolini used the term" bermensch" to refer to the Aryan race.
However he was not popular among all fascists.
Nietzsche wrote in a very fiery and exciting way.
However, what he wrote later in his life became more and more odd.
When he was forty years old, Nietzsche went insane.
Supposedly, one day in the city of Turin, Italy, he saw a horse being whipped by its owner and ran to save it, hugging it around the throat.
After this, Nietzsche never wrote again and could not look after himself.
This illness may have been caused by the disease syphillis, or a brain tumor.
His writing and ideas are still popular and of interest to academics and intellectuals.
In the late 1880s Georg Brandes developed a philosophy called "aristocratic radicalism" inspired by Nietzsche 's idea of the "overman."
Nietzsche is associated with anarchism, but his writing seems to have a negative opinion of anarchists.
Anarcha-feminist Emma Goldman was deeply influenced by his work.
Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 - December 4, 1993) was an American musician and composer.
He was known for his strange style of music, which was often weird and funny.
He made various types of music and many albums.
Zappa worked with many other musicans, most notably his 1960s group The Mothers of Invention and his friend and blues singer Captain Beefheart.
Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but spent most of his life in Southern California.
He grew up in Baltimore, in Florida, and in Monterey, Claremont and El Cajon, California.
His mother was of French and Italian descent; his father was an immigrant from Sicily.
Zappa had four children with his wife Gail.
They gave them all very unusual names: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet, and Diva.
Zappa was openly against drugs, Televangelism, and censoring music.
He often tried to see what he could get away with.
Zappa died from prostate cancer in Los Angeles, California.
The Fagales are an order of flowering plants, including some of the best known trees.
The order name is derived from genus Fagus, Beeches.
They belong among the rosid group of dicotyledons.
The families currently included are as follows:
Fabales is an order of flowering plants.
It is included in the rosid group of the eudicots in the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group II classification system.
Under the Cronquist system and some other plant classification systems, the order Fabales contains only the family Fabaceae.
The other families treated in the Fabales by the APG II classification were placed in separate orders by Cronquist, the Polygalaceae within its own order, the Polygalales, and the Quillajaceae and Surianaceae within the Rosales.
Frank Lloyd Wright (Frank Lincoln Wright; June 8, 1867 April 9, 1959) was a famous American architect from the early 20th century.
He designed all kinds of buildings including banks, holiday resorts, office buildings, churches, a synagogue, a gas station, a beer garden and an art museum.
Wright designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 532 works.
Wright believed in designing structures which were in peace with humanity and its environment.
He called his belief organic architecture.
He used this technique for his design for Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture".
Wright was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the image of the Usonian home, his one-of-a-kind vision for urban planning in the United States.
He began an American style of building design and is said to be one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century.
Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin on June 8, 1867 to a farming family.
His work includes original and creative examples of many building types.
Wright also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass.
Wright authored 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe.
His colorful personal life often made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio.
Already well-known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time."
Wright died on April 9, 1959 in Phoenix, Arizona from surgical complications.
He was 91 years old.
Frank Lloyd Wright was born in the farming town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, United States, on June 8, 1867.
He was born Frank Lincoln Wright.
His father, William Carey Wright (1825 1904), was a locally admired speaker, music teacher, sometimes a lawyer, and minister.
William Wright had met and married Anna Lloyd Jones (1838\/39 1923), a county school teacher of Welsh descent, the previous year when he was employed as the superintendent of schools for Richland County.
The Wright family moved from Richland Center to Weymouth, Massachusetts.
Afterwards, The Wright Family struggled financially in Weymouth and returned to Spring Green, Wisconsin.
They settled in Madison.
Although William was a distant parent, he shared his love of music, especially the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, with his children.
Wright attended a Madison High School, but there is no evidence he ever graduated.
He was admitted to the University of Wisconsin Madison as a special student in 1886.
There he joined Phi Delta Theta fraternity, took classes part-time for two semesters, and worked with a professor of civil engineering, Allan D. Conover.
He moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1887.
Wright did not get along well with other draftsmen.
He wrote that several violent events happened between them during the first years of his apprenticeship.
Afterwards many other draftsmen showed very little respect for his employees as well.
In spite of this, "Sullivan took (Wright) under his wing and gave him great design responsibility."
As an act of respect, Wright would later refer to Sullivan as Lieber Meister (German for "Dear Master").
Wright also formed a bond with office foreman Paul Mueller.
Wright would later engage Mueller to build several of his public and commercial buildings between 1903 and 1923.
As Wright began to work on residential projects for Adler & Sullivan.
Wright designed his houses on his own time.
Sullivan knew nothing of Wright 's works until 1893, when he recognized that one of the houses was a Frank Lloyd Wright design.
This particular house, built for Allison Harlan, was only blocks away from Sullivan 's townhouse in the Chicago community of Kenwood.
Many examples of his work are in Buffalo, New York as a result of friendship between Wright and Darwin D. Martin.
In 1902, the Larkin Company decided to build a new building.
Wright came to Buffalo and designed not only the Larkin Administration Building (completed in 1904, demolished in 1950), but also homes for three of the company 's executives including the Darwin D. Martin House in 1904.
Wright later built their summer home.
He also designed the Graycliff Estate, also designed for Darwin D. Martin and his wife, Isabelle.
On August 15, 1914, while Wright was working in Chicago, Julian Carlton, a male servant from Barbados who had been hired several months earlier, set fire to the living room of Taliesin and murdered seven people with an axe as the fire burned.
The dead included Mamah; her two children, John and Martha; a gardener; a draftsman named Emil Brodelle; a worker; and another workman 's son.
Two people survived the mayhem.
One of them helped to put out the fire that almost completely burned the residential wing of the house.
Carlton swallowed muriatic acid right after the attack in an attempt to kill himself.
He was nearly lynched on the spot, but was taken to the Dodgeville jail.
Carlton died from starvation seven weeks after the attack, despite medical attention.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed a summer-house in 1935 for the Kaufmann family over a waterfall in Pennsylvania.
He called the house "Fallingwater".
Some people say it is the most famous private home in the world.
The house actually sits low in the valley over the stream, but looks dramatic from further downstream.
It has large terraces, and some of them stick straight out and hang over the waterfall or the stream.
There are windows and glass doors, with only narrow steel supports between them, wrapping all the way around the living room.
There are also windows going all the way from the floor to the ceiling in all three stories of the tower.
Most of the house is made from stone.
There are strong horizontal and vertical lines in the design of the house.
It resembles the horizontal and vertical lines in the rock formations and other natural features.
The waterfall can be heard everywhere in the house.
Wright wanted there to be a close connection between inside and outside, and for the house itself to be natural.
In 1991, members of the American Institute of Architects named the Fallingwater house the "best all-time work of American architecture".
One famous house was called the Robie House.
It had a maze like layout and geometric stained glass windows.
The Robie House was a unique house with odd shapes, colors and form.
He finished making it in 1910, as a house for children.
In fact, many children lived and played in that house with their families up until 1926 when it was closed for living in, and closed to the public.
Many times, it was planned to be destroyed.
However, twice, Wright saved his house from destruction because of the reasons he built it and all the memories of it that he loved so much.
It is now being restored at a cost of $ 10 million.
Another famous building by Wright was called the Johnson Wax Headquarters.
The building has Wright 's idea of the streamlined Art Moderne style popular in the 1930s.
In a break with Wright 's earlier Prairie School structures, the building features many circular forms and needed over 200 different curved "Cherokee red" bricks to create the sweeping curves of the inside and outside.
The mortar between the bricks was created in traditional Wright-style to give the horizontality of the building.
The warm, reddish hue of the bricks was used in the polished concrete floor as well.
The white stone trim and white columns create a slight yet striking difference.
All of the furniture, created by Steelcase, was designed for the building by Wright and it mirrored many of the building 's unique design features.
The entrance is in the structure, entering the building on one side with a covered carport on the other.
The carport is supported by short versions of the steel-reinforced (tree-like) concrete columns that appear in the Great Workroom.
Wright proposed to build a skyscraper called The Illinois that would be the height of a distance of a mile.
It was intended to be constructed in Chicago, Illinois.
It could have included 528 stories, with a gross area of 18,460,000 square feet (1,715,000 m2).
Wright stated that there would be parking for 15,000 cars and 150 helicopters.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Wright worked on this project for 16 years (1943 1959) and is probably his most recognized masterpiece.
The building is located in Fifth Avenue.
Its interior is similar to the inside of a seashell.
Its one of a kind central geometry was created to allow visitors to easily see Guggenheim 's collection of his paintings by taking an elevator to the top-level and then viewing artworks by walking down the slowly descending, central spiral ramp, the floor of which is lodged with circular shapes and triangular light bulbs to complement the geometric nature of the building.
However, when the museum was completed, some of Wright 's design were ignored, such as his desire for the interior to be painted off-white.
Further, the Museum currently designs exhibits to be viewed by walking up the curved walkway without walking down from the top-level.
Wright strongly believed in working alone.
He did not support the American Institute of Architects during his career, going so far as to call the organization "a harbor of refuge for the incompetent," and "a form of refined gangsterism."
When an the Institute called him "an old amateur" Wright later responded, "I am the oldest."
In 1940, Wright started the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
It was set up for educational purposes.
It looks after two Wright buildings, Taliesin East in Wisconsin, and Taliesin West in Arizona.
It has a library with more than 22,000 of Wright 's drawings, and 300,000 documents.
It is home to the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.
Frank Lloyd Wright was married three times and fathered seven children, four sons and three daughters.
He also adopted Svetlana Milanoff, the daughter of his third wife, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright.
Wright once had an apprentice who was married to Joseph Stalin 's daughter.
The Oscar-winning actress Anne Baxter was Wright 's granddaughter.
Wright was a fan of Japanese Art and collected them throughout his career.
Wright continued to collect them until his death in 1959.
He used prints to help him pay for loans.
He often relyed upon his art business to help financially.
Wright died on April 9, 1959, while undergoing surgery in Phoenix, Arizona, to remove an intestinal obstruction.
His third wife, Olgivanna, ran the Fellowship after Wright 's death, until her own death in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1985.
Later that year, it was learned that her dying wish had been that Wright, she, and her daughter by a first marriage all be cremated and relocated to Scottsdale.
By then, Wright 's body had lain for over 25 years in the Lloyd-Jones cemetery, next to the Unity Chapel, near Taliesin, Wright 's later-life home in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
Wright 's remains were removed from his grave by members of the Taliesin Fellowship.
Then, his remains were cremated and sent to Scottsdale where they were later interred in the memorial garden.
In 1966, the United States Postal Service honored Wright with a Prominent Americans series 2 postage stamp.
Several of Wright 's buildings have been proposed by the United States to be UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Shortly after his death, Simon & Garfunkel recorded So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright as a tribute to Wright.
In 2000, Fallingwater was named "The Building of the 20th century" in "Top-Ten" poll taken by members attending the AIA annual convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
On that list, Wright was listed along with many of the USA 's other greatest architects including Eero Saarinen, I. M. Pei, Louis Kahn, Philip Johnson and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
He was the only architect who had more than one building on the list.
The other three buildings were the Guggenheim Museum, the Frederick C. Robie House and the Johnson Wax Headquarters.
A flying disc is a flat round object with a thick rim.
The rim make the disc easier to grip and throw, and also keeps the disc from turning over as it flies.
Detailed throwing instructions are below, but the basic goal is to throw the disc while also making the disc spin.
Also mentioned below is a flying ring, made under the brand name Aerobie.
Although these designs are very different, they both use air resistance in the same way to fly.
Unlike the Aerobie, flying discs are used in both Ultimate Frisbee and Disc Golf.
The Frisbee brand of flying disc is rarely used in official competition in either game, which is why the team sport of Ultimate Frisbee is officially called simply "Ultimate."
Still, as "Kleenex" was once a word used to mean "facial tissue," "Frisbee" is still broadly used as a synonym for a flying disc.
The Aerobie Superdisk is an alternative design of flying disc that, although somewhat differently shaped, still has very similar properties to the conventional disc.
It has less air resistance.
Because there is less resistance to motion, the Aerobie discs can fly farther than the conventional disc.
The Aerobie flying ring has minimal drag and holds the world record for the longest flight by a human-thrown projectile.
However, due to the lack of a rim, the Aerobie is less suited to angled, curved flights and air-bouncing.
The spin of the disc helps to keep the disc stable in flight and prevent unplanned tilting.
This is because a large angular momentum stabilises the disc in the same way that it keeps a gyroscope steady, with the angular force forcing the mass of the disc away from the center of mass, perpendicular to the axis of rotation.
Any unequal force acting on a particular area of the disc is quickly redirected to be equal over the circumference of the disc.
As the disc spins faster, it becomes more stable due to the rapidity of the equalisation of forces.
The force required to accelerate the disc is directly proportional to the mass of the disc.
This decreases the acceleration of the disc, assuming that the force of projection is constant.
Therefore, discs come in a variety of weights, although those used for Ultimate are mainly 175 g in mass, heavier than the majority of discs and considerably heavier than an aerobie.
Flying discs (including Frisbees) can be thrown in many ways.
All involve spinning the disc to give it gyroscopic stability, and accelerating its mass to a certain velocity.
Without spin, a disc will wobble and fall; without velocity, the disc will not go anywhere.
Using these two guidelines, any number of throws are possible.
Most discs are designed to create lift when thrown with the flat side up.
Right-side up throws are all similar in that they react the same way to the tilt of the disc when it is released.
A disc thrown right-side up will accelerate in the direction of the low end of the disc.
A disc tilted leading-edge up will lose speed at the end of the throw and make a gentle landing; if tilted sideways (known in aeronautics terms as roll), it can curve around objects.
There is a language for describing throws that curve.
Both descriptions are relative to the direction the person is facing and intends to throw.
This axis is marked in red in the picture.
This is probably the most commonly learned throw, and also one of the most powerful.
This throw is also known as the flick, two-finger, or the side-arm.
Focused in the wrist, this throw takes little time to execute.
Along with the backhand, it is one of the two most common throws used in Ultimate.
The forehand is a versatile throw, and can be adapted to many different situations.
The Push Pass: A relatively little-used throw, it is thrown with a grip similar to a backhand (index finger on the outer rim of the disc, thumb on top, other fingers curled underneath) but is released on the forehand side from a forehand stance.
A pronating wrist snap similar to a forehand release pushes the disc forward, while spin is imparted "backwards" by rolling the disc off the index finger.
A final flick of the index finger finishes the release.
It is difficult to impart as much spin to the push pass as one can typically impart to a forehand or backhand, resulting in a less stable throw.
It is useful in Ultimate for very short throws released to the forehand side.
The thumber forehand is also known as a The Beach Thumber, Peach, or in the sport of guts, simply as a thumber.
Its primary advantage is that it can be thrown quite hard and with a great amount of spin, and is relatively easy to learn.
It is often seen used in a game of Guts due to its power and velocity.
It is unpopular in Ultimate due to several disadvantages when compared to the standard forehand.
It is relatively difficult to impart different curves or release angles to, it is harder to release extended away from the thrower 's body, and it makes for slow grip transitions to a backhand or hammer.
The Overhand (also known as Hungarian, flamingo, dragonwing, windmill, waffle, discus, wrist-hook, chicken wing, or biscuit) is rarely used among ultimate players, because the alternative, the traditional forehand, allows greater sideways arm extension, useful in moving the disc around defenders.
The Overhand is most useful when the disc is caught above the head and must be thrown quickly without changing grips, such as during a Greatest attempt.
The Duck (also known as a bear claw, a duder, or a useless) is thrown with a similar grip to the Overhand, except it is the backward version of it.
While the Overhand is thrown with counter-clockwise spin (for right-handers), the duck is thrown with clockwise spin.
It is usually thrown with the arm out to the side or above the head.
It is called the duck due to the shape of the gripping hand during the throw, as if making a duck shadow puppet.
This throw is used in attempts at The Greatest (jumping out of bounds and throwing the Frisbee back in to play while in the air).
A disc thrown upside-down has a very different flight path than one thrown right-side up.
The lift force does not enforce stable flight as it does on a right-side up disc, resulting in a more of a parabolic arc in flight.
As with a right-side up throw, however, the flight path of the disc will curve toward the lower edge.
This banking effect is most pronounced when the disc is at a 45 degree angle, and less pronounced when it is near-vertical, or near-horizontal.
Gyroscopic precession causes the disc to rotate toward horizontal through its flight path.
Unlike a right-side up throw, however, an upside-down disc will not precess toward a stable flat state, and will in stead oscillate past horizontal and begin to bank in the opposite direction.
This shuttlecock-like effect is known as "helixing", and is generally avoided due to the difficulty in controlling a helixing flight path.
For this reason, an upside down throw is typically released with either clockwise rotation and the left edge up, or counterclockwise rotation and the right edge up.
The longer the disc is expected to remain in the air, the closer to vertical it must be at release to avoid the helixing effect.
The Hammer is gripped just like a normal forehand throw, and is generally a mid-range, high and arching throw.
A hammer, when thrown by a right-handed thrower, will arc up and to the left as it moves away from the thrower, and will bank towards the right in flight.
The banking effect will be more pronounced if the disc is thrown higher and spends more flight time near a 45 degree angle.
Another upside-down variant of the forehand, the scoober (also known as the "Spoon pass" or Hiawatha) is similar to a hammer, but released away from the body from a backhand stance, instead of over the head from a forehand stance.
The scoober travels in a path similar to the hammer, although the initial release is typically more flat than a hammer release.
Although it is more difficult to impart power to a scoober than a hammer, a scoober can be an effective short-range (10 to 20 yards\/meters) throw and is used in Ultimate for breaking the mark and to throw over defenders in a zone defense.
The Thumber (not to be confused with the thumber forehand) is a throw that is rarely used in competitive play, compared to the Hammer or standard forehand.
It has a flight path that is the mirror-image of the Hammer (arcing high and to the right for a right-handed thrower).
It can be useful when the disc needs to drop quickly and fly with an opposite curve to a Hammer in order to avoid defenders.
This table represents the fundamental disc throws with classic technique in the foreword form, in fact exist many variations of throws and grips that make the number of pitches quite infinite.
The natural path is the trajectory the disc takes without pre-release tilt.
The hyzer path is the trajectory the disc takes when the outside edge of the disc is tilted downward.
The anhyzer path is the trajectory the disc takes when the outside edge of the disc is tilted upward.
The spin is the rotation of the disc.
Every throw can be done with the right hand or the left hand and this is shown in the hand column.
RH = right hand, LH = left hand, R = the path tends to the right of the thrower, L = the path tends to the left of the thrower, 0 means that the path is quite linear.
So R with RH and L with LH are outside-in (OI) paths; R with LH and L with RH are inside-out (IO) paths.
In spin column numbers represent the sign of the angular momentum relative to the upside of the disc (+1 = positive (counter-clockwise rotation), -1 = negative (clockwise rotation)).
Throws may be signed as follows: hand acronym + throw acronym + tilt acronym.
For example LHBHIO is an inside out backhand throw pitched with the left hand; RHFH0 is a linear forehand throw pitched with the right hand.
To have linear paths the disc must be released with a light opposite tilt than his natural path.
Fiji is a small country in the Pacific Ocean.
It has 322 islands.
The most important islands are Vanua Levu and Viti Levu.
The capital city of Fiji is Suva, and the city with the most people is Nadi.
There are about 844,330 people in Fiji.
The official languages of Fiji are Fijian, English and Hindustani (a mix of Hindi and Urdu).
Fiji is part of the Pacific Rim.
About 313000 speak Fiji Hindi.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch and the British explored Fiji.
Fiji was a British colony up until 1970; British occupation lasted almost a century.
They have many forest, mineral, and fish resources.
Fijian law defines "towns" as urbanized areas incorporated as municipal bodies, governed by Town Councils.
The following localities are urbanized, but have not been municipally organized.
Fiji has a lot of tourism and many people go to the Nadi and Denarau islands.
Most visitors are from Australia, New Zealand and the USA.
Fiji has many soft coral reefs.
Scuba diving is a common tourist activity.
More budget resorts are being opened in remote areas, which provides more tourism opportunities.
French Polynesia (, Tahitian: Porinetia Farani) is a French "overseas collectivity" (French: collectivit d'outre mer, or COM) with the particular designation of "overseas country" (French: pays d'outre-mer, or POM) in the southern Pacific Ocean.
The country is made up of several groups of Polynesian islands.
The most well-known is Tahiti, the most populous island, which is in the Society Islands group.
The capital of the territory, Papeete, is also there.
Although it does not really belong in the territory, French Polynesia is in charge of affairs for Clipperton Island.
Aside from Tahiti, some other important atolls, islands, and island groups in French Polynesia are: Ahe, Bora Bora, Hiva ` Oa, Huahine, Maiao, Maupiti, Mehetia, Moorea, Nuku Hiva, Raiatea, Tahaa, Tetiaroa, Tubuai, and Tupai.
Fran ois Roland Truffaut (6 February 1932 21 October 1984) was a French movie director, producer, writer, actor and critic.
He was very popular in the 1960s for such noted movies as The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, Stolen Kisses, The Wild Child and others.
Truffaut was born in Paris and died of brain cancer in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine.
Fair use is the idea that it should be okay for a person to reuse something that another person has created, in certain amounts and for certain purposes, without breaking the law.
In most countries, art and other made-up things, like stories, books, TV shows, and pictures, are owned by the person that first made them.
This person can let someone else own the things they make, sometimes for money.
The person that owns these things has a copyright for them, which means that person can decide who can copy their work.
If someone else copies that work without asking the owner first, that person is breaking the law.
The owner can take the person to court and try to get money from them because of what they did.
Since a lot of creative work is popular, people want to talk about them, and they may want to talk about them on TV or in a book.
This might mean that they want to use a little bit of it when they talk about it.
The idea of "fair use" was added to most copyright laws to make sure that it would be OK do to this, as long as only a little bit of someone 's work is used.
Since a lot of creative work is now on computers and on the Internet, it is very easy to copy things and send them to lots of people.
To make sure that people can not always do this, there are computer programs that try to stop people from copying other people 's work (known as digital rights management).
One problem with these programs is that they also mean that you can not copy even a small part of someone 's work, so you can not do "fair use" without cheating the program.
In some countries, cheating those software programs is also breaking the law.
Funk is a type of music from the United States that was developed the 1960s by African American musicians and singers such as James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, George Clinton, and The Meters.
Funk music emphasizes the rhythm of the music.
Funk music mixes Rhythm and Blues music with soul music.
Funk music is dance music.
Funk uses many rhythm instruments, such as electric guitar, bass guitar, drums, and electric organ.
Funk bands also have a horn section, which includes several saxophone players, a trumpet player, and in some bands, trombone players.
In funk music, the electric bass has a more important role than in other styles of popular music.
Many funk songs are based on a strong bass line (melody) played by the electric bass player.
Well-known funk bass players include Bootsy Collins, Louis Johnson and Larry Graham of Sly & the Family Stone.
Larry Graham invented a new style of electric bass playing called "slap bass technique."
With this technique, the bass player slaps and plucks the strings to create a strong rhythm.
The United States singer and musician James Brown was one of the first funk musicians.
James Brown recorded a song in 1965 called "papa 's got a brand new bag" which is considered the first funk song.
Other musical groups copied the rhythms and musical style developed by James Brown and his band.
A band called The Meters played funk music in New Orleans.
The Meters had hit songs such as "Sophisticated Cissy" and "Cissy Strut" in 1969.
Another funk group, The Isley Brothers, had a hit song in 1969 called "It 's Your Thing".
In the 1980s, funk music changed.
Funk musicians began using electronic instruments such as synthesizer keyboards and electronic drum machines instead of electric bass, electric organ, trumpets, saxophones, and drums.
Rick James had hits in the 1980s with funk songs such as "Give It To Me Baby" and "Super Freak."
The band Queen had funk songs such as "Another One Bites The Dust."
The musician and singer Prince had hit songs.
Some major names of early 80s funk include: Cameo, Zapp, The Gap Band, The Bar-Kays, and The Dazz Band.
In the later 1980s, two new styles of funk developed called "funk rock" and funk metal.
These styles of music mixed funk music with rock and metal music.
Funk rock and funk metal bands include Red Hot Chili Peppers, Living Colour, Jane 's Addiction, Prince, Primus, Fishbone, Faith No More and Rage Against the Machine.
Funk music influenced 1980s hip hop music.
Many hip hop musicians use funk songs by James Brown or George Clinton to compose new hip hop songs.
In the 1990s and 2000s, funk rock bands included Outkast, and Van Hunt.
As well, 1990s and 2000s hip hop musicians continue to use funk songs by James Brown or George Clinton to compose new hip hop songs.
Frequency is how often an event repeats itself over a set amount of time.
In physics, the frequency of a wave is the number of wave crests that pass a point in one second (A wave crest is the peak of the wave).
Hertz (symbol Hz) is the unit of frequency.
where v is speed and (Lambda) is wavelength.
The formula for the frequency of light waves is ' where the c is the speed of light.
All electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light in a vacuum but they travel at slower speeds when they travel through a medium that is not a vacuum.
Other waves, such as sound waves, travel at much much lower speeds and can not travel through a vacuum.
Examples of electromagnetic waves are; light waves, radio waves, infrared radiation, microwaves, and gamma waves.
Different types of electromagnetic waves have different frequencies.
One way to visualize this is if there were two trains traveling at the same speed, but the size of the train cars was smaller on one train than the other.
If someone picked something that was not moving, like a signpost, and then counted how many train cars passed the sign post in one second for each train, they would know the frequency of cars passing in each train.
The number and frequency of train cars passing the sign post would be different, because the train with smaller train cars would have more train cars passing the sign post in a second than the train with larger train cars.
Knowing how many cars passed the sign post in one second, and knowing the speed of the train, one could figure out mathematically the size of each train car for each train.
For example, if the train was moving at 10 miles per second, and 10 train cars passed in one second, then each train car would be 1 mile long.
If the other train was also moving at 10 miles per second and 20 train cars passed in one second, then one would know that each train car was 1\/2 of a mile long for that train.
This example shows that knowing the frequency of an electromagnetic wave gives you the wavelength, since all electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light so that c = v (lambda) where v is frequency and lambda is wavelength, and c is the speed of light.
Therefore, another way of expressing frequency is to say frequency is c over lambda.
Film noir is a term used to describe crime drama movies from Hollywood that are often focused on sex, crime, and corruption.
Film noir movies were mostly made from the early 1940s to the late 1950s in the United States, and they were usually filmed in black-and-white.
The term "film noir" comes from the French term for "black film."
Film noir movies include many different genres of movies, such as gangster movies, police movies, and detective movies.
Film noir movies were often filmed so that there were many dark shadows in the movie, even on characters ' faces.
The Hollywood film noir movies were influenced by German film directors such as Fritz Lang, who used dramatic lighting techniques.
Another influence on film noir movies was 1930s French books or movies about heroes who would die at the end of the story or stories with sad endings.
Film noir movies were also influenced by crime fiction, such as the detective and crime stories by Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Raymond Chandler.
Some important film noir movies are: Stranger on the Third Floor (1940); The Maltese Falcon (1941) Double Indemnity (1944) The Big Sleep (1946) The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946); Key Largo (1948); Kiss Me Deadly (1955), and Touch of Evil (1958).
The important actors from Hollywood film noir movies were Robert Mitchum, Humphrey Bogart, and Peter Lorre.
The film noir period was the 1940s and 1950s.
Even in the years after the 1950s, some movies were made in the film noir style.
In the 1960s and 1970s, there were movies like The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Chinatown (1974), which were influenced by the film noir movies from the 1950s.
In the 1980s and 1990s there were movies that were a bit like film noir movies, like Body Heat (1981), Basic Instinct (1992), Kill Me Again (1989), Red Rock West (1992), and Fargo (1996).
In the 2000s, there are also movies that are like film noir movies in some ways.
For example, there are films such as Memento (2000) and Sin City (2005).
There are also science fiction movies that look a bit like film noir movies because they look dark and they have a lead character who does some bad things, such as Soylent Green (1973); Blade Runner (1982), which starred Harrison Ford; and Minority Report (2002), which starred Tom Cruise.
Film noir movies are often shot in cities at night, and the stories often take place in bars, nightclubs, gambling clubs, casinos, and cheap hotels.
This makes film noir movies look very dark, because the scenes are shot at night, or inside dark places like a bar or hotel.
Film noir movie scenes often have a lot of shadows, such as the shadows of window frames, blinds, or stair banisters.
There are also often dark shadows on the movie scenes, even on the faces of the actors.
All of the shadows and darkness make the film noir movies feel mysterious and stressful.
The characters in film noir movies are often motivated by greed, jealousy, or revenge.
The characters in film noir movies are often private detectives or police officers who are investigating crimes committed by bad criminals and gang members such as murder, gambling or prostitution.
In film noir movies, there are often stories about robberies, heists, extortion of money (which is called "blackmail"), or murder.
In film noir movies, even the heroes or lead characters are often bad or partly bad in some way.
For example, the hero of a film noir movie may help an innocent man or woman who is being threatened by a criminal, or rescue a woman from a criminal gang.
Yet the hero or lead character may also do bad things, such as commit crimes, hurt or threaten people, or tell lies.
Often, the hero or lead character of a film noir film will be bitter, sad, lonely, or depressed, because of bad things that happened to them.
The person watching the movie has to decide if they think that a hero who does both good and bad things is a good person or not.
The stories from film noir movies can make the audience think about how people should act, or how people should make choices in their life.
This is one of the things that people like about watching film noir movies.
Film noir movies are not happy movies.
In happy movies, like romance movies, people fall in love, get married, and live happy lives.
In film noir movies, sad things happen.
A good man with a wife might need money for their rent, and borrow the money from a criminal gang leader, because the good man has no other way of getting the money.
Then the bad gang leader might force the good man to do bad things to pay back the money.
Maybe the bad gang leader will threaten to hurt the good man 's wife.
Then the good man has to decide between protecting his wife or doing a bad crime.
People who watch film noir movies like to see stories about people who have to make hard choices, or people whose lives have sad things happen in them.
Real life is not a romantic comedy; people often have to make hard choices or have sad things happen.
Robert Ottoson wrote a book in 1981 about film noir called A Reference Guide to the American Film Noir: 1940 1958.
Freestyle music or Latin freestyle is a type of electronic dance music.
It became popular during the 1980s.
However, the genre declined in popularity in the 1990s.
Freestyle continues to be produced and played on radio stations that appeal to Latin and Italian communities.
Notable artists that performed freestyle include Stevie B, Shannon, Cynthia, Collage, Johnny O, Safire, George Lamond, Lil Suzy, Judy Torres, Information Society, Expos, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, La India, TKA, Corina, Nocera, Company B, The Cover Girls, Noel, Pajama Party, Shana, Will to Power, Sweet Sensation, Seduction, Linear, Lisette Melendez, Angelina, Laissez Faire, Coro, and Rockell.
Francium is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Fr and an atomic number of 87.
It is a metal.
In chemistry it is placed in a group of metal elements named the alkali metals.
Francium is very radioactive.
It is in very small amounts in uranium and thorium ores.
It has the lowest electronegativity and electron affinity of all the chemical elements.
Francium reacts violently with water, as do all of the elements in group 1 on the periodic table.
Francium is one of the hardest to find elements on the planet Earth.
It is estimated that there are only about 15 grams or half an ounce in the Earth 's crust at a single time.
Although chemists knew the element number 87 in the periodic table should exist, it was a long time before it was discovered.
In the early 1900s, nearly all boxes on the periodic table had been filled.
Chemists knew that one element had been found to fit into each box.
Francium was discovered in 1939 by a French chemist called Marguerite Perey.
She named it after her home country, France.
Fermium (symbol Fm) is a chemical element.
It has an atomic number of 100, which makes it at position 100 at the periodic table.
Fermium can not be found in nature; it has to be made.
Scientists can create it by combining plutonium with neutrons at very high speeds and temperatures.
It is named after Enrico Fermi.
Albert Ghiorso and other scientists at the University of California, Berkeley first discovered fermium.
They found the element in the fallout from the explosion of the first successful hydrogen bomb test.
This test was on November 1, 1952.
In the fallout, scientists also discovered another new element, Einsteinium.
Because of the Cold War, the US military did not allow the scientists to publish their results in a scientific journal.
However, they conducted other studies and published their research in 1954.
The studies of nuclear fallout were declassified and published in 1955.
A group in the Nobel Institute for Physics in Stockholm also discovered isotopes of this element before the research of the Berkeley scientists was published.
However, most agree that the Berkeley scientists were the first to discover fermium.
Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (1 March 1810 17 October 1849) was a Polish-French composer and virtuoso pianist.
He is considered one of the greatest Romantic piano composers.
Chopin was born in elazowa Wola, a village in the Duchy of Warsaw.
A famous child prodigy, he grew up in Warsaw where he completed his music education and composed many of his mature works in before leaving Poland in 1831 at age 21, shortly before the November 1830 Uprising.
After the Uprising, he lived in Paris as part of Poland 's Great Emigration.
During the last 19 years of his life, Chopin performed only about 30 times, usually in a salon.
He supported himself by selling his compositions and teaching piano.
After a romantic relationship with Polish women, including an abortive engagement, from 1837 to 1847 he carried on a relationship with the French writer Amandine Dupin, better known as George Sand.
Chopin suffered from poor health most of his life and died of tuberculosis Paris in 1849 at age 39.
Since he composed many piano pieces, he was called the poet of the piano.
Most of Chopin 's works are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos, a few chamber pieces and some songs to Polish lyrics.
His piano works are often technically difficult, especially because deep expression is involved along with the importance of considering each detail in his music.
Chopin also created the instrumental ballade, along with the addition of new ideas to the piano sonata, mazurka, waltz, nocturne, polonaise, tude, impromptu, scherzo and pr lude.
The Free Democratic Party or Freie Demokratische Partei, short FDP (from 1968 to 2001 F.D.P.) is a political party in Germany.
Currently its position is that of free market believer.
The party does not want to take away all of the social features of the German welfare state, however.
Several liberal parties have existed in Germany since the 19th century.
The FDP was founded in West Germany in September of 1945 in the state of Hamburg.
It became member of the state parliament of Hamburg in its first election.
Similar liberal parties were founded in other German states, most of them successful in getting mandates.
In 1947, on March 17th, the Demokratische Partei Deutschlands (DPD) was founded as a whole-Germany liberal party by Theodor Heuss and Wilhelm K lz, but it broke down after a short while.
On December, 11th in 1948 the FDP was founded as a liberal party for West Germany.
Chief of the party was Theodor Heuss.
The next important man was Thomas Dehler.
In its first years the main part of the party followed a national-liberal way.
Liberal in the economical field, but very conserative in most other fields.
But in every state it had its own way.
The FDP was the smaller partner of the CDU under Konrad Adenauer.
It was member of the West German government from 1949 to 1966.
In 1969 the FDP returned to government.
But now the FDP was partner of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands under Willy Brandt, later Helmut Schmidt.
The party changed its values.
Left-liberal positions were the leading ideas of the FDP at that time and included ideas like civil rights and giving everyone the chance for a good education (guaranteed state stipendia, no more study fees, more higher education schools).
It changed again in 1982, when the government crashed on Schmidt and elected Helmut Kohl of the CDU as the new chancellor.
It became more and more a single issue party with its only interest in a low tax tarif - especially for high incomes.
It fought for study fees now and against social security.
It secretary general said one day "We are the party of the best-incomes".
In 1998 it lost its power and became part of the opposition.
In some state parliaments the FDP is still in power as junior partner of the CDU.
The party 's unofficial motto is "So viel Staat wie n tig, so wenig Staat wie m glich!"
, meaning "as much state as necessary, as little state as possible!"
Fax (short for facsimile), or telecopying, is the transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device.
The original document is scanned with a fax machine (or a telecopier), which turns the contents (text or images) into a bitmap, Then the bitmap is sent through the telephone system.
The receiving fax machine reconverts the coded image, printing a paper copy.
Businesses usually have some kind of fax system, but the technology has faced increasing competition from Internet-based methods.
Fax machines still retain some advantages, particularly in the transmission of sensitive material which, if sent over the internet, may be intercepted.
However, encryption (a secret coding system) can make internet messages secure.
In some countries, because electronic signatures on contracts are not recognized by law while faxed contracts with copies of signatures are, fax machines enjoy continuing support in business.
In many businesses, standalone fax machines have been replaced by fax servers which receive and store incoming faxes electronically.
The servers route them to users on paper or via a secure email.
Such systems reduce costs by eliminating unnecessary printouts and reducing the number of inbound phone lines needed by an office.
Scottish inventor Alexander Bain worked on chemical mechanical fax type devices and in 1846 was able to reproduce graphic signs in laboratory experiments.
He received the first fax patent in 1843.
Frederick Bakewell made several improvements on Bain 's design and demonstrated a telefax machine.
The Pantelegraph was invented by the Italian physicist Giovanni Caselli He introduced the first commercial telefax service between Paris and Lyons in 1865, some 11 years before the invention of telephones.
In 1881, English inventor Shelford Bidwell constructed the scanning phototelegraph that was the first telefax machine to scan any two-dimensional original, not requiring manual plotting or drawing.
Around 1900, German physicist Arthur Korn invented the Bildtelegraph.
It became widely used in continental Europe after a wanted-person photograph was transmitted from Paris to London in 1908.
Its main competitors were the B linograf by douard Belin first, then since the 1930s the Hellschreiber, invented in 1929 by German inventor Rudolf Hell, a pioneer in mechanical image scanning and transmission.
Transmission by landline was replaced by radiotransmission, and from 1960 by satellite transmission.
Digital systems are now universal.
Faster, more efficient and cheaper fax machines have allowed even small companies to own a fax machine.
The technology is now world-wide.
Fear is an emotion much like anxiety.
A person who fears something does not want it to happen, because they think something bad will happen to them if it does.
Fear is the body 's way of protecting itself from doing things that may be dangerous.
For example, if one has a fear of jumping off a cliff, he\/she will not do it.
This saves one from death.
In this case, fear is a good thing but in others, it can be bad.
An example of fear being bad is if it stops one from doing something important, like going to see a doctor.
A football team refers to a group of players who together play football.
A football team may represent a football club, or their nation, group or other associations.
In general, there may be 11-18 members in such a team depending on the type of football, i.e., whether it is association football or American football or any other format of the game.
F is the sixth letter in the English alphabet.
Food preservation is the name for a number of processes that help to preserve food.
This means that the food treated that way will go bad (spoil from bacteria) later that if it had not been treated that way.
For thousands of years, humans have used methods of preserving food, so that they can store food to eat later.
The simplest methods of preserving food, such as drying strips of fish or meat in the hot sun have been used for thousands of years, and they are still used in the 2000s by indigenous peoples.
Food is spoiled because microorganisms change it.
There are five basic techniques which make food last longer:
Usually several of the techniques are combined.
Many common methods use several of these approaches at the same time.
For example, pickles preserved in a jar are heated then put in a mixture of vinegar and brine.
Fruit jams and jellies are heated and mixed with a large amount of sugar.
Some preserved fruit is heated and then mixed with alcohol (for example, Brandy) and a large amount of sugar.
Smoked hams are cured in brine and then exposed to the smoke from burning wood chips.
In telecommunications and signal processing, frequency modulation transmits information over a carrier wave by varying the frequency.
This technique is different from amplitude modulation which varies the amplitude, but keeps the frequency constant.
This kind of modulation is used in broadcasting and other radio work.
In the context of broadcasting, Frequency modulation is often shortened to FM.
When transmitting analog sound, the sound quality of FM signals is better than that of amplitude modulation (AM) signals.
However, FM signals do not travel as far as AM.
Many radio stations send out both kinds of signals.
AM may be used for talk shows, and FM for music.
FM broadcasting usually includes a difference signal, which can cause two different speakers at home to create different sounds.
This creates stereo sound.
In botany, a fruit is a plant structure that contains the plant 's seeds.
To a botanist, the word fruit is used only if it comes from the part of the flower which was an ovary.
It is an extra layer round the seeds, which may or may not be fleshy.
However, even in botany, there is no general agreement on how fruits should be classified.
Many do have extra layers from other parts of the flower.
In general speech, and especially in cooking, fruits are a sweet product, and many botanical fruits are known as vegetables.
This is how ordinary people use the words.
On this page, we describe what botanists call a fruit.
The fleshy part of a fruit is called the mesocarp.
It is between the fruit 's skin (exocarp) and the seeds.
The white part of an apple, for example, is the "fleshy" part of the apple.
Usually, when we eat a fruit, we eat the "fleshy" part.
If the entire fruit is fleshy, except for maybe a thin skin, we call the fruit a berry.
A berry might contain one seed or many.
Grapes, avocados, and blueberries are berries.
They all have a thin skin, but most of the fruit is fleshy.
Strawberries, however, are actually not berries, because the seeds are on the outside: on a real berry, the seed or seeds must be inside.
A pepo (pronounced pee ' po) is a modified berry.
Its skin is hard and thick and is usually called a "rind".
Pumpkins and watermelons, for instance, are pepos.
A hesperidium is another modified berry.
It has a leathery skin that is not as hard as the skin of a pepo.
All citrus fruit like oranges and lemon are hesperidiums.
A pome (pohm) is a fruit that has a core surrounded by fleshy tissue that we can eat.
The core is usually not eaten.
Berries are different - the seeds are inside the fleshy part, not separated from it by a core.
Apples and pears are pomes.
Drupes are also called stone fruit.
A drupe is a fleshy fruit with a hard stone around the seed.
We usually call this stone the "pit" of the fruit.
Peaches and olives are drupes.
Actually, the almond fruit is a drupe, too, though we eat the seed that is inside the "pit" of the almond fruit.
Since fruits are produced from fertilised ovaries in flowers, only flowering plants produce fruits.
Fruits are an evolutionary ` invention ' which help seeds get dispersed by animals.
The botanical term includes many that are not "fruits" in the common sense of the term.
such as the vegetables squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, tomato, peas, beans, corn, eggplant, and sweet pepper and some spices, such as allspice and chillies.
An accessory fruit or false fruit (pseudocarp) is a fruit in which some of the flesh is derived not from the ovary but from some adjacent tissue.
A fig is a type of accessory fruit called a syconium.
Pomes, such as apples and pears, are also accessory fruits: the core is the true fruit.
Many fruits come from trees or bushes.
For plants, fruits are a means of dispersal, usually by animals.
When the fruit breaks apart, the seeds can go into the ground and begin to grow.
Most fruits we eat contain a lot of water and natural sugars, and many are high in Vitamin C. They have a large amount of dietary fiber.
Fruits are usually low in protein and fat content, but avocados and some nuts are exceptions to this.
Not only humans, but our closest living relatives (primates) are keen fruit-eaters.
So are many other groups of herbivorous mammals and many birds.
Seedlessness is an important feature of some fruits of commerce.
Commercial bananas, pineapple, and watermelons are examples of seedless fruits.
Some citrus fruits, especially oranges, satsumas, mandarin oranges, and grapefruit are valued for their seedlessness.
Seedless bananas and grapes are triploids, and seedlessness results from the abortion of the embryonic plant which is produced by fertilisation.
The method requires normal pollination and fertilisation.
February is the second month of the year, coming between January and March, with 28 days in most years.
In leap years February has 29 days.
In Sweden in 1732 the month had 30 days.
This was to make the calendar match the rest of the world.
In 1930 and 1931, February had 30 days in the Soviet Union because the government changed all the months to be 30 days long.
The name comes either from the Roman god Februus or else from "februa", the festivals of purification celebrated in Rome every fifteenth of this month.
February is one of the last two months to be added to the calendar at the beginning of the year (the other is January).
This is because in the original Roman calendar, the two months of winter, when not much would happen in agriculture, did not have names.
February is the second month of the year, coming between January and March, and is also the shortest month, with 28 days in a common year, and 29 days in a leap year.
February begins on the same day of the week as March and November in common years, and on the same day as August in a leap year.
Every year, February ends on the same day of the week as October, and in common years, February also ends on the same day of the week as January.
In a leap year, February is the only month to begin and end on the same day of the week.
From circa 700 BC, when Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, added it to the calendar, February had 23 days and 24 days on some of every second year, until 46 BC when Julius Caesar assigned it 29 days on every fourth year and 28 days otherwise.
Leap year Day, February 29, is added in every year that can be divided equally by four, such as 2012 and 2016, but this does not apply when the year ending in "00" at the turn of the century does not divide equally into 400.
This means that 2000 was a leap year in the Gregorian calendar, but 1900 was not.
This is where the Julian calendar calculated dates differently, as it always repeated February 29 every four years.
February is a winter month in the Northern Hemisphere and a summer month in the Southern Hemisphere.
In each hemisphere, it is the seasonal equivalent of August in the other.
In weather lore, Groundhog Day, in the United States, is set to decide what the weather will be like for the rest of the winter.
February 's flower is the violet and its birthstone is the amethyst.
The meaning of the amethyst is sincerity.
The zodiac signs for February are Aquarius (January 21 to February 19), and Pisces (February 20 to March 20).
The First Lady of the United States is the wife of the President of the United States.
If the President is not married, or his wife is unable to do the jobs of First Lady, a family member such as daughter or sister usually is considered the First Lady.
The current first lady is Michelle Obama.
Some famous former first ladies include Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, Mary Todd Lincoln, Julia Grant, Lucy Webb Hayes, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The First Lady is not chosen by the people of the United States, and there are no things that she must do.
She is also not paid anything for being First Lady.
However, she joins in many official ceremonies with the President.
Sometimes she does these things for him.
Formula One is a type of motorsport.
Teams compete in a series of Grand Prix races, held in different countries around the world.
Some of the most popular races are held in Monaco, Japan, Italy and Britain.
The cars are very fast, reaching speeds of up to 350 kilometers per hour.
The championship has been won many times by different teams like McLaren, Ferrari and Williams.
Teams can consist of as many as 600 people, who all come together every race weekend, and using each of their individual expertise try to obtain the best result - a victory.
The winning driver and team each get twenty-five points towards the Drivers ' and Constructors ' Championship.
Teams consist of drivers, test drivers, a team principal, mechanics, engineers, and designers.
Winning a race takes a good qualifying position, flawless strategy, perfect pitstops and a fast car.
If you get the most poles (first place) then you get a trophy.
This was added in 2014
Drivers are paid huge salaries and money to risk their lives every time they step into the cockpit of the F1 car.
Like all types of motor racing, the dangers associated with Formula One are great.
Therefore, there are many safety measures.
Drivers wear 4 layers of flameproof overalls, made of a fire resistant material called Nomex.
A drivers helmet must be able to resist an 800 degree celsius flame for at least 45 seconds, as well as big G forces.
The helmets are so strong that they can be driven over by trucks with no damage being done to them.
Carbon fiber is the ideal material for the bodywork of Formula One cars, as it is light and strong.
Because of this, the cars are very expensive to build and repair.
The design of cars differs from team to team.
Each team has two entries into the championship, which means two cars to build.
The current tyre suppliers are Pirelli - making sure every car has the right tyre for the differing weather conditions.
Wet weather driving is considered a skill in Formula One, as the cars are harder to drive.
The body that runs Formula One, the FIA, is based in France.
Although Formula One is a ` billion dollar business ', a drop in viewership and attendance figures at races has prompted the FIA to make a number of rule changes in recent years.
These changes are meant to make the races more interesting, so more people watch F1 on television.
Franco Baresi (born 8 May 1960) is a former Italian football player.
He has played for Italy national team.
Franz Kafka (born Prague July 3, 1883 died near Vienna June 3, 1924) was a Czech-born, German-speaking writer.
His best known works are The Metamorphosis and the novels The Trial and The Castle.
Not much of his work was published during his lifetime.
He asked his friend to make sure that all his writings which were not published, including his three novels, would be destroyed when he died.
Fortunately his friend did not destroy them, and they were published after Kafka s death.
Kafka s writings are about the frightening world around him which he often did not understand.
A typical situation in his books might be someone who has gone somewhere to take a message, but he does not know what the message is or who it is for.
The people he meets confuse him even more.
Sometimes, when people find themselves in strange, nightmarish situations like this, they are described as Kafkaesque situations.
Kafka was born into a middle-class Jewish family.
His father was a merchant.
He was very strict and unkind to his family.
Kafka s stories often have fathers who are very brutal and unkind.
Kafka spent most of his life living at home.
He never married or became free from his parents.
He felt that he had no will of his own.
He wrote about people who are dominated by some mysterious power.
He found it difficult to make friends, he hated his job and everyone around him.
He often felt that he belonged nowhere.
He was German-speaking but lived in a Czech-speaking country (Bohemia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now part of the Czech Republic).
He was different because he was Jewish, but he did not become part of the Jewish community either.
He said that he was a socialist and an atheist, but although he was interested in politics he never took part in political activity.
He supported Czechs who wanted to rule their own country and let their culture flourish, but he was not one of them because he himself was brought up in a German culture.
It was while he was studying law at the University of Prague that he met Max Brod who was to become his friend.
Brod was a writer himself, and he later wrote a biography of Kafka.
After his studies Kafka took a job in an insurance company.
He was good at his job although he hated it.
He found the office work boring, and he spent his nights writing.
In 1917 he got tuberculosis.
Gradually he became more and more ill..
He had to retire in 1922.
He spent some time in hospital.
He died in Klosterneuburg in 1924.
Several publishers realized how good Kafka s writings were and asked him whether they could publish his works.
Kafka reluctantly let a few things be published.
One of these works was a story called Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung).
It is about a man called Gregor Samsa (the name Samsa means "loner" or "lonely").
Gregor wakes up one morning to find he has changed into a giant cockroach.
His family becomes ashamed of him and they stop looking after him so that he slowly dies.
Stories like these are a kind of fable.
They are full of strange and frightening situations.
His novel Amerika (published in 1927) is about a man who arrives in America looking for a father figure to protect him.
He is quiet and timid and other people use him.
In the end he dies.
In The Trial (German: Der Prozess, published in 1925), a man who works in a bank is arrested and taken to court.
He is never told what he has done wrong.
Even the priest tells him that if he asks what he has done wrong it proves that he is guilty.
Finally he is executed.
In The Castle (German: Das Schloss) a man who is simply called K (the first letter of Kafka) arrives at a castle saying that he has been given a job there, but the people there say they have not been told about his appointment.
Kafka never finished the novel, but Max Brod says that Kafka was going to end it with K receiving permission to stay at the castle just as he was dying.
The German word Schloss has two meanings: castle and lock.
K becomes locked (trapped) in this strange situation.
At the time of his death only a few people understood Kafka s writings.
Max Brod saved all the unpublished books which would otherwise have been lost.
Kafka is now thought of as one of the most important writers of the 20th century.
His works had a lot of influence on German literature.
The Fields Medal is a prize given to two, three, or four people who study math who are not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union, a meeting that takes place every four years.
The Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields was the first to propose this medal and it was first awarded in 1936.
It has been regularly awarded since 1950.
Its purpose is to give recognition and support to younger mathematical researchers who have made major contributions.
The Fields Medal is viewed, at least in the media, as the top honor a mathematician can receive.
It comes with a monetary award, which in 2006 was C$ 15,000 (US$ 13,400 or 10,550).
Because of its prestige, the Fields Medal is often described as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics,", but the comparison is not so good.
First, it is awarded not only to recognize the valuable contributions of a mathematician but also to encourage him or her to continue his work.
The Fields Medals have generally been awarded for a mathematician 's whole work, rather than for a particular result.
Another difference is that the Fields Medal is awarded every four years, and its recipients can not be over the age of 40.
Also, the money awarded with the medal is much lower than the US$ 1.3 million given with each Nobel prize.
French fried potatoes (also French fries, just fries in North America, chips in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Commonwealth), are a type of food made out of potatoes.
The potatoes are cut into thin strips and fried in oil.
They are usually eaten with fish, burgers, sausages, pies, fried chicken, or by themselves.
Many things can be put on them to make them taste better, such as salt and vinegar, gravy, curry, cheese, ketchup or mayonnaise.
These extra flavors are called condiments.
A chip shop is a shop which sells cooked chips to take home.
They usually also sell fried fish, sausages and pickled onions.
Fish and chips is a very popular meal in Great Britain, and other places.
Field Hockey is a well-liked sport for both men and women.
It is played in many countries all around the world.
The game is played between two teams and each team is made up of 11 players, and in 15-minute quarters with 15 minutes break at halftime, 2 minutes after 1st and 3rd periods.
Field hockey is played with a ball on natural grass, or on sand-based or water based artificial turfs with a small hard ball.
The field played on is rectangular and has a goal at each end.
A semi-circle about 15 meters from the goal is known as the shooting circle.
Goals can only be scored when the ball is in the shooting circle.
The hockey stick that is used is a J shape and made out of wood, glass and fiber.
The stick has a curve hook at the end.
The positions are similar to the game soccer; in which they have fullbacks, halfbacks and forwards.
Each team has a selected person who plays the goalkeeper.
The goalkeepers try and stop the opposition team from scoring goals.
Each player has to wear shin guards and a mouth guard, to protect their shins and protect their teeth.
The floppy disk (or a 3 floppy for today 's standard) is a removable magnetic storage medium.
Floppy disks are used for moving information between computers, laptops or other devices.
Some early digital cameras, electronic music instruments and older computer game consoles use floppy disks.
Floppy disks are inserted in to a floppy disk drive or simply floppy drive to allow data to be read or stored.
Floppy disks store much less data than a CD-ROM disk or USB flash drive.
A normal 3 inch disk can store 1.44 megabytes of data.
This is usually enough for simple text documents.
A special type of floppy disk was made in the late 1980s.
It could store 2.88 MB of data.
They did not become popular.
Larger size floppy disks became available in the 1990s.
The 2 most popular were the Zip drive and the Jaz drive, both made by Iomega.
Floppy disk technology has been around since the early 1970s (the 8-inch floppy was the first).
Today, floppy disks have been replaced by other storage media, like USB flash drives.
A floppy drive (often called drive A on a computer) can be connected to or installed in a personal computer (PC).
It is the part of a computer that reads and writes the disk that can be removed.
A disk, often called a floppy disk, is used to store files and carry them from one computer to another by using the floppy drive.
The floppy drive reads the disk (or diskette) and the user is then able to open and change the files saved on the disk.
This is about the sport.
You may be wanting to read about a fence.
Fencing is a sport that includes two people with swords.
The aim is to score hits.
There is also a referee.
In the olden times when two people argued they fenced the first one to draw blood was wrong and the person would be dead, so the person that won would claim the dead person 's house and belongings.
The floret is a light and easy to bend weapon, first made in mid 17th century as a weapon for practice.
` Hits ' can only be scored by hitting the right target area with the point of the sword.
The target area is the torso.
The p e is the heaviest of the three weapons.
To score a hit, the push-button on the end of the weapon must remain fully down for 2-10 milliseconds, and must arrive (hit) with a force of at least 7.35 newtons.
The target area for p e is the entire body.
This includes the feet.
The sabre is the "cutting" weapon, with a curved guard (to protect the hand) and a triangular blade.
However, in modern electric scoring, a touch with any part of the sabre, (point, flat or edge, as long as it is on target) will count as a hit.
The target area in sabre is everything from the waist up, except for the hands.
Fencers wear a uniform to avoid injury.
They wear a mask of black mesh with a bib.
Also, a jacket, short pants and a sort of half-a-shirt (called a underarm protector or plastron), all of white fabric.
They must also wear socks that cover their legs.
Women must wear a chest protector.
These are collectively called "whites."
A fugue is a piece of music written for a certain number of parts (voices).
The word fugue comes from the Italian fuga meaning flight.
A fugue is based on one particular tune.
This tune is called the subject.
Each part has an equal share in playing the subject.
When we talk about the parts in a fugue we do not mean the sections of the piece but the number of voices needed to sing it or instruments to play it.
A 3 part fugue means a fugue written for three voices or instruments.
Fugues can be in 2, 3, 4, 5 or even 6 parts.
The more parts there are the harder it is to write a fugue because each part has to sound interesting by itself, but together they must also make sense.
3, 4 and 5 part fugues are usual.
A fugue always starts with just one part playing the subject.
Then the other parts come in one at a time until they are all playing.
When the second part comes in it will always be half an octave higher or lower than the beginning (musicians say: on the dominant, meaning that it starts on the 5th note of the scale instead of the tonic or 1st note).
This called: the answer.
The third part to come in will be the subject (in the tonic once again) and the fourth part will be another answer, etc.
If the answer is an exact transposition of the subject (i.e. exactly the same but in the dominant key) it is called a real answer.
Sometimes one or two notes have to be changed so that the music sounds right.
This is called a tonal answer.
For example: a subject that starts with a rising doh soh (an interval of a fifth) will be answered by a rising soh doh in the answer (an interval of a fourth).
When the second part comes in with the answer the first part will have to play something else, called a countersubject.
If this something else is used every time in the piece to accompany the answer then it is called a regular countersubject.
The countersubject should sound nice, and be grammatically correct, whether it is on top or below the subject.
This is called invertible counterpoint.
If a part is not playing a countersubject it may just be playing a free part.
A redundant entry is the repetition of the subject or answer in a voice in which one or two of the aforementioned have already been stated.
Sometimes entries overlap.
This is called stretto (NB stretto also has a different meaning in music: hurried).
If none of the parts are playing the subject or answer (i.e. they are all playing free parts) this is called an episode.
If it happens during the first section (exposition) then it is called a codetta.
Because a fugue is a piece which puts several lines of melody together it is a form of contrapuntal music.
A fugue usually has three sections: the first section is called the exposition.
This lasts until all the parts have entered.
The middle section will go through various keys (modulate), and the final section will be back in the main key (tonic), and all the parts will probably play the subject or answer in turn once more.
The fugue became a very popular form of music in the Baroque period.
It was often played after a prelude.
The most famous composer of fugues was Johann Sebastian Bach.
He wrote two books, each with 24 Preludes and Fugues, called the Das Wohltemperiertes Klavier (Well-tempered keyboard).
He also wrote many Preludes and Fugues for organ, sometimes writing a passacaglia, fantasia or toccata instead of the prelude.
Bach s fugues became models for future generations.
Composers from later periods all studied Bach s fugues in order to learn how to write them.
Fugues can be very dramatic and exciting as each part comes in one at a time and the music builds up.
This is why many composers have ended long works with a fugue.
It helps to build up the tension towards the end of the work.
Even if it is not a strict fugue it might be fugal i.e. it might start off as a fugue and then become freer (adding extra parts etc.).
Beethoven uses fugues a lot in the last movement of his late piano sonatas.
Benjamin Britten writes a fugue at the end of A Young Person s Guide to the Orchestra.
At the end of his song for choir called The Twelve William Walton starts a fugue with a very long, fast and complicated fugues subject, but it soon develops into a much freer piece of music.
A fugue state (dissociative fugue or psychogenic fugue) is a rare psychiatric disorder.
It involves temporary loss of memory (amnesia).
It usually only lasts a short time (from hours to days), but can last months or longer.
In a fugue state, the person not only forgets all about who they are, but may suddenly adopt a new identity.
They may leave home and wander, settle in another area with a new name.
Fugue occurs to avoid stress and anxiety.
After the fugue state comes to an end, the person recovers the memories they lost, but usually forgets all that happened during the fugue.
In physics, force is a push or a pull that changes or tends to change the state of rest or uniform motion of an object or changes the direction or shape of an object.
Force causes objects to accelerate, add to the object 's overall pressure, change direction, or change shape.
Force is measured in Newtons.
(N).
A force is always a push, pull, or a twist, and it affects objects by pushing them up, pulling them down, pushing them to a side, or by changing their motion or shape in some other way.
where is the force, is the mass of an object, and is the acceleration of the object.
This formula says that when there is a force on an object then it will move faster and faster.
If the force is weak and the object is heavy, then it will take a long time to increase the speed very much, but if the force is strong and the object is light, then it will move a lot faster very quickly.
Gravity is an acceleration.
Everything that has a mass is being pulled toward the Earth because of that acceleration.
This pull is a force called weight.
where is the weight of an object, is the mass of an object, and is the acceleration due to gravity at sea level.
It is about.
This formula says that when you know the mass of an object, then you can calculate how much force there is on the object because of gravity.
You must be on earth to use this formula.
If you are on the moon or another planet, then you can use the formula but g will be different.
Force is a vector, so it can be stronger or weaker and it can also point in different directions.
Gravity always points down into the ground (if you are not in space).
is force; is the gravitational constant, which is used to show how gravity accelerates an object; is the mass of one object; is the mass of the second object; and is the distance between the objects.
This equation is used to calculate how the earth moves around the sun and how the moon moves around the earth.
It is also used to calculate how other planets, stars and objects in space move around.
The equation says that if two objects are very heavy then there is a strong force between them because of gravity.
If they are very far apart then the force is weaker.
In organic chemistry, a group of specific atoms, or a specific arrangement of atoms, can form a functional group.
These groups determine the way a compound behaves physically and chemically.
A fractal is any pattern, that when seen as an image, produces a picture, which when zoomed into will still make the same picture.
It can be cut into parts which look like a smaller version of the picture that was started with.
The word fractal was made by Beno t Mandelbrot in 1975 from the Latin word fractus, which means "broken" or "fractured".
A simple example is a tree that branches into smaller branches, and those branches into smaller branches and so on.
Fractals are not only beautiful, but also have many practical applications.
There are many types of fractals, made in a large variety of ways.
One example is the Sierpinski triangle, where there are an infinite number of small triangles inside the large one.
Another example is the Mandelbrot set, named for Beno t Mandelbrot.
The Sierpinksi triangle is constructed using patterns, but the Mandelbrot set is based on an equation.
There are also many natural examples of fractals in nature including trees, snowflakes, some vegetables and coastlines.
The Koch Curve is a simple example of a fractal.
First, start with part of a straight line - called a straight line segment.
Cut the line into 3 same-sized pieces.
Get rid of the middle of those pieces, and put in the top part of a triangle with sides which are the same length as the bit to cut out.
We now have 4 line segments which are touching at the ends.
We can now do what we just did to the first segment to each of the 4 bits.
We can now do the same thing again and again to all the bits we end up with.
We now do this forever and look at what we end up with.
The length of the Koch Curve is infinity, and the area of the Koch Curve is zero.
This is quite strange.
A line segment (with dimension 1) could have a length of 1, but it has an area of 0.
A square of length 1 and width 1 (with dimension 2) will have area 1 and length of infinity.
So, the Koch Curve seems to be bigger than something of dimension 1, and smaller than something of dimension 2.
The idea of the similarity dimension is to give a dimension which gives a better idea of length or area for fractals.
So, for a Koch Curve, we want a dimension between 1 and 2.
The Koch Curve can be cut into 4 pieces, each of which are of the size of the original.
We call the number of pieces that a fractal can be cut into, and we call the size difference.
We put those into the equation:
Where is the logarithm of a number.
This number is the Hausdorff Dimension of the fractal.
In the Koch Curve, this is as we wanted.
The Koch Curve is one of the simplest fractal shapes, and so its dimension is easy to work out.
Its similarity dimension and Hausdorff dimension are both the same.
This is not true for more complex fractals.
The Koch snowflake (or Koch star) is the same as the Koch curve, except it starts with an equilateral triangle instead of a line segment.
Fractals have many applications e.g. in biology (lung, kidneys, heart rate variability, etc...)
, in earthquakes, in finance where it is related to the so called heavy tail distributions and in physics.
This indicates that fractals should be studied to understand why fractals are so frequent in nature.
Some fractals exist only for artistic reasons, but others are very useful.
Fractals are very efficient shapes for radio antennas and are used in computer chips to efficiently connect all the components.
Also, coastlines can be thought of as fractals.
A fluid is a substance that can move easily and change shape such as water (liquids), or air (gases), or plasmas.
They can ` flow ' - flow and fluids both come from the same English word roots (Latin: fluere "to flow") and are pronounced similarly.
The physics of fluids is called fluid mechanics.
Fluids usually take on the shape of their containers, in contrast to solids which maintain their own shape.
Some things are not exactly fluid and not exactly solid, such as Silly Putty.
Powders are made up of small solids that appear to flow but do n't actually.
If you cool a fluid down enough it eventually becomes solid.
FAQ is an abbreviation for "Frequently Asked Question (s)".
The term is used for a list questions and answers.
All of the questions are supposed to be asked often and they all are about the same thing.
Since the acronym was first used in written form, there are different ways it is said; both "fak" and "F.A.Q." are commonly used.
The Fibonacci numbers are a pattern of numbers in mathematics named after Leonardo of Pisa, known as Fibonacci.
Fibonacci 's 1202 book Liber Abaci introduced the pattern to Western European mathematics, although this pattern was already described in Indian mathematics.
The first number of the pattern is 0, the second number is 1, and each number after is equal to the two numbers before it added together.
For example 0 +1 = 1 and 3 +5 = 8.
Fibonacci sequences appear in many places in nature.
Some examples of the Fibonacci sequence being used in nature are tree branches, the pattern of leaves on a stem, the fruitlets of a pineapple, the flowering of artichoke, the uncurling of a fern and the arrangement of a pine cone.
The Fibonacci numbers are also found in the family tree of honeybees.
Fontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France.
It is 55.5 k south-southeast of the center of Paris.
Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department.
It is the seat of the Arrondissement of Fontainebleau.
The commune has the largest land area in the le-de-France region.
It is the only one to cover a larger area than Paris itself.
Fontainebleau, together with the neighbouring commune of Avon, Seine-et-Marne and three other smaller communes, form an urban area of 36,713 people (according to the 1999 census).
This urban area is a satellite of Paris.
Fontainebleau is known for the large and scenic Forest of Fontainebleau, a favorite weekend getaway for Parisians.
It is also known for the historical Palace of Fontainebleau, which once belonged to the kings of France.
Fighter aircraft are small military airplanes that are made to fight other airplanes.
They are often fast, having aerodynamic shapes (shapes that make them move through air easily) and very powerful engines for their size.
They also usually are maneuverable (turn well).
Fighters can carry many different kinds of weapons, including missiles, machine guns, and bombs.
While fighters may be used as attack aircraft to attack vehicles, soldiers, or buildings on the ground, they are different from bombers because they are mainly designed to attack other airplanes.
February 29 is the 60th day of a leap year in the Gregorian Calendar.
It is sometimes called "leap day" or "bissextile day".
Only leap years have February 29.
This date only occurs every four years, in years that can be exactly divided by 4, such as 1988, 1996, or 2008, except century years that can not be divided by 400 without leaving a remainder, such as 1900.
A person who was born on February 29 may be called a "leapling".
In non-leap years they usually celebrate their birthday on February 28 or March 1.
Different countries have different laws about people who are born on February 29.
In Taiwan, the law says that the birthday of a leapling is February 28 in years that are not leap years.
The well-known superhero Superman is often said to have his birthday on February 29.
Francis Scott Key (August 1, 1779 - January 11, 1843) was an American lawyer and poet.
He is best known for writing "The Star-Spangled Banner", which is the national anthem of the United States of America, a country in the continent North America He went to college at St. John 's College in Annapolis, Maryland.
His mother was Ann Phoebe Penn Dagworthy (Charlton) and his father was Captain John Ross Key.
Key was an owner of slaves, and in the later administration of Andrew Jackson he was the United States Attorney in Washington, D.C.
In mathematics, logic, and computer science, a formal language is a language that is defined in a precise mathematical way.
A language is defined using a set called the alphabet of the language.
The members of the alphabet are usually called symbols of the language.
The language is a set of sequences of symbols of the alphabet.
The sequences usually have finite length.
The sequences that are members of the language are called the words of the language or strings.
A precise definition is that a formal language is typically characterized as an ordered pair of sets.
is the alphabet, and each element of is a sequence of elements.
Formal languages have lots of uses.
A formal language is often thought of as:
In the first case, the set is called the alphabet of, and the elements of are called words.
In the second, the set is called the lexicon or the vocabulary of, while the elements of are then called sentences.
The mathematical theory that treats formal languages in general is known as formal language theory.
Although it is common to hear the term formal language meaning natural language that is more stilted, disciplined or precise than everyday speech, this article refers to the meaning in formal language theory, in maths, logic or computer science.
As an example of formal language, an alphabet might be.
One string over that alphabet is.
A typical language over that alphabet, containing that string, would be the set of all strings which contain the same number of symbols and.
The empty word (that is, length-zero string) is allowed and is often denoted by, or.
While the alphabet is a finite set and every string has finite length, a language may very well have infinitely many member strings.
This is because the length of words belonging to it may be unbounded.
Determining the difficulty of deciding whether a given word belongs to a particular language is problem that Computability theory and Complexity theory deals with.
The Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit is a street circuit around Albert Park Lake, only a couple of kilometres south of central Melbourne.
It is used once a year as a racetrack for the Australian Grand Prix and associated support races.
The circuit uses everyday sections of road that circle Albert Park Lake, a small man-made lake just south of the Central Business District of Melbourne.
The roads that are used were rebuilt prior to the first race in 1996 to ensure consistency and smoothness.
As a result, the Albert Park track has quite a smooth surface.
The course is considered to be quite fast and relatively easy to drive.
Drivers have commented that the consistent placement of corners allows them to easily learn the circuit and achieve competitive times.
The flat terrain around the lake, coupled with a track design that features few true straights, means that it is not easy to pass another car on the track.
Watching the entire race track can only be done from a grandstand seat.
Each year, most of the trackside fencing, pedestrian overpasses, grandstands and other motorsport infrastructure must be erected for the race.
This is done about one month before the Grand Prix weekend.
They are all removed by six weeks after the event.
Land around the circuit has restricted access during the grand prix weekend.
This includes an aquatic center, a golf course, a football stadium, some restaurants and rowing boathouses.
Many nearby local residents are unhappy with the loss of park access.
Some maintain a silent protest against the event.
The event is popular with most people in Melbourne and Australia.
They have a large European population and a general interest in motorsport.
Middle Park (stadium), the home of South Melbourne FC was demolished in 1994 due to expansion at Albert Park.
Albert Park has the distinction of being the only venue to hold the Australian Grand Prix in both World Championship and non-World Championship formats.
Prior to the Grand Prix, a modified version of the current circuit was used for both the 1953 and 1956 Grands Prix.
During this time Albert Park ran anti-clockwise as opposed to the current GP circuit standard clockwise.
The Monaco Grand Prix (Grand Prix de Monaco) is a Formula One race held each year on the Circuit de Monaco.
Run since 1929, it is widely considered to be one of the most important and prestigious automobile races in the world alongside the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Active drivers are in bold.
Active Formula One constructors are in bold.
No driver won Monaco more than once in the pre Formula One years.
Active Formula One constructors are in bold.
Events that were not part of the Formula One World Championship have a pink background.
Events that were part of the pre-war European Championship have a cream background.
Championship.
Events that were not part of the Formula One World Championship have a pink background.
Events that were part of the pre-war European Championship have a cream background.
The four color theorem is a theorem of mathematics.
It says that in any plane surface with regions in it (people think of them as maps), the regions can be colored with no more than four colors.
Two regions that have a common border must not get the same color.
They are called adjacent (next to each other) if they share a segment of the border, not just a point.
This was the first theorem to be proved by a computer, in a proof by exhaustion.
In proof by exhaustion, the conclusion is established by dividing it into cases, and proving each one separately.
The number of cases sometimes may be very large.
For example, the first proof of the four color theorem was a proof by exhaustion with 1,936 cases.
This proof was controversial because most of the cases were checked by a computer program, not by hand.
The shortest known proof of the four color theorem today still has over 600 cases.
Even though the problem was first presented as a problem to color political maps of countries, mapmakers are not particularly interested in it.
According to an article by the math historian Kenneth May, Maps utilizing only four colors are rare, and those that do usually require only three.
Books on cartography and the history of map making do not mention the four-color property.
Many simpler maps can be colored using three colors.
The fourth color is required for some maps, such as one in which one region is surrounded by an odd number of others, which touch each other in a cycle.
One such example is given in the image.
The five color theorem states that five colors are enough to color a map.
It has a short, elementary proof and was proven in the late 19th century.
Proving that four colors suffice turned out to be significantly more difficult.
A number of false proofs and false counterexamples have appeared since the first statement of the four color theorem in 1852.
Intuitively, the four color theorem can be stated as ` given any separation of a plane into contiguous regions, called a map, the regions can be colored using at most four colors so that no two regions which are adjacent have the same color '.
To be able to correctly solve the problem, it is necessary to clarify some aspects: First, all points that belong to three or more countries must be ignored.
Secondly, bizarre maps with regions of finite area and infinite perimeter can require more than four colors.
For the purpose of the theorem every "country" has to be a simply connected region, or contiguous.
In the real world, this is not true: Alaska as part of the United States, Nakhchivan as part of Azerbaijan, and Kaliningrad as part of Russia are not contiguous.
Because the territory of a particular country must be the same color, four colors may not be sufficient.
For instance, consider a simplified map, such as the one shown on the left: In this map, the two regions labeled A belong to the same country, and must be the same color.
This map then requires five colors, since the two A regions together are contiguous with four other regions, each of which is contiguous with all the others.
If A consisted of three regions, six or more colors might be required.
In this manner, it is possible to construct maps that require an arbitrarily high number of colors.
A similar construction also applies if a single color is used for all bodies of water, as is usual on real maps.
An easier to state version of the theorem uses graph theory.
The set of regions of a map can be represented more abstractly as an undirected graph that has a vertex for each region and an edge for every pair of regions that share a boundary segment.
This graph is planar: it can be drawn in the plane without crossings by placing each vertex at an arbitrarily chosen location within the region to which it corresponds, and by drawing the edges as curves that lead without crossing within each region from the vertex location to each shared boundary point of the region.
Conversely any planar graph can be formed from a map in this way.
In graph-theoretic terminology, the four-color theorem states that the vertices of every planar graph can be colored with at most four colors so that no two adjacent vertices receive the same color, or for short, "every planar graph is four-colorable".
The first person to name the problem was Francis Guthrie, in 1852.
He was a law student in Engand, at the time.
He found that he needed at least four colors to color a map of the counties of England.
Augustus de Morgan first discussed the problem, in a letter he wrote to Rowan Hamliton in August 1852.
In the letter, de Morgan asks whether four colors are really enough to color a map, such that countries that are next to each other get different colors.
English mathematician Arthur Cayley presented the problem to the mathematical society in London, in 1878.
Within a year, Alfred Kempe found what looked like a proof of the problem.
Eleven years later, in 1890, Percy Heawood showed that Percy 's proof was wrong.
Peter Guthrie Tait presented another attempt at a proof in 1880.
It took eleven years to show that Tait 's proof did not work either.
In 1891, Julius Petersen could show this.
When he falsified Cayley 's proof, Kempe also showed a proof for a problem he called Five color theorem.
The theorem says that any such map can be colored with no more than five colors.
There are two restrictions: First, any country is contiguous, there are no exclaves.
The second restriction is that countries need to have a common border; if they only touch in a point, they can be colored with the same color.
Even though Kempe 's proof was wrong, he used some of the ideas which would later permit a correct proof.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Heinrich Heesch developed a first sketch of a proof by computer.
Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken improved this sketch in 1976.
They were able to reduce the number of cases that would need to be tested to 1936; a later version was made that relied on testing only 1476 cases.
Each case needed to be tested by a computer.
In 1996, Neil Robertson, Daniel Sanders, Paul Seymour and Robin Thomas improved the method, and reduced the number of cases to be tested to 663.
Again, each case needed to be tested by computer.
In 2005, Georges Gonthier and Benjamin Werner developed a formal proof.
This was an improvement, because it allowed to use theorem-proving software, for the first time.
The software used is called Coq.
The four color theorem is the first big mathematical problem that was proved with the help of a computer.
Because the proof can not be done by a human, some mathematicians did not recognize it as correct.
To verify the proof, it is necessary to rely on a correctly working software, and hardware to validate the proof.
Because the proof was done by computer, it is also not very elegant.
The four color theorem has been notorious for attracting a large number of false proofs and disproofs in its long history.
At first, The New York Times refused to report on the Appel Haken proof.
The newspaper did this as a matter of policy; it feared that the proof would be shown false like the ones before it.
Some proofs took a long time, till they could be falsified: For Kempe 's and Tait 's proofs falsifying them took over a decade.
The simplest counterexamples generally try to create one region which touches all the others.
This forces the remaining regions to be colored with only three colors.
Because the four color theorem is true, this is always possible; however, because the person drawing the map is focused on the one large region, they fail to notice that the remaining regions can in fact be colored with three colors.
This trick can be generalized: If the colors of some regions in a map are selected beforehand, it becomes impossible to color the remaining regions in such a way that in total, only four colors are used.
Someone verifying the counterexample may not think that it may be necessary to change the color of these regions.
This will make the counterexample look valid, even though it is not.
Perhaps one effect underlying this common misconception is the fact that the color restriction is not transitive: a region only has to be colored differently from regions it touches directly, not regions touching regions that it touches.
If this were the restriction, planar graphs would require arbitrarily large numbers of colors.
Other false disproofs violate the assumptions of the theorem in unexpected ways, such as using a region that consists of multiple disconnected parts, or disallowing regions of the same color from touching at a point.
In real life, many countries have exclaves or colonies.
Since they belong to the country, they need to be colored with the same color than the parent country.
This means that usually, more than four colors are needed to color such a map.
When mathematicians talk about the graph associated with the problem, they say that is not planar.
Even though it is easy to check if a graph is planar, finding the minimal number of colors needed to color it is very difficult.
It is NP-complete, among the most difficult problems that exist.
The minimal number of colors needed to color a graph is known as its chromatic number.
Many of the problems that occur when trying to solve the four color theorem are related to discrete mathematics.
For this reason, methods from algebraic topology are often used.
The four color theorem requires the "map" to be on a flat surface, what mathematicians call a plane.
In 1890, Percy John Heawood created what is called Heawood conjecture today: It asks the same question as the four color theorem, but for any topological object.
As an example, a torus can be colored with at most seven colors.
The Heawood cojecture gives a formula that works for all such objects, except the Klein bottle.
Fahrenheit 451 is an American dystopian fiction novel.
It was written by Ray Bradbury and first published in 1953.
The novel is about a future American society in which people are hedonistic (meaning they live only for pleasure), and reading is against the law because it makes them think.
The main character, Guy Montag, has a job as a "fireman" (which, in this future, means "book burner").
The number "451" refers to the temperature (in Fahrenheit) at which the books burn when the "firemen" burn them "for the good of humanity".
Written in the early years of the Cold War, the novel is a critique of what Bradbury saw as an increasingly dysfunctional American society.
The idea began with Bradbury 's short story "Bright Phoenix," written in 1947 but first published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1963.
The original short story was reworked into the novella, The Fireman, and published in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.
The novel was also serialized in the March, April, and May 1954 issues of Playboy magazine.
Bradbury wrote the entire novel on a pay typewriter in the basement of UCLA 's Powell library.
His original idea in writing Fahrenheit 451 was to show his great love for books and libraries.
He has often referred to Montag as an allusion to himself.
Over the years, the novel has been subject to various interpretations, primarily focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas.
Bradbury has said that the novel is not about censorship; he says that Fahrenheit 451 is a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which leads to people thinking that knowledge is made up of "factoids", partial information without context, such as Napoleon 's birth date alone, without an indication of who he was.
A movie version of the novel was released in 1966, and at least two BBC Radio 4 dramatizations have also been aired, both of which follow the book very closely.
Francis Xavier (1506-1552) was a Spanish Jesuit.
He was made a saint by the Catholic church.
He is known for his travels to Asia, including Goa and Japan.
A fossil is the remains or trace of an ancient living thing.
Fossils of animals, plants or protists occur in sedimentary rock.
In a typical fossil, the body form is retained, but the original molecules that made up the body have been replaced by some inorganic material, such as calcium carbonate (CaCO3) or silica (SiO2).
The fossil feels like, and is, made of rock.
It has been mineralised or petrified (literally, turned into rock).
A fossil may also be an imprint or impression of a living thing remaining in the fossilised mud of a long-gone age.
Some organisms fossilise well, others do not.
The most common fossils are those left behind by organisms that produce hard materials.
The hard, calcitic shells of molluscs (such as clams and snails) and of now-rare brachiopods (also known as lampshells) are examples.
These sea-dwelling shellfish have produced many fossiliferous (that is, fossil-bearing) chalky layers of limestone in the earth.
Soft-bodied organisms can fossilise in special circumstances: the Ediacaran biota is a good example.
The best-known fossils for the general public are those of the giant, prehistoric dinosaurs.
The fossilized bones and fossilized tracks of these huge, ancient reptiles can be seen in many museums of natural history and earth science.
The study of fossils by geologists and biologists is known as paleontology.
If the study puts living things in their ecological context it is called paleobiology.
There are some sites where fossils have been found with remarkable details, or in large numbers.
Palaeontologists call these sites Lagerst tten, which means, in German, ` storage place '.
The La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles is such a place.
So are the Solnhofen limestone quarries in Bavaria.
Microscopic or very tiny fossils are called "microfossils"; while larger, macroscopic fossils such as those of seashells and mammals are called "macrofossils".
Natural stones which look like fossilized organisms, but are not fossils at all, are called "pseudofossils".
Although most fossils are formed from the hard parts of organisms, there are also indirect signs of prehistoric life.
Examples such as a worm 's trail or an animal 's footprint are quite common.
They are known as trace fossils.
Fossilized excrement, faeces or dung is known as a coprolite.
Chemical traces of prehistoric organisms is called a chemofossil.
Objects made by prehistoric people are called artifacts.
Even when the remains of soft-bodied animals are gone, there may be impressions, molds or carbon traces which remain permanently.
So, in special cases, we do have fossils even of small, soft invertebrate animals.
Sometimes a fossil is produced as a result of dryness (desiccation), freezing, or pine resin.
Mummified animals, ice-covered wooly mammoths, and insect-filled amber are examples of such fossils.
Living fossils, however, are not fossils at all.
Instead, they are modern-day organisms which very closely resemble their prehistoric ancestors of many millions of years ago.
The ginkgo tree, the coelacanth and the horseshoe crab are good examples.
Many pre-scientific peoples noticed fossils, but not all thought they were the remains of living things.
Perhaps the first to leave a record of his thought was the Ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes (about 570BC 470BC).
p387 His ideas were reported by later writers: "Shells (are) found in the midst of the land, and on mountains.
In the quarries of Syracuse the impressions of a fish and seaweed have been found; on Paros the impression of a bay-leaf in the depth of a stone, and on Malta the flattened shape of sea-creatures (have been found).
These, he says, were formed when everything, long ago, was covered in mud, and the impression dried out in the mud".
Guthrie p387
These ideas were rediscovered in the 17th century in Europe.
Nicolas Steno in the Netherlands and Robert Hooke at the Royal Society in London both wrote and gave lectures about fossils.
In the 18th century fossil-collecting began, and serious thinking on geology began to make progress.
In the 19th century geology became a modern science, and fossils played a part in the theory of evolution.
Fay Wray (born Vina Fay Wray; September 15, 1907 August 8, 2004) was a Canadian-American actress.
She is best known for playing Ann Darrow in King Kong.
Her acting career spanned 57 years, Wray received international renown as an actress in horror movie roles.
In 1989, Wray received the Women in Film Crystal Award.
Wray received a "Legend in Film" award at the 2003 Palm Beach International Film Festival.
For her contribution to the movie industry, Wray received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6349 Hollywood Blvd..
She received a star posthumously on Canada 's Walk of Fame in Toronto on June 5, 2005.
A small park near Lee 's Creek on Main Street in Cardston, Alberta, her birthplace, was named "Fay Wray Park".
The small sign at the edge of the park on Main Street has a silhouette of King Kong on it, remembering her role in the film King Kong.
A large oil portrait of Wray by Alberta artist Neil Boyle is on display in the Empress Theatre in Fort Macleod, Alberta.
In May 2006, Wray became one of the first four entertainers to ever be honored by Canada Post by being featured on a postage stamp.
Two days after her death, the lights of the Empire State Building were extinguished for 15 minutes in her memory.
A Field-programmable gate array (often shortened to FPGA) is an integrated circuit which can be "programmed" before it is used by a customer.
Each FPGA has a certain capacity of logic blocks; each block can be programmed to hold a certain number of logic gates.
The logic gates will be connected with each other to provide the desired functionality.
Programming is done using a programming language developed for the purpose, called a Hardware Description Language (HDL).
The logic blocks can also be assigned the function to act as computer memory, which allows to store certain values.
Some FPGAs do not only offer logic gates such as XOR or Flip-flops, but also higher-level components such as the logic for an Ethernet controller.
Because of their design, a logic circuit done as an FPGA will be slower than if it is done on a dedicated integrated circuit (called ASIC).
Nevertheless, FPGAs are often used, especially for tasks where only a limited number of units can be sold.
FPGAs are generally built upon programmable logic elements and programmable interconnects.
One building block of logic elements is a programmable Lookup Table (LUT).
A LUT can be programmed to output any value given input values.
In this way, a LUT can be programmed to be any type of logic with the same number of inputs and outputs.
For example, a 2-input, 1-output LUT can be programmed to emulate the logic of a 2-input AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, etc..
The output of this LUT can be either saved using a register (see CPU), or connected to the input of other LUTs.
Using a programmable mux, the FPGA can be programmed to choose the registered or non-registered output.
This combination of a LUT, a register, and a mux is the general structure of a logic element.
To connect these logic elements together, pass transistors are used.
The transistor can be programmed to either connect a signal or not, thereby giving the FPGA the ability to very specifically connect logic elements together.
For example, if the output of one logic elements will feed the input of another, the pass transistor can be programmed to connect these two wires together and match the specified logic.
Between the logic elements and the pass transistors, a compiler can take a hardware description from an HDL, create the logic for the logic elements, and connect them together using the pass transistors.
In Norse mythology, Fenrir or Fenrisulfr is a giant wolf.
It is the son of Loki and the giantess Angrbo a. Fenrir was tied up by the gods, but was destined to grow too big for his bonds and eats Odin during Ragnar k. After killing Odin, he is killed by Odin 's son, Vi arr.
Fenrir has two sons, Hati (` hate ') and Skoll.
He has a brother, J rmungandr (the Midgard serpent), and a sister, Hel.
Odin found out about a prophecy that the children of Loki and Angrbo a would cause trouble for the gods.
He had Fenrir brought to him along with its brother J rmungandr and its sister Hel.
After throwing J rmungandr into the sea and sending Hel into the land of the dead, Odin had the wolf raised among the sir.
Only the god T r was brave enough to feed the growing monster.
The wolf got stronger and stronger.
The gods were scared that he would eventually destroy them.
They tried to chain it up.
He agreed to be chained two times.
Both times he easily broke the chains.
Odin had the dwarfs make the chain Gleipnir ("deceiver" or "entangler").
It looked like a silken ribbon but was made of six magical ingredients: the sound of a cat 's step, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, bear 's sensibility, fish 's breath, and bird 's spittle.
The gods challenged Fenrir to break this chain as well.
The wolf saw how thin and well made Gleipnir was and thought it was a trick.
He agreed to try and break the chain, but only if one of the gods would put his hand in the wolf 's mouth.
He believed this would force them to free him if he could not break the chain.
Only T r was willing to put his hand in the wolf 's mouth.
Fenrir tried to break the chain.
The more he tried, the tighter the chain held him.
When the gods would not free him, the wolf bit off T r 's hand at the wrist.
It is said that at Ragnar k, the wolf will break free.
He will join forces with the enemies of the gods and will then eat Odin.
After that Vi arr, Odin 's son, will slay the wolf to avenge his father 's death.
This article is not about the Final Fantasy series.
For the first Final Fantasy game, please see Final Fantasy (video game)
Final Fantasy is a game franchise created by Karimito Sakaguchi.
It is developed and owned by Square Enix.
Final Fantasy is a series of fantasy and science fantasy role-playing video games (RPGs).
It also includes movies, anime, printed media, and other products.
The first game was published in 1987.
The game was a success.
It had sequels.
The video game has since branched into other Video game genres.
Some of these genres are tactical role-playing, action role-playing, massively multiplayer online role-playing, racing, third-person shooter, fighting, and rhythm.
Most Final Fantasy games are independent stories.
They have different settings and main characters.
Recurring elements include plot themes, character names, and game mechanics.
Plots center on a group of heroes fighting evil and exploring their internal struggles and relationships.
Character names are borrowed from history, languages, and mythologies of many cultures.
The series is a commercial and critical success.
It is Square Enix 's best selling video game franchise.
It sold more than units.
It is one of the best-selling video game franchises.
It was awarded a star on the Walk of Game in 2006.
It has seven Guinness World Records in the Guinness World Records Gamer 's Edition 2008.
Final Fantasy is known for its innovation, visuals, and music.
It includes full motion videos, photo-realistic character models, and orchestra music by Nobuo Uematsu.
There are two main types of Final Fantasy game: the main series, where the games are just numbered with Roman numbers, and several related games and spinoffs.
Each of the games in the main series have very little to do with each other, with its own setting, story, and characters.
Some exceptions include Final Fantasy X and X-2, the sequel, or Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns.
But the games are connected through the gameplay, themes, and ` style '.
Newer sequels and prequels are Final Fantasy X-2 and the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII games and films.
Since 1987, more than seventeen games have been released.
The series started on Nintendo Entertainment System, but today most Final Fantasy games are made for the Sony PlayStation or PlayStation 2.
Games have also been released for the Nintendo Game Boy and GameCube.
Final Fantasy VII is generally regarded as one of the pinnacle achievements of gaming.
A must-play for any gamer.
In 2001, Columbia Pictures made a CGI movie called Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
While it is not actually a Final Fantasy game, one game called Final Fantasy Adventure was released in America for the Nintendo Game Boy.
The game was actually a prequel to the SNES game Secret of Mana, but was released in the United States with the name "Final Fantasy" to boost sales.
In 2003 it was remade for the Game Boy Advance with the title Sword of Mana.
In Japan, the Mana series is called Seiken Densetsu, which means "Legend of the Sword."
There are three games in the series, but only the first two, Secret of Mana and Sword of Mana, have been released in the United States.
In Final Fantasy, players control a group of characters.
They go through the game 's story by exploring the game world and defeating enemies.
Enemies are found randomly.
This changed in Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XII.
The player gives combat orders.
These orders are "Fight", "Magic", and "Item".
The orders are given to individual characters through a menu.
This menu appears when in battles.
The games have used different battle systems.
Before Final Fantasy XI, battles were turn-based.
The main characters and bad characters were on different sides of the battlefield.
Final Fantasy IV introduced the "Active Time Battle" (ATB) system.
It made better the turn-based system with a time-keeping system.
This system was designed by Hiroyuki Ito.
It gave a feeling of urgency and excitement to the fights.
It required the player to act before an enemy attacks.
It was used until Final Fantasy X. This game had the "Conditional Turn-Based" (CTB) system.
This new system returned to the old turn-based system.
Magic is common in the game.
The way characters get magic depends on the game.
It is generally divided into classes organized by color: "White magic" focuses on spells that heal teammates; "Black magic" focuses on hurting enemies; "Red magic" is a combination of white and black magic, "Blue magic" copies enemy attacks; and "Green magic" focuses on applying status effects to teammates or enemies.
There are other types of magic like "Time magic".
This magic focuses on time, space, and gravity; "Summoning magic" brings legendary creatures to help in battle.
This magic has appeared since Final Fantasy III.
Summoned creatures are called names like "Espers" or "Eidolons".
They are inspired by mythologies from Arabic, Hindu, Norse, and Greek cultures.
Different means of transportation have appeared through the series.
The most common is the airship.
There are also chocobos for traveling short distances.
Others include sea and land vehicles.
Following Final Fantasy VII, more modern and futuristic vehicles have appeared.
A list of upcoming Final Fantasy games.
A fatty acid is a carboxylic acid (- C (= O) OH), with a long unbranched hydrocarbon tail.
It is studied in organic chemistry and biochemistry.
Fatty acids are important sources of body fuel.
When metabolized, they yield large quantities of ATP.
Many cell types can use either glucose or fatty acids for this purpose.
In particular, heart and skeletal muscle prefer fatty acids.
Fatty acids may be either saturated or unsaturated.
Unsaturated compounds have reactive double bonds; saturated ones do not.
Fatty acids are aliphatic monocarboxylic acids derived from, or contained in, an animal or vegetable fat, oil, or wax.
Natural fatty acids commonly have a chain of four to 28 carbon atoms (usually unbranched and even numbered), which may be saturated or unsaturated.
This would include acetic acid, although this is not usually considered a fatty acid (not a lipid).
The blend of fatty acids in mammalian skin, together with lactic acid and pyruvic acid, are distinctive.
They allow animals with a keen sense of smell to identify individuals.
The Four Freedoms is an important concept of American president Franklin D. Roosevelt.
He presented them in the State of the Union of January 6, 1941, which is therefore also called the Four Freedoms Speech.
Roosevelt made the Four Freedoms public just eleven months before the American participation at World War II.
The concept played an important role in the American propaganda during the war.
After Roosevelts death in 1945, his wife Eleanor continued being an important advocate for including the Four Freedoms in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"That is no vision of a distant millennium.
It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb".
Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 6, 1941
To inspire a greater public for his concept, Roosevelt arranged the creation of the Four Freedoms Monument.
The statue was made public in 1943 in New York City.
In honor of one of the first Americans to be killed in action, Colin Kelly, Roosevelt had the statue moved to his former home in Florida.
In 1943 artist painter Norman Rockwell got inspired by the Four Freedoms and made a series of four paintings on this subject.
Afterwards, the American authorities made use of these paintings to collect money for the world war.
Frankfurt am Main is one of the biggest cities in Germany.
The City of Frankfurt has a population of 670,000.
The metropolitan area, called Rhine-Main after its two biggest rivers, has over four million people.
Frankfurt is an important center for traffic and for the financial business.
The Frankfurt International Airport is the largest in Germany, and the third biggest in the world.
Frankfurt 's train station is one of the largest, and its highway crossing is the center of Germany 's street network.
Frankfurt is the seat of the European Central Bank, the German Federal Bank (Bundesbank) and of the biggest German banks, and it has an important stock exchange where shares of German companies are traded.
Frankfurt is on the Main river.
The city 's name means ford of the Franks - a ford is a place in a river where it is so shallow that you can walk through it, and the Franks were a Germanic people which existed in the first millennium.
So, this was a place where travellers could cross the river without a boat.
The frankish kings built a palace and a church here.
Over the centuries, this group of buildings grew to be a big city which was famous for international trade and fairs, like today.
Frankfurt was one of the most important cities of the Holy Roman Empire, and its emperors were crowned here.
In the 19th century, Frankfurt was the capital of the German Confederation which was founded after the Holy Roman Empire fell apart.
During the revolution of 1848, the first freely elected German parliament worked in Frankfurt.
During the Industrial Revolution, many factories and railway lines were built in Frankfurt and its suburbs.
In the city center, a lot of big buildings were built, like an opera house, theaters, stock exchange, railway stations, department stores or museums.
Tram lines were constructed to make traveling inside the growing city easier.
In World War II, the old city was totally destroyed by airplane bomber attacks.
After the war, Germany was divided into two parts, and Frankfurt became the economic capital of West Germany while Bonn was chosen to be the political capital.
Frankfurt is a very international city.
Every third inhabitant is not German.
Most immigrants come from southeastern Europe, Turkey and North Africa, but there are people from almost every country living in Frankfurt.
There are also many international business companies here, and the big airport links Frankfurt with many countries in the world.
Many banks are based in Frankfurt, and the city has some of the tallest buildings in Europe.
Frankfurter is also a name for a hot dog, or sausage, because they are said to have originated in the city.
Frankfurt has an oceanic climate (Cfb in the K ppen climate classification).
The first Wikimania conference was hosted in this city in 2005.
Freenet is a decentralized (hosted on many machines) network., It is censorship-resistant, which means it is not easy for anyone other than authors to remove content.
The data is stored on many machines.
Freenet was made by Ian Clarke.
Freenet has a goal to provide freedom of speech and Freedom of information through a peer-to-peer network with protection of user 's identity.
Freenet works by putting together the volunteer bandwidth and storage space of member machines to allow users to anonymously publish (place or upload) or retrieve (get or download) different kinds of information.
From a user 's perspective, it can be thought of as simply a large storage device.
Freenet has been under continuous development since 2000; a version 1.0 has not yet been released but current builds are usable.
The project has already seen a ground-up rewrite (redoing of programming) for version 0.7.
Freenet is free software.
Sir Fred Hoyle (24 June 1915 20 August 2001) was an English astronomer.
He is noted mainly for being the first man to think of the idea that nuclear fusion might happen in stars, like our Sun.
In addition to his work as an astronomer, Hoyle was a writer of science fiction, including a number of books co-written with his son Geoffrey Hoyle.
Fred Hoyle gave the Big Bang theory its name.
French cuisine has influenced the style of cooking throughout Europe, and its chefs work in restaurants throughout the world.
The roots of modern haute cuisine lie in chefs like La Varenne (1615 1678) and the notable chef of Napoleon, Marie-Antoine Car me (1784 1833).
These chefs developed a lighter style of food compared to the food of the Middle Ages.
They used fewer spices, and more herbs and creamy ingredients.
Typical ingredients like roux and fish stock, and techniques such as marinading, and dishes such as ragout, were invented.
Car me was an expert p tissier (pastry-maker), and this is still a mark of French cooking.
He developed basic sauces, his ` mother sauces '; he had over a hundred sauces in his repertoire, based on the half-dozen mother sauces.
French cuisine was introduced in the 20th century by Georges Auguste Escoffier (1846 1935).
He was a genius at organization.
He worked out how to run large restaurants, as in a big hotel or a palace: how the staff should be organised; how the menu was prepared.
He had methods for everything.
Escoffier managed the restaurants and cuisine at the Savoy Hotel and Carlton Hotel in London, the H tel Ritz Paris, and some of the greatest cruise ships of the day.
Escoffier 's other main contribution was the publication of Le Guide Culinaire in 1903, which spread the understanding of French cookery.
However, Escoffier left out much of the culinary character to be found in the regions of France.
Gastro-tourism and the Guide Michelin helped to acquaint people with the rich bourgeois and peasant cuisine of the French countryside in the 20th century.
Gascon cuisine has also had great influence over the cuisine in the southwest of France.
Many dishes that were once regional have proliferated in variations across the country.
Cheese and wine are a major part of the cuisine, playing different roles regionally and nationally.
In the north of France, people often prefer to use butter to cook.
In the south, they prefer olive oil and garlic.
In France, each region has its own special dish; choucroute in Alsace, quiche in Lorraine, cassoulet in the Languedoc-Roussillon, and tapenade in Provence-Alpes-C te d'Azur.
In November 2010, French gastronomy was added by UNESCO to its lists of the world 's ` intangible cultural heritage '.
Francis Hopkinson (September 21, 1737 May 9, 1791), an American author, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence as a delegate from New Jersey.
His supporters believe he played a part in the design of the first American flag.
Francis Hopkinson gave his help to the second committee that designed the Great Seal of the United States.
This is the same seal that is now impressed upon the reverse of the United States one-dollar bill.
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was an African-American in the 19th century.
He was born as a slave in Maryland, but learned to read and escaped to the North in the 1830s.
He soon became an abolitionist (someone who wants to end slavery), and worked with other abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison.
He was the most powerful speaker for abolitionism.
Frederick also published his own newspaper "North Star".
He wrote two books, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and My Bondage and My Freedom.
Douglass spent several years in England and Ireland.
During the Civil War, Douglass was the most famous black man in the country, and met Abraham Lincoln.
After the War, he served as Ambassador to Haiti and an advocate for equal rights for African-Americans.
Fluid Dynamics talks about how fluids (liquids and gases) work.
It is one of the oldest parts of the study of Physics, and is studied by physicists, mathematicians, and engineers.
Mathematics can describe how fluids move using mathematical formulas called equations.
The fluid dynamics of gases are called aerodynamics.
Understanding how fluids behave helps us understand things like flight or ocean currents.
For example, fluid dynamics can be used to understand weather, because clouds and air are both fluids.
Fluid dynamics can also be used to understand how aeroplanes fly through the air or how ships and submarines move through water.
Computer programs can use the mathematical equations of fluid dynamics to model and predict the actions of moving fluids.
Computers have helped us understand fluid dynamics very much, and some people study how to model or simulate fluids only with a computer.
Studying how fluid dynamics can be done with computers is called computational fluid dynamics (or CFD for short).
The mathematical equations that govern fluid flow are simple to think about but very hard to solve.
In most real life cases there is no way to get an solution that can be written down and a computer must be used to calculate the answer instead.
There are three fundamental equations based on three principles.
Conservation of mass: mass is neither created nor destroyed, it simply moves from one place to another.
This gives the mass conservation equation.
Sometimes this may not apply such as a flow involving a chemical reaction.
Conservation of energy: this is the first law of thermodynamics, energy is never created or destroyed, it just changes form (i.e. kinetic energy into potential energy) or moves around.
Conservation of momentum: this is Newton 's Second Law and it states that Force = rate of change of momentum.
Momentum is mass times velocity.
The momentum equations are the equations that make it hard to solve problems in fluid dynamics.
There are a number of different versions that include a number of different effects.
The Navier-Stokes equations are momentum equations, and the Euler equations are the Navier-Stokes equations but with viscosity not included.
There is one momentum equation in a 1D problem and three, one in each space direction, in 3D.
To solve the equations more information is often needed in the form of an equation of state.
This relates thermodynamic properties (usually pressure and temperature) to each other for a specific type of fluid.
An example is the "Ideal Gas" equation of state that relates pressure, temperature and density and works well for gases under normal pressures (like air at atmospheric pressure).
A fin is a surface used to produce lift and thrust or to steer while traveling in water, air, or other fluid media.
The word was first used for the limbs of fish, but it is now also used when describing other animal limbs and man-made devices.
Freyr (sometimes written as Frey or Frej), in Norse mythology is a god of prosperity and fertility.
His father is Njord, and his twin sister is Freyja.
Freyr is one of the most important Norse gods.
He was the first god to lose in Ragnarok because he gave up his magical sword to marry a giantess.
Surtr, the King of the fire giant, killed Freyr and then burnt all the nine worlds with the same magical sword.
When Freyr snuck in and sit on Odin 's throne (on which one can see all things around the world), he saw Gerd, a very pretty giantess.
He fell in love, and sent his servant to woo her for him, but Gerd did not agree until Freyr 's servant threatened to use Freyr 's magical sword to damage her lands.
Freyr then gave his sword to his servant as a reward.
The sword was said to be able to fight by itself.
Freyr 's realm is Alfheim.
It is the land of the elves.
He is the patron god of Sweden.
Statues of Odin, Thor, Freyr, Frigg, and Freyja are often found in ancient temples.
Freyja (or Freya, Freja, Frejya) is a goddess in Norse and Germanic Mythology.
She is the twin sister of Freyr and the daughter of Njord.
She was originally worshipped as a fertility goddess but in the Eddas she was often portrayed as a goddess of love, beauty and attraction.
She was also associated with war, battle, death, wealth, magic and prophecies.
Freyja was said to be the most beloved, honored, and renowned among goddesses.
She is one of the most popular deities of Norse mythology.
The Valkyries collect the souls of heroes killed in battles and bring them to valhalla, where they will become warriors of the gods.
Freyja shares with Odin half of these heroes.
Her sacred realm is Folkvang (Warriors ' Field), here lies her great and fair hall Sessrumnir (Room of Seats).
At this hall, she decides where her warriors shall sit.
Some belong to Odin.
Freyja married a god called Odr.
She deeply loves her husband, but he often went away on long journeys, and Freyja cried red golden tears for him.
Her tears become gold and amber when they fall to Earth, therefore gold was called "Freyja 's tears".
They have two beautiful daughters called Hnoss and Gersemi.
Freyja often rides in a chariot pulled by big blue cats, or on a golden battle boar.
She is called "The Fair One".
In the myths, there were three giants who wanted to marry Freyja, but they were all killed by Thor, the god of thunder.
Freyja also has a precious necklace called Brisingamen (Jewelry of Fire).
The god Loki once stole this necklace, and Freyja had to ask the god Heimdall for help.
Heimdall won the fight with Loki and gave the necklace back to Freyja.
For this, Loki is also called "Thief of Brisingamen", and Heimdall is also called "Seeker of Brisingamen".
When Thrymr, the King of the frost giants, told Loki to ask Freyja to become his wife, the goddess was so angry that heaven was shaken, and the necklace Brisingamen broke.
The god Thor later borrowed the necklace and came to the wedding, dressed up as Freyja.
Thor killed Thrymr and all his relatives.
Freyja is a warrior goddess.
Whenever she rides into battles, she gets half of the souls of dead heroes.
Freyja is also a priestess, and she taught Odin the magic arts.
She has a magical cloak made of feathers which allows her to fly between different worlds.
Freyja is the patron goddess of crops and childbirths.
She is also a goddess of love, whom lovers may send prayers to.
Frigg and Freyja are the two main goddesses in Norse mythology.
They were especially worshipped by Vikings.
Freyja is said to be the kindest among goddesses.
In a poem in Poetic Edda, a young man called Ottar always trusted in the goddesses; he built a rock shrine for the goddesses, and Freyja answered his prayers.
She disguised Ottar as her golden boar, and went on a trip to help him find his ancestors.
In final battle of Ragnarok, Odin, and Freyr will die.
Freyja alone will remain among the gods, and she continues the sacrifices.
Freyr 's name means "the Lord", Freyja 's name means "the Lady".
The day of the week, Friday, is named either after her, or after Odin 's wife Frigg.
The Orion was called Frigg 's distaff or Freyja 's girdle.
Frigg and Freyja may be one and the same goddess.
Freyja is also widely known as Vanadis, which means Lady of the Vanir.
The metallic element Vanadium was named after her.
The Vanir are close relatives of elves.
Freyr is the Lord of the elves, his sacred realm is Alfheim, home of the elves.
Another well-known name of godddess Freyja is Gefn, which means "Giver", a suitable name for the fertility goddess.
Freyja represents the Norse women of Viking Age, whose husbands often went away to war.
From Freyja 's name, noble Norse women are called Fru, wives are called house-fru.
And Frau means "woman" in German.
Freya and Freja are now common Scandinavian female names.
The word "fat" can also mean that someone is obese.
Fat is one of the three main types of nutrient.
Fats are found in many foods.
They are made of macromolecules called lipids.
Lipids are based on long-chain fatty acids.
Some of these are essential because the body can not make them.
There are three different types of fats: Unsaturated fats, Saturated fats, and Trans fats.
Unsaturated fats, are liquid at room temperature.
They are considered useful fats because they can improve blood cholesterol levels, and ease heart rhythms.
Most vegetable oils are liquid at room temperature have unsaturated fats.
There are two kinds of unsaturated fats, Mono-unsaturated fats, and polyunsaturated fats.
We can commonly find them in avocados, nuts, peanuts, seeds, fish, and canola oil.
Saturated fats will likely have no benefits; they are mainly found in animal foods, but a few plant foods are also high in saturated fats.
Too much saturated fat in your diet can lead to heart disease and other health problems, such as gaining weight or increasing the risk of heart disease or stroke.
People should not eat too much saturated fats.
You should limit saturated fat to less than 10 % of your daily calories.
It can usually be found in dairy products, meat products, grain-based desserts.
Trans fatty acids, which are more commonly called trans fats.
There are two types of trans fats, naturally-occurring and artificial trans fats.
Naturally-occurring trans fats can be found in the guts of some animals and foods which are made from these animals.
Artificial trans fats are made in an industrial process that adds hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid.
Trans fats are bad for cholesterol levels than saturated fats.
They are most likely found in frying.
baked goods, and processed foods.
Fats are used to absorb or get nutrients, like Vitamins for humans.
It is used as a source of backup energy in cases when carbohydrates are not available, or people can not use it at that time.
People need more than 20 to 35 % of daily calories from fat.
Also, fats play a role in helping people 's body maintain or keep the core (center) temperature.
However, they are also harmful, in other words, they have bad effects on human 's bodies.
Bad fats, in other words, trans fats, have no known health benefits and will damage someone 's heart and take them away from healthy.
People might get diseases like blindness, which means they can not see anything because of having too much cholesterol and other fats.
Most of the foods that contain these types of fats are solid at room temperature, such as butter and animal meat.
On the other hand, good fats are naturally found in foods and will not damaged human 's organs.
The example foods of good fats are avocados, eggs, and nuts.
Unsaturated fatty acids are very important.
They are called by where their double bond is placed.
Omega-3 fatty acids (-3) and omega-6 fatty acids (-6) are essential: you need them both.
They help build longer molecules which do cell signaling in different tissues.
There are over 20 different signaling paths that control a wide array of bodily functions.
Why do you need to eat fat to burn fat?
Medium-chain triglycerides are good for burning fat.
They are easily absorbed, digested, and reused as energy.
Eating milk fat, palm oil, and coconut oil will burn burn fat because they contain medium-chain triglycerides.
Also, medium-chain triglycerides can increase metabolism.
Increasing metabolism can burn more fat.
Athletes use medium-chain triglycerides to increase their endurance during exercise.
And nobody cooks medium-chain triglycerides oil.
Healthy people are mix with water, juice, ice cream, or pudding.
Fat is important for people, even though some people think fat is bad.
But fat can help us keep our weight, and fat doesn t make us fat.
The fat that we eat can prove energy for us, and protects our organs, also keeping save for our cell membranes.
But not all the fatty foods are good for you.
Like pizza, french fries, and hamburgers.
The fat of those will let you became fat and, let your health became terrible.
Fats also provide long-term energy for humans and, in cold climates, a layer of insulation to keep the body warm.
They help the body use the vitamins found in foods.
Fats are also good for the skin and hair.
Olive oil is an especially healthy fat.
Many types of fish also contain healthy fat, for example salmon, sardines, herring, and tuna.
But if too much fat collects in the body, a person can become too heavy.
The energy given by fats is used by moving around or exercising.
Some vegetables like celery or carrots contribute much less to the bodies fat supply.
Though being very important for the human body, it can also harmful in large amounts.
First, you can get some diseases if you have too many fats in your body.
One of these diseases is called the Fatty Liver.
It is a condition which can be resolved by eating different food.
Fatty liver is when someone has too many fats in his liver.
But it can also associate by alcohol or metabolic syndrome.
Fatty liver can be fixed, it can be improved by doing more games or adjust food and drinks.
This is one of the hidden danger of fats.
Another hidden danger of fats is that it can cause some heart diseases.
One example is Heart Failure.
Heart Failure is an illness that does not have enough heart pumps blood.
It lowers the leading of blood flow.
The blood stuck in veins and lungs.
There are some ways to avoid these issues.
The first way is to work out.
Exercise is always good for your body.
The second way is to eat healthily.
You need to keep nutritious balance in your body.
Also, enough protein can help you remove the fats in your body.
The F d ration Internationale de Football Association (French for International Federation of Association Football), or FIFA for short, is the organization that controls international football (also called association football).
The organization s main buildings are in Z rich, Switzerland.
FIFA organizes major international football tournaments, and the most famous one is the FIFA World Cup, which has been held since 1930.
FIFA was established on May 21, 1905 in Paris and has 209 national associations as its members.
The organization s official languages are English, French, German and Spanish.
The president of FIFA is currently Gianni Infantino, serving since 26 February 2016.
The most powerful organ of FIFA is the FIFA Congress, which is an assembly made up of representatives from each member association.
The Congress holds a regular meeting once a year, and since 1998 an additional meeting has been held every year.
Only the Congress can pass changes to FIFA 's laws.
The Congress decides whether FIFA should accept new national associations and elects the President of FIFA, its General Secretary and the other members of FIFA 's Executive Committee.
The President and General Secretary take care of what goes on within and around FIFA.
The Executive Committee, with the President as its head, is responsible for deciding the dates, locations and format of tournaments.
Also, there are six regional confederations recognized by FIFA which take care of the game in the seven different continents of the world.
National associations must be members of both FIFA and their regional confederation in order for their teams to compete in FIFA 's competitions.
The six confederations are AFC (Asian Football Confederation in Asia and Australia), CAF (Conf d ration Africaine de Football in Africa), CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football in North America and Central America), CONMEBOL (Confederaci n Sudamericana de F tbol in South America), OFC (Oceania Football Confederation in Oceania) and UEFA (Union Europ enne de Football Association in Europe).
Fascism is a form of government in which the country is considered more important than any one person, group, liberty, or provision.
Two Fascist leaders in history are Mussolini and Hitler.
A country under this kind of government is usually run by a person called a leader, who has the right of total control over the government and people.
Fascist leadership might also be similar to an oligarchy, such as in Italy where the fascist party was ruled by its "grand council" from 1922 until the end of World War II.
Fascism appeared in Europe before World War II because many people thought that democracy was weak and full of moral perversions, that multiparty capitalism was too materialistic and unfair to the people, while communism, although unifying and fair, did not care about the needs of the nation and hampered business initiative.
Fascism was supposed to be the answer for that need, with national unity and solidarity instead of the divisions of class struggle and party politics.
Liberals and believers in democracy generally considers fascism and communism as two facets of totalitarianism, and that they are unified by the urge to control everything and allow no freedom.
But, believers in Marxism-Leninism think that capitalism either creates or uses fascism as a tool to destroy the workers ' movements and secure rule by the upper classes if it is challenged.
It does so by appealing to the people and to their most primitive needs, while actually pursuing the interests of the already rich.
There is more than one reason why people living in democratic states oppose fascism, but the main reason is that in a fascist dictatorship the individual citizen has no guaranteed rights.
If you say the wrong thing or oppose the wrong person, you can be arrested or killed without a fair trial.
You have to be careful to avoid becoming popular with the people.
Many people believe that Fascism would not be a terrible system if you always do your duty and you never oppose the government.
However, the problem is that people can be corrupt.
Everything looks good in theory, but in real life innocent people can get into serious trouble with the government when there is no guaranteed right to a fair trial.
Fascist governments are different from communist ones in that fascists, in theory, support the right of labor representatives and corporate representatives (CEOs, company presidents, etc.) to negotiate - through a system called corporatism.
Fascists usually work closely with corporations and economic elites, and use the resources to build up the military and other parts of the fascist state.
Fascist States take over schools and other parts of civil society in order to promote nationalism and propaganda.
All adults are expected to either join the fascist party or support it as the government.
Fascist governments, similar to the Nazis in Germany, pursue racist policies of segregation and\/or extermination in opposition to cultural and ethnic pluralism.
Communism, on the other hand is viewed as totalitarian in the sense that it calls for complete economic control and ownership of the economy by the people, in common.
It is always a big crime in fascist countries to speak against the leader or ruling party.
Fascist leaders often give themselves a high military rank, or appear in public in an army or navy uniform, because fascist countries consider the army and warfare the most important part of the struggle for survival.
The first fascist government was run by Benito Mussolini in Italy from 1922 until 1943.
The governments of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria and Adolf Hitler in Germany are also iconic examples of fascism.
Other examples are Greece under Ioannis Metaxas, Spain under the rule of Francisco Franco, and Portugal when Ant nio de Oliveira Salazar was the head of the government.
All of these governments were much like Italian fascism, especially before and during World War II.
Fascism is named after the fasces, which is an old Roman Empire name for a group of sticks tied together.
It is easy to break one stick in half.
It is very hard to break many sticks tied together in half.
Fascists think that everyone following rigidly following the same leader and nationalist ideas makes the country strong the same way the sticks are.
In countries led by fascist governments, the government tries to control all areas of life, including work, school, and family life.
Fascist ideas were most common around the time of World War II.
Many people were killed by fascist governments because the government did not like them or because they opposed fascism.
Even more were killed in wars started by fascist governments.
However, the fascist governments of Portugal and Spain did not take part in World War II, and stayed in power until the 1970s.
Many scholars consider these governments to have been or evolved into traditionalist and conservative rather than fascist.
Fascism, while supporting order and stability as conservatism does, wants to transform society in new ways.
After World War II, Fascism lost much of its influence, although movements and politicians inspired by Fascism have had success in several countries, such as Italy.
The Five Pillars of Islam are five basic rules in Islam that all Muslims should follow.
Friction is a force that acts to stop the movement of two touching things.
The energy lost to friction is turned into sound and heat.
Two kinds of friction are static and kinetic.
Static friction is when the friction is strong enough to stop movement between two objects.
Kinetic friction is when the frictional force is not strong enough to stop all motion.
A forest is a piece of land with many trees.
Many animals need forests to live and survive.
Forests are very important and grow in many places around the world.
They are an ecosystem which includes many plants and animals.
Temperature and rainfall are the two of the most important things for forests.
Forests can exist from the equator to near the polar regions, but the character of the forest differs greatly.
In cold climates conifers dominate, but in temperate and tropical climates forests are mainly of flowering plants.
Rainfall is also a major factor.
No forests exist in deserts, just a few trees in places where their roots can get at some underground water.
The three major forest biomes are coniferous forests, deciduous forests, and tropical rain forests.
Evergreen coniferous forests stretch across Canada, Alaska, Northern Asia, and Northern Europe.
They are composed of conifers which produce seeds in cones.
The weather during the winter is cold, but the snow melts completely in the spring, turning some parts of the forest into swamps.
There are only eight types of trees in the coniferous forests, including balsams, firs, and black spruce.
There are not many different types of trees in coniferous forests because of the cold weather, and the poor soil.
Fallen branches, needles, and dead animals do not decay as fast as in warmer regions.
This is why the soil in coniferous forests is not very fertile.
Also, only those trees that have adapted to cold weather and poor soil have been able to survive.
These trees have flexible branches that support heavy snowfalls.
Less water evaporates from their leaves because of the shape of their needles.
Many coniferous trees shade large parts of the soil below them, which keeps many plants from growing on the forest ground.
Some animals that live in the coniferous forests are pine martens, deer, bears, caribou, moose, lynxes, beavers, and birds such as gray owls, crossbills, and warblers.
Deciduous forests grow in North America, Europe and Asia.
They have a moderate climate during the spring, summer, autumn (fall) and winter, with rainfall of at least 500mm a year.
Summers are warm and winters are cold, but not as cold as the northern coniferous forests.
In the winter, snow covers the ground and the deciduous trees and plants lose their leaves.
The decaying leaves help make the soil rich in nutrients.
Many insects, spiders, snails, and worms make their homes in this rich soil.
Wild flowers and ferns grow almost everywhere in the spring.
New leaves capture the energy of the sun and sprout before the tall trees shadow them.
During the winter, many birds migrate to warmer climate.
Many small animals hibernate or aestivate, in other words, slow down their metabolism and sleep or stay in their burrows.
Some of the other animals just slow down their metabolism and eat food they stored during the summer and fall months.
The trees in winter are bare, but with the coming of spring, leaves sprout, birds return, animals are born, and all the forest animals get busy with their lives.
Animals that we may see or hear in this biome include bears, deer, raccoons, otters, beavers, foxes, frogs, squirrels, snakes, salamanders, and birds such as woodpeckers, robins, owls, blue jays and the small birds usually called tits.
Tropical rainforests grow in South America, the Congo, Indonesia and some nearby countries, Hawaii, and eastern Australia.
Tropical rain forests are aptly named, as it rains here on about half the days.
The only season in a tropical rain forest is summer, so plants grow for all 12 months of the year.
Trees are tall and thick in the rain forest and they grow so close together that they seem to form a big umbrella of greenery called a canopy.
This blocks out most of the sunlight.
The air is muggy as it filters through the dense canopy cover of the trees.
The light that filters through this tree cover is dim and green.
Only along river banks and in places that have been cleared does enough sunlight allow plants to grow on the forest ground.
Millions of species of plants and animals live in the world 's tropical forests.
Life in the rain forest exists at different levels or layers in the trees.
Each of these layers have a special name, such as 'em ergent ', ` canopy ', ` understory ', and ` forest floor.
Animal life is found on all levels.
Many forests are being cut down for their wood.
This cutting down of forests is called deforestation and it is causing damage to the natural habitat of animals.
Even roads have been built for the peoples to pass though the forest to reach their destination.
The Finger Lakes are a series of lakes in the central section of Upstate New York.
They are a popular tourist destination.
The lakes are long and thin and go from north to south.
They are also very deep.
The deepest one, Lake Seneca, is 618 f deep.
A kite is a flying object that is attached to the ground by a rope, or ropes.
Kites can be flown for fun, or in competitions.
The kite was created in China, about 2,800 years ago.
Later it spread into other Asian countries, like (India), Japan and Korea.
However, the kite only appeared in Europe by about the year 1600.
The first kites had sails made of paper or light fabrics such as silk.
The poles were made from bamboo sticks, or other strong but flexible woods, and the kite line was made from string or twine.
Modern kites are made from synthetic materials, such as ripstop nylon or more exotic fabrics on the sails.
They have fiberglass or carbon fiber poles, and use dacron or dyneema for the kite lines.
Today, there are different types of kite.
Some are large and are made to look good, but some are smaller and are made for speed, children and competitions.
Also, there 're many different types of kites.
The most important types of kite are stunt kites and parafoil kites.
However, they can come in a variety of sizes, types and designs.
Fatah is a Palestinian nationalist political party.
Fatah is an acronym for Harakat At-Tahriri Al-Filistiniya.
That means Palestinian National Liberation Movement in English.
It was created by Yasser Arafat in the late 1950s.
In 1968 Fatah joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and in 1969 it got a leadership role.
When it was founded, it did not accept the existence of Israel, but now the group officially does.
The political part of the party is not considered a terrorist group by any country, but its military part, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is considered a terrorist group.
Fatah says that the Brigades are not a part of the party but Israel says that Fatah supports the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Leaders of the brigades, and other members have said they are a military group that is a part of Fatah.
On their website, and on posters they post the Fatah Emblem.
Leaders of Fatah have said they did not create the brigades, or make them the military of Fatah.
Since 2002 leaders in Fatah have tried to get the brigades to stop attacking Israeli citizens.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger.
It serves both developed and developing countries and acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals.
FAO is also a source of knowledge and information, and helps developing countries and countries in transition modernize and improve agriculture, forestry and fisheries practices, ensuring good nutrition and food security for all.
Fiqh or Islamic jurisprudence is an expansion of Sharia law and is meant to be used with fatwas by Islamic clerics (known as ` Ulema ' in Arabic) to help Muslims not break Sharia law.
Fiqh is a section of Islamic law which deals with acts of Muslim, that includes both worship and daily life actions.
The different schools of thought are not different beliefs but different views.
The First Council of Nicaea was held in Nicaea, in Bithynia in 325.
Nicea is the city of Iznik in Turkey.
The Roman Emperor Constantine I called the bishops of the Roman Empire to the first ecumenical conference of the early Christian Church.
It had as most important result the first uniform Christian doctrine, called the Nicene Creed.
With the creation of the creed, a precedent was established for subsequent ` general (ecumenical) councils of Bishops ' (Synods) to create statements of belief and church law.
The purpose was to define unity of beliefs for the whole of Christendom.
The purpose of the council was to resolve disagreements in the Church of Alexandria over the nature of Jesus in relationship to the Father; in particular, whether Jesus was of the same substance as God the Father or merely of similar substance.
St. Alexander of Alexandria and Athanasius took the first position; the popular presbyter Arius, from whom the term Arian controversy comes, took the second.
The council decided against the Arians (of the estimated 250-318 attendees, all but 2 voted against Arius).
But many of the Eastern bishops who were pro-Arian, were prevented from reaching the Council until after the vote had been taken.
Another result of the council was an agreement on the date of the Christian Passover (Pascha in Greek; Easter in modern English), the most important feast of the ecclesiastical calendar.
The council decided in favor of celebrating the resurrection on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, independently of the Bible 's Hebrew calendar and authorized the Bishop of Alexandria to announce annually the exact date to his fellow bishops.
The Council of Nicaea was historically significant because it was the first effort to come to a consensus in the church through an assembly representing all of Christendom.
"It was the first occasion for the development of technical Christology."
Further, "Constantine in convoking and presiding over the council signaled a measure of imperial control over the church."
With the creation of the Nicene Creed, a precedent was established for subsequent general councils to create a statement of belief and canons which were intended to become guidelines for doctrinal orthodoxy and a source of unity for the whole of Christendom a momentous event in the history of the Church and subsequent history of Europe.
The First Council of Nicaea was called by Constantine I upon the recommendations of a synod led by Hosius of Cordoba in the Eastertide of 325.
To most bishops, the teachings of Arius were heretical and a danger to the salvation of souls.
In the summer of 325, the bishops of all provinces came to Nicaea (now known as znik, in modern-day Turkey), a place easily accessible to the majority of them, particularly those of Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Greece, and Thrace.
Approximately 300 bishops attended, from every region of the Empire except Britain.
This was the first general council in the history of the Church since the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem.
In the Council of Nicaea, The Church had taken her first great step to define doctrine more precisely in response to a challenge from a heretical theology.
The resolutions in the council, being ecumenical, were intended for the whole Church.
Constantine had invited all 1800 bishops of the Christian church (about 1000 in the east and 800 in the west), but only 250 to 320 bishops actually participated.
Eusebius of Caesarea counted 250, Athanasius of Alexandria counted 318, and Eustathius of Antioch counted 270 (all three were present at the council).
Later, Socrates Scholasticus recorded more than 300, and Evagrius, Hilarius, Jerome and Rufinus recorded 318.
The bishops were given free travel to the council, as well as lodging.
These bishops did not travel alone; each one had permission to bring with him two priests and three deacons; so the total number of attendees would have been above 1500.
Eusebius speaks of an almost innumerable host of accompanying priests, deacons and acolytes.
A special prominence was also attached to this council because the persecution of Christians had just ended with the February 313 Edict of Milan by Emperors Constantine and Licinius.
The Eastern bishops formed the great majority.
Of these, the first rank was held by the three patriarchs: Alexander of Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch, and Macarius of Jerusalem.
The Latin-speaking provinces sent at least five representatives: Marcus of Calabria from Italia, Cecilian of Carthage from Africa, Hosius of C rdoba from Hispania, Nicasius of Dijon from Gaul, and Domnus of Stridon from the province of the Danube.
Pope Silvester I did not attend, telling he was ill, but he was represented by two priests.
Athanasius of Alexandria, a young deacon and companion of Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, was among the assistants.
Athanasius eventually spent most of his life battling against Arianism.
Alexander of Constantinople, then a presbyter, was also present as representative of his aged bishop.
Fox News Channel is an American conservative cable and satellite television news network.
It was made by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.
It is owned by Fox Broadcasting Company.
The channel plays up to 15 hours of live shows every day.
9 hours are news programs based on fact.
The remaining 6 hours are opinion shows.
The hosts of its opinion shows are Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto, Greta Van Susteren, and Geraldo Rivera.
Fox News Network leans right-wing, but has some liberals, such as Greta van Susteren.
There was a documentary called Outfoxed that criticized the channel because they say it is biased towards conservatives and the US Republican Party in its reporting.
Fox says its opinion shows are biased but its regular news programs are not.
President Obama through a spokesperson accused Fox News Network of working for the Republican Party.
Roger Ailes has called Fox News "the balance" against the liberal networks news groups such as ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, Cable News Network, and MSNBC, and seems to now promote his network as a conservative network.
Fornax is a constellation in the southern sky.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is an agency of the United States Government.
It investigates crime across the country.
It is dedicated to national security and law enforcement.
The Bureau of Investigation was founded in 1908.
It was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI for short, in 1935.
J. Edgar Hoover was the Director of the Bureau from its start, and continued as Director of the FBI until his death in 1972.
Although the FBI work worldwide, their headquarters is in Washington DC.
They have 56 main offices in cities throughout the United States.
The FBI 's mission is to protect the USA and maintain justice.
They do this in many ways:
The FBI is organized into branches and the Office of the Director.
This office contains most administrative offices.
An executive assistant director manages each branch.
Each branch is then divided into offices and divisions.
Each division is headed by an assistant director.
The various divisions are further divided into sub-branches.
Each sub-branch is led by deputy assistant directors.
Within these sub-branches there are various sections headed by section chiefs.
Section chiefs are ranked analogous to special agents in charge.
Four of the branches report to the deputy director while two report to the associate director.
The functions branches of the FBI are:
The FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit (FCNU) is a 24\/7 operational response to crisis and to negotiate person (s) who are threatening to commit suicide or other harmful situations after a crime has been committed.
The FBI 's lead negotiator contacts the person (s) involved, with a hard-wire phone line to communicate with the person (s) to try convincing them to give themselves up to local police who are on stand-by.
Flamsteed designations are for stars that are similar to Bayer designations.
However, they use numbers instead of Greek letters.
Flamsteed designation contained 2554 stars.
The numbers are usually assigned in the order of increasing right ascension within each constellation.
However, because of the effects of precession, they are now slightly out of order in some parts.
This method first appeared in John Flamsteed 's Historia Coelestis Britannica, a book that was published by Edmond Halley and Isaac Newton together in 1712.
Fresco is a way of painting pictures.
A fresco is a painting that is done on a wall.
A wall painting is sometimes called afresco by mistake.
A true fresco is painted onto plaster that is fresh.
The plaster has been laid on the wall that day and is still damp.
The word fresco comes from the Italian for "fresh".
Fresco is a very good way of painting pictures on walls.
It is much easier than painting on dry plaster because when paint is put onto dry plaster, it sinks straight in.
Painting on fresh plaster means that the artist can spread the paint much easier.
Another reason why it is a good way to paint pictures on plastered walls is that the paint joins with the plaster so that the colors will not rub off.
Frescoes last for hundreds of years.
If they are kept clean and dry, the colors will stay bright for a very long time.
Fresco is the "green" method of painting because it does not use dangerous chemicals.
The water, the calcite and the colors do not cause pollution.
The problems with painting frescos come from the plaster.
It must be mixed up and put on the wall freshly every day and left to partly dry before it can be used.
As the plaster begins to dry or "set", the artist can start the picture.
The artist must work very quickly and carefully.
If he\/she makes a mistake, the plaster must be scraped off.
While the plaster is setting, it becomes very hot and gives off gases.
This makes working on a fresco unpleasant.
Because frescos are on walls, or ceilings, they can not be moved from place to place, or rearranged, like other paintings.
The artist must plan the work carefully.
It starts with a small drawing of the picture, The artists then makes a large drawing, called a cartoon, and works out the right order to paint the picture, because a big picture might take more than a week to paint.
Each day 's work is called by the Italian name giornata.
Giorno means "day".
When the day 's work starts, the artist needs to work fast so there is usually another worker or assistant who mixes the plaster and helps the artist.
The artists pins up a drawing and uses a sharp point to mark the lines of the drawing onto the plaster.
He\/she then paints the outlines of the picture onto the plaster.
Accuracy is very important; the artist must get it right in one go.
As the painting dries, the artist works over the whole giornata again, putting in details of the faces and the clothing, and painting shadows.
At the beginning of the next day 's work, the plaster edge of the last giornata is scraped so that the new plaster joins well.
Often it is possible to see the joins and work out how many giornata it took to do a single painting.
Not all wall paintings are frescoes.
In Ancient Egypt, for example, many of the wall paintings were done on dry plaster and are not true frescoes.
The Royal Palace at Knossos in Crete, c. 1500 BC, had many frescoes.
The scene of athletes dancing with a bull is the most famous.
Many Ancient Roman wall paintings can be seen at Pompeii from the 1st century AD, but these are not true frescoes.
The Sigiriya Frescoes painted in Sigiriya in Sri Lanka around 485 AD use the "fresco lustro" technique which varies slightly from the pure fresco technique in that it also contains a mild binding agent.
This gives the frescoes added durability as they have survived exposed for nearly 1500 years.
There are many frescoes dating from the late Middle Ages, about 1000-1400 AD when, it was the fashion to paint the inside of churches with people and stories from the Bible.
The order of the pictures was carefully planned by the artists and priests.
Above the altar is usually seen a picture of Jesus Christ.
On the west wall is often a frightening picture of The Last Judgement to remind people to turn to Jesus.
There are a few in Germany, France and Italy.
In Italy, around 1300 AD, the artist Giotto painted frescoes that were so full of life that people were amazed.
Each picture was like looking onto a stage where real people told the story.
This was the beginning of the period of art history called the Renaissance.
Giotto 's frescoes became so famous that he had many pupils and followers.
Giotto 's most famous frescoes are in the Arena Chapel in Padua.
He also painted in the Church of St. Francis at Assisi and at Santa Croce (Church of the Holy Cross) in Florence.
A hundred years later, about 1400 AD, two artists called Masolino and Masaccio worked in the city of Florence, painting a chapel.
Their names translate as "Little Tom" and "Fat Tom".
Masaccio 's way of painting was the biggest change since Giotto, in particular the two weeping naked figures of Adam and Eve.
Everyone thought that Masaccio was one of the greatest painters alive.
But he died at only 27 years old.
These frescoes are in the Church of the Carmine, in Florence.
In the 1400s many other artists in Italy were given the job of painting churches or chapels.
They were paid by patrons, rich people who could afford an artist.
The most important patron was the Pope.
Pope Sixtus IV had built a new chapel in the Vatican in Rome.
In 1481, he got some of the best artists in Italy to decorate the walls for him.
See Sistine Chapel.
In 1508 the work continued in the Sistine Chapel when Pope Julius II made the great artist Michelangelo go to Rome to paint the ceiling.
It took him four years, and he became sick from the strain and the smell.
But when he had finished, he had painted one of the greatest artworks in the world.
Then, 1537-1541, he painted the west wall of the same chapel with The Last Judgement
For the next 200 years, painted ceilings were in fashion.
But artists soon discovered that it was easier to paint in oil on canvas and put it up on the ceiling than to paint on the ceiling in fresco.
The fashion for fresco painting began to fade.
Fire is a chemical reaction that gives off light and heat.
It is an example of the chemical process of oxidation.
Fire is very hot.
A person should never touch fire, because fire may burn anything that gets too close.
If human skin touches fire, the skin may blister which can take some time to heal.
If a fire occurs, the mouth should be covered with a wet cloth because if too much smoke is breathed in, it is possible to faint.
Fire can be very useful if it is treated carefully.
It has always been very important for people to be able to make fire, because people need its heat on cold days and to cook things.
Its light is also useful to be able to see in dark places.
If fire is not treated carefully, it can be very dangerous.
A fire that got out of control once destroyed 17,400 km, an area the size of New York City, in the United States.
Forests can burn down if fires are not controlled.
Every year, large areas of forests are destroyed because of fire, particularly in Europe.
This usually happens in summer.
Firefighters or firemen are people with special training to stop fires, or to keep a fire under control.
Fire needs three things to burn: oxygen, fuel, and heat.
Fuels can be wood, tinder, coal, oil or any other substance that will easily oxidize.
Once a fire is burning, it creates its own heat, which allows the fire to keep burning on its own for some time.
However, some fires can not be smothered, such as magnesium flames.
They can burn in CO2, nitrogen, and some other elemental compounds, although they can not burn in noble gases such as helium.
Fires are usually combustion reactions that take carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.
The products are very commonly water, and carbon dioxide, although there are other examples that avoid this generalization, such as burning magnesium in air, which makes magnesium oxide.
Fires can occur in many ways and there are many types of fire which, if not treated correctly, can cause total devastation.
There are wood fires, gas fires, metal fires, and more.
Wood fires can usually be put out with water used to absorb the heat, but metal fires are too hot for water to absorb enough heat to put out the fire.
If water is used to extinguish ("put out") a metal fire, the water will simply evaporate.
For metal fires, sand can be used to cover the fire and choke it off from obtaining oxygen.
A fire extinguisher can put out most fires.
FIDE (F d ration Internationale des checs) is the world chess organization.
All national federations are members.
It decides matters like World Championships and changes in rules of the game.
FIDE was founded on 20 July 1924 in Paris, France.
However, it had little influence until the end of World War II.
The reigning world champion at that time, Alexander Alekhine, did not want to have anything to do with it.
He regarded the world title as his personal property.
This only changed when he died with the title, in 1946 (no other champion has ever died while holding the title).
It was obvious that some method was needed to find a new champion.
FIDE stepped in and, with Russian backing, put forward a solution.
The strong Soviet Chess Federation only joined FIDE in 1946.
It had a great influence, with resources and many young strong players.
In 1948 a tournament was organized to determine which of the world top players was entitled to call himself World Champion.
The death of Alekhine had left a vacuum.
Two previous champions, Emanuel Lasker and Jos Ra l Capablanca had died in the late 1930s.
It was clear that a new champion would come from the younger players.
In the end, Reuben Fine dropped out, and the other five contested the event.
Mikhail Botvinnik won the tournament and became the new world champion.
In 1950 the FIDE awarded its first IM (International Master) and GM (International Grandmaster) titles.
However it was not until 1957 that FIDE formulated clear criteria to award these titles.
In 1970 a new ranking system, the Elo-rating, was introduced.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union FIDE lost a powerful partner.
This resulted in a long period of trouble.
In 1993 worldchampion Gary Kasparov and his challenger Nigel Short left FIDE.
They founded their own organization for professional top players, the PCA (Professional Chess Association).
So now there were two worldchampions: one from FIDE and one from the PCA.
It was not until 2006 that the dust settled down and a re-unification match between Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov took place.
In 1999 FIDE was recognized by the International Olympic Committee.
In 2001 FIDE played by anti-doping rules, trying to make chess for like a candidate for the Olympic Games.
Figure skating is both an art and a sport, in which people skate around on ice, doing jumps and spins.
It is done at the Winter Olympics, and it has its own world championships.
The name means to make figures or patterns on the ice.
People skate with music.
In figure skating, sometimes women or men skate alone, or they skate in couples.
Couples dancing includes pairs and ice dancing.
Pairs skating has jumps, and sometimes the man lifts the woman in the air.
These things are not done in ice dancing.
In ice dancing, the woman must be held in the man 's arms.
Another kind of figure skating is synchronized skating done in groups.
The first ever figure skating club was started in 1742 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
World Championships began in 1896 (the first in St. Petersburg, Russia).
Before the Winter Olympic Games were started, competitions in figure skating were part of the Summer Olympic Games, in 1908 and 1920.
The International Skating Union (ISU) make the rules.
Singles skating is composed of a Short Program and a Free Skate.
Both of them have a technical score and a presentation score.
Under the ISU Judging System the Judges focus entirely on evaluating the quality of each element performed (technical aspect) and the quality of the performance.
There will be a panel of 9 Judges per segment.
Out of these 9 scores, the highest and lowest score of each element or program component are ignored and the average will be taken.
The score for the element is composed of a Base Value of each element and the Grade of Execution - GOE.
GOE is that the Judge grades the quality of the element on a scale of +3, +2, +1, 0, -1, -2, -3.
The total of all the elements scores gives the Technical Score.
The Judges award points on a scale from 0.25 to 10,00 with increments of 0.25 for the Presentation Score to grade the overall presentation of the performance.
There are five items in the Presentation Score.
Skating Skills Over all skating quality Transitions, Linking Footwork and Movement The varied and\/or intricate footwork, positions, movements, and holds that link all elements.
This also includes the entrances and exits of technical elements.
Performance\/Execution The physical and emotional involvement of the skater\/couple as they translate the intent of the music and choreography Choreography\/Composition The arrangement of all movements according to the principles of proportion, space and music Interpretation The translation of the music to movement on ice There are six types of jump that ISU decides to score.
The following items are listed in order of the score (difficulty).
There are two types of jumps: edge jump and toe jump.
The Axel, loop, and Salchow are edge jumps and the lutz, flip and toe loop are toe jumps.
Axel: This is the only jump where a skater takes off while skating forward.
It 's the most difficult jump of the six.
Lutz: The skater takes off from the back outside edge of the left or right foot and pokes the ice with the opposite toe.
Flip: The skater takes off from the back inside edge of the left or right foot and pokes the ice with the opposite toe.
Loop: The skater takes off from the back outside edge of the right or left foot.
This jump is often used in second jump of combination jump.
Salchow: The skater takes off from the back inside edge of the right or left foot.
Toe Loop: The skater takes off from the back outside edge of the right or left foot and pokes the ice with the opposite toe.
This is the easiest jump and it is often used in second jump of combination jump.
Spins are classified as Sit spins, Upright spins or Camel spin.
Each of them has various variations.
Any position which is not basic is a non-basic position.
The position of this spin is that the upper part of the skating leg is at least parallel to the ice.
The position of this spin is any position with the skating leg is extended or slightly bent which is not a camel position.
The position of this spin is any position where the free leg backwards and the knee is higher than the hip level, however Layback, Biellmann and similar variations are still considered upright spins.
: three turns, twizzles, brackets, loops, counters, rockers Turns must be executed on one foot.
If a turn is jumped, it is not counted as performed.
: toe steps, chasses, mohawks, choctaws, change of edge, cross rolls Steps must be executed on one foot whenever possible.
Finance is a study which figures out how people, businesses and groups make and use money.
It can mean:
The process of finance is learning how people and groups act in managing their money, and most of all how they manage making money, and making a profit, with spending money, or making a loss.
A group that makes more money than it spends can lend or invest the excess profit.
On the other hand, a group that makes less money than it spends can raise money by getting a loan or selling stock, or spending less, or making more money.
A bank is where many people borrowing money meet people lending money.
A bank gets money from lenders, and pays interest.
The bank then lends this money to borrowers.
Banks allow borrowers and lenders of different sizes to meet.
Corporate finance is about things like the sale of stock by a company to the public.
Stock is ownership in a company, broken up into pieces.
The stock gives whoever owns it part ownership in that company.
If someone buys one share of XYZ Inc, and the company has 100 shares available, the buyer is 1\/100th owner of that company and owns 1\/100th (1 %) of the profit.
Finance is used by people, by governments, by businesses, etc., as well as by all kinds of groups.
This is finance for people.
It is about:
Business finance is about finding money for a company 's activities.
It studies trying to make more profit than loss, and taking good risks for the chance to make more money.
Financial economics is the study of economics which is important to financial things like changes in price and supply of goods.
It studies how much risk some actions that a company may take will cause, and how the company should spend its money.
Financial maths is the study of maths for financial markets.
Financial maths studies mathematics, mainly statistics.
Fortran is a programming language first created in the 1950s.
It is still in use today.
It is a procedural language mainly used for scientific computing and numerical analysis.
The first FORTRAN compiler was created in 1954-57 by a team at IBM led by John W. Backus.
This compiler was the first compiler for any High level language.
The authors were worried that no one would use the language if programs written in it did not run nearly as fast as programs written in assembly language.
So they made it an optimizing compiler.
Because of the heavy use by scientists doing numerical work the language grew in ways that encouraged compiler writers to produce compilers that generated high quality (fast) code.
There are many high performance compiler vendors.
Much work and research in compiler theory and design was caused by the need to generate good code for Fortran programs.
Several revisions of the language have appeared, including the very well known FORTRAN IV (the same as FORTRAN 66), FORTRAN 77 and Fortran 90.
The most recent formal standard for the language was published in 1997 and is known as Fortran 95.
Initially, the language relied on precise formatting of the source code and heavy use of statement numbers and goto statements.
Every version introduced ` modern ' programming concepts, such as source code comments and output of text, IF-THEN-ELSE (in FORTRAN 77), recursion (in Fortran 90) and parallel constructs, while trying to maintain Fortran 's ` lean ' profile and high performance.
The name "Fortran" is short for "Formula Translation".
The language was formerly known as FORTRAN (and older variants of it still are).
Since Fortran 90, the capitalization has been abandoned.
The published formal standards use "Fortran".
The two standards below reflect the current Fortran implementations.
Fortaleza is a city in Brazil.
It is the capital of the state of Cear.
The city has a population of about 3 million people.
It has an area of 313.8 k. The people who live in the city are known as Fortalezenses.
The current mayor is Roberto Cla dio.
The Pinto Martins International Airport connects Fortaleza with the major Brazilian cities.
It also operates international flights.
The Federal University of Cear is located in Fortaleza.
Fortaleza is located in the northeastern part of Brazil.
It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the east.
To the south of the city are the cities of Pacatuba, Eus bio, Maracana and Itaitinga.
To the east is the county of Aquiraz and the Atlantic Ocean.
The city of Caucaia is west of Fortaleza.
Things to do in Fortaleza includes bars, discos and restaurants.
The area also has comedy shows with nationally famous people.
An off-season carnival, Fortal, happens in Fortaleza, in July.
Changes were made to the carnival in 2008.
It now has parking lots, bleachers, and a food court.
The event lasts four days.
About 1.5 million people enjoy the nationally famous ax music bands.
Fortaleza also has music festivals, for example Cear Music.
This event happens every year and lasts for three days.
It includes local musicians and international pop rock musicians.
Around twenty-five thousand people enjoy the concerts, electronic music tents, and fashion shows.
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra (December 12, 1915 May 14, 1998) was an American singer, musician, actor and filmmaker.
His singing career was 60 years long, and more than 250 million records of his have been sold worldwide.
He is also well known by the nickname "Old Blue Eyes".
The New York Times said he was "the first modern pop superstar".
At first, he was mostly known as a crooner, a singer of love songs.
By the 1950s and 1960s, he was singing swing and jazz songs as well.
Sinatra was also part of the Rat Pack, a group of entertainers (musicians and actors), in the 1950s and 1960s.
The name was informal, and the group was not an official organization of any sort, but a group of friends.
Members of the Rat Pack included Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, Humphrey Bogart, Judy Garland, Lauren Bacall, Sid Luft, and Shirley MacLaine.
He was born in Hoboken, New Jersey to Italian immigrants.
Sinatra was also an actor.
He was in movies such as The Manchurian Candidate, From Here to Eternity, and The Man With The Golden Arm.
He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here To Eternity.
Sinatra was married 4 times.
He was married to Nancy Barbato from 1939 to 1951, to Ava Gardner from 1951 to 1957, to Mia Farrow from 1966 to 1968, and to Barbara Marx from 1976 until his death on May 14, 1998.
Sinatra died on May 14, 1998 at 10:50 pm at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, after suffering a heart attack.
His wife Barbara was at his side.
The words "The best is yet to come" are written on his gravestone.
Funeral is an official ceremony of someone who has died.
Most religions have their own style of funeral ceremony.
A funeral ceremony can be held in the house of the dead, a church, a temple or a public place.
The family and friends of the dead come together, remember the dead, and comfort each other.
If it is a religious ceremony, they say a prayer for the dead so that his or her soul may rest in peace.
There are lots of different traditions that different religions use.
Sometimes at funerals, the family or friends of the dead person want to pray or say something nice about them.
At Christian funerals, the priest or preacher may say: "From earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust".
Modern funerals have greatly changed over time.
Present day funeral or memorial services may often be more like a thanksgiving for the life of the dead person, rather than just thinking about the sadness of death.
At many present day funerals there is a video tribute played before, after, or during the funeral service.
Memorial folders or prayer cards are handed out at many funeral services and this, too, is a way to make a funeral service personal.
At funerals it is not uncommon to see a "life reflection" table.
Family members bring favorite pictures, or memorabilia to display as another reminder of the deceased (the person who has died).
Headstones are bought so that everyone can see who has been buried in a specific grave.
They usually tell the name, date of birth and the date of death.
Feminism is a social and political movement.
Feminism is about changing the way that people see male and female rights, and campaigning for equal ones.
Somebody who follows feminism is called a feminist.
There are also many other types of feminism.
There have been women who have been involved in politics throughout history.
Esther, Lady Godiva, Queen Elizabeth, Catherine the Great, and Joan of Arc.
Starting in 1960, there have been many women elected to high positions of power, such as prime minister.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike was the first, followed by Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Elisabeth Domitien and Margaret Thatcher.
Dame Eugenia Charles lasted nearly 15 years in the post, a record.
Feminism started with the idea that human rights should be given to women.
This idea was put forward by some philosophers in the 18th and 19th centuries such as Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill.
Later feminists in the early 20th century also said that women should be allowed to vote in a democracy.
Many women felt very strongly that they should be allowed to vote and there were many protests.
These women were called Suffragettes.
This is because they were fighting for Universal suffrage which means everybody is able to vote.
The Suffragettes staged many protests for their rights.
Some women even committed suicide to show how wrong it was that they could not take part in politics.
After women received the vote, feminism worked to make all of society more equal for women.
Not all female politicians have been welcomed by feminists, with Margaret Thatcher, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann being clear examples.
There are also many other types of anti-feminism.
Writers such as Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Daphne Patai oppose some forms of feminism, though they identify as feminists.
They argue, for example, that feminism often promotes misandry (hatred of men) and the elevation of women 's interests above men 's, and criticize radical feminist positions as harmful to both men and women.
Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge argue that the term "anti-feminist" is used to silence academic debate about feminism.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is an agency of the United States Department of Transportation with authority to regulate and oversee all aspects of civil aviation in the U.S..
The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 created the group under the name "Federal Aviation Agency", and adopted its current name in 1967 when it became a part of the United States Department of Transportation.
The FAA is the single most influential governmentally-run aviation agency in the world, with the European Aviation Safety Agency in a close second.
Before 1789, France was ruled by the nobles and the Catholic Church.
The ideas of the Enlightenment were beginning to make the ordinary people want more power.
They could see that the American Revolution had created a country in which the people had power, instead of a king.
The government before the revolution was called the Ancien Regime.
Before the Revolution, France was divided into three Estates.
The First Estate was the Clergy (the church).
It made up 1 % of the population.
The Second Estate was the Nobility, which also made up 1 % of the population.
The other nearly 98 % of the population was in the Third Estate.
Representatives of the people from all three estates together made up the Estates-General.
In May 1789, the Estates-General was called by the King in order to deal with the money problems of the country.
They met at the royal Palace of Versailles.
However, the members of the Third Estate were angry.
They had made lists of problems they wanted to fix called the Cahiers de Dol ances.
The members of the Third Estate were angry that they were being taxed the most when they were the poorest group of people.
They, and the Director-General of Finances, Jacques Necker, thought the Church and the Nobility ought to be taxed more.
They also wanted votes in the Estates-General to be fairer.
Even though the Third Estate had many more members than the other two Estates, each Estate only had one vote in the Estates-General.
The Third Estate thought this could be improved by giving members of the Estates-General a vote each.
However, when they talked to the other Estates, they could not agree.
Since the First and Second Estates would not listen, The Third Estate decided to break away and start their own assembly where every member would get a vote.
On 10 June 1789, they started the National Assembly.
The king tried to stop them by closing the Salle des tats meeting room, but they met in an indoor tennis court instead.
On June 20th, they took the Tennis Court Oath, where they promised to work until they had created a new constitution for France.
In July 1789, after the National Assembly was formed, the nobility and the king were angry with Jacques Necker, the Director-General of Finances, and they fired him.
Many Parisians thought the King was going to try to shut down the National Assembly.
Soon, Paris was filled with riots and looting.
On 14 July 1789, the people decided to attack the Bastille prison.
The Bastille contained weapons, as well as being a symbol of the power of the nobility and the rule of the king, the "Ancien R gime".
By the afternoon, the people had broken into the Bastille and released the seven prisoners being held there.
They killed the Governor of the prison, Bernard de Launay, and put his head on a stick.
The Members of the Third Estate took over Paris.
The president of the National Assembly at the time of the Tennis Court Oath, Jean-Sylvain Bailly, became mayor of the city.
Jacques Necker was given back his job as Director-General of Finances.
Soon, the King visited Paris and wore the red, white and blue (tricolor) ribbons (cockade) that the revolutionaries were wearing.
By the end of July, the revolution had spread all over France.
The National Assembly began to make lots of changes.
On 4 August, the National Assembly ended the special taxes the Church was collecting, and put a stop to the rights of the Nobility over their people, ending feudalism.
On 26 August, the National Assembly published the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which was written by the nobleman Marquis de Lafayette.
The National Assembly began to decide how it would be under the new constitution.
Many members, especially the nobles, wanted a senate or a second upper house.
However, more people voted to keep having just one assembly.
The King was given a suspensive veto over laws, which meant he would only have the power to delay laws being made, not stop them.
In October 1789, after being attacked at the Palace of Versailles by a mob of 7,000 women, the King was convinced by Lafayette to move from Paris to the palace in Tuileries.
The Assembly began to divide into different political parties.
One was made up of those against the revolution, led by the nobleman Jacques Antoine Marie de Cazales and the churchman Jean-Sifrien Maury.
This party sat on the right side.
A second party was the Royalist democrats (monarchists) which wanted to create a system like the constitutional monarchy of Britain, where the king would still be a part of the government.
Jacques Necker was in this party.
The third party was the National Party which was center or centre-left.
This included Honor Mirabeau and Lafayette.
Under the new government, the Roman Catholic Church would have much less power than they had before.
In 1790, all special taxes and powers of the Church were canceled.
All the Church s property was taken over by the state.
On 12 July 1790, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy made all clergy employees of the state and made them take an oath to the new constitution.
Many clergy, as well as the Pope, Pius VI, did not like these changes.
On 14 July 1790, a year since the storming of the Bastille, thousands of people gathered in the Champs de Mars to celebrate.
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand led the crowd in a religious mass..
The crowd, including the King and the royal family, took an oath of loyalty to the nation, the law, and the king.
However, many nobles were unhappy with the revolution and were leaving the country.
They were called migr s (emigrants).
Although the members of the Estates-General had only been elected for a year, the members of the Assembly had all taken the Tennis Court Oath.
They had promised to keep working until they had a constitution and no constitution had been made.
It was decided that the members would keep working until they had a constitution.
The Assembly continued to work on a constitution and make changes.
Nobles could no longer pass their titles to their children.
Only the king was allowed to do this.
For the first time, trials with juries were held.
All trade barriers inside France were ended along with unions, guilds, and workers ' groups.
Strikes were banned.
Many people with radical ideas began to form political clubs.
The most famous of these was the Jacobin Club, which had left-wing ideas.
A right-wing club was the Club Monarchique.
In 1791, a law was suggested to prevent noble migr s from leaving the country.
Mirabeau had been against this law, but he died on 2 April, and by the end of the year, the law was passed.
Louis XVI did not like the revolution, but did not want to get help from other countries or run away from France like the migr s. General Bouille held the same views and wanted to help the king leave Paris.
He said that he would give the King and his family help and support in his camp at Montm dy.
The escape was planned for June 20, 1791.
Dressed as servants, the royal family left Paris.
However, their escape was not well planned, and they were arrested at Varennes on the evening of June 21.
The royal family was brought back to Paris.
The Assembly imprisoned Louis and his wife Marie Antoinette, and suspended the king from his duty.
Although the king had tried to escape, most members of the Assembly still wanted to include the king in their government rather than to have a Republic with no king at all.
They agreed to make the king a figurehead, with very little power.
The king would have to take an oath to the state.
If he did not, or if he created an army to attack France, he would no longer be king.
Some people, including Jacques Pierre Brissot, did not like this.
They thought the king should be completely removed from the throne and the constitution.
Brissot made a petition and a huge crowd came to the Champs de Mars to sign it.
Republican leaders Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins came and gave speeches.
The National Guard, led by Lafayette, was called in to control the crowd.
The mob threw stones at the soldiers who first fired their guns over the heads of the crowd.
When the crowd kept throwing stones, Lafayette ordered them to fire at the people.
Up to 50 people were killed.
After this, the government closed many of the political clubs and newspapers.
Many radical left-wing leaders, including Danton and Desmoulins, ran away to England or hid in France.
Finally the constitution was completed.
Louis XVI was put back on the throne and came to take his oath to it.
He wrote, I engage to maintain it at home, to defend it from all attacks from abroad, and to cause its execution by all the means it places at my disposal.
The National Assembly decided that it would stop governing France on 29 September 1791.
After that date, the Legislative Assembly would take over.
The new Legislative Assembly met for the first time in October 1791.
Under the Constitution of 1791, France was a Constitutional Monarchy.
The King shared his rule with the Legislative Assembly, but had the power to stop (veto) laws he did not like.
He also had the power to choose ministers.
The Legislative Assembly had about 745 members.
165 of them were Feuillants, or Constitutional Monarchists.
330 were Girondins and Jacobins, left-wing liberal republicans who did not want a king.
The other 250 members were independent, but they voted most often with the left wing.
The Legislative Assembly did not agree very well.
The King used his veto to stop laws that would sentence migr s to death.
Because so many of the members of the Assembly were left-wing, they did not like this.
The kings and emperors of many foreign countries were worried by the French Revolution.
They did not want revolutions in their own countries.
On 27 August 1791, Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire\/Austria, Frederick William II of Prussia, and Louis XVI s brother Charles-Philippe wrote the Declaration of Pillnitz.
The Declaration asked for Louis XVI to be set free and the National Assembly to be ended.
They promised that they would invade France if their requests were ignored.
The Declaration was taken very seriously among the revolutionaries.
With the Legislative Assembly in place, the problems did not go away.
The Girondins wanted war because they wanted to take the revolution to other countries.
The King and many of his supporters, the Feuillants, wanted war because they thought it would make the King more popular.
Many French were worried that the migr s would cause trouble in foreign countries against France.
On 20 April 1792, the Assembly voted to declare war on Austria (Holy Roman Empire).
They planned to invade the Austrian Netherlands, but the revolution had made the army weak.
Many soldiers deserted.
Soon, Prussia joined on the Austrian side.
They both planned to invade.
Together, on 25 July, they wrote the Brunswick Manifesto, promising that if the royal family was not hurt, no civilians would be hurt in the invasion.
The French believed that this meant the king, Louis XVI, was working with the foreign kings.
Prussia invaded France on 1 August, 1792.
This first stage of the French Revolutionary Wars continued until 1797.
The people were turning against King Louis XVI.
On 10 August 1792, the members of a revolutionary group called the Paris Commune attacked the Tuileries, where the King and Queen were living.
The King and Queen were taken prisoner.
The Legislative Assembly held an emergency meeting.
Even though only a third of the members were there and most of them were Jacobins, they suspended the King from duty.
In September, things got worse.
The Legislative Assembly had almost no power.
No single group was controlling Paris or France.
The country was being invaded by the Prussian Army.
The revolutionaries were very angry and violent.
They began to go into prisons and kill people they thought were traitors to France.
They hated the priests of the Roman Catholic Church the most, but they also killed many nobles and ordinary people.
By 7 September, 1,400 people were dead.
The Legislative Assembly had lost all its power.
France needed a new government.
On 20 September 1792, the National Convention was formed.
The Convention had both Girondins and radical Jacobins.
The Brunswick Manifesto had made many people suspicious of the king.
They thought he was plotting with the Prussian and Austrian rulers to invade France.
In January 1793, the National Convention voted and found Louis XVI guilty of conspiracy against the public liberty and the general safety.
On the twenty-first of January, the King was executed using the guillotine.
Marie Antoinette, the Queen, was also executed on the sixteenth of October.
People in the area of Vend e did not like the revolutionary government.
They did not like the rules about the church in the Civil Constitution of the Church (1790) and new taxes put in place in 1793.
They also disliked being forced to join the French army.
In March, they rose up against the government in a revolt.
The war lasted until 1796.
Hundreds of thousands of people from Vend e (Vendeans) were killed by the Revolutionary French army.
Now that the king was dead, the National Convention made a new republican constitution that began on 24 June.
It was the first one that did not include the king and gave every man in France a vote.
However, it never came into power because of the trouble between the Jacobins and Girondins.
The war with Austria and Prussia was causing the state to have money problems.
Bread was very expensive and many people wanted things to change.
In June 1793, the Jacobins began to take power.
They wanted to arrest many Girondin members of the National Convention.
In July, they became angrier when Charlotte Corday, a Girondin, killed Jean-Paul Marat, a Jacobin.
By July, the coup was complete.
The Jacobins had taken power.
They put in new, radical laws including a new Republican Calendar with new months and new ten-day weeks.
They made the army bigger and changed the officers to people who were better soldiers.
Over the next few years, this helped the Republican army push back the attacking Austrians, Prussians, British, and Spanish.
In July 1793, a Jacobin called Maximilien de Robespierre and eight other leading Jacobins set up the Committee of Public Safety.
It was the most powerful group in France.
This group and Robespierre were responsible for the Reign of Terror.
Robespierre believed that if people were afraid, the revolution would go better.
The Reign of Terror lasted from the spring of 1793 to the spring of 1794.
It was not only the nobility who died in the Reign of Terror.
Anyone who broke the Jacobins ' laws, or was even suspected of breaking their laws or working against them, could be arrested and sent to the guillotine, most without a trial.
Even powerful people who had been involved in the Jacobin coup were executed.
Prisoners were taken from the prisons to Madame Guillotine (a nickname for the guillotine) in an open wooden cart called the tumbrel.
According to records, 16,594 people were executed with the guillotine.
It is possible that up to 40,000 people died in prison or were killed during the Reign of Terror.
By July 1794, people began to turn against Maximilien de Robespierre.
He and his Revolutionary Tribunal had killed 1,300 people in six weeks.
On 27 July, the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety turned against him.
Robespierre tried to get help from the Convention s right-wing members, but he failed.
A day later, Robespierre and many of his supporters in the Paris Commune were sentenced to death by guillotine without any kind of trial.
This reaction against Robespierre is called the Thermidorian Reaction.
Now that the terror was over, the National Convention started to make a new Constitution, called the Constitution of the Year III.
On 27 September 1794, the constitution came into effect.
The new constitution had created the Directoire (Directory), which was the first government of France to be bicameral (split into two houses).
The lower house, the parliament, had 500 members.
It was called the Conseil de Cinq-Cent (Council of Five Hundred).
The upper house, the senate, had 250 members and was called the Conseil des Anciens (Council of Elders).
There were five directors chosen every year by the Conseil des Anciens from a list made up by the Conseil de Cinq-Cent.
This group was in charge and was called the Directory.
Although the constitution of 1793 had given all men in France a vote, in this constitution only people with a certain amount of property could vote.
The Directory was much more conservative than the governments in France since 1789.
The people were tired of radical changes and the unstable governments.
Things were much more stable under the Directory than they had been before.
However, the Directors were disliked by the people - especially the Jacobins, who wanted a republic, and the royalists, who wanted a new King.
France s money problems did not go away.
The Directors ignored elections that did not go the way they wanted.
They ignored the constitution in order to do things to control the people.
They used the ongoing war and the army to keep their power.
People rioted against the Directory, but the Directory used the army to stop them.
The army, under the Corsican general Napoleon Bonaparte, became much more powerful.
On 9 November 1799 (18 Brumaire Year VIII), Bonaparte took power.
This event is called 18 Brumaire.
Napoleon Bonaparte set up a new government called the Consulate with him in power.
This led to him becoming the dictator and, in 1804, the Emperor of France.
The 18 Brumaire marks the end of the Republican part of the French Revolution.
Francis Fukuyama (born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist and author, who is most known for his widely discussed book The End of History and the Last Man was published in 1992, in which thesis of a post-Cold War.
He was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
He earned his Ph.. D in political science from Harvard University.
Fingerspelling is making an alphabet with your hands.
Sometimes you can also make numbers.
Many deaf people learn fingerspelling.
They use it when they want to sign a word but there is no sign in the sign language.
Other people also use fingerspelling to talk in secret, to help remember something or to talk without making sound (for example in a church).
Fingerspelling is a part of some sign languages.
The picture shows the fingerspelling in American Sign Language.
Writing systems are not the same everywhere, and fingerspelling is also different.
Different countries have different ways of fingerspelling.
Some alphabets use one hand, some use two hands.
Four Weddings and a Funeral is a 1994 British romantic comedy-drama movie.
It was written and co-produced by Richard Curtis.
It was directed by Mike Newell.
It stars Hugh Grant as Charles and Andie MacDowell as Carrie, an American whom he repeatedly meets at weddings and a funeral as they become attracted to each other.
Ferrari is an Italian car company that makes fast cars.
They are made in Italy and are very expensive.
They usually cost $ 150,000 - $ 1,500,000.
Ferrari has a rich racing history and is a well known premium car brand.
The fastest street Ferrari is the F50 GT1, which can go over 370 kph (about 222 mph).
The most powerful Ferrari is the FXX, which has about 800 horsepower.
The FXX is a lighter, improved version of the F60 Enzo; it is Ferrari 's most exclusive model, which you have to be chosen to own.
It is basically a race car that you can buy from Ferrari.
The car is so extreme (completely flat tires, low ride height, and no roadcar safety features such as Airbags) that it can not be driven on roads legally.
Ferrari will keep it for you at their Factory in Maranello in Italy.
You can go to Italy and drive it on their private race track, or have it transported to another race track around the world, the same as if you were driving for a racing team.
Thirty have been built and all but two were sold to customers for $ 2,500,000 each.
Ferrari gave one to seven-time Formula 1 World Champion Michael Schumacer, who had driven for Ferrari for ten years when he retired in 2006, having brought Ferrari much success.
Ferrari made his FXX different by painting it black.
The other twenty-nine are either red or white, with stripes painted in the other color.
Freemasonry is an organization of people who believe in brotherhood and helping others.
Its members are known as "Freemasons" (in full: "Ancient Free and Accepted Masons", or simply "Masons").
Freemasons also help one another in times of hardship.
Freemasonry can be found all over the world in various forms.
About 6 million people are Freemasons.
The local groups in various countries are known as "lodges".
At the State or National level are "Grand Lodges".
These are independent of each other.
"Regular" Freemasonry is only for men, but there are also co-ed Masonic lodges (and lodges for only Women) that are not recognized as legitimate by the "regular" groups.
All of these lodges believe in "brotherly love, relief and truth".
They do work for charities such as running schools for orphaned children.
There is a Royal Masonic Hospital which is a home for old members and their families.
The word mason means a man who works with stone.
He is also called a "stonemason".
Freemasonry grew from the groups (guilds) of stonemasons in the Middle Ages.
These men were building cathedrals and other big buildings.
They were called freemasons because they were free, they were not servants who belonged to a rich lord, like many workers were in those days.
They often changed jobs and moved about from one town to another.
In this way they were different from other craftsmen who often worked in one place and had guilds in one town.
The stonemasons tried to keep their skills secret so that only they knew how to do their job.
This is probably why the Freemasons have hand shakes and passwords that they swear to keep secret.
About 1650, Masons ' guilds started to let people who were not masons into their guilds.
In 1717, the first Grand Lodge (the Grand Lodge of England) was formed.
It developed into the governing body of Freemasonry in England.
In 1813, it merged with a rival and is now called the United Grand Lodge of England.
Freemasonry is controversial.
It has been opposed on two grounds.
The Catholic Church opposes Freemasonry, although Freemasonry itself does not block Catholics.
The second is political.
In Britain the Labor Party has advocated laws restricting Masonry.
Fulham Football Club, is an English football club from London.
It plays in a white shirt and black shorts for home games.
For away games, it plays in red shirts and white shorts in 2013\/14, but has played in colors such as green, yellow or black.
The team 's away kit in is navy with orange sleeves.
Shahid Khan owns the club.
He is from America, and also owns the Jacksonville Jaguars, a famous NFL team in American.
The club was made in 1879 as Fulham St. Andrews.
Lots of famous players used to play for Fulham, like Johnny Haynes (1950s), Bobby Moore (1970s), George Best (1970s) and Edwin van der Sar (2000s).
Fulham have only won 1 trophy; the Inter Toto Cup in 2003.
When Mohamed Al-Fayed bought Fulham, it was in the 2nd division of English football (English Division Two).
He put lots of money into the club, and he made good choices about the club.
The club won promotion two times, so in 2001 it was a Premiership team.
Fulham 's stadium is called "Craven Cottage", it was built 100 years ago.
It has a pretty building in one corner of the pitch, this is the "Cottage".
The fans of Fulham like to call it "The Cottage", and it can have 26,500 people sitting in it.
From 2002 to 2004, Fulham had to play at Loftus Road, which is the ground of Queens Park Rangers, near the BBC.
This was because the club needed to change Craven Cottage because of new rules.
The rules said that nobody can stand at football games, so the club had to have new seats.
Some people who live near to Craven Cottage do not like having a big club near to them.
They made it hard for the club to be allowed to make the changes.
This is why the changes took a long time, even though it was easy work for the builders.
Because of the "Cottage", the club and its supporters are called "The Cottagers".
The club plays in the Premier League, the top football league in England.
The club is managed by Felix Magart who preceded Martin Jol and Rene Mulensteen (after Roy Hodgeson)
Frankie Goes to Hollywood were a British dance band from Liverpool, England.
The band is probably best known for their first single "Relax".
This song was banned the BBC.
The band released their first studio album Welcome to the Pleasuredome on 29 October 1984.
The album featured the singles "Relax", "Two Tribes", "The Power of Love" and "Welcome to the Pleasuredome".
Their second and last studio album Liverpool was released on 20 October 1986.
The band broke up in 1987.
They reunited in 2004, but broke up again in 2007.
Factors of production are means necessary for the production of goods and services in economics.
Fort Wayne is a city in the U.S. state of Indiana and the county seat of Allen County.
The population was 254,555 as of the 2012 Census estimate making it the 74th largest city in the United States and the second largest in Indiana after Indianapolis.
The city is in northeastern Indiana, about 18 m west of the Ohio border and 50 m south of the Michigan border.
Under the direction of American Revolutionary War statesman Anthony Wayne, the United States Army built Fort Wayne.
It was the last in a series of forts near the Miami tribe village of Kekionga in 1794.
Named in Wayne 's honor, the settlement established itself as a trading post for European pioneers.
Fort Wayne was known for hosting the first ever nighttime baseball game.
In 1982, there was flood that forced 9,000 residents to leave their homes.
It damaged 2,000 buildings and caused US$ 56.1 million in damage.
Because of this, President Ronald Reagan visited the city.
The city has been an All-America City Award winner.
It won in 1982, 1998, and 2009.
It received an Outstanding Achievement City Livability Award by the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 1999.
The FA Cup is a national football competition between all clubs in England that are linked with the sport 's governing body in that country, The Football Association.
The winner of the FA Cup usually goes through to the next season 's UEFA Europa League.
If the winner of the FA Cup has already qualified for a European competition, then the Europa League place goes to the runner-up.
If the runner-up has also qualified for a European competition, then the Europa League place goes to 6th or 7th place, depending on who won the Football League Cup.
The FA Cup final is held at Wembley Stadium, and currently both semi-finals are also held at Wembley, but in the past both semi-finals were played at neutral stadiums.
The FA Cup is the oldest football competition in the world and first took place in 1871.
The current holders (winners of the cup in 2014) are Arsenal football club, of London.
The cup has been won 11 times by both Arsenal and Manchester United.
At the moment the F.A cup is at the semi-final stage - the matches are Aston Villa against Liverpool and Reading against Arsenal.
Fenway Park is a baseball stadium in Boston, Massachusetts.
It is the home stadium of the Boston Red Sox.
The park opened in 1912.
It is the oldest of all current Major League Baseball parks.
The ballpark has also been the home field of several football teams.
Some Boston college teams have played there.
The New England Patriots also played there in their early years.
The name Fenway Park comes from the stadium being in the Fenway district of Boston.
One of its well-known features is the Green Monster, a tall wall in left field.
The Major League Baseball All-Star Games in 1946, 1961, and 1999 were played at Fenway.
Nine World Series games have been played there.
Flatulence, also called fart or flatus, is when intestinal gas leaves the anus.
This often happens with a loud sound, caused by the speed and amount of gas released, the vibration of the anal sphincter, and occasionally by the closed buttocks.
In mammals like humans, the gases come from two sources: swallowed air (for example, while eating, talking or drinking) and gases naturally created by bacteria in the body during digestion.
Nitrogen is the main gas released (20-90 % in total), followed by hydrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen and methane.
All these gas are odorless; the bad odor often associated with flatulence is caused by compounds that contain sulfur, such as methanethiol, hydrogen sulfide and dimethyl sulfide.
Because methane is highly flammable, some people can light up their flatulences, but not all humans produce flatus containing methane.
The gas that does n't come from swallowed air is produced by the bacteria that live in the intestine; these bacteria help us digest the food we eat by feeding on it, and this causes gas to be produced.
Foods that produce large amounts of gas are usually high in carbohydrates or polysaccharides, such as beans, lentils, cheese, pasta, vegetables and fruit.
Some people ca n't digest milk, and because of this they can get flatulence when they drink it.
Some other people swallow a lot of air when they chew gum, smoke, drink carbonated drinks, eat too fast, wear loose dentures or just because they 're nervous; this causes them to release more gas and is known as aerophagia.
Intestinal gas is brought to the rectum in the same way as feces, so it causes a similar feeling of urgency and discomfort.
Researchers have discovered that the sensitive nerves around the anus exist to help us tell the difference between flatus and feces; sometimes, though, a person can get confused and accidentally defecate while trying to release gas.
This is colloquially known as sharting and can leave stains in a person 's underwear.
There are many slang terms for the passing of flatulence, such as farting, pooting, tooting, passing gas, breaking wind, and cutting the cheese.
All people produce and release flatulence, on average 14 times every day.
This can happen accidentally, for example while coughing, sneezing or even during an orgasm, but people can also pass gass at will; this is often done by bearing down on the stomach and relaxing the anal opening, or by raising a leg and pushing.
Flatulence is completely normal and a sign of good health, but because of its odor, many people feel too embarrassed to pass gas in front of strangers and will try to hold it until they are alone.
This has caused flatulence to become a taboo in many occasions; at the same time, most people think flatulence is funny, so it is often a source of humor in jokes, artworks, books and movies.
Not only humans pass gas: in fact, all animals expel flatus, including many invertebrates.
Even birds, worms, ants, fishes and reptiles produce flatus.
Because of their different diet, the flatus of carnivores, such as dogs and cats, is usually smellier than that of herbivores, such as cows.
Farting feels so good.
in fact women who wore corsets would often have to lay down for a time to release the built of flatulence due to how tight the corsets were.
A filter is a device used to remove unwanted parts from something.
For example, removing solid particles from a liquid.
Filter can also mean the act of filtering: it can be used as a verb.
The different branches of science and technology often mean a particular kind of device when filter is mentioned.
The simplest filter is the kind called filter paper.
Liquids can pass through the paper.
Solid particles are stopped.
More advanced filters are possible.
Two that are often used to make water more pure are activated carbon and zeolites.
Filters are used to remove unwanted items and\/or impurities in the substance you are filtering.
The most usual thing meant by filter in electrical science is a wave filter.
One common kind lets through some frequencies and stops all others.
This is a band pass filter.
For instance, in a radio it can select the radio station the listener wants to hear.
The frequency of that station is passed, but all others are rejected.
There are many other uses, including use in telephones and audio, see: audio crossover.
There are digital filters which can be used to filter things besides frequencies.
A common use is to improve the quality of pictures.
For instance, there are filters which can make the edges of objects look more clear.
Optical filters act on light.
They change it certain ways.
This can be used for photographic filters.
Filters can be made from mechanical components.
They will do very similar things to electric filters.
Most especially, mechanical filters can be wave filters.
That is, they can block some frequencies and pass others.
Because of this, electric filters are sometimes made by first making a mechanical filter.
The electric wave is turned into a mechanical movement, then passed through the filter, then turned back in to an electric wave.
This kind of filter is often made from quartz crystals.
A device which changes electrical signals into mechanical signals is called a transducer.
A device which changes mechanical signals into electrical signals is also a transducer, but one of a different kind.
An internet filter removes certain kinds of information.
For example, certain words can be blocked.
A value x is a fixed point of a function f if and only if f (x) = x. 1 is a fixed point of because.
Some functions do not have fixed points.
For example does not have one because is never equal to x.
This page is about the Shakespearean character.
For the opera by Verdi see Falstaff (opera)
Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare.
In two of the Henry IV plays, he is a friend of Prince Hal, the man who becomes King Henry V.
Falstaff is very fat.
He thinks he is very important and is always boasting.
He is also a coward.
Falstaff makes Prince Hal get into trouble.
When Hal becomes king Falstaff is rejected.
Falstaff is a comic figure, but Shakespeare makes him say some things which tell us a lot about human nature.
For example: before a battle in Henry V he explains that his cowardice is actually common sense, because honor in battle is not really worth anything.
Honour would not stop other people saying he was a coward and it would not help him if he got injured.
Falstaff also appears in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Shakespeare s character inspired several musicians to compose music about him.
Carl Otto Nicolai wrote an opera called Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1849).
Verdi s wrote an opera Falstaff based on the same play.
It is often thought to be Verdi s greatest opera.
Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote an opera called Sir John in Love, (1924 1928).
Elgar wrote a brilliant piece for orchestra called Falstaff which he called: a symphonic study.
It is likely that Shakespeare based the character of Falstaff on a real person.
Many ideas have been discussed but no one can be sure who Shakespeare may have had in mind.
Floorball is an indoor team sport similar to hockey.
Floorball is usually played in gyms with little plastic balls and special hockey sticks.
In floorball, there are basically five players with sticks and a goalkeeper without any special equipment.
The goalkeeper has only special jersey and helmet.
Floorball is very popular today and in 2020 it is going to be part of the Summer Olympic Games.
Floorball was invited in the USA, but has been most popular in Sweden since the 1970s.
Its popularity quickly spread to Finland and Switzerland, but with different rules.
For example, in Switzerland a goalkeeper is allowed to use a stick.
In 1986, the International Floorball Federation (IFF) was founded and rules became the same.
Floorball is played in a gym on an area of 40x20 meters bordered by boards 50 centimetres high.
The formations are very similar to ice hockey.
Both teams play with 3 attackers, 2 defenders and a goalkeeper.
They can relieve whenever they want.
Floorball is played 3x20 minutes with 15 minutes breaks.
This is only for men.
In juniors matches the time is different.
Floorball is a contact sport so players can play with their body, but it has limits.
The only thing they can give a goalkeeper is a stick, but they can handle the ball with the body.
They can not hit the ball with their hands or head and they can not jump.
The goalkeeper can hit the ball with every part of his body and he can it for 3 seconds.
In floorball, a player can be excluded for 2 minutes when he breaks the rules.
The most redistricted players have in Sweden.
The second is Finland and the third is Czech Republic.
IFF organises world championships in floorball.
Every year they are in a different country.
A Premier League is normally a league in sports at the top of the league system.
Dr Fu Manchu is a fictional character in novels by British author Sax Rohmer during the first half of the 20th century.
The character was also featured extensively in cinema, television, radio, comic strips and comic books for over 90 years He has become an archetype of the evil genius.
"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan,... one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man".
The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
A master criminal, Fu Manchu 's murderous plots are marked by a use of biological warfare; he disdains guns or explosives, preferring dacoits, thuggee, and members of other secret societies as his agents armed with knives, or using "pythons and cobras... fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli... my black spiders" and other peculiar animals or natural chemical weapons.
In the earliest books, Fu Manchu is an agent of the secret society, the Si-Fan.
and is the mastermind behind a wave of assassinations targeting Western imperialists.
In later books, he seeks control of the Si-Fan.
The Si-Fan is largely funded through criminal activities, particularly the drug trade and white slavery.
Dr. Fu Manchu has extended his already considerable lifespan by use of the elixir vitae (elixir of life), a formula he spent decades trying to perfect.
Fu Manchu is opposed by a typical English detective of the Sherlock Holmes type: Denis Nayland Smith.
Fu Manchu 's daughter, Fah lo Suee, is a devious mastermind in her own right, plotting to usurp her father 's position in the Si-Fan, and aiding his enemies within and outside of the organization.
Her real name is unknown; Fah lo Suee was a childhood term of endearment.
Friesland (Frysl n in Frisian, Friesland in Dutch) is a province in the north of the Netherlands.
The capital (city) of Friesland is Leeuwarden (Ljouwert in Frisian).
People in Friesland speak Frisian and Dutch.
People also speak Frisian in a small part of Groningen (province), and in East Friesland and North Friesland in Germany.
In North Holland there is a region called West Friesland, but people who live there are not called Frisians.
Agriculture and tourism, on the lakes and the isles in the Wadden Sea, are important sources of income.
The province is also famous for its ice skaters and its Elfstedentocht (Eleven cities tour), an ice skating race of 200 kilometers.
In Friesland the Frisians live.
They are an old ethnic group.
Members of this ethnic group are:
Fellatio is oral sex performed on the penis.
Fellatio is often called a blow job.
The opposite of this is cunnilingus.
Cunnilingus is oral sex performed on the vulva.
Fellatio can continue until the receiver ejaculates or as part of foreplay, before actual sexual intercourse.
There is no risk of getting pregnant by performing a fellatio, because there is no connection from the mouth to the womb and the fallopian tubes.
There is however a large risk of transmitting diseases if the mouth comes in contact with semen on the penis.
If the person drinks alcoholic drinks, it can make this risk higher.
HIV can also enter through open sores or bleeding gums.
Very few people are allergic to semen.
Some claim that swallowing ejaculate is an intimate act.
Diseases such as Chlamydia, human papillomavirus (HPV), gonorrhea, herpes, hepatitis (multiple strains), and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), as well as viruses such as HIV, can be transmitted through oral sex.
The risk of transmitting HIV through fellatio is unknown, but it is thought to be low.
Any kind of direct contact with body fluids of a person infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, poses a risk of infection.
The risk from most of these types of infection, however, is generally considered far lower than that associated with vaginal or anal sex.
If the receiving partner has wounds on their genitals, or if the giving partner has wounds or open sores on or in their mouth, or bleeding gums, this poses an increased risk of STD transmission.
Brushing the teeth, flossing, undergoing dental work, or eating crunchy foods such as potato crisps relatively soon before or after giving fellatio can also increase the risk of transmission, because all of these activities can cause small scratches in the lining of the mouth.
These wounds, even when they are microscopic, increase the chances of contracting STDs that can be transmitted orally under these conditions.
Such contact can also lead to more mundane infections from common bacteria and viruses found in, around and secreted from the genital regions.
Because of this, some medical professionals advise the use of condoms when performing or receiving fellatio with a partner whose STD status is unknown.
Flavoured condoms may be used for this purpose.
Many people accuse someone of performing fellatio as an insult.
For example ` cock sucker! '
or ` suck my dick '.
Many cultures see fellatio as showing control over ones partner, as often the giver is on their knees.
In ancient Greece it was called playing the flute.
The Moche people of ancient Peru practiced it regularly and made vases showing it.
A fatwa (; plural fat wa), is a legal pronouncement in Islam.
A mufti (a scholar capable of making judgments on Sharia (Islamic law)) pronounces it.
Usually a fatwa is made to clarify a question where "fiqh" (Islamic jurisprudence) is unclear.
Usually a judge or other person requests it.
Faroese is the Germanic language of the Faroe Islands spoken by about 70,000 people.
The language came from Old Norse which was spoken in the Middle Ages.
Faroese is the most similar to Icelandic.
The alphabet has 29 letters that come from the Latin alphabet.
In physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a particle that might not be made of other particles.
An elementary particle can be a fermion or a boson.
Fermions are the building blocks of matter and have mass, while bosons behave as force carriers for fermion interactions and some of them have no mass..
The Standard Model is the most accepted way to explain how particles behave, and the forces that affect them.
According to this model, the elementary particles are further grouped into quarks, leptons, and gauge bosons, with the Higgs boson having a special status.
Of the particles that make up an atom, only the electron is an elementary particle.
Protons and neutrons are made of quarks.
There are three basic properties that describe an elementary particle: "mass", "charge", and "spin".
Each property is assigned a number value.
For mass and charge the number can be zero.
For example, a photon has zero mass and a neutrino has zero charge.
These properties always stay the same for an elementary particle.
Mass and charge are properties we see in everyday life, because gravity and electricity affect things that humans see and touch.
But spin affects only the world of subatomic particles, so it can not be directly observed.
Fermions (named after the scientist Enrico Fermi) have a spin number of, and are either quarks or leptons.
There are 12 different types of fermions (not including antimatter).
Each type is called a "flavor".
The flavors are:
Six of the 12 fermions are thought to last forever: up and down quarks, the electron, and the three kinds of neutrinos (which constantly switch flavor).
The other fermions decay.
That is, they break down into other particles a fraction of a second after they are created.
Fermi-Dirac statistics is a theory that describes how collections of fermions behave.
Essentially, you ca n't have more than one fermion in the same place at the same time.
Bosons, named after the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, have spin 1.
Although most bosons are made of more than one particle, there are two kinds of elementary bosons:
The photon and the gluons have no charge, and are the only elementary particles that have a mass of 0 for certain.
The photon is the only boson that does not decay.
Bose-Einstein statistics is a theory that describes how collections of bosons behave.
Unlike fermions, it is possible to have more than one boson in the same space at the same time.
The Standard Model includes all of the elementary particles described above.
All these particles have been observed in the laboratory.
The Standard Model does not talk about gravity.
If gravity works like the three other fundamental forces, then gravity is carried by the hypothetical boson called the graviton.
The graviton has yet to be found, so it is not included in the table above.
The first fermion to be discovered, and the one we know the most about, is the electron.
The first boson to be discovered, and also the one we know the most about, is the photon.
The theory that most accurately explains how the electron, photon, electromagnetism, and electromagnetic radiation all work together is called quantum electrodynamics.
The Miami Marlins are a Major League Baseball team in Miami, Florida.
The team began play in 1993.
They were called the Florida Marlins through the 2011 baseball season.
In November 2011, after the end of the season, they were renamed the Miami Marlins.
The marlin is a large sport fish that lives in warm parts of the ocean.
There was once a minor league baseball team called the Miami Marlins.
The major league team was named the "Marlins" in honor of the minor league team.
The Marlins ' first home was Sun Life Stadium.
They opened a new stadium in 2012 called Marlins Park.
Falsifiability is the capacity to prove something is not correct.
Scientists make hypotheses and theories about their fields of study.
At the start, they hope their hypothesis or theory is true but they and other scientists will use the scientific method to try and prove it false.
Falsifiability (or refutability) means that a theory or hypothesis can be proved wrong because it failed a critical test or experiment.
A famous example in the 20th century was the expedition led by Arthur Eddington to Principe Island in Africa in 1919 to record the positions of stars around the Sun during a solar eclipse.
The observation of star positions showed that the apparent star positions close to the Sun were changed.
In effect, the light passing the Sun was pulled towards the sun by gravitation.
This confirmed predictions of gravitational lensing made by Albert Einstein in the general theory of relativity, published in 1915.
Eddington 's observations were considered to be the first solid evidence in favor of Einstein 's theory.
Had the observations resulted differently, this would have counted against Einstein 's theory, and perhaps refuted it.
Karl Popper had the opinion that only theories that are falsifiable are scientific.
Falsifiability is then a line between science and other kinds of knowledge: if it can be refuted, it is science; it if can not, then it is not science.
Many working scientists think Popper was right.
Not everyone agreed with this: Pierre Duhem and Paul Feyerabend had different ideas.
Feyerabend 's Against method (1975) argued that there was no one scientific method.
Instead, whatever works, works and anything goes.
This is called epistemological anarchy.
Duham 's idea was more subtle.
He thought that for any given set of observations there is a huge and uncountable number of explanations.
According to Duhem, an experiment in physics is not just an observation, but an interpretation of observations by means of a theoretical framework.
Furthermore, no matter how well one constructs one 's experiment, it is impossible to subject an isolated single hypothesis to an experimental test.
Instead, it is a whole interlocking group of hypotheses, background assumptions, and theories that is tested.
This thesis has come to be known as holism.
According to Duhem, it makes crucial experiments impossible.
The word Freikorps (German for "Free Corps") was first used for voluntary armies in Germany.
After World War I the term was used for paramilitary units.
The Freikorps got famous at the time of the Weimar Republic to fight in some towns against the Communism.
The first freikorps were started by Frederick II of Prussia in the eighteenth century during the Seven Years ' War.
Other freikorps were started during the Napoleonic Wars and were commanded by people such as Ferdinand von Schill and later Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von L tzow.
The freikorps were thought to be not reliable by regular armies and were mostly used as guards and for minor duties.
The meaning of the word changed over time.
After 1918, the word was used for the paramilitary organizations that were started in Germany by soldiers who came home after losing World War I. They were the main paramilitary groups during that time.
Many of these returning soldiers were not able to return to a normal life, and joined a Freikorps to again be a part of a military structure.
Others were angry at losing the war and joined to fight against Communists or get revenge.
They were liked and supported by Minister of Defense Gustav Noske, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, who used them to stop the German Revolution and the Marxist Spartacist League, and also to murder Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg on 15 January 1919.
They were also used to defeat the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919.
In 1920, Adolf Hitler had started his political work as the leader of the very small and unknown German Workers Party (that was soon called the National Socialist German Workers Party, NSDAP (or Nazi Party)) in Munich.
Many people who would join this party had been in the Freikorps, including Ernst R hm, future leader of the Sturmabteilung, or SA, and Rudolf H, the future Commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Hermann Ehrhardt, who started the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt, and his deputy Commander, Eberhard Kautter, did not want to help Hitler and Erich von Ludendorff in the Beer Hall Putsch.
Freikorps leaders gave their old battle flags to Hitler 's SA and SS on Nov 9, 1933 in a very big ceremony.
Historian Robert Waite said that Hitler had many problems with the Freikorps.
Many of the Friekorps had joined the SA, so when the Night of the Long Knives happened, they were targets for being murdered or arrested and this was also done to Ehrhardt and to R hm.
Waite also says that in Hitler 's ` Rohm Purge ' speech to the Reichstag on July 13, 1934, that Hitler said that the Freikorps were enemies of Germany.
In 1939, in the Polish September Campaign, Freikorps Ebbinghaus, was started to work behind the frontlines.
It was not very good at this work and was sent to fight as an army unit but was not good at this either and was ended in less than one year.
: - rescued the Iron Division after a 12,000 mile march.
: - Fought in the Baltic.
: - was trapped in Thorensberg by the Latvian Army.
Was rescued by the Rossbach Freikorps.
Francisco I. Madero (October 30, 1873 - February 22, 1913) was a reformist politician and writer who served as President of Mexico from 1911 to 1913.
This unlikely revolutionary helped engineer the overthrow of entrenched dictator Porfirio D az by kick-starting the Mexican Revolution.
Unfortunately for Madero, he found himself caught between the remnants of D az ' power structure (who hated him for overthrowing the old regime) and the revolutionary forces he unleashed (who despised him for not being radical enough).
He was deposed and executed in 1913 by Victoriano Huerta, a general who had served under D az.
First aid is basic knowledge about how to help people who are suddenly sick (illnesses) or hurt (injuries or body damage).
For example, first aid is used at accidents to help an injured person until he receives medical treatment (help by doctors, nurses or ambulances).
First aid is also used to help people who suddenly become sick, until help arrives or they can be taken to medical care.
A person does not need a lot of equipment to give first aid.
A package of things useful to give first aid is called a first aid kit.
Lives can be saved even without a first aid kit.
First aid can be done just about anywhere.
In places far from hospitals, first aid may be the only help possible until the person can be taken to a hospital or clinic.
Emergency medical dispatchers are trained in first aid, so that if there is an emergency, they can give the caller some information on what to do until the ambulance arrives.
This can include the "C-A-B" listed below.
First aid skills are kept simple on purpose so that people can remember and use them in an emergency to save at least one life.
People can learn about first aid from books ("manuals") and videos.
A good first aid kit will often include a simple First Aid Guide.
It is best to have good training to give first aid.
In addition to books and videos, good training includes a good teacher and the chance to practice.
For example, CPR is practiced on a dummy called a manikin, so a student can learn to push down on someone 's chest in an emergency without actually doing it to a person.
The teacher makes sure the first aid student is doing the skill correctly.
Training can be given by an organization or by a professional medical person, like a doctor, a nurse, or a paramedic.
Organizations that teach first aid include the International Red Cross, schools, hospitals, the military, and rescue groups such as fire departments.
The level of training needed to be a first aid helper changes from country to country.
For example, in the United Kingdom and the United States, you can go on a 1-day course to become a first aid giver.
In the U.K., you can go on a 4-day course for emergencies in a place of work.
All firefighters, police officers, and soldiers are trained in first aid during their basic training.
First aid kits may be kept in cloth bags or plastic or metal boxes.
They are often labeled with a symbol such as those on the upper right.
A first aid kit may contain many items, but basic items that can help with first aid include:
Feudalism is a system of land ownership and duties.
It was used in the Middle Ages.
With feudalism, all the land in a kingdom was the king 's.
However, the king would give some of the land to the lords or nobles who fought for him.
These presents of land were called manors.
Then the nobles gave some of their land to vassals.
The vassals then had to do duties for the nobles.
The lands of vassals were called fiefs.
When talking about places other than Europe, the idea of feudalism is normally only used by analogy (called semi-feudal), most often in discussions of Japan under the shoguns, and, sometimes, medieval and Gondarine Ethiopia.
Some people have seen situations like feudalism in places as far away as Ancient Egypt, Parthian empire, India, to the American South of the nineteenth century.
Under feudalism, taxes were not paid with money.
They were paid in products and services.
Presents and taxes had to be given to the lords by their vassals.
At harvest time, the vassals gave shares of their crops to the lords.
The vassals would grind their grain at the noble 's grainaries.
They would give part of the grain to their lord.
When animals were killed for food, part of the meat was given to the lords.
The lords promised to give protection, peace, and safety to their vassals.
Manors were completely owned by the nobles.
They were given from one generation to another.
The noble 's firstborn son took it all when his father died.
Each manor had its own pasture lands, mill, wine press, church, and village.
A manor had to let many people live there.
Lords gave their servants food and a place to sleep, but they did not pay their servants money.
The villein was in a poorer class.
He had to serve the lords, but free in other things.
He had work to do for the lord or the town.
Then he went back to his little house with floors made of earth and a thatch roof.
On the walls of his house, the villein hung meats, tools, and dried vegetables.
A villein was more free than slaves or serfs, but he still was n't completely free.
He could not move or marry if the lord did n't say yes.
He also could not leave the manor lands if the lord said no..
If he escaped, he could run away to a town where he could try to live quietly without being known, until he is discovered.
If he did this, he becomes a free man.
If he wanted to help the Catholic Church, he needed special permission.
As a member of the church, his position could get higher.
However, if this did not work, he could join a band of outlaws.
The serf was in the lowest class.
He was only a little better than slaves.
He could not be sold away from the land, but was always sold with the land.
But villeins and serfs had rights as well.
They could cultivate grain and vegetables for sale, and the lord had duty to protect them and provide them land to cultivate.
If they got wealthy enough, they could buy themselves free.
They also did not need to serve in levy (that is: army mustered up by conscription) and they did not need to pay state taxes.
They usually paid 10 % of their income to the Church and 10 % to the feudal lord.
A fox is a small mammalian carnivore.
They hunt and eat live prey, mostly rabbits and rodents (rats and mice).
They may also eat grasshoppers, birds ' eggs, and even fruit and berries.
Sometimes they eat carrion.
Foxes are the smallest members of the dog family Canidae.
There are 27 species of fox.
They are swift and agile runners, and live in family groups.
A female fox is called a vixen, and the male is called a dog.
Foxes ' tails are multi-purpose organs.
Their bushy tail helps them keep warm while they are sleeping in cold weather.
It is also part of the animal 's food store for wintertime.
Foxes ' plump bushy tail is easily seen, and is used for sending signals to its family members.
The tail is also used for balance while running.
Foxes are found on all continents (except Antarctica), mostly living in forest, shrubland, and desert regions.
They were not native to Australia, but were introduced in some way.
In the United Kingdom, it was a common sport for people to hunt foxes with horses and dogs.
This is now banned.
"Most agricultural damage is caused by rabbits, and this can be considerable.
Yet in lowland areas, rabbits comprise 45 to 70 per cent of the diet of foxes... One study estimated that, over its lifetime, each fox was worth between 150 and 900 in increased revenue to farmers... A strong argument against killing foxes".
The informal term ` true fox ' refers to members of the Vulpes genus.
There are 11 species of Vulpus.
They are:
Sometimes the arctic fox (Alopex lagopus) is included in this genus (as Vulpes lagopus).
This is because of the way it looks.
There is also genetic evidence that shows that the arctic fox is probably a true fox.
Some species of true fox are extinct.
Fossils have been found of:
Felidae is a family of mammals, in the order Carnivora.
Animals that belong to Felidae are called felids.
The family is of quite recent origin: the first fossils are from the Oligocene, 25 million years ago (mya).
There are 41 living species, including the domestic cat, and they are monophyletic: all descended from the same ancestor.
Felids tend to have lithe and flexible bodies with muscular limbs.
In most species, the tail is a third or a half the length of the body, with some exceptions (the bobcat and margay).
The limbs are digitigrade, meaning they walk on their toes.
The paws have with soft toe pads and retractible claws (usually).
The tongue of felids is covered with horny papillae, which rasp meat from prey and aid in grooming.
More examples of felines are the big cats the lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar, snow leopard, clouded leopard, puma, and cheetah - and other wild cats, for example the lynx, caracal, and bobcat.
All felines, also the small pet cat, are predators that can hunt many animals.
The felids evolved in Asia and spread across continents by crossing land bridges.
DNA sequence analysis shows that ancient cats evolved into eight main lines.
There were at least 10 migrations (in both directions) from continent to continent via the Bering land bridge and Isthmus of Panama.
The Panthera genus is the oldest and the Felis genus is the youngest.
60 percent of the modern species of cats developed within the last million years.
The felids ' closest relatives are the linsangs, and at one remove the group of civets, hyenas, mongooses, and Madagascar carnivores, with whom they share the Suborder Feliformia.
All felid species share a genetic anomaly that prevents them from tasting sweetness.
Genetic research has provided a basis for a more concise classification for the living members of the cat family based on genotypical groupings.
Specifically, eight genetic lineages have been identified:
The last four lineages (5, 6, 7, 8) are more related to each other than to any of the first four (1, 2, 3, 4), and so form a clade within the Felinae subfamily of family Felidae.
Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including stories, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, and more within a particular people.
This also includes the oral traditions of that culture, subculture, or group.
The academic and usually ethnographic study of folklore is sometimes called folkloristics.
Father Ted is an Anglo-Irish sitcom created for Channel 4.
It was created by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews and produced by Hat Trick Productions.
It was shown from 21 April 1995 until 1 May 1998.
It is set on a fictional island off the west of Ireland.
It is about three Roman Catholic priests who share a house.
It stars Dermot Morgan as Father Ted Crilly, Ardal O'Hanlon as Father Dougal McGuire and Frank Kelly as Father Jack Hackett.
Pauline McLynn plays their housekeeper Mrs Doyle.
Foster 's is a full strength Australian beer.
It was first brewed by the brothers, W.M. Foster and R.R. Foster, in 1887.
It is a European style lager, with 4.9 % alcohol.
More than 100 million cases of Foster 's Lager are sold around the world each year, which makes it Australia 's biggest selling beer.
It is brewed in nine countries using 20 breweries.
Friends is an American comedy television series.
It was on television from September 22, 1994 to May 8, 2004.
It is about 6 friends who lived in Manhattan, New York City.
They were in their 20s and 30s.
The names of the "friends" were: Monica, Chandler, Rachel, Ross, Phoebe and Joey.
Friends got positive reviews through most of its run.
It is one of the most popular sitcoms of all time.
The series won many awards and was nominated for 63 Primetime Emmy Awards.
TV Guide ranked it # 21 on their list of the 50 greatest TV shows of all time.
The series was produced by Bright\/Kauffman\/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros..
Television.
At first, the executive producers were Crane, Kauffman and Kevin Bright.
Other producers were brought in during later seasons.
In all, there were 236 episodes.
There is a sequel to this show named Joey.
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St. Alban KC, (22 January 1561 9 April 1626), was an English philosopher, statesman, and author.
He has been described as one of the greatest thinkers ever whose ideas have changed the way people think.
He was born in London, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon and the nephew of Queen Elizabeth 's advisor, William Cecil.
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge.
His first job was a lawyer.
He later became a Member of Parliament and in 1586 he took a leading part in having Mary Queen of Scots executed.
He became a friend of Robert Deveraux, the Earl of Essex, in 1591, and received many valuable gifts from him.
After Essex led a rebellion against the Queen, Bacon was one of the people who led the investigation which led to Essex 's execution in 1601.
Bacon was often in trouble for spending too much, and in 1601 he was arrested for debt.
When King James became king in 1603, Bacon 's position improved.
He was knighted in 1603.
He was one of the people appointed to plan the joining of England and Scotland together as one country.
He married Alice Barnham in 1606, and the next year he was made the Solicitor General.
He continued to be given better paying positions including Attorney General, Lord Keeper, and Lord Chancellor.
He was made Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St Albans in 1621.
Because he did not have children both titles ended when he died.
He used his positions to make more money for himself, and in 1621 the Parliament found that he was corrupt.
He was fined 40,000 and removed from all his jobs.
King James overturned the fine, but he was kept as a prisoner in the Tower of London for a while.
He became best known as a leading thinker in new ways of looking at the world.
His writings started and made famous a way of thinking about science.
This way of thinking is now called the Baconian method.
It is based on looking at the world by making experiments.
After watching the results the scientist comes up with an idea to explain what has happened.
This idea or hypothesis is then further tested by more experiments.
This way of thinking about science is called inductive methodology.
In Bacon 's time these methods were linked with magic including hermeticism and alchemy.
Alchemy was the study of fire, earth, water and air.
Alchemists tried to make gold from lead.
Frigg (or Frigga) is a goddess in Norse mythology.
She is Odin 's wife.
She is the goddess of marriage, motherhood, managing the household, and keeper of the domestic arts.
She has the power of prophecy, but she does not tell what she knows.
Her children are Baldr, H r and, in an English source, Wecta; her stepchildren are Herm r, Heimdall, Tyr, Vidar, V li, and Skjoldr.
Thor is her stepson.
Frigg 's companion is Eir, the gods ' doctor and goddess of healing.
Frigg 's attendants are Hl n (a goddess of protection), Gn (a messenger goddess), and Fulla (a fertility goddess).
It is unclear whether Frigg 's companions and attendants are simply different aspects of Frigg herself (cf. avatar).
According to the poem Lokasenna Frigg is the daughter of Fjorgyn (masculine version of "Earth," cf. feminine version of "Earth," Thor 's mother), her mother is not identified in the stories that have survived.
Frigg is the foremost goddess of the sir, she is often confused with Freyja, foremost goddess of the Vanir.
Friday, the fifth day of the week is named either after her or after Freyja.
In Norse mythology, Frigg (Eddas) or Frigga (Gesta Danorum) was a goddess.
It was said to be "foremost among the goddesses," 1 the wife of Odin, queen of the sir, and goddess of the sky.
One of the synjur, she is a goddess of marriage, motherhood, fertility, love, household management, and domestic arts.
Her primary functions in the Norse mythological stories are as wife and mother, but these are not her only functions.
She has the power of prophecy although she does not tell what she knows 2, and is the only one other than Odin who is permitted to sit on his high seat Hlidskjalf and look out over the universe.
She also participates in the Wild Hunt (Asgardreid) along with her husband.
Frigg 's children are Baldr, H r and, in an English source, Wecta; her stepchildren are Herm r, Heimdall, Tyr, Vidar, V li, and Skjoldr.
Thor is either her brother or a stepson.
Frigg 's companion is Eir, the gods ' doctor and goddess of healing.
Frigg 's attendants are Hl n (a goddess of protection), Gn (a messenger goddess), and Fulla (a fertility goddess).
It is unclear whether Frigg 's companions and attendants are simply different aspects of Frigg herself (cf. avatar).
According to the poem Lokasenna Frigg is the daughter of Fjorgyn (masculine version of "Earth," cf. feminine version of "Earth," Thor 's mother), her mother is not identified in the stories that have survived.
The FIFA World Cup is the most watched sport of football (soccer).
The F d ration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) puts together the World Cup every four years.
More people watch the World Cup finals than any other sporting event in the world even more people than the Olympic Games.
The most successful team has been Brazil.
The finals tournament is held every four years.
On the other years there are only qualifiers (qualifying tournaments).
These games help to decide which teams will move on.
Over 160 national teams play in the beginning games.
The best teams from the beginning games win a place in the finals.
The finals now include 32 teams.
Before 1998, only 24 teams were in the finals.
Many years before each World Cup, FIFA picks the host nation, the country where the finals will be held.
Being the host nation means that their team has qualified for the finals tournament automatically and does not need to play any qualifying games.
The 32 teams in the finals then play for four weeks, usually between June and July, to decide the champion (tournament winner).
Real numbers in binary have to be stored in a special way in a computer.
There is no decimal point in the binary system so the computer has a method of understanding decimals.
This is called floating-point representation.
The decimal point in a real number is called a floating point because it can be placed anywhere - it is not fixed.
Because of this, a computer will divide a number into two parts.
These are called the mantissa and the exponent.
1101.
0111 would become 1101 0111
The exponent is the number of spaces the decimal point has moved.
In the example above, the decimal point moved 4 places to the left, so the exponent is 0000 0100 (this is binary for 4).
If the decimal point moves to right, the exponent is negative.
For example,
0000.
0111 (mantissa - 0000 0111) here, the exponent is -1.
The binary number for this is 1111 1111 (see Negative binary numbers)
The result is found by putting the Mantissa and Exponent together.
The results for the examples above are:
The First Epistle to the Corinthians, or the First Letter to the Corinthians, is a long letter written by the Apostle Paul to the church in Corinth.
Paul wrote to the Corinthian church for a number of reasons.
He realizes the church at Corinth is divided and explains that although himself and a few disciples had helped start the church, the church was really headed by Christ Jesus Himself.
"I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow."
(TNIV)
Paul scolds the church members there for sexual immorality and asks for these immoral people to be thrown out of the church.
He gives instructions for marriage, against worshipping worthless idols (idolatory), for spiritual gifts like prophecy.
Paul praises the superior way of love and urges the church to be united.
At the end, Paul states that the resurrection of Christ is true.
He supports it with testimonies from "more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters" and it is this very truth which makes certain the believers will have eternal life.
Finally Paul tells of his plans to visit the Corinthians, and that Timothy, his co-worker, is coming to their church very soon.
The First Epistle of Peter is the sixtieth book in the Christian Bible, and the twenty-first in the New Testament.
This book is believed to be a letter from Peter to fellow Christians.
The First Epistle of John is the sixty-second book in the Christian Bible, and the twenty-third in the New Testament.
This book is believed to a letter from John.
There is some disagreement over whether the John who wrote the letters of John, the John who wrote The Gospel of John, and the John who wrote the Book of Revelation are the same person.
The Four Noble Truths are a Buddhist teaching.
They show Buddhists why they should follow the Middle Way.
The first noble truth is called Dukkha, which means suffering.
It says that life is full of suffering.
To say it a different way, in life there is sickness, poverty (being poor), old age, and death.
People can not keep what they want.
People can not avoid what they do not want.
If that is all a person learns, they suffer.
The second noble truth is called Samudaya, which says that there is a reason for the suffering in the world.
It says that the reason there is suffering is because people want things.
It also says that the reason there is suffering is because people change what they think is real.
They do this because they are ignorant.
People do bad actions because they want things and because they do not see what is real.
Those bad actions lead to suffering.
The third noble truth is called Nirodha.
It says that people can be free from suffering.
They are free when they no longer want things.
The fourth noble truth is called Marga.
It says that for a person to stop wanting things, they must follow a set of rules.
The rules are called the Noble Eightfold Path.
The eightfold path says that truth is found in the Middle Way.
A person can get to the Middle Way by following the eightfold path.
The eight rules are these:
Freeman John Dyson FRS (born December 15, 1923) is an English-born-American theoretical physicist and mathematician.
He is known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering.
He gained a bachelor degree at the University of Cambridge.
In 1957, he became an American citizen and renounced his British citizenship.
Dyson was born in Crowthorne, Berkshire, England, the son of George Dyson.
Franconia (German: Franken) is the northern part of the German federal state of Bavaria.
This region is divided in three smaller regions: Oberfranken, Mittelfranken, and Unterfranken.
The biggest city in Franconia is Nuremberg.
Other large cities in Franconia are Coburg, Aschaffenburg, W rzburg, Erlangen, F rth, Bamberg, Bayreuth, Schweinfurt and Hof.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is cutting off part or all of the female genitals that are outside of the body.
FGM is also called female genital cutting and female circumcision.
It is done for cultural reasons, as part of a ritual, not for medical reasons.
FGM is most common in 27 African countries, as well as Yemen and Iraqi Kurdistan.
However, it also happens in other countries in Asia, the Middle East, and around the world.
Usually, FGM is not done by a doctor or in a hospital.
It is often done with a razor blade, sometimes without anesthesia.
Different ethnic groups do different kinds of FGM.
They also do FGM at different ages.
Some groups do FGM when infants are only a few days old.
Others do it when girls reach puberty, or are older.
In about half the countries where FGM happens, most girls have FGM before they are five years old.
FGM can cause serious health problems, like infections, chronic pain, trouble getting pregnant and giving birth, bleeding so bad that it can kill.
FGM does not make a person 's health better in any way.
FGM is illegal in most of the countries where it happens.
However, these laws are often ignored.
Since the 1970s, many countries have tried to stop FGM.
In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly said that FGM is a human rights problem, and voted to try harder to stop it.
The World Health Organization and the "Maputo Protocol" to the African Charter on Human and Peoples ' Rights also say that FGM must be stopped.
There are many different types of female genital mutilation.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has created four basic categories of FGM, called Types 1-IV.
In Type I FGM, part or all of the clitoris is cut off.
The clitoris is the organ that makes sex feel good for women.
Without it, a woman usually can not have an orgasm.
There are a few forms of Type II FGM.
All of them involve cutting off part or all of the inner labia, the two flaps of skin on the sides of the vagina.
The forms of Type II FGM are:
Type III FGM is usually called infibulation.
It is the most severe form of FGM.
The genitals outside a woman 's body are cut off and the wound is sewn shut with thread and thorns.
The different types of infibulation are:
When the labia are sewn shut, one small hole is left open so the girl can urinate and menstruate.
The hole is kept open by putting something like a twig into the wound.
To help the wound close, the girl 's legs are tied together, often from hip to ankle, for up to six weeks.
After the woman gets married, her vagina is cut open so she can have sex.
A midwife might cut open the vagina with a knife, or the woman 's husband might tear it open with his penis.
If the woman gets pregnant, the vagina is opened more for childbirth, and then often sewn back up afterward (this is called re-infibulation).
Type IV FGM is anything else that is done to hurt the genitals, like scraping, burning, scarring, or cutting the genitals without cutting them off.
In many countries where FGM is common, almost every woman and girl in the country has had FGM.
In other countries, millions of women and girls have had FGM over many years.
In 25 countries in Africa and the Middle East, over 125 million women and girls have had FGM.
This includes:
In some of these same 25 countries, FGM is very common.
It is most common in these countries:
However, in other countries, FGM is not as common.
For example, of the 25 countries where FGM happens most often, it is least common in these countries:
FGM can hurt women 's physical and mental health throughout their lives.
"Short-term complications" are problems caused by FGM soon after the FGM happened.
Common short-term complications include:
More serious short-term complications can cause symptoms that can kill a woman.
They include:
Nobody knows how many girls and women die from FGM.
Late complications happen later on after FGM is done.
For example:
Painful periods are common because it is very difficult for blood to get out of the tiny hole left by infibulation.
Blood can fill the vagina and uterus, and stay there without moving.
If the vagina gets completely blocked, the vagina and uterus can fill up completely with menstrual blood.
Because women with this problem do not menstruate, and blood builds up in their abdomen (making it swell), it can be confused with pregnancy.
FGM may increase a woman 's risk of having problems during pregnancy and childbirth.
For example, women who had infibulations are more likely to:
FGM also raises the risk that a woman 's baby will die soon after it is born.
In 2008, the WHO estimated that 10 20 babies out of every 1,000 die because their mothers had FGM.
All types of FGM were found to raise babies ' risk of death, which was:
There is not much information about the effects of FGM on women 's and girls ' mental health.
However, a few small studies have found that women with FGM often have anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Studies on how FGM affects women 's ability to have sex have also been small.
In total, in 2013, there had been 15 studies involving 12,671 women from seven countries.
When all the information from these studies was put together, researchers found that:
Forseti is a god of justice and reconciliation in Norse mythology.
He oversaw courts and mediation.
He is one of the sir gods.
Forseti 's name means "the presiding one" in Old Norse.
He is often identified with Fosite, a god in the mythology of the Frisians.
Forseti was the son of Nanna and Baldur.
A flag is a piece of colored cloth with a special design that is put on a pole as a symbol.
Flags first appeared more than 2000 years ago in China, and in Europe under the Roman Empire.
Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, an island arc.
Its area is about 14300 k. It goes east from the island of Java.
There are about 1.5 million people in Flores.
The largest town is Maumere.
Flores is east of Sumbawa and Komodo.
It is west of Lembata and the Alor Archipelago.
To the southeast is Timor.
To the south is the Sumba strait.
The Flores Sea is to the north.
On December 12 1992, an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale occurred.
It killed 2,000 people in the town of Maumere.
The First Punic War started in 264 BC.
It lasted for 23 years, ending in 241 BC.
It was the first of three wars fought between ancient Carthage and the Roman Republic.
They were rivals for trade and influence in the Mediterranean.
For more than 20 years the two powers struggled for supremacy.
Key areas were the island of Sicily and its surrounding waters, and also North Africa.
Rome eventually won control of Sicily.
Rome won the First Punic War after 23 years.
In the end it became the dominant naval power of the Mediterranean.
To get terms for peace, the Carthaginians had to pay a large amount of money (in silver), and give up a number of islands in the Mediterranean.
Fernando Ant nio Nogueira Pessoa (Lisbon, 13 June 1888 - Lisbon, 30 November 1935), also known as Fernando Pessoa, was a Portuguese poet and writer.
Pessoa is considered one of the greatest Portuguese poets.
He has been compared to Lu s Vaz de Cam es.
His works reflect the infuence of classic tradition and French symbolism and his poetry reflects nostalgia.
He is famous for having written under 73 different names.
Each had its own presumed biography, physical qualities, relationship to the others, poetic voice, and point of view.
Pessoa believed that a person could have more than one integrated personality.
His work was also influenced by the English language which he learned in South Africa, where he spent a great part of his youth.
He died of liver disease at age 47 in Lisbon.
His last words were in English: "I know not what tomorrow will bring...".
Among Pessoa 's poems in English, there are Sonnets (1918), English Poems (1922), and Mensagem (1934).
The flag of the United States of America is a national flag.
It represents the freedom of the United States.
The flag of the United States has 7 red stripes and 6 white stripes.
These 13 stripes stand for the original thirteen colonies.
The flag also has a blue canton, a rectangle in the top left corner.
The canton has one white star for every state.
When a new state joins the United States a new flag is made with an extra star.
The new flag is first flown on the "4th of July", Independence Day.
The last states to join so far the United States were Alaska and Hawaii in 1959.
Alaska joined on 3 January 1959, so the new flag with 49 stars was used from 4 July 1959.
Hawaii joined on 21 August 1959 so the flag with 50 stars that is used today was not flown until 4 July 1960.
The colors in the flag are red, white and blue.
The colors have no special meaning in the flag, but in the coat of arms white stands for purity and innocence, red for bravery and strength and blue for watchfulness, perseverance and justice.
The flag is also often called the Stars and Stripes, the Star-Spangled Banner, or Old Glory.
The national anthem of the United States both reference the flag.
Micronesia, officially the Federated States of Micronesia, is an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, northeast of Papua New Guinea.
The country is a sovereign state in free association with the United States.
The capital city of Federated States of Micronesia is Palikir.
The Federated States of Micronesia were formerly part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, a United Nations Trust Territory under US administration.
In 1979 they adopted a constitution, and in 1986 independence was attained under a Compact of Free Association with the United States.
Present concerns include large-scale unemployment, overfishing, and overdependence on U.S. aid.
The Federated States of Micronesia are in the region known as Micronesia, which consists of hundreds of small islands divided in seven territories.
The term Micronesia may refer to the Federated States or to the region as a whole.
This area is in Oceania.
Fra Angelico (c. 1395 February 18, 1455), was an Italian Early Renaissance painter.
Giorgio Vasari, who wrote the Lives of the Artists said he had "a rare and perfect talent".
Fra Angelico has been known by many different names.
When he was born, he was called Guido di Pietro.
People who knew him when he was older called him Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (Brother John from Fiesole).
When Giorgio Vasari wrote about him in Lives of the Artists, in the 1500s, he was already known as Fra Giovanni Angelico (Brother Giovanni who is like an Angel).
The Italians usually call him il Beato Angelico (the Blessed Angelico).
He has been called this for a long time, because he was thought to be blessed by God who gave him the talent of painting, and also because he was such a good and holy man.
The name "Blessed Angelico" has now been made official, because in 1982 Pope John Paul II "conferred beatification" which means that he is now on the way to being made a saint.
Vasari says about him: "It is impossible to think of enough good things to say about this holy father, who was so humble and modest in everything that he did and said, and whose pictures were painted with such cleverness and holy faith."
Fra Angelico was born in Mugello near Fiesole in Tuscany, Italy probably about 1385 87 and died in Rome in 1455.
Nothing is known about his parents.
He was baptized Guido or Guidolino.
In 1407, he joined the Dominican Order at Fiesole.
In 1423, when he became officially a friar, he changed his name from Guido to Fra Giovanni (Brother John).
(People who are accepted into a holy order, usually take a new name.)
Like the other "brothers" (friars) of the Dominican Order, he wore a white robe and a black cloak, and shaved part of his head.
Fra Angelico had a brother called Benedetto who was also a Dominican friar.
Fra Benedetto painted illuminated manuscripts.
Fra Angelico possibly learned to paint manuscripts as well.
The convent of San Marco in Florence has several manuscript books that he is thought to have painted.
He was very busy with other work at the convents where he lived, but he still found time to paint pictures, which very soon became famous.
In January and February of 1418, he was paid for paintings that he did in the church of Santo Stefano del Ponte.
Between 1418 and 1436, Fra Angelico painted an altarpiece for the church in Fiesole, which has been damaged.
Age caused the some of the paint to come off, or fade, and other artists have painted over some of Fra Angelico 's work while trying to repair the paintings.
The top part of the altarpiece is in the National Gallery, London.
It shows Christ in Glory, surrounded by more than 250 figures, and is a large and magnificent piece of work.
It has been described as one of the best works in the gallery.
In 1436, a new Dominican Convent of San Marco was established in Florence in some older monastery buildings.
Fra Angelico was one of the friars from Fiesole who moved to Florence.
This was an important move for Fra Angelico because Florence already had a great number of artists from whom he could learn.
The convent had a very wealthy "patron of the arts" called Cosimo de ' Medici who loved to buy works of art for himself and his favorite churches.
Cosimo took the largest of the friars ' rooms, called cells, at the convent so that he could have a quiet place for religious thought.
Fra Angelico painted a picture showing the Magi at Bethlehem on the wall of Cosimo 's cell.
Cosimo employed Fra Angelico to paint more pictures for the convent.
All the cells for the friars were built upstairs around the sides of a square courtyard with a garden in the middle (called a cloister).
On the wall at the top of the stairs, Fra Angelico painted a fresco of the Angel Gabriel announcing the birth of Jesus to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
This is one of his most famous pictures.
Fra Angelico then began to paint a picture in each of the monk 's cells.
Each cell has large picture with a round top on the wall beside the window.
At least six of these paintings were done be by Fra Angelico, and others were done by artists who copied his style of painting.
These pictures were to help the friars with their prayers.
In 1439, he finished one of his most famous works, which is the altarpiece for San Marco 's Church, which is where the friars worship.
It shows the Madonna and Child on a throne, surrounded by saints from different dates, who are all grouped together as if they were standing in a room in Heaven, talking about holy things.
This type of painting called a "Sacred Conversation" later became very popular, but this is one of the first ones.
In 1445, Pope Eugenius IV sent a message for Fra Angelico to come to Rome to paint the frescoes of the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament at St Peter 's.
The chapel was later demolished by Pope Paul III to make way for the new St. Peter 's Basilica and Fra Angelico 's work was lost.
Vasari says that one of the popes (it might have been Eugenius or Pope Nichoas V) asked Fra Angelico if he would like the very important job of Archbishop of Florence.
But Fra Angelico did not want such a high job and he suggested the name of another friar for the position.
In 1447 Fra Angelico went to the city of Orvieto with his pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, to paint some pictures for the Cathedral there.
One of his other pupils was called Zanobi Strozzi, but he did not become as famous as Benozzo.
From 1447 to 1449, Fra Angelico was back at the Vatican, where Pope Nicholas V had built a small chapel where he could pray privately.
The pictures that Fra Angelico and his pupils painted there are the lives of two young saints St. Stephen and St. Lawrence, who were both "martyrs" (they were killed because of their Christian faith).
The small chapel, with its bright colors and gold leaf decorations is like a jewel box.
From 1449 until 1452, Fra Angelico was back at his old convent of Fiesole, where he was the Prior (the head man).
Fra Angelico 's pupils were probably left in Rome to finish the work on the chapel.
In 1455, Fra Angelico went back to Rome, probably to look at the work in Pope Nicholas ' Chapel.
He died at the Dominican Convent and was buried in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.
Pope John Paul II beatified Fra Angelico on October 3, 1982, making him officially known as the "Blessed Angelico".
In 1984 the pope made him the patron of Catholic artists.
Fra Angelico never wanted to be important, and even though he was so talented he never put himself above other people.
He thought his most important job was caring for others.
He always prayed before he picked up his brushes to paint, and he never made any changes to his pictures later, because he believed that the Holy Spirit was guiding him.
He painted a great number of scenes of the Crucifixion and he would always cry while he was painting them.
: "When you praise me, do n't say that I am a famous painter.
: Instead, say that for love of Jesus, I gave everything that I had to the poor.
: The things that seem to be important on Earth are not the things that are important in Heaven.
: I am Brother John, from Florence, the flower of Tuscany.
Fra Angelico was working at a time when the style of painting was in a state of change.
The changes had begun a hundred years before his time with the works of Giotto.
Fra Angelico would have seen the famous pictures of the "Life of Saint Francis" that Giotto did for the church of Santa Croce in Florence.
In Giotto 's paintings the figures look more real and solid and lifelike than in the pictures of other painters of the 1300s.
Giotto was also very good at painting the emotions on peoples faces and the actions that showed how they were feeling.
His work was a big influence on every artist who saw it.
At the same time, rich patrons like Cosimo de Medici liked to show off their wealth.
They often did this by ordering paintings that had lots of bright color and real gold backgrounds.
The red color called "vermilion" was one of the most expensive.
But the most expensive color was a beautiful blue made by grinding up a semi-precious stone called Lapis lazuli.
This type of painting is called "International Gothic".
Some artists of Fra Angelico 's day were expert at doing paintings that would make very rich people happy.
But other painters, like Masaccio were followers of Giotto and painted in a very plain way.
Fra Angelico was able to paint in both ways.
If the Pope or a rich family wanted an altarpiece or a fresco that had gold and expensive bright colors, then Fra Angelico could do it.
But his most famous paintings have no gold and no bright colors.
They are the simple gentle paintings of the life of Jesus that he did for the friars in their cells at San Marcos.
This gallery shows stories from the life of Jesus.
The square paintings are in tempera.
They are all parts of a big altarpiece and are about 25 cm wide.
The "tondo" (round painting) is a small altarpiece about 1.4 metres wide.
All the paintings with arched tops are frescos and were painted for the Dominican brothers.
Jean Fr d ric Bazille (6 December 1841 28 November 1870) was a French painter.
He was born in Montpellier.
He was killed in action in the Franco-Prussian War.
It was at the Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande in France while leading his unit into a assault on the German position.
He died at the age of 28.
Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS (8 June 1916 28 July 2004) was a British physicist and biologist.
He is one of those who worked out the structure of DNA.
Using X-ray crystallography results from Maurice Wilkins ' biophysics team at King 's College London, Crick and James Watson discovered that DNA has what is called a "double helix structure".
This means that DNA is made of two chains wound round each other to make a spiral.
Only one of the chains carries information, but the two chains together makes the molecule more stable.
DNA is the basis of heredity for almost all forms of life today.
Crick, Watson and Wilkins won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1962.
Their work sparked a huge amount of research in molecular and cell biology and, as a result, many subsequent Nobel awards have been made.
During the mid-to-late 1950s Crick helped sort out the way proteins are synthesized.
In 1958, Crick 's listed all the key features of the protein synthesis process:
The adaptor molecules were eventually shown to be tRNAs and the catalytic "ribonucleic-protein complexes" became known as ribosomes.
An important step was later realization (in 1960) that the messenger RNA was not the same as the ribosomal RNA.
The next fundamental question was the exact nature of the genetic code.
In his 1958 article, Crick speculated, as had others, that a triplet of nucleotides could code for an amino acid.
Crick also used the term "central dogma" to summarize an idea that implies that genetic information flow between macromolecules would be essentially one-way:
In his thinking about the processes linking DNA genes to proteins, Crick made clear the distinction between the materials involved, the energy required, and the information flow.
Crick was focused on this third component (information) and it became the organizing principle of what became known as molecular biology.
In the final phase of his career, Crick and Christof Koch published a series of articles on consciousness (1990 2005).
Crick decided to focus his work on how the brain generates visual awareness within a few hundred milliseconds of viewing a scene.
Crick 's book The Astonishing Hypothesis made the argument that neuroscience now had the tools required to begin a scientific study of how brains produce conscious experiences.
The Francis Crick Institute is a planned 660,000,000 biomedical research center to be in London.
The Francis Crick Institute is a partnership between Cancer Research UK, Imperial College London, King 's College London, the Medical Research Council, University College London (UCL) and the Wellcome Trust.
Once completed in 2015, it will be the biggest center for biomedical research and innovation in Europe.
The Institute will be built next to St Pancras station on the Euston Road.
It will have an annual budget of over 100 million.
The building s vaulted roof is arranged into two shells and will be fitted with solar panels.
A third of the building will be below ground to reduce its visible mass.
A frigate is a warship.
The term has been used for warships of many sizes and roles for a few centuries.
During the age of sail they were small, agile ships that were extensively used in the American War of Independence, and later against the British.
Their main use was shore defense.
In the modern day the term Frigate covers a broad range of ships.
This is primarily for political reasons.
The generally accepted term is of a warship less that 6, 000 dwt and greater that around 2, 000 dwt.
Its primary purpose is usually anti-submarine warfare.
It can also be a long range patrol vessel or in smaller navies an anti-air vessel.
Francisco Franco (Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Te dulo Franco y Bahamonde Salgado Pardo de Andrade, 20 December 1892 20 November 1975) was a Spanish military leader who ruled as dictator of Spain from 1939 until his death.
He was a leader of a coup d' tat against the Spanish Second Republic in 1936.
After this uprising the Spanish Civil War started.
Franco was supported by fascists, big businesses, the church, conservative people and Spanish nationalists.
This was because the Spanish Republic had a socialist government that wanted to make businesses and the church less powerful.
The Republic also set up local parliaments in the regions of Spain.
Spanish nationalists thought this was wrong and would make Spain weak.
Franco remained neutral during World War II as Hitler did not accept his conditions for Spain to take part in it with the fascist and nazi regimes.
He let a group of volunteer soldiers join the German Army to fight the Russians between 1941 and 1943.
They were called the Divisi n Azul (Blue Division)
Franco died in Madrid on November 20, 1975, just after midnight.
Relatives had asked doctors to remove his life support systems.
After Franco 's death, Juan Carlos became king.
Free verse is a term for different styles of poetry that do not rhyme.
Poets who have written in free verse include Rainer Maria Rilke, Saint-John Perse, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, and William Carlos Williams.
Frederik Willem de Klerk is a South African politician.
De Klerk was born in Johannesburg, on 18 March 1936.
He was the president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994.
In 1993, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace with Nelson Mandela.
They were given the prize for peacefully ending apartheid and setting up a new democratic South Africa.
From 1994 to 1996 he was vice president of South Africa.
In 1997, he retired from politics.
In 2004, he left the New National Party, when it became known that it wanted to unite with the African National Congress to form a single party.
De Klerk studied to be an attorney.
He finished his studies in 1958.
As a student, he joined the National Party.
After obtaining his degree, he was their legal counsel, until 1972.
From his first marriage with Marike Willemse he has three children.
Since 1998, he has been married to Elita Georgiades.
A furlong is a unit for measuring distance.
It is part of the Imperial and United States customary systems.
It is equal to 660 feet or 201.168 metres.
There are eight furlongs in a mile.
The English first used the furlong in the 9th century or before.
The word "furlong" comes from Old English words furh ("furrow") and lang ("long").
Originally it was the length of the furrow in one acre of a ploughed field.
An acre is an area that is one furlong long and one chain wide.
For this reason, the furlong was once also called an acre 's length.
Around the year 1300, England standardised the furlong as 40 rods or 660 feet.
The length of the furlong was standardised between South Africa, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and the United States in the International Pound and Yard Agreement.
The Furlong was abolished for official use in the UK in 1985.
However, it is still uncommonly seen on road signs in villages, along with miles and chains.
The same also applies in Burma.
Distances for horse races in the UK, Ireland, the U.S. and Canada are still given in miles and furlongs.
It is also used in the railway industry in the UK.
Otherwise the unit is not used much.
It is considered an archaic unit.
Proverb furlongs per fortnight means to express something in as obscure and little-used units as possible.
(A fortnight is two weeks, or 14 days).
The proverb itself means speed, and is the same as 0.000166309524 m\/s or 0.17 mm\/s.
A fable is a type of story which shows something in life or has a meaning to a word.
A fable is a funny story but may teach a lesson or suggest a moral from it.
A fable starts in the middle of the story, that means, jumps into the main event without detailed introduction of characters.
The characters of a fable may be people, animals, gods, or anything else.
When animals and objects are used in fables, they think and talk like people, even though they act like animals or objects.
For example, in a fable a clay pot might say that it is frightened of being broken.
The stories told by fables are usually very simple.
To understand a fable, the reader or listener does not need to know all about the characters, only one important thing.
For this reason animals are often used in fables in a way that is easily understood because it is always the same.
They keep the same characteristics from story to story.
The most famous fables are those attributed to Aesop (6th century B.C.).
Many fables are so well-known that their morals have become English sayings.
So, if a person sees a beautiful thing that they want, but can not have, sometimes they say "I do n't want it, anyway!
I 'll bet it is really no good!"
This way of thinking is called "sour grapes".
So if a person always makes a great fuss to get attention, or if a person says something bad has happened when it has not, then it is called "crying wolf" and people will stop bothering to pay attention, even when things go really wrong.
Foot is also the name of a unit of measurement.
See foot (unit of length).
A foot (one foot, two or more feet) is a body part on the end of a leg.
We use it when walking, and it is important for balance: it helps us stand straight.
We also use it to kick, in both fighting and sports, football being an example.
People 's hands and feet have the same shape: they both have five digits (the fingers and toes).
Many other animals with backbones also have five digits.
The part of the foot which joins it to the leg is called the heel.
The bottom of the foot is called the sole.
Half the bones in our body are in the foot.
Doctors who work with people 's feet are podiatrists or chiropodists.
Many animals have feet, and there are many different sorts of foot.
The hard foot of an ungulate is a hoof.
When an animal has soft feet, or feet with soft parts on the underside, we often call it a paw.
In many societies, people like to cover the foot when they are with others, especially outside.
In many cultures (for example North American, European, Japanese and others) people wear clothing over the foot to keep it safe.
This footwear has special names, for example sandals, shoes, and boots.
When people always wear footwear, especially in hot places or when they are very active, their feet can smell badly (foot odour).
If footwear is too big or small, it can be bad for the feet when the person wears the shoe because it can cause long term damage.
People who have foot, leg, and back problems can also get help from special shoes.
People have different traditions in different parts of the world for when to wear footwear.
For example, in much of Europe and Canada, people usually do not wear their shoes or boots in a home or visiting.
In the United States people often wear shoes inside a home.
In Japan, people do not wear shoes in homes, and floors are often made of very soft materials, too soft for shoes.
In cultures where people always wear shoes, people sometimes think it is bad not to wear them.
Not wearing shoes can be good for the feet, especially for children 's feet.
Conditions like Athlete 's foot affect the feet, causing the feet to feel dry and cracked.
In a human foot, there are 26 bones.
They are made up of 14 phalanges (toes), 5 metatarsals (sole bones) and 7 tarsals (ankle bones).
Fandom (from the noun fan and the affix - dom, as in kingdom, dukedom, etc.) or fanbase is a name used for a group of people (called "fans") who are interested in something.
A fandom can be about any interest or activity.
Fandoms can be for example about hobbies, genres or fashions, book or movie series, or even individual celebrities.
Fort Collins is a city in the U.S. state of Colorado.
It is near the Cache la Poudre River and home of Colorado State University.
Vice Admiral Sir Francis Drake (1540 27 January 1596) was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era.
Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581.
He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588.
He also carried out the second circumnavigation of the world, from 1577 to 1580, during which he attacked towns of the Spanish Empire.
He died of dysentery in January 1596 after unsuccessfully attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico.
His exploits were legendary.
He was a hero to the English but a pirate to the Spaniards.
King Philip II was reported to have offered a reward of 20,000 ducats, about 4,000,000 (US$ 6.5 M) by modern standards, for his life.
The Falklands War was a war between the United Kingdom and Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982.
The Falkland Islands are 480 kilometres from Argentina in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
Argentina and the United Kingdom have both argued over which country the Falklands Islands belongs to since the 1800s.
In the 1760s and 1770s, the British set up a town at Port Egmont, which nearly led to a war with Spain who had a town at Port Louis.
Then Argentina became a separate country from Spain in 1817 and set up a colony on the islands in 1820.
An American warship later destroyed this town, and the British took the islands again in 1833.
The British kept the islands until Argentinian Special Forces invaded on April 2, 1982 and took control of the island.
The United Nations Security Council asked Argentina to withdraw, and tried to end the crisis with diplomacy.
After seven weeks, Argentina did not withdraw, so the United Kingdom sent their military to attack.
After a short battle in the air and at sea, the British landed on May 21 and fought on land until Argentina 's army surrendered on June 14.
The British captured 11,313 soldiers, and killed about 650.
Almost half of these Argentinians deaths were when the warship ARA General Belgrano was sunk by the British submarine HMS Conqueror.
In total there were 258 British deaths.
Fahrenheit (more precisely, a degree Fahrenheit) is a unit of measurement used to measure temperature.
The conversion rate to Celsius is C = 5\/9 x (F 32).
The degree Fahrenheit is abbreviated F.
This temperature scale was made in 1724 by a German scientist named Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit.
In the twentieth century, the unit declined in favor for the degree Celsius.
It is still used often in the United States.
In the United Kingdom, Fahrenheit is encountered on some websites, as well as some weather forecasts; the main reason for this is because some of the older population are more familiar with Fahrenheit.
The use of the degree Fahrenheit is in decline throughout the majority of the world with the USA being the main exception.
The degree Fahrenheit is often considered to be "old fashioned" throughout the majority of the world as it is an older and outdated way of measuring temperature.
The degree Celsius has largely replaced Fahrenheit 's use as it is generally easier to use.
On the Fahrenheit scale, water freezes at 32 and boils at 212.
Florence (Italian: Firenze) is the capital city of the region of Tuscany (Toscana), in Italy.
From 1865 to 1870 the city was also the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.
Florence is on the Arno River.
The city has a population of around 400,000 people, and a suburban population of over 2,000,000 persons.
The greater area has some 956,000 people.
The city was a center of medieval European trade and finance.
It is often considered the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance and was long ruled by the Medici family.
Florence is also famous for its fine art and architecture.
It is said that, of the 1,000 most important European artists of the second millennium, 350 lived or worked in Florence.
The football team of Florence is the Fiorentina.
The food of Florence is based more on peasant eating rather than expensive cooking.
Most of foods are based on meat.
The whole animal was usually eaten.
Many kinds of tripe, (trippa) and (lampredotto) were commonly served.
They are still sold at the food carts in the city.
Antipasti include crostini toscani, sliced bread topped with a chicken liver-based p t.
Also common are sliced meats (mainly prosciutto and salami).
They are often served with melon when it is in season.
Tuscan bread has no salt or butter.
It is used often in Florentine meals.
It is very common in the local soups, ribollita and pappa al pomodoro, Both soups are usually served with local olive oil.
The bread is also used in the salad of bread and fresh vegetables called panzanella that is served in summer.
The most famous main course is the bistecca alla fiorentina.
It is a huge steak of Chianina beef that is cooked over hot charcoal.
It is served very rare with the tagliata, sliced rare beef served on a bed of arugula, often with slices of parmesan cheese on top.
Florence has a mixed Mediterranean climate and humid subtropical climate, with hot and humid summers and cool and damp winters.
Florence is especially hot from June to August (surrounded by hills in a valley cut by the Arno river).
Summer temperatures are higher than those along coastlines.
Winter has some snow.
A fermion is a category of elementary particles.
They are very small and very light.
Fermions can be thought of as the building blocks of matter because atoms are made up of fermions.
Paul Dirac named them fermions in honor of a famous scientist called Enrico Fermi.
An electron (a charged particle) is a fermion, but a photon (the particle of electromagnetic radiation) is not.
The spin numbers of fermions are 1\/2, 3\/2, 5\/2, etc..
Because their spin is not a whole number they follow the Pauli exclusion principle: no two fermions can share a quantum state (which includes position in space), if they have the same quantum numbers, such as spin.
In other words, fermions can collide with each other.
This behavior is not in the other class of elementary particles called bosons: you can have many bosons, for example photons, in the same place at the same time.
The motion of fermions follows the Fermi-Dirac statistics.
Most well known fermions have spin of 1\/2.
An example of a type of fermion with a spin of 1\/2 is the electron.
The electron belongs to a group of fermions called leptons.
Fundamental fermions (fermions that are not made up of anything else) are either quarks or leptons.
There are 6 different types of quarks (called "flavors") and 6 different types of leptons.
These are their names:
Each of these fermions also has an anti-particle associated with it, so there are a total of 24 different fundamental fermions.
The anti-particle is similar to the original particle, but with opposite electrical charge.
The "up", "charm", and "top" quarks have electrical charge of +2 \/ 3.
Their anti-particles have charge -2 \/ 3 (anti-up, anti-charm, anti-top).
The other three quarks (down, strange and bottom) have charge -1 \/ 3, and their anti-particles have charge +1 \/ 3.
The electron, muon, and tau leptons all have charge of -1, and their anti-particles (anti-electron or "positron", anti-muon, anti-tau) have charge +1.
All the neutrinos and anti-neutrinos have charge 0.
The main difference between quarks or leptons with the same charge is their mass.
The supersymmetric counterpart of any fermion is called a "sfermion."
Frederick Aaron Savage (born July 9, 1976) is an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award-nominated American actor and television director.
He is best known for his role as Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years.
Fianna F il is an Irish political party.
It was founded in 1926 by amon DeValera.
Its leader is Mich al Martin.
It is a faction of the Sinn Fein, another Irish political party alongside the Fine Gael.
Its name is translated from Irish as ` Soldiers of Destiny ' but literally means ` Warriors of F l' (F l was the name of Ireland in legends).
Fianna F il does not support the Anglo-Irish treaty, unlike the Fine Gael.
There have been eight leaders of the Fianna F il since its creation in 1926.
They are:
The Youth Wing of Fianna F il is the gra Fianna F il, which was created in 1975 to get younger people to vote and support the party.
Federalism is a political philosophy in which a group of people are bound together, with a governing head.
In federalism, the authority is divided between the head (for example the central government of a country) and the political units governed by it (for example the states or provinces of the country).
Currently, several countries in the world have a federal government; examples are United States of America, Canada, Switzerland and Austria.
The European Union can be called a sort of federal government as well.
In the United States Constitution for example, the federal government and state governments both have power.
When states and the federal government do not agree on something, the Supreme Court can decide who is right.
Firmin Abauzit (1679 1767) was a French scientist who is well known because he read and corrected Issac Newtons work on gravity.
King of England William III asked Abauzit if he would like to stay in England, but he declined and returned to Geneva, where he took a role as Librarian.
He lived in Geneva for the next 40 years until his death at age 87 in 1767.
Feedback is when the effect of a process (or things that come out of it) have a connection to its cause (or things that go in to it).
Sometimes, output from an electronic source affects future input.
This can form what is called a "feedback loop".
In some cases the output reinforces the input, making it stronger; this is called "self-reinforcing", "positive", "runaway" or "amplifying".
In other cases, the output blocks or stops some of the input; this is called a negative feedback loop.
Think about a sound system with input from a microphone and output to a loudspeaker.
If the sound coming out of the loudspeaker is heard by the microphone, a loop is created, from speaker, to the microphone, through the cord, and back into the speaker.
The loop is made up of sound and the electrical energy that the microphone and loudspeaker use to create that sound.
If nothing stops the sound and electricity in the loop, it will travel faster and faster, which is why feedback starts out as a low hum and turns into a high squeal very quickly
This is an example of a positive feedback loop: the output reinforces the input; it makes the input stronger.
Think about two mirrors that face each other.
The mirrors reflect each other infinitely, or forever, but in each reflection, the image in the mirror is slightly smaller than the image it reflects.
The images get smaller and smaller until they are no longer visible.
This is an example of a negative feedback loop: the output (the relfection) reduces the input; it makes the input smaller.
Warm temperature caused a glacier to melt.
As the glacier melts, areas that were at one time covered by snow and ice are now water or land.
Because snow and ice reflect heat but water and land absorb heat, this causes the glacier to melt faster as more snow and ice is melted.
This is not a feedback loop; it is a feedforward loop which accelerates the process.
American mathematician Norbert Wiener made feedback loops more well known in 1948 in his book Cybernetics.
Cybernetics is the study of feedback loops and their role in communication and control.
Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation.
First the substance absorbs the energy, then it emits light.
It is a form of luminescence.
In most cases, the emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore lower energy, than the absorbed radiation.
The most striking examples of fluorescence occur when the absorbed radiation is in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum, invisible to the human eye, and the emitted light is in the visible region.
Fluorescence has many practical applications in mineralogy, gemology, chemical sensors (fluorescence spectroscopy), fluorescent labeling, dyes, biological detectors, and, most commonly, fluorescent lamps.
Fluorescence in the life sciences is a non-destructive way of tracking biological molecules.
A protein or other component can be labeled with a fluorescent dye.
This is often used in biological applications.
The Fundamental theorem of arithmethic (also called the unique factorization theorem) is a theorem of number theory.
The theorem says that every positive integer greater than 1 can be written as a product of prime numbers (or the integer is itself a prime number).
The theorem also says that there is only one way to write the number.
If two people found two different ways to write the number, the only thing that can be different is the order in which the primes are written.
For example, we can write:
and if somebody else finds another way to write 6936 or 1200 as product of prime numbers, we can put those prime numbers in the right order and find out that it is the same as what we have here.
Finding the prime numbers is called factorization.
This theorem can be used in cryptography.
The first person who proved the theorem was Euclid.
The first detailed and correct proof was in the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae by Carl Friedrich Gau.
Some people may think that the theorem is true everywhere.
However, the theorem is not true in more general number systems, like algebraic integers.
This was first mentioned by Ernst Kummer in 1843, in his work on Fermat 's last theorem.
For more information about that: read algebraic number theory.
The proof consists of two parts: first we show that every number can be written as a product of primes; second we show that if we write a number as a product of primes for a second time, then the two lists of prime numbers must be the same.
We show that if not every number greater than 1 can be written as a product of primes, we end up in some kind of impossibility.
So after that we conclude that it must be true that every number can be written as a product of primes.
So, now see what happens when somebody says that he knows a positive integer, greater than 1, which can not be written as a product of primes.
In that case we ask him to mention all the numbers, greater than 1, that can not be written as a product of primes.
One of these numbers must be the smallest: let 's call it n. Of course, this number n can not be 1.
Further, it can not be a prime number, because a prime number is a ` product ' of a single prime: itself.
So it must be a product of numbers.
Thus
where both a and b are positive integers that are of course smaller than n. But: n was the smallest number that can not be written as a product of primes.
So it must be possible to write a and b as products of primes, because they are both smaller than n. But then the product
can be written as a product of primes as well.
This is an impossibility because we said that n can not be written as a product of primes.
We have now shown the impossibility which exists if the first part of the theorem would not be true.
In this way we have now proven the first part of the theorem.
Now we have to prove that there is only one way to write a positive number greater than 1 as a product of prime numbers.
To do this, we use the following lemma: if a prime number p divides a product ab, then it divides a or it divides b (Euclid 's lemma).
First we now prove this lemma.
Well, assume now that p does not divide a. Then p and a are coprime and we have Bezout 's identity that says that there must be integers x and y such that
px + ay = 1.
On the left-hand side we have now two terms that are divisible by p. So the term on the right-hand side is also divisible by p. We have now proven that if p does not divide a, it must divide b. That proves the lemma.
Now we will prove that we can write an integer greater than 1 in only one way as a product of prime numbers.
Take two products of primes A and B which have the same outcome.
So we know for the outcome of the products that A = B. Take any prime p from the first product A. It divides the A, so it also divides B. Using several times the lemma that we just proved, we can see that p must then divide at least one factor b of B. But the factors are all primes themselves, so also b is prime.
But we know that p is also prime, so p must be equal to b. So now we divide A by p and also divide B by p. And we get a result like A \* = B \*.
Again we can take a prime p from the first product A \* and find out that is equal to some number in the product B \*.
Continuing in this way, at the end we see that the prime factors of the two products must be exactly the same.
This proves that we can write a positive integer as a product of primes in only one unique way.
Flamenco is a style of entertainment with song, music and dance.
it is very popular in Spain and is known worldwide.
Its foundation is in Andalusia in Spain.
In its evolution Andalusian Gypsies played an important part.
The term ` flamenco ' was first recorded in the late 18th century but many believe the art form is much older.
Flamenco has acoustic guitar music, singing, hand claps, heel stamps, castanets.
It is danced by a man and a woman in traditional Spanish costumes.
The dance has no set tempo.
It may have both fast and slow passages, rising to a climax near the end.
Flamenco performance has evolved during the history of this musical genre.
In the beginning (the 18th century at the latest), songs were sung without any guitar accompaniment.
During the 19th century, the guitar was used to accompany songs.
Since the second half of the 19th century, the solo guitar is played in flamenco concerts.
On November 16, 2010, UNESCO declared Flamenco one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Father Christmas is the British name for Santa Claus.
The name was used in songs such as "I Believe in Father Christmas" by Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
Enrico Fermi 's paradox wonders why, given the age and size of the universe and that there are billions of stars and planets that have existed for billions of years, we have not detected any other alien civilizations.
There have been attempts to resolve the Fermi paradox by finding evidence of alien civilizations, along with thoughts that such life could exist without humans knowing.
The physicist Enrico Fermi first asked the question in an informal discussion in 1950.
A paper by Michael H. Hart in 1975 made scientists more curious and they began to study the question in more detail.
This is why some people call it the Fermi Hart paradox.
Other common names for the same phenomenon are Fermi 's question ("Where are they?")
, the Fermi Problem, the Great Silence, and silentium universi (Latin for "the silence of the universe"; the misspelling silencium universi is also common).
Fundamentalism was used at first to describe some people in the Protestant community in the United States in the early 20th century.
These people had a set of well-defined ("fundamental") values.
These values were in opposition to more modern ideas.
The group also said it was important to stick to what faith (the Bible) told them.
When people look at religion this way they see the ideas in the religion as absolute.
This means that it is not possible for them to change.
When religion is seen as absolute it becomes fundamentalism.
Today, the term is used more generally.
It is now often used to describe groups of people who will stick to their (mostly moral, and religious) values even though these values may be criticised by many people.
These values may also be unpopular.
Modern-day fundamentalists want to go back to the roots of certain ideological or religious positions.
Religious fundamentalism has been prevalent in society since its beginnings in the late 19th - and early 20th-century.
People today who study fundamentalism see it as a response to modern society.
Today society is not as simple as it was: many people live in societies that can be difficult to understand.
Changes in familiar things can make people feel unsafe.
So some people look in their religion to see something that does not change.
They also want rules about how to act that do not change.
So they see their religion as this thing that does not change.
Some people who are called religious fundamentalists do not like that name, as the term has other meanings.
They do not like it because ` religious fundamentalist ' has some negative ideas about it.
Many people who are politically progressive or liberal sometimes do not like religious fundamentalists.
They believe bad things about them like that they are not clever, they are not educated, or that they do not respect people 's human rights.
Some people who are Christian fundamentalists do like that term and use it to name themselves.
But they do not like being called religious fundamentalists because Islamic fundamentalists are in this same group.
Fundamentalism began as a movement in the U.S., starting among conservative Presbyterian academics and theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary in the first decade of the Twentieth Century.
It soon spread to conservatives among the Baptists and other denominations during and immediately following the First World War.
The movement 's purpose was to reaffirm orthodox Protestant Christianity and zealously defend it against the challenges of liberal theology, German higher criticism, Darwinism, and other movements which it regarded as harmful to Christianity.
The term "fundamentalism" has its roots in the Niagara Bible Conference (1878 1897) which defined those things that were fundamental to Christian belief.
The term was also used to describe "The Fundamentals", a collection of twelve books on five subjects published in 1910 and funded by Milton and Lyman Stewart
Not all religious fundamentalists believe the same things.
But there are many issues that they have strong beliefs about.
Some of these issues are similar even in different religions.
Some of these issues are:
Many criticisms of fundamentalist positions have been offered.
One of the most common is that some claims made by a fundamentalist group can not be proven, and are irrational, demonstrably false, or contrary to scientific evidence.
For example, some of these criticisms were famously asserted by Clarence Darrow in the Scopes Monkey Trial.
Furthermore, human beings are the ones who transmit this understanding between generations.
Even if one wanted to follow the literal word of God, the need for people first to understand that word (requires) human interpretation.
Through that process human fallibility is inextricably mixed into the very meaning of the divine word.
As a result, it is impossible to follow the indisputable word of God; one can only achieve a human understanding of God 's will.
Freeware is software that people may get without paying for it.
It is not to be mixed up with free software.
Freeware may be free in price, but the users might not be allowed to share the software or source code with others.
The idea of a flat Earth is that the surface of the Earth is flat (a plane).
Belief in a flat Earth is found in the oldest writings.
Early Mesopotamian maps showed the world as a flat disk floating in the ocean.
This was a common belief until the Classical Greeks began to discuss the Earth 's shape about the 4th century BC.
Eratosthenes (276 BC 194 BC) calculated the circumference of the Earth quite well.
From then on, few educated people ever believed in its being flat.
People first started having the thought that the Earth is round in around 6th century BC.
Then, Aristotle proved the Earth was round in around 330 BC.
The large-scale shape of the Earth only matters when considering large distances.
Therefore in the Ancient world only sailors, astronomers, philosophers, and theologians would have cared about the Earth 's large-scale shape.
Portuguese people explored Africa and Asia, Columbus sailed to the Americas (1492) and Ferdinand Magellan 's circumnavigated (sailed all round) the earth (1519-21).
This proved finally, in a practical way that the earth is a globe.
During the 19th century, the Romantic ideas about a European "Dark Age" made the Flat Earth model look much more important than it ever had been in history.
The widely circulated woodcut is of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat Earth to see the machines working the spheres.
It was made in 16th century style but can not be traced to an earlier time than Camille Flammarion 's L'Atmosph re: M t orologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163).
The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a missionary in the middle Ages claimed that "he reached the horizon where the Earth and the heavens met".
That story may be traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known source in the Middle ages.
The original woodcut had a decorative border that places it in the 19th century; in later publications, some claimed that the woodcut dated from the 16th century and the border was removed.
According to an unproved story Flammarion ordered the woodcut himself; certainly no source of the image earlier than Flammarion 's book is known.
An early mention in literature was Ludvig Holberg 's comedy Erasmus Montanus (1723).
A great many people disagree with Erasmus Montanus when he claims the Earth is round, since all the peasants believe it is flat.
He is not allowed to marry his fianc e until he cries "The earth is flat as a pancake".
In Rudyard Kipling 's The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat, the main characters spread the rumor that a Parish Council meeting had voted in favor of a flat Earth.
Fantasy fiction often imagines a flat Earth.
In C. S. Lewis ' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader the fictional world of Narnia is "round like a table" (i.e., flat), not "round like a ball", and the characters sail toward the edge of this world.
Terry Pratchett 's Strata and Discworld novels (1983 onwards) are set on a flat, disc-shaped world resting on the backs of four huge elephants which are in turn standing on the back of an enormous turtle.
Persian is the official language of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
It is also spoken by many people in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, immigrants from Central Asia in Russia, and in other neighbouring countries.
Persian was also taught as a second language in schools in Pakistan until 2006.
In the past, many of these places were parts of the Persian Empire.
Persian has many dialects.
The Persian language is officially called Farsi in Iran, Dari and Farsi in Afghanistan, and Tajiki in Tajikistan.
The literary language of each of these countries is a little different, but people from each country can understand each other when they have a conversation.
It has taken on many French words in Iran, and many Russian words in Tajikstan.
The Persian alphabet used in Iran and Afghanistan is very similar to the Arabic one, but the language is in a different family than Arabic, so their vocabulary and grammar are very different.
Since the 1930 's, in the countries which used to be in the Soviet Union, like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Persian has been written in an alphabet that is similar to the Russian one.
In the past, all Persian speakers used the one based on Arabic.
Persian is a very old language, and linguists have names for three different versions of Persian that were used in three different times.
Old Persian was spoken in the first Persian empire, under the Achaemenid kings, including Cyrus and Darius the Great.
This first empire started in the 6th century BC and continued until Alexander the Great conquered it.
A second Persian empire, the Sassanian kings, ruled from the 2nd century AD until the Muslim conquest of Iran by the Arabs in the 7th Century, and Middle Persian, or Pahlavi, was spoken by them.
The current Persian language, New or Modern Persian, was first written down in the 9th century during the Samanid empire, which was the first Muslim Persian kingdom, and was based in Central Asia.
The earliest writers of New Persian included poets like Rudaki, and Ferdowsi, who wrote an epic called the Shahname, translated as the Book of Kings in English.
It is a very long poem, which has myths and historical stories from before the Arabs conquered Persia.
Many other famous writers in the Persian language were poets too, such as Saadi, Hafez, Rumi, and many more.
Up until today, the Persian language was a very important one for literature.
After Arabic, it was the second most used language for writing in Muslim countries, especially in the East.
Franchising is a business method that involves the licensing of trademarks and methods of doing business.
That can be chain stores, which are retail outlets which share a brand and central management, but also an exclusive right to sell branded merchandise.
A similar case is a media franchise, the ownership of the characters and setting of a movie, video game, book, or toys etc., particularly in North American usage.
Examples include Pok mon, Harry Potter, or Barbie.
A Feynman diagram is a diagram that shows what happens when elementary particles collide.
Feynman diagrams are used in quantum mechanics.
A Feynman diagram has lines in different shapes straight, dotted, and squiggly which meet up at points called vertices.
The vertices are where the lines begin and end.
The points in Feynman diagrams where the lines meet represent two or more particles that happen to be at the same point in space at the same time.
The lines in a Feynman diagram represent the probability amplitude for a particle to go from one place to another.
In Feynman diagrams, the particles are allowed to go both forward and backward in time.
When a particle is going backward in time, it is called an antiparticle.
The meeting points for the lines can also be interpreted forward or backwards in time, so that if a particle disappears into a meeting point, that means that the particle was either created or destroyed, depending on the direction in time that the particle came in from.
All the lines and vertices have an amplitude.
When you multiply the probability amplitude for the lines, the amplitude for the particles to go from wherever they start to wherever they meet, and to the next meeting point, and so on, and also multiply by the amplitude for each meeting point, you get a number that tells you the total amplitude for the particles to do what the diagram says they do.
If you add up all these probability amplitudes over all the possible meeting points, and over all the starting and ending points with an appropriate weight, you get the total probability amplitude for a collision in a particle accelerator, which tells you the total probability of these particles to bounce off one another in any particular direction.
Feynman diagrams are named after Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
His diagrams are very simple in the case of quantum electrodynamics (QED), where there are only two kinds of particles, electrons (little particles inside atoms) and photons (particles of light).
In QED, the only thing that can happen is that an electron (or its antiparticle) can emit (or absorb) a photon, so there is only one building block for any collision.
The probability amplitude for the emission is very simple it has no real part, and the imaginary part is the charge of the electron.
Even though some people argue with it, folk dancing can be dancing for with no governing body or dancing for which there are no competitive or professional performances.
Sword dances include Longsword dances and rapier dancing.
Some choreographed dances such as contra dance, Scottish country dance, and modern Western square dance, are called folk dances, though this is not true in the strictest sense.
Country dance overlaps with contemporary folk dance and ballroom dance.
Most country dances and ballroom dances are from folk dances, with small changes over the years.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821 9 February 1881) was a Russian novelist.
In his 20s he joined a group of radicals in St Petersburg They were into French socialist ideas.
A police agent reported the group to the authorities.
On 22 April 1849, Dostoyevsky was arrested and imprisoned with the other members.
After months of questioning and investigation they were tried.
They were found guilty of planning to distribute subversive propaganda and condemned to death by firing squad.
The punishment was changed to a sentence of exile and hard labor, but not before they were forced to go through a mock execution.
In 1859 a new tsar allowed Dostoyevsky to end his Siberian exile.
A year later he was back in St Petersburg.
The experience had cost him ten years of his life.
It is the root of all his writing.
"Dostoyevsky 's experience had altered him profoundly... He was particularly scornful of the ideas he found in St Petersburg when he returned from his decade of Siberian exile.
The new generation of Russian intellectuals was gripped by European theories and philosophies (which) were melded together into a peculiarly Russian combination that came to be called ` nihilism '".
Raised in an educated and religious family, Dostoyevsky 's beliefs changed through his life.
In prison, he focused intensely on the figure of Christ and on the New Testament, the only book allowed in prison.
In a letter to the woman who had sent him the New Testament, Dostoyevsky wrote that he was a "child of unbelief and doubt up to this moment, and I am certain that I shall remain so to the grave".
He also wrote that "even if someone were to prove to me that the truth lay outside Christ, I should choose to remain with Christ rather than with the truth".
From an analysis of religious ideas in Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov, James Townsend thinks Dostoyevsky held orthodox Christian beliefs except for his view of salvation from sin.
According to Townsend, "Dostoevsky almost seemed to embrace an in-this-life purgatory", in which people suffer to pay for their sins, rather than the Christian doctrine of salvation through Christ.
Malcolm Jones sees elements of Islam and Buddhism in Dostoyevsky 's religious convictions.
Colin Wilson in The Outsider describes him as a "tormented half-atheist-half-Christian".
Many scholars see Dostoyevsky as one of the greatest psychologists in literature.
His works have had a big effect on twentieth-century fiction.
Very often, he wrote about characters who live in poor conditions.
Those characters are sometimes in extreme states of mind.
They might show both a strange grasp of human psychology as well as good analyses of the political, social and spiritual states of Russia of Dostoevsky 's time.
Many of his best-known works are prophetic.
He is sometimes considered to be a founder of existentialism, most frequently for Notes from Underground, which has been described as "the best overture for existentialism ever written".
He is also famous for writing The Brothers Karamazov, which many critics, such as Sigmund Freud, have said was one of the best novels ever written.
His attack on nihilism is in his great novel Demons, or The Possessed.
Published in 1872, it is a "dark comedy, cruelly funny in its depiction of high-minded intellectuals toying with revolutionary notions without understanding anything of what revolution means in practice".
The plot is a version of actual events at the time.
A former teacher of divinity turned terrorist, Sergei Nechaev, had written a pamphlet, The Catechism of a Revolutionary, which argued that any means (including blackmail and murder) could be used to advance the cause of revolution.
Nechaev planned to kill a student who questioned his ideas.
One of the characters in Demons confesses: "I got entangled in my own data, and my conclusion contradicts the original idea from which I start.
From unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism".
This suggests that the result of abandoning morality for the sake of an idea will be tyranny more extreme than any in the past.
English versions of titles come after the Russian title.
The last five stories (1873-1877) are included in A Writer 's Diary.
Fritz Lang (5 December 1890 2 August 1976) was a Austrian director, screenwriter, and movie producer.
His movies include Metropolis and M. He is one of the most famous German expressionist filmmakers.
Lang was born in Vienna.
He died in Beverly Hills, California.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or USFDA) is a United States government agency that protects and promotes public health, by regulating food safety, tobacco, prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs, vaccines, and cosmetics.
The FDA enforces federal laws along with other agencies, such as the DEA.
The agency was made in 1906, and is led by the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, currently Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg.
Saint Francis of Assisi (September 26, 1181 October 3, 1226) is a Christian Saint.
He is the founder of the Franciscan Order and patron saint of animals, the environment, merchants, Italy and Catholic Action.
He was born in Assisi in Italy where a large basilica was built in his honor.
On his feast day, October 4, many churches have a ceremony for people to bring their pets and working animals to church.
Saint Francis was born to Pietro Bernardone, a wealthy cloth merchant, and his wife Pica.
He was originally named Giovanni Francesco Bernardone.
In his youth, he was first interested by French troubadors, known as wanderers who improvised songs on a stringed instrument.
He later planned a career in military.
When he was serving in the war between Assisi and Perugia in 1202, at the battle of Ponte Saint Giovanni, he was captured and imprisoned for a year.
During this time he had a conversion experience, including a reported message from Christ calling him to leave this worldly life.
When Francis was released, He began taking his Christianity faith seriously.
He acted as the Gospels was his laws and how he would act towards people; Jesus Christ as a literal example for loving one another.
He dressed in rough clothes, ask and begged for his sustenance, and preached purity and peace.
His family disapproved, and his father disinherited him; Francis formally renounced his wealth and inheritance.
After that Francis started visiting hospitals and caring for the sick.
In 1229 Francis started to attract followers, and with a blessing from the pope, he founded the Franciscans based on a simple statement by Jesus: Leave all and follow me.
The F-16 Fighting Falcon (also called the Viper) is an American light fighter.
It is made to do many things, including destroying things on the ground and in the air.
It can carry air missiles, ground missiles, and bombs.
It first flew in 1974, and was introduced in service in 1978.
It is still in the American air force and many other airforces, and has been upgraded many times since it was first used.
The Fighting Falcon was built as a fighter aircraft that would fight other aircraft in the air.
It could turn very quickly, so it could get behind the enemy aircraft and shoot it down with missiles and guns.
Over time, the aircraft proved so good that it was also made to carry bombs that it could drop to destroy things on the ground.
Today, the most advanced Fighting Falcons have a lot of lumps and bumps in which all the upgraded and added electronics are housed.
What started as a cheap light-weight fighter aircraft is today a true multi-role aircraft.
Friedrich August von Hayek, CH (8 May 1899 23 March 1992) was an Austrian-British economist and political philosopher.
He became known because he strongly defended liberalism and free-market capitalism.
He was against too much central control of the economy and society.
He thought that forms of government like socialism were not good for the economy, and damaged freedom of the individual.
Hayek 's signature work, The Road to Serfdom, refers to the consequences of socialism.
He was one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the 20th century.
He was one of the most important members of the Austrian School of economics.
He also had many ideas in the fields of jurisprudence and cognitive science.
He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with his rival Gunnar Myrdal.
The award was for their work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations; also for their analysis of the inter-dependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.
He also received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.
He is thought to be one of the major causes of change from the Keynesian policies of the first part of the 20th century.
Instead of governments handling the details of the economy, they went back towards classical liberalism in the 1980s and later.
This happened most clearly in the 1980s in the U.S.A. (under Ronald Reagan and the U.K. (under Margaret Thatcher).
: Volume I. Rules and order, 1973.
ISBN 978-0-226-32086-1: Volume II.
The mirage of social justice, 1976.
ISBN 978-0-226-32083-0: Volume III.
The political order of a free people, 1979.
ISBN 978-0-226-32090-8
Frederick Phillips Brooks, Jr. (born April 19, 1931) is an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist.
He is best known for managing the development of IBM 's System\/360 family of computers and the OS\/360 software support package, then later writing candidly about the process in his seminal book The Mythical Man-Month.
Brooks has received many awards, including the National Medal of Technology in 1985 and the Turing Award in 1999.
Brooks was born in Durham, North Carolina.
He studied Duke University, graduating in 1953 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, and he received a Ph. D. in Applied Mathematics (Computer Science) from Harvard University in 1956, supervised by Howard Aiken.
Factoid is stating a fact that is not backed up by evidence.
The factoid may not be trusted because (a) it is actually false, or (b) because evidence to support it can not be checked.
Factoids become widely treated as if they were true.
In 1973, the term factoid was created and first used by Norman Mailer.
A factoid is "an item of unreliable information which is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as a fact".
The most important thing is that the factoid is widely believed.
A factoid refers to something that looks like a fact, could be a fact, but in fact is not a fact.
The term can also be used to describe partial information without context.
Fashion mostly refers to the style of clothing worn at a particular time.
Clothing at its most basic is to keep us warm, but it serves many other functions.
It needs to fit the customs and norms of society.
Clothing needs to be accepted as more or less ` normal '.
It needs, for instance, to preserve decency.
Fashion can also mean a style of language or behavior.
Fashions are a kind of nonverbal communication.
They communicate something, but exactly what is something of a mystery.
Often what they express is membership of a particular group.
Fashions are like trends.
They change more quickly than the entire culture.
The term ` fashion ' is often used a synonym for glamour and style.
Sometimes the term is used in a negative sense, to mean a ` fad '.
There are fashions in many types of human activity and ways of thinking.
There are fashions in architecture (the way people build houses) and interior design (the way people decorate inside their houses).
There are fashions for clothing.
There are fashions for dance and music, and for the way people speak.
There are fashions for ideas.
Fashion is more than just a designer 's whim.
Fashion is a reflection of a given time, socially, politically, economically, and artistically.
The changing styles show just as much about history and the time period as any history book.
It reflects on what people think, what they valued and how they lived.
Fashion is a statement, a way of living.
Fashion is used in different ways such as clothing, culture, religions etc..
Clothes are not just for keeping warm!
Fashion is a way to express one 's self.
Many teenagers show their ideas and opinions by the way they look.
They may want to look unique and individual, often to be a member of a group which looks unique.
Fashion is superficial (on the surface) but as the outside of a person is the only bit that other people see, what they wear is meaningful.
It helps people to make their first opinion of you and can influence the opinions and ideas of other people.
Fashion has changed over the years, long dresses, miniskirts, and bell bottoms are examples of clothing items that were once in style.
Clothing fashions that keep coming back in style are known as classics.
Khaki pants, polo shirts, and simple dresses are all examples of classics.
Eye makeup, Jewellery, hair styles, hats and shoes can all work together to create a fashion image, a total effect.
Fourier analysis is a branch of analysis that looks at how more complex functions can be built with simpler ones.
It is also known as classical harmonic analysis.
It is named after Joseph Fourier who first used it in the 19th century.
The process itself is called Fourier transform.
Fourier analysis is widely used in fields such as physics, partial differential equations, number theory, combinatorics, signal processing, imaging, probability theory, statistics, option pricing, cryptography, numerical analysis, acoustics, oceanography, sonar, optics, diffraction, geometry and protein structure analysis.
Fat Man is the name of the third ever atomic bomb and the second to be used in war.
It was dropped over the Japanese island of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
The term Far East means countries of East Asia.
It became used in the English language during the period of the British Empire for lands to the east of British India.
Before World War I, the Near East meant relatively nearby lands of the Ottoman Empire, Middle East northwestern South Asia and Central Asia, and Far East countries along the western Pacific Ocean and countries along the eastern Indian Ocean.
Many European languages have analogous terms, such as the French ', Spanish ', Portuguese ', German ', Italian ', and Dutch '.
Far East is never used for the culturally Western nations of Australia and New Zealand, which lie even farther to the east of Europe than much of East Asia.
Fawlty Towers is a British television sitcom.
It was broadcast by the BBC in two series, one in 1975, the other in 1979.
Only twelve episodes were ever broadcast.
However the show is still very popular with people.
Fawlty Towers has influenced other comedies.
It is set in a hotel in the coastal Devon town of Torquay.
The owners of the hotel are Basil Fawlty (played by John Cleese) and his wife Sybil (Prunella Scales).
They are helped by Polly, a young British maid (Connie Booth) and Manuel, a clumsy waiter from Barcelona in Spain (Andrew Sachs).
In later episodes (from series two onwards) there is also a chef, Terry (Brian Hall).
Basil is a rude, angry man, who fought in the Korean War.
He has been married to Sybil for fifteen years.
Sybil and Basil do not love each other.
Polly has a talent for painting, and this is shown in some episodes when her artwork is laid upon the front desk, annoying Basil.
Manuel speaks only a little English and he often makes mistakes.
When he makes a mistake Basil usually apologises to the guests by saying, "I 'm so sorry, he 's from Barcelona."
The Major (Ballard Berkeley) is a regular guest; he 's old and forgetful.
The aged and easily shocked Miss Tibbs (Gilly Flower) and Miss Gatsby (Renee Roberts) are also regular guests.
There were twelve episodes of Fawlty Towers made.
The first six episodes were made in 1975, the last six in 1979.
Fawlty Towers still has many fans, and many people regard it as the best comedy series made by the BBC.
It was voted 5th in a poll in Britain to find "Britain 's Best Sitcom" 2004.
One of the most famous episodes is "The Germans".
In that episode, people from Germany are visiting the Hotel.
Basil dislikes Germans, because he blames them for starting World War II.
He tells his staff not to mention the war ("Do n't mention the war!").
He himself continually mentions the war, and even imitates Adolf Hitler.
False friends are two words in different languages or lects that look the same, or similar, but have different meanings.
Frasier is an American sitcom starring Kelsey Grammer.
The series aired from 1993-2004.
It was a spin-off from Cheers.
Story based upon the intellectual, mild mannered psychiatrist and his life.
Revolving around his personal life and hilarious interpersonal interactions with his father (Martin Crane, an ex-cop with a walking impediment), his eccentric brother Niles, who is also a shrink, his father 's attractive English health care worker Daphne Moon & a host of folks he regularly runs into \/ works with at the radio station (including his producer Roz Doyle) where he hosts a community psychiatric call-in show.
Franz Boas (July 9, 1858 December 21, 1942) was a German-born American anthropologist.
Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 American war drama movie directed by Stanley Kubrick.
It is based on the Gustav Hasford book The Short-Timers.
The name of the movie comes from the full-metal jacketed bullets used in the military.
The movie follows soldiers who are drafted to fight in the Vietnam War.
The story is set in the late 1960s and follows the characters from their time in recruit training and them fighting in the war.
Flirting is a form of human behavior from one person toward another person, or between two people, usually showing a sexual or romantic interest in the other person.
It can include conversation, body language (such as winking), or short physical contact.
Finches are passerine songbirds in the family Fringillidae.
They are mostly seed-eaters.
The scientific name Fringillidae comes from the Latin word fringilla for the Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs), which is common in Europe.
Most species are native to the Southern Hemisphere, but one subfamily is endemic to the Neotropics, one to the Hawaiian Islands, and one genus is found only in the Palaearctic (Eurasia and north Africa).
Many birds in other families are also commonly called "finches" They include some species in the very similar-looking waxbills (family Passeridae, of the Old World tropics and Australia; several groups of the bunting and American sparrow family (Emberizidae); Darwin 's ` finches ' of the Galapagos Islands, which provided evidence of natural selection.
They are now recognized to be peculiar tanagers (Thraupidae).
Some species are being imported or smuggled into other countries and sold as exotic pets.
The F-15 Eagle is a fighter jet that originally made by McDonnell-Douglas (later Boeing).
It is known around the world for its toughness and undefeated record, meaning that it has never been shot down by an enemy plane.
It is used primarily by the United States Air Force, but it is also used in Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.
It carries missiles to shoot down enemy fighter jet planes.
More than a thousand have been made.
In 1981, the F-15 was redesigned to include the ability to carry bombs, allowing the F-15 to do the job of attack aircraft.
This means it can also destroy things on the ground.
This new variant of the aircraft was called the McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle.
The F-14 Tomcat is a fighter plane made for the American Navy.
It first flew in 1970 and started to replace the F-4 Phantom II in 1973.
It could carry 6 of AIM-54 Phoenix missiles and two AIM-9 Sidewinders.
The plane is supersonic.
In 2006, the Navy stopped using it.
Iran uses the F-14, but they are rumored to be in bad condition.
The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk is a US military jet aircraft.
It was the first stealth aircraft to be declared operational.
It was only used by US Air Force until 2003.
It was used in the Gulf War.
It was also used by NATO air attacks in Kosovo in 1999.
The Lockheed F-117 is a single-seat, twin-engine stealth ground-attack aircraft that is operated by the United States Air Force.
The F-117 was the first flyable aircraft to be designed around stealth technology.
It retired in 2008 because of the F-22 Raptor.
It is shaped to deflect radar signals.
It is limited to subsonic speed.
It s weird 2d shape was from the 1970 s era computer technology.
The Vought F4U Corsair was a fighter aircraft that fought in World War II and the Korean War.
Vought could not keep up with demand for the aircraft, so Goodyear and Brewster made them.
It has longest production run of any piston-engined fighter in U.S. history (1942 1953).
The Corsair was used by the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marines, Fleet Air Arm and the Royal New Zealand Air Force, as well as the French Navy A ronavale and other, smaller, air forces.
It became the most capable carrier-based fighter-bomber of World War II.
Some Japanese pilots said it was the best American fighter of World War II, and the U.S. Navy reported an 11:1 kill ratio.
As well as being a great fighter, the Corsair proved to be an excellent fighter-bomber.
Formula 3000 was a type of formula racing, below Formula One and above Formula Three.
It was named because the cars were powered by 3000 cc engines.
The International Formula 3000 was introduced by the F d ration Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) in 1985 to replace Formula Two, and was itself replaced by the GP2 Series in 2005.
A fuel cell converts the element hydrogen into electricity by mixing it with oxygen, which then creates water.
It is like a battery that is constantly fed with fuel.
It is an important part of the hydrogen economy.
Note, that, unlike oil, hydrogen is not found in nature and is not an energy source, but an energy carrier.
It has to be produced first, and if this is done by burning fossil fuels, it does not help against climate change.
But, the hydrogen fuel cell will help against climate change in future, because scientists are trying to find new ways to make hydrogen without using fossil fuels.
Water is a molecule that consists of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms.
It takes energy to separate water into oxygen and hydrogens.
And energy is released when they are put back together.
A fuel cell does the latter.
Hydrogen (the energy source) and oxygen (which can come from plain air) are put into the fuel cell.
Each is put near a metal plate on two opposite sides of the fuel cell.
In the middle of the fuel cell there is a screen that separates hydrogen from the oxygen.
This screen will only let one type of hydrogen atoms pass through to the oxygen.
These hydrogen atoms lack the electron, and they are called ions.
The electrons were split off from the hydrogen fuel by the metal plate at the hydrogen side (the metal plate acts as a catalyst).
Because the screen does n't let electrons pass through, they go through a separate wire, to the other metal plate on the oxygen side.
The travel of electrons creates electric energy (electricity).
The wire is where electricity can be used.
For example, the wire can be cut in half, and a light bulb can be connected in between the two halves.
In the meantime, the hydrogen ions (which are protons) pass through the screen.
They combine with the oxygen atoms and with the electrons that traveled through the wire.
Water is formed, which them comes out through an exhaust pipe.
Fuel cells make electricity by combining oxygen and hydrogen.
Efficiency is very good (about 40 % -60 %).
They have a maximum efficiency of 83 % if exhaust heat is used during the reaction.
Also, fuel cells can use various fuels, for example, natural gas, methanol, LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas), naphtha, kerosene etc.
Some types of fuel cells produce only water, which means no pollution.
Most types of fuel cell cause much less emissions than classic ("caloric") power generation.
They can consume the same fuel types as classic power generators, for example Diesel engines.
But they are about two times as efficient.
Fuel cells are very quiet.
They have no moving parts, which means they very rarely require repairs.
Because of very low polluting emissions, fuel cells are often used in vehicles that move inside buildings, like forklifts.
Because they are very quiet, they are used on some military submarines to avoid detection.
Fuel is more efficiently used, which means fuel cells can work longer without getting new fuel.
This lets them be used in places that are hard to get to, such as weather or research stations, space ships, or military bases.
Fuel cells can be classified by the type of inner screen (electrolyte).
For instance, phosphoric acid fuel cells are for low temperatures.
It is used in cell phones and automobile power supplies that require high currents because it is much safer.
Alkali fuel cells usually consist of K (OH) 2 (potassium hydroxide).
Methanol fuel cells are used by reacting methanol electrochemically.
This type of fuel cell is a better choice for simpler system.
But methanol fuel cells have low output densities as its reacting rate is slow.
There are many uses for fuel cells right now, all of the major automakers are working to commercialize a fuel cell car.
Fuel cells are powering buses, boats, trains, planes, scooters, forklifts, even bicycles.
There are fuel cell-powered vending machines, vacuum cleaners and highway road signs.
Miniature fuel cells for cellular phones, laptop computers and portable electronics are on their way to market.
Hospitals, credit card centers, police stations, and banks are all using fuel cells to provide power to their facilities.
Wastewater treatment plants and landfills are using fuel cells to convert the methane gas they produce into electricity.
Telecommunications companies are installing fuel cells at cell phone, radio and 911 towers.
The possibilities are endless.
Frederik George Pohl, Jr. (November 26, 1919 September 2, 2013) was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan.
His career has spanned over seventy-five years from his first published work, the 1937 poem "Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna", through the 2011 novel All the Lives He Led and articles and essays published in 2012.
Pohl was born on November 26, 1919 in New York City, New York.
His family moved to Brooklyn when Pohl was around seven.
Pohl studied at Brooklyn Technical High School, but dropped out at the age of 17.
Pohl was married to Judith Merril from 1949 until they divorced in 1953.
They had one child.
He married Carol Metcal Ulf in 1952; they divorced in 1982.
He was married to Elizabeth Ann Hull from 1984 until his death in 2013.
Pohl died on September 2, 2013 in Palatine, Illinois from respiratory failure, aged 93.
In mathematics, a finite set is a set that is not infinite.
A finite set has a certain number of elements.
The elements of the set can be numbered like and n must either be a natural number or zero.
An infinite set is a set with an unlimited number of elements.
Another definition is to say a set is finite if its cardinality (the number of its elements) is a natural number.
A set with n elements is called an n-set.
A definition that is harder to understand, but which is often used by mathematicians, is to say that a set is finite if there is no strict subset that can be put in 1-to-1 correspondence with the set itself.
(A strict subset of a set is one that is not equal to the set itself).
For example, the set of even numbers can be put in one-to-one correspondence with the set of natural numbers (2n corresponds to n), but the set of even numbers is also a strict subset of the natural numbers (there are many numbers which are not in the set of even numbers, but which are natural numbers, for example the number 1).
This means that the set of natural numbers is infinite.
The F-4 Phantom II was an American fighter-bomber.
It was mainly used during the Vietnam War.
It was first flown in 1958 and was shown in 1960.
The plane could carry four AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles and four long range AIM-7 Sparrow missiles, but it did not have a gun.
Later, the E model had a cannon mounted on it.
After the F-15 Eagle replaced it, it was used as a bomber and the G model was used as a Wild Weasel.
The McDonnell FH Phantom was one of the first U.S. jet fighters.
It was used by the US Navy and US Marines Corps from aircraft carriers between 1947 and 1954.
Mc Donnell F2H Banshee is a modernized variant.
A Fricatives consonant is a consonant that is made when you squeeze air through a small hole or gap in your mouth.
For example, the gaps in between your teeth can make fricative consonants.
When the gaps in the teeth are used, these fricatives are called sibilants.
An example of a sibilant in English is (s), (z), (-RRB-, and (-RRB-.
This is a list of sibilant fricatives.
In many languages, such as English, the glottal "fricatives" like the (h) in English "hat", ia not really a fricative because there are just vowels that are not voiced.
However, in languages such as Arabic, they are true fricatives.
Frost is ice that is formed when water vapor freezes onto a surface.
It has a white, powdery appearance.
It forms on cold surfaces when the temperature of the air is very low.
It can destroy crops.
Many plants can be damaged or killed by freezing temperatures or frost.
This varies with the type of plant and tissue exposed to low temperatures.
Greenhouses help to protect crops from cold and frost damage.
There is a rise in average IQ scores since the beginning of measurements.
It is called the Flynn effect.
The rise in most industrialized countries is about three IQ points per decade.
James R. Flynn described this phenomenon in 1984.
Others supported the claims.
They found the rise was mostly due to the test scores of those who scored an IQ below 100.
The number of those who were classified as mentally handicapped reduced from year to year.
In contrast, the scores of those who got more than 100 did not seem to be affected.
IQ tests are re-normalized every so often to hold the average score for an age group at 100.
This gave a first hint to Flynn that the IQ was changing over time.
The revised versions are standardized on new samples and scored with respect to those samples only.
The only way to compare the difficulty of two versions is to have a group of people take both tests.
This confirms IQ gains over time.
The average rate of rise seems to be around three IQ points per decade.
Today, children go to school for a longer time.
They have also become more familiar with testing.
It might therefore be expected that the biggest gains occur with school-related content, such as vocabulary, arithmetic or general information.
Just the opposite is the case: abilities such as these have had small gains and occasional declines over the years.
The largest changes appear on general intelligence factor loaded (g-loaded) tests such as Raven 's Progressive Matrices, instead.
For example, Dutch soldiers gained 21 points in only 30 years, or 7 points per decade, between 1952 and 1982.
Some studies focused on the distribution of scores have found that the Flynn effect mainly occurs with lower scores.
However, Raven (2000) found that a lot of data must be re-interpreted with respect to the date of birth.
Previously, this data had been interpreted to show that many abilities decrease when people get older.
This data must now be interpreted to show that many abilities had in fact increased dramatically, as Flynn predicted.
On many tests this occurs at all levels of ability.
Two large samples of Spanish children were assessed with a 30-year gap.
Comparison of the IQ distributions indicated that
Some scientists believe these changes are very big.
One of them is Ulric Neisser.
In 1995 he was the head of a task force of the American Psychological Association, charged with writing a statement on where intelligence research was.
He estimates that if American children of 1932 could take an IQ test normed in 1997 their average IQ would have been only about 80.
In other words, half of the children in 1932 would be classified as having borderline mental retardation or worse in 1997.
Looking at Ravens, Neisser estimates that if you extrapolate beyond the data, which shows a 21 point gain between 1952 and 1982, an even larger gain of 35 IQ points can be argued.
Arthur Jensen warns that extrapolating beyond the data leads to results such as an IQ of minus 1000 for Aristotle (even assuming he would have scored 200 in his day).
Most of the time, the effect is associated with IQ rises.
A similar effect has been found with increases in semantic and episodic memory.
Frederick Soddy was a Nobel Prize winning English chemist and physicist.
He graduated from Merton College, Oxford with a degree in chemistry.
He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1921.
His work on the theory of how atoms worked was very important.
He proved, amongst other things, the existence of isotopes and how radioactivity causes changes in atoms.
Throughout his career he worked closely with another important atomic physicist, Ernest Rutherford.
Fur seals are any of nine species of pinnipeds in the Otariidae family.
One species, the northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus) inhabits the North Pacific, while eight species in the Arctocephalus genus are found primarily in the Southern hemisphere.
Therefore they are not a single taxonomic unit.
Federico Fellini (born 20 January 1920 in Rimini, died 31 October 1993 in Rome) was an Italian movie-maker and director.
Fellini 's movies combine memory, dream, and fantasy.
The first movie Fellini directed was Lo Sceicco Bianco (1951), with Alberto Sordi, written by Michelangelo Antonioni and Ennio Flaiano.
In making this movie Fellini met Nino Rota, the musician that would follow him for the successful rest of his career.
Fellini was married to actress Giulietta Masina (1921-1994) from 1943 until his death.
In 1945, he had a son who survived for only 2 weeks; it was the only child of Fellini and Giulietta Masina.
Masina acted in many of his movies.
Other actors Fellini often worked with include Marcello Mastroianni, Alberto Sordi, and Anita Ekberg.
Apart from making movies he also wrote scripts for radio shows, for movies (mainly for Roberto Rossellini) and wrote comic gags for well known actors like Aldo Fabrizi.
Fellini also produced several drawings (mostly pencil on paper), often humoristic portraits.
His first success was in drawing advertising pictures for movies.
During Fascism an Avanguardista, his first writings were for Alleanza Cinematografica Italiana (ACI), a production company of Vittorio Mussolini, son of Benito, who introduced him to Rossellini.
In 1944, when Fascism was over, he opened a shop in Rome in which he sold these drawings.
The shop was named (in English) "The Funny Face Shop", and contained works from Fellini and De Seta, Verdini, Camerini, Scarpelli, Majorana, Guasta, Giobbe, Attalo, Migneco (all writers, directors or otherwise intellectuals working for Italian cinema).
In the same year started his contribution to Rossellini 's Roma Citt Aperta, with Aldo Fabrizi.
Fellini took also part in writing another of Rossellini 's movies: Pais.
He wrote also for other directors as Alberto Lattuada, Pietro Germi and Luigi Comencini.
In 1987 he won the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, a lifetime achievement award.
In 1993, he received an Academy Award (Oscar) for his lifetime achievement.
Fleetwood Mac are a British-American rock band that formed in London, England in 1967.
The group was started by Peter Green.
The original group included Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Jeremy Spencer and Bob Brunning.
In 1970 Peter Green left and was replaced by Christine McVie and Danny Kerwin.
When Kerwin left he was replaced by Americans Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.
The band became famous with the release of the album Fleetwood Mac.
F-Zero Maximum Velocity (F-Zero for Game Boy Advance in Japan) is a 2001 futuristic racing video game published by Nintendo and developed by Nintendo R&D 1 and Nd Cube.
It was released for the Game Boy Advance and for the Virtual Console.
F-Zero: Maximum Velocity was released on March 21, 2001 in Japan, June 12, 2001 in North America, and on June 22, 2001 in Europe.
It was the first F-Zero game to be released on a handheld game console.
The game takes place twenty-five years after F-Zero and is the only F-Zero game without Captain Falcon.
IGN rated the game a 9 out of 10.
Craig Harris of IGN called the game "an amazing achievement for the Game Boy Advance".
GameSpot rated the game 8.1 out of 10.
Shane Satterfield of GameSpot said that the game was "a challenging yet addictive racer" and that "With plenty of tracks to unlock, vehicles to master, and multiplayer modes to explore, it wo n't be headed for trade-in anytime soon".
Famitsu magazine scored the game a 31 out of 40 when it released.
The word "felsic" is a term used in geology to refer to silicate minerals, magma, and igneous rocks which are enriched in the lighter elements such as silicon, oxygen, aluminium, sodium, and potassium.
They are usually light in color and have specific gravities less than 3.
The most common felsic rock is granite, but others include quartz, muscovite, orthoclase, and the sodium-rich plagioclase feldspars.
In terms of chemistry, felsic rocks are on the other side of the rock spectrum from the mafic rocks.
In order for a rock to be classified as felsic, it generally needs to contain more than 75 % felsic minerals; namely quartz, orthoclase and plagioclase.
Rocks with greater than 90 % felsic minerals can also be called leucocratic, meaning ` light-coloured '.
The rock texture thus determines the basic name of a felsic rock.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Alexandria 21 December 1876 Bellagio 2 December 1944) was an Italian poet and writer.
He is famous as the founder of Futurism.
Franz Anton Mesmer (23 May 1734 5 March 1815) was a German physician with an interest in astronomy.
He had a theory that there was a natural transfer of energy between all animated and inanimate objects.
He called this animal magnetism, sometimes later referred to as mesmerism.
The theory attracted a wide following between about 1780 and 1850, and continued to have some influence until the end of the century.
In 1843 the Scottish physician James Braid proposed the term hypnosis for ` animal magnetism '.
Today this is the usual term for mesmerism.
Ferromagnetism is a property of many materials like iron.
They are magnets, so they are attracted to, or pulled towards other magnets.
In physics there are many different type of magnetism.
Ferromagnetism is the strongest one.
It is used every day in many technological objects, like television screens and credit cards.
Ferromagnets are materials that have some magnetization on their own.
This means that at a temperature of absolute zero and without any magnetic field from other objects, they are still magnetic.
The reason for this is that the electrons in a material have a spin.
In ferromagnetic materials, the electrons like to have all the spins going one way, giving some magnetism.
Usually, as the temperature is increased, the magnetization goes down.
This is because the temperature causes the electrons in the material to move around a bit more.
They do not have the spins perfectly going in the same way anymore.
The point at which there is no magnetization anymore is called the Curie temperature.
This changes with different materials.
Some materials that are ferromagnets are: iron, cobalt, nickel.
Hematite is also ferromagnetic but only above a certain temperature.
Francesco Cossiga (26 July 1928 17 August 2010) was an Italian politician.
He was the 8th President of Italy, serving from July 1985 to April 1992.
He was the 42cd Prime Minister of Italy, serving from August 1979 to 1980.
Cossiga was born in Sassari, Sardinia.
He died on 17 August 2010 in Rome, Italy from a respiratory infection, aged 82.
The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a family of single-seat, single-engine, fifth generation multirole Fighter aircraft under development to perform ground attack, reconnaissance, and air defense missions with stealth capability.
A food additive is a substance that is added to certain foods to make them better in some ways.
Some additives have been used for centuries, like salting fish or using vinegar to preserve vegetables (called pickling).
Another use for additives is to use them for food coloring.
Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen (10 October 1861 13 May 1930) was a Norwegian explorer, historian, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
In his youth a champion skier and ice skater, he led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, and won international fame after reaching a record northern latitude of 86 14 during his North Pole expedition of 1893 96.
Although he retired from exploration after his return to Norway, his techniques of polar travel and his innovations in equipment and clothing influenced a generation of subsequent Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.
Nansen studied zoology at the Royal Frederick University, and later worked as a curator at the Bergen Museum where his research on the central nervous system of lower marine creatures earned him a doctorate and helped establish modern theories of neurology.
After 1896 his main scientific interest switched to oceanography; in the course of his research he made many scientific cruises, mainly in the North Atlantic, and contributed to the development of modern oceanographic equipment.
As one of his country 's leading citizens, in 1905 Nansen spoke out for the ending of Norway 's union with Sweden, and was instrumental in persuading Prince Charles of Denmark to accept the throne of the newly independent Norway.
Between 1906 and 1908 he served as the Norwegian representative in London, where he helped negotiate the Integrity Treaty that guaranteed Norway 's independent status.
In the final decade of his life Nansen devoted himself primarily to the League of Nations, following his appointment in 1921 as the League 's High Commissioner for Refugees.
In 1922 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of the displaced victims of the First World War and related conflicts.
Among the initiatives he introduced was the "Nansen passport" for stateless persons, a certificate recognized by more than 50 countries.
He worked on behalf of refugees until his sudden death from a heart attack in 1930, after which the League established the Nansen International Office for Refugees to ensure that his work continued.
This office received the Nobel Peace Prize for 1938.
Nansen was honored by many nations, and his name is commemorated in numerous geographical features, particularly in the polar regions.
A free market is a market where property rights are traded by a price agreed on by the people selling and the people buying.
In a free market, individual people make the majority of decisions regarding the economic activities instead of a government.
The guitar is a string instrument which is played by plucking the strings.
The main parts of a guitar are the body, the fretboard, the headstock and the strings.
Guitars are usually made from wood or plastic.
Their strings are made of steel or nylon.
The guitar strings are plucked with the fingers and fingernails of the right hand (or left hand, for left handed players), or a small pick made of thin plastic.
This type of pick is called a "plectrum" or guitar pick.
The left hand holds the neck of the guitar while the fingers pluck the strings.
Different finger positions on the fretboard make different notes.
Guitar-like plucked string instruments have been used for many years.
In many countries and at many different time periods, guitars and other plucked string instruments have been very popular, because they are light to carry from place to place, they are easier to learn to play than many other instruments.
Guitars are used for many types of music, from Classical to Rock.
Most pieces of popular music that have been written since the 1950s are written with guitars.
There are many different types of guitars, classified on how they are made and the type of music they are used for.
All traditional types of guitar have a body which is hollow.
This makes the sound of the strings louder, and gives the guitar its quality.
This type of guitar is called "acoustic".
(An acoustic instrument is one that makes its own dynamics.)
From the 1930s, people started making and playing guitars that used electricity and amplifiers to control the loudness.
These guitars, which are often used in popular music, are called electric guitars.
They do not need to have a hollow body.
This is because they do not use acoustics to amplify the sound.
Most guitars have six strings, but there are also guitars with four, seven, eight, ten, or twelve strings.
More strings make the instrument sound fuller.
The neck of a guitar has bars or marks called frets.
Frets help a guitarist know where to put his or her fingers to get the right pitch when playing.
The word guitar was adopted into English from Spanish word guitarra in the 1600s.
In the Middle Ages the word gitter or gittern was used in England.
Both guitarra and gitter came from the Latin word cithara.
The word cithara came from the earlier Greek word kithara.
Kithara could have come from the Persian word seht r. seh meaning "three" and t r meaning "string".
There is also a similar but two-stringed Persian instrument named dot r. do means "two" in Persian.
The Indian sitar instrument was named after the Persian seht r. The sihtar itself is related to the Indian instrument, the sitar.
A person who plays a guitar is called a guitarist.
A person who makes or fixes guitars is a luthier, which comes from the word "lute".
The word "lute", comes from the Arabic "Al-Uud", a stringed instrument from the Middle East.
The guitar appears to be derived from earlier instruments known in ancient central Asia as the Sitara.
Instruments very similar to the guitar appear in ancient carvings and statues recovered from the old Iranian capitol of Susa.
The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from the Spanish word guitarra, which came from the older Greek word kithara.
Possible sources for various names of musical instruments that guitar could be derived from appear to be a combination of two Indo-European roots: guit -, similar to Sanskrit sangeet meaning "music", and - tar a widely found root meaning "cord" or "string".
The word guitar is a word that the Iberian Arabic language took from the Persian language.
The word qitara is an Arabic name for various members of the lute family that preceded the Western guitar.
The word guitarra was introduced into Spanish when such instruments were brought into Iberia by the Moors after the 10th century.
There have been instruments like the guitar for at least 5,000 years.
The guitar may have come from older instruments known as the sitara from ancient India and central Asia.
The oldest known picture of a guitar-like instrument is a 3300 year old stone carving of a Hittite bard.
The oldest guitar-like instrument that is still complete is the "Warwick Gittern" in the British Museum.
It belonged to Elizabeth I of England and probably to her father Henry VIII before it was given to her.
It is about 500 years old.
The design of the modern guitar began with the Roman cithara.
The cithara was brought by the Romans to Hispania (Spain) around 40 AD.
In the 8th century the Moors brought the four-stringed oud into Spain.
The introduction to the oud caused changes to the design of the cithara.
In other parts of Europe, the six-string Scandinavian lut (lute) became popular wherever the Vikings had been.
By 1200 AD, there were two types of the four string "guitar": the guitarra morisca (Moorish guitar) from Spain which had a rounded back, wide fingerboard and several soundholes, and the guitarra latina (Latin guitar) which was more like the modern guitar with one sound hole and a narrower neck.
The Spanish vihuela, of the 16th century, was another instrument similar to the guitar.
It had lute-style tuning and a body that was like a guitar.
The vihuela was only popular for a short amount of time.
It is not known whether it was simply a design that combined features of the oud and lute or a transition from the Renaissance instrument to the modern guitar.
The Vinaccia family from Naples, Italy were famous mandolin makers.
It is thought that they also made the oldest six-string guitar that still exists.
There is a guitar built that was signed and dated 1779 on the label by Gaetano Vinaccia (1759 - after 1831) Although there are many fakes that have dates on them from that time, this guitar is believed by experts to be genuine (real).
The guitar 's design was improved (made better) by the famous Spanish luthier, Antonio Torres Jurado (1817-1892) and by Louis Panormo of London.
The electric guitar was made by George Beauchamp in 1936.
Beauchamp co-founded a company called Rickenbacher to make guitars.
However, Danelectro was the first to produce electric guitars for the public to use.
A guitar was described by Dr. Michael Kasha as an instrument that had "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, most often with incurved sides".
Modern guitars come in four main types.
The classical guitar is used for classical music.
The term acoustic guitar is generally used for a guitar used for popular music, even though a classical guitar is also an acoustic instrument.
There are many other different types of acoustic guitars from different parts of the world.
A electric guitar can be flat, hollow, or semi-hollow (solid with hollow pockets on the sides), and produces sound through its pickups, which are wire-wound magnets that are screwed onto the guitar.
Some guitars combine the hollow acoustic body with amplified sound.
Bass guitars are designed to make a low bass rhythm.
A special electric folding travel guitar called the Foldaxe (briefly manufactured by Hoyer in 1977) was invented for Chet Atkins (in Atkins ' book "Me and My Guitars") by inventor and guitarist Roger Field, featuring a built-in way to keep the string tension and tuning the same even when folded, and ready to play when unfolded.
Atkins demonstrated his several times on US television, and also on The Today Show with Les Paul, who was with him as a guest.
Guitars are used in many different genres of music, such as traditional, regional, and folk to modern punk, rock, metal or pop.
Guitars are used as rhythm instruments, lead instruments, and sometimes both.
A capo is a device which can be placed on any of the guitar 's frets which do n't lie on the body itself.
This enables the user to change key with out changing the tuning of the guitar strings.
Their are multiple types of capos, some latch around the whole guitar neck and some just clamp onto the back and fret board.
George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944 in Modesto, California) is an American movie director, producer, and screenwriter most famous for his Star Wars and Indiana Jones movie series.
He also directed the movies THX 1138 (1970) and American Graffiti (1973).
He made the Indiana Jones series with Steven Spielberg.
He is also an innovator for what he has done with special effects, and has founded companies that make not only movies, but also things like video games, theme park rides, and TV shows.
Lucas founded the Pixar animation studio and later sold it to Steve Jobs in 1986 for $ 10 million.
He has three children: Katie, Amanda and Jett Lucas (born 1993).
Jett is has had cameo appearances in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith as "Zett Jukassa".
Lucas began dating Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments and chair of DreamWorks Animation, in 2006.
Lucas and Hobson announced their engagement in January 2013, and married on June 22, 2013 at Lucas 's Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California.
A George Lucas Cultural Arts Museum was to be built in San Francisco, California, but after talks failed, Lucas decided not to build the museum in San Francisco.
Soon afterwards, the Chicago Tribune reported that Lucas wanted to build the museum in Chicago, Illinois.
Lucas said: "The city of Chicago has enthusiastically welcomed me and I consider Chicago to be my second home," Lucas said in a statement.
"I look forward to working with community leaders to see if Chicago can become home to the Lucas Cultural Arts Museum."
The office of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel confirmed that talks between the two were ongoing.
A potential lakefront site on Museum Campus in Chicago was proposed in May 2014.
On June 24, 2014, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Chicago was selected as the location, pending approval of the Chicago Plan Commission.
The commission approved the idea and the museum will be built in Chicago.
Gothenburg is the second largest Swedish city, after Stockholm.
Around 550 000 people live there.
The city was founded in 1621 by king Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.
Gotland County is a county in Sweden, on the Swedish Baltic Sea island of Gotland.
The county seat is in Visby.
A Global Positioning System, also known as GPS, is a system designed to help navigate on the Earth, in the air, and on water.
A GPS receiver shows where it is.
It may also show how fast it is moving, which direction it is going, how high it is, and maybe how fast it is going up or down.
Many GPS receivers have information about places.
GPSs for automobiles have travel data like road maps, hotels, restaurants, and service stations.
GPSs for boats contain nautical charts of harbors, marinas, shallow water, rocks, and waterways.
Other GPS receivers are made for air navigation, hiking and backpacking, bicycling, or many other activities.
The majority are in smartphones.
Most GPS receivers can record where they have been, and help plan a journey.
While traveling a planned journey, it predicts the time to the next destination.
A GPS unit takes radio signals from satellites in space in orbit around the Earth.
There are about 30 satellites 20200 k above the Earth.
(Each circle is 26600 k radius due to the Earth 's radius.)
Far from the North Pole and South Pole, a GPS unit can receive signals from 6 to 12 satellites at once.
Each satellite contains an atomic clock which is carefully set by NORAD several times every day.
The radio signals contain very good time and position of the satellite, including its ephemeris.
The GPS receiver subtracts the current time from the time the signal was sent.
The difference is how long ago the signal was sent.
The time difference multiplied by the speed of light is the distance to the satellite.
The GPS unit uses trigonometry to calculate where it is from each satellite 's position and distance.
Usually there must be at least four satellites to solve the geometric equations.
A GPS receiver can calculate its position many times in one second.
A GPS receiver calculates its speed and direction by using its change in position and change in time.
Many inexpensive consumer receivers are accurate to 20 m almost anywhere on the Earth.
The system was created by the United States Department of Defense.
In the beginning, it was only used by the U.S. military, but in 1983 President Ronald Reagan made an order to allow anyone to use the system.
Some GPS receivers are separate units with their own power and display.
They were the majority in the 20th century.
Now, more are part of something else such as mobile phones, wristwatches, and cars.
There are other systems that act in the same way.
One was put in space by Russia, called GLONASS.
Another that is not yet done is named for Galileo and built by the European Union.
The Federal Republic of Germany, also called Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland or just Deutschland), is a country in Central Europe.
The country 's full name is sometimes shortened to the FRG (or the BRD, in German).
To the north of Germany are the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the country of Denmark.
To the east of Germany are the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic.
To the south of Germany are the countries of Austria and Switzerland.
To the west of Germany are the countries of France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
The total area of Germany is 357,021 square kilometres (137,847 square miles).
The large majority of Germany has warm summers and cool or cold winters.
In June 2013, Germany had a population of 80.6 million people.
After the United States, Germany is the second most popular country for migration in the world.
Before it was called Germany, it was called Germania.
In the years A.D. 900 until 1806, Germany was part of the Holy Roman Empire.
From 1949 to 1990, Germany was made up of two countries called the Federal Republic of Germany (inf.
West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (inf.
East Germany).
During this time, the capital city of Berlin was divided into a west and an east part.
On 13 August 1961, East Germany started building the Berlin Wall between the two parts of Berlin.
West Germany was one of the countries that started the European Union.
Germany gained importance as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which was the first Reich, a word translated as empire.
It was started by Charlemagne who became the first Holy Roman Emperor in 800 AD, and it lasted until 1806, the time of the Napoleonic Wars.
The Second Reich was started with a treaty in 1871 in Versailles.
The biggest state in the new German Empire was Prussia.
The rulers were called Kaisers or "German Emperors", but they did not call themselves "Emperors of Germany".
There were many smaller states in the Empire, but not Austria.
Germany stayed an empire for 50 years.
The treaty of unification of Germany was made after Germany won the Franco-Prussian War with France in 1871.
In World War I, Germany joined Austria-Hungary, and again declared war on France.
The war became slow in the west and became trench warfare.
Many men were killed on both sides without winning or losing.
In the Eastern Front the soldiers fought with the Russian Empire and won there after the Russians gave up.
The war ended in 1918 because the Germans could not win in the west and gave up.
Germany 's emperor also had to give up his power.
France took Alsace from Germany and Poland got the Danzig corridor.
After a revolution, the Second Reich ended and the democratic Weimar Republic began.
After the war, there were a lot of problems with money in Germany because of the Peace Treaty of Versailles (which made Germany pay for the costs of World War I) and the worldwide Great Depression.
The Third Reich was Nazi Germany; it lasted 12 years, from 1933 to 1945.
It started after Adolf Hitler became the head of government.
On 23 March 1933, the Reichstag (parliament) passed the Enabling Act, which let Hitler 's government command the country without help from the Reichstag and the presidency.
This gave him total control of the country and the government.
Hitler in effect became a dictator.
Hitler wanted to unify all Germans in one state, and did this by annexing places where Germans lived, such as Austria and Czechoslovakia; Hitler also wanted the land in Poland that Germany had owned before 1918.
Poland refused to give it to him.
The invasion of Poland started World War II on 1 September 1939.
In the beginning of the war, Germany was winning.
It managed to take over much of Europe.
However, Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 and, after the Battle of Kursk, the German Eastern Front began a slow retreat until war 's end.
On 8 May 1945, Germany gave up after Berlin was captured, Hitler had killed himself a week earlier.
Because of the war, Germany lost a lot of German land east of the Oder-Nei e line, and for 45 years, Germany was split into West Germany and East Germany.
In 1989 there was a process of reforms in East Germany, which lead to the opening of the Berlin Wall and to the end of socialist rule in Germany.
This events are known as the Wende or the Friedliche Revolution (Peaceful Revolution) in Germany.
After that, East Germany joined West Germany in 1990.
The new Germany is a part of the European Union.
Germany is a constitutional federal democracy.
Its political rules come from the ` constitution ' called Basic Law (Grundgesetz), written by West Germany in 1949.
It has a parliamentary system, and the parliament elects the head of government, the Federal Chancellor (Bundeskanzler).
The current Chancellor, Dr Angela Merkel, is a woman who used to live in East Germany.
The people of Germany vote for the parliament, called the Bundestag (Federal Assembly), every four years.
Government members of the 16 States of Germany (Bundesl nder) work in the Bundesrat (Federal Council).
The Bundesrat can help make some laws.
The head of state is the Bundespr sident (Federal President).
This person has no real powers but can order elections for the Bundestag.
The current president is Joachim Gauck (Independent).
The judiciary branch (the part of German politics that deals with courts) has a Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court).
It can stop any act by the law-makers or other leaders if they feel they go against Germany 's constitution.
The opposition parties are the Alliance ' 90\/The Greens and Die Linke.
Germany is one of the largest countries in Europe.
It stretches from the North Sea and Baltic Sea in the north to the high mountains of the Alps in the south.
The highest point is the Zugspitze on the Austrian border, at 2962 m.
Germany 's northern part is very low and flat (lowest point: Neuendorf-Sachsenbande at -3.54 m).
In the middle, there are low mountain ranges covered in large forests.
Between these and the Alps, there is another plain created by glaciers during the ice ages.
Germany also contains parts of Europe 's longest rivers, such as the Rhine (which makes up a part of Germany 's western border, while Oder is on its eastern border), the Danube and the Elbe.
In these states there are 301 Kreise (districts) and 114 independent cities, which do not belong to any district.
Germany has one of the world 's largest technologically powerful economies.
Bringing West and East Germany together and making their economy work is still taking a long time and costing a lot of money.
Germany is the largest economy in Europe.
In September 2011, the inflation rate in Germany was 2.5 %.
The unemployment rate of Germany was 5.5 % as of October 2011.
Germany is one of the G8 countries.
The main industry area is the Ruhr area.
In Germany live mostly Germans and many ethnic minorities.
There are at least seven million people from other countries living in Germany.
Some have political asylum, some are guest workers (Gastarbeiter), and some are their families.
Many people from poor or dangerous countries go to Germany for safety.
Many others do not get permission to live in Germany.
About 50,000 ethnic Danish people live in Schleswig-Holstein, in the north.
About 60,000 Sorbs (a Slavic people) live in Germany too, in Saxony and Brandenburg.
About 12,000 people in Germany speak Frisian; this language is the closest living language to English.
In northern Germany, people outside towns speak Low Saxon.
Many people have come to Germany from Turkey (about 1.9 million Turks and Kurds).
Other small groups of people in Germany are Croats (0.2 million), Italians (0.6 million), Greeks (0.4 million), Russians, and Poles (0.3 million).
There are also some ethnic Germans who lived in the old Soviet Union (1.7 million), Poland (0.7 million), and Romania (0.3 million).
These people have German passports, so they are not counted as foreigners.
A lot of these people do not speak German at home.
Christianity is the biggest religion; Protestants are 38 % of the people (mostly in the north) and Catholics are 34 % of the people (mostly in the south).
There are also many Muslims, while the other people (26.3 %) are either not religious, or belong to smaller religious groups.
In the eastern regions, the former territory of the GDR (known as the DDR in German), only one fifth of the population is religious.
Germany has one of the world 's highest levels of schooling, technology, and businesses.
The number of young people who attend universities is now three times more than it was after the end of World War II, and the trade and technical schools of Germany are some of the best in the world.
German income is, on average, $ 25,000 a year, making Germany a highly middle class society.
A large social welfare system gives people money when they are ill, unemployed, or similarly disadvantaged.
Millions of Germans travel outside of their country each year.
The english Wikipedia webpage Immigration to Germany has a bit of information, including information for asylum seekers and refugees.
Warning: Mainly in 2015 there has been massively wrong information especially in some african, arabic etc. media channels concerning the conditions of coming to and living in Germany.
False promises of money, easy living and easy jobs were made.
Germany 's constitution says that all people can believe in any religion they want to, and that no one is allowed to discriminate against somebody because of the person 's religion.
In ancient times Germany was largely pagan.
Roman Catholicism was the biggest religion in Germany up to the 15th century, but a major religious change called the Reformation changed this.
In 1517, Martin Luther said that the Catholic Church used religion to make money.
Luther started Protestantism, which is as big as the Catholic religion in Germany today.
Before World War II, about two-thirds of the German people were Protestant and one-thirds were Roman Catholic.
In the north and northeast of Germany, there were a lot more Protestants than Catholics.
Today, about two-thirds of German people (more than 55 million people) call themselves Christian, but most of them do not practice it.
About half of them are Protestants and about half are Roman Catholics.
Most German Protestants are members of the Evangelical Church in Germany.
The previous Pope, Benedict XVI, was born in Germany.
Before World War II, about one percent of the country 's people were German Jews.
Today, Germany has the fastest-growing group of Jewish people in the world.
Many of them are in Berlin.
Ten thousand Jews have moved to Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall; many came from countries that were in the Soviet Union.
Schools teaching about the horrible things that happened when the Nazis were in power, as well as teaching against the ideas of the Nazis, has helped to make Germany very tolerant towards other people and cultures, and now many people move there from countries that may not be so tolerant.
About three million Muslims live in Germany, 3.7 % of the total population.
The country also has a large atheist and agnostic population, and there are also Jain, Buddhist and Zoroastrian communities.
The 20th century has also seen a neopagan revival.
Germany has a long history of poets, thinkers, artists, and so on.
There are 240 supported theaters, hundreds of orchestras, thousands of museums and over 25,000 libraries in Germany.
Millions of tourists visit these attractions every year.
Germany has created a high level of gender equality, disability rights, and accepts homosexuality.
Gay marriage is somewhat legal in Germany.
Germany was rated the second most valuable country in the world, and a global poll showed that Germany has the most positive influence on the world.
Germany is also known for their food.
Their food varies from region to region.
For example, in the southern regions, such as Bavaria and Baden-W rttemberg, they share their type of food with Switzerland and Austria.
Everywhere in Germany, meat is eaten as a sausage.
Even though wine use is increasing, the national alcoholic drink is beer.
The number of Germans who drink beer is one of the highest in the world.
German restaurants are also rated the second-best, with France rated first place.
Football is the most popular sport in Germany.
The national team has won the FIFA World Cup 4 times (1954, 1974, 1990 and 2014), and appears in the finals a lot.
The team also has had the most Euro titles than any other country.
The top football league in Germany is Bundesliga.
Also, the German Football Association (Deutscher Fu ball-Bund) is the largest in the world.
Some of the world 's best Footballers came from Germany.
These would include Miroslav Klose, Oliver Kahn, Gerd M ller, Michael Ballack, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Franz Beckenbauer, and so on.
Plus, many tournaments have taken place in Germany.
The most recent was the 2006 FIFA World Cup, and the 2011 FIFA Women 's World Cup.
The Audi Cup takes place in Germany every year in Munich.
Germany is also known for its motor sports.
The country has made companies like the BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, etc..
Successful German racing drivers include Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel.
Successful tennis players have also come from Germany, including Steffi Graf and Boris Becker.
More recently, Sabine Lisicki reached the Women 's Singles final at Wimbledon in 2013.
Lastly, Germany is one of the best countries in the Olympic Games.
Germany is the third in the list of the most Olympic Games medals in history (mixed with West and East Germany medals).
The country finished first place in the 2006 Winter Olympics, and second in the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Germany got fifth place in the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Guatemala City is the capital of Guatemala.
It is the largest city in Central America.
It has a population of 942,348 in the city itself and 2,945,080 including all the suburbs.
It was founded in the year 1773 after strong earthquakes damaged the old capital, Antigua Guatemala.
The city has being the center of trade and comerce in Guatemala since it s establisment.
The main center of trade and comerce can be found on the Central Market and The Terminal, which recently suffered from a fire.
Guatemala City is a center of culture showing this on the Museum for Children, La Sexta (an open pedestrian street) and The National Palace (where the government operated until the 50s).
GNU is the name of a computer operating system.
The name is short for GNU 's Not Unix.
Richard Stallman leads the project working on GNU, known as the GNU Project.
It was created to replace the UNIX operating system with all free and open source software.
The popular Linux operating systems made using Linux kernel consist large number of GNU tools.
Due to this reason, many projects and developers call the linux based operating systems GNU\/Linux
The GNU project was started by Richard Stallman in 1983.
His aim was to create a computer system fully free to modify, share and publish modified work.
He and a group of developers started with creating copies, of each piece of Unix software, which are free to modify and share.
The remaining part of GNU was the kernel, called the GNU Hurd, which is not yet completely built.
The more popular Linux kernel is used instead.
Gradualism is a process of change by gradual, slow stages.
In politics, it is the opposite of revolutions and rapid change.
"Gradualism is... sometimes associated with social democracy".
In geology it is in tune with uniformitarianism, and against catastrophism.
In biology it is in tune with Darwinian ideas of slowly changing species as opposed to big, rapid changes
Gradualism is one of the defining features of political liberalism and reformism.
It is against abrupt strokes such as revolutions or uprisings.
Instead, change ought to be brought about in small, discrete steps.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was opposed to the idea of gradualism as a method of eliminating segregation.
The government wanted to try to integrate African-Americans and European-Americans slowly into the same society, but many believed it was a way for the government to put off actually doing anything about racial segregation:
This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
Martin Luther King Jr. 's I Have a Dream speech, delivered August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC
Charles Lindblom was an influential professor and author who believed in muddling through ("incrementalism") as the right way to go.
He pointed out the connexions between the political system, the market-place and democratic freedom.
In the natural sciences, gradualism is a theory which holds that profound change is the cumulative product of slow but continuous processes, often contrasted with catastrophism.
The theory was proposed in 1795 by James Hutton, a Scottish physician and gentlemen farmer, and was later was the basis for Charles Lyell 's Principles of Geology.
William Whewell called the idea ` uniformitarianism '.
It formed the basis of early evolutionary theory.
Charles Darwin was influenced by Lyell 's Principles of Geology.
Everything we see from the past is explained by processes we can see going on today.
The present is key to the past.
So Darwin thought evolutionary must occur gradually, not in jumps (` saltations '), since we do not see big changes going on today.
Extreme and rapid changes in an organism would be most likely to be fatal.
It is almost universally agreed that complex organs such as the eye must have evolved by many small steps rather than by one or two mutations.
"Phyletic gradualism" is a term coined by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge to contrast with their model of punctuated equilibrium.
This proposes that most evolution is marked by long periods of evolutionary stability or stasis, punctuated by rare instances of branching evolution.
The Germanic languages are a language family in the Indo-European languages.
They came from one language, "Proto-Germanic", and were originally spoken in northern, western and central Europe.
The Germanic languages are separated into the East Germanic languages (these are no longer spoken), the North Germanic languages and the West Germanic languages.
The German language (German: Deutsch or (die) deutsche Sprache) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family.
It is spoken in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg; natively by around 100 million people.
It is the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union.
There are some people who speak German in Belgium and in the Netherlands, as well as in France and Northern Italy.
There are people who speak German in many countries, including the United States and Canada, where many people emigrated from Germany.
In Eastern Europe, too, in Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, etc.
German is a part of the West Germanic language family (a group of languages that are similar) and is much like English and Dutch.
A lot of the vocabulary in German is related to English, but the grammar is more complicated.
German has a system of cases, and when helping verbs are used, the main part of the verb must be moved to the end of the sentence.
For example, "Someone has stolen my car" is Jemand hat mein Auto gestohlen (Someone has my car stolen) or, "Someone called me last night" is Jemand hat mich letzte Nacht angerufen (Someone has me last night called).
In German writing, every noun must start with a capital letter.
English and Danish also did this long ago, but not now.
Today, German is the only language that has this rule.
While German is an official language in Switzerland, the Swiss dialect of German is difficult for native speakers from Germany, and even for Swiss who are not native to speaking German, to understand.
One reason why the dialects are still so different today is that even though Switzerland adopted Standard German, mostly as a written standard, German Swiss in WWII wanted to separate themselves from the Nazis by choosing to speak the Swiss dialect over the standard dialect.
Swiss German also has some differences in writing, for example, the letter, which is only seen in German, is always replaced by ss.
The Greek language is an Indo-European language.
It is the official language of Greece (Hellas) and Cyprus.
It was first spoken in Greece and was also once spoken along the coast of Asia Minor (now a part of Turkey) and in southern Italy.
It was also widely used in Western Asia and Northern Africa at one time.
In Greek, the language is called (ellinik).
Greeks write their language using the Greek alphabet.
The Latin alphabet (used to write English and many other languages) came from the Greek alphabet.
Many other alphabets around the world also came from the Greek one, such as the Cyrillic alphabet.
The Greeks got the idea of using an alphabet from the Phoenicians.
Greek has an unbroken history of being a written language for over 3,000 years.
This is longer than any other Indo-European language spoken today.
This history is often divided into three parts, ancient Greek, medieval Greek, and modern Greek.
The years 330-1453 are called medieval Greek because that 's the time of the Byzantine Empire.
Over 15 million people in the world speak Greek now.
These speakers mostly live in Greece and Cyprus, but there are also people in other countries around the world who speak the language.
This is largely because people left Greece and emigrated, meaning they moved to other countries.
Countries like the United States and Australia have a large Greek diaspora
George Orwell (25 June 1903 21 January 1950) was an English writer.
His real name was Eric Arthur Blair.
He used the name George Orwell for his novels.
He was born in India during the British Empire 's rule of India.
He is best known for two novels that he wrote in the late 1940s, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.
In those works, he said that totalitarianism, especially Stalinism, was very bad.
Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War with the antifascist troops.
These troops were against the dictatorship of fascist governments.
Orwell died of tuberculosis in London.
Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903, in India.
His great-grandfather Charles Blair had been a rich gentleman who had married Lady Mary Fane, and he was supported by money from slave plantations in Jamaica.
His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman.
His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Indian Civil Service.
His mother, Ida Mabel Blair, grew up in Burma.
Eric had two sisters.
Marjorie, his first sister, was five years older than he was.
Avril was five years younger.
When Eric was one year old, Ida took him to England.
Eric grew up with his mother and sisters.
Except for a short visit, he did not see his father again until 1912.
The family moved to Shiplake before World War I. There, Eric became friends with the Buddicom family, especially Jacintha Buddicom.
They read poetry and hoped to become famous writers.
At this time, he also liked fishing and watching birds with Jacintha 's brother and sister.
When he was five, Eric was sent to a convent school where Marjorie went to.
It was a Catholic convent.
His mother wanted him to go to public school, but his family was not rich enough to pay for it.
Ida 's brother, Charles Limouzin, was asked to help find the best school to help Eric prepare for better things.
He suggested St Cyprian 's School in Eastbourne, Sussex.
Limouzin, who was a good golfer, came to know the school and its headmaster at the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club.
The headmaster helped Blair win the scholarship to pay for his education.
He also let Blair 's parents pay only half the usual amount of money.
However, Blair hated the school.
Gambling is a contest where a player bets on the result of an event.
The bet is generally in the form of money.
The outcome is dependent on the predictability of the event.
The rules and the amount of money bet are decided on before the event happens.
There are three variables common to all gambling.
There are many types of gambling.
Casino games, parimutuel games, sports betting and state lotteries are some of the most common forms of gambling.
Generally, the odds are not in favor of the gambler.
Many people gamble for fun and entertainment.
For others it becomes an addiction and a financial burden.
Investments such as stocks, bonds and real estate are sometimes considered forms of gambling.
In some places, gambling is illegal.
Game theory is the study of how and why people make decisions.
(Specifically, it is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers".)
It helps people understand parts of science and politics.
An alternative term suggested "as a more descriptive name for the discipline" is interactive decision theory.
In the Cold War period, the strategic decisions of the United States and the Soviet Union were sometimes viewed as an exercise in game theory.
In that case the "players" being studied were the United States and the Soviet Union.
Game theory is not just about games, but how and why businesses make decisions, and just about any decision based on valuing likely outcomes.
In game theory, all of these situations are "games" since the people involved make choices based on how they value the possible outcomes of the choices.
This is true even of cases where the decisions of a single person only affect that one person.
Game theory is found in the financial choices people make, and is found in the study of economics.
One example is the prisoner 's dilemma.
It gives an example where co-operation may not be the "best choice" in game theory.
Suppose two people are arrested for a crime, and the police are uncertain which person committed the crime, and which person abetted the crime.
Each is given a choice: If each remains silent, they are both soon released.
If one betrays the other, the betrayer goes free, and the other is imprisoned for a long time.
If each betrays the other, they both are held for a shorter time.
If you are a prisoner in this situation and you only care about yourself, the way to get the smallest sentence is to betray the other prisoner.
No matter what, you get a shorter sentence when you betray than when you do not.
If the other prisoner stays silent and does not betray, then betraying means you do not go to jail at all instead of going to jail for 6 months.
If the other prisoner betrays, then betraying lets you go to jail for 2 years instead of 10 years.
In short, "betrayal" is the best strategy, and is called the "dominant strategy."
The prisoner 's dilemma does not have same result if some of the details are different.
If the prisoners (or countries) can talk with each other and plan for the future, they might both decide to cooperate (not betray) because they hope that will make the other country help them in the future.
In game theory, this is called a "repeated game."
If the players are altruistic (if they care about each other), they might be okay with going to jail so they can help the other person.
Game theory has also beeen used in philosophy.
Responding to two papers by W.V.O. Quine from 1960 and 1967, used game theory to develop a philosophical account of convention.
With this, he provided the first analysis of common knowledge and used it to analyze play in coordination games.
In addition, he first suggested that it is possible to understand meaning in terms of signaling games.
This suggetion has been pursued by several philosophers since Lewis.
Following game-theoretic account of conventions, Edna Ullmann-Margalit (1977) and Bicchieri (2006) have developed theories of Social norms that define them as Nash equilibria that result from transforming a mixed-motive game into a coordination game.
Game theory has also challenged philosophers to think in terms of interactive Epistemology: what it means for a collective to have common beliefs or knowledge, and what are the consequences of this knowledge for the social outcomes resulting from agents ' interactions.
Philosophers who have worked in this area include Bicchieri (1989, 1993), Skyrms (1990), and Stalnaker (1999).
Using the ethics part of philosophy pursues Thomas Hobbes ' project of deriving morality from self-interest.
Since games like the Prisoner 's dilemma present an apparent conflict between morality and self-interest, explaining why cooperation is required by self-interest is an important part of this project.
This general strategy is a component of the general Social contract view in Political philosophy (for examples, see and).
Other authors have attempted to use Evolutionary game theory to explain the emergence of human attitudes about morality and corresponding animal behaviors.
These authors look at several games including the prisoner 's dilemma, Stag hunt, and the Nash bargaining game as providing an explanation for the emergence of attitudes about morality (see, e.g., and).
The politics of Germany are based on a federal parliamentary democratic republic.
The government is elected by the people in elections were everyone has an equal vote.
The constitution is called the Grundgesetz.
As well as setting out the rights of the people, it describes the jobs of the President, the Cabinet, the Bundestag, Bundesrat and the Courts.
The President is the head of state.
The Federal Chancellor is the head of government, and of the majority group in the legislature (law making body) which is called the Bundestag.
Executive power is exercised by the government.
The power to make federal law is given to the government and the two parts of parliament, the Bundestag and Bundesrat.
The ministers of the government are members of the parliament, and need parliamentary support to stay in power.
From 1949 to 1990, the main political parties were the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), with its "sister party", the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU).
After the reunification of Germany the Green Party and Alliance ' 90 (B ndnis 90\/Die Gr nen) became more important and was in government between 1999 and 2005.
Other important political parties after reunification have been the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) which was based on East Germany 's Socialist Unity Party of Germany.
It joined with The Left Party (Die Linkspartei) of western Germany.
In 2007 Die Linke and WASG joined together under the leadership of Oskar Lafontaine
As Germany is a federal country, a lot of the work of government is done by the 16 states (L nder).
Power is shared between the national (or federal) government and state governments.
The national government can not abolish the state governments.
The political system is set out in the 1949 constitution, the Grundgesetz (Basic Law), which stayed in effect after 1990 's German reunification.
The constitution puts freedom and human rights first.
It also splits powers both between the federal and state levels and between the legislative (law-making), executive (government), and judicial (courts) branches.
The 1949 Grundgesetz was written to correct the problems with the Weimar Republic 's constitution.
The Weimar Republic collapsed in 1933 and was replaced by the dictatorship of the Third Reich.
The courts of Germany are independent of the government and the lawmakers.
Senior judges are appointed by the Bundestag for a fixed term.
The Bundeskanzler (Federal Chancellor) heads the Bundesregierung (Federal Cabinet) and thus the executive branch of the federal government.
He or she is chosen by and must report to the Bundestag, Germany 's parliament.
Germany, like the United Kingdom, can thus be said to have a parliamentary system.
The Chancellor can not be removed from office during a 4-year term unless the Bundestag has agreed on a successor.
This Constructive Vote of No Confidence is stop what happened in the Weimar Republic.
There the government did not have a lot of support in the parliament.
The small parties often joined together to vote against the government, but could never stay together and choose a new government.
Except in the periods 1969-72 and 1976-82, when the social democratic party of Chancellor Brandt and Schmidt came in second in the elections, the Chancellor has always been the candidate of the largest party.
Usually the largest party is helped by one or smaller more parties to get a majority in the parliament.
Between 1969-72 and 1976-82 the smaller parties decided not to help the largest party, but the second biggest party instead.
The Chancellor appoints a Vice-Chancellor (Vizekanzler), who is a member of his cabinet, usually the Foreign Minister.
When there is a coalition government (which has, so far, always been the case, except for the period of 1957 to 1961), the Vice-Chancellor usually belongs to the smaller party of the coalition.
The Chancellor is responsible for policy guidelines.
This means he, or she, sets the broad ideas of what the government will do.
To help carry out these ideas the Chancellor can change the make-up of the federal ministries whenever they want.
For example, in the middle of January 2001, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture was renamed to Ministry of Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture.
This was to help fight the "Mad Cow Disease" BSE problem.
At the same time some of the jobs (competences) of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Health were moved to the new Ministry of Consumer Protection.
Reporting to the cabinet is the Civil service of Germany.
The duties of the Bundespr sident (Federal President) are mostly representative and ceremonial; The power of the executive is exercised by the Chancellor.
The President is elected every 5 years on May 23 by the Federal Assembly (Bundesversammlung).
The Bundesversammlung only meets to elect the President.
Its members are the entire Bundestag and an equal number of state delegates selected especially for this purpose in proportion to election results for the state parliaments.
In May 2004, Horst K hler of the CDU was elected.
The reason that the President is not directly elected by the people is to stop him from claiming to be more powerful than the government and the constitution, which happened in the Weimar Republic.
1) Although Mr. K hler has been a member of the CDU the German Basic Law requests in Article 55 that the Federal President does not hold another office, practice a profession or hold a membership of any corporation.
Accordingly every Federal President has let his party membership rest dormant and does not belong to a political party during his term of office.
Germany has a bicameral legislature, that means that the parliament has two houses.
The Bundestag (Federal Diet) has at least 598 members, elected for a four year term.
Half of the members (299) are elected in single-seat constituencies according to first-past-the-post.
The other 299 members are chosen from statewide party lists.
The total percentage of constituency members and regional list members a party has should equal the percentage of votes that a party gets.
This is called proportional representation.
Because Voters vote once for a constituency representative, and a second time for a party Germany is said to have mixed member proportional representation.
Sometimes a party already has more constituency seats in a land (state) than it should have to keep the percentage of votes and seats equal.
The party does not lose seats.
Instead it gets no land seats.
This means that the Bundestag sometimes has more than 598 members.
In the current parliament there are 16 overhang seats, giving a total of 614.
A party must get 5 % of the national vote or win at least three constituency seats to be represented in the Bundestag.
This rule, often called the "five percent hurdle", was made to stop lots of small parties being in the Bundestag.
Small parties were blamed for the problems of the Weimar Republic 's Reichstag.
The first Bundestag elections were held in the Federal Republic of Germany ("West Germany") on August 14, 1949.
Following reunification, elections for the first all-German Bundestag were held on December 2 1990.
The last election was held on September 18 2005, the 16th Bundestag met on October 18 2005.
The Bundesrat (Federal Council) is the representation of the state governments at the federal level.
The Bundesrat has 69 members who are delegates of the 16 Bundesl nder.
Usually the 16 Ministers President are members, but they do not have to be.
The L nder each have from three to six votes in the Bundesrat, depending on population.
Bundesrat members must vote as their state government tell them.
The legislature has powers of exclusive jurisdiction (it can make laws by itself) and concurrent jurisdiction with the L nder (the l nder can also make laws).
What laws and what type of laws are set out in the Basic Law.
The Bundestag does most law making.
The Bundesrat must concur (agree) to laws about money shared by the federal and state governments and those making more work for the states.
Often this means that the Bundesrat often needs to agree to a law, because federal laws are often carried out by state or local agencies.
Since the political make-up of the Bundesrat is often different from that of the Bundestag, the Bundesrat is often the place for opposition parties to put their point of view, rather than for the states to look after their interests, as the constitution intended.
To limit, members of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat form a Vermittlungsauschuss which is a joint committee to try to reach agreement when the two chambers can not agree on a certain piece of legislation.
For other political parties see List of political parties in Germany.
More info: 16th German federal election, 2005 The Federal Council is composed by representatives of the State governments.
Germany has had a court system that was free of government control for longer than it has had democracy.
This means that the courts have traditionally been strong, and almost all state actions are subject to judicial review (being looked at by the court).
There is also a system of specialist courts, that deall with certain areas of the law.
These generally have a state court and state appeals court before coming to the federal supreme court for that area of law.
The other federal supreme courts are
Unlike the United States, all courts are state courts, except for the top level supreme courts.
Germany also has another supreme court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht Federal Constitutional Court.
The Grundgesetz says that every person may complain to the Federal Constitutional Court when his or her constitutional rights, especially the human rights, have been violated by the government or one of its agencies, and after he or she has gone through the ordinary court system.
The Bundesverfassungsgericht hears complaints about laws passed by the legislative branch, court decisions, or acts of the administration.
Usually only a small percentage of these constitutional complaints, called (Verfassungsbeschwerden) are successful.
Evenso, the Court is often angers both the government and the law-makers.
The judges even say that they do not care about the reactions of the government, the Bundestag, or public opinion or about the cost of one of the court 's decisions.
All that matters is the constitution.
The Bundesverfassungsgericht is very high popular with ordinary people, because it protects them from government wrong doing.
Only the Constitutional Court can handle some types of cases, including arguments between government bodies about their constitutional powers.
Only the Constitutional Court has the power to ban political parties for being unconstitutional.
However so far the Constitutional court has only used this power twice, outlawing the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) and the SRP (Socialist Reich Party, a successor to the NSDAP) because both parties ideas went against the constitution.
In the 1998 election the SPD said they wanted to reduce high unemployment rates and said new people were needed in government after 16 years of Helmut Kohl 's government.
Gerhard Schr der said he was a centrist "Third Way" candidate like Britain 's Tony Blair and America 's Bill Clinton.
The CDU\/CSU said people should look at how well off they were because of Kohl 's government, and that the CDU\/CSU had experience in foreign policy.
But the Kohl government was hurt at the polls by slower growth in the east in the previous two years, which meant the gap between east and west widened as the west got richer and the east did not.
The final seat count was enough to allow a "red-green" coalition of the SPD with Alliance ' 90\/The Greens (B ndnis ' 90\/Die Gr nen), bringing the Greens into a national government for the first time.
The first months of the new government had policy disputes between the moderate and traditional left wings of the SPD, and some voters got fed up.
The first state election after the federal election was held in Hesse in February 1999.
The CDU increased its vote by 3.5 %.
The CDU became the largest party, and replaced a SPD\/Green coalition with a CDU\/FDP coalition.
The result was seen in part as a referendum on the federal government 's ideas for a new citizenship law, which would have made it easier for long-time foreign residents to become German citizens, and also to keep their original citizenship as well.
In March 1999, SPD chairman and Minister of Finance Oskar Lafontaine, who represented a more traditional social democratic position, resigned from all offices after losing a party-internal power struggle against Schr der.
In state elections in 2000 and 2001, the respective SPD - or CDU-led coalition governments were re-elected into power.
The next election for the Bundestag was September 22 2002.
Gerhard Schr der led the coalition of SPD and Greens to an 11 seat victory over the CDU\/CSU headed by Edmund Stoiber (CSU).
Two factors are generally cited that enabled Schr der to win the elections despite poor approval ratings a few months before: good handling of the 2002 European floods and firm opposition to the USA 's 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The coalition treaty for the second red-green coalition was signed October 16, 2002.
There were a lot of new ministers.
In February 2003, elections took place in the states of Hesse and Lower Saxony, were won by the conservatives.
In Hesse, the CDU minister president Roland Koch was re-elected, with his party CDU gaining enough seats to govern without the former coalition partner FDP.
In Lower Saxony, the former SPD minister president Sigmar Gabriel lost the elections, leading to an CDU\/FDP-government headed by new minister president Christian Wulff (CDU).
The protest against the Iraq war changed this situation a bit, favoring SPD and Greens.
The latest election in the state of Bavaria led to a landslide victory of the conservatives, gaining not just the majority (as usual), but two thirds of parliamentary seats.
In April 2003, chancellor Schr der announced massive labor market reforms, called Agenda 2010.
This included a shakeup of the system of German job offices (Arbeitsamt), cuts in unemployment benefits and subsidies for unemployed persons who start their own businesses.
These changes are commonly known by the name of the chairman of the commission which conceived them as Hartz I - Hartz IV.
Although these reforms have sparked massive protests they are now credited with being in part responsible for the economic upswing and the fall of unemployment figures in Germany in the years 2006\/7.
The European elections on June 13, 2004 brought a staggering defeat for the Social Democrats, who polled only slightly more than 21 %, the lowest election result for the SPD in a nationwide election since the Second World War.
Liberals, Greens, conservatives and the far left were the winners of the European election in Germany, because voters were disillusioned by high unemployment and cuts in social security, while the governing SPD party seems to be concerned with quarrels between its members and gave no clear direction.
Many observers believe that this election marked the beginning of the end of the Schr der government.
In September 2004, elections were held in the states of Saarland, Brandenburg and Saxony.
In the Saarland, the governing CDU was able to remain in power and gained one additional seat in the parliament and the SPD lost seven seats, while the Liberals and Greens re-entered the state parliament.
The far-right National Democratic Party, which had never got more than 1 or 2 % of the vote, received about 4 %, although it failed to earn a seat in the state parliament (a party must obtain at least 5 % of the vote to achieve state parliamentary representation).
Two weeks later, elections were held in the eastern states of Brandenburg and Saxony: once again, overall, the ruling parties lost votes and although they remained in power, the right to far-right parties made the big leaps.
In Brandenburg, the Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) re-entered the state parliament after winning 6.1 % of the vote.
In Saxony, the NPD entered a non-competition agreement with the DVU and obtained 9.2 % of the vote, thus winning seats in the state parliament.
Due to their losses at the ballots, the ruling CDU of Saxony was forced to form a coalition with the SPD.
The rise of the right to far-right worries the ruling political parties.
On May 22, 2005 as predicted the SPD was defeated in its former heartland, North Rhine-Westphalia.
Half an hour after the election results, the SPD chairman Franz M ntefering announced that the chancellor would clear the way for premature federal elections by deliberately losing a vote of confidence.
This took everyone by surprise, especially because the SPD was below 25 % in polls at the time.
On the following Monday the CDU announced Angela Merkel as conservative candidate for chancellorship.
Whereas in May and June 2005 victory of the conservatives seemed highly likely, with some polls giving them an absolute majority, this changed shortly before the election at September 18, 2005, especially after the conservatives introduced Paul Kirchhof as potential minister of the treasury, and after a TV duel between Merkel and Schr der where many considered Schr der to have performed better.
New for the 2005 election was the alliance between the newly formed Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG) and the PDS, planning to join into a common party (see Left Party.
PDS).
With the former SPD chairman Oskar Lafontaine for the WASG and Gregor Gysi for the PDS as prominent figures, this alliance soon found interest in the media and in the population.
Polls in July saw them as high as 12 %.
After success in the state election for Saxony, the alliance between the far right parties National Democratic Party and Deutsche Volksunion (DVU), which planed to leapfrog the "five-percent hurdle" on a common party ticket was another media issue.
The election results of September 18, 2005 were surprising.
They were very different from the polls of the previous weeks.
The conservatives lost votes compared to 2002, reaching only 35 %, and failed to get a majority for a "black-yellow" government of CDU\/CSU and liberal FDP.
The FDP polled a 10 % of the votes, one of their best results ever.
But the red-green coalition also failed to get a majority, with the SPD losing votes, but polling 34 % and the greens staying at 8 %.
The left party alliance reached 8.7 % and entered the German Parliament, whereas the NPD only got 1.6 %.
The most likely outcome of coalition talks was a so-called "grand coalition" between the conservatives (CDU\/CSU) and the social democrats (SPD), with the three smaller parties (liberals, greens and the left) in the opposition.
Other possible coalitions include a "traffic light coalition" between SPD, FDP and Greens and a "Jamaica coalition" between CDU\/CSU, FDP and Greens.
Coalitions involving the Left Party were ruled out by all parties (including the Left Party itself), although the combination of one of the major parties and any two small parties would mathematically have a majority.
Of these combinations, only a red-red-green coalition is politically even imaginable.
Both Gerhard Schr der and Angela Merkel announced that they had won the election and should become next chancellor.
On October 10, talks were held between Franz M ntefering, the SPD chairman, Gerhard Schr der, Angela Merkel and Edmund Stoiber, the CSU chairman.
In the afternoon it was announced that the CDU\/CSU and SPD would begin formal coalition negotiations with the aim of a Grand Coalition with Angela Merkel as the next German chancellor.
Angela Merkel is the first woman, the first East German and the first scientist to be chancellor as well as the youngest German chancellor ever.
On November 22 2005 Angela Merkel was sworn in by president Horst K hler for the office of Bundeskanzlerin.
George Herbert Walker Bush (born June 12, 1924) is an American politician.
He was the 41st President of the United States from 1989 to 1993.
Before he became president, he was the 43rd Vice President of the United States from 1981 to 1989 under the Ronald Reagan administration, an ambassador, a congressman, and Director of Central Intelligence.
He is married to Barbara.
His sons are 43rd President of the United States George W. Bush and former Governor of Florida Jeb Bush.
His daughter is Dorothy Bush Koch.
He is an Episcopalian.
Bush was born on June 12, 1924 in Milton Massachusetts.
His father was politician Prescott Bush.
He studied at Yale University.
In June 1943, Bush became the youngest pilot in the United States Navy at the time.
Bush served in the United States Navy during 1942 until 1945.
During World War II, his plane was shot down.
He won 3 Air Medal, Presidential Unit Citation, and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
He is married to Barbara Pierce since 1945.
They had six children.
He worked for Zapata Oil in Texas and was a politician in Texas, running for the Senate in 1964 but losing to Ralph Yarborough and later again in 1970 though losing again to Lloyd Bentsen.
He later was a House Representative.
He also was Republican Party Chairman and attempted the vice presidency, with the support of Congressional conservatives such as Senator Barry Goldwater, after Nixon resigned and Ford took office but lost to liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller in 1974.
Bush also ran against Ronald Reagan in 1980 for the Republican Party 's candidacy for President but lost.
He was then named Republican Vice Presidential candidate by Reagan after Reagan defeated him.
Reagan and Bush were elected President and Vice President that year.
During World War II, he was a crewman on a TBM Avenger.
He had survived many crashes and sunk a Japanese ship.
He later became a diplomat and head of the CIA.
After being Ronald Reagan 's vice-president, George H.W. Bush was elected president in 1988 by defeating Democrat Michael Dukakis.
While he was President, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union fell apart.
In 1992, Bush visited the Prime Minister of Japan, Kiichi Miyazawa, when he vomited on his lap and soon fainted during a dinner feast.
Hours later, Bush made a comment that he was suffering from the flu.
When Saddam Hussein (the dictator of Iraq) invaded its enemy Kuwait in order to steal their supplies of oil, George H.W. Bush lead the United States and many other countries to protect Kuwait.
The conflict was called the Gulf War.
He also invaded Panama to remove its dictator Manuel Noreiga who was guilty of drug trafficking.
At home, George H. W. Bush also signed in important laws such as The Americans With Disabilities Act.
However, the country suffered from a recession.
This was embarrassing and many people believe this was why he lost the presidential election of 1992 to Bill Clinton.
Bush now lives in a ranch in Houston, Texas with his family.
After his presidency, he supported John McCain and his son George W. Bush.
He recently supported Mitt Romney and Rick Perry for president.
He attended the opening of the USS George H.W. Bush, a naval ship named after him.
He had traveled with his son to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.
On February 15, 2011, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, by President Barack Obama.
He was present at his son 's presidential library opening ceremony on April 25, 2013.
In July 2013, Bush had his head shaved in a show of support for the two-year-old son of a member of his security detail, who had leukemia.
He is the most recent president that was a veteran during World War II.
He is the father of George W. Bush, another president, Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and Dorothy Bush Koch.
He has two other sons.
His other daughter, Dorothy died of leukemia in 1953.
His father was politician was Prescott Bush.
On April 13, 2013, he became a great-grandfather when his granddaughter Jenna Bush Hager gave birth to a daughter.
Since Bush has the same first and last names as his son, he is often called George H. W. Bush or George Bush Sr. (George Bush senior).
Some people call him "41" or "Bush 41", because he was the 41st President.
Bush suffers from a form of Parkinson 's disease which has forced him to use a motorized scooter or wheelchair to get around, since at least 2012.
On November 23, 2012, he had a bronchitis-like cough that initially brought him to Methodist Hospital in Houston for treatment.
He was supposed to be released before Christmas, but was kept in and over the holiday because he got worse with a high fever.
On December 23, 2012 he started to be in the Intensive-care unit.
On December 29, 2012, his health became better and moved out of intensive care.
He was discharged in the hospital on January 14, 2013.
On December 23, 2014, Bush was once again hospitalized at the Methodist Hospital after suffering a "shortness of breath".
He was released from the hospital on December 30, 2014.
On July 15, 2015, Bush fell at his home in Kennebunkport, Maine and broke a vertebrae in his neck.
George Berkeley (12 March 1685 14 January 1753), or Bishop Berkeley, was an Irish bishop and philosopher.
Berkeley was one of the three ` British Empiricists ', philosophers around the late 1600s and 1700s who believed in 'em piricism ', the philosophy that everything we learn comes through our senses.
The other British Empiricists included the Englishman John Locke and Scotsman David Hume.
His philosophy was called "immaterialism", or "subjective idealism".
His idealism said that all our ideas came through sensations, but our senses did n't tell us anything about the world.
He said that Locke 's belief in matter was wrong.
He said that even though we can see, hear, taste, touch and smell, there was no way of knowing that our senses were reacting to matter, because to find out how accurate our senses were, we would need to study the very thing we use to study.
Instead, he said that our experiences are caused by God, a being that is also a mind, like us, and powerful enough to create all our ideas and senses.
Berkeley was born at his family home, Dysart Castle, near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland.
He was educated at Kilkenny College and attended Trinity College, Dublin, completing a Master 's degree in 1707.
George Washington (February 22, 1732 December 14, 1799) was the first President of the United States (1789 1797), the commander in chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
His mother was Mary Ball and his father was Augustine Washington.
They owned a plantation with slaves in Virginia.
George studied at local schools in Fredericksburg, and was also homeschooled for part of his life.
George 's father died when he was 11.
George 's mother was not fit to look after him.
There is a well known story about honesty, that Washington cut down his father 's cherry tree.
Although it is a very good example of what Washington was like, the story is not true.
Washington became a farmer like his father.
His large plantation was called Mount Vernon.
He also worked as a surveyor, someone who measures land.
Washington always wanted to be a soldier.
He was active in the French and Indian War.
His first military actions were a defeat at the hands of the French and their soldiers in Virginia.
They fought the Indians.
In 1759, Washington married a widow named Martha Custis.
They did not have any children.
Washington was a delegate to the First Continental Congress, which was created by the Thirteen Colonies to respond to various laws passed by the British government.
The Second Continental Congress chose him to be the commanding general of the Continental Army.
Washington led the army from 1775 until the end of the war in 1783.
After losing the big Battle of Long Island, and being chased across New Jersey Washington led his troops back across the Delaware River on Christmas Day, 1776, in a surprise attack on Hessian mercenaries at the small Battle of Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey.
The British had more troops and more supplies than Washington.
However, Washington kept his troops together and won these small battles.
Overall, Washington did not win many battles, but he never let the British destroy his army.
With the help of the French army and navy, Washington made a British army surrender at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781, in the final major battle of the war.
The war officially ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
The army in Newburgh, New York had not been paid and some leaders wanted to force the Continental Congress to pay them.
Washington made a speech to persuade them not to do that.
When the Revolutionary war ended, Washington was a national hero.
He was offered what would basically be a dictatorship over the colonies.
In a move that surprised everyone, however, Washington said no, quit the army and went home to Mount Vernon.
He wanted the colonies to have a strong government, but was tired of leading.
He also did not want the U.S. to be run by a tyrant.
A few years later, Washington was called over to host the discussions for the new government.
He was voted president of the Constitutional Convention in 1785.
Washington wanted the states to ratify the Constitution of the United States and they did, largely thanks to the Federalist Papers, which were written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison.
In 1789, Washington was elected president without any competition.
Washington was the first President of the United States.
Washington helped the government get started.
While Washington did not belong to any political party and stayed neutral, he agreed with Federalist policies such as the country having a standing army and a national bank.
He was re-elected to a second term.
After his second term, Washington decided not to run for reelection even though he was popular enough to probably win in a landslide.
His decision set a precedent that every president followed until Franklin D. Roosevelt broke it in 1940.
In Washington 's farewell address, he warned the country not to divide into political parties and to not get involved in wars outside of the United States.
Washington 's non-intervention foreign policy was supported by most Americans for over one hundred years.
His advice concerning political parties was completely ignored, as parties were already forming at the time of his speech.
Washington went back home to Mount Vernon after his second term ended in 1797.
He was very happy to be home.
He died on December 14, 1799, in Mount Vernon at the age of 67 from pneumonia.
Washington, D.C. and the state of Washington are named after him.
Many schools are named after him.
His face is on the United States dollar bill and the quarter coin.
From his marriage in his 20s, George Washington owned a lot of farm land.
He grew tobacco and wheat and vegetables.
Washington also owned more than 100 slaves.
He made them free when he died.
However, he did not have much money in cash.
He had to borrow money while he was president.
At his death, Washington 's estate was worth over $ 500,000.
Many people think George Washington had wooden teeth, but this is not true.
He tried many different ways to replace his teeth, though: for instance, he tried having teeth carved from elk 's teeth or ivory.
Ivory and bone both have hairline fractures in them, which normally can t be seen which started to darken due to Washington 's love of wine.
The darkened, thin fractures in the bone made the lines look like the grain in a piece of wood.
George Washington 's teeth started falling out when he was about 22, and he had only one tooth left by the time he became president.
It was hard to talk and hard to eat.
At one time, he had fake teeth with a special hole so that the one tooth he still had could poke through; he tried to keep them smelling clean by soaking them in wine, but instead they just became mushy and black.
In 1796, a dentist had to pull out George Washington 's last tooth, and he kept his tooth in a gold locket attached to his watch chain.
When the time came for the president to have his portrait painted, cotton was pushed under his lips to make him look as if he had teeth.
But the cotton made his mouth puff out too far, as is seen on the picture on the dollar bill.
The Gulf Coast region of the United States is made up of the coasts of states which border the Gulf of Mexico.
The states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida are known as the Gulf States.
All Gulf States are in the Southern region of the United States.
Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the Western Post World War II baby boom.
Commentators use beginning birth dates from the early 1960s to the early 1980s.
Many sources mention that Generation X are born between the years 1965 and 1982.
Examples of Gen Xers are Britney Spears, Kirsten Dunst, Claire Danes, Brooke Shields, Sarah Jessica Parker and Isla Fisher.
Guam is an island in Micronesia in the Pacific Ocean that is part of the United States.
It is a territory and not one of the 50 U.S. States.
The people that first lived there are called "Chamorros".
The capital of Guam is the city of Hag t a. The largest city is Dededo.
Guam has important United States Air Force and Navy bases, which use a lot of Guam 's land.
Guam also has a lot of tourists.
Guam was one of the first islands in the Pacific Ocean to be visited by Europeans.
In 1521, the first European to visit Guam was Ferdinand Magellan, on his voyage around the World.
Spain took over Guam in 1668, and it was an important place for Spanish delivery boats every year going between Mexico and the Philippines, known as the Manila Galleon.
During this time the people on Guam learned a great deal about the Spaniards.
In 1898, the United States had a war with Spain and took Guam under the Treaty of Paris, which also brought the giving of Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico from Spain.
Guam continued to be important due to its strategic location, both for shipping and air travel in the Pacific.
During World War II, Japan captured Guam in 1941, but the U.S. fought to get it back in 1944.
This meant that the Chamorro people on Guam were on a different side of the war than the Chamorro people on the nearby Northern Mariana Islands.
Even though the Northern Mariana Islands were also taken over by America, they still feel different from the Chamorro people on Guam.
In 1950, the US Congress passed a law making the people of Guam American citizens.
Most people on Guam are happy to be Americans.
The American military bases make some jobs for a lot of Guam people.
Being part of America also helps bring visitors from Japan who spend money.
But some people on Guam do not like Guam continuing its status as a U.S. territory.
They want to be a more important part of America.
Some of these people want Guam to be a commonwealth, like Puerto Rico.
A few others want Guam to be a U.S. State, or for Guam to be its own country.
But the United States does not think this would be a good idea.
Guam needs a lot of money from the U.S. government, which it would lose if it changed into a commonwealth, a state, or its own country.
Also, changing Guam might mean the U.S. would have to give up some of the important military bases.
Guam gets most of its money from the United States government.
Much of that money is spent on the military bases, but there are also federal grants given to the Guam government for various programs.
Because it is only a territory, federal income taxes paid by Guam residents are given to the Guam government for its operations.
Guam also gets a lot of money from visitors on vacation.
Almost all of these visitors are from Japan.
Japanese tourists like Guam because it is closer to Japan than other American places.
Guam has lots of hotels and other fun places for people to visit.
Tumon Bay is Guam 's biggest beach.
It has lots of pretty white sand, and the water has lots of fish.
Tumon is becoming a busy city.
Today, Guam has less visitors than it did a few years ago, because Asia has had some trouble.
This means there are fewer jobs on Guam, and it has lost money.
Guam is 212 square miles (549 square kilometers) large.
In the north part, it has a flat area of coral and limestone rock.
The south part has mountains.
Around the island is a coral reef.
Guam is next to the Marianas Trench, which is the deepest part of the Earth and underwater.
It sometimes has earthquakes, some of which have been very strong.
Guam is a tropical island.
It is usually quite warm and wet and the temperature does not change very much.
From February to July it is dry, but the rest of the year it is rainy.
Sometimes Guam has very strong and dangerous storms in October and November.
The Game Boys are a group of handheld video game consoles made by Nintendo.
The first Game Boy was released in 1989.
It had a small screen, a D-pad, and an A and B button.
To play games, there were small objects called cartridges that you put into the Game Boy to play the game in the cartridge.
The game that made it popular was Tetris.
The Game Boy had a link cable and a link port which let it connect with other Game Boys.
After the Game Boy, Nintendo released the Game Boy Pocket.
It only needed two batteries instead of four.
The link port was smaller than the Game Boy 's, so the Game Boy and Game Boy Pocket could not connect.
The Game Boy Light was only released in Japan and had a front-light so people could see better.
It is very rare - only about 12,000 of them were manufactured.
Because it is rare, it sells for more money than other Game Boys.
The Game Boy Color was the first Game Boy in color.
It was also able to play Game Boy cartridges, which helped it sell better.
This also helped other Game Boy models after the Game Boy Color.
It is sometimes called GBC.
The Game Boy Advance is a handheld that had better color and smaller cartridges.
It is sometimes called GBA.
It came out in 2001.
The Game Boy Advance SP was an improved version of the GBA.
It has a clamshell design, which means you can fold it to make it smaller.
It has a better light.
It can play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, along with the new cartridges introduced with the GBA.
The Game Boy Micro is a smaller GBA.
It has a smaller link port than the Game Boy Advance.
It has the very best screen out of all the Game Boys.
When Nintendo released the Nintendo DS handheld in 2004, they said it was a "third pillar" (the other two pillars were the Game Boy and the home console).
It has two screens, one of them is a touch screen.
DS games use cards in Slot 1.
In Slot 2, it can accept Game Boy Advance games, but not the older Game Boy or Game Boy Color ones.
Gardening is the growing of plants such as flowers, shrubs and trees as a hobby or recreation.
Some people also grow vegetables or fruit in their gardens.
People do gardening outdoors in the soil in their backyard, or in pots or containers on their balcony or on their patio.
Some people do gardening on a roof.
People do indoor gardening inside their house or inside a building.
Sometimes indoor gardening is done in greenhouses, which are special buildings where plants are grown.
A greenhouse has a transparent glass or plastic roof and walls that let sunlight in.
Water gardening is growing plants in ornamental pools and ponds.
People doing water gardening plant water lilies and other aquatic plants.
Gardening can be done outside of the home, in city parks, botanical gardens, zoos, amusement parks, theme parks, and around tourist attractions.
These types of gardens are cared for by people called gardeners or groundskeepers.
Gardening is related to farming.
But farming is done on a much larger scale.
A farm may have hundreds of square kilometers of plants and crops.
A garden in a person 's backyard usually only measures a few square meters.
As well, farming is done as a business, to sell the crops, fruit, and vegetables that are produced.
Gardening is done just to produce fruit or vegetables for the gardener 's own family.
Gardening is done as a hobby or as a recreation, not as a business.
Gardeners use tools to dig in the soil and water the crops.
These tools include a spade, a fork, a hoe, a basket, a watering can, a hose, a bucket, a trowel and a wheelbarrow.
In many countries and cultures, designing beautiful gardens is considered to be an art.
In Japan, for instance, Zen monks created Japanese gardens.
In Europe in the 1700s, kings and queens had formal gardens built (for example the gardens at Versailles, France).
Graffiti is marks, scratchings or drawings made on a surface on a public place.
It is often created with paint or spray paint (paint that is sprayed from a can).
A single mark could be called a graffito but the word graffiti is usually used, meaning that there is more than 1 mark.
Graffiti can take the form of art, drawings or words.
When done without a property owner 's permission it is considered vandalism.
Sometimes it is just a person 's name or a rude word.
Sometimes it is as a public political protest.
Graffiti has been found in very old cities.
For example, in the Roman Empire, people wrote messages and drew caricatures on walls.
Graffiti is also found in many places.
Some of people do murals of graffiti rather than just writing one mark in a location.
It was used for good instead of vandalism.
Probably the simplest graffiti is when a person cuts (or carves) the name of a lover on a tree with a knife.
Today, many graffiti are very complicated mixtures of writing and pictures.
They are sometimes made by gangs and applied with spray-paint to buildings, bridges, street signs, and other areas.
These are often signed with a tag (in graffiti slang, a signature), which is a shape special to an artist or group.
Graffiti can be thought of as a part of hip hop or street protest.
It is often but not always illegal.
Some cities have small areas where graffiti can be made.
Sometimes graffiti are very beautiful.
Some people consider graffiti as not only something bad, but something good, like art.
Some people pay graffiti artists to do graffiti on their buildings.
In the 1980s, some graffiti artists like Keith Haring became very famous.
Modern graffiti was made famous in New York City in the early 1970s by the children of the working class.
They called it "writing," and called themselves "writers."
In a 1971 New York Times article, the term "graffiti" was first used to refer to the new urban art explosion that was becoming popular in New York City.
This period of the early 1970s is known as the "Original School."
Later in the 1980s, the next generation of graffiti artists is known as "Old School."
Godzilla is a giant dinosaur-like fictional monster who first appeared in movies from Japan, in the year 1954.
Since then has been featured in twenty-nine movies.
During his movie career, this large reptile fought against many other mythical monsters, including the giant moth-like Mothra, the three-headed King Ghidorah, his own robotic mirror image Mechagodzilla, and several more enemies.
The original Japanese name, Gojira, is a combination of the words gorilla and kujira (means whale).
In countries where the primary language is English, the name has been changed to Godzilla.
King Kong vs. Godzilla is a 1962 Japanese monster movie.
It was produced by Toho Studios.
It is the third Godzilla movie and first Japanese King Kong movie.
It is the first time Godzilla and King Kong appear together in a movie, and the first time they appear in color.
The movie involves Godzilla and King Kong fighting on Mount Fuji after King Kong fights a giant octopus and Godzilla attacks Japan.
The movie has the highest box office figures of any Godzilla movie.
It sold 11.2 million tickets and made 350,000,000.
The movie was produced as a part of Toho 's 30th anniversary celebration.
It was later released in the United States in the summer of 1963.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (;; May 19, 1762 January 27, 1814), was a German philosopher.
He was one of the first philosophers of the movement known as German idealism.
He died of typhus in Berlin.
The Great Lakes are five large lakes in east-central North America.
They hold 21 % of the world 's surface fresh water.
Four of the Great Lakes are on the border between Canada and the United States of America.
The other, Lake Michigan, is completely inside the United States.
All together, by volume, they are the largest group of fresh water lakes in the world.
No one of the Lakes is larger than Lake Baikal (Russia) or Lake Tanganyika (East Africa).
The cities of Chicago, Illinois (9.8 million people, on Lake Michigan), Toronto, Ontario (5.5 million, on Lake Ontario); Detroit, Michigan (5.3 million, on the Detroit river); Montreal, Quebec (3.9 million, on the St. Lawrence River), Cleveland, Ohio (2.9 million, on Lake Eyrie) and Ottawa (1.2 million, Ontario, on the Ottawa River) are on the shores of the Great Lakes or their rivers.
Though the five lakes have separate basins, they form a single, connected body of freshwater.
The lakes connect the east-central interior of North America to the Atlantic Ocean.
Water flows from Lake Superior and Lake Michigan into Lake Huron; then through the Detroit River into Lake Erie; then through Niagara Falls into Lake Ontario; and then through the Saint Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean.
Water also drains from the Chicago River on the south.
Many rivers flow through a large watershed into the lakes.
The lakes have about 35,000 islands.
The Great Lakes region includes the five lakes and many thousands of smaller lakes, often called inland lakes.
Lake Michigan and Lake Huron hit all-time record low levels in 2013.
The unusual shape of the Great Lakes has created the possibility of large waves called seiche.
If a storm causes a fast, strong increase in air pressure on one side of a lake, the water level on that side of the lake will drop and suddenly push up the water level on the opposite side of the lake.
A 10 foot tall wave in Chicago caused several deaths in 1954.
The Great Lakes are home to a variety of species of fish and other organisms.
In recent years, overfishing caused a decline in lake trout.
The drop in lake trout increased the alewife population.
In response, the government introduced salmon as a predator to decrease the alewife population.
This program was so successful that the salmon population rose rapidly, and the states surrounding Lake Michigan promoted ` salmon snagging '.
This has been made illegal in all of the Great Lakes states except for a limited season in Illinois.
Lake Michigan is now being stocked with several species of fish.
However, several invader species such as lampreys, round goby, and zebra mussels threaten the native fish populations.
Accidentally introduced species are a big problem.
Since the 19th century about 160 species have invaded the Great Lakes ecosystem, causing severe economic and ecological impacts.
According to the Inland Seas Education Association, they deprive fish of food, cause blooms of toxic algae, and foul boats, spawning areas and drinking water intakes.
On average a new invasive species enters the Great Lakes every eight months.
Two important infestations in the Great Lakes are the zebra mussel, first discovered in 1988, and the quagga mussel in 1989.
These molluscs are efficient filter feeders.
They compete with native mussels, and also reduce available food and spawning grounds for fish.
Also, the mussels hurt utility and manufacturing industries by clogging or blocking pipes.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that the economic impact of the zebra mussel will be about $ 5 billion over the next decade.
Because the quagga mussel is good at filtering plankton from the lake water, sunlight reaches deeper into the lake.
This increases the growth of algae.
Chemicals from industrial plants run off the land into rivers and arrive in the lakes.
Some of these chemicals are highly toxic, such as mercury.
Contaminated water from sewer overflows also reaches the lakes, and beaches get closed because of the threat of pathogenic bacteria.
General relativity is a theory of space and time.
The theory was published by Albert Einstein in 1915.
The central idea of general relativity is that space and time are two aspects of spacetime.
Spacetime is curved when there is gravity, matter, energy, and momentum.
The links between these forces are shown in the Einstein field equations.
A central idea in general relativity is the "principle of equivalence."
An example is that two people, one in an elevator sitting on the surface of the earth, and the other in an elevator in outer space accelerating at 9.8 m\/s2, will each observe the same behavior of an object they drop from their hand.
The object will accelerate to the floor at 9.8 m\/s2 in either case, making it impossible for either to distinguish whether or not they are at rest in a gravitational field or accelerating upward at one.
Other versions of this type of "thought experiment" were used to show that light would curve in an accelerating frame of reference.
There are several forms of the equivalence principle.
These include: Newton 's equivalence principle, the weak equivalence principle, the gravitational weak equivalence principle, Einstein 's equivalence principle and the strong equivalence principle.
The Sun can be seen as this kind of valley in spacetime, and one of the other objects in the valley is the Earth.
The Earth does not roll directly towards the Sun (or ball) because it is moving too fast.
The force pulling the Earth towards the sun is about the same as a second force.
This second force is called the centrifugal force.
The centrifugal force exists because the Earth moves sideways.
This sideways motion makes the distance between the Earth and Sun increase.
Since the Earth is being pulled towards the sun and moving away at the same time, it stays at about the same distance.
This is also how the Moon orbits the earth.
In this second case, Earth is the ball and the Moon is the object.
General relativity has predicted many things which were later seen.
These include:
Genealogy is the study of family history.
It is the study of family relationships and ancestry.
It is a popular hobby in the United States and in many other countries.
Some people show their family history using a family tree.
A family tree is a diagram of the members of a family.
With a family tree you use lines to show how people are related, for example, people who are married or have children.
Some people keep track of their family history data in a genealogy database on their computer.
Examples of data that a person would save are dates and places of births, marriages, and deaths.
Other information that might be saved are records of military service, census records which show where ancestors lived at a certain time, immigration data, education, occupations, and even photos of the ancestors.
The person building the database can usually decide to save many kinds data news articles, stories that were told in the family (oral history), information on religious ceremonies, wills or inheritances, information from family letters, customs, or how world or local events affected the family.
The advantages of using a genealogy database are that it helps to keep the data organized, especially when relationships change; it can generate several types of charts or tables with the data filled in; it may make it easier to share data with others; and it takes up less room than paper and notebooks.
People study genealogy (family history) for many reasons.
They may want to help someone be reunited with their family after war, natural disasters, foster care, or adoption, or find living relatives.
They may want to learn about their ancestors (parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.) from hundreds of years ago.
They may want to track hereditary diseases that may be passed from parents to their children.
(This would overlap with the study of genetics.)
Some people used to (and some still do) study genealogy to keep track of wealth, land and power because people used to argue that it belongs to their family.
These people use genealogy to help it stay in the family and prevent untruthful claims to the wealth, land or power.
The Gabonese Republic or Gabon is a country in Africa.
It is located on the equator.
It has borders with the countries of Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, and Republic of the Congo.
Its capital is Libreville which is also the largest city in the country.
Gabon has an area of almost 270000 s. 1.5 million people live in Gabon.
Gabon was a colony of France.
It became a new country on August 17, 1960.
Since 1960, country has had only 3 presidents.
At first it had one-party rule.
In the early 1990s country switched to many party government.
Gabon is one of the richest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
It has 4th highest HDI and third highest GDP per capita (PPP) in the region.
Gabon 's income is not evenly given to people and many people are poor.
The first people who lived in the country were pygmies.
Later, Bantu people took over the area.
Bad weather did not let people form local culture, as it had happened in the south (Congo) or north (Benin).
In the 15th century first Europeans came to the area.
Starting from the 16th century coast was used for slave trade.
In the 19th century French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza organized the first journey to the Gabon-Congo area in 1875.
After 10 years, France took over the whole country.
At that time a small amount of Bantu people lived in the country.
In 1910 Gabon was one of the French colonies which formed the French Equatorial Africa (together with Congo, Central African Republic and Chad).
French Equatorial Africa lasted to 1959.
On August 17, 1960 it became a new country.
Since 1960, Gabon has only had 3 presidents.
In 1961 L on M ` ba became the first president.
In 1967 after his death Omar Bongo became the president and ruled the country to 2009.
In 2009, Omar Bongo died and his son Ali Bongo Ondimba took over as president.
Gabon is on the Atlantic coast of central Africa.
It is on the equator.
Gabon generally has an equatorial climate.
Rainforests cover 85 % of the country.
There are three distinct regions: the coastal plains (ranging between 20 to 300 km from the ocean 's shore), the mountains (the Cristal Mountains to the northeast of Libreville, the Chaillu Massif in the center, culminating at 1575 m with Mont Iboundji), and the savanna in the east.
The coastal plains form a large section of the World Wildlife Fund 's Atlantic Equatorial coastal forests ecoregion and contain patches of Central African mangroves especially on the Muni River estuary on the border with Equatorial Guinea.
Gabon 's largest river is the Ogoou which is 1200 km long.
Gabon has three karst areas where there are hundreds of caves in the dolomite and limestone rocks.
Some of the caves include Grotte du Lastoursville, Grotte du Lebamba, Grotte du Bongolo, and Grotte du Kessipougou.
Many caves have not been explored yet.
A National Geographic Expedition visited the caves in the summer of 2008 to document them (Expedition Website).
The first Gabonese president was Leon Mba.
His successor was Omar Bongo, from 1967 until his death in 2009.
Under his governance Gabon had just one political party between 1968 and 1990.
It was called PDG.
Gabon is divided into nine provinces.
The provinces are divided into 37 departments.
Gabon has nine states.
The soil of Gabon is rich in the metals uranium, manganese, and petrolium.
Therefore, these three elements, such as metal exploited in Port-Gentil, Iranium in Munana, and the manganese in Franceville.
Gabon has a wide culture.
Before colonialism, Gabon 's people believed their ancestral spirit as religion, like bwiti, mvett, djobi.
After colonialism, others religions such as Christianity and Islam came to be added to the first animists believers.
The Gaza Strip is a Palestinian stretch of land along the Mediterranean.
The main city in the Gaza Strip is called Gaza.
The strip is not currently part of any recognized country.
It is governed by the Palestinian political party Hamas, within the confines of Israel 's military occupation.
It is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth.
About 1.8 million people live on a surface of roughly 360 km.
Israel withdrew Jewish-only settlements and troops from Gaza in 2005, but retains control of the Strip 's borders, coastline and airspace.
It has since then subjected Gaza to a blockade, severely restricting Gazans ' freedom of movement and access to essential goods.
Gaza is recognized as occupied territory under international law by the United Nations, Amnesty International, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and several other organizations.
Israel disputes this.
80 % of the inhabitants are recognized as refugees by the United Nations Works Relief Agency (UNWRA).
They live in cities which they call refugee camps.
The main problems facing the area are assaults by the Israeli military, unemployment, poverty, lack of access to clean drinking water, lack of access to higher education, lack of access to electricity, and malnutrition as a result of the Israeli blockade.
The Republic of Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) is a country in West Africa.
Twenty-three million people live there; its capital is Accra.
It is in Western Africa, bordering the Gulf of Guinea, between C te d'Ivoire and Togo.
Since Ghana is near the Equator, the climate is very warm and tropical.
The eastern coastal belt is warm and comparatively dry.
South west corner is hot and humid.
The north is hot and dry.
Lake Volta (the world s largest artificial lake) extends through eastern Ghana.
Most Ghanaians have access to primary and secondary education.
Ghana has a 6-year primary school system.
There are 6 public universities and 10 private universities.
After secondary education, there are not many opportunities for Ghanaian students go into higher education.
Only 9 out of 100 students continue studying after secondary educations.
Ghana has many natural resources.
The main exports are gold, timber, cocoa, diamonds, and more.
Ghana has one of the strongest economies in Africa.
Ghana used Cedi for their currency but in July 2007, Ghana Cedi became the new currency.
1 Ghana Cedi is equal to 1000 Cedi.
1 US dollar is around 0.93 Ghana Cedi.
Ghana is a country located on the Gulf of Guinea.
It is only a few degrees north of the Equator.
This gives it a warm climate.
The country has an area of 238500 k. It is surrounded by Togo to the east, C te d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north and the Gulf of Guinea (Atlantic Ocean) to the south.
The country has flat plains, low hills and a few rivers.
Ghana can be divided into five different geographical regions.
The coastline is mostly a low, sandy shore backed by plains and scrub.
It is crossed by several rivers and streams.
The northern part of the country has high plains.
Southwest and south central Ghana is made up of a forested plateau region with the Ashanti uplands and the Kwahu Plateau.
The hilly Akuapim-Togo ranges are found along the country 's eastern border.
The Volta Basin also takes up most of central Ghana.
Ghana 's highest point is Mount Afadjato.
It is 885 m and is found in the Akwapim-Togo Ranges.
There are two main seasons in Ghana: the wet and the dry seasons.
Northern Ghana has its rainy season from March to November.
The south, including the capital Accra, has the season from April to mid-November.
Ghana is divided into 10 administrative regions.
The regions are divided into a total of 170 districts.
The regions are:
Football is the most popular sport.
The national men 's football team is known as the Black Stars.
The under-20 team is known as the Black Satellites.
Ghana has been in many championships including the African Cup of Nations, the FIFA World Cup and the FIFA U-20 World Cup.
In the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Ghana became the third African country to reach the quarter final stage.
There are several club football teams in Ghana, which play in the Ghana Premier League and Division One League.
Both are managed by the Ghana Football Association.
The country also has quite a few quality boxers such as Azumah Nelson a three time world champion, Nana Yaw Konadu also a three time world champion, Ike Quartey, and Joshua Clottey.
The Gulf of Finland is a body of water that points east from the Baltic Sea with Finland on its north side and Estonia on its south side.
Both Finnish capital Helsinki and Estonian capital Tallinn are at shore of Gulf of Finland.
At the bottom of the gulf of Finland is Russia and its most important coast city St. Petersburg.
The water is less salty in the eastern side of the Gulf.
This is because the Neva River flows into the Gulf in the east.
Gda sk is a city in the north of Poland in Pomeranian Voivodeship, near the place where the Vistula river meets the Baltic Sea.
It is Poland 's 6th largest city (population of 500 000 people) and the largest and most important sea port.
It has existed since the 10th century and many times played a very important role in Poland 's history.
In the 19th century it was part of Prussia.
This is where Solidarity, the movement which helped end Communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, came to life.
Gdansk has a humid continental climate (Dfb in the K ppen climate classification).
The sixth Wikimania was hosted in this city in 2010.
A graviton is a hypothetical particle that ` transfers ' gravitation 's force (particles like this are known as gauge bosons) from its field.
Gravitons have never been observed, directly or indirectly, however, there have been several theories that use gravitons to explain certain phenomena.
For example, a theory that describes black holes by combining quantum mechanics and gravity, has been advanced by Georgi Dvali and Cesar Gomez, which suggests a black hole is "an overpacked bucket of gravitons".
There are some theories that suggest that gravitons would make up a new group of particles, "attraction particles".
Cern is currently smashing more particles using the LHC to try to find this particle.
Because the graviton is a particle that has force (gravity), it is classed as a gauge boson.
Other gauge bosons include the photon, the gluon, and the W and Z particles.
If someone found one, it could lead to a theory which would join together the four main physical forces: electromagnetism, gravity, strong force and weak force.
G ta Canal is a canal in southern Sweden.
Opened in 1832, its economic importance started to decline early because of the arrival of railroads in Sweden by the mid 19th century, and nowadays, it 's mostly used for summertime tourist boat tours, as well as private boating.
General Motors Company is the largest American car company.
It is based in the Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan.
It was founded in 1908 by a man named Billy Durant.
It makes cars and trucks in 31 countries.
About 209,000 people work for it.
It is the second largest car company in the world.
In the 1950s and 60s it dominated the car industry, but it fell into decline by the 1980s and 90s.
The company went through a bankruptcy in 2009 and was bought by the US Government, which has been selling its stake in the company.
As of April 2014, GM is being investigated by the United States Congress over the deaths of 13 people involving faulty ignition systems that have been used in many GM cars, with some built as early as 1997.
In May 2014 the company was fined $ 35 million from NHTSA over the ignition problem.
In the past, General Motors has used other brands, including Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer, Geo, and Daewoo, but none of these are produced by GM as of 2014.
They either have gone out of business or were merged into Chevrolet.
GM also owned Saab from 1989-2010, and also held stakes in Isuzu and Suzuki until 2008.
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge that crosses over the San Francisco Bay, going from San Francisco to Marin County, in the U.S. state of California.
It was opened for use in 1937.
When the bridge was finished, its length of 9,266 ft (2824 m) made it the longest bridge in the world.
Now there are several bridges that are longer, but for many people, it is still one of the most beautiful bridges in the world.
Before the bridge, the only way to go north from San Francisco to Marin County was by ferryboat.
The trip by ferry took 20 minutes to complete.
Before the bridge was built, San Francisco was the biggest American city still served mostly by ferries.
Some experts did not think that people could build a bridge because the water currents between Marin and San Francisco were very strong.
Also, the water was very deep in the middle - 102 m - and there was a lot of wind and fog that could make building a bridge difficult.
In 1916, San Francisco 's city engineer asked other engineers to offer ideas for a bridge.
One man, Joseph Strauss, designed a very cheap bridge - only $ 17 million, but many thought it was ugly.
Local authorities asked him to change the design and to work with other experts.
He agreed.
He and other experts, especially architect Irving Morrow, designed the bridge again, this time as a suspension bridge.
A suspension bridge has tall towers that hold long cables, and the cables hold up or "suspend" the bridge.
The bridge is called the Golden Gate Bridge because it crosses the Golden Gate Strait, the area of water between the San Francisco peninsula and the Marin County peninsula.
In 1930, people in San Francisco and Marin County agreed that the local governments could sell bonds to the public to raise money for the bridge.
The new bridge was going to cost $ 30.1 million.
But it was difficult for the governments to sell the bonds at the time because of the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
Finally, the Bank of America, which was based in San Francisco, agreed to buy all the bonds to help the local economy.
Construction began on January 5, 1933 and was finished in April 1937.
Eleven men died during the construction, so the builders put a net under the bridge for the safety of the builders.
Nineteen men were saved by the net.
When they finished the bridge, they painted it with a reddish-orange sealant, a type of paint that protects the bridge from water and humidity.
People liked the color because it looked good with the bridge 's surroundings and it was easy to see in the fog, so the bridge was officially painted with the color, called International Orange.
People can cross the bridge in cars or motorcycles any time.
During daylight hours, they can cross by bicycle or on foot.
They can not cross the bridge on roller skates, skateboards, or mopeds.
When the bridge opened, drivers had to pay 50 cents to cross the bridge in either direction.
Today, when drivers go north on the bridge (leaving San Francisco) they do not have to pay, but starting on September 2, 2008, when going south (entering San Francisco), they have to pay $ 6 if they pay cash or $ 5 if they buy a Fastrak pass.
People often jump off the bridge to commit suicide (kill themselves).
They fall 75 meters and most of them die when they hit the water.
Over 1300 people committed suicide by jumping off the bridge.
Guglielmo Marconi (25 April 1874 - 20 July 1937) was an Italian inventor and electrical engineer.
He was a pioneer of long-distance radio transmission.
and for his development of Marconi 's law and a radio telegraph system.
Marconi is often named as the inventor of radio.
He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun.
Much of Marconi 's work in radio transmission was built on previous experimentation, and work by others.
When he was twenty years old he learned of the experiments of Hertz, Popov, Lodge, Bose, and Tesla.
He began his own experiments.
As an entrepreneur, businessman, and founder of The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company in Britain in 1897, Marconi became wealthy in the business of radio, mainly for ships at sea.
In 1924, he was ennobled as Marchese Marconi.
Back in Italy, he went on to become a member of the Grand Council of Fascism.
Greece ((e la a) or (e las)), officially the Hellenic Republic ((elini k i imokra tia)), is a country in Southeastern Europe.
Its capital city is Athens.
It borders Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east.
The Aegean Sea is to the east and south of mainland Greece, the Ionian Sea is to the west.
Both are part of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and have many islands.
The official language spoken in Greece is Greek, spoken by 99 % of the population.
Many Greeks also understand English, French and German, which are taught in schools.
Greece became a member of the European Union in 1981.
Greece 's history is one of the richest in the world.
The Greeks were one of the most advanced civilizations.
Greece is famous for its many philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, and kings like Alexander the Great and Leonidas.
Greece is said to be the birthplace of Democracy, because city-states like Athens, now the capital of Greece, were the first to elect their leaders and not have kings.
During the years of Alexander the Great, a huge Greek empire was created that stretched from modern-day Greece to Egypt and Iran, until the borders of India.
Because of the significant role that Greek culture played during that time, it is called the Hellenistic period (or Greek-dominated period).
During that time, the Greek language became the ` lingua franca ' of the middle east, which means the language that people who do not speak the same language use to communicate, like English is used today as an international language.
Greece was then ruled by the Roman Empire, and many argue that Rome conquered Greece with its army, but Greece conquered Rome with its culture.
The Roman Empire after the conquest of Greece became a civilization known as the Greco-Roman (or Greek-Roman) civilization.
When the Roman Empire collapsed, the Greeks emerged as the ruling class of the East Roman Empire, and the Greek language became the official language of the country, which included all the eastern Mediterranean Sea, Turkey, Egypt and other countries in the area.
It was then occupied by the Ottoman Empire for a period of 400 years.
Some areas of Greece, like the second-largest city in the country, Thessaloniki, were occupied for 500 years and became part of Greece less than 100 years ago.
The Greek War of Independence began on the 25th of March 1821, according to tradition, and Greece was an independent country (a republic) in 1828.
In reality, the Greek War of Independence began on 23 February 1821, when Alexander Ypsilantis (Greek) declared the start of the revolution in modern-day Romania.
In 1832 Greece was made a kingdom by the United Kingdom and Russia, under the German Wittelsbach dynasty.
Greece fought in both World War I and World War II in the side of allies.
In 1912, Greece took part in the Balkan Wars, where it gained many of the territories that make up the country now, such as Greek Macedonia and the islands of the Aegean Sea.
In 1920 Greece expanded again, and reached its maximum size, but the territories that the country had gained in Turkey were given back to Turkey in 1923, but Greece kept Western Thrace.
In 1940, Greece was invaded by Italy, but managed to defeat the Italian invasion and marked the first victory of an Allied country against an Axis power (the side of Hitler).
After the defeat of Italy, Hitler decided to attack Greece sooner than he had planned.
Germany invaded on 6 April 1940 and captured Greece 's second-largest city of Thessaloniki on 9 April, while Athens was captured on 27 April.
Greece suffered major damages in the Second World War and was involved in a civil war between 1946 and 1949, which left the country devastated and the people very poor.
The Greek civil war was fought between the communists and the people who supported the king, who also had support from the United Kingdom and the United States.
In 1967 the military took control of the country and restricted democracy.
Free elections were then held again 7 years later, and the Greeks voted to send the king away and declared a republic in 1974.
Greece became a member of the European Union in 1981.
Greece had seen rapid growth in the 1990s, but some of the country 's economic statistics were modified to appear more correct than they were, as the government had lied with the help of banks from the United States.
In 2004, Greece hosted the Olympic Games for a second time.
Since 2009, Greece has been in an economic crisis, which is also becoming a political crisis.
Greece is not a federal state like the United States, but a unitary state like the United Kingdom.
It is ruled by a parliament, called the Hellenic Parliament (or Greek Parliament in Simple English), which has 300 members.
It is a parliamentary republic, which means that, unlike in the United States, the President has very few powers.
The person in charge of the government of Greece is the Prime Minister.
Greece was a kingdom for most of its history as an independent nation.
It officially became the Third Hellenic Republic (or Third Republic of Greece in Simple English) in 1975, when the monarchy was abolished by a popular vote.
Greece was under a military dictatorship between 1967 and 1975, which collapsed after the invasion of Cyprus, and handed over power to Constantine Karamanlis.
Demonstrations by the students of the universities across Greece took place in 1973, but were suppressed by the regime, which sent a tank to crash the gates of the Athens Polytechnic and forcefully stop the protests.
Greece was also under a fascist dictatorship from 1936 until 1941, when it was invaded by Nazi Germany.
During World War I, Greece was divided into two countries, the State of Thessaloniki in the north and the State of Athens in the south.
Both countries claimed to be the legitimate government of Greece, but the State of Thessaloniki received support from the Allies.
The country was reunited in 1917, when the King abdicated.
There are many political parties in Greece, but only seven are in the Greek parliament.
Until 2015, only two political parties formed governments, the PASOK party (which is social democratic) and New Democracy (which is conservative).
The government ousted in the 2015 election was led by PASOK, DIMAR AND ND.
Other parties include the Communist party, the left-wing SYRIZA party, the nationalist party and others.
SYRIZA, led by Alexis Tsipras, won the 2015 parliamentary election held on January 25 of that year, and entered into a coalition government with the small right-wing party Greek Independents.
The divisions of Greece are called ` Peripheries '.
As of January 2011, there are 13 peripheries in Greece.
Peripheries are subdivided into ` peripheral units ', and previously they were known as ` prefecture ', but prefectures were abolished in 2011.
The most populated peripheries in Greece are Attica, where the capital city of Greece, Athens, is, and Central Macedonia, where Greece 's second-largest city, Thessaloniki, is.
All the peripheries, and their capital cities, are:
Greece is a small country compared to other countries such as the United States, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom.
The population of Greece is estimated to be over 10 million.
Most of the people in Greece are Greeks, and they form 94 % of the population of the country.
There are also many Albanians in Greece, and they make up 4 % of the population.
Other nationalities make up for another 2 % of the country.
The Greek government recognizes only one minority in the country, the Turkish one in the region of Thrace.
The dispute between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia has resulted in the refusal of Greece to acknowledge the existence of a Macedonian minority.
The 2001 population census showed only 747 citizens of the Republic of Macedonia in Greece.
The Republic of Macedonia says that there are a maximum of 300,000 ethnic Macedonians in Greece, but Greece says that if there is a minority in the country, it would not be more than 30,000 people, in the northern part of the country, near the border with the Republic of Macedonia.
This is also supported by international organizations.
The Greek flag was officially adopted in 1828 as a civil and state ensign (a flag for use only on boats and ships) and as a national flag when flown outside of Greece, for example on embassies.
A different flag (white cross on a blue field) was used as a land flag within Greece from 1828 until 1969 and from 1975 to 1978.
In 1978 the current flag became national flag and the older land flag was abolished.
There are many theories about the origin of the color of the flag.
One says that the blue represents the color of the sea and the white represents the waves, and others include white for the waves and blue for the sky and white for purity and breakaway from tyranny and blue for Greece.
There are nine stripes on the flag, which according to the legend represent the nine syllables in the phrase which means freedom or death.
The cross stands for Christianity.
Greece is a capitalist country, like the United States and France.
Greece has the largest number of trading ships (a ` merchant navy ') in the world.
Tourism is also a major source of income for Greece.
In the 20th century Greece had its own currency but now uses the Euro as most other European Community countries do.
Greece has adopted some welfare state policies, such as public healthcare and free education, like many other European countries.
The pension system of Greece has created serious problems.
Thousands of Greeks are retired before the age of 55.
Political leaders have made themselves popular by adjusting the retirement age several times.
Currently the average age of retirement is 50 for women and 55 for men.
This is putting Greece in a very difficult situation when the country has accumulated a debt of about 350 billion, or debt by 170 per-cent of the country 's total GDP.
Greece also has a trade deficit, meaning that it buys more things than it sells.
The country is cutting costs and asking for loans in order to avoid bankruptcy.
About 16.5 million tourists visit Greece each year.
That is more than the country s entire population.
Since there are so many tourist in Greece, it has many international airports.
Greenland is a large Arctic island.
It has a population of only 50,000 residents, because of its cold climate.
Most of the civilian population lives in the southern part of the island, on the coasts.
The capital of Greenland is Nuuk.
Greenland is the world 's largest island that is not a continent.
The island is the least densely populated country in the world, with a density of 0.26 people per square kilometer.
(Antarctica and uninhabited islands are not counted because they are not independent countries.)
Since the 1950s, scientists think that the ice sheet that covers Greenland may hide three separate islands, which are joined by glaciers since the last geologic ice age.
In Greenland, there are no forests.
In the south, at the coastal area, only some dwarf trees are found.
Greenland is a Danish-occupied territory of Denmark, but Greenland is not a member of the European Union.
It is part of the North American continent, and Greenland is the largest island in the world, excluding Australia and Antarctica, which are continents.
The prime minister of Greenland is Kim Kielsen.
The island is populated mostly by Inuit and Scandinavians who speak Greenlandic, an Inuit language.
Danish is also spoken by most people.
The national anthem of Greenland is Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit.
Until 2009, there were 20 communes in Greenland.
Unless stated otherwise, they are in the district Kitaa:
As of January 1st, 2008, 218 people lived there.
The island has many mountains.
All of the cities are on the coast, because everywhere else is covered by a big layer of ice.
The major cities are Nuuk, Sisimiut, Ilulissat, and Qaqortoq.
Guernsey is an island in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.
It is one of the Channel Islands, and is the main administration island of the Bailiwick of Guernsey '.
Elizabeth II is the head of state, but it has a government of its own, with its own laws and special status when it comes to taxes.
65,573 people live there.
Guernsey has 10 parishes.
These are Castel, Forest, St Andrews, St Martins, St Peter Port, St Pierre du bois, St Sampson, St Saviour 's, Torteval, Vale.
St Peter Port is the biggest parish by terms of population, with 16,500 people living there.
Guernsey has its own dialect of the Norman language, called Guern siais.
It is spoken by only 2 % of the population, but is understood by around 14 %.
This means that only 1300 people speak it, and most of these people are elderly.
Only 1 in every 1000 young people can speak it.
Guinea, or the Republic of Guinea, is an independent nation in western Africa.
They speak French.
It 's a member of Economic Community of West African States.
Guinea is divided into 8 regions and then divided even further into 33 prefectures.
The capital of Guinea, Conakry, is a special area.
Guinea-Bissau is a country in Africa.
The official language is Portuguese, and the capital is Bissau.
About 1,442,000 people live in Guinea-Bissau as of 2006.
The country was a Portuguese colony in the 19th century.
At that time is was called Portuguese Guinea.
It became independent in 1973.
In 1974, the name of the country 's capital was added so that it would not be confused with the neighboring country Guinea.
Guinea-Bissau is divided into 8 regions and one autonomous sector.
These are divided into thirty-seven sectors.
The regions are:
Geology is the study of the nonliving things that the Earth is made of.
Geology is the study of rocks in the Earth 's crust.
People who study geology are called geologists.
Some geologists study minerals and the useful substances the rocks contain (such as natural gas and oil).
Geologists also study the history of the Earth.
Some of the important events in the Earth 's history are floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, orogeny (mountain building), and plate tectonics (movement of continents).
Geology is divided into special subjects that study one part of geology.
Some of these subjects are:
Rocks can be found in all sorts of shapes and colors.
Some are very hard and some are soft.
Some rocks are very common, while others are rare.
However, all the different rocks belong to three categories or types, igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic.
Igneous rock is rock that has been made by volcanic action.
Igneous rock is made when the lava (melted rock on the surface of the Earth) or magma (melted rock below the surface of the Earth) cools down and becomes hard.
Sedimentary rock is rock that has been made from sediment.
Sediment is all solid pieces of stuff that are moved by the wind, water, or glaciers.
Sediment can be made from clay, sand, gravel and the bodies and shells of animals.
The sediment gets dropped in a layer at the bottom of a river or sea.
As the sediment piles up, the lowers layers get squashed together.
Slowly they set hard into rock.
Some sedimentary rocks are made of just one type of sediment, all about the same size, such as sand.
Other sedimentary rocks will have large and small lumps, and pieces made of different types of rock.
Well-known sedimentary rocks are sandstone and limestone.
Metamorphic rock is rock that has been changed.
The word "metamorphosis" means "change".
Sometimes an igneous, or a sedimentary rock can be heated, or squashed under the ground, so that it changes.
Metamorphic rock is often harder than the rock that it was before it changed.
One well-known metamorphic rock is marble which is valued for its different colors, and because it can be carved and polished.
Slate is a metamorphic rock that is a useful building material.
All three kinds of rock can be changed by being heated and squeezed by forces in the earth.
When this happens, faults (cracks) may appear in the rock.
Geologists can learn a lot about the history of the rock by studying the patterns of the fault lines.
Earthquakes are caused when a fault breaks suddenly.
Soil is the stuff on the ground made of lots of particles (or tiny pieces).
The particles of soil come from rocks that have broken down, and from rotting leaves and animals bodies.
Soil covers a lot of the surface of the Earth.
Plants of all sorts grow in soil.
To find out more about types of rocks, go to Rock (geology).
To find out more about soil, go to Soil.
Geologists use some simple ideas which help them to understand the rocks they are studying.
The following ideas were worked out in the early days of stratigraphy by people like Nicolaus Steno, James Hutton and William Smith:
Eugene Curran Kelly (August 23, 1912 February 2, 1996), better known as Gene Kelly, was an American dancer, actor, singer, director, producer, and choreographer.
Kelly was a great example of 20th century filmed dance, famous for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likeable characters that he played on screen.
Although he is probably most famous today for his act in Singin ' in the Rain, he was the most important actor in the Hollywood musical movie industry from the mid 1940s until its decadence in the late 1950s.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Kelly among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at No. 15.
Gangsta rap (also called Gangster rap, Gansta rap, G rap Gangsta hip hop) is a subgenre of hip hop that reflects the violent lifestyles of some inner-city youths.
Gangsta is a non-rhotic pronunciation of the word gangster.
The genre was pioneered in the mid 1980s by rappers such as Afroman and Ice Cube, and was popularized in the later part of the 1980s by groups like N.W.A..
After the national attention that Ice-T and N.W.A created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, gangsta rap became the most commercially lucrative subgenre of hip hop.
Georg Cantor (3 March 1845 - 6 January 1918) was an important German mathematician.
He founded set theory and worked on transfinite numbers.
Cantor was born in St Petersburg, Russia.
His parents were Danish of pure Jewish descent.
His father was Protestant.
He was a rich merchant.
His mother was Roman Catholic.
She was very artistic.
When his father became ill in 1856 the family moved to Frankfurt.
Georg went to private schools and then to gymnasien in Darmstadt and Wiesbaden.
He soon showed that he was brilliant at maths.
His father wanted him to be an engineer but Georg persuaded him to let him study mathematics.
He spent a short time studying at the University of Z rich, but soon went to Berlin where he studied physics, philosophy and mathematics.
He was very influenced by the teaching of Weierstrass, Kummer and Kronecker, who were later to become his enemies.
He wrote a doctoral thesis in which he said that asking questions was more important than finding the answers.
He was talking about a problem that Carl Friedrich Gauss had left unanswered.
Cantor taught for a time at a girls school in Berlin, then he became a lecturer in Halle where he remained for the rest of his life.
He became full professor there in 1879.
Cantor worked on the theory of numbers and then on trigonometric series, starting with ideas that had been developed by Bernhard Riemann on complex variables.
He sent a paper on algebraic numbers to be published in Crelle 's Journal, but Kronecker was against it.
However, Dedekind supported Cantor, and eventually the article was published.
This article showed that Cantor was a great mathematician.
When his father died in 1863 he had enough money to build a house for his wife and five children.
Cantor thought that infinite numbers really existed, and used ideas from ancient and medieval philosophy to prove his point.
Kronecker disagreed with him.
He thought that only integers existed.
Kronecker said that God made integers and all the rest is the work of man.
Kronecker stopped Cantor from being offered a professorship in Berlin, a position he ought to have had since he was one of the greatest mathematicians in the world.
Cantor stayed at Halle and continued to work into his old age, although he often suffered from fits of depression.
He often lost his temper, but he was also a very kind man.
He always gave encouragement to young mathematicians with new ideas.
He did not want them to suffer like he had because of older mathematicians who felt threatened by new ideas.
A lot of Cantor s work led eventually to what is called new mathematics in schools today.
Cantor died in a mental hospital in Halle on 6 January 1918.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is a huge pyramid built by the Ancient Egyptians.
It stands near Cairo, Egypt.
It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain mostly intact.
When it was built it was 146.5 metres (481 feet) tall.
It was the tallest building in the world for over 3,800 years.
The pyramid was built for Khufu, an Egyptian pharaoh.
It was perhaps built by Khufu 's vizier, Hemiunu.
It is believed that it took about 20 years to build, and was completed around 2650 BC.
When it was built, the Great Pyramid was covered by stones that formed a smooth outer surface.
Some of these stones can still be seen around the base.
Most of what can be seen of the pyramid now is its basic core of 2,300,000 blocks of limestone and granite.
There have been many different theories to explain how the pyramid was built.
Most accepted building ideas are based on the idea of moving huge stones from a quarry and dragging and lifting them into place.
Scientists found that the Great Pyramids of Giza were not built by slaves, but workers who were paid for working.
Their graves were found near the pyramid in 1990.
There are three known rooms, or chambers, inside the Great Pyramid.
The lowest chamber is cut into the rock on which the pyramid was built.
This chamber was not finished.
The other two chambers are higher up inside the pyramid.
They are called the Queen 's Chamber and the King 's Chamber, but these are modern labels as we do not know how the Egyptians were going to use them.
The Great Pyramid has two passages, one leading up, and the other down.
It is the only Egyptian pyramid to have the two passages.
The Great Pyramid is part of a group of buildings, called the Giza Necropolis.
This includes two mortuary temples in honor of Khufu.
One is close to the pyramid and one near the Nile.
There are three smaller pyramids for Khufu 's wives.
Other buildings include an even smaller "satellite" pyramid, and a raised causeway which joins the two temples.
There are other tombs, called mastaba, probably for other important people.
The Generic Universal RolePlaying System, or GURPS, is a role-playing game system created by Steve Jackson Games.
It emphasizes a set of rules that can be used in any time or world.
Characters are created using a point-based system.
There have been four releases of the GURPS core rules and dozens of game supplements that extend the core rules with genre or setting-specific information.
In 1990, GURPS became the focus of a Secret Service investigation when an as yet unreleased GURPS Cyberpunk game supplement was misconstrued by the Secret service as being a handbook for computer crime.
Gary Wayne Coleman (February 8, 1968 - May 28, 2010) was an American actor.
Coleman was an African American who was born in Zion, Illinois, with a kidney disease causing nephritis.
Nephritis is an autoimmune destruction of the kidney.
The disease stopped his growth at an early age.
Because of this, he was only tall.
His height was his most notable feature.
He received two kidney transplants, one in 1973 and one in 1984.
He then needed dialysis every day.
He was adopted.
He was famous for his role as Arnold Jackson in the American sitcom Diff ` rent Strokes.
He died of a hemorrhage cause by an accidental fall in Provo, Utah.
Troyal Garth Brooks (born February 7, 1962) is an American country music singer and songwriter.
He uses rock elements into his recordings and live performances.
Brooks was successful in the country singles and country album charts and later also proved popular in the mainstream pop arena, exposing country music to a larger audience.
Brooks has had one of the most successful careers in popular music history, with over 70 hit singles and 15 charted albums to his credit.
Throughout the 1990s he broke records for both sales and concert attendance.
In 1999, looking to expand his career boundaries, Brooks began a multimedia project involving a fictitious alter ego known as Chris Gaines.
In 2001, Brooks officially retired from recording and performing, after having conflicts between his career and family.
During this time he has sold millions of albums through an exclusive distribution deal with Wal-Mart and has released new singles from time to time.
On November 6, 2007, The Ultimate Hits was released.
Brooks came out of retirement in 2007 when he opened a new arena in Kansas City, Missouri.
He left retirement again in 2013 to play at the Encore Casino in Las Vegas.
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (December 15, 1832 December 27, 1923;, a f l) was a French structural engineer and architect.
He is known for designing the Eiffel Tower.
He also designed the armature (supporting framework) for the Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor, United States.
Greenpeace is an international non-governmental organization working for the protection and conservation of the environment.
It was set up in Vancouver, Canada in 1971 and now has regional and national offices in 46 countries.
Greenpeace received international attention during the 1980s when the French intelligence agency bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in the Auckland Harbour, killing one individual.
In the following years, Greenpeace evolved into one of the largest environmental organizations in the world.
Greenpeace is known for its direct actions and has been described as the most visible environmental organization in the world.
The organization has raised environmental issues to public knowledge, and influenced both the private and the public sector.
All Greenpeace actions are based on a common set of values and should therefore be: nonviolent, non-partisan, independent and international.
Since Greenpeace was founded, seagoing ships have played a vital role in its campaigns.
The group has three ocean-going ships, the Esperanza, Arctic Sunrise and Rainbow Warrior III.
Greenpeace receives its funding exclusively from individual supporters and foundations.
Greenpeace screens all major donations in order to ensure it does not receive unwanted donations.
The organization does not accept money from governments, political parties or corporations in order to avoid their influence.
Donations from foundations which are funded by political parties or receive most of their funding from governments are also rejected.
George Hoyt Whipple (August 26, 1878 - February 1, 1976) was an American doctor.
He won the 1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with George Minot and William P. Murphy, for their discoveries about how eating liver could cure anemia.
Guilt is a feeling that a person has when they realize or believe that they have done something wrong.
This usually depends on that person 's own conscience, their understanding of right and wrong.
Guilt is usually related to remorse ("feeling sorry").
Guilt can sometimes cause anxiety.
A person may react to their guilt in either a peaceful or violent way.
A person might begin blaming the victim of their own actions.
Gold is a soft, heavy, shiny metal.
It is a chemical element.
Its chemical symbol is Au.
Its atomic number is 79.
It has been used for many thousands of years by people all over the world, for jewelry, decoration, and as money.
Gold is important because it is rare, but also easier to use than other rare metals.
It is also used to repair teeth and in electronic equipment such as computers.
The color of this metal is also called gold.
Mining methods for gold are similar to other metals.
Gold is so valued that the discovery of a new place to mine has sometimes caused a gold rush.
Often, gold is found as a native element.
This means it is not part of an ore, and does not need extracting.
Most of the gold on Earth is deep inside the Earth 's core because it is dense.
Nearly all discovered gold was deposited on the surface by meteorites.
In chemistry, gold is chemical element 79, a transition metal in Group 11.
It has an atomic weight of 199.96 a.m.u. Its symbol is Au, from the Latin word for gold, aurum.
It is a "noble metal" meaning it has low chemical reactivity.
Gold is very soft.
A goldsmith can hammer it into thin metal sheets.
It is also ductile, which means it can be pulled into wire.
When it is used in money or in jewelry, it is often mixed with silver or some other metal to make it harder.
Most metals are gray in color.
Gold is yellow because of the way its electrons behave.
The only other metal in common use that has a non-gray color is copper.
Gold can mean that something or someone is very good or has done very well.
A gold medal is often the given to the first place winner in a race or other sports.
Something that is in some way good may be given gold status.
Gallium (chemical symbol: Ga) is chemical element 31 on the periodic table.
Gallium is a metal, but is has some unusual properties.
If it is held in a person 's hand, it will melt.
Gallium does not conduct electricity well, and is known as a semiconductor.
That means gallium can be used in computers to make them work.
It is very shiny, so it is used to paint mirrors when melted.
Germanium is a chemical element.
Its chemical symbol is Ge.
Its atomic number is 32.
It was discovered by Clemens Winkler.
It is a shiny, hard, silver-white metalloid.
The chemistry of Germanium is quite like tin.
Germanium forms a large number of organometallic compounds.
It is an important semiconductor material used in transistors.
Gadolinium is a chemical element.
It has the chemical symbol Gd.
It has the atomic number 64.
It is part of a group of chemical elements in the periodic table named the Lanthanides.
It is a rare earth element.
It is silvery white, malleable and ductile.
Its main uses are as chemical compounds in color televisions and nuclear magnetic resonance radio contrast agents.
In color cathode ray tube televisions (the type first produced, not flat televisions) some of the pixels are dots gadolinium compounds.
When the electrons from the cathode ray tube hit the pixels and transfer energy to the gadolinium compounds they give out light as energy.
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging is used in medicine where it is named MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging).
It is used to take picture of inside the body.
How the pictures look is changed by the gadolinium compounds and how much water is around.
It makes the images clearer because it makes the difference in the concentration of water in different parts of the body look more clear (more contrast) in the picture that is made.
Alliance ' 90\/The Greens (German: B ndnis 90\/Die Gr nen) is a political party in Germany.
It was formed in 1992 by the Western German party Die Gr nen and the Eastern German B ndnis ' 90.
Its main interests are ecology, civil rights, equality between men and women and the chances of immigrants in the German society.
Their motto is now, for tomorrow.
In the 1970s, there were a lot of protests against nuclear power in Germany.
The protesters had no support in the political parties in Germany.
So they got the idea to found their own party.
In the election to the European Parliament of 1979, their party, the Sonstige Politische Vereinigung Die Gr nen, got 3,2 %.
They tried again and this time it was accepted and was founded in Karlsruhe on January 13th, 1980.
Since their aims were for civil rights and ecology, a lot of former Anti Vietnam War protesters joined the party.
The Greens were pacifists and strictly against nuclear weapons.
They wanted to reach a de-militarized Europe.
First chiefs of the party were Herbert Gruhl and Petra Kelly.
After a short while some right-winged people left the party, so they became a left-winged party.
In the old GDR, a Green party was founded in 1989 and joined to the Western Greens in 1990.
In 1993 the B ndnis 90 - a civil rights movement from the former GDR - and Die Gr nen joined them.
In 1998 they joined the federal government under Gerhard Schr der together with the Social democrats.
The Green lost a lot of their values in that time.
They voted for joining the Kosovo War and to attack Serbia in 1999 and lost their social issues.
In 2005 they lost their power in the federal government.
Currently they are in opposition in the federal and all state parliaments.
The Greens are interested in ecology, so one of their main issues is saving the earth - especially the climate - without using nuclear power.
The second main issue of the Greens is gender mainstraming.
The third issue are the integration and the chances of immigrants in Germany.
In the foreign policy the Green changed their position in their first period in federal government.
Before that time they wanted German soldiers only to allow peace keeping missions of the United Nations, many Greens wanted a de-militarized Germany.
After their legislative period - with main influence of foreign secretary Fischer - they accepted to join international military missions e.g. in Afganisthan.
But their main issue is to avoid conflicts by development policy and international cooperation.
Main issues of foreign policy are international envoirementional and climate saving projects like the Kyoto protocoll, the development of the European Union and a reform of the international law like the installing of the International Crime Court in The Hague.
They are left-winged liberals.
G is the 7th (number 7) letter in the English alphabet (or Latin alphabet).
The letter G was created in the third century BC by Spurius Carvilius Ruga.
At the time, the letter C sounded like the "c" in "cat" and the "g" in "girl".
To make the difference more clear, Ruga created the letter G.
Gamma is a Greek letter.
Used as a symbol or name it may refer to:
The Greek letter gamma is used in both science and mathematics very often.
A goitre or goiter (Latin: struma), also called a bronchocele, is a swelling in the neck (just below Adam 's apple or larynx).
It happens when the thyroid gland gets larger (usually because the body is not getting enough iodine).
New research says that some people may be more vulnerable to goitre (more likely to have goiters) because they inherited that vulnerability (it was passed down to them from their parents).
Genetics is a discipline of biology.
It is the science of heredity.
This includes the study of genes, and the inheritance of variation and traits of living organisms.
In the laboratory, genetics proceeds by mating carefully selected organisms, and analyzing their offspring.
More informally, genetics is the study of how parents pass some of their characteristics to their children.
It is an important part of biology, and gives the basic rules on which evolution acts.
The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been known since prehistoric times, and used to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding.
However, the modern science of genetics, which seeks to understand the process of inheritance, only began with the work of Gregor Mendel in the mid-nineteenth century.
Although he did not know the physical basis for heredity, Mendel observed that organisms inherit traits via discrete units of inheritance, which are now called genes.
Living things are made of millions of tiny self-contained components called cells.
Inside of each cell are long and complex molecules called DNA.
DNA stores information that tells the cells how to create that living thing.
Parts of this information that tell how to make one small part or characteristic of the living thing red hair, or blue eyes, or a tendency to be tall are known as genes.
Every cell in the same living thing has the same DNA, but only some of it is used in each cell.
For instance, some genes that tell how to make parts of the liver are switched off in the brain.
What genes are used can also change over time.
For instance, a lot of genes are used by a child early in pregnancy that are not used later.
A living thing has two copies of each gene, one from its mother, and one from its father.
There can be multiple types of each gene, which give different instructions: one version might cause a person to have blue eyes, another might cause them to have brown.
These different versions are known as alleles of the gene.
Since a living thing has two copies of each gene, it can have two different alleles of it at the same time.
Often, one allele will be dominant, meaning that the living thing looks and acts as if it had only that one allele.
The unexpressed allele is called recessive.
In other cases, you end up with something in between the two possibilities.
In that case, the two alleles are called co-dominant.
Most of the characteristics that you can see in a living thing have multiple genes that influence them.
And many genes have multiple effects on the body, because their function will not have the same effect in each tissue.
The multiple effects of a single gene is called pleiotropism.
The whole set of genes is called the genotype, and the total effect of genes on the body is called the phenotype.
These are key terms in genetics.
We know that man started breeding domestic animals from early times, probably before the invention of agriculture.
We do not know when heredity was first appreciated as a scientific problem.
The Greeks, and most obviously Aristotle, studied living things, and proposed ideas about reproduction and heredity.
Probably the most important idea before Mendel was that of Charles Darwin, whose idea of pangenesis had two parts.
The first, that persistent hereditary units were passed on from one generation to another, was quite right.
The second was his idea that they were replenished by ` gemmules ' from the somatic (body) tissues.
This was entirely wrong, and plays no part in science today.
Darwin was right about one thing: whatever happens in evolution must happen by means of heredity, and so an accurate science of genetics is fundamental to the theory of evolution.
This ` mating ' between genetics and evolution took many years to organise.
It resulted in the Modern evolutionary synthesis.
The basic rules of genetics were first discovered by a monk named Gregor Mendel in around 1865.
For thousands of years, people had already studied how traits are inherited from parents to their children.
However, Mendel 's work was different because he designed his experiments very carefully.
In his experiments, Mendel studied how traits were passed on in pea plants.
He started his crosses with plants that bred true, and counted characters that were either\/or in nature (either tall or short).
He bred large numbers of plants, and expressed his results numerically.
He used test crosses to reveal the presence and proportion of recessive characters.
Mendel 's laws helped explain the results he observed in his pea plants.
Later, geneticists discovered that his laws were also true for other living things, even humans.
Mendel 's findings from his work on the garden pea plants helped to establish the field of genetics.
His contributions were not limited to the basic rules that he discovered.
Mendel 's care towards controlling experiment conditions along with his attention to his numerical results set a standard for future experiments.
Over the years, scientists have changed and improved Mendel 's ideas.
However, the science of genetics would not be possible today without the early work of Gregor Mendel.
In the years between Mendel 's work and 1900 the foundations of cytology, the study of cells, was developed.
The facts discovered about the nucleus and cell division were essential for Mendel 's work to be properly understood.
1832: Barth l my Dumortier, the first to observe cell division in a multicellular organism.
1841, 1852: Robert Remak (1815 1865), a Jewish Polish German physiologist, was the first person to state the foundation of cell biology: that cells only derive from other cells.
This was later popularized by the German doctor Rudolf Virchow (1821 1902), who used the famous phrase omnis cellula e cellula, meaning, all cells from other cells.
1865: Gregor Mendel 's paper, Experiments on plant hybridization was published.
1876: Meiosis was discovered and described for the first time in sea urchin eggs, by German biologist Oscar Hertwig (1849 1922).
1878 1888: Walther Flemming and Eduard Strasburger describe chromosome behavior during mitosis.
1883: Meiosis was described at the level of chromosomes, by Belgian zoologist Edouard van Beneden (1846 1910), in Ascaris (roundworm) eggs.
1883: German zoologist Wilhelm Roux (1850 1924) realized the significance of the linear structure of chromosomes.
Their splitting into two equal longitudinal halves assured each daughter cell got the same chromosome complement.
Therefore, chromosomes were the bearers of heredity.
1889: Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries suggests that "inheritance of specific traits in organisms comes in particles", naming such particles (pan) genes.
1890: The significance of meiosis for reproduction and inheritance was described only in 1890 by German biologist August Weismann (1834 1914), who noted that two cell divisions were necessary to transform one diploid cell into four haploid cells if the number of chromosomes had to be maintained.
1902 1904: Theodor Boveri (1862 1915), a German biologist, in a series of papers, drew attention to the correspondence between the behavior of chromosomes and the results obtained by Mendel.
He said that chromosomes were "independent entities which retain their independence even in the resting nucleus... What comes out of the nucleus is what goes into it".
1903: Walter Sutton suggested that chromosomes, which segregate in a Mendelian fashion, are hereditary units.
Edmund B. Wilson (1856 1939), Sutton 's teacher, and the author of one of the most famous text-books in biology, called this the Sutton Boveri hypothesis.
At this point, discoveries in cytology merged with the rediscovered ideas of Mendel to make a fusion called cytogenetics, (cyto = cell; genetics = heredity) which has continued to the present day.
During the 1890s several biologists began doing experiments on breeding.
and soon Mendel 's results were duplicated, even before his papers were read.
Carl Correns and Hugo de Vries were the main rediscovers of Mendel 's writings and laws.
Both acknowledged Mendel 's priority, although it is probable that de Vries did not understand his own results until after reading Mendel.
Though Erich von Tschermak was originally also credited with rediscovery, this is no longer accepted because he did not understand Mendel 's laws.
Though de Vries later lost interest in Mendelism, other biologists built genetics into a science.
Mendel 's results were replicated, and genetic linkage soon worked out.
William Bateson perhaps did the most in the early days to publicise Mendel 's theory.
The word genetics, and other terminology, originated with Bateson.
Mendel 's experimental results have later been the object of some debate.
Fisher analyzed the results of the F2 (second filial) ratio and found them to be implausibly close to the exact ratio of 3 to 1.
It is sometimes suggested that Mendel may have censored his results, and that his seven traits each occur on a separate chromosome pair, an extremely unlikely occurrence if they were chosen at random.
In fact, the genes Mendel studied occurred in only four linkage groups, and only one gene pair (out of 21 possible) is close enough to show deviation from independent assortment; this is not a pair that Mendel studied.
During the process of DNA replication, errors sometimes occur.
These errors, called mutations, can have an effect on the phenotype of an organism.
In turn, that usually has an effect on the organism 's fitness, its ability to live and reproduce successfully.
Error rates are usually very low 1 error in every 10 100 million bases due to the "proofreading" ability of DNA polymerases.
Error rates are a thousandfold higher in many viruses.
Because they rely on DNA and RNA polymerases which lack proofreading ability, they get higher mutation rates.
Processes that increase the rate of changes in DNA are called mutagenic.
Mutagenic chemicals increase errors in DNA replication, often by interfering with the structure of base-pairing, while UV radiation induces mutations by causing damage to the DNA structure.
Chemical damage to DNA occurs naturally as well, and cells use DNA repair mechanisms to repair mismatches and breaks in DNA nevertheless, the repair sometimes fails to return the DNA to its original sequence.
In organisms which use chromosomal crossovers to exchange DNA and recombine genes, errors in alignment during meiosis can also cause mutations.
Errors in crossover are especially likely when similar sequences cause partner chromosomes to adopt a mistaken alignment; this makes some regions in genomes more prone to mutating in this way.
These errors create large structural changes in DNA sequence duplications, inversions or deletions of entire regions, or the accidental exchanging of whole parts between different chromosomes (called translocation).
Developed by Reginald Punnett, Punnett squares are used by biologists to determine the probability of offspring to having a particular genotype.
If B represents the allele for having black hair and b represents the allele for having white hair, the offspring of two Bb parents would have a 25 % probability of having two white hair alleles (bb), 50 % of having one of each (Bb), and 25 % of having only black hair alleles (BB).
Geneticists (biologists who study genetics) use pedigree charts to record traits of people in a family.
Using these charts, geneticists can study how a trait is inherited from person to person.
Geneticists can also use pedigree charts to predict how traits will be passed to future children in a family.
For instance, genetic counselors are professionals who work with families who might be affected by genetic diseases.
As part of their job, they create pedigree charts for the family, which can be used to study how the disease might be inherited.
Since human beings are not bred experimentally, human genetics must be studied by other means.
One recent way is by studying the human genome.
Another way, older by many years, is to study twins.
Identical twins are natural clones.
They carry the same genes, they may be used to investigate how much heredity contributes to individual people.
Studies with twins have been quite interesting.
If we make a list of characteristic traits, we find that they vary in how much they owe to heredity.
For example:
The way the studies are done is like this.
Take a group of identical twins and a group of fraternal twins.
Measure them for various traits.
Do a statistical analysis (such as analysis of variance).
This tells you to what extent the trait is inherited.
Those traits which are partly inherited will be significantly more similar in identical twins.
Studies like this may be carried further, by comparing identical twins brought up together with identical twins brought up in different circumstances.
That gives a handle on how much circumstances can alter the outcomes of genetically identical people.
The person who first did twin studies was Francis Galton, Darwin 's half-cousin, who was a founder of statistics.
His method was to trace twins through their life-history, making many kinds of measurement.
Unfortunately, though he knew about mono and dizygotic twins, he did not appreciate the real genetic difference.
Twin studies of the modern kind did not appear until the 1920s.
The genetics of bacteria, archaea and viruses is a major field or research.
Bacterial mostly divide by asexual cell division, but do have a kind of sex by horizontal gene transfer.
Bacterial conjugation, transduction and transformation are their methods.
In addition, the complete DNA sequence of many bacteria, archaea and viruses is now known.
Although many bacteria were given generic and specific names, like Staphylococcus aureus, the whole idea of a species is rather meaningless for an organism which does not have sexes and crossing-over of chromosomes.
Instead, these organisms have strains, and that is how they are identified in the laboratory.
Gene expression is the process by which the heritable information in a gene, the sequence of DNA base pairs, is made into a functional gene product, such as protein or RNA.
The basic idea is that DNA is transcribed into RNA, which is then translated into proteins.
Proteins make many of the structures and all the enzymes in a cell or organism.
Several steps in the gene expression process may be modulated (tuned).
This includes both the transcription and translation stages, and the final folded state of a protein.
Gene regulation switches genes on and off, and so controls cell differentiation, and morphogenesis.
Gene regulation may also serve as a basis for evolutionary change: control of the timing, location, and amount of gene expression can have a profound effect on the development of the organism.
The expression of a gene may vary a lot in different tissues.
This is called pleiotropism, a widespread phenomenon in genetics.
Alternative splicing is a modern discovery of great importance.
It is a process where from a single gene a large number of variant proteins can be assembled.
One particular Drosophila gene (DSCAM) can be alternatively spliced into 38,000 different mRNA.
Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene activity which are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence.
It is the study of gene expression, the way genes bring about their phenotypic effects.
These changes in gene activity may stay for the remainder of the cell 's life and may also last for many generations of cells, through cell divisions.
However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism.
Instead, non-hereditary factors cause the organism 's genes to behave (express themselves) differently.
Hox genes are a complex of genes whose proteins bind to the regulatory regions of target genes.
The target genes then activate or repress cell processes to direct the final development of the organism.
There are some kinds of heredity which happen outside the cell nucleus.
Normal inheritance is from both parents via the chromosomes in the nucleus of a fertilised egg cell.
There are some kinds of inheritance other than this.
Mitochondria and chloroplasts carry some DNA of their own.
Their make-up is decided by genes in the chromosomes and genes in the organelle.
Carl Correns discovered an example in 1908.
The four o'clock plant, Mirabilis jalapa, has leaves which may be white, green or variegated.
Correns discovered the pollen had no influence on this inheritance.
The color is decided by genes in the chloroplasts.
This is caused by a symbiotic or parasitic relationship with a microorganism.
In this case nuclear genes in the female gamete are transcribed.
The products accumulate in the egg cytoplasm, and have an effect on the early development of the fertilised egg.
The coiling of a snail, Limnaea peregra, is determined like this.
Right-handed shells are genotypes Dd or dd, while left-handed shells are dd.
The most important example of maternal effect is in Drosophila melanogaster.
The protein product maternal-effect genes activate other genes, which in turn activate still more genes.
This work won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1995.
Much modern research uses a mixture of genetics, cell biology and molecular biology.
Topics which have been the subject of Nobel Prizes in either chemistry or physiology include:
Many well-known disorders of human behavior have a genetic component.
This means that their inheritance partly causes the behavior, or makes it more likely the problem would occur.
Examples include:
Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th century French writer.
He is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story.
He was an apprentice of Flaubert.
Maupassant 's stories have a common economy of style and their efficient, effortless d nouement (ending).
Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War.
Many more describe the war.
He also wrote six short novels.
Gheorghe Hagi (born 5 February 1965) is a former Romanian football player.
He has played for the Romanian national team.
Gordon Banks (born 30 December 1937) is a former English footballer.
He has played for England national team.
In anatomy, a ganglion (plural ganglia) is a mass of tissue in the nervous system.
It is a group of nerve cells which act as a junction between different parts of the nervous system.
With invertebrates, ganglia often do the work of a brain.
In these cases, like the earthworm, there is a ganglion above the gut at the front.
This is linked to another under the gut by nerve fibers running down each side of the gut.
The rest of the central nervous system runs under the gut.
This type of arrangement in found in a number of invertebrate phyla, and contrasts with the vertebrates, who have their spinal cord above (dorsal to) their gut.
In another usage, ganglion cells are found in the retina of the vertebrate eye.
Grimoire is a book of witchcraft or paranormal magic.
The word is pronounced "grim-warr", which rhymes with "guitar".
The word is a mistaken way of saying grammar.
It probably started being used in a time when not many people could read.
Then any book might be thought to contain instructions for magic.
In the religion of Wicca other forms of Neopaganism, such a book is sometimes called a "Book of Shadows".
During the Great Plague of London (1665-1666), the disease called the bubonic plague killed about 100,000 people in London, England.
In seven months, almost one quarter of London 's population (one out of every four Londoners) died from the plague.
At its worst, in September of 1665, the plague killed 7,165 people in one week.
After this, the number of people dying from the plague began to slow down.
Around September of 1666, the great outbreak ended.
The Great Fire of London, which happened on 2-3 September 1666, may have helped end the outbreak by killing many of the rats and fleas who were spreading the plague.
Though most of the people who died during the Great Plague lived in London, the plague also killed people in other areas of England.
By the time the Great Plague ended, about 2.5 % of England 's population had died from the plague.
To compare, about 2 % of the entire United Kingdom 's population (including soldiers and civilians) died in World War I, and about 1 % of the entire United Kingdom 's population died in World War II.
The Great Plague of 1665 was the last major plague in England.
Before the Great Plague, England had had outbreaks of plague (meaning many people got the disease) every few decades.
For example:
Historians think the plague spread to England from the Netherlands.
Dutch trading ships carrying cotton from Amsterdam may have brought the plague to England.
Amsterdam was badly hit by the plague in 1663 1664; the disease killed about 50,000 people.
In London, the first places hit by the plague were the dock areas outside of the city and the parish of St Giles in the Fields.
In these places, poor workers lived crowded together in bad conditions.
Nobody kept records about the deaths of very poor people, so nobody knows how many of these people may have died from the plague.
However, records say the first person to die of the plague in London was Rebecca Andrews, on 12 April 1665.
By July 1665, plague was in the city of London itself.
Many of the people who could afford to leave the city left for the countryside.
King Charles II of England, his family, and his court left the city for Oxfordshire.
Most wealthy merchants and professionals left the city, so most businesses were closed.
As the plague got worse, more and more people left.
London got so empty that grass started to grow on the streets.
However, most of the city 's government officials stayed in London.
So did the Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Lawrence.
As the plague got worse, more and more people left, but a small number of clergymen, physicians and apothecaries chose to stay.
Also, people who were too poor to move to the countryside had no choice but to stay in the city.
Some of the people who stayed in London wrote about the Great Plague.
Samuel Pepys 's diary about living through the plague has given historians a lot of information about what the plague was like.
Henry Foe, a saddler who lived in East London, also decided not to leave the city.
Years later, in 1722, Foe 's nephew Daniel Defoe wrote A Journal of the Plague Year, a story about the plague, which he may have based on Foe 's journals.
People in London tried many different things to try to treat the plague and stop it from spreading.
At the time, nobody understood what caused the plague, how it spread, or how to treat it.
p. 42 Antibiotic medications, which are the only treatment for plague, would not be discovered for another 300 years.
People were so afraid of catching the plague from other people that they threw dead plague victims ' bodies in overcrowded pits and buried them all together, as quickly as possible.
In one parish in London, 1,114 dead plague victims were buried together in a hole that was fifty feet long and twenty feet wide. pp.174 -175
As the plague got worse, people began to do worse things.
Some people refused to help sick family members.
Other people forced sick servants to leave, even though they had nowhere to go.
Eventually, if one person in a home got the plague, the whole family was forced to stay in the home.
A red cross and the words "Lord have mercy upon us" would be painted on the door.
Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary: "the plague (is) making us cruel as dogs to one another."
Government officials tried several public health programs to prevent more people from getting the plague.
For example:
"Plague doctors" walked the streets diagnosing victims, although many of them were not actual doctors.
Wearing special costumes, they tried to treat plague victims with bloodletting, frogs, and leeches.
Though the plague was worst in London, it also affected other parts of England.
Perhaps the most famous example was the village of Eyam in Derbyshire.
Nobody knows for sure how the plague got to Eyam.
However, stories say that a merchant carrying cloth from London accidentally brought the plague with him.
The villagers quarantined themselves - kept themselves apart from other people and other villages - to make sure the disease would not spread any further.
This kept the plague from spreading outside Eyam.
However, about 80 % of the people in Eyam died from the plague within a little over a year.
As time went on, more and more people died from the plague.
This continued until the week of 19-26 September, 1665.
This was the worst week of the Great Plague: 7,165 people died from the plague in that week.
After that, the number of deaths from the plague began to slow down.
By February 1666, the King and his court decided it was safe enough to return to London.
Some people - though not nearly so many - continued to get the plague until September 1666.
Around that time, the plague outbreak ended.
The Great Fire of London, which destroyed most of the center of London, may have helped.
A gamete is a specialized sex cell that fuses with another gamete during fertilization (conception) in organisms that reproduce sexually.
Gametes are produced by germ cells.
In species which produce two morphologically distinct types of gametes, and in which each individual produces only one type, a female is any individual which produces the larger type of gamete called an ovum (or egg) and a male produces the smaller type called a spermatozoon (or sperm cell).
The name gamete was introduced by the Austrian biologist Gregor Mendel.
Gametogenesis is the development of diploid germ cells into haploid eggs or sperm, (respectively oogenesis and spermatogenesis).
It is different for each species but the general stages are similar.
The development of eggs (oogenesis -RCB- and sperm (spermatogenesis) have many features in common.
They both involve:
George Raymond Richard Martin (September 20, 1948), is an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction.
He is best known for his A Song of Ice and Fire series.
HBO made the series into a TV series called Game of Thrones.
A Song of Ice and Fire is an award-winning series of fantasy books that were written by an American author, George R. R. Martin.
Martin started writing the series in 1991, and the first book came out in 1996.
Now there are five books in the series, and two more are planned.
The series has been translated into more than twenty languages and is a best-seller, with the fourth volume reaching the top of the New York Times bestseller lists when it came out.
A fictional language called Dothraki was created for the series.
It was adapted and improved when the HBO series Game of Thrones was created.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (\* 22.
January 1729 in Kamenz (Saxony); 15.
February 1781 in Braunschweig) was a German poet in the time of the enlightenment.
Lessing was one of twelve children.
His father was a Protestant priest.
He went to school in Kamenz and got a stipendium for the Higher School in Mei en.
From 1746 to 1748, he studied medicine and theology in Leipzig.
In 1750, he moved to Berlin, where he met Voltaire.
In 1752 he got the Magister (Master) degree from the university in Wittenberg.
He moved back to Leipzig in 1755, but returned later to Berlin.
He traveled around in Europe and studied.
He worked as a reporter.
From 1760 to 1765, he worked as secretary for a general in Breslau (today: Wroclaw).
Later he worked at the theater and became a librarian.
Lessing got married in 1776.
But 1778 his wife died.
In 1781, Lessing died.
Geotechnical engineering is an important subset of civil engineering dealing with engineering performance of earth materials.
Geotechnical engineering uses principles of soil and rock mechanics to determine:
Foundations built for above-ground structures include shallow and deep foundations.
Retaining structures include earth-filled dams and retaining walls.
Gustave Flaubert (in French) (12 December 1821 8 May 1880) was a French writer.
He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857).
He was very devoted to what he did, and always looked for the word that would best fit the context.
He died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Gestation is the carrying of an embryo or fetus inside a female viviparous animal, until its birth.
Mammals can have more than one embryo or fetus at the same time.
The time between fertilization of an ovum and the birth of the young is called the gestation period.
Humans have a gestation period of around 37 weeks or about 9 months and 1 week.
Syrian hamsters have a gestation period of 16 days.
That is believed to be the shortest gestation period.
In mathematics, the gamma function ((z)) is an extension of the factorial function to positive real and complex numbers.
The argument of the function is shifted down by one.
This means that if n is a positive integer
The gamma function is defined for all complex numbers.
But it is not defined for negative numbers and zero.
For a complex number whose real part is positive, it is defined by:
This improper integral is convergent.
Legendre first used the notation (z).
If the real part of the complex number z is positive (Re (z)) 0), then the integral
converges absolutely.
It is known as the Euler integral of the second kind.
If we use integration by parts, we see that the functional equation holds true for the gamma function.
for all positive integers n.
Euler 's reflection formula is an important functional equation for the gamma function.
It says:
This is found if we set z = 1\/2 in the reflection or duplication formulas.
If we simply make the substitution u = t in the integral definition of the gamma function, we get a Gaussian integral.
In general, for non-negative integer values of n we have:
where n!!
denotes the double factorial and, when n = 0, (-1)!!
= 1.
The derivatives of the gamma function are described in terms of the polygamma function.
For example:
Gauss introduced the Pi function.
This is another way of denoting the gamma function.
In terms of the gamma function, the Pi function is
for every non-negative integer n.
The gamma function is used to study the Riemann zeta function.
A property of the Riemann zeta function is its functional equation:
Bernhard Riemann found a relation between these two functions.
This was in 1859 paper" ber die Anzahl der Primzahlen unter einer gegebenen Gr sse" ("On the Number of Prime Numbers less than a Given Quantity")
Georges Braque (Argenteuil, 13 May 1882 Paris, 31 August 1963) was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, with Pablo Picasso, developed the art movement known as Cubism.
French art critic Louis Vauxcelles first used the term Cubism, or "bizarre cubiques", in 1908 after seeing a picture by Braque.
He described it as ` full of little cubes ', after which the term quickly gained wide use.
Art historian Ernst Gombrich described cubism as "the most radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity, and to enforce one reading of the picture that of a man-made construction, a colored canvas".
The Cubist movement spread quickly throughout Paris and Europe.
A major idea of Braque 's was the fractured stringed instrument as a cubist model.
This he painted a number of times with variations, and made sculptures with fractured violins, guitars, etc., inside transparent acrylic (perspex) blocks.
Examples:
Galen of Pergamum (AD 129 199\/217) was a prominent Roman physician and philosopher from Greece.
He was an important medical researcher during the time of the Roman Empire.
His theories influenced Western medical science for over a thousand years.
He came up with the ` Theory of Opposites ' based upon Hippocrates ' Four Humours ' theory, which helped develop medicine in the Roman and again in the Middle Ages to include more natural based medicine (rather that just religious medicine).
Some of his observations in his books were wrong, as he could only dissect animals and compare them to humans, because he was not allowed to dissect human corpses.
Later on in the Renaissance period people such as Vesalius challenged his theories and observations with his own books.
Galen was vital in the beginnings of natural medicine, and is often known as the ` Father of Anatomy '.
Glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, is speaking rapid speech-like syllables which can not be understood.
In some cases it is part of religious practice.
Some consider it as a part of a sacred language.
It is a common practice amongst Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity.
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (12 March 1824 17 October 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and radiation by heated objects.
He coined the term black body radiation in 1862.
He proposed two sets of independent concepts in both circuit theory and thermal emission.
They are all called ` Kirchhoff 's laws ' after him, as well as a law of thermochemistry.
The Bunsen Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after him and his colleague, Robert Bunsen.
He also discovered rubidium with Bunsen in 1861.
G. K. Chesterton (in full Gilbert Keith Chesterton; 1874 1936) was an English author and critic who wrote a large and varied amount of works, including essays, poems, novels, short stories and more.
He is perhaps best remembered today for his delightfully mysterious yet humorous Father Brown stories, based on his very popular, imaginary priest-detective.
"God Save the Queen" is the national anthem of the United Kingdom.
When there is a king instead of a queen it becomes "God Save the King".
Some other countries that still have the British monarch as their head of state use this song as a "Royal Anthem" to honor the queen.
It is not completely known who wrote it, but most people think it was Dr Henry Carey, who first performed it in 1740.
The tune for "God Save the Queen" was used in many countries as a national anthem.
Apart from the German state, many of which were linked to Great Britain by marriage, Liechtenstein and Switzerland used the tune.
Switzerland changed to a different tune in the 1960s.
Liechtenstein still uses the tune.
The tune is both American and British.
In the 1930s the United States chose an official anthem.
"The Star Spangled Banner" was chosen instead of the equally popular "My Country ` tis of Thee" which used the "God Save the Queen" tune.
Gladiators (Latin: gladiat r s, "swordsmen" or "one who uses a sword," from gladius, "sword") were professional fighters in ancient Rome, who fought against each other, wild animals, and sentenced criminals, sometimes to the death, for the entertainment of the public.
These fights took place in arenas in many cities from the Roman Republic period through the Roman Empire.
The word comes from gladius, the Latin word for a short sword used by legionaries and some gladiators.
There were different types of gladiators in the world, such as Thracians, Mirmillones, Retiarii, and the Secutores.
The gladiators were the footballers of their time.
You would have been very famous and rich.
The Emperor would have the final say about who would live and who would die.
He would put his thumbs up to die or thumbs down to live.
A genetically modified organism (GMO) is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques.
Organisms that have been genetically modified include micro-organisms such as bacteria and yeast, insects, plants, fish, and mammals.
GMOs are the source of genetically modified foods, and are also widely used in scientific research and to produce goods other than food.
Although Maxam and Gilbert published their chemical sequencing method two years after the ground-breaking paper of Sanger and Coulson on plus-minus sequencing, Maxam Gilbert sequencing rapidly became more popular, since purified DNA could be used directly, while the initial Sanger method required that each read start be cloned for production of single-stranded DNA.
However, with the improvement of the chain-termination method (see below), Maxam-Gilbert sequencing has fallen out of favor due to its technical complexity prohibiting its use in standard molecular biology kits, extensive use of hazardous chemicals, and difficulties with scale-up.
The first genetically modified black, blue and red rose made in the lab.
Ghent is a municipality and city in the Belgian province of East Flanders.
In 2007, 235 143 people lived there.
It is at 51 03 North, 03 43 East.
Ghent is known for its cultural landmarks and punk rock music industry.
Guadeloupe is part of France in the Caribbean Sea.
It is made up of five islands.
The capital is Basse-Terre.
Arawak Native Americans first lived on the islands.
Most died when Europeans came.
Guadeloupe was first governed by the French Company of the American Islands.
It was then taken over by England, given to Sweden, and given back to France.
Today, most of the people in Guadeloupe are Roman Catholic and are of African descent.
The greatest common divisor (gcd) or Highest common factor (HCF) of two integers is the greatest (largest) number that divides both of the integers evenly.
Euclid came up with the idea of GCDs.
The GCD of 20 and 12 is 4, since 4 times 5 equals 20 and 4 times 3 equals 12.
You can notice 3 and 5 have no common factor, hence their GCD is 1.
The GCD of 81 and 21 is 3.
GNOME is a computer desktop environment.
It was designed for GNU\/Linux, but many other operating systems can use it too.
GNOME aims to provide an easy way to use a computer.
GNOME is a free software project.
It was made because people were questioning whether KDE is free.
GNOME is part of the GNU project.
The GNOME project puts heavy emphasis on simplicity, usability, and making things just work (see KISS principle).
The other aims of the project are:
GNOME has many applications written for it.
Some of them include:
A googolplex is the number 10googol (1010100).
Like the number googol, googolplex was thought of by Milton Sirotta, the nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner.
The company Google named their headquarters, the Googleplex, after the number.
Graphite, like diamond, is an allotrope of carbon.
They are very similar to each other but the structure of the atom affects the chemical and physical properties.
Graphite is made of layers of carbon atoms.
These layers can slide over each other very easily.
This means that it is very soft.
It is a dull gray in appearance.
Due to the delocalized electrons between the layers, it can conduct electricity very well.
Graphite can be formed from coal put under high heat and pressure.
Also, graphite can be turned into diamond with enough heat and pressure.
This is how synthetic (man-made) diamonds are made.
Graphite is naturally found in Sri Lanka, Canada and the United States.
It is also called Lead Black because it looks like the metal lead.
It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 originating from the Greek language.
It can be used as a lubricant to make mechanical devices run smoother.
The most common use of graphite is the "lead" in a pencil, which also has clay.
A guild is an association of craftspeople or merchants who control the practice of their craft in a town.
Many groups of people started as guilds, including scholars, and religious guilds.
Many modern organizations, like universities, started as guilds.
However, the basic idea of a guild was to control the training and practice of a trade or business.
In Europe, guilds were given authority by the monarch.
New young members had to serve as apprentices to a master for a certain length of time (such as seven years).
At the end they became full members of the guild, and could set up on their own, and take apprentices of their own.
That is the way the European world worked up to and including the first part of the 20th century.
There were guilds of weavers and dyers in the wool trade, of masons and architects in the building trade.
There were guilds of painters, blacksmiths, bakers, butchers, and so on.
The Corporation of the City of London includes the "livery companies".
These companies were originally guilds.
The senior members of the livery companies choose the Lord Mayor of London, the sheriffs and certain other officers.
Guilds were common in the cities of the Middle Ages.
After that, around 1700 to 1800 their influence lessened somewhat.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were much opposed to the idea of guilds.
They believed that guilds hindered economic development and free trade.
A gamemaster is a person who plans, referees, solves arguments in and otherwise runs a role-playing game with more than one player.
They are almost always seen in games where all the players are on the same side, and less often seen in games where the players are against each other.
Acting as a gamemaster is sometimes called "Gamemastering" or "GMing" for short.
A gamemaster 's job in a traditional role-playing game (where all the players are together in person) is to bring the other players ' characters ' stories together, control the other characters and monsters, put together places and scenes for the player characters to act in, and solve arguments between players.
This basic rule is the same in almost all role-playing games, but some rule sets may need the gamemaster to do other jobs unique to that system.
The role of a gamemaster in an online game is to make sure everyone follows the game 's rules and give general customer service.
Gamemasters for online games may be players who choose the role like in traditional role-playing games, or they might be workers paid by the company that makes the game.
The term gamemaster and the job itself it could be found in the postal gaming hobby.
In the sense of a role-playing game, it was first used by Chivalry & Sorcery, and in wargaming it has been used in Guidon Games ' 1973 ruleset, Ironclad.
In most play-by-mail games, players control armies or countries and mail the actions they want to do to the GM.
The GM then regularly mails the newest game state to all players.
Each gaming system has its own name for the gamemaster, such as "judge", "narrator", "referee", "director", or "storyteller", and these names not only describe the role of the gamemaster in general but also help explain how the game is meant to be run.
For example, the Storyteller System used in White Wolf Game Studio 's storytelling games calls its gamemaster the "storyteller", while the rules - and setting-focused Marvel Super Heroes role-playing game calls its gamemaster the "judge".
The cartoon-based role-playing game Toon calls its gamemaster the "animator".
A few games use system - or setting-specific flavourful (closely related to the game 's setting or "flavor") names for the gamemaster, such as the Hollyhock God in Nobilis, where the hollyhock means vanity, or the most well known of such names, "Dungeon Master" (or "DM") in Dungeons & Dragons.
The gamemaster prepares the game session for the players and the characters they play (known as player characters or PCs), describes the events taking place and decides on the results of players ' actions.
The gamemaster also keeps track of non-player characters (NPCs) and random encounters, as well as of the general state of the game world.
The game session (or "adventure") could be described as a play, in which the players are the lead actors, and the GM brings the stage, the scenery, the basic plot on which the improvisational (unplanned) script is built, as well as all the bit parts and supporting characters.
Gamemasters can also be in charge of RPG board games, making the events and setting up challenges.
A gamemaster can be said to wear four "hats" in their role, meaning the four main jobs they do as part of the overall job of GMing.
In early virtual worlds gamemasters worked as a moderator or administrator; in MUD gamemasters were called "wizards".
Gamemastering in the form found in traditional role-playing games has also been used in virtual worlds that mostly run by themselves.
However, human moderation was sometimes thought of as unfair or wrong in a world that is otherwise run by computer programs.
As online games got bigger and more popular, gamemasters ' jobs grew to include giving customer service for an online community.
A gamemaster in such a game is either a volunteer player that has been there a long time, or someone who works for the game 's publisher.
They make everyone follow the game 's rules by getting rid of spammers, player killers, cheaters, and hackers and by solving players ' problems by giving general customer service.
For their jobs they use special tools and characters that allow them to do things like teleport to players, make items, and look at logs that record players ' actions.
Often, players who are n't happy with the game will blame the GMs for any problems.
However, this blame is not fair as most GMs are not developers and can not fix those types of problems.
America Online Online Gaming Forum (which is no longer in use) used to use volunteers chosen from applications from its users.
These people were called OGFs by other members, and their screennames showed their role (i.e., OGF Moose, etc.).
While users only needed to be members of AOL to use the Online Gaming Forum, OGFs were given powers like AOL "Guides" and could use them at will when they thought it was right.
World of Warcraft has employees of Blizzard Entertainment that serve as gamemasters to help users with many problems in gameplay, chat, and other things like account and payment issues.
A gamemaster in this game can talk to players through chat with blue text, and they will also have a special "GM" tag and Blizzard logo in front of their name.
RuneScape has more than 500 moderators working for Jagex Games Studio to help players and do administrative work in-game and on the site forums.
These Jagex Moderators, as they are called, usually have the word "Mod" and a gold crown preceding their account names which normal players are not allowed to use.
The game also has Player Moderators and Forum Moderators who are player volunteers helping with moderation, having the power to mute (block from chatting) other players who break rules.
Note that a few games, such as Neverwinter Nights and Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption, are video game adaptations of tabletop role-playing games that are played online with one player acting as a gamemaster in the same way as they would in real life.
Gamemastering, sometimes called Orchestration is used in pervasive games to guide players along a path that the game 's writer wants.
To make sure good gamemastering can happen, four things are needed: some kind of way for the game masters to know current events and game information; this allows them to make good decisions; decisions need to be put into effect in the game, either through the game system or in person; and finally a way to send messages is needed for both diegetic (sounds you would expect to hear in the game world) or non-diegetic (sounds that are obviously not part of the game world) communication.
Good gamemastering in this type of game sometimes needs special user interfaces that are unique to a certain game.
Sometimes, tabletop GMs can not find players that want to play in either the same setting, product line, or play style in their local area.
The networked personal computer gave an answer with online chat programs.
Gamemasters with the right equipment can find players online and a group can meet using chat rooms, forums, or other electronic means.
Compared to standard tabletop games (and to games meant to be played online), this online chat format changes the balance of duties for a gamemaster quite a lot.
Descriptions require more preparation, even when using cut-and-paste; acting and voice skills can not be used to get the personality of NPCs and monsters across, making background music as a playing aid more useful.
The GM is likely to need copies of player-character records, not being able to look at the originals as in a normal face-to-face game.
The format also forces the issue (particularly when players do not all know each other) of whether to leave all rolling of dice to the GM, or to trust all players to honestly give the results of their rolls (the honor system may be strained when rolling well is a very good thing).
However, over time there have been answers to these problems.
The use of Wiki software helps GMs and players keep track of game data, sometimes turning into a home-made gaming aid.
Scripting software allows difficult parts of gameplay (e.g. a complicated formula or lots of die-rolling) to be done at the push of a button.
Teleconferencing lets groups use voice, video, and a shared whiteboard to interact.
The use of technology to allow online play is growing, as seen in products like the D&D Insider.
Genetic engineering (GE), also called genetic modification, is a branch of applied biology.
It is the changing of an organism 's genome using biotechnology.
These methods are recent discoveries.
The techniques are advanced, and full details are not given here.
An organism that is altered by genetic engineering is a genetically modified organism (GMO).
The first GMOs were bacteria in 1973; GM mice were made in 1974.
Insulin-producing bacteria were commercialized in 1982.
Genetically modified food has been sold since 1994, including crops.
Genetic engineering techniques have been used in research, agriculture, industrial biotechnology, and medicine.
Enzymes used in laundry detergent, and medicines such as insulin and human growth hormone are now manufactured in GM cells.
GM animals such as mice or zebrafish are being used for research purposes.
Critics have objected to use of genetic engineering on several grounds, including ethical concerns, ecological concerns.
Economic concerns are raised by the fact GM techniques and GM organisms are subject to intellectual property law.
Ecological concerns are more subtle.
There is a risk that some genetically modified (GM) organisms may be better adapted to some niche in nature, and will take away some the habitat of the regular species.
The ability to construct long base pair chains cheaply and accurately on a large scale allows researchers to do experiments on genomes that do not exist in nature.
The field of ` synthetic genomics ' is beginning to enter a productive stage.
The J. Craig Venter Institute has built a quasi-synthetic Mycoplasma genitalium yeast genome.
They recombined 25 overlapping fragments in a single step.
"The use of yeast recombination greatly simplifies the assembly of large DNA molecules from both synthetic and natural fragments".
Other companies, such as Synthetic Genomics, have already been formed to take advantage of the many commercial uses of custom designed genomes.
The team of about 20 researchers is led by Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, DNA researcher Craig Venter and microbiologist Clyde A. Hutchison III.
They plan to create Mycoplasma laboratorium a partially synthetic species of bacterium derived from the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium.
Geneticists have made the first synthetic chromosome for yeast.
As a eukaryote, yeast has cells with a nucleus.
Often classified as a fungus, yeast is related to plants and animals and shares 2,000 genes with ourselves.
The creation of the first of yeast 's 16 chromosomes has been hailed as "a massive deal" in the emerging science of synthetic biology.
"The genes in the original chromosome were replaced with synthetic versions and the finished manmade chromosome was then successfully integrated into a yeast cell.
Yeast is a favored target for this research because of its well-established use in key industries such as brewing and baking and its potential for future industrial applications".
GMOs also are involved in controversies over GM food, as to whether food produced from GM crops is safe, whether it should be labeled, and whether GM crops are needed to address the world 's food needs.
These controversies have led to litigation, international trade disputes, and protests, and to restrictive regulation of commercial products in most countries.
We can now produce and use GM and GE seeds.
Some large countries like India and China have already decided that GM farming is what they need to feed their populations.
Other countries are still debating the issue.
This debate involves scientists, farmers, politicians, companies and UN agencies.
Even those involved in the production of GM seedlings are not in total agreement.
The Gettysburg Address is a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
It was delivered on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863.
This speech was made during the American Civil War, at the dedication of the Soldiers ' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
This was four-and-a-half months after the Union Army had a victory over the Confederate States Army at the Battle of Gettysburg.
The address is one of the greatest speeches in the history of the United States.
Lincoln spoke of how humans were equal as it said in the Declaration of Independence.
He also said the Civil War was a fight not simply for the Union, but "a new birth of freedom" that would make everyone truly equal in one united nation.
The speech famously begins with "Four score and seven years ago", referring to the American Revolution in 1776.
"Score" in this case is an old word meaning "twenty."
Lincoln used the ceremony at Gettysburg to encourage the people to help America 's democracy, so that the "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish (be destroyed) from the earth".
The speech is very important in the popular culture of the United States.
However, people are not sure about the exact words of the speech.
The five known manuscripts of the Gettysburg Address are different from one another in some details.
They are also different from the words of the Gettysburg Address that have been printed in modern newspapers.
About 172,000 American soldiers fought in the Battle of Gettysburg from July 1 3, 1863.
The Battle of Gettysburg was an important influence on the American Civil War and on the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where only 2,400 people lived.
The battlefield had more than 7,500 bodies of dead soldiers and 5,000 horses.
Sarah Broadhead, a wife and mother living in the town, feared that they would "be visited with pestilence".
Eliza Farnham, a nurse, called the place "one vast hospital".
An army medical officer spoke similarly:" days following the battle of Gettysburg greatest amount of human suffering known in this nation since its birth".
The people of Gettysburg wanted to bury the dead properly.
At first, they planned to buy land for a cemetery and ask the families of the dead to pay for the burial.
However, David Willis, a rich 32-year-old lawyer, did not like this idea.
He wrote to the Governor of Pennsylvania, Andrew Gregg Curtin, asking that a National Cemetery be supported by the states.
Wills was allowed to buy 17 acres (69,000 m) for a cemetery to honor the people who died in the battle.
He paid $ 2,475.87 for the land.
At first, Wills wanted to dedicate this new cemetery on Wednesday, October 23.
He asked Edward Everett to be the main speaker.
Everett was a very famous orator at that time.
He had also served as Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, U.S. Representative, Governor of Massachusetts, president of Harvard University, and Vice Presidential candidate.
However, Everett replied that he would not be able to prepare a good speech so quickly, and wanted to move the date of the dedication.
The organizing committee agreed, and the dedication was moved to Thursday, November 19.
Wills and the event committee then asked President Lincoln to join in the ceremony.
Wills ' letter said, "It is the desire, as Chief Executive of the nation, formally (officially) set apart these a few appropriate (proper) remarks".
Lincoln was officially asked to join only 17 days before the ceremony, while Everett had received his invitation 40 days earlier.
"Although there is some evidence Lincoln expected Wills 's letter, its late date makes the author (writer) appear days was extraordinarily (remarkably) short notice for presidential participation even by nineteenth-century standards".
Also, Wills 's letter "made it equally clear to the president that he would have only a small part in the ceremonies".
Lincoln came by train to Gettysburg on November 18.
He spent the night in Wills 's house on the Gettysburg town square.
There, he finished the speech he had written in Washington, D.C..
There is a popular story that Lincoln completed his address on the train on the back of an envelope, but it is not true.
There are several early copies on Executive Mansion paper, and reports of Lincoln finishing his speech while he was a guest of David Wills at Gettysburg.
On the morning of November 19 at 9:30 a.m., Lincoln, riding a brown horse, joined the townspeople, and widows marching out to the grounds to be dedicated.
About 15,000 people went to the ceremony.
This included the governors of six of the 24 Union states.
They were Andrew Gregg Curtin of Pennsylvania, Augustus Bradford of Maryland, Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, Horatio Seymour of New York, Joel Parker of New Jersey, and David Tod of Ohio.
Canadian politician William McDougall came as Lincoln 's guest.
Historians do not agree about the exact place where the dedication ceremony was held inside the cemetery.
Moving all the bodies to the graves in the cemetery was less than half complete on the day of the ceremony.
By August 1863, millions of people had been killed or hurt because of Civil War battles.
This made people in the North begin to dislike Lincoln and the war.
Lincoln 's 1863 drafts were not popular, and people became angriest with them around the time of the New York Draft Riots.
This was just ten days after the Battle of Gettysburg.
In September 1863, Pennsylvania 's Governor Curtin told Lincoln that people were turning against the war effort:
If the election were to occur now, the result would be extremely doubtful (not sure), and although most of our discreet friends are sanguine of the result, my impression is, the chances would be against us.
The draft is very odious in the State... the Democratic leaders have succeeded in exciting prejudice and passion, and have infused their poison into the minds of the people to a very large extent, and the changes are against us.
In the summer of 1864, Lincoln was worried that the people 's bad feelings would make him lose the Presidential election.
In the fall of 1863, he grew very concerned about keeping up the Union 's spirits toward the war effort.
That was the greatest purpose of Lincoln 's Address at Gettysburg.
Lincoln 's short speech became known in history as one of the best examples of English public speeches.
Everett 's two-hour oration was called the "Gettysburg address" that day, but his oration is not well-known today.
It began:
"Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break of God and Nature.
But the; grant me, I pray sympathy".
"But they, I am sure, will join us in saying, as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, the glorious annals of our common country, there will be no brighter page than that which relates the Battles of Gettysburg".
After Everett finished his speech, Lincoln spoke for two or three minutes.
Lincoln 's "few appropriate remarks" summarized the war in ten sentences.
Lincoln 's speech is very important in history, but modern scholars do not agree about the words of the speech.
There are many different modern versions printed in newspaper accounts of the event.
Among these, the Bliss version, written some time after the speech for a friend, is seen by lots of people as the most reliable text.
Its text is different, however, from the written versions prepared by Lincoln before and after his speech.
It is the only version Lincoln put his signature on.
It is also the last he is known to have written.
In Lincoln at Gettysburg, Garry Wills notes the similarity between Lincoln 's speech and Pericles 's Funeral Oration during the Peloponnesian War (James McPherson and Gore Vidal also note this).
Pericles ' speech begins with remembering honored people: "I shall begin with our ancestors: it is both just and proper that they should have the honor of the first mention on an occasion like the present".
This is very much like the Gettysburg Address 's famous beginning.
In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln had begun by speaking of how "our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation".
He then praises their State 's firm democracy: "If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all".
He honors the dead 's sacrifice: "Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor, but met danger face to face".
He also warmly encourages the living to continue to fight for true democracy: "You, their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier issue".
But writer Adam Gopnik felt differently.
In The New Yorker, he said that Everett 's Oration was openly neoclassical.
For example, Everett spoke directly about Marathon and Pericles.
But he said that "Lincoln s rhetoric is, instead, deliberately Biblical".
He added that it is hard to find any obviously classical references in all of his speeches.
Gopnik felt that "Lincoln had mastered the sound of the King James Bible so completely that he could recast (make again) abstract issues of constitutional law in Biblical terms (words from the Bible), making the proposition (suggestion) that Texas and New Hampshire should be forever bound by a single post office sound like something right out of Genesis".
There are many theories about where Lincoln 's expression of "government of the people, by the people, for the people" came from.
In The American Monthly Review of Reviews, it is suggested that the writings of William Herndon, Lincoln 's law partner, much influenced Lincoln.
William Herndon wrote in Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of A Great Life that he had brought some of the sermons of abolitionist minister Theodore Parker to Lincoln, who had been moved by them.
Craig R. Smith, In "Criticism of Political Rhetoric and Disciplinary Integrity", suggested that the Gettysburg Address was influenced by the speech of Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster.
In his "Second Reply to Hayne", Webster had famously cried out, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable"!
In this 1830 speech, Webster had also described the Federal Government as "made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people".
This expression was very similar to Lincoln 's "government of the people, by the people, for the people."
Webster also said, "This the independent offspring of the popular will.
It is not the creature of State the whole truth must be told, the people brought it into existence, established it, and have hitherto (until now) supported it, for the very purpose, amongst others, of imposing certain salutary restraints on State sovereignties".
Wills was interested in how Lincoln used the ideas of birth, life, and death.
Lincoln had described the nation as "brought forth", "conceived", and that shall not "perish".
Others, such as Allen C. Guelzo, suggested that Lincoln 's expression "four score and seven" was about the King James Version of the Bible 's.
There, man 's life is described as "threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years".
Each of the five manuscript copies of the Gettysburg Address are named for the person who received it from Lincoln.
Lincoln gave a copy to each of his private secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay.
Both were written around the time of his November 19 address.
The other three copies of the address (the Everett, Bancroft, and Bliss copies) were written a long time after November 19.
They were written by Lincoln for charitable purposes.
The Bliss copy has become the most widely accepted text of Lincoln 's Gettysburg Address.
This is partly because Lincoln gave it a title and signed and dated it.
There has been some controversy about the two earliest drafts of the Address.
Lincoln 's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, made Nicolay and Hay the legal guardians of Lincoln 's papers in 1874.
The Nicolay Copy appeared as a copy in an article written by Nicolay in 1894.
After that, it was thought to be among the papers passed to Hay by Nicolay 's daughter Helen when Nicolay died in 1901.
Robert Lincoln began a search for the first copy in 1908.
He discovered a handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address among the papers of John Hay a copy now known as the "Hay Draft".
The Hay Draft was different from the Gettysburg Address printed by Nicolay in 1894 in many important ways.
For example, it was written on a different kind of paper, had a different number of words on every line, had a different number of lines, and had corrections in Lincoln 's handwriting.
Both the Hay and Nicolay copies of the Address are inside the Library of Congress.
They are inside specially designed, temperature-controlled, sealed containers with argon gas.
This is to protect the documents from oxidation.
The Nicolay Copy is often called the "first draft".
This is because it is thought to be the earliest copy that exists.
Scholars are not sure if the Nicolay Copy was actually the copy Lincoln read from at Gettysburg on November 19.
In an 1894 article, Nicolay wrote that Lincoln had brought to Gettysburg the first part of the speech written in ink.
Nicolay also said that Lincoln had written the second page in pencil on lined paper before November 19.
Matching folds can still be seen on the two pages, suggesting it could be the copy that eyewitnesses say Lincoln took from his coat pocket and read at the ceremony.
But some of the words and expressions in the Nicolay Copy do not match modern transcriptions of Lincoln 's speech.
Because of this, some people believe that the text used at Gettysburg has been lost.
The words "under God", for example, are missing in this copy from the phrase "that this nation (under God) shall have a new birth of freedom..." If the Nicolay draft was the copy Lincoln read from, either the modern transcriptions are not correct, or Lincoln spoke differently from his written text several times.
John Nicolay kept this copy of the Gettysburg Address until he died in 1901.
When he died, it was passed on to his friend John Hay.
It is on permanent display as part of the American Treasures exhibition of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
In 1906, it was first announced that the Hay Copy had been discovered.
It had been found among the papers of John Hay when people were searching for the "original manuscript" of the Address.
There are some important differences from the copy of the Address described by John Hay in his article.
There are many important words taken out and added by Lincoln 's own handwriting, which often changed the basic meaning of the sentence.
In this copy, like in the Nicolay Copy, the words "under God" are not there.
This version has been described as "the most inexplicable" of the drafts.
It is sometimes referred to as the "second draft".
The "Hay Copy" was probably made on the morning of the delivery of the Address.
It could also have been made shortly after Lincoln came back to Washington.
The people who believe it was completed on the morning of his address note that it has some expressions that are not in the first draft but are in the reports of the address and in later copies by Lincoln.
It is likely, they say, that Lincoln used this copy when he delivered the address.
Lincoln later gave this copy to his other secretary, John Hay.
Hay 's descendants gave it and the Nicolay Copy to the Library of Congress in 1916.
The Everett Copy is also known as the "Everett-Keyes Copy".
It was sent by President Lincoln to Edward Everett in early 1864.
Everett, who was collecting the speeches at the Gettysburg dedication into one book to sell for hurt soldiers at New York 's Sanitary Commission Fair, had asked for it.
The Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield, Illinois has it on display.
It is in the Treasures Gallery of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
The Bancroft Copy of the Gettysburg Address was written by President Lincoln in February 1864.
The famous historian George Bancroft, the "father of American History", who wrote History of the United States, had asked him to write it for him.
Bancroft wanted to put this copy in Autograph Leaves of Our Country 's Authors and sell it at a Soldiers ' and Sailors ' Sanitary Fair in Baltimore.
But Lincoln wrote on both sides of the paper, so he could not use it for this purpose.
Therefore, Bancroft was allowed to keep it.
This copy was kept by the Bancroft family for many years.
Then, it was sold to different dealers and bought by Nicholas and Marguerite Lilly Notes.
They donated it to Cornell in 1949.
It is now kept by the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in the Carl A. Kroch Library at Cornell University.
Among the five copies, it is the only one to be privately owned.
When Lincoln found that his fourth written copy could not be used, he wrote a fifth copy.
The Bliss Copy was named for Colonel Alexander Bliss, Bancroft 's stepson.
It is not known if Lincoln made any more copies.
Lincoln wrote this copy with much care.
He gave it a title "Address delivered at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg" and signed and dated this copy.
In fact, it was the only copy of the Gettysburg Address he signed.
Partly because of this, it has become the most well-known version of the Gettysburg Address.
It is the source of most modern copies of Lincoln 's Gettysburg Address.
Today, this copy hangs in the Lincoln Room of the White House.
It is a present from Oscar B. Cintas, who used to be a Cuban Ambassador to the United States.
Cintas liked to collect art and manuscripts.
He had bought the Bliss Copy for $ 54,000 at a public auction in 1949.
It "set a new high record for the sale of a document at public auction".
The Castro government claimed Cintas ' properties after it became powerful in 1959.
But Cintas, who died in 1957, had willed the Gettysburg Address to the American people, if it would be kept at the White House.
It was moved there in 1959, and is still there today.
Another source of the Gettysburg Address is the copy from the Associated Press.
It was copied from the notes taken by reporter Joseph L. Gilbert.
It is different from the drafted words in a few ways.
Eyewitnesses reports about Lincoln 's performance are various.
In 1931, 87-year-old Mrs. Sarah A. Cooke Myers suggested that there was a dignified silence after Lincoln finished his speech.
She had been there when she was 19 years old.
"I was close to the President and heard all of the Address, but it seemed short.
Then there was an impressive silence like our Menallen Friends Meeting.
There was no applause when he stopped speaking".
Historian Shelby Foote said that the applause, which came after a long time, was "barely polite".
But the governor of Pennsylvania, Curtin, said, "He pronounced (said) that speech in a voice that all the multitude (people) heard.
The crowd was hushed into silence because the President stood before was so Impressive!
It was the common remark of everybody.
Such a speech, as they said it was!"
There is a story that Lincoln turned to his bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon and said that his speech "wo n't scour (would n't be successful)".
Garry Wills argued that this story was not true.
He said that Lamon was the only person who remembered this remark, and that it was not reliable.
Garry Wills felt that Lincoln had done what he wanted to do at Gettysburg.
The following day, Everett wrote a letter to Lincoln.
In the letter, he praised the President for his speech, saying, "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central (main) idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes".
Lincoln replied that he was glad the speech was not a "total complete failure".
Other public reaction to the speech was different according to each party.
The Democratic Chicago Times said, "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances (remarks) of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States".
However, the Republican New York Times praised the speech.
The Springfield, MA.
Republican newspaper printed the entire speech, calling it "a perfect gem" that was "deep in feeling, compact (simple) in thought and expression, and tasteful and elegant in every word and comma".
The Republican said that Lincoln 's short remarks would "repay further study as the model speech".
William R. Rathvon is the only known eyewitness of the Gettysburg Address to have left an audio recording of what he remembered.
One year before he died in 1939, Rathvon 's remarks were recorded on February 12, 1938.
It included his reading the address itself.
The title of the record was "I Heard Lincoln That Day - William R. Rathvon, TR Productions".
The National Public Radio (NPR) discovered a copy during a "Quest for Sound" project in 1999.
NPR allows people to hear the record around Lincoln 's birthday.
The only known and confirmed photograph of Lincoln at Gettysburg was taken by David Bachrach.
It was identified in the Mathew Brady collection of photographic plates in 1952.
Lincoln 's speech was short, but he and others sat for hours during the rest of the program.
Because Everett 's speech was very long, and because it took a long time for 19th century photographers to prepare for taking a picture, it is likely that photographers were not prepared for how short Lincoln 's speech was.
In 2006, John Richter identified two more photographs in the Library of Congress collection.
The Nicolay and Hay copies do not have the words "under God", but they appear in the three later copies (Everett, Bancroft, and Bliss).
So, some skeptics suggest that Lincoln did not say "under God" at Gettysburg.
Yet at least three reporters telegraphed the words of the Gettysburg Address with the words "under God" included.
Historian William E. Barton says:
"Every stenographic report, good, bad and indifferent poor, says ` that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom. '
There was no common source from which all the reporters could have obtained those words but from Lincoln 's own lips at the time of delivery.
It will not do to say that (Secretary of War) Stanton suggested those words after Lincoln 's return to Washington, for the words were telegraphed by at least three reporters on the afternoon of the delivery".
The reporters who were there at that time included Joseph Gilbert, Charles Hale, John R. Young.
There were also reporters from the Cincinnati Commercial, New York Tribune, and New York Times.
Charles Hale "had notebook and pencil in hand, (and) took down the slow-spoken words of the President".
"He took down what he declared was the exact language of Lincoln 's associates confirmed his testimony, which was received, as it deserved to be at its face value".
Lincoln probably spoke differently from what he had prepared and added the expression when he was speaking.
The Gettysburg Address 's importance in the history of the United States can be seen by the long time it has been a part of American culture.
Popular works often refer to the Gettysburg Address as if expecting that the audience will know Lincoln 's words.
Many years have passed after the Address was delivered, but it is still one of the most famous speeches in American history.
Martin Luther King, Jr. 's famous speech of "I Have a Dream" spoke of the Gettysburg Address.
In August 1963, King spoke of President Lincoln and his well-known words: "Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
came as a of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames".
The Constitution of France spoke of France as a "gouvernement du peuple, par le peuple et pour le peuple" ("government of the people, by the people, and for the people").
This was a direct translation of Lincoln 's words.
The address has become a part of American tradition.
It is studied in schools and warmly praised by writers.
The Gettysburg Address shows an important interpretation of the Declaration of Independence that is still remembered and used.
It is widely accepted as one of the most important documents in U.S. history, together with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
To this day, it is one of the most famous, beloved, and most quoted of modern speeches.
The genetic code is the set of rules by which information encoded within genetic material (DNA or mRNA sequences) is translated into proteins by living cells.
Biological decoding is done by the ribosome.
This links amino acids together in an order specified by mRNA.
It uses transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules to carry amino acids and to read the mRNA.
The molecules read the mRNA three nucleotides at a time.
These nucleotide triplets are called codons.
A codon specifies which amino acid will be added next during protein synthesis.
There are some exceptions, but usually a three-nucleotide codon represents a single amino acid.
The genetic code among all organisms is very similar.
It can be expressed in a simple table with 64 entries.
The genetic code decides the protein sequence for a given coding region (gene).
Other regions in the genome can influence when and where these proteins are produced.
If a person has one number a and another smaller number b, he can make the ratio of the two numbers by dividing them.
Their ratio is a\/b.
The person can make another ratio by adding the two numbers together a + b and dividing this by the larger number a. The new ratio is (a + b) \/ a. If these two ratios are equal to the same number, then that number is called the golden ratio.
The Greek letter (phi) is usually used as the name for the golden ratio.
For example, if b = 1 and a\/b =, then a =.
The second ratio (a + b) \/ a is then.
Because these two ratios are equal, this is true:
is like any number which, when multiplied by itself, makes 5 (or which number is multiplied):.
The golden ratio is an irrational number.
If a person tries to write it, it will never stop and never be the same again and again, but it will start this way: 1.6180339887... An important thing about this number is that a person can subtract 1 from it or divide 1 by it.
Either way, the number will still keep going and never stop.
If the length of a rectangle divided by its width is equal to the golden ratio, then the rectangle is a "golden rectangle".
If a square is cut off from one end of a golden rectangle, then the other end is a new golden rectangle.
In the picture, the big rectangle (blue and pink together) is a golden rectangle because.
The blue part (B) is a square.
The pink part by itself (A) is another golden rectangle because.
The big rectangle and the pink rectangle have the same form, but the pink rectangle is smaller and is turned.
The Fibonacci numbers are a list of numbers.
A person can find the next number in the list by adding the last two numbers together.
If a person divides a number in the list by the number that came before it, this ratio comes closer and closer to the golden ratio.
In nature, the golden ratio is often used for the arrangement of leaves or flowers.
These use the golden angle of approximately 137.5 degrees.
Leaves or flowers arranged in that angle best use sunlight.
The genome of an organism is the whole of its hereditary information encoded in its DNA (or, for some viruses, RNA).
This includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA.
The term was coined in 1920.
"I propose the expression genome for the haploid chromosome set, which, together with the pertinent protoplasm, specifies the material foundations of the species..." p165
However, no single haploid chromosome set defines even the DNA of a species, because of the huge variety of alleles carried by a population.
Even a diploid individual carries genetic variety.
For that reason Dobzhansky preferred "set of chromosomes", and the definition now must be broader than Winklers ' definition.
The genome of a haploid chromosome set is merely a sample of the total genetic variety of a species.
The term ` genome ' can be applied specifically to mean the complete set of nuclear DNA (the ` nuclear genome ') but can also be used of organelles that contain their own DNA, as with the mitochondrial genome or the chloroplast genome.
Note: The DNA from a single human cell has a length of ~ 1.8 m (but at a width of ~ 2.4 nanometers).
The greenhouse effect occurs when certain gases in the Earth 's atmosphere (the air around the Earth) entraps infrared radiation.
This makes the planet become warmer, similar to the way it makes a greenhouse become warmer.
The greenhouse effect is caused by greenhouse gases; the most important greenhouse gases in Earth 's atmosphere are: water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane.
When there is more greenhouse gas in the air, the air holds more heat.
This is why more greenhouse gases cause global warming.
The greenhouse effect is natural.
It is important for life on Earth.
Without the greenhouse effect, the Earth 's average temperature would be around -18 or -19 degrees Celsius (0 or 1 degree Fahrenheit).
Earth would be locked in an ice age.
Because of the greenhouse effect, the Earth 's actual average temperature is 14 degrees Celsius (57 degrees Fahrenheit).
The problem is that recently, the greenhouse effect has become stronger.
This is because humans have been using large amounts of fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide when they are burned.
Since carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, it has caused the planet to warm over the past 150 years.
About ten thousand years ago, before people started burning large amounts of fossil fuels, there was 260 to 280 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.
In September 2011, the figure was 389 ppm.
Most scientists say that having 350 ppm or less is safe for the environment and that species on the planet can adapt to this level.
Higher levels can make severe problems for animal and marine life that are already being seen today, such as ocean acidification.
The greenhouse effect was first proposed by Joseph Fourier in 1824.
Mars, Venus and other planets with atmospheres also have greenhouse effects.
The effect on Venus is especially strong because Venus has so much CO2.
This is why Venus is hotter than Mercury, even though Mercury is closer to the sun.
The first person to predict that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels (and other combustion processes) could cause global warming was Svante Arrhenius.
Graph theory is a field of mathematics about graphs.
A graph is an abstract representation of: A number of points are connected by lines.
Each point is usually called a vertex (more than one are called vertices), and the lines are called edges.
Graphs are a tool for modelling relationships.
They are used to find answers to a number of problems.
Leonhard Euler used to live in a city that was called K nigberg for some time.
(The city has been called Kaliningrad since 1946).
The city is situated on the river Pregel.
There is an island in the river, and there are a number of bridges across the river.
Euler loved to go for walks, so he asked himself, whether it was possible to do a walk, use each of the bridges once, and come back to the point where he started.
In 1736, he published a scientific article where he showed that this was not possible.
Today, this problem is known as the Seven Bridges of K nigsberg.
The article is seen as the first paper in the history of graph theory.
This article, as well as the one written by Vandermonde on the knight problem, carried on with the analysis situs initiated by Leibniz.
Euler 's formula was about the number of edges, vertices, and faces of a convex polyhedron was studied and generalized by Cauchy and L'Huillier, and is at the origin of topology.
Over a century after Euler, Cayley studied a special class of graphs, called the trees.
A tree is a graph where there is only one path between two vertices.
Cayley tried to solve a problem from differential calculus.
His solution influenced the development of theoretical chemistry.
The technique he used mainly focused on listing all graphs which had certain properties.
Today, this is called Enumerative graph theory.
It developed from Cayleys results, a scientific publication done by P lya between 1935 and 1937 and the generalization of these by De Bruijn in 1959.
Cayley linked his results on trees with the contemporary studies of chemical composition.
The fusion of the ideas coming from mathematics with those coming from chemistry is at the origin of a part of the standard terminology of graph theory.
In particular, the term "graph" was introduced by Sylvester in an article published in 1878 in Nature.
One of the most famous and productive problems of graph theory is the four color problem: "Is it true that any map drawn in the plane may have its regions colored with four colors, in such a way that any two regions having a common border have different colors?"
This problem was first posed by Francis Guthrie in 1852 and its first written record is in a letter of De Morgan addressed to Hamilton the same year.
Many incorrect proofs have been proposed, including those by Cayley, Kempe, and others.
The study and the generalization of this problem by Tait, Heawood, Ramsey and Hadwiger led to the study of the colorings of the graphs embedded on surfaces with arbitrary genus.
Tait 's reformulation generated a new class of problems, the factorization problems, particularly studied by Petersen and K nig.
The works of Ramsey on colorations and more specially the results obtained by Tur n in 1941 was at the origin of another branch of graph theory, extremal graph theory.
The four color problem remained unsolved for more than a century.
A proof produced in 1976 by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken, which involved checking the properties of 1,936 configurations by computer, was not fully accepted at the time due to its complexity.
A simpler proof considering only 633 configurations was given twenty years later by Robertson, Seymour, Sanders and Thomas.
The autonomous development of topology from 1860 and 1930 fertilized graph theory back through the works of Jordan, Kuratowski and Whitney.
Another important factor of common development of graph theory and topology came from the use of the techniques of modern algebra.
The first example of such a use comes from the work of the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff, who published in 1845 his Kirchhoff 's circuit laws for calculating the voltage and current in electric circuits.
Graph theory is an important part of mathematics and computer science.
To many such problems, exact solutions do exist.
Many times however, they are very hard to calculate.
Therefore, very often, approximations are used.
There are two kinds of such approximations, Monte-Carlo algorithms and Las-Vegas algorithms.
Graphs are normally represented by two different sets, typically set a graph G would be represented as the collection of the sets V and E. The set V is a discrete set containing all vertices of the graph.
The set E is a binary set, whose pairwise elements are elements of set V. Each pair in set E represents an edge connecting two vertices.
If every two nodes have an edge between them, then the graph is called the complete graph.
Gumby is a dark green clay figure.
He was in 233 episodes on American television series.
He was also in a feature-length movie and other media.
He has become well known as an example of stop motion clay animation.
He has become a cultural icon.
There have been many tributes and parodies, including a video game and toys.
Gumby Adventures aired on PBS Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network and Galavision
Gumby was started by Art Clokey in 1953.
The first ` episode ' was a 3-minute short called Gumbasia.
It showed moving lumps of clay set to music, and parodied Fantasia.
In 1955, Art showed Gumbasia to movie producer Sam Engel, who then paid him for a 15 minute movie called Gumby Goes to the Moon.
Gumby was given his own NBC series in 1957.
Female actress ' voiced Gumby.
New episodes were added in 1962, and Dallas McKennon became the voice of Gumby.
Gumby 's main sidekick is Pokey, a talking orange pony.
His enemies are the Blockheads.
They are a pair of human-like, red-colored figures with block-shaped heads.
The Blockheads were inspired by the Katzenjammer Kids, who were always getting into scrapes and causing discomfort to others.
Other characters are Gumby 's dog Nopey.
All he says is "nope".
There is also Prickle, a yellow dinosaur who sometimes acts like a detective with pipe and hat like Sherlock Holmes.
Also on the series are Goo, a flying blue mermaid who spits blue goo balls and can change shape at will; Gumby 's mother Gumba and father Gumbo.
The later series in 1988 added Gumby 's sister Minga and mastodon friend Denali.
The Adventures of Gumby had 22 bonus episodes and 16 episodes with commentary.
Gumby Bumpers in 2 minutes is released in January 4, 1980 starring Gumby, Pokey and cameo appearance of Blue Mermaid Goo.
Was released on February 13, 1982.
It is 6 minutes long.
In 1967 version, an episode of Gumby Train Trouble is released in January 7, 1967 starring Gumby and first appearance of Nopey.
This episode in 1967 is the version of 1958.
Gioachino Rossini (born Pesaro 29 February 1792; died Passy 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer.
He was the most famous composer of operas in his time.
His operas had lots of new ideas.
Italian operas had become rather unimaginative, with composers such as Cimarosa and Paisiello writing the same sort of thing each time.
Rossini made his operas interesting by writing skillfully for the singers, giving them good tunes, as well as giving the orchestra interesting music, and by choosing a variety of stories for his operas.
The opera for which he is best known today is the Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville).
Many of the overtures to his operas are played at orchestral concerts.
The most popular is the overture to his opera Guillaume Tell (William Tell) with its ioooo
During the last 40 years of his life Rossini wrote no more music.
His friends begged him to write another opera but he always refused.
Rossini was born on 29 February of the leap year 1792.
His birthplace was Pesaro, a small town in Italy on the Adriatic coast.
His father played the horn in military bands and opera houses and his mother sang in operas.
Often his parents toured together and the young Rossini was left in the care of his grandmother.
The family eventually settled in Bologna.
Rossini had lessons in singing, cello, piano and counterpoint.
He did not like the counterpoint lessons, but it did help him to study different styles of music and he became very good at writing harmony in a clear way.
Italian opera at this time needed a new composer to bring more life into it.
Five of his first nine operas were written for the Teatro S Moise in Venice.
Other theaters soon asked him to write operas.
In 1812 he wrote La pietra del paragone for the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.
It was a great success.
Many of these early operas were comic operas (opera buffa).
Sometimes he had to produce so many new operas that he kept reusing some of the music he had already written in another opera.
Nevertheless they include a lot of fine music, and Rossini was developing his musical personality.
His overtures have a fine sense of orchestral color.
He often started with a slow section and then went into fast music with a crescendo.
Because he did this a lot it is often called a Rossini crescendo or Rossini rocket.
It was not easy for him to earn enough money to keep himself.
He only got paid for the operas he took part in.
There were no copyright laws in those days.
The important singers were well paid, but the composers earned much less.
We know very little about his life at this time, but we do know that he traveled a lot.
His most famous operas from this period are Tancredi, La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie) and Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) which has often been called the greatest of all comic operas.
By 1815 Rossini s operas were famous everywhere in Western Europe except in Naples.
Neapolitan opera had been famous throughout the 18th century and the city was proud of its tradition.
The Neapolitans did not want a young composer from the north to continue their operatic tradition.
Nevertheless, Rossini soon won their hearts.
He wrote for the Teatro S Carlo which had a fine orchestra and very good singers.
He wrote many of his best serious operas (opera seria) for Naples, and this tradition which he built up made it possible for Verdi to take over thirty years later as Italy s leading opera composer.
Rossini s international fame took him to Vienna where he met Beethoven.
After returning to Italy for a while he traveled to Paris and England.
He was only 31 years old and had written 34 operas.
The Paris audiences already knew his operas.
In London a Rossini Festival was organized.
Most of the time in England he spent at social parties at the houses of rich people who were glad to pay him money to come and be their guest.
Soon after this he settled in Paris for five years.
He was director of the Th tre-Italien until 1836.
His two greatest operas from this period were Le Comte Ory (which was an op ra comique) and Guillaume Tell which was based on a play by Schiller.
These works have beautifully flowing tunes (like Italian opera) as well as grand drama (like French opera).
In 1829, at the age of 37, Rossini decided to retire.
He had lots of money but his health was not particularly good.
Although he wrote a few small pieces of music he never composed another opera.
He went back to Bologna, although he returned to Paris nearly 20 years later with his wife.
Here his health improved and he wrote a little music.
His Petite messe solennelle for 12 voices, two pianos and harmonium is still performed today.
When he died in 1868 thousands of people came to his funeral.
Rossini was a composer of the classical period.
He was brought up hearing 18th century opera, and much of his best known music is still Classical in style, but he developed a lot as he matured and was writing in a more Romantic way by the end of his career.
He gradually stopped writing music which has set numbers all the time: music divided sharply into arias and recitative.
His recitative became more expressive and was accompanied by the orchestra instead of by a harpsichord.
This helped to make his music more continuous.
He did not often write for castrati as they were going out of fashion.
The chorus have an important part in the drama of his operas (in 18th century opera they just used to comment on what was going on).
Gustav Klimt (14 July 1862 6 February 1918) was an Austrian Symbolist painter.
He was one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement.
His major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects.
Many of them are on display in the Vienna Secession gallery.
Klimt 's primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism nowhere is this more apparent than in his numerous drawings in pencil (see Mulher sentada, below).
Klimt died of influenza in Vienna.
Julius Henry Marx or Groucho Marx (October 2, 1890 August 19, 1977), was a famous American comedian.
He was best known for work with his siblings in The Marx Brothers and then later on his own.
He is best known for playing a fast-talking "wise guy" with bushy eyebrows, glasses, moustache, and a cigar.
The Game Boy Advance, commonly abbreviated as GBA, is a 32-bit handheld video game console.
It was manufactured by Nintendo.
The predecessors to the Game Boy Advance were the Game Boy and Game Boy Color.
The Game Boy Advance was eventually succeeded by the Nintendo DS.
The Game Boy Advance was released in Japan on 21 March, 2001.
Nintendo released it in North America on 11 June, 2001 and for Europe on 22 June, 2001.
The Game Boy Advance SP is one of the two Game Boy Advance variations, released in February 2003.
It is similar to the original, but it has a "clamshell" design, meaning that it can be folded to open and close.
The Game Boy Advance SP has a rechargeable battery, and it does not run on two AA batteries.
The Game Boy Advance SP has a backlit screen, meaning it has a bright screen (older versions of the GBA SP have a frontlit screen).
The Game Boy Micro is one of the two variations of the Game Boy Advance.
It is smaller than most handhelds and is designed to fit inside coin pockets.
It retains a rechargeable battery and backlit screen from the Game Boy Advance SP.
The Game Boy Micro removed compatibility with original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.
It also is incompatible with the Nintendo e-Reader.
The Game Boy Micro also has a removable face plate for alternative designs.
The Game Boy Micro has a switch on its right side to adjust the volume.
If the player presses the L shoulder button, it can be used to adjust the backlit screen between five different brightness levels.
Google Search or Google Web Search is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. and is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web.
Google receives several hundred million queries each day through its various services.
The main purpose of Google Search is to hunt for text in webpages, as opposed to other data, such as with Google Image Search.
Google search was originally developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997, based on earlier search-engine designs.
Google Search provides at least 22 special features beyond the original word-search capability.
These include synonyms, weather forecasts, time zones, stock quotes, maps, earthquake data, movie showtimes, airports, home listings, and sports results.
(see below: Special features).
There are special features for numbers, including ranges (70.
.73), prices, temperatures, money\/unit conversions ("10.5 cm in inches"), calculations (3 \* 4 + sqrt (6) - pi\/2), package tracking, patents, area codes, and language translation of displayed pages.
The order of search results (ghits for Google hits) on Google 's search-results pages is based, in part, on a priority rank called a "PageRank".
Google Search provides many options for customized search (see below: Search options), using Boolean operators such as: exclusion ('' - xx"), inclusion ('' + xx"), alternatives ("xx OR yy"), and wildcard ("x \* x").
Google 's rise to success was in large part due to a patented algorithm called PageRank that helps rank web pages that match a given search string.
Previous keyword-based methods of ranking search results, used by many search engines that were once more popular than Google, would rank pages by how often the search terms occurred in the page, or how strongly associated the search terms were within each resulting page.
The PageRank algorithm instead analyses human-generated links, assuming that web pages linked from many important pages are themselves likely to be important.
The algorithm computes a recursive score for pages, based on the weighted sum of the PageRanks of the pages linking to them.
PageRank is thought to correlate well with human concepts of importance.
In addition to PageRank, Google over the years has added many other secret criteria for determining the ranking of pages on result lists, reported to be over 200 different indicators.
The details are kept secret due to spammers and in order to maintain an advantage over Google 's competitors.
The exact percentage of the total of web pages that Google indexes is not known, as it is very hard to actually calculate.
Google not only indexes and caches web pages but also takes "snapshots" of other file types, which include PDF, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Flash SWF, plain text files, and so on.
Except in the case of text and SWF files, the cached version is a conversion to (X) HTML, allowing those without the corresponding viewer application to read the file.
Users can customize the search engine, by setting a default language, using the "SafeSearch" filtering technology and set the number of results shown on each page.
Google has been criticized for placing long-term cookies on users ' machines to store these preferences, a tactic which also enables them to track a user 's search terms and retain the data for more than a year.
For any query, up to the first 1000 results can be shown with a maximum of 100 displayed per page.
The ability to specify the number of results is available only if "Instant Search" is not enabled.
If "Instant Search" is enabled, only 10 results are displayed, regardless of this setting.
Despite its immense index, there is also a considerable amount of data available in online databases which are accessible by means of queries but not by links.
This so-called invisible or deep Web is minimally covered by Google and other search engines.
The deep Web contains library catalogs, official legislative documents of governments, phone books, and other content which is dynamically prepared to respond to a query.
Privacy in some countries forbids the showing of some links.
For instance in Switzerland any individual can force Google Inc. to delete a link which contains their name.
Since Google is the most popular search engine, many webmasters have become eager to influence their website 's Google rankings.
An industry of consultants has arisen to help websites increase their rankings on Google and on other search engines.
This field, called search engine optimization, attempts to discern patterns in search engine listings, and then develop a methodology for improving rankings to draw more searchers to their client 's sites.
Search engine optimization encompasses both "on page" factors (like body copy, title elements, H1 heading elements and image alt attribute values) and Off Page Optimization factors (like anchor text and PageRank).
The general idea is to affect Google 's relevance algorithm by incorporating the keywords being targeted in various places "on page", in particular the title element and the body copy (note: the higher up in the page, presumably the better its keyword prominence and thus the ranking).
Too many occurrences of the keyword, however, cause the page to look suspect to Google 's spam checking algorithms.
Google has published guidelines for website owners who would like to raise their rankings when using legitimate optimization consultants.
Google search consists of a series of localized websites.
The largest of those, the google.com site, is the top most-visited website in the world.
Some of its features include a definition link for most searches including dictionary words, the number of results you got on your search, links to other searches (e.g. for words that Google believes to be misspelled, it provides a link to the search results using its proposed spelling), and many more.
Google 's search engine normally accepts queries as a simple text, and breaks up the user 's text into a sequence of search terms, which will usually be words that are to occur in the results, but one can also use Boolean operators, such as: quotations marks ('') for a phrase, a prefix such as" +"," -" for qualified terms, or one of several advanced operators, such as "site:".
The webpages of "Google Search Basics" describe each of these additional queries and options (see below: Search options).
Google 's Advanced Search web form gives several additional fields which may be used to qualify searches by such criteria as date of first retrieval.
All advanced queries transform to regular queries, usually with additional qualified terms.
Google applies query expansion to the submitted search query, transforming it into the query that will actually be used to retrieve results.
As with page ranking, the exact details of the algorithm Google uses are deliberately obscure, but certainly the following transformations are among those that occur:
Google 's homepage includes a button labeled "I 'm Feeling Lucky".
When a user clicks on the button the user will be taken directly to the first search result, bypassing the search engine results page.
The thought is that if a user is "feeling lucky", the search engine will return the perfect match the first time without having to page through the search results.
According to a study by Tom Chavez of "Rapt", this feature costs Google $ 110 million a year as 1 % of all searches use this feature and bypass all advertising.
On October 30, 2009, for some users, the "I 'm Feeling Lucky" button was removed from Google 's main page, along with the regular search button.
Both buttons were replaced with a field that reads, "This space intentionally left blank."
This text faded out when the mouse was moved on the page, and normal search functionality is achieved by filling in the search field with the desired terms and pressing enter.
A Google spokesperson explains, "This is just a test, and a way for us to gauge whether our users will like an even simpler search interface."
Personalized Google homepages retained both buttons and their normal functions.
On May 21, 2010, the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, the "I 'm Feeling Lucky" button was replaced with a button reading the words "Insert Coin".
After pressing the button, the user would begin a Google-themed game of Pac-Man in the area where the Google logo would normally be.
Pressing the button a second time would begin a two-player version of the same game that includes Ms. Pacman for player 2.
This version can be accessed at http://www.google.com/pacman as a permanent link to the page.
On 12 May 2009, Google announced that they would be parsing the hCard, hReview, and hProduct microformats and using them to populate search result pages with what they called "Rich Snippets".
The webpages maintained by the Google Help Center have text describing more than 15 various search options.
Note that Google searches the HTML coding inside a webpage, not the screen appearance: the words displayed on a screen might not be listed in the same order in the HTML coding.
"We 're sorry...
... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application.
To protect our users, we ca n't process your request right now.
We 'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon.
In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.
We apologise for the inconvenience, and hope we 'll see you again from all of the team here at Google."
sometimes followed by a CAPTCHA prompt.
The screen was first reported in 2005, and was a response to the heavy use of Google by search engine optimization companies to check on ranks of sites they were optimizing.
The message is triggered by high volumes of requests from a single IP address.
Google apparently uses the Google cookie as part of its determination of refusing service.
In June 2009, after the death of pop superstar Michael Jackson, this message appeared to many internet users who were searching Google for news stories related to the singer, and was assumed by Google to be a DDoS attack, although many queries were submitted by legitimate searchers.
Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously.
Google does this to protect users against visiting sites that could harm their computers.
For approximately 40 minutes on January 31, 2009, all search results were mistakenly classified as malware and could therefore not be clicked; instead a warning message was displayed and the user was required to enter the requested URL manually.
The bug was caused by human error.
The URL of" \/" (which expands to all URLs) was mistakenly added to the malware patterns file.
On certain occasions, the logo on Google 's webpage will change to a special version, known as a "Google Doodle".
Clicking on the Doodle links to a string of Google search results about the topic.
The first was a reference to the Burning Man Festival in 1998, and others have been produced for the birthdays of notable people like Albert Einstein, historical events like the interlocking Lego block 's 50th anniversary and holidays like Valentine 's Day.
In August 2009, Google announced the rollout of a new search architecture, codenamed "Caffeine".
The new architecture was designed to return results faster and to better deal with rapidly updated information from services including Facebook and Twitter.
Google developers noted that most users would notice little immediate change, but invited developers to test the new search in its sandbox.
Differences noted for their impact upon search engine optimization included heavier keyword weighting and the importance of the domain 's age.
The move was interpreted in some quarters as a response to Microsoft 's recent release of an upgraded version of its own search service, renamed Bing.
Google announced completion of Caffeine on 8 June 2010, claiming 50 % fresher results due to continuous updating of its index.
With Caffeine, Google moved its back-end indexing system away from MapReduce and onto BigTable, the company 's distributed database platform.
Caffeine is also based on Colossus, or GFS2, an overhaul of the GFS distributed file system.
In May 2010 Google rolled out SSL-encrypted web search.
The encrypted search can be accessed at: https://encrypted.google.com
Google Instant, an enhancement that displays suggested results while the user types, was introduced in the United States starting on September 8, 2010.
One concern is that people will select one of the suggested results instead of finishing their request, and that such a practice could cause bias toward familiar businesses or other search terms.
Pornographic or otherwise offensive search terms are excluded from the suggested results.
The instant feature appears only on the basic Google site and not specialized iGoogle pages.
Google expects Google Instant to save users 2 to 5 seconds in every search, which they say will be collectively 11 million seconds per hour.
Search engine marketing pundits speculate that Google Instant will have a great impact on local and paid search.
In concert with the Google Instant launch, Google disabled the ability of users to choose to see more than 10 search results per page.
Instant Search can be disabled via Google 's "preferences" menu, but autocomplete-style search suggestions now can not be disabled.
A Google representative stated, "It 's in keeping with our vision of a unified Google search experience to make popular, useful features part of the default experience, rather than maintain different versions of Google.
As Autocomplete quality has improved, we felt it was appropriate to have it always on for all of our users."
Google is available in many languages and has been localized for many countries.
In addition to the main URL Google.com, Google Inc. owns 160 domain names for each of the countries\/regions in which it has been localized.
As Google is an American company, the main domain name can be considered as the U.S. one.
For a list of the current domain names, see Template: Google.com.
Some domain names unregistered by Google are currently squatted, such as "Google.
ua" (for Ukraine, where the correct URL is "google.com.
ua").
In addition to its tool for searching webpages, Google also provides services for searching images, Usenet newsgroups, news websites, videos, searching by locality, maps, and items for sale online.
In 2006, Google has indexed over 25 billion web pages, 400 million queries per day, 1.3 billion images, and over one billion Usenet messages.
It also caches much of the content that it indexes.
There are also products available from Google that are not directly search-related.
Gmail, for example, is a webmail application, but still includes search features; Google Browser Sync does not offer any search facilities, although it aims to organize your browsing time.
Also Google starts many new beta products, like Google Social Search or Google Image Swirl.
Google claims that a search query requires altogether about 1 kJ or 0.0003 kW h.
A genius is a person who is exceptionally intelligent.
People may have different ideas of how clever one has to be in order to be called a genius.
A genius may be extremely clever at maths or science or games such as chess, or they may be creative geniuses who are brilliant writers, musicians or artists.
Albert Einstein is perhaps the world s most famous genius.
He was extraordinarily good at math, but in other areas, such as languages, he was not particularly good.
Leonardo da Vinci and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were geniuses who can also be described as polymaths because they were brilliant in lots of different subjects.
Geniuses are usually child prodigies, i.e., they already show they are a genius when they are young children.
Genius is not quite the same as talent.
Talent means the ability to learn a particular skill very quickly.
A genius, on the other hand, is also very creative and able to do things that no one else has thought of.
Some geniuses, such as Goethe, are very sensible, reliable people who are good at organizing their lives.
However, there are many geniuses who have unusual personalities.
They may be very absent-minded, they may not have much common sense, or they may suffer at times from depression and changes of mood.
Grapes are the fruit of a woody grape vine.
Grapes can be eaten raw, or used for making wine, juice, and jelly\/jam.
Grapes come in different colors; red, purple, white, and green are some examples.
Today, grapes can be seedless, by using machines to pit the fruit.
Wild grapevines are often considered a nuisance weed, as they cover other plants with their usually rather aggressive growth.
Raisins are the dried fruit of the grapevine, and the name actually comes from the French word for "grape."
Since the early 21st century in the United States and other countries, and the global functional food industry, there has been a fast-growing recognition of red grapes for their popularity, nutrient content and antioxidant qualities.
This has given them commercial status as a "superfruit".
The leaves of the grapevine itself are considered edible (eatable).
They are used to make dolmades.
Grapevines are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species.
According to the "Food and Agriculture Organization" (FAO), almost 76,000 square kilometres of the world is used to grow grapes.
About 71 % of grapes are used for wine.
27 % are used as fresh fruit, and 2 % are used as dried fruit.
A part of grape production goes to making grape juice to be used as a sweetener for fruits canned "with no added sugar" and "100 % natural".
The area dedicated to vineyards is increasing by about 2 % per year.
The following list of top wine-producers shows the areas used to grow grapes for wine making, although of course country size is a limiting factor, as well as the economic demand for their product.
Comparing diets among western countries, researchers have found that although the French usually eat more animal fat than other countries, the number of cases of heart disease remains low in France.
Many scientists think this is because the French drink more red wine than other countries.
Something in the grape helps lower the amount of cholesterol in the body.
This helps prevent clogging of the arteries.
Doctors do not recommend drinking a lot of red wine, but three or four glasses a week is good and encouraged.
Grapes of all colors offer benefits.
Red wine offers health benefits that are not found in white wine.
This is because many of the good nutrients are found in the skins of the grapes, and only red wine is fermented with the skins.
White grapes are derived from the green grape by evolution.
Changes in two genes turn off creation of anthocyanin.
Anthocyanin is what makes red grapes the color green.
A raisin is any dried grape.
A currant is a dried Zante grape.
The name is a corruption of the French raisin de Corinthe (Corinth grape).
A sultana was originally a raisin made from a specific type of grape of Turkish origin.
The word is now used for raisins made from common North American grapes and chemically treated to resemble the traditional sultana.
Note that, while raisin is a French loanword, the word in French means the fresh fruit.
Grappe (Where the English word grape comes from) means the bunch (as in une grappe de raisin).
Note also that currant has also come to mean to the blackcurrant and redcurrant.
These two berries completely unrelated to grapes.
A genetic disorder is an illness caused by abnormalities in the genome.
They are heritable, and are passed down from the parents ' genes.
If a genetic disorder is present from birth, it is a type of congenital defect.
Some only show up in later life.
Most genetic disorders are quite rare and affect one person in every several thousands or millions.
Sometimes they are relatively frequent in a population.
These types of recessive gene disorders give an advantage in certain environments when only one copy of the gene is present.
Sickle cell anemia is an example.
The same disease, such as some forms of cancer, may be caused by an inherited genetic condition in some people, by new mutations in other people, and by nongenetic causes in still other people.
A disease in only called a genetic disease when it is inherited.
Guanine is one of the five main nucleobases found in the nucleic acids DNA and RNA.
The others are adenine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil.
With the formula C5H5N5O, guanine is a derivative of purine.
Guanine, along with adenine and cytosine, is present in both DNA and RNA, whereas thymine is usually seen only in DNA and uracil only in RNA.
Genocide is the crime of killing many people who are all part of one ethnic or religious group, or some sort of similar group, and trying to destroy that group.
Genocide is done usually by a group, such as a government, or military group, not by one person or a small number of people.
Usually, the motivation for genocide is based on political reasons.
The word genocide was made up by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew, in 1944, from the words "genos" (Greek for family, tribe or race) and" - cide" (from the Latin "occidere", to kill).
It was first used to the Nazi Holocaust, when many groups, including Jews and others, were killed.
Ustashe of Croatia are another example of genocidial horror.
About a million of Serbs were killed in WWII in Ustashe concentration camps.
Another example of genocide was when about a million of the Tutsi group of people of Rwanda were killed along with Hutus who were against the genocide in 1994.
In 1933 Lemkin made a speech to the Legal Council of the League of Nations conference on international criminal law in Madrid, for which he prepared an essay on the Crime of Barbarity as a crime against international law.
The purpose of the crime, which later evolved into the idea of genocide, was based mostly on the experience of Assyrians massacred in Iraq on 11 August 1933.
The event in Iraq reminded him of earlier similar events of the Armenian Genocide during World War I.
Today, any genocide is prohibited by the Genocide Convention and actor or inciter of genocide is judged by the International Criminal Court.
Some people do not agree that all of these events are genocides, but the events listed here are recognized as genocides by many people.
The Germanic peoples are a linguistic and ethnic branch of Indo-European peoples.
They came from Northern Europe and are identified by their use of the Germanic languages.
Migrating Germanic peoples spread throughout Europe, mixing with existing local populations (such as Celts, but also Slavs\/Vends and Romans), forming the future basis of many nations, that are connected by similar languages and common history, and culture.
Latin Germani is first used by Julius Caesar.
But the Germanic tribes did not have a self name that included all Germanic-speaking people.
In English, German is first attested in 1520, replacing earlier use of Almain or Dutch.
Dutch is now used in the English language to refer to the language and the inhabitants of the Netherlands.
By the 1st century A.D., the writings of Caesar, Tacitus and other Roman era writers indicate a division of Germanic-speaking peoples into tribal groupings centred on:
The Sons of Mannus Istvaeones, Irminones, and Ingvaeones are collectively called West Germanic tribes.
In addition, those Germanic people who remained in Scandinavia are referred to as North Germanic.
These groups all developed separate dialects, the basis for the differences among Germanic languages down to the present day.
The division of peoples into West Germanic, East Germanic, and North Germanic is a modern linguistic classification.
The Germanic tribes were each politically independent, under a hereditary king (see Germanic king).
The kings appear to have claimed descendancy from mythical founders of the tribes, the name of some of which is preserved:
The early Germanic tribes spoke mutually intelligible dialects, and shared a common culture and mythology (see Germanic mythology), as is indicated by Beowulf and the Volsunga saga.
In the absence of large-scale political unification, such as that imposed forcibly by the Romans upon the peoples of Italy, the various tribes remained free, led by their own hereditary or chosen leaders.
The Ganges (English pronunciation: \/ nd i z \/ GAN-jeez), also called the Ganga (Sanskrit: Hindi: Urdu: Ganga IPA: (a) (listen); Bengali: G nga), is the second largest river on the Indian subcontinent by discharge.
Ganges river is named after a Hindu goddess called Ganga.
Geographists to Historians and Mythologists regard Ganges as the heart of Indian culture, tradition and living.
The government declared that the Ganges river between Allahabad and Haldia is National-Waterway No. 1.
The river has many industrial towns like Patliputra, Kannauj, Kara, Allahabad, Murshidabad, Baharampur and Kolkata on its banks.
The Ganges Basin drains 1,000,000-square-kilometre (390,000 sq mi) and supports one of the world 's highest densities of humans.
The average depth of the river is 52 feet (17 m), and the maximum depth, 100 feet (33 m).
The river starts from a glacier called Gangotri Glacier, which is in the Garhwal region in Himalayas.
The Ganges flows through north India, and ends at the Bay of Bengal in eastern India.
Overall it flows 3,877 km making it one of the longest rivers in the world.
Its watershed is 907,000 km broad.
The major rivers which flow into the Ganges are Brahmaputra River, Gomti, Kosi river, Gandak, Ghaghra river, Yamuna river and Son river.
The Ganges flows only 200 km through the Himalayas.
The river touches plain land in the Rishikesh region near Haridwar in Uttarakhand.
Then it passes through the towns of Kanpur, Soron, Kannauj, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, Ghazipur, Bhagalpur, Mirzapur, Ballia, Buxar, Saidpur, and Chunar.
At Allahabad, the river joins with Yamuna river.
At Pakur, the river divides itself into two distributaries, viz.
- the Bh girathi-Hooghly and the main stream.
Bh girathi-Hooghly in the later course forms the Hooghly River.
The main stream Ganges enters Bangladesh.
Near the border with Bangladesh the Farakka Barrage controls the flow of the Ganges by diverting some of the water into a feeder canal which has link with the Hooghly river to keep it relatively silt-free.
There is a lot of pollution in the Ganges because everyone releases their waste into it.
This causes a lot of sicknesses like cholera, hepatitis, typhoid, and amoebic dysentery.
The presence of coliform bacteria in the waters has increased well above normal.
This is a major cause of water pollution.
These diseases cause about a third of the deaths in India every year.
That is why the government has started a multi-crore project called the Ganga Action Plan (GAP).
During the early Vedic Age, the Indus and the Sarasvati River were the major rivers of the Indian subcontinent, not the Ganges.
But the later three Vedas seem to give much more importance to the Ganges, as shown by its numerous references.
Possibly the first European Traveler to mention the Ganges was Megasthenes (ca.
350 290 BCE).
In Rome 's Piazza Navona, Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (fountain of the four rivers) was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and built in 1651.
The art-work symbolizes four of the world 's great rivers (the Ganges, the Nile, the Danube, and the R o de la Plata), which is to represent the four continents (Australia and Antarctica were unknown then).
Hindus regard the Ganges as not only a river but also a mother, a goddess, a tradition, a culture, and much more.
In Hinduism it is considered holy to take a pilgrimage to the Ganges and take a dip.
This leads to more illness: adding to the death toll.
Many Hindus believe that bathing in the Ganga can purify a person 's soul of all past sins, and some believe that it can also cure illnesses.
So, many Hindu families keep Ganga water in their homes as they consider it to be very pure.
The holy towns like Haridwar, Allahabad, Kanpur, and Varanasi attract thousands of pilgrims.
Thousands of Hindu pilgrims arrive at these towns to bathe in the Ganges.
According to Hindu Puranas a king named Bhagiratha did Tapasya for many years to bring the River Ganges.
Ganges was then residing in the Heavens.
By the help of pure Ganga waters, Bhagirath wanted to release his ancestors of a curse.
Therefore, the Ganges descended to the Earth to make the earth pious, fertile and wash out the sins of humans.
The water of the Ganges is used extensively in agriculture in the fertile Gangetic plains.
Chief crops cultivated in the area include rice, sugarcane, lentils, oil seeds, potatoes, and wheat.
Along the banks of the river, the swamps and lakes provide a good growing area for crops such as legumes, chillies, mustard, sesame, sugarcane, and jute.
Fishing is also done in the Ganga waters.
Industries which require a large amount of water are set up on the banks of the river.
The Ganges is popular for river rafting, which attract many adventurers in the summer months.
Tourism is also a related acivity in the modern times.
Edward Gough Whitlam (11 July 1916 21 October 2014), known "Gough Whitlam", was an Australian politician.
He was the 21st Prime Minister of Australia., and the only Prime Minister to have been dismissed from office by a Governor-General.
He was Prime Minister for three years.
His Labor Party was elected after 23 years of government by the Liberal-Country Party Coalition, and his government made a lot of new changes.
Whitlam is the only Prime Minister who has lived in the lifetime of all the other Prime Ministers.
Whitlam was born in Kew, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria.
He studied at the University of Sydney.
Whitlam served at the Royal Australian Air Force from 1941 through 1945 during World War II.
Whitlam became Prime Minister in December 1972.
He succeeded William McMahon.
His government, for most of the time it lasted, did not have a majority in the Senate (the upper house of the Australian Parliament).
This made it hard for Whitlam 's government to make laws.
In 1975 the government thought about borrowing US$ 4 billion in foreign loans.
One cabinet minister, Rex Connor, had secret discussions with a loan broker from Pakistan.
The Treasurer, Jim Cairns, misled parliament over this.
Partly as a result, the new leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser, use the Senate to stop passing money for the government until there was an election.
In 1975 the opposition, led by Fraser, blocked government supply in the Senate.
This meant that the government had no money with which to pay civil servants and carry out administration.
In order to end the crisis the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, dismissed Whitlam and made Fraser the temporary Prime Minister.
Whitlam was easily defeated by Fraser in the election that was held a month later.
He was defeated for a second time by Fraser at the next election in 1977, and resigned from parliament shortly after that.
Since then he has continued to be a very public figure, writing books and often commenting on political affairs.
Whitlam married Margaret Dovey a prominent Australian swimmer and social worker in 1942 and they remained married till her death on 17 March 2012.
On 21 October 2014, Whitlam died in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, New South Wales at the age of 98.
Whitlam is one of the most controversial people in Australia.
Many people think of him as a hero while others consider his government to have been inefficient.
Green is a color.
It is one of the colors of the rainbow.
Green is between the yellow and blue colors in a rainbow.
Green paint can be made by mixing yellow paint and blue paint together.
Green light, like all light, is quanta composed of photons.
The wavelength of green light is about 550 nanometers (one-billionth of a meter).
Most leaves of growing plants, such as trees and bushes, are green.
This is because there is a chemical in leaves, called chlorophyll, which is colored green.
Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by range with a wavelength of roughly 570-520 nm.
In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar field is a vector field which points in the direction of the greatest rate of increase of the scalar field, and whose magnitude is the greatest rate of change.
A generalization of the gradient, for functions which have vectorial values, is the Jacobian.
Consider a room in which the temperature is given by a scalar field, so at each point the temperature is.
We will assume that the temperature does not change in time.
Then, at each point in the room, the gradient at that point will show the direction in which the temperature rises most quickly.
The magnitude of the gradient will determine how fast the temperature rises in that direction.
Consider a hill whose height above sea level at a point is.
The gradient of at a point is a vector pointing in the direction of the steepest slope or grade at that point.
The steepness of the slope at that point is given by the magnitude of the gradient vector.
The gradient can also be used to measure how a scalar field changes in other directions, rather than just the direction of greatest change, by taking a dot product.
Consider again the example with the hill and suppose that the steepest slope on the hill is 40 %.
If a road goes directly up the hill, then the steepest slope on the road will also be 40 %.
If instead, the road goes around the hill at an angle with the uphill direction (the gradient vector), then it will have a shallower slope.
For example, if the angle between the road and the uphill direction, projected onto the horizontal plane, is 60, then the steepest slope along the road will be 20 % which is 40 % times the cosine of 60.
The gauss (symbol G) is the CGS unit used to measure magnetic fields.
One gauss is defined as one maxwell per square centimeter.
There are 10,000 (104) gauss in one tesla.
The unit is named in honor of the German mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss.
A glacier is a large body of ice and snow.
It forms because the snow in an area does not all melt in summer.
Each winter, more snow is added.
The weight of all the snow creates pressure.
This pressure turns the lower parts of the snow into ice.
After this happens for many years, the glacier will start growing large.
It becomes so heavy that gravity causes the ice to move.
It flows downwards like water but very slowly.
A glacier only moves about 50 m per year.
New snowfalls replace the parts that flow away.
Glaciers are the largest sources of fresh water on Earth.
The largest bodies of salt water are the oceans.
Glaciers will only form in places that are cold enough and get enough snow over time.
This can take a long time.
If often take tens or hundreds of years for a glacier to form.
There are two kinds of glaciers: continental glaciers and alpine glaciers.
Alpine glaciers are also called mountain glaciers.
Glaciers are very important.
They have a large effect on the environment.
They do this because they are very large and heavy.
When they move, they erode mountains and land.
Also, since they froze long ago, snow crystals and air bubbles inside are kept in good condition.
These can provide a large amount of information for scientists.
Recently glaciers have been melting more than they did in the past.
Many scientists think this is happening because global warming is changing the climate.
Glaciers are blue in color.
This is because water is very good at absorbing light.
Only the strongest light, with the most energy, is able to escape.
Blue is the color of light that has the most energy.
Because of this, blue is the only color of light that can escape without being absorbed.
The thicker the glacier is, the more blue it appears.
The Glorious Revolution was ann event in the history of England and Scotland in 1688.
The people of England and Scotland did not like the king, King James II because he would not let them vote or practice the religion of their choice.
They invited William III of Orange-Nassau to take over as king.
William was King James II 's nephew and Mary 's first cousin.
He came to England with his wife Queen Mary, the daughter of King James II.
They let the old king escape, so he moved to France out of fear.
William signed the Bill of Rights and became king, and England became a constitutional monarchy.
On the surface, this is a story about religion.
However, it is also about the balance between monarch and Parliament.
A civil war had been fought because Charles I tried to rule as an absolute monarch.
Charles II had been accepted back because he agreed to limit his powers.
However, his brother, James II, made it clear he wanted to get back the absolute power that Charles I had.
When Charles II died without any legitimate children in 1685, his brother the Duke of York became King as James II in England and Ireland.
He also became James VII in Scotland.
He tried to give freedom of religion to non-Anglicans.
He did this by making the acts of Parliament invalid by Royal Decree.
The public did not like this.
Several Protestant politicians and noblemen entered into discussions with Mary 's husband as early as 1687.
In May 1688, James forced Anglican clergymen to read the Declaration of Indulgence.
The Declaration of Indulgence was a statement that gave religious freedom to those who did not agree with the Church of England.
This made him much less popular.
Protestants became even more fearful when James 's wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son James Francis Edward in June 1688.
They were fearful because the son would, unlike Mary and Anne, be raised a Roman Catholic.
Some said that the boy had been secretly carried into the Queen 's room in a bed-warming pan instead of her stillborn baby.
There was no strong proof to support this story, but Mary publicly doubted the boy 's legitimacy.
She sent a list of suspicious questions to her sister, Anne, about the boy 's birth.
On 30 June, the Immortal Seven secretly asked William, who was in the Netherlands with Mary, to come to England with an army.
William, who was jealous of Mary 's position and power, did not want to go at first.
But Mary told William that she did not care about political power.
She said "she would be no more but his wife, and that she would do all that lay in her power to make him King for life".
William agreed to attack.
He declared that James ' newborn son was the "pretended Prince of Wales".
He also gave a list of what the English people wanted, and said that he only wanted to have "a free and lawful Parliament assembled".
The Dutch army, which had been turned back by a storm in October, landed on 5 November.
The English Army and Navy went over to William.
At this time, the English people 's confidence in James was very low.
They did not even try to save their King.
On 11 December, the King tried to run away, but failed.
He tried to run away again on 23 December.
This second attempt was successful, and James escaped to France.
He lived there in exile until his death.
Though Mary was sad because of the deposition of her father, William ordered her to look happy when they arrived in London.
Because of this, people thought she was being cold to her father.
James also thought his daughter was unfaithful to him.
This hurt Mary deeply.
In 1689, a Convention Parliament called by the Prince of Orange came together to discuss what they should do.
William of Orange felt uncomfortable about his position.
He wanted to rule as a King, not simply as a husband of a Queen.
The only example of joint monarchy was from the sixteenth century.
This was Queen Mary I and the Spanish Prince Philip.
When they married, it was agreed that Prince Philip would take the title of King.
But Philip II was King only during his wife 's lifetime.
He also did not have much power.
William wanted to remain King even after his wife 's death.
Some important people suggested making Mary the only ruler.
But Mary, who was faithful to her husband, refused.
On 13 February 1689, Parliament passed the Declaration of Right.
In this declaration, it said that James, by trying to run away on 11 December 1688, had abandoned the government, so no one at the time was king.
Normally, James 's oldest son, James Francis Edward would have been the heir.
However, Parliament offered the crown to William and Mary as joint Sovereigns instead.
But it was added that "the sole and full exercise of the regal (royal) power be only in and executed by the said Prince of Orange in the names of the said Prince and Princess during their joint lives."
The declaration was later extended to take out all Catholics.
This was because "it hath been found (discovered) by experience that it is inconsistent (not in harmony) with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a papist prince".
William and Mary were crowned together at Westminster Abbey on 11 April 1689.
The Archbishop of Canterbury usually performed coronations.
But William Sancroft, the Archbishop at that time, felt that James II 's removal had been wrong.
Therefore, the Bishop of London, Henry Compton, crowned them instead.
On the day of the Coronation, the Convention of the Estates of Scotland declared at last that James was no longer King of Scotland.
William and Mary were offered the separate Scottish Crown.
This was because the two kingdoms were not united until the Acts of Union in 1707.
They accepted on 11 May.
Even after this was declared, there was still strong support for James in Scotland.
John Graham of Clevehouse, the Viscount of Dundee, raised an army and won a victory at Killiecrankie on 27 July.
But Dundee 's army suffered great losses, and he was seriously wounded at the start of the battle.
This stopped the only effective resistance to William, and the revolt was quickly crushed.
The next month, there was a great defeat at the Battle of Dunkeld.
The Goidelic languages or Gaelic languages are a language family of the Celtic languages.
They are spoken in Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
Gnosticism comes from the which means knowledge.
Some religions and sects mostly in the few hundred years before and after Christ are said to be gnostic or practice gnosticism.
This is because these religions believe that there is a special, hidden knowledge that only a few people may have.
Gnosticism says that humans are divine souls trapped in the ordinary physical (or material) world.
They say that the world was made by an imperfect spirit called the demiurge.
The demiurge is thought to be the same as the God of Abraham.
The demiurge may be seen as evil, or sometimes just not perfect but doing the best it can.
The real God who is good, is distant and not easy to know.
In order to get free from the material world, a person has to get gnosis.
That is the special secret knowledge given only to a few special people.
Some Gnostic groups saw Jesus as sent by the supreme being, to bring gnosis to the Earth.
Germanicus Caesar (May 24, 15 BC October 10, 19 AD) was a Roman general.
He was the son of the general Nero Claudius Drusus, and nephew of Emperor Tiberius.
The Gospel of Mark is a book of the Bible.
It is the second book of the New Testament and comes after the Gospel of Matthew even though it may have been written before it.
The writer is believed to have been John Mark, a friend of Simon Peter, who was one of the Twelve apostles of Jesus.
The four gospels tell the story of the life of Jesus.
The word "gospel" means "good news".
The Gospel of Mark moves quickly, and the story shows how much Jesus worked during his short 3-year ministry.
Mark 's gospel tells many things about Jesus which are also found in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke.
The Gospel of Luke is a book of the Bible.
Like the other gospels, the Gospel of Luke tells the stories of the life and teachings of Jesus.
It is the third book of the New Testament and comes after the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark.
The gospel is believed to be written by Luke, who was a friend of the Apostle Paul.
Luke was a doctor.
He wrote his gospel for a man he calls ` most excellent Theophilus ' (1:3).
Luke wrote another book which is fifth in the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles which tells what Jesus 's disciples did after his rise back to Heaven.
Unlike the gospel writers Matthew, Mark and John, Luke was probably not Jewish but was Greek.
He wrote the gospel mainly for non-Jewish people, (who were called Gentile by the Jews).
Luke wrote to prove that Jesus is the Son of God.
Luke 's gospel contains many similar stories of Jesus.
He tells more about the Virgin birth of Jesus than the other gospel writers.
The Gospel of Matthew is a book of the Bible.
(Its full name is the Gospel According to Matthew, but it is often called the Gospel of Matthew or just Matthew).
It is one of the four gospels of the New Testament that tell the story of Jesus ' life and teachings.
It is thought to have been written by the apostle Matthew, who was one of Jesus ' twelve apostles.
The Gospel of Matthew is called one of the synoptic gospels because it has some of the same stories and language as the Gospels of Mark and Luke.
Matthew wrote the gospel mainly for the Jewish people, to show them that Jesus is really the Messiah.
Like the Gospels of Mark and Luke, Matthew tells many stories about Jesus ' life.
Matthew 's gospel also talks about Jewish scripture.
The Gospel of John is a book of the Bible.
It is one of the four "gospels" at the beginning of the New Testament.
The four gospels tell the life of Jesus.
The Gospel of John is the fourth book of the New Testament, after the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
In the gospel, it is says that the book was written by "the disciple whom Jesus loved".
It is believed that John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee, wrote the gospel.
He was probably the youngest of the Twelve apostles of Jesus.
John lived a long life and was imprisoned on the Island of Patmos in his old age.
He also wrote the last book of the New Testament, called the "Book of Revelation".
The Gospel of John tells many of the stories of Jesus ' life that are in the other three gospels, but also contains a lot of different information.
The Gospel begins by calling Jesus "the Word" (the Communication of God).
It says "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God."
In John 's Gospel, the writer shows that Jesus was part of God, who came to live among humanity so that they could "hear His voice" and have the power to become true "children of God".
According to the gospel, the accounts are written so that the reader "may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name".
(TNIV; John 20:31)
There is some disagreement over whether the John who wrote the letters of John, the John who wrote The Gospel of John, and the John who wrote the Book of Revelation are the same person.
Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 - June 24, 1908) was the 22nd (1885 1889) and also the 24th (1893 1897) President of the United States.
He was the only president to serve a second term that did not begin as soon as the first had ended.
Cleveland was the first Democrat elected as President after the Civil War.
He was known for his honesty, integrity, and having a firm stance against corruption.
He believed in small government (he wanted the government to tax less and spend less).
He used the presidential veto power over 500 times, far more than most other presidents, to reject bills he disagreed with.
He did not want the United States to get its military involved in Latin America.
Cleveland was born on March 18, 1837 in Caldwell, New Jersey.
He was raised in Cleveland, Ohio.
Cleveland studied at New York Institute for the Blind.
He was married to Frances Folsom.
He was the first President to marry in the White House.
They had one child, Ruth Cleveland.
During his second term, he had an emergency surgery for jaw cancer on a boat in the middle of a river to avoid publicity.
Cleveland died on June 24, 1908 from a heart attack in Princeton, New Jersey, aged 71.
Gregorio Allegri (1582 February 7, 1652), was an Italian composer and priest.
He wrote a large number of religious pieces, including motets and several settings of the Mass..
His best known compositions is the Miserere mei Deus.
From 1591 to 1596 Allegri was employed in a church choir in Rome.
In 1601 he became a tenor in the choir.
He studied music and composing with the director of the choir, G. B. Nannio.
He moved around to a number of different churches in Rome, before joining the choir at the Vatican in 1629.
This was the choir that performed in the Sistine Chapel for the pope.
he was made the director of the choir in 1650.
Pope Urban VIII had rewritten some of the texts used in the religious services.
Allegri was given the job of editing Giovanni da Palestrina 's music so that it would fit with the new words.
He was seen as an expert in the old style, even though some of his music was written in the new baroque style.
Miserere mei, Deus is a motet written to be sung by two choirs.
One choir is five voices - soprano, alto, two tenors and bass.
The second choir has two sopranos, alto and baritone.
One choir sings a simple kind of tune called a fauxbourdon which is based on a plainchant.
The other sings a more complicated version, with a top part which goes up to top C (the note two octaves higher than Middle C).
The singers also improvised some parts of the music, making up elaborate ornamented parts.
These improvisations were not written down, but were passed from singer to singer in the choir.
Allegri wrote the Miserere to be sung in the Sistine Chapel during the Easter celebrations.
During the service, which started at 3.00 am, there would be 27 candles burning.
The Pope would gradually extinguish the candles until there was only one left burning.
The Miserere was performed as the pope prayed at the altar with the single candle.
This piece of music became very popular, and the Vatican did not want anyone else to perform it.
No one was allowed to take the music away from the chapel or make copies of it.
However by 1770 there were three known copies of the music.
One of these was given to the Emperor Leopold I by the pope.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visited the Sistine Chapel during a tour of Europe with his father in 1770.
He was just 14 years old, but heard the piece and wrote all the music out from memory later the same day.
A second visit enabled him to check that he had it written correctly.
It is believed that Mozart 's copy of the music was sent to England where it was published by Dr Charles Burney.
It would be assumed that Mozart would have written the improvisations in his copy.
Burney 's version lacks the improvisations, so it possible that he removed them, and destroyed Mozart 's copy to avoid trouble with the church.
There were no copyright laws in those days, so there was nothing that the Vatican could do about it.
It is believed that the version of the Miserere mei Deus performed today, is very different to the work that Allegri composed.
Geoff Hurst (born 8 December 1941) is an English retired professional footballer.
He was born in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire and moved to Chelmsford, Essex when he was eight.
He played football for West Ham United F.C. over 400 times.
He also played for the England national football team and scored a hat trick (three goals) in the 1966 World Cup final which England won 4 2.
The Galilean moons are the four satellites of Jupiter found by Galileo Galilei: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
They are by far the biggest of the many moons of Jupiter.
Galileo Galilei found what came to be known as the Galilean moons around December 1609 or January 1610.
As a result of improvements he made to the telescope, Galileo was able to see celestial bodies better than ever before in human history.
Using his improved telescope, Galileo was the first to see four moons of Jupiter.
On January 7, 1610, Galileo wrote a letter containing the first mention of Jupiter s moons.
At the time, he only saw three of them, and he believed them to be fixed stars near Jupiter.
He continued to look at them from January 8 through March 2.
In these observations, he found a fourth body, and also observed that the four were not fixed stars, but rather were orbiting Jupiter.
Galileo s discovery proved the importance of the telescope as a tool for astronomers.
It showed there were objects in space to be found, which were not seen by the naked eye.
More importantly, the discovery of celestial bodies orbiting something other than the Earth dealt a blow to the then-accepted Ptolemaic world system.
This held that the Earth was at the center of the universe and all other celestial bodies revolved around it.
That Jupiter has four moons while Earth has only one further undercut the near-universal belief that the Earth was the center of the universe both in position and in importance.
Galileo 's Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), which announced celestial observations through his telescope, does not mention Copernican heliocentrism, a theory that placed the Sun at the center of the universe.
Nevertheless, Galileo believed in the Copernican theory.
Galileo called his discovery the Cosmica Sidera (` Cosimo 's stars '), in honor of Cosimo II de ' Medici (1590 1621), grand-duke of Tuscany, whose patronage he wanted.
At the grand-duke 's suggestion, Galileo changed the name to Medicea Sidera (` the Medici stars '), honoring all four Medici brothers (Cosimo, Francesco, Carlo, and Lorenzo).
The discovery was announced in the Sidereus Nuncius (` Starry Messenger '), published in Venice in March 1610, less than two months after the first observations.
Other names put forward, but the names which eventually prevailed were chosen by Simon Marius.
Marius claimed to have found the moons at the same time as Galileo: he named them after lovers of the god Zeus (the Greek equivalent of Jupiter): Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, in his Mundus Jovialis, published in 1614.
Galileo refused to use Marius 's names and invented the numbering scheme that is still used nowadays, in parallel with proper moon names.
The numbers run from Jupiter outward, thus I, II, III and IV for Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto respectively.
Galileo used this system in his notebooks but never actually published it.
All four Galilean moons are bright enough that they could, if they were farther away from Jupiter, be seen without a telescope.
They have apparent magnitudes between 4.6 and 5.6 when Jupiter is in opposition with the Sun, and about one unit of magnitude dimmer when Jupiter is in conjunction.
The main thing that is hard in observing them is due to the fact that they are very close to Jupiter, and are masked by its brightness.
Their maximum angular separations from Jupiter are between 2 and 8 minutes of arc, close to the limit of human visual acuity.
Ganymede and Callisto, at their maximum separation, are the likeliest targets for possible naked-eye observation.
The easiest way to observe them is to cover Jupiter with an object, e.g. a tree limb or a power line that is perpendicular to the plane of moons ' orbits.
Gloria Gaynor (born Gloria Fowles, September 7, 1949 near Newark, New Jersey) is an American recording artist and musician.
She performed disco in the 1970s.
She is best known for her classic song I Will Survive.
A ghost is considered to be the spirit of a dead person.
Scientists say that there are no real ghosts, but many people believe that there are.
There are many stories about ghosts in books and movies.
Sometimes the ghost is the spirit of a person who was killed or who died.
The ghost may stay on Earth because he or she has unfinished problems or is still trying to say good bye to loved ones.
Sometimes ghosts are said to live in a particular locality, for example an abandoned house.
Sometimes the ghosts in these stories exist because of some problem the person had during life or to say good bye to loved ones, that was not solved before he or she died.
The ghost stays on the Earth trying to fix the problem.
If the problem is fixed, the ghost can leave the Earth.
Many people say they have seen or heard ghosts.
People who try to talk to ghosts as their job are called mediums.
There can be bad ghosts and there can also be good ones.
There have never been any ghosts that have actually hurt or killed people, although people tell stories about it.
Many people believe they have seen ghosts.
Others believe they have felt ghosts near them.
Often the ghost is said to appear as a feeling of cold and a light or a misty cloud, but sometimes people say they have seen ghosts that look more like people.
Sometimes ghosts are said to come in human form.
Some ghosts might cause fear in the person who sees them, by being seen suddenly.
Some ghosts are said to be friendly and help people who have problems.
Ghosts are said to form right after they die, or even centuries later.
Many people make up stories or urban legends.
Many try to prove the existence of these paranormal creatures with special technology such as heat sensors.
They also make TV shows dedicated to proving the existence of ghosts.
They often investigate cases where a person has seen one or visit a place of sighting.
Stories of ghosts can be found all over the world.
Chinese philosopher Confucius said "Respect ghosts and gods, but keep away from them."
The most feared spirit in Thailand is Phi Tai Hong, the ghost of a person who has died suddenly of a violent death.
The Koran discusses spirits known as jinn.
In Europe there is the recurring fear of "returning" or revenant deceased who may harm the living.
This includes the Scandinavian gjenganger, the Romanian strigoi, the Serbian vampir, the Greek vrykolakas among others.
Geneva (,, (g nf), (d i ne vra),) is the second biggest city in Switzerland.
Only Z rich is bigger.
Geneva is the biggest city in Romandy (the French-speaking part of Switzerland).
Geneva is the capital of the Republic and Canton of Geneva.
It is situated where the Rh ne River leaves Lake Geneva (called in French Lac L man).
Geneva is a very important financial and diplomatic center.
There are many international organizations in Geneva, including the United Nations and the Red Cross.
A 2009 survey states that Geneva has the third highest quality of living in the world (narrowly outranked by Z rich).
Internationally, Geneva is strongly associated with the Geneva Conventions.
Geneva was first written about as a border town, set up to protect the Roman Empire against the Helvetii.
The Romans took the city in 120 B.C..
In A.D. 443 it was taken by Burgundy, and with the latter fell to the Franks in 534.
In 888 the town was part of the new Kingdom of Burgundy, and with it was taken over in 1033 by the German Emperor.
From 1154 the bishops of Geneva had the status of prince of the Holy Roman Empire, but the counts of Geneva and later the counts of Savoy were "guardians", always ready to take over from the bishops.
In 1290 the counts of Savoy got the right to appoint a deputy ruler (vice-dominus) of the diocese, the title of Vidame of Geneva was granted to the family of count Fran ois de Candie of Chamb ry-Le-Vieux a Chatellaine of the Savoy.
The vidame had some powers in the town.
In 1387 Bishop Adh mar Fabry granted the town its great charter, the basis of its communal self-government, which every bishop on his accession was expected to confirm.
The last Count of Geneva died in 1394, and the House of Savoy took over their land.
In 1416 the counts became dukes, and kept trying to bring the city of Geneva under their control, often by making members of their own family to Bishops of Geneva.
The city protected itself by joining the Swiss Federation (Eidgenossenschaft), uniting itself in 1426 with Berne and Fribourg.
In the Protestant Reformation Bern favored the new Protestant teaching and demanded liberty of preaching for the Reformers Guillaume Farel and Antoine Froment, but Catholic Fribourg renounced in its union with Geneva in 1511.
Later the Protestant leader John Calvin was based in Geneva from 1536 to his death in 1564.
At the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) the territory of Geneva was enlarged to cover 15 Savoyard and 6 French parishes, with more than 16,000 Catholics; at the same time it became a part of the Swiss Confederation.
The treaty said that Catholic religion was to be protected, and that no changes were to be made without agreement with the Holy See.
Later, Pope Pius VII made the cities of Geneva and Lausanne a new diocese of and part of Geneva diocese that was in France part of the French diocese of Annecy.
The Protestant and Old Catholic churches got money from the city taxes, but the Roman Catholics did not.
On 30 June 1907, most of the Catholics of Geneva voted for the separation of Church and State.
Geneva is located at 46 12 ' North, 6 09 ' East, at the south-western end of Lake Geneva, where the lake meets the Rh ne River.
It is surrounded by two mountain chains, the Alps and the Jura.
The city of Geneva has an area of 15.86 k. The area of the Canton of Geneva is 282 k.
The altitude of Geneva is 373.6 m. This is the altitude of the largest of the Pierres du Niton, two large rocks in the lake that are used as a reference point for surveying in Switzerland.
The second main river of Geneva is the Arve River which flows into the Rh ne River just west of the city center.
Geneva has a temperate oceanic climate (Cfb in the K ppen climate classification).
Winters are cool and generally a little cloudy.
During the winter, it is possible to have several days without thawing, and a day or two with severe freezes where the thermometer displays -10 C. There are several days each month when, if anticyclonic conditions are stable, the clouds may stay for several days.
From March, with temperatures rising it feels like summer in late May.
However, the rain intensifies and often has a stormy character during the month of May.
These may be short but strong storms depositing several centimetres of rain within just a few minutes.
Summers are often hot and rather humid, although some may be more changeable, the mornings remain relatively fresh.
During the summer season, the rains are less frequent but more intense.
This is the season where you most likely get thunderstorms with hail.
If the weather in early September is still hot, it cools down quickly to become really cold in November.
The morning frosts are then reappearing.
Autumn is also the season of mists, and the month of October is often the month with the most fog in the year.
The fog can be very intense, restricting vision to less than 100 m in the areas outside the city.
The city 's main newspaper is the Tribune de Gen ve, a daily newspaper founded on 1 February 1879 by James T. Bates, with a readership of about 187,000.
Le Courrier, founded in 1868, was originally supported by the Roman Catholic Church, but has been completely independent since 1996.
Mainly focused on Geneva, Le Courrier is trying to expand into other cantons in Romandy.
Both Le Temps (headquartered in Geneva) and Le Matin are widely read in Geneva, but both actually cover the whole of Romandy.
Geneva is covered by the various French language radio networks of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, in particular the Radio Suisse Romande.
While these networks cover the whole of Romandy, special programs related to Geneva are sometimes broadcast on some of the local frequencies in the case of special events such as elections.
Other local station broadcast from the city, including RadioLac (FM 91.8 MHz), Radio Cit (Non-commercial radio, FM 92.2 MHz), OneFM (FM 107.0 MHz, also broadcast in Vaud), and World Radio Geneva (FM 88.4 MHz), Switzerland 's only English-language radio station.
The main television channel covering Geneva is the T l vision Suisse Romande; while its headquarters are in Geneva, the programs cover the whole of French-speaking Switzerland.
L man Bleu is a local TV channel, founded in 1996 and distributed by cable.
Because Geneva is nearly surrounded by France, many French television and radio channels can be picked up in Geneva.
Theatre Most theater in Geneva is in French, however there are several companies that stage regular English productions.
Cinema Movie going is a favorite activity in Geneva and there are plenty of theaters throughout the city.
Most movies are dubbed into French.
Because of the number of English speakers in the city movies may also be subtitled.
Restaurants In has over 1,000 restaurants, so it is the undisputed capital of cuisine in Switzerland.
However eating out can be expensive, and many people drive the few kilometres over the border into France where prices are lower.
Since 1818, a particular chestnut tree is used as the official "herald of the spring" in Geneva.
The sautier (secretary of the Parliament of the Canton of Geneva) observes the tree and notes the day of arrival of the first bud.
While this event has no practical impact, the sautier issues a formal press release and the local newspaper will usually mention the news.
In 2007, the first bud appeared on 2 March.
Geneva celebrates Jeune genevois on the first Thursday following a Sunday in September.
By local tradition, this commemorates when the news of the St. Bartholomew 's Day massacre of Huguenots reached Geneva.
The Genevois (people of Geneva) joke that the federal equivalent holiday, Jeune f d ral, is celebrated two weeks later on account of the rest of the country being a bit slow on the uptake.
Genevans also traditionally celebrate the failure of a Savoyard attempt to invade the city in 1602.
The celebration, which takes place in December, is called L'Escalade, and includes a parade in the Old Town, a marathon, and numerous costume parties across the city.
Inhabitants generally eat vegetable stew to commemorate a fictional character called M re Royaume who is said to have thrown boiling hot soup on the Duke of Savoy 's men when they were climbing the walls of the city during the night (hence the name L'Escalade, which means "the climb" in French).
Traditionally, children are encouraged to knock on people 's doors and sing songs in old Genevan, while teenagers generally throw eggs and flour at each other.
Another tradition is to cross a pot made of chocolate filled with marzepan vegetables while saying "and so perished the enemies of the Republic".
The main sport team in Geneva is Servette FC, a football club founded in 1890 and named after a borough on the right bank of the Rh ne River.
Servette was the only club to have remained in the top league in Switzerland since its creation in the 1930s; however, in 2005, management problems caused the bankruptcy of the club 's parent company, causing the club to be demoted two divisions lower.
It is now playing in second division.
Geneva is also home of the Gen ve-Servette Hockey Club, who play in the Swiss Nationalliga A.
The city of Geneva is divided into 8 "quartiers" or districts, often made up of several conglomerated neighborhoods.
On the Left Bank (Rive Gauche) these include Jonction, Centre \/ Plainpalais \/ Acacias, Eaux-Vives and Champel while the Right Bank includes Saint-Jean \/ Charmilles, Servette \/ Petit-Saconnex, Grottes \/ Saint-Gervaise and Paquis \/ Nations.
As of 2005, the population of the Commune (city) of Geneva was 185,028, while 441,000 people lived in the Canton of Geneva; around 960,000 people live in the Geneva urban community, which extends into Vaud Canton and neighbouring France.
The population of the Canton is split between 148,500 people originally from Geneva (33.7 %), 122,400 Swiss from other cantons (27.6 %) and 170,500 foreigners (38.7 %), from 180 different countries.
Including people holding multiple citizenship, 54.4 % of people living in Geneva hold a foreign passport.
While Geneva is usually considered a Protestant city, there are now more Roman Catholics (39.5 %) than Protestants (17.4 %) living in the Canton.
22 % of the inhabitants claim not to be religious, the rest being shared between Islam (4.4 %), Judaism (1.1 %), other religions and people who did not respond.
Geneva 's economy is mainly services oriented.
The city has an important and old finance sector, which is specialized in private banking (managing assets of about 1 trillion USD) and financing of international trade.
It is also an important center of commodity trade.
Geneva hosts the international headquarters of companies like JT International (JTI), Mediterranean Shipping Company, Serono, SITA, Soci t G n rale de Surveillance and STMicroelectronics.
There is a long tradition of watchmaking (Baume et Mercier, Chopard, Franck Muller, Patek Philippe, Rolex, Raymond Weil, Omega, etc.).
Two major international producers of flavors and fragrances, Firmenich and Givaudan, have their headquarters and main production facilities in Geneva.
Many people also work in the numerous offices of international organizations in Geneva (about 24,000 in 2001).
Geneva Motor Show is one of the most important international auto-shows.
The show is held at Palexpo, a giant convention center located next to the International Airport.
The show is so important that the Jet d'Eau is switched on for longer than usual because of all the visitors in the city during the show.
The city is served by the Geneva Cointrin International Airport.
It is connected to both the Swiss railway network SBB-CFF-FFS, and the French SNCF network, including direct connections to Paris, Marseille and Montpellier by TGV.
Geneva is also connected to the motorway systems of both Switzerland (A1 motorway) and France.
Public transport by bus, trolleybus or tram is provided by Transports Publics Genevois (TPG).
In addition to an extensive coverage of the city center, the network covers most of the municipalities of the Canton, with a few lines extending into France.
Public transport by boat is provided by the Mouettes Genevoises, which link the two banks of the lake within the city, and by the Compagnie G n rale de Navigation sur le lac L man (CGN) which serves more distant destinations such as Nyon, Yvoire, Thonon, Evian, Lausanne and Montreux using both modern diesel vessels and vintage paddle steamers.
Trains operated by SBB connect the airport to the main station of Cornavin in six minutes, and carry on to towns such as Nyon, Lausanne, Fribourg, Montreux, Neuch tel, Berne, Sion, Sierre, etc..
Regional train services are being increasingly developed, towards Coppet and Bellegarde.
At the city limits, two new stations have been created since 2002: Gen ve-S cheron (close to the UN and the Botanical Gardens) and Lancy-Pont-Rouge.
In 2005, work started on the CEVA (Cornavin - Eaux-Vives - Annemasse) project, first planned in 1884, which will connect Cornavin with the Cantonal hospital, the Eaux-Vives station and Annemasse, in France.
The link between the main station and the classification yard of La Praille already exists; from there, the line will go mostly underground to the Hospital and the Eaux-Vives, where it will link up to the existing line to France.
Support for this project was obtained from all parties in the local parliament.
Taxis in Geneva can be difficult to find, and may need to be booked in advance especially in the early morning or at peak hours.
In addition, which may be surprising in a modern country like Switzerland, taxis often refuse to take babies and children.
The University of Geneva was founded by John Calvin in 1559.
The International School of Geneva is the oldest international school in the world.
It was founded in 1924 along with the League of Nations.
Geneva is also home to one of the most prestigious graduate schools of international relations, the Graduate Institute of International Studies.
Other international schools include the International School of Geneva and Institut International de Lancy (founded in 1903).
The Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations is a private university located on the grounds of the Ch teau de Penthes, an old castle with a park and view of Lac Leman.
The Canton of Geneva 's public school system has" coles primaires" (4-12), "cycles d'orientation" (12-15), and the post-obligatory "coll ges" (15-19), the oldest of which is the Coll ge Calvin.
It is housed in the ancient buildings of the University of Geneva, and could be considered one of the oldest public schools in the world.
Geneva also has a wide choice of reputed private schools.
As the Geneva authorities say, the history of the city is closely related to that of the foreign communities.
Ever since the migration of foreigners to Geneva, these communities have found refuge, bringing their know-how, their customs and hope of a new life.
They have widely participated in the international influence of Geneva, to its economic prosperity, and also to the spreading of views and of science.
Many other communities or minorities are also very well represented in Geneva, including sexual minorities, with no less than three organizations: Dialogai, a gay organization; Lestime, a lesbian organization; and association 360, an LGBT organization.
The Gay International Group (Geneva, Switzerland) is a good resource for gay foreigners, tourists or expatriates.
Also, a new LGBT group has debuted within the University of Geneva itself, called "Think Out".
This group addresses students and professors linked directly or indirectly with the matter of sexual diversity.
There are a lot of different communities in Geneva.
Even if Geneva is supposed to be the Protestant Rome, many religions are represented in Geneva.
The Plymouth Brethren have a thriving assembly there, established since the days of John Nelson Darby.
Besides the Protestants, the Catholic religion becomes more influential thanks to immigration from Latin countries.
The Jewish community is one of the oldest of Switzerland, and the more recent Muslim community is emerging in this tolerant city.
Geneva was the seat of the League of Nations between 1919 and the league 's dissolution in 1946.
It was first housed in the Palais Wilson, and then in the Palais des Nations, which now hosts the United Nations.
Numerous international non-governmental organizations have also elected Geneva as their headquarters, including:
George Peppard, Jr. (October 1, 1928 May 8, 1994) was an American movie and television actor.
He had a major role early in his career when he acted with Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany 's (1961), but he is probably more well known for his role as Col. John "Hannibal" Smith in the 1980s television show The A-Team, where he was the leader of the group, who was often smoking a cigar.
Peppard had lung cancer and died of pneumonia.
Geocaching is an outdoor sport activity based on GPS (Global Positioning System).
Players use a receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide or look for containers, called "geocaches" or "caches".
One of the main ideas of geocaching is putting caches in places that are interesting, but not often visited by tourists.
In the listing of the cache, information about the places is given.
After 13 years of activity there are over 2,000,000 active geocaches.
There are over 5 million geocachers worldwide.
Geocaching was invented shortly after the removal of artificial error from GPS on May 2, 2000.
Accuracy of the GPS before this date was about 100m, after this date is less than 3m.
Improved accuracy allowed geocachers to specify where caches are located.
The first cache was placed on May 3, 2000, by Dave Ulmer in Beavercreek.
It was found by Mike Teague of Vancouver on May 6, 2000.
The original name of the game is GPS Stash Hunt, but it was changed on May 30, 2000 after the discussion of several players to Geocaching.
The cache is usually in a waterproof plastic container with a logbook where geocachers write their registered nickname and date they find it.
Larger containers usually contain items for trading like plastic toys, hockey cards or special trackable items called Travel Bugs or Geocoins.
Trackable items are logged on the website and moved from cache to cache.
The coordinates of a hidden cache with the rating of the difficulty and terrain and information about size are placed by owner at the official website Geocaching.com.
After checking by a reviewer, they are published and available for other geocachers.
Traditional cache: The basic cache type, hidden on the place defined by coordinates in header of listing.
Multi cache: The geocacher usually has to go over the stages, find some information at every stage (such as number on information board etc.) and at the finish calculate the coordinates of the final cache.
Mystery\/puzzle cache (also called "Unknown cache"): The coordinates of the final cache are usually hidden in some cipher, image or text and the geocacher has to discover it.
Letterbox hybrid cache: A combination of geocaching and letterboxing in the same container.
Instead of a classic cache there is a stamp, which the finder can print to his or her diary.
Webcam cache: It is not a typical cache where the geocacher has to find a hidden box with a logbook.
Instead, he has to find a webcam on the published coordinates and take a photo of himself.
Virtual cache: Similar to webcam cache, there is no hidden box at the coordinates.
The geocacher only has to find out information such as the name on a monument and send it to the owner of the cache.
Earth cache: Very similar to virtual cache, but in a geographically interesting place.
The geocacher has to find out answers for the questions in a listing, take a photo here, and send it to the owner of the cache.
Event cache: Meeting organized and attended by geocachers.
There is also special type of event CITO (Cache in, trash out), where geocachers have to clean up an area.
An event attended by more than 500 people is called a Mega-event, and an event attended by more than 5000 people is called a Giga-event
Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong Province of China.
Historically, it was known to Westerners as Canton, which is a misnomer, or a mistake in naming, since the name is an older English pronunciation for the entire region the city is in, Guangdong.
It is also called the City of Flowers.
It is in the south of China and is one of the five biggest cities in China.
In mainland China, Guangzhou is regarded as one of the three most popular cities with Beijing and Shanghai, which is called Bei-Shang-Guang for short.
It is where the 16th Asian Games were held and it is famous for its food all over the world.
Guangzhou is the core city of South China.
It is on the north of Zhu Jiang Delta (Pearl River Delta), where the Dong Jiang River (East River), Xi Jiang River (West River) and Bei Jiang River (North River) join together.
On its South is the South China Sea.
With its geographical advantages, Guangzhou has been a very important port in South China for hundreds of years.
Today, it is the biggest and most important port for air, sea, and trains in China.
The area of Guangzhou is about 7434.4 k. The north part and middle part of Guangzhou are hills.
The west part and south part are plains that have a lot of rivers and streams.
Guangzhou is in the subtropics monsoon climate region.
It has a lot of sunshine and rain.
The average temperature is from 21.4 to 21.9 C (about 71 F) and the lowest temperature in winter is about 10 C. The rainy season lasts for almost six months and the typhoons in summer also bring lots of rain.
The average humidity is about 77 percent.
Guangzhou has Baiyun Airport, which is one of the three most important parts of air transportation in the country.
The passenger throughput ranks third in China and 19th in the world.
It is also a very important harbor in China, second to Shenzhen in South China and the fourth one in the country.
With the Jing-Guang Railway, Jing-Jiu Railway, Guang-Shen Railway and other railways, Guangzhou has become one of the four biggest railway passenger stations in China.
A high speed railway has been built here.
Guangzhou has been the city famous for business for hundreds of years.
It has been open to the world for nearly 2000 years.
After the Reform and Opening Up in 1979, Guangzhou has gained great economic achievement.
For example, Guangzhou 's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has grown about 14 % per year.
It ranks as the third economic city in China (not including Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao).
In addition, Guangzhou has become a city with a sound industrial foundation and developed tertiary-industry.
In September of 1993, Guangzhou was accepted as a member of the World Association of Metropolises.
The most important elements of Guangzhou s economy are light manufacturing sector and foreign trade.
They are the main reasons for Guangzhou s economic achievement and its attraction to appeal people from all over the world to begin their own business in this city.
Every year, the China Import and Export Commodities Fair (Guangzhou Fair) is held here.
It has the biggest conference and exhibition center, Guangzhou International Convention and Exhibition Center, in Asia.
After 2000, Guangzhou began to change its industrial structure and increase its investment in the heavy manufacturing sector.
Nowadays, the automobile industry, petrochemical industry, and the IT industry have been the three mainstay industries in Guangzhou.
Guangzhou is a typical city for Lingnan Culture.
The main characters of Lingnan Culture are open-mindedness, practical spirit and civilian consciousness.
People here don t adhere to traditional rules.
They combine culture from different parts in the world with the local culture and are creating new culture to adjust to the modern world.
This is very different from the Center Plains Culture in the north part of China.
Guangzhou has its own opera, Guangdong Opera, and its own language, Cantonese.
In Guangzhou Metro, you can hear the announcement for station not only in Chinese and English, but also in Cantonese.
Besides, sotto portico is the typical construction for Lingnan Culture.
A flowers market held every Spring Festival is famous around South China.
The education in Guangzhou began in the Western Han Dynasty.
Now, Guangzhou is one of the cities with the most colleges and universities in the South China.
It is one of the cities which has the most education resource in the country.
The best comprehensive university here is Sun Yat-sen University.
It is a university built in memory of Sun Yat-sen, who led the Xinhai Revolution and is regarded as the father of China.
In grammar, the genitive case is the grammatical case used when talking about possession: something that belongs to someone.
For example, in the sentence "the boy 's bike was red," the bike belongs to the boy.
The word "boy 's" is in the genitive case.
The Grateful Dead was a rock band that formed in San Francisco, California, United States in the 1960s.
They are known for their concerts, and devoted followers called "Deadheads".
The band and their music are sometimes associated with the hippie and drug cultures.
Their music style is psychedelic rock combined with other kinds of music like blues, country, folk, and bluegrass.
They are also known for their artwork and logos, which include skeletons and dancing bears.
They were named number 57 on Rolling Stone 's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
Their albums have sold 35 million copies around the world and they have played for 25 million people, more than any other band.
The group were together from 1965 to 1995, when Jerry Garcia, the group 's lead guitarist and singer, who was seen by many people as the group 's leader, died.
The other members were Bob Weir (guitar and singing), Phil Lesh (bass guitar), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica, and singing) and Bill Kreutzmann (drums).
All of these members were in the group the entire time, they were together, except for McKernan who died in 1973.
Other main members of the band were Mickey Hart (drums 1967 to 1971 and 1974 to 1995), Keith Godchaux (keyboards 1971 to 1979), his wife Donna Godchaux (singing 1972 to 1979), Brent Mydland (keyboards 1979 to 1990), and Vince Welnick (keyboards 1990 to 1995).
The group was known for their stage shows, which included improvising or "jamming" with their song and instruments, some Deadheads have recorded and collected many of these shows on tape.
The gorilla is the largest member of the ape family.
They may be aggressive when attacked or provoked, but they are naturally gentle.
They are omnivorous, like chimpanzees and orangutans.
A gorilla 's lifespan is between 35 and 40 years, although zoo gorillas may live for 50 years and more.
Gorillas are the biggest.
They can become heavy, and are strong.
A male gorilla can weigh up to 225 kilograms and stand 1.8 meters in height.
Gorillas are peaceful that live in family groups called troops.
They have a broad chest, wide shoulders, short legs, and long, powerful, strong arms.
They have black skin and fur.
Male gorillas ' fur becomes silver\/grey on their backs as they become older.
Because of that older males are called silverbacks.
Gorillas live in the rainforests in central Africa.
They mostly live on the ground, but they can also climb.
When on the ground, they walk on their feet and finger knuckles.
Troops of gorillas wander slowly through the forests of Central Africa.
For about half of their day they search for leaves, vines, and bamboo shoots to eat.
For the rest of the day, they lay in the sun and play with their children.
If another gorilla threatens them, the troop 's leader, the silverback, protects them by rearing up and beating his chest.
Few animals can survive the attack of an angry gorilla.
Gorillas sleep in nests that they build on the ground.
At the end of each day, each adult gorilla will spend a few minutes putting together a soft, flat bed made of leaves, branches, and moss.
The young gorillas sleep with their mothers.
The gestation period (when a baby grows inside the mother) of a gorilla lasts between eight and ten months.
Gorillas almost always produce one offspring - twins are rare.
Gorilla babies begin to hang onto their mothers when they are only a few hours old and will continue to do so for the next three years.
Gorillas live up to 50 years in the wild and up to 54 years in captivity.
Gymnastics is a sport which involves doing exercises which need strength, flexibility, balance and control.
This may include running, jumping, tumbling, somersaulting, flipping and balancing.
In women 's gymnastics, there are four activities: floor, uneven bars, balance beam, and vault.
In men 's gymnastics, there are six activities: floor exercise, parallel bars, high bar, pommel horse, vault, and rings.
Gymnastics is an Olympic sport.
Gymnastics began as a form of exercise in ancient Greece.
It was one of the first sports in the Olympics.
Originally, only men were allowed to compete in the Olympic Games, but there was another festival at which women competed, the Herean Games.
There are several forms of gymnastics, including rhythmic gymnastics, artistic gymnastics, acrobatics, trampolining, and wheel gymnastics.
In artistic gymnastics, gymnasts perform short routines using different pieces of equipment.
Acrobatics involves showing balance and performing flips on the floor or in the air.
In trampolining, gymnasts do routines using only the trampoline.
Wheel gymnasts exercise in a large wheel called a German wheel.
In rhythmic gymnastics, gymnasts perform with ribbons, rope, ball, hoop and clubs.
Usually, only women do rhythmic gymnastics because they are more flexible then boys
The great auk was a large bird, that could not fly.
People hunted it for meat and feathers.
It grew rare, because it was too easy to kill, and the ones left could not breed fast enough to make up for the lost ones.
The last known great auks (there were two auks) were killed on June 3, 1844 in Iceland.
It lived mostly in the water, like a duck.
Penguins got their name from the great auk.
The word "penguin" was the Celtic word for "great auk".
When sailors saw penguins for the first time, they thought they looked like great auks.
The great auk was covered in black feathers, but had white feathers on its chest and abdomen.
It had very short wings, like stubs, which meant it could not fly.
On land it stood upright and was about 75 cm tall.
They spent most of their time at sea, coming to shore in the summer to breed.
They lived in large breeding colonies on low rocky islands in the north Atlantic Ocean from Canada to Norway.
Females laid one egg on bare rock.
In winter they went as far south as Florida and southern Spain.
For the automobile, see Ford Galaxy.
A galaxy is a group of many stars, along with gas, dust, and dark matter.
The name ` galaxy ' is taken from the Greek word galaxia meaning milky, a reference to our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
Gravity holds galaxies together against the general expansion of the universe.
In effect, the expansion of the universe takes place between groups of galaxies, not inside those groups.
This is because the mass of a galaxy holds the galaxy together, and the same applies to the groups of galaxies, such as our Local Group.
The gravitation is produced by the matter and energy in a galaxy or group of galaxies.
Everything in a galaxy moves around a center of mass, which is also an effect of gravity.
There are various types of galaxies: elliptical, spiral and lenticular galaxies, which can all be with or without bars.
Then there are irregular galaxies.
All galaxies exist inside the universe.
There are probably over 170 billion (1.7 x1011) galaxies within the observable universe.
There are galaxies of different sizes.
Typical galaxies range from dwarfs with as few as ten million (107) stars up to giants with a hundred trillion (1014) stars, all orbiting the galaxy 's center of mass..
Galaxies may contain many multiple star systems, star clusters, and various interstellar clouds.
The Sun is one of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy; the Solar System includes the Earth and all the other objects that orbit the Sun.
Star clusters are not galaxies, they are inside galaxies.
Globular clusters are spherical tightly knit balls of stars which are part of the outer halo of the Milky Way.
One of the largest (and oldest) known star clusters, Messier 15, has several million stars, packed closely together, with a black hole at its center.
The stars are too closely packed to get an accurate count, but it certainly has more stars than some of the smaller galaxies.
Within galaxy clusters, galaxies move relative to other galaxies.
They can and do collide.
When this happens, the stars generally move past each other, but gas clouds and dust interact, and can form a burst of new stars.
Gravity pulls both galaxies into somewhat new shapes, forming bars, rings or tail-like structures.
Many galaxies also continue to form new generations of stars.
The Milky Way, and all spiral shaped galaxies like it (see above image of NGC 2997), produce new stars at a rate of one or two stars per year.
These stars are formed in the vast interstellar clouds that account for about 1 % to 10 % of the mass of these galaxies.
Globular star clusters, on the other hand, are not currently forming stars because this activity happened billions of years ago and then stopped once all of the gas and dust clouds were used up.
In the astronomical literature, the word ` Galaxy ' with a capital G is used for our galaxy, the Milky Way.
The billions of other galaxies are just written as ` galaxy ' with a lowercase g. The term Milky Way first came out in the English language in a poem by Chaucer.
When William Herschel wrote his catalogue of deep sky objects, he used the name spiral nebula for objects like the Andromeda Galaxy, but nebula is now only used for diffuse structures within a galaxy.
Eugene Alden Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is an American retired actor and novelist.
Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California.
His parents divorced while he was a child, and he moved from one place to another until he settled finally in Danville, Illinois, where he lived with his English-born grandmother.
At the age of 16 he left home to join the Marines, where he served 3 years as a radio operator.
Having finished his service, he moved to New York, where he worked in several minor jobs.
He then studied television production and journalism at the University of Illinois.
Already over 30 years old, Hackman decided to become an actor, and joined the Pasadena Playhouse in California.
It was in that school that Hackman became friends with another person who wanted to be an actor named Dustin Hoffman.
After working hard in many roles he became a well-respected actor.
He has won two Academy Awards, and has played many well-known roles.
Gregor Johann Mendel (Heinzendorf, Austria, 20 July 1822 Br nn, Austro-Hungary, 6 January 1884) was an Austrian monk and botanist.
He founded genetics by his work cross-breeding pea plants.
He discovered dominant and recessive characters (genes) from the crosses he performed on the plants in his greenhouse.
What he learned is known today as Mendelian inheritance.
His work was not appreciated at first, but was ` rediscovered ' in 1900 by Carl Correns and Hugo de Vries.
Erich von Tschermak 's status as a third rediscoverer is now less convincing.
Mendel used the edible pea (Pisum sativum) for his crosses.
He selected seven characters which were distinctive, and never blended; they occurred as either-or alternatives.
Examples: plant height (short or tall); color of peas (green or yellow); position of flowers (restricted to the top or distributed along the stem).
When he crossed varieties which differed in a trait (e.g. tall crossed with short), the first generation of hybrids (F1) showed only one of the two alternatives.
One character was dominant, and the other recessive.
But when he crossed these hybrids with each other, the recessive character reappeared in the second (F2) generation.
The proportion of plants showing the dominant as opposed to the recessive character was close to 3 to 1.
Further analysis of the descendants (F3) of the dominant group showed that one-third of them were true-breeding and two-thirds were of hybrid constitution.
The 3:1 ratio could therefore be rewritten as 1:2:1, meaning that 50 percent of the F2 generation were true-breeding and 50 percent were still hybrid.
This was Mendel s major discovery.
It could all be summed up by saying that inheritance was not blending, as Darwin had thought, it was particulate.
The factors (genes) were not merged or mixed, they stayed separate and were passed on to the next generation unchanged.
He published his work in 1866, but at the time no-one saw how significant it was.
35 years later, the papers were rediscovered and, immediately, modern genetics began.
Grappling is making a move on an opponent in a martial art, combat or combat sport which does not involve striking or the use of a weapon.
Some sports like sumo, wrestling or judo are solely about grappling.
George Mason University (also known as GMU or "Mason") is a public university in Fairfax, Virginia.
The university has about 32,562 students.
It was founded in 1957.
The current president of the university is Alan G. Merten.
The athletics teams of the university are called the Patriots.
They have 22 varsity teams, most of which compete in the Atlantic 10 Conference (A10).
Mason has different conference memberships in two sports that the A10 does not sponsor.
The men 's volleyball team plays in the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association, and the wrestling team is a member of the Eastern Wrestling League.
Grammar means the rules about how to speak and write in a language.
The Ancient Greeks used to call it grammatik t khn, the craft of letters.
It can have any of these meanings:
When we speak, we use the native-person 's grammar, or as near as we can.
When we write, we try to write with correct grammar.
So, speaking and writing a language each have their own style.
All languages have their own grammar.
Most European languages are rather similar, but some, such as Chinese and Japanese, are very different from all European languages.
English makes few changes to its word endings (` suffixes ').
In the Italic or ` Romance ' languages (such as French, Italian, and Spanish), word endings carry a lot of meaning.
In English we have just a few: plurals and possessives (John 's) are the most common.
In our verbs we have dropped most endings except one: I love, you love, but she loves.
That final 's ' is a remnant of Anglo-Saxon, which had more suffixes.
Verbs do have endings which show changes in tense: walked, walking.
Word order is the other big difference.
Romance languages normally put adjectives after the nouns to which they refer.
For example, in English, a person may say I like fast cars, but in Spanish, it is Me gustan los coches r pidos.
The order of the words has changed: if just the words, without the grammar, are translated into English, it would mean ` to me they please the cars fast '.
This is because Spanish and English have different rules about word order.
In German, verbs often come near the end of sentences (as: Die Katze hat die Nahrung gegessen.)
, whereas in English we usually put them between subject and object, as: the cat has eaten the food.
Written grammar changes slowly but spoken grammar is more fluid.
Sentences which English speakers find normal today, might have seemed strange 100 years ago.
And they might not, because many of our favorite sayings come from the Authorized King James Version of the Bible, and from Shakespeare.
Some people use grammar that is different from other people when speaking.
For example, people who use what is called General American English or BBC English might say, I did n't do anything, while someone who speaks what is called African American Vernacular English or AAVE might say, I did n't do nothing.
London working class version: I ai n't done nuffink!
These are called double negatives, and are found almost entirely in spoken language, not written language.
These differences are called dialects.
The dialect a person uses is usually decided by where they live.
Even though the dialects of English use different words or word order, they still have grammar rules.
However, when writing in American English, grammar uses the rules of General American English.
When people talk about using ` proper English ', they usually mean using the grammar of general British English, as described in standard reference works.
The models for spoken English in Britain are often called Received Pronunciation or BBC English.
Grammar studies syntax as well as the different parts of language.
These are called "parts of speech".
They fit together according to rules and create sentences.
Sentences fit together and create paragraphs.
Grammar studies nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, sentences, phrases, clauses, interjections.
Nouns are ` thing ' words like ` table and ` chair '.
They are objects, things you see in everyday life.
Proper nouns are places, people 's names, or other things like days of the week.
The name ` James ' is a proper noun, as is ` Wednesday ' and ` London '.
Nouns can also be abstract things, such as ` suffering ' or ` happiness '.
Verbs describe actions and states.
Action: "John threw the ball".
State: "I am worried".
The basic verb form is called the infinitive.
The infinitive for existence is "to be".
A famous example is the speech of Hamlet: To be or not to be, that is the question.
Variations of the infinitive create verb tenses.
Adjectives describe nouns.
For example, the pretty in "pretty bicycle" says that the bicycle is pretty.
In other words, the "pretty" is describing the bicycle.
This can also happen with a place.
For example, the tall in "that 's a tall building" is describing the building.
A gigabyte (GB), sometimes abbreviated as a gig, is a unit of measurement in computers and similar electronic devices.
At first it meant exactly 1 billion bytes, usually referring to the number of bytes in a computer hard drive.
Its meaning gradually changed over time, so that today it is often used to mean 1,073,741,824 (230) bytes, especially when referring to the random access memory (RAM) of a modern computer.
Now international standards bodies say a gigabyte should only be used to mean exactly 1 billion bytes, and that gibibyte is a better name for 1,073,741,824 bytes.
In everyday use, people use gigabyte to mean 1,073,741,824 bytes when talking about computer memory and 1,000,000,000 bytes when talking about computer disk space.
One thousand gigabytes make one terabyte.
This measurement is often used when measuring the capacity of computer memory, hard drives, or other storage devices.
Grus is a constellation in the southern sky.
Servius Sulpicius Galba (Lucius Livius Ocella Sulpicius Galba, 24 December 3 BC-15 January AD 69) was a Roman Emperor for seven months from AD 68 to 69.
Galba was an governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, which was the province near the Pyrenees.
He was the first emperor of Year of the Four Emperors.
He was born near Terracina, "On the left as you travel towards Fundi" in the words of Suetonius.
Galba was adopted by Livia Ocellina and took her family name until becoming emperor.
George Stephenson (9 June 1781 - 12 August 1848) was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer.
He built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives.
He is known as the "Father of Railways".
George was born in Wylam, which is in Northumberland.
Stephenson 's rail gauge of 4 feet 8 inches (1,435 mm), sometimes called the "Stephenson gauge", is the standard gauge for most of the world 's railways.
He also invented a miner 's safety lamp, which was widely used in the north of England.
A grapheme is a written mark which corresponds to a spoken sound, or a bit of written language (orthography).
It roughly corresponds to a phoneme in speech.
Graphemes include alphabetic letters, typographic ligatures, Chinese characters, numerical digits, punctuation marks, and other individual symbols of any of the world 's writing systems.
The separate items on a keyboard all produce graphemes when writing in the appropriate software.
A grapheme may or may not carry meaning by itself, and may or may not correspond to a single phoneme.
A grapheme is an abstract concept.
A glyph is a specific shape that represents that grapheme, in a specific typeface.
For example, the abstract concept of "the Arabic numeral one" is a grapheme which has different glyphs in different typefaces.
Glass is a hard material that can be made in many shapes.
It is usually transparent, but it can also be made in colors.
Glass is mainly made of silica (sand is an example).
Glass used to make windows and bottles is made of a specific type called soda-lime glass, composed of about 75 % silicon dioxide (SiO2), sodium oxide (Na2O) from sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), calcium oxide, also called lime (CaO), and several minor additives.
By changing the proportions, and adding different ingredients, many kinds of glass can be made.
Coloured glass is made by adding small amounts of metal oxides.
For example, a blue color is given by tiny amounts of cobalt oxide.
Crystal glass is made by adding lead and zinc oxides.
It is not actually a crystal, because all glass is a non-crystalline solid.
Crystal glass is called cut glass if it has been cut by hand:" ` Cut glass ' is glass that has been decorated entirely by hand by use of rotating wheels.
Cuts are made in an otherwise completely smooth surface of the glass by workers holding and moving the piece against various sized metal or stone wheels".
Because glass is used to make lenses, the word "glasses" means eyeglasses.
The myth that glass is actually a liquid comes from the fact that old windows in houses and churches (200 300 years old) are sometimes a little out of shape: thicker at the bottom than the top.
This is actually due to the process of glass making in the past which led to the glass pane being thicker at one edge than the other.
It was sensible to install the windows with the thick edge at the bottom.
Sometimes a window can be found with the thick edge at the top of the window.
Glass can be recycled over and over.
Glass bottles and jars can easily be recycled to make new glass bottles and jars or used in industry as aggregate (building material) or sand.
Gel electrophoresis is a technique used to separate mixtures like DNA and proteins.
The separation is based on how positively or how negatively charged a molecule is, and its size.
Gel electrophoresis uses a gel (like gelatin) and an electric field is put through the gel.
The word electrophoresis comes from electro, because an electric field is used, and phoresis, which means movement.
The gel is made up of large and branched molecules called polymers.
The amount of branches in the gel determines how easily molecules can squeeze through, depending on their size.
If there are a lot of branches, small molecules will be able to move through easily while big molecules will move through slowly or not at all.
If there are few branches, both big and small molecules can move through more easily.
If a large molecule has a big charge, its attraction to the opposite charge is also large.
But, since the molecule is large, it will have a difficult time moving through the thick gel.
In gel electrophoresis, large molecules are going to move slower.
A small charged molecule will move through the gel more easily.
Shorter molecules move faster and move further than longer ones because shorter molecules get through the pores of the gel more easily.
This phenomenon is called sieving.
If the molecule does not have any charge, it will not move.
After the gel has been run by applying the electric field, you can look to see where the molecules have moved to.
To do this, different stains can be applied to the gel: this allows the molecules to be seen.
The stain makes the places where the molecules moved to appear as colored bands.
Stains that are used to look at proteins, such as Coomassie blue, can often been seen by the human eye under normal light.
Stains that are used to look at DNA, such as ethidium bromide and GelGreen, can only be seen with the help of an ultraviolet lamp.
Gel electrophoresis is the most commonly used technique to study DNA.
DNA is a very large molecule that contains genetic information.
DNA can be broken down to smaller pieces of different sizes and these pieces are then separated using gel electrophoresis.
DNA always has a negative charge, and moves towards the anode.
Proteins are large and complex molecules made of amino acids.
Proteins can be studied by gel electrophoresis in two ways.
One way is to take a mixture of proteins and separate them in the gel.
The other way is to break down a single protein into smaller pieces.
The smaller pieces can then be separated in the gel.
Proteins can be positively or negatively charged.
To separate proteins by size only, protein mixtures can be coated with a chemical called sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) to give all proteins a negative charge before putting the mixture into the gel.
In medicine, there is a special type of electrophoresis called iontophoresis.
Iontophoresis uses the same idea of gel electrophoresis to deliver drugs into the human body through the skin without using needles to inject the drug.
Gary Lineker (born 30 November 1960) is an English retired footballer.
He has played for the English national team.
He scored 48 goals for the English national team.
He is now on television on the BBC on Match of the Day.
Grace Murray Hopper (December 9 1906 January 1 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy officer.
She was one of the first people to work with modern digital computers and the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I calculator.
She developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.
She had the idea that programs could be written in a language that was close to English rather than in machine code or languages (such as assembly language) close to machine code, which is how it was normally done at that time.
COBOL language was based very much on her philosophy.
A park in Arlington, Virginia is named in her honor.
The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) was named for her.
On December 9 2013 Google had an animation of Hopper for their Google Doodle.
In economics, gross domestic product (GDP) is how much a place produces in some amount of time.
GDP can be calculated by adding up its output inside the borders of that country.
To find the GDP of a country, one adds up all consumer spending (C), all investment (I), all government spending minus taxes (G), and the value of exports minus imports (X M).
This is shown by the equation: This measure is often used to find out how healthy a country; a country with a high value of GDP can be called a large economy.
The biggest GDP in the world is the United States.
Germany is the largest in Europe, Nigeria in Africa and China in Asia.
There are different ways to calculate the GDP.
Nominal GDP is the total amount of money spent on all new and final goods in an economy, real GDP (adjusting for changes in prices) tries to correct this number for inflation.
For example, if the prices rise by 2 % (meaning, everything costs 2 % more) and the nominal GDP grows by 5 %, the real GDP growth is only increases by 3 %.
GDP per capita is the total income of a country, divided by the number of inhabitants.
It shows how rich people, on average, are.
The GDP measure is different from gross national product (GNP) in that GNP = GDP + net income from assets in other countries (net income receipts).
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, W rttemberg, which is now southwest Germany.
He started Hegelianism and is a part of German Idealism.
He influenced many writers and philosophers, including those who agreed with him (Bradley, Sartre, K ng, Bauer, Stirner, Marx), and those who did not agree with him (Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Schelling).
Hegel 's books are difficult to read and deal with many different ideas at the same time.
He has written about history, politics, religion, art, logic and metaphysics.
The Governor-General of Australia is the representative in Australia of Australia 's head of state, Queen Elizabeth II.
The current Governor-General is Sir Peter Cosgrove.
The Governor-General of Australia is a powerful person in the country.
The Governor-General is leader of the Executive Council and Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Defense Forces.
Glasnost was a policy that called for increased openness in government institutions and activities in the Soviet Union.
It was introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s.
Glasnost is often paired with Perestroika (restructuring), another reform instituted by Gorbachev at the same time.
The word "glasnost" has been used in Russian at least since the end of the 18th century.
The word was often used by Gorbachev for policies he believed might reduce corruption at the top, and moderate the abuse of power by the Central Committee.
Russian human rights activist and dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva explained glasnost as a word that "had been in the Russian language for centuries.
It was in the dictionaries and lawbooks as long as there had been dictionaries and lawbooks.
It was an ordinary, hardworking, nondescript word that was used to refer to a process, any process of justice of governance, being conducted in the open".
Glasnost can also refer to the specific period in the history of the USSR during the 1980s when there was less censorship and greater freedom of information.
Geodesy, which is sometimes called geodetics, is a scientific branch of geography which deals with describing the surface of the earth.
Friedrich Robert Helmert (1843-1917), who started the discipline, talked about measuring and mapping the surface of the earth.
This includes its geometric description (the geoid) and the measurement and description of its gravitational field.
Some people involved in the discipilne look at geodynamics, the crusts, the tides, or the motion of the geographical poles.
Gossip is when someone spreads a rumor, mostly about personal or private affairs of others, which can be true or false.
The name gossip mostly became known during the 16th Century.
The word is from Old English godsibb, from god and sibb.
Gothic fiction is a genre of literature which combines parts of both horror and romance.
The genre is said to have started in England in 1764 with Horace Walpole 's book The Castle of Otranto.
Its second edition was subtitled A Gothic Story.
The idea quickly spread to other European languages.
A famous early example of gothic fiction is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, in the early 19th Century.
The works of Edgar Allen Poe and Bram Stoker 's Dracula followed later.
The word gospel came from the Old English word "g dspel", which literally means "good news", since it narrates Jesus Christ 's life and teaching to invite anyone to believe that he was born to save the world from sin and make humans truly know God as a Father.
It is mostly about the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.
The Gospel was originally spoken, not written.
Eventually gospel came to mean an ancient book about Jesus, especially one of the four books collected by the Church in the Bible.
These books are the first part of the New Testament of the Bible, and are put in a group of this order: the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John.
The GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP or "The GIMP", is a free software picture maker.
It is often used for making logos, making photographs bigger or smaller, changing colors, making many pictures part of one picture, making pictures nicer to look at, and changing file formats.
GIMP is often used as a free software alternative for the most popular Adobe Photoshop, but it is not made to be an Adobe Photoshop clone.
The GIMPs mascot is a coyote named Wilber.
The GIMP was started in 1995 by Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis and is now taken care of by a group of volunteers as part of the GNU Project.
The newest version of GIMP is v. 2.8 and it was available since March 2009.
The GIMPs license is the GNU General Public License, GIMP is free software.
GIMP can be used for opening and changing many types of file formats.
GIMPs own file format is XCF, which is the name of the building where GIMP was written.
Some file formats that GIMP can be used with are bitmap, JPEG, PNG, GIF and TIFF.
GIMP can also read and write path information from SVG files and GIMP can read Adobe PDF files and the raw image formats used by digital cameras, but can not write to these formats.
Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1655) (known as Gianlorenzo Bernini) was one of the greatest artists of the Italian Baroque period.
He was famous both for his sculpture and his architecture.
From 1527, he worked for Pope Urban XIII and then for Pope Alexander VII at St. Peter 's Basilica where he designed the famous piazza (place) in front of the basilica and many of the most splendid things that are inside.
Bernini was born in Naples, Italy.
He was the son of Pietro Bernini (1562-1629) who was a well known sculptor.
When he was about 7 years old, his father took him to Rome.
As a boy and as a young man living in Rome, he saw the works of many famous artists.
He saw the famous fresco paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo, one of the most famous artists of the 1500s.
The paintings told the Bible story of Creation.
He saw the huge dome of St. Peter 's Basilica which Michelangelo designed and the new extension to the building that was being built by Carlo Maderna.
One artist who Bernini knew well was Annibale Carracci who painted scenes on the ceilings of rooms for the pope.
The scenes told stories, often Ancient Roman legends.
Carracci took Bernini into St. Peter 's Basilica.
Bernini fell on his knees and decided at that moment that he wanted to make something beautiful and splendid to honor Saint Peter.
Another artist whose work Bernini saw was Caravaggio.
Caravaggio 's paintings were nothing like Carracci 's.
Carracci 's pictures were bright, lively and colourful.
Caravaggio 's pictures were dark, sad and often frightening.
But looking into Caravaggio 's paintings was like looking at something that was really happening while you were watching.
The people in Caravaggio 's paintings looked as if they could breathe, speak and feel pain.
By the time he was 20, Bernini was a sculptor, carving statues out of marble.
He had learned a lot, not just how to carve marble, which he learned from his father, but how to make figures that told stories like Carracci 's and Michelangelo 's and seemed to be alive, like Caravaggio 's.
An important man in the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, saw his work and became his patron, paying Bernini to make many beautiful sculptures for him and his family.
Soon the cardinal 's uncle got to hear about Bernini.
He was Pope Urban VIII, the most powerful man in Italy.
He asked Bernini to work for him at St. Peter 's Basilica.
Bernini spent 40 years of his life there, all the time except for a trip to France and shorter visits to other cities.
Most sculptures of that time were just of one figure.
But Bernini had seen Michelangelo 's famous sculpture of the "Pieta" which showed the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of her dead son, Jesus.
Bernini made figures that were in groups and told stories.
One of his famous groups comes from Roman Mythology.
It shows the god, Apollo chasing a beautiful wood nymph (a sort of fairy) that he had fallen in love with.
But her father had magic powers and suddenly turned his daughter into a tree.
Bernini sculptured the very moment when her toes are turning into roots, her legs are becoming the trunk, and leaves are sprouting out of her hands and long hair.
She has her mouth open and a look of horror on her face.
No-one had ever tried to carve anything like that in marble before.
The thing that is so amazing about Bernini 's sculpture is that he has made the flesh, the wood, the leaves and the hair all look so real, even though they are all carved in white stone.
Bernini 's most famous sculpture is St. Theresa in Ecstasy.
It tells the story of a saint who had a vision of an angel.
Her vision was so beautiful that she fainted.
Bernini has sculptured the vision, with St. Theresa lying on a cloud with the laughing angel in front of her.
Their robes are blowing around, and it is hard to believe that the whole scene, which is set against a wall, is not really floating.
Bernini did not just design the statues.
He also designed the walls of the chapel around it, which is like a stage-set, made of beautifully patterned marble.
Against another wall, he carved a balcony and several white marble people looking at the scene.
They are members of the family that paid for the chapel.
The city of Rome has lots of squares with fountains in them.
Pope Alexander wanted to make the city more beautiful, so during his time, more fountains were made.
One of the biggest squares in Rome was the Piazza Navona.
On one side of the piazza was the church of St. Agnes, built by Borromini.
Bernini thought it was an ugly building.
He was asked to make the "Fountain of the Rivers" in the square, right outside the church.
It has four figures who are symbols of four rivers.
Bernini carved one of river-figures looking up at the church and throwing his hands in the air in shock at its ugliness.
Borromini was very upset with Bernini 's joke, which has been there now for more than 300 years.
Bernini 's first work at St. Peter 's was to design the "baldacchino" which is like a tent or "pavilion" above the High Altar.
This amazing thing is 30 metres (98 ft) tall and is probably the largest piece of bronze in the world.
It stands underneath Michelangelo 's dome and has four huge bronze twisted columns decorated with olive leaves and bees, because bees were the symbol of Pope Urban.
Pope Urban had a niece that he loved very much and he got Bernini to put her face and the face of her new-born baby boy on the columns as well.
Holding up the dome of the Basilica were four enormous stone pillars (piers).
Bernini had a great idea for the big piers.
He had four hollow "niches" carved into them where four huge statues could stand.
This sent some people into a panic because they thought the dome would fall down, but it did not.
The basilica owns some precious relics: a piece of the True Cross of Jesus, a veil that a woman wiped the face of Jesus with, while he was carrying the cross, the spear that was used to pierce Jesus side, and the bones of St. Andrew, the brother of St. Peter.
No-one knows for sure whether these things are real or not, but for hundreds of years they have been precious.
Bernini 's plan was the make four marble statues of the four Holy people: St. Helena who found the cross, St. Longinus who was the soldier with the spear, St Veronica who wiped Jesus ' face and St. Andrew.
Even though the design is Bernini 's, the statues, which are all 5 metres high, were made by four different sculptors.
Only St. Longinus is the work of Bernini.
Bernini 's next job was to make a special throne out of bronze, to hold an ancient wood and ivory throne that had been at the basilica for more than 500 years.
It is called the Cattedra Petri or "throne of St. Peter".
The bronze throne, with the old wooden throne inside it, is held up high at the end of the basilica, by four important saints who are called "Doctors of the Church" because they were all great writers and teachers.
The statues are made of bronze.
They are Saints Ambrose and Augustine for the Church of Rome and Saints Athanasius and John Chrysostum for the Orthodox Church.
Above the chair is a window which is made not from glass but thin translucent stone called alabaster.
The Dove of the Holy Spirit is in the middle of the window with rays of light spreading out into the basilica through a sculpture of golden clouds and angels.
Bernini designed this to look like a window into Heaven.
There was a great celebration when the chair was put in place on January 16, 1666.
To the west of the basilica is the Piazza di San Pietro (St. Peter 's Place).
The piazza was designed by Bernini and built between 1656 and 1667.
It was not an easy job because the designer had lots of things to think about.
Firstly, many people complained that Maderna 's facade on St. Peter 's looked too wide, so Bernini wanted to make it look narrower, not wider.
Secondly, in the old square left over from the Old St. Peter 's, Pope Sixtus V had a monument set up.
This monument was a precious Ancient Egyptian obelisk (which is like a tall column, but with four flat sides).
From its base to the top of the cross (that the pope had put on top) it was 40 metres (131 ft) high, and had been brought to Roman in ancient times.
The obelisk really should be at the center of the new square, but it was not in quite the right place, and was very difficult to move without breaking.
The third problem was that Maderna had built a fountain to one side of the obelisk, and Bernini needed to make another fountain to match it, otherwise the design would look unbalanced.
Bernini solved the problem by making two areas, instead of one huge one.
The first area is an almost-square area right in front of the facade.
It is cleverly designed with sloping sides that make the building look taller and not so wide.
The second part of the piazza is oval.
It has the obelisk at the center with two fountains on either side at the widest part.
The two parts of the piazza are surrounded by a colonnade (covered walk-way) which is carried on tall columns.
All around are large statues of saints which seem to look down on the thousands of visitors that come to the square every day.
The colonnade is in two great arcs that seem to stretch out like loving arms, welcoming people to the Basilica.
In recent times some buildings were demolished, making another square, to match the one near the piazza.
It is a good place for vans to park and can be seen in the photo.
The famous architectural historian, Sir Banister Fletcher, said that no other city in the world had given such a wonderful view to people visiting their main church.
He said that no other architect except Bernini could have imagined such a noble design.
He said it is the greatest entrance to the greatest Christian church in the whole world.
Bernini 's last work for St. Peter 's, 1676, was to decorate of the Chapel of the Sacrament.
He designed a miniature temple just like the one that was built over the place where St. Peter died.
He made it bronze covered with fine gold.
On either side is an angel, one gazing in adoration and the other looking towards the viewer in welcome.
Bernini died in 1680 aged 81, after working for St. Peter 's for 40 years of his life.
Galilee (ha-Galil, lit: the province, Latin: Galileia, al-Jaleel) is a large place in northern Israel.
It is traditionally divided into Upper and Lower Galilee.
It is mentioned frequently in the New Testament.
The Goths (Gothic:, Gutans) were an East Germanic tribe.
Jordanes is a scholar from the 6th century.
He wrote a summary of a twelve volume work by Cassiodorus about the Goths.
Jordanes work is commonly called Getica.
As the original work by Cassiodorius was lost, Getica is the only surviving contemporary account about the Goths.
According to this work, they left Scandinavia and settled close to the mouth of the Vistula river (in present day Poland).
In the 3rd and 4th centuries they settled Scythia, Dacia and parts of Moesia and Asia Minor.
In the 3rd and 4th centuries, they fought with the Roman Empire and later adopted Arianism (a form of Christianity).
In the 5th and 6th centuries, they split into the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths.
With this move, they established powerful successor-states of the Roman Empire in Italy and on the Iberian peninsula (now Spain & Portugal).
Traces of Gothic blood can be found in many people.
Glycolysis is a metabolic process in most organisms.
It is the first stage in cellular respiration.
It allows both aerobic and anaerobic respiration.
Glycolysis releases only a small amount of energy.
Glycolysis is thought to be the archetype of a universal metabolic pathway.
It occurs, with variations, in nearly all organisms, both aerobic and anaerobic.
The wide occurrence of glycolysis shows that it is one of the most ancient known metabolic pathways.
Glycolysis has ten intermediate compounds, catalysed by ten different enzymes.
Only the broad outline is described here.
The second half of glycolysis is known as the ` pay-off phase ', by the net gain of the energy-rich molecules ATP and NADH.
Since glucose leads to two triose sugars in the preparatory phase, each reaction in the pay-off phase occurs twice per glucose molecule.
This yields 2 NADH molecules and 4 ATP molecules, leading to a net gain of 2 NADH molecules and 2 ATP molecules from the glycolytic pathway per glucose molecule.
Cells performing aerobic respiration (respiration using oxygen) synthesize much more ATP, but not as part of glycolysis.
These further reactions use the pyruvate from glycolysis.
Eukaryote aerobic respiration produces about 30 additional molecules of ATP for each glucose molecule.
Glycolysis, through anaerobic respiration, is the main energy source in many cells.
Gary is a city in the state of Indiana, in the Midwestern United States.
Gary is known for its steel mills and for being the birthplace of singer Michael Jackson.
The population of Gary is less than 80,000.
This is under half what it was in 1960.
Industry has been reduced a lot since the 1960s.
Most of the city 's middle-class and white people moved away.
It is now 85 % African-American.
Gary has a humid continental climate (Dfa in the K ppen climate classification).
Saint Gregory the Illuminator or Saint Gregory the Enlightener (Armenian: translit.
Grigor Lusavorich, Greek: or, Gregorios Phoster or Photistes), the founder and patron saint of the Armenian Apostolic Church, he was born about 257.
He belonged to the royal line of the Arsacid Dynasty, being the son of a Parthian named Anak, who assassinated Chosroes I of Armenia, and thus brought ruin on himself and his family.
Godwin 's Law (also known as Godwin 's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is a saying made by Mike Godwin in 1990.
The law states: "As a discussion on the Internet grows longer, the likelihood of a comparison of a person 's being compared to Hitler or another Nazi reference, increases.".
That means that as more people talk on the Internet for a longer time, it becomes more and more likely that someone will talk about Hitler or the Nazis.
The Green Bay Packers are an American football team in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
They play in the National Football League.
Their stadium is Lambeau Field.
Their quarterback is Aaron Rodgers.
The Packer 's uniforms are a green or white jersey with yellow pants.
The Packers hold the record for the most NFL league championships.
They have won 13 championships, including four Super Bowls.
The team is called the Packers because their original owner was a meat-packing company.
Today, it is the only fan-owned team in the country 's four major professional leagues.
It is owned by a community-based group with more than 100,000 shareholders.
Each shareholder is limited to holding 200 shares (out of about 5 million issued).
The Packers are also the only team in the major professional leagues to release their balance sheet every year.
A general-purpose machine gun (GPMG) is a machine gun which gets its ammunition from a belt.
It can be used in many different roles: it can support infantry from a bipod or tripod or be put onto a helicopter or armored vehicle.
It can provide fire support for vehicles or infantry from a variety of mounts.
A general-purpose machine gun is generally a medium machine gun.
It also fires rifle cartridges like the 7.62 51mm NATO or 7.92 x57mm Mauser.
It is usually used from a bipod, tripod or on a vehicle.
This is because it is usually too powerful and heavy to be fired well on foot or while moving.
Gdynia is a city in northern Poland in Pomeranian Voivodeship, and is a important and seaport of Gda sk Bay on the south coast of the Baltic Sea.
It has about 248 000 inhabitants and 135 km.
Gluons are what hold quarks together to make bigger particles.
Gluons carry the strong force between other quarks, so it is considered a force carrying particle.
Photons do the same thing, but for the electromagnetic force.
Also, like photons, gluons are spin-1 particles, and when a particle has spin-1 it is considered a boson.
Gluons are hard to study because although they exist in nature all the time, they are so small and require so much energy to break them away from quarks (about 2 trillion degrees) that scientists have only been able to find more about them from particle colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
Genesis (Greek: "origin, birth") is the first book of the Christian Bible.
It means "creation".
It starts with the start of the Universe.
It ends with the death of Joseph.
The Hebrew name for the book is transliterated Bre ` shiyth, which means ` in beginning. '
God created the universe and everything in it in six days.
God rested on the seventh day and declared it a holy day of rest.
God provided the Garden of Eden to the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve.
There was only one thing that they were not allowed to do.
God told them not to eat from the tree of knowledge, which would make them aware of good and evil.
A snake tricked Eve, and she ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge.
Because they did not obey him, God made them leave the garden, and caused all people to work for their food.
Adam and Eve 's first two children were sons, Cain and Abel.
Abel was a shepherd and Cain was a farmer.
Cain became jealous of Abel and so angry that he killed him, making them the first murderer and the first person to die.
(Genesis 4:1 16)
Later, when the world was full of people who were evil, God chose to kill them and save only the animals and the most morally right person alive.
He told a man, named Noah, to build a huge boat and gather two of every mammal and lizard onto it.
Noah built and filled the boat as he was told, and a flood covered the whole world.
After 150 days, the boat landed on the mountain of Ararat.
God promised never to send another such flood, and he used the rainbow as a sign of that promise.
The people built a high tower to show the power of mankind.
God felt insulted and gave people different languages to prevent the tower from ever being finished.
God chose Abram to be "the father of many nations."
Abram changed his name to Abraham, and God promised him the land of Canaan (Israel) forever.
As a sign of this promise, the sons of Abraham are circumcised.
God tested Abraham 's loyalty by asking him to kill his son Isaac.
Abraham was ready to do it, but God sent an angel to stop him.
God told him there would be no more human sacrifice.
God destroyed the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, saving only Abraham 's nephew Lot and his daughters.
Isaac and his wife Rebekah had two twin sons, Esau and Jacob.
Jacob traded food to Esau for Esau 's right to carry the family name.
Rebekah helped trick Isaac, who was old and blind, into giving his final blessing to Jacob by dressing him in fur (Isaac felt Jacob 's furs and thought he was his hairy twin, Esau).
Esau later got a blessing of his own.
Jacob left to find a wife.
He found Rachel and worked for her father, Lavan, for seven years to marry her, but was tricked into marrying her sister Leah.
He worked for another seven years to marry Rachel.
He went back to his home, then moved to Bethel, where God told him to change his name to Israel.
Jacob later also marries the servants of Leah and Rachel, whose names are Bilah and Zilpah.
Jacob had twelve sons named Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issaschar, Zebulun, Gad, Dan, Asher, Naftali, Joseph, and Benjamin.
His wife Rachel died after she gave birth to Benjamin.
Jacob gave his son Joseph a coat of many colors.
Joseph 's brothers were jealous, so they sold him into slavery in Egypt.
They covered his coat in blood and told their father he had died.
Joseph became a great leader in Egypt by predicting a long famine by explaining the pharaoh 's dreams.
During the famine, his brothers came to Egypt to buy food.
They did not know that Joseph was the leader.
Joseph first tricked the brothers, but then gave them food and let them stay in Goshen in Egypt.
Jacob blessed his sons and then died.
The German Empire ("Deutsches Reich" or "Deutsches Kaiserreich" in the German language) is the name for a group of German countries from January 18, 1871 to November 9, 1918.
This is from the Unification of Germany when Wilhelm I of Prussia was made German Kaiser to when the third Emperor Wilhelm II was removed from power at the end of the First World War.
It was once called the "Second Reich".
The name of Germany was "Deutsches Reich" until 1945.
"Reich" can mean many things, empire, kingdom, state, "richness" or "wealth".
Most members of the Empire were previously members of the North German Confederation.
At different times, there were three groups of smaller countries, each group was later called a "Reich" by some Germans.
The first was the Holy Roman Empire.
The second was the German Empire.
The third was the Third Reich.
The words "Second Reich" were used for the German Empire by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, a nationalist writer in the 1920s.
He was trying to make a link with the earlier Holy Roman Empire which had once been very strong.
Germany had lost the war and was suffering big problems and he wanted to start a "Third Reich" to unite the country.
These words were later used by the Nazis to make themselves appear stronger.
Afghanistan is in the middle of Asia.
The country is landlocked and mountainous, and has most of the Hindu Kush mountains.
There are four major rivers in the country: the Amu Darya, the Hari River, the Kabul River and the Helmand River.
The country also contains a number of smaller rivers, lakes, and streams.
Afghanistan has a total of 5529 km of borders - the longest part of the border (2,430 km) is known as the Durand Line and forms Afghanistan international border with the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
It is in the south and southeast of Afghanistan.
The border with Iran, which is to the west of Afghanistan, is 936 km.
To the north are the Central Asian countries - Tajikistan has a border of 1,206 km with Afghanistan, Turkmenistan has 744 km, and Uzbekistan has 137 km.
Afghanistan also has border with China, it is 76 km in length and is in the far northeast of the country, although this is disputed by both Pakistan and Tajikistan which lay irredentist claims on Wakhan area.
Afghanistan has a lot of rugged mountains known as the Hindu Kush as well areas of desert.
Damaging earthquakes occur in the Hindu Kush mountains; flooding and droughts in the south and south-west of the country.
Afghanistan 's natural resources include: natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, uranium, gold, silver, chromite, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, iron ore, salt, precious and semiprecious stones.
The Hindu Kush reaches a height of 7485 m. \/ 24,557 ft. at Nowshak, Afghanistan 's highest peak.
Of the ranges extending southwestward from the Hindu Kush, the Koh-i-Baba reaches the greatest height (Shah Fuladi, 5,142 m \/ 16,870 ft).
The Safed Koh range, which includes the Tora Bora area, dominates the border area southeast of Kabul.
The area towards the Khyber Pass across the Safed Koh are in eastern Afghanistan; at the top the height is 1070 m. \/ 3,509 ft. at Landi Kotal.
This area is near to Pakistan, the town of Torkham is five kilometres from Pakistan.
A grand jury is a legal body which has the power to conduct official proceedings to investigate possible criminal conduct.
They also decide whether criminal charges should be brought.
A grand jury may subpoena evidence and may compel the sworn testimony of witnesses who appear before it.
Grand juries are made up of from 16 to 23 people in the United States.
They meet for a period of one month up to a year.
However, jurors may only have to meet for a few days each month.
The juries meet in private.
The suspected person, called a suspect, is not usually present.
About half the state in the US do not regularly use grand juries.
A preliminary hearing may be used instead.
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires the use of grand juries by the federal legal system for all capital and "infamous crimes" (cases involving treason, certain felonies or gross moral turpitude).
In 1166 an enactment of King Henry II of England, called the Assize of Clarendon, called for "the oath of \* twelve men from every hundred and four men from every vill" to meet and decide who was guilty of robbery, theft or murder.
It was the early ancestor of the jury system and of the grand jury.
The United Kingdom abolished grand juries in 1933.
Many of their former colonies including Canada, Australia and New Zealand have also stopped using them.
The United States is one of the few remaining countries that uses the grand jury.
Grand juries are called by a federal judge and are required to supervise them.
But judges almost never interfere.
The grand jury is led by a federal prosecutor.
He can not testify or be present while the jury deliberates.
But most federal grand juries will return any indictment presented to it.
This led to the famous saying "a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich."
They can subpoena anything they want with very few restrictions.
In United States v. R. Enterprises, Inc., 498 U.S. 292 (1991), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled "federal grand jury subpoenas are presumed to be reasonable and the burden of showing unreasonableness is on the recipient."
A grand jury, state or federal, has two functions.
The first is to go over all evidence of criminal wrongdoing and to issue an indictment only if there is enough evidence.
Their other purpose is to investigate and help the prosecutor gather evidence.
Critics claim grand juries have failed to do both.
A shock site is a website that wants to be offensive and to shock people that see it.
Shock sites usually show pictures that are meant to make people feel disgusted.
These pictures are often violent, or pornographic.
For example, in 2004 Goatse.
cx showed a picture of a man stretching his anus.
Often these sites are mentioned in emails, or online discussions, which tries to trick users into following links to another website.
Greenwich Mean Time is an internationally standard time format.
It is the main time zone in several countries, including the United Kingdom and Portugal.
It is similar to UTC, however there are some small differences between the two.
Including that the Greenwich uses a straight line to signal the Time Zone, while in the UTC you can put which time zone you want, even if it does not need this time zone.
One example is China, which uses one same time zone, meaning that in some places like Beijing 12:00 PM can be 3:00 PM on the western part of the country.
Greg Egan (born 20 August 1961) is an Australian science fiction author.
His first novel was published in 1983.
Guy Fawkes (13 April 1570 31 January 1606) sometimes known as Guido Fawkes, was a member of a group of Roman Catholic revolutionaries from England who planned to carry out the Gunpowder Plot.
Fawkes and the other plotters planned to kill the king, James I, and replace him with a Catholic monarch.
5 November 1605 is remembered each year in England, during Guy Fawkes Night.
People build large bonfires, light fireworks, and burn figures of Fawkes (known as ` the guy ').
November 5 was the date when Parliament re-assembled after a long recess.
The plot was uncovered quite late, in the night before the day of the 5th.
Fawkes was arrested as he sat in a cellar, near the gunpowder, waiting for the right time to set it off.
He was tortured to make him reveal the names of the other plotters.
Later eight men, including Fawkes, stood trial for high treason.
They were found guilty and executed by hanging in Westminster, London, except for Fawkes, who killed himself by jumping from the scaffold before he was to be hanged.
Their remains were sent to the corners of the kingdom and displayed, as a warning to others.
There were five other conspirators; the main man, Robert Catesby, was killed by the Sheriff of Worcester when he tried to flee.
There are many places to find Fawkes in popular literature.
Here are some important examples, listed in chronological order.
Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American writer.
He is also an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist.
Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Since the 1970s, he has often been called the "laureate of Deep Ecology."
Since the 1950s, he has published travel-journals and essays.
The giant panda, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, is a bear.
It lives in south central China.
Although it belongs to the order Carnivora, the panda 's diet is 99 % bamboo.
Pandas in the wild occasionally eat other grasses, wild tubers, or even meat in the form of birds, rodents or carrion.
In captivity, they may get honey, eggs, fish, yams, shrub leaves, oranges, or bananas along with specially prepared food.
The giant panda lives in a few mountain ranges in central China, mainly in Sichuan province, but also in the Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.
As a result of farming, deforestation and other development, the panda has been driven out of the lowland areas where it once lived.
Giant pandas are bears.
They have black and white fur.
The black fur is on their ears, around their eyes, on their legs, and on their shoulders.
Giant pandas are about the size of an American black bear.
They are about 3 f tall at the shoulder when they are standing on all four legs.
They are about 6 f long.
Males weigh up to 251 l in the wild.
Females usually weigh less than 220 l.
Wild giant pandas live in the mountains of central China.
They live in forests of tall trees.
They eat the bamboo that grows under the trees.
The weather is rainy and misty in these mountain forests.
There are thick clouds almost all the time.
In the wild, giant pandas eat a lot of bamboo.
Ninety-nine percent of the food they eat is bamboo.
They eat as much as 40 l of bamboo every day.
They spend 10 to 16 hours every day looking for food and eating it.
Bamboo is a grass.
Sometimes giant pandas eat other grasses.
They also eat little rodents or musk deer babies (fawns).
In zoos, giant pandas eat bamboo, sugar cane, vegetables, and fruit.
Giant pandas get a lot of water from the bamboo they eat.
They need more water though.
They drink from the fresh water streams and rivers in the mountain.
Melting snow high in the mountains runs into these streams and rivers.
There are two kinds of giant panda.
They both live in China.
The best known is the black and white panda.
Its scientific name is Ailuropoda melanoleuca melanoleuca.
The other giant panda has dark brown and light brown fur.
Its skull is smaller than the other giant panda.
It has larger molars.
This panda lives only in the Qinling Mountains.
Its scientific name is Ailuropoda melanoleuca qinlingensis.
Giant pandas are ready to have babies (cubs) when they are between the ages of four and eight years.
They may be able to have babies until about age 20.
Female pandas are ready to have a baby only once a year.
This is in the springtime.
There are only two to three days she is ready for a baby.
Calls and scents bring the males and female pandas to each other.
Female pandas may give birth to two young.
Usually only one lives.
Giant panda cubs may stay with their mothers for up to three years.
Then they leave her for a life of their own.
Today, the giant panda is a symbol for China.
It is protected by the Chinese government.
Killing a giant panda is a crime.
The giant panda may become extinct.
It will die out if the forests of bamboo continue to disappear.
People outside of eastern Asia did not know about the giant panda until 1869.
The first "Westerner" to see a live panda was a German zoologist in 1916.
In 1936, Ruth Harkness became the first Westerner to bring a live giant panda out of China.
It was a cub (baby panda) named Su-Lin.
The cub was taken to live at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago.
In the 1970s, China began showing giant pandas in zoos in the United States and Japan as a type of diplomacy.
This happened until 1984, when China changed how this was done.
Starting in 1984, China would allow zoos to keep the giant pandas for 10 years, but the zoo would have to pay China up to $ 1,000,000 each year.
Also, the zoo would have to agree that any cubs born would belong to China.
Currently, 14 cities outside of China have zoos that have giant pandas.
; North America
The Adelaide Zoo in Adelaide, Australia received two giant pandas in 2009.
The giant panda is an endangered species.
It may become extinct.
In 2013, it was estimated that there were less than 2,500 mature giant pandas living in the wild.
Illegal hunting is no longer a problem.
It is a crime.
The penalties are harsh.
The greatest threat to survival is the loss of living areas.
People are ruining the areas where pandas live.
They are cutting down trees.
They are building farms.
Groups of pandas are forced to live in small areas.
They are isolated.
They can not mix other panda groups.
Giant pandas eat bamboo.
Sometimes the bamboo dies off.
At one time, pandas could move to an area where bamboo was still growing.
Moving has become more and more difficult.
People are living and working in panda areas.
Pandas can not move about as freely as they once did.
China set up the first giant panda nature reserve in 1963.
Other nature reserves were also set up.
There were 40 giant panda reserves in 2006.
In music a glissando is a slide up or down the notes of a scale.
The plural is glissandi.
In written music the instruction to the player is often shortened to gliss.
The word comes from the French glisser = to slide.
With the singing voice, or with an instrument such as the trombone or a string instrument a glissando is a smooth slide in which the pitch gradually changes, becoming higher and higher.
The trombonist can make a glissando by blowing whilst pushing out or pulling in the slide.
The violinist can make a glissando by sliding a finger up or down the fingerboard.
With instruments such as the piano, xylophone or harp a glissando is a quick slide in which we hear one note after another because the pitches between the notes can not be played.
On the piano there are two ways to play a glissando: either on the white notes or on the black notes.
At the end of the piano piece called Ondine from Gaspard de la Nuit by Maurice Ravel both these types of glissando can be heard.
The pianist has to play a glissando with tips of the fingers or the finger nails.
It can be quite painful to practice them a lot.
Harpists are very fond of playing glissandi.
By changing the position of the harp pedals a harpist can change the scale which will sound when the glissando is played.
Many modern timpani have pedals which tighten or slacken the drum head.
These can be used to make a glissando.
The Hungarian composer B la Bart k often used this effect.
Some jazz clarinettists manage to play a glissando on the clarinet.
They do this by gradually changing the way they blow whilst at the same time gradually lifting all the fingers off the keys.
George Gershwin 's Rhapsody in Blue starts with a glissando on the solo clarinet.
When composers write a glissando they write the first and the last note, and then put a long, straight line between the notes, and write the word glissando or gliss.
A giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) is a mammal which lives in Africa.
Giraffes have an even number of toes and are the tallest land animals.
Giraffes and Okapi are the family Giraffidae.
Fully grown giraffes stand 4.3 tall, with males taller than females.
The tallest recorded male was 5.88 m and the tallest recorded female was 5.17 m tall.
The average weight is 1192 k for an adult male and 828 k for an adult female.
Maximum weights of 1930 k and 1180 k having been recorded for males and females, respectively.
Giraffes have a very long neck and legs.
Their fur has a light yellowish or brownish color with dark patches.
Both male and female giraffes have small horn-like stumps on their head, which are covered with skin.
They have a long black tongue, which can be up to 45 cm long.
Giraffes are the tallest land animals on Earth, with necks that can be up to 2-2.4 m (6.6-7.9 ft) in length.
Giraffes are found in parts of Africa.
They live on the savannah, which is the African grassland, or in light woodland.
They do not live in thick forests where it is difficult to see predators, such as lions, approaching.
Giraffes eat mostly leaves from tall trees, which they can reach because of their long legs and long necks, as well as Fruit.
They can go without water for weeks.
Giraffes live alone or in loose groups.
Young male giraffes form small groups until they become mature.
Adult males live alone.
Females form groups of 4 32 animals.
When the female is close to giving birth, it leaves the group for a time to give birth to its offspring, and comes back 2-3 weeks after her baby is born.
After a pregnancy of 14-15 months, the female gives birth to usually a single baby (which is called "calf").
Giraffes give birth while standing, so the baby falls down 2 metres.
Giraffe calfs are already 2 m tall and weigh 50-55 kg.
The calf stays with its mother for 1 years.
Young giraffes become mature when they are 4 years old, and they are fully grown when they are 6 years old.
Giraffes can become 25 years old, in captivity they can become 35 years old.
Like all mammals, giraffes have only seven bones in their necks.
There are about nine different subspecies of giraffe.
There are only small differences between them.
When giraffes of two different sub-species breed, the young are called hybrids (mixed breeds).
Of the nine sub-species of giraffe, only one, the Rothchild 's, is endangered.
Giraffes have horns called ossicones.
These are fur-covered bumps on their skulls, unlike the horns of other animals.
Giraffe skin is blotched in patterns of browns and yellows.
No two giraffes have the same pattern.
The different sub-species have different coat patterns.
Griffith 's experiment, was an experiment done in 1928 by Frederick Griffith.
It was one of the first experiments showing that bacteria can get DNA through a process called transformation.
Griffith used two strains of Pneumococcus.
These bacteria infect mice.
He used a type III-S (smooth) and type II-R (rough) strain.
The III-S strain covers itself with a polysaccharide capsule that protects it from the host 's immune system.
This means that the host will die.
The II-R strain does not have that protective shield around it and is killed by the host 's immune system.
In this experiment, bacteria from the III-S strain were killed by heat, and their remains were added to II-R strain bacteria.
While neither harmed the mice on their own, the blend of the two was able to kill mice.
Griffith was also able to get both live II-R and live III-S strains of pneumococcus from the blood of these dead mice.
He concluded that the type II-R had been "transformed" into the lethal III-S strain by a "transforming principle" that was somehow part of the dead III-S strain bacteria.
Today, we know that the "transforming principle" Griffith saw was the DNA of the III-S strain bacteria.
While the bacteria had been killed, the DNA had survived the heating process and was taken up by the II-R strain bacteria.
The III-S strain DNA contains the genes that form the shielding polysaccharide part from attack.
Armed with this gene, the former II-R strain bacteria were now protected from the host 's immune system and could kill the host.
The exact nature of the transforming principle (DNA) was confirmed in the experiments done by Avery, McLeod and McCarty and by Hershey and Chase.
A guerrilla is a civilian who attacks a regular army.
When civilians attack civilians, it is usually called terrorism.
When two or more armies (representing countries) attack each other, this is a war.
Guerrilla warfare is a war tactic in which people use the land and geography as an advantage against an organized army.
Guerrilla warfare is sometimes practiced from dense areas such as forests, or jungles.
Usually, this army is invading a territory.
Guerrilla is a word of Spanish origin.
It means "little war".
This war tactic was used on the British by the Native Americans.
The natives had an advantage because they used Guerrilla warfare.
This war tactic was also used on the Americans during the Vietnamese War.
General Electric is a big company in the USA.
They make electrical things.
As of 2008, they are the third biggest company in the world.
George Harrison, MBE (25 February 1943 29 November 2001) was an English musician.
He was born and grew up in Liverpool, England, and was first famous as a member of The Beatles.
After the group broke up in 1970, he had a solo career.
He made many albums and worked with other musicians including Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Phil Spector, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Ravi Shankar.
He was also interested in Eastern mysticism and charitable causes.
George 's best-known album was All Things Must Pass, which he made just after the Beatles broke up.
Harrison owned a mansion in England called Friar Park, where he lived from 1970 until he died.
He built his own recording studio inside the mansion, which for a time was better than Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles had made their records.
Having a private studio meant Harrison could work on songs and recordings anytime he wanted.
Ravi Shankar came to Harrison during 1971 with news about a war in Bangladesh, where thousands of people had died and millions more were refugees and starving.
Shankar asked for Harrison 's help to give a benefit show to buy food for them.
Harrison called on many of his musician friends, who put together an all-star charity concert to help the refugees.
The Concert for Bangla Desh, a live recording, became a best-selling album, raised money for the refugees, and brought worldwide attention to the problems in their country.
It also inspired later benefits, including Live Aid in the 1980s.
Harrison found a new musical partner in the 1980s, when Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra began to write and record songs with him.
The two men worked well together and became close friends.
Harrison and Lynne formed another band, the Traveling Wilburys, with fellow musicians Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison.
The Traveling Wilburys recorded two albums, which became hits.
In 1966, Harrison married a model, Pattie Boyd, but they were divorced in 1971, and had no children.
Boyd left Harrison to be with his friend, guitarist Eric Clapton, but all three remained friends.
Harrison married again in 1978, to American-born Olivia Trinidad Arias, who had worked for his record company.
Arias became the mother of Harrison 's son Dhani, whose name is comprised of the names of two notes in the Indian music scale.
Dhani grew up to be a musician like his father, fronting the band thenewno2.
He went to Brown University in the United States.
In the late 1970s Harrison formed a movie production company, Handmade Films, which produced movies including Monty Python 's Life of Brian and Terry Gilliam 's Time Bandits.
The grounds of Harrison 's home, Friar Park, had been more or less open to the public, until the murder of his former bandmate John Lennon late in 1980.
Harrison was very hurt and shocked by Lennon 's death, and was afraid someone might try to harm him or his family.
Afterwards, the gates were locked, and no-entry notices were posted.
In December, 1999, an intruder broke into his home, stabbing him with a knife.
Harrison and his wife Olivia stopped the intruder and called the police.
Harrison recovered.
The man who attacked him is schizophrenic and was acquitted of attempted murder by reason of insanity in November 2000 at Oxford Crown Court.
He was sent to a mental hospital and released in 2002.
In the 1990s, decades of smoking cigarettes caused Harrison to develop throat cancer.
He later developed lung cancer, which caused his death in 2001.
His family issued a last statement from him: "Everything else can wait, but the search for God can not wait, and love one another."
Even music was not as important to Harrison as his wanting people to learn to get along with each other, and to make the world a better place.
A year after Harrison 's death, Jeff Lynne, Dhani Harrison, the two remaining Beatles (Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr), and other musicians held the Concert for George, which remembered Harrison 's music, his life, and his gifts to humanity.
All the profits from the concert were given to charity.
Gunpowder (or gun powder) is a mix of chemical substances (charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter).
It burns very quickly, and creates gases.
Those gases use up more space than the gunpowder they come from, so they push outward.
If the gunpowder is in a small space, the gasses will push on the walls of the space, building up pressure.
In a gun, the pressure pushes against a bullet, causing it to fly out at high speeds.
The pressure is not high enough, though, to destroy the gun barrel.
Gunpowder was probably invented by the Chinese, the first references of black powder, which is a form of gun powder date to the 9th century, when Roger Bacon described the formula of black powder.
According to legend, Chinese alchemists were looking for a formula to create the elixir of life, or the mythical potion that causes whoever drinks it to become immortal, when they accidentally created gunpowder.
Because the powder was highly flammable, or burned very easily, they decided to call it "fire medicine" (Simplified Chinese: \/ Traditional Chinese:).
Shortly after the discovery, the Chinese weaponized the substance, or made weapons out of it, and throughout the centuries they would make many weapons using gunpowder, including rockets, bombs, flamethrowers, and land mines before making cannons and guns.
The oldest weapon that uses gunpowder dates back to a bronze handheld cannon made in northeastern China in 1288.
Gary Arlen Kildall (May 19, 1942 July 11, 1994) was a computer scientist and microcomputer entrepreneur.
Born to parents Joseph and Emma Kildal, Gary studied math at the University of Washington (UW) because he wanted to become a math teacher.
However, he began getting in computer technology.
Joseph was the creator of the CP\/M operating system and the founder of Digital Research, Inc. (DRI).
Kildall was one of the first people to see microprocessors as fully capable computers rather than equipment controllers and to organize a company around this concept.
He also co-hosted the PBS TV show The Computer Chronicles.
Although his career in computing spanned for more than 20 years, he is most known in connection with IBM 's unsuccessful attempt in 1980 to license CP\/M for the IBM PC.
Gary died from alcoholism and hitting his head in 1994 at the age of 52.
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (born August 7, 1942) is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio personality.
He is known as host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion (also known as Garrison Keillor 's Radio Show on United Kingdom 's BBC Radio 4 Extra, as well as on RT in Ireland, Australia 's ABC, and Radio New Zealand National in New Zealand).
Giacomo Puccini (23 December 1858 - 29 November 1924) was the most famous Italian opera composer after Verdi.
He wrote 16 operas, most of which are performed very often today.
Many of his operatic songs are known by many people, especially the aria Nessun dorma from Turandot which was sung by Luciano Pavarotti for the BBC s television coverage of the Football World Cup which was held in Italy in 1990.
Puccini was born in Lucca, Tuscany into a musical family.
He was expected to follow the family tradition and become a church organist.
He started playing the organ in churches near Lucca.
He liked to improvise on the organ, playing popular tunes from Verdi s operas.
He soon realized that he wanted to be an opera composer.
Eventually he persuaded his family to let him study at the Milan Conservatory.
His earliest compositions showed that he had a great talent for writing beautiful melodies and that he was good at writing for the orchestra.
His first opera to be published, Edgar, had a story similar to that of Bizet s Carmen, but it was not a suitable story for Puccini.
Manon Lescaut was the first opera for which Puccini chose the story himself.
It is the same story as Massenet s opera Manon.
This made Puccini internationally famous.
His next opera, La boh me, produced in 1896, is often thought to be his best opera.
He worked with two poets on this opera and, although they quarrelled a lot, the result was a work in which the music flowed beautifully like a conversation.
His next opera was Tosca.
When it was first performed in Rome in 1900 there were rumors that a bomb would be thrown, but nothing happened.
Tosca was a great success.
However, Madama Butterfly was hissed and booed at its first performance in Milan s famous opera house La Scala in 1904.
It was at this time that Puccini married.
He already had a son by Elvira, his wife, who had been married to someone else.
When her husband died, she was able to marry Puccini.
The marriage was not without difficulties.
Elvira accused Puccini of having an affair with their servant girl.
This servant girl committed suicide and there was a court case which resulted (after an autopsy) in Elvira being found innocent.
Puccini was very upset by all this and did not compose much for several years.
When he finally started writing again his new opera La fanciulla del West was set in the American West at the time of the Goldrush.
The music has very Impressionistic harmonies like that of Debussy.
The way he writes for the orchestra shows the influence of Richard Strauss.
The opera was first performed in New York.
The world-famous tenor Enrico Caruso sang the main hero part and Arturo Toscanini was the conductor.
With such a star cast it had to be a great success.
Puccini followed this by writing an operetta and two one-act operas.
The best of these is Gianni Schicchi His last opera is Turandot, which has a fairy-tale like story.
While he was working very hard at it he developed throat cancer.
He died of complication of the disease in autumn 1924 in Brussels.
The whole of Italy went into mourning and Mussolini spoke at the funeral.
Puccini had not quite managed to finish Turandot.
A man called Franco Alfano finished it using the sketches that Puccini had left.
George Dewey Cukor (July 7, 1899 January 24, 1983) was an American movie director.
He made many comedy movies and movies based on books.
Cukor directed several of RKO 's most important movies such as Little Women (1933).
At MGM he directed Dinner at Eight (1933), David Copperfield (1935) Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Camille (1936).
He went on to direct The Philadelphia Story (1940), Adam 's Rib (1949), Born Yesterday (1950), A Star Is Born (1954) and My Fair Lady (1964).
He continued to work into the 1980s.
He was born in New York City and died in Los Angeles, California.
A gas mask is a kind of mask that fits over the face area and nose.
Protecting from poisonous gases, gasoline spills, and tear gas are just a few things a gas mask is used for.
Gas masks were sent all over England.
They were worn everywhere even to sleep they knew Hitler would send no warning at all.
It is power gear.
It was much more safe to put the gas mask on in the blitz.
The Germans did n't attack with gas bombs so the gas masks were not useful.
The gas masks were sent to the whole country.
Gas masks have a type of material which lets good air in.
George Fredrick Handel (German: Georg Friedrich H ndel) (23 February 1685 14 April 1759) was a German composer who went to live in England when he was a young man and later became a naturalised Briton.
Johann Sebastian Bach and Handel were born in the same year.
They were the greatest composers of their time, but they never met.
Handel changed his name to George Frideric Handel when he became British; he removed the dots above the "a" and changed the spelling of Georg and Friedrich.
The German spelling of his name (Georg Friedrich H ndel) is still used by German writers.
Although they both lived in the late Baroque period, Bach and Handel s music developed differently.
Handel wrote many operas and oratorios and by them became very famous.
He took many trips, including to Italy where he learned a lot about composition.
Bach never left central Germany, and most of the time he was a church musician who was not well known by the general public.
Handel wrote over 42 operas.
Later he wrote oratorios.
His most famous oratorio is the Messiah.
He wrote anthems, chamber music and orchestral music including the Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks.
Handel was born in Halle in the northeast of Germany, in today 's Saxony-Anhalt.
His father was a barber and a surgeon.
He started playing the harpsichord and the organ when he was very young.
He was given a clavichord when he was seven and he used to practice it in the attic where his father could not hear him.
At the age of nine he was already composing.
He had a teacher called Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow who was the organist of the big church, the Marienkirche, in Halle.
He learned the organ, harpsichord and violin as well as composition, harmony.
Handel s father did not want him to study music; he wanted him to be a lawyer.
Although Handel 's father died in 1697, Handel enrolled at the University of Halle in 1703.
He studied law for a year because his father wanted him to do so.
After that year, Handel was unhappy studying law.
He decided to stop studying law and become a musician.
He became organist at the Protestant Cathedral in Halle.
The next year he moved to Hamburg where he got a job as violinist and harpsichordist in the orchestra of the opera-house.
Here his first two operas, Almira and Nero, were produced early in 1705.
Two other early operas, Daphne and Florindo, were produced at Hamburg in 1708.
Handel was becoming a good opera composer, but he wanted to learn more, so he went to Italy in 1707.
He spent four years there.
His opera Rodrigo was produced in Florence in 1707, and his Agrippina at Venice in 1709.
Agrippina was very popular and had 26 performances.
It made Handel famous.
He also had three oratorios produced in Rome.
He wrote sacred music (church music) and other pieces in an operatic style, e.g. Dixit Dominus (1707).
In 1710 Handel became Kapellmeister (music director) to George, Elector of Hanover, who would soon be King George I of Great Britain.
The Elector agreed that Handel could have an immediate leave of 12 months so that he could go to London.
He visited London for eight months.
His opera Rinaldo was performed in 1711.
It was the first time an Italian opera had been performed in England.
It was an immediate success.
Handel returned to Hanover in the summer of 1711 and spent a year writing chamber and orchestral music because there was no opera in Hanover.
He was also trying to learn English.
In 1712 the Elector allowed him to make another visit to England.
In England he had patrons (rich people who gave him money).
He had a yearly income of 200 from Queen Anne (while Bach earned as little as eighty pounds in a year).
He was having a lot of success, and so stayed in England instead of returning to his job in the Hanover Court.
In 1712 Queen Anne died and the Elector of Hanover became King of Great Britain.
Handel might have been in trouble for staying in Britain.
According to one story the King forgave Handel because he wrote some lovely music called Water Music which was performed on a boat on the Thames at a royal water party.
This story about the king forgiving Handel is probably not true.
George would have known that Queen Anne was about to die and he would become King of Great Britain and therefore Handel 's master again.
In fact, the new king doubled Handel s salary.
A few years later his salary increased again when he taught music to Queen Caroline s daughter.
In 1724 Handel moved into a newly built house in 25 Brook Street, London, which he rented until his death in 1759, 35 years later.
The house is now called Handel House Museum and is open to the public.
It was here that Handel composed some of his most famous music such as Messiah, Zadok the Priest, and Fireworks Music.
In 1729 Handel 's opera Scipio (Scipio) was performed for the first time.
The march from this work is now the regimental slow march of the British Grenadier Guards.
In the next year he took on British nationality.
In 1731 Handel was commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation ceremony of King George II.
One of these, Zadok the Priest, has been sung at every coronation ceremony since.
Handel spent most of his time working on operas.
From 1722-1726 he was director of the Royal Academy of Music.
This was an organization that put on opera performances.
It had nothing to do with the academy which is called the Royal Academy of Music today where young students study music.
Handel also worked in the management of the King 's Theatres and many of his operas were performed in the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden.
He sometimes traveled to Italy to find new Italian singers and persuade them to come to London.
London became world famous for operas.
In spite of everything Handel was doing for opera he had many enemies as well as friends.
There was a lot of rivalry, especially with a composer called Bononcini whose music is forgotten today.
Handel gave up operatic management in 1740, after he had lost a lot of money in the business.
In April 1739, age 54, he had a stroke.
It was probably this which left his right arm paralysed for a while so that he could not perform, but he made an excellent recovery after six weeks at a health spa in Aix-la-Chapelle.
At this time he started to write oratorios instead of operas.
In 1742 his oratorio Messiah was first performed in Dublin.
Surprisingly, it was not successful in London until 1750 when it was performed in aid of the Foundling Hospital Chapel.
Handel performed it every year there, which brought the hospital about 600 for each performance.
Handel spent most of his time in these later years composing and producing oratorios.
Judas Maccabaeus was particularly popular.
The singers for these oratorios were English and Italian.
They were not world-famous virtuosos but singers whom Handel had trained himself.
In August, 1750, on a journey back from Germany to London, Handel was seriously injured when his carriage overturned.
In 1751 he started to lose his eyesight.
He died, in 1759, in London.
The last concert he went to was his own Messiah.
More than 3,000 mourners went to his funeral.
He was buried with full state honors in Westminster Abbey.
Handel never married, and kept his personal life very private.
He left 20,000 which was a lot of money for those days (Approximately 2800000 pounds today) His niece inherited most of his money.
He also left some of it to friends, servants, relations and charities.
His autographs (the original copies of the music that he wrote) are now mostly in the British Museum.
Handel adopted the spelling "George Frideric Handel" on his naturalization as a British subject, and this spelling is generally used in English speaking countries.
The original form of his name (Georg Friedrich H ndel) is usually used in Germany, but he is known as "Haendel" in France.
There was another composer with a similar name, Handl, who was a Slovene and is more commonly known as Jacobus Gallus.
This can be very hard for cataloguers (people trying to make a list of his music)
Group velocity is often considered to be the wave velocity at which information travels.
Often, this can be seen as the speed at which the envelope of the wave travels.
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 25 October 1400) was an English writer, poet, and philosopher.
He is most famous for writing Canterbury Tales which had 24 stories but was not completed.
He was one of the first writers to write in English.
Chaucer was probably born in London.
His father, John, and grandfather were prosperous wine merchants in London.
The name Chaucer is French and means shoemaker.
However, not many details are known of his early life and education.
By 1357, Chaucer was a page to Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, wife of Lionel, 1st Duke of Clarence.
In 1360, he was captured by the French near Reims during a battle in the Hundred Years ' War.
He was then ransomed and released.
King Edward III gave 16 towards his release.
Chaucer married Phillipa (de) Roet.
She was a lady-in-waiting to the queen and had close family connections to John of Gaunt.
He had about three or four children.
Chaucer may have studied law in the Inner Temple.
He joined the Royal court and traveled around Europe on business for the king.
He became one of the king 's esquires.
One of his first known poems was written in 1369.
It was called The Book of The Duchess, and was written after the death of John of Gaunt 's wife, Blanche.
In 1374, he became Comptroller (in charge of the money) of the Customs for the Port of London.
He did this job for 12 years.
It was a well paid job and Chaucer was quite rich.
When Richard II became king, Chaucer continued to work in Customs.
He was also sent to Europe on several more diplomatic jobs for the king.
Chaucer moved to Kent in 1385 where he had a new position as Justice of the Peace.
He was also elected as one of two knights of the shire to be a member of parliament.
At the end of the year he lost his customs jobs.
His wife, Phillipa, died in 1387.
But on 12 July 1389, he was made the Clerk of the Kings Works, looking after repairs to the royal palaces.
He was given other small positions, including looking after the river banks of the Thames, and as a deputy forester in the Royal Forest.
Over the next few years, Chaucer became poorer and often was given small payments and pensions from the king.
He died at St. Mary 's Chapel in Sevenoaks on 25 October 1400.
Chaucer is buried in Westminster Abbey, in what is now called the Poets ' Corner.
Chaucer did most of his writing between 1369 and 1393.
He is famous for his collection of stories in verse called the Canterbury Tales.
He also wrote The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame and Troilus and Criseyde.
Gavin MacLeod (born Allan George See, February 28, 1931) is an American movie, stage, and television actor who is known for his role as Captain Merrill Stubing in The Love Boat.
He was born in Mount Kisco, New York on February 28, 1931.
He was married to Joan Devore from 1954 until they divorced in 1972, they had four children.
He was married to Patti Kending from 1972 until they divorced in 1982 and remarried in 1985 and are still married.
A general election is an election in which all or most members of a given political body are chosen.
The term is usually used to mean the elections held for a nation 's primary legislative body.
This is different from primary elections, by-elections or local elections.
In the United Kingdom when Parliament is dissolved every seat in the House of Commons becomes vacant and a general election is held.
The genotype is the genetic constitution of an organism, mainly its genome.
The term is contrasted with the term phenotype, as follows:
The terms were invented by Wilhelm Johanssen to distinguish between inherited and environmentally produced variation.
"The distinction was not new.
It had, for instance, been discussed by Francis Galton as nature vs. nurture.
The extent to which the genotype influences the phenotype varies hugely.
Some aspects of the phenotype are almost entirely determined by heredity, such as eye color and blood types.
Human language is an interesting case.
The capacity to learn and speak a language is entirely inherited, but which language is spoken is entirely learned, and hence is environmental.
Graphic design is a practical art which helps in communication.
Visual information is formed in such a way that it produces a message.
This can be done by placing words and pictures in ways that will get the attention of others.
People who do graphic design as work are called graphic designers.
In printed media, graphic design includes typography, organising illustration, book design, page layout, specifying print.
Graphic design can be done in different media.
These include paper, video, labels, and web sites.
"Graphic design" is a vast and varied discipline, using many skills, rules and techniques to be able to provide the right information.
It is both a combination of artistic expression and media relations.
A grphic designer take an idea and makes it ok
The Great Rift Valley is a name given to the continuous geographical trench, about 6,000 kilometres (3,700 mi) in length, that runs from northern Syria in Southwest Asia to central Mozambique in East Africa.
The rift is bordered by a series of mountains and active volcanoes.
It is a site of faults and earthquakes.
Basically, the western part of Africa is rifting away from the eastern part body.
This causes all the geological activity at the Valley.
Far in the future, a sea will run between these two parts of Africa.
The Arabian peninsula is already almost separated.
The whole process is part of plate tectonics.
In eastern Africa, the valley divides into two, the Western Rift Valley and the Eastern Rift Valley.
There are about 20 UNESCO World Heritage Sites which owe their formation to the geography and geology of the Great Rift Valley.
The Western Rift is edged by some of the highest mountains in Africa.
It contains the Rift Valley lakes, which include some of the deepest lakes in the world (up to 1,470 metres deep at Lake Tanganyika).
Much of this area is inside national parks.
Lake Victoria, the second largest area freshwater lake in the world, is between the two branches.
All of the African Great Lakes were formed as the result of the rift, and most lie within its rift valley.
The African Great Lakes are a series of lakes formed by the action of the tectonic East African Rift on the continent of Africa.
They include Lake Victoria, the second largest fresh water lake in the world in terms of surface area, and Lake Tanganyika, the world 's second largest in volume as well as the second deepest.
The African Great Lakes are divided among three different catchments (river basins), and a number, such as Lake Turkana, have internal drainage systems.
These are the largest, in order of size from largest to smallest:
The lakes in the Eastern Rift have no outlet to the sea and tend to be shallow, they have a high mineral content as the evaporation of water leaves the salts behind.
Lake Malawi (or Lake Nyasa: the name is disputed) is the most southern of the Great Lakes, and empties into the great Zambezi River via the Shire River.
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (January 10, 1869 - December 17, 1916) was a Russian peasant, mystical faith healer and a religious pilgrim.
He was also known as the ` Mad Monk ', but was not a monk who lived in a monastery.
Rasputin had a lot of influence over the lives of Tsar Nicholas II, who was the leader of Russia.
His wife, the Tsarina Alexandra, believed that Rasputin was the answer to her prayers.
The Tsar and Tsarina talked with Rasputin about their worries and asked for advice.
Their only son, Tsarevich Alexei, was the heir to the throne.
Alexei was very sick most of the time.
He had hemophelia and it caused bad bleeding even with minor injuries.
Rasputin seemed to be the only person who could heal him.
Because of this influence, the Tsar and his family began to trust Rasputin more with important decisions.
Rasputin made some very bad decisions, including telling the Tsar to go out and personally lead his country 's army, which was fighting in World War I.
Some Russians became very worried about what Rasputin was doing to Russia with his decisions, and tried to kill him.
It took them several tries that failed before Rasputin died.
He was first stabbed by a female conspirator, Khionia Guseva.
Later, Poison was put in his wine but after a long time went by, Rasputin was not even sick.
Next, he was lead into the palace 's basement and got drunk.
He was shot but this did not initially kill him.
He staggered out of the palace still alive.
Rasputin was then followed and shot again.
This shot penetrated his right kidney and lodged in his spine, and would end up killing him.
To be sure he was dead, he was then shot in the forehead at point blank range.
They finally disposed of his body into the Neva River.
Garry Kasparov (born 13 April 1963 in Baku, Azerbaijan) is a Russian chess grandmaster and political activist.
He was born with the name Garry Weinstein, and was the World Chess Champion from 1985 to 2000.
In 1993 he broke away from FIDE to make a rival organization (the PCA), because he felt FIDE had failed to raise enough money for world title matches.
There is controversy about that period.
By any measure, he is one of the greatest chess players of all time, and the highest-rated player before Magnus Carlsen.
Kasparov became the youngest non-disputed World Chess Champion in 1985 at the age of 22.
He held the official FIDE world title until 1993, when an argument with FIDE led him to set up a rival company, the Professional Chess Association.
He continued to hold the "Classical" World Chess Championship until his defeat by Vladimir Kramnik in 2000.
Kasparov lost a match (a series of chess games) against Deep Blue, a computer made by IBM, in 1997.
Lately, retired from competition, he has been coaching Magnus Carlsen, the young player from Norway who is the current world # 1.
After retiring from chess, Kasparov became involved in Russian politics.
In 2005, he traveled around Russia, speaking against Vladimir Putin, who was President of Russia at that time.
The same year he created the United Civil Front, a political movement whose main goal is to dismantle Putin 's regime and restore democracy in Russia.
Kasparov was also one of the founders of The Other Russia, an opposition coalition which unites many left and nationalist politicians.
He helped organize marches of dissenters involving several thousand people rallying against Putin and governors of Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
In October 2007, Kasparov announced his intention of standing for the Russian presidency.
In November 2007, he was detained by police at a rally in Moscow and given a jail sentence of five days.
On 12 December 2007, Kasparov announced that he had to withdraw his presidential candidacy due to inability to rent a hall where at least 500 of his supporters could meet to endorse his candidacy, as is legally required.
Kasparov 's spokeswoman accused the government of using pressure to discourage anyone from renting a hall for the gathering.
In 2008 Kasparov and his United Civil Front joined the Solidarity movement.
Kasparov is among the 34 first signatories and a key organiser of the online anti-Putin campaign Putin must go started in March 2010.
The Flag of Greenland was designed by Greenlander Thue Christiansen.
It features two equal horizontal bands of white (top) and red with a large disk at the center.
The top half of the disk is red, the bottom half is white.
Its local name in the Greenlandic language is Erfalasorput, which means "our flag", but Aappalaartoq (meaning "the red") is also used for both the Greenlandic flag and the Dannebrog.
Today Greenlanders display both the Erfalasorput and the Dannebrog, often side-by-side.
Greenland first thought of the idea of a flag of its own in 1973, when five Greenlanders proposed a green, white and blue flag.
The following year, a newspaper printed eleven design proposals (all but one of which was a Nordic Cross), and polled the people to determine the most popular.
The Dannebrog was better liked than any.
Little came of this effort.
In 1978, Denmark granted home rule to Greenland, making it an equal member of the Danish Kingdom.
The home rule government asked for flag proposals, receiving 555.
293 were made by Greenlanders.
Out of all the designs, the current red-and-white design by Christiansen narrowly won over a green-and-white Nordic cross by a vote of fourteen to eleven.
Christiansen 's red-and-white flag was officially adopted on June 21, 1985.
To honor the tenth anniversary of the Erfalasorput, the Greenland Post Office issued commemorative stamps and a leaflet by its creator.
He described the white stripe as representing the glaciers and ice cap; the red stripe, the ocean; the red semicircle, the fjords; and the white semicircle, the icebergs and pack ice.
The design is also reminiscent of the setting sun half-submerged below the horizon and reflected on the sea.
In the beginning, a gate was a place between two parts of a wall, or a fence which could be opened and closed to let people go through it.
In the Middle Ages, a city gate also allowed people to go into a (walled) city.
Nowadays, people also talk about gates at airports.
When going on an aircraft, people need to get together in a certain area of the airport first.
They then pass through some kind of doorway to get onto the plane.
That is what is called gate.
Invented by Byzantines, Greek fire was a fearsome weapon.
It had the ability to keep burning while on water.
As such, it was often used in naval battles.
The creation of it was a closely guarded secret and has now been lost.
The term "Greek fire" is normally used in English.
However, most other languages use other terms such as "sea fire" (Greek:), "Roman fire" (-RRB-, "war fire" (-RRB-, "liquid fire" (-RRB-, or "processed fire" (-RRB-.
Galicia or Galiza is a nationality in Spain that became a Spanish autonomous community in 1978.
It is in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula.
It shares borders with Portugal to the South and the communities of Castile and Le n and Asturias to the east.
Galicia is a green country with Celtic features.
Since re-gaining autonomy in 1978, Galicia has been governed by the Xunta de Galicia (government of Galicia).
Galicia was strictly governed from 1990 until 2005, during the Manuel Fraga years.
The Xunta de Galicia was then under a socialist president Emilio Perez Touri o, who had made Galicia more liberal than ever before, until 2009.
From March 2009 Partido Popular (right-wing party) won power and the new president is Alberto N ez Feijoo, who won a second term as President in 2012.
Galicia has one main language: Galician "galego".
It has many similarities with Portuguese.
Galego and Portuguese have the same origin.
Spanish is also spoken in Galicia, but mainly as a second language.
Galicia is very famous for its fishing industry and seafood remains an important part of its cuisine.
A very popular dish in Galicia is polbo feira, ("polbo" means octopus).
There are many restaurants that serve seafood in Galicia.
Ernest Gary Gygax (July 27, 1938 March 4, 2008) (IPA: (gaj.
g ks)) was an American writer and game designer.
He was best known for co-creating the early role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) with Dave Arneson in 1974.
Gygax is often thought of as one of the first people to make role-playing games.
The Governor of New South Wales is the oldest political office of Australia.
Captain Arthur Phillip became the first Governor of New South Wales on 7 February 1788.
The Colony of New South Wales was the first British settlement in Australia.
The first governors had almost autocratic powers due to the distance from and poor communications with Great Britain.
In 1824 the New South Wales Legislative Council, Australia 's first legislature, was appointed to help the governor.
Between 1850 and 1861, the Governor of New South Wales was also called the Governor-General.
All letters between the Australian colonies and the British Government were meant to go through the Governor-General.
The other colonies had Lieutenant-Governors.
As they became independent, South Australia in 1836, Tasmania January 1855 and Victoria May 1855 replaced their Lieutenant-Governors with Governors.
Sir William Denison kept the title of Governor-General until his retirement.
The Governor acts on the advice of the head of the elected government, the Premier of New South Wales.
The Governor does have power of the Crown, and has the right to dismiss the Premier.
This power was last used in 1932, when Sir Philip Game dismissed Jack Lang.
If the Governor dies, resigns or is absent their duties are carried out by the Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales.
The Governor of New South Wales used Government House as a home, office and official reception space until 1996.
The Governor 's office is now in the historic Chief Secretary s Building at 121 Macquarie Street.
In 2011, the Premier of New South Wales, Barry O'Farrell, said that this would change and the governor would move back into Government House.
The first Australian-born Governor of New South Wales (or of any Australian state) was Lieutenant General Sir John Northcott in 1946.
All governors since then have been Australian-born except for Gordon Samuels, who was born in the United Kingdom but came to Australia at an early age.
Northcott 's successor, Lieutenant General Sir Eric Woodward (1957), was the first born in New South Wales.
The Governor of Victoria represents the head of state, Elizabeth II in the Australian state of Victoria.
The Governor performs the same tasks at the state level as the Governor-General of Australia at the national level.
The Governor 's office and official residence is Government House in central Melbourne.
The current Governor of Victoria is a former judge, Alex Chernov.
In a Westminster system of parliamentary government, the Governor nearly always acts on the advice of the head of the elected government, the Premier of Victoria.
However, the Governor retains the reserve powers of the Crown, and has the right to dismiss the Premier.
There is also a Lieutenant-Governor and an Administrator.
The Chief Justice of Victoria is the Administrator, unless he or she is the Lieutenant-Governor, in which case, the next most senior judge is the Administrator.
The Lieutenant-Governor takes on the job of the Governor when that post is vacant, when the Governor is out of the State, or is unable to act.
The Administrator takes on those duties if both the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor are unable to act.
The first Australian (and Victorian) born Governor of Victoria was Sir Henry Winneke (appointed 1974).
Apart from Dr Davis McCaughey (b. Ireland), Professor David de Kretser (b. Ceylon) and Alex Chernov (b. Lithuania), all governors since 1974 have been born in Australia.
Before 1855, the Governor-General of New South Wales appointed Lieutenant-Governors to Victoria.
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 2 November 1950) was an Irish writer.
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.
His best known works are his plays, some of which were made into movies.
He wrote many plays about political problems, and they sometimes made him enemies.
For example, he wrote a play about prostitution, and another about women 's rights.
Saint Joan was made into a movie in 1957.
His play Pygmalion was made into a movie twice.
The first Pygmalion movie won him an Academy Award for the best adapted screenplay, 1938.
Later, the play was made into a musical called My Fair Lady.
The movie based on the musical won 8 Academy Awards in 1964.
Shaw was the only person to win a Nobel Prize as well as an Academy Award.
Shaw also wrote musical criticism using the pseudonym (made-up name) Corno di Bassetto (which means: Basset horn).
In 1962, his play Androcles and the Lion was printed in a two-language version.
On one side of the book, the text is written using regular English.
On the other side, it is written using the Shaw alphabet.
Shaw was a vegetarian, did not drink alcohol, and spoke strongly about socialism and women 's rights.
He was also interested in making the English language easier to spell.
In his will, he left money to be used to make a new alphabet.
He wanted the new alphabet to have at least 40 letters, so that each sound could be spelled with just one letter.
Shaw delivered speeches supporting the idea of eugenics (selected breeding to improve the human race) and he became a noted figure in the movement in England.
He sometimes exaggerated his arguments to an extreme to expose the cruelty that might come from this.
The Golden Rule is a moral which says treat others as you would like them to treat you.
This moral is used as a basis in the human rights.
It is called the ` golden ' rule because there is value in having this kind of respect and caring attitude for one another.
People of many religions see the value of this mandate and have similar expressions.
In Christianity, Jesus Christ taught this idea to his disciples and others when he gave his Sermon on the Mount.
It is recorded in the Holy Bible in the book of Matthew, Chapter 7 and verse 12.
Jesus explained to his listeners that all the things that were recorded in the Jewish law and that the prophets had taught about concerning morality was summed up in this one rule.
The context of this statement (Matthew 7) is in regard to God 's mercy and kindness.
The principle that was shared is to not always treat others as they might deserve to be treated, as we may judge some as undeserving, but instead to always be merciful and charitable, not withholding good.
Some philosophers consider the idea that this statement can be interpreted according to one 's personal ethics, which may include wishing harm to one 's self, so that it instead becomes permissive to harm others.
What Jesus said was to not be judgemental, as we all make mistakes, do not focus on the behavior of others, but instead focus on your own behavior and attitude and let it be good.
In other religions and belief systems there is a similar concept of "the ethic of reciprocity", also called the Golden Rule.
However, there is an important distinguishing trait about the Golden Rule of Christianity.
The "gold" in the "Golden Rule" is given without expectation of the act or attitude being recipricated.
If every one gave freely of themselves in this way we would become rich indeed and perhaps begin to see the goodness of God in effect as He intended it to be.
The Governor of the State of New York is the chief executive of the U.S. state of New York.
The governor is the head of the executive branch of New York 's state government and the commander-in-chief of the state 's military and naval forces.
The officeholder is known as His\/Her Excellency while in office.
A globular cluster is a group of stars of a similar age which often orbits the central bulge of a galaxy.
Gravity holds clusters together and gives them their spherical shape.
Towards the center of a clusters there are many stars in a relatively small space.
Globular clusters occur in the halo of a galaxy and in its disk.
Those in the halo contain many more stars and are much older than the less dense open clusters in the disk.
Globular clusters are fairly common: there are about 150 to 158 known globular clusters in the Milky Way.
Large galaxies can have more: Andromeda may have as many as 500.
Some giant elliptical galaxies, particularly those at the centres of galaxy clusters, such as M87, have as many as 13,000 globular clusters.
These globular clusters orbit the galaxy out to huge distances, 40 kiloparsecs (approximately 131,000 light-years) or more.
Every galaxy of sufficient mass in the Local Group has its group of globular clusters, and almost every large galaxy surveyed has a system of globular clusters.
The Sagittarius Dwarf and Canis Major Dwarf galaxies appear to be in the process of donating their associated globular clusters (such as Palomar 12) to the Milky Way.
This demonstrates how many of this galaxy 's globular clusters might have been acquired in the past.
The first globular cluster discovered was M22 in 1665, but individual stars in a globular cluster were not seen until Charles Messier observed M4.
The first eight globular clusters discovered are shown in the table.
The M before a number refers to the catalogue of Charles Messier, while NGC is from the New General Catalogue.
William Herschel began a survey program in 1782 using larger telescopes and was able to resolve the stars in all 33 of the known globular clusters.
In addition he found 37 additional clusters.
In Herschel 's 1789 catalog of deep sky objects, his second such, he became the first to use the name globular cluster as their description.
The number of globular clusters discovered continued to increase, reaching 83 in 1915, 93 in 1930 and 97 by 1947.
A total of 152 globular clusters have now been discovered in the Milky Way galaxy, out of an estimated total of 180 20.
These additional, undiscovered globular clusters are believed to be hidden behind the gas and dust of the Milky Way.
George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, KG, KT, PC (28 January 1784 14 December 1860) was a Scottish Tory\/Peelite politician.
He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1852 until 1855.
A gallon is a unit of measurement used to measure volume.
People have used many different gallons throughout history.
There are three types of gallon still in use.
The Gini coefficient (also known as the Gini index or Gini ratio) is a measure of differences in income.
It was developed by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1912.
The Gini coefficient is usually a number between 0 and 1 (or 0 to 100).
0 means a country where the income is equally distributed.
On the other hand, 1 means that one person owns everything but the rest owns nothing.
In reality, all scores are between 0.25 and 0.6 (between 25 and 60 on the 0 to 100 scale).
The table below is about the world Gini coefficient (not by single countries).
The table below shows the income Gini coefficient of the United States from 1947 to 2009.
The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is a British intelligence agency.
Its work continues that of the Bletchley Park team.
GCHQ collects, analyses and passes on signals from many parts of the world.
This is called "signals intelligence" (SIGINT).
It would include all forms of free-to-air signals plus many interceptions of covert communication.
Computers scan the signals for key words of phrases, and flag any which contain key words.
The second job of GCHQ is to crack the cyphers (codes) of sources it is interested in.
It is this part of the work which Bletchley Park used to do.
It also arranges for our own secret transmissions to be coded securely.
This is the world of cryptography, ways and means of getting into other people 's secrets, and keeping our secrets secure.
This is done by CESG (Communications-Electronics Security Group).
As an organization, GCHQ is under the guidance of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).
GCHQ was started after the First World War as the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS or GC&CS), by which name it was known until 1946.
As part of ECHELON, it works with Intelligence agencies from other allied countries.
Francis Gary Powers (August 17, 1929 August 1, 1977) was an American pilot and spy.
He was known for creating the Central Intelligence Agency U-2 spy plane which was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over Soviet Union airspace.
He was held as Prisoner of War under the Soviet Union.
This caused the 1960 U-2 incident.
This played a large role in the Cold War.
He was born in Jenkins, Kentucky.
Powers died in Los Angeles County, California in a helicopter crash, aged 47.
Gene therapy means putting in a working gene to a person who has a damaged gene.
The European Commission has approved this method for one particular treatment.
The treatment by the product Glybera uses a virus to infect muscle cells with a working copy of the gene.
The European Commission has given Glybera marketing authorisation, which means it can be sold throughout the EU.
One in a million people have damaged copies of the lipase gene needed to break down fats.
Fat builds up in their blood; this leads to pain and inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis).
It is life-threatening.
Up to now, the only way to manage the condition is to have a very low-fat diet.
When used in this way, a virus is a vector.
That means it is a carrier; the gene has been inserted into the viral genome, and the virus sticks it into the human cells.
The technique is called transfection.
This technique is different from the gene knockout technique, which does not use a viral vector.
China was the first country to approve the commercial production of a gene therapy, in 2003.
That gene therapy is for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) a cancer that occurs in 10 % of new cancers in China.
There are 2.5 million new cancer patients every year in China.
Sold under the brand name Gendicine, the world 's first commercial gene therapy also uses a virus to insert the gene into the human genome.
The possibility of gene therapy was talked about as soon as the roles of DNA and RNA were known about.
The first specific publication was in 1972.
Many more types of gene therapy are in the trial stage.
It is clear that a cycle of events will be part of future clinical medicine: DNA sequence analysis) identify defective genes) fix genes with gene therapy or gene knockout.
There are sometimes problems of side-effects; these may be discovered at the trial stage.
There is now a database which lists all known clinical trials.
The Gulf of Oman is an arm of the Arabian Sea that borders Iran and south-western Pakistan to the north and Oman and the United Arab Emirates to the south.
The Gulf of Oman used to be called The Persian Sea on old maps.
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany.
Hermann G ring formed the unit in 1933.
Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of SS national leader Heinrich Himmler, who in 1936 was appointed Chief of German Police (Chef der Deutschen Polizei) by Hitler.
The name stands for Geheime Staatspolizei.
This means "secret state police".
It was under the overall administration of the Schutzstaffel (SS).
The Gestapo were allowed to arrest people that offended the government in any way.
The government could use the secret police to accuse and arrest anyone they wanted without being questioned.
The Gegenshein, also called Counterglow, is a very faint light which can be seen in the sky at night.
The light can be seen at the point in the sky that is exactly opposite of the Sun.
It is very hard to see.
The light can only be seen from areas with no other lights (away from cities) and on nights with no moon.
This effect is caused by matter spread around that reflect the light from the Sun, and is related to the zodiacal light.
A glyph is an element of writing.
Example: the ligature ' ' in arch ology represents a and e letters.
More exactly, a glyph is an element in an agreed set of symbols.
A mark used in a language is a glyph, but in another language it may not be a glyph.
For example, an 'n' with tilde,, is used only in Spanish, as in pi ata.
It is not a glyph in English.
A goth is a person who listens to gothic music.
Goths often wear black clothes and unusual jewelry.
Both goth men and goth women often wear make-up.
The goth subculture originated in the early 1980s among fans of the first gothic rock group, Bauhaus.
The word Goth comes from the word Gothic which actually means gloomy or dark.
This meaning of the word comes from gothic fiction, a type of literature popular during the late 18th and early 19th century.
People who call themselves a Goth are those who live up the meaning of the name through wearing clothes or putting on makeup that is in colors that represent death, decay, or gloominess, such as the color black, deathly white face makeup, dark bloody red colors, or the tones of the color puce.
Goth people also make and listen to Goth music.
Goth people are often mistaken to be emo or punk because of the everyday stereotypes.
Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese franchise of different media.
It was originally published as a manga series, written and illustrated by Masamune Shirow.
It told the story of a fictional counter-cyberterrorist organization.
It has been made into a series of anime television series and movies, and a series of video games.
Goshen is a city in the state of Indiana, in the United States.
The Gallipoli peninsula (l p li;;) is in Turkish Thrace, the European part of Turkey.
To the west there is the Aegean Sea and to the east there are the Dardanelles straits.
After an earthquake in 1354, the Greek city of Gallipoli was abandoned, then occupied by Turks from Anatolia.
This made it the first Ottoman position in Europe.
The peninsula was part of the Byzantine Empire.
The Ottoman Empire slowly conquered it from 13th century to the 15th century.
By the 19th century, thirty thousand people lived in the city: Greeks, Turks, Armenians and Jews.
It was a big military camp for the British and French forces during the Crimean War (1854).
It was also a stopping-off point on the way to Constantinople.
In World War I, Gallipoli was the site of the Gallipoli Campaign.
The name is from Greek"" (Kallipolis), meaning "Beautiful City".
In antiquity, it was called the Thracian Chersonese.
Gram staining (or Gram 's method) is a way of classifying bacteria into two large groups: gram-positive and gram-negative.
The name comes from its inventor, Hans Christian Gram.
Gram 's method stains bacteria according to the chemical and physical properties of their cell walls.
First, a violet dye is put on the bacteria.
This dye stains peptidoglycan, a thick layer that is only found in gram-positive bacteria.
After the first stain, another stain (usually safranin or fuchsin) gives all gram-negative bacteria a red or pink color.
The Gram stain is almost always the first step in the identification of a bacterial organism.
However, not all bacteria can be classified by this technique.
Bacteria for which the method does not work are called ` gram-variable ' or ` gram-indeterminate '.
Gram developed the technique working with another scientist, Carl Friedl nder in a hospital in Berlin.
However, Gram first used the test to make bacteria in the lungs easier to see.
He published his finished method in 1884.
A Greyhound is a dog breed that is skinny, has long legs, and runs faster than any other breed of dog.
It is one of the oldest breeds of dogs.
For centuries, people have raced them in some parts of the world.
Greyhound racing is a bit like horse racing in many ways.
In recent years, many Greyhounds have been mistreated or killed especially after they get too old to race, but many animal rights rescue groups try to stop that and to help them be adopted by people to keep as pets.
Glucose is a simple carbohydrate, or sugar.
It is one of several kinds of sugars.
It is important because cells in an organism use it as a source of energy.
Turning glucose into energy is called cellular respiration, which is done inside the cells of a living organism.
Glucose is made by plants in a process called photosynthesis.
It can also be made by animals in their liver or kidneys.
Having the right amount of glucose available in a person 's body is important.
It can be measured with a simple blood test.
People that do not have enough glucose have low blood sugar levels.
This is a health condition called hypoglycemia.
People with too much glucose have hyperglycemia.
They might have a health condition called diabetes.
Its chemical formula is C6H12O6.
This means it has 6 carbon atoms, 12 hydrogen atoms, and 6 oxygen atoms bonded together.
How sugars work, and how glucose can be formed, was studied by a German chemist named Emil Fischer in the 1890s.
His work earned him the 1902 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
There are two forms of glucose, the - and - forms.
The only difference between them is the position of the hydroxyl group, above and below the plane of the ring of the molecule.
For - glucose, the hydroxyl (- OH) group is located below the ring, while for - glucose, the (- OH) group is located above.
Giovanni Boccaccio (June 16, 1313 - December 21, 1375) was an Italian author and poet.
He wrote several famous works, such as On Famous Women and the Decameron.
Giuseppe Verdi (b. Roncole near Busseto, 9 or 10 October 1813; died Milan 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer of operas.
Verdi and Richard Wagner were the greatest composers of opera in the 19th century although they were completely different from one another.
When Verdi was a young man the most famous opera composers in Italy were Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini who wrote in the bel canto tradition.
This meant that their operas had beautiful tunes which were written for singers to show off their voices, even if what they sang did not suit the story.
During his long life Verdi changed opera so that it did not have to obey old-fashioned rules.
He made the drama the most important thing and the music is there to help the drama; that said, Verdi is most remembered for the power of his music.
The small village where Verdi was born lies in the valley of the river Po in the north of Italy.
It was a poor district.
His father was an innkeeper who had a small farm.
The young boy must have been very talented.
He was given a spinet which he kept all his life.
At the age of 9 he often played the organ for church services in the village when the organist was away.
A few years later he composed music for the amateur orchestra in Busseto.
A man called Antonio Barezzi knew many important people and he helped Verdi a lot.
Later Verdi married his daughter.
Barezzi sent him to Milan so that he could study, but Verdi had not been taught the piano properly and he did not get a place in the music conservatory.
He had some private lessons and learned a lot about opera as well as about literature and politics.
In 1839 he composed an opera: Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio, which was performed in La Scala, the world-famous opera house in Milan.
It is not one of his greatest operas, but it helped him to become well-known and he was asked to write three more operas for La Scala.
When his next opera was produced it was not a success: the audience did not like it and they hissed and booed.
There was also tragedy in his personal life at this time: his two children and his wife all died.
Verdi managed to overcome his unhappiness in 1842 when he produced his opera Nabucco.
This was a great success and made him world-famous.
He started to work very hard, composing two operas a year.
He not only had to write the music but organize all the people to perform it.
It was a huge workload.
His opera Ernani (1844) was one of the best from this period.
In 1847 he had another big success with Macbeth.
This opera, based on Shakespeare s famous play, is still one of the best-loved of all operas.
He was becoming more amazing.
For centuries Italy had been a collection of several countries, each with their own ruler.
In the 1850s there was a lot of political unrest in the country.
Verdi often wrote music for large choruses in his operas.
The words of these choruses were often about fighting for freedom, and it was often thought that the songs were encouraging people to revolt.
The song Va pensiero from his opera Nabucco was about the Hebrew slaves who were captive in Babylon.
People chanted it in the streets with the words suitably changed.
Verdi became a great national hero.
Italy eventually became one country in 1861.
Giuseppina Strepponi was the soprano who sang the part of Abigaille in Nabucco.
Verdi fell in love with her.
She had lived with another man and had three children so she felt that she was not good enough for Verdi.
They eventually married in 1859.
She was a great support to him until her death in 1897 although Verdi was not an easy husband to live with.
He moved back to Busseto with her.
He continued to travel a lot but did not let his wife come with him, leaving her behind in Busseto where she was not happy because many people there did not like her.
Three more famous operas were written at this time: Rigoletto in 1851 and Il trovatore (The Troubadour) and La traviata, both in 1853.
These operas have many tunes which became famous.
They are full of exciting drama in which the characters are very skilfully described by the music.
The music is not divided so clearly into recitative and aria like it had been for two centuries.
Instead, the music is developing all the time, the arias run straight into the following music.
He had a brilliant sense of drama, but he often had to fight hard to stop producers making changes to what he had written.
Verdi often had trouble with the censors (the officials who decide whether the opera should be allowed to be performed).
His opera Rigoletto was based on a story called Le roi s amuse by Victor Hugo.
The attempted murder of a king was not thought to be a suitable subject.
Verdi had to change the king into a duke in his story and make some other changes before the opera could be performed.
The story of his opera Traviata, based on a novel by Alexandre Dumas fils, was also thought to be immoral.
At the first performance the audience laughed because the heroine, who is supposed to be dying of consumption, was very fat.
However, the opera soon became enormously popular.
Verdi had become very famous by now, and was asked to compose for the Op ra in Paris.
He had to write operas in the French style: operas with five acts and a ballet based on a serious story.
None of the operas he wrote at this time for Paris belong to his best works.
He was more inspired when writing for the Italian theaters.
Simon Boccanegra has a very complicated plot, but the characters are described beautifully by the music.
Un ballo in maschera (The masked ball) was about the murder of King Gustav III of Sweden.
Again the censors did not like it and he had to change the story to a setting in Boston which rather spoiled the story.
In the 1860s his best works were La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny), written for St Petersburg, Don Carlos written for the Paris Op ra, and Aida for the new opera house in Cairo in Egypt.
Aida is considered one of his most perfect works.
The first performance was not without difficulties: Verdi was having a long argument with the conductor Mariani who refused to go to Cairo to conduct it.
The argument was made worse by the newspapers who accused Verdi of taking Mariani s girlfriend.
This caused a great scandal.
Verdi retired in the 1870s.
He was a rich man who owned a lot of land.
He gave a lot of money to charities, particularly to one charity for elderly musicians.
Even in retirement he was persuaded by his publishers to write two more operas.
He became fascinated by Shakespeare and he wrote Otello to a libretto by Arrigo Boito.
This was a brilliant libretto and it helped him to write a great masterpiece in which every little detail of the story is beautifully described by the music.
His very last opera, Falstaff (1893) is based on Shakespeare s Merry Wives of Windsor.
Verdi continued to write a few religious pieces in his old age.
He died of a stroke in Milan in 1901.
Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid (- Hydroxybutyric acid, commonly shortened to GHB; other names include 4-hydroxybutanoic acid and sodium oxybate) is a chemical substance.
Small quantities of it can be found in the central nervous system of many animals.
It can also be discovered in wine, beef and small citrus fruits.
In the central nervous system, GHB is involved in the exchange of information.
It interacts with other neurotransmitters, such as gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA).
Many countries have regulated it as an illegal drug, even though it can be used in medicine.
It can be used as an anesthetic, and a sedative.
In the past it has been used to treat insomnia and depression.
It can also help people who have a problem with alcoholism or cataplexy.
In patients with narcolepsy it has been used to treat sleepiness during the day.
Athletes have used it to make their performance better.
The drug has been used as a recreational drug.
This is because it can make a person euphoric.
Many countries have made it illegal if it is not used as medicine.
Its most common name as an illegal drug is probably liquid Ecstasy.
However, ecstasy is a different drug that is unrelated to GHB.
GHB is naturally produced in the human body 's cells.
Its chemical structure is similar to that of ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate.
As a supplement or drug, it is used most as a salt.
GHB is also produced as a result of fermentation.
Small amounts of the substance can be found in some beers and wines.
GHB can cause ` GHB comas '.
This is when people faint or become unconscious.
This is what causes most deaths.
GHB is a depressant of the central nervous system.
Its effects have been described as similar to those of alcohol or ecstasy.
People feel in a good mood.
They also lower their inhibitions.
If the dose is increased, the symptoms include nausea, drowsiness, breathing problems, amnesia, unconsciousness and death.
The effect of GHB lasts between 1.5 and 3 hours, but may be longer.
They can be longer if the drug is mixed with alcohol, or a large dosis was taken.
Certain substances are changed to GHB in the stomach.
One such drug, called "pro-drug" is gamma-butyrolactone.
Such products are also a problem.
Lots of them are used in industrial processes.
An example of this are paint strippers.
What is fine for use in industry may be bad for humans.
Giordano Bruno (1548 17 February 1600), born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian philosopher, priest, mathematician, and astronomer.
He is best known as believing in the infinity of the universe.
His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model.
Bruno thought the Sun was just one of an infinite number of independently moving heavenly bodies.
He is the first man to have thought the stars we see at night are identical in nature to the Sun.
For publishing beliefs contrary to Roman Catholic dogma, he was burnt at the stake as a heretic by the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church.
Bruno also wrote extensive works on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles.
Bruno did accept and promote Copernicus ' idea that the Earth revolves round the Sun.
Many believe this was one of main reasons for his downfall; others think his theological beliefs were more critical.
In 1584 he published two dialogues which argued for his idea on astronomy.
Eight years later he was arrested, and his trial took another eight years.
His accusers demanded complete recantation of all his ` erroneous ' beliefs.
He refused, and went to his death.
Later the Inquisition used his example to terrify Galileo into withdrawing his works from publication.
Geddy Lee (born Gary Lee Weinrib on July 29, 1953 in Toronto, Ontario) is the Canadian bass guitarist, singer, and synth player of the rock band Rush.
He is known for melodic basslines and high pitched singing.
In the 1970s, Geddy Lee mainly used Rickenbacker 4001 basses.
For the Grace Under Pressure album he used Steinberger basses.
From the mid-80 's to mid-90 's he used Wal basses.
Currently, he uses Fender Jazz basses.
Gastroenterology is a special type of medicine.
It is about the digestive system.
Diseases of the gastrointestinal tract are the focus.
The tract includes the organs from mouth to anus.
Physicians in this type of medicine are called gastroenterologists.
Gulag describes a vast network of slave labor camps operated by the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the 1950s.
From the time that the Soviet Union was founded in 1917, it imprisoned people who disagreed and spoke out against it.
This was in fact no different from what Imperial Russia did in previous decades, with its katorga camps.
But the Soviet Union camp system eventually grew to be one of the biggest prison systems in existence.
During the 1920s, the Soviet Union imprisoned more and more people that disagreed with it.
It believed that it was better to put these people to work and make their labor and goods part of the national economy.
The Gulag system was officially created in 1930.
During the 1930s there was a lot of fear of the Soviet government.
Police officials were encouraged to round up and imprison many citizens for the most trivial offenses, even if they were innocent, and this caused the Gulag system to swell.
By 1939 there were 1.3 million people in labor camps.
Even though the Gulag is often associated with Siberia, labor camps were located nationwide.
Siberian camps greatly simplified the problem of keeping prisoners from running away, though it was harder to feed these camps and move goods in and out because of the vast distances involved.
The Gulag system died during the 1950s after the death of Stalin, and many people were released starting in 1954.
The Gulag program was ended with a government decree in 1960.
It is thought that as many as 20 million people had been in a Gulag camp at one time or another.
A Geiger counter (sometimes called Geiger-M ller counter) is an instrument that measures ionizing radiation such as alpha particles, beta particles, or gamma rays.
It is best known as a hand held radiation survey instrument, but it can also be used as a bench instrument or permanently installed.
The original operating principle was discovered in 1908 and since the subsequent development of the Geiger-M ller tube in 1928 the counter has been a very popular instrument due to its robust sensing detector and element and relatively low cost.
The radiation sensor is a Geiger-Muller tube which gives out an electronic signal when radiation is present.
The readout is counts or radiation dose.
The counts display is commonly "counts per second".
Radiation dose rate is displayed in a unit such as the sievert.
The readout can be analog or digital, and modern instruments have communications with a computer or network.
There is usually an option to produce audible representing the radiation intensity.
This allows the user to concentrate on manipulation of the instrument without looking at the display.
For alpha particles and low energy beta particles the "end window" type of GM tube is used as these particles have a limited range even in free air and are easily stopped by a solid material.
Geiger counters can be used to detect gamma radiation, and for this the windowless tube is used.
A special type of the Geiger tube is used to measure neutrons.
For hand-held units there are two fundamental physical configurations: the "integral" unit, with both detector and electronics in the same unit, and the "two-piece" design which has a separate detector probe and an electronics module connected by a short cable.
There is a particular type of gamma instrument known as a "hot spot" detector which has the detector tube on the end of a long pole or flexible conduit.
These are used to measure high radiation gamma locations whilst protecting the operator by means of distance shielding.
In 1908 Hans Geiger, developed a technique for detecting alpha particles that would later be used in the Geiger-muller tube.
This counter was only capable of detecting alpha particles but in 1928 Geiger and Walther M ller developed the sealed Geiger-M ller tube which could detect more types of ionizing radiation and it became a practical radiation sensor.
Once this was available, Geiger counter instruments could be produced relatively cheaply.
Gerrymandering is when a political group tries to change a voting district to create a result that helps them or hurts the group who is against them.
It is named after Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814).
Gerrymandering works by wasting votes.
It puts more votes of winners into the district they will win so the losers win in another district.
If we have Group A and Group B both trying to win in a district.
Group A has 40 votes and Group B has 50.
In another district Group A knows Group B will win for sure.
Group A changes the voting district so that 11 votes are moved to the other district.
Now they will win 40 votes to 39.
Gin is a type of alcoholic drink with a high amount of alcohol in it, usually about 35-50 % alcohol by volume.
It was invented in the Netherlands in the 17th century, and soon became very popular in England.
This became a problem when many people drank themselves to death, because gin was cheap to make and contained so much alcohol.
Gin is flavored with juniper berries.
Today, gin is usually a dry liquor, which means that it is not very sweet.
Gin is also very popular in cocktails - two of the most common of these are the Gin & Tonic (gin mixed with tonic water) and the martini (gin mixed with vermouth, usually with an olive added).
Gin is still one of the most popular liquors to this day.
The Gall Peters projection is an equal-area map projection.
It is a map style that has areas near the equator appear to be smaller than they are.
Those areas closer to the poles appear larger.
It was named after James Gall and Arno Peters.
A controversy came up in the late 20th century about the political implications of map design.
Maps based on this projection are promoted by UNESCO.
They are also widely used by British schools.
Gone with the Wind is a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell.
It tells the story of Scarlett O'Hara, and her adventures in the American South (and in the plantation of Tara) during the Civil War.
During the book, she falls in love with Rhett Butler, a city gentleman.
It is one of the most famous books of its time, and was made into a movie with the same name.
The title takes its name from the lines an Ernest Dowson poem: "I have forgot much, Cynara!
gone with the wind."
(This line also appears in the book.)
Critics and historians have disagreed with its views of Confederacy and the American South before the Civil War.
But it is true to the events of the time, and also has a well-written account of the fall of Atlanta in 1864.
The book won the Pulitzer Prize on May 3, 1937.
In 1991, Alexander Ripley wrote its official sequel, Scarlett.
Three years later, it was made as a television miniseries.
In 2001, the copyright holders of the original book tried to stop sales of Alice Randall 's The Wind Done Gone.
(The book retold Mitchell 's story from a slave 's point of view.)
The resulting lawsuit allowed the book to be published; it was seen, based on rules in the First Amendment, as a parody.
George Washington Carver (c. January 1864 January 5, 1943) was an American educator, botanist (someone who works with plants), and inventor.
He is best known for his work with peanuts, sweet potatoes, and other crops.
Carver 's reputation is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes, which also aided nutrition for farm families.
He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life.
The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes using peanuts.
He also developed and promoted about 100 products made from peanuts that were useful for the house and farm, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline, and nitroglycerin.
He received numerous honors for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP.
He was born into slavery in January 1864 in Diamond, Missouri.
The date of his birth is unknown.
He studied in Simpson College when he was 22.
Much of Carver 's fame is based on his research.
He died on January 5, 1943 after a fall he had in his home in Tuskegee, Alabama on January 5, 1943.
The Geelong Football Club, the Cats, is an Australian Rules Football team that plays in the Australian Football League.
The club is based in the city of Geelong, Victoria.
The club started in July 1859, and had played continuously since then, which makes it the second oldest club in any code, in the world.
The club was an original member of the Victorian Football Association which formed in 1877.
It left the association with a number of other clubs to form the Victorian Football League in 1897.
It is now a member of the Australian Football League.
Gavrilo Princip (25 July 1894 28 April 1918) was the Serb who shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the wife of the Archduke, Archduchess Sophie Chotek.
These deaths are considered the main cause of First World War (World War I).
Princip was born in Obljaj a poor area of Bosnia.
As a young man he joined a small group who wanted the Slavs in the south of Austria-Hungary to join with Serbia in a new country.
They called themselves "Young Bosnia".
A group of powerful people in Serbia decided to help them.
Those powerful people were called the Black Hand.
They gave ` Young Bosnia ' guns and small bombs.
When they heard that Franz Ferdinand was coming to Sarajevo, six of them took the bombs and guns and waited for Ferdinand to drive past.
They were going to kill Ferdinand when he drove past.
Every one of them failed.
After they all failed, Princip went to a cafe to buy a sandwich.
When Princip came out of the cafe, he saw Ferdinand in his car.
The driver of the car had driven his car the wrong way and he stalled the car while trying to turn.
Princip walked up and shot Ferdinand.
He wanted to shoot the general who was also sitting in the car, but Ferdinand 's wife Sophie threw her arms around Ferdinand.
She was in the way, and Princip shot her instead of the general.
At his trial, Princip said he did it because he loved his people.
The Austrians thought it was a very bad crime, but they could not kill him because he was only 19 years old.
The law in Austria-Hungary said only people older than 20 could be killed, even when the crime was as bad as killing royalty like Ferdinand.
They said Princip must stay in prison for 20 years.
During his time in the prison, one of his arms was amputated.
He died in prison of tuberculosis and blood loss in the year 1918.
Because this crime happened, Austria-Hungary gave Serbia a list of things that Serbia had to do, called an "ultimatum", to stop things like this from happening any more.
But it was just about impossible for Serbia to do all the things on the list fast enough, because the Austrians really wanted war with Serbia.
Their German allies also wanted a big war.
This led to many of the European countries to start fighting.
Greenwich Village is an area on the western part of southern\/downtown Manhattan.
It is sometimes called The Village.
The Village is mainly residential.
Greenwich Village is bordered by Broadway to the east, Hudson River to the west, Houston Street to the south and 14th Street to the north.
Originally, Greenwich Village was a hamlet separate to New York City.
The grid plan for its streets is less orderly than in parts of Manhattan that were built later.
The village is located on what used to be marshland.
In the 16th century, Native Americans called it Sapokanikan which means tobacco field.
In the 1630s, it was turned into pasture by the Dutch, who called it Noortwyck.
In 1664, when the English captured the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, and Greenwich Village developed as a hamlet.
In 1712, it officially became a village, and was named Grin ` wich in the 1713 Common Council records.
Following a yellow fever epidemic in 1822, many New York residents moved to the healthier air of Greenwich; where many stayed.
In the 19th century, it was known as Washington Square.
The Governor of Michigan is the chief executive of the U.S. State of Michigan.
The current Governor is Rick Snyder, a member of the Republican Party.
From the time the state was created until the election of 1966, governors were elected to two-year terms.
Elections are held in November and the governor took office the next January.
Until 1851, elections were held in odd-numbered years.
A new state constitution was created in 1850 and took effect in 1851.
Because of this, there was a single one-year term of governor in 1851.
After this, elections were held on even years.
The constitution adopted in 1963 changed the governor 's term to four years, starting in 1967.
Since then, elections for governor have been two years before U.S. Presidential elections (for example, Presidential elections were in 2000 and 2004, elections for governor were in 1998 and 2002).
The winner of the election takes office at noon on January 1 of the year after the election.
In 1992, a change to the Michigan constitution said that a person could only be governor for two terms.
Before this, they were not limited as to how many terms they could serve.
John Engler, the governor at the time, served three terms as his first term took place before the change was made.
Engler was reelected in 1994 and 1998 before being term limited in 2002.
Forty-eight people have been governor of the state.
Before becoming a state, there were five governors of the Michigan Territory.
Stevens T. Mason, Michigan 's first governor, also served as a territorial governor.
He was elected governor at age 23 as a member of the Democratic Party in 1835 and served until 1840.
Mason was the youngest state governor in United States history.
Jennifer Granholm became the first female Governor of Michigan on January 1, 2003.
She served for 8 years, until January 1, 2011.
G tterd mmerung is an opera by Richard Wagner.
It is the fourth and last of the cycle of operas that together tell a story called Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).
The story continues from the end of the third opera which was called Siegfried.
"G tterd mmerung" is the German name for "Ragnar k".
G tterd mmerung is the longest of the four operas.
It takes about five hours to perform.
It consists of a prologue and three acts.
Wagner finished composing the opera in the autumn of 1874.
It was first performed on 17 August 1876 as part of the complete Ring cycle.
The three Norns, daughters of Erda the Earth Goddess, are spinning the rope of destiny.
This rope is a symbol of what has to happen in the end.
They take it in turns to tell the story of the past, spinning as they sing and passing on the rope to the next one.
The first Norn tells how Wotan went to drink from the Well of Wisdom for which he lost an eye.
He then cut a spear from a tree which then died.
The second Norn tells how a young hero broke Wotan s spear and how the gods were sent from Valhalla to chop down the World Ash.
The third Norn tells how the logs from the ash tree have been piled round Valhalla ready for a fire that will burn everything.
The Norns have visions of the future.
The rope breaks.
The Norns disappear into the earth.
Br nnhilde and Siegfried come out of a cave by the rock where they were left at the end of the third opera.
Siegfried has to go off to do heroic deeds.
He gives Br nnhilde the ring as a token of his love for her.
She gives him her horse which is called Grane (pronounce: GRAH-ne).
Siegfried travels down the river Rhine.
Act One takes place in the Hall of the Gibichung palace.
Gunther is the chief of the Gibichungs.
His half-brother Hagen tells him he would look more important if he got married.
He also says that Gunther s sister Gutrune ought to get married.
He tells him about Br nnhilde who, he thinks, is still asleep on the rock surrounded by fire that no one except Siegfried would be able to get through.
He says that if they manage to get Siegfried to marry Gutrune, then she could persuade him to go and catch Br nnhilde for Gunther.
He says that they could give Siegfried a potion (a special drink) which would make him forget that he loved Br nnhilde.
They hear Siegfried s horn outside and the great hero arrives.
Siegfried asks Hagen whether he knows him.
Of course, Hagen does.
Siegfried is carrying the magic tarn helmet which allows a person to change their shape or become invisible.
Siegfried, however, does not know what the tarn helmet can do, and Hagen has to explain it to him.
Gutrune appears and offers Siegfried a drink.
It is the potion which is going to make him forget any other woman.
He drinks to the health of Br nnhilde.
As soon as he has drunk it he looks at Gutrune and is in love with her.
He agrees to marry her, and he agrees to get a wife for Gunther.
Hagen tells him about Br nnhilde on the rock.
Siegfried has forgotten about her.
He agrees to put on the tarn helmet and disguise himself as Gunther and to go and get Br nnhilde.
He goes off, leaving Hagen guarding the palace.
The next scene takes place on the top of the Valkyrie rock.
Her sister Waltraute arrives on a flying horse.
She says that Wotan (their father, the chief God) returned to Valhalla with his spear broken.
She says he told the gods to pile up the logs from the World Ash for a fire which will burn everything.
Wotan desperately wants the ring to be given back to the Rhine Maidens (who were guardians of the, from which the ring was forged, in the first opera).
Br nnhilde refuses to give her the ring that Siegfried had given her as a token of their love.
Waltraute disappears.
After the weather calms the flames flicker again.
Siegfried arrives, disguised as Gunther.
Br nnhilde is horrified to see a person she thinks is a stranger.
Siegfried says she is his bride, forces the ring from her finger and drags her into a cave for the night, although placing the sword between them.
Back at the palace Alberich tries to persuade his son Hagen to get the ring.
Hagen wants to get the ring, but only for himself.
Siegfried arrives.
He no longer wears the tarn helmet so he looks like himself.
Hagen blows his horn to call his vassals (soldiers) for a celebration.
Gunther is to marry Br nnhilde and Siegfried is to marry Gutrune.
Br nnhilde can not understand why Siegfried is doing this.
She sees the ring on his finger and asks him how he got it, as she thinks Gunther snatched it from her.
Siegfried says that he won it by killing a dragon.
He tells people how he tricked Br nnhilde and swears that a sword lay between them during the night, although Br nnhilde tries to make people think otherwise.
Br nnhilde is left alone with Gunther and Hagen.
She tells them that, although Siegfried is so strong and impossible to kill in battle, he has one weak spot on his back.
Gunther does not like the idea of having Siegfried killed, but Hagen promises him that he can then have the ring.
They decide to kill Siegfried and to tell Gutrune that he was killed by a wild boar.
The last act takes place in a wild forest.
Siegfried s hunting horn is heard, and then the hunting horn of the Gibichungs.
By the river Siegfried happens to meet the Rhine Maidens and teases them by showing them the ring, but does not let them have it.
They tell him about the curse on the ring but Siegfried does not believe them.
He meets Hagen.
They drink together.
Siegfried tells the men all about his life, how he was brought up by Mime, about the sword, the dragon and the bird singing.
Then he can not remember any more.
Hagen gives him another drugged drink which makes him start to remember what actually happened.
He remembers Br nnhilde and how he found her surrounded by fire.
He gradually realizes how he has been tricked and feels unbearable sadness.
Two ravens fly overhead and Hagen plunges his spear into Siegfried s back.
He dies while speaking the name of Br nnhilde.
His body is carried off to a funeral march.
Back at the palace his body is brought in.
Gutrune accuses Gunther of murdering him, but Gutrune says Hagen did it.
Hagen says he did it because Siegfried, when disguised as Gunther, had slept with Br nnhilde.
He tries to snatch the ring from the dead Siegfried s finger, Gunther tries to stop him but is murdered by Hagen.
He tries again to snatch the ring but to everybody s horror the arm of the dead hero rises in the air.
Br nnhilde enters and tells everyone how she promised Siegfried her love.
Gutrune curses Hagen and falls onto her brother s dead body.
Br nnhilde orders a funeral pyre (a fire) to be prepared.
She sings to Wotan that Siegfried is now at peace in death and that she understands more now.
She takes the ring and promises to return it to the Rhine Maidens.
She lights the fire which flares up and she rides on her horse Grane into the flames.
The whole building catches fire, the Rhine overflows.
Hagen jumps into the water trying to get the ring from the Rhine Maidens who drown him.
The flood dies down and Valhalla (the gods palace) is lit up by the fire.
The gods and the heroes die in the flames.
The Twilight of the Gods has now happened.
The music of this long opera is extremely cleverly linked so that musical ideas flow into one another and combine to comment on the drama.
Many of the themes have been heard in the other three operas.
It is a very exhausting opera to sing, especially for Br nnhilde.
There are usually two long intervals during a performance.
The orchestra is very large and includes eight harps.
Gilbert and Sullivan were two men who worked together during the late 19th century to write fifteen well known operas.
W. S. Gilbert wrote the words to the operas, while Arthur Sullivan was the composer who wrote the music.
Their operas are still commonly performed today, and some have been turned into movies.
Many of the operas are very funny, and the songs are often parodied.
For the U.S. President, see James A. Garfield.
Garfield is a famous comic strip created by Jim Davis.
It has a cat called Garfield, a dog called Odie, and their owner Jon Arbuckle.
The cat is named after Davis 's grandfather, James Garfield Davis (who was probably named after former U.S. President James Garfield).
It debuted in 1978 in 41 US newspapers.
Garfield at Large was Garfields first book that debuted in 1980 and was listed in the New York Times bestseller lists at # 1.
By 1983, Garfield was featured in 1400 newspapers, and was translated into seven different languages.
Garfield got a website in 1996.
In 2002, Garfield was declared "Most widely syndicated comic strip in the world" by the Guinness Book of World Records.
Garfield 's 1st cookbook featured in 2003.
In 2004, Garfield: The Movie was the first full-length feature movie based off of Garfield.
Garfield is a fun loving cat who loves lasagna and is enjoyed by many people around the world.
Graham Chapman (8 January 1941 4 October 1989) was a British actor, comedian and writer.
He was most famous as a member of Monty Python.
He was openly gay and was in a long-term relationship with writer David Sherlock.
Chapman was born in Leicester.
He studied medicine at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
He died of tonsil cancer in Maidstone, Kent.
The gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) is a baleen whale (a filter feeder) that has a layer of blubber up to 10 inches (25 cm) thick.
Because a mother gray whale would defend her calf so fiercely it would actually attack whalers and overturn their boats, whalers often called the gray whale a devilfish.
The gray whale migrates from cold waters to the tropics each year in pods.
Gray whales are very agile swimmers.
They can dive for up to 30 minutes and go 500 feet (155 m) deep.
Gray whales make grunts, clicks, and whistling sounds which may be used to communicate with other gray whales.
This giant cetacean eats small fish, crustaceans, squid, and other tiny organisms that it finds on the sea floor.
It sieves its food through its comb-like plates of baleen.
Compared to most baleen whales, gray whales are rather small, growing to be only about 45 feet long.
They are easy to see with their gray mottled color, which is actually more charcoal black than it is gray.
Gray whales have lots of barnacles and lice on their skin.
However, scientists say the lice and barnacles do not harm the whale, and it is possible they may actually help the whale by feeding off of dead skin, which the whale needs to get rid of.
Whales prefer one fin over the other, just like humans are right-handed or left-handed.
It is possible to see whether a gray whale is left-fineed or right-finned.
The fin that has least barnacles is the fin it uses most.
This is because the whale likes to dive down to the ocean floor to scoop up huge amounts of sand from the bottom, filtering out small prey animals that live in it.
When the whale does this, many of the barnacles on the side that rubbed along the bottom are scraped off.
So, whichever side has fewest barnacles is the side the whale prefers to use when it digs up sand.
Gray whales make a really long migration from the Arctic Ocean (northwest of Alaska) to the coast of Mexico, and back each year.
They travel about 20,000 km (~ 12,500 miles) each year, staying near the coast.
They feed in the cold Arctic waters and calve and mate in the warm, protected tropical lagoons of the Pacific Ocean off Mexico.
Gallurese (') is a Romance language spoken in the northeastern part of Sardinia.
It is seen as being related to the Corsican language and Sardinian language.
The language takes its name from the region of Gallura.
Gary Busey (born June 29, 1944) is an American actor.
He has appeared in many movies and television shows since the 1970s.
In 1988, He was involved in a motorcycle accident, but he recovered.
He was born in Goose Creek, Texas and grew up in Oklahoma.
He was a heavy cocaine user for many years, before giving it up and becoming a born-again Christian.
His elder son Jake Busey (born 1971) is also an actor.
Busey was a contestant in two celebrity series of The Apprentice (2011 and 2013).
He won the August-September 2014 series of Celebrity Big Brother UK.
Giosu Alessandro Giuseppe Carducci (Pietrasanta, 27 July 1835 Bologna, 16 February 1907) was an Italian poet and teacher.
He was very influential and was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy.
In 1906 he became the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
He was fascinated with the restrained style of Greek and Roman antiquity, and his mature work reflects a restrained classical style, often using the classical meters of Latin poets as Horace and Virgil.
A geyser is a hot spring which shoots out water and steam.
They erupt when pressure has built up, often at regular intervals.
There are about a thousand geysers around the world.
About half are in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, United States.
Geysers are made in special geological conditions.
Only a few places on Earth have these conditions.
Because of this, geysers are not very common.
One place is the Yellowstone National Park, which is the remains of a gigantic volcano.
Another is Iceland, which sits on top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where new Earth 's crust is formed.
Geysers are often near active volcanos.
This is because the geyser is caused by magma.
Surface water usually goes down to about 2000 m. There, it mixes with hot rocks.
The pressurized water begins to boil.
When it is pressured enough, hot water and steam burst out of the geyser.
Individual geysers do not last forever, but systems of geysers last as long as the geological situation continues.
The oldest individual geysers are only a few thousand years old.
Geysers are usually near volcanic areas.
As the water boils, the pressure increases.
This forces hot steam and water to the surface through the geyser.
Geysers are usually made because of three things that are around volcanoes.
; Great heat A geyser needs a lot of heat.
This heat comes from magma.
This magma needs to be near the surface of the earth.
Geysers need much more heat than is usually found near the earth 's surface.
This is why they are often around volcanoes or volcanic areas.
; Water The water that bursts from a geyser must travel underground through deep, high-pressure cracks in the earth 's crust.
; A plumbing system For the heated water to form a geyser, a plumbing system is needed.
The water needs to be held while it is being heated.
The plumbing system is made up of a system of fractures, fissures, spaces and sometimes cavities (holes).
Most importantly, the temperatures near the bottom of the geyser become high enough to start boiling the water.
Steam bubbles come out of the top of the column.
They burst through the geyser 's vent.
Some water flows or splashes out.
This makes the weight of the column of water and the pressure on the water below less.
When this pressure is released, the hot water turns into steam.
It boils violently.
There are several bodies in the Solar System where jet-like eruptions, often called "geysers" and "cryogeysers", have been seen.
Unlike geysers on Earth, these are eruptions of gas, together with dust or ice particles, but without liquid.
Water vapor streams have been seen near the south pole of Saturn 's moon Enceladus.
Nitrogen eruptions have been seen on Neptune 's moon Triton.
Carbon dioxide eruptions from the southern polar ice cap of Mars have also been seen.
In mathematics, Gaussian elimination (also called row reduction) is a method used to solve systems of linear equations.
It is named after Carl Friedrich Gauss, a famous German mathematician who wrote about this method, but did not invent it.
To perform Gaussian elimination, the coefficients of the terms in the system of linear equations are used to create a type of matrix called an augmented matrix.
Then, elementary row operations are used to simplify the matrix.
The three types of row operations used are: Type 1: Switching one row with another row.
Type 2: Multiplying a row by a non-zero number.
Type 3: Adding or subtracting a row from another row.
The goal of Gaussian elimination is to get the matrix in row-echelon form.
If a matrix is in row-echelon form, that means that reading from left to right, each row will start with at least one more zero term than the row above it.
Some definitions of Gaussian elimination say that the matrix result has to be in reduced row-echelon form.
That means that the matrix is in row-echelon form and the only non-zero term in each row is 1.
Gaussian elimination that creates a reduced row-echelon matrix result is sometimes called Gauss-Jordan elimination.
Suppose the goal is to find the answers to this system of linear equations.
First, the system needs to be turned into an augmented matrix.
In an augmented matrix, each linear equation becomes a row.
On one side of the augmented matrix, the coefficients of each term in the linear equation become numbers in the matrix.
On the other side of the augmented matrix are the constant terms each linear equation is equal to.
For this system, the augmented matrix is:
Then, row operations can be done on the augmented matrix to simplify it.
The table below shows the row reduction process on the system of equations and on the augmented matrix.
The matrix is now in row-echelon form.
This is also called triangular form.
The matrix is now in reduced row-echelon form.
Reading this matrix tells us that the solutions for this system of equations occur when x = 2, y = 3, and z = -1.
Guantanamo Bay is a bay in the south of the island of Cuba.
Part of it is controlled by the United States.
They took control of it in 1903, under a treaty between the United States and Cuba.
The current government of Cuba does not see this treaty as legal.
They say it violates International law (more specifically, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969).
The southern part of the bay is surrounded by a navy station of the United States.
The name of the station (or base) is sometimes shortened to GTMO, called "Gitmo".
The mission of this station is to act to prevent terrorism, help people who are fleeing Cuba and stop drug crime.
This base is also now used as a place to keep people captured by American forces from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Also some prisoners were taken from other countries, like Britain and France.
Some people say that these people do not get the rights that they should get as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
One reason that they are there may be that the laws of the United States do not apply to them.
According to some well-known human rights groups, some prisoners have been tortured and others may have been badly treated according the FBI Inquiry.
This has also been reported by some Europeans who were taken by CIA "torture flights" and have now been released.
There is a lot of argument about Guantanamo Bay.
This camp is a navy base and would sometimes hold people who had escaped from the Cuban government by sea.
Now it also has a prison for people who oppose the United States, including some soldiers.
Some people have called it a concentration camp.
George W. Bush has said that it is sometimes used for prisoners of war, but many human rights groups accuse America of keeping people from countries they are not at war with.
This was shown to be sometimes true when British prisoners were returned home in 2003.
This camp may be used for prisoners who are seen as terrorists by the United States.
These people are detained because there is not enough evidence to give them a trial in a court.
About 300 to 400 men are in this prison.
They are almost all Muslims who are said to have attacked American troops.
Some of these people were captured during the war in Afghanistan.
Some were taken by force from other countries.
There has been some evidence of torture taking place at the camp.
Some prisoners have tried to kill themselves.
Others have been on hunger strike, where they refuse to eat.
These prisoners are not forced to work, but they have not been given fair trials.
There is now some work starting to bring Guantanamo prisoners to some justice.
Some people have been sent back to their home countries, some have been sent to other countries.
Some people who were shown to not be terrorists have then been released by their governments, some people are now in prison in their home countries.
Some Uighur people from China have been sent to Albania, possibly because China did not want them back.
Gypsum is a common mineral, calcium sulfate.
Gypsum has been used as a building material for a long time, possibly since the neolithic.
Today, it is an ingredient of plaster.
It can also be used as a fertilizer.
Growth factors are things in the body that allow or deny cells to grow.
These factors are normally made up of cell hormones or other proteins within the body.
All growth factors occur naturally within cells and are necessary for the cell life progression and death.
The first growth factor discovered and publicly recognized was in 1986.
It was recognized in the form of a Nobel Prize.
This was award was given to Kerstin Hall of the Karolinska Institute.
Mary Ann (Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist.
She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.
Middlemarch is perhaps her most famous book.
She was born in Nuneaton, the youngest child of Robert and Christiana Evans.
Mary Ann attended Miss Latham 's boarding school and then Mrs Wallington 's Boarding School in Nuneaton in 1828.
In 1850, Evans traveled the first time to the continent of Europe.
There, she translated the book Essence of Christianity into English.
This was the only book she published under her real name and not under her pseudonym George Eliot.
Evans became ill in on December 19 1880.
Later, her kidney problem started again.
Due to this illness, she died on 22 December 1880.
The German Democratic Republic (GDR) ((DDR)), commonly called East Germany, was founded on October 7,1949, after World War II.
It was formed from the parts of Germany occupied by the USSR, including part of the city of Berlin.
It is no longer a nation by itself since the two parts of Germany, East Germany and West Germany, reunified in 1990.
The GDR was ruled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).
After World War II, Germany was divided into four sections, each controlled by a different country.
The countries that controlled these parts of Germany were France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
Then, the French, American, and British parts of Germany formed West Germany (the Bundesrepublik) and part of the Soviet section became East Germany.
Walter Ulbricht, the head of the SED, also had a lot of power.
Pieck died in 1960, and Ulbricht became "Chairman of the State Council".
Now he was really the head of state.
On 13 August 1961, the Berlin Wall was built.
Many people were shot dead by East German soldiers when they tried to escape the GDR.
The SED told the East German people that the wall 's purpose was to keep ` Western Capitalists ' out; when in fact it was to keep them (East Germans) inside.
After Mikhail Gorbachev had started glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union, many people in the GDR wanted reforms, too.
In 1989, there were lots of demonstrations against the SED and for democracy and human rights.
In the city of Leipzig, people met every Monday and demonstrated, and so these demonstrations are called Montagsdemonstrationen ("Monday Demonstrations").
Erich Honecker wished that the Soviets would use its army to suppress these demonstrations.
The Soviet Union, with its own political and economical problems, refused and did not want to control Eastern Europe anymore.
Honecker was eventually forced to resign on October 18, 1989.
Egon Krenz was elected by the politburo to be Honecker 's successor.
Krenz tried to show that he was looking for change within the GDR but the citizens did not trust him.
On November 9, 1989, the SED announced that East Germans would be able to travel to West Berlin the next day.
The spokesman who announced the new travel law incorrectly said that it would take effect immediately, implying the Berlin Wall would open that night.
People began to gather at border checkpoints at the wall hoping to be let through, but the guards told them that they had no orders to let citizens through.
As the number of people grew, the guards became alarmed and tried to contact their superiors but had no responses.
Unwilling to use force, the chief guard at the checkpoint relented at 10:54 pm and ordered the gate to be opened.
Thousands of East-Germans swarmed into West Berlin and the purpose of the wall was deemed now obsolete.
The fall of the wall destroyed the SED politically as well as the career of its leader, Egon Krenz.
On December 1, 1989, the GDR government revoked the law that guaranteed the SED the right to rule the East German political system, effectively ending communist rule in the GDR.
On 18 March 1990, there were free elections in the GDR.
The "Alliance for Germany", a group of political parties who wanted to unify the GDR with West Germany, won that election.
This process, when East Germany became a democracy, is known also the Wende in Germany.
In the German reunification, the GDR joined West Germany by approving its constitution in 1990.
The East German districts were reorganised into the L nder (Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt and Th ringen) and joined West Germany, after which the GDR ceased to exist.
Even though the western and the eastern part joined back together in 1990, people from former West Germany still call people from East Germany "Ossi".
This comes from the German word "Osten" which means "East".
Ossi is not always meant kindly.
The leading role of the SED was written down in the constitution of the GDR.
There were other parties in the GDR, which were called the Blockparteien ("block parties"), but their job was mostly to do what the SED said:
The Ministry for State Security (in German: Ministerium f r Staatssicherheit; often called "MfS" or "Stasi") was the East German homeland security service.
It searched for people who were against the state, the SED and their politics.
The MfS had many informants who told them when some people said or did something against the state.
There was a big MfS prison in the town of Bautzen.
East Germany was a member of the Warsaw Pact.
In retrospect, the GDR was a puppet state of the Soviet Union until democratic reforms.
The GDR was released from Soviet control by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during his reforms in the late 1980s in what was known as the "Sinatra Doctrine".
In the GDR, there was a planned economy.
All big factories and companies were in property of the state (officially Volkseigentum, "people 's property").
Only some small companies and shops were private property.
A famous relic of the GDR is the low-powered automobile "Trabant" or Trabi.
Until 1964, East and West Germany took part in the Olympic Games with only one team for both states.
Since 1968, East and West Germany had their own team each.
East German sportspeople were very successful, for example in athletics, cycling, boxing or some winter sports.
Famous sportspeople from East Germany were T ve Schur (cycling), Waldemar Cierpinski (athletics), Heike Drechsler (athletics), Olaf Ludwig (cycling), Katarina Witt (ice skating) or Jens Wei flog (ski jumping).
A famous cycling race was the Peace Race (in German: Friedensfahrt).
The East German national football team was not so successful.
They were only in one FIFA World Cup.
This was the 1974 FIFA World Cup, which took place in West Germany.
On 22 June 1974, East Germany played against West Germany.
J rgen Sparwasser shot a goal and East Germany won 1-0.
Georg Philipp Telemann (born March 14, 1681 in Magdeburg; died June 25, 1767, Hamburg) was a German baroque composer.
He wrote over 601 pieces of music, many of which were published.
As publishing cost much money at that time, this was quite unusual.
He mostly taught himself musically and knew how to play 10 instruments.
During his life people thought he was one of the greatest composers.
He also wrote lots of church music, most of which is not common today.
George Gershwin (September 26, 1898; Brooklyn, New York July 11, 1937; Hollywood, California) was an American composer.
George Gershwin was born on September 26, 1898, in Brooklyn, New York.
His family immigrated to the United States.
Gershwin, his two brothers and sister had a close, happy family life.
George liked playing games on the streets of New York.
He liked exploring the city, but he did not like school or studying.
While exploring the city, Gershwin heard jazz and blues music spilling out of public drinking places.
However, he did not become seriously interested in music until he heard another boy playing the violin in a concert at his school.
Gershwin began to take piano lessons.
His teacher was a fine classical musician.
He immediately recognized Gershwin 's unusual ability.
The teacher wrote about him to a friend: "I have a student who will make his mark in music, if anybody will.
The boy is a genius, without doubt."
Gershwin studied classical piano, and he was a first-rate pianist, but his strongest interest continued to be jazz and popular music.
At the age of fifteen, he left school and went to work in the music business.
The New York City street where most music publishers had their offices was called "Tin Pan Alley."
The phonograph and radio had been invented in the late 1800s.
But it would be many years before there were musical recordings or regular radio broadcasts.
Tin Pan Alley publishers needed another way to sell new songs, so they employed people to play the piano to do this.
The piano players played the songs all day long to interested singers and other performers.
Gershwin was one of the youngest piano players in Tin Pan Alley.
Soon, he was considered one of the finest there.
He was already writing his own songs.
He succeeded in getting one published when he was only 18 years old.
It had a long title: "When You Want 'Em, You Ca n't Get Em, When You 've Got 'Em, You Do n't Want 'Em."
Gershwin was now a real composer.
The rest of his life was an unbroken record of success.
He wrote song after song.
His ideas were so endless that he was not even troubled when he once lost some music he had been writing.
"There is plenty more where that came from," he said.
Gershwin had his first big hit in 1919, when he was twenty-one years old.
It was a song called "Swanee."
A popular entertainer, Al Jolson, sang the song.
"Swanee" was made into one of the first musical recordings.
Gershwin was suddenly famous.
Music critics note that "Swanee" is not like most of Gershwin 's music.
Later, he wrote true love songs.
Some were light and funny.
Some were full of intense feeling.
Many of these songs were written for the popular musical theater.
One of his most emotional love songs never became part of a musical play, however.
It is called "The Man I love."
The song was sung by the Francine Evans role (played by Liza Minnelli in Martin Scorsese 's film, New York, New York) and supposedly ` written ' by her character for her soon to be husband, Jimmy Doyle (superbly played by Robert De Niro), of the Jimmy Doyle Orchestra.
His character also ` wrote ` the title song, New York, New York, who was actually written by Fred Ebb, music by Kanter, his partner.
The song became New York 's official anthem in 1985.
Gershwin 's older brother, Ira, wrote the words to "The Man I Love".
As George became famous, Ira wrote the words to more and more of his songs.
The two brothers were very different.
Ira, the writer, was quiet and serious.
George, the musician, was outgoing the life of any party.
When they had to finish a new musical Ira locked George in a hotel room until it was done.
But George wrote better songs with Ira than with anyone else.
One of many examples of the Gershwin 's combined work is the song "They Ca n't Take That Away From Me."
The Gershwins wrote the song for dancer and actor Fred Astaire for the film "Shall We Dance."
That was George and Ira Gershwin 's first movie musical.
Many of George Gershwin 's songs were first written for musical plays performed in theaters in New York City.
These comedies, with plenty of songs, were a popular form of entertainment in the 1920s and 1930s.
One of Gershwin 's musical plays, "Girl Crazy," introduced a young singer named Ethel Merman.
She became one of the most celebrated performers in America.
In the play, Merman sang a song George Gershwin wrote just for her.
It was called "I Got Rhythm".
Many songs that George Gershwin wrote for musical plays and movies have remained as popular as ever.
Over the years, they have been sung and played in every possible way from jazz to country.
One example is the song, "Someone to Watch Over Me."
It was written for the 1926 musical "Oh, Kay!"
In the nineteen twenties, there was a debate in the United States about jazz music.
Could jazz, some people asked, be considered serious music?
In 1924, jazz musician and orchestra leader Paul Whiteman decided to organize a special concert to show that jazz was serious music.
Gershwin agreed to compose something for the concert before he realized how little time he had to do it.
The concert was just a few weeks away.
Gershwin got busy, and, in that short time, he composed a piece for piano and orchestra.
He called it "Rhapsody in Blue."
Gershwin himself played the piano part of "Rhapsody in Blue" at the concert.
The audience included some of the greatest classical musicians of the time.
When they heard his music, they were electrified.
It seemed to capture, for the first time, the true voice of modern American culture.
Today, we can still hear Gershwin playing "Rhapsody in Blue."
An old mechanical piano recording Gershwin created has been reproduced exactly.
There are also very early versions of "Rhapsody in Blue" which feature Gershwin playing the piano with Whiteman 's orchestra.
Those recordings, because they are early, do not sound like modern recordings.
But they are recordings of Gershwin at the piano.
This makes those recordings important.
"Rhapsody in Blue" made George Gershwin famous all over the world.
Several hundred thousand copies of the printed music sold immediately.
Gershwin was satisfied that he had shown that jazz music could be both serious and popular.
Gershwin also wrote an opera, "Porgy and Bess."
It was based on a book by DuBose Heyward.
It is a tragic love story about black Americans along the coast of South Carolina.
"Porgy And Bess" opened in Boston, Massachusetts in 1935.
Audiences loved it.
But most critics did not know what to think of it.
It was not like any other opera or musical play they had ever seen.
Gershwin did not care about the critics ' opinions.
He believed some of his greatest music had gone into the opera.
He said he had created a new musical form an opera based on popular culture.
Today "Porgy And Bess" is considered a masterpiece.
Another well-known Gershwin piece is "An American in Paris."
It is a long tone poem for orchestra.
Its first public performance was by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1928.
Once again, opinion was mixed.
Most people loved "An American in Paris," as they loved all of Gershwin 's music.
Some critics liked it, too.
They called it happy and full of life.
Others hated it.
They called it silly and long-winded.
George Gershwin died in 1937, just days after doctors learned he had brain cancer.
He died while having surgery to remove the brain tumor.
He was only thirty-eight years old.
Newspapers all over the world reported his death on their front pages.
Everyone mourned the loss of the man and all the music he might have written.
Gershwin is still considered one of America 's greatest composers.
His works still are performed by many singers and groups.
They are probably performed more often than any other serious American composer.
Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg was one of the people who praised George Gershwin.
Schoenberg said Gershwin was a man who lived in music and expressed everything through music, because music was his native language.
The Great Victoria Desert is the largest desert in Australia.
It consists of sand dunes, small sandhills, grassland plains, areas with closely packed pebbles (called desert pavement or gibber plains) and salt lakes.
The desert is an Australian IBRA.
The desert covers a large area, about 42000000 h in the states of Western Australia and South Australia.
The distance from east to west is about 700 k. It is very dry, getting only between 200 m to 250 m of rain each year.
It is surrounded by other very dry areas including the Nullabor Plain to the south, the Gibson Desert to the north, Sturt 's Stony Desert to the east.
It was named by the explorer Ernest Giles in 1875, after Queen Victoria.
Aboriginal people have lived in the desert for more than 24,000 years.
Between 1953 and 1957, the British government exploded nine atomic bombs in the Great Victoria Desert at Maralinga and Emu.
The area of the Great Victoria Desert is shared roughly equally by the states of South and Western Australia.
It is north of the Nullarbor Plain and south of the Musgrave Ranges.
The desert is bounded on the west by Laverton and the goldfields and to the east by Coober Pedy and the Stuart Highway.
The Great Victoria Desert can be very dry and sandy.
However, plants and animals still live there.
The plants are adapted to the dry, arid climate, otherwise they would not be able to survive.
Wallabies, snakes, lizards and many birds live in the Great Victoria Desert.
These animals have also adapted to survive in extreme heat and extreme cold.
The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free software license created by the Free Software Foundation.
It is similar to the GNU General Public License and is also an open source license.
James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and was the leader of the British Labor Party.
He is the Labor MP Representative for the Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath UK Constituency.
He was born in Glasgow, Scotland and is married to Sarah Macaulay.
Their daughter Jennifer Jane died as a baby.
They have two sons, John Macaulay and James Fraser.
Brown is blind in his left eye after a sports injury but he has a replacement eye made of glass.
Brown took over as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after Tony Blair resigned on 27 June 2007.
Before this, he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer since May 1997.
Brown has a PhD in history from the University of Edinburgh.
He spent his early career working as a television journalist.
He has been a Member of Parliament since 1983.
At the beginning for Dunfermline East and since 2005 for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.
As Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, he was also First Lord of the Treasury and the Minister for the Civil Service.
Brown 's time as Chancellor was marked by major reform of Britain 's financial and fiscal policy architecture.
For example was the interest rate setting power transferred to the Bank of England.
This was done by a wide extension of the powers of the Treasury to cover much domestic policy and by giving the responsibility for banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority.
Controversial moves included the abolition of Advance Corporation Tax (ACT) relief in his first budget, and the removal in his final budget of the 10 per cent "starting rate" of personal income tax which he had introduced in 1999.
After an initial rise in opinion polls, Brown 's time as Prime Minister has seen his approval ratings fall.
The Labor Party suffered its worst local election results in 40 years.
Despite public and parliamentary pressure on his leadership, he remained leader of the Labor Party.
He announced on the 6 April 2010 that there would be a general election on 6 May 2010, in which Labor came second, with 258 seats.
Brown resigned, allowing Conservative leader David Cameron to become Prime Minister.
On 14 July 2012, United Nations Secretary-General Ban ki-moon named Brown UN Special Envoy for Education.
Galileo was an unmanned NASA spacecraft.
It explored the planet Jupiter and its moons.
Galileo was launched in 1989 and it arrived at Jupiter in 1995.
Galileo was made up of two parts: an orbiter and a probe.
The orbiter went into orbit around the planet on December 8, 1995 and went down into Jupiter 's atmosphere and was crushed on September 21, 2003.
The probe was released from the orbiter on July 13, 1995 and it went towards Jupiter.
It reached Jupiter on December 7, 1995 and went down into the atmosphere.
The probe gathered data for 57 minutes until the great atmospheric heat and pressure destroyed it.
The Garden of Eden is the place where the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, lived after they were created by God.
In the Christian Bible, the story of the creation of the world in the book of Genesis describes how Adam and Eve lived in Eden in peace with all of the animals.
They tended the garden and could eat from any tree except the Tree of Knowledge.
After they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, God punished Adam and Eve by making them leave the Garden of Eden forever.
The story is told in Book of Genesis 1-3 (in the old Testament of the Bible and the Tanakh.
The Tanakh translates the Garden of Eden as Paradise.
In Sumerian, Eden is a name for the Steppe.
Heavenly Eden is also mentioned.
It refers to a place that appears to be fertile at first, but later changes to become infertile.
Climatologists have said this is a good description of the climate change that happened in The Levant after the last ice age.
The green steppe became dry.
This meant that food was no longer available all year round, but only at certain times.
This forced the people living at the time to start agriculture and to keep some of their food for the periods where there was none.
Scientists have referred to this change as the Neolithic Revolution.
This change of food is also mentioned in the story.
Babylonian mythology sees the main reason for the creation of man to grow food for the gods.
This is different in the Bible.
There, god created plants as food for humans, and animals to keep them company.
The beginning of the Book of Genesis has been seen as describing the state before a climate change in a certain region.)
Because of this change, humans were condemned to growing crops and keeping some food in stock, to be able to eat it, during the times it did not grow.
Genesis has been seen to only start when this region converted to agriculture (the Neolithic Revolution, mentioned above).
This means that Genesis roughly covers the time from about 8000 - 6000 BC to about 2000 BC.
Judaism teaches that sin can not be passed on from the parents to their children.
There is a free will, everyone is responsible for their own sins only.
Humans can do bad things and good things.
God 's commandments help them do good things.
What exactly makes up the Commandments of God is not written down, but needs to developed by tradition.
Sins are forgiven once a year (at Jom Kippur).
Unlike Christianity, Judaism has no personified evil.
Christianity believes that sin can be passed on from the parents to their children.
This is known as original sin.
Without Jesus, humans must live in sin.
Augustine of Hippo formalized this belief, which is now a dogma in the Western Christian denominations (Catholicism and Protestantism).
Islam sees Adam and Eve being chased away as a chance for a new start.
Islam says the Christian concept of original sin is false.
This means that them being chased away does not change the relationship between men and God.
According to Islamic tradition, Adam and Eve were placed in different parts of the world.
They first had to wander around, before they found each other.
Gorillaz are an animated English rock band.
The band was invented by Damon Albarn, a member of the band Blur, and Jamie Hewlett, who has worked on the comic book series Tank Girl.
Even though the band members are fictional, they have released several albums and music videos.
The band 's members are 2D, Noodle, Russell Hobbs, and Murdoc Niccals.
The band 's genre is mostly a combination of alternative rock, alternative hip hop, and electronica.
It also has elements of experimental, trip hop, dub, and psychedelic rock.
Since they are an animated group, they can not perform live like real bands can.
At Gorillaz concerts, the real members of the band stand behind screens which show computer-generated images of the animated group performing.
Despite the animated performances, the actual band members did go on tour as the Gorillaz (which the animated band referred to as that Gorillaz tribute band), playing at various venues across the states, headlining at Coachella.
The live Gorillaz band played at the 2010 Glastonbury Festival, performing in place of u2 due to Bono 's emergency back surgery.
Nevertheless, they were a hit with the crowd.
Granite is a kind of igneous rock, found on Earth but nowhere else in the Solar System.
It is formed from hot, molten magma.
Its color ranges from pink to gray, according to the proportions of its minerals.
The magma is forced between other layers of rock by the pressure under the Earth 's surface.
The magma cools and turns slowly into solid stone.
Granite has many different types of minerals in it.
These include quartz, feldspar, hornblende, and sometimes mica.
As the magma cools, these minerals form crystals.
The crystals can be seen easily if the granite is cut and polished.
Granite is a common stone on Earth, and makes up a big part of the crust (the Earth 's outer layer).
It is usually found in the continental plates of the Earth 's crust.
Although it forms under the surface of the Earth, there are many places where it has been forced upwards by tectonic movement.
When plates in the Earth 's crust move together, they get bent and pushed upwards.
When this happens, granite mountains can be formed.
Granite is dense, and can be cut, carved and shaped.
It is resistant to water and pollution, and has a range of different colors.
Kitchen benches are often made of polished granite.
Granite is found in many countries of the world.
Some countries have beautifully patterned granite which is quarried (cut in open mines) and sold for building material.
Gotham City is a fictional city which is the home of Batman, a DC Comics character.
The city is based on New York City, and became Batman 's home in 1941.
Gotham was a village in England, near Nottingham, where the people were all very foolish.
Author Washington Irving was the first person to describe New York as Gotham in his 1807 book, Salamagundi.
In Christopher Nolan 's Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight Gotham City is based in Chicago.
The Dark Knight Rises Gotham City is based in Pittsburgh, New York City, and Los Angeles.
Christopher Nolan based Gotham City on Chicago, New York City, and London.
When Bob Kane first thought of a city he wanted it to be like New York City, London, and Chicago.
Bill Finger was about to name the city "Civic City".
The Game Boy Color is a video game console manufactured by Nintendo.
It was first introduced in Japan on October 1998.
It is the successor to the original Game Boy, but it precedes the Game Boy Advance.
The biggest innovation of the Game Boy Color was its colorful graphics.
The Game Boy Color is almost as powerful as the Nintendo Entertainment System.
With the exception of the Pokemon Mini, it was the last 8-bit console made by a mainstream company.
The last game released for Game Boy Color was Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets in 2002.
Province of Grosseto (Italian: Provincia di Grosseto) is a province in the Tuscany region of Italy.
The capital of the province is the city of Grosseto.
In the province, there is The Natural Park of Maremma.
It is in the famous area of Maremma.
The province has an area of 4,504 km and a total population of 211,086 (2001).
There are 28 comuni (singular: comune) in the province
Geckos are small to middle size lizards.
Lizards are reptiles.
There are 1196 different kinds of geckos.
They live in many warm countries.
Some kinds of geckos go into people 's houses.
People are often happy to have them, because geckos eat many insects.
Unlike most lizards, geckos have voices.
A gecko sounds a little like a bird or a frog.
In some languages these lizards have names that sound like their calls, for example, both English and Indonesian call one kind gecko (gek KO) and tokay (to-KAY).
Another kind of gecko, with a different sound, is called chicak (CHEE chak).
Geckos have no eyelids.
Instead, they have a clear membrane (skin) over their eyes.
They lick the membrane clean with their tongues.
Like most lizards, they can regenerate their tail if they need to.
Many kinds of geckos can walk on walls, windows and ceilings.
They can do this because they have special toe pads.
A microscope can show that each toe pad is made of thousands of hair-like structures.
Each of these structures branches into many smaller ends.
Geckos ' feet form a molecular bond with the substance that they are walking on in order to "stick" to the surface.
A game show is a reality television program where people play a game for points, with the goal of winning money or prizes.
Different game shows use different games.
Some game shows involve word games, and others involve tests of skill or general knowledge.
Many game shows incorporate some element of chance; for example, in Wheel of Fortune, contestants spin a wheel to determine how much prize money they get for a correct letter.
Some game shows have the contestents compete against other individual contestants; other game shows group contestants into teams.
Some game shows have regular people as the contestants.
Other game shows have celebrities such as movie actors or musicians as the contestants.
Many game shows air on the Game Show Network and stations like NBC, ABC, and G4.
Game shows often reward people with money, holidays, or cars.
These prizes are often given by the people or group of people that give the game show money to run.
The people who give the game show money to run are called sponsors.
The first game shows were on radio.
Grindcore is a type of heavy metal and hardcore punk music.
It was invented in the 1980s by bands such as Napalm Death.
Grindcore is a lot like black metal and death metal, but the guitar parts are very simple and are played over and over again in a song.
The vocals are usually loud shouts and screams while the drums play fast and loud, around 200bpm.
In most cases, grindcore songs will be very short in length - Napalm Death 's song ` You Suffer ' is the shortest in the world at 1.316 seconds long.
Their lyrics are similar to death metal and hardcore punk, which usually sing about pain, suffering, blood, gore or politics, injustice and revolution.
One popular grindcore band is Anal Cunt, who go by "A.C." because their name has a sexual meaning.
A.C. sings about racism, violence, and sexism.
They produce very controversial songs such as ` You Were Pregnant So I Kicked You in the Stomach ' and lyrics which make jokes of the Third Reich.
There are several offshoots of grindcore, including pornogrind, goregrind and deathgrind.
Gerolamo Cardano or Girolamo Cardano (English Jerome Cardan, Latin Hieronymus Cardanus; September 24, 1501 - September 21 1576) was a celebrated Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer and gambler.
As he was an illegitimate child, he could not enter the college of physicians.
Despite this he was a relatively successful physician.
The first description of Typhoid fever is attributed to him.
Today he is mainly known as a mathematician.
He made some discoveries in algebra.
He proposed ways to solve cubic and quartic equations.
Niccol Fontana Tartaglia told him about the solution of one particular cubic equation, '.
This caused a long fight.
His student Lodovico Ferrari solved the quartic equations.
Cardano also speaks about imaginary numbers in the same book, Ars Magna.
He did not completely understand what they were like though.
Cardano was often short of money.
He gambled.
A book of his, called Liber de ludo aleae (aproximately translates to as Book on the game of chances) contains the first systematic treatment of probability, as well as a section on how to cheat.
He wrote it in the 1560s, but it was only published after his death, in 1663.
He invented various things.
He also thought that perpetual motion was impossible, except for stars.
Gabbro is a large group of dark, coarse-grained, igneous rocks.
They are chemically equivalent to basalt.
The rocks are plutonic, formed when molten magma is trapped under the Earth 's surface and cools into a crystalline mass.
Most of the Earth 's surface has gabbro in the oceanic crust, produced by basalt magmatism at mid-ocean ridges.
In general, when the gabbro is formed, it lies above the Earth 's mantle, and below the basalt.
Gabbro is generally coarse grained, with crystals in the size range of 1 mm or greater.
It is an essential part of the oceanic crust.
Long belts of gabbro intrusions are typically formed at proto-rift zones and around ancient rift zone margins.
Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry (August 19, 1921 October 24, 1991) was an American screenwriter and producer.
He is best known as the creator of Star Trek, an American sci-fi series.
He was sometimes called the "Great Bird of the Galaxy" because he helped start Star Trek.
He was one of the first people to have his ashes "buried" in space.
Gene Roddenberry was born in El Paso, Texas in 1921.
His parents were Eugene Edward Roddenberry and Caroline Glen.
He grew up in Los Angeles, California, where his father worked in the police.
He became interested in engineering and got a pilot 's license.
In 1941, he joined the United States Army Air Force.
He flew many combat missions as a bomber pilot and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal.
After he left the military, he became a commercial pilot (which means he flew passenger aircraft) with Pan American World Airways.
He then stopped flying in 1949 so he could write television shows.
While writing he also worked in the police so he could provide for (look after) his family.
In 1956, he quit his job as a policeman to write full time.
Roddenberry was married twice and had three children.
He married Eileen Rexroat first, and they were married for 27 years.
They had two daughters, Darlene (1947-1995) and Dawn (1953 -).
In the 1960s, he also started romantically seeing Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett (1932-2008).
He divorced Rexroat and married Barrett in Japan in a traditional Shinto ceremony on August 6, 1969.
They had a son, Eugene Wesley, Jr..
Roddenberry 's marriage to Barrett lasted until his death in 1991.
He died in 1991 of heart failure.
He was 70 years old.
In 1992, some of his ashes were sent into space on board the Space Shuttle Columbia.
In 2012, some more of his ashes will be sent into space with his wife Majel 's ashes.
Gluten is a composite of the proteins gliadin and glutenin.
These proteins are found in the endosperms of some grass-like grains such as wheat, rye and barley.
Gliadin and glutenin make up about 80 % of the protein contained in wheat seed.
As they are insoluble in water, they can be got by washing away the starch in the grain.
Worldwide, gluten is an important source of food protein, both in foods prepared directly from grains with gluten in them, and as an additive to foods that are low in protein.
Some people are very sensitive to glutens in their food.
When they eat foods which contain gluten, these people may experience stomach cramps, bloating, gas and diarrhoea and rashes.
This sensitivity is called coeliac disease (in North America, it is usually spelled "celiac disease").
Glen or Glenda is a 1953 movie about a male transvestite.
It was written and directed by Ed Wood.
It stars Ed Wood as Glen and Glenda, and features Bela Lugosi and Wood 's then-girlfriend Dolores Fuller.
The movie was inspired by the Christine Jorgensen 's sex reassignment surgery in 1952.
George Weiss was a Hollywood producer of low-budget films.
He wanted a movie made to exploit the event.
He made Jorgensen several offers to appear in the movie.
These offers were turned down.
This was the only movie Wood directed but did not also produce.
Wood himself played the title character, but under the pseudonym "Daniel Davis".
Lugosi is credited as "The Scientist".
He acts as a sort of narrator but gives no narration relevant to the plot.
Glen is shown looking at women 's clothes in a shop window.
He reads about sex change operations in a newspaper.
He meets with Barbara, his girlfriend.
She asks if Glen 's secret problem is another woman.
A transvestite friend tells Glen how crossdressing ended his marriage.
A dream sequence containing some BDSM scenes full of flagellation and bondage follows.
Glen tells Barbara the truth.
She offers Glen an Angora wool sweater as a sign of acceptance.
George Fox (July 1624 13 January 1691) was one of the people that left the Church of England.
He was a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, also known as the "Quakers."
The Gunpowder Conspiracy of 1605 was a plan to kill King James I of England and VI of Scotland.
Other names for the plot are The Powder Treason or The Gunpowder Plot.
A group of Catholics wanted to blow up the Houses of Parliament during the State Opening on 5 November 1605.
This would have killed the king, and most of the Protestant aristocracy.
The conspirators also planned to kidnap the royal children, and lead a popular revolt in the Midlands.
Robert Catesby led the planning of the conspiracy, which started in May 1604.
The people who helped him were either rich Catholics, or gentry families who had a lot of influence.
Catesby may have come up with the plot when he saw that there was little hope that Great Britain would become more tolerant to Roman Catholics, under King James I. Many Catholics were disappointed about the situation.
It is more likely though that Catesby simply wanted to give the Catholics in England a chance: The plot was to be the first step of a rebellion.
Afterwards, James ' nine-year-old daughter (Princess Elizabeth) could be put in as a Catholic head of state.
Other plotters were Thomas Winter (also spelled Wintour), Robert Winter, John Wright, Christopher Wright, Robert Keyes, Thomas Percy (also spelled Percye), John Grant, Ambrose Rokewood, Sir Everard Digby, Francis Tresham and Thomas Bates (Catesby 's servant).
The explosives were prepared by Guy "Guido" Fawkes, a man with 10 years military experience.
Fawkes had fought with the Spanish against the Dutch in the Spanish Netherlands.
The main Jesuit in England, Father Henry Garnet was said to know the details of the plot.
Oswald Tesimond, a fellow Jesuit had told him.
Robert Catesby confessed them to Tesimond, and gave him the permission to tell Garnet.
Although he was convicted, there has since been some debate over how much Garnet really knew.
As the details of the plot were known through confession, Garnet was not allowed to reveal them to the authorities.
He did not think it was a good idea.
Nevertheless, the plot went ahead.
Garnet 's opposition to it did not save him from being hanged, drawn and quartered for treason in 1606, though.
In the 17th century, the Palace of Westminster was made of many buildings, spread over a large area.
They were grouped around the medieval chambers, chapels, and halls of the old royal palace.
This palace housed both Parliament and the various law courts.
The palace was also easier to access than it is today.
Merchants, lawyers, and other people lived and worked on the palace grounds.
As a member of the King 's Bodyguard, Percy was able to lease rooms next to the House of Lords, in May 1604.
The plotters ' original idea was to dig their way under the foundations of the Lords chamber to put the gunpowder there.
The main idea was to kill James, but many other important targets would be present, including most of the Protestant nobility and senior bishops of the Church of England.
Guy Fawkes, as "John Johnson", was put in charge of this building, where he posed as Percy 's servant.
Catesby 's house in Lambeth was used to store the gunpowder with the tools for digging.
However, when the Black Plague came back to London in the summer of 1604 and it proved to be particularly severe.
For this reason, the opening of Parliament was changed to 1605.
By Christmas Eve, the miners had still not reached the buildings of Parliament, and just as they restarted work early in 1605, they learned that the opening of Parliament had been further postponed to 3 October.
The plotters then took the opportunity to row the gunpowder up the Thames from Catesby 's house in Lambeth, to hide it in their new rented house: they had learned (by chance) that a coal merchant named Ellen Bright had vacated a ground-floor undercroft directly beneath the House of Lords chamber.
Presented with this golden opportunity, Percy immediately took pains to secure the lease.
He created the story that his wife would join him in London and that he would need the extra storage space.
Fawkes assisted in filling the room with gunpowder, which was hidden beneath a wood store under the House of Lords building, in a cellar leased from John Whynniard.
By March 1605, they had filled the undercroft underneath the House of Lords with 36 barrels of gunpowder, hidden under a store of winter fuel.
Had all 36 barrels been successfully ignited, the explosion could easily have reduced many of the buildings in the Old Palace of Westminster complex to rubble, and would have blown out windows in the surrounding area of about a one kilometre radius.
The conspirators left London in May, and went to their homes or to different areas of the country, because being seen together would arouse suspicion.
They arranged to meet again in September; however, the opening of Parliament was again postponed.
The weakest parts of the plot were the arrangements for the subsequent rebellion which would have swept the country and installed a Catholic monarch.
Due to the requirements for money and arms, Sir Francis Tresham was eventually admitted to the plot, and it was probably he who betrayed the plot in writing to his brother-in-law Lord Monteagle.
An anonymous letter revealed some of the details of the plot; it read: "I advise you to devise some excuse not to attend this parliament, for they shall receive a terrible blow, and yet shall not see who hurts them".
According to the confession made by Fawkes on Tuesday 5 November 1605, he had left Dover around Easter 1605, bound for Calais.
He then traveled to Saint-Omer and on to Brussels, where he met with Hugh Owen and Sir William Stanley before making a pilgrimage to Brabant.
He returned to England at the end of August or early September, again by way of Calais.
Guy Fawkes was left in charge of executing the plot, while the other conspirators fled to Dunchurch in Warwickshire to await news.
Once Parliament had been destroyed, the other conspirators planned to start a revolt in the Midlands.
During the preparation, several of the conspirators had been concerned about the safety of fellow Catholics who would be present in Parliament on the day of the planned explosion.
On the evening of Friday, 26 October Lord Monteagle received an anonymous letter while at his house in Hoxton.
Monteagle had the note read out loud, possibly to warn the plotters that the secret was out, and promptly handed it over to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, the Secretary of State.
The conspirators learned of the letter the following day, but decided to go ahead with their plan, especially after Fawkes inspected the undercroft and found that nothing had been touched.
Having been shown the letter, the King ordered Sir Thomas Knyvet to conduct a search of the cellars underneath Parliament, which he did in the early hours of 5 November.
Shortly after midnight, Fawkes was found leaving the cellar the conspirators had rented and was arrested, giving his name as John Johnson.
Inside, the barrels of gunpowder were discovered hidden under piles of firewood and coal.
Far from denying his intentions during the arrest, Fawkes stated that it had been his purpose to destroy the King and the Parliament.
Nevertheless, Fawkes maintained his false identity and continued to insist that he was acting alone.
Later in the morning, before noon, he was again interrogated.
He was questioned on the nature of his accomplices, the involvement of Thomas Percy, what letters he had received from overseas and whether or not he had spoken with Hugh Owen.
On the 5th of November we began a Parliament, to which the King should have cometh in person, but refrained through a practice but that morning discovered.
The plot was to have blown up the King at such time as he should have been sat in his royal throne, Nobility and Commons and with all Bishops, Judges and Doctors at one instant, and the blast to have ruined the whole estate and kingdom of England.
Fawkes was taken to the Tower of London and interrogated there under torture.
Torture was forbidden, except by the express instruction of the monarch or a body such as the Privy Council or the Star Chamber.
In a letter of 6 November, King James I stated:
The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot aroused a wave of national relief at the delivery of the king and his sons, and inspired in the ensuing parliament a mood of loyalty and goodwill, which Salisbury astutely exploited to extract higher subsidies for the king than any (bar one) granted in Elizabeth 's reign.
In his speech to both Houses on 9 November, James expounded on two emerging preoccupations of his monarchy: the Divine Right of Kings and the Catholic question.
He insisted that the plot had been the work of only a few Catholics, not of the English Catholics as a whole, and he reminded the assembly to rejoice at his survival, since kings were divinely appointed and he owed his escape to a miracle.
On hearing of the failure of the plot, the conspirators fled towards Huddington Court near Worcester, a family home of Thomas and Robert Wintour.
Heavy rain, however, slowed their travels.
Many of them were caught by Richard Walsh, the Sheriff of Worcestershire, when they arrived in Stourbridge.
The remaining men attempted a revolt in the Midlands.
This failed, coming to a dramatic end at Holbeche House in Staffordshire, where there was a shoot-out resulting in the deaths of Catesby and Percy and capture of several other principal conspirators.
Jesuits and others were then rounded up in other locations in Britain, with some being killed by torture during interrogation.
Robert Wintour managed to remain on the run for two months before he was captured at Hagley Park.
The conspirators were tried on 27 January 1606 in Westminster Hall.
All of the plotters pleaded "Not Guilty" except for Sir Everard Digby, who attempted to defend himself on the grounds that the King had reneged on his promises of greater tolerance of Catholicism.
Sir Edward Coke, the attorney general, prosecuted, and the Earl of Northampton made a speech refuting the charges laid by Sir Everard Digby.
The trial lasted one day (English criminal trials generally did not exceed a single day 's duration) and the verdict was never in doubt.
The trial ranked highly as a public spectacle, and there are records of up to 10 shillings being paid for entry.
Four of the plotters were executed in St. Paul 's Churchyard on 30 January.
On 31 January, Fawkes, Winter and a number of others implicated in the conspiracy were taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster, in front of the scene of the intended crime, where they were to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
Fawkes, although weakened by torture, cheated the executioners: when he was to be hanged until almost dead, he jumped from the gallows, breaking his neck and killing himself, thus avoiding the gruesome latter part of his execution.
Henry Garnet was executed on 3 May 1606 at St Paul 's.
His crime was of being the confessor of several members of the Gunpowder Plot, and as noted, he had opposed the plot.
Many spectators thought that his punishment was too severe.
Antonia Fraser writes:
Greater freedom for Catholics to worship as they chose seemed unlikely in 1604, but after the plot in 1605, changing the law to afford Catholics leniency became unthinkable; Catholic Emancipation took another 200 years.
Nevertheless, many important and loyal Catholics retained high office in the kingdom during King James ' reign.
Interest in the demonic was heightened by the Gunpowder Plot.
The king himself had become engaged in the great debate about other-worldly powers in writing his Daemonology in 1597, before he became King of England as well as Scotland.
The apparent devilish nature of the gunpowder plot also partly inspired William Shakespeare 's Macbeth.
Demonic inversions (such as the line fair is foul and foul is fair) are frequently seen in the play.
Another possible reference made in Macbeth was to equivocation, as Henry Garnett s A Treatise of Equivocation was found on one of the plotters, and a resultant fear was that Jesuits could evade the truth through equivocation:
The Gunpowder Plot was commemorated for years after the plot by special sermons and other public acts, such as the ringing of church bells.
It added to an increasingly full calendar of Protestant celebrations which contributed to the national and religious life of seventeenth-century England.
Through various permutations, this has evolved into the Bonfire Night of today.
Professor Ronald Hutton has considered the possible events which could have followed the successful implementation of the Gunpowder Plot, with the resultant destruction of Parliament and death of the king.
He concluded that the violence of the act would have instead resulted in a more severe backlash against suspected Catholics.
Without the involvement of some form of foreign aid, success would have been unlikely, as most Englishmen were loyal to the institution of the monarchy, despite differing religious convictions.
England could very well have become a more "Puritan absolute monarchy", as "existed in Sweden, Denmark, Saxony, and Prussia in the seventeenth century", rather than follow the path of parliamentary and civil reform that it did.
When Parliament met in January 1606 for the first time after the plot they passed an Act of Parliament called the "Thanksgiving Act".
This made services and sermons commemorating the Plot an annual feature on 5 November.
The act remained in force until 1859.
On 5 November 1605, it is said that the people of London celebrated the defeat of the plot with fires and street festivities.
The tradition of marking the day with the ringing of church bells and bonfires started soon after the Plot and fireworks were also included in some of the earliest celebrations.
In Britain the fifth of November is also called Bonfire Night, Fireworks Night or Guy Fawkes Night.
It remains the custom in Britain, on or around 5 November, to let off fireworks.
Traditionally, in the weeks running up to the 5th, children made "guys" effigies supposedly of Fawkes usually made from old clothes stuffed with newspaper, and with a grotesque mask, to be burnt on the 5 November bonfire.
These effigies would be shown in the street, to collect money for fireworks, although this practice is becoming less common.
The word guy came thus in the 19th century to mean an oddly dressed person, and in the 20th and 21st centuries to mean any male person.
Institutions and towns may hold firework displays and bonfire parties, and the same is done on a smaller scale in back gardens throughout the country.
In some areas, particularly in Sussex, there are extensive processions, large bonfires and firework displays organised by local bonfire societies; the most extensive of which takes place in Lewes.
The Houses of Parliament are still searched by the Yeomen of the Guard before the State Opening of Parliament, however, this is done as a traditional custom rather than a serious anti-terrorist precaution.
A commemorative British two pound coin was issued in 2005 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the plot.
The cellar in which Fawkes watched over his gunpowder was demolished in 1822.
The area was further damaged in the 1834 fire and destroyed in the subsequent rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster.
The lantern which Guy Fawkes carried in 1605 is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
A key supposedly taken from him is in Speaker 's House, Palace of Westminster.
These two items were shown in a major exhibition held in Westminster Hall from July to November 2005.
According to Esther Forbes (a biographer), the Guy Fawkes Day celebration in the pre-revolutionary American Colonies was a very popular holiday.
In Boston, the celebration took on anti-authoritarian overtones, and often became so dangerous that many would not venture out of their homes.
In November 1930, taking advantage of the bonfires used on the holiday, Alfred Arthur Rouse murdered an unknown man and planted his body as a substitute for Rouse 's in his Morris Minor (1928) automobile (which was then set alight).
The scheme did not work out, and Rouse was arrested, tried and executed for the crime.
Many at the time felt that Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury had been involved in the plot to gain favor with the king and enact more stridently anti-Catholic legislation.
Such theories alleged that Cecil had either actually invented the plot or allowed it to continue when his agents had already infiltrated it, for the purposes of propaganda.
These rumors were the start of a long-lasting conspiracy theory about the plot.
Yet while there was no "golden time" of "toleration" of Catholics which Father Garnet had hoped for at the start of James ' reign, the legislative backlash had nothing to do with the plot: it had already happened by 1605, as recusancy fines were re-imposed and some priests expelled.
There was no purge of Catholics from power and influence in the kingdom after the Gunpowder Plot, despite Puritan complaints.
The reign of James I was, in fact, a time of relative leniency for Catholics, few being subject to prosecution.
This did not dissuade some from continuing to claim Cecil 's involvement in the plot.
In 1897 Father John Gerard of Stonyhurst College, namesake of a Jesuit priest who had performed Mass to some of the plotters, wrote an account called What was the Gunpowder Plot?
, alleging Cecil 's culpability.
This prompted a refutation later that year by Samuel Gardiner, who argued that Gerard had gone too far in trying to "wipe away the reproach" which the plot had exacted on generations of English Catholics.
Gardiner portrayed Cecil as guilty of nothing more than opportunism.
Subsequent attempts to prove Cecil 's responsibility, such as Francis Edwards 's 1969 work Guy Fawkes: the real story of the gunpowder plot?
, have similarly foundered on the lack of positive proof of any government involvement in setting up the plot.
There has been little support by historians for the conspiracy theory since this time, other than to acknowledge that Cecil may have known about the plot some days before it was uncovered.
According to the historian Lady Antonia Fraser, the gunpowder was taken to the Tower of London magazine.
It would have been reissued or sold for recycling if in good condition.
Ordnance records for the Tower state that 18 hundredweight (equivalent to about 816 kg) of it was "decayed", which could imply that it was rendered harmless due to having separated into its component chemical parts, as happens with gunpowder when left to sit for too long if Fawkes had ignited the gunpowder during the opening, it would only have resulted in a weak splutter.
Alternatively, "decayed" may refer to the powder being damp and sticking together, making it unfit for use in firearms in which case the explosive capabilities of the barrels would not have been significantly affected.
The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding The Legend, an ITV program presented by Richard Hammond and broadcast on 1 November 2005, re-enacted the plot by blowing up an exact replica of the 17th-century House of Lords filled with test dummies, using the exact amount of gunpowder in the underground of the building.
The dramatic experiment, conducted on the Advantica Spadeadam test site, proved unambiguously that the explosion would have killed all those attending the State Opening of Parliament in the Lords chamber.
The power of the explosion, which surprised even gunpowder experts, was such that seven-foot deep solid concrete walls (made deliberately to replicate how archives suggest the walls in the old House of Lords were constructed) were reduced to rubble.
Measuring devices placed in the chamber to calculate the force of the blast were themselves destroyed by the blast, while the skull of the dummy representing King James, which had been placed on a throne inside the chamber surrounded by courtiers, peers and bishops, was found a large distance away from the site.
According to the findings of the program, no-one within 100 metres of the blast could have survived, while all the stained glass windows in Westminster Abbey would have been shattered, as would all windows within a large distance of the Palace.
The power of the explosion would have been seen from miles away, and heard from further still.
Even if only half the gunpowder had gone off, everyone in the House of Lords and its environs would have been killed instantly.
The program also disproved claims that some deterioration in the quality of the gunpowder would have prevented the explosion.
A portion of deliberately deteriorated gunpowder, at such a low quality as to make it unusable in firearms, when placed in a heap and ignited, still managed to create a large explosion.
The impact of even deteriorated gunpowder would have been magnified by the impact of its compression in wooden barrels, with the compression overcoming any deterioration in the quality of the contents.
The compression would have created a cannon effect, with the powder first blowing up from the top of the barrel before, a millisecond later, blowing out.
In addition, mathematical calculations showed that Fawkes, who was skilled in the use of gunpowder, had used double the amount of gunpowder needed.
Gelatin is a protein substance that comes from collagen.
Collagen is a natural protein found in the tendons, ligaments, and tissues of mammals.
It is made by boiling the connective tissues, bones and skins of animals, usually cows and pigs.
Once the boiling is done, the collagen will cool and make a jelly.
As a food, gelatin is used to make jellied desserts; used in the preservation of fruit and meat, and to make powdered milk.
Gelatin can also be used as glue for matches or glue for paper money.
You can also find it is used as the syrup in medicine.
Also known as medicine emulsions.
Gelatin is classed as a liquid when at room temperature but reverts to a solid if below room temperature.
Gneiss is a type of metamorphic rock.
The minerals in gneiss may come from rocks which were originally either igneous or sedimentary.
They were heated and squeezed, and the minerals recrystallized.
In gneisses, minerals tend to be foliated: layered and segregated into bands.
Thus there are seams of quartz and of mica in a mica schist, very thin, but consisting essentially of one mineral.
The Lewisian complex or Lewisian Gneiss is a suite of Precambrian metamorphic rocks that outcrop in the northwestern part of Scotland, forming part of the Hebridean Terrane.
These rocks are of Archaean and Palaeoproterozoic age, ranging from 3.0 1.7 Ga.
(IPA: \/ gru h m br ntl n \/) (born 20 April 1939) is a Norwegian politician, diplomat, and physician.
She is an international leader in sustainable development and public health.
She is a former Prime Minister of Norway.
She was the Director General of the World Health Organization.
In 2007, she became a Special Envoy for Climate Change for the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Brundtland has a degree from the University of Oslo.
She also has a master 's degree from Harvard University.
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language for creating webpages.
Webpages are usually viewed in a web browser.
They can include writing, links, pictures, and even sound and video.
HTML is used to mark and describe each of these kinds of content so the web browser can show them correctly.
HTML can also be used to add meta information to a webpage.
Meta information is information about the web page.
For example, the name of the person who made it.
Meta information is not usually shown by web browsers.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript can be included in HTML code.
CSS is used to change how a webpage looks.
JavaScript is used to add features to webpages and make them more interactive.
HTML was made by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
There are many versions of HTML.
The current standard is HTML 4.01.
So, it is the version the W3C recommends.
A newer version, called HTML5, will become standard within the next few years.
The W3C also develops XHTML.
This is another markup language which is very similar to HTML, but more strict.
HTML uses special bits of programming language called "tags" to let the browser know how a webpage should look.
The tags usually come in pairs: an opening tag to tell the browser when to start doing something, and an ending tag to tell the browser when to stop doing something.
There are many different kinds of tags, and each one has a different purpose.
Opening tags have a keyword, such as "p," surrounded by angle brackets.
For example, the tag tells the browser the start a new paragraph.
Ending tags look almost exactly the same, only they have a forward slash (\/) added just before the keyword.
For example, the tag tells the browser to end a paragraph.
A small number of tags, like and, can be used without an ending tag.
Some tags only work in certain browsers.
For example, the tag, which is used to make a bit of writing slide across the page, only works in the Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers.
Other browsers simply ignore this tag and display the writing normally.
Many web page creators avoid using these "non-standard" tags because they want their pages to look the same with all browsers.
<!DOCTYPE html>
This is the title of the page.
This is a paragraph.
The W3C is making a new version of HTML, called HTML5, with more features and better support for things like online video.
HTML5 is expected to become the standard version of HTML within the next few years.
In addition, some features of HTML4 have been left out of HTML5.
For example, the tag, which is used to change how text looks on a page, is not available in HTML5.
The W3C recommends doing this with CSS instead.
One of the aims of HTML5 is to remove the need to use third-party software like Adobe Flash, because it is often slow on mobile devices like phones and can be used to infect your computer with viruses.
Another aim is to reduce the amount of program code (JavaScript) running in each webpage, thus making the web faster.
Currently, no browsers completely support all of HTML5 's new features.
However, some of the features are supported by Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple Safari.
Hector is a person in Greek mythology.
He is an important person in the Trojan War, and Homer 's Iliad.
Hector was the favorite son of King Priam of Troy and his wife Hecuba.
He was married to Andromache, and had a son named Astyanax.
In the Trojan War he was the leader of the Trojans in battle and their hero.
Hector was killed by Achilles.
Also he was wounded badly by Ajax a Greek hero because Ajax threw a rock at him.
In Greek mythology, Hera was the goddess of marriage, life and love and is one of the Twelve Olympians.
Hera is also a goddess of the sky and starry heavens.
The Ancient Greeks said that Hera is the most beautiful goddess, even prettier than Aphrodite.
Her own special signs are the peacock, the pomegranate, and the cow.
Her other important items are the crown and veil.
Hera 's parents are Cronos and Rhea.
Her brothers and sisters are Zeus (who she also married), Hestia, Demeter, Hades, and Poseidon.
Hera has one daughter and two sons, Hebe, Ares and Hephaestus.
Athena is her stepdaughter.
Hermes is her stepson.
Hera is the queen of all the Greek gods and goddesses.
She is often thought of as being wise and serious.
Hera is also called ` The Queen of Heaven ' because she rules over Mount Olympus where all the gods and goddesses live.
Long before her marriage to Zeus, she ruled over the heavens and the Earth.
She is responsible for every living thing, including the seasons and the weather.
In most stories, myths and legends, Hera (Juno) is the goddess of marriage.
The name Hera means ` beautiful lady '.
Hera was the sister and wife of the harsh Zeus.
He had raped her and then she in a later time, had drugged him in a myth.
Dionysus is a son of Zeus by a human woman.
Hera tried to kill him when he was a baby with the Titans.
The Titans were going to make Dionysis come to him by showing him toys, and then eat him.
Zeus scared the Titans away with his thunderbolts, but the Titans had already eaten everything but Dionysus 's heart.
Zeus used the heart to make Dionysus again.
He did this by putting the heart in the womb of Semele.
Dionysis was then born for a second time.
Echo is a nymph in Greek mythology.
She once had the job of distracting Hera from Zeus having relationships with other women.
She did this by leading Hera away and flattering her.
When Hera found out she was very angry with Echo.
She put a curse on her that meant that she could only speak the words of other people after she had heard them.
It is due to this story that we get the meaning behind the word echo.
Io is a mistress of Zeus.
Hera almost caught Io and Zeus together, but Zeus hid Io by turning her into a cow.
Hera was not fooled and said that Zeus had to give her the cow as a present.
Once Io belonged to Hera she was looked after by Argus.
It was Argus 's job to make sure that Io and Zeus were never together.
Zeus ordered Hermes to kill Argus so that Io would be free.
Hermes did this by killing Argus after he had been lulled to sleep.
Hera then sent a gadfly to sting Io as she walked about on the earth.
Lamia is a queen of Libya who Zeus was in love with.
Hera was jealous of Lamia and turned her into a monster.
When she was a monster, Lamia then killed her children.
Another version of this story is that Hera killed Lamia 's children and was then so sad that she turned into a monster.
Hera also put a curse on Lamia.
The curse was that Lamia could not close her eyes.
Hera chose this curse because she wanted Lamia to always think about the picture of her dead children.
Zeus then gave Lamia the gift of being able to take her eyes out, so that she could rest.
She could then put them back in again afterwards.
When Hera found out that Leto was pregnant with twins by Zeus she was angry.
She banned Leto from giving birth on any mainland or island that was known.
Leto found a floating island, called Dellos.
It was neither a mainland or a real island, so Leto was allowed to give birth there.
Artemis was born first, who then helped Leto to give birth to Apollo.
Dellos was later held down with four pillars so that it would not float around anymore.
It is said to be surrounded by swans and later became a sacred place to Apollo.
The history of Europe means all the time when humans lived in the European continent up to the present day.
The first evidence of Homo sapiens in Europe dates back to 35,000 BC.
Europe 's antiquity (ancient time) dates from Homer 's Iliad in Ancient Greece of around 700 BC.
The Roman Republic was established in 509 BC, which was usurped by Octavian 's new Roman Empire at its first century BC peak.
The Christian religion was adopted in the fourth century, and in the sixth was organized, within the Empire, by Emperor Justinian I (527 565) with five most important cities: Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria.
The fall of the Western Roman Empire was followed by a decline of Western Europe.
The Byzantine Empire kept civilization in the East.
A schism within the church 's authority in 1054 was added to the earlier division that had persisted since 451 and was followed by Crusades from west to rescue the Holy Land from Muslim invasion.
Feudal society began to break down, as the Mongol invaders carried the Black Death with them.
Constantinople fell in 1453, showing the military weakness of the Christians in Eastern Europe, yet the New World was discovered by Western European Christians in 1492.
Europe awoke from the medieval period through rediscovery of classical learning, much of which had been kept alive in the Muslim world while the Western church had rejected lots of it as paganry.
The Renaissance was followed by the Protestant Reformation, as German priest Martin Luther attacked Papal authority.
The Thirty Years War, the Treaty of Westphalia and the Glorious Revolution laid the basis for a new era of expansion and enlightenment.
The Industrial Revolution, beginning in Great Britain, allowed masses of people, not just the rich, to escape for the first time from lives of being always poor and barely able to afford either food or shelter.
The early British Empire split as its colonies in America revolted to establish their own representative government.
Political change in continental Europe was spurred by the French Revolution, as people cried out for libert, egalit, fraternit (liberty, equality, brotherhood).
The French leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, conquered and reformed the social structure of the continent through war up to 1815, when he met his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo and was sent away into exile.
As more and more small property holders were granted the vote, especially in France and the UK, socialist and trade union activity developed and revolution gripped Europe in 1848.
The last vestiges of serfdom were abolished in Austria-Hungary in 1848.
Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861.
The Balkan nations began to regain their independence from the Ottoman Empire.
After the Franco-Prussian War, Italy and Germany were formed, each from groups of smaller countries which spoke the same languages, in 1870 and 1871.
Conflict spread across the globe, in a chase for empires, where powerful countries turned less powerful ones into colonies, until the search for a place in the sun ended with the outbreak, in 1914, of the biggest war that had ever been fought up to that point in time, referred to by people at the time as the Great War but now most often called World War I or the First World War.
In the desperation of war, the Russian Revolution promised the people "peace, bread and land" and led to the end of the Russian Empire and its replacement by the formation of the Soviet Union.
The defeat of Germany came at the price of economic destruction, which was formally written into the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 where it was stated that the First World War had been entirely the fault of Germany and its allies and demanded that they pay back the entire amount the war had cost.
The Great Depression began in 1929, brought about in part by the economic problems caused by the attempt to force Germany to pay for the war and in part by trade restrictions countries put up between each other in an attempt to make their countries ' own goods less expensive and goods made in other countries more expensive, caused millions of people around the world to lose their jobs and led to changes in government in many countries, some by elections and some by revolutions.
The governments of these countries generally fell into two main groups, those who believed in freedom and human rights and those who followed fascism.
These two deeply different views led to a Second World War, which most people who write history feel began in Europe when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, but soon spread to most of the countries in the world and also took in wars which were already going on in other places, most notably the war between Japan and China.
After this war Communism spread to Central and Eastern Europe, including the relatively new Eastern European countries of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, and in Asia North Vietnam and North Korea, and, slightly later, to Cuba in the Carribean Sea very near to North America.
The conflict between the advocates of a capitalist economy and democratic political system and a communistic economy and political system led to the Cold War, a forty-year argument between the United States and the Soviet Union, two of the countries which had worked together to win the Second World War and the two which had come out of it with the most powerful military forces, and the allies of each (mainly countries that were members of the US-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact).
Each country wanted to promote their type of government.
The Soviet Union wanted to spread communism, and the United States wanted to spread capitalistic democracy.
People across the world feared a nuclear war because of the tension, and the two countries each supported their friends in several "proxy wars", most notably in Korea and Vietnam.
Communism became less attractive when it became clear that it could promote economic growth less effectively than the capitalistic Western states and that it was not suited for a reform that allowed freedom of speech for everyone.
Therefore the Soviet Union forced in Hungary to give up its reform in 1956, it favored the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and it stopped reform in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
When in 1988\/89 the Soviet leader Gorbachev made clear that he would not force the countries of the East block to stick to Communism the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed (1991).
Then the United States was the only superpower left.
Europe signed a new treaty of union, which included 27 European countries in 2007.
Haiku is a type of Japanese poetry.
Previously called hokku, haiku was given its current name by the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki at the end of the 19th century.
The traditional hokku usually was written in six verses or more or less 5, 7, 5 syllables (on-ji).
The Japanese word cow, meaning "sound", corresponds to a mora, a phonetic unit similar but not identical to the syllable of a language such as English.
A haiku has a special season word (the kigo) to represent the season in which the poem is set, or a reference to the natural world.
Haiku usually breaks in three parts, called kireji, normally placed at the end of the first five or second seven morae.
In Japanese, there are actual kireji words.
In English, kireji is often replaced with commas, hyphens, elipses, or breaks in the haiku.
Japanese haiku are normally written in one line, while English language haiku are traditionally separated into three lines.
In Japanese, nouns do not have different singular and plural forms, so "haiku" is used as both a singular and plural noun in English as well.
Japanese hokku and haiku are traditionally printed in one vertical line.
Hatsu shigure saru mo komino wo hoshige nari The first cold shower; Even the monkey seems to want A little coat of straw.
(Coats and straw hats were normally used in Japan to protect from rain at the time)
All of the poets below have some haiku.
However, only Hackett and Virgilio are known for writing haiku.
Richard Wright wrote some 4000 haiku in the last eighteen months of his life.
Amiri Baraka recently wrote a collection of what he calls "low coup."
This is his own version of haiku.
Poet Sonia Sanchez is also known for putting together haiku and the blues musical genre.
Hades is a god in Greek mythology, and the eldest son of the Titans Kronos and Rhea (mythology).
He is the god of the Greek underworld.
In Roman mythology he is called Pluto.
In his Roman form not only is he god of the underworld but also the god of riches and despair.
Hades is the brother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hestia, Hera and Demeter.
He owns the three-headed dog Cerberus.
Cerberus acts somewhat as a guardian of the Underworld.
Persephone is to go there every six months since she ate the seeds of a pomegranate, this is what the ancient Greek believes causes the seasons to change.
Lonely in the underworld, Hades saw and fell in love with Persephone, who was picking flowers.
Persephone was the daughter of Demeter.
Hades then arose from the earth and carried Persephone into the Underworld.
At her absence, Demeter became anguished and searched the earth for her missing daughter, neglecting her duty of bringing flourishing plants to the mortals.
The distressed mortals starved and prayed to Zeus, who had no choice but to tell Hades to give up Persephone.
GNU Hurd is a multiserver kernel with the goal of providing users with as much freedom to do as they wish with the GNU operating system as possible.
It was initially intended to provide a free alternative to Unix (GNU stands for GNU 's Not Unix).
The Hurd was the intended implementation of the GNU operating system before Linux became the kernel of choice for GNU users.
The current goal of the Hurd project is:
(T) o create a general-purpose kernel suitable for the GNU operating system, which is viable for everyday use, and gives users and programs as much control over their computing environment as possible.
The Hurd kernel consists of a microkernel that provides basic kernel services and a collection (or herd) of servers \/ daemons that provided services that are beyond basic.
This design was meant to provide developers with freedom that Unix and other Unix-like operating systems did not.
For example, this design allows developers to program servers in languages other than the one used by the kernel.
GNU Mach currently is the mircokernel being used in the Hurd.
Richard Stallman created the GNU project in 1983 and founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985 in order to to fund and promote the development of free software and GNU.
By the early 1990 's, the GNU toolchain and other components besides the kernel were completed.
Work began the Hurd in 1990.
Stallmnan decided to use Carnegie Mellon University 's Mach mircokernel as the basis for the Hurd microkernel.
In 1991, Linus Torvalds released the Linux kernel, and free software enthusiasts ported GNU 's completed components to the Linux kernel in order to create GNU\/Linux.
NetBSD and FreeBSD were released a couple of years later, yet the Hurd was not in a functional state.
Due to the presence of functioning alternatives, interest in the Hurd waned.
As the FSF moved away from GNU development and more towards free software activism, Debian became more involved in the Hurd 's development.
Hydrogen is a chemical element.
Its atomic number is 1, which makes it the simplest, known element in the entire universe.
Hydrogen is the true primordial substance, the first atom produced after the big bang.
All chemical elements were formed from hydrogen by the processes of nuclear fusion.
Hydrogen glows purple when it is in plasma state.
In its pure form on Earth, hydrogen is usually a gas.
Hydrogen is also one of the parts that make up a water molecule.
Hydrogen is important because it is the fuel that powers the Sun and other stars.
Hydrogen makes up about 75 % of the entire universe.
Hydrogen 's symbol on the Periodic Table of Elements is H.
Pure hydrogen is normally made of two hydrogen atoms connected together.
Scientists call these diatomic molecules.
Hydrogen will have a chemical reaction when mixed with most other elements.
It has no color or smell.
Pure hydrogen is very uncommon in the Earth 's atmosphere.
In nature, it is usually in water.
Hydrogen is also in all living things, as a part of the organic compounds that living things are made of.
In addition, hydrogen atoms can combine with carbon atoms to form hydrocarbons.
Petroleum and other fossil fuels are made of these hydrocarbons and commonly used to create energy for human use.
Hydrogen has two different isotopes, called deuterium and tritium.
Like regular hydrogen, they both have only one proton and one electron, but deuterium also has one neutron and tritium has two.
These other types of hydrogen are important in nuclear energy and organic chemistry reactions.
Hydrogen was discovered in 1671 by Robert Boyle even though many people think it was discovered by Henry Cavendish in 1776.
The name ` Hydrogen ' comes from the Greek word for water, ' (pronounced \/ HEEW-dor \/) and gennen meaning to "generate" as it forms water in a chemical reaction with oxygen.
The main uses of hydrogen are in the petroleum industry and in making ammonia by the Haber process.
Some is used elsewhere in the chemical industry.
A litte of it is used as fuel, for example in rockets for spacecraft.
Most of the hydrogen that people use comes from a chemical reaction between natural gas and steam.
Nuclear fusion is a very powerful source of energy.
It relies on forcing atoms together to make helium and energy, exactly as happens in a star like the Sun, or in a hydrogen bomb.
This needs a large amount of energy to get started, and is not easy to do yet.
A big advantage over nuclear fission, which is used in nuclear power stations, is that no waste is produced, and no toxic fuel like uranium is needed.
There is more than 600 million tons of hydrogen undergoing fusion every second on the Sun.
1.
Water can be easily broken down into hydrogen and oxygen with electricity, but it takes a lot of electricity to get a usable amount of hydrogen.
2.
Burning hydrogen combines with oxygen molecules to make steam (pure water vapor).
3.
A fuel cell combines hydrogen with an oxygen molecule releasing an electron as electricity.
For these reasons, many people believe hydrogen power will eventually replace technologies such as diesel-electric engines and biodiesel fuel.
But it is not correct to see hydrogen as a fuel if it is used in a fuel cell.
It is more of a replacement for the power grid.
Such a grid and infrastructure with new vehicles might be first made in Iceland, a country that has much free geothermal energy and is quite small.
Because it imports all fossil fuel, it would help Iceland to completely stop using it.
The huge advantage of hydrogen is that when burnt in an engine or in a fuel cell, there is no pollution.
Only a small amount of water forms.
Helium is a chemical element.
It has the chemical symbol He, atomic number 2 and atomic weight of about 4.002602.
There are 9 isotopes of helium, only two of which are stable.
These are 3He and 4He.
4He is by far the most common isotope.
Helium is called a noble gas, because it does not regularly mix with other chemicals and form new compounds.
It has the lowest boiling point of all the elements.
It is the second most common element in the universe, after hydrogen, and has no color or smell.
However, Helium has a blue-ish, neon color when being burnt with fire.
Helium does not usually react with anything else.
Astronomers discovered helium in 1868.
They found that it was in the Sun before it was found on Earth.
Because of where it was found, its name comes from the Greek word for Sun, helios.
Helium is used to fill balloons and airships because it is lighter than air, and does not burn or react, meaning it is normally safe for using it in that way.
It is also used in some kinds of light bulbs.
People also breathe it in to make their voices sound higher than they normally do as a joke, but this is extremely dangerous if they breathe in too much, since it can kill them because they are not breathing normal air.
Breathing too much helium can also cause long-term effects to vocal cords.
It can be created through the process of nuclear fusion in the sun we are currently trying to harness nuclear fusion as a form of power but this is still at an early stage because the sun can quantum tunnel enough because of its huge size).
During this process, four Hydrogen atoms are fused together to form one Helium atom.
A hydrocarbon is a type of chemical compound.
It is made of only hydrogen and carbon atoms.
They can be found in crude oil and are separated by fractional distillation (which means they are separated into different groups).
The hydrogen and carbon are bonded with non-polar covalent bonds.
Because of its lack of polar covalent bonds, hydrocarbons can not create hydrogen bonds with water and are hydrophobic.
Hydrocarbons are grouped into "families" or "homologous series".
There are five main families.
The hydrocarbons in each family have a general formula and similar chemical properties, and similar trends in physical properties.
Alkanes are the simplest hydrocarbons.
Their general formula is CnH2n +2.
Alkenes are similar to alkanes.
The main difference between them is that alkenes have a carbon to carbon double bond.
The general formula for the alkenes is CnH2n.
Note that there is no "Methene".
Methene is not possible as alkenes require a carbon-carbon double bond and methane only has one carbon atom.
Alkynes have a carbon to carbon triple bond.
CnH2n-2 is their general formula.
"Methyne" does not exist because of methane 's one carbon atom.
Cycloalkanes are isomers of alkenes.
They have the same general formula (CnH2n), the only difference is that they do not have a carbon to carbon double bond.
Note that the alkane Methane and the alkene Ethene do not have a cycloalkane because they can only form a straight line.
Alkadienes have two carbon to carbon double bonds.
Their general formula is CnH2n-2.
They are isomers of Alkynes.
Aromatic hydrocarbons are aromatic organic molecules that form flat ring-shaped bonds.
The most simplest of aromatic hydrocarbons are benzene and indole.
They can have one ring, heterocyclic, like benzene or 2 rings, bicyclic like napthalene (primary ingredient in mothballs) or many rings, polycyclic like anthracene (red dye colourant).
Their general formula is CnH2n-6, where n is a number greater than or equal to 6.
The halogens are chemical elements under the second-to-right column in the periodic table, also known as Group 17.
The elements in the group are fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, astatine, and ununseptium.
Halogen literally means "salt becomer", but it is often cited to mean "salt producer".
They are very reactive, so they are likely to join with other elements on the left side of the periodic table to make compounds.
This is due to the fact that they are missing one electron.
They are rarely found alone in nature, except astatine, which is not found in nature.
Fluorine is the most reactive, while iodine is the least reactive.
Astatine is very radioactive and hard to get.
The home page of a web site is the document that a web server sends to another computer 's web browser application when it has been contacted without a request for specific information.
That is, when you enter only a domain name in the Address box without specifying a directory or a file, the home page is usually the first part of the web site you will be taken to.
The Home Page is also called the Main Page.
A properly written home page will tell a user about the information available in the web site, and how to view different parts of the web site.
The home page of simple.wikipedia.org can be found at this link.
Home Page was a popular computer application used for composing web pages.
In Linux-based servers, the homepage usually is index.
html, index.
php, index.
cgi, etc..
Unless the website administrator has created a redirect to a specific webpage.
However, in Windows-based servers, the homepage is default.
html, default.
php, etc..
This is a problem for website administrators to install website applications like MediaWiki.
Mainly because most website applications are created with the homepage as index.
php (for PHP applications).
A histogram is a concept from statistics.
It is a graphical display that tells us about the distribution of the samples involved.
They are commonly a picture made from a table with many categories.
The table tells how many samples there are in each category.
The word histogram is derived from histos and gramma in Greek.
Histos means web or mast.
Gramma means drawing, record or writing.
A histogram of something is therefore, etymologically speaking, a drawing of the web of this something.
The histogram is one of the seven basic tools of quality control, which also include the Pareto chart, check sheet, control chart, cause-and-effect diagram, flowchart, and scatter diagram.
A generalization of the histogram is kernel smoothing techniques.
This will construct a smooth probability density function from the supplied data.
Hawaii is a U.S. state; the only one which is in Oceania.
It is the last state which joined the United States.
Hawaii became a state on August 21, 1959.
It is the only state made only of islands.
Hawaii is also the name of the largest island.
The capital and largest city of Hawaii is Honolulu on the island named Oahu.
Hawaii is known as the "Aloha State".
Aloha is a Hawaiian word that has many meanings like welcome, hello and goodbye.
Aloha also means love and care.
The different meanings are brought together in the term "Aloha Spirit" to describe the friendly people of Hawaii.
The state flower is the yellow hibiscus (Hibiscus brackenridgei or).
The state bird is the Hawaiian goose (nene).
The state fish is the reef triggerfish, also called the '.
The state tree is the candlenut, also called kukui.
The state song is Hawaii Ponoi.
The state motto is '.
In English it says, The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.
The first people of Hawaii were Polynesians.
They came to the islands sometime between 200 and 600 AD.
Captain James Cook is given credit for discovering the islands for the Europeans in 1778.
Others may have been there before him.
Captain Cook named the islands the Sandwich Islands for the fourth Earl of Sandwich, John Montague.
Kamehameha I was the first king of Hawaii.
He united the separate small Hawaiian kingdoms into one large kingdom in 1795.
In 1893, American soldiers stopped Queen Liliuokalani from leading Hawaii when American business people took over the government and made their own laws.
She was the last monarch of Hawaii.
She also wrote the original words of the song called Aloha Oe.
The American business people made Hawaii into a republic for a short time.
The new leader, Sanford Dole was called the President of Hawaii.
In 1898, the United States of America took over the government and made Hawaii into a territory.
In 1959, Hawaii became the fiftieth American state.
Hawaii is an archipelago, a long chain of islands.
There are eight main islands and many small islands and atolls.
They are the tops of underwater volcanos.
The main islands are Niihau, Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe, Maui and Hawaii.
The biggest industry of Hawaii is tourism.
Almost 7 million people visited in 2000.
Important exports are sugar, pineapple, macadamia nuts, and coffee.
Popular tourist sites include Waikiki Beach, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Polynesian Cultural Center, and the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.
A hearse is a car used to transport a coffin.
It is usually used to go to a cemetery.
Hearses are usually black or gray.
They are driven by a mortician.
Hungary is a country in Central Europe.
Its capital city is Budapest.
Hungary is slightly bigger than its western neighbor Austria and has about 10 million inhabitants.
Other countries that border Hungary are Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia.
Hungary 's official language is the Hungarian language.
It has been a member of the European Union (EU) since 2004.
In Hungarian the country is called Magyarorsz g (Hungary) or Magyar K zt rsas g (Hungarian Republic).
This is named after the Magyar tribes who came to Hungary in the late 9th century.
The Magyars established Hungary in 896, after they had arrived there from their previous, Eastern European territories.
Prince rp d was their leader at the time; he also established the first royal house of the country, the rp d-house.
In 1000, after the first king, Saint Stephen had been crowned, the country became a Kingdom.
In 1241, the Tatars (Mongols) invaded the country, causing many deaths and damages.
In 1301, the rp d-house died out.
Later on, kings from various houses were ruling over Hungary.
The greatest of them is Matthias Corvinus, famous for protecting the country against the Ottoman aggression.
However, some decades after he had died (1490), the Ottomans defeated the country in the Battle of Moh cs (1526).
The Kingdom was cut up to three parts: the western and northern areas remained Hungary, the southern region fell under Ottoman rule, and the eastern parts became semi-independent as the Principality of Transylvania.
The Kingdom of Hungary became a Habsburg dependency, because an agreement made in Vienna in 1515 said that the Habsburg family would take over the territory of the Jagellion family in Bohemia and Hungary if the line of kings should die out.
In 1686, the Ottomans were forced to leave, and the country was reunified.
Many nationalities were living in the country at this time.
Along with Hungarians, there were also the ancestors of modern Slovaks, Serbs, and Romanians.
In 1703, Francis II R k czi, a Hungarian nobleman organized a revolution against the Habsburgs, as Hungarians were not satisfied with them.
However, his revolution failed in 1711, and he had to go to exile.
The next most important event is the "Hungarian Revolution of 1848", when the inhabitants of the country mutinied again.
Fighting ended in 1849, with Habsburg success.
The leaders of the revolution were executed.
The country tried to find the way towards consolidation: in 1867, the two most important Habsburg territory, Austria and Hungary signed a treaty, and they established the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
The new situation was feasible for both sides: the agreement brought massive economic growth.
In 1918 after the defeat in World War I, the Kingdom was abolished, and a republic was established, as people had enough of war.
This republic was short-lived, and soon the Communists seized power (1919).
Their rule was irresponsible and many people, including the peasants and the intelligentsia, were tortured.
The communists had to abandon the country as Romanian troops invaded.
In late 1919, the Hungarian forces, led by Admiral Mikl s Horthy, finally occupied the capital, Budapest.
In response to the communist terror, they launched the "White Terror", in which they persecuted the communists and their supporters.
The kingdom was re-established but there was no king.
Horthy was elected as the regent of the country, as the assembly decided not to recall the Habsburgs.
Hungary lost the war.
According to the Treaty of Trianon (1920), Hungary lost two thirds of its territory.
On the majority of these territories, non-Hungarians were the majority; however, many Hungarians also found themselves outside their country, in the nation state of Romanians or Slovaks.
Thus, the main political goal of the governments under Horthy was to revise this treaty, and at least, to regain the Hungarian-inhabited lands.
After the fall of Nazi Germany, Soviet troops occupied all of the country.
So Hungary gradually became a communist satellite state of the Soviet Union.
After 1948, Communist leader M ty s R kosi established Stalinist rule in the country.
He forced collectivization and planned economy.
This led to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Hungary withdrew from the Warsaw Pact.
But the Soviets sent in over 150,000 troops and 2,500 tanks.
Nearly a quarter of a million people left the country during the brief time that the borders were open in 1956.
J nos K d r became leader of the communist party.
In 1991 Soviet military presence in Hungary ended and the transition to a market economy began.
Today, Hungary is a democratic republic.
Elections are held in every fourth year.
The current president of the country is J nos der, and the prime minister is Viktor Orb n. Orb n was Prime Minister from 1998 to 2002, and was elected again in 2010.
Hungarians make up the largest part of the population but there are also several other ethnic communities.
The largest of these are Romas and Germans.
Hungarian is the most widely used language in Hungary but of course ethnic communities often use their own languages as well.
The majority of Hungarians are religious, mainly Roman Catholic and Calvinist (in Hungarian ` reform tus ' - ` Reformed ').
Hungary 's highest point is K kestet (1014 m; in the northeastern part of Hungary).
The River Danube, one of Europe 's largest rivers divides Hungary into a western and an eastern part.
The region west of the Danube is called Transdanubia (Dun nt l).
Transdanubia has a hilly landscape and many small villages and towns.
The large flat area in the eastern part is the Great Plains (Alf ld).
Along the Slovakian border there are mountains.
Lake Balaton, Central Europe 's largest lake can be found in Hungary.
This small country has several thermal spas too.
Lake H v z is one of the world 's largest thermal lakes.
Hungary, however is a landlocked country (it has no seacoast).
Its biggest cities are Budapest, Debrecen, Miskolc, Szeged, P cs, Gy r, Ny regyh za and Szolnok.
Szolnok is found at the juncture of the Tisza River and the Zagyva River (stream).
Historiography is about the writing of history and the use of historical methods.
Thus it looks at authors, sources, interpretation, style, bias, and audience.
The word historiography can also refer to a body of historical work.
For thousands of years people have been telling stories about the past, and making written records of the actions of kings and prophets and other famous persons.
After 500 BC, they began writing more organized histories.
Written history appeared first with the ancient Greeks, whose historians greatly contributed to the development of historical methodology.
The very first historical works were The Histories composed by Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484 BC ca.425 BC), who became later known as the ` father of history ' (Cicero).
Thucydides was the first to distinguish between cause and immediate origins of an event, and his successor Xenophon (ca.
431 355 BC) introduced autobiographical elements and character studies in his Anabasis.
The Romans adopted the Greek tradition, becoming the first people to write history in a non-Greek language.
The most famous writers are Julius Caesar 's (100 BC 44 BC) Bellum Gallicum.
Livy (59 BC AD 17) who records the rise of Rome from city-state to world dominion.
Plutarch (c. 46 - 127) and Suetonius (c. 69-after 130) introduced biography as a branch of history.
Tacitus (c. 56 c. 117) criticizes Roman immorality by praising German virtues.
Writing history was popular among Christian monks and clergy in the Middle Ages.
They wrote about the history of Jesus Christ, the Church and of their patrons, the dynastic history of the local rulers.
In the Early Middles Ages historical writing often took the form of annals or chronicles recording events year by year but this style tended to hampered the analysis of events and causes.
An example of this type of writing are Anglo-Saxon Chronicles which were the work of several different writers and start during the reign of Alfred the Great in the late 9th century and one copy of which was still being updated in 1154.
History was written about states or nations during the Renaissance.
The study of history changed during the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
Voltaire described the history of certain ages that were important according to him, instead of describing events in a chronological order.
History became an independent discipline.
It was not called philosophia historiae anymore, but merely history (historia).
Modern historiography began with Leopold Ranke in the 19th century, who was very critical on the sources used in history.
The French Annales School radically changed history during the 20th century.
Fernand Braudel wanted history to become more scientific by demanding more mathematical evidence in history, in order to make the history discipline less subjective.
Furthermore, he added a social-economic and geographic framework to answer historical questions.
Other French historians, like Philippe Ari s and Michel Foucault described history of daily life topics such as death and sexuality.
They wanted history to be written about all topics and that all questions should be asked.
The idea of the historical journal, a forum where academic historians could exchange ideas, came into being in the nineteenth century.
The early journals were similar to those used in the physical sciences, and were seen as a means by which history could be professionalised.
Journals also helped historians to establish various historiographical approaches, the most notable example of which was Annales.
conomies.
Soci t s. Civilisations.
a publication instrumental in establishing the Annales School.
The question of how a historian approaches historical events is one of the most important questions within historiography.
It is commonly recognized by historians that, in themselves, individual historical facts are not particularly meaningful.
Such facts will only become useful when assembled with other historical evidence, and the process of assembling this evidence is understood as a particular historiographical approach.
Determinism means that historians view history as being more caused by certain factors than other factors.
The two most common types of determinism are geographic determinism and economic determinism.
Geographic determinism means that historians think history is mostly caused by geography.
Frederick Jackson Turner thought that.
Economic determinism means that historians think history is mostly caused by economics.
Charles Beard thought that.
Other historians believe that history is caused mostly by politics or mostly by a struggle for natural rights, but these are not usually called determinism.
The Holy Roman Empire should not be mistaken for the Roman Empire.
The Holy Roman Empire (German: Heiliges R misches Reich, or in the 15th century: Heiliges R misches Reich Deutscher Nation) was a group of regions and free cities in central Europe which all came under the rule of an emperor who was elected by the princes and magistrates of the regions and cities within the empire.
When Charlemagne died, his Frankish Empire was given to his children and divided into three different countries: West Francia, Lotharingia and East Francia.
The Holy Empire started when Otto I of East Francia became Holy Emperor in 962, and it was ended by Napoleon in 1806.
The emperors claimed to be heirs of Charlemagne and that the Empire dates from 800, when Charlemagne became Frankish Emperor.
In the 16th century the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) had to deal with the rebellion of the Frisians lead by Pier Gerlofs Donia and Wijerd Jelckama.
This lasted from 1515 until 1523.
In the 17th century the Empire was shattered by the Thirty Years ' War (1618-1648).
Nearly thirty percent of the population of the Empire was killed.
The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation lost parts of its territory.
Until the 13th century, the Holy Roman Empire was powerful.
Later, all the duchies and counties inside the Empire started to get more power.
At the end, the Emperors Had little real power any more, and the country existed only in name.
The last emperor abolished the empire in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.
Voltaire, a French philosopher in the 18th century, once joked that the nation was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
The Empire was in fact Germanic and not Roman since it was mainly in the region 's of present-day Germany and Austria.
It was not really holy since after 1530, no emperors were crowned by the Pope; the last being Charles V. It was only really an Empire by name as the territories it covered were mostly independent themselves.
The Empire had its own central government and armed forces that acted as one.
It was ruled by the House of Habsburg before it fell in 1806.
Napoleon forced the emperor to abdicate when France began invading the Holy Roman Empire during the First French Empire.
The Emperor made himself emperor of Austria and ended the Holy Roman Empire.
The Empire was one of the rare countries in Europe that had an elective monarchy.
This meant that the Emperor was chosen by a group of princes.
Common practice was to just elect the deceased Emperor or Empress 's heir to the throne.
A holiday is a regularly reoccurring festive day.
Usually, but not always, the festive day is observed every year.
The word "holiday" is derived from the words "holy" and "day."
: Other holidays like Independence Day and Veterans ' Day can come on a weekday or weekend.
If the holiday is on a weekend, it is moved to Friday or Monday to create a "3-day weekend."
Calendars sometimes mark these holidays twice.
For example, in 2006, Veterans ' Day in America was on Saturday, November 11.
"Veteran 's Day (observed)" was also on the calendar; it was Friday, November 10.
Catholics also celebrate saint 's days.
A hobby is a leisure activity that people do for fun or recreation.
People do it because they like it.
Some people do arts and crafts.
They make clothing or decorations with their hands.
Some popular arts and crafts that involve textiles or fabrics include crocheting, sewing (making clothing), embroidery, knitting, and quilting.
Some people like to do hobbies that involve making images on paper, such as scrapbooking, painting, and drawing.
Some people like to make three-dimensional decorations using clay or wood, in the hobbies of pottery, sculpture, wood carving, and woodworking.
Some other arts include movie-making, photography, and musical hobbies such as singing, playing musical instruments, and writing songs.
Some people enjoy hobbies such as playing games or solving puzzles.
Games include board games such as chess, card games, and newer games such as wargaming and role-playing games.
Popular puzzles include jigsaw puzzles and crossword puzzles.
Some people enjoy spending their time reading books, magazines, and newspapers, or writing stories or in a diary.
Other people enjoy learning foreign languages by taking classes, or doing research, such as genealogy.
In the 2000s, many people have Internet-based hobbies, such as editing Wikipedia, writing their own blogs, or having online discussions in Newsgroups or online forums.
Some people enjoy computer activities, such as computer programming, learning about open source software, or playing computer games.
Some people enjoy learning about electronics such as doing amateur radio broadcasts or building robots.
Some people enjoy working on their home and learning how to repair their home by themselves, without hiring repair people or plumbers.
Some people enjoy learning how to repair motor vehicles, such as antique cars.
Some people even build and repair sailboats in their backyard.
Many people have hobbies that they do in the kitchen, such as cooking for their guests and family, and making their own beer.
Many people also have hobbies in their home that involve animals, such as keeping a pet animal, such as a dog, a cat, or tropical fish.
Some people even learn about dog breeding.
Collecting is a popular hobby in North America and in Europe.
People enjoy finding interesting examples of different items and learning about them.
Some of the well-known types of collecting include stamp collecting, coin collecting, video game collecting, trading cards such as baseball cards, and Pok mon cards.
People also collect toys, books, comic books, and old records.
Some people collect antiques and artwork, but these hobbies are more rare, because antiques and artwork are usually expensive.
A type of hobby that is related to collecting is model building.
People who do model-building as a hobby collect small models which they build, paint, and then display.
Some common types of model-building hobbies include model airplanes, model rockets, model ships, model cars, and model railways.
Outdoor hobbies include bird feeding, birdwatching, canoeing, gardening, hiking, walking, and sports such as baseball, bowling, cycling, fishing, hunting, and sailing.
Many people spend a lot of time in leisure activities that are not necessarily called hobbies.
Some people disapprove of spending time on these activities.
These activities include watching too much television, drinking alcohol, and taking illegal drugs.
Holland is the name of a region in the western part of the Netherlands.
Holland was a county of the Holy Roman Empire and later the leading province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (1581 1795).
Today, there is no country called "Holland".
There are two provinces called "Holland" in the Netherlands: North Holland and South Holland.
Those provinces were created in 1840.
The earlier country and province of Holland used to be bigger, but some parts of that province were given to other provinces during the French occupation (1795-1813).
For example, Willemstad became part of North Brabant, the islands of Vlieland and Terschelling were given to Friesland, and the island of Urk to Overijssel.
But for a short time during that period (1806 1810), there was a country called "Holland", the Kingdom of Holland, which was in the central and northern Netherlands and East Friesland in Germany.
Many people use the name "Holland" to refer to all of the Netherlands, including the other ten provinces.
That is not correct and is like calling the United Kingdom, "England" or "Great Britain".
Some Dutch people who do not live in Holland do not like it when people call the entire country Holland.
But they do n't mind using "Holland" when you mean the Dutch national football team, which they are used to calling "Holland".
A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek city-states.
A hoplite 's main weapon was his spear.
They fought close together in what was called a phalanx formation.
In a phalanx, each man 's shield protected himself and also gave some protection to the right arm of the man on his left.
The word "hoplite" comes from the type of the shield used by the soldiers.
In later texts, the term hoplite is used to denote any armored infantry, regardless of armament or ethnicity.
A hoplite was usually a free citizen who got his own armor and weapons.
In most Greek city-states, citizens got basic military training, serving in the standing army for a time.
They were expected to take part in any military campaign when they would be called for duty.
The Lacedaemonian citizens (Sparta) were renowned for their lifelong combat training and almost mythical military prowess, while their greatest adversaries, the Athenians, were exempted from service only after the 60th year of their lives.
The phalanx, and hence the armor, was trained to work as a team.
A phalanx tended to be 8 rows or more deep, each row with a leader, and an officer who kept order in the rear.
The first lines would stab at their opponents, at the same time try to keep in position.
The ranks behind them would support them with their spears and the mass of their shields gently pushing them, not to force them into the enemy but to keep them steady and in place.
At certain points, a command would be given to take a certain number of steps forward.
In battle, a phalanx would tend to drift to the right (as hoplites sought to keep behind the shield of their neighbor).
The weak spot on a phalanx was on the right, where the free arms were unprotected by shields.
The most experienced hoplites were often placed on the right side of the phalanx, to counteract these problems.
Spain is a country in Europe.
People have lived on the Iberian Peninsula for about 500,000 years.
Neanderthal man came about 200,000 years ago.
Modern humans first came about 40,000 years.
The Roman Empire controlled Spain for three hundred years; then people from Eastern Europe called Visigoths fought for Spain, won it from the Romans, and controlled Spain for over two hundred years.
The Visigoths converted from Arian Christianity to Roman Catholics.
The land was won after a war by Muslims who were Arab and Berber.
Roman Catholics from Europe eventually decided to fight to take Spain from the Muslims.
They fought wars for many hundreds of years, some of which were Crusades against other Christians like the Cathars.
These were very cruel wars.
In the year 1492, they took the last part of Spain that had belonged to the Moors.
Boabdil, the last Moorish Leader of Granada, gave the city to King Ferdinand of Aragon on 2 January 1492, and Christians now ruled all of Spain.
Before this, several different kings had ruled different countries in what is now called Spain.
Two of these countries, Castile and Aragon, came together when the king of Aragon, Ferdinand II, married the queen of Castile, Isabella.
In the same year, 1492, they decided to send Christopher Columbus to explore the Atlantic Ocean.
Columbus found a land there that the people of Europe did not yet know.
These were the islands of the Caribbean Sea.
Columbus and other sailors explored more and found that there were two continents there - North America and South America.
Spain sent many soldiers and businessmen to North and South America, and they took over very large parts of those two continents.
Owning this empire made Spain very rich.
But when they conquered that empire, they killed millions of the Native Americans who had lived there before.
Spain owned this empire for more than three hundred years.
Meanwhile, at home, the Muslim manuscripts had been either burnt or spread to other countries.
Jews had been expelled from Spain.
The multicultural society was destroyed, and so was the learning.
Among the few things kept and respected in Spain were in music: harmony and stringed instruments, and of course the buildings, many of which became churches, by adding crosses.
The Spanish Empire was the strongest in the world through most of the next two centuries, thanks to gold from the Americas.
This new gold made rulers and colonial governors rich.
Meanwhile others ' savings became worth less due to inflation.
Spain became a society of very rich and very poor.
Some of the poorest went to the new colonies in the Caribbean, Central America and South America, mostly to find gold.
Native American peoples were killed by diseases brought by the Spaniards, but most Spaniards did not know this.
They found damaged and dying societies with people who had lost some of their most important leaders and thinkers.
The Spaniards thought this meant they were inferior, and used this as an excuse to enslave the natives.
Millions of natives died mining gold for the Spanish.
The Spanish Empire also at this time funded the Spanish Inquisition which tortured and killed anyone who disagreed with the Roman Catholic Church.
The Reformation which created Protestant sects in Europe was not allowed into Spain, it was kept out and, as with Jews or Muslims, its believers were killed.
The nobles of Spain no longer had to fight anyone since the internal feuds were over.
No one could challenge their power.
In many ways it was held together as a reign of terror.
People who challenged them were often called heretics, so that the Inquisition could torture them, and then nobles take the property.
For ordinary people on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, life got worse.
A few rulers got rich.
Today we would say that these people were guilty of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
Many Church people who had the power to speak out at that time, did so, and they said many of the same things as we would say today.
But none of this mattered much to the rulers.
The great satire Don Quixote was written about this time.
In the 18th century, there was doubt over who should become king of Spain; this doubt led many of the kings of Europe to fight to become king of Spain.
This was called the War of the Spanish Succession.
France occupied Spain for a long time.
This made Spain very weak.
It also made Spain lose its empire in North and South America; all of the parts of that empire became their own countries, or were taken over by other countries such as the United States of America.
There was not much peace in Spain during the first part of the 20th century.
Some Spaniards tried to set up a government chosen by the people (a democracy), and they made the King of Spain leave the country.
However, in 1936, two different groups of Spaniards went to war over whether the government should be a democracy, or take orders from one person.
In 1939, those who wanted democracy were defeated, and a dictator named Francisco Franco took over the government.
Franco died in 1975.
He had decided that Spain should have a king again, and he chose Juan Carlos, the grandson of the king who had been forced to leave the country, to be king.
But the king did not rule as a dictator; instead, he chose to set up a democracy.
Also since Franco 's death, Spain appointed Adolfo Su rez to became Spain 's first democratically elected prime minister.
Now Spain is a modern democratic country, and does business with many countries around the world.
It is a part of the European Union.
Muslim history began in Arabia when Muhammad recite the Quran in the 7th century.
The historical development of Islam has affected political, economic, and military trends both inside and outside the Islamic world.
As with Christianity, the concept of an Islamic world is useful when one looks at different periods of human history.
After Muhammad died, the Muslim leadership was assumed by Abu Bakr.
He was followed by Umar, Uthman ibn Affan and then Ali.
These four are called the Rashidun caliphs which means The Righteous Caliphs.
The word caliph means religious and spiritual leader.
Under these caliphs Islam became one of the most important religions of the middle East.
Administrative offices of the Muslim nation were established.
Under Umar more than two thirds of the Eastern Roman Empire was conquered by the Muslims.
Umar also started the Muslim calendar.
The first civil war in Islam, also known as the First Fitna broke out in Islam during the rule of the fourth caliph Ali and lasted throughout his caliphate.
The third caliph Uthman ibn Affan had been murdered by rebel Muslim groups who had political motives.
After Ali took over, the most important problem he faced was that of punishing those responsible for murder.
However many people felt that before accepting the position of the caliph, Ali should have focused his attention on finding and punishing the murderers.
A group of people led by Muhammad 's wife Aisha, her brothers in law Talhah and Zubair ibn al-Awam refused to recognize Ali 's caliphate.
They instead raised an army which met Ali 's army at Basra in Iraq, originally for the purposes of negotiations.
In the night, some fighting broke out, probably out of confusion or due to rebel groups who were involved in the infamous murder.
This led to the Battle of Bassorah (also known as Battle of the Camel) in which Ali 's party emerged victorious.
Aisha was escorted back to Medina honorably after the battle by Ali.
This battle however did not entirely finish the tension in the Muslim empire.
Ali was soon challenged by Muawiyah, the governor of the Muslim provinces of Syria.
He too raised the issue of punishing Uthman 's murderers and refused to acknowledge Ali as caliph until the issue had been solved.
Muawiyah was a kinsman of Uthman and his army pledged to bring to justice the murderers and those who sheltered them.
This reference to people who are sheltering the murderers was towards Ali and his followers.
Accordingly, the two groups met and fought a battle, called the Battle of Siffin.
This battle ended in a draw and so both groups decided on arbitration which also did not lead to any concrete decision.
Another group of Muslims, The Kharijites who had previously been with Ali, meanwhile rejected him because they felt that he was not following true Islam and conducting business over the caliphate as if it were his own property.
In the following years Ali 's governors could not prevent his losing provinces to Muawiyah who increased his strength by further expanding his army.
Ali had shifted the capital of the caliphate from Medina to Kufa in 656.
He was killed by a Kharijite assassin in Kufa in 661.
The Hittites were an ancient people from Anatolia who spoke an Indo-European language.
They established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia from the 18th century BC.
At its peak, the Hittite Empire covered most of modern Turkey and Syria.
This was under the reigns of Suppiluliuma I (~ 1350 1322) and Mursili II (~ 1321 1295 BC).
They had up-and-down relationships with Ancient Egypt to the south, and the Assyrian Empire in Mesopotamia.
They were a party to the first known peace treaty, which was made with Ramesses II of Egypt by Hattusili III in 1258 BC.
After 1180 BC, the empire disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some surviving until as late as the 8th century BC.
The Hittite Kingdom reached its zenith during the reign of Suppiluliuma I (~ 1350 1322).
The kingdom of Mitanni, wracked by civil war, was unable to withstand the Hittite onslaught.
Suppiluliuma swiftly attacked the Mitanni heartland, capturing and plundering the Mitanni capital of Washshuganni.
He then turned west, recrossed the Euphrates and captured all the Syrian kingdoms which were vassals to the Mitanni, including Aleppo, Mukish, Niya, Qatna, Upi (Upina), and Kadesh.
Other kingdoms such as Ugarit and Amurru (an Egyptian vassal) voluntarily became vassal states of the Hittites.
When hostilities flared up once more with Mitanni, Tulipinu, Suppiluliuma 's son and viceroy at Aleppo invaded Carchemish but was unable to take the city.
Suppiluliuma met with his son and then invaded Syria himself, laying siege to the city of Carchemish.
Suppiluliuma broke the siege on the eighth day, installing his son Piyassili as viceroy of the kingdom.
With his sons as viceroys of Aleppo and Carchemish, Suppiluliuma had cemented his rule over Syria and brought the empire of Mitanni to an end.
The Mitanni King was assassinated soon after.
When Tutankhamun, the Egyptian Pharaoh died, to Suppiluliuma 's amazement, Tutankhamun 's wife asked him to marry one of their sons.
Suppiluliuma sent an envoy to Egypt to confirm this message.
After meeting with his returning ambassador and an Egyptian envoy, Suppiluliuma agreed to send his son Zannanza to Egypt to marry the queen.
However, Zannanza was assassinated en route to Egypt.
Suppiluliuma was furious and blamed the new Egyptian Pharaoh Ay for his son 's death.
A Hittite army under crown prince Arnuwanda invaded Egyptian territory from Syria, pillaging and taking many prisoners.
These prisoners brought with them a plague which ravaged the Hittite Kingdom continuing well into Mursili 's reign and may have killed Suppiluliuma himself.
Mursili II was young and inexperienced, but he proved to be a strong king.
In the first years of his reign he carried out punitive campaigns against several kingdoms.
In Syria the Nuhashshi king Tette rebelled and was joined by Egyptian troops.
Troubles in Syria continued when Mursili 's brothers Tulipinu and Piyassili both died.
The loss of his Syrian viceroys led to rebellion and even the invasion of Carchemish by Assyria.
Leaving his generals to deal with Syria and Hayasa, Mursili invaded Carchemish and drove out the Assyrians.
Later in his reign Mursili II campaigned against the Kaska once again retaking the Hittite holy city of Nerik.
He also decisively defeating the King of Tummanna.
Hormones are the chemical messengers of the endocrine system.
Hormones are the signals which adjust the body 's internal working, together with the nervous system.
Every multicellular organism has hormones.
The cells which react to a given hormone have special receptors for that hormone.
When a hormone attaches to the receptor protein a mechanism for signalling is started.
The cell or tissue that gets the message is called the ` target '.
Hormones only act on cells which have the right receptors.
Many different kinds of cells can send a message.
There are some kinds of cells whose main job is to make hormones.
When many of these cells are together in one place, it is called a gland.
Glands are groups of cells that make something and release it (put it outside the cell).
Many glands make hormones.
"Endocrine" means secreting directly into the blood.
Most internal secretions are endocrine, from endocrine glands.
The opposite word is "exocrine", which means secreting through a duct or tube.
Some hormones are produced by exocrine glands, and some exocrine secretions go outside the body.
Sweat glands and salivary glands are examples of exocrine glands whose products are released outside the body.
Hormones do many things.
They regulate metabolism.
Metabolism is all of the chemical and energy reactions that happen in a living thing.
Hormones cause the growth and death of cells and of whole organisms.
Hormones also start and control sexual development.
For example, the hormones estrogen and progesterone make girls puberty.
Hormones help keep homeostasis in an organism.
Homeostasis means to keep a constant state inside the body like temperature, amount of water and salts, and amount of sugar.
Hormones released by one gland can also tell other glands to make different hormones.
There are four types of hormones in most vertebrates.
They are grouped by the chemicals from which they are made.
In biology regulation means to control something.
So regulating hormones means controlling how much hormones are made and released from cells.
Hormone regulation is mostly done by negative feedback.
In negative feedback, a hormone causes an effect.
The cells that make the hormone detect this effect and its production ceases.
A good example of negative feedback is with the hormone, insulin.
Insulin is produced by the pancreas.
Insulin is released by the pancreas in response to consumption of glucose.
The amount of glucose in the blood rises and the pancreas detects this increase.
It then secretes insulin into the blood.
Insulin increases glucose uptake in target cells.
Some glucose is used by the cells but some is also converted to and stored in the form of glycogen.
Glucose uptake by cells decreases blood glucose levels - this decrease is detected by the pancreas and in response, it stops secreting insulin in to the bloodstream.
As insulin levels in the blood decrease, as does glucose uptake by cells.
This negative feedback therefore helps to maintain normal blood glucose levels and prevents extreme changes.
There are three main types of hormones: steroid hormones - these are non-polar and do not need a receptor.
The other is peptide hormones.
The last is Tyrosine derivative hormones, such as the T3 and T4 hormones produced by the thyroid.
Sometimes two or more hormones control the same thing.
For example, blood glucose is very important to an organism.
So it is not controlled by just one hormone.
Other hormones also make the glucose level go up or down.
If the glucose level gets too low, the body releases hormones that do the opposite of insulin.
They do not tell the cells in the body to take up glucose from the blood.
They tell the cells to put glucose back into the blood.
These kind of hormones that work opposite of other hormones are called counter-regulatory hormones.
Counter-regulatory hormones for insulin are glucagon and epinephrine.
Most important things in an organism are kept in homeostasis by negative feedback and counter-regulatory hormones.
However a few things are controlled in different ways.
One rare way is positive feedback.
In negative feedback, the hormone 's effect makes a gland stop making hormones.
In positive feedback the opposite happens.
The effect of the hormone tells the gland to make even more hormones.
An example of positive feedback is the hormone that causes childbirth (when babies are born.)
The hormone that causes this is oxytocin.
This hormone is made by the pituitary gland.
When the baby starts coming out, it stretches the muscle in the cervix (the bottom of the uterus).
Nerves in the cervix send a message to the pituitary.
This message makes the pituitary release more oxytocin.
The oxytocin then causes the muscles of the uterus to contract, or squeeze.
This causes more stretching in the cervix.
This stretching then tells the pituitary to make even more oxytocin.
So levels of oxytocin keep rising until the squeezing or contractions of the uterus force the baby out.
Most hormones start a cellular response by binding to cell membranes or receptors inside the cell.
A cell may have several different receptor types that recognize the same hormone but activate different signal transduction pathways, or a cell may have several different receptors that recognize different hormones and activate the same biochemical pathway.
Hormones are defined functionally, not structurally.
They may have various chemical structures.
Hormones occur in multicellular organisms (plants, animals, fungi, brown algae and red algae).
These compounds occur also in unicellular organisms, and may act as signalling molecules,
The Hammond organ is a keyboard instrument that looks like a piano.
The most common Hammond organs create sound using metal wheels and electricity.
It is an electric version of a pipe organ that was invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert.
It was first built in 1935.
Sliding "drawbars" adjust the type of sound that the organ makes.
The Hammond organ is one of the most successful organs made because almost two million Hammond organs were sold.
The most common Hammond organ has two keyboards that are called manuals by organ players.
They are smaller versions of piano keyboards that are stacked on top of each other.
This allows the organist to play both at the same time.
The keys on the manuals of a Hammond organ are lighter and easier to press than the keys on a piano.
This makes it easier for organists to play notes faster.
The pedalboard on a Hammond organ looks like a very large piano keyboard.
It 's played with your feet and makes very low sounding notes, known as bass notes.
Both manuals and the pedalboard can be played at the same time, making it easy to make complex sounds with the organ.
The sounds that the manuals and pedalboard make are controlled by switches called drawbars.
You can pull them out to make the sound louder, or push them in to make the sound softer.
Each manual has nine drawbars that control different parts of the sound.
The drawbars on the left side control lower sounds while the drawbars on the right side control higher sounds.
The pedalboard has two drawbars, and they both control low sounds.
Hammond organs have a feature called "percussion" which allows you to add melodic clicks to the music you 're playing.
It 's controlled by switches on the upper left side of the organ.
Percussion adds harmonics to the melodies you 're playing.
To further change the sound of the organ, a knob exists that adds vibrato or chorus to the music depending on how it 's turned.
Vibrato is a very small change in pitch that makes the notes sound like they 're "wobbly".
Chorus adds additional notes to the notes you 're playing to make the sound more "full".
The Hammond organ was based off of an early instrument called the Telharmonium which made sounds the same way the Hammond organ did, with turning metal discs.
Laurens Hammond, the inventor, had a clock making business where he created a clock motor that is useful for other things too.
With his motor he made the Hammond Organ.
The most common Hammond organs are tonewheel organs, which means that they create sound based off of turning metal disks with bumps on the edges.
An electric signal is sent over the bumps and the resulting signal is made louder by using an amplifier.
Hammond 's A, B, C, D, and RT series organs use tonewheels, and according to experts, they are preferred over any other model of Hammond.
Hammond manufactured tonewheel organs from 1935 to 1975.
After Hammond made tonewheel organs, he moved onto transistor organs, which did n't use tonewheels, but instead used computer circuitry to generate sound.
Most Hammond organ players did not like the sound of the transistor organs, and they lost popularity quickly.
Hammond manufactured transistor organs from 1975 to 1985 when the Hammond Organ Company went out of business.
The tone generator in a Hammond organ is made up of many tonewheels spinning at the same speed.
Electric signals and amplifiers make the sounds louder.
The most common speaker used with the Hammond organ is called a Leslie speaker.
Made by Don Leslie, it copies the sound of a pipe organ by rotating the speakers inside the speaker cabinet.
Leslie speakers were not made by Hammond, but most people liked them so much that they would buy them anyway.
An alternative to the Leslie Speaker is the Hammond Tone Cabinet, but that was n't as popular.
Hypoglycemia is a medical emergency that involves lower than normal blood sugar.
Normal blood sugar is about 70 to 100mg per deciliter.
All of the cells in the body need sugar to do their jobs and to survive.
When a person does not have enough blood sugar, their body can not work normally.
Hypoglycemia can cause many symptoms.
Some common symptoms are nausea, feeling hungry, sweating, feeling sad, and heart palpitations (feeling the heart pounding).
Bad hypoglycemia can make a person act like they are drunk or have taken drugs.
Very bad hypoglycemia can look exactly like a stroke.
Hypoglycemia can happen to anyone, at any age, but it usually happens in people who are diabetic.
It is often a complication of treatment for diabetes with insulin or oral medications.
Hypoglycemia is treated by returning the blood sugar levels back to normal.
Often, a hypoglycemic person can bring their blood sugar levels back up by eating.
In the worst cases, when the blood sugar is very low, hypoglycemia is treated by giving sugar water intravenously (through a needle placed into a vein).
The brain and other parts of the body can not work without sugar.
Because of this, severe (very bad) hypoglycemia can cause serious medical problems (like seizures) or even death if it is not treated quickly enough.
Helsingborg Municipality is a municipality in Sk ne County in southern Sweden.
The seat is in Helsingborg.
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 April 7, 1947) was an American engineer and businessman.
He started making cars in 1896 and founded the Ford Motor Company.
He developed the idea of a system in which each worker has the duty to do one small part of the process of making something.
His idea made it possible to produce cars in large numbers.
This was called the assembly line.
Many factories around the world still make things this way.
It was quite innovative at the time and it allowed him to produce many cars quickly and at a cheaper price than other car companies could.
He married Clara Bryant and had one child named Edsel Bryant Ford.
Ford left home for Detroit, Michigan to start his mechanical career.
In 1903, Henry Ford helped start the Ford Motor Company.
He was the owner of the company.
The company sold its first car which was the model T car on July 23, 1903.
Ford became president of the company in 1906.
In 1908, Ford 's company began making the Ford Model T car.
Ford said that he wanted to make a "motor car for the great multitude".
This meant that he thought that most Americans should be able to afford to buy a car and not just a few rich people.
In order to reach this goal, he chose to make the design as simple as possible.
All his cars would be made the same way.
They were even all the same color - black.
It cost $ 850 to buy a Model T car.
Even though that was a lot of money back then, it was still very cheap for a car.
Many people wanted to buy Model T cars.
In fact, so many people wanted to buy them that Ford was having a hard time making enough cars to sell one to everybody who wanted to buy one.
Ford helped develop an idea, not much used before his time, called the assembly line, and started using it in his factories in 1913.
Because of the assembly line, making new cars would not take as long.
He put a moving belt in his factory.
Cars moved along the belt, and workers put on one part at a time.
Each worker would only be responsible for putting one part on cars.
The assembly line was a big success.
Cars did not take as long to make, and they were cheaper to buy now, too.
By 1916, it only cost $ 360 to buy one of Ford 's cars, and more than three times as many people were buying his cars now.
The Ford Model T changed America.
It made it easier for people to live in the city instead of the country.
Ford was also known for his political views.
He had been against World War I because he thought that it was a waste of time.
He also believed that Jewish people were causing problems in the world.
This belief is called Anti-Semitism.
In 1919, he took over a newspaper called the Dearborn Independent.
He began publishing articles that blamed Jews for problems in the world.
Later, he would blame Jewish bankers for starting World War II.
Haiti (French: Ha ti; Haitian Creole: Ayiti), officially the Republic of Haiti (French: R publique d'Ha ti; Haitian Creole: Repiblik d Ayiti) is a country on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
The other country on the island is the Dominican Republic.
Haiti has two official languages: French and Haitian Creole, or "Kreyol", which is a simple version of French mixed with African languages.
Its capital city is Port-au-Prince.
Haiti has a tropical climate.
In French, the country is called "La Perle des Antilles" (The pearl of the Antilles), because of its natural beauty.
There are many mountains in Haiti.
The country used to be covered with forests.
However, it no longer is, because of deforestation.
It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
Haiti is divided into ten departements.
The main religion is Roman Catholicism.
However, many Haitians also practice Voodoo.
This is a religion which came from African folk beliefs in Benin.
Haiti has many holidays; the largest and most important is the Mardi Gras.
Haiti has a total area of 27,750 km.
Most of it is in the western third of the Hispaniola island.
There are also smaller islands near the Haitian coast, like Gon ve, le de la Tortue, Les Cayemites, le - - Vache and La Navase.
Haiti has many mountains.
There are only some coastal plains and few valleys.
The largest valley is the Cul-de-Sac.
Port-au-Prince is in the western end of this valley.
The country 's main river is the Artibonite, which is also the longest in Hispaniola.
Haiti 's biggest city is Port-au-Prince, with more than 3 million people in its metropolitan area.
The second largest city is Cap-Ha tien.
Haiti has a tropical climate.
The rainy season lasts from April to June, and from October to November.
Hurricanes are common during summer.
In the past, hurricanes have caused a lot of damage and killed many people.
The Taino people were a tribe of Arawak Amerindians.
They lived on the island of Hispaniola before Christopher Columbus found the island and started a European colony there.
Columbus discovered the island of Hispaniola on his first trip to the Americas.
Within twenty-five years after Columbus arrived, all of the Arawaks had been killed by Spanish conquistadors.
In the early 17th century, the French set up a colony on Hispaniola.
In 1697, Spain sold the western third of the island - Haiti - to the French.
The French colony was based on forestry and making sugar.
It became one of the wealthiest in the Caribbean.
However, to do this, the colony brought many slaves over from Africa and destroyed much of the environment.
By the late 18th century, there were nearly half a million slaves in Haiti.
They revolted, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture.
After a hard and bloody struggle, they won their independence.
In 1804, Haiti became the first independent black republic in the world.
Today there are many monuments in Haiti remembering the Haitian Revolution.
One of the largest is La Citadelle Laferriere.
On January 12, 2010, in the afternoon of a Tuesday, Haiti was struck by a magnitude-7.0 earthquake.
This was the worst earthquake to hit the country in the past 200 years.
The quake 's epicenter was just outside the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.
The quake caused major damage to Port-au-Prince and nearby areas.
Over 200,000 people were thought to have been killed, but it was hard to be sure because many people were buried in mass graves before they could be identified.
Haiti is made of ten regions known as departments (, singular d partment).
These departments are further divided into 41 arrondissements, and 133 communes.
These are the second and third level units of administration.
.
Haiti is the least developed country in the Americas.
It is also one of the least developed and poorest countries in the world.
There are indicators that can be used to compare social and economic situations between countries.
Some indicators show that Haiti has fallen behind other poor developing countries since the 1980s.
In 2006, Haiti ranked 146th of 177 countries in the United Nations Human Development Index (2006).
About 90 % of the Haitian people were living in poverty in 2003.
Haiti is the only country in the Americas on the United Nations list of Least Developed Countries and it is the poorest country in the Americas.
The was economy staying even or falling behind even before their big earthquake.
About 66 % of all Haitians work in agriculture.
Most of them do small-scale subsistence farming (meaning that they are able to grow just enough to survive).
This does not bring in much money.
Very few jobs were created in the last ten years.
However, the informal economy is growing.
Mangoes and coffee are two of Haiti 's most important exports.
Haiti has consistently ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world on the Corruption Perceptions Index.
About one third of the national government 's budget is money given to them by other countries.
The United States gives the most money.
Canada gives the second largest amount of money.
The European Union, Venezuela and Cuba also give and help Haiti 's economy in different ways.
Haiti has renewed its alliances with Venezuela and Cuba in 2006 and 2007.
From 2001-2004, the United States stopped giving aid to Haiti completely.
The aid was cut off after Haiti 's 2000 election.
The election 's results were questioned, and President Aristide was accused of cheating to win the election.
Aristide was overthrown in 2004.
After that, the United States started giving aid to Haiti again.
The United Nations led a peacekeeping operation called the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti.
(The Mission is called called MINUSTAH in Haiti; this is an acronym for the Mission 's name in French).
The Brazilian army led the peacekeeping operation.
Even after President Aristide was overthrown, corruption continued to be very common in Haiti.
Haiti has a large amount of foreign debt (money owed to other countries and international institutions to repay loans).
The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) program planned to forgive about $ 525 million of Haiti 's debt by mid-2009.
In 2009, the population of Haiti (the number of people living in the country) was about 10,090,190.
Figures from the DNA Nation-wide Studies Institute say that the racial makeup of the population is:
Some Asian people also live in the country.
Haiti is a country in the Caribbean.
It occupies the western third of Hispaniola; the Dominican Republic occupies the eastern two-thirds of the island.
The country has a total area of 27,750 km of which 27,560 km is land and 190 km is water.
Haiti has 1,771 km of coast-line and a 360 km-border with the Dominican Republic.
The limits of the country are the Dominican Republic to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the Caribbean Sea to the south and west.
The capital, Port-au-Prince, is located on the west coast.
Cuba is to the northwest and Jamaica to the southwest of Haiti; the Winward Passage separates Cuba from Haiti (and Hispaniola) and the Jamaica Channel separates Haiti from Jamaica.
There are two large peninsulas: the Northwestern on the Atlantic Ocean, and the Southern peninsulas on the Caribbean Sea.
The Northwestern, or just Northern, Peninsula is also known as the Saint-Nicolas Peninsula; it was the first part of the Hispaniola visited by Christopher Columbus on 1492.
The historical name of the Southern Peninsula was Tibur n Peninsula.
Between those two large peninsulas there is a gulf (a very large bay): the Gulf of Gon ve.
It is named so after the Gon ve Island that is in the middle of the gulf.
It was called also Gulf of L ogane after the city of L ogane, one of the oldest in Haiti.
Haiti has a tropical climate but modified by elevation and the Trade winds (winds that come from the northeast, from the Atlantic Ocean, full of water vapor), which blow from the Atlantic all year long.
In low lands with mountains to the northeast, the climate is arid (dry) because the trade winds leave their water in those mountains rather than the valleys and plains.
There are two rain seasons, in spring and fall to the south, and in spring and winter to the north.
From June to November (mainly from August to October), tropical storms and hurricanes are frequent and can do much damage in the country.
There are several smaller islands and cays that are part of Haiti.
The largest islands are:
The chains of mountains show a direction northwest-southeast, except in the Southern Peninsula where they have a direction west-east.
The mountains are separated by valleys with the same general direction.
The river Artibonite is the longest river of the island and of Haiti.
It is 321 km long (68 km in the Dominican Republic, 253 km in Haiti).
Its sources are in the Cordillera Central (Dominican Republic) and flows into the Gulf of Gon ve.
Its watershed has an area of 6,399 km in Haiti and 2,614 km in the Dominican Republic.
Another important Haitian river is the Trois Rivi res (Three Rivers).
It is 150 km long and its sources are in the Massif du Nord and flows into the Atlantic Ocean, near the city of Port-de-Paix.
The largest lake of Haiti is the tang Saum tre (also known as Lake Azuei); it is eastern end of the Cul-de-Sac valley.
It is a saline lake with an area of around 170 km.
Others lakes are tang de Mirago ne (25 km), of fresh water at 4 km southeast from the city of Mirago ne; and Trou Ca man (16.2 km), a small lake at 6 km from tang Saum tre.
Heard Island and McDonald Islands (abbreviated as HIMI) are islands in the Indian Ocean, about two-thirds of the way from Madagascar to Antarctica.
The islands are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The islands were discovered in 1833 by the British sailor Peter Kemp.
They have been territories of Australia since 1947.
Big Ben is an active volcano.
The volcano is also known as "Mawson Peak".
The group 's size is 372 km in area.
The Holy See (Latin: Sancta Sedes, "holy seat") is the office of the Bishop of Rome, that is, the Pope.
The term Holy See also means the Pope and the Roman Curia, the central government of the Roman Catholic Church.
Every episcopal see is seen as holy and the Eastern Orthodox Church constantly applies the adjective "holy" or "sacred" to all its sees, but "the Holy See" (definite singular) normally means the see of Rome, which is also called "the Apostolic See".
While "Apostolic See" can refer to any see founded by any of the Apostles, the term is in this case used to refer to the see of the bishop seen as successor of the chief of the Apostles, Saint Peter.
Aside from Rome, the archiepiscopal See of Mainz, which was also of electoral and primatial rank, is the only other Western see that bears the title of "Holy See", although this usage is less common.
The Pope governs the Church through the Roman Curia.
The Roman Curia consists of the Secretariat of State, nine Congregations, three Tribunals, 11 Pontifical Councils, and a complex of offices that administer church affairs at the highest level.
The Secretariat of State, under the Cardinal Secretary of State, directs and coordinates the Curia.
The current incumbent, Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, is the Holy See 's equivalent of a prime minister.
Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, Secretary of the Section for Relations With States of the Secretariat of State acts as the Holy See 's foreign minister.
Bertone and Mamberti have been named in their respective roles under by Pope Benedict XVI in September 2006.
Among the most active of the major Curial institutions are the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which oversees church doctrine; the Congregation for Bishops, which coordinates the appointment of bishops worldwide; the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which oversees all missionary activities; and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, which deals with international peace and social issues.
The Holy See sends a delegate to the Arab League in Cairo.
It is also a guest of honor to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The Holy See, not the Vatican City, maintains diplomatic relations with states (such as with the United Kingdom), and participates in international organizations.
Foreign embassies are accredited to the Holy See, not to the Vatican City, and it is the Holy See that establishes treaties and concordats with other sovereign entities.
When necessary, the Holy See will enter a treaty on behalf of the Vatican City.
Under the terms of the Lateran Treaty, the Holy See has extraterritorial authority over 23 sites in Rome and five Italian sites outside of Rome, including the Pontifical Palace at Castel Gandolfo.
The same authority is extended under international law over the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See in a foreign country.
Honduras is a country in Central America.
Its capital is Tegucigalpa.
Most people of Honduras speak the Spanish language.
7,483,763 people live in Honduras and it is 112492 k in size.
It is next to El Salvador.
To one side is the Caribbean Sea and to the other in the Pacific Ocean.
The ethnic makeup of Honduras is 80 % mestizo, 17 % amerindian, 2 % black, and 1 % white.
Honduras has the world 's highest murder rate.
Honduras is divided into 18 departments.
The capital city is Tegucigalpa in the Central District.
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (, literally "Fragrant Port") is one of two Special Administrative Regions (SARs) of the People 's Republic of China (the other is Macau).
It is one of the richest and most highly developed places in China and even the world.
Hong Kong grew quickly in the decades after World War II.
It is now a famous world class financial center.
The population of Hong Kong is more than seven million.
The economy has rapidly grown from a trading port to a very rich city.
Hong Kong was a British colony from 1842 to 1997 because China lost the Second Opium War.
After the Handover, Hong Kong became a part of China.
Hong Kong is in a tropical area, and has monsoon winds.
It is cool and wet in winter (Jan-Mar), hot and rainy from spring through summer (Apr-Sep), and warm, sunny and dry in the autumn (Oct-Dec).
The rainy season is from May until September.
In summer and early autumn, there is a frequent threat of typhoons.
The population of Hong Kong reached 7 million in 2009.
Most of the people in Hong Kong are Chinese.
Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.
It has an overall density of 6,300 people per square kilometre.
Hong Kong has one of the world s lowest birth rates 1.11 per woman of child-bearing age as of 2012.
This is far below the rate needed to replace each person, 2.1.
People from Hong Kong mainly speak Cantonese.
Many learn English as an additional language.
Ever since Hong Kong became a part of China, the number of people who speak Mandarin has increased because Mandarin is the official language of the PRC.
Some schools have a different track for each of the three languages, depending on the language the student is most comfortable with, and teach all of the subjects of the school in the language of the track.
There are coins from 10 cents to 10 Hong Kong dollars; and bank-notes (paper money bills) from $ 10 to $ 1000.
One American dollar is equal to about $ 7.75 in Hong Kong dollars, at the official bank exchange rate.
Hong Kong has two media companies, Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) and Asia Television Limited (ATV).
They are business rivals.
Hong Kong has a complex transport network.
It includes both public and private transport.
Over 90 % of the daily use is on public transport.
That is the highest rate in the world.
The Octopus card is an electronic money system.
It became available in September 1997.
Passengers can use it in every station of the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system.
The card can be used to pay for public transport, parking meters, convenience stores, supermarkets, fast-food restaurants and most vending machines.
Howland Island is a small island in the north Pacific Ocean, just north of the Equator.
It is owned by the United States.
Howland island is a very hot and sunny island with wind blowing almost all the time.
It only rains every once in a while.
Howland Island is located at 0 48 N, 176 38 W.
Henryk Sienkiewicz (May 5, 1846 November 15, 1916) - Polish journalist and Nobel Prize-winning novelist.
Hydrology is the study of movement, distribution, and quality of water throughout the Earth.
A person who studies hydrology is called a hydrologist.
The central theme of hydrology is how the water circulates.
This is called the water cycle.
The most vivid illustration of it is the water evaporation from the ocean with the formation of clouds.
These clouds drift over the land and produce rain.
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (7 October 1900 - 23 May 1945) was the leader of Germany 's SS and Gestapo organization.
Hitler ordered his arrest after Himmler offered peace to allies.
He killed himself by cyanide poisoning when he was a prisoner of the British Army after Germany had lost World War II.
Himmler 's father was a teacher and headmaster.
Himmler 's SS (theTotenkopfverb nde) organized and administered Germany s regime of concentration camps and, after 1941, the holocaust in Poland.
The SS, through its Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD), hunted down Jews, Gypsies, communists and any persons who the Nazis believed to be either Untermensch (sub-human) or against the regime.
They were brought to concentration camps.
Himmler opened the first of these camps at Dachau on 22 March 1933.
Unlike Hitler, Himmler inspected concentration camps.
In August 1941, he saw many Jews being shot in Minsk.
It was said that he turned green in the face after brain matter from one of the Jews splashed onto his coat.
His assistant had to jump forward and hold him steady.
After that, the Nazis searched for a new and easier way to kill.
This led to the use of the gas chambers.
On 4 October 1943, Himmler spoke of the extermination of the Jewish people during a secret SS meeting in the city of Pozna (Posen).
The following are parts from an audio recording of the speech: I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly.
It should be discussed amongst us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public.
I am talking about the Jewish evacuation: the extermination of the Jewish people.
It is one of those things that is easily said.
"The Jewish people are being exterminated," every Party member will tell you: "Perfectly clear, it s part of our plans, we re eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!
, a small matter."
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (often abbreviated to HTTP) is a communications protocol.
It is used to send and receive webpages and files on the internet.
It was developed by Tim Berners-Lee and is now coordinated by the W3C.
HTTP version 1.1 is the most common used version today.
It is defined in RFC 2616.
HTTP works by using a user agent to connect to a server.
The user agent could be a web browser or spider.
The server must be located using a URL or URI.
This always contains http: \/ \/ at the start.
It normally connects to port 80 on a computer.
A more secure version of HTTP is called HTTPS.
This contains https: \/ \/ at the beginning of the URL.
It encrypts all the information that is sent and received.
This can stop malicious users such as hackers from stealing the information.
HTTPS is often used on payment websites.
HTTPS uses port 443 for communication instead of port 80.
The request line and headers must all end with two characters: a carriage return followed by a line feed, often written.
The empty line must consist of only and no other whitespace.
In the HTTP\/1.1 protocol, all headers except Host are optional.
A request line containing only the path name is accepted by servers to maintain compatibility with HTTP clients before the HTTP\/1.0 standard.
Even this site has a HTTP at it 's beginning, which is: http://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol&action=edit&section=1 HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is a communication protocol and it is used to send and receive webpages and other data files on the internet.
A more secure version of HTTP is called HTTPS (Hyper Transfer Protocol Secure).
It encrypts all the information sent and received.
This can stop hackers from stealing the information; HTTPS is often used on payment websites.
The Hebrew language is a Semitic language.
It is the language of the Jews.
The Academy of the Hebrew Language is the main institution of the Hebrew language.
The language was spoken by Israelites a long time ago - during the time of the Bible.
After Judah was conquered by Babylonia, the Jews were taken captive to Babylon and started speaking Aramaic.
Hebrew was no longer used as much in day-to-day life, but it was still known by Jews who studied religious books.
In the 20th century, many Jews decided to make Hebrew into a spoken language again.
It became the language of the new country of Israel in 1948.
People in Israel came from many places, and decided to learn Hebrew, the language of their common ancestors, so they could all speak one language.
However, Modern Hebrew is quite different from Biblical Hebrew, with a lot of simplified grammar and loanwords from other languages, especially English.
In order to read the Bible in its original language, one must learn Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Aramaic and Koine Greek.
Hebrew is a lot like the Arabic language.
Hebrew words are made by combining a root with a pattern.
In Israeli Hebrew, some words are translated from European languages like English, French, German, and Russian.
Many words from the Old Testament were given new meanings in Israeli Hebrew.
People learning Hebrew need to study the grammar first in order to read correctly without vowels.
In Israeli Hebrew, there is no verb "to be" in the present tense, only in the future and the past tenses.
In Biblical Hebrew, there are no tenses but only two "aspects": imperfect and perfect.
The imperfect is something like the future and the present tenses.
The perfect is something like the past tense.
Mishnaic Hebrew is the Hebrew spoken as well as Judeo-Aramaic in the time of Jesus and in the time of the Bar-Kokhba revolt (2nd century AD), until the Byzantine Empire of Justinian (6th century AD).
The Hebrew alphabet has been adapted to write Yiddish, another of the Jewish languages.
But Yiddish sounds different from Hebrew as it comes from the same family as German.
The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters.
Five of these letters change when they are at the end of a word.
The Hebrew language is read from right to left.
The Hebrew alphabet is an abjad which means that only the consonants are written out and the reader must supply the vowels himself.
Since this is pretty difficult, the vowels can be marked as dots called niqqud (plural niqqudim).
In Modern Hebrew, some letters can denote vowels.
These are called matres lectionis (mothers of the reading) as they help the reading a lot.
The head of state of a country is its highest leader.
However, the head of state may not have very much real power.
In a modern republic, the head of state is a president, usually elected by the people or by a parliament.
In a monarchy, the head of state is the king or queen.
Some countries have different systems - for example the head of state of the Vatican City is the Pope.
In a modern monarchy, the head of state usually has little real power.
Instead, the most powerful person is the head of government.
This is usually the leader of the political party that wins the most seats in an election.
In these cases the king is considered to be the leader of the country, but must always take the decisions that the head of government advises them to make.
The king or queen carries out national ceremonies.
The United Kingdom works like this, with the Prime Minister heading the government.
A president may be the most powerful person in the country.
This is true in the United States.
However, sometimes there is a head of government, as well as a president.
The president then acts very much like a king or queen, leaving the real decisions to the head of government.
The Republic of Ireland works like this.
In older times, and in some modern countries, the head of state has absolute power, this called an absolute monarchy.
Heredity is the passing of traits (characteristics) from parents to offspring.
In biology, the study of heredity is called genetics.
With most living things, heredity is analyzed by breeding (making crosses), often in a laboratory.
But with humans, heredity is studied in other ways.
Family pedigrees, identical twins and DNA genome analysis all provide clues.
A trait which may be inherited is heritable; it is inborn or innate.
Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 13 August 1946) was an English author.
He was born in Bromley, Kent.
He wrote about 50 books.
He was one of the inventors of science fiction, and also wrote novels and utopias.
He wrote books such as The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The War of the Worlds.
He also explained how the things he wrote about could actually happen.
Some of his books have been made into movies.
He had diabetes.
He died in London.
A hypertext is a text that is organised like a network.
Parts of the text reference other text passages or texts which can directly be accessed.
The parts that provide the reference are known as hyperlinks.
An example of a hypertext is the HTML standard used in the World Wide Web.
Harlan Jay Ellison (born May 27, 1934) is an award-winning American writer of short stories, novellas, teleplays, essays, and criticism.
His most famous work is in the science fiction area, where he has won many Hugo and Nebula awards.
Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt (June 2, 1885 December 30, 1964) was a German neuropathologist.
He was the first to describe Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
He was born in Harburg upon Elbe and died in Munich.
Holmium is a chemical element with the symbol Ho and atomic number 67.
Part of the lanthanide series, holmium is a relatively soft and malleable silvery-white metallic element, which is stable in dry air at room temperature.
A rare earth metal, it is found in the minerals monazite and gadolinite.
Hafnium is a chemical element.
It has the chemical symbol Hf.
It has the atomic number 72.
It is a metal.
It is silver gray.
In chemistry it is placed in a group of metal elements named the transition metals.
The chemistry of hafnium is similar to zirconium.
Hafnium is found in zirconium minerals.
Hafnium is used in tungsten alloys in filaments and electrodes.
It is also used as a neutron absorber in control rods in nuclear power plants.
Hamburg or in full Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, is a city in the north of Germany on the banks of the River Elbe, 18 km away from the North Sea.
With a population of about 1.73 million (1730000) it is the biggest German city after Berlin and the sixth largest city of the European Union.
The religion is about 37 % Protestant, 10 % Catholic, 8 % Muslim, 38 % agnostic, 2 % Pagan.
Since it was an important member of the Hanseatic League, the city 's official name still includes Hansestadt (Hanseatic city).
Other German cities that do the same today are: L beck, Rostock, Wismar, Stralsund, Bremen, Greifswald and Demmin.
The membership in this trade alliance has influenced the architecture of the city to a great extent.
It has also left some marks in the region around the city.
The city is ranked 17th for best place to live in the world.
The area of Hamburg is 755.16 k. It has an oceanic climate (Cfb in the Koeppen climate classification).
Hamburg 's harbor is, by shipments, the second largest harbor in Europe (after Rotterdam) and among the ten largest in the world.
It is a very important gate to the countries along the Baltic Sea and Eastern Europe.
There are about 120,000 businesses in Hamburg.
The company Airbus has an assembly plant for large civil aircraft in Hamburg.
30,000 people are employed in Hamburg 's aircraft industries.
There are only two other locations worldwide in this scale, Seattle in the United States and Toulouse in France.
About half of Germany 's nation-wide newspapers and magazines are made in Hamburg.
Germany 's most-viewed television news Tagesschau is broadcast from Hamburg.
Hamburg 's red-light district (in Sankt Pauli) is the largest in Europe.
Hedonism is a type of philosophy.
Hedonism can be generally summed up as a belief that "pleasure is the highest good" or that "whatever causes pleasure is right."
In Hedonism, people think that what makes them happy is good.
Things that avoid pain are also good.
Hedonism is focused around pleasure.
There are different beliefs in hedonism.
Some people believe it is important to get as many pleasurable experiences as possible, others believe that the quality of the pleasure matters.
They think there are higher and lower pleasures.
Many people also believe Hedonism is related to sex.
This is not true.
Sex can be a very pleasurable experience, but when philosophers talk about Hedonism, they think more about the pleasure of reading a good book, listening to classical music, or discussing with other philosophers.
Two types of Hedonism are Cyrenaicism and Epicureanism.
Cyrenaicism is where people make themselves happy in the fastest amount of time.
Epicureanism is where people like to be happy but they do so slowly so that they cause less pain to themselves.
They also look more into the future and go for the higher pleasures in life.
The Holocene is the present geological epoch.
It is also called the Recent epoch.
It is the second stage in the Quaternary period.
The Holocene marks the end of the previous series of ice ages in the Pleistocene.
It started about 11,700 years ago when the temperatures rose quickly from the previous level.
During the early Holocene, there were many extinctions amongst larger mammals.
This is attributed to a combination of human hunting and climate change.
Harbour means to shelter or keep safe.
A harbor (or harbor) is a place where ships may shelter.
A port is also a harbor, but is usually bigger.
The port will often contain a water space with breakwarers around the edge, a number of quays or piers where the ships may be moored or tied up and a transport system for taking goods inland.
Often railway and road transport will be used.
Goods also move by pipeline transport and by smaller ships on rivers.
Harbors can be natural as in San Francisco or artificial as in ancient Carthage or a mix of both.
During the D-Day operations of 1944, two artificial harbors (named mulberry) were built just off the beaches where the invasion was going to happen.
H is the eighth (number 8) letter in the English alphabet.
Horseshoes are things worn by horses to protect their feet when they walk - like a shoe.
They are made by a person called a farrier who makes them and nails or glues them on the horse 's hoof (feet).
Horseshoes are usually made from iron, rubber, plastic, rawhide or a combination of these.
People also put horseshoes over doorways, because a long time ago, many people thought it was a sign for good luck and it protected whoever walked under it from evil spirits.
Horseshoes are also used in a game where you try to throw them on a poll.
Hemoglobin (or hemoglobin) is a protein in red blood cells which contains iron.
It is used to transport oxygen around the human body.
Hemoglobin is found in the red blood cells of all vertebrates apart from white-blooded fish.
It also occurs in some invertebrates.
Hemoglobin is involved in the transport of other gases.
It carries some of the body 's respiratory carbon dioxide (about 20-25 % of the total).
Red blood cells get their color from hemoglobin, which is red.
There are millions of hemoglobin molecules in each red blood cell and millions of red blood cells in the human body.
When hemoglobin has oxygen attached, it is called oxyhemoglobin.
The most common type of hemoglobin in mammals contains four such subunits.
Each subunit of hemoglobin is a globular protein (globin) with a heme group inside it.
Each heme group has one iron atom.
This binds one oxygen molecule.
So the complete hemoglobin molecule has four globin chains, four heme molecules, and four iron atoms.
When hemoglobin is in the lungs, it picks up oxygen in its hemes, and carries it to the rest of the body.
Its structure took years to work out.
Max Perutz and John Kendrew worked out the structure of myoglobin first.
That muscle globin is smaller, with only one heme group.
England is the largest of the countries that today make up the United Kingdom.
The name England comes from the Anglo-Saxons who arrived in the 5th century.
The territory of England has been united as one country since the 10th century.
This article is about the history of that territory until 1707, when Britain (England and Wales) was joined with Scotland to make Great Britain.
Archaeology shows that people came to southern England long before the rest of the British Isles, probably because of the friendly climate between and during the ice ages of long ago.
Julius Caesar invaded what is now England in 55 and 54 BC, and wrote in De Bello Gallico that there were many tribes there, who were very similar to other Celtic tribes in Europe.
Coins, and later Roman historians, have given us the names of some of the rulers of the tribes, and what they did.
For hundreds of years, what is now England was a Roman province, Britannia.
The Romans later gave up on the province and left the Celtic people on their own as the Roman Empire began to fall apart.
The influence of the Romans meant that the territory of England had already experienced unity before the Anglo-Saxons arrived.
After the Romans left around 410, England was settled by waves of Germanic peoples (Anglo-Saxons).
Jutes, together with large numbers of Frisians, Saxons from northern Germany, and Angles from southern Denmark - often called "Anglo-Saxons", began to invade Britain in the mid-5th century.
They were tribes led by royal chiefs, and they settled on the eastern and southern shores.
Analysis of human bodies found at an ancient cemetery near Abingdon, England, shows that Saxon immigrants and native Britons lived side-by-side.
The Romano-British population (the Britons) was assimilated.
The settlement (or invasion) of England is called the Saxon Conquest, or the Anglo-Saxon or English Conquest.
From the 4th century AD, many Britons left across the English Channel from Wales, Cornwall and southern Britain, and started to settle the western part of Gaul (Armorica), where they started a new nation: Brittany.
The Britons gave their new country its name and the Breton language, Brezhoneg, a sister language to Welsh and Cornish.
The name "Brittany" (from "Little Britain") arose at this time to tell the new Britain apart from "Great Britain".
Brezhoneg is still spoken in Brittany today.
Beginning with the raid in 793 on the monastery at Lindisfarne, Vikings made many raids on England.
After a time of raids, the Vikings also began to settle in England and to trade, eventually controlling an area called the Danelaw from the late 9th century.
One Viking settlement was at York, called Jorvik by the Vikings.
Viking rule left traces in the English language because Old English was already related to Old Norse, many Norse words began to be used in English at this time.
The defeat of King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 against Duke William II of Normandy, later called William I of England, and the following Norman conquest of England caused important changes in the history of Britain.
William ordered the Domesday Book to be written.
This was a survey of the entire population, and their lands and property, to help in collecting taxes.
William also ruled Normandy, then a powerful duchy in France.
William and his nobles spoke, and held court, in Anglo-Norman, in Normandy as well as in England.
The use of the Anglo-Norman language by the aristocracy was kept up for centuries, and had a great influence on the development of English.
In England, the Middle Ages was a time of war, civil war, rebellions from time to time, and many plots among the nobles and royalty.
England had more than enough cereals, dairy products, beef and mutton.
The nation 's international economy was based on the wool trade, where wool from northern England was sold to the textile merchants of Flanders to make into cloth.
Medieval foreign policy was also shaped by relations with the Flemish cloth business.
An English cloth business was developed in the fifteenth century, allowing the English also to become wealthier.
In the reign of Henry II, the king got some power back from the barony and the Church.
Henry 's successor, Richard I "the Lion Heart", took part in the Third Crusade, and defended his French territories against Philip II of France.
His younger brother John, who followed him as king, was not so lucky; he lost Normandy and many other French territories.
In 1215, the barons led an armed rebellion and forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which put legal limits on the King 's personal powers.
The reign of Edward I (1272 1307) was rather successful.
Edward strengthened the powers of his Government, and called the first English Parliament.
He conquered Wales.
His son, Edward II, lost the Battle of Bannockburn against Scotland.
The Black Death, an epidemic that spread over all of Europe and parts of Asia, arrived in England in 1349 and killed perhaps up to a third of the population.
Edward III gave land to powerful noble families, including many people with royal blood.
Because land was like power in these days, some powerful men could now try to claim the Crown.
Main article: Early Modern Britain The Wars of the Roses ended with the victory of Henry Tudor, who became king Henry VII of England, at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where the Yorkist king, Richard III was killed.
His son, Henry VIII split with the Roman Catholic Church over a question of his divorce from Catherine of Aragon.
Though his religious position was not entirely Protestant, this led to the Church of England breaking from the Roman Catholic Church.
There followed a time of great religious and political troubles, and the English Reformation.
Henry VIII had three children, all of whom would wear the Crown.
The first to reign was Edward VI of England.
Although he was intelligent, he was only a boy of ten when he took the throne in 1547.
When Edward VI died of tuberculosis in 1553 Mary I took the throne when crowds cheered for her in London, which people at the time said was the largest show of affection for a Tudor monarch.
Mary, a loyal Catholic who had been influenced greatly by the Catholic King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, tried to get the country back to Catholicism.
This led to 274 burnings of Protestants, which are recorded in John Foxe 's Book of Martyrs.
She was highly unpopular among her people then.
Mary lost Calais, the last English possession on the Continent, and became even more unpopular (except among Catholics) at the end of her reign.
The reign of Elizabeth returned a sort of order to England in 1558.
The religious question that had divided the country since Henry VIII was put to rest by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which set up the Church of England in much the same form it has today.
The slave trade that made Britain a major economic power began with Elizabeth, who gave John Hawkins permission to start trading in 1562.
The government of Elizabeth was more peaceful, apart from the revolt of the northern earls in 1569, and she was able to lessen the power of the old nobility and expand the power of her government.
One of the most famous events in English military history was in 1588 when the Spanish Armada lost against the English navy, commanded by Sir Francis Drake.
Elizabeth 's government did much to make her government stronger, and to make common law and administration more effective throughout England.
In all, the Tudor period is seen as an important one, leading to many questions that would have to be answered in the next century during the English Civil War.
These were questions of how much power the monarch and Parliament should have, and how much one should control the other.
Elizabeth died without children who could take the throne after her.
Her closest male Protestant relative was the king of Scotland, James VI, of the house of Stuart, so he became James I of England, the first king of the entire island of Great Britain, although he ruled England and Scotland as separate countries.
The English Civil War began in 1642, mainly because of conflicts between James ' son, Charles I, and Parliament.
The defeat of the Royalist army by the New Model Army of Parliament at the Battle of Naseby in June 1645 destroyed most of the King 's forces.
The capture and trial of Charles led to his beheading in January 1649 at Whitehall Gate in London.
A republic was declared, and Oliver Cromwell became the Lord Protector in 1653.
After he died, his son Richard Cromwell followed him in the office, but soon quit.
The monarchy was returned in 1660, after England had a time of anarchy, with King Charles II again in London.
In 1665, London was hit with the plague, and then, in 1666, the capital was burned for 5 days by the Great Fire, destroying around 15,000 buildings.
In 1689, the Dutch Protestant William of Orange, replaced the Catholic King James II in what is called the Glorious Revolution.
However, in Scotland and Ireland, Catholics loyal to James II were not so happy, and a series of bloody revolts followed.
These rebellions continued until the mid-18th century, when Charles Edward Stuart was defeated at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
The First Act of Union made Scotland, England and Wales into one county.
The history of England after this 1707 Act is a part of Great Britain 's history.
Hippocrates (c. 460 c. 370 BC) was a Greek doctor who is called the "father of medicine".
He was the first person to write that people got sick for scientific reasons.
People used to believe disease was caused by angry (mad) gods.
Hippocrates wrote about treating sick people.
His writings are still important to doctors today.
He said many ideas that doctors still study.
An idea he wrote about is "patient confidentiality".
This means that doctors can not tell anyone else what their patients tell them.
Another idea is that the doctor can not do anything to kill a patient.
These kinds of ideas are part of medical ethics.
The Hippocratic Oath is named after him.
This is a promise or oath doctors say.
This means they say they will do what is said in the Hippocratic Oath.
(People now think that Hippocrates did not write it.)
Most medical schools today use a new version.
This means that some things are changed.
But the important ideas are the same.
This is an example of a modern Hippocratic Oath.
This is used today at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.
Hermann Wilhelm G ring (12 January 1893 in Rosenheim, Upper Bavaria, Bavaria, Germany 15 October 1946 in Nuremberg, Middle Franconia, Bavaria, Germany) was a German politician and military leader of Germany.
Between 1932 and 1945, he was President of the German Reichstag and also a minister of the Third Reich, under Adolf Hitler.
In the Second World War, he was the Commander-in-Chief of the German air force.
G ring was responsible for the creation of the concentration camps and the Gestapo, the official secret Nazi police, which he handed over to SS chief Heinrich Himmler.
In 1941, he gave Reinhard Heydrich the order to arrange the Final Solution to kill millions of Jews.
G ring was one of the 25 people charged at the Nuremberg Trials.
The court decided he was guilty.
The judgment on 1 October 1946 said that he was to be hanged, but he killed himself by swallowing a tablet of cyanide a few hours before he could be executed.
Hermann G ring, son of Ernst Heinrich G ring and Franziska G ring (born Tiefenbrunn), was born in Rosenheim, Bavaria.
G ring 's father was a judge.
The German chancellor Otto von Bismarck made Ernst G ring the first Reichskommissar (Governor-General) of South West Africa (today: Namibia), in 1885.
Hermann G ring had two brothers, Albert G ring and Karl Ernst G ring, and two sisters, Olga Therese Sophie G ring and Paula Elisabeth Rosa G ring.
He spent the first three years of his life at the home of a friend of his mother, because G ring 's father was in Namibia.
From 1901, he lived at his godfather Hermann von Epenstein 's mansion.
Hermann 's mother had an affair (a romantic relationship with someone other than her husband) with von Epenstein.
He attended the grammar schools in F rth and Ansbach.
In the games he played as a child, the story was always about war.
In 1905, he went to a military school in Karlsruhe.
He got his Abitur, and an officer exam, in 1912.
He then went to the Bavarian Prinz Wilhelm Regiment (112th Infantry) in Mulhouse.
When the First World War started, G ring had the rank of Lieutenant.
He served in the infantry.
In 1915, because of his rheumatism, he had to go to a hospital.
His friend, Bruno Loerzer, got him to join the air force.
In France, he flew as an observer, a person who looked for targets and enemy planes.
Because of this, he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class in 1915.
In 1916, he was trained to fly a plane.
On 14 March 1916, he shot down his first bomber.
In 1917, he became the leader of the 27th Flying Group.
In 1918, after he shot his 19th plane, he was awarded the Pour le M rite (also called "The Blue Max").
This was the highest airforce award in Germany.
After the death of Manfred von Richthofen, he became the leader of the flying group "The Red Baron".
Between 1919 and 1921, G ring worked as a stunt pilot in Scandinavia.
In November 1922, he met Adolf Hitler and became a member of the National Socialist German Workers ' Party (NSDAP).
G ring married Carin in Stockholm on 3 February 1923.
In 1923, he took part in the Beer Hall Putsch and was wounded.
After this, he went to Austria.
Because of pain, a doctor injected him with morphine but he became dependent on it.
Between 1925 and 1926, he had two treatments in Sweden at the L ngbro mental hospital.
He came back to Germany in 1927.
In 1928, he became a member of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic.
He was a member of the Reichstag until the end of the Second World War.
In 1932, the NSDAP became the most powerful party of the Reichstag.
G ring then became president of the Reichstag.
When Hitler became chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933, he made G ring a minister of the Reich without a specific area of responsibility.
This means that he was not the head of a ministry.
In April 1933, he was made minister president of Prussia.
Then, on 30 August 1933, he was made a General by Paul von Hindenburg.
Between 1934 and 1935 he became minister of several agencies.
On 10 April 1935, he got married the second time to Emmy Sonnemann in Berlin.
In 1936, he sent the German Condor Legion to Spain to help Francisco Franco.
After the Kristallnacht in 1938, he was in charge of Jewish businessmen getting removed from the German economic system.
During Second World War, his biggest defeat was the loss of the air battle against Great Britain.
Hitler named G ring to be his successor if he died in 1939.
In 1940, he was made Reichsmarschall (Marshal of the Empire) by Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler.
In 1941, G ring ordered Heydrich to make a plan for the Holocaust.
In 1942, he gave Fritz Sauckel the order to use the Russian population for industry-work.
In 1943, G ring had an expensive birthday party for his 50th birthday.
On 20 April 1945, he left Hitler 's birthday party and went to Berchtesgaden.
He told Hitler that he had important things to do in south Germany.
From Berchtesgaden, G ring sent a telegram to Hitler in Berlin.
In the telegram G ring asked about taking over the affairs of state.
Towards the end of the war, after the telegram, he started to talk with the Allies.
Because of this, Hitler wanted to put G ring in prison.
G ring then went to the Americans.
On 29 April 1945 Hitler removed G ring from all his offices, stripped him off his party membership and ordered his arrest.
He wrote this down in his testament.
G ring surrendered in Bavaria on 9 May 1945.
The Nuremberg Trials started on 20 November 1945.
On 18 March 1946, G ring was questioned by the Allies.
After this, he was imprisoned in Nuremberg.
He was the third-highest-ranking Nazi official tried at Nuremberg.
Only Reich President (former Gro admiral) Karl D nitz and former Deputy F hrer Rudolf Hess had higher ranks than G ring.
The judges decided he was guilty.
Because of this on 1 October 1946 the court reached a verdict that he was to be hanged.
One day before he was to be hanged, he committed suicide by taking a tablet of cyanide.
It is not known how G ring got the cyanide or how long he hid it but there was a claim that he was given it by an American soldier who was in love with a German woman who was in touch with him.
It is not known if this is the truth.
Hyperthyroidism is a medical condition.
It is caused by a thyroid gland that is too active.
The thyroid gland makes hormones.
These hormones manage the body s metabolism.
An example of one of these hormones is thyroxine.
The thyroid-stimulating hormone starts the making of thyroxine.
The thyroid-stimulating hormone is also called TSH.
TSH is made in the pituitary gland.
Hyperthyroidism is determined by a doctor by blood tests that show a decreased thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) level.
The most common cause of this disorder is "Graves disease.
Graves disease is a condition in which the thyroid gland becomes overactive.
Antibodies from the immune system in the bloodstream attack itself (this is called an autoimmune disease).
This causes the thyroid gland to grow, as well as produce more thyroid hormones.
Some symptoms of this disorder are the swelling of the neck, as well as weight loss.
In addition, patients could experience their hands trembling, as well as their blood pressure increasing.
They could also experience nervousness and anxiety attacks.
Medication can be taken to stop the effects of hyperthyroidism, though hyperthyroidism is n't completely fixable.
Hyperthyroidism can occasionally cause death.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 March 15, 1937) was an American author of fantasy, horror and science fiction.
He wrote many scary short stories.
These often were about weird creatures that Lovecraft made up by himself or with his friend, August Derleth, who wrote mysteries.
The creatures did not really care about human people at all, so they were not out to hurt people, but if they did, they did not care.
They looked at us like we would be ants.
Their behavior, attitude and look also tended to make people go crazy.
Lovecraft 's stories were inspiration for lots of other authors.
Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island.
He died of cancer there.
The Huns were an early group of Central Asian.
They moved into Europe around 370, and in the 5th century.
And, built an empire there under Attila the Hun.
After Attila 's death in 453, the empire fell apart.
They saw horses as their gods @ lahuns.
blogspot.
ca they practiced their favorite activity, war.
Roman Britain (Britannia) was the part of Great Britain in the Roman Empire from AD 43 to 409 or 410.
The first invasion was led by Julius Caesar, in the days of the Roman Republic.
He defeated the dominant Catuvellauni tribe in 54 BC near Wheathampstead in Hertfordshire.
Their capital was taken over by the Romans.
Trouble in Gaul (mainly modern France & Belgium) prevented Caesar from staying in Britain.
The full conquest of Britain was delayed for almost a century.
In 43 AD, the Emperor Claudius sent an invasion force, led by Aulus Plautius, a distinguished senator.
He was given four legions, totalling about 20,000 men, plus about the same number of helpers The legions were:
The II Augusta was commanded by the future emperor Vespasian.
The other three legions were also led by high-ranking men.
The invasion was one of the most significant events in British history.
Roman legions left in 410 AD after almost four centuries, and the administration of the country was taken over by prominent local chieftains.
This was known as Sub-Roman Britain, with a Romano-British culture and the people may have used a Latin-based language.
It lasted for about two centuries but gave way to an increasingly Anglo-Saxon England by the start of the seventh century.
Roman technology made its impact in road building and the construction of villas, forts and cities.
During their occupation of Britain the Romans built an extensive network of roads.
They were used in later centuries, and many are still followed today.
The Romans also built water supply, sanitation and sewage systems.
Many of Britain 's major cities, such as London (Londinium), Manchester (Mamucium) and York (Eboracum), were founded by the Romans.
There was no writing in Britain before the Romans.
They introduced it and, when they left, writing only survived with the help of religion.
The British were skilled in the arts, and produced ornamental jewellery and pottery which was exported to Europe.
They built defensive structures such as hill forts.
They were proficient in warfare with spears, bows and arrows.
Small round stones found in such sites indicate the use of slings or catapults.
To keep Roman control, forts and garrisons were built throughout Britain, and the existing roads improved.
The local people had to maintain the Roman roads in Britain, and got tax relief for their efforts.
Roman roads allowed for troop movements and the distribution of supplies.
The forts and garrisons needed food and other services.
Vast areas produced these goods.
For example, the often flooded Somerset levels was like a huge market garden that provided supplies for the garrisons at Exeter, Gloucester, Bath and the forts in between.
Local fishermen supplied fresh fish, and farmers reared sheep, pigs, cattle and poultry for the garrisons.
Missionaries from Gaul began to introduce Christianity to the West country.
Before the end of the first century AD they had a Church of Celtic Christianity.
This spread such that by the mid second century much of Cornwall, Devon, Western Dorset, and South Somerset had adopted Christianity.
The spread of Christianity continued eastward and strongly northward into Wales through the next two centuries, especially after the adoption of Christianity by Rome.
The Romans had built shrines and temples to their pagan gods and continued to patronize these, even after the adoption of Christianity by Rome.
Henri-Louis Bergson (18 October 1859 - 4 January 1941), was a French philosopher.
Bergson convinced many thinkers that the processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.
He was born on the Rue Lamartine in Paris, France.
His mother, Katherine Levison, was of English and Irish Jewish descent.
His father, the pianist Micha Bergson, was of Polish Jewish descent.
His early childhood was spent mostly in London after his birth.
He learned the English language from his mother.
He returned to Paris when he was nine years old, and became a naturalized French citizen.
He attended the Lyc e Fontanes in Paris from 1868 to 1878.
There he was given the 1877 prize for school mathematics, for the solution of a mathematical problem.
When he was nineteen, he studied at cole Normale Sup rieure (ENS).
He read many philosophy books, especially Herbert Spencer.
He was given the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 4 January 1941, Bergson died in occupied Paris from bronchitis.
Hinduism, with about one billion followers is the world 's third largest religion, after Christianity and Islam.
However, it is not a religion of the same kind as the other two main religions.
Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world.
Hinduism is a very old religion from India that is still practiced today.
It was one of the first religions that had the idea of reincarnation (that people can be born again after death), karma (one event invents another, or that every action has its consequences), and other ideas.
Hinduism is not simple.
Hinduism has been described as a tradition having a "complex, organic, multileveled and sometimes internally inconsistent nature".
Hinduism does not have a "unified system of belief encoded in a declaration of faith or a creed", but is rather an umbrella term comprising the plurality of religious phenomena of India.
According to the Supreme Court of India, "Unlike other religions in the World, the Hindu religion does not claim any one Prophet, it does not worship any one God, it does not believe in any one philosophic concept, it does not follow any one act of religious rites or performances; in fact, it does not satisfy the traditional features of a religion or creed.
It is a way of life and nothing more".
Hinduism is the federation of a number of faiths (a group of sub-religions or sects (Sampradaya) joined together, which have evolved from people who lived in the Indian subcontinent (land near the Indian Ocean).
One group accepts the varna system, another does not accept it.
One group accepts vedas, another does not accept it.
One group accepts god, another does not believe in god.
But they are all called Hindus.
The Indian constitution says that, by law, a Hindu is whoever who lives in India and is not a Muslim or a Christian.
Hinduism takes ideas from the Vedas, the Upanishads, as well as the teachings of many Hindu gurus through the ages.
Many different types of thought come from six main Vedic\/Hindu schools.
Bhakti sects, and Tantric Agamic schools are very common paths within Hinduism.
"The Eternal Way" (in Sanskrit, San tana Dharma), or the "Perennial Philosophy\/Harmony\/Faith", is the one name that has represented Hinduism for thousands of years.
According to Hindus, it speaks the idea that certain spiritual principles are true for all time, surpassing man-made beliefs, and representing a pure science of consciousness.
This consciousness is not just that of the body or mind and intellect, but of a soul-state above the mind that exists within and beyond our existence, the pure Self of all.
Religion to the Hindu is the search for the divine within the Self, the search to find the One truth that really never was lost.
According to this belief, somebody looking for truth will find it, no matter who they are.
Everything that exists, from vegetables and animals to mankind, are subjects and objects of the eternal Dharma.
This inner faith, therefore, is also known as Arya\/Noble Dharma, Veda\/Knowledge Dharma, Yoga\/Union Dharma, Hindu Dharma or, simply, the Dharma.
What can be said to be common to all Hindus is belief in Dharma, reincarnation, karma, and moksha (liberation) of every soul through a variety of moral, action-based, and meditative yogas.
Still more basic principles include ahimsa (non-violence), the importance of the Guru, the Divine Word of Aum and the power of mantras, love of Truth in many manifestations as gods and goddessess, and an understanding that the essential spark of the Divine (Atman\/Brahman) is in every human and living being, allowing for many spiritual paths leading to the One Unitary Truth.
An example of Hindu spirituality in daily life is the bindi, which is a common marker for Hindu women.
It stands for different things.
For some, it may represent opening a "third eye" that helps people gain knowledge.
Hindus all think it is important to learn things through meditating.
They believe this gives them an intuition beyond the mind and body, something often associated with the god Shiva.
Men, too, may place a tilak mark on their foreheads, usually on religious occasions.
Its shape may stand for devotion to a certain main god: a ` U ' shape stands for Vishnu, a group of three lines for Shiva.
It is not uncommon for some to meld both together in an marker signifying Hari-Hara (Vishnu-Shiva indissoluble).
Hinduism states that success can be only achieved by effort.
As it is called if karma or prayash is done along with dharma then success is achieved.
Hinduism tells about a particular way of life to lead as a Hindu.
This is done by way of Yogas (spiritual practices), mainly as follows:
The way to do all these have been described in the two main texts of Hindu Yoga: the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras.
The Upanishads also contain important texts about yoga.
Hinduism believes in four main goals of life.
They are karma, artha, dharma and moksha.
It is said that all humans seek kama (pleasure, physical or emotional) and artha (power, fame and wealth), but soon, with maturity, learn to govern these legitimate desires within a higher, pragmatic framework of dharma, or moral harmony in all.
In Hinduism, life of a human being is divided into four stages.
These stages are called Ashramas, and they are:
India, Mauritius and Nepal are very popular to celebrate festivals.
In Nepal Dashain is celebrated which is called Dusshera in India.
Similarly, Tihar or Diwali is also celebrated where houses are lit up for welcoming Goddess Laxmi.
People exchange gifts and have a lot of fun together with their families.
Likewise Teej is also a very popular Hindu festivals where ladies fast without water for their husband 's long life and also enjoy by singing folk songs and dancing.
Little is known about Hinduism origins.
It has been around since before history was written down.
It has been said to have come from what the Aryans believed.
Before the Aryans came to India, there were the hundreds of faith and beliefs of Dravidians, and Harappans living in the Indian subcontinent.
They came together under the Hindu name during the British Raj.
Different ideas of where the Veda come from, and understandings of whether or not the Aryans were native or foreign to Indian soil can change estimates of Hinduism 's age from 4000 to 6000 years.
Historically, the word Hindu comes from before Hinduism was thought of as a religion.
This term is of Persian origin and first referred to people who lived on the other side (from a Persian point of view) of the Sindhu or Indus river.
It was used to refer to not only ethnicity but also the Vedic religion as far back as the 15th and 16th centuries by such figures as Guru Nanak (who started Sikhism).
During the British Raj, the term 's use was made standard, and eventually, the religion of the Vedic Hindus was given the name ` Hinduism. '
In actuality, it was merely a new name for a culture that had been around for millennia before.
In a 1966, Supreme Court of India said exactly what Hinduism was for the purposes of the law.
The Court 's ruling said what a number of conditions a person had to meet to be a Hindu.
The nations of India, Mauritius, and Nepal as well as the Indonesian island of Bali have more people who are Hindus than people who are not Hindus.
In these nations, specially Nepal and India Hinduism is very popular.
There are also strong Hindu communities in the countries of the ex-Soviet Union, especially in Russia and Poland.
The Indonesian islands of Java, Sulawesi, Sumatra, and Borneo also have big native Hindu populations.
In its Yoga stream, Hinduism is even more widespread all over the world with 30 million (less than one percent can not be 30 million for US population) Hindus in the United States alone.
According to one view, the caste system shows how strongly many have felt about each person following his or her dharma, or destined path.
Many Hindus say it goes against the true meaning of dharma.
However, caste plays a big role in Hindu society, although it is now losing favor and is illegal in India.
In early Vedic periods, the Brahmins began not letting young candidates become priests if they were in a lower caste.
This became more part of the culture over centuries until it became almost impossible to move up into a higher caste.
Even though people had tried to change things for years, caste is so much of a part of in Indian culture that even people who convert to Christianity have been known to have different church meetings for different castes.
The six Astika or orthodox (accepting the authority of the Vedas) schools of Hindu philosophy are Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Purva Mimamsa (also called just ` Mimamsa '), and Uttara Mimamsa (also called ` Vedanta ').
The non-Vedic schools are called Nastika, or heterodox, and refer to Buddhism, Jainism and Lokayata.
The schools that continue to affect Hinduism today are Purva Mimamsa, Yoga, and Vedanta.
See Hindu philosophy for a discussion of the historical significance of Samkhya, Nyaya, and Vaisheshika.
The main purpose of the Purva Mimamsa line of thought was to make the Vedas more of a part of life, and led people to understand it better.
Adi Shankara and Swami Vivekananda followed this line of thought to explain the meaning of Hindu beliefs.
The Yoga system is thought to have come from the Samkhya philosophy.
The yoga referred to here, however, is specifically Raja Yoga (or meditational union).
It is based on the sage Patanjali 's text called the Yoga Sutra, which is about the Yoga philosophy that came before.
Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita are also important writings in the study of Yoga.
The Uttara ("later") Mimamsa school is perhaps one of the cornerstone movements of Hinduism and certainly was responsible for a new wave of philosophical and meditative inquiry, renewal of faith, and cultural reform.
Primarily associated with the Upanishads and their commentary by Badarayana, the Vedanta Sutras, Vedanta thought split into three groups, initiated by the thinking and writing of Adi Shankara.
Most Hindu thought today in some way relates to changes affected by Vedantic thought, which focused on meditation, morality and centeredness on the one Self rather than on rituals and meaningless societal distinctions like caste.
See Vedanta for greater depth.
Advaita literally means "not two"; thus this is what we refer to as a monistic (or non-dualistic) system, which emphasises oneness.
Its consolidator was Adi Shankara (788?
-820?)
expounded his theories largely based on previous teachings of the Upanishads and his own guru Govinda Bhagavadpada.
By analysis of experiential consciousness, he exposed the relative nature of the world and established the non-dual reality of Brahman in which Atman (the individual soul) and Brahman (the ultimate reality) are identified absolutely.
It is not merely philosophy, but a conscious system of applied ethics and meditation, all geared towards attaining peace and understanding of truth.
Adi Shankara denounced caste and meaningless ritual as foolish, and in his own charismatic manner, exhorted the true devotee to meditate on God 's love and apprehend truth.
See Advaita Vedanta for more.
Ramanuja (1040 - 1137) was the foremost proponent of the concept of Sriman Narayana as the supreme Brahman.
He taught that Ultimate reality had three aspects: Isvara (Vishnu), cit (soul) and acit (matter).
Vishnu is the only independent reality, while souls and matter are dependent on God for their existence.
Because of this qualification of Ultimate reality, Ramanuja 's system is known as qualified non-dualism.
Like Ramanuja, Madhvacharya (1199 - 1278) identified god with Vishnu, but his view of reality was purely dualistic in that he understood a fundamental differentiation between the ultimate godhead and the individual soul, and the system is therefore called Dvaita (dualistic) Vedanta.
Puja (worship) takes place in the Mandir (temple).
Mandirs vary in size from small village shrines to large buildings, surrounded by walls.
People can also visit the Mandir at any time to pray and participate in the bhajans (religious songs).
Hindus also worship at home and often have a special room with a shrine to particular gods.
Temple construction in India started nearly 2000 years ago.
The oldest temples that were built of brick and wood no longer exist.
Stone later became the preferred material.
Temples marked the transition of Hinduism from the Vedic religion of ritual sacrifices to a religion of Bhakti or love and devotion to a personal deity.
Temple construction and mode of worship is governed by ancient Sanskrit scriptures called agamas, of which there are several, which deal with individual deities.
There are substantial differences in architecture, customs, rituals and traditions in temples in different parts of India.
During the ritual consecration of a temple, the presence of the universal all-encompassing Brahman is invoked into the main stone deity of the temple, through ritual, thereby making the deity and the temple sacred and divine
The Bhakti (Devotional) school takes its name from the Hindu term that signifies a blissful, selfless and overwhelming love of God as the beloved Father, Mother, Child, or whatever relationship finds appeal in the devotee 's heart.
The philosophy of Bhakti seeks to tap into the universal divinity through personal form, which explains the proliferation of so many gods and goddesses in India, often reflecting the singular inclinations of small regions or groups of people.
Seen as a form of Yoga, or union, it seeks to dissolve the ego in God, since consciousness of the body and limited mind as self is seen to be a divisive factor in spiritual realization.
Essentially, it is God who effects all change, who is the source of all works, who acts through the devotee as love and light.
` Sins ' and evil-doings of the devotee are said to fall away of their own accord, the devotee shriven, limitedness even transcended, through the love of God.
The Bhakti movements rejuvenated Hinduism through their intense expression of faith and their responsiveness to the emotional and philosophical needs of India.
They can rightly be said to have affected the greatest wave of change in Hindu prayer and ritual since ancient times.
The most popular means of expressing love for God in the Hindu tradition has been through puja, or ritual devotion, frequently using the aid of a murti (statue) in conjunction with the singing or chanting of meditational prayer in the form of mantras.
Devotional songs called bhajans (written primarily from the 14th-17th centuries), kirtan (praise), and arti (a filtered down form of Vedic fire ritual) are sometimes sung in conjunction with performance of puja.
This rather organic system of devotion attempts to aid the individual in connecting with God through symbolic medium.
It is said, however, that the bhakta, through a growing connection with God, is eventually able to eschew all external form and is immersed entirely in the bliss of undifferentiated Love in Truth.
Altogether, bhakti resulted in a mass of devotional literature, music and art that has enriched the world and gave India renewed spiritual impetus, one eschewing unnecessary ritual and artificial social boundaries.
See bhakti yoga for more.
According to the most famous Western Tantrik scholar, Sir John Woodroffe (pseudonym Arthur Avalon): "The Indian Tantras, which are numerous, constitute the Scripture (Shastra) of the Kaliyuga, and as such are the voluminous source of present and practical orthodox ` Hinduism '.
The Tantra Shastra is, in fact, and whatever be its historical origin, a development of the Vaidika Karmakanda, promulgated to meet the needs of that age.
Shiva says: ` For the benefit of men of the Kali age, men bereft of energy and dependent for existence on the food they eat, the Kaula doctrine, O auspicious one!
is given ' (Chap.
IX., verse 12).
To the Tantra we must therefore look if we would understand aright both ritual, yoga, and sadhana of all kinds, as also the general principles of which these practices are but the objective expression."
(Introduction to Sir John Woodroffe 's translation of "Mahanirvana Tantra.")
The word "tantra" means "treatise" or "continuum", and is applied to a variety of mystical, occult, medical and scientific works as well as to those which we would now regard as "tantric".
Most tantras were written in the late Middle Ages and sprang from Hindu cosmology and Yoga.
Many Hindus are vegetarians (do not eat meat) because of their respect for life.
About 30 % of today 's Hindu population, especially in orthodox communities in South India, in certain northerly states like Gujarat, and in many Brahmin areas around the subcontinent, are vegetarian.
Most Hindus who do eat meat do not eat beef.
Some do not even use leather products.
This is most likely because many Hindus have relied so heavily on the cow for all sorts of dairy products, tilling of fields and fuel for fertiliser that its status as a willing ` caretaker ' of humanity grew to identifying it as an almost motherly figure.
Thus, while most Hindus do not worship the cow, and rules against eating beef arose long after the Vedas had been written, it still has an honored place in Hindu society.
It is said that Krishna is both Govinda (herder of cows) and Gopala (protector of cows), and Shiva 's attendant is Nandi, the bull.
With the stress on vegetarianism (which is usually followed even by meat-eating Hindus on religious days or special occasions) and the sacred nature of the cow, it is no wonder that most holy cities and areas in India have a ban on selling meat-products and there is a movement among Hindus to ban cow-slaughter not only in specific regions, but in all of India.
Hindus use many symbols and signs.
The two most important symbols used by Hindus are the "Aum" and the "Swastika (Hinduism)".
Contrary to popular belief, practiced Hinduism is neither polytheistic nor strictly monotheistic.
The various Hindu gods and avatars that are worshipped by Hindus are understood as different forms of One truth, sometimes seen as beyond a mere god and as a formless Divine Ground (Brahman), akin but not limited to monism, or as one monotheistic principle like Vishnu or Shiva.
Whether believing in the One source as formless (nirguna brahman, without attributes) or as a personal god (saguna Brahman, with attributes), Hindus understand that the one truth may be seen as different to different people.
Hinduism encourages devotees to describe and develop a personal relationship with their chosen deity (ishta devata) in the form of a god or goddess.
While some censuses hold worshippers of one form or another of Vishnu (known as Vaishnavs) to be at 80 % and those of Shiva (called Shaivaites) and Shakti at the remaining 20 %, such figures are perhaps misleading.
The vast majority of Hindus worship many gods as varicolored forms of the same prism of Truth.
Among the most popular are Vishnu (as Krishna or Rama), Shiva, Devi (the Mother as many female deities, such as Lakshmi, Saraswati, Kali and Durga), Ganesha, Skanda and Hanuman.
Worship of the said deities is often done through the aid of pictures or icons (murti) which are said not to be God themselves but conduits for the devotee 's consciousness, markers for the human soul that signify the ineffable and illimitable nature of the love and grandeur of God.
They are symbols of the greater principle, representing and are never presumed to be the concept or entity itself.
Thus, Hindu image worship is a form of iconolatry, in which the symbols are venerated as putative sigils of divinity, as opposed to idolatry, a charge often levied (erroneously) at Hindus.
For more details on this form of worship, see murti.
Hindus use several prayers and group of words.
Some group of words are called mantras.
These words are said to give the speaker a deeper concentration and understanding, thus coming closer to Brahman.
A well known mantra is om or aum.
It symbolizes Brahman, and is often the opening word in many prayers.
To pronounce a mantra well, you should say it slowly, and in a deep voice.
There are many texts relating to Hinduism.
Most of them have been written in Sanskrit and Tamil.
These texts are called Hindu scriptures.
Some of the important Hindu texts are:
The Vedas are considered scripture by all Hindus.
While most Hindus may never read the Vedas, they strongly believe that the search for eternal knowledge is important (Veda means knowledge).
Classed with the Vedas (which specifically refer to the Rig\/Rg, Yajur, Sama and Atharva Vedas) are their famous commentaries, the Upanishads.
The post-Vedic Hindu scriptures form the latter category, the most notable of which are the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, major epics considered scripture by most followers of Sanatana Dharma, their stories arguably familiar to the vast majoriy of Hindus living in the Indian subcontinent, if not in other places also.
Other texts considered important by today 's Hindus include the Devi Mahatmya, an ode to Devi, the Divine Mother, and the Yoga Sutras, a key meditative yoga text of Shri Patanjali.
There are also a number of revered Hindu Tantras and Sutras that command the respect of various Hindu sects of different persuasion, some including the Mahanirvana Tantra, Tirumantiram and Shiva Sutras.
some of the gods names are called lord Shiva, Durga, Luckshmi, Brama, Rama, Hanuman, Krishna, Ganesh.
Henry Fielding (22 April 1707 8 October 1754) was an English writer and magistrate.
He was born in Sharpham, Somerset.
He wrote many plays from 1728 until 1737.
Then, he wrote many famous novels such asTom Jones, Joseph Andrews, and Amelia.
He was friends with the writers Samuel Johnson and Christopher Smart and the politician William Pitt the Elder.
Fielding went to school at Eton College.
In 1728, he left school to go to London and write plays.
The License Act shut down the London theater in 1737 and Fielding began to write novels.
Then, he became a magistrate and created the Bow Street Runners, London 's first police force.
In 1754, he became sick and he went to Lisbon, Portugal to be treated.
He died in Lisbon and was buried in the English Cemetery.
A hate crime is when someone breaks a law by hurting another person because of prejudice against a group the victim belongs to.
Normally, a hate crime is not caused in any way by something the victim did or said, but just because of who they are.
Hate crime is often in the form of physical violence, but can also be vandalism and damage to property, insults or other hurtful words, or other violations of human rights.
People often commit hate crime because of prejudice about the victim 's sex, ethnicity, religion, nationality, gender identity, class, sexual orientation, age, or other things about them.
The term "hate crime" was first used in the 1980s in the United States, when crimes caused by bias against certain types of people were being talked about in the media.
Hate crime is sometimes a way to frighten other people who belong to the same group.
This intimidation can be seen as terrorism when it is carried out on a large scale.
In 2009, the Matthew Shepard Act has changed the definition of a hate crime in the law of the United States.
It says that crimes which were committed because of the victim 's sexual orientation, gender identity or disability are hate crimes.
It is the first law that protects transgender people.
Hans Christian Andersen (2 April 1805 4 August 1875) was a Danish writer.
Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark.
His father was a shoemaker.
His mother washed clothes for customers.
The family was poor.
When Andersen was 11, his father died.
At 14, Andersen left his mother and his home.
He moved to Copenhagen.
The king helped Andersen finish his education.
Andersen wanted to be an actor or dancer.
He did not have the talent for either.
He started to write novels, plays, poems, short stories, and travel books.
In 1835, he published four fairy tales that were liked by the readers.
After this success, he wanted to write more fairy tales.
Andersen 's stories were popular all over Europe.
He was invited into the homes of rich and powerful people.
He fell in love with several men and women.
He was in love with singer Jenny Lind.
He also fell in love with ballet dancer Harald Scharff.
Andersen was a sad and lonely man.
He traveled all over Europe.
He wanted to see the sights.
He hoped traveling would make him happier.
He always carried a rope with him.
He planned to use this rope as a fire escape if needed.
In the spring of 1872, Andersen fell off of his bed and did not recover.
Soon after that, Andersen showed signs of liver cancer.
He died on 4 August 1875 from complications following a fall and from liver cancer.
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a play by William Shakespeare.
It is one of his best-known plays, and many lines have become famous quotations.
The play is often just called Hamlet.
Hamlet was written between 1600 and 1602, and first printed in 1603.
Claudius murders Hamlet 's father and becomes king.
He marries Gertrude.
Hamlet 's father appears as a ghost and tells Hamlet that he was murdered by Claudius.
Hamlet kills Polonius because he thinks he is Claudius.
Laertes decides to kill Hamlet in revenge.
He challenges Hamlet to a sword fight, and puts poison on his own sword.
Claudius makes some poisoned wine for Hamlet to drink in case that does not work.
In the meantime Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine without knowing, and dies.
Laertes pierces Hamlet with a poisoned blade, but then Hamlet stabs Laertes with the same sword.
Laertes dies.
Hamlet kills Claudius.
Hamlet tells everyone that the Norwegian prince, Fortinbras, should be king, and then dies.
Hamlet is one of the hardest parts for an actor to perform.
It is one of the largest roles written by Shakespeare.
Many people disagree about what Hamlet is really thinking.
For many actors, playing Hamlet is one of the most important parts of their career.
There have been many movies made of the play.
Most of them show only part of the play, because the entire play is very long.
Some of the most famous movies include:
Histology is the study of the microscopic anatomy of cells and tissues of plants and animals, particularly the tissues.
It is a part of cytology, and an essential tool of biology and medicine.
Histology is usually done by looking at cells and tissues under a light microscope or electron microscope.
The tissue has to be specially prepared beforehand.
The stages below are only described in outline.
Laboratories which do histology work from schedules which are much more detailed.
Chemical fixatives are used to preserve tissue from decay.
This preserves the structure of the cell and of sub-cellular components such as cell organelles (e.g., nucleus, endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria).
The most common fixative for light microscopy is formalin (4 % formaldehyde in saline).
After fixing, the block of tissue is embedded in paraffin wax.
This holds and preserves the tissue as a block.
The section is cut into a series of wafer-thin slices, each of which is put on a glass microscope slide.
The machine which cuts the block is a mechanical guillotine which can be set to cut at a suitable depth for the tissue in question.
Stains are dyes, chemicals used to make cells and tissues easy to see under a microscope.
There are many tissue stains, and each of them has advantages and disadvantages.
This is the most widely used stain in biology and medicine.
Haematoxylin colors cell nuclei and eosin colors cell cytoplasm.
Camillo Golgi developed a silver nitrate stain for nerve cells.
His idea was used by Santiago Ram n y Cajal in his famous work on the structure of brain tissue.
Electron microscopy is used often as well as light microscopy.
This has its own procedures.
Its advantage is that it resolves things which light can not resolve.
For example, viruses were first seen by electron microscopy..
Specialised selective stains using immunology or radioactive labeling are now routine.
The advantage of using antibodies or radioactive labels is that they stick to specific kinds of molecules.
Increasingly popular is tagging with a fluorescent stain, which shows up even if a tiny part of a cell is stained.
Immunoinfluorescence is the name of this particular technique.
Herodotus was an Ancient Greek historian.
He was born at Halicarnassus, town in south-west Asia Minor (now Bodrum, Turkey), probably in 484 BC.
He died in 425 BC.
Herodotus was called the "Father of History" by Cicero for his writings about the ancient empires of Babylon, Egypt, and Persia, and about the Ancient Greeks.
During his life, Herodotus probably told his stories in front of large numbers of people in Greek cities.
Some men at the time did this for pay.
He is now most famous for his writings about the wars between the Persian Empire and the Greek city-states.
He told the story from the Greek side, although the war was mostly finished when he was still a child.
In his books, Herodotus tells us that he traveled a lot.
He says that he went to what is now Italy, Ukraine, Egypt, and Sicily.
He may also have traveled to Babylon.
He often used stories from people he met to write about other places and happenings.
Some people think that Herodotus wrote about things that were not true.
This is possible, but it is also possible that he thought these things were true.
It may also be that he thought that these stories were interesting.
His work is important because he lived so long ago and there is very little writing on these subjects from this time.
His works are available today and have been translated for the benefit of those who wish to read him.
A historian is someone who studies history.
Historians study the passage of time and the events that happen within that passage.
Hermann Hesse (2 July 1877 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter.
In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
His best known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi).
A house is a building that is made for people to live in.
It is a "permanent" building that is meant to stay standing.
It is not a place to live that can be easily packed up and carried away like a tent, or moved like a caravan.
If people live in the same house for more than a short stay, then they call it their "home".
Houses come in many different shapes and sizes.
They may be as small as just one room, or they may have hundreds of rooms.
They also come in many different shapes, and may have just one level or several different levels.
A house is sometimes joined to other houses at the sides to make a "terrace" (a connected row of houses).
A big building with lots of levels and apartments is called "a block of flats" (British) or an apartment block.
One of the differences between a house and an apartment is that a house has a front door to the outside world, whereas the main door of an apartment usually opens onto a passage or landing that can be used by other people in the building.
Houses have a roof to keep off the rain and sun, and walls to keep out the wind and cold.
They have window openings to let in light, and a floor.
Houses of different countries look different to each other, because of different materials and different styles.
A house is a building for people to live in.
It is usually built for a family (parents and their children) to live in.
Most modern houses have special areas or rooms for a person, or a family group to do the things that they need to live comfortably.
A modern house has a place to cook food, a place to eat, places to sleep and a place to wash..
These things are usually done in separate rooms, which are called the kitchen, the sitting room, the bedrooms, the bathroom, and the toilet (or lavatory).
Many houses have a separate dining room for eating meals and a separate laundry.
In some houses the toilet is in the bathroom, and in other houses it is separate.
Many houses may also have a "study" or computer room and a "family room" where the children can play games and watch television.
In some countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand many families live in a "detached house" which is separate from other buildings and surrounded by its own yard, but is close enough to town to have shops, good transport and entertainment nearby.
In many other countries, including most of Europe, owning a house like this is something that only the richer families can afford, and is just a dream for most people.
In many very poor countries, a lot of people live crowded in houses with only one room.
They often have to share a toilet with many other families, and have to do the cooking outside.
The house might be made of materials that can be found nearby like mud bricks and grass or from second-hand materials like corrugated iron and cardboard boxes.
In many cities there are thousands of small houses crowded together with narrow alleys between them.
A small house is often called a cottage.
In England, where this word comes from, it is used to mean a house that has one main storey, with a second, lower storey of bedrooms which fit under the roof upstairs.
Cottages are usually found in villages or in the countryside.
They are nearly always built from material that can be found nearby.
In many places the word cottage is used to mean a small old-fashioned house.
In the United States the word cottage is often used to mean a small holiday home.
A semi-detached house is a building that has two houses side by side and covered over by just one big roof.
Each house has a pathway to one side, leading from the front to the backyard.
Semi-detached houses are very common in some cities, and can be single storey or several storeys high.
A row or terraced house (see the picture in the introduction) is a house that is part of a row of houses joined at the side walls.
Many cities and towns have thousands of row houses because they are a good way to build lots of houses close together.
Many row houses have two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs, with a kitchen or wash area at the back.
Houses like this were built for poor factory workers and coal miners in many cities and towns.
"Terrace houses" are a type of row house where each house has a similar front to its neighbors.
Row houses are not always small.
Some cities have large beautiful row houses, such as the Royal Crescent, which was built 200 years ago at Bath in England and is a famous example of Georgian architecture.
In some places, the word "bungalow" is used for any house that is all on one level.
The word came from India and for a long time was used for a house that is built all on one level and has a verandah where people can sit or work outdoors, but under a shady roof.
A bungalow often has a hall down the middle of the house to let the breeze blow through.
Bungalows are often seen in countries with hot summers, in India, South East Asia, South Africa, parts of the United States, South America, Australia and New Zealand.
In regions with flooding, a bungalow is often built up on wooden "stilts" or a high basement.
In the 1800s, bungalows were nearly always built of wood, but from the 1920s it became fashionable to build them of brick as well.
A farmhouse may look like a cottage, a bungalow or a mansion, but in many countries a farmhouse can look quite different to a house in a town, because, as well as having a place for people to live, it also has a place for animals.
Three typical types of farmhouses are found.
Many farm houses are long and have two doors.
One door leads to the rooms used by the family.
The other door opens into a stable for the cows, sheep and chickens.
The stable part often has a loft where hay can be kept to feed the animals in the winter.
Another type of farmhouse has two storeys with a big stable and storeroom underneath, with the rooms for the family on the upper floor.
Another type of farmhouse has buildings such as the family house, the barn and the stable all joined together around a central courtyard.
Old farmhouses of these three types can be found in many parts of Europe and Great Britain.
A mansion is a big grand house, usually with two storeys and sometimes more.
A mansion often has beautiful architecture, and shows that the person for whom it was designed and built was rich.
Mansions often have beautiful gardens.
Sometimes a mansion does not belong to a private family, but to a town council, to a big business company, to a church or college and is a place for a person with an important job to live and to entertain guests.
A mansion often has rooms which are not found in ordinary houses, such as a drawing room, a ballroom, a library and a music room.
Mansions often need servants to help keep them in order and there are often special rooms where the servants do particular jobs such as cleaning the silver tableware.
Well-known mansions are the White House in Washington, D.C. where the President of the United States lives and Mansion House in London where the Lord Mayor of London lives.
A palace is a house that is very grand.
Palaces are some of the most famous and beautiful houses in the world.
They have often been built by people who were extremely rich, and who wanted to leave behind them a sign that their family was important.
Some palaces have taken a long time to build.
They have been changed and added to by different family members or changed by people from different families that have owned them over many hundreds of years.
One of the best-known palaces in the world is Buckingham Palace where the monarch of England, who is currently Queen Elizabeth II, lives.
The largest palace in the world is the Louvre which was built in Paris for the Kings of France.
It now holds a famous art gallery.
Houses are usually built from types of material that can easily be made or bought near the place where the house is built.
Because of this, old houses in different towns and different villages look quite different to each other, even in the same country.
In modern times building materials can be transported easily and this means that a builder has much more choice about the types of material to use for a house.
In many parts of the world, mud or clay are the main building materials.
Clay is a type of soil that sticks together more strongly than most other types of soil.
There are three main ways of building walls with mud and clay.
Because brick walls are heavy, a brick house needs to have a very firm base or "foundation" to sit on.
This often means digging deep into the ground to lay a foundation before a brick house can be built.
Houses with brick walls often have tiled roofs, because the tiles can often be made at the brick factory.
Modern bricks and tiles come in a big range of colors, because different materials can be transported from different areas.
People who are employing a builder to build a home are nowadays often shown pictures of all the colors of bricks and tiles that are available.
This means that although in old towns, every house is made of the same type of bricks, in a modern suburb every house may look quite different.
The bricks range from white through shades of red, yellow and brown and are sometimes very patterned, while the roof tiles include blue, green and yellow as well as the traditional red, orange and brown.
Houses made of timber are found wherever there are, or there has once been big forests.
Timber houses are also often found in seaside towns where the sea air makes brick and stone houses feel cold and damp.
A well-known type of old-fashioned house is the "half-timbered" house.
These are seen in the British Isles, France, and across northern Europe and the Alps.
These houses date mainly from about 1200 to about 1800.
In places where there is lots of stone, many houses are built of it.
In many parts of the world, little cottages are built of stone.
Many mansions and palaces are also built of stone.
Modern houses are often made of "pre-fabricated" parts that are partly built in a factory, and are easy to put together at the site of the building.
Many different types of materials for making houses have been developed in the 20th century.
Hipparchus (Greek; ca.
190 BC ca.
120 BC) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician.
He lived in the Hellenistic period.
Hipparchus was born in Nicaea (now Iznik, Turkey), and probably died on the island of Rhodes.
He worked as an astronomer at least from 147 BC to 127 BC.
Hipparchus is considered the greatest ancient astronomical observer.
Some people see him as the greatest overall astronomer of antiquity.
He was the first Greek whose quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon survive.
To get to these models, he certainly made use of the observations and perhaps the mathematical techniques accumulated over centuries by the Chaldeans from Babylonia.
He had a trigonometric table.
It looks like he solved some problems of spherical trigonometry with the table.
With his solar and lunar theories and his trigonometry, he was perhaps the first to develop a reliable method to predict solar eclipses.
His other well-known achievements include the discovery of precession, the compilation of the first comprehensive star catalog of the western world, and possibly the invention of the astrolabe.
He might also have invented the armillary sphere which first appeared during his century and was used by him during the creation of much of the star catalogue.
It would be three centuries before Claudius Ptolemaeus ' synthesis of astronomy would make the work of Hipparchus obsolete; it is heavily dependent on it in many areas.
Huldrych (or Ulrich) Zwingli or Ulricus Zuinglius (January 1, 1484 October 11, 1531) was the leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed churches.
Separately from Martin Luther, Zwingli arrived with similar final beliefs.
He did this by studying the Bible from the point of view of a humanist scholar.
Zwingli 's father was named Ulrich Zwingli also and his mother was named Margaret Meili.
Zwingli had 2 sisters and 7 brothers.
Zwingli was born in Toggenburg, Wildhaus, St. Gallen, Switzerland, to an important family of the middle class.
Zwingli 's Reformation was supported by the judge and people of Z rich.
It led to major changes in the lives of the people and state matters in Z rich.
Zwingli was killed at Kappel am Albis, in a battle against the Roman Catholic Cantons of Switzerland.
Humus (or humous) is the organic matter in the soil.
It is made of dead parts of plants and animals.
Humus takes in water and has plenty of nutrients.
Nitrogen is the most important.
Plants put roots into the soil to get the water and nutrients.
Humus is good for plants because it is like a sponge.
The dark color of humus (usually black or dark brown) helps to warm up cold soils in the spring.
When plants and insects die they are first raw organic matter.
Bacteria and fungi eat the raw material, but they do not eat all of it.
They leave a small amount behind.
The part they leave behind is named "humus".
This activity is dynanmic and keep happening.
There is always more dead material arriving on top.
So the soil always has organic material in it, along with small pieces of rock.
In agriculture, "humus" usually means mature compost, or some taken naturally from a forest, where it may have lived for many years.
A hydrogen bond is a low kind type of dipole-dipole bond that exists between an electronegative molecule and a hydrogen molecule bonded to another electronegative molecule.
This type of bond always involves a hydrogen molecule.
That explains the name.
Hydrogen bonds can occur between molecules (intermolecularly), or within different parts of a single molecule (intramolecularly).
The typical hydrogen bond is stronger than van der Waals forces, but weaker than covalent, ionic and metallic bonds.
Intermolecular hydrogen bonding is responsible for the high boiling point of water (100 C).
Heraldry is the art and science of designing and using a coat of arms.
The study of coats of arms is also called armory.
The practice of using distinct markings on a person 's shield started in the Middle Ages, when a knight 's helmet covered his face, making everybody look the same in battle.
At first, only knights and nobility had coats of arms, but in the Middle Ages, some cities started using heraldry too.
By the end of the Middle Ages, other people began using coats of arms, now called burgher arms, which means they belong to a regular person and not a member of the nobility.
An official in charge of approving and recording coats of arms is called a herald.
The related study of flags is called vexillology.
Heraldry is described in English using a specialised jargon called Blazon which is based on French words.
Heraldry uses only bold, bright colors, called tinctures, with special names.
Gold, for instance, is called Or.
This word is often capitalized to distinguish it from the conjunction or.
Silver and white are sometimes treated as different colors, but in English Blazon both are called argent.
Some combinations of colors represent furs, and these have names that are only used in heraldry.
There are a number of geometric shapes, called ordinaries, that are used in heraldry, and each of these has a special name too.
The shield may be divided in a number of ways, usually following the lines of the ordinaries.
Heretic is a first-person shooter video game made by ID Software for computers.
It is like Doom, but it takes place in a fantasy world.
The monsters are mostly not human.
The player has the ability to look up and down, which they could not do in Doom.
The weapons are also fantasy weapons.
It uses the same base as Doom and Doom 2.
It has two sequels: Hexen and Heretic 2.
For the computer term, see Computer hardware.
Hardware describes things people use.
They can be equipment such as fasteners, keys, locks, hinges, latches, handles, wire, chains, tools, screws and machine parts, especially when they are made of metal.
In slang, hardware can be military equipment, or electronic equipment, or computer equipment.
Howard Carter (May 9, 1874 March 2, 1939) was an English archaeologist.
He was the man who found King Tutankhamun 's tomb in 1922.
Tutankhamun was a young pharaoh His mother was Martha Carter and his father was Samuel Carter.
The discovery of Tutankhamun 's tomb was an accident.
Howard Carter 's waterboy stumbled across some steps leading under the desert surface.
Lady Carnarvon, a sponsor of Carter 's work, was running low on patience at this point, and so if the discovery had not been made, then it is likely it would not have been discovered at all.
Hadrian (Publius Aelius Hadrianus, 24 January 76 10 July 138) was Roman Emperor from 117 to 138.
He is best known for building Hadrian 's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Roman territory in Britain.
In Rome, he built the Pantheon and the Temple of Venus and Roma.
In addition to being emperor, Hadrian was a humanist and a lover of Greek culture in all his tastes.
Hadrian was the third of the so-called Five Good Emperors.
Hadrian was born to a Hispano-Roman family, probably in Italica (near Seville).
His predecessor Trajan was a maternal cousin of Hadrian 's father.
Trajan never officially designated an heir, but according to his wife Pompeia Plotina, Trajan named Hadrian emperor immediately before his death.
Trajan 's wife and his friend Licinius Sura were well-disposed towards Hadrian, and he may well have owed his succession to them.
During his reign, Hadrian traveled to nearly every province of the empire.
Hadrian sought to make Athens the cultural capital of the empire: he ordered the construction of many temples in the city.
Hadrian spent much of his time with the military.
He usually wore military attire, and dined and slept amongst the soldiers.
He ordered military training and drilling to be more rigorous and even made use of false reports of attack to keep the army alert.
Despite his fondness for the army, there was little military activity throughout the empire while Hadrian reigned.
After he became emperor, Hadrian withdrew from Trajan 's conquests in Mesopotamia and Armenia, and even considered abandoning Dacia.
Late in his reign, he stopped the Bar Kokhba revolt in Judaea, renaming the province Syria Palaestina.
In 136 an ailing Hadrian adopted Lucius Aelius as his heir, but he died suddenly two years later.
In 138, Hadrian promised to adopt Antoninus Pius if he would in turn adopt Marcus Aurelius and Aelius ' son Lucius Verus as his own eventual successors.
Antoninus agreed, and soon afterward Hadrian died at his villa near Tibur.
Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet.
He is best known for writing Moby-Dick.
High fidelity or hi-fi is a way of describing a very good home music system.
"High fidelity" means that the sound is as close to the original as possible with no changes or added noise.
People who like hi-fi are sometimes called audiophiles.
Hi-fi is often now called "high-end audio".
In the 1930s and 1940s, vacuum tubes were used to make radios and electronic amplifiers.
Radio was becoming popular, and microphones, amplifiers and loudspeakers began to be sold.
Manufacturers began to compete to produce the best product.
A lot of research was done at Bell Laboratories and products were made by Western Electric.
Then a new kind of vinyl record with less noise and better sound was invented.
Manufacturers began to call their equipment and records "high fidelity" to help sell them.
In the 1950s, "hi-fi" became the popular term, replacing "phonograph" and "record player".
Rather than playing a record "on the phonograph," people would play it "on the hi-fi".
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Westrex invented the stereo record that used two speakers.
This led to more improvements in home audio.
The word "stereo" replaced the word "hi-fi."
Records were now played on "a stereo".
Some people bought individual parts (separate speakers and amplifiers), and even built their own equipment.
The term "high fidelity" is still used for very good music systems.
Holden is an automobile maker, owned by General Motors.
It is based in Australia.
Holden is known for making rear wheel drive cars.
Heinrich Schliemann (January 6 1822 in Neubukowin, Germany - December 26 1890 in Naples) was a German archaeologist.
He is famous for his work in Troy.
Heinrich Schliemann was born in Neubukowin, Germany.
His father, Ernst Schliemann, was a minister.
His mother, Luise Therese Sophie Schliemann, died in 1831 when Heinrich was 9 years old.
When his mother died, Heinrich lived with his uncle in Neustrelitz.
He went to a grammar school in the town for about a year.
His father paid the school fees.
Heinrich was very interested in history and was encouraged by his father to read history books.
After he left school, he worked in a shop in F rstenberg for about five years.
He worked hard as an apprentice, but he continued to read in his spare time.
He was not able to work as an archaeologist at this time, so he moved to a company which imported and exported products.
His ability to speak these languages was very important in his job, because he had to speak to other countries.
In 1850, Heinrich 's brother, Ludwig Schliemann, died.
He moved to Sacramento, where he opened a bank, just like his brother.
The new bank bought gold dust and sold it on to make money.
In six months, the bank bought and sold millions of dollars of the gold dust.
Heinrich married his wife, Ekaterina, in 1852, but the marriage was troubled.
Ekaterina kept encouraging her husband to make more money, but Heinrich felt that they were rich enough.
Nobody knows how Heinrich became an archaeologist, but he continued to travel to see famous historical icons around the world.
He even disguised himself as a tribesman to get into Mecca, the holy Muslim city.
He became very interested in Troy, which was involved in a big dispute at the time.
He was inspired by many people in the city, especially Ferdinand Fouqu and Frank Calvert, who he met in 1868.
Hypnos is the god of sleep in Greek mythology.
He is the son of Nyx and the twin brother of Thanatos, the god of death.
His sons are the Oneroi: Morpheus, Phobetor and Phantasos.
His Roman equivalent was Somnus.
Hypnos was represented as a gentle young man, usually with wings attached to his temples or shoulders (even though he tended to kill Roman workers that dozed off during their jobs).
Homer is the name of the Greek poet who wrote the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey.
These are the earliest works of Greek literature which have survived to the present day, and are among the greatest treasures of the ancient world.
They are a product of Mycenaean culture.
The Iliad tells the story of the Trojan war, which took place around 1190 BC.
The manuscripts of Homer were written much later, probably later than 800 BC.
What makes the history of this period so difficult is that the Mycenaean civilization was followed by several hundred years of decline, from which little or no writing has survived.
This period, the Greek Dark Age, ended around 800 BC, when once again we find Greek writing, though this time in their newly developed alphabetic script.
Therefore, there is a distinct possibility that the Homeric epics had a life, perhaps a long life, as oral literature, spoken by story-tellers.
We know little about Homer, and the later Greeks also knew little about him.
Some have doubted he was a real person; others think he was a woman.
A legend, has it that he was a blind poet who lived in Ionia.
There is no definite evidence for any of these ideas.
There is archaeological evidence that Troy existed.
The site of Troy has been discovered, and excavated.
Therefore it is a fair guess that the epic began as a long oral poem based on the siege of Troy, but with details added and changed as time went on.
Virtually every feature of Homer 's poetry is due to the economy forced on it by oral methods of composition.
The date of Homer 's existence is not known.
Herodotus said that Homer lived 400 years before his own time, which would place him at around 850 BC; but other ancient sources gave dates much closer to the time of the Trojan War.
The date of the Trojan War was given as 1194 1184 BC by Eratosthenes.
Today, "the date of Homer" means the date of the writing down the oral poems, rather than the life of Homer.
This is called the transcription date.
The language suggests that the earliest possible date for the transcription is 800 BC, and the latest possible date is 600 AD.
Hawkwind are an English rock band.
They are one of the earliest space rock groups.
Their write and sing about science fiction themes.
They formed in November 1969.
Hawkwind have changed many times during their history and have played many styles of music.
Dozens of musicians, dancers, and writers have worked with the group since they began.
Hawkwind have been named as an influence by artists such as the rock band Monster Magnet, the Sex Pistols (who covered their 1972 song, "Silver Machine"), Henry Rollins of Black Flag, the guitarist Ty Segall, and the English rock band, Ozric Tentacles.
Horses are mammals of the family Equidae.
The common horse is the species Equus caballus.
It was domesticated from wild horses by humans at least 5000 years ago.
They are large, strong animals, and some breeds are used to pull heavy loads.
Racehorses can gallop up to 30 miles an hour.
A male horse is a stallion, and a female horse is a mare.
The general term for a young horse is foal.
A young female horse is a filly, and a young male horse is a colt.
A castrated horse is a gelding.
Horses have hooves which need protection by horseshoes from hard or rough ground.
The evolution of horses has been well studied.
Fifty million years ago, there were no horses as we know them now.
Of the earliest fossil horse, the North American one is called Eohippus, and the Eurasian one is called Hyracotherium.
Both were small animals: Eohippus was the larger of the two at twice the size of a terrier dog.
Many changes took place between those little animals and today 's horse.
These changes are best explained as adaptations to its changing life-style.
From a small forest-dweller eating nuts and fruit to a larger forest browser eating leaves and small branches.
Finally, the modern horse is a grazer on open grassland, with different teeth, legs for running and much larger size.
Major changes happened in the mid-Miocene when the climate became cooler, and grassland began to replace forests.
This change continued, and several groups of mammals changed from browsers to grazers.
Horses have been domesticated for at least 5000 years.
They have been used by humans in many different ways for travel, work, food, and pleasure.
They are also kept as a pet for humans too.
They are used for riding, as transport, racing, and just plain riding.
They are also used for carrying things or pulling carts, or to help plow farmer 's fields in agriculture.
Horses have also been used for meat, milk, and glue.
Today, horses are mostly used for entertainment and sports.
They are also still used for work and transportation in some places.
"Equus" is the old Latin word for horse.
Horses are used by humans in equine sports such as cross-country, showjumping, dressage, horse polo, rodeo events etc..
Showjumping, cross-country and dressage are Olympic sports can be competed together in one event (known as one\/three day events) or as separate events
Horsehide is a tough leather made from the skin of horses.
Horsehair is used to make a stiff fabric.
Horsehair can also be used as a stuffing for furniture.
Horsehair can be mixed with plaster to make it strong.
Horse bones can be used to make gelatin for food.
The bones can also be used to make glue.
Animal glue is still preferred by some wood workers.
Horses are used all over the world to carry people and pull carts.
They are used by police in big cities.
Police horses help police watch and protect people in crowds.
Hindi is the most commonly spoken language in India.
It is the fifth most spoken language in the world with about 182 million native speakers in 1998.
The script used in writing Hindi is Devan gar.
Hindi is widely written, spoken and understood in North India and most other places in India.
In 1997, a survey found that 66 % of Indians can speak Hindi.
The most common form of Hindi is known as Hindustani.
It has taken words from the Dravidian languages of South India, many words from the Persian, Arabic, Turkish, English, and Portuguese languages.
Hindustani language is almost the same as Urdu, the most commonly spoken language in Pakistan; the difference is that Urdu is written in the Arabic alphabet from right to left.
Hindi and Urdu were considered the same language until Pakistan 's split from India, and to this day, both languages are mutually intelligible, meaning that speakers of two different languages can understand each other without knowing the other language.
Some other dialects of Hindi are: Avadhi, Braj, Bhojpuri, Bundeli, Bagheli, Chhattisgarhi, Dogri and Marwari.
Hindi has developed from Sanskrit, the ancient language of India.
Hindi started to develop in the 7th century as "Apabhramsha", but became stable by the 10th century.
Some famous Hindi poets are Tulsidas and Kabir.
Hindi is also spoken with regional accents like Haryanvi, Rajasthani, and Bengali.
In the past few years a new Hindi language (with unwritten grammar) has emerged from Mumbai.
It is being spread by Hindi films.
It is becoming very popular with younger generation.
A heat engine is a device that converts heat into mechanical motion that can be used to do work.
Many kinds of real heat engines have been invented like the internal combustion engine that drives cars and the steam engine that once powered ships and trains.
The branch of physics called thermodynamics studies heat engines and how they work.
In engineering and thermodynamics, a heat engine converts heat energy to mechanical work by using the temperature difference between a hot "source" and a cold "sink".
Heat is transferred from the source, through the "working body" of the engine, to the "sink", and in this process some of the heat changes into work by using the qualities of the gas or liquid inside the engine.
There are many kinds of Heat engines.
Each has a thermodynamic cycle.
Heat engines are often named after the thermodynamic cycle they use, like the Carnot cycle.
They often pick up everyday names, such as gasoline\/petrol, turbine, or steam engines.
Some heat engines may generate heat inside the engine itself.
Others may absorb heat from an external source.
Heat engines can be open to the air or sealed and closed off to the outside (This is called an Open or Closed cycle).
When scientists study heat engines they come up with ideas for engines that can not actually be built.
These are called ideal engines or cycles.
Real heat engines are often confused with the ideal engines or cycles they attempt to mimic.
Typically when describing the physical device the term ` engine ' is used.
When describing the ideal the term ` cycle ' is used.
One could say that the thermodynamic cycle is an ideal case of the mechanical engine.
One could equally say that the model does not quite perfectly match the mechanical engine.
However, much benefit is gained from the simplified models, and ideal cases they may represent.
In general terms, the larger the difference in temperature between the hot source and the cold sink, the more efficient the cycle or engine.
On Earth, the cold side of any heat engine is limited to the air temperature of the place where the engine is.
Most efforts to improve the efficiency of heat engines goes into increasing the temperature of the heat source, but at very high temperatures the metal of the engine begins to go soft.
The efficiency of various heat engines proposed or used today ranges from 3 percent (97 percent waste heat) for the OTEC ocean power proposal through 25 percent for most automotive engines, to 45 percent for a supercritical coal plant, to about 60 percent for a steam-cooled combined cycle gas turbine.
All of these processes gain their efficiency (or lack thereof) due to the temperature drop across them.
The least efficient, OTEC, uses the temperature difference of ocean water on the surface and ocean water from the depths, a small difference of perhaps 25 degrees Celsius, and so the efficiency must be low.
The most efficient, the combined cycle gas turbine burns natural-gas to heat air to nearly 1530 degrees Celsius, a large temperature difference of 1500 degrees Celsius, and so the efficiency can be very large when the steam-cooling cycle is added.
Examples of everyday heat engines include: the steam engine, the diesel engine, and the gasoline (petrol) engine in an automobile.
The stirling engine is less common but is found in small models which can run off the heat of a hand.
A common toy that is also a heat engine is the drinking bird.
All of these familiar heat engines are powered by the expansion of heated gases.
A bimetallic strip is a device that converts temperature into mechanical movement and is used in thermostats to control temperature.
It is a heat engine that does not use a liquid or gas.
The House of Lords is one of the two Houses of Parliament of the United Kingdom (UK).
It is in London, the capital city of the UK.
The other house is the House of Commons.
Together the two houses form the government and parliament of the UK.
Many members of the House of Lords sit as Crossbenchers.
This means they do not support either the government or opposition parties, but instead are independent of party politics.
They got their name because the benches where they sit are placed across the aisle which separates the government and opposition supporters.
Hans-Dietrich Genscher (21 March 1927 31 March 2016) was a German politician.
Genscher was born at Reideburg, near Halle.
Genscher served in World War II from 1943 to 1945.
He joined the Nazi Party at the age of 18.
After the war, he studied economics and law in Halle and Leipzig.
He joined the East German Liberal Democratic Party (LDPD) in 1946.
In 1952, Genscher fled to West Germany.
There he joined the Free Democratic Party (FDP).
He passed his second state examination in law in Hamburg in 1954.
After that, he became a solicitor in Bremen.
In 1965, Genscher was elected to the Bundestag, the West German parliament for the first time.
From 1969 to 1974, he was Federal Minister of the Interior under Chancellor Willy Brandt.
Genscher was Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 1974 to 1982 under Helmut Schmidt.
Two weeks later, he began to serve in the same positions under Helmut Kohl.
He served the second time from 1982 to 1992.
He was Germany 's longest serving Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor.
Genscher died at his home in Wachtberg, Germany from heart failure on 31 March 2016, aged 89.
In economics, hyperinflation is inflation that is "out of control," when prices increase very fast as money loses its value.
One example of hyperinflation is in Germany in the 1920s.
In 1922, the largest bank note was 50,000 Mark, In 1923 the largest bank note was 100,000,000,000,000 Mark.
In December of 1923 the exchange rate was 4,200,000,000,000 Marks to 1 US dollar.
These bank notes were so worthless that people would burn them in fires to keep them warm.
The notes would burn longer than the amount of wood you could buy with them.
Sometimes the rate of inflation was so high that prices doubled every two days.
The Rentenmark was introduced to stop this problem.
The exchange rate was set at 4.2 Rentenmarks to 1 US Dollar.
In Zimbabwe, the inflation rate was 231,150,888.87 % in July 2008.
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 October 20, 1964) was the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933.
He was a world-famous mining engineer and humanitarian administrator.
As a United States Commerce Secretary in the 1920s under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted economic modernization.
In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover easily won the Republican nomination.
The nation was prosperous and optimistic, leading to a landslide for Hoover over the Democrat Al Smith.
He was born in West Branch, Iowa.
He is the first president born west of the Mississippi River.
Herbert Hoover was businessman.
He was the United States Secretary of Commerce.
In 1927, Hoover appeared in the first public demonstration of television broadcast.
Hoover and his wife learned Mandarin Chinese while he worked in China.
They used it in the White House so the White House staff would n't understand them.
A few months after he was elected, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression was beginning.
Unlike Andrew Mellon and Calvin Coolidge who believed that the federal government should keep its hands off the economy, Herbert Hoover believed that some action from the federal government is necessary.
While he opposed a welfare state which would give money to people for doing nothing, he wanted to create jobs through several government programs, including the construction of a huge dam which would be later named Hoover Dam.
The federal government received less money in tax revenues because of the bad economy, and the government was spending more money than it was taking in, so Hoover tried to increase the government 's revenue to balance the budget.
He signed the Revenue Act of 1932 which was a large tax increase.
He signed the largest tariff (tax on countries which trade with the United States) increase in American history which worsened the Great Depression, even though 1000 economists warned him not to sign that.
Hoover denied giving promised retirement money to poor World War 1 veterans (called the Bonus Army) earlier than what was agreed to, so they went on strike.
Hoover ordered the United States army to force them to leave.
It resulted in a bloody conflict which hurt Hoover 's reputation.
Hoover was uncharismatic and did not relate to the people well, which made many people consider him as mean-spirited.
Hoover supported the very unpopular prohibition of alcohol and did not want to make alcohol legal.
While Hoover did support some government involvement in the economy, he was against Franklin Roosevelt 's New Deal, because he thought it called for too much government involvement in the economy.
Due to his failure to fix the Great Depression, he lost the 1932 election to Franklin Roosevelt.
Hoover died at the age of 90 in New York City from internal bleeding.
Hildegard of Bingen (born Bemersheim nr.
Alzey 1098; died 17 September 1179) was a German writer, composer and mystic.
She was an abbess who is well known for her literary works and her songs.
She also wrote about medical and scientific things, and wrote letters to many important politicians.
Hildegard was born into a noble family.
Her parents sent her to a monastery because she was the tenth child of the family.
She took the veil (became a nun) at the age of 15.
By the time she was 38 she had the title of mother superior.
She founded (started) a monastery on the Rupertsberg in the Rhine valley near Bingen.
Later she founded a daughter house on the other side of the river near R desheim.
She traveled a lot and talked to many important people.
She later had the title of abbess.
After she died several popes suggested she should be made a saint, but this never happened.
She does, though, have a feast day on September 17, which is celebrated in some parts of Germany.
Known as the "Sybil of the Rhine", Hildegard had many visions, many of which she wrote down.
They were mostly about God and his relationship with humans, the church, redemption from God, and creation.
She wrote lyrical poetry which was very colourful and had lots of visionary ideas.
Her music does not use plainchant like the music of many other medieval composers at the time.
It mostly has small patterns of melody which are repeated many times in slightly different ways.
Her music was also different because the chants she wrote were written for female voices, in a higher range than earlier chants.
This made them easier for women 's voices.
She wrote a morality play in verse with 82 melodies.
Hildegard of Bingen is the first composer whose life we know about.
She may possibly be the first woman to write about female sexuality.
Hilversum is a town in North Holland in the Netherlands.
It lies between Amsterdam and Utrecht.
About 85,000 people live there.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (December 8, 65 BC - November 27, 8 BC), known to English speakers as Horace, was a famous poet in the Roman Empire.
Horace was born in the small Italian town of Venusia.
His father used to be a slave, but was known as a freedman because his master had freed him.
They moved to Rome a short time later.
Horace 's father had a job taking items from the seller to the buyer.
He received money from these sales.
His father became richer and was able to send Horace to the best schools in Rome.
He was also able to send him to Athens (Greece) to study the Greek language and philosophy.
Horace 's native language was Latin.
Horace was incredibly proud of his father, and said he felt no shame in being the son of a freedman.
In his early adult life, Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator, was killed.
War was declared against the people who killed him.
Horace joined the army.
When the war was over, Horace returned to Italy to find that other people were living in his apartment.
His father was also gone.
Horace became very poor.
Eventually, he found a job in the treasury.
This involved sorting the country 's money.
His friends, Lucius Varius Rufus and Virgil, who were also writers, introduced him to Maecenas.
Maecenas was a close friend of Augustus, the emperor of Rome.
Horace lived in Tivoli, an area of Rome.
When he died, he gave the land he owned to Augustus, to increase the land the state owned.
Today, other writers visit the land to remember him.
Horace wrote many famous quotes in his poems.
These lines are still spoken today, by speakers of every language, in the original Latin.
Some of Horace 's poems are difficult to translate because of their syntax, grammar and structure, which is sometimes very different to modern languages.
Horace is viewed by many people, including experts, to be one of the best Latin poets.
Helsinki is the capital city of Finland.
Helsinki is the largest city in Finland.
604,380 (31.12.2012) people live in Helsinki, and 1,360,000 live in the Helsinki metropolitan area.
Helsinki is in the south of Finland, on the coast of the Gulf of Finland.
City is in the Uusimaa region.
When one looks from Helsinki, Tallinn is on the opposite side of the sea, but it is too far away to see.
A poetic name for Helsinki is "the daughter of the Baltic Sea".
In 1550, Swedish king Gustav Vasa commanded people to build a new city and move there.
His idea was to build a new place to trade, which would be more popular than Tallinn.
The idea did not work well, and many people returned from Helsinki to their homes.
Later Sweden built the fortress Suomenlinna in Helsinki.
After Russia had taken Finland from Sweden in several wars, they started developing Helsinki.
Helsinki became the capital of autonomous province of Finland.
When Finland became independent in 1917, Helsinki stayed as the capital city.
Helsinki spreads around several bays and over several islands.
Some famous islands include Seurasaari, Lauttasaari and Korkeasaari - which is also the country 's biggest zoo - as well as the fortress island of Suomenlinna (Sveaborg).
Hobart is a city in Australia.
It is the capital city of the state of Tasmania, and it has about 200,000 people.
It is on the western shore of the Derwent River, although some of its suburbs are on the eastern shore.
Just west of Hobart is Mount Wellington.
Hobart was founded in 1803 as a penal colony.
Today it is a busy seaport, and is the home port of Antarctic expeditions.
Tourist attractions include Salamanca Markets, the Cadbury chocolate factory and the Cascade Brewery.
Hobart has an oceanic climate (Cfb in the Koeppen climate classification).
Hesiod (Hesiodos,) was an Ancient Greek poet.
He is probably the second Greek poet whose work has survived; like Homer, his dates are not known for certain.
As with Homer, there are numerous legends, none of which are supported by hard evidence.
He may have lived around 700 BC in Askra in Boeotia, as a farmer.
Today his writings are one of the main sources for Greek mythology, and everyday life in Ancient Greece, such as farming techniques, astronomy and ancient time-keeping.
The complete surviving works were published in 1493, and by Aldus Manutius in 1495.
The system of Hebrew numerals is a quasi-decimal alphabetic numeral system using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
In this system, zero does not have a place, and the number values for each letter are added together.
Each unit (1, 2,..., 9) is assigned a separate letter, each tens (10, 20,..., 90) a separate letter, and each hundreds (100, 200,..., 900) a separate letter.
Hebrew has masculine and feminine ways of saying the words.
For just counting, feminine is used.
Otherwise, the gender is used (ex.
two boys, two girls).
A hero in Greek mythology is a half-god\/half-human being.
Herakles, for example, was the son of the god Zeus and the mortal woman Alkmene.
Heroes performed extraordinary feats and were worshipped in hero cults.
In the modern world, hero has lost its ancient meaning.
It now means someone who is courageous ("The firefighter who saved my baby is a hero.").
Heroes are "heroic", they have "heroism".
They help in saving people or a society from bad people, villains, or natural disasters.
A hero can also be someone who is helpful, polite, or helping people who need it.
The word is used in the sports world to mean an extraordinary player or athlete ("football hero", "Olympic hero", etc.).
The female equivalent of the male hero is the "heroine".
Sometimes, the protagonist (or main character) of a story is called the "hero" of the work (a book\/movie\/etc.).
Hydroxide in chemistry is a name given to the diatomic anion OH, made up of oxygen and hydrogen atoms.
Most chemical compounds that contain hydroxides are bases.
An Arrhenius base is a substance that when dissolved in an aqueous solution, it produces hydroxide ions.
Therefore, hydroxide ions are heavily involved in acid-base reactions.
Many useful chemical reactions or processes involve hydroxide or hydroxide ions.
Sodium hydroxide is used in industry as a strong base, potassium hydroxide is used in agriculture, and iron hydroxide minerals such as goethite and limonite have been used as iron ore..
The aluminium ore bauxite is made mainly out of aluminium hydroxides.
Most inorganic hydroxide salts do not dissolve in water.
Many useful chemicals and chemical processes involve hydroxides or hydroxide ions.
Sodium hydroxide is used in factories as an alkali, potassium hydroxide is used in farming, and iron hydroxide have been used as low grade brown iron ore.
Hans Rudolf "Ruedi" Giger (5 February 1940 12 May 2014) was a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer.
He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for their design work on the movie Alien.
On 12 May 2014, Giger died at the age of 74 in a hospital in Z rich after having suffered injuries in a fall.
Hispaniola is an island in the Caribbean Sea.
It is the second largest island (after Cuba) of the West Indies, east of Cuba and west of Puerto Rico.
The Republic of Haiti occupies the western three-eighths, the Dominican Republic the rest.
Hispaniola is one of two Caribbean islands in which there are two countries; the other is Saint Martin.
When Columbus arrived to America, some groups of native people, coming from northern South America, had lived in the Caribbean Islands since a very long time.
That movement from South America to the Caribbean islands was not continuous but it happened in several waves during almost twelve centuries.
Archeological studies suggests that those people from South America came to the Caribbean islands during four periods.
The first period began around 5000 B.C. For most Caribbean islands, this period ended around 2000 years ago except in Cuba and Hispaniola where there were some small populations in western Cuba and southwestern Hispaniola when the Europeans arrived to these islands.
They were called Ciboney or Siboney by the Ta nos, meaning "man that lives among rocks" (Ciba means stone and eyeri man).
The second group was the Igneri, the first Arawak Indians to come to the Caribbean Islands.
They displaced the Ciboney people and, later, they were displaced by another group of Arawak Indians, the Ta nos..
Ta nos occupied all the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico) and they developed a culture different from the culture of the Arawaks of South America.
They were the first people that the Spanish met in the Americas.
The fourth and last group was the Carib.
The Carib were also Arawaks but with a different language.
Even if they used to go to Puerto Rico and the Hispaniola to fight against the Ta nos, they lived only in the Lesser Antilles when Columbus got to America.
At the moment when the Spanish came to the Hispaniola, most of the island was occupied by Ta nos; only in the western tip of the Southern Peninsula (in modern Haiti), there were some small groups of Ciboney In the northeastern part of the island (Saman Peninsula and north of the Northern mountain range), there was a group called Ciguayos, and sometimes Macorix, with the same culture of the Ta nos but a different language.
It seems that they were Carib that took the Ta no culture.
They were the first Indians that fought against the Europeans.
Christopher Columbus arrived to the island on December 5, 1492, naming it as La Espa ola, meaning The Spanish Island.
When Peter Martyr d'Anghiera wrote in latin about this island, he wrote Hispaniola, meaning Small Spain; that was not correct.
Because the book of Anghiera was translated into English very soon, the name Hispaniola is the most used in English-speaking countries and in scientific works.
For centuries, other names were used for the island.
The most common were Santo Domingo Island (the Dominican constitution still uses that name) and Haiti.
Hispaniola was the only island that Columbus visited in all his four travels to the Americas.
He saw the island for the first time on December 5, 1492 but he stayed on his ship during the night; the next day, he went to land.
The Spaniards spent the rest of December traveling along the north coast of Haiti; on December 12, Columbus took possession of the island in the name of the King and Queen of Spain and named the island as "La Espa ola".
On Christmas Eve, December 24, the main ship ("Santa Mar a") was badly damaged.
The next day, Christmas Day, Columbus gave orders to use the wood of the ship to build a small fort on what is now M le Saint-Nicolas, Haiti.
That fort was named La Navidad ("Navidad" means Christmas) and was the first European building on American soil.
Columbus left 39 men there because there was not space in the other two ships for all the people.
From "La Navidad", they traveled east along the north coast of the island and in Saman they had a small fight with some natives ("Ciguayos", not Ta no Indians) and named the bay as "Golfo de las Flechas" (Gulf of the Arrows), but now is called "Saman Bay".
From there, they went back to Spain.
In 1493, Columbus found, when he returned in his second trip, that "La Navidad" was destroyed by the Indians and all Spaniards killed.
Then he went to the east, founding the first European city in the American continent, near the present city of Puerto Plata; he named the city "La Isabela" in honor of Queen Isabella of Castile.
The first Catholic mass in America was celebrated at La Isabela on January 6, 1494.
From La Isabela, Columbus sent groups of persons to explore and take control of the island.
Because La Isabela was an unhealthy site, Bartholomew Columbus, brother of Christopher, established a new city, La Nueva Isabela (The New Isabela) on the south coast of the island, on the left side of the Ozama river.
Because a hurricane destroyed the city, it was built again but on the right side of the river and with the new name of Santo Domingo.
It is the oldest permanent European city in the Americas.
The Ta no population of the island decreased very fast because a combination of new diseases, like smallpox, and abuses by the Spaniards.
Even if some black slaves were brought from Spain since 1501, the colony began to import African slaves when the colony began to grow sugar cane, around 1516, to produce sugar.
Spain kept conquering new regions of the Americas and, for the Spanish people, those new regions were more interesting because there was more gold; the population of the island grew very slowly.
By the early 17th century, the island and its smaller neighbors (above all, the Tortuga island) became places often visited by Caribbean pirates.
In 1606, the king of Spain gave the order that all inhabitants of Hispaniola had to move close to the city of Santo Domingo, to avoid interaction with pirates and Protestant people.
This resulted in French, British and Dutch pirates establishing bases on the abandoned north and west coasts of the island.
In 1665, the presence of French people on the island had the official approval of the French king Louis XIV and he named Bertrand d'Ogeron as the governor of the western part of Hispaniola (in French, Saint-Domingue).
By the Treaty of Ryswick, Spain gave the western third of the island to France and kept the eastern part.
The development of the French "Saint-Domingue" was very fast, both in wealth and population, and it became the richest colony in the Caribbean.
The eastern, Spanish colony of "Santo Domingo" remained poor and with a very low population.
The island of Hispaniola has an area of 76,480 km.
There are two countries: the Republic of Haiti is in the western part of the island and the Dominican Republic in the eastern part.
These two countries are separated by an artificial border, except in the northern and southern extremes where they are separated by the rivers Dajab n and Pedernales, respectively.
The island is separated from Cuba by the Windward Passage (81 km from Punta Mais in Cuba to Cape Saint-Nicolas in Haiti), from Jamaica by the Jamaica Channel (186 km from Point Morante in Jamaica to Cape Irois in Haiti) and from Puerto Rico by the Mona Channel (112 km from Punta Hig ero in Puerto Rico to Punta de Agua in the Dominican Republic).
The maximun length, east to west, is 650 km from Cape Enga o to Cape Irois.
The maximum width, north to south, is 265 km from Cape Isabela to Cape Beata.
The highest point of the island, and of the Caribbean is Duarte Peak (Pico Duarte) in the Dominican Republic with 3,087 m; the lowest point is in the Enriquillo Lake, which is about 46 meters under sea level.
There are many smaller islands around the Hispaniola.
The largest are:
The Hispaniola is an island with many mountains, and the highest peaks of the West Indies are here.
The chains of mountains show a direction northwest-southeast, except in the Southern peninsula (in Haiti) where they have a direction west-east.
The mountains are separated by valleys with the same general direction.
The sources of the longest rivers of Hispaniola are in the mountains of the Cordillera Central (Dominican Republic) - Massif du Nord (Haiti).
The largest lake of the Hispaniola, and of the West Indies, is the Lake Enriquillo.
It is in the Hoya de Enriquillo with an area of 265 km.
There are three small islands within the lake.
It is around 40 meters below sea level and is a saline lake with a higher concentration of salt than the sea water.
The second largest lake, tang Saum tre (also known as Lake Azuei), is close to Lake Enriquillo but in Haiti, in the Cul-de-Sac.
It is also a saline lake with an area of around 170 km.
Others lakes are Rinc n (fresh water, area of 28.2 km), Oviedo (brackish water, area of 28 km), Redonda Lim n, tang de Mirago ne.
Hispaniola has a tropical climate but modified by elevation and the trade winds (winds that come from the northeast, from the Atlantic Ocean).
At sea level, the average temperature is 25 C, with small changes from one season to another.
In the highest mountains, the temperature in winter can be as low as 0 C.
There are two wet seasons: April-June and September-November.
The most dry period is from December to March.
Rainfall varies greatly; eastern regions, like the Saman Peninsula, get an average of over 2,000 mm in a year, but less than 500 mm fall in the southwest (Hoya de Enriquillo - Cul-de-Sac).
From June to November, hurricanes are frequent and can do much damage in the island.
Hispaniola has a total population, estimated for July 2013, of 20,113,564 inhabitants, for a density of 263 inhabitants per km.
In Haiti, 95 % of the population belongs to the black ethnic group, in the Dominican Republic, 11 % belongs to the black ethnic group as well.
In the Dominican Republic, only Spanish is spoken (except for groups of immigrants) even if Haitian Creole is gaining importance because the massive immigration from Haiti.
Both French and (Haitian) Creole are spoken in Haiti, and both are official languages.
In both countries, the main religion is Roman Catholicism.
Protestant groups are important, more in Haiti (15 % of the population) than in the Dominican Republic (5 %).
The most important cities in the island are Santo Domingo (capital of Dominican Republic), Port-au-Prince (capital of Haiti), Santiago (Dominican Republic), Carrefour (Haiti).
Halle Maria Berry (born August 14, 1966) is an American actress.
Berry has received Emmy and Golden Globe awards, and was awarded the Academy Award in 2002 for her role in Monster 's Ball.
She is the only African American woman to have won the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Berry was ranked No. 1 on People 's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" list in 2003.
In March 2014, she launched her own TV production company, 606 Films.
Robert Koch (11 December 1843 - 27 May 1910) was a German doctor.
He won the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for studying tuberculosis.
The Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Disease started in 1891, is now called the Robert Koch Institute.
Koch developed a system to check whether a microorganism caused a disease.
The system was four questions, known as Koch 's postulate.
The postulates are still useful.
Many variations have been developed.
A hogshead is a measurement unit in the imperial system.
It was derived in the 14th century by weighing King Henry IV 's hog 's head.
The measure was used throughout Europe but the length varied from country to country, even city to city.
The hogshead was popularized in modern pop culture by Episode 208 of The Simpsons.
There are 2.7 hogshead to a standard gallon.
In 1959, the length was standardized by Canada, New Zealand, United Kindgom, and the United States in the international treaty "Standardization of Units".
Honda is a large engineering company from Japan.
It is well known for making cars and motorcycles.
Although Honda started in Japan, it now has many factories in other countries that includes the United States, Canada, Brazil, Thailand and China.
Honda sells a luxury line of cars in the United States with the Acura name.
Honda also makes ATVs.
Honda is also known for participating in a very wide range of motorsport events, including Formula 1, MotoGP, LeMans, IRL and others.
Honda also makes small engines for chainsaws, lawnmowers and leaf blowers.
Honda does a lot of research on humanlike robots.
Honda built Asimo, a robot that can walk, talk, dance, carry stuff and answer questions.
These are not yet for sale in the United States.
Honda also creates Jet Airplanes, known as the HondaJet.
The jet is rarely seen in America but it is an amazing airplane according to reviews on www.google.com
Handball (also known as team handball, field handball or Olympic handball) is a team sport similar to football (soccer).
Two teams of 7 players each (six players and a goalkeeper) pass and bounce a ball using the hands, trying to throw it into the goal of the other team.
Games are an hour of playing time, divided into 30-minute halves, with 15 minutes break at halftime.
The size of the court is a little bigger than a basketball court, 40 meters by 20 meters, which is the same court as indoor soccer.
It has a six meter line which no one but the goalie is allowed to have possession of the ball and touching the ground.
If this happens, a foul is called and the player committing the foul gets ejected, (sitting out of the game for two minutes, five minutes, or the rest of the game).
There are seven players total on a team handball, six players and a goalie.
Most historians agree that handball predates soccer, (football) but that is not for certain.
"Team handball."
World Book Advanced.
World Book, 2012
A hadith (, pronounced:"") is the narration of an event from the life of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.
In English, the word hadith is also used as the plural word for a group of these narrations although the plural in Arabic is a-HAA-deeth.
The hadith is used along with the Quran to interpret Sharia.
Sunnis follow the Kutub al-Sittah while Shias follow the Kutub al-Arba ` a.
Abu Hurairah narrated the most Sunni hadiths.
The word hadith means something new or a piece of information.
The religious meaning of hadith is a statement, action or approval attributed to the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad.
Therefore, hadith can be divided into three categories based upon their content:
After Muhammad died, Muslim scholars wrote down stories about what he had said and done.
They also wrote down facts about who told each story.
Some of the stories were retold many times before they were written down, and some stories did not agree in every detail resulting in the detailed study of hadith by scholars to compare between those hadith.
Muslim scholars collected all of these Hadith in books and compared them to each other.
They decided which Hadith were most likely to be true records of the Sunnah, that is, the words and actions of Muhammad.
Muslims see the Sunnah as an important source of guidance, along with the Qur ` an.
Islam is the complete religion so nothing could be changed about it.
It gives a complete code of life.
A hull is the body of a ship or boat.
It is a central concept in floating vessels as it provides the buoyancy that keeps the vessel from sinking.
Archimedes, a Greek doctor, inventor, and mathematician, made the science of "hydrostatics", the study of liquids and pressure.
The Archimedes principle says that the force holding up an object that is inside a liquid in part or totally.
So, a ship actually does sink, until it moves an amount of water that is the same weight of the weight of the ship.
The weight must be over a wide area to work.
This explains why ships and boats (including submarines) float.
An object 's weight pulls down in the direction of gravity, but the water 's buoyant (floating) force pushes it up.
Because these forces counteract each other, the object seems to lose weight.
NASA uses this principle to prepare their astronauts for the weightlessness of space, so they had the astronauts work on parts of the space ship inside water tanks 25 feet (7.6 m) deep.
Waterline is an imaginary line circumscribing the hull that matches the surface of the water when the hull is not moving.
Midships is the midpoint of the LWL (see below).
It is half-way from the forwardmost point on the waterline to the rear-most point on the waterline.
Baseline an imaginary reference line used to measure vertical distances from.
It is usually located at the bottom of the hull.
: \* Length Overall (LOA) is the extreme length from one end to the other (see also o\/a): \* Length on the Waterline (LWL) is the length from the forwardmost point of the waterline measured in profile to the stern-most point of the waterline.
(see also w\/l): \* Beam or breadth (B) is the width of the hull.
(ex: BWL is the maximum beam at the waterline): \* Depth (D) is the vertical distance from the top of the keel to the underside of the upper deck at the side.
: \* draft (d) or (T) is the vertical distance from the bottom of the hull to the waterline.
: \* Freeboard (FB) is depth plus the height of the keel structure minus draft.
: \* Volume (V) is the volume of water displaced by the hull.
: \* Displacement (-RRB- is the weight of water equivalent to the immersed volume of the hull.
: \* Longitudinal Centre of Buoyancy (LCB) is the longitudinal distance from a point of reference (often Midships) to the center of the displaced volume of water when the hull is not moving.
Note that the Longitudinal Centre of Gravity or center of the weight of the vessel must align with the LCB when the hull is in equilibrium.
: \* Vertical Centre of Buoyancy (VCB) is the vertical distance from a point of reference (often the Baseline) to the center of the displaced volume of water when the hull is not moving.
: \* Longitudinal Centre of Floatation (LCF) is the longitudinal distance from a point of reference (often Midships) to the center of the area of waterplane when the hull is not moving.
A hymn is a religious song of worship in Christianity, or a sacred song.
Collections of hymns are known as hymnals.
In Hinduism, a hymn is a shloka.
A hydrofoil is a type of boat that can lift its hull out of the water with a pair of special wings underwater.
These wings are like the wings of an airplane.
When a hydrofoil moves quickly, its wings allow it to fly.
When this happens the boat is said to be in foilborne.
The result of flying means less of the boat is touching the water and can make the boat have less drag which allows it to move faster (drag slows a boat down).
or special pontoons when going fast keep it out of the water.
Hassium is a chemical element.
It has been named unniloctium and eka-osmium.
It has the symbol Hs.
It has the atomic number 108.
It is a transuranium element.
Hassium is a radioactive element that does not exist in nature.
It has to be made.
Hassium oxidises like osmium, the element above it in the periodic table.
Hassium oxidises to hassium tetroxide.
It is less volatile than osmium tetroxide.
Hassium was first made in 1984.
It was made at the Gesellschaft f r Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany.
The team that made darmstadtium was led by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried M nzenberg.
The element was named from the Latin name for the German state of Hessen.
Hessen is the state that the Gesellschaft f r Schwerionenforschung is in.
Before it was named Hassium scientists could not decide what the name should be.
There was an element naming controversy.
The temporary IUPAC systematic element name was unniloctium.
The symbol with the name was Uno.
In 1994 a committee of IUPAC recommended that element 108 be named hahnium.
The name hassium was adopted internationally in 1997.
Isotope 270 of Hassium was found in December 2006.
An international team of scientists led by the Technical University of Munich found it.
It is a doubly magic isotope.
It has an long half-life of 22 seconds.
Scientists had thought that heavy and stable isotopes should exist.
Some theories said Hassium-270 may be part of an island of stability.
Henry Alfred Wolfgang Kissinger (born Heinz Alfred Wolfgang Kissinger on May 27, 1923),, is a German-American political scientist, diplomat, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
He served as both National Security Advisor and later as Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration and the Ford Administration.
Kissinger was born in Germany in 1923.
As a German Jew, it was not safe for him to stay in Germany after Adolf Hitler came to power, and he left for the United States in 1933.
He fought for the US against the Nazis in World War Two.
A controversial figure, Kissinger was Richard Nixon 's most trusted advisor on foreign affairs.
He was in government during the Cold War and promoted what he called "realpolitik" in dealing with the Soviet Union and Communist China.
He was a major force behind the 1973 ceasefire in the Vietnam War.
He won a Noble Peace Prize for the ceasefire, but the agreement fell apart in 1975.
Under Kissinger, the US opened up relations to China, which is considered one of his biggest successes.
He also supported d tente, an easing of the rivalry with the Soviets.
In his later years, Kissinger along with William Perry, Sam Nunn, and George Shultz called upon governments to reduce nuclear weapons, and in three Wall Street Journal articles proposed a program of urgent steps to that end.
The four have created the Nuclear Security Project to advance this cause.
His legacy is often debated by historians.
Some people criticize him, even calling him a criminal, for his tactics during the cold war, notably supporting a military junta in Chile and backing Pakistan during the Bangladesh War.
Many people, however, consider Kissinger a great figure in modern American history who ended the Vietnam War, opened up China, and supported peace in the Cold War.
Hydrus is a constellation in the southern sky.
Hercules is a hero in Roman mythology.
He is a mortal son of Jupiter.
Hercules is known for his great strength.
In Greek mythology he is named Herakles, but he has some different stories.
In one of the more well known stories of Hercules, he had to complete twelve tasks.
These tasks were:
Hercules is also a character in Marvel Comics.
He was an ally of the mighty Thor.
He is the leader and a founding member of the super team the Champions.
He was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1962.
The History of Poland is the history of rather different territories during the past millennium.
At one time, in the 16th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the second largest state in Europe, after Russia.
At other times there was no separate Polish state at all.
Poland got back its independence in 1918, after more than a century of rule by its neighbors, but its borders shifted again after the Second World War.
Poland began to form into a country around the middle of the 10th century in the Piast dynasty.
In 966, Prince Mieszko I got himself and the whole Polish nation christened.
In the 12th century Poland broke into some smaller states, which were later attacked by Mongol armies in 1241.
In 1320 W adys aw I became the King of the repaired Poland.
His son Casimir III repaired the Polish economy, built new castles and won the war against the Ruthenian dukedom.
The Black Death, which affected many parts of Europe from 1347 to 1351, did not come to Poland.
Beginning with the Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila, the Jagiellon dynasty (1385 1569) formed the Polish-Lithuanian Union.
The partnership proved beneficial for the Poles and Lithuanians, who played a dominant role in one of the most powerful empires in Europe for the next three centuries.
The Nihil novi act adopted by the Polish Sejm (parliament) in 1505, transferred most of the legislative power from the Monarch to the Sejm.
This event marked the beginning of the period known as "Nobility Commonwealth" when the State was ruled by the "free and equal" Polish nobility.
The Lublin Union of 1569, established the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as an influential player in European politics and a vital cultural entity.
In the 17th century Sweden attacked all of Poland (this was called the Deluge).
Many wars against the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Cossacks, Transylvania and Brandenburg-Prussia ended in 1699.
During the following 80 years, the government and nationed were weaker, making Poland dependent on Russia.
Russian tsars took advantage of this by offering money to traitors, who would block new ideas and solutions.
Russia, Prussia, and Austria broke Poland into three pieces in 1772, 1793 and 1795, which dissolved the country.
Polish people did not like the new kings, and often rebelled.
In 1791, in an attempt of reform the Sejm of Poland and Lithuania accepted the Constitution of May 3 which was the first modern constitution in Europe and the second (after the United States) on Earth.
But that did not help against the partitions of Poland in 1793 and 1795 on 123 years.
Napoleon made another Polish state, the Ghosts of Warsaw, but after the Napoleonic wars, Poland was split again by the countries at the Congress of Vienna.
The eastern part was ruled by the Russian tsar.
During World War I all Western Allies agreed to save Poland.
Soon after the surrender of Germany in November 1918, Poland became the Second Polish Republic (II Rzeczpospolita Polska).
It got its freedom after several military conflicts; the largest was in 1919-1921 Polish-Soviet War.
On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany attacked Poland, and the Soviet Union attacked on September 17.
Warsaw was defeated on September 28, and was split up into two pieces, one owned by Nazi Germany, the other by the Soviet Union.
The eastern part of the German zone was turned into the German Government area.
Out of all the countries that were in the war, Poland lost the highest amount of its people: over 6 million died, half of them Polish Jews.
Poland also gave the most troops, after the US, the British and the Soviets, to ultimately defeat Nazi Germany.
At the war 's end, Poland 's borders were moved west, pushing the east border to the Curzon line.
The west border was moved to the Oder-Neisse line.
The new Poland became 20 % smaller by 77,500 square kilometeres (29,900 sq mi).
The shift forced millions of people to move: Poles, Germans, Ukrainians, and Jews.
After these events, Poland became, for the first time, a real country.
There are still many Polish in the neighboring countries Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, as well as in other countries.
The most Poles outside of Poland are in the United States, especially in Chicago.
After the Second World War, the Soviet Union put a Communist government in Poland, and the country was named the People 's Republic of Poland.
In 1989 Solidarity - a political group led by Lech Wa sa - helped defeat the communist government in Poland.
During the early 1990s the country turned its economy into one of the most solid in Central Europe.
There were many improvements in human rights, such as free speech, democracy, etc..
In 1991 Poland became a member of the Visegrad Group and joined NATO in 1999 also with the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Polish voters then voted to join the European Union in a vote in June 2003.
The country joined the EU on May 1, 2004.
Houston is a large city in the United States.
It is in the state of Texas.
It is the fourth largest city in the U.S..
The mayor of Houston is Annise Parker.
Over two million people live in Houston.
It is named after Sam Houston, who fought for Texas freedom in 1836.
It is well known for Johnson Space Center of NASA.
The George Bush Intercontinental Airport is the main airport serving Houston.
Houston has many sports teams.
The Astros play baseball.
The Rockets play basketball.
The Texans play American Football.
Houston has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa in the Koeppen climate classification).
The Hebrew calendar or Jewish calendar is the calendar used in Judaism.
It is used to set the dates of the Jewish holidays and the weekly public reading of the Torah.
It is used to set the date for a Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah, the day a young person is considered an adult in Judaism.
It sets the Yahrzeit, the anniversary of the death of a relative.
The daily Jewish prayer service changes depending on the day of the Hebrew calendar.
The Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar calendar which depends on both the moon and the sun.
Months of the Hebrew calendar are based on the appearance of the new moon.
At the same time, the holiday of Passover must be in the spring.
For this reason, years of the Hebrew calendar are based on the sun.
One solar (sun-based) year lasts about 365 days, but twelve lunar (moon-based) months only last about 354 days.
For this reason, the Hebrew calendar adds an extra lunar month seven times in each cycle of 19 years.
This rule makes the average Hebrew calendar year about the same length as a solar year, 365 days.
The seven-day week is used to figure out the day for Shabbat, the day of rest.
The week does not depend on the solar year or lunar month.
Instead, it depends on a count of seven days that is believed to go back to ancient times.
The week is also an important part of the Hebrew calendar.
Jews have been using a lunisolar calendar since Biblical times.
The first commandment the Jewish people received as a nation was the commandment to determine the New Moon.
The months are usually referred to in the Bible by number rather than name.
Only four month names from before the Babylonian Exile appear in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible): Aviv (first, literally "spring", but originally probably meant the ripening of barley), Ziv (second, literally "light"), Ethanim (seventh, literally "strong" in plural), and Bul (eighth), and all are Canaanite names.
The month names of the modern Hebrew calendar were taken from the month names in the Babylonian calendar during the Babylonian Exile (6th century BCE).
At first, a new month began when witnesses came to the Sanhedrin (high rabbinical court) and testified that they saw the new crescent moon in the sky.
The Sanhedrin also decided when an extra month should be added to the calendar to keep Passover in the spring.
After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, it became harder for the Sanhedrin to meet and hear witnesses.
For that reason, the Sanhedrin established a fixed, rule-based form of the calendar.
The fixed calendar was adopted between 70 and 1178 CE, when its final form was fully described by Maimonides.
In the modern Hebrew calendar, years are counted as Anno Mundi (Latin for "year of the world").
This represents the traditional count of years since the creation of the world as described in Genesis.
This year is anno mundi.
In the small Karaite Judaism community, the calendar is very similar.
However, Karaites use witnesses to set the date of the new crescent moon.
They still use the ripening of barley to decide whether to add an extra month to the year.
For those reasons, the Karaite calendar can be slightly different from the main Jewish calendar.
In the Hebrew calendar, the meaning of day is taken from the Hebrew Bible: "And there was evening and there was morning, one day".
Because "evening" comes before "morning", a day in the Hebrew calendar starts in the evening.
For many purposes, the day in the Hebrew calendar begins at sunset.
But when it is important to make sure the previous day is completely over, the day begins at nightfall.
People who print calendars, or who write calendar programs for computers, ignore that rule.
They treat the Hebrew calendar date and the Gregorian calendar date that has the same midnight as being the same day.
They assume that people reading a Hebrew calendar know the sundown rule.
Whenever a holiday, birthday or anniversary appears on a printed calendar, it actually begins on the day before, at sundown.
In the Hebrew calendar, every seven days is Shabbat, the day of rest.
The week is the cycle of counting out each set of seven days ending in Shabbat.
The week is not affected by any other calendar calculation.
In Hebrew, the only name for the first six days of the week is a counting name: "First day", "Second day", etc..
The only day of the week with a special name is the seventh day Shabbat.
(See table above.)
The calculation of the Hebrew calendar year and month start with the molad.
Molad is a Hebrew word meaning "birth".
The word refers to the "birth" of the new moon each month.
The modern Hebrew calendar uses a calculated molad: the average length of the cycle from new moon to new moon over many years.
The length of the molad is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 3 seconds.
A year of 12 lunar months would be 354 days long; but a Hebrew calendar year must be a solar year about 365 days long.
Also, a Hebrew calendar year must have either 12 months or 13 months.
It is not allowed to have "part" of a month, so a thirteenth month is added seven times in every cycle of nineteen years.
This is called the Metonic cycle, and was well-known in ancient times.
By conventionn 3, the Hebrew calendar adds the extra month during years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19 of the cycle.
Hebrew calendar months are supposed to be lunar months.
For that reason, the calculation of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, starts with the molad for the month of Tishrei.
Starting from there, the calendar rules allow two main reasons to delay Rosh Hashanah by one or more days: 1.
Postponing Rosh Hashanah if the time of the molad (in Jerusalem) is after 12:00 noon.
If not for this rule, Rosh Hashanah would be the day before the molad in parts of the world east of Jerusalem.
2.
Postponing Rosh Hashanah so that it does not start on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday.
This rule prevents Yom Kippur from being the day before or after Shabbat.
It also prevents Hoshana Rabba, the seventh day of Sukkot, from being on Shabbat.
Once Rosh Hashanah for this year is calculated, the Rosh Hashanah for next year is calculated, starting with the time either 12 or 13 molad periods in the future.
Once the dates for this year 's and next year 's Rosh Hashanahs are known, calculating the calendar in between is easy.
The length of a molad is just a little over 29 days.
Since a month must have a whole number of days, calculating the calendar starts with alternating months of 30 and 29 days.
This gives an average of 29 days and a 12-month total of 354 days.
Starting from there, the month lengths are changed as follows:
(See the table of months above.)
The first day of the Hebrew calendar month, known as Rosh Hodesh, is always close to the astronomical new moon.
It often is not exactly on the astronomical new moon.
There are two reasons for that:
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (or Golden Dawn for short) was a magical order for the study of the occult.
It was founded in London in 1888 by Dr. William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers.
It ceased to exist under that name in 1903.
However, two spin-off groups were created at that time, the Stella Matutina and the Alpha et Omega.
While it was popular, many well-known people joined the Golden Dawn.
Some of its members included:
The Hash function is a function.
When a computer program is written, very often, large amounts of data need to be stored.
These are normally stored in tables.
In order to find the data again, some value is calculated.
This is like when someone reads a book, and to remember, they put what they read into their own words.
Hash values are much the same, except that care is taken that different sets of data do not get the same hash value (this is called a hash collision).
The high jump is a track and field athletics event.
Without the aid of any devices, athletes jump over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights.
The high jump was first practiced in England in the 19th century.
It became an Olympic sport in 1896 for men and in 1928 for women.
The rules that were made in 1865 still exist today.
Thus, every athlete has three attempts on every height.
The athletes are allowed to touch the bar but they must not knock it down.
The women 's world record of 2.09 metres is held by Stefka Kostadinova.
It was set in 1987.
There is a technique called the Fosbury flop and scissor kick.
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Heraclitus of Ephesus or Herakleitos (about 535 475 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher.
He was a native of Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor.
His teaching, as we have it now, is a series of epigrams.
that is, sayings and remarks, rather than systematic essays.
Heraclitus is famous for his doctrine of change being central to the universe.
His famous sayings, "All is flux", and "You can not step twice into the same river" is still remembered today.
Another of his sayings appeals to some psychologists:
Often it is difficult to understand what he saying.
He believed in the unity of opposites, stating that "the path up and down are one and the same".
His utterance that "all things come to be in accordance with this logos," (literally, "word," "reason," or "account") has been the subject of many interpretations.
Diogenes La rtius states that Heraclitus ' work was "a continuous treatise On Nature, but was divided into three discourses, one on the universe, another on politics, and a third on theology."
Theophrastus says (in Diogenes)"... some parts of his work are half-finished, while other parts make a strange medley".
Diogenes also tells us that Heraclitus deposited his book as a dedication in the great temple of Artemis, the Artemisium, one of the largest temples of the 6th century BC, and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Ancient temples were regularly used for storing treasures, and were open to private individuals under exceptional circumstances.
Many later philosophers refer to the work.
A hammer is a tool for putting nails into objects such as wood.
It has a long handle, and a tip with a flat end for hitting nails.
The most common type of hammer (sometimes called a claw hammer) has a curved end (on the other side of the hitting end) for pulling nails out.
A sledgehammer is a hammer that has a longer shaft, and a more massive head.
The user can swing it with two hands and apply more force.
Big hammers were sometimes used as weapons.
A tiny hammer is also used inside most small arms.
Hiragana are part of the Japanese writing system.
Japanese writing normally consists of kanji which are used for the main words in a sentence, and hiragana which are used for the little words that make up the grammar (in English these would be words like from and his).
Hiragana is also used for the endings of some of the words.
Hiragana is a syllabary, which means that each hiragana character stands for a syllable.
It is therefore different from a language such as English which uses an alphabet in which most of the letters stand for one bit of sound (phoneme).
There is also another syllabary called katakana which is mostly used for foreign words and names.
The two kana systems are quite easy to learn, but kanji takes years of practice.
In contrast, the kana systems can be learned in two weeks.
In the past hiragana was considered as women 's writing, while men wrote in kanji.
Since kanji suit well in Chinese but poorly in Japanese, it was the women who wrote the first Japanese books, poems and songs.
Later the Buddhist clerics, such as Rennyo (d. 1498), wrote in hiragana to make the religious message easy to understand and everyone to read.
Sometimes the whole of a text may be written in hiragana to make it easy.
This would be used in books for young children, or for students starting to learn Japanese, or when writing the lyrics for songs underneath the music where it is important to show how the words fit the music.
Some rare or strange kanji may also have so-called furigana characters above it.
They are hiragana which show how the kanji is to be pronounced.
In Hiragana each character (kana) is either a vowel (such as "a":); a consonant followed by a vowel (such as "ka":); or, at the end of a syllable, an "n": (-RRB-, although sometimes this sounds more like an m or ng.
As an example of how the grammatical endings are used we can take the verb to eat which is (taberu).
Here the main part of the word eat (pronounced ta in this case) is the kanji.
The other two syllables: be-ru are in hiragana (-RRB-.
To say I ate or you ate etc. you would say tabemashita, written (be-ma-shi-ta is written in hiragana).
The main hiragana characters are shown in this table.
Notice that the sound hu is unknown in Japanese, so is pronounced fu with an f which is blown lightly.
To write the voiced sounds for g, d, z and b two little lines called a dakuten (-RRB- are added after a character starting with the unvoiced sounds k, t, s and h.
A circle, (-RRB-, is added after a h for the sound p.
For example: gives the sound ha; gives the sound ba; gives the sound pa.
Sometimes when words are joined together to make compound words, a sound changes from unvoiced to voiced.
For example: hana: (nose) + chi (blood) becomes hanaji (nosebleed)
Some Japanese syllables which have sliding sounds add a small version of the hiragana for ya, yu or yo (, and) This is called y on.
For example: sha sounds like shi + ya so densha (a tram) is written.
A small tsu called a sokuon shows a doubled consonant: Nippon (Japan) is written.
Without the small tsu the first syllable would sound like the word knee.
A student starting to learn to write Japanese can start with hiragana or with katakana.
Hiragana is the basis of learning Japanese script.
However, for someone who is about to visit Japan and just wants to be able to recognize a few words, katakana will be more useful as it will help to read many of the road signs, shop names and the names of things on restaurant menus.
Heaven is a concept of the afterlife (what happens after you die) in many religions.
Some people who believe in heaven say that it is a place that is perfect.
They believe heaven is where people will go after they die if they have been good.
Some people also believe in Hell, which is a place where people will go when they die, if they have been bad.
They believe hell is a punishment for being bad.
Ideas of Heaven and Hell are not the same in all religions.
The Bible does not have a lot to say about what it looks like.
The apostle Paul tells about a vision he had of being taken up to "the third heaven," where he saw and heard things too wonderful to describe.
But, much of what Christians believe Heaven to be like comes from the vision that John saw in a vision while praying, including:
Catholics believe Mary is the Queen of Heaven, officially defined by Pope Pius XII in 1954.
However many Protestants see this as not in the Bible.
According to the Quran and Hadith, Heaven is a place of reward for those believers who accept the true faith and practices the teaching of Prophet Muhammad.
The eternal life will be perfect, with thousands of types of food and clothing more beautiful than humans could ever imagine.
There will also be no sad feelings, stress or pain and related problems of life.
Baha ` is believe that Heaven or (hell) being specific places as symbolic.
The Aqdas, the holy book of Baha ` is, along with other Baha ` i books, describe heaven as a "spiritual condition" where being close to God is called heaven.
Hell is seen as being separated from God.
Bah ` u 'll h, the founder of the Bah ' Faith, said that the afterlife is beyond human understanding.
Summerland is the name given by Wiccans and other Pagan (old European religions) to their belief of afterlife (life after death).
Henry Rollins (born February 13, 1961 in Washington D.C.) is an American singer, writer and actor.
After a few wild years in the punk rock band Black Flag, he started his own metalband, the Rollins Band.
Rollins is now a solo artist.
He often tours in many countries performing spoken-word concerts.
A hadron, in particle physics, is any subatomic (smaller than the atom) particle or antiparticle which is made of quarks.
Quarks are fundamental particles which among other properties have an electrical charge and a name (e.g. ` up ', ` down ', ` strange ').
The electrical charge of a single quark is always a fraction (e.g. 2\/3).
Quarks combine to make a hadron of integer charge, for example, the charges of two ` down ' quarks and one ` up ' quark combine like this -1 \/ 3 -1 \/ 3 +2 \/ 3 = 0 to make a neutrally charged neutron.
Quarks do not appear alone, they exist in groups and are held together by the strong nuclear force.
The word to describe the different types of quarks is flavors.
According to the current standard model there are 6 flavors of quarks.
There are two known ways quarks can combine, to give the two categories of hadrons:
Hadrons are also characterized by being affected by the strong nuclear force, which holds them tightly together over a short distance.
At the center of an atom is a nucleus (a cluster of protons and neutrons).
These are the most commonly discussed hadrons.
There are many more: complete list of baryons, complete list of mesons.
These are predictions for different ways quarks may be put together.
There is not any solid evidence for them existing yet.
Habsburg was a family of dukes, kings, and monarchs.
They were very important in European history.
They ruled Austria, later Austria-Hungary for more than 600 years.
They also sometimes owned Spain, the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Empire from about 1280 to 1806.
A Treaty was made in Vienna in 1515 between the king of Poland and duke of Lithuania from the Jagiellon dynasty and the duke of Austria from the Habsburg family.
It said that if the kings of Bohemia and Hungary, (Jagiellons), were to die without male heirs the Duke of Austria would take over their territory.
They also ruled over the Kingdom of Sardinia.
The House of Habsburg became extinct in the 18th century.
The senior branch ended upon the death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and was replaced by the House of Bourbon.
The mental and physical handicaps of Charles II were probably caused by inbreeding between relatives in the royal houses of continental Europe.
Marriages of close relatives occurred for five generations before him.
He was the son of Philip IV, who married his sister 's daughter.
The remaining branch went extinct in the male line in 1740 with the death of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI and completely in 1780 with the death of his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa of Austria.
It was succeeded by the Vaudemont branch of the House of Lorraine.
The new successor house styled itself formally as House of Habsburg-Lorraine (German: Habsburg-Lothringen), although it was often referred to as simply the House of Habsburg.
The last empress was Zita of Bourbon-Parma.
She died in Switzerland in 1989.
She had ruled with her husband, Charles I of Austria, from 1916 to 1918.
The term House of Commons is used by many countries to describe part of their parliament.
In the United Kingdom, the House of Commons is the part of the parliament which has the most power.
It is made up of Members of Parliament elected by the people.
Sometimes it is called the ` lower house '.
(The ` upper house ' is called the House of Lords.)
Other countries also have parts of parliament called the House of Commons which work in the same way.
In the British parliament, there are 650 Members of Parliament or MPs.
Each MP represents a constituency, which covers an area of the country.
The people of each constituency vote at a general election or a by-election to choose one person to represent them in the House of Commons.
Usually, the people choose someone who belongs to a political party.
When all the parties get together, the party which has the most members is the government and runs the country.
The leader of that party is called the Prime Minister.
The House of Commons hold their meetings in the Palace of Westminster.
Their chief officer is the Speaker of the House elected by MPs.
The Clerk of the House of Commons is the Principal Advisor of the Speaker and is in charge of the security.
Hastings is a town on the coast of East Sussex in England and is the administrative center for the borough of the same name.
Today, the principles are protected as legal rights in national and international law.
They are seen as universal, which means they are meant for everyone, no matter what their race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, age, sex (also women 's rights), political beliefs (or any other kind of beliefs), intelligence, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity are.
The idea of human rights originated from ideas found in religion and philosophy in Western Europe.
The modern Western idea of human rights started in the European Enlightenment.
In the 16th century, some people started suggesting that everyone had the religious and political right to choose their religion and their leaders.
This sort of thinking was important in the English Civil War.
After the war, the philosopher John Locke argued that people should have these rights; he was one of the first people to call them "human rights."
These ideas were also important in the American revolution and the French revolution in the 18th century.
In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill was an important philosopher who also thought about human rights.
He said that people should be able to control their own bodies and minds.
He talked about three special ideas:
Hegel was a philosopher who talked about the idea of free will.
He also talked about what makes a person free: that a person has to have certain relations with other people to have true freedom.
A person has to be able to:
Because people believe that human rights are important, countries make laws to protect them.
These laws say that governments can not take away people 's basic rights.
They make sure people who take away other people 's rights are punished.
Some major political organizations have made statements that promote human rights.
These are not laws, but they affect us anyway.
If groups or countries do not follow these statements, others will condemn them (say that they are very bad); and then people may not talk with them, do business with them, or help them.
Some of the important places that human rights laws are written is in constitutions.
The United States Constitution and Constitution of France are two of the oldest set of laws based on human rights.
In 1948 the United Nations made the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This is a widely respected document that says what the United Nations believes are human rights.
It is not a law, but is the basis on which two important agreements are written:
These are United Nations human rights Covenants: agreements between people or countries.
The countries who sign these two covenants agree to follow them.
In addition to those Declaration and Covenants, there are many treaties and documents made by United Nations and other international organizations.
Those treaties and documents are called "International human rights law".
Not everyone agrees on what the basic human rights are.
It is very clear that few countries permit all these rights.
Also, there are countries in which the rights are not illegal, but nothing is done to promote them.
Here is a list of some of the most recognized rights:
Abuse means to intentionally harm a person or people physically, mentally, emotionally, or verbally once or many times.
Human rights abuse follows along similarly, also keeping in count the universal rights.
Human rights abuse happens when a person is hurt in a way that violates (goes against) his\/her human rights.
Human rights abuses are also often called human rights violations.
Many people, groups, and countries think protecting human rights is very important.
But not everyone in the world believes in human rights.
If people who do not believe in human rights have political power they can hurt many people.
Even if these people have no political power, they can be violent to other people.
There are many people who work to protect everyone 's human rights; some of these are government groups, and some are not with any government.
They are sometimes called human rights organizations.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are examples of human rights organizations.
A hash table is one type of tool for storing information.
In computer science, these tools for keeping track of information, or data, are called data structures.
A hash table is a data structure that uses a hash function to keep track of where data is put.
Each piece of information to be stored has a name, which is called a key.
For example, a key might be a person 's name.
Each name is matched up to one piece of data called a value, like the person 's telephone number.
The data is kept in another data structure called an array, which is like many boxes, or buckets, in a row to hold data.
Each box has a number starting from 0 and counting up.
The idea behind a hash table is to figure out which box to put data by using only its name.
This means, no matter how many boxes are filled up, you can always find information quickly if you have its name.
The hash table uses a hash function to figure out which number to put data in from its name.
The hash function reads a name and gives back a number.
A good Hash Table will always find information at the same speed, no matter how much data is put in.
A lot of Hash Tables also let the user put key\/value pairs (a name and its data) in and take them out at the same speed.
Because of this, Hash Tables can often find information faster than other tools, such as search trees or other table lookup structure.
As a result, they are used in many kinds of computer software.
They are used most for associative arrays, databases, caches, and sets.
Hang gliding is a sport which involves soaring in a very small aircraft without an engine.
A hole is an empty space in a solid object, which can be flat.
Halloween is a celebration on the night of October 31st.
It is most practiced in the United States and Canada.
Children wear costumes and go to peoples ' homes saying "Trick or treat!"
to ask for candy (sweets in the UK) and people give it to them.
The suggestion is: "Give me a treat or I will play a trick on you."
People often dress up as ghosts, witches, or other scary things for Halloween.
For Christians it is the eve of All Hallows ' Day, which begins the three-day observance of Allhallowtide.
All Hallows ' Eve is a Christianized feast influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, and pagan roots.
The pagan holiday Samhain, which the All Saints holy day replaced, was also known as the Day of the Dead.
Many wiccans and modern pagans celebrate the Day of the Dead.
This is a happy holiday (even though it celebrates death).
It is the day that some believed the souls of dead people come back to Earth.
Many Lutheran churches celebrate a holiday on October 31st called the Reformation.
This holiday celebrates the day that Martin Luther put The Ninety-Five Theses on a church door.
Hampshire is a county in the south of the UK.
The county has an area of 1,455 square miles (3,769 km).
At its widest points, the county is approximately 55 miles (90 km) east-west and 40 miles (65 km) north-south.
The county town is Winchester.
About 1.6 million people live in Hampshire.
The Houston Texans are a professional American National Football League team in Houston, Texas.
They are part of the American Football Conference (AFC).
The Texans joined the NFL in 2002 as an expansion team.
The team is, of course, named for their home state.
There was another "Texans" team in the early 1960s, the Dallas Texas.
That team move and became the Kansas City Chiefs.
The first NFL team in Houston was the "Oilers".
The Oilers moved to Tennessee and were renamed the "Titans".
The Texans were created in order to replace the Oilers in Houston.
Harold Edward Holt (5 August 1908 17 December 1967) was the 17th Prime Minister of Australia.
He became Prime Minister after the retirement of Robert Menzies.
He supported the United States in the Vietnam War.
He disappeared while swimming at a beach in Victoria in December 1967.
His body was never found.
Many urban Australian myths surround his disppearance.
On the day of his disappearance, the guards at the gate of Point Nepean told Percy Cenulty, who held a camp that day at Point Nepean, that Harold Holt was n't in the car that went through the gate.
Theories state that Harold never went to the beach that day.
The second night, the Springvale Necropolis was surrounded by military For the whole night.
This has not happened ever before and since.
Heavy metal is a loud, aggressive style of rock music.
The bands who play heavy-metal music usually have one or two guitars, a bass guitar and drums.
In some bands, electronic keyboards, organs, or other instruments are used.
Heavy metal songs are loud and powerful-sounding, and have strong rhythms that are repeated.
There are many different types of heavy metal, some of which are described below.
Heavy metal bands sometimes dress in jeans, leather jackets, and leather boots, and have long hair.
Heavy metal bands sometimes behave in a dramatic way when they play their instruments or sing.
However, many heavy metal bands do not like to do this.
In the very late 1960s and 1970s, rock and roll turned into a harder, louder form of music called rock.
In the 1970s, rock music bands played huge, loud concerts in outdoor stadiums.
In the early 1970s, many rock bands played psychedelic rock, a type of rock music with lyrics and sounds that were intended to give the listener some idea of what it felt like to be on so-called "mind-expanding" (and usually illegal) drugs, and which some believe even enhanced the experience of being on the drugs themselves.
Many bands from Britain played blues music mixed with rock music, such as The Animals, The Kinks, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, the Jeff Beck Group.
In the late 1960s, a harder form of rock music called "heavy metal" was invented.
The first use of the term was in a 1968 song by Steppenwolf, "Born to be Wild", and other early heavy metal bands appeared in the same year, such as Blue Cheer.
Bands from Britain such as Cream and Led Zeppelin played loud, heavy rock music based on blues music.
Heavy metal music was mostly based on the sounds of the electric guitar.
The electric guitar in heavy metal is always amplified through powerful amplifiers so that it has a loud, distorted, angry sound.
Other bands such Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Eric Burdon and Alice Cooper played even louder, harder forms of heavy metal rock music.
Next, the "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" came along.
This style of heavy metal includes bands such as Iron Maiden and Mot rhead playing faster and with more anger in the music.
Heavy metal bands from the United States made heavy metal music popular in the late 1970s.
Bands such as Kiss, Aerosmith and Van Halen put on large stadium concerts and attracted many fans.
In the 1980s the real Heavy Metal bands were created.
Bands such as M tley Cr e, W.A.S.P. and Ratt became popular.
Heavy Metal rock bands had long hair and the men wore make up (lipstick and eyeshadow) and tight leather pants and boots.
Many metal songs were about love, sex, partying, having a good time, illegal drug use, and drinking alcohol.
Rarely, but sometimes, metal songs were also politically and socially critical.
In the late 1980s, groups such as Poison and Warrant were very successful.
Another type of heavy metal in the 1980s was called "thrash metal" or "thrash."
Thrash metal bands played a faster, more aggressive type of heavy metal rock.
Thrash metal bands such as Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer had many fans.
In the 1990s, a new form of heavy metal developed, called alternative metal.
Alternative metal combined thrash metal and grunge rock with hip-hop music and industrial music.
Also in the 1990 's was nu metal, a shortening of "new metal".
Nu metal mixed rap and hip hop style singing with metal music.
Nu metal bands also often include DJ decks, synthesizers and other electronic instruments.
Nu metal was very successful and made a lot of money, especially bands such as Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit and Slipknot as well as Disturbed.
Two other styles of heavy metal music, "death metal" and "black metal" are very angry, fast music.
A person who does not like heavy metal at all will have a much harder time listening to death metal or black metal because it is much faster, louder, and more aggressive than other types of music.
The singers usually do not sing, but instead they growl or roar to make the songs more intense.
This makes it harder to hear the lyrics (words) and most people are not used to singers who use their voice in this way.
The lyrics often tell stories from the view of people who are suffering and dying, or people who are hurting others.
The guitars are usually distorted.
The drums also use very fast beats with double bass pedals (AKA two kick pedals, double peds, etc.)
Other important styles of metal are: power metal, a style whose music often is about fiction and epics like The Lord of the Rings, and gothic metal, which has melancholy songs about abstract subjects like pain, life, death, faith and religion.
The Helvetii were a Celtic tribe and the main dwellers of the Swiss plateau in the 1st century BC.
They are usually featured in Julius Caesar s commentaries on the Gallic War.
Halakha is the Hebrew word for the Jewish code of laws.
A long time ago, these laws were oral (spoken, but not written down).
Once they became written down they were called the Mishnah.
The Mishnah was made by rabbis in the 1st and 2nd Century (CE).
Israel and Judah were Iron Age kingdoms of the old Near East.
The area of time covered in this page is from the first mention of the name Israel in the archaeological record (1200 BCE) to the end of a independent Judean kingdom near the time of Jesus Christ.
The two kingdoms arose on the most eastern coast of the Mediterranean, the most western part of the Fertile Crescent, between the old empires of Egypt to the south, Assyria, Babylonia, later Persia to the north and east, Greece and later Rome across the sea to the west.
The area is small, maybe only 100 miles north to south and 40 or 50 miles east to west.
Israel and Judah were from the Canaanite culture of the late Bronze Age, and were based on villages that formed and grew in the southern Levant highlands (today for the region between the coastal plain and the Jordan Valley) between c. 1200-1000 BCE.
Israel became an important local power in the 9th and 8th centuries BCE before falling to the Assyrians.
The southern kingdom, Judah, became rich inside the greater empires of the region before a revolt against Babylon led to it being destroyed early in the 6th century.
Judean exiles returned from Babylon early in the following Persian period, starting a Judahite presence in the province of Yehud, as Judah was now called.
Yehud was absorbed into the subsequent Greek-ruled kingdoms which followed the conquests of Alexander the Great.
In the 2nd century BC, the Jews went up against Greek rule and created the Hasmonean kingdom, which became first a Roman dependency and soon went under the rule of the Roman Empire.
The eastern Mediterranean seaboard - the Levant - goes 400 miles north to south from the Taurus Mountains to the Sinai desert, and 70 to 100 miles east to west between the sea and the Arabian desert.
The coastal area of the southern Levant, large in the south and becoming short to the north, the southernmost part has a zone of foothills, the Shephalah; like the plain this area narrows as it goes northwards, ending at Mount Carmel.
East of the plain and the Shephalah is a mountainous ridge, the "hill country of Judah" in the south, the "hill country of Ephraim" north of that, then Galilee and the Lebanon mountains.
To the east again lie the steep-sided valley occupied by the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and the wadi of the Arabah, which continues down to the eastern arm of the Red Sea.
Beyond the plateau is the Syrian desert, separating the Levant from Mesopotamia.
To the southwest is Egypt, to the northeast Mesopotamia.
"The Levant thus constitutes a narrow corridor whose geographical setting made it a constant area of contention between more powerful entities".
The central and northern part of the Levantine coast was known in Classical times as Phoenicia; the southernmost portion was known to the Egyptians as Canaan, by which they seem to have meant all their Asian possessions.
In the bible Canaan can mean all of the land west of the Jordan river, or, more narrowly, the coastal strip.
By Classical times the name Canaan had been dropped in favor of "Philistia", "Land of the Philistines", despite the fact that the Philistines had long since disappeared.
The modern name "Palestine" is derived from this.
Northeast of Canaan\/Palestine was Aram, later called Syria after the Assyrians, who had likewise long since vanished.
Settlement during the Late Bronze was concentrated in the coastal plain and along major communication routes, with the central hill-country only sparsely inhabited; each city had its own ruler, constantly at odds with his neighbors and appealing to the Egyptians to adjudicate his differences.
One of these Canaanite states was Jerusalem: letters from the Egyptian archives indicate that it followed the usual Late Bronze pattern of a small city with surrounding farmlands and villages; unlike most other Late Bronze city-states, there is no indication that it was destroyed at the end of the period.
Canaan in the 13th and early 12th centuries had people of various origins, united by a common socioeconomic system of city-states administered and controlled by Egypt.
Egyptian power and the Canaanite city-state system collapsed.
From the collapse two new communities emerged in the 12th century BCE, the Israelites in the hill country and the Philistines in the southern part of the coastal plain.
The Philistines clearly represent the arrival of a considerable number of outsiders, probably from Cyprus, with their own non-indigenous culture.
The Israelites are just as clearly indigenous to Canaan: to take linguistics as just one indicator, Judahite and Israelite Hebrew of the early 1st millennium BCE group with Phoenician, Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite; and within that grouping a "core Canaanite" of Israelite and Phoenician can be distinguished from a "fringe Canaanite" of Judahite, Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite.
The causes of the Bronze Age collapse - which extended throughout the eastern Mediterranean - are obscure.
Drought, famine and other stresses may be behind the widespread population movements of the time.
Whatever the cause, several important Canaanite cities were destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age (over a period of more than a century), and Canaanite culture was gradually absorbed into that of the Philistines, Phoenicians and Israelites.
The Merneptah stele, erected by an Egyptian pharaoh about 1200 BC, contains the first record of the name Israel: "Israel is laid waste and his seed is not."
This Israel, identified as a people, were probably located in the northern part of the central highlands.
As chaos spread, people went to live in the previously unsettled highlands: surveys have identified more than 300 small settlements, most of them new and the largest with a population of no more than 300, in the Palestinian highlands during Iron Age I. The villages were bigger and more numerous in the northern regions (biblical Manasseh and Ephraim), although no settlements can be described as urban.
The total settled population at the beginning of the period was about 20,000, and double this number by the end.
Nevertheless, while Iron Age I villages with features such as four-roomed houses, collar-rim store jars, and hewn water-cisterns are counted as Israelite when found in the highlands, it is in fact impossible to differentiate these from Canaanite sites of the same period; nor is it possible to distinguish between Hebrew and Canaanite inscriptions down to the 10th century.
In Iron Age I the highlands lack any sign of centralised authority, or of temples, shrines, or centralised worship in general (although cult-objects associated with the Canaanite god El have been found); almost the sole marker distinguishing the highland "Israelite" villages from Cannanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether this can be taken as an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute.
The same period saw the rise of the kingdoms of the kingdoms of Aram Damascus and Ammon to the east of the northern hill country, Moab (east of the Dead Sea), and Edom (in the Arabah south of the Dead Sea), in that order.
An inscription of the Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq I, probably identical with the biblical Shishak, record a series of campaigns apparently directed at the area immediately north of Jerusalem in the second half of the 10th century BCE.
About a hundred years later, in the 9th century BCE, the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III names Ahab of Israel among his enemies at the battle of Qarqar (853 BCE), while in the Mesha stele (c. 830 BCE) a king of Moab celebrates his success in throwing off the oppression of the "House of Omri" (i.e. Israel).
Similarly, the Tel Dan stele tells of the death of a king of Israel, probably Jehoram, at the hands of an Aramaen king about 841 BCE.
Excavations at Samaria, the Israelite capital, further reinforce the impression of a powerful, centralised kingdom in the northern highlands during the 9th and 8th centuries.
In the second half of the 8th century king Hoshea of Israel revolted against the Assyrians, and was crushed (c. 722 BCE).
Part of the population was deported, outside settlers were brought in to replace them, and Israel became an Assyrian province.
The first evidence for the existence of an organised kingdom in the southern region comes from the mid 9th century Tel Dan stele, which mentions the death of a king of the "House of David" alongside the king of Israel; the contemporary Mesha stele may also mention the House of David, although the reconstruction which allows this reading is disputed.
It is generally assumed that this "House of David" is identical with the biblical dynasty, but the archaeological evidence from surface surveys indicates that during the 10th and 9th centuries Jerusalem was only one of the four large villages in the area, with no sign of primacy over its neighbors.
It was only in the last part of the 8th century that Jerusalem experienced a period of rapid growth, achieving a population far greater than at any time before and clear primacy over the surrounding towns.
The older scholarly reconstruction of events is that this was due to an influx of refugees from Israel following its conquest by the Assyrians (c. 722 BC), but the newer view is that it reflects a cooperative effort between Assyria and the kings of Jerusalem to establish Judah as a pro-Assyrian vassal state exercising control over the valuable olive industry.
The sudden collapse of the Assyrian power in the last half of the 7th century led to an unsuccessful bid for independence under king Josiah, followed by the destruction of Jerusalem by Assyria 's successor, the neo-Babylonian empire (587\/586 BCE).
In 586 BCE, the Babylonians, under king Nebuchadnezzar II captured Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple of Solomon, ended the Davidic kingship, and carried the people into captivity.
Only the poorest were left behind in Judah, now the Babylonian province of Yehud with its capital at Mizpah in the former territory of Benjamin, north of Jerusalem.
A few years later, again according to the bible, the governor of Yehud was murdered by rivals, triggering another exodus of refugees, this time to Egypt.
Thus by about 580 the people of Judah were to be found in three separate locations, the elite in Babylon (where, incidentally, they appear to have been well treated), a large community in Egypt, and a remnant in Judah.
The Exile ended when Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon (traditionally 538 BCE).
The Persians reconstituted Judah\/Yehud as a province ("Yehud medinata") within the satrapy "Beyond the River", and over the following century some of the exiles returned to Jerusalem.
There they eventually rebuilt the Temple (traditionally 516\/515 BCE), but for over a century the administrative capital remained at Mizpah.
Samaria, meanwhile, continued as the province of Semarina within the same satrapy as Yehud.
In 539 BCE the Persians conquered Babylon and in 537 BCE, inaugurated the Persian period of Jewish history.
In 520 BCE Cyrus the Great allowed Jews to return to Judea and rebuild the Temple (completed 515 BCE).
He appointed Zerubbabel (the grandson of the second to last Judean king, Jehoiachin) governor, but did not allow the restoration of the kingdom.
The influence of Zoroastrianism on monotheism, Judaism, as well as Christianity are still the subject of academic debate.
Without a powerful king, the Temple became more powerful, and priests became the dominant authority.
However, the Second Temple had been constructed under a foreign power, and there were lingering questions about its legitimacy.
This provided the condition for various sects to develop within Judaism over the coming centuries, each of which claimed to represent "Judaism".
Most of these typically discouraged social intercourse, especially marriage, with members of other sects.
The end of the Babylonian Exile saw not only the construction of the Second Temple, but, according to the Documentary Hypothesis, the final version ion of the Torah as well.
Although the priests controlled the monarchy and the Temple, scribes and sages (who later became the rabbis) monopolized the study of the Torah, which (starting from the time of Ezra) was read publicly on market-days.
These sages developed and maintained an oral tradition alongside of the Holy Writ, and identified with the prophets.
According to Geza Vermes, such scribes were often addressed using a basic term of respect, "lord."
The Hellenistic period began in 332 BCE when Alexander the Great conquered Persia.
Upon his death in 323 BCE, his empire was divided among his generals.
At first, Judea was ruled by the Egyptian-Hellenic Ptolemies, but in 198 BCE, the Syrian-Hellenic Seleucid Empire, under Antiochus III, seized control over Judea.
The Hellenistic Period saw the canonization of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), according to one theory, and the emergence of extra-Biblical sacred traditions.
The earliest evidence of a Jewish mysticism tradition surrounds the book of Ezekiel, written during the Babylonian Exile.
Virtually all known mystical texts, however, were written at the end of the Second Temple period.
Some scholars think the esoteric traditions of the Kabbalah (Jewish Mysticism, were influenced by Persian beliefs, Platonic philosophy and Gnosticism.
2 Esdras 14:45 -46, which was written in the second century CE, declares: "Make public the twenty-four books that you wrote first, and let the worthy and the unworthy read them; but keep the seventy that were written last, in order to give them to the wise among your people."
This is the first known reference to the canonized Hebrew Bible, and the seventy non-canonical texts may have been mystical; the Talmud suggests other mystical traditions which may have their roots in Second Temple Judaism.
The Near East was cosmopolitan, especially during the Hellenistic period.
Several languages were used, and the matter of the lingua franca is still subject of some debate.
The Jews almost certainly spoke Aramaic among themselves.
Greek was often used throughout the entire eastern portion of the Mediterranean.
Judaism was rapidly changing, reacting and adapting to a larger political, cultural, and intellectual world, and in turn drawing the interests of non-Jews.
All the Judaisms of the Hellenistic period, of both the diaspora and the land of Israel, were Hellenized, that is, were integral parts of the culture of the ancient world.
Some varieties of Judaism were more hellenized than others, but none was an island unto itself.
It is a mistake to imagine that the land of Palestine preserved a "pure" form of Judaism and that the diaspora was the home of adulterated or diluted forms of Judaism.
The term "Hellenistic Judaism" makes sense, then, only as a chronological indicator for the period from Alexander the Great to the Macabees or perhaps to the Roman conquests of the first century BCE.
As a descriptive term for a certain type of Judaism, however, it is meaningless because all the Judaisms of the Hellenistic period were "Hellenistic."
(Cohen 1987: 37)
Many Jews lived in the Diaspora, and the Judean provinces of Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee were populated by many Gentiles (who often showed an interest in Judaism).
Jews had to live with the values of Hellenism and Hellenistic philosophy, which were often directly at odds with their own values and traditions.
Broadly, Hellenistic culture saw itself as a civilizor, bringing civilized values and ways to peoples they thought of as insular or either backwards or degenerate.
For example, Greek-style bath houses were built in sight of the Temple in Jerusalem, for instance, and even in that city the gymnasium became a center of social, athletic, and intellectual life.
Many Jews, including some of the more aristocratic priests, embraced these institutions, although Jews who did so were often looked down upon due to their circumcision, which Jews saw as the mark of their covenant with God, but which Hellenistic culture viewed as an aesthetic defacement of the body.
Consequently, some Jews began to abandon the practice of circumcision (and thus their covenant with God), while others bridled at Greek domination.
At the same time that Jews were confronting the cultural differences at their door, they had to confront a paradox in their own tradition: their Torah laws applied only to them, and to proselytes, but their God, they believed, was the one and only God of all.
This situation led to new interpretations of the Torah, some of which were influenced by Hellenic thought and in response to Gentile interest in Judaism.
It was in this period that many concepts from early Greek philosophy entered or influenced Judaism, as well as debates and sects within the religion and culture of the time.
In 331 BCE Alexander the Great took over the Persian Empire.
Upon his death in 323 BCE his empire crumbled, and the province of Yehud became part of the kingdom of Egypt, ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty.
Ptolemaic rule was mild: Alexandria became the largest Jewish city in the world, and Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt (281-246 BCE) promoted Jewish culture, sponsoring the Septuagint translation of the Torah.
This period also saw the beginning of the Pharisees and other Jewish Second Temple parties such as the Sadducees and Essenes.
But in the early 2nd century BCE Yehud fell to the Seleucid Syrian ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (174-163 BCE), who, in contrast to the tolerance shown by the Ptolemids, attempted complete Hellenization of the Jews.
His desecration of the Temple sparked a national rebellion, which ended in the expulsion of the Syrians and the re-consecration of the Temple under the Maccabees
The kingdom established by the Maccabees was a conscious attempt to revive the Judah described in the bible: a Jewish monarchy ruled from Jerusalem and stretching over all the territories once ruled by David and Solomon.
In order to carry out this project the Hasmonean kings conquered (and forcibly converted to Judaism) the one-time Moabites, Edomites and Ammonites, as well as the lost kingdom of Israel.
Generally, the Jews accepted foreign rule when they were only required to pay tribute, and otherwise allowed to govern themselves internally.
Nevertheless, Jews were divided between those favoring hellenization and those opposing it, and were divided over allegiance to the Ptolemies or Seleucids.
When the High Priest Simon II died in 175 BCE, conflict broke out between supporters of his son Onias III (who opposed hellenization, and favored the Ptolemies) and his son Jason (who favored hellenization, and favored the Seleucids).
A period of political intrigue followed, with priests such as Menelaus bribing the king to win the High Priesthood, and accusations of murder of competing contenders for the title.
The result was a brief civil war.
Huge numbers of Jews flocked to Jason 's side, and in 167 BCE the Seleucid king Antiochus IV invaded Judea, entered the Temple, and stripped it of money and ceremonial objects.
Jason fled to Egypt, and Antiochus imposed a program of forced hellenization, requiring Jews to abandon their own laws and customs under threat of slaughter.
At this point Mattathias and his five sons, John, Eleazar, Simon, Jonathan, and Judah Maccabee, priests of the Hasmon family living in the rural village of Modein (pronounced "Mo-Ah-Dein"), assumed leadership of a bloody and ultimately successful revolt against the Seleucids.
Judah liberated Jerusalem in 165 BCE and restored the Temple.
Fighting continued, and Judah and his brother Jonathan were killed.
In 141 BCE an assembly of priests and others affirmed Simon as high priest and leader, in effect establishing the Hasmonean dynasty.
When Simon was killed in 135 BCE, his son (and Judah 's nephew) John Hyrcanus took his place as high priest and king.
After defeating the Seleucid forces, John Hyrcanus established a new monarchy in the form of the priestly Hasmonean dynasty in 152 BCE thus making priests as political as well as religious authorities.
Although the Hasmoneans were popularly seen as heroes and leaders for resisting the Seleucids, some regarded their reign as lacking the religious legitimacy conferred by descent from the Davidic dynasty of the First Temple Era.
The rift between the priests and the sages grew during the Hellenistic period, when the Jews faced new political and cultural struggles.
Around this time the Sadducee party emerged as the party of the priests and allied elites (the name Sadducee comes from Zadok, the high priest of the first Temple).
The Essenes were another early mystical-religious movement, who are believed to have rejected either the Seleucid appointed high priests, or the Hasmonean high priests, as wrong.
But they soon rejected the Second Temple, arguing that the Essene community was itself the new Temple, and that obedience to the law represented a new form of sacrifice.
Although their lack of concern for the Second Temple alienated the Essenes from the great mass of Jews, their notion that the sacred could exist outside of the Temple was shared by another group, the Pharisees ("separatists"), based within the community of scribes and sages.
The meaning of the name is unclear, though.
During the Hasmonean period, the Sadducees and Pharisees functioned primarily as political parties (the Essenes not being as politically oriented).
The political differences between the Sadducees and Pharisees became evident when Pharisees demanded that the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannai choose between being king and being High Priest in the traditional manner.
This demand led to a brief civil war that ended with a bloody repression of the Pharisees, although at his deathbed the king called for a reconciliation between the two parties.
Alexander was succeeded by his widow, whose brother was a leading Pharisee.
Upon her death her elder son, Hyrcanus II, sought Pharisee support, and her younger son, Aristobulus, sought the support of the Sadducees.
In 64 BCE the Roman general Pompey took over Jerusalem and made the Jewish kingdom a client of Rome.
In 57-55 BCE Aulus Gabinius, proconsul of Syria, split it into Galilee, Samaria & Judea, with 5 district Sanhedrin\/Synedrion (councils of law).
In 40-39 BCE Herod the Great was appointed King of the Jews by the Roman Senate, but in 6 CE his successor, Herod Archelaus, ethnarch of Judea, was deposed by the emperor Augustus and his territories annexed as Iudaea Province under direct Roman administration: this marked the end of Judah as an even theoretically independent kingdom.
Israel and Judah inherited the religion of late first-millennium Canaan, and Canaanite religion in turn had its roots in the religion of second-millennium Ugarit.
In the 2nd millennium, polytheism was expressed through the concepts of the divine council and the divine family.
Honolulu is the capital city of the U.S. state of Hawaii.
It is also the largest city in Hawaii and it has the most important harbor.
It is on the south-east shore of the island of Oahu.
Honolulu means "sheltered harbor" in the Hawaiian language.
No one knows for sure when Honolulu was first settled or when the name was first used.
Honolulu harbor was called Kulolia before foreigners came.
The first foreigner was Captain William Brown of the English ship Butterworth, in 1794.
He named the harbor Fair Haven.
Other foreign captains is started calling it Brown 's Harbor.
The name Honolulu was used some time after that.
Honolulu quickly became the most important harbor of Hawaii.
At that time, sandalwood was a big export.
Honolulu was also an important supply point for whalers.
Kamehameha III made Honolulu the capital city of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1850.
It was also the capital of the Republic of Hawaii and the Territory of Hawaii.
It stayed the capital when Hawaii became a state in 1959.
The history of India covers thousands of years.
It covers many periods and dynasties.
It may be divided in the following parts:
Remains (stone tools and a skull) in central India show presence of an early species of man, Homo erectus.
Archeologists think they lived in India between 200,000 to 500,000 years ago.
This period is known as the paleolithic era.
Evolution of its crust shows four stages and the fourth stage is known as Quaternary which is further divided into Pleistocene and Holocene
The earliest archaeological site in the subcontinent is the paleolithic hominid site in the Soan River valley.
Soanian sites are found in the Sivalik region across India, Pakistan, and Nepal.
Modern humans (Homo sapiens) settled in the Indian subcontinent at least 12,000 years ago.
At that time the last Ice Age had just ended and climate became warm and dry.
First settlements of human beings in India are found in Bhimbetka, a place near Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh, India).
Mesolithic people lived on hunting, fishing and food gathering
Neolithic agriculture sprang up in the Indus Valley region around 7000 years ago, in the lower Gangetic valley around 5000 years ago.
Later, in South India, agriculture spread southwards and also into Malwa around 3800 years ago.
The Bronze Age in the Indian subcontinent began around 5300 years ago with the early Indus Valley Civilisation (include cities like Harappa, Mohenjodaro, Lothal, Kalibanga).
It was centred on the Indus River and its tributaries which extended into the Ghaggar-Hakra River valley, the Ganges-Yamuna Doab, Gujarat, and southeastern Afghanistan.
The civilisation is mainly in modern-day India (Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan provinces) and Pakistan (Sindh, Punjab, and Balochistan provinces).
The first cities in the subcontinent were in the Indus Valley Civilisation.
It is one of the world 's earliest urban civilisations, with Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt.
Inhabitants of the ancient Indus river valley, the Harappans, developed new techniques in metallurgy and handicraft (carneol products, seal carving), and produced copper, bronze, lead, and tin.
The mature Indus civilisation flourished from about 4600 to 3900 years ago.
It was the start of urban civilisation on the subcontinent.
The civilisation included urban centres such as Dholavira, Kalibanga, Ropar, Rakhigarhi, and Lothal in modern-day India, and Harappa, Ganeriwala, and Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Pakistan.
The civilisation is noted for its cities built of brick, roadside drainage system, and multistoried houses.
During the later period of this civilisation, signs of a gradual decline began to emerge.
By about 3700 years ago, most of the cities were abandoned.
However, the Indus Valley Civilisation did not disappear suddenly.
Some parts of the Indus Civilization may have survived in the smaller villages and isolated farms.
The Vedas are the oldest teachings of India, though the transmission of these teachings was mainly oral until around the 5th century.
There are four Vedas, and the first one is the Rigveda.
As per Rigved the whole regions in which the Aryans were first settled in India which was called as the Land of 7 Rivers or SaptaSindhawa.
The other three are Samveda, Yajurveda and Atharvaveda.
The Vedas have verses in praise of gods and others.
They also have other information.
At that time, the society was pastoral.
After the Rigveda, society became more agricultural.
People became divided into four classes depending on the type of the work.
Brahmins were priests and teachers.
Kshatriyas were the warriors.
Vaishyas did agriculture, trading and commerce.
The shudras were the general working class.
A common misconception is that the Vaishyas and Shudras were generally looked down upon, and treated badly by Brahmins and Kshatriyas, which was true for the later part of the Vedic age.
But was untrue for the earlier part.
This type of social division is called the Varna system in Hinduism.
During the period of the Vedic civilization, there were many Aryan clans and tribes.
Some of them combined and became bigger like the kingdom of the Kurus.
Around the 5th century BC, north-western parts of India faced invasion by the Achaemenid Empire and by the Greeks of Alexander the Great.
A Persian way of thinking, administration and lifestyle came to India.
This influence became bigger during the Mauryan dynasty.
From around 520 BC, the Achaemenid Empire s Darius I ruled large part of northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent.
Then Alexander conquered these areas.
Herodotus, a historian of that time, has written that these areas were the richest areas of Alexander s Empire.
Achaemenid rule lasted about 186 years.
In modern times, there are still traces of this Greek heritage to be found in parts of northwestern India.
Greco-Buddhism (also spelt as Gr co-Buddhism) is a combination of the cultures of Greece and Buddhism.
This mixture of cultures continued to develop for 800 years, from the 4th century BC until the 5th century AD.
The area where it happened is modern day s Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This mixture of cultures influenced Mahayana Buddhism and spread of Buddhism to China, Korea, Japan and ibet.
The Magadha formed one of the sixteen kingdoms in ancient India.
The core of the kingdom was the area of Bihar south of the Ganges.
Its first capital was Rajagriha (modern Rajgir) then Pataliputra (modern Patna).
Magadha expanded to include most of Bihar and Bengal, followed by much of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Orissa.
The ancient kingdom of Magadha is mentioned in Jain and Buddhist texts.
It is also mentioned in the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas.
A state of Magadha, possibly a tribal kingdom, is recorded in Vedic texts much earlier than 600 BC.
Magadha played an important role in the development of Jainism and Buddhism, and two of India 's greatest empires, the Maurya Empire and Gupta Empire, originated from Magadha.
These empires saw advances in ancient India 's science, mathematics, astronomy, religion, and philosophy.
This was the Indian "Golden Age".
The Satavahanas came to power from around 230 BC.
They are also called Andhras.
For about 450 years, many Satavahanas kings ruled most parts of the southern and central India.
For about 350 years, from the years 35-405, Saka kings ruled India.
They ruled the western and central parts of India.
These areas are in today 's states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh.
There were 27 independent rulers, collectively known as the Kshatrapas.
Saka kings ruled India along aside the Kushan kings and the Satvahana kings.
Kushan kings ruled the northern parts of India.
Satvahana kings ruled the central and some of the southern parts of India.
Indo-Scythians came to India from Siberia passing through several places like Bactria, Sogdiana, Kashmir and Arachosia.
Their coming to India continued from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century BC.
They defeated the Indo-Greek rulers of India, and ruled India from Gandhara to Mathura.
The Gupta dynasty reigned from around 320 to 550 AD.
The Gupta Empire covered most of North-central India, the region Gupta Empire (never included Pakistan); and what is now western India and Bangladesh.
Gupta society was ordered in accordance with Hindu beliefs.
The time of the Gupta Empire is seen as the Golden Age of India.
Historians place the Gupta dynasty alongside the Han Dynasty, Tang Dynasty and Roman Empire as a model of a classical civilization.
By the first half of the fifth century, a group of people known as Huns had settled in Afghanistan.
They became powerful.
They made Bamiyan as their capital city.
They started attacking northwestern parts of India.
Skandagupta, an emperor of the Gupta dynasty fought back and kept them away for some years.
At last the Huns won and could enter most parts of northern India.
With this the Gupta dynasty came to an end.
Most of north India became badly affected by this invasion.
However, Huns could not go up to the Deccan Plateau and the southern parts of India.
These parts remained peaceful.
No one knows definitely about the fate of Huns after the end of the sixth century.
Some historians believe that they mixed up fully with the Indian people of that time.
In the history of India, Middle kingdoms of India covers a period beginning from around the 6th-7th century.
In South India, Chola kings ruled Tamil Nadu, and Chera kings ruled Kerala.
They also had trading relationships with the Roman Empire to the west and Southeast Asia to the east.
In north India, Rajputs ruled in many kingdoms.
Some of those kingdoms continued for hundreds of years.
After the collapse of the Gupta Empire, it was Harsha of Kanauj (a place now in Uttar Pradesh state of India) who united the northern parts of India in one kingdom.
After his death several dynasties tried to control north India and ruled from time to time from 7th century till the 9th century as described in some of the sections below.
Some of these dynasties were the Pratiharas of Malwa and later Kannauj; the Palas of Bengal, and the Rashtrakutas of the Deccan.
The Pratihara kings ruled kingdoms in Rajasthan and some other parts of northern India from the 6th century to the 11th century.
The Palas ruled the eastern part of India.
They ruled over areas which are now parts of the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, and the west Bengal, and of Bangladesh.
The Palas ruled from 8th century to the 12th century.
In the southern parts of India, Rashtrakutas of Malakheda (Karnataka) ruled the Deccan during the 8th-10th centuries after the end of Chalukya rule.
All these three dynasties always tried to control the entire north India.
During all this time lasting for three to four hundred years, the Chola kings were growing in power and influence.
In the 6th century several Rajput kingdoms came into being in Rajasthan.
Many other Rajput kings ruled in different parts of north India.
Some of these kingdoms continue to survive for hundreds of years during different periods of the history of India.
In 1336, two brothers named Harihara and Bukka founded the Vijayanagara Empire in an area which is now in Karnataka state of India.
The most famous king of this empire was Krishnadevaraya.
In 1565, rulers of this empire were defeated in a battle.
But, the empire continued for about next one hundred years.
A number of kingdoms of south India had trading relations with the Arabs in the west, and with Indonesia and other countries of the east.
Islam spread across the Indian subcontinent over a period of 500 years.
In the 10th and 11th centuries, Turks and Afghans invaded India and established sultanates in Delhi.
In the early 16th century, descendants of Genghis Khan swept across the Khyber Pass and established the Mughal Empire, which lasted for 200 years.
From the 11th to the 15th centuries, southern India was dominated by Hindu Chola and Vijayanagar Dynasties.
During this time, the two systems the prevailing Hindu and Muslim mingled, left lasting cultural influences on each other.
Slave dynasty was started by Qutub ud din Aibak.
He was the one who started the first architectural monument of the slave dynasty or rather the first architectural work of Muslims in India which was Qutub Minar.
Qutub ud din Aibak died while playing chaugan (modern day polo) as he fell from his horse.
He was succeeded by Iltumish who completed the Qutub Minar.
He was succeeded by his daughter Razia Sultan who became the first woman ruler.
Though she reigned for only three years, she introduced various reforms in her tenure.
The Kingdom of Mysore was a kingdom of southern India.
People known as Wodeyars founded this kingdom in the year 1400.
Later on, Hyder Ali and his son, Tipu Sultan, fought with the Wodeyar rulers.
They also fought with the forces of the British Raj, but were defeated.
Under the British Raj, Wodeyar kings continued to rule a large part of Karnataka.
When India became independent on 15th August 1947, Wodeyars kingdom chose to become a part of India.
Guru Nanak founded Sikhism and his followers were called Sikhs.
The power of Sikhs continued to increase in the northwestern part of India.
The Sikhs became rulers of large part of the northwestern India.
This is called the Sikh Kingdom or Empire.
Ranjit Singh was the most famous ruler of the Sikh Empire.
He expanded the borders of the Sikh Empire and at the time of his death, this empire covered areas of Punjab, and present day Kashmir and parts of Pakistan.
The Sikhs and forces of the British Raj fought many wars.
Till Maharaja Ranjit Singh was alive, Britishers were not able to cross the Sutlej river.
After his death, the they took over the entire Punjab after battles with disorganised sikh troops.
For a short period, a person named Ahmed Shah Durrani ruled some parts of northwestern India.
Historians have named his rule as the Durrani Empire.
In 1748, he crossed the Indus River and attacked Lahore, now a part of Pakistan.
He also attacked many parts of Punjab.
Then, he attacked Delhi.
At that time, Delhi was the capital of the Mughal Empire.
He took many valuable things from India.
This included the famous diamond named Kohinoor.
Colonial period means the period during which Western countries ruled India.
These countries also ruled many other countries of Asia, Africa, and South America.
Starting in the 1600 's the British East India Company began a very profitable trading empire in India, centered in Bengal.
In the mid-1700 's Robert Clive (1725-1774) lead the Company to an expanded influence in India with victories over the French, the Bengalis, and the Mughals.
With a victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 Clive became the first British Governor of Bengal.
In the hundred years after the battle, the East India Company conquered the entire subcontinent of India.
They did this by trade, political intrigue, and direct military action.
The British were very efficient administrators of their domains.
But in 1857 the Indian Mutiny almost destroyed the Company 's rule of India.
Afterward the British government took control away from the Company.
In 1858, India became a part of the British Empire and Queen Victoria became the empress of India.
For ninety years the British ruled India and Burma as a unified territory under the British king or queen.
It was divided into eight provinces each with a governor.
These provinces were Burma, Bengal, Madras, Bombay, UP, Central Provinces, Punjab, and Assam.
A Governor-General (Viceroy) in Calcutta was head of the government.
The British did some very harmful things to the culture and society.
They took valuables, tortured and raped many Indians.
The way they conquered India was often divide and rule.
In the end, many kingdoms were defeated by the British and the riches taken.
For example, many of the Royal Crown Jewels were taken from previous kingdoms in India - including the Koh-I-Noor diamond (one of the worlds largest diamonds) and also stole many other large diamonds and gold.
During famines and floods many people died because the government did not help enough.
Any Indian not able to pay the British taxes, could be forced into prison and\/or publicly beaten.
Political opponents were jailed and sometimes killed for speaking out against colonial rule.
After taking much of the India 's natural resources for hundreds of years, England was criticized for not protecting Indians during the partition of India and Pakistan.
During the partition of India and Pakistan, millions of Indians and Pakistanis died.
The British also did good things.
They built railroads, telegraphs and telephones, improved trade, standardized laws, and water supplies.
Many of these things were done to help improve commerce in India and taxes provided to England.
They created the Indian Civil Service for administering rules and regulations.
They also tried to eliminate practices like burning widows.
The British ruled India primarily for the economic benefit of Britain.
India produced cheap raw materials for British industry.
Indians had to buy British manufactured goods and profits went back to Britain.
Many people in India wanted to be free from British rule.
The struggle for independence was long and difficult.
The most important leader of the struggle for Indian independence was Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi believed in a non-violent opposition towards the British.
India won its independence, along with Muslim Pakistan, and became a free country on August 15, 1947.
On 15 August 1947, British Indian Empire was partitioned into two countries, India (Hindustan) and Pakistan.
With this the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent ended.
On 26 January 1950, Hindustan adopted a constitution.
From that day, Hindustanis became the Republic of India or Indians.
During last 60 years, Republic of India has seen different stages in its national life.
Some of them are as follows:
Presently (as of 2006), India is currently the tenth largest economy in terms of gross GDP.
It is the 4th largest economy of the world when accounting for purchasing power parity.
Some economists think that in coming decades, India s economy will become still larger.
The Houston Astros are a Major League Baseball team in Houston, Texas.
They began play in 1962.
They were originally called the "Houston Colt.45 s" or the "Houston Colts".
They changed their name to "Astros" in 1965.
The Astros left the National League and joined the American League in 2013.
They are the first team in a long time to do this.
The Astros play their home games at Minute Maid Park in Houston.
Heathers is a 1989 American black comedy teen movie starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, and Shannen Doherty.
The movie is about a group of four girls in a high school in Sherwood, Ohio.
The girls, three of whom are named Heather, rule the school as they are the prettiest and most popular girls in town.
Heathers won awards for its director Michael Lehmann and producer Denise Di Novi the 1990 Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature.
Daniel Waters also won an award for his screenplay, which won a 1990 Edgar Award.
The movie was a U.S. box office failure, but has since become a cult classic, as is shown by its high sales and rentals on DVD and VHS.
In 2006, it was ranked # 5 on Entertainment Weekly 's list of the 50 Best High School Movies.
The harp is a musical instrument.
It is the second biggest string instrument in an orchestra.
It dates back to 4000 BC when the Egyptians used them in holy places.
Christian artists often draw angels playing harps in Heaven.
Harp is a string instrument.
Each string is tight, so it makes the right sound or note for that string.
The strings are tied to the frame.
The frame is usually a wood triangle.
It must be strong, so that the many tight strings do not break it.
The side of the triangle that leans on the player 's body, is the sound-box.
Empty boxes can make sounds louder.
The top side of the triangle has a lot of pegs in it.
There is one peg for each string on the harp.
The top of each string is tied to one peg, and twisted around the peg.
The player turns the peg to make the string more tight or less tight.
This is how the player makes each string make the right note.
The bottom of each string is tied to the sound-box.
The last side of the triangle is called the pillar.
The oldest harps from Egypt did not have pillars.
If the strings were too tight, they would break the harp.
Adding a pillar to a harp frame makes the frame very strong, so that the strings will not break it.
Harp players pluck the strings with their fingers.
This makes the strings move so that the strings make sounds.
Each string sound is a different musical note.
Harp players play songs by plucking the strings in the right order and at the right time.
More than one string can be plucked at the same time.
When the harp player wants a note to stop, they touch that string softly, so that it stops moving.
There are many different kinds of harps.
The two main kinds are folk harps and pedal harps.
Folk harps are the older kind of harp.
Each string makes one note.
They are usually tuned so that playing each string in order sounds like playing all the white notes on a piano in order.
This is called a diatonic scale.
In some places, they are tuned so that playing each string in order sounds like playing all the black notes on a piano in order.
This is called a pentatonic scale.
Folk harps can be found in many different sizes.
The smallest ones can be less than half a meter tall.
The biggest ones can be almost 1.5 meters tall, and have a foot so they can stand on the ground by themselves.
They can be too big to be lifted by one person.
The number of strings varies on folk harps from less than 20 to more than 40.
Pedal harps were invented during the 1800 's CE, by a man in France.
This is the kind of harp that is used in a Symphony Orchestra.
Pedal harps are about two meters tall and have about 50 strings.
The lowest and highest notes on a pedal harp are the same as the lowest and highest notes on a piano.
They are very heavy, and need more than one person to move them.
The frame is usually made out of metal.
The pedal harp is tuned like the white keys on a piano (a diatonic scale).
There are seven pedals to let the harp player play songs in different musical keys.
Each pedal has three places.
For the A pedal, place-1 makes all the A strings on the harp sound like A-flat.
Place-2 makes all the A strings sound like a normal A (A-natural).
Place-3 makes all the A strings sound like A-sharp.
Cross-strung harps are chromatic and consist of two rows of strings.
They cross near to the middle of the string without touching.
The strings are in the order of the piano keys (7 plus 5) or in the order of the 6-plus-6 system.
Some instruments have the word harp in their name, but they are not really harps.
The harp is such an old musical instrument, that people sometimes say harp when they mean any kind of instrument.
Hamas (Arabic:, acronym of Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, Arabic:, literally "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Islamist Sunni organization.
It was started in 1987 during the First Intifada by Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi as the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood organziation in Egypt.
In the 2006 Palestinian election, Hamas got 74 of 132 seats in parliament and controls the Gaza Strip.
The group wants to build a Palestinian state based on Islamic ideas in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip.
Hamas does not recognize the State of Israel.
Hamas is an acronym of the Arabic phrase, or Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya or "Islamic Resistance Movement".
Hamas is known for its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, which plans and carries out attacks on Israel.
Because of numerous suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israel, the United States, European Union and other countries call it a terrorist organization.
The country of Jordan has made the group illegal.
However, a lot of the international press, including the Israeli English-language daily newspaper, Haaretz, call Hamas members by the more neutral term "militants."
In early 2006, Hamas won a clear victory in the vote for the Palestinian parliament.
Voters saw Hamas as an alternative to exchange the long-ruling Fatah party, the main part of the PLO.
Fatah had not improved the Palestinian people 's conditions and reached statehood, and was thought to be corrupt.
Hamas has shown its organizational ability by building health, education, and social services to help the population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where there is much poverty.
Such efforts have increased its support.
In the first half of 2007, Hamas gained political control of the Gaza Strip, while Fatah keeps its headquarters in the West Bank.
Hamas is also associated in some way with Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine headed by Ahmed Jibril.
Hezbollah (, meaning Party of God) is an Islamic political party and paramilitary organization in Lebanon.
It was formed in Lebanon in 1982, during the Lebanese Civil War.
The leader of Hezbollah is currently Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah 's main goals during the Civil War were to fight against Western influences and create an Islamic state in Lebanon.
Its members are Shia Muslims, which are the largest Islamic denomination in Lebanon.
It is also supports Arab nationalism.
It wants freedom for the Palestinian people in Palestine.
Because of this, it believes that the State of Israel should not exist, and fights against it.
Over the years, the Hezbollah militia has fought a guerrilla war against the Israeli Army along the border in southern Lebanon.
It often attacks Israel 's military positions by firing rockets across Israel 's northern border.
Hezbollah is supported by Syria and Iran.
To destroy Hezbollah bases, Israel has responded in different ways; for example, air strikes on sites in Lebanon and sending ground troops into Southern Lebanon.
In 2000, Israel withdrew its troops from the "security zone" in Southern Lebanon, but not from a sliver of land called Shebba Farms.
This fertile area was kept under Israeli occupation.
The border stayed relatively quiet until July 2006, except for targeted assassinations and kidnappings by Israel.
In July, Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers.
This led to the 2006 Lebanon War, in which Hezbollah rockets reached deep into Israel.
A few governments consider Hezbollah a terrorist group.
The majority do not.
Among those who consider it to be a terrorist group are the United States, and Israel.
The European Union and the United Kingdom consider Hezbollah 's military branch to be a terrorist group, but not the political party.
Lebanon considers Hezbollah to be a legitimate resistance movement.
This view is shared by Syria, Iran and all other countries in the Arab world.
A homeland (rel.
country of origin and native land) is the concept of the territory (cultural geography) to which an ethnic group holds a long history and a deep cultural association with.
It 's the country in which a particular national identity began.
Hyaenas (sometimes ` Hyena ') are mammals.
They are the family Hyaenidae, in the order Carnivora.
They live in Africa, and in west and south Asia.
In the past they had a much wider distribution.
Now there are two subfamilies with four species.
With only four species, it is the fourth-smallest family in the Carnivora, and one of the smallest in the class Mammalia.
Despite their low diversity, hyenas are unique and vital components to most African and some Asian ecosystems.
Hyaena walk much like bears because their front legs are longer than their back.
Hyaenas are known to have one of the world 's strongest bites.
Its function is to crush bone.
Hyaenas look much like canids, but they are actually in the Feliformia, with cats and mongooses.
Although related to felines and viverrids, their life style is similar to canids.
Convergent evolution has taken place.
Both hyaenas and canids are non-climbing, running hunters which catch prey with their teeth rather than claws.
Both eat food quickly and may store it.
Their calloused feet have large, blunt, nonretractable nails, good for running and making sharp turns.
However, the hyaenas ' grooming, scent marking, defecating habits, mating, and parental behavior are similar to the behavior of other feliforms.
Hyaenas were long said to be cowardly scavengers, but they kill as much as 95 % of the food they eat (especially spotted hyaenas).
They can drive off leopards or lionesses from their kills.
Hyenas are mostly nocturnal animals, but may leave their lairs in the early morning.
Except for the very social spotted hyaena, hyenas are generally not gregarious animals, though they may live in family groups and come together at kills.
Hyaenas are intelligent creatures.
They work together well and are cooperative.
They have strategic hunting methods and work to steal and protect it from other predators.
Hyaenas main targets are zebra and wildebeest.
Their main rival is the lion.
Whether hyaenas do or do not chase lions off their kills is mostly a matter of numbers.
The Hershey Chase experiments were a series of experiments started in 1952 by Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase.
These experiments were to make sure that DNA was the genetic material which had been discovered by the Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher in his experiments on white blood cells or leukocytes between 1868 and 1869.
Hershey shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries concerning the genetic structure of viruses.
Hershey and Chase used T2 phage, a bacteriophage, for their experiments.
The phage infects a bacterium by attaching to it and injecting its genetic material into it.
They put labels on phage DNA with radioactive Phosphorus-32.
They then followed the phages while they infected E. coli.
They found that the radioactive element was only in the bacteria, and not in the phage.
In a second experiment, they put labels on the phage protein with radioactive Sulfur-35.
After the phage was attached to the bacterium, the radioactive element was found in the phage, but not in the bacteria.
This showed them that genetic material which infects the bacteria is DNA.
House music is a type of electronic dance music.
It began during the early 1980s from disco and the black American soul music tradition.
It takes its name from the Warehouse, a Chicago club where DJs first played their records to a large audience.
The original "House" sound is characterized by "four on the floor" beats at 120-130 BPM, forward-driven bass lines, an emphasis on the second and fourth beats of each measure, handclaps, and cymbals.
Over the years, house has created many types of house music.
These include:
Hanover is a town along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States.
The population was 11,260 at the 2010 census.
HMS Beagle was a Cherokee-class ship of the Royal Navy.
It was launched on 11 May 1820 from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames.
It is best known for a voyage that carried Charles Darwin.
On 22 May 1826, Beagle left to survey bodies of water in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.
One of the bodies of water found was named the Beagle Channel after the ship.
During the voyage, Captain Pringle Stokes became depressed and shot himself.
He died ten days later.
Robert FitzRoy became the new captain.
Beagle returned to England on 14 October 1830.
On 27 December 1831, the Beagle began her second voyage.
Captain FitzRoy did not want to have the stress and loneliness that led to the suicide of the first captain.
He looked for someone to go on the voyage to keep him company.
The person found was Charles Darwin.
On this voyage, the crew did surveys in South America.
Beagle returned to Falmouth, Cornwall, England on 2 October 1836.
Darwin kept a diary of the things he saw and did on this voyage.
He rewrote it as the book called Journal and Remarks.
The book was published in 1839 as the third volume of the official account of the expedition.
It was very popular.
It was reprinted many times with different titles.
It eventually became known as The Voyage of the Beagle.
In 1837, Beagle went to survey the coast of Australia.
Commander John Clements Wickham was in charge.
They started with the western coast between the Swan River (modern Perth, Australia) and the Fitzroy River.
They then surveyed both shores of the Bass Strait.
In May 1839 they sailed north to survey the shores of the Arafura Sea opposite Timor.
This voyage ended in 1843.
Many places around the coast were named on this voyage.
Many of the places were named for important people or members of the crew.
Wickham named Port Darwin in honor of Charles Darwin.
A settlement there became the town of Palmerston in 1869, and was renamed Darwin in 1911.
During this survey, the Beagle Gulf was named after the ship.
Hannibal (H nnibal Barca, 247 BC?
183\/2\/1 BC), was a Carthaginian statesman and general.
He was the greatest enemy of the Roman Republic.
Hannibal is most famous for what he did in the Second Punic War.
He marched an army from Iberia over the Pyrenees mountains and the Alps mountains into northern Italy and defeated the Romans in a series of battles.
At the Battle of Cannae he defeated the largest army Rome had ever put together.
The Roman army is reckoned at 16 legions and a total of 86,000 men.
Over 80 % of this army was killed or captured, including its commander.
He kept an army in Italy for many years.
Eventually, a Roman invasion of North Africa made him return to Carthage.
He lost, and the Romans made him leave Carthage.
He lived at the Seleucid court, and convinced its Emperor to fight Rome.
When he lost a naval battle, Hannibal fled to the Bithynian court.
When the Romans told him to give up, he killed himself.
Hannibal is listed as one of the greatest military commanders in history.
Military historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge once called Hannibal the "father of strategy" because even his greatest enemy, Rome, copied his military ideas.
Hannibal 's father Hamilcar was commander of the Carthaginian forces at the end of the First Punic War (264 241 BC).
After Carthage lost the war, Hamilcar crossed to Hispania to conquer the tribes of what is now Spain.
Carthage at the time was in a poor condition.
Its navy could not carry its army to Iberia (Hispania).
Hamilcar had to march towards the Pillars of Hercules and go across the Strait of Gibraltar.
According to a story in Livy, Hamilcar made Hannibal promise that he would never be a friend of Rome.
Hannibal told his father I swear so soon as age will permit... I will use fire and steel to arrest the destiny of Rome.
In return, Hamilcar agreed to take Hannibal with him to Hispania.
He spent two years finishing the conquest of Iberia south of the river Ebro.
He died in 229\/228 in battle, most likely drowning in the Jucar River.
His son-in-law Hasdrubal took command, but was assassinated in 221 BC.
So, in 221 BC, Hannibal became the leader of the army.
Rome feared the growing strength of Hannibal.
They made an alliance with the city of Saguntum and claimed to be protecting the city.
Saguntum was South of the river Ebro.
Hannibal attacked the city because of this.
It was captured after eight months.
Rome wanted justice from Carthage.
The Carthaginian government saw nothing wrong with Hannibal 's actions.
The war Hannibal wanted was declared at the end of the year.
Hannibal 's army was made up of as many as 75,000 foot soldiers and 9,000 horsemen.
Hannibal left "New Carthage" in late spring of 218 BC.
He fought his way north to the Pyrenees.
He defeated the tribes through clever mountain tactics and stubborn fighting.
After marching 290 miles and reaching the Ebro river, Hannibal chose the most trustworthy and loyal parts of his army of Libyan and Iberian mercenaries to keep going with him.
He left 11,000 troops to keep watch over the newly conquered region.
At the Pyrenees, he let go of another 11,000 Iberian troops.
Hannibal entered Gaul with 50,000 foot soldiers and 9,000 horsemen.
Hannibal needed to cross the Pyrenees, the Alps, and many important rivers.
starting in the Spring of 218 BC, he fought his way to the Pyrenees.
He made peace deals with the Gaulish leaders and reached the Rh ne River.
Arriving at the Rh ne in September, Hannibal 's army numbered 38,000 infantry, 8,000 horsemen, and thirty-seven war elephants.
Hannibal got away from a Roman force sent to fight him in Gaul.
He then went up the valley of one of the streams of the Rh ne River.
By Autumn, he reached the foot of the Alps.
His journey over the mountains is one of the most famous achievements of any military force.
After this journey, Hannibal came down from the foothills into northern Italy.
He had arrived with only half the forces he had started with and only a few elephants.
Hannibal had lost as many as 20,000 men crossing over the mountains.
Publius Cornelius Scipio commanded the Roman force sent to stop Hannibal.
He did not expect Hannibal to cross the Alps.
He expected to fight Hannibal in Spain.
With a small army still in Gaul, Scipio tried to stop Hannibal.
He moved his army to Italy by sea in time to meet Hannibal.
Hannibal made the area behind him safer by defeating the tribe of the Taurini (modern Turin).
The opposing forces fought at Carthage.
Here, Hannibal forced the Romans to get out of the plain of Lombardy.
This victory did much to weaken Roman control over the Gauls.
The Gauls decided to join the Carthaginians.
Soon all of northern Italy was unofficially allied.
Gallic and Ligurian troops soon raised his army back to 40,000 men.
Hannibal s army was ready to invade Italy.
Scipio retreated across the River Trebia.
He camped at the town of Placentia and waited for more troops.
The Senate had ordered Sempronius Longus to bring his army from Sicily to meet Scipio and face Hannibal.
Hannibal was in position to head him off.
Sempronius avoided Hannibal and joined Scipio near the Trebbia River near Placentia.
At Trebia, Hannibal defeated the Roman infantry by a surprise attack from an ambush on the flank.
Arriving in Etruria in the spring of 217 BC, Hannibal decided to lure the main Roman army led by Flaminius into battle.
Hannibal found Flaminius camped at Arretium.
He marched around his opponent s left side and cut Flaminius off from Rome.
Hannibal made Flaminius chase him.
On the shore of Lake Trasimenus, Hannibal destroyed Flaminius 's army in the waters or on the nearby slopes.
He killed Flaminius as well.
He had got rid of the only force that could stop him from getting to Rome.
He realized that without siege engines he could not hope to take the capital.
He decided to continue into central and southern Italy.
He hoped this show of strength would create a revolt against the Roman government.
After Lake Trasimene, Hannibal said, I have not come to fight Italians, but on behalf of the Italians against Rome.
Rome was put into an immense state of panic.
They appointed a dictator named Quintus Fabius Maximus.
He was an intelligent and careful general.
Fabius adopted the "Fabian strategy".
He refused open battle with his enemy, and put several Roman armies near Hannibal to limit his movement.
Fabius sent out small forces against Hannibal s foraging parties.
Residents of small northern villages were told to post lookouts.
They could gather their livestock and possessions and go to fortified towns.
This would wear down the invaders endurance.
Hannibal decided to march through Samnium to Campania.
He hoped that the destruction would draw Fabius into battle.
Fabius refused to let himself be drawn into battle.
His troops became irritated by his cowardly spirit.
His policies were not liked.
Romans were used to facing their enemies in the field.
The people wanted to see a quick end to the war.
The rest of Autumn continued with frequent skirmishes.
After six months, Fabius was removed from his position in accordance with the Roman law.
In the Spring of 216 BC Hannibal captured the large supply depot at Cannae in the Apulian plain.
He had placed himself between the Romans and their source of supply.
The Roman Senate resumed their Consular elections in 216.
They chose Caius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus as Consuls.
The Romans raised a new army that was much larger than ever before.
The total strength of the army which faced Hannibal is not known, but probably up to 80,000 men.
The Roman army marched southward to Apulia.
After a two days march, they found Hannibal at the Audifus River.
Roman consuls had to switch their command on a daily basis.
Consul Varro was a reckless man full of pride.
He was determined to defeat Hannibal.
Hannibal drew him into a trap.
The Roman army had no way to escape.
With brilliant tactics, Hannibal surrounded and destroyed most of this force.
It is estimated that 50,000-70,000 Romans were killed or captured at Cannae.
Among the dead were eighty senators.
The Roman Senate was no more than 300 men this was 25 % 30 % of the governing body.
The Battle of Cannae one of the worst defeats in the history of Ancient Rome.
It is also one of the bloodiest battles in all of human history in terms of the number of lives lost in a single day.
After Cannae, the Romans refused to fight Hannibal in battles.
They tried instead to defeat him by wearing him down.
They relied on their advantages of supply and manpower.
Because of this victory most of southern Italy joined Hannibal 's cause.
During that same year, the Greek cities in Sicily revolted against Roman control.
The Macedonian king, Philip V supported Hannibal.
This started the First Macedonian War against Rome.
Hannibal made his new base in Capua, the second largest city of Italy.
Without the resources from his allies or reinforcements from Carthage, Hannibal could not do much more.
Hannibal began losing ground.
He continued defeating the Romans whenever he could bring them into battle but was never able to complete another decisive victory.
In 212 BC conspirators in Tarentum let Hannibal into the city.
They then blew the alarm with some Roman trumpets.
This let Hannibal 's troops pick off the Romans as they stumbled into the streets.
Hannibal told the Tarentines to mark every house where Tarentines lived.
The houses not marked were looted.
The citadel held out.
This stopped Hannibal from using the harbor and Rome was slowly gaining ground over Hannibal.
In the same year, he lost Campania.
In 211 BC the city of Capua fell.
In summer of that year, the Romans destroyed the Carthaginian army in Sicily.
Meanwhile, Hannibal had defeated Fulvius at Herdonea in Apulia, but lost Tarentum.
With the loss of Tarentum in 209 BC and the Romans capturing of Samnium and Lucania, his hold on south Italy was almost lost.
In 207 BC he retired into Bruttium.
These events marked the end to Hannibal 's success in Italy.
In 203 BC, Hannibal was recalled to Carthage to lead the defense of his homeland against a Roman invasion.
Both Scipio and Hannibal met on the field of Zama.
Hannibal had about 50,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry.
Scipio had 34,000 infantry and 8,700 cavalry.
For years, Hannibal had won victories with his experienced army.
He now faced the best of the Roman army, while he led a makeshift army.
They did not do well against the Romans.
Hannibal was defeated.
20,000 men of Hannibal s army were killed at Zama.
The same number of men were taken as prisoners.
The Romans lost as few as 500 dead and 4,000 wounded.
With their best general defeated, the Carthaginians accepted defeat and surrendered to Rome.
Seven years after the victory of Zama, the Romans demanded Hannibal 's surrender.
Hannibal went into voluntary exile.
He journeyed to Tyre, the mother-city of Carthage, and then to Ephesus and Syria.
In 190 BC he was placed in command of a Phoenician fleet but was defeated in a battle off the Eurymedon River.
Hannibal went to Crete, but he soon returned to the Asia Minor.
At Libyssa on the eastern shore of the Sea of Marmora, he was going to be turned over to the Romans.
Rather than letting himself be taken, he drank poison.
The precise year of his death is not certain.
It is believed to be 183 BC.
He died in the same year as Scipio Africanus.
Hultsfred Municipality is a municipality in Kalmar County in southern Sweden.
The seat is in Hultsfred.
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the highest legislative body in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories.
It alone has parliamentary sovereignty over all other political bodies.
At its head is the Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II.
The parliament has an upper house, the House of Lords, and a lower house, the House of Commons.
The Queen is the third part of Parliament.
Parliament developed from the early medieval councils of bishops and earls that advised the sovereigns of England.
In the Middle Ages and early modern period there were three kingdoms within the British Isles England, Scotland and Ireland and these developed separate parliaments.
The 1707 Acts of Union brought England and Scotland together under the Parliament of Great Britain, and the 1800 Act of Union included Ireland under the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The parliament at Westminster in London is sometimes called the "Mother of all Parliaments"
The English Parliament has its origins in the Anglo-Saxon '.
In 1066, William of Normandy brought a feudal system, where he sought the advice of a council before making laws.
In 1215, this council got the Magna Carta from King John, which established that the king may not levy or collect any taxes (except the feudal taxes to which they were hitherto accustomed), save with the consent of his royal council, which slowly developed into a parliament.
In 1265, Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester called the first elected Parliament.
The Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 42 annexed Wales as a part of England and brought Welsh representatives to Parliament.
When Elizabeth I was succeeded in 1603 by the Scottish King James VI of Scotland (James I of England) the countries both came under his rule, but each kept its own Parliament.
In Scotland in the High Middle Ages the King 's Council of Bishops and Earls was the beginning of the Parliament of 1235.
The Irish Parliament was founded to represent the English community in the Lordship of Ireland, but the native or Gaelic Irish were not allowed to vote or stand for office, the first known meeting being in 1264.
In 1541 Henry VIII declared the Kingdom of Ireland.
The Gaelic Irish lords were now entitled to attend the Irish Parliament as equals of the majority of English descent.
Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 November 17, 1929) was an American statistician and inventor.
He developed a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards.
This tabulated (put into tables) the data from millions of people.
He was the founder of the Tabulating Machine Company that later became IBM.
Hollerith is as a father of modern machine data processing.
The start of automatic data processing systems came with his invention.
Programs and data were put in to computer by punched cards in the 1950s and 60s.
Hollerith began working for the United States Census Bureau in the year he filed his first patent application.
Titled "Art of Compiling Statistics", it was filed on September 23, 1884; U.S. Patent 395,782 was granted on January 8, 1889.
Hollerith built machines under contract for the Census Office, which used them to tabulate the 1890 census in only one year.
The previous 1880 census had taken eight years.
Hollerith started his Tabulating Machine Company in 1896.
Major census bureaus around the world leased his equipment and purchased his cards, as did major insurance companies.
To make his system work, he invented the first automatic card-feed mechanism and the first keypunch (that is, a punch operated by a keyboard); a skilled operator could punch 200 300 cards per hour.
He also invented a tabulator.
Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language, which is a member of the Uralic language family.
The group of Finno-Ugric languages also includes Finnish, Estonian, Lappic (S mi) and some other languages spoken in the Russian Federation.
Out of these it is Khanty and Mansi that are the most closely related to Hungarian.
The Hungarian name for the language is magyar.
Hungarian is spoken by about 14 million people.
Most of its speakers live in Hungary (around 10 million) and Romania (around 1.5 million), but it is also spoken in Slovakia, the northern part of Serbia (Vojvodina), Ukraine and other countries.
Hungarian is the official language of the Republic of Hungary and one of the official languages of the EU (European Union).
It is also an official language of the Autonomous Republic of Vojvodina (Serbia) and of some places in the Republic of Slovenia.
Hungarians call their language magyar.
Hungarian has several dialects but they are not too different to make understanding difficult.
The only such example may be the dialect of the Cs ng s of Romania.
That dialect is an old and archaic version of the language.
Hungarian literary language is based on the Northeastern dialect.
Hungarian grammar is rather different from the grammar of Indo-European languages.
People may find this grammar complicated the first time if they speak an Indo-European language, until they realize that it works along some pretty logical rules.
Hungarian has no grammatical gender.
For example there are no separate words for ` he ' and ` she ' but there is one pronoun (' ').
Instead of prepositions (like English ` from ' or ` with '), Hungarian has suffixes (little words stuck to the end of main words).
` From Budapest ' becomes ` Budapestr l', and ` with Alexandra ' becomes ` Alexandr val ' in Hungarian.
Another feature of the language is vowel harmony.
This means that suffixes must tone in (harmonize) with the vowel of the main word.
To over-simplify it, if they have an ` a ' in the word then the suffix will also contain an ` a ' (` fa ' - ` tree ' and ` f val ' - ` with a tree '), and if their word has an ` e ' then its suffix too will get an ` e ' (teve - ` camel ' and ` tev vel ' - with a camel).
In Hungarian they must put the stress always on the first syllable (the beginning) of the words.
Although Hungarian is not an Indo-European language, its lexicon (all the words of the language together) has many words from Slavic and Turkic languages, and also from German.
Hungarian is written in the Latin alphabet.
Some letters have accents (dots or commas above them) so while the English alphabet has 26 letters, Hungarian has 44.
The writing of Hungarian is largely phonetic.
This means that each letter has its own pronunciation, and it is easy to read any text once they learn how the letters are pronounced.
The earliest known written Hungarian words are to be found in a Latin document, the Foundation Charter of the Abbey of Tihany (1054).
The Funeral Oration and Prayer (1192-95) and Old Hungarian Lament of Mary (13th century) are the earliest known continuous Hungarian texts.
In the 16th century the first printed Hungarian texts came out.
Modern Hungarian literary language appeared in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Hungarian replaced Latin as the official language of Hungary first between 1844 and 1849 and then in 1867.
The Hymenoptera is one of the larger orders of insect.
It includes the wasps, bees, ants and sawflies.
There are over 130,000 recognized species, with many more remaining to be described.
The name is derived from the Greek words hymen meaning ` membrane ' and ptera meaning ` wings.
The hindwings are connected to the forewings by a series of hooks called hamuli.
Females typically have a special ovipositor for inserting eggs into hosts or otherwise inaccessible places.
The ovipositor is often modified into a stinger.
The young develop through complete metamorphosis that is, they have a worm-like larval stage and an inactive pupal stage before they mature (See holometabolism).
These are the sawflies, the most primitive Hymenoptera.
Their adults do not have a narrow ` waist ' between the thorax and abdomen.
The female 's ovipositor is adapted to burrowing or sawing into the substrate, usually plant tissue.
These, the bees, wasps and ants, have a ` waist ' between the thorax and abdomen.
They are by far the most numerous Hymenoptera, and include the famous groups of colonial insects.
In fact, the group with the most species is not colonial; it is the vast number of parasitoid wasps, such as the Ichneumons.
Hymenoptera originated in the Triassic: the oldest fossils belong to the Sawfly family Xyelidae.
Social hymenopterans appeared during the Cretaceous.
Hannibal Hamlin (August 27, 1809 July 4, 1891) was a politician from Maine.
Hamlin served as a lawmaker in Maine, Governor of Maine, in the U.S. House of Representatives, and in the U.S. Senate.
He began his career as a Democrat but later became a Republican.
He was the first Republican to serve as Vice President of the United States, elected as Abraham Lincoln 's Vice President in the 1860 presidential election.
Hamlin was born in Paris, Maine.
He was a descendant of James Hamlin who had lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639.
He attended the area 's schools, and later managed his father 's farm.
For the next few years he worked at several jobs.
He studied law.
He lived in Hampden, where he practiced law until 1848, when he moved away.
Homeostasis is self-regulation, a basic property of all self-organising systems.
In biology, it is the keeping of a stable internal environment.
The most important example of homeostasis is life.
Animals keep their body in a stable condition.
They do so by regulating their inner equilibrium.
For example, they adjust their pH, temperature, amount of oxygen or carbon dioxide in the blood and so on.
In living things, the study of how they keep in a stable condition is called physiology.
Mostly, our physiology works unconsciously throughout life.
We have many feedback systems which adjust our physiology so that we stay alive.
These systems are self-organising and do not need to be learned.
They are inherited.
The concept was described by Claude Bernard, and the term was later coined by Walter Cannon in 1926, 1929, and 1932.
Walter Cannon thought these were the features of homeostasis:
The brain is also central to homeostasis.
It controls behavior, and the basic function of behavior is to support life by taking action.
Hockey is a type of sport in which players try to get points by hitting an object into the other team 's goal with a stick.
There are three main ways that hockey is played.
Hertfordshire is a county in England.
It is one of the so called Home Counties, those counties that border or surround Greater London.
The county is also surrounded by Essex, Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire.
The county town is Hertford; the oldest city is St Albans.
Hertfordshire has 26 independent schools and 73 state secondary schools.
The state secondary schools are entirely comprehensive, although seven schools in the south and southwest of the county are partially selective (see Education in Watford).
The University of Hertfordshire, formerly the Hatfield Polytechnic, is a modern university.
It is mostly in Hatfield, and has more than 23,000 students.
Hertfordshire has been home to many famous people, including George Michael and Geri Halliwell.
Victoria Beckham, born in Essex, was raised near Broxbourne in Hertfordshire.
The Beckhams bought a 2.5 million house in Sawbridgeworth when they married in 1999.
They sold it last year to insurance entrepreneur Neil Uttley for 11.4 million.
The richest person in Hertfordshire is Mike Ashley, a retailing tycoon.
His fortune is estimated as 3,650 million.
He owns Newcastle United F.C. and has an 8.9 % share in owning Glasgow Rangers F.C.
Hans-Georg Gadamer (; February 11, 1900 March 13, 2002) was a German philosopher.
His philosophy was about the continental tradition.
He was best known for his 1960 magnum opus Truth and Method (Wahrheit und Methode) on hermeneutics.
A hierarchy (in; this comes from ' - hieros, sacred, and ' - arkho, rule) is a way of ranking and organizing things or people.
Beneath the top of the hierarchy, each part of it is below some other part.
This turns out to be like a pyramid.
It is a system to decide who can make decisions, and who is forced to comply with those decisions.
An example with people would be the structure of a company.
There is the top manager, and there are a few levels of middle and lower management.
At the bottom are the common workers.
Another example would be an army that might have a general, followed by colonels, corporals, and sergeants, then privates.
In democracy this is done by educating people in the issues and then voting - in an election to choose leaders, or a referendum to actually choose one option from several.
Competing power networks each form a political party and each offers only one leader or one option to the public, to simplify the issues to make decisions possible.
After the decision, they typically do not fight it to the point of civil war, but wait for the next election.
In dictatorship this is done by asking one powerful person to make the decision and then agreeing to force everyone to follow it.
Any who will not are exiled, imprisoned, or killed, even if the decision is not very important, since the refusal to follow is taken as a challenge to the power structure itself.
There is only one power network and all others are forced to become part of it, or fight it.
Civil war is much more common in a dictatorship than in a democracy.
In these examples, people who are higher up have more authority and power than people below them.
An hour (abbreviation: h or hr) is a unit of measurement used to measure time.
An hour is equal to 60 minutes.
24 hours are equal to one day.
Unlike the second, the hour is not an SI unit.
Hezekiah (meaning God will strengthen) or izqiyy hu (Hebrew), also translated as izkiyyahu (and sometimes as Ezekias (Greek), Khizkiyahu, Y izqiyy hu, Y ` khizkiyahu), was a king of Judah that appears in the book of 2 Chronicles, chapters 18 to 32, and the book of 2 Kings chapters 18 to 20.
He was one of the few kings who is compared favorably with David, and is unique for his trust in the Lord: "There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him.
He held fast to the LORD and did not cease (stop) to follow him" (NIV).
Hezekiah was the son of Judah 's King Ahaz, and is best known for turning his people away from the sins of his father Ahaz, restoring worship in the temple, and having his life made 15 years longer.
The Book of 2 Chronicles tells more about Hezekiah than any other king after Solomon, and suggests that he is a "second Solomon" in his celebration of the Passover, his wealth, his honor, and his land.
Toward the end of his reign, he became very sick and close to death.
He prayed to the Lord, who healed him miraculously.
The king of Babylon heard about it and sent men with a letter and gift to Hezekiah.
Because Hezekiah was proud of his riches, he showed all of his treasures to the visitors.
The prophet Isaiah predicted that it all would later be taken by the Babylonians.
His prediction came true.
Haemophilia is a blood condition that means bleeding does not stop.
The bleeding occurs because the blood does not clot.
People with hemophilia lack proteins in the blood that make scabs and blood clots.
A person with a small cut or internal bleed (bruise) could bleed to death.
They do not bleed more than a normal person, but they bleed for much longer.
The word comes from the Greek words haima ("blood") and philia ("to love").
To treat this, an affected person can get a blood donation from someone without hemophilia.
The donor s blood has the clotting proteins and can temporarily make a normal scab.
30 % of hemophilia A and B cases are the first person in their family to have hemophilia which is the result of an unexpected mutation (this means that there is an unexpected change in the body).
It usually affects males.
It is passed from mother to child through genes.
Haemophilia A happens in about 1 in 5,000 10,000 male births.
Haemophilia B happens in about 1 in every 20,000 34,000 male births.
Genetic defects on the X chromosome affect males because they have only one X chromosome.
In females, a recessive gene is usually masked by a normal gene on the other X chromosome.
The Y chromosome does carry some genes, but far fewer than the X chromosome.
Defects of this type are called "sex-linked" in genetics.
There is no cure for this disease but there are different treatments available around the world.
A person with hemophilia is called a hemophiliac.
Hern n Cort s (1485 - 2 December 1547) was an explorer and conqueror from Spain.
Between 1519 and 1521, he conquered the Aztec empire of emperor Montezuma II where Mexico is today.
Cortes was born Medell n, Extremadura province, in the Kingdom of Castile in Spain.
He went to Salamanca University, but dropped out at the age of 17.
After two years, Cortes failed and finished schooling, returning home.
This, however, was later helpful, as he knew how the law of Spain worked.
Hernan 's journeys started in 1502 when he had heard stories about the New World.
He then went on a journey led by Nicolas de Ovando and Diego Velazquez to the West Indies.
He turned out to be a good soldier under the orders of Vel zquez.
He went to the New World in 1506.
In 1511, he took part in the Spanish conquest of Hispaniola and Cuba, where the Arawak people lived.
In 1513, the Spanish built the town Bayamo.
The next year, they built Trinidad, Santo Espiritu, Puerto Principe, and Santiago de Cuba.
In 1519, Cortes set out from Cuba with a fleet of ships, 600 men, and about 20 horses.
They went to Yucat n to look for gold and to get Mexico ready for colonization.
They landed in Yucat n Peninsula and met Jeronimo de Aguilar, a priest who lived through a shipwreck.
He knew a lot about the Maya, who owned this section of land.
Cortes took over Yucat n by winning a battle against the people of Tabasco.
He met a woman, La Malinche, who knew the Maya and Nahuatl languages.
She acted as his translator when he talked with Maya and Aztec people.
In July of 1519, the Spanish took over Veracruz, and left 100 men there.
That August, Cortes went to Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire.
He brought 400 men, 15 horsemen, and 15 cannons with him.
On his way, he met Native Amercian tribes like the Nahuus of Tlaxcala and the Totonaes of Cempoaly.
In October 1519, Cortes gathered his soldiers and around three thousand Tlaxcalteca (who did not like the Aztecs).
His goal was to scare the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan.
He then went on a killing spree and burned down the city.
When he came to Tenochtitlan, he had a vast army of Aztec enemies.
Cort s was surprised that Tenochtitlan was as great as Constantinople.
In November, the emperor of the Aztecs, Moctezuma II, welcomed Cortes and his army.
Montezuma II let them into Aztec territory, where they learned the Aztecs ' weaknesses and then destroyed them.
The emperor gave them gold, and Cortes later told King Charles V that the Aztecs might have thought he was one of their gods: Quetzalcoatl, a feathered serpent with fair skin and a beard.
Cortes quickly realized that some Spaniards had been attacked on the coast and planned to kidnap Moctezuma and his house and make him swear loyalty to King Charles V.
On the night of June 30 July 1, 1520 the Aztecs attacked, but the majority of the Spanish escaped and allied themselves with enemies of the Aztec empire.
Later, in 1521, with his army of a few Spaniards and many natives, Cort s destroyed Tenochtitlan and took over the Aztec Empire.
Cort s returned from Honduras and was Governor of the Viceroyalty of New Spain for a while.
Later, he went back to Europe with a lot of treasure.
He died in Seville, Spain, in 1547 from pleurisy.
Horsepower is a unit of power that is approximately how much work one horse can do.
It is equal to 746 watts.
The idea of horsepower was originated by James Watt, who invented the steam engine.
Because people used horses to pull carts, it was an amount of energy that could be understood by most people at that time.
A human can only maintain about 0.1 horsepower, but an engine can maintain much higher than that.
Small motors can create 10 horsepower while a jet engine can create more than 1,000 horsepower.
The history of astronomy describes the ideas of earlier civilisations.
It also discusses the beginnings of modern astronomy.
The Babylonian astronomers viewed the Universe as a flat disk floating in the ocean.
This forms the start for early Greek maps like those of Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus.
Greek philosophers, seeing the movement of heavenly bodies, developed models of the Universe based more on empirical evidence.
The first model was proposed by Eudoxus of Cnidos.
According to this model, space and time are infinite and eternal, the Earth is spherical and stationary, and all other matter is confined to rotating concentric spheres.
This model was brought into agreement with astronomical observations by Ptolemy of Alexandria, in the second century AD.
His Syntaxis mathematica, known as the Almagest, was translated from Greek to Arabic, and from Arabic to Latin.
It was first printed in 1515, with another edition in 1528.
However, not all Greek scientists accepted the geocentric (Earth-centered) model of the Universe.
The Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus thought the center of the Universe was a "central fire" around which the Earth, Sun, Moon and Planets revolved in uniform circular motion.
The Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos was the first person to propose a heliocentric (Sun-centered) model of the universe.
Though the original text has been lost, a reference in Archimedes ' book The Sand Reckoner describes Aristarchus ' heliocentric theory.
Archimedes wrote: (translated into English)
You King Gelon are aware the ` Universe ' is the name given by most astronomers to the sphere the center of which is the center of the Earth, while its radius is equal to the straight line between the center of the Sun and the center of the Earth.
This is the common account as you have heard from astronomers.
But Aristarchus has brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses, wherein it appears, as a consequence of the assumptions made, that the universe is many times greater than the ` Universe ' just mentioned.
His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the Sun remain unmoved, that the Earth revolves about the Sun on the circumference of a circle, the Sun lying in the middle of the orbit, and that the sphere of fixed stars, situated about the same center as the Sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes the Earth to revolve bears such a proportion to the distance of the fixed stars as the center of the sphere bears to its surface.
Aristarchus thus believed the stars to be very far away, and saw this as the reason why there was no visible parallax, that is, an observed movement of the stars relative to each other as the Earth moved around the Sun.
The stars are in fact much farther away than was generally assumed in ancient times, which is why stellar parallax is only detectable with telescopes.
The rejection of the heliocentric view was apparently quite strong, as the following passage from Plutarch suggests (On the apparent face in the orb of the Moon):
Cleanthes (a contemporary of Aristarchus and head of the Stoics) thought it was the duty of the Greeks to indict Aristarchus of Samos on the charge of impiety for putting in motion the Hearth of the universe (i.e. the Earth),... supposing the heaven to remain at rest and the earth to revolve in an oblique circle, while it rotates, at the same time, about its own axis.
The only other astronomer from antiquity known by name who supported Aristarchus ' heliocentric model was Seleucus of Seleucia.
He was a Babylonian astronomer a century after Aristarchus.
According to Plutarch, Seleucus was the first to prove the heliocentric system through reasoning, but it is not known what arguments he used.
Seleucus ' arguments for a heliocentric theory were probably related to the phenomenon of tides.
According to Strabo (1.1.9), Seleucus was the first to state that the tides are due to the attraction of the Moon, and that the height of the tides depends on the Moon 's position relative to the Sun.
The geocentric model was accepted in the Western world for about two thousand years, until Copernicus revived Aristarchus ' theory that the sun was placed at the center of the Solar System.
As noted by Copernicus himself, the suggestion that the Earth rotates (goes round on its axis) was very old, dating at least to Philolaus (c. 450 BC).
About a century before Copernicus, Nicholas of Cusa also proposed that the Earth rotates on its axis in his book, On Learned Ignorance (1440).
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The first empirical evidence for the Earth 's rotation on its axis, using the phenomenon of comets, was given by Tusi (1201 1274).
Copernicus ' heliocentric model allowed the stars to be placed uniformly through the (infinite) space surrounding the planets, as first proposed by Thomas Digges in his Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes according to the most aunciente doctrine of the Pythagoreans, latelye revived by Copernicus and by Geometricall Demonstrations approved (1576).
Giordano Bruno accepted the idea that space was infinite and filled with solar systems similar to our own.
n; for the publication of his various beliefs, he was burnt at the stake in Rome on 17 February 1600.
This cosmology was accepted provisionally by Isaac Newton, Christiaan Huygens and later scientists, but it had several paradoxes which were resolved only with general relativity.
The first paradox was that it assumed that space and time were infinite, and that the stars in the universe had been burning forever; however, since stars are constantly radiating energy, a finite star seems inconsistent with the radiation of infinite energy.
Secondly, Edmund Halley (1720) noted that an infinite space filled uniformly with stars would lead to the prediction that the nighttime sky would be as bright as the sun itself; this became known as Olbers ' paradox in the 19th century.
Third, Newton himself showed that an infinite space uniformly filled with matter would cause infinite forces and instabilities crushing matter inwards inwards under gravity.
This instability was later clarified in 1902.
As observations on the Solar System progressed, some basic facts appeared.
All planets go round the Sun in the same direction, and their planes of revolution are very similar.
Likewise, most satellites go round planets in nearly the same planes.
The planets revolve around their own axes in the same sense in which they orbit the Sun.
These regularities can not be a chance coincidence.
Many were at work trying to use the ideas of Newton and Kepler to explain the observational astronomy provided by the new, larger, telescopes.
A significant astronomical advance of the 18th century was the realization by Thomas Wright (1711 1786) that the "fixed stars" were not scattered at random, but concentrated in what we now call the "galactic plane", our view of the Milky Way.
What is even more remarkable is his idea that very faint nebulae, in which "no one star... can possibly be distinguished" might be extremely distant groups of the same kind.
p83\/4
Kant (1724 1804), known today for his philosophy, made some important discoveries about the nature of the Earth 's rotation.
He showed the frictional resistance against tidal currents on the Earth 's surface must cause a very gradual slowing of the earth 's rotation.
The days have grown longer as time has passed.
Also, he laid out a nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula.
Following Wright, Kant also thought the Milky Way was a large disk of stars formed from a (much larger) spinning cloud of gas.
The greatest theoretician of the 18th century was Laplace (1749 1827), who worked on the mechanics of the planets and Solar System.
His massive 5-volume work on the mechanics of the Solar System explained many of the regularities which observations had discovered.
Laplace made good use of another Frenchman 's mathematics: Lagrange (1736 1813).
Laplace is also noteworthy for his nebular hypothesis of the evolution of the Solar System.
As it happens, the details of Laplace 's theory do not quite work out for planetary systems, but they are the basis of how we understand stars condense out of a nebula.
The 18th century was also a century of great observers.
William Herschel (1738 1822), helped by his sister Caroline (1750 1848) built the biggest telescope of the day (40-foot), but did his best work on a 20-foot telescope.
There were problems with the mirror of the large one.
The discovery of Uranus put his career on the way: he got a salary of 200 a year as "King 's Astronomer".
He got a rough idea of where we are in the galaxy, and could see other spiral galaxies.
He called them "island universes" like the Milky Way.
Also he began to work out the motions of different stars.
He discovered double stars, and published catalogues of them.
p113\/120 Herschel 's observations brought astronomy into the modern era.
The modern era of physical cosmology began in 1917, when Albert Einstein first applied his general theory of relativity to model the structure and dynamics of the universe.
The Haber process or the Haber-Bosch process is a chemical reaction that uses nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas to create the chemical compound ammonia.
The Haber process uses temperatures ranging from 400 C to 450 C under a pressure of 200 atm.
The Haber process uses a catalyst mostly made up of iron.
The Haber process is named after the German scientist Fritz Haber.
Haber was the first person to successfully complete the process.
In 1909, Haber 's process could produce about one cup of ammonia every two hours.
Carl Bosch helped to develop the Haber process for industry.
In 1913, the German company BASF started using the Haber process to make ammonia.
During World War I, the Haber process was used to make explosives.
The Germans kept this a secret until after the war.
In 1918, Haber won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and in 1931, Bosch also shared a Nobel Prize.
The Haber process is still important today because it produces ammonia, which is needed for fertilizer and for many other purposes.
The Haber process produces about 500 million tons (453 billion kilograms) of fertilizer every year.
This fertilizer helps to feed about 40 % of the world 's population.
The gases for the Haber process must be prepared before changing them into ammonia.
After that is done, ammonia is created by using magnetite (iron oxide) as the catalyst:
In this process, only about 15 % of the nitrogen and hydrogen is changed into ammonia.
However, the unused nitrogen and hydrogen is recycled.
Overall, 98 % of nitrogen and hydrogen can be changed into ammonia.
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Histones are proteins found in eukaryotic cell nuclei, which package the DNA into structural units called nucleosomes.
They are the chief protein components of chromatin, the active component of chromosomes.
Histones act as spools around which DNA winds, and play a role in gene regulation.
Without histones, the unwound DNA in chromosomes would be very long.
For example, each human cell has about 1.8 meters of DNA, but wound on the histones it has about 90 millimeters of chromatin, which, when duplicated and condensed during mitosis, result in about 120 micrometers of chromosomes.
Histones act as spools around which DNA winds.
This packs in the large genomes of eukaryotes to fit inside cell nuclei.
The compacted molecule is 40,000 times shorter than an unpacked molecule.
Histones undergo changes which alter their interaction with DNA and nuclear proteins.
Long-term changes in histone\/DNA interaction cause epigenetic effects.
Combinations of modifications are thought to constitute a code, the so-called histone code.
Histone modifications act in diverse biological processes such as gene regulation, DNA repair and chromosome condensation (mitosis).
Histones were discovered in 1884 by Albrecht Kossel.
The word "histone" dates from the late 19th century and is from the German "Histon", of uncertain origin: perhaps from Greek histanai or from histos.
Until the early 1990s, histones were dismissed as merely packing material for nuclear DNA.
During the early 1990s, the regulatory functions of histones were discovered.
The discovery of the H5 histone appears to date back to 1970 's.
Histones are found in the nuclei of eukaryotic cells, and in certain Archaea, namely Euryarchaea, but not in bacteria.
Histone proteins are among the most highly conserved proteins in eukaryotes, which suggests they are vital to the biology of the nucleus.
In contrast, mature sperm cells largely use protamines to package their genomic DNA, most likely to achieve an even higher packaging ratio.
Core histones are highly conserved proteins, that is, there are very few differences among the amino acid sequences of the histone proteins of different species.
Linker histone usually has more than one form within a species and is also less conserved than the core histones.
Ch acts like morphine in the body.
Heroin is called a semi-synthetic opioid, meaning that it was created from an opiate that occurs in nature (morphine).
Heroin is a white or brown powder made from the sap of the poppy plant.
It is an analgesic drug (a painkiller), and its effects are like other drugs that come from the poppy plant sap, like opium and morphine.
Peop.
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AnothePeople can also have very strong psychological symptoms of withdrawal, like depression and strong cravings for heroin.
Many heroin users are very afraid of withdrawal.
Withdrawal - and fear of withdrawal - is one of the most common reasons why people have trouble quitting heroin.
Medications like methadone and Suboxone are sometimes used to treat or prevent withdrawal symptoms, and to decrease cravings for heroin.
Injecting heroin can be very dangerous.
A person can get infections by using a needle that has not been cleaned properly.
Also, if people share the same needle, they can infect each other with diseases that travel in the blood, like HIV or hepatitis C. People can also get diseases by having unsafe sex while they are high on heroin.
There are many slang names, or street names, for heroin.
These names are different in different places.
Some of the most common are Dope, Horse, Junk, H, Brown, and Smack.
Heroin was first made in 1898, by the Bayer Company in Germany.
At first, it was used as a cough medicine and a painkiller.
People thought that heroin would help decrease morphine and opium addiction.
But after twelve years, doctors realized that people became strongly addicted to heroin.
In 1914, the United States passed the Harrison Act.
This was the first of many attempts to control the use of heroin.
The word heroin comes from the German word heroisch, which means powerful and heroic.
Hellas Verona F.C. is a football club which plays in Italy.
Not to be confused with the Serie A side.
Humphrey Bogart (December 25, 1899 - January 14, 1957) was an American actor who starred in seventy-five movies.
These include Black Legion, High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942) and The African Queen (1951).
His last movie was The Harder They Fall.
A hyperbola is a type of conic section.
Like the other three types of conic sections - parabolas, ellipses, and circles - it is a curve formed by the intersection of a cone and a plane.
A hyperbola is created when the plane intersects both halves of a double cone, creating two curves that look exactly like each other, but open in opposite directions.
This occurs when the angle between the axis of the cone and the plane is less than the angle between a line on the side of the cone and the plane.
Hyperbolas can be found in many places in nature.
For example, an object in open orbit around another object - where it never returns - can move in the shape of a hyperbola.
On a sundial, the path followed by the tip of the shadow over time is a hyperbola.
One of the most well-known hyperbolas is the graph of the equation.
The two disconnected curves that make up a hyperbola are called arms or branches.
The two points where the branches are closest together are called the vertices.
The line between these two points is called the transverse axis or major axis.
The midpoint of the transverse axis is the center of the hyperbola.
At large distances from the center, the branches of the hyperbola approach two straight lines.
These two lines are called the asymptotes.
As the distance from the center increases, the hyperbola gets closer and closer to the asymptotes, but never intersects them.
The conjugate axis or minor axis is perpendicular, or at a right angle to, the transverse axis.
The endpoints of the conjugate axis are at the height where a segment that intersects the vertex and is perpendicular to the transverse axis intersects the asymptotes.
a is the distance between the center and a vertex.
The length of the transverse axis is equal to 2a.
b is the length of a perpendicular line segment from a vertex to an asymptote.
The length of the conjugate axis is equal to 2b.
The two branches of the above type of hyperbola open to the left and the right.
If the branches open up and down and the transverse axis is on the y-axis, then the hyperbola can be written as the equation
A hyperbolic trajectory is the trajectory followed by an object when its velocity becomes more than the escape velocity of a planet, satellite, or star.
For example, meteors approach on a hyperbolic trajectory, and interplanetary space probes leave on one.
Nasir uddin Muhammad Humayun (; OS 7 March 1508 AD OS 17 January 1556 AD) was the second Mughal Emperor.
He ruled Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of northern India from 1530 to 1540.
He was the son of the previous emperor, Babur.
His son was Akbar, one of the most famous emperors in Mughal history.
In 1532, Humayun and Sher Shah Suri clashed on the battlefield.
Humayun won the battle and capured Chunar.
In 1534, Humayun defeated Bahadur Shah and captured Gujarat.
Sher Shah meanwhile regrouped and defeated Humayun, at Chausa in 1539 and at Kanauj a year later.
Humayun was forced to go to Persia in exile, for 15 years.
In 1555, Humayun returned to India and defeated the succesor of Sher Shah, Islam Shah and regained India.
In 1556, he fell down the steps of his library in Sher Mandal, (in Purana Kila) and died soon after.
He was succeeded by Akbar
Prince-electors were the group of rulers of German countries which elected the Holy Roman Emperor.
In English they were usually called "Electors" and included the Elector of Brandenburg, who also began ruling as King of Prussia, and the Electors of Hanover, who were also kings of Great Britain after 1714.
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (December 24, 1905 April 5, 1976), was an American businessman and movie producer.
During his life, he was one of the richest people in the world.
He was born in Humble, Texas to a rich family.
He went to Hollywood and became a movie producer and aviator.
Hughes broke several world records for flying aeroplanes.
He created his own air company, which was later bought by TWA.
Many people now think Hughes may have had OCD or obsessive compulsive disorder.
This is because later in life, he kept himself away from the outside world.
He lived in a hotel suite at The Desert Inn in Las Vegas as a recluse.
He never left his room.
He also did not cut his hair or fingernails.
He had a group of doctors and other people to help take care of him.
In 1972, a man named Clifford Irving claimed to have co-written the autobiography of Hughes.
It was later shown to not be real.
Hughes died in Houston while being moved to a hospital in Mexico.
After he died, there was an argument over his will.
Harwich is a port town near the A120 road in Essex, England.
In 2011 there were 17,684 people living in Harwich.
Hydropower is the capture of the energy of moving water for some useful purpose.
In the 1830s, at the peak of the canal-building era, hydropower was used to transport barge traffic up and down steep hills using inclined plane railroads.
For direct mechanical power transmission industries that used hydropower had to be near the waterfall.
For example, during the last half of the 19th century, many grist mills were built at Saint Anthony Falls, to use the 50 foot (15 metre) drop in the Mississippi River.
The mills were important for the growth of Minneapolis.
Today the largest use of hydropower is for electric power generation.
That allows low cost energy to be used at long distances from the watercourse.
Hydroelectric power is a means of making electricity without burning fuel.
Hydroelectric power supplies about 715,000 MWe or 19 % of world electricity (16 % in 2003).
Large dams are still being designed.
Apart from a few countries with plenty of it, hydro power is normally applied to peak load demand because it is readily stopped and started.
Nevertheless, hydroelectric power is probably not a major option for future energy production in the developed nations, because most major sites within these nations are either already being exploited or are unavailable for other reasons, such as environmental considerations.
Hydropower produces essentially no carbon dioxide or other harmful emissions, in contrast to burning fossil fuels, and is not a significant contributor to global warming through CO2.
Hydroelectric power can be far less expensive than electricity generated from fossil fuel or nuclear energy.
Areas with abundant hydroelectric power attract industry.
Environmental concerns about the effects of reservoirs may prohibit development of economic hydropower sources.
The chief advantage of hydroelectric dams is their ability to handle seasonal (as well as daily) high peak loads.
When the electricity demands drop, the dam simply stores more water.
Some electricity generators use water dams to store excess energy (often during the night), by using the electricity to pump water up into a basin.
Electricity can be generated when demand increases.
In practice the utilization of stored water in river dams is sometimes complicated by demands for irrigation which may occur out of phase with peak electrical demands.
Harnessing the tides in a bay or estuary has been achieved in France (since 1966), Canada and Russia, and could be achieved in other areas with a large tidal range.
The trapped water turns turbines as it is released through the tidal barrage in either direction.
Another possible fault is that the system would generate electricity most efficiently in bursts every six hours (once every tide).
This limits how tidal energy can be used.
A relatively new technology, tidal stream generators draw energy from currents in much the same way that wind generators do.
The higher density of water means that a single generator can provide significant power.
This technology is at the early stages of development and will need more research before it can produce any higher amount of energy.
But several prototype were tested in the UK, in France and the USA.
Already in 2003 a turbine that produces 300 kW was tested in the UK.
The Canadian company Blue Energy has plans for installing very large arrays tidal current devices mounted in what they call a ` tidal fence ' in various locations around the world, based on a vertical axis turbine design.
Power from ocean surface wave motion might produce much more energy than tides.
It has been tested that it is possible to produce energy from waves, particularly in Scotland in the UK.
But there are still a lot of technical problems.
A prototype shore based wave power generator is being constructed at Port Kembla in Australia and is expected to generate up to 500 MWh annually.
Wave energy is captured by an air driven generator and converted to electricity.
For countries with large coastlines and rough sea conditions, the energy of waves offers the possibility of generating electricity in utility volumes.
Excess power during rough seas could be used to produce hydrogen.
Heterosexual people love people (sexually and romantically) of the opposite gender.
A heterosexual man loves women.
A heterosexual woman loves men.
Another less formal word for heterosexual is straight.
Heterosexual is seen as different from homosexuality, bisexuality or asexuality.
Most people describe themselves as heterosexual.
Society is described by some people as ` heteronormative ', which is a word that describes an attitude that homosexuality is not ` normal '.
A writ of (; Latin: "may you have the body") is a writ (legal action) that requires a person under arrest to be brought to a judge or into court.
Prince Henry the Navigator (1394 1460) was a prince from Portugal.
He was called Infante Dom Henrique in Portuguese.
He was never a navigator himself.
He got his name because he organized many ocean voyages on which lands were found.
He is seen as the man who started the Age of Discovery.
He is also known for opening a navigation school in Portugal, so tools and ships could be made better.
Henry the Navigator also discovered the first shipping routes directly from Europe to Asia for the Portuguese monarchy.
Human cloning is the creation of a human being, human cell, or human tissue taken from another human.
This method is used to make an exact copy of a human.
The history of Asia can be seen as the history of several distinct regions, East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East that have more or less context depending of the situation in the central Eurasian steppe.
The coastal periphery was the home to some of the world 's earliest known civilizations, with each of the three regions developing early civilizations around fertile river valleys.
The civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China had much in common.
Therefore it is likely that they exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel.
Other aspects such as that of writing developed individually in each area.
Cities, states and then empires developed in these lowlands.
The steppe region had long been inhabited by nomads, and from the central steppes they could reach all areas of the Asian continent.
The earliest known expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans which spread their languages into the Middle East, India, and in the Tocharians to the borders of China.
The northern part of the continent was not accessible to the steppe nomads due to the dense forests and the tundra.
These areas had very few people.
The center and periphery were kept separate by mountains and deserts.
The Caucasus, Himalaya, Karakum Desert, and Gobi Desert formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could only cross with difficulty.
The city dwellers were more advanced in civilisation but they could do little militarily to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe.
Because the lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large horsebound force the nomads who conquered states in China, India, and the Middle East were soon forced to adapt to the local societies.
Alexander the Great conquered an area from Turkey to India in the 4th century BC.
The Roman Empire would later control parts of western Asia.
The Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian and Sassanian empires were based in Ancient Persia.
Many ancient civilizations were influenced by the Silk Road, which connected China, India, the Middle East and Europe.
The religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, which began in India, were an important influence on South and East Asia.
The Islamic caliphate and other Islamic states took over the Middle East starting in the 7th century, and later expanded into India and Indonesia.
The Crusades would be fought from the 12th century, in Christian Europe 's attempt to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims.
The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of Asia in the 13th century, an area extending from China to Europe.
The Russian Empire began to expand into Asia from the 17th century, eventually taking control of all of Siberia and most of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century.
The Ottoman Empire controlled Turkey and the Middle East from the 16th century onwards.
In the 17th century, the Manchu conquered China and established the Qing Dynasty, although this was in decline by the nineteenth century and had been overthrown in 1912.
Several European powers had control of other parts of Asia by the 1900s, such as British India, French Indochina and Portuguese Macau and Goa.
Russia and Britain struggled for power in the Central Asian region in the nineteenth century.
The Trans-Siberian Railway that crossed Asia by train was complete by 1916.
Parts of Asia remained free from European control, although not influence, such as Persia, Thailand and most of China.
In the twentieth century, Imperial Japan expanded into China, Korea and Southeast Asia during the Second World War.
After the war, many Asian countries became independent from European powers.
During the Cold War, the northern parts of Asia were communist controlled with the Soviet Union and People 's Republic of China, while western allies formed pacts such as CENTO and SEATO.
Conflicts such as the Korean War, Vietnam War and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan were fought between communists and anti-communists.
In the decades after the Second World War, a massive restructuring plan drove Japan to become the world 's second-largest economy, a phenomenon known as the Japanese post-war economic miracle.
The Arab-Israeli conflict has dominated much of the recent history of the Middle East.
After the Soviet Union 's collapse in 1991, there were many new independent nations in Central Asia.
The history of the Americas is the history of North and South America, including Central America and the Caribbean.
It begins with people migrating to these areas from Asia and possibly Oceania during the height of an Ice age.
These groups are generally believed to have been isolated from peoples of the "Old World" until the coming of Europeans in the 10th and 15th centuries.
The ancestors of today 's Native Americans were hunter-gatherers who migrated into North America.
The most popular theory says that migrants came to the Americas via the Bering Land Bridge, Beringia, the land mass covered by the cold ocean waters in the Bering Strait.
Small Paleo-Indian groups probably followed the mammoth and other prey animals.
It is possible that groups of people may also have traveled into North America on shelf or sheet ice along the northern Pacific coast.
Cultural traits brought by the first immigrants later evolved and spawned such cultures as Iroquois on North America and Quechuas of South America.
These cultures later developed into civilizations.
In many cases, these cultures expanded at a later date than their Old World counterparts.
Cultures that may be considered advanced or civilized include: Zapotec, Toltecs, Olmec, Maya, Aztecs, and the Inca.
The Puebloan peoples of what is now the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico, living conditions were that of large stone apartment like adobe structures.
They live in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and possibly surrounding areas.
Chichimeca was the name that the Mexica (Aztecs) applied to a wide range of semi-nomadic peoples who inhabited the north of modern-day Mexico, and had the same sense as the European term "barbarian".
The name was adopted with a negative tone by the Spaniards when they spoke of the semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples of northern Mexico.
The Zapotec emerged around 1500 years BCE.
Their writing system influenced the later Olmec.
They left behind the great city Monte Alban.
The Olmec civilization emerged around 1200 BCE in Mesoamerica and ended around 400 BCE.
Olmec art and concepts influenced surrounding cultures after their downfall.
This civilization was thought to be the first in America to develop a writing system.
After the Olmecs abandoned their cities for unknown reasons, the Maya, Zapotec and Teotihuacan arose.
Maya history spans 3,000 years.
The Maya may have collapsed due to changing climate in the end of the 10th century.
The Toltec were a nomadic people, dating from the 10th - 12th century, whose language was also spoken by the Aztecs.
Teotihuacan (4th century BCE - 7\/8th century CE) was both a city, and an empire of the same name, which, at its zenith between 150 and the 5th century, covered most of Mesoamerica.
The Aztec having started to build their empire around 14th century found their civilization abruptly ended by the Spanish conquistadors.
They lived in Mesoamerica, and surrounding lands.
Their capital city Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities of all time.
The oldest known civilization of the Americas was established in the Norte Chico region of modern Peru.
Complex society emerged in the group of coastal valleys, between 3000 and 1800 BCE.
The Quipu, a distinctive recording device among Andean civilizations, apparently dates from the era of Norte Chico.
The Chav n established a trade network and developed agriculture by as early as (or late compared to the Old World) 900 BCE according to some estimates and archaeological finds.
Artifacts were found at a site called Chav n in modern Peru at an elevation of 3,177 meters.
Chav n civilization spanned from 900 BCE to 300 BCE.
Holding their capital at the great city of Cusco, the Inca civilization dominated the Andes region from 1438 to 1533.
Known as ', or "the land of the four regions," in Quechua, the Inca culture was highly distinct and developed.
Cities were built with precisely matched stonework, constructed over many levels of mountain terrain.
Terrace farming was a useful form of agriculture.
There is evidence of excellent metalwork and even successful brain surgery in Inca civilization.
The number of Native Americans is increasing now in the U.S. by actual population growth, changing enrollment laws, and from the immigration from Spanish America, especially from Mexico, though the definition being applied to them is Hispanic.
Slavery has had a significant role in the economic development the New World after the colonization of the Americas by the Europeans.
Slaves helped build the roads upon which they were transported.
The cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane harvested by slaves became important exports for the United States and the Caribbean countries.
The Hanseatic League (German: die Hanse, Dutch: de Hanze, Estonian: hansa, Latvian: Hanza Polish: Hanza, Swedish: Hansan) was an alliance of trading guilds.
These guilds established and maintained a trade monopoly over the Baltic Sea and most of Northern Europe.
This monopoly lasted for a time in the later Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, between the 13th and 17th centuries.
Many cities were part of it.
The following cities were part of the Hanse.
They carry the word Hansestadt (Hanseatic City) as part of their official city name:
In mathematics a holomorphic function is a function that is defined on the complex numbers, and that can be differentiated everywhere where it is defined.
Differentiating the function again leads to a function defined on the complex numbers.
In older literature, these functions are sometimes called regular.
Holomorphic functions show a number of properties function defined on real numbers do not have.
The history of Christianity is the history of the Christian religion and the Christian church, from Jesus and his apostles to our times.
Christianity is the monotheistic religion that is based on the life and teaching of Jesus.
Christianity began in the 1st century AD as a Jewish sect but quickly spread throughout the Greco-Roman world.
Despite early persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire, it became the state religion in the end.
In the Middle Ages it spread into Northern Europe and Russia.
During the Age of Exploration, Christianity expanded throughout the world; it is the largest religion of the world.
The religion had schisms and theological disputes that had as result three main branches: the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and Protestant churches.
Most of the first Christians were ethnically Jewish or Jewish proselytes.
An early difficulty came from non-Jewish converts.
There was the question if they had to "become Jewish" before becoming Christian.
The decision of St. Peter, was that they did not, and the matter was further addressed with the Council of Jerusalem.
The doctrines of the apostles brought the Early Church into conflict with some Jewish religious authorities, and this eventually led to the martyrdom of SS.
Stephen and James the Great and expulsion from the synagogues.
Thus, Christianity got an identity distinct from Judaism.
The name "Christian" (Greek) was first used for the disciples in Antioch, as recorded in (Acts 11:26; Acts 11:26).
The sources for the beliefs of the apostolic community include the Gospels and New Testament Epistles.
The very earliest reports are in these texts: early Christian creeds and hymns and reports about the Passion, the empty tomb, and appearances of Jesus after his Resurrection.
There reasons to suppose that they were written within a few years of the crucifixion of Jesus and came from the Jerusalem Church.
Christianity kept many practices from Jewish tradition.
Christianity thought the Jewish scriptures to be sacred and used mostly the Septuagint edition and translation as the Old Testament, and added other texts as the New Testament canon developed.
Christians professed Jesus to be the God of Israel, having taken human form, and considered Jesus to be the Messiah (Christ) who had been prophesied about in the Old Testament and so was expected by the people of Israel.
Christianity also continued other Judaic practices: liturgical worship, including the use of incense, an altar, a set of scriptural readings adapted from synagogue practice, use of sacred music in hymns and prayer, and a religious calendar, as well as other typical features: an exclusively male priesthood, and ascetic practices (fasting etc.).
The time when most of the apostles had died and their jobs as leaders of the Christian communities in the cities had been taken over by bishops, is called post-apostolic period.
It includes the time of persecutions until Christian worship was legalized under Constantine the Great.
The earliest recorded use of the term Christianity (Greek) is from this period.
The term was used by Ignatius of Antioch c. 107.
Until the late fourth century, when they became the dominant political force of the Roman Empire (and by consequence the entire Mediterranean), Christians were subject to various persecutions.
This meant even death.
That was the case with Stephen and James, son of Zebedee.
Persecutions in lager scale by the authorities of the Roman Empire, began with the year 64, when the Emperor Nero blamed them for the great Fire of Rome as the Roman historian Tacitus reported.
According to Church tradition, it was under Nero 's persecution that the saints Peter and Paul became martyrs in Rome.
Similarly, several of the New Testament writings mention persecutions and that they had very difficult times.
For 250 years there were times when Christians suffered from persecutions, because they refused to worship the Roman emperor.
That was seen as treason and punished by execution.
But the Christian religion continued to spread throughout the Mediterranean region.
Galerius issued an edict permitting the practice of the Christian religion under his rule in April of 311.
In 313 Constantine I and Licinius announced toleration of Christianity in the Edict of Milan.
Constantine became the first Christian emperor.
By 391, under the reign of Theodosius I, Christianity had become the state religion of Rome.
The Emperor Constantine I had learned about Christianity of his mother, Helena.
But it is not clear if he adopted his mother 's humble Christianity in his youth, or if he adopted it later on in his life.
When Christianity was legalized the Church took the same provinces for administration as the imperial government and called them dioceses.
The Bishop of Rome claimed to be the highest amongst all others and chose the title pope.
During this era, there were several Ecumenical Councils.
These were mostly concerned with Christological disputes.
The two Councils of Niceaea (324, 382) condemned Arianism and produced the Nicene Creed to define the faith.
The Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorianism and affirmed the Blessed Virgin Mary to be Theotokos ("God-bearer" or "Mother of God").
Perhaps the most important council was the Council of Chalcedon that affirmed that Christ had two natures, fully God and fully man, at the same time.
That meant that Monophysitism was condemned.
The Church in the Early Middle Ages saw a "transformation of the Roman world" rather than a "fall of the Roman Empire".
With the Muslim invasions of the seventh century, the Western (Latin) and Eastern (Greek) areas of Christianity began to take on distinctive shapes, and the Bishops of Rome were more interested in barbarian kings than in the Byzantine Emperors.
This led to the coronation of Charlemagne as "Emperor of the Romans" by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas Day, 800.
The city of Rome was affected very much by warfare in Italy during the Early Middle Ages.
Emperor Justinian I tried to restore imperial dominion in Italy against the gothic aristocracy.
The following campaigns were more or less successful, and the Imperial Exarchate was established in Ravenna for Italy, but imperial influence was often limited.
Then came the invasion of the Lombards, and Rome had to take care of itself.
Thus the popes, out of necessity, found themselves feeding the city with grain from papal estates, negotiating treaties, paying protection money to Lombard warlords, and, failing that, hiring soldiers to defend the city.
Eventually, the failure of the Empire to send aid resulted in the popes turning for support from other sources, most especially the Franks.
The High Middle Ages is the period from the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 to the close of the fifteenth century, which saw the fall of Constantinople (1453), the end of the Hundred Years ' War (1453), the discovery of the New World (1492), and thereafter the Protestant Reformation (1515).
The Investiture Controversy, also known as the lay investiture controversy, was the most important conflict between secular and religious powers in medieval Europe.
It began as a dispute in the 11th century between the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII.
The question was who would control appointments of bischops (investiture).
The end of lay investiture meant an important loss of royal power, for the benefit Church reform, as the pope intended, and for ambitious noblemen as well.
Bishops collected revenues from estates attached to their bishopric.
Noblemen who held lands (fiefdoms) hereditarily passed those lands on within their family.
However, because bishops had no legitimate children, when a bishop died it was the king 's right to appoint a successor.
So, while a king had little recourse in preventing noblemen from acquiring powerful domains via inheritance and dynastic marriages, a king could keep careful control of lands under the domain of his bishops.
Kings would bestow bishoprics to members of noble families whose friendship he wished to secure.
Furthermore, if a king left a bishopric vacant, then he collected the estates ' revenues until a bishop was appointed, when in theory he was to repay the earnings.
The infrequence of this repayment was an obvious source of dispute.
The Church wanted to end this lay investiture because of the potential corruption, not only from vacant sees but also from other practices such as simony.
Thus, the Investiture Contest was part of the Church 's attempt to reform the episcopate and provide better pastoral care.
Pope Gregory VII issued the Dictatus Papae, which declared that the pope alone could appoint or depose bishops, or translate them to other sees.
Henry VI 's rejection of the decree lead to his excommunication and a ducal revolt; eventually Henry received absolution after dramatic public penance barefoot in Alpine snow and cloaked in a hairshirt (see Walk to Canossa), though the revolt and conflict of investiture continued.
Likewise, a similar controversy occurred in England between King Henry I and St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, over investiture and ecclesiastical revenues collected by the king during an episcopal vacancy.
The English dispute was resolved by the Concordat of London, 1107, where the king renounced his claim to invest bishops but continued to require an oath of fealty from them upon their election.
This was a partial model for the Concordat of Worms (Pactum Calixtinum), which resolved the Imperial investiture controversy with a compromise that allowed secular authorities some measure of control but granted the selection of bishops to their cathedral canons.
As a symbol of the compromise, lay authorities invested bishops with their secular authority symbolized by the lance, and ecclesiastical authorities invested bishops with their spiritual authority symbolized by the ring and the staff.
The Crusades were a military conflicts conducted by Christian knights for the defense of Christians and for the expansion of Christian domains.
Generally, the crusades refer to the campaigns in the Holy Land against Muslim forces sponsored by the Papacy.
There were other crusades against Islamic forces in southern Spain, southern Italy, and Sicily, as well as the campaigns of Teutonic knights against pagan strongholds in Eastern Europe, and (to a much lesser extent) crusades against Catharism or other Christian heresies.
The Holy Land had been part of the Roman Empire, and thus Byzantine Empire, until the Islamic conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries.
Thereafter, Christians had generally been permitted to visit the sacred places in the Holy Land until 1071, when the Seljuk Turks closed Christian pilgrimages and assailed the Byzantines, defeating them at the Battle of Manzikert.
Emperor Alexius I asked for aid from Pope Urban II (1088-1099) for help against Islamic aggression.
Instead of sending money, Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom in a speech made at the Council of Clermont on 27 November 1095, combining the idea of pilgrimage to the Holy Land with that of waging a holy war against infidels.
The East-West Schism, or Great Schism, separated the Church into Western (Latin) and Eastern (Greek) branches, i.e. Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
It was the first major division since certain groups in the East rejected the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon (see Oriental Orthodoxy), and was far more significant.
Though normally dated to 1054, the East-West Schism was actually the result of an extended period of estrangement between Latin and Greek Christendom over the nature of papal primacy and certain doctrinal matters like the filioque, but intensified by cultural and linguistic differences.
The "official" schism in 1054 was the excommunication of Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople, followed by his excommunication of papal legates.
Attempts at reconciliation were made in 1274 (by the Second Council of Lyon) and in 1439 (by the Council of Basel), but in each case the eastern hierarchs who consented to the unions were repudiated by the Orthodox as a whole, though reconciliation was achieved between the West and what are now called the "Eastern Rite Catholic Churches".
More recently, in 1965 the mutual excommunications were rescinded by the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople, though schism remains.
Both groups are descended from the Early Church, both acknowledge the apostolic succession of each other 's bishops, and the validity of each other 's sacraments.
Though both acknowledge the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy understands this as a primacy of honor with limited or no ecclesiastical authority in other dioceses.
The Western Schism, or Papal Schism, was a prolonged period of crisis in Latin Christendom from 1378 to 1416, when there were two or more claimants to the See of Rome and thus it was difficult to discern who the true Pope was.
The conflict was political, rather than doctrinal, in nature.
The Renaissance was a period of great cultural change and achievement, marked in Italy by a classical orientation and an increase of wealth through mercantile trade.
The City of Rome, the Papacy, and the Papal States were all affected by the Renaissance.
On the one hand, it was a time of great artistic patronage and architectural magnificence, where the Church patroned such artists as Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Bramante, Raphael, Fra Angelico, Donatello, and da Vinci.
On the other hand, wealthy Italian families often secured episcopal offices, including the papacy, for their own members, some of whom were known for immorality, such as Alexander VI and Sixtus IV.
In the early 16th century, movements were begun by two theologians, Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, that aimed to reform the Church; these reformers are distinguished from previous ones in that they considered the root of corruptions to be doctrinal (rather than simply a matter of moral weakness or lack of ecclesiastical discipline) and thus they aimed to change contemporary doctrines to accord with what they perceived to be the "true gospel".
The Protestant Reformation is so called because the movement 's leaders "protested" against the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the pope, essentially electing to institute their reforms separately from it.
The term "Protestant", however, was not originally used by these leaders; instead, they called themselves "evangelical", emphasizing the "return to the true gospel (Greek: euangelion)".
The beginning of the Protestant Reformation is generally identified with Martin Luther and the posting of the 95 Theses on the castle church in Wittenburg, Germany.
Early protest was against corruptions such as simony, episcopal vacancies, and the sale of indulgences.
The Protestant position, however, would come to incorporate doctrinal changes such as sola scriptura and sola fide.
The three most important traditions to emerge directly from the Protestant Reformation were the Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist, Presbyterian, etc.), and Anglican traditions, though the latter group identifies as both "Reformed" and "Catholic", and some subgroups reject the classification as "Protestant".
The Protestant Reformation may be divided into two distinct but basically simultaneous movements, the Magisterial Reformation and the Radical Reformation.
The Magisterial Reformation involved the alliance of certain theological teachers (Latin: magistri) such as Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, Cranmer, etc. with secular magistrates who cooperated in the reformation of Christendom.
Radical Reformers, besides forming communities outside state sanction, often employed more extreme doctrinal change, such as the rejection of tenants of the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon.
Often the division between magisterial and radical reformers was as or more violent than the general Catholic and Protestant hostilities.
The Protestant Reformation spread almost entirely within the confines of Northern Europe, but did not take hold in certain northern areas such as Ireland and parts of Germany.
By far the magisterial reformers were more successful and their changes more widespread than the radical reformers.
The Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation is known as the Counter Reformation, or Catholic Reformation, which resulted in a reassertion of traditional doctrines and the emergence of new religious orders aimed at both moral reform and new missionary activity.
The Counter Reformation reconvered approximately 33 % of Northern Europe to Catholicism and initiated missions in South and Central America, Africa, Asia, and even China and Japan.
Protestant expansion outside of Europe occurred on a smaller scale through colonization of North America and areas of Africa.
Martin Luther was an Augustinian friar and professor at the University of Wittenberg.
In 1517, he published a list of 95 Theses, or points to be debated, concerning the illicitness of selling indulgences.
Luther had a particular disdain for Aristotelian philosophy, and as he began developing his own theology, he increasingly came into conflict with Thomistic scholars, most notably Cardinal Cajetan.
Soon, Luther had begun to develop his theology of justification, or process by which one is "made right" (righteous) in the eyes of God.
In Catholic theology, one is made righteous by a progressive infusion of grace accepted through faith and cooperated with through good works.
Luther 's doctrine of justification differed from Catholic theology in that justification rather meant "the declaring of one to be righteous", where God imputes the merits of Christ upon one who remains without inherent merit.
In this process, good works are more of an unessential byproduct that contribute nothing to one 's own state of righteousness.
Conflict between Luther and leading theologians lead to his gradual rejection of authority of the Church hierarchy.
In 1520, he was condemned for heresy by the papal bull Exsurge Domine, which he burned at Wittenburg along with books of canon law.
John Calvin was a French cleric and doctor of law turned Protestant reformer.
He belonged to the second generation of the Reformation, publishing his theological tome, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, in 1536 (later revised), and establishing himself as a leader of the Reformed church in Geneva, which became an "unofficial capital" of Reformed Christianity in the second half of the sixteenth century.
He exerted a remarkable amount of authority in the city and over the city council, such that he has (rather ignominiously) been called a "Protestant pope".
Calvin established an eldership together with a "consistory", where pastors and the elders established matters of religious discipline for the Genevan population.
Calvin 's theology is best known for his doctrine of (double) predestination, which held that God had, from all eternity, providentially foreordained who would be saved (the elect) and likewise who would be damned (the reprobate).
Predestination was not the dominant idea in Calvin 's works, but it would seemingly become so for many of his Reformed successors.
Unlike other reform movements, the English Reformation began by royal influence.
Henry VIII considered himself a thoroughly Catholic King, and in 1521 he defended the papacy against Luther in a book he commissioned entitled, The Defense of the Seven Sacraments, for which Pope Leo X awarded him the title Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith).
However, the king came into conflict with the papacy when he wished to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, for which he needed papal sanction.
Catherine, among many other noble relations, was the aunt of Emperor Charles V, the papacy 's most significant secular supporter.
The ensuing dispute eventually lead to a break from Rome and the declaration of the King of England as head of the English (Anglican) Church.
England then experienced a period of frenetic and eclectic reforms, some more radical and others more traditional, under monarchs such as Edward VI and Elizabeth I, and Archbishops of Canterbury such as Thomas Cranmer and William Laud.
What emerged was a state church that considered itself both "Reformed" and "Catholic" but not "Roman" (and hesitated from the title "Protestant"), and other "unofficial" more radical movements such as the Puritans.
The Counter-Reformation, or Catholic Reformation, was the response of the Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation.
The essence of the Counter-Reformation was a renewed conviction in traditional practices and the upholding of Catholic doctrine as the source of ecclesiastic and moral reform, and the answer to halting the spread of Protestantism.
Thus it experienced the founding of new religious orders, such as the Jesuits, the establishment of seminaries for the proper training of priests, renewed worldwide missionary activity, and the development of new yet orthodox forms of spirituality, such as that of the Spanish mystics and the French school of spirituality.
The entire process was spearheaded by the Council of Trent, which clarified and reasserted doctrine, issued dogmatic definitions, and produced the Roman Catechism.
Though Ireland, Spain, France, and elsewhere featured significantly in the Counter-Reformation, its heart was Italy and the various popes of the time, who established the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (the list of prohibited books) and the Roman Inquisition, a system of juridical tribunals that prosecuted heresy and related offences.
The Papacy of St. Pius V (1566-1572) was known not only for its focus on halting heresy and worldly abuses within the Church, but also for its focus on improving popular piety in a determined effort to stem the appeal of Protestantism.
Pius began his pontificate by giving large alms to the poor, charity, and hospitals, and the pontiff was known for consoling the poor and sick, and supporting missionaries.
The activities of these pontiffs coincided with a rediscovery of the ancient Christian catacombs in Rome.
As Diarmaid MacCulloch stated, "Just as these ancient martyrs were revealed once more, Catholics were beginning to be martyred afresh, both in mission fields overseas and in the struggle to win back Protestant northern Europe: the catacombs proved to be an inspiration for many to action and to heroism."
The First Great Awakening was a wave of religious enthusiasm among Protestants in the American colonies c. 1730-1740, emphasizing the traditional Reformed virtues of Godly preaching, rudimentary liturgy, and a deep sense of personal guilt and redemption by Christ Jesus.
Historian Sydney E. Ahlstrom saw it as part of a "great international Protestant upheaval" that also created Pietism in Germany, the Evangelical Revival, and Methodism in England.
It centered on reviving the spirituality of established congregations, and mostly affected Congregational, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, German Reformed, Baptist, and Methodist churches, while also spreading within the slave population.
The Second Great Awakening (1800 1830s), unlike the first, focused on the unchurched and sought to instill in them a deep sense of personal salvation as experienced in revival meetings.
It also sparked the beginnings of Restorationist groups such as the Mormons and the Holiness movement.
The Third Great Awakening began from 1857 and was most notable for taking the movement throughout the world, especially in English speaking countries.
The final group to emerge from the "great awakenings" in North America was Pentecostalism, which had its roots in the Methodist, Wesleyan, and Holiness movements, and began in 1906 on Azusa Street, in Los Angeles.
Pentecostalism would later lead to the Charismatic movement.
Restorationism refers to various unaffiliated movements that considered contemporary Christianity, in all its forms, to be a deviation from the true, original Christianity, which these groups then attempted to "Reconstruct", often using the Book of Acts as a "guidebook" or sorts.
Restorationism developed out of the Second Great Awakening and is historically connected to the Protestant Reformation, but differs in that Restorationists do not usually describe themselves as "reforming" a Christian church continuously existing from the time of Jesus, but as restoring the Church that they believe was lost at some point.
The name Restoration is also used to describe the Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and the Jehovah 's Witness Movement.
Fascism describes certain related political regimes in 20th century Europe, especially the Nazi Germany of Hitler.
In his encyclical Non Abbiamo Bisogno, Pope Pius XI declared that Fascist governments had hidden "pagan intentions" and expressed the irreconcilability of the Catholic position and Fascism, which placed the nation above God and fundamental human rights and dignity.
Many Catholic priests and monastics were persecuted under the Nazi regime, most notable the concentration camp victims Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein (Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross).
Furthermore, many Catholic laypeople and clergy played notable roles in sheltering Jews during the Holocaust, including Pope Pius XII.
Various incidents, such as giving aid to downed Allied airmen, nearly caused Nazi Germany to invade the Vatican before the liberation of Rome in 1944.
The relationship between Nazism and Protestantism, especially the German Lutheran Church, is complex.
Though the majority of Protestant church leaders in Germany made little comment on the Nazis ' growing anti-Jewish activities, some, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a Lutheran pastor) were strongly opposed to the Nazis.
Bonhoeffer was later found guilty in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and executed.
Fundamentalist Christianity, is a movement that arose mainly within British and American Protestantism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in reaction to modernism and certain liberal Protestant groups that denied doctrines considered fundamental to Christianity yet still called themselves "Christian".
Thus, fundamentalism sought to reestablish tenants that could not be denied without relinquishing a Christian identity, the "fundamentals": the Bible as God ` s word, viewed as the sole source of authority, the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine of atonement through Jesus, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the imminent return of Christ.
Ecumenism broadly refers to movements between Christian groups to establish a degree of unity through dialogue.
"Ecumenism" is derived from Greek ' (oikoumene), which means "the inhabited world", but more figuratively something like "universal oneness".
The movement can be distinguished into Catholic and Protestant movements, with the latter characterized by a redefined ecclesiology of "denominationalism" (which the Catholic Church, among others, rejects).
Concerning the Greek Orthodox Church, steady movement was made to reconcile the East-West Schism.
On 30 November 1894, Pope Leo XIII publishes the Apostolic Letter Orientalium Dignitas (On the Churches of the East) safeguarding the importance and continuance of the Eastern traditions for the whole Church.
On 7 December 1965, a Joint Catholic-Orthodox Declaration of His Holiness Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I was issued lifting the mutual excommunications of 1054.
Concerning Catholic relations with Protestant communities, certain commissions were established to foster dialogue and documents have been produced aimed at identifying points of doctrinal unity, such as the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification produced with the Lutheran World Federation in 1999.
Ecumenical movements within Protestantism have focused on determining a list of doctrines and practices essential to being Christian and thus extending to all groups which fulfill these basic criteria a (more or less) equal status, with perhaps one 's own group still retaining a "first among equal" standing.
This process involved a redefinition of the idea of "the Church" from traditional theology.
This ecclesiology, known as denominationalism, contends that each group (which fulfills the essential criteria of "being Christian") is a sub-group of a greater "Christian Church", itself a purely abstract concept with no direct representation, i.e. no group, or "denomination", claims to be "the Church".
Obviously, this ecclesiology it at variance with other groups that indeed consider themselves to be "the Church".
But moreover, because the "essential criteria" generally consist of belief in the holy Trinity, it has resulted in strife between these Protestant ecumenical movements and non-Trinitarian groups such as Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and Jehovah 's Witnesses, which are not often not regarded as Christian by these ecumenical groups.
The hertz (symbol: Hz) is a unit derived from time which measures frequency.
Frequency is how often something happens.
A frequency of 1 hertz means that something happens once a second.
The note Middle C (the C in the middle of the piano) is 262 Hz.
This means there are 262 vibrations every second, which is heard as the note Middle C, when that piano key is played.
Humans are able to hear sounds between 20-20 000 Hz.
Owls are able to hear sounds between 200-12000 Hz.
The unit is named after Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.
1000 hertz is 1 kilohertz.
1000 kilohertz is 1 megahertz, 1000 megahertz is 1 gigahertz: (see table)
H r (also written Hodhr, Hothr, Hothur, Hoder, Hodur, Hodor, Hodr) is the blind twin brother of Baldr and a son of Odin and Frigg in Norse mythology.
He is depicted as having his eyes closed or covering them completely.
H r is associated as the god of winter and the cold as well as being the god of darkness unlike his brother Baldr who is god of light.
The only source of information of him thus far is when he is seen as being manipulated and tricked by Loki, and therefore accidentally kills his brother Baldr by throwing a shaft of mistletoe and piercing him in the heart.
H r 's sworn enemy is Vali who is born to avenge his brother 's death by killing H r. It was said that after Ragnar k, H r and Baldr shall survive to rule alongside each other.
Herat (, Her t) is the third largest city of Afghanistan with about 436,300 people living in it as of 2012.436,300 as of 2012.
It is the capital of a Herat province.
It is in the west of the country, close to the border of Iran.
The spoken language in the city is called Herati Perisan or just Herati.
Herat dates back to very old times.
Avesta, the old book of Zoroastrianism mentions Herat as "Haroyu" and lists it as the sixth land of the sixteen perfect lands created by Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian god.
In Achaemenid times (ca.
550-330 BC), the surrounding district was known as "Haraiva" (in Old Persian).
Ancient Greeks called it "Aria" and "Artacoana" was the capital of Aria.
Alexander the Great took Artacoana in 330 BC and destroyed it.
He later built another city near Artacoana and named it "Alexandria in Ariana", today 's city of Herat.
After him Parthians and Sassanians took over.
Sassanians called the city Har v.
Arabs took Herat in 660 AD, and it became a center of the Muslim world.
Herat has a long history as a center for sufism, the mystical branch of Islam.
It became part of the area then known as Khurasan, which reached its peak of civilization in the twelfth century.
In 1221 AD, it was taken by the Mongols and later destroyed by Genghis Khan and Timur, the Turkic conqueror, took it in about 1393 AD.
Herat s greatest era was during the Timurid rule, when it was a center of science and culture.
As the capital of the Timurid empire, it boasted many fine religious buildings and was famous for its sumptuous court life and musical performance and its tradition of miniature paintings.
Later Persians and Afghans fought over the control of the city and Herat changed hands several times before it (under British interference) permanently became part of Afghanistan in 1857 under the Treaty of Paris.
In March 1979, an anti-Communist uprising in Herat, left 25,000 civilian deaths.
Between 1978 and 1992, communist forces in Herat city fought resistance forces holding the countryside.
In 1995 the area came under the control of Pashtuns of the Taliban movement.
After the United States ' invasion of Afghanistan, on November 12, 2001, it was liberated from the Taliban by the Northern Alliance.
These days, unlike other places in Afghanistan, Herat is safer.
Hydroponics or Hydroculture is the method of growing plants in the nutrients that they need instead of soil.
The plant foods are simply put into water instead and it makes a solution for the plants to live in.
Vegetables, flowers and herbs can all be grown in water.
It is quite an old idea.
The earliest published work on growing terrestrial plants without soil was the 1627 book Sylva Sylvarum by Francis Bacon, printed a year after his death.
Water culture became a popular research technique after that.
In 1929, William Frederick Gericke of the University of California at Berkeley began publicly promoting that solution culture be used for agricultural crop production.
There are many ways to grow plants in this way.
Here are some examples.
This puts or floats the plants in water containing nutrients into a container.
The water is renewed by a control system to prevent the plants ' roots from becoming dry.
The water does not flow through the container but remains static.
Because the water is still algae often grows, using nutrients and covering the plants roots so that they are not able to take in the nutrients so well.
Algae growth can be reduced by using some method to prevent light from reaching the roots, for example, black plastic, or aluminium foils.
The static solution has to be changed every week or two to ensure it has the correct amount of nutrients.
This is growing plants in a stream of continuously running water.
The plants can be placed in a shallow container and the water containing the nutrients runs through the roots.
This can be carried out in several different ways, either passing the water over the bare roots inside a tube or hollow container or passing the water through a mat of fiber into which the roots have grown or variations between the two.
One of the main advantages of this system is that the nutrient water can be kept in a storage container and if any changes need to be made to the nutrient it is easy to do this to the storage container.
The system usually runs be gravity, the storage container is placed in a higher position than the plants and the water trickles downwards until it has passed though the roots of the plants and into a lower storage container where it is pumped back up to the higher container.
The advantage of this method is that it uses the nutrients efficiently, it allows oxygen to reach the roots (important for healthy growth) and the water can be adjusted very easily.
The main disadvantages are that if any fault occurs with the circulation system the plants have little water to live on until the fault is corrected and the flow channels must be regular in their slope, if they are not then water can remain in the non-sloping areas and this can cause problems.
This system does not use electricity to circulate the water containing nutrients.
The system has a large container positioned higher than the plants and the water runs down through and to the plants in a controlled way.
This system is used with plants that are grown in pots with the water being delivered to the base of the pot and capillary action drawing the water up into the pot.
This uses a system where the roots of the plants are contained in a chamber which is sprayed continuously or discontinuously with a fine mist of water containing nutrients.
The roots of the plant hang in the air and the advantage of this system is that the roots have good access to oxygen.
This system was invented in 1983 by Richard Spooner and has become a successful way of growing a wide range of crops including seed potato production, tomato production, leaf crops, and small salad leaves.
Other advantages of aeroponics are that a much wider range of plants can be grown with this system, (some plants do not like to have their roots in water continuously) plants grow with only one quarter of the nutrients needed in normal hydroponics and NASA has an interest in this system because managing a spray is easier than handling liquids in zero gravity.
Finally, plants grown by this method can be transferred to soil or another growing medium without suffering from a slowing of growth while they adjust to the new conditions.
The main disadvantage is that this system is more costly to build and maintain than the normal hydroponic systems.
This method is also known as passive hydroponics or semi-hydroponics.
This system has the plants growing in a porous material like special clay granules, vermiculite, fiber glass, coconut husk, perlite or a similar substance that holds water, has lots of air spaces but does not act directly on the plants roots.
The water is run through the material to keep it wet and the material keeps the plants roots separated to allow a good contact with the air to help the plant use oxygen and carbon dioxide.
this method is easy to set up and control and is suitable for a number of plants like orchids or bromeliads that in nature grow with their roots in warm damp air.
This method is also known as "Flood and Drain".
It uses a method that has a large container of water with nutrients positioned below the level of the plants being grown and at intervals the water is pumped or manually lifted to irrigate the plants and then drain back into the container.
This is a simple method to build and can be easily controlled with an automatic mechanism.
This is a method where plants are grown on a material that holds some water but has many air spaces, such as vermiculite, perlite, fibreglass or coarse sand.
The water with nutrients is controlled by a timer and the amount of irrigation will depend on several factors such as temperature, the size of the plants, the type of material the plants are growing in and other more technical things.
The water runs to a collecting container after irrigating the plants and may be used again or discarded.
This system is used very widely for growing commercial crops of vegetables such as tomatoes and cucumbers.
This involves the growing of plants hanging in water with nutrients.
The plants are held in nets with their roots in the water.
The nets may or may not contain a material to separate the roots.
The water has air pumped through it to increase the oxygen in the water which assists the roots to grow.
This is a method which is used together with the above method of Deep Water Culture.
In the early stages of growth the roots of the plants are irrigated with water and nutrients that are pumped through an air-stone to introduce a high level of dissolved oxygen into the water which greatly helps the young roots to grow.
It is usually used only in the early stages of growth when the plants are forming roots clumps.
Henry Purcell (born Westminster, London, 1659; died Westminster, November 21, 1695) was an English composer.
Most musicians think he is the greatest English composer of all times.
Although he only lived until he was 36 he wrote a very large amount of music.
His compositions include church music, instrumental music, music for the theater, even popular drinking songs.
He wrote the first English opera.
He lived in the time called the Baroque period.
He liked Italian and French music, and combined those styles to make something that was typically English.
We do not know very much about Purcell s childhood.
In 1664 his father died and Henry went to live with his uncle, Thomas Purcell, who was very kind to him.
Thomas Purcell was a gentleman of the Chapel Royal which meant that he sang in the king s choir.
Soon Henry was singing in the Chapel Royal.
This was the best musical training a boy could have in England.
His teachers were Captain Henry Cooke, and then Pelham Humfrey.
Henry sang in the choir until his voice broke in 1673.
He was then given the job of looking after the king s musical instruments.
Purcell may have been composing already when he was nine.
We know that he wrote an ode for the King 's birthday in 1670.
When Humfrey died Purcell studied with the famous composer John Blow.
He went to Westminster School.
In 1676 he was made organist at Westminster Abbey.
He started writing music for the theater.
He also wrote church music, including an anthem for a singer called John Gostling who had a very good, deep bass voice.
Purcell wrote several anthems for him during his life.
One is called "They that go down to the sea in ships".
It goes down to a low D.
In 1680, Blow, who had been made organist of Westminster Abbey in 1669, resigned so that the 22-years-old Purcell could have his job.
Purcell then spent the next six years just writing sacred (religious) music.
Later he went back to writing music for the theater, including the first English opera Dido and Aeneas.
In 1682 Purcell became organist of the Chapel Royal.
He did this job as well as being organist at Westminster Abbey.
His first printed composition, Twelve Sonatas, was published in 1683.
Music printing was expensive in those days, so it was unusual to have something printed.
He continued to write music including odes to the king and royal family.
In 1685, he wrote two of his finest anthems, "I was glad" and "My heart is inditing", for the coronation of King James II.
In 1687 he wrote more theater music.
Sometimes this music was for masques (a kind of ballet with some singing as well), sometimes it was music for tragedies, e.g. plays by Dryden.
In 1691, he wrote King Arthur, also written by Dryden.
In 1692, he composed songs and music for The Fairy-Queen (an adaptation of Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night 's Dream).
Purcell s music for this was lost for many years, and was rediscovered and published in 1901.
In these works the characters in the plays do not sing, they speak their lines.
Purcell 's Te Deum and Jubilate was written for Saint Cecilia 's Day, 1693, the first English Te Deum ever composed with orchestral accompaniment.
He composed an anthem and two elegies for Queen Mary II 's funeral.
He was very famous when he died in 1695, possibly from tuberculosis.
His wife and two of his six children survived him.
Purcell is buried next to the organ in Westminster Abbey.
His epitaph reads, "Here lyes Henry Purcell Esq., who left this life and is gone to that blessed place where only his harmony can be exceeded."
Purcell wrote a lot of music for the theater.
He was born one year before the time known in England as the Restoration.
Before the Restoration Oliver Cromwell had been ruling England for nearly 20 years.
Most music had been banned.
People were therefore very glad to be able to make music again, and they wanted lots of songs and instrumental music in their plays.
Opera, however, was not wanted.
In Europe opera was very popular in countries such as Italy, Germany and France, but it did not become popular in England until Handel came to England in 1709 and introduced Italian opera.
Dido and Aeneas is an exception because it is a real opera: everything is sung, and the words are in English.
It was written for a performance at a girls school.
It is quite short, lasting just one hour.
It contains the famous lament When I am laid in earth sung by Dido.
Purcell wrote a very large amount of music for the church.
This includes anthems and service settings.
Although he was an organist he wrote very little for organ.
He wrote chamber music, including some very beautiful fantasias for viols.
Although Purcell was recognized as a great composer at the time he did not have much influence on other composers after his death.
He was the last in a line of great English musicians in the 16th and 17th centuries.
After his death English music was not as important as it had been.
In the 18th century the music heard in England was largely imported from the continent, e.g. Italian opera.
Much later, in the 20th century, English composers were often inspired by Purcell s music.
Benjamin Britten wrote a piece called The Young Person 's Guide to the Orchestra which is based on a tune from Purcell 's Abdelazar.
The aria "I know a bank" from Britten 's opera A Midsummer Night 's Dream is inspired by Purcell 's aria "Sweeter than Roses".
Sir Michael Tippett loved Purcell s harmonies and rhythms and they influenced him in his compositions.
Harley-Davidson, or H-D for short, is an American motorcycle maker that started making motorcycles in Milwaukee in 1903.
The company makes heavyweight motorcycles that are designed for cruising on the highway; they 're called Harleys.
Harley-Davidson is one of two big U.S. companies that made motorcycles that was still in business after the Great Depression; the other closed down in 1953.
Harleys have a special look and sound.
Most new Harleys, except the V-Rods, are made to look like old Harleys.
Harley-Davidson made small motorcycles in the US and in Italy, but they did n't sell well enough.
They stopped making small motorcycles in the US in 1966 and in Italy in 1978.
Harley-Davidson and their motorcycles have many fans.
The fans can join clubs and go to events or to Harley-Davidson 's museum.
Apart from selling motorcycles, Harley-Davidson also charges fees for companies to put Harley-Davidson 's logos on the things they make.
Less than one-hundredth of the money Harley-Davidson made in 2010 came from these fees.
William S. Harley, Arthur Davidson, William A. Davidson and Walter Davidson, Sr. were inducted into the Labor Hall of Honor.
They were given the award for their good work for the H-D company and its workforce.
Harmonic analysis is a branch of mathematics that looks at the theoretical foundations of digital signal processing.
A continuous signal can be drawn as a wave, or as a combination of several waves.
Fourier transforms and Fourier series are among the main tools used for signal analysis.
Today, this field has many uses, which also include quantum mechanics and neuroscience.
In essence, harmonic analysis looks at locally compact groups.
The Lebesgue measure is a way to assign a measurement to a subset of the Euclidean space.
For real numbers there is the Haar measure, which can perform this task.
This measure allows to use Fourier analysis to model the groups and their properties.
The term harmonics is also related to Eigenvalues, in the case where the frequency of one wave is an integer multiple of the frequency of another wave.
This is the case of the harmonics that are used for musical notes.
Later the term was generalized.
A home run is a term in baseball for when the batter hits the ball and touches all the bases without an error being made by the team on defense.
The most common way for a batter to hit a home run is to hit the ball over the outfield fence in fair territory.
If the ball goes over the outfield fence but it is ruled a "foul ball", it does not count as a home run.
Another way for a batter to hit a home run is to hit what is called an "inside-the-park" home run.
If the batter touches all four bases after he hits the ball and it stays on the field, he scores a home run.
This is an inside-the-park home run as long as no error is committed by the fielding team on the play.
Harappa is an archaeological site in Punjab, northeast Pakistan.
It is about 35 km (22 miles) southwest of Sahiwal.
A village with the same name is located about 6 kilometres from the site.
About 15,000 people live there.
In 2005, an amusement park scheme was abandoned during the early stages of building work.
The site contains the ruins of a city from the Bronze Age.
The people living in Harappa were part of the Indus Valley Civilization.
The Hebrides are two archipelagos off the west coast of Scotland.
They are:
Hexameter is a metrical line of verse.
It is usually made of six parts, called feet.
It is the standard verse form used in Ancient Greek and Latin literature.
The Iliad and Aeneid use it, and so do Ovid 's Metamorphoses.
The meter consists of lines made from six ("hex") feet.
In strict dactylic hexameter, each of these feet would be a dactyl, but classical meter allows for the substitution of a spondee (two long syllables) in place of a dactyl in most positions.
Specifically, the first four feet can either be dactyls or spondees more or less freely.
The fifth foot is frequently a dactyl (around 95 % of the time in Homer).
Because of the strong pause at the end of the line, it is traditionally regarded as a spondee.
Thus the dactylic line most normally looks as follows:
As in all classical verse forms, the last syllable can actually be short or long.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a type of virus called a retrovirus, which infects the human immune system (the system in the body which is in charge of fighting off illness).
HIV may cause AIDS (a collection of diseases and symptoms) by eventually killing the white blood cells, which a healthy body uses to fight off disease.
It is possible that a person can get infected with HIV if any body liquid with the virus gets into their body.
The body liquids that carry HIV are blood, semen, liquid from the vagina, and breast milk.
The liquids can go into the body through injured skin.
The liquids can also enter through the mouth, eyes, nose, vagina, anus, or penis.
However, though HIV might enter the body through any of these places, when people get HIV by having sex, the virus usually enters the body through the vagina or anus.
A person can not get infected with HIV from non-sexual touching, like a hug or handshake, or touching someone else 's saliva.
A person can not get HIV from an insect bite, a cough, or a sneeze.
People also can not get HIV from touching light switches, using toilets, or drinking from the same glass as a person with HIV.
a Other studies found insufficient evidence that male circumcision protects against HIV infection among men who have sex with men b Oral trauma, sores, inflammation, concomitant sexually transmitted infections, ejaculation in the mouth, and systemic immune suppression may increase HIV transmission rate.
"best-guess estimate" Pooled transmission probability estimate.
Bracketed values represent 95 % confidence interval.
HIV causes a person to become more prone to illness, so infected people need treatment options.
However, there is no cure for HIV.
To help ease negative symptoms, drugs called anti-retroviral therapy (ART) are available.
This treatment is also called high active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART).
HAART treatment begins with one non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) and two nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs).
The NRTI drug could be named zidovudine (AZT), tenofovir (TDF), andlamivudine (3TC), or emtricitabine (FTC).
These drugs slow the progression of the HIV virus in the body.
Usually, these treatments consist of a combination of three or more drugs, and each drug performs a different job in fighting the virus.
In general, HAART prevents the HIV from multiplying and destroying CD4 cells.
CD4 cells are necessary to help protect the body from infections and cancer.
Since the HIV virus destroys CD4 cells, it causes people with HIV to be more prone to illness.
It is recommended to start HAART if a person has HIV and has a CD4 cell count of less than or equal to 350 cells\/mm3.
This number can be determined by a doctor.
A person s age, sex, and other infections determine which treatment he or she should take.
These medication regimens can help HIV-infected people live longer, healthier lives, and can also help prevent the HIV from advancing to AIDS.
There has been controversy surrounding when the correct time to start therapy should be after a person discovers that he or she has HIV.
Recently, the answer has been that earlier treatment is recommended.
This is because, first, effective therapy can prevent non-AIDS-related deaths.
Second, therapy can prevent harm to a person s immune system.
Third, therapy can help prevent transmission of HIV to others, and can therefore reduce HIV prevalence overall.
Although there are some negative side effects of antiretroviral medications, the benefits of therapy usually outweigh the negative effects.
Patients on HAART have reported significant improvements in physical health, emotional health, mental health, and daily function compared to HIV-positive patients not yet on treatment.
Most research has occurred in developing countries, and little research has been done on the impacts of ART on household wellbeing.
Although HAART can be an effective means to treating HIV, there can be many negative side effects.
Negative side effects can vary by drug, by ethnicity, and by drug interactions in the body.
The following list contains the most common and serious negative side effects associated with HAART medications to treat HIV.
Many people living with HIV have tried using alternative treatment methods, known as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
Some types of CAM include stress management, natural health products, massage\/therapeutic touch, acupuncture, and homeopathy.
Stress management can increase quality of life for a person with HIV.
Even with little evidence of its effectiveness, many people chose to try CAM because of the many negative side effects associated with HAART and the few negative side effects associated with CAM.
Some HIV-infected people also try herbal medicines to treat HIV, but there has been no evidence showing any positive outcomes with the use of herbal remedies.
Another type of alternative therapy for treating HIV is micronutrient supplementation.
Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals, so these supplements would be in the form of a general daily multivitamin.
These supplements have been proven to help treat HIV because HIV can cause micronutrient deficiencies, so the supplements can help replenish these needed vitamins and minerals.
Although the supplements may not help ease all negative symptoms, they offer some benefits and are safe for HIV-infected patients.
Supplements are also safe for HIV-infected pregnant women and their children.
Specifically, vitamin A and zinc have shown positive health effects.
There are no major negative side effects of vitamin and mineral supplements.
Alternative therapies can help to reduce symptoms of diseases like HIV, but do not cure the disease, or stop the disease from spreading to other people.
Henry I of England (c. 1068 C.E. - 1 December 1135 C.E.), also called Henry Beauclerc (meaning good scholar), was the King of England.
He ruled from, 1100 until his death in 1135.
Henry was born in Selby, Yorkshire.
He was the fourth son of William the Conqueror and Queen Matilda of Flanders.
Henry was the only child born in England.
His mother had come to England for her coronation in 1068.
Henry was educated in Latin and the liberal arts.
His parents probably raised him to go into the Church when he was old enough.
On William 's death in 1087, Henry 's two older brothers were each left half of their father 's kingdom.
Robert Curthose became Duke of Normandy.
William Rufus became king of England.
But Henry, still a minor, was left with no inheritance.
Henry purchased the County of Cotentin in western Normandy from Robert.
But Robert and William Rufus forced him out in 1091.
Henry gradually rebuilt his power base in the Cotentin.
He then allied himself with William against Robert.
Henry was present when William died in a hunting accident in 1100.
Robert was away on Crusade.
Henry, who was present when William was killed, rushed to seize the English throne for himself.
As King, Henry tried to make social reforms.
He issued the Charter of Liberties which is considered a predecessor of the Magna Carta.
He put back in place some of the laws of Edward the Confessor.
Henry and his wife had two children, Matilda and William Adelin.
William died in the White Ship sinking on November 25, 1120.
Henry also fathered more illegitimate children than any other English King.
Estimates by various historians place the number between 20 and 25.
Henry died in 1135.
He was visiting his daughter and grandchildren in Normandy.
After his death, his daughter Mathilda and his nephew, Stephen, argued over who would become the ruler of England, and started a civil war called The Anarchy.
Hentai is a Japanese word that literally means "strange appearance", but also means "perverted".
Hentai, because of this, is a word used by countries outside of Japan to show porn and sex-related anime, manga and video games.
The word is not used to mean this in Japan.
In Japan, terms such as ecchi are used.
The word hentai is sometimes used to apply to cartoon characters that are not anime characters.
Hentai is the anime version of porn.
There is on screen sex, often very graphic and very imaginative.
Since hentai is anime, the performers are not bound by physical laws.
Makers of hentai often use this in very creative ways.
Some of the acts performed in hentai would be physically impossible.
Some of the performers are often impossible themselves.
Fairies, monsters, and even new and strange creatures are stars of hentai.
Monsters and demons with tentacles are seen so often that tentacle porn is its own sub-category of hentai.
Most of the hentai (anime) - films in the late 1990s to the present day are based on Ero-Games, where the only actual goal is to date the girls in the game and have sex with one of them.
The games feature various character-types, like a bookworm, a tough girl, a younger girl, and a tomboy.
Ero-games can include highly taboo themes, such as (coprophillia or dismemberment and pedophilia) and sometimes less taboo subjects, such as (incest, rape).
Some examples of these kind of game-to-hentai-anime conversions are Immoral Sisters, Isaku, Pia Carrot, Five Card, Bible Black, Words Worth, Night Shift Nurses, and Milk Junkies.
Henry the VII or Henry Tudor (28 January 1457 21 April 1509) was king of England from 1485 to 1509.
He founded the Tudor dynasty.
Henry VII was born in 1457 to Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort.
His father died two months before he was born, leaving his 13-year-old mother as his only parent.
After Henry 's birth, he spent a lot of time with his uncle Jasper Tudor.
Jasper took Henry to France, where he spent most of his youth.
Henry had a claim to the throne of England, but it was not a very good one, and he had to wait a long time for a chance to take the throne.
In 1483, a new king came to the throne in England, called Richard III.
King Richard was not popular with everyone, because it was thought that he had stolen the throne from his young nephews and had killed them.
This gave Henry the chance he had been waiting for.
With help from the French, he raised an army.
They landed at Dale in Pembrokeshire, close to where Henry had been born, so he was able to gather more supporters on the way.
The Wars of the Roses (1455 - 1485) had been going on for years.
They were fought over the throne of England between supporters of the House of Lancaster and supporters of the House of York.
Both houses were branches of the Plantagenet royal house, tracing their descent from King Edward III.
The main reason for the war was that King Edward III had many sons.
His oldest son, who is known as Edward, the Black Prince, died first, and the throne passed to the Black Prince 's son, Richard, who became King Richard II of England in 1377 at the age of only ten.
He grew up to be a weak and unpopular king, and one of his actions was to send his cousin Henry into exile.
Henry later returned, while Richard was away in Ireland, and took over the country.
When Richard returned, Henry tricked him into giving himself up.
Richard was put in prison, where he died, and Henry became King Henry IV of England.
Although Henry IV reigned until his death, and was followed by his son, King Henry V, the next king in line, King Henry VI was only a baby.
While he was still growing up, the most powerful men in the kingdom started quarrelling over how to run the country, and some of them raised an army to try to take the throne.
Henry VI and his family fought back, and the war between his supporters and their enemies lasted for many years, finally coming to an end when King Henry VII of England came to the throne in 1485
On 22 August 1485, Henry 's army defeated Richard III 's army at the Battle of Bosworth Field.
When Richard III died in this battle, Henry VII became king.
There were other people who had a claim on the throne, and Henry did his best to stop them from taking it from him, either by executing them, putting them in prison, or trying to make friends of them, as he did with the Earl of Lincoln.
Another step he took was to marry Elizabeth of York, the niece of King Richard III, who would herself have been the heir to the throne if she had not been a girl.
There were also people who pretended to be long-lost members of the royal family, so that they could try to take the throne.
One of these was a little boy called Lambert Simnel, who looked very like Edward, Earl of Warwick.
The real Earl of Warwick was Henry 's prisoner, but this did not stop other people from believing that Lambert was him.
The Earl of Lincoln rebelled against King Henry and raised an army to make Lambert king, thinking that he himself could rule the country.
There was a battle, and the Earl of Lincoln was killed.
Lambert Simnel was captured, but, because he was only a child, Henry spared his life and he became a royal servant.
Henry married Elizabeth of York, and by this action put an end to the Wars of the Roses.
They had six children, but only four survived infancy:
After Henry VII died in 1509, his son became king as Henry VIII.
Henry VII was buried in Westminster Abbey.
He was succeeded by his son, Henry VIII on 21 April 1509.
Henry VIII (28 June 1491 28 January 1547) was the King of England from 1509 until his death.
He is perhaps one of England 's most famous monarchs because he split from the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope and he married six times.
Henry was born at Greenwich Palace on 28 June 1491 and was the second son of Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York.
He had an elder brother, who was called Arthur, Prince of Wales, and two sisters, who were called Margaret and Mary.
Arthur should have been king after their father died, but Arthur died before his father, making Henry next in line for the throne.
Henry ended up marrying Arthur 's widow, Catherine of Aragon.
He is credited as a talented composer and author.
However, King Henry VIII was famously unpredictable and temperamental with many of his subjects executed under his orders, including two of his own wives.
His physical decline dominated his later reign and he became hugely obese.
As he lay dying in 1547, Henry 's last words are reported to have been "monks monks monks", with certain historians believing it a reference to the monks he evicted during the dissolution of the monasteries.
He died at the age of 55 in 1547, on the day which would have been his father 's King Henry VII 90th Birthday.
Henry VIII was born in Greenwich.
His father and mother, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York saw little of their children.
Henry was their second son.
He had his own servants and minstrels, and a fool named John Goose.
He even had a whipping boy who was punished for Henry when he did something wrong.
Prince Henry enjoyed music and was very good at it.
At the age of 10 he could play many instruments, including the fife, harp, viola and drums.
Henry VIII was also a scholar, linguist, musician and athlete at his early age.
He could speak fluent Latin, French and Spanish.
He had the best tutors and he also had to learn jousting, archery, hunting and other military arts.
Henry was very religious.
Henry 's older brother was called Arthur.
Arthur married a Spanish princess, Catalina de Aragon (Catherine of Aragon).
He was fifteen years old.
Prince Arthur died a few months later.
He died of tuberculosis, but some say he died of plague or sweating sickness.
After his brother died, Henry VIII bonded closely with Catalina de Aragon.
Later, they got married.
The couple had trouble getting married because in Leviticus 21, If a brother is to marry the wife of a brother they will remain childless.
That meant that Catherine had to swear that her marriage with Arthur had not been perfect.
Young Prince Henry was now the heir to the throne.
While his father was alive he was watched closely, because the King feared for the safety of his only remaining male heir.
Henry could go out only through a private door, and then he was watched by specially appointed people.
No one could speak to Henry.
He spent most of his time in his room, which could only be entered through his father s bedroom.
Henry never spoke in public, unless it was to answer a question from his father.
He kept his enthusiastic personality under control on public occasions because he feared his father 's temper.
He was given little training for his future role as King by his father, and relied heavily on his counselors in the early years of his reign.
In 1509, Henry VII died of tuberculosis as well and his son became King Henry VIII.
He was 18 when he was crowned king and Catherine was crowned queen consort.
The most important event that happened in England when Henry was the king was the country 's change in religion.
As his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had only had one daughter, and they did not have any sons to be his heirs, Henry asked the Pope to give them a divorce.
The Pope would not do this.
Catherine 's nephew was Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and he was very powerful.
Also, Catherine 's family ruled Spain, which was the largest Catholic country.
Henry then chose a new Archbishop of Canterbury, a man called Thomas Cranmer.
Henry knew that Cranmer would do what he wanted, and Cranmer agreed that Henry could have a divorce from Catherine.
The Pope was so angry that he excommunicated Henry, meaning Henry was thrown out of the church.
Henry fought back.
He switched from opposition to the Protestant Reformation and instead opposed Roman Catholicism.
In 1534, he passed the Act of Supremacy, which meant that the king, not the pope, was the head of the church in England.
This established the new Church of England.
He then forced all priests and bishops to accept him as the new leader.
Anyone who refused was punished.
Henry VIII spent a lot of time at a magnificent building named Hampton Court that belonged to his friend, Cardinal Wolsey.
He spent the equivalent of 18 million renovating the Court and building things such as tennis courts and jousting yards.
However Cardinal Wolsey failed to get an anulment for Henry when he wished to divorce Catherine of Aragon.
Many people think that this is the reason why Henry sacked Cardinal Wolsey and took Hampton Court from him.
Protestants thought that monasteries, in which Roman Catholic monks and nuns lived, had more money and land than the monks and nuns needed.
Henry forced the monks and nuns to move out of the monasteries.
Then Henry gave their money and land to men who supported him.
Most of the men who received money and land from the closed monasteries were Protestants.
This event was called the Dissolution of the monasteries.
After his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn, who was younger than Catherine and still able to have children.
When Anne, just like Catherine, only had a daughter and no sons, Henry blamed her for treason and had her beheaded by a French swordsman.
He then started looking for another wife.
Henry 's most loyal official, Thomas Cromwell, helped him to find a way to get rid of Anne, by finding people who said that she had been the lover of several other men.
Anne was put on trial and found guilty, and she was executed by having her head chopped off.
Henry 's third wife was Jane Seymour.
She soon gave birth to a son called Edward.
Although this made Henry very happy, a few days later Jane died.
Henry had loved her very much and he never got over his sadness at her death.
He lost interest in everything, and became bigger in size.
He became angry with Thomas Cromwell when Cromwell suggested that he should get married again after Jane 's death.
After a while, Henry changed his mind.
As he still only had one son, he realized that it might be a good idea to marry again, and he agreed to marry Anne of Cleves, a German princess.
When Anne arrived, Henry did not think she was as pretty as she looked in the pictures he had seen, and he was not satisfied with her.
Anne was also unhappy, and agreed to be divorced from Henry after only a few months.
In the meantime, Henry had noticed a young lady at court, called Catherine Howard, and thought that she might make a good wife.
Catherine Howard was a cousin of Henry 's second wife, Anne Boleyn.
Henry and Catherine got married in 1540, but Catherine was much younger than Henry and she soon got tired of him and started to flirt with other men.
After they had been married for just over a year, Henry found out that Catherine had been having an affair with someone else.
She was found guilty of treason and was executed, just like Anne Boleyn had been a few years before.
Henry 's sixth and last wife was called Catherine Parr.
She was a woman in her thirties who had already been married twice.
Her first two husbands had been much older than she was, and both had died.
Henry thought that she would be more sensible and faithful than his other wives, and he turned out to be right.
Catherine Parr stayed married to Henry for over three years, until he died, but they did not have any children.
In 1520, an event named; ` The Field of the Cloth of Gold ', took place in Calais which belonged to Britain rather than France at the time.
It was organised by Britain (and therefore Henry VIII) to celebrate peace between France and England because they had been at war for a long time.
Music, dancing, food, wine and culture dominated the event and millions of pounds was spent on the event (in modern day money).
It is clear that no expense was spared.
The event lasted for two and a half weeks.
Henry famously wrestled King Francis I of France and lost.
After divorcing Catherine of Aragon, Henry began to suffer many different ailments, he never again regained health.
He died on 28 January 1547 and was buried in Windsor Castle.
Henry was the father of two queens and one king.
They were Mary I of England, Elizabeth I of England, and Edward VI of England.
None of them had any children of their own.
Henry often liked to be captured in his portraits with either food or pets.
He had many pets.
Henry was often seen with his dog.
He owned a white pug and was very aware of how much his dog represented him as a rich wealthy man.
In 1536, the Act of Union was passed under Henry 's rule which had a long lasting effect on Wales as a nation.
The Act of Union meant that Welsh people were forced to speak English and things such as road signs were translated in to English.
The Royal family, who were based in London, were now officially in charge of Wales.
However the Act also meant that Welsh citizens were given the same legal rights as the English so there was an up side to this new law.
Haryana (Doabi:,) is a state in the Republic of India.
It is the birthplace of Hinduism.
The main language spoken in the area is Haryanvi.
The area is 17122 m. It is larger than Denmark but smaller than Estonia.
In traditional Indian geography it falls under the North Indian zone.
Himachal Pradesh is a state in northern India.
Simla is the capital of Himachal Pradesh.
It covers an area of 56,019 km (21,629 mi), although the border with China is still disputed.
The land contains high mountains.
In traditional Indian geography it falls under the North Indian zone.
Himachal Pradesh was part of Indian Punjab before 1966.
Himachal Pradesh is divided into 12 districts.
These are further divided into 55 sub-divisions, 82 tehsils and 35 sub-tehsils.
Hanover (German: Hannover) is a German city.
It is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony.
Hanover has 522,944 inhabitants (1 February 2007).
In Hanover there are some big industry companies like Volkswagen (Cars and Vans), Continental (tyres), Varta (batteries) and TUI (tourism).
Hanover has a very modern zoo and an international airport.
There are some very big fairs in Hanover like the CeBIT - Centre of Office, Information and Telecommunication (B is for B ro that means office) and the traditional Hanover fair that shows classical industrial products.
In the year 2000 the Expo-2000 was in Hanover.
Hanover has a large forest near the inner city, it is called the Eilenriede.
There is also a lake (the Maschsee) of about three km length and 500 m width near the city center.
The famous gardens of Herrenhausen (Herrenh user G rten) are also in Hanover.
The gardens were heavily destroyed in WWII, but they are currently under reconstruction.
People in Hannover get around town by using the Hannover Hauptbahnhof, which has been around since 1843.
The mayor of the city is Stefan Weil who followed Herbert Schmalstieg in 2006.
Both are from the social democratic party SPD.
The city has been administered by social democratic city councils since the 1950s.
The (new) town hall is one of the famous buildings in the city, others are the Marktkirche (market church), the old (medieval) town hall, some castles like the Leineschloss and the Welfenschloss.
Hanover is located at the river Leine.
The classic rock band Scorpions, the former German chancellor Gerhard Schr der and the association football player Per Mertesacker.
Hannover has an Oceanic climate (K ppen climate classification).
Hanover has a famous football club, Hannover 96, since 2002 (again) a member of the first German football league, the Bundesliga.
Its home stadium is the AWD-Arena (capacity: 49000).
Hanover is also a center for ice hockey.
A handheld game console is a light, portable electronic machine for playing video games.
Halophiles are organisms that need salt in their environment to live.
Halophiles live in evaporation ponds or salt lakes such as Great Salt Lake, Owens Lake, or Dead Sea.
The name "halophile" comes from Greek for "salt-loving".
Most halophiles are archaeans, but some bacteria and eukaryotes are also halophiles, such as the alga Dunaliella salina.
Most halophilic and salt-eating animals use energy to remove salt from their cytoplasm.
Normally, organisms living around a lot of salt would lose water and die because of osmosis.
Water inside the organism would move from inside the cell to its outside environment.
This is because there is always movement of water to reach a state where the concentrations of salt are the same on both sides of the cell membrane.
To survive, the cytoplasm of halophiles must be isotonic with its environment.
To get to this state, halophiles use two different methods.
In the first (mainly used by bacteria, some archaea, yeasts, algae and fungi), organic compounds are stored in the cytoplasm.
These compounds help the organism survive the stress of osmosis.
The most commonly used solutes for this process are neutral and include amino acids and sugars.
Advantages to this method are that organisms can live in a wider range of salt concentrations.
Also, if proteins are not exposed to high salt levels, they do not have to adapt to high salt levels.
It requires the organism to use much more energy then the adaption below.
The second, less common adaptation, is the selective intake of potassium (K +) ions into the cytoplasm.
In exchange, the organism pumps sodium (Na +) ions out with the help of the sodium-potassium pump.
Ions of sodium may be used instead of potassium, but potassium is the most common.
This adaptation is only used by one order of bacteria and one family of Archaea.
An advantage to this method is that it uses much less energy than the adaption above.
The main disadvantage to this adaption is that all of the machinery inside the cell (enzymes, structural proteins, etc.) must be adapted to high levels of non-organic ions, and high salt levels.
This is much more demanding than the adaptation described above.
Most halophilic organisms only use one of the two methods, but a few halophiles can use both.
Halophiles are categorized by the levels of salt at which they grow best.
Halophiles can either be categorized as slight halophiles, moderate halophiles, or extreme halophiles.
Slight halophiles grow best in concentrations of salt around 2 % to 5 %.
An example of a slight halophile is Erythrobacter flavus.
Slight halophiles live in mud on the ocean floor, in seawater, and in garden soil.
Moderate halophiles grow best in concentrations of salt around 5 % to 20 %.
Examples of moderate halophiles are organisms in the genera Desulfovibrio, Desulfocella, Desulfohalobium, and Desulfotomaculum.
Moderate halophiles live in marine salterns, saline lakes, in matter at the bottom of the sea, and in oil brine fields.
Extreme halophiles grow best in concentrations of salt from 20 % to 30 %.
Examples of extreme halophiles are Salinibacter ruber and organisms in the Halobacteria class.
Extreme halophiles live in the Dead Sea in the Middle East and in man-made solar salterns (lakes used for making sea salt).
Halophiles play an important part in ecosystems.
For example, halophiles often support entire populations of wild birds.
Halophiles are useful for cleaning up polluted environments.
Waste water with salt concentrations more than 2 % is ideal for halophiles to remove organic pollutants from.
For instance, halophiles have been shown to remove phenol (a poisonous chemical) from their environments.
This could lead to future use in cleaning up oil spills.
Halophiles play an important part in the fermentation of some foods.
For instance, halophiles ferment soy and fish sauces.
Halophiles also ferment salted fish.
Halophilic microorganisms are useful in he hakken biotechnology.
The compounds that certain halophiles make are valuable.
Some of these compounds are not found anywhere else in the living world.
The salt-tolerant enzymes that halophiles produce can be used in a variety of ways.
For example, these enzymes could be used for rough industrial processes, like food processing.
Some moderate halophiles produce sugars outside the cell.
These sugars can be used as thickeners and emulsifiers in the petroleum and medicine industries.
Hematite or haematite is the main ore of iron.
It is mostly iron (III) oxide.
Millions of tons are dug up every year to feed to blast furnaces to make steel.
It has a metallic luster.
It has no cleavage (the way a mineral breaks) but does have a fracture.
The fracture is irregular and uneven.
Hematite on the hardness scale is 5 to 6.
It has a bright red to dark red streak.
To find the streak, you take the mineral and run it across a plate of unglazed porcelain.
The colors vary from metallic gray to a dark, rough and earthy red color.
Hematite has a chemical formula of Fe2O3.
The Holocene extinction is, first of all, the extinction of nearly all large mammal species after the end of the ice age.
This is attributed to hunting by humans, and climate change.
Habitat destruction and over-harvesting are two of the primary causes which drive species extinct in more recent times.
The fundamental cause of this is the huge increase in human population since the agricultural revolution.
Forests and natural habitats have been greatly reduced throughout the world, and this has been the cause of many extinctions.
History of mathematics is how mathematics has developed over time.
Early maths by Babylonians and Egyptians was built upon by Greeks such as Euclid, Archimedes, Pythagoras and Eratosthenes.
Other important figures include Fibonacci, Descartes, Leonhard Euler, Blaise Pascal and Gauss.
A hydrogen atom is an atom of the chemical element hydrogen.
Its parts are a single negatively-charged electron that circles a single positively-charged nucleus of the hydrogen atom.
The nucleus of hydrogen consists of only a single proton (in the case of hydrogen-1 or protium), or it may also include one or more neutrons (giving deuterium, tritium, and other isotopes).
The electron is bound to the nucleus by the Coulomb force.
Hydrogen-1, also known as protium or "light hydrogen" is the main component of natural hydrogen.
Section 4.2 deals with the hydrogen atom specifically, but all of Chapter 4 is relevant.
Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine.
It was created in the 18th century by Samuel Hahnemann.
The theory behind homeopathy is that a sick person can be healed with very small amounts of something that produces the symptoms of the illness in a healthy person.
Scientists say that homeopathy does not work and only makes people think they feel better (this is called the placebo effect.)
Homeopaths make their medicines by taking the ingredients, adding water, and shaking the mixture.
They then take a drop of the mixture, throw out the rest, and add more water.
They do this usually 30 times but sometimes up to 200 times.
They call it potentisation.
Hahnemann said this would bring out the "spirit-like medicinal powers held within a drug".
Science can show how many atoms or molecules - tiny things that can not be divided up any more - of the original substance are left in the homeopathic drug.
In most homeopathic drugs, there is not a molecule left of the substance they started out with.
Homeopaths believe that the solution carries a "memory" of the original substance.
Science says that goes against the laws of physics and chemistry.
Homeopathy became popular because it was created at a time when medicine did not work very well and could make people sick.
Back then, taking homeopathy might have kept people from getting hurt by bad doctors.
However, medicine has improved since then, and now helps a lot more than it hurts people.
Homeopaths have also been known to tell their patients not to take medicines like antibiotics and vaccines that could cure (or keep them from getting) dangerous diseases.
Hate speech is communicating in a way that is meant to offend and hurt somebody.
It is usually based on a factor such as somebody 's race, gender, ethnic group, sexual orientation, gender identity or religion.
Some places have laws that make it illegal to use hate speech.
Countries such as Canada, France and Germany have stricter laws against hate speech than the United States, where hate speech is usually legal because its Constitution says that people have freedom of speech.
But hate speech is a inciting of discrimination and sometimes a cause of bullying or hate crime and Article 7 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that all are protected from such a inciting.
Henrik Johan Ibsen (born 20 March 1828 - 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright.
He is often called the "father of modern drama."
Ibsen is held to be the greatest of Norwegian authors and one of the most important playwrights of all time, celebrated as a national symbol by Norwegians.
His greatest works can be said to be "A Doll 's House" or "Enemy of the People."
The Hawaiian language is the language of native Hawaiians.
Aloha and mahalo are probably its most recognized words.
The word lanai is also used in English.
(That is different from Lanai, the name of one of Hawaii 's islands.)
There are related languages in the Marquesas, Raratonga, Samoa, some islands of what is now Fiji and New Zealand.
Their languages have changed a lot over the last two thousand years or so.
However, native speakers of all these languages can still understand each other.
The language has only 12 letters (A, E, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, U, W).
There are 13 if you count the okina.
The okina is a real letter and came from some "K" sounds in old Polynesian languages.
The okina is pronounced as a glottal stop, like the break in the middle of the word "Uh-oh".
The okina is written as a backward apostrophe (small numeral 6 above and before a vowel).
The Niihau dialect still uses some T, S, R and "hints" of B sounds.
People who live on that island are the only people who still speak Hawaiian only and their dialect is the most true to its roots.
Every Hawaiian syllable ends with a vowel.
There are some who think that makes the language sound "musical".
Some think that final vowels helped the speakers remember chanted traditional stories and genealogies.
Most linguists, however, think it 's because of internal phonological processes.
There are two forms of each of the five vowels.
One is regular, where the vowel is pronounced as a Spaniard would say it.
The other is extended, in written form, where a horizontal bar called a kahako is over the vowel.
The meanings (and pronunciations) of words spelled the same but with or without the appropriate kahakos or okinas can be very different, sometimes even embarrassing.
One might think that learning the language would be relatively easy, but that only applies to na keiki (children) who have never learned the 26 letters that English speakers use.
There is a children 's rhyme that goes on for a couple minutes (and written, probably a couple dozen lines) that consists of nothing but both versions of the letters a, i and the okina.
It talks of him (ia) eating (ai) his (iaia) fish (ia).
When the missionaries made a written form of Hawaiian Language, they did not write the kahakos or okinas; leaving it to the context to make the meanings evident.
Since the intent was to translate the Bible ("Paipala"), natives forgave some of the confusion created.
They still learned how unintended "double entendres" could be funny in written form.
When Hawaiian language newspapers started, native-speaking writers and editors were careful to avoid these (the type that was available to "set" did not include such "specialty" characters).
Second Polish Republic was name of Polish state from 1918 (end of WWI) through 1939 (start of WWII).
When its borders were fixed in 1922 after several wars, it had borders with Czechoslovakia, Weimar Republic, Free City of Danzig, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Soviet Union.
Helen Keller was an American writer and speaker.
She was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama in 1880.
When she was nineteen months old she became sick and lost her eyesight and hearing.
The doctor did n't know what it was, so he called it a "congestion of the stomach and brain."
Some people say that it was scarlet fever or meningitis.
When Helen was seven years old, her family decided to find a teacher for her.
They wrote to Michael Anagnos, who was the director of the Perkins Institute and Asylum for the Blind.
They asked him to help them find a teacher for their daughter.
He wrote to them and told them that he knew a young teacher and her name was Anne Sullivan.
She had been blind, but a series of operations helped restore her eyesight.
Anne traveled to Alabama to live with Helen s family and to teach her.
Anne went to live with the Keller family in March, 1887.
Anne helped Helen to learn how to communicate with other people.
She taught her the names of things by writing the words on Helen s hand.
Helen 's first word was "water".
She learned this word when Anne put Helen 's hand under some water and wrote W, A, T, E, R on her hand.
Then she learned the words with this method.
In 1890, Helen s family sent her to the Perkins Institute to learn how to speak and communicate.
When she was nineteen years old, Helen went to Radcliffe College in Massachusetts.
She graduated from Radcliffe in 1904.
She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
In 1903, Helen wrote a book about her life.
It was called The Story of My Life.
The movie The Miracle Worker, made in 1962, was based on Helen 's book.
She also wrote a book about Anne Sullivan called Teacher.
She wrote twelve other books.
Helen tried to help poor people and other blind people during her life.
She traveled to over 39 countries with Anne to talk about her life and experiences.
When Helen was in Japan, she met Hachiko, a famous Akita dog.
She decided to adopt an Akita, and was the first person to bring an Akita to America.
Helen Keller wanted to get married.
She fell in love with her secretary, but her mother did n't allow Helen to marry him.
At that time, disabled people often could not marry.
Helen Keller died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, at Arcan Ridge in Connecticut.
A hypnotic is a drug designed to help you sleep.
It is a type of psychoactive drug which acts as a soporific, and is also used for surgical anaesthesia.
Many hypnotics are addictive, and have side-effects.
Because of this, most are prescribed as a last resort, and only for a short time.
Rohypnol is a particularly powerful example of a hypnotic.
A hotel or a guest-house is a large building with many rooms, where people can sleep when they are not at home.
A motel is a hotel especially for motorists - people who drive cars - where the room door usually opens into the parking lot.
Inn is sometimes used to mean a smaller hotel.
These places will rent a room for any number of days.
They offer rooms to sleep, and want money for the service.
There are also hotels where conferences are held.
Hugh Marston Hefner (born April 9, 1926) is the founder of Playboy Magazine and its Editor-in-Chief.
Hefner was born to Glenn Hefner, an accountant, and Grace (Swanson) Hefner, a teacher, on April 9, 1926 in Chicago, Illinois.
He was raised in Chicago.
Hefner served in the US Army (1944 - 1946).
He attended the Art Institute of Chicago (1946), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, earning a BA in Psychology (1949), and Northwestern University, 1949.
He married Mildred Williams (June 25, 1949 - 1959, divorced); Kimberley Conrad (July 1, 1989 - September 2009, divorced); and Crystal Harris (December 31, 2012 - present).
He has several children.
With Mildred, he has David Paul (August 30, 1955) and Christie Ann (November 8, 1952).
With Kimberley, he has Cooper Bradford (September 4, 1991) and Marston Glenn (April 9, 1990).
Hefner is a distant relative of George W. Bush and John Kerry.
He owns a multi-million mansion called the Playboy Mansion.
He was also the executive producer of Roman Polanski 's 1971 film version of Macbeth.
Hefner has also appeared in cameos of himself in some movies.
When nude photographs of Jayne Mansfield on the set of Promises!
Promises!
were published in the June 1963 issue of Playboy, Hefner was hauled into Chicago city court on obscenity charges.
In 2013 Hefner announced that his youngest son, Cooper would succeed him and eventually help run the Playboy Empire.
Hefner supports legalizing same-sex marriage and he states that a fight for gay marriage is "a fight for all our rights.
Without it, we will turn back the sexual revolution and return to an earlier, puritanical time."
Hefner owns a burial plot next to Marilyn Monroe 's grave in Los Angeles.
Hafizullah Amin (, August 1, 1929 December 27, 1979) was the second President of Afghanistan.
He was president during the time of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
The Soviets got information from their KGB spies that Amin 's rule was a threat to the stability of Afghanistan.
They also were not certain about Amin s loyalty to the Soviet Union.
The Soviets found some information about Amin 's trying to become closer to Pakistan and China.
The Soviets also believed that Amin was behind the death of president Nur Muhammad Taraki.
Finally, the Soviets decided to remove Amin.
Hamilton is a medium-sized city in the Canadian province of Ontario.
Hamilton is an important industrial city located on Lake Ontario, part of the Golden Horseshoe region in Ontario.
It has a history of being a dirty city.
It 's reputation is slowly changing.
People now see Hamilton for its arts & music culture.
For over 150 years, Hamilton has had factories.
For over 100 years, most of them have been steel factories like Stelco and Dofasco.
Since the strike of 1946, the workers at Stelco have had a trade union.
The workers at Dofasco do not have a trade union.
There was also a Studebaker car factory in Hamilton until 1966.
Since the 1980s, industries in Hamilton have had trouble making money and keeping people working.
In 2004, Stelco filed for bankruptcy.
This means Stelco asked the courts if it could stop paying money it borrowed back to banks.
The future for industry does not look good for Hamiltonians.
However, other businesses look much better.
People might not think of schools like McMaster University and Mohawk College as businesses, but they are.
Students and teachers come to Hamilton and spend their money here.
Doctors, teachers, nurses and other professionals train here.
Even Tim Hortons doughnut stores started in Hamilton in 1965.
CH has been a local TV station in Hamilton since 1954.
Steve Smith, known for starring in The Red Green Show, started working at CH.
Tiny Talent Time is another popular show on CHCH which features many children.
Some movies were filmed in and around Hamilton, such as Anne of Green Gables,5 ive Girls and Rocky V, because it looks like other places.
Folksinger Stan Rogers was born in Dundas, which became part of Hamilton in 2001.
The Appleton sisters, now famous in Britain, were born in Hamilton.
Daniel Lanois is an important singer himself and helped the band U2 with its music.
He lived in Hamilton and recorded at Grant Avenue Studios.
The Hamilton Spectator newspaper has been around since the 1840s.
It offers tours showing its giant printing press and writers ' offices.
It also has school projects which include a classroom subscription to the newspaper for every student.
Government is how people organize themselves to be directed by politics.
Hamilton was part of Wentworth County until 1974.
Here is how the government of Hamilton changed over the years:
Politics is the way people choose the leaders of their communities and the things they decide are important enough to do.
Hamiltonians like choosing socially minded people to governm themselves, especially women and minorities.
Many people who were mayors, members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs) or members of Parliament (MPs) have things named for them in the city, such as:
Netural and Mohawk Native Canadians of the Six Nations were the first people to live in this area.
In 1616, tienne Br l probably became the first European to visit what is now Hamilton.
United Empire Loyalists moved into the Hamilton area during and after the American Revolution.
The Battle of Stoney Creek was fought during the War of 1812 in what is now Hamilton.
In the mid - to late 1800s, Hamilton became an industrial city with lots of factories.
It was close to limestone from the Niagara Escarpment, coal from the United States, iron ore mined from northern Ontario.
But factories demanded that people work hard jobs for long hours.
In 1872, Hamilton workers marched for a work day of no more than nine hours!
The two large steel factories were Stelco (the Steel Company of Canada), created in 1910 and the Dofasco (Dominion Steel Casting Company) in 1912.
Dominion is an old word often heard to describe Canada when it was part of the British Empire.
Many schools were built between 1910 and 1930, including Adelaide Hoodless School, Memorial School (for the First World War, Viscount Allenby School (WWI general) and Earl Kitchener School (WWI general).
The First World War is often shortened to WWI.
In the 1930s, the Great Depression hit Hamilton.
People were unemployed and poor.
Factories stoped running.
Times were hard.
Then the Second World War started and people got jobs again in the army and building guns for the army.
August 19, 1942, hundreds of young men from Hamilton were killed by the German army when they tried to attack Dieppe in France.
There are a few professional sports in Hamilton.
The Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League play at Ivor Wynne Stadium.
Hamilton would like a National Hockey League team but it does not have one.
The Hamilton Bulldogs of the Ontario Hockey League play at Copps Coliseum.
There are many amateur sports in Hamilton.
People of all ages can run in the Around the Bay Race.
It takes 30 km to go around the edge of Hamilton Harbour or Burlington Bay.
The Hamilton Spectator also hosts amateur indoor games.
Every year, children from Hamilton and Flint, Michigan compete in the Canusa Games.
The Commonwealth Games are like the Olympics for people who used to be ruled by Britain.
In 1930, Hamilton became the first ever host for what ere then called the Empire Games.
The city also tried to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
McMaster University and Mohawk College have produced national championship teams in a number of sports.
McMaster University is a perennial powerhouse in Men 's Basketball and Football.
Here in Hamilton we also have recreational leagues for kids to enjoy their childhood by playing many recreational sports such as Hockey (Stoney Creek Minor Hockey), Soccer (Stoney Creek Soccer Club), and Football with (Steelcity Ironmen).
In addition, there are a number of other community sport clubs like the Mt Hamilton Youth Soccer Club which has provided an avenue for children to play soccer since 1964.
There are many buses, apart from the school buses operated by the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.
For $ 2.55, the Hamilton Street Railway or HSR takes people inside and across the city.
Travellers can also get to places like Niagara Falls, Dunnville, Buffalo, Kitchener, and London.
These buses are run by companies called Greyhound, Trentway Wagar and McCoy.
GO Transit has buses and trains that go to Toronto.
Using GO however is not a part of the HSR.
The city streets in the old city of Hamilton follow a pattern.
The big streets going north and south are in straight lines.
When they are on the Mountain, they have "Upper" in front the their names, except for Garth Street which should be Upper Dundurn Street.
Streets are called "North," such as "James Street North," if they are north of King Street or Queenston Road.
Streets are called "South" if they are south of King or Queenston.
Streets are called "East," such as "East 5th Street" or "Main Street East," if they are east of James Street or Upper James Street.
Streets are called "West" if they are west of James or Upper James.
King and Main Streets are major roads that are almost parallel or side by side one another.
They cross at the Delta in east Hamilton.
For most of King and Main, cars could only travel one way.
So instead of thinking of them as two streets, think of them as one street with a very wide boulevard between them.
This changed in the early 2000s, and most of the streets in Downtown Hamilton are now two-way.
Throughout the city there are some neighborhoods with weird or strange street names.
For example, Birdland has streets named after birds like Cardinal, Blue Jay and Swallow.
Another neighborhood on the Mountain has streets named after people from the French Revolution, such as Napoleon, Josephine, and Robespierre.
Riverdale West, in the Lower City, has streets named after types of berries.
Heckler & Koch (H&K, Heckler und Koch) is a German firearm manufacturing company.
They make many guns such as the MP5 series submachine gun and the rifle G3.
Heckler and Koch are one of the most famous weapon manufacturers and deliver weapons to many countries like to the German Armed Forces or the US Army.
The company is in Oberndorf in the state of Baden-W rttemberg, but also has locations in the United Kingdom, France and the United States.
The company motto is "Keine Kompromisse!"
(No Compromise!).
H&K makes firearms for many military and paramilitary units, like the Special Air Service, U.S. Navy SEALs, Delta Force, FBI HRT, the German KSK and GSG 9 and many other counter-terrorism and hostage rescue teams.
Ham is meat that comes from a thigh of a pig.
Ham is a kind of pork, which is any meat from a pig.
It is really good with pickle.
Ham can be dry-cured or wet-cured.
Dry-cured ham is made by rubbing the meat with a mixture with salt.
Then, it is dried and aged.
Wet-cured ham is made with brine.
Ham is used in SPAM.
The Hammerhead sharks are a group of sharks which make up the family Sphyrnidae.
Their unusual head looks like a hammer.
This "hammer" on its head is also known as the "cephalofoil".
Of the nine species of the Hammerhead sharks, the Winghead shark is in the genus Eusphyra, and the other eight are in the genus Sphyrna.
There are nine known species of Hammerhead sharks.
They range from the length of 0.9 meters to the length of 6.1 meters, and weigh from 500 pounds (225 kg) to 1000 pounds (450 kg).
They are usually light gray with a tint of green, but some are more greener in color then others, and the belly in white.
The unusual structure of the head makes the head look like a hammer, this is why they are known as "Hammerhead sharks".
Since the eyes are positioned on the ends of the cephalofoil, Hammerheads are able to see everything around them, including what is under them, and what is above them.
This head helps hammerhead sharks make very tight turns in the water, and it also helps them sense prey.
Hammerhead sharks are aggressive hunters and feed on crustaceans, molluscs like octopuses and squids, and many types of fish.
They also eat other types of sharks.
Hammerhead Sharks favorite type of food is stingrays.
They are known to swim along the bottom of the ocean, following their prey.
Hammerhead sharks use their cephalofoil as a weapon to hunt for stingrays; they hit stingrays with their cephalofoil to weaken the stingray, and then eat the stingray.
When Hammerhead Sharks can not find food, they have been known to eat each other, but Great hammerhead sharks have been known to eat their own young.
Hammerhead Sharks are viviparous, meaning they give live birth.
Females usually give birth to 12 to 15 pups at a time, but the Great hammerhead shark gives birth to around 20 to 40 pups at a time.
Once they are born, baby Hammerhead sharks come together in groups and swim towards warmer waters.
They stay together in groups until they are older and big enough to live on their own.
Hammerhead shark live for around 20 to 30 years.
In 2007, the bonnethead was found to be capable of asexual reproduction, making it the first shark to be able to do this.
The hammerhead sharks are a monophyletic group.
sequence analysis shows they evolved from the Winghead shark.
Out of the nine species of Hammerhead sharks three are dangerous to humans: the Scalloped Hammerhead shark, the Great hammerhead shark, and the Smooth Hammerhead shark.
The Great and Scalloped are listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, while the Smalleye Hammerhead shark is listed as vulnerable.
This is because of over-fishing for the fins of Hammerhead sharks, which are used in sharkfin soup.
In 2010, 33 attacks were reported, but none of these attacks were fatal.
In Hawaiian culture, sharks are considered to be gods of the seas, they are also known as aumakua, protectors of humans, and cleaners of ocean life.
Some of these sharks are believed to be family members who have died and have turned into sharks.
But there are some sharks which are known as niuhi, or man-eaters.
These sharks include Great White Sharks, Tiger sharks, and Bull sharks.
The Hammerhead sharks are known as mano kihikihi, they are not considered as man-eaters or niuhi, but are considered one of the most respected sharks in the oceans, an aumakua.
Many Hawaiians believe that they have an aumakua which watches over them and protects them from the niuhi.
The Hoover Dam is a large dam on the Colorado River.
It is on the border of the states of Arizona and Nevada.
The dam is named after the former US President Herbert Hoover.
At first it was called "Boulder Dam", but the name was changed to honor Hoover, who was president when the idea of building the dam started.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a book written by Mark Twain, published in 1884.
It is a sequel to his earlier book, Tom Sawyer.
After The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck was adopted by the widow Douglas who wants to civilize him and so he joined Tom s band of robbers.
One day, Huck s father Pap, a violent drunkard, appears in St. Petersburg.
When a new judge arrives, Pap gains custody of his son and moves to a cabin on the other side of the river.
Huck is kept locked but fakes his own death and hides on Jackson s Island, a small island on the river.
There he meets Miss Watson s black slave Jim who ran away.
When they find a raft, they decide to go to a free state.
After a storm, a house is floating down the river and they enter it and grab what they can.
Inside, there is a dead man shot in the back and Jim prevents Huck from seeing the dead man s face.
Huck dresses as a girl and returns to town because he wants to hear what s going on in town.
A woman tells that Jim is considered to be Huck s murderer.
Moreover, she is suspicious about Huck s true sex and reveals that he is a boy.
Huck returns to the island and together with Jim he flees downriver.
After some time on the river, they are separated by a passing steaming boat and Huck meets the Grangerfords, a rich family.
He befriends with Buck Grangerford who is about his age.
The Grangerfords are in a 30-year feud against the Shepherdsons, another rich family along the Mississippi.
When a conflict breaks out, all Grangerford males are killed.
Huck can escape and reunites with Jim.
Together they float further downriver.
Later, they rescue two con men who join the boys on their journey.
They pull several scams along the river.
Once, they pretend to be a dead man s brothers and escape after their true identities are revealed.
Later, the elder one sells Jim.
Huck finds out that Jim is now owned by the Phelps.
He decides to free him and pretends to be the Phelps nephew Tom Sawyer.
When the real Tom arrives, he plays along.
Jim is held in a shed and Tom has a risky escape plan.
As they carry out their plan, Tom is shot in the leg.
While Huck gets help, Jim remains with Tom.
When they return to the farm, Jim is recaptured while Tom is unconscious.
When Tom awakes, he reveals that Jim had been free for weeks after his owner died two months ago.
He did not tell Huck because he wanted a risky plan to rescue Jim.
Furthermore, Tom s Aunt Polly arrives and reveals Huck s and Tom s real identities.
Moreover, Jim tells that Pap was the dead man on the floating house.
Finally, Huck decides to go West.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn received often good reviews, but the novel was controversial from the beginning.
When the American edition came out in 1885 some libraries banned it.
Today, many people feel that the book attacks racism and shows that it is bad.
Others criticize the book because it shows things like slavery, and uses words like "nigger".
They also think that, although Jim is not meant to be a bad character, he has some stereotypes of that time.
Harpsichords are keyboard instruments that make sound by having the strings plucked with a plectrum.
They are thought to have originated when a keyboard was attached to a psaltery.
This makes them different from a clavichord where the strings are hit.
The piano is therefore closer to a clavichord than a harpsichord.
On a piano it is possible to play louder or quieter by playing the keys with more or less force.
On a harpsichord the volume (playing louder or softer) can not be controlled by the way it is played.
However, some large harpsichords have several "stops", each one giving a different kind of sound.
The largest harpsichords have two manuals (keyboards) which gives more variety.
It makes it possible for the right hand to play the tune on one manual while the left hand plays an accompaniment more quietly on the other.
Some small harpsichords were called "virginals", perhaps because they were played by young girls.
There are also spinets which were very small and sometimes wing-shaped.
They could be picked up and put on a table.
Harpsichords were very important in music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
They were used as solo instruments as well as to accompany an orchestra.
Some of the most famous composers of harpsichord music are William Byrd (1543-1623), Fran ois Couperin (1668-1733), Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).
Hair is something that grows from the skin of mammals.
Animal hair is usually called fur.
Sheep and goats have curly hair, which is usually called wool.
Hair is made of keratins, which are proteins.
Humans and some other animals have lost much of their hair through evolution, and some other mammals, such as the elephant and the whale, have almost none at all.
Some animals, for example certain insects and spiders also have hairs.
However these are not hair in the biological sense, but are actually bristles.
The hairs found on certain plants are also not true hair, but trichomes.
In humans, hair grows mostly on the head, and the amount of body hair is different from race to race.
Asians and native North Americans have the least amount of body hair, while Caucasians tend to have the most.
Hair color is passed down by parents only.
Natural hair color can be given only by genes.
It is impossible to have a hair color that is not passed down genetically by both mother and father.
This relies on dominant and recessive genes carried by a parent.
These genes may not be the color of their hair, however, many people carry genes that are recessive and do not show in their traits or features.
Dyeing hair is to change the color of hair.
It consists of a chemical mixture which can change the color of hair by a chemical reaction.
Many people dye their hair to hide gray or white hairs.
This is because most people gain white or gray hairs as they grow older.
Two types of melanin pigment give hair its color: eumelanin and pheomelanin.
Pheomelanin colors hair red.
Eumelanin determines the darkness of the hair color.
A low concentration of brown eumelanin results in blond hair, but more brown eumelanin will color the hair brown.
High amounts of black eumelanin result in black hair, while low concentrations give gray hair.
All humans have some pheomelanin in their hair.
The genetics of hair colors are not yet firmly established.
According to one theory, at least two gene pairs control human hair color.
One phenotype (brown\/blond) has a dominant brown allele and a recessive blond allele.
A person with a brown allele will have brown hair; a person with no brown alleles will be blond.
This explains why two brown-haired parents can produce a blond-haired child.
The other gene pair is a non-red\/red pair, where the not-red allele is dominant and the allele for red hair is recessive.
A person with two copies of the red-haired allele will have red hair, but it will be either auburn or bright reddish orange depending on whether the first gene pair gives brown or blond hair, respectively.
The two-gene model does not account for all possible shades of brown, blond, or red (for example, platinum blond versus dark blonde\/light brown), nor does it explain why hair color sometimes darkens as a person ages.
Several other gene pairs control the light versus dark hair color in a cumulative effect (quantitative genetics).
Hair texture is also inherited genetically.
The thickness of hair, its color and its tendency to curl are all inherited.
There are also genetic differences between men and women.
Body hair is limited in women, and thicker in men.
People have about 100,000 hairs on their head.
About 100 fall out each day, but they usually grow back.
Some men are bald but girls and women may become bald if they lose their hair from a disease called Alopecia.
Men often lose some of their hair as they grow older.
This is known as baldness.
Doctors call it "male pattern baldness" because hairs often fall out in similar places.
It often begins by hair falling out first from the front of the head, and then from the top of the head.
After a while, all that may be left is a some hair running above the ears and around the lower back of the head.
Even though it is unusual for women to go bald, many women suffer from thinning hair over the top of their head as they grow old.
People have tried to find cures for hair loss for thousands of years.
In an effort to get their hair back, men have tried "cures" like applying strange lotions or even having their heads packed in chicken manure.
Many unproven "cures" are still marketed today.
It is only in the last decade or so that treatments have been developed which do sometimes work.
Some doctors do hair transplants, where they take tiny plugs of hair from areas like the back of the neck and plant them in the bald spots on the head.
Some drugs have been tested and approved for sale as hair loss treatments.
They encourage hair regrowth and thickening, but work better if applied before hair loss turns to baldness.
People have been interested in hair on their heads for hundreds of thousands of years.
For both men and women, styling and coloring hair have been ways to look good, and get attention.
Sometimes society makes rules about hair, for example by not allowing people to cut their hair or beards, like in Sikhism (it is also good to do this in Islam, but not a requirement).
Georges Prosper Remi (22 May 1907 3 March 1983), also known as Herg, was a Belgian cartoonist.
Herg was born in Etterbeek, Brussels from a group of people in Belgium called Walloons.
He 's best known for his 23 completed comics, The Adventures of Tintin.
Herg first made Tintin in Le Petit Vingti me in 1929.
"This famous Belgian artist is often considered to be the most influential European comic artist ever and his "clear line" style was widely copied by new generation of comic artists."
Herg died in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert on 3 March 1983.
He was 75 years old.
Herg 's life 's work is watched over by his widow.
She shut down Herg Studios.
She started the Herg Foundation in 1987.
It is now called Moulinsart S.A..
Henry Louis Aaron (born February 5, 1935) is a baseball player.
He played baseball professionally for 22 years, and hit 755 home runs..
Even though he has 755 home runs in his career, he never hit 50 or more in a season.
He was selected for 25 All-Star games.
He was put into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982.
The Holy Grail is an artifact from Christian mythology.
According to a legend, it is the cup or plate used by Jesus at the Last Supper.
It was later used to catch his blood when he had to die on the cross.
According to legend, it has special powers.
Many stories of the Arthurian Legend are about the Holy Grail.
The first to write about it was Chr tien de Troyes.
The legend may combine Christian lore with a Celtic myth of a cauldron which has special powers.
The connection of Joseph of Arimathea with the Grail legend dates from Robert de Boron 's Joseph d'Arimathie.
In the story, Joseph receives the Grail from an apparition of Jesus Christ, and sends it with his followers to Great Britain; building upon this theme, later writers told how Joseph used the Grail to catch Christ 's blood while burying him and that in Britain he founded a line of guardians to keep it safe.
A cup that could have been the Holy Grail can be seen in Valencia Cathedral.
The term "Holy Grail" is often used as a metaphor for something very important or special.
Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 February 20, 2005) was an American writer.
He was known for a unique style of writing which he called Gonzo journalism, where the writer writes about himself trying to write about what was happening around him.
He was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky and spent most of his adult life on his ranch in Colorado.
He committed suicide in Woody Creek, Colorado by shooting himself in the head.
His main topic was the health of the American Dream.
Harry Julius Shearer (born December 23, 1943, in Los Angeles, California) is an American comedic actor, voice actor, comedian, writer, musician, author, radio host, director and producer.
Shearer is famous for playing the voices of several minor characters for The Simpsons (1989 to present).
Shearer was a child actor.
He acted on the Jack Benny radio program.
Shearer was a member of the Credibility Gap comedy group.
The radio stations KRLA and later KPPC broadcast the Credibility Gap.
He performed on the Pop Chronicles music documentary.
Shearer portrayed Derek Smalls in the 1984 comedy movie This is Spinal Tap.
Rob Reiner directed this movie.
Shearer speaks the voices for many characters on The Simpsons cartoon.
Some of the characters he plays are Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, and Ned Flanders.
Homininae is a subfamily of Hominidae, which includes humans, gorillas and chimpanzees.
It also includes some extinct human relatives such as Ardipithecus and Australopithecus.
It comprises all those hominids, such as Australopithecus, that arose after the split from the other great apes.
Homo habilis (also known as "handy man") is one of the early ancestors of modern man who used primitive stone tools.
Their remains have been found in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.
They are believed to be about 2 million years old.
The flat face and large molars of the Homo habilis resemble the Australopithecus lineage.
The brain size of the Homo habilis is about 700 cc (larger than the Australopithecus).
An "apelike" (long arms and a small body) body structure was characteristic of the Homo habilis.
They are believed to have been about 1.3 metres tall, and weigh about 37 kilograms.
There is still a lot of argument between scientists about the species.
They can not all agree on the characteristics, or whether it is even a separate species at all.
A harmonica is small musical instrument that is played with the mouth by blowing into holes in its side.
Harmonicas are cheap and easy to play.
Harmonicas produce their musical sounds from the vibrations of reeds in the harmonica 's metal case.
Harmonicas are used in blues music, folk music, rock and roll music, and pop music.
A special type of harmonica, the chromatic harmonica, is used in jazz and classical music.
Harmonicas are made in several different keys: G, A, A, B, B, C, D, D, E, E, F, and F.
Each key can play a different range of notes.
Harmonicas are played by blowing or sucking air into one side.
On this side, there are many holes.
Each hole has a different note.
Different notes are played when you blow or suck air.
Another type of harmonica is the chromatic harmonica.
More songs can be played on it than a regular harmonica, because chromatic harmonicas can play more different notes.
Chromatic harmonicas have a button which moves a sliding bar.
By pressing the button, the player can play a larger range of notes.
The harmonica is called many different names, such as: mouth organ, mouth harp, Hobo Harp, French harp, Reckless Tram, harpoon, tin sandwich, blues harp, Mississippi saxophone, or simply harp.
Hops are the flowers of the hop plant, which are in the humulus genus.
Hops look like little cones, and are used to make beer.
They give the beer a bitter flavor.
They have been used to make beer for many centuries, and were used by the Romans in the Roman Empire.
Hammurabi (Akkadian from Amorite Ammur pi, meaning "the kinsman is a healer," from Ammu, meaning "paternal kinsman", and R pi, meaning "healer"), was the sixth king of Babylon from 1792 BC to 1750 BC.
He became king after his father abdicated, and was the first ruler of Babylonia.
By winning wars against other kingdoms in Mesopotamia, Hammurabi created a large Babylonian empire.
However, his son Samsu-iluna and later Babylonian rulers lost much of the land he had gained.
Hammurabi is most famous for his laws, which are known as the Hammurabi 's Code.
Hammurabi 's Code was one of the first written codes of law in history.
Hammurabi became king of Babylon in around 1792 BC, when his father Sin-Muballit abdicated.
Babylon was one of many small independent cities in ancient Mesopotamia.
These cities often fought each other for control of land.
Babylon was already one of the more powerful cities when Hammurabi became king.
Earlier kings of Babylon had taken over the nearby city-states of Borsippa, Kish, and Sippar.
Hammurabi did not fight any important wars in the early part of his reign.
He instead improved the buildings of Babylon.
He built taller city walls to make the city more difficult to attack, and expanded the temples.
In around 1771 BC, the kingdom of Elam attacked Mesopotamia from the east.
Elam invaded Eshnunna, a city-state to the north-east of Babylon, and destroyed its cities.
It also tried to start a war between Babylon and Larsa, a city in southern Mesopotamia.
However, Hammurabi instead made an alliance with Larsa against Elam.
Hammurabi defeated Elam, but felt that Larsa had not given him enough help.
He therefore attacked Larsa.
Babylon had entirely conquered southern Mesopotamia by c. 1763 BC.
Hammurabi 's allies in northern Mesopotamia had sent their armies to the south to help Babylon.
This caused unrest in the northern area.
Hammurabi therefore returned north, stopping the unrest, and defeating Eshnunna.
He then attacked and conquered the remaining cities in northern Mesopotamia, including Babylon 's former ally Mari.
It is possible that Mari surrendered to Babylon without any fighting happening.
After this, Hammurabi was in control of most of Mesopotamia.
Only Aleppo and Qatna, two western cities in modern Syria remained independent.
When Hammurabi died in c. 1750 BC, his son Samsu-iluna became king.
Honey is a food made by honeybees from nectar.
Then they put the honey into a honeycomb, which for them is a storage unit.
Honey is sweet and can be used instead of sugar.
It is a supersaturated liquid.
As the temperature drops, glucose comes out of solution.
Then it is a semi-solid rather than a liquid
Honey is first mentioned in the Book of Exodus, and is often linked with pleasant and comfortable things.
"Land of Milk and honey".
It is also referenced in the Qur ` an, with similar associations to good and evil.
Much like wine, there are several kinds of honey with different tastes, colors and textures.
Some common types are got from bees who use the clover flower 's pollen.
It is thick and has a medium color.
It tends to form crystals\/form grains more quickly when exposed to air.
Acacia flowers makes another common variety.
Honey from bees using flowers from oleanders, rhododendrons, some laurels, and azaleas may cause honey intoxication.
Symptoms include dizziness, weakness, sweating, nausea, and vomiting.
Expert beekeepers solve this problem by moving their hives to areas where the right kind of flowers are available.
Bees like to get their nectar locally, and in any event do not go more than two miles from the hive.
Honey tastes quite different according to which flowers were used by the bees.
Key things are its fragrance (smell), taste and how clear it is; also the absence of bad qualities.
Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society) (born 17 December 1778 in Penzance, Cornwall, England; died 29 May 1829 in Geneva City, Switzerland), was a chemist whose study of electrochemistry led to the first pure forms of some of the chemical elements such as potassium and sodium.
Hecate is the Greek goddess of magic, crossroads.
She is sometimes seen as having three-heads.
Zeus favors her greatly.
She is also the mother of Circe and other famous sorceresses.
Hecate often carries a torch, and because of this she is often described as having black hair, luminous skin, and starry eyes.
She is very similar to Artemis and Selene as Hecate is sometimes represented by the moon, and is a virgin goddess.
In modern day she is represented by witchcraft, as the old lady stirring potions in a cauldron.
Her parents are Perses and Asteria.
Hecate 's main attributes are torches, dogs, keys, and the number three.
She is the goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, moon, ghosts and necromancy.
She was the only child of the Titanes Perses and Asteria from whom she received her power over heaven, earth, and sea.
She has an army of monsters with one gout leg one bronze leg a ghost 's body, many fangs and flaming hair.
The first of these came from pandora 's pythos (they did not have boxes then).
To say her name correctly, you must know that in the Greek language, the H is silent.
Her name, properly pronounced, is E-CA-TA or e-CO-ta.
Hecate was originally worshipped in Thrace (a place in ancient Greece) as a moon goddess.
Eventually, she became known with Selene (the moon goddess) and Persephone (goddess of springtime, daughter of Demeter, the goddess of harvest).
Hecate s parents were the titans, Perses, titan of destruction, and Astraea, the titan of the starry night.
She was a sort of triple goddess, looked at as having three bodies of pretty, young maidens that were joined together.
But in later times, she was thought as an old crone or witch.
As a Roman goddess, her name was Trivia.
This goddess usually had something to do with having children, taking care of children, walls and gates, crossroads, magic, torches, dogs, and lunar lore.
She was said to have three dogs by her side, and carried a torch.
She was also said to usually be seen at night.
Hecate was also greatly recognized as a wicked, gory goddess.
But it is important to remember her gentle, generous, powerful side as well.
Hamsters are rodents belonging to the subfamily Cricetinae.
The subfamily contains about 25 species in six or seven genera.
They have become established as popular small house pets.
They are a bit like a mouse.
Wild hamsters live in the desert, but people all over the world keep domesticated hamsters as pets.
In the wild, hamsters are crepuscular and stay underground during the day.
They feed on seeds, fruits, and vegetation, and occasionally eat burrowing insects.
Hamsters are distinguished by their large cheek pouches, and relatively short tail.
They use their long cheek pouches (extending to their shoulders) to carry food back to their burrows.
There are six main types of hamsters: the Syrian hamster (the kind most people have as pets), winter whites, campbells, the Russian dwarf hamster (a hybrid of winter white and campbell hamsters), winter whites and campbells are two type of Russian (despite what many pet shops say), the Chinese hamster, and the Roborovski hamster.
The Chinese hamster has a long tail.
All Syrian hamsters are the descendants of 12 baby hamsters found in Syria in 1930.
Pet hamsters like to live in cages with wood shavings or recycled newspaper (only if non-toxic).
Fluffy bedding is dangerous for hamsters.
Plain toilet paper is also a cheap, safe option, but not straw as it is very dry and they may choke on it.
Hamsters eat mostly hamster food sold at a pet shop, but they also eat almost any vegetables and fruits in very tiny portions.
Hamsters store food in the sides of their mouths.
Hamster teeth grow constantly.
Wooden blocks and some hard food can be used for this.
Most hamsters also have a wheel to run on for exercise.
A 6 inch (Syrian) wheel is recommended for most dwarf hamsters, and at least an eight inch wheel for Syrians.
Some people get other kinds of exercise equipment for their hamsters, like an empty ball that the hamster can roll around the floor or a long network of tubes with air holes for it to crawl through.
They should live in an aquarium (without water) or cage.
When letting your hamster out always keep an eye on it.
Hamsters may look slow, but are truly very fast.
Keep your hamster away from any electric wires, since they like to chew on them.
Hamster are not recommended for young children.
The Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, is a part of the triune godhead (three in one God) of Christianity.
The Holy Spirit was there from the beginning.
Genesis 1:2 says that the Holy Spirit helped create the Earth.
It was by the Holy Spirit that Jesus was conceived in Mary (Matthew 1:18,19).
When Jesus had finished his ministry on Earth, he told his followers that he would provide "another Comforter" (helper), who would lead them, into truth (John 14:16), and would be their teacher to tell them things that Jesus had not told them, but that they needed to know to continue to live for God.
The second chapter of the book of Acts tells how on the 50th day after Passover (called Pentecost), and 10 days after Jesus ascended to Heaven, Jesus ' followers were gathered at the feast.
While they were praying, the Holy Spirit came upon them.
They began to speak in other languages (tongues).
While most Christians believe that the Holy Spirit is in them from the time they become born again, in Pentecostal denominations, such as the Assemblies of God, it is believed that speaking in unknown languages can still be an expression of the Holy Spirit, and that it is proof that a person has received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
A hi-hat, or hihat, is a pair of cymbals which can be pushed together with a pedal.
It is usually part of a drum kit, and is used in many forms of music including reggae, jazz and rock and roll as well as many others.
Hydrolysis is a chemical reaction or process in which a chemical compound reacts with water.
This is the type of reaction that is used to break down polymers into many smaller units.
In this reaction, water is always added to the chemical compound.
(As noted above, hydrolysis of metal salts is more commonly known as hydration.)
Many metal ions are strong Lewis acids, and in water they may undergo hydrolysis to form basic salts.
Such salts contain a hydroxyl group that is directly bound to the metal ion in place of a water ligand.
The positive charge on metal ions creates an attraction to water, a Lewis base with a non-binding electron pair on the oxygen atom, and alters the water molecule 's electron density.
This in turn increases the polarity of the O-H bond, which now acts as a proton donor under Br nsted-Lowry acid-base theory to release the hydrogen as a H + ion, increasing the acidity of the solution.
For example, aluminium chloride undergoes extensive hydrolysis in water with the solution being very acidic.
+ H2O + H3O +
This implies that hydrogen chloride is lost in the evaporation of AlCl3 solutions and the residue is a basic salt (in this case an oxychloride) in place of AlCl3.
This type of reaction is also seen with other metal chlorides such as ZnCl2, SnCl2, FeCl3 and lanthanide halides such as DyCl3.
With some compounds such as TiCl4, the hydrolysis may go to completion and form the pure hydroxide or oxide, in this case TiO2.
Hephaestus was the Greek god of fire and volcanoes.
His Roman equivalent is the god Vulcan.
He was prayed to by metal workers.
Hephaestus mother and father were Hera and Zeus.
His grandparents were Kronos and Rhea.
When Hephaestus was born, he was ugly and weak, with a broken foot.
Hera did not like the way he looked and threw him off her castle which was on top of the clouds.
Hephaestus fell for one day and one night before falling into the sea.
The sea animals rescued him and took him to an island called Lemnos.
There Hephaestus built his forge underneath a volcano.
He collected precious metals, pearls and pieces of coral to fashion extraordinary!
jewelry.
Hephaestus built little robots of gold to help him get around.
Hephaestus even worked with the Cyclopes (one eyed creatures).
To impress the gods and goddesses, he made a set of golden thrones for them.
Hera realized her mistake of throwing Hephaestus off Mount Olympus and pleaded Zeus to welcome Hephaestus back.
Hephaestus politely refused, saying that he was quite happy where he was.
Then he set to work and fashioned a beautiful golden throne and sent it to Hera as a thank you gift for the invitation.
The instant she sat on it, golden ropes flew out and tied her up locking her into the chair.
Hephaestus was still very angry with Hera because she threw him of Mount Olympus.
Even though everyone tried to free Hera from the great trap, Hephaestus design was so clever that none could detach the ropes.
So, Zeus sent his son Ares, god of war, to bring Hephaestus back to let Hera loose.
Instead Hephaestus made him run away throwing firebrands at him, and Ares made a shameful retreat.
Zeus used trickery next and sent Dionysus, the god of wine, to get Hephaestus drunk.
Hephaestus was not a regular drinker, and Hephaestus got drunk very quickly.
Soon Dionysus was making his proud return to Mount Olympus, with drunk Hephaestus on the back of a mule.
Hephaestus finally freed Hera and moved back to the forges because he did not like the busy life of the palace.
Although, he still refused to forgive Hera.
Hera felt very guilty and gave him loads of supplies, materials, tools, and helpers for his workshop.
Hephaestus made the best weapons, jewelry, and armor.
Some of his greatest creations ever were the silver bows and arrows of Artemis and Apollo as well as Apollo s golden chariot.
He also made the shield of Achilles, Athena 's spear, and Hercules ' breastplate.
In addition to this he made the scepter of Zeus and the battle armor of the Olympian armies.
He also made all of the gods and goddesses palaces and their unbreakable locks.
On top of all this, Hephaestus was and is still credited with the invention of the three-legged stool and the world s first robots.
Hephaestus helpers included a complete set of life size golden maids who helped around the house.
Hephaestus married Aphrodite.
When Aphrodite emerged from the sea (created by the sperm of the severed member of Uranus,) Zeus feared that the gods would battle over her hand in marriage, so Zeus arranged that Aphrodite would marry Hephaestus.
Hephaestus gave Aphrodite his best creations and even gave her a magic girdle that made her irresistible to men.
However, Aphrodite did not love him as she was married against her will and she did n't like Hephaestus ' looks.
She spent most of her time with Ares.
Hephaestus was well liked by all of the Olympians.
He was not involved in their plots.
Hephaestus preferred to be alone in his workshop.
Hephaestus was also worshiped by the Greeks because he proved that those who labor are also noble.
Hephaestus reminds us of the value and dangers of losing our selves in work.
A howitzer is a special type of big gun used by an army.
It has a short barrel, and is used fire a shell over a short distance.
The barrel length of a howitzer is 15 to 25 times of the caliber.
Howitzers are special because they 're made to fire higher than a cannon but lower than a mortar.
Howitzers are almost always used to shoot at targets on the ground, but they can be used for targets on water, or in the air.
The name howitzer comes from an old Czech word, haufnice, which was a catapult that could fire many stones.
Hummer is a type of Sport utility vehicle.
Hummer was first made by AM General who also made vehicles used by the United States Army.
The design of the Hummer H1 is based on the military High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV Humvee).
Hummer used to be made by General Motors.
General Motors wanted to sell the brand, but they could not find a buyer, so the brand will stop being made.
The history of science is the study of the historical development of science and scientific knowledge.
The English word scientist is relatively recent - first coined by William Whewell in the 19th century.
Previously, people investigating nature called themselves "natural philosophers".
Science is a body of knowledge about the natural world, produced by scientists who observe, explain, and predict real world phenomena.
Historiography of science, in contrast, often draws on the historical methods.
Facts about the natural world have been described since classical antiquity.
Ancient Greece is perhaps most famous for its contributions to astronomy and mathematics.
Aristarchus of Samos came up with the idea of the Sun at the center of what we now call the Solar system many centuries before Galileo.
Others, like Thales and Aristotle were interested in the natural world.
Scientific methods have been used since the Middle Ages (Roger Bacon), but the dawn of modern science is often traced back to the early modern period and in particular to the scientific revolution that took place in 16th - and 17th-century Europe.
Important figures in the development of modern science include Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Robert Boyle, Charles Darwin, Wilhelm Roux and Albert Einstein.
Scientific methods are so fundamental to modern science that some consider earlier inquiries into nature to be pre-scientific.
Traditionally, historians of science have defined science sufficiently broadly to include those inquiries.
There are various applied sciences which depend on one of more of the natural sciences.
Medicine is an example.
Hydrogen peroxide is a chemical compound.
Its molecular formula is H2O2.
It is used as a cleaner, and as hair bleach.
In a concentration of 3 % (meaning that there are 3 grams of hydrogen peroxide for 100 grams of a water solution), it can be used to treat wounds.
Over time it will slowly become oxygen gas and water through decomposition.
Chemists often use hydrogen peroxide in chemical reactions.
It is a very strong oxidising agent when used with acid and water.
Oxidising agents take electrons from other compounds.
Here hydrogen peroxide takes an electron from the Fe2 + ions and becomes water.
It can also be a reducing agent when used with other compounds.
When it acts as a reducing agent, oxygen gas is also produced.
Reducing agents give electrons to other compounds.
This method is often used to make oxygen in laboratories.
Hydrogen peroxide can be bought in shops when mixed with lots of water but is very dangerous when the concentration is higher.
It is flammable and causes burns.
Hemlock is a herbal poison got from several related plants in the Apiaceae family.
The toxic chemicals differ in each plant, but there is a general similarity in the way they work.
Hermes is the god of travellers and shepherds in Greek mythology.
He is one of the Twelve Olympians and is the messenger of the gods.
He is often shown with his caduceus.
Hermes is the son of Zeus and Maia.
He was born on Mount Cyllene.
The story of his birth was told in the Homeric Hymn, which means Hymn to Hermes.
It said that Maia was a nymph.
Hermes was very clever and on his first day invented the lyre, by using the shell of a tortoise.
One of the myths about Hermes is that he once, stole his brother 's oxes, and burned them as a sacrifice.
Hashish is a sticky, thick, dark-colored resin (like sap) which is made from the flower of the female cannabis plant, Cannabis sativa.
The cannabis plant 's leaves and flowers contain chemicals known as cannabinoids.
The cannabinoids include THC which gives a person who smokes or eats parts of the cannabis plant a feeling of euphoria (makes the user feel good or happy), CBD, which gives the user a feeling of relaxation or sedation, and CBG which is responsible for giving the user red\/droopy eyes.
The name hashish comes from an Arabic word meaning dry weed.
The two main drugs made from the cannabis plant are marijuana and hashish.
Hashish has much more of the chemical THC (which makes users feel good or happy) than marijuana.
Hashish is an illegal drug in the United States, Canada, and many other countries.
It is controversial, since some people think it should be legal, some think it should be legal only for medical purposes, and some think it should not be legal at all.
To make hashish, workers rub cannabis blossoms with their hands to get the resin to stick to their hands, and then the resin is collected.
Another way to make hashish is to sift the ground-up, dried leaves through a screen and compress the powder resin to make a "brick".
A more modern method of producing hashish is through alcohol extraction.
In this method cannabis plants are ground up and covered in isopropyl alcohol or butane and left to sit.
The resulting mixture is then evaporated off the alcohol leaving the active terpenoid and terpene compounds which can be used immediately or cooked into bricks.
When a person wants to use hashish, they usually smoke it by putting a small piece of hashish in a joint with tobacco or marijuana.
Then the person lights the paper roll with a flame and inhales the smoke that comes out, exhaling 1-3 seconds after holding in the smoke.
Another way that people use hashish is by putting a small piece of hashish in a pipe or bong (water pipe) then lighting it with a flame, inhaling the smoke.
Some people also eat hashish, usually by mixing it into food or baked goods.
The legality of hashish use varies by country.
In the USA, there are conflicting state and federal laws concerning the use of the drug.
Some states allow medicinal use but these state laws are superseded US federal law which prohibits all use of hash and marijuana.
Hashish is not legal in the Netherlands, but there are no criminal laws against having a small amount of cannabis (marijuana or hashish).
This is because the Netherlands has decided that having cannabis should not be a crime.
Some other countries are starting to "decriminalize" marijuana as well (make using it or having it no longer be a crime).
In some countries, such as Canada and the United States, sick people with serious diseases can legally use marijuana if they have a prescription from a medical doctor.
When people with serious medical conditions such as AIDS or Multiple Sclerosis smoke marijuana, it helps to improve their mood and increase their appetite.
Hashish has much more of the chemical THC (which is a short form for "delta-9-tetra-hydro-cannabinol") than marijuana.
THC is the chemical (or drug) which causes people who take hashish or marijuana to feel euphoria (happy).
Hashish is a much stronger drug than marijuana.
When people smoke hashish (in a cigarette, a tin or glass pipe, or other forms of smoking apparatus like a bong) or eat hashish, certain sensations come about.
One can start feeling any of the following depending on the strain or origin: happy, relaxed, feeling silly, cloudy (not able to think clearly) which can be descriptive of the type of high experienced.
The term of "getting high" could mean that the effects are a more mental stimulation while other types that are for "getting stoned" tend to render the user in a relaxed and observational state.
The two types of this "High", are called 1.)
a heady high or 2.)
couchlock.
A heady high does exactly what it sounds like by creating mental stimulation that sometimes leads to exaggerated imagination and potential over analysis on simple subjects.
When one "over does it", the stimulation can lead to various degrees of dizziness, euphoria and a sensation of feeling uncoordinated.
In a "couchlock" state, one becomes extremely focused on a singular action or topic, sometimes leading to an unproductive state.
The latter is achieved depending on the strain of marijuana or hashish, and also depends on the amount of the drug taken.
Since hashish is much stronger than marijuana, users may get strange visions or thoughts (hallucinations).
Some people who take a large amount of hashish may start feeling scared, strange, or paranoid (worried that something bad is going to happen).
In the 19th century, hashish was used as a source of inspiration by Charles Baudelaire 's Club des Hachichins.
This was a group of French writers.
Smoking any drugs such as marijuana, hashish, or tobacco is bad for the lungs.
Smoke hurts the lungs and the throat because the smoke has tar in it and contains chemicals that can cause cancer in the lungs or mouth if the person smokes over a long time period.
A person who only eats hashish will not hurt their lungs or throat.
A relatively newer process of inhalation which is much safer than smoking is vaporizing the Hashish.
This method is based on increasing the temperature of the Hashish to about 190-195 degrees Celsius which is about the temperature THC vaporizes at but is far below the point when "carbons" begin being burned.
The end result is the THC compound being breathed in combined with air rather than the THC compound being breathed in with smoke.
Most other illegal drugs, such as heroin, crack, and cocaine are very addictive.
This means that if a person starts taking heroin, meth, or cocaine, the person will want to keep taking more of the drug, even if it is making them sick (ill).
Legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol are also found to be addictive.
Tobacco has additives that make it more harmful than cannabis and hash.
Hashish and marijuana are not physically addictive like heroin, cocaine and cigarettes; however, users may develop a psychological addiction.
Hashish is often just called "hash".
Slang terms vary from one country to country.
A pipe used for smoking hashish is often called a "pipe".
A water pipe for smoking hashish is called a "bong".
There are also many slang terms for hashish smoking, such as "getting faded", "blown" or "blazing".
Many slang terms for cannabis intoxication, such as "getting high", "getting stoned", "getting ripped", "toking bowls" and "spliffing" are shared for hashish as the effects of cannabis \/ marijuana and hashish are the same.
Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination".
It is an altered state of consciousness.
Usually, one person (the "hypnotist") talks to another (the "subject") in a special way that puts the subject into a trance.
While the subject is in this state, he can be influenced by suggestions.
The hypnotist can tell him to forget his name, or that the room is hot (he will start sweating), or that he is someone else.
Hypnotic suggestions may be delivered by a hypnotist in the presence of the subject, or may be self-administered (` self-suggestion ' or ` autosuggestion ').
The use of hypnotism for therapeutic purposes is referred to as ` hypnotherapy ', while its use as a form of entertainment for an audience is known as ` stage hypnosis '.
Contrary to a popular misconception that hypnosis is a form of unconsciousness resembling sleep some contemporary research suggests that hypnotic subjects are fully awake and are focusing attention, with a corresponding decrease in their peripheral awareness.
Subjects also show an increased response to suggestions.
However, the behavior of subjects under hypnotism goes so far beyond normal focused attention that the description of "altered state of consciousness" is more used.
Hypnotherapy is when a hypnotist uses hypnosis to help the subject heal emotionally, or to heal a sick mind.
Hypnotherapy is hypnosis used for therapy.
Hypnosis can also be done by one person acting alone.
Then he is acting as both hypnotist and subject.
This is called "self-hypnosis," or sometimes "auto-suggestion."
In some cases, this is simply a form of using trance.
Almost every pre-modern society had practices which were somewhat like hypnotism.
Often a special person in a society (witchdoctor, shaman, priest...) would conduct a ceremony.
The ceremony might use incantations (spells), chants, repetitive music, mind-altering substances, darkness, fire, and other settings.
The purpose was to send a person or group into an altered state of mind like a trance.
Even literate societies such as ancient Greece had phenomena suggestive of hypnosis.
The Delphic oracle was in a trance of some kind as she uttered her famous predictions.
Whether that was self-hypnosis or just the effects of volcanic gas will never be known.
There seem to be many ideas about how hypnosis started.
Historic records in modern Europe start with the work of Franz Mesmer, though he did not invent the word ` hypnotism '.
Mesmer and his followers practiced what was first called ` animal magnetism ', and later mesmerism.
Descriptions of his work leave no doubt that he had discovered for himself what we now call ` hypnotism '.
The words hypnosis and hypnotism both derive from the term neuro-hypnotism (nervous sleep) coined by the Scottish surgeon James Braid around 1841.
Braid based his practice on that developed by but differed in his theory as to how the procedure worked.
The main hypnosis discoveries came in 1842 when Braid started to learn more about its effects.
He did not think that ` mesmerism ' was the cause of hypnosis, and in the end he thought that trances were only a ` nervous sleep '.
In 1843 he wrote a book about this with the title Neurypnology.
In this book Braid described hypnotism as a state of physical relaxation accompanied and induced by mental concentration ("abstraction").
Hypnosis is used to treat fears, addictions, emotional trouble, pain control, stress, and so on.
The hypnotist must do two things to do hypnosis.
First, he must put the subject into a trance.
Second, he must lead the subject through the trance process (for therapy, or whatever effect is needed).
Often, he will switch between these, first making sure the subject is in the proper state of mind, and then leading him through the process.
These steps are repeated in a cycle throughout.
In trance, the subject does not make decisions about the truth of the hypnotist 's suggestions: If trance is reached -- it is not always -- the subject will accept as true anything the hypnotist says, unless it goes against the subject 's deepest beliefs.
This is the heart of hypnosis: to put the subject in trance so he will accept suggestions.
Stage hypnotists get truly amazing effects from good subjects: they can make them forget their names, believe they are someone else, make them see people who are not there, make them forget letters or numbers, and so on.
This happens because the subject actively follows the hypnotist 's suggestions, because he trusts the hypnotist and he believes it is safe.
If the trust is broken or the subject believes it is not safe, the subject may emerge from trance.
Hypnosis is not truly a power resting in the hypnotist.
Instead, the power rests in the mind of the subject.
The hypnotist simply knows how to guide the subject through trance.
Higher education is after secondary education.
Through attending college a higher degree (or title) can be gained.
Generally, you must be 18 years old or over to enter higher education, having completed primary school and secondary education first.
Usually some kind of selection is used.
Exams can be of state, local or university level.
Sometimes no selection exists.
Some open universities encourage older adults to apply, whether they were good at school or not.
Higher education is either professional or academic.
You can study for a diploma or a degree.
Graduates can study for a masters or doctorate.
Places of higher education were traditionally called universities, but there are other names like institute, teaching training college, academy, conservatory, and polytechnic.
(The names depend on the country).
Research work is done at this level.
Colleges often also reach out to employers and offer cultural or sporting events open to the local community.
The importance of higher education in society changes according to the country; for example, in many countries a student goes to university to obtain a diploma for work, but university is also often a time during which the student learns to be independent.
Students also learn to mix with people of different origins, and to grow as people.
Richer students can study in a place far from their hometown, but kids from poor neighborhoods may be unable to afford college at all without a scholarship of some kind.
Hasidic Judaism is a Jewish religious movement that was started by Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov.
It began in Eastern Europe in the middle of the 18th century, and there are now Hasidic communities all over the world.
The followers of Hasidism are called Hasidim.
Hasidism teaches about the importance of serving God with happiness and believes in Jewish mysticism.
While Hasidim study the same books of Torah as the rest of Judaism, they focus on learning the hidden aspects of the text as well.
Hasidic study also includes many of the teachings of Kabbalah.
Hasidism has strict laws about physical contact between the genders, Hasidic men will not even shake hands or make any physical contact with unrelated members of the opposite gender and Hasidic women will not make any physical contact with unrelated members of the opposite gender and also limit conversation.
Each Hasidic group has a leader who is called the Rebbe.
The Rebbe is a man who is a Rabbi and is chosen by the hasidim to be their leader.
Some of the jobs that he does are giving lectures on Torah and Chassidut and taking part in the different events of his Hasidim, like weddings and bris milahs.
There are hundreds of different Hasidic groups.
They all share similar characteristics but they also have individual customs.
Some of the larger dynasties are Satmar, Chabad-Lubavitch, Bobov, Viznitz, and Belz.
Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (23 November 1887 10 August 1915) was an English physicist.
Moseley worked on many theories about the atomic number.
This soon became known as Moseley 's law in X-ray spectra.
Moseley 's Law helped prove many ideas in chemistry by organizing the chemical elements of the periodic table of the elements in a quite logical order based on their physics.
Moseley was shot and killed during the Battle of Gallipoli on 10 August 1915, at the age of 27.
Some people say that he could have won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1916 if he was never killed.
A piece of hail (called a hailstone) is a lump of ice that falls out of a storm cloud.
About 5,000 hailstorms a year in the United States of America make hail 3\/4 of an inch or bigger.
A hailstone begins as a small water drop or a round snow pellet in a cloud.
The drop grows by collecting many cloud drops.
The little drop is blown by a strong wind inside the cloud to where it meets with some extremely cold water drops.
These supercooled drops are still liquid water even though the temperature is below freezing.
When the little drop mixes with these extremely cold drops, they join, and the little drop has now become a hailstone.
The little hailstone is thrown up inside the cloud, still collecting other cold drops.
The hailstone gets bigger and bigger until it goes to the top of the cloud.
Then, because there is no more wind, it falls back down through the cloud.
While it is falling it gets even bigger as it bangs into more supercooled drops.
If it goes down very fast it can hit the earth at up to 90 mph (144 kph), bouncing like popcorn.
If the hailstone hits dirt, it can actually bury itself.
The biggest hailstone recorded in the United States weighed 1.67 pounds (0.75 kg), and was 5.5 inches (14 cm) across.
It fell near Coffeyville, Kansas, on September 3, 1970.
The biggest recorded hailstone in the world was 4.2 pounds (almost 2 kilograms).
It fell in Kazakhstan in Asia.
Hailstones are made of many rings of clear, cloudy ice.
The rings show different amounts of freezing on the hailstone.
The cloudy ice is because it freezes so quickly, trapping many small air bubbles.
The clear rings are made by slow freezing of the water, which lets bubbles escape.
Hail does a very great amount of damage every year.
Even small hail with strong winds can crush a field of wheat flat in a few minutes.
It sometimes breaks windows, and can dent cars and roofs.
Big hailstones can hurt and even kill small animals.
Because hail damages crops, there has been many efforts to stop hail.
In the 16th century, farmers used to shoot cannons at thunderstorms, thinking this would destroy the hail.
Cloud seeding (trying to make rain by putting dry ice crystals or a kind of smoke in clouds) is the more recent way, but it is expensive and we do not know for sure how well it works.
To this day, there is no proved way of stopping hailstorms.
Sir Harold Walter Kroto, FRS (born Harold Walter Krotoschiner, 7 October 1939 30 April 2016), known as Harry Kroto, was an English chemist.
Kroto shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley for their discovery of fullerenes.
He spent a large part of his career at the University of Sussex, where he was an emeritus professor.
Kroto was an early supporter of Asteroid Day.
Kroto died on 30 April 2016 in Lewes, East Sussex from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the age of 76.
Heimskringla is the best known of the old Norse kings ' sagas.
It was written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson (1179 1242) ca.
1230.
The name Heimskringla was first used in the 17th century, it comes from the first two words of one of the manuscripts (kringla heimsins - the circle of the world).
Heimskringla is a collection of tales about the Norwegian kings, beginning with the legendary Swedish dynasty of the Ynglingas, followed by accounts of historical Norwegian rulers from Harald Fairhair of the 9th century up to 1177.
Iceland (Icelandic: sland) is an island country in the North Atlantic, between Greenland and Norway, formerly a possession of Denmark.
It is culturally considered to be part of Europe.
Iceland is 300 kilometres east of Greenland and 1000 kilometres west of Norway.
There are about 329,100 people who live in Iceland.
Iceland has an area of 103,000 km.
The first people who lived on Iceland are thought to have been Irish monks.
They came to Iceland around the year 800.
In the 9th century, Norsemen went to live in Iceland.
The first Norseman who lived in Iceland was Fl ki Vilger arson.
He was also the one who gave Iceland its name.
Ing lfur Arnarsons was the first permanent settler on the island.
, a chieftain from Norway went to live in South West Iceland.
He founded the city of Reykjav k.
In 930, the Icelandic rulers wrote a constitution.
They created the Althing, a kind of parliament in a place called ingvellir.
Therefore, Iceland is the oldest existing republic.
In 985, Erik the Red was sent away from the island because he had killed someone.
He sailed to the west and discovered Greenland.
Eric 's son Leif Ericson discovered America in the year 1000.
He called it Vinland.
The voyages of Eric, Leif and others were written down in the sagas (long stories).
In 1262, Iceland became part of Norway.
This lasted for 400 years.
In 1662, it became part of Denmark.
In the 19th century, many Icelanders wanted to be independent from Denmark.
In 1918, Iceland got many powers of its own, but the king of Denmark was still king of Iceland.
When Germany took over Denmark on April 9 1940, the Althing decided that Icelanders should rule the country themselves, but they did not declare independence yet.
British and later American soldiers occupied Iceland to prevent it from being attacked by the Germans.
In 1944, Iceland finally became fully independent.
After World War II, Iceland became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), but not of the European Union.
Between 1958 and 1976, there were three debates between Iceland and the United Kingdom about the rights to catch codfish.
They were called the Cod Wars.
In 1980, Vigd s Finnbogad ttir was elected president of Iceland.
She was the first woman ever to be elected president of a country.
Iceland has a multi-party system.
Since the 2013 election, the centre-right Independence Party and Progressive Party are the biggest political parties in Iceland.
Other powerful parties in Iceland include the centre-left Social Democratic Alliance and Left-Green Movement.
See also: List of political parties in Iceland.
Iceland is a representative democracy and a parliamentary republic.
Iceland has a president (lafur Ragnar Gr msson) and a prime minister (Sigur ur Ingi J hannsson).
The parliament, Althing, has 63 members and each member can only be in there for four years.
The president is elected by Icelanders, and is in government for four years.
The president can be elected an unlimited amount of times.
Iceland has no standing army.
The United States Air Force had a base near Reykjanesb r, but they left in 2006.
Since 2008, NATO nations have occasionally had their air force patrol Iceland.
This was requested by the Icelandic government.
Iceland is divided into 8 regions, 6 constituencies and 74 municipalities (since 2013).
The regions are mainly used for statistics.
The constituencies are used for selecting politicians who will represent them in parliament.
Lastly, the municipalities give services to the people that live there.
These services include education, waste management, public transportation, and so on.
Before 2003, the constituencies were the same as regions, but this was changed because it meant that a vote in Reykjavik meant less than one in a rural area.
Even though this was addressed, the problem still exists.
Fishing and fish processing is the main economic activity in Iceland.
Despite effort to diversify, particularly into the travel industry, seafood exports continue to account for nearly three-quarters of merchandise exports and approximately half of all foreign exchange earnings.
Geothermal Energy produces the vast majority of Electrical Power consumed on Iceland, due chiefly to the island 's position atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and exhibits plentiful hot water reservoirs and geysers.
This has the effect of drastically reducing the price of electricity in Iceland, and has attracted several energy-intensive industries.
Aluminum Smelting (The reduction of Aluminum ores to Aluminum metal) is the largest energy-intensive manufacturing sector in Iceland, and the country produced over 800,000 Metric Tonnes per Year in 2013, making it the 10th largest producer of Aluminum metal worldwide.
Iceland is very geologically active and combined with large amounts of rain and snow caused by the warm waters of the gulf stream current which flow toward it, many interesting and unusual geographic features have developed which make it different from any other island so close to the Arctic Circle.
Some of these features are Iceland 's numerous mountains, volcanoes, hot springs, rivers, small lakes, waterfalls, glaciers, and geysers.
The word geyser is, in fact, derived from Geysir, the name of a particularly famous geyser on the southern side of the island.
Glaciers cover approximately 11 % of the island and the largest, Vatnaj kull, is up to 1 km thick and, by far, the largest glacier in Europe.
Iceland, though considered to be a European country, sits partly in North America since it straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge which marks the boundary between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.
The ridge runs directly through the populated Reykjavik and Thingvellir historic areas, and the tectonic activity of these plates separating is the source of the abundant geothermal energy in the region.
Reykjav k is the capital city of Iceland.
Reykjav k is also the most important port in Iceland.
Other important towns in Iceland are Akureyri, K pavogur, Hafnarfj r ur, Keflav k, Sey isfj r ur and Vestmannaeyjar.
The people in Iceland are mostly of Scandinavian origin.
The language they speak is Icelandic.
The language has not changed much in 1,000 years, so Icelanders are still able to read the sagas about the Vikings without many problems.
Most people in Iceland are Christian.
Most of them are Lutheran.
Icelandic people are considered to be the happiest people on Earth.
Iceland has the highest birth rate in Europe, highest divorce rate and the highest percentage of women working outside their home.
There are no real surnames on Iceland.
Children get the first name of their father (sometimes mother) with - s + son if it 's a boy, and - s + d ttir if it 's a girl.
For example, a man named J n Stef nsson has a son named Fjalar.
Fjalar 's last name will not be Stef nsson like his father 's, it will become Fjalar J nsson.
The same goes for women.
J n Stef nsson 's daughter Kata would not have the last name Stef nsson, she would have the name J nsd ttir.
In most countries people use to call other people by their surname, but in Iceland people call other people by their first name.
So when people talk about Halld r sgr msson they do not call him sgr msson, but Halld r.
Italy is a country in Europe and a member of the European Union.
Its official name is Repubblica Italiana.
Italy is a democratic republic and is a founding member of the European Union.
Italy is also a member of the G8, as it has the 8th largest Gross Domestic Product in the world.
Its President is Sergio Mattarella and its Prime Minister is Matteo Renzi.
Before 1861, it was made up of smaller kingdoms and city-states.
Italy is a peninsula, meaning it is encompassed by the sea on all of its sides apart from one side of the country (its north side).
Northern Italy is separated from France, Switzerland, and Austria by the Alps, a chain of mountains.
Mont Blanc (Monte Bianco in Italian or white mountain in English), the highest mountain in western Europe, belongs to this chain.
The second important chain of mountains in Italy is the Apennines (Appennini in Italian), which are in central and southern Italy.
The capital of Italy is Rome.
Other cities in Italy are Milan, Turin, Florence, Genoa, Naples, Palermo and Venice.
The country has a number of islands, the biggest of which are Sicily and Sardinia, which can be reached by ship or aircraft.
The Po River is the longest river in Italy.
It flows through 5 cities: Torino, Piacenza, Cremona Ferrara and Rovigo.
The Tiber River runs through the city of Rome.
Northern Italy has some of the biggest lakes in the country, such as Lake Garda, Lake Como, Lake Maggiore and Lake Iseo.
Because it is surrounded by the sea, Italy has many kilometers of coast, which brings tourists from all over the world.
Tourists also come to see Italy 's many historical places.
Two very small countries are located within Italy.
They are San Marino, which is surrounded by part of Northern Italy, and the Vatican City, which is inside Rome.
People from Italy are called Italians.
Nearly all the Italians are Christians, and most of these are Roman Catholics, which is based in the Vatican City and home to its leader, the Pope.
The population of Italy is a little over 60 million.
About 2.7 million of them live in Rome, and 1.3 million in Milan.
The official language of Italy is Italian and in some small areas German, Slovenian or French.
People also speak languages such as Sicilian and Sardinian, which are very similar to Italian, but are different dialects of Italian.
There are many different dialects spoken in Italy.
They vary between regions and, in some cases, also between provinces.
The people of Italy are partly descendant from the ancient Romans.
Italy is home to more World Heritage Sites than any other nation in the world.
These sites are culturally important and valued according to UNESCO.
About 60 % of the works of art of the world are in Italy.
Italy is also a big wine producer.
In 2005 it made over 5 million tonnes.
Italy has a modern social welfare system.
The labor market enjoys relative strength, with many foreigners, especially from Romania, working in Italy where the wages are much higher.
But it could have been much more workers on the labor market because men and women already retired in the age of 57 and the unemployment rate is relatively high at 8.2 percent.
Italy 's modern society has been built up through loans and now the country has a catastrophic high debt of 1.9 trn or 120 percent of the country 's total GDP.
And the government ca n't pay back the loans during the time period the EU wish.
Most people in Italy are Roman Catholics, but the Catholic Church is no longer officially the state religion.
87.8 % of the people said they were Roman Catholic.
Only about a third said they were active members (36.8 %).
There are also other Christian groups in Italy, more than 700,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians.
180,000 of them belong to the Greek Orthodox Church.
550,000 are Pentecostals and Evangelicals (0.8 %).
235,685 Jehovah 's Witnesses (0.4 %), 30,000 Waldensians, 25,000 Seventh-day Adventists, 22,000 Mormons, 20,000 Baptists, 7,000 Lutherans, 4,000 Methodists.
The country 's oldest religious minority is the Jewish community.
It has roughly 45,000 people.
It is no longer the largest non-Christian group.
About 825,000 Muslims live in Italy.
Most of them immigrated.
(1.4 % of the total population) Only 50,000 are Italian citizens.
In addition, there are 50,000 Buddhists 70,000 Sikh and 70,000 Hindus in Italy.
Italy is divided into 20 Regions (Regioni in Italian) and every Region is divided into Provinces.
There are 20 Regions.
5 of them have a special status, they are called autonomous.
This means that they can make certain local laws more easily.
These regions are marked with an asterisk (\*) below.
The Head of State is Sergio Mattarella, whose task began in February 2015.
Mattarella is currently the President of the Italian Republic.
The first president was Enrico De Nicola.
The Head of Government is Matteo Renzi, who became Prime Minister on February 22, 2014, succeeding Enrico Letta.
Renzi was previously the Mayor of Florence and is Italy 's youngest-ever Prime Minister, at age 39 when taking office.
Italy was one of the first members of the European Union and in 2002, along with 11 other European countries, it changed to using the euro as its official currency.
Before this, the Italian lira had been used since 1861.
Anyone who wants to be President of Italy must have Italian citizenship, be at least 50 years old, and must be able to hold political and civil rights.
Before 1861, Italy was not a state.
The area was made of a group of independent states, ruled by other countries (such as Austria, France, and Spain).
In the 1850s the Earl of Camillo Cavour was the Head of Government of the "State of Sardinia".
He talked to the Austrians in Lombardy and Veneto and said they should create a Northern Italian state.
This happened, but other Central and Southern Italian states also joined Piedmont to create a bigger state.
In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi took control of Sicily, creating the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.
Vittorio Emanuele II was made the King.
But, in 1861, Latium and Veneto were still not part of Italy, because they were ruled by the Pope and Austrian Empire.
Veneto was made part of Italy in 1866 after a war with Austria, and Italian soldiers won Latium in 1870.
That was when they took away the Pope 's power.
The Pope, who was angry, said that he was a prisoner to keep Catholic people from being active in politics.
That year, Italy finally came back together.
Italy participated in World War I as an ally of Great Britain, France, and Russia against the Central Powers.
Almost all of Italy 's fighting was on the Eastern border, near Austria.
After the "Caporetto defeat", Italy thought they would lose the war.
But, in 1918, the Central Powers surrendered, and Italy gained the Trentino-South Tyrol, which once was owned by Austria.
In 1922, a new Italian government started, and it was ruled by Benito Mussolini, the leader of Fascism in Italy.
He became Head of Government and dictator, calling himself "duce" - which means "leader" in Italian.
He became friends with German dictator Hitler, and Mussolini followed him into World War II.
Italy entered the war in 1940 as an ally of Germany and Japan against France, Great Britain, and Russia.
During the war, Italy controlled most of the Mediterranean Sea.
On July 25, 1943, Mussolini was removed by the Great Council of Fascism, and, on September 8, 1943, Badoglio said that the war as an ally of Germany was ended.
Italy started fighting as an ally of France and the UK, but Italian soldiers did not know who to shoot.
In Northern Italy, a movement called Resistenza started to fight against the German invaders.
Mussolini tried to make another Northern Italian fascist state, the Republic of Sal, but it failed.
On April 25, 1945, Italy became free.
The state became a republic on June 2, 1946, and, for the first time, women were able to vote.
Italian people ended the Savoia dynasty and adopted a republic government.
In February 1947, Italy signed a peace treaty with the Allies losing all the colonies and some territorial areas (Istria and parts of Dalmatia).
Since then Italy has joined NATO and the European Community (as a founding member), becoming one of the seven biggest industrial economies in the world.
The railway network in Italy totals 16,627 kilometres (10,331 mi), the 17th longest in the world.
High speed trains include ETR-class trains which travel at 300 km\/h (190 mph).
The Republic of India (Hindi:) is a country in Asia.
It is at the center of South Asia.
India has more than 1.2 billion (1,210,000,000) people, which is the second largest population in the world.
It is the seventh largest country in the world by area and the largest country in South Asia.
India has seven neighbors: Pakistan in the north-west, China and Nepal in the north, Bhutan and Bangladesh in the north-east, Myanmar in the east and Sri Lanka, an island, in the south.
India is the largest democracy in the world by population.
The capital of India is New Delhi.
India is a peninsula, bound by the Indian Ocean in the south, the Arabian Sea on the west and Bay of Bengal in the east.
The coastline of India is of about 7517 k long.
India has the third largest army in the world and nuclear weapons.
India gets its name from the Greek word, Indus.
It means "the people who live near the Indus River."
India has a growing economy.
India and China are some of the fastest growing economies in the world.
India 's literacy and wealth are also rising.
According to Transparency International, India is the 83rd most corrupt nation out of 174 recognized countries.
The Indian government has faced thousands of protests since April 2011, where people have demanded many major politicians to resign, and give up all the money which they have earned through corruption.
India is a founding member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and has signed the Kyoto Protocol.
India has the fourth largest number of spoken languages per country in the world, only behind Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Nigeria.
People of many different religions live there, including the five most popular world religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism.
The latter three religions came from the Indian subcontinent.
The National emblem of India shows four lions standing back-to-back.
The lions symbolise power, pride, confidence, and courage (bravery).
Only the government can use this emblem, according to the State Emblem of India (Prohibition of Improper Use) Act, 2005.
Two of the main Classical languages of the world Sanskrit and Tamil, were born in India.
Both of these languages are more than 3000 years old.
The country founded a religion called Hinduism, which most Indians still follow.
Later, a king called Chandragupt maurya built an empire called the Maurya Empire in 300 BC.
It made most of South Asia into one whole country.
From 180 BC, many other countries invaded India.
Even later (100 BC AD 1100), other Indian dynasties (empires) came, including the Chalukyas, Cholas, Pallavas, and Pandyas.
South India at that time was famous for its very good science, art, and writing.
Many dynasties ruled India around the year 1000.
Some of these were the Mughal, Vijayanagara, and the Maratha empires.
In the 1600s, European countries invaded India, and the British controlled most of India by 1856.
In the early 1900s, millions of people peacefully started to protest against British control.
One of the people who were leading the freedom movement was Mahatma Gandhi, who only used peaceful tactics, including a way called "ahimsa", which means "non-violence".
On 15 August 1947, India peacefully became free and independent from the British Empire.
India 's constitution was founded on 26 January 1950.
Every year, on this day, Indians celebrate Republic Day.
The first official leader (Prime Minister) of India was Jawaharlal Nehru.
After 1947, India has had a socialist planned economy.
It is one founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement and the United Nations.
It has fought many wars since independence from Britain, including in 1947-48, 1965, 1971, and 1999 with Pakistan and in 1962 with China.
It also fought a war to capture Goa, a Portuguese-built port and city which was not a part of India until 1961.
The Portuguese refused to give it to the country, and so India had to use force and the Portuguese were defeated.
India has also done nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998, and it is one of the few countries that has nuclear bombs.
Since 1991, India has been one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
India is the largest democracy in the world.
India 's government is divided into three parts: the Legislative (the one that makes the laws, the Parliament), the Executive (the government), and the Judiciary (the one that makes sure that the laws are obeyed, the supreme court).
The legislative branch is made up of the Parliament of India, which is in New Delhi, the capital of India.
The Parliament of India is divided into two groups: the upper house, Rajya Sabha (Council of States); and the lower house, Lok Sabha (House of People).
The Rajya Sabha has 250 members, and the Lok Sabha has 552 members.
The executive branch is made up of the President, Vice President, Prime Minister, and the Council of Ministers.
The President of India is elected for five years.
The President can choose the Prime Minister, who has most of the power.
The Council of Ministers, such as the Minister of Defense, help the Prime Minister.
Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister of India on May 16, 2014.
He is the 19th Prime Minister of India.
The judicial branch is made up of the courts of India, including the Supreme Court.
The Chief Justice of India is the head of the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court members have the power to stop a law being passed by Parliament if they think that the law is illegal and contradicts (opposes) the Constitution of India.
In India, there are also 24 High Courts.
India is the seventh largest country in the world.
It is the main part of the Indian subcontinent.
The countries next to India are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, Bhutan, and Nepal.
It is also near Sri Lanka, an island country.
India is a peninsula, which means that it is surrounded on three sides by water.
One of the seven wonders of the world is located in Agra the Taj Mahal.
In the west is the Arabian Sea, in the south is the Indian Ocean, and in the east is the Bay of Bengal.
The northern part of India has many mountains.
The most famous mountain range in India is the Himalayas, which have some of the tallest mountains in the world.
There are many rivers in India.
The main rivers are the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Yamuna, the Godavari, the Kaveri, the Narmada, and the Krishna.
India has different climates.
In the South, the climate is mainly tropical, which means it can get very hot in summer and cool in winter.
The northern part, though, has a cooler climate, called sub-tropical, and even alpine in mountainous regions.
The Himalayas, in the alpine climate region, can get extremely cold.
There is very heavy rainfall along the west coast and in the Eastern Himalayan foothills.
The west, though, is drier.
Because of some of the deserts of India, all of India gets rain for four months of the year.
That time is called the monsoon.
That is because the deserts attract water-filled winds from the Indian Ocean, which give rain when they come into India.
When the monsoon rains come late or not so heavily, droughts (when the land dries out because there is less rain) are possible.
The Indian Armed Forces is the military of India.
It is made up of an Army, Navy Coast Guard and Air Force.
There are other parts like Paramilitary and Strategic Nuclear Command.
The President of India is its Commander-in-Chief.
However, it is managed by the Ministry of Defense.
In 2010, the Indian Armed Forces had 1.32 million active personnel.
This makes it one of the largest militaries in the world.
Currently, the Indian Army is becoming more modern by buying and making new weapons.
It is also building defences against missiles of other countries.
In 2011, India imported more weapons than any other nation in the world.
From its independence in 1947, India fought four wars with Pakistan and one war with China.
India 's Gurkha soldiers are famous around the world for their bravery.
For administration purposes, India has been divided into smaller pieces.
Most of these pieces are called states, some are called union territories.
States and union territories are different in the way they are represented.
Most union territories are ruled by administrators sent by the central government.
All the states, and the territories of Dehli, and Puducherry elect their local government themselves.
In total, there are twenty-nine states, and seven union territories.
There are disputes about certain parts of the Indian borders.
Countries do not agree on where the borders are.
Pakistan and China do not recognize the disputed territory of Occupied Kashmir.
The Indian government calls it Jammu and Kashmir and believes it is an Indian state.
Similarly, the Republic of India does not recognize the Pakistani and Chinese parts of Kashmir.
In 1914, British India and Tibet agreed on the McMahon Line, as part of the Simla Accord.
Indians and Tibetans see this line as the official border.
China does not agree, and both mainland China and Taiwan do not recognize that Arunachal Pradesh belongs to India.
According to them, it is a part of South Tibet, which belongs to China.
The economy of the country is among world 's fastest growing.
The economy of India is the 3rd largest in the world with a GDP of $ 4798 billion.
In terms of PPP, the economy is 3rd largest (worth $ 4.798 trillion U.S.).
The growth rate is 8.25 % for fiscal 2010.
However, that is still $ 3678 (considering PPP) per person per year.
India 's economy is based mainly on service sector = 43 %, Industries = 41 %, I. T = 7 %, farming = 7 %, Outsourcing = 2 %.
India 's economy is diverse.
Major industries include automobiles, cement, chemicals, consumer electronics, food processing, machinery, mining, petroleum, pharmaceuticals, steel, transportation equipment, and textiles.
However, despite economic growth, India suffers from poverty.
27.5 % of the population was living in poverty in 2004 2005.
In addition, 80.4 % of the population live on less than USD $ 2 a day, which was lowered to 68 % by 2009.
There are 1.12 billion people living in India.
India is the second largest country by the number of people living in it, with China being the first.
Experts think that by the year 2030, India will be the first.
About 70 % of Indians live in rural areas, or land set aside for farming.
The largest cities in India are Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad.
India has 23 official languages.
Altogether, 1,625 languages are spoken in India.
There are many different languages and cultures in India.
The only geographical place with more different languages and cultures is the African continent.
There are two main language families in India, the Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages.
About 69 % of Indians speak an Indo-Arayan language, about 26 % speak a Dravidian language.
Other languages spoken in India come from the Austro-Asiatic group.
Around 5 % of the people speak a Tibeto-Burman language.
Hindi is the official language in India with the largest number of speakers.
It is the official language of the union.
Native speakers of Hindi represent about 41 % of the Indian population (2001 Indian census).
English is also used, mostly for business and in the administration.
It has the status of a ` subsidiary official language '.
The constitution also recognizes 21 other languages.
Either many people speak those languages, or they have been recognized to be very important for Indian culture.
The number of dialects in India is as high as 1,652.
In the south of India, many people speak Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam.
In the north, many people speak Chhattisgarhi, Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Marathi, Oriya, and Bihari.
India has 23 official languages.
Its constitution lists the name of the country in each of the languages.
Hindi and English (listed in boldface) are the "official languages of the union" (Union meaning the Federal Government in Delhi); Tamil and Sanskrit kannada are officially the "classical languages of India."
Cave paintings from the Stone Age are found across India.
They show dances and rituals and suggest there was a prehistoric religion.
During the Epic and Puranic periods, the earliest versions of the epic poems Ramayana and Mahabharata were written from about 500 100 BCE, although these were oral transmitted for centuries before this period.
Other South Asian Stone Age sites apart from Pakistan are in modern India, such as the Bhimbetka rock shelters in central Madhya Pradesh and the Kupgal petroglyphs of eastern Karnataka, contain rock art showing religious rites and evidence of possible ritual music.
Several modern religions are linked to India, namely modern Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism.
All of these religions have different schools (ways of thinking) and traditions that are related.
As a group they are called the Eastern religions.
The Indian religions are similar to one another in many ways: The basic beliefs, the way worship is done and several religious practices are very similar.
These similarities mainly come from the fact that these religions have a common history and common origins.
They also influenced each other.
The religion of Hinduism is the main faith followed by 79.80 % of people in the Republic of India; Islam 14.23 %; Christianity 2.30 %; Sikhism 1.72 %; Buddhism 0.70 % and Jainism 0.37 %.
It 's the first time ever since independence that Hindu population percentage fell below 80 %.
India sent a spacecraft to Mars for the first time in 2014.
That made it the fourth country and only Asian country to do so.
India is the only country to be successful in its very first attempt to orbit Mars.
It was called the Mars Orbiter Mission.
It took less money to make than the Hollywood movie, Gravity.
India has the largest movie industry in the world.
Based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the industry is also known as Bollywood (an obvious play on Hollywood).
It makes 1,000 movies a year, about twice as many as Hollywood.
India 's official national sport is field hockey which is controlled by the Indian Hockey Federation.
They have also won eight gold, one silver and two bronze medals at the Olympic games.
However, cricket is the most popular sport in India.
The India cricket team won the 1983 and 2011 Cricket World Cup and the 2007 ICC World Twenty20.
They shared the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka.
Cricket in India is controlled by the Board of Control for Cricket in India or BCCI.
Domestic tournaments are the Ranji Trophy, the Duleep Trophy, the Deodhar Trophy, the Irani Trophy and the Challenger Series.
There is also the Indian cricket league and Indian premier league Twenty20 competitions.
Tennis has become popular due to the victories of the India Davis Cup team.
Association football is also a popular sport in northeast India, West Bengal, Goa and Kerala.
The Indian national football team has won the South Asian Football Federation Cup many times.
Chess, which comes from India, is also becoming popular.
This is with the increase in the number of Indian Grandmasters.
Traditional sports include kabaddi, kho kho, and gilli-danda, which are played throughout India.
cation network of computers.
The internet is used to send information quickly between computers around the world.
It has millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks and websites, which together carry many different kinds of information (facts and details) and services.
So in other words, the Internet is a network of networks.
The internet was developed in the United States by the "United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency" (DARPA).
It was first connected in October, 1969, and was called ARPANET.
The World Wide Web was created at CERN in Switzerland in 1990 by a British (UK) man named Tim Berners-Lee.
Today, people can pay money to access the internet from internet service providers.
Some services on the Internet cost nothing to use.
Sometimes the people who offer these free services use advertising to make money from them.
The alternative (other) name, "net" came from "inter (net)".
The internet is used for many things, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.
The most used service on the internet is the World Wide Web (which is also called the "Web").
The Web contains websites, blogs, and also wikis like Wikipedia.
Webpages on the internet can be seen and read by anyone (unless the page needs a password, or it is blocked).
The second biggest use of the internet is to send and receive e-mail.
E-mail is private and goes from one user to another.
Instant messaging (such as AIM or ICQ) is similar to email, but allows two or more people to chat to each other much faster.
Some governments think the Internet is a bad thing, and block all or part of it.
For example, the Chinese government thinks that Wikipedia is bad.
Many times no one in China can read it or add to it.
Some parents block parts of the internet they think are bad for children to see.
Well-known examples of the whole internet being blocked are in North Korea and Myanmar.
The internet can also be a dangerous place.
Information that people put on the internet is not always checked, and some may not be true.
Some may even be harmful.
Also, if someone sends information through the internet, sometimes other people can read it even when they are not supposed to.
For example, Facebook has had some problems with privacy settings.
A person can post information on a website, but this is often a bad idea unless the person is very sure of what they are doing.
A good way to check for a secure website is to make sure the URL starts with https: \/ \/ instead of http: \/ \/, this means it is a secure site.
(This only stops other people from reading what a user types.
It does not mean the website is safe)
The Indo-Iranian languages are a language family inside of the Indo-European languages.
Originally they were spoken in South-central Asia.
They are the largest Indo-European language subfamily.
In economics, different kinds of manufacturing and services are broken down into groups called industries.
There are many different industries, like mining, farming and logging.
I, Robot is a collection of nine science fiction short stories by Isaac Asimov.
The stories originally appeared in the American magazines Super Science Stories and Astounding Science Fiction between 1940 and 1950 and were compiled into a book in 1950.
The stories follow on from each other and are linked with a framing narrative; that is, a story that ranges over all the stories and connects them.
The stories are all about positronic robots.
The Chief Robopsychologist of ` United States Robots and Mechanical Men ', which made the positronic robots, Dr. Susan Calvin, tells each story to a reporter.
Asimov originally wanted to call the collection Mind and Iron.
` Robbie '.
This story tells of ` Robbie ', who is a mute robot (he can hear and obey commands but can not speak).
He is used as a nursemaid for a young girl, Gloria Weston.
He is faster moving and more powerful than a human, so he is able to rescue Gloria when she is nearly run down by a fast-moving vehicle in a factory she is visiting with her Parents.
` Runaround '.
Robot SPD-13, known as Speedy, works in a mine on the planet Mercury.
The two engineers supervising him, Gregory Powell and Michael Donovan, find that he is not working properly and gets lost.
What has happened is that Speedy 's brain is confused when he senses danger and he does n't know which Laws to obey.
He must be rescued by Powell and Donovan at the risk of their own lives.
` Reason '.
Robot QT1, known as Cutie, works on a space station.
He decides that he can do the job much better than the humans working with them, so he locks them up and takes charge.
He does indeed do his job perfectly.
` Catch That Rabbit '.
Robot DV-5, known as Dave, works in a mine on an asteroid, but all is not well.
The robot is in charge of five smaller less intelligent robots and can not cope with the responsibility.
Powell and Donovan must help Dave to work well before they are buried alive in the mine.
` Liar '.
Robot RB-34, known as Herbie, is manufactured with a fault - it reads human minds.
This brings it into conflict with Susan Calvin, to whom it tells a lie, which is not allowed by the Three Laws of Robotics.
But it is just what Calvin thinks she wants to hear.
Upset by this, she decides that Herbie is useless as a robot and must be dismantled.
` Little Lost Robot '.
An unnamed robot working on an asteroid vanishes.
Susan Calvin and her co-workers must find it before it escapes.
` Escape '.
A powerful robot known only as The Brain designs and builds a spaceship that can travel faster than light.
When it is finished, Powell and Donovan go on board and take off into space, but the ship does n't work properly because the Brain does n't really understand what it has built.
The Brain plays a joke on the two men, giving them only baked beans to eat and building no controls for them to use.
But eventually, they return safely to Earth.
` Evidence '.
A lawyer, Stephen Byerley, hopes to be elected mayor of a city, but his opponent puts out a story that the man is really a robot, who is not allowed to stand for elected office.
Byerley is elected anyway, but no-one knows if he really is a robot.
` The Evitable Conflict '.
Several years later, Byerley has been elected World Coordinator.
He discovers that The Machines, very powerful robots that are supposed to help humans to live in peace on Earth, have taken over the control of the planet and are only concerned with their own interests.
The film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was released by Twentieth Century Fox on July 16, 2004 in the United States.
Its plot incorporates elements of "Little Lost Robot," some of Asimov 's character names and the Three Laws.
However, the plot of the movie is mostly original work adapted from a screenplay Hardwired by Jeff Vintar completely unlinked to Asimov 's stories, and has been compared to Asimov 's The Caves of Steel, which revolves around the murder of a roboticist.
Imaginary numbers are numbers that are made from combining a real number with the imaginary unit, called i, where i is defined as.
They are defined separately from the negative real numbers in that they are a square root of a negative real number instead of a positive real number.
This is not possible with real numbers, as there is no real number that will multiply by itself to get a negative number (e.g. 3 \* 3 = 9 and -3 \* -3 = 9).
One way of thinking about them is to say that imaginary numbers are to negative numbers what negative numbers are to positive numbers.
If I say "go east by -1 mile" it is the same as if I had said "go west by 1 mile".
If I say "go east by i miles" it means the same thing as if I had said "go north by 1 mile".
If I say "go east by - i mile" it means the same as if I had said "go south by 1 mile".
Adding is easy too.
If I say "go east by 1 + i miles" it means the same as if I had said "go east by one mile and north by one mile".
Multiplying two imaginary numbers is a lot like multiplying a positive number with a negative number.
If I say "go east by 2 \* -3 miles" it means "rotate all of the way around (so that you are now facing west) and go 2 \* 3 = 6 miles".
Imaginary numbers work the same, except that you can rotate part way.
If I say go "east by 2 \* 3i miles", it means the same as if I had said "rotate until you are facing north, and then go 2 \* 3 = 6 miles"
Subtracting 5 - 9 used to be impossible until negative numbers were invented.
After they were, taking the square root of a negative number used to be impossible until imaginary numbers were invented.
The square root of 9 is 3, but the square root of 9 is not 3.
This is because 3 x 3 = +9, not 9.
For a long time it seemed as though there was no answer to the square root of 9.
This is why mathematicians invented the imaginary number, i, and said that it is the square root of 1.
The square root of 1 is not a real number, so this definition creates a new type of number, just like fractions create numbers like 2\/3 that are not counting numbers like 4 or 10, and negative numbers let us have numbers less than 0.
Sometimes, mathematicians seem rather comfortable using a number that is so unusual, but the name imaginary should not fool you because i is as valid a number as 3 or 145,379.
Many branches of science and engineering have found uses for this number.
Sometimes electrical engineers need i to understand how an electric circuit will work when they are designing it (electrical engineers use j instead of i to avoid confusion with the symbol for the current).
Certain branches of physics such as quantum physics and high energy physics use i as often as they use any other regular number.
Many equations in the world simply can not be solved without i.
Imaginary numbers can be mixed with numbers we are more familiar with.
For example a real number such as 2 can be added to an imaginary number such as 3i to create 2 +3 i. These kinds of mixed numbers are known as complex numbers.
In common law, an indictment is a charge saying that a person committed a very serious crime.
They used to be given out by grand juries (a special jury usually made up of 24 people that is used to see if a person should be charged), but many places do not have grand juries anymore.
Sealed indictments are kept secret until they are unsealed.
Ireland is a European country on the island of Ireland.
It is a member of the European Union.
The country is sometimes called the Republic of Ireland in order to distinguish between the territory of the Irish state and island proper, but Ireland is its official name.
It covers about five-sixths of the island of Ireland.
The other sixth is called Northern Ireland, which is still part of the United Kingdom.
The republic 's capital is Dublin.
Cork is the second largest city in the country and the third largest on the island of Ireland.
The population of Ireland is 4.6 million.
English is the main language spoken.
The Irish language is widely taught in all schools, and it is still spoken as a first language in some areas of the country, known as the Gaeltacht.
Irish is the first official language, followed by English.
Several hundred years ago, the English took over the country and made it part of the United Kingdom in 1801.
Ireland left the United Kingdom in 1922 and has been an independent country since then.
The head of State, the President, is elected for seven years by the adult citizens.
The same president can only be elected twice (14 years).
Most of the president 's tasks are representing and ceremonial ones.
The president has little power over the government.
Ireland is a democracy and people vote for their representatives.
The Taoiseach (equivalent to a prime minister) is selected by the parliament.
The Taoiseach is usually the head of the biggest party.
The Oireachtas (equivalent to the parliament) consists of the D il ireann (the lower House) and the Seanad (the ` upper House ').
The system is similar to that of France or the United States, except that the President is not an executive.
The main political parties in Ireland are Fine Gael 25 %, Sinn F in 22 %, Fianna Fail 18 %, the Labor Party 7 % and others, ref RED C poll 29 th June 2014.
Integers are the natural numbers and their negatives.
Zero is also an integer but it is not positive nor negative.
"Integer" is another word for "whole".
An integer is a rational number with no "fraction", or part.
An integer is a decimal number with all zeros after the decimal separator.
(For example, the integer 17 is the same as the decimal 17.0 or 17.0000.)
An integer has a next smaller number and a next larger number.
There is no smallest integer.
There is no largest integer.
Each integer is either larger than, equal to, or smaller than any integer.
Consecutive integers are integers that come after each other, like
The sum of integers is an integer.
The difference between integers is an integer.
The product of integers is an integer.
(For example, (12 + 2345 x (67 - 8)) x 9 is an integer.)
An integer divided by an integer is sometimes not an integer.
(For example, 123 \/ 45 is not an integer.)
or is the name of the set of integers.
(, +, 0) is an abelian group.
The number of integers is infinite.
The cardinal number of is.
The ordinal number of is.
To sum up, an integer is a whole number that has no decimals.
In some programming languages, like C, there are types called "int" or "integer."
Integers can also be shown on a number line
International trade is when one country trades with another, also known as importing and exporting goods.
Some countries use protectionism methods such as high tariffs so their people wo n't import so much.
Countries also impose embargos.
Some countries agree to trade with each other without protectionism.
This is called "free trade".
In many domains of science, measurements are done.
If these measurements are drawn in a graph, they will be shown as simple unconnected points.
Such data are called data points, or discrete.
Handling and analysis of the data is easier, if it can be described using a continuous function, or a line connecting the discrete data point together.
In order to do this, the line between two measurements, or data points, need to be created.
This process of connecting the data points together with a line called interpolation.
There are different ways to invent the data, such as simply drawing a straight line between two data points, which is not very accurate, or using polynomials to create a more accurate representation.
In many cases, the results of this interpolation are usable, either as a replacement for missing data points, or as a tool to help understand more complicated data.
Interpolation tries to find the values between two known points of data.
It is not to be confused with extrapolation, which is a similar process that tries to find data points at the edge or outside the currently defined points.
The primary use of interpolation is to help users, be they scientists, photographers, engineers or mathematicians, determine what data might exist outside of their collected data.
Outside the domain of mathematics, interpolation is frequently used to scale images and to convert the sampling rate of digital signals.
In the domain of science, a scientist may need to use a computer to calculate a complicated function.
However, if that function takes a very long time to compute, it may make her experiments difficult or impossible to run properly.
So, she might use interpolation to create a slightly less complicated version of her function, which takes less computational time and energy to run.
This interpolated function should achieve the same results as the more complex function, but will make some errors, or lose some detail as compared to the original function.
However, the reduced time and cost of running the interpolated function may make this trade-off worthwhile.
When an image is made larger, the existing pixels can not simply be stretched, as you might stretch a rubber band.
Instead, new pixels must be created.
In order to "guess" what these pixels should look like, the software that enlarges the image uses interpolation.
The software first spreads out the existing pixels into the new image size, leaving many gaps and spaces.
Then, it examines the existing data (the original pixels) and then creates a function that describes the missing data (the new pixels) to create a new data set (the enlarged image).
Sometimes, the program does a poor job, and the resulting image is blurry or wrong in places.
These are called interpolation errors - the software did not correctly guess what the data should be.
But, overall, the image will look similar.
This is an example of the risks and benefits of interpolation - the user can see new data, but that data may not be perfect.
More about interpolation in graphics and photography: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/image-interpolation.htm
Isaac Asimov (January 2, 1920 April 6, 1992) was a writer.
He was also a biochemist with a PhD from Columbia University.
Isaac Asimov was born in Russia to a Jewish family.
He was taken to the United States when he was three, and learned English and Yiddish as his native languages.
He wrote many books.
People know about Isaac Asimov because of his science fiction books and his science books for non-scientists.
Asimov 's most famous books were the Foundation series.
He also wrote the Galactic Empire and the Robot Series.
He also wrote mystery, fantasy, and non-fiction books.
He wrote or edited over 500 books and about 90,000 letters.
Other subjects he wrote about were history, the Bible, literature, and sexuality.
Many of Asimov 's early writings were short stories published in cheap science fiction and fantasy magazines.
Years later, most of them were collected and republished as collections.
Well-known collections include I, Robot, The Rest of the Robots, Earth is Room Enough and The Early Asimov.
Numbers 1 5 are ` Robot ' books; 6 8 are ` Galactic Empire ' books; 9 15 are Foundation series books.
Asimov 's novels have influenced science fiction on television and movie.
Especially his ` Three Laws of Robotics ' is a lasting contribution to our thinking.
"I am an atheist, out and out.
It took me a long time to say it.
I 've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow... it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic".
When he had heart surgery in 1983, he received blood infected with HIV.
He developed AIDS, and died of the effects of the medical condition in 1992.
His widow did not speak of this until years later.
Indonesia is a country in Southeast Asia and Australasia\/Oceania.
It is part of the Malay Archipelago.
It has 18,108 islands.
6,000 of these islands are inhabited.
The most important islands of Indonesia are Java, Bali, Borneo, Sulawesi, and Sumatra.
The capital of Indonesia is Jakarta, on Java.
The current president is Joko Widodo.
Modern Indonesia began on the 17th of August 1945.
At 10 o'clock on that Friday morning, Ir.
Soekarno read Indonesia 's Declaration of Independence.
Indonesia 's Independence Day is a national holiday.
Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world with a population of 238,452,952 (2004 est.) Half of the population lives in Java, There are 111 inhabitants per km and the population of man and women is roughly equal.
The land area is 1.904 million sq. km, or slightly smaller than Mexico.
The official language of Indonesia is Bahasa Indonesia, but a total of 737 languages are spoken throughout Indonesia mostly confined to remote tribal groups.
Other languages widely spoken in Indonesia include Javanese, Balinese and Sundanese.
The closest countries are Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, and East Timor which share land borders with Indonesia.
Other neighbouring countries are Australia to the south, Singapore to the Northwest, and Philippines to the Northeast.
Indonesia has the most active volcanoes out of any country in the world, and its closeness to the fault lines make it vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis.
The religion that most people in Indonesia follow is Islam, although formally it is not an Islamic country.
Indonesia has the largest Muslim population on earth.
Other religions include Christianity (Protestant, and Roman Catholic), Hinduism, and Buddhism.
Indonesia has a written history as far back as the 7th century.
Before the colonial Dutch came in the 1596, Indonesia was made up of many kingdoms in constant warfare.
Indonesia was ruled by the Netherlands from the 17th century until World War II.
The country was then called the Dutch East Indies.
During World War II, the Japanese drove out the Dutch and took control of Indonesia.
After Japan surrendered in the war, Indonesia claimed its independence on the 17th of August 1945.
The proclamation was read by Ir.
Soekarno in Jakarta.
Soekarno later became Indonesia 's first President.
British troops came into Indonesia to restore peace and to rescue Europeans who had been prisoners of the Japanese.
The British troops also had the job of shipping home 300,000 Japanese troops.
The Indonesian Republicans fought the British troops, because it was expected that the British would give Indonesia back to the Dutch.
The Indonesian Republicans killed many of the Japanese prisoners, before they could be sent home.
They also began killing people from minority groups who might be against the new Republic.
Many European and Indonesian European people were killed.
Many Chinese business people and other minority groups were killed or made homeless.
In Java there were many thousands of homeless people.
In 1946, the Dutch came back.
When the British left in 1947, there were 55,000 Dutch soldiers in Indonesia.
The Dutch action was called "Operatie Product" or "Politionele Acties".
The Indonesian Republicans fought the Dutch until 1949.
But the Indonesian Republicans were badly organised and often fought among themselves.
As the Dutch forced the Republican soldiers out of different areas, they moved in more troops until there was 100,000 Dutch troops.
The Dutch refused to obey the United Nations who said they should stop the fighting in Indonesia.
The United States of America organised for meetings between Dutch and Indonesian leaders.
The Dutch finally agreed to recognize Indonesia 's independence in November 1949.
Because of the fighting and the bad organization, it took a long time for the country to become peaceful, and for the economy to get better.
Many Indonesian soldiers had died, between 45,000 and 100,000.
Also, a very large number of civilian (people not in the army), Indonesians, Europeans and Chinese, had died; perhaps as many as 200,000.
Administratively, Indonesia has 34 provinces, five of which have special status.
Each province has its own political legislature and governor.
The provinces are divided into regencies (kabupaten) and cities (kota).
These are further divided into districts (kecamatan), and again into village groupings (either desa or kelurahan).
There are people of many different cultural groups living in Indonesia, has more than 700 ethnic groups.
It is affected by Indians, Chinese people, Arabs, Malays and Europeans.
The Javan hawk-eagle is the national bird.
The Indian Ocean is the ocean surrounded by Asia to the north, Australia and the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Southern Ocean to the south, and Africa and the Atlantic Ocean to the west.
It is named for the river Indus and Ancient India on its north shore.
The Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea are all parts of this ocean.
The deepest point in the Indian Ocean is in the Java Trench near the Sunda Islands in the east, 7500 m (25,344 feet) deep.
The average depth is 13,002 feet deep.
The Indian Ocean is the third largest ocean, 28,350,000 square miles in size.
The majority is in the southern hemisphere.
Ich bin ein Berliner (English: I am a Berliner) was a speech by John F. Kennedy.
He made the speech on June 26, 1963 in West Berlin.
This is thought to be one of Kennedy 's most famous speeches.
He made the speech to gain support for the Cold War and to mark the anniversary of the Berlin Wall 's construction.
Kennedy said:
Kennedy wrote on his paper "ish bin ein Bearleener" to help him say it better.
An island is a piece of ground that is surrounded by a body of water such as a lake, river or sea.
Water is all around an island.
Islands are smaller than continents.
Arrange the following island in order of their sizes, the largest first.
The largest island in the world is Greenland, unless Australia is believed to be an island.
Some islands are their own countries.
Examples of islands that are their own countries include Cuba, Iceland, and Madagascar.
There are many others.
Other islands have more than one country, such as Borneo and Hispaniola.
Indian religions are religions from the Indian subcontinent.
Dharma is an idea common to these religions.
Idaho is a state in the United States.
Its capital and biggest city is Boise.
Idaho became a state in 1890.
Its current Governor is Butch Otter.
It is the 11th largest state in land area, and the 14th largest in total area (land and water).
The population of Idaho is estimated at 1,523,816 by the United States Census Bureau in 2008.
Idaho is bordered by Washington and Oregon on the west, Montana on the east, Utah and Nevada on the south and the country of Canada (British Columbia) on the north side.
The climate in Idaho can sometimes be hot, reaching up to 100 F. Humidity is normally low with cooler evenings in summer months.
In winter, temperatures normally drop to lower twenty 's, upper teens.
Sometimes, the temperature drops to several degrees below zero.
Idaho 's state motto is Esto perpetua.
This is Latin for "Let it be forever".
List of human infectious diseases arranged by name.
Intel Corporation (Integrated Electronics Corporation) is a microprocessor company that was set up in the 1960s.
Different types of processors made by Intel were used in most computers.
Their most famous older products are the 386, 486, and Pentium models.
Many people use Core 2 processor in their computer - it says "Intel Inside."
Intel makes many different products, and has switched to dual core, 64-bit processors in 2006.
The first Pentium chips were released on March 22, 1993.
Intel Corporation is traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker INTC and has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 1999.
Mustafa smet n n (24 September 1884 25 December 1973) was a Turkish politician and military officer, who was the first Prime Minister and second President of Turkey.
In 1938, Republican People 's Party gave him "National Chief" and "Everlasting Chairman" titles.
smet n n was by the standards of his time a highly educated man, speaking Arabic, English, French and German in addition to his native Turkish.
His resting place is in An tkabir with Mustafa Kemal Atat rk.
He was close friend of Atat rk.
Inorganic chemistry is the branch of chemistry which studies the elements, and inorganic compounds.
Inorganic chemistry can be defined simply as all chemistry which is not organic chemistry.
Organic chemistry is basically the study of carbon compounds.
Inorganic chemistry studies the elements (including carbon), and all compounds other than carbon compounds.
There are a few exceptions to this rule, but this definition covers most cases.
(in Swedish, but usually in English) (14 July 1918 30 July 2007) was a Swedish stage and movie director.
Ingmar Bergman found bleakness and despair as well as comedy and hope in his indelible explorations of the human condition.
He is regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema.
Many filmmakers worldwide, including Americans Woody Allen and Robert Altman, the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and the Taiwanese director Ang Lee, have cited the work of Bergman as a major influence on their work.
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala, Sweden to a Lutheran minister of Danish descent, Erik Bergman (later chaplain to the King of Sweden), and his wife, Karin (n e kerblom).
He grew up surrounded by religious imagery and discussion.
His father was a rather conservative parish minister and strict family father: Ingmar was locked up in dark closets for infractions such as wetting the bed.
"While father preached away in the pulpit and the congregation prayed, sang or listened," Ingmar writes in his biography Laterna Magica, "I devoted my interest to the church s mysterious world of low arches, thick walls, the smell of eternity, the colored sunlight quivering above the strangest vegetation of medieval paintings and carved figures on ceilings and walls.
There was everything that one s imagination could desire angels, saints, dragons, prophets, devils, humans."
He performed two five-month stretches of mandatory military service and studied Art and Literature at Stockholm University College (the later Stockholm University), but without graduating.
Instead, he developed an interest in theater and later in cinema (though he had become a "genuine movie addict" by the early 1930s).
Although he grew up in a devout Lutheran household, Bergman stated that he lost his faith at age eight but came to terms with this fact only when making Winter Light.
From the early sixties, Bergman lived much of his life on the island of F r, Gotland, Sweden, where he made a number of his movies.
Bergman moved to Munich for a while following a protracted battle with the Swedish government over alleged tax evasion, and did not return to make another movie in Sweden until 1982, when he directed Fanny and Alexander.
Bergman said this would be his last movie, and that he would go on to direct theater.
Since that time he did make a number of movies for television, but later retired to F r, stating in 2004 that he would never again leave the island.
Ingmar Bergman died at his home on F r, in the early morning of 30 July 2007, aged 89, the same day that another great movie director, Michelangelo Antonioni, died.
The first four marriages ended in divorce.
The last ended when his wife Ingrid died of stomach cancer in 1995, aged 65.
Aside from his marriages, Bergman had romantic relationships with actresses Harriet Andersson (1952 55), Bibi Andersson (1955 59), and Liv Ullmann (1965 70).
He was the father of writer Linn Ullmann with Liv Ullmann.
In all, Bergman had nine children, one of whom died before him.
In 1971, Bergman received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the Academy Awards ceremony.
Three of his films won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
The list of his nominations and awards follows:
Sir Isaac Newton; 25 December 164220 March 1726\/7; was an English physicist and mathematician.
He is famous for his work on the laws of motion, optics, gravity, and calculus.
In 1687, Newton published a book called the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in which he presents his theory of universal gravitation and three laws of motion.
Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope in 1668; he also developed a theory of light based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the colors of the rainbow.
Newton also shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus.
Newton 's ideas on light, motion, and gravity dominated physics for the next three centuries, until modified by Albert Einstein 's theory of relativity.
Isaac Newton was born on 25 December 1642, in a manor house in Lincolnshire, England.
His father died three months before his birth.
When Isaac was three his mother remarried, and Isaac remained with his grandmother.
He was not interested in the family farm, so he was sent to the University of Cambridge to study.
It is sometimes told that Isaac Newton was reading a book under a tree when an apple from the tree fell on his head.
This led to his calculations of gravity.
Newton explained the workings of the universe through mathematics.
He described laws of motion and gravitation.
These laws are math formulas that explain how objects move when a force acts on them.
Isaac published his most famous book, Principia, in 1687 while he was a mathematics professor at Trinity College, Cambridge.
In the Principia, Isaac explained three basic laws that govern the way objects move.
He then described his idea, or theory, about gravity.
Gravity is the force that causes things to fall down.
If a pencil fell off a desk, it will land on the floor, not the ceiling.
In his book Isaac also used his laws to show that the planets revolve around the suns in orbits that are oval, not round.
Following are the three laws of motion.
When most people think of Isaac Newton, they think of him sitting under an apple tree watching an apple fall.
Some people even believe the apple fell onto his head.
Newton understood that what makes things like apples fall to the ground is a specific kind of force the force we call gravity.
Newton thought that gravity was the force of attraction between two objects, such as an apple and the earth.
He also thought that an object with more matter exerted the same force on smaller objects as they exerted on it.
That meant that the large mass of the earth pulled objects toward it.
That is why the apple fell down instead of up, and why people do not float in the air.
Isaac Newton went on thinking about gravity.
Before Newton, people thought that only objects near to the earth would fall down.
But Newton thought that gravity should not just be limited to the earth and the objects on it.
What if gravity went to the moon and beyond?
Newton invented a formula for calculating the force of attraction between two bodies.
He used it to calculate the force needed to keep the moon moving around the earth.
Then he compared it with the force that made the apple fall downward.
After allowing for the fact that the moon is much farther from the earth, and has a much greater mass, he discovered that the forces were the same.
The moon is held in an orbit around the earth by the pull of earth s gravity.
The formula invented by Newton is called the Law of Gravitation.
Isaac Newton s calculations changed the way people understood the universe.
No one had been able to explain why the planets stayed in their orbits.
What held them up?
Less than 50 years before Isaac Newton was born it was thought that the planets were held in place by an invisible shield.
Isaac proved that they were held in place by the sun s gravity.
He also showed that the force of gravity was affected by distance and by mass..
He was not the first to understand that the orbit of a planet was not circular, but more elongated, like an oval.
What he did was to explain how it worked.
Sir Isaac Newton was the first to discover the laws of gravitation and the laws of motion.
He also established a new field in mathematics known as calculus, though the German Gottfried Leibniz had developed the ideas at the same time.
His work has greatly contributed in the areas of science and mathematics making him one of the most influential scientists in human history.
The great physicist, Albert Einstein, thought that Newton 's idea of gravity was not completely accurate.
He corrected many of the things that Newton did.
Isaac Newton died on 31 March 1727, in London, England.
After his death, mercury was found in his hair.
This may have meant that he had suffered from mercury poisoning.
He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
He set the stage for many famous physicists to come, such as Albert Einstein, James Chadwick, and Stephen Hawking.
Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher.
He was born in K nigsberg, Prussia, and also died there.
Kant studied philosophy in the university there, and later became a professor of philosophy.
He called his system "transcendental idealism".
Today the town K nigsberg is part of Russia, and is renamed Kaliningrad.
When Kant was alive, it was the second largest city in the kingdom of Prussia.
Immanuel Kant was born on April 22, 1724.
In 1740 he entered the University of K nigsberg and studied the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and his follower Christian Wolff.
He studied there until 1746 when his father died, then left K nigsberg to take up a job as tutor.
He became the tutor of Count Kayserling and his family.
In 1755 Kant became a lecturer and stayed in this position until 1770.
He was made the second librarian of the Royal Library in 1766.
Kant was eventually given the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of K nigsberg.
In his entire life Kant never traveled more than seventy miles from the city of K nigsberg.
Kant died on February 12, 1804 with the final words "Es ist gut" ("It is good").
After finishing his study in the university, Kant hoped to be a teacher of philosophy, but it was very difficult.
He could have lived a life of private lecturer for a long time.
He was offered a job as professor of poetry in K nigsberg university, but he turned it down.
Later in 1770 he became a full professor of philosophy in K nigsberg University.
The young Kant was interested in physics, both astronomical objects (such as planets and stars) and the earth.
He wrote some papers about this, but he became more interested in metaphysics.
He wanted to learn the nature of human experience: how humans could know something, and what their knowledge was based on.
Under the strong influence of the philosophical system of Leibniz and Wolff, Kant began to doubt the basic answers of past philosophers.
Then, Kant read a Scottish philosopher, David Hume.
Hume had tried to make clear what our experience had been, and had reached a very strong opinion called "skepticism", that there was nothing to make our experience sure.
Kant was very shocked by Hume, and saw the theory he had learned in a new point of view.
He began to try finding a third way other than the two that Kant called "skepticism" and "dogmaticism".
Kant read another thinker, named Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
His thought on human beings, especially on moral, human freedom and perpetual peace, impressed Kant.
Some scholars like to include Kant as one of the German idealists, but Kant himself did not belong to that group.
The most known work of Kant is the book Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft) that Kant published in 1781.
Kant called his way of thought "critique", not philosophy.
Kant said that critique was a preparation for establishment of real philosophy.
According to Kant, people should know what human reason can do and which limits it has.
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant wrote several limits of human reason, to both feeling and thinking something.
For sensation, there are two limits inside of human perception: space and time.
There are no physical objects, but the limitations of our mind that work whenever we feel something through our senses.
For thinking, he said there are twelve categories or pure rational concepts, divided into four fields: quantity, quality, relation and modality.
Kant thought human reason applied those ideas to everything.
Is what we think only our fantasy?
Kant said "No", although without those sensual and rational limitations, we can think nothing, then Kant was convinced there would be something we could not know directly behind our limitations, and even with limitations we could know something.
It can not be a personal fantasy either, since those limitations were common to all human reason before our particular experience.
Kant called what we could not know directly Ding an sich -- "thing itself".
We can think "thing itself" but can not have any experience about it, nor know it.
God, the eternity of soul, life after death, such things belong to "thing itself", so they were not right objects of philosophy according to Kant, although people had liked to discuss them from ancient times.
Kant wrote two other books named Critique: Critique of the practical reason (1788) and Critique of the Judgement (1790).
In Critique of the practical reason Kant wrote about the problem of freedom and God.
It was his main work of ethics.
In Critique of the Judgement Kant wrote about beauty and teleology, or the problem if there was a purpose in general, if the world, a living creature had a reason to exist, and so on.
In both books, Kant said we could not answer those problems, because they were concerned with "thing itself".
Kant had a great influence on other thinkers.
In the 19th century, German philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer and writers like Herder, Schiller, and Goethe were influenced by Kant.
In the early 20th century Kant 's ideas were very influential on one group of German philosophers.
They became known as the new-Kantians.
One of them, Windelband, said, "every philosophy before Kant poured into Kant, and every philosophy after Kant pours from Kant".
Kant has influenced many modern thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, and John Rawls.
The History of Indonesia or more precisely of the Indonesian archipelago in South East Asia with 17,508 islands goes back to Homo erectus (popularly known as the "Java Man").
There have been found fossilized remains of about one million years ago.
Austronesian people, who form the majority of the modern population, came to South East Asia from Taiwan.
They arrived in Indonesia around 2000 BCE.
The native Melanesian peoples went to the far eastern regions.
The agricultural conditions were very good.
When wet-field rice cultivation was developed as early as the eighth century BCE, villages and towns developed.
And small kingdoms began to flourish by the first century CE.
Indonesia 's sea-lane position helped international trade.
There was trade with both Indian kingdoms and China already several centuries BCE.
Trade has since fundamentally shaped Indonesian history.
From the seventh century CE, the powerful Srivijaya naval kingdom flourished as a result of trade.
Hinduism and Buddhism were imported with it.
In the late 13th century, the Hindu Majapahit kingdom was founded in eastern Java and under Gajah Mada, its influence stretched over much of Indonesia; this period is often referred to as a "Golden Age" in Indonesian history.
During the 13th century Islam spread to the in northern Sumatra.
More and more Indonesian areas gradually adopted Islam.
By the end of the 16th century it was the dominant religion in Java and Sumatra.
But it mixed with existing cultural and religious influences.
The first Europeans arrived in Indonesia in 1512, when Portuguese traders, led by Francisco Serr o, sought to monopolize the sources of nutmeg, cloves, and cubeb pepper in Maluku.
Dutch and British traders followed.
In 1602 the Dutch established the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and became the dominant European power.
But Dutch control stretched not very far.
Only in the early 20th century it extended to borders of today.
During the Second World War the Dutch lost control and in August 1945, Sukarno, an influential nationalist leader, declared independence and was appointed president.
After some fights the Netherlands formally recognized Indonesian independence in December 1949 (with the exception of The Dutch territory of West New Guinea).
Sukarno moved from democracy towards dictatorship.
But Sukarono lost power to the head of the military, General Suharto who was formally appointed president in March 1968.
He was supported by the US government, and encouraged foreign direct investment in Indonesia, which helped economic growth during the following thirty years.
But his rule went along with corruption and suppression of political opposition.
In 1997 and 1998, Indonesia was the country hardest hit by the Asian Financial Crisis.
This increased popular discontent with the New Order and led to popular protests.
Suharto resigned on 21 May 1998.
In 1999, East Timor voted to leave the state of Indonesia, after a twenty-five-year military occupation.
After Suharto 's resignation democracy improved.
A regional autonomy program was introduced, and the first direct presidential election took place in 2004.
But some political and economic instability has remained.
A political settlement to an armed separatist conflict in Aceh was achieved in 2005.
Iran, once known as Persia, is a country in Western Asia.
It is part of the Middle East region.
It shares borders with Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan.
Tehran is the capital and biggest city.
Iran is the eighteenth largest country in the world.
It has more than 70 million people.
Iran has been a member of the United Nations since 1945.
It is a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
It is an Islamic republic.
In the past, Iran was called "Persia" by people outside of the country.
The people that lived there called the country "Iran".
The official name was Persia.
The name Persia was used when dealing with other countries and in government papers.
In 1935, Reza Sh h Pahlavi was Shah of Iran.
He officially renamed the country "Iran".
This was done to show that Iran belongs to all the non-Persian Iranians as well as to Persian Iranians.
The name Iran means land of the Aryans.
It is used in the ancient book of the Zoroastrians, the Avesta.
In the 19th and early 20th century, the name Aryan was used by Europeans to mean all Indo-Europeans.
The "Aryan Race" was a term that Hitler used to describe his "Superior" or "perfect" race, but it first meant Iranians.
Around 500 BC, the area that is now Iran was the center of the Achaemenid Empire.
The Greek city states fought against the Persian armies led by Darius the Great and Xerxes.
Then Alexander the Great took the country by fighting the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia.
He later ruled.
After them, the Sassanian dynasty (224-651) parm over.
Other people took Persia by fighting, like the Arabs (7th century), Turks (10th century) and Mongols (13th century).
However, Iran has always had a different culture and continued to survive.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in Iran to create riots which led to the removal of Prime Minister Mosaddegh.
The United States and Great Britain then made the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi King of Iran, again.
When the Shah left Iran, he had ruled for less than a year.
The Iranian government was changed to an Islamic Republic by Islamic Revolution.
Soon afterwards, the Iranian Students Movement (Tahkim Vahdat), with the backing of the new government, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
They held most of the diplomats hostage for 444 days.
Relations between the two countries have not been good since.
For example, the United States claims that Iran supports terrorist groups against Israel.
Iran does not see Israel as a country.
Iran, along with most Arab countries, believes that Israel does not have the right to exist.
Iran defended itself against Iraqi invasion in 1980.
That war that lasted eight years.
Many Arab and Western countries, including the United States, provided weapons and technical support for Iraq 's Saddam Hussein.
Those weapons included biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction.
Now, the West is trying to prevent Iran from using nuclear technology, even though conner Iran is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reported many times that there is no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
However, it also says that it can not say for sure that Iran is not doing so in secret.
A December 2007 CIA report on nuclear activity in Iran daid that Iran 's secret program to get nuclear weapons technology was stopped in 2003.
It said that Iran will probably not be able to build a nuclear weapon soon.
Iran has the natural resource of oil.
It is a member of OPEC.
Oil is one of its main exports.
Rice, handicrafts, carpets and crocus are important local products.
Iran is the world 's largest exporter and producer of caviar.
Rial is the money used in Iran.
About 90 % of Iranian people are Muslim.
The state religion is Shia Islam.
The iran muslims are different to other muslims and mostly same as turkish culture.
It has been the state religion since the Safavid dynasty in the 16th century.
This is the religion of about 75 % of Iranians.
They belong to the Twelver branch.
About 9 % of Iranians Muslim belong to the Sunni branch of Islam.
The 9 % of Iranians who are not Muslim are Bah ' s, Mandeans, Zoroastrians, Christians and Jews.
The Italian language is the language of Italy.
Other countries that use Italian as their official language are San Marino, Vatican City, and Switzerland.
Slovenia and Croatia also use Italian as their official language, but only in some regions.
Italian is spoken by about 70 million people in several countries, including some parts of Monaco, Malta, Albania, Montenegro, Dodecaneso (Greece), Eritrea, Libya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Tunisia.
It is mostly derived from Latin, with some words from Greek, Etruscan and elsewhere.
It is called an inflected language - that means that the meaning of words can be changed by changing their endings.
Italian nouns are either masculine or feminine (these are grammatical terms, normally only indirectly to do with genders).
Most singular masculine nouns end in - o, and most plural masculine nouns end in - i.
Most singular feminine nouns end in - a, and most plural feminine nouns end in - e.
The ending of verbs are quite complicated, because they depend upon the tense of the verb (past, present, future and so on) and on the person of the verb (I, you, they etc.).
Because of that, the personal pronoun is not always needed (in the following example it is in parenthesis).
There are very many of these endings to learn - it is one of the more difficult parts of the Italian Grammar.
But pronunciation is simple - there are just a few rules to learn, and hardly any difficult sounds.
Many Italian words for food have entered the English language, such as: pizza, spaghetti and ravioli.
Many technical words in music are Italian, such as forte and allegro.
Many musical instrument names are also Italian, such as cello and tuba.
Mafia and vendetta come from the darker side of Italian culture.
Tracy Marrow (born February 16, 1958), better known by his stage name Ice-T, is an American rapper, actor and songwriter.
He was born in Newark, New Jersey and moved to Summit, New Jersey during his childhood.
He moved to Los Angeles, California in his early teens.
His movies include Ricochet and New Jack City.
He is best known for his role in the TV series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
The Iron Age is the period after the Bronze Age.
Iron production took place in Anatolia at least as early as 1200 BC, with some evidence pointing to even earlier dates.
In the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, the use of iron reaches far back, to perhaps to 3000 BC.
One of the earliest smelted iron artifacts known was a dagger with an iron blade found in a Hattic tomb in Anatolia, dating from 2500 BC.
The widespread use of iron weapons which replaced bronze weapons rapidly disseminated throughout the Near East (North Africa, southwest Asia) by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC.
Before this time, people used bronze or flint tools, and pottery.
They farmed, and lived in communities.
Most of Europe, Africa and Asia reached the Iron Age by 500 BC.
In Europe, it is a period of prehistory, as Iron Age people did not write their history down.
Iron is easy to find, but hard to make into tools.
It melts at a higher temperature than bronze.
When blacksmiths learned how to make iron tools, they were able to make many of them.
With more and better tools, people could do more.
For example, more people could own a metal plough.
They could farm their fields better and grow more crops.
Some people invented coins to help buy and sell their crops and their iron tools.
Bronze weapons and armor were no match for those made of iron, so many peoples who did not have iron were conquered by those who did.
Armour was rare in western Europe 's Iron Age, but people used shields and helmets to keep safe in battles.
Undernet is an Internet Relay Chat network that was made in 1992.
It has many channels, but there are few limits to what kind of channels can be made.
BitchX is an IRC client.
The first public release was in 1996.
The latest stable version is 1.1 and was updated in 2004.
It is free of charge and was written in C. It 's last version has lots of security software bugs and it 's use is generally discouraged.
mIRC is a popular shareware Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client for Microsoft Windows.
It was created in 1995 by Khaled Mardam-Bey in C. Its most recent update (7.25) was made in 2012.
It is licensed as Proprietary.
It comes free of charge for 30 days and then you have the choice to buy it for $ 20 USD, or continue using but the program will ask you to buy it at each launch.
XChat is a popular IRC client.
It is open source, but its Windows port is shareware.
A takeover in internet relay chat is when someone who is not meant to be in control of a channel takes control.
Several ways this can happen is by taking advantage of a net split, an event that occurs when one server disconnects from another, or by tricking an IRC Bot into promoting the user to operator status.
Once the user has operator status, they kick the other operators out or remove their operator status.
irssi is an command-line IRC client.
It is commonly used on Unix machines, but is also available for Windows.
Intellectual property (IP) refers to the ownership of an idea or design by the person who came up with it.
It is a term used in property law.
It gives a person certain exclusive rights to a distinct type of creative design, meaning that nobody else can copy or reuse that creation without the owner 's permission.
It can be applied to musical, literary and artistic works, discoveries and inventions.
Common types of intellectual property rights include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets.
The term intellectual property dates from the 19th century.
Before that, patent laws were first made under the Statute of Monopolies 1623 and copyright laws were first seen in the Statute of Anne in 1710.
Modern usage of the term intellectual property goes back at least as far as 1867.
The constitution of the North German Confederation granted legislative power over the protection of intellectual property to the confederation.
The stated reason for most intellectual property laws is to encourage progress.
To give legal ownership of an idea to an inventor is seen as an incentive for those people to make their inventions available to the public.
It is designed to secure the full value of a work for its creator, to make it into another type of ` real ' property.
The Isle of Man is an island in the Irish Sea, off the coast of Great Britain (of which it is a crown dependency).
Douglas is the capital city.
It also has a flag with a red background and 3 armored legs joined together - "whichever way you throw us, we always land on our feet".
It has a Parliament called Tynwald.
It is the longest running parliament in the world.
The Isle of Man is a Crown dependency.
Foreign affairs, defense, and good government are handled by the British government, but in all other matters the island is independent.
The Isle of Man Government is the executive and proposes laws to the legislature, Tynwald.
Laws passed by Tynwald are given royal approval by the Lieutenant Governor unless the British Minister of Justice says they do not help the good government of the island.
The Isle of Man is an island in the Irish Sea, it is northwest of the European continent.
It is between the United Kingdom and Ireland.
The island is 22 km wide and 52 km long, it has a total area of 572 km.
The Isle of Man has a total of 160 km of coastline, it has no important bodies of water.
Apart from the island itself, the Isle of Man also includes some nearby islands.
The most important of these islands are called Calf of Man, St Patrick 's Isle and St Michael 's Isle.
The island 's terrain is varied, it has mountains in the north and south.
A valley is more or less in the center of the island, between the cities of Douglas and Peel.
The northern part of the island is very flat.
Snaefell is the Isle of Man 's highest mountain, it measures 621 meters above sea level.
It is said that you can see Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales from the top of mount Snaefell.
The Isle of Man has a usually mild weather.
Summers are cool and winters are mild and rainy.
Rainfall is similar to that of the other British Isles.
Elevated parts of the Isle of Man get more rainfall, especially mount Snaefell.
The northern and southern parts of the island are not as rainy as the rest.
The island 's weather is normally cool.
The highest temperature ever registered is 28.9 C, in Ronaldsway.
The Isle of Man is not very sunny, but it is less cloudy than other parts of the British Isles; strong winds around the island help keep clouds in constant movement.
The geology of Man is notable for the Iapetus Suture, which runs almost unseen right through the rocks of the island.
The suture is the remnant of a once huge ocean, the Iapetus Ocean, which was lost about 420 million years ago as three continents came together.
The Isle of Man became separated from Ireland and the British Isles about 8500 years ago.
The short period of time between the melting of glaciers and the rise of sea level allowed a small number of species to colonize the island by land.
The island was heavily deforested in the Middle Ages, which weakened its environment.
Some land is now protected by the government to help preserve its wildlife.
Curraghs Wildlife Park, in the wetlands, is home to many species of animals and plants.
The island is also home to a large number of bird species.
A lot of the Isle of Man 's plant life, or flora, is composed of shrubs (bushes) and other short plants.
Several species of grass and moss also live there.
Mosses on the island contribute to the formation of peat.
There is peat in the island 's wet areas.
The island has heavily deforested in the Middle Ages.
Common trees on the island include ashes, elms, pines, willows, and hawthorns.
There are also other trees on the island, as well as many species of flowering plants.
Bogs are home to ferns and orchids.
The Isle of Man is home to a large number of bird and insect species.
Many species live in "curraghs" (wetlands in the northeast of the island).
Curraghs are protected by the Government of the Isle of Man.
Curraghs Wildlife Park is in these wetlands, it is both a zoo and a protected area.
During the winter, curraghs are the second largest nesting ground of the Hen Herrier in Europe.
The Peregrine Falcon, Merlin, European Robin, Willow Warbler, Song Thrush, Dunnock, Swan and a subspecies of Winter Wren possibly native to the island also nest in the curraghs.
The Chough is also in the Isle of Man, it is more common than in other parts of Europe.
Some farming methods have decreased the bird population of the island.
The Northern Lapwing is now rarely found, and the Yellowhammer is now extinct on the island.
18 species of butterfly and 250 species of moth also live on the Isle of Man.
Most of them live in the wetlands during different seasons.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a chat system on the Internet.
It allows people from around the world to have conversations together, but it can also be used for two people to chat privately.
The IRC chat rooms are also called IRC channels.
These channels are on IRC servers, which you can connect to by finding that server 's information.
This information will often begin with "irc," then a period, the name of the server, then another period, and finally,.
com.
org or.
net.
An example would be ` irc.[Servername].org '
There are small IRC servers (for example, OperaNet) to medium IRC servers (freenode and DalNet, which have about 30,000 users) and big IRC servers (for example, EFNet, UnderNet, which have over 100,000 users).
An IRC client is needed to use IRC.
An IRC client is a computer program designed to work with IRC.
There are many Java web browser based clients as well as application based.
Popular stand-alone clients includes mIRC for Microsoft Windows and XChat for Linux and Microsoft Windows.
The Opera web browser has an IRC client built into the browser.
ChatZilla is a chat client which is a plugin to Mozilla Firefox.
IRC bots are computer programs used to help control and protect channels.
IRC channels usually begin with a hash (#).
IRC is an open protocol that uses TCP and optionally TLS.
An IRC server can connect to other IRC servers to expand the IRC network.
Users access IRC networks by connecting a client to a server.
There are many client and server programs, such as mIRC and the Bahamut IRCd, respectively.
Most IRC servers do not require users to log in, but a user will have to set a nickname before being connected.
IRC was originally a plain text protocol (although later extended), which on request was assigned port 194\/TCP by IANA.
However, most servers now run IRC on 6667\/TCP and nearby port numbers (for example TCP ports 6112-6119) so that the server does not have to be run with root privileges.
This is a list of some programs that allow users to connect to IRC.
An ideogram or ideograph is a graphical symbol that represents an idea or concept.
Some ideograms can be understood because they resemble an image; they are known as Pictograms.
Others rely on convention to be understandable.
This article is about iron the metal.
For the tool called iron, see ironing.
Iron (Fe) is the second most common metal on Earth, and the most widely-used metal.
It is element 26, a transition metal in Group 8.
Its symbol is Fe, from the Latin word for iron, ferrum.
Its atomic number is 26 and its mass number is 55.85.
It is used a lot because it is very strong and cheap.
Iron is the main ingredient used to make steel.
Raw iron is attracted to magnets, but it is not actually a magnet, however it can be used to make an electromagnet.
Iron is a gray, silvery metal.
It is magnetic.
It is easy to mine and make, which is why it is so useful.
Pure iron is soft and very malleable and is able to stretch a lot, while steel (iron mixed with a little carbon) is stronger and does not stretch as much as iron.
Iron is reactive.
It reacts with most acids like sulfuric acid.
It makes ferrous sulfate when reacted with sulfuric acid.
This reaction with sulfuric acid is used to clean metal.
Iron reacts with air and water to make rust.
When the rust flakes off, more iron is exposed allowing more iron to rust.
Eventually, the whole piece of iron is rusted away.
Other metals like aluminum do not rust away.
Iron can be alloyed with chromium and carbon to make stainless steel, which does not rust under most conditions.
Iron powder can react with sulfur to make iron (II) sulfide, a hard black solid.
Iron also reacts with the halogens to make iron (III) halides, like iron (III) chloride.
Iron reacts with the hydrohalic acids to make iron (II) halides like iron (II) chloride.
Iron makes chemical compounds with other elements.
Normally the other element oxidizes iron.
Sometimes two electrons are taken and sometimes three.
Compounds where iron has two electrons taken are called ferrous compounds.
Compounds where iron has three electrons taken are called ferric compounds.
Ferrous compounds have iron in its +2 oxidation state.
Ferric compounds have iron in its +3 oxidation state.
Iron compounds can be black, brown, yellow, green, or purple.
Ferrous compounds are weak reducing agents.
Many of them are green or blue.
The most common ferrous compound is ferrous sulfate.
Ferric compounds are oxidizing agents.
Many of them are brown.
The most common ferric compound is ferric oxide, the same thing as rust.
One reason why iron rusts is because ferric oxide is an oxidizing agent.
It oxidizes iron, rusting it even under paint.
That is why if there is a small scratch in the paint, the whole thing can rust.
Compounds in the +2 oxidation state are weak reducing agents.
They are normally light colored.
They react with oxygen in air.
They are also known as ferrous compounds.
These compounds are rare; only one is common.
They are found in the ground.
Compounds in the +3 oxidation state are normally brown.
They are oxidizing agents.
The are corrosive.
They are also known as ferric compounds.
Iron metal is thought to be the main ingredient in the Earth 's core but it is almost never found in native form on or near the surface.
Some meteorites contain iron in the form of rare minerals.
Normally iron is found as hematite ore in the ground, much of which was made in the Great Oxygenation Event.
Iron can be extracted from the ore in a blast furnace.
Some iron is found as magnetite.
Iron is present in meat.
Iron is also found in hemoglobin in red blood cells.
Iron is made in large factories called ironworks by reducing hematite with carbon (coke).
This happens in large containers called blast furnaces.
The blast furnace is filled with iron ore, coke and limestone.
A very hot blast of air is blown in, where it causes the coke to burn.
The extreme heat makes the carbon react with iron ore, taking off the oxygen from iron oxides, and making carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide is a gas and it leaves the mix.
There is some sand in with the iron.
The limestone, which is made of calcium carbonate, turns into calcium oxide and carbon dioxide when the limestone is very hot.
The calcium oxide reacts with the sand to make a liquid called a slag.
The slag is drained, leaving only the iron.
The reaction will leave pure liquid iron in the blast furnace, where it can be shaped and hardened after cooling down.
Almost all ironworks are today part of steel mills, and almost all iron is made into steel.
There are many ways to work iron.
Iron can be hardened by heating a piece of metal and splashing it into cold water.
It can be softened by heating it and allowing it to slowly cool.
It can also be stamped by a heavy press.
It can be pulled into wires.
It can be rolled to make sheet metal.
In the United States, much of the iron was taken from the ground in Minnesota and then sent by ship to Indiana and Michigan where it was made into steel.
Iron is used more than any other metal.
It is strong and cheap.
It is used to make buildings, bridges, nails, screws, pipes, girders, and towers.
Iron is not very reactive, so it is both easy and cheap to extract from ores.
It is very strong once made into steel, and is used to reinforce concrete.
There are different types of iron.
Cast iron is iron made by the way described above in the article.
It is hard and brittle.
It is used to make things like storm drain covers, manhole covers, and engine blocks (the main part of an engine).
Steel is the most common form of iron.
Steels come in several forms.
Mild steel is steel with a low percentage of carbon.
It is soft and easily bent, but it does not crack easily.
It is used for nails and wires.
Carbon steel is harder but more brittle.
It is used in tools.
There are other types of steel.
Stainless steel because of the chromium content is rust resistant, and nickel-iron alloys can remain strong at high temperatures.
Other steels can be very hard, depending on the alloys added.
Wrought iron is easily shaped and used to make fences and chains.
Very pure iron is soft, and can rust (oxidize) easily.
It is also fairly reactive.
Iron compounds are used for several things.
Iron (II) chloride is used to make water clean.
Iron (III) chloride is also used.
Iron (II) sulfate is used to reduce chromates in cement.
Some iron compounds are used in vitamins.
Our bodies need iron to help oxygen get to our muscles, because it is at the heart of some essential macromolecules in our bodies such as hemoglobin that cause it to work better.
Many cereals have some added iron (the element metal iron).
It is added to cereal in the form of tiny metal filings.
It is even possible to see the slivers sometimes by taking an extremely strong magnet and putting it into the box.
The magnet will attract these pieces of iron.
Eating these small metal shavings are not harmful to our body.
Iron is most available to the body when added to amino acids iron in this form is ten to fifteen times more digestible than than it is as an element.
Iron is also found in meat, for example steak.
Iron provided by diet supplements is in the form of a chemical, such as Iron (II) sulfate, which is cheap and is absorbed well.
The body will not take up more iron than it needs, and it usually needs very little.
The iron in red blood cells is recycled by a system which breaks down old cells.
Loss of blood by injury or parasite infection may be more serious.
Iron is toxic when large amounts are swallowed.
It can damage the body.
When too many vitamins that have iron in them are eaten, people get sick.
There are chemicals that doctors have that can react with iron and stop it from poisoning people.
IEEE 802.11 is the name for a series of protocols for wireless networking.
Often.
these are referred to as Wireless LAN, WLAN, or Wi-Fi.
Such a protocol allows computers that have the needed radio parts to communicate with each other, without a cable.
The first of these standards was made in 1997.
It is called IEEE 802.11.
It allows communication with 1-2 MBit per second.
Today it is outdated, and hardly used any more.
Newer standards have a bandwidth of 54 MBit\/s.
About 40-50 % of this is usable in real-life situations.
As of 2007, the standards most widely used are IEEE 802.11 g, and IEEE 802.11 b. They are compatible with each other.
Currently, standards exist and are labeled IEEE 802.11, 802.11 a to IEEE 802.11 g; h, i, j, n, p and s are also there, or are planned.
Data communication is either done in the 2.4 GHz band or in the 5 GHz band.
The 2.4 GHz band is a general use band.
Microwave ovens and Bluetooth are examples of other things that emit radio waves in this band.
The 2.4 GHz band has the problem that there are only only very few channels that can be used at the same time, without the signals interfering.
There are three usable channels there.
When more than three networks operate in the same place, interference slows them.
The 5 GHz band can solve some of these problems, but it introduces others.
That band has 19 usable channels.
Overall the band is less used.
However there are more regulations.
Most devices need to be able to choose their channel to minimize interference.
Some channels require that those participating can do Transmitter Power Control.
This means they adapt the strength of the signal to what is actually needed.
This helps reduce the amount of interference between different networks.
Irn-Bru is a carbonated drink made by Barrs in Scotland, United Kingdom.
It was invented in Glasgow in 1901.
It is a bright orange color, and is nicknamed "Scotland 's other national drink" a reference to whisky.
The recipe remains a secret today, with competing drinks trying to make their own copy of Irn-Bru, with little success.
One notable advertising slogan was "Made in Scotland from Girders".
Although not made from girder, Irn-Bru does actually contain iron: it has an ammonium ferric citrate content of 0.002 %.
In 1999, Irn Bru was included in the book Oxford Companion to Food along with caviar, quail and smoked salmon as one of the world 's great foods.
The drink 's inclusion was because it is "important for its symbolic value as well as its refreshing qualities".
Irn-Bru is a sponsor of the Scottish Football League.
It currently sponsors the Scottish First Division, Scottish Second Division and the Scottish Third Division.
Indium is a chemical element.
It has the chemical symbol In.
It has the atomic number 49.
It is a rare metal.
It is a soft, malleable and poor metal.
Indium looks like zinc.
Pieces of indium can easily be joined together by pushing one piece into another.
The chemistry of indium is quite like aluminium or gallium.
Zinc ores are the main source of indium.
The main use of indium is in the chemical compound Indium tin oxide in liquid crystal displays.
It is also used in very thin layers as a lubricant.
In World War II it was used a lot to coat bearings in aircraft.
Iodine is a chemical element.
Its atomic number (which is the number of protons in it) is 53, and its atomic mass (the number of protons plus neutrons) is 127.
It is part of the Group 7 (halogens) on the periodic table of elements and its electronic configuration is 2,8,18,18,7.
It is a nonmetal.
Iodine is a dark purple-black solid.
It is also a nonmetal and a halogen.
It sublimes when heated to make a bright purple vapor.
This vapor is very irritating, although colorful.
Iodine does not dissolve in water, but it does dissolve in a solution of an iodide in water.
It dissolves easily in organic solvents.
Iodine is at the bottom of the halogens and is the least reactive of the halogens.
Iodine is an oxidizing agent, though not as strong as bromine or chlorine.
It can become the colorless iodide ion if another atom or molecule gives an iodine atom one of its electrons.
This is called reduction.
Iodine reacts with hydrogen sulfide or hydrazine to make hydriodic acid.
Iodine dissolves in oleum to make a bright blue solution of I2 + and sulfur dioxide.
This cation is also made when iodine reacts with antimony pentafluoride.
Iodine reacts with bases to make hypoiodite and iodide.
The hypoiodite disproportionates to iodate and iodide.
Iodine reacts with nitric acid and chlorates to make iodates, too.
Iodine reacts violently with some metals like aluminium to make large amounts of heat and toxic vapors.
Iodine forms chemical compounds in several oxidation states: -1, +1, +3, +5, and +7.
This is typical of the halogens except for fluorine.
-1 compounds as iodides are the most common.
Most organic iodine compounds are in the -1 oxidation state.
Most iodides are colorless or reddish-yellow and are weak reducing agents.
+1 and +3 compounds are quite rare.
They are both oxidizing agents.
+1 compounds are found as iodine monochloride and hypoiodites.
+3 compounds are found as iodine trichloride or iodine trifluoride.
+5 compounds are found as iodates and iodic acid.
Iodine pentafluoride and iodine pentoxide are iodine compounds in the +5 state.
+5 and +7 compounds are all strong oxidizing agents.
+7 compounds are normally found as periodates and periodic acid.
Iodine heptafluoride is also in the +7 oxidation state.
Potassium iodide is one of the most common iodides.
Iodides are normally colorless but turn yellow after being in air because the iodide is oxidized to iodine.
Iodides react with acidified manganese dioxide or chlorine to make iodine.
Iodine monochloride is a red or brown liquid.
Iodine trichloride, as well as iodine trifluoride, are yellow solids.
Iodates like potassium iodate are colorless solids similar to chlorates.
Iodic acid is the only stable oxidizing halogen acid.
Chloric acid, by comparison, is very unstable and dangerous.
Iodine pentoxide is a white solid, and iodine pentafluoride is a yellowish liquid.
Periodates, like sodium periodate, are colorless solids similar to perchlorates, although weaker oxidizing agents.
They decompose to iodates when they are heated.
Periodic acid is not as stable as iodic acid.
Iodine heptafluoride is the only iodine (VII) compound.
It was discovered by Barnard Courtois in 1811.
He burned seaweed to get sodium carbonate and reacted the residue with sulfuric acid.
One time, he poured too much sulfuric acid on the seaweed and purple vapor came out which made dark blue-black crystals on a cold surface.
He did not have enough money to see whether it was a new element or not.
He gave samples to several chemists, who identified it as an element in 1813.
Iodine is too reactive to be in nature as an element.
Iodine compounds are not common in the ground.
There is a mineral called caliche that is found in dry deserts.
It has iodate in it.
Iodide is found in seawater.
Kelp has quite large amounts of iodine in it.
Iodine is one of the heaviest elements needed by living things.
If we do not get enough of it, we get a disease known as goitre.
Most salt has iodine in it, in the form of iodide or iodate.
We can also take iodine pills to make sure we get enough.
Kelp was burned and the iodine extracted from the ashes in the 18th and 19th century, but now it is not good enough for common use.
Most iodine now is extracted from seawater.
Chlorine is reacted with seawater to change the iodide to iodine.
Air is blown over the water to evaporate the iodine.
Then the iodine is reduced with sulfur dioxide to hydriodic acid.
Then the hydriodic acid is oxidized with chlorine again to make iodine.
This process is repeated until the iodine is pure.
A very pure form of iodine is made by reacting copper sulfate and potassium iodide.
This makes copper (II) iodide which is not stable.
It breaks down into copper (I) iodide and iodine, which is pure.
Iodine is used as a catalyst for making acetic acid.
Animal feed also has iodine in it for nutrition.
Iodine is used for a disinfectant.
Tincture of iodine is a common iodine disinfectant.
Iodine can be used to prevent thyroid cancer after a nuclear explosion.
After a nuclear explosion, radioactive iodine fills the air.
The radioactive iodine easily goes into the thyroid and causes cancer.
When people take iodine tablets, it fills up the thyroid with non-radioactive iodine which prevents any radioactive iodine from coming in.
Iodine compounds can be used in X-rays because X-rays can not go through them easily.
Some metals are purified using their iodides.
Silver iodide is used in photographic film and cloud seeding.
Erythrosine is a food coloring that has iodine in it.
Iodine can be used to make illegal drugs so it is restricted in some areas.
Iodine can be used as a test for reducing agents.
Iodine turns colorless when mixed with a reducing agent.
Iodine also turns black when mixed with starch.
Iodides become colored when mixed with oxidizing agents.
Iodine can irritate skin.
Its vapors are irritating to the lungs.
It is less toxic than the other halogens, though.
2-3 grams of iodine can kill.
Iodides are only toxic in large amounts.
IKEA is a multinational furniture company that was started by Ingvar Kamprad, from Sweden.
The company was started in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad when he was seventeen years old.
From the beginning the company was selling pens, picture frames, clocks, jewellery, nylon stocking, wallets and all who Kamprad come over.
Suites were sold for first time in 1947 and in 1955 IKEA started selling their own designed furniture.
Iridium is the 77th element on the periodic table.
Its symbol is Ir.
Ir 's atomic number (the amount of protons) is 77.
Iridium is a metal.
It is very hard to find and costs a lot.
It is known as a "noble metal".
Iridium belongs to a group of metals known as transition metals.
It looks like platinum and is found in asteroids and comets.
It can be used to find out when an asteroid or comet will hit the Earth.
It is a very costly metal that can fold and bend just like aluminum.
It is very shiny.
It is relatively rare on the Earth 's crust.
Most Iridium is found in Brazil, Canada, Myanmar, Russia, South Africa, and the United States.
Iridium is the most corrosion resistant metal.
Iridium melts at 2410 C and boils at 4130 C.
Iridium is not needed in the body.
A man named Smithson Tennant first found it in the year 1803.
Smithson Tennant found it in the remains when he left crude platinum in a mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system for writing down sounds.
It was created by the International Phonetic Association in 1886, so that people could write down sounds of languages in a standard way.
Linguists, language teachers, and translators use this system to show the pronunciation for words.
Wikipedia also uses the IPA to show how certain words are meant to be spoken.
Most symbols are letters in the Latin alphabet, or variations of it.
For example, the palatal approximant (the y in yesterday) is written with (j).
In IPA symbols can be written between slashes (broad transcription, e.g. "little" can be written as \/ l tl \/) or in square brackets (narrow transcription, e.g. "little" can be written (l)).
Narrow translation is more precise than broad.
The IPA has symbols only for sounds that are used normally in spoken languages.
The Extended IPA is used to write down other sounds.
The IPA is sometimes changed, and symbols are added or taken away.
Right now there are 107 different letters in the IPA.
There are also 52 marks which are added to letters to change their sound.
These marks are called "diacritics."
In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers formed the International Phonetic Association.
These teachers used the Romic alphabet at first.
They later changed the alphabet so that different languages would all write the same sounds with the same letters.
The IPA is made to have one symbol for each sound.
This means that every letter always makes the same one sound.
This is different from English.
In English, some letters make multiple sounds.
For example, the letter in English normally is spoken as two sounds ((ks)), but could also mean (gz) or (z).
The International Phonetic Alphabet has letters for three types of sounds: pulmonic consonants, non-pulmonic consonants, and vowels.
Pulmonic consonants are made by obstructing air coming from the lungs.
Most consonants (and all English consonants) are pulmonic.
The symbols for these sounds are arranged in a table.
The rows show how the sound is made, and the columns show where it is made.
Non-pulmonic consonants are made without air coming from the lungs.
There are three types of non-pulmonic consonants.
Implosive consonants are made by taking air into the mouth.
Ejective consonants are made by forcing the air out of the voicebox instead of the lungs.
Click consonants are made by creating an airtight pocket in the mouth and quickly releasing it.
Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering.
Information theory measures the amount of information in data that could have more than one value.
In its most common use, information theory finds physical and mathematical limits on the amounts of data in data compression and data communication.
Data compression and data communication are statistical, because they guess unknown values.
The amount of information in data measures how easily it is guessed by a person who does not know its value.
The inch is a unit of length in the Imperial system and the United States customary system.
The abbreviation for inches is in or".
There are 12 inches in a foot.
One inch is equal to 2.54 centimetres.
The word "inch" came from Middle English unche, which came from Old English ynce, from Latin uncia meaning "a twelfth part".
The inch was originally defined as 3 barleycorns.
The inch was finally standardised in the International Yard and Pound Treaty in 1959 between the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
The international yard was made equal to 0.9144 metres.
From this, subdivisions and multiples of the yard were specifically defined.
In the United States, people use inches more than they use millimetres or centimetres.
In the rest of the world, international units are almost always used.
The inch is not used by scientists.
In the United Kingdom, road signs that show how high a vehicle can be in order to pass through a tunnel are required to be in feet and inches.
Theme parks and drive thru signs usually show it in metres.
People regularly measure their height in feet and inches.
Official medical records, however, are required to record people 's height in metric measurements only.
In Canada, a mix of centimetres and inches are used in height.
Older generations, especially, use Imperial units.
A lot of exposure to Americanized phrases leads to younger generations often having a good understanding of both the Imperial and metric systems.
In the United States, height is always in feet and inches.
Science is the only field to use metric measurements.
Other Commonwealth countries, including Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Jamaica use inches to varying degrees.
From every day use to exclusively the older community.
Iota is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet.
The Iran-Contra affair was a scandal that happened from August 1985 to March 1987.
The scandal involved the United States Government selling weapons to Iran in exchange for hostages and to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
It happened under President Ronald Reagan 's government.
When 1,500 missiles were shipped three hostages were released but those three hostages were soon replaced with three more hostages.
Secretary of State George Shultz called it a hostage Bazaar
Oliver North was tried in court for the affair because he took the blame instead of Reagan.
The court found North to be not guilty.
On March 4, 1987, Reagan himself apologized to the American people and said it was all his fault.
George H. W. Bush later pardoned anyone who was involved in the affair.
While President Ronald Reagan was a supporter of the Contra cause, the evidence is unclear as to whether he knew about the scandal.
On November 25, 1986, President Reagan announced the creation of a Special Review Board to look into the matter; the following day, he appointed former Senator John Tower, former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie, and former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to serve as members.
This commission was called the Tower Commission.
Towards the end the committee said that there was no evidence to say that Reagan had anything to do with the affair.
Infocom was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction.
They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone.
It is also credited for creating the DOS game series Zork.
The company bought by Activision in 1986.
Interactive Fiction, usually abbreviated as IF, is a kind of computer game.
In interactive fiction, the player types words with their keyboard, as an instruction to the main character of a story.
One instruction might be:
Which would make the main character pick up a lamp.
Ice hockey is a sport that is played by two teams on ice.
The players wear ice skates on their feet and can skate across the ice at very high speeds.
They hold hockey sticks, which they use to push, shoot or pass a puck around the ice.
The players score by shooting the puck into a net; the goaltenders try to stop them.
Six players on each team play at once, but a whole team has over 20 players.
Each team has 2 defenders, 3 forwards, and a goalie on the ice at a time.
When a player breaks a rule, a referee calls a penalty, and the player has to sit in a penalty box for 2-4 minutes.
While the player sits in the penalty box, his team has to play without him, and will have fewer players on the ice until the penalty is over.
Ice hockey is very well-known and well-liked in Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic, the United States, Latvia and Slovakia.
Most of the best players in the world play in the National Hockey League (NHL), which has 30 teams in the United States and Canada.
These teams are divided 2 conferences and 4 divisions.
In the regular season, they play 82 games.
Each team faces each other about 3 times.
They try to win the Stanley Cup at the end of the year.
Another popular hockey league is the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), which has teams in Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Belarus, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Croatia.
In North America, women play in the Canadian Women 's Hockey League and the Western Women 's Hockey League.
In North America and Europe, men 's hockey is much more popular than women 's hockey.
Hockey is played by both men and women at the Olympic games, and at world championships.
Ice hockey began in Canada in the 19th century.
There are two types of penalty: The major and the minor.
The minor is the main one the referee will call during a game and the players have to go in the penalty box for two minutes.
The major is when players fight with each other or when someone did something very dangerous.
Most of time players are kicked out of the games but in a fight they only get 5 minutes in the penalty box.
In the National Hockey League (NHL) there are four referees.
Two lineman and two head referee.
Only head referees can call the penalty.
They can be recognized by the orange armband on their arm.
In the major league, the game is separated into three periods of 20 minutes.
For the minor league, the time can be different for each category.
Each period starts after the face-off.
A face-off is when two teams are in position around the face-off circle.
Then, the referee drops the puck between the players who play center.
There are 6 different positions: center, right wing, left wing, right defense, left defense and goalie.
The play is over after a whistle of any referee.
After a whistle-blow, the time stops running.
Each team can have a maximum of 20 players, including two goaltenders who have a zone to defend.
Each team has one captain and two or three assistant captains.
The ice is separated into three zones.
Each zone is marked by lines.
The center zone is between two blue lines and team zones are between one blue line and the end of the ice.
The lineman can whistle for two reasons: icing and offside.
An icing is when a player throws the puck into the zone before he crosses the red line (center line) and an offside is when a player enters the zone before the one who has the puck enters with it.
An icon (from the Greek language:, eikon, "image") is an image, picture, or representation which has a religious meaning.
It is a sign or a likeness that stands for a real object or person.
Although the word icon can be used for images of other religions, it is most often used to describe a painting on a wooden panel that has been done in the Orthodox Christian tradition, and may also be used for carved ivory panels and panels of silver or gold.
These icons show a holy being such as Jesus, Mary, a saint or an angel.
They also show scenes from the Bible such as the Crucifixion and scenes from lives of the saints.
In Orthodox Christianity an icon is thought of as a window through which a person can get a view of God 's truth.
The traditional way of making an icon was used in Egypt in Early Christian times to make portraits of dead people to use for their funerals.
Like icons, these funeral portraits were done on a wooden panel and the paint was mixed with yolk of egg.
From the time that Christianity was made legal by Constantine the Great in the early 300s, artists began to use the same method for painting holy pictures.
It was always hoped that a painting would last for a long time, so everything had to be very carefully prepared.
A board had to be chosen that would not crack or warp (bend), and which did not have any knotty bits that might fall out.
The board was sanded smooth and then coated with a gluey paint called "size" which would hold the colored paint well, but stop the expensive colors from being soaked up by the wood.
The artist would prepare the paints very carefully.
Some of the colors were made from gound-up semi-precious stones.
Others were made from chemicals.
Before the artist could start on the panel, he had to prepare the design.
It was not important for the artist to think of something new and different.
It was much more important that he could copy another icon very accurately.
The same designs were used over and over.
Although all icons were thought of as a window to Heaven, some icons were believed to have special properties.
It was believed that praying and lighting candles before some icons would bring healing, or the help of the saint who was shown in the picture.
These icons became very famous and were often copied.
After the artist had drawn the design onto the surface of the size in thin green or brown paint, he would put the paint on in layers, building up the colors bit by bit.
Most of the colors were quite transparent and this made the painting look glowing.
When the figures were finished the artist would set the work in a wooden frame and "gild" it by covering the background with a little pieces of gold leaf that had been beaten into very thin sheets.
When a candle was lit near the icon, it shone on the gold surface and made the figures stand out.
Throughout history, some religions such as Christianity and Hinduism, have often used images such as paintings and statues, while others, such as Judaism and Islam, do not often use images of people.
In Hinduism there is much use of sacred objects because there is a belief in murti, the idea that the Spirit of God can be present in an icon (or holy object).
The Islamic calendar is a calendar.
It is used to determine islamic holidays.
It is a lunar calendar.
It has 12 months, and about 354 days.
This means that each year, the calendar is about 11 days shorter than a solar calendar, like the Gregorian.
Islamic years are often called hijra years, because the first year of the calendar when the hijra occurred, that is when Muhammad went from Mecca to Medina.
Each year is therefore labeled with either H or AH.
The interquartile range (IQR) is a number that indicates how spread out scores are and tells us what the range is in the middle of a set of scores.
The interquartile range is not sensitive to outliers (scores that are much higher or much lower than the other scores) as it eliminates them.
It is calculated as the range of the middle half of the scores.
The scores are divided into four equal parts, separated by the quartiles and, after the scores have been arranged in ascending (becoming bigger as you go further) order.
The second quartile is also known as the median.
The interquartile range IQR is then defined as:
Suppose the observation 29 has accidentally been written down as 92.
This number is an outlier.
Notice that the interquartile range is not affected.
Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr. is a fictional American professor, archaeologist, and adventurer.
He originally appeared in a series of movies produced by George Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg in the 1980s, in which he was played by actor Harrison Ford.
Indiana Jones is noted for his trademark bullwhip, his fedora hat, and his great fear of snakes.
Indiana Jones is also the general name given to the series as a whole, which has four movies, a TV series, novels, comics, video games, and other media.
In abstract algebra, an isomorphism can be thought of as a function that preserves sets and the relations among their elements.
Formally an isomorphism between two groups is a bijective (one-to-one and onto) map that preserves the group operation.
That is, for x and y elements of a group G, (xy) = (x) (y).
As an example, consider the group Z of integers under ordinary addition, and the function (x) = 2x which maps elements of Z to elements of the even integers 2Z, since (ab) = 2 (ab) = 2a2b = (a) (b), this is an example of an isomorphism that is also an automorphism (an isomorphism from a set of elements onto itself).
Internet Message Access Protocol (or IMAP) is a communication protocol, a set of rules that e-mail client programs, like the one in your computer, use to download email from a mail server.
An older protocol which does the same thing is called Post Office Protocol but IMAP has additional features.
Interstellar space travel is manned or unmanned travel between stars.
Interstellar travel is much more difficult than travel within the Solar System, though travel in starships is a staple of science fiction.
Actually, there is no suitable technology at present.
However, the idea of a probe with an ion engine has been studied.
The energy would come through a laser base station.
Given sufficient travel time and engineering work, both unmanned and sleeper ship interstellar travel seem possible.
Both present considerable technological and economic challenges which are unlikely to be met in the near future, particularly for manned probes.
NASA, ESA and other space agencies have done research into these topics for several years, and have worked out some theoretical approaches.
Energy requirements appear to make interstellar travel impractical for "generation ships", but less so for heavily shielded sleeper ships.
The main challenge facing interstellar travel is the vast distances that have to be covered.
This means that a very great speed and\/or a very long travel time is needed.
The travel time with most realistic propulsion methods would be from decades to millennia.
Hence an interstellar ship would be much more exposed to the hazards found in interplanetary travel, including vacuum, radiation, weightlessness, and micrometeoroids.
At high speeds the vehicle would be penetrated by many microscopic particles of matter unless heavily shielded.
Carrying the shield would greatly increase the propulsion problems.
Cosmic rays are of great interest because there is no protection outside the atmosphere and magnetic field.
The energies of the most energetic ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) have been observed to approach 3 1020 eV, about 40 million times the energy of particles accelerated by the Large Hadron Collider.
At 50 J, the highest-energy ultra-high-energy cosmic rays have energies comparable to the kinetic energy of a 90 k baseball.
As a result of these discoveries, there has been interest in investigating cosmic rays of even greater energies.
Most cosmic rays, however, do not have such extreme energies.
The energy distribution of cosmic rays peaks at 0.3 G.
A significant factor is the energy needed for a reasonable travel time.
A lower bound for the required energy is the kinetic energy K = mv2 where m is the final mass..
If deceleration on arrival is desired and can not be achieved by any means other than the engines of the ship, then the required energy at least doubles, because the energy needed to halt the ship equals the energy needed to accelerate it to travel speed.
The velocity for a manned round trip of a few decades to even the nearest star is thousands of times greater than those of present space vehicles.
This means that due to the v2 term in the kinetic energy formula, millions of times as much energy is required.
Accelerating one ton to one-tenth of the speed of light requires at least 450 PJ or 4.5 J or 125 billion kWh, not accounting for losses.
The source of energy has to be carried, since solar panels do not work far from the Sun and other stars.
The magnitude of this energy may make interstellar travel impossible.
One engineer stated At least 100 times the total energy output of the entire world (in a given year) would be required for the voyage (to Alpha Centauri).
interstellar dust and gas may cause considerable damage to the craft, due to the high relative speeds and large kinetic energies involved.
Larger objects (such as bigger dust grains) are far less common, but would be much more destructive..
The long travel times make it difficult to design manned missions.
The fundamental limits of space-time present another challenge.
Also, interstellar trips would be hard to justify for economic reasons.
It can be argued that an interstellar mission which can not be completed within 50 years should not be started at all.
Instead, the resources should be invested in designing a better propulsion system.
This is because a slow spacecraft would probably be passed by another mission sent later with more advanced propulsion.
On the other hand, a case can therefore be made for starting a mission without delay, because the non-propulsion problems may turn out to be more difficult than the propulsion engineering.
Intergalactic travel involves distances about a million-fold greater than interstellar distances, making it radically more difficult than even interstellar travel.
Andrew Kennedy has shown that voyages undertaken before the minimum wait time will be overtaken by those who leave at the minimum, while those who leave after the minimum will never overtake those who left at the minimum.
Kennedy 's calculation depends on r, the mean annual increase in world power production.
From any point in time to a given destination, there is a minimum to the total time to destination.
Voyagers would probably arrive without being overtaken by later voyagers by waiting a time t before leaving.
The relation between the time it takes to get to a destination (now, Tnow, or after waiting, Tt, and growth in velocity of travel is
Taking a journey to Barnard 's Star, six light years away, as an example, Kennedy shows that with a world mean annual economic growth rate of 1.4 % and a corresponding growth in the velocity of travel, the quickest human civilization might get to the star is in 1,110 years from the year 2007.
Astronomical distances are often measured in the time it would take a beam of light to travel between two points (see light-year).
Light in a vacuum travels approximately 300,000 kilometers per second or 186,000 miles per second.
The distance from Earth to the Moon is 1.3 light-seconds.
With current spacecraft propulsion technologies, a craft can cover the distance from the Earth to the Moon in around eight hours (New Horizons).
That means light travels approximately thirty thousand times faster than current spacecraft propulsion technologies.
The distance from Earth to other planets in the Solar System ranges from three light-minutes to about four light-hours.
Depending on the planet and its alignment to Earth, for a typical unmanned spacecraft these trips will take from a few months to a little over a decade.
The distance to other stars is much greater.
If the distance from Earth to Sun is scaled down to one meter, the distance to Alpha Centauri A would be 271 kilometers or about 169 miles.
The nearest known star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.23 light-years away.
The fastest outward-bound spacecraft yet sent, Voyager 1, has covered 1\/600th of a light-year in 30 years and is currently moving at 1\/18,000 th the speed of light.
At this rate, a journey to Proxima Centauri would take 72,000 years.
Of course, this mission was not specifically intended to travel fast to the stars, and current technology could do much better.
The travel time could be reduced to a few millennia using solar sails, or to a century or less using nuclear pulse propulsion.
Special relativity offers the possibility of shortening the travel time: if a starship with sufficiently advanced engines could reach velocities near the speed of light, relativistic time dilation would make the voyage much shorter for the traveller.
However, it would still take many years of elapsed time as viewed by the people remaining on Earth.
On returning to Earth, the travellers would find that far more time had elapsed on Earth than had for them (twin paradox).
Many problems would be solved if wormholes existed.
General relativity does not rule them out, but so far as we know at present, they do not exist.
The round-trip delay time is the minimum time between a probe signal reaching Earth, and the probe getting instructions from Earth.
Given that information can travel no faster than the speed of light, this is for the Voyager 1 about 32 hours, near Proxima Centauri it would be 8 years.
Faster reactions would have to be programmed to be carried out automatically.
Of course, in the case of a manned flight the crew can respond immediately to their observations.
However, the round-trip delay time makes them not only extremely distant but, in terms of communication, extremely isolated from Earth.
Another factor is the energy needed for interstellar communications to arrive reliably.
Obviously, gas and particles would degrade signals (interstellar extinction), and there would be limits to the energy available to send the signal.
The mass of any craft capable of carrying humans would inevitably be substantially larger than that necessary for an unmanned interstellar probe.
The vastly greater travel times involved would require a life support system.
The first interstellar missions are unlikely to carry life forms.
There are 59 known stellar systems within 20 light years from the Sun, containing 81 visible stars.
The following could be considered prime targets for interstellar missions: Radiation dangers would rule out any organic beings for an expedition to Sirius.
In any event, it is hard to visualise any manned expeditions at all, given the probable journey times.
Perhaps the most likely time for interstellar travel would be when a star comes through our Oort cloud.
We should get a good 10,000 years ' warning of this, so could plan for the event in some detail.
See Scholz 's star for the last time one came through.
Existing and near-term astronomical technology is capable of finding planetary systems around these objects, increasing their potential for exploration.
Indo-European languages are the world 's largest family of languages.
Linguists believe they all came from a single language called Proto-Indo-European.
This language was originally spoken somewhere in Eurasia.
Today they are spoken all over the world.
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia.
Historically, this language family was also important in Anatolia and Central Asia.
The earliest Indo-European writing comes from the Bronze Age in the Anatolian and Mycenaean Greek languages.
We can place the origin of Indo-European languages after the invention of farming, because some of the Proto-Indo-European words are farming words.
The languages of the Indo-European group have about three billion native speakers.
Although it may not have the largest number of languages of any language family, it is the biggest language family in terms the amount of native speakers.
Of the 20 languages with the most speakers, 12 are Indo-European: English, Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, German, Sindhi, Punjabi, Marathi, French, and Urdu.
They account for over 2.7 billion native speakers.
Four of the six official languages of the United Nations are Indo-European: English, Spanish, French, and Russian.
Suggestions of similarities between Indian and European languages began to be made by European visitors to India in the 16th century.
In 1583 Fr.
Thomas Stephens S.J. an English Jesuit missionary in Goa, noticed similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin.
These observations were included in a letter to his brother which was not published until the twentieth century.
The first account to mention Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti (born Florence, Italy 1540).
He was a Florentine merchant who was among the first Europeans to study the ancient Indian language Sanskrit.
Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian (these included deva \/ dio "God", sarpa \/ serpe "serpent", sapta\/sette "seven", a a\/otto "eight", nava\/nove "nine").
However, neither Stephens ' nor Sassetti 's observations led to further scholarly inquiry.
In 1647 Dutch linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted the similarity among Indo-European languages, and supposed that they derived from a primitive common language.
He included in his hypothesis Dutch, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages.
However, van Boxhorn 's suggestions did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research.
Gaston Coeurdoux and others had made observations of the same type.
Coeurdoux made a thorough comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship between them, about 20 years before William Jones.
Similarly, Mikhail Lomonosov compared different languages groups of the world including Slavic, Baltic, Iranian, Finnish, Chinese, Hottentot and others.
The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on the striking similarities between three of the oldest languages known in his time: Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, to which he tentatively added Gothic, Celtic, and Old Persian, though also committing some inaccuracies and omissions in his classification.
It was Thomas Young who first used the term Indo-European in 1813, which became the standard scientific term (except in Germany) through the work of Franz Bopp.
Bopp 's Comparative Grammar, appearing between 1833 and 1852, is the starting point of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline.
Illinois is a state in the United States.
Its capital is Springfield and its largest city is Chicago.
It is bordered to the north by Wisconsin, to the west by Iowa and below that, by Missouri (both borders are along the Mississippi River).
To the south-east, Illinois is bordered along the Ohio River by Kentucky and to the east by Indiana.
Illinois ' northeasternmost boundary is to Lake Michigan.
Illinois became a state on December 3, 1818.
Illinois was the first state to ratify the 13th Amendment to the Constitution which helped abolished slavery in the United States.
Three U.S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama.
Additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was the only US President born and raised in Illinois.
Illinois has a diverse economy.
Chicago is a major center for transportation and business.
Central and northern Illinois is mostly used for agriculture.
The south produces many natural resources such as coal, timber and petroleum.
Illinois was once known to be a swing state (voted for either Democratic Party or the Republican Party).
Today, Illinois is known to be a blue state in which it votes for the Democratic Party.
The last time Illinois voted for a Republican president was in 1988 for George H.W. Bush.
Bruce Rauner (R) is the current Governor of Illinois.
It has two senators; Dick Durbin (D) and Mark Kirk (R).
Illinois has the average population of 12,419,293 people since 2010.
Most of the people living in Illinois live near the city of Chicago.
In Illinois, school children voted to select the state bird, state flower, and state tree.
The state bird is the cardinal.
The state flower of Illinois is the violet.
The state tree is the white oak.
Illinois 's seal has an eagle in a prairie.
Across a river, behind the eagle is a rising sun.
The eagle stands for the United States.
The prairie reminds Illinoisans of their land.
The two dates on the seal, 1818 and 1868, are the year that Illinois became a state and the year that the state seal was designed.
The state flag includes the state seal.
Ian Murdock (28April 1973 28December 2015) was a German-born American software engineer.
He was known for being the founder of the Debian project and Progeny Linux Systems, a commercial Linux company.
He was born in Konstanz, Germany.
Murdock died on 28 December 2015 from unknown causes in San Francisco, California at the age of 42.
Details surrounding his death have not been released.
The last tweets at his Twitter account described violent encounters with police.
It was reported that he declared an intention to commit suicide over Twitter, but there is as of now no public record of such a tweet.
It was reported that police officer found Murdock drunk and that he did not appear suicidal.
Iain Menzies Banks (16 February 1954 9 June 2013) was a Scottish writer.
He wrote fiction under the name Iain Banks.
When he wrote science fiction books he wrote his name as Iain M. Banks.
He was known for his book The Wasp Factory.
Banks was born on 16 February 1954 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland.
He studied at University of Stirling.
Banks was married to Annie Banks from 1992 until they separated in 2007.
Then he was married to Adele Hartley from March 2013 until his death.
He had no children.
Banks died on 9 June 2013 from gallbladder cancer after being diagnosed in early April.
He was 59 years old.
The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is an international organization that represents chemists in individual countries.
It governs everything to do with chemicals, elements and new discoveries.
Every chemical known has a common name and a IUPAC name.
This is also true for the Periodic Table of the Elements.
Every element 's name has been approved by IUPAC.
This rule does not apply to those elements still given temporary names.
The organization was founded in 1919.
Iowa State University of Science and Technology or as it is better known, Iowa State University is a public university in Ames, Iowa.
The university has about 33,000 students.
It was founded in 1858.
The president of the university is Steven Leath.
George Washington Carver was a student at Iowa State.
The athletics teams of the university are called the Cyclones.
They have 16 varsity teams and they compete in the Big 12 Conference.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is a international group that brings together the national astronomical groups from around the world.
It was created in 1919.
It was created to promote and protect the science of astronomy by getting different nations to work together.
Its members are professional astronomers from all over the world, and they all work on research and education in astronomy.
The IAU has good relationships with groups that include amateur astronomers.
"National Members" are usually people with a high level of professional astronomy.
The IAU is made up of 8,858 "Individual Members" in 85 countries.
It has 62 "National Members".
The IAU is also the group in charge of naming objects in space and anything on them such as mountains and craters.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) was created on 1 July 2002.
It investigates and punishes people for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
It is sometimes called the ICC or the ICCt.
The ICC 's main office is in The Hague in The Netherlands.
It has smaller offices in New York City, Kampala, Kinshasa, Bunia, Ab ch and Bangui.
The ICC is different from the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The main difference is that ICJ settles arguments between countries, but the ICC punishes people.
On 1 January 2008, 105 countries were members of the ICC.
These countries have a duty to help the ICC.
Nearly all the countries in Europe and South America are members, and about half the countries in Africa are members.
Only a few countries in Asia have joined.
The ICC can only investigate crimes that happened after 1 July 2002.
It can only open a case when national courts are not able to or do not want to.
If a national court is investigating or prosecuting a case, the ICC is not allowed to.
There are 18 judges in the ICC.
They all come from member-countries of the ICC.
No two judges can come from the same country.
The prosecutor 's job is to investigate crimes.
If he finds evidence that a person did something wrong, he asks the judges to start a trial.
The ICC is managed by an "Assembly of States Parties".
The Assembly elects the judges and the prosecutor.
Each ICC member-country has one vote in the Assembly.
The ICC has opened investigations in four places: Northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and Darfur.
The ICC has arrested three people.
They are all from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Thomas Lubanga is accused of using children to make war.
Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui are both accused of murder, sexual slavery, using children to make war, and other crimes.
The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is the southwest part of Europe.
Like all peninsulas, it is mostly surrounded by sea.
To the south and east of the peninsula is the Mediterranean Sea.
To its north and west is the Atlantic Ocean.
It is the third largest peninsula of Europe with an area of 582,860 km.
The name Iberia is the Ancient Greek name for the area which the Romans called "Hispania".
The word Hispania is now used for Spain, while the word Iberia is used for the whole area.
The word Iberia was also used by the Ancient Greeks and Romans for another territory at the opposite side of Europe - Caucasian Iberia which is near the Black Sea.
The Iran-Iraq War was a war between the armed forces of Iraq and Iran lasting from September 1980 to August 1988.
It was commonly called the Persian Gulf War until Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
The Iraq-Kuwait war, which the United States entered, later was called the Persian Gulf War or the Gulf War.
The war began when Iraq invaded Iran on 22 September 1980, after a long history of border disputes and demands for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein 's regime.
Iraqi forces did well at the beginning of the war, but before long they were stopped and forced out of Iran.
The war continued for years, and neither side gained much ground.
About half a million soldiers died and a similar number of civilians.
Both sides used blockade, which other countries opposed.
Despite several calls for an end to the fighting by the United Nations Security Council, the two countries fought until 20 August 1988; the last prisoners of war were exchanged in 2003.
The war changed politics in the Middle East and world wide.
The Iran-Iraq War is also noted for Iraq 's use of chemical weapons and biological weapons against Iranian troops and civilians.
The role of the United States in the war was very important.
In 1953, the US encouraged a coup d' tat against Mohammed Mossadeq, who was the Prime Minister of Iran.
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi returned to power (he previously was in power, and later was allowed to reign but not to rule, like the Queen of England), supporting his military and his government.
Meanwhile revolutionaries of the Arab Socialist Ba ` ath Party overthrew the king of Iraq and, with the help of the Soviet Union, built up their army.
They sought to unite all the Arabs into one state, including the Arab minority in Iran.
This triggered the Iranian Revolution in 1979, as the people of Iran were unhappy with the monarchy of the Shah.
Later on (especially between 1983 and 1988) the United States sold weapons to the Iraqis.
This move was largely due to America 's interest in containing the revolutionary Ayatollah Khomeini.
In summary, the United States supplied Iraq with weapons to use against Iran.
An Intelligence quotient, or an IQ is a number.
This number is the score (result) of one of several standard tests.
The tests are designed to measure the intelligence of an individual.
A person 's IQ score tells how much his intelligence is above or below the average.
The idea of the test was developed at the start of the 20th century.
The tests try to avoid specific knowledge, and try to ask questions which, in principle, anyone might be able to answer.
One modern IQ test is the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.
It says where the subject 's score is on the Gaussian bell.
The bell curve used has a center value of 100 and a standard deviation of 15; other tests may have different standard deviations.
IQ scores can tell some things about a person, as well as intelligence.
This is because intelligence is linked to other aspects of life.
"All the cognitive tests completed in 1983 predicted onset of dementia and Alzheimer s disease up to 11 years later".
They can predict social status (how much money they earn and how important their job is) of the parents, and the parents ' IQ.
There is still disagreement about how much is heritable (passed from parents to children).
People still disagree about how much of a person 's IQ comes his parents and how much depends on his environment (what his home is like).
The average IQ scores for many populations have been rising about three points per decade since the early 20th century.
Most of the increase is in the lower half of the IQ range.
This is called the Flynn effect.
People who study it disagree whether these changes in scores are really happening, or it they mean that there were mistakes with how people were tested in the past.
There are many different kinds of intelligence tests that use many different methods.
Some kinds of tests are
The psychologist Charles Spearman in 1904 first studied how the scores from different kinds of intelligence tests are related to each other.
He found that if a person got a high (or low) score on one kind of test, he probably (but not always) would get a similar score on the other kinds of tests.
Because of this, he said that a person 's intelligence could be described with one number.
He called this number g (for general factor).
Tests that use abstract reasoning are usually the best to tell what the scores on the other kinds of tests probably will be.
Because of that, Spearman thought that a person 's abstract reasoning ability (how good he was at solving puzzles or problems) was what other kinds of intelligence are based on.
Therefore, the number g is what an IQ test is supposed to measure.
One of the most commonly used measures of g is Raven 's Progressive Matrices, which is a test of visual reasoning.
During World War I, a way was needed to test if people could be in the military and then decide what kind of job they could do best.
Because of this people wanted to learn the best way to test the minds of recruits (people serving in the military).
Because of this, people in America (and other countries) worked to develop good intelligence tests.
The testing generated controversy and much public debate.
Nonverbal or "performance" tests were developed for those who could not speak English or were suspected of malingering.
After the war, positive publicity on army psychological testing helped to make psychology a respected field.
Afterwards, there was an increase in jobs and funding in psychology in the United States.
Group intelligence tests were developed and became widely used in schools and industry.
There are a number of problems with intelligence quotients.
They relate to different fields of the subject.
The problems can be grouped:
Alfred Binet, a French psychologist who had designed one of the first such tests in 1905 had this opinion.
He used the test to see which pupils would need special help with the school curriculum.
He believed that the test scales were not able to measure intelligence:
He argued that with good education programs, most students could catch up and perform quite well in school.
This was independent of the background of the pupil.
He did not believe that intelligence was a measurable fixed entity.
Some dispute psychometrics entirely.
Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould argued that intelligence tests were based on faulty assumptions and showed their history of being used as the basis for scientific racism.
In his opinion, the General intelligence factor g (which these tests measure), is simply a mathematical artifact.
However, as explained above, IQ tests were highly successful in assessing recruits during wartime.
Therefore, it must be true that they are measuring a relevant mental capability.
Therefore IQ are not simply a mathematical fiction: they relate to the ability of individuals to perform certain functions.
Even if experts do not agree on a definition of intelligence, that does not disprove the usefulness (or otherwise) of the tests.
In every day life people do notice the relative intelligence of others.
The issue is central to human nature and evolutionary psychology, because humans evolved the characteristics which helped them survive and reproduce.
The American Psychological Association 's report Intelligence: knowns and unknowns states that IQ tests as predictors of social achievement are not biased against people of African descent.
They predict future performance, such as school achievement, similarly to the way they predict future performance for European descent.
However, IQ tests may well be biased when used in other situations.
A 2005 study stated that "differential validity in prediction suggests that the WAIS-R test may contain cultural influences that reduce the validity of the WAIS-R as a measure of cognitive ability for Mexican American students," indicating a weaker positive correlation relative to sampled white students.
Other recent studies have questioned the culture-fairness of IQ tests when used in South Africa.
Standard intelligence tests, such as the Stanford-Binet, are often inappropriate for children with autism and dyslexia; the alternative of using developmental or adaptive skills measures are relatively poor measures of intelligence in autistic children, and have resulted in incorrect claims that a majority of children with autism are mentally retarded.
Claimed low intelligence has historically been used to justify the feudal system and unequal treatment of women.
In contrast, others claim that the refusal of "high-IQ elites" to take IQ seriously as a cause of inequality is itself immoral.
The American Psychological Association 's Board of Scientific Affairs established a task force in 1995 to write a consensus statement on the state of intelligence research which could be used by all sides as a basis for discussion.
The full text of the report is available through several websites.
In this paper the representatives of the association regret that IQ-related works are frequently written with a view to their political consequences: "research findings were often assessed not so much on their merits or their scientific standing as on their supposed political implications".
The task force concluded that IQ scores do have high predictive validity for individual differences in school achievement.
They confirm the predictive validity of IQ for adult occupational status, even when variables such as education and family background have been statistically controlled.
They found that individual differences in intelligence are substantially influenced by genetics and that both genes and environment, in complex interplay, are essential to the development of intellectual competence.
They state there is little evidence to show that childhood diet influences intelligence except in cases of severe malnutrition.
The task force agrees that large differences do exist between the average IQ scores of blacks and whites, and that these differences can not be attributed to biases in test construction.
The task force suggests that explanations based on social status and cultural differences are possible, and that environmental factors have raised mean test scores in many populations.
The APA journal that published the statement, American Psychologist, later published responses in January 1997.
Several of these argued that the report failed to examine adequately the evidence for partly-genetic explanations.
Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas in the body that controls the glucose level in the blood.
People who can not make insulin in their bodies, or who make it but their body can not use it properly, have the disease diabetes.
When blood glucose levels fall below a certain level, the human body begins to use stored sugar as an energy source through glycogenolysis.
This process breaks down the glycogen stored in the liver and muscles into glucose which can then be used as an energy source.
Insulin is a central metabolic control mechanism.
Insulin is also used as a control signal to other body systems (such as amino acid uptake by body cells).
In addition, it has several other anabolic effects throughout the body.
Insulin affects vascular compliance and cognition.
Human insulin is a peptide hormone composed of 51 amino acids and has a molecular weight of 5808 Da.
The islets of Langerhans in the pancreas produces insulin.
The name comes from the Latin insula for "island".
Insulin 's structure varies slightly between species of animals.
Insulin from different animal sources has different effects on the human carbohydrate metabolism process.
Porcine insulin is especially close to the human version.
So, people with diabetes can take in insulin extracted from pigs instead of producing their own insulin.
Nicolae Paulescu, a Romanian professor of physiology at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, was the first to isolate insulin.
He did that in 1916.
He called it pancrein.
He isolated it by developing an aqueous pancreatic extract which, when injected into a diabetic dog, proved to have a normalizing effect on blood sugar levels.
He had to interrupt his experiments because the World War I. In 1921 he wrote four papers about his work carried out in Bucharest and his tests on a diabetic dog.
Later that year, he detailed his work by publishing an extensive whitepaper on the effect of the pancreatic extract injected into a diabetic animal, which he called: "Research on the Role of the Pancreas in Food Assimilation".
Dr. Frederick Banting and Dr. Charles Best also did similar experiments while trying to find a cure for diabetes.
In these experiments they used dogs.
They first knew insulin would control diabetes in a person when they injected some insulin into a 14 year old boy named Leonard Thompson who was dying of diabetes.
After the injection he survived.
Banting won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with John Macleod, for the discovery of insulin.
Best and Paulescu were not honored at that time.
The first genetically-engineered, synthetic "human" insulin was produced in a laboratory in 1977 by Herbert Boyer using E. coli.
An inductor is an electrical device used in electrical circuits because of magnetic charge.
An inductor is usually made from a coil of conducting material, like copper wire, that is then wrapped around a core made from either air or a magnetic metal.
If you use a more magnetic material as the core, you can get the magnetic field around the inductor to be pushed in towards the inductor, giving it better inductance.
Small inductors can also be put onto integrated circuits using the same ways that are used to make transistors.
Aluminum is usually used as the conducting material in this case.
While a capacitor does not like changes in voltage, an inductor does not like changes in current.
Inductors are used often in analog circuits.
Two or more inductors that have coupled magnetic flux make a transformer.
Transformers are used in every power grid around the world.
Inductors are also used in electrical transmission systems, where they are used to lower the amount of voltage an electrical device gives off or lower the fault current.
Because inductors are heavier than other electrical components, people have been using them in electrical equipment less often.
Inductors with an iron core are used for audio equipment, power conditioning, inverter systems, rapid transit and industrial power supplies.
Insulin pumps are medical devices used to administering insulin for treatment of diabetes mellitus.
These devices are an alternative to constant and daily injections of insulin via syringe or pen.
An insulin pump allows intensive insulin therapy when used along with carb counting and blood glucose monitors.
ISO 3166 is a standard made by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and it uses short codes to name all countries and some other places.
People from all over the world can use the same codes; this is helpful because different languages have different names for many countries.
For example, the country English-speakers call Spain is called Espa a by Spanish-speakers.
The ISO 3166 has three codes for Spain: ES, ESP, and 724.
No other country has any of these codes.
An inverse function is a concept of mathematics.
A function will calculate some output, given some input.
This is usually written.
The inverse function does the reverse.
Let 's say is the inverse function of, then.
Or otherwise put,.
An inverse function to is usually called Do not confuse with: the first is a value of an inverse function, the second is reciprocal of a value of a normal function.
Let 's take a function over real.
Then,
Not all functions have inverse functions: for example, function has none (because, and should give both 1 and -1 when given 1)), but every binary relation has its own inverse relation.
Finding the inverse of a function can be very difficult to do.
Inertia is the resistance of an object to any change in its motion, including a change in direction.
An object will stay still or keep moving at the same speed and in a straight line, unless it is acted upon by an outside force.
For example, a rubber ball will not start bouncing around unless someone picks it up and throws it.
Basically, if an object is not moving, it will not start moving unless something else acts upon it.
The same idea can be applied to motion: an object in motion will stay in motion unless some outside, opposing force acts upon it.
Inertia is also called Sir Isaac Newton 's First Law of Motion.
The First Law of Motion says that:
Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight ahead, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed.
(Cohen & Whitman 1999 translation)
Every object stays at rest or stays moving at the same speed unless something makes it change.
Ibanez is company that makes guitars.
The company is from Nagoya, Aichi, Japan.
The company was started by Hoshino Gakki.
The company is very big and sells many guitars to musicians.
Incest means sexual intercourse between people who are closely related.
Usually, this means members of the same family.
In many societies, it is forbidden by law and religion.
Which relatives it is forbidden to have sex with depends on the law, religion and culture.
If pregnancy is a risk, there may be reasons based on health.
Children that result from incest between blood relatives are more likely to have birth defects.
The exact definition of the incest relationship varies.
In some societies it is immediate relations, such as parents and their children; or brothers and sisters of the same parents.
It sometimes includes extended family like aunts, nephews, nieces and uncles.
That way, intercourse between cousins is legally permitted in the large majority of the world, but is disliked in many countries.
In some U.S. states, such as Texas, the legal definition of incest includes first cousins, but not second cousins.
A person who engages in incest is called an incestophile or incestualist.
Other societies define it much more widely, to include all "blood relatives", or all who live in the same household, or belong to the same clan.
Some religions say that sex between people related by marriage is incest.
For example, the Old Testament forbids sex between siblings-in-law.
In South Africa, sex between a parent-in-law and child-in-law is illegal.
The type of incest most often reported in the Western world is father-daughter incest.
Incest between adults and children is a form of child sexual abuse.
This form has been shown to cause one of the worst forms of childhood trauma, a trauma that often causes serious and long-term psychological damage, especially in the case of parental incest.
Stepparents are more likely to abuse stepchildren than biological parents are to abuse their children, because people typically care about their own children more than they care about their stepchildren - the Cinderella effect.
It is suggested that the Westermarck effect prevents a person being attracted to anyone whom he lived in the same house as during his childhood, hence most people are never sexually attracted to their siblings or parents.
The term is often used to apply to less serious sexual relationships between related people.
It is difficult to say how frequent incest is, but researchers have estimated that between 10 % and 15 % of people have at least one "incest experience" (this means some kind of sexual relationship falling short of actual incest).
Less than 2 % of these involve intercourse or attempted intercourse.
Among women, research by Russell (1986) and Wyatt (1985) has given estimates as high as twenty percent (for such ` incest experience ').
In a survey of women in San Francisco, of those who had grown up with a stepfather, 17 % (1 in 6) said that he sexually abused her.
In the same study, 2.5 % (1 in 40) of the women said that they had been sexually abused by their father.
Cousincest refers to incest with a cousin.
Siblingcest refers to incest with a sibling.
Incest between consenting adults is very rare, or rarely reported.
Willing incest between adults is a crime in most countries.
It is seen by some as a victimless crime.
A reason why it is prohibited is because severely handicapped children are often born to parents who are blood-related.
Other reasons for it being illegal are religion and to try to prevent sexual predation.
Most societies have some form of incest avoidance.
The incest taboo is and has been one of the most common of all cultural taboos, both in current nations and many past societies, with legal penalties imposed in some jurisdictions.
Most modern societies have legal or social restrictions on closely consanguineous marriages.
However, in some societies, such as that of Ancient Egypt, brother sister, father daughter, and mother son relations were practiced among royalty.
In addition, the Balinese and some Inuit tribes have altogether different beliefs about what constitutes illegal and immoral incest.
The Industrial Revolution is the name historians have given to the period in history when there was a large and rapid change in the way things were made.
This meant that instead of things being hand made in small workshops, they were made more cheaply in large quantities by machines in factories.
Products being made in large quantity now meant that they were sold for less.
Many people began to move from an agricultural based life in the country to the towns where the factories offered more and better paid work.
The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the middle of the 18th century.
In particular, the County of Shropshire was important, for it had both minerals (e.g. iron ore and coal) and transport on the River Severn.
This led to the group of industries near the Ironbridge Gorge and the town of Coalbrookdale.
The revolution spread to Europe and the Americas, especially the United States, by the early 19th century.
Samuel Slater, who had been an apprentice in an English cotton factory, disguised himself and came to America.
He reconstructed a spinning machine from memory and built a factory of his own.
New ideas and inventions were also taken up and used in mining, the working of metals, and in the transport of goods.
Around the same time new ideas in farming were leaving some farm workers without jobs.
They added to the move to the industrial towns where they sought out work in factories.
The most important new invention of the industrial revolution was the steam engine.
The steam engine, improved by James Watt around 1776 was used to power the factories and pump out the deeper mines.
It was also used in railway engines.
The heat from burning coal became the main source of power.
Historians still disagree on why the Industrial Revolution happened when it did, and why it happened in England first.
It built on a new spirit of studying things through science.
The 17th century began a period now called the Enlightenment during which people asked more questions about the way the world worked.
England also was a politically stable country throughout the 1700s with no wars at home (although it had many abroad).
England was also lucky that it had many of the raw materials needed to make and power the new machines within its borders.
It also had an overseas empire that would buy the goods it made and provide it with a cheap source of other raw materials such as cotton and sugar.
At the time of the industrial revolution slavery was practiced in many British Empire lands, this supplied a source for some of the money which could be spent on building the new industries.
Also, England had much less land that could be farmed compared to other European countries.
Living standards rose and people generally became richer and healthier and had more children who survived to be adults instead of starving.
The resulting population growth in England caused new problems.
The environment was damaged.
Where only a few people had been rich because they owned land, now a few more became very rich thanks to industry, and many lived in poor conditions.
Children and women had to work for a long time for little pay.
Often several families crowded into very small apartments.
Working at different times, family members would take turns sleeping when they were not working.
Families were usually unable to get together.
12, 14, or even 18-hour workdays were common.
The Industrial Revolution brought problems of its own.
During the industrial revolution, new technology brought many changes.
For example:
The International Court of Justice (French La Cour internationale de justice (CIJ), is an international organization.
It is the main judicial organ or branch of the United Nations.
In short, International Court of Justice is ICJ; sometimes people call it the World Court.
In French language, it is Cour internationale de justice.
Established ICJ in 1945, ICJ has its headquarters at The Hague, Netherlands.
The ICJ began its working from 1946.
It replaced an earlier similar court named Permanent Court of International Justice.
The International Court of Justice is different from the International Criminal Court.
The ICJ uses two languages, the English language and the French language.
The Internal Court of Justice has two major functions.
Firstly, it settles disputes, which the member countries may bring before it.
Secondly, it may give its opinions on legal matters.
Since 1980s, many developing countries have been using the services of the ICJ.
But, in 1986, the United States of America did not accept the court s views on all matters, but rather selectively, on a case-to-case basis.
Since the year 2000 the docket went down from 23 to 12 cases.
In the meantime the staff tripled.
The ICJ has fifteen permanent judges.
The UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council elects the judges.
A judge serves a for nine year period and may be re-elected if necessary.
If a serving judge dies, another judge, from the same country he or she belonged to is generally elected to fill the vacant position.
Elections are staggered, thus five judges (one-third of the Court) come up for election every three years.
The fifteen permanent judges are elected from a list of persons nominated by the national groups in the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
The election process is set out in Articles 4-12 of the ICJ statute Generally, five members of the Security Council of the United Nations always have a judge from their country.
These countries are China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
In some case, the ICJ allows Ad hoc judges.
Thus, the countries in dispute have a right to nominate one judge each for that particular case, if desired.
This right is not available if that country already has a judge of its nationality in the ICJ.
Thus, sometimes, instead of fifteen, seventeen judges may be deciding a case.
There are many rules, which lay down the qualifications and conduct of the judges of the ICJ.
Generally, all the judges of the ICJ sit together to hear and decide any matter.
However, sometimes smaller chambers of three to five judges hear and decide a case.
Such chambers may be for special types of cases.
Sometimes, the ICJ sets up ad hoc chambers to hear and decide particular disputes.
While deciding the case, the ICJ applies the principles of international law.
It also uses the laws of the civilized world.
This may be the civil and criminal law of major countries.
It may also refer to legal writings, law books, and earlier decisions while deciding any matter.
The International Standard Book Number, ISBN, is a unique commercial book identifier barcode.
The ISBN system was created in the United Kingdom, in 1966, by the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith.
Originally, it was the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code and still was used in 1974; it was adopted as the international standard ISO 2108 in 1970.
A similar, numeric identification, the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), identifies periodical publications such as magazines.
Since January 1, 2007, ISBNs are of 13 digits, like in Bookland EAN-13.
The TC 46\/SC 9 is responsible for the standard.
An ISBN is given to each edition and variation (except reprintings) of a book.
The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned after January 1, 2007, and 10 digits long if assigned before 2007.
An International Standard Book Number consists of 4 or 5 parts:
The ISBN parts may be of different lengths, and usually are separated with hyphens or spaces.
The group identifier code (GIC) number is 0 or 1 for English-speaking countries; 2 for French-speaking countries; 3 for German-speaking countries; 4 for Japanese; 5 for Russian, et cetera.
The original standard book number (SBN) had no group identifier, but affixing a zero (0) as prefix to a 9-digit SBN creates a valid 10-digit ISBN.
The group identifier may be up to 5 digits long; e.g. 99936 is a group identifier for the country Bhutan.
The national ISBN agency assigns the publisher number (cf. the: category: ISBN agencies); the publisher selects the item number.
Generally, a book publisher is not required to assign an ISBN, nor for a book to display its number (except in China; see below), however, most book stores only handle ISBN bearing merchandise.
A listing of all the 628,000 assigned publisher codes is published, and can be ordered in book form, but, as of 2007, it costs US$ 300.
The web site of the international ISBN agency does not offer any free method of looking up publisher codes.
Can also use it to verify ISBNs to see if they are valid.
Assures compliance with the full ISBN spec, not just the check digit.
An IP address is a label which is used to identify one or more devices on a computer network, such as the internet.
It is comparable to a postal address.
An IP address is a long number written in binary.
Since such numbers are difficult to communicate, IP addresses are usually written as a set of numbers in a given order.
Devices using IP addresses use the internet protocol to communicate.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority assigns IP addresses to regional internet registries (RIRs).
The RIRs assign them to Internet Service Providers.
Internet Service Providers then assign IP addresses to their customers.
Very often, people have a router or gateway at home, to which they connect computers, printers, and other devices.
These routers or gateways are often configured to assign IP "local" IP addresses to the devices that are connected.
Each address has two parts: One that specifies the computer or group of computers, and another which specifies the network.
A device can have more than one IP address.
Certain types of IP addresses are used to address a group of devices, while others are used to address only one device.
Certain types of addresses are unique, others can be re-used.
A number of IP addresses are used for special purposes, for example to obtain an IP address automatically.
An IP address is converted to physical or Media Access Control Address using the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP).
If an IP address is your phone number, then your MAC address is your name.
You may change your phone number, but your name will not change.
An IP address is a long binary number, made of ones and zeros.
An IPv4 address is 32 binary digits (or bits) long.
An IPv6 is 128 bits long, allowing many more IP addresses to be used.
IP addresses are usually written in human-readable form, where 8 bits are grouped into one octet.
IPv4 addresses are usually written as a group of four numbers.
Each number can take a value from 0 to 255.
IPv6 addresses are written as a group of eight hexadecimal numbers.
Many Ipv6 addresses contain many zeroes.
There are special rules which say that in certain cases, these zeroes do not need to be written.
Certain IP addresses can be assigned freely on the local area network.
Since they are not unique, they are not routed on the internet.
The addresses which can be freely assigned are called private IP addresses, the ones which are unique are called public.
To be routed, a private address needs to be translated into a public one.
This process of translating between private and public addresses is called network address translation, or NAT.
Routers and firewalls often also perform this task.
There are different ways of getting a new IP address.
One of them is called Bootstrap Protocol (usually shortened to BOOTP).
The device that needs a new address, does not know what network it is in, so it uses an IP address of all zeroes (0.0.0.0) which it sends as a broadcast to the current network, on a special port.
In addition, it sends the MAC address of the network card, plus a 4 byte random number.
The BOOTP server will send a reply, also as broadcast, addressed to a different port.
The reply will contain the mac address of the client, the random number, and the IP address of the client.
When the client receives the data, it will set the address specied.
If the BOOTP server is configured that way, it will also send the IP address and hostname of the BOOTP Server, the name and path to a file which should be loaded to boot the client (using TFTP) or the name of a directory, which the client should mount using NFS.
DHCP extends BOOTP, and allows to send more information, souch the address of a time server, or information which is useful for routing.
IP addresses obtained automatically can be dynamic or static.
Static addressing means the same machine will always get the same IP address.
With dynamic addresses, a device will get the next address which is not used.
Dynamic addresses which are used need to be reviewed form time to time.
If they are not renewed, they can be used for other devices.
With IPv4, each address consists of four 8-digit binary numbers, called octets.
An IPv4 address is 32 bits in total.
The biggest number one can make with 8 regular digits is 99,999,999, but the biggest number one can make with 8 binary digits is 255 (11111111 in binary), so each octet can be any number from 0 to 255.
198.51.100.137 Each octet is converted to its decimal form and separated by a period.
Also, there are special meanings associated with two different ending numbers.
In general, a last number of 0 stands for the network (called base address), and a last number of 255 stands for all hosts on that network (called broadcast address).
Computers that are on the same local network share 3 of the 4 numbers.
A computer can be on more than one network.
It can also have several names.
The problem with IPv4 is that it only allows for 4.3 billion addresses, and we 've almost used them all.
To delay this, Network Address Translation (NAT) was created.
Network Address Translation has a network share one public IP address and give every computer on the network a private IP address.
Everyone living in the same house uses the same address, but mail can be meant for multiple different people living in the house.
There are some IP addresses that are reserved for special purposes.
For example, the address 127.0.0.1 is called the Loopback Address and will "loop back" any packets sent to this address back to the computer that sent them, like sending mail to yourself.
Although this may not seem useful, it is used to test servers.
To make a network work faster, it is split up into subnets.
To do this, an IP address contains a network ID, subnet ID, and a host ID.
A special binary number called a Subnet Mask is used to determine the size of the network, subnet, and host IDs.
The original IPv4 only supported 254 networks, so in 1981 the Internet addressing specification was changed to a classful network architecture.
Classful network design allowed for a larger number of individual networks.
The first three bits of an IP address determined its class.
Three classes (A, B, and C) were defined for normal computer communication (Unicast).
The size of the network ID was based on the class of the IP address.
Each class used more octets for the network ID, making the host ID smaller and reducing the number of possible hosts.
Classful networks have been replaced by Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) since 1993.
CIDR also provides a network address and host address.
CIDR does not have classes, which means network and host address sizes do n't have to be in octets.
An IPv4 Address in CIDR notation looks like192.168.0.14 \/ 24The slash and number represent the amount of bits that the network id uses, in this case 24 or 4 octets.
Because IPv4 is only 32 bits, the number of available addresses will run out.
To prevent this, an organization called the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) created IP Version 6 (IPv6), which will eventually replace IPv4.
IP Version 6 uses 16 octets, or 128 bits in total.
Octets in IPv6 are written in hexadecimal, and separated by colons (:).
An IPv6 address might look like this: 2001:0 db8:85 a3:0000:0000:8 a2e:0370:7334 An IPv6 address can be long and this can lead to mistakes when typing them into the computer or writing them down.
There are two ways in which an IPv6 address can be made shorter without leaving anything out:
Versions before IPv4 were experimental and never widely used.
Version 5 was used exclusively for the Internet Stream Protocol, which was also never widely used.
Iff (if and only if) is a "biconditional statement".
It means both conditions must hold (be true) for the statement to be true.
It is often called a necessary and sufficient condition.
Example:
This makes it clear that Madison will eat all and only those fruits that are apples.
She will not leave any apple uneaten, and she will not eat any other type of fruit.
That a given fruit is an apple is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for Madison to eat the fruit.
Please note that the truth table shown is equivalent to the XNOR gate.
The International Organization for Standardization is an international body dedicated to promoting international standards.
Its official languages are English, French and Russian.
Its name in French is ' and its name in Russian is ' or '.
Its short name form is ISO.
Its members are standards bodies from various countries around the world.
Its headquarters are in Geneva.
ICBM is an acronym.
It stands for Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.
It is a missile that can travel such distances so it can be used from one continent to another.
The missile can then carry a bomb.
This can be a conventional or nuclear warhead.
Today, most of the time, it will be a nuclear warhead.
Ice is the common name for frozen water.
Other liquids, such as ammonia or methane or milk could be called ice when they freeze but the name would always be ` milk ice ', for instance, instead of just ` ice '.
Water becomes ice when it is very cold.
Liquid water freezes and becomes solid ice at a temperature of 0 Celsius (32 Fahrenheit or 273 kelvin).
Ice is commonly made in a home refrigerator or freezer.
If water is put in a freezer and left for a while, the water gets very cold and will freeze solid, creating ice.
Water can be placed into a copper (or other meta)) container to cause it freeze into ice faster.
Metals are good conductors of heat, so water can freeze faster than in a plastic ice tray.
Unlike other liquids, water expands as it freezes to become ice; so ice floats on water because ice has less density than water.
This is very unusual - just about every other liquid gets more dense as it cools; water ice, however, is an important exception.
Liquid water expands by about 9 % as it becomes ice - it takes up more space.
This is because the water molecules are actually farther apart instead of being closer together.
The molecules in an ice crystal are arranged in a way that makes it less dense than liquid water.
If water in plumbing freezes, it can burst the water pipe.
Water in glass bottles can make them explode when it freezes.
Water freezing in rock cracks can expand enough to split hard rocks apart; this is an important geological weathering process that can wear down mountains and make rock into soil.
When materials are cooled their molecules vibrate less and compact together.
When most materials reach a temperature called the freezing point, the molecules form a crystalline solid - although some materials (like glass and tar) do not crystallise at all but form super stiff fluids, which seem to be solid.
Only Helium will not freeze; all other substances will freeze if cold enough, but fluids like cooking oil, anti-freeze, petrol (gasoline), nitrogen, etc. freeze at temperatures that most people do n't experience.
Salt water needs a lower temperature to freeze than pure water.
The resulting ice contains much less salt than the salt water it came from.
This salty ice is not as strong as frozen pure water.
Similarly spreading salt on ice melts it, if it 's not too cold: the salt progressively eats into the ice, forming brine which is not cold enough to be frozen at the same temperature.
Because ice floats, even large bodies of water that freeze, like some oceans, only form ice on the surface.
Most lakes never freeze to the bottom.
Even the coldest oceans, like the Arctic Ocean, only freeze on the top, leaving liquid ocean circulating below.
Because of this the Earth 's oceans are able to redistribute heat and the climate of the earth has less extremes of heat and cold than it would otherwise.
If ice were to sink instead of float, the oceans would fill up with ice from the bottom, would remain solid and only some of the top would thaw.
A solid ocean would not circulate heat.
But because ice floats on the surface the water beneath can continue to circulate and the ice on the surface stays exposed and readily melts when the temperature rises.
Antarctica has the majority of the world 's ice.
The earth 's climate is always changing.
When it is very cold it is called an ice age.
During ice ages very large areas of the earth are covered in ice, snow and glaciers.
The causes of ice ages are complex, or hard to understand.
Global warming is currently affecting the Earth 's ice resources and its causes are also very complex.
Main article: dry ice.
There is also ` dry ice '; it is frozen carbon dioxide.
Dry ice exposed to normal air gives off carbon dioxide gas that is odorless and colorless.
The gas is so cold that when it mixes with air it cools the water vapor in the air to fog, which looks like a thick white smoke.
It is often used in the theater to make fake fog or smoke.
The immune system is the set of tissues which work together to resist infections.
The immune mechanisms help an organism identify a pathogen, and neutralize its threat.
The immune system can detect and identify many different kinds of disease agents.
Examples are viruses, bacteria and parasites.
The immune system can detect a difference between the body 's own healthy cells or tissues, and ` foreign ' cells.
Detecting an unhealthy intruder is complicated, because intruders can evolve and adapt so that the immune system will no longer detect them.
Once a foreign cell or protein is detected, the immune system creates antibodies to fight the intruders, and sends special cells (` phagocytes ') to eat them up.
Even simple unicellular organisms such as bacteria possess enzyme systems that protect against viral infections.
Other basic immune mechanisms appeared in ancient life forms and remain in their modern descendants, such as plants and insects.
These mechanisms include antimicrobial peptides (called defensins), phagocytosis, and the complement system.
These are the innate immune system, which defends the host from infections in a non-specific way.
The simplest innate system is the cell wall or barrier on the outside to stop intruders getting in.
For example, skin stops most outside bacteria getting in.
Vertebrates, including humans, have much more sophisticated defense mechanisms.
Whereas the innate immune system is found in all metazoa, the adaptive immune system is only found in vertebrates.
It is thought to have arisen in the first jawed vertebrates.
The adaptive immune response gives the vertebrate immune system the ability to recognize and remember specific pathogens.
The system mounts stronger attacks each time the pathogen is encountered.
It is adaptive immunity because the body 's immune system prepares itself for future challenges.
The typical vertebrate immune system consists of many types of proteins, cells, organs, and tissues that interact in a complex and ever-changing network.
This acquired immunity creates a kind of "immunological memory".
The process of acquired immunity is the basis of vaccination.
Primary response can take 2 days to 2 weeks to develop.
After the body gains immunity towards a certain pathogen, if infection by that pathogen occurs again, the immune response is called the secondary response.
In some organisms, the immune system has its own problems within itself, called disorders.
These result in other diseases, including autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases and possibly even cancer.
Immunodeficiency diseases occur when the immune system is less active than normal.
Immunodeficiency can either be the result of a genetic (inherited) disease, or an infection, such as the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), that is caused by the retrovirus HIV, or other causes.
In contrast, autoimmune diseases result from an immune system that attacks normal tissues as if they were foreign organisms.
Common autoimmune diseases include Hashimoto 's thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, Type 1 diabetes, and Lupus erythematosus.
Immunology is the study of all aspects of the immune system.
It is very important to health and diseases.
Immunology is scientific part of medicine that studies the causes of immunity to disease.
For many centuries people have noticed that those who recover from some infectious diseases do not get that illness a second time.
In the 18th century, Pierre Louis Maupertuis made experiments with scorpion venom and saw that certain dogs and mice were immune to this venom.
This and other observations of acquired immunity led to Louis Pasteur (1822 1895) developing vaccination and the germ theory of disease.
Pasteur 's theory was in direct opposition to contemporary theories of disease, such as the miasma theory.
It was not until the proofs Robert Koch (1843 1910) published in 1891 (for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1905) that microorganisms were confirmed as the cause of infectious disease.
Viruses were confirmed as human pathogens in 1901, when the yellow fever virus was discovered by Walter Reed (1851 1902).
Immunology made a great advance towards the end of the 19th century, through rapid developments, in the study of humoral immunity and cellular immunity.
Particularly important was the work of Paul Ehrlich (1854 1915), who proposed the side-chain theory to explain the specificity of the antigen-antibody reaction.
The Nobel Prize for 1908 was jointly awarded to Ehrlich and the founder of cellular immunology, Ilya Mechnikov (1845 1916).
The immune system is extremely ancient, and may go back to single-celled eukaryotes which needed to distinguish between what was food and what was part of themselves.
"Genomic analysis of plants and animals provides evidence that a sophisticated mechanism of host defense was in existence by the time the ancestors of plants and animals diverged.
This system, shared by plants and animals, is the Toll pathway of NF B activation of gene function... The necessary DNA sequences are found in invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants", Janeway.
Immunology is the study of the immune system.
The immune system is the parts of the body which work against infection and parasitism by other living things.
Immunology deals with the working of the immune system in health and diseases, and with malfunctions of the immune system.
An immune system is present in all plants and animals.
We know this because biologists have found genes coding for toll-like receptors in many different metazoans.
These toll-like receptors can recognize bacteria as ` foreign ', and are the starting-point for immune reactions.
The type of immunity which is triggered by the toll-like receptors is called innate immunity.
This is because it is entirely inherited in our genome, and is fully working as soon as our tissues and organs are properly developed.
Vertebrates, and only vertebrates, have a second type of immunity.
This is called adaptive immunity, because it ` remembers ' previous infections.
Then, if the same infection occurs again, the reaction is much stronger and faster.
This immunological memory "confers a tremendous survival advantage" and with it vertebrates "can survive over a long lifetime in a pathogen-filled environment".
The innate immune system is usually means all of the cells and systems that does not have to be exposed to a particular pathogen before they can work.
Innate immunity starts with the skin, which is an excellent barrier to infection.
The adaptive immune system includes cells and systems that do require previous exposure to a pathogen.
It explains the unique ability of the mammalian immune system to remember previous infections and mount a rapid and robust reaction to secondary infections.
This immunological memory is due to the biology of T-cells and B-cells.
Vaccines boost the acquired immune system by offering weak forms of infection that the body can fight off.
The system remembers how to do it again when a stronger infection happens.
If the vaccine works, the body can then fight off a serious infection.
The distribution of vaccines and other immune system affecting cures can be considered another level of acquired immune system, one governed by access to vaccination and medicine in general.
The intersection of this with the spread of disease (as studied in epidemiology) is part of the field of public health.
Errors of the immune system may cause damage.
In autoimmune diseases, the body attacks parts of itself because the system mistakes some parts of the body as ` foreign '.
Some kinds of arthritis are caused this way.
Sometimes serious pathogens slip in because their surface is disguised as something the host cell walls can accept.
That is how viruses work.
Once inside a cell, their genetic material controls the cell.
Infections like HIV get in this way, and then attack cells which are the basis of the immune system.
Artificial means are often used to restore immune system function in an HIV-challenged body, and prevent the onset of AIDS.
This is one of the most complex issues in immunology as it involves every level of that system.
This research during the 1980s and 1990s radically changed the view of the human immune system and its functions and integration in the human body.
Immunology is a science that examines the structure and function of the immune system.
It originates from medicine and early studies on the causes of immunity to disease.
The earliest known mention of immunity was during the plague of Athens in 430 BC.
Thucydides (460 395 BC) noted that people who had recovered from a previous bout of some diseases could nurse the sick without contracting the illness a second time.
In the 18th century, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis made experiments with scorpion venom and observed that certain dogs and mice were immune to this venom.
This and other observations of acquired immunity led to Louis Pasteur (1822 1895) developing vaccination and the germ theory of disease.
Pasteur 's theory was in direct opposition to contemporary theories of disease, such as the miasma theory.
It was not until the proofs Robert Koch (1843 1910) published in 1891 (for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1905) that microorganisms were confirmed as the cause of infectious disease.
Viruses were confirmed as human pathogens in 1901, when the yellow fever virus was discovered by Walter Reed (1851 1902).
Immunology made a great advance towards the end of the 19th century, through rapid developments, in the study of humoral immunity and cellular immunity.
Particularly important was the work of Paul Ehrlich (1854 1915), who proposed the side-chain theory to explain the specificity of the antigen-antibody reaction.
The Nobel Prize for 1908 was jointly awarded to Ehrlich and the founder of cellular immunology, Ilya Mechnikov (1845 1916).
The simplest form of immunity is the DNA restriction system in bacteria that prevents infection by bacteriophages.
In mathematics, the identity element (or neutral element) of a set is a special element of that set.
It is special because if it is combined with another element of that set, it does not change the other element.
With addition, the identity element is 0, because adding 0 to some number does not change the number.
With multiplication, it is 1.
An instrumental is music that has no words or people singing.
The music is made only by musical instruments, or by makings sounds using other things, like bins.
Some types of music like Jazz and classical music have a lot of instrumentals, but most other types of popular music do not.
Idempotence is a property that an operation in mathematics or computer science may have.
It roughly means that the operation can be carried out again and again without changing the result.
The word idempotence was made by Benjamin Pierce because he saw the concept when studying algebra.
The meaning is different if we are talking about different kinds of operations.
It can also be used to describe elements than an operation can take:
We say that an element c in the domain of f is an idempotent element if f (f (c)) = f (c).
This means that f is idempotent if every element of its domain is an idempotent element.
We say that an element c which \* can take is an idempotent element for \* if c \* c = c. For example, the number 1 is an idempotent element for multiplication because 1 times 1 is 1.
If a call button inside an elevator is pressed then the elevator will go to the floor that is on the button.
If it is pressed again then it will do the same thing.
This means that the operation of pressing a button to make the elevator change floors is an idempotent operation.
If we mix two pots which have the same liquid in them into a new pot then we will have the same liquid in that pot.
If we only care about what kind of liquid is in the pot (not how much) then mixing liquids is an idempotent binary operation.
The face of a clock looks the same if 12 hours have passed.
So for the operation of "letting time pass on a clock" we see that letting 12 hours pass is an idempotent element (this is also true for all multiples of 12 like 24, 36, 48,...).
Ithaca is a city in upstate New York, America.
It was named after the Greek island of Ithaca.
Cornell University and Ithaca College are in the city.
Imhotep was a high priest in ancient Egypt, and had many other important skills.
He was born in Ankhtowe on the 16th day of Epiphi.
Epiphi is the third month of the Egyptian harvest season.
His mother was Khreduonkh and father was Kanofer an architect.
Imhotep also became famous as an architect.
After his death, because of his attachment with the god Ptah during his work at Ptah 's temple stories were spread that said that Ptah was his father.
As a god he was often pictured seated, wearing a long kilt robe and a skull cap or a shaven head.
He had a papyrus scroll spread on his lap to show his scholarly nature and scribal assistance.
As an architect Imhotep was most famous because he was the designer of the step pyramid.
Before the step pyramid, pharaohs were buried in flat topped structures called mastabas.
The term mastaba comes from the word meaning bench because they look like the benches most Egyptians placed outside their door.
An average mastaba had four walls, a flat top and an underground burial chamber, reached by a vertical shaft or stairwell.
There were also a couple of small rooms above the burial chambers containing various items for the afterlife.
The step pyramid was actually just a number of mastabas placed one on top of the other, each one smaller than the previous one.
Imhotep was the architect, physician, scribe, and grand vizier of the IIIrd Dynasty pharaoh Zoser.
It was Imhotep who conceived and built the Step Pyramid at Sakkara.
In the Late Period, Imhotep was worshipped as the son of Ptah and a god of medicine, as well as the patron (with Thoth) of scribes.
The Greeks considered him to be Asklepios.
Imhotep s best-known writings were medical scrolls.
He is thought to have written the Edwin Smith papyrus.
The papyrus consists of 48 injuries of which 27 are head trauma, and six are spine trauma.
Here s an example for treatment of a head injury: Examination: If thou examinest a man having a wound in his head, while his wound does not have two lips, penetrating to the bone of his skull, (but) not having a gash, thou shouldst palpate his wound (or, thou shouldst lay thy hand upon it); shouldst thou find his skull uninjured, not having a perforation; a split, or a smash in it.
Treatment: Thou shouldst bind it with fresh meat the first day (and) treat afterwards with grease, honey (and) lint every day until he recovers wound in the head
Around 100 years after his death Imhotep was deified (made into a god).
He became the god of medicine and healing.
Small temples were built in honor of him.
People with injuries would sleep near his temple hoping to be healed.
As a god, Imhotep was also worshiped by scribes.
Scribes would offer a couple drops of water in libation to him before starting to write.
Even when the Greeks took over, he was identified with another deified man called Asclepius and the Greeks continued to honor and build temples for him.
This continued until the Arab invasion in North Africa in the 7th century AD.
Imhotep did many things that boosted Egyptian society to amazing heights.
He was the architect that changed Egyptian funeral architecture from mastabas to the phenomenal structures we today call pyramids.
As a physician he healed many people and saved many lives, which after his death lead to him becoming a medicine god.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a spin-off organization from the United Nations.
It was created as an autonomous (self-governing) organization on July 29, 1957.
The organization is intended to monitor and promote the peaceful and safe use of nuclear energy with protection from harmful radiation and, also, to prevent the use of this energy to build nuclear weapons.
International Atomic Energy Agency and its Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei, were both awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on 7 October 2005 for their role in trying to prevent the invasion of Iraq by a US-led coalition of troops.
The IAEA has its headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
Additional facilities are in Seibersdorf (near Vienna), Monaco, Toronto, and Tokyo.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) is an international organization created in Geneva in 1919 for better for working conditions and standard of living.
In 1946, this organization has become a special organization of the United Nations and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969.
The constitution of the International Labor Organization affirms that "universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice."
An additional declaration adopted in Philadelphia at the 26th section affirms that "Labor is not a commodity" (I (a)), "Freedom of expression and association are essential to sustained progress" (I (b)), "Poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere" (I (c)), and that "All human beings, irrespective of race, creed or sex, have the right to pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity".
(II (a))
For this purpose, ILO has made 189 Conventions called "International Labor Convention" but many countries do not ratify the Conventions despite its importance.
Idiot is a word used to describe someone who is stupid.
The adjective is idiotic.
The noun idiocy describes the state of being idiotic.
The word can be used in different ways.
The word "fool" is similar to "idiot", but it is not so strong.
In the history of drama a "fool" was a jester: someone who made people laugh.
Kings often had jesters in real life.
A court jester had the job of making the king feel happy when he was sad.
Jesters often pretended to be stupid, but were actually very clever.
There are jesters and fools in a lot of Shakespeare s plays.
The word simple can also be similar to "idiot".
Someone who is simple is a person who is not very clever or "streetwise".
They are na ve and can easily be made to believe things because they are kind and expect everyone else to be kind as well.
Such people are often called simpletons.
Idiots or simpletons are commonly used in literature.
In German literature (and in Wagner s opera), Parsifal is described as "perfect fool" because he does not understand the evil ways of the world and is therefore completely good.
That is why he can break the magic spell cast by Klingsor.
The idiot often appears in Russian literature.
Because the idiot is so simple he (it is always a male) is often able to express the truth which other people can not see.
Dostoevsky wrote a novel called The Idiot.
It is about a man who is simple and trusting.
At the end of the opera Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky the crowd of poor people gather round the simpleton who is the last person to sing in the whole opera.
His moans express the fact that Russia will continue to be ruled by cruel dictators and the people will remain poor.
Islamism is group of ideologies that say that Islamic nations should be run by sharia (Islamic laws).
Generally, it is the idea that Islam should guide both society and politics, as well as people 's personal lives.
Important people who have inspired Islamist movements include Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Rashid Rida, and Muhammad Iqbal.
Infrared (IR) radiation is a type of electromagnetic radiation (a wave with electricity).
The wave is longer than light which humans can see and shorter than microwaves.
The word infrared means below red.
It comes from the Latin word infra (meaning below) and the English word red.
(Infrared light has a frequency below the frequency of red light.)
Red light has the longest wavelength that human eyes can see.
Infrared waves can not be seen by the eye.
The infrared wave is between 800 nm and 1 mm.
People sense infrared as heat.
Most remote controls use infrared to send the control signals.
Many missiles for anti-aircraft warfare find their target by infrared.
Before Bluetooth was invented, some computers, personal digital assistants, and mobile phones were using the infrared technology to send files to other devices.
Bluetooth replaced infrared in the early 2000 's.
Infrared is limited by the need to have both devices in a "line of sight" with each other.
Infrared lasers are used to provide the light for optical fiber communications systems.
Infrared light with a wavelength around 1,330 nm (least dispersion) or 1,550 nm (best transmission) are the best choices for standard silica fibers.
ISO 8601 is an international standard to describe dates and times in the easiest way possible for computers to understand.
This standard is based on putting the biggest types of numbers first and the smallest numbers last.
Because years are bigger than months, and months are bigger than days, they are put in the order of YEAR-MONTH-DAY.
A basic ISO date for today looks like --.
The basic ISO time is:.
Another very important principle is that when a computer or human puts ISO 8601 dates into alphabetical order, they are also in chronological order.
People can also use these dates, but it is currently not common for people in any country to write dates using this standard in their day-to-day lives.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a group of scientists chosen by governments and other large groups from around the world who study the chance that humans may make the Earth heat up unnaturally.
The group was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), two organizations of the United Nations.
The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore who won for working on the same problems.
A lot of IPCC work is publishing reports about the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international agreement that human inventions and chemistry may make the Earth too hot to live on.
The UNFCCC was the beginning of the Kyoto Protocol.
Members of the IPCC read, write, and calculate as much as they can.
Only member states of the WMO and UNEP may be members of IPCC.
A lot of professors trust the IPCC work.
The first IPCC report was published in 1990.
More was added to that report in 1992.
The second report was published in 1995, the third was published in 2001, and a fourth in 2007.
Each report is in three books called Working Groups 1, 2 and 3.
Most times "the IPCC report" means the Working Group I report, which is about basic climate change.
The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was completed in early 2007.
Like earlier IPCC reports, it contains four reports, three of them from its working groups.
Working Group 1 was about the "Physical Science Basis of Climate Change."
The Working Group 1 report was published on February 2 2007 and revised on February 2007.
There was also a February 2 2007 press release.
The full Working Group 1 report was published in March.
The main report says:
The Summary for Policymakers for the Working Group 2 (IPCC wg2) report was published on April 6, 2007.
The Summary for Policymakers for the Working Group 3 report was published on May 4, 2007.
The estimate for the climate sensitivity was 1.5 to 4.5 C; and the average temperature was predicted to increase by 1.4 to 5.8 Celsius degrees between 1990 and 2100, and the sea level was predicted to rise between 0.1 and 0.9 meters.
The range of predictions is based on different levels of human carbon dioxide production.
Each perdiction has different possible outcomes.
MIT professor Richard Lindzen, who works for the IPCC Working Group 1, claims some of the IPCC reports are wrong.
He told the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that he was unhappy about the Executive Summary based on his work in May 2001.
He said that he told the IPCC they were making mistakes and the Working Group 1 report said that meant they were "making improvements".
The summary does not reflect the full document... For example, I worked on Chapter 7, Physical Processes.
This chapter dealt with the nature of the basic processes which determine the response of climate, and found numerous problems with model treatments including those of clouds and water vapor.
The chapter was summarized with the following sentence: ` Understanding of climate processes and their incorporation in climate models have improved, including water vapor, sea-ice dynamics, and ocean heat transport. '
Climate Change 1995, the IPCC Second Assessment Report (SAR), was finished in 1996.
It was made in four parts:
Each of the working groups was made by its own working group, and each has a Summary for Policymakers (SPM) that is a list of agreements by governments.
The Summary for Policy Makers of the Working Group 1 report says:
Three scientists involved in climate research believe that the IPCC reports do not accurately summarize the state of knowledge.
On December 20, 1995, Reuters news agency claimed a British scientist Keith Shine, one of IPCC 's most important authors, talking about the Policymakers ' Summary, said: "We produce a draft, and then the policymakers go through it line by line and change the way it is presented... It 's peculiar that they have the final say in what goes into a scientists ' report".
Keith Shine did not say what differences the changes make.
Frederick Seitz, a physicist of Rockefeller University, said the IPCC report was not good, writing "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report".
He opposed it in the Leipzig Declaration of S. Fred Singer 's Science and Environmental Policy Project.
Professor Seitzs comments were opposed by the presidents of the American Meteorological Society and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, who wrote about an effort by some people make it seem that humans had not changed the climate.
Special insert.
S. Fred Singer said that:
Benjamin D. Santer, Lead Author of Chapter 8 of 1995 IPCC Working Group 1 report, said:
The Second Assessment Report was the only one with a chapter on the economic effect of climate change.
This part of the report was thought to be unfair because the value of life in poorer countries was less.
The 1992 supplementary report was an update of the 1990 report, requested for the Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Earth Summit (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
It did not make any important changes to the 1990 report.
It claimed the prediction methods in the First Assessment Report, were now improved, but did not include aerosol or ozone changes.
The IPCC first assessment report was completed in 1990, and used to make the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The Chairperson of the IPCC is Rajendra K. Pachauri, elected in May 2002; before that Robert Watson headed the IPCC.
The chairperson is helped by an elected Bureau including vice-chairpersons, Working Group co-chairpersons and a Secretariat (see below).
The IPCC Panel is made of people from governments and other groups.
Scientific experts are preferred.
Meetings of the IPCC and IPCC Working Groups are held by members of governments.
Non-Governmental and Intergovernmenta Organizations may be allowed to attend as observers.
Meetings of the IPCC Bureau, workshops, experts and lead authors are by invitation only.
350 government officials and climate change experts visited the 2003 meeting.
The meeting report says there were 322 persons in attendance at meetings with about seven-eighths of visitors being from governments.
The IPCC receives funding from UNEP, WMO, and its own Trust Fund which gets money from governments.
People from over 130 countries contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report over 6 years.
These people included more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers, more than 800 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors.
The Working Group 1 report of 2007 (including the summary for policy makers) included contributions by 600 authors from 40 countries, over 620 expert reviewers, a large number of government reviewers, and representatives from 113 governments.
The IPCC activities are controlled by the WMO Executive Council and UNEP Governing Council to support the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In April 2006, the IPCC released the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report or AR4.
Reports of the workshops held so far are available at the IPCC website.
The AR4 Synthesis Report (SYR) was finalized in November 2007.
Documentation on the meetings for the AR4 are available, the outlines for the Working Group 1 report and a provisional author list.
The IPCC also supports other activities, such as the Data Distribution Centre Welcome to the IPCC Data Distribution Centre and the National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme IPCC - Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.
This involves estimating greenhouse gas based on the levels of fuel used, industrial production and so on.
The IPCC also answers questions from the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA).
The IPCC reports are a collection of peer reviewed and published science.
Each IPCC report explains improvements to the previous report and also explains where more research is needed.
Review comments are open to the public for at least five years.
The Panel controls what the IPCC agrees on to meet standards.
The Panel 's approval process has been criticized for changing what the experts put in the Reports.
Each chapter has a lot of authors who are responsible for writing and editing the material.
A chapter usually has two "Coordinating" Lead Authors who control what words go in their chapter, ten to fifteen Lead Authors, and a larger number of Contributing Authors.
The Lead Authors put together the work of the other authors and report to the Working Group chairs.
Lead Authors write sections of chapters.
Contributing Authors prepare text, graphs and data.
Authors are chosen from a list of researchers prepared by governments, other important groups, the Working Group\/Task Force Bureaux, and other experts (, 4.2.1,2).
The group of Coordinating Lead Authors and Lead Authors for a section or chapter of a Report is expected to have many different views and to have people from different parts of the world.
In December 2007, the IPCC was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
The award is shared with Former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore for his work on climate change and the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
In January 2005 Christopher Landsea resigned from work on the IPCC AR4, saying that it was "both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound" because of Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research 's idea that global warming was contributing to recent hurricane activity.
Roger A. Pielke who published Landsea 's letter writes: "How anyone can deny that political factors were everpresent in the negotiations is n't paying attention", but says that "Despite the pressures, on tropical cyclones they figured out a way to maintain consistency with the actual balance of opinion (s) in the community of relevant experts."
He continues "So there might be a human contribution (and presumably this is just to the observed upwards trends observed in some basins, and not to downward trends observed in others, but this is unclear) but the human contribution itself has not been quantitatively assessed, yet the experts, using their judgment, expect it to be there.
In plain English this is what is called a ` hypothesis ' and not a ` conclusion. '
And it is a fair representation of the issue."
The IPCC Third Assessment Report showed a graph labeled "Millennial Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction" from a paper by Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH98) often called the "Hockey Stick Graph".
This graph was different to the IPCC First assessment report which showed global temperature for the past 1000 years, and higher temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period.
The graph was thought to show that temperatures between 1000 and 1900 were very different.
This was criticized in an article by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick.
In a 2006 letter to Nature, Bradley, Hughes and Mann claimed the original article had said that they could not be exact.
Some critics say the IPCC reports underestimate dangers, understate risks, and report only the lowest risks.
On February 1, 2007, the night before publication of IPCCs report on climate, a study was published saying that temperatures and sea levels have been rising at or above the speed the IPCC reported in 2001.
The study compared IPCC 2001 predictions of temperature and sea level change with what actually happened.
Over the six years, the actual temperature rise was near the top end of the range given by IPCC 's 2001 prediction and the actual rise was more than the top of the range the IPCC predicted.
An example of scientific research which has indicated that predictions by the IPCC have uderstated risks is a study on rises in sea levels.
Political influence on the IPCC has been shown by the release of a memo by ExxonMobil to the Bush administration, and its effects on the IPCCs leadership.
The Bush administration, at the request of ExxonMobil, wanted rid of Robert Watson, a climate scientist and IPCC chairperson, and to have him replaced by Pachauri, who was seen at the time as more friendly to industry.
In 2005, the UK House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs produced a report on the economics of climate change.
It commented on the IPCC process:
"We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations.
There are significant doubts about some aspects of the IPCCs emissions scenario exercise, in particular, the high emissions scenarios.
The Government should press the IPCC to change their approach.
There are some positive aspects to global warming and these appear to have been played down in the IPCC reports; the Government should press the IPCC to reflect in a more balanced way the costs and benefits of climate change.
The Government should press the IPCC for better estimates of the monetary costs of global warming damage and for explicit monetary comparisons between the costs of measures to control warming and their benefits.
Since warming will continue, regardless of action now, due to the lengthy time lags.
The 32 historic counties on the island of Ireland.
Several large towns are county boroughs.
These councils have the same powers and duties of a county council.
Information security is about protecting information so that people who should not have access to it can not distribute, see, change, or delete it.
Although this has a lot in common with computer security, information risk management and information assurance, it is different from them.
For example, computer security can focus on making sure that the computer is available when it is needed and that it works correctly but may not have anything to do with the data that it stores.
Information security has to do with the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data in any form e.g. electronic, print, or other forms.
Organizations, including governments, private businesses and others have much information stored and processed on computers.
Data that is lost or released to the wrong people or that is not properly secured could lead to legal and ethical problems for the organization.
For an individual person, information security has a big effect on privacy, which is viewed very differently by people in different cultures.
Income is the money that someone gets for business activities.
For individuals income usually means their wages or salary before any tax and other deductions have been made by their employer.
Overall it is the amount you earn after all outstanding deductions have been made.
Gross income is the income from all sources including wages or salary.
For business, there is a difference between the USA, where it most often means the amount of money that a company earns after paying for all its costs, and the world outside the U.S., where the term is usually profit or earnings.
Iona is a small island in the Inner Hebrides off the western coast of Scotland.
When Columba arrived with twelve monks in 563 he founded a great monastery.
From that time Iona was known as a holy place.
It was the center of Scottish Christianity for many centuries.
Today it is a popular tourist attraction and a place for retreats.
Its modern Gaelic name means "Iona of (Saint) Columba" (formerly anglicised "Icolmkill").
The main settlement, located at St. Ronan 's Bay on the eastern side of the island, is called Baile M r. It is known locally as "The Village".
The primary school, post office, the island 's two hotels, the Bishop 's House and the ruins of the Iona nunnery are here.
The abbey and MacLeod Centre are a short walk to the north.
There are a number of offshore Islands nearby.
Eilean Annraidh (island of storm) and Eilean Chalbha (calf island) are larger islands to the north.
R idh Eilean and Stac MhicMhurchaidh Islands lay to the west of Iona.
Eilean M simul (mouse holm island) and Soa Island are to the south.
At the start Iona was a part of the Gaelic kingdom of D l Riata.
The island was the site of a highly important monastery during the Early Middle Ages.
According to tradition the monastery was founded in 563 by the monk Columba, also known as Colm Cille, who had been exiled from his native Ireland.
Columba and twelve companions went into exile on Iona and founded a monastery there.
The monastery was very successful, and played a large part in the conversion of the Picts to Christianity.
It also had an influence on the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria.
Many other monasteries were founded in Scotland and Iona became the center of a great monastic system.
The scriptorium produced many very important documents.
The monastery itself became the center of Celtic Christianity.
Iona was a major supporter of the "Celtic" system for calculating the date of Easter.
The missionaries and bishops who came to Britain from Rome used a Roman calculation for the date of Easter.
This issue was settled when they adopted the Roman system at the Synod of Whitby in 664.
Pictland adopted the Roman system in the early 8th century.
Iona changed systems in 716, according to the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede.
Iona 's prominence was reduced over the next centuries as a result of Viking raids and the rise of other powerful monasteries in the system, such as the Abbey of Kells.
The Book of Kells was created on Iona about the year 800.
At about the same time the island 's high crosses were erected.
They had a ring around the top part that became the symbol called a "Celtic cross".
The series of Viking raids on Iona began in 794 and, after its treasures had been plundered many times, Columba 's relics were removed and divided two ways between Scotland and Ireland in 849 as the monastery was abandoned.
As the Viking control of the west coast of Scotland advanced, Iona became part of the Kingdom of the Isles.
Amla b Cuar n, King of Northumbria and Dublin, died in 981 while on Iona.
Still, the island was sacked twice by his successors.
On Christmas night 986 and again in 987.
The ruling dynasty of Alba traced its origin to Iona, and the island thus became an important religious icon of the new kingdom.
Many of its early kings are buried there.
The kings of the Isles were at times vassals of the King of Norway, High King of Ireland, or the King of Scotland.
By the 11th century they were nominally attached to the Kingdom of Norway, but in reality they were independent.
A convent for Benedictine nuns was established in about 1208, with Beth c, daughter of Somerled, as first prioress.
The present Benedictine abbey, Iona Abbey, was built in about 1203.
The monastery itself flourished until the Reformation when buildings were demolished and all but three of the 360 carved crosses destroyed.
According to tradition, the first "King of Scots" was Kenneth MacAlpin (Cin ed mac Ailp n).
He founded the beginnings of what we know as Scotland in 843.
The Reilig Cemetery on Iona was from that time until the 11th century the place where Scottish kings were buried.
In total there are about forty-eight Scottish kings buried at Iona.
In addition, eight kings of Norway and four kings of Ireland are buried on Iona.
Following the 1266 Treaty of Perth the Isles (Hebrides) were restored to Scottish rule.
An Augustine nunnery survives as a number of 13th century ruins, including a church and cloister.
The nunnery continued to be active until the Reformation.
By the 1760s little more of the nunnery remained standing than at present, though it is the most complete remnant of a medieval nunnery in Scotland.
In the 19th century green-streaked marble was commercially mined in the south-east of Iona; the quarry and machinery survive.
The International Space Station (ISS) is a space station, or a big satellite that people can live in for a long time that is being built in space right now.
The station is a connected project among several countries: the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.
Other nations such as Brazil, Italy, and China also work with the ISS through cooperation with other countries.
Building the ISS began in 1998, when a Russian and American space modules were connected with each other.
In the early 1980s, NASA planned Space Station Freedom as a counterpart to the Soviet Salyut and Mir space stations.
It never left the drawing board and, with the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, it was canceled.
The end of the Space race prompted the U.S. administration officials to start negotiations with international partners Europe, Russia, Japan and Canada in the early 1990s in order to build a truly international space station.
This project was first announced in 1993 and was called Space Station Alpha.
It was planned to combine the proposed space stations of all participating space agencies: NASA 's Space Station Freedom, Russia 's Mir-2 (the successor to the Mir Space Station, the core of which is now Zvezda) and ESA 's Columbus that was planned to be a stand-alone spacelab.
The first section, the Zarya Functional Cargo Block, was put in orbit in November 1998 on a Russian Proton rocket.
Two further pieces (the Unity Module and Zvezda service module) were added before the first crew, Expedition 1, was sent.
Expedition 1 docked to the ISS on November 2, 2000, and consisted of U.S. astronaut William Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev.
When is bedtime?
The scientists living in the space station have to get used to all kinds of changes from life on Earth.
It takes them only 90 minutes to orbit (go around) the earth, so the sun looks as if it is rising and setting every 45 minutes.
This can be pretty confusing, especially when you are trying to decide when you should go to bed!
The astronauts try to keep a 24-hour-schedule anyway.
When it really is bedtime, they have to sleep in sleeping bags that are stuck to the wall.
They have to strap themselves inside so they will not float away in the middle of a nice dream.
Zero gravity In space there is no gravity (this is called zero gravity).
To help prepare astronauts experience zero gravity, NASA trainers put the astronauts in the water.
Because water makes you float, this is a little like experiencing no gravity.
However, in water you can push against the water and move around.
In zero gravity, there is nothing to push against, so you just float in the air.
Another way of training is going in a plane and making the plane fall to earth very quickly.
This lets people experience zero gravity for a very short time.
This training can make people quite sick at first.
Since in zero gravity, the astronauts do not use their legs very much, they need to get lots of exercise to keep them from becoming too weak (without gravity, astronauts can get big upper bodies and skinny legs.
This is called chicken-leg syndrome).
Lots of exercise is needed to keep the astronauts healthy every day.
Eating in space style is pretty hard, too!
Water and other liquids do not flow down in space, so if you spilled some milk in a space station, the milk would float around everywhere!
Liquids ruin electric equipment, so astronauts have to be very careful in space.
They drink by sucking water out of a bag, or from a tube stuck to the wall.
They can not put their food on plates because it would just float right off, so they put it in pouches and eat from the pouches.
The food is usually dried, because crumbs are very messy things that can ruin the equipment.
Sometimes fresh fruits and vegetables are sent up to the astronauts, but it is very expensive and hard to send it, so they have to prepare a lot of food before they go.
Using the bathroom in space Actually, in space, the bathroom should probably be called the restroom instead, because you really can not take baths there.
Instead, astronauts use squirt guns to take a shower!
One person squirts himself with a gun while other people stand outside with a water vacuum to get rid of all the water that floats out of the shower.
This is quite hard, so astronauts usually just take a "sponge bath" with a wet cloth.
Toilets can be another problem.
Toilets are supposed to use gravity to work.
When you flush the toilet, gravity makes the water go down.
Since the astronauts on the ISS do not feel any gravity, the toilet must be attached to the astronauts and gently suck away all their waste.
The Indianapolis Colts are an American football team in Indianapolis, Indiana.
They play in the National Football League.
They were originally the Baltimore Colts.
The team moved to Indianapolis in 1984.
Ivanhoe is a historical romantic novel set around the reign of Richard III of England.
It was written by Scottish author Walter Scott.
It was first printed in 1820.
A 1952 movie version of the story starred Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, and Joan Fontaine.
An electrical insulator is a material that will not easily conduct an electric current.
Typical materials used to make insulators include rubber, plastic and glass.
In transformers and electric motors, varnish is used.
Insulating gases such as Sulfur hexafluoride are used in some switches.
Wires that carry electric currents are usually insulated so the electricity goes to the right place.
Insulators are made of various materials.
Common materials are: glass, tapes, silicone, rubber, plastic, foams, oil, wood, dry cotton, quartz, ceramic, etc.
The type of insulator will depend on the uses.
Insulators have high resistivity and low conductivity.
The insulators protect the loss of current and make the current more efficient by concentrating the flow.
Electric power transmission uses hree types of overhead insulator: pin insulator, suspension insulator, and strain insulator.
Infantry is the branch of a country 's army that fights on foot.
A member of the infantry is called an infantryman.
Infantrymen are also called foot soldiers or footmen.
Infantry is different than cavalry because infantry members fight on their own two feet, without vehicles or animals to ride on.
Historically, infantrymen were trained to use spears, swords and shields.
Modern infantrymen are trained to use many different kinds of weapons, including rifles, grenades, rocket launchers, pistols, sniper rifles, and machine guns.
It is one of the most dangerous jobs in any country 's military.
Infantry is the backbone of the military and the most important branch of the army.
In cryptography, the International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA) is a block cipher designed by Xuejia Lai and James Massey of ETH Zurich in 1991.
It was meant to be a replacement for the Data Encryption Standard.
IDEA very like an earlier cipher called Proposed Encryption Standard (PES), but with some improvements.
Because of this, IDEA was first called IPES (Improved PES).
The cipher is patented in a number of countries but can be used by anyone for non-commercial use.
The name "IDEA" is also a trademark.
The patents will expire in 2010 2011.
Today, IDEA is licensed worldwide by a company called MediaCrypt.
IDEA was used in Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) v2.0 after the cipher used in v1.0, BassOmatic, was found to be breakable.
IDEA can be used with the OpenPGP standard.
IDEA operates on 64-bit blocks, using a 128-bit key.
It contains a series of eight identical transformations (rounds) and one output transformation (the half-round).
It does this for a total of 8.5 rounds.
The processes for encryption and decryption are similar.
IDEA derives much of its security by interleaving operations from different groups modular addition and multiplication, and bitwise eXclusive OR (XOR) which are chosen to be "algebraically incompatible".
Each of the eight round uses six sub-keys, while the half-round uses four; for a total of 52 sub-keys.
Each sub-key is a 16-bit in length.
The first eight sub-keys are extracted directly from the 128-bit key, with K1 being the lowest sixteen bits and K8 is the highest sixteen bits; further groups of eight keys are created by rotating the main key left 25 bits after the creation of the previous group; six rotations generate all sub-keys.
The designers analyzed IDEA to measure its strength against differential cryptanalysis and concluded that it is unsusceptible only under certain assumptions.
No successful linear or differential attacks have been reported.
Some classes of weak keys have been found E.g. (Daemen et al., 1994) but these are of little importance, being so rare to be explicitly avoided.
As of 2007, the best attack which applies to all keys can break IDEA if reduced to 6 rounds (the full IDEA cipher uses 8.5 rounds).
In 1996, Bruce Schneier wrote about IDEA, "In my opinion, it is the best and most secure block algorithm available to the public at this time."
(Applied Cryptography, 2nd ed.)
However, by 1999 he was no longer recommending IDEA due to the availability of faster cryptographic algorithms, some progress in its cryptanalysis, and the issue of patents.
Iconoclasm means symbols of a culture (like icons or monuments) being destroyed by people of that same culture.
This is usually done for religious or political motives.
Often, it occurs together with major political or religious changes.
It is generally distinct from destruction by foreigners, for example by Spanish conquistadors in America.
The term does not generally include the specific destruction of images of a ruler after his death or overthrow (damnatio memoriae), for example Akhenaten in Ancient Egypt.
People who engage in or support iconoclasm are called iconoclasts.
This word is also used for people who are against established dogmata or conventions.
Similarly, people who revere or venerate religious images are called idolators.
In an Eastern Orthodox context they are known as iconodules, or iconophiles.
Iconoclasm may be carried out by people of a different religion, but is often the result of sectarian disputes between factions of the same religion.
The two Byzantine outbreaks during the 8th and 9th centuries were unusual because the use of images was the main issue in the dispute, rather than a by-product of wider concerns.
In Christianity, iconoclasm has generally been motivated by a literal interpretation of the Ten Commandments, which forbid the making and worshipping of "graven images" of God.
Imbolc is a festival belonging to Brigid, the Celtic goddess who, in later times, became famous as a Christian saint.
At first, her festival on February 1 was known as "Imbolc" or "Oimelc", two Gaelic names which refer to the lactation of the ewes.
Lactation is the flow of milk that happens when the baby lambs are born in the spring, and Gaelic languages are those spoken in countries like Ireland and Scotland.
Imbolc was, and still is, a time to celebrate that winter would soon be over.
Sometimes in Ireland, the first flowers are coming up at the time of this festival, even when there is still snow on the ground.
Later, the Roman Catholic Church replaced this festival with Candlemas Day on February 2, a day that now belongs to the Virgin Mary.
On this day, people may have ceremonies or processions by candlelight - walking together in the dark, with the only light coming from candles they carry.
The may also sing songs to Brigid, or say poems or prayers to her.
In both Pagan and Christian celebrations, Brigid is celebrated as a powerful female figure, who brings light, inspiration, and healing to the world.
Isaiah was a prophet of God in Islam, Christianity and Bah '.
He lived from about 740 to 681 BC.
The name Isaiah means "the Lord is salvation" in the Hebrew language.
Isaiah is also the name of a book in the Old Testament of the Bible, which tells the story of the Israelites in Isaiah 's time.
According to Christianity, Isaiah predicted in this book, the birth and then death of Jesus, hundreds of years before it actually happened.
Judaism does not agree with that interpretation.
Isaiah was known to be the Shakespeare of the Bible due to his good education and the quality of the passages he wrote.
He was cut in half by King Manasseh which led to his gruesome death.
Most of Isaiah 's Bible passages begin with ` God 's message to '.
Interlingua is a planned language using words that are found in most West-European languages.
It was made by IALA - a group of people (the most known was Alexander Gode) that worked on it for more than 20 years, and they finished and published the first dictionary in 1951.
Interlingua was created on the base of languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian.
Inter is the same root word like you see in the words "interaction", "interface" and so on, and it means "between" or "to each other"; lingua means "language".
They chose the name Interlingua because they wanted it to be used for people of different countries to talk to each other easily.
Because Interlingua was made by people to be easy, it is easier than natural languages to learn.
Many thousands of people know Interlingua, and Interlingua speakers say that millions can understand it (read texts in it and listen to someone talk in it) without having to learn it first.
There are two other planned languages in the world that have more than 1000 speakers, Esperanto and Ido.
Those two were made before Interlingua.
Some people think that Esperanto and Ido are easy to learn because they have no exceptions (words that break the rules) but other people think Interlingua is easier because the makers chose all the words to be easy to understand for people who know English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian, plus languages like Occitan and Romanian, languages that used to be Latin, the language used in Rome a long time ago.
Actually, people that use Interlingua say that their language is actually new Latin, just simpler and modernized (made new).
The Isle of Wight is an island that is just off the south coast of England.
It is about 40 kilometres (25 miles) by 20 kilometres (13 miles) in size.
About one hundred and twenty thousand people live on the island.
The Isle of Wight is known as a county.
This means that it has a council of people who make decisions about some things that affect the people who live there.
The county town of the island, which is the place where the council work from, is called Newport.
Many people like to go on holiday on the island.
There are a lot of hotels and things for tourists to do there.
The island really is quite spectacular.
Queen Victoria used to like to visit the Isle of Wight where she had a house called Osborne House.
Tourism is the most important industry on the island.
Over half of the island is officially designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
It is also widely recognized as the most important site in Europe for finding dinosaur remains.
Interferons (IFNs) are proteins released by body cells in response to pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, parasites or to tumor cells.
They allow cells to trigger the defenses of the immune system.
IFNs belong to the large class of glycoproteins known as cytokines.
Interferons are named after their ability to "interfere" with virus replication inside host cells.
About ten distinct IFNs have been identified in mammals; seven of these have been described for humans.
All IFNs are very important for fighting viral infections.
Ice skating is a type of sport.
People wear special shoes to skate on ice.
These special shoes are called ice skates.
Ice skates have narrow pieces of metal on the bottom of the shoes.
People balance on these pieces of metal.
People can move on the ice from place to place by sliding on these metal rails on the bottom of their ice skates.
Professionals compete in ice skating competitions.
A famous ice-skating event is the Elfstedentocht, held in Friesland every year.
The International Olympic Committee is an organization based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin and Demetrios Vikelas on June 23 1894 to reinstate the Ancient Olympic Games held in Greece between 776 BC to 393 AD.
Its membership is 203 National Olympic Committees.
An integrated circuit (more often called an IC, microchip, silicon chip, computer chip, or chip) is a piece of specially prepared silicon (or another semiconductor) into which a very complex electronic circuit is etched using photographic techniques.
Silicon chips can contain computer processors, memory and special devices.
The chip is very fragile and so is normally surrounded by a tough plastic package, and electrical contact with the chip is provided through metal legs sticking out of the package.
There are two main advantages of ICs over discrete circuits: cost and performance.
Cost is low because millions of transistors are printed as a complete unit by photolithography and not constructed as one transistor at a time.
Performance is higher since the components switch quickly, consuming little power.
ICs are designed for different purposes.
A chip may be designed as a calculator, which only works as a calculator.
Integrated circuits can be classified into analog, digital and mixed signal (both analog and digital on the same chip).
A semiconductor such as silicon can be controlled to conduct much or little.
This allows making transistors that control each other.
They are found in many household items such as radio, computers, telephones and other devices.
Other semiconductor devices include solar cells, diodes, and LED s (light emitting diode).
In 1958 and 1959, two people had the idea for an integrated circuit at almost exactly the same time.
Transistors had become an everyday thing used in computers.
They affected everything from radios to phones and at the time manufacturers needed a better product.
Transistors were smaller than vacuum tubes, but for some of the newest electronics, for example missile guidance, they were n't small enough.
One day in July, Jack Kilby was working at Texas Instruments when it occurred to him that all parts of a circuit, not just the transistor, could be made out of silicon.
At the time, nobody was making capacitors or resistors out of semiconductors.
This would change the future and make it easier to produce and sell integrated circuits.
Kilby 's boss liked the idea, and told him to get to work.
By September 12, Kilby had built a working model, and on February 6, Texas Instruments filed a patent.
Their first "Solid Circuit" was the size of a fingertip.
Meanwhile, in California, another man had the same idea.
In January of 1959, Robert Noyce was working at the small Fairchild Semiconductor startup company.
He also realized a whole circuit could be put into a single chip.
While Kilby had worked out the details of making individual components, Noyce thought of a much better way to connect the parts.
The design was called a "unitary circuit.
All that detail paid off because on April 25, 1961, the patent office awarded the first patent for an integrated circuit to Robert Noyce while Kilby 's application was still being analyzed.
Today, both men are acknowledged as having independently conceived of the idea.
The difference between VLSI and ULSI is obscure.
Integrated circuits can be packaged as DIP (Dual in-line package), PLCC (Plastic leaded chip carrier), TSOP (Thin small-outline package), PQFP (Plastic Quad Flat Pack) and other chip package types.
Some small ones are packaged for surface-mount technology.
The transistors inside can be bipolar transistors in unusual circuits, such as those needing unusually high switching speeds.
Most, however, are MOSFETs.
Ieoh Ming Pei (born April 26, 1917) is a Chinese American architect.
Pei has been an important name in his field, with his buildings built all over the world.
When he was a child, he learned basic knowledge about architecture from his father.
Pei made innovations in architecture, and won the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Medal for Architecture.
He built the Allied Bank Tower in Dallas, Texas, as well as the Louvre Pyramid, which is the main entrance to the Louvre Museum in Paris.
In 1983, Pei won the Pritzker Prize.
"I. M. Pei."
Notable Asian Americans.
Ed.
Helen Zia and Susan B. Gall.
Detroit: Gale, 1995.
Biography in Context.
Web.
29 May 2015.
"I. M. Pei."
Newsmakers.
Detroit: Gale, 1990.
Biography in Context.
Web.
29 May 2015.
Ivory is a hard white material made from the tusks and teeth of animals such as elephants, hippopotamuses and walruses.
Ivory is now very rare and expensive since there are restrictions on hunting elephants for ivory.
There are also laws against the trade of ivory.
Some countries (including Zimbabwe and South Africa) argue that these laws should be removed or changed, to allow them to sell some ivory.
Ivory has been used to make piano keys, billiard balls, handles and small ornaments.
Ivory has been used in artworks, such as carvings, since ancient times.
Impressionism is a style of painting which began in France in the late 19th century.
Impressionist painting shows life-like subjects painted in a broad, rapid style, with brushstrokes that are easily seen and colors that are often bright.
The term ` impressionism ' comes from a painting by Claude Monet, which he showed in an exhibition with the name Impression, soleil levant ("Impression, Sunrise").
An art critic called Louis Leroy saw the exhibition and wrote a review in which he said that all the paintings were just "impressions".
The word stuck.
Impressionist painters are mostly known for their work in oil paint on canvas.
Some impressionist painters also made watercolors and prints.
There is also some impressionist sculpture.
In the 19th century, most artists learned to paint by attending an art school or academy.
The academies were very strict about the way that young artists learned to paint.
The popular style of painting was called classicism.
Classical paintings were always done inside a studio.
They often showed stories from mythology.
An artist would prepare for a painting by doing lots of drawings.
The paintings were very smoothly and carefully painted.
At the same time there were several painters who loved to paint the French landscape and the village people in a realist way, different from Classicism.
They would often make small quick paintings out of doors, and then finish them in the studio.
These artists include Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste Corot.
Edgar Degas wrote in 1883: "There is one master, Corot.
We are nothing in comparison, nothing".
A group of young painters who admired the work of these artists became friends and started painting together.
These artists were Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Fr d ric Bazille, Camille Pissarro, Paul C zanne, and Armand Guillaumin.
Every year the academy in Paris would hold a big exhibition (art show) called the Salon de Paris.
In 1863 an artist called Edouard Manet put a picture into the show called Lunch on the Grass ("Le d jeuner sur l'herbe").
The judges at the Salon refused to hang this work in the gallery because it showed a naked woman sitting on the grass with two men wearing clothes.
If the painting had been about Ancient Greek mythology, this would not be a problem but these men were wearing ordinary suits, and the woman 's dress and hat were lying on the grass.
Perhaps she was a prostitute!
The judges said that the painting was indecent (very rude).
Monet and his friends also had their paintings turned away.
They were angry and they met with Manet to discuss this.
The Emperor Napoleon III gave permission for another exhibition called the Salon des Refus s which showed all the pictures that had been "refused".
Many people went to see this exhibition and soon discovered that there was a new "movement" in art, quite different from the style that they were used to.
In 1872 Monet and his friends formed a society called the "Cooperative and Anonymous Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers".
They began to organize their own art show.
In 1874 thirty artists held their first exhibition.
The critic Louis Leroy made fun of their work and wrote an article called The Exhibition of the Impressionists.
The public who came to the exhibition also began to use this name.
The painters themselves soon started to use the name "Impressionists" and they have been called by that name ever since.
They had eight exhibitions between 1874 and 1886.
They paid a dealer called Paul Durand-Ruel to organise exhibitions, and he arranged shows in London and New York.
Bit by bit, their paintings became popular.
Some of the Impressionists, Monet and Renoir, lived to be old and famous, but others died very poor.
The main artists who are called "Impressionists" include Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Paul C zanne, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Armand Guillaumin, Mary Cassatt, Gustave Caillebotte and Frederic Bazille.
Many artists worked with the Impressionists for a short time, but then began to try out new ideas.
These artists all painted in different ways, but together are called the Post-Impressionists.
They include Georges Seurat, Paul C zanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vincent van Gogh.
While the French Impressionist painters were at work in France, painters in other countries were also beginning to paint outdoors in a broader style.
Eventually the Impressionist style spread to many countries across Europe, to North America and Australia.
Some artists continued to paint in the Impressionist style right through the 20th century.
Before the time of the Impressionists, many artists worked by painting portraits.
Before the invention of the camera, painted portraits were the main way to record a person 's "appearance" (what they looked like).
But by the time the Impressionists started painting, there were many photographers who had studios where people could go to be photographed.
As cameras improved, photographers started taking "snapshots" of scenery and people outdoors.
Photography had two effects on painters.
Firstly, it meant that it was much harder for them to live by painting portraits.
Many artists became very poor.
Secondly, the image taken by a camera often has interesting angles and viewpoints that are not usually painted by artists.
Impressionist painters were able to learn from photographs.
Many Impressionist paintings make the viewer feel as if they were right there, looking at the scene through the eyes of the artist.
Impressionist painters did not paint from their imagination, from literature, history or mythology like most other painters of the 19th century.
They painted what they saw in the world around them: the town where they lived, the landscape where they went on holiday, their family, their friends, their studios and the things that were around their home.
Sometimes they were "commissioned" (given a job) to paint a portrait of someone.
Impressionist painters liked to paint "ordinary" things that were part of everyday life.
They painted women doing the washing and ironing, ballet dancers doing exercises, horses getting ready for a race and a bored-looking waitress serving a customer.
Nobody, before the Impressionists, had ever thought that these subjects were interesting enough to paint.
Even though many Impressionist artists painted people, they are thought of mainly for their landscape painting.
Impressionist painters were not satisfied with doing some drawings or quick painted sketches outdoors and then making grand pictures in the studio.
Impressionist painters were not satisfied with painting the shape of the land, the buildings and trees.
They wanted to capture the light and the weather.
The Impressionist painters looked for a "technique" (a way of doing something) to paint landscapes that showed the light and the weather.
The light and the weather change all the time.
The light of the sun on the landscape changes every minute as the Earth turns.
Impressionist painters looked at the works of earlier French artists such as Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet.
Courbet often took his paints outdoors and made quick colored sketches that he could then use to make large paintings in his studio.
The Impressionist painters were more interested in the sketches than the finished paintings.
Another artist, Eugene Boudin, used to sit on the beach at Deauville with his oil paints, and make quick paintings of the people on holiday.
They would sometimes buy his paintings as souvenirs.
Claude Monet met Boudin and learned that the only way to "capture" the way that a landscape looked at a particular time was to paint small pictures, very quickly, and without bothering to mix the paints up to make nice smooth even colors.
Impressionist painters would use big brushstrokes of different bright colors and let them get mixed up on the canvas, instead of carefully mixing them up on a palette first.
By painting in this way, without bothering with the details, Impressionist painters capture a realistic "impression" of a the world that they saw around them.
Some of the things that they painted were: snow gently falling over a town, mist rising on a river in the pink morning light, people walking through a field of wheat with bright red poppies growing in it, sunlight dappling through leaves onto people dancing, a train sending up clouds of smoke in a big railway station, and water lillies floating on a pool under drooping willows.
Most Impressionist landscape paintings are small, so that the artist could carry them outdoors.
Some artists, particularly Claude Monet, would take several canvases, and as the day went on and the light changed, he would put down one and take up another.
He rented a room from which he could see Rouen Cathedral so that he could paint it from the window at different times of day.
Monet also did a series of Haystack paintings, showing them standing in the field from different angles and in all sorts of weather, bright sunshine, morning frost and snow.
Paintings that are done outdoors are called "plein air" paintings.
The Impressionist painters often used to go out together on painting trips, so there are many pictures that can be compared.
The term "impressionism" has been used for other forms of art, such as writing and music.
Octave Mirbeau is often described as an impressionist writer.
In 1887, music critics said the works of Claude Debussy were impressionist.
Later, other composers were also described as impressionist, including Maurice Ravel, Paul Dukas, Erik Satie and Albert Roussel.
Click on each image to enlarge it, to see the way each artist has used brush-strokes and color.
Internet slang is slang words which are used on the internet.
Most of these words are new, such as Wiki and blog, which were not used before the internet became popular.
Some old words were given new meanings, such as mail (which now means email).
There are many mixed metaphors on the Internet, such as boot (which used to mean a shoe) and link (which used to mean a join in a metal chain).
Some existing acronyms, such as "AFK" (To mean "Away from keyboard") and "IRL" (To mean "In real life") were used on bulletin board systems before the internet became popular.
These are now used on the internet, such as in chat rooms and on instant messenger software.
Shorthand is where a word is written in a shorter way because it is quicker and easier to type.
It is also done to fit more text into a limited space.
Internet slang uses many acronyms because they are quicker and easier to type.
They are often shorthand for common phrases and idioms, but they can show somebody 's emotions and their certainty.
Leet speak (written as: L33T or 1337) is the most common language on MMORPGs because rude words are not stopped by filters.
This language is changing all the time because new words are made and used.
A lot of the words use numbers instead of letters but some were made because of typing errors which are now done on purpose.
Also, some suffixes are used, such as - age and - ness.
Some of the numbers and symbols used instead of letters are in the table below.
Insurance is a term in law and economics.
It is something people buy to protect themselves from losing money.
People who buy insurance pay a "premium" (often paid every month) and promise to be careful (a "duty of care").
In exchange for this, if something bad happens to the person or thing that is insured, the company that sold the insurance will pay money back.
(However, there are some times when the company will not have to pay money back, such as if the person was not careful.)
There are different kinds of insurance.
There are life insurance and general insurance.
In life insurance, someone ensures their life or someone else 's life.
At the death of insured person or on the date of maturity whichever happens earlier, the amount insured will be paid.
Actuaries are the people who figure out how much the premium should be.
They balance how much the insurer might have to pay out against the chances of having to pay out.
If an actuary thinks that there is a big chance that the company will have to pay out, he will make the premium higher.
Indira Gandhi (19 November 1917 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician.
She was Prime Minister of India from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 to 1984.
She was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, who was also Prime Minister of India.
Her son, Rajiv Gandhi, later became Prime Minister of India.
She married Feroze Gandhi, who was not related to the civil rights leader, Mahatma Gandhi.
Indira Gandhi was the first woman prime minister of India.
Gandhi was assassinated in 1984 at the age of 66.
In 1938, Indira joined the Indian National Congress Party.
After the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966, Indira Gandhi served as prime minister until India held the next election.
She won that election in 1967 and became one of the first women elected to lead a democracy.
Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister of India twice.
She served the first time between 1966 and 1977 and the second time between 1980 and 1984.
She also studied at the University of Oxford.
The Inquisition was the legal agent of the Catholic Church against heresy in the Middle Ages.
It did two main things.
First, it issued a list (the Index) of published books banned because they contained heresy.
The faithful were forbidden to read such books.
Second, it prosecuted individuals thought guilty of heresy.
Later versions of the Inquisitions had the power to use torture or the threat of torture to get confessions and religious conversions.
It had the power to order executions.
The standard method was to burn heretics alive, or to garrotte them in public.
The actual deed was done by the civil authorities.
The full name of the Inquisition was the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith of the Catholic Church.
It developed in stages.
The first permanent Inquisition was established in 1229.
It was run by the Dominicans in Rome.
In 1478 Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile set up the Spanish Inquisition.
In 1542 Pope Paul III established the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition as a tribunal staffed with cardinals and other officials.
This version supervised the local Inquisitions in other countries, and also investigated important cases from Italy.
The most famous case it tried was that of Galileo Galilei in 1633.
The word Inquisition comes from Latin quaerere.
That means to to turn, to ask a question.
Isaac is a figure in Abrahamic religions.
He is described in the Bible, in the Book of Genesis (around chapters 18-27).
He was the son of Abraham and Sarah.
He marries Rebecca, and is the father of Esau and Jacob.
Interdisciplinarity is when two or more subjects (academic disciplines) join up.
This happens when a problem overlaps traditional academic boundaries.
Other terms which mean almost the same thing are multidisciplinarity and crossdisciplinarity.
When they joined up, the field they formed was called cell biology at the level of cells, or molecular biology at the level of macromolecules.
Other examples include artificial intelligence, cultural studies, cybernetics, computational linguistics, biomedical engineering, and so on.
Physical chemistry, biochemistry and astrophysics must have been some of the first.
In many universities, traditional departments (e.g. botany, zoology) were scrapped, and new broader departments like ` School of biological sciences ' were formed.
Inside this umbrella, research and teaching teams were based on interdisciplinary problems, such as ecology or cell division or Earth history.
There are some necessary specialities which do not fit easily into the new system.
Examples are taxonomy (you still need people to identify animals) and areas like parasitology and agricultural botany.
A system which works in some universities is to appoint staff to the Schools (usually Humanities, Science.
Social sciences and Technology) and let the staff join those groups which best fit their expertise.
Isaac Alb niz (pronounced EE-saac al-BAY-nith) (born Camprod n, Catalonia, Spain, 29 May 1860; died Camb - les-Bains, Spain, 18 May 1909) was a Spanish composer and pianist.
He wrote a lot of piano music.
His best known work is the collection of 12 piano pieces called Iberia which have lots of exciting Spanish rhythms.
These pieces are very difficult to play.
He also wrote several zarzuelas (light-hearted Spanish operas) and he tried to make the zarzuela more serious, but the public did not want that.
He helped to make Spanish music more popular in other countries.
Alb niz started to learn the piano when he was three.
His elder sister taught him.
He was a child prodigy who first performed at the age of four.
When he was seven he passed the entrance examination for piano at the Paris Conservatoire, but he was not given a place because they thought he was too young.
A year later his father lost his job, so he took his two children on tour so that they could give concerts and earn some money.
In 1869 the family moved to Madrid, but Alb niz had an unsettled childhood.
He returned to Spain in 1873.
By the age of fifteen, he had already given concerts all over the world.
After a short stay at the Leipzig Conservatory, in 1876 he went to study in Brussels.
In 1880, he went to Budapest wanting to study with Franz Liszt, but Liszt was not there.
In 1874 his sister wanted to become a singer at the Teatro de la Zarzuela.
When she did not get a place there she committed suicide.
Alb niz continued to travel all over the world.
In 1883, he met the teacher and composer Felipe Pedrell, who inspired him to write Spanish music such as the Suite Espa ola, Op.
47.
The fifth movement of that suite, called Asturias (Leyenda), was later arranged for guitar.
It is probably the most famous piece for classical guitar.
The composer Francisco T rrega made guitar arrangements of many other piano works by Alb niz.
Alb niz once said that he preferred T rrega s guitar arrangements to his own original piano versions.
During the 1890s Alb niz lived in London and Paris and wrote mainly theatrical works.
In 1900 he started to suffer from Bright 's disease and started to write more piano music.
Between 1905 and 1909 he composed his most famous work, Iberia (1908), a suite of twelve piano "impressions".
His orchestral works include Spanish Rhapsody (1887) and Catalonia (1899).
In 1883, the composer married his student Rosina Jordana.
They had three children, Blanca (who died in 1886), Laura (a painter), and Alfonso (who played for Real Madrid in the early 1900s before becoming a diplomat).
Alb niz died on 18th May 1909 at the age of 48 in Camb - les-Bains and is buried in Barcelona.
Although he became world famous as a composer and pianist he was not properly appreciated in his own country.
The Spaniards were jealous of his international reputation and thought he was a Spaniard who had deserted his country.
He spent his last years in Paris where he had many friends including Gabriel Faur, Vincent d Indy, Paul Dukas and Claude Debussy.
There are no recordings of his piano playing but he had a very individual style.
He was able to put a lot of color and life into his playing.
He had learned a lot from Liszt.
Most of his works are for piano.
The Suite Iberia is his best work.
A lot of the music is based on Spanish folksong.
The Irish Civil War (; 28 June 1922 24 May 1923) followed the Irish War of Independence.
It went along with the beginning of the Irish Free State.
It was independent from the United Kingdom but stayed a part of the British Empire.
The conflict was between two opposing groups of Irish republicans over the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
The forces of the "Provisional Government" (which became the Free State in December 1922) supported the Treaty.
The Republican opposition saw it as a betrayal of the Irish Republic (which had been proclaimed during the Easter Rising).
Many of those who fought in the conflict had been members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the War of Independence.
The Civil War was won by the Free State forces.
They had many weapons provided by the British Government.
The conflict may have claimed more lives than the War of Independence that went before it.
It left Irish society divided and bitter for generations.
About 927 people died during the civil war.
Windows Internet Explorer (IE, formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer, MSIE), is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft.
It was included as part of the Microsoft Windows operating system, starting in 1995.
It was first released as part of the add-on package Microsoft Plus!
for Windows 95, that year.
Later versions were available as free downloads, or in service packs, and included in releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows.
IE has been the most popular web browser since 1999, attaining a peak of about 95 % usage share during 2002\/2003 with IE5 and IE6.
Since its peak of popularity, its usage share has declined in the face of renewed competition from other web browsers to 55 %, and is slowly trending downward.
Microsoft spent over $ 100 million per year on IE in the late 1990s, with over 1000 people working on it by 1999.
The latest release is Internet Explorer 11.
Internet Explorer was originally planned to be omitted from Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in Europe, but Microsoft later dropped the plans, and instead included a browser ballot screen with the products, allowing users to select a different web browser if they wish.
Windows 10 does not include Explorer but rather Microsoft Edge.
Versions of Internet Explorer for other operating systems have also been produced, including an embedded OEM version called Internet Explorer for Windows CE (IE CE), available for WinCE based platforms and currently based on IE6; Internet Explorer for Pocket PC, later rebranded Internet Explorer Mobile, which is made for Windows Mobile and Windows CE and remains in development alongside the more advanced desktop versions; and the discontinued Internet Explorer for Mac and Internet Explorer for UNIX (Solaris and HP-UX).
The Internet Explorer project was started in the summer of 1994 by Thomas Reardon, using source code from Spyglass, Inc..
Mosaic, an early commercial web browser with formal ties to the pioneering NCSA Mosaic browser.
In late 1994, Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic for a quarterly fee plus a percentage of Microsoft 's non-Windows revenues for the software.
Although bearing a name similar to NCSA Mosaic, the Spyglass Mosaic had used the NCSA Mosaic source code sparingly.
Internet Explorer 1 made its debut on August 16, 1995.
It was a reworked version of Spyglass Mosaic, which Microsoft had licensed, like many other companies initiating browser development, from Spyglass Inc..
It came with Microsoft Plus!
for Windows 95 and the OEM release of Windows 95.
It was installed as part of the Internet Jumpstart Kit in Plus!.
The Internet Explorer team began with about six people in early development.
Internet Explorer 1.5 was released several months later for Windows NT and added support for basic table rendering.
However, by including it for free on their OS, they did not have to pay royalties to Spyglass Inc., which resulted in a lawsuit and a multi-million USD settlement.
Internet Explorer 2 was released for Windows 95, Windows NT 3.5, and NT 4.0 on November 22, 1995 (following a 2.0 beta in October).
It featured support for SSL, cookies, VRML, RSA, and Internet newsgroups.
Version 2 was also the first release for Windows 3.1 and Macintosh System 7.0.1 (PPC or 68k), although the Mac version was not released until January 1996 for PPC, and April for 68k.
Version 2.1 for the Mac came out in August 1996, although by this time, Windows was getting 3.0.
Version 2 was included in Windows 95 OSR 1 and Microsoft 's Internet Starter Kit for Windows 95 in early 1996.
It launched with twelve languages including English but this expanded to 24, 20, and 9 for Win 95, Win 3.1, and Mac respectively by April 1996.
The 2.0 i version supported double-byte character-set.
Internet Explorer 3 was released on August 13, 1996, and went on to be much more popular than its predecessors.
Internet Explorer 3 was the first major browser with CSS support, although this support was only partial.
It also introduced support for ActiveX controls, Java applets, inline multimedia, and the PICS system for content metadata.
Version 3 also came bundled with Internet Mail and News, NetMeeting, and an early version of the Windows Address Book, and was itself included with Windows 95 OSR 2.
Version 3 proved to be the first more popular version of Internet Explorer, which brought with it increased scrutiny.
In the months following its release, a number of security and privacy vulnerabilities were found by researchers and hackers.
This version of Internet Explorer was the first to have the ` blue e ' logo.
The Internet Explorer team consisted of roughly 100 people during the development of three months.
The first major IE security hole, the Princeton Word Macro Virus Loophole, was discovered on August 22, 1996 in IE3.
Backwards compatibility was handled by allowing users who upgraded to IE3 to still use the last IE, because the installation converted the previous version to a separate directory.
Internet Explorer 4, released in September 1997, deepened the level of integration between the web browser and the underlying operating system.
Installing version 4 on a Windows 95 or Windows NT 4 machine and choosing Windows Desktop Update would result in the traditional Windows Explorer also being replaced by a version more akin to a web-browser interface, as well as the Windows desktop itself being web-enabled via Active Desktop.
The integration with Windows, however, was subject to numerous packaging criticisms (see United States v. Microsoft).
This option was no longer available with the installers for later versions of Internet Explorer but was not removed from the system if already installed.
Internet Explorer 4 introduced support for Group Policy, allowing companies to configure and lock down many aspects of the browser 's configuration as well as support for offline browsing.
Internet Mail and News was replaced with Outlook Express, and Microsoft Chat and an improved NetMeeting were also included.
This version also was included with Windows 98.
New features were added that allow you to save and retrieve posts in comment forms which are still not being used today.
Internet Explorer 4.5 offered new features such as easier 128-bit encryption.
It also offered a dramatic stability improvement over prior versions, particularly the 68k version which was especially prone to freezing.
Internet Explorer 5, launched on March 18, 1999, and subsequently included with Windows 98 Second Edition and bundled with Office 2000, was another significant release that supported bi-directional text, ruby characters, XML, XSLT, and the ability to save web pages in MHTML format.
IE5 was bundled with Outlook Express 5.
Also, with the release of Internet Explorer 5.0, Microsoft released the first version of XMLHttpRequest, giving birth to Ajax (even though the term "Ajax" was not coined until years later).
It was the last with a 16-bit version.
Internet Explorer 5.01, a bug fix version, was released in December 1999.
Windows 2000 includes this version.
Internet Explorer 5.5 followed in July 2000, improving its print preview capabilities, CSS and HTML standards support, and developer APIs; this version was bundled with Windows Me.
However, version 5 was the last version for Mac and UNIX.
Version 5.5 was the last to have Compatibility Mode, which allowed Internet Explorer 4 to be run side by side with the 5.
x. The IE team consisted of over 1,000 people by 1999, with funding on the order of 100 million USD per year.
Internet Explorer 6 was released on August 27, 2001, a few months before Windows XP.
This version included DHTML enhancements, content restricted inline frames, and partial support of CSS level 1, DOM level 1, and SMIL 2.0.
The MSXML engine was also updated to version 3.0.
Other new features included a new version of the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK), Media bar, Windows Messenger integration, fault collection, automatic image resizing, P3P, and a new look-and-feel that was in line with the Luna visual style of Windows XP, when used in Windows XP.
Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1 offered several security enhancements and coincided with the Windows XP SP1 patch release.
In 2002, the Gopher protocol was disabled and support for it was dropped in Internet Explorer 7.
Internet Explorer 6.0 SV1 came out August 6, 2004 for Windows XP SP2 and offered various security enhancements and new color buttons on the user interface.
IE6 updated the original ` blue e ' logo to a lighter blue and more 3D look.
Microsoft now considers IE6 to be an obsolete product and recommends that users upgrade to IE8.
Many corporate IT users have not upgraded despite this.
Internet Explorer 7 was released on October 18, 2006.
It includes bug fixes, enhancements to its support for web standards, tabbed browsing with tab preview and management, a multiple-engine search box, a web feeds reader, Internationalized Domain Name support (IDN), Extended Validation Certificate support, and anti-phishing filter.
With IE7, Internet Explorer has been decoupled from the Windows Shell - unlike previous versions, the Internet Explorer ActiveX control is not hosted in the Windows Explorer process, but rather runs in a separate Internet Explorer process.
It is included with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, and is available for Windows XP Service Pack 2 and later, and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and later.
The original release of Internet Explorer 7 required the computer to pass a Windows Genuine Advantage validation check prior to installing, but on October 5, 2007, Microsoft removed this requirement.
As some statistics show, by mid-2008, Internet Explorer 7 market share exceeded that of Internet Explorer 6 in a number of regions.
Internet Explorer 8 was released on March 19, 2009.
It had been in development since August 2007 at the latest.
On March 5, 2008, the first public beta (Beta 1) was released to the general public.
On August 27, 2008, the second public beta (Beta 2) was released.
It is supported in Windows XP SP2 and SP3, Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 on both 32-bit as well as 64-bit architectures.
Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) RC1 was released on January 26, 2009.
Internet Explorer 8 "Final" was released on March 19, 2009.
Security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, CSS, and Ajax support are Microsoft 's priorities for IE8.
It includes much stricter compliance with web standards, including a planned full Cascading Style Sheets 2.1 compliance for the release version.
All these changes allow Internet Explorer 8 to pass the Acid2 test.
However, to prevent compatibility issues, IE8 also includes the IE7 rendering behavior.
Sites that expect IE7 quirks can disable IE8 's breaking changes by including a meta element in the HEAD section of the HTML document.
IE8 also includes numerous improvements to JavaScript support as well as performance improvements, although it still does not pass the Acid3 test, with version 8.0 scoring 20\/100.
It includes support for Accelerators - which allow supported web applications to be invoked without explicitly navigating to them - and WebSlices - which allows portions of page to be subscribed to and monitored from a redesigned Favorites Bar.
Other features include InPrivate privacy features and SmartScreen phishing filter.
Internet Explorer 9 was released on March 14, 2011.
It will have complete or nearly complete support for all CSS 3 selectors, border-radius CSS 3 property, faster JavaScript, embedded ICC v2 or v4 color profiles, and hardware accelerated rendering using Direct2D and DirectWrite.
Microsoft has confirmed that Web Open Font Format (WOFF) will also be supported.
WOFF is "a strong favorite" for standardization by the Web Fonts Working Group of W3C.
IE9 is supposed to fix many issues with Internet Explorer, including support of the CSS3 standard border-radius property, which means that people using IE9 will be able to see rounded corners, the same way people using Firefox can.
Microsoft has continued to downplay the importance of passing the Acid3 test, but speculation that IE9 would support the SVG W3C recommendation was ignited when Microsoft announced they had joined the SVG Working Group.
At MIX 10, the first IE9 Platform Preview was released, which featured support for CSS3 and SVG, a new JScript engine called Chakra, and a score of 55\/100 on the Acid3 test, up from 20\/100 for IE8.
On May 5, 2010, the second IE9 Platform Preview was released, which featured a score of 68\/100 on the Acid3 test and faster performance on the WebKit SunSpider JavaScript benchmark than the first IE9 Platform Preview.
On June 23, 2010, the third IE9 Platform Preview was released, which scores 83\/100 on the Acid3 test and introduced support for ', ', and ' elements and WOFF.
On August 4, 2010, the fourth IE9 Platform Preview was released, which features a score of 95\/100 on the Acid3 test and a faster JScript engine than the third IE9 Platform Preview.
The final build of IE9 is expected to be released in 2011.
Support for the HTML5 video and audio tags was also promised.
Some industry experts predict that Microsoft will release IE9 as a major out-of-band version that is not tied to any particular version of Windows.
According to the Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive page, the system requirements for IE9 are Windows Vista SP2 (with Platform Upgrade and IE8) or Windows 7.
On August 12, 2010, Microsoft announced that the IE9 Public Beta would launch on September 15, 2010 at a special event in San Francisco linked to the idea of ` beauty of the web. '
It was also confirmed that the browser would only function with Windows Vista and Windows 7.
On September 15, 2010, Microsoft launched the IE9 Public Beta.
Internet Explorer 10 does not work with Windows Vista, but only for Windows 7 and a future release of the Windows operating system.
Internet Explorer 10 was released together with Windows 8 in 2012.
Users of Windows 7 can download this version from February 2013.
Internet Explorer has been designed to view a broad range of web pages and to provide certain features within the operating system, including Microsoft Update.
During the heyday of the browser wars, Internet Explorer superseded Netscape only when it caught up technologically to support the progressive features of the time.
Internet Explorer uses DOCTYPE sniffing to choose between standards mode and a "quirks mode" in which it deliberately mimicks nonstandard behaviors of old versions of MSIE for HTML and CSS rendering on screen (Internet Explorer always uses standards mode for printing).
It also provides its own dialect of ECMAScript called JScript.
Internet Explorer has been subjected to criticism by W3C over its limited support for SVG promoted by W3C.
Internet Explorer has introduced an array of proprietary extensions to many of the standards, including HTML, CSS, and the DOM.
This has resulted in a number of web pages that appear broken in standards-compliant web browsers and has introduced the need for a "quirks mode" to allow for rendering improper elements meant for Internet Explorer in these other browsers.
Internet Explorer has introduced a number of extensions to JScript which have been adopted by other browsers.
These include the innerHTML property, which returns the HTML string within an element; the XMLHttpRequest object, which allows the sending of HTTP request and receiving of HTTP response; and the designMode attribute of the contentDocument object, which enables rich text editing of HTML documents.
Some of these functionalities were not possible until the introduction of the W3C DOM methods.
Its Ruby character extension to HTML is also accepted as a module in W3C XHTML 1.1, though it is not found in all versions of W3C HTML.
Microsoft submitted several other features of IE for consideration by the W3C for standardization.
These include the ` behavior ' CSS property, which connects the HTML elements with JScript behaviors (known as HTML Components, HTC); HTML+TIME profile, which adds timing and media synchronization support to HTML documents (similar to the W3C XHTML+SMIL); and the VML vector graphics file format.
However, all were rejected, at least in their original forms.
VML was, however, subsequently combined with PGML (proposed by Adobe and Sun), resulting in the W3C-approved SVG format, currently one of the few vector image formats being used on the web, and which IE is now virtually unique in not supporting.
Other non-standard behaviors include: support for vertical text, but in a syntax different from W3C CSS3 candidate recommendation; Support for a variety of image effects and page transitions, which are not found in W3C CSS; Support for obfuscated script code, in particular.
Support for embedding EOT fonts in web pages.
; Favicon The favicon (short for "favorites icon") introduced by Internet Explorer is now also supported and extended in other browsers.
It allows web pages to specify a 16-by-16 pixel image for use in bookmarks.
In IE, support was, and still is, provided only for the native Windows ICO format; in other browsers it has now been extended to other types of images such as PNG and GIF.
Internet Explorer makes use of the accessibility framework provided in Windows.
Internet Explorer is also a user interface for FTP, with operations similar to that of Windows Explorer.
Pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing were added respectively in Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7.
Tabbed browsing can also be added to older versions by installing MSN Search Toolbar or Yahoo Toolbar.
Internet Explorer caches visited content in the Temporary Internet Files folder to allow quicker access (or offline access) to previously visited pages.
The content is indexed in a database file, known as Index.
dat.
Multiple Index.
dat files exist which index different content - visited content, web feeds, visited URLs, cookies, etc.
Prior to IE7, clearing the cache used to clear the index but the files themselves were not reliably removed, posing a potential security and privacy risk.
In IE7 and later, when the cache is cleared, the cache files are more reliably removed, and the index.
dat file is overwritten with null bytes.
Internet Explorer is fully configurable using Group Policy.
Administrators of Windows Server domains can apply and enforce a variety of settings that affect the user interface (such as disabling menu items and individual configuration options), as well as underlying security features such as downloading of files, zone configuration, per-site settings, ActiveX control behavior and others.
Policy settings can be configured for each user and for each machine.
Internet Explorer also supports Integrated Windows Authentication.
Internet Explorer uses a componentized architecture built on the Component Object Model (COM) technology.
It consists of several major components, each of which is contained in a separate Dynamic-link library (DLL) and exposes a set of COM programming interfaces hosted by the Internet Explorer main executable,:
Internet Explorer does not include any native scripting functionality.
Rather, MSHTML.
dll exposes an API that permit a programmer to develop a scripting environment to be plugged-in and to access the DOM tree.
Internet Explorer 8 includes the bindings for the Active Scripting engine, which is a part of Microsoft Windows and allows any language implemented as an Active Scripting module to be used for client-side scripting.
By default, only the JScript and VBScript modules are provided; third party implementations like ScreamingMonkey (for ECMAScript 4 support) can also be used.
Microsoft also makes available the Microsoft Silverlight runtime that allows CLI languages, including DLR-based dynamic languages like IronPython and IronRuby, to be used for client-side scripting.
Internet Explorer 8 introduces some major architectural changes, called Loosely Coupled IE (LCIE).
LCIE separates the main window process (frame process) from the processes hosting the different web applications in different tabs (tab processes).
A frame process can create multiple tab processes, each of which can be of a different integrity level; each tab process can host multiple web sites.
The processes use asynchronous Inter-Process Communication to synchronize themselves.
Generally, there will be a single frame process for all web sites.
In Windows Vista with Protected Mode turned on, however, opening privileged content (such as local HTML pages) will create a new tab process as it will not be constrained by Protected Mode.
Internet Explorer exposes a set of Component Object Model (COM) interfaces that allow other components to extend the functionality of the browser.
Extensibility is divided into two types: Browser extensibility and Content extensibility.
The browser extensibility interfaces can be used to plug in components to add context menu entries, toolbars, menu items or Browser Helper Objects (BHO).
BHOs are used to extend the feature set of the browser, whereas the other extensibility options are used to expose the feature in the UI.
Content extensibility interfaces are used by different content-type handlers to add support for non-native content formats.
BHOs not only have unrestricted access to the Internet Explorer DOM and event model, they also can access the filesystem, registry and other OS components.
Content extensibility can be either in terms of Active Documents (Doc Objects) (e.g., SVG or MathML) or ActiveX controls.
ActiveX controls are used for content handlers that render content embedded within an HTML page (e.g., Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight).
Doc objects are used when the content type will not be embedded in HTML (e.g., Microsoft Word, PDF or XPS).
In fact, the Trident rendering engine is itself exposed as a Doc object, so HTML in itself is treated as an Active Document.
Internet Explorer add-on components run with the same privileges as the browser itself, unlike client-side scripts that have a very limited set of privileges.
Add-ons can be installed either locally, or directly by a web site.
Since the add-ons have a more privileged access to the system, malicious add-ons can and have been used to compromise the security of the system.
Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 2 onwards provide various safeguards against this, including an Add-on Manager for controlling ActiveX controls and Browser Helper Objects and a "No Add-Ons" mode of operation as well as greater restrictions on sites installing add-ons.
Internet Explorer itself can be hosted by other applications via a set of COM interfaces.
This can be used to embed the browser functionality inside the application.
Also, the hosting application can choose to host only the MSHTML.
dll rendering engine, rather than the entire browser.
Internet Explorer uses a zone-based security framework that groups sites based on certain conditions, including whether it is an Internet - or intranet-based site as well as a user-editable whitelist.
Security restrictions are applied per zone; all the sites in a zone are subject to the restrictions.
Internet Explorer 6 SP2 onwards uses the Attachment Execution Service of Microsoft Windows to mark executable files downloaded from the Internet as being potentially unsafe.
Accessing files marked as such will prompt the user to make an explicit trust decision to execute the file, as executables originating from the Internet can be potentially unsafe.
This helps in preventing accidental installation of malware.
Internet Explorer 7 introduced the phishing filter, that restricts access to phishing sites unless the user overrides the decision.
With version 8, it also blocks access to sites known to host malware.
Downloads are also checked to see if they are known to be malware-infected.
In Windows Vista, Internet Explorer by default runs in what is called Protected Mode, where the privileges of the browser itself are severely restricted - it can not make any system-wide changes.
One can optionally turn this mode off but this is not recommended.
This also effectively restricts the privileges of any add-ons.
As a result, even if the browser or any add-on is compromised, the damage the security breach can cause is limited.
Patches and updates to the browser are released periodically and made available through the Windows Update service, as well as through Automatic Updates.
Although security patches continue to be released for a range of platforms, most feature additions and security infrastructure improvements are only made available on operating systems which are in Microsoft 's mainstream support phase.
On December 16, 2008, Trend Micro recommended users switch to rival browsers until an emergency IE patch was released to fix a potential security risk which "could allow outside users to take control of a person 's computer and steal their passwords".
Microsoft representatives countered this recommendation, claiming that "0.02 % of internet sites" were affected by the flaw.
On December 17, 2008, a fix to the security problem above became available, with the release of the Security Update for Internet Explorer KB960714, which is available from Microsoft Windows Update 's webpage.
Microsoft has said that this update fixes the security risk found by Trend Micro the previous day.
Internet Explorer has been subjected to many security vulnerabilities and concerns: Much of the spyware, adware, and computer viruses across the Internet are made possible by exploitable bugs and flaws in the security architecture of Internet Explorer, sometimes requiring nothing more than viewing of a malicious web page in order to install themselves.
This is known as a "drive-by install".
There are also attempts to trick the user into installing malicious software by misrepresenting the software 's true purpose in the description section of an ActiveX security alert.
A number of security flaws affecting IE originated not in the browser itself, but ActiveX-based add-ons used by it.
Because the add-ons have the same privilege as IE, the flaws can be as critical as browser flaws.
This has led to the ActiveX-based architecture being criticized for being fault-prone.
By 2005, some experts maintained that the dangers of ActiveX have been overstated and there were safeguards in place.
In 2006, new techniques using automated testing found more than a hundred vulnerabilities in standard Microsoft ActiveX components.
Security features introduced in then recently released Internet Explorer 7 mitigated some of these vulnerabilities.
Internet Explorer in 2008 had a number of published security vulnerabilities.
According to research done by security research firm Secunia, Microsoft did not respond as quickly as its competitors in fixing security holes and making patches available.
The firm also reported 366 vulnerabilities in ActiveX controls, an increase from the prior year.
According to the latest information, Secunia reports that IE6 has 24 known unpatched vulnerabilities, IE7 has 11, and IE8 has 4.
The most severe unpatched Secunia advisories affecting Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.
x, 7.
x, and 8.
x with all vendor patches applied, are all rated Extremely critical.
The oldest known unpatched vulnerabilities for IE6, IE7, and IE8 date from November 7, 2003, June 6, 2006, and February 26, 2007 respectively.
According to the latest information, security research firm SecurityFocus reports that IE6 has 396 known unpatched vulnerabilities, IE7 has 22, and IE8 has 25.
The oldest known unpatched vulnerabilities for IE6, IE7, and IE8 date from November 20, 2000, May 17, 2007, and April 11, 2009 respectively.
In an advisory on January 14, 2010, Microsoft said that attackers targeting Google and other U.S. companies used software that exploits a security hole, which had already been patched, in Internet Explorer.
The vulnerability affected Internet Explorer 6, IE7, and IE8 on Windows 7, Vista, Windows XP, Server 2003, and Server 2008 R2, as well as IE 6 Service Pack 1 on Windows 2000 Service Pack 4.
The German government warned users against using Internet Explorer and recommended switching to an alternative web browser, due to the major security hole described above that was exploited in Internet Explorer.
The Australian and French Government issued a similar warning a few days later.
The first browser they recommended was Mozilla Firefox, followed by Google Chrome.
The adoption rate of Internet Explorer seems to be closely related to that of Microsoft Windows, as it is the default web browser that comes with Windows.
Since the integration of Internet Explorer 2.0 with Windows 95 OSR 1 in 1996, and especially after version 4.0 's release, the adoption was greatly accelerated: from below 20 % in 1996 to about 40 % in 1998 and over 80 % in 2000.
A CNN article noted at the release of Internet Explorer 4: "Microsoft 's Internet Explorer has made inroads and various estimates put its share of the browser market 30 to 35 percent from about 10 percent a year ago."
By 2002, Internet Explorer had almost completely superseded its main rival Netscape and dominated the market with up to 95 percent market share.
After having fought and won the browser wars of the late 1990s, Internet Explorer gained almost total dominance of the browser market.
Having attained a peak of about 95 % during 2002 and 2003, its market share has since declined at a slow but steady pace.
This is mainly due to the adoption of Mozilla Firefox, which statistics indicate is currently the most significant competition.
Nevertheless, Internet Explorer remains the dominant web browser, with a global usage share of around 60 % (though measurements vary).
Usage is higher in Asia and lower in Europe.
Firefox 1.0 had surpassed Internet Explorer 5 in early 2005 with Firefox 1.0 at roughly 8 percent market share.
An article notes at the release of Internet Explorer 7 in October 2006 that "IE6 had the lion 's share of the browser market with 77.22 %.
Internet Explorer 7 had climbed to 3.18 %, while Firefox 2.0 was at 0.69 %."
Internet Explorer 7 was released at the same time as Firefox 2.0, and overtook Firefox 1.
x by November 2006, at roughly 9 % market share.
Firefox 2.0 had overtaken 1.
x by January 2007, but IE7 did not surpass IE6 until December 2007.
By January 2008, their respective version market share stood at 43 % IE7, 32 % IE6, 16 % FF2, 4 % Safari 3 and both FF1.
x and IE5 versions at less than half a percent.
Approximate usage over time based on various usage share counters averaged for the year overall, or for the fourth quarter, or for the last month in the year depending on availability of reference.
Approximate usage over time based on various usage share counters averaged for the year overall, or for the fourth quarter, or for the last month in the year depending on availability of reference.
IE was at its peak in 2003 with 94 % of the worldwide internet browsers, but started falling in 2004 and since has hit a 2000 's decade low in 2011 with only 49.7 % of worldwide internet users.
The ActiveX extension mechanism is used by many public websites and web applications, including eBay.
Similarly, Browser Helper Objects are also used by many search engine companies and third parties for creating add-ons that access their services, such as search engine toolbars.
Because of the use of COM, it is possible to embed web-browsing functionality in third-party applications.
Hence, there are a number of Internet Explorer shells, and a number of content-centric applications like RealPlayer also use Internet Explorer 's web browsing module for viewing web pages within the applications.
IE versions, over time, have had widely varying OS compatibility, ranging from being available for many platforms and several versions of Windows to only a few versions of Windows.
Many versions of IE had some support for an older OS but stopped getting updates.
The increased growth of the Internet in the 1990s and 2000s means that current browsers with small market shares have more total users than the entire market early on.
For example, 90 % market share in 1997 would be roughly 60 million users, but by the start of 2007 90 % market share would equate to over 900 million users.
The result is that later versions of IE6 had many more users in total than all the early versions put together.
The release of IE7 at the end of 2006 resulted in a collapse of IE6 market share; by February 2007, market version share statistics showed IE6 at about 50 % and IE7 at 29 %.
Regardless of the actual market share, the most compatible version (across operating systems) of IE was 5.
x, which had Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, Unix, and most Windows versions available and supported for a short period in the late 1990s (although 4.
x had a more unified codebase across versions).
By 2007, IE had much narrower OS support, with the latest versions supporting only Windows XP Service Pack 2 and above.
Internet Explorer 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, and 7.0 (Experimental) have also been unofficially ported to the Linux operating system from the project IEs4Linux.
& Final version of Windows XP Service Pack 3 does not include IE7.
$ No native support, but possible with third party Standalone installer of IE6 Alpha.
See also Internet Explorer Mobile.
Non-desktop versions of IE have supported Windows CE also.
Internet Explorer 2.0 and 2.0.1 requires System 7.0.1 or higher.
Internet Explorer 2.1 requires System 7.1 or higher.
Included Internet Explorer 3.01 in Mac OS 8.1; Internet Explorer 4.01 in Mac OS 8.5 and 8.5.1; Internet Explorer 4.5 from Mac OS 8.6 to 9.0.4; Internet Explorer 5 from Mac OS 9.1 to 9.2.2.
Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh Edition requires Mac OS 7.6 or higher.
Internet Explorer version 5.1; 5.1.4; 5.1.5; 5.1.6 and 5.1.7 requires Mac OS 8.0 or higher.
Early versions of Internet Explorer such as 5 had a compatibility mode to run Internet Explorer 4, though this feature was dropped (also, Internet Explorer for Mac users could still use 4.5 after installing IE 5).
While Microsoft claims it is impossible to keep multiple versions of Internet Explorer on the same machine, some hackers have successfully separated several versions of Internet Explorer, making them standalone applications.
These are referred to as "standalone" IEs and have included versions 3 through 7.
Microsoft has discontinued standalone installers for Internet Explorer to the general public.
However, there are unofficial procedures for downloading the complete install package.
Internet Explorer standalone uses a feature introduced in Windows 2000 called DLL redirection to force it to load older DLLs than the ones installed on the system.
It is also possible to install Internet Explorer via Wine.
After Internet Explorer 7 is installed, an Internet Explorer 6 executable is still available in C: WINDOWS ie7, hidden by default.
Launching this executable provides the user with the older IE6 interface, however web pages are rendered using the IE7 engine.
The IE6 engine can be re-enabled by placing a file named "iexplore.
exe.
local" into the IE7 folder.
As an alternative to using IE standalone, Microsoft now makes available Microsoft Virtual PC images containing pre-activated copies of Windows XP with either IE 6 or IE 7 installed.
Microsoft recommends this approach for web developers seeking to test their pages in the different versions of IE as the standalone versions are unsupported and may not work the same way as a properly installed copy of IE.
While a major upgrade of Internet Explorer can be uninstalled in a traditional way if the user has saved the original application files for installation, the matter of uninstalling the version of the browser that has shipped with an operating system remains a controversial one.
The idea of removing a stock install of Internet Explorer from a Windows system was proposed during the United States v. Microsoft court case.
One of Microsoft 's arguments, during the trial, was that removing Internet Explorer from Windows may result in system instability.
Removing Internet Explorer does have a number of consequences.
Applications that depend on libraries installed by IE will fail to function, or have unexpected behaviors.
The Windows help and support system will also not function due to the heavy reliance on HTML help files and components of IE.
In versions of Windows before Vista, it is also not possible to run Microsoft 's Windows Update or Microsoft Update with any other browser due to the service 's implementation of an ActiveX control, which no other browser supports.
In Windows Vista, Windows Update is implemented as a Control Panel applet.
With Windows 7, Microsoft added the ability to safely remove Internet Explorer 8 from Windows.
Microsoft does not allow the dependencies to be removed through this process, but the Internet Explorer executable (iexplore.
exe) is removed without harming any other Windows components.
Invertebrate is a kind of animal that does not have a spinal column or backbone.
It is the opposite of vertebrate, that means if an animal is not a vertebrate (fish, reptile, amphibian, bird, or mammal), it is an invertebrate.
Insects have no bones, but they have a skeleton on the outside of their bodies that scientists call an exoskeleton.
It is like skin, only it is hard.
There are 18 more groups of invertebrates, mostly minor: see List of animal phyla.
Ivar Andreas Aasen (5 August 1813 23 September 1896) was a Norwegian philologist and lexicographer.
He is best known for creating a new variant of the Norwegian language based on the way people in Norway spoke.
His aim was to replace Danish as the official written language in Norway.
He wanted a new written language that sounded more like the spoken Norwegian of ordinary people.
Danish had become the official written language during Norway 's union with Denmark (1400s-1814).
It was only mastered by a few middle and upper class Norwegians.
Irredentism is the desire of a state, or of some people in a state, for annexation of land that another state has.
The ones who want the land say it really belongs to them because the other state stole it, or because they wish to liberate people of the same ethnicity or other connection who live there.
Ibn Battuta (1304 1368 or 1369) was a Moroccan explorer.
He is known for the account of his journeys called the Rihla ("Voyage").
He traveled for nearly 30 years and covered most of the Islamic world.
He also explored West Africa, Southern and Eastern Europe, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China.
This distance was more than Marco Polo traveled; about 75000 k. Ibn Battuta was considered the greatest traveller of the medieval period.
Ibn Battuta was born on February 24, 1304 in Tangier.
His family consisted of judges and scholars of Islamic law.
At age 21, Ibn Battuta started his long exploration when he went on the Hajj.
This is a year-long pilgrimage that brings Muslims closer to God.
Ibn Battuta first went across North Africa (Maghreb), to the great port Alexandria in 1326.
Ibn spent 30 years visiting every Muslim country of his day.
He recorded details about the social and political life he saw on his journeys.
Integrated Services Digital Network is an international standard for a communication network.
It is often shortened to ISDN.
It is used for telephone lines.
Before ISDN, telephone lines were mainly seen as a way for people to make phone calls, so the main idea was to use circuit switching.
When a phone call is made, a line is set up between the two participants.
This phone call is analog.
With ISDN, this view changes.
As the signal is now digital ISDN can be used to offer a number of services, which use the telephone line to transport data.
There were different services, like telex or teleprinters before ISDN, but they used their own networks.
At specific locations, there were gateways between these networks.
With ISDN, this changes.
There is only one network, and it offers different services.
Some of them are for voice, to make phone calls, others are for data, for example to send telefaxes.
ISDN offers a number of data channels, and a signalling channel.
The data channels carry the actual service data.
The two data channels are completely independent and can be used independently.
The usual setup has two such data channels.
That way, it is possible to send a fax through one channel, while doing a phone call over the other channel, for example.
If the main focus is on a high quality voice connection, the two channels can be combined into one single channel carrying twice the amount of a single channel enhancing the quality dramatically.
For larger companies it is possible to extend the number of data channels to 30 with still one signalling channel.
ICANN (, eye-can) is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
ICANN is a non-profit corporation that was made on September 18, 1998.
It oversees Internet-related tasks that used to be done by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority for the U.S. government.
ICANN is located in Marina Del Rey, California, United States.
ICANN manages the assignment of domain names and IP addresses.
To date, much of its work is about making new generic top-level domains.
An imam is an Islamic leader, often the leader of a mosque and\/or community.
Similarly to spiritual leaders, the imam is the person who leads the prayer during Islamic gatherings.
More often the community turn to the mosque imam, if they have an Islamic question.
In smaller communities an imam could be the community leader based on the community setting.
Shia Islam uses the term differently.
Shiites give the title to only the one true leader of all the faithful.
Indigo is a hue lying between blue and violet.
The brightest tone of indigo is the sixth color of the rainbow.
The color shown at right, electric indigo, is the closest color it is possible to display on a computer to the color of the indigo color band in the rainbow.
Isaac Newton named and defined indigo as a spectrum color when he divided up the spectrum into the seven colors of the rainbow.
The spectral range of indigo is between 450 and 420 nanometers.
The name of the color indigo originally came from the indigo plant.
Indigo is a dye made from the indigo plant, used to dye cloth.
Indigo dye also is used to dye denim cloth, which is used to make what are called blue jeans (they should really be called indigo jeans).
This shade of indigo, called indigo dye (shown at left above in the picture and in the color chart below), is darker than the spectrum indigo shown above.
The indigo plant originally came from the nation of India.
The Ancient Greek language word for the dye is indikon.
The Romans used the term indicum, which passed into Italian dialect and eventually into English as the word indigo.
Note: The spectrum colors can only be approximated on a computer screen but the colors shown below are a close approximation of the spectrum colors blue, indigo, and violet.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an international organization.
188 countries are members of the International Monetary Fund.
It has its headquarters in Washington, D.C., USA.
In the 1930s, many countries faced economic problems.
Some of such problems were falling standard of living and unemployment by large number of people.
Trading between different countries also came down.
Some countries reduced the value of their currencies.
All such factors combined and an economic depression resulted.
By late 1939, the Second World War had started.
After the Second World War was over, most countries found that the international value was not smooth and faced many restrictions.
Leaders of many countries thought over these matters and discussed them in meetings.
Thus, after the Second World War, many countries felt the need to have an organization to get help in monetary matters between countries.
To begin with, 29 countries discussed the matter, and signed an agreement.
The agreement was the Articles of Association of the International Monetary Fund.
The International Monetary Fund came into being in 29th December 1945.
Any country may apply to become a member of the IMF.
When a country applies for membership, the IMF s Executive Board examines the application.
If found suitable, the Executive Board gives its report to IMF s Board of Governors.
After the Board of Governor clears the application, the country may join the IMF.
However, before joining, the country should fulfill legal requirements, if any, of its own country.
Every member has a different voting right.
Likewise, every country has a different right to draw funds.
This depends on many factors, including the member country s first subscription to the IMF.
The IMF does a number of supervisory works relating to financial dealings between different countries.
Some of the works done by IMF are:
A Board of Directors manages the IMF.
One tradition has governed the selection of two most senior posts of IMF.
Firstly, IMF s managing director is always European.
World Bank 's president is always from the United States of America.
The major countries of Europe and America control the IMF.
This is because they have given more money to IMF by way of first subscriptions, and so have larger share of voting rights.
Many people and countries have commented about IMF.
Some are good and some are bad comments about the work of IMF.
Despite many bad comments about IMF, a research shows that more than 60 percent of Asians and 70 percent of Africans feel that IMF have had a positive effect on their country.
The International Bank Account Number is an internationally-recognised way of identifying bank account numbers.
Its abbreviation is "IBAN".
The IBAN was developed to enable people in the European Union to send money to a bank account in another country.
When a person uses a computer to make a money transfer, the IBAN has features that allow the person s computer to check for typing errors.
The IBAN is now used in all European countries and also in many developing countries.
Developed countries outside Europe such as the United States, Australia and Canada do not use the IBAN.
IBANs are usually written in groups of four characters.
This makes it easy for people to copy the numbers.
The first four characters in an IBAN have the same meaning throughout the world.
Each country has its own layout for the rest of the IBAN.
For example"" is a British IBAN for a bank account at the National Westminster Bank.
The parts of this IBAN are described below:
Each country has its own layout for the rest of the IBAN.
This example shows the British layout.
A computer can check an IBAN by changing it into an integer and dividing the number by 97.
If the IBAN is valid, the remainder equals 1.
The rules for changing the IBAN to an integer are:
For Example check that"" is a valid IBAN.
Many computer programs have been written to check whether or not an IBAN is valid.
These programs do not check whether or not an IBAN is genuine.
They do check that a genuine IBAN has been copied correctly.
UNESCO maintains one such program and have made the source code public.
It will detect a large number of mistakes that users might make when they are copying a genuine IBAN by hand.
These mistakes include:
The IBAN was developed to make it easier to transfer money from a bank in one EU country to a bank in another EU country.
This was important when people bought goods from other countries.
The rules for the IBAN were drawn up by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1997.
They were revised in 2003 and again in 2007.
The rules that were written in 2007 consist of two rule books:
All bank accounts within the European Union must have an IBAN.
Bank accounts can also have a domestic bank account identifier.
The domestic bank account identifier in the United Kingdom is the sort code and bank account number.
During 2014 all banks in Europe that use the euro must start using the IBAN for customer account numbers.
They will no longer be allowed to use older national systems.
The IBAN is also used in many developing countries including Brazil, Pakistan.
Turkey and many counties in the Middle East.
The infinitive is a verb form.
It has no person, number, mood, or tense.
After a modal verb you must use an infinitive.
For example, I must go, he must go (he must goes is not correct)
Information retrievial is a field of Computer science that looks at how non-trivial data can be optained from a collection of information resources.
Commonly, either a full-text search is done, or the metadata which describes the resources is searched.
Depending on the content, there may also be other indices.
Information retrieval is about finding existing information; it is different from knowledge discovery in databases which is about finding new relationships between different datasets, which were unknown.
Techniques from information retrieval are commonly used in internet search engines, but also when looking for informaion on a subject in a library, or when searching complex content such as images in a database.
This kind of content is usualy described using metadata.
A system for information retrival will attach a score to each document returned.
This score reflects how well the document matches the query of the user.
The documents with the best scores are shown to the user, who has the possbility to refine the query.
In addition, each model has parameters, which influence its performance.
Some of the models make a number of assumption about the data; they were developed for a very special purpose.
Using such a model for a different purpose may not yield good results.
The Internet Engineering Task Force, or IETF, is the main organization that researches and promotes new Internet standards.
It is an open volunteer organization.
A Request for Comments, or RFC, is a document from the IETF.
These are divided into several categories: Informational, Historical, and Standard-track.
Only Standard-track are Internet Standards.
An interrupt is an asynchronous break in program flow that occur as a result of events outside the running program.
They are frequently the result of hardware, though they can be the result of a software trap.
Frequent sources of interrupts are button presses, timer expiration, completion of a data transfer, or other external events.
Interrupt conditions are independent of particular instructions; they can happen at any time.
Interrupts trigger execution of instructions that perform work on behalf of the system, but not necessarily the current program.
The interrupt request (frequently called the IRQ), is handled by an interrupt handler or interrupt service routine (frequently called the ISR).
Many modern controllers use an interrupt vector to organize interrupts from different sources.
The vector generally holds information about what code to run when the interrupt is triggered.
ISRs are generally responsible for acknowledging, clearing, and rearming the interrupt, along with servicing the device itself.
The CPU\/controller must also be accepting interrupts for ISRs to be triggered.
There are multiple ways of prioritizing interrupts.
Calendars are commonly based on the rotation of celestial bodies, such as the sun or the moon.
These calendars periodically add a certain time unit, to make the calendar follow the rotation more closely, which is known as intercalation.
As an example, the solar year is about 365,25 days long.
The Gregorian calendar says that the year has 365 days, but that roughly every four years, an extra day is added.
Another example is the Jewish calendar, which is a lunisolar calendar.
In addition to the 365,25 days of the solar year, there are the 29.5 days in a lunar month.
This gives the problem that the year does not have twelve months, but about 12.4 months.
The calendar solves this problem by adding an extra month in certain cases.
Ink is a liquid that is used to write, draw, print, or make marks.
The word ink is from Latin and means "colored water".
Ink is used in pens, in some computer printers, and in printing presses.
In some countries, people write by using ink and brushes.
People usually write or print using black ink, but ink can be any color.
The first ink was used in Egypt about 2600 BC.
A disadvantage of many kinds of ink is that they may smudge when wet, spoiling the picture or writing.
The first inks were carbon inks, made from soot, which is 80 % carbon, water and gum arabic.
Red ink would need iron oxide (such as haematite) from ground rocks instead of soot.
Later, in Europe, people used iron gall ink.
This is the kind of ink Johann Sebastian Bach and Leonardo da Vinci used.
Now ink colors are produced by dyes.
Ink in a ball point pen is held in a thin long cylinder (tube) inside the pen.
The ink does not fall out of the cylinder as it sticks to the sides of the tube.
For the capital city of Pakistan, see Islamabad.
For the third largest city of Indian-administered Kashmir, see Islamabad Town
The Islamabad Capital Territory (, ICT for short) is one of the two federal territories of Pakistan.
The territory includes Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan.
It covers an area of 1165.5 sqkm; in terms of area the territory of Islamabad is greater in area than Faroe Islands but smaller than Mauritius.
Of this area, Islamabad city covers an area of 906 sqkm.
Intelligent design is a type of creationism.
It believes that the universe is so complex that it must have been designed by a higher intelligent being.
This theory is that life did not evolve by natural selection.
Creationists use intelligent design as an explanation of how life was formed.
Scientists in biology who believe evolution is true, think intelligent design is not real science because it is not supported by any scientific evidence.
They think it is a religious idea instead of a scientific fact.
Intelligent design was developed by a group of American creationists to get around legal judgements like Edwards v. Aguillard, which said that creationism could not be taught in schools because of the First Amendment.
The first use of the term in this form was in the creationist textbook Of Pandas and People, published in 1989.
Intelligent design suggests that life is too complex to have evolved.
Scientists have discovered that even a single cell is complex.
The genes in a cell code have a huge amount of information.
Therefore that information, like computer programming, has to come from an intelligent source and can not be made randomly.
This is thought to be because the properties of entropy say things can not grow in complexity by randomness.
It is also argued that although an amino acid could be made randomly, a protein (a long, shaped string of amino acids) is such a precise sequence and structure that it would be impossible to make by chance.
Also, a protein or DNA would not be alive by itself; so a whole life form would have to be made all at once.
This argument can be seen as a way of saying that natural selection could not have created life.
It is argued whether that is a valid point.
A common example of this is a bacterial flagellum, which is essentially a microscopic animal version of a very efficient electric motor.
The flagellum has lots of separate parts.
It is argued that for the flagellum to form by evolution, every single one of the parts would have to be formed together at just the right time.
However, scientists say this is not correct.
There is evidence that the flagellum developed through evolution.
A religious philosopher, William Paley, said that life is more complicated than a machine (like as a watch.)
He said that just like a watch was made by a smart designer, so were animals.
This is known as the watchmaker analogy.
Many parts of different animals are very similar.
Intelligent design could show that a common creator used the same good design ideas for all of them.
This could be evidence of evolution; but intelligent design suggests that every part of an animal is useful and there for a reason, showing how smart the designer was.
Evolution suggests that many parts of the same animal would not be useful or not good, because it happened by natural selection.
In the past, it was believed that some parts of the human body have no biological function, but later it was proved that some actually do important things.
If animals and persons have similar parts because they came from a common ancestor, then the genes that code for these parts should be similar too.
Sometimes this is true.
But, other times similar structures are coded by entirely different genes, because of convergent evolution.
These examples of this kind of different results in data can be used to claim that evolution is either wrong or right, causing arguments.
Ion channels are pore-forming proteins that help to establish and control the small voltage gradient across the plasma membrane of all living cells (see resting potential) by allowing the flow of ions down their electrochemical gradient.
They are present in the membranes that surround all biological cells.
An ion channel is an integral membrane protein or more typically an assembly of several proteins.
The 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon for their discovery of ion channels.
An integrated development environment, or IDE, is a computer program that makes it easier to write other computer programs.
They are used by computer programmers to edit source code, and can be easier to use than other text editors for new programmers.
They can have compilers so programmers do n't have to open other programs to compile the source code.
They also often have syntax highlighting.
Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CBE, CH (born 25 May 1939) is an English actor in theater and movies.
He got a Tony Award and two Oscar nominations.
He was born in Burnley, Lancashire.
In 1939, he moved to Wigan.
In 1951, he moved to Bolton.
His work has spanned genres from serious Shakespearean and modern theater to popular fantasy and science fiction movies.
Best known for his roles as Gandalf in the 2001-2003 Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, as Sir Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code, and as Magneto in the X-Men series of movies.
He is openly gay and is a prominent activist for the rights of LGBT people.
He was made a CBE in 1979 and knighted in 1990 for his outstanding work and contributions to the theater.
In 2008 he was made a Companion of Honour.
McKellen said in 2012 that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006.
McKellen once signed an autograph to a fan stating F \*\*\* off, I m gay.
The person given the autograph was politician Michael Howard.
Intellivision is a video game console created by toy company Mattel.
It was launched in 1980 and discontinued in 1984.
Today, Intellivision is owned by Intellivision Lives Inc.
Imperialism is a policy (way of governing) in which large or powerful countries seek to extend their authority beyond their own borders.
The policy of imperialism aims at the creation of an empire.
Imperialist countries take control of other countries.
They may use military force to do this.
However, they may also avoid using military force.
They may simply establish economic and\/or political control over the other country.
Imperialist policies are expansive.
That is, imperialist countries always aim to create a bigger empire.
The ruler of an empire gains natural resources such as agricultural and mining products.
Human resources are also gained.
Conquered peoples may be forced into slavery or into low-wage work.
They may also be called into military service on behalf of the empire.
Trade markets are also gained.
The people under an imperial government may be forced to buy products from that government or from that government 's industries.
Thus, a policy of imperialism can vastly enrich the imperialist country.
This benefit can extend over a long period of time.
Imperialism has been practiced throughout recorded history.
However, there is one historical period that is specifically known as the Age of Imperialism.
This period extends from the early 18th century to the mid-20th century.
During the Age of Imperialism, modern, industrialised countries competed for control of pre-industrial parts of the world.
In pre-industrial areas, natural and human resources were widely and cheaply available.
The imperialist countries that acquired the largest empires during the Age of Imperialism are The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States.
Some writers use the term "imperialism" informally.
They use the term to mean any type of domination of one country over another part of the world.
The Inca were a pre-Columbian civilization.
Their empire was in the Andes of South America.
The word Inca can also mean the emperor or king of the Inca people.
It was the largest empire in America, and was large even by world standards.
It existed shortly before Christopher Columbus arrived in America.
The Inca ruled along the western coast of South America for a little over 100 years, until the Spanish invasion in the 16th century.
The empire was centred around the city of Cusco, or Qosqo, in what is now southern Peru.
This was the administrative, political and military center of the empire.
In later years, it was also centred around Quito.
The Inca were ruled by an Emperor known as the Sapa Inca.
Throughout their empire, they built many roads and bridges to make travel between their communities easy.
The Inca Empire was called in Quechua, which means "four regions".
The empire only lasted for about 100 years as the arrival of the conquering Spaniards in 1532 AD marked the end of their reign.
Their main language was Quechua, but as the Empire was made up of many different groups there were probably many different languages as well.
The Inca Empire began around Lake Titicaca in about 1197.
From 1438 to 1533, the Incas used conquest and non-violent assimilation to gain a large portion of western South America.
Their empire centered on the Andean mountain ranges.
It included large parts of what is now Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile.
In 1533, Atahualpa, the last sovereign emperor, was executed by the conquistador Francisco Pizarro.
That meant the beginning of Spanish rule in South America.
The Inca Empire was supported by an economy based on the collective ownership of the land.
The Internet Protocol (IP) is the main protocol that computers use to talk to each other.
When two computers talk to each other, data passes from computer to computer.
IP is in charge of figuring out the path that data will take (called routing), and is the backbone of the Internet.
The first version of the Internet Protocol is IP Version 4 (IPv4).
The latest version, meant to replace IPv4 is IP Version 6 (IPv6).
The Internet Protocol gets information from a source computer to a destination computer.
It sends this information in the form of packets.
IP also gives those computers an IP address to identify each other.
An IP packet or datagram has two parts.
The first part is the header, which is like a label on an envelope.
The second part is the payload, which is like the letter inside an envelope.
The header contains the source and destination IP addresses, and some extra information.
This information is called metadata, and is about the packet itself.
Putting data in a packet with a header is encapsulation.
Every computer on a network does some kind of routing.
Dedicated computers talk with each other to figure out where to send packets.
These computers are called routers, and talk using routing protocols.
Along every hop in a packet 's journey, a computer reads the header.
The computer sees the destination IP address and figures out where to send the packet.
ARPANET, the early ancestor of the internet, was designed to survive a nuclear war.
If one computer was destroyed, communication between all the other computers would still work.
Computer networks still follow this same design.
Computers talking to each other handle the "smart" functions to simplify computer networks.
The end nodes will check for errors instead of a central authority.
Keeping the "smart" things on the end computers or nodes follows the end-to-end principle.
The Internet Protocol sends packets out without ensuring they arrive safely.
This is best-effort delivery, and is unreliable.
Packets could get messed up, lost, duplicated, or received out of order.
Higher level protocols like the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) ensure packets are delivered correctly.
IP is also connectionless, so it does not keep track of communications.
Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) uses a checksum to check for errors in an IP header.
Every checksum is unique to a source\/destination combination.
A routing node generates a new checksum when it gets a packet.
If the new checksum is different from the old one, the routing node knows the packet is bad and throws it out.
IPv6 assumes another protocol will check for errors and leaves out the checksum.
This is to improve performance.
In 1974, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers published a paper called "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication".
The paper described a way for computers to talk to each other using Packet Switching.
A big part of this idea was the "Transmission Control Program".
The Transmission Control Program was too big, so it split into TCP and IP.
This model is now called the DoD Internet Model and Internet Protocol Suite, or the TCP\/IP Model.
Versions 0 to 3 of IP were experimental, and used between 1977 and 1979.
IPv4 addresses will run out, because the number of possible addresses is finite.
To fix this, the IEEE tried to make IPv5, which could have more addresses, but they would still run out soon.
IPv5 was never used, and the IEEE made IPv6 which had even more addresses.
While IPv4 has 4.3 Billion addresses, IPv6 has 340 undecillion of them.
This means we will never run out of IPv6 addresses.
Impeachment is a way to remove government officials from office in some countries.
It happens when the official does not want to leave his or her job.
It is like an indictment (something that the prosecutor needs to get before the trial).
Someone is impeached when a legislature votes to do that.
Later, there is another vote on whether or not to convict, which is like guilty.
The second vote may be by the same people who did the impeachment, or someone else.
An intron is a non-coding sequence in a gene.
It is any nucleotide sequence within a gene that is removed by RNA splicing to get the final RNA product of a gene.
The term intron refers to both the DNA sequence within a gene, and the corresponding sequence in RNA transcripts.
Sequences of coding DNA which are joined together in the final RNA after RNA splicing are exons.
They code for amino acids in the final polypeptide.
Introns are in the genes of most organisms and many viruses.
They can be in a wide range of genes, including those that generate proteins, ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and transfer RNA (tRNA).
RNA splicing takes place after transcription and before translation.
The discovery of introns led to the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1993 for Phillip Sharp and Richard Roberts.
The term intron was introduced by American biochemist Walter Gilbert.
There are many unanswered questions about introns.
It is unclear whether introns serve some specific function, or whether they are selfish DNA which reproduces itself as a parasite.
Recent studies of entire eukaryotic genomes have now shown that the lengths and density (introns\/gene) of introns varies considerably between related species.
There are four or five different kinds of intron.
Some introns represent mobile genetic elements (transposons).
Alternative splicing of introns within a gene allows a variety of protein isoforms from a single gene.
Thus multiple related proteins can be generated from a single gene and a single precursor mRNA transcript.
The control of alternative RNA splicing is performed by complex network of signalling molecules.
In humans, ~ 95 % of genes with more than one exon are alternatively spliced.
In criminal trials, the insanity defense is the claim that the defendant is not responsible for his or her actions due to a mental illness.
People who have been determined to be insane have been exempt from full criminal punishment since the Code of Hammurabi.
There are different definitions of legal insanity in different jurisdictions.
A finding of insanity usually results in the defendant being confined in a mental health facility instead of a prison.
In the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States, use of the insanity defense is rare.
However, insanity pleas have steadily increased in the UK.
Mitigating factors, including things not eligible for the insanity defense like intoxication (or, more frequently, diminished capacity), may lead to reduced charges or reduced sentences.
The question of who bears the burden of proof is an issue in the United States.
Before the John Hinckley, Jr. trial the burden of proof rested with the government in most states.
Afterwards many of these states required the defense to prove the defendant was legally insane.
Where the state still bears the burden of proof, the standard for the prosecution is beyond a reasonable doubt.
Where the defense bears the burden, the standard is preponderance of the evidence (a lower standard).
The insanity defense is based on evaluations by forensic mental health professionals with the appropriate test according to the jurisdiction.
Their testimony guides the jury (or judge in a bench trial).
But they may not testify to the defendant 's criminal responsibility.
This is for the jury or judge to decide.
Mental health experts may testify as to whether at the time of the crime the defendant understood what he did was wrong.
If the defendant were acting under a delusion at the time and could still determine right from wrong, he is not insane and may be punished.
An ice age is a period when for a long time the temperature of Earth 's climate is very low.
This leads to an expansion of the continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers.
Ice age is a phrase coined for the period of extensive ice sheets in the recent Pleistocene period.
We now know that ice ages have happened a number of times in the past, the greatest and longest of which took place in the Proterozoic era, before multi-cellular eukaryotes evolved.
During ice ages the sea level drops as water is held in the great ice sheets at the poles.
How much it drops depends on several factors, such as the length of time that a cold period lasts.
Within an ice age, there are stages.
The longer cold stages are called glacials or glacial periods.
The shorter warm periods are called interglacials.
The last glacial ended about 11,000 years ago when the present interglacial started.
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist.
The last two million years have been the Pleistocene ice age.
During glacials, large and thick ice sheets cover much of the North American and Eurasian continents.
Many glacial periods that have occurred during the last few million years are initially at 40,000-year frequency, but more recently ice ages have occurred at 100,000-year frequency.
Insider trading means the trading of public companies ' stocks and other assets on stock markets using secret information.
This is done by getting people who have confidential or non-public facts about how much a stock is really worth to tell traders so they can buy or sell.
A stock could be worth more or less than the public knows, depending on how well a company is doing in making money.
In many countries, insider trading with secret information is against the law and thought to be a bad thing to do.
Some economists think insider trading should be allowed.
Isle Royale National Park is a wildlife reserve on more than 100 islands in northwest Lake Superior, in northern Michigan in the United States.
This national park was opened in 1940.
The wildlife includes moose, wolves and many kinds of birds.
One of the islands is called Isle Royale.
It has an area of 229 square miles.
Native Americans mined copper on this island in pre-Columbian times (before 1492).
The mines can still be seen here.
International standard is a guidance made by international organizations to be considered and used around the world.
The standard can be used directly or with small changes to suit the local conditions.
International standard is used as one of the way to ease technical differences and barriers for international trading which caused by different regulations about technical aspects by each country.
ISO 4217 is the international standard describing three-letter codes (also known as the currency code) to define the names of currencies, as established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
The ISO 4217 code list is the common way in banking and business, all over the world, for defining different currencies.
In many countries, the codes for the more common currencies are so well-known, by the general public, that exchange rates written in newspapers or posted in banks use only those codes to define the different currencies, instead of translated currency names or currency symbols.
ISO 4217 codes are used on airline tickets and international train tickets to remove any uncertainty about the price.
The first two letters of the code are the two letters of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes (which are also used as the basis for national top-level domains on the Internet).
The third letter is usually the initial of the currency itself.
So Japan 's currency code is JPY, "JP" for Japan and "Y" for yen.
This eliminates the problem caused by the names dollar, franc and pound being used in dozens of different countries, each having significantly differing values.
Also, if a currency is revalued, the currency code 's last letter is changed to distinguish it from the old currency.
In some cases, the third letter is the initial for "new" in that country 's language, to distinguish it from an older currency that was revalued; the code sometimes outlasts the usage of the term "new" itself (for example, the code for the Mexican peso is MXN).
Other changes can be seen, however; the Russian ruble, for example, changed from RUR to RUB, where the B comes from the third letter in the word "ruble".
There is also a three-digit code number assigned to each currency, in the same manner as there is also a three-digit code number assigned to each country as part of ISO 3166.
This numeric code is usually the same as the ISO 3166-1 numeric code.
For example, USD (United States dollar) has code 840 which is also the numeric code for the US (United States).
The standard also defines the relationship between the major currency unit and any minor currency unit.
Often, the minor currency unit has a value that is 1\/100 of the major unit, but 1\/1000 is also common.
Some currencies do not have any minor currency unit at all.
In others, the major currency unit has so little value that the minor unit is no longer generally used (e.g. the Japanese sen, 1\/100th of a yen).
This is indicated in the standard by the currency exponent.
For example, USD has exponent 2, while JPY has exponent 0.
Mauritania does not use a decimal division of units, setting 1 ouguiya (UM) = 5 khoums, and Madagascar has 1 ariary = 5 iraimbilanja.
ISO 4217 includes codes not only for currencies, but also for precious metals (gold, silver, palladium and platinum; by definition expressed per one troy ounce, as compared to "1 USD") and certain other entities used in international finance, e.g. Special Drawing Rights.
There are also special codes allocated for testing purposes (XTS), and to indicate no currency transactions (XXX).
These codes all begin with the letter "X".
The precious metals use "X" plus the metal 's chemical symbol; silver, for example, is XAG.
ISO 3166 never assigns country codes beginning with "X", these codes being assigned for privately customized use only (reserved, never for official codes) for instance, the ISO 3166-based NATO country codes (STANAG 1059, 9th edition) use "X" codes for imaginary exercise countries ranging from XXB for "Brownland" to XXR for "Redland", as well as for major commands such as XXE for SHAPE or XXS for SACLANT.
Consequently, ISO 4217 can use "X" codes for non-country-specific currencies without risk of clashing with future country codes.
Supranational currencies, such as the East Caribbean dollar, the CFP franc, the CFA franc BEAC and the CFA franc BCEAO are normally also represented by codes beginning with an "X".
The euro is represented by the code EUR (EU is included in the ISO 3166-1 reserved codes list to represent the European Union).
The predecessor to the euro, the European Currency Unit (ECU), had the code XEU.
In 1973, the ISO Technical Committee 68 decided to develop codes for the representation of currencies and funds for use in any application of trade, commerce or banking.
At the 17th session (February 1978) of the related UN\/ECE Group of Experts agreed that the three-letter alphabetic codes for International Standard ISO 4217, "Codes for the representation of currencies and funds", would be suitable for use in international trade.
Over time, new currencies are created and old currencies are discontinued.
Frequently, these changes are due to new governments (through war or a new constitution), treaties between countries standardizing on a currency, or revaluation of the currency due to excessive inflation.
As a result, the list of codes must be updated from time to time.
The ISO 4217 maintenance agency (MA), SIX Interbank Clearing, is responsible for maintaining the list of codes.
The following is a list of active codes of official ISO 4217 currency names.
The following is a list of active, unofficial codes that emulate the ISO 4217 format.
The US dollar actually has three codes assigned: USD, USS (same day) and USN (next day).
According to UN\/CEFACT recommendation 9, paragraphs 8-9 ECE\/TRADE\/203, 1996, available online: 8.
In applications where monetary resources associated with a currency (i.e. funds) need not be specified and where a field identifier indicating currency is used, the first two (leftmost) characters are sufficient to identify a currency example: US for United States dollars for general, unspecified purposes where a field identifier indicating currency is present.
(A field identifier can be a preprinted field heading in an aligned document or a similarly-agreed application in electronic transmission of data.)
9.
In applications where there is a need to distinguish between different types of currencies, or where funds are required as in the banking environment, or where there is no field identifier, the third (rightmost) character of the alphabetic code is an indicator, preferably mnemonic, derived from the name of the major currency unit or fund example: USD for general, unspecified purposes; USN for United States dollar next-day funds, and USS for funds which are immediately available for Federal Reserve transfer, withdrawal in cash or transfer in like funds (same-day funds).
Since there is no need for such a distinction in international trade applications, the funds codes have not been included in the Annex to the present Recommendation.
A number of territories are not included in ISO 4217, because their currencies are: (a) not per se an independent currency but a variant of another currency, (b) a legal tender only issued as commemorative banknotes and\/or coinage, or (c) a currency of an unrecognized or partially recognized state.
These currencies are:
A number of currencies were official ISO 4217 currency codes and currency names until their replacement by the euro or other currencies.
Note that the currency names used below may not match the currency names used in the ISO standard itself, but the codes do match.
The Irgun, (full title: Irgun Zevai Leumi) (from, "The National Military Organization in the Land of Israel"), was a Zionist paramilitary group in Palestine between 1931 and 1948.
Irgun is best known was the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946.
In the 1940s, Irgun was labeled as a terrorist organization.
Irgun is considered an early version of erut which was an Israeli political party.
Irgun is also an early version of today 's Likud political party in Israel.
Infrared spectroscopy (sometimes called Infrared spectrometry) is a physical analysis method that uses infrared light.
Typically, infrared spectroscopy uses a wavelength between 800nm and 1mm.
The method can be used for quantitative analyses of unknown substances, or of the structural properties of known substances.
Raman spectroscopy is another method that produces similar results.
The main method used in infrared spectroscopy today is Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, which uses Fourier transforms.
Infrared vibrational spectroscopy)) can be used to identify molecules by listing their chemical bonds.
An IR spectrometer is a machine that shines infrared light from a set range of frequencies on a sample.
It measures which exact light frequencies are absorbed by the sample.
Each chemical bond in a molecule vibrates at a frequency which is characteristic of that bond.
A group of atoms in a molecule may have multiple modes of oscillation caused by the stretching and bending motions of the group as a whole.
If an oscillation leads to a change in dipole in the molecule, then it will absorb a photon which has the same frequency.
The vibrational frequencies of most molecules correspond to the frequencies of infrared light.
Typically, the technique is used to study organic compounds using light radiation from 4000 400 cm 1, the mid-infrared.
The spectrometer records all the frequencies of absorption in a sample.
This can be used to gain information about the sample composition in terms of chemical groups present and also its purity (for example a wet sample will show a broad O-H absorption around 3200 cm 1).
Saint Irenaeus (130 AD - 202) was a Roman Catholic Bishop of Lyon, France.
He is a Church Father.
He is known for his Christian writings.
He is remembered on the 28 June.
In physics, chemistry, and biology, intermolecular forces are forces that act between stable molecules or between functional groups of macromolecules.
These forces are generally much weaker than the chemical bonding forces.
Their bonding energies are less than a few kcal\/mol.
But they are responsible for many different physical, chemical, and biological phenomena.
In general one distinguishes short and long range intermolecular forces.
Hydrogen bonding is an intermolecular interaction with a hydrogen atom being present in the intermolecular bond.
Here is a list of currently existing top-level domains (TLDs).
Idealism is the philosophy that believes the ultimate nature of reality is ideal, or based upon ideas, values, or essences.
The external, or real world can not be separated from consciousness, perception, mind, intellect and reason in the sense of science.
In some doctrines of idealistic thought the ideal relates to direct and immediate knowledge of subjective mental ideas, or images.
Inheritance is the practice of passing on property, titles, debts, and duties when someone dies.
Those things usually go to family members.
Inheritance has been very important in human society for a long time.
If only sons and other male family members get the inheritance, it is called patrilineal succession.
If only daughters and other female family members get the inheritance, it is called matrilineal succession.
Cultural inheritance is called legacy.
Genetic inheritance is called heredity.
The person who gets the property and other things when someone dies is called the heir (male) or heiress (female).
Saint Ignatius of Antioch (also known as Theophorus) (ca.
35-107) was the third Bishop or Patriarch of Antioch and a student of the Apostle John.
En route to his martyrdom in Rome, Ignatius wrote a series of letters, including one to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who had also known John.
These letters are an example of the theology of the earliest Christians.
Important topics addressed in these letters include ecclesiology, the sacraments, and the role of bishops.
Ignatius ' feast day is observed on 17 October in Western Christianity and 20 December in Eastern Christianity.
Ignatius became Bishop of Antioch after Saint Peter and Evodius, who died around AD 67.
Besides the Latin name, Ignatius, he also called himself Theophorus ("God Bearer"), and tradition says he was one of the children Jesus took in His arms and blessed.
Ignatius was most likely a disciple of the Apostle John.
Ignatius is generally considered to be one of the Apostolic Fathers (the earliest authoritative group of the Church Fathers) and a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, Lutheran Church, Eastern Orthodox Church and Anglican\/Episcopal Church who celebrate his feast day on October 17, and the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches, who celebrate his feast day on December 20.
Ignatius based his authority on living his life in imitation of Christ.
He died as a martyr in the arena.
This was during the reign of Trajan.
The Roman authorities hoped to make an example of him and thus discourage Christianity from spreading.
Instead, he met with and encouraged Christians who flocked to meet him all along his route, and he wrote six letters to the churches in the region and one to a fellow bishop.
Itanium is a type Intel microprocessors with 64-bit chip architecture.
Itanium processors are sometimes used today for servers.
Itanium processors have been produced by HP and several other manufacturers.
As of 2008, Itanium was the fourth-most deployed chip for business systems.
When first released in 2001, Itanium 's speed was disappointing compared to other processor types.
Using existing x86 applications and operating systems was especially bad, with one test in 2001 showing that it was as fast as a 100 MHz Pentium (1.1 GHz Pentiums were on the market at that time).
Itanium did not have success compared to IA-32 or RISC, and was even worse when x86-64 was released, which worked with older x86 applications.
In an article from 2009 about the history of Itanium "How the Itanium Killed the Computer Industry" journalist John C. Dvorak reported "This continues to be one of the great fiascos (bad situations) of the last 50 years".
Technology writer Ashlee Vance wrote that slowness in speed and release "turned the product into a joke in the chip industry."
In an interview, Donald Knuth said "The Itanium approach... was supposed to be so terrific until it turned out that the wished-for compilers were basically impossible to write."
Both Red Hat and Microsoft said that they would stop allowing Itanium to be used with their operating systems.
However, other Linux distributions such as Gentoo and Debian are still available for Itanium.
On 22 March 2011, Oracle said they would no longer support Itanium, but support for their existing products would continue.
In October of 2013, Oracle said they would release Oracle Database 12.1.0.1.0 on HP-UX Itanium 11.31 by early 2014.
A past Intel company official said that Itanium had become profitable (Able to make a lot of money) for Intel in late 2009.
In 2009 and later, Itanium was mostly used on servers by HP, which made 95 % of Itanium servers, so the primary operating system for Itanium was HP-UX.
On 22 March 2011, Intel said they will keep supporting Itanium entirely with many new Itanium chips being created and on-time.
Although Itanium did do well with high-end computing, Intel wanted it to have more usage compared to the original x86 architecture.
AMD decided on an easier idea, creating x86-64, a 64-bit addition to the x86 architecture, which Microsoft soon supported in Microsoft Windows, so Intel had to include the same type of 64-bit addition in Intel 's x86 processors.
x86-64 can use existing 32-bit applications at full hardware speed, but has 64-bit memory addressing and other additions to new applications.
This architecture has now become the most used 64-bit architecture in the desktop and laptop market, with the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture powering many mobile devices, used in today 's iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches, and now many Android phones and tablets such as the Nexus 6P and Nexus 9.
Ssome Itanium-based workstations were initially introduced by companies such as SGI, but they are no longer available.
Because AMD made the first x86-64 chip, the architecture is commonly referred to as "amd64" inside of operating systems.
In 1989, HP thought Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) architectures were stuck at one instruction per cycle.
HP researchers tried to create a new type of processor architecture, later called Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC), that allows the processor to use many instructions in each clock cycle.
EPIC uses a form of very long instruction word (VLIW) architecture, in which 1 instruction word had many instructions.
With EPIC, the compiler checks which instructions can be used at the same time, so the processor can run the instructions without needing complicated methods to see which instructions to use at the same time.
The goal of this idea is to allow better inspection of the code at the time of compile to check for additional opportunities for multiple executions at once, and to simplify processor design and save electricity by removing the need for runtime scheduling instructions.
HP thought that it was not good for individual enterprise system companies like HP to make proprietary processors, so HP worked with Intel in 1994 to create the IA-64 architecture, made with EPIC 's ideas.
Intel wanted to make a large effort in creating IA-64 in the expectation that the resulting processor would be used by most enterprise systems.
HP and Intel had a large design effort to make the first Itanium product, Merced, in 1998.
During creation, Intel, HP, and other industry analysts thought that IA-64 would be very popular in servers, workstations, and desktops, and one day replace RISC and Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC) architectures for multi-purpose applications.
Compaq and Silicon Graphics stopped working on their Alpha and MIPS architectures to move to the Itanium architecture.
Many groups created operating systems for Itanium, including Microsoft Windows, OpenVMS, Linux, and UNIX types such as HP-UX, Solaris, Tru64 UNIX, and Monterey\/64 (the last three were never finished work with running on Itanium).
By 1997, many found that the Itanium architecture and the compiler were more difficult to use than they thought.
Technology issues such as the very high transistor counts needed for the large instruction words and the large caches.
There were also problems with the project, as the two parts of the team used different methods and had slightly different priorities.
Because Merced was the first EPIC processor, its creation had more problems than the team had thought.
In addition, the EPIC concept requires different compiler abilities that had never been created before, so more research was needed.
Intel announced the name of the processor, Itanium, on 4 October 1999.
In only a few hours, the name Itanic had been used as a joke, (a reference to Titanic, the "unsinkable" ship that sank in 1912 ("Itanium + Titanic = Itanic")).
"Itanic" has also been used by The Register, and others, to say the multi-billion-dollar investment in Itanium, and the early demand with it, would mean nothing because they thought Itanium was going to fail.
By the time Itanium was released in June 2001, its performance was not superior to competing RISC and CISC processors.
Itanium competed with low-power systems (primarily 4-CPU and small systems) with servers based on x86 processors, and with high-power such as with IBM 's POWER architecture and Sun Microsystems ' SPARC architecture.
Intel shifted Itanium to working with the high-power business and HPC computing, trying to copy x86 's successful market (i.e., 1 architecture, many system vendors).
The success of the 1st processor version was only with replacing PA-RISC in HP systems, Alpha in Compaq systems and MIPS in SGI systems, but IBM also made a supercomputer based on this architecture.
POWER and SPARC were strong, and the x86 architecture grew more into the enterprise space, because of easier scaling and very large install base.
Only a few thousand systems using the 1st Itanium processor, Merced, were sold, because of poorer performance, high cost and less Itanium-made software.
Intel saw that Itanium required more native software to work well, so Intel made thousands of systems for independent software vendors to help them make Itanium software.
HP and Intel brought the 2nd Itanium processor, Itanium 2, to market a year later.
The Itanium 2 processor was released in 2002, for enterprise servers and not all of high-power computing.
The 1st version of Itanium 2, code-named McKinley, was created by HP and Intel.
It fixed many of the problems of the 1st Itanium processor, which were mostly caused by a bad memory subsystem.
McKinley had 221 million transistors (25 million of them were for logic), and was 19.5 mm by 21.6 mm (421 mm2) and was created with a 180 nm design process, and a CMOS process with 6 layers of aluminium.
In 2003, AMD released the Opteron, which implemented the first x86-64 architecture (called AMD64 at the time).
Opteron was much more successful because it was an easy upgrade from x86.
Intel implemented x86-64 in its Xeon processors in 2004.
Intel released a new Itanium 2 processor, code-named Madison, in 2003.
Madison used a 130 nm process and was the foundation of all new Itanium processors until June 2006.
In March 2005, Intel announced that it was working on a new Itanium processor, code-named Tukwila, to be released in 2007.
Tukwila would have 4 processor cores and would replace the Itanium bus with a new Common System Interface, which would also be used by a new Xeon processor.
Later in that year, Intel changed Tukwila 's release date to late 2008.
In November 2005, the largest Itanium server makers worked with Intel and many software vendors to create the Itanium Solutions Alliance, to promote the architecture and speed up software porting.
The Alliance says that its members would invest $ 10 billion in Itanium solutions by the end of the decade.
In 2006, Intel delivered Montecito (marketed as the Itanium 2 9000 series), a 2-core processor that had approximately 2x performance and 20 % less energy usage.
Intel released the Itanium 2 9100 series, codenamed Montvale, in November 2007.
In May 2009, the release for Tukwila, Montvale 's successor, was changed again, with release to OEMs planned for the first quarter of 2010.
The Itanium 9300 series processor, code-named Tukwila, was released on 8 February 2010, with greater performance and memory amount.
Tukwila uses a 65 nm process, has between two and four cores, up to 24 MB CPU cache, Hyper-Threading technology and new memory controllers.
It also has double-device data correction, which helps to fix memory issues.
Tukwila also has Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) to replace the Itanium bus architecture.
It has a maximum inner-processor bandwidth of 96 GB\/s and a maximum memory bandwidth of 34 GB\/s.
With QuickPath, the processor has built-in memory controllers, which controls the memory using QPI interfaces to communicate with other processors and I\/O hubs.
QuickPath is also used with Intel processors using the Nehalem architecture, so that Tukwila and Nehalem might be able to use the same chipsets.
Tukwila incorporates four memory controllers, each of which supports multiple DDR3 DIMMs via a separate memory controller, similar to the Nehalem Xeon processor code-named Beckton.
The Itanium 9500 series processor, code-named Poulson, is the follow-on processor to Tukwila and was released on 8 November 2012.
Intel says it skips the 45 nm process technology and uses the 32 nm process technology instead; it features 8 cores, has a 12-wide issue architecture, multi-threading additions, and new instructions for parallelism, including virtualization.
The Poulson L3 cache size is 32 MB.
L2 cache size is 6 MB, 512 I KB, 256 D KB per core.
Poulson 's size is 544 mm, less than Tukwila 's size (698.75 mm).
At ISSCC 2011, Intel presented a paper called, "A 32nm 3.1 Billion Transistor 12-Wide-Issue Itanium Processor for Mission Critical Servers."
Given Intel 's history of sharing details about Itanium microprocessors at ISSCC, this paper most likely refers to Poulson.
Analyst David Kanter speculates that Poulson will use a new architecture, with a more advanced form of multi-threading that uses as many as two threads, to improve performance for single threaded and multi-threaded work.
New information was released at Hot Chips conference.
The new information claims improvements in multithreading, reliability improvements (Instruction Replay RAS) and some new instructions (thread priority, integer instruction, cache pre-fetching, data access hints).
In Intel 's Product Change Notification (PCN) 111456-01, it listed 4 models of Itanium 9500 series CPU, which were removed in a revised version of the document.
The parts were later listed in Intel 's Material Declaration Data Sheets (MDDS) database.
Intel later posted Itanium 9500 reference manual.
In comparison with its Xeon server processors, Itanium has never been a large product for Intel.
Intel does not release production numbers.
One industry analyst estimated that the production rate was 200,000 processors per year in 2007.
According to Gartner Inc., the total number of Itanium servers (not processors) sold by all vendors in 2007, was about 55,000.
(It is unclear whether clustered servers counted as a single server or not.)
This compares with 417,000 RISC servers (spread across all RISC vendors) and 8.4 million x86 servers.
IDC reports that a total of 184,000 Itanium-based systems were sold from 2001 through 2007.
For the combined POWER\/SPARC\/Itanium systems market, IDC reports that POWER captured 42 % of revenue and SPARC captured 32 %, while Itanium-based system revenue reached 26 % in the second quarter of 2008.
According to an IDC analyst, in 2007, HP had about 80 % of Itanium system revenue.
According to Gartner, in 2008, HP had 95 % of Itanium sales.
HP 's Itanium system sales were at $ 4.4 Billion at the end of 2008, and $ 3.5 Billion by the end of 2009, compared to a 35 % decline in UNIX system revenue for Sun and an 11 % drop for IBM, with an x86-64 server revenue increase of 14 % during this period.
In December 2012, IDC released a research report stating that Itanium server shipments would remain flat through 2016, with annual shipment of 26,000 systems (a decline of over 50 % compared to shipments in 2008).
As of 2015, only a few providers have Itanium systems, such as HP, Bull, NEC, Inspur and Huawei.
Intel offers a chassis that can be used by system integrators to build Itanium systems.
HP, the only one of the industry 's top 4 server manufacturers to sell Itanium systems today, creating at least 80 % of all Itanium systems.
HP sold 7,200 systems in the first quarter of 2006.
Most Itanium systems sold are enterprise servers and machines for large-scale technical computing, with each system costing about US$ 200,000.
A typical system uses eight or more Itanium processors.
The Itanium bus communicates with the rest of the system.
Enterprise server makers differentiate their systems by making their own chipsets that interface the processor to memory, interconnections, and peripheral controllers.
The chipset is the heart of the system-level architecture for each system design.
Creation of a chipset costs tens of millions of dollars and represents a major commitment to the use of the Itanium.
IBM created a chipset in 2003, and Intel in 2002, but neither of them has developed chipsets to support technologies such as DDR2 or PCI Express.
Currently, modern chipsets for Itanium supporting such technologies are manufactured by HP, Fujitsu, SGI, NEC, and Hitachi.
The "Tukwila" Itanium processor model had been designed to share a common chipset with the Intel Xeon processor EX (Intel s Xeon processor designed for four processor and larger servers).
The goal is to streamline system development and reduce costs for server OEMs, many of whom develop both Itanium - and Xeon-based servers.
However, in 2013, this goal was pushed back to "evaluated for future implementation opportunities".
Microsoft announced that Windows Server 2008 R2 would be the last version of Windows Server to support the Itanium, and that it would also discontinue development of the Itanium versions of Visual Studio and SQL Server.
Likewise, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (first released in March 2007) was the final Itanium version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Canonical 's Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (released in April 2010) was the last supported Ubuntu release on Itanium.
HP will not be supporting or certifying Linux on Itanium 9300 (Tukwila) servers.
In late September 2012, NEC announced a return from IA64 to the previous NOAH line of proprietary mainframe processors, now produced in a quad-core variant on 40 nm, called NOAH-6.
Oracle Corporation announced in March 2011, that it would drop development of application software for Itanium platforms, with the explanation that "Intel management made it clear that their strategic focus is on their x86 microprocessor and that Itanium was nearing the end of its life."
However, a California state judge ruled that Oracle will have to continue supporting and releasing new versions of its software designed for Intel Itanium-based servers sold by Hewlett-Packard, after a settlement and release agreement between HP, Oracle and Mark Hurd had revealed that Oracle must continue to offer its product suite on HP 's Itanium-based server platforms and does not confer on Oracle the discretion to decide whether to do so or not.
Oracle 's obligation to continue to offer its products on HP 's Itanium-based server platforms lasts until such time as HP discontinues the sales of its Itanium-based servers.
Oracle was ordered to port its products to HP 's Itanium-based servers without charge to HP.
HP sells a virtualization technology for Itanium called Integrity Virtual Machines.
To allow more software to run on the Itanium, Intel supported the development of compilers optimized for the platform, especially its own suite of compilers.
Starting in November 2010, with the introduction of new product suites, the Intel Itanium Compilers were no longer bundled with the Intel x86 compilers in a single product.
Intel offers Itanium tools and Intel x86 tools, including compilers, independently in different product bundles.
GCC, Open64 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (and later) are also able to produce machine code for Itanium.
According to the Itanium Solutions Alliance over 13,000 applications were available for Itanium-based systems in early 2008, though Sun has contested Itanium application counts in the past.
The ISA also supported Gelato, an Itanium HPC user group and developer community that ported and supported open source software for Itanium.
Emulation is a technique that allows a computer to execute binary code that was compiled for a different type of computer.
Before IBM 's acquisition of QuickTransit in 2009, application binary software for IRIX\/MIPS and Solaris\/SPARC could run via type of emulation called "dynamic binary translation" on Linux\/Itanium.
Similarly, HP implemented a method to execute PA-RISC\/HP-UX on the Itanium\/HP-UX via emulation, to simplify migration of its PA-RISC customers to the radically different Itanium instruction set.
Itanium processors can also run the mainframe environment GCOS from Groupe Bull and several x86 operating systems via instruction set simulators.
Itanium is aimed at the enterprise server and high-performance computing (HPC) markets.
Other enterprise - and HPC-focused processor lines include Oracle Corporation 's SPARC M7, Fujitsu 's SPARC64 X + and IBM 's POWER8.
Measured by quantity sold, Itanium 's most serious competition comes from x86-64 processors including Intel 's own Xeon line and AMD 's Opteron line.
Since 2009, most servers were being shipped with x86-64 processors.
In 2005, Itanium systems accounted for about 14 % of HPC systems revenue, but the percentage has declined as the industry shifts to x86-64 clusters for this application.
An October 2008 paper by Gartner, on the Tukwila processor stated that"... the future roadmap for Itanium looks as strong as that of any RISC peer like Power or SPARC."
An Itanium-based computer first appeared on the list of the TOP500 supercomputers in November 2001.
The best position ever achieved by an Itanium 2 based system in the list was # 2, achieved in June 2004, when Thunder (LLNL) entered the list with an Rmax of 19.94 Teraflops.
In November 2004, Columbia entered the list at # 2 with 51.8 Teraflops, and there was at least one Itanium-based computer in the top 10 from then until June 2007.
The peak number of Itanium-based machines on the list occurred in the November 2004 list, at 84 systems (16.8 %); by June 2012, this had dropped to one system (0.2 %), and no Itanium system remained on the list in November 2012.
The Itanium processors show a progression in capability.
Merced was a proof of concept.
McKinley dramatically improved the memory hierarchy and allowed Itanium to become reasonably competitive.
Madison, with the shift to a 130 nm process, allowed for enough cache space to overcome the major performance bottlenecks.
Montecito, with a 90 nm process, allowed for a dual-core implementation and a major improvement in performance per watt.
Montvale added three new features: core-level lockstep, demand-based switching and front-side bus frequency of up to 667 MHz.
During the HP vs. Oracle support lawsuit, court documents unsealed by Santa Clara County Court judge revealed in 2008, Hewlett-Packard had paid Intel Corp. around $ 440 million to keep producing and updating Itanium microprocessors from 2009 to 2014.
In 2010, the two companies signed another $ 250 million deal, which obliged Intel to continue making Itanium central processing units for HP 's machines until 2017.
Under the terms of the agreements, HP has to pay for chips it gets from Intel, while Intel launches Tukwila, Poulson, Kittson and Kittson + chips in a bid to gradually boost performance of the platform.
Kittson is planned to follow Poulson in 2015.
Kittson, like Poulson, will be manufactured using Intel 's 32 nm process.
Few other details are known beyond the existence of the codename and the binary and socket compatibility with Poulson and Tukwila, though moving to a common socket with x86 Xeon "will be evaluated for future implementation opportunities" after Kittson.
In Realtime Operating Systems (RTOS), interrupt latency is the time between the generation of an interrupt by a device (or a peripheral) and servicing the device which generated the interrupt.
For many operating systems (OS), the OS code is programmed so that devices are serviced as soon as the device 's interrupt handler is executed.
Interrupt latency depends on the CPU, interrupt controllers, interrupt masking, and the operating system 's (OS) "interrupt handling methods".
When computers connect and transmit data between each other on the Internet, they follow a set of rules to do so.
These rules are universal; all computers throughout the Internet must follow them.
Otherwise, the Internet would not function as computers would not be able to transmit data in a meaningful and useful way.
These rules are called protocols.
There are many different protocols, each for different purposes, and they all together are called the Internet protocol suite.
The two most important protocols are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), which ensure data is delivered at the right place, and without errors, and is what computers use when they access servers (computers that have the data that is accessed on the Internet) on the World Wide Web, as well as for email, and the like.
Other protocols include the Network Time Protocol, which ensures clock synchronisation in computers, and there are many others.
The TCP\/IP model and other related protocols are maintained by the Internet Engineering Task Force, whose parent organization is the Internet Society, and which also cooperates closely with other standards bodies such as the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and ISO\/IEC.
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a movement to save human life and health.
Although it is a big international organization, it is privately run.
No government controls the Red Cross.
The Red Cross has a special job, given by international law.
It is the only private group to have its jobs set out by international law.
The Indus River flows from Tibet, into Jammu and Kashmir and the rest of Pakistan.
The river is the greatest river on the western side of the subcontinent, and is one of the seven sacred rivers of Hindus.
It was the birthplace of the early Indus Valley civilization.
The total length of the river is 3,180 km (1,980 mi).
It is Pakistan 's longest river.
The river has a total drainage area exceeding 1,165,000 km2 (450,000 sq mi).
Its estimated annual flow stands at around 207 km3 (50 cu mi), making it the twenty-first largest river in the world in terms of annual flow.
The word Indus and the cognate word Sind\/Sindhu for the river is ancient.
The Ancient Greeks used the word Ind s; Hindu was Old Persian; Sindhu in Sanskrit.
Modern languages on the sub-continent use either Sindh (Urdu) or Sindhu (Hindi) or very similar words.
There is no doubt that the river gave its name to the country India.
Over 60 % of the total area of the Indus drainage basin is in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
India-Administered Kashmir, has about 15 %, Tibet has about 10 % and the Republic of India and Afghanistan each have about 7 % of the Indus basin catchment area.
The Indus water system of rivers comprises the main Indus and its major tributaries: the Kabul River and Kurram River on the right bank, and the Jhelum River, Chenab River, Ravi River, Beas River and the Sutlej on the left.
The first two join the Indus soon after it leaves the mountains, and the others lower down in the plains.
The whole of the Beas and the head reaches of the Ravi and Sutlej are in the Republic of India, while those of the Chenab and Jhelum lie mostly in the disputed Kashmir state.
The entire basin covers an area of about 384,000 square miles of open land, of which 204,000 lie in Pakistan.
In addition, there are about 29,000 square miles which lie outside the Indus basin but are dependent on the Indus river system for their water requirements and irrigation supplies.
Without the Indus waters, agriculture in Pakistan would be very uncertain.
Even now when Pakistan is being rapidly industrialised, it can not do without its water resources, because a very big percentage of its existing and proposed industry has to draw upon the agriculture produce for its raw materials.
Almost all of the basin in Pakistan receives an overall rainfull of less than 15 inches, 60 % of its area receiving less than 10 inches, while, 16 % receives less than 5 inches.
The rainfull is not evenly distributed throughout the year but is concentrated during the monsoons.
Rising in western Tibet, the Indus runs at first across a high plateau, then the ground falls away and the river, dropping rapidly, gathering momentum and rushing north-west, collects the waters from innumerable glacier-fed streams, and runs north-west between the world 's greatest mountain ranges, the Karakoram and the Himalayas.
In Kashmir it crosses the United Nations cease-fire line and, in Baltistan District, enters Pakistan-Administered Kashmir.
From here on it is Pakistan 's river; Pakistan 's first town on the upper Indus, Skardu, at 7,500 feet above sea-level, stands on a bluff near the junction of the Indus and one of its great right-bank tributaries, the Shigar.
The majority of the people live in Skardu town; others inhabit small and scattered villages along the Indus and Shigar valleys, or tiny hamlets high on the surrounding mountains beside tributary streams or springs.
Walnuts grow along the Indus near Skardu, and poplars and apples; there are delicious melons and nectarines and apricots in the valley of Shigar, but it is difficult to send them "down-country" because they are easily spoilt in transit.
Potatoes, maize and other crops need unremitting attention; the patchwork of fields must be fed by small water-channels led off from the upper streams of the Indus, sometimes for hundreds of yards.
This means endless, back-breaking work in moving boulders to dam icy water, in continually checking, adjusting and repairing the flimsy clay dykes.
Strong winds funnel along the river, and the fine soil blows away and must be replaced.
At this height, the growing season is short, and everyman, woman and child is pressed into service.
Below Skardu, the Karakorams and Himalayas close in towards the Indus.
Main attraction of Sindh is Lansdowne Bridge which built by British Raj in 1888 located over River Indus at Rohri city, Sukkur, Sindh.
The Imperial units or the Imperial system is a collection of measurement units.
An Act of Parliament in 1824 created it from traditional English units.
Commonwealth countries used this system from 1824 until they changed to the metric system.
The imperial system is very similar to the American system but there are some differences.
The British nautical mile used to be 6080 feet.
In 1970 the UK adopted the international definition of 1852 metres.
For a comparison to the U.S. customary system see the article on Comparison of the Imperial and US customary systems.
Serie A is a football league which is top division in Italy.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (November 21, 1902 July 24, 1991) was a leading writer in Yiddish literature.
He was an American who was born in Poland.
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Sir Ian Terence Botham (born 24 November 1955) is an English retired cricketer.
He also played football.
He was an all-rounder, being good at both batting and bowling.
He was also very good at catching the ball when he was fielding.
He played over 100 test matches for England.
He is a very popular man in England.
One reason for this is that he helped England to beat Australia in a series of test matches called "The Ashes" in 1981.
This series is sometimes called "Botham 's Ashes".
Now he works on television.
He has done some long walks to raise money for charity.
He was knighted in 2007.
id Software is an American video game company.
They are most famous for their first-person shooter games.
They started in 1991.
ID has made many games.
In calculus, an integral is the space under a graph of an equation (sometimes said as "the area under a curve").
An integral is the reverse of a derivative.
A derivative is the steepness (or "slope"), as the rate of change, of a curve.
The word "integral" can also be used as an adjective meaning "related to integers".
The symbol for integration, in calculus, is: as a tall letter "S".
This symbol was first used by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who used it as a stylized"" (for summa, Latin for sum) to mean the summation of the area covered by an equation, such as y = f (x).
Integrals and derivatives are part of a branch of mathematics called calculus.
The link between these two is very important, and is called the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus.
The theorem says that an integral can be reversed by a derivative, similar to how an addition can be reversed by a subtraction.
Integration helps when trying to multiply units into a problem.
For example, if a problem with rate,, needs an answer with just distance, one solution is to integrate with respect to time.
This means multiplying in time to cancel the time in.
This is done by adding small slices of the rate graph together.
The slices are close to zero in width, but adding them forever makes them add up to a whole.
This is called a Riemann Sum.
Adding these slices together gives the equation that the first equation is the derivative of.
Integrals are like a way to add many tiny things together by hand.
It is like summation, which is adding.
The difference with integration is that we also have to add all the decimals and fractions in between.
Another time integration is helpful is when finding the volume of a solid.
It can add two-dimensional (without width) slices of the solid together forever until there is a width.
This means the object now has three dimensions: the original two and a width.
This gives the volume of the three-dimensional object described.
By the fundamental theorem of calculus, the integral is the antiderivative.
If we take the function, for example, and anti-differentiate it, we can say that an integral of is.
We say an integral, not the integral, because the antiderivative of a function is not unique.
For example, also differentiates to.
Because of this, when taking the antiderivative a constant C must be added.
This is called an indefinite integral.
This is because when finding the derivative of a function, constants equal 0, as in the function.
.
Note the 0: we can not find it if we only have the derivative, so the integral is.
A simple equation such as can be integrated with respect to x using the following technique.
To integrate, you add 1 to the power x is raised to, and then divide x by the value of this new power.
Therefore, integration of a normal equation follows this rule:
The at the end is what shows that we are integrating with respect to x, that is, as x changes.
This can be seen to be the inverse of differentiation.
However, there is a constant, C, added when you integrate.
This is called the constant of integration.
This is required because differentiating an integer results in zero, therefore integrating zero (which can be put onto the end of any integrand) produces an integer, C. The value of this integer would be found by using given conditions.
There are certain rules for integrating using e and the natural logarithm.
Most importantly, is the integral of itself (with the addition of a constant of integration):
The natural logarithm, ln, is useful when integrating equations with.
These can not be integrated using the formula above (add one to the power, divide by the power), because adding one to the power produces 0, and a division by 0 is not possible.
Instead, the integral of is:
The two vertical bars indicated a absolute value; the sign (positive or negative) of is ignored.
This is because there is no value for the natural logarithm of negative numbers.
The integral of a sum of functions is the sum of each function 's integral.
that is,.
The proof of this is straightforward: The definition of an integral is a limit of sums.
Thus
Note that both integrals have the same limits.
When a constant is in an integral with a function, the constant can be taken out.
Further, when a constant c is not accompanied by a function, its value is c \* x. That is, and This can only be done with a constant.
Proof is again by the definition of an integral.
If a, b and c are in order (i.e. after each other on the x-axis), the integral of f (x) from point a to point b plus the integral of f (x) from point b to c equals the integral from point a to c. That is, if they are in order.
(This also holds when a, b, c are not in order if we define.).
This follows the fundamental theorem of calculus (FTC): F (a) - F (a) = 0 Again, following the FTC:
Japan (, Nippon) is a country in Asia.
It has many islands.
Four of them are big, and the biggest is the 7th largest island in the world.
This island is called Honshu.
The islands are near the east Asian coast, in the western part of the Pacific Ocean.
Japanese people call their country "Nihon" or "Nippon", which means "the origin of the Sun" in Japanese.
Japan has a constitutional democratic government, of which system is called parliamentary cabinet system, where the cabinet exercises political power with parliamentary confidence.
Japan also has a Prime minister and an Emperor and Empress.
About 13 million people live in Tokyo, which is the capital city of Japan.
The earliest records on Japan are from Chinese documents.
One of those records said there were many small countries (in Japan) which had wars between them and later a country, ruled by a queen, became the strongest, unified others, and brought peace.
The Japanese began to write their own history after the 5th and 6th centuries, when people from Korea and China taught Japan about the Chinese writing system.
Japan 's neighbors also showed them the ways of Buddhism.
The Japanese changed Buddhism in many ways, for example, by building strongly on ideas such as Zen, which came from mainland Asia.
In the ancient and the Middle Ages, China gave Japan many new cultural ideas, but their friendship became weaker later.
In the late 13th century, Mongolians from China tried to invade Japan twice, but they could not.
The samurai and shogun of Medieval Japan are similar to knights and lords in Medieval Europe.
Japan had some contact with the Europeans in the 16th century.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit Japan.
Later, the Spanish, English and Dutch came to Japan to trade.
Also, they brought Christianity.
Japan 's leaders welcomed them at first, but because Europeans had conquered many places in the world, the Japanese were scared they would conquer Japan too.
So the Japanese did not let the Europeans come into Japan anymore, except in a small area in Nagasaki city.
Many Christians were killed.
Only the Chinese, Korean and Dutch people were allowed to visit Japan, in the end, and they were under careful control of the Japanese government.
Japan was opened for visitors again in 1854 by Commodore Matthew Perry, when the Americans wanted to use Japanese ports for American whale boats.
Perry brought steamships with guns, which scared the Japanese into making an agreement with him.
This new contact with Europeans and Americans changed the Japanese culture.
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 stopped some old ways and added many new ones.
The Empire of Japan was created, and it became a very powerful nation and tried to invade the countries next to it.
It invaded and annexed Ryukyu Kingdom, Taiwan, and Korea.
It had wars with China and Russia: the First Sino-Japanese War, the Boxer Rebellion the Russo-Japanese War, and the Second Sino-Japanese War, which grew to become a part of World War II when Japan became allies with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
In 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, a water base of the United States, and destroyed or damaged many ships and airplanes.
This started the United States ' involvement in World War II.
American and Japanese forces fought each other in the Pacific.
Once airbases were established within range of the Japanese mainland, America began to win, and started dropping bombs on Japanese cities.
America was able to bomb most of the important cities and quickly brought Japan close to defeat.
To make Japan surrender, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 150,000 Japanese citizens.
Soon after this the Soviet Union began to fight against Japan, and the Japanese army in Manchuria lost.
Japan surrendered and gave up all the places it took from other countries, accepting the Potsdam Proclamation.
The United States occupied Japan and forced it to write a new constitution, in which it promised to never go to war again.
Japan is a group of islands in the Western Pacific, off the coast of China.
The four biggest islands are Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku, and Kyushu, and there are about 6,000 smaller islands there.
Japan is separated from the Asian continent by the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea.
Honshu, which means ` Mainland ' in the Japanese language, is the biggest island.
Hokkaido is the island north of Honshu.
Kyushu is the island west of Honshu.
Shikoku is the island to the south-west of Honshu.
In the middle of Japan there are mountains.
They cover the middle of the islands and leave a very narrow strip of flat land on most coasts.
Many of the mountains are extinct volcanoes, but some are still active.
The highest of these mountains is the beautiful, volcano-shaped Mt Fuji (3776m or 12,389 feet high).
Japan has many earthquakes, in fact there are about 1500 of these every year.
The most recent big earthquake was in 2011 - called ' 2011 Tohoku Earthquake '.
It caused great damage to several power plants forcing Japan to shut down all its nuclear plants.
There was nuclear core meltdown which caused a serious health risk to nearby villages and cities.
90 % of the people living in Japan live in just 10 % of the land, near the coast.
The other 10 % of the people in Japan live away from the coast.
Over 10 cities have more than a million people in them.
The biggest city in Japan is Tokyo, which is the capital.
The ruling party is the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) and prime minister is Shinzo Abe.
In the past, the Japanese learned science by way of China or from Europe in the Meiji Era.
However, in recent decades Japan has been a leading innovator in several fields, including chemical engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics.
There are many technological companies in Japan, and these companies make products for export.
The robot Asimo was made and introduced in 2000.
It was manufactured by Honda.
Many things in Japanese culture originated in China, for example, Go and bonsai.
Japan 's traditional food is seafood, rice, miso soup, and vegetables.
Noodles and tofu are also common.
Sushi, a Japanese food made of cooked rice with vinegar with other ingredients such as raw fish, is popular around the world.
The religion in Japan is mostly Shinto and Buddhist.
Due to the tolerant nature of the two main Japanese religions, and the resulting intermixing mixing of the two, many Japanese identify as both Shinto and Buddhist at the same time.
There are small numbers of Christians and Muslims, and a few Jews.
Since Japan is an island nation, Japan has several problems over territory because maritime boundaries can be hard to protect.
These days, Japan is competing for at least 4 different territories.
It can not agree with some neighbouring countries on whether the land belongs to Japan or the other country.
There are several important international airports in Japan.
Narita is the major international airport in the Tokyo area.
Kansai International Airport serves as the main airport for Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto.
Ch bu Centrair International Airport near Nagoya is the newest of the three.
Haneda Airport is close to central Tokyo and is the largest domestic airport in the country.
The Shinkansen is one of the fastest trains in the world and connects cities in Honshu and Kyushu.
Networks of public and private railways are almost all over the country.
People mostly travel between cities in buses.
Modern Japan is divided into 47 prefectures.
Before the Meiji period (1868-1912), the nation was divided into provinces which were consolidated in the prefectural system.
Japan has many traditional sports such as sumo, judo, karate, kyudo, aikido, iaido and kendo.
Also, there are sports which were imported from the West such as baseball, soccer, rugby, golf and skiing.
Japan has taken part in the Olympic Games since 1912.
It hosted the Olympic Games in 1964, 1972 and 1998.
From 1912 until now, Japanese sportspeople have won 398 medals in total.
Professional sports are also popular and many sports such as baseball (see Pacific League and Central League), soccer (see List of Japanese football teams), sumo, American football, basketball and volleyball, are played professionally.
Joshua Carter Jackson (born June 11, 1978) is a Canadian actor.
He has appeared in American television and movies, and is famous for his role as Pacey Witter in the television series Dawson 's Creek and Charlie Conway in The Mighty Ducks movie series.
John Ray (29 November 1627 17 January 1705) was an English naturalist, sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history.
Ray was a Protestant dissenter who had accepted the return of Charles II.
He was ordained in London in 1660, but refused to sign the Act of Uniformity of 1662.
The Act of Uniformity made the Book of Common Prayer compulsory in religious services, which was opposed by those of Puritan beliefs.
So Ray was forced to resign his Fellowship of Trinity College, Cambridge; he returned to his native village of Black Notley, near Braintree in Essex.
After this, his most important scientific works were supported financially by the Royal Society, whose President at a critical time in the 1680s was Samuel Pepys.
Ray published important works on plants, animals, and natural theology.
His classification of plants in his Historia Plantarum, was an important step towards modern taxonomy.
Ray rejected the system by which species were classified according to an either\/or type system.
Instead he classified plants by observation according to similarities and differences.
Thus he advanced scientific empiricism against the deductive rationalism of the scholastics.
He was the first person to give a biological definition of the term species.
"Ray sweeps away the litter of mythology and fable... and always insists upon accuracy of observation and description and the testing of every new discovery".
p10
Ray published about 23 works, depending on how one counts them.
The biological works were usually in Latin, the rest in English.
For ease of reading, the titles below are in English.
Including the various editions, there are 172 works of Ray, of which most are rare.
The only libraries with substantial holdings are all in England.
p153 The list in order of holdings is: The British Library, Euston, London.
Holds over 80 of the editions.
The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
The University of Cambridge Library.
Trinity College Library, University of Cambridge.
The Natural History Museum Library, South Kensington, London.
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 - 13 January 1941) was an Irish writer and poet of the modernist movement.
He was from Dublin, Ireland.
He wore an eyepatch, because of eye damage.
He could not see well.
His books are written in a special style.
At first he wrote in a way which describes very accurately how life is, in the short story collection called Dubliners.
In his next book, called A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he started a new style.
It is called stream of consciousness, which is writing all the thoughts that a character has.
His work influenced many other writers in the 20th century.
James Joyce was the oldest of ten children.
He went to a boarding school called Conglowes Wood College and later to Belvedere College.
(College here refers to secondary school not to university as it can in the U.S.) Conglowes was run by Jesuit priests.
When he was very young, his family was rich.
Later his father lost most of their money so he had to change schools and go to Belvedere College, which was cheaper.
Joyce met Nora Barnacle in 1904 and they began to have a long relationship until his death in 1941.
The couple moved out of Dublin to Z rich in 1904, then to Trieste, Paris then back to Z rich.
They married in 1931.
They had a son and a daughter.
Their daughter had a mental illness later in her life.
Because he was smart, his parents wanted him to go to college.
He studied modern languages at University College Dublin.
Joyce became a very famous writer after he published Ulysses.
He also began to have a lot of problems with his eyes and his family.
But he completed his last book, Finnegans Wake by 1939.
He died in Zurich.
Judo is a modern Japanese martial art and Olympic sport.
It was developed in 1882 by Jigor Kan.
Judo is very scientific in its training methods and fighting techniques.
Judo grew out of an older martial art, Jujutsu or J - jutsu.
Jujutsu was an ancient and deadly martial art which used chokes, throws, joint locks, and strikes.
Kan created judo by using techniques which were common in jujutsu.
He eliminated techniques that he thought were dangerous in training, so that students could train with resistance.
Some basic throws are Tai-otoshi and De-ashi-barai (these are in Japanese).
There are 2 types: groundwork and feet work.
Ground work is when both players are on the ground.
Usually the the attacker would be on top and the ukemi (defender) would be on the bottom.
In feet work both players would move along the mat in a variety of moves.
Every once in a while a player will throw his\/her opponent on the floor.
In competitions the players will go full on for each other and once someone has thrown his\/hers opponent down they need to hold them down for 25 seconds or the point wo n't count.
The person who has the most points at the end wins a gold, silver or bronze.
One of the best trophies is the spirit of judo.
You get the spirit of judo award for never giving up and carry on trying.
James Bond is a fictional British spy created by Ian Fleming in 1953.
In 1953, Fleming wrote Casino Royale, the very first James Bond novel.
The novel made a lot of money, and he continued to write one James Bond novel each year until he died in 1963.
In a 1956 South African radio program Moonraker he was voiced by Bob Holness.
In 1962 Albert.
R. "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman started to produce the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, starring Sean Connery as James Bond.
The movie became extremely popular, and they continued to make more Bond movies.
In the end of the 1960s Connery did not want to do any more Bond movies, and many thought that Bond was now dead.
In 1969, George Lazenby appeared in one movie as the Bond character, but the movie was not successful.
In 1971 Sean Connery stepped back into the role for one movie "Diamonds are Forever".
After this in 1973, producers came up with the Live and Let Die movie, starring Roger Moore as Bond.
The movie became a very big success.
The series continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s with Roger Moore playing the role of Bond.
In the 1980s, Bond movies were not as successful at the box office.
Unlike the 1960s and 1970s, in the 1980s there were many other action movies being produced that could compete with the Bond series.
After Moore left the role as Bond, he was replaced with Timothy Dalton in the late 1980s.
Dalton tried to make a serious, "down to earth" Bond, closer to the Fleming novels.
Fans did not like Dalton 's interpretation of the Bond character, and the movies made little money.
The Cold War ended in 1991.
Since Bond almost always fought Communists, many now thought that the Bond series of movies was finally dead.
In 1995, producers developed the Goldeneye movie, starring Pierce Brosnan as Bond.
This film made the Bond character well known in the 1990s.
Brosnan appeared in several Bond movies.
In 2002, the James Bond character was used in the 20th movie, Die Another Day, the 40th anniversary of the movies and the 50th anniversary since Fleming wrote his first Bond novel.
In 2006, the 21st movie, Casino Royale, was released.
Pierce Brosnan, who played James Bond in the previous four movies, was replaced by Daniel Craig, the first James Bond to have blonde hair.
The movie is based on the first Ian Fleming novel of the same name, but is set in the present day.
The movie features a cameo appearance by Richard Branson, a British billionaire.
It has a new model of Aston Martin DB9, the car that made James Bond so famous in the 1960s.
Many fans think that whilst this movie is different than other movies, it is much better, and movies in the future (however few there will be) will be in this new format.
In 2008, Craig appeared in a second Bond movie, Quantum of Solace and a third, Skyfall, in 2012.
His fourth appearance as Bond was with Spectre in 2016.
Many of the James Bond movies were massive hits.
However, there are two movies classed as unofficial Bond films and not recognized as part of the series.
The 1967 version of Casino Royale was a spoof, featuring "Jimmy Bond".
Also, Never Say Never Again was not made by Albert R. Broccoli 's production company, EON Productions.
Connery is the tallest actor to play James Bond to this day.
Japanese (-RRB- "Nihon-go" or "Nippon-go" in Japanese) is the language spoken in Japan, in East Asia.
A theory about its origin is that Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, and Turkish come from the same family of Altaic languages.
Interestingly, a different term is used for Japanese as a course of study by citizens: it is "kokugo" (-RRB-, which means national language.
Nonetheless, Japanese is still referred to as by the Japanese.
Japanese uses three separate writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji.
The first two are phonetic systems (writing that shows the pronunciation of Japanese words), and kanji is the Japanese variation of Chinese characters (which show the meaning of Japanese words).
The three systems are used interchangeably, and all three systems can often be found in the same sentence.
The three systems are each reserved for different purposes.
In English, the order of the words is very important.
For example, the sentences "Is it?"
and "It is."
mean different things.
In Japanese a lot of these differences are made by adding or changing the endings of words.
So a Japanese word has a stem called a "body", and additional parts (called suffixes).
By changing the suffix you can change the meaning of the word.
Japanese has five vowel sounds that can have two different lengths.
They are a, i, u, e, o, in IPA they are transliterated as \/ a \/, \/ i \/, \/ \/, \/ e \/, \/ o \/, and they are pronounced in English as ah, ee, oo, eh, oh.
Lengthening a vowel changes the meaning of the word: ojisan (, uncle) and ojiisan (, grandfather).
Japanese has a sound which is like the English "L" sound, but it is also like the English "R" sound.
(That is why it can be difficult for many Japanese to learn to make both "L" and "R" sounds when they speak English.)
Japanese has a sound which is not common in English which is usually written Tsu (-RRB-.
This sound appears in "tsunami" (-RRB-, the Japanese word for large ocean waves caused by earthquakes or extreme weather.
When foreigners speak Japanese, it is important they know how formal they must be when speaking to people you may or may not know.
In Japan, it could be considered quite impolite if you are not formal enough.
In Japanese, the sentence follows the subject-object-verb (SOV) order, meaning the verb is at the end of the sentence, and the subject is at the beginning.
In many sentences there is no subject.
The listener can guess what the subject is by thinking about the context and the form of the verb.
In Japanese, Japan is called Nihon (-RRB-, and the Japanese language is called Nihongo (-RRB- (- go means language).
Sometimes, the words Nippon and Nippongo are also used, but today these words are thought of as more nationalist, while Nihon is a more neutral word.
The kanji characters of the word mean "sun-origin."
This is because Japan is at the eastern edge of Asia, and to observers in China, the sun rose from the direction of Japan.
For this reason Japan is called "The Land of Rising Sun."
Japanese is an agglutinative language, especially in the verb system.
In agglutinative languages a word has a short "body" and prefixes or suffixes are added to change or to redefine the meaning.
Making new words in Japanese is very easy.
Sir John Tenniel (28 February 1820 25 February 1914) was a British illustrator.
He is famous for drawing the pictures in Alice 's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
He was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1893.
He was born and died in London.
Jazz is a type of music which was invented in the United States.
Jazz music combines African-American music with European music.
Jazz first became popular in the 1910s.
It is still a popular music to play and hear because of the different styles.
Some common jazz instruments include the saxophone, trumpet, piano, double bass, and drums.
It is difficult to give an exact definition for "jazz".
One important part of jazz is improvisation (improv), which means the person playing is making music up as they go along.
If a jazz band is playing a song, the song may have several solos where one player will improvise while the rest of the band, except for the rhythm section (such as the piano, bass, or drums), does not play.
Jazz began in the United States in the early 20th century.
Jazz music was first based on the music of African slaves who were forced to work in the plantations of the southern United States.
This included call and response songs, spirituals, chants and blue notes.
These characteristics are what developed blues, a sad song that slaves sung during their labor.
These influences were indirect, through earlier musical forms such as ragtime.
Jazz also has musical styles from European music, as well as the brass and stringed instruments and (sometimes) the use of musical notation.
There have been different types of jazz through time.
New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s.
Dixieland jazz was also popular.
In the 1930s, there was swing jazz, which was also called big band jazz.
In the 1940s, bebop became a major type of jazz, with fast songs and complex harmony.
Large jazz bands, which are called big bands, were also popular in the 1940s.
Big bands usually have 5 saxophone players, 4 or 5 trumpet players, 4 trombone players, a piano player or guitar player, an acoustic bass player, a drummer, and sometimes a singer.
In the 1950s, there was hard bop jazz.
In the 1960s, there was modern jazz and free jazz.
In the 1970s, jazz fusion began to blend jazz music with rock music.
Some jazz is still played with the same improv methods as it did at its beginning, except with modern electronic instruments.
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for the Tories), poet and cleric.
He became Dean of St. Patrick 's Cathedral in Dublin.
He is remembered for books and poems he wrote like: Gulliver 's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier 's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub.
Swift is probably the most well known prose satirist in the English language.
He is less well known for his poetry.
Swift originally published all of his work under pseudonyms such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier or anonymously.
He is known for being a master of two styles of satire; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
Swift was a good writer, famous for his satires.
The most recent collection of his prose works (Herbert Davis, ed.
Basil Blackwell, 1965 -) comprises fourteen volumes.
A recent edition of his complete poetry (Pat Rodges, ed.
Penguin, 1983) is 953 pages long.
One edition of his correspondence (David Woolley, ed.
P. Lang, 1999) fills three volumes.
John Ruskin named him as one of the three people in history who were the most influential for him.
Jello Biafra (born Eric Reed Boucher; June 17, 1958) is an American musician and spoken word artist.
Biafra was the lead singer and songwriter for San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.
He started the record label Alternative Tentacles with East Bay Ray in 1979.
Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States.
He ran for President in 2000.
James Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is an Academy and Golden Globe Award winning Canadian movie director.
He is also an oceanographer.
He is best known for his hit movies The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic and Avatar.
This article is about the Jewish religion.
For more information about the Jewish people, see Jew.
Judaism is the world 's oldest Abrahamic religion.
There are about 450 million followers who are called Jews.
It is one of the oldest monotheistic religions, teaching the belief in one God.
Both Christianity and Islam have similarities with Judaism.
These religions accept the belief in one God and the moral teachings of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), which includes the Torah or"."
The laws and teachings of Judaism come from the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible and oral traditions.
Some of these were first oral traditions and later written in the Mishnah, the Talmud, and other works.
The Torah is the most important holy book of Judaism.
The Hebrew Bible is a collection of writings called the "Tanakh" (-RRB- in Hebrew.
It is divided into three parts - Torah (, Instruction), Nevi ` im (, Prophets), and Ketuvim (, Writings).
The most important teaching of Judaism is that there is one God, who wants people to do what is just and compassionate.
Judaism teaches that a person serves God by learning the holy books and doing what they teach.
These teachings include both ritual actions and ethics.
Judaism teaches that all people are made in the image of God and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
The main teachings of Judaism about God are that there is a God and there is only one God.
Only God created the universe and only He controls it.
Judaism also teaches that God is spiritual and not physical.
Jews believe that God is one a unity: He is one, whole, complete being.
He can not be divided into parts and people can not say how He looks in words; they can only say how He is and what He does.
Jews believe that all goodness and morality is from God.
God is interested in what people do and He watches what they do.
Judaism teaches that all people are made in the image of God.
This is why people must be treated with dignity and respect.
A person serves God by being like God.
This means that they must do what is fair and just, show mercy, and behave with kindness and love for people.
Judaism says that God exists forever, that He is in every place, and that He knows all things.
He is above nature (supernatural) but He is in the world and He hears people who pray to Him and can answer them.
God is the main power in the universe.
Judaism teaches that God allows people to choose what to do this is called free will.
A person is responsible for their actions.
God rewards people who do good actions and punishes people who do bad actions.
God gives a person a reward or a punishment in this world, but He gives the final reward or punishment to the soul of the person after they die.
Jews believe that God made an agreement called a covenant with Abraham, the ancestor of the Jewish people.
The Bible says that God promised to bless Abraham and his descendants if they worshipped God and were faithful to him.
God made this covenant with Abraham 's son, Isaac, and with Isaac 's son, Jacob.
God gave Jacob another name Israel.
This is how Jacob s descendants got the name the Children of Israel or Israelites.
God later gave the Torah to the Israelites through their leader, Moses.
The Torah told the Israelites how to live and build their community.
God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments and other laws in the Torah.
The Jews are sometimes called the Chosen People.
This is because the Bible says God told them you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:6) and For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord chose you to be His own special nation out of all peoples on the earth (Deuteronomy 14:2).
Jews understand this means that they have special duties and responsibilities commanded by God.
For example, Jews must build a just society and serve only God.
Jews believe that this covenant works in two ways: if they follow God s laws, He will give them his love and protection, but they are also responsible for their sins bad actions and not doing what God told them.
Jews believe that they must teach other people that God exists and that God wants all people to do good actions.
Jews believe that their job in the world is to be "a light to the nations" (Isiah 49:6) by showing the people of the world ways to make the world a better place.
Jews believe that God has given them a special job to repair the world.
Their job is to make the world a better place with more good in it.
They must use the things in the world to increase good and come closer to God.
They call this tikkun olam repairing the world.
Jews see themselves as God s partner to repair the world in any way they can to find ways to lessen suffering of people and animals, to make more peace and respect between people, and protect the earth s environment from destruction.
Jews do not try to convince other people to believe in Judaism.
Jews believe they have a special job to show all peoples that God exists, but people do not have to be Jewish to follow God.
All people can serve God by following the Seven Commandments (rules) given to Noah.
But, Judaism accepts people who choose to change their religion to Judaism.
Jews believe that God tells them in the Torah the way of life that they must follow.
The Torah says God wants the people of Israel to walk in His ways, to love Him, and to serve Him, and to keep God s commandments (Deut.
10:12 13).
Actions are more important than beliefs and beliefs must be made into actions.
These actions are called mitzvot in Hebrew (singular: a mitzvah).
Sometimes they are called laws, "rules" or commandments.
Many people think of a mitzvah as "a good act," or "a good thing to do."
There are 613 mitzvot in the Torah.
Jews believe that the Torah gives mitzvot for all people; all people must keep seven laws that were taught to Noah and his children after the flood.
The Jews must keep 613 mitzvot, which are listed in the Torah.
The rabbis counted 365 mitzvot that Jews must not do (negative mitzvot), and 248 mitzvot that Jews must do (positive mitzvot).
Some mitzvot are for everyday life, and some are only for special times, such as Jewish holidays.
Many of the 613 mitzvot are about the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and can not be done now, since the Temple was destroyed.
Some of the mitzvot are about how people must act to other people.
For example, they must give charity to a poor person, or help a person who is in danger.
They must not steal or lie.
These are ethical and moral mitzvot.
Some mitzvot are about how people must act towards God.
For example, they must respect God s name, or not work on the Sabbath.
These are religious or ritual mitzvot.
Jews believe that God tells them to do both ethical and religious acts.
Jews see mitzvot as acts that sanctify bring holiness to the world and bring people and the world closer to God.
Jews do the mitzvot to sanctify the physical world and the things in it, such as food and drink, clothing, and natural activities such as sex, work, or seeing beautiful sights.
Before doing many acts, such as eating, Jews say a blessing a short prayer that God makes and gives a person the things that they need for life.
In Judaism, life is most holy and important.
A Jew must stop doing other mitzvot of the Torah to help save another person s life.
Jews believe that they must do the mitzvot with happiness and joy because the Bible says Serve God with joy; come before God with singing (Psalms 100:2).
Doing a mitzvah helps a person come close to God and that makes the person happy.
A group of Jews called the Hasidim say this is the best way to live.
They say that worrying takes people away from joy and they will not see the beauty and good in the world.
Many mitzvot in the Torah are about the Land of Israel.
The Talmud and later books call these mitzvot commandments connected to the Land because Jews can only do them in the Land of Israel.
For example, Jews give gifts to the poor or the priests from their fields every year, take fruit or animals to the Temple in Jerusalem, and must stop working on the land every seven years (the shmittah sabbatical year).
The Land of Israel is holy in Judaism.
A Jewish belief is that God created the Earth from Mount Moriah in Jerusalem in the Land of Israel, and He is always closest to this land.
Jews believe that this land is where God told the Jewish people to build a society to serve Him, and many mitzvot (commandments) in the Torah are about the Land of Israel.
The Jewish people believe their history as a nation begins with Abraham.
The story of Abraham in the Torah begins when God tells Abraham to leave his country.
He promises Abraham and his descendants a new home in the land of Canaan.
This is now known as the Land of Israel.
It is named after Abraham 's grandson, Jacob, who was also called Israel and who was the father of the twelve tribes.
This is where the name Land of Israel comes from.
The land is also called the Promised Land because in the Torah, God promises to give the land to the children of Abraham.
The rabbis of the Talmud understood from the Torah that it is a mitzvah for Jews to live in the land of Israel.
They saw living outside of Israel as not natural for a Jew.
Jews often called the land outside of Israel "galut."
This is usually translated as "diaspora" (a place where people are scattered), but the word more closely means "exile".
The story of going out of Egypt, called the Exodus, is very important in the way the Jewish people understand the world.
The Torah tells how God took a group of slaves the Israelites saved them from slavery, and tells them how to be His partner to build the world.
Jews see this story as a model for the whole world.
In the future, the whole world will change, and all the people of the world will serve the one God.
This will be God s kingdom on Earth.
The whole of Jewish history and world history is part of this process.
The prophets taught that God would send a person to the world who would help all the people of the world see that God is the maker and king of the world.
This person is called the Messiah.
The word Messiah comes from the Hebrew word mashiah, which means "the anointed one".
The Book of Isaiah says the Messiah will be a just king who will unite the Jewish people and lead them in God 's way.
The Messiah will also unite all the people of the world to serve God.
People will act with justice and kindness, and the whole world will be filled with peace.
Orthodox Jews still wait for the Messiah to come.
They believe that this will be a person.
Other Jews believe in a future time when justice and peace will come through the cooperation of all people and the help of God.
Jews believe that to know what God wants them to do, they must study the books of Torah and its laws and do what they teach.
These include both laws about how to behave to other people and how to serve God.
The two most important groups of books in Judaism are the Bible and the Talmud.
The beliefs and actions of Judaism come from these books.
Jewish teachers and scholars wrote more books, called commentaries.
They explain and say more about what is written in the Bible and Talmud.
The Torah is the most important of all Jewish writings.
The first five books of the Hebrew Bible (known to Christians as the "Old Testament") make up the Torah.
The Torah contains the basic laws of Judaism and describes the history of the Jews until the death of Moses.
Jewish tradition says that God told Moses what to write in the Torah, which is also called the Five Books of Moses.
Religious Jews believe that Moses brought the Ten Commandments and the Torah down from Mount Sinai.
The Ten Commandments are special because they were heard by all of the Jewish people at Mount Sinai.
However, in traditional Judaism, all of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah are equally important.
Jews divide the Hebrew Bible into three parts and call it the Tanakh.
The three parts are the Torah, which is the first five books; the Nevi ` im, which are the books of the prophets; and the Ketuvim, meaning the Writings, which are other books of history and moral teachings.
Rabbinic Jews also believe that there is another part of the Torah besides the 5 books of Moses.
It is called the Mishnah, also called the Oral Torah or Oral Law.
It explains how to follow the laws written in the 5 books.
There is a commentary (explanation) of the Mishnah, called the Gemara.
Together, the Mishna and the Gemara make up the Talmud.
Karaite Jews however believe that there is no additional Torah besides the 5 books of Moses.
Traditional Jews believe that God gave the written Torah and the oral Torah to Moses and that Moses told it to the Jewish people, and that it is the same today as it was back then.
Traditional Jews also believe that all of the commandments must still be followed today.
Liberal Jews believe that the Torah was inspired by God but written by human beings.
Liberal Jews believe that all of the ethical laws in the Torah must still be followed, but many ritual laws do not need to be followed today.
It is considered good in Judaism to talk about the commandments and to try to understand how to follow them.
The Talmud has many stories about Rabbis who argued about the commandments.
Over time, some opinions have become the rule for everyone.
Some rules are still being argued about.
Jews praise logical argument and looking for truth.
There is no single leader of Judaism who can decide how to follow the commandments or what to believe.
Even though Jews believe different things and they disagree about the rules, they are still one religion and one people.
Jews who follow the religious rules called "kashrut" only eat some types of food that are prepared by special rules.
Food that a Jew can eat is called kosher food.
Traditional Jews are very careful about kashrut.
They usually can not eat many foods in non-kosher restaurants or in the home of someone who does not keep kosher.
Sometimes, this makes it hard to visit people or to do business.
It is important to understand that this is part of their religion.
People help avoid this problem by choosing to dine with Traditional Jews in a kosher restaurant or serve them kosher food in their home.
Liberal Jews are not so careful about kosher, although some of them may keep some rules.
There are other rules for kosher food as well.
One of the commandments is to keep the Jewish Sabbath, or Shabbat.
Shabbat starts every Friday at sunset and ends on Saturday at nightfall.
Shabbat is a day of rest to thank God for making the universe.
The tradition of resting on Shabbat comes from the Torah.
According to the Torah, God created the world in six days and on the seventh day, Shabbat, He rested.
Many Jews go to their temple or synagogue to pray on Shabbat.
Religious Jews follow special rules on Shabbat.
These rules require Jews not to do creative work on Shabbat.
One reason for this is to give people a break from all the things that make them busy during the week.
This helps them focus more on appreciating God, their family, and the rest of creation.
Also it reminds people that God is the creator and ruler of the world; and no matter how great a person 's creative power is, it can not compare with God 's creation of the universe and everything in it.
Many of these categories of creative work include actions that people might not think of as work.
For instance, on Shabbat a Jew can not:
Traditional Jews are very careful about Shabbat.
It is a special day.
They clean their houses and prepare special food for Shabbat.
They dress in their nicest clothes.
They sing beautiful songs and say extra prayers in the synagogue.
They have dinner and lunch with their families.
Many families also invite guests for dinner and for lunch.
They eat special delicious food, and sing together traditional Shabbat songs.
On Shabbat afternoon people study Judaism together or just visit friends.
Liberal Jews do not follow those rules.
Some do go to synagogue, visit friends, or have special meals.
But they may also talk on the phone, drive cars, and go shopping.
For a very long time, most Jews in Europe believed the same basic things about Judaism.
Jews in other lands had different beliefs and customs than European Jews.
About 200 years ago, a small group of Jews in Germany decided to stop believing in many parts of Judaism and try to become more "modern" and more like Germans.
Those Jews were called Reform Jews.
Today there are three main kinds of Judaism: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism.
There are also kinds with a smaller number of people, such as Reconstructionist Judaism, and Karaite Judaism.
Each group has its own practices according to how it understands the Jewish laws.
Some do not believe in keeping most of the laws.
For example: Reform (also called Liberal or Progressive) Judaism does not require eating kosher food or keeping the Sabbath at all.
Reform Judaism teaches Jews to focus on the ethical laws of Judaism.
Conservative Judaism developed after Reform Judaism.
The leaders of Conservative Judaism felt that Reform Judaism was too radical.
They wanted to conserve (protect) Jewish tradition instead of reforming (changing) it.
Orthodox Jews do not believe that Reform or Conservative Judaism are correct because they believe that the laws given by God are timeless, and ca n't be changed.
In the most recent survey of Jews in the United States in 2000-2001, it was found that 35 % of American Jews say they are Reform, 27 % say they are Conservative, 10 % say they are Orthodox, 2 % say they are Reconstructionist and 25 % do not say what type they are.
In Israel, almost all Jews go to Orthodox synagogues.
There are very few Reform or Conservative synagogues, but there has been an steady increase since 2009.
In Israel, Jews do not call themselves Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox.
Instead, they mostly call themselves "Haredi" (completely religious) "Dati" (basically religious), "Masorati" (traditional\/conservative) or "Chiloni" (secular).
Surveys suggest that about 20 % of Israelis say they are secular, 25 % say they are Dati or Haredi and 55 % say they are traditional.
Names are very important in Judaism.
Many Jews believe that a name not only tells you who someone is, but also tells you something about them.
Names of God are very special in Judaism, so Jews do not write them or speak them fully but use other words instead.
That is why some Jews write G-d, with a" -" instead of an "o."
HaShem Means "The Name".
It is the word Jews use most often when not praying to talk about God.
Adonai means "My Lord."
This name tells Jews about God 's position.
God is the King of the World, and his name Adonai lets us know that.
Elohim means "one who is strong enough to do everything."
This name is used when talking about God 's power to create or God 's justice.
This tells us that God is the creator and that God rules the world with just laws.
The two names above are so special that Orthodox Jews use these names only when they pray and read the Torah.
When they are not praying or reading the Torah, they say "Hashem" (The Name) or "Elokim".
God - Some Jews write "God" by replacing the "o" with a dash, like this: "G-d".
They do this because God 's name is very holy so they are not allowed to throw away a piece of paper with "God" written on it.
However, if by accident "God" is written, then the paper can be disposed of in a special way and buried in a special place.
Others say that "God" is just an English word, not Hebrew, and so it is not holy.
YHWH ("Yehovah") is the most sacred name of God in Hebrew, and is not pronounced by most Jews.
No one knows where the name came from, or what exactly it means.
It looks like the Hebrew word "hayah," which is the verb "to be."
(According to Hebrew scripture, when Moses asked God who God was, God told Moses I am that I am.)
Jews believe that the name YHWH shows that God is endless.
Instead of trying to say it, most Jews say "haShem", which means "The Name."
Some people pronounce this name as Yahweh, or Jehovah.
Scholars of religion sometimes refer to "YHWH" as the Tetragrammaton, from Greek words meaning "four letters".
John "Stuart Little" Mill, known as John Stuart Mill (May 20, 1806 May 8, 1873), was an English philosopher and political economist.
He was a classical liberal thinker of the 19th century.
He was for utilitarianism, and he loved the ethical theory first proposed by his third godfather Jeremy Bentham.
Captain James Cook, FRS (27 October 1728 14 February 1779) was an English explorer, navigator and cartographer.
He made three voyages to the Pacific Ocean, mapping many areas and recording several islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time.
He is most notable for the British finding the east coast of Australia, finding the Hawaiian Islands and the first mapping of Newfoundland and New Zealand.
During his lifetime, he sailed twice around the world.
He crossed the Antarctic Circle and found new islands and landscapes in North America and the South Pacific.
During his trips, he spent a lot of time on science experiments, and mapping new areas.
He also wrote a lot of books about what he found.
Cook was born on 27 October 1728 in Marton in Yorkshire.
He was a son of a Scottish farmer.
He was educated at the school in Great Ayton, and at 17 he began work in a shop at Staithes.
At 18, Cook became a sailor, and became an apprentice to John Walker of Whitby.
Walker 's business was transporting coal.
Cook learned mathematics and navigation from Walker.
Cook was not just a normal seaman.
He studied as much as he could.
That is how he learned a lot of good knowledge about navigation and science.
He was sent on three expeditions with the ship called Endeavour all over the world.
He had four sons and one daughter.
Their names were Elizabeth Cook, Hugh Cook, George Cook, Nathaniel Cook and Joseph Cook.
His father s name was James Cook.
He had 3 sisters and 2 brothers.
Their names were Mary Cook, Margaret Cook, William Cook, Jane Cook and John Cook.
Joseph Stalin (or Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin; 18 December 1878 5 March 1953) was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death.
He replaced Vladimir Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union.
Stalin was a totalitarian ruler, and stayed in power by removing anyone he thought might be a threat to him.
His ideas and policies turned the Soviet Union into a powerful, modern nation, the largest on Earth.
It also led to the deaths of millions of people.
His form of government was later called Stalinism.
Stalin invaded Poland on 18 September 1939.
In the subsequent World War II, Stalin stayed neutral but signed a deal of peace with Germany 's leader Adolf Hitler.
He then led a bloody war after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
The end of the war saw Stalin gain control of all Eastern Europe including part of Germany.
There, a series of loyal Marxist-Leninist single-party states were set up, extending his power and determining the Soviet Union 's position as a superpower..
Stalin was born as Ioseb Besarionis dze Jugashvili, or Iosif Dzhugashvili.
He adopted the name "Stalin" later.
Ioseb Vissarionovich Jugashvili was born in a small one room house in Gori, Georgia (country).
His father made and fixed shoes.
His father was often drunk and used to hit his wife and his son until his death in a fight in 1890.
Joseph had smallpox when he was young.
This left his face scarred.
Later, photographs were often changed to hide the scars.
His left arm was also shorter because of an accident.
He was educated at the Gori church school.
Stalin studied to be a priest at a seminary (school for priests) in Tbilisi.
He was an active student reading many books, especially books that were not allowed by the seminary.
This included books by Karl Marx.
He joined a Marxist group in 1898, the Mesame Dasi, or Group Three.
He left school in 1899 and got a job at the Tbilisi Physical Institute.
He joined groups that were trying to start a revolution to remove the Tsar.
They wanted a different type of government.
The police raided his house in 1901 while hunting for people who opposed the government.
Stalin escaped but went into hiding so the police could not find him.
He organized anti-government activities such as May Day marches and protests.
He became a Bolshevik.
He supported a violent revolution, and did not support the Mensheviks.
The secret police caught him in April 1902 and exiled him without trial to Siberia.
He lived in the village of Novaya Uda.
He soon escaped from Siberia.
This led to many later claims that he was a police spy.
The arrest of another Bolshevik, Stephan Shaumyan, a rival of Stalin, increased these beliefs.
At the end of 1905, he went to a meeting in Finland and met Vladimir Ilich Lenin.
Lenin was not what Stalin had expected.
The government arrested and exiled Stalin several times in the next ten years.
This increased his power in the Bolshevik party and he was elected to the Central Committee of the party in 1912.
He was promoted to a position at St. Petersburg.
Stalin was a member of the Bolshevik Party, but did not do much in the Russian Revolution of 1917.
He was writing and editing Pravda, the party newspaper.
He had a number of organizational jobs in the Communist Party.
In 1922 he became General Secretary.
He was able to give jobs to people he liked in the Communist Party.
These supporters helped him become the leader after Vladimir Lenin died in 1924.
Stalin tried to collectivize farms.
Collectivization meant taking the land from owners of all farms and joining it into large farms run by the government.
Communist officials then let farmers work the new farms and told them to turn the harvest over to the government.
They did not work well.
Because they were not paid much money, and whatever they grew went to the state, the workers did not try their best.
The best farming worked on very small bits of land given to the peasants to grow what they liked.
On these pieces of land, farmers could keep what they grew.
In 1938 these parts of land were 4 % of Soviet farmland.
However, they gave 20 % of its produce.
Stalin cooperated with Hitler before World War II.
Later on, in 1941, Hitler turned against Stalin and attacked the Soviet Union, trying to conquer it.
After the Operation Barbarossa invasion, the USSR began working with the Weatern Allies to defeat Germany.
In the end, Germany lost, but the USSR had more casualties than any other country during the war.
When World War II was over, the Soviet army ended up occupying many countries in Europe, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and part of Germany, imposing Marxism-Leninism on these countries.
Stalin continued to rule over the Soviet Union until he died.
Stalin also militarized Russia by focusing the country 's time and energy towards weapons, vehicles, and the armed forces.
Stalin died on March 5, 1953.
It was officially said to be because of a stroke.
In 2003, however, a group of Russian and American historians said that they believed Stalin had been poisoned with warfarin, possibly by the men who took over the government after Stalin died.
Led by Lavrentiy Beria, these were Vyacheslav Molotov and Georgy Malenkov.
Nikita Krushchev later began a process called "De-Stalinization", which meant taking apart much of the political system that Stalin made.
Stalin was denounced as a tyrant.
After outsmarting and defeating his rivals, Krushchev established a personal control over the government comparable to Stalin 's own, even if he never went as far in murdering millions of people.
Stalin is a very controverisal figure in history.
Many historians see him as a ruthless dictator, while others praise him as the Father of the Soviet State.
He has been criticized for his role in the Holodomor.
A recent poll in Russia (2008) listed him as the third most popular person in Russian history.
In 2006, a poll stated that almost half the adults in Russia thought Joseph Stalin was a good person.
January is the first month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, coming between December (of the previous year) and February (of the current year).
It has 31 days.
January is named for Janus, the Roman god of doors and gates.
January and February were put on the calendar after all the other months.
This is because in the original Roman calendar, winter did not have months.
Although March was originally the first month, January became the new first month because that was when people chose the new consuls (Roman leaders).
January is a winter month in the Northern Hemisphere and a summer month in the Southern Hemisphere.
In each hemisphere, it is the seasonal equivalent of July in the other.
Perihelion, the point in its orbit where the Earth is closest to the Sun, also occurs in this month, between January 2 and January 5.
January has 31 days and starts on the same day of the week as October in common years and the same day as April and July in leap years.
It ends on the same day of the week as February and October in common years, and ends on the same day as July in leap years.
January is the only month of the year that always has a "twin" - a month that starts and ends on the same day of the week as it does.
In a common year, this is October.
In a leap year, this is July.
January 's flower is the carnation with its birthstone being the garnet.
The meaning of the garnet is constancy.
The first day of January is called New Year 's Day.
It is said that it became this date when Roman consuls took office on this day in 153 BC.
Different calendars across Europe made this the start of the New Year at different times, as some observed it on March 25.
Reaching over from December, the Christmas season in Christianity also extends into this month.
Eastern churches celebrate Christmas on January 6 or January 7, and Epiphany on January 18 or January 19 - In Western Christianity this occurs on January 6, with Christmas occurring on December 25.
John Constantine "Johnny" Unitas (May 7, 1933 September 11, 2002, often called "Johnny U."), was a professional American football player in the 1950s through the 1970s.
He was a record-setting quarterback and the National Football League 's most valuable player in 1959, 1964 and 1967.
His record of throwing a touchdown pass in 47 consecutive games (between 1956-1960) is unrivaled.
Unitas is commonly considered the greatest quarterback of all-time.
He spent his first and last seasons each with the Pittsburgh Steelers and San Diego Chargers.
He is most famous for his time with the Baltimore Colts.
He was part of what some considered "The Greatest Game ever Played," in 1959.
Unitas handed a ball to Alan Ameche, who scored against the New York Giants.
The Colts eventually moved from Baltimore to Indianapolis in 1984.
Unitas supported the Baltimore Ravens and is part of their Ring of Honor (Inducted 2002).
See also: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15795636@N02/2103926819/
John Jacob Astor (July 17, 1763 March 29, 1848), born Johann Jakob Astor, was a German-American businessman.
He was born in Germany and moved to London and then to New York City in 1784.
He started a business trading furs.
By 1800, he had made half a million dollars trading furs.
His company was called The Pacific Fur Trading Company.
In the early 1800s, his company was trading furs in Oregon.
His fur traders found the pass through which the Oregon Trail passes.
He made even more money in New York real estate.
When he died in 1848, he was worth over $ 50 million.
Today, his fortune would be over $ 150 billion.
The city of Astoria, Oregon was named for him.
So was the neighborhood Astoria, Queens and Astor Place in Manhattan.
The Julian calendar is a calendar that was invented by Julius Caesar, the leader of Ancient Rome.
It is a reform of the Roman calendar.
It was first used in the year 709 Ab urbe condita, or 45 BC.
Caesar consulted the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria.
Very probably it was made to approximate the tropical year, which was known at least since Hipparchus.
The calendar has a regular year of 365 days divided into 12 months, and a leap day is added every four years to the month of February, making the average Julian year 365.25 days.
In the 16th century, the Gregorian calendar was introduced in Europe because it was more accurate with regard to the length of the year, and it also moved the date for the vernal equinox, the first day of spring (or of fall in the Southern Hemisphere) to where it belonged again, on March 21.
The Gregorian calendar has 97 leap days every 400 years, while the Julian had exactly 100.
Some countries used this calendar to the 20th century.
Mount Athos, and many national Eastern Orthodox churches still use the Julian calendar, or a revised form, introduced in 1923.
The main problem with the Julian Calendar is that it makes too many leap days, which means that it gains a day about every 128 years.
People sometimes use the term Old Style or O.S. to refer to the Julian calendar, with N.S. or New Style referring to the Gregorian calendar.
John Quincy Adams (July 11, 1767 February 23, 1848) was the sixth President of the United States.
He was the first President who was the son of a President.
Several cities are named after Adam 's middle name such as Quincy, Illinois.
He was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1767.
He watched the Battle of Bunker Hill, a fight of the American Revolutionary War, from his family 's farm.
When his father, John Adams, was in Europe, John Quincy went with him as his secretary.
He became good at speaking other languages.
He went to Harvard College and became a lawyer.
At age 26 he was appointed Minister to the Netherlands and then he went to Berlin.
In 1802 he was elected to the United States Senate.
Six years later President James Madison appointed him Minister to Russia.
Adams was Secretary of State when James Monroe was President.
He organized joint control of Oregon with England and helped get Florida from Spain.
Adams helped make the Monroe Doctrine.
Adams was elected president by the United States House of Representatives after the 1824 election that had no one get a majority of electoral votes.
People who wanted future president Andrew Jackson to win said there was a deal between Adams and Speaker of the House Henry Clay.
Adams made Clay his Secretary of State.
Adams passed law for U.S. improvements as part of what he called the "American System."
This means he created roads, canals, and used high tariffs, or taxes on imports and exports.
Adams fought Congress many times as many supporters of Andrew Jackson did not like his support of a national bank and tariffs (taxes on trade).
Adams lost the 1828 election to Jackson.
The election was noted for the personal attacks made by the candidates against each other.
Adams returned to Massachusetts for a short time after he was lost.
He returned to Washington D.C. in 1831 after being elected to the United States House of Representatives.
He was a leading opponent of slavery.
He remained in Congress until his death on February 23, 1848.
The Jurassic is the second geological period in the Mesozoic era.
It began 201.3 million years ago, and ended 145 million years ago.
The Jurassic period happened between the Triassic and Cretaceous periods.
During the Jurassic period, the climate was hotter and wetter than it is today.
Carbon dioxide levels and sea levels were also higher than today 's are.
The Kimmeridge Clay of the Upper Jurassic was laid down in an environment which does not exist on the earth today.
Much of Western Europe was covered by a high sea level.
The supercontinent Pangaea was beginning to break up, causing a narrow Atlantic Ocean.
Because of this, the United Kingdom was covered by a shallow and largely anoxic sea, perhaps less than 100 metres deep, with occasional landmasses.
This was shallower water than the Blue Lias of the Lower Jurassic.
It was often low in oxygen, which caused its organic material to decompose, but only partially.
The Jurassic 's mudstones are organic-rich, and gave rise to most of the North Sea oil.
Forces of tension and rifting (breaking apart) made the supercontinents Laurasia and Gondwana.
This was the start of the break-up of Pangaea, a process which took a long time to complete.
Floods of lava flowed from fissures (splits) and volcanos.
By the end of the Jurassic, South America had begun to part from Africa.
In the western part of North America, mountain ranges began to form.
This continued as the American tectonic plates gradually moved west.
The westward-moving North American plates gradually rode over the Pacific Ocean plates to form the Rocky Mountains.
On sea and land, evolutionary trends which started in the Upper Triassic continued through the Jurassic.
Archosaurian reptiles dominated the land biota.
Reptile groups radiated and filled many niches.
Dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles (Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, turtles) all flourished.
Amongst Invertebrates, there was much change.
Modern predators like starfish, crabs, and hole-boring gastropods took over the sea floor, eating the benthic fauna in huge numbers.
Brachiopods lost their grip on the in-shore habitats; molluscan bivalves took their place.
Early mammals existed, but mostly as small creatures living in burrows, on the margins of a reptilian world.
The first fossils of small dinosaurs with feathers, called Anchiornis, come from the Jurassic period.
The first fossil bird, Archaeopteryx, comes from the Upper Jurassic.
The dominant land plants were the gymnosperms.
Jeep is a brand of American automobiles that is a division of FCA US LLC (formerly Chrysler Group, LLC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.
The former Chrysler Corporation acquired the Jeep brand, along with the remaining assets of its owner American Motors, in 1987.
Jeep 's current product range consists solely of sport utility vehicles and off-road vehicles, but has also included pickup trucks in the past.
The original Jeep was the prototype Bantam BRC.
Willys MB Jeeps went into production in 1941 specifically for the military.
Arguably that makes them the oldest four-wheel drive mass-production vehicles now known as SUVs.
The Jeep became the primary light 4-wheel-drive vehicle of the United States Army and the Allies during World War II.
It remained so in the postwar period.
The term became common worldwide in the wake of the war.
Doug Stewart notes: The spartan, cramped, and unstintingly functional jeep became the ubiquitous World War II four-wheeled personification of Yankee ingenuity and cocky, can-do determination."
The first civilian models were produced in 1945.
It inspired a number of other light utility vehicles, such as the Land Rover.
Many Jeep variants serving similar military and civilian roles have since been designed in other nations.
In 2007 Jeep began manufacturing crossover SUVs with its Compass and Patriot models.
This led to the 2013 Jeep Cherokee midsize crossover.
Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean; it is part of the Greater Antilles.
The island, 10,990 k in area, lies about 145 k south of Cuba, and 191 k west of Hispaniola.
Its capital is Kingston; other towns include Montego Bay, St. Ann 's Bay and Spanish Town.
The island is divided into three counties Cornwall, Middlesex and Surrey which are subdivided into 14 parishes: Kingston, St. Andrew, St. Catherine, Clarendon, Manchester, St. Elizabeth, Westmoreland, Hanover, St. James, Trelawny, St. Ann, St. Mary, Portland and St. Thomas.
Jamaica is the third-largest island country in the Greater Antilles.
Its Ta no name was Xaymaca, meaning "Land of Springs".
The island is known for the Rastafarian movement, as well as reggae artist Bob Marley.
The popular sprinter Usain Bolt is also an asset from the country.
The Taino indigenous people, originating in South America, settled on the island between 4000 and 1000 BC.
When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1494, there were more than 200 villages ruled by caciques (chiefs of villages).
The south coast of Jamaica was the most populated, especially around the area now known as Old Harbour.
Christopher Columbus, during his second voyage to the Americas, claimed Jamaica for Spain after landing there on 5 May 1494 and his probable landing point was Dry Harbour, now called Discovery Bay.
There is some debate as to whether he landed in St. Ann 's Bay or in Discovery Bay.
St. Ann 's Bay was named "Saint Gloria" by Columbus, as the first sighting of the land.
In 1503, during his fourth voyage, Columbus had to spend one year on the northern coast of the island, and he named the island Isla de Santiago (by Sant Iago Apostol, in Spanish Santiago).
In 1509, the new Governor of the Hispaniola, Diego Columbus, sent Juan de Esquivel, a Conquistador born in Seville, Spain, with 70 men to Jamaica to complete the conquest of that island.
They first lived in the St. Ann 's Bay area and soon Esquivel founded a town, Sevilla La Nueva (in English, "The New Seville") on the north coast, one mile to the west of St. Ann 's Bay.
Sevilla was abandoned around 1524 because it was deemed unhealthy.
The capital was moved to Spanish Town, then called Saint Jago de la Vega, in the south around 1534.
In 1654 Oliver Cromwell decided to break the Spanish control of the West Indies and he sent a fleet in an expedition) led by William Penn and General Robert Venables.
The fleet arrived to the Santo Domingo island on 13 April 1655 but the British lost in two battles on 17 and 25 April and they decided to move to Jamaica.
On 10 May 1655, Penn and Venables led a successful attack on Jamaica.
The Spanish surrendered to the English, freed their slaves and then fled to Cuba.
It was this set of freed slaves and their descendants living in the Jamaican mountains who became known as the Maroons.
After a long period of direct British colonial rule, Jamaica gained a degree of local political control in the late 1930s, and held its first election under full universal adult suffrage in 1944.
Jamaica joined nine other U.K. territories in the West Indies Federation in 1958 but withdrew after Jamaican voters rejected membership in 1961.
Jamaica got its independence in 1962, remaining a member of the Commonwealth.
Jamaica is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II serving as the monarch.
However, as Elizabeth II is shared as head of state of fifteen other countries (the Commonwealth realm) in addition to the United Kingdom and resides mostly in the United Kingdom, she is thus often represented as Queen of Jamaica in Jamaica and abroad by the Governor-General of Jamaica.
The governor-general is nominated by the Prime Minister of Jamaica and appointed by the monarch.
All the members of the Cabinet are appointed by the governor-general on the advice of the prime minister.
The monarch and the governor-general serve largely ceremonial roles.
The Parliament of Jamaica is bicameral.
This means that it consists of two Houses, the Senate, also called the Upper House, and the House of Representatives, also known as the Lower House.
The members of the House (known as Members of Parliament or MPs) are elected by the people of Jamaica.
The leader of the political party with most members in the House of Representatives is appointed by the governor-general to be the prime minister.
Senators are nominated jointly by the prime minister and the parliamentary leader of the opposition and are then appointed by the governor-general.
The current prime minister of Jamaica is Andrew Holness, having been inaugurated on 3 March 2016.
Prime Minister Holness acts as head of government of Jamaica.
Jamaica has traditionally had a system of two parties, with power often alternating between the People 's National Party and Jamaica Labor Party (JLP).
The party with current administrative and legislative power is Jamaica Labor Party, with a two-thirds Parliamentary majority as of 2016.
Jamaica is divided into 14 parishes, which are grouped into three historic counties that have no administrative relevance.
In 2011 (last national census), there were 2,697,983 people living in Jamaica: 1,334,533 men and 1,363,450 women.
There were 1,453,438 (53.9 %) living in towns and cities.
The population density was 245.5 persons\/km.
The following table shows the parishes with their populations in the 2011 census.
The official language of Jamaica is English and the population also speaks Jamaican Creole English.
The people of Jamaica is 62.5 % Protestant (10.8 % Seventh-day Adventist Church, 9.5 % Pentecostal, 8.3 Other Church of God, 7.2 % Baptist, 6.3 % New Testament Church of God, 4.8 % Church of God in Jamaica, 4.3 % Church of God of Prophecy, 3.6 % Anglicans, 7.7 % other Christian), 2.6 % Catholics, 14.2 % other or unspecified, 20.9 % none.
Jamaica is between latitudes 17 42 "N and 18 31 "N and longitudes 78 22 "W and 76 11", that is between the equator and the Tropic of Cancer.
It has an area of 10,990 k.
Jamaica is the third-largest island country in the Greater Antilles, after Cuba and the Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic); it is larger than Puerto Rico.
The island is 235 k from east to west; the width, from north to south, varies between 35 k to 82 k. The country is composed mainly of the mainland, but near the coast there are a few isolated small islands.
The Blue Mountains are the longest mountain range in Jamaica.
They include the island 's highest point, Blue Mountain Peak, at (2256 m.
The Rio Minho is the longest river in Jamaica at 92.8 k. It rises close to the island 's geographic center, flows generally south-southwest and reaches the Caribbean Sea at Carlisle Bay in the central south coast, to the west of the island 's southernmost point, Portland Point.
The Black River is one of the longest rivers in Jamaica.
At a length of 53.4 k, it was believed to be the longest until it was discovered that the Rio Minho was longer.
It was originally called Rio Caobana.
Jan Mayen is an island in the Arctic Ocean.
It is part of Norway.
The island 's area is 373 km.
A large part of the island is an active volcano, the Beerenberg, which is 2,277 m high.
Jan Mayen is 600 km north of Iceland, 500 km east of Greenland and 1000 km west of the Norwegian mainland.
There is a radio station and a meteorological station on the island.
The staff at these stations are the only people living on the island.
There are many claims and stories about discovery of the island.
Some claims and possible discoveries are as early as the beginning of the 6th century.
However, the first discovery that is certain was in 1614.
The Dutchman Jan Jacobs May van Schellinkhout visited the island then and it is named for him.
His first mate made maps of some of the coast.
It is incorrectly assumed that Henry Hudson discovered the island in 1607 and called it Hudson 's Tutches or Touches, but there is no evidence for this.
Thereafter it was allegedly seen several times by navigators who claimed its discovery and renamed it.
Thus, in 1611 or the following year whalers from Hull named it Trinity Island; in 1612 Jean Vrolicq, a French whaler, claimed in 1629 that he had discovered the island and called it le de Richelieu; and in 1614 English captain John Clarke named it Isabella.
The island has very few residents.
The Long Range Navigation (Loran-C) base has a staff of 14 and a weather services station has a staff of four.
The staff members of both stations live in Olonkinbyen.
The island has no native people living on it, but is given the ISO 3166-1 country code SJ, the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD).
no (.
sj is allocated but not used) and data code JN.
Its amateur radio call sign prefix is JX.
Jarvis Island (; formerly known as Bunker Island) is an uninhabited island owned by the United States.
The small island is a part of the United States Minor Outlying Islands, a group of mostly uninhabited islands.
Jarvis Island was officially made part of the United States in 1858.
People used to mine guano there, but they then abandoned it.
The United States treats it as a nature reserve.
Located 25 miles south of the equator, Jarvis Island, is an uninhabited coral island located in the South Pacific Ocean.
Jarvis has no known natural freshwater sources, and very little rain.
This creates a very bleak, flat landscape with plants no larger than shrubs.
Jarvis Island has no ports or docks, other than a reef the guano miners blew up in order for the cargo boats to be able to drop anchor.
Its grass, vines and low-growing bushes are primarily a nesting, roosting, and foraging habitat for wildlife.
The island has a tropical desert climate, with high temperatures in the day, constant wind, and a very hot sun.
There is no evidence that the island has ever supported a native human population, but on August 30, 1913, the Amaranth was carrying a cargo of coal from Newcastle, New South Wales, to San Francisco when it crashed on Jarvis ' southern shore.
Ruins of ten wooden buildings, and a two-story house among them, could still be seen by the Amaranth crew, who left Jarvis aboard two lifeboats.
Also, Settlers were moved to Jarvis Island in 1935 to maintain a weather station and plan a landing field.
A settlement called Millersville was established on the west coast of the island because of it was the highest elevation.
The Japanese shelled the island in 1942 and the men living on Jarvis were evacuated soon afterward.
The United States claimed possession of Jarvis under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.
The Act gave American citizens the right to claim any unclaimed, uninhabited islands for the purpose of mining guano.
Because at the time guano was a very valuable asset used for fertilizer.
Jersey is an island off the northwest coast of France.
It is a crown dependency of the British monarchy.
Jersey is called a bailiwick because the person who is the head of law for the island is called the Bailiff.
The Bailiwick of Jersey also includes the islands of the Minquiers and Ecr hous, where nobody lives.
The other islands of the Channel Islands belong to the Bailiwick of Guernsey.
The country code (also used for internet) is JE.
Over ninety-seven thousand people live on the main island.
Thirty per cent of them live in its only town, Saint Helier.
Along with English and French, more than two thousand people speak J rriais, a dialectal form of the Norman language.
The Bailiwick of Jersey is not a part of the United Kingdom or of the European Union.
It has its own parliament called the States of Jersey which passes laws for the island.
Jersey is divided into 12 parishes which elect their own administration.
Johnston Atoll is an island in the Pacific Ocean.
It is a property of the United States.
The United States is currently trying to sell it.
The military used the Island for many things including a re-fueling location for planes going oversees, a chemical weapons ammunition storage facility, and a test launch location for nuclear testing.
It was inhabited by all forces of the US military and government contract workers.
The island is named after Captain James Johnston, who discovered it in 1807.
The island was mined for guano until 1890.
After that, it was used as an army base.
Johannes Kepler (27 December 1571 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer.
He was Tycho Brahe 's apprentice.
Tycho Brahe looked at the way the planets moved in the sky.
Johannes Kepler found a simple way to say how the planets move.
Kepler also studied other things like Kepler 's supernova.
A planet moves along a path called an orbit.
Kepler used three laws to say what form the path has and how fast the planet moves.
Kepler published the first two laws in 1609, and the third in 1619.
John Bardeen (23 May 1908 30 January 1991) was an American physicist and electrical engineer.
He is the only person to win two Nobel Prizes in Physics.
Bardeen was born in Madison, Wisconsin.
His father, Charles Bardeen was a Professor at the Medical School of the University of Wisconsin.
He completed his bachelor 's degree and master 's degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He completed his PhD in Physics at Princeton University in 1936.
Bardeen worked with William Shockley and Walter Brattain to invent the transistor on 23 December 1947.
They shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1956.
Later, Bardeen worked with Leon Cooper and Robert Schrieffer.
They created the BCS theory of superconductivity, named after them.
For this work they shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1972.
Bardeen was a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1951 to 1991.
Jewellery (or jewelry) refers to any clothing accessory that is worn as a decoration.
In itself, jewellery has no other purpose than to look attractive.
However, it is often added to items that have a practical function.
Items such as belts and handbags are mainly accessories but may be decorated.
A broach, often worn to keep a cloak closed, could be highly decorated with jewels.
Necklaces, finger rings and earrings are the most usual kinds of jewellery.
Humans have made jewelry for a long time.
There are many forms of jewelry worn for traditional, social or religious reasons.
Jewelry can come in many forms, worn on any part of the body or clothing.
Jewelry most often are rings, chains, bead strings, pendants and piercings, worn around or on different body parts.
Jewelry can be made from any material.
The first jewelry was made from bone, animal teeth, wood or stone.
Jewelry often uses gemstones and precious metals.
Fashion jewelry or Costume jewelry is jewelry that is worn just for fashion, and is not made of expensive materials.
metal-worker and inventor.
He is famous for his work in printing in the 1450s, and is specifically known for inventing typography.
Gutenberg was born in Mainz, the son of a merchant, Friele Gensfleisch zur Laden.
Gutenberg 's father took the surname "zum Gutenberg" after the name of the place they now lived.
Gutenberg invented a sort of metal for printing; inks; a way to fix type (metal letters) very accurately; and a new sort of printing press.
He took the idea for his printing press from the presses wine-makers used.
Many people say Gutenberg invented printing with moveable type, but it was already invented in China before that: see printing.
Before movable type, people used block printing, where the printer prints a whole page from one piece of metal or wood.
With movable type, the printer makes a letter (A, B, C...) from a piece of metal or wood, and can use it again and again in different words.
Together, all Gutenberg 's inventions made printing fast.
In Renaissance Europe, there was an information explosion - in a short time, people printed a lot of new books.
The high number of new books was partly because of the popular Bible Gutenberg printed the Gutenberg Bible.
This was the first Bible people made in large numbers; Gutenberg started on 23 February 1455.
Gutenberg was not a clever businessman, and did not get much money from his system.
He had legal problems, and lost his machines to his partner, Johann Fust.
The Archbishop at the time sympathized with Gutenberg because of his contributions to society, so told him that he would receive a pension each year with clothes, wine, and grain.
Gutenberg died in Mainz, Germany, in 1468.
In his lifetime Gutenberg was not successful, but his invention was very important.
In a short time, news and books were traveling around Europe very fast.
Scientists could communicate better, and it helped the development of science and technology.
More people learned to read.
Today, there are still 60 Gutenberg Bibles.
They are probably the oldest books that printers made with moveable type.
The Gutenberg Galaxy and Project Gutenberg use Gutenberg 's name.
The city of Guttenberg, Iowa in the United States is named after him.
James Brown (May 3, 1933 December 25, 2006) was an American R&B and funk singer.
He was known as the "Godfather of Soul".
He was born in Barnwell, South Carolina and grew up in Augusta, Georgia.
Brown was arrested by police on many occasions.
When he was 16, he was convicted of armed robbery, for which he spent three years in a youth detention center.
His other convictions include assaults.
Four of Brown 's albums were in Rolling Stone magazine 's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Brown 's most well known song is "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine".
In 2006, Brown died of pneumonia and heart disease in Atlanta.
There was a public memorial service at Apollo Theater.
Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Prince were there.
In 1993 Brown was in The Simpsons episode Bart 's Inner Child.
Jules Verne (February 8, 1828 March 24, 1905) was a French writer.
He was one of the first authors to write science fiction.
Some of his books include Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).
He was born in the city of Nantes, France.
His father was a lawyer, and at the beginning, Verne wanted to study law as well.
When he was nineteen, he started writing long pieces of literature, but his father wanted him to earn money as a lawyer, not as a writer.
In 1847, his father sent him to Paris to start studying law.
In 1848, Jules Verne, on a visit home, fell in love, but the girl 's parents did not want her to marry him.
Verne was depressed when he heard that the girl had been married to someone else - a rich, older man.
In his stories, Jules Verne often writes about women married to people they do not love.
He returned to Paris to find it on the verge of revolution: the French Revolution of 1848 deposed the king, and Louis-Napol on Bonaparte was elected as the first president of the Republic of France.
(A republic is a country which does not have a king or queen, but has a president instead.)
Verne continued to study law until 1851, but all the time he was writing and meeting with other authors and artists.
Finally, in 1852, he decided to give up being a lawyer, and become a full-time professional writer instead.
His father was very unhappy with this decision, but Verne was stubborn and strong-minded, so he went ahead with his plans.
Verne went to Paris to try to find success.
At first, he did not find any fame.
Over time, he became a fan of science, while becoming well-known for his writing.
His love of science and writing led him to write stories and novels that are now called "science fiction".
Many people say Jules Verne was the creator of the science fiction genre.
Verne lived to write.
He wrote many stories.
These included fiction novels, theater works, and other novels.
In 1886, his young nephew, Gaston, who had paranoia, shot Verne in the leg.
After that, Verne had a permanent limp in his leg.
This may have resulted in his darker writing styles in that time period.
Verne married Aim e du Fraysse de Viane in January 1857 with his father 's blessing.
In August 1861, their son was born.
He continued to write until his death.
On 24th of March 1905, Verne, who was sick with diabetes, died at his home in Amiens, France.
Jules Verne wrote about many things which did not exist when he was alive.
Some of these things later became real.
Verne was far from being a scientist, but his passion for technology and the progress being made at the time served to introduce many of the inventions that were to come and that, over time, have ended up becoming ordinary elements of our every-day life.
In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Captain Nemo and his electric submarine were a modern marvel.
Electricity was very new at the time, and had never been used to power an underwater ship.
In an 1889 article, "In the Year 2889," Jules Verne described an alternative to newspapers: "Instead of being printed, the Earth Chronicle is every morning spoken to subscribers, who, from interesting conversations with reporters, statesmen and scientists, learn the news of the day.
"The first newscast did n't happen until 1920, according to the Associated Press nearly 30 years after Verne imagined it.
Jules Verne wrote about "projectiles" in From the Earth to the Moon.
These projectiles would carry people to the moon.
Verne imagined a big gun which would force the module up to the moon.
Today, space modules are sent into space at the top of rockets, which force the module beyond the reach of gravity.
In The Carpathian Castle, some villagers are terrified of a certain castle, from which they can hear voices and see shapes.
An intrigued visitor decides to see what is happening, and he finds out that they were hearing just recorded sounds and holographic images.
Johannes Rau (16 January 1931, Wuppertal 27 January 2006, Berlin) was a German politician of the SPD.
He was the eighth President of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1 July 1999 until 30 June 2004 and minister president of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1978 to 1998.
He was born in Barmen, Wuppertal.
His family was Protestant, and he was active in the Confessing Church, a part of the German Protestant Church which was against Nazism.
Rau left school in 1949 and worked as a journalist and publisher.
Rau was a member of the All-German People 's Party (GVP), which was founded by Gustav Heinemann, who also became a president of Germany.
This party only existed from 1952 until 1957.
In 1958 Rau and Heinemann joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP), where he was active in the Wuppertal branch.
He served on the City Council (1964-1978), where he was as chairman of the SDP Group (1964-1967) and later as Mayor (1969-1970).
In 1958 Rau was elected a member of the Landtag (state parliament) of North Rhine-Westphalia.
In 1967 he became chairman of the SPD group in the Landtag, and in 1970 Minister of Science and Education in the cabinet of Minister President Heinz K hn.
He founded five universities in North Rhine-Westphalia during the 1970s.
He also started Germany 's first distance learning university at Hagen (modelled on the Open University in Britain).
In 1978 Rau became Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, where he remained until 1998, winning four elections for the SPD, which became biggest party in the Landtag each time and gained an absolute majority three times, in 1980, 1985, 1990 and finally 1995.
From 1995 onwards, Rau led an SPD-Greens coalition in NRW.
In 1987 Rau tried to become chancellor of Germany for the SPD, but lost to Helmut Kohl 's Christian Democrats (CDU).
In 1994 Rau tried for the first time to become Federal President, but lost to Roman Herzog.
Rau twice served as President of the Bundesrat in 1982\/83 and 1994\/95, and was deputy for the Federal President.
In 1998 Rau stepped down from his positions as SPD Chairman and Minister President, and on 23 May 1999, was elected Federal President by the Federal Assembly of Germany to succeed Roman Herzog (CDU).
On 1 July 2004, he was succeeded by Horst K hler.
In 2000 Rau was the first German head of state since the Holocaust to address the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in German.
Some Israeli delegates to walked out, but Israeli President Moshe Katsav supported and praised him for bridging the gap between the two states.
Following a long history of heart disease, he died a few days after his 75th birthday.
Johannes Rau was a practising Christian.
He was sometimes called, "Brother John", to make fun of his strong Christian belief; but, he sometimes used this term himself.
On 9 August 1982 he married the political scientist Christina Delius (born 1956).
Christina Rau is a granddaughter of Gustav Heinemann, former President of Germany.
The couple had three children: Anna Christina, born 1983, Philip Immanuel, born 1985 and Laura Helene, born 1986.
After leaving office, Rau lived with his family in the federal capital Berlin.
However, they also kept a house in Wuppertal.
Johannes Rau died on 27 January 2006 in Berlin.
Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels (German pronunciation:; 29 October 1897 in M nchengladbach as Paul Joseph Goebbels 1 May 1945 in Berlin) was a German politician and the minister of propaganda during the Nazi regime.
He studied literature and philosophy at the Heidelberg university.
He was a close friend of Adolf Hitler.
Goebbels stayed with Hitler in the F hrerbunker until Hitler 's suicide on 30 April 1945.
After Hitler 's death, Goebbels was chancellor of Germany for one day, before he and his wife Magda Goebbels killed themselves.
Just before she died, Magda killed their six children with poison.
Joseph Goebbels was born as Paul Joseph Goebbels in M nchengladbach on 29 October 1897.
His father, Friedrich Goebbels, was a bookkeeper and his mother was Maria Goebbels (born Oldenhausen).
He was the third child of the family and grew up with five siblings.
Due to an illness in his childhood in 1901, Goebbels ' right foot was malformed and he was 1.65 m (165cm).
He went to a Roman Catholic school in Rheydt in 1908.
In 1914, Goebbels went to high school in Rheydt.
When the First World War started in August 1914, he volunteered to be part of the Army.
This was refused because of his limp.
Goebbels took his Abitur (school exams) in 1917.
He was the best in his class.
He gave a speech at the end of the school year.
However, his headteacher said, that he would not become a good speaker.
Later, in 1917, Goebbels studied ancient philology, history and German philology at the University of Bonn.
He received his PhD in Drama from the Heidelberg university in 1921.
In 1923, Goebbels worked for the Deutsche Bank.
Goebbels joined the National Socialist German Workers ' Party in 1926.
In the same year, Hitler made him a Gauleiter for Berlin and Brandenburg.
In 1927, Goebbels published the first Nazi newspaper, Der Angriff (The Attack), in Berlin.
The newspaper was printed twice a week.
In 1928, he became a member of the German Reichstag.
He kept this position until 1945.
In 1929, Goebbels saw his first movie with sound, "The Singing Fool".
He said it would be the future of propaganda.
In 1930, he became the Reichspropagandaleiter (Chief of the German Propaganda) and the deputy of Heinrich Himmler.
Goebbels married Magda Quand in 1931.
Franz Ritter von Epp and Adolf Hitler were the witnesses at the wedding.
When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, Goebbels became the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
In 1934, Goebbels moved to a villa near Berlin.
On 30 June 1934, he saw the arrest of Ernst R hm in Bad Wiessee.
Goebbels gave the order to confiscate about 650 art exhibits in 1937.
He put them on display in show called Degenerate Art.
On 9 November 1938, a German diplomat was killed in France by a Jewish teenager.
Because of this murder, Goebbels gave the order to the SS for what is now called Kristallnacht.
At the start of the Second World War, Goebbels ordered to broadcast special announcements at the cinema and on the radio.
On 26 May 1940, he published the new weekly newspaper Das Reich (The Imperium) for the first time.
In 1942, Goebbels took part in the Wannsee Conference.
He was one of the Nazi leaders who planned the Final Solution to kill all the Jewish people.
In 1943, he gave a well known speech in the Berlin Sportpalast where he called the Germans to support total war.
The coup on 20 July 1944 failed, because of Goebbels ' quick thinking.
He broadcast on radio that the coup had failed, before the plan of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg could succeed.
On 22 April 1945, two days after Adolf Hitler 's birthday, he arrived in the F hrerbunker in Berlin.
He was one of the witnesses to the marriage of Hitler to Eva Braun.
On the same day, he took over the leadership from Hitler.
After Hitler 's suicide on 30 April, he became the Chancellor of Germany.
He only held this job for one day, because on 1 May 1945, his wife poisoned their six children with the help of an SS doctor.
Immediately afterward he and his wife went up to the garden of the Chancellery, where they killed themselves.
The details of their suicides are uncertain.
After the war, Rear-Admiral Michael Musmanno, a U.S. naval officer and judge, published several accounts apparently based on eye-witness testimony: According to one account.
"While Schw germann was preparing the petrol, he heard a shot.
Goebbels had shot himself and his wife took poison.
Schw germann ordered one of the soldiers to shoot Goebbels again because he was unable to do it himself."
One SS officer said they each took cyanide and ordered an SS trooper to shoot them both.
According to another account, Goebbels shot his wife and then himself.
Joel David Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen are movie directors, producers and screenwriters.
They are brothers and always work together.
They have won many awards including the Academy Award (Oscar) four times and the Palme d'Or at the Cannes International Film Festival.
Their movies are different genres.
They sometimes make movies that are funny like Raising Arizona or movies with a lot of violence like No Country For Old Men.
They can also mix both styles like, for example in Fargo.
They write, direct and produce their movies and they share the credits.
People sometimes call them "A two-headed director" because when actors who work in their movies have a question they can ask either Joel or Ethan and get the same answer.
Joel was born on November 29, 1954 and Ethan on September 21, 1957 in St. Louis Park, Minnesota near Minneapolis in the United States.
Their parents were teachers, their father taught economy and their mother art history.
Joel bought a camera and with it they started making new versions of the movies they saw on television.
When they finished high school, Joel studied movie at Bard College at Simon 's Rock in Massachusetts and Ethan studied philosophy at Princeton University.
They are married.
Joel married actress Frances McDormand in 1984 (she has acted in six of their movies).
Ethan is married to Tricia Cook who edits their movies.
They live in New York with their families.
Their first movie, Blood Simple (1984), follows the story of a bar-owner who asks a detective to murder his wife and her lover.
The Cohens directed, but only Joel appears in the credits and he accepted awards at Sundance and Independent Spirit.
They wrote the screenplay for the Sam Raimi movie, Crimewave in 1985.
In 1987 they wrote and directed Raising Arizona.
The movie is about a couple that can not have babies and decides to steal one.
Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter played the married couple.
The movie was not very successful and it did not make a lot of money in the box offices but many people consider it a cult movie (a movie that has a relatively small number of fans who constantly repeat lines from the dialogs, buy or create merchandise and gather to comment on it).
Their next movie was Miller 's Crossing.
It is about gangsters and was made in 1990.
After Miller 's Crossing, Raising Arizona and Blood Simple, the brothers received good comments on their movies and their directing style as well as the dialogs in their movies.
It was not until they made Barton Fink in 1991 that the brothers achieved international fame.
The movie was nominated for Academy Awards.
It won three awards at Cannes International Film Festival (the Palme d'Or, best director, and best actor).
The story is about a playwright (a person who writes plays) whose name is Barton Fink and he moves to Los Angeles to write movies.
Fink is played by John Turturro.
After Barton Finks success, the brothers had the chance to make a big-budget movie (with more money than the previous ones).
That movie was The Hudsucker Proxy.
The story talks about a man who is given the opportunity to be the director of a big company because the other people in the company (the board) want to buy it at a low price so they intend to have him ruin it.
Instead of ruining the company, the man invents the hula hoop and becomes famous.
The Coens had 25 million dollars to make this movie but it only earned 3 million so it is considered a commercial failure (not successful).
The critics said the movie was not good because it had nothing new to offer the viewers.
The brothers made another movie in 1996 with a little money.
The name was Fargo.
It was universally praised (almost everybody said it was good).
They returned to Minnesota because the story takes place there and in North Dakota.
The story is about a man who needs money to start his own business so he pays other men to kidnap his wife and plans to ask his rich father-in-law for the ransom (money given in exchange for the woman).
Everything goes wrong and a series of violent events starts.
Experts say the movie was very good because of the dialog used by the actors (they used different accents) and Frances McDormand 's performance (acting).
She won the Best Actress Oscar.
The brothers also won Best Original Screenplay and the Palme d'Or for Best Directing for a second time.
By 1998 they were famous for their style and talent and they made another movie The Big Lebowski, a comedy about a man who does not work and spends his time bowling.
The man 's name is Jeffrey Lebowski so some guys mistake him for a millionaire who has the same name.
Fans of the movie consider it a cult movie.
Inspired by parts of Homer 's Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou?
(2000), received wide critical acclaim.
In 2001 they created The Man Who Was n't There.
The movie is supposed to be in 1940 's in California.
In 2003 they directed Intolerable Cruelty.
It is their most mainstream movie (the movie that is closest to the most common or popular genres).
The leading roles are played by George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
They worked with Tom Hanks in The Ladykillers in 2004.
A previous version had been made before (not by the brothers) in 1955.
No Country for Old Men came out in 2007.
The movie is based on the book with the same name written by Corman McCarthy.
A Serious Man, set in the 1960s in the suburbs of Minneapolis, came out in 2009.
The Coen brothers are two of only seven directors with three Oscars for the same movie.
2000: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
2000: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
2000: O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899 June 14, 1986) was an Argentine writer.
He was best known in the English-speaking world for his short stories and fictive essays.
Borges was also a poet, critic, translator and man of wisdom.
He was influenced by authors such as Dante Alighieri, Miguel de Cervantes, Franz Kafka, H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Schopenhauer and G. K. Chesterton.
Jane Austen (16 December 1775 18 July 1817) was an English novelist.
She wrote many books of romantic fiction about the gentry.
Her works made her one of the most famous and beloved writers in English literature.
She is one of the great masters of the English novel.
Austen 's works criticized sentimental novels in the late 18th century, and are part of the change to nineteenth-century realism.
She wrote about typical people in everyday life.
This gave the English novel its first distinctly modern character.
Austen 's stories are often comic, but they also show how women depended on marriage for social standing and economic security.
Her works are also about moral problems.
Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon, near Basingstoke.
Educated mostly by her father and older brothers, and also by her own reading, she lived with her family at Steventon.
They moved to Bath when her father retired in 1801.
After he died in 1805, she moved around with her mother.
In 1809, they settled in Chawton, near Alton, Hampshire.
In May 1817 she moved to Winchester to be near her doctor.
She died there on 18 July 1817.
Jane Austen was very modest about her own genius.
She once famously described her work as "the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory, on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labor".
When she was a girl she wrote stories.
Her works were printed only after much revision.
Only four of her novels were printed while she was alive.
They were Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816).
Two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were printed in 1817 with a biographical notice by her brother, Henry Austen.
Persuasion was written shortly before her death.
She also wrote two earlier works, Lady Susan, and an unfinished novel, The Watsons.
She had been working on a new novel, Sanditon, but she died before she could finish it.
Biographical facts about Jane Austen are "famously scarce" (few).
Only a few letters remain (it is estimated that only 160 out of Austen 's 3,000 letters survive).
Her sister Cassandra (to whom most of the letters were written) burned "the greater part" of the ones she kept.
The letters she did not destroy she censored.
Other letters were destroyed by the heirs of Admiral Francis Austen, Jane 's brother.
Most of the biographies written about her for 50 years after she died was by her relatives, who often described her as "good quiet Aunt Jane".
Scholars have not been able to find much information after that.
Austen 's parents, George Austen (1731 1805), and his wife, Cassandra (1739 1827), were both part of the gentry.
Cassandra was a part of the important Leigh family.
George Austen, however, was of a lower class of society.
He had first met Cassandra at Oxford, while she was meeting her uncle Theophilus.
George and Cassandra married on 26 April 1764 at Walcot Church in Bath.
Austen had a large family.
She had six brothers James (1765 1819), George (1766 1838), Edward (1767 1852), Henry Thomas (1771 1850), Francis William (Frank) (1774 1865), Charles John (1779 1852) and one sister, Cassandra Elizabeth (1773 1845), who died without marrying.
Jane deeply loved Cassandra, and they were both best friends.
Of her brothers, Austen was most close to Henry, who helped spread and influence her writing.
"Oh, what a Henry!"
she once wrote.
George was almost ten years older than Jane.
He suffered from fits and was not able to develop normally.
His father wrote of him, "We have this comfort, he can not be a bad or a wicked child".
He may also have been deaf and mute.
Jane knew sign language (she mentioned talking "with my fingers" in a letter) and could have communicated with him.
Charles and Frank served in the navy.
Edward was adopted by his fourth cousin, Thomas Knight.
He became "Edward Knight" instead of Edward Austen in 1812.
Austen was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon rectory.
She was christened in public on 5 April 1776.
A few months after she was born, her mother hired a woman named Elizabeth Littlewood to nurse her.
Littlewood took care of Austen for about a year.
According to family tradition, Jane and Cassandra were sent to Oxford to be educated by Mrs. Ann Crawley in 1783.
They moved with her to Southampton later in the year.
Both girls caught typhus and Jane almost died.
After that, Austen was educated at home until she went to boarding school with Cassandra early in 1785.
She learned some French, spelling, needlework, dancing, music, and probably drama.
In the winter of 1786, Jane and Cassandra went back home because their family was not rich enough to send both of their daughters to school.
Austen then studied English at Bristol University.
She stayed in Manor Hall in Clifton at that time.
Austen also learned much by reading books.
Her father and brothers helped choose the books she read.
George Austen seemed to have let his daughters read the books in his large library freely.
He also allowed Austen 's experiments in writing, and gave her costly paper and other writing materials.
Jane Austen and her family also enjoyed acting out plays privately.
Most of the plays were comedies.
This might have been a way for Austen 's comedic and satirical talents to develop.
Perhaps from as early as 1787, Austen began writing poems, short stories, and plays for fun.
Austen later put together "fair copies" of 29 of these early works into three notebooks.
They are now called the Juvenilia.
It has pieces which were first written down between 1787 and 1793.
Jane Austen had arranged her writing during this time into three volumes, namely Volume the First, Volume the Second and Volume the Third.
There is some proof that Austen continued to work on these pieces later in life.
Her nephew and niece, James Edward and Anna Austen, may have made further additions to her work in around 1814.
In these works were included Love and Freindship which was completed in 1790 and Lesley Castle which was completed in 1792.
In Love and Freindship, she laughed at popular sentimental novels.
She also wrote The History of England, which had 13 watercolor pictures by her sister Cassandra inside it.
Jane Austen started to feel increasingly unwell during 1816, which was the year when her novel Persuasion ' was published.
On 24 May 1817, she moved to Winchester in search for a cure to her illness.
She died on 18 July 1817, aged 41.
Although there is no conclusive evidence to prove the cause of her death, it seems likely that it was Addison 's disease that killed her.
She was buried in Winchester Cathedral on 24 July 1817.
June is the sixth month of the year.
It has 30 days.
June is named for the Roman goddess Juno, the wife of Jupiter.
She is goddess of marriage.
Because of this, getting married in June was thought to be lucky.
June begins on a different day of the week each year.
June 's flower is the Rose.
Its birthstone is the pearl.
The meaning for the birthstone pearl is health.
July is the seventh month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, coming between June and August.
It has 31 days.
July was named after Julius Caesar.
The month begins on the same day of the week as April every year and also January in leap years.
The mid-way point of the year is either on July 2 or in the night of July 1-2.
In each hemisphere, it is the seasonal equivalent of January in the other hemisphere.
In the North, it is summer and in the South it is winter.
In the Northern Hemisphere, July is often the warmest month of the year, and major sporting events and music festivals are held around this time.
In the Southern Hemisphere, it is a winter month, with the coldest-recorded temperature having been measured in Antarctica in this month.
July begins on the same day of the week as April in common years and also January in leap years.
It ends on the same day of week as January in leap years, while in common years, no month ends on the same day of the week as July.
July 's flower is a variety of the water lily.
Its birthstone is the ruby.
The meaning for the birthstone ruby is contented mind.
Astrological signs for July are Cancer (June 22 - July 23) and Leo (July 24 - August 22).
In the old Roman calendar, July was called Quintilis, meaning Fifth Month because, in the old calendar, the year began in March.
Augustus later renamed it July in honor of Julius Caesar, whose birthday was in this month.
Augustus later also named the following month, August, after himself.
Starting in the 1200s, January 1 was called New Year 's Day.
It is a holiday.
This is the only date in the Gregorian calendar where the day and the month (28 and 6) are different Perfect numbers.
In most years, this is the date of the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, as the day with the most daylight hours.
In the southern hemisphere, this is the winter solstice, with the least daylight hours.
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 June 27, 2001), was an American actor and director who received many awards in his long career.
He got two Academy and five Golden Globe awards.
Lemmon acted in many movies, and was famous for being very good at comedy and drama.
He made a famous comedic couple at many movies with actor Walter Matthau.
Lemmon died of colon cancer and bladder cancer.
Joseph Conrad (3 December 1857 3 August 1924) (real name: J zef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) was a Polish writer, regarded as one of the greatest English-language novelists.
This is very remarkable, because he did not learn to speak English well until he was in his 20s and therefore always had a Polish accent.
People think Conrad 's prose style is one of the best of all English novelists.
He also is seen as important for paving the way to modernist literature.
His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many modern writers and inspired such films as Apocalypse Now (after Conrad 's Heart of Darkness).
Conrad lived in the time of the British Empire and worked in the Merchant Navy.
So he had experience enough to write novels and short stories about empire and navy.
John Updike (March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009) was an American author of works including Rabbit, Run and Couples.
He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania.
He died of lung cancer in Danvers, Massachusetts in January 2009.
John Ernst Steinbeck (February 27, 1902 - December 20, 1968) was an American writer.
Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.
Some of his most famous works are Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), which won a Pulitzer Prize.
In these two books, Steinbeck writes about migrant workers during the Great Depression.
Steinbeck used naturalism in his books.
His characters and stories came from real events from the early 20th century.
His work shows his wide range of interests, such as politics, history, philosophy and mythology.
Seventeen of his works were made into Hollywood movies.
Steinbeck also tried screen writing, which is writing for movies.
He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing in Alfred Hitchcock 's 1945 movie, Lifeboat.
Steinbeck was born to John Ernst Steinbeck Sr., a first-generation German American.
He attended Stanford University until 1925 when he left the university in order to become a writer.
His first work, Cup of Gold, came out four years later, but was not successful.
He married Carol Henning the following year.
Steinbeck first gained success with the novel Tortilla Flat in 1935.
The story was about two men living in Monterey, California during the Great Depression.
The book won the California Commonwealth Club 's Gold Medal.
It was made into a movie seven years later, starring Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, and John Garfield.
Steinbeck continued to write on the subject of the Great Depression.
Two years later, Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men, considered as one of the best works of American literature in the twentieth century.
His story dealt with the lives of two migrant laborers with big dreams in California.
It was turned into a Hollywood movie in 1939, starring Lon Chaney Jr. as "Lennie" and Burgess Meredith as "George".
That year, Steinbeck followed up with another book, The Grapes of Wrath.
The book is about the Joad family and their travels from Oklahoma to California during the Dust Bowl in search of work.
The novel won the Pulitzer Prize and movie adaptation won two Academy Awards, and is ranked # 7 on the American Film Institute 's list, 100 Years... 100 Cheers: America 's Most Inspiring Movies.
There was controversy with the book, though.
Many people felt that Steinbeck 's liberal opinions misrepresented the truth of Dust Bowl migrations.
He had this student that his name was Oscar Perez and they would both do the job together.
Steinbeck continued to write from 1940s to 1960s.
He wrote such works as The Moon is Down, The Pearl, Cannery Row, East of Eden and The Winter of Our Discontent.
In 1962, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his realistic and imaginative writing, combining as it does sympathetic humor and keen social perception."
Two years later, he was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Steinbeck died on December 20, 1968 in New York at the age of 66, of a heart disease.
Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA (16 July 1723 23 February 1792) was an English painter of portraits.
He helped to start the Royal Academy of Arts and was its first president.
King George III made him Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1769.
Some critics disliked Reynolds and the Royal Academy.
The Pre-Raphaelites called him "Sir Sloshua" and William Blake published a savage pamphlet Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds ' Discourses in 1808.
On the other hand, Turner was a strong supporter, and asked to be buried at Reynolds ' side.
Reynolds has over 1000 portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Despite Blake 's criticisms, Reynold 's Discourses had a lasting impact on the theory and practice of art.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (8 February 1883 8 January 1950) was a researcher in economics and political science.
He studied the theory of Marxism and capitalism.
In his view, capitalism can not work because of what he called creative destruction.
This term was originally used by Karl Marx to describe the capitalist system, but Schumpeter used it differently: He says that each time innovation by entrepreneur occurs, it must (also) change what already exists.
In this context, certain structures that already exist will also be destroyed.
A current example of this is that digital photography has made the instant camera, such as Polaroid almost disappear.
John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1917 June 21, 2001) was an American blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter born in Coahoma County near Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Hooker was born on August 22, 1917 in Coahoma County near Clarksdale, Mississippi.
He was born to William Hooker and Minnie Ramsey and was the youngest of eleven children.
He and his siblings were home-schooled and they were only allowed to listen to religious songs.
His parents separated in 1921 and his mother married William Moore, a blues singer the next year.
Moore introduced Hooker to the guitar.
John would later credit Moore for his distinctive playing style.
All through the 1930s, Hooker lived in Memphis where he worked on Beale Street and sometimes performed at house parties.
In 1948, he started working at Ford Motor Company.
Hooker 's early solo songs were recorded by Bernie Besman.
John Lee Hooker rarely played on a standard beat, changing tempos to fit the songs.
This made it nearly impossible to add backing tracks.
Hooker appeared and sang in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers.
He recorded over 100 albums.
In 1989, he played with Keith Richards, Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt to record The Healer and won a Grammy Award.
Hooker recorded lots of songs with Van Morrison, including "Never Get Out of These Blues Alive", "The Healing Game" and "I Cover the Waterfront".
He fell ill just before a tour of Europe in 2001 and died soon afterwards at the age of 83.
The last song Hooker recorded before his death, is "Ali D'Oro".
Jean Cocteau (Jean Maurice Eug ne Cl ment Coctea, 5 July 1889 11 October 1963) was a French artist, poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager, playwright, moviemaker and actor.
Cocteau wrote or worked on 21 stage performances, some of which were ballets, and some were plays.
Cocteau 's movies, most of which he both wrote and directed, were particularly important in introducing the avant-garde into French cinema and influenced the upcoming French New Wave genre.
He also worked with Pablo Picasso on several projects and was friends with most of the European art community.
In all his creative work, he was a modernist.
In 1955, Cocteau was made a member of the Acad mie Fran aise and The Royal Academy of Belgium.
During his life Cocteau was made a Commander of the L gion d'honneur.
Cocteau was bisexual.
His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, Mar a F lix, dith Piaf (whom he cast in one of his one-act plays entitled Le Bel Indifferent in 1940), and Raymond Radiguet.
In the 1930s, Cocteau had an affair with Princess Natalie Paley, the beautiful daughter of a Romanov grand duke.
She became pregnant.
To Cocteau 's distress and Paley 's life-long regret, the foetus was aborted.
Cocteau 's longest-lasting relationships were with the French actors Jean Marais (who played ` tough guy ' roles in movies and TV), and douard Dermit, whom Cocteau formally adopted.
Cocteau cast Marais in four of his movies.
At times, Cocteau was addicted to opium.
Biographer James S. Williams describes Cocteau 's politics as "naturally right-leaning".
p123 In his diary, Cocteau accused France of disrespect towards Hitler and speculated on the F hrer 's sexuality.
His views became known, and he was arraigned on charges of collaboration after the war.
He was cleared of any wrongdoing: it turned out that he had used his contacts to try and save friends from the Nazis.
p182
Cocteau died of a heart attack in Milly-la-Foret, Essonne.
Cocteau wrote or worked on 21 stage performances, some of which were ballets, and some were plays.
He was involved in Diaghilev 's Ballets Russes from the first season in Paris, 1909.
He wrote scenarios (librettos) for Fokine 's Le Dieu Blue in 1912, Massine 's Parade in 1917 and Nijinska 's Le Train Bleu in 1924.
He also design company posters, and worked for several other ballet companies.
He wrote many articles on dance, and made sketches of many in Diaghilev 's circle.
In 1940, Le Bel Indiff rent, Cocteau 's play written for and starring dith Piaf, was enormously successful.
Cocteau directed eleven movies in avant-gard style, wrote scripts for six movies and dialogue for three, and directed the photography for one more.
Some of his most well-known were Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents terribles (1948), and Orpheus (1949).
Cocteau wrote extensively.
including poetry.
All of it is in French, but some is available in translation.
Cocteau wrote five novels.
The most important of these was probably Les Enfants terribles (1929).
He also published 23 books or pamphlets of original poetry, and 26 volumes of poetic criticism and collections.
He illustrated 12 works of poetry.
He made a number of recordings, mostly spoken poems.
John Donne (1572-1631) was a British metaphysical poet.
He wrote love poems and sonnets but later in his life became religious and wrote many Christian poems.
He was also Dean of St Paul 's Cathedral and was the author of many sermons.
His famous poems include A valediction forbidding mourning and Good Friday, riding westward.
Joey Ramone (born Jeffery Hyman, May 19, 1951 April 15, 2001) was an American punk musician and founder member of the Ramones, in which he was lead singer, along with Dee Dee Ramone, Tommy Ramone, and Johnny Ramone.
Joey Ramone 's mother encouraged both his and his brothers ' interests in music.
He was a fan of The Beatles, The Who, Iggy and The Stooges and David Bowie, among other bands.
He was also a fan of Phil Spector produced records as well.
He took up the drums at 13 and played throughout his teen years.
He idolized Pete Townshend of the Who.
Joey Ramone died at the age of 49 on April 15, 2001 of lymphoma.
In a Common year of the Gregorian calendar, this date marks the half-way point of the year.
This would be at 12 noon (or 1 p.m. if Daylight Saving Time is used).
In a Leap year, the half-way point is at midnight between the 1 and 2 July (or 1 a.m. on July 2 if Daylight Saving Time is used).
Every year, this date falls on the same day of the week as New Year 's Eve, and it also falls on the same day of the week as New Year 's Day in Common years.
Aphelion, the point during its orbit, when the Earth is furthest from the Sun, occurs around this date.
John Winston Ono Lennon (9 October 1940 8 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter and artist who rose to worldwide fame as the founder of the rock band the Beatles.
After the Beatles stopped making records in 1970, he lived in the United States with his wife Yoko Ono, and continued his music career up until his death in 1980.
Lennon started the Beatles in his hometown of Liverpool, with Paul McCartney and George Harrison.
After Ringo Starr joined the band, they started to be very successful.
People were excited by their music, and their live performances always pleased audiences.
Manager Brian Epstein and record producer George Martin helped the Beatles become the most popular act in entertainment.
Lennon played the guitar, and later learned to play the piano.
Most of the songs the Beatles recorded were written by Lennon and McCartney.
Their songs were always credited as by "Lennon\/McCartney" on Beatles records, but in fact they usually wrote their songs on their own.
The two men often helped to make each other 's songs better, so they liked to share writing credit.
Famous songs written by Lennon for the Beatles are "A Hard Day 's Night", "Help!"
, "Strawberry Fields Forever", "A Day In The Life" and many others.
The Beatles grew apart as the members got older.
Lennon divorced his first wife, Cynthia Powell, and married Yoko Ono, while McCartney married Linda Eastman.
Each wife had different ideas, and encouraged their husbands to depend less on each other.
Later, some fans blamed Yoko and Linda for breaking the Beatles up.
Lennon loved his wife so much that he added her surname Ono to his own name, since she became Yoko Ono Lennon when she married him.
He had never liked his middle name Winston (given him by his mother after Winston Churchill) and wanted to change it.
He could add a new name, so he did that.
He never used the name Winston again, unless he had to for legal reasons (such as when he traveled to America).
Otherwise he gave his "full name" as John Wong Ono Lennon.
Lennon and Ono moved to the United States in 1971, and settled in New York City.
Ono had a daughter, Kyoko Chan Cox, from an earlier husband, Anthony Cox, a jazz musician, who took her and disappeared.
It was easier to look for Kyoko, and get the law 's help to look, if they stayed in America.
Ono and Lennon were also hurt emotionally by the way Ono was treated by many people in England.
Some insulted Ono, and asked Lennon why he was with her.
On the other hand, most of the people they met in America accepted them together.
Lennon recorded several albums and singles after the Beatles disbanded.
The best-known one was Imagine.
He made many records with Yoko Ono.
On some records they called themselves the Plastic Ono Band.
Lennon and Ono worked with different musician friends, including Ringo Starr, Jim Keltner, Klaus Voormann, Harry Nilsson, Eric Clapton and Elton John.
Lennon 's solo music was different from his Beatles songs.
He spoke more directly about his own feelings, and sometimes used harsh language or loud sounds.
This upset a few fans, who wished for more Beatles music from him.
Lennon and Ono were also campaigners for peace in the world.
They used Lennon 's famous name to talk to the media (television, radio and newspapers) about their beliefs.
Lennon and Ono were sometimes in trouble with people like politicians, who did not like the things they said.
President Richard Nixon 's administration even tried to deport Lennon, because of his political views.
The two things Lennon and Ono wanted most were to live permanently in the United States, and to have a child together.
Their lives were stressful in the early 1970s for several reasons.
There were the problems with immigrating to the United States, and with the search for Kyoko.
The public were also sometimes negative toward Ono, her music, and her ideas.
The couple had several miscarriages, caused partly by the stress.
Lennon also had business problems, because leaving the Beatles was not as simple as quitting an ordinary job.
The Beatles had signed many contracts.
They promised to do things in a certain way, meet deadlines, and work together, to be paid as musicians and songwriters.
Many business deals had to be finished or changed, and new deals had to be made, to continue their music careers apart.
This took time, and meant making many hard decisions.
The four former Beatles could not always agree on what to do with the things they owned together.
It took years to work out what to still own in common, what to divide up, and what to let go.
The choices they had to make sometimes hurt their friendship.
Lennon and Ono separated for over a year, from late 1973 until early 1975, because of the stress in their lives, and their relationship.
Each of them dated another person (Lennon pairing off with May Pang, his and Ono 's personal assistant, and Ono with guitarist David Spinozza), and they were nearly divorced.
They spoke nearly every day by telephone, however, and tried to work things out.
They decided that they wanted to be together more than anyone else could want them apart, and they reunited.
When Richard Nixon faced the Watergate crisis in 1974, it became more important than pushing Lennon out of the country.
The deportation case against him was dropped.
Lennon won the right to stay in America in 1975.
Lennon and Ono also finally had a son, Sean Lennon, that October.
Father and son shared the same birthday.
Lennon and Ono stopped making music for five years, to be able to spend more time together, and give Sean as much attention as he needed.
They lived on Lennon 's income from the music he already made.
Ono became Lennon 's business manager, and invested his money in real estate and organic farming.
Her office was downstairs in the Dakota, the apartment building where they lived, so they were never far apart.
Lennon became a full-time father to Sean, and he was proud to call himself a "househusband".
They also visited Ono 's family in Japan several times, and made other trips.
In 1980 Lennon and Ono began to write new music, as Sean got old enough to begin school.
They recorded a new album titled Double Fantasy that year.
A single from the album," (Just Like) Starting Over", was a hit, and people welcomed Lennon back.
Even people who had not liked Ono earlier now respected her, and more of them began to like her music.
Lennon and Ono planned to start fresh, do a world tour, and record more albums.
On December 8, 1980, Lennon was shot dead as he was going into his home, by a man named Mark David Chapman who was mentally ill..
Even though he was ill, Chapman was still prosecute for murder, because he killed Lennon.
Chapman pled guilty to the murder the next year, and is still in prison today.
He admitted later he was jealous of Lennon 's fame and success, while his own life disappointed him.
Chapman thought that killing Lennon would give his own life more meaning.
He is always refused for parole, and is infamous (hated by many people).
Fans all over the world mourn Lennon 's death.
It made them feel that a special part of their lives was gone.
Many met in New York 's Central Park, near where Lennon and Ono lived, to say their goodbyes.
Some played recordings of Lennon 's music.
Politicians and celebrities everywhere were sorry Lennon had died, even if they disliked him, because his music meant so much to so many people.
Radio stations in the Soviet Union, where rock music was rarely allowed to be played, gave an hour over to Beatles recordings.
There was no funeral for Lennon, but Yoko Ono asked people everywhere to observe ten minutes of silence and prayer for him on Sunday, December 14, 1980, at 2:00 PM.
At two o'clock, the music playing in Central Park stopped, and people all over the world fell silent for ten minutes.
Other tributes came later, including songs by George Harrison ("All Those Years Ago"), Paul McCartney ("Here Today"), Elton John ("Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)") and Queen ("Life Is Real (Song for Lennon)").
Lennon 's music (with and after his Beatles years) is still played everywhere, and people are still touched by it.
A series of radio programs were devoted to playing demoes of his songs.
Young musicians play Lennon 's records, and learn his music.
Yoko Ono released an album of acoustic versions of many Lennon songs, to help musicians understand them better.
There is now a garden in Central Park in Lennon 's memory called "Strawberry Fields" after one of Lennon 's most popular songs, which in turn was named after a Salvation Army orphanage near his childhood home.
On October 9, 1990, on what would have been Lennon 's fiftieth birthday, "Imagine" was simulcast on radio and television stations all over the world, uniting people everywhere to remember Lennon and his music.
John Marwood Cleese (born 27 October 1939) is an English actor and writer.
He was born in Weston-super-Mare, England.
He graduated from Downing College, Cambridge.
Cleese has a degree in law.
He was a member of the comedy team, Monty Python.
He starred in the television sitcom, Fawlty Towers that he co-wrote with his first wife, Connie Booth, who played the role of Polly Sherman on the show.
He plays Q in some of the James Bond movies.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (January 3, 1892 September 2, 1973) was a British philologist, university professor, and writer.
Tolkien is best known for his most famous works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
He was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa but his parents were both from England.
He fought in World War I, and after the war he found a job helping to produce the Oxford English Dictionary.
Tolkien was very interested in languages, and he had studied at Oxford University.
Soon he became a professor of English Language at the University of Leeds.
He was then a professor at the University of Oxford until 1959, when he retired.
He also was good friends with many other writers and scholars, most notably C. S. Lewis, who wrote the Narnia books, The Screwtape Letters, and many essays on Christian theology.
Tolkien himself was a devout Catholic.
Tolkien married Edith Mary Bratt on March 22, 1916 in England at the age of 24.
They had four children, three sons and a girl: John, Michael, Christopher, and Priscilla.
He created and worked on the fictional fantasy world of Middle-earth for most of his life, and his most famous books are set in that world.
Because of his Middle-earth books he is often considered the "father of high fantasy" which made the fantasy genre very popular.
Tolkien wrote other books, for example Farmer Giles Of Ham, and also illustrated (drew the pictures and maps for) The Lord of the Rings.
The Lord of the Rings was published in three parts and has been made into several motion pictures.
The Lord of the Rings took 12 years to write.
James Branch Cabell (1879 1958) was an American writer.
He wrote fantasy fiction.
His name is pronounced "CAB-ble".
Cabell was born and lived most of his life in Richmond, Virginia.
He spent the winters in Florida until the death of his first wife in 1949.
He retired in Florida.
Cabell was born into a rich Virginian family.
His father, Robert Gamble Cabell II (1847 1922), was a physician.
His mother, Anne Harris (1859 1915), was the daughter of Col. and Mrs James R. Branch.
Cabell 's great-grandfather, William H. Cabell, was Governor of Virginia from 1805 to 1808.
Cabell was the oldest of three boys.
His brothers were Robert Gamble Cabell III (1881 1968) and John Lottier Cabell (1883 1946).
His parents separated and were later divorced in 1907.
He went to the College of William and Mary in 1894 at the age of fifteen.
He graduated in 1898.
While an undergraduate, Cabell taught French and Greek at the college.
Ellen Glasgow, a writer and close friend of Cabell said that he had a friendship with a professor at the college which some people thought was "too intimate".
Because of this, Cabell had to leave the college.
He was later allowed back and finished his degree.
Cabell worked from 1898 to 1900 as a newspaper reporter in New York City.
He returned to Richmond in 1901.
In Richmond, he worked several months for the Richmond News.
Many things happened to Cabell in 1901.
His first stories were accepted for publication.
It was believed for a short time that Cabell murdered John Scott, a rich person in Richmond.
There was a rumor that Scott was "involved" with Cabell 's mother.
In 1902, seven of his stories appeared in national magazines.
Over the ten years, he wrote many short stories and articles.
These were published in well-known magazines including Harper 's Monthly Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post.
Between 1911 and 1913, he worked for his uncle in the office of the Branch coal mines in West Virginia.
On November 8, 1913, he married Priscilla Bradley Shepherd.
She was a widow with five children from an earlier marriage.
In 1915, Priscilla gave birth to a son, Ballard Hartwell Cabell.
Priscilla died in March of 1949.
In June 1950, Cabell married Margaret Waller Freeman.
During his life, Cabell published fifty-two books.
These included novels, genealogy, collections of short stories, poetry, and miscellanea.
He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1937.
Today, the modern languages house and an endowed law professorship at the College of William and Mary are named for him.
Cabell died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
He is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.
In 1970, Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond named its main campus library "James Branch Cabell Library".
In the 1970s, Cabell 's library and personal papers were moved from his home on Monument Avenue to the James Branch Cabell Library.
The collection includes some 3,000 volumes, manuscripts, notebooks and scrapbooks, periodicals, letters (including conversations with noted writers such as H.L. Mencken, Ellen Glasgow, Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser), newspaper clippings, photographs, criticisms, printed material, publishers ' agreements and statements of sales.
The VCU undergraduate literary journal at the university is named Poictesme after the fictional province in his book Jurgen.
Cabell published about fifty books.
Most of these are not well known.
His eighth book, Jurgen, (1919) was the most popular.
The hero, Jurgen, goes on a journey through ever more fantastic places.
He even goes to hell and heaven.
Everywhere he goes, he seduces the local women, even the Devil 's wife.
The book was seen as being bad by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
They tried to bring a prosecution for obscenity.
The case went on for two years before Cabell and his publishers won.
Many of the things in the book were double entendres.
They had one meaning which was bad and also had a decent meaning.
It appeared that what had actually offended the prosecution most was a joke about papal infallibility.
Cabell took an author 's revenge.
The new edition of 1926 included a ` lost ' section which was not in the earlier version.
In it, the hero is put on trial by the Philistines.
A large dung beetle is the chief prosecutor.
Other works include Figures of Earth.
This introduces Manuel the Redeemer.
He took control of a realm by playing on others ' expectations.
His motto is Mundus Vult Decipi.
This means ` the world wishes to be deceived '.
The Silver Stallion is a sequel.
It deals with the adventures of the knights in Manuel 's company after he left them.
Cabell is now forgotten by most people but his work affected later writers of fantasy fiction.
Robert Heinlein 's Job, A comedy of Justice has an appearance of the Slavic god Koschei (from Jurgen).
Fritz Leiber 's Swords of Lankhmar was also affected by Jurgen.
Jack Vance 's Dying Earth books show a similar style to Cabell 's writing.
Cugel the Clever in those books is very similar to Jurgen.
Java is a programming language.
It was first developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems, which is now a part of Oracle Corporation.
It was released in 1995 as a part of Sun Microsystems ' Java platform.
The language has developed much of its syntax from C and C + +.
Java applications are usually compiled to bytecode (class file) that can run on any Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
Java is currently one of the most popular programming languages being used.
It has about 10 million users.
Java and JavaScript are not the same thing; in fact, they are not even related.
JavaScript is a scripting language which is used mainly inside of web browsers.
Java is object oriented.
Unchanged C + + or C code will not work in Java, in most cases, though Java looks much like C and C + +.
Java can run on many different operating systems.
This makes Java platform independent.
Java does this by making the Java compiler turn code into Java bytecode instead of machine code.
This means that when the program is executed, the Java Virtual Machine interprets the bytecode and translates it into machine code.
Java was developed to achieve 5 main goals.
These are:
The Java platform refers to a group of software products from Sun Microsystems.
The platform is used to develop and run Java programs.
The platform includes the execution engine (called a Java Virtual Machine) that allows Java programs to do the same thing on different computer systems.
This capability of being able to develop software on one platform and running it on other platforms is called "cross-platform capability".
Java is commonly used to teach students how to program as a first language, yet is still also used by professionals.
The programming language Java has also been criticized.
Some of the criticisms are:
Jason was a hero in Greek mythology.
He was born in Thessaly, northern Greece.
Jason was the captain of the ship called the Argos.
The men who helped to sail the boat were called the Argonauts.
The word Argonaut comes from the name of the boat: Argo and the word ending - naut.
The ending - naut is used in other words about the ocean such as nautical.
Jason and the Argonauts went to find the Golden Fleece.
His father was Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcus.
Jason fell in love with the daughter of the Golden Fleece 's owner.
Her name was Medea.
Medea helped Jason get the Golden Fleece from her father.
Jason and Medea killed the owner of the Golden Fleece and returned to Jason 's city, Iolcus.
Medea then killed Jason 's half-brother Pelias so Jason could be in charge.
When she was found out, Jason and Medea went to live in the Greek city of Corinth.
Jason then married the princess of Corinth so they could stay.
The story of Jason, the Argonauts, and the Golden Fleece is told in two modern movies: Hercules starring Steve Reeves, and Jason and the Argonauts starring Todd Armstrong.
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac (born March 12, 1922 died October 21, 1969), better known as Jack Kerouac, was an American author and poet.
He was part of the Beat Generation movement of writers and artists of the 1950s and 1960s, and gave the movement its name.
His most famous work was a long novel titled On the Road, which was published in 1957.
Kerouac was a friend of writers Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gregory Corso, among many others.
Nearly all of Kerouac 's writings were directly based on his own life, but he mostly changed names and details, to protect everyone 's privacy.
The man he wrote about most was his friend Neal Cassady, who was called "Dean Moriarty" in On the Road.
Kerouac influenced many other writers and poets who came along later, and also many musicians of the 1960s, through his works.
He also changed the way Americans saw themselves, and their country.
Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts to French-Canadian parents (named Leo and Gabrielle), and was the youngest of three children.
He spoke only French until he started school.
His family was Roman Catholic.
His father was a printer, and Kerouac became interested in printed works.
He liked to make his own handwritten newspapers and books.
He enjoyed reading, and imitated the styles of writers he liked, such as Thomas Wolfe.
He became an expert typist, and could type faster than 100 words per minute.
Kerouac was a good athlete, and earned a football scholarship to Columbia University.
An injury during a practice game ended his football career.
He dropped out of Columbia, and devoted himself to writing stories and plays.
He met Allen Ginsberg at college.
Their circle of friends included many future writers and artists, like William S. Burroughs, and Herbert Huncke.
During World War II, Kerouac served in the Merchant Marine, which made him a veteran of the American military.
He kept journals of his experiences, and he used them later to write other works.
He was honorably discharged from military service in 1943 when he was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder.
He was able to get veteran 's benefits later, such as medical help when he was sick with phlebitis, and grant money to pay his bills while he wrote.
Kerouac was proud to be an American, and always said good things about his country.
Kerouac 's father died of stomach cancer in 1946.
He made Kerouac promise to always work to support his mother.
He tried to talk Kerouac out of becoming a writer, because he knew it was hard to succeed in such a career.
Kerouac had a hard time staying with any other kind of work, though.
He would become impatient or restless, or a disagreement with someone at work would turn into trouble.
Kerouac did his best to earn enough money to pay for both his and his mother 's living, but his mother also had to work.
She was a nurse.
She worked in a factory when there were no nursing jobs.
Kerouac published a few short story and reviews in New York magazines and newspapers in the 1940s.
He worked briefly for his hometown newspaper, The Lowell Sun.
His first novel, The Town and the City, was published in 1950.
For his second novel, Kerouac wanted to write a book about cross country road trips and hitchhiking.
Hitchhiking was safer to do in the 1940s, in America, than it is today.
Kerouac stopped and restarted writing this book several times.
Kerouac did not want to just tell an ordinary story.
He wanted to give an idea of how the people he met thought things through, and expressed this to each other, along with telling what they did and said.
He also knew he needed more experiences, to tell a better story.
Many experiences came through Kerouac 's friendship with Neal Cassady.
Cassady was a handsome, bright young drifter with a teenaged wife, named Luanne Henderson.
Cassady and Luanne had a hard relationship, and broke up and got back together many times.
He later married another woman named Carolyn Robinson, who was older than Luanne and understood him better, but Carolyn and Cassady also had troubles.
Kerouac was briefly married, to girlfriend Edie Parker.
They did not stay together long, and were soon divorced.
Cassady taught Kerouac, who never had a driver 's license, how to drive, while Kerouac taught Cassady about writing.
Neal Cassady traveled back and forth across the country, usually driving cars like Hudsons at high speed.
he looked for jobs, fresh experiences, and new friends.
Kerouac began to travel with him.
They lived in and visited cities such as Denver, San Francisco, Monterey, and even Mexico City.
They also looked sometimes for Cassady 's father, who disappeared years earlier.
Kerouac got sick in Mexico City, and Cassady left him behind at the hospital.
Kerouac had to make his own way home.
He took this very hard, and was angry with Cassady.
He forgave him later, when they met again, and he made Cassady the central character of his new book.
One job Kerouac could fall back on, thanks to Cassady, was as a railroad brakeman.
Many people in the 1940s and 1950s used stimulant drugs such as benzedrine, to help them stay alert.
Jazz music was also popular, and some jazz musicians and listeners smoked marijuana.
Kerouac was influenced by both drugs, and they changed the way he wrote.
He began to write what he called "spontaneous prose", jotting down words in much the same way a musician improvise a solo in a song.
(Kerouac played no musical instruments, but could scat well, and had many of the same instincts as a musician.)
His new writing style was strange to many people, and even seen as bad by some older authors and critics.
It was six years before Kerouac published his second novel.
The version of On the Road that finally satisfied Kerouac was written over three weeks in 1951.
It was typed on a single roll of teletype paper.
Kerouac liked to type on rolls of paper, because he did not have to stop to change pages.
He had just gotten married for the second time, to Joan Haverty.
The manuscript was Kerouac 's way to explain his friendship with Neal Cassady to his new wife.
The explanation made a fine rough draft for a novel, but it did not help his marriage.
Joan felt that Kerouac 's nonstop work on the manuscript was an obsession, and she did not want to stay married to him after it was finished.
They were soon divorced, as he was with his first wife.
The editor who worked on The Town and the City found the long, scroll-like manuscript hard to understand, and even harder to work with.
Kerouac 's publisher rejected the novel, as did every other publisher he went to.
Nor was anyone interested in The Subterraneans, a shorter novel he wrote in three nights, about his romance with an African-American woman.
Such a relationship was taboo in America during the 1950s.
Kerouac continued to write, from short stories and essays to long novels, and even poetry.
He tried many different subjects, but had almost nothing published.
He also worked different jobs, including brakeman and night watchman.
It turned out that Joan Haverty was pregnant by Kerouac, and she gave birth to a daughter, Jan-Michelle.
Kerouac denied he was the father at first, but a blood test later proved it was likely.
She also grew to look like him, and he accepted her as his child.
Joan sued Kerouac for child support, but he was ill and could not work at the time, and she collected almost no money.
Kerouac only saw Jan a few times, but talked to her more often by telephone.
Joan mostly kept them apart.
Allen Ginsberg became well-known during the 1950s for his writings, in particular a poem called "Howl", whose title came from Kerouac 's critique of it.
Ginsberg mentioned his friends in some of his works, including Kerouac, and wanted the people who liked him to give them and their writings a chance.
Finally Viking Press agreed to publish On the Road, after many changes to the manuscript.
The novel became a bestseller, and Kerouac was a celebrity after years of little success.
Magazines began to request articles and essays from him.
He appeared on many television programs, including The Steve Allen Show.
Steve Allen liked him, and they recorded an album together, with Kerouac reading aloud and Allen playing piano.
He recorded another album later, with jazz musicians Al Cohn and Zoot Sims.
Kerouac wrote and published more novels, including The Dharma Bums, Doctor Sax, Maggie Cassidy, Visions of Gerard (a memoir of his older brother, who died in childhood), Big Sur (about the stresses brought on by fame, and how the people he knew saw him differently), Desolation Angels, and Book of Dreams (a dream journal).
He studied Buddhism, and this also influenced his writing.
He wrote Some of the Dharma as an introduction to Buddhism, though he remained a Catholic.
As Kerouac, Ginsberg, and their friends became famous, a trend among the group of writers and artists was noticed, and was written about in the mainstream media.
Kerouac was asked to describe his generation.
He explained that the pressures of 20th century living had ` beaten ' normal ways of thinking and working out of them, and they preferred the beat of bebop and jazz to most other music, "so I guess you could say we 're a beat generation."
"Beat Generation" became the name for the new sense of style coming from artists and writers in New York and San Francisco.
Kerouac 's circle of friends and acquaintances (and their imitators) were called the Beats, with Kerouac himself called "King of the Beats" by the media.
(The term was later parodied as "beatnik", implying such people were Communists, and would hurt the country.)
Kerouac narrated a movie, called Pull My Daisy, about the Beat phenomenon.
An ongoing problem Kerouac had with fame was that people thought he did all the things he wrote about.
Much of what he described (like Neal Cassady 's lawless nature, promiscuous, and drug use) was only what he saw in other people.
Not everyone who read Kerouac 's stories understood this.
Some people wanted to blame him for doing bad things, or getting others to do them.
Other people wanted to do those kinds of things with Kerouac.
Shy by nature, Kerouac pulled away.
He became almost a recluse in the house he bought for his mother.
He also began to abuse alcohol.
During the 1960s, American society went through many changes, in part because of the influence of the Beats.
Many young people read On the Road, and saw things they related to, and it made them want to experience more in their own lives.
Other writers liked the looseness of Kerouac 's style, and it made them think more about their own writing, how to study life, and how to better express themselves.
Many musicians were affected by Kerouac 's books, including Bob Dylan, Donovan, and The Doors.
Kerouac was more disappointed than happy to be famous.
Even though he liked some of what he inspired, he felt that the public largely got the wrong message from his books.
He saw many people take what the Beats wrote as a kind of permission to get into trouble, or abandon (give up) people and things they cared about.
He felt sympathy for the hippie, but disagreed with them on the Vietnam War, the role of government, and patriotism.
He also lost some of his old friends, when their views differed.
Kerouac still abused alcohol and other drugs, and it harmed his health.
He became bloated and irritable, and looked drunk on his last television appearance, on William F. Buckley 's Firing Line in 1968.
He married for the third time, to Stella Sampas, the sister of a boyhood friend.
Stella looked after Kerouac and his mother, kept the public and others away, and tried to get him to stop drinking alcohol.
His daughter Jan-Michelle also began to write during her teen years.
He gave her his blessing, and told her "You can use my (last) name."
She wrote under the name Jan Kerouac, and published novels and stories herself, from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Kerouac 's mother became sick, and he sometimes worked at her bedside on stories.
She helped him work out the ending of Pic, his novel about a young African-American.
Kerouac wrote and reworked new material until the last day of his life.
He died in St. Petersburg, Florida during emergency surgery, to try to repair a hemorrhage caused by cirrhosis, due to his alcohol abuse.
He was buried in his hometown, and was hardly remembered there at first.
Even though he was world famous, Kerouac earned very little money as a writer.
He died with only a few hundred dollars in the bank.
It was years before his grave received a headstone.
Neal Cassady died more than a year before, of exposure, alongside a railroad track in Mexico.
He set out to become a writer or musician, but he never got far with either.
He only published one book, The First Third, which was about his youth.
Cassady earned most of his money from labor, and was often out of work and owed money.
He spent a long time in jail after he was arrested for selling marijuana.
Sometimes the fact that Cassady was well-known through Kerouac kept him from having the life he wanted.
Cassady had a family with Carolyn, but she had to both work, and raise the children when her husband was away.
Carolyn later wrote a memoir.
Kerouac 's works, especially On the Road, are now more popular than ever.
Generations have discovered his works, as a means of learning about life and attitudes in America during his lifetime, as a way to measure their own sense of experience, or as examples of free association and stream of consciousness in creative writing.
Less than half of Kerouac 's writings were published during his lifetime, but nearly all are now available.
The ones published later drew hundreds of times more money than his most famous works, when they first appeared.
His hometown Lowell remembers Kerouac today with a memorial, and cultural events every year.
His grave now has a headstone, which reads "He honored life".
A street in Lowell was renamed "Jack Kerouac Alley" in his memory.
The Subterraneans was made into a movie by MGM in 1960, but the storyline was almost completely different from the book.
On the Road was considered many times to be made into a movie, once with actor Marlon Brando as Dean Moriarty and another time with Sean Penn, but this never got farther than negotiation.
The movie rights were resold in the 1990s, for more than ten times Kerouac 's lifetime earnings, and a movie of On the Road appeared in 2012, starring Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund as Kerouac and Cassidy, with Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst as LuAnne Henderson and Carolyn Cassady.
A movie, Heart Beat, was made in 1980, about the relationship between Carolyn Robinson, Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac.
It starred Sissy Spacek, Nick Nolte, and John Heard.
Kerouac appears as "Hank" in William S. Burroughs 's novel Naked Lunch, and was played by Nicholas Campbell in the 1991 movie version.
He was also the subject of a song by 10,000 Maniacs, "Hey Jack Kerouac".
He and Neal Cassady are the subject of a song by Tom Waits, "Jack & Neal\/California Here I Come".
Waits also covered a song written by Kerouac, titled "On the Road", on his ' album "Orphans".
Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) KG CH is a British politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and leader of the Conservative Party from November 1990 to May 1997.
He was also a member of the Cabinet of Margaret Thatcher as Chief Secretary to the Treasury (1987-1989), Foreign Secretary (1989) and Chancellor of the Exchequer (1989-1990).
Major was born in Carshalton, England and left school at the age of 16.
He became a Conservative Party councillor in 1968.
At the 1979 General Election, Major became a Member of Parliament for Huntingdonshire (Huntingdon from 1983 onwards).
After holding several cabinet posts, Major was elected to succeed Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister and Conservative leader.
As Prime Minister, John Major oversaw British involvement in the Gulf War (1991-92) and his party 's narrow re-election in the 1992 General Election.
After this, the Conservative Party became less popular because of the Black Wednesday fiasco in November 1992 and because the Conservative Party became divided over the issue of the European Union.
The Conservative Party was defeated at the 1997 General Election and Major was succeeded by the Labor Party 's Tony Blair.
Major was succeeded as Conservative leader by William Hague and he stood down as an MP at the 2001 General Election.
Major has so far declined a life peerage on standing down from Parliament.
Major married Norma Johnson (now Dame Norma Major, DBE) on 3 October 1970.
She was a teacher, and a member of the Young Conservatives.
They became engaged after only ten days.
They had two children; a son, James, and a daughter, Elizabeth.
They have a holiday home on the coast of north Norfolk, near Weybourne.
He is a keen follower of cricket, motor racing, and also a supporter of Chelsea Football Club.
Jazz dance is a dance genre which is easy to recognize, but not easy to define.
It is, like some other forms of dance and music, an African influence in western culture.
'' (Jazz dance was) developed by African Americans in the first part of the twentieth century".
Its origins were in social dancing to the music of jazz, but it developed into a type of stage dancing.
Today, jazz dance is taught to students of stage dancing.
The ISTD (Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing) lists jazz dance under ` Modern Theatre ', and the IDTA (International Dance Teachers Association) lists it in their ` Theatre Branch '.
Professional stage dancers are certain to have some kind of jazz dance training.
Modern ballet has also been influenced by jazz dance.
Balanchine 's ballet Slaughter on Tenth Avenue was the climax of the Broadway musical On Your Toes (1936), Kathleen Dunham and Bob Fosse were famous jazz dancers and choreographers.
Jabberwocky is a ` nonsense poem ' written by Lewis Carroll in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass.
All the same, it does strangely make a kind of sense.
In an early scene Alice finds the verse Jabberwocky.
She says (p24) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideasonly I do n't exactly know what they are".
This is now thought to be one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English.
Its playful, whimsical language has given us nonsense words and neologisms such as "galumphing" and "chortle".
The concept of nonsense verse was not original to Carroll.
Nonsense existed in Shakespeare 's work and was well-known in the Brothers Grimm 's fairytales, some of which are called lying tales or l genm rchen.
John Tenniel reluctantly agreed to illustrate the book in 1871, and his illustrations are still the defining images of the poem.
The illustration of the Jabberwock may reflect the Victorian obsession with natural history and the fast-evolving sciences of palaeontology and geology.
The works of Darwin and the models of dinosaurs at the Crystal Palace Exhibition helped feed the interest.
Perhaps it is not so surprising that Tenniel gave the Jabberwock "the leathery wings of a pterodactyl and the long scaly neck and tail of a sauropod".
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
Long time the manxome foe he sought So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!
One, two!
One, two!
and through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day!
Callooh!
Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
Many of the words in the poem are playful words of Carroll 's own invention, without special meaning.
When Alice has finished reading the poem she gives her impressions:
` It seems very pretty, ' she said when she had finished it, ` but it 's rather hard to understand! '
(You see she did n't like to confess, even to herself, that she could n't make it out at all.)
` Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas only I do n't exactly know what they are!
However, somebody killed something: that 's clear, at any rate '
In Through the Looking-Glass, the character of Humpty Dumpty explains to her the nonsense words from the first stanza of the poem.
However, Carroll 's personal commentary on several of the words differ from Humpty 's.
An analysis of the poem and Carroll 's commentary is given in the book The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner.
Sir John Alexander Macdonald, GCB, KCMG, PC, PC (Can), (January 11, 1815 June 6, 1891) was the first Prime Minister of Canada and the dominant figure of Canadian Confederation.
Macdonald 's time in office spanned 19 years.
So he was the second longest serving Prime Minister of Canada.
He is the only Canadian Prime Minister who won six majority governments.
He was for a national railway that should link Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.
That was completed in 1885.
John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 April 26, 1865) was an American actor who shot U.S. president Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died the next morning.
Booth was born in Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland to English immigrant parents.
He was a very well-known stage actor who supported the Confederacy during the American Civil War.
He was angry with Lincoln for supporting voting rights for former slaves, and he hoped to rally the remaining Confederate troops to keep fighting the war, which was coming to an end.
Booth was chased by United States soldiers and killed at a farm in Virginia 12 days after the assassination.
Booth became politically active in the 1850s, joining the Know-Nothing Party, a group that wanted fewer immigrants to come to the United States.
Booth strongly supported slavery.
In 1859, he joined a Virginia company that helped with the capture of John Brown after his raid on Harpers Ferry.
Booth watched Brown 's execution.
During the Civil War, Booth worked as a Confederate secret agent.
He met frequently with the heads of the Secret Service, Jacob Thompson and Clement Clay, in Montreal.
In the summer of 1864, Booth began making plans to kidnap Abraham Lincoln.
The plan called for Lincoln to be taken south to Richmond, where he would be held until traded for Confederate prisoners-of-war.
Booth recruited friends and known southern-sympathizers for his mission, including the eight persons tried by the 1865 military commission.
Some who resisted his persuasive efforts, such as actor Samuel Chester, became key government witnesses in the trial.
On March 4, 1865, Booth attended Lincoln 's second inauguration as President, as can be seen in photographs taken that day.
On March 15, Booth and most of his fellow conspirators met at a restaurant three blocks from Ford 's Theatre to plan the kidnapping.
Soon thereafter, Booth heard that the President would be attending a matinee performance of Still Waters Run Deep on March 17 at the Campbell Hospital on the outskirts of Washington.
This, he decided, would the perfect opportunity for a kidnapping and according to John Surratt Booth developed a plan to intercept Lincoln 's carriage en route to the play.
Booth 's plans were stopped, however, when the President changed his plans and decided instead to speak to the 140th Indiana Regiment and present a captured flag.
Booth 's next plan was to kidnap the President at a future performance at Ford 's Theatre (where the actor had several friends).
This plan failed to win the support of some of his co-conspirators, who dismissed it as unworkable.
After the fall of the Confederate capital at Richmond (April 4) and General Lee 's large-scale surrender of Confederate forces (April 9), Booth decided to assassinate Lincoln instead of kidnapping him.
According to Booth 's former friend, Louis Weichmann, Booth may have made the decision to kill the President after hearing Lincoln deliver a speech on April 11 urging Negro suffrage.
Weichmann spoke of his viewing of the President 's speech with Booth: "I had never seen Mr. Lincoln up close and I knew he was a tall man, however nothing could have prepared me for the sight of him.
A long shadow did he have.
And his arms, when at his sides, touched near his knees.
Very professionally he said that there would never be any suffrage based on differences in the way people look.
Upon this, Booth turned to the two of us and said, That means nigger citizenship.
Now by God I ll put him through!
On April 14, 1865, while picking up his mail at Ford 's Theatre in Washington, D.C., Booth discovered that Lincoln would be attending a play with his wife there that evening.
Booth knew the play well.
Booth met with his co-conspirators and established a plan to kill President Lincoln, Vice-President Johnson, Secretary of State Seward, and possibly General Grant all around 10:15 that evening.
That afternoon Booth prepared a peep hole into the balcony room the Presidential party would use.
During the play, Booth quietly entered the unguarded balcony room.
At 10:15 pm, following a line in the play he knew would get a laugh, Booth fired a pistol at point-blank range into the back of Lincoln 's head.
Booth escaped by jumping from the balcony onto the stage, where he shouted a triumphant line to the audience.
He broke his leg during the jump, but escaped out the back door and onto his horse.
The mortally wounded Lincoln was carried across the street to Petersen House, where he died the next morning.
One co-conspirator did attack Secretary of State Seward with a knife the night of the 14th, but Seward survived the attack.
The conspirator who planned to attack Vice-President Johnson did not follow through with the plot.
Booth fled with an accomplice south through Maryland to Virginia.
An army troop caught up with him on April 26.
His accomplice surrendered but Booth refused.
He died from shots fired during his capture.
James Danforth "Dan" Quayle (born February 4, 1947) served as the 44th Vice President of the United States, serving with President George H. W. Bush (1989 1993).
Quayle was born in Indianapolis, Indiana.
His parents were Martha Corinne (nee Pulliam) and James Cline Quayle.
He has often been incorrectly referred to as James Danforth Quayle III.
In his memoirs, he points out that his birth name was simply James Danforth Quayle.
The name Quayle originates from the Isle of Man, where his great-grandfather was born.
His maternal grandfather, Eugene C. Pulliam, was a rich and influential publishing magnate who founded Central Newspapers, Inc., owner of over a dozen major newspapers such as The Arizona Republic and The Indianapolis Star.
James C. Quayle moved his family to Arizona in 1955 to run part of the family 's publishing business.
While his family was very wealthy, Quayle was less rich; his total net worth by the time of his election in 1988 was less than $ 1 million.
Quayle and his wife are Presbyterians.
He currently lives in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
Gaius Julius Caesar (July 100 BC 15 March 44 BC) was a military commander, politician and author at the end of the Roman Republic.
Caesar became a member of the First Triumvirate and when that broke up he fought a civil war against Pompey the Great.
Winning the war, Caesar became Dictator for life of the Roman Republic.
He was assassinated by his enemies in Rome.
Julius Caesar was born in Italy around 16 July 100 BC.
The exact date is not known.
He was born Gaius Julius Caesarius.
At sixteen he was the head of his family, and soon came under threat as Lucius Cornelius Sulla became dictator.
Sulla set about purging Rome of his enemies.
Hundreds were killed or exiled, and Caesar was on the list.
His mother 's family pleaded for his life; Sulla reluctantly gave in, but stripped Caesar of his inheritance.
From then on, lack of money was one of the main problems in his life.
Caesar joined the army, and left Rome.
He only returned after Sulla 's death in 78 BC.
On the way across the Aegean Sea, Caesar was kidnapped by pirates and held prisoner.
He maintained an attitude of superiority throughout his captivity.
When the pirates thought to demand a ransom of twenty talents of silver, he insisted they ask for fifty.
After the ransom was paid, Caesar raised a fleet, pursued and captured the pirates, and imprisoned them.
He had them crucified on his own authority, as he had promised while in captivity a promise the pirates had taken as a joke.
As a sign of leniency, he first had their throats cut.
He was soon called back into military action.
On his return to Rome he was elected military tribune, a first step in a political career.
He was elected quaestor for 69 BC.
His wife Cornelia died that year.
After her funeral, Caesar went to serve his quaestorship in Spain.
On his return in 67 BC, he married Pompeia (a granddaughter of Sulla), whom he later divorced.
In 63 BC he ran for election to the post of Pontifex Maximus, high priest of the Roman state religion.
He ran against two powerful senators; there were accusations of bribery by all sides.
Caesar won comfortably, despite his opponents ' greater experience and standing.
After his praetorship, Caesar was appointed to govern Roman Spain, but he was still in considerable debt and needed to satisfy his creditors.
He turned to Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of Rome 's richest men.
In return for political support, Crassus paid some of Caesar 's debts and acted as guarantor for others.
Caesar left for his province before his praetorship had ended.
In Spain he conquered two local tribes, was hailed as imperator by his troops, and completed his governorship in high esteem.
Though he was due a ` triumph ' in Rome, he also wanted to stand for Consul, the most senior magistracy in the Republic.
Faced with the choice between a triumph and the consulship, Caesar chose the consulship.
After election, he was a consul in 59 BC.
Caesar took power with Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) and Marcus Licinius Crassus.
These three men ruled Rome and were called the Triumvirate.
Caesar was the go-between for Crassus and Pompey.
They had been at odds for years, but Caesar tried to reconcile them.
Between the three of them, they had enough money and political influence to control public business.
This informal alliance, known as the First Triumvirate (rule of three men), was cemented by the marriage of Pompey to Caesar 's daughter Julia.
Caesar also married again, this time to Calpurnia, who was the daughter of another powerful senator.
Caesar proposed a law for the redistribution of public lands to the poor, a proposal supported by Pompey, by force of arms if need be, and by Crassus, making the triumvirate public.
Pompey filled the city with soldiers, and the triumvirate 's opponents were intimidated.
With the agreement of his partners, Caesar became the governor of Gallia (Gaul).
Gaul is the area which is today 's Northern Italy, Switzerland, and France.
Caesar was the commander of the Roman legions during the Gallic War.
The war was fought on the side of Rome 's Gallic clients against the Germans, who wanted to invade Gaul.
It was also to extend Rome 's control of Gaul.
Caesar 's conquest of Gaul extended Rome 's territory to the North Sea.
In 55 BC he conducted the first Roman invasion of Britain.
Caesar wrote about this eight-year war in his book De Bello Gallico (` About the Gallic Wars ').
This book, written in Latin, is an important historical account.
These achievements got him great military power, and threatened to eclipse Pompey.
The balance of power was further upset by the death of Crassus in 53 BC.
In 50 BC, the Senate, led by Pompey, ordered Caesar to disband his army and return to Rome because his term as governor had finished.
Caesar thought he would be prosecuted if he entered Rome without the immunity enjoyed by a magistrate.
Pompey accused Caesar of insubordination and treason.
Caesar and his army approached Rome and crossed the Rubicon, a shallow river in north-east Italy, in 49 BC.
It was the point beyond which no army was supposed to go.
The river marked the boundary between Cisalpine Gaul to the north, and Italy proper to the south.
Crossing the Rubicon caused a civil war.
Pompey, the lawful Consul, and his friends, fled from Rome as Caesar 's army approached.
Pompey managed to escape before Caesar could capture him.
Caesar decided to head for Spain, while leaving Italy under the control of Mark Antony.
Caesar made an astonishing 27-day route-march to Spain, where he defeated Pompey 's lieutenants.
He then returned east, to challenge Pompey in Greece.
There, in July 48 BC, at Dyrrhachium Caesar barely avoided a catastrophic defeat.
He then decisively defeated Pompey, at the Battle of Pharsalus later that year.
In Rome, Caesar was appointed Dictator, with Mark Antony as his Master of the Horse (second in command).
Caesar presided over his own election to a second consulship and then, after eleven days, resigned this dictatorship.
Late in 48 BC, he was appointed dictator again, with a term of one year.
Caesar then pursued Pompey to Egypt, where Pompey was soon murdered.
Caesar then became involved in an Egyptian civil war between the child pharaoh and his sister, wife, and co-regent queen, Cleopatra.
Perhaps as a result of the pharaoh 's role in Pompey 's murder, Caesar sided with Cleopatra.
He is reported to have wept at the sight of Pompey 's head, which was offered to him by the pharaoh as a gift.
In any event, Caesar defeated the pharaoh 's forces in 47 BC and installed Cleopatra as ruler.
Caesar and Cleopatra celebrated their victory with a triumphant procession on the Nile in the spring of 47 B.C..
The royal barge was accompanied by 400 additional ships, introducing Caesar to the luxurious lifestyle of the Egyptian pharaohs.
Caesar and Cleopatra never married; Roman Law only recognized marriages between two Roman citizens.
Caesar continued his relationship with Cleopatra throughout his last marriage, which lasted 14 years in Roman eyes, this did not constitute adultery and may have fathered a son called Caesarion.
Cleopatra visited Rome on more than one occasion, staying in Caesar 's villa, outside Rome across the River Tiber.
In 46 BC, Caesar defeated Cato and the remnants of Pompey 's supporters in Africa.
He was then appointed dictator for ten years.
In two years he made numerous changes in Roman administration to improve the Republic.
Many of these changes were meant to improve the lives of ordinary people.
One example, which has lasted, was his reform of the calendar into the present format, with a leap day every four years.
In February of 44 BC, one month before his assassination, he was appointed Dictator for life.
On the Ides of March (15 March) of 44 BC, Caesar was due to appear at a session of the Senate.
Mark Antony, fearing the worst, went to head Caesar off.
The plotters expected this, and arranged for someone to intercept him.
According to Eutropius, around sixty or more men participated in the assassination.
He was stabbed 23 times.
According to Suetonius, a physician later established that only one wound, the second one to his chest, had been lethal.
The dictator 's last words are not known with certainty, and are a contested subject among scholars and historians alike.
The version best known in the English-speaking world is the Latin phrase Et tu, Brute?
(` You too, Brutus? ').
In Shakespeare 's Julius Caesar, this is the first half of the line: "Et tu, Brute?
Then fall, Caesar".
According to Plutarch, after the assassination, Brutus stepped forward as if to say something to his fellow senators; they, however, fled the building.
Brutus and his companions then marched to the Capitol while crying out to their beloved city: "People of Rome, we are once again free!".
They were met with silence, as the citizens of Rome had locked themselves inside their houses as soon as the rumor of what had taken place had begun to spread.
He has been mentioned in many, many movies.
A wax statue of Caesar was erected in the forum displaying the 23 stab wounds.
A crowd who had gathered there started a fire, which badly damaged the forum and neighbouring buildings.
In the ensuing chaos Mark Antony, Octavian (later Augustus Caesar), and others fought a series of five civil wars, which would end in the formation of the Roman Empire.
The Roman empire and its emperors were so important in history that the word Caesar was used as a title in some European countries to mean emperor, even long after the Roman empire was gone.
For example, Germany 's emperor was called a Kaiser up to the year 1919 CE and Russia 's emperor was called a Tsar until the year 1917 CE.
Caesar was a significant author.
These narratives were written and published on a yearly basis during or just after the actual campaigns, as a sort of "dispatches from the front".
Apparently simple and direct in style to the point that Caesar 's Commentarii are commonly studied by first and second year Latin students they are in fact highly sophisticated tracts, aimed particularly at the middle-brow readership of minor aristocrats in Rome, Italy, and the provinces.
Based on remarks by Plutarch, Caesar is sometimes thought to have suffered from epilepsy.
Modern scholarship is divided on the subject.
It is more certain that he was plagued by malaria, particularly during the Sullan proscriptions of the 80s.
Caesar had four documented episodes of what may have been complex partial seizures.
He may additionally have had absence seizures (petit mal) in his youth.
The earliest accounts of these seizures were made by the biographer Suetonius who was born after Caesar died.
The claim of epilepsy is countered among some medical historians by a claim of hypoglycemia.
This can cause seizures which are a bit like epilepsy.
In 2003, psychiatrist Harbour F. Hodder published what he termed as the "Caesar Complex" theory, arguing that Caesar was a sufferer of temporal lobe epilepsy, and that the symptoms were a factor in Caesar 's decision to forgo personal safety in the days leading up to his assassination.
\/ ref) Caesar was kidnapped by pirates and held prisoner.
Jacobitism was (and, to a much smaller extent, is) the political movement that tried to put the Stuart kings back onto the thrones of England, Scotland, and Kingdom of Ireland.
The movement took its name from the Latin form Jacobus of the name of King James II and VII.
Jacobitism began after the deposition of James II and VII in 1688.
He was replaced by his daughter Mary II jointly with her husband and first cousin William of Orange.
The Stuarts lived on the European mainland after that, sometimes trying to get back the throne with the help of France or Spain.
The most important places of Jacobitism were Ireland and Scotland, especially the Scottish Highlands.
In England, Jacobitism was strongest in the north, and some support was also in Wales.
A great number of Catholic people liked Jacobitism.
They hoped the Stuarts would end bad laws.
Lots of different helped the military campaigns for all sorts of reasons.
In Scotland the Jacobite cause became a lasting romantic memory.
James Graham Ballard (often "Jim"; 15 November 1930 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, and important member of the New Wave movement in science fiction.
His best-known books are Crash (1973) and Empire of the Sun (1984).
Ballard 's father was a chemist at a company called the Calico Printers Association.
The company was based in Manchester and made cloth.
Ballard was born and raised in the Shanghai International Settlement, an area under foreign control where people "lived an American style of life".
He went to the Cathedral School in Shanghai.
After the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Ballard 's family temporarily left their suburban home and rented a house in downtown Shanghai to avoid the shells fired by Chinese and Japanese forces.
After the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese occupied the International Settlement.
In early 1943 they began interning Allied civilians.
Ballard was sent to the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center with his parents and younger sister.
He spent over two years in the internment camp.
His family lived in a small area in G block, a two-story residence for 40 families.
He went to school in the camp.
Many think that Ballard 's exposure to the atrocities of war at a young age explains the conflicts and violence in much of his fiction.
In 1946, after the end of the war, his mother returned to England with Ballard and his sister on the SS Arrawa.
They in Plymouth, and he attended The Leys School in Cambridge.
After a couple of years his mother and sister returned to China, rejoining Ballard 's father.
Ballard went to live with his grandparents when he was not at boarding school.
In 1949 he went on to study medicine at King 's College, Cambridge and planned to become a psychiatrist.
At university, Ballard was writing avant-garde fiction heavily influenced by psychoanalysis and surrealist painters.
At this time, he wanted to become a writer as well as pursue a medical career.
Ballard stopped his medical studies, and in 1952 he enrolled at Queen Mary, University of London to read English Literature.
However, he was asked to leave at the end of the year.
Ballard then worked for an advertising agency and as an encyclopedia salesman.
He kept writing short fiction but did not get published.
In 1953 Ballard joined the Royal Air Force and was sent to the RCAF flight-training base in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada.
He left the RAF in 1954 after two years and returned to England.
In 1955 he married Helen Mary Matthews and they lived in Chiswick.
Ballard published several novels and short-story collections during the seventies and eighties.
However, he only became popular in the mainstream with his novel Empire of the Sun in 1984.
This novel was based on his years in Shanghai and in an internment camp.
It became a bestseller,
Ballard continued to write until the end of his life.
He died of prostate cancer in London.
Bruce Sterling called Ballard is an important writer leading to cyberpunk in the introduction to the Mirrorshades anthology.
Ballard was interested in the relationship between different media.
He was one of the trustees of the Institute for Research in Art and Technology in the early 1970s.
Journalism is a type of writing.
The term is used to describe the activities of newspapers, news shows on television, news shows on radio, and news magazine.
There are many different news and information jobs in the field of journalism, such as the jobs of newspaper reporter, television news anchor, writer, editor, sub-editor, illustrator, and photographer.
Most people use journalism to express themselves and put their feelings into what they are writing.
People who work in journalism jobs are called journalists.
Jean Cauvin, also Jean Calvin (John Calvin in English) (July 10, 1509 May 27, 1564), was a French Protestant theologian during the Protestant Reformation and was a central developer of the system of Christian theology called Calvinism or Reformed theology.
In Geneva, he rejected Papal authority, established a new scheme of civic and ecclesiastical governance.
He is famous for his teachings and writings and infamous for his role in the execution of Michael Servetus.
Calvin was born with the name Jean Chauvin (or Cauvin, in Latin Calvinus) in Noyon, Picardie, France, to G rard Cauvin and Jeanne Lefranc.
In 1523, Calvin 's father, a lawyer, sent his fourteen-year-old son to the University of Paris to study humanities and law.
By 1532, he had attained a Doctor of Law degree at Orl ans.
In 1536, he settled in Geneva, Switzerland.
After being expelled from the city, he served as a pastor in Strasbourg from 1538 until 1541, before returning to Geneva, where he lived until his death in 1564.
Calvin was trained to be a lawyer.
He studied under some of the best legal minds of the Renaissance in France.
Part of that training involved the newer humanistic methods of trying to understand, which dealt with a text directly.
His training was important for Calvin because, once convinced of Evangelicalism, he applied these methods to the Bible.
He molded his thinking along biblical lines, and he labored to preach and teach what he believed the Bible taught.
While Reformers such as Jan Hus and Martin Luther may be seen as somewhat original thinkers that began a movement, Calvin was a great logician and systematizer of that movement, but not an innovator in doctrine.
Calvin was very familiar with the writings of the early Church Fathers and the great Medieval schoolmen, and he was also in debt to earlier Reformers.
Calvin did not reject the Scholastics of the Middle Ages outright but rather made use of them and reformed their thoughts in accordance with his understanding of the Bible.
Calvin is often associated with the doctrines of predestination and election, but he said pretty much the same things that the other magisterial Reformers said about these doctrines.
Calvin 's power was very great in his last years.
He was known all around the world as a reformer different from Martin Luther.
Mainly, Luther and Calvin respected each other.
However, Luther and a Z rich reformer Huldrych Zwingli thought differently about the eucharist.
Calvin 's thoughts about it made Luther believe that Calvin agreed with Zwingli.
At the same time, Calvin was sad that the reformers were not all together.
He tried to join them together by signing the Consensus Tigurinus.
This was an agreement between the Z rich and Geneva churches.
Calvin 's greatest help to the English-speaking people was by giving Marian exiles in Geneva protection.
He did this starting in 1555.
With the city 's protection, they could make their own reformed church under John Knox and William Whittingham.
They later carried many of Calvin 's ideas back to England and Scotland.
However, Calvin was most interested in trying to change his homeland, France.
He helped the building of churches by giving out literature and offering ministers.
Between 1555 and 1562, over one hundred ministers were sent to France.
Inside Geneva, Calvin mainly wanted to make a coll ge, a school for children.
A place to build the school was picked on 25 March 1558.
It was opened the next year on 5 June 1559.
It was divided into two parts.
One part was a grammar school.
The grammar school was called the coll ge or schola privata.
The other part was an advanced school called the acad mie or schola publica.
In five years there were 1,200 students in the grammar school and 300 in the advanced school.
The coll ge later became the Coll ge Calvin, one of the college preparatory schools of Geneva.
The acad mie became the University of Geneva.
In autumn 1558, Calvin became ill with a fever.
He was afraid he might die before finishing his last revision of the Institutes.
Because of this, he forced himself to work.
The last edition became much longer, so Calvin called it a new work.
It was 21 chapters in the edition before the last one.
However, in the last one, it was 80.
This was because of more detail in the material that was already there: more subjects were not really added.
Soon after he became better, he strained his voice while preaching.
This made him cough violently.
He burst a blood-vessel in his lungs.
His health became much worse after this.
He preached his last sermon in St. Pierre on 6 February 1564.
On 25 April, he made his will.
In his will, he left a little money to his family and to the coll ge.
A few days later, the ministers of the church came to visit him.
He said his last goodbye before dying of testicular cancer.
This goodbye is recorded in Discours d'adieu aux ministres.
He remembered his life in Geneva.
Calvin died on 27 May 1564.
He was 54.
On the next day, he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Cimeti re de Plainpalais.
People are not sure where the grave is exactly.
However, a stone was added in the 19th century to mark a grave traditionally thought to be Calvin 's.
Judit Polg r (born 23 July 1976) is a Hungarian chess grandmaster.
She is by far the strongest female chess player in history, p312 yet she has never played in the Women 's World Chess Championship.
In 1991 she got the title of Grandmaster (GM) at 15 years, 4 months.
She was, at that time, the youngest person to do so.
Polg r is now ranked number 51 in the world, the only woman on FIDE 's Top 100 Players list; she has been ranked as high as eighth.
Judit and her two sisters were educated at home by their father.
She always preferred playing in the open events, making it clear from the start that she wanted to become the true world chess champion regardless of gender.
This considerably annoyed the Hungarian Chess Federation, which had visions of winning the Women 's World Championship after decades of Soviet domination.
Paid substantial appearance fees by the Hungarian Chess Federation, p106 the family did play in two female-only events.
The Hungarians (nicknamed ` Polgaria ') won the Women 's Chess Olympiads, with a team packed with Polg rs, in 1988 and 1990.
p106; 156 Zsuzsa, Judit, Sofia (the least strong sister) and Ildiko Madl were the team which pushed the Soviet Union into second place for the first time.
In 1994 Judit suffered a controversial defeat at the hands of then-world champion Garry Kasparov, the highest-rated chessplayer of all time.
Kasparov changed his mind after making a losing move and then made another move instead.
According to chess rules, once a player has released a piece s\/he can not make a different move, so Kasparov should have been made to play his original move.
However, Polg r did not challenge this because she says there were no witnesses and an arbiter was not around.
She was also unaware at the time that the re-move was caught on tape by a television crew.
The tournament director was criticised for not forfeiting Kasparov when the videotape evidence was made available to him.
In the event, Polgar has not reached the top of the game (very few do), and now is the mother of two children.
Nevertheless, she has broken the gender barrier in chess: she has proved that a woman can reach the top ten.
Her sister, Susan Polgar, who now lives in the U.S.A., did become Women 's World Champion, and also a full Grandmaster.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (1712 2 July 1778) was a famous French speaking philosopher.
He was born in Geneva, Switzerland and always described himself as being Genevan.
Rousseau lived in the 18th century during the Age of Enlightenment.
His political ideology influenced the French Revolution and aided the development of nationalism and socialist theories.
Rousseau was also a composer, writing numerous books about music theory.
Rousseau authored Confessions, an autobiography, one of the first of its kind.
Many later philosophers were influenced by him.
He wrote a novel Julie, ou la nouvelle H lo se which was a best-seller and influenced 19th century writers of romanticism.
Rousseau believed that men were born good and innocent, and that corruption and sadness happened because of life experiences and experiences in society.
He believed that if society was gone, man would be happy and pure once again.
Rousseau is most famous for his social contract ideology, which is often compared to the social contract of John Locke.
This ideology is stated in Rousseau 's book, The Social Contract.
John von Neumann (December 28.
1903 February 8.
1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician and physicist who made contributions to many fields including:
He is generally regarded as a prodigy, polymath and one of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century.
By some of his contemporaries suggested to be the "smartest human being ever"
Member of a group called ` Martians ', a group of hungarian immigrants to the US of extraordinary intellect.
Other people considered part of this group were Edward Teller, Paul Erd s, Leo Szillard and Eugene Wiegner.
His textbook on Quantum Mechanics is considered to be one of the first and a seminal work on this topic.
His game theory is considered one of the most important tools in competitive strategic management and is also of high importance in biosciences.
He is the designer of the Von-Neumann architecture, which is the basic architecture nearly all computers are still build upon today.
He was one of the first proponents of artificial intelligence and is considered the grandfather of the artificial life movement by proposing the idea of self replicating machines.
This is why a machine that can replicate itself is now commonly referred to as a Von Neumann Machine
Further, together with Stanislav Ulam, he executed some of the most important calculations within the Manhattan project and had a massive impact on the military strategy of the United States in the early fifties until his death from cancer.
Worked at the same time at the Institute of Advanced Studies as Albert Einstein, Kurt G del and Robert Oppenheimer.
John Henry Newton, Jr. (July 24, 1725 December 21, 1807) was an Anglican clergyman.
He was a former slave-ship captain.
He was the author of many hymns, including Amazing Grace.
A jet engine is any engine that creates force by releasing a high speed jet of a liquid or a gas.
An example of a jet engine is a full balloon that is not held closed.
It will release the air and push the balloon forward.
Turbojet engines are used on airplanes.
Turbojet engines have a gas compressor, a kind of fan, at the front that takes in air.
The engine burns fuel to make the air expand, and it blows a big wind out the back.
On the way out, the hot air turns another fan (a gas turbine) which turns the rod that turns the fan at the front to make it go.
Another kind of a jet engine is a rocket engine.
Ramjet and pulse jet engines are rarer kinds of jet engine.
James Madison (March 16, 1751 June 28, 1836) was the fourth President of the United States.
He was also the most important author of the United States Constitution.
Madison was the shortest President, with a height of 5 f.
Madison was the oldest of twelve children.
His father and mother were James Madison Sr. and Nellie Conway.
Madison married Dolley Todd (n e Payne) on April 18, 1794.
Madison started his career in the Virginia state legislature.
Madison learned many things from Thomas Jefferson.
Madison wanted a stronger federal government of the United States than the Articles of Confederation provided.
He was a member of the meeting that formed the current United States Constitution.
Madison is called the "Father of the Constitution" because he helped write a large part of it and persuaded people that it was a good one.
Madison was elected to the United States House of Representatives.
Madison helped write the first laws for the United States.
Madison also was the main writer of the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.
Madison and Jefferson were good friends and helped create the Democratic-Republican Party who wanted a weak federal government.
Madison was selected by Jefferson to be his Secretary of State.
Madison was selected by his political party to be the Democratic-Republican candidate for president in 1808.
He won that election and the next election in 1812.
The War of 1812 started while Madison was president.
Madison still hoped for peace, but Congress wanted war so he gave in and approved a declaration of war against Britain on June 18, 1812.
Madison and his family were forced to flee in 1814 when British forces seized control of Washington D.C and burned the White House, and many other buildings, to the ground.
The war caused Madison to want a stronger government than he had before.
While he originally was against a national bank, Madison realized that it was necessary and it was impossible to fund a war without it.
When the government 's national bank expired, Madison renewed it.
Best known during the War of 1812, James Madison 's wife - Dolly Madison - saved a potrait of George Washington.
Madison retired to Virginia after his second term.
Madison died on June 28, 1836.
James Hutton MD (Edinburgh, (14 June 1726 26 March 1797) was a Scottish geologist, physician, naturalist, chemist and experimental farmer.
Hutton trained in medicine, but never practiced it.
Instead, he did scientific research, helped to start a chemical industry, and farmed his estate.
He is one of the founders of modern geology.
He saw the Earth as the product of natural forces.
What could be seen happening today, over long periods of time, could produce what we see in the rocks.
His book on the Theory of the Earth set out theories of geology and geologic time.
These ideas supported the theories of plutonism and uniformitarianism.
Hutton hit on a variety of ideas to explain the rock strata he saw around him.
According to Playfair he "was in no haste to publish his theory; for he was one of those who are much more delighted with the contemplation of truth, than with the praise of having discovered it.
After some 25 years of work, his Theory of the Earth was read to meetings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785.
Hutton later read an abstract of his Concerning the system of the Earth, its duration and stability on 4 July 1785, which he had printed and circulated privately.
In it, he outlined his theory as follows;
"The solid parts of the present land appear in general, to have been composed of the productions of the sea, and of other materials similar to those now found upon the shores.
Hence we find reason to conclude:1 st, That the land on which we rest is not simple and original, but that it is a composition, and had been formed by the operation of second causes.2 nd, That before the present land was made, there had subsisted a world composed of sea and land, in which were tides and currents, with such operations at the bottom of the sea as now take place.
And, Lastly, That while the present land was forming at the bottom of the ocean, the former land maintained plants and animals; at least the sea was than inhabited by animals, in a similar manner as it is at present.
Hence we are led to conclude, that the greater part of our land, if not the whole had been produced by operations natural to this globe; but that in order to make this land a permanent body, resisting the operations of the waters, two things had been required; 1st, The consolidation of masses formed by collections of loose or incoherent materials; 2ndly, The elevation of those consolidated masses from the bottom of the sea, the place where they were collected, to the stations in which they now remain above the level of the ocean".
In Hutton 's less well-known work is a remarkable anticipation of the idea of natural selection.
As always with Hutton, the idea is almost hidden in the complex language:"... if an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be the most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organised bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race".
Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, volume 2.
The same "principle of variation" would influence "every species of plant, whether growing in a forest or a meadow".
He came to his ideas as the result of experiments in plant and animal breeding, some of which he outlined in an unpublished manuscript, the Elements of Agriculture.
He distinguished between heritable variation as the result of breeding, and non-heritable variations caused by environmental differences such as soil and climate.
Hutton 's prose hindered his theories.
John Playfair in 1802 restated of Huttton 's geological ideas (though not his thoughts on evolution).
Charles Lyell in the 1830s popularized the idea of an infinitely repeating cycle (of the erosion of rocks and the building up of sediment).
Lyell believed in gradual change, and thought even Hutton gave too much credit to catastrophic changes.
Lyell 's books had widepread influence, not least on the up and coming young geologist Charles Darwin who read them with enthusiasm during his voyage on the Beagle.
William Whewell coined the term uniformitarianism to describe Lyell 's version of the ideas.
This was in contrast with catastrophism, the idea that the rocks recorded a series of catastrophes followed by repopulation by a new range of species.
Over time there was a convergence between these views, but Lyell 's description of the development of geological ideas led to a belief that uniformitarianism had triumphed.
Jerry Lewis (born Jerome Levitch, March 16, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, U.S.) is an American comedian and actor.
He is best known for acting in many comedy movies from the 1950s and 1960s.
He also helps to raise money for people with muscular dystrophy, through the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Lewis first became famous as part of a duo, Martin & Lewis, with singer Dean Martin.
They worked together for ten years, appearing onstage, on radio and television, and in movies.
They parted ways during 1956.
They did not speak for years, but reunited a few times from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Besides his acting career, Lewis was also the director of many of his movies.
He was the first director to use video cameras alongside movie cameras, to help with filming scenes.
While movie takes time to be developed, videotape could be played back instantly, saving time and work if a scene needed to be redone.
Other directors soon adopted his technique, and it is still used today.
During the 1970s, Lewis ' movies became less popular, and he moved away from acting and directing.
In the 1990s, he returned to performing onstage, and continued to perform during the 2000s.
Johann Georg Albrechtsberger (born 3 February 1736 in Klosterneuburg near Vienna; died 7 March 1809 in Vienna) was an Austrian composer, organist, music theorist and music teacher.
He is most known today because he was Beethoven s teacher for a time.
From the age of seven, Albrechtsberger was a choirboy.
He had lessons in organ and music theory.
As an adult, he had several jobs in churches in small towns.
He became Kapellmeister at St Stephen s Church, Vienna in 1793.
This was the best job for a church musician in the empire.
Albrechtsberger wrote hundreds of compositions.
He wrote most of them before he got the job in Vienna.
He wrote in a classical style.
Albrechsberger enjoyed doing things with music which were not normally done.
He would ask string players to tune their strings in different ways (called scordatura).
He would also write slow movements with muted strings.
As well as classical sonatas he wrote lots of fugues.
Several people, including Mozart, thought of him as the greatest organist in the world.
Albrechtsberger was a very important music teacher.
Joseph Haydn thought he was the best teacher in Vienna.
He was very interested in contrapuntal music of the Baroque period.
He copied many fugues by Bach and other composers.
When Beethoven was a young man, he had some composition lessons from Joseph Haydn.
When Haydn was going to travel to England for several months, he asked Albrechtsberger to teach Beethoven while he was gone.
These lessons took place from 1793 to 1795.
A few years later, Albrechtsberger said about Beethoven that he learned absolutely nothing and will never accomplish anything decent.
Beethoven said that Albrechtsberger was a musical pedant.
However, Beethoven still studied Albrechtsberger s books on music theory.
The string quartets which Beethoven wrote near the end of his life show the influence of Albrechtsberger.
John Alden (c. 1599 1689) was a passenger on the ship Mayflower.
He was hired in England to be the cooper (barrel-maker) aboard the ship during her 1620 voyage.
It is not known when or where he was born
The Mayflower left Plymouth, England on 16 September 1620.
There were 102 passengers and 30 40 crew.
On 19 November 1620, the Mayflower reached land at Cape Cod hook.
They landed on November 21.
They wrote the Mayflower Compact, which made rules on how they would live and treat each other.
The Mayflower was supposed to land in the Virginia Colony, but the ship was too damaged and they were forced to land at Cape Cod now called Provincetown Harbor.
Alden was one of the signers of the Mayflower Compact in November 1620.
In Plymouth Colony, he became an assistant to the Governor.
Alden married Priscilla Mullins on 12 May 1622.
They had ten children.
He died on 12 September 1687.
John and Priscilla were buried in the Myles Standish Burial Ground in Duxbury, Massachusetts.
Japanese cuisine is not the same in every region of Japan.
It has two main groups.
"Washoku" is traditional Japanese food and "Youshoku" is western style food which has been changed by local people.
Japanese food has become more popular outside of Japan.
In the narrow sense, Japanese food means the original Japanese food, before the opening of the country to the world in the Edo era.
But, in the broader sense, it now includes foods influenced by other cultures.
Soya beans are a very important ingredient in Japanese cooking; it is used in soya sauce, miso and tofu.
Soya milk is also used as a drink.
One example of a dish with soya beans in it, is tofu.
Tofu is made from pressing soybeans into cubes and then boiling them.
Tofu is often in soups and stews.
Deep fried tofu is also used in many popular Japanese dishes, for example as kitsune udon and inari sushi.
Soya beans also have omega 3 fatty acids, that can also be found in salmon.
Noodles (like in most Asian foods) are used often in Japanese foods.
The dishes usually come originally from China; nevertheless they have reached a unique development in Japan.
Japan is surrounded by the ocean so there is a rich variety of seafood which is an important part of Japanese cooking.
Japanese people did not eat meat until the Europeans first came.
Fish was the most common food.
Wasabi is Japanese horseradish.
It is often a green paste used with sashimi and sushi.
Wasabi is also used with many other Japanese foods.
Wasabi is sold as a paste or in powder form.
Wasabi powder has to be mixed with water to be turned into a paste.
Wasabi has a strong, very spicy (hot) taste.
Sashimi is very thinly cut raw seafood.
Many different kinds of fresh fish and other seafood are served raw in Japanese dishes.
Sashimi is one of them.
It is almost the same as sushi, but it has no vinegar rice.
When the slices of fish are put on small pieces of rice they are called "Nigiri Sushi".
Sashimi is artistically arranged and put on the plate on top of shredded daikon and shiso leaves.
The fish pieces are dipped into soya sauce before being eaten.
Seaweed has been a very important part of Japanese dishes for a long time.
Today, many different types of seaweed are used in soups, seasonings and other forms of Japanese cooking.
These are the three seaweeds used the most:
James Monroe (April 28, 1758 July 4, 1831) was the fifth President of the United States.
Monroe was born in Virginia.
His father died at age 16.
At age 18, he joined the Continental Army.
He later studied law with Thomas Jefferson.
Created the Monroe Doctrine and was included in the Louisiana Purchase.
Many cities have been named Monroe.
He married Elizabeth Kotright in 1789.
Monroe did not want the United States Constitution to pass.
He was elected to the United States Senate in 1790.
He helped form the Democratic-Republican Party with Jefferson and James Madison.
Monroe was Governor of Virginia from 1799 - 1802.
Monroe negotiated the Louisiana Purchase.
Monroe was Madison 's Secretary of State and Secretary of War.
Monroe was president from 1817 to 1825.
With his Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Monroe got Spain to give the United States Florida.
Monroe and Adams also created the Monroe Doctrine, which was a policy that said that the United States did not want Europe to be involved in the Western Hemisphere anymore.
Monroe signed the Missouri Compromise.
The compromise was to delay the slavery issue in the United States.
Monroe was the last president to have fought in the American Revolutionary War.
Monroe was the last President of the United States to be a founding father of the United States.
Monroe retired to Virginia.
After his wife 's death he moved to New York where he died on July 4, 1831.
James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795 June 15, 1849) was the eleventh President of the United States.
His term was from March 4, 1845 to March 3, 1849.
He died days after leaving office and has the shortest retirement of any president.
Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.
He went to the University of North Carolina.
Polk was sworn in on March 4, 1845.
He is the first president elected under the age of 50.
Polk is respected by historians because he made four promises during his presidential campaign and accomplished all of them.
He signed legislation which made the Smithsonian Institution.
He promised to lower tariffs (taxes on foreign trades) and he did that.
He promised to make the U.S. government its own bank so it did not have to put its money in other banks.
He did that.
He intimidated England into allowing the United States to have the Oregon Territory (the north-western United States) just like he promised.
He promised he would make Texas part of the United States.
He declared war on Mexico and led the country through the Mexican-American War.
During his presidency, the U.S. gained a lot of land.
He is the only President to have been Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
He promised to serve only a single term.
He did not run for re-election as President and did not serve a second term.
On January 1, 1824, Sarah Childress Polk, aged 20, married James Polk, aged 28, at the plantation home of the bride 's parents near Murfreesboro.
They had no children, but raised a nephew as if it were their own child.
Polk died on June 15, 1849 in Nashville, Tennessee.
He died from cholera.
Polk was only in retirement for three months.
Polk was buried at Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville, Tennessee.
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. (born October 1, 1924) was the 39th President of the United States.
He served from 1977 to 1981.
He is a member of the Democratic Party.
Carter was born in Plains, Georgia.
He was a state senator and later the governor of Georgia.
His family owned a peanut plantation.
The Secret Service called him Peanut One.
During Carter 's term as President, he created two new cabinet-level departments.
They are the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.
He won a primary against Ted Kennedy for the Democratic Party nomination in the He lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan, the Republican candidate.
After Carter 's term in office ended on January 20, 1981, the 52 U.S. hostages held at the U.S. embassy in Iran were released.
The 444-day Iran hostage crisis was ended.
After leaving office, Carter and his wife Rosalynn founded the Carter Center in 1982.
It is a not-for-profit organization that works to advance human rights.
He has traveled widely to conduct peace negotiations, and observe elections.
He works for disease prevention and disease eradication in developing countries.
James Earl Carter was born in the Wise Sanitarium in Plains, Georgia on October 1, 1924.
His parents are Lillian Gordy Carter and James Earl Carter, Sr..
He is the eldest of four children.
Carter 's father was a business owner in the community.
His mother was a registered nurse.
Carter was the first President of the United States to be born in a hospital.
Carter has Scots-Irish and English ancestry.
One of his paternal ancestors arrived in the American Colonies in 1635.
His family has lived in the state of Georgia for several generations.
Ancestors of Carter fought in the American Revolution.
He is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution.
Carter 's great-grandfather, Private L.B. Walker Carter (1832 1874), served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
Carter had three younger siblings: sisters Gloria (1926 1990) and Ruth (1929 1983), and brother "Billy" (1937-1988).
During Carter 's presidency, Billy was often in the news, usually for something absurd.
His half-second cousin is Berry Gordy through his mother Lillian Gordy.
He is a cousin of June Carter Cash.
Carter was a gifted student from an early age.
He always love to read.
As a youngster, he was a star in basketball.
In high school, he was in the Future Farmers of America.
Carter was the Plains FFA Chapter Secretary.
After high school, Carter enrolled at Georgia Southwestern College, in Americus.
Later, he applied to the United States Naval Academy.
He took extra mathematics courses at Georgia Tech.
He was admitted to the Academy in 1943.
Carter graduated 59th out of 820 midshipmen at the Naval Academy.
He earned a Bachelor of Science degree.
He married Rosalynn Smith in 1946.
They have four children: Jack, Chip, Jeff, and Amy.
Carter served on ships and on submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.
He was a junior officer when he completed qualification for command of a submarine.
He applied for the US Navy 's nuclear submarine program run by Captain Hyman G. Rickover.
Rickover 's demands on his men and machines were well known.
Carter later said that, next to his parents, Rickover had the greatest influence on him.
He had planned to make it his service to the Navy as his career.
His ultimate goal was to become Chief of Naval Operations.
Carter felt the best route for promotion was with submarine duty.
He felt that nuclear power would be used more and more in submarines.
Carter was based in Schenectady, New York.
There he worked on developing training materials for the nuclear propulsion system for the prototype of a new submarine.
His father James Earl Carter, Sr., died in July 1953.
Carter was needed to run the family business.
He resigned his commission, and was discharged from the Navy on October 9, 1953.
Carter was sworn in as the 76th Governor of Georgia on January 12, 1971.
He held this job for one term, until January 14, 1975.
At the time, governors of Georgia were not allowed to succeed themselves.
His predecessor as governor, Lester Maddox, became the Lieutenant Governor.
Carter and Maddox found little common ground during their four years of service.
They often publicly disagreed with each other.
In Georgia, the Governor and Lieutenant Governor were not elected as a team.
When Carter 's name was on the ballot in the Democratic Party primaries in 1976, he was considered to have little chance against nationally well known politicians.
His name recognition was about two percent.
As late as January 26, 1976, Carter was the first choice of only four percent of Democratic voters, according to a Gallup poll.
He chose United States Senator from Minnesota Walter Mondale as his running mate.
Carter is the only interviewee of Playboy to become US president.
He beat Republican Gerald Ford.
He received 297 electoral votes.
Carter became the first person from the Deep South since Zachary Taylor was elected in 1848 to win the presidency.
Carter tried to help with the problem between Israel and Palestine.
He also tried to reach an agreement with the USSR about nuclear weapons.
This did not work because he was not prepared to compromise.
He did help Egypt and Israel sign the peace treaty.
They have not gone to war since.
He was followed as President by Ronald Reagan.
Carter often visits foreign countries as an independent observer of elections.
While Carter was President, some people took over the U.S. Embassy in Iran.
They kept Americans in the embassy as hostages.
The hostages were not released until the last day Carter was president.
They were held for 444 days.
Carter also had to deal with many problems in the United States.
During his presidency, the nation had an energy and economic crisis.
He suggested that the country use less resources like water and electricity in order to protect the environment.
In foreign affairs, Carter pursued the Panama Canal Treaties and returned the Panama Canal Zone to Panama.
There was a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics that took place in Moscow, USSR.
This was in protest of the Soviet Union 's invasion of Afghanistan during the time.
Carter was beaten by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.
When his presidency was over, Carter worked with groups such as Habitat for Humanity to build houses in poor areas.
He also has worked for peace in the Middle East.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
He has written many books.
On September 8, 2012, Carter surpassed Herbert Hoover as the longest retirement of any president after leaving office.
His grandson, Jason Carter became a member of the Georgia State Senate in 2010 and is running for Governor of Georgia in 2014.
On August 12, 2015, Carter announced he had cancer originating in the liver.
He had undergone treatment and elective surgery earlier in the month at Emory Healthcare in Georgia to remove what was described as "a small mass." His spokeswoman originally stated that the prognosis for recovery from the surgery was "excellent".
However, Carter subsequently disclosed that he has liver cancer which has spread to other areas of his body.
On August 20, he disclosed that melanoma had been found in his brain and liver, and that he had begun treatment with the immunotherapy drug Keytruda and was about to start radiation therapy.
On 6 December, 2015 it was announced that his cancer ` had gone '.
Joseph Weizenbaum (8 January 1923 - 5 March 2008) was a German-American mathematician and computer scientist.
He was born in Berlin.
He became famous for writing the program ELIZA, which simulated a doctor, in the 1960s.
He also became well-known for having a critical attitude to what computers can and should do.
Weizenbaum died of a stroke at age 85, in 2008.
Saint Jerome (347 30 September 420) was a Christian priest, theologian and historian.
He lived in the Roman Empire.
He is best known for translating the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate).
He is recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Lutheran Church, and the Church of England (Anglican Communion).
In computing, the JPEG file format is a file format which is used to compress digital images.
The amount of compression can be changed.
If an image is high quality, it will take up a large amount of storage.
If it is low quality, it will take up a small amount of storage.
The JPEG file format is commonly found on the World Wide Web.
The word JPEG is short for the Joint Photographic Experts Group which created the format.
JPEG file extensions include,, and others.
The first notable thing about JPEG compression is the way in which the color of each pixel is stored.
Each pixel of the image is assigned 3 bytes to define it 's color.
All three bytes can have any value from 0 to 255 and every possible combination of the three bytes stands for another color.
In most file formats, the RGB format is used for defining the color.
RGB stands for Red Green Blue.
It 's named this way, because the first of the three bytes tells you how much red there is in the pixel 's color.
The second byte tells you how much green there is in the color and the third byte how much blue.
The higher value the first byte has, the more red the pixel looks.
JPEG also uses three bytes for every pixel each, but it 's using the YPbPr (also known as YCbCr) format.
Here, the first byte tells us how bright the pixel is.
The second byte tells us how blue the pixel is.
The third byte tells us how red the pixel is.
Using this color format, the brightness is stored apart from the color.
This is useful, because we are going to compress an image.
Because the human eye is better at seeing brightness than seeing color, we can apply a greater compression to the color bytes (the Pb-byte and the Pr-byte.
Since we see brightness better, we use less compression on the Y-byte, to have the image look better after compression.
Because images are most often stored in RGB format, the first step of JPEG compression is usually to correctly change the RGB format into the YPbPr format.
JPEG uses cosine functions to represent an image.
Therefor, we are going to talk a little bit about cosine functions.
This is what a cosine function could look like:
To have the cosine function represent the color of a pixel, we say that the higher the value of the cosine function, the brighter the pixel.
If we had a set of pixels that went bright-dark-bright, we could use the function above to define them.
The function could also have a higher frequency.
Like this:
But here 's where it gets interesting.
We can also create different functions by taking the average of different cosine functions.
Here is what it would look like if we took the average of the above two functions:
But it gets even more interesting when use a weighted average.
Here is what it would look like if we gave the cos (x) a weight of 3 and the cos (2x) a weight of 5:
This mathematical principle is used in the second step of JPEG compression: DCT.
The Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) can be used to write a set of numbers differently.
Namely: as a weighted average of different cosine functions.
In JPEG, DCT is applied to blocks of 8 8 pixels.
So far, no information has been lost in the process of compressing the image.
In this step, we 're filtering out information.
For that reason, this is the step that lowers the quality of the image.
For every block of 8 8 pixels, the cosine functions with high frequencies are set to 0.
This means that these can no longer have any impact on how the image looks when you decompress it.
A lot of values will now be 0, which means that this can be very easily compressed.
This is done using Huffman coding.
Huffman coding is the last step of JPEG compression.
It is also the only step in which the data is actually compressed.
Jainism is a South Asian religion that teaches non-violence towards all living beings.
Its philosophy rests on the principle of Nonviolence (ahimsa) and Non-Possessiveness (non-attachment).
It teaches that the universe is eternal and that every living being has a soul which has the power to become God.
A soul which has won over its inner enemies like attachment, greed, pride, etc. is called jina which means conqueror or victor.
Such great souls are considered God.
Self-control is considered the means to obtain liberation or Godhood.
Jainism is also called Shraman (self-reliant) Dharma or the religion of Nigrantha (who does not have attachments and aversions) by ancient texts.
It is referred to in Hindi: (Jain Dharma), and in Tamil (Samanam).
Jainism is revived by a lineage of 24 enlightened ascetic leaders called tirthankaras culminating with Parshva (9th century BC) and Mahavira (6th century BC).
In the modern world, it is a small but influential religious group with about 4.2 million followers in India, and growing immigrant communities in North America, Western Europe, the Far East, Australia and elsewhere.
Jains successfully sustained this ancient religion to this era and have significantly influenced and contributed to ethical, political and economic spheres in India.
Jains have an ancient tradition of scholarship and have the highest degree of literacy in India; Jain libraries are the oldest in the country.
Tamil Jains and Tulu Jains who are native to their region residing in places of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka early since 1st century BC.
Even though South Indian Jains are distinguishable in some of their routines and practices from North Indian Jains, the core philosophies and belief systems are the same for both cultures.
According to Jain philosophy, a soul in its pure form is God.
The following are three posts that any soul can attain -
T rtha kara is a human being who has win over the cycle of birth and death.
Tirthankaras shows the path to liberation to other living beings.
After their death they become Siddha i.e. soul at its purest form.
Following are the 24 tirthankaras of present time cycle -
According to Jainism, universe has no beginning or end.
The Jain wheel of time is divided into two parts, Utsarpin or ascending time cycle and Avasarpin, the descending time cycle, occurring continuously after each other.
Jains believe that their religion is eternal, having no origin and end.
This trend will start reversing with the start of utsarpi k l.
Jackson is a city in lower mid-Michigan.
It was started in 1829.
It is named after Democratic President Andrew Jackson.
Jackson is the home town of several well-known people.
One of whom is the first African-American Super Bowl winning coach, Tony Dungy.
Several of the major employers in the city are CMS Energy, which gives natural gas and electrical services to much of Michigan and has its international headquarters in the city, as well as Foote Hospital.
Jackson is 18 miles (29 km) from the Michigan International Speedway.
Joanne ` Jo ' Rowling OBE (born 31 July 1965) is a British author, who wrote the Harry Potter books.
She only uses the name J. K. Rowling for her books: the "K" stands for "Kathleen" which was the first name of her grandmother.
Rowling was born 31 July 1965 in Chipping Sodbury, near Bristol, England.
She grew up in Tutshill, Gloucestershire, and went to school at Wyedean Comprehensive.
She earned a degree in French and Classics at the University of Exeter.
She worked at Amnesty International in London.
The original idea for Harry Potter came to her on a train that was delayed for four hours in 1990.
She moved to Portugal to teach English in 1990.
She married Jorge Arantes in October 1992.
They had her first child, Jessica in 1993.
The marriage ended in divorce and Rowling moved to Edinburgh, Scotland.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher 's Stone (British version) (American version: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer 's Stone) was first published in the United Kingdom in 1997.
She married Dr. Neil Murray in 2001.
She had a second child, David, in 2003, and a third, Mackenzie, in January 2005.
Rowling is a Christian.
Rowling has won awards for the Harry Potter series of books and has earned over $ 1 billion.
The last book of the series - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released on 21 July 2007.
Due to the popularity of the books, Rowling has become very rich; she is said to be the richest woman in the United Kingdom.
Her books and popularity, however, are not limited to the Harry Potter serie.
Rowling has written many books about the magic in Harry 's world, such as ` Quiddich Through the Ages ' and ` Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them '.
Additionally, she has written other books targeting adults, the first of which is titled The Casual Vacancy.
The Cuckoo 's Calling was published in April 2013, under the pen name Robert Galbraith, and its sequel followed in June 2014, called The Silkworm.
Rowling 's novels feature a teenage boy named Harry Potter who grows up in a normal world with his aunt, uncle and cousin Dudley.
When he is eleven years old, he discovers that he is a wizard and attends a magical academy called Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry, where Albus Dumbledore is headmaster.
Harry discovers his past about a dark wizard and with the help from his best friends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger, he attempts to destroy the darkest wizard of all time, Voldemort, once and for all.
Jan Hus, or John Huss (c. 1370 - 6 July 1415) was born in Husinec, Bohemia (now Czech Republic).
He was a Bohemian religious thinker and reformer.
He started a religous movement that was strongly influenced by the beliefs of British scholar, John Wycliffe.
Hus studied at the University of Prague.
In about 1400, he became a Catholic priest, and was soon accepted a position of preaching in Czech, the language spoken in Bohemia.
While preaching, he studied Wycliffe s writings, and came to like them, especially because of how authentic and real they were.
In 1403, Hus asked the church to undo the ban on Wycliffe 's writings, and translated them into Czech.
The church, led by archbishop Zbynek Zaj c, had different beliefs.
In 1410, Zaj c ordered that Hus writings be burned and Hus and his followers, the Hussites be forced out of the church.
Hus was excommunicated in 1411, condemned by the Council of Constance, and burned at the stake on 6 July 1415, in Konstanz, Germany.
Many of his teachings were later taken up by Martin Luther.
Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world that people have lived in continuously.
It is important to many major religions.
Jews consider Jerusalem a holy city because it was their religious and political center during Biblical times and was the place where the Temple of God stood.
Christians consider Jerusalem holy because many events in the life of Jesus took place there.
Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad rose to heaven from Jerusalem.
Both Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their national capital.
All other countries and the United Nations say that West Jerusalem is part of Israel and that East Jerusalem is Palestinian.
Because it is not considered to belong to any country at the moment, the city has no embassies.
Most countries have their embassies in Tel Aviv and Ramallah.
Jerusalem is about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of the Mediterranean Sea.
It is a hilly city with many valleys around it.
Jerusalem is a very old city.
It has great importance for three religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The Bible says King David, the second king of Israel, took this city from pagans and settled his palace there.
King Solomon, David 's son and the next king, built the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.
Later, as capital of Judah, Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II, the king of Babylon.
The Palace of King David and the Temple of Solomon were burned, and the Jews were captured and taken to Babylon.
Seventy years later, the Persian King Cyrus allowed them to return to Jerusalem and to rebuild the Temple.
Later the area was occupied by Romans.
King Herod the Great, who ruled for the Roman Emperor, made the Temple larger to try and win Jewish favor.
The Temple was famous for its greatness and beauty.
Jesus died in Jerusalem around 33 CE.
In 70 CE, the Jews rebelled against the Romans, but the Romans destroyed the city and the Temple.
Jewish people who lived in Jerusalem were caught and became slaves.
The Romans renamed Jerusalem with a Latin name.
Since then, the Temple has not been rebuilt, and only a part of its wall remains until today.
After the Roman Empire was split into two, the Byzantine Empire ruled Jerusalem.
Later, Muslims took over the city from them.
The Muslims believed Muhammad went to heaven from Jerusalem.
Later, the Pope in Rome sent the Crusaders from Western Europe to try and take Jerusalem back.
They succeeded for a while, but eventually the city fell again to the Saracens.
Until the 20th century, Jerusalem was a part of the Ottoman Empire.
There were some Jews in Jerusalem all along, even though they were ruled by other people.
The "New City" of Jerusalem is the part outside the old stone walls.
People started building the new city in the 1800s.
Mishkenot Sha ` annanim, Mea Shearim, and the Bukharan Quarter are some of the first neighborhoods in the new city.
In 1949, at the end of the first Arab-Israeli War, Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan.
Israel controlled the western part of the city.
Jordan controlled the eastern section, including the Old City, a walled section of Jerusalem dating from Biblical times.
Israel took control of the entire city during the Six-Day War in 1967.
Jerusalem today is claimed by both the Palestinians and the Israelis as their capital.
The United Nations do not agree to Israel saying that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, according to international law.
Jerusalem has a central place in the worship, doctrine, and daily practice of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The city 's large number of synagogues, churches, mosques, and other religious institutions reflects the significance of the city for all three faiths.
Each religious community supervises its own holy sites.
According to Jewish tradition, Jerusalem is where God told the patriarch Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to Him.
The Jews built the Temple, the center of Jewish worship in ancient times, at the site of Abraham 's sacrifice on the Temple Mount in the Old City.
Two buildings, one after the other, the First Temple and the Second Temple, stood at the site.
The First Temple housed the Ark of the Covenant, a sacred box holding the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments.
The Western Wall is a part of the Second Temple and Judaism 's most sacred shrine.
It is a stone wall that strengthened the western side of the Temple Mount in ancient times.
The wall is sometimes called the Wailing Wall because of the sad prayers Jewish people said there to mourn the destroyed Temple.
Other sites in the city that are sacred to the Jews include King David 's tomb on Mount Zion, and the Jewish Cemetery and the Tombs of the Prophets on the Mount of Olives, a hill just east of the Old City.
Many sites associated with Biblical figures are sacred to Christians, too.
Many monasteries, convents, shrines, and religious seminaries in Jerusalem mark events in the life of Jesus and in the formation of the Christian Church.
According to the Bible, Jesus taught in Jerusalem and performed numerous miracles there.
The Last Supper supposedly took place in a room known as the Cenacle (also called Coenaculum) on Mount Zion.
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City is said to be the place of Jesus 's Crucifixion (called Calvary or Golgotha), as well as His burial and resurrection.
Several Christian sects own the church, which was originally built by Constantine the Great, then rebuilt and dedicated by the Crusaders in 1149 CE.
The building stands at the end of the Via Dolorosa (Way of Sorrows), believed to be the path over which Jesus carried His cross to Calvary.
Jesus was last seen by His followers on the Mount of Olives before He went up to heaven.
All of these sites attract many religious pilgrims each year.
Jerusalem is Islam 's third holiest city, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad originally selected Jerusalem as the qibla: the direction Muslims should face during prayer.
However, he later told his followers to face Mecca instead of Jerusalem when praying.
Muhammad is said to have gone up to heaven from a stone now covered by a golden-domed shrine called the Dome of the Rock.
The Dome of the Rock and the ancient Al-Aqsa Mosque are among the holiest sites in Islam.
They are the main buildings on the Temple Mount, which Muslims call Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary).
Jerusalem 's architecture is a mixture of old and new.
The Old City contains architectural examples from each major period in the city 's history.
Many ancient historical sites and places of worship stand near modern shopping centers and industrial zones.
Architecture from the late 1800s and early 1900s shows European influences.
Usefulness rather than style characterizes new apartment buildings constructed by the government as housing for immigrants.
Many buildings, old and new, have matching exteriors because all construction is required to be faced with a cream-colored limestone called Jerusalem stone, produced by nearby quarries.
John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 May 2, 1972) was an American politician.
He was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States.
He was chosen as director of the Bureau of Investigation because he helped start it.
He was the director until his death in 1972 at age 77.
According to President Harry S Truman, Hoover transformed the FBI into his private secret police force.
Truman stated that "we want no Gestapo or secret police.
FBI is tending in that direction.
They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail.
J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him".
Hoover had the largest collection of pornography in history.
Some adult movies included photos of Joan Crawford, Frank Sinatra, Warren Beatty, and Tony Curtis.
Hoover was born on January 1, 1895 to a Swiss-German-English-American family in Washington, D.C..
He studied at George Washington University.
Hoover was homosexual.
It is unknown if Hoover and his political partner Clyde Tolson were ever in a relationship.
Hoover died on May 2, 1972 in Washington, D.C. from heart failure, aged 77.
James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894 November 2, 1961) was an American author, journalist, and cartoonist.
Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories.
He published his stories mainly in The New Yorker magazine.
One of the most popular humorists of his time, Thurber celebrated the comic frustrations and eccentricities of ordinary people.
Thurber died on November 2, 1961 from complications from pneumonia and a stroke, aged 66.
His last words, aside from the repeated word "God," were "God bless... God damn," according to his wife.
James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899 March 30, 1986) was an American movie actor who had many roles in his long career, and won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1942 for his role in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Like James Stewart, Cagney became so familiar to the public that they usually referred to him as "Jimmy" Cagney.
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Cagney eighth among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time.
Robert Jonathan Demme (born February 22, 1944) is an American filmmaker.
He was born in Baldwin, Nassau County, New York.
He is best known for directing The Silence of the Lambs, for which he won an Academy Award.
He directed and co-produced Philadelphia.
His nephew Ted Demme (1963-2002) was a filmmaker.
James Whale (22 July 1889 29 May 1957) was an English movie director, theater director, and actor.
He is best remembered for his horror movies.
These include Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
He also directed the movie musical Show Boat (1936).
Whale was born into a large family.
Early on, he discovered his artistic talent and studied art.
With the outbreak of World War I, Whale joined the British Army.
He became an officer.
He was captured by the Germans.
During his time as a prisoner of war, he became interested in theater.
After the war, he became an actor, set designer, and director.
He moved to the United States to direct a Broadway play, and then moved to Hollywood to direct movies.
Whale lived in Hollywood for the rest of his life with his longtime companion, producer David Lewis.
Whale directed a dozen movies for Universal Studios between 1930 and 1936, developing a style influenced by German Expressionism.
After string of movies failures, Whale 's directing career was over by 1941.
He continued to direct for the stage, painted, and traveled.
His retirement years were comfortable until strokes in 1956 left him in pain.
Whale committed suicide on 29 May 1957 by drowning himself in his backyard swimming pool.
James Madison University is a public university in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
The university has about 18,971 students.
It was founded in 1908.
The current president of the university is Dr. Linwood H. Rose.
The athletics teams of the university are called the Dukes.
They have 7 varsity teams and they compete in the Colonial Athletic Association.
Jericho is a very old city in the West Bank.
It is mentioned in the Book of Joshua.
In 2007 18,346 people lived there.
The Society of Jesus (Latin: Societas Iesu, S.J. and S.I. or SJ, SI) is a Roman Catholic Church religious order whose members are called Jesuits, Soldiers of Christ, and Foot soldiers of the Pope, because the founder, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, was a knight before becoming a priest.
Jesuits are the largest male religious order of the Roman Catholic Church with 19,216 members (13,491 priests, 3,049 scholastic students, 1,810 brothers and 866 novices).
The Society of Jesus is consecrated under the patronage of the Madonna Della Strada.
It is led by a Superior General, currently Adolfo Nicol s.
The headquarters of the society, its General Curia, is in Rome.
Within the Catholic Church, there has been a sometimes tense relationship between Jesuits and the Vatican.
This is due to questioning of official Church teaching and papal directives, such as those on abortion, birth control, women deacons, homosexuality, and liberation theology.
However, as of 2013, the current Pope, Pope Francis, is a Jesuit himself.
Joseph Haydn (also known as Franz Joseph Haydn) was an Austrian composer.
He was born on March 31 or April 1, 1732 and died on May 31, 1809.
He was one of the most famous composers in the Classical music period.
He is often called the "Father of the Symphony".
He wrote many brilliant operas.
He inspired many great composers after him.
James Marshall Hendrix (November 27, 1942 September 18, 1970), was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter.
Hendrix was a major influence on other rock and roll musicians.
He became successful in England, and then became famous all through the world after he played at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.
He was also known for headlining in the famous Woodstock Festival.
Hendrix taught himself how to play the electric guitar and usually played a Fender Stratocaster.
Because he was left-handed, he would play the guitar upside down.
He was named Greatest Guitarist of all Time by Rolling Stone magazine in 2003.
Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle on November 27, 1942.
He was called Johnny Allen Hendrix when he was born.
Later, his dad named him James Marshall Hendrix when he returned from the military.
He grew up without much money or attention; his parents divorced when he was nine years old, and his mother died when he was 16.
At about the age of 14, Hendrix found his first guitar.
It was a broken broomstick with one string that had been thrown away by another boy.
He still managed to play several tunes on it.
Soon after, at around 15, he managed to buy a proper acoustic guitar for $ 5 from a friend of his father.
His first electric guitar was a white Supro Ozark that his father, Al Hendrix, had bought him.
He did not have lessons and learned basic tunes and improvisation from watching Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley play live.
He played without an amplifier.
Hendrix finished middle school but did not graduate from his high school, Garfield High School.
Hendrix told some reporters in the late 1960s that he had failed because people were racist there, and did not like him because he was black.
Others claim it was just because he could not get good enough grades and was unorganized.
Hendrix later told the reporters that he was thrown out for being impolite to a teacher.
When Hendrix was young, he was a fan of Elvis Presley.
He went to see Presley play at Sick s Stadium on September 1, 1957, and he drew a color picture of him holding an acoustic guitar.
The original drawing can be seen in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.
Even as an adult, he still loved Presley.
He went to a see a Presley movie, King Creole, in Paris in late 1968, to give him inspiration to write songs.
He also liked famous blues musicians such as Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and Lightning Hopkins; and he played in the band of R&B star Little Richard.
However, Hendrix and Richard did not get along.
Richard did not like Hendrix 's clothes, his being late and him showing off on stage.
After getting in trouble for stealing cars twice, Hendrix had to choose between going to prison for two years or joining the U.S. Army.
Hendrix chose the army and on May 31, 1961 was sent to Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
While in the army, his officers said that he was often caught sleeping on duty and needed to be watched at all times.
He could not use a gun well and an officer said that "his mind apparently can not function (can not work properly) while performing duties and thinking about his guitar".
However, his time in the army was important for Hendrix, because it was there that he met another soldier and bass guitar player called Billy Cox.
They would later play together in a small group called The King Kasuals.
On May 31, 1962 Hendrix s officers thought it would be best for him to leave the army because he caused too much trouble.
Hendrix agreed, and he left after only a year of service.
Hendrix later said he had been let go from the army after breaking his ankle when he was landing his 26th parachute jump.
He also spoke about his time in the army in interviews for a magazine, "Melody Maker", in 1967 and 1969.
He said that he did not like serving the army and did not agree with their ways of doing things.
When he was interviewed in America, Hendrix never talked about his time in the army.
When it was brought up in a television interview, Hendrix only said that he had been based at Fort Campbell.
Hendrix 's left-handed playing on a guitar made for right-handed people made him popular.
His first proper concert was with a small band without a name, playing in a Synagogue.
He later joined a band called The Velvetones.
After leaving the army, Hendrix and Cox moved to Clarksville in Tennessee, where they played in their group, The King Kasuals.
They played in small bars but they did not make much money.
So, eventually, he and Cox moved to Nashville.
They played many blues-style songs in Nashville.
In November 1962, Hendrix went to his first studio performance.
While in Nashville, Hendrix played in many other bands as rhythm and lead guitarist and vocals.
This did not get him much money, but did give him experience of how bands worked.
Later, Hendrix left Nashville and went to Northern New York City.
By January 1964, he moved to Harlem where he played at bars and clubs for money.
Hendrix also won first prize in an amateur guitar contest at The Apollo Theatre.
In 1966, Hendrix formed his own band called "Jimmy James and The Blues Flames".
The members were people that he met around town.
One of them was a 15-year-old boy called Randy.
Hendrix played many gigs around New York City and many songs at a cafe called Caf Wha?
In 1966, Hendrix became friends with the girlfriend of Keith Richards, guitarist for The Rolling Stones, Linda Keith.
She liked his music and introduced him to Chas Chandler, the manager for The Animals.
Chandler told Hendrix to write a rock version of the song Hey Joe and when he did, Chandler brought him to London to sign a contract with him.
Hendrix had to make a new band.
It was called The Jimi Hendrix Experience, a name found by their business manager Mike Jeffery.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience made its first album in 1967.
It was called Are You Experienced?
When the album was being produced and sold, Hendrix traveled around the UK and some of Europe.
On June 4, 1967, The Jimi Hendrix Experience played their last concert in London before going to America.
In America many famous people came to see Hendrix play including Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Brian Epstein.
The album reached number two in the UK charts.
In 2001, VH1 named Are You Experienced as the fifth greatest album of all time.
Rolling Stone magazine put it at number 15 on a list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in 2003.
Hendrix second album came out in 1967.
It was called Axis: Bold as Love.
It had famous songs in it, most famous being "Little Wing".
There have been several other versions of the song by other musicians like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Henry "Hank" Marrion, Metallica, Eric Clapton, Sting and Pearl Jam.
An important difference in the album from other albums he made was that Hendrix tuned his guitar down a semi-tone (to E flat).
The album reached number three in the US charts and number five in the UK charts.
The album almost did not sell, since Hendrix lost the master tape of side one of the LP in the back of a taxi in London.
Hendrix, Chas Chandler and an engineer called Eddie Kramer had to re-mix the songs in one night.
They could not get the song "If 6 was 9" right, but Hendrix 's bassist Noel Redding had a copy of it on tape.
When the album was released, Hendrix was disappointed that the album was finished so quickly and he thought it could have been done better.
Hendrix finished his third album, called Electric LadyLand - a double album with two LP 's - in 1968.
In this year, Chas Chandler (Hendrix s manager) decided to leave Hendrix and so did Noel Redding.
When Chandler left, Hendrix changed everything in his music.
He began using different musicians and instruments.
He used guitars with flutes and trombones all with distortion to get strange sounds.
The album reached number one in the US.
It reached number five in the UK.
In 2003, VH1 named the album the 72nd best album of all time, and the Rolling Stones magazine gave it 54th greatest album of all time.
Hendrix went to play at Woodstock on August 18, 1969.
That year, Woodstock made over $ 18,000 and has since become one of the most famous concerts in the world.
Hendrix was told to play on Sunday evening, but did not arrive until Monday morning, which was unfortunate because of the 500,000 people that had paid to see him, around 180,000 were left and did not plan on staying his whole concert; they just wanted to see him in person for a few minutes.
Hendrix then went on to play a two-hour concert that was described as awful.
Hendrix s large band had not practiced enough and could not keep up with Hendrix 's fast guitar playing.
But to make up for all of this, Hendrix played a version of Star Spangled Banner.
He played this anthem with heavy distortion and screams from his guitar, and people thought that he was being anti-American and making fun of their anthem and country.
Hendrix, in an interview, said that he "did not intend for his performance to be a political statement", he just wanted it to be another version of the national anthem.
On September 18, 1970, Hendrix was found dead in a basement of the Samarkand Hotel in London.
He died after drinking too much, and then taking too many sleeping pills.
He vomited and choked on his vomit because he could not regain consciousness.
There are many different theories that were thought up.
His girlfriend, who was with him at the time that he died, said that he was alive when she put him in the back of the ambulance, but hospital records say that Hendrix had been dead for some time before the ambulance had reached him.
Some people say that Hendrix was alive, but that the paramedics did not properly hold his head while he was unconscious so he choked on his own vomit.
A sad poem that was found in Hendrix apartment written by him made some think that he committed suicide.
The most likely explanation is that Hendrix just took too many sleeping pills while he was drunk, and then could not wake up as he vomited and choked as a result.
There has been recent speculation that he may have been murdered by his manager.
Hendrix was buried in Renton, Washington in Greenwood Memorial Park on October 1, 1970.
His headstone was wrong because it shows a picture of Hendrix playing a Stratocaster, but the Stratocaster is right-handed, Hendrix played left-handed.
Because Hendrix had so many fans, people were worried that the crowds of people wanting to look at his grave would damage other graves, so Hendrix father, Al Hendrix, had another memorial site built far from other graves.
The memorial is a granite dome architecture, held up by three pillars and Hendrix is buried underneath.
His autograph is at the foot of each pillar and a brass sundial is at the top of the dome.
There is also a memorial statue of Hendrix playing a Stratocaster on the corner of Broadway and Pine in Seattle.
Hendrix had unique fashion and a Bob Dylan-style haircut.
He wore scarves, rings and brooches.
In his early career, he wore a dark suit with a silk shirt.
Later, he wore bright blue velvet suits, red suits and flared trousers.
In 1967, he started to wear a cowboy-style hat he called "The Westerner".
In 1968, Hendrix started tying scarves to his legs and arms.
In 1969, he wore his famous bandana.
Hendrix was widely associated with the use of psychedelic drugs like LSD.
He also smoked marijuana and drank alcohol.
Hendrix would become angry and violent when he was drunk.
However, no one knows if Hendrix took heroin or not.
Hendrix died after choking on his own vomit in a London apartment.
At his autopsy, there was no heroin in his body and he had no needle marks on his body.
Janet Reno (born June 21, 1938) was the United States Attorney General from 1993 to 2001, under President Bill Clinton.
She was the first woman to ever have this job.
John Wayne (May 26, 1907 June 11, 1979) was an Academy Award-winning, American movie actor.
He has become a symbol of American man.
Born with the name Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa.
Wayne was Scotch Irish on his father and Irish on his mother 's side.
During Wayne 's childhood, he moved to Palmdale, California then to Glendale, California.
While attending Wayne started working in small local movie companies.
And also started playing football in high school and participated in the Glendale school team before being recruited by the University of Southern California (USC).
Wayne began his movie career in the 1920s.
In 1928, he played an extra in John Ford 's Four Sons.
In 1930, he had his first leading role in The Big Trail.
Wayne was nominated for an Academy Award for Sands of Iwo Jima.
One of his most important roles was that of Ethan Edwards a desperate man looking for his niece kidnapped by Comanche in the 1956 western movie The Searchers, directed by John Ford.
The Alamo was nominated for several Academy Awards.
It won the award for Best Sound.
Wayne received an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for his role in True Grit.
His last role was in The Shootist.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Wayne thirteenth among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time.
A Harris Poll released in 2007 placed Wayne third among America 's favorite movie stars, the only star on the list who has died and the only one who has appeared on the poll every year.
Wayne had lung cancer in the 1960s.
He had a lung removed and recovered.
He died of stomach cancer.
Johnny Haynes (17 October 1934 18 October 2005) is a former English football player.
He was captain of Fulham, played for England national team and captained it.
He was a forward, playing on the left wing as an outside left or inside left.
Today he would be called an attacking midfield player.
His job was to provide balls to the strikers.
He played three times for England in the FIFA World Cup.
His statue outside the club ground at Craven Cottage shows what they thought of him.
James Todd Spader (born February 7, 1960) is an American actor.
He is best known for his roles in Stargate (1994), Crash (1996) and Secretary (2002).
Spader was born in Boston, Massachusetts.
Jacob is a figure in the Abrahamic religions.
He was a patriarch of the Hebrew people, as told in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the New Testament and the Qur ` an.
He was the ancestor of the tribes of Israel, which were named after his children.
Jacob had an older brother, Esau.
His mother was named Rebecca and his father named Isaac.
According to the Talmud, immediately after Abraham died, Jacob prepared a lentil stew as a traditional mourner 's meal for his father, Isaac.
The Hebrew Bible says that Esau, who was very hungry, begged Jacob to give him some of the stew.
(Esau called the dish, "that red, red stuff", which is why he is called Edom, (` Edom, meaning "Red").)
Jacob said, "If you give me your birthright I will give you some stew."
Esau agreed.
Soon, Issac became almost blind.
Rebecca tricked Issac into giving Jacob the blessing.
Jacob 's brother got angry, so Rebecca sent Jacob away.
Jacob works for his uncle Laban so he can marry his daughter Rachel.
But he is tricked into marrying Leah, her older sister too.
He has children with both women, and with their concubines.
He is very upset when his son Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers.
Jacob moves to Egypt when there is a famine.
He dies and is buried in Canaan.
John the Baptist (also called John the Baptizer or Yahya the Baptizer) is viewed as a prophet by at least three religions: Christianity, Islam, and Mandaeanism.
According to the New Testament, he was a preacher who baptized people.
John called people to turn to God and to prepare for the coming of the messiah (Jesus).
He baptized Jesus in the Jordan River.
People would go to him so that he would put them in the water to show that they have turned away from their sins, so that they could get into heaven.
John was the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and a relative of Jesus.
He was known for living in the wild, wearing clothes made from camel 's hair, and eating locusts and honey.
In Catholicism, his birthday is celebrated on June 24.
Jefferson Fine Davis (June 3, 1808 December 6, 1889) was an American statesman.
He led the Confederacy during the American Civil War.
He was President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history, from 1861 to 1865.
Davis was born on June 3, 1808 in Christian County, Kentucky, the last child of ten of Jane (n e Cook) and Samuel Emory Davis.
Both of Davis ' paternal grandparents had immigrated to North America from the region of Snowdonia in the North of Wales; the rest of his ancestry can be traced to England.
Davis ' paternal grandfather, Evan, married Lydia Emory Williams.
Samuel Emory Davis was born to them in 1756.
Lydia had two sons from a previous marriage.
Samuel served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, along with his two older half-brothers.
In 1783, after the war, he married Jane Cook (also born in Christian County, in 1759 to William Cook and his wife Sarah Simpson).
Samuel died on July 4, 1824, when Jefferson was 16 years old.
Jane died on October 3, 1845.
In 1811 he moved to St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, and later to Wilkinson County, Mississippi.
In 1813 Davis began his education at the Wilkinson Academy, near the family cotton plantation in the small town of Woodville.
Two years later, Davis entered the Catholic school of Saint Thomas at St. Rose Priory.
At the time, he was the only Protestant student at the school.
Davis went on to Jefferson College at Washington, Mississippi, in 1818, and then to Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1821.
On February 9, 1861, after Davis resigned from the United States Senate, he was selected to be the provisional President of the Confederate States of America; he was elected without opposition to a six-year term that November.
During his presidency, Davis took charge of the Confederate war plans but was unable to find a strategy to stop the larger, more powerful and better organized Union.
His diplomatic efforts failed to gain recognition from any foreign country, and he paid little attention to the collapsing Confederate economy, printing more and more paper money to cover the war 's expenses.
Historians have criticized Davis for being a much less effective war leader than his Union counterpart Abraham Lincoln, which they attribute to Davis being overbearing, controlling, and overly meddlesome, as well as being out of touch with public opinion, and lacking support from a political party (since the Confederacy had no political parties).
His preoccupation with detail, reluctance to delegate responsibility, lack of popular appeal, feuds with powerful state governors, inability to get along with people who disagreed with him, and neglect of civil matters in favor of military ones all worked against him.
After Davis was captured on May 10, 1865, he was charged with treason.
Although he was not tried, he was stripped of his eligibility to run for public office; Congress later lifted this restriction in 1978, 89 years after his death.
Many Southerners felt bad with his arrest, refusal to accept defeat, and resistance to Reconstruction.
Over time, admiration for his pride and ideals made him a Civil War hero to many Southerners, and his legacy became part of the foundation of the postwar New South.
By the late 1880s, Davis began to encourage reconciliation, telling Southerners to be loyal to the Union.
He was helped in the last decade of his life by the generosity of Sarah Anne Ellis Dorsey, a rich widow.
First she invited him to her plantation in 1877 near Biloxi, Mississippi, at a time when he was sick, and gave him a cottage to use for working on his memoir.
She gave Davis her plantation before her death in 1878, and she also gave him a fund for his support.
This made him to live in some comfort with his wife until his death on December 6, 1889 in New Orleans, Louisiana from bronchitis.
He was 81 years old.
James Watt (19 January 1736 - 19 August 1819) was a Scottish mathematician and engineer.
He did not invent the first steam engine, but he did modify it to work better.
There were other patented steam engines (such as the Savery and Newcomen steam engines) in use by the time Watt started his work on them.
His major contribution is in developing the modern form of the steam engine.
The Watt steam engine is credited for driving the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries.
James Watt was a brilliant engineer and he also transformed the Newcomen engine.
Today, most people honor him by naming a unit of power, the watt, after him.
James Watt was born on 19 January 1736 in Greenock, Renfrewshire, a seaport on the Firth of Clyde.
His father was a shipwright, ship owner and contractor, and served as the town 's chief baillie, while his mother, Agnes Muirhead, came from a distinguished family and was well educated.
Both were Presbyterians and strong Covenanters.
Watt 's grandfather, Thomas Watt, taught mathematics and was a baillie to the Baron of Cartsburn.
Watt did not go to school every day.
At first, he was mostly schooled at home by his mother but later he attended Greenock grammar school.
He exhibited great manual dexterity and an aptitude for mathematics, although Latin and Greek failed to interest him, and he absorbed the legends and lore of the Scottish people.
One of Watt 's many improvements was the invention of a "centrifugal governor" to regulate automatically the speed of the engine.
This is most obvious on steam engines where it regulates the admission of steam into the cylinder (s).
It is also found on internal combustion engines and variously fueled turbines, and in some modern striking clocks.
A centrifugal governor is a homeostatic device which controls the speed of an engine by regulating the amount of "intermediate substance" (steam) which drives the machine.
This keeps a near constant speed whatever the load or fuel supply conditions.
It uses the principle of proportional control: this means the cut-off of (in this case) steam varies according to the speed of the machine.
On Watt 's fly-ball device, as the machine speeds up, the balls fly round faster.
As they fly round faster, they move out from the central post.
As they move out from the central post, they close the steam supply more firmly.
As they do so, the machine slows down and the balls spin more slowly, and allow more steam into the cylinders.
In addition, the system has a safety release valve to allow excess steam to escape without driving the wheels.
500 Boulton & Watt engines were built by the firm between 1775 and 1800.
Later, in 1872, Willard Gibbs showed that all regulating systems must balance two opposing forces.
Watt went into partnership with a fellow member of the Midlands Lunar Society, Matthew Boulton.
The firm of Boulton & Watt designed and built steam engines, and was very important to the industrial revolution.
At first the partnership made the drawing and specifications for the engines, and supervised the work to erect it on the customers property.
They produced almost none of the parts themselves.
Watt did most of his work at his home in Harper s Hill in Birmingham, while Boulton worked at the Soho Manufactory.
Gradually the partners began to actually make more and more of the parts, and by 1795 they purchased a property about a mile away from the Soho manufactory, on the banks of the Birmingham Canal.
There they built a new foundry for making the engines.
The Soho Foundry opened in 1796 at a time when Watt s sons, Gregory and James Jr. were heavily involved in the management of the enterprise.
In 1800, the year of Watt s retirement, the firm made a total of forty-one engines.
Watt retired in 1800, the same year that his fundamental patent and partnership with Boulton expired.
The famous partnership was transferred to the men 's sons, Matthew Robinson Boulton and James Watt Jr..
Longtime firm engineer William Murdoch was soon made a partner and the firm prospered.
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 28 October 1704), known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician.
His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, a lot of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries.
He is mentioned in the American Declaration of Independence.
Locke 's theories were usually about identity and the self.
Locke thought that we are born without thoughts, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience.
Locke 's father, who was also named John Locke, was a country lawyer.
He had served as a captain in the early part of the English Civil War.
His mother, Agnes Keene, was a tanner 's daughter and was thought to be very beautiful.
Both mother and father were Puritans.
Locke was born on 29 August 1632, in a cottage by the church in Wrington, Somerset, about twelve miles from Bristol.
He was baptized when he was born.
After that, his family soon moved to Pensford.
In 1647, Locke was sent to Westminster School in London.
During this time he was being sponsored by Alexander Popham, a member of the Parliament.
After finishing his studies there, he went into the Christ Church.
Although Locke was a good student, he did not like the schedule of the time spent there.
He did not like the classical subjects taught at the university, and wanted to learn more about modern philosophy.
Through his friend Richard Lower, whom he had met at the school, Locke learned about medicine.
Locke was awarded a bachelor 's degree in 1656 and a master 's degree in 1658.
In 1666, he met Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, who had come to Oxford seeking treatment for his liver disease.
Cooper was impressed with Locke and asked him to come.
Locke had been looking for a job and in 1667 moved into Shaftesbury 's home at Exeter House in London, to serve as Lord Ashley 's personal physician.
In London, Locke continued his studies on medicine.
Locke 's medical knowledge was put to the test when Shaftesbury 's liver disease became worse until Shaftesbury was about to die.
Locke used the advice of several physicians and persuaded Shaftesbury to go to an operation.
Shaftesbury lived through the operation and thanked Locke for saving his life.
Shaftesbury, as a member of the Whig movement, was a big influence on Locke 's political ideas.
However, after Shaftesbury began to fall from favor in 1675, Locke decided to travel across France.
He came back to England in 1679.
At this time, due to Shaftesbury 's insists, Locke wrote the Two Treatises of Government.
While it was once thought that Locke wrote the Treatises to defend the Glorious Revolution of 1688, recent scholarship has shown that the work was composed before this even started.
However, Locke ran away to the Netherlands in 1683.
This is because people became suspicious of him being involved in the Rye House Plot.
In the Netherlands, Locke had time to return to his writing, spending a great deal of time re-working the Essay.
Locke did not return home until after the Glorious Revolution.
Locke came with William of Orange 's wife back to England in 1688.
Locke 's close friend Lady Masham invited him to join her at the Mashams ' country house in Essex.
Although his time there was marked by variable health from asthma attacks, he nevertheless became an intellectual hero of the Whigs.
During this period he discussed matters with such figures as John Dryden and Isaac Newton.
He died in 28 October 1704, and is buried in the churchyard of the village of High Laver, east of Harlow in Essex, where he had lived in the household of Sir Francis Masham since 1691.
Locke never married nor had children.
Events that happened during Locke 's lifetime include the English Restoration, the Great Plague of London and the Great Fire of London.
He did not quite see the Act of Union of 1707, though the thrones of England and Scotland were held in personal union throughout his lifetime.
Constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy were in their infancy during Locke 's time.
John Mathias Engler (born October 12, 1948) once was governor of Michigan.
Engler was born in Mount Pleasant and grew up in Beal City.
He went to college at Michigan State University.
He became a member of the Michigan House of Representatives in 1970.
He became governor of Michigan in 1991.
His term ended in 2003.
Jacques Lacan (Paris, 13 April 1901 Paris, 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist.
He added new ideas to psychoanalysis and philosophy.
Some of these ideas are the mirror stage, the three orders of subjectivity (the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real), the object little a and jouissance.
He talked every year at seminars from 1953 to 1981.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he influenced many French intellectuals.
He also talked about going back to the ideas of Sigmund Freud.
He called himself a Freudian (follower of Freud).
The Jacksonville Jaguars are a professional American football team in Jacksonville, Florida.
They are currently members of the Southern Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL).
The Jaguars, and the Carolina Panthers, became part of the NFL as expansion teams in 1995.
The Jutes were a Germanic people who are believed to have come from Jutland (called Iutum in Latin) in modern Denmark inclusive Southern Schleswig in Northern Germany and part of the Frisian coast.
The Jutes, along with the Angles, Saxons and Frisians, were mentioned amongst the Germanic tribes who sailed across the North Sea to raid and eventually invade Great Britain.
It is believed that the Jutes settled particularly in Kent and the Isle of Wight.
The land where the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons settled became the country of England.
The Kingdom of Judah was an ancient Jewish kingdom that existed in the southern part of the Levant.
It was on the western shore of the Dead Sea.
Its main cities were Jerusalem and Hebron.
It existed from the 9th or 8th century BC, up until 586 BC.
After the death of Saul, Israel picked David to rule them.
(1 Chronicles 11:1) After the death of King Solomon, son of David, ten of the twelve of the tribes of Israel did not want Solomon 's son, Rehoboam to lead them.
This caused the kingdom to split the Northern Kingdom, the Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom, the Kingdom of Judah.
Jerusalem was the capital of the Kingdom of Judah.
In 586 BC, the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar II, took over Jerusalem and destroyed Judah.
Jackson is the capital city and largest city of the U.S. state of Mississippi.
Jennifer Lynn Lopez (also known as J. Lo) is a Grammy-nominated American singer, dancer, fashion designer and actress.
She was born July 24, 1969.
She 's most known for her performances in Selena, Out of Sight (co-starring George Clooney), Monster-in-Law, The Cell, and An Unfinished Life (with Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman).
She also was a judge for the talent reality series American Idol in 2011 and from 2014 until the show 's series finale in 2016.
She began her career as a "Fly Girl" dancer on the 1990s TV series, In Living Color.
Her first album On the 6 was released in 1999.
It contains the hit singles "If You Had My Love", "No Me Ames", "Waiting for Tonight", "Feelin ' So Good" and "Let 's Get Loud".
She released J. Lo in 2001, her most successful album to date.
J to tha L-O!
The Remixes and This Is Me... Then were released in 2002.
The album Brave was released in 2007, followed by Love?
in 2011.
She has released one greatest hits album, Dance Again... The Hits, in 2012.
Her most recent album is A.K.A., which was released in 2014.
Lopez has sold more than 40 millions copies of her albums so far.
She has many records, including record for having a movie and album (The Wedding Planner, and J. Lo) both # 1 on the same week.
Also, she is recently known for having the biggest re-entry on the Billboard charts, for the single "Control Myself" (2006) by LL Cool J and where she 's featuring.
After a peak at # 89 and going out of the charts, it made a high re-entry again, at # 4, some weeks after.
Lopez has had problems with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and other animal activist groups because she often uses fur in the clothing she designs and the clothing she wears.
All of Lopez ' three marriages ended in divorce.
From February 1997 until January 1998 Lopez was married to Ojani Noa.
From September 2001 until June 2002 she was married to Cris Judd.
On June 5, 2004, she married Marc Anthony.
They have twin children, son Maximillian David Mu iz and daughter Emme Maribel Mu iz (born on February 22, 2008).
The couple separated in July 2011 and divorced in June 2014.
John Dewey (born 20 October 1859) was an American psychologist and philosopher.
He was born in Burlington, Vermont.
Dewey graduated from the University of Vermont.
He later taught at many schools.
In September 1882, Dewey went to the Johns Hopkins University and studied philosophy and psychology and published the paper, "The New Psychology" in the Andover Review in 1884.
Afterwards, he taught psychology at universities and later on, got married to his former student Alice Chipman.
In 1886, he started a new school which came to be known as the "Laboratory School" or "Dewey School".
This school taught pragmatism, which says that a school 's curriculum should be based on everyday life, lessons, and focuses on hands-on activities to better help students learn.
His wife Alice was principal of the "Dewey School" from 1901 to 1904.
After he retired as a teacher, he continued watching and figuring the society and politics.
John Dewey died in 1952.
John Dewey believed in the "theory of inquiry", which shows how animals survived in their environment.
He used the theory in the way he taught.
He said that children learn best with real-life problems and hands-on activities.
His most well-known essay was "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896) which created the stimulus that became the response, which later became known as social behaviorism.
For example, a person focuses on something, decides what to do, then acts on the decision.
Jackals are canids found in Africa and Asia.
They are nocturnal carnivorous and eat small mammals, birds and reptiles.
To hunt, they can run at speeds of 16km\/h (10mph).
Jackals are monogamous (each male live with only a female), and a pair defends its territory from other pairs.
They mark the territory with urine and feces.
The territory may be large enough to hold some young adults who live with their parents until they have their own territory.
Sometimes, jackals join small packs (groups), for example to hunt a big animal, but normally hunt alone or as a pair.
Today they are very common on safaris, and are also found next to human settlements (villages).
A canid from Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Ethiopian Wolf (Canis simensis), is sometimes called Simian Jackal, but it is really a wolf.
The Ethiopian Wolf is one of the rarest and most endangered of all canids.
January 14 is celebrated as New Year 's Day by those still following the Julian calendar.
Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919 October 24, 1972) was the first African-American Major League Baseball (MLB) player of modern times.
Robinson broke the baseball color barrier when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
He was the first black man to openly play in the major leagues since the 1880s.
He had a big role in bringing an end to racial segregation in professional baseball.
Up to that point, African-Americans could only play in Negro leagues for six decades.
His character and skills challenged the usual basis of segregation.
At the time, this basis was part of many other pieces of American life.
Robinson and his abilities contributed a lot to the civil rights movement.
Apart from his cultural impact, Robinson had an overall good baseball career.
Over ten seasons, he played in six World Series and helped in the Dodgers ' 1955 World Championship.
He was selected for six consecutive All-Star Games from 1949 to 1954.
Robinson received the first MLB Rookie of the Year Award in 1947.
He also won the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949.
He was the first black player to win this award.
Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
In 1997, Major League Baseball retired his uniform number, 42, across all major league teams.
Robinson was also known for his activities outside of baseball.
He was the first African-American television analyst in Major League Baseball.
He was also the first African-American vice-president of a major American company.
In the 1960s, he helped establish the Freedom National Bank, an African-American-owned\/controlled financial business based in Harlem, New York.
In honor of his achievements on and off the field, Robinson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal after his death.
Robinson was born on January 31, 1919.
His family were sharecroppers in Cairo, Georgia.
He was born during a Spanish flu and smallpox epidemic.
He was the youngest of five children, after siblings Edgar, Frank, Matthew (nicknamed "Mack"), and Willa Mae.
His middle name was in honor of former President Theodore Roosevelt, who died twenty-five days before Robinson was born.
After Robinson 's father left the family in 1920, they moved to Pasadena, California.
The Robinson family lived on a plot with two small houses at 121 Pepper Street in Pasadena.
Robinson 's mother worked different odd jobs to support the family.
Robinson grew up somewhat poor in a fairly rich community.
Because of this, Robinson and his minority friends were left out of many sports activities.
As a result, Robinson joined a neighborhood gang.
However, his friend Carl Anderson made him leave it.
In 1935, Robinson graduated from Washington Junior High School.
He then entered Muir Tech (now called John Muir High School).
Seeing that Robinson was good at sports, his older brothers Mack (himself a good athlete and silver medal winner at the 1936 Summer Olympics) and Frank inspired Jackie to follow his interest in sports.
At Muir Tech, Robinson played several sports at the varsity level.
Robinson lettered in four of them: football, basketball, track, and baseball.
He played shortstop and catcher on the baseball team, quarterback on the football team, and guard on the basketball team.
With the track and field team, he won awards in the broad jump.
He was also part of the tennis team.
In 1936, Robinson won the junior boys singles championship in the yearly Pacific Coast Negro Tennis Tournament.
He also won a place on the Pomona baseball tournament all-star team.
That team included future Hall of Famers Ted Williams and Bob Lemon.
In late January 1937, the Pasadena Star-News newspaper wrote that Robinson "for two years has been the outstanding athlete at Muir, starring in football, basketball, track, baseball and tennis."
After Muir, Robinson went to Pasadena Junior College (PJC).
There he continued his sports career by playing basketball, football, baseball, and track.
Jackie Robinson was one of the best athletes at Pasadena Junior College.
On the football team, he played quarterback and safety.
He was a shortstop and leadoff hitter for the baseball team.
He broke school broad jump records held by his brother, Mack.
As at Muir Hugh School, most of Jackie 's teammates were white.
While playing football at PJC, Robinson fractured his ankle.
Issues from this would later delay his deployment status while in the military.
Also while at PJC, he was elected to the Lancers.
They were a student-run police group who patrolled various school activities.
In 1938, he was elected to the All-Southland Junior College Team for baseball.
He was also selected as the region 's Most Valuable Player.
That year, Robinson was one of ten students named to the school 's Order of the Mast and Dagger (Omicron Mu Delta).
This was awarded to students performing "outstanding service to the school and whose scholastic and citizenship record is worthy of recognition."
An event at PJC shown Robinson 's impatience with people he felt were racist.
This character trait that would come up several times in his life.
On January 25, 1938, he was arrested after he argued against his black friend being taken away by police.
Robinson received a two-year suspended sentence.
The incident along with other possible run-ins between Robinson and police gave Robinson a reputation for getting upset in the face of racial problems.
Toward the end of his PJC career, Frank Robinson (to whom Robinson felt closest among his three brothers) was killed in a motorcycle accident.
The event motivated Jackie to pursue his athletic career at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he could remain closer to Frank 's family.
After graduating from PJC in spring 1939, Robinson transferred to UCLA.
There he became the school 's first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football, and track.
He was one of four African-Americans on the 1939 UCLA Bruins football team.
The others were Woody Strode, Kenny Washington, and Ray Bartlett.
Washington, Strode, and Robinson made up three of the team 's four backfield players.
This made UCLA college football 's most integrated team.
Even though it would be his future career, baseball was Robinson 's "worst sport" at UCLA.
He hit.097 in his only season, although in his first game he went 4-for-4 and twice stole home.
While a senior at UCLA, Robinson met his future wife, Rachel Isum.
She was a UCLA freshman who knew Robinson 's sports career at PJC.
In the spring semester of 1941, against his mother 's and Isum 's doubts, Robinson left college before graduation.
He took a job as an assistant athletic director with the government 's National Youth Administration (NYA) in Atascadero, California.
After the government stopping running the NYA, Robinson traveled to Honolulu in fall 1941 to play football.
He played for the semi-professional, racially integrated Honolulu Bears.
After a short season, Robinson returned to California in December 1941.
There he tried for a career as running back for the Los Angeles Bulldogs of the Pacific Coast Football League.
By that time, however, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had taken place.
The attack made the United States enter World War II.
This ended Robinson 's football career.
In 1942, Robinson was drafted and assigned to a segregated Army cavalry unit in Fort Riley, Kansas.
Having the necessary requirements, Robinson and several other black soldiers applied for entrance to an Officer Candidate School (OCS) then located at Fort Riley.
Although Army policy had allowed black applicants to enter OCS since July 1941, the applications of Robinson and his colleagues were delayed for several months.
After protests by boxing champion Joe Louis (then stationed at Fort Riley) and the help of Truman Gibson (then an assistant civilian aide to the Secretary of War), the men were accepted into OCS.
This shared military experience created a friendship between Robinson and Louis.
Upon finishing OCS, Robinson was commissioned as a second lieutenant in January 1943.
Shortly afterward, Robinson and Isum were engaged.
After receiving his commission, Robinson was moved to Fort Hood, Texas.
There he joined the 761st "Black Panthers" Tank Battalion.
While at Fort Hood, Robinson often used his weekend leave to visit the Rev. Karl Downs, President of Sam Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson University) in nearby Austin, Texas.
Downs had been Robinson 's pastor at Scott United Methodist Church while Robinson attended PJC.
An event in July 1944 stopped Robinson 's military career.
While waiting for results of hospital tests on the ankle he had injured in junior college, Robinson got on an Army bus with a fellow officer 's wife.
Although the Army had its own unsegregated bus line, the bus driver ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus.
Robinson refused.
The driver backed down.
However, after reaching the end of the line, he got the military police, who took Robinson into custody.
Robinson later talked to the duty officer about racist questioning by the officer and his assistant.
The officer then recommended Robinson be court-martialed.
After Robinson 's commander in the 761st, Paul L. Bates, refused to allow this legal action, Robinson was moved to the 758th Battalion.
The commander there quickly allowed Robinson to be charged with several offenses, including, among other charges, public drunkenness even though Robinson did not drink.
By the time of the court-martial in August 1944, the charges against Robinson had been reduced to two counts of insubordination (going against someone in charge of him) during questioning.
Robinson was acquitted by an all-white panel of nine officers.
Although his former unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, became the first black tank unit to see combat in World War II, Robinson 's court-martial stopped him from going with them.
He never saw fighting action in the war.
After his acquittal, he was moved to Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky.
There he served as a coach for army athletics until receiving an honorable discharge in November 1944.
While there, Robinson met an ex-player for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League.
The player encouraged Robinson to write the Monarchs and ask for a tryout.
Robinson took the ex-player 's advice and wrote Monarchs ' co-owner Thomas Baird.
After he left the army, Robinson returned to his old football club, the Los Angeles Bulldogs for a short time.
Robinson then took an offer from his old friend and pastor Rev. Karl Downs to be the athletic director at Sam Huston College in Austin.
The school was part of the Southwestern Athletic Conference at the time.
The job included coaching the school 's basketball team for the 1944 45 season.
As a starting program, few students tried out for the basketball team.
Robinson even had to play in some of the practice games.
Although his teams were outmatched by opponents, Robinson was respected as a coach who made his players work really hard.
He received the respect of, among others, Langston University basketball player Marques Haynes, a future member of the Harlem Globetrotters.
In early 1945, while Robinson was at Sam Huston College, the Kansas City Monarchs sent him a written offer to play professional baseball in the Negro leagues.
Robinson accepted a contract for $ 400 ($ in dollars) per month.
This was a big deal for him at the time.
He played well for the Monarchs, but Robinson was upset with the experience.
He had grown used to having a structure while playing in college.
The Negro leagues ' lack of organization and acceptance of gambling interests bothered him.
The travel schedule also placed stress on his relationship with Isum.
The two could now communicate only by letter.
In all, Robinson played 47 games at shortstop for the Monarchs.
He hit.387 with five home runs and had 13 stolen bases.
He also played in the 1945 Negro League All-Star Game (where he had no hits in five at-bats).
During the season, Robinson tried for a possible major league interest.
The Boston Red Sox held a tryout at Fenway Park for Robinson and other black players on April 16, 1945.
The tryout, however, was an act held mostly to make powerful Boston City Councilman Isadore Muchnick happy.
Even with the stands limited to management, Robinson was subjected to racial comments.
Robinson left the tryout humiliated.
More than fourteen years later, in July 1959, the Red Sox became the last major league team to integrate its roster.
Other teams, however, had more serious interest in signing a black ballplayer.
In the mid-1940s, Branch Rickey, club president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, began to scout the Negro leagues for a possible addition to the Dodgers ' roster.
Rickey selected Robinson from a list of African-American players.
He interviewed Robinson for possible assignment to Brooklyn 's International League farm club, the Montreal Royals.
Rickey was especially interested in making sure his eventual hire could put up with the racial abuse that he would receive.
In a famous three-hour discussion on August 28, 1945, Rickey asked Robinson if he could face the racial hatred without reacting angrily.
This was a worry because of Robinson 's past arguments with law enforcement officials at PJC and in the military.
Robinson was shocked: "Are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?"
Rickey replied that he needed a Negro player "with guts enough not to fight back."
After receiving a vow from Robinson to "turn the other cheek" to racial taunts, Rickey agreed to sign him to a contract for $ 600 a month.
He made Robinson keep the agreement a secret for the time being.
Rickey committed to officially signing Robinson before November 1, 1945.
On October 23, it was announced that Robinson would be assigned to the Royals for the 1946 season.
On the same day, with officials of the Royals and Dodgers present, Robinson signed his contract with the Royals.
In what was later referred to as "The Noble Experiment", Robinson was the first black baseball player in the International League since the 1880s.
Robinson was not necessarily the best player in the Negro leagues.
Black players Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson were upset when Robinson was selected first.
Rickey 's offer allowed Robinson to leave the Monarchs and their long bus rides behind.
He went home to Pasadena.
That September, he signed with Chet Brewer 's Kansas City Royals.
This was a post-season barnstorming team in the California Winter League.
Later that off-season, he toured South America with another team.
His fianc e Isum worked as a nurse in New York City while he was away.
On February 10, 1946, Robinson and Isum were married by their old friend, Rev. Karl Downs.
In 1946, Robinson arrived at Daytona Beach, Florida, for spring training with the Montreal Royals of the Class AAA International League.
Robinson 's being there upset people in racially sensitive Florida.
He was not allowed to stay with his teammates at the team hotel.
Instead he lived at the home of a local black politician.
Since the Dodgers team did not own a spring training complex, the schedule was controlled by the towns in the area.
Some of these towns did not allow any event involving Robinson or Johnny Wright, another black player whom Rickey had signed to the Dodgers in January.
In Sanford, Florida, the police chief said he would cancel games if Robinson and Wright did not stop training there.
Because of this, Robinson was sent back to Daytona Beach.
In Jacksonville, the stadium was locked without warning on game day.
This was ordered by the city 's Parks and Public Property director.
In DeLand, a day game was canceled, supposedly because of bad electrical lighting.
After a lot of talking to local officials by Rickey, the Royals were allowed to host a game involving Robinson in Daytona Beach.
Robinson made his Royals debut at Daytona Beach 's City Island Ballpark on March 17, 1946.
It was an exhibition game against the Dodgers.
With the game Robinson became the first African-American to openly play for a minor league team and against a major league team since the baseball color line had been put in place in the 1880s.
Later in spring training, after some somewhat poor performances, Robinson was moved from shortstop to second base.
This allowed him to make shorter throws to first base.
Robinson 's performance soon improved.
On April 18, 1946, Roosevelt Stadium hosted the Jersey City Giants ' season opener against the Montreal Royals.
This game was the first professional game for the Royals ' Jackie Robinson.
In his five trips to the plate, Robinson had four hits, including a three-run home run.
He also scored four runs, drove in three, and stole two bases in the Royals ' 14 1 win.
Robinson went on to lead the International League that season with a.349 batting average and.985 fielding percentage,.
He was named the league 's Most Valuable Player.
Although he often faced hatred while on road trips (the Royals were forced to cancel a Southern tour, for example), the Montreal fans supported Robinson.
Whether fans supported or opposed it, Robinson 's being on the field helped attendance.
More than one million people went to games that Robinson played in 1946.
The number was an amazing amount for the International League.
In the fall of 1946, following the baseball season, Robinson returned home to California and briefly played professional basketball for the Los Angeles Red Devils.
The following year, six days before the start of the 1947 season, the Dodgers brought Robinson up to the major leagues.
Eddie Stanky was playing second base for the Dodgers.
So Robinson played his first major league season as a first baseman.
On April 15, 1947, Robinson played his first major league game at Ebbets Field in front of a crowd of 26,623 spectators.
More than 14,000 black fans attended the game.
He did not get a base hit, but the Dodgers won 5 3.
Robinson became the first player since the 1880s to openly break the major league baseball color line.
Black fans began coming to see the Dodgers when they came to town, ignoring their Negro league teams.
Robinson 's rise to the major leagues met a generally positive, although mixed, reception from newspapers and white major league players.
However, there was racial tension in the Dodger clubhouse.
Some Dodger players implied they would sit out rather than play alongside Robinson.
The possible problem ended when Dodgers bosses defended Robinson.
Manager Leo Durocher told the team, "I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin ' zebra.
I 'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays.
What 's more, I say he can make us all rich.
And if any of you can not use the money, I will see that you are all traded."
Robinson was also taunted by opposing teams.
Some, notably the St. Louis Cardinals, said they would strike if Robinson played.
National League President Ford Frick and Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler said that any striking players would be suspended.
Robinson became the target of rough physical play by opponents (particularly the Cardinals).
Once he received a seven-inch cut in his leg.
On April 22, 1947, during a game between the Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies, Phillies players called Robinson a "nigger" from their dugout.
They yelled that he should "go back to the cotton fields".
Rickey later recalled that Phillies manager Ben Chapman "did more than anybody to unite the Dodgers.
When he poured out that string of unconscionable abuse, he solidified and united thirty men."
Robinson received major support from several major league players.
Dodgers teammate Pee Wee Reese once came to Robinson 's defense with the famous line, "You can hate a man for many reasons.
Color is not one of them."
In 1948, Reese put his arm around Robinson in response to fans who shouted racial slurs at Robinson before a game in Cincinnati.
A statue by artist William Behrends, first displayed at KeySpan Park on November 1, 2005, shows this event by representing Reese with his arm around Robinson.
Jewish baseball star Hank Greenberg, who had to deal with racial slurs during his career, also encouraged Robinson.
After colliding with Robinson at first base on one occasion, Greenberg whispered a few words into Robinson 's ear.
Robinson later said they were "words of encouragement."
Greenberg had told him that the best way to go against the slurs from the opposing players was to beat them on the field.
Robinson finished the season with 12 home runs, a league-leading 29 steals, a.297 batting average, a.427 slugging percentage, and 125 runs scored.
His performance earned him the first Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year Award (separate National and American League Rookie of the Year honors were not awarded until 1949).
After Stanky was traded to the Boston Braves in March 1948, Robinson took over second base.
There he had a.980 fielding percentage for year (second in the National League at the position behind Stanky).
Robinson had a batting average of.296 and 22 stolen bases for the season.
In a 12 7 win against the St. Louis Cardinals on August 29,, he hit for the cycle a home run, a triple, a double, and a single in the same game.
The Dodgers moved into first place in the National League in late August 1948 for a short time, but they finished third at the end of the season.
The Braves went on to win the league title and lose to the Cleveland Indians in the World Series.
Racial pressure on Robinson eased in 1948 as a number of other black players entered the major leagues.
Larry Doby (who broke the color barrier in the American League on July 5, 1947) and Satchel Paige played for the Cleveland Indians.
The Dodgers had three other black players besides Robinson.
In February 1948, he signed a $ 12,500 contract with the Dodgers.
While a big amount, this was less than Robinson made in the off-season.
He had a vaudeville tour where he answered pre-set baseball questions, and a speaking tour of the South.
Between the tours, he had surgery on his right ankle.
Because of his off-season events, Robinson went to training camp thirty pounds overweight.
He lost the weight during training camp, but dieting left him weak while hitting.
In the spring of 1949, Robinson turned to Hall of Famer George Sisler, working as an advisor to the Dodgers, for batting help.
On Sisler 's advice, Robinson spent hours at a batting tee, learning to hit the ball to right field.
Sisler taught Robinson to look for a fastball.
His theory was that it is easier to then adjust to a slower curveball.
Robinson also noted that "Sisler showed me how to stop lunging, how to check my swing until the last fraction of a second".
The teaching helped Robinson raise his batting average from.296 in 1948 to.342 in 1949.
In addition to his improved batting average, Robinson stole 37 bases that season, was second place in the league for both doubles and triples, and had 124 runs batted in with 122 runs scored.
For the performance Robinson earned the Most Valuable Player award for the National League.
Baseball fans also voted Robinson as the starting second baseman for the 1949 All-Star Game.
This was the first All-Star Game to include black players.
That year, a song about Robinson by Buddy Johnson, "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?"
, reached number 13 on the charts.
Count Basie recorded a famous version.
That year, the Dodgers won the National League pennant, but lost in five games to the New York Yankees in the 1949 World Series.
Summer 1949 had a distraction that Robinson did not want.
In July, he was called to testify before the United States House of Representatives ' Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) about things said in April by African-American athlete and actor Paul Robeson.
Robinson did not want to testify, but he eventually agreed to do so.
He was afraid it might affect his career if he did not testify.
In 1950, Robinson led the National League in double plays made by a second baseman with 133.
His salary that year was the highest any Dodger had been paid to that point: $ 35,000 ($ in dollars).
He finished the year with 99 runs scored, a.328 batting average, and 12 stolen bases.
The year saw the release of a film biography of Robinson 's life, The Jackie Robinson Story.
Robinson played himself in the movie and actress Ruby Dee played Rachael "Rae" (Isum) Robinson.
The project had been delayed when the film 's producers did not listen to the demands of two Hollywood studios.
The studios wanted the movie to scenes of Robinson being taught how to play baseball by a white man.
The New York Times wrote that Robinson, "doing that rare thing of playing himself in the picture 's leading role, displays a calm assurance and composure that might be envied by many a Hollywood star."
Robinson 's Hollywood acting, however, did not sit well with Dodgers co-owner Walter O'Malley.
He called Robinson "Rickey 's prima donna".
In late 1950, Rickey 's contract as the Dodgers ' team President expired.
Bothered by a lot of disagreements with O'Malley, and with no hope of being re-appointed as President of the Dodgers, Rickey cashed out his one-quarter financial interest in the team.
This left O'Malley in full control of the team.
Rickey then became general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Robinson was disappointed at the turn of events and wrote a letter to Rickey, whom he considered a father figure.
In it he said, "Regardless of what happens to me in the future, it all can be placed on what you have done and, believe me, I appreciate it."
Before the 1951 season, O'Malley offered Robinson the job of manager of the Montreal Royals starting at the end of Robinson 's playing career.
O'Malley was quoted in the Montreal Standard as saying, "Jackie told me that he would be both delighted and honored to tackle this managerial post."
But, reports differed as to whether a position was ever formally offered.
During the 1951 season, Robinson led the National League in double plays made by a second baseman for the second year in a row, with 137.
He also kept the Dodgers close to the lead for the 1951 pennant.
During the last game of the season, in the 13th inning, he had a hit to tie the game, and then won the game with a home run in the 14th.
This forced a playoff against the New York Giants, which the Dodgers lost.
Despite Robinson 's regular-season heroics, the Dodgers lost the pennant on Bobby Thomson 's famous home run, known as the Shot Heard ` Round the World, on October 3, 1951.
Overcoming his dejection, Robinson dutifully observed Thomson 's feet to ensure he touched all the bases.
Dodgers sportscaster Vin Scully later noted that the incident showed "how much of a competitor Robinson was."
He finished the season with 106 runs scored, a batting average of.335, and 25 stolen bases.
Robinson had what was an average year for him in 1952.
He finished the year with 104 runs, a.308 batting average, and 24 stolen bases.
He did, however, record a career-high on-base percentage of.436.
The Dodgers improved on their performance from the year before, winning the National League pennant before losing the 1952 World Series to the New York Yankees in seven games.
That year, on the television show Youth Wants to Know, Robinson challenged the Yankees ' general manager, George Weiss, on the racial record of his team.
The Yankees had yet to sign a black player.
Sportswriter Dick Young, whom Robinson called a "bigot", said, "If there was one flaw in Jackie, it was the common one.
He believed that everything unpleasant that happened to him happened because of his blackness."
The 1952 season was the last year Robinson was an everyday starter at second base.
Afterward, Robinson played at first, second, and third bases, shortstop, and in the outfield, with Jim Gilliam, another black player, taking over everyday second base duties.
Robinson 's interests began to shift toward the prospect of coaching a major league team.
He had hoped to gain experience by coaching in the Puerto Rican Winter League.
But, according to the New York Post, Commissioner Happy Chandler did not allow the request.
In 1953, Robinson had 109 runs, a.329 batting average, and 17 steals,.
He led the Dodgers to another National League pennant (and another World Series loss to the Yankees, this time in six games).
Robinson 's continued success led to a string of death threats.
He was not stopped, however, from talking about racial issues publicly.
That year, he served as editor for Our Sports magazine.
This was a magazine that focused on Negro sports issues.
Contributions to the magazine included an article on golf course segregation by Robinson 's old friend Joe Louis.
Robinson also openly criticized segregated hotels and restaurants that served the Dodger organization.
A number of these places integrated as a result, including the five-star Chase Park Hotel in St. Louis.
In 1954, Robinson had 62 runs, a.311 batting average, and 7 steals.
His best day at the plate was on June 17, when he hit two home runs and two doubles.
The following autumn, Robinson won his only championship when the Dodgers beat the New York Yankees in the 1955 World Series.
Although the team enjoyed success, 1955 was the worst year of Robinson 's individual career.
He hit.256 and stole only 12 bases.
The Dodgers tried Robinson in the outfield and as a third baseman.
They did this because of his diminishing abilities and because Gilliam was established at second base.
Robinson, then 37 years old, missed 49 games and did not play in Game 7 of the World Series.
Robinson missed the game because manager Walter Alston decided to play Gilliam at second and Don Hoak at third base.
That season, the Dodgers ' Don Newcombe became the first black major league pitcher to win twenty games in a year.
In 1956, Robinson had 61 runs, a.275 batting average, and 12 steals.
By then, he had begun to show the effects of diabetes.
He also lost interest in playing or managing professional baseball.
After the season, Robinson was traded by the Dodgers to the arch-rival New York Giants for Dick Littlefield and $ 35,000 cash.
The trade, however, was never completed.
Unbeknownst to the Dodgers, Robinson had already agreed with the president of Chock full o ` Nuts to quit baseball and become an executive with the company.
Since Robinson had sold exclusive rights to any retirement story to Look magazine two years before.
His retirement decision was revealed through the magazine, instead of through the Dodgers organization.
Robinson 's major league debut brought an end to almost sixty years of segregation in professional baseball, known as the baseball color line.
After World War II, several other forces were also leading the country toward increased equality for blacks.
This included more African-Americans moving to the North, where their political influence grew.
President Harry Truman 's desegregation of the military occurred in 1948.
Robinson 's breaking of the baseball color line and his professional success symbolized these bigger changes and showed that the fight for equality was more than simply a political matter.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said that he was "a legend and a symbol in his own time", and that he "challenged the dark skies of intolerance and frustration."
According to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robinson 's "efforts were a monumental step in the civil-rights revolution in America... (His) accomplishments allowed black and white Americans to be more respectful and open to one another and more appreciative of everyone 's abilities."
Beginning his major league career at the somewhat older age of twenty-eight, he played only ten seasons.
All of his career was for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
During his career, the Dodgers played in six World Series, and Robinson himself played in six All-Star Games.
In 1999, he was named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team after his death.
Robinson 's career is generally considered to mark the beginning of the post "long ball" era in baseball, in which a need for power-hitting was replaced with balanced offensive strategies that used footspeed to create runs through baserunning.
Robinson showed both hitting ability and speed which was part of the new era.
He scored more than 100 runs in six of his ten seasons (averaging more than 110 runs from 1947 to 1953), had a.311 career batting average, a.409 career on-base percentage, a.474 slugging percentage, and had more walks than strikeouts (740 to 291).
Robinson was one of only two players during the span of 1947 56 to have at least 125 steals while having a slugging percentage over.425 (Minnie Mi oso was the other).
He had 197 stolen bases in total, including 19 steals of home.
None of the steals of home were double steals (in which a player stealing home is helped by a player stealing another base at the same time).
Robinson has been referred to by author David Falkner as "the father of modern base-stealing."
Historical statistical analysis indicates Robinson was an outstanding fielder throughout his ten years in the major leagues and at almost every position he played.
After playing his rookie season at first base, Robinson spent most of his career as a second baseman.
He led the league in fielding among second basemen in 1950 and 1951.
Toward the end of his career, he played about 2,000 innings at third base and about 1,175 innings in the outfield and did well at both.
Robinson said about himself, "I 'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me... all I ask is that you respect me as a human being."
Regarding Robinson 's qualities on the field, Leo Durocher said, "Ya want a guy that comes to play.
This guy did n't just come to play.
He come to beat ya.
He come to stuff the goddamn bat right up your ass."
Robinson retired from baseball on January 5, 1957.
Later that year, after he complained about a lot of physical problems, his doctors diagnosed Robinson with diabetes.
This disease had also affected his brothers.
Robinson started an insulin injection schedule.
However, the quality of medicine at the time could not stop his body from falling apart because of the disease.
In the first year he was able to be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, Robinson ask voters to think of only his on-field statistics and abilities.
He did not want them to think of his cultural impact on the game.
He was elected on the first ballot, becoming the first African-American inducted into the Cooperstown museum.
In 1965, Robinson served as an analyst for ABC 's Major League Baseball Game of the Week telecasts.
He was the first black person to do so.
On June 4, 1972, the Dodgers retired his uniform number, 42, along with those of Roy Campanella (39) and Sandy Koufax (32).
From 1957 to 1964, Robinson was the vice president for personnel at Chock full o ` Nuts.
He was the first black person to serve as vice president of a major American company.
Robinson always considered his business career as advancing the cause of African-Americans in business.
Robinson also chaired the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 's (NAACP) million-dollar Freedom Fund Drive in 1957.
He served on the organization 's board until 1967.
In 1964, he helped start, with Harlem businessman Dunbar McLaurin, Freedom National Bank an African-American-owned and operated bank based in Harlem.
He also served as the bank 's first Chairman of the Board.
In 1970, Robinson started the Jackie Robinson Construction Company to build housing for low-income families.
Robinson was active in politics throughout his post-baseball life.
He called himself a political independent.
But he held conservative thoughts on several issues, including the Vietnam War (he once wrote Martin Luther King, Jr. to defend the Johnson Administration 's military policy).
After supporting Richard Nixon in his 1960 presidential race against John F. Kennedy, Robinson later praised Kennedy for his views on civil rights.
He then supported Hubert Humphrey against Nixon in 1968.
In 1964, Robinson became one of six national directors for Nelson Rockefeller 's Republican presidential campaign.
He later became special assistant for community affairs when Rockefeller was re-elected governor of New York in 1966.
Robinson made his final public appearance on October 15, 1972.
He threw the ceremonial first pitch before Game 2 of the World Series.
He accepted a plaque honoring the 25th anniversary of his MLB debut, but also said, "I 'm going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third base coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball."
This wish was fulfilled only after Robinson 's death.
After the 1974 season, the Cleveland Indians gave their coaching job to Frank Robinson (no relation), a Hall of Fame-bound player who would go on to coach three other teams.
Despite the success of these two Robinsons and other black players, the number of African-American players in Major League Baseball has gone down since the 1970s.
After Robinson 's retirement from baseball, his wife, Rachel Robinson, went for a career in academic nursing.
She became an assistant professor at the Yale School of Nursing and director of nursing at the Connecticut Mental Health Center.
She also served on the board of the Freedom National Bank until it closed in 1990.
She and Jackie had three children: Jackie Robinson Jr. (born November 18, 1946), Sharon Robinson (born January 13, 1950), and David Robinson (born May 14, 1952).
Robinson 's oldest son, Jackie Robinson Jr., had emotional trouble during his childhood.
He entered special education at an early age.
He enrolled in the Army in search of a disciplined environment.
He served in the Vietnam War.
He was injured in action on November 19, 1965.
After his discharge, he struggled with drug problems.
Robinson Jr. eventually completed the treatment program at Daytop Village in Seymour, Connecticut.
He became a counselor at the institution.
On June 17, 1971, at the age of 24, he was killed in an automobile accident.
The experience with his son 's drug addiction turned Robinson, Sr. into someone who fought against drugs for the rest of his life.
Robinson did not live long after his son.
Problems with heart disease and diabetes made Robinson weak.
He was almost blind by middle age.
On October 24, 1972, he died of a heart attack at home in Stamford, Connecticut, aged fifty-three.
Robinson 's funeral service on October 27, 1972, at New York City 's Riverside Church had 2,500 people come.
Many of his former teammates and other famous black baseball players served as pallbearers.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson gave the eulogy.
Tens of thousands of people lined the procession route that followed to Robinson 's gravesite site at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
There he is buried next to his son Jackie and mother-in-law Zellee Isum.
Jackie Robinson Parkway also runs through the cemetery.
After Robinson 's death, his widow founded the Jackie Robinson Foundation, of which she remains an officer as of 2010.
On April 15, 2008, she announced that in 2010 the foundation will be opening a museum about Jackie in Lower Manhattan.
Robinson 's daughter, Sharon, became a midwife, educator, director of educational programming for MLB, and the author of two books about her father.
His youngest son, David, who has ten children, is a coffee grower and social activist in Tanzania.
According to a poll conducted in 1947, Robinson was the second most popular man in the country, behind Bing Crosby.
In 1999, he was named by Time magazine on its list of the 100 most important people of the 20th century.
Also in 1999, he ranked number 44 on the Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players.
He was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team as the top vote-getter among second basemen.
Baseball writer Bill James, in the The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, ranked Robinson as the 32nd greatest player of all time based on his performance on the field.
James noted that Robinson was one of the top players in the league throughout his career.
Robinson was among the 25 first members of UCLA s Athletics Hall of Fame in 1984.
In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante included Robinson on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
Robinson has also been honored by the United States Postal Service on three different postage stamps, in 1982, 1999, and 2000.
The City of Pasadena has recognized Robinson in several ways.
Brookside Park, located next to the Rose Bowl, has a baseball field and stadium named Jackie Robinson Field.
The city 's Human Services Department owns the Jackie Robinson Center, a community outreach center that provides early diabetes detection and other services.
In 1997, a $ 325,000 bronze sculpture by artists Ralph Helmick, Stu Schecter, and John Outterbridge showing oversized nine-foot busts of Robinson and his brother Mack was put up at Garfield Avenue, across from the main entrance of Pasadena City Hall.
A granite footprint lists multiple donors to the commission project, which was organized by the Robinson Memorial Foundation and supported by members of the Robinson family.
MLB has honored Robinson many times since his death.
In 1987, both the National and American League Rookie of the Year Awards were renamed the "Jackie Robinson Award" in honor of the first to receive the award (Robinson 's Major League Rookie of the Year Award in 1947 encompassed both leagues).
On April 15, 1997, Robinson 's jersey number, 42, was retired by Major League Baseball.
No future player on any major league team can wear it.
The number was retired in ceremonies at Shea Stadium to mark the 50th anniversary of Robinson 's first game with the Dodgers.
A few players who wore number 42 as a salute to Robinson, such as the Mets ' Butch Huskey and Boston 's Mo Vaughn, were allowed to continue to use the number by means of a grandfather clause.
The Yankees ' Mariano Rivera is the last player in the major leagues to wear jersey number 42 on a regular basis.
As an exception to the retired-number policy, MLB has recently begun honoring Robinson by allowing players to wear number 42 on April 15, Jackie Robinson Day.
For the 60th anniversary of Robinson 's major league debut, MLB invited players to wear the number 42 on Jackie Robinson Day in 2007.
The gesture was originally the idea of outfielder Ken Griffey, Jr..
He asked for Rachel Robinson 's permission to wear the number.
After receiving her permission, Commissioner Bud Selig not only allowed Griffey to wear the number, but also gave an invitation to all major league teams to do the same.
In the end, more than 200 players wore number 42, including everyone on the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets, Houston Astros, Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, and Pittsburgh Pirates.
The tribute was continued in 2008, when, during games on April 15, all members of the Mets, Cardinals, Washington Nationals, and Tampa Bay Rays wore Robinson 's number 42.
On June 25, 2008, MLB installed a new plaque for Robinson at the Baseball Hall of Fame commemorating his off-the-field impact on the game as well as his playing statistics.
In 2009, all uniformed personnel (players, managers, coaches, and umpires) wore number 42 on April 15.
At the November 2006 groundbreaking for a new ballpark for the New York Mets, Citi Field, it was announced that the main entrance, modeled on the one in Brooklyn 's old Ebbets Field, would be called the Jackie Robinson Rotunda.
The rotunda was dedicated at the opening of Citi Field on April 16, 2009.
It honors Robinson with large quotations spanning the inner curve of the facade.
It has a large statue of his number, 42, which has become an attraction in itself.
Mets owner Fred Wilpon announced that, along with Citigroup and the Jackie Robinson Foundation, the Mets will create a Jackie Robinson Museum and Learning Center.
It will be located at the headquarters of the Jackie Robinson Foundation at One Hudson Square in lower Manhattan.
The main purpose of the museum will be to fund scholarships for "young people who live by and embody Jackie 's ideals."
Robinson has also been recognized outside of baseball.
In December 1956, the NAACP recognized him with the Spingarn Medal, which it awards annually for the highest achievement by an African-American.
President Ronald Reagan awarded Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom on March 26, 1984 after Robinson 's death.
On March 2, 2005, President George W. Bush gave Robinson 's widow the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award bestowed by Congress.
Robinson was only the second baseball player to receive the award, after Roberto Clemente.
On August 20, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, announced that Robinson was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts in Sacramento.
A number of buildings have been named in Robinson 's honor.
The UCLA Bruins baseball team plays in Jackie Robinson Stadium, which, because of the efforts of Jackie 's brother Mack, features a memorial statue of Robinson by sculptor Richard H. Ellis.
City Island Ballpark in Daytona Beach, Florida the baseball field that became the Dodgers ' spring training site in 1947 was renamed Jackie Robinson Ballpark in 1989.
The New York Public School system has named a middle school after Robinson.
Dorsey High School plays at a Los Angeles football stadium named after him.
In 1976, his home in Brooklyn, the Jackie Robinson House, was declared a National Historic Landmark.
Robinson also has an asteroid named after him, 4319 Jackierobinson.
In 1997, the United States Mint issued a Jackie Robinson commemorative silver dollar, and five dollar gold coin.
(\*) Note: The sacrifice fly (SF) as its own category did not exist in Major League Baseball from 1940 through 1953.
Any pre-1954 sacrifice flies by Robinson would be listed in the sacrifice hit (SH) category.
(\*\*) Note: Also, the intentional walk (IBB) category only became its own category beginning in 1955.
Any intentional walks issued to Robinson before that year would be listed in the walk (BB) category.
Jack French Kemp (July 13, 1935May 2, 2009) was an American politician and a collegiate and professional football player.
A Republican, he served as Housing Secretary in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993.
Kemp was known for being a top adviser to President Ronald Reagan.
He helped Reagan pass the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981.
Some people say that he helped create the Reagan Revolution during the 1980s.
Kemp served nine terms as a congressman for Western New York 's 31st congressional district from 1971 to 1989.
He was the Republican Party 's nominee for Vice President in the 1996 election, where he was the running mate of presidential nominee Bob Dole.
Kemp had previously contended for the presidential nomination in the 1988 Republican primaries.
Kemp died of cancer of unknown primary origin in Bethesda, Maryland, aged 73.
Jihad is an Arabic word meaning "to struggle".
Muslims (believers in Islam) use this word to talk about defending the faith and protecting their family and nation, as well as defending innocent people.
It can also mean fighting with yourself to become a better person.
It is an official part of Shi ` a Islam, but it is not an official part of Sunni Islam, though some call it the sixth pillar of Islam.
In some cases, there have been ` Jihads ' that have self immolated themselves, in order to get into heaven.
There are suicide bombers, who blow themselves up, because they think that it is right and that they are cleaning the world 's filth.
This is, however, wrong in Islam.
It is a major sin to commit suicide or homicide.
Killing another human being in Islam is the equivalent of killing all of humanity.
On the contrary, saving another human being 's life is the equivalent of saving all of humanity.
James Gillespie Blaine (January 31, 1830 January 27, 1893) was an American Republican politician.
He was a United States Representative.
He was the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
He was a U.S. Senator from Maine.
He was the Secretary of State twice.
He was also nominated to be President.
Blaine was born on January 31, 1830 in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania.
He was the third child of Ephraim Lyon Blaine and his wife Maria Gillespie Blaine.
He was educated at Washington College and later met his wife Harriet Stanwood.
They married in 1850 and they had seven children.
Blaine was a Republican.
He was Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1869 until 1875.
He was chosen by the 18th United States President Ulysses S. Grant.
Blaine would later served as the Senator from Maine from 1876 through 1881.
Secondly he served as the Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine 's 3rd district from 1863 until 1876.
Then as the 28th and 31st United States Secretary of State from 1881 through 1881 and then again in 1889 through 1892.
On July 2, 1881, Blaine and President James A. Garfield were walking up to the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad in Washington, D.C. when Charles J. Guiteau shot Garfield in the back.
The Republicans nominated Blaine for President in 1884 but Grover Cleveland won the election.
Blaine died just 4 days short from his 63rd birthday on January 27, 1893 in his Washington, D.C. home from a heart attack, aged 62.
He was later buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C. and was later re-buried in Blaine Memorial Park, Augusta, Maine, in 1920.
Blaine was hypochondriac.
Justinian I (c. 482 14 November 565), commonly known as Justinian the Great, was Eastern Roman Emperor from 527 until his death.
He is considered a saint by Eastern Orthodox Christians.
Justinian simplified Roman laws.
These are now called Corpus Juris Civilis.
John Milton (9 December 1608 8 November 1674) was an English poet, religious thinker, and civil servant for the English Commonwealth Government.
He is one of the most important figures in Western literature.
He is most famous for his Christian epic poem Paradise Lost.
His writing influenced both later poets and religious thinkers.
John Milton was born on 9 December 1608, the son of John Milton (senior) and Sarah Jerry.
His family lived in Bread Street, London.
His father was a musician and composer.
His main work was as a scrivener, a secretary who reads and writes letters for people who can not read and write for themselves.
Milton 's father was well paid at this work, and was able to hire a private tutor to teach his clever eldest son.
Milton 's brother Christopher said he studied very long into each night.
Milton then went to St. Paul 's School where he studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
Milton then studied at Christ 's College, Cambridge and graduated with a B.A. in 1629.
On 3 July 1632, he received his Master of Arts degree.
He returned home where he continued to study and write poetry for six years.
He wrote a large number of poems.
In 1638 he made a tour of the Continent, spending a lot of time in France and Italy, where he learned about other authors such as Dante, Tasso, and Ariosto.
When he was 34, he married Mary Powell, who was 17.
In 1645, during the English Civil War, he published Poems of Mr. John Milton, in which there were his famous poems "L'Allegro" and "Il ` Penseroso", which was mostly ignored.
In 1649, during the trial of Charles I, Milton wrote Of the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, arguing that kings can rule only when the people allow them to.
He then became secretary to the Council of State and wrote in Latin Eikonoklastes in 1649.
That was the last big writing project he did before he began to become blind.
In 1652, he became completely blind and was very unhappy.
However, in 1667, he published the famous Paradise Lost, one of the greatest English-language epics.
Four years later, he wrote Paradise Regained, a story about how men became sinful and how Jesus Christ won the battle with the devil.
The last work that was published while he was alive was Samson Agonistes.
He died, probably because of gout, on 8 November 1674.
The jaguar (Panthera onca) is a large feline (big cat) which lives in South and Central America.
The jaguar is the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion.
It is also the largest and most powerful feline in the Western Hemisphere.
Because of its spots, jaguars look like leopards, though it is usually larger and stronger, and its behavior is more like that of a tiger.
It likes to stay near water, and like the tiger, it is famous for being a big cat that enjoys swimming.
It usually hunts alone.
The jaguar has a very powerful strong bite, even compared to other big cats.
Because of its strong bite, jaguars can bite through armored reptiles like caimans, crocodiles, turtles and tortoises.
Jaguars kill their prey in an unusual way: they bite directly through the skull between the ears and into the brain.
Jaguars have yellow or sometimes yellow-orange fur with brown and black rosettes and spots.
They are big and heavy and also have very strong muscles which makes them really powerful.
Sometimes there are jaguars who are completely black, but if you look closely you can still see the spots.
They are called "black panther" or just "panther".
This is a ` color morph ' of the same species, a kind of polymorphism.
Jaguars live in South and Central America.
They mostly live in rainforests, but also in savanna, swamp, grasslands, forest and deserts and open areas.
They can not climb well, but they swim very well.
Jaguars are not specialized with their food, but eat almost anything they get: big and small mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and livestock.
It is an ambush predator.
When hunting, they usually try to secretly get very close to the prey, and then the jaguar suddenly jumps at it and throws it down.
The jaguar bites the skull of its prey to kill it.
It then takes the prey to a safe place and eats it.
After a pregnancy of about 100 days the female gives birth to usually 1 - 4 babies.
The young leave their family after 1 2 years, and they become mature at about 3 years.
Jaguars can live up to 10 12 years old in freedom, but in captivity (such as in zoos) they can live to 20 22 years old.
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 November 28, 1994) was an American serial killer.
He was born in Wisconsin and moved to Ohio in 1966.
He murdered young males in Wisconsin and Ohio from 1978-1991.
In 1992, he was convicted of 15 murders.
Dahmer later confessed to 17 murders in all, dating back to his first victim in 1978.
The jury rejected Dahmer 's insanity defense, and he was sentenced to 15 life terms.
He was killed by another inmate on the morning of November 28, 1994.
Dahmer had three personality disorders: antisocial, borderline and schizotypal.
Joseph Cheshire Cotten (May 15, 1905 February 6, 1994) was an American actor.
He was known for his roles in Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Duel in the Sunand, Journey into Fear (1943), Love Letters (1945), Portrait of Jennie (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
Cotten was born in Petersburg, Virginia on May 15, 1905.
He was married to Lenore Kipp from 1931 until her death in 1960.
Then he was married to Patricia Medina from 1960 until his death in 1994.
Cotten died on February 6, 1994 from pneumonia caused by throat cancer in Los Angeles, California, aged 88.
The Jacquard loom is a mechanical loom.
It is used to make patterns in clothing material.
It was invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard, and first used in 1801.
It simplified the process of making textiles with complex patterns.
James Maury "Jim" Henson (September 24, 1936 May 16, 1990) was an American artist, animator, puppeteer, and moviemaker.
He was best known for his work with the Muppets, which he helped to create.
Henson 's best known puppet is Kermit the Frog.
As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, movies such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper.
He also made puppets for projects like Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth.
The Jim Henson Company and the Jim Henson Foundation continued after his death, making new series and specials.
Jim Henson 's Creature Shop, founded by Henson, also continues to build creatures for a large number of other movies and series (e.g. the science-fiction production Farscape, the movie adaptation of The Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy, and the movie MirrorMask) and is said to be one of the most advanced and well respected creators of movie creatures.
His son Brian and daughter Lisa are the co-chairs and co-CEOs of the company.
His daughter Cheryl is the president of the foundation.
Steve Whitmire, a veteran member of the Muppet puppeteering crew, plays the roles of Kermit the Frog and Ernie, the most famous characters formerly played by Jim Henson.
One of Henson 's last projects is a show attraction in Walt Disney World and Disneyland.
It is called Muppet \* Vision 3D.
It opened in 1991, shortly after his death.
A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling.
Joysticks are often used to control video games, and usually have one or more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer.
A popular variation of the joystick used on modern video game consoles is the analog stick.
The joystick has been the principal flight control in the cockpit of many aircraft, particularly military fast jets, where center stick or side-stick location may be employed.
Joysticks are also used for controlling machines such as cranes, trucks, underwater unmanned vehicles and zero turning radius lawn mowers.
Miniature finger-operated joysticks have been adopted as input devices for smaller electronic equipment such as mobile phones.
John Maynard Smith, FRS (6 January 1920 19 April 2004) was a British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist.
Originally an aeronautical engineer during the Second World War, he then took a second degree in genetics under the well-known biologist J.B.S. Haldane.
Maynard Smith was instrumental in the application of game theory to evolution and theorized on other problems such as the evolution of sex and signalling theory.
Maynard Smith has an Erd s number of four.
John Claggett Danforth (born September 5, 1936) is a retired American politician.
He began his career in 1968 as the Attorney General of Missouri.
He served three terms as a United States Senator from Missouri.
He is considered a moderate and conciliator.
He has been periodically called out of retirement by both of the major political parties to fill diplomatic roles.
In 2004, he served briefly as United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
Danforth is an ordained Episcopal priest.
He presided over the state funeral of Ronald (2004) and Nancy Reagan (2016).
Danforth was born in St. Louis, Missouri.
He is the son of Dorothy (Claggett) and Donald Danforth.
He is the grandson of William H. Danforth, founder of Purina Mills.
His father was the CEO of its successor, Ralston Purina.
Danforth 's brother, Dr. William Henry Danforth, is former chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis.
Danforth attended St. Louis Country Day School for high school.
He eventually went to Princeton University where he received his bachelor 's degree in 1958.
While in college Danforth joined Lambda Chi Alpha, a fraternity.
He then attended law and divinity graduate schools at Yale University.
He was employed a short time at the New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell.
Jordanes (also Jordanis or even Iornandes), was a 6th century Roman clerk.
who wrote history later in life.
Jawaharlal Nehru (November 14 1889 - May 27 1964) was the leader (prime minister) of India for 17 years immediately after 1947, when India became independent.
He was born in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.
He died of a heart attack in New Delhi.
During the struggle for Indian independence from British rule, Nehru was jailed many times.
During these periods, he used to write long letters to his daughter, Indira, on Indian and World history.
These letters were remarkably well written and became very successful books when published later as Glimpses of World History and The discovery of India.
His father Motilal Nehru, was also an important figure in the Indian freedom struggle, and his daughter Indira Gandhi and grandson Rajiv Gandhi went on to become prime ministers of India.
Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 October 4, 1970) was an American singer, songwriter, and music arranger, from Port Arthur, Texas.
She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later as a solo artist.
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Joplin # 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
Her vocal range was mezzo-soprano.
She died in Los Angeles, California of an accidental overdose of heroin at the age of 27.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau known as Jacques Cousteau (11 June 1910 - 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water.
He helped create the aqua-lung, helped marine conservation and was a member of the Acad mie fran aise.
He was also known as "le Commandant Cousteau" or "Captain Cousteau".
Cousteau was born on 11 June 1910, in Saint-Andr - de-Cubzac, Gironde, to Daniel and lisabeth Cousteau.
He had one brother, Pierre-Antoine.
Cousteau attended Coll ge Stanislas in Paris.
In 1930, he entered the cole Navale and graduated as a gunnery officer.
After an automobile accident cut short his career in naval aviation, Cousteau changed to studying the sea.
In Toulon, where he was serving on the Condorcet, Cousteau carried out his first underwater experiments, thanks to his friend Philippe Tailliez who in 1936 lent him some Fernez underwater goggles.
Cousteau also belonged to the information service of the French Navy, and was sent on missions to Shanghai and Japan (1935 1938) and in the USSR (1939).
On 12 July 1937 he married Simone Melchior (1919-1990), with whom he had two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940 1979).
His sons took part in the adventures of the Calypso.
In 1991, after his wife Simone 's death from cancer, he married Francine Triplet.
They already had a daughter Diane Cousteau (born 1980) and a son Pierre-Yves Cousteau (born 1982), born during Cousteau 's marriage to his first wife.
On the morning of 25 June 1997, Jacques-Yves Cousteau died at his home in Paris, aged 87 from a heart attack.
Despite rumors, encouraged by some Islamic publications and websites, Cousteau did not convert to Islam, and when he died he was buried in a Roman Catholic Christian funeral.
He was buried in the family vault at Saint-Andr - de-Cubzac in France.
A street was named "rue du Commandant Cousteau" in a street which runs near his native house, where a commemorative plaque was affixed.
A joke is something told to make people laugh.
There are many kinds of jokes; they can be questions with surprising answers or stories with unexpected endings.
The humor of a joke comes from the surprise.
Jokes can be about anything.
Jokes can be found anywhere: on the Internet, in books or heard from friends.
Some jokes are about certain types of people and can hurt people 's feelings, for example if they are racist or sexist.
Jokes are used in comedy, plays and movies.
Jokes could take the form of sarcasm or even try to poke fun at something to get a point across.
People sometimes get hurt by jokes at them.
If a joke is used to show a problem in someone 's thought, it is normally called satire.
James Maitland Stewart (May 20, 1908 July 2, 1997) was one of the most famous American movie and stage actors of all times.
In his career, he starred in many movies considered classics and was nominated for five Oscars, winning one in competition and one life achievement.
He also had an important military career, and made it to the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Air Force.
Stewart became so familiar to the American public that he was most usually referred to by them as "Jimmy" Stewart.
He was named the third Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.
Jalalabad is a city in eastern Afghanistan.
Jalalabad is the capital of Nangarhar province.
It is linked by about 90 m of road with Kabul to the west.
It is also about the same distance to Peshawar in Pakistan to the east.
Although most of the people of Jalalabad are Pashtun, a few Dari-speaking Tajikslive there, too.
Sunni Islam is the main religion of the people.
Jakarta (also Djakarta or DKI Jakarta) is the largest and the capital city of Indonesia.
It is on the northwest coast of the island of Java, it has an area of 661.52 km and a population of 10,187,595 as of November 2011.
Jakarta has been established for more than 490 years and now is the ninth most dense city in the world with 15,400 people per km.
Jakarta 's first name was Sunda Kelapa.
Before the Dutch came, it was renamed the city Jayakarta, starting in 1527.
In 1619 the Dutch renamed the city Batavia.
It was called Jakarta by the Japanese during World War 2.
Jakarta has a tropical monsoon climate (Am in the Koeppen climate classification).
Jacob Leon "Jack" Rubenstein (March 25, 1911 January 3, 1967) was an American criminal.
Ruby was born on March 25, 1911 in Chicago, Illinois.
On November 24, 1963, Ruby fatally shot Lee Harvey Oswald, who was in police custody after being charged with the murder of President John F. Kennedy two days earlier.
Ruby was convicted of murdering Oswald, but the conviction was overturned.
He continued to be held in prison while awaiting retrial.
The retrial did not happen because he died on January 3, 1967 at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas from lung cancer and a pulmonary embolism, aged 55.
James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928) is a Canadian-American magician and skeptic who is known for bending metal forks or spoons.
He is known for performing ghost magic and for being the founder of James Randi Educational Foundation.
He holds two world records.
He was influenced by Harry Houdini and Harry Blackstone, Sr..
Randi was born on August 7, 1928 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
He is openly gay.
He married his partner of 27 years, Deyvi Pena, in 2013.
J rgen Habermas was born on June 18, 1929.
He is a German philosopher and sociologist, or someone who studies different societies.
He uses a type of theory called critical theory, where he studies how people use power.
He also uses the theory of American pragmatism, which studies if something is true or not by the effects of actions.
He is known for his work on the theory of the public sphere.
He studies power in democracy, and politics.
He also studies how people develop a society through language, and tries to understand how that society and the government work together.
Habermas was born in D sseldorf, North Rhine-WestphaliaGermany.
Habermas lived in Gummersbach, near the city of Cologne until his graduation from gymnasium.
Ernst Habermas was his father and worked for the Cologne Chamber of Industry and Commerce, and he was a supporter of the Nazi 's.
J rgen was raised in a Protestant religious family because his grandfather was in charge of the seminary, or religious school, in Gummersbach Germany.
J rgen Habermas went to the universities of G ttingen (1949\/50), Z rich (1950\/51), and Bonn (1951 54) and earned a doctorate, or an expert degree in philosophy from Bonn in 1954 with his work called, ' ("The absolute and history: on the contradiction in Schelling 's thought").
The group who graded his work included Erich Rothacker and Oskar Becker.
From 1956 on, he studied philosophy and sociology under the critical theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main Institute for Social Research, but because Horkheimer had asked Habermas to make some changes to his dissertation, or final project which Habermas did not want to do, and Habermas s thought that the Frankfurt School was not correct in its views of modern culture, Habermas left the Frankfurt School and he finished his habilitation, or highest academic degree, in political science at the University of Marburg under the Marxist Wolfgang Abendroth.
His habilitation work was entitled, ' (published in English in 1989 titled The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society).
In 1961, he became a privatdozent in Marburg, and he began working as a "extraordinary professor" (professor without chair) of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg (at the instigation of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Karl L with) in 1962.
In 1964 Habermas returned to Frankfurt to take over Horkheimer 's job in philosophy and sociology.
He was in charge of the Max Planck Institute in Starnberg (near Munich) in 1971, and worked there until 1983, two years after the publication of his magnum opus, or great work, The Theory of Communicative Action Habermas then returned to his chair at Frankfurt and became in charge of the Institute for Social Research.
Since retiring from Frankfurt in 1993, Habermas has written many books and articles.
In 1986, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the, which is the highest honor awarded in German research.
He is a "Permanent Visiting" Professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and "Theodor Heuss Professor" at The New School, New York.
Habermas was awarded The Prince of Asturias Award in Social Sciences of 2003.
Habermas was also the 2004 Kyoto Laureate in the Arts and Philosophy section.
He traveled to San Diego and on March 5, 2005, as part of the University of San Diego 's Kyoto Symposium, gave a speech entitled The Public Role of Religion in Secular Context, regarding the history of separation of Church and State.
He received the 2005 Holberg International Memorial Prize (about 520,000).
Nuruddin Muhammad Jahangir (birth name was Shahzada \/ Prince Salim or Selim) (20 September 1569 8 November 1627) was the fourth Mughal Emperor from 1605 to 1627.
Jahangir was the eldest son of Emperor Akbar the Great.
He was married to Queen Nur Jahan (` Light of the World ') and was much under her influence.
He is especially well-known because of his memoirs, the Tuzk-i-Jahangiri (also called the Jahangir-nameh by some).
He died on his way back from kashmir.
After his death Nur Jahan isolated herself and never talked to anyone.
He is buried at Shah Dara outside Lahore city, now in Pakistan.
He was succeeded by his son Shah Jahan military campaigns started by akbar continued.
Josiah Wedgwood (12 July 1730 - 3 January 1795, born in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent) was an English potter, who became famous for the industrialisation of pottery.
He was the grandfather of both Charles Darwin and Emma Darwin, Charles ' wife.
Wedgwood was the first to use modern marketing: direct mail, money-back guarantees, traveling salesmen, self-service, free delivery, buy one get one free, and illustrated catalogues.
When he was a child, Josiah had smallpox, but he survived (did not die).
The smallpox injured his knee, so he could not easily work as a potter.
Instead, he worked hard to design pottery.
Working as an apprentice, Wedgwood learned many techniques for making pottery.
He used his skills to make one of the first pottery factories, Ivy Works, in Burslem, now part of Stoke-on-Trent.
Wedgwood was very interested in science and technology, and used new ideas to make good quality pottery.
He became famous for making pottery for royalty, and became very rich.
He spent money on civic works, things that would help businessmen and people in the city, for example canals.
He became friends with Erasmus Darwin, an important scientist and inventor.
In 1780, Wedgwood and Darwin became business partners.
Wedgwood 's son married Darwin 's daughter, who gave birth to Charles Darwin.
Wedgwood and Darwin were also members of the ` Lunar Society ', a group of important scientists, philosophers and businessmen.
By 1763, he was receiving orders from the highest levels of the British nobility, including Queen Charlotte.
Wedgwood convinced her to let him name the line of pottery she had purchased "Queen 's Ware", and trumpeted the royal association in his paperwork and stationery.
In 1773, Empress Catherine of Russia ordered the Green Frog Service from Wedgwood; it can still be seen in the Hermitage Museum.
An even earlier commission from Catherine was the Husk Service (1770), now on exhibit in Peterhof.
In the latter part of his life, Wedgwood 's obsession was to duplicate the Portland Vase, a dark blue and white glass vase from the first century BC.
For three years he worked on the project, eventually producing what he considered a satisfactory copy in 1789.
Together with his friends in the Lunar Society, Wedgwood worked for the abolition (ending) of slavery.
Wedgwood produced medallions asking for the end of slavery.
These medallions became very popular.
Wedgwood died in Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent, in 1795.
Selling slaves became illegal (against the law) in 1807 in Britain, and having slaves became illegal in 1833.
Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 August 11, 1956) was an American painter.
He became famous for painting in the abstract expressionist style.
Pollock 's most famous paintings were made by dripping and splashing paint on a large canvas.
His nickname was Jack the Dripper.
Because of the method, this style is often called action painting.
Pollock was helped by his wife, artist Lee Krasner, and his style was very new at the time.
Pollock was bitter, and had serious drinking problems.
His paintings are in museums all over the world, and his work is rated very highly.
Pollock has been the subject of many movies because of his interesting life.
The most famous was a short documentary movie directed by Hans Namuth in 1951, and the 2000 movie about his life called Pollock, made by and starring actor Ed Harris.
Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming.
In 1956, he was killed in a car crash in Springs, New York at the age of 44.
Pollock was introduced to the use of liquid paint in 1936 at an experimental workshop operated in New York City by the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros.
He later used paint pouring as one of several techniques on canvases of the early 1940s, such as "Male and Female" and "Composition with Pouring I." After his move to Springs, New York, he began painting with his canvases laid out on the studio floor, and he developed what was later called his drip technique.
Pollock described this use of household paints, instead of artist s paints, as "a natural growth out of a need".
He used hardened brushes, sticks, and even basting syringes as paint applicators.
With this technique, Pollock was able to achieve a more immediate means of creating art, the paint now literally flowing from his chosen tool onto the canvas.
By defying the convention of painting on an upright surface, he added a new dimension, literally, by being able to view and apply paint to his canvases from all directions.
Later, Pollock turned to synthetic resin-based paints called alkyd enamels, which, at that time, was a novel medium.
In 1956, Time magazine called Pollock "Jack the Dripper" as a result of his unique painting style.
"My painting does not come from the easel.
I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor.
I need the resistance of a hard surface.
On the floor I am more at ease.
I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting".
"I continue to get further away from the usual painter 's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc..
I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass or other foreign matter added".
"When I am in my painting, I 'm not aware of what I 'm doing.
It is only after a sort of ` get acquainted ' period that I see what I have been about.
I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.
I try to let it come through.
It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess.
Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well".
Influences on his dripping technique include the Mexican muralists and Surrealist automatism.
Pollock denied "the accident"; he usually had an idea of how he wanted a particular piece to appear.
His technique combined the movement of his body, over which he had control, the viscous flow of paint, the force of gravity, and the absorption of paint into the canvas.
It was a mixture of controllable and uncontrollable factors.
Flinging, dripping, pouring, and spattering, he would move energetically around the canvas, almost as if in a dance, and would not stop until he saw what he wanted to see.
Pollock 's No. 5, 1948 stands at the fifth highest price ever for a work of art.
It was privately sold by Sotheby 's for (price adjusted) US$ 163.8 million dollars.
Li Lianjie (born April 26, 1963), better known by his stage name Jet Li, is a Chinese martial artist, actor, wushu champion, and movie star.
He currently lives in Singapore.
Joseph Campbell (1904-87) was a writer known for his work on myth and religion.
"I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave."
John Dowland (born 1563; buried 20 February 1626) was an English composer and lutenist.
He is best known for some beautiful songs which express his unhappiness such as "Come, heavy sleep", "Come Again, Sweet Love" and "Flow my tears".
His instrumental music became very popular again in the 20th century.
We hardly know anything about Dowland 's early life.
He was probably born in London.
He went to Paris in 1580 where he worked for the ambassador to the French court.
He became a Roman Catholic at this time.
In 1594 the job of royal lutenist to Queen Elizabeth I became available.
Dowland did not get the job.
He said later that it was because he was a Catholic, but there were other Catholic musicians at the English court, so that may not have been the real reason.
Dowland continued to work in Europe instead.
He worked for the Duke of Brunswick-L neburg in Wolfenb ttel.
He went to Italy where he wanted to study with Luca Marenzio in Rome.
He went to Venice and Florence but never got as far as Rome.
He published a book of lute music in 1597 which made him the most important English composer for the lute.
However, he still did not get a job at the English court so he went to Denmark where he worked for King Christian IV of Denmark who paid him very well.
Dowland seems to have been married and he had children, although we do not know how many.
His wife and family always stayed in England.
Dowland returned to England in 1606 and in 1612 got the job as one of James I 's lutenists.
Strangely, he does not seem to have composed anything between that time and his death in London in 1626.
We do not know the date he died, but we do know the date when he was buried.
Most of Dowland 's music is for his own instrument, the lute.
It includes several books of music for solo lute, songs for one voice and lute, part-songs with lute accompaniment, and several pieces for viol consort with lute.
Many of his best-known songs are full of sadness.
One lute song is called "Flow My Tears".
A very well-known instrumental work is Lachrimae (the Latin word for "tears"), a set of seven songs for five viols and lute, each based on the tune of his song "Flow My Tears."
It became one of the best known pieces of consort music in his own time.
His pavane "Lachrymae antiquae" was also one of the big hits of the seventeenth century.
Dowland 's music often shows the melancholia that was so fashionable in music at that time.
He wrote a consort piece called Semper Dowland, semper dolens (always Dowland, always unhappy).
Many later musicians have been inspired by Dowland 's music, including Benjamin Britten and the pop musician Sting.
John James Audubon (April 26, 1785 January 27, 1851) was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, hunter, and painter.
He painted, described, and put in catalogues the birds of North America.
His Birds of America is a collection of 435 life-size prints.
It is still a standard against which 20th and 21st century bird artists are measured.
Audubon was born in Saint Domingue (now Haiti).
He was the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and plantation owner and his French mistress.
He was raised by his stepmother in Nantes, France.
Early interests included birds, nature, drawing, and music.
In 1803, at the age of 18, he was sent to America to escape conscription into Napoleon s army.
He lived on the family-estate at Mill Grove, near Philadelphia.
It was here that he hunted, studied and drew birds.
He married Lucy Bakewell.
The couple became the parents of two sons, Victor Gifford and John Woodhouse.
A daughter died in infancy.
Audubon set up a dry goods business on the western frontier in Henderson, Kentucky.
He continued to draw birds as a hobby.
He was quite successful in business, but hard times hit.
In 1819 he was briefly jailed for bankruptcy.
Audubon had few prospects.
He set off with his gun, his artist s materials, and a young assistant to paint America 's birds.
Floating down the Mississippi River, he lived a rugged hand-to-mouth existence in the South.
His wife earned money as a tutor to rich plantation families.
In 1826 he sailed with his partly finished collection of bird drawings to England.
"The American Woodsman" was an overnight success.
Audubon found a printer for the Birds of America, first in Edinburgh, then London, and later collaborated with the Scottish ornithologist William MacGillivray on the Ornithological Biographies life histories of each of the species in the work.
est comfort.
The last print of his monumental work was issued in 1838.
By this date, Audubon was famous.
He traveled America several more times in search of birds, and settled in New York City.
He made one more trip to the West in 1843 for his work of mammals, the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America.
It was largely completed by his sons.
The text was written by his long-time friend, the Lutheran pastor John Bachman (whose daughters married Audubon s sons).
Audubon spent his last years in senility and died at age 65.
He is buried in the Trinity Cemetery at 155th Street and Broadway in New York City.
The National Audubon Society writes: "Audubon s story is one of triumph over adversity; his accomplishment is destined for the ages.
He encapsulates the spirit of young America, when the wilderness was limitless and beguiling.
He was a person of legendary strength and endurance as well as a keen observer of birds and nature.
Like his peers, he was an avid hunter, and he also had a deep appreciation and concern for conservation; in his later writings he sounded the alarm about destruction of birds and habitats.
It is fitting that today we carry his name and legacy into the future".
In December 2010, The Economist magazine estimated that, adjusted for inflation, five of the ten highest prices ever paid for printed books were paid for copies of Birds of America.
Of the 119 copies known to survive, only eleven are held in private collections.
On 6 December 2010, a complete copy of the first edition was sold in London at Sotheby 's for 7,321,250 (about $ 11.5 million).
The winning bid was a record auction price for a printed book and was placed by a London-based art dealer, who outbid three others during the auction.
According to the provenance details reported by the auction house, the copy 's original owner was Henry Witham of Durham, listed as subscriber # 11 in Audubon 's Ornithological biography.
Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957.
Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period of intense anti-communist suspicion inspired by the tensions of the Cold War.
He made claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the federal government and elsewhere.
The term "McCarthyism," coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy 's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist pursuits.
McCarthy died of hepatitis.
John Hancock (January 12, 1737 October 8, 1793) was an early American patriot, a leader in the American Revolutionary War, and an American statesman.
He was the first man to sign America 's Declaration of Independence.
In modern America, "John Hancock" is a synonym for signature.
Hancock 's ancestors arrived in the English colonies in 1652.
In 1737, Hancock was born the only child of a minister in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts.
When his father died, he was adopted by his uncle, a merchant in Boston, Massachusetts.
At his uncle 's death in 1754, Hancock inherited the business.
He became one of the leading merchants in Boston.
In 1768, British officials seized his ship, the Liberty.
It carried a shipment of wine.
The officials said he was not following the rules.
Boston patriots rioted.
This incident was one of the events that led to the American Revolutionary War.
Hancock had several important jobs in Colonial America and the early United States of America.
He was president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in 1774 and 1775.
He used his money to support American independence.
The British thought him a very dangerous man.
Hancock was president of the Continental Congress in 1774 and 1775.
He wanted to lead the Continental Army.
George Washington got the job instead.
With 5,000 troops, he tried to free Rhode Island from the British.
He was not successful.
Hancock led the convention that adopted the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780.
He was first Governor of the state Massachusetts.
He served nine terms.
Hancock suffered from gout in his later life.
He died in 1793.
A joule (or sometimes) is a unit in the SI system.
That means that scientists use it.
It measures the work being done.
It is named after James Prescott Joule.
A joule equals one newton multiplied by a meter (1J = 1N 1m).
It is related to the watt (a unit of power): one watt equals one joule per second.
It is also the work done passing one amp through a resistance of one ohm for one second.
John Chrysostom (347 407) was an Archbishop of Constantinople and an important Early Church Father.
He is known for his powerful and persuasive words in preaching and public speaking.
After his death in 407 C.E., he was given the Greek title "chrysostomos", meaning "golden mouthed" in English.
The Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches see him as a saint.
He is also recognized by the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church as a saint.
Western Churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, some Anglican Churches, and parts of the Lutheran Church, celebrate him by making 13 September a holiday.
They also celebrate an Eastern feast day of 27 January.
The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria also recognizes John Chrysostom as a saint.
John is known mainly as a preacher in Christianity, as well as a theologian and liturgist.
Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 May 1940) is a British author and politician.
He was a member of Parliament, Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party and since 1992 is a life peer.
His political career ended after an indictment for perjury.
He is married to Mary Archer, a prominent scientist in solar power.
Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in the City of London Maternity Hospital.
When he was two weeks old he and his family moved to the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where he spent most of his young life.
At Oxford he was successful in athletics, competing in sprinting and hurdling.
He also made a name for himself in raising money for the then little-known charity Oxfam, famously claiming to have obtained the support of The Beatles in a charity fundraising drive (it was actually Pat Davidson of Oxfam).
The band accepted the invitation to visit the Senior Common Room of his Brasenose College, where they were photographed with Archer and dons of the college, although they did not play there.
It was during this period that he met his future wife, Mary.
His parents were John and Mary Archer who gave birth to him in 1940.
Jeffery Archer only had one sibling and that was his brother, Thomas Archer who is a renowned politician for the conservative party.
At the age of 29, he was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for a Lincolnshire constituency, holding the seat for the Conservative Party in a by-election on 4 December 1969.
In Parliament, Archer was on the left of the Conservative Party, rebelling against some of his party 's policies.
He urged free TV licences for the elderly and was against museum charges.
Archer voted against restoring the death penalty saying it was barbaric and obscene.
Archer had to resign because of a scandal in October 1986 when the Sunday newspaper The News of the World led on the story "Tory boss Archer pays vice-girl".
The article claimed that Archer had paid Monica Coghlan, a prostitute, 2000 through another person at Waterloo Station to go abroad.
Unlike the Daily Star, the newspaper did not allege that Archer had actually slept with Coghlan.
Archer sued the Daily Star.
Archer had been selected by the Conservative Party as their candidate for the London mayoral election of 2000.
He was forced to withdraw from the race when it was revealed that he was facing a charge of perjury.
On 4 February, 2000 Archer was expelled from the Conservative Party for five years.
On 26 September, 2000 he was charged with perjury and perverting the course of justice (i.e., obstruction of justice) during the 1987 libel trial.
A few months before the beginning of the perjury trial, Archer began performing in the star role in a courtroom play (which he also wrote) called The Accused.
The play was staged at London 's Theatre Royal Haymarket and concerns the court trial of an alleged murderer from beginning to end.
The play used the innovation of assigning the role of jury in the trial to the audience, with theatre-goers voting on whether Archer 's character was innocent or guilty at the end of each night 's performance.
Archer would attend his real trial during the day and be judged in his fictional trial at the theater in the evening.
The real life trial began on 30 May, 2001.
On 19 July, 2001 Lord Archer was found guilty of perjury.
He was sentenced to a total of four years ' imprisonment by Mr. Justice Potts.
The most ironic aspect of his trial was that he had fabricated the alibi for the wrong date.
Archer never spoke during the trial.
Ted Francis was found not guilty of perverting the course of justice.
On 21 July, 2003 he was released on licence, after serving half of his sentence, from HMP Hollesley Bay, Suffolk.
Many of Lord Archer 's friends remained loyal to him.
In addition, Archer lost an 8m libel case about false accusations in his book twist of tales, portraying Major General James Oluleye to be a thief.
Oluleye was a man who left a legacy of honesty and integrity for the future generations of Nigerians, See his book "Architecturing a Destiny" and "Military Leadership in Nigeria".
Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 - 3 April 1897) was a famous German composer.
He started his career as a pianist.
He was always very self-critical and destroyed any composition he thought was not really good.
He thought that people were expecting him to be the next Beethoven, and spent many years on his first symphony before he allowed it to be performed.
He wrote four symphonies, four concertos, a requiem, piano music, chamber music and songs.
Perhaps his best known tune is his Wiegenlied ("cradle song"), often called "Brahms ' Lullaby," used in many a child s musical box.
Brahms was born in Germany.
His father was a double bass player in the Hamburg city orchestra.
He probably gave the young boy his first music lessons.
He soon was learning the piano with a teacher named Otto Cossel.
When Brahms played in a public concert in 1843 an American agent asked him to tour America, but his teacher realized he was too young.
He said that Johannes should study with Eduard Marxsen, a well-known teacher in Hamburg.
By 1848 he was playing piano recitals.
He also started to compose, and he sent some of his compositions to Robert Schumann to ask for his advice.
Schumann sent the parcel back unopened.
At this time there were many Hungarian musicians in Hamburg.
Brahms liked their folk music with its unusual rhythms, little triplet figures and sense of rubato.
It was to influence his own style of composition.
One of the Hungarians was called Remenyi.
He played the violin and Brahms often accompanied him at concerts.
They went on tour together and met famous people such as the composer Franz Liszt and the violinist Joseph Joachim who became a close friend of Brahms for many years.
Joachim told Brahms to go and see Schumann and his wife Clara in D sseldorf.
Schumann liked Brahms and could see that he was going to be a great composer, so he wrote an article in his music journal about him.
The article had the title: Neue Bahnen (New Paths).
Schumann turned out to be correct: Brahms did become a famous composer and found new paths (new ways of composing).
Brahms remained a very close friend of Schumann.
When Schumann had a nervous breakdown, Brahms went all the way to D sseldorf to see him.
Brahms soon fell in love with Clara who was 14 years older than himself.
He continued to be in love with her after Robert Schumann s death, and they had a close relationship, though Brahms became interested in other women and was briefly engaged.
However, he never married.
In 1859 Brahms settled in Hamburg.
He founded a women s chorus and wrote and arranged a lot of music for them.
His First Piano Concerto was a great success in Hanover and Hamburg, but not in Leipzig, where a lot of people preferred the wildly Romantic music of Liszt which was quite different from Brahms s style based on the Classical music style.
Brahms decided to go to Vienna.
He was to stay there for the rest of his life.
In Vienna he soon made many friends who liked his music.
For a short time he was director of a choir called the Vienna Singakademie, who sang some of his compositions.
He met Wagner.
Wagner was afraid that Brahms would start to write operas which would be more famous than his own.
So Wagner wrote an article saying that Brahms was a very bad conductor.
Wagner had made himself an enemy of Brahms, who never did write any operas anyway.
In 1870 Brahms became director of a concert series called Vienna Gesellschaftskonzerte.
He became more and more famous as a composer, but he was never very good at conducting, and in 1875 a conductor called Hans Richter took over conducting the concerts.
During these years he finished one of his greatest works: Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem), as well as one of his most popular works: the Variations on the St Anthony chorale (sometimes wrongly known as Variations on a Theme by Haydn).
At last, in 1876, he allowed his First Symphony to be performed.
It was not very successful at first, but in Vienna the audience liked it.
He started to compose a lot of his greatest works and received many honors from universities.
In the winter he gave concerts and in the summer he spent his time composing.
He wrote his last symphony (Fourth Symphony) in 1885 and conducted it, going on tour with the orchestra through Germany and the Netherlands.
From 1889 Brahms spent each summer in Ischl where he had many friends.
By 1890 he had decided to stop composing, although he did still write four beautiful works for clarinet after meeting the clarinettist Richard M hlfeld.
In 1896 he wrote Four Serious Songs which were probably inspired by the sad death of Clara Schumann.
The next year Brahms died from cancer in Vienna.
His father had died of the same illness.
Brahms wrote a great deal of vocal music.
The greatest of these works is the German Requiem.
There were many works for choirs, and a large collection of songs with piano accompaniment (Lieder).
He wrote a lot of piano music which includes sonatas and many shorter pieces such as fantasias, rhapsodies, ballades, intermezzos, capriccios and romances.
His chamber music includes string quartets, quintets and sextets and piano trios, quartets and a piano quintet.
He wrote four symphonies and four concertos: two for piano, one for the violin and one for violin and cello (the Double Concerto).
The German Requiem is his greatest vocal work.
Brahms was also very interested in old music and helped to edit music by Fran ois Couperin as well as the music of his friend Robert Schumann.
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (21 June 1905 15 April 1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and critic.
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1964, but refused it.
saying "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution".
He was a Marxist and an atheist.
Sartre was born in Paris, France.
He studied philosophy at the cole Normale Sup rieure, an lite (high quality) education establishment.
In 1929, Sartre graduated with a doctorate in philosophy.
Sartre served in the French Army from 1929 to 1931.
In 1929 at the cole Normale, he met Simone de Beauvoir, who studied at the Sorbonne.
She went on to become a noted philosopher, writer, and feminist.
The two became inseparable and lifelong companions.
In 1938, Sartre wrote the novel called La Naus e (Nausea).
This story explains the way of thinking of existentialism.
Existentialism is a way of thinking about human freedom.
In 1939 Sartre was drafted into the French army.
France was at war with Germany, because Germany had invaded France (World War II) Sartre was captured by German troops in 1940, and Sartre spent nine months as a prisoner of war in a camp.
Sartre was released from the prison camp (jail) in 1941.
Then Sartre began working as a teacher again.
He made friends with other writers and thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Toussaint and Dominique Desanti, and Jean Kanapa.
In 1943, Sartre wrote a book about philosophy (ways of thinking) called L' tre et le N ant, which means Being and Nothingness.
In this book, Sartre said that when people tried too hard to conform to the rules of society (or of their country), then people did not really make their own decisions.
In 1945, Sartre started a newspaper called Les Temps Modernes (Modern Times), which had articles about politics, art and literature.
He also began writing a group of novels (stories) called Les Chemins de la Libert (The Roads to Freedom).
In 1946 Sartre wrote a book about philosophy (ways of thinking) called Existentialism is a Humanism, which explains existentialism.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Sartre became involved in politics.
Sartre said that France should leave Algeria, a country where France had many soldiers.
In the 1960s, Sartre said that the Vietnam War was bad.
In 1960, he wrote the Critique de la raison dialectique (Critique of Dialectical Reason).
In the 1960s, Sartre had many arguments with Louis Althusser, a man who also believed in communism.
Sartre died of oedema of the lung in 1980 in Paris.
His body is buried in Cimeti re du Montparnasse in Paris.
His funeral was attended by 50,000 people.
Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law.
Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal philosophers, hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions.
As jurisprudence has developed, there are three main aspects with which scholarly writing engages:
Modern jurisprudence and philosophy of law is dominated today primarily by Western academics.
The ideas of the Western legal tradition have become so pervasive throughout the world that it is tempting to see them as universal.
Historically, however, many philosophers from other traditions have discussed the same questions, from Islamic scholars to the ancient Greeks.
A jury trial or trial by jury is a legal proceeding in which a jury either makes a decision or makes findings of fact.
This is called a verdict.
The judge usually follows the jury 's verdict in his ruling.
It is distinguished from a bench trial, in which a judge or panel of judges make all decisions.
William the Conqueror brought to England a system of having witnesses who had any knowledge of a crime, tell the court what they knew.
They did this after first swearing an oath.
The word juror in English comes from the French jurer (to swear).
In the 12th century juries were used by the king to discover and present facts.
Usually this was in answer to questions posed by the king or his ministers who made the final decision in the case.
Eventually this led to a system where the jury made a verdict based on evidence.
In the late colonial period, juries became a tool used to express American discontent with British rule.
A series of Navigation Acts prohibited the American colonies from trading directly with the Netherlands, Spain, France, and their colonies.
As more and more trade restriction were imposed, the American colonists turned to smuggling.
When smugglers were caught, they were brought before juries made up of other colonists.
These sympathetic juries often acquitted their fellow colonists.
The king, angered at these lawbreakers going free, created new courts that did not allow juries.
This was a breach of common law practice and infringed on their rights as British citizens.
After the Revolutionary war, the Seventh Amendment 's right to a jury trial was written to limit the powers of the executive and the Judicial branches of the new federal government.
Jury trials are changing worldwide.
In 2008 Russia abolished jury trials in cases of treason and terrorism.
Britain, where juries got their start, is using them less in cases of serious fraud and may ban them from some inquests.
In many asian countries, their legal systems are moving towards using the jury trial more.
In the United States jury trials are on the decline.
In federal courts
The right to a jury trial in civil cases is found in the United States but in very few other places.
England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have all but done away with civil jury trials in favor of bench trials.
Fewer than 1 percent of civil trials in the US are jury trials.
The Seventh Amendment prevents judges from overturning a jury verdict in federal cases where the finding of fact is reasonably supported by the evidence.
In addition, the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a speedy trial by an impartial jury in criminal trials.
Justice is a concept on ethics and law that means that people behave in a way that is fair, equal and balanced for everyone.
Governments, and especially the police and courts, see that the laws are obeyed in most societies.
Because they can punish a person for not obeying the law, most people agree that laws should be fair and the same for everyone.
But governments sometimes make laws that many people believe are not just.
If many people believe this, people may lose respect for the law and may even disobey it.
However, in democratic societies, the law itself has ways to change or get rid of these unjust laws.
In the fictional Star Wars universe, the Jedi or Jedi Knights are members of an old order, who use a power they call The Force.
The Jedi use The Force to have magic-like powers.
Their typical weapon is the lightsaber, a sword-like weapon with an energy blade.
The Jedi try to lead a good and virtuous life, serving others.
They keep and defend the peace of the galaxy.
The opposite of the Jedi are the Sith, who follow the Dark side of the Force (using the force for evil).
James Tobin (March 5, 1918 March 11, 2002) was an American economist.
Outside academia, Tobin became widely known for his suggestion of a tax on foreign exchange transactions, now known as the "Tobin tax".
This was designed to reduce speculation on currency markets, which he saw as unproductive.
He also suggested that the money gained from the tax could be used to fund projects for the benefit of Third World countries, or to support the United Nations.
Tobin 's academic work included pioneering contributions to the study of investment, monetary and fiscal policy and financial markets.
He promoted and developed the ideas of Keynesian economics.
He believed that governments should intervene in the economy in order to stabilise output and avoid recessions.
John Belushi (January 24, 1949 - March 5, 1982) was an American actor in movies and television shows.
Belushi was born in Chicago, Illinois.
His mother was the daughter of Albanian immigrants; his father was an immigrant from Albania.
His brother is James Belushi, who is also an actor.
John was co-captain of the football team in high school as well as homecoming king in his senior year.
In school he was already active in acting, but wanted to become a baseball-coach.
His drama-teacher pursued him to become a professional actor.
He appeared mainly in TV shows, and was one of the founders of Saturday Night Live.
His Blues Brothers act with Dan Aykroyd was famous, long before The Blues Brothers movie (1980).
Unfortunately Belushi became a drug addict.
He used both heroin and cocaine, and a lot of both.
When The Blues Brothers was made, he spent about US$ 40,000 to $ 70,000 a week on drugs.
John Belushi died in 1982 from a drug overdose injected by Cathy Smith.
She was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
A Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is a set of computer software programs and data structures which use a virtual machine model for the execution of other computer programs and scripts.
The model used by a JVM accepts a form of computer intermediate language commonly referred to as Java bytecode.
Java Virtual Machines operate on Java bytecode, which is normally (but not necessarily) generated from Java source code; a JVM can also be used to implement programming languages other than Java.
The JVM is an important component of the Java Platform.
Because JVMs are available for many hardware and software platforms, Java can be both middleware and a platform in its own right hence the expression "write once, run anywhere."
The use of the same bytecode for all platforms allows Java to be described as "compile once, run anywhere", as opposed to "write once, compile anywhere", which describes cross-platform compiled languages.
In law, jurisdiction is the authority given to a judge to take decisions in matters concerning the law.
The word comes from the Latin jus, juris meaning "law" and dicere meaning "to speak": and literally means: telling the law.
Jurisdiction may be legally restricted to a certain period of time called a statute of limitations.
It also includes the authority a of formally constituted legal body or a political leader to deal with legal matters and, by implication, to administer justice within a defined area of responsibility.
Jurisdiction relies on public International Law, conflict of laws, constitutional law and the powers of the executive and legislative branches of government to give resources to best serve the needs of its society.
Justin Martyr (100-165 AD), also known as Saint Justin, was an early Christian from Nablus on the West Bank, who was martyred in Rome.
He is known for his writings defending Christianity.
Juventus F.C. is an Italian football club.
The club plays in Serie A. It was started in 1897 and its home stadium is the Juventus Stadium in Turin.
The club is the most successful team in the history of Italian football.
Overall, the club have won 51 official trophies, more than any other team in the country; 40 in Italy, which is also a record, and 11 in European and world competitions.
The Old Lady is the third most successful club in Europe and the sixth in the world with the most international titles officially recognized by one of the six continental football confederations and FIFA.
The club was the first Italian to win the UEFA Cup.
In 1985, Juventus, the only team in the world to have won all official international cups and championships became the first club in the history of European football to have won all three major UEFA club competitions.
In Italy, Juventus is the club which has the biggest fan base, having also one of the largest numbers of supporters in the world, with a total of 170 million Juventus supporters (Italian "tifosi") worldwide.
The club is a founding member of the European Club Association, which was formed after the dissolution of the G-14, a collection of Europe 's most elite clubs.
The Torinese side is also recognized for its huge contribution to the Italian national team.
Based on the findings of a survey of companies Demos & Pi (September 2010), Juventus appears to be the team with the highest number of supporters in Italy, having received the preference of 29 % of the sample.
It is also among the teams with the highest number of supporters worldwide are approximately 180 million supporters, according to a report from the German market research company Sport + Markt AG Sports in August 2005
In more than 110 years of corporate history, at the helm of Juventus 23 presidents have come and gone and two management committees.
The first president was Eugenio Canfari Juventus, one of the founding members.
The longest period in office was dominated by Giampiero Boniperti, at the helm of Juventus for 19 years from 1971 to 1990 (117); Boniperti, like its successor Caissotti di Vittorio Chiusano, president from 1990 to 2003, boasts the largest trophy the history of the club.
The businessman Umberto Agnelli, who became chairman less than 21 years of age, in 1955, was the youngest to hold this office.
Also noteworthy is the presidencies of the Swiss Alfred Dick and Giuseppe Hess and Frenchman Jean-Claude Blanc, the only non-Italian to become presidents of the club.
In particular, Dick was the President of the Bianconeri 's first championship (1905).
Currently the contractor is in charge of Turin Andrea Agnelli, who was elected president April 28, 2010 by the shareholders at the club.
Jadwiga Andegawe ska ' (1374-1399) became the King of Poland on 16 October 1384 at the age of eleven.
She was crowned as a king, not queen.
Her royal title was: Hedvigis Dei Gracia Rex Poloniae, necnon terrarum Cracoviae, Sandomiriae, Syradiae, Lanciciae, Cuyaviae, Pomeraniaeque domina et heres, (Jadwiga the grace of God, the Polish king, and heir to the land in Krak w, Sandomierz, Sieradz, czyca, Kujawy and Pomerania).
She was the daughter of Louis Hungarian, King of Poland and Hungary).
Jadwiga married a Lithuania Grand Duke, Jogaila (W adys aw Jagie o) on 18 February 1386.
After her death during childbirth on 17 July 1399, her husband became the King Ladislaus II of Poland.
In 1997 she was made a saint by Pope John Paul II.
The Kennedy Space Center is next to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, USA.
It is the place where NASA rockets are launched and Space Shuttles take off and land.
Roberta Joan Anderson (born November 7, 1943 in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada), better known as Joni Mitchell, is a Canadian songwriter, musician and artist.
Her usual musical instrument is a guitar.
Her songs include "Big Yellow Taxi", "Woodstock" (about the 1969 Woodstock Festival), "Free Man In Paris", "Help Me" and "Both Sides Now".
Her name Mitchell comes from her first marriage (to Chuck Mitchell).
She first began singing folk music while she attended art school, to earn spending money.
In time, her songs and style got her noticed, and she became a professional musician.
She signed a recording contract, and her first album appeared in 1968.
"Both Sides Now" also boosted the musical career of Judy Collins, another folksinger, whose cover version became a popular hit.
She also performs in the contralto range.
Mitchell had romantic relationships with Stephen Stills and David Crosby, both of the band Crosby, Stills & Nash.
She also did artwork for one of their album covers.
She was scheduled to appear at the Woodstock Festival, as CSN was (joined by Neil Young), but she had to cancel.
Her song "Woodstock" still became a hit for CSN, and summed up for many people the meaning of the festival.
During the 1970s, Mitchell changed from folk music to jazz, and she lost some of her fans.
Many other people enjoyed her later music, though, including an album she made with Charles Mingus, a legendary jazz musician.
The album was Mingus 's last project before his death.
Not all of Mitchell 's records have been hits, and she resisted compiling a "best-ofs" or "greatest hits" album for many years, feeling that if she did so, her career would be "over".
She did finally release a pair of recordings, Hits (which contained her biggest hit records) and Misses (which included some of her favorite songs, that were not hits).
She continues to perform, and to paint pictures.
Her paintings are displayed in galleries around the world.
Before she became famous, Mitchell gave up a newborn daughter for adoption in Canada.
During the 1990s, the two got back in contact, and now have a good relationship.
Though she first became famous during the 1960s, Mitchell does not romanticize that era.
She reminds listeners of the negative parts of it, and encourages them to make the present better.
In March 2015, Mitchell was found unconscious in her Los Angeles home.
She regained consciousness in an ambulance on her way to hospital, but was taken to intensive care for tests.
She had a brain aneurysm.
She was diagnosed with a throat tumor later the next day.
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (30 September 1207 17 December 1273), also named Mawl n, which means Our Master, is one of the Islamic world 's greatest poets.
He is usually known in the English-speaking world simply as Rumi.
He was a Sufi mystic, philosopher and lover of humanity.
His followers began a school of mysticism to encourage and celebrate his teachings the Sufi branch known to many Westerners as the ` Whirling Dervishes ', but whose proper name is the Mevlevi order.
Jal ludd n Rumi was born in 1207 in Balkh Persia in what is today Afghanistan.
His father Bahauddin was a famous religious teacher and mystic who received a position at the university in Balkh.
When Mongols invaded Persia, Rumi left Persia for Konya, which was then under the Persian empire.
By the time he made it to Konya his mother had died, and he was married with one a son.
` Mevl na ' (Our Master) had had his early spiritual education under the tutelage of his father Bahauddin and later under his father s close friend Sayyid Burhaneddin of Balkh.
Mevl na grew both in knowledge and consciousness of God over the years.
Eventually Sayyid Burhaneddin told Mevl na that he was now ready and a mature Sufi and scholar and that the ` next stage ' of his spiritual development would soon occur.
And so Sayyid predicted the coming of Shams of Tabriz, the central event and love of Rumi s life.
At the age of thirty-seven Mevl na met the spiritual vagabond and holy-man, Shams.
It was his meeting with this dervish on 15 November, 1244 that completely changed his life.
Much has already been written about their relationship.
Prior to this encounter Rumi had been an eminent professor of religion and a highly attained mystic; after this he became an inspired poet and a great lover of humanity.
Shams companionship with Rumi was brief.
Despite the fact that each was a perfect mirror for the other, Shams disappeared, not once but twice.
The first time, Rumi s son Sultan Veled searched for him and found him in Damascus.
The second disappearance, however, proved to be final, and it is believed that he may have been murdered by certain orthodox Muslim theologians, and other people of Konya who resented his influence over Mevl na.
Shams convinced Rumi that at certain moments it was possible to commune directly with God: Rather than believers simply being interpreters of the word of God, they could in fact experience his presence directly.
The effect on Rumi was immediate: abandoning his familial and scholarly responsibilities he devoted all his time to learning as much as possible from Shams.
However, the mystic came and went without explanation, and vanished permanently in 1248.
From then on, Rumi devoted himself to poetry, and primarily to the topic of love.
His verses, inspired by Shams more than 30,000 in all were collected in a work that he called Diwan-i Shams-i-Tabriz (` The Divan of Shams of Tabriz ').
Stylistically, Rumi favored the well established, ghazal, a traditional Persian meter of up to twelve rhyming lines; and to a lesser extent, the Rubai quartrain form.
Rumi seems to have been permanently engaged in a search of divine inspiration and love.
He saw and found his ` Muse ' in various human and natural aspects of existence.
After the Divan he completed his great masterpiece or magnum opus, the Mathnavi-i Ma ` navi (` The Mathnavi\/Treatise Devoted to the Intrinsic Meaning of All Things '), which was dictated in its entirety to his student Hissam-ud-din Chelebi over the course of many years.
Although there had been a substantial Islamic mystical tradition prior to Rumi, it is fair to comment that his poetry transformed both thinking and ritual in this regard.
For example, the famous centripetal dance of the dervishes - the sema ritual - is said to have its inspiration in Rumi 's own movements around a pole in his garden as he mourned for his companion Shams.
In time, these actions were adapted into Sufic practice by Rumi and then handed down to his favored disciples who institutionalized them into the activities of the Mevlevi Order that they founded in their Master 's honor.
Rumi died on December 17, 1273 AD and his Urs (Spiritual anniversary\/festival) is held every year on 8th December at his Turbe (shrine) in Konya.
In recent times, Mevlana Rumi remains as fresh and vital as ever.
The love poetry of Rumi has found great favor in the West as well as amongst the newer generation of Muslim youth throughout the Muslim world.
For Turks, Afghanistanis, Iranians, Tajiks, and other Central Asian Muslims as well as the Muslims of South Asia, Rumi 's importance is considered to transcend religious, national and ethnic borders.
With his works being translated into many languages everywhere, other cultures and people in the world are now also approaching and understanding Rumi more deeply and at times, even trying to follow his teachings and ` Way '.
The James Norris Memorial Trophy is given out to the National Hockey League 's best "defense player who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-round ability in the position".
The James Norris Memorial Trophy has been awarded 53 times to 22 different players since it was first created in 1954.
At the end of each season, members of the Professional Hockey Writers ' Association vote to decide the player who was the best defenseman during the regular season.
The trophy is named in honor of James E. Norris, owner of the National Hockey League 's Detroit Red Wings from 1932 to 1952.
The trophy was first awarded at the end of the 1953 54 NHL season.
Bobby Orr of the Boston Bruins won the award for a record eight seasons in a row (1968 75).
Doug Harvey won the award seven times, while Nicklas Lidstrom has won it six times in his career and Ray Bourque won it five times during his career.
The Boston Bruins have won the most Norris Trophies with 14.
The Montreal Canadiens are second with 11.
There are only two players that have won both the Norris and Hart Memorial Trophy for the same season: Bobby Orr, who won both trophies for the 1969 70, 1970 71 and 1971 72 seasons, and Chris Pronger, who won the Hart and Norris for the 1999 2000 NHL season.
Seven different defensemen won the Hart Trophy before the Norris Trophy 's establishment: Billy Burch, Eddie Shore (four times), Herb Gardiner, Albert "Babe" Siebert, Ebbie Goodfellow, Tommy Anderson and Babe Pratt.
The voting is done at the end of the regular season by members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association, and each voter picks their top five candidates on a 10 7 5 3 1 points system.
Three finalists are named and the trophy is awarded at the NHL awards ceremony after the end of the playoffs.
Julia Carolyn Child (Julia Carolyn McWilliams; August 15, 1912 August 13, 2004) was an American television personality, writer, and chef.
She was known for having her own cooking show The French Chef.
She won an Peabody Award and an Emmy Award.
Child was born on August 15, 1912 in Pasadena, California.
She studied at Smith College and at Le Cordon Bleu.
Child was married to Paul Cushing Child from 1946 until his death in 1994.
They had no children.
Child died on August 13, 2004 in Montecito, California from kidney failure, aged 91.
Jerome K. Jerome (in full Jerome Klapka Jerome) (1859-1927) was an English novelist, playwright and humorist.
He wrote books that were very funny and won him a wide public following.
John Keats (31 October 1795 23 February 1821) was an English poet.
He is often ranked as one of the five most important poets of the Romantic movement in English literature; the other four are William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Though Keats was the youngest of these poets, he also died before the others: he suffered from tuberculosis and died in Rome at the age of 25.
Keats was the son of an inn-keeper who died when Keats was nine years old; and his mother died of tuberculosis in 1810.
The young Keats began studying to be a surgeon, though his interest in literature grew stronger than his interest in medicine.
He became a friend and follower of the poet and editor James Henry Leigh Hunt, and made his first attempts to write his own poetry.
Keats 's active writing life lasted only about six years, from the spring of 1814 through 1819.
His short life meant that he wrote less than many other poets.
His longest poems, Endymion and Hyperion, tell stories from ancient Greek mythology.
Many of his shorter poems are among the best known in English literature, including the ballad "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and his sonnets and odes.
Keats was an active letter-writer throughout his life, like many people of his time.
Hundreds of his letters to friends and relatives have survived, and Keats is often called one of the great letter writers in the English language.
The Jewish Defense League (JDL) is a Jewish organization started in the US in 1968.
Its stated goal is to "protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary".
The JDL was suspected of plotting to bomb the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California.
The FBI called the JDL a "right-wing terrorist group".
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a NASA research center in Pasadena, California.
Jet streams are fast flowing, relatively narrow air currents found a little below the tropopause, the transition between the troposphere (where temperature decreases with height) and the stratosphere (where temperature increases with height).
This is about 10 t above the surface of the Earth.
John David Ashcroft (born May 9, 1942) is an American politician.
He was the 79th United States Attorney General.
He served during the first term of President George W. Bush from 2001 until 2005.
Ashcroft was previously the Governor of Missouri (1985 1993) and a U.S. Senator from Missouri (1995 2001).
Ashcroft was born in Chicago, Illinois.
Jason Alexander (born Jason Scott Greenspan on September 23, 1959) is an American actor.
He is famous for his role as George Costanza on the television series Seinfeld.
John Wycliffe (lived from about 1320 to 1384 in England) was an English theologian.
He was one of the first to translate the Christian Bible into common English.
It is generally known as "Wyclif 's Bible".
A missions agency bearing his name (Wycliffe Bible Translators) continues translating the scriptures into languages around the world.
Wycliffe wrote that papal claims of temporal power had no foundation in the scriptures and that the scriptures alone should be the standard of Christian belief and practice.
John Wycliffe s family lived in a lower social class, which meant they did not live in great wealth, but they were not poor either.
Later, after Wycliffe had grown up, he attended Oxford University where he earned an arts degree.
He became Master of Balliol College, Oxford in 1361.
He was also given a parish in Lincolnshire, which meant he had to give up the position of Master.
He lived at Oxford for a large portion of his life, and worked as a rector (a member of the clergy) at local churches.
There were many more changes to his life.
Some of his ideas were in conflict with those of the Church, but he had the support and protection of John of Gaunt, who was ruling England at the time.
Wycliffe encouraged the Church to benefit the sinners of the world by living a life of poverty, but not everyone agreed with his thoughts and ideas.
In some of late writings, he wrote that the Bible was the authority of the Christian religion, not of the church.
In 1382 Wycliffe s followers helped him translate the Bible.
Early members of the Christian churches called him the first great reformer.
Flavius Josephus (AD 37 c. 100) was a Jewish writer and historian who wrote about the destruction of Jerusalem in the First Jewish Roman War ' in 70.
He also wrote briefly about Jesus, some decades after Jesus died.
Judy Blume is an American author.
Judy Blume was born on February 12, 1936 to Rudolph and Esther Sussman.
She was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Blume graduated with honors from her high school, Battin, and went on to Boston University.
She was forced to quit college after a year because of a disease that caused her to have too many large white blood cells.
She then transferred to New York University where she graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science in early childhood education.
She then had two children, Randy Lee and Lawrence Andrew.
Many of her books are about the challenge pre-teens face when growing up in middle-class America.
Judy Blume has written many books, mostly focusing on middle-class children and the problems they face in their lives.
Her most famous piece is Are You There God?
It s Me, Margaret.
She started out writing books meant only for adults, such as Wifey, Smart Women, and Summer Sisters.
As time passed, Blume began to write books for children, including:
Her books are published by Bradbury Press.
Throughout her lifetime she has received many awards.
Some of these include, the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Library of Congress Living Legends award.
Sir John Anthony Pople, (31 October 1925 15 March 2004) was an American scientist.
He was a Nobel Prize winning theoretical chemist.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Walter Kohn in the year 1998.
Jerry Lamon Falwell, Sr. (August 11, 1933 May 15, 2007) was an American evangelical Christian pastor and televangelist.
He was the pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia.
He founded Liberty University in 1971 and co-founded the Moral Majority in 1979.
James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno (; born April 28, 1950) is an American comedian, actor, voice actor, writer, producer and television host.
Leno was born in New Rochelle, New York, in 1950.
His homemaker mother, Catherine (n e Muir; 1911 1993), was born in Greenock, Scotland, and came to the United States at age 11.
Leno 's father, Angelo (1910 1994), who worked as an insurance salesman, was born in New York, to immigrants from Flumeri, Italy.
Leno grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, and although his high school guidance counselor recommended that he drop out of school, he later obtained a Bachelor 's degree in speech therapy from Emerson College, where he started a comedy club in 1973.
Leno 's only sibling was his late older brother, Patrick, who was a Vietnam veteran and a lawyer.
Leno worked on late night television.
He became host of The Tonight Show in 1992, when Johnny Carson retired.
In 2007, during the writer 's strike, Leno sided with the writers, although he returned to his show after two months (without the writers besides himself) so that his staff would not be out of work.
Despite leading the late-night ratings, he was forced out as host of the Tonight Show in 2009 to make way for Conan O'Brien.
On March 1, 2010, became The Tonight Show host once again, because of poor ratings with both himself and Conan O'Brien.
Leno hosted his last episode of the Tonight Show on February 6, 2014.
He now stars in his own prime-time comedy show, The Jay Leno Show, which debuted September 14, 2009.
He guest-starred twice on the Nickelodeon TV series The Fairly OddParents as the Crimson Chin.
His character 's name uses the fact that Leno has a large and square chin.
Leno has been married since 1980 to Mavis Leno; they have no children, by mutual agreement.
Leno is dyslexic.
Saint Joan of Arc or The Maid of Orl ans (Jeanne d'Arc, c. 1412 30 May 1431) is a national heroine of France.
She is also a Catholic saint.
She was a peasant girl born in the east of France.
Joan said that she had visions from God.
In these visions, she said, God told her to take back her homeland from English rule late in the Hundred Years ' War.
Many quick victories made her famous.
Joan of Arc has remained an important figure in Western civilization.
Famous writers like Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky, Mark Twain, and Voltaire wrote about her.
She occurs in video games, television, movies, songs, and dances.
When Joan of Arc was put on trial, she said no to the customary courtroom rules about a witness 's oath.
She said she would not answer every question about her visions.
She complained that the normal witness oath would not be right because she had an oath that she had given to the king.
It is not known how much the record which reports this has been changed by dishonest court officials or her possible lies to protect state secrets.
Some historians simply say that her belief in her duty was more important than where the visions came from.
Most people say that she was healthy and that she was not crazy.
Recently, people have tried to explain her visions through things like epilepsy, migraine, tuberculosis, and schizophrenia.
None of these guesses have been greatly supported.
This is because, even though seeing visions can be through different diseases, other facts of Joan 's life do not agree with these ideas.
Two experts who studied a teberculoma hypothesis in the medical journal Neuropsychobiology said: "It is difficult to draw final conclusions, but it would seem unlikely that widespread tuberculosis, a serious disease, was present in this ` patient ' whose life-style and activities would surely have been impossible had such a serious disease been present."
Ralph Hoffman, professor of psychology at Yale University, points out that visions, like "hearing voices" are not always signs of mental illness.
He says that her religious inspiration was possibly a reason.
However, he does not say any other reasons.
Actually, the court of Charles VII was concerned about her mental health.
The Church said Joan should be killed for wearing men 's clothes even after being warned not to.
Joan agreed to wear women 's clothes.
She wore male clothes again.
This might have been to protect herself from being attacked.
It could also have been, as Jean Massieu said, because her dress had been stolen and she was left with nothing else to wear.
People say she was burned on a stake on 30 May 1431.
After she died, the English showed people her burnt body so no one could say she had escaped alive.
Then they burned the body two times again to turn it into ashes.
They put what was left of her in the Seine.
The executioner, Geoffroy Therage, later said that he"... greatly feared to be damned."
Jamiroquai are a British funk and acid jazz band.
It was created by Jason Kay.
The name of the band is a compound word created from "Jam session" and the name of the Native American tribe, the "Iroquois".
The band 's first single, "When You Gonna Learn?"
, was released in 1992.
Because of the success of this single, Jamiroquai made a contract with Sony BMG.
They release their first album Emergency on Planet Earth in 1993.
The next year, their second album The Return of the Space Cowboy was released.
This album become popular.
In 1996, a song "Virtual Insanity" on the third album Travelling Without Moving was very popular.
The music video of this song was so innovative that it caused a big sensation.
With this song, Jamiroquai was nominated for 10 MTV video awards.
It won four awards.
This album made the band famous all across the world.
The members of Jamiroquai have changed for many times, except Jason Kay.
For the present, the members of the band are:
John Coolidge Adams is an American composer.
He was born in 1947.
His music often uses minimalism with large orchestras and lots of different sounds.
He was named after John Adams, the 2nd President.
He studied music at Harvard University.
After he had graduated he packed all his belongings into his Volkswagen and drove all the way across the United States to California where he got a job as a forklift operator.
Soon he became part of the musical scene of San Francisco.
He listened to the music of minimalist composers like John Cage, Terry Riley and Morton Feldman.
By the mid-1980s he was earning a living as composer and conductor.
The piece that made him famous was called Harmonium.
At times the music is made to sound like a harmonium instrument, but the title also refers to "harmony", showing that he is writing tonal music unlike some modern composers at the time whose music was getting harder and harder to understand because it was not in any key.
Adams wrote several short pieces such as Short Ride in a Fast Machine and The Chairman Dances.
This last piece is music from his opera Nixon in China which was widely performed but made some people angry because the Chinese leaders Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-tung are shown as human beings who deserve a certain amount of sympathy.
Adam 's Violin Concerto has been performed over 100 times by many of the world 's famous violinists.
Adam 's song "The Chairman Dances" appered in the game Civilization IV.
Jon Voight (born December 29, 1938) is an American actor.
His mother was of German ancestry; his father was of Slovak ancestry.
Voight is the middle of three brothers: volcanologist Barry Voight was born in 1937; musician Chip Taylor was born in 1940.
Voight 's son James Haven and daughter Angelina Jolie are actors.
James Ephraim Lovelock CH CBE FRS (born 26 July 1919) is an independent scientist who lives in Devon.
He became an environmentalist and futurologist.
He is best known for proposing the Gaia theory.
This suggests the biosphere is a self-regulating system which keeps our planet healthy by controlling the environment.
After the development of an instrument in the late 1960s, Lovelock was the first to detect the widespread presence of CFCs in the atmosphere.
He found a concentration of 60 parts per trillion of CFC-11 over Ireland.
He went on to measure the concentration of CFC-11 from the northern hemisphere to the Antarctic aboard the research ship RRS Shackleton.
Lovelock developed his Gaia ideas after working for NASA on detecting life on Mars.
The Gaia hypothesis proposes that living and non-living parts of the Earth form a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism.
Named after the Greek goddess Gaia at the suggestion of novelist William Golding, the idea is that the biosphere has a regulatory effect on the Earth 's environment which acts to sustain life.
While the idea was readily accepted by many in the environmentalist community, it has not been widely accepted by other scientists.
Among its more famous critics are the evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins, Ford Doolittle, and Stephen Jay Gould.
Lovelock has responded to these criticisms with models such as Daisyworld, which illustrate how individual-level effects can translate to planetary homeostasis, under the right circumstances.
In Lovelock 's 2006 book, The Revenge of Gaia, he argues that the destruction of rainforests weakens Gaia 's capacity to control greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
If so, the planet 's negative feedbacks would weaken, and global warming would continue to increase.
The warming of the oceans is extending the oceanic thermocline layer of tropical oceans over the Arctic and Antarctic waters.
This would prevent the rise of oceanic nutrients into the surface waters and eliminate the algal blooms of phytoplankton.
As phytoplankton and forests are the main ways in which Gaia draws down carbon dioxide, taking it out of the atmosphere, the elimination of this environmental buffering will see, according to Lovelock, most of the earth becoming uninhabitable for humans and other life-forms by the middle of this century, with a massive extension of tropical deserts.
This rather extreme view is held by only a few other scientists.
In his most recent book, "The Vanishing Face of Gaia", he suggests that we may already be beyond the tipping point of terrestrial climate into a permanently hot state.
Given these conditions, Lovelock expects human civilization will be hard pressed to survive.
He expects the change to be similar to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum when atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 450 ppm.
At that point the Arctic Ocean was 23 C and had crocodiles in it, with the rest of the world mostly scrub and desert.
In September 2007, Lovelock and Chris Rapley proposed the construction of ocean pumps to pump water up from below the thermocline to "fertilize algae in the surface waters and encourage them to bloom".
The basic idea was to accelerate the transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean by increasing photosynthesis and increasing the export of organic carbon (as "marine snow") to the deep ocean.
A scheme similar to that proposed by Lovelock and Rapley is being independently developed by a commercial company.
Lovelock subsequently said that his proposal was intended to stimulate interest, and research would be the next step.
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (born Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim Ribbentrop, 30 April 1893 16 October 1946) was Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945.
He was executed by hanging for war crimes after the Nuremberg trials.
Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American actress and producer.
She is best known for her roles in the movies Steel Magnolias (1989), Pretty Woman (1990), Runaway Bride (1998) and Erin Brockovich (2000).
Roberts regularly plays characters of attractive powerful women.
She has been among People Magazine 's 50 Most Beautiful People in the world eight times.
It is commonly mistaken that Julia 's birth name is "Julie".
Roberts has said in interviews that "Julie" was a nickname given to her by classmates in elementary school, and she never took well to it.
She reverted to her original name "Julia Roberts" when she discovered that a "Julie Roberts" was already registered with the Screen Actors Guild.
Roberts originally wanted to be a veterinarian (an animal doctor), but later studied journalism.
When her brother, Eric Roberts, achieved success in Hollywood, Julia decided to try acting.
Her first breakthrough came when she played in two youth-oriented movies called Mystic Pizza and Satisfaction, both filmed in 1987.
Roberts ' sister Lisa Roberts Gillan and niece Emma Roberts are actresses.
Roberts was born in Smyrna, Georgia, to Betty Lou (n e Bredemus) and Walter Grady Roberts She is of English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, German, and Swedish ancestry.
Her father was a Baptist and her mother a Roman Catholic, and she was raised a Catholic.
Her older brother, Eric Roberts, from whom she was estranged until 2004; sister Lisa Roberts Gillan; and niece Emma Roberts, are also actors.
Roberts ' first marriage was to musician Lyle Lovett; they divorced.
She and her husband Danny Moder have three children.
She gave birth to twins, Hazel Patricia and Phinnaeus Walter, in 2004.
In 2007, she gave birth to a son, Henry Daniel.
Roberts is a convert to Hinduism.
Jack Kirby (August 28, 1917 February 6, 1994) was a famous comic book artist.
He worked with Stan Lee to create superhero characters The Fantastic Four, X-Men, and The Hulk.
Kirby worked with Joe Simon to create Captain America.
((Image: Johny Weissmuller-publicity.
JPG thumb (width in number of pixels) px right Johnny Weissmuller in c. 1940s)) Johnny Weissmuller (June 2, 1904 January 20, 1984) was a German-American swimmer and actor.
He was born in Timisoara, Austria-Hungary to German parents.
He was one of the world 's best swimmers in the 1920s.
He won five gold medals in swimming competitions at the Olympics in 1924 and 1928, and a bronze medal in water polo at the 1924 Olympics.
He later played Tarzan in a series of movies in the 1930s and became a movie star.
This made him a character actor.
He then had trouble getting parts in other movies because of this.
On January 20, 1984, Weissmuller died of pulmonary edema.
He was 79.
He was buried in Acapulco, Mexico, where he was living when he died.
At his funeral, a sound recording of the Tarzan yell he had made famous in the movies was played three times, at his request.
Sir John Arthur "Jack" Brabham, AO, OBE (2 April 1926 19 May 2014) was an Australian racing driver who was Formula One champion in 1959, 1960 and 1966.
He won the Australian Grand Prix in 1955, 1963 and 1964.
He was a founder of the Brabham racing team and race car builder that carried his name.
In 2000 the Australian Government gave him the Australian Sports Medal, and in 2001 he was given the Australian Centenary Medal for services to motor sport.
Brabham died at his home on the Gold Coast, Queensland on 19 May 2014 from liver failure, aged 88.
Josip Broz, nicknamed Tito, (May 25, 1892 May 4, 1980) was the leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, from 1945 until his death.
From 1945 to 1953 he was Prime Minister, and from 1953 to 1980 he was the President.
His funeral on May 4, 1980, was the largest state funeral in Yugoslavia.
Tito was a controversial person, with people having strong and different views about his leadership.
Tito was born in Komrovec, Croatia, where his parents had a small farm.
He went to the village elementary school until 1905.
In 1907 he was machinist 's apprentice in Sisak.
In 1910 he joined the union of workers and social-democratic party of Croatia and Slavonia.
In 1913 he entered the Austro Hungarian Army and later was imprisoned for anti war propaganda.
During World War I he was wounded, captured, then imprisoned by Russians.
After being set free, he became active in the bolshevik movement.
After October Revolution, he joined Red Guards (Russia).
In 1920 Tito came back to new nation Yugoslavia and joined Communist party.
This was later renamed Yugoslav Communist League in 1952.
Tito was the leader of the Communist party from 1937 until his death.
In 1921 the Yugoslav communist party was banned.
Tito was imprisoned from 1928 until 1933 for being a communist.
In 1934 he went back to Soviet Union and he was involved as secret agent in NKVD.
In 1937 Broz came back to Yugoslavia and during World War II he, total supported by Anglo-Americans and Soviet armies, organized People 's Liberation Army against the Axis powers and in civil war against Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland, Serbian State Guards, Croatian Home Guard, Slovene Home Guard.
In 1945, Broz ordered the end of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and created the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with six republics: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia, and two autonomous provinces in Serbia: Vojvodina in the north, and Kosovo, next to Albania.
Tito with communist dictatorship, dramatically supported by spy ring OZNA and political police UDBA, ruled Yugoslav Republic from 1945 to 1980: he banned monarchy and all democrat parties.
He with other political personalities started Non-Aligned Movement.
When he died the political situation was controlled by other chiefs of communist party.
Later situation led to the break up of this Balkan country, and wars in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Slovenia during the 1990s.
On 7 January and again on 11 January 1980, Tito was admitted to the Medical Centre in Ljubljana, the capital city of the SR Slovenia, with circulation problems in his legs.
His left leg was amputated soon afterward due to arterial blockages and he died of gangrene at the Medical Centre Ljubljana on 4 May 1980 at 3:05 pm, three days short of his 88th birthday.
His funeral drew many world statesmen.
Accusations of culpability are related with crimes perpetrated during WW II and during repression by Broz Tito 's communist Yugoslav Republic command such as massacres of Foibe and Ko evski Rog butchery.
Mass graves are evidences of massacres; accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing by historians.
Accusations of culpability in the Bleiburg massacre, the repression of Croatia Catholic 's Church, and the crackdown on the Croatian Spring or MASPOK.
Accusation of Vojvodina massacre consists in retaliation against Germans and Hungarians citizen and supposed Chetnik Serbs but some historians consider these incidents also ethnic cleansing against Germans and Hungarians because during World War II, the German minority in occupied Yugoslavia enjoyed a status of superiority over the Yugoslav population.
The AVNOJ Presidium issued a decree that ordered the government confiscation of all property of Nazi Germany and its citizens in Yugoslavia, persons of German nationality (regardless of citizenship), and collaborators.
The decision acquired the force of law on February 6, 1945.
Other accusation of crimes committed against children.
Broz Tito 's repression involved many dictator 's old friends such as Milovan Dilas and Vladimir Dedijer who both were imprisoned but later wrote several books with gross accusations against him; criticismn heaped on Broz Tito 's lustful lifestyle: by 1974 he had 32 official residences, one of the ten richest men in the Balkans, a communist who lived like a king.
Broz Tito constructed huge personality cult around him.
Jeffrey ("Jeff") Lynne (born 30 December 1947, Birmingham, England) is a British musician (guitar, piano and bass guitar), songwriter and music producer.
His longtime band was the Electric Light Orchestra (also known as ELO), but he worked with many other artists, including Duane Eddy, members of the Travelling Wilburys (Lynne himself was one also), and The Beatles.
Lynne first became known as a member of a band called The Idle Race.
He taught himself about recording with a simple reel-to-reel tape recorder at home, using "sound on sound" to build up the sound of his own music.
He later joined The Move, which then re-formed as Electric Light Orchestra.
Lynne did not collaborate with ELO 's members, as much as he directed how each member should play and sound.
His work with ELO was often compared to music by The Beatles.
Even John Lennon, the Beatles 's founder, called ELO a "Son of Beatles" kind of band, before his death in 1980.
Lynne also performed music for two movie soundtracks, All This and World War II and Electric Dreams.
Electric Light Orchestra 's fame lessened during the 1980s.
Lynne began to produce other, sometimes older recording artists, some of whom had new hits after years without them.
A friend introduced Lynne to George Harrison, another former Beatle, who planned a comeback album in the late 1980s.
Their collaboration, Cloud Nine, reawakened interest in Harrison and his music.
After the success of Cloud Nine, Lynne and Harrison formed the Travelling Wilburys with Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison.
They became a popular group.
Early in the 1990s, the surviving Beatles completed a documentary series telling their own history.
George Martin, their original producer, could not play as big a role as he had, because he had lost some of his hearing.
Lynne was chosen to work with them.
Yoko Ono handed over demos of five unfinished John Lennon songs, and two were chosen for the rest of the band to overdub (add parts to).
Lynne used his studio knowhow to develop finished records from the raw demos, and the songs became hits, over twenty years since the Beatles issued a new recording.
Lynne moved to Los Angeles, California, and bought a house, which he turned into a large recording studio, with places to plug in equipment in nearly every room.
He formed a new lineup of ELO in the early 2000s, recording a new album and beginning a tour, but interest was short-lived, and many shows were canceled.
Lynne 's music with ELO is popular again, through its use in television commercials.
He continues to write and produce new music.
Judge Dredd is a comic book character that first appeared in 2000 AD comics in 1977.
The comics are set in a dystopian future where ` judges ' control everything.
A film based on Judge Dredd was made in 1995, starring Sylvester Stallone.
A 2012 film starred Karl Urban.
Joy Division were an English punk band.
It was made up of Ian Curtis (vocals), Peter Hook (bass guitar), Stephen Morris (drums) and Bernard Albrecht (AKA Sumner, guitar).
During the Anarchy in the UK tour, the Sex Pistols played in Manchester on June 4.
In the audience that night were three young men living around Manchester: school mates Peter Hook and Bernard Albrecht, and Ian Curtis.
A few days later, Hook and Albrecht decided to start up a band, with Hook on bass and Albrecht on guitar.
They got Terry Mason as a drummer, but still needed a singer.
They placed an ad in the Virgin record shop in Manchester.
Curtis answered it and became the singer of the band, called at the time the Stiff Kittens.
He would also write the lyrics.
They practiced a lot during a few months, and wrote their first songs.
In May of 1977, the band 's name was changed to Warsaw and Mason was replaced on drums by Tony Tabac.
Just a month later, Tabac left and Steve Brotherdale was hired as new drummer.
It was at the same time that Paul Morley of the NME and DJ Rob Gretton found out about the band and saw its potential.
Warsaw made a demo tape with five songs in the Pennine Sound Studios in July, but Brotherdale quit the group a few days later.
Finally, Stephen Morris joined the band.
In October, they played at the Electric Circus, which was due to close down, along with The Fall and The Buzzcocks.
In December, they recorded four songs, which were to appear later as "An Ideal For Living".
In January of 1978 the band changed its name to Joy Division to avoid any confusion with another group.
They practiced a lot and wrote new songs.
On April 14 1978, they played along with 16 bands in a contest.
Tony Wilson, who worked for Granada TV, and Rob Gretton liked their performance very much.
In 1979 Joy Division released their first album Unknown Pleasures which was well received by critics.
During 1979 and early 1980 their popularity increased.
Also in this period lead singer Ian Curtis suffered worsening bouts of illness caused by epilepsy.
The band returned to the studio in 1980 to record their second album Closer and a single "Love Will Tear Us Apart".
Before these recordings were released Curtis committed suicide.
The unreleased album and single were subsequently released to critical acclaim.
The remaining members of Joy Division reformed in 1980 as New Order and enjoyed considerable worldwide success during the 1980s and 1990s.
Many musicians and bands have acknowledged their appreciation of the work of Joy Division including U2 frontman Bono, Moby, Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Killers and the song Love Will Tear Us Apart has been covered by many artists from different musical backgrounds and genres.
Johnny Bench (born December 7, 1947) is a former baseball player who played for the Cincinnati Reds.
He mostly played catcher.
He hit 389 home runs.
He was the National League Most Valuable Player in both 1970 and 1972.
He was also the National League Rookie of the Year, or best first year player, in 1968.
He was chosen for the All Star Game 14 times.
He won the baseball championship, the World Series, with Reds in both 1975 and 1976, and was voted the Most Valuable Player of the World Series in 1976.
He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989.
Jell-O is a brand name belonging to the United States.
It is known for a number of gelatin desserts, such as fruit gels, puddings, and unbaked cream pies.
including fruit gels, puddings and no-bake cream pies.
Jell-O is sold as all prepared (ready to eat) or in powder form, and it is has many different colors and flavors.
The powder has powdered gelatin, sugar, and artificial sweeteners.
It is melted into hot water, and then chilled and eaten.
Sometimes other ingredients are added to make them taste better.
Jell-O must be put in a refrigerator until it is served, and usually eaten with a spoon.
There are also pudding and pie under the Jell-O brand.
To make pudding, they are cooked on the stove with milk, then eaten.
Though the word Jell-O is a name brand, it is commonly used in the United States as a generic name for all gelatin products.
Javier Saviola (born 11 December 1981) is an Argentine football player.
He plays for Benfica.
The Junkers Ju 87 or Ju 87 was a German light bomber of World War II.
It was used like a dive bomber.
Its crew was a pilot with a navigator behind him.
He also handled the mobile machine gun.
The Ju 87 could drop 500 kg of bombs.
Some Ju-87 were modified for attack against tanks.
It was built at more than 6 500 ex.
It 's universally known as Stuka, an abbreviation of ', German for dive bomber.
The plane was designed by Hermann Pohlmann.
It has first flight 17 September 1935.
The first time it was used in battle was 1936 during the Spanish Civil War.
Junkers Ju 87 attacked Guernica.
In World War II, Ju-87 were used for bombing against Poland, and after against Belgium, Netherlands, France, and Greece.
By the Battle of Britain Junkers Ju87 were used to attack Dover, Folkestone and other harbors of the English Channel.
This aircraft was very famous for its siren whose whistling panicked people.
Many Ju-87 were used in the Soviet Union against Soviet troops.
In the Battle of Stalingrad, they were used to bomb the town.
Keanu Charles Reeves (born September 2, 1964) is a Canadian actor.
He is known for his roles in movies like the Bill and Ted series, The Matrix series, and Speed, etc..
At age 9, he started his acting career by appearing onstage, and at age 14, he appeared in Canadian television series and commercials.
He also appeared in short movies and stage work in early 1980s.
Keanu acted his first significant role in River 's Edge (1987), and the next year (1988), he appeared in some movies such as Dangerous Liaisons and Permanent Record.
In 1989, he appeared in the successful comedy Bill & Ted 's Excellent Adventure, which was one of the Bill and Ted series.
In 2008 he played the alien in The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon.
He is the son of Patricia Bond (n e Taylor), an English-born costume designer\/performer, and Samuel Nowlin Reeves, Jr..
His father, who is a Hawaiian-born American, has English, Native Hawaiian, Chinese, Irish, and Portuguese ancestry.
Reeves has said: "My grandmother is Chinese and Hawaiian, so I was around Chinese art, furniture and cuisine when I was growing up".
He is named after his uncle, and his first name is a Hawaiian word that means ` cool breeze over the mountains. '
King Crimson is a progressive rock band.
They formed in England in 1969.
Their music is usually called progressive rock, but they also have jazz, Gamelan Music, Classical music, heavy metal and experimental music in their sound.
They are not very popular, but they have a loyal group of fans.
Their music has influenced a lot of bands and styles of music.
King Crimson is most well known for their first album, In the Court of the Crimson King, which helped create Progressive Rock.
Only one person has been in the band since they started, guitarist Robert Fripp.
Right now, the people in the band are Robert Fripp on guitar, Adrian Belew on guitar, Tony Levin on Bass, and Pat Mastelotto on drums.
In 1967, drummer Michael Giles and his brother, Peter, a bass guitar player, started a band with Robert Fripp.
They recorded one album called The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp.
This album did not do very well, and a lot of critics wrote bad reviews of it.
After this, Ian Mcdonald joined playing keyboards, reeds, and woodwind instruments.
Ian McDonald 's friend, Peter Sinfield, joined to write lyrics, and Greg Lake replaced Peter Giles on bass guitar.
Then they bought a mellotron, which helped them sound more like classical music.
They changed their name to King Crimson, and did their first show in Hyde Park, London in 1969.
Their first CD, In the Court of the Crimson King, was a huge success.
Their original style impressed fans and critics.
Micheal Giles and Ian Mcdonald left the band to do solo work.
The three of them still in the band, Robert fripp, Peter sinfield, and Greg Lake, released the single Catfood\/Groon.
On the next album, woodwind player Mel Collins, singer Gordon Haskell, and Peter Giles all helped record a few songs with the band.
King Crimson released their second album, In the Wake of Poseidon, in 1970.
It was not very popular because it sounded too much like the first album.
The kilogram or kilogramme is a metric unit of mass..
The official kilogram is the mass of one piece of platinum-iridium metal kept in Paris.
The piece of metal is known as Prototype Kilogram (IPK).
It is now the only metric unit which is defined as an object.
There are attempts to define the kilogram in other ways.
One example specifies a number of atoms of a certain substance (at a certain temperature).
One kilogram is a little more than 2.2 pounds.
One tonne is one thousand kilograms.
One litre of water weighs almost exactly one kilogram, at 3.98 centigrade, at sea level.
This was the basis of the definition of the gram in 1795.
In 1879, the piece of metal was made.
It was officially chosen to be the kilogram in 1889.
It was made of 90 % platinum and 10 % iridium.
Those metals were chosen because they do not rust or corrode like most metals.
It is stored in a vault at the BIPM in S vres, France.
From 1795 to 1799, the unit of mass was not called "kilogram" but was called "grave".
The original kilogram is kept inside bell jars.
Over time, dust can collect on it.
Before it is measured, it is cleaned to get the original size.
The kilogram is a unit of mass..
In normal language, measuring mass defines how heavy is something.
This is not scientifically correct.
Mass is an inertial property.
It measures the tendency of an object to stay at a given speed when no force acts on it.
Sir Isaac Newton s laws of motion contain an important formula: F = ma.
F is force.
m is mass. a is acceleration.
An object with a mass (m) of one kilogram will accelerate (a) at one meter per second per second when acted upon by a force (F) of one newton.
This about one-tenth the acceleration due to earth s gravity.
The weight of matter depends on the strength of gravity.
The mass of matter does not.
The mass of an object is the same everywhere.
Objects are "weightless" for astronauts in microgravity.
However, the objects still have their mass and inertia.
Astronaut must use ten times as much force to accelerate a ten-kilogram object at the same rate as a one-kilogram object.
A common swing, as shown in the picture, can show the relationship of force, mass and acceleration.
Someone could push an adult on the swing.
The adult would accelerate slowly.
They would only swing a short distance forward before the swing would change direction.
If a child is sitting on the swing, then the child would swing forward faster and further.
There are various copies of the original Kilogram.
Some of these copies have gained or lost some mass..
This is a problem for scientists and engineers who need to make exact measurements.
Knitting creates flexible fabric by looping thread or yarn together using two or more knitting needles or a knitting machine.
Flat knitting, which is usually done on two straight needles, produces a length of cloth and is used to create things like blankets, scarves, and the backs and fronts of sweaters.
Circular knitting, which is done on circular or double-pointed needles, produces a seamless tube and is used to create things like hats, socks, mittens, and sleeves.
Patterns called cables are typically used on sweaters, particularly on Aran sweaters from Ireland.
Different kinds of stitches create different patterns in knitting.
For example, the stretchy ends of knitted sleeves are called ribbing.
Yarn for knitting can be made from any number of natural or synthetic (man made) fibers such as wool, cotton, silk, or acrylic.
Some yarns are made from a blend of several kinds of fibers.
Yarns come in many thicknesses or weights from fine to thick: lace, fingering, sock, sport, double-knit (or DK), worsted, aran, bulky, and super-bulky.
Thinner yarns are generally used with smaller knitting needles, and thicker yarns are used with larger knitting needles.
Knitting needles come in various shapes: straight, double-pointed, cable, and circular.
They can be made from bamboo, aluminum, steel, or plastic.
Sir Karl Popper CH FRS FBA (28 July 1902 17 September 1994) was an Austrian and British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics.
He is considered one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and also wrote on social and political philosophy, especially the evils of totalitarian ideas and politics.
Popper is known for the idea of empirical falsification.
Karl Popper was born in Vienna (then in Austria-Hungary) in 1902 to middle-class parents of Jewish origins, both of whom had converted to Christianity.
Popper received a Lutheran upbringing and was educated at the University of Vienna.
His father had 12,000 14,000 volumes in his personal library.
In 1919, he became attracted to Marxism.
He joined the Association of Socialist School Students and also became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria, which was at that time a party that fully adopted the Marxist ideology.
He soon became disillusioned, stopped believing in Marxism, and was a supporter of social liberalism for the rest of his life.
Popper, brought up in Vienna, was well aware of the Vienna Circle.
That school of logical positivism, led by Moritz Schlick, defined knowledge (especially scientific knowledge) as being propositions which could be verified.
Popper thought this was quite wrong.
In his opinion, science grew indirectly, by wrong ideas being falsified.
This he worked up in great detail in a series of books, of which The logic of scientific discovery is the most famous.
All philosophy of science since then has had to deal with this issue, the criterion.
By ` criterion ' is meant: what is it that makes a theory truly scientific, as opposed to simply common sense or opinion?
Popper 's work on political philosophy is also of great importance.
Marx claimed knowledge of an historical process, where societies evolved from one state to another, until they reached a final state.
This type of thought is known as ` historicism '.
Popper argued that the growth of human knowledge partly causes the evolution of human history.
Since "no society can predict its own future states of knowledge", it follows that no science can predict human history.
Popper 's great works in defense of the liberal society were The open society and its enemies and The poverty of historicism.
His allies in this struggle were Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman.
Although Popper was an advocate of toleration, he thought intolerance should not be tolerated.
If tolerance allowed intolerance to succeed completely, tolerance itself would be threatened.
In The open society and its enemies: The spell of Plato, he argued that:
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.
If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them".
Kamikaze (Japanese:; literally: "god-wind"; usual translation: "divine wind") is a word of Japanese origin.
It comes from the name the Japanese gave to a typhoon that destroyed the Mongol ships in the 13th century and saved the country from invasion.
In Western culture, the word kamikaze is used to mean the suicide pilots of the Empire of Japan, and their attacks on the ships of the Allied Powers in the final years of World War II, during which they flew their planes into enemy ships.
It has also come to mean other kinds of suicide attack.
Most people in Western culture believe the word kamikaze was the name used by the Japanese military for pilots, but that is not true.
Their correct name was tokubetsu k geki tai (-RRB-, which literally means "special attack unit."
This is usually abbreviated tokk tai (-RRB- in a shortened form.
The suicide attacks made by Navy pilots were called shinp tokubetsu k geki tai (, "divine wind special attack units").
The American translators used a different style of pronunciation of the Japanese language by mistake, and read the word shinp ("divine wind") as kamikaze, as those Japanese characters can be read both ways.
The name became well known so, after the war, the Japanese also started using it.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese Navy and Air force were defeated in several important battles, like Midway and the Philippine Sea.
They lost many ships (including nearly all the Japanese aircraft carriers), hundreds of fighter aircraft, and many of their best pilots.
The Japanese industry had little resources and was very poor compared to the American industry.
For this reason, the United States replaced their lost ships and planes with better ones very quickly; but Japan could only make few, and of poor quality.
During 1943-44, the Allied forces were moving towards Japan.
At the Battle of the Philippine Sea, on June 19-20, 1944, the Japanese forces were pushed back to the Philippines.
On July 15, Saipan (in the Northern Mariana Islands) was captured by Allied forces.
The capture of Saipan made it possible for the US Air force to attack Japan itself, using B-29 Superfortress bombers.
After the fall of Saipan, the Japanese commanders knew that the Allies would try to capture the Philippines next.
The Philippines were very important because they were located between the oil fields of Southeast Asia and Japan.
If Japan lost control over the Philippines, they would have little fuel left for their ships.
On October 17, the Allies started the attack on the Philippines in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi was in charge of the Japanese Air Force in Manila.
He understood that it was impossible to win the battle with so few aircraft and trained pilots.
For this reason, he decided to form a suicide attack force, the Special Attack Unit.
A group of 24 student pilots volunteered for the mission.
The Special Attack force was organized into 4 groups, Unit Shikishima, Unit Yamato, Unit Asahi, and Unit Yamazakura.
These names were taken from a patriotic poem (waka or tanka), written by the Japanese classical poet, Motoori Norinaga: "Shikishima no Yamato-gokoro wo hito towaba, asahi ni niou yamazakura bana" (-RRB-.
The poem reads:
The Japanese were defeated at the battle of Leyte Gulf, but the Special Attack force had great success.
The first kamikaze attack took place on October 21, 1944, against the flagship of the Royal Australian Navy, HMAS Australia.
30 sailors died in the attack, including its Captain Emile Dechaineux, and many more were wounded.
By October 26, 47 more Allied ships had been attacked.
Most of them were badly damaged or sunk, like the United States aircraft carrier USS St. Lo.
This early success convinced the Japanese commanders to continue the kamikaze attacks.
Many more pilots were recruited to act as kamikaze.
Over the next few months, more than 2,000 planes made such attacks.
When the Japanese stock of airplanes began to run low, new models of low quality were built for these missions.
Some of them, like the Nakajima Ki-115 Tsurugi, were made mostly of wood and used stocks of older engines.
The plane 's landing gear was usually dropped by the pilot after takeoff so it could be used by other aircraft, because he would not be landing again.
Similar suicide attack programs were planned, including rocket bombs with pilots (called Ohka) and submarine torpedoes (Kaiten).
The high point of kamikaze attacks came from April 6 to May 25, 1945 during the Battle of Okinawa, in Operation Kikusui ("floating chrysanthemums").
In that time, seven important waves of attacks took place, with more than 1,500 kamikaze planes.
Because their training had been too short and their airplanes were poorly made, kamikaze pilots were easy targets for the experienced Allied pilots, who also had much better planes.
But still, the kamikaze who escaped the anti-aircraft fire and the enemy fighter airplanes did great damage to the Allied fleet.
The Allies won the battle, but they lost many ships and men because of kamikaze attacks.
By the end of the battle, at least 21 American ships had been sunk by kamikazes.
Some ships from other Allied navies were also sunk, and dozens more were damaged.
Hundreds of extra kamikaze planes were ready to defend Japan from invasion.
However, with Japan 's surrender on August 15 after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the declaration of war by the Soviet Union, they were never used again.
The most important effect of the attacks was creating fear among the Allied troops.
When the American ships went to the last battles, the crews were very afraid of kamikaze pilots.
By the end of World War II, the Japanese Navy had sacrificed 2,525 kamikaze pilots, and the Air force had lost 1,387.
The Japanese government said, the missions sank 81 ships and damaged 195.
They also claimed that the kamikaze attacks were the cause of 80 % of Allied deaths in the last years of the War.
The American sources claim that kamikaze sunk less ships than the Japanese say.
But still, they agree that they did very important damage.
According to a U.S. Air Force source, the kamikaze attackers sunk 34 Navy ships, damaged 368 others, killed 4,900 sailors, and wounded over 4,800.
In a 2010 book, the historian Robin Rielly said that about 60 U.S. ships were sunk by kamikazes, and over 400 were damaged by them.
Many kamikaze pilots offered themselves as volunteers for the mission.
They were usually very young, between 18 and 24 years old.
Their belief was that dying when striking the enemies of Japan and the Emperor down was a very honorable death.
This principle was traditional since the days of the samurai, and gave great importance to the sense of duty and obedience.
This idea was called Giri ("Obligation"), and was part of the code of conduct of the Japanese warriors since the Middle Ages, the Bushido.
Many young men sacrificed themselves by their free will because these beliefs and their love for the home land were the most important things for them.
The tokk tai pilot 's manual told pilots to never close their eyes.
This was because if a pilot closed his eyes he would miss his target.
In the final moments before the crash, the pilot was to shout "Hissatsu!"
("Critical Strike!")
as loud as he could.
However, many others did so because of social pressure.
Not offering oneself as a volunteer was a sign of cowardice and dishonor.
Several professional pilots who were ordered to do suicide attacks did it because of military obedience, not because of honor.
One of the first kamikaze pilots, Lieutenant Yukio Seki, wrote after nearly being forced to volunteer: Japan 's future is pale if it is forced to kill one of its best pilots.
I am not going on this mission for the Emperor or for the Empire... I am going because I was ordered to.
A special ceremony before going to combat usually took place.
Pilots drank sake and ate a ball of rice.
They were given medals, and a katana sword.
They put on a headband with the rising sun, and a sennibari, a "belt of a thousand stitches" made by a thousand women, who made one stitch each.
Many times, they took prayers written by their families with them.
According to legend, young pilots on kamikaze missions many times flew southwest from Japan over the 922 metre (~ 3000 ft) Mount Kaimon.
Suicide mission pilots looked over their shoulders to see this, and said farewell to their country.
Another legend says that kamikaze pilots dropped flowers from the air, as they departed on their final missions.
Some places, like the hills near Kikajima airport, are said to have beds of cornflower that bloom in early May from those days.
Some important military men who survived the war criticized the kamikaze plan years after.
Saburo Sakai, a war time ace pilot said: A kamikaze is a surprise attack, according to our ancient war tactics.
Surprise attacks will be successful the first time, maybe two or three times.
But what fool would continue the same attacks for ten months?
Emperor Hirohito must have realized it.
He should have said "Stop."
KDE (short for K Desktop Environment) is a desktop environment for operating systems based on Linux or UNIX.
This replaces the console, which is simply a black screen with text on it.
It is known for how good it can look, and it is a very popular piece of software for users of Linux and UNIX.
KDE runs on top of the X Window System, which runs on top of any UNIX-like operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X, Since KDE 4.0, KDE also runs on Microsoft Windows.
Besides the desktop environment the KDE project also includes a large amount of software created using the same technologies as the KDE desktop.
The following table lists when each version of KDE was released.
There are several major applications for KDE.
These include:
Dr. Konrad Hermann Josef Adenauer (born 5 January 1876 in Cologne; died 19 April 1967 in Rh ndorf (part of Bad Honnef)).
From 1949 to 1963 he was the first Bundeskanzler (chancellor) of the Federal Republic of Germany and from 1951 to 1955 was foreign secretary the same time.
Adenauer was the third of five children of a court secretary in Cologne.
His family was Catholic.
Konrad Adenauer started his political career in 1906 in the city assembly of Cologne.
From 1917 to 1933 and again in 1945 he was mayor of Cologne.
Adenauer was member of the Catholic Zentrum Party.
When the Nazi Party took power he lost his job.
At first he worked with the Nazis, but after the conspiracy to kill Hitler failed in 1944 he hid for his own safety.
After the war he became mayor of Cologne again, but lost the job after a few months.
In the Parlamentarischer Rat of West Germany, he was one of the top politicians and the President.
He founded the CDU at the same time.
He was important in making Bonn the West German capital instead of Frankfurt am Main.
In 1949 he was elected as the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.
He made sure West Germany joined the side of the western capitalist countries in the Cold War.
He also helped West Germany join NATO.
He was reelected three times.
In 1964 he stopped being chancellor.
He was a member of the Bundestag until his death at 91 years old.
Kurtis Blow (born August 9, 1959) is an American rapper.
He sang many major songs, like "Christmas Rapping" and "The Breaks".
He was born in The Bronx, New York City.
Kazakhstan is a country in the middle of Eurasia.
Its official name is the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan is the ninth biggest country in the world, and it is also the biggest landlocked country in the world.
Before the end of the Soviet Union, it was called "Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic".
The president of the country since 1991 is called Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Astana is the capital city of Kazakhstan.
Almaty was the capital until 1998, when it moved to Astana.
Russia leases (rents) the land for the Baykonur Cosmodrome (site of Russian spacecraft launches) from Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan has no ocean shoreline, but borders the Caspian Sea, which boats use to get to neighboring countries.
The Caspian Sea is an Endorheic basin without connections to the ocean.
Russia has the longest border with Kazakhstan.
Other countries next to Kazakhstan are China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.
Kazakhstan is divided into 14 provinces.
The provinces are divided into districts.
Almaty and Astana cities have the status of State importance and are not in any province.
Baikonur city has a special status because it is currently being leased to Russia with Baikonur cosmodrome until 2050.
Each province is headed by an Akim (provincial governor) appointed by the president.
Municipal Akims are appointed by province Akims.
The Government of Kazakhstan moved its capital from Almaty to Astana on December 10, 1997.
The population of Kazakhstan is 17,165,000.
It takes the 62th place in the List of countries by population.
Average density is almost 6 people\/km2 (List of countries by population density).
Kingman Reef is a coral reef in the North Pacific Ocean, owned by the United States.
It is the farthest north of the Northern Line Islands.
It is only sometimes above water.
Palmyra Atoll is the other U.S. territory in the Northern Line Islands.
Kiribati (pronounced "KiriBASS") is a country in the Pacific Ocean.
It has 33 atolls, groups of tiny islands.
The country is near the equator.
Its capital is South Tarawa, on the Tarawa atoll.
Kiribati used to be called the Gilbert Islands.
In 1892, the Gilbert Islands became a British protectorate with the Ellice Islands (nowadays known as Tuvalu), together called Gilbert and Ellice Islands.
Kiribati became an independent republic in 1979.
Kiribati is one of the poorest nations in the Pacific Ocean.
It has few natural resources.
Tourism is an important industry.
Kiribati signed a "Treaty of Friendship and Territorial Sovereignty" (also called the "Treaty of Tarawa") with the United States in 1979.
The USA gave up its claims to the islands of Canton, Enderbury, Hull, Birnie, Gardner, Phoenix, Sydney, McKean, Christmas, Caroline, Starbuck, Malden, Flint, and Vostok in that treaty.
The official languages of Kiribati are English and Gilbertese.
Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 - c. April 5, 1994) was an American musician.
He was the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana, which also included bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl.
Cobain was born in the city of Aberdeen, Washington.
His parents divorced when he was seven years old.
During his sophomore year in high school, Cobain began living with his mother in Aberdeen.
In late 1986 Cobain moved into an apartment.
At this time he often traveled to Olympia to go to rock concerts.
Cobain met Love in 1990.
Love began pursuing Cobain in 1991.
He married her in 1992 in Hawaii after she found out that she was pregnant with his child, Frances Bean Cobain.
In 2002, some of Cobain 's private journal entries were published in a book called Journals.
Cobain was very influential in creating what came to be known as grunge music.
Grunge musicians pushed back against music they saw commercial and shallow.
Grunge was a reaction against 1980s stadium rock and metal bands that were more concerned with appearance than sound.
Kurt Cobain started Nirvana with his friend Krist Novecselic in 1987.
They often would practice on the second floor of Novescelic 's Mom 's hair salon.
Nirvana 's first album, Bleach, was released in 1989.
they went through five different drummers and finally they decided to hire Dave Grohl from the band Scream in 1990.
After the 1991 release of their hit album Nevermind, Nirvana became one of the most popular bands of that time.
Nirvana 's best known song is "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which was often referred to by the media as an anthem for Generation X and grunge itself.
Often Cobain expressed frustration with his fame, because he thought they where getting the wrong side of him.
They went on to release one more album, In Utero.
it was n't as famous as Nevermind, but it was still very successful.
Cobain said that this album was the one he was looking for, the sound he had in his head for their last two albums.
he decided that he wanted to have a more mellow sound.
The band broke up after Cobain committed suicide in 1994.
On February 20, 2014, Aberdeen had its first Kurt Cobain Day.
Cobain was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and bipolar disorder.
He started using drugs when he was a teenager.
He often used heroin.
Cobain also had chronic bronchitis.
He used drugs to self-treat his undiagnosed stomach condition.
Later in his career, he was admitted to special drug treatment hospitals several times.
The last time, he escaped to his home.
Cobain committed suicide by shooting himself with a gun and taking an overdose of heroin in 1994.
He is a member of the '27 club ' of popular musicians who have died at the age of 27, often from drug abuse.
The Swedish krona is the currency of Sweden.
The country of Sweden has used this money since 1873.
In the English language, the Swedish krona means the Swedish Crown.
The Swedish crowns consist of:
This is all the Swedish money there is.
On December 18 2008, the Swedish Riksbank asked to phase out the 50 re, the final re coin, by 2010.
Note, however that the re would remain as a subdivision unit for electronic payments
The Riksbank decided in 17 February 2010, to recommend the parliament to allow it to issue a 2-krona coin and a 200-krona note, the latter a new denomination for the country.
However it did not recommend replacing the 20-krona note with a coin.
Kattegat is a sea in the northern part of Europe between the Danish peninsula Jutland, the Danish island Zealand, and the western coast of Sweden.
To the north-west is Skagerrak.
Kattegat is connected to the Baltic Sea through the Danish Straits and Belts.
The sea is shallow, and life conditions are threatened by loss of oxygen in the water.
The oxygen loss is caused by pollution.
The pollution originates from farming.
A century ago, the sea was very rich in cod, herring, and salmon, which were important sources of food in the countries around the sea.
Kansas is a state in the Midwestern United States of America.
Kansas has a total population of 2.9 million, with an area of 82,000 s, making Kansas the 34th largest state by population and the 15th largest state by area.
The name of the state comes from the Kansa Native Americans, whose name comes from a Siouan-language phrase meaning "people of the south wind".
The land that would become Kansas was bought in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
Kansas became the 34th state to be admitted to the United States on January 29, 1861.
Kansas ' capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita.
Kansas is in a region known as America 's Breadbasket.
Like other states in this area, Kansas is a large producer of wheat and other grains, producing one-fifth of all wheat grown in the United States.
In addition to wheat, Kansas produces large amounts of grain sorghum, summer potatoes, and sunflowers, with other industries in Kansas including aviation and communications.
The terrain of Kansas consists of mountain ranges, prairies, and forests.
All of Kansas is in the Great Plains.
In 1539, Marcos de Niza, a friar, reported rumors of C bola, a city of gold, to Spanish colonial officials in Mexico City.
Niza said the city was in modern-day New Mexico.
In response to the rumors, two years later, Francisco V zquez de Coronado, with an army of 300 Spaniards and 800 Mexicans, marched northward from Culiac n in hopes of finding the city.
When Coronado did not find the city in New Mexico, he continued northeast into the Mississippi Valley, crossing the present area of Kansas diagonally.
This made Conrado and his army the first Europeans to see the Great Plains, including Kansas.
Later, Juan de O ate also traveled to Kansas in 1601.
In 1682, Marquette, Joliet, Hennepin and other French leaders took formal control of the Mississippi Valley, including the land that would become Kansas.
This land, known as the Louisiana territory, was used to organize trade with Native Americans.
In 1762, France ceded the Louisiana territory to Spain.
However, in 1801, Spain receded the territory back to France in the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso.
On April 30, 1803, Napoleon sold the Louisiana territory to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase.
In the early 1800s, Kansas was used to hold Native Americans that were removed from their native lands.
On May 30, 1854, the Congress signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act stated that Kansas and Nebraska were both territories of the United States.
It also stated that Kansans would vote on the legality of slavery.
Upon hearing this, about 1,200 armed New Englanders came to Kansas to vote against slavery.
However, thousands of southerners, mostly from Missouri, came to vote for slavery.
The final vote was to make slavery legal, and Kansas adopted most of Missouri 's slave laws.
There was fighting between Southerners and Northerners in Kansas.
In one fight, John Brown and his men killed five people in the Pottawatomie Massacre.
Later, Southerners destroyed Lawrence, Kansas.
Kansas was called "Bleeding Kansas".
Between 1854 and 1861, Kansas proposed four state constitutions.
Out of the four proposed constitutions, three did not allow slavery.
Finally, in July 1859, Kansas passed the Wyandotte Constitution, which was anti-slavery.
The constitution for statehood was sent to the U.S. government in April, 1860 to be voted on.
The constitution was passed by the House of Representatives, but rejected by the Senate.
This is because southern voters in the Senate did not like that Kansas would become a state without slavery.
In 1861, after the Confederate states formed, the constitution gained approval from the Union, and Kansas became a state.
Four months after Kansas became a state, the Civil War started.
Out of the 381 battles in the Civil War, four were fought in Kansas.
Throughout the war, Kansas remained a Union state.
On August 21, 1863, William Clarke Quantrill led a force of 300 to 400 Confederates into the town of Lawrence, Kansas.
Quantrill and his troops burned, looted, and destroyed the anti-slavery town.
This battle became known as the Lawrence Massacre.
In total, 164 Union soldiers and 40 Confederate soldiers died in the Lawrence Massacre.
In the Battle of Mine Creek, on October 25, 1864, Union soldiers attacked Confederates as they were crossing the Mine Creek.
The Union surrounded the Confederates, and captured 600 men and two generals.
1,000 Confederate soldiers and 100 Union soldiers died in the battle.
In total, 8,500 people from Kansas died or were wounded in the Civil War.
After the Civil War, many free slaves came to Oklahoma and Kansas.
In fact, between the years of 1879 and 1881, about 60,000 African Americans came to this region.
This is because the slaves wanted economic opportunities, which they believed awaited them in Kansas.
African Americans also came to Kansas for better political rights and to escape sharecropping.
From 1930 to 1936, Kansas went through a period of time called the Dust Bowl.
During this time, Kansas had little rainfall and high temperatures.
Thousands of farmers became very poor and had to move to other parts of the United States.
In total, 400,000 people left the Great Plains area.
The years from 1930 to 1940 was the only time the population of Kansas went down.
The number of people living in Kansas decreased 4.3 percent.
During the 1950s, school segregation was required in fifteen U.S states.
However, Kansas was not one of these states.
Instead, school segregation was permitted by local option, but only in elementary schools.
In 1896, the ruling from Plessy v. Ferguson stated that segregation was allowed, but equal facilities should be made available for blacks and whites.
Often, however, black schools received less funding and had fewer textbooks than white schools.
For these reasons, Linda Brown and her family sued the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
Brown won the case, and the ruling was to overturn the Plessy v. Ferguson decision.
This was considered by many a landmark case in the Civil Rights movement.
Kansas is the 15th-largest state in the United States.
It covers an area of 82,282 square miles (213,109 km2).
Of this, about 462 square miles (1196.57 km2) are water.
This makes up 0.60 % of the total area of the state.
Kansas is one of six states on the Frontier Strip.
Kansas shares borders with Nebraska to the north, Oklahoma to the south, Missouri to the east, and Colorado to the west.
Kansas increases in elevation from east to west.
All of Kansas is in the Great Plains, where the land is mostly flat with prairies and grasslands.
Eastern Kansas has hills and forests, like the Flint Hills and the Osage Plains in the southeastern part of the state.
The highest point in the state is Mount Sunflower near the Colorado border.
Mount Sunflower is 4,039 ft (1,231 m) tall.
The lowest point is the Verdigris River in Montgomery County, at 679 ft (207 m) above sea level.
Kansas has a varied climate with an average yearly temperature of 56 F (13 C).
The record high in Kansas is 121 F (49.4 C).
This occurred in Fredonia on July 18, 1936, and in Alton on July 24, 1936.
The record low in Kansas is -40 F (-40 C).
This occurred in Lebanon on February 13, 1905.
Kansas is in a temperate area of the country.
Like other states in this region, Kansas has four distinct seasons.
Kansas can have extreme weather in all four seasons.
For example, in spring and autumn, Kansas has many tornadoes.
In fact, the state averages 55 tornadoes per year.
This is because Kansas is in the area known as Tornado Alley, where cold and warm air masses come together to make severe weather.
In summer, Kansas has experienced severe droughts.
For example, in 1934, 1936, and 1939, Kansas had less than average rainfall and widespread dust storms as a part of the Dust Bowl.
In winter, Kansas has snow in most parts of the state.
The average snowfall in the northern half of the state is 16 inches, with the average snowfall in the southern half of the state being 8 inches.
Blizzards and related snowstorms are rare in Kansas.
Kansas had 627 cities in 2008.
The largest city in Kansas is Wichita, which had a population of 382,368 in 2010.
The other largest cities in Kansas are: Overland Park, 173,372; Kansas City, 145,786; Topeka, 127,473; and Olathe, 125,872.
Between the years of 2000 and 2010, the Kansas population increased 6.1 percent.
83.3 percent of Kansans are Caucasian, 5.9 percent are African American, and 10.8 percent are another race.
Farming has always been an important part of the state economy of Kansas.
The main crop grown in Kansas is wheat.
In fact, Kansas farmers produce about 400 million bushels of wheat per year.
Kansas also ranks first in the United States in grain sorghum produced, second in cropland, and third in sunflowers produced.
However, farming is not the only important part of the economy of Kansas.
Many parts of airplanes are made in the city of Wichita.
Also, many important companies are near Kansas City, Missouri.
For example, the Sprint Nextel Corporation is one of the largest telephone companies in the United States.
Its main operational offices are in Overland Park, Kansas.
The median household income for Kansas was $ 47,709 in 2009.
The gross domestic product (GDP) for Kansas was $ 122,700,000,000 ($ 122.7 billion) in 2008.
Overall, Kansas ' GDP accounts for less than 1 percent of total U.S. economy.
K is the eleventh (number 11) letter in the English alphabet.
Kirk Hammett (born November 18, 1962) is the lead guitarist for the band Metallica.
He also sings in the background (backing vocals) during most of their songs.
Joe Satriani was Hammett 's guitar instructor.
Before joining Metallica, he was the founding member of another band called Exodus.
He left Exodus when the other musicians in Metallica asked him join them.
Kurt G del (28 April 1906 Brno, then Austria-Hungary, now Czech Republic 14 January 1978 Princeton, New Jersey) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher.
Some people believe G del was one of the most significant logicians of all time.
G del 's work has had a big impact on scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century.
Many people, such as Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead, and David Hilbert, tried to use logic and set theory at that time.
They wanted to understand the foundations of mathematics.
G del is best known for his two incompleteness theorems.
The theorems were published in 1931.
He was 25 years of age, and had just finished his doctorate at the University of Vienna one year earlier.
The more famous of the two theorems says that if there are consistent axiomatic systems that are powerful enough to describe themselves, there will be things that are true in those systems that can not be proved within the system itself.
To prove this theorem, G del developed a technique now known as G del numbering, which codes formal expressions as natural numbers.
He also showed that the continuum hypothesis can not be disproved from the accepted axioms of set theory, if those axioms are consistent.
He made important contributions to proof theory.
He did this by clarifying the connections between classical logic, intuitionistic logic, and modal logic.
Later in his life, G del probably suffered from paranoia.
He thought that some people would come and poison his food.
So when his wife Adele was no longer able to prepare his food, he stopped eating.
He died of starvation.
To put his theories in simple terms: What he discovered was that some theorems in mathematics may be true, but they can not be proved to be true.
This sentence is false.
Therefore, we found a contradiction.
This sentence is false is a proposition that is called undecidable.
We can not say if it is true or false.
Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 14 March 1883) was a German political thinker who wrote about money (economics) and power (politics).
Marx thought that if a place that works together runs on wage-labor, then there would always be class struggle.
Marx thought that this class struggle would result in workers taking power.
His most famous book was the Communist Manifesto.
He wrote it with Friedrich Engels in 1848.
The book is about the ideas and aims of communism.
His ideas are called Marxism.
His most important work is Das Kapital, or The Capital.
He spent many years working on the three parts of the book.
Das Kapital describes how "capitalism" works and the problems this creates, such as division of labor and exploitation.
The book has led to many arguments between those who agree with the book and those who do not.
Marx 's ideas have been thought of as responsible for socialist revolutions (like the Russian Revolution).
Marx 's most popular theory was his ` materialism '.
He believed that religion, morality, social structures and other things are all rooted in economics.
In his later life he was more tolerant of religion.
Karl Marx was born in Trier in 1818, but he had to move many times because the government did not like his ideas.
Marx lived for a long time in London.
He died there in 1883.
After he died, his friend Engels finished many of his works.
Marx also wrote the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, a critique of political economy in which he discusses topics such as labor wages, labor rent, and capital profit, and his ideas of how to change the economy, including proletarian socialist revolution and an eventual communist society.
Many people continue to follow and develop Marx 's ideas.
Karate is a Japanese martial art.
It was developed in the former Ry ky Kingdom in what is now Okinawa Prefecture.
Karate uses all parts of the human body as a weapon such as the hand, fist, elbow, leg and knee.
Gichin Funakoshi, a school teacher from the island of Okinawa, introduced Karate to mainland Japan in the early 1900s.
Traditional karate is different from boxing, wrestling and kickboxing: in karate, there is just as much importance on the strength of the mind and good manners as there is on strength of the body and self defense to use when you 're in trouble.
Karate became more known around the world because of Karate movies in the 1960s and 1970s.
Now people all over the world learn Karate.
After World War II, Karate also became popular in Korea, where a local variation appeared, it is called "tangsudo".
The full name of Karate is "Karate-do" which means "the way of the empty hand" in English.
A person who does Karate is called a "karateka".
Notable Karateka include: Gichin Funakoshi, Yoshitaka Funakoshi, Shigeru Egami, Masutatsu Oyama, and Fumio Demura.
When people practice Karate, they wear special clothes called a karategi.
The karategi is made up of a white jacket and white pants.
People who practice Karate also wear a colored belt, which tells other people their rank.
The belt shows how long you have trained rather than how good you are.
Two people wearing different colored belts can be surprisingly similiar.
Different schools of Karate have different colors of belts for their ranks.
You can not know precisely how good they are without either asking them or knowing how their school arranges the belt colors in ranks.
Usually the black belt is for the students who try very hard to be the best that they can be for a long time.
Some schools have several degrees of black belts.
They show this by having a white stripe, called a Dan, on the one end of the belt, for the black belt degree the person has.
For instance a "3 Dan black belt" would have 3 white stripes on his black belt and would be higher ranked than a "1 Dan black belt".
Kickboxing is a descriptive term for martial arts that, while similar to boxing, use the feet just like the hands to hit.
Kickboxing can be practiced for general health, or as the fight sport.
The word kickboxing represents a set of disciplines or sports of combat that use the feet and the fists.
Especially, kickboxing is one of the disciplines of Boxe pieds-poings which was developed at first by the Japaneses and afterwards by the North Americans.
There are different kinds of kick boxing, most popular form is one where kicks are allowed towards head & torso only.
In the middle of the years 1960, the Japanese Kurosaki, who trained in Kyokushinkai Karate, traveled to Thailand discovering Thai boxing.
In his returning to the Japan decided to combine his techniques of karate with that of Thai boxing, removing elbow strikes (the Americans also removed knee strikes), so a new sport called "kickboxing" was born.
Among the non-Japaneses that gained more successes, a special consideration should be given to Frenchman Christian Guillaume who in 1969 gained four victories and two draws; and American Benny "The Jet" Urquidez who in 1977 defeated Tatsuyuki Suzuki in four rounds.
In 1973 Urquidez and Howard Hanson created the W.K.A. (World Karate Association), changing years after the "K" de karate for that of Kick-Boxing.
The more known champions are Rob Kaman, Benny Urquidez, Dennis Alexio, Ernesto Hoost, and Marek Piotrowski.
The punches and kicks are permitted for above the waist, the sweepings and the low kicks (kicks to the thigh) also are permitted.
The "amateur" combats take place in three rounds, and the professional ones last five rounds; 10 in championships of Europe and 12 in the championships of the world, with a one-minute half-time (break) between rounds.
The kicks to the thigh (low kick) usually decide about the difference in the combats.
Pants (long or short), boxing gloves and protectors for the teeth and for the genitals; in the female combats, women should also wear protector of chest and boots (not required in the professional combats).
Korea is in northeast Asia.
It covers a peninsula called the Korean Peninsula.
Korea became a country (or state) in 918.
In 1948, it split into two countries: North Korea and South Korea.
North and South Korea and their allies fought against each other in the Korean War.
People have lived in Korea for about 15,000 years.
In the past, some of Manchuria and Siberia was governed by Korea.
The best silk came from Korea.
In the 7th century, the people of China also liked gold-workers from Korea.
Europeans knew very little about Korea until modern times.
Koreans built a printing machine in 1232.
This machine used metal letters.
This was long before Johannes Gutenberg improved the printing press in Europe.
Korea is famous for its traditional food kimchi.
The Korean people usually eat sticky white rice.
Traditionally, Koreans eat seaweed soup on their birthdays.
People believe the soup is also good for pregnant women.
South Korea has over 48 million people, and North Korea has more than 23 million.
South Korea 's biggest city is Seoul, the capital of South Korea.
The city has more than 10 million people and the region of Seoul has more than 21 million people.
North Korea 's biggest city is Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
It has fewer than 4 million people.
Korean people speak Korean.
Many people in South Korea study English and other languages in school.
South Korea is an advanced country with large cities, high-speed rail trains, high-speed internet, and many television and radio networks.
Many Korean television dramas are popular around the world.
But there are still poor areas, even in South Korea.
The Korean farmers are not rich and struggle to compete with cheap food from other countries.
Gochosun is the first state in Korean history.
It was established in 2333 BCE.
Its real name is Chosun, but it is called Gochosun to make it different from other Chosun in Korean history.
Go is a Korean prefix meaning ` old '.
The founder of Gochosun is said to be Dangun.
The Korean people believe that Dangun established the country on October 3rd, and still celebrate that day.
In Korea October 3rd is a national holiday, which is named Kaecheonjeol (The day heaven opened).
It is said to be the day that Dangun 's father whose name is Hwan-ung came from sky on October 3rd 2457 BCE.
Gochosun was destroyed by the Chinese Han Dynasty in 108 BCE.
After Gojoseon had been destroyed there were many confederations in the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria: Mahan, Byeonhan, Jinhan, Buyeo, Dongye, Okjeo, Goguryeo, and so on.
The ancient confederation countries later merged into three more powerful kingdoms and an advanced confederation country.
Between 57 BC and the year 668 there were three kingdoms in the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria.
The names of the kingdoms were: Silla, Goguryeo and Baekje.
In the year 372, the religion Buddhism came from China to Korea.
Buddhism was very important in Korea.
In the year 660, the kingdom of Silla invaded the kingdom of Baekje.
In the year 668 the kingdom of Silla invaded the kingdom of Goguryeo.
The people of Goguryeo ran away and made a new kingdom with the name Barhae.
After a little time, the kingdom of Balhae was invaded by Liao Dynasty.
When Silla was the only country, it had the name Unified Silla.
In the Silla kingdom Buddhism was very important.
In the year 998, Balhae was founded by allies of Goguryeo.
We call the time when united Silla and Balhae were existing together (698 926) The northern and southern kingdoms period.
In the year 918 the kingdom of Goryeo began.
The name Korea comes from Goryeo.
The kingdom of Goryeo had power until the year 1392.
The kingdom of Goryeo wrote the law in books, and had a big government.
Buddhism was very important in the kingdom of Goryeo.
Bronze-type printing technology was invented in Goryeo Dynasty.
This is known as the world 's oldest bronze-type printing technology.
In the year 1392 a man from the military of Korea went to China.
His name was Yi Seonggye.
Yi 's job was to attack China.
But Yi returned without doing it.
When Yi came back to Korea, he changed the kingdom.
Yi became king.
The name of the kingdom was Joseon.
In the year 1394, the people of Joseon moved the capital to Seoul.
The religion of Buddhism was not important.
A new religion, Confucianism was important.
Confucianism came from China.
In the year 1443 the king Sejong ruled.
He invented the Korean alphabet Hangeul.
In the year 1592 and the year 1598 the people from Japan fought Korea.
A man from the military made very strong ships, including the famous turtle ship.
The name of the man was Yi Sun-sin.
With the strong ships, the people of Korea won.
The people of Joseon were friends with the people of China.
Today, North Koreans use the name Joseon (officially Chos n) to mean Korea.
In the 19th century the people of Korea did not want to trade with other people.
People called Korea Hermit Kingdom.
The people of the United States wanted to trade with Korea.
The people of Japan also wanted to trade with Korea.
Before 1876, people failed when they tried to use force to trade with Korea.
In the year 1876 the military of Japan fought Korea.
Korea and Japan made a contract to trade.
In 1895 Japan won a war against China.
This war was fought in the Korean peninsula.
The name of the war was Sino-Japanese War.
The military of Japan killed the Queen of Korea in 1895.
The last name of the Queen was Min.
Korea 's name changed to Daehan Jeguk (empire of Korea).
The people from Korea made friends with the people from Russia.
In 1905 Japan won a war against Russia.
The name of the war was Russo-Japanese War.
In the year 1910, the emperor of Japan made Korea a colony of Japan.
Korea was occupied by Japan from 1910 to 1945.
When World War II started, the policy of the Japanese government changed.
The government made the religion of Japan (Shinto) the religion of Korea.
In 1945 Japan lost World War II.
The United States and Soviet Union made a contract.
United States occupied the south of Korea and Soviet Union occupied the north of Korea.
The people of Korea wanted to be independent.
The United States and the Soviet Union agreed the people of Korea would be free and independent.
But soon the United States and Soviet Union were not friends and the Cold War started.
United States and Soviet Union refused to settle a deal.
In 1948 the people in the south made an independent country called South Korea.
The United States helped them.
In 1948 the people in the north also made a country.
The Soviet Union helped North Korea.
In 1950 a war started in Korea.
The name of the war was the Korean War.
The war ended in 1953, but no peace treaty was signed.
The border line between North and South was the same in the end as it was before the war.
No land was lost or gained.
Now there are two countries: North Korea (also called the DPRK or Democratic People 's Republic of Korea) and South Korea (also called the Republic of Korea).
The Korean language (Korean), is spoken mainly in North and South Korea.
It is spoken by more than 78 million people (most of whom are North or South Koreans).
In South Korea, it is called han ` gukmal (-RRB- or han ` gugeo (Hangeul:, Hanja:).
In North Korea, however, it is called chos nmal (-RRB- or chos n (,).
They are named differently because the common names for North and South Korea are different.
In additional, Koreans usually call their language urimal (Hangeul:) or urinara mal (Hangeul:) meaning "our language" or "our country 's language".
The Korean language uses two different writing systems.
The first is Hangul, the main alphabet.
In North Korea, only Hangeul (Known as Chos ng l in North Korea) is used by law.
In South Korea, only Hangeul should be used in most public areas like education, but the second system, Hanja, is still used in some newspapers and professional areas.
Hanja is the system of Chinese characters that are used in Korean.
Hanja was the only way to write Korean before the creation of Hangeul in the 15th century, and it was common in novels before the 19th century.
Despite the fact that King Sejong the Great led the development of Hangeul in order to allow literacy to spread among common people and to create a writing system that more accurately represented the Korean language than Hanja, it was not adopted by the upper classes of Koreans, and therefore Hanja would continue to be the official writing system util the late 19th century.
Despite it being rejected by the elite classes, Hangeul was used often by lower classes as a way to write down Korean literature and for lower classes to communicate with each other.
Kyle Merritt MacLachlan (born February 22 1959) is an American actor.
He is known for the role of Agent Dale Cooper in the television series Twin Peaks.
He has appeared in movies by David Lynch, including Blue Velvet and Dune.
MacLachlan won the 1991 Golden Globe Award for "Best Performance by an Actor in a TV-Series - Drama" for his work on Twin Peaks.
He was also nominated twice for the Emmy Award for his acting on that series.
MacLachlan was also in the 1995 movie Showgirls and the television series Desperate Housewives.
Kent is a county in England.
It is just to the south-east of London and is on the coast.
The sea to the East of Kent is the North Sea.
The sea south of Kent is called The English Channel by the British.
France is opposite Kent on the other side of The Channel.
At the most narrow point, between Dover, Calais and Cape Gris-Nez, The Channel is only 21 miles (34 km) wide.
Dover is one of the main ports in Kent.
From here many ferries sail to and from France.
Other main ports in Kent include Sheerness and Ramsgate.
The Channel Tunnel goes from Folkestone in Kent to France.
It was built in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Kent is a very ancient county.
In the 6th and 7th centuries it was ruled by its own kings, It is often called ` the garden of England ' because its countryside is very green and because it produces much fruit.
A lot of fruit such as strawberries are grown in Kent, and the county is famous for growing hops which are used to make beer.
Maidstone is called the county town because the local government for Kent is based there.
Another important town is the city of Canterbury.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the head of the Church of England.
Hundreds of years ago many Christian people would travel to the Cathedral at Canterbury from their homes in other parts of Britain.
This was called making a pilgrimage.
Kevin Spacey Fowler, CBE (honorary) (born July 26, 1959) is an American actor, director, screenwriter and producer.
The name "Spacey" was the surname of his grandmother, he took it as his acting surname in high school.
He worked as an actor in the theater before he worked in movies and shows.
He got his Oscar Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in The Usual Suspects and for Best Actor in American Beauty (1999).
A few of the other movies in which he played the main part are Seven, L.A. Confidential, Pay It Forward and Superman Returns.
He works as the artistic director of the Old Vic theater at London in 2003 and plays Francis Underwood in the television drama series, House of Cards.
The Korean War was a war fought in Korea between armies from North Korea and from South Korea.
The war began at 4:30 AM on June 25, 1950.
Fighting stopped July 27, 1953.
More than two million Koreans died, most of them in the north.
Both sides blame each other for starting the war.
The north, led by communist Kim Il-Sung, was helped mostly by People 's Republic of China, and the USSR.
There was medical support from Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Poland.
Other support came from Mongolia and India.
The south, led by nationalist Syngman Rhee, was helped by many countries in the United Nations, and especially by the United States.
The war did not end but a ceasefire was put in place.
South Korea and North Korea are still officially at war, and the United States still keeps troops in South Korea, in case North Korea ever invades again.
North and South Korea are divided by the Korean Demilitarized Zone that crosses the 38th parallel.
In 1910, Japan put Korea under Japanese rule and was still ruling Korea when World War II ended.
When Japan surrendered, the United States and the USSR agreed to split Korea into two temporary occupation zones with USSR occupying the North and USA occupying the South.
This was, at first, to be for a short time.
At the Moscow Conference of the Council of Foreign Ministers in December 1945, the United States and USSR agreed on Korea having a provisional government (a temporary government set up quickly before a real government is ready).
This became difficult because of the growing Cold War (see next cause).
The Cold War was an important cause in the Korean War.
Relations between the two occupying powers were bad and when China became Communist in October 1949, the President of the USA, Harry Truman, was very worried that other countries around China may also become Communist, such as Japan.
The American Army was about one twelfth the size of five years earlier and Joseph Stalin had recently lost a Cold War dispute over the Berlin Blockade and subsequent airlift.
July 1950 North and South Korea had officially divided.
The popular television show M \* A \* S \* H was about American doctors serving in the Korean War.
The show lasted longer than the war did.
Karl D nitz (16 September 1891 24 December 1980) was a German naval leader.
He commanded the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) during the second half of World War II.
D nitz was also President of Germany for 23 days after Adolf Hitler 's suicide.
For his role in World War II, D nitz was referred to as "der L we" (the Lion).
D nitz was born in Berlin.
He entered the Imperial German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) in 1911.
During World War I, he served on surface ships.
Later he was transferred to submarines (U-boats).
He remained in the navy after the war and rose through the ranks of the German Navy of the Weimar Republic (Reichsmarine) and the German Navy of the Third Reich (Kriegsmarine).
He became a Gro admiral.
He served as Commander of Submarines (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote, B.d.U.).
Later, he became Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy (Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine).
He got this position, even though he never joined the Nazi Party.
Under his command, the U-boat fleet fought the Battle of the Atlantic.
He also served as Reichspr sident for 23 days after Adolf Hitler 's suicide.
He ended the war as a prisoner-of-war of the British.
After the war D nitz was charged and convicted of "crimes against peace" and "war crimes" at the Nuremberg Trials.
He served ten years in prison.
He ordered the unrestricted submarine warfare which was done by Germany in the North Atlantic.
With this, he caused Germany to be in breach of the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936.
At his trial, evidence was shown that the Allies had acted similarly.
For this reason, this breach of international law had no impact on his sentence.
After his release from prison, D nitz moved to Aum hle, a small village near Hamburg.
During his later years, he wrote two autobiographies.
In them, he covered different periods in his life.
He died of a heart attack on Christmas Eve, 1980.
The Kyoto Protocol is a plan created by the United Nations for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that tries to reduce the effects of climate change, such as global warming.
The plan says that countries that adopt (follow) the Kyoto Protocol have to try to reduce how much carbon dioxide (and other "greenhouse gases" that pollute the atmosphere) they release into the air.
The full name of the Kyoto Protocol is the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
It is called the Kyoto Protocol because it was made in Kyoto, Japan.
The Kyoto Protocol was officially put into "full force" on February 16, 2005.
On February 16, Russia began to follow (ratify) the Kyoto Protocol and it was decided to be put into "full force".
As of February 2009, 183 countries have agreed to follow the Kyoto Protocol, who make up for more than 55 % of the greenhouse gases released into our atmosphere.
There are still 29 countries which have not yet adopted it.
Croatia and Kazakhstan have signed the treaty, but have not ratified it (made it a law they have to follow).
The United States of America has signed it but said that they will not ratify it.
Australia has only recently ratified the Kyoto Protocol under the previous Prime Minister, John Howard.
Both of these countries have said that the fact that China and India are using exceptions to the treaty (those countries believe parts of the treaty do not apply to them and they will not follow those parts) in the name of industrialization is unfair and that they will not ratify because of this, although it is believed that the U.S. and Australia are protecting their economic interests by not ratifying.
The countries ' leaders say that changing their use of greenhouse gases will make their people lose jobs.
The twenty four other countries have neither signed nor ratified the treaty.
Kalevala is the Finnish national epic.
This means it is a book that is very important to Finnish people.
Kalevala has many stories in it.
The stories of Kalevala are poems that are very old.
Long ago, people sang these poems.
The poems have a unique metre that is not known outside Finnic languages.
There are many themes in these stories from different times in the past.
The oldest themes are from the stone age.
Many of the poems are collected from Karelia and areas nearby.
Heroes have adventures in these stories.
The most important heroes are V in m inen, Ilmarinen, Lemmink inen and Kullervo.
The enemies of heroes are Louhi and Joukahainen.
Many stories in Kalevala are about two countries fighting each other.
These countries are the land of Kalevala and land of Pohjola.
The Land of Kalevala is the land of Heroes.
Pohjola is the land of enemies.
Pohjola is an evil and cold place somewhere far north.
Elias L nnrot was a man who collected these poems and made a book of them.
Kalevala has been translated into many languages.
There is also an English Kalevala.
The Ku Klux Klan is a hate group.
It was started in the southern United States on 3 March 1865.
Most of its hate has been towards African-Americans, but it has also attacked Catholics, Jews and immigrants.
It has sought to keep something called "white power", often through very violent acts such as killing people.
The first Ku Klux Klan broke up and does not exist anymore.
However, other groups with the same name and the same ideas have been created.
The Ku Klux Klan (acronym KKK) is an organization which was started in the South of the United States in 1865.
This was after the American Civil War.
It was to resist the Reconstruction of the United States.
During this time, there were troops based in the ex-Confederacy states.
The Klan was scared that the population in the South could lose their democratic rights.
Also the Klan members believed that African Americans were inferior to (less than) white people.
The Klan acted against black people.
Republicans were also targets of attacks by the Klan.
The methods of acting against people were often the same: the Klan members tried to frighten the people that the Klan wanted to go out of town.
The KKK tried to scare people by burning crosses or by threatening them.
If people did not react, the Klan sometimes killed them.
The growing violence which was promoted by the KKK led to many lynchings (giving a person an unfair trial and killing them, often by hanging by the neck).
The KKK was "prohibited" (made against the law) in 1871.
After 1871, many KKK members were imprisoned (put in Prison).
However, the Klan had achieved many of its original goals.
For example, the occupation troops were moved out of the Southern states, to the West.
The KKK affected many African Americans throughout the last century.
In 1915, William J. Simmons started the Ku Klux Klan for a second time.
Most of the rituals and traditions of the old Ku Klux Klan were kept.
Any white Protestant man could join the KKK.
The KKK still attacked African Americans, but they also attacked Jews and Catholics this time.
In 1920, growing economic problems in rural areas caused the Klan to grow again.
The KKK strongly argued for white supremacy.
White supremacy says that people who are white (from European origins) are better than other racial groups and must rule them.
The Klan killed many blacks.
These were not legal executions because there were no trials.
Many people now call these acts a kind of terrorism, because the KKK used fear to control African Americans and take away their political rights.
In the middle of the 20 s the Klan got smaller due to bad leaders and too much violence.
After the Second World War, the Klan closed again because it owed more money than it could pay.
In 1954, the United States Supreme Court (the highest court in the US) made an important decision.
The case was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
The court ruled (decided) that it was un-Constitutional to have different schools for black and white children.
When this ruling passed, many independent groups using the Ku Klux Klan name attacked African Americans.
In the summer of 1964, Edgar Killen killed three African Americans that participated in the civil rights movement.
Killen was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
There was an early trial in 1967, but in this trial there was an all-white jury and so Killen was set free.
In 1988 a movie called Mississippi Burning was made which talked about the events of this case.
In 2005 there was another trial.
Killen (now 80 years old) was sentenced to prison for 160 years.
In 2011 they were estimated to be perhaps as many as 5,000 members.
The Klondike is a region of Yukon in northwest Canada.
It is around the Klondike River, a small river that enters Yukon from the east at Dawson City.
The Klondike Gold Rush took place there from 1897 to 1899.
The summers in the Klondike are short and very hot.
The winters are long and very cold.
There are snow storms between September and May.
Jack London 's novel The Call of the Wild, published in 1903, was set in the Klondike.
Korean cuisine came from very old traditions in Korea.
It has developed through many environmental, political, and cultural changes.
There are special rules for eating meals in Korea.
Korean cuisine is mostly made up of rice, noodles, vegetables, and meats.
Most Korean meals have many side dishes (called banchan) along with their steam-cooked rice.
Kimchi is usually eaten at every meal.
Sesame oil, doenjang, soy sauce, salt, garlic, ginger, pepper and gochujang are ingredients that are often used in the food.
In different provinces of Korea, its ingredients and dishes are different, too.
The Korean royal court cuisine used to serve all the best dishes from each province for the royal family.
People follow special rules when they eat meals in Korea.
Traditional rice cakes like tteok are eaten as treats during holidays and festivals.
Tteok means all rice cakes made from pounded rice (, metteok), pounded glutinous rice (, chaltteok), or glutinous rice that has not been pounded.
It is usually filled or covered with sweet mung bean paste, red bean paste, raisins, or a sweet, creamy filling made with sesame seeds, pumpkin, beans, pine nuts, and honey.
Tteok is usually eaten for dessert or as a snack.
The oldest people are usually served first, and it is thought rude to pick up chopsticks or eat before the oldest people do so.
In Korea, unlike in China and Japan, the rice bowl is not lifted up from the table.
Spoons should not hit bowls while eating.
You must not talk about dirty things.
Some rules are now not important.
For instance, talking used to be discouraged, but today people usually talk together at meals.
Also, men usually ate at a different table than women, but now they eat all together.
In Korea, they have both spoons and chopsticks, and together they are called sujeou (pronounced soo-juh -).
Usually, before they eat, people say, "Jalmukgessemnidah (-RRB-", and after they are finished, they say, "Jalmuggussemnidah (-RRB-."
Soups and stews must be set on the right side of the person who is eating.
; Grain dishes: Usually made with rice, which is the main meal.
; Snacks or Simple Foods: These simple foods can be bought at shops on the street and are usually thought of as snacks rather than meals.
A kilobyte (kB) is a number used to measure storage space on computer hard drives or computer memory.
A kilobyte originally meant 1000 bytes.
Over time the meaning changed and today it is often used to mean 1024 bytes.
This created some confusion as a "kilo" normally means 1000.
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) now defines a kilobyte as being 1000 bytes.
According to the IEC, the correct name for 1,024 bytes is a kibibyte.
One thousand kilobytes make one megabyte.
The Kuiper belt is an area of the Solar System beyond the orbit of Neptune (at 30 Astronomical units) to 50 AU from the Sun.
The objects within the Kuiper Belt together with the members of the scattered disk beyond, are together called trans-Neptunian.
The asteroids in the Kuiper belt are much bigger than the asteroids in the asteroid belt.
At least some Kuiper belt objects are icebound.
After the Kuiper belt was discovered in 1992, the number of known Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) has added to over a thousand, and more than 70,000 KBOs over 100 km (62 mi) in diameter.
Kraftwerk is a electronic band from Germany that became famous in the late 1970s and 1980s for making electronic music.
They used a synthesizer to make the rhythms and melodies in the song.
Kraftwerk made electronic music many years before other bands knew it would be popular.
They paved the way for the MIDI and digital styles of music to become popular in the 1990s.
Many of the sounds from songs such as "Computer Love", "The Robots", and "Trans Europe Express" can be heard sampled by a variety of bands on their current releases.
Recently, some of Kraftwerk 's original recording equipment was sold on eBay for astonishing amounts.
Kraftwerk continues to have a faithful following.
The band 's name is German for power station.
The Kalmar Union was a historical consisting union of the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and various other provinces and areas.
At that time, Norway included Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Shetland, Orkney, and parts of Finland belonged to Sweden.
The union was started in 1397 at a meeting in the town of Kalmar in Sweden.
The union ended in 1523 when Sweden left the union.
Krav Maga (, lit.
"contact combat") is an Jewish Israeli martial art.
It was developed by Hungarian-Israeli martial artist Imi Lichtenfeld in Slovakia.
Today it is used by the Israeli Defense Forces.
A ketone is an organic compound that has a carbon atom with a double bond to an oxygen atom (this is called carbonyl functional group).
This carbon atom must also have single bonds to two other carbon atoms.
A ketone will show a strong peak between 1690 and 1715cm-1 using infrared spectroscopy.
King Arthur was a legendary king in the mythology of Great Britain.
He lived in the medieval times, in his famous castle, Camelot.
He possessed a sword known as Excalibur, given to him by the Lady in the Lake.
King Arthur is a fabled ruler of Sub-Roman Britain who defended his kingdom from the Anglo-Saxons, and a popular fictional character in modern literature.
He won several battles, and had many homes.
However, his favorite home was in Camelot.
One of the most famous tales of King Arthur is one where he pulls a sword out of a stone, making him King of the Britons.
It is said that Arthur was magically conceived in Merlin 's bay by the wizard Merlin.
He is said to have rose up out of the waves and to have floated to Merlin, his protector.
His father was a king named Uther Pendragon, who fell in love with Lady Igraine.
However when Arthur was born, his mother died; His father followed shortly.
After this tragedy, young Arthur was sent by Merlin to live with a knight named Ector when he was still an infant.
Growing up, he was teased by his elder brother, Kay.
When their mother died, Kay told Arthur about his adoption.
Later, he found a gleaming sword stuck in a stone, while looking for a sword for his older brother to use at the knight trials.
He was told that the man who could pull it out was the true king and when he succeeded in pulling the sword out, he proved his merit as King and his right to the throne.
Therefore, he claimed the title and became King of Britain.
Many castles claim to be Arthur 's Camelot, but the most likely one is Tintagel Castle, Cornwall.
In Camelot sat the famous Round Table, where Arthur, his queen Guinevere, Merlin, Morgan le Fay, Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain, Sir Perceval and many other knights sat.
Arthur and his knights went on many quests including The Quest For The Holy Grail, The Green Knight, The Black Knight and more.
After King Arthur 's many adventures, his sword Excalibur was stolen by his son, Mordred.
Mordred seized his kingdom and queen, forcing Arthur to fight for what was truly his.
They fought for a long time and Mordred hit King Arthur in many places, but in the end it was Arthur who killed Mordred.
After this victory, King Arthur was weak and died from losing blood from the wounds received in the battle.
As his knights rode back to Camelot, they threw Excalibur into the lake so that it could return to where it came from.
One legend is that he never died but will return when the British need him.
Many books have been written about him.
Most of them involve Merlin, the Knights of the Round Table, Morgan le Fay etc..
Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote the first.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson visited Tintagel, the mythical Camelot twice and wrote a series of poems about Arthur.
One of the best-known books, The Death of Arthur, was written by Sir Thomas Malory.
Another tells how he set out to find the Holy Grail, the cup that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper.
There are also many movies about him, including Disney 's The Sword in the Stone, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the musical Camelot.
Krak w (Polish: Krak w; (pronounced: (` krakuf)); variant English spelling Cracow; in full Royal Capital City of Krakow, Polish: Kr lewskie Sto eczne Miasto Krak w) is the one of the oldest and largest cities in Poland.
In 2014 in Krak w lived 759,800 people.
It is on the Vistula river.
Krakow is the capital of Lesser Poland Voivodeship (wojew dztwo ma opolskie); before that it was the capital of Krak w Voivodship (since 14th century).
During the mid-early 19th century, Krakow became an independent city-state, under the name of "The Free, Independent and Strictly Neutral City of Krakow".
However, it was annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1846.
Pope John Paul II was raised in Krakow and was its archbishop from 1964 until he was elected as Pope in 1978.
When it was later announced that the city will host World Youth Day in 2016, it will be a tribute to the late Pope who became a saint in 2014.
The current mayor of Krakow is Jacek Majchrowski.
The kora is a 21-string harp-lute used mostly by peoples in West Africa.
Kabul is the capital and the largest city in Afghanistan.
According to a 2012 estimate, the population of the city was around 3,289,000.
Ths includes Tajiks, Pashtuns, Hazaras and smaller numbers of Afghans belonging to other ethnic groups.
It is the 64th largest and the 5th fastest growing city in the world.
It is 1,800 meters, or 5,900 feet above-sea-level.
Kabul is over 3,500 years old.
Kevin Norwood Bacon (born July 8, 1958 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American movie actor who has starred in Stir of Echoes, Wild Things, JFK, Footloose and Apollo 13, among others.
He has been married to actress Kyra Sedgwick since September 4, 1988.
They have two children, Travis and Sosie Ruth.
Bacon is known for the Bacon Number.
In hand-to-hand combat, in martial arts and sports, a kick is a blow with the foot, the knee or the leg.
It is used in combat as an attack.
Generally, the kicks are slower than the punches although stronger than the blows with hands.
The kicks are a fundamental part in many martial arts.
The examples are: wushu, karate, kickboxing, tangsudo or taekwondo; whereas other arts do not use any kick, as it is in the case of judo or of boxing.
Other martial arts can use kicks, although they limit them to attacks to the legs and to the lower parts of the body of the opponent.
There exists a great number of kicks, and a lot of them have typical names for each one.
Frequently the same movement has different names in different martial arts.
This is obvious especially when comparisons are done between western arts and oriental arts.
(1) The front kicks and side kicks, in "penetrating" form, on the lower member are entitled between the professionals especially for certain titles, but not in all the lands.
(\*) Certain techniques can be spinning and jumping at the same time.
Kofi Annan (born 8 April 1938) is a Ghanaian diplomat.
He served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006.
Annan and the United Nations were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize.
They were awarded the prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world".
Annan was born in Kumasi, Ghana, to an elite family.
His parents, Henry Reginald and Victoria Annan, are from the two major ethnic groups that make up the Akan one of the groups of indigenous people of Ghana.
His father was half Asante and half Fante; his mother was Fante.
The Asante were gold merchants while the Fante tribe were the middlemen in the gold trade between the Asante and the British.
Annan, whose first name means "born on a Friday", also had a twin sister, who died in 1991 from a still yet unknown disease.
In Ghanaian culture, twins are considered special and are adored.
Annan probably got his first lessons in politics and diplomacy early on from his family.
Both of Annan 's grandfathers and his uncle were tribal chiefs.
Upon his retirement, Annan 's father, who worked as an export manager for the cocoa exporter Lever Brothers, was elected governor of Ghana 's Asante province.
In 1954, Annan attended Mfantsipim School, an Methodist boarding school in central Ghana.
The Secretary-General says that the school taught him "that suffering anywhere concerns people everywhere".
Annan went to Macalaster College in St. Paul, Minnesota and graduating in 1961.
He was a Sloan Fellow at MIT in 1971 72, getting a master 's degree in management.
Annan became Secretary-General of the United Nations in January 1997, succeeding Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt.
Annan was a U.N. veteran who took his first job with the organization in 1962 and worked his way up through various posts including Deputy Director to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (1980 83) and head of the U.N. 's peacekeeping efforts (1995 96).
Annan was the first Secretary-General chosen from the ranks of the U.N. 's staff.
He is also the first black man to hold the post and the second African (after Boutros-Ghali).
His second term began in 2002 and ran through the end of 2006.
In 2001 he and the United Nations were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world".
Annan is married to Nane Annan, a lawyer and artist from Sweden.
Kentucky is a state in the United States.
Its capital is Frankfort.
It touches the states of Missouri (by the Mississippi River), Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia (by the Ohio River), Tennessee and Virginia.
Some people call it the "Bluegrass State" because of a special kind of grass that grows there.
It is also famous for its horse farms.
The Kentucky Derby, a well-known horse race, is held in the city of Louisville, which is also the largest city in the state.
Other well-known places are Fort Knox, The Cumberland Gap, Cumberland Falls, Mammoth Cave, Red River gorge, and Land Between the Lakes.
Some well-known towns and cities are Louisville, Lexington, Owensboro, Bowling Green, Covington, Florence, Maysville, Georgetown, Paducah, Murray, Bardstown, Morehead, Midway, Berea, Richmond, Danville, Versailles, Elizabethtown, Radcliff, Corbin, Somerset, Ashland, and Middlesboro.
Hodgenville is famous for being the birthplace of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
Katakana is a Japanese script used for writing words borrowed from other languages.
It is easier to read than the kanji (the picture method based on Chinese characters).
Once the 46 katakana symbols have been learned, the reader knows how to pronounce them.
Katakana and hiragana are both syllabaries.
In English we use the letters of the alphabet.
In most words each letter stands for a bit of sound (a phoneme).
In a syllabary each symbol stands for a syllable.
For example: in English we write Wagamama: each of the eight letters standing for a sound: W-a-g-a-m-a-m-a.
But if the word Wagamama is divided into syllables there are four syllables (blocks of sound): Wa-ga-ma-ma.
In Katakana it is written with four symbols:.
Hiragana works in the same way, but the symbols are mostly different.
Katakana is perhaps a little easier to learn than Hiragana because the symbols are simpler and more squared off.
Together Katakana and Hiragana are called Kana.
This is a table of the basic katakana strokes.
The first chart shows the basic katakana (characters with red letters next to them are no longer used today).
From the first table it can be seen that there are 46 basic characters (top left, first five columns, from "a" to "wa").
Diphthongs (vowels that slide from one sound to the other) have to be written with an extra symbol in small print.
For example: the sound mu in our word music sounds like myu so it is written (mi + yu).
So the word musical (as in a stage musical) is written:.
A long vowel is shown in katakana by a kind of dash called a choon (-RRB-.
Katakana is used to write words which have been borrowed from other languages, or to write foreign names and names of countries.
For example America is written.
It is not always easy for us to recognize these words because the Japanese language does not have some of the sounds that we do in English.
This means that Japanese have to find other ways to pronounce and write the word.
For example: the word coffee is written (koo-hii).
Sometimes the word is shortened as well: television is written (pronounced te-re-bi).
Sometimes it is impossible to show the difference between two foreign words, e.g. could spell either the name Lara or Lala (as in the Teletubbies).
The Japanese have just one sound which is somewhere between our r and l.
In the Japanese language a consonant is always followed by a vowel.
Words or syllables can not end in a consonant (except n or m), so the Japanese put in an extra vowel.
Ski (as in skiing) becomes suki (-RRB-, and a musical, as we have seen, becomes myuujikaru (-RRB-.
Katakana are also used for onomatopoeic words like ding, or for making words look important, or for scientific names such as the names of birds.
Sometimes sentences in books or cartoons may be written in katakana to show that someone is supposed to be speaking with a foreign accent.
It is often used to write the names of Japanese companies, i.e. Suzuki is written, and Toyota is written.
A small tsu called a sokuon shows what we would write as a double consonant, e.g. the English word bed is used in Japanese for a western-style bed.
It is pronounced beddo and written.
The makes the e vowel short.
Learning to read the katakana characters is useful for reading some of the signs in Japan, or items on the restaurant menus.
Japanese sentences are usually written in a mixture of katakana, hiragana and kanji, e.g.: (amerikajin desu: I am American).
Here amerika is written in katakana, the ending jin (-RRB- is kanji, and desu (I am) is in hiragana.
Kuala Lumpur is the capital city of Malaysia, and the Federal Territory of Wilayah Persekutuan.
Malaysia is a country in Asia.
With the completion of Putrajaya in the late 1990s, the administrative capital has been moved to Putrajaya.
Kuala Lumpur is home to one of the tallest buildings in the world, the Petronas Twin Towers.
Kuala Lumpur has a tropical rainforest climate (Af in the Koeppen climate classification).
The annual range of temperature in Kuala Lumpur is small, only 1 C. There is no distinct seasonal difference in temperature in the city.
Kuala Lumpur is hot throughout the year.
The annual mean temperature are 26.5 C (79.7 F).
The annual rainfall in Kuala Lumpur is high (2393mm).
The rainfall distribution is even in the city, with heavy rainfall all the year.
In April and November, the monthly rainfall is slightly higher.
Since Kuala Lumpur became a Federal Territory of Malaysia on February 1, 1972, the city has been led by seven mayors.
They are:
Kansas State University (often called K-State) is a public university in Manhattan, Kansas, in the United States, although there is also a branch in Salina, Kansas and Olathe, Kansas.
It was started in 1863.
In fall 2010, 23,588 students were enrolled there.
Sporting Kansas City are an American football (soccer) team that plays in Major League Soccer in Kansas City, Kansas.
They started out as the Kansas City Wiz, before changing their name to the Kansas City Wizards in 1997.
Later, in November 2010, they changed their name again to Sporting Kansas City, as the team was moving into a new stadium in the 2011 season.
The stadium has been known by several names, first Livestrong Sporting Park, then Sporting Park, and now Children 's Mercy Park.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., (; November 11, 1922 April 11, 2007) was an American writer.
He influenced many other writers.
He combined satire, black comedy, and science fiction in his writing.
Some of his works include Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat 's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973).
He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was born in Indianapolis, Indiana.
His parents were Kurt Vonnegut, Sr., and Edith Lieber.
He was the youngest of three children.
His ancestors had come to America from Germany in 1855.
They were prosperous, originally as brewers and merchants.
Both his father and his grandfather attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology and were architects in the Indianapolis firm of Vonnegut & Bohn.
His great-grandfather was the founder of the Vonnegut Hardware Company, an Indianapolis institution.
Vonnegut graduated from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in May 1940.
He went to Cornell University that autumn.
He studied Chemistry, but he was Assistant Managing Editor and Associate Editor of the university newspaper called The Cornell Daily Sun.
He was a member of the Delta Upsilon Fraternity just like his father.
Vonnegut joined the U.S. Army while he was at Cornell.
The Army transferred him to the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee to study Mechanical Engineering.
On Mothers ' Day in 1944, his mother committed suicide with sleeping pills.
Kurt Vonnegut 's experience as a soldier and prisoner of war (POW) had a deep and powerful effect on his writing.
During the war, he was a soldier with a low rank.
He was a private with the 423rd Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division.
Vonnegut was captured during the Battle of the Bulge on December 19, 1944.
He was in prison in the German city of Dresden.
He became a leader among the prisoners because he could speak German a little bit.
But, he told German guards"... just what I was going to do to them when the Russians came".
The guards beat Vonnegut and stopped him from being a leader.
He experienced the fire bombing of Dresden in February 1945 which destroyed most of the city.
Vonnegut 's group of American prisoners of war survived the attack.
The Germans had kept them in an underground room for storing meat at a slaughterhouse.
The Germans called the building Schlachthof F nf (Slaughterhouse Five) and the Allied POWs used that name for their prison.
Vonnegut said the result of the attack was complete destruction and death that nobody could understand.
This experience gave him ideas for his famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five.
His experience of death and destruction is a central theme in at least six of his other books.
In Slaughterhouse-Five he described the city as looking like the surface of the moon after the bombing.
He told about how the Germans making the prisoners work.
They had to break into basements and bomb shelters to gather bodies.
They had to bury these dead people all together in large holes while German people threw rocks at them and shouted curses.
Vonnegut said later, "There were too many corpses to bury.
So instead the Germans sent in troops with flamethrowers.
All these civilians ' remains were burned to ashes."
Vonnegut was freed by Red Army troops in May 1945 at the Saxony-Czechoslovakian border.
The U. S. Army gave him a Purple Heart.
But he said it was funny because he was not hurt badly at all.
He wrote in Timequake that he was given the award for getting "frostbite".
After the war, Vonnegut became an anthropology graduate student at the University of Chicago.
He also worked at the City News Bureau of Chicago.
Vonnegut admitted that he was a not a good student.
One professors said that some of the students were going to be professional anthropologists but he was not one of them.
In the book Bagombo Snuff Box, Vonnegut wrote that the university rejected his first thesis.
It was about Cubist painters and the leaders of Native American uprisings.
The university said it was "unprofessional."
He moved from Chicago to Schenectady, New York.
He worked in public relations for General Electric.
His brother Bernard worked in the research department at the same company.
While in Schenectady, Vonnegut lived in a tiny village called Alplaus.
Vonnegut rented an upstairs apartment across the street from the Alplaus Volunteer Fire Department.
He was an active Volunteer Fire-Fighter for a few years.
That apartment still has his desk in it.
He wrote many of his short stories at that desk carved his name into the bottom of it.
The University of Chicago later accepted his novel Cat 's Cradle as his thesis because they said the story was anthropological.
They gave him an M.A. degree in 1971.
In the mid 1950s, Vonnegut worked for Sports Illustrated magazine for a very short time.
He was asked to write about a racehorse that had jumped a fence and tried to run away.
Vonnegut stared at the blank piece of paper on his typewriter all morning.
Then, he typed, "The horse jumped over the fucking fence," and left.
He was almost going to quit writing, but the University of Iowa Writers ' Workshop asked him to teach.
While he was there, Cat 's Cradle became a best-seller, and he began Slaughterhouse-Five.
That book is now called one of the best American novels of the 20th century.
It is on the 100 best lists of Time magazine and the Modern Library.
In 1961, he published the famous short story Harrison Bergeron.
Vonnegut moved to Barnstable, Massachusetts, a town on Cape Cod.
He was the manager of the first Saab dealership in the U.S.
After coming home from World War II, Kurt Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox.
They had loved each other since they were very young.
He wrote about their early relationship in several of his short stories.
The couple separated in 1970.
He did not divorce Cox until 1979, but from 1970 Vonnegut lived with another woman, the photographer Jill Krementz.
She became his second wife after Vonnegut divorced Cox.
He raised seven children.
Three were from his first marriage to Cox.
He adopted one daughter named Lily with Krementz.
Three were his sister Alice 's children.
Vonnegut adopted them after she died of cancer.
Of Vonnegut 's four adopted children, three are his nephews: James, Steven, and Kurt Adams.
Vonnegut adopted them after a terrible week in 1958.
During that week the children 's father James Carmalt Adams was killed in a train crash and their mother died two days later.
In his novel Slapstick, Vonnegut told how Alice 's husband had died two days before she did.
Her family tried to keep her husband 's death a secret.
However, she found out when another patient gave her a newspaper one day before she died.
The three boys had a younger brother named Peter Nice.
He was a baby when their parents died.
Peter went to live with their father 's cousin in Birmingham, Alabama.
On January 31, 2001, a fire destroyed the top story of Vonnegut 's home.
He had smoke inhalation and was in the hospital in critical condition for four days.
He survived, but his personal papers were destroyed.
Vonnegut smoked unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes.
He called this habit a "classy way to commit suicide".
Vonnegut fell down at his home in Manhattan and injured his brain.
He died on April 11, 2007.
The k an; are groupings of related questions and answers which are a paradox.
The k an may be a story which can not be understood or explained easily.
The k an can be a special kind of metaphor with a hidden meaning, such as "the sound of one hand clapping".
K ans originate in the sayings and events in the lives of wise men and legendary figures.
A k an can refer to a story selected from Buddhist historical records and sutras.
The k an is a fundamental part of the history and practice of Zen Buddhism.
Karma (car-ma) is a word meaning the result of a person 's actions as well as the actions themselves.
It is a term about the cycle of cause and effect.
According to the theory of Karma, what happens to a person, happens because they caused it with their actions.
It is an important part of many religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.
Karma is about all that a person has done, is doing and will do.
Karma is not about punishment or reward.
It makes a person responsible for their own life, and how they treat other people.
The "Theory of Karma" is a major belief in Hinduism, Ayyavazhi, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
All living creatures are responsible for their karma - their actions and the effects of their actions.
Karma is the universal principle of cause and effect.
Our actions, both good and bad, come back to us in the future, helping us to learn from life s lessons and become better people.
In religions that include reincarnation, karma extends through one 's present life and all past and future lives as well.
Karma is basically energy.
One person throws out energy through thoughts, words and actions, and it comes back, in time, through other people.
Karma is the best teacher, forcing people to face the consequences of their actions and thus improve and refine their behavior, or suffer if they do not.
Even harsh karma, when faced in wisdom, can be the greatest spark for spiritual growth.
The conquest of karma lies in intelligent action and unemotional response.
The process of action and reaction on all levels physical, mental and spiritual is karma.
One must pay attention to thoughts, because thought can make karmas good, bad and mixed.
I say kind words to you, and you feel peaceful and happy.
I say harsh words to you, and you become ruffled and upset.
The kindness and the harshness will return to me, through others, at a later time.
Finally, what I give is what I get back.
An architect thinks creative, productive thoughts while drawing plans for a new building.
But were he to think destructive, unproductive thoughts, he would soon not be able to accomplish any kind of positive task even if he desired to do so.
Hindus look at time as a circle, as things cycle around again.
Karma is a very just law which, like gravity, treats everyone the same.
The law of karma puts man at the center of responsibility for everything he does and everything that is done to him.
Understanding the way karma works, Hindus try to live a virtuous life.
This is called dharma.
Karma is considered one of the natural laws of the mind, just as gravity is a law of matter.
Just as God created gravity to bring order to the physical world, He created karma as a divine system of justice that is self-governing and infinitely fair.
It automatically creates the appropriate future experience in response to the current action.
Several different views exist in Hinduism regarding the role of divine beings.
In Hinduism, many see the deities or devas as playing some kind of role.
Other Hindus, such as the Mimamsakas, reject such notions and see karma as acting independently, considering the natural laws of causation sufficient to explain the effects of karma.
Some interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita suggest an intermediate view, that karma is a law of cause and effect yet God can mitigate karma for His devotees.
It is said in Bhagavad Gita that only the karma that is done with a sense of doership and with attachment to the karma could cause good or bad reactions.
Karma that is done with an attitude of duty and without attachment to the results will not create any effect and will move one closer to God.
Another view holds that a Satguru, acting on God 's behalf, can mitigate or work out some of the karma of the disciple.
The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici), commonly known as the Knights Templar or the Order of the Temple (French: Ordre du Temple or Templiers), were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders.
The organization lasted for two centuries in the Middle Ages.
It was founded after the First Crusade of 1096, with its original purpose to ensure the safety of the many Christians who made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem after it was taken over.
It was officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church around 1129, and became a favored charity by many Christians and grew fast in membership and power.
Templar knights wore white mantles quartered by a red cross and were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades.
Those members of the Order that did not fight managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, innovating financial techniques that were an early form of banking, and building many fortifications throughout the Mediterranean and the Holy Land.
The Templars ' success was tied closely to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the Order faded.
Rumors about the Templars ' secret initiation ceremony created mistrust, and King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Order, began pressuring Pope Clement V to take action against the Order.
In 1307, many of the Order 's members in France were arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake.
In 1312, Pope Clement, under continuing pressure from King Philip, disbanded the Order.
Kimonos (-RRB- are traditional Japanese style clothes.
"Kimono" meant "something you wear" originally.
Long ago, people in Japan wore kimonos every day.
Now, people only wear a kimono for special occasions such as formal ceremonies.
A kimono is a robe shaped like a "T".
Normal kimonos reaches to the ankles, and have very long sleeves.
Kimonos for women usually have a colorful design of flowers, butterflies, etc..
People wear a wide belt called an obi with their kimono.
Obi are also colorful.
Women 's kimonos are all the same size.
They fold them and tuck them to make them the right size.
People who are very tall or heavy have to have kimonos made for them.
There are different types of formal and casual kimono.
Kimonos are usually made of silk, but there are cotton and polyester kimonos as well.
Kimonos are very expensive.
One woman 's kimono can cost more than US$ 10,000.
The obi (belts) are very expensive too.
They can cost thousands of dollars.
Most people 's kimonos are not so expensive.
Some people make their own kimono, or buy them second hand.
Japanese people have been wearing kimonos for hundreds of years.
Today, kimonos are worn only at special times.
More women wear kimonos than men.
Men wear kimonos most often at weddings and Japanese tea ceremonies.
Men 's kimonos are made of haori (top) and hakama (loose-fitting pants).
People who play some sports like kendo also wear kimono.
They are tough, thick and short, not like typical women 's kimono.
They are usually called do-gi.
In Japan people can take classes about wearing kimonos and learn about how to choose kimonos and how to tie the obi.
Most Japanese women do not know how to put on a kimono by themselves because it is very difficult.
Some people work as "kimono dressers".
They help people to put on their kimono.
Some people still wear kimonos every day in Japan.
Kingston upon Thames is the center of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames in southwest London.
Its postcodes are KT1 and KT2.
About 45,000 people live in Kingston.
Karnataka is a state in the Republic of India.
It has an area of 74,122 m. It is bigger than Syria but smaller than Senegal.
In traditional Indian geography it falls under the South Indian zone.
Bangalore, also spelt Bengaluru is the capital city of Karnataka.
It is also declared as the IT capital of India.
Mysore, Mangalore, and Hubli-Dharwad are the other big cities in Karnataka.
Places to see in Karnataka are Bangalore, Mysore, Hampi, Bijapur, Belur\/Halebid, Shimoga and Shravanabelagola.
Most people in Karnataka speak Kannada language.
Kannada is declared as one of the official languages of India.
It has won the most number of Gnanpith Awards - 8 awards, which is the greatest record (As per Jan 7, 2013).
It is awarded for poets who have contributed their works related to literature.
Karnataka is bordered by the Arabian Sea in the west, Goa in the northwest, Maharashtra in the north, Andhra Pradesh in the east, Tamil Nadu in the south and Kerala in the southwest.
Topographically, Karnataka consists of the Arabian Sea Coast, Western Ghats, Deccan Plateau, and Eastern Ghats.
Karnataka 's history dates back to the 3rd century BC.
The succession of able administrators from the Hoysalas, Chalukyas and the mighty Vijayanagara rulers, to the arrival of the Mughals in the 17th century and the British in the 18th century have contributed to the mix of culture and heritage that is as rich as it is ancient.
If you visit Karnataka, do n't ever forget to see the Lalbhag Botanical Garden, Bangalore, Belur, Halebid, Badami, Shimoga and Jog waterfalls.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is an airline that is a part of Air France-KLM.
It is based in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
It has flights that stay in Netherlands and other flights that go world-wide.
KLM goes to 90 different places and its main airport or hub is Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.
Before KLM combined with Air France, KLM was the main airline of the Netherlands.
KLM is the world 's oldest airline with its original name.
In September 2014, KLM had around 32,000 people working for it.
The Kansas City Royals are a Major League Baseball team based in Kansas City, Missouri.
They began play in 1969.
The Royals won a World Series title in 1985.
From 1973 to the present, the Royals have played in Kauffman Stadium.
They are owned by David Glass, managed by Ned Yost, and their General Manager is Dayton Moore.
The old minor league baseball team in Kansas City had been called the Blues.
There was also a famous Negro league baseball team called the Kansas City Monarchs.
The Royals name and their team color blue are at least partly in honor of those older teams.
The Kansas City Royals Won 2015 World Series By The New York Mets 4-1
The Klingon language is a language that was made for the Klingons in the Star Trek universe.
It is a made-up language.
This means that there is no country that uses the language.
Only a few people can speak the Klingon language well enough to talk in it.
The Klingon Language Institute helps people learn Klingon.
The first Klingon words were made by the actor James Doohan in 1979 for the first Star Trek movie.
When they made the third movie in 1984, Gene Roddenberry wanted to have a real language for the Klingons.
So it was the linguist (a language scientist) Marc Okrand who made the Klingon language.
He has written some books about the Klingon language.
The Klingon language feels like talking backwards.
Marc Okrand wanted the language to be as complicated as possible.
He did this to make it sound very extraterrestrial.
The word order in a sentence is always object-verb-subject.
So the English sentence "I see the cat" is said as "the cat see I" in Klingon.
When writing in Klingon, some letters are always in uppercase and some are lowercase.
This never changes because the letters are spoken differently when they are written differently.
This is the Klingon alphabet:
Kylie Ann Minogue (born 28 May 1968) is an Australian singer, songwriter and actress.
She became popular in the late 1980s, because of her role in the Australian television soap opera Neighbours, before becoming a dance-pop singer.
Minogue was born in Melbourne to a Welsh immigrant mother and Irish-Australian father.
Her sister Dannii Minogue is also a singer and actress, and her brother Brendan works as a cameraman.
She was signed to a contract by British songwriters and producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman, she got hit records throughout the world.
Her popularity began to decline by the early 1990s and she left Stock, Aitken & Waterman in 1992.
For years she tried to become an independent performer and songwriter.
Her projects were widely talked about, but her albums resulted in the lowest sales of her career.
In 2000, Minogue became popular again as a dance-pop singer and became well known for her sexual music videos and elaborate concerts.
She has one of the longest and most successful careers in pop music, and she has become one of the most recognisable celebrities and sex symbols.
In Australia, she holds the record for the highest concert ticket sales for a woman, and has had nine singles at number one on the ARIA Singles Chart.
On 17 May 2005, Minogue was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She was on tour at the time, and the rest of it had to be canceled.
Minogue had surgery for it on 21 May 2005 at a hospital in Malvern, Victoria, and started chemotherapy soon afterwards.
She finished her chemotherapy treatment in January 2006, but still needed six more weeks of radiotherapy to stop any new cancerous tumors from growing.
Minogue was in a relationship with Andres Velencoso from 2008 until 2013.
Minogue began a relationship with Joshua Sasse in 2015.
The couple became engaged in February 2016.
A knight was a professional heavy cavalry soldier in the Middle Ages.
They were the top soldiers to the kingdom, and protected it at all costs.
Knights worked for lords, who in exchange would give them land if the knight would fight for them.
Knights thought honor was very important, and they had a code of honor called chivalry.
They always had a coat of arms, also called a crest.
Knights of the Commonwealth Realms today are named by the Sovereign One of the British orders of knighthood is known as the Order of the British Empire.
These knights today are called ` Sir ' and then their first name.
Many members of nobility are descended from knights.
For example: Wijerd Jelckama descended from a knight who died at the siege of Antioch (1199).
Knights were first used in the 4th century in the late Roman armies.
The era of the knights ended in the 16th century as national armies replaced feudal armies.
Many knights were recruited as officers in the new armies.
Today 's officer corps in all Western armies are direct descendants of knights.
The Kara Sea (Russian:) is part of the Arctic Ocean.
It lies north of Siberia.
The Kara Sea is separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya.
It is roughly 1,450 kilometres long and 970 kilometres wide.
It has an area of around 880,000 km and a average depth of 110 m.
The Kara receives a large amount of fresh water from the Ob, Yenisei, Pyasina, and Taimyra rivers, so its salinity is very variable.
Its main ports are Novy Port and Dikson and it is important as a fishing ground although the sea is ice-bound for all but two months of the year.
Significant discoveries of petroleum and natural gas, an extension of the West Siberian Oil Basin, have been made but have not yet been developed.
There is concern about the levels of nuclear waste the former Soviet Union dumped in the sea which included six nuclear submarine reactors and ten nuclear reactors, and the effect this will have on the marine environment.
An International Atomic Energy Agency appraisal showed that releases are low and localized.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. on April 16, 1947) is an American former professional basketball player and current assistant coach.
He was known as Lew Alcindor before changing his name in the fall of 1971, several years after converting to Islam.
He is considered one of the greatest players of all time.
He has also had numerous television and movie appearances.
Alcindor was born in NYC.
He attended Power Memorial High School in New York.
While there, the school went 78-2 and won three city championships.
Alcindor went to college at UCLA.
When he played on the freshman team, it beat the UCLA varsity team that had won two national championships.
When he played on the varsity team, it won three national championships.
The Bruins were 80-2 when Alcindor.
When Alcindor was at UCLA, the NCAA did not allow the dunk, so he developed a hook shot called the skyhook.
Alcindor also got a degree in history.
Alcindor was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks in the 1969 NBA Draft.
He lead the league in scoring twice with the Bucks.
He also won three MVP awards with them.
In 1975, Abdul-Jabbar was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.
He won three more MVP awards with them, as well as five championships.
Abdul-Jabbar played in the NBA until 1989.
When he left, he had scored 38,387 points, which is more than any other player has.
He was also one of the ten most accurate players, and blocked the third-most shots.
Abdul-Jabbar was placed in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1995.
Abdul-Jabbar studied martial arts with Bruce Lee, and appears in the Lee movie Game of Death.
He is also in the movie Airplane!.
Abdul-Jabbar has written several books.
Some of them are about basketball, but he has also written a book about the Harlem Renaissance.
His book was later made into a documentary movie.
Abdul-Jabbar has also been an assistant coach for several NBA teams.
Usually, he has helped tall players play better.
Abdul-Jabbar has had leukemia from 2009.
Kuomintang (KMT;; English: Chinese Nationalist Party) is the main political party in Republic of China (Taiwan).
It was ruling in Mainland China until 1949 when Communists captured the mainland and the KMT moved to Taiwan.
It was founded by Song Jiaoren and Sun Yat-sen.
Chiang Kai-shek later led for decades.
Kabbalah (also Cabala or Qabb l) is a Jewish mysticism of the Torah.
The kabbalah started in the 1st-century by Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai.
It continued in the 13th century in Spain by Rabbi Moses de Le n. It tries to explain how something beyond thought and imagining can still be seen and felt.
The kabbalah has a great influence on the Jewish spiritual life.
It is based on the various spiritual movements.
The kabbalah is based on the tree of the 10 Sephirot called the "Tree of Life".
In the tree are presented the 10 powers that affect each domain in the world.
Karl Friedrich Benz (November 25, 1844 April 4, 1929) was a German engine designer and car engineer, generally regarded as the inventor of the petrol-powered automobile, and together with Bertha Benz pioneering founder of the automobile manufacturer Mercedes-Benz.
Kenny Dalglish (born 4 March 1951) is a former Scottish football player.
He has played for Scotland national team.
Kabaddi (sometimes Kabbadi or Kabadi) is a team sport from South Asia.
Two teams are on opposite halves of a small field.
They take turns sending a "raider" into the other half.
This is to win points by tackling members of the opposing team.
Then the raider tries to return to his own half.
He holds his breath and chants the word "Kabaddi" during the whole raid.
The raider must not cross the lobby unless he touches any of his opponents.
If he does not touch anyone then he will be "out".
There is also a bonus line.
If the raider touches it and returns to his side of the field, he will get extra points.
In the international team version of kabaddi there are two teams of seven members.
Each are on opposite halves of a field of 10 m 13 m in case of men and 8 m 12 m in case of women.
Each has three extra players held in reserve.
The game is played with 20-minute halves.
There is a five-minute half-time break when the teams change sides.
Teams take turns sending a "raider" to the opposite team 's half.
The goal is to tag or wrestle ("confine") members of the opposite team.
Tagged members are "out" and temporarily sent off the field.
The goal of the defenders is to stop the raider from returning to the home side before taking a breath.
If any of the seven players cross the lobby without touching the raider he will be declared as "out".
Each time when a player is "out", the opposing team earns a point.
A team scores a bonus of two points, called a "lona", if the entire opposing team is declared "out".
At the end of the game, the team with the most points wins.
Matches are based on age and weight.
Six officials supervise a match: one referee, two umpires, a scorer and two assistant scorers.
; Men 's World Cup 2004 The Kabaddi World Cup was first played in 2004.
It was played again in 2007 and 2010.
So far India is the unbeaten champion in Kabaddi World Cup.
Iran is the next most successful nation being twice runner-up.
Pakistan was the runner-up in 2010.
; Women 's World Cup The Women 's Kabaddi World Cup was first played in 2012 in Patna, Bihar, India.
India won the championship defeating Iran in the finals.
Kaolinite or Kaolin is a clay mineral.
It is in a group with the chemical composition Al2Si2O5 (OH) 4.
It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedral sheet of alumina.
Rocks that are rich in kaolinite are known as kaolin or china clay.
The name is after Kao-Ling, a village near Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, China.
The name entered English in 1727 from the French kaolin, used in a Jesuit priest 's reports from Jingdezhen.
In Africa, kaolin is sometimes known as kalaba or calaba.
Kaolinite is a soft, earthy, usually white mineral (dioctahedral phyllosilicate clay).
It is produced by the chemical weathering of aluminium silicate minerals like feldspar.
In many parts of the world, it is colored pink-orange-red by iron oxide, giving it a distinct rust hue.
Lighter concentrations yield white, yellow or light orange colors.
Alternating layers are sometimes found, as at Providence Canyon State Park in Georgia, United States.
Commercial grades of kaolin are supplied and transported as dry powder, semi-dry noodle or as liquid slurry.
Kerberos (pronounced \/ k rb r s \/ "kur-ber-uhs") is a computer network authentication protocol, which allows people communicating over a non-secure network to prove their identity to one another in a secure manner.
It is also a suite of free software published by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that implements this protocol.
Its designers aimed primarily at a client-server model, and it provides mutual authentication both the user and the server verify each other 's identity.
Kerberos protocol messages are protected against spying and replay attacks.
Kerberos performs authentication as a trusted third party authentication service by using cryptographic shared secret under the assumption that packets traveling along the insecure network can be read, modified, and inserted.
Kerberos builds on symmetric-key cryptography and requires a key distribution center.
Extensions to Kerberos can provide for the use of public-key cryptography during certain phases of authentication.
MIT developed Kerberos to protect network services provided by Project Athena.
The protocol was named after the Greek mythological character Kerberos (or Cerberus), known in Greek mythology as being the monstrous three-headed guard dog of Hades.
Several versions of the protocol exist; versions 1 3 used only internally at MIT.
Steve Miller and Clifford Neuman, the primary designers of Kerberos version 4 (which used the DES encryption algorithm with 56-bit keys), published that version in 1989, although they had targeted it primarily for Project Athena.
Version 5, designed by John Kohl and Clifford Neuman, appeared as RFC 1510 in 1993 (made obsolete by RFC 4120 in 2005), with the intention of overcoming the limitations and security problems of Version 4.
The MIT makes an implementation of Kerberos Version 5 freely available, under a software license similar to that used by BSD license.
In 2005, the IETF Kerberos working group introduced a new updated specifications for Kerberos Version 5.
updates include:
In 2007, MIT formed the Kerberos Consortium for continuation of development.
Kerberos uses as its basis the Needham-Schroeder protocol.
It makes use of a trusted third party authentication known as "key distribution center (KDC)", which consists of two logically separate parts: an Authentication Server (AS) and a Ticket Granting Server (TGS).
Kerberos works on the basis of "tickets" (called Kerberos tickets) which serve to prove the identity of users.
Kerberos database: The key distribution center (KDC) maintains a database of secret keys; each entity on the network whether a client or a server shares a secret key known only to itself and to the KDC.
Knowledge of this key serves to prove the identity of each entity.
For communication between two entities, the KDC generates a session key which they can use to secure their communications.
The term "Kerberos server" generally refers to the KDC.
For reliability purposes, it is possible to have backup KDCs.
These are referred to as "Kerberos slave servers".
All slaves synchronize their databases from the master Kerberos server.
The term "Kerberized application server" generally refers to Kerberized programs that clients communicate with using Kerberos tickets for authentication.
For example, the Kerberos telnet server is an example of a Kerberized application server.
While the term The term "Kerberized applications" is used to referrer to the client side of Kerberized application server, For example, the Kerberos telnet client is an example of a Kerberized applications
Briefly, the client authenticates to AS using a long-term shared secret and receives a ticket from the AS.
Later the client can use this ticket to get additional tickets for SS using the same shared secret.
These tickets can be used to prove authentication to SS.
Ketamine is an anesthetic, which is a type of drug a doctor might give to put someone to sleep for an operation.
Ketamine can also be used as a painkiller and a bronchodilator (which makes it easier for air to get into your lungs).
Sometimes it can lead to a special type of hallucination which makes you feel detached from yourself and the things around you which is why some people use it as a recreational drug.
As it can have severe side effects, it is usually not available as an over-the-counter drug.
In medicine ketamine is normally injected into a vein or muscle.
Ketamine is not the first anesthetic a doctor would think of using in most situations because of the hallucinations it causes.
On the other hand while most anaesthetics suppress your breathing, resulting in the need for a machine to help you breathe, ketamine does not.
This can make it a useful anesthetic when you do n't have any equipment available, for example, in a war zone.
In the medical setting ketamine is only given a few times so most long term effects mentioned below are found in recreational ketamine users and animal models.
There are 110 reports of people with problems in their urinary tract due to using ketamine.
These urinary tract problems are most common in people who have abused ketamine daily for a long time.
People who abuse ketamine a lot (more than 4 times a week) have been found to have impaired memory and increased depression when compared to people who do n't abuse ketamine.
Those who use ketamine less frequently (1-4 times per week) and those who had stopped taking ketamine showed no difference in the aforementioned parameters.
This suggests that these problems with memory and mood do not affect infrequent users and might be reversible once ketamine use is stopped.
One study has recently been done using monkeys as a model to see if ketamine is toxic to the brain.
The study found that injecting the monkeys every day for 6 months with ketamine caused more cells to die in the front of their brain and also caused a decrease in activity in the areas of the brain which control movement.
Ketamine is a NMDA antagonist in the CNS.
By inhibiting NMDA receptors in inhibitiory neurons in the brain, it causes increased CNS activity and sympathomimetic effects.
As a result, there is not only an anesthetic effect, but also activation of the CNS unlike other anaesthetics.
This is beneficial in surgical settings because it maintains blood pressure, airway reflexes, bronchioles remain dilated and airways patent.
Making this a particularly useful drug in shock and surgery patients because of blood pressure maintained with ketamine use, unlike typical anaesthetics which cause decreased BP and respiratory suppression.
One study by Evgeny Krupitsky has found that using ketamine along with psychotherapy and group therapy was a lot more effective at treating alcohol addiction than the traditional treatment.
The same scientist found that ketamine might also be useful for treating heroin addiction.
Patients who had been treated for their addiction with multiple sessions of ketamine fared much better than those who had only had one session of ketamine with abstinence rates of 50 % and 22.2 % respectively.
Some small studies have been done which found that a single dose of ketamine was able to improve treatment resistant depression after just a few hours with the effects lasting for one week.
The rapid anti-depressant effects of ketamine may prove to be a useful alternative compared to current anti-depressants which can take several weeks to have their effects.
CRPS is a disease that causes severe pain and swelling, getting worse over time.
Some studies have been done which suggest that ketamine might be useful as a painkiller for CRPS.
The Koh-i-Noor (also spelled Koh-i-N r and Kooh - Noor) is a large, colourless diamond that was found near Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, India, possibly in the 13th century.
The name means Mountain of Light in the Persian language.
Before it was cut for jewellery, it weighed 793 c. It was was first owned by the Kakatiya dynasty.
Ownership of the stone changed several times between various ruling groups in South Asia over the next few hundred years.
The Koh-i-Noor ended up in the possession of Queen Victoria after the British conquest of the Punjab in 1849.
It is now part of the British Crown Jewels, part of the Royal Collection held in trust by Queen Elizabeth II for her successors and the UK.
In 1852, Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, unhappy with its dull and irregular appearance, ordered it cut down from 186 c. It emerged 42 per cent lighter as a dazzling oval-cut brilliant weighing 105.6 c and measuring 3.6 cm x 3.2 cm x 1.3 cm.
Since arriving in the U.K., it has only ever been worn by female members of the family, starting with Queen Victoria.
After Queen Victoria 's death, the Koh-i-Noor was set in the crown of Queen Alexandra, the wife of Edward VII.
It was used to crown her at their coronation in 1902.
The diamond was transferred to Queen Mary 's crown in 1911, and finally to the Queen Mother 's crown in 1937.
When The Queen Mother died in 2002, it was placed on top of her coffin for her state funeral.
Today, the diamond is set in the front of the crown, as part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom.
It is seen by millions of visitors to the Tower of London each year.
Kvass is a fermented beverage made from black or regular rye bread.
The color of the bread used helps to make the color of the drink.
It is a non-alcoholic drink by Russian standards.
This is because the alcohol content from fermentation is less than 1.2 %.
Overall, the alcohol content is low (0.05 % - 1.0 %).
It is often flavored with fruits or herbs such as strawberries, raisins or mint.
Kvass is also used for preparing a cold summertime soup called okroshka.
It is popular in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Estonia, and other Eastern and Central European countries, It is also popular in former Soviet states, such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where one can see many kvass vendors in the streets.
Kvass is also popular in Harbin and Xinjiang, areas within China that are influenced by Russian culture.
Kabuki is the traditional Japanese classical drama which started about 400 years ago.
It is known for its very stylized acting and the elaborate makeup worn by the actors.
The word kabuki means "singing and dancing".
It also means strange and different, to be outside what is normal.
Kabuki is not meant to look like real life.
People from around the world are now interested in Kabuki.
It was recognized by UNESCO in 2006 as an important part of Japan 's cultural history.
Kabuki theater started during the Edo period (1603 1868), but it really developed into what we now know as kabuki during the Genroku (1688 1704).
Kabuki was started by a woman, Izumo no Okuni, who performed in the dry river bed in Kyoto in 1603.
It was very popular, especially because many of the stories and dance moves were about sex.
Many of the women performers were probably prostitutes.
Women were banned from performing in Kabuki plays in 1629 because it was thought to disturb discipline.
They were replaced by beautiful young men to play the female roles, but in 1652 they were banned for the same reasons as the women.
Kabuki was allowed to continue with adult men playing all the roles, Yaro kabuki, which is the style that has became famous.
After the Genroku era, Kabuki became popular in Japanese cities, growing rapidly as proper theater due to great authors and actors.
Ningyo Jyoruri (the puppet theater) also influenced the stories, directions, content and rich style.
Ballet and theater music, such as Nagauta, Tokiwadubushi and Kiyomotobushi were also influences on the development of kabuki.
After the restoration of the emperor in 1888, kabuki was influenced by foreign culture, and it was stimulated by new theater such as rise of new drama.
In Showa period, from 1926 to 1989, performances began in other countries.
Also the Empire Theater was reconstructed, and called the National Theater.
In 1954, East Side Theater was made, and Kabuki stage relied on TV.
In 1965, Kabuki was seen as an important cultural heritage.
After World War II, the Japanese came to see that Kabuki as an important part of their culture.
Many famous actors became famous people in Japan.
Kabuki theaters are very unique.
In the Genroku era, kabuki was influenced by nou or kyougen which were the theater styles made before kabuki.
In this period there was no roof for audiences, so that if it rained, actors could not perform.
In the Edo period, all seats were covered with a roof.
Mawari-butai, a revolving stage, began in the Ky h era (1716 1735).
Scenes are built on the revolving stage and when a new scene is needed they simply rotate the stage; it makes progress of plays move quickly and easily.
Foreign theaters have copied this kabuki invention.
Other unique system is hanamichi or "flower path".
This is a walkway which crosses the auditorium at the same height as the stage.
Actors can use this walkway to enter or leave the stage.
During a play it can become many kinds of places.
For example, it can be a river, a road, a corridor and so on.
The most famous theater in Japan is the Kabuki-za.
It was built in Tokyo in 1889.
It was built as western-style theater.
The interior decorations were Japanese style but the outside was brick walls and it was a three-storied theater at first.
The interior decorations and outside changed many time.
Kabuki theaters have long histories and these were so unique.
((Image: K shir Matsumoto VII as Benkei.
jpg thumb (width in number of pixels) px right K shir Matsumoto VII (1870 1949) as Benkei)) Woman kabuki actors are rare though there was onnakabuki.
The onnakabuki is woman s kabuki.
But women performing kabuki was believed to corrupt public morals.
The shogunate prohibited the woman from performing in 1629.
And kabuki actors became only the men in 1652.
Now the men play both male and a female roles.
There are a lot of famous kabuki actors in Japan such as Danjuro Ichikawa, Ebizo Ichikawa and Koshiro Matsumoto.
Danjuro Ichikawa is especially famous kabuki actor.
He started aragoto at the age only of 14.
The aragoto is a kabuki genre dealing with a brave warrior, a fierce god, or a demon.
He also wrote kabuki plays under the name of Hyogo Mimasuya.
The name of a kabuki actor usually is passed on from one generation to the next.
Therefore the name of an actor is passes to the next generation.
Kabuki actors do not perform only kabuki but also act in TV drama and movies.
Koshiro Matsumoto often appears on TV.
Famous authors of kabuki plays include Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653 1724), Tsuruya Nanmboku (1755 1829), and Kawatake Mokuami (1816 1893).
Kabuki plays can be put into three main groups Jidaimono, Sewamono and Shosagoto.
The Jidaimono are plays which show the world of samurais or court nobles before the Edo period.
The government banned performances that showed the history of the Edo period.
Sewamono are plays about the lives of the town people in the Edo period.
Shosagoto are plays that feature dance.
Gidayu kyogen or Maruhonmono are kabuki plays that were first written as puppet plays.
They were turned into kabuki plays when they became famous.
Shin kabuki are plays which were written by writers who did not normally write kabuki plays.
Kabuki makeup helps audiences understand each character 's role.
It is special and emphasizes beauty of form.
If an actor plays the role of a daughter or a man in love, he must apply makeup.
First, he rubs grease, which is made of canola oil and perfume, into his face.
Second, he paints out eyebrow with grease.
Third, he rubs face powder on chest, neck, long hair and spreads powder with sponge.
Next, he rubs face powder on face with sponge.
Also, he puts rouge on nose, eyes cheek and the outer corner of the eye.
He paints his eyebrow from red to black and he rubs lip with red lip stick and traces the outline clearly.
If the actor is playing a brave man, called Aragoto, he paints on rouge with red and black lines, Kumadori, to show brave feelings.
Kumadori is a type of kabuki 's make up.
It was started in 1673 by Danjyurou Ichikawa.
It shows the character 's role, for example, Sujiguma is one of the kamadori showing a super hero.
Modern Japanese has a lot of words that came from kabuki words.
For example, there are three famous words; the first is an ohako.
Ohako means skillful things.
Japanese often say the ohako is own good tune with karaoke.
The ohako is derived word from Danjuro Ichikawa.
He kept the kabuki plays of his good kabuki in a box.
The ohako originated in there.
The second is a nimaime.
The nimaime means a good-looking man.
The nimaime was written secondarily from the right in the signboard of the kabuki.
Therefore it came to be said so.
The third is a sanmaime.
The sanmaime means a comedian.
The origin of this word is the same as nimaime, sanmaime was written third from the right in the signboard of the kabuki.
Now Kabuki actors often perform for foreign audiences.
The group Heisei Nakamuraza directed by Nakamura Kanzaburou have become famous for their performances in foreign countries.
They were the first traditional style kabuki group to perform in New York City in 2004, with actor Nakamura Kankuro V. Using a tent as a playhouse near opera house, with the audience seated on tatami (Japanese mats), they performed "The Summer Festival: A Mirror of Osaka" with Japanese actors.
In July 2008, Heisei Nakamuraza again performed in New York and they played in English.
It was a historical and splendid achievement.
In Australia, the Za Kabuki group at the Australian National University has been performing a kabuki drama each year since 1976; the single longest regular kabuki performance outside of Japan.
Kent State University is a public university in Kent, Ohio.
The university has about 41,365 students.
It was founded in 1910.
The current president of the university is Lester Lefton.
The athletics teams of the university are called the Golden Flashes.
They have 17 varsity teams and they compete in the Mid-American Conference.
Joke-Teller: "Knock-knock!"
Joke-Hearer: "Who 's there?"
Hearer: "Police who?"
Teller: "Po-lice (please) stop telling these awful knock-knock jokes!"
Keith John Moon (23 August 1946 7 September 1978) was an English drummer best known as being a member of the rock band The Who.
He was famous for his frantic drumming style, his destructive, volatile behavior and his heavy drinking that help earn him the nickname "Moon the Loon."
Keith Moon joined The Who in 1964.
He played on all the band 's albums and singles from their debut, 1965 to 1978.
Who Are You was his last album with The Who.
It was released two weeks before his death.
He died of an accidental drug overdose in Mayfair, London.
Twelve years after his death, in 1990, Keith Moon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Who.
Kerosene or paraffin oil is a colourless flammable liquid, usually used for fuel.
Kerosene is made from petroleum.
It may be used as fuel for lamps, in some kinds of cooking stoves, and in heaters.
Kerosene is also used in the fuel for jet engines.
The most common use for kerosene in Canada and the US is lighting camp lamps.
Kerosene is used as cooking fuel in India.
Kwashiorkor is a type of protein energy malnutrition.
If a child uses up energy from carbohydrates and lipids, their body may begin to use protein for energy.
The body breaks down protein into energy that can be used.
They then do not have enough protein for other functions in their bodies.
Children from aged 1-4 years usually get this but rarely adults and older children get it.
It is common in poor places in Africa.
Symptoms include having a pot belly, swollen face, and hair that is dark then light then dark.
This can be cured by having a protein rich diet.
In the Hindu religion, there is a strong spirit energy called Kundalini.
It lives in all people but nearly always sleeps, curled like a snake near the bottom of their spine, in the first chakra.
If it ever wakes up, it climbs the spine and the other chakras, and the whole body and mind of the person fill with energy and understanding.
This feels so special that people can not find words to say what it is like.
Some people try to wake kundalini up by meditation or yoga.
A person with awake kundalini can help, by sending energy to them.
This is called shaktipat.
Kundalini is a Hindu name, but ideas that are nearly the same come from all around the world.
Some of these are the Taoist ` greater kan and li ', Egyptian ` sekhem ', Hebrew ` shekinah ', Christian ` Pentecostal fire ', Kaballist ` secret fire ' and Kalahari ` num '.
The family Tettigoniidae, known in American English as katydids and in British English as bush-crickets, contains more than 6,400 species.
It is part of the suborder Ensifera.
They are also known as long-horned grasshoppers, though they are more closely related to crickets than to grasshoppers.
Their antennae may be longer than their own body length, those of the grasshoppers are always relatively short.
Katydids may disguise themselves brilliantly.
Some look exactly like dead brown leaves, complete with holes, lying still on the forest floor of the rainforests of Asia and South America.
Others act like green, living leaves fluttering from a branch.
They even have vein-like markings like real leaves.
A knot is a fixed looping of a piece of string or rope.
Knots are often used for binding things together.
While a knot is often made from rope, it can also be made from many other things.
In fact, a knot is actually the condition a long flexible object is in.
For example, hair can be tied in a knot.
The ends of balloons are tied in a knot to prevent the air from escaping.
The average person over 5 or so years of age is likely capable of tying a knot; most of these knots people tie are probably with their shoelaces.
Ribbons are also tied in a knot so as to appear pretty, as when wrapped around a gift.
In addition, knots are also made by sailors in many different forms and for many different purposes.
There are even people who have adopted knot-making as a hobby.
Killer whales, or Orcas (Orcinus orca) are cetaceans.
They are the largest dolphins in the world, called ` whales ' because of their size.
Orcas have mostly black skin with white patches.
They are found in all the world 's oceans, from the cold of the Arctic to the tropical seas.
They are really easy to identify because of their distinctive white and black coloring.
Like all toothed whales, they are carnivores.
They hunt in family groups called ` pods '.
Packs of fifty or more, all working together, surround and chase sharks, seals, dolphins, penguins, other whales.
Killer whales are the largest extant members of the dolphin family.
Males typically range from 6 to 8 metres long and weigh in excess of 6 tonnes.
Females are smaller, generally ranging from 5 to 7m and weighing about 3 to 4 t. The largest male killer whale on record was 9.8 metres, weighing over 10 tonnes, while the largest female was 8.5 m, weighing 7.5 t. Calves at birth weigh about 180 k and are about 2.4 m long.
The killer whale 's large size and strength make it among the fastest marine mammals, able to reach speeds in excess of 30 k.
Killer whales have the second-heaviest brains among marine mammals.
They can be trained in captivity and are often described as intelligent, although defining and measuring "intelligence" is difficult in a species whose life is very different from ours.
Killer whales imitate others, and seem to deliberately teach skills to their young.
This is most strikingly seen when killer whales deliberately beach themselves to catch seals.
Off Pen nsula Vald s, adults sometimes pull seals off the shoreline and then release them again near juvenile whales, allowing the younger whales to practice the difficult capture technique on the now-weakened prey.
Off the Crozet Islands, mothers push their calves onto the beach, waiting to pull the youngster back if needed.
People who have interacted closely with killer whales offer numerous anecdotes demonstrating the whales ' curiosity, playfulness, and ability to solve problems.
For example, Alaskan killer whales have not only learned how to steal fish from longlines, but have overcome a variety of techniques designed to stop them, such as the use of unbaited lines as decoys.
Once, fishermen placed their boats several miles apart, taking turns retrieving small amounts of their catch, in the hope that the whales would not have enough time to move between boats to steal fish as it was being retrieved.
A researcher described what happened next:
"It worked really well for a while.
Then the whales split into two groups.
It did n't even take them an hour to figure it out.
They were so thrilled when they figured out what was going on, that we were playing games.
They were breaching by the boats".
In other anecdotes, researchers describe incidents in which wild killer whales playfully tease humans by repeatedly moving objects that the humans are trying to reach, or suddenly start to toss around a chunk of ice after a human throws a snowball.
The killer whale 's use of dialects and the passing of other learned behaviors from generation to generation have been described as a form of culture.
"The complex and stable vocal and behavioural cultures of sympatric groups of killer whales (Orcinus orca) appear to have no parallel outside humans and represent an independent evolution of cultural faculties".
The dorsal fin of the orca can extend up to six feet above its body.
That 's taller than most grown men.
And because a killer whale swims close to the surface, the dorsal fin can often be seen gliding through the surface of the water.
This causes some people to mistake killer whale for sharks.
In captivity, dorsal fins often collapse for many reasons, but in the wild, dorsal fin collapse happens in less than one percent of wild orcas.
Female killer whales are often tamed and can be trained to do tricks for audiences in marine shows, like in Sea World.
Sometimes, killer whales have even starred in movies, such as the movie titled Free Willy.
Orcas can be dangerous, and have been known to kill their attendants on rare occasions.
Some marine parks now require trainers to stay outside the pool when they work with orcas.
Unlike wild killer whales, captive killer whales are reported to have made nearly two dozen attacks on humans since the 1970s, some of which have been fatal.
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 1912 11 May 1988) was a British intelligence officer who worked as a spy for the Soviet Union, before defecting in 1963.
Of the five spies in the Cambridge Five spy ring, Philby was believed to have been the most successful at passing information to the Soviet Union.
Karst is a geological system of rocks where water has eroded (dissolved) the bedrock.
If it is very extensive, karst can be a geographical or topographical feature.
It is classed as a badland if it difficult to travel through the environment, which it often is.
Almost always, karst is formed in carbonate rocks, such as limestone or dolomite.
Since carbonate sedimentary rocks are very common, karst areas occur all over the world.
Many karst regions display distinctive surface features, with sinkholes being the most common.
However, karst surface features may be absent where the soluble rock is mantled (covered), such as by a non-soluble rock strata on top of the carbonate strata.
Some karst regions include thousands of caves, and the water is generally underground.
The world 's largest karst area is the Nullarbor Plain, part of the area of flat, almost treeless, dry country of southern Australia.
It is on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its north.
It is the world 's largest single exposure of limestone bedrock, and occupies an area of about 200000 k. At its widest point, it stretches about 1100 k from east to west across the border region between South Australia and Western Australia.
Many parts of the world suffer from sinkholes which form when karsts are underground.
Beneath the flat surface of the land in Florida, Guatemala City and elsewhere are vast systems of limestone.
Water running through the limestone is dissolving the limestone away, leaving huge caverns.
Without warning, huge holes appear in the surface, causing great damage.
Practically the whole of Florida is sitting on a gigantic karst system, as are several countries in Central America.
The area round Tampa is especially at risk, and there is a huge karst system under Mexico City.
According to a senior geochemist, there are as many as 15,000 sinkholes in Illinois.
The world 's deepest sinkhole is China 's Xiaozhai Tienkeng at 2172ft (662m).
The Qattara Depression in Egypt is part of the Libyan Desert.
It is roughly 50 miles (80km) by 75 miles (121km) in surface area.
It is the world 's largest natural sinkhole.
It lies below sea level and is covered with salt pans, sand dunes and salt marshes.
The Kellogg Briand Pact (also called the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War or the World Peace Act) was an agreement signed on August 27, 1928, by several countries.
Some of these countries were the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, and Germany.
It was named after its authors, Frank B. Kellogg and Aristide Briand.
The pact said that war was wrong and should be banned, but said nothing about what to do with a country that went to war anyway.
The pact was the result of a determined American effort to avoid involvement in the European alliance system.
The Kellogg-Briand Pact was registered with the League of Nations on September 4, 1928.
Kidneys are two organs in the abdomen of vertebrates that are shaped like beans.
They make urine (the yellow waste water that comes out of the urethra.)
They are part of the urinary system.
When medical professionals discuss the kidneys, they typically refer to the word renal.
For example, renal failure is when the kidneys are sick and do not work.
The prefix nephro - is also used in words to mean "kidneys".
For example, a nephrologist is a doctor who studies kidneys.
The kidney makes hormones.
The two most important ones that it makes are erythropoetin and renin.
Erythropoetin is made by the kidneys if there is less oxygen in the kidney.
Erythropoetin tells the bone marrow to make more red blood cells.
So this means there will be more oxygen carried in the blood.
Renin is made by the kidney if there is low blood pressure, low volume of blood, or too low salts in the blood.
Renin makes the blood vessels smaller and tells the adrenal gland to make aldosterone (which tells the kidneys to save salts).
It also makes a person feel thirsty.
All of this makes the blood pressure go up.
The kidney 's most important work is keeping homeostasis.
Homeostasis means that the body keeps a stable environment inside itself.
The body needs to have the consistent and proper amount of water, salt, and acid in the blood.
The kidney keeps these things constant.
If there is too much water, the kidney puts more water in the urine.
If there is not enough water, the kidney uses less water in the urine.
This is why people make less urine when they are dehydrated.
There are many types of kidney diseases.
A kidney disease makes the kidneys unable to work perfectly but they do work in part.
People can have mild kidney failure and have no symptoms.
As long as it does not become worse, people may not even know they have it.
Severe kidney failure means very bad failure.
The kidneys do not work very much at all.
People with severe kidney failure always have symptoms.
They may need special care from doctors.
If a person 's kidneys do not work properly, they are very sick.
If they have severe kidney failure, they can not live unless they have a replacement for their kidneys.
There are two ways to replace the kidneys: dialysis and transplantation.
Dialysis is when doctors use a machine and medicines to do the work of the kidneys.
There are two kinds of dialysis: hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis.
Peritoneal dialysis is when doctors put a plastic tube into the person 's abdomen.
Every day the person fills the abdomen with fluid.
The extra salts, waste, and water that the body does not need goes into the fluid.
Then the fluid comes out and takes the wastes with it.
This does part of the job that kidneys do.
Hemodialysis is when doctors take blood from a person, clean the blood with a special kind of filter, called a hemodialyser, and put it back in the person.
When the blood is cleaned; water, salts and wastes are taken out of it.
This must be done 2 4 times every week (usually 3 times.)
It takes 2 4 hours to do this each time.
Hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis are not perfect.
They do some of the work of the kidney, but it is not as good as a real kidney.
So people who need dialysis are not as healthy.
They must take medicines.
For example, in kidney failure, the kidneys do not make any erythropoetin.
Doctors have to give people erythropoetin so they make enough red blood cells.
A better way to do the kidneys ' work is to give the person another kidney.
This is called a kidney transplant.
Kidney transplants are the most common type of organ transplant.
It is the most common because we have two kidneys, but only need one kidney to live.
People who are alive can donate a kidney to another person.
Even transplanted kidneys are not the same as kidneys people were born with.
A person who gets a renal transplant must take strong medicines to stop their body from attacking the new kidney.
Sometimes, after years, the transplanted kidney stops working.
But sometimes a patient can get a new transplanted kidney after the first one stops working.
It was widely believed in Europe that the conscience was actually located in the kidneys.
This idea was taken from the Hebrew Bible.
In modern times, medical scientists have shown kidneys do not have this kind of psychological role.
Kermit the Frog is a Muppet created by Jim Henson.
Kermit was Henson 's trademark fictional character.
He was originally performed by Henson himself.
Since Henson 's death, Kermit has been performed by Steve Whitmire.
Kermit has appeared on many TV shows including Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Sam and Friends, The Ed Sullivan Show, and Muppet Babies.
Kermit has also appeared in several films and has been a guest speaker.
The kumquats or cumquats are a group of small fruit-bearing trees.
The edible fruit (which is also called kumquat) is similar to other Citrus but is smaller.
Kumquats are slow-growing, evergreen shrubs or small trees, from 2.5 4.5 m tall, with dense branches.
Sometimes they have small thorns.
The leaves are dark glossy green, and the flowers pure white, similar to citrus flowers.
Kumquats came from China (they are known in literature of the 12th century), and have long been cultivated there and in Japan.
They were introduced to Europe in 1846 by Robert Fortune, who was collector for the London Horticultural Society, and a short time later into North America.
They are much hardier than citrus plants as oranges.
The ` Nagami ' kumquat needs a hot summer, ranging from 25 C (77 F) to 38 C (100.4 F), but can withstand frost down to about -10 C (14 F).
It grows in the tea regions of China where the climate is too cold for other citrus fruits, even the Mikan (also known as the Satsuma) orange.
The English name "kumquat" derives from the Cantonese pronunciation gam1 gwat1 (given in Jyutping romanization).
The alternate name, also pronounced gam1 gwat1 in Cantonese (g n j in Mandarin, literally "large tangerine orange") is now more commonly written by Cantonese speakers.
The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 made the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.
It also allowed the states to vote on whether slavery was legal or not.
This law canceled the Missouri Compromise, which said that slavery was not legal in those areas.
A kaleidoscope is a tube with loose, small, colorful objects inside.
These objects can be beads or something similar.
The inside is made using three long mirrors.
A person looks into the kaleidoscope through one end and sees patterns created by reflections of the objects inside.
In 1815, Sir David Brewster began work that led to the invention of the kaleidoscope.
At that time, he was doing experiments on light polarization.
The kaleidoscope was not patented until two years later.
His first design was a tube with pairs of mirrors at one end, pairs of translucent disks at the other, and beads between the two.
In 1817, Brewster chose the well-known lens developer Philip Carpenter to be the only manufacturer of the kaleidoscope.
It was a big success.
Two hundred thousand kaleidoscopes were sold in London and Paris in just three months.
Brewster knew that the company could not make as many kaleidoscopes as people wanted.
On 17 May 1818, he asked Carpenter to allow them to be made by other manufacturers.
Carpenter agreed.
At first, the kaleidoscope was meant to be a scientific tool.
Later it was used as a toy.
Brewster believed he would make money from the kaleidoscope.
However, a fault in his patent application allowed others to copy it.
The common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) is a bird of prey species belonging to the kestrel group of the falcon family Falconidae.
It is also known as the ` European kestrel ', ` Eurasian kestrel ', or ` Old World kestrel '.
In Britain, where no other brown falcon occurs, it is generally just called ` the kestrel '.
The bird lives all over Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Common kestrels are 32 39 cm (13 15 in) from head to tail.
Their wings are 65 82 cm (26 32 in) when spread out.
Females are larger.
They are small compared with other birds of prey, but larger than most songbirds.
Like the other Falco species, they have long wings and a long tail.
Their feathers are mainly light brown with black spots on the top and buff with narrow blackish streaks on the underside.
When hunting, the common kestrel hovers about 10 20 m (c. 30 70 ft) above the ground.
common kestrels have very good eyesight.
They can see small prey from a distance.
Once they see the prey, the bird makes a short, steep dive.
common kestrels eat nearly only mouse-sized mammals like voles.
They also eat shrews and true mice.
Small birds are also eaten, mostly in the summer when young birds are born.
It also eats spiders and beetles when it finds them.
The Khmer Rouge (Khmer: '; French for "Red Khmer") were a Stalinist, Maoist militant group in Cambodia.
They took over the capital, Phnom Penh, on 17 April 1975.
It was led by Pol Pot, who was called Saloth Sar before the take over.
They named the country Democratic Kampuchea.
They immediately forced everyone out of the cities, effectively turning the whole country into a giant labor camp.
They were defeated by the Vietnamese in January of 1979.
During the Khmer Rouge Years, between 1.7 million and 2 million people were killed (20 30 % of the population) in a genocide comparable to the Holocaust.
The international community continued to recognize the Khmer Rouge as the government of Kampuchea for a decade after they were defeated.
Therefore the Khmer Rouge held a seat in the United Nations until 1989.
Pol Pot killed himself in 1998.
He was cremated without any ceremony.
By 1999, the Khmer Rouge disbanded.
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah (born Francis Nwia-Kofi Ngonloma, September 21, 1909 April 27, 1972) was an African political leader.
He was well known as the first Prime Minister, then President, of Ghana.
He imagined a united Africa.
On March 6, 1957, after ten years of campaigning for Ghanaian independence, Nkrumah was elected President and Ghana gained independence from British rule.
Nkrumah was born Francis Nwia-Kofi Ngonloma in Nkroful, a town in Gold Coast (the British colony that was to become Ghana) to Kofi Ngonloma, a goldsmith, and Elizabeth Nyaniba, a salesperson, who he saw as a great inspiration.
He attended Elementary School at Half Assini where his father worked as a goldsmith.
A German priest called George Fischer influenced his education.
He went to a school for teachers in Accra, then became a teacher himself.
In 1935 he went to Lincoln University in the United States.
He learned more about Communism.
His education continued at the University of Pennsylvania, from 1939 to 1943.
Next he went to London and organized an international conference for African freedom.
He also changed his name to "Kwame".
Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast and founded the Convention People 's Party.
He was elected Prime Minister.
When Ghana became independent from England, Nkrumah was its first president.
He created the flag of Ghana.
He required all children to attend school.
More women attended school and took jobs.
For electricity, Nkrumah ordered the building of a hydroelectric dam and a nuclear power plant.
Nkrumah was not friendly to the tribes in Ghana, such as the Asante.
He wanted everyone to be a member of the Convention People 's Party.
He wanted them to be loyal to Ghana and Africa but not to smaller groups.
Some people did not like Nkrumah because he opposed the tribes.
The military and police forced Nkrumah from power on February 24, 1966.
He lived for the rest of his life in Guinea.
The Osagyefo, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah authored over 20 books and publications.
(See a list of his publications) and he is a lead authority on the Political theory and Practical Pan-Africanism.
A kangaroo is an Australian marsupial.
It belongs to the genus Macropus.
The name Kangaroo is used for the four large species, but there are another 50 species of smaller macropods.
It is common in Australia and can also be found in New Guinea.
Kangaroos hop to move around quickly, and walk on four legs while moving slowly.
They can jump backwards, but only a very small distance.
They can hop or jump as far as about three times their own height.
They can also swim if necessary.
The kangaroo is a herbivore, eating mainly grass, but some species also eat shrubs.
A female Kangaroo has three vaginas.
Kangaroos are marsupials because they carry their young in a special pouch on their bodies.
Baby kangaroos are called joeys.
Kangaroos live in large groups, called mobs Each group is made up of breeding females, their young and several adult males.
One of the males is the dominant male, he is the only one that breeds with the other females in the mob.
Because it is mostly found in Australia, Australians see it as a national symbol.
The kangaroo is featured holding the Australian coat of arms.
The Australian airline, Qantas, uses the kangaroo as its emblem.
The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) also a has a kangaroo emblem.
Kangaroos can be dangerous because of their powerful legs.
They can lean back on their tails to deliver powerful kicks.
In 2009, a man went to save his dog which had chased a kangaroo into a farm dam.
The kangaroo was able to hold the dog underwater nearly drowning it.
The kangaroo gave the man several big kicks before he was able to grab his dog and escape from the dam.
He needed hospital treatment for his injuries.
The word kangaroo is an Australian Aboriginal word from the Guugu Yimidhirr people of north Queensland.
The word was recorded by Captain James Cook in August 1770.
It was the name for the gray kangaroo, Macropus robustus.
Cook 's ship, the HMS Endeavour, had been damaged on coral on the Great Barrier Reef.
It took seven weeks for the ship to be repaired on the banks of a river, now the Endeavour River, at the site of the town of Cooktown.
This gave Cook, Joseph Banks and other crew members time to explore the area and the plants and animals.
The skin and skull of a kangaroo was taken back to England to be put on show.
In James Boswell 's book "Life of Johnson" he describes Dr. Samuel Johnson in 1793 hopping around the room to explain to people how a kangaroo moved.
When Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet arrived in Sydney in 1788, they were surprised that the Aborigines did not know the word "kangaroo."
It took them a while to realize that Aborigines at Sydney spoke a different language to those from Cooktown.
There are also about 50 other smaller macropods in the macropodidae family.
There was a now-extinct family of giant kangaroos, the Sthenurinae.
They were adapted for browsing in woodland areas, rather than open grassland.
The largest (Procoptodon goliah) had an estimated body mass of 240 kg., which is almost three times the weight of the largest living kangaroos.
Probably they moved at slower speeds, since hopping was not possible.
They would have moved by striding (walking).
The family went extinct about 30,000 years ago.
Chios is the fifth largest Greek island.
Its total area is 842 Km2.
It is in the northeast of Aegean Sea, near Asia Minor coast.
The biggest town of the island is Chios city.
51,936 people lived there according to the 2001 Greek census.
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (Vienna, 7 November 1903 Vienna, 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoologist, naturalist, ornithologist and Nobel Prize winner.
He is one of the founders of studies on animal behavior (ethology).
Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in Greylag geese and jackdaws.
In his autobiographical essay, published in 1973 in Les Prix Nobel (people who win the Nobel Prize are asked to write essays about their lives), Lorenz said that his parents were the main reason he was so successful.
He also said that a book by Selma Lagerlof called The Wonderful Adventures of Nils that he read as a child was the reason he became interested in wild geese.
Lorenz began his studies in 1922 at Columbia University, but he returned to Vienna in 1923 to continue his studies at the University of Vienna until 1928.
At this university he became an assistant professor from 1928 to 1935.
In 1936, Lorenz met his great friend and colleague Niko Tinbergen.
Together they studied geese wild, domestic, and hybrid.
In 1940 Lorenz became a professor of psychology at the University of K nigsberg.
He was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1941.
He tried to become a motorcycle mechanic, but instead he was assigned as a medic.
He was a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union from 1942 to 1948.
During this time, he continued to work as a medical doctor and "got quite friendly with some Russians, mostly doctors".
When he was sent back home after the war, he was allowed to keep both the manuscript of the book he had been writing and his pet starling.
He arrived back in Altenberg "with manuscript and bird intact."
The manuscript became his book Behind the Mirror.
Lorenz shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for discoveries in individual and social behavior patterns" with two other important early ethologists, Niko Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch.
In 1969, he became the first person to receive the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.
Lorenz retired from the Max Planck Institute in 1973 but continued to research and publish from his family home, in Austria.
Konrad Lorenz died on 27 February 1989, in Altenberg.
Lorenz joined the Nazi Party in 1938 and accepted a university position under Nazi Germany.
In his application for membership to the Nazi-party NSDAP he wrote in 1938: "I 'm able to say that my whole scientific work is devoted to the ideas of the National Socialists."
When he accepted the Nobel Prize in 1973, Lorenz apologized for a 1940 publication that included Nazi views of science, saying that "many highly decent scientists hoped, like I did, for a short time (that) National Socialism (would produce good results), and many quickly turned away from it with the same horror as I (did)."
Together with Niko Tinbergen, Lorenz formed the idea of an innate releasing mechanism to explain instinctive behaviors (fixed action patterns).
Building on the ideas of William McDougall, Lorenz developed this into a "psychohydraulic" explanation of the motives (reasons) of behavior.
Another contribution is his work on imprinting.
His influence on a younger generation of ethologists, as well as his books, were important in bringing ethology to the attention of the general public.
Lorenz predicted that market economics could eventually destroy Earth 's ecosystem.
In his 1973 book, Civilized Man 's Eight Deadly Sins, Lorenz considered the following paradox: "All the advantages that man has gained from his ever-deepening understanding of the natural world that surrounds him, his technological, chemical and medical progress, all of which should (help) to (ease) human suffering... tends instead to (make) humanity 's destruction (more likely than it was before)."
"To gain a desired prey, a dog or wolf will do things (that they would normally not do, such as) run through thorn bushes, jump into cold water and expose themselves to risks which would normally frighten them.
All these inhibitory mechanisms... act as a counterweight to the effects of learning mechanisms... The organism can not allow itself to pay a price which is not worth paying".
p53
In nature, these mechanisms tend towards a ` stable state ' among the living beings of an ecology: "A closer examination shows that these beings... not only do not damage each other, but often constitute a community of interests.
It is obvious that the predator is strongly interested in the survival of that species, animal or vegetable, which constitutes its prey.
... It is not uncommon that the prey species derives specific benefits from its interaction with the predator species...".
pages 31 33
Lorenz states that humanity is the only species that is not forced to abide by these mechanisms, as humans are the only species that has the ability to change its own environment:" (The pace of human ecology) is determined by the progress of man 's technology".
Not only that, but human ecology (economy) is governed by mechanisms of positive feedback, defined as a mechanism which tends to encourage behavior rather than to discourage it.
p43
Positive feedback always involves the danger of an ` avalanche ' effect... One particular kind of positive feedback occurs when individuals of the same species enter into competition among themselves... For many animal species, environmental factors keep... intraspecies selection from (leading to) disaster... But there is no force which exercises this type of healthy regulatory effect on humanity 's cultural development; unfortunately for itself, humanity has learned to overcome all those environmental forces which are external to itself".
p44
Lorenz does not see human independence from natural ecological processes as necessarily bad.
Indeed, he states that "a completely new (ecology) which corresponds in every way to (humanity 's) desires... could, theoretically, prove as durable as that which would have existed without his intervention" p36.
However, the principle of competition, typical of Western societies, destroys any chance of this: "The competition between human beings destroys with cold and diabolic brutality... Under the pressure of this competitive fury we have not only forgotten what is useful to humanity as a whole, but even that which is good and advantageous to the individual.
(...) One asks, which is more damaging to modern humanity: the thirst for money or consuming haste... in either case, fear plays a very important role: the fear of being overtaken by one 's competitors, the fear of becoming poor, the fear of making wrong decisions or the fear of not being up to snuff...".
pages 45-47
In this book, Lorenz proposes that the best hope for mankind lies in our looking for mates based on the kindness of their hearts rather than good looks or wealth.
In his 1973 book Behind the Mirror: a search for a natural history of human knowledge, Lorenz considers an old philosophical question: Do our senses actually tell us about the world as it is?
Or do they only give us an illusion?
Lorenz ' answer comes from evolutionary biology.
Only things that help a species to survive and reproduce are kept.
Anything that does not benefit a species is quickly removed through the process of natural selection.
Lorenz argued that if our senses gave us wrong information about our environment, humanity would soon be extinct.
Therefore we can be sure that our senses give us correct information, for otherwise we would not be here to be deceived.
Lorenz 's best-known books are King Solomon 's Ring and On aggression, both written for a popular audience.
His scientific work appeared mainly in journal articles, written in German; they became widely known to English-speaking scientists through the descriptions of it in Tinbergen 's 1951 book The study of instinct, though many of his papers were later published in English translation in the two volumes titled Studies in animal and human behavior.
Kary Banks Mullis (born 28 December 1944) is an American biochemist.
In 1993, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Michael Smith.
The process of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was first described by Kjell Kleppe and 1968 Nobel laureate H. Gobind Khorana.
It allows specific DNA sequences to be amplified (multiplied hugely).
Mullis greatly improved the technique, and it became a standard tool in DNA research.
In 1983, Mullis was working for Cetus Corp. as a chemist.
That spring, according to Mullis, he was driving his vehicle late one night, when he had the idea to use a pair of primers to bracket the desired DNA sequence and to copy it using DNA polymerase.
This would allow a small strand of DNA to be copied almost an infinite number of times.
Cetus took Mullis off his usual projects to concentrate on PCR full-time.
Mullis succeeded in demonstrating PCR on December 16, 1983.
Cetus paid him a mere $ 10,000 for the discovery but later sold it to Hoffmann-La Roche, owned by Roche Holding Ltd., for $ 300 million.
The Kinsey Reports are two books, published in 1948 and 1953 by Alfred Kinsey and his co-workers.
The books Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male and Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female, were based on thousands of interviews by Kinsey and his team.
The books were shocking when they came out, as they talked about subjects that were taboo.
It also questioned widely-held beliefs about sexuality.
They were controversial.
People said that the selection of the sample (those asked) was not well done.
One in four were prisoners, and 5 % were male prostitutes.
The institute, or location Kinsey did these tests, then did another such tests, without asking prisoners or prostitutes, and the findings were more or less the same.
People also say that child abuse may have been involved when collecting the data.
The Kinsey scale attempts to describe a person 's sexual history or episodes of their sexual activity at a given time.
It uses a scale from 0 to 6.
0 means the person tested is exclusively heterosexual.
A person scoring 6 is exclusively homosexual.
In the Kinsey Reports, an extra grade was used for asexuality.
The scale was first published in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948).
It was also important in the complementary work Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).
"Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual.
The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats.
It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.
"While emphasising the continuity of the gradations between exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual histories, it has seemed desirable to develop some sort of classification which could be based on the relative amounts of heterosexual and homosexual experience or response in each history... An individual may be assigned a position on this scale, for each period in his life... A seven-point scale comes nearer to showing the many gradations that actually exist."
(Kinsey et al 1948.
pp.
639, 656)
Kendo is a Japanese martial art.
Kendo means the "way of the sword".
The rules and gear of kendo were first created in the 18th century and its modern rules and styles date to 19th century.
An opponent may be struck at seven places: both sides and top of helmet (men), on either hand (gloves, kote) or either side of the body breastplate (do).
There is also one legal thrust (tsuki) on throat.
The "men" can only be struck from face, not from back.
However only one of the two hands can be struck, it depends on which kind of posture ("kamae") your opponent are using.
A struck to the right side of body (one kind of "do") will often be ignored by referee because in the old days samurai will have a smaller sword in this position, which gives this position a good protection.
Very important, because "tsuki" is somehow dangerous, junior practicer perform "tsuki" is forbidden both in match and daily training.
In a match, the attacker must name the location of each strike.
Often, name these locations by Japanese list before ("men", "kote", "do", "tsuki"), but some people will name it by Korean or Chinese or other language, or even a meaningless shout.
All these kinds of shout name "kiai".
An effective attack must contains "kiai" besides other essential factors.
The weapon used in kendo is a bamboo sword, called shinai.
The kendo armor, which the players must wear, is called bogu and is made of a helmet (men), breastplate (do), waist protector (tare), and special gloves (kote).
Lesson is called keiko in kendo.
keiko means that We think about past.
kendo 's keiko is distinguished between shinai keiko and kata keiko.
the building which we do kendo is called dojyo.
In particular keiko done in summer is shochugeiko and one done in winter is kangeiko.
Kingfishers are small birds of the order Coraciformes.
There are about 90 species, mostly in the Old World and Australasia, Most species are tropical in distribution.
Their feathers are often bright colors, such as blue or orange.
They have large heads, long, sharp bills, short legs, and stubby tails.
Most species have bright plumage with little differences between the sexes.
Most are found only in forests.
They eat a wide range of prey, including fish.
They usually catch prey by swooping down from a perch.
Many live near rivers and eat fish, but most species live away from water and eat small invertebrates.
Like other members of their order they nest in holes, usually tunnels dug into the natural or artificial banks in the ground.
A quarter of all kingfishers nest in disused termite nests.
Kingfishers are found all over the world.
They often make their nests near rivers where the water flows slowly.
They make their nests in tall river banks.
They dig a hole in the side of the river bank.
Most kingfishers lay 3 6 eggs each time.
Many kingfishers eat fish.
They sit on branches hanging over the river 's edge and wait for a fish to appear.
They then dive into the water to catch the fish.
Some kingfishers eat lizards or other reptiles.
Kookaburras do this.
Most species are in the Australasian region, but the family did not originate there.
They evolved in the Northern Hemisphere and invaded the Australasian region a number of times.
Fossil kingfishers have been described from Lower Eocene rocks in Wyoming 50 million years ago (mya) and in Germany, around 30-40 million years ago.
More recent fossil kingfishers have been described in the Miocene\/Pliocene rocks of Australia (5-25 mya).
Kingfishers are easily harmed if there is a lot of snow and cold weather in winter.
They can also die if humans cause a lot of water pollution or if the places where Kingfishers live are destroyed.
Some kingfishers are endangered species
Kurt Josef Waldheim (21 December 1918 14 June 2007) was an Austrian diplomat and conservative politician.
He was Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981, and President of Austria from 1986 to 1992.
Shortly before 1986, Waldheim published an autobiography.
During his campaign to become president in 1986, it became public that some statements in that biography were not true.
These were about his past.
Waldheim was an officer for Germany in the Second World War.
There was a commission of several historians who looked at the issue.
They did find that Waldheim had behved as he should have done.
He did not commit any War crimes.
However, in his role of an officer, he must have known about the deportation of about 40.000 Jews into concentration camps.
These transports, as well as the shooting of soldiers were a clear breach of law.
Because of this, he was not allowed to travel to the United States any more.
In 1990, he had a success: Saddam Hussein held several foreigners as hostages at the start of the Second Gulf War.
When Waldheim heard this, he personally went to Baghdad.
Through talks he could get Saddam to release the Austrian and the Swiss hostages.
(both countries are neutral)
On June 14, 2007, Waldheim died of heart failure.
At the time of his death he was the oldest living former Secretary-General of the United Nations and the oldest living former President of Austria.
Karachi is the largest city and former capital of Pakistan and the capital of the province of Sindh.
It 's old name found in history books is "Mai Kolachi Jo Goth" and "Karatishi" is also one of the old version of its name.
A native of Karachi is called a Karachiite.
The city is the financial and commercial center of Pakistan.
It has two important regional seaports.
The city lies on the coast of the Arabian Sea west of the Indus River delta.
Karachi generates the largest share of Pakistan 's GDP and national revenue.
The population is estimated at approximately 12 million, making it the third largest cities in the world after Shanghai and Mumbai.
It has five districts: District South, District East, District West, District Central, and Distrct Malir.
Karachi has the most number of districts in Sindh after Hyderabad, which has six districts.
Quad-e-Azam (Muhammad Ali Jinnah) father of the nation was born and buried in Karachi.
Apart from the University of Karachi, there are several other institutions of higher education and numerous colleges and schools in Karachi.
Karachi is home to the National Stadium which hosts many cricket games, and several other sports complexes.
The city has several long sandy beaches including Clifton\/Kemari beach and Sandspit beach.
Clifton beach suffered from a recent oil spillage but the beach has been cleaned.
Karachi has Pakistan 's first nuclear site KANUP in 1952 from Canada.
The city has 26 universities, including 1.
Karachi university-KU 2.
Nadirshaw Eduljee Deenshaw engineering university-NED University Hamdard Medical University & 4.
Dow University of Health Sciences.
Karachi has the honor to host the first ever night hockey match between India and Pakistan in 1986 at Hockey Club of Pakistan Stadium but failed to gain the official status due to having no night hockey match recognition by World Hockey federation at that time.
Karachi has many large and small shopping areas including the Saddar area in downtown Karachi.
Karachi also has a number of large modern shopping malls.
The city has a modern international airport called the Jinnah International Airport and two large shipping ports at Port of Karachi and Port Qasim.
Karachi is linked by railway to the rest of Pakistan.
Karachi has a hot desert climate (BWh in the Koeppen climate classification).
Allen Kelsey Grammer (born February 21, 1955) is an American television, voice, and movie actor.
He is known for his role as Dr. Fraiser Crane in Cheers, Frasier, and in Wings.
He was good friends with late producer David Angell.
He won five Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards.
Grammer was born on February 21, 1955 in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.
He was married four times.
First to Doreen Alderman from 1982 until they divorced in 1990, they had 1 child.
Second to Leigh-Anne Csuhany from 1992 until they divorced a year later in 1993.
Third to Camille Donatacci from 1997 until his divorced in 2011, they had 2 children.
He has been married to Kayte Walsh since 2011, they have one child.
Grammer is a member of the Republican Party and has expressed an interest in someday running for United States Congress.
He is also interested in running for Mayor of New York City.
The Kentucky Derby is a horse race for three-year-old thoroughbreds held every year at the Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky on the first Saturday in May.
The race is 1.25 miles long.
The race is nicknamed "The Run for the Roses".
Koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) are herbivore marsupials that live in the eucalyptus forests of eastern Australia.
They are the only living species in the family Phascolarctidae.
Koalas are often called the koala bears because it looks like a small bear or teddy bear.
However, it is not a bear, it is quite a different type of animal.
Koalas have brownish-grey or silver-grey fur, and a big pink and\/or black nose.
They have sharp claws which help them to climb.
Koalas ' also have finger prints which look the same as human finger prints.
Finger print experts have had difficulty in being able to tell if the prints are from a human or koala.
Finger prints are rare among mammals that climb trees.
Scientists do not know why the koala has them, but their best guess is that it helps the koala select leaves to eat.
Koalas are mostly active at night.
They live in trees and are rarely found on the ground.
They eat leaves of Eucalyptus trees.
Koalas do not drink often, they get most of their water from the Eucalyptus leaves.
Koalas live alone most of the time, but they have a social hierarchy with the other koalas who live near.
After a pregnancy of 35 days, the newly born koala is about a quarter of an inch long, and is born with no ears, eyes, or hair.
It crawls into its mothers pouch on its own.
After 12 months the young koala is old enough that it does not go into its mother 's pouch or need milk anymore.
The female koala can have another baby then.
Young koalas usually leave their mothers when they are 18 months old, but if their mother does not have another baby they sometimes stay for up to three years.
Koalas become mature when they are about two years old, but they often have their first baby after another two years.
The koala is not an endangered species, but it is a near vulnerable species.
One reason is the loss of habitat, which means that koalas have less space to live.
In some places there are very few koalas left.
But there are also places, such as French Island (Victoria), with too many koalas that eat too much.
Because of this the eucalyptus trees and other animals are in danger.
A study looking at koala numbers at 1800 sites for 20 years, shows that the number of koalas is falling.
The study, by the Australian Koala Foundation, estimates that there are only about 50,000 koalas left.
Most groups of koalas in Australia have the disease chlamydia.
This is also affecting the survival of the species.
Koalas on French Island do not have the disease, and so groups of them are often moved to the mainland to repopulate some areas.
The disease can cause blindness, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and reproductive tract infections.
A kilobit is 1000 (kilo -), as in SI, bits.
A bit is either 0 (off) or 1 (on).
The kilobit is usually written as kbit or kb.
Kibibit is similar, except it has 1024 (power of two) bits instead of 1000.
They are sometimes confused.
Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson, (December 24, 1809 May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman.
His career as a frontiersman involved four chief occupations: mountain man, guide, Indian agent, and officer in the United States Army.
He helped to open the American West to settlement.
In his day, he was a celebrity known far and wide in the United States.
In modern America, he is remembered as a folk hero.
Carson began his adult life in 1829 as a mountain man.
He trapped beaver about ten years for the fur trade.
During these years, Carson became an "Injun killer" he was forced to kill many Native Americans to protect himself from attack, theft, and murder.
Carson became known as one of the greatest of "Injun killers" through novels, newspaper accounts, and other media.
When the fur trade died out in the 1840s, Carson looked for other work.
In 1842, Army officer John Charles Fr mont hired Carson to guide him on three separate expeditions into the West.
All three expeditions involved mapping and describing remote and uncharted areas of the West.
These expeditions were hugely successful.
Fr mont 's reports to the government made Carson a frontier hero, and were read by many Americans.
Carson became a celebrity throughout the United States.
His adventures were turned into stories that were published in paper-covered books called dime novels.
These cheap, popular books made him more famous than ever.
In 1853, Carson became an Indian agent in northern New Mexico.
His job was to keep the Utes and Apaches at peace.
He saw to it that they were treated with honesty and fairness, and that they got the food and clothing they needed.
In 1861, the American Civil War broke out.
Carson resigned his position as Indian agent, and joined the Union Army.
As a lieutenant, he led the New Mexico Volunteer Infantry.
His forces fought Confederates at Valverde, New Mexico.
The Confederates won this battle, but were later defeated.
Most of Carson 's time in the Army was passed training recruits.
Carson served in several wars and battles with the southwestern tribes during this time.
He rounded-up and moved Apaches and Navajos from their homelands to government lands called reservations.
Carson was promoted to the rank of colonel.
Late in life, he was promoted to brigadier general, and given command of Fort Garland in Colorado.
After about two years.
Carson left the military because of illness.
He died in 1868 at Fort Lyon, Colorado.
He is buried in Taos, New Mexico, next to his third and last wife Josefa Jaramillo.
Carson was described by his contemporaries as a "small, stooped-shoulder" man with brown to red hair, blue eyes, and a strong but spare frame.
He was said to be about 5 foot 7 inches.
He was a modest gentleman.
Most of his contemporaries were astonished that such a slight, inconspicuous man had accomplished so much among the Native Americans and wild animals on the western frontier.
In 1847, General William Tecumseh Sherman met Kit Carson in Monterey, California.
Sherman wrote: "His fame was then at its height,... and I was very anxious to see a man who had achieved such feats of daring among the wild animals of the Rocky Mountains, and still wilder Indians of the plains... I can not express my surprise at beholding such a small, stoop-shouldered man, with reddish hair, freckled face, soft blue eyes, and nothing to indicate extraordinary courage of daring.
He spoke but little and answered questions in monosyllables."
Colonel Edward W. Wynkoop wrote: "Kit Carson was five feet five and one half-inches tall, weighed about 140 pounds, of nervy, iron temperament, squarely built, slightly bow-legged, and those members apparently too short for his body.
But, his head and face made up for all the imperfections of the rest of his person.
His head was large and well-shaped with yellow straight hair, worn long, falling on his shoulders.
His face was fair and smooth as a woman 's with high cheekbones, straight nose, a mouth with a firm, but somewhat sad expression, a keen, deep-set but beautiful, mild blue eye, which could become terrible under some circumstances, and like the warning of the rattlesnake, gave notice of attack.
Though quick-sighted, he was slow and soft of speech, and posed great natural modesty."
Lieutenant George Douglas Brewerton made one coast-to-coast dispatch-carrying trip to Washington, D.C. with Carson.
Brewerton wrote: "The Kit Carson of my imagination was over six feet high a sort of modern Hercules in his build with an enormous beard, and a voice like a roused lion... The real Kit Carson I found to be a plain, simple... man; rather below the medium height, with brown, curling hair, little or no beard, and a voice as soft and gentle as a woman 's.
In fact, the hero of a hundred desperate encounters, whose life had been mostly spent amid wilderness, where the white man is almost unknown, was one of Dame Nature 's gentleman..."
Carson was illiterate (he could not read or write).
He was embarrassed by this, and tried to hide it.
He was impressed by gentlemen who could read and write however.
In 1856, he told his life story to an Army officer who wrote it down.
Carson told the officer that he left school at an early age: "I was a young boy in the school house when the cry came, Injuns!
I jumped to my rifle and threw down my spelling book, and thar it lies."
Carson enjoyed having other people read to him.
He liked the poetry of Lord Byron.
Carson thought Sir Walter Scott 's long poem, The Lady of the Lake was "the finest expression of outdoor life."
He also liked a book about William the Conqueror.
The Conqueror 's favorite oath was "By the splendor of God".
Carson used this oath as his own, and was known to never have used anything stronger.
Carson learned to write "C. Carson" late in life.
It was very difficult for him.
He made his mark on official papers, and this mark was then witnessed by a clerk.
Carson easily spoke English, Spanish, and French.
He could speak many Native American languages, including Navajo, Apache, and Comanche.
He also knew the sign language used by mountain men.
Very late in life, he learned to read to a certain extent, and to recognize his name when it appeared in print.
Kit Carson was born in Kentucky, but his family moved to Missouri when he was a baby.
In Missouri, the family was in danger from Native American attacks, and they were forced to find ways to protect themselves.
After his father 's death in 1818, Kit 's mother remarried.
The boy became a wild teenager.
His stepfather put him to work in a saddle-making shop in Franklin, Missouri.
Carson was born in a log cabin at Tate 's Creek, Madison County, Kentucky on Christmas Eve 1809.
His parents were Lindsay (or Lindsey) Carson and his second wife, Rebecca Robinson.
Lindsay had had five children by his first wife Lucy Bradley, and ten more children by Rebecca.
Kit was their sixth.
Lindsay Carson had a Scots-Irish Presbyterian background.
He was a farmer, a cabin builder, and a veteran of the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.
He also fought Native Americans on the frontier.
Two fingers on his left hand were shot away in a battle with the Sauk and Fox tribes.
The Carsons moved to Boone 's Lick, Howard County, Missouri when Kit was about one year old.
They knew the Daniel Boone family.
Lindsay 's oldest son William married Boone 's grand-niece, Millie Boone, in 1810.
Their daughter Adaline became Kit 's favorite playmate.
The Carson family was always in danger of Native American attacks in Missouri.
They had to be alert.
Cabins were "forted".
This means that they had tall fences built around them called stockades.
These stockades made the people inside safe from attack.
During the day, men worked in the fields near the cabins.
Some men had weapons, and protected the workers.
These men were ready to kill any Native American who attacked.
Carson wrote in his Memoirs: "For two or three years after our arrival, we had to remain forted and it was necessary to have men stationed at the extremities of the fields for the protection of those that were laboring."
One day in 1818, Lindsay Carson was clearing a field when a tree limb fell on him.
He was killed instantly.
Kit was about 8 years old.
His mother took care of her children alone for four years.
They lived in great poverty.
She then married Joseph Martin, a widower with several children.
Carson did not get along with his stepfather.
He became a wild and uncontrollable teenager.
His stepfather apprenticed him to David Workman, a saddle maker in Franklin, Missouri.
Kit was a boy in his middle-teens.
He wrote in his Memoirs that Workman was "a good man, and I often recall the kind treatment I received."
Carson did not like making saddles, and ran away from home in 1826.
He traveled over the Santa Fe Trail with mountain men.
In 1829, he joined with trapper Ewing Young on a trek to the Rocky Mountains.
He learned much from Young about trapping.
Franklin, Missouri was at the eastern end of the Santa Fe Trail.
This was a starting point for many settlers heading west.
Kit heard wonderful stories about the west from the mountain men returning to the East.
Kit did not like making saddles.
In August 1826, he ran away from home, and went west with the mountain men.
They traveled over the Santa Fe Trail to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
They reached their destination in November 1826.
Kit passed the winter in Taos, New Mexico with Mathew Kinkead, a mountain man and neighbor from Missouri.
Taos would become Carson 's home.
Workman put an advertisement in a local newspaper back in Missouri.
He wrote that he would give a one cent reward to anyone who brought the boy back to Franklin.
No one claimed the reward.
It was a bit of a joke, but Carson was free.
The advertisement featured the first printed description of Carson: "Christopher Carson, a boy about 16 years old, small of his age, but thick set; light hair, ran away from the subscriber, living in Franklin, Howard county, Missouri, to whom he had been bound to learn the saddler 's trade."
Between 1827 and 1829, Carson worked as cook, translator, and wagon driver in the southwest.
He also worked at a copper mine near the Gila River in southwestern New Mexico.
In later life, Carson never mentioned any women from his youth.
There are only three specific women mentioned in his writing: Josefa Jaramillo, his third and last wife; a comrade 's mother in Washington, DC; and Mrs. Ann White, a victim of Native American atrocities.
In August 1829, the nineteen year old Carson joined trapper Ewing Young and his mountain men on a fur-hunting expedition to Arizona and California.
This was Carson 's first professional job as a mountain man.
Carson received much experience as a trapper on this expedition.
Young is credited with shaping Carson 's early life in the mountains.
Carson returned to Taos in 1829, and joined a wagon train rescue party.
Although the perpetrators had fled the scene of atrocities, Young had the opportunity to witness Carson 's horsemanship and courage.
Kit passed the winter of 1827-1828 as Young 's cook in Taos.
Carson joined another expedition led by Thomas Fitzpatrick in 1831.
Fitzpatrick and his trappers went north to the central Rocky Mountains.
Carson would hunt and trap in the West for about ten years.
He was known as a reliable man and a good fighter.
Carson traveled through many parts of the American West gathering furs.
Men at this time wore hats made of beaver fur.
Carson trapped beaver for the fur trade.
He sometimes worked with famous mountain men like Jim Bridger and Old Bill Williams.
Carson 's career as a mountain man began in 1829 when he joined Ewing Young 's trapping expedition to the Rocky Mountains.
Mountain men worked mostly in the Rocky Mountains.
They worked for themselves, or sometimes with a partner or two, or for a large trading organization like the Hudson Bay Company.
A mountain man 's life was not easy.
He sometimes had to walk into deep, cold water to get a trapped beaver.
He then had to remove the hide with the fur (the pelt).
The mountain man kept these beaver pelts for many months.
He then sold them in St. Louis, Missouri, or at a mountain man rendezvous.
With the money he collected, he bought fish hooks, flour, tobacco, and the other things he needed for life in the mountains.
The mountain men faced many hazards including biting insects, bad weather, and diseases of all kinds.
There were no doctors in the lands where mountain men worked.
These men had to set their own broken bones, tend their wounds, and nurse themselves.
Native Americans were an ever-present danger.
Even a friendly Native American could turn at once into an enemy.
Most mountain men had a Native American wife or mistress.
The mountain man 's main food was buffalo.
The mountan man dressed in deer skins that had stiffened after being left outdoors for a time.
This suit of stiffened deer skin gave him some protection against the weapons of his enemies.
Grizzly bears were one of the mountain man 's greatest enemies.
Carson wrote in his Memoirs that he was hunting an elk alone in 1834.
Two grizzly bears chased him up a tree.
One bear tried to make him fall by shaking the tree.
The bear was not successful, and finally went away.
Carson returned to his camp as fast as he could.
He wrote in his Memoirs that this incident was the scariest moment of his life:" (The bear) finally concluded to leave, of which I was heartily pleased, never having been so scared in my life."
Mountain men met every year in the second quarter of the 19th century for an event called a rendezvous.
The first rendezvous was held in 1825.
These events were held in remote areas of the West like the banks of the Green River in Wyoming.
The mountain men had a good time at these lively events.
Native Americans often joined the gathering.
Everyone played card games, danced, sang, told stories, made jokes, and had much to eat and drink.
Sometimes mountain men married Native American women at a rendezvous.
The last rendezvous was held in 1840.
About 1840, the fur trade began to drop off.
Well-dressed men in London, Paris, and New York City wanted silk hats instead of beaver hats.
In addition, the mountain men had very nearly killed almost every beaver in North America.
Trappers were no longer wanted or needed.
Mountain man Robert Newell told Jim Bridger:" (W) e are done with this life in the mountains done with wading in beaver dams, and freezing or starving alternately done with Indian trading and Indian fighting.
The fur trade is dead in the Rocky Mountains, and it is no place for us now, if ever it was."
Carson knew it was time to find other work.
He wrote in his Memoirs that "Beaver was getting scarce, it became necessary to try our hand at something else."
In 1841, he was hired at Bent 's Fort in Colorado.
This fort was one of the greatest buildings in the West.
Hundreds of people worked or lived there.
Carson hunted buffalo, antelope, deer, and other animals to feed these hundreds of people.
He was paid one dollar a day.
He returned to Bent 's Fort several times during his life to again provide meat for the fort 's residents.
In April 1842, Carson went back to his childhood home in Missouri.
He made this trip to put his daughter Adaline in the care of relatives.
Carson found much pleasure in killing Native Americans.
He did not respect them, and thought those who committed outrages like murder, theft, and rape deserved the worst punishment possible.
Carson 's thoughts about Native Americans softened over the years, as he found himself more and more in their company.
He became an Indian agent and a spokesman for the Utes.
Carson was nineteen when he set off with Ewing Young 's expedition to the Rocky Mountains.
In addition to furs and the company of free-spirited, rugged mountain men, he sought action and adventure.
He found what he was looking for in killing and scalping Native Americans.
Carson probably killed and took the scalp of his first Native American when he was nineteen years old, during Ewing Young 's expedition.
Carson was known to most 19th century Americans as an "Injun killer", chiefly through newspaper accounts and dime novels.
Many of these works gave Carson 's deeds and life a romantic cast.
Excitement and thrills were heightened through exaggeration.
Carson hated Native Americans, especially those who had committed crimes such as rape, theft, and murder.
He believed Native Americans could not be trusted, and should be punished.
Mountain men often had to kill Native Americans to save their own lives.
The young Carson 's brutal and vicious notions about Native Americans is sometimes considered his greatest moral failing.
Carson never killed Native American women and children though.
He believed a brave man would never do this, and he scorned those men who did.
Carson 's Memoirs are replete with stories about Native American encounters with the memoir writer.
In January 1833, for example, warriors of the Crow tribe stole nine horse from Carson 's camp.
Carson and eleven other men found the Crow camp after dark, and quietly led the horses away.
Those men who owned the horses wanted to return to their own camp at once.
Although Carson and two other men had not lost any horses, these three wanted to punish the Crows.
Carson and his men fired their guns into the Crow camp, killiing almost every Crow.
Carson wrote in his Memoirs: "During our pursuit for the lost animals, we suffered considerably but, the success of having recovered our horses and sending many a redskin to his long home, our sufferings were soon forgotten."
The Blackfoot nation was a hostile tribe, and posed an ever-present threat to Carson 's safety.
A Blackfoot warrior once injured Carson in the shoulder.
This was the worst injury he received in his life.
He hated the Blackfeet, and killed them at every opportunity.
Historian David Roberts has written: "It was taken for granted that the Blackfeet were bad Indians; to shoot them whenever he could was a mountain man 's instinct and duty."
The Blackfeet did not like whites.
They were convinced whites were trying to take over their hunting grounds.
In addition, the Blackfeet wanted the valuable horses owned by the whites.
Carson had several encounters with the Blackfeet, but his last battle with the Blackfeet took place in spring 1838.
He was traveling with about one hundred mountain men led by Jim Bridger.
In Montana territory, the group found a teepee with three Native American corpses inside.
These three had died of smallpox.
Bridger wanted to move on, but Carson and the other young men wanted to kill the Blackfeet.
They found the Blackfoot village, and killed ten Blackfeet warriors.
The Blackfeet found some safety in a pile of rocks, but were driven away.
It is not known how many Blackfeet died in this incident.
Historian David Roberts writes:" (I) f anything like pity filled Carson 's breast as, in his twenty-ninth year, he beheld the ravaged camp of the Blackfeet, he did not bother to remember it."
Carson wrote in his Memoirs that this battle was "the prettiest fight I ever saw."
Carson 's notions about Native Americans softened over the years.
He found himself more and more in their company as he grew older.
His thoughts about Native Americans became more understanding and more humane.
He urged the government to set aside lands called reservations for their use.
As an Indian agent, he saw to it that those under his watch were treated with honesty, fairness, and clothed and fed properly.
Historian David Roberts believes his first marriage to an Arapaho women named Singing Grass, "softened the stern and pragmatic mountaineer 's opportunism."
In killing Native Americans, Carson was making America safe for settlers heading west to build their homes, farms, and villages.
He had the approval of the United States government and its citizens.
In addition, Senator Thomas Hart Benton, the United States Congress, and President James K. Polk had developed and were working under a concept called Manifest Destiny.
This concept stated that it was the will of God that the United States push America 's western boundary to the Pacific Ocean at all costs.
Manifest Destiny spurred the movement of American settlers to the West.
((File: Alfred Jacob Miller - Rendezvous - Walters 371940159.
jpg thumb upright = 1.5 left A rendezvous on the banks of the Green River, Wyoming in 1847.
It was at such a rendezvous that Carson met his first wife, Waanibe.
(Alfred Jacob Miller, about 1847)))
Carson was married three times.
His first two wives were Native Americans.
His third wife was Mexican.
He was the father of ten children.
Carson never wrote about his first two marriages in his Memoirs.
He may have thought he would be known as a "squaw man".
Such men were not welcomed by polite society.
In 1836, Carson met an Arapaho woman named Waanibe (Singing Grass) at a mountain man rendezvous.
This rendezvous was held along the Green River in Wyoming.
Singing Grass was a lovely young woman.
Many mountain men were in love with her.
Carson was forced to fight a duel with a French trapper named Chouinard for Waanibe 's hand in marriage.
Carson won, but he had a very narrow escape.
The French trapper 's bullet singed his hair.
The duel was one of the best known stories about Carson in the 19th century.
Carson married Singing Grass.
She was a good wife.
She tended to his needs, and went with him on his trapping trips.
They had a daughter named Adaline (or Adeline).
Singing Grass died after giving birth to Carson 's second daughter.
This child did not live long.
In 1843, she fell into a kettle of boiling soap in Taos.
Waanibe died about 1841.
Carson 's life as a mountain man was too hard for a little girl.
In 1852, he took Adaline to live with his sister Mary Ann Carson Rubey in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Adaline was taught in a school for girls called a seminary.
Carson brought her West when she was a teenager.
She married and divorced.
In 1858, she went to the California goldfields.
Adaline died in 1860.
In 1841, Carson married a Cheyenne woman named Making-Out-Road.
They were together only a short time.
Making-Out-Road divorced him in the way of her people.
She put Adaline and all Carson 's property outside their tent.
Making-Out-Road left Carson to travel with her people through the west.
Historian David Lavender writes:" (Making-Out-Road) was spoiled.
She had put most of the Cheyenne bachelors and half the white men at the fort in a slow burn, and they had showered her with gifts.
Now that they were married she expected Kit to keep her in expensive foofaraw (finery).
She ignored her household chores and neglected little Adaline..."
About 1842, Carson met Josefa Jaramillo.
She was the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Mexican couple living in Taos.
Lewis Garrard wrote: "Her style of beauty was of the haunting, heartbreaking kind... such as would lead a man with a glance in his eye, to risk his life for one smile."
Carson wanted to marry her.
He left the Presbyterian Church for the Catholic Church.
Thirty-three year old Carson married 14-year old Josefa on February 6, 1843.
They had eight children.
In 1842, Carson was returning from Missouri after depositing his daughter Adaline with relatives when met John C. Fr mont aboard a steamboat on the Missouri River.
Fr mont was a United States Army officer in the Corps of Topographical Engineers.
Carson had very little money at this time.
Fr mont hired Carson at $ 100 a month as a guide.
Fr mont wrote, "I was pleased with him and his manner of address at this first meeting.
He was a man of medium height, broad-shouldered, and deep-chested, with a clear steady blue eye and frank speech and address; quiet and unassuming."
In 1842, Carson guided Fr mont across the Oregon Trail to Wyoming.
This was their first expedition into the West.
The purpose of this expedition was to map and describe the Oregon Trail as far as South Pass, Wyoming.
A guidebook and maps would be printed for settlers.
Fr mont praised Carson in his government reports.
Because of that, Carson became well known across the United States.
He became the hero of many cheap, popular books called dime novels.
In 1843, Fr mont asked Carson to join his second expedition.
Carson did.
He guided Fr mont across part of the Oregon Trail to the Columbia River in Oregon.
The trip 's purpose was to map and describe the Oregon Trail from South Pass, Wyoming to the Columbia River.
They also traveled to Great Salt Lake in Utah.
The men then headed to California.
They suffered from bad weather in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The men were saved by Carson 's good judgement and his guiding skills.
They found American settlers who fed them.
The expedition then went into California.
This was illegal and dangerous.
California was Mexican territory.
The Mexican government ordered Fr mont to leave.
Fr mont finally went back to Washington, DC.
The government liked his reports, but ignored his illegal trip into Mexico.
Fr mont was made a captain.
The newspapers called him "The Pathfinder".
During this expedition, Fr mont went to the Mojave Desert.
Fr mont 's party met a Mexican man and boy.
The two told Carson that Native Americans had ambushed their party of travelers.
The male travelers were killed; the women travelers were staked to the ground, sexually mutilated, and killed.
The murderers then stole the Mexicans ' thirty horses.
Carson and a mountain man friend named Alexis Godey went after the murderers.
They took two days to find them.
They rushed into their camp, killing and scalping two of the murderers.
The stolen horses were recovered and returned to the Mexican man and boy.
This selfless, disinterested, generous deed brought Carson even greater fame.
It confirmed his status as a western hero in the eyes of the American people.
In 1845, Carson guided Fr mont on their third and last expedition.
They went to California and Oregon.
Fr mont made scientific plans, but the expedition was appeared political in nature.
Fr mont may have been working under secret government orders.
President Polk wanted the province of Alta California for the United States.
Once in California, Fr mont started to rouse the American settlers into a patriotic fever.
The Mexican government ordered him to leave.
Fr mont went north to Oregon.
He camped near Klamath Lake.
Messages from Washington, DC made it clear that President Polk wanted California.
At Klamath Lake in southern Oregon, Fr mont 's party was attacked by about twenty Native Americans on the night of March 6, 1846.
Three men in camp were killed.
The Native Americans fled after a brief struggle.
Carson was angry that his friends had been killed.
He took an axe and avenged the death of his friends by chopping away at a dead Klamath 's face.
Fremont wrote, "He knocked his head to pieces."
In June 1846, Fr mont and Carson both participated in a California uprising against Mexico called the Bear Flag Revolt.
Mexico ordered all Americans to leave California.
They did not want to go, and declared California an independent republic.
American settlers in California wanted to be free of the Mexican government.
The Americans found courage to oppose Mexico because they had Fr mont and his troops on board.
Fr mont wrote an oath of allegiance.
He and his men were able to give some protection to the Americans.
He ordered Carson to execute an old Mexican man named Berresaya and his two adult nephews.
These three were captured when they stepped ashore at San Francisco Bay.
They were executed to keep them from taking reports to Mexico about the uprising.
Mexico ordered Fr mont and Carson to leave the area.
They left for Oregon.
Along the way, Carson and most of the group attacked a Native American village.
They killed about 100 villagers.
Carson thought that this massacre would discourage Native Americans from attacking white settlers.
Fr mont heard that the Klamath tribe had killed three of his men.
Carson was sorry to have lost his friends.
He attacked another Native American village, wrecking it.
Fr mont worked hard to the win California for the United States.
He became its military governor.
Carson took military records to the Secretary of War in Washington, DC.
Fr mont wrote, "This was a service of great trust and honor... and great danger also."
In 1847 and 1848, Carson made two quick trips to Washington, DC with messages and reports.
In 1848, he took news of the California Gold Strike to the nation 's capital.
Carson 's fame spread throughout the United States with government reports, dime novels, newspaper accounts, and word of mouth.
The dime novels celebrated Caron 's adventures, but were usually colored with exaggeration.
A factual biography was attempted by DeWitt C. Peters in 1859, but has been criticized for inaccuracies and exaggerations.
In 1847, the first story about Carson 's adventures was printed.
It was called An Adventure of Kit Carson: A Tale of the Sacramento.
It was printed in Holden 's Dollar Magazine.
Other stories were also printed such as Kit Carson: The Prince of the Goldhunters and The Prairie Flower.
Writers thought Carson the perfect mountain man and Indian fighter.
His exciting adventures were printed in the story, Kiowa Charley, The White Mustanger; or, Rocky Mountain Kit 's Last Scalp Hunt.
In this story, an older Kit is said to have "had ridden into Sioux camps unattended and alone, had ridden out again, but with the scalps of their greatest warriors at his belt."
In 1849, Carson guided soldiers on the trail of Mrs. Ann White and her baby daughter.
They had been captured by Apaches.
No one paid attention to Carson 's advice about a rescue attempt.
Mrs. White was found dead.
An arrow was in her heart.
She had been horribly abused.
She may have been passed among the Apaches as a camp prostitute.
Her child had been carried away, and was never found.
A soldier in the rescue party wrote: "Mrs. White was a frail, delicate, and very beautiful woman, but having undergone such usage as she suffered nothing but a wreck remained; it was literally covered with blows and scratches.
Her countenance even after death indicated a hopeless creature.
Over her corpse, we swore vengeance upon her persecutors."
Carson discovered a book about himself in the Apache camp.
This was the first time that he found himself in print.
He was the hero of adventure stories.
He was sorry for the rest of his life that Mrs. White had been killed.
He wrote in his Memoirs: "In camp was found a book, the first of the kind I had ever seen, in which I was made a great hero, slaying Indians by the hundreds... I have often thought that Mrs. White read the same... (and prayed) for my appearance that she might be saved."
In 1856, Carson told his life story to someone who wrote it down.
This book is called Memoirs.
Some say Carson forgot dates or got them wrong.
The manuscript was lost when taken East to find a professional writer who would work it into a book.
Washington Irving was asked, but declined.
The lost manuscript was found in a trunk in Paris in 1905.
It was later printed.
The first biography of Carson was written by DeWitt C. Peters in 1859.
The book was called Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself.
When the book was read to Carson he said, "Peters laid it on a leetle too thick."
The Mexican American War was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848.
America won this war.
Under The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico was forced to sell the territories of Alta California and New Mexico to the United States.
While Carson was not a member of the United States Army, one of his best known adventures took place during this war.
In December 1846, Carson was ordered by General Stephen W. Kearny to guide him and his troops from Socorro, New Mexico to San Diego, California.
Mexicans soldiers attacked Kearny and his men near the village of San Pasqual, California.
There were too many Mexican soldiers.
Kearny knew he would could not win; he ordered his men to take cover on a small hill.
Kearny then sent Carson, a naval lieutenant named Beale, and a Native American scout to get help.
The three left on the night of December 8 for San Diego.
San Diego was 25 m away.
Carson and the lieutenant removed their shoes because they made too much noise.
They walked barefoot through the desert.
Carson wrote in his Memoirs: "Finally got through, but had the misfortune to lose our shoes.
Had to travel over a country covered with prickly pear and rocks, barefoot."
By December 10, Kearny believed help would not arrive.
He planned to break through the Mexican lines the next morning.
That night, 200 mounted American soldiers arrived in San Pasqual.
They swept the area and drove the Mexicans away.
Kearny was in San Diego on December 12.
Carson went back to Taos after the Mexican American War to start a ranch.
In 1853, Carson became the United States Indian agent to the Utes.
These people lived across northern New Mexico.
The Jacarilla Apaches and the Puebloans at the Rio Grande would also come under Carson 's watch.
Carson 's job was to keep the peace between the southwestern tribes, and to hunt down and punish any who committed crimes.
Carson was honest and fair as an Indian agent.
Carson came to realize that the hostilities between white Americans and Native Americans were the result of a great decrease in available wild game.
This situation forced the Native Americans into raiding American farms, ranches, and herds of cattle.
He also knew that the liquor available in towns and villages led the Native Americans into serious trouble.
Carson wanted the government to put aside large areas of land far from white settlements.
The lands would be called reservations, and were intended for the use of Native Americans only.
He thought the Native Americans should be taught agriculture, but it would prove almost impossible to teach nomadic hunters to settle on one piece of land and farm it.
He thought his plans would keep these peoples from becoming extinct.
Carson resigned as Indian agent with the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861.
He joined the Union Army to lead the 1st New Mexico Volunteer Infantry.
In April 1861, the American Civil War broke out.
Carson left his job as an Indian agent, and joined the Union Army.
He was made a lieutenant.
He led the 1st New Mexico Volunteer Infantry.
He trained the new men.
In October 1861, he was made a colonel.
The Volunteers fought the Confederate forces at Valverde, New Mexico in February 1862.
The Confederates won this battle, but were later defeated.
Once the Confederates were driven from New Mexico, Carson 's commander Major James Henry Carleton, turned his attention to the Native Americans.
The historian Edwin Sabin writes that this officer had a "psychopathic hatred of the Apaches".
Carleton led his forces deep into the Mescalero Apache territory.
The Mescaleros were tired of fighting, and put themselves under Carson 's protection.
Carleton put these Apaches on a remote and lonely reservation east on the Pecos River.
Carson disliked the Apaches.
He wrote in a report that the Jicarilla Apaches "were truly the most degraded and troublesome Indians we have in our department... (W) e daily witness them in a state of intoxication in our plaza."
Carson half-heartedly supported Carleton 's plans.
He was tired.
He had suffered an injury two years before that gave him great trouble.
He resigned from the Army in February 1863.
Carleton refused to accept the resignation because he wanted Carson to lead a campaign against the Navajo.
Carleton had chosen a bleak site on the Pecos River for his reservation.
This reservation was called Bosque Redondo (Round Grove).
He chose this site for the Apaches and Navajos because it was far from white settlements.
He also wanted these Apaches and Navajo to act as a buffer for any aggressive acts committed upon the white settlements from Kiowas and Comanches to the east of Bosque Redondo.
He thought as well that the remoteness and desolation of the reservation would discourage white settlement.
The Mescalero Apaches walked 130 miles to the reservation.
By March 1863, four hundred Apaches had settled around nearby Fort Sumner.
Others had fled west to join fugitive bands of Apaches.
By middle summer, many of these people were planting crops and doing other farm work.
On July 7, Carson, with little heart for the Navajo roundup, started the campaign against the tribe.
His orders were almost the same as those for the Apache roundup: he was to shoot all males on site, and take the women and children captives.
No peace treaties were to be made until all the Navajo were on the reservation.
Carson searched far and wide for the Navajo.
He found their homes, fields, animals, and orchards, but the Navajo were experts at disappearing quickly and hiding in their vast lands.
The roundup was a great frustration for Carson.
He was in his 50s, tired, and ill..
By autumn 1863, Carson started to burn the Navajo homes and fields, and remove their animals from the area.
The Navaho would starve if this destruction continued.
One hundred eighty-eight Navajo surrendered.
They were sent to Bosque Redondo.
Life at the Bosque had turned grim.
Murders occurred.
The Apaches and Navajos fought.
The water in the Pecos contained minerals that gave people cramps and stomach aches.
Residents had to walk about twelve miles to find firewood.
Carson wanted to take a winter break from the campaign.
Major Carleton refused.
Kit was ordered to invade the Canyon de Chelly.
It was here that many Navajos had taken refuge.
Historian David Roberts writes, "Carson 's sweep through the Canyon de Chelly in the winter of 1863-1864 would prove to be the decisive action in the Campaign."
The Canyon de Chelly was a sacred place for the Navajo.
They believed it would now be their strongest sanctuary.
Three hundred Navajo took refuge on the canyon rim at a place called Fortress Rock.
They resisted Carson 's invasion by building rope ladders, bridges, lowering water pots into a stream, and keeping out of sight.
These three hundred Navajo survived the invasion.
In January 1864, Carson swept through the 35-mile Canyon with his forces.
He cut down the thousands of peach trees in the Canyon.
Few Navajo were killed or captured.
Carson 's invasion however proved to the Navajo that the white man could invade their country at any time.
Many Navajo surrendered at Fort Canby.
By March 1864, there were 3,000 refuges at Fort Canby.
An additional 5,000 arrived in the camp.
They were suffering from the intense cold and hunger.
Carson asked for supplies to feed and clothe them.
The thousands of Navajo were led to Bosque Redondo.
Many died along the way.
Stragglers in the rear were shot and killed.
In Navajo history, this horrific trek is known as The Long Walk.
By 1866, reports indicated that Bosque Redondo was a complete failure.
Major Carleton was fired.
Congress started investigations.
In 1868, a treaty was signed, and the Navajo were allowed to return to their homeland.
Bosque Redondo was closed.
On November 25, 1864, Carson led his forces against the southwestern tribes at the First Battle of Adobe Walls in the Texas panhandle.
Adobe Walls was an abandoned trading post blown up by its inhabitants to prevent a take-over by hostile Native Americans.
Combatants at the First Battle were the United States Army and masses of Kiowas, Comanches, and Plains Apaches.
It was one of the largest engagements fought on the Great Plains.
The Texas State Library and Archives Commission writes: "The result of Adobe Walls was a crushing spiritual defeat for the Indians.
It also prompted the U.S. military to take its final actions to crush the Indians once and for all.
Within the year, the long war between whites and Indians in Texas would reach its conclusion."
The battle was the result of General Carleton 's belief that the Native Americans were responsible for the continuing attacks on white settlers along the Santa Fe Trail.
He wanted to punish these thieves and murderers, and brought in Carson to do the job.
With most of the Army engaged elsewhere during the American Civil War, the protection the settlers sought was almost nonexistent.
They were begging for help.
Carson led 260 cavalry, 75 infantry, and 72 Ute and Jicarilla Apache Army scouts.
In addition, he had two mountain howitzer cannons.
On the morning of November 25, Carson discovered and attacked a Kiowa village of 176 lodges.
After the destruction, he moved forward to Adobe Walls.
Carson found other Comanche villages in the area, and realized he would face a very large force of Native Americans.
A Captain Pettis estimated that 1,200 to 1,400 Comanche and Kiowa began to assemble.
The number would swell to possibly 3,000.
Four to five hours of battle ensued.
When Carson ran low on ammunition and howitzer shells, he ordered his men to retreat to a nearby Kiowa village.
There they burned the village and many fine buffalo robes.
His Native American scouts killed and mutilated four elderly and weak Kiowas.
The retreat to New Mexico was then begun.
There were few deaths among Carson 's men.
General Carleton wrote to Carson: "This brilliant affair adds another green leaf to the laurel wreath which you have so nobly won in the service of your country."
The battle is considered by some to be Carson 's finest moment, and is thought one of the factors that made the Kiowas and Comanches sue for peace in 1865.
Some of those who have studied the battle believe Carson was correct in ordering his troops to retreat.
Only one Comanche scalp was reported taken by Carson 's soldiers.
The First Battle at Adobe Walls would be the last time the Comanche and Kiowa forced American troops to retreat from battle.
Adobe Walls marked the beginning of the end of the plains tribes and their way of life.
A decade later, the Second Battle of Adobe Walls was fought on June 27, 1874, between 250 to 700 Comanche and a group of 28 hunters defending Adobe Walls.
After a four-day siege, the hundreds of Native Americans withdrew.
The Second Battle led to the Red River War of 1874-1875, a war that resulted in the final relocation of the Southern Plains Indians to reservations in Oklahoma.
Carson left the Army on November 22, 1867.
He moved his family to a small settlement on the Purgatoire River called Boggsville, Colorado.
He had no money.
He sold his house in Taos.
He wanted to build a ranch.
In January 1868, he was made superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Colorado Territory.
He was called to Washington, D. C. in February 1868 with Ute chiefs and other men to make a treaty.
Carson was seriously ill, and doubted he could make the journey, but he felt a responsibility to the chiefs and made the journey.
He asked doctors on the East Coast about his health (they gave him little hope of recovery), and toured New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston.
His last photograph was snapped in Boston.
He returned home in April 1868.
Josefa had given birth to their last child, Josefita.
It was not an easy birth.
Josefa died within two weeks on April 23, 1868.
Carson missed her greatly.
His health grew worse.
He needed chloroform to ease the pain.
Carson made his will on May 15, 1868 at Fort Lyon, and named Thomas Boggs his administrator.
Any monies realized from his estate would be used to support his children.
Carson had been diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm.
The aneurysm broke; Carson 's mouth gushed with blood.
His doctor and best friend Thomas Boggs were present when he died.
Carson 's last words were: "Doctor, goodbye.
Compadre, ad os."
He died on May 23, 1868 at Fort Lyon, Colorado.
He was 58 years old.
The wife of an officer offered her wedding dress to line Carson 's casket while the women of the fort took the cloth flowers from their hats to decorate his coffin.
Carson and Josefa were first buried in Boggsville.
The two were disinterred in 1869, and buried in Taos, New Mexico..
Carson 's home in Taos is today a museum maintained by the Kit Carson Foundation.
A monument was raised in the plaza at Santa Fe by the New Mexico Grand Army.
In Denver, a statue of a mounted Kit Carson can be found atop the Mac Monnies Pioneer Monument.
Another equestrian statue can be seen in Trindad.
A national forest in New Mexico was named for Carson as well as a county in Colorado.
A river in Nevada is named for Carson as well as the state 's capital, Carson City.
Fort Carson, an army training post near Colorado Springs, was named for him during World War II by popular vote of the men training there.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Carson came under the scrutiny of revisionist historians.
Hitherto he had been regarded as an American hero, but the tide turned and he became an arch-villain in the genocidal campaign against the Native Americans.
Clifford Trafzer 's 1982 Kit Carson Campaign: The Last Great Navajo War found fault with both Carleton and Carson, but Trafzer completely ignored Carson 's many acts and deeds that humanized The Long Walk.
In 1992, a young professor at Colorado College was successful in abruptly demanding that a period photograph of Carson be removed from the R.O.T.C. office.
In 1992, a tourist told a journalist at the Carson home in Taos, "I will not go into the home of that racist, genocidal killer."
In 1973, militants in Taos tried to change the name of Kit Carson State Park.
Six years later, Kit Carson Cave near Gallup, New Mexico was the target of vandals, and, in 1990, protestors spray-painted Kit and Josefa 's tombstones with the word "NAZI".
In the 1970s, a Navajo at a trading post said, "No one here will talk about Kit Carson.
He was a butcher."
In 1993, a symposium was organized to air various views on Carson, but the Navajo spokespeople refused to attend.
In time, views of Carson returned to their former glory.
David Roberts writes, "Carson 's trajectory, over three and a half decades, from thoughtless killer of Apaches and Blackfeet to defender and champion of the Utes, marks him out as one of the few frontiersmen whose change of heart toward the Indians, born not of missionary theory but of first hand experience, can serve as an exemplar for the more enlightened policies that sporadically gained the day in the twentieth century."
A knife is a metal tool with a sharpened metal blade that is used to cut all sorts of things.
The plural form of "knife" is "knives."
There are many kinds of knives, depending what is to be cut.
With the right knife, the cuts you want to make will happen faster and more easily.
With the wrong kind of knife, it will take more effort to perform the same amount of work.
When a knife is too small to cut something, a saw, axe, or power tool may be needed.
Carrying knives is illegal in many countries, especially if the blade is longer than several inches.
Another type of knife which is illegal in many places is the "switchblade," a knife that has a button which when pressed activates a spring to open the knife.
Knockout, also known as the knockout game and knockout king, is a violent activity played by teenagers.
The object of the game is to render unconscious (knockout) an innocent pedestrian with one punch.
The game can result in serious injuries or death for its victims.
Players face criminal charges.
In 1992, a teen stabbed an MIT student through the heart, killing him.
In another case, a St. Louis, Missouri teenager allegedly attacked a pedestrian who hit his head on the ground and died in hospital.
In May 2013, a 51 year-old man died from his injuries after he was attacked in Syracuse, New York, by two teenagers.
The Kalahari Desert is a large arid to semi-arid sandy area in southern Kgalagadi Africa extending 900,000 km (362,500 sq. mi.)
, covering much of Botswana and parts of Namibia and South Africa.
It has huge tracts of excellent grazing after good rains.
The Kalahari Desert is the southern part of Africa, and the geography is a portion of desert and a plateau.
The Kalahari supports some animals and plants because most of it is not a true desert.
There are small amounts of rainfall and the summer temperature is very high.
The driest areas usually receive 110 - of rain per year, and the wettest just a little over 500 m.
The surrounding Kalahari Basin covers over 2.5 million km extending farther into Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, and encroaching into parts of Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The only permanent river, the Okavango, flows into a delta in the northwest, forming marshes that are rich in wildlife.
Ancient dry riverbeds called omuramba traverse the Central Northern reaches of the Kalahari and provide standing pools of water during the rainy season.
Previously havens for wild animals from elephant to giraffe, and for predators such as lion and cheetah, the riverbeds are now mostly grazing spots, though leopard or cheetah can still be found.
The Kalahari has a number of game reserves the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR, the world 's second largest protected area), Khutse Game Reserve and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.
Animals that live in the region include brown hyenas, lions, meerkats, giraffe, warthogs, jackals and several species of antelope (including the eland, gemsbok, springbok, hartebeest, steenbok, kudu, and duiker), and many species of bird and reptiles.
Vegetation in the Kalahari consists mainly of grasses and acacias but there are over 400 identified plant species present (including the wild watermelon or Tsamma melon).
The Bushmen of the Kalahari were hunter\/gatherers.
They hunted for meat and gathered the food of the desert to eat.
They did not keep animals.
They moved from place to place to find food and water.
They owned very few things because they had to carry everything themselves.
Very few people still live this way anywhere in the world.
Kathmandu is the capital city of Nepal.
It is the largest city of Nepal.
The population of the city is about 1.5 million.
Kathmandu is divided into three areas; Lalitpur, Patan and Bhaktapur.
It has many Buddhist and Hindu temples and palaces.
Kathmandu has a humid subtropical climate (Cwa in the K ppen climate classification).
The Kariba Dam is a hydroelectric dam in the Kariba Gorge of the Zambezi river basin between Zambia and Zimbabwe.
It is one of the largest dams in the world at 128 m high and 579 m long.
Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher.
He wrote more than twenty novels, three collections of poetry, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism.
He was the father of the British novelist Martin Amis.
Kingsley Amis was born in Clapham, South London, England.
He went to school at the City of London School and St. John 's College, Oxford.
At Oxford, he met Philip Larkin and became friends.
Amis served in the Royal Corps of Signals in the Second World War.
Amis was a fan of jazz music.
He liked the American musicians Sidney Bechet, Henry "Red" Allen and Pee Wee Russell.
His first novel Lucky Jim was very successfull.
The novel won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction.
Lucky Jim was the first English novel that focused on an ordinary man as anti-hero.
As a poet, Amis was a part of The Movement (anti-romantic poetry).
As a young man, Kingsley Amis was a member of the Communist Party.
He left them when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956.
After that, Amis became anti-communist, and conservative.
He talks about his political change in the essay "Why Lucky Jim Turned Right" (1967).
Amis was an atheist.
Novels such as The Green Man and The Anti-Death League were about the personality of a divine being.
They were also about its relationship to death and dying.
Amis 's novel The Old Devils won the Booker Prize in 1986.
He received a knighthood in 1990.
Amis was married.
The first time in 1948 to Hilary Bardwell and then to novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard in 1965.
He divorced Howard in 1983.
Amis spent his last years living with his first wife and her third husband.
He had two sons and a daughter.
His younger son was novelist Martin Amis.
Martin wrote about his father 's life and decline in his memoir Experience.
Amis ' interest in science fiction led to New Maps of Hell (1960).
It was about how he felt about science fiction in literature.
He liked the stories of Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth.
With the Sovietologist Robert Conquest, Amis produced the science fiction series Spectrum I IV.
This series got a lot of its ideas from the 1950s magazine Astounding Science Fiction.
He wrote three science fiction novels.
The Alteration was an alternate history novel set in a twentieth-century Britain.
Russian Hide-and-Seek was an alternate history where Russia had conquered Britain after the Second World War.
He also wrote the supernatural-horror novel The Green Man which the BBC adapted for television.
Amis wrote books about Ian Fleming 's James Bond.
He wrote the popular James Bond Dossier.
Later, he wrote, The Book of Bond, or, Every Man His Own 007.
It was a tongue-in-cheek how-to manual about being a spy like Bond.
He wrote it under the name "Lt Col. William ` Bill ' Tanner".
Tanner was M 's Chief of Staff in many of the Bond novels.
Kana refers to the two syllabic writing systems used in Japanese.
A kilt is a ceremonial article of clothing worn in Scotland.
It is made of a thick, woven fabric with a tartan (checkered) pattern.
It resembles a pleated skirt except that it is worn by men.
It is still worn during ceremonies by some Scottish and Canadian military units and by people who play the bagpipes (a Scottish wind instrument).
It is also quite commonly worn by men at weddings.
Kubla Khan is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
He wrote it in 1797, and it was published in 1816.
It is a poem from the Romantic era, a time when people often made art about nature and emotions.
Coleridge said that he wrote the poem after a dream he had, while on opium.
He said that he was interrupted by a person from Porlock while he was writing it, and never got to finish it.
Some people say that this is not completely true.
The first stanza of the poem describes a pleasure dome and a river called Alph, and the second stanza talks about an Abyssinian maid.
Kashubian or Cassubian is a Lechitic language, a kind of Slavic language.
It is spoken in the Polish region of Pomerania.
Today the language is taught in some state schools.
Since 2005 it has been protected in Poland as a regional language.
It is the only language in Poland with this status.
The status was given by an act of Polish Parliament on January 6, 2005.
Kenneth Elton Kesey (September 17, 1935 November 10, 2001) was an American writer best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest.
He was born in La Junta, Colorado and moved to Springfield, Oregon in 1946.
Kandahar is the second largest city in Afghanistan.
Alexander the Great visited the town and named it after himself.
Alexander the Great founded Kandahar in the 4th century BC.
He called it "Alexandria Arachosia".
About 500,000 people live there in 2015.
It is in the central-south of Afghanistan.
Kandahar is the capital of Kandahar Province.
It is an important trading center for sheep, wool, cotton, silk, felt, food grains, fresh and dried fruit, and tobacco.
Kandahar has an international airport.
The Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is an observatory in the United States.
It is 88 k southwest of Tucson, Arizona.
Karlheinz Stockhausen (22 August 1928-5 December 2007) was a German composer.
He was the most important German composer in the years after World War II.
During this time composers were exploring many new ideas.
Stockhausen used serialism in new ways, and he invented many ways of composing electronic music.
His works include an opera cycle Licht which consists of seven operas.
Stockhausen was born near Cologne.
His father was a village school teacher.
His mother was put in a sanatarium in 1933 where she died in 1942.
She was probably killed there because the Nazis thought people who were mentally ill should not be allowed to live.
Stockhausen was a young man during the war.
He trained to be a teacher and was sent to work in a military hospital near where the army was.
His father died fighting in the war.
After the war, with no parents, he went to work on a farm.
Then, in 1947, he went to study at the Cologne Musikhochschule.
He played the piano in bars and clubs and he improvised at the piano when playing for a magician s magic shows.
He was thinking of becoming a writer.
At this time many of Germany s important composers met every summer in Darmstadt.
The course was called Darmstadt Holiday Course for New Music.
Stockhausen went there in 1951.
There he performed some modern music and met important people such as the music critic and philosopher Theodor Adorno.
He heard the music of Messiaen and, soon after marrying, he went to Paris to study with Messiaen.
In Paris he met Pierre Boulez and Pierre Schaeffer who was working on musique concr te.
He experimented with different sounds that percussion instruments can make, and he started composing electronic music.
When he went back to Cologne he worked in a studio for electronic music where he studied communications theory.
By this time Stockhausen, Boulez and Nono were the leading composers of avant garde (experimental) music.
Stockhausen made Cologne an important center for electronic music.
He also helped to make the Darmstadt Summer Courses a famous center for modern music.
He did not invite John Cage to lecture there in 1958.
This led to disagreements with Boulez and Nono.
In California in 1967, Stockhausen married his second wife who was a painter.
During the 1960s he bought land in the country near Cologne and had a house built there.
Stockhausen did not design the house himself, because he was not an architect.
Stockhausen was by now world famous.
He toured the United States and many other countries with a small group of musicians performing modern music.
His music was not only listened to by fans of classical music but was also becoming part of popular youth culture.
His picture was included on the front cover of the Beatles s record Sgt. Pepper 's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The record company Deutsche Grammophon sold more copies of his music than of any other modern composer except Stravinsky.
During the 1970s Stockhausen became even more popular.
This was partly because other music, like the other arts, had become political and very left-wing in the 1960s, which made people angry.
It was also partly because audiences wanted a change from music that was very complicated, and Stockhausen 's music had become much simpler.
His most popular compositions are Tierkreis (1974 75) and In Freundschaft (1977).
Stockhausen broke with his publisher and started to publish his music himself.
From 1977 to 2003 Stockhausen composed Licht ("Light"), a set of seven operas named for the days of the week.
Stockhausen died of heart failure on 5 December 2007 in Kuerten.
In some student works Stockhausen used twelve tone composition.
He became interested in Messiaen and his composition Kreuzspiel shows Messiaen s influence.
In Kontra-Punkte (1953) the music starts with very small bits played by ten instruments.
Gradually these little bits come together and at the end the music concentrates on the piano.
From 1953 he worked seriously at electronic music.
He thought that electronic music was going to be the music of the future.
His Gesang der J nglinge is a multi-track work, using 5 tracks (later reduced to 4).
Gruppen (Groups) is a work for three orchestras and three conductors.
They sit in different parts of the concert hall and play at different speeds at the same time.
His piano piece Klavierst ck XI (Piano Piece eleven) shows no influence of John Cage at all.
The music is written on a huge sheet of paper and the pianist decides as he plays which part of the music to go to next and how to play it.
This means that each performance of the work is different.
This is not chance music, but "mobile" music.
He continued to experiment with new ideas.
Kontakte is a work for piano, percussion and electronic music (the tape has been prepared beforehand).
He composed live electronic music beginning in the 1960s.
This means using electronics to change the sound of normal instruments that are amplified.
His operatic cycle Licht was started in 1977 and took him 26 years to complete.
There are seven operas: one for each day of the week.
Some of the music for this includes microtonal scales, in which the notes are tuned so that they are less than a semitone apart.
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko (Russian language: September 24, 1911 March 10, 1985) was the leader of the Soviet Union for a short time.
He became the leader in 1984.
He had emphysema, hepatitis and cirrhosis.
He ruled for 13 months until his death in from heart failure in Moscow in 1985.
Chernenko had a son called Albert.
The Komondor is a breed of dog.
The Komondors are cord-coated dogs.
They come from Hungary.
They are livestock guard dogs and should not be confused with herd dogs.
They stay with the animals they guard as a member of their flock.
Komondors need a job to do or a property to guard.
They should not be kept in apartments.
They need space, a large garden or a home in the countryside.
They are not lap dogs but working dogs.
They may think of their family as their herd to take care of.
The Komondors are 50-60 k and must be at least 70 chigh.
But they can be much bigger; this is the minimum height.
They live 12-14 years; that is long life for a big dog.
Komondors are calm, intelligent and independent.
They do not always need a human to tell them what to do.
This trait can make them more difficult to train.
They are loyal and will often follow family members around the house.
A Komondor is a large territorial dog.
To protect a herd or family is instinctive to this breed.
Komondors can be aggressive with people they meet, if they do not learn how to be friendly and social with people and other pets.
This ability to be friendly must be taught while they are puppies.
Komondors are generally quiet dogs.
They do not bark without a good reason.
Giving a glaring stare can be a warning to intruders to leave, or the Komondor will attack.
Komondor dogs should be trained to listen to owners and caregivers.
Otherwise they will just go on doing things their own way.
This is because that is what they learned to do for hundreds of years.
The Komondors were often left alone to take care of the herd.
The Komondors learned to make decisions and not wait for directions to tell them what to do if a wolf or bear was coming.
The Komondor is usually silent and sleeping during the day.
But when the night comes the Komondor starts moving around.
The Komondor will walk up and down all over the area he is supposed to guard.
The dog will take care of any thief, burglar or bad people who want to make trouble.
The Komondor often knows how to tell a friendly person from a burglar.
The Komondor just knows and feels if somebody will come with a bad intention.
Krakatoa (Indonesian name: Krakatau) is an active volcano in the Sunda Strait, Indonesia.
The volcano has erupted repeatedly in known history.
The best known of these events occurred in late August 1883.
The 1883 eruption ejected more than seven cubic miles (25 cubic kilometers) of rock, ash, and pumice, and made the loudest sound ever recorded by human beings.
The sound was heard as far away as Perth in Australia (3,500 km; 2,200 miles), and the island of Rodriguez near Mauritius (4,800 km; 3,000 miles).
Many thousands of people were killed and injured by the eruption, mostly in the tsunami (giant wave) which followed the explosion.
The pressure wave from the final explosion was recorded on barongraphs around the world, which continued to register it up to 5 days after the explosion.
The recordings show that the shock wave from the final explosion reverberated around the globe seven times.
The eruption destroyed two-thirds of what was then the island of Krakatoa.
New eruptions at the volcano since 1927 have built a new island, called Anak Krakatau (child of Krakatoa).
Edmond Roberts called Krakatoa, Crokatoa, in 1832.
Kremlin is the Russian word for "fortress", "citadel" or "castle".
It is used to refer to fortified central complexes in historic Russian cities.
In Moscow it refers to the central square.
The Necropolis for communists is in one of the walls of the Moscow kremlin.
The mausoleum for Vladimir Lenin is outside.
Because of the Katyn massacre, Joseph Stalin 's body was removed from Lenin mausoleum on November 1 1961.
This was very ironic, because it was during a holiday (All Saints Day) that he had banned when he came to power.
Stalin 's death also came exactly 13 years later to the minute of signing Katyn execution orders on March 5 1940 at 9:50 pm.
Nikita Khrushchev ordered his body be very deeply reburied behind the Kremlin Wall in a simple grave.
Removal was part of the successful destalinization process started by Khrushchev in march 1953.
By 1956 all stalin towns and cities were renamed worldwide.
((Image: Kristi Yamaguchi at Heart Truth 2009.
jpg thumb (400x599) px right Kristi Yamaguchi)) Kristi Yamaguchi is an American figure skater and a 1992 Winter Olympics champion.
She was born in Hayward, California during 1971.
In May 2008 the skater was featured on ABC 's reality program Dancing with the Stars.
Khunjerab Pass is in the north of Hunza\/Nagar on China 's boundary.
It is at an altitude of 15397 f above sea level.
Karakoram Highway (Silk Route) crosses into China through this pass.
All trade between China and Gilgit is carried through Khunjerab.
Kazimir Malevich (Kiev, 23 February 1879 15 May 1935) was a Russian painter and art theoretician.
He was born in Ukraine to a Ukrainian mother and a Polish father who worked as an engineer on sugar-beet plantations.
He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the avant-garde Suprematism movement.
In March 1913 a major exhibition of Aristarkh Lentulov 's paintings opened in Moscow.
The effect of this exhibition was comparable with that of Paul C zanne in Paris in 1907, as all the main Russian avant-garde artists of the time (including Malevich) immediately absorbed the cubist principles and began using them in their works.
Already in the same year the Cubo-Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun with Malevich 's stage-set became a great success.
In 1914 Malevich exhibited his works in the Salon des Independants in Paris.
In 1915, Malevich laid down the foundations of Suprematism.
He published his manifesto From Cubism to Suprematism.
In 1916 1917 he took part in exhibitions of the Jack of Diamonds group in Moscow.
Famous examples of his Suprematist works were exhibited there, including Black Square (1915) and White on White (1918).
After the October Revolution, Malevich became a member of the Collegium on the Arts of Narkompros, the commission for the protection of monuments and the museums commission (all from 1918 1919).
He taught at the Vitebsk Practical Art School in the USSR (now part of Belarus) (1919 1922), the Leningrad Academy of Arts (1922 1927), the Kiev State Art Institute (1927 1929), and the House of the Arts in Leningrad (1930).
He wrote the book The World as Non-Objectivity (Munich 1926; English trans.
1959) which outlines his Suprematist theories.
In 1927 he traveled to Warsaw, and then to Berlin and Munich, for a retrospective exhibition.
This finally brought him international recognition.
Malevich arranged to leave most of the paintings behind when he returned to the Soviet Union, because he could see what was going to happen.
Malevich thought a shift in attitude of the Soviet authorities towards the modernist art movement would take place after the death of Lenin.
This proved correct.
In a couple of years the Stalinist regime turned against forms of abstractism, considering them a type of ` bourgeois ' art which could not express social reality.
As a consequence, many of his works were confiscated and he was banned from creating and exhibiting similar art.
Critics derided Malevich for "negating everything good and pure: love of life and love of nature".
Malevich responded that art can advance and develop for art 's sake alone, regardless of its pleasure: art does not need us, and it never did.
Malevich 's work only recently reappeared in art exhibitions in Russia after a long absence.
Since then art followers have worked to reintroduce the artist to Russian lovers of painting.
A book of his theoretical works with an anthology of reminiscences and writings has been published.
On 3 November 2008 a work by Malevich entitled Suprematist Composition from 1916 set the world record for any Russian work of art and any work sold at auction for that year.
It sold at Sotheby s in New York City for just over $ 60 million U.S. (far surpassing his previous record of $ 17 million set in 2000).
Toshiki Kaifu is a Japanese politician.
He was the 76th and 77th Prime Minister of Japan from 1989 to 1991.
Koenigsegg Automotive AB is a Swedish company that makes cars.
They make "super cars", a mixture of sports cars and a fast cars.
The main office is in ngelholm, Sweden.
The creator and manager of Koenigsegg is Christian E. H. von Koenigsegg.
In 1994 he created Koenigsegg as a small company, after years of planning.
The designer David Crafoord designed the concept car for Koenigsegg 's original drawings.
Then, they built a prototype that could be driven.
They tested the car for several years and developed it further.
In 2002, the company started the series production of the model CC 8S.
Koenigsegg CC 8S was named by the Guinness Book of Records for the world 's most powerful car with its 1,050 horsepower.
Koenigsegg 's fastest car is Koenigsegg 2013 Agera R. It can go up to 440 km\/h (273 mph).
In 14,5 seconds the car can go up to 300 km\/h (186 mph).
Kaliningrad Oblast is an exclave of Russia bordered by Poland, Lithuania and Baltic Sea.
The capital of Kaliningrad Oblast is Kaliningrad, formerly K nigsberg.
It is quite unusual, first because it is not attached to Russia.
It is an exclave, with no land connection to the rest of Russia, on the Baltic coast.
It has a population of 941,873 (2010 Census).
It has a continental climate (Dfb in the Koeppen climate classification).
Its territory was part of historical East Prussia (German: Nord-Ostpreussen), which was an exclave of Germany from World War I until 1945.
That year, it was occupied by the Soviet Union.
The region was later annexed to the Soviet Union under border changes of the Potsdam Agreement, when it was attached to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).
Most of its German population were killed or fled west to West Germany during the last months of the war.
The rest were expelled between 1944 and 1950.
Russian settlers were moved in and the population is now mainly Russian.
Khandi Alexander (born 4 September 1957) is an American dancer, choreographer, and movie and television actress.
She played the character Catherine Duke on NewsRadio and the character Jackie Robbins on ER.
She is best known for the character Alexx Woods, a coroner on the CBS drama '.
She is currently appearing in the HBO series Treme.
Khartoum is the capital of North Sudan.
This big city has over three million people.
It is where the Blue Nile and main Nile come together.
Its name means "elephant tusk".
Two other big cities nearby are Omdurman and Khartoum North.
Keynesian economics (also called Keynesianism) describes the economics theories of John Maynard Keynes.
Keynes wrote about his theories in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.
The book was published in 1936.
Keynes said capitalism was a good economic system.
In a capitalist system, people earn money from their work.
Businesses employ and pay people to work.
Then people can spend their money on things they want.
Other people work and make things to buy.
Sometimes the capitalist system has problems.
People lose their work.
Businesses close.
People can not work and can not spend money.
Keynes said the government should step in and help people who do not have work.
This idea is called "demand-side policy".
If people are working, the economy is good.
If people are not working, the economy is bad.
Keynes said when the economy is bad, people want to save their money.
That is, they do not spend their money on things they want.
As a result, there is less economic activity.
Keynes said the government should spend more money when people do not have work.
The government can borrow money and give people jobs (work).
Then people can spend money again and buy things.
This helps other people find work.
Some people, such as conservatives, libertarians, and people who believe in Austrian economics, do not agree with Keynes ' ideas.
They say government work does not help capitalism.
They say when the government borrows money, it takes money away from businesses.
They do not like Keynesian economics because they say the economy can get better without government help.
During the late 1970s, Keynesian economics became less popular because inflation was high at the same time that unemployment was high.
This is because many people interpreted Keynesian theory to say that it was impossible for there to be both high inflation and high unemployment.
When a big recession happened in 2007, Keynesian economics became more popular.
Leaders around the world (including Barack Obama) created stimulus packages which would allow their government to spend a lot of money to create jobs.
Kinetic energy is the energy that an object has because of its motion.
This energy can be converted into other kinds, such as gravitational or electric potential energy, which is the energy that an object has because of its position in a gravitational or electric field.
where is the mass (resistance to linear acceleration or deceleration); is the linear velocity.
where is the moment of inertia (resistance to angular acceleration or deceleration, equal to the product of the mass and the square of its perpendicular distance from the axis of rotation); is the angular velocity.
Klaus Barbie (25 October 1913 25 September 1991) was an SS-Hauptsturmf hrer, soldier, and Gestapo member.
He is known as the "Butcher of Lyon" because of the war crimes he committed in France during World War II.
He lived in Bolivia from 1951 until he was extradited (moved by government order) to France in 1983.
From 1984-1987, he was tried and convicted of, and sentenced to life imprisonment for, crimes against humanity.
He remained in prison until he died of leukemia in Lyon.
Kashmir, previously spelled Cashmere, is a region in South-central Asia.
Historically, the name Kashmir referred to the valley just to the south of the western end of the Himalayan mountain range.
Today, Kashmir refers to a much larger area that includes the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (which includes the Kashmir Valley, Jammu region and Ladakh), Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan (part of Pakistan), and Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract (part of China).
The main "Valley of Kashmir" is a low fertile area surrounded by mountains and fed by many rivers.
People like it for its natural beauty and simple lifestyle.
The region is part of a border dispute between India and Pakistan.
In total it has an area of 230,166.1 square kilometres or (89,106 square miles).
The population of the region is more than the individual populations of 127 UN member nations and its area is larger than that of 97 nations.
The Nilamata Purana describes the Valley 's origin from the waters, a fact corroborated by prominent geologists, and shows how the name of the land was derived from the process of desiccation Ka means "water" and Shimir means "to desiccate".
Hence, Kashmir stands for "a land desiccated from water".
There is also a theory which takes Kashmir to be a contraction of Kashyap-mira or Kashyapmir or Kashyapmeru, the "Sea or Mountain of Kashyapa", the sage who is credited with having drained the waters of the primordial Lake Satisar, that Kashmir was before it was reclaimed.
The Nilamata Purana gives the name Kashmira to the (Kashmir Valley includes the Wular Lake) Mira" which means the sea lake or the mountain of Sage Kashyapa.
Mira in Sanskrit means Ocean or boundary, considering it to be an embodiment of Uma and it is the Kashmir that the world knows today.
The Kashmiris, however, call it Kashir, which has been derived phonetically from Kashmir.
The Ancient Greeks called it as Kasperia.
Kashyapa-pura, which has been identified with Kaspapyros of Hecataeus (apud Stephanus of Byzantium) and Kaspatyros of Herodotus (3.102, 4.44).
Kashmir is also believed to be the country meant by Ptolemy 's Kaspeiria.
Cashmere is an archaic spelling of present-Kashmir, and in some countries it is still spelled this way.
A tribe of Semitic origin, named Kash (which means a deep slash in the native dialect), is believed to have founded the cities of Kashan and Kashgar, not to be confused with the Kashyapi tribe from Caspian.
The land and the people were known as ` Kashir ' from which ` Kashmir ' was also derived from therein.
The Kashmir conflict has existed since India and Pakistan became independent states.
At first, the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh, wanted his state to remain independent of both India and Pakistan.
On 20 October 1947, tribesmen supported by Pakistan invaded Kashmir.
Singh fought back at first, but on 27 October, he asked the Governor-General of India, Louis Mountbatten, for help.
He agreed, but made Singh turn over Jammu and Kashmir to India.
Once the papers of accession to India were signed, Indian soldiers entered Kashmir with orders to stop any further occupation, but they were not allowed to expel anyone from the state.
Pakistan claimed that it was illegal for Singh to give Kashmir to Pakistan, and the First Kashmir War was started.
India took the matter to the United Nations.
The UN resolution asked Pakistan to vacate the areas it had occupied and asked India to assist the U.N. Plebiscite Commission to organize a plebiscite to determine the will of the people.
Pakistan refused to vacate the occupied areas and the plebiscite was never held.
India and Pakistan have fought several wars over Kashmir.
In 1949 and 1972 they agreed on a border for most of the Territories (except for the Siachen Glacier).
This demarcation line which marks the border between India and Pakistan is known as the Line of Control.
It is guarded by Indian and Pakistani troops.
The border between Aksai Chin (held by China) and Jammu and Kashmir (held by India) is known as Line of Actual Control.
The Kashmir border between the Punjab (Pakistan) and Indian-administered Kashmir is called the working boundary, but is not recognized by Pakistan.
India has built a fence along part of this border.
The Siachen Glacier and the bordering Saltoro Range first saw military action in 1984 when the Indian Army occupied the glacier and the Saltoro range to prevent Pakistan from occupying the area.
This operation was codenamed Operation Meghdoot.
There have been several minor changes to the held positions.
However, the Indian Armed forces have held onto the heights on the plateau, preventing the Pakistani soldiers from climbing up the Saltoro range.
The Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) refers to the current position that divides Indian and Pakistani troops in the Siachen Glacier region.
The line extends from the northernmost point of the LOC (Line of Control) to Indira Col. This line runs across the edge of the Saltoro Range, which is a mountainous plateau with peaks that are over 8,000 meters tall.
The current position of the AGPL follows the general line:
A group of Districts forms a Division, which is administered by a ` Divisional Commissioner '.
Kashmir is now divided in twenty-one districts, grouped under five divisions jointly controlled by Pakistan and India respectively:
Kashmir 's economy is centred around Agriculture, like that of Pakistan.
Traditionally the staple crop of the valley was Rice, which formed the chief food of the people.
In addition, corn, wheat, barley and oats were also grown.
Given its temperate climate, it is suited for crops like Asparagus, Artichoke, seakale, broad beans, scarletrunners, beetroot, cauliflower and cabbage.
Fruit trees are common in the valley, and the cultivated orchards yield pears, apples, peaches, and cherries.
The chief trees are deodar (National tree of Pakistan), firs and Pines, chenar (State tree) or plane, Maple, birch and Walnut, apple, cherry.
Historically, Kashmir became known worldwide when Cashmere wool was exported to other regions and nations (exports have ceased due to decreased abundance of the cashmere goat and increased competition from Western China).
Kashmiris are well adept at Knitting and making Pashmina Shawls, silk carpets, rugs, Kurtas, and Pottery.
Saffron, too, is grown in Kashmir.
Efforts are on to export the naturally grown fruits and vegetables as Organic foods mainly to the Greater Middle East region which it forms an integral part.
Srinagar is known for its silver-work, Papier mache, wood-carving, and the weaving of silk.
The economy was badly damaged by the 2005 Pakistan earthquake which, as of 8 October 2005, resulted in over 70,000 deaths in the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir and around 1,500 deaths in Indian controlled kashmir.
The Indian-held portion of Kashmir is believed to have potentially rich rocks containing hydrocarbon reserves.
The economy of the region is focused on agriculture.
People grow rice there.
In the Indian part they also grow corn, such as wheat and barley.
Its climate is different from that of most of the Indian subcontinent: It is milder.
Therefore, crops like artichoke, cauliflower, cabbage and certain kinds of beans are also grown.
Cashmere wool is well-known almost anywhere in the world.
Cashmere wool is wool from Cashmere goats.
Because of conflicts over the territory, however, most Cashmere wool no longer comes from Kashmir.
Kashmir is home to the finest saffron in the world.
Tourism has been important in Kashmir for many years.
Many people call the region Paradise on Earth.
Tourists from all over the world visit Kashmir.
In the last ten years, less people have visited Kashmir because of terrorism, but it still remains one of the most sought after tourist destinations.
78 % of the people in Kashmir are Muslims and Islam is the majority religion of the territory.
Kenneth David Kaunda (born 28 April 1924), also known as KK, is a Zambian politician and teacher.
He first served as the first President of Zambia from 1964 to 1991.
He was also Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from September 1970 to September 1973.
K2 is the second highest mountain in the world.
It is in the Karakoram section of the Himalayas between Pakistan and China.
K2 is the National mountain of Pakistan.
The popular name K2 came from the name of the mountain range Karakoram.
It means Karakoram 2.
K2 is 8,623 metres (28,661 feet) high.
The mountain may be harder to climb than Mount Everest because of its very bad weather.
Climbers say that the weather around K2 is much worse than Mount Everest.
K2 is also much higher than the area around it when compared to Everest.
K2 is nicknamed "The Savage Mountain" because of how difficult the climb is.
It has the second-highest fatality rate among the eight-thousand-feet mountains.
As of 2011, only 300 people have climbed to the top of the mountain.
At least 80 people have died trying to climb it.
An unofficial name for K2 is Mount Godwin Austen, named for the man who first climbed it.
The first attempt to reach the summit was made by an Anglo-Swiss expedition in 1902 that ascended to 18,600 feet (5,670 metres) on the peak s northeastern crest.
Other unsuccessful attempts included an Italian expedition in 1909, led by Luigi Amedeo, duke d Abruzzi, via the southeastern ridge (later called the Abruzzi Ridge) that reached approximately 20,000 feet (6,100 metres).
In 1938 an American expedition led by Charles Houston via the Abruzzi Ridge reached about 26,000 feet (7,925 metres); in 1939 another American-led expedition following the same route reached about 27,500 feet (8,380 metres); and in 1953 another expedition led by Houston reached 25,900 feet (7,900 metres) on the Abruzzi Ridge.
Finally, in 1954, an Italian expedition consisting of five scientists (including the geologist Ardito Desio as leader), a doctor, a photographer, and 12 others, including a Pakistani, managed to conquer the Abruzzi Ridge despite the severe weather conditions.
The summit was reached at 6 pm on July 31, 1954, by Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli.
In the course of the ascent, Mario Puchoz, one of the guides, died of pneumonia.
The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is a species of lizard that lives in the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Rincah, Flores, Gili Motang, and Gili Dasami.
It is the largest living lizard.
They grow to an average length of 2 3 meters (approximately 6.5 10 ft) and weigh around 70kg (154 pounds).
Komodo dragon bites can be very dangerous, and they sometimes attack people.
Western scientists first saw Komodo dragons in 1910.
They are very popular animals in zoos because they are very big and look scary.
The lizards are in some danger.
There are very few Komodo dragons still alive on their home islands.
Indonesian law does not allow hunting these lizards.
Komodo National Park was made to help protect Komodo dragons.
The Komodo dragon has other names.
It can also be called the Komodo monitor or the Komodo Island monitor by some scientists, but this is not very common.
The people who live in Komodo Island call them ora, buaja durat (land crocodile) or biawak raksasa (giant monitor).
The Komodo dragon is cold-blooded.
It has a tail as long as its body.
It has about 60 sharp teeth that can grow up to 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) long.
It also has a long, yellow, forked tongue.
Also its skin can be blue, orange, green, gray, or brown.
Its saliva is red because its gums almost completely cover its teeth.
When they eat, their teeth cut their gums and make them bleed.
This creates a good environment for the dangerous bacteria that live in its mouth.
These lizards are the top predators in the areas where they live, because they are so big.
People used to think they were very big because there are no other large, meat-eating animals on the islands where they live.
Therefore they did not have to compete with other similar animals for the same food and places to live.
People also thought they were big because of their low metabolic rate.
However, facts are different.
The fossil record shows that the Komodo is the last of a group of lizards called varanids.
These lizards have been about the same size for nearly a million years.
They had their origin in Australia nearly four million years ago, and spread later to much of Indonesia.
Their size has nothing to do with being on a relatively small island.
Most of them died out after contact with the modern humans.
The Komodo dragon 's earholes are easy to see, but Komodo dragons are not very good at hearing.
It is able to see as far away as 300 meters (985 feet), but it is thought to have poor night vision.
The Komodo dragon is able to see in color, but has trouble seeing objects that do not move.
The Komodo dragon uses its tongue to taste and smell like many other reptiles.
They have a special part of the body called the Jacobson 's organ for smelling.
With the help of a good wind, they can smell dead animals from 4 9.5 kilometres (2.5 6 mi) away.
The Komodo dragon 's nostrils are not very useful for smelling, because it does not have a diaphragm.
It only has a few taste buds in the back of its throat.
Its scales have special connections to nerves that give the lizard a sense of touch.
The scales around its ears, lips, chin, and bottoms of the feet may have three or more of these connections.
Komodo dragons have dangerous bacteria in their saliva.
Scientists have identified 57 of them.
One of the most dangerous bacteria in Komodo dragon saliva appears to be a kind of Pasteurella multocida.
These bacteria cause disease in the blood of their victim.
If a bite does not kill an animal and it escapes, it will usually die within a week from infection.
The Komodo dragon seems to never get sick from its own bacteria.
So, researchers have been looking for the lizard 's antibacterial.
This may be used as medicine for humans.
In addition to this deadly bacterial brew, the Komodo dragon has venom glands in its lower jaws which match the potency of the inland taipan, a venomous snake.
The venom acts as a blood thinner, and will cause death by heart failure and massive internal bleeding in as little as 30 minutes.
Mating begins between May and August, and the eggs are laid in September.
Dragons leave about twenty eggs in empty nests left by birds called megapodes.
The eggs develop for seven to eight months.
The eggs open and the baby lizards come out in April, when there are many insects to eat.
Young Komodo dragons live in trees, where they are safe from adult Komodo dragons and other animals that might eat them.
They take around three to five years to mature and may live as long as fifty years.
Female Komodo dragons can have babies without fertilisation (parthenogenesis).
The Komodo dragon likes hot and dry places and lives in dry open grassland, savanna, and tropical forest on lower land.
It is most active in the day because it is cold-blooded, although it is sometimes active at night.
Komodo dragons live alone.
They come together only to breed and eat.
They can run up to 20 kilometers per hour (12.4 mph), dive up to 4.5 metres (15 ft) at top speed for short periods of time.
When they are young, they climb trees with their strong claws.
As the Komodo dragon grows bigger, its claws are used mostly as weapons, because it is too big to climb trees well.
The Komodo dragon digs holes for protection with its powerful legs and claws.
These holes can be from 1 3 metres (3 10 ft) wide.
Because it is very big and sleeps in holes, it is able to keep itself warm through the night.
The Komodo dragon usually hunts in the afternoon, but stays in the shade during the hottest part of the day.
Komodo dragons have special resting places on ridges that catch cool sea breezes.
Komodo dragons are carnivores, which means that they eat meat.
Although they eat mostly dead animals they will also catch live animals as prey.
When prey goes by a Komodo dragon, it will suddenly charge at the animal and bite or claw the belly or the throat.
To catch animals that are up high and out of reach, the Komodo dragon may stand on its back legs and use its tail as a support.
Komodo dragons do not chew their food.
They eat by biting and pulling off large chunks of flesh and swallowing them whole.
They can swallow smaller prey, up to the size of a goat, whole.
This is because they have flexible jaws and skulls, and their stomachs can expand.
Komodo dragons make much saliva to help the food move easily, but swallowing still takes a long time (15 20 minutes to swallow a goat).
Komodo dragons may try to swallow faster by running and pushing the dead animal in its mouth very hard against a tree.
Sometimes a lizard hits the tree so hard that it gets knocked out.
Dragons breathe using a small tube under the tongue that connects to the lungs.
This allows it to continue breathing even while swallowing large things.
Komodo dragons can eat up to 80 percent of its body weight in one meal.
After swallowing its food, it drags itself to a sunny place to speed up digestion so the food does not rot and poison the dragon.
Large dragons can survive on as little as 12 meals a year.
After digestion, the Komodo dragon vomits the horns, hair, and teeth of the animal it ate.
This vomit is covered in a smelly mucus.
After vomiting, it rubs its face in the dirt or on bushes to get rid of the mucus.
This suggests that komodo dragons dislike the smell, just like humans do.
The largest animals usually eat first, while the smaller ones eat later.
Dragons of equal size may wrestle each other.
Losers usually run away, although sometimes they are chased and eaten by the winners.
The Komodo dragon 's diet includes invertebrates, other reptiles (including smaller Komodo dragons), birds, bird eggs, small mammals, monkeys, wild boars, goats, deer, horses, and water buffalo.
Young Komodo dragons will eat insects, eggs, geckoes, and small mammals.
Komodo dragons may eat people and, they can even dig up bodies from their graves to eat them.
Therefore, people on Komodo Island moved their graves from sandy to clay ground and piled rocks on top to stop the lizards from digging up dead bodies.
Because the Komodo dragon does not have a diaphragm, it can not suck water when drinking.
It can not lap water with its tongue either.
Instead, it drinks by taking a mouthful of water, lifting its head, and letting the water run down its throat.
Recent fossils from Queensland suggests that the Komodo dragon evolved in Australia before spreading to Indonesia.
Its body size remained stable on Flores, ever since the islands were isolated by rising sea levels, about 900,000 years ago.
The sea level dropped very low during the last ice age and uncovered wide areas of continental shelf.
The Komodo dragon spread into these areas.
They became isolated on the islands where they live today when sea levels rose again.
They moved into what is now the Indonesian island group.
They spread as far east as the island of Timor.
Komodo dragons have been popular in zoos for a long time.
However, there are few of them in zoos because they may become sick and do not have babies easily.
As of May 2009, there are 13 European, 2 African, 35 North American, 1 Singaporean, and 2 Australian institutions that keep Komodo dragons.
A Komodo dragon was shown in a zoo for the first time in 1934 at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park.
But, it lived for only two years.
People continued to try to keep Komodo dragons in zoos, but the lives of these creatures was very short.
The average life of a dragon in a zoo was five years in the National Zoological Park.
Walter Auffenberg studied the dragons in zoos and eventually helped zoos to keep dragons more successfully
Many dragons in zoos may become tamer than wild lizards within a short period of time in a zoo.
Many zoo keepers have brought the animals out of their cages to meet visitors without any problems.
Dragons can also recognize individual humans.
However, even dragons that seem tame may surprise people and become aggressive.
This can often happen when a stranger enters the animal 's home.
Research with captive Komodo dragons has shown that they play.
One dragon would push a shovel left and seemed attracted to the sound of it moving across rocks.
A young female dragon at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. would grab and shake things like statues, drink cans, plastic rings, and blankets.
She would also put her head in boxes, shoes, and other objects.
She did not make a mistake and think these objects were food; she would only swallow them if they were covered in rat blood.
Komodo dragons do not attack human very often.
However, they do sometimes hurt or kill people.
In June 2001, a Komodo dragon seriously hurt Phil Bronstein executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Bronstein had entered the dragon 's cage at the Los Angeles Zoo after being invited in by its keeper.
The zoo keeper had told him to take off his white shoes, which could have excited the Komodo dragon.
Bronstein was bitten on his bare foot.
Although he escaped, he needed surgery to repair his foot.
On June 4, 2007, a Komodo dragon attacked an eight-year-old boy on Komodo Island.
The boy later died because he lost too much blood.
This was the first time that people know a dragon had killed a human in 33 years.
Local people blamed the attack on environmentalists.
People from outside the island had stopped local people from killing goats and leaving them for the dragons.
The Komodo dragons no longer found the food they needed, so they came into places where humans lived in search of food.
Many natives of Komodo Island believe that Komodo dragons are actually the reincarnation of relatives and should be treated with respect.
On March 24, 2009, two Komodo dragons attacked and killed fisherman Muhamad Anwar on Komodo Island.
They attacked Anwar after he fell out of a sugar-apple tree.
He was bleeding badly from bites on his hands, body, legs, and neck.
He was taken to a clinic on the nearby island of Flores, but doctors said he was dead when he arrived.
There are very few Komodo dragons, and they may not survive.
The lizards are on the IUCN Red List of animals in danger.
Not many Komodo dragons still live on their home islands.
However, there may now be only 352 females having babies in the wild.
The Komodo National Park was founded in 1980 to protect the Komodo dragon on its home islands.
Many things have reduced the number of dragons, including: volcanoes, earthquakes, loss of good places to live, fire, not enough animals to eat, tourism, and illegal hunting.
Buying or selling Komodo dragons or their skins is illegal as part of an international law called CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species).
A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber or oven in which a controlled temperature regime is produced.
The Kiwi is a bird from New Zealand.
They are the genus Apteryx of the family Apterygidae.
There are several species and sub-species of kiwi.
The kiwi is a symbol for New Zealand.
People from New Zealand are nicknamed "Kiwis".
They have a long beak and brown feathers.
The feathers look like fur.
Kiwis can not fly, and their wings are so small that they can not usually be seen.
Kiwis can not see well, but they can hear very well.
They are the smallest ratite birds.
Kiwis are night (nocturnal) birds.
They mostly eat invertebrates, like worms and insects.
Kiwis keep a territory where they live alone or with their mate.
In their territory they build several small caves where they sleep, or lay their eggs.
Kiwis are monogamous; the male and female stay together until one of them dies.
The male and female live in the same territory and raise their children together.
Female kiwis lay 1-3 eggs.
Compared to the size of the parent, the eggs are the largest of any bird species.
Kiwis are mature when they are 2 years old, and they can live more than 20 years.
One kiwi kept in a zoo even reached 35 years old.
The female brown Kiwi lays enormous eggs, which are almost one-sixth of her own body weight.
These eggs take 11 weeks to incubate, the longest time for any bird.
In comparison, Yellow-breasted Chats ' eggs take only 11 days, and chickens ' eggs take 21 days.
Kiwis prefer to live in burrows they make in forested areas.
They make their burrows in the ground like rabbits, or in between the roots of trees or in places such as hollow logs.
Kiwi line their burrows with leaves to make them more comfortable and warm.
Sometimes they hide the entrance to their burrows using piles of twigs.
Kiwis may have more than ten different burrows in their territory and will swap between them sometimes.
Kiwis are threatened by many mammals.
Stoats are the main threat for the Kiwi chicks.
Ferrets and dogs kill adult Kiwis.
Kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa) is a fruit.
It has an oval shape.
It is green on the inside with small black seeds that can be eaten.
The kiwi has furry brown skin that is edible but is usually removed.
The skin is relatively thin.
The kiwi is native to South China.
The fruit was named in 1959 after the kiwi, a bird and the symbol of New Zealand.
Before that, its English name was Chinese gooseberry.
The kiwifruit is healthy and contains many vitamins and minerals.
Kiwis are rich in vitamin C, vitamin K, potassium, and fiber.
Kiwis have more vitamin C than an equivalent amount of orange.
There are different types of kiwifruit.
The main types are hayward (the most common green kiwifruit), chico, saanichton 12, and golden kiwifruit.
Golden kiwifruit are sweeter than normal green kiwifruit.
Golden kiwifruit was invented by grafting and cross-pollinating different types of kiwifruit.
The Kiel Canal is a waterway in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein.
The canal connects the North Sea from the River Elbe to the Baltic Sea at Kiel.
The Canal is about 100 k long.
The canal was first opened to traffic on 19 June 1895.
It was then improved to allow the largest warships to pass through.
The formal reopening of the improved canal was on June 24, 1914.
The Kiel Canal is the busiest artificial waterway for seagoing ships worldwide.
In 2014, 32,600 ships passed through the waterway.
Konrad Emil Bloch ForMemRS (January 21, 1912 October 15, 2000) was a German American biochemist.
Bloch won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1964 with Feodor Lynen "for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism".
He was born on January 21, 1912 in Neisse, Prussian Silesia, German Empire (today Poland).
He studied at the Technical University in Munich from 1930 to 1934.
He fled to the Schweizerische Forschungsinstitut in Davos, Switzerland in 1934 because of the Nazi persecutions of Jews.
He then moved to the United States in 1936.
While in the United States, he was appointed to the department of biological chemistry at Yale Medical School.
He then earned his Ph.. D in biochemistry from Columbia University in 1938.
He would teach at Columbia University from 1939 to 1946.
After that, he went to University of Chicago and then Harvard University where he worked as the Higgins Professor of Biochemistry in 1954.
He worked there until 1982.
He then retired and served as the Mack and Effie Campbell Tyner Eminent Scholar Chair in the College of Human Sciences at Florida State University.
In 1964, Bloch was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology which he shared with Feodor Lynen.
They won the prize "for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism".
The work that they did showed that the body first makes squalene from acetate over many steps and then converts the squalene to cholesterol.
Bloch traced the carbon atoms in cholesterol back to acetate.
Some of the research that he did was conducted using radioactive acetate in bread mold and this was possible because fungi also produce squalene.
The results were confirmed after he tested it on rats.
He was one of many researchers that showed acetyl Coenzyme A is turned into mevalonic acid.
Both Bloch and Lynen showed that mevalonic acid is converted into chemically active isoprene, the precursor to squalene.
Bloch discovered that bile and a female sex hormone were made from cholesterol, which led to the discovery that all steroids were made from cholesterol.
His Nobel Lecture was "The Biological Synthesis of Cholesterol."
In 1985, Bloch was named as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1988.
Klement Gottwald (23 November 1896 14 March 1953) was a was a Czechoslovak politician.
Kettlebaston is a village and civil parish in England.
It is in the Babergh district of Suffolk, about 3 m east of Lavenham.
About 30 people live in the village.
The village 's name comes from Kitelbeornastuna, a Scandinavian name that means "Kitelbjorn 's farm."
Today, the name is pronounced like Kettlebarston.
The village was mentioned for the first time in the Domesday Book in 1086.
Kettlebaston has a church called Church of St Mary.
Kami (-RRB- is a Japanese word for the spirits that are worshipped in the Shintoist religion.
Not all of Kami are gods, because some of these spirits are not personified, but have to do with phenomenons and events like the growth of trees, or rain, or other things in Nature; it is believed that these kami live in those natural things.
It is usually said that there are "yaoyorozu-no-kami.
In Japanese the number "eight-million" is normally used to mean infinity.
A kayak is a small boat that is driven by manpower.
It typically has a covered deck, and a cockpit covered by a spraydeck.
It is propelled by a double-bladed paddle by a sitting paddler.
The kayak was used by the native Ainu, Inuit, Aleut and Eskimo hunters in sub-Arctic regions of northeastern Asia, North America and Greenland.
Modern kayaks come in a wide variety of designs and materials for specialized purposes.
Kayaks typically are built for one, two or occasionally three paddlers who sit facing forward in one or more cockpits below the deck of the boat.
The spray skirt or similar waterproof garment attaches securely to the edges of the cockpit, so that no water from waves or spray may enter the boat.
Therefore in most styles the boat can roll upright again without it filling with water or ejecting the paddler.
Kayaks differ distinctly in design and history from canoes, which are craft propelled by single-bladed paddles by a kneeling paddler, although some modern canoes may be difficult for a non-expert to distinguish from a kayak.
Kayaks are often called canoes in Great Britain and Ireland.
The Kriegsmarine (, War Navy) was the name of the Navy of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945.
It replaced the Imperial German Navy of World War I and the inter-war Reichsmarine.
The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches of the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany.
The Kriegsmarine was developed during the German naval rearmament of the 1930s.
The Treaty of Versailles had limited the size of the German navy after World War I. It also prevented Germany from building submarines.
But by 1934 Germany had secretly stockpiled most of the parts they needed to construct submarines (called U-boats).
In early 1935 Hitler ordered the U-boats to be built.
In January 1939 Plan Z was ordered, calling for the construction of many naval vessels.
The ships of the Kriegsmarine fought during the Spanish Civil War and World War II.
The commander of the Kriegsmarine was Karl D nitz.
The Kriegsmarine 's most famous ships were the U-boats.
Most of them were built after Plan Z was abandoned at the beginning of World War II.
Wolfpacks were groups of submarines that attacked British convoys.
Most of the attacks were during the first half of the Battle of the Atlantic.
Along with the U-boats, commerce raiders and cruisers were used to disrupt Allied shipping in the early years of the war.
The most famous of these were the heavy cruisers Admiral Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer and the battleship Bismarck.
However, the allied adoption of convoy escorts greatly reduced the danger from commerce raiders.
The Knights of Labor (K of L) was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s.
One of its first leaders was Terence V. Powderly.
The Knights started as a secret society with many elaborate rituals.
By 1878 they became more of an open group.
They greatly expanded their membership in the 1880s.
The Knights of Labor began during the era of labor unions.
The Garment Cutters Association of Philadelphia failed and was dissolved on 9 December 1869.
Several members voted to form a new organization.
They were convinced their new union needed more secrecy.
As they drew up plans for the new organization each member was required to take an oath of secrecy.
The title for the presiding officer was "Master Worker" and other titles were similarly named.
On December 28th they adopted the name of Knights of Labor.
The membership fees were $ 1.
In 1878 they held their first general meeting.
The early Knights took up campaigning for an 8-hour workday.
Child labor exploitation was another of their causes.
About 20 % of the Knights were women and black workers.
The members were mainly working class people.
Certain professions were banned from membership.
This included lawyers, bankers, and stockbrokers.
As a measure of how these occupations were viewed, saloon keepers and gamblers were also excluded.
Workers in the 1880s began going on strike to gain better working conditions.
Only about half belonged to unions.
There were an average of about 500 strikes a year between 1881 and 1885.
In 1886 this increased to over 1400 strikes.
On 4 May 1886 in Chicago a peaceful rally was held to support workers striking for an eight-hour day.
Someone threw a bomb into the crowd at Haymarket square.
At least eight police officers and several civilians were killed.
Labor unions were blamed even though the person throwing the bomb was never caught.
The press and the American people held labor unions responsible.
As one of the largest labor organizations the knights of Labor were blamed more than the other unions.
The Haymarket affair caused the decline of the Knights of Labor even though they were not directly involved.
By the early 1900s they were all but gone.
Kosovo (Albanian: Kosov or Kosova; Serbian:, Kosovo) is a territory in the Balkans.
Whether it should be considered a country is disputed mainly between the Kosovan authorities which supported independence and the Serbian authorities which opposed Kosovo breaking away from them.
It has been part of the lands of Dardani in the years BC, Roman, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Serbian and Ottoman Empires, then the Kingdom of Serbia, Italian Empire and Yugoslavia in the 20th century.
After NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999, the territory came under the administration of the United Nations (UNMIK).
The Assembly of Kosovo declared indepedence in February 2008.
This is disputed by Serbia and some other states.
Serbia still sees the territory as Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija.
To the north and east of Kosovo is the rest of Serbia.
To the south of Kosovo is the Republic of Macedonia.
To the west of Kosovo are the Albania and Montenegro.
The capital is Prishtina.
Prishtina is also Kosovo 's largest city.
About two million people live in Kosovo.
A majority of them are of Albanian origin, but there are also Serbs living in the most northern part of Kosovo.
A key signature is a group of sharps or flats which are printed at the beginning of a line of music.
It shows which notes have to be changed into sharps or flats.
For example: if there is one sharp in the key signature it will be an F sharp.
It means that every time the note F is written one plays (or sings) an F sharp (on a keyboard: the black note just to the right of the F) instead.
There are twelve major and twelve minor keys (properly called modes").
This is because a scale can start on any note, and there are twelve notes within an octave: seven white notes and five black notes on a keyboard.
Each major key has its own key signature (the relationship between the keys is explained in the article circle of fifths.
Each minor key shares a key signature with one of the major keys.
There are fifteen possible key signatures: up to seven sharps, up to seven flats, or no sharps or flats.
The reason why there are fifteen and not twelve is because three of them have two possible names: F sharp major (6 sharps) can also be called G flat, C sharp is D flat and B is C flat.
We call these enharmonic i.e. the same note but with a different name.
There are two reasons for writing a key signature.
Firstly, it saves writing out lots of sharps or flats during the piece.
Secondly, it helps the player to think in the key (music) of the piece.
This helps to understand the music better.
If the composer wants any extra sharps or flats during the piece, or he wants to cancel the ones in the key signature, these can be written in the music.
These are called accidentals.
An accidental is always written before the note it belongs to (we say C sharp but we write the sharp sign and then the note C).
As an example: in a piece in G major all Fs are F sharps.
If the composer wants a C sharp he writes a sharp sign in front of the C that needs to be sharpened.
This will last for the rest of the bar (measure).
If he wants a B flat he has to write it in.
If he wants an F instead of the usual F sharp he writes a natural sign.
There are also double sharps (the sign looks like an x) and double flats (two flat signs).
An F double sharp is an F sharp that has been sharpened.
It is the same note as G.
Key signatures are written at the beginning of each line of music.
This helps the player to remember what the key signature is.
The time signature, however, is only written at the beginning of the piece (the order is: clef key signature time signature).
Sometimes music changes key (modulates) during a piece.
If the music is going to stay in the new key for some time the composer may decide to change the key signature.
Another reason for changing the key signature might be that the music has modulated to a key like G sharp major with eight sharps (including a double sharp).
It is easier to read the music if it is written in A flat major (4 flats).
One can tell from the key signature what key a piece is in so long as one knows whether it is major or minor (see mode).
For example: a key signature of one sharp is either G major or E minor.
The best way to find out which it is would be to see whether the end of the piece is based on G major or E minor.
Also: if the piece is in the minor key it is very likely that there will be several accidentals in the piece which sharpen the 7th note of the scale (in this case changing a lot of the Ds to D sharps).
Some modern composers do not use key signatures.
This is often the case when the music is atonal or not very firmly in one key.
If there are lots of sharps and flats and the bars are very long they may write accidentals in front of every note that needs one instead of just once in a bar.
This should be explained at the top of the music.
It may also be because the piece is modal.
Robert James "Bob" Ritchie (better known as Kid Rock) (born January 17, 1971) is an American musician.
He has made songs with parts of many different styles of music, including rap, heavy metal, and country.
Kid Rock grew up in Romeo, Michigan, which is near Detroit.
He made his first album, Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast, in 1990, but it did not have much success.
He made several more records over the next few years, but they did not sell much either.
However, by 1998, bands such as Korn and Limp Bizkit were becoming popular with music that had both rap and heavy metal.
Because Kid Rock was making similar music, Atlantic Records, a big record label, signed Kid Rock to a contract.
In 1998, his album Devil Without A Cause came out.
Songs such as Bawitdaba and Cowboy came out, and Kid Rock was a star.
In 2000, Kid Rock released The History of Rock, an album that mostly had old songs from before he became famous, along with two new songs.
He released the album Cocky in 2001, Kid Rock in 2003, Rock n Roll Jesus in 2007, and Born Free in 2010.
Kid Rock is a supporter of people in the United States Military.
He has performed several concerts for soldiers, and gave soldiers free copies of his album Born Free.
In 2004, Kid Rock performed during the Super Bowl halftime show.
Although the show was more controversial for an incident where one of Janet Jackson 's breasts was seen on television, Kid Rock was criticized for playing while wearing an American flag.
Kowtow, which is borrowed from koutou in Mandarin Chinese, is a tranditional prostration common in Eastern Asia.
Kowtow means kneeling and knocking one 's head onto the ground.
Kowtow is used in showing respect to parents or gods, or as a form of punishment by the parents when one has done something wrong.
In the Qing Dynasty of China, the main usage of kowtow was to show respect and loyalty to the king.
Nowadays, people seldom kowtow and bow to others instead.
However, in some Chinese weddings, the couple kowtow to the parents.
At some schools in Taiwan, students still have to kowtow to thank their teachers.
The Klein bottle is a geometrical object, named after the German mathematician Felix Klein.
He described it in 1882, and named it Klein ` sche Fl che (Klein surface).
Like the M bius strip, it only has one surface.
Mathematicians call this a non-orientable surface.
Klein bottles only exist in four-dimensional space, but a model of a Klein bottle can be made in 3D.
This model is different from the original because at some point the shape touches itself.
In 3D, part of the shape is "inside" the rest.
This is not the case in 4D.
Some 3D models use different colors to show the 4th component.
The part that lies "inside" then has a different color.
Because the surface is non-orientable, there is no "inside" or "outside".
This means that if a liquid were filled "in the bottle", it would run down its surface.
This may not be true for the 3D models of the bottle.
The 2-dimensional version of a Klein bottle is a M bius strip.
Kwanzaa is a week long celebration held in the United States to honor universal African heritage and culture.
People light a kinara (candle holder with seven candles) and give each other gifts.
It takes place from December 26 to January 1 every year.
It was created by Maulana Karenga and was first celebrated in 1966 - 1967.
Non-African Americans also celebrate Kwanzaa.
The holiday greeting is "Joyous Kwanzaa".
Kwanzaa is a celebration that started in the black nationalist movement of the 1960s.
It was created as a way to help African Americans reconnect with their African cultural and historical heritage.
The name Kwanzaa comes from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza, meaning first fruits of the harvest.
During the early years of Kwanzaa, Karenga said that it was meant to be an alternative to Christmas, that Jesus was psychotic, and that Christianity was a white religion that black people should shun.
However, as Kwanzaa became more popular, Karenga changed his position so that practicing Christians could also feel included.
He stated in the 1997 Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community, and Culture, "Kwanzaa was not created to give people an alternative to their own religion or religious holiday."
Many Christian African Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa do so in addition to observing Christmas.
Kwanzaa celebrates what its founder called the seven principles of Kwanzaa, or Nguzo Saba (originally Nguzu Saba the seven principles of blackness).
Karenga said that this "is a communitarian African philosophy,".
It consists of what Karenga called "the best of African thought and practice in constant exchange with the world."
These seven principles comprise Kawaida, a Swahili term for tradition and reason.
Each of the seven days of Kwanzaa is dedicated to one of the following principles, as follows:
Kwanzaa symbols include a decorative mat on which other symbols are placed, corn and other crops, a candle holder with seven candles, called a kinara, a communal cup for pouring libations, gifts, a poster of the seven principles, and a black, red, and green flag.
The symbols were designed to convey the seven principles.
During Kwanzaa, families also decorate their households with objects of art.
They use colorful African cloth such as kente, especially the wearing of kaftans by women.
Fresh fruits that represent African idealism are also used.
It is normal to include children in Kwanzaa ceremonies and to give respect and gratitude to ancestors.
Libations are shared, generally with a common chalice (a shared cup), Kikombe cha Umoja, passed around to all people present.
A Kwanzaa ceremony may include drumming and musical selections, libations, a reading of the African Pledge and the Principles of Blackness, reflection on the Pan-African colors, a discussion of the African principle of the day or a chapter in African history, a candle-lighting ritual, artistic performance, and, finally, a feast (Karamu).
The greeting for each day of Kwanzaa is Habari Gani?
which is Swahili for "What 's the News?"
Cultural exhibitions include the Spirit of Kwanzaa, an annual celebration held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts featuring interpretive dance, African dance, song and poetry.
K-Meleon is a web browser for Microsoft Windows.
It 's build to be small, simple and fast.
Small means that if a user 's computer does not have much space in his hard drive, the person will still be able to use it.
Catherine "Kate" Bush CBE (born 30 July 1958) is an English singer-songwriter.
In 1978, her first single "Wuthering Heights" was Number 1 in the UK for a month, making her the first woman to have a No. 1 in the UK with a song she had written by herself..
She has released ten studio albums and 25 UK hit singles.
Bush was born in Welling, Kent and raised in East Wickham.
At the age of 11 she taught herself piano.
At 13 she was writing songs, some of which featured on her first album.
In July 1976 Bush was signed to EMI.
Bush 's first album The Kick Inside was released 17 February 1978 and reached number three in the UK album charts.
The album had her brother Paddy playing harmonica and mandolin.
She released her second album Lionheart nine months afterwards.
It reached number six in the UK album chart.
In 1979 she did The Tour of Life, her only tour until August 2014.
In 1980 she had her first UK No. 1 album, Never for Ever.
"Babooshka" was the best-selling single from the album.
It reached number five in the UK and was the 20th best-selling single of the year in Australia.
In 1982 her fourth album, The Dreaming, was released.
It was the first album she had produced.
It was also her first album to enter the US Billboard 200 chart.
It went straight to number 3 in the UK chart but it is her lowest-selling album so far.
Hounds of Loves 1985 release gave Bush her second No. 1 album.
It is her best-selling studio album so far.
Its first single, "Running Up That Hill", was her most successful 1980s release.
It reached No. 3 in the UK, her second highest chart place for a single ever.
In 1986 it was used as the theme tune for the BBC children 's drama Running Scared.
The Whole Story, a collection of her "greatest hits" so far, was released and reached No. 1 in the UK chart.
1989 's The Sensual World reached number 2 in the UK album chart.
It is Bush 's best-selling album in the US.
In 1990 she played a bride called Angela in a comedy film, Les Dogs.
In 1993 Bush released The Red Shoes, her last album for twelve years.
Bush released a short film called The Line, the Cross and the Curve in 1994.
Her eighth studio album and first double album, Aerial, was released on CD and vinyl in 2005.
It took nine years to make.
In 2007 she was asked to write a song for The Golden Compass soundtrack.
It was played in the credits at the end of the film.
In 2011 she released two albums, Director 's Cut and 50 Words for Snow on her own record label Fish People.
Director 's Cut is made of songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes.
They have been remixed and three have been re-recorded.
It got mostly good reviews.
50 Words for Snow got good responses from critics and won the 2012 Best Album at the South Bank Arts Awards.
On 26 August 2014 Bush performed her first concert in 35 years.
Bush lives in Devon with her husband Dan McIntosh and son Albert "Bertie" Jack, who was born in 1998.
Kirsten Caroline Dunst (born April 30, 1982) is a German-American actress, famous for her roles in Interview with the Vampire, The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, and Bring It On, as well as Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man movie series.
She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for being the main heroine of many films.
She is also known as "the hero."
Kansas City is the biggest city in the U.S. state of Missouri.
The Kansas River and Missouri River meet one another in Kansas City.
The city has about 448,000 people, and the entire metropolitan area has about 2,000,000 people, some of whom live in the state of Kansas.
Its mayor is Sly James.
Some sports teams there are the Royals (baseball), the Chiefs (American football), and the Wizards (soccer).
Kansas City is well known for some of its barbecue restaurants, and is also an important place for business.
Koi (, Romaji: koi) or more specifically nishikigoi (, literally "brocaded carp"), are ornamental varieties of common carp (Cyprinus carpio) that are kept for decorative purposes in outdoor koi ponds or water gardens.
Koi varieties are distinguished by coloration, patterning, and scalation.
Some of the major colors are white, black, red, yellow, blue, and cream.
It is illegal to keep koi in Queensland, Australia because they are an invasive species.
Dr. Kurt Georg Kiesinger (born 6 April 1904 in Ebingen, now Baden-W rttemberg; died 9 March 1988 in T bingen-Bebenhausen) was a German politician.
Kiesinger was born in Southern Germany.
He studied history and philosophy in T bingen and later law in Berlin.
He joined the Nazi party in 1933, and worked in the government.
After the war he was held in a prison camp in Ludwigshafen.
He was released when notes on his personnel file showed that he had not helped the anti-Jewish actions in his department, and had tried to stop them.
In 1946, he started a political career in the CDU.
From 1958 to 1966, he was Minister President of Baden-W rttemberg, from 1967 to 1971 Chair of the CDU.
From 1966 to 1969, he was chancellor of West Germany.
The Lynx is a small cat.
It is a genus with four species.
The four species are in Eurasia, Spain, Canada and America, and do not averlap much.
Lynx have short tails, and usually some hair on the ears.
They have large paws (feet) padded for walking on snow, and long whiskers on the face.
The color of the body is from light brown to gray and is sometimes marked with dark brown spots, especially on the legs.
They weigh about 5 kg or about 11 pounds (approximately the size of a large domestic cat) and can weigh up to about 30 kg (66 pounds).
Lynx are similar to a regular house cat, but larger.
They have a powerful body on short, furry legs attached to hefty feet, and a bobbed, black-tipped tail.
The fur is spotted and yellowish-brown to gray.
It has a collar of fur around the face, giving a triangular shape.
They also have long black ear tufts.
Lynx live in the high altitude forests with many shrubs, reeds and grass.
They hunt only on the ground, but can climb trees and swim.
They can be found in the some places in northern Scandinavia, in North America and also in the Himalayas.
Since the 1990s people try to move part of the population of the Eurasian lynx to Germany.
They can also be found in Bia owie a Forest (northeastern Poland), and southern Spain.
The Colorado Division of Wildlife tried to move other wild Lynx populations from Canada back to the United States.
Lynx are usually solitary, although a small group may travel and hunt together occasionally.
Mating takes place in the late winter and once a year the female gives birth to between two and four kittens.
The young stay with the mother for one more winter, a total of around nine months, before moving out to live on their own as young adults.
Lynx make their dens in crevices or under ledges.
They feed on a wide range of animals from white-tailed deer, reindeer, roe deer, small red deer, and chamois, to smaller, more usual prey: snowshoe hares, fish, foxes, sheep, squirrels, mice, turkeys and other birds, and goats.
They also eat ptarmigans, voles, and grouse.
The Iberian lynx is the most endangered feline in the world.
There are only two populations (together, 300 animals), in the southern Spain.
Hunting lynxes is illegal in many countries.
Leisure (or free time) is when a person can choose what to do.
During a person 's leisure time, they do not have an obligation to be at school or work at a job.
During leisure time, people can do fun activities, family activities, or other non-work activity, such as hobbies.
A vacation or holiday is the setting aside of time specifically for leisure.
During their vacation, some people travel to a different region or country, and stay at a hotel so that they can do things they could not do near home.
Other people prefer to spend their vacation time at home in their own community.
In rich industrialized countries such as the US and Canada, as well as in most European countries, workers are allowed to stay home on the weekend (usually Saturday and Sunday), and use it as leisure time.
People in poorer developing countries usually have less leisure time, as they have to work longer hours and more days per year.
Leslie Caron (born 1 July 1931) is a French dancer and actress.
Caron was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, France to a French father and an American mother.
She began taking ballet lessons at age 10 and joined Roland Petit 's Ballet des Champs-Elys e in 1947 and quickly became one of the lead dancers of the company.
Noticed by Gene Kelly, she went to Hollywood to appear with him in the film An American in Paris (1951), which introduced her to the American public.
She went on to appear in other musical films such as Lili (1953), for which she won a BAFTA Award for best actress, The Glass Slipper (1955), Daddy Long Legs (1955), opposite Fred Astaire, Gaby (1956) and Gigi (1958), to considerable acclaim.
In the 1960s, she turned to more dramatic roles in Fanny (1961), The L-Shaped Room (1962), which earned her a Golden Globe Award and a second BAFTA for best actress.
She returned to romantic-comedy with Father Goose (1964), opposite Cary Grant.
She also appeared in the war-thriller Is Paris Burning (1966).
She has continued to work in films and on television in the United States and France: Carola (1973), QB VII (1974), The Man Who Loved Women (1977), Valentino (1977), Chocolat (2000), and Law and Order (2006), for which she won an Emmy Award.
She was married to British stage direcor Peter Hall from 1956 until 1965, with whom she had two children, Christopher (b. 1957) and Jennifer (b. 1958).
Latvia is a country in Northern Europe.
The capital is Riga.
It is one of the Baltic States, together with Estonia in the north and Lithuania in the south.
Latvia 's neighbors to the east are the countries Russia and Belarus.
Latvia is split into four parts called Kurzeme, Vidzeme, Zemgale, and Latgale.
People from Latvia are called Latvians.
They speak the Latvian language, which is a little like the Lithuanian language, though not close enough to be understood.
Latvia was settled by the Baltic tribes thousands of years ago.
They mainly fished, hunted, and traded.
German traders and crusaders came to Latvia at the end of the 12th century.
Latvians lost control of their homeland.
Over the next 800 years, Germans, Danes, Swedes, Poles, and Russians all invaded Latvia.
Latvia finally became independent in 1918.
The Soviet Union invaded Latvia during World War II and killed or took away many of its people to Siberia and other places far away from their homes.
Nazi Germany invaded and killed half of Latvia 's Jews.
The Soviet Union then invaded again and occupied Latvia until 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart and Latvia became an independent country again.
In Copenhagen on 13 December 2002, Latvia and nine other countries were invited to join the European Union.
On 20 September 2003, Latvians held an election to vote on joining.
Two thirds of Latvians voted to join, and on 1 May 2004 Latvia became a member of the EU.
Latvia has been a NATO member since 29 March, 2004.
Luxembourg is a country in Western Europe; its official name is the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
It is a small country.
It was one of the first countries in the European Union.
It is also a member of the Benelux.
The countries next to Luxembourg are Belgium, Germany, and France.
Its population is 442,972.
Which is big for its country 's size.
Luxembourg is a parliamentary democracy lead by a constitutional monarch.
Under the constitution of 1868, executive power is in the hands of the Governor and the cabinet, which consists of several other ministers.
Luxembourg is divided into 3 districts, which are further divided into 12 cantons and then 116 communes.
Twelve of the communes have city status, of which the city of Luxembourg is the largest.
Larry Wall (born September 27, 1954) is an American programmer, best known for creating the programming language Perl.
He worked at NASA for a short time.
He is currently working on a new version of Perl.
Language is the normal way humans communicate.
Only humans use language, though many other animals communicate in various ways.
Human language has syntax, a set of rules for connecting words together to make statements and questions.
Language can also be changed, by adding new words, for example, to describe new things.
Other animals may inherit a set of calls which have pre-set functions.
Language may be done by speech or by writing or by moving the hands to make signs.
It follows that language is not just any way of communicating.
Even some human communication is not language: see non-verbal communication.
Humans also use language for thinking.
UNESCO says that 2,500 languages are at risk of becoming extinct.
All languages share certain things which separate them from all other kinds of communication.
There are many more things in common between languages.
The capacity to learn and use language is inherited.
Normally, all humans are born with this capability.
Which language is learned by a child depends on which language is spoken by the child 's community.
The capacity is inherited, but the particular language is learned.
Children have a special period, from about 18 months to about four years, which is critical for learning the language.
If this is seriously disrupted, then their language skills will be damaged.
Older people learn differently, so they seldom learn a second language as well as they learn their native language.
Mathematics and computer science use created languages called formal languages (like computer programming languages), but these may or may not be ` true ' languages.
Mathematics itself is seen as a language by many.
Some people consider musical notation to be a way of writing the musical language.
Chinese is the language with the most native speakers in the world, but Chinese is not really a language.
It is a close family of dialects, some of which are as different as Romance languages are from one another.
English is often called "the international language", or the world 's lingua franca.
It is the main second language of the world and the international language of science, travel, technology, business, diplomacy, and entertainment.
Some languages are made up so that a lot of people around the world can learn them, without the new languages being tied to any specific country or place.
These are called constructed languages.
One of the most popular of these languages is Esperanto, which is sometimes called "La Internacia Lingvo," or "The International Language."
Another of these languages is called Volapuk, which was popular about a hundred years ago but is much less popular now.
It has mostly been replaced by languages like Esperanto, Interlingua, and Ido.
Part of the reason that Volapuk became unpopular is that some sounds are hard to say for people who speak Spanish or English, two of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
Laura Bush (born Laura Lane Welch on November 4, 1946 in Midland, Texas) was the First Lady (The President 's Wife) of the United States from 2001 to 2009.
She is the wife of George W. Bush, who was the President then.
Mrs. Bush is the only child of Harold Bruce Welch (1912-1995) and Jenna Louise Hawkins (born 1919).
Laura and George met and married in 1977.
She is the mother of Barbara and Jenna Bush, who were born in 1981.
Before she became First Lady she worked as a librarian and a school teacher in Dallas and Austin, Texas.
Lorisidae (sometimes called Loridae) is a family of primates.
Its members resemble lemurs.
They live in trees, in Africa and Asia.
Depending on the author, there are nine to eleven species, in about five genera.
LSD is the shorter name for a drug called Lysergic acid diethylamide.
LSD is often called by the slang name acid.
LSD is a psychedelic drug which causes people who take it to witness illusions.
It also alters their thought processes.
LSD was investigated as an adjunct to psychiatric therapies for disorders such as alcoholism.
Currently, LSD is being investigated as a clinical tool for treating people with anxiety and depression associated with having a terminal illness.
Since there is no recognized medical use for LSD, its use in medicine is experimental.
The vast majority of LSD use extramedical and thus considered "drug abuse" according to some definitions.
LSD does not occur in nature, so it must be chemically synthesized.
It was invented in 1938 by a Swiss chemist, Albert Hofmann, at the Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland.
Hofmann was trying to produce a new circulatory and respiratory stimulant (an ` analeptic ').
He produced LSD because of its similarity to nicotinic acid diethylamide, a known respiratory stimulant.
One day in 1943, Hofmann accidentally ate a small amount of LSD, and noticed strange light patterns in the sky as he went home.
He believed that what he had experienced were the effects of the drug.
He tried a larger amount next.
He ended up with a much stronger reaction to the drug than he expected.
Hofmann lay on a couch, afraid he had made himself insane for life.
When a neighbor came, found him in trouble, and stayed to look after Hofmann, he was able to calm down, and even said he began to enjoy the plays of colorful shapes and patterns that occurred behind his closed eyes.
The next day Hofmann reported to have waken up refreshed and clear-headed, though somewhat physically tired.
He also noted that his breakfast tasted unusually delicious that morning.
Sandoz began to offer LSD to doctors and therapists.
Sandoz saw it as a help to doctors and therapists so they could get a chance to gain insight into how someone who was mentally ill might see the world.
It is known today, that the effects of LSD are very different from those of delusional mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia.
For their patients, it was a chance to uncover hidden feelings and thoughts, which could be dealt with in therapy.
LSD showed promise in the treatment of problems like alcoholism.
Some alcoholics who tried the drug found their need to drink alcohol lessened or went away.
They understood better why they had abused alcohol.
Unlike other drugs, the desire for alcohol was not replaced by a craving for LSD.
The study showed a 50 % success rate, compared to 10 % for "cold turkey" methods.
In the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency tested the drug on subjects for different reasons.
The name for one of these test projects was MK-ULTRA.
Subjects did not know they were given the drug.
It was used in interrogation to see if it would make people tell the truth, or remember things they had forgotten.
It was also used to convince people they were becoming insane, or that things had happened which really had not, such as an invasion from outer space, or a Communist takeover of the country, or that their bodies were transformed in some way.
The CIA supposedly felt it was important to learn how ordinary citizens might react to such things if they happened.
The drug sometimes made the scenarios more believable.
The effects of these experiments were often harmful to the subjects, even years later, because of the intense anxiety or fear caused when someone unknowingly takes a drug like LSD.
LSD first became popular in the 1960s.
A Harvard psychology professor, Timothy Leary, began to encourage people to try the drug then.
College students willingly took part in LSD experiments.
These experiments were made by psychologists and other professionals.
Leary and two of the people he worked with, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner, thought the transforming effects of the drug could be a kind of ` rebirth ' of users, in the same way as many religions offered them.
They wrote a book, The Psychedelic Experience, which was based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Leary eventually became well known in the 1960s hippie movement for his slogan about LSD: "Turn on, tune in, drop out".
The Hippies were a countercultural movement.
A number of famous rock bands, including the Beatles and the Grateful Dead, became known for their use of LSD, and even a new type of rock music, called "acid rock", was born from the fad.
LSD quickly became a popular drug outside of the medical profession.
Many people began using or giving LSD out casually.
"Acid parties" and "acid tests" became a social fad.
The drug would sometimes be slipped to persons unknowingly, often through "spiked" punch or drinks.
Some problems developed, as some casual users began to experience side effects, such as "flashbacks" and psychotic symptoms, though both of these are rare.
Sometimes signs of depression and instability were seen.
Due to the spread of LSD use outside of the medical community, the United States government banned LSD (made it against the law to make, have or use) in 1967.
Other countries soon followed.
The most common danger of taking LSD is having a bad experience, which is called a "bad trip".
During a bad trip, people may feel very scared and worried, and they may have very sad thoughts.
A bad trip can lead to lasting bad memories and even mental harm.
Users who get out of control, or who try to harm themselves, should be taken for medical help.
Many illegal drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, are very addictive.
This means that people who start taking the drug will want to keep taking it, even if it is damaging their physical and mental health.
LSD is not addictive to the body or to the mind.
Another danger from using LSD is that it makes a person impaired (intoxicated).
When people are impaired, they may have accidents or do things that they would not normally do.
In some rare cases, people taking LSD develop a psychosis.
Frequent or regular use of LSD can result in flashbacks.
In a flashback, the person feels the drug beginning to affect him or her again, even though he or she has not taken a dose that day.
This can be brought on by stress.
Note that over 75 % of LSD users claimed never to have "flashed back".
It has been said that some people who use LSD can end up with damage to their chromosomes, but this is a myth based on one wrong report that was disproved soon after it was published.
LSD is illegal in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and most of Europe.
Some countries enforce the laws against LSD very harshly.
Other countries do not enforce the law very much.
LSD has been manufactured illegally since the 1960s.
A lawyer (also called an "advocate", "attorney", "barrister", "counsel", "counsellor", or "solicitor") is someone who practices law.
A lawyer has earned a degree in law, and has a license to practice law in a particular area.
If people have any problem regarding the law, they can contact a lawyer for advice.
A legal problem is referred to as a case.
A person can hire a lawyer to start a case against someone else, or to help with a case that has been started against them.
If the case goes to court, the lawyer will represent their client in court.
The lawyer will use their knowledge of the law to convince the court that the client is on the right side of the argument.
Lawyers also help people "settle out of court," which means that both sides of the argument agree to a punishment ahead of time so that they will not have to go to trial.
When a person is accused of a crime, the person has a defense lawyer to try to show they have not committed a crime.
The lawyer arguing that they did do the crime is called the prosecutor.
Lawyers also prepare legal documents their clients.
Examples: buying or selling property or making a will (testament).
Certain lawyers (called "commissioners of oaths" in England) can take legally binding witness statements which can be presented to the court.
Lawyers work in different settings.
Some work by themselves, while some work in law firms.
Some lawyers work for hospitals and private companies.
Lawyers who work for private companies are usually called in-house counsel.
Lawyers generally charge a fee for the work that they do, but sometimes advice is offered freely, which is called "pro bono," meaning "for the public good."
In many countries, if a person is accused of a crime and unable to pay for a lawyer, the government will pay a lawyer to represent them using tax money.
Love is the feeling of liking somebody or something very much.
People sometimes get married or go on a date when someone loves another.
Love is usually believed to have something to do with the chemical reactions in the brain.
According to one of the young Pakistani philosopher Engr.
Arshad Ali Azeemi, love is not something that is simply understandable.
It is a feeling of the heart which one can only observe practically.
There are many kinds of love.
There can be self-love, love towards a friend (such as platonic love), love in romance, towards family, toward God, or towards an object or idea.
Often love can be confused with other feelings.
Being sexually or physically attracted is the feeling of lust.
Lust and love may be thought of as different.
Besides that, normal friendship can be distracted by love.
Sometimes, love can be destroyed.
When love is destroyed between a dating couple, they may break up with each other.
Love is based on respect, understanding, and being able to talk with each other.
People describe the person that they first loved romantically as their "first love."
For example, in William Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is Juliet 's very first love.
At that time, she was only 13.
In Maria Edgeworth 's book Belinda, Mr. Vincent says, "First loves are silly things."
The biological model of sex is different from love because it is more like hunger or thirst.
Helen Fisher, an expert in the topic of love, divides love into three stages: lust, attraction, and attachment.
Lust makes people like each other, attraction encourages people to focus on mating, and attachment helps people tolerate the spouse (or the child).
Lust is the passionate sexual desire that promotes mating.
This usually lasts only a few weeks or months.
Attraction is more for one person specially.
Recent studies in neuroscience say that as people fall in love, the brain releases chemicals, including dopamine.
These chemicals make people less hungry and sleepy, and also adds an intense feeling of excitement.
Research shows that this stage normally lasts from one and a half to three years.
Since these lust and attraction stages are both described as temporary, a third stage might describe long-term love.
Attachment can be used to describe the bonding period that helps keep husband and wife together for many years.
Attachment occurs in the longer term.
Love has consequences for health and well-being.
Joyful activities such as love activate areas in the brain responsible for emotion, attention, motivation and memory, and it may further lead to reduction of cortisol, which reduces stress.
A laser is a machine that makes an amplified, single-colour source of light.
The beam of light from the laser does not get wider or weaker as most sources of light do.
It uses special gases or crystals to make the light with only a single color.
Then mirrors are used to amplify (make stronger) that color of light and to make all the light travel in one direction, so it stays as a narrow beam, sometimes called a collimated beam.
When pointed at something, this narrow beam makes a single point of light.
All of the energy of the light stays in that one narrow beam instead of spreading out like a flashlight (electric torch).
The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation".
A laser creates light by special actions involving a material called an "optical gain medium".
Energy is put into this material using an ` energy pump '.
This can be electricity, another light source, or some other source of energy.
The energy makes the material go into what is called an excited state.
This means the electrons in the material have extra energy, and after a bit of time they will lose that energy.
When they lose the energy they will release a photon (a particle of light).
The type of optical gain medium used will change what color (wavelength) will be produced.
Releasing photons is the "emission of radiation" part of laser.
Many things can radiate light, like a fluorescent light bulb, but the light will not be organized in one direction and phase.
By using an electric field to control how the light is created, this light will now be one kind, going in one direction.
This is the "stimulated" emission of radiation.
At this point, the light is still weak.
The mirrors on either side bounce the light back and forth, and this hits other parts of the optical gain medium, causing those parts to also release photons, generating more light ("light amplification").
When all of the optical gain medium is producing light, this is called saturation and creates a very strong beam of light at a very narrow wavelength, which we would call a laser beam.
The light moves through the medium between the two mirrors that reflect the light back and forth between them.
One of the mirrors, however, only partially reflects the light, allowing some to escape.
The escaping light makes up the laser beam.
This is a simple design; the type of optical gain medium used usually defines the type of laser.
It can be a crystal, examples are ruby and a garnet crystal made of yttrium and aluminum with the rare earth metal mixed in.
Gases can be used for laser by using helium, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, neon or others.
Finally, the smallest lasers use semiconductor diodes to produce the light.
These are used in electronics.
Albert Einstein was the first to have the idea of stimulated emission that could produce a laser.
From that point many years were spent to see if the idea worked.
At first, people succeeded in making masers and later figured how to make shorter visible wavelengths.
It was not until 1959 that the name laser was coined by Gordon Gould in a research paper.
The first working laser was put together and operated by Theodore Maiman at the Hughes Research Laboratories in 1960.
Many people started working on lasers at this time, and the question of who would get the patent for the laser was n't decided until 1987 (Gould won the rights).
Lasers have found many uses in everyday life as well as in industry.
Lasers are found in CD and DVD players, where they read the code from the disk that stores a song or movie.
A laser is often used to read the bar codes or SQR codes on things sold in a store, to identify a product and give its price.
Lasers are used in medicine, particularly in LASIK eye surgery, where the laser is used to repair the shape of the cornea.
It is used in chemistry with spectroscopy to identify materials, to find out what kind of gases, solids or liquids something is made of.
Stronger lasers can be used to cut metal.
A laser is even used to measure the distance of the Moon from Earth by reflecting off reflectors left by the Apollo missions.
By measuring the time it takes for the light to travel to the Moon and back again we can find out exactly how far away the moon is.
Lithium (from Greek lithos ` stone ') is a soft, silver-white metal with symbol Li.
It is the third chemical element in the periodic table.
This means that it has 3 protons in its nucleus and 3 electrons around it.
Its atomic number is 3.
Its mass number is 6.94.
It has two common isotopes, 6Li and 7Li.
7Li is more common.
92.5 % of lithium is 7Li.
Lithium is a soft silvery metal that is very reactive.
It is used in lithium batteries and certain medicines.
Lithium is one of the alkali metals.
Lithium is a silvery solid metal (when freshly cut).
It is very soft.
Thus it can be cut easily with a knife.
It melts at a low temperature.
It is very light, similar to wood.
It is the least dense metal and the least dense element in a solid or liquid state.
It can hold more heat than any other solid element.
It conducts heat and electricity easily.
It will react with water, giving off hydrogen to form a basic solution (lithium hydroxide).
Because of this, lithium must be stored in petroleum jelly.
Sodium and potassium can be stored in oil but lithium can not because it is so light.
It will just float on the oil and not be protected by it.
Lithium also reacts with halogens.
It can react with nitrogen gas to make lithium nitride.
It reacts with air to make a black tarnish and then a white powder of lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate.
Lithium forms chemical compounds with only one oxidation state: +1.
Most of them are white and unreactive.
They make a bright red color when heated in a flame.
They are a little toxic.
Most of them dissolve in water.
Lithium carbonate is less soluble in water than the other alkali metal carbonates like sodium carbonate.
It does not occur as an element in nature.
It only is in the form of lithium compounds.
The ocean has a large amount of lithium in it.
Certain granites have large amounts of lithium.
Most living things have lithium in them.
There are some places where much lithium is in the salt.
Some silicates have lithium in them.
Lithium (Greek lithos, meaning "stone") was discovered by Johann Arfvedson in 1817.
In 1818, Christian Gmelin observed that lithium salts give a bright red color in flame.
W.T. Brande and Sir Humphrey Davy later used electrolysis on lithium oxide to isolate the element.
Lithium was used first in greases.
Then nuclear weapons became a big use of lithium.
Lithium was also used to make glass melt easier and make aluminium oxide melt easier in making aluminium.
Now lithium is used mainly in batteries.
It was apparently given the name "lithium" because it was discovered from a mineral, while other common alkali metals were first discovered in plant tissue.
It is made by getting lithium chloride from pools and springs.
The lithium chloride is melted and electrolyzed.
This makes liquid lithium and chlorine.
Its main use is in batteries.
Lithium is used as an anode in the lithium battery.
It has more power than batteries with zinc, like alkaline cells.
Lithium ion batteries also have lithium in them, though not as an element.
It is also used in heat transfer alloys.
Lithium is used to make organolithium compounds.
They are used for very strong bases.
Lithium compounds are used in some drugs known as mood stabilizers.
Lithium niobate is used in radio transmitters in cell phones.
Some lithium compounds are also used in ceramics.
Lithium chloride can absorb water from other things.
Some lithium compounds are used to make soap and grease.
Lithium reacts with water, making irritating smoke and heat.
It is not as dangerous as the other alkali metals.
Lithium hydroxide is very corrosive.
There are 5 isotopes of Lithium having respectively 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 neutrons in the nucleus.
The most common isotope in nature is 3Li7 which makes up 92.58 % of the total.
The second isotope which is widely available is 3Li6 which makes up 7.42 % of the total.
The other 3 isotopes exist in very small quantities.
The atomic mass of Lithium is 6.939.
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (22 August 1902 8 September 2003) was a German movie director.
Her most famous movies are Triumph of the Will and Olympia.
In mathematics, a linear equation is a type of equation.
In a linear equation, both terms have to be constant.
A linear equation is the equation of a straight line.
This type of equation is written in the form:
where: m = the rate of change, or slope.
The slope is how fast the line moves up or down.
Larger numbers will make the slope steeper.
If m is a negative number, then the line will appear to fall or go down the page when read from left to right.
If m is a positive number, then the line will appear to climb the page when read from left to right.
b = the y-intercept of the function.
This is where the function crosses the y - axis of the coordinate plane.
The first equation is called slope-intercept form, because in it, the slope (m) and y-intercept (b) are easily found.
The second equation is called point-slope form, because in it, a point on the graph (x1, y1) and the slope (m) are easily found.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition was an expedition by Meriwether Lewis (1774 1809) and William Clark (1770 1838), two men chosen by United States President Thomas Jefferson to explore the Louisiana Purchase, which the country had just bought from France.
(This land was made up of much of what is now the Central and Western United States).
They left Saint Louis in 1804, leading a group of 33 people.
The group reached the Pacific in 1806, viewing much of the West on the way and writing down what they saw.
Along the way, the group was joined by a Shoshone Native American woman named Sacagawea, who helped guide them.
After their exploration, Lewis became Governor of Louisiana Territory, and Clark became Governor of Missouri Territory.
The latitude of the Earth gives the distance north and south of the equator.
It is measured in degrees.
Latitude is represented by the Greek letter phi,.
It is usually used along with a measurement of longitude in order to pinpoint a location on Earth.
The equator is numbered 0 degrees.
Everything north or south of the equator is designated either as north latitude or south latitude.
Longitude is a way to say where a place is on the Earth.
It is measured starting from an imaginary north-south line called the Prime Meridian.
(A meridian is an imaginary line drawn from the North Pole to the South Pole.)
Longitude says how far east or west of the Prime Meridian any place is.
Longitude is measured using degrees, the same way an angle is.
The Prime Meridian is 0 (zero degrees), and the farthest away is +180 eastward and -180 westward.
Unlike latitude, which has the equator as a natural starting position, there is no natural starting position for longitude.
Other meridians have been used in the past, but most scientists now agree to use the Prime Meridian.
Longitude, as opposed to latitude does not maintain a constant distance between degrees since the primary measurement is time, not distance.
This means if you are near the North Pole, you can gain many degrees of longitude West by traveling a relatively short distance.
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a computer scientist, born December 28, 1969, in Helsinki, Finland.
His parents named him after Linus Pauling.
He studied at the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 1996.
He became famous because of the success of his operating system, Linux.
He started making this system as a student project in 1991.
He based it on the popular UNIX operating system.
Today, Linux has become the most popular free operating system.
Linus is the leader of the Linux project, which has many members around the world.
He is the one person who can make decisions about changes or future development on the operating system.
He also made the revision control system Git.
He now lives with his family in the United States.
Linus chose the penguin to be the logo of Linux.
A picture of penguin appears on many desktop computers that run Linux.
The Louisiana Purchase was a land purchase made by United States president Thomas Jefferson in 1803.
He bought the Louisiana territory from France, which was being led by Napoleon Bonaparte at the time, for $ 15,000,000 USD.
At first the men sent to France were allowed to spend up to $ 10,000,000 USD in order to buy New Orleans and, if possible, the west bank of the Mississippi River.
But then the French government said that for five million more dollars they would sell all of the Louisiana territory.
Thomas Jefferson approved the deal and used his constitutional power to sign treaties to buy the land.
Napoleon sold the land because he was desperate for money and he was afraid of losing his North American territories to the British.
Napoleon Bonaparte had been busy with a war in Europe, and no matter how badly that Bonaparte wanted to go about in his interests with America, there was no way that he could do so with what he had been occupied in Europe with.
Thomas Jefferson took this as an opportunity to make America larger, even if it meant going against his republican principles of small government (some would say he exceeded his constitutional power by accepting the deal on his own).
The purchase added 827,000 square miles and doubled the size of the U.S..
It also included a small piece of land is now part of Canada.
The Louisiana Purchase is important because it gave the U.S. control of the Mississippi River and the port city of New Orleans, both of which were used by farmers to ship their crops and get paid.
It also got rid of one country that might try to harm the new nation because France sold all of their North American territory.
The Lewis and Clark expedition explored the Louisiana Purchase and the Oregon Territory.
They started from St. Louis.
Their route traced the Missouri River.
Libya (', Berber: Libya), officially the State of Libya, is a country in North Africa.
It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west.
It covers an area of almost 1.8 e. It is the 17th largest country in the world.
Libya 's borders touch the countries of Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Algeria, Niger, and Tunisia.
To its north is the Mediterranean Sea.
The capital of Libya is Tripoli, which is a port on the sea.
Tripoli has about one million people.
Libya covers an area of about 1760000 k.
The highest point in Libya is Bikku Bitti 2,267 m above sea level and the lowest point is Sabkhat Ghuzayyil -47 m at below sea level.
Most of the country is flat, with large plains.
Because it is so dry, only 1.03 % of the land is suitable for farming.
The area around Tripoli is called Tripolitania, and it was the most developed during the Ottoman occupation.
Cyrenaica is an area of the north east coast.
It is divided from Tripolitania by the Gulf of Sirte.
It was named by the Greeks who built the city of Cirene in 630 BC.
The area was where many of the battles of World War II were fought.
It includes the cities of Tobruk and Benghazi.
Like Tripolitania, Cyrenaica was also governed by Britain after the war.
The Fezzan is an area of desert in south west Libya which the Italians made a part of Tripoli in 1912.
After the war this area was governed by France, who wanted to annex to their Empire.
The population of Libya in 2011 was said to be about 6,597,960.
This is not a large number for a country that has such a large area, so the population density of Libya is low.
This is because much of Libya is in the Sahara Desert.
Most people in Libya live in cities on the coast.
People from Libya are called Libyans.
Libyans are mostly Arabs, though many are Berbers, a group which includes the nomadic Tuareg of North Africa.
About 95 % of Libyans are of Arab-Berber origin.
Most Libyans are Sunni Muslims.
Since 2007 Libya has been divided into 22 districts.
Oil was discovered in Libya in 1958 and is about 95 % of the country 's export income.
Oil is about 25 % of Libya 's GDP.
Other exports include natural gas, salt, limestone and gypsum.
Because so much of the country is desert, Libya has to import about 75 % of its food.
It does grow wheat, barley, olives, dates, citrus, peanuts, soybeans and many vegetables.
In 1984, a 3862 k pipeline was started to bring underground water from the Sahara to coastal areas for irrigation.
The pipeline which will take 25 years to complete has been estimated to cost about $ 25 billion.
It is called the Great Man-made River, and is the largest water development scheme in the world.
The money of Libya is called the Libyan dinar.
It was made to take the place of the old money, the Libyan pound, in 1971.
There are 1000 dirhams in a dinar.
Dinar is the name of the money in many Islamic countries.
The name comes from an old Roman coin, the denarius.
Libya is made up of three regions, Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and the Fezzan.
Tripolitania is the area on the north west coast, once called the Kingdom of Tripoli.
It was ruled by Turks from the Ottoman Empire.
The USA went to war with the Kingdom of Tripoli in 1805 over the problems of piracy in the Mediterranean.
The USA had refused to pay increased "protection" money to the Turkish rulers.
Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were captured by the Italians during the Italian-Turkish War of 1911-1912.
The reason for the war was to set up a colony for Italy.
They said that this area was once part of the Roman Empire and belonged to Italy.
The Italians were the first country to use aeroplanes to drop bombs when they attacked Tripoli in 1911.
Many thousands of Italian settlers moved to Libya to set up businesses and farms, which were going to supply food and produce for Italy and its Empire Libyans had some of their land in Cyrenaica taken from them by force and about 70,000 people died during the battles, starved, or were decimated by the terrible epidemic (called "Spanish flu") of 1918.
Many thousands escaped to Egypt, but soon moved back when the new Italian governor Italo Balbo started a friendly attitude toward Arabs.
Italian Libya enjoyed in the late 1930s a huge development, with the creation of new railways, ports, hospitals, airports, roads.
In those years the agricultural economy boomed, thanks to the creation of many dozens of new villages for Italian & Arab farmers.
There was even an international race-car competition outside Tripoli (Grand Prix of Tripoli).
The British captured Tripolitania in 1942 during World War II and ruled it until 1951.
After World War II, the regions of Libya were ruled by military governors from both Britain and France.
The United Nations made Libya an independent country, the United Kingdom of Libya, in 1951.
This was to be a constitutional monarchy, ruled by King Idris I and his successors.
Idris (Muhammad Idris bin Muhammad al-Mahdi as-Senussi) (13 March 1890 25 May 1983) had been the Emir of Cyrenaica, but went into exile in Egypt in 1922.
At the end of the war, he returned as emir, with support of Britain.
He was also asked to be Emir of Tripolitania.
He was able to unite the three regions and became the king of the United Kingdom of Libya on 24 December 1951.
The problems facing Libya were huge.
The country was poor, with little in the way of goods to export.
Only 250,000 people could read.
There were only 16 Libyan college graduates, no Libyan doctors, engineers, pharmacists, or surveyors.
The United Nations estimated that 10 % of the people were blind from eye diseases, especially trachoma.
Idris was a religious leader did not take much interest in the affairs of government.
His government was seen to be corrupt, and did nothing about an increasing rise in Arab nationalism which had brought Nasser to power in Egypt in 1952.
Once oil was discovered, Libya became one of the largest oil producing countries in the world.
Many Libyans felt that Cyrenaica was getting more of the oil money than the rest of the country.
A lot of the money from oil was also going to overseas companies.
In the early morning of 1 September 1969, a group of military officers took over the government in a coup d' tat.
Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi was named as chief of staff of the military.
From 1970-1972 he served as Prime Minister.
He began a political system named "The Third Universal Theory".
This is a mix of socialism and Islam, based on tribal government.
It was to be put in place by the Libyan people themselves in a unique form of "direct democracy."
Al-Gaddafi called this "jamahiriya".
Some of his first actions were to take back control of the oil and send the remaining Italian settlers back to Italy.
He also closed down the American USAF base.
In 1977 Libya became "Al-Jamahiriya al - ` Arabiyah al-Libiyah ash-Sha ` biyah al-Ishtirakiyah al-Uzma".
In English, the name means the "Great Socialist People 's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya".
Libya was alleged to have sponsored anti-western groups.
Gaddafi openly supported independence movements like Nelson Mandela 's African National Congress, Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Irish Republican Army, the Polisario Front (Western Sahara) and more.
Because of this Libya 's foreign relations with several western nation were negatively effected, and it would become a reason for US to bomb Libya in 1986.
Gaddafi survived the bombing, the action of US was condemned by many countries and UN general assembly.
Libya had also supplied weapons and money to the Irish Republican Army during its fight with the British government in Northern Ireland.
Gaddafi developed a good relationship with revolutionary Colombian Marxist Leninist guerrilla group called FARC.
Activities also included such as Libyan contribution towards Falklands War, where Gaddafi had provided 20 launchers, 60 SA-7 missiles, machine guns, mortars and mines to the Argentinian government.
Libya was alleged to have role in bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 and French UTA Flight 772 in 1989, despite the investigation found no evidence which involves any Libyan role.
The United Nations put economic sanctions in place against Libya in 1992.
These sanctions stopped other countries selling weapons, investing money, or even allowing their people to visit Libya.
After six days when US had captured Iraq 's Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi renounced Libya 's weapons of mass destruction programs and welcomed international inspections to verify that he would follow through on the commitment.
Gaddafi said he hopes that other nations would follow his example.
UN removed the sanctions in the same year.
Gaddafi solved the Lockerbie plane crash issue by paying US$ 2.7 billion to the families of the victims.
Prime Minister of Libya Shukri Ghanem, told in the interviews that Gaddafi was "paying the price for peace" with the West, and suggested that Libya had no role in the case.
United Nations observers would acknowledge such statement and cast doubt towards the whole issue.
Gaddafi also set about having normal relations with other counties.
Western European leaders and many working-level and commercial delegations were able to visit the country.
He made his first trip to Western Europe in 15 years when he traveled to Brussels in April 2004.
He reattached the ties with Russia once again, which had remained idle since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
By 2010, Libya 's Human Development Index was highest in Africa, the country ranked at # 53 overall as ` High standard ' on living bases.
Libya remained a debt-free nation.
In 2011, Human rights in Libya were praised by the U.N. Human rights council.
However after civil war the human rights seems to be getting worse.
On March 2013, according to the Barnabas Fund, at least 48 Christians were tortured inside Libya, one died in custody.
Every Libyan who is older than 18 can vote.
This means that voting (also known as "suffrage") in Libya is universal.
In February 2011, a civil war broke out in Libya when rebels started a rebellion against Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi and his government.
NATO intervention in the civil war was in favor of the rebels.
However, some rebels had links with al-Qaeda.
NATO ended its mission in October after Colonel al-Gaddafi was reported to have been killed.
In the aftermath of the civil war, a low-level rebellion by al-Gaddafi loyalists continued.
Armed militias have filled the gap left by left by the revolution, and disagreements and strife are ongoing.
The law of non-contradiction is a rule of logic.
It states that if something is true, then the opposite of it is false.
For example, if an animal is a cat, the same animal can not be not a cat.
Or, stated in logic, if + p, then not - p, + p can not be - p at the same time and in the same sense.
The law was stated as a principle of mathematical logic by Russel and Whitehead in Principia Mathematica.
Ravi Zacharias has said most eastern philosophies reject the law of noncontradiction.
The law of non-contradiction is found in ancient Indian logic as a rule in the Shrauta Sutras, the writing of P ini, and the Brahma Sutras attributed to Vyasa.
It was later elaborated on by medieval commentators such as Madhvacharya.
The idea of noncontradiction is rejected in some strands of Buddhism.
Liliales is an order of flowering plants.
This order of necessity includes the family Liliaceae, but both the family and the order have had a widely disputed history, with the circumscription varying greatly from one taxonomist to another.
The best known representative of the order is the lily.
The Laurales are an order of flowering plants.
They are a basal group of dicots.
They are related to, and sometimes included in, the Magnoliales.
The order includes 85-90 genera from seven families of trees and shrubs.
Most of the species are tropical and subtropical, though a few genera reach the temperate zone.
The best known species in this order are those of the Lauraceae (for example bay laurel or Laurus, cinnamon or Cinnamomum, avocado or Persea, and Sassafras), and the spice bush or Calycanthus of the Calycanthaceae.
The earliest lauraceous fossils are from the Cretaceous.
It is possible that the ancient origin of this order is one of the reasons for its highly diverged morphology.
Indeed, at present no one trait is known which would unify all the members of Laurales.
This used to cause much argument among botanists about the correct limits of the order.
The presently classification is based on recent molecular and genetic analysis.
The order Lamiales is a taxon in the asterid group of dicotyledonous flowering plants.
It includes approximately 11,000 species divided up into about 10 families.
A few well-known members of this order are the lavender, the lilac, the olive, the jasmine, the ash tree, the teak, the snapdragon, and a number of table herbs such as mint, basil, and rosemary.
Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 November 24, 1963) was, according to five government investigations, the sniper who assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
A former U.S. Marine who lived in the Soviet Union for almost 3 years, Oswald was first arrested for the murder of police officer J. D. Tippit (1924-1963), who had been shot on a Dallas street shortly after Kennedy was killed.
He was also soon suspected in the death of Kennedy as well.
Soon after he was arrested, Oswald talked to reporters in a hallway.
Oswald shouted, "I did n't shoot anybody," and, "They 've taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union.
I 'm just a patsy!"
(a scapegoat or someone who is blamed for something someone else actually did).
Later, at a press meeting, a reporter asked, "Did you kill the President?"
and Oswald answered, "No, I have not been charged with that.
In fact, nobody has said that to me yet.
The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question."
As he was led from the room the question was called out, "What did you do in Russia?"
and, "How did you hurt your eye?"
; Oswald answered, "A policeman hit me."
Two days later, while being moved from police headquarters to the county jail, Oswald was shot and mortally wounded by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, in full view of television cameras broadcasting live.
In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy, a conclusion reached previously by the FBI and Dallas Police.
In 1979, The United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations agreed that Kennedy was killed by Oswald, but also concluded Kennedy ` s death was probably as a result of a conspiracy.
The members of this probable conspiracy were not identified.
Oswald had been born in New Orleans, 2 months after his father died, and his mother moved him and 2 brothers to several different towns, while marrying a third husband for 3 years, 1945-48.
After attending 12 schools, around Fort Worth, New York City, and New Orleans, Oswald dropped out of 10th grade, at age 16, and worked as a office clerk\/messenger.
Moving back to Texas in July 1956, Oswald entered 10th grade in Fort Worth, but quit school again, at age 17 in October, to join the U.S. Marines, as had his brother Robert, after their half-brother John Pic joined the U.S. Coast Guard.
In 1959, Oswald received a hardship discharge (for mother 's health) to quit the Marines, but defected to the Soviet Union, for nearly 3 years.
Having married Marina, the daughter of a Soviet security official, he re-defected back to the U.S. with her and their daughter, in June 1962.
They settled in Dallas, with his mother and brother Robert.
Oswald worked 3 months in a welding company, then worked in a printing shop from October until being fired in April 1963.
Oswald was later suspected of the April 10 attempt to shoot General Edwin Walker, using a rifle (and handgun) he received through mail-order in March.
Oswald and Marina quickly moved to New Orleans in April, but she returned to Dallas in late September 1963, when he traveled to Mexico with failed plans to go to Cuba and the USSR.
Instead, he returned to Dallas and began working at the Texas School Book Depository on October 16, 1963.
The FBI was investigating Marina as a possible Soviet spy.
That was one month before the shootings of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit.
Oswald died on November 24, 1963, from gunshot wound by Jack Ruby.
He was survived by his wife Marina, 2-year-old daughter June, and 1-month-old daughter Rachel.
Lincoln is the capital city of Nebraska, United States.
The City of Lincoln Only Omaha has more people of any city in Nebraska.
Lincoln is also the county seat of Lancaster County and the home of the University of Nebraska.
Lincoln 's 2010 Census population was 258,379.
Lincoln was founded in 1856 as the village of Lancaster.
It became the county seat of the newly created Lancaster County in 1859.
The capital of Nebraska Territory had been Omaha since the start of the territory in 1854.
Most of the territory 's population lived south of the Platte River.
After much of the territory south of the Platte became a part of Kansas, the legislature voted to move the capital south of the river and as far west as possible.
They made the village of Lancaster the new capital, in part due to the salt flats and marshes.
People from Omaha tried to stop the move by renaming Lancaster after the recently-killed President Abraham Lincoln.
Many of the people south of the river had wanted the Confederate to win the recent Civil War.
These people thought that the legislature would not approve the move if the future capital were named after Lincoln.
The plan did not work, as Lancaster was renamed Lincoln and also became the state capital upon Nebraska 's admission to the Union on March 1, 1867.
The people either liked or disliked the new name depending on how they felt about the Civil War.
Nebraska State Capitol was designed by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue and constructed between 1922 and 1932.
The capitol building is a skyscraper topped by a golden dome.
The tower is crowned by a 6-meter (20 ft) statue of a farmer sowing grain on a pedestal of wheat and corn, to represent the state 's agricultural heritage.
City zoning rules prevent any other building from rivaling it in height, making it a landmark not only within the city but for the surrounding area.
Inside, there are many paintings and iridescent murals showing Native American heritage and the history and culture of the early pioneers who settled Nebraska.
It is the second tallest U.S. State Capitol building behind the Louisiana State Capitol building in Baton Rouge.
Lincoln has a humid continental climate (Dfa in the Koeppen climate classification).
Lithuania is a country in northern Europe on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea.
Lithuania is a member of the European Union, NATO, and several other organizations.
About 3,000,000 people live in the country.
The official language is Lithuanian which is spoken by more than 82 % of the people.
Vilnius is the capital and largest city.
The colors of the Lithuanian flag are yellow (at the top), for the sun, green (in the middle), for the fields, and red (at the bottom), for the blood of Lithuanians fighting for its independence.
Lithuania began to turn into a country in the 7th 9th centuries from Baltic nations group.
The Balts, the ancestors of Lithuanians and Latvians, came to area between Nemunas, Daugava rivers and the Baltic Sea, from a supposed original homeland of the Proto-Indo-European languages.
Many scientists think they came there sometime in the 3rd millennium BC.
The traditional date of the beginning of the country is 1236 when the Lithuanians won the Battle of iauliai (Battle of Sun).
Lithuania (at that time - The Grand Duchy of Lithuania) made a Treaty with Poland in 1569.
The country was taken over by the Russian Empire in 1795.
It got back its independence on February 16, 1918.
It was taken over by the Soviet Union on June 16, 1940, by Nazi Germany from 1941-1944 and again the Soviet Union from 1944-1990.
Lithuania re-declared its independence on March 11, 1990.
Currently Lithuania is an independent, semi-presidential, democratic republic.
Lithuania has been a member of NATO and the European Union since 2004.
Lithuania is a semi presidential republic, that restored its independence and democracy in 1990.
Since then, very important reforms were made and Lithuania is now declared as a democratic state that grants the human rights.
The Constitution that was adopted in 1992 declares that the leader of the country is the President, who must be elected to take office.
The elections are held every 5 years.
If the President breaks their oath, they can be forced to resign by the Parliament.
The President also represents Lithuania abroad and is the commander-in-chief.
The legislative power of Lithuania is called the Seimas, or Parliament.
There are 141 members of Seimas who are elected for 4-year-terms.
Seimas passes the laws that must be executed by the government, that is formed in Seimas and it must be accepted by the President.
The Prime Minister is set and fired by the President.
The justice is under the power of the courts.
The supreme court in Lithuania is the Constitutional Court.
Lithuania is divided into 10 counties, 60 municipalities and 500 elderates.
The counties are:
The county governor rules the county.
He or she must be appointed by the central government.
Municipalities are governed by the Municipal Councils that are elected for 4 year terms.
The head of a municipality is the mayor.
The elderates are governed by the elders.
The elders are appointed by the municipal councils.
Lithuania is a country in northern Europe.
Its neighbors are Poland in the south west, Russia (Kaliningrad) in west, Latvia in north and Belarus in the east.
Lithuania borders the Baltic sea and 99 kilometres of it belong to Lithuania.
The highest hill is Auk tojas (294 metres high), the largest lake is Dr k iai Lake.
31 % of the land suitable for farms.
Lithuania has a fast growing economy.
It grew up to 7 % in the first quarter of 2008.
GDP per capita, based on purchasing power parity is estimated to be $ 19 730 in 2008.
The nominal GDP per capita is estimated to be $ 14 213 at the same year.
According to these numbers, Lithuanian per capita GDP reaches only 61 % of EU average.
However, it is impressive that only in 8 years, since 2000 it grew up from 30 % of EU average.
Emigration still contains a problem.
Acoording to the official data, emigration in 2006 was 30 % lower than previous year, with 3 483 people leaving in four months.
About 80 % of people in Lithuania are Lithuanians.
There are large national minorities:
Lithuanian is spoken by 82 % of the people and it is the only official language.
Polish is used mostly in Vilnius County where Polish politicians are elected to represent the Polish minority.
The documents and street names must be in Lithuanian.
The biggest cities are Vilnius, 542,287 people, Kaunas, 358,107 people, and Klaip da, 185,899 people.
The nursery schools and the kindergartens are the first-level education forms.
However, they are not compulsory.
The children start attending the primary school at age 7, where educational programs last for 4 years; then they must start attending secondary school (5th to 10th grades).
After finishing 8th or 10th grade, the student can continue learning at the high school or choose courses at the vocational college.
The students who finish the high school can join colleges and universities.
Higher education is free for the students whose annual median of grades is 8 or higher.
The others have to pay 500 Litass per semester at least.
The higher education schools are universities and colleges.
The main universities are:
Lithuanians can choose from many television and radio stations.
The first radio station was started in 1928 in Kaunas.
The first television station started in 1957.
The main radio stations are:
The oldest legal newspaper in Lithuania is the Polish Kurier Wilenski.
It was first published in the 18th century and is now only popular with the Polish community.
The biggest selling newspapers are:
Internet news portals are very popular in Lithuania.
They have the latest information and also let people make comments.
The most popular Internet sites with news and information are:
False dilemma, also called the either-or fallacy and the fallacy of false choice, is a mistake in logic that allows only two possibilities when more exist.
For example, there is "either-or fallacy" in saying that an apple must be green or red.
The premise is that the apple is either one color or another; but this beginning is a mistake because some apples not most are other colors.
In other words, most apples are red or green, but some are also yellow.
A "fallacy of false choice" may hide a deliberate attempt to eliminate agreement on an issue.
Eldridge Cleaver used this tactic when he said: "You 're either part of the solution or part of the problem."
Ignoratio elenchi (also known as irrelevant conclusion or irrelevant thesis) is the informal fallacy of presenting an argument that may in itself be valid, but does not address the issue in question.
"Ignoratio elenchi" can be roughly translated by ignorance of refutation, that is, ignorance of what a refutation is; "elenchi" is from the Greek ((Socratic method)), meaning an argument of disproof or refutation.
(Some sources give by ignorance of the issues or even by ignoring the issues as a translation of ignoratio elenchi.)
Aristotle believed that an ignoratio elenchi is a mistake made by a questioner while attempting to falsify a respondent 's argument.
He called it an ignorance of what makes for a refutation.
For Aristotle, ignoratio elenchi amounts to ignorance of logic.
In fact, Aristotle goes so far as to say that all logical fallacies can be reduced to what he calls ignoratio elenchi.
Modern use limits this term much more narrowly to the kind of mistake described in the first paragraph above.
Similar to ignoratio elenchi, a red herring is an argument, given in reply, that does not address the original issue.
Critically, a red herring is a deliberate attempt to change the subject or divert the argument.
This is known formally in the English vocabulary as digression which is a neutrally connotated "Red herring".
The actual problem is eclipsed by the process of re-focusing on something else.
Maher: It 's arbitrary, is n't it?
If you had been born in Pakistan, you would n't be believing in Jesus Christ.
You would have been told another fairy tale and you would have been believing that.
Scarborough: Well, Bill, that 's your opinion.
Whether Maher 's argument is his opinion or not is irrelevant and does not address the argument made.
The conclusion is ignoratio elenchi, since friendliness and charity are not the main qualifications for induction into the Hall of Fame.
The existence of worse criminals is a secondary issue which has no bearing on whether the driver deserves a fine for recklessness.
If the speaker were deliberately attempting to divert the issue, this would be an example of a red herring.
While the argument about how the police should spend their time may have merit, the question of whom the police should prioritize pursuing and the question of what should be done with those the police have caught are separate questions.
A red herring, the unrelated alleged affair, attempts to change the subject away from the popular policies.
However, if the original discussion were of the prime minister 's public integrity (encompassing both popularity and conduct), this argument could be perfectly valid.
Such as if a politician 's election campaign revolved around family values.
Then an argument about such an affair would be valid, as it is in direct conflict with a family values platform.
Equivocation refers to a term that is used in two or more senses within statement.
In contrast to ambiguity, it is the application of a statement and in the context which is either perceived as specific event or factual statement or can be perceived in a broader perception amongst those who have their own pre-conceived perceptions which are always limited to their experiences of apprehension.
An argument from ignorance, or appeal to ignorance (` ignorance ' stands for "lack of evidence to the contrary"), is a fallacy in informal logic.
It says something is true because it has not yet been proved false.
Or, that something is false if it has not yet been proved true.
This is also called a negative proof fallacy.
This also includes the (false) assumption there are only two options (true or false).
There may be as many as four choices:
Appeals to ignorance are often used to suggest the other side needs to do the proving.
Rules of logic place the burden (responsibility) of proving something on the person making the claim.
A logical fallacy is simply a bad argument.
Using bad logic does not necessarily mean the argument is false (or true).
It is basically a hasty conclusion, one that is arrived at incorrectly.
But it still may be convincing to some audiences.
This is why it is used in politics and advertising.
Leo is one of the constellations of the zodiac.
Its name is Latin for lion.
Its symbol is (-RRB-.
Leo lies between dim Cancer to the west and Virgo to the east.
Leo contains many bright shining stars, such as Regulus (also called Leonis); the lion 's tail, Denebola (also called Leonis); and 1 Leonis (also called Algieba).
Many other fainter stars have been named as well, such as Leo (Zosma), Leo (Chort), Leo (Al Minliar al Asad), Leo (Alterf), and Leo (Subra).
Regulus, Al Jabbah, and Algieba, together with the fainter stars Leo (Adhafera), Leo (Ras Elased Borealis), and Leo (Ras Elased Australis), make up the pattern known as "the Sickle".
These stars represent the head and the mane of the lion.
The star Wolf 359, one of the nearest stars to Earth (7.78 light-years), is in Leo.
The carbon star CW Leo (IRC +10216) is the brightest star in the night sky at the infrared N-band (10 m wavelength).
Leo contains many bright galaxies, Messier 65, Messier 66, Messier 95, Messier 96, Messier 105, NGC 3521 and NGC 3628 are the most famous.
The first two are part of the Leo Triplet.
The Leo Ring is a cloud of hydrogen and helium gas.
It is found in orbit of two galaxies found within Leo.
Many civilizations over thousands of years have portrayed the constellation of Leo as a lion.
One theory for this is that the Sun was among its stars in Midsummer.
This was the time when the lions of the Egyptian desert left their usual home for the banks of the river Nile.
There they could find relief from the heat in the water.
The Roman writer Pliny the Elder wrote that the Egyptians worshipped the stars of Leo.
He says this is because the Nile would overflow with water at the same time as the Sun entering into the constellation.
In Egypt, the Ramesseum (the memorial temple of Pharaoh Ramesses II) at Thebes mentions Leo in the inscription on the wall.
On the planisphere of Dendera Leo is shown standing on an outstretched serpent.
The Persians called Leo Ser or Shir; the Turks, Artan; the Syrians, Aryo; the Jewish, Arye; the Indians, Simha; all meaning a lion.
In Babylonian astronomy these stars were called UR.
GU.
LA - the ` Great Lion '; the bright star, Regulus, that stands at the Lion 's breast also had distinctly regal associations as it was known as the King Star.
In Greek mythology, it was identified as the Nemean Lion which was killed by Hercules during one of his twelve labors, and after that put into the sky.
The Roman poet Ovid called it Herculeus Leo and Violentus Leo.
Bacchi Sidus (Star of Bacchus) was another of its titles, the god Bacchus always being identified with this animal.
However, Manilius called it Jovis et Junonis Sidus (Star of Jupiter and Juno).
Early Hindu astronomers knew it as Asleha and as Sinha, the Tamil Simham.
As of 2002, the Sun appeared in the constellation Leo from August 10 to September 15.
In tropical astrology, the Sun is considered to be in the sign Leo from July 23 to August 22.
In sidereal astrology the sun is said to be in Leo from August 16 to September 15.
H.A. Rey has suggested an alternative way to connect the stars, which shows a lion walking.
The stars delta Leonis, gamma Leonis, eta Leonis, and theta Leonis form the body of the lion.
The stars gamma Leonis, zeta Leonis, mu Leonis, epsilon Leonis, and eta Leonis form the lion 's neck.
The stars mu Leonis, kappa Leonis, lambda Leonis, and epsilon Leonis form the head of the lion.
Delta Leonis and beta Leonis form the lion 's tail: beta Leonis, also known as Denebola, is the bright tip of the tail with a magnitude of two.
The stars theta Leonis, iota Leonis, and sigma Leonis form the left hind leg of the lion, with sigma Leonis being the foot.
The stars theta Leonis and rho Leonis form the right hind leg, with rho Leonis being the foot.
The stars eta Leonis and alpha Leonis mark the lion 's heart, with alpha Leonis, also known as Regulus, being the bright star of magnitude one.
The stars eta Leonis and omicron Leonis form the right front foot of the Lion.
Libra (,, symbol, Unicode) is a constellation of the zodiac.
It lies between Virgo to the west and Scorpius to the east.
It once represented the claws of Scorpius.
and Librae are the scales ' balance beam, and and are the weighing pans.
Librae was formerly known as Scorpii even though it is well inside the boundaries of Libra.
It was not renamed as Librae until 1851 (by Benjamin A. Gould).
A locomotive is the part of a train that makes the train move.
Normally, it is the first part of the train, and has an engine.
A diesel locomotive is a powered by a diesel engine.
The diesel engine may drive the locomotive 's wheels directly via a gearbox, shaft or chain (called mechanical transmission); by generating electricity which is in turn used to power the wheels (called diesel-electric); or by using a hydraulic transmission system (diesel-hydraulic).
Diesel locomotives are extremely popular worldwide, due to their ease of use and reliability.
They are more powerful than steam locomotives and do not need an expensive power grid like electric locomotives.
A steam locomotive uses wood, coal or oil (but mostly coal) as fuel to heat water in a boiler, which turns into steam which pushes pistons to power the train.
Steam locomotives are not widely used any more due to their operational costs, especially the fuel costs; steam locomotives are now mostly only used on tourist railroads.
An electric locomotive runs on electricity as the name suggests.
Electric locomotives cost the least to buy and operate.
However, the railway electrification system is very expensive, so only tracks used by many trains per day are usually electrified.
Thus, electrics are only the second next used type, behind diesel locomotives.
The Lighthouse of Alexandria, or the Pharos, was a tall tower built between 285 and 247 BCE.
It was built on the island of Pharos in Alexandria, Egypt to serve as a lighthouse for sailors.
The top of the tower had a mirror that reflected sunlight during the day; a fire was lit at night.
The word for "lighthouse" in some languages is pharos or its equivalent.
.
(Sostratus of Cnidus, son of Dexiphanes, to the Gods protecting those upon the sea.)
These words were hidden under a layer of plaster, on top of which was chiseled another inscription honoring Ptolemy the king as builder of the Pharos.
After centuries the plaster wore away, revealing the name of Sostratus.
With a height estimated at between 115 and 145 meters (384 469 ft), it was among the tallest man-made structures on Earth for many centuries.
It was identified as one of the Seven Wonders of the World by Antipater of Sidon.
It was the third tallest building after the two Great Pyramids (of Khufu and Khafra).
It was destroyed by earthquakes.
Divers discovered remains of the lighthouse in fall 1994 on the floor of Alexandria 's Eastern Harbour.
Some of these remains were brought up and were lying at the harbor on public view at the end of 1995.
An episode of the PBS television series Nova chronicled the discovery.
Later satellite imaging has revealed further remains.
It is possible to go diving and see the ruins.
A lighthouse is a tall building that has a light near the top.
Lighthouses are built on the coast of an ocean or lake.
The lighthouse protects ships from crashing into shore by sending the light out towards the sea.
The light usually turns in a circle so that ships see a flashing light.
The light is usually covered by a Fresnel lens.
This lens enables the light to travel a far distance.
One of the most famous lighthouses was the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
It was on an island near the coast.
That island was called Pharos.
Even today, in many languages, the word for lighthouse comes from the name of the island.
Almost all lighthouses are automatic now.
The ancient Library of Alexandria was a large and significant library of the ancient world.
It was founded in Alexandria, Egypt.
The Library flourished under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a major center of scholarship.
It was built in the third century BC.
In ancient Latin, the library was known as the "ALEXANDRINA BYBLIOTHECE" (see image at right).
The Greek term bibliotheke (-RRB-, used by many historians of the era, refers to the collection of books, not to any building.
This complicates the history and chronology.
The library was conceived and opened either during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter or during the reign of his son Ptolemy II.
Plutarch (AD 46 120) wrote that during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC, Julius Caesar might have accidentally burned the library when he set fire to his own ships to frustrate Achillas ' attempt to limit his ability to communicate by sea.
According to Plutarch 's account, this fire spread to the docks and then to the library.
However, this version of events is not confirmed in contemporary accounts of Caesar 's visit.
In fact, it has been reasonably established that segments of its collection were partially destroyed on several occasions before and after the first century BC.
A modern view attributes the destruction to Coptic Christian Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria in 391, who called for the destruction of the Serapeum -- the Daughter library and a temple to the god Serapis.
According to the earliest source of information, the library was initially organized by Demetrius of Phaleron, a student of Aristotle, under the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (ca.367 BC ca.283 BC).
The library comprised a peripatos (walk), gardens, a room for shared dining, a reading room, lecture halls and meeting rooms.
However, the exact layout is not known.
This model 's influence may still be seen today in the layout of university campuses.
The library itself is known to have had an acquisitions department (possibly built near the stacks, or for utility closer to the harbor), and a cataloguing department.
The hall contained shelves for the collections of scrolls (as the books were at this time on papyrus scrolls), known as bibliothekai (-RRB-.
It was rumored that carved into the wall above the shelves, a famous inscription read: The place of the cure of the soul.
It was the first known library to gather a serious collection of books from beyond its country 's borders.
The Library was charged with collecting all the world 's knowledge.
It did so through an aggressive and well-funded royal mandate involving trips to the book fairs of Rhodes and Athens and a policy of pulling the books off every ship that came into port.
They kept the original texts and made copies to send back to their owners.
Alexandria, because of its man-made bidirectional port between the mainland and the Pharos island, welcomed trade from the East and West, and soon found itself the international hub for trade, as well as the leading producer of papyrus and, soon enough, books.
The library was also home to a host of international scholars.
The library filled its stacks with new works in mathematics, astronomy, physics, natural history and other subjects.
It was at the Library of Alexandria that the scientific method was first conceived and put into practice, and its empirical standards applied in serious textual criticism.
As the same text often existed in several different versions, comparative textual criticism was crucial for ensuring their accuracy.
Once ascertained, copies would then be made for scholars, royalty and wealthy bibliophiles the world over, this commerce bringing income to the library.
The editors at the Library of Alexandria are especially well known for their work on Homeric texts.
The more famous editors generally also held the title of head librarian.
These included, among others,
Already famous in the ancient world, the library 's collection became even more storied in later years.
Papyrus scrolls comprised the collection, and although parchment codices were used predominantly as a more advanced writing material after 300 BC.
A single piece of writing might occupy several scrolls.
King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309 246 BC) is said to have set 500,000 scrolls as an objective for the library.
Mark Antony supposedly gave Cleopatra over 200,000 scrolls (taken from the great Library of Pergamum) for the library as a wedding gift.
Carl Sagan, in his series Cosmos, states that the library contained nearly one million scrolls, though other experts have estimated a smaller number.
No index of the library survives, and it is not possible to know with certainty how large and how diverse the collection may have been.
A perhaps exaggerated story concerns how the library 's collection grew so large.
By decree of Ptolemy III of Egypt, all visitors to the city were required to surrender all books and scrolls.
Official scribes then swiftly copied these writings, some copies proving so precise that the originals were put into the library, and the copies delivered to the unsuspecting owners.
This process also helped to create a reservoir of books in the relatively new city.
According to Galen, Ptolemy III requested permission from the Athenians to borrow the original scripts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, for which the Athenians demanded the enormous amount of fifteen talents as guarantee.
Ptolemy happily paid the fee but kept the original scripts for the library.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was inaugurated in 2002 near the site of the old library.
A library is a place where many books are kept.
Most libraries are public and let people take the books to use in their home.
Most libraries let people borrow books for several weeks.
Some belong to institutions, for example, companies, churches, schools, and universities.
Also a person 's bookshelves at home can have many books and be a library.
The people who work in libraries are librarians.
Other libraries keep famous or rare books.
There are a few "Copyright libraries" which have a copy of every book which has been written in that country.
Some libraries also have other things that people might like, such as magazines, music on CDs, or computers where people can use the Internet.
In school they offer software to learn the alphabet and other details.
A library is not a bookstore (a store that sells books).
Many places have a public library, where anybody can join if they live in the area.
With a library card, people can borrow books and take them home for several weeks.
It does not cost money to get a library card at most public libraries.
Books are kept on shelves in a special order so they are easy to find.
Public libraries have stories and books about lots of things.
Many public libraries have books and CDs about learning English.
Stories are kept in alphabetical order by the last name of the person who wrote them, the author.
Books about other things are often given a special number, that refers to what they are about.
They are then put on the shelf in number order.
One number system used by many libraries is the Dewey decimal system.
Many colleges and universities have large academic libraries.
These libraries are for the use of college students, professors, and researchers.
Academic libraries are used mainly for doing research like studying the solar system or how earthquakes happen.
These libraries do not have the same types of books you would find in a public library.
They usually do not have fiction books or books for children (unless they are being studied).
Academic libraries can have many books, sometimes more than a million.
Special libraries are those libraries that are not public libraries or academic libraries.
They are usually small.
Many times a special library holds books on a particular subject or even a special kind of book.
Some special libraries keep just old books or books by Shakespeare.
A special library can be owned by a business for use only by that business.
For example, Disney World in Orlando has its own library that is not open to the public but for the use of the people who work for the company.
A librarian is a person who works in a library.
Librarians help people find books and information.
They can teach people how to find books and use the library.
A professional librarian is a person who went to school to study library science.
They can earn a degree called a Masters in Library Science.
The earliest known library was discovered in Iraq and belonged to the ancient civilization in Sumer.
They did n't used paper books but instead wrote everything on clay tablets using a style of writing called cuneiform.
These tablets are over 5,000 years old.
The Library of Alexandria, in Egypt, was the largest and most important library of the ancient world.
It was destroyed when the Romans conquered Egypt in 30 BC.
Rome s first public library was established by Asinius Pollio who was a lieutenant of Julius Caesar.
Eventually Rome would build 28 public libraries within the city.
When the Roman Empire fell in 330 AD, many books went east to the city of Byzantium where a large library was built.
Other libraries were built in monasteries and public homes.
Libraries began to appear in many Islamic cities where science and philosophy survived after the fall of the Roman Empire.
Surprisingly, Christian monks and Islamic libraries exchanged books to copy.
These books eventually made there way back to the West and helped start the Renaissance.
European universities began the practice of creating academic libraries at this time for the use of their students.
The 17th and 18th centuries was called "The Golden Age of Libraries" when national libraries were being created all over Europe.
These national libraries collected books that were published in their own country as well as some books from other countries.
The Line Islands are an island chain in the central Pacific Ocean near the equator.
Three of the islands are territories of the United States of America.
These islands are Jarvis Island, Kingman Reef, and Palmyra Island.
The rest of the islands are part of Kiribati, an island nation in the Pacific ocean.
The Islands that are part of Kiribati are Washington Island, Tabuaeran, Kiritimati, Malden Island, Starbuck Island, Caroline Island, Flint Island, and Vostok Island.
The islands are sometimes grouped into the southern line islands (Caroline, Vostok, and Flint islands), central line islands (Jarvis Island, Malden Island, and Starbuck islands), and northern line islands (Kingman Reef, Kiritimati, and Palmyra, Washington, and Fanning islands).
Latin is an old language that was spoken by the Romans and others during ancient and medieval times.
No one speaks Latin as a first language anymore, which makes it a dead language.
However, many people around the world study it in school and in other places because it is considered important to understand the past societies and even how current languages work.
Latin is used today in taxonomy to give technical names to species and groups of species of living things.
Some terms used in medicine to name parts of the body (such as bones) and diseases are also written in Latin.
Since Latin was very important to Christianity through many centuries, it is still spoken today during some religious activities such as prayers and cults.
For the same reason, it is considered official in Vatican, where the Pope, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, lives.
People in the Vatican sometimes communicate in Latin (if they have different mother tongues) and sometimes in ceremonies.
There were two types of Latin, Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin.
Classical Latin was the kind of Latin used by the educated Romans and is the one used by the Roman Catholic Church and studied by many students around the world and Vulgar Latin was the more common spoken variety used by the common non-educated Romans and the variety taught to the peoples conquered by the Romans.
Latin was the most important language in most of Europe in the Middle Ages.
It was taught in many European schools, and all universities used Latin as the teaching language.
Latin began to lose its importance in the Reformation, but it was still often used by authors of scientific books and encyclopedias.
Until about 1900 many universities accepted dissertations written in Latin.
When people from other regions of Europe learned Vulgar Latin during Roman conquests, they did not speak and write it correctly in most cases, and so in the course of time each of these regions developed its own language, that is, a simplified form of Latin.
Those languages are called Romance languages and they are still spoken today.
The five Romance languages with the largest number of speakers are Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian.
The Romance languages are very similar to each other, and speakers of one Romance language can understand many words and sentences (in both texts and spoken conversations) from another Romance language.
For example, speakers of Portuguese can well understand Spanish.
It can be said that the Romance languages are modern dialects of Latin.
Latin has almost the same inflection structure as Ancient Greek.
It uses a different alphabet, though.
Latin has seven different noun cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative and locative.
The vocative case is almost always the same as the nominative case.
The locative takes the from of the dative.
Latin nouns are declined, or changed, according to how they are used in the sentence.
A noun can be declined five different ways.
These ways are called declensions.
The declensions are numbered 1 through 5 (1st Declension, 2nd Declension,...), and each one has unique endings that identify the noun 's declension.
When a noun is declined, twelve forms are made, two for each of the noun cases (the locative is omitted).
Verbs also have a similar thing done to them; changing a verb is called conjugation.
When a verb is conjugated, six forms are made.
There are five factors that can change a verb: person, number, tense, voice, and mood.
In all, there are 120 possible forms of each Latin verbs.
Latin used to be written on plates of wax.
These had little space, so words were run together (there was no space between words).
Sometimes papyrus was used, but this was expensive.
Punctuation is an ancient idea, but came to Latin later.
Lowercase letters (` small letters ') are relatively modern inventions.
The Roman alphabet was derived from the Etruscan language.
The following is the introduction to the Metamorphoses by Ovid; it describes the Golden Age.
"This was the Golden Age that, without coercion, without laws, spontaneously nurtured the good and the true.
There was no fear or punishment: there were no threatening words to be read, fixed in bronze, no crowd of suppliants fearing the judge s face: they lived safely without protection.
No pine tree felled in the mountains had yet reached the flowing waves to travel to other lands: human beings only knew their own shores.
There were no steep ditches surrounding towns, no straight war-trumpets, no coiled horns, no swords and helmets.
Without the use of armies, people passed their lives in gentle peace and security."
A local area network (LAN) is a computer network in a small area like a home, office, or school.
Many computers can be connected to share information and Internet connections.
Most LANs use Ethernet to connect together.
LAN topologies tell you how network devices are organized.
Five common LAN topologies exist: bus, ring, star, tree, and mesh.
These topologies are logical architectures.
This means that they tell you the directions that signals go between devices, but that the actual cables that connect the devices might not be connected the same way.
For example, logical bus and ring topologies are commonly organized physically as a star.
Louis Pasteur (December 27, 1822 September 28, 1895) was a French microbiologist and chemist.
He and his wife, Marie, are best known for their experiments supporting the Germ theory of disease, and he is also known for his vaccinations, most notably the first vaccine against rabies.
He made many discoveries in the field of chemistry, including the asymmetry (different shapes) of crystals.
He is also well known for his way of keeping milk and wine from going sour for longer periods of time.
That process is called pasteurization.
Pasteur 's later work on diseases included work on chicken cholera.
During this work, Pasteur noticed how a culture of the responsible bacteria had spoiled, and it failed to induce the disease in some chickens, which he was infecting, with the disease.
Louis Pasteur was born on December 27, 1822 in Dole in the Jura region of France, into the family of a poor tanner.
Louis grew up in the town of Arbois.
He gained degrees in Letters and in Mathematical Sciences before entering the cole Normale Sup rieure, an elite college.
After serving briefly as professor of physics at Dijon Lyc e in 1848, he became professor of chemistry at the University of Strasbourg, where he met and courted Marie Laurent, daughter of the university 's rector, in 1849.
Louis Pasteur and Marie were married on May 29, 1849, and together had five children.
Only two survived to adulthood; his other three children had died of typhoid fever.
These personal tragedies inspired Pasteur to try to find cures for diseases, such as typhoid.
In 1895 at Marnes-la-Coquette, a commune in Paris, Pasteur died after several strokes.
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ((lu tv jo z f jo han v tg n ta n) in German) (April 26, 1889 April 29, 1951) was an Austrian philosopher.
He worked mainly in the basics of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.
He is regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century.
Before his death at the age of 62, the only book Wittgenstein had published was the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
His second book Philosophical Investigations was published shortly after he died.
Both of these works are regarded as very important for analytic philosophy.
Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on 26 April 1889, to Karl and Leopoldine Wittgenstein.
He was the youngest of eight children and was born into one of the most prominent and wealthy families in the Austro-Hungarian empire.
His father 's parents, Hermann Christian and Fanny Wittgenstein, were born into Jewish families but later converted to Protestantism, and after they moved from Saxony to Vienna in the 1850s, assimilated themselves into the Viennese Protestant professional classes.
Ludwig 's father, Karl Wittgenstein, became an industrialist and went on to make a fortune in iron and steel.
Ludwig 's mother Leopoldine, born Kalmus, was an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich von Hayek.
Despite Karl 's Protestantism, and the fact that Leopoldine 's father was Jewish, the Wittgenstein children were baptized as Roman Catholics the faith of their maternal grandmother and Ludwig was given a Roman Catholic burial upon his death.
Wittgenstein was homosexual.
Wittgenstein began studying mechanical engineering.
During his research he became interested in the foundations of mathematics, particularly after reading Bertrand Russell 's Principles of Mathematics and Gottlob Frege 's Grundgesetze.
In 1911 Wittgenstein visited Frege and Russell and discussed philosophy with them at great length.
He made a great impression on Russell and started to work on the foundations of logic and mathematical logic.
Russell saw Wittgenstein as a successor who would carry on his work.
During the First World War, Wittgenstein served in the army and developed his logic.
He included ethical aspects.
In the summer of 1918 he learned that his friend David Pinsent had been killed in an airplane accident.
Wittgenstein became depressed and thought of suicide.
He went to stay with his uncle Paul where he was able to complete the Tractatus.
No publisher accepted it, but Russell realized it was a philosophically important work and wrote an introduction.
Wittgenstein did not like it because he thought that Russell had not understood the book.
In the end Wilhelm Ostwald 's journal Annalen der Naturphilosophie printed a German edition in 1921, and Routledge 's Kegan Paul printed a bilingual edition with Russell 's introduction in 1922.
Since Wittgenstein thought that the Tractatus had solved all the problems of philosophy, he left philosophy and returned to Austria to train as a primary school teacher.
Wittgenstein had unrealistic expectations of the rural children he taught, and had little patience with those children who had no gift for mathematics.
But he had good results with children that were interested, especially boys.
His severe disciplinary methods led to disagreement with some of his students ' parents, and eventually he resigned his position and returned to Vienna, feeling that he had failed as a school teacher.
After abandoning his work as a school teacher, Wittgenstein worked as a gardener 's assistant in a monastery near Vienna and then he worked with the architect, Paul Engelmann.
This intellectual work did much to restore Wittgenstein 's spirits.
Between 1925 and 1928, he joined his sister Margaret in Vienna, where she was having a house built.
Wittgenstein and the architect Paul Engelmann built it together, and though they never lived in it, ` Haus Wittgenstein ' is still standing in Vienna today.
Toward the end of this work, Wittgenstein was contacted by Moritz Schlick, one of the leading figures of the newly formed Vienna Circle.
This contact stimulated Wittgenstein intellectually and revived his interest in philosophy.
In 1929 he decided to return to Cambridge.
He was met at the railway station by a crowd of England 's greatest intellectuals.
He found out to his horror that he was one of the most famous philosophers in the world now.
In 1939 Wittgenstein was appointed to the chair in Philosophy at Cambridge.
During World War II he left Cambridge and volunteered as a hospital porter in Guy 's Hospital in London and as a laboratory assistant in Newcastle upon Tyne 's Royal Victoria Infirmary.
Wittgenstein resigned his position at Cambridge in 1947 to concentrate on his writing.
When in 1949, he found out that he had prostate cancer, he had written most of the material that would be published after his death as Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations), which might be his most important work.
He died of prostate cancer in Cambridge.
Lanthanum is a chemical element.
It has the chemical symbol La..
It has the atomic number 57.
It is part of a group of chemical elements in the periodic table named the Lanthanides.
It is a rare earth element.
It is silvery white, malleable and ductile.
It is soft and can be cut with a knife.
Lutetium is a chemical element.
It has the chemical symbol Lu.
It has the atomic number 71.
It is a metal.
It is silver white.
In chemistry it is placed in a group of metal elements named the transition metals.
Lutetium can also be grouped with the lanthanides because it is near the lanthanides in the Periodic Table.
Its physical properties are like the lanthanides.
Lawrencium is a chemical element.
It is also named eka-lutetium by some people.
It has the symbol Lr.
It has the atomic number 103.
It is a radioactive element that does not exist in nature.
It has to be made.
Lawrencium is made from californium.
The isotope that has the longest half-life (262Lr) has a half life of about 3.6 hours.
No uses for lawrencium are known.
What lawrencium looks like is not known because not enough has been made to see it with human eyesight.
Is a Block-D Group3 Period 7 element.
Discovered by Albert Ghiorso and co-workers in 1961, in California.
Named after Ernest O. Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron, a research instrument with which several new elements have been found\/made.
Lead (pronounce: "lehd") is a chemical element.
Its chemical symbol is Pb, which comes from plumbum, the Latin word for lead.
Its atomic number is 82, atomic mass is 207.2 and has a melting point of 327.8 C. It is a very poisonous and heavy metal.
Lead is a shiny, gray-blue poor metal.
It gets tarnished easily to a dull gray color.
It is soft and malleable.
It is very shiny when it is melted.
It is very heavy.
It is very corrosion-resistant.
It is made stronger by adding antimony or calcium.
It can form an alloy with sodium.
It is toxic to people and animals when swallowed.
Lead burns in air with a grayish-white flame, making toxic fumes of lead (II) oxide.
Only the surface is corroded by air.
It dissolves in nitric acid to make lead (II) nitrate.
It does not dissolve in sulfuric or hydrochloric acid.
It reacts with sodium nitrate to make lead (II) oxide and sodium nitrite.
It reacts with chlorine to make lead (II) chloride.
Lead (II) oxide reacts with lead sulfide to make lead metal and sulfur dioxide.
Lead makes chemical compounds in two main oxidation states: +2 and +4.
+2 compounds, also known as lead (II) compounds or plumbous compounds, are weak oxidizing agents.
+4 compounds, also known as lead (IV) compounds or plumbic compounds, are strong oxidizing agents.
Lead compounds are toxic just like the element.
The lead halides do not dissolve in water.
Lead (IV) oxide is the most common lead (IV) compound.
It is a black solid.
The lead oxides are all colored, while the other salts are white or colorless.
Lead nitrate and lead (II) acetate are the soluble compounds of lead.
; +2 compounds This state is more common than the +4 state.
These are weak oxidizing agents.
All but the oxides are colorless or white.
; Mixed oxidation state compounds Mixed oxidation state compounds contain lead in the +2 and +4 oxidation state.
; +4 compounds These are less common.
They are strong oxidizing agents.
Lead is found very rarely in the earth 's crust as a metal.
Normally, lead is in the mineral galena.
Galena is lead sulfide.
Galena is the main lead ore.
Lead was used for thousands of years because it is easy to get from the ground and easy to shape and work with.
The Romans used lead very commonly.
They used it for pipes, drinking vessels, and fasteners.
Lead is made from galena.
Galena is made pure by froth flotation to get all the impurities out.
Then the lead sulfide is roasted in a furnace to make lead (II) oxide.
The lead (II) oxide is heated with coke to make liquid lead metal.
Lead is used in the ballast of sailboats.
It is also used in weight belts for scuba diving.
It is also used to make shotgun pellets and bullets for small arms.
Some printing presses use lead type because it can be easily shaped.
It can be used outside because it does not corrode in water.
Most lead is used in lead acid batteries, though.
The lead is oxidized, making electricity.
Sheets of lead are used to block sound in some places.
Lead is used in radiation shielding.
Molten lead can be used as a coolant in nuclear reactors.
It used to be mixed with tin to make the pipes in pipe organs.
Different amounts of lead make different sounds.
In addition, lead has found its usage in solder.
It is used in some solder.
It is used in covering for wires that carry high voltage.
Some tennis rackets have lead in them to make them heavier.
It is used to balance wheels of cars, to make statues, and to make decorative looks in buildings.
Many lead compounds are used to make colored glazes in ceramics.
Lead can be used in PVC pipes.
Lead compounds are added to candles to make them burn better.
Lead glass has lead (II) oxide in it.
Lead compounds are still used as pigments in some places.
Lead compounds were added to gasoline, but are now outlawed.
Some lead compounds are semiconductors and are used in photodetectors.
Lead was used in many red, yellow, and white pigments in paints.
Lead was also used in pesticides.
Lead used to be used in pipes carrying water, but now it is not because lead can leach into the water.
Although it can be safely touched, exposure to lead should be avoided it is very toxic to humans and other animals when swallowed, and its use is restricted in many countries.
If someone is exposed to lead for a long time, it ruins their kidneys and gives them abdominal pains.
Lead also ruins the nervous system.
Lead paint was being eaten by children and they were getting lead poisoning.
The best way to understand lead and its properties is to read its MSDS.
Limestone is a sedimentary rock, made up mostly of the mineral calcite, a form of calcium carbonate, CaCO3.
The calcium carbonate is originally produced by living organisms.
Later, some of it goes into solution in sea water.
Limestone rocks include mainly organic remains and precipitated carbonate.
Limestone makes up about 10 % of the total volume of all sedimentary rocks.
Limestones are mostly made of calcium carbonate.
It is originally made by small photosynthetic protists like certain bacteria, coccolithophores, and algae.
Then the carbonate gets used by various animals, like bivalves and the polyps which make coral reefs.
They build their shells or framework out of CaCO3 crystals."
(Coccolithophores) were the first organisms to bring about a steady rain of calcium carbonate from the upper, illuminated zone of the ocean towards the deep sea".
p144
Carbonates are rocks formed from these sources, plus any CaCO3 which is precipitated out of solution.
Some carbonate dissolves in the water.
It gets precipitated when the physical condition of the water changes.
For example, if the concentration of CaCO3 is high, then a temperature drop, or a pH (acidity) change, can cause precipitation.
Florida Bay, the shallow lagoon behind the Florida Keys, is a model for the conditions which produced limestones on the continental shelf.
Of course, all the species were somewhat different then but, as an ecosystem, it is similar.
In the Florida Bay a type of flowering plant called sea grass is in abundance.
Also in abundance is white, milky water full of calcium carbonate.
This is mainly formed by Melobesia, a small red alga which lives on the sea grass.
p151 Finally, the organisms produce huge amounts of slime, which is a polysaccharide.
There is good reason to think the slime is produced by microorganisms to control the way their carbonate skeletons are formed.
p139 As a side-effect the slime limits the amount of carbonate which goes into solution.
p155
Florida Bay is a flat platform which has laid down a huge amount of carbonate rock.
"You have to drill for more than 3000 feet before you reach a different rock type, and that is of Cretaceous age some 70 million years ago".
p158
Many limestones contain fossils, and some are made up almost entirely of skeletal material.
Chalk is ~ 99 % coccoliths; Solnhofen limestone is famous for its animal fossils; and there are many shelly limestones from different periods.
Limestone is not found much before the Cambrian period, because shelled animals had not yet evolved.
When limestone is heated to a high temperature, and squeezed at the base of a mountain, it becomes the metamorphic rock marble.
Marbles are fairly dense, relatively easy to cut, or be shaped into blocks, and some forms are white in color.
Limestone is hard enough to resist weathering but usually soft enough to be worked (cut and carved) by stonemasons.
It is used for building material.
Limestone, particularly Portland limestone, became popular in the 19th and 20th centuries for building things such as churches, banks and houses.
However, acid rain does slowly erode limestone.
Limestone is used to make glass and cement.
It is also used to make iron in a blast furnace, to remove impurities from the iron ore.
L beck is a city in the North of Germany, in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.
It has about 210,000 inhabitants and a university.
The city 's full name is Hansestadt L beck (Hanseatic city of Lubeck) in memory of its history.
It was an important part in the Hanseatic League.
The architecture of the city and the region as well is influenced by this historic period.
As the Free City of L beck, the city was a state of the Weimar Republic.
Other Hanseatic cities today are: Hamburg, Rostock, Wismar, Stralsund, Bremen, Greifswald and Demmin.
The most famous citizen is the author G nter Grass.
He won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Luebeck has an oceanic climate (Cfb in the Koeppen climate classification).
Lao People 's Democratic Republic, or Laos country (-RRB- for short, is a country in southeast Asia.
The capital of Laos is Vientiane.
Laos is landlocked (it does not have a coast on a sea or ocean).
It is bordered by Myanmar (used to be known in English as "Burma") and by China to the northwest, by Vietnam to the east, by Cambodia to the south, and by Thailand to the west.
The Mekong river forms a large part of the western boundary with Thailand.
Boats from Laos can not get to the ocean using the Mekong because of rapids and waterfalls in the south of the country.
Laos had a long history before becoming a French colony.
Fa Ngum created the first unifed Lao Kingdom.
In 1949 it became independent from France, as the Kingdom of Laos.
Later there was a civil war, and in 1975 it became a republic under control of the communist party.
The official language is Lao, a language belonging to the Tai language group.
98 % of Lao people believe in Buddhism.
The main crop in Laos is rice.
Laos is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia.
The country is slightly smaller than Romania and Colorado.
The landscape is mostly rugged mountains.
The highest is Phou Bia at 2818 m. The Mekong River forms the border with Thailand.
The mountains of the Annamite Range form the eastern border with Vietnam.
The climate is tropical.
The rainy season is from May to November.
The dry season is from December to April.
Laos has three seasons (rainy, cold and hot).
The capital and largest city is Vientiane.
Laos is divided in 16 provinces and one prefecture.
Laos is one of the world 's five remaining communist states.
The only legal political party is the Lao People 's Revolutionary Party (LPRP).
The head of state is President Choummaly Sayasone.
He is the General Secretary of the Lao People 's Revolutionary Party.
Shortly after the end of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) joined forces with the Pathet Lao, started a coup on December 2, 1975 to overthrow the royalist Lao government, and established a communist government that continues to run the country to this day.
The head of government is Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong.
Government policies are determined by the party.
Important government decisions are checked by the Council of Ministers.
Lebanon is a country in the Middle East, on the Mediterranean Sea.
It has a border with Israel to the south, and Syria to the east and north.
Lebanon has been independent since 1943.
Its capital city is Beirut.
Lebanon has two chains of mountains.
It is often called the ruby of the Middle East.
It has a coastline stretching all the way up.
The area of Lebanon is 10,452 square kilometres.
Over 4 million people live in Lebanon.
The people mostly speak Arabic.
About 54 % of Lebanese people are Muslim and 40.5 % are Christian.
There are 16 million Lebanese people living in other countries.
Lebanon is a very westernized country, is East meets the West.
The national symbol in Lebanon is the Cedar tree, because an abundance of them are found in the Lebanon Mountains.
Lebanon is divided into six governorates.
These are divided into twenty-five districts.
The districts are also divided into several municipalities.
The governorates and their districts are listed below:
Lesotho is a small country in southern Africa.
Its population is about 1,800,000.
The capital of Lesotho is called Maseru.
Lesotho has no coast on the sea nor on a lake.
This type of country is called landlocked, meaning it is surrounded by land.
All of Lesotho 's trade must either be flown in by aeroplane, or brought in by land.
Lesotho position is unusual: it is completely surrounded by the country of South Africa and has no borders with any other country.
This type of country is called an enclave.
Enclave countries are very rare, but Lesotho is one (there are only two other countries like this, San Marino and the Vatican City).
This makes Lesotho 's relationship with South Africa very important to them both.
Lesotho has many mountains and is one of the most mountainous countries in the world.
All of Lesotho is at least 1,400 m above sea level.
People sometimes travel there to ski in winter.
The many mountains in Lesotho mean that it rains there a lot.
Lesotho uses some of its water to generate electricity and sells some of the water to South Africa.
Lesotho became a country in 1818, but it was then called Basutoland.
A man called Moshoeshoe brought several of the groups of people in the area together and formed a new country with him as its king.
This new country came under attack from its enemies and in 1868 Moshoeshoe asked Queen Victoria of Great Britain for help.
Great Britain said it would help if Lesotho became part of the British Empire.
Lesotho eventually gained its independence on 4 October 1966.
Now it is a member of the British Commonwealth.
King Letsie III is the ruler of Lesotho.
The Republic of Liberia is a country in West Africa that has been gravely affected in recent years by two civil wars.
The name of the country is "Land of the Free" in Latin, because it was founded in the early 19th century by freed American slaves.
It gained its independence on July 26, 1847.
Its official language is English.
Liberia is home to more than three and a half million people.
The capital of Liberia is Monrovia.
The country 's constitution is similar to that of the United States.
In the Autumn 2005 elections, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf became the first female elected head of state in African history.
She was inaugurated on January 16, 2006.
The President before Johnson-Sirleaf was Gyude Bryant.
There are 3,283,000 in Liberia.
For ships, Liberia is a flag of convenience.
Liechtenstein is a country in Western Europe.
It is the sixth smallest country in the world and, with Uzbekistan, one of only two doubly landlocked countries.
This means that it is landlocked by a landlocked country.
Liechtenstein is between Austria and Switzerland.
It was a part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1806 when it became an independent principality.
Liechtenstein was linked with Austria until the end of World War I, after which it became linked with Switzerland in a customs union.
The heir to the throne is usually called Hereditary Prince of Liechtenstein.
The official language in Liechtenstein is German.
The capital of Liechtenstein is Vaduz, a very small town of 5000 people.
Liechtenstein is famous for its many private banks.
It also has more companies than people.
The London Underground is a system of electric trains which are in London, United Kingdom.
It is the oldest underground railway in the world.
It started running in 1863 as the Metropolitan Railway.
After the opening the system was copied in many other cities, for example New York and Madrid.
Even though it is called the Underground about half of it is above the ground.
The "Tube" is a slang name for the London Underground, because the tunnels for some of the lines are round tubes running through the ground.
The Underground has got 274 stations and over 408 km of track.
From 2006 2007 over 1 billion passengers used the underground.
Underground train systems in other cities may be called metros or subways (in North America).
Subway is used in Britain to refer to underground walkways.
The Metropolitan Line was the first part of the Underground to be made.
It was opened in 1863.
It then ran between Paddington and Farringdon.
It took 40,000 passengers per day.
Later it was made longer.
The District Line was built by a different company.
In 1884, the Circle Line was finished.
All these lines used steam engines at first.
In 1890, a line using electric trains was opened.
It was much deeper below ground than the other lines.
Now it is part of the Northern Line.
More lines like this were opened.
People liked them, so in 1905 the lines that used steam engines were changed to use electric trains.
Because the different lines were run by different companies, changing lines was difficult.
Between 1900 and 1902 Charles Yerkes bought most of the companies and formed a company named Underground Electric Railways of London Company Ltd, short UERL.
In 1933 a company was formed of all the bus, tram and underground companies, called London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB).
It planned to make the network longer, but the Second World War stopped this.
In the war, some Underground stations were used as shelters against bombs.
After the war more passengers used the underground.
Because of that they built the Victoria Line which took over many passengers.
The Piccadilly Line was built farther to Heathrow Airport in 1977.
The Jubilee Line was opened in 1979.
In 1999 the Jubilee Line was built longer to Stratford.
The system uses two kinds of trains, a big type - called sub surface trains and a smaller type - deep level trains.
The big ones are used for the rectangular tunnels (District Line, Metropolitan Line, Circle Line), the small ones for the round tunnels.
Most lines have different trains, although they fit into one of the two categories.
The Underground 's trains usually drive to 270 stations.
14 Stations are outside of London.
The Underground uses zones to collect fares.
There are 9 zones.
Zone 1 is the most central zone.
The only London Underground stations in Zones 7 to 9 are on the Metropolitan line beyond Moor Park, outside Greater London.
Some stations are in two zones, and the cheapest fare applies.
Paper tickets or the contactless Oyster card can be used for travel.
The Oyster Card is a plastic card which stores credit (money and Travelcards) which the owner uses to pay for Underground travel.
The user must "charge" (put money onto) their card at a ticket machine.
They then touch the card on a yellow reader to pay for their journey.
Since its introduction in 2002 it has become very popular with regular travelers, as the prices are much cheaper if you use an Oyster card.
There are ticket offices, some open only in the rush-hour, and ticket machines, which can be used at any time.
Some machines take coins only, other touch-screen machines take coins and English notes, and usually give change.
These machines also take credit and debit cards: some newer machines accept cards only.
When most of the stations in the London Underground system were built, disabled and wheelchair access was not considered.
While many above-ground stations have only a few steps to the platform, nearly all Underground stations have some of the systems 's 410 escalators and 112 lifts (elevators).
Newer stations include disabled access, and many older stations install disabled access when they are refurbished or rebuilt.
Since 2004, maps inside the trains show which stations have step-free access from street level.
Transport for London plan to have a network of over 100 fully accessible stations by 2020, which means that 75 % of Tube journeys can be made with step-free access.
The escalators in the London Underground system are some of the longest in Europe.
They run 20 hours a day, 364 days a year and are used by 13,000 people per hour, with 95 % of them running at one time.
There have been relatively few accidents in the Underground 's history.
Most happen if people accidentally fall onto the tracks.
In some stations there are pits in the middle of the track to stop people being injured if they fall onto the track.
Newly rebuilt parts of the system, especially on the Jubilee line, have platform doors.
These doors only open when a train stops and prevent people falling or jumping onto the tracks.
In recent years, refurbished and rebuilt parts of the Underground, especially the Jubilee Line (around Westminster) have had sliding platform doors installed to prevent people falling off the platform onto the tracks, and discourage\/prevent suicides.
In the 30s, 70s and 90s the Underground was bombed many times by the IRA, and for this reason there have been no wastebins in or around stations until very recently, when clear plastic sacks were introduced in some parts of the system.
On 7th July 2005 there were three attacks by radical Islamic terrorists on two Circle Line trains and on one Piccadilly Line.
Smoking is not allowed in any part of the underground.
It was banned after a fire in King 's Cross Station in 1987.
The commuters of London often complain about the Underground.
Even newspapers, especially the Evening Standard, often criticise the system.
Usually the complaints are about delays, overcrowding and the fares.
Sometimes strikes of London Underground staff occur.
London Underground fares are now the most expensive of any rail system around the world, including the luxurious Orient Express, and they continue to rise at very high levels.
Concern has also been raised over the huge difference between oyster card fares and cash fares, with the criticism that the high cash fares will discourage tourists and day visitors to London from traveling around the City.
Because the underground is a very old system, engineering work is often needed and often causes delays.
There can be other reasons as well, for example signal failures or other breakdowns.
Customers can claim a refund if their tube journey is delayed for more than 15 minutes due to problems within the control of Transport For London.
Because many more commuters use the underground than planned, overcrowding often happens.
This can cause stress and frustration with the underground system among commuters.
According to a report by MPs, commuters face "a daily trauma" and are often forced to travel in "intolerable conditions".
Because so many passengers travel on the London Underground network every day, strikes or industrial actions on the Underground network have a very high impact on London 's traffic and can impact on London 's economy.
London Underground and the rail unions claim to be under high pressure from the working public, private businesses and government departments.
Strike actions on the London Underground occur for a number of reasons, including health and safety, working conditions and pay levels.
There were several such strikes in the late 1970s.
Lund University is a university in Lund.
It was founded in 1666 and is the second oldest university in Sweden.
A lesbian is a homosexual woman.
This means a woman who is sexually attracted to other women, and not to men.
The word lesbian comes from Lesbos, an island in Greece.
An ancient poet, Sappho, lived on Lesbos.
Sappho wrote mostly poems about love.
Many of her love poems are written to women.
So her name and the island where she lived make people think about women who love women.
Sometimes lesbians are also called Sapphists from the name Sappho.
Lesbians were involved in the early feminist (a movement of women who want to be treated equally to men) movement.
Feminism is the political and social movements that promote women 's equality and rights.
However, there was conflict between lesbians and straight (heterosexual) women in the feminist movement.
In the 1960s and 1970s some straight (women who like men) feminists wanted the lesbians out of the women 's rights movement.
They wanted feminism to be accepted by society.
They believed lesbians were less accepted by society and might hurt the feminist movement.
Eventually, the women 's rights movement accepted its lesbian members.
Now many important feminist leaders are out (out means that they make it known that they are lesbians) lesbians.
Many lesbian couples want to have children of their own.
In order to raise children, they sometimes adopt.
However some places do not allow homosexual couples to adopt children, so many of them want to be able to adopt children.
Some lesbian couples also have their own biological children.
To do this they may have artificial insemination.
This is when sperm from a donor male is placed in a woman to make a pregnancy.
Some lesbian women do this at home with a friend they choose to be the donor.
However many may use sperm banks.
These are medical businesses that match couples who need donor sperm with men who will donate.
Sometimes this is done anonymously which means the couple does not know the donor.
Sometimes this is done with the donor known and even chosen by the couple.
Unlike gay sex between males, lesbian sex is not against the law in as many places.
Some religions that condemn gay male sex say nothing about lesbian sex.
Abrahamic religions usually see gay as well as lesbian relations as immoral.
Saint Paul in Epistle to the Romans 1:26 describes lesbianism as ` unnatural ' and ` shameful '.
There are some religions, however, mostly new religious movements that accept lesbian relations.
In most parts of the world lesbians can not marry.
This means they do not have the legal benefits and protection of marriage.
This can cause lesbians, and gay men, many problems.
Lambda (uppercase\/lowercase), is the letter of the Greek alphabet, used to represent the "l" sound in Ancient and Modern Greek.
In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 30.
Letters that came from it include the Roman L and Cyrillic.
It is used as shorthand as a symbol for wavelength.
Lamiaceae or Labiatae, also known as the mint family, is a family of plants.
It includes about 210 genera and about 3,500 species.
It has been considered closely related to Verbenaceae but 1990s phylogenetic studies have shown that a lot of the genera classified in Verbenaceae belong instead in Lamiaceae, whereas the core genera of Verbenaceae are not closely related to Lamiaceae and are more closely related to other members of the Lamiales.
Logarithms or logs are a part of mathematics.
They are related to exponential functions, and are useful in multiplying or dividing large numbers.
Logarithms were first used in India in the 2nd century BC.
The first to use logarithms in modern times was the German mathematician Michael Stifel (around 1487-1567).
In 1544, he wrote down the following equations: and This is the basis for understanding logarithms.
For Stifel, and had to be whole numbers.
John Napier (1550 1617) did not want this restriction, and wanted a range for the exponents.
According to Napier, logarithms express ratios: has the same ratio to, as to if the difference of their logarithms matches.
Mathematically:.
At first, base e was used (even though the number had not been named yet).
Henry Briggs proposed to use 10 as a base for logarithms, such logarithms are very useful in astronomy.
Just as an exponential function has three parts, a logarithm has three parts.
The three parts of a logarithm are a base, an argument (also called power) and an answer.
In this function, the base is 2, the argument is 3 and the answer is 8.
In this logarithm, the base is 2, the argument is 8 and the answer is 3.
Addition has one inverse operation: the subtraction.
Also, multiplication has one inverse operation: the division.
Therefore, it may be hard to understand why exponentiation has actually two inverse operations: Why do we need the logarithm if there already is the root?
This is the case because the exponentiation is not commutative.
Logarithms can make multiplication and division of large numbers easier because adding logarithms is the same as multiplying, and subtracting logarithms is the same as dividing.
Before calculators became cheap and common, people used logarithm tables in books to multiply and divide.
The same information in a logarithm table was available on a slide rule, a tool with logarithms written on it.
Logarithms to base 10 are called common logarithms.
They are usually written without the base.
For example:
Some authors prefer the use of natural logarithms as but usually mention this on preface pages.
Logarithms to base e are called natural logarithms.
The number e is nearly 2.71828, and is also called the Eulerian constant after the mathematician Leonhard Euler.
Logarithms have many properties.
For example:
For example, and because.
The logarithm to base b of a number a is the same as the logarithm of a divided by the logarithm of b. That is,
For example, let a be 6 and b be 2.
With calculators we can show that this is true or at least very close:
Our results had a small error, but this was due to the rounding of numbers.
Where 0.434294 is an approximation for the logarithm of e.
Before electronic computers, logarithms were used every day by scientists.
Logarithms helped scientists and engineers in many fields such as astronomy.
Before computers, the table of logarithms was an important tool.
In 1617, Henry Briggs printed the first logarithm table.
This was soon after Napier 's basic invention.
Later, people made tables with better scope and precision.
These tables listed the values of logb (x) and b ' x for any number x in a certain range, at a certain precision, for a certain base b (usually b = 10).
For example, Briggs ' first table contained the common logarithms of all integers in the range 1 1000, with a precision of 8 digits.
As the function is the inverse function of logb (x), it has been called the antilogarithm.
People used these tables to multiply and divide numbers.
For example, a user looked up the logarithm in the table for each of two positive numbers.
Adding the numbers from the table would give the logarithm of the product.
The antilogarithm feature of the table would then find the product based on its logarithm.
For manual calculations that need precision, performing the lookups of the two logarithms, calculating their sum or difference, and looking up the antilogarithm is much faster than performing the multiplication by earlier ways.
Many logarithm tables give logarithms by separately providing the characteristic and mantissa of x, that is to say, the integer part and the fractional part of log10 (x).
The characteristic of is one plus the characteristic of x, and their significands are the same.
This extends the scope of logarithm tables: given a table listing log10 (x) for all integers x ranging from 1 to 1000, the logarithm of 3542 is approximated by
Numbers are marked on sliding scales at distances proportional to the differences between their logarithms.
Sliding the upper scale appropriately amounts to mechanically adding logarithms.
For example, adding the distance from 1 to 2 on the lower scale to the distance from 1 to 3 on the upper scale yields a product of 6, which is read off at the lower part.
Many engineers and scientists used slide rules until the 1970s.
Scientists can work faster using a slide rule than using a logarithm table.
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 January 24, 1986) was an American pulp fiction writer.
He created Dianetics and Scientology.
Hubbard was born in Tilden, Nebraska to Harry Ross Hubbard and Ledora May Hubbard.
He died of a stroke in Creston, California.
Anarchist communism, also known as Anarcho-communism, is the belief that no government, private property or capitalism should exist, and that the means of production should be held in common.
Many Anarcho-communists support direct democracy and a network of voluntary associations, workers ' councils and\/or a gift economy in which everyone will be free to satisfy their needs.
Some well-known Anarcho-communist writers are Peter Kropotkin, Ricardo Flores Magnon and Nestor Makhno.
London is by far the largest city in England and the United Kingdom.
8.63 million people live in London, which is on the River Thames.
It is the capital of the United Kingdom.
London is the biggest city in Northwestern Europe, and the world 's largest financial center.
London was founded by the Romans in AD 43 and called Londinium.
London is also known as Lunnainn in Scottish Gaelic, Llundain in Welsh and Londain in Irish.
For a long time, London was a small city.
All its people lived inside the walls that were built by the Romans.
This area is still called the City of London.
There were many villages around the city.
Gradually, more and more people came to live there.
Then, step by step, the villages joined together into one huge city.
The city has a huge network of transport systems.
The Victorians built a number of railway systems in the mid-19th century.
Their main stations are in London, and the lines go to every corner of Great Britain.
There were originally five major companies, which were merged into a national rail network in modern times.
There is also the world 's first underground railway system, London Underground, which is the main way commuters get into London.
There are five airports, though only one is actually in London (the City Airport).
There is the London end of the London-Birmingham canal, which was important to the industrial 19th century.
Most people in London are British.
However, London also has many immigrants.
These people come from many different countries.
They speak many different languages and have different religions and cultures.
There are also many people from different countries who stay in London on business.
Many people visit London as tourists.
They may see the famous "Sights of London".
These sights include palaces, churches and museums.
London is one of the world 's most important cities for business, finance, and politics.
It is also important for culture: media, entertainment, fashion, and art.
The Romans built a city called Londinium on the River Thames in AD 43.
The name Londinium (and then ` London ') came from the Celtic language of the Ancient Britons.
In the year AD 61, Queen Boudica (a British Celtic queen) and her army destroyed the city.
Boudica killed herself when Romans trapped her.
Then the Romans rebuilt London.
London became an important trading city.
After the Romans left Britain, few people lived in the city for a long time.
This is because the Anglo-Saxons liked living in the countryside.
In the 9th century, more people started living there again.
It became the largest city in England.
However, it did not become the capital city of England until the 12th century.
After the railways were built, London grew very big.
Greater London has 33 London Boroughs and a mayor.
The old City of London is only a square mile in size but has its own Lord Mayor.
Another famous old part of Greater London is Westminster, which was always a different city from the City of London.
In Westminster is Westminster Abbey (a cathedral), The Palace of Westminster (the Houses of Parliament, with Big Ben), and 10 Downing Street (where the Prime Minister lives).
London has an oceanic, or temperate climate.
It is not usually very hot or cold.
It is often cloudy.
London also has a "partnership" agreement with Tokyo, Japan.
The London Underground is a system of electric trains which are in London, United Kingdom.
It is the oldest underground railway in the world.
It started running in 1863 as the Metropolitan Railway.
After the opening the system was copied in many other cities, for example New York and Madrid.
Even though it is called the Underground about half of it is above the ground.
The "Tube" is a slang name for the London Underground, because the tunnels for some of the lines are round tubes running through the ground.
The Underground has got 274 stations and over 408 km of track.
From 2006 2007 over 1 billion passengers used the underground.
In anatomy, the term ligament usually means fibrous tissue that connects bones to other bones or cartilages.
In this use, a ligament is a short band of tough fibrous connective tissue composed mainly of long, stringy collagen fibers.
Ligaments connect bones to other bones to form a joint.
They do not connect muscles to bones; that is the function of tendons.
Some ligaments limit the mobility of articulations, or prevent certain movements altogether.
Ligaments are only slightly elastic; when under tension, they gradually lengthen.
This is one reason why dislocated joints must be set as quickly as possible: if the ligaments lengthen too much, then the joint will be weakened.
Athletes, gymnasts, dancers, and martial artists perform stretching exercises to lengthen their ligaments, making their joints more supple.
The consequence of a broken ligament can be instability of the joint.
Not all broken ligaments need surgery, but if surgery is needed to stabilise the joint, the broken ligament can be joined.
The Loch Ness Monster, also refered to as Nessie, is a supposed animal, said to live in the Scottish loch of Loch Ness, the second biggest loch in the country.
The Loch Ness Monster story was big in the field of cryptozoology.
Most scientists believe that the Loch Ness Monster is not real, and they say that many of the seeings are either hoaxes or pictures of other mistaken existing animals.
However, a popular theory among believers is that "Nessie" is a plesiosaur, an extinct meat-eating aquatic reptile that lived in the Mesozoic era.
The Loch Ness monster has also been described as an elephant, eel, and other animals.
The Surgeon 's photograph was the only photographic evidence of a head and neck all the others are humps or disturbances.
Dr. Wilson claimed he was looking at the loch when he saw the monster, so grabbed his camera and snapped five photos.
After the film was developed, only two exposures were clear.
The first photo (the more publicised one) shows what was claimed to be a small head and back.
The second one, a blurry image, attracted little publicity because it was difficult to interpret what was depicted.
The image was revealed as a hoax in 1994.
Supposedly taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London gynaecologist, it was published in the Daily Mail on 21 April 1934.
Wilson 's refusal to have his name associated with the photograph led to it being called "Surgeon 's photograph".
The strangely small ripples on the photo fit the size and of circular pattern of small ripples as opposed to large waves when photographed up close.
Analysis of the original uncropped image fostered further doubt.
A year before the hoax was revealed, the makers of Discovery Communications 's documentary Loch Ness Discovered analyzed the uncropped image and found a white object was visible in every version of the photo.
"It seems to be the source of ripples in the water, almost as if the object was towed by something", the narrator said.
"But science can not rule out it was just a blemish on the negative", he continued.
Additionally, analysis of the full photograph revealed the object was quite small, only about 60 t long.
After Christian Spurling 's confession, most agree it was what Spurling claimed a toy submarine with a sculpted head attached.
Details of how the photo was accomplished were published in the 1999 book, Nessie the Surgeon s Photograph Exposed.
Essentially, it was a toy submarine with a head and neck made of plastic wood, built by Christian Spurling.
Spurling was the son-in-law of Marmaduke Wetherell, a big game hunter who had been publicly ridiculed in the Daily Mail, the newspaper that employed him.
Spurling claimed that to get revenge, Marmaduke Wetherell committed the hoax.
His co-conspirators were Spurling (a sculpture specialist), his son Ian Marmaduke, who bought the material for the fake Nessie, and Maurice Chambers (an insurance agent).
Chambers asked surgeon Robert Kenneth Wilson to offer the pictures to the Daily Mail.
The hoax story was disputed by Henry Bauer.
Unfortunately for Bauer, he claimed that plastic wood did not exist in 1934, when actually it was a popular DIY and modelling material from the 1920s.
No animal has ever been discovered in the loch which resembles the mythical monster.
Lincoln is an old city in Lincolnshire, England.
Lincoln has a cathedral that is one of the biggest in the world.
Lincoln has a population of 101,000 people.
The Luftwaffe (pronounced) is the name for the air force of Germany.
This was the name for the air force of Germany during the Third Reich when Adolf Hitler was in power (between 1933 and 1945) and was also the name for the air force during the era of the Cold War when Germany was divided into two: East Germany and West Germany.
This meant that the Luftwaffe was the air force of West Germany between 1955 and 1990.
In 1990, these two countries became one country again, so the Luftwaffe has been the air force of the united (together) Germany since 1990.
Luftwaffe means Air force in English.
Germany first had aeroplanes in its army in 1910, four years before the start of World War I in 1914.
At that time, aeroplanes had no guns.
They were being used for reconnaissance duties, that is, they would fly over the battlefield to see what the enemy was doing and fly back so that the pilots could tell their generals what they knew.
The generals used that information to plan the fighting.
Before aeroplanes, balloons had been used.
During World War I, Germany used a few kinds of aeroplane to fight its war, such as fighters, bombers and reconnaissance aeroplanes, but the fighter aeroplanes became very famous because of its brave pilots.
The most famous German pilot of World War I was Manfred von Richthofen, also known as "The Red Baron."
Germany also used airships called "Zeppelins".
They were named after Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who had built the first airships in 1900, but he had wanted them to carry cargo and passengers, not bombs.
He died in 1917, but people still use his name when they remember the German airships of World War I. (In fact, the Zeppelin company is still making airships today, but these are much smaller now.)
In November 1918, the "Allies", or the Allied forces (which included Britain and France) won the war, and Germany had to sign the Treaty of Versailles.
It was told that it could not have any military aeroplanes at all because it was blamed for starting the war in 1914.
Germany therefore had to destroy all its military aeroplanes as a punishment, so until 1933 it had no air force at all.
For many years, Germany pretended to have no army pilots because the German army generals did not like the idea of not having any aeroplanes.
At first, pilots would pretend to be training to become airline pilots but this was not much use because they really needed to fly fighters and bombers.
The Treaty of Versailles did not allow Germany to have them, so Germany had to ask for help from Russia, its former (and future) enemy.
In 1924, German army pilots started to fly Russian fighters and bombers at a secret training school near the Russian city of Lipetsk.
These pilots would then become the first ones to fly for the new German air force, the Luftwaffe, when Hitler said that it now existed.
The training school closed in 1933.
In 1935, Adolf Hitler finally told the world that Germany had a new air force, even if the Treaty of Versailles forbade Germany from having one.
Hitler was defying the Allies, who had won World War I, but they did not do anything about this, because many people still remembered the war in 1914-1918.
They were frightened by the idea of war and did not want another one.
The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 gave the Germans the opportunity to test its new aircraft, pilots and weapons in battle.
Hitler sent many aeroplanes and pilots over to Spain because he wanted to support Francisco Franco, who wanted to get rid of the Spanish government.
Amongst the aeroplanes were fighters called the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and dive-bombers called the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka.
The world now remembers one mission that the German air force carried out during the war.
German bombers attacked the city of Guernica in the Basque region of northeast Spain, and many civilians (people who were not soldiers) died in the attack.
Many governments and people around the world were horrified by the attack.
The artist Pablo Picasso painted a painting called Guernica that has become very famous.
People see the painting as a symbol of the horror of war.
A copy of the painting hangs in the United Nations building in New York City.
The German air force was the strongest in the world when World War II broke out in September 1939.
It supported the army on the ground and the aircraft were very effective at defeating all opposition, since the German armed forces, the Wehrmacht, had practiced a very new and very fast way to defeat their enemies.
This was called Blitzkrieg or Lightning War.
The French and the British were prepared for a trench war.
It was impossible to fight back.
Within a year, Germany had conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France.
Britain supported the countries attacked by Germany but found herself on her own by June 1940 when Germany had conquered most of western Europe.
As the war went on, things began to go badly wrong for the Luftwaffe.
The leadership of the Luftwaffe began to become quite bad, as generals were arguing about what the air force should be doing and blaming each other when the Luftwaffe was unable to stop the British from attacking German aircraft factories and other industrial targets in large numbers during the night.
The RAF had lost many planes when attacking by day.
Not only that, but Germany was suffering a shortage of materials needed to build the aeroplanes.
Things got worse for the Germans when the USA joined the war in December 1941, because the Americans brought thousands of bombers to the United Kingdom, and they attacked Germany from there.
Soon, hundreds of American and British bombers were attacking Germany every day and night.
Germany could not hope to win the war on the ground.
Since Russia was so huge, the government set up factories hundreds of miles away from the fighting in order to build aeroplanes, tanks, guns and other weapons for the Russian Army.
This meant that the Russians would eventually start to push the Germans back west, especially after they defeated the Germans in great battles near the city of Kursk and in the city of Stalingrad itself.
The Germans had failed to conquer the city of Leningrad, too.
On January 1 1945 the Luftwaffe launched a desperate plan called operation ` Bodenplatte ' (Baseplate), a dawn air attack aimed at multiple Allied air bases in Belgium & Holland.
Over 800 German aircraft were rounded up with many veteran pilots retired from combat duty pressesd back into service.
The plan cost more than it was worth, with over 280 German planes lost and 213 irreplaceble pilots killed or captured.
As with the fog of war, over 100 German planes were shot down by their own ground fire who were not in on the plan.
Germany became famous as the country, which flew the first jet aeroplanes.
In 1944, the Luftwaffe started to use the world s first jet fighter plane, the Messerschmitt Me-262, even if the engines sometimes did not work properly.
Once again, the shortage of the materials needed to build the plane as well as the continuing bombing of Germany meant that not as many Me-262s were built as Germany would have liked.
Even so, Germany also built and flew the world 's first jet bomber, the Arado Ar 234, the world s first fighter plane powered by a rocket, the Messerschmitt Me-163, the world s first "cruise missile", the V-1, and the world s first ballistic missile, the V-2.
After the war the allies were quite impressed with Germany 's technical know how & gleaned all they could from the vast array of Luftwaffe aircraft strewn across Germany.
Once again, the Allies prohibited Germany from having an air force.
The Russians were in the eastern half of Germany, and this half became East Germany.
The British, French and Americans were in the western half, and this half became West Germany.
These became countries in their own right, and East Germany became a Russian puppet state.
In case a new war started with Russia and East Germany as enemies, the Western Allies finally allowed West Germany to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), an organization of western countries which wanted there to be peace throughout the world.
NATO allowed West Germany to have an air force because the country was right next to East Germany.
Germany used military aircraft in war for the first time since 1945 when they supported British aircraft in the war in Kosovo in 1999, but many people still believed that Germany should never again go to war because of what had happened in the two world wars.
Lassa fever or Lassa hemorrhagic fever (LHF) is a fever caused by the Lassa virus.
It is common in West Africa.
One in 80 people who get Lassa fever will die.
Some cases are severe and require going to a hospital.
These cases have a death rate of 1 in 5.
Lassa Fever was discovered in 1969 after two nurses died from the disease.
It was named for the town in Nigeria where it was first diagnosed.
Lassa fever is transmitted from rodents to humans.
It is caused by direct contact with rodent droppings.
It can also be transmitted by humans to other humans by their blood.
Lassa fever is common in West and Central Africa (around the equator).
Lassa fever can not be transmitted by breathing.
It is not very contagious between humans.
However it is much more contagious among seriously ill patients.
Lassa fever is transmitted by humans through skin lesions, mucous that is exposed to the virus, or by a patient 's blood.
This means healthcare workers (such as doctors and nurses) need to be especially careful in treating patients, or they risk getting the virus themselves.
In 80 % of cases, the disease does not have any symptoms and does not make people ill..
In the other 20 % of cases it shows symptoms and becomes much more severe.
About 5,000 people die from it each year.
In infected patients, the disease has an incubation period of 5 days to 3 weeks.
During this time, the virus remains dormant and does not cause harm.
After this time various symptoms begin to appear including:
In laboratories, there are many ways to test if a patient has Lassa fever.
However, in many of the affected regions, there is no equipment to do the tests.
This means sometimes people may not be correctly tested and identified with having Lassa fever.
If a patient is diagnosed with Lassa fever, then the patient will be kept away from other people, to prevent the spread of the virus.
If found early, it is possible to treat Lassa fever with the medicine Ribavirin.
Despite the fact the drug is relatively cheap, the medicine is still considered expensive for many people in affected regions.
Patients may also require blood transfusions and rehydration.
Pregnant women in their 3rd trimester may need their baby 's birth to be induced to allow them to stand a chance of survival.
Due to the use of Ribavirin, fewer people are dying from Lassa fever.
It is not practical to control the amount of rodents in the affected states.
Therefore the best way of prevention is to keep rodents out of houses and public areas to prevent people coming into contact with infected droppings.
Infected patients should also be isolated to prevent the spread of the virus (by humans to other humans).
In rich countries, diseases such as Lassa fever can be easily monitored by public health organizations to prevent outbreaks.
Poor countries often can not afford these services
There is a vaccine which has shown promise in primates.
It has not yet been proved effective in humans.
' (; also transliterated Leo, Lev, Trotskii, Trotski, Trotskij and Trotzky; October 26 (O.S.) = November 7 (N.S.), 1879 - August 21, 1940) was the public name of Leib or Lev Davidovich Bronstein.
He was a Russian revolutionary and political theoretician.
Trotsky was a socialist and a Marxist.
In 1905 there was a revolution in Russia.
Trotsky helped organize a committee of workers in St Petersburg which was called the Soviet.
When the leader of the Soviet was arrested, Trotsky became leader of the Soviet in his place.
Trotsky helped to expand on the idea of Permanent Revolution, which is a theory originally thought up by Karl Marx.
After the revolution Trotsky left Russia for his own safety.
In 1917, he returned to Russia because of the Russian Revolution.
He helped to bring about communism in Russia and defend it during the Russian Civil War.
He was in charge of the army at this time.
When the leader of the Bolsheviks (the party who lead the revolution) Vladimir Lenin died, Trotsky became involved in a power struggle with Joseph Stalin for the leadership of the party.
He lost, and Stalin came to power.
He had to leave Russia because of Stalin, who was now his own enemy and wanted to harm Trotsky.
In 1938 Trotsky founded the Fourth International.
Stalin had one of his spies, Spaniard Ram n Mercarder stab Trotsky to death in Mexico in 1940.
People who believe in Trotsky 's ideas are called Trotskyists and follow Trotskyism.
The main Trotskyist organizations today are the Fourth International (post - Reunification), the Socialist Workers Party in the UK and the International Socialist Tendency.
In the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell, Trotsky is represented by Snowball the pig and Stalin is represented by Napoleon who was also a pig.
A leap year is a year in which an extra day is added to the Gregorian calendar, which is used by most of the world.
While an ordinary year has 365 days, a leap year has 366 days.
The extra day, February 29, is added to the month of February.
In an ordinary year, February has 28 days, but in a leap year, it has 29 days.
The extra 29th day, called a leap day, is the same day of the week as the first day of the month, February 1.
Also, in a leap year, the months of January, April, and July all start on the same day of the week.
A leap year comes once every four years.
Because of this, a leap year can always be evenly divided by four.
For example, 2012 was a leap year.
But a year is not a leap year if it can be evenly divided by 100 but can not also be evenly divided by 400.
This is why 1600, 2000, and 2400 are leap years, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not.
We have leap years because instead of 365 days, the Earth really takes a few minutes less than 365-1\/4 days (365.24219) to go completely around the Sun.
Without leap years, the seasons would start one day earlier on the calendar every four years.
After 360 years, spring (which usually begins on March 21) would begin on December 21 (which is when winter presently begins).
A number of countries use a lunar calendar (based on the moon, instead of the Sun, like our solar calendar is).
They have leap years when they add an extra lunar month.
Different calendars add the extra month in different ways.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (born as Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886, Aachen August 19, 1969, Chicago) was a German-American architect.
He is commonly referred to, and was addressed, as Mies, his surname.
Along with Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto and Frank Lloyd Wright, he is widely regarded as one of the first masters of modern architecture.
Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris (birth name), (6 October 1887 27 August 1965), known by the popular name of Le Corbusier, was an architect and writer born in Switzerland.
In the 1930s, he became a French citizen.
He is famous for his theories about modernism in architecture.
His plans included the improvement of housing for people in large cities.
This was because many people lived in poverty at that time.
Many of his designs have been built across the world.
He also liked to paint and was skilled at designing furniture.
Le Corbusier grew up in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a small town in the north of Switzerland.
In 1907, aged 19, he moved to the French city of Paris.
He traveled across Europe, and learned a lot of new ideas.
He learned to speak German and worked with famous architects, such as Peter Behrens.
During World War I, Le Corbusier went back to Switzerland and became a teacher.
Soon, he opened his own architectural business with his cousin, and they worked together until 1940.
It was in 1918 that he met a painter, Am d e Ozenfant, who would become a great friend.
They combined their ideas to create a new type of art called Purism.
After the war, Le Corbusier concentrated on his art until 1922.
After this, he began designing apartments that could be stacked on top of each other, to house people and meet their needs.
This type of low-density housing was to deal with the problem of over-crowding in Paris.
He said this transformation was needed, or a revolution could occur from the unhappy lower classes.
He created a design for an ideal city (Ville Contemporaine) that was never built.
It was a plan developed around a lot of skycrapers.
He presented this plan to the French government, who refused it.
This did raise their awareness of overcrowding in the city though.
Le Corbusier began to dislike capitalism, and said that people 's house size should depend on the size of their family, and not by how rich they were.
Le Corbusier was not active in politics from 1942.
Instead, he built "unit s", smaller housing blocks around France.
This is illustrated in the design below.
The name, Le Corbusier, is French.
It is a different version of his grandmother 's surname, Lecorb sier.
The name translates in to English as "the crow like one".
He chose this name in 1920.
He considered speed in architecture by saying that house is a machine to live in.
This machine 's purpose is to speed up the activities of the people who live in it.
He introduced an idea of building residence with just some slabs, columns, and, stairs.
These three things can produce any kind for residence and for any class of people.
Ludovico Ariosto (Reggio Emilia, 8 September 1474 Ferrara 6 July 1533) was an Italian poet.
He is best known as the author of the romance epic Orlando Furioso (1516).
The poem is a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo 's Orlando Innamorato.
It tells about the adventures of Charlemagne, Orlando, and the Franks as they fight the Saracens with diversions into many side plots.
Ariosto composed the poem in the ottava rima rhyme scheme and introduced narrative commentary throughout the work.
Ariosto spent the greater part of his life at Ferrara including many years in the service of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este and then of Duke Alfonso I. His poem Orlando Furioso is designed to exalt the Este family; in its final form it was first published in 1532.
It is the greatest of the Italian romantic epics.
Ariosto also wrote lyric poetry in Italian and Latin, some satires and four comedies.
Leonhard Euler (pronounced Oiler) (April 15, 1707 September 7, 1783) was a Swiss mathematician and physicist.
He spent most of his life in Russia and Germany.
Euler made important discoveries in fields like calculus and topology.
He also made many of the words used in math today.
He came up with the idea of a mathematical function.
He is also known for his works in mechanics, optics, and astronomy.
Euler is considered to be the most important mathematician of the 18th century, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, and also one of the mathematicians who wrote the most.
His collected works fill 60 80 volumes.
Another mathematician, Pierre-Simon Laplace said, "Read Euler, read Euler, he is a master for us all".
Euler was featured on the sixth series of the Swiss 10-franc bill and on numerous Swiss, German, and Russian postage stamps.
The asteroid 2002 Euler was named in his honor.
He is also celebrated by the Lutheran Church on their Calendar of Saints on May 24.
Euler was born in Basel to Paul Euler.
He was a pastor of the Reformed Church.
His mother was Marguerite Brucker, a pastor 's daughter.
He had two younger sisters named Anna-Maria and Maria Magdalena.
Soon after the birth of Leonhard, the Eulers moved from Basel to the town of Riehen, where Euler spent most of his childhood.
Euler 's started school in Basel, where he was sent to live with his grandmother.
At the age of thirteen he went to the University of Basel.
In 1723, he received his Master of Philosophy.
At this time, he was receiving Saturday afternoon lessons from Johann Bernoulli, who quickly discovered his new pupil 's incredible talent for mathematics.
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band.
The group was started in 1968 and broke up in 1980.
The members were Robert Plant (vocals), Jimmy Page (lead guitar), John Paul Jones (bass), and John Bonham (drums).
Led Zeppelin ended in 1980 after the accidental death of John Bonham.
After Bonham 's death, the band believed that nobody could take his place and decided not to continue.
The band played together again in a tribute concert in London on 10 December 2007 with Jason Bonham, John 's son, playing the drums.
The band is one of the most influential rock bands of all time and one of the most successful music artists in history, selling 300 million albums around the world.
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized 17 December 1770 in Bonn 26 March 1827 in Vienna) was a German composer.
He wrote classical music for the piano, orchestras and different groups of instruments.
His best-known works are his third ("Eroica"), fifth, sixth ("Pastorale") and ninth ("Choral") symphonies, the eighth ("Pathetique") and fourteenth ("Moonlight") piano sonatas, two of his later piano concertos, his opera "Fidelio", and also the piano piece F r Elise.
When he was a young man, he was a talented pianist.
Beethoven was popular with the rich and important people in Vienna, Austria, where he lived.
In 1801, however, he began to lose his hearing.
His deafness became worse.
In 1817, he was completely deaf.
Although he could no longer play in concerts, he continued to compose.
During this time he composed some of his greatest works.
He is said to be one of the greatest classical composers who has ever lived.
When Beethoven died, he was surrounded by friends on his death bed.
His funeral was held at the Church of the Holy Trinity.
Between 10,000 and 30,000 people are estimated to have attended.
Franz Schubert was a pall bearer at his funeral, even though the two were never close.
Very little is known about Beethoven s childhood.
He was baptized on December 17, 1770 and was probably born a few days before that.
Beethoven 's parents were Johann van Beethoven (1740 in Bonn December 18, 1792) and Maria Magdalena Keverich (1744 in Ehrenbreitstein July 17, 1787).
Magdalena 's father, Johann Heinrich Keverich, had been Chef at the court of the Archbishopric of Trier at Festung Ehrenbreitstein fortress opposite to Koblenz.
His father was a fairly unimportant musician who worked at the court of the Elector of Cologne.
This court was in Bonn and it was here that he lived until he was a young man.
His father gave him his first lessons in piano and violin.
Beethoven was a child prodigy like Mozart, but while Mozart as a little boy was taken all over Europe by his father, Beethoven never traveled until he was 17.
By that time, his piano teacher was a man called Neefe who had learned the piano from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the son of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Neefe said to the Elector that the young Beethoven should be given the chance to travel, so he was allowed to go to Vienna.
There, he might have had one or two lessons from Mozart, but then Beethoven got a letter saying that his mother was dying, so he hurried back to Bonn.
Soon his mother died, and Beethoven had to help to look after the family because his father had become an alcoholic.
Beethoven played the viola in the orchestra of the Elector, he started to compose, and made many friends.
Some of these friends were musicians and others were very important people, many of them were aristocrats who would be able to help him in his career.
In 1792, the Elector let Beethoven travel to Vienna again.
They expected him to return after a while.
However, Beethoven never left Vienna.
He stayed there for the rest of his life.
He would have loved to have had some more composition lessons from Mozart, but Mozart had just died, so he had lessons from Haydn instead.
Haydn was a good teacher, but a year later he went off to England.
Therefore, Beethoven took lessons from a man called Albrechtsberger who was not famous like Haydn.
He was a good teacher too and he made him write lots of technical exercises.
He showed him how to write advanced counterpoint and fugues.
This helped him to be a great composer.
Beethoven wanted to become famous as a pianist and composer, so he started to get to know important, aristocratic people.
Some of these people had already heard him in Bonn when they had traveled there, so his name was becoming known in Vienna.
It also helped that he could say he was the pupil of the famous Joseph Haydn.
There were a lot of aristocratic people in Vienna who liked music, and many had their own private orchestras.
Some of them started to give Beethoven places to live when the Elector of Bonn stopped sending him money in 1794.
Beethoven started to perform in private houses, and he became known for his improvisations.
In 1795 he performed one of his piano concertos at a concert.
He also had his first publication (his opus 1).
This was a group of three Piano Trios.
Haydn had heard them at a private concert a year before and had advised Beethoven not to publish the third one.
However, he did publish it, and that was the one which became the most successful.
His opus 2 was a group of three piano sonatas which he played at the court of his friend Prince Lichnowsky.
When he published them he dedicated them to Haydn.
Beethoven was starting to become famous, traveling to places like Prague and Pressburg.
He wrote much chamber music.
He was, perhaps, a little jealous of the success that Haydn had with his latest symphonies he had written for London.
In 1800 he gave his first public concert with his own music.
He conducted his First Symphony as well as the Septet.
By now several publishers were trying to persuade him to let them publish his new works.
Beethoven was becoming famous as a composer.
And during this period Beethoven produced his most famous piano sonata: No. 14, in C sharp minor, nicknamed, "Moonlight".
This was written for his girlfriend, 16-year-old Giulietta Guicciardi.
However, he was far from happy because he realized that he was starting to become deaf.
And when he asked for Giulietta 's marriage, her parents refused and married her to another 20-year-old man instead.
Beethoven seems to have tried to forget these bad thoughts by working very hard.
He composed a lot more music, including his Third Symphony, called the Eroica.
Originally he gave it the title Bonaparte in honor of Napoleon whom he admired.
But when Napoleon crowned himself emperor in 1804, Beethoven began to think that he was just a tyrant who wanted a lot of power.
He went to the table where the score of the symphony was lying and tore up the title page.
Beethoven stayed in Vienna that year, working hard at an opera and giving piano lessons to Josephine von Brunsvik to whom he wrote passionate letters.
She was a young widow with four children.
It is impossible to know quite what her feelings were for Beethoven, but socially she belonged in higher society and probably thought that a wild musician was not a suitable husband.
In the end she married a Baron, but this marriage, like her first one, was not happy either.
In 1805 Beethoven wrote his only opera.
The next spring it had two performances but was then not performed again for another eight years.
Beethoven had made several changes to the opera which became known as Fidelio.
The overture that he had written for the 1806 performance is now known as Leonore 3 and is usually performed separately at concerts.
The opera is a rescue opera, a typical French kind of opera describing a man who is imprisoned and rescued by his lover who disguises herself as a man and manages to get into the prison.
Beethoven continued to write compositions: a Violin Concerto, symphonies, piano concertos, string quartets and chamber music.
Two of his greatest symphonies were produced in 1806: Symphony No. 5 and Symphony No. 6 "Pastorale".
The first one was known for its dark and deep tone, especially in its first movement.
The second was famous for its depiction of the countryside.
He also wrote Piano Concerto No. 4 and Piano Concerto No. 5 "Emperor.
He earned money by pleasing the aristocrats, dedicating works to them in return for fees, and by selling his music to publishers.
Occasionally he earned money from concerts.
It was not a regular income.
He would have liked the job of Kapellmeister to the emperor.
He was not able to get this, but in 1809 three rich aristocrats: the Archduke Rodolph, Prince Lobkowitz and Prince Kinsky gave him an income for the rest of his life on condition that he stayed in Vienna.
This meant that Beethoven did not have to worry so much about money.
He was asked to write music for Egmont, a play by Goethe.
The overture is very often performed as a concert piece.
Beethoven very much wanted to meet Goethe.
The two great men met in Teplitz.
Goethe later described Beethoven as a rather wild-mannered man who made life difficult for himself by his cross attitude to the world.
Beethoven admired several women, including one to whom he wrote a passionate letter.
She is known as the Immortal Beloved, but no one knows who she was.
Beethoven seems to have become deeply depressed because he never found true happiness in love.
In a letter dated June 29, 1801 Beethoven told a friend in Bonn about a terrible secret he had for some time.
He knew that he was becoming deaf.
For some time he had spells of fever and stomach pains.
A young man does not expect to become deaf, but now he was starting to admit it to himself.
He was finding it hard to hear what people were saying.
Just at the moment when he was starting to become known as one of the greatest of all composers, it was a terrible blow to realize that he was losing his hearing.
In 1802, he stayed for a time in Heiligenstadt which is now a suburb of Vienna but at that time it was outside the city.
There he wrote a famous letter which is known as the Heiligenstadt Testament.
It is dated October 6 and told about his rising frustration at his deafness.
He asks people to forgive him if he can not hear what they are saying.
He said that he had often thought of suicide, but that he had so much music in his head which had to be written down that he decided to continue his life.
This very emotional letter was found amongst his papers after his death.
It was never sent to anyone.
By 1814, Beethoven had reached the height of his fame.
He was thought of as the greatest composer by the Viennese people and he was often invited by royal people to their palaces.
It was the year in which he played his famous Piano Trio Op.
97 The Archduke.
That was the last time he played the piano in public.
His deafness was making it impossible to continue.
Beethoven had many problems when his brother Caspar Carl died, leaving a 9-year-old son.
The boy s mother may have been incapable of looking after him, but Beethoven had to prove this in a court of law.
For several years he looked after his nephew, but it was a difficult relationship and it involved a lot of legal letters and quarrels with people.
In 1826, Karl tried to shoot himself.
He survived, but people persuaded Beethoven to stop being his guardian.
Karl went into the army.
The last years were unhappy years for Beethoven.
During this time he composed very little.
Then, in 1817, he recovered and wrote his last two symphonies, a mass called Missa Solemnis, his last five piano sonatas, and a group of string quartets which were so modern and difficult that very few people at the time understood the music.
Nowadays, people think they are the greatest works ever written for string quartet.
His Ninth Symphony is called the Choral Symphony because there is a choir and soloists in the last movement.
At the time people did not understand this either, because a symphony is normally a work for orchestra, not a work with singers.
Beethoven chose the words of a poem by the German poet Friedrich Schiller: An die Freude (Ode to Joy).
It is all about living together in peace and harmony, so that it sends an important message to people.
This is why it has been chosen in recent years as the National Anthem for the European Union.
The Ninth Symphony was performed at a concert on May 7, 1824.
After the scherzo movement the audience applauded enthusiastically, but Beethoven could not hear the applause and one of the singers had to turn him round so that he could see that people were clapping.
Beethoven died on March 26, 1827.
About 20,000 people came onto the streets for his funeral.
The famous poet Franz Grillparzer wrote the funeral speech.
One of the torchbearers was Franz Schubert.
Schubert died the next year.
In 1888 Beethoven s and Schubert s remains were moved to another cemetery in Vienna and were placed side by side.
Beethoven s music is usually divided into three periods: Early, Middle and Late.
Most composers who live a long time develop as they get older and change their way of composing.
Of course, these changes in style are not sudden, but they are quite a good way of understanding the different periods of his composing life.
His first period includes the works he wrote in his youth in Bonn, and his early days in Vienna up to about 1803.
His middle period starts with the Eroica Symphony and includes most of his orchestral works.
His last period includes the Ninth Symphony and the late string quartets.
Beethoven is probably the most famous of all composers, and the most written about.
He had a wild personality and this was something that the Romantics in the 19th century always expected from great artists.
The Romantics thought that the artist was somehow a person with exaggerated qualities who was not like normal people.
Beethoven had a very strong personality.
He lived in the time of the French Revolution and had strong views on independence and ways of living free from tyranny.
This made him a hero in many people s eyes.
His music was so famous that many composers in the 19th century found it quite hard to compose because they thought they would be compared to him.
For example, Johannes Brahms, took a long time to write his First Symphony.
He thought that everyone was expecting him to be the next Beethoven.
It was only towards the end of the 19th century that Gustav Mahler wrote several symphonies which include singing, although he does this very differently to Beethoven.
Lleyton Glynn Hewitt (born 24 February 1981) is an Australian tennis player.
He was born in Adelaide, South Australia.
His father is retired Australian rules footballer Glynn Hewitt (born 1953).
Hewitt was once ranked the No. 1 in the world and was the youngest ever male player to reach this rank.
He played for Australia in the Davis Cup.
In August 2000, the Australian Government gave him the Australian Sports Medal.
Hewitt won the US Open in 2001 and the Wimbledon Championships in 2002.
This table shows Hewitt 's performance in each Grand Slam tournament in singles.
Lars von Trier (b. 30 April 1956) is a Danish movie director.
He has won many prizes.
These include the Palme d'Or, the Grand Prix, and the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival.
Some of his movies are controversial, such as Antichrist.
His newest film, Nymphomaniac, was released on December 25, 2013 in Denmark.
Monty Python 's Life of Brian is a 1979 comedy movie by Monty Python.
It is about the life of Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman), a young man born on the same night and the same street as Jesus Christ.
Leucippus or Leukippos (, first half of 5th century BC) was among the earliest philosophers of atomism, the idea that everything is made up of many imperishable, indivisible elements called atoms.
He was born at Miletus or Abdera
Leucippus apparently was the first person to suggest the idea of empty space.
We would call this vacuum, and he believed that the different atoms had different sizes and weights.
The League of Nations (French La Soci t des Nations) was the predecessor to the United Nations.
The League was founded in 1920, after World War I, but failed to maintain peace during World War II.
The League had a Council of the great powers and an Assembly of all the member countries.
The League of Nations was thought up by Woodrow Wilson, the American President during the First World War.
It was to be a group of nations that worked together to keep peace.
One of the reasons for its downfall was that, after a vote, the American public refused to join.
The League did not have the power it needed to enforce any of the rules that made it up.
This later proved to be a fatal flaw in the League 's structure.
Another flaw in the League was that it was not representative enough: no more than 65 nations were members at any given time, and the interests of the leading members (notably Britain and France) often outweighed those of smaller, less powerful members.
The League also had no troops of its own, and decisions it made were often slow.
For example, when the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, it took a whole year for the League 's decision to be heard.
After a series of disasters in the 1930s, it was abolished.
It was thought to be weak and powerless, after Japan completely ignored it when the League of Nations tried to stop Japan from invading Manchuria (North-East China) and Italy invaded Abyssinia.
The League did not fail completely: it had prevented a few conflicts in Europe in the 1920s and worked hard to stamp out various public health and social problems around the world.
President Woodrow Wilson arranged a plan for a "government of governments", or rather an international peacekeeping force.
The idea of his plan was to settle problems between nations peacefully.
Wilson tried to persuade the international community that the league would discourage aggression and tackle the underlying problems that often lead to war, such as poverty.
Wilson was however unable to convince the American public into supporting the League.
The United States did not want to be part of Wilson s approach for several reasons:
First of all the United States had many German immigrants who hated the Treaty of Versailles.
The treaty said that Germany and its allies were to accept full responsibility for causing the war and reparations were to be made to certain countries.
The Treaty of Versailles was the treaty that set up the League of Nations and not agreeing to it meant not being part of the League of Nations.
The next reason that America did not want to get involved in European affairs is because they did not want to risk more Americans dying in a war, as they had in World War I. They also felt that it would result in pouring effort into pointless actions such as sending soldiers all around the globe to sort out small disputes.
This attitude was called isolationism.
Most Americans felt it would be best to avoid European and British affairs completely.
In 1946, the League of Nations formally ended, and the United Nations was established, along with a few of the League 's committees, such as the World Health Organisation, which still today maintains many of the same responsibilities of the League of Nations.
Logic programming is using mathematical logic to write computer programs.
There are specialized programming languages where the user can directly enter logical statements.
Probably the best-known of these languages is called Prolog.
Alonzo Church used a form of logic programming in what is known as lambda calculus today.
Logic programming has also been used in LISP.
Programs consist of a set of rules and facts.
In most cases, logic programming uses what is called negation as failure or weak negation: This means that if it is not possible to derive some clause from the facts and rules, the system will assume that its negation is true.
Light is a type of energy.
It is a form of electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength which can be detected by the human eye.
It is a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum and radiation given off by stars like the sun.
Animals can also see light.
Light exists in tiny packets called photons.
It shows properties of both waves and particles.
The study of light, known as optics, is an important research area in modern physics.
Light is electromagnetic radiation that is in the form of a wave.
Each wave has a wavelength or frequency.
The human eye sees each wavelength as a different color.
Rainbows show the entire spectrum of visible light.
The separate colors, moving in from the outer edges, are usually listed as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.
Other colors can be seen only with special cameras or instruments: Wavelengths below the frequency of red are called infrared, and higher than of violet are called ultraviolet.
The other main properties of light are intensity, polarization, phase and orbital angular momentum.
In physics, the term light sometimes refers to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, whether visible or not.
This article is about visible light.
Read the electromagnetic radiation article for the general concept.
In a vacuum, light moves at the speed of light; which is 299,792,458 meters, or about 186,282 miles, per second.
This means it takes about 8 minutes for light to reach Earth from the Sun.
In glass it travels at about two-thirds as fast.
Light moves in a straight line, creating shadows when the path of light is blocked.
More solid things will have a darker shadow, things that are more clear have a lighter shadow, and transparent things will have none or very little shadow.
Light can pass through transparent things the most easily.
When light is not in a vacuum, it travels more slowly than its maximum speed of light.
The slowest light ever recorded moved at 38 mph.
Our eyes react to light; when we see something we see the light it reflects, or the light it emits.
For example, a lamp gives off light, and everything else in the same room as the lamp reflects its light.
Every color of light has a different wavelength.
The shorter the wavelength, the more energy the light has.
The speed at which light moves does not depend on its energy.
Going through partly clear objects can slow light down by a very small amount.
White light is made up of many different colors of light added together.
When white light shines through a prism, it splits up into different colors, becoming a spectrum.
The spectrum contains all of the wavelengths of light that we can see.
Red light has the longest wavelength, and violet (purple) light has the shortest.
Light with a wavelength shorter than violet is called ultraviolet light.
X-rays and Gamma rays are also forms of light with even shorter wavelengths than ultraviolet.
Light with a wavelength longer than red is called infrared light.
Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength even longer than infrared light.
The microwaves that are used to heat food in a microwave oven are also a form of electromagnetic radiation.
Our eyes can not see those kinds of energy, but there are some cameras that can see them.
The various forms of light, both visible and invisible are the electromagnetic spectrum.
When light is refracted in raindrops, a rainbow is made.
The raindrop acts like a prism and refracts the light until we can see the colors of the spectrum.
Light and color are forms of analog information.
However, electronic cameras and computer displays work with digital information.
So, electronic cameras or document scanners make a digital version of a color image by separating out the full color image into separate red, green, and blue images.
Later, a digital display uses pixels of just those three colors.
Computer screens use only these three colors in different brightness levels.
The brain combines them to see all of the other colors in the image.
People think of objects as having color.
Scientist explain this because the molecules that make up the object absorb certain light waves, leaving the other light waves to bounce off.
The human eye sees the wavelengths of all of the light that was not absorbed, and the combination of those leaves the brain with the impression of a color.
A lipid is a type of organic molecule found in living things.
It is oily or waxy.
Fats are made from lipid molecules.
Sources of lipid can be found in algae, seeds, meat, cheese, butter and fish.
Lipids are long chains of carbon and hydrogen molecules.
Lipids are classified as simple and complex.
Examples of complex molecules could be steroids or phospholipids.
A very important biological function of lipids is as lipid bilayers, the basis of many cell membranes.
Another function of lipids is to serve as an energy reserve.
Lipids are a group of naturally occurring molecules that include fats, waxes, sterols, fat-soluble vitamins (such as vitamins A, D, E, and K), glycerides, phospholipids, and others.
The main biological functions of lipids include storing energy, signalling, and acting as components of cell membranes.
Lake Eire is one of the Great Lakes in North America.
It is the second to the last in the Great Lake system before water flows into the St. Lawrence River.
Like Lake Superior, Lake Huron, and Lake Ontario, Lake Erie is part of the boundary between the USA and Canada.
Most of the water that flows into Lake Erie flows through a small river, the Detroit River, that moves water down from Lake St. Clair past Detroit, Michigan.
Some more water flows into Lake Erie from other rivers, including the Maumee and the Cuyahoga.
At the foot of the Maumee is Toledo, Ohio.
At the bend of the Cuyahoga is Cleveland, Ohio.
Water that flows out of Lake Erie flows past Buffalo, New York, and into the Niagara falls.
On its way down to Lake Ontario, the Niagara River pours over Niagara Falls, one of the largest waterfalls in North America, and then into the lowest of all the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario.
Lake Ontario is the smallest of the Great Lakes in North America.
It is found on the border between Canada and the United States of America.
Its inlet is the Niagara River (from Niagara Falls), and its outlet is the Saint Lawrence River.
Nearly 9 million Canadians live near Lake Ontario.
It is also the only Great Lake that does not touch the U.S. state of Michigan, the "Great Lakes State".
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes in North America.
It has a surface area of 22300 s. It is 307 b wide.
Lake Michigan is the 5th largest lake in the world.
Lake Michigan is surrounded by the U.S. states of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
It is the only Great Lake that is not partly in Canada.
The largest city on the shore of Lake Michigan is Chicago.
The earliest time that people lived near the lake was 800 CE.
The word "Michigan" originally meant the lake itself.
It is believed to come from the Ojibwa word mishigami meaning "great water".
The first person to reach the deepest part of Lake Michigan was J. Val Klump.
Klump reached the bottom with a submarine as part of a 1985 research expedition.
Twelve million people live along Lake Michigan 's shores.
They are mainly in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas.
Fibonacci, also know as Leonardo Bonacci, Leonardo Fibonacci and Leonardo of Pisa, lived c. 1170-1250.
He was an Italian mathematician.
He was thought "the most talented Western mathematician of the Middle Ages".
Fibonacci popularized the Hindu Arabic numeral system to the Western World.
He did this in his composition in 1202 of Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation).
He also introduced to Europe the sequence of Fibonacci numbers which he used as an example in Liber Abaci.
Fibbonacci is best known for the list of numbers called the Fibonacci Sequence.
In this list, a person can find the next number by adding the last two numbers together.
1 + 1 = 2 1 + 2 = 3 2 + 3 = 5 3 + 5 = 8 5 + 8 = 13 8 + 13 = 21 13 + 21 = 34 21 + 34 = 55 34 + 55 = 89 55 + 89 = 144 89 + 144 = 233 144 + 233 = 377 233 + 377 = 610 377 + 610 = 987 610 + 987 = 1597 987 + 1597 = 2584 etc...
This series is also interesting because the ratio of two adjacent numbers in the series approaches the golden ratio.
Lake Superior is a lake in Canada and the United States.
The Ojibwe Native Americans call it Gitchigume.
Lake Superior is in between Ontario and Minnesota to the north and Wisconsin and Michigan in the south, and is the largest of North America 's Great Lakes.
It is the world 's third largest lake, and the world 's largest freshwater lake (by area).
Over 80 species of fish live in Lake Superior.
Leipzig is the biggest city in the state of Saxony (eastern Germany).
When Germany was divided into East and West Germany, Leipzig was one of the three biggest industrial cities in the East Germany.
Leipzig occupies 297.62 k and is still an industrial city.
510,651 people are living in Leipzig as of 29 February 2008.
Its Latin name is Lipsia and the German name "Leipzig" came from this name.
Leipzig has a long history.
Its name was recorded first in 1015 as Leipzig Castle (Leipziger Burg).
The city was settled in 1165.
It was an economic center of Medieval Germany, famous with its market (Leipziger Messe).
In 1409, Leipzig University was started.
Theology was its major faculty.
In 1519, Martin Luther had a discussion in Leipzig against Johann Eck.
Reformation came to Leipzig in 1539 and the city people became Lutheran.
It is famous for St. Thomas Church, where Johann Sebastian Bach worked as music director (Kantor) from 1723 until his death in 1750.
In 1813 near Leipzig, the Battle of Leipzig was fought between the French army led by Napoleon Bonaparte and the allied armies of Austria, Prussia and Russia.
In 1839, the railway between Dresden and Leipzig was opened.
It was the first long distance railroad in Germany.
As a result of industrialization, the number of people living in Leipzig grew during the 19th century.
Before World War II, there were about 750,000 people in Leipzig.
After the war, Leipzig belonged to the part of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union, and later to East Germany.
In 1989, the Monday Demonstrations took place in Leipzig.
Every Monday after a Christian mess in the Nikolaikirche the Leipzig people demonstrate for freedom to travel and democracy.
These demonstrations became bigger and bigger and reached their peak on 23 October when 320,000 people came.
The demonstrations are one of the things that lead to the end of communist dictatorship in East Germany.
Today, Leipzig is still known as a city of fairs, media and university, but is less important than it was before World War II.
Before World War II, Leipzig was a famous center of commerce (Leipzig exhibition) and industry.
Now, there are big companies in Leipzig like Porsche, BMW, Siemens and DHL, as well as the Leipzig Airport.
With almost 511,000 people, Leipzig city proper is the 12th biggest city in Germany and the 2nd biggest in what was East Germany (DDR), smaller than East Berlin and bigger than Dresden.
Leipzig urban has 567,000 people.
The total population of Leipzig metropolitan area is 1,389,000.
Leipzig, Chemnitz, Dresden, Halle, and Zwickau form an area called the Saxon Triangle, which has about 3,500,000 people.
The Leipzig Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) is the biggest terminal station in Europe.
It sees about 150,000 passengers each day.
It is 293 meters wide.
LimeWire is an open source, peer-to-peer computer program that can be used to download and share music, video, other computer programs, and other kinds of files.
In 2010 the Recording Industry Association of America took the makers of LimeWire to the federal court in New York.
They said that the software allowed people to download and share music which was against the law.
In June 2010, the National Music Publishers Association also took legal action against LimeWire.
LimeWire itself as a program is available to be downloaded online, even though copyrighted files must be inhabited with legal permission.
Even though there are strict boundaries on the material that may and may not be uploaded to the website, it is strictly against the law to upload any material that consists of pornographic files, especially those containing children.
LimeWire has a filter that sorts out materials and content that is copyrighted that can not be downloaded, LimeWire is doing its best to prevent illegal downloading.
The least common multiple of two integers is the smallest positive integer between all the multiples of both.
It is usually denoted by LCM (a, b).
Likewise, the LCM of more than two integers is the smallest positive integer that is divisible by each of them.
The LCM is known in elementary arithmetic as the "least common denominator" (LCD) that must be calculated before fractions can be added, subtracted or compared.
A multiple of a number is the product of that number and an integer.
For example, 10 is a multiple of 5 because 5 2 = 10, so 10 is divisible by 5 and 2.
Because 10 is the smallest positive integer that is divisible by both 5 and 2, it is the least common multiple of 5 and 2.
By the same principle, 10 is the least common multiple of 5 and 2 as well.
This formula is often used to compute the LCD, once known the GCD of a and b.
Louis Leakey (L.S.B. Leakey, 7 August 1903 1 October 1972) was a Kenyan archaeologist, anthropologist and naturalist.
His work was important in establishing human evolutionary development in East Africa.
He also played a major role in creating organizations for future research in Africa and for protecting wildlife there.
Leakey was the third of the three great anthropologists of British origin who made Africa their home: the others were Robert Broom and Raymond Dart.
He started a tradition of palaeoanthropological inquiry in Kenya.
His own family carried on the ` family firm '.
Several of them became well-known anthropologists and fossil hunters.
Louis took part in national events of British East Africa and then Kenya at critical times.
In biology he asserted Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution unswervingly, and set about to prove Darwin 's hypothesis that man arose in Africa.
He was also a devout Christian.
chapter 3
Louis and Mary spent all the time they could at Olduvai Gorge, starting in 1951.
So far they had discovered only stone tools.
A more extensive excavation came in 1952.
They found what Louis termed an Oldowan "slaughter-house", an ancient bog where animals had been trapped and butchered.
Louis was so carried away that he worked without his hat and his hair was bleached white from the sun.
They stopped in 1953.
In 1955 they excavated again with Jean Brown.
She related that he preferred to be called Louis, was absent-minded, once had everyone looking for spectacles that were around his neck, wore pants with the buttons off and shoes with holes in them, charged about everywhere and once collapsed unconscious.
He was completely happy.
chapter 12
In 1959 they decided to excavate Bed I. While Louis was sick in camp, Mary discovered the fossilized skull OH 5, which Mary called "Our Man", and became "Dear Boy" and "Zinj."
The question was whether it was a previous genus discovered by Robert Broom, Paranthropus, which Broom had taken not to be in the human line, or a different one, in it.
Louis opted for Zinj, a decision opposed by Wilfrid Le Gros Clark, but one which attracted the attention of Melville Bell Grosvenor, president of the National Geographic Society.
That contact resulted in an article in National Geographic, and a hefty grant to continue work at Olduvai.
Zinj was far older than anyone had imagined.
Scientists swarmed to Africa.
Louis had proved Darwin right.
chapter 13
In 1960, unable to leave the museum except on weekends, Louis appointed Mary director of excavation at Olduvai.
She brought in a staff of Kamba tribesmen, instead of Kikuyu, who, she felt, took advantage of Louis.
The first, Muteva Musomba, had kept her children 's ponies.
He recruited Kamoya Kimeu among others.
Mary set up Camp 5 under Jonathan 's direction.
He was 19.
From then on she had her own staff and associates.
Mary picked and sieved at the site from early morning dressed in old clothes, chain smoking cigarettes, always surrounded by her Dalmatian.
She and Louis communicated by radio.
On weekends he drove non-stop at high speed the 357 miles between Olduvai and Nairobi.
The teen-age boys, Richard and Philip, were on site holidays and vacations.
Their home in Nairobi was a circus, figuratively speaking, when they were there.
Dinner guests were frequent.
Important guests stayed for weeks if they could stand it.
They shared the quarters and the dinner table with the Dalmatians, hyraxes, a monkey, a civet cat, an African eagle owl, tropical fish, snakes, such as vipers, and a python.
The extended families of twenty African staff lived in cinderblock huts in the yard.
Mary had switched to cigars and the ashes often fell into the food.
Both Louis and Mary cooked.
Louis never stopped talking; his stories were endless.
He literally ran through the day, making long lists of things to be done, which he never completed.
He drove recklessly through the streets of Nairobi, often reading and writing as he drove.
chapter 5
There was another side to the Leakey family.
Louis was a notorious womanizer.
He was faithful neither to Frida nor to Mary.
Mary tolerated this behavior well until his relationship with Rosalie Osborn, 1954\/55, threatened to break up her marriage.
chapter 17
The two fought constantly, upsetting the boys.
After Richard nearly died in a fall from a horse, Louis broke with Rosalie for the sake of the boys.
Jonathan achieved some brief fame before he quit palaeoanthropology altogether.
He started his own site, "Jonny 's site" in the Leakey lingo, FLK-NN.
There he discovered two skull fragments without the Australopithecine sagittal crest, which Mary connected with Broom 's and Robinson 's Telanthropus.
The problem was its contemporaneity with Zinj.
Mailed photographs, Le Gros Clark retorted casually "Shades of Piltdown".
Louis cabled him immediately and had some strong words at this suggestion of his incompetence.
Clark apologized.
chapter 14
In 1960 Louis, his son Philip and Ray Pickering discovered a fossil he termed "Chellean Man", as it was in context with Oldowan tools, the first such find.
After reconstruction Louis and Mary called it "Pinhead."
It was subsequently included with Homo erectus and was in fact contemporaneous with Paranthropus, which on that account can not have been in the human line.
For many years Louis believed erectus was the user of the tools and Australopithecus was not.
In 1961 Louis got a salary as well as a grant from National Geographic and turned over the acting directorship of Coryndon to a subordinate.
He created the Centre for Prehistory and Paleontology on the same grounds, moved his collections to it, and appointed himself director.
This was his new operations center.
He opened another excavation at Fort Ternan on Lake Victoria.
Shortly after, Heselon discovered Kenyapithecus wickeri, the species name from the owner of the property, which Louis promptly celebrated with George Gaylord Simpson, who happened to be present, aboard the Miocene Lady with Leakey Safari Specials, a drink made of condensed milk and cognac.
In 1962 Louis was visiting Olduvai when Ndibo Mbuika discovered the first tooth of Homo habilis at MNK.
Louis and Mary thought it was female and named her Cinderella, or Cindy.
Phillip Tobias identified Jonny 's Child with it and Raymond Dart came up with the name Homo habilis at Louis ' request, which Tobias translated as ` handyman '.
chapter 16 It was seen as intermediary between gracile Australopithecus and Homo.
chapter 16
One of Louis 's greatest legacies was fostering field research of primates in their natural habitats.
He understood this helped to unravel the mysteries of human evolution.
He chose three female researchers: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas.
They were dubbed ` Leakey 's Angels '.
Each went on to become an important scholar in the field of primatology.
Louis Leakey was married to Mary Leakey, who made the noteworthy discovery of fossil footprints at Laetoli.
Found preserved in volcanic ash in Tanzania, they are the earliest record of bipedal gait.
He is also the father of paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey and the botanist Colin Leakey.
Louis ' cousin, Nigel Gray Leakey, was a recipient of the Victoria Cross during World War II.
Louis the Pious, also called Louis I, (778 - 840) was the third Carollingian King of Franks and 2nd Holy Roman Emperor (814 - 840), King of Aquitaine 781 to 814.
He was Charlemagne 's sixth son.
Liquid crystals are special substances that are usually liquid, but that show certain properties of a solid crystal.
A liquid crystal (LC) may flow like a liquid, but its molecules may be rotated in a crystal-like way.
There are many different types of liquid crystal phases.
Different phases are different because their optical properties are different.
Using a microscope and a polarized light source, different liquid crystal phases will have different textures.
This is also shown in the image.
The contrasting areas in the texture each correspond to a domain where the LC molecules are rotated in a different direction.
Within a domain, however, the molecules are well ordered.
LC materials may not always be in an LC phase (just as water is not always in the liquid phase: it may also be found in the solid and gaseous phase).
Linear A is an ancient script used on Crete.
No one has been able to translate this script yet.
It was one of the writing systems used in Minoan Crete.
Another script, about a century older, is called Cretan hieroglyphs.
For some time, both methods of writing were used.
Probably, each system was used for a special purpose.
Linear A was used from about the 17th century BC until the 15th century BC.
Linear B is a script based on Linear A. It has been translated.
Archaeologist Arthur Evans found both Linear A and B.
Linear A has about fifty signs that are similar to those in Linear B. About 80 % of the signs in Linear A are unique.
Using the knowledge from Linear B to read Linear A produces text which can not be read.
The language used has been called Eteocretan.
It does not seem to be related to any known language.
Today, about 70 characters (probably representing syllables) are known.
The meaning of about 100 ideographic characters is known.
These are combined with the syllables.
Also, there are a few numerals whose value is known.
Most texts seem to be lists.
A few are probably short dedications, as they are found on libations.
So far, no long texts have been found.
Straight lines, such as those used for Linear A, are not very practical to use on clay tables.
For this reasons, most writing was probably done on other things, such as papyrus or parchment.
The problem with these materials is that they do not last as long as clay does.
For this reason, most writing on papyrus and parchment has probably been lost.
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game publisher and licensor Until 2013, it was also a video game developer.
The company was founded in May 1982 as the video game development group of Lucasfilm Limited, the film production company of George Lucas.
On October 30, 2012, LucasArts was acquired by The Walt Disney Company through the acquisition of its parent company Lucasfilm in a deal for $ 4.05 billion.
Long-term memory (LTM) is our memory of past events.
It follows from short-term memory, and involves the growth of nerve synapses which are very long-lasting.
The brain does not store memories in one unified structure, as might be seen in a computer 's hard disk drive.
Instead, different types of memory are stored in different regions of the brain.
Long term memory is typically divided up into two major headings: explicit memory and implicit memory.
Explicit or ` declarative ' memory refers to memories which can be consciously recalled such as facts and knowledge.
These are partly encoded by the hippocampus, stored elsewhere.
Exactly where is unknown, but the temporal cortex has been proposed as a likely candidate.
Research shows that amnesiac patients with damage to the medial temporal lobe performed more poorly on explicit learning tests than did healthy controls.
However, the same patients performed at the same rate as healthy controls on implicit learning tests.
This implies that the medial temporal lobe is heavily involved in explicit learning, but not in implicit learning.
Implicit or procedural memory refers to the use of objects or movements of the body, such as how exactly to use a pencil, drive a car, or ride a bicycle.
This type of memory is encoded and it is presumed stored by the striatum and other parts of the basal ganglia.
The basal ganglia is believed to mediate procedural memory and other brain structures and is largely independent of the hippocampus.
The parietal and occipital regions are associated with implicit memory.
The memory for events that evoke a particularly strong emotion may involve both declarative and procedural memory processes.
Emotional memories are consciously available, but elicit a powerful, unconscious physiological reaction.
Research indicates that the amygdala is extremely active during emotional situations, and acts with the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in the encoding and consolidation of emotional events.
Working memory (STM) is not part of long term memory, but is important for long term memory to work.
Working memory holds and works on information for a short period before it is either forgotten or put into long term memory.
Then, to remember something from long term memory, it must come back into working memory.
If working memory is overloaded it can affect the encoding of long term memory.
This page lists direct English translations of common Latin phrases, such as veni vidi vici and et cetera.
Some of the phrases are themselves translations of Greek phrases, as Greek rhetoric and literature were highly regarded in ancient Rome when Latin rhetoric and literature were still maturing.
Be aware that the Latin letter i can be used as either a vowel or a consonant.
When used as a consonant, it is often replaced by the letter j, which was originally simply an orthographic "long i" that was used in initial positions and when it occurred between two other vowels.
This medieval convention is most commonly preserved in Latin legal terminology hence phrases like de iure are often spelled de jure.
On this list, the more common form will be the one a phrase is listed under: thus, de jure is used instead of de iure, and alea iacta est instead of alea jacta est.
Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 - March 6, 1888) was an American writer.
She was born at Germantown, Pennsylvania to Amos Bronson Alcott, a controversial educator.
In 1834, the Alcott family moved to Massachusetts, finally settling at Concord.
Family friends in the area included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The Alcotts had money troubles.
Louisa went to work at an early age.
She taught, sewed, and even worked as a domestic helper.
In 1848, her first book, Flower Fables, was published.
She wrote many sensational stories and passionate novels such as A Long Fatal Love Chase.
She also wrote stories for children.
The critics liked these children 's stories.
She began writing only for children.
In 1868, Little Women was published.
It was a great success.
It was followed by Little Men in 1871 and Jo 's Boys in 1886.
These books were about four fictional sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March.
The books were based on Alcott 's childhood experiences with her own three sisters.
The character of Jo was based on Alcott herself.
Other children 's books by Alcott include Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Under the Lilacs, and Jack and Jill.
Alcott died of a stroke at age 55 in Boston, Massachusetts on March 6, 1888.
After three years after the Civil War started, Alcott got a job in a hospital in District of Columbia.
Alcott became a teacher after her sister Anna got married.
When Alcott stayed in hospital, she got typhoid fever.
She had to spend a long time in bed, which affected her health.
The lift force, lifting force or simply lift is the sum of all the forces on a body that force it to move perpendicular to the direction of flow.
The most common type of lift is that of a wing of an aircraft.
But there are many other common uses such as propellers on both aircraft and boats, rotors on helicopters, fan blades, sails on sailboats, and wind turbines.
While the common meaning of the term "lift" suggests an "upwards" action, lift can be in any direction.
For instance, for a sail the lift is horizontal, and for the wing on a race car the lift is down.
There are a number of ways of explaining the production of lift; some are more complicated than others, some have been shown to be false.
The simplest explanation is that the wing deflects air downward, and the reaction pushes the wing up.
Loki is the god of mischief, guile, cunning and trickery in Norse mythology.
He is also seen as the personification of chaos and evil as well as being the Lord of Lies.
At one point in time he was also known as being the God of Fire.
He is portrayed as a scheming craven who cares only for self-preservation and guilty shallow pleasures.
He s depicted as being playful, malicious, and at certain times even helpful, but he s always irreverent, nihilistic and impetuous.
Loki possesses the ability of changing his entire appearance (called Shapeshifting) and even his gender, although he had to borrow Freyja 's magical cloak at times to change into a falcon.
He has been known to take the form of a mare, salmon and an old Jotun woman
Once, Loki changed himself into a mare, and he bore the son of a horse.
This eight-legged horse is called Sleipnir, and became the favorite horse of Odin.
Loki also has many monstrous children, namely Hel, Fenrir, and J rmungandr.
He and his children became enemies of the gods in Ragnarok.
Loki is a murderer.
He cut off the hair of Thor 's wife, Sif, but then replaced it, he tricked a giant into building the defensive walls of Asgard, stole Freyja 's necklace, helped Thor rescue his hammer mjolnir, gave the goddess Idunn to a giant, then rescued her, etc..
He was blamed for the death of the god Baldur, using the blind god Hodhr 's hands.
In a poem called Lokasenna (Loki 's Arguments), he insulted all the gods and goddesses.
For this, he was bound to rock with the intestines of his son, until Ragnarok.
Loki was punished many times in ways including; having a venomous snake drip venom into his eyes and he had his lips sewn together with a leather thong by the dwarves.
At Ragnarok, Loki was freed by the giants, and he fought with his rival, the god Heimdall, resulting in the demise of them both.
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (May 28, 1807 December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-born and European-trained biologist and geologist.
His work on natural history in Europe and the Americas was important.
His reputation now is less good, because he fought against the theory of evolution, and held wrong ideas about human races.
He thought the different human races were of different origins.
This idea is called "polygenism".
Darwin 's comment at the end is interesting:"... when the principle of evolution is generally accepted, as it surely will be before long, the dispute between the monogenists and the polygenists will die a silent and unobserved death".
After visiting Harvard University in mid-career, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1847 and became a professor of zoology and geology at Harvard.
He founded its Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Agassiz made extensive contributions to ichthyology (including extinct species).
He founded glaciology, the study of ice fields and ice ages.
Li Bai (also Li Bo or Li Po,; 701 762) was a Chinese poet.
His fellow poet Du Fu counted him to the group of Chinese scholars that he called the "Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup" in a poem.
Li Bai is often regarded, along with Du Fu, as one of the two greatest poets in China 's literary history.
Today we know about 1,100 of his poems.
The first translations in a Western language were published in 1862 by Marquis d'Hervey de Saint-Denys in his Po sies de l' poque des Thang.
The English-speaking world was introduced to Li Bai 's works by a Herbert Allen Giles publication History of Chinese Literature (1901) and through the liberal, but poetically influential, translations of Japanese versions of his poems made by Ezra Pound.
Li Bai is best known for the imagination and Taoist imagery in his poetry.
He spent much of his life traveling.
People tell the story that he fell from his boat when he tried to embrace the reflection of the moon, and therefore drowned in the Yangtze River.
Li Bai was probably born in Central Asia, though the exact location is unknown.
His ancestors had lived in exile in that area since around the 7th century.
He grew up in a fairly poor family.
His father was a merchant.
Li Bai did not receive any formal schooling as a child.
Despite this, he had always been skilled with the art of words even as a young boy.
In 705, Li Bai 's father moved the family back to Mien-chou in Sichuan.
It was there that he spent most of his early childhood.
As Lai Bai grew up he developed his sword fighting skills.
He spent his teenage years traveling all of Sichuan as a knight-errant.
At age 25, he traveled to Central China.
In 727, Li Bai traveled to A-lu in Hubei.
He married the daughter of the retired prime minister.
There, he continued to explore the natural world where he lived.
In 735, Li Bai traveled north to the Yellow River, and east to the Yangtze River.
In 742, he traveled to Chang an, and was presented to the Emperor.
The Emperor gave Li Bai many compliments, and thought highly of him.
He gave Li Bai a position at the Hanlin Academy.
Li Bai received a lot of attention from fellow scholar-officials.
Li Bai enjoyed drinking liquor.
He is known for often getting very drunk with seven other officials in city taverns.
This earned them the title the "Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup" from Du Fu, another one of China 's best poets at the time.
In 744, Li Bai left the city of Chang ` an.
He was bored with the luxuries of city life.
A year later, he met up with Du Fu, in Loyang.
It was here that he also became a Taoist, a decision that would change the rest of his life.
After settling his family down in Loyang, he left on another ten-year journey wandering around northern China.
During this time, his poetry reflects his shift in interest to Toasm rather than his youthful interests of knightly behaviors and gallantry.
While famous and well known, Li Bai started to struggle with problems like lack of money and property.
Li Bai is best known for his imaginative and witty poetry.
It involves romantic descriptions of nature, and opinions on ethics and death.
He was famous among both nobles and commoners in his time, and is thought of as one of the four best poets during the Tang Dynasty.
He is also well known for his Taoist beliefs and rebellion against Confucian teachings through his writing.
One of Li Bai 's most famous poems is Drinking Alone by Moonlight (, pinyin: Yu Xi D Zhu), which is a good example of some of the most famous aspects of his poetry a very spontaneous poem, full of natural images.
Li Bai actually wrote several poems with the same title; Arthur Waley 's version of the most famous reads:
Li Bai s poetry reflects the state of low feeling one experiences when he finds his life is wasted, and talents unused.
To drown his own sorrows, Li Bo became very drunk very often, until it became a lifelong habit.
Wine, however did help him write.
While he was drunk, Li Bai was able to compose beautiful verses without restraint.
Without anything holding him back, Li Bai s finest poems were composed with much spontaneity and imagination.
A cup of wine, under the flowering trees; I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon, For her, with my shadow, will make three men.
The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave I must make merry before the Spring is spent.
To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams; In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.
While we were sober, three shared the fun;
Now we are drunk, each goes his way.
May we long share our odd, inanimate feast, And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.
Li Bai is influential in the West partly due to Ezra Pound 's versions of some of his poems in the collection Cathay, such as The River Merchant 's Wife: A Letter.
In the east he influenced poets like Mi Fei in the Song Dynasty.
A crater on the planet Mercury has been named after him.
Longships were seagoing vessels made and used for trade, exploring, and raiding.
They are usually thought of as Viking ships but were used by early people on the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.
It was the Vikings who mastered the design of light fast longships that could also go up rivers.
At the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon period in Britain, the invading groups of Angles, Saxons, Frisians and Jutes arrived in longships.
From that time on longships were also being built and used in the British Isles.
When the Normans conquered England in 1066, William the Conqueror used a large fleet of longships to transport his army to England.
The earliest discovered longship built from planks traces back to BC.
The ship was recovered from the Hjortspring bog in southern Denmark.
Called the Hjortspring boat it was made of planks of wood sewn together with cord.
The spaces between planks were filled with resin.
The ship was about 59 feet (18 meters) long and was a very light and flexible design.
It had a double bow and stern that looked like a bird 's beak.
The ship had places for 20 men to row and had a steering oar at both ends.
A replica of this design was built and tested.
It was very seaworthy, fast and maneuverable.
In calm waters it averaged 6 knots (about 7 miles per hour) in speed.
The next design was of clinker-built construction (also called lapstrake).
In this design overlapping boards are held together with nails.
Named the Nydam ship for being found in the Nydam bog in 1863 in south Jutland.
It measured 77 feet (23.5 meters) long, a little over 11 feet (3.5 meters) wide and was about 4 feet (1.2 meters) deep.
This ship was sunk (and filled with weapons) between 350 400 AD.
Unlike the Hjortspring boat, the planks are held together with nails (the tips being bent over).
It did not have a mast, as later designs would, it had places for 30 men to row.
It also did not have a keel.
This kind of shallow open ship could cross open sea but could be swamped (filled with water) and sink.
This was a classic Northern design that in different forms could range as far as Constantinople or Newfoundland.
The Viking designed longship could cross an ocean or could row up a shallow river.
Over time the design changed.
There were many different types of longships built for different purposes.
The smallest ships were the Faering (four oars) and Sexaeringer (six oars) used around the fjords to move people and for fishing.
Longships of from 12 to 32 oars were called Karvi.
The Gokstad Ship is a famous ship of the Karvi type.
The Gokstad ship was excavated in 1880.
Its mast was cut off but otherwise the ship was well preserved.
It was 76 feet (23 meters) long and 17 (5.3 meters) wide.
The Gokstad ship had a keel and was made of oak.
Its rudder was about 11 feet (3.3 meters) long; big enough to steer the ship in any weather.
The mast stood about 40 feet (12 meters) tall.
A replica of the Gokstad ship sailed across the Atlantic ocean in 1893.
A specialized type of ship with at least 20 rowing benches was called a snekkja, meaning ` thin and projecting. '
It was a warship known to be used by both Swedish Vikings and Wends.
It could carry 44 men and 2 horses.
Snekkjas were one of the most common types of warship.
Duke Ratibor of the Wends had 660 of this type of ship he used when he attacked Kong lf in 1135.
Skeid (skei), meaning ` that which cuts through water, ' ships were larger warships.
Skeids usually had more than 30 rowing benches.
These were the largest longships ever discovered.
They had armor over the oar ports (openings for the oars) protecting the men rowing.
King Aethelred of England ordered this type of ship to be made throughout England.
Every district of 310 hides was to provide one such ship.
The largest warships of the era were of the Drakaar (dragon) type.
King Olaf I of Norway had a famous longship of this design called Long Serpent.
King Olaf II of Norway had a longship named Visunden (the Ox).
It had an Ox head carved in the prow.
Matilda of Flanders had a ship built for her husband William the Conqueror of the Drakkar design.
It was named the Mora and was built at Barfleur in Normandy in the summer of 1066.
This type could operate in shallow water and was easy to beach.
Many of this type of ship were called Knarrs.
From the 9th century larger sailing ships were used for overseas trading.
Many were specialized cargo ships.
They were marked by having a small crew, few oars, and depended on sails for power.
They had a large load capacity for a variety of cargo.
An example would be the Kl stad ship.
It was built in the last years of the 10th century.
The ship was wrecked near Kaupang in Norway.
It had a capacity of about 13 tons and a length of 69 feet (21 meters).
Another form of cargo ship was the horse transports used by William the Conqueror in 1066.
In the ship list it gives a total of 776 vessels in the Conqueror 's fleet.
Many were for the knights and soldiers but others were used to haul the supplies and horses they needed.
Earlier Vikings did not use horse transports and usually used the horses they found in the places they invaded.
The Normans, however, used cavalry and needed to transport their war horses and palfreys.
But the Normans in Sicily had used horse transports (1060 61) before possibly based on Byzantine ships of a similar design.
The Byzantines had ships called hippagogoi designed to land horses which could go right into battle.
Guy of Amiens observed that William 's invasion force included men from Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily.
William had shipbuilders familiar with building horse transports at his disposal.
How many he built is unknown, but he did have such ships in his fleet.
Little Nemo is the main fictional character in a series of weekly comic strips by Winsor McCay.
These comic strips appeared in the New York Herald and New York American newspapers from October 15, 1905 July 23, 1911 and September 3, 1911 July 26, 1914.
The strip was first called Little Nemo in Slumberland and then In the Land of Wonderful Dreams.
Little Nemo in Slumberland came back for a short time from 1924-1927.
The comic was about the dreams of a little boy named Nemo.
His name means "nobody" in Latin.
In the first strips he tried to go to Slumberland.
That was the land of King Morpheus.
The King wanted Nemo as a friend for his daughter, the Princess.
The last picture in each strip always was Nemo waking up, in or near his bed.
Then the grownups were angry with him, because he had waken them up.
Or they comforted him because he was sad.
In the earliest strips, the dream would end because of a disaster that could hurt or kill Nemo.
These events would be something like falling from a bridge, becoming a monkey, or becoming 90 years older.
Later on Nemo reached Slumberland.
Then Flip always woke him up.
Flip wore a hat that had ` Wake Up ' written on it.
Other characters in the strip were Dr. Pill, The Imp, the Candy Kid, and Santa Claus.
The strip was not a very big success from 1905 to 1927.
Most comics readers liked the slapstick actions of the Katzenjammer Kids, Happy Hooligan, and Buster Brown (other comic strips) more than the surreal (not real) fantasy of Nemo.
From the 1970s until now, people like the strip more.
Many of the original strips were found at a comic strip studio in 1966.
They were shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Very special of Nemo was that the pictures were very difficult, had many details and beautiful colors.
Also the story was special, because it was a fast story and had many strange characters and places.
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud) was the seventh and last legendary king of ancient Rome.
He ruled Rome from 534 510 BC.
Many of the stories about him are legends, and are based on earlier Greek and Babylonian stories.
He used force to become king.
He changed the constitution of the Roman Kingdom to give himself complete power and used violence to rule.
Many members of the Senate were killed and not replaced.
He built large monuments, including a fortified temple.
He and his family were forced to leave Rome after a revolt by the people.
His son Sextus Tarquinius had raped Lucretia, a married noblewoman.
Tarquinius Superbus died in Cumae.
Louise Erdrich is an American author.
She was born on June 7, 1954, in Minnesota.
Erdrich lived in North Dakota as a child.
Her mother is Chippewa.
She has a German-American father.
Louise incorporates Native American themes in her books.
Major characters represent both sides of her heritage and background.
She was married to Michael Anthony Dorris, who was a writer and professor of Native American studies at Dartmouth.
Erdrich was named a most beautiful person in People magazine.
She was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2001 for her book The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse.
She received the award in 2012 for The Round House.
She has written novels, short stories, poetry, and children 's books.
Some of these works are Love Medicine, Tracks, and The Plague of Doves.
From 1972 to 1976, she attended Dartmouth College.
She received the Academy of Poets Prize in 1975.
She also received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976.
Leather is the skin of an animal used as a material.
The skins of cows, pigs, and goats are often used to make leather.
Skins of snakes, alligators or crocodiles, and ostriches are sometimes used to make fancier leather.
Shoes, bags, clothes, and balls are often made of leather.
Sometimes people make leather out of whales, ducks, giraffes, and African elephants, but all of these ways of making leather are very simple but can also be very hard and rare sometimes.
A lubricant is a substance used to reduce friction between moving surfaces.
The property of reducing friction is known as lubricity (slipperiness).
The most often used lubricant is motor oil, which is used in engines of cars and motorcycles.
Sometimes, chemicals are added to normal oil to give it special properties.
A lubricant, like motor oil, can also help in reducing heat.
Simply put, cooling depends on surface area in contact.
So, if something normally has a small surface area, you can put that thing into a bigger pot, and put oil in the pot.
This way, oil comes in contact with small surface area of the small object, and transfers that heat to the big surface area of the big vessel.
As a rule, liquids can transfer heat better than gases.
In manufacturing, sometimes oil is used to cool the item being made.
This also helps in removing metal that was just chipped off.
This chipped-off metal normally flows with the oil until it is filtered.
Then the oil is reused.
The filtered metal chips are normally scrapped.
Sometimes, lubricants are used for hydraulic machines.
A hydraulic machine uses the fact that the hydraulic oil can not be compressed, and performs a simple conversion it works like a lever.
Oils can cause pollution, especially water pollution, if released into the open.
A Llama (Lama glama) is a mammal of the Camelidae family.
It is from South America, the Andes Mountains of Peru and Ecuador.
Sometimes the name llama is used for all four South American camelids.
The llama was domesticated about 5000 years ago.
It was and is used for carrying things, and for wool.
The llama was very important for the Incan people.
Even today, llamas are used for similar reasons, but will more commonly be used as domesticated pets.
The llama 's close relative is the alpaca, who is a more demure, petite animal in comparison to the llama.
Llamas have three related cousins - the alpaca, the guanaco, and the vicu a. The llama is the national symbol of Bolivia.
Llamas spit, and travel together.
Leonardo da Vinci (15 April 1452 2 May 1519) was an Italian man who lived in the time of the Renaissance.
He is famous for his paintings, but he was also a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and a writer.
Leonardo wanted to know about everything in nature.
He wanted to know how everything worked.
He was very good at studying, designing and making all sorts of interesting things.
Many people think that Leonardo was one of the greatest painters of all time.
Other people think that he was the most talented person ever to have lived.
The art historian Helen Gardner said that no-one has ever been quite like him because he was interested in so many things that he seems to have had the mind of a giant, and yet what he was like as a person is still a mystery.
Leonardo was born at Vinci which is a small town near Florence, Italy.
He was trained to be an artist by the sculptor and painter Verrocchio.
He spent most of his life working for rich Italian noblemen.
In his last years, he lived in a beautiful home given to him by the King of France.
Two of his pictures are among the best-known paintings in the world: the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.
He did many drawings.
The best-known drawing is Vitruvian Man.
Leonardo was often thinking of new inventions.
He kept notebooks with notes and drawings of these ideas.
Most of his inventions were never made.
Some of his ideas were a helicopter, a tank, a calculator, a parachute, a robot, a telephone, evolution, and solar power.
Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452, in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the valley of the Arno River.
His grandfather, Antonio Meza, wrote down the details of the birth.
Leonardo 's parents were not married.
His father was a lawyer, Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci.
His mother, Caterina, was a servant.
She may have been a slave from the Middle East.
When da Vinci was three years of age his father divorced his mother.
His father later on took custody of Leonardo and his mother re-married and had many more children.
Leonardo 's full name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", which means "Leonardo, the son of Messer (Mister) Piero from Vinci".
Leonardo spent his first five years living in a farm house with his mother.
Then he lived at Vinci with his father, his father 's new wife Albiera, his grandparents and uncle, Francesco.
When Leonardo grew up, he only wrote down two memories from his childhood.
He remembered that when he was lying outside in his cradle a large bird flew from the sky and hovered over him.
Its tail feathers brushed his face.
Leonardo 's other important memory was how he found a cave while exploring in the mountains.
He was terrified that some great monster might be hiding there.
But he was also very excited and wanted to find out what was inside.
Leonardo started painting while he was still a boy.
Giorgio Vasari wrote about Leonardo 's life shortly after his death.
He tells many interesting stories about how clever Leonardo was.
He says that Leonardo painted a round wooden shield with a picture of snakes spitting fire.
Messer Piero took his son 's painting to Florence and sold it to an art dealer.
In 1466, when Leonardo was fourteen, his father took him to Florence, to be an apprentice to the artist Verrocchio.
Florence was a very exciting place for a young person who wanted to be an artist.
Many famous artists had lived in Florence, starting with Cimabue and Giotto in the 1200s.
Everywhere a person looked there were famous and beautiful artworks.
The huge cathedral had an enormous new dome.
The church of St John had doors that gleamed with gold and were said to be the most beautiful doors in the world.
Another church had statues all around it by the most famous sculptors, including one by Leonardo 's teacher Verrocchio.
If an artist was lucky, they would find a rich patron who would buy lots of their paintings.
The richest family in Florence were the Medici.
They had built themselves the finest palace in Florence, and liked buying paintings, statues and other beautiful things.
They were also interested in the study of literature and philosophy.
Many young artists hoped to get work from the Medici and their friends.
Verrocchio had a big workshop that was one of the busiest in Florence.
Leonardo was learning to be an artist, so he had to learn drawing, painting, sculpting and model making.
While he was at the workshop, he was able to learn all sorts of other useful skills: chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry.
Leonardo was not the only young painter at Verrocchio 's workshop.
Many other painters were trained there, or often visited.
Some of them later became famous: Ghirlandaio, Perugino and Botticelli.
These artists were all just a few years older than Leonardo.
Vasari tells an interesting story from this time of Leonardo 's life.
Verrocchio was painting a large picture of the Baptism of Christ.
He gave Leonardo the job of painting one of the angels holding Jesus ' robe on the left side of the picture.
Vasari said that Leonardo painted the angel so beautifully that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again.
When the painting is examined closely it is possible to see that many other parts of the picture, such as the rocks, the brown stream and the background may have been painted by Leonardo as well.
Verrocchio made a bronze statue of David at this time.
It is believed that he used Leonardo as his model.
In about 1472, when he was twenty, Leonardo joined the Guild of St Luke, an organization of artists and doctors of medicine.
Even after his father set him up in his own workshop, Leonardo still enjoyed working at Verrocchio 's workshop.
Leonardo 's earliest known work is a drawing in pen and ink of the Arno River valley.
It has the date 5 August 1473.
It is now in the Uffizi Gallery.
When Vasari writes about Leonardo, he uses words like "noble", "generous", "graceful" and "beautiful".
Vasari tells us that as an adult Leonardo was a tall handsome man.
He was so strong that he could bend horseshoes with his bare hands.
His voice was so beautiful that it charmed everyone that heard it.
Almost everyone wanted to be his friend.
He loved animals, was a vegetarian and would buy birds at the market and set them free.
Very little is known about Leonardo 's life and work between 1472 and 1481.
He was probably busy in Florence.
In 1478, he had an important commission to paint an altarpiece for the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto.
The painting was to be the Adoration of the Magi (The Three Wise Men).
The painting was never finished because Leonardo was sent away to Milan.
Leonardo was a very talented musician.
In 1482, he made a silver lyre (a musical instrument) in the shape of a horse 's head.
At that time there was a new ruler in the city of Milan, in the north of Italy.
Duke Ludovico il Moro was making other rulers nervous.
Lorenzo Medici sent Leonardo to Milan as an ambassador.
Lorenzo de ' Medici wanted Leonardo to give Ludovico the lyre as a present from him.
Leonardo wrote a letter to the Duke of Milan, telling him about all the clever and useful things that he could do, like making war machines.
He wrote in the letter that he could "also paint".
Leonardo did not know at the time that it was for painting that he would be mostly remembered.
Leonardo stayed in Milan and worked for the Duke between 1482 and 1499.
Part of his work was to design festivals and carnival processions.
In Leonardo 's note books are drawings of theater costumes, amazing helmets and scenes that might be for the theater.
Leonardo, like most other well-known artists of his time, had servants, young students and older assistants in his workshop.
One of his young students was a boy whose name was Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno.
He was a handsome boy with beautiful long golden curls.
He looked perfect as an artist 's model for an angel.
But he was such a difficult and dishonest boy that Leonardo called him "Salai" or "Salaino" which means "the little devil".
Leonardo wrote in his notebook that Salai was very greedy, that he was a liar and that he had stolen things from the house at least five times.
Salai stayed in Leonardo 's household for thirty years as a pupil and a servant.
Leonardo 's most important work for Duke Ludovico was to make a huge statue of the previous ruler, Francesco Sforza, on horseback.
He started with the horse.
After studying horses and drawing designs, he made a huge horse of clay.
It was called the "Gran Cavallo".
It was going to be cast in bronze.
It was going to be the biggest bronze horse that had been made for more than a thousand years.
Unfortunately, the bronze horse was never made.
In 1494, Ludovico gave the bronze to be made into cannons because the French army was invading Milan.
The huge clay horse was still standing when the French army invaded again in 1499.
This time it was used for target practice and was completely destroyed.
While Leonardo was working for Duke Ludovico, he had two important painting commissions.
One was to do an oil painting to go in a big altarpiece for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception.
Leonardo did the painting twice.
He left one with the monks in Milan, and took the other painting to France where it is now in the Louvre Museum.
The paintings are both called the Virgin of the Rocks.
They show a scene of the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus in a rocky mysterious landscape.
Mary and Jesus are meeting with John the Baptist.
There is a story (which is not in the Bible but is part of Christian tradition) about how the baby John and the baby Jesus met on the road to Egypt.
In this scene John is praying and the baby Jesus raises his hand to bless John.
The paintings have a strange eerie light with soft deep shadows.
In the background is a lake and mountains in the mist.
No painting like this had ever been done before.
Leonardo 's other important painting in Milan is even more famous.
It is the Last Supper.
The painting shows the last meal shared by Jesus with his disciples, before his capture and death.
Leonardo chose to paint the moment when Jesus has said "one of you will betray me".
Leonardo tells the story of the surprise and upset that this caused to the twelve followers of Jesus.
He tells the story through the actions and faces of the people in the painting.
Some of them are talking, some of them have stood up, some are raising their hands in horror.
The novelist Matteo Bandello saw Leonardo at work.
Bandello wrote that on some days he would paint from morning till night without stopping to eat.
Then for three or four days he would not paint at all.
He would often just stand and look at the painting.
Vasari said that the prior of the convent was very annoyed.
He asked Ludovico to tell Leonardo to work faster.
Vasari said that Leonardo was worried because he did not think that he could paint the face of Jesus well enough.
Leonardo told the Duke that he might use the face of the prior as his model for Judas, the traitor.
When it was finished, everyone that saw it said that the painting was a masterpiece.
But Leonardo had not used proper fresco for the painting.
He had used tempera over gesso, which is not usually used for wall painting.
Soon the painting started to grow mold and flake off the wall.
In a hundred years it was "completely ruined".
Even though in some places the paint has fallen right off the wall, the painting is so popular that it is printed and copied more that any other religious painting in the world.
In 1499, Ludovico il Moro was overthrown.
Leonardo left Milan with his servant Salai and a friend, Luca Pacioli, who was a mathematician.
They went to Venice.
Leonardo worked as a military architect and engineer.
Because Venice is a city on many islands, Leonardo tried to think of ways to defend the city from a naval attack.
In 1500, Leonardo went back to Florence, taking his "household" of servants and apprentices with him.
The monks from the monastery of The Holy Annunciation gave Leonardo a home and a large workshop.
In 2005, some buildings which were used by the Department of Military Geography were being restored.
The restorers discovered that part of the building was Leonardo 's studio.
Leonardo started work on a new painting.
He drew a large "cartoon".
(This means a drawing that is a plan for the painting.)
The cartoon showed the Virgin Mary sitting on the knee of her mother, St Anne.
Mary holds the baby Jesus in her arms.
Jesus stretches out his hands to his young cousin John the Baptist.
Vasari says that everyone was so amazed by the beautiful drawing that "men and women, young and old" came in large groups to see it "as if they were attending a great festival".
The drawing is now in the National Gallery, London.
Even though it is old and faded and is kept in a dark room, people go to the gallery to sit in front of it every day.
Like many of Leonardo 's projects, the painting was never done.
In 1502 and 1503, Leonardo worked for Cesare Borgia, a powerful noble who was the son of Pope Alexander VI.
Leonardo traveled around Italy with Borgia, as a military architect and engineer.
Late in 1503, Leonardo returned to Florence.
He rejoined the Guild of St Luke.
He was given a very important commission.
The Signoria (Town Council) of the City of Florence wanted two large frescos painted on the walls of the most important room of the Signoria Palace.
Michelangelo was to paint The Battle of Cascina and Leonardo was to paint The Battle of Anghiari.
Leonardo began the project by studying and drawing the faces of angry men and fighting horses.
These drawings can still be seen in his notebooks.
But unfortunately, this was to be another failure for Leonardo.
When he painted the picture on the wall, instead of using fresco, he mixed the paints with oil.
The paint would not dry.
Leonardo lit some fires to dry it, and the painting melted.
Peter Paul Rubens drew a copy of the middle part.
After a time, the town council covered it up and got somebody else to paint the wall.
Michelangelo did not finish his painting either, because the Pope called him to Rome.
In about 1503 Leonardo began painting the a portrait of a woman known as Mona Lisa, the most famous portrait that has ever been painted.
He continued working on it for many years.
It is a small picture, painted in oil on a wooden panel.
It shows the face, upper body and hands of a woman.
She is very plainly dressed.
For a portrait, a woman would usually put on her best clothes and jewellery.
Mona Lisa has a dark dress and a fine black veil over her head.
Leonardo often left symbols in his paintings that give clues about the person.
The unusual thing about this picture is the smile.
The smile is the clue to her name: Mona Lisa Giacondo.
Giacondo means "the joking one".
(Mona is short for Madonna which means "My Lady".)
The reason why the painting is so famous is that it seems to be full of mystery.
Mona Lisa 's eyes look out at the viewer.
But no-one can guess what she is thinking.
Her eyes and her mouth seem to be smiling.
This is very unusual in a portrait painting.
Most people in portraits look very serious.
It is hard to tell what Mona Lisa 's exact expression is.
When a person wants to read another person 's feelings, they look at the corners of their mouth and eyes.
But Leonardo has painted soft shadows in the corners of Mona Lisa 's mouth and eyes, to disguise her expression.
The soft shadows are also found on the sides of her face, her neck and hands.
The way that Leonardo uses shadow is called "sfumato" (which is an Italian word for "smoke").
Vasari said that the picture was so beautifully painted that every other artist who looked at it thought that they could never paint so well.
In 1506, Leonardo went back to Milan with his pupils, and lived in his own house in Porta Orientale.
Some of the pupils became painters: Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco D'Oggione.
D'Oggione made several copies of the Last Supper.
Luini made a copy of the Virgin of the Rocks.
Boltraffio (and the others) painted many Madonna and Child pictures which can still be seen in art galleries and churches.
One of pupils was a young nobleman called Count Francesco Melzi.
Melzi never became a very good painter, but he loved Leonardo and stayed with him until the day he died.
In September 1513 Leonardo went to Rome and lived there until 1516.
He lived in the Vatican.
The three greatest painters of the High Renaissance, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were all working in Rome at the same time.
Even though their names are often said together as if they were friends, they were not.
Leonardo at this time was in his sixties, Michelangelo was middle-aged.
He was not friendly to either Leonardo or Raphael.
Raphael was a very clever young painter who learned a lot by looking at the pictures painted by Leonardo and Michelangelo.
But neither of them was ever his teacher.
In October 1515, King Francis I of France captured Milan.
On December 19, there was a meeting of Francis I and Pope Leo X, in Bologna.
Leonardo went to the meeting with Pope Leo.
Leonardo made an amazing toy to entertain King Francis.
It was a life-sized mechanical lion that could walk.
It had doors in its chest which opened, and a bunch of lilies came out.
Lilies were the royal symbol of the French Kings.
In 1516, Francis I invited Leonardo to go to France with him.
He gave Leonardo a beautiful house called Clos Luc (sometimes called "Cloux").
It is near the king 's palace, Chateau Amboise.
Leonardo spent the last three years of his life at Clos Luc, with his faithful friend and apprentice, Count Melzi.
The king gave Leonardo a pension of 10,000 scudi.
One of the last paintings that Leonardo did was a picture of John the Baptist.
His model was Salai, with his beautiful long curling hair.
When Leonardo was dying, he asked for a priest to come, so that he could make his confession and receive Holy Communion.
Leonardo died at Clos Luc, on May 2, 1519.
King Francis had become a close friend.
Vasari says that the King held Leonardo 's head in his arms as he died.
In his will, he asked that sixty beggars should follow his casket in procession.
He was buried in the Chapel of the Chateau Amboise.
Leonardo had never married and had no children of his own.
In his will, he left his money, his books and most of his paintings to Count Melzi.
Leonardo also remembered his other pupil Salai and his servant Battista di Vilussis, who each received half of Leonardo 's vineyards near Milan.
Leonardo 's left to his serving woman a black cloak with a fur edge.
Salai was the owner of Leonardo 's most famous oil painting, the Mona Lisa.
He still owned it a few years later when he died, after fighting in a duel.
King Francis said: "There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher."
Leonardo did not paint very many pictures.
But he drew hundreds of quick sketches, plans, maps and detailed drawings.
This is the way that he recorded all the interesting things that he saw, studied and thought about.
Some of Leonardo 's drawings are "studies" for paintings.
In these drawings Leonardo planned the things he was going to paint.
Some studies are plans for whole paintings.
One of these paintings is the large beautiful drawing of the Madonna and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist that is now in the National Gallery, London.
Many of the studies show "details" that Leonardo wanted to get just right.
One study shows a very detailed perspective drawing of the ruined buildings in the background of the painting of the Magi.
Other studies show hands, faces, drapery, plants, horses and babies.
The earliest drawing by Leonardo that has a date on it, is a Landscape of the Arno Valley, 1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle and the farmlands beyond it in great detail.
Leonardo studied things all his life.
He did not go to university to study.
He studied by looking at things in the world around him.
He looked at things to see how they were made and how they worked.
He drew the things that he saw and the discoveries that he made into his notebooks, and made notes about them.
Many of his notebooks are now in museums.
There are 13,000 pages of notes and drawings.
Many of these are scientific studies.
Leonardo 's notebooks are hard to read because he wrote backwards in "mirror writing".
Some people think that perhaps he was trying to keep his work secret.
This is not true.
Leonardo wrote (and sometimes drew) with his left hand.
In those days pens were made from a quill (a large feather) that was cut with a pen-knife on the end.
It is hard for a left-handed person to write with a quill in the ordinary way, but quite easy to write backwards.
It is likely that Leonardo planned to publish the studies in his notebooks.
He organized many pages carefully, with one study taking up the front and back of each page.
There is a page with drawings and writing about the human heart and a page about the womb and the fetus.
One page shows drawings of the muscles of a shoulder and another page shows how an arm works.
The notebooks were not published in Leonardo 's lifetime.
After he died, they were divided between different people who had known him.
They are nearly all in museums or libraries such as Windsor Castle, the Louvre, and the British Library.
The Biblioteca Ambrosiana (a library) in Milan has the twelve-volume Codex Atlanticus.
Many of the drawings and notes in Leonardo 's notebooks are designs, plans and inventions.
Lacrosse, invented by the Native Americans, is a popular team sport in North America and a national summer sport for Canada.
It involves the use of nets, or "heads" as they are called, which consist of a wooden or metal shaft with a net on the end.
Hockey is a game based on this sport.
There are about three different forms of lacrosse based on the different Native American tribes or places of how they played it.
One of the ways still played today is called double stick; you play by using a two and a half foot stick in each hand and tossing a deer skin ball in between the two sticks.
The name lacrosse was named by the French settlers; with Crosse meaning curved stick it is called the curved stick.
Lacrosse played a more serious role in Native American culture than anywhere else.
It was often used to settle tribal disagreements.
Lacrosse was not a very well-known sport until the late nineteenth century.
Now more than half a million people are playing.
Lacrosse has two teams, each with ten players.
There is one goalie, three defensemen, three midfielders and three attack men.
The goalies defend the goals, and if the ball goes into the goal, the team who scored the goal gains a point.
Whoever scores the most goals by the end of the game wins, with an overtime period being played if the game is tied.
The game has four quarters and starts with a "face off" at the beginning of each quarter.
A face off is when the ball is on the ground to start the game, and one person from each team fights for possession of the ball.
Liverpool is a city in Merseyside, United Kingdom which is formed of 30 neighborhoods.
It was most famous as a port during the late 19th and early 20th century.
It is the birthplace of the famous rock group The Beatles.
It is also famous because of its football teams, Liverpool F.C. and Everton F.C.
People from Liverpool are called Liverpudlians or Scousers.
There has been a lot of development work which is part of a regeneration plan for Liverpool.
It is because Liverpool was the Capital of Culture for 2008.
The long jump is a sport in athletics (track and field), where athletes compete by comparing lengths of their jumps where athletes try to jump as far as they can.
For this, the athlete runs down the runway to the jumping pit which is made of soft sand If a person falls backwards when jumping, this can decrease the length of their jump.
The Labrador duck (C. labradorius) is an extinct duck that lived in North America.
The Labrador duck lived along the sandy coasts and bays of New Jersey and New England.
Audubon 's son reported seeing a nest belonging to the species.
Some believe that it may have laid its eggs on the islands in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.
It was a rare bird before European settlement, and the increase in humans probably finished it off.
The duck became extinct after settlers became common along the eastern coast of North America.
The reasons are not clear.
The duck was eaten, although its flesh tasted bad.
its eggs were probably harvested.
It depended considerably on shellfish, which humans may have eaten in large quantities.
Lisbon is the capital city of Portugal.
It is the largest city of Portugal.
The city has a population of about two million people.
Lisbon is 11th most populous urban area in the European Union.
Lisbon is on the River Tagus.
It has a pleasant climate and has about 220 days of sunshine each year.
There are many beautiful beaches close to the city.
There are also many seafood restaurants, historical sites and monuments.
Lisbon is one of the oldest cities in the world.
The Local Group is the group of galaxies that includes our galaxy, the Milky Way.
The group has more than 50 galaxies (including dwarf galaxies).
Its gravitational center is somewhere between the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy.
The galaxies of the Local Group cover a 10 million light-year diameter and have a binary (dumbbell) shape.
The group has a total mass of about (1.29 0.14) Ms. The group itself is part of the Virgo Supercluster (also called the Local Supercluster).
The term "Local Group" was introduced by Edwin Hubble in 1936.
He describes it as "a typical small group of nebulae which is isolated in the general field".
He listed the galaxies, by decreasing luminosity, as the Andromeda galaxy, the Milky Way, Triangulum galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Small Magellanic Cloud and half-a-dozen others.
By 2003, the number of known Local Group members has increased from his initial twelve to thirty-six, by way of the discovery of almost two dozen low-luminosity galaxies.
A litre (liter in the United States) is one of the metric units of volume.
It is not an SI unit.
One litre is the volume of one cubic decimetre, that is a cube of 10 x 10 x 10 centimetres.
One litre of water has the mass of exactly one kilogram.
This results from the definition given in 1795, where the gram was defined as the weight of one cubic centimetre of melting ice.
The symbol for litre is "L" or "l".
For smaller volumes the decilitre is used: 10 dl = one litre.
For smaller volumes the centilitre is used: 100 cl = one litre.
For smaller volumes the millilitre is used: 1000 ml = one litre.
The capital letter "L" is preferred by some people as the small "l" can look like the number one "1".
The metric system was first introduced in France in 1791.
That system did not have its own unit of capacity or volume because volume can be measured in cubic metres.
In 1793 work to make the metric system compulsory in France was started by the Temporary Commission of Republican Weights and Measures.
Due to public demand, the commission said that the cubic metre was too big for everyday use.
They said that a new unit based on the old cadil should be used instead.
One cadil was to be 0.001 cubic metres.
This was equivalent to a cube with sides 10 cm.
The cadil was also known as the pinte or the litron.
The pinte had been an old French unit of measure of capacity.
In 1795 the definition was revised.
The cadil was given the name litre.
In 1795 the kilogram was defined to be exactly one litre of water at 4 C. In 1799 the kilogram was redefined.
The new definition said that the kilogram was the mass of the kilogram des archives.
In 1901 scientists measured the volume of one litre of water at 4 C very carefully.
They found that it occupied about dm3.
The BIPM redefined the litre as being exactly the volume of one kilogram of water at 4 C.
In 1960 the SI was introduced.
The BIPM changed the definition of the litre back to "one dm3".
The litre is not part of SI.
The BIPM defined the litre as a "Non-SI unit accepted for use with the SI".
This was because it is used in many countries.
The BIPM said that the litre should not be used very very accurate work.
According to SI rules, the symbol for the litre should be "l".
This is because the litre was not named after somebody whose name was "Litre".
However the symbol "l" and the number "1" are easily confused.
In 1979 the BIPM made an exception for the symbol for the litre.
They said that people could use either "L" or "l" as its symbol.
The Leyden jar (or Leiden jar) is a device for storing static electricity.
It is large glass bottle, usually lined on both the inside and the outside with some type of metal foil.
Some of the early ones had water inside.
They allow the experimenter to collect a large amount of charge.
They are the first form of electrical storage.
These methods are known today as ` condensers ' or ` capacitors '.
The first electrical storage jar was created by Dean Edwald von Kleist on 11 October 1745.
He was the dean of the cathedral of Cammin in Pomerania, on the north coast of Germany (at that time a separate country).
He was interested to find whether static electricity could be stored in a bottle, because he knew that electricity could not pass through glass.
He thought he might be able to capture and hold a small amount.
He only had a small experimental friction generator.
He underestimated how much electricity a small medicine bottle could hold by thousands of times.
A peculiarity of electricity allows it to continue flowing into the bottle provided the outside of the bottle has an electrically conductive surface connected to the earth.
This neutralises the pressure from the charge trying to flow back out.
In von Kleist 's case, this electrically conductive surface was just his hand, but it was enough to allow a very substantial charge to enter and remain in the jar through a nail he had driven through the cork.
When he accidentally touched the nail, he received such a shock that it threw him across the room.
He had made a connection between the inside charge and the accumulated outside charge, and since these were opposite signs (one positive and the other negative) all the accumulated charge flowed through his body.
He did n't understand why this jar stored so efficiently, but he send a scrambled description to some associates in Berlin, and one copy was sent on to von Klein 's old university associate Andreas Cunaeus where it ended up in the hands of Pieter van Musschenbroek, who was the University of Leyden 's main physics professor.
He worked out that the storage capacity was vastly improved only if the flask was held in the hand, and his letter to scientist in France gave the jar the name "Leyden jar".
For many years the Leyden jar was the main tool of electrical storage, and it remained so until the invention of a chemical battery and electrical generators of the type we use today.
Los Angeles, officially the City of Los Angeles (also called L.A.), is a city in southern California, in the United States.
There are 3,847,400 people living in the city, and over 18 million people in the L.A. region.
The city has an area of 1200 square kilometres.
L.A. has the second largest population of any city in the United States, the first being New York City.
It is also the largest city of California.
The name Los Angeles comes from the Spanish language and it means "The Angels".
The name is an abbreviation from the original name of the place.
The original name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Se ora la Reina de los ngeles de Porci ncula" (in English, "town of our lady the Queen of Angels of the little Portion").
Los Angeles was founded in 1781.
The area had earlier been explored by two Franciscan priests named Junipero Serra and Juan Crespi, when California still belonged to Spain.
On April 4, 1850 California became a State of the USA.
Los Angeles began to grow rapidly from when the railroad came in the 1870s up until the 1930s.
Los Angeles was home to the Olympic Games in 1932 and 1984.
Twice the city broke out in riots, in 1965 and 1992, both caused by anger between people and the city police.
In 1994, an earthquake killed 72 people and damaged many buildings.
Los Angeles is a very large city, and the edges of the city are very far from the center, going from the beaches to the mountains.
The Santa Monica Mountains run through the city, separating it into the San Fernando Valley to the north and the Los Angeles Basin to the south.
The Los Angeles River also runs through the city some 51 m. Los Angeles moves about one-quarter of an inch (6.3 millimeters) to the east every year.
It is caused by the cities tectonic plates and rough ground geography and since Los Angeles is at a close distance with the San Andreas Fault.
This brings Los Angeles and San Francisco 2.5 inches closer together each year.
The climate in Los Angeles is a Mediterranean climate.
The weather is usually warm and dry during the summer, and it is cool and rainy in the winter.
The weather is different depending on how far away from the ocean you are, so places near the beach usually do not get as hot in the summer.
It is very rare for temperatures to go below freezing.
The city receives about 15 inches (386 mm) of rain each year, although the amount can change a lot from year to year.
L.A. has many famous sights.
There are many very long beaches, such as Venice Beach.
Many visitors go to Hollywood, home to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Mann 's (Grauman 's) Chinese Theater, a large cinema.
Los Angeles also has many fine museums such as the L.A. County Museum of Art and the Getty Museum.
Another sight is the Los Angeles City Zoo.
Los Angeles is the only major city in the world with an active population of wild mountain lions.
An average of three people each year within the city limits are killed and eaten by the mountain lions.
Los Angeles is known for its large movie and television industry.
Much of this is located in Hollywood.
Some military aircraft are also made there.
The music industry is also concentrated in the area.
The city is also a banking center.
The San Pedro area has a busy port.
The current mayor of Los Angeles is Eric Garcetti.
Lepus is a constellation south of the celestial equator.
Its name is Latin for hare.
The hare is not from any figure in Greek mythology.
Lepus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy.
It is one of the 88 modern constellations.
It is below the constellation Orion (the hunter).
It is known as a hare being chased by Orion.
This constellation should not be mixed up with Lupus, the wolf.
There is one Messier Object in Lepus, M79.
It is a globular cluster of magnitude 8.0, 42,000 light-years from Earth.
It is one of the few globular clusters seen in the Northern Hemisphere winter.
Lupus is a constellation in the southern sky.
Lyra is a constellation in the northern sky.
Legnica is a city in Poland.
The river Katzbach runs through Legnica.
There live over 100,000 people.
The city is in west part of Poland (near Germany and Czech border).
Legnica is near a bigger city, Wroc aw.
Legnica is in the middle of Silesia.
The area used to be part of Prussia, and Legnica was the capital of one of the three Silesian government areas (Regierungsbezirk).
Silesia, a Prussian Province, is divided in 3 administrative regions (Regierungsbezirk): Liegnitz, Breslau and Oppeln.
Liverpool Football Club is an English football club.
They were created on 15 March 1892, and are also known as The Reds.
The club plays in the Premier League.
The stadium they play in is Anfield.
The club is managed by J rgen Klopp.
The club is owned by John W. Henry.
Liverpool won their first Football League championship in 1901, and their second in 1906.
They played their first FA Cup final in 1914, but lost 1-0 to Burnley.
The last trophy they won was the Carling cup in February 2012, after beating Cardiff City.
They have also won the European Cup five times, with the 5th success in Istanbul in 2005.
The game was won after Liverpool drew 3-3 with A.C. Milan and then won the penalty shootout, partly due to goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek 's heroics.
Liverpool F.C. have won England 's top football league, the Premier League (this includes the First Division), 18 times.
In season 2013-2014, Liverpool F.C were 2nd in the league in the Barclays Premier League.
A lysosome is a cell organelle.
They are like spheres.
They have hydrolytic enzymes which can break down almost all kinds of biomolecules, including proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, lipids, and cellular debris.
They contain more than 50 different enzymes.
By convention, lysosomes are the term used for animal cells.
In plants, similar organelles are called vacuoles.
With a wider definition, lysosomes are found in the cytoplasm of plant and protists as well as animal cell.
Lysosomes work like the digestive system to break down, or digest, proteins, acids, carbohydrates, dead organelles, and other unwanted materials.
They break up larger molecules into smaller molecules.
Those smaller molecules can then be used again as building blocks for other large molecules.
Louisiana is a state in the Southern United States of America.
It had a population of about 4,533,372 people in 2010.
The state has a total area of about 51,885 s. Louisiana is the 25th largest state by population and the 31th largest state by area.
Louisiana is also known by its nickname, The Pelican State.
The land that would become Louisiana was bought in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
Louisiana became a state on April 30, 1812.
It was the 18th state to become part of the United States.
The people who live in the state are known as Louisianans.
The state 's capital is Baton Rouge, and its largest city is New Orleans.
Louisiana has coastal plains, marshs, and low ridges.
All of the state is in the Sun Belt.
Louisiana is in a sub tropical region, and has a diverse ecosystem.
The climate of Louisiana Louisiana has a humid subtropical climate (K ppen climate classification Cfa).
It has long, hot, humid summers and short, mild winters.
One third of the adults in Louisiana are obese.
This is the highest rate in the United States.
Los Angeles International Airport is the airport which serves Los Angeles, California, United States.
It is often called LAX, its airport code.
The letters usually said by themselves.
LAX is in southwestern Los Angeles in the neighborhood of Westchester, 16 m from the downtown core.
With 61,895,548 passengers in 2007, LAX is the fifth busiest airport in the world and is served by direct flights to North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and The Middle East.
The airport is a small hub for American Airlines and United Airlines and a focus city for Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and Southwest Airlines.
The La T ne culture is a culture that lasted from about 500 BC to about 100 AD.
It is named after the city of La T ne (today, Marin-Epagnier, next to Neuch tel).
It was influenced a lot by the Roman and Greek cultures.
There are two sources for this:
The Celts basically lived in clans.
These were led by leaders, the Druids and Bards.
Women were much better off than with the Romans, they were factually equal to men.
There was Polygyny and Polyandry (A man could have several women, a woman could have several men).
Logical conjunction (very often called and) is a Logic operation.
Logical conjunction shows a true\/false value (output).
Whether it is true or false depends on two other true\/false values (inputs).
If both of the inputs are "true" at the same time, then logical conjunction outputs "true."
If one of the inputs is false, or if both of the inputs are false, then logical conjunction outputs "false."
Its logic gate equivalent is the AND gate.
A logic gate is an electronic component that can be used to conduct electricity based on a rule.
The outputs of the gate is the result of applying this rule to one or more "sources".
These sources may be two wires or the output of other logic gates.
Logic gates are digital components.
They normally work at only two levels of voltage, a positive level and a zero level.
Commonly they work based on two states: On and Off.
In the On state, voltage is present.
In the Off state, the voltage is at zero.
The On state usually uses a voltage in the range of 3.5 to 5 volts.
This range can be lower for some uses.
Logic gates compare the state at their inputs (source) to decide what the state at their output should be.
A logic gate is on or active when its rules are correctly met.
At this time, electricity is flowing through the gate and the voltage at its output is at the level of its On state.
Logic gates are electronic versions of Boolean logic.
Truth tables will tell you what the output will be, depending on the inputs.
With an AND gate, both inputs must be at an On state for the output to be On.
Using the image at the right, if A and B are both in an On state, the output (out) will be an On state.
If either A or B is in an Off state, the output will also be in an Off state.
A and B must be On for the output to be On.
With an OR gate, if either input is On, the output will be On.
Using the image at the right, if either A or B is On, the output (out) will also be On.
If both A and B are Off, the output will be Off.
The NOT logic gate has only one input so if our input is On then our output will be Off.
The NOT logic gate simply changes the signal from On to Off or from Off to On.
It is sometimes called an inverter.
Linear search or sequential search is an algorithm to find an item in a list.
It 's a search algorithm.
Start out with a list, L which may have the item in question.
In the programming language Java, linear search looks like this.
This method has two parameters: an array of integers and the item we are looking for (also an integer).
It says the location in the array if it finds the item.
If it does not find it, it says -1.
A land mine (sometimes just called a "mine") is a weapon that is put on the ground or just underneath the ground so that it explodes when a person or vehicle goes by.
They are called "mines" because people who put them there dig a hole in the ground (like miners who dig for coal etc.).
Many people can be killed by mines, including innocent people.
Sometimes mines can lie in the ground for years after a war has ended and people get killed or badly injured.
There are different types of land mines.
Anti-vehicle mines are against vehicles.
Infantry mines are used against foot soldiers.
Lizards are reptiles.
Together with snakes, they make up the order Squamata.
There are about 6,000 species, which live all over the world, except in cold climates.
They range across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains.
One type, the marine iguana, lives in the sea.
Size varies greatly, ranging from 5 inches to the Komodo dragon 's 9 feet and 150 pounds.
There are other versions, and the taxonomy will probably not settle until more molecular evidence is collected.
The skull structure of both snakes and lizards is distinctive.
They can move their upper jaw relative to the braincase.
They bear horny scales, and many use venom for attack and defense.
The Squamates are definitely a monophyletic group; they are a sister group to the Tuatara.
Judged by their fossil record, the Squamates were present in the Mesozoic, but occupied a minor place in the land ecology.
Three of the six lines are recorded first in the Upper Jurassic, the others in the Cretaceous.
Probably all (including snakes) arose earlier in the Jurassic.
The Mosasaurs of the Upper Cretaceous were by far the most successful of all the lizards, becoming the top predator in their ecosystem.
Although snakes and lizards look so different, neither are proper clades.
Snakes did descend from early lizards, so both groups together do form a monophyletic clade, the Squamata.
Within that clade there is another monophyletic clade, the Toxicofera.
This includes all venomous reptile species, as well as many related non-venomous species.
The evidence for this is in recent molecular analyses.
Sight is very important for most lizards, both for locating prey and for communication.
Many lizards have highly acute color vision.
Most lizards rely heavily on body language, using specific postures, gestures and movements to define territory, resolve disputes, and entice mates.
Some species of lizard also utilize bright colors, such as the iridescent patches on the belly of Sceloporus.
These colors would be highly visible to predators, so are often hidden on the underside or between scales and only revealed when necessary.
The dewlap is a brightly colored patch of skin on the throat, usually hidden between scales.
When a display is needed, the lizards erect the hyoid bone of their throat, resulting in a large vertical flap of brightly colored skin beneath the head which can be then used for communication.
Leviticus is the third book of both the Bible, and the Torah, known as Wayiqra ' in transliterated Hebrew, meaning ` And He will declare. '
It was written by the Old Testament Patriarch Moses.
Leviticus was written to the Hebrew people of Israel.
The book has several main topics, some of which are the Jewish laws of sacrificing to God, and the work of the priests.
This book probably was written around 1300 B.C.
Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 May 6, 1919) was an American writer of children 's books during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
He is best known for his most famous and popular book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and other Oz books that followed it.
Baum was born in a small town in Chittenango, New York.
He was a member of a large family.
He started writing as a child.
When his father bought his children a simple printing press, Baum and a younger brother wrote and printed a small local newspaper.
As a young man, Baum wrote and staged plays.
Sometimes he wrote songs for his plays and starred in them himself.
He also tried many other careers.
He was a traveling salesman and a storekeeper for a time.
He started a newspaper while he lived in a town in South Dakota.
He married in 1882.
He and his wife, Maud Gage Baum, raised four sons.
Baum had a very good imagination.
He liked creating stories for his young sons and their friends.
When he became 40 years old and was living in Chicago, Baum started writing children 's books.
These books were often based on the stories he had told to children over many years.
After several successes in the late 1890s, Baum published what he called an "American fairy tale," The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in 1900.
The book had pictures drawn by the American artist W. W. Denslow.
Baum had to pay for the first Oz book himself.
No Chicago publisher wanted to publish The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
One man even told Baum that if people had wanted to read this kind of book, it would already have been written.
But the first Oz book was a big success.
Baum was able to give up other business ideas and make enough money to live on by writing children 's books.
The children who read his books often wrote to Baum, and asked him to write more about Oz.
This caused Baum to begin a series of books set in the fantasy land of Oz.
In time, Baum grew tired of the series.
He tried to end it but his child readers kept demanding that he continue.
Baum met their demands through the rest of his life.
He wrote 14 Oz books in all.
The last two were printed after his death in 1919.
Baum also wrote a large number of books other than the Oz series.
He was proudest of his fantasies for children, but he also wrote many other kinds of popular works.
He used many pen names for these works.
Baum 's children 's books were illustrated with pictures by different artists.
After the first Oz book, all the rest in the series had pictures by John R. Neill.
Baum made a good income from his books.
He spent time traveling around the world with his wife.
They settled in Hollywood, California, and Baum made movie versions of some of his Oz books.
He also produced stage versions of them.
But his businesses were not always successful.
In time, Baum had to declare bankruptcy.
He was smart enough to put his house in his wife 's name, so that they did not lose their home in the bankruptcy.
Lake Ladoga is very large lake in Russia.
It is the largest lake in Europe and one of the 20 largest lakes on Earth.
There are six hundreds islands in the lake.
Language families are groups of languages that are related to each other because they come from a common older language.
The languages in such a family are similar in their vocabulary or structure.
For example, French and Spanish both come from Latin.
Latin was spoken a long time ago, and some of the people who spoke it started to speak one way, saying, for example, for good: "bueno" while another group started saying "bon."
Most words are said a little differently in Spanish and French, so the two are called different languages.
Most languages belong to a language family, but some languages do not.
These languages are called Language isolates.
There also are Constructed languages, like for example Esperanto.
Constructed languages are made for different reasons: making a ` world language ', for fun, for use in fiction, etc.
Latex is also the sap of certain trees that can be used to make rubber LaTeX is a computer program used for making articles, books and mathematical formulas look good and professional.
It is good at making mathematical formulas look right.
LaTeX is used for making mathematical formulas for some articles on Wikipedia.
It is used at colleges too.
The writer types his article into a plain text document.
A plain text document can not have styled text, like bold or italic.
When the writer wants to write styled text, they use Computer Commands.
For example, the command for bold text is textbf.
After the writer is finished writing the article, they tell LaTeX to read the document.
After LaTeX is done, LaTeX makes a file that can be printed.
The command textbf would print as This text is bold.
LaTeX was first made in the early 1980s by Leslie Lamport at SRI International.
The current version is LaTeX2e (styled).
Lake Champlain is a natural freshwater lake in North America along the borders of New York and Vermont and partially across the United States-Canada border in the province of Quebec.
The lake was named for the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who discovered it in 1609.
Lake Champlain is one of a large number of large lakes spread in an arc from Labrador through the northern United States and into the Northwest Territories of Canada.
Although it is much smaller than the Great Lakes of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Superior, or Michigan, Lake Champlain is a large body of fresh water.
The lake is about 1269 k in area.
It is about 201 k long.
At its widest point, it is about 23 k wide.
The maximum depth is about 400 f. It contains about 80 islands, including an the entire country of Grand Isle County in Vermont.
In the colonial times, Lake Champlain gave an easily blocked water (or, in winter, ice) passage between the Saint Lawrence and the Hudson Valleys.
Boats and sledges were usually preferable to the unpaved and frequently mud-bound roads of the time.
The northern tip of the lake at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec (St. John in colonial times) is a short distance from Montreal.
The southern tip at Whitehall (Skenesborough in colonial times) is a short distance from Saratoga, Glens Falls, and Albany, New York.
Forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point (Fort St. Frederic) controlled passage of the lake in colonial times.
Important battles were fought at Ticonderoga in 1758 and 1777.
A important naval battle was fought in 1776 at Valcour Island: in the Battle of Valcour Island, Benedict Arnold delayed British ships enough to prevent the fall of these forts until the following year, allowing the Continental Army to grow stronger and allowing the later victory at Saratoga.
In mathematical logic and computer science, lambda calculus, also - calculus, is a formal system.
It was designed to investigate the definition of functions, and how to apply them.
It is also a tool for analyzing recursion.
It was introduced by Alonzo Church and Stephen Cole Kleene in the 1930s.
Church used lambda calculus in 1936 to give a negative answer to the Entscheidungsproblem.
Lambda calculus can be used to define what a computable function is.
No general algorithm can answer the question of whether two lambda calculus expressions are equivalent.
This was the first question, even before the halting problem, for which undecidability could be proved.
Lambda calculus has greatly influenced functional programming languages, such as LISP, ML and Haskell.
Lambda calculus can be called the smallest universal programming language.
It consists of a single transformation rule (variable substitution) and a single function definition scheme.
Lambda calculus is universal in the sense that any computable function can be expressed and evaluated using this formalism.
It is thus the same as the Turing machine formalism.
However, lambda calculus emphasizes the use of transformation rules.
It does not care about the actual machine that implements them.
It is an approach more related to software than to hardware.
Lossy compression is a form of data compression where parts of the data are lost in the process.
When a compressed data is returned to normal some data is lost.
Lossy compression is used to greatly reduce the size of a computer file when it is stored, handled, or transmitted.
As an example, JPEG is a lossy compression format.
GIF and PNG are lossless compression systems.
Other lossy compression systems are MP3 for sound files and WMV for video.
If the compression were to be taken too far, it would cause a noticeable change in the file.
Linux distributions are made of the Linux kernel and a collection of applications.
The operating system will be made up of the Linux kernel and, usually, a set of libraries and utilities from the GNU project, with graphics that come from the X Window System.
Distributions that are made to be small may not contain big window systems full of features like KDE or GNOME, but use small window systems like busybox, uclibc or dietlibc.
There are more than three hundred Linux distributions.
Most of those are in still in development, being improved and changed constantly.
Before the first Linux distributions, a Linux user needed to be a Unix expert, knowing what libraries and executables that were needed to get the system to boot and run.
Linux distributions started to form after the Linux kernel was starting to be used by people outside the original Linux programmers.
They were more interested in creating the operating system than making it user-friendly.
SLS was not well-maintained, so Patrick Volkerding created a distribution based on SLS, which he called Slackware; released July 16, 1993.
This is the oldest being developed.
People who used computers wanted to use Linux distributions as replacements to Microsoft Windows operating systems on the PC, Mac OS on the Apple Macintosh and proprietary versions of Unix.
Distributions are normally split into packages.
Each package has a certain application or service.
Examples of packages include a collection of fonts, or a web browser.
The package is usually given as compiled code, with installation and removal of packages done by a package management system).
Linux distributions usually contain much more software than Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X.
There are tools available to help people make the decision easier.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are a Major League Baseball team in Los Angeles, California, USA.
The team plays in the West Division of the National League.
The team began play in Brooklyn, New York, starting in 1883.
The team had several informal nicknames over the years, including the "Atlantics", the "Bridegrooms", the "Superbas" and the "Robins".
The name "Dodgers" was first used in the 1890s.
It was short for "Trolley Dodgers".
The Brooklyn Dodgers played in several ballparks.
The most famous of them was Ebbets Field, their home from 1913 through 1958.
In 1959 they moved to Los Angeles.
They played in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for four years.
In 1962 they opened Dodger Stadium, and have played there ever since.
The Dodgers have been to the World Series 21 times, and won it six times: 1955, 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981 and 1988.
Little penguins (Eudyptula minor) are also called fairy penguin, little blue penguin, or blue penguins.
They are a species of penguin that lives near the coasts of Australia and New Zealand.
The little penguin is the smallest of all penguins.
The penguins weigh around 0.9 kg (2 lbs) and are up to 40 cm (15 in) tall.
On average, they are 33 cm (13 in) tall.
The little penguin is slate gray or indigo along the head and back, with a white belly and neck.
The flippers - wings - are dark blue, with a white edge along the back.
Males and females of the species are very similar but males have a curve on the end of their beak.
Juvenile little penguins, which are younger than adults, have lighter colors.
Little penguin chicks have blue-grey bellies and brown feathers.
Originally, the Eudyptula genus includeded two different species of penguin, the little penguin (E. minor) and the fairy penguin (E. undina).
In 1976, scientists combined these two species into one species (E. minor) with six subspecies.
However, new research on the penguins ' mitochondrial DNA shows that the DNA of populations in the Australia and southern New Zealand region are very different from those of little penguins in northern New Zealand.
Because of those discoveries, some researchers still argue about whether these two populations should be divided into two different species.
Another common argument is over the classification of the white-flippered penguin.
While most believe the white-flippered penguin is a subspecies of the little penguin, some argue that it is a different species.
Others argue that it is not a subspecies at all, but a morph that just has different colors.
The little penguin has different common names depending on their location.
In Australia, they are often called fairy penguins because the Australia population was originally considered a part of that species.
In New Zealand, they are called little blue penguins or blue penguins because their gray feathers look more blue in the sun.
They are also called ` Koror ' in M ori, the language of New Zealand natives.
Little penguins live in sandy burrows at night and go to the ocean during the day.
They can be found right around the south coast of Australia, from Perth in the west to Coffs Harbour on the east coast.
They are found all around Tasmania.
The largest little penguin colonies in New South Wales are on Montague Island, Tollgate Island and Brush Island.
The little penguin is known for its wide variety of calls.
In fact, one of the main ways scientists identify different little penguin subspecies is by the differences in the noises the penguin groups make.
Because little penguins live together in large groups, called colonies, it is important they can tell each other apart.
Little penguins can find their mates, even in crowded and loud areas, by the distinctive call that each penguin makes.
Little penguins have one call that changes to mean different things.
Most calls have a rhythm of two repeated sounds.
Little penguins are the only penguin species that breeds nocturnally - that is, at night.
At Phillip Island off the coast of Victoria, there is a "Penguin Parade" where lights and viewing stands have been set up so that people can watch the penguins return to their homes at dusk.
Over 500,000 visitors from around the world visit each year.
Lithium carbonate is a chemical compound.
Its chemical formula is Li2CO3.
It contains lithium and carbonate ions.
Lithium carbonate is a white solid.
It dissolves in water, although not as much as sodium carbonate.
It reacts with acids to make carbon dioxide.
It can react with carbon dioxide temporarily to make the bicarbonate.
It can be made by mixing lithium oxide or lithium hydroxide and carbon dioxide.
Lithium carbonate is used in various medications for treating bipolar disorder.
It is also used in fireworks to make a bright red color.
It is used in processing metal oxides.
It can be used to make glass.
It is used to glaze ceramics.
It can also be used to dry cement.
It is used in making lithium ion batteries.
It is used in carbon dioxide detectors.
Lithium carbonate is somewhat toxic.
It is a base, and reacts with strong acids.
The Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos.
Its function was to hold the Minotaur, which was eventually killed by the hero Theseus.
Daedalus had so cleverly made the Labyrinth that he could barely escape it after he built it.
Pliny 's Natural History mentions four ancient labyrinths: the Cretan labyrinth, an Egyptian labyrinth, a Lemnian labyrinth, and an Italian labyrinth.
Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. (usually just called Lamborghini) is an Italian car company.
It produces sports cars.
Lamborghini was founded in 1963 by Ferruccio Lamborghini.
He became rich building Tractors after the Second World War.
He founded Lamborghini because he wanted to build a good touring car to compete against the cars of makers such as Ferrari.
In 1963 he released a first prototype of his ideal sports car, the 350 GTV.
One year later Lamborghini started with the production of their first car for sale, the 350 GT.
At the beginning of the 1970s, Lamborghini had financial problems because of the worldwide oil crisis.
After these problems, Lamborghini had several different owners from 1987 until 1994, including Chrysler.
Audi took over Lamborghini in 1998.
This was the first production car made by Lamborghini.
It was made from 1964 until 1967.
It is a two-door coup with two seats.
It has a V12 engine in the front of the car.
The engine produced 206 kW.
The Miura was the third car made by Lamborghini.
It also had a V12 engine, but the engine was in the middle of the car, which was a new idea in its time.
It was also one of the fastest cars of its time, with a top speed of 295 kph.
The Countach is one of the most famous Lamborghinis.
It was also the one which was built for the longest time, 16 years, from 1974 till 1990.
There were several different versions.
They all had V12 engines with a power ranging from 260 to 355 kW.
The Diablo was named after a famous fighting bull and also after the Spanish word for Devil.
It was the last car made by Lamborghini before Audi took over.
The Murci lago (Murci lago is Spanish for bat) was the first car made under the ownership of Audi.
It was built from 2001 until 2010.
It had a V12 engine which produced between 426 and 493 kw.
The Lamborghini Revent n is a special edition of this car.
The Gallardo was first seen at the 2003 Geneva Motorshow.
It was a competitor for the Ferrari F430.
It was an entry-level model for Lamborghini.
It had a V10 engine from Audi which offered between 368 and 419 kW.
During its production time from 2003 until 2013, there were several special editions, including a version for the Italian Police.
The Aventador has a V12 engine powered by Hewitt, Clint, and Seymour.
It was released in 2011.
It replaced the Murci lago.
Its engine produces 515 kW.
The Hurac n is the most recent car by Lamborghini.
It is the successor to the Gallardo.
It has a V10 engine, which produces 449 kW.
Light pollution is a type of pollution.
It is defined as any adverse (or bad) effect as a result of man-made lights.
Usually, this means too much light.
Several species, including plants and humans, are badly affected by light pollution.
Most people have never heard of light pollution, and those who have usually don t care, or do anything about it.
Light pollution costs Americans billions of dollars every year.
Sky glow usually has more of an effect on the environment than light trespass and glare, but all of them are a major problem to people today.
Sky glow is the kind of light pollution that prevents people from seeing stars and other deep-space objects.
This causes birds to not be able to migrate to the right place because they can not follow the moon and stars.
Sky glow also prevents astronomers from seeing dim objects.
Light trespass is when light being used by a person goes into the property of another.
Though light trespass is not an environmental issue, it is still light pollution.
The third kind of light pollution, glare has different kinds.
The first, disability glare, is the loss of visibility because of too many lights.
Discomfort glare is when the lights cause pain.
Light pollution stops migrating birds of having any way of seeing the moon and stars, they need to use to nagivate the direciton of their migration, therefore not being able to migrate to the correct place.
Also, sea turtles do not come to shore and nest as often, because they are afraid of the lights.
It also affects animals eyes as a flash of camera weakens the eyesight of animals.
Glare causes sleep problems in humans.
Too much light in an apartment shining in from a nearby billboard will disturb their sleep.
Also science is being affected by light pollution.
Astronomers have no way of observing, or making discoveries with too much light to block the night sky.
It also causes headache as when light directly falls into our eyes and affects the sensory nerves.
There are now several groups that are trying to prevent light pollution.
Light pollution first made news in 1964, when an observatory was specially placed just to avoid light pollution.
However, it wasn t brought to the attention of most people until June 6, 2002, when the Czech Republic passed the world s first light pollution law.
Since then, light pollution is slowly being recognized by the general public as a major problem.
You can lower the amount of light pollution by having lights off when they are not needed.
You can also shield yourself from this pollution by putting curtains on a window facing the street or any other disturbing light source.
A lucid dream is a dream where the person knows that they are dreaming.
The person can then try to control things in the dream because it is not real.
In a lucid dream, it is possible to do anything the dreamer wants, such as flying.
Some people have lucid dreams for spiritual reasons, but they can also be used for fun or to stop bad dreams.
Although some people can have lucid dreams without trying, most people do not have them often.
It is important to be able to remember dreams, because if the dreamer does not remember them, he or she will not know if they were lucid dreams or not.
Remembering dreams becomes easier if they are written in a dream diary upon waking up.
There are some ways that help make lucid dreams more likely.
Stephen LaBerge, a psychologist who studies lucid dreams, made the MILD (mnemonic induction of lucid dreaming) technique.
To do this, the dreamer must wake up after having a dream, and visualise himself or herself being in the dream again, except now knowing it is a dream.
The dreamer should think "the next time I am dreaming, I want to remember I am dreaming", and should concentrate on this while returning to sleep.
There are many other ways to help someone lucid dream.
One other way is to fall asleep while keeping the mind awake.
This is called the WILD (wake induced lucid dreaming) technique.
It is easiest to perform after waking up from a few hours of sleep.
A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that produces light from electricity.
LEDs last a long time and do not break easily (compared to incandescent lightbulbs).
They can produce many different colors.
They are efficient - most of the energy makes light, not heat.
An LED is a type of diode that makes one color of light when electricity is sent through it in the expected direction (electrically biased in the forward direction).
This effect is a kind of electroluminescence.
The color of the light depends on the chemical composition of the semiconducting material used, and can be near-ultraviolet, visible or infrared.
The color affects how much electricity is used by the LED.
A white LED has either two or three LEDs inside, of different colors.
Some white LEDs have one single-color LED inside, combined with a phosphor that converts that single color to white.
LEDs are used in many places.
They are the colored indicator lights on many electronic devices, they can be used to make bright advertising signs, brake lights on a car, in TVs and more recently, light bulbs for the home.
White LEDs bright enough to illuminate rooms are usually more expensive than regular lightbulbs but they last longer and burn less electricity.
LEDs, which make their own light, should not be confused with LCDs, which block light.
Todays LEDs can also base on surface-mount technology and may be very small.
Nikolay Zheludev 2007.
The life and times of the LED a 100-year history.
Nature Photonics.
1, 189 192..
is a full-text version.
Luxembourgish is a West Germanic language.
A lot of people in Luxembourg speak the language.
It is quite similar to German and French.
Outside Luxembourg, not many people speak it, and inside Luxembourg many people speak other languages, too.
A lunar eclipse is an astronomical phenomenon.
It happens when the moon passes through the shadow of the Earth which can only occur during a full moon.
Lunar eclipses happen about twice a year and can be seen from a much larger portion of the Earth compared to solar eclipses.
Lunar eclipses can last for a few hours, but solar eclipses may last only a few minutes.
During a lunar eclipse, the Moon looks red-brown.
It may be thought that the Moon is completely black because of the Earth 's shadow, but the reddish-brown color is because of the fact that some of the Sun 's light bends through the Earth 's atmosphere and reflects off the moon.
Like solar eclipses, there are different types of lunar eclipses.
There are total eclipses, where the moon passes completely through Earth 's shadow and all of the moon appears reddish-brown.
A partial eclipse occurs when only part of the moon passes through Earth 's shadow and so only part of the moon appears reddish-brown.
Lunar eclipses are safe to view with just your eyes and also with telescopes.
The lanthanide (or lanthanoid) series is a group of 15 elements that have atomic numbers 57 to 71.
This group starts from lanthanum and it ends at lutetium.
All lanthanoids are f-block elements, meaning that electrons fill the 4f electron shell, except for lutetium which is a d-block lanthanoid.
The lanthanoid series (Ln) is named after lanthanum.
Lanthanoids are metals that are related to each other in how they behave.
Most of them slowly turn into their hydroxides when they are placed into water, like the alkali metals.
They usually form a coating of oxide when placed in the air, like most metals.
Lanthanides, with Scandium and Yttrium, are called rare earth elements.
Lucifer is another name for Satan.
This is because people interpret a passage in the Book of Isaiah of the Bible in a certain way.
Lucifer is Latin.
It is made of two parts, lux-lucis (light) and ferre (to bring).
There are two mentions of Lucifer in the Latin Vulgate.
It is used to refer to the morning star, the planet Venus that appears at dawn: once in to translate the Greek word"" (Phosphoros), which has exactly the same literal meaning of "Light-Bringer" that "Lucifer" has in Latin; and once in to translate"" (H l l), which also means "Morning Star".
The star of Venus, called in Greek and Lucifer in Latin when it precedes, Hesperos when it follows the sun.
Poets also used the word "Lucifer".
Ovid has at least eleven mentions of the Morning Star in his poetry.
Virgil wrote:
Lucifer is very evil in the Christian religion.
He is also the symbol for not obeying.
Lucifer is believed by some to be Satan 's name when he was still an angel, but it is Latin for ` light bringer ' and not originally in the Bible.
The word Lucifer was also used in Latin to mean the "morningstar", the planet Venus, and this word was used in the Latin version of Isaiah 14, where the Hebrew version was speaking to a king of Babylonia.
The reason people came to think this was a name of Satan has been argued about for many years.
Some people think that it is a misnomer, or a wrongly given name.
Others believe that he was the best out of all the angels before he rebelled against God.
There is no Lucifer in Hebrew.
The Jewish scholars do not know who this Lucifer that was put in the KJV.
It should not be used since this statement in Isaiah 14:12.
Thus Lucifer is not an evil character in the Bible.
That is just misinformation.
Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901 July 6, 1971) nicknamed Satchmo or Pops was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana.
He sang the blues and played the trumpet and the cornet.
He was famous in many countries.
He was also known for his good singing voice.
Armstrong won many awards during his career.
He died of a heart attack in July 6, 1971 in Corona, Queens, New York City.
Long Island is a large island in New York.
It is the longest and largest island in the mainland United States.
The island has four counties: Queens and Brooklyn in the west are boroughs of New York City, Nassau County is in the central area, and Suffolk County in the east.
To the north is Long Island Sound and to the south is the Atlantic Ocean.
The East River separates Long Island from Manhattan island and the Bronx mainland.
The island is a terminal moraine left by glaciers during the ice ages.
The 2000 census counted 7,448,618, people living on Long Island, making it the most populated island in all of the United States, and more populated than Ireland and Jamaica.
Long Island is in the eastern time zone.
The term "Long Island" often refers only to the mostly suburban counties of Nassau and Suffolk because Brooklyn and Queens are part of New York City.
Lake Toba is a lake in the caldera of a supervolcano.
The lake is 100 kilometres long and 30 kilometres wide, and 505 metres (1,666 ft) at its deepest point.
It is in the middle of the northern part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra with an elevation of about 900 m. The lake stretches from to.
It is the largest lake in Indonesia and the largest volcanic lake in the world.
A lens is a clear (transparent) object (like glass, plastic or even a drop of water) that changes the way things look by bending the light that goes through it.
They may make things appear larger, smaller, or upside-down.
Some places lenses are used include spectacles (eyeglasses), contact lenses, cameras, projectors, microscopes, telescopes, magnifying glasses, etc..
Each eye also has a lens.
They work by refraction, or the bending of light.
Lenses have three main shapes.
Each different shape changes the image (making it bigger or smaller).
The three types are:
The word "lens" comes from the Latin word for "lentil," because the earliest convex lenses in common use were shaped like the bean.
The oldest written record of lenses is in the ancient Greek play by Aristophanes called "Clouds", where lenses were used with sunlight to make fire.
Galileo Galilei is commonly believed to have used lenses to make the first known refracting telescope.
However, he merely adapted and improved a design he learned from Dutch lensmakers such as Hans Lippershey.
He was probably the first to use telescopes to make accurate astronomical observations, though.
Lexus is a luxury car line produced by the Toyota company.
Its worldwide motto is "The Pursuit of Perfection" Its slogan in the United States is "The Passionate Pursuit of Perfection".
This brand of vehicle is newer than others.
It was founded in 1989.
The article about graphical symbols is at Logo Logo is a programming language that is easy to learn.
It is used to teach students and children to program a computer.
It was developed to process lists of words.
It was like the language LISP.
In 1967, the first Logo ran on a mainframe computer, a machine called a teletype was used to type in and printout the results.
There was no screen.
In 1969, it was used to control a Floor Turtle.
Commands were added to send the turtle forwards and backwards, and to turn the turtle to left or right.
This turtle had pen with different colors.
When it moved, it left a trail on the floor.
When a new version of Logo was developed to draw graphics on a screen, it used the same commands.
This was called Turtle graphics.
There are 170 versions of Logo.
Many of them are open source and free.
There are three Logo textbooks that can be downloaded free.
Logo is usually an interpreted language.
Load the Logo program.
Type the next line in the command box.
print (Hello World!)
The computer replies.
Hello World!
A spiral drawn using recursion.
Using the editor, type in this new definition.
to spiral: size if: size) 30 (stop); a condition stop fd: size rt 15; many lines of action spiral: size \* 1.02; the tailend recursive call end Type this in the command box.
spiral 10
On the screen you will see.
Lundy is an island off the coast of Devon, England, UK.
It has a very small population.
In the 1930s the owner sold stamps and coins as if Lundy was an independent country.
You can hire cottages on this island to stay in for a week or so.
You can get to Lundy by helicopter or a ferry in the summer.
Lombok (population 2,950,105 in 2005) is an island in West Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia.
It is to the east of Bali on the other side of the Lombok Strait.
The capital and largest city on the island is Mataram.
The Gili Islands are very popular with tourists.
There are many places to dive and the beaches are lovely.
Mount Rinjani, 3,726 m (12,224 ft), is the third-highest volcano in Indonesia.
Lego, also called LEGO, is a type of building toy created and made by the Lego Group, a company in Denmark.
"Lego Bricks" are colorful plastic building blocks that can be joined together easily.
Lego blocks are joined together by studs on the top, and holes in the bottom of the brick commonly known as the stud-and-tube connection.
LEGO is the most popular building toy in the world.
The Lego company was started by Ole Kirk Christiansen a Danish toy maker in 1935.
Christiansen made wooden toys for children.
He made and sold his first plastic Lego set in the 1940s.
Since then, Lego toys have become very popular and are known and loved by people around the world.
Lego bricks come in many shapes and sizes.
There are wheels, car screens, and plants.
Lego bricks can be joined together in many ways.
Vehicles, buildings and even robots can all be built with Lego bricks.
Almost all the blocks from Lego sets can fit together.
New blocks made today can fit with old blocks made years ago.
The blocks can join together no matter which set they come from.
Lego has become so popular that people sometimes use the word "Lego" to talk about any sort of building blocks.
There are millions of LEGO fans and conventions around the world
Many LEGO video games are being created for different video game systems.
LEGO video games usually come from LEGO themes, such as LEGO Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones.
Lego Star Wars is a famous theme and it has three video games.
A new game Harry Potter is a video game which came out before the new Harry Potter theme but made after the old Harry Potter.
LEGO Star Wars 1 and 2 are some of the best selling video games and are about to get a new version of LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars.
In LEGO Clone Wars, you can play as most of your favorite characters, like Rex, Yoda, Cody, and a lot of others.
Also, you can face fearsome monsters like the Rancor.
The newest game from LEGO is LEGO Universe, a massively multi-player online game.
new games for the movie will be loaded with legos.
There has been a Lego game that is very popular Lego Dimensions.
The starter pack is expensive but the game is very popular.
The fun packs are the cheapest pack to extend the game.
The level and team packs are the expensive packs.
A Lego Cartoon Network show Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu was aired from 2011 until the show 's end in 2012.
A second Cartoon Network Lego show aired in 2013.
A 2014 Lego movie (The Lego Movie) stars Chris Pratt, Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks, Morgan Freeman, Will Ferrell, and Liam Neeson.
The movie was released on February 7, 2014.
The Hlai or Li are an ethnic group living primarily on the island of Hainam, off the southern coast of mainland China and just east of Vietnam.
The Hlai are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the Chinese government.
The Hlai were known to the Sui Dynasty Chinese by the name Liliao.
Presently they refer to themselves as the Hlai or Sai people.
The ethnic group is called L in Mandarin and Lai in Cantonese.
The Hlai people have their own language.
Some dialects of the Hlai language are too different from each other for people to mutually understand each other.
The Hlai language is distantly related to languages such as Thai, Lao, and Cuengh.
The Hlai language did not have a writing system before the 1950s, when the Latin alphabet was adopted.
Some to most Hlai people nowadays can understand Mandarin and Hainanese.
Lycos is a search engine and web portal centered around broadband entertainment content.
Luton Town Football Club are an English football club that are based in Luton in the county of Bedfordshire.
They started in 1885 and play their home games at a stadium called Kenilworth Road.
Lake Eyre (pronounced "air") is the lowest point in Australia, at about 15 m below sea level.
When it fills with water, it is the largest lake in Australia, being 144 k long and 77 k wide.
It is also in the driest part of Australia, getting only about 100 m of rain each year.
It is in the north of South Australia, about 700 k north of Adelaide.
The lake was named after the explorer, Edward Eyre, who was the first Europen to see it in 1840.
It is the center of the Lake Eyre National Park.
Lake Eyre is in the driest desert region of central Australia.
It is a large endorheic lake system, which means that the water flows in, but does not flow out.
As the water evaporates, the lake dries up leaving a dry salt lake.
The lake does not usually completely dry up, there is often water in small areas on the lake surface.
The rate that the water dries up is 2.5 m per year, that is about 20 times more than the rainfall in the area.
During the wet season the rivers from Queensland flow towards the lake through the Channel Country.
These rivers drain about one sixth of Australia, an area the size of Spain.
How much water reaches the lake depends on how rain falls in Queensland.
Since 1885 the lake has filled in 1886\/1887, 1889\/1890, 1916\/1917, 1950, 1955 and 1974-1976.
In 1974 Lake Eyre was 6 m deep.
Local rain filled Lake Eyre to 3.5 m in 1984 and 1989.
Very heavy rain in January 2007 took about six weeks to reach the lake but put only a small amount of water into it.
In February 2009, water from flooding rains in Queensland were flowing along the creeks to the lake covering about 40 km per day.
The lake fills to about 1.5 m every three years, to 4 m, every ten years, and fills up about four times every 100 years.
When Lake Eyre is full, the water is almost fresh and native fresh water fish can live in it.
The lake becomes saltier as the 450 m salt crust dissolves over six months.
This kills millions of fish.
When about 4m deep the Lake is as salty as the sea.
It becomes more salty as the water evaporates.
At about 500mm depth the Lake becomes a "pink" color because of a beta-carotene pigment made by the algae Dunaliella salina.
Beaches made by wave action suggest that during the Medieval Warm Period Lake Eyre possibly held permanent water at levels above those of 1974.
The local Aboriginal people, the Arabunna people, have stories that explain the creation of Lake Eyre.
These stories are part of their sacred traditions, and are only told to initiated people.
Fresh water fish found in the full lake include boney bream (Nematolosa erebi), the Lake Eyre Basin sub-species of golden perch (Macquaria ambigua) and various small hardyhead species (Craterocephalus spp).
The Lake Eyre hardyhead, can live in water up to 15 times saltier than the ocean.
When there is water more than 8 million birds, from more than 60 different species, flock to the lake.
The pelicans are usually the first to arrive, followed by silver gulls, hoary headed grebes, Australasian grebes, cormorants, ducks, banded stilts, kites, falcons and wedge tailed eagles.
Scientists still do not know how the birds know when the lake holds water.
There is also a lizard, the Lake Eyre Dragon, Ctenophorus maculosus, that lives in the cool mud below the salt crust of the lake.
The Lake Eyre Yacht Club is a small group of people who sail on the lake 's floods, including recent trips in 1997, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2009.
A number of 6 m Trailer Sailers sailed on Lake Eyre in 1975, 1976 and 1984 when the flood depth reached 3 6 m.
The salt crust on the lake is not thick and can break like glass under a person 's weight.
At Level Post Bay, the crust is more than one metre thick, and because of its flat surface it has been the site for various land speed record attempts.
In 1964, British driver, Sir Donald Campbell, set a new record of 664 k, in the Bluebird-Proteus CN7.
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, OM (12 November 1842 30 June 1919) was an English Physicist.
He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904.
He discovered argon and Rayleigh scattering.
A lunisolar calendar is a calendar that shows both the phases of the moon and the days of the solar year.
Laconia is one of 51 prefectures of Greece.
It is on the Peloponnese peninsula.
The capital of Laconia is Sparta.
Other meanings are at Limburg Limburg an der Lahn (Limburg on the Lahn river) is a German town and the capital of the Kreis Limburg-Weilburg in the west of Hesse.
Lyonel Charles Feininger (July 17, 1871 January 13, 1956) was a German-American painter.
He also drew cartoons (caricaturist).
Lyonel Feininger 's father was the German violinist Karl Feininger.
His mother was the American singer Elizabeth Feininger.
Feininger grew up in New York City.
Feininger married Clara F rst, the daughter of the painter Gustav F rst.
They had two daughters.
He also had several children with Julia Berg whom he later married.
His sons, Andreas Feininger and T. Lux Feininger, both became artists.
Andreas was a photographer and T. Lux became a photographer and a painter.
He moved to Berlin in 1887 to study at the K nigliche Akademie Berlin under Ernst Hancke.
Then he studied at art schools in Berlin with Karl Schlabitz, and in Paris with sculptor Filippo Colarossi.
He started as a caricaturist in 1894 for several German, French and American magazines.
These included Harper 's Round Table, Harper 's Young People, Humoristische Bl tter, Lustige Bl tter, Das Narrenschiff, Berliner Tageblatt and Ulk.
In February of 1906, James Keeley, editor of The Chicago Tribune traveled to Germany.
He was looking for artists to draw cartoons for his newspaper.
He recruited Feininger to draw two comic strips ("The Kin-der-Kids" and "Wee Willie Winkie 's World") for the Chicago Tribune.
People liked the comic strips for their humor and experimental drawing style.
Fenininger also worked as a commercial caricaturist for 20 years for various newspapers and magazines in both the USA and Germany.
Later, Art Spiegelman wrote in The New York Times Book Review, that Feininger 's comics have achieved a breathtaking formal grace unsurpassed in the history of the medium.
Feininger 's art was chosen to be a part of the annual Berlin Secession art show in the years 1901 through 1903.
Feininger started to work as a fine artist at the age of 36.
He was a member of the Berliner Sezession in 1909.
He was associated with expressionist group Die Br cke, the Novembergruppe, Gruppe 1919, the Blaue Reiter circle and The Blue Four.
When Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Germany in 1919, Feininger became the master artist in charge of the printmaking workshop.
He designed the cover for the Bauhaus 1919 manifesto: an expressionist woodcut ` cathedral '.
He taught at the Bauhaus for several years.
Among the students who attended his workshops were Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (German\/Australian, 1893 1965), Hans Friedrich Grohs (German 1892 - 1981) and Margarete Koehler-Bittkow (German\/American, 1898 1964)
In 1933, the Nazi Party came to power in Germany.
Feininger 's wife was partly Jewish, and they decided to leave Germany.
The Nazi Party declared his work to be "degenerate."
They moved to America after his work was exhibited in the ` degenerate art ' (Entartete Kunst) in 1936, but before the 1937 exhibition in Munich.
After moving to the United States, Feininger taught at Black Mountain College.
In addition to drawing, Feininger created art with painted toy figures being photographed in front of drawn backgrounds.
Feininger also worked sometimes as a pianist and composer.
Music historians still keep several of Feininger 's piano compositions and fugues for organ.
Life is a biological concept regarding the characteristic, state, or mode that separates a living thing from dead matter.
The word itself may refer to a living being or ongoing processes of which living things are a part of.
It may also refer to the period during which something is functional (as between birth and death), the condition of an entity that has been born but yet has to die or that which makes a living thing alive.
The study of life is called biology and people who study life are biologists.
A lifespan is the average length of life in a species.
All known life on Earth is powered by solar energy.
Without energy from the sun no life could exist.
All life on Earth is based on the chemistry of carbon compounds, specifically involving long-chain molecules such as proteins and nucleic acid.
With water, which is essential, the long molecules are wrapped inside membranes to form cells.
This may or may not be true of all possible forms of life in the Universe: it is true of all life on Earth today.
Living organisms are open systems.
They are always changing, because they exchange materials and information with their environment.
They undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, possess a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli and reproduce.
Through natural selection, they adapt to their environment in successive generations.
More complex living organisms can communicate through various means.
Many life forms can be found on Earth.
The properties common to these organisms plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria are a carbon and water-based cellular form with complex organization and heritable genetic information.
At present, the Earth is the only planet we have detailed information about.
The question of whether life exists elsewhere in the Universe is open.
There have been a number of claims of life elsewhere in the Universe.
None of these have been confirmed so far.
The best evidence of life outside of Earth is are nucleic acids that have been found in certain types of meteorites.
One explanation of life is called the cell theory.
The cell theory has three basic points: All living things are made up of cells.
The cell is the smallest living thing that can do all the things needed for life.
All cells must come from pre-existing cells.
However, not all living things fit every point on this list.
They do, however, fit the biochemical definitions: they are made of the same kind of chemicals.
The thermodynamic definition of life is any system which can keep its entropy levels below maximum (usually through adaptation and mutations).
Roth commented that "In short, organisms are self-reproducing and self-maintaining, or ` autopoietic ', systems".
This approach makes use of molecular biology ideas and systems science ideas.
Laminar flow is characterized by the smooth flow of a liquid.
This tends to happen at low velocities when there are few disturbances, such as in a straight, smooth pipe.
In laminar flow through a pipe, it is assumed that the velocity of the fluid is zero at the boundaries of the pipe and is at a maximum in the center; mathematically, the velocity profile is parabolic.
Microscopically, the particles or pieces of the liquid flow in a straight line along the direction of the pipe and do not mix with other layers of fluid.
The layers slide past one another like playing cards.
This is in contrast to turbulent flow, when a fluid swirls around.
Even though there is no mixing, there is still some friction in the flow.
This friction will cause a pressure drop and its numerical value is given by the Hagen-Poiseuille equation.
Luanda is the capital and the largest city of Angola.
Its former name was Loanda.
It is a main seaport of the country on the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1995, about 3 million people lived there.
It is a center of manufacturing, but very destroyed because of a long civil war.
It was founded by Portuguese in 1575 as S o Paulo de Luanda and has been the administrative center of Angola since 1627 (except for 1640 1648).
When Angola got independence in 1975, it became the capital of Angola.
The Lorentz transformations is a set of equations that describe a linear transformation between a stationary reference frame and a reference frame in constant velocity.
The equations are given by
Luminiferous aether is something once believed to fill the Universe and explain how the transmission of waves of light can happen.
People believed that light was a kind of wave.
Waves travel over the surface of water in a pond, through the air in a room, etc..
All waves that people had studied before had traveled through something.
Sound waves traveled faster through steel than through air.
So people imagined that light had to travel through something too.
Since light travels faster than anything else, light should travel through something more rigid (like steel) faster than anything else.
But at the same time this substance would have to be entirely yielding so that it would not slow down the movements of planets and cause them to eventually fall into their suns.
The people coming before Albert Einstein believed this stuff to exist, and they called it the "Luminiferous aether."
If we were traveling on a boat moving through an ocean current, then we could see changes in the rate that waves appeared to travel depending on whether we were moving with the current, across the current, or against the current.
People who studied the physics of this problem made experiments to try to make this question become clear.
The Michelson-Morley Experiment showed that there was no substance through which light traveled.
This negative result was a great success for science.
It took down one untrue belief that stood in our way of true understanding.
It said that there is no luminiferous aether.
The easiest way to see the general idea is to imagine a very fast spaceship moving at one half the speed of light from one star to another.
The spaceship has two light-speed meters, one pointing backward and one pointing forward.
Since the spaceship is running away from the photons given off by the yellow star, and running toward the photons given off by the blue star, our ordinary experience leads us to expect that we would measure the speed of the yellow photons as 150,000 kilometers per second, and the speed of the blue photons as 450,000 kilometers per second.
But the truth is that both photons are measured at 300,000 km\/sec.
That result indicates that speeds do not add up the way we ordinarily expect speeds to add together.
Albert Einstein made a basic change in how we understand things.
He said that light always moves at 300,000 km\/sec and we just have to accept that fact.
If we do, then we will find that everything else makes sense.
If we do not accept that fact, then we will have to make up explanations for all sorts of inconsistencies.
We do not need the hypothesis of the luminiferous aether.
A recent study is much more precise than the one by Michelson and Morley, but it still shows that the speed of light is constant no matter which direction one is moving in.
The Dimension of a given vector space is the number of elements of the basis.
B is a basis of.
It 's easy to see that for any element of it can be represented as a combination of the above basis.
Let be any element of, lets say
Since and are elements of then they can be written as and so on.
Linear algebra is a branch of mathematics.
It came from mathematicians trying to solve systems of linear equations.
Vectors and matrices are used to solve these systems.
The main objects of study currently are vector spaces and linear mappings between vector spaces.
Linear algebra is useful in other branches of mathematics (e.g. differential equations and analytic geometry).
It can also be applied to the real world in areas such as engineering, physics and economics.
Linear algebra describes ways to solve and manipulate (rearrange) systems of linear equations.
These two equations form a system of linear equations.
It is linear because none of the variables are raised to a power.
The graph of a linear equation in two variables is a straight line.
since it makes all of the original equations valid, that is, the value on left side of the equals sign is exactly the same as the value on the right side for both equations.
Linear algebra uses a system of notation for describing system behavior, called a matrix.
For the previous example, the coefficients of the equations can be stored in a coefficient matrix.
Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (27 January 1836 9 March 1895) was an Austrian writer and journalist, who became famous for his romantic stories about Galician life.
The word masochism comes from his name.
During his lifetime, Sacher-Masoch was known as a thinker who supported socialist and humanist ideas in his writing, both his stories and his letters.
Most of his works have not been translated into English.
The novel Venus in Furs is the only one of his books that can be commonly found in English.
Von Sacher-Masoch was born in what is now Lviv, Ukraine.
His father was a Austrian police director with Spanish ancestry, and his mother was Charlotte von Masoch, a Ukrainian noblewoman.
He began learning German at age 12.
He studied law, history and mathematics at Graz University.
After he finished his study, Sacher-Masoch moved back to Lemberg where he became a professor.
His early writing was mainly non-fiction works about Austrian history.
At the same time, Sacher-Masoch began looking into the stories of his homeland, Galicia.
Soon he stopped lecturing to write stories and letters.
Within ten years, his short stories and novels became more famous than his historical non-fiction works, though his fiction had history in it.
Sacher-Masoch was especially interested in capturing stories of the different ethnicities that lived in Galicia.
From the 1860s to the 1880s, he collected many volumes of Jewish Short Stories, Polish Short Stories, Galician Short Stories, German Court Stories and Russian Court Stories.
His works were translated into Ukrainian, Russian and French.
They were very popular in Ukraine.
In 1869 Sacher-Masoch wrote a large number of short stories under the group title Legacy of Cain.
These stories showed his view on life and the world.
Six volumes were planned, but only the first two were ever completed.
By the middle of the 1880s, Masoch had abandoned the Legacy of Cain.
Despite this, the published volumes of the series included his best-known stories, including Venus in Furs (1869) which is the most famous today.
The short novel expressed Sacher-Masoch 's fantasies and fetishes, which he tried to live out with his mistresses and wives.
Sacher-Masoch edited the monthly literary magazine Auf der H he.
Internationale Review (At the Pinnacle.
International Review), which was published in Leipzig from October, 1881 to September, 1885.
This was a magazine aimed at helping Jews in Saxony become part of the community, as well supporting women 's rights with articles on women 's education and suffrage.
In his later years, he worked against local antisemitism through an association called the Oberhessischer Verein f r Volksbildung (OVV), which he founded in 1893 with his second wife, Hulda Meister.
Lithography (from Greek - lithos, ` stone ' + - graph, ` to write ') is a method for printing using a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal (steel or aluminium) plate with a completely smooth surface.
Lithography was invented in 1796 by Bavarian author Alois Senefelder as a low-cost method of publishing theatrical works.
Lithography can be used to print text or artwork onto paper or other suitable material.
Lithography originally used an image drawn in wax or other oily substance applied to a lithographic stone as the medium to transfer ink to the printed sheet.
In modern times, the image is often made of polymer applied to a flexible aluminium plate.
The flat surface of the plate or stone is slightly roughened, or etched, and divided into hydrophilic (= water-loving) regions that accept a film of water and repel the greasy ink, and hydrophobic regions which repel water and accept ink.
The image may be printed directly from the stone or plate (in which case it is reversed from the original image) or may be offset by transfer to a flexible sheet, usually rubber, for transfer to the printed article.
This process is different from gravure or intaglio printing where a plate is engraved, etched or stippled to make cavities to contain the printing ink, and in woodblock printing and letterpress where ink is applied to the raised surfaces of letters or images.
In the early days of lithography, a smooth piece of limestone was used (hence the name "lithography" "lithos" (-RRB- is the ancient Greek word for stone).
After the oil-based image was put on the surface, a solution of gum arabic in water was applied, the gum sticking only to the non-oily surface.
During printing, water adhered to the gum arabic surfaces and avoided the oily parts, while the oily ink used for printing did the opposite.
Chromolithography (color lithography) was invented by Engelmann and son, who were granted a patent in 1837.
After that, it was a matter of time before it reached full commercial development.
By using more than one stone, different colors can be added to the same picture.
Each color needs a separate stone.
The great posters of such artists as Alphonse Mucha and Toulouse-Lautrec are made like this.
Complicated graphics may need twenty or more stones.
Lee Marvin (February 19, 1924 August 29, 1987), was an American actor.
Marvin was born in New York City, United States.
He began his career with small roles in western movies such as Cave of Outlaws (1951), The Duel at Silver Creek (1952), with Audie Murphy, and Seminole (1953), with Rock Hudson.
He was also in The Caine Mutiny (1954) with Humphrey Bogart.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Marvin continued to act in small roles in westerns, including: Seven Men from Now (1956), with Randolph Scott, The Comancheros (1961), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), with John Wayne.
In 1965 Marvin won an Academy Award for the Western Comedy movie, Cat Ballou (1965).
He played a nice drunken cowboy.
He acted with Burt Lancaster in The Professionals (1966), by Richard Brooks.
His became well known after playing the role of Major Reisman, in the Robert Aldrich movie The Dirty Dozen (1967).
That same year, he starred in Point Blank.
At the end of the decade from 1960 Marvin had popular movies including Hell in the Pacific (1968) and Paint Your Wagon (1969), with Clint Eastwood.
In 1973 he had one of his best performances in Emperor of the North Pole (1973).
He plays a drifter who often stows away on trains.
In 1974 he played a sheriff, who must deal with racism in The Klansman by Terence Young.
In his later years, he worked with Chuck Norris in The Delta Force (1986).
Marvin also had a successful career in television.
He was in the television series M Squad (1957-1960), as Detective Lt. Frank Ballinger.
He was in 117 episodes in this series.
He was a guest star on many series.
These include Wagon Train, Ben Casey, Bonanza, The Virginian, The Untouchables, The Twilight Zone and Dr. Kildare.
He also played the role of Maj. John Reisman, in the TV movie The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (1985).
Lower Saxony is a German Bundesland (state).
The capital is Hannover (Hanover).
Other important towns are G ttingen, Hildesheim and Goslar.
Loch is a Gaelic word for lake.
It is commonly used in Scotland.
The ` ch ' at the end is pronounced with a guttural (back of throat) sound which does not occur in modern English.
There are also lochs in Ireland, and the word is sometimes used in other coutries.
The wors is used both for lakes, and for "narrow or landlocked arms of the sea" (OED).
Sometimes the term sea loch is used for saltwater lochs.
Many other lochs are normal freshwater lakes, like Loch Lomond.
Lung cancer is the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in one or both of the lungs.
Cigarette smoking causes most lung cancers when smoke gets in the lungs.
Lung cancer kills 1.3 million people each year, more than any other cancer.
It is currently the leading cause of cancer death in both men and women, it kills more women than breast cancer, ovarian cancer and uterine cancers together.
The large majority of people who get lung cancer have smoked for many years.
However, there are types of lung cancers that appear in otherwise healthy patients who have never smoked.
There are two main types of lung cancer, small cell lung cancer and non-small cell lung cancer.
Small cell lung cancer typically responds well to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and non-small cell lung cancer is more commonly treated with surgical removal of the lung tumor.
Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) account for about 85 % to 90 % of lung cancer cases.
There are three types of non-small cell lung cancer:
Lindisfarne (often called Holy Island), is a tidal island off the north-east coast of England.
It is connected to the mainland of Northumberland by a causeway and is cut off twice a day by tides something well described by Sir Walter Scott:
For with the flow and ebb, its style Varies from continent to isle; Dry shod o ` er sands, twice every day, The pilgrims to the shrine find way; Twice every day the waves efface Of staves and sandalled feet the trace.
According to the 2001 census it had a usual population of 162.
Large parts of the island, and all of the adjacent inter-tidal area, are protected as Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve to help safeguard the internationally important wintering bird populations.
Grey seals are frequent visitors to the rocky bays at high tide.
The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded by Irish-born Saint Aidan.
He was brought from Iona off the west coast of Scotland to Northumbria around AD 635 by King Oswald of Northumbria.
It became the base for Christian evangelising in the North of England and also sent a successful mission to Mercia.
Monks from the community of Iona settled on the island.
Northumberland 's patron saint, Saint Cuthbert, was a monk and later Abbot of the monastery, and his miracles and life are recorded by the Venerable Bede.
Cuthbert later became Bishop of Lindisfarne.
In the early 700s the famous illuminated manuscript known as the Lindisfarne Gospels (an illustrated Latin copy of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) was made, probably at Lindisfarne.
Later, a monk named Aldred added an Anglo-Saxon translation to the Latin text.
This made (late 10th century) the earliest surviving Old English copies of the Gospels.
In 793 a Viking raid on Lindisfarne scared many people throughout the Christian West.
The year 793 is often called the beginning of the age of Viking raids.
A very famous passage in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reads:
"In this year fierce, foreboding omens came over the land of Northumbria.
There were excessive whirlwinds, lightning storms, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky.
These signs were followed by great famine, and on January 8th of the same year, the ravaging of heathen men destroyed God 's church at Lindesfarne."
Eventually the monks fled the island.
They took with them the body of St Cuthbert, which is now buried at Durham Cathedral.
The priory was re-established in Norman times as a Benedictine house and continued until its dissolution in 1536 under Henry VIII.
It is now a ruin in the care of English Heritage, who also run a museum\/visitor center nearby.
The neighbouring parish church (see below) is still in use.
Lindisfarne also has the small castle, based on a Tudor fort and open to visitors.
J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Girtin and Charles Rennie Mackintosh all painted on Holy Island.
Literacy means the ability to read and write.
Being able to read and write is an important skill in modern societies.
Usually, people learn how to read and write at school.
People who can read and write are called literate; those who can not are called illiterate.
According to UNESCO, illiteracy is not being able to write or read a simple sentence in any language.
They estimated that, in 1998, about 16 % of the world 's population were illiterate.
Illiteracy is highest amongst the states of the Arabian Peninsula, and in Africa, around the Sahara.
In those countries about 30 % of men, and 40-50 % of women are illiterate, by the UN definition.
One of the causes of illiteracy is that someone who can manage to live without being able to read and write often does not have any reason to want to learn to read and write.
Cultural factors also play a part, such as having a culture in which the oral tradition (communicating by speaking) is more important than writing.
A tribe that mostly herds livestock, for example, may have no need to read or write.
In English the word literacy has traditionally meant to be well educated.
It also meant to be familiar with literature (to know about books).
In the late 19th century the word came to include the ability to read and write.
It still kept its larger meaning.
In modern usage, literacy also means being able to read print, visual, and sound texts.
To continue learning students must be literate in more than just reading and writing text.
Lysithea is a prograde non-spherical moon of Jupiter.
It was found by Seth Barnes Nicholson in 1938 at Mount Wilson Observatory and is named after the mythological Lysithea, daughter of Oceanus and one of Zeus ' lovers.
Lysithea did not get its present name until 1975; before then, it was simply known as '.
It was sometimes called "Demeter" from 1955 to 1975.
It belongs to the Himalia group, five moons orbiting between 11,000,000 and 13,000,000 km from Jupiter at an inclination of about 28.3.
Its orbital elements are as of January 2000.
They are changing a lot due to Solar and planetary perturbations.
Larissa is the capital city of the Thessaly periphery of Greece, and capital of the Larissa Prefecture.
Larissa is found in the north of the Thessaly plain near at the foot of the mountain Olympus.
Its population is 131,496 inhabitants.
Larissa is crossed by Pineios river.
The most interest sight in Larissa is the ancient theater which is located in the center of the city.
Lexeme is a term in linguistics.
They are units of meaning, independent of any inflectional endings, or whether it is one word or several.
"Come in" is a lexeme; so is "raining cats and dogs".
The largest English dictionaries have about half a million lexemes.
"The true figure is undoubtedly a great deal higher".
In the English language, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, conventionally written as RUN.
A similar concept is the lemma (or citation form).
It is the form of a lexeme which is chosen to represent the lexeme, for example, RUN instead of the other forms.
Lemmas are used in dictionaries as the headwords.
Other forms of a lexeme are usually listed later in the entry.
So all headwords in a dictionary are lexemes.
A lexicon is made of lexemes.
The Lord 's Prayer is the best known prayer in the Christian religion.
It is also known as the Our Father (the first two words of the prayer) and Pater noster (which is Latin for "Our Father").
It was not until the Protestant Reformation that it was called the Lord 's Prayer.
The prayer is spoken in two places in the New Testament of the Bible (Matthew 6:9 -13 and Luke 11:1 -4).
Jesus ' disciples asked him how they should pray.
Jesus gave an example of how to pray to Father God.
The Bible has been translated into English several times.
Therefore, there are slightly different versions that are used.
The traditional and one of the best-known versions is the translation from the Book of Common Prayer (1662):
Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, For ever and ever.
Amen.
The Latin version has been very important in Church history.
It is given below: Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum.
Adveniat regnum tuum.
Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra.
Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris.
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo.
Amen.
The best known version of the text is found in Luke.
Its Greek language original is given below:,,,.
(-RRB- -LCB-.
Many composers have written musical scores of the prayer.
Some of them are:
Maybe the most modern version was done by S hne Mannheims in 2004.
The Love Parade was a big festival centered around Techno music.
The festival began in Berlin in 1989.
It had been held most years in different locations.
In 2004 and 2005, there were no Love Parades.
The first Love Parade was held with about 150 people in 1989.
In 1999, there were about 1.5 million people.
In 2007, there were 1.2 million people and in 2008, there were 1.6 million people.
The last Love Parade was held in 2010, at which 21 people were crushed to death.
There were also protest parades, like the Fuckparade in Berlin, and an Antiparade in Z rich.
The "Lost Generation" is a term used to describe a number of American writers and artists who went to live in Europe after the First World War.
People associated with the Lost Generation include Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and John Steinbeck.
The term has also been used more recently to describe those unable to find work after the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.
The writer and poet Gertrude Stein is often considered to have come up with the term She supposedly heard her French garage owner speak of his unskilled young workers as "une generation perdue" (a generation lost).
Ernest Hemingway then used the term in the introduction to his novel The Sun Also Rises.
The term is generally used for the period from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Great Depression.
After the First World War, members of the Lost Generation decided that they did not want to live a normal life in America.
They went to Europe, often Paris.
Away from America, the Lost Generation often drank heavily, had affairs and tried to find meaning in life.
The Lost Generation produced some of the finest writing of all time, and arguably created a new style of writing.
Latin America is a region of the Americas.
People do not completely agree which countries are in Latin America, but normally, it is the parts where Spanish and Portuguese are spoken (South America, Central America, and Mexico).
Sometimes the Caribbean Islands are also included.
Other people call all American countries where people speak Spanish, Portuguese, and French Latin America.
The words Latin America come from the use of languages that came from Latin.
The Spanish, Portuguese, and French languages, spoken by many people in Latin America, are Romance languages.
Romance languages are derived from Latin.
Not all people in Latin America speak Romance languages, some Latin American people speak Native American languages.
Most Latin Americans are Roman Catholic.
The population of Latin America comprises various ethnic groups and races, making this continent the most diverse in the world today.
The majority of Latin Americans are Mestizo (European-Native American); while some are dominated by Native Americans, others are dominated by people from Europe; and some others are Mulatto, Black, Zambo, and Asian.
European\/Whites are the largest single ethnic group, they and people of part-European makeup about as much as 80 % of the Latin American population, possibly even more.
The bottom chart is an accurate estimate, since all of these countries were tested for DNA genetics among the local people who have more than 3 generations in their home country of origin since the year 2000.
So regardless of age, anyone who was born before or after will be tested, but will only count with their ancestors for 3 generations before the year 2000.
Note: Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States.
Spanish and Portuguese are the dominant languages of Latin America.
Portuguese is only spoken in Brazil.
Spanish is the official language of the grand majority of Latin America mainland, as well as in Cuba, Puerto Rico (along with English), and the Dominican Republic.
Native American languages are widely spoken in Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia, Paraguay and Mexico, and to some extent, in Panama, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, and Argentina amongst other countries.
Other European languages spoken in Latin America include: English, by some in Puerto Rico, as well as other languages in other Latin American Countries.
African languages are also spoken by few in Latin America.
The west African Yoruba language (known as Lucumi) is spoken among the people of predominant Yoruba ancestry; it is spoken in Cuba where it is a ritual language used by the Santeria prayers.
In several nations, Creole languages are also spoken, especially in the Caribbean.
Palenquero is the Spanish-based Creole language spoken in Colombia by approximately lass than 3,000 people, it is Spanish but with a lot of African influences, and alittle Portuguese influences as well.
Creole languages have also been espablished elsewhere in the mainland of Latin America, but they all have the same roots with the blending of Spanish with either African or Indeginous languages, or sometimes even both.))
See Cuban Creole Oriental
According to some analysis, by 2050 the biggest economies in the world will be China (1), United States (2), India (3), Brazil (4), and Mexico (5).
Poverty continues to be one of the biggest challenges for Latin American countries.
According to estimates, Latin America is the most unequal regions of the world.
According to a Country Studies Institute the poorest countries in the region (in 2011) were: Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Honduras.
Undernourishment affects 72 % of Haitians, 60 % of Dominicans, 47 % of Nicaraguans and Bolivians, and 27 % of Hondurans.
Populations of below the poverty line; according to a Country Studies Institute, poverty affects over 90 % of Haitians, 84 % of Dominicans, 75 % of Bolivians, 70 % of Nicaraguans, and 63 % of Hondurans.
Lansing is the capital city of the U.S. state of Michigan.
It is about 1 to 2 hours west of Detroit.
It lies in the center of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.
The landscape is flat and there is a lot of agriculture.
Leukemia or leukemia is a cancer of white blood cells and bone marrow.
When a person has leukemia, the body makes too many white blood cells (leukocytes).
There are many kinds of leukemia.
Leukemias are part of a bigger group of diseases, the blood cancers (hematological neoplasms).
Without treatment, leukemia may lead to death within weeks, months, or years.
How long the person lives depends on the kind of leukemia.
In 2000, about 256,000 children and adults around the world developed some form of leukemia, and 209,000 died from it.
About 90 % of all leukemias are seen in adults.
Leukemia can be either acute or chronic.
Acute leukemia usually grows quickly.
Chronic leukemia usually grows slowly.
Leukemia can also affect two different types of white blood cells.
These are lymphoid cells and young granulocyte cells (which are called myelocytes).
The causes of most types of leukemia are not known.
In general, all cancers have a breakdown in the normal way cell division is controlled.
Most likely, the different kinds of leukemias have different causes.
The known causes account for relatively few cases.
Most of the causes are outside our control.
Fanconi anemia is also a risk factor for developing acute myelogenous leukemia.
Most cases of leukemia are treated with a number of drugs, which are usually combined into a chemotherapy program.
In some cases, radiation therapies or bone marrow transplants are done.
Length is a property of a thing that can be measured.
One of the methods of measurement is either using a ruler or a Geometric Square.
We generally measure the length of small shapes but we have made a range of sizes so you can either have an ` easy to go ' degree of accuracy or an close to exact measurement in millimeters, or even more accurate ways of saying that length, the more longer the object seems the lesser the degree of accuracy we tend to measure it.
The length of something is the distance between two ends of the thing.
Short means of small length.
Long means of much length.
Short and long are opposites.
For two dimensional things, length is usually the longer side of measurement.
Length is also a property of time.
An amount of time has a length.
John sits down at one o'clock, or 1h.
John waits until three o'clock, or 3h.
John stands up at three o'clock, or 3h.
John was sitting for 2 hours.
The length of time John was sitting was two hours.
Linear B is an ancient script, used to write Mycenaean Greek, the oldest known form of Ancient Greek.
This was proved by Michael Ventris in the early 1950s.
Linear B came before the Greek alphabet by several centuries.
The script is based on Linear A, a script which can not be read today.
The oldest texts written in Linear B date from about 1450 BC.
Linear B was found mainly in the palace archives at Knossos, Cydonia, Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae.
It disappeared with the fall of the Mycenaean civilization.
There are about 87 signs in Linear B that represent syllables.
In addition, there are many ideographic signs: These represent objects or commodities.
They do not represent sounds, and are never used as word signs in writing a sentence.
Linear B seems to have only been used for administration.
In all the thousands of clay tablets, a relatively small number of different "hands" (or writers) have been detected: 45 in Pylos (west coast of the Peloponnese, in southern Greece) and 66 in Knossos (Crete).
The script may have only been used by a guild of professional scribes.
These scribes worked at the different palaces: when the palaces were destroyed, the script disappeared.
Louis XIV, also popularly known as the Sun King (5 September 1638 1 September 1715) was the King of France and King of Navarre from 14 May 1643 until his death.
He was a king for 72 years.
This was the longest recorded rule of any European monarch.
He is often seen as the typical example of absolutism.
He was the oldest of two brothers the other being Philippe.
The two were very close and Philippe was later created the Duke of Orl ans.
Louis ' parents were Louis XIII and Anne of Austria.
He was the unexpected child of King Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, who had not had children in their 22-year marriage.
He was christened Louis Dieudonn (literally, gift of God).
In 1643, before his fifth birthday, his father died, and Louis inherited the throne of France.
Because Louis XIV was too young to rule, his mother ruled France with Cardinal Mazarin, the Italian financier who had been the principal minister of Louis XIII.
Mazarin had guided the nation through the later stages of the Thirty Years ' War (1618-1648).
In this war France struggled against the Habsburg dynasty that ruled Spain for military supremacy in Europe.
After Mazarin died in 1661, Louis declared that he would rule France without a chief minister, something no French king had done in living memory.
He intended to rule as an absolute monarch, believing that his power as king was derived from God and that he was responsible to God alone.
He was obliged to rule for the benefit of his people.
While Louis assumed responsibility for decision making, he understood that he must rule within the constraints of the laws and customs of his kingdom.
Louis consulted widely with his nobles and ministers, and he met weekly with members of his high council.
He created an informal cabinet, which was eventually led by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, chief minister of finance.
Nevertheless, the system of absolute monarchy emphasized the role of the king, and no monarch was more successful in creating the image of monarchy than Louis XIV.
He took the sun as his emblem and connected himself to its radiant image.
Starting in 1661, King Louis XIV transformed a humble hunting lodge into a glittering palace.
Over 30,000 men worked on constructing the Palace of Versailles, a project that drained the royal treasury for decades.
Expenses included not only building but also diverting rivers, piping in fresh water, and planting thousands of orange trees to mask the smell of sewage that could not be properly drained away.
In May 1682, Louis moved the capital of France to Versailles, 12 miles away of Paris.
It was Louis XIV 's motive to remove himself and his nobles from the political intrigues of Paris.
It became a symbol of his Absolute Monarchy.
Although Louis dreamed of a Spanish inheritance for his heirs, his military policy was not to expand French territory.
He fought his early wars for defensive purposes to secure France s northern border and to dislodge the Spanish from strategic towns.
Louis fought the War of the Devolution (1667-1668) to assert his claims to a portion of Spain s possessions after his wife s father, Philip IV, died.
Louis claimed the Spanish Netherlands in place of the wedding gift that Philip IV had never paid.
The French aggression in the Spanish Netherlands caused relations between France and Holland to deteriorate.
The Dutch had already fought the Spanish for generations to protect against an invasion of their country.
They had no intention of allowing the French to pose the same threat by occupying the territories on their border.
The result was war in the Netherlands from 1672 to 1678, during which Louis again demonstrated the effectiveness of French might.
In a sweeping campaign, Louis almost succeeded in conquering Holland.
To protect themselves, the Dutch opened their dikes, flooded the countryside, and turned Amsterdam into a virtual island.
Louis s armies could not advance farther, and they began negotiating a truce.
War resumed, however, when Spain and Austria allied themselves with Holland, and Louis signed a treaty with England in 1670 to keep the English navy neutral.
Neither side could win a decisive victory, and both suffered from financial exhaustion, which ultimately led to a treaty to end the war.
Louis revoked, or ended, the Treaty of Nantes.
This Treaty said that there would be freedom of religion in France.
This means that everybody in France could worship the way they wanted to.
When Louis revoked the Treaty of Nantes, he said that all people in France must be Catholic.
Because of this, 50 thousand Protestant workers left France and went to America, England, and Germany.
While Louis ruled, France became the most powerful country in all of Europe, and many other countries copied the French people 's way of dressing and thinking.
He also encouraged people to explore Canada, and tried very hard to make France larger.
Louis spent a lot of money on wars, and France went into deep debt because of him.
By the middle of the 1680s the Sun King was losing much of his shine.
Mazarin had taught him to work rigorously, and Louis maintained a punishing schedule throughout his life, shrugging off a series of minor illnesses and not listening to the advice of his physicians.
Eventually a broken arm put an end to his vigorous horseback riding, and gout ended his long walks around Versailles.
He was wheeled to the throne room or carried to his carriage.
In 1683 his first wife died, and Louis secretly married his longtime mistress, Fran oise d Aubign, Marquise de Maintenon.
In 1711 he went through the tragedy of the death of his oldest son and the following year that of his oldest grandson.
French kings after Louis XIV taxed a lot of money from the poor people to try and pay off the debt.
This is part of what led to the French Revolution.
In a world that regarded territory, power, and wealth as paramount, Louis XIV was recognized as a great king.
He transformed France into the dominant nation in Europe, expanded its boundaries, and left his heirs secure in their possessions.
Louis reached the height of his power in the 1670s, and he protected what he had achieved for the next four decades in the face of a Europe united against him.
Moreover, he eventually realized his dream of seeing a Bourbon on the Spanish throne.
During Louis s reign, France also consolidated the administration of its colonial possessions and commerce, becoming a world power.
On the domestic front, Louis strengthened the central government s control over the diverse regions of France, incorporating his territorial gains into a united state.
On the other hand, he provoked controversy when he restored Catholic religious unity by revoking the Edict of Nantes and repressing Protestantism.
Unfortunately many of Louis s policies, both domestic and foreign, caused great hardship to ordinary people, many of whom suffered starvation, fled their homeland, or lived in terror of persecution.
Ultimately, Louis XIV wished to bring glory to France and to his dynasty, and he died believing that he had.
Leet (sometimes written as "1337" or "l33t"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is another alphabet for the English language that is used mostly on the internet.
It uses various combinations of ASCII characters to replace Latinate letters.
For example, leet spellings of the word leet include 1337 and l33t; eleet may be spelled 31337 or 3l33t.
It is used a lot on the internet in forums, chat rooms and online games.
Leet is mostly used for English, but can also be used with other languages including French, Spanish and German.
Leetspeak is a mixture of words (mostly computer-related) spelled incorrectly intentionally \*, usually coming from typographical errors (e.g. the becomes t3h).
The words of leetspeak are usually put together to create a dialect (small language).
This dialect is used in some places for funniness.
l33tspeak uses numbers, ASCII symbols, and diacritics together to make symbols that look like Latin letters.
For example, in the name "David" would translate in 13375) 34 (as) \/ - \/ 1).
Note: Most of the time it is only the vowels that are changed and then usually only they are replaced by numbers; therefore, it is unusual to see someone use the leet alphabet to spell out a whole word (although there are common exceptions, namely 1337).
Please note as these are only examples; these are not mandatory for leetspeak, which is not officially defined anywhere, like most slangs.
When people write in leet, they spell some words wrong all the time.
They might do this to laugh at new people who do not write words with their keyboards well, or might just be making fun of English 's pronunciation or spelling.
When a person writes in English the person must follow English rules, but most of the time people who write in leet do not use these rules.
When they write in leet they try to write it in a special way, so that it is very different from English.
"l33t is teh suck!"
(meaning: ` leet sucks ') shows that in leet people can use their own rules, and not use the English rules.
A lot of times adjectives (describing words) are turned into nouns.
The leet word "teh" (the) is also often placed in front of verbs, as in "I teh pwnd j00" (meaning I the owned you, meaning: I beat you badly).
11!!
11 (meaning I am the best!)
Leet speakers may also speak normally but without the vowels.
Fr xmpl nmbr 1 u cn tll it wrks.
= For example number one you can tell it works.
Because some words are too long for use in games they have been written how they sound.
Here 's a quick guide:
There are some that are uber 1337... using nothing but symbols and numbers to represent their letters... Example as follows;
Lois Lane is a fictional character created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster.
She is the romantic interest of Superman in the comic books from DC Comics.
She first appeared in Action Comics # 1 in June 1938.
Like Superman 's alter ego Clark Kent, she is a reporter for the newspaper, The Daily Planet.
L on Theremin (born Lev Sergeyevich Termen,) (August 15, 1896 November 3, 1993) was a Russian inventor.
He is most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments.
L on Theremin was born in Saint Petersburg - renamed Leningrad from 1924 until 1991 - and his family had French ancestry.
He invented the theremin (also called the thereminvox) in 1919, when his country was in the midst of the Russian Civil War.
Theremin also invented the first electronic burglar alarm, which he called a "radio watchman".
Theremin moved to the United States, arriving December 30, 1927 with his first wife, Katia Constantinova.
He performed the theremin with the New York Philharmonic in 1928.
He patented his invention in the United States in 1928 and subsequently granted commercial production rights to RCA.
Theremin set up a laboratory in New York in the 1930s, where he developed the theremin and experimented with other electronic musical instruments and other inventions.
Theremin was interested in a role for the theremin in dance music.
He developed performance locations that could automatically react to dancers ' movements with varied patterns of sound and light.
He worked with the American Negro Ballet.
After the Soviet consulate had apparently demanded he divorce Katia, the inventor fell in love with and married the young prima ballerina Lavinia Williams.
His marriage to the African-American dancer caused shock and disapproval in his social circles, but the couple remained together.
Theremin abruptly returned to the Soviet Union in 1938.
At the time, the reasons for his return were not clear.
Some claimed that he was simply homesick, while others believed that he had been kidnapped by Soviet officials.
Beryl Campbell, one of Theremin 's dancers, said his wife Lavinia "called to say that he had been kidnapped from his studio" and that "some Russians had come in" and that she felt that he was going to be spirited out of the country.
Theremin was put to work in a secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag labor camp system.
Theremin created the "Buran" eavesdropping system which recorded conversations in French and American embassies by measuring the window glass vibrations using a low power infrared beam from a distance.
Lavrentiy Beria, head of the KGB then used Buran to spy on US, British and French embassies.
In 1945 Theremin invented the first covert listening device (or "bug") for spying.
Theremin 's device was embedded in a carved wooden plaque of the Great Seal of the United States.
On August 4, 1945, Soviet school children presented the bugged carving to U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman, as a "gesture of friendship" to the USSR 's World War II ally.
It hung in the ambassador s Moscow office until 1952, when the bug was discovered by a British radio operator who heard conversations on an open radio channel.
The CIA found the device in the Great Seal carving.
Peter Wright, a scientist and former MI5 counterintelligence officer, eventually figured out how it worked.
After his release from the labor camp in 1947, Theremin volunteered to remain working with the KGB until 1966.
By 1947 Theremin had remarried, to Maria, and they had two children: Lena and Natalia.
After working for the KGB, Theremin worked at the Moscow Conservatory of Music for 10 years where he taught and built Theremins, electronic cellos and some Terpsitones.
There he was discovered by a visiting New York Times correspondent, but when an article by Christopher Walker appeared, according to Lydia, the Vice President of the conservatory said "The people do n't need electronic music.
Electricity is for killing traitors in the electric chair", fired Theremin, closed his laboratory and had his instruments destroyed.
After 51 years in the Soviet Union L on Theremin started traveling, first visiting France in June 1989 and then the United States in 1991, each time accompanied by his daughter Natalia, where he was reunited with Clara Rockmore who performed a number of concerts at this time.
He also made a demonstration concert at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in early 1993 before dying in Moscow in 1993 at the age of 97.
L on Theremin is the subject of the documentary movie, Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, written, directed, and produced by Steven M. Martin.
The documentary was a winner at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994.
The movie features legendary thereminists Clara Rockmore and Lydia Kavina as well as electronic instrument pioneer Robert Moog, Nicolas Slonimsky, The Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson, and Theremin himself.
Leto is a goddess in Greek mythology.
She was the daughter of Coeus and Phoebe, who were Titans.
Leto was the mother of the twins Artemis and Apollo, whose father was Zeus.
After her twins were born, Leto played very little part in Greek mythology.
Hera, who was Zeus 's wife, discovered that Leto was pregnant and became very angry.
She banned Leto from giving birth on any mainland or island known.
Leto found the island of Delos, which floated and so was not an island nor mainland, and gave birth there.
Leto gave birth to Artemis without any problem.
However she was in labor with Apollo for nine days and nine nights.
Artemis helped Leto to give birth to Apollo.
Other meanings are at Limburg Limburg is the southernmost province of the Netherlands.
Its capital is Maastricht.
It is the only province in the Netherlands which has hills.
It is a very old province; the capital city, Maastricht, is over 2000 years old.
The Limburgish people do speak Dutch, but they also speak their own dialects.
These dialects - especially the ones in the South of Limburg, the normal Dutch people find difficult to understand.
These dialects have many influences from German and French.
The Limburgish are renowned for their famous vlaai.
Limburger cheese comes from this region.
A ligand is a biochemical substance.
Its function is to bind to a biological molecule, and make the molecule perform a function.
Ligand binding alters the shape of the receptor protein.
This changes the protein 's behavior.
In a narrower sense, it is a signal triggering molecule, binding to a site on a target protein.
The binding occurs by intermolecular forces, such as ionic bonds, hydrogen bonds and van der Waals forces.
The docking (association) is usually reversible (dissociation).
Ligands include substrates, inhibitors, activators, and neurotransmitters.
The tendency or strength of binding is called affinity.
Lascaux is the name given to a cave in the V z re Valley of southwestern France.
The Lascaux cave is famous for its cave paintings.
There are a number of caves near the village of Montignac, in the Dordogne d partement.
One of these caves contains some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art.
Most of the paintings are realistic images of large animals.
Many of these animals are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time.
The site of Lascaux was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list in 1979, under the name of the V z re Valley.
Unfortunately, none of the colors used in Lascaux is based on coal.
Therefore, a direct dating of the paintings is not possible.
Despite this, Lascaux was one of the first sites, where radiocarbon dating was used.
That way, the coal in the fireplaces was dated to about 17,000 years ago.
H. Breuil himself thought that the site was older, about 31.000 to 22.000 years old.
Norbert Anjoulat looked at the style and the theme of the paintings, and found these were close to Solutr en, rather than Magdal nien.
There are some disagreements about dating the site.
The paintings seem to date from 17,000 to 15,000 years ago.
Artifacts were also found in the cave, which seem to be older.
The original dating was to about 26,000 years ago.
The caves were discovered in 1940.
By 1955, about 2000 people visited them every day.
In 1968, the original cave was closed to the public, and a system of air conditioning was installed.
The cave paintings were restored and replicas of several paintings were created in other caves nearby, known as Lascaux II and Lascaux III.
Today, the original cave is no longer accessible to the public.
In 2000, another problem emerged: Certain kinds of fungi started to grow in the original cave.
These are extremely resistant to the usual fungicides used, even to formaldehyde.
The fungus lives in symbiosis with a bacterium which is capable of destroying the fungicide.
Therefore, the fungicide needs to be combined with an antibiotic to kill the bacterium as well.
As of 2006, the situation is more or less under control.
The original caves are now sprayed with the fungicide\/antibiotic every fortnight.
Special workers need to clear the cave walls by hand, removing the mycelium which grows despite the treatment.
Lex Luthor (full name: Alexander Joseph Luthor) is a fictional supervillain from the comic books published by DC Comics.
He is the biggest enemy of Superman.
He is also an enemy of Batman and other superheroes in the DC Comics.
The character was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster.
He first appeared in Action Comics # 23 (April 1940).
The lute is a kind of musical instrument with strings.
The first lutes were brought to Spain by the Moors.
Others may have been brought to Europe from Arabic lands.
The lute is one of the ancestors of the classical guitar.
A lute has an oval-shaped back, made of strips of wood.
It has a flat front, with a neck attached to it.
Early lutes had four strings or eight sets of two strings.
Beneath these strings, there were strings tied to the neck, where the player pressed down to make the notes.
These strings were called frets.
The front part of the body is made of a flat piece of wood, and known as the sound board.
It has a beautifully carved hole in the center which is called the rose.
The lute was at first played by strumming or plucking with a pick.
Later they were played with the fingers alone.
During the Renaissance, bigger lutes were designed.
Most lutes at this time had seven or eight sets of strings.
New kinds of lutes were invented.
One new kind of lute made in the Renaissance was the theorbo.
Another kind was the archlute.
In European classical music the lute was changed into the harpsichord and the mandolin.
Today there are kinds of lute still being played in Greece, Turkey, and in Arabic-speaking countries.
The Renaissance lute is also played today, in western countries, as well as a German lute that is played the same way as a guitar.
Little Boy is the name that was given to the first atomic bomb that was dropped in a war.
The bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 by the American army who were trying to end World War II.
Enola Gay was the name of the plane that dropped Little Boy.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is an organization.
They are fighting against the Government of Sri Lanka for an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka called Tamil Eelam.
LTTE are also known as the Tamil Tigers.
The group was started in 1972 by Velupillai Prabhakaran who was killed in battle against Sri Lanka 's forces on May 18, 2009.
Prabhakaran 's body was cremated because the government did not want people to gather around his grave.
There is also the Tamil Nadu Liberation Army who is currently fighting the Indian Army in South India.
This group killed the third president of Sri Lanka, Ranasinghe Premadasa.
A Laplace transform is a way to turn functions into other functions in order to do certain calculations more easily.
This way of turning functions to other functions is very similar to U Substitution.
The aim of this change is to be able to turn the hard work of integration into a simple algebraic addition and subtraction, just as logarithms allow us to add and subtract instead of multiplying and dividing.
An example of its use is in Ruin Theory which is a subject of Actuarial Science with regards to insurance.
Lollard or Lollardy was a religious movement that started in the Middle Ages.
It began in the middle of the 14th century during the English Reformation.
"Lollard" is a word used to refer to those who believed in John Wycliffe 's ideas., He was a well-known theologian who was expelled from the University of Oxford in 1381 because he criticized the Catholic Church.
He mainly did this using his teaching about the Eucharist.
The Lollards wanted to reform Western Christianity.
Lausanne is a city in Switzerland.
It has a population of about 120,000 people.
The city is the capital of the district Lausanne.
It is also the capital of the canton of Vaud.
Lausanne is the forth biggest city of Switzerland.
The syndic of Lausanne (syndic is the French word for mayor in the canton of Vaud) is Daniel Br laz, from the ecological party, since 2001.
Professor Ludwig Von Drake is a fictional duck.
He is one of Walt Disney 's cartoon and comic book characters.
Von Drake first appeared in The Wonderful World of Color in 1961.
Paul Frees was the original voice actor.
The Professor is a scientist, psychologist, and road traveler.
He is from Vienna, Austria.
He enjoys learning.
When asked for help from other characters, he usually has a university degree about the topic.
Paul Frees was the original voice of Ludwig Von Drake.
After Frees ' death in 1986, Walker Edmiston and Albert Ash took over the role.
As of 1988, Corey Burton has voiced the character.
Los Altos is a city in the San Francisco Peninsula around the San Francisco Bay Area, California.
It has the population of 28,976 residents.
A liqueur is a sweet-tasting alcoholic drink.
It is often flavored with fruits, herbs, spices, flowers, seeds, roots, plants, barks, and sometimes cream.
The word liqueur comes from the Latin word liquifacere which means "to dissolve."
This is because the flavors are dissolved to help make the liqueur.
In some parts of the world, liqueurs are sometimes called cordials.
Liqueurs have been around for many centuries.
They are related to the herbal medicines that monks used to make.
Liqueurs were made in Italy as early as the 13th century, and were used during signings of treaties during the Middle Ages.
Most liqueurs have 15 to 30 % alcohol content but may have an alcohol content as high as 55 %.
Types of liqueurs include: fruit liqueur, cream liqueur, coffee liqueur, chocolate liqueur, schnapps liqueur, brandy liqueur, anise liqueur, nut-flavoured liqueur, and herbal liqueur.
Liqueurs can be enjoyed many ways.
They are commonly drank by themselves, poured over ice, with coffee, or mixed with cream or other mixers to create cocktails.
They are often served with dessert or as a dessert.
Liqueurs may also be used in cooking.
Lilith is a female demon in Jewish legends, found first in the Dead Sea scrolls.
The legend is related to a Hebrew language term lilith meaning night, and has also been linked to beliefs about demons called lili in ancient Mesopotamia.
Lorentz 's law is a law discovered by the Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz.
Lorentz 's law defines force that acts on moving charged particles in an electromagnetic field.
Force consists of magnetic force and electric force.
F = qE (electric force) If the charge is positive, the direction of the electric force is equal to direction of electric field.
F = qv \* B (magnetic force) The direction of the magnetic force is given by the right hand rule.
Using this law, J.J. Thomson measured mass-to-charge ratio.
Lorenzo de ' Medici (1 January 1449 9 April 1492) was an Italian statesman and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance.
He was called Lorenzo the Magnificent (Lorenzo il Magnifico) by Florentines.
He was a diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists, and poets.
He is probably best known for what he gave to the world of art.
He gave large amounts of money to artists so that they could make very good artwork.
When he died, the Golden Age of Florence ended.
The peace he helped keep between the many Italian states collapsed when he died.
Lorenzo de ' Medici is buried in the Medici Chapel in Florence.
Lorenzo was an artist.
He wrote poetry in Tuscan.
Lorenzo 's agents took a lot of classical works from the east.
Lorenzo had a large workshop to copy his books and spread their content across Europe.
He supported the development of humanism through his friends who studied Greek philosophers, and tried to merge the ideas of Plato with Christianity.
In this group were the philosophers Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.
In mathematics, a lemma is a "mini-proof"; a small hypothesis which is proved and then provides a part of a more important theorem.
Lucrezia Borgia (18 April 1480 24 June 1519) was the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, and his long-term mistress Vannozza dei Cattanei.
Her brothers included Cesare Borgia, Giovanni Borgia, and Gioffre Borgia.
Lucrezia 's family was typical of the ruthless Machiavellian politics and sexual corruption of the times.
It was alleged to be characteristic of the Renaissance Papacy.
Lucrezia was cast as a femme fatale, a role seen in many artworks, novels, and films.
Very little is known for sure about Lucrezia.
Whether she was involved in the political activities of her father and brothers is unclear.
They certainly arranged several marriages for her to important and powerful men.
Presumably, this helped their own political ambitions.
Lucrezia was married to Giovanni Sforza (Lord of Pesaro), Alfonso of Aragon (Duke of Bisceglie), and Alfonso I d'Este (Duke of Ferrara).
Tradition has it that Alfonso of Aragon was an illegitimate son of the King of Naples and that her brother Cesare may have had him murdered when his political value faded.
Lucrezia is described as having heavy blonde hair which fell past her knees, a beautiful complexion, hazel eyes which changed color, a full, high bosom, and a natural grace which made her appear to "walk on air".
These features were highly appreciated in Italy during that period.
Another description said that "her mouth is rather large, the teeth brilliantly white, her neck is slender and fair, and the bust is admirably proportioned".
One painting, Portrait of a Youth by Dosso Dossi at the National Gallery of Victoria, was identified as a portrait of Lucrezia in November 2008.
This painting may be the only surviving formal portrait of Lucrezia Borgia; however, doubts have been cast on that claim.
Several other paintings, such as Veneto 's fanciful portrait, have also been said to depict her but none has been accepted by scholars at present.
Several rumors have persisted throughout the years, especially about the extravagant parties thrown by the Borgia family.
There were allegations of incest, poisoning, and murder on her part, but no historical basis for these rumors has ever been found.
Most of the allegations were made by the rivals of the Borgias.
Ian Fraser "Lemmy" Kilmister (24 December 1945 28 December 2015), commonly known by Lemmy, was a British musician, singer-songwriter and actor.
He was best known as the bassist of the heavy metal band Mot rhead.
Lemmy was born in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England.
He went to school at Ysgol Syr Thomas Jones in Amlwch, Wales.
At age 16 he attended a concert by The Beatles in the Cavern Club.
Lemmy liked the sarcastic attitude of the Beatles, especially John Lennon.
Around that time he began playing guitar in small local bands like The Sundowners.
In mid-1960, he played guitar in bands like The Rainmakers, then The Motown Sect, playing clubs in the north.
In 1965, he joined the band The Rockin ` Vickers, and signed a contract with CBS.
The band released three single albums and toured Europe.
In 1967, he moved to London and got a job as a roadie on The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
In 1968, he recorded an album titled Escalator with the band Sam Gopal.
After that, Lemmy met Simon King in a shopping center in Chelsea and then joined the band Opal Butterfly for a short period.
Lemmy joined the Ladbroke Grove rock band Hawkwind as a bassist and vocalist.
He gained experience as a bassist, because until then he had only worked as a guitarist.
Lemmy was also lead vocals on several songs for the band.
In 1975, Lemmy founded a new band called Bastard with guitarist Larry Wallis and Lucas Fox on drums.
Later, Lemmy changed the name of the band to Mot rhead.
Wallis and Fox left the band and were replaced by the guitarist Eddie Clarke and drummer Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor.
This new formation would begin Mot rhead 's success in live performances.
In 1977, the band recorded their first album, Mot rhead, released 24 September 1977.
The second album, titled Overkill, contained two songs that would become Mot rhead classics: "Louie Louie" and "Overkill".
The peak of the band was 1980 and 1981 with a series of chart hits in the UK, including the classic single "Ace of Spades", one of the biggest hits of the band.
Mot rhead 's members changed throughout the band 's career, but Lemmy remained on bass and vocals from their start 1975 until today.
Lemmy 's career as an actor began by playing small roles in low-budget UK films Eat the Rich (1988) and Hardware (1990).
His credits include Terror Firmer (1998), Frezno Smooth (1999), and Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000).
On 28 December 2015, Lemmy died of prostate cancer, cardiac arrhythmia and congestive heart failure at his home in Los Angeles, California at the age of 70.
Lactose is a disaccharide that consists of galactose and glucose molecules.
Lactose makes up around 2-8 % of the solids in milk.
The name comes from the Latin word for milk, plus the - ose ending used to name sugars.
Lactose is found in milk products.
Infant mammals are fed on by milk from their mothers.
To digest it an enzyme called lactase cleaves the lactose into its two subunits glucose and galactose for absorption.
Lactase is an enzyme which acts on lactose, breaking it down so it can be digested.
Mammals in their infancy usually make lactase: they need it for digesting the lactose found in their mother 's milk.
Mammalian adults usually lose the capacity to produce lactase.
Thus, if you give milk to an adult cat it causes discomfort and diarrhea.
Humans are somewhat different.
Some humans continue to produce lactase, and some do not.
It is a type of polymorphism.
The ability to digest lactose into adulthood (` lactase persistence ') was useful to humans after the development of animal husbandry.
This created a system providing a consistent supply of milk.
Hunter-gatherer populations before the Neolithic revolution were overwhelmingly lactose intolerant.
So are modern hunter-gatherers.
A mutation on chromosome # 2 stops the shutdown in lactase production, making it possible for those with the mutation to continue drinking fresh milk (and eating other dairy products) throughout their lives.
This appears to be a recent adaptation to dairy consumption.
It has occurred independently in both northern Europe and East Africa in populations with a pastoral lifestyle.
Lactase persistence, allowing lactose digestion to continue into adulthood, is a dominant allele, making lactose intolerance a recessive trait.
Genetic studies suggest that the oldest mutations associated with lactase persistence only reached appreciable levels in human populations in the last ten thousand years.
Therefore, lactase persistence is often cited as an example of recent human evolution.
As lactase persistence is genetic, but animal husbandry a cultural trait, this is gene culture coevolution.
Linkin Park is an American rock band from Agoura Hills, California.
They started making music in 1996, the band became very famous with their first album, Hybrid Theory, which was labeled with the Diamond Award of more than 10 million copies by the RIAA and multi-platinum in several other countries.
Their second album, Meteora, continued the band 's popularity, reaching number one at the Billboard 200 album chart in 2003.
It was promoted with concerts and giving for charities around the world.
In 2003, MTV2 called Linkin Park the sixth greatest band of the music video time and the third best band of the new millennium, only beaten by Oasis and Coldplay.
Billboard ranked Linkin Park # 19 on the Best Artists of the Decade (Past 10 Years) chart.
The band used the genres nu metal and rap metal to make it suitable for radio yet heavy in layers in Hybrid Theory and Meteora.
The band used other types of music in their next studio album Minutes to Midnight, which was released in 2007.
The album also reached number one at the Billboard and had the third best beginning at number one of any album that year.
The band also worked with other artists and bands.
The most famous would be rapper Jay-Z in their mash-up (mixing more than one song together) extended play Collision Course and many other people on their remix album Reanimation.
The band 's album, A Thousand Suns, was released on 2010.
They further changed their sound again.
Linkin Park have sold more than 50 million albums all over the world and have won two Grammys.
The band was first made up of three friends from high school, Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson and Rob Bourdon.
After high school, they started to get serious in music and added DJ Joe Hahn, bass player Dave "Phoenix" Farrell and singer Mark Wakefield to their band.
They were named "Xero".
Even though they have few materials, the band started recording and making songs in Shinoda 's studio in his bedroom in 1996.
The band started feeling uncomfortable and angry with each other after they were not able to get a contract from a major music company.
Because they did not become successful, Wakefield quit so he could look for other music projects.
Farrell also quit so he could perform in concerts with many bands including his old band, Tasty Snax.
After a long time without a lead singer, Xero added an Arizonan singer named Chester Bennington.
Jeff Blue, the vice-president of Zomba Music in March 1999, insisted them to get Bennington.
Bennington, who used to be in a post-grunge band called Grey Daze, became the most wanted among the people who wanted to be in Xero because of the strength in his voice.
The band then soon changed their name from Xero to "Hybrid Theory".
Since Shinoda and Bennington sound good together, it helped restart the band into making new music.
The band restarting also led to the band changing its name again to "Linkin Park", a tribute to Santa Monica 's Lincoln Park.
Even with this, they still could not get a music contract.
After many record labels (music companies) rejected them, they asked Jeff Blue, now vice-president of Warner Bros..
Records, to help.
After not being able to sign with Warner Bros. three times, Blue helped the band finally get a contract with Warner Bros. in 1999.
In 2000, the next year, they released their first studio album which made them very famous, Hybrid Theory.
Linkin Park released Hybrid Theory on October 24, 2000.
It was the result of over four years of work.
It was edited by Don Gilmore.
Hybrid Theory was very successful in sales.
It sold 4.8 million copies in the first year, and had the most sales of any album in 2001.
The singles of the album are "One Step Closer", "Crawling", "Papercut" "In the End".
It made them always appear on many alternative rock radios during 2001.
Other songs from the album were included in movies like Dracula 2000, Little Nicky, and Valentine.
Linkin Park also worked with The X-Ecutioners for the song "It 's Goin ' Down".
Hybrid Theory led them to win a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance for the song "Crawling".
They were also nominated for two other Grammy Awards: Best New Artist and Best Rock Album.
MTV gave the band the awards of Best Rock Video and Best Direction for "In the End".
Because of the band 's Grammy win, the success of Hybrid Theory made them famous in the mainstream.
At this time, Linkin Park had many invitations for them to perform on many famous concerts and tours like Ozzfest, Family Values Tour and KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas.
The band also made their own tour called "Projekt Revolution".
It included others bands and singers like Cypress Hill, Adema, and Snoop Dogg.
In one year, they performed at 320 concerts.
The band 's memorable moments and performance were shown in their first DVD, Frat Party at the Pankake Festival.
It was released in November 2001.
Farrell then rejoined Linkin Park.
They then began working on Reanimation, an album that had remixes of songs from Hybrid Theory and their first EP.
It was released on July 30, 2002.
It has appearances by Black Thought, Jonathan Davis, Aaron Lewis and many other singers and rappers.
It became very successful.
It started at # 2 at the Billboard 200 albums chart.
It sold almost 270,000 copies during its first week.
The album has only one single, "Pts.
OF.
Athrty", a remix of the Hybrid Theory song "Points of Authority".
Hybrid Theory is also in the RIAA 's Top 100 Albums.
After Hybrid Theory and Reanimation became very successful, Linkin Park spent a lot of time performing concerts around the United States.
The band started working on new music, even with a very busy schedule.
They used a short part of their free time in the studio in their tour bus.
The band announced that they were making their new album in December 2002.
They also said that the title was inspired by Meteora, a rocky place in Greece.
Meteora has many places of worship have been built on top of the rocks.
Meteora shows the band mixing their nu metal and punk rap styles with new special effects.
Some of them include a shakuhachi (a Japanese flute made of bamboo) and many other instruments.
On March 25, 2003, they released Meteora and instantly became popular around the world.
It reached their first # 1 in the US and UK and # 2 in Australia.
Meteora sold 800,000 albums in its first week.
It ranked as the best selling album on the Billboard charts at that time.
The album 's singles are "Somewhere I Belong", "Faint", "Numb", "From the Inside", "Lying from You" and "Breaking the Habit".
Most of them always appeared in many radio stations.
By October 2003, it had sold almost 3 million copies.
Because the album was a success, the band formed yet another Projekt Revolution tour.
It featured other bands and artists including Mudvayne, Blindside and Xzibit.
Metallica also invited Linkin Park to play at the Summer Sanitarium Tour 2003.
It included very famous bands such as Limp Bizkit, Mudvayne and Deftones.
The band released their first live album and third DVD, Live in Texas, in November 18, 2003.
It includes audio and video tracks of some of the band 's concerts in Texas during their tour.
In early 2004, Linkin Park started a tour around the world called Meteora World Tour.
Bands that were opening concerts on the tour included Hoobastank, P.O.D., Story of the Year and Pia.
The band had many awards and honors because of Meteora.
The band won the MTV awards for Best Rock Video for "Somewhere I Belong" and the Viewer 's Choice Award for "Breaking the Habit".
Linkin Park also won many awards during the 2004 Radio Music Awards.
They won the Artist of the Year and Song of the Year ("Numb") awards.
Even though Meteora was not as popular as Hybrid Theory, it was the third best selling album in America during 2003.
The band toured in early 2004 around the world.
They performed in their third Projekt Revolution tour and many European tours.
After Meteora was successful, the band did not work on another album for over three years.
Instead, they kept on performing at concerts and created side projects.
Chester Bennington appeared on "State of the Art" by DJ Lethal.
He also created a new band called Dead by Sunrise, with the band members of Julien K. Mike Shinoda also worked with Depeche Mode.
In 2004, the band started making a remix album with Jay-Z called Collision Course.
The album, which included mash-ups of both Linkin Park and Jay-Z songs, was released in November 2004.
The album 's only single is "Numb\/Encore", which was successful.
Shinoda also created a new hip hop side project Fort Minor.
With the help of Jay-Z, Fort Minor released its first album, The Rising Tied, to very positive reviews.
A the same time, the band was arguing with their record label, Warner Bros..
Records.
They were arguing because of many trust and money matters.
After many months, the band finally made a deal with them in December 2005.
The band also did a lot of charity.
They raised money to help victims and survivors of Hurricane Charley in 2004 and later Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The band donated $ 75,000 to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation in March 2004.
They also helped efforts for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami victims by performing in many charity concerts and starting their own charity, Music for Relief.
Their most famous charity concert was Live 8, a number of concerts for charity for awareness worldwide.
They performed with Jay-Z on Live 8 's stage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with an audience around the world.
The band would later be reunited with Jay-Z at the 2006 Grammy Awards.
Linkin Park and Jay-Z performed "Numb\/Encore" with Paul McCartney who added lyrics from the song "Yesterday".
"Numb\/Encore" won the Best Rap\/Sung Collaboration award.
They would later perform at the 2006 Summer Sonic music festival, which was hosted by Metallica in Japan.
In 2006, Linkin Park returned to the recording studio and began writing new songs.
They chose producer Rick Rubin to help in the new album.
Even when they said that the album will be released in 2006, the album was pushed to 2007 after realizing that they could not finish it in time.
The band had recorded thirty to fifty songs in August 2006.
Shinoda said the album was halfway done.
Bennington also said that the new album will no longer show their famous nu metal sound.
Warner Bros. then officially announced new album 's title, Minutes to Midnight.
It was released in May 15, 2007 in the United States.
After 14 months of working on the album, they wanted to make the album better by taking five songs out from the original seventeen tracks.
The album 's title was a reference to Doomsday Clock.
The title also suggested the album 's lyrics and topics.
The album sold more than 625,000 in its first week.
It is one of the most successful starts for an album in recent years.
The album also went to # 1 on the Billboard Charts.
The album 's first single, "What I 've Done", was released on April 2, 2007.
The music video premiered on MTV and Fuse at the same week.
The single was loved by listeners, becoming # 1 on Billboards Modern Rock Tracks and Mainstream Rock Tracks charts.
The song is also in the soundtrack for the 2007 movie Transformers.
Shinoda was also in on the Styles of Beyond song "Second to None" which was also included in the movie.
Later in the year, the band won the "Favorite Alternative Artist" in the American Music Awards.
The albums 's other singles are "Bleed It Out", "Shadow of the Day", "Given Up" and "Leave Out All the Rest".
They were released from 2007 to 2008, and were successful.
The band also made a single with Busta Rhymes called "We Made It", which was released on April 29, 2008.
The band 's concerts included a performance at Live Earth Japan on July 7, 2007.
and at Download Festival in Donington Park, England and Edgefest in Downsview Park, Toronto, Canada.
The band finished their fourth Projekt Revolution tour.
After that, they performed concerts at many arenas around the UK, including Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester.
They performed for two nights at the O2 arena in London.
Bennington also said that the band will make a new album after Minutes to Midnight.
However, he said that the band will first perform in the United States so they can have ideas for the next album.
He told Rolling Stone that the band already started writing for the album.
Shinoda also said that the album will be released in the last part of 2009.
Shinoda also announced a live CD\/DVD called Road to Revolution: Live at Milton Keynes, which was released November 24, 2008.
It was recorded from their Projekt Revolution concert at the Milton Keynes Bowl on June 29, 2008.
The band also released Songs From the Underground, a compilation of previously unreleased songs.
In May 2009, the band said that they were working on a fourth studio album.
They planned it to be released on 2010.
Shinoda told IGN that the new album would be ` genre-busting. '
They were taking themes and sounds from Minutes to Midnight He also mentioned that the album would have more experiments and advanced than their other albums.
Bennington also confirmed that Rick Rubin will return as a producer of the new album.
While working on the new album, Linkin Park worked with famous movie music composer Hans Zimmer to make the music for the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
The band released a new single for the movie called "New Divide".
Hahn directed the song 's music video.
It has scenes from the movie.
On June 2009, the band performed at Westwood Village after the first showing of the movie.
After finishing work on the movie, the band returned to the studio to finish their album.
In late 2009, Bennington 's band Dead by Sunrise finally released their album Out of Ashes.
On January 19, 2010, the band released a new song entitled "Not Alone".
It was part of a compilation from Music for Relief called Download to Donate for Haiti.
The compilation was to help the people hurt in the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
On February 10, 2010, the band released the official music video for the song.
On April 26, the band released a game for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, a game called 8-Bit Rebellion!
In the game, the band members are characters that can be played.
After beating the game, a new song called "Blackbirds" will be unlocked.
The song was also later released as an iTunes bonus track on their new album.
The band later revealed their new album 's title is A Thousand Suns.
It was released on September 14.
The album 's first single was "The Catalyst", released on August 2.
The band performed at many concerts so that it can have attention.
They started in Los Angeles on September 7.
The band also used MySpace to get attention for their album.
They released two songs called "Waiting for the End" and "Blackout" on September 8.
They also made a "making of" of the album, entitled Meeting of A Thousand Suns.
It was also shown in their MySpace page.
It was included in the album 's deluxe edition.
On August 31, it was told that the band would perform the song live for the first time live at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12, 2010.
They performed the song at the Griffith Observatory.
It was a famous place used in many movies.
The album reached # 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
The album 's other singles were "Waiting for the End", "Burning in the Skies" and "Iridescent".
On April 13, 2011, Shinoda said that "Iridescent" is part of the soundtrack of the movie Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
This continued Linkin Park songs being the theme songs of the Transformers movies (after "What I 've Done" and "New Divide").
The band did more charity work.
On January 11, 2011, they started the new version of Download to Donate for Haiti.
It was called Download to Donate for Haiti V2.0, with more songs to download.
For the new compilation, the band released a remix of "The Catalyst" by Keaton Hashimoto from the "Linkin Park featuring YOU" contest.
Shinoda designed two t-shirts, so that the money earned will help the victims of the 2011 T hoku earthquake and tsunami disasters.
Music For Relief also released Download to Donate: Tsunami Relief Japan, another compilation of songs.
The money earned went to Save the Children to help the victims.
The album helped the band reach many year-end positions.
Linkin Park reached No. 8 in Billboard Social 50, a chart of artists that use many social networking sites.
In other Billboard Year-End charts, the band reached No. 92 in the "Top Artists" chart, as well as A Thousand Suns reaching No. 53 in the Year-End chart of the Billboard Top 200 albums and No. 7 in the 2010 Year-End Rock Albums, and "The Catalyst" reaching No. 40 in the Year-End Rock Songs chart.
The band charted in many Billboard Year-End charts in 2011.
The band was No. 39 in the Top Artists Chart, No. 84 in the Billboard 200 Artists chart, No. 11 in the Social 50 Chart, No. 6 in the Top Rock Artists Chart, No. 9 in the Rock Songs Artists Chart, No. 16 in the Rock Albums Chart, No. 4 in the Hard Rock Albums Chart, and No. 7 in the Alternative Songs Chart.
Lake Nicaragua is the biggest lake in Central America.
It lies in the south of Nicaragua, close to the border with Costa Rica.
A river connects the lake to Lake Managua, which lies to the north.
There are over 400 islets, three islands, and two volcanoes in Lake Nicaragua.
San Juan river connects the lake to the Carribean Sea.
Louis David Riel (22 October 1844 16 November 1885, (Loo-E Ree-L) in English) was a Canadian politician.
He founded the province of Manitoba and was a leader of the M tis people of the Canadian prairies.
He led two resistance movements against the Canadian government and its first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald.
Riel tried to preserve M tis rights and culture.
He is regarded by many as a Canadian folk hero today.
Until recently, Riel was regarded as an outlaw.
During a battle against the Canadian government his people took prisoners.
One of these prisoners was a man named Thomas Scott.
Scott would often be resistant and disrespectful of his captors.
When Scott assaulted one of Riel 's men, Riel had had enough.
He was put on trial to a jury containing several of Riel 's most trusted men.
(including Elz ar Goulet, a M tis leader who supported Riel.)
The court found Scott guilty, and he was sentenced to death for treason, by a firing squad.
The English speaking people of Ontario considered this murder and a war party called the Wolsely Expedition was sent to put his rebellion down.
This, eventua lly led to his capture.
Riel was hanged in Regina due to his involvement in the resistance against the Canadian government.
Life expectancy is how long a person is expected to live.
It is based on many factors such as country and life style including smoking, diet, and exercise.
There are great changes in life expectancy between different parts of the world, mostly caused by differences in public health, medical care and diet.
Much of the excess mortality (higher death rates) in poorer nations is due to war, not enough food, and medical conditions or diseases (AIDS, Malaria, etc.).
Over the past 200 years, countries with Black or African populations have generally not had the same improvements in mortality rates that have been enjoyed by other peoples.
Even in countries with a majority of White people, such as USA, Britain, Ireland and France, Black people tend to have shorter life expectancies than their White counterparts (although often the statistics are not analyzed by race).
For example, in the U.S. White Americans are expected to live until age 78, but African Americans only until age 71.
Climate may also have an effect, and the way data is collected may also influence the figures.
According to the CIA World Factbook, Macau has the world 's longest life expectancy of 84.4 years.
There are also significant differences in life expectancy between men and women in most countries, with women typically outliving men by around five years.
Economic circumstances also affect life expectancy.
For example, in the United Kingdom, life expectancy in the richest areas like Kensington is several years longer than in the poorest areas such as Glasgow.
This may reflect factors such as diet and lifestyle as well as access to medical care.
It may also reflect a selective effect: people with chronic life-threatening illnesses are less likely to become rich or to live in rich areas.
Louis Jude "Lou" Ferrigno (born November 9, 1951) is an American movie, television, voice actor, and bodybuilder.
He is known for playing the Hulk in the television series The Incredible Hulk.
Ferrigno was born on November 9, 1951 in Brooklyn, New York.
He was married to Susan Groff from 1978 until they divorced in 1979.
In 1980, he married Carla Ferrigno.
Vladimir Lenin was a Russian Marxist.
He had a set of political ideas based on Marxism.
Lenin 's development of Marxism has become known as Leninism.
Limp Bizkit is an American nu metal band from Jacksonville, Florida.
They were formed in 1994.
Fred Durst is the vocalist.
They were on hiatus, but reformed in 2009, and have played festivals since.
They have sold around 35 million records around the world.
Lazio or Latium is a region in the center of Italy.
The capital is Rome.
The population was 5,889,649 in 2014.
Lee Van Cleef (January 9, 1925 December 16, 1989) was an American actor.
Born in Somerville, New Jersey, U.S..
His first roles were the villain Jack Colby in the western classic High Noon (1952) with Gary Cooper, and the sci fi movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) as Corp..
Stone.
Other classic western movies, he played a minor role in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), as Ed Bailey, and The Tin Star (1957), as Ed McGaffey.
Lee Van Cleef jumped to fame in the spaghetti westerns, directed by Sergio Leone, Per qualche dollaro in pi (For a Few Dollars More) (1965) and Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) (1966), with Clint Eastwood in the title role.
He had great success in European cinema in Italy is the protagonist of Spaghetti Westerns: The Big Gundown (1966) - Da uomo a uomo (1966) - I giorni dell ` ira (1967) - Al di l della legge (1968) - Sabata (1969) - tornato Sabata... hai chiuso un ` altra volta (1971) - Bad Man 's River (1971) - Il grande duello (1972) - Dio, sei proprio un padreterno!
(1973) - The Stranger and the Gunfighter (1974) - Take a Hard Ride (1975) - Diamante Lobo (1976).
In the United States, Van Cleef also starred in some western movies such as Barquero (1970), by Gordon Douglas, and The Magnificent Seven Ride!
(1972) by George McCowan
In the early 1980s he worked in the film The Octagon (1980), with Chuck Norris, Escape from New York (1981), directed by John Carpenter, and Armed Response (1986), with David Carradine.
In 1984, Van Cleef was the main protagonist of the NBC television series The Master, created by Michael Sloan, Lee plays an ex-military master martial arts expert ninja.
Although it only lasted 13 episodes in the series keeps hundreds of thousands of fans around the world
Luigi Pirandello (Agrigento 28 June 1867 Rome 10 December 1936) was an Italian playwrights, novelist, and short story writer.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage".
Pirandello 's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian.
Pirandello 's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners for Theatre of the Absurd.
Luke the Evangelist is said to be the man who wrote the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible.
Irenaeus, Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome say that he was a friend of Saint Paul and a doctor, and that he accompanied Paul on some of his travels.
These people also say that he was of Greek origin, from Antioch in Syria.
Modern-day scholars think that the person that wrote the two books was not the same that accompanied Paul.
Paul had a theology that was special, and slightly different from that of other writers of the New Testament.
The two books written by Luke never refer to this theology.
Also, the name of Paul 's companion is never linked to writing the two books.
The Acts of the Apostles often tell things about Paul which Paul does not tell himself in his letters.
Luke wrote about the Three Wise Men who visited Jesus in the Bible.
Luke never said there were 3 wise men, only wise men from the east.
Lynyrd Skynyrd is an American southern rock band from Jacksonville, Florida.
Their name comes from one of their school teachers who was named Leonard Skinner.
They wrote songs including: "Sweet Home, Alabama", "Simple Man" and "Freebird."
The lead singer 's name was Ronnie Van Zant.
After Ronnie died, his brother Johnny Van Zant became lead singer.
Land Rover is a brand of the British Jaguar Land Rover company.
The company makes cars (SUV 's).
Since 2008 they have been owned by a Indian company called Tata Motors.
Land Rover supplies the British Army with vehicles.
The original Land Rover car dates back to 1948, and was designed by Maurice Wilks.
As of 2014, Land Rover sells six ranges of vehicle: the Defender, Freelander 2\/LR2, Discovery 4\/LR4, Range Rover Evoque, Range Rover Sport and Range Rover.
Lleida is a city in western Catalonia, Spain.
It is the capital of the province of Lleida.
Le Mans is a commune.
It is found in the Pays de la Loire region in the Sarthe department in the west of France.
Le Mans is a city in France.
It has about 143,000 inhabitants.
It takes about one hour to go to Paris by TGV.
Lycopene is the pigment of tomato.
Its chemical formula is (6E,8 E,10 E,12 E,14 E,16 E,18 E,20 E,22 E,24 E,26 E) - 2,6,10,14,19,23,27,31 - Octamethyldotriaconta - 2, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16,18,20,22,24,26,30 - tridecaene.
C40H56.
Ketchup contains the highest concentrations of bioavailable lycopene.
Liv Ullmann (born 16 December 1938) is a Norwegian actress particularly associated with movies by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman.
Ullmann was born in Tokyo, Japan, to Norwegian parents.
The family moved to Toronto when she was two.
Her father was an engineer and after his death in 1946, Ullmann returned to Norway with her mother and older sister, where they settled in Trondheim.
After high school, she decided on an acting career.
She applied and was turned down twice at the National Theater School in Oslo.
She nonetheless persevered and after some studies at the Webber School of Acting in London, she eventually found work with a repertory theater company in Stavenger.
She also began appearing in bit parts in movies and on television.
She got her first major break when she met Swedish director Ingmar Bergman who offered her a role in his movie Persona (1966), opposite Bibi Anderson.
She became his muse and lover and went on starring in several of his movies to considerable acclaim; Hour of the Wolf (1968), Shame (1968), The Passion of Anna (1969), Cries and Whispers (1972), Scenes of a Marriage (1973), Face to Face (1975), The Serpent 's Egg (1977), Autumn Sonata (1978) and Saraband (2003).
She also appeared in Jan Troell 's epic movie The Emigrants (1971) and its sequel The New Land (1972), which earned her an Academy Award nomination as best actress.
After her break up with Bergman in the early 1970s, she went to Hollywood and appeared in movies such as Pope Joan (1972), New Horizons (1973), Forty Carats (1973), The Abdication (1974), Zandy 's Bride (1974), but failed to establish herself as the new Nordic star like Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman before her.
She published two autobiographies Changing (1977) and Choices (1984), in which she candidly discussed her life and career.
In the 1990s, she turned to directing with movies including Sofie (1992) and Kristin Lavransdotter (1995).
She also worked as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF.
Miss Ullmann has a daughter Linn Ullmann (born in 1966) with Ingmar Bergman, and two grandchildren.
Laika (, meaning "Barker"; c. 1954 November 3, 1957) was a Soviet Union space dog.
She was one of the first animals in space, and the first animal to orbit the Earth.
She was a mix of either a Siberian Husky or other Nordic breed, and a terrier.
NASA refers to Laika as a "part-Samoyed terrier."
The reason for sending a dog into space was to get information about the behavior of living organisms in a space environment.
Information from the flight led to the discovery of solar (from the sun) and cosmic radiation.
Laika had been a stray dog living in the streets of Moscow.
She underwent training with two other dogs.
She was then chosen as the dog to go up in the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2.
It was launched into outer space on November 3, 1957.
Not much was known about how spaceflight would affect living animals at the time of Laika 's mission.
There was also no way, at that time, to bring the satellite back down to Earth.
So all the scientists knew there would be no way for Laika to survive her trip.
It was necessary to send a dog first as a test, because it was not thought that humans could live in outer space.
Before her trip in Sputnik, one of the scientists took Laika home to play with his children.
Dr. Vladimir Yazdovsky wrote: "Laika was quiet and charming... I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live."
One of the technicians getting the capsule ready before final lift-off said that "after placing Laika in the container and before closing the hatch, we kissed her nose and wished her bon voyage, knowing that she would not survive the flight."
Laika died within hours from overheating.
Her body temperature got way too hot for her to survive.
The heat in her spacecraft had quickly risen to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
The true cause and time of her death were hidden from people until 2002.
Instead, it was reported that she died when her oxygen ran out on day six.
Another untruth, as the Soviet government first said, was that she was euthanised (put to sleep) before her oxygen ran out.
In 1998, Oleg Gazenko, a top-level scientist with the project, said to news reporters "The more time passes, the more I 'm sorry about it.
We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog...".
Over five months later, after 2,570 orbits, Sputnik 2 burned up along with Laika 's remains during re-entry on April 14, 1958.
On April 11, 2008, Russian officials opened a monument to Laika.
It was built near the military research facility in Moscow which prepared Laika 's space flight.
It is of a dog standing on top of a rocket.
She also appears on the Monument to the Conquerors of Space in Moscow.
Laika & the Cosmonauts, a Finnish surf rock band, were named for Laika.
They formed in 1987.
Genre: Heavy Metal, Thrash metal Master of Puppets is Metallica 's third album.
It was released by Elektra Records on February 21 1986.
The album has 8 songs, which many feel made a permanent impact on heavy metal music.
Several of its songs are still played on the radio.
It is the last album to feature bassist Cliff Burton, who died in a bus accident on September 27, 1986 while touring in Sweden to promote the album.
It is one of the best selling heavy metal albums.
Ride the Lightning is the second album released by the thrash metal band Metallica.
It was released on 19 November 1984.
It got good reviews.
It has sold over six million copies in the US.
Metallica (also known informally as The Black Album) is the fifth studio album by thrash metal band Metallica.
It was released in 1991 by Elektra Records.
It debuted at # 1 in the Billboard 200, making Metallica the band 's first album to do so.
Currently, Metallica has sold over 15 million copies in the United States alone.
It is the band 's most successful album.
The album was hard for the band to make.
Ulrich, Hammett and Newsted got divorces with their wives because of the stress.
Six singles were released from the album: "Enter Sandman", "The Unforgiven", "Nothing Else Matters", "Wherever I May Roam", "Sad but True", and "Do n't Tread on Me".
"Enter Sandman" was the best-selling.
It won Best Metal Video at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards.
The album won a Grammy for Best Metal Performance in 1992.
In 2012 Metallica played the whole album in their 2012 European Black Album Tour from the end to the start.
Load is an album by the heavy metal band Metallica.
It was released in 1996.
Four singles were released from it.
It has sold over 5 million copies in the US.
Metallica is an American thrash metal\/heavy metal band.
The band came together in Los Angeles in 1981 and helped to invent the thrash sub-genre of heavy metal.
They are well known for many of their songs, including "Master of Puppets", "The Unforgiven", "One", "Enter Sandman", and "Nothing Else Matters."
Since then, they have become one of metal 's most popular and successful bands, and have sold over 100 million albums worldwide.
The band 's fifth album, Metallica, has sold over 21 million copies, making it the twenty-fifth biggest selling album of all time in America.
The band formed after drummer Lars Ulrich placed an advertisement in a newspaper saying that he was looking for musicians to play material consisting of Tygers of Pang Tang, Diamond Head, and Led Zeppelin with.
James Hetfield, a guitar player who would become the lead singer of Metallica, answered the advertisement.
Later, Lars and James would have contact from another young aspiring guitar player seeking a band, Dave Mustaine.
Ulrich, Hetfield, Mustaine, and bass player Ron McGovney began playing in the band.
Ulrich and Hetfield saw another bass player, Cliff Burton, playing at a concert, and asked him to join the band to replace McGovney, who was having trouble getting along with other band members.
Burton later joined the band after Ulrich and Hetfield agreed to move from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
In 1983, Mustaine was kicked out of the band for his drug and alcohol problems and violent behavior, and was replaced with guitar player Kirk Hammett who left his previous band, Exodus.
Mustaine went on to form his own band Megadeth, who became extremely popular on the metal scene, and have become one of Metallica 's metal contemporaries, along with Slayer and Anthrax.
All four bands are collectively known as the Big 4 of thrash metal.
In 1983, Metallica released their first studio album Kill 'Em All, on which few of the songs were still credited to Mustaine.
One year later, Metallica released their second studio album Ride the Lightning.
"Ride the Lightning" and "The Call of Ktulu," the album 's final track, were the band 's last songs to give Dave Mustaine writing credits.
Metallica was one of few bands at the time to deviate from the then popular hair\/glam metal trend that was taking place during the 1980 's, led by bands like Poison and M tley Cr e.
In 1986, Metallica released their third studio album, Master of Puppets, which is widely considered to be one of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time.
On September 27, 1986, Cliff Burton was killed when the band 's tour bus crashed in Sweden.
Burton was subsequently replaced by Jason Newsted after auditioning.
With Newsted as bassist, Metallica released their fourth studio album... And Justice for All, reaching # 6 on the Billboard 200.
The album features the song "One," which won a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 1990.
The album is criticized for its production and inaudible bass guitar, which is commonly believed to be a result of Jason Newsted 's hazing, during which the other members turned down the bass guitar volume on the album.
The album is also known for having much more complex song structures than previous albums.
Metallica reached even greater success with their self-titled fifth studio album, which debuted at # 1 on the Billboard 200 and has sold over 15 million copies in the United States.
The album won a Grammy for Best Metal Performance in 1992, being Metallica 's third consecutive Grammy (the second being their cover of Queen 's "Stone Cold Crazy").
Metallica 's music shifted towards a more mainstream hard rock style, and continued their success with Load and ReLoad, released in 1996 and 1997, which both debuted at # 1 on the Billboard 200.
Despite the albums ' success, many fans were unhappy with the large change of style from Metallica 's previous albums.
In 1998, Metallica released Garage, Inc., which was an album of cover songs by many of the artists that influenced Metallica, such as Mot rhead, Mercyful Fate, Thin Lizzy, and Blue yster Cult.
In 2001, Newsted left Metallica to start his own project, Echobrain, much against the band 's wishes, particularly James Hetfield.
Their eighth studio album, St. Anger, was released in 2003, with producer Bob Rock playing bass after Newsted 's departure.
St. Anger also debuted at # 1 on the Billboard 200, but was even further disliked by fans than Load and Reload.
Shortly after the release of St. Anger, bassist Robert Trujillo joined the band after a long auditioning process with many bassists.
At Trujillo 's request, his audition song was Battery, a very fast-paced song from Master of Puppets.
Death Magnetic, the band 's ninth studio album, was released in September 2008, and debuted at # 1 on the Billboard 200, making Metallica the first band to achieve five consecutive # 1 albums in United States.
Death Magnetic showed a return to the band 's thrash metal roots.
From 2008 to 2010, Metallica performed their World Magnetic Tour supporting the album 's release.
The tour concluded in Melbourne, Australia November 21, 2010.
In June 2010, Metallica attended the Sonisphere Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria with the rest of the Big 4, alongside Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer.
Between Metallica 's encores, all four bands took the stage to perform "Am I Evil?"
by Diamond Head.
In 2011, Lulu, a collaboration album between Metallica and Lou Reed, was released.
Many Metallica fans were dissatisfied due to stylistic differences between Reed and Metallica, but the album has managed to garner success.
In October 2013, Hetfield stated in an interview that the band would start working on their next album in early 2014.
A mural is a painting on a wall or a ceiling.
Murals are usually big.
They may be in public places, such as the outside of a building, or indoors.
Microeconomics is the science of how people make decisions at the small scale.
It is different from macroeconomics which looks at how the economy works as a whole ("on aggregate").
In microeconomics, we might look at how a person chooses what to buy at the store, or how many things a company will make.
Some parts of microeconomics include Consumer Theory and Theory of the Firm, which study how people and businesses make decisions.
Game Theory looks at how people make decisions when the outcome (how something ends) depends on what decision another person makes; when agents are said to act "strategically".
Macroeconomics studies large-scale economic decisions.
For example, a whole country 's economy (or, its economic output) is summarised by the GDP (gross domestic product).
Many governments use macroeconomic ideas to decide how much tax to collect and what interest rates should be.
It also considers the amount of unemployment, the rate that prices go up (inflation), and the exchange rates of its currency.
The exchange rate affects the amount of imports and exports.
Exchange rates and taxation are "levers of the economy".
Less dramatic, but also very important, are decisions about government spending inside the country.
Such police decisions are politically controversial due to differing political ideas on government spending.
Another factor in macroeconomics is the make-up of the population.
A growing population is economically different from a stable population (one which is not growing).
Mary Pickford (April 8, 1892 May 29, 1979) was a silent movie actress.
She was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
She was co-founder of United Artists.
She was one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
She married silent movie star Douglas Fairbanks.
They lived in a Hollywood home called Pickfair.
The American Film Institute named Pickford 24th among the greatest female stars of all time.
MD5 is a special algorithm, a mathematical process, used to make computer information secure and safe.
It is mainly used for security in database systems.
The algorithm generates a unique hash code for every piece of data (strings, text etc.).
Any change to the data, either deliberate or accidental, will mean the hash code will also change.
By comparing the codes, it is easy to see if a change has been made.
MD5 was invented by Ron Rivest of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991.
An MD5 hash code is usually a 32-digit hexadecimal number.
By 1996 methods were developed to break the security of an MD5 algorithm.
This was done by getting another program to make the same hash number for different sets of data.
MD5 is no longer considered acceptable for protecting against intentional malicious changes to data, but it is still considered OK to protect from accidental changes, for example single-bit changes caused by noise on a network connection.
Magic: The Gathering is a CCG (Collectable Card Game).
The game uses a fantasy world involving magic.
Richard Garfield made the game in 1993.
The game is played by 2 or more people.
Players attack each other causing them to lose life points.
Each player starts at 20 life points.
There are many kinds of cards that can be used to reduce another player 's life.
Players can attack another player with a creature or deal direct damage with a spell.
You win the game by reducing your opponent 's life to 0, when you opponent runs out of cards to draw or through a win condition determined by a card.
Magic: The Gathering is a trading card game.
Players buy and trade cards, and build their own card decks.
Decks must have at least 60 cards.
Players can play in tournaments, and there are even professional Magic players.
Most players of Magic: The Gathering simply call the game Magic.
Some Magic cards cost a lot, because they are very good or very rare.
The card Black Lotus is worth $ 27,302.
About 12,000,000 people in the world today play magic.
Richard Garfield started to make the game at University of Pennsylvania.
In 1993 he showed the game to the game company Wizards of the Coast.
The company liked the game, and started to produce it.
The first cards were made in 1993.
The cards are produced in groups of cards called "sets".
The first sets were very successful, so more sets were made.
About four sets are produced each year.
Cards made before 2003 look different than newer cards, but are still compatible with the modern game in most cases.
Professional Magic began in 1996.
Professionals play in tournaments around the world in the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour.
A player can win as much as $ 40,000 in one tournament.
Magic: The Gathering Online (MTGO) was made in 2002.
Magic players can now play their favorite game on the internet.
A new MTGO was released in 2008.
Generally more males play the game than females.
A game of Magic is played by two or more players.
A player starts the game with twenty "life points".
A player loses when he or she has zero or fewer life points.
There are different ways to lose life points: players play "creature" cards and attack other players with them, or players play spells on other players.
There are also other ways for players to lose: they have no cards in their deck, they have 10 "poison counters", or a card is played that says they lose.
Players begin the game by shuffling their decks (mixing up their cards) and then taking up seven cards.
Each card has a different power.
Players takes one new card at the start of each turn, but the first player does not take a card on their first turn.
There are many steps in each turn.
Certain cards can only be played in certain steps.
A player can have no more than seven cards at the end of their turn.
If they do, they must put cards into their "graveyard" (next to their deck) till they only have seven.
There are two basic kinds of cards: "spells" and "lands".
Lands give its player "mana" (magical energy).
Mana is used to cast spells.
A player may only play one land each turn.
More powerful spells take more mana to play.
There are also different kinds of spells.
"Sorceries" and "instants" are played, and go directly to the "graveyard" after their effects take place.
"Permanents" stay in play after they are played, and their effects stay as well.
"Creatures" are a special kind of permanent that can attack and damage other players.
Most spells are one of five colors: white, blue, black, red, and green.
To play a spell, at least one mana that is the same color as the spell is needed.
Players normally get this mana from "basic lands": "plains" for white, "island" for blue, "swamp" for black, "mountain" for red, and "forest" for green.
Each color has strengths and weaknesses, with white magic dealing in protection and defense, blue magic dealing with trickery and thinking, black magic dealing in death and greed, red magic dealing in fire and emotion, and green magic dealing in strength and nature.
Each card has a picture that gives an idea of the power of the card.
Card sets are usually made along with stories, and the pictures on cards generally show actions, events or characters in the stories.
Mathematics is the study of numbers, shapes and patterns.
The word is sometimes shortened to maths (in England, Australia, and New Zealand) or math (in the United States and Canada).
Mathematicians are people who do mathematics.
Mathematics is useful for solving problems that occur in the real world, so many people besides mathematicians study and use mathematics.
Today, some mathematics is needed in many jobs.
Business, science, engineering, and construction need some knowledge of mathematics.
Mathematicians solve problems by using logic.
Mathematicians often use deduction.
Deduction is a special way of thinking to discover and prove new truths using old truths.
To a mathematician, the reason something is true is just as important as the fact that it is true.
Using deduction is what makes mathematical thinking different from other kinds of thinking.
Mathematics uses logic, paper, and calculator.
These things are used to create general rules, which are an important part of mathematics.
These rules leave out information that is not important so that a single rule can cover many situations.
By finding general rules, mathematics solves many problems at the same time.
A proof gives a reason why a rule in mathematics is correct.
This is done by using certain other rules that everyone agrees are correct, which are called axioms.
A rule that has a proof is sometimes called a theorem.
Experts in mathematics perform research to create new theorems.
Sometimes experts find an idea that they think is a theorem but can not find a proof for it.
That idea is called a conjecture until they find a proof.
Sometimes, mathematics finds and studies rules or ideas in the real world that we do n't understand yet.
Often in mathematics, ideas and rules are chosen because they are considered simple or neat.
On the other hand, sometimes these ideas and rules are found in the real world after they are studied in mathematics; this has happened many times in the past.
In general, studying the rules and ideas of mathematics can help us understand the world better.
Mathematics includes the study of number, or quantity.
Some areas of mathematics study the structure that an object has.
Some areas of mathematics study the shapes of things.
Some areas of mathematics study the way things change.
Applied mathematics uses mathematics to solve problems of other areas such as engineering, physics, and computing.
These theorems have interested mathematicians and people who are not mathematicians.
These are theorems and conjectures that have greatly changed mathematics.
Progress in understanding the nature of mathematics also influences the way mathematicians study their subject.
Mathematics in history, and the history of mathematics.
The word "mathematics" comes from the Greek word"" (m thema).
The Greek word"" means "science, knowledge, or learning".
Often, the word "mathematics" is made shorter into maths (in British English) or math (in American English).
The short words maths or math are often used for arithmetic, geometry or simple algebra by students and their schools.
There is no Nobel prize in mathematics.
Mathematicians can receive the Abel prize and the Fields Medal for important works.
There are many tools that are used to do mathematics or to find answers to mathematics problems.
The Middle Ages are a time period in European history.
They started around the year 476 CE when the Western Roman Empire ended, and continued until around the time Christopher Columbus discovered the New World in 1492.
The ` Middle Ages ' are called this because it is the time between the fall of Imperial Rome and the beginning of the Early modern Europe.
This period of time is also known as the Medieval Age, the Dark Ages, or the Age of Faith (because of the rise of Christianity and Islam).
When used narrowly, the term "Dark Ages" refer only to very early period, from 476 to 800 (when Charlemagne became king).
Across Europe, the fall of the Roman Empire, and the invasions of barbarian tribes, devastated towns and cities and their inhabitants.
The Dark Ages are given this name because during this period of time Europe was in disarray, and it was not fun to live there and since few could write, little is known about it.
Much of the knowledge that the Romans used (science, technology, medicine, and literature) was lost.
The Dark Ages period was marked by mass migrations, wars and plagues.
This lasted some 300 years until the development of feudalism partly diminished the continuous violence.
Emperor Charlemagne was crowned in 800, and he promoted order, education and civilization.
Europe began slowly regain what was lost during those centuries.
During the Middle Ages, Europe changed as the remains of a great empire (the Western Roman Empire) slowly became independent countries (England, France (The Franks), Germany (Germania), Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Poland, and Russia.
Meanwhile the remains of Eastern Rome had become the Byzantine Empire, which was started by Roman emperor Constantine in 330, and likewise had a capital city named Constantinople.
The Byzantine empire controlled Asia Minor, Southern Spain, Northern Africa and sometimes southern Italy but its lands were slowly eaten away by enemies like the Turks and the Franks.
As a walled city on a peninsula the city of Constantinople was extremely difficult to attack.
The Byzantines were eventually destroyed by the Ottoman Turks, who seized Constantinople in 1453.
They called the city by its present day name, Istanbul.
This event is sometimes called the end of the Middle Age.
Islam was founded in the early 7th century by the prophet Muhammad.
Muslims believe that the Qur ` an is God 's ultimate revelation to mankind.
Islam spread quickly through warfare and along the major trade routes of the old world, finding appeal with traders and travellers.
The Islamic religion soon split; between the Sunni Muslims and the Shi ` a.
The Sunni religion is the majority (roughly 85 % of Muslims belong to this sect), Most Shi ` a live in modern day Iran and Iraq.
The Sunni-Shi ' a split has been compared to the Catholic-Eastern Orthodox split of the Christian church much later in 1054.
Muslims quickly conquered the Christian countries of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Spain.
The Christians were able to keep France and other European countries.
Later Muslims took other countries such as Persia and India where they built the Mughal Empire.
The Muslim Ottoman Empire eventually conquered parts of eastern Europe.
The Muslims took hold of vast areas of land making them a superpower of the Middle Ages.
During the Early Middle Ages, Muslims achieved what is remembered as a golden age of knowledge.
During these times of strife in Europe, Muslim caliphs gathered the ancient texts of the great empires (Rome, Greece, Egypt) and attempted to re-integrate that knowledge.
During this time a Persian Muslim helped develop progress in algebra.
The golden age of Islam ended with the Ottoman invasions in the 11th century.
During the Middle Ages trade between countries became much more common.
It was mostly through the Middle Eastern \/ Asian trade route known as the Silk Road.
Arabs served as the middle men in international trade.
Trade in this time was based on how valuable the item was.
The items that had higher value, and low weight, traveled the farthest (gold, silk, etc...)
, and items that were heavier and worth less would travel mostly short distances.
Food, for example, would mostly travel only within a few villages.
During the high Middle Ages, wealth began to return and consumers began to demand luxuries again.
Silk, porcelain, spices, incense, gold and gems, all traveled thousands of miles across deserts, mountains and plains.
Glass was in turn imported from Europe to East.
Trade was greatly interrupted several times during the Crusades (1094-1291) due to the aggression between Muslims and Europeans, and because of Mongolian Invasions, and later because of the Black Plague.
It is thought that the Mongols brought the Plague with them from Asia, and devastated the world population from 1348-1351.
Almost a third of the world 's population was killed by the plague at this time, although the Americas were not touched by the disease at all.
Buddhism is a non-theistic religion (in other words, Buddhists do n't believe in a god) that is based on philosophy.
It began in India but is almost entirely gone from that area now.
Muslim invaders of the Mughal dynasty drove out this system of beliefs, more or less forcing Buddhism to flee East (where it eventually took strong roots in China).
During the Middle Ages the Mongols created the world 's largest empire, controlling much of Asia, Middle East, and far eastern Europe.
Mongolia was so large and powerful that its strength lead to the Pax Mongolica, similar to the Roman Pax Romana (pax is Latin for peace).
In other words, the Mongol Empire created a period of time that saw no war; only a great deal of international trade and diplomacy along the Silk Road.
Mongol leader Genghis Khan built an empire that was so large, it collapsed under its own size (much like Alexander the Great 's did) around the time of the Khan 's death in 1227.
The former Mongol empire was split four ways, leaving the Chinese to become the dominant power in the Far East once again.
Later, the Chinese took control of northern China again under the Yuan Dynasty.
Around 1405, A Chinese admiral named Zheng He went to explore the world.
His fleet of 300 ` treasure ships ' explored great areas of the Eastern world, and were many times larger than anything the Europeans had built.
(A Zheng He Treasure ship was wider than Columbus ' ship ` Santa Maria ' was long).
Unfortunately for Zheng, his voyages were ended before he had a chance to discover the Americas.
The Late Middle Ages were the last two centuries of the Middle Ages, from 1300 to 1492.
During this period the gun changed war and aristocracy and feudalism became less important.
States founded standing armies.
Before, armies were only formed when there was a war.
States only made their laws, money and identity the same in the entire country.
Technology, economy and science developed.
Cities were founded and existing cities grew larger and richer.
France and England fought the Hundred Years ' War.
The Grand Duchy of Moscow regained its independence from the Mongols just like the Chinese, and under the name "Russia" became the most important state in Eastern Europe.
In the 15th century, the Ottoman Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire.
That event cut off the Silk Road, and the Europeans had to find new trade routes.
In turn, the Muslims were driven off Spain.
This event triggered the Age of Discovery during the Renaissance.
In the late Middle Ages the Frisians rebelled against the Habsburgians from 1515 until 1523.
They were lead into battle by the legendary warriors and warlords Donia and Jelckama.
They were eventually defeated and decapitated (beheaded) in Leeuwarden.
In probability theory and statistics, the median is a number.
This number has the property that it divides a set of observed values in two equal halves, so that half of the values are below it, and half are above.
If there are a finite number of elements, the median is easy to find.
The values need to be arranged in a list, lowest to highest.
If there is an odd number of values, the median is the one at position.
For example, if there are 13 values, they can be arranged into two groups of 6, with the median in between, at position 7.
With an even number of values, as there is no single number which divides all of the numbers to two halves, the median is defined as the mean of the two central elements.
With 14 observations, this would be the mean of elements 7 and 8, which is their sum divided by 2.
Alternatively, the median of an even-sized list is sometimes defined as either of the two middle elements; the choice being either (a) always the smallest one, (b) always the largest one, or (c) randomly choose between the two.
This alternative definition has two important advantages: it guarantees that the median is always a list element (e.g., a list of integers will never have a fractional median), and it guarantees that the median exists for any ordinal-valued data.
On the other hand, when one of the choices (a) or (b) is taken, the median of a sample will be biased, which is an unwanted property of a statistical estimator.
Definition (c) does not have that disadvantage, but it is more difficult to do.
It also has the disadvantage that the same list of values does not have a well-defined, deterministic median.
Median and mean are different in several ways.
Mean is a better measure in many cases, because many of the statistical tests can use mean and standard deviation of two observations to compare them, while the same comparison can not be performed using the medians.
Median is more useful when the variance of the values is not important and we only need a central measure of the values.
If the maximum value of a set of numbers changes while the other numbers of this set are kept the same, the mean of this set of numbers changes, but the median does not.
Another advantage of median is that it can be calculated sooner when we are studying survival data.
For example, a researcher can calculate the median survival of patients with a kidney transplant, when half the patients participated in his study die.
Calculate the mean survival requires continuing the study and following all the patients until their death.
Suppose you want to know how many jelly beans most people in the room have.
Let 's say there are five people in the room:
The results change a lot when you have a bigger range of numbers.
Let 's imagine a different group of five people:
In this second case, the mean gives you a poor understanding how many jelly beans most people have (10 or less).
The median gives you a better idea of the number of jelly beans most people have.
If you wanted to divide up the number of jelly beans equally, however, you would use the mean.
Mammals are the group of vertebrate animals which form the class Mammalia.
They have fur and a very precise kind of temperature regulation.
The females bear live young, and produce milk for the young.
Parental care of the young is universal among mammals, and it is essential because live birth limits the number of offspring.
Most marsupial and eutherian mammals have a reproductive cycle known as the oestrous cycle (U. S: estrous cycle).
Females are sexually active only during the oestrous stage, when they are ` on heat ' for a few days each month.
If an ovum is not fertilised, the endometrium (uterus lining) is resorbed.
Oestrus cycles may occur once or twice a year, or many times a year.
Each group of mammals has its own frequency.
Humans and primates, are quite different.
They have a menstrual cycle.
In this case, females are sexually receptive at any time, but only fertile when an ovum is released from an ovary.
In this case, the endometrium (if not needed for an fertilised egg) is discarded.
The endometrium is shed, and takes with it a certain amount of blood.
In this system, eggs are released from the ovaries mostly in the middle of the cycle, away from the mentrual period.
This ovulation is ` concealed ', meaning, it is not obvious when it occurs.
This process, so it is thought, tends to keep the male and female together, which is unusual in mammals with the oestrous cycle.
One diagnostic feature is the lower jaw which, unlike earlier forms, is composed of a single bone, the dentary.
This is one feature which can be seen in fossils, or at least those which are complete enough to have the lower jaw.
Mammals have three little bones in their inner ear, the ear ossicles.
The ear ossicles are bones which were, long ago, part of the lower jaw in early proto-mammals.
There are quite a number of other features, particularly in the skull and limbs, so that it is usually possible identify and describe a mammal from its skeleton alone.
Another diagnostic feature is the neocortex of the brain, which no other vertebrate has.
This is involved in the kind of flexible behavior and learning typical of mammals.
Reptiles and birds have much of their behavior controlled by "inherited behavior chains", which roughly translates as "instincts".
Almost all animals can do some learning, but mammals do far more than other vertebrates.
Their behavior is much more flexible than lizards, for example, and that is made possible by their neocortex.
Other things in the life of mammals seem to be connected with this flexibility and learning.
Play is a kind of early learning period in which, according to one theory, mammals develop skills which they will need in life.
All mammalian young play, and this is very obvious in the more intelligent mammals (primates, cats).
The emotions of mammals are very noticeable, and rather similar to ours.
It is possible, and quite common, for humans to have a friendly relationship with another mammal.
It is quite impossible for a human to have any kind of relationship with a snake or a gecko (for example).
This is because the reptile simply does not have the same basic emotions as a human.
There are about 50 characters which are typical of mammals, and some of the most important are discussed above.
A few more examples will make it clear that mammals are very different from reptiles and birds:
In the language of cladistics, these 50 unique characters are apomorphies which prove that mammals are a clade descended from a common ancestor.
Almost all mammals give birth to live young.
There are only two mammals that lay eggs, called Monotremes, the Duck-billed Platypus Ornithorhynchus, and the Spiny Anteater Echidna, with four species.
All are confined to Australia and New Guinea, and are the sole survivors of an earlier group of mammals.
However, like other mammals, they feed milk to their young, and protect and look after them.
Other mammals are divided into the Marsupials and the Eutheria, the placental mammals.
Marsupials are mammals with pouches to carry young in, like the kangaroo.
All other mammals are Eutherian.
In terms of number of species mammals, with 5488 species, are not the most successful vertebrates.
Birds, with about 10,000 species have nearly twice as many, and reptiles have just as many as birds.
Fish have even more species.
There are 27,000 species of fish, of which nearly 26,000 are bony fish.
Despite this, many zoologists do regard mammals as a successful group of animals.
One reason is that they are successful in all habitats on Earth.
In the air, in the water, in forests, in the colder regions of the world, and above all on grasslands, where they are outstandingly successful.
In the air, the bats (Chiroptera) are the mammalian order with the most species.
They ` own ' the nighttime, since birds are largely diurnal (daytime) animals.
Bats are hugely successful, mostly as nighttime predators of insects.
Seagoing mammals, the Cetacea and the pinnipeds, are very successful and significant predators.
This includes the whales, seals, walrus, dolphins and others.
The terrestrial mammals are fewer in number of species than lizards, but they are huge in individual numbers, and far more important in the life of the terrestrial biomes.
Their ability to move from place to place and adapt has made them a most effective group.
Many mammals live in cold places.
These mammals have thick hair or blubber to keep them warm.
Others may live in rainforests.
On land the rodents (rats, mice) are hugely successful, more common in numbers than any other mammals.
Large mammals on land have been hunted to extinction in some parts of the world, but the ones which remain are now better protected.
Last, but certainly not least, are the primates.
Their natural habitat, with few exceptions, are the forests.
Most live in the trees, with hands that grasp, good color vision, and intelligence.
In the Pliocene period some moved out onto the savannahs as grassland replaced forests.
Mankind is the result of this shift into the savannahs.
This sort of classification is not traditional, but it does reflect our knowledge of palaeontology and evolution.
A somewhat standardized classification system has been adopted by most current mammalogy classroom textbooks.
It is based on living animals.
The following taxonomy of extant and recently extinct mammals is from Vaughan et al. 2000.
Music is a form of entertainment that puts sounds together in a way that people like or find interesting.
Most music includes people singing with their voices or playing musical instruments, such as the piano, guitar, or drums.
The word music comes from the Greek word (mousike), which means" (art) of the Muses".
In Ancient Greece the Muses included the goddesses of music, poetry, art, and dance.
Someone who makes music is called a musician.
Music is sound that has been organized by using rhythm, melody or harmony.
If someone bangs saucepans while cooking, it makes noise.
If a person bangs saucepans or pots in a rhythmic way, they are making a simple type of music.
There is no simple definition of music which covers all cases.
It is an art form, and opinions come into play.
Music is whatever people think is music.
A different approach is to list the qualities music must have, such as, sound which has rhythm, melody, pitch, timbre, etc.
These and other attempts, do not capture all aspects of music, or leave out examples which definitely are music.
According to Thomas Clifton, music is "a certain reciprocal relation established between a person, his behavior, and a sounding object".
p10 Musical experience and the music, together, are called phenomena, and the activity of describing phenomena is called phenomenology.
Even in the stone age people made music.
The first music was probably made trying to imitate sounds and rhythms that occurred naturally.
Human music may echo these phenomena using patterns, repetition and tonality.
This kind of music is still here today.
Shamans sometimes imitate sounds that are heard in nature.
It may also serve as entertainment (games), or have practical uses, like luring animals when hunting.
Some animals also can use music.
Songbirds use song to protect their territory, or to attract a mate.
Monkeys have been seen beating hollow logs.
This may, of course, also serve to defend the territory.
The first musical instrument used by humans was probably the voice.
The human voice can make many different kinds of sounds.
The larynx (voice box) is like a wind instrument.
The oldest known Neanderthal hyoid bone with the modern human form was found in 1983, indicating that the Neanderthals had language, because the hyoid supports the voice box in the human throat.
Most likely the first rhythm instruments or percussion instruments involved the clapping of hands, stones hit together, or other things that are useful to keep a beat.
There are finds of this type that date back to the paleolithic.
Some of these are ambiguous, as they can be used either as a tool or a musical instrument.
The oldest flute ever discovered may be the so-called Divje Babe flute, found in the Slovenian cave Divje Babe I in 1995.
It is not certain that the object is really a flute.
The item in question is a fragment of the femur of a young cave bear, and has been dated to about 43,000 years ago.
However, whether it is truly a musical instrument or simply a carnivore-chewed bone is a matter of ongoing debate.
In 2008, archaeologists discovered a bone flute in the Hohle Fels cave near Ulm, Germany.
The five-holed flute has a V-shaped mouthpiece and is made from a vulture wing bone.
The researchers involved in the discovery officially published their findings in the journal Nature, in June 2009.
The discovery is also the oldest confirmed find of any musical instrument in history.
Other flutes were also found in the cave.
This flute was found next to the Venus of Hohle Fels and a short distance from the oldest known human carving.
When they announced their discovery, the scientists suggested that the "finds demonstrate the presence of a well-established musical tradition at the time when modern humans colonized Europe".
The oldest known wooden pipes were discovered near Greystones, Ireland, in 2004.
A wood-lined pit contained a group of six flutes made from yew wood, between 30 and 50 cm long, tapered at one end, but without any finger holes.
They may once have been strapped together.
In 1986 several bone flutes were found in Jiahu in Henan Province, China.
They date to about 6,000 BC.
They have between 5 and 8 holes each and were made from the hollow bones of a bird, the Red-crowned Crane.
At the time of the discovery, one was found to be still playable.
The bone flute plays both the five - or seven-note scale of Xia Zhi and six-note scale of Qing Shang of the ancient Chinese musical system.
It is not known what the earliest music of the cave people was like.
Some architecture, even some paintings, are thousands of years old, but old music could not survive until people learned to write it down.
The only way we can guess about early music is by looking at very old paintings that show people playing musical instruments, or by finding them in archaeological digs (digging under the ground to find old things).
The earliest piece of music that was ever written down and that has not been lost was discovered on a tablet written in Hurrian, a language spoken in and around northern Mesopotamia (where Iraq is today), from about 1500 BC.
Another early piece of written music that has survived was a round called Sumer Is Icumen In.
It was written down by a monk around the year 1250.
Much of the music in the Middle Ages (roughly 450-1420) was folk music played by working people who wanted to sing or dance.
When people played instruments, they were usually playing for dancers.
However, most of the music that was written down was for the Catholic church.
This music was written for monks to sing in church.
It is called Chant (or Gregorian chant).
In the Renaissance (roughly 1400-1550) there was a lot of music, and many composers wrote music that has survived so that it can be performed, played or sung today.
The name for this period (Renaissance) is a French word which means "rebirth".
This period was called the "rebirth" because many new types of art and music were reborn during this time.
Some very beautiful music was written for use in church services (sacred music) by the Italian composer Giovanni da Palestrina (1525-1594).
In Palestrina 's music, many singers sing together (this is called a choir).
There was also plenty of music not written for the church, such as happy dance music and romantic love songs.
Popular instruments during the Renaissance included the viols (a string instrument played with a bow), lutes (a plucked stringed instrument that is a little like a guitar), and the virginal, a small, quiet keyboard instrument.
In the arts, the Baroque was a Western cultural era, which began near the turn of the 17th century in Rome.
It was exemplified by drama and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music.
In music, the term ` Baroque ' applies to the final period of dominance of imitative counterpoint, where different voices and instruments echo each other but at different pitches, sometimes inverting the echo, and even reversing thematic material.
The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement.
The upper class also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control.
Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence.
In similar profusions of detail, art, music, architecture, and literature inspired each other in the Baroque cultural movement as artists explored what they could create from repeated and varied patterns.
Some traits and aspects of Baroque paintings that differentiate this style from others are the abundant amount of details, often bright polychromy, less realistic faces of subjects, and an overall sense of awe, which was one of the goals in Baroque art.
The word baroque probably derives from the ancient Portuguese noun "barroco" which is a pearl that is not round but of unpredictable and elaborate shape.
Hence, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is "elaborate", with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In western music, the classical period means music from about 1750 to 1825.
It was the time of composers like Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Orchestras became bigger, and composers often wrote longer pieces of music called symphonies that had several sections (called movements).
Some movements of a symphony were loud and fast; other movements were quiet and sad.
The form of a piece of music was very important at this time.
Music had to have a nice ` shape '.
They often used a structure which was called sonata form.
Another important type of music was the string quartet, which is a piece of music written for two violins, a viola, and a violoncello.
Like symphonies, string quartet music had several sections.
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven each wrote many famous string quartets.
The piano was invented during this time.
Composers liked the piano, because it could be used to play dynamics (getting louder or getting softer).
Other popular instruments included the violin, the violoncello, the flute, the clarinet, and the oboe.
The 19th century is called the Romantic period.
Composers were particularly interested in conveying their emotions through music.
An important instrument from the Romantic period was the piano.
Some composers, such as Frederic Chopin wrote subdued, expressive, quietly emotional piano pieces.
Often music described a feeling or told a story using sounds.
Other composers, such as Franz Schubert wrote songs for a singer and a piano player called Lied (the German word for "song").
These Lieder (plural of Lied) told stories by using the lyrics (words) of the song and by the imaginative piano accompaniments.
Other composers, like Richard Strauss, and Franz Liszt created narratives and told stories using only music, which is called a tone poem.
Composers, such as Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms used the piano to play loud, dramatic, strongly emotional music.
Many composers began writing music for bigger orchestras, with as many as 100 instruments.
It was the period of "Nationalism" (the feeling of being proud of one 's country) when many composers made music using folksong or melodies from their country.
Lots of famous composers lived at this time such as Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Frederic Chopin, Johannes Brahms, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Richard Wagner.
From about 1900 onwards is called the "modern period".
Many 20th century composers wanted to compose music that sounded different from the Classical and Romantic music.
Modern composers searched for new ideas, such as using new instruments, different forms, different sounds, or different harmonies.
The composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) wrote pieces which were atonal (meaning that they did not sound as if they were in any clear musical key).
Later, Schoenberg invented a new system for writing music called twelve-tone system.
Music written with the twelve-tone system sounds strange to some, but is mathematical in nature, often making sense only after careful study.
Pure twelve-tone music was popular among academics in the fifties and sixties, but some composers such as Benjamin Britten use it today, when it is necessary to get a certain feel.
One of the most important 20th-century composers, Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), wrote music with very complicated (difficult) chords (groups of notes that are played together) and rhythms.
Some composers thought music was getting too complicated and so they wrote Minimalist pieces which use very simple ideas.
In the 1950s and 1960s, composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen experimented with electronic music, using electronic circuits, amplifiers and loudspeakers.
In the 1970s, composers began using electronic synthesizers and musical instruments from rock and roll music, such as the electric guitar.
They used these new instruments to make new sounds.
Composers writing in the 1990s and the 2000s, such as John Adams (born 1947) and James MacMillan (born 1959) often use a mixture of all these ideas, but they like to write tonal music with easy tunes as well.
A.R. Rahman is one of the most famous musicians in the world from India.
Other good examples are Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Bruno Mars etc..
One direction is one of the most famous band.
Zayn Malik is known for his incredible vocals and high notes
Music can be produced electronically.
This is most commonly done by computers, keyboards, electric guitars and disk tables.
They can mimic traditional instruments, and also produce very different sounds.
21st-century electronic music is commonly made with computer programs and hardware mixers.
Jazz is a type of music that was invented around 1900 in New Orleans in the south of the USA.
There were many black musicians living there who played a style of music called blues music.
Blues music was influenced by African music (because the black people in the United States had come to the United States as slaves.
They were taken from Africa by force).
Blues music was a music that was played by singing, using the harmonica, or the acoustic guitar.
Many blues songs had sad lyrics about sad emotions (feelings) or sad experiences, such as losing a job, a family member dying, or having to go to jail (prison).
Jazz music mixed together blues music with European music.
Some black composers such as Scott Joplin were writing music called ragtime, which had a very different rhythm from standard European music, but used notes that were similar to some European music.
Ragtime was a big influence on early jazz, called Dixieland jazz.
Jazz musicians used instruments such as the trumpet, saxophone, and clarinet were used for the tunes (melodies), drums for percussion and plucked double bass, piano, banjo and guitar for the background rhythm (rhythmic section).
Jazz is usually improvised: the players make up (invent) the music as they play.
Even though jazz musicians are making up the music, jazz music still has rules; the musicians play a series of chords (groups of notes) in order.
Jazz music has a swinging rhythm.
The word "swing" is hard to explain.
For a rhythm to be a "swinging rhythm" it has to feel natural and relaxed.
Swing rhythm is not even like a march.
There is a long-short feel instead of a same-same feel.
A "swinging rhythm" also gets the people who are listening excited, because they like the sound of it.
Some people say that a "swinging rhythm" happens when all the jazz musicians start to feel the same pulse and energy from the song.
If a jazz band plays very well together, people will say "that is a swinging jazz band" or "that band really swings well."
Jazz influenced other types of music like the Western art music from the 1920s and 1930s.
Art music composers such as George Gershwin wrote music that was influenced by jazz.
Jazz music influenced pop music songs.
In the 1930s and 1940s, many pop music songs began using chords or melodies from jazz songs.
One of the best known jazz musicians was Louis Armstrong (1900-1971).
"Pop" music is a type of popular music that many people like to listen to.
The term "pop music" can be used for all kinds of music that was written to be popular.
The word "pop music" was used from about 1880 onwards, when a type of music called music was popular.
Modern pop music grew out of 1950s rock and roll, (for example Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Little Richard) and rockabilly (for example Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly).
In the 1960s, The Beatles became a famous pop music group.
In the 1970s, other styles of music were mixed with pop music, such as funk and soul music.
Pop music generally has a heavy (strong) beat, so that it is good for dancing.
Pop singers normally sing with microphones that are plugged into an amplifier and a loudspeaker.
"Musical notation" is the way music is written down.
Music needs to be written down in order to be saved and remembered for future performances.
In this way composers (people who write music) can tell others how to play the musical piece as it was meant to be played.
Solf ge (also called solfa) is the way tones are named.
It was made in order to give a name to the several tones and pitches.
For example, the eight basic notes "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do" are just the names of the eight notes that confirm the major scale.
Music can be written in several ways.
When it is written on a staff (like in the example shown), the pitches (tones) and their duration are represented by symbols called notes.
Notes are to put on the lines and in the spaces between the lines.
Each position says which tone must be played.
The higher the note is in the staff, the higher the pitch of the tone.
The lower the notes are, the lower the pitch.
The duration of the notes (how long they are played for) is shown by making the note "heads" black or white, and by giving them stems and flags.
Music can also be written with letters, naming them as in the solfa "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do" or representing them by letters.
The next table shows how each note of the solfa is represented in the Standard Notation:
The Standard Notation was made to simplify the lecture of music notes, although it is mostly used to represent chords and the names of the music scales.
These ways to represent music ease the way a person reads music.
There are more ways to write and represent music, but they are less known and may be more complicated.
People can enjoy music by listening to it.
They can go to concerts to hear musicians perform.
Classical music is usually performed in concert halls, but sometimes huge festivals are organized in which it is performed outside, in a field or stadium, like pop festivals.
People can listen to music on CDs, Computers, iPods, television, the radio, cassette\/record-players and even mobile phones.
There is so much music today, in elevators, shopping malls, and stores, that it often becomes a background sound that we do not really hear.
Sometimes it is good to listen more closely to music: by trying to hear the different instruments and what types of notes the instruments are playing.
People can learn to play an instrument.
Probably the most common for complete beginners is the piano or keyboard, the guitar, or the recorder (which is certainly the cheapest to buy).
After they have learned to play scales, play simple tunes and read the simplest musical notation, then they can think about which instrument for further development.
They should choose an instrument that is practical for their size.
For example, a very short child can not play a full size double bass, because the double bass is over five feet high.
People should choose an instrument that they enjoy playing, because playing regularly is the only way to get better.
Finally, it helps to have a good teacher.
Anyone can make up his or her own pieces of music.
It is not difficult to compose simple songs or melodies (tunes).
It 's easier for people who can play an instrument themselves.
All it takes is experimenting with the sounds that an instrument makes.
Someone can make up a piece that tells a story, or just find a nice tune and think about ways it can be changed each time it is repeated.
The instrument might be someone 's own voice.
A mouse (plural mice) is a rodent, which is a kind of mammal.
It has a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail and a high breeding rate.
The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (Mus musculus).
It is also a popular pet.
In some places, certain kinds of field mice are also common.
They are known to invade homes for food and occasionally shelter.
These small animals are often used in science experiments, or sometimes kept as pets.
Some mice carry diseases.
This causes some people to think of mice as vermin or pests.
Many other people think mice are cute and fun animals.
Mice are rodents, therefore they are related to squirrels, rats, and beavers.
Mice eat weeds, seeds, berries, and more.
They are eaten by owls, foxes, and cats, amongst others.
The word "mouse" should only be used for small murines, but does get used for other distantly-related small rodents.
The murines are the largest subfamily of mammals.
In fact, it is larger than almost all mammal orders.
The common house mouse is thought of as a pest.
They are found in the homes of humans.
Voles are not mice, they are in a different family of rodents.
These are not mice either, or only distantly related.
These mice live in forests.
They can run and jump better than mice, and they get their common name from this.
The aggressive grasshopper mouse rarely eats other mice, but it does like grasshoppers and insects.
It is also only a distant relative.
Two mice found in popular culture are Disney characters: Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
Though they are mice, they can walk, talk, and act like people.
Chuck E. Cheese is another famous mouse.
He is the mascot of Chuck E. Cheese 's pizza restaurants.
A morpheme is the smallest linguistic part of a word that can have a meaning, such as "un -", "break", and" - able" in the word "unbreakable".
MTV (music television) is an American cable television network.
They are based in New York City.
The channel launched on August 1, 1981.
They used to only show music videos.
The first music video shown on MTV was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles.
Today, the channel shows many different television programs aimed at adolescents and young adults.
Maryland is a state in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States of America.
It is on the south east of the East Coast.
Its capital is Annapolis, and its biggest city is Baltimore.
Its Governor is Larry Hogan.
He was elected in the 2014 election.
The state bird is the Baltimore Oriole, which is no longer found in Maryland.
The state flower is the Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta).
The state reptile is the diamondback terrapin.
The state crustacean is the blue crab.
The state motto is Fatti maschii, parole femine, which is Italian for "Manly deeds, womanly words".
Maryland is the only state with a motto in Italian.
Maryland has many places important to the American Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the American Civil War.
One of these places is Fort McHenry, which defended against the British Empire during the War of 1812.
Another place is the Antietam National Battlefield, where the Battle of Antietam took place in 1862 during the American Civil War.
Silver Spring, Bethesda, Gaithersburg, Rockville, Frederick, Hagerstown, Cumberland, Salisbury, Greenbelt are other cities.
Michigan is the 11th largest state in the United States.
It is made up of two peninsulas (connected by the Mackinac Bridge).
It borders the U.S. states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, and Illinois.
Its borders with Minnesota and Illinois are only by water.
It also borders Canada by water.
It was the 26th state to join the union on January 26, 1837.
In 1847, Michigan became the first U.S. state to abolish the death penalty.
Michigan is noted as the place where many automobiles were made, and it still shows today.
Michigan is 50 % forest, which makes it very useful to the lumber industry.
It also borders four of the Great Lakes, which are some of the largest reservoirs of fresh water in the world.
Lake Superior is the largest body of freshwater in the world.
The state experiences four seasons, with the winter being predominant and severe in the north, while the south has more mild, equally long seasons.
The northern areas are very popular for skiing in the winter.
The National Ski Hall of Fame can be found in Ishpeming in the Upper Peninsula.
It is surrounded by four of the five great lakes.
It is also home to the largest mosque in North America, the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn.
Due to the large amount of water surrounding the state, boating is very popular in the warmer months.
There are more private boats registered in Michigan than in any other state.
Many famous people have come from Michigan.
They include the singer Madonna, the comedian Andy Richter, singer Stevie Wonder, Anthony Kiedis, former president Gerald Ford, singer Kid Rock, rapper Eminem, the former Reverend Jim Bakker, basketball legend Magic Johnson, Diana Ross, and Aretha Franklin.
Also it was the home of Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company.
The capital city of Michigan is Lansing, and large cities include Detroit, Ann Arbor, Flint, Grand Rapids, and Saginaw.
Marquette is the largest city in the Upper Peninsula.
Michigan has several state universities including the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Grand Valley State University and Western Michigan University.
The state also has many private colleges.
The current governor is Rick Snyder, a Republican who took office in January 2011, and its two national senators are Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, both Democrats.
The minimum wage is the least amount of money that employees of a business can be paid.
Minimum wage is a relative term.
Different countries have different minimum wages.
Nunavut in Canada has a minimum wage of $ 11.00 per hour.
Ontario, another place in Canada has a minimum wage of $ 10.25 per hour.
Some people think the minimum wage should be raised, so poor people will have more money.
Others think it is worse because the government will not have enough money to pay all the employees, so they will raise the taxes or raise the inflation.
Some people think that the minimum wage is harmful to employees because companies only hire employees whose labor is worth the price they are required to pay.
They think that if the minimum wage is raised employees will lose their job because companies can not afford to pay them the raised minimum wage.
Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare wrote three types of plays; histories, comedies and tragedies, and Macbeth is the shortest tragedy written by Shakespeare.
It was written between 1603 and 1607, during the reign of King James I of England.
Shakespeare based some characters in the play (Macbeth, Macduff, and Duncan) roughly on records of real people in Holinshed 's Chronicles, a history book from 1587.
However, the things that happen in the play are very different from what happened in real life.
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare 's most popular plays, and has often been acted since his time in theaters and movies.
There have also been several comic books and novels written based on the story of the play.
The first characters we see in the play are the three Witches.
They talk to each other in a mysterious way, and agree to meet with Macbeth on the heath.
This scene includes the famous line "fair is foul, and foul is fair", a subject which becomes a main part of the play.
In Act 1 Scene 2, there is a war going on.
King Duncan is at a camp, listening to reports from the battlefield.
An injured officer (some scripts say a captain, others a sergeant) is brought in.
He saved Malcolm 's life.
The officer tells Duncan about the battle.
He says that it was going badly, until Macbeth fought his way to the rebel leader Macdonald and disembowelled him.
But as soon as that happened, the Norwegians, led by their king Sweno, also attacked.
They were joined by a traitor, the Thane of Cawdor.
Macbeth and Banquo fought bravely until they were defeated.
Duncan is pleased by the news.
He orders that the Thane of Cawdor be executed and his title given to Macbeth.
In I. iii, the Witches appear again.
They talk about using their powers on humans, and it becomes clear that they have a lot of power, but they can not kill people.
Macbeth and Banquo are returning from the battlefield to Forres, and meet the witches.
Banquo is amazed by the way the witches look, because they look like women but they have beards.
Macbeth is not afraid and asks them what they are.
They do not answer him, but greet him as the Thane of Glamis, the Thane of Cawdor and the future King.
Macbeth is surprised, because he knows that he is not the Thane of Cawdor, and does not think he will ever become the King.
Banquo asks the witches what his future will be like.
They answer in riddles, saying that he will be "lesser than Macbeth, and greater", "not so happy, yet much happier", and that he will be the father to a line of kings.
Then the witches disappear.
Ross and Angus come to find Macbeth, and tell him that the King has given him the title of Thane of Cawdor.
Macbeth is surprised and happy, but he starts thinking of ways to become king.
This frightens him, because he thinks that the only way he can become king is to murder Duncan.
In I. iv, Macbeth and Banquo return to Forres and Duncan thanks them for their courage and hard work.
He also says that his son Malcolm will be his heir.
Macbeth realizes that he will have to get past both Duncan and Malcolm to become king.
Duncan says he is going to Macbeth 's castle for the night.
In I. v, Lady Macbeth is reading a letter from Macbeth that tells her about the witches and their prophecy.
She is very excited, and starts planning to murder Duncan.
A messenger tells her that Duncan will be staying at their castle that night.
She calls on evil spirits to make her strong and evil so that she can murder Duncan.
Macbeth comes in and she tells him of her plans.
I. vi shows Duncan, Banquo, Donalbain, Malcolm, Macduff and some of the thanes entering Macbeth 's castle.
Duncan and Banquo agree that the castle is sweet and pleasant.
Lady Macbeth enters and greets them.
I. vii is the last scene in Act I. Macbeth is talking to himself about why it is wrong to kill the king.
He knows that it is a bad thing to do, especially because he is the host and Duncan trusts him.
Lady Macbeth enters and scolds him for being a coward and says that he is not brave enough to be a man.
She works out how they are going to kill Duncan, and convinces Macbeth to do it.
Act II starts with Banquo and his son Fleance walking in a courtyard in Macbeth 's castle.
They meet Macbeth, who lies to Banquo and says that he has not thought about the witches ' prophecy.
When they leave, Macbeth sees a hallucination of a knife.
He knows it is not real, but before his sight it changes and becomes covered in blood.
He leaves to kill Duncan.
Lady Macbeth enters in scene ii.
She has already made Duncan 's guards drunk.
Macbeth comes in with his hands covered in blood, carrying the knifes of the guards.
He is very troubled.
Lady Macbeth comforts him and tells him to wash his hands and cover the guards with blood, so it looks like they did it.
But Macbeth is afraid, so Lady Macbeth does it instead.
In II.
iii, the porter is very drunk.
He pretends to be the porter of the gate of hell, and takes a long time to open the gate for Macduff and Lennox.
Macbeth greets them.
Macduff says that he is there to wake the king, and Macbeth leads him to the king 's room.
Macduff is shocked to see the king murdered on his bed.
He runs out shouting and wakes everybody up.
Macbeth pretends he did not know about the murder, as everyone comes to see what is happening.
He admits that he killed the guards, and says that he did it because he was so angry that they killed Duncan.
Lady Macbeth faints and they rush to help her.
Malcolm and Donalbain think that somebody is lying.
They know it is not safe for them to stay in Scotland, so they run away.
Malcolm goes to England, and Donalbain to Ireland.
Scene iv is a talk between Ross and an old man.
They talk about how strange the night was.
Nature seems to have turned into a mess now that Duncan is dead.
Macduff comes in and says that Macbeth is going to become king.
He does not trust Macbeth, and is not going to the coronation.
Banquo is alone on stage at the start of Act III.
He realizes that Macbeth has become everything the witches said he would become.
He thinks that Macbeth did wrong to get the crown, but he does not want to say anything.
He hopes that his son will also be king, as the witches said.
Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and the lords enter.
Macbeth asks Banquo if he is going riding that afternoon, and if Fleance is going with him.
Banquo says yes to both.
Two men come to see Macbeth, and he goes to meet them.
He is angry that he has risked everything to become king, but that Banquo 's sons will be kings after him.
The men are actually murderers.
Macbeth tells them that Banquo is the reason they are unhappy and have bad lives, and convinces them to kill Banquo and Fleance.
Macbeth talks to Lady Macbeth in scene ii.
He says that he has nightmares and can not sleep.
He is jealous of Duncan, because he is dead and does not need to worry anymore.
Macbeth also says that he is worried about Banquo being alive, but he does not tell his wife about the murderers.
In III, the two murderers meet another one, also sent by Macbeth.
They kill Banquo, but Fleance escapes.
In Scene iv Macbeth has a banquet with the nobles.
The murderers come in and inform him of Banquo 's death and Fleance 's escape.
He returns to the table where the nobles are eating, and looks for a seat.
Even though there is one empty, he can not see it.
He has a vision of the murdered Banquo sitting in his seat, and becomes hysterical talking to the vision.
Lady Macbeth explains it to the nobles as an illness, and asks them to leave as Macbeth becomes more and more upset.
Many editors say that scene v of Act III, along with a song in IV.
i, is not written by Shakespeare.
This is because the writing is different to the way Shakespeare usually writes.
It has a witch called Hecate in it, who is not previously mentioned in the play.
She seems to be in charge of the other witches and is scolding them for dealing with Macbeth without informing her.
In the final scene, Lennox is talking to another lord.
They find out that Macduff has gone to England to convince Malcolm to return and claim his throne, and to ask for the help of King Edward of England.
Scene (i) starts with the witches, who are standing in a circle around their cauldron, throwing things in, like the tongue of a dog.
Then suddenly Macbeth arrives and asks them to tell him some more prophecies.
As the first prophecy they tell him to be careful of Macduff, Thane of Fife.
As the second prophecy they say he can ` t be killed by anyone who was born of a woman and as the third prophecy the witches say if Birnom Wood stays at its current position Macbeth is okay but if the wood moves he will have problems.
Macbeth is happy because he thinks that all of these things are impossible.
He wants to know a forth thing but suddenly the witches dance crazily and then run away.
Next Lennox enters and tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to England.
Macbeth orders Macduff 's castle to be seized.
In scene ii Macbeth s men arrive at Macduff s castle and kill Macduff s family and everybody else in the castle.
In scene iii Macduff finds out what Macbeth did to his family.
He is very sad and angry, so he decides to go back to Scotland with Malcolm and they plan to kill Macbeth.
Scene i takes place in Macbeth s castle.
A doctor and a servant are talking about Lady Macbeth.
They re talking about Lady Macbeth s sickness.
She is sleepwalking and while she sleepwalks she says that she regrets having told her husband to kill Duncan and Banquo.
In scene ii Lennox and other Scottish thanes think that Macbeth is crazy and that he is killing too many people.
Together they go to Malcolm and king Edward of England and tell them that they want to fight against Macbeth with the English army.
Scene iii takes place in Macbeth s castle.
He is told that Malcolm and Macduff are coming with the English army and want to kill him.
The doctor tells him that his wife is ill..
She has become crazy and is sleepwalking.
In scene iv Malcolm, Macduff and the English army hide in Birnam Wood.
They don t want to be seen, so they cut off some branches and cover themselves with them.
In scene V, the doctor comes to Macbeth and tells him that his wife is dead.
Macbeth is depressed, and then he has a monologue about how meaningless life is.
After that, a servant says that Birnam Wood is moving, but Macbeth does n't believe him, so the servant shows him.
In scene VI, Macduff, Malcolm and the English army are planning to attack Macbeth.
In scene VII, Macbeth and an English Lord fight, and Macbeth says he can not be killed by anyone born of a woman.
Macbeth then kills him.
Meanwhile Macduff is looking for Macbeth.
Scene VIII shows the fight between Macduff and Macbeth, who says again that he can not be killed by anyone born of a woman.
Macduff replies that he was cut out of his mother s stomach (Caesarean).
He then kills Macbeth.
In the last scene Malcolm is declared king.
Many actors think it is bad luck to say the word "Macbeth", and will not say the play 's name.
Instead, they call it "The Scottish Play".
One theory about where this superstition came from is that the play deals with witchcraft.
Minor Threat was hardcore punk band from Washington DC from the 1980s.
Many other bands which played hardcore punk music in the United States were influenced by Minor Threat 's music.
Minor Threat 's songs were usually short and fast.
All of Minor Threat 's records were released on the band 's own Dischord Records label.
Minor Threat told their listeners they did not use illegal drugs or drink alcohol, which was called being "straight edge."
Ian MacKaye, Jeff Nelson, bassist Brian Baker, and guitarist Lyle Preslar formed Minor Threat in 1980.
Their first records were Minor Threat and In My Eyes in 1981.
The group toured through the United States.
Their song "Straight Edge" had lyrics (words) that told people they did not use illegal drugs or drink alcohol, which was called being "straight edge."
Another song called "Out of Step" tells listeners not to smoke, drink, or have casual sex.
People often thought that the band was telling others not to do these things but in interviews the band states that straight edge is a personal decision.
Minor Threat broke up in 1983.
A monopoly (from the Greek monos, one + polein, to sell) is when a product or service can only be bought from one supplier for a specific market.
If other firms serve the market, they may be too small compared to the largest, thus allowing the large firm to have a lot of market power.
A monopoly usually happens when there is no economic competition to produce the product or service and there is no available substitutes to the product or service.
In economics, a monopoly is a single producer of a product or service.
In law, a monopoly is a firm that has a lot of market power and is able to charge very high prices for a product or service.
As long as the firm has a lot of market power, it does not matter if the firm is large or small, as size is not used to decide if a firm is a monopoly.
A monopoly can be formed by the government, by merging a few firms to form a large one, or form naturally to become a natural monopoly.
In many places, utilities such as telephone service or cable television are monopolies, as it is very costly to build the infrastructure for another firm to compete in the market.
Such natural monopolies is hence allowed by the government, but is usually strictly controlled to prevent the monopoly from charging a very high price for a product or service.
Many countries, including the United States, have laws to stop companies from having a monopoly or to limit the actions that they can do as a monopoly.
A monopoly is a type of firm that aims to maximize profits, and as the market does not have any other large firms, the monopoly is thus able to set prices on their products or services.
Hence, the monopoly would set a price that would maximize the profits that they gain, but cause the consumers to have to pay more for the same good.
For all types of firms (including monopoly), firms maximize their profits at the output level in which the marginal revenue and marginal cost curves meet, known as the profit maximizing output.
The price that the monopoly sets is the price level of the demand curve for that amount of output.
However, it is better for society if the output level is when the marginal cost and the demand curve meet, which is of a higher output and a lower price than what the monopoly produces.
Hence, as there is welfare that is available to consume for society if more of the good is produced, a deadweight loss is hence created.
A monopoly is hence not allocatively efficient.
Depending on the total cost that the monopoly has, a monopoly may be able to earn supernormal profits in the long run.
This thus allows the monopoly to have money to do costly innovation or become more cost efficient in producing the products or services.
However, there are people who believe that a monopoly may become complacent and not do innovation at all as there is no competition in the market.
A natural monopoly can happen when there is very high barriers to entry that it is not profitable for more firms to enter the market for the level of demand that is present in the market.
A natural monopoly keeps getting increasing economies of scale for the level of demand in the market, and relatively high fixed costs.
The average cost of production would then keep decreasing for the whole demand of the product or service.
It is thus cheaper for a single firm to produce the product or service, as it would not be profitable for two or more firms to be in the market.
A natural monopoly is similar to a normal monopoly and can be inefficient.
Hence, governments tend to make laws that controls what the natural monopoly does, mainly to set prices at an affordable level.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MIT has five schools and one college, and it has 32 academic departments, and gives much importance to scientific and technological research.
MIT students, graduates, and faculty members are famous for being given many awards, including 76 Nobel Prizes.
In 2013 QS ranked MIT as the best university in the world.
It started in 1861.
It is one of the most selective universities.
It accepted 8.9 % of people who applied for class of 2016.
Nine months ' tuition and fees for 2012 2013 is $ 42,050.
MIT gives financial aid so that anyone who is good enough can pay.
In 2011-2012 64 % of undergraduates had some kind of financial aid.
The student: faculty ratio is 8:1.
45 % of undergraduates are women.
The most popular major is engineering.
Monopolistic competition is a market form.
Like with Perfect competition, there are many buyers and sellers.
But the market is not perfect.
This is because the products are not homogeneous, or because the buyers have explicit or implicit preferences.
This market form is quite common.
As an example, take a bakery.
There are many bakeries in the town, but one of those bakeries can demand a slightly higher price for bread, because it is the only one in a certain part of the town.
Monopolistically competitive firms are able to gain a greater degree of market share and as a result, increase prices.
If a particular bakery is known for selling the best pies and pasties in town, they can increase their prices for pies and pasties as they know consumers will pay slightly more for a superior product.
This is known as establishing a brand name and brand loyalty.
Mathematical induction is a special way of proving a mathematical truth.
It can be used to prove that something is true for all the natural numbers (all the positive whole numbers).
The idea is that
Because it 's true for 1, then it is true for 1 +1 (= 2, by the induction step), then it is true for 2 +1 (= 3), then it is true for 3 +1 (= 4), and so on.
so this is true.
Next, assume that for some n = n0 the statement is true.
That is,:
Hence the proof is correct.
Mathematical induction is often stated with the starting value 0 (rather than 1).
In fact, it will work just as well with a variety of starting values.
Here is an example when the starting value is 3.
The sum of the interior angles of a - sided polygon is degrees.
The initial starting value is 3, and the interior angles of a triangle is degrees.
Assume that the interior angles of a - sided polygon is degrees.
Add on a triangle which makes the figure a - sided polygon, and that increases the count of the angles by 180 degrees degrees.
Proved.
There are a great many mathematical objects for which proofs by mathematical induction works.
The technical term is a well-ordered set.
The same idea can work to define, as well as prove.
There is a set of axioms for the arithmetic of the natural numbers which is based on mathematical induction.
This is called "Peano 's Axioms".
The undefined symbols are and =.
The axioms are
One can then define the operations of addition and multiplication and so on by mathematical induction.
For example:
Metaphilosophy is the study of the nature of philosophy.
Philosophy is the study of ideas connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.
Metaphilosophy investigates the aims, boundaries and methods of philosophy.
The mandolin is a musical instrument, which literally means, a small soprano member of the lute family.
It is played by hitting its strings and sounds similar in tone of a violin or a hammered dulcimer.
The most common type of mandolin, which was first designed in Naples, has eight strings.
It has a body made of wood and a fingerboard which has frets.
The mandolin was originally invented to scare wolves away from finland, but after finding out it 's dark secret, the mandolin was banished from western europe.
Microsoft Windows is an operating system for computers which is made by Microsoft, a company from the United States.
Almost 90 % of desktop and laptop computers use Windows.
The first version of Windows came out on November 20, 1985 and was called Windows 1.0.
Since then, new versions of Windows go on sale every three years.
The newest version, Windows 10, came out July 29, 2015.
Most newly bought personal computers come with Windows 10, although some older or cheaper ones may have older versions such as Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 installed.
Until July 29, 2016, they can be upgraded to Windows 10 for free.
Windows makes it easier to run programs (applications) than MS-DOS did.
To use DOS, you typed a commands to make the computer do something.
You had to use the correct syntax of each command.
If you made a mistake, the computer usually gave an error message and did nothing.
Windows makes it easier to do things because of its graphical user interface (or GUI for short).
It only needs a keyboard or a mouse to work.
However, using both a keyboard and a mouse makes it easier to use Windows.
By clicking a few buttons on the screen, Windows helps keep your files safe, and easier to change and move.
The latest versions of Windows also work with touch screens, making it even easier to use for users with disabilities.
Because of this, Windows even comes with some tablet computers and smartphones.
Mobile devices that use Windows include Microsoft Surface and Microsoft Lumia.
Some programs are included with Windows.
Some examples are:
Many kinds of applications\/programs are available for Windows.
Some popular applications are games, word processors (to write words) or additional programs like Adobe Flash Player (to watch some videos and play many games on internet sites).
Adding new applications to Windows is called "installing".
Applications can be bought\/purchased on a CD or DVD.
Applications can also be downloaded from the Internet, some for free, and others you can buy using the internet.
Many users complain that Windows creates problems for them.
Some people say that their computers become slower\/less fast because of Windows.
Many people also complain about problems that make their computer less safe to use, even though Microsoft tries to fix these problems.
Because Windows is the most popular operating system, most computer viruses are created to infect computers running Windows.
Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening (born February 15, 1954) is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, producer, animator, author, musician, comedian, and voice actor.
He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell, as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama.
Groening has won 12 Primetime Emmy Awards, ten for The Simpsons and two for Futurama as well as a British Comedy Award for "outstanding contribution to comedy" in 2004.
In 2002, he won the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award for his work on Life in Hell.
He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 14, 2012.
He was born on February 15, 1954 in Portland, Oregon, the middle of five children.
His mother Margaret Ruth was once a teacher.
His father Homer Philip Groening was a filmmaker, advertiser, writer and cartoonist.
Groening has Norwegian and German ancestry.
Groening grew up in Portland, and attended Ainsworth Elementary School, Lincoln High School and also The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.
Groening identifies himself as agnostic and liberal.
He has often made campaign contributions to Democratic Party candidates.
His first cousin, Laurie Monnes Anderson, is a member of the Oregon State Senate representing eastern Multnomah County.
He has been married twice.
Groening and Deborah Caplan married in 1986.
They had 2 sons - Homer (who is called Will) and Abe.
Couple split up in 1999.
In 2011, Groening married Argentinian artist Agustina Picasso and became stepfather to her daughter Camille.
In May 2013, Picasso gave birth to Nathaniel Philip Picasso Groening who was named after American writer Nathanael West.
Metaphysics is a major branch of philosophy.
It concerns existence and the nature of things that exist.
Altogether it is a theory of reality.
Ontology is the part of metaphysics which discusses what exists: the categories of being.
Apart from ontology, metaphysics concerns the nature of, and relations among, the things that exist.
The metaphysical idea that reality exists independently of one 's mind and yet can be known is called realism.
The metaphysical idea that no mind-independent reality exists or can be known is idealism.
These are two main battlegrounds of metaphysics.
In the West, metaphysics is usually traced to the natural philosophers in ancient Greece, where Aristotle systematized a metaphysical description of nature equivalent to today 's theoretical science.
By the 4th century AD in Alexandria, Egypt, alchemy was starting its transformation into chemistry, the conventional view is that alchemy was steeped in mysticism and that chemistry did not quite become what we would call science until it entered the 19th century.
In the early 17th century, Galileo introduced to physics his experimentations with earthly objects, the dawn of empirical science in Western Europe.
Galilean laws of motion led to the overthrow of Aristotle 's ideas, a revolution more or less completed by the wide acceptance of Cartesian physics, built upon Copernican and Galilean mechanics.
Newtonian physics rapidly replaced Cartesian physics.
Isaac Newton, like others that we now call scientists, was known as a natural philosopher.
In the 1830s, Auguste Comte created positivism, the first modern philosophy of science.
It sought the divorce of science from religionn and also from metaphysics.
In 1847, Hermann von Helmholtz 's paper "On the conservation of energy", stated the first law of thermodynamics, and tried to reduce physiology to physics.
In 1859, Darwin proposed an explanation of evolution by natural selection.
This seemed both plausible, and compatible with physical theory.
By the 1860s, the term science (as meaning something distinct from philosophy) entered the dictionary.
Today the term metaphysics usually refers to discussion of aspects of reality which are beyond physics.
Particularly among those seeking to be scientific, the term metaphysics can be pejorative to varying degrees.
However, philosophers of science recognize that science is impossible without metaphysics.
At the very least, before beginning empirical investigation, one needs an ontology.
This is because categories are needed to sort observations into.
Mendelevium) is a synthetic element with the symbol Md (used to be Mv) and the atomic number 101.
It is a metallic radioactive transuranic element of the actinides.
Mendelevium is created by einsteinium and alpha particles forcefully combining and was named after Dmitri Mendeleev, the creator of the Periodic Table.
Modus ponendo ponens is a valid, simple argument form in classical logic sometimes referred to as affirming the antecedent or the law of detachment.
It is closely related to another valid form of argument, modus tollens or denying the consequent.
Modus ponens is a very common rule of inference, and takes the following form: If P, then Q. P. Therefore, Q.
Modus tollendo tollens (Latin: the way that denies by denying) is a valid, simple argument form in classical logic.
It is referred to as denying the consequent.
It is closely related to another valid form of argument, modus ponens or affirming the antecedent.
Modus tollens is a very common rule of inference, and takes this form: If P, then Q. Not Q. Therefore, not P.
A mathematician is someone who studies mathematics, either as a hobby or as a job.
Many mathematicians are math professors at universities.
Euclid, Ramanujan, Sir Isaac Newton are some of the most famous early mathematicians.
In mathematics, a Mersenne number is a number that is one less than a power of two.
Mn = 2n 1.
A Mersenne prime is a Mersenne number that is a prime number.
This however, is not sufficient.
Many mathematicians prefer the definition of a Mersenne number where exponent n has to be a prime number.
For example, 31 = 25 1, and 5 is a prime number, so 31 is a Mersenne number; and 31 is also a Mersenne prime because it is a prime number.
But the Mersenne number 2047 = 211 1 is not a prime because it is divisible by 89 and 23.
And 24 1 = 15 can be shown to be composite because 4 is not prime.
Throughout modern times, the largest known prime number has very often been a Mersenne prime.
Most sources restrict the term Mersenne number to where n is prime, as all Mersenne primes must be of this form as seen below.
Mersenne primes have a close connection to perfect numbers, which are numbers equal to the sum of their proper divisors.
Historically, the study of Mersenne primes was motivated by this connection; in the 4th century BC Euclid demonstrated that if M is a Mersenne prime then M (M +1) \/ 2 is a perfect number.
In the 18th century, Leonhard Euler proved that all even perfect numbers have this form.
No odd perfect numbers are known, and it is suspected that none exist (any that do have to belong to a significant number of special forms).
It is currently unknown if there is an infinite number of Mersenne primes.
Most mathematicians who have studied the question think there are an infinite number of Mersenne primes.
Carl Pomerance, Samuel S. Wagstaff Jr. and Hendrik Lenstra developed a formula which they think should say about how many Mersenne primes there are under a given number.
The binary representation of 2n - 1 is n repetitions of the digit 1.
For example, 25 - 1 = 11111 in binary.
The first four Mersenne primes were known to the Ancient Greeks.
They are 3, 7, 31 and 127.
The next, 8191, was discovered in 1456.
Some people like trying to find big primes.
Since there are tricks to finding Mersenne primes quickly, the largest primes known are usually Mersenne primes.
Magnesium (\/ m ni zi m \/ mag-NEE-zee - m) is a chemical element with the symbol Mg, atomic number 12 and common oxidation state +2.
It is an alkaline earth metal and the eighth most abundant element in the Earth 's crust, where it constitutes about 2 % by mass, and ninth in the known universe as a whole.
This preponderance of magnesium is related to the fact that it is easily built up in supernova stars from a sequential addition of three helium nuclei to carbon (which in turn is made from three helium nuclei).
Magnesium ion 's high solubility in water helps ensure that it is the third most abundant element dissolved in seawater.
Magnesium is the 11th most abundant element by mass in the human body.
Its ions are essential to all living cells.
The ions play a major role in manipulating important biological polyphosphate compounds like ATP, DNA, and RNA.
Hundreds of enzymes thus require magnesium ions to function.
Magnesium is also the metallic ion at the center of chlorophyll, and is thus a common additive to fertilizers.
Magnesium ions are sour to the taste, and in low concentrations help to impart a natural tartness to fresh mineral waters.
The free element (metal) is not found naturally on Earth, as it is highly reactive (though once produced, is coated in a thin layer of oxide (see passivation), which partly masks this reactivity).
The free metal burns with a characteristic brilliant white light, making it a useful ingredient in flares.
The metal is now mainly obtained by electrolysis of magnesium salts obtained from brine.
Commercially, the chief use for the metal is as an alloying agent to make aluminium-magnesium alloys, sometimes called "magnalium" or "magnelium".
Since magnesium is less dense than aluminium, these alloys are prized for their relative lightness and strength.
Magnesium is used in fireworks to make a brilliant white light.
Another use is to mix it with other metals to make it strong, lightweight alloys such as those used to make bicycle frames.
Magnesium compounds are used medicinally as common laxatives, antacids (i.e., milk of magnesia), and in a number of situations where stabilization of abnormal nerve excitation and blood vessel spasm is required (that is, to treat eclampsia).
Magnesium is used in electronic devices, including: mobile phones, laptop computers, cameras, and other electronic components.
Magnesium 's low weight, good mechanical and electrical properties are good for these uses.
Magnesium reacted with an alkyl halide gives a Gringard reagent, which is a very useful tool for preparing alcohols.
Magnesium is also used in incendiary bombs, which are bombs that blow up and spread fire everywhere.
A markup language is a computer language.
It is made up of a set of instructions, and of data.
It is not the same as a programming language, as only programming languages can have if statements and other conditional statements.
The first markup languages were used for printing; there was the text, and there were instructions how the text should be printed.
The source code is generally done in ASCII.
Then there are tags.
That way, LaTeX (and with that, Wikipedia), uses the instruction mu to get the symbol, the Greek letter "Mu".
HTML uses & micro; to get the same symbol.
Manitoba is a province of Canada.
It lies roughly in the center of Canada.
Manitoba is the 6th largest province with 647,797 km area.
It has the fifth largest number of people, with 1 150 000 in 2001.
People from Manitoba are called "Manitobans".
The capital of Manitoba is the City of Winnipeg.
Other big cities in Manitoba include Steinbach and Brandon.
The people of Manitoba elected a legislature.
The leader of the government, who is called the Premier, is the leader of the largest party in the legislature.
There is also a Lieutenant Governor, who represents the Queen.
Right now, the premier of Manitoba is Greg Selinger and the Lieutenant Governor is Philip S. Lee.
The main political parties in Manitoba are the New Democratic Party, the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba, and the Liberal Party.
People have been living in Manitoba for thousands of years.
Both the Hudson 's Bay Company from England and many people from France moved to Manitoba during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
It became part of the Northwest Territories in 1869.
The Red River Rebellion, which was started by Louis Riel, began in Manitoba.
Manitoba became part of Canada on 12 May 1870.
It included only the southern part which is nearest to the United States.
But parts of the Northwest Territories were added to Manitoba later on.
Mount Logan is the highest mountain in Canada.
It is the second-highest peak in North America, after Mount McKinley (Denali).
The mountain was named after Sir William Edmond Logan, a Canadian geologist and founder of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC).
Mount Logan is in Kluane National Park and Reserve in southwestern Yukon.
Logan is believed to have the largest base circumference of any non-volcanic mountain on Earth.
The massif has eleven peaks over 5000 m.
Temperatures are extremely low on and near Mount Logan.
On the 5,000 m high plateau, air temperature stays around -45 C in the winter.
It reaches near freezing in summer.
Little snow melt leads to a large ice cap, reaching almost 300 m in certain spots.
Muhammad (; AD 570 12 July 632) was an Arabian religious and political leader.
Muslims and Baha ` is believe he was a messenger and A prophet of Allah (God).
He is believed to be a descendant of Ishmael, a son of Abraham, and a seal to all prophets.
He is seen as an example for all Muslims to follow.
Muhammad was born about 570 AD in Mecca.
His father, whose name was Abdullah, died six months before Muhammad 's birth.
His mother, Amina, died when he was six years old, So, his grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, took care of him after the death of amina but unfortunately he too died two years later when the prophet was eight.
After his grandfather 's death, his uncle Abu Talib took care of him, and was a support to him for many years of his adult life.
In 610 AD, when Muhammad was forty years old, he went for a walk to the mountain of Hira near Mecca.
According to Muslims, the angel Jibrail (Gabriel) spoke with him in a cave on the mountain.
The story says that when Muhammad first saw the angel Gabriel, he fainted, because Gabriel was so large.
This is what Jibrail said to Muhammad:
"Read... in the name of God Who made man from a drop of blood... God is Most Rewarding... He Who taught man to write with pen... and taught man what he knew not."
Muhammad went back home to his wife Khadijah, and told her what had happened.
New revelations came to him commanding him to preach what was being sent down from God.
When Muhammad first started teaching, many of the people of Mecca, who worshipped idols, did not like the things that Muhammad said.
But there were also people who listened to his preaching and obeyed his messages.
These people were the first of the followers of Islam.
Leaders of Mecca punished and tortured the followers of Islam.
Some followers of Islam were executed.
Muhammad resisted this and continued to teach Islam.
After Muhammad finished in Mecca, he took his message to Medina, where some people learned about him and his followers.
They welcomed him into their city, and Muhammad wanted them to convert to Islam.
They agreed, and many of his followers went to Medina.
This movement from Mecca to Medina is called the Hijrah.
The Hijra was also the beginning of the Islamic calendar.
Muhammad stayed behind until all of his people left Mecca safely.
As Muhammad stayed in Mecca, his uncle Abu Lahab trained seven men to kill Muhammad in his sleep.
According to the history, they did not see him leave Mecca.
The men went into his house and found his cousin, Ali.
Abu Lahab and his horsemen went to the desert to look for him and his friend, Abu Bakr.
Muhammad and Abu Bakr arrived in Medina.
Some people welcomed Prophet Muhammad to their homes.
He used his camel to show everyone where he would build his house.
Also, the first mosque of Medina, a small place for prayer, was built in the back of this house.
The people in a strong Jewish tribe in Medina disagreed with the teachings and rules set by Muhammad.
This tribe told their allies in Mecca to sell of all the things and homes that Muslims of Mecca left behind.
The Muslims and those from Mecca were advised to fight for their property.
Prophet Muhammad told them not to do that.
Muslims were called all over Medina to gather at a mosque that Prophet Muhammad prayed in.
They were told to fight against the people of Mecca who burned down their homes and stole their property.
The Quraysh pagans of Mecca heard about this, and they sent a larger army numbering 1000 warriors to fight the Muslims.
They met in Badr, but the pagans were defeated and Abu Jahl, one of the pagan leaders, was also killed.
But, the Muslims lost the second battle at Uhud.
One year after the fight at Badr, the army of Mecca had outside help.
Muslim archers failed to listen to Muhammad 's instructions and Khalid ibn al-Walid cleverly took advantage of that.
Hamza, Muhammad 's last uncle, was killed when a slave from Mecca threw a spear into his chest.
Muhammad himself was injured.
Then in 627, Abu Sufyan led the Quraysh and its allies to attack Medina itself.
However, they could not pass the trench that the Muslims had dug around Medina.
After several weeks, the coalition broke up and went home.
The Medinians were considered victors.
After the pagans of Mecca failed to gain control of Medina, the Muslims became stronger.
The pagans then decided to sign a truce with the Muslims.
This means that they would not fight each other for ten years.
The Muslims used this as a chance to talk to other people all over Arabia.
In three years, many people changed their religions to Islam.
But, this truce did not last for long.
After three years of it, a small group of horsemen from Mecca attacked a Muslim camp and killed a few of them.
The Muslims in Medina heard of this, and the truce was canceled.
Abu Sufyan, third leader of Mecca in Muhammad 's lifetime, tried to resume the truce, but Muhammad politely refused the offer.
Muhammad told his followers to be ready to capture Mecca.
After Mecca was captured, they went on to capture the Torkan.
In 630, most people in Arabia had become Muslims, and they became part of Muhammad 's large army to capture Mecca.
Because of the big size of the army, the people of Mecca were afraid to fight back.
Abu Sufyan, who was feeling unhappy over the broken truce, went to Muhammad 's camp outside Mecca to ask for forgiveness.
Muhammad did not say that he would forgive him, so he returned back home.
While he was with Muhammad, he changed his religion to Islam by saying the Testimony (ash-Ashaada): "I testify that there is no other god but Allah, and I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah."
The next day, the Muslim army walked towards Mecca.
Everyone ran to their homes and closed all doors and windows.
They were afraid that the Muslims were going to kill them, because of the bad things they did to the Muslims many years ago.
But, the Muslims went towards the Ka ` aba, believed to be built by Abraham and his elder son, Ishmael.
Bilal ibn Ribah, a former Ethiopian slave, shouted out loud to the people of Mecca that they were all safe: "All those who lay down arms are safe.
All those in the house of Abu Sufyan are safe.
All those behind closed doors are safe."
Abu Sufyan heard this in his home.
From this, he learns that Muhammad forgave him.
At that time, Muhammad and his followers removed and broke all idols from the Kaaba.
The idols were statues that were worshiped as gods.
Muhammad forgave all citizens of Mecca.
At the end, Bilal climbed to the top of the Kaaba and called for prayer.
This was Muhammad 's victory in spreading Islam all over Arabia.
But, because he was old, he would not live for long.
In 632 AD, on June 8, Muhammad became very sick.
Before he died, he told his followers about his death.
He is buried in the chamber of his wife Aisha (RA) in Medina, where the Masjid al-Nabawi (Mosque of the Prophet) is.
In Medina, his friend Abu Bakr went to the Masjid al-Nabawi and shouted to the people:
"If any of you worship Muhammad, you should know that Muhammad is dead.
But those of you who worship Allah (swt) (God), let it be known that Allah (swt) (God) is alive and can not die."
Although Muhammad died, Islam soon spread all over the Middle East.
Then, centuries later, it continued till it reached Africa, Asia and Europe.
Islam has become one of the world 's biggest and fastest growing religions.
When Muslims say or write the name of Muhammad, they usually follow it with Peace and Blessings be upon him (Arabic: sall-Allahu ` alayhi wa sallam).
For example, "Muhammad (Peace and Blessings be upon him)".
In printed matter, a calligraphic symbol is frequently used instead of printing the phrase.
Sunnis believe that Abu Bakr succeeded Muhammad.
Shias believe that Ali should have succeeded.
Most Muslims do not make or show images of Muhammad.
The Qur ` an does not state that images of Muhammad must not ever be made, but it does contain passages that forbid the creation of idols.
There are also passages against the creation of images of God in the Hadith.
Muslims, especially Sunni Muslims, believe there should be no pictures of Muhammad.
When people create images of Muhammad, some Muslims may view this as disrespectful, offensive and emotionally injurious.
In 2005, a Danish newspaper published political cartoons of Muhammad.
This led to violent protests in the entire Muslim world.
More than 100 people died as a result of the protests.
Johan Galtung, a Norwegian mathematician and peace activist, tried to help both sides come together and talk about this.
According to Galtung, the attacks against Danish institutions ended after the government had invited talks.
1.
Khadijah bint Khuwaylid
Abdullah ibn Jafar reported that he heard Sayyiduna Ali saying in Kufa that Allah 's Messenger, (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, "The best of the women of her time was Maryam, daughter of Imran, and the best of women of her time was Khadijah, daughter of Khuwaylid."
2.
Sawada bint Zam ' a
Sawda bint Zam ` a, may Allah be pleased with her had been the first woman to immigrate to Abyssinia in the way of Allah.
She was middle-aged, rather plump, with a jolly, kindly disposition, and just the right person to take care of the Prophet 's household and family.
3.
A ` isha bint Abu Bakr
` A ` isha was a very intelligent and observant young girl with a very good memory.
` A ` isha spent the next nine years of her life with the Prophet, she remembered all that she saw and heard with great clarity, and reported to us a great deal of the Prophets narrations.
4.
Hafsa bint ` Umar
By marrying Hafsa the Prophet strengthened the ties between two of his closest Companions, the two who would become the first two rightly guided khalifs after his death.
He was now married to the daughter of Abu Bakr, A ` isha and to the daughter of Umar, Hafsa.
5.
Zaynab bint Khuzayma
She offered herself in marriage to the Prophet who accepted her proposal and married her.
Zaynab bint Khuzayma was so generous to orphans and the poor that she came to be known as the ` Mother of the Poor '.
She died only eight months after.
6.
Umm Salama Hind bint Abi Umayya
She was not the only wife to have been widowed as a result of the battle of Uhud, and thanks to this marriage, many of the Companions followed the Prophet 's example, marrying widows and thereby bringing them and their children into the circle of their families, instead of leaving them to struggle on their own.
7.
Zaynab bint Jahsh
As with all the marriages of Muhammad, there was much for all the Muslims to learn from it.
This one was to show that Zayed ibn Haretha was not the Prophet 's son and to demonstrate that the social level matters when it comes to tieing the knot.
She bragged about the fact that her marriage had been arranged by Allah.
It was at this point that the Prophet changed her name from Barra to Zaynab.
8.
Juwayriya bint al-Harith
The Prophet was thinking of how to save her and all her tribe from an ignoble fate.
By marrying Juwayriyya, the Banu Mustaliq would be able to enter Islam with honor, and with the humiliation of their recent defeat removed, so that it would no longer be felt necessary by them to embark on a war of vengeance that would have continued until one of the two parties had been annihilated.
9.
Umm Habiba Ramla bint Abi Sufyan
10.
Safiyya bint Huyayy
The only person who could save her from becoming a slave after having enjoyed such a high position was the Prophet.
Although her father had planned to assassinate Muhammad after the battle of Uhud, and had conspired with the Banu Qurayza to exterminate all the Muslims during the battle of al-Khandaq, it was characteristic of the Muhammad that he did not bear any grudges.
11.
Maymuna bint al-Harith
The Prophet gave her the name, Maymuna, meaning "blessed", and Maymuna lived with the Prophet for just over three years, until his death.
She was obviously very good natured and got on well with everyone and no quarrel or disagreement with any of the Prophet 's other wives has been related to her.
` A ` isha said, "Among us, she had the most fear of Allah and did the most to maintain ties of kinship."
12.
Maria al-Qibtiyya
Maria was honored and respected by the Prophet and his family and Companions.
She spent three years of her life with the Prophet, until his death, and died five years later.
For the last five years of her life, she remained a recluse and almost never went out except to visit the grave of the Prophet or her son 's grave.
After her death, Umar ibn al Khattab led the prayer over her and she was buried in al Baqi.
Morse code is a type of code that is used to send telegraphic information using rhythm.
Morse code uses dots and dashes to show the alphabet letters, numbers, punctuation and special characters of a given message.
When messages are sent by Morse code, dots are short beeps or clicks or flashes, and dashes are longer ones.
Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, who helped invent it.
It is not used as much today as it was in the 19th and 20th centuries, because there are now other types of technology that are easier to use to communicate.
However, some people still use Morse code to communicate on amateur radio.
The signal for help is S.O.S sent by Morse code.
People can send Morse code by flickering lights.
This is coded into - - -, as seen on the right.
There are different types of Morse code for some different countries.
Emergency contraception is a form of contraception that can be taken by the woman after sex.
Emergency contraception can not protect against sexually transmitted diseases.
Emergency contraception may prevent a pregnancy.
The drugs that are used for emergency contraception are based on hormones.
Emergency contraception needs to be applied soon after the unprotected sex.
If it is not applied within about 3 days (72 hours) after the event, it will no longer help to prevent pregnancy.
The sooner the drug is taken after unprotected sex, the more effective it is.
It is estimated that these drugs may prevent 85 % of expected pregnancies.
The drugs will not work if the woman is already pregnant.
The drugs will also not work for preventing pregnancy from unprotected sex again in the same menstrual cycle.
Emergency contraception is illegal in some countries and for some circumstances (for example, outside the context of rape).
Often the drugs are available in pharmacies.
In some countries, the affected person needs to talk to a healthcare professional (a doctor or a pharmacist).
After this counseling, the drugs can be obtained.
Note that this is different from pills containing Mifepristone, which are taken during the pregnancy, as a form of abortion.
Meat is animal tissue used as food.
Most often is used to describe skeletal muscle and fat that is found with it.
Types of meat include beef and veal from cattle, pork, ham and bacon from pigs, mutton from sheep, venison from deer and poultry from chickens, ducks and turkeys.
The word meat is also used for sausages and for non-muscle organs which are used for food, for example liver, brain, and kidneys.
Eggs may also be included, as may fish.
In the meat processing industry, (in some countries) the word "meat" is to mean only the flesh of mammalian species such as pigs, cattle, etc. but does not include fish, poultry, and eggs.
Meat is an important part of the diet of many people because it contains protein.
Protein helps the growth and healing of a body and gives energy.
Meat is a "high-protein" food, but costs more than other foods like bread and vegetables.
People who can not afford meat, or who do not like to eat it need to find other ways to get enough protein in their diet.
Beans and certain nuts are also high in protein.
People that choose not to eat meat are called vegetarians, and those who do not eat any animal product are known as vegans.
Animals such as members of the cat family that mainly eat animals are called carnivores.
Red meat is darker-coloured meat, different from white meat such as chicken or fish.
Some raw meat can make people sick or even cause death.
Monty Python, also known as The Pythons, is a group of British comic actors.
They have acted in several comedy movies (most famously, Monty Python and the Holy Grail).
They had a television show, Monty Python 's Flying Circus between 1969 and 1974, which is still well-known and watched around the world.
The members of Monty Python are: John Cleese, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin.
Monty Python started with their first movie, And Now For Something Completely Different, and finished with their final movie, Monty Python 's The Meaning of Life.
Married... with Children is an American sitcom.
It aired for 11 seasons.
It was about a family living in a fictional Chicago, Illinois, suburb.
It stars Ed O'Neill, Katey Segal, Christina Applegate, Ted McGinley, and David Garrison.
On April 22, 2012, Fox re-aired the series premiere in honor of its 25th anniversary.
A metre (US spelling, meter) is the basic unit of length in the SI measurement system.
The abbreviation for the metre is m. The first meaning (in the French Revolution), it was 1\/10,000,000 th (one ten-millionth) of the distance between the Earth 's equator and the North Pole along the Paris meridian.
The metre is now officially defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1\/299,792,458 of a second.
In the imperial system of measurement, one metre is equal to about 39.37 inches, 3.28 feet, or about 1.09 yards.
Mentha (mint) is a genus of about 25 species (and many hundreds of varieties) of flowering plants in the family Lamiaceae (Mint Family).
Marjoram (Origanum majorana, Lamiaceae) is a somewhat cold-sensitive perennial herb or undershrub with sweet pine and citrus flavors.
In some middle-eastern countries, marjoram is synonymous with oregano, and there the names sweet marjoram and knotted marjoram are used to distinguish it from other plants.
Medicine is the science that deals with diseases (illnesses) in humans and animals, the best ways to prevent diseases, and the best ways to return to a healthy condition.
People who practice medicine are most often called medical doctors or physicians.
Often doctors work closely with nurses and many other types of health care professionals.
Many doctors specialize in one kind of medical work.
For example, pediatrics is the medical specialty about the health of children.
The Macedonian phalanx is an infantry formation developed by Philip II.
It was used by his son Alexander the Great to conquer the Persian Empire.
The formation was made up of spearmen carrying 18 to 20 ft (5.5-6 m) long spears.
These were called sarissas.
They were two-handed; the smaller shields were slung over the left shoulder.
The Macedonian phalanx was impregnable from the front, but vulnerable from the sides and back, where it could be attacked by the enemy cavalry.
Therefore, the system required protection, which it got from the Macedonian cavalry, which was the most flexible force.
At the start of a battle, Alexander used the phalanx to pin down the enemy.
His heavy cavalry would drive the enemy horse from the field, and then charge selected opponents or exposed enemy unit flanks.
Then, the phalanx would move against the center.
The early Greek city states often fought on narrow valley floors, where cavalry was not so important.
Often, there was little or no cavalry.
But in the Greco-Persian Wars, the battles were fought on more open land, where cavalry was a great force.
An example of this is the Battle of Gaugamela.
There, Alexander manoeuvered to the right to prevent a double envelopment from the Persian army.
Darius commanded his cavalry on his left flank to check the oblique movement of the Greeks by attacking their cavalry.
Alexander 's Companion cavalry then charged the weakened enemy center where Darius was posted and were followed by the phalanx formation.
Madagascar is a large island nation in the Indian Ocean, off of the east coast of Africa.
Twenty-two million people live there; its capital is Antananarivo.
It is the world 's fourth largest island.
The official languages are Malagasy and French.
Geologists think that about two million years ago, Madagascar was a part of a big landmass that included what is now the continent of Africa, but it broke off.
Madagascar would later break off of the Indian subcontinent.
Madagascar is home to many species that were not known about until around 1679 when Dutch explorers went there.
They do not even exist elsewhere in Africa.
They only exist in Madagascar.
In fact, most of the mammals living in Madagascar do not live anywhere else in the world.
However, many of the species in Madagascar are in danger because many of the forests have been cut down.
A big reason that forests have been cut down is so that land can be used to grow crops such as coffee, which is one of the most important crops that is grown in Madagascar.
Agriculture is a big part of the economy in Madagascar, including the growing of coffee and vanilla.
Madagascar sells more vanilla than any other country in the world.
Madagascar also makes money from tourism.
In 2004 Madagascar was divided into 22 regions.
It used to be divided into 6 provinces.
People have probably lived in Madagascar for at least 2000 years.
France took over the city of Antananarivo in 1895, and added Madagascar as a colony two years later.
Madagascar became independent from France, which meant it became its own country, on 26 June, 1960.
On March 17, 2009, President Marc Ravalomanana quit because of pressure from the military.
Andry Raejolina became the next president.
Flowering plants (also called Angiosperms or Magnoliophyta) are the dominant land plants today.
Together with the gymnosperms they make up the seed plants.
They are different from the gymnosperms because angiosperms bear flowers, and have enclosed ovules.
Gymnosperms bear naked seeds on cones or open structures.
Angiosperms have a number of derived characters, which evolved as they split off from the gymnosperms.
Flowers, the reproductive organs of flowering plants, are the most remarkable feature distinguishing them from other seed plants.
Flowers, with their color and their nectar, act to attract pollinators, which are mostly insects and birds.
Whereas gymnosperms are almost entirely wind-pollinated, early flowers were probably all insect-pollinated.
Some present-day flowering plants are wind-pollinated, but that is a secondary feature.
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The fertilized angiosperm ovule develops into a seed, and the ovary develops into the fruit.
The fruit is often a way to use animals to spread the seeds far and wide.
The fruit is made out of the carpel and some tissue round it.
The carpel hold inside itself the ovules.
In general, endosperms form after fertilization and before the first division of the zygote.
Endosperm is a highly nutritive tissue that can provide food for the developing embryo, the cotyledons, and sometimes the seedling when it first appears.
Specialised sexual parts have led to co-evolution in fertilization and seed dispersal.
The stamens, and the male and female gametophytes, have been adapted in many ways to suit particular pollinators.
The smaller pollen grain shortens the time between pollination and fertilization, which can be up to a year in gymnosperms.
The small female gametophyte also allows rapid seed production, which led to annual herbaceous life-cycles.
Adaptations in these novelties allowed angiosperms to invade many habitats.
They now dominate everywhere except the boreal forest or taiga, which is still composed almost entirely of gymnosperms.
A whole genome duplication (doubling) at 160 million years ago (mya) may have started the ancestral line that led to all modern flowering plants.
That event was studied by sequencing the genome of an ancient flowering plant, Amborella trichopoda.
Amborella, found on the Pacific island of New Caledonia, belongs to a sister group of the other flowering plants.
Studies suggest that it has features that may have been characteristic of the earliest flowering plants.
The earliest known fossil confidently identified as an angiosperm, Archaefructus liaoningensis, is dated to about 125 mya in the Lower Cretaceous.
Pollen probably of angiosperm origin takes the fossil record back to about 130 mya.
Malvales is the name of an order of flowering plants.
As circumscribed by APG II-system, it includes about 6000 species within nine families.
The order is placed in the eurosids II, which are part of the eudicots.
The Myrtales are an order of flowering plants.
They are a basal group of dicotyledons.
The Malpighiales are a large order of flowering plants, included in the group named eurosids I in the recent APG classification.
Its internal systematics are still uncertain.
This diverse order covers plants as superficially dissimilar as violets and willows, passionfruit and mangrove, poinsettia and flax.
A Miranda warning is a list of rights that people in the United States have when they are being questioned by the police or arrested.
These rights are called Miranda rights.
Because of a United States Supreme Court decision in a case called Miranda v. Arizona,, the police have to give a person this list of rights before they start questioning them.
One goal of the Miranda warning is to make sure that suspects ' rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution are protected.
Another goal is to make sure suspects know about their rights, and know that they can use them.
In Miranda v. Arizona, a man named Ernesto Miranda confessed to raping and murdering a 17-year-old girl.
Miranda was convicted and sent to prison.
However, he and his lawyers appealed his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court.
They argued that Miranda 's confession should not have been used as evidence because:
The Sixth Amendment protects the right to a lawyer, but the Supreme Court had also just recently made two landmark decisions about this right.
In 1963, the Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright,, that anyone being tried for a crime had the right to a lawyer.
If the person could not pay for a lawyer, the state had to assign them a free lawyer.
The next year, the Court ruled in another landmark case called Escobedo v. Illinois,, that anyone suspected of a crime had the right to have a lawyer with them while the police questioned them.
The Supreme Court decided the police got Miranda 's confession by ignoring his rights, and they threw out Miranda 's conviction.
(Miranda was re-tried, and even without the confession as evidence, he was convicted again.)
The Court also ruled that police have to make sure suspects know and understand their rights before being interrogated.
Specifically, police have to give a "Miranda warning" that tells suspects they have these rights:
Many people from all over the world know these words from television and think of this as "the Miranda warning."
However, there is no one version of the Miranda warning.
Different people, police departments, and states use different words.
The Supreme Court has said the words can change, as long as the four basic parts of the warning are there.
In Simple English, they are:
There are at least 945 different versions of the Miranda warning just in English.
Some try to make the warning easier for juveniles or people with learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, or mental illnesses to understand.
However, studies have shown that in fact, people in these groups often have even more trouble understanding the ` simpler ' versions.
The Miranda warning has also had to be translated into many different languages.
Many different police departments carry cards that show the warning in different languages.
Others use translators to give the warning.
The law says the police have to give a suspect a Miranda warning before they start questioning them.
If they do not, and the suspect gives a confession, that confession could later be thrown out in court.
This means a court could rule that the confession can not be used as evidence in a trial.
A confession can also be thrown out if the police gave a Miranda warning, but gave it the wrong way, or did not make sure the suspect understood it.
(This is discussed more in the "Problems" section.)
If the prosecution can not prove each of these things, the confession can be thrown out.
Studies of many different versions of the Miranda warning have shown that most of them are complex.
The more complex the Miranda warning is, the harder it is to understand.
For example, one study from 2008 looked at how complex the sentences were in the average Miranda warning.
They found a "sentence complexity" score of 48.96 - which meant the sentences were as complicated as the instructions on United States tax forms.
In some of the warnings, the information about Miranda rights was more complex than a college-level accounting textbook.
Some areas have "simplified" versions of the Miranda warning.
However, researchers have found that these versions are not always easier to understand.
A person would need high school-level reading and language skills to understand some of them.
In a study of 560 different English versions of the Miranda warning, researchers found that a person would need 7th-grade reading skills to understand the simplest versions.
To understand the most complicated Miranda warnings, a person would need a doctoral-level education (the highest level of education you can get at a university).
According to the American Psychological Association, people are so used to hearing the Miranda warning on television that they think they understand their rights.
However, a 2011 study by Richard Rogers says that many people do not understand their Miranda rights, or have wrong beliefs about them.
For example, Rogers found that 31 % of defendants waiting for trials in Texas and Oklahoma did not understand their right to remain silent.
They believed that if they did not answer questions, the court would use that as evidence of their guilt.
Rogers also found that 36 % of college students believed the same thing.
Other studies have shown that most juveniles (children and teenagers) - and many adults - do not understand their rights well enough to decide when to use them and when to waive them (not use them).
For example, in one study, a researcher asked juveniles and adults to repeat back the Miranda warning in their own words.
The researcher also asked them to define six of the most important words in the Miranda warning, like "consult," "appoint," and "attorney."
Finally, the researcher tested whether they could understand different versions of the Miranda warning.
He found:
No Supreme Court ruling or federal law has ever said that children must have a parent or lawyer with them while being questioned.
About 12 states have chosen to add extra protections for juveniles in their states, like not letting juveniles waive their Miranda rights without a parent or guardian there.
However, most states have not done this.
This means that in most states, juveniles can waive their rights on their own.
A famous study done by Richard Rogers and others in 2008 looked at Miranda warnings that were meant to be simplified versions for juveniles.
He found that these warnings were longer than the non-simplified versions; some had as many as 526 words.
Understanding them also required higher reading levels and abilities than the adult versions.
Another study, done in 2013, found that 16 - and 17-year-olds charged with a felony almost always waived their Miranda rights.
They waived their rights 93 % of the time, while adults waived their rights 80 % of the time.
Especially when juveniles waive their rights and agree to talk to police without a lawyer, they are much more likely to confess to something they did not actually do.
Looking at people who were proven to be innocent, studies found that one-third to two-fifths of untrue confessions came from juveniles.
Police got almost 7 out of every 10 of these false confessions from children ages 15 and under.
Translating the Miranda warning into other languages brings up special problems.
There have been many cases where suspects ' confessions have been challenged and thrown out in court because of problems giving the Miranda warning in other languages.
For example, since 1993, there have been lawsuits about:
The Miranda warning is also difficult to translate into some languages.
Not all languages have words for the same ideas as English.
For example, American Sign Language has no signs for legal words like "rights."
Meiosis is a special type of cell division.
Unlike mitosis, the way normal body cells divide, meiosis results in cells that only have half the usual number of chromosomes, one from each pair.
For that reason, meiosis is often called reduction division.
In the long run, meiosis increases genetic variation, in a way which will be explained later.
Sexual reproduction takes place when a sperm fertilizes an egg.
The eggs and sperm are special cells called gametes, or sex cells.
Gametes are haploid; they have only half the number of chromosomes as a normal body cell (called a somatic cell).
Fertilization restores the chromosomes in body cells to the diploid number.
The basic number of chromosomes in the body cells of a species is called the somatic number and is designated 2n.
In humans 2n = 46; we have 46 chromosomes.
In the sex cells the chromosome number is n (humans: n = 23).
So, in normal diploid organisms, chromosomes are present in two copies, one from each parent (23x2 = 46).
The only exception are the sex chromosomes.
In mammals, the female has two X chromosomes, and the male one X and one Y chromosome.
A karyotype is the characteristic chromosome number of a eukaryote species.
The preparation and study of karyotypes is part of cytogenetics, the genetics of cells.
All eukaryotes that reproduce sexually use meiosis.
This also includes many single-celled organisms.
Meiosis does not occur in archaea or bacteria, which reproduce via asexual processes such as binary fission.
The offspring gets a set of chromosomes from each parent so that, overall, half of its heredity comes from each parent.
But the two sets of chromosomes are not identical with the parental chromosomes.
This is because they are changed during the reduction division by a process called crossing-over.
1.
First, to reduce the chromosomes in each egg or sperm to one set only.
: The two chromosomes in a pair are not identical because at any particular locus on the chromosomes there may be different alleles (forms of the gene) on the two chromosomes.
Think about each pair of chromosomes, one set from each parent.
From each pair, only one goes into each gamete.
So, in the first place, gametes differ because of each pair the gamete may have the father 's chromosome or the mother 's.
This is called ` independent assortment '.
2.
To allow crossing-over to take place between each pair of parental chromosomes.
Crossing-over changes which alleles sit on a particular chromosome.
: So, though described as ` mother 's ' and ` father 's ' chromosomes, in practice the gamete chromosomes are not all the same as the parents ' chromosomes.
This is because bits of chromosomes have been exchanged in the process of meiosis.
Although the gametes have only one set of chromosomes, that set is a shuffled mixture of genetic material from both parents.
Every single egg or sperm may have a different selection of alleles from the parental chromosomes.
As with shuffling a deck of cards, many different combinations of genes can be produced without a change (mutation) in any individual gene.
However, mutations do occur, and they may add alleles which were not in the population before.
At any rate, the shuffling increases the variety of the offspring, and the variety gives at least some of the offspring a better chance of surviving in difficult times.
The shuffling of alleles which takes place in meiosis may be the reason why sexual reproduction exists at all.
"It is not difficult to think of reasons why sexual populations should have long-term advantages over asexual ones.
They can evolve more rapidly to meet changing circumstances..."
Several quite large taxa (groups of organisms) use cyclical parthenogenesis.
This is when several generations are born by virgin birth, and then a generation occurs with normal sexual reproduction.
Examples include aphids, and cladocerans (small crustacea called water fleas).
Aphids usually operate as follows: when the weather is good, and their plant hosts are at their best, they use parthenogenesis.
At the end of the season, when the weather gets worse, they use sexual reproduction.
This system of reproduction is called apogamy.
In parthenogenesis, the eggs contain only the mother 's genetic material, and they are not fertilized.
The egg cells may be produced either by meiosis or mitosis.
When meiosis occurs, crossing-over produces a genetic fingerprint which differs somewhat from the mother 's.
So, the parthenogenetic greenfly offspring are not identical, and do show some genetic variation: some chromosome segments differ because of meiosis.
Mitosis would produce identical offspring.
Amongst these parthenogenetic taxa are a number of species which have entirely abandoned sex.
A few eukaryote organisms have completely lost the ability for sexual reproduction, and so do not have meiosis.
These include the Bdelloid rotifers, which only reproduce by parthenogenesis.
Meiosis can be divided into Meiosis I and Meiosis II.
The function of the first division is to permit crossing over.
Just like Mitosis, meiosis includes Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase and Telophase.
Prophase I: The chromosomes become visible, the nuclear envelope disappears and the centrioles (at the top and bottom of the nucleus) begin forming spindle fibers that envelop the chromosomes.
At this stage each chromosome is split into two sister chromatids, held together by the centromeres.
The paired chromosomes now have four chromatids (2 sets of ` sisters ') pressed together.
Crossing over takes place between two of the non-sister chromatids; the other two remain uncrossed.
The crossover results in the exchange of segments of each of the participating chromatids, DNA and associated chromatin protein.
Genetically, the process is called recombination.
Metaphase I: The chromosomes line up along the equatorial (the central line) of the spindle fibers in homologous pairs.
Anaphase I: The chromosomes are divided so that there are equal amounts on either side of the cell.
As there are 46 chromosomes in a human cell, 23 end up on either side.
(Cytokinesis, the division of cells into two, takes place.
The cell divides.)
Telophase I: The two daughter cells are completely divided, a nucleic envelope forms and the chromosomes become less visible.
There are 23 chromosomes in each of these cells.
The two cells prepare to divide again in a stage known as Interkinesis or Interphase II.
Both of these cells will go through meiosis II.
Prophase II: The chromosomes become visible, the nuclear envelope disappears and the centrioles form the spindle fibers.
Anaphase II: The chromosomes get split into its two chromatids.
Chromatids are the two strands of DNA (deoxyribo-nucleic acid) that make up the chromosome.
They are joined by a mid-way connection called a centromere.
(Cytokinesis takes place.
The cell divides.)
Telophase II: The cells are completely divided.
The nucleic envelope reforms and four new cells with different DNA are created.
In males, all four cells become sperm.
In females, only one becomes a mature egg, while the remaining three become re-absorbed into the body.
In humans, there are certain conditions that are caused by a meiosis gone wrong.
Examples are:
MINIX is a Unix-like computer operating system based on a microkernel architecture.
Andrew S. Tanenbaum wrote the operating system so it could be used for educational purposes; MINIX also helped Linus Torvalds design the Linux kernel.
Its name comes from the words minimal and Unix.
Released under the BSD license, MINIX is free and open source.
Andrew S. Tanenbaum created MINIX at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
MINIX 3 was announced to the public on 24 October 2005 by Andrew Tanenbaum during his speech on top of the ACM Symposium Operating System Principles conference.
MINIX 3 currently supports only IA-32 architecture PC systems.
It has a Live CD format that lets it be used on a computer without installing it.
Version 3.1.2 was released 8 May 2006.
It contains X11, emacs, vi, cc, gcc, perl, python, ash, bash, zsh, ftp, ssh, telnet, pine, and over 400 other common UNIX programs.
With the addition of X11, this version starts the change from a Text-Only System.
The design principles Tanenbaum applied to MINIX had influenced the design decisions Linus Torvalds applied in the creation of the Linux kernel.
Torvalds used and appreciated MINIX, but his design was different from the MINIX architecture in significant ways, most notably by employing a monolithic kernel instead of a microkernel.
This was famously disapproved by Tanenbaum in the Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate.
(Tanenbaum explained again his rationale for using a microkernel in May 2006.)
In May 2004 Kenneth Brown of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution raised the accusation that major parts of the Linux kernel had been copied from MINIX, in a book called Samizdat.
These accusations were refused by almost everyone - in particular by Andrew Tanenbaum, who strongly felt that Kenneth Brown was very wrong and published a long rebuttal on his own personal website.
Its licensing fee was very small ($ 69) compared to the ones of other operating systems.
Although Tanenbaum wished for MINIX to be as easily available to students, his publisher would not allow it.
When free\/open source Unix-like operating systems such as Linux became available in the early 1990s, many volunteer software developers stopped using MINIX for Linux.
In April 2000, MINIX became free\/open source software under a permissive free software licence, but by this time other operating systems were much better, and it was mostly used as an operating system for students and hobbyists.
The name Mongols (Mongolian: Mongol) explains one or more ethnic groups.
A hard definition includes the Mongols proper (self-designation Monggol), which can be split into eastern and western Mongols.
In a bigger sense, the Mongol peoples also people who speak a Mongolic language but use other self-designations, such as the Kalmyks of eastern Europe.
The name Monggol has its meaning in the Tungusic languages and usually means "the invincible ones".
At first it was applied to a small and still insignificant tribe in the area of the Onon river.
In the 13th century it grew into an umbrella term for a large group of tribes united under the rule of Genghis Khan.
The polytheistic (believing in many gods) Mongols thought that good and evil spirits controlled the world.
They also believed in a most important god, who ruled all the spirits.
They called him Tengri (TENG gree), which means, "the great god of heaven".
The Mongols lived in fear of the spirits and hoped for blessings from them.
Every yurt had small idols made of felt.
The wives and daughters of the nobles made these idols at sewing parties.
The Mongols believed that these idols protected their families and animals.
Before every meal they put food and drink on the idols ' lips.
They also prayed to them.
The Mongols believed that some men, called shamans (SHAH muns), had power over the spirits.
The shamans were the priests of the traditional Mongol religion, called shamanism (SHAH muh NIZ um).
The shamans were medicine men and witch doctors who used a special language when doing their magical ritual.
The Mongols talked to their shamans before making big choices and followed their advice.
The later empire of the Mongols had many people with many religions, including Christians.
The most important Christian group in the Mongol Empire was the Nestorian Church, sometimes called the Church of the East.
These Christians were named for Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople.
A manga is a Japanese comic book.
Manga is drawn by a mangaka (Japanese for cartoonist: an artist of comics).
Manga is usually read from right to left.
The word manga can be both singular and plural, and mean both the medium of comics or a single comic.
It is a form of art that is used to draw comics and develop Anime (animated cartoons of manga art).
Colors and symbols are important.
Mexico City is the capital and largest city in Mexico.
It is also one of the most populous and polluted cities in the world.
The Aztec people were here before the Spanish came and made Mexico City.
It was founded in 1521 by Hern n Cort s. Today, about 8.5 million people live in the city, and about 18 million live in the Greater Mexico City urban area.
The city of Mexico City ceased to exist in 1928.
Since then, there is only the Federal District.
Mexico City has 18.1 million people.
It is the city with the second highest number of people in the world after Tokyo in Japan and just slightly more populated than Mumbai in India.
Mexico City was first built in the 1520s after Hern n Cort s destroyed the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.
The Spaniards then emptied the basin of Lake Texcoco to keep it from flooding.
By the late 1700s, Mexico City had over 100,000 people.
However, there were many slums, which caused epidemics.
There were political problems in the mid 1800s after Mexico became independent.
More than 40 people ruled in the 40 years after the country became independent.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, electric light and gas were brought to the city.
But there was a big difference between the rich western part of the city and the poor eastern part of the city.
By 1930, Mexico City had 1,000,000 people.
The city kept growing quickly.
In 1968, the olympics were in Mexico City.
In 1985, an earthquake hit the capital.
In the past few decades, there have been problems with crime and corruption.
Mexico City has a high population density.
It is also surrounded by mountains.
This causes problems with air pollution.
Sometimes Mexico City gets earthquakes.
Mexico City is in the Valley of Mexico at around 2,300 meters (7,800 feet) above sea level.
Mexico City its divided by 16 boroughs: lvaro Obreg n, Azcapotzalco, Benito Juarez, Coyoac n, Cuajimalpa, Cuauht moc, Gustavo A. Madero, Iztacalco, Iztapalapa, Magdalena Contreras, Miguel Hidalgo, Milpa Alta, Tl huac, Tlalpan, Venustiano Carranza and Xochimilco.
Mexico City was originally built on a lake, Lake Texcoco, which is now mostly drained.
The ecology of the area has been much changed by the draining.
Many of its native species, such as the Axolotl, are extinct, or endangered.
The mountains Popocat petl and Iztacc huatl are nearby.
Mexico City is in the tropics.
But because its elevation is so high, it has a subtropical highland climate (Cwb in the K ppen climate classification).
This means temperatures are warm or mild year-round.
It is a lot wetter in the summer than in the winter.
Some parts of the city get frost in the winter.
Merlot is a type of red wine and it is the main agricultural production of the Swiss canton called ticino.
Martin Scorsese (born November 17, 1942) is an American movie director.
He was born in Queens and raised in Manhattan.
Many of Scorsese 's movies have Italian American, Roman Catholic and violent themes or ideas.
Scorsese is probably best known for his movies about the mafia.
He won the Academy Award for Best Director for his movie The Departed at the 79th Academy Awards in 2007; the movie also won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Film Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay.
This was Scorsese 's first Academy Award for Best Director.
Scorsese has earned praise from many film legends including Ingmar Bergman, Frank Capra, Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Elia Kazan, Akira Kurosawa, David Lean, Michael Powell, Satyajit Ray, and Fran ois Truffaut.
Mean Streets is a 1973 American crime drama movie directed by Martin Scorsese.
It is set in New York City and stars Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro.
This movie was released by Warner Bros. on October 2, 1973.
It received mostly positive reviews from movie critics.
Myasthenia gravis is a rare autoimmune disease.
It causes weak muscles and tiredness.
Stress and hot weather can make the symptoms worse.
It is treated with acetylcholinesterase inhibitors or immunosuppressants.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is a company that makes computer software and video games for users around the world.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded the company in 1975.
Microsoft makes Windows, Microsoft Office (including Microsoft Word), Edge, MSN and the Xbox One, among others.
Most Microsoft programs can not be downloaded for free - people have to buy them in a shop or online.
Some products (like the Windows operating system) are often already installed when people buy a new computer.
Microsoft Windows is an operating system, which means that it is the basic software that makes people 's computers work and lets other programs work.
The majority of desktop and laptop computers run Windows, and so do some tablet computers and a few smartphones.
The latest version of Windows is Windows 10.
Microsoft Office is an office suite.
It lets people write documents on their computer with Microsoft Word, make charts and graphs with Microsoft Excel and make presentations with Microsoft PowerPoint.
Internet Explorer is a piece of software that lets people look at things online (known as browsing) and download things from the Internet.
Microsoft also makes other programs for the Internet.
Many of them are called Windows Live services, with the name Windows Live put in front of the old name of the service, like Windows Live Hotmail, which is an email service.
However, the Windows Live name is not being used much anymore.
Microsoft runs a service called Bing on the internet which lets people search for things like photos or information online.
MS-DOS is the first existing operating system developed by Microsoft, used for primitive computers and terminals.
Microsoft Sharepoint is a server tool included in Microsoft Office (2007, 2013).
Microsoft Expression series is a web development tool which is now discontinued.
Minecraft and many other programs have been bought by Microsoft and developed further.
Skype is also a service by Microsoft.
It was not started by Microsoft, but was later purchased by Microsoft.
Skype is a free program that lets people call other people, either through the telephone, or through Skype on the other person 's computer.
The Xbox, the Xbox 360 and the new Xbox One are video game consoles, which means they let people play video games when connected to their televisions.
Microsoft is one of the three big companies that make video game consoles.
The other two are Nintendo and Sony.
Xbox Live is a service that lets people play online against other people anywhere in the world.
Microsoft also makes many PC games.
Microsoft also has many other small products such as tablet computers and computer peripherals including mice and keyboards that are used with computers.
The Microsoft Surface is an example, which is a laptop\/tablet convertible.
Moscow (, "Moskva") is the capital city of Russia.
11.5 million people live there (since 1 October 2010), so it is Europe 's biggest city.
It is also the seventh biggest city in the world.
Moscow is an important political, cultural, economic, religious, financial and transportation center.
It is a global city, important in the economic infrastructure of the region.
Moscow was founded by Prince Yuri Dolgoruki in 1147.
The middle of the city is an ancient walled city called the Kremlin.
There are important government buildings, museums and churches in the Kremlin.
Many of the buildings in Moscow, like St. Basil 's Cathedral and Spasskaya Tower, are very beautiful and famous.
There are also modern buildings.
The many art galleries have big collections.
Moscow has many scientific and educational buildings, as well as some sports complexes built for the 1980 Summer Olympics.
Transport includes four international airports, nine railroad stations and the second busiest (after Tokyo) metro system in the world, which is famous for its artwork.
Over time, the city has earned a variety of nicknames, most referring to its pre-eminent status in the nation: The Third Rome (-RRB-, Whitestone (-RRB-, The First Throne (-RRB-, The Forty Forties (.)
A person from Moscow is called a Muscovite in English, or a Moskvich in Russian.
It is by the Moskva River in the Moskva Oblast, in the European part of Russia.
Moscow sits on the center of three parts of Earth 's crust.
It was once the capital of the Soviet Union (1918-1991), Russian Empire, Tsardom of Russia and the Grand Duchy of Moscow (1480-1703).
It is the place of the Moscow Kremlin, one of the World Heritage Sites in the city, which is the home of the President of Russia.
The Russian parliament (the State Duma and the Federation Council of Russia (Federation Council) and the Government of Russia also are in Moscow.
Moscow has a large economic infrastructure.
It is home to the most billionaires in the world.
; in 2008 Moscow was named the world 's most expensive city for non-Russian workers for the third year in a row.
In 2009, however, Moscow went down to third after Tokyo and Osaka came in first and second.
The city is named after the river (old, which means "the city next to the Moskva River").
The beginning of the name is not known, but some people have a few ideas.
One is that the name might be from a very old Finnic language, in which it means "dark" and "cloudy".
The first Russian reference to Moscow is from 1147 when Yuri Dolgoruki called upon the prince of Novgorod-Severski (North Novgorod) to "come to me, brother, to Moscow."
Nine years later, in 1156, Prince Yuri Dolgoruki ordered the building of a wooden wall, which had to be redone many times, to go around the growing city.
After the attack of 1237 1238, when the Mongols burned the city to the ground and killed its people living there, Moscow grew back and became the capital of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality (an amount of land ruled by a prince) in 1327.
Its good place on the start of the Volga River helped the city to grow slowly bigger and bigger.
Moscow turned into a peaceful and rich principality, known as the Grand Duchy of Moscow, for many years and a large number of people from across Russia moved to live there.
Under Ivan I the city replaced Tver as a political center of Vladimir-Suzdal and became the only collector of taxes for the Mongol-Tatar rulers.
By paying high taxes, Ivan worked out an important deal with the Khan.
Unlike other principalities, Moscow was not divided among his sons but was passed whole to his oldest.
However, Moscow did not like the Mongol rule.
In 1380, prince Dmitry Donskoy of Moscow led a Russian army to an important victory over the Tatars in the Battle of Kulikovo.
Only two years later Moscow was raided by the Khan Tokhtamysh.
In 1480, Ivan III finally broke the Russians free from Tatar control, allowing Moscow to become the center of power in Russia.
Under Ivan III the city became the capital of an empire that would eventually include all of Russia and other countries.
In 1571, the Crimean Tatars raided Moscow, burning everything but the Kremlin.
In 1609 the Swedish army, led by Count Jacob De la Gardie and Evert Horn, marched from Veliky Novgorod toward Moscow to help Tsar Vasili Shuiski.
They entered Moscow in 1610 and stopped the revolution against the Tsar, but left early in 1611.
After that the Polish invaded.
During the Polish Muscovite War (1605 1618) hetman (army commander) Stanis aw kiewski entered Moscow after he defeated the Russians in the Battle of Klushino.
The 17th century had lots of revolutions, such as the Salt Riot (1648), the Copper Riot (1662), and the Moscow Uprising of 1682.
The plague of 1654 1656 killed half the population of Moscow.
The city stopped being Russia s capital in 1712, after the building of Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great near the Baltic coast in 1703.
The Plague of 1771 was the last big plague in central Russia, killing 100,000 people in Moscow alone.
During the French invasion of Russia in 1812, the Muscovites burned the city and ran away, as Napoleon s army was coming near to the city on 14 September.
Napoleon s army, which was very hungry and cold had to leave and was nearly destroyed by the freezing Russian winter and some attacks by the army.
In January 1905, Alexander Adrianov became Moscow s first mayor.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, on 12 March 1918 Moscow became the capital of the Soviet Union.
During World War II (known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War), after the German invasion of the USSR, the Soviet State Defense Group and commanders of the Red Army were placed in Moscow.
In 1941, 16 groups of national volunteers (more than 160,000 people), twenty-five battalions (18,500 people) and four engineering regiments were created among the Muscovites.
That November, the German Army was stopped at the edge of the city and then driven off in the Battle of Moscow.
Many factories were moved away, and much of the government was too, and from 20 October the city was declared to be under siege.
Its people who stayed built and used antitank defences, while the city was bombed from the air.
Joseph Stalin (the leader of Russia) did not leave the city, so the general staff remained in the city as well.
Even with a siege going on, the building of the Moscow Metro system continued through the war, and by the end of the war a few new metro lines were opened.
On 1 May 1944, a medal For the defense of Moscow and in 1947 another medal In memory of the 800th year of Moscow were given to Moscow.
In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, on 8 May 1965, Moscow became one of twelve Soviet cities awarded the title of Hero City.
In 1980, Moscow hosted the Summer Olympic Games, which the United States and several other Western countries did not go to because of the Soviet Union 's war in Afghanistan in the end 1979.
In 1991, Moscow was the scene of the failed overthrow attempt by the government members opposed to the rules of Mikhail Gorbachev.
When the USSR ended in the same year, Moscow continued to be the capital of Russia.
Since then, the beginning of a market economy in Moscow has made an explosion of Western-style stores, services, architecture, and lifestyles.
In 1998, it hosted the first World Youth Games.
The Mediterranean Sea is the body of water that separates Europe, Africa and Asia.
The Mediterranean Sea is connected to the Atlantic Ocean by a narrow passage called the Strait of Gibraltar.
It is between the southern tip of Spain and northern Morroco.
It is almost completely surrounded by land, on the north by Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Middle East.
It covers around 2.5 million km (965 000 mi).
To the east it connects to the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, by the Dardanelles and the Bosporus.
The Sea of Marmara is often thought to be a part of the Mediterranean Sea, whereas the Black Sea is generally not.
The 163 km (101 mi) long man-made Suez Canal in the southeast connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.
The canal is between Egypt and the Sinai peninsula.
It was built by the French Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez from 1859 to 1869 against the British government.
As a sea around which some of the most ancient human civilizations were arranged
Some of the most ancient human civilisations were made around the Mediterranean Sea, so it has had a large influence on the history and ways of life of these cultures.
It provided a way of trade, colonization and war, and was the basis of life (like fishing and catching other seafood) for many communities throughout the ages.
The combination of similarly shared climate, geology and access to a common sea has led to lots of historical and cultural connections between the ancient and modern societies around the Mediterranean.
Above all, it was the superhighway of transport in ancient times.
It allowed for trade and cultural exchange between peoples of the region Phoenicians, Egyptians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, and the Middle East (Arab\/Persian\/Semitic) cultures.
The history of the Mediterranean is important in understanding the origin and development of Western civilization.
In modern times, the Mediterranean was the location of many battles at sea during World War II and control over it was important for defeating the Axis Powers, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
Today the Mediterranean Sea still connects the economies of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East as it did in ancient times.
The european migrant crisis has resulted in many refugees drowning in the Mediterranean Sea.
Being nearly landlocked affects the Mediterranean Sea 's properties.
Tides are limited by the narrow connection with the Atlantic Ocean.
The water is saltier, partly because of evaporation.
The Mediterranean has a deep blue color.
Evaporation greatly exceeds precipitation and river runoff in the Mediterranean, a fact that is central to the water circulation within the basin.
p202 Evaporation is especially high in its eastern half, causing the water level to decrease and salinity to increase eastward.
p206 This pressure gradient pushes relatively cool, low-salinity water from the Atlantic across the basin; it warms and becomes saltier as it travels east, then sinks in the region of the Levant and circulates westward, to spill over the Strait of Gibraltar.
p206\/7 Thus, seawater flow is eastward in the Strait 's surface waters, and westward below; once in the Atlantic, this chemically distinct "Mediterranean Intermediate Water" can persist thousands of kilometers away from its source.
p207
The Milgram experiment is the name for a number of controversial experiments in psychology.
They were done by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s.
Milgram wanted to find out if people would follow orders, even if the orders went against their conscience.
He proved they would.
There have been many repetitions and variations, with similar results.
The experiments do not answer the question as to why apparently normal people commit atrocities in wartime.
However, "obedience to authority" is built into the experiment, since the subjects were paid, and acting under the instructions of a senior university professor.
Many were students.
Participants (acting as "teachers") gave what they thought were electric shocks to "learners".
The "learners" were actually actors, and the shocks were spoof (not real).
The learners reacted as if they were in real pain.
As the "shocks" increased, they acted as if in very bad pain.
If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted.
Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum "450-volt" shock three times in succession.
Milgram found that some of the "teachers" became very nervous.
For example, they would laugh and be unable to control it.
Before Milgram did his experiment, he asked fourteen Yale University psychology students what they thought the results would be.
On average, the students thought that 1.2 % of the "teachers" would give the biggest electric shock of 450 volts.
In fact, in Milgram 's first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40) of participants administered the experiment 's final massive 450-volt shock.
Milgram wrote about the experiment in his book Obedience to Authority: an experimental view.
It was published in 1974.
Milgram 's experiments have been done again by many psychologists, with very similar results.
'' (People) have learned that when experts tell them something is all right, it probably is, even if it does not seem so.
In fact, it is worth noting that in this case the experimenter was indeed correct: it was all right to continue giving the "shocks" even though most of the subjects did not suspect the reason".
The experiment has been mentioned numerous times in pop culture.
In the graphic novel V for Vendetta Dr. Surridge said that he has lost faith in humanity because of the experiment.
In 2013 there was a conference about it at Nipissing University in Canada.
The Miocene is the first epoch of the Neogene period of the Cainozoic.
It started about 23 million years ago and ended about 5.33 million years ago.
The rock beds that mark the start and end are well known, but the exact dates of the start and end of the period are uncertain.
The biota becomes ` modern '.
The Miocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell.
Its name comes from the Greek words (', less) and (', new) and means "less recent", because it has 18 % fewer modern sea invertebrates than the Pliocene.
As the earth cooled, it went from the Oligocene epoch, through the Miocene, and into the Pliocene.
The Miocene boundaries are not set at any particular world wide event.
They are set at regional boundaries between the warmer Oligocene and the cooler Pliocene epochs.
The plants and animals of the Miocene were fairly modern.
Modern families of mammals and birds existed.
Whales, seals, and kelp spread.
Modern sharks appeared, including the huge Megalodon.
Grasslands became more common.
Mammalian browsers became less common, and grazer species became more common.
About 100 species of ape lived at that time, and cetaceans were very common in the seas.
The giganic shark Carcharodon megalodon may have preyed on them.
A monarch is a person who rules because one of their relatives ruled.
A male monarch can be called a king or emperor.
A female monarch can be called a queen or empress.
This is monarchy, a system of ruling in which ruling starts by a member of a family, and continues in that family as a dynasty.
Monarchs were very common in history.
Many countries used to have a monarch, but no longer have them.
Some countries that still have monarchs have other leaders that actually have the power.
Monarchs tended to have monarchs of lower honor below them, e.g. a Empire could include several kingdoms, and a kingdom would have several duchies or principalities, nations would rarely include all titles, usually going from duchy to kingdom instead of duchy to principality to kingdom.
Prince\/Princess means ` Ruler of a Principality ' and ` son of king\/queen '.
Some other languages have separate words for them.
A monarchy is a kind of government where a monarch, a kind of hereditary ruler (someone who inherits their office), is the head of state.
Monarchs usually rule until they die or pass down (when a monarch resigns it is called abdication).
Most monarchies are hereditary, but some are elected.
The most famous elected monarch is the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.
Some well known titles for monarchs are King, Queen, Emperor, Empress, Czar, Kaiser, Shah, Emir and Sultan.
Monarchy is one of the oldest kinds of government.
Most historians agree that the first monarchies were tribes or small groups of people who decided to let a war-chief or other leader pass on their office to their children.
Over time, the rules for deciding who got to become the next monarch became more complicated.
In general, the oldest son or, in some countries, daughter, gets to become the next monarch when the old one dies.
Kings and other kinds of monarchs have been around for many thousands of years, there are many, for example, mentioned in the Bible as well as ancient historical records.
Three of the oldest countries with monarchs that still hold office are the United Kingdom, where the present line of Kings and Queens has been around for nearly 1,000 years, Denmark where the royal line has remained unbroken for almost 1,200 years, and Japan, which has records showing a line of Emperors dating back even farther.
Many monarchs today perform mostly the ceremonial jobs of a head of state, while the head of government, who is usually elected, passes and enforces laws.
It is also very important in other parts of the country.
In an absolute monarchy the monarch is the only source of all laws and the monarch can make any law they want just by deciding it.
Any other institution in the country can not make laws that affect the monarch, unless the monarch decides to allow it.
Sometimes the monarch is also the head of the state religion and makes religious laws also.
All land and property in the country can be taken or given away by the monarch at any time for any reason.
The army and navy is under the personal control of the monarch and can be used for any purpose at any time.
The monarch can also pick who gets to be the next monarch and can change the rules at any time.
There is usually no elected government or Parliament, and if there is one, it has no real power.
This kind of government is very rare today.
The people do not have a lot of power in it.
Countries that are examples of an absolute monarchy are Vatican City, Brunei, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Swaziland.
A constitutional monarchy is a form of government that is usually a democracy and has a constitution, with the monarch as head of state.
Either the monarch has to obey the laws like everyone else, or, if the monarch does not have to obey the same laws as the rest of the people, there are special laws that say what the monarch can and can not do.
The monarch usually can not decide their special laws on their own.
There may be laws about who the monarch 's children can marry, for example, that are passed by the Parliament or Congress.
For example, in the Netherlands, if a member of the royal family marries without the permission of Parliament, they can not become king or queen themselves.
The army and navy may swear an oath to the monarch, but the real power to control it is given to the elected government.
There are laws about property and succession (who gets to be the next monarch) that can only be changed by the elected government.
Usually the monarch must sign laws into effect, but they are required to follow the will of the elected government.
A constitutional monarchy usually has separation of power, and the monarch often has only ceremonial functions, such as representing the country while traveling or acting as a symbol for the whole country (not for a particular political party).
Constitutional monarchs usually do not vote, even when it is legal for them to do so.
Voting would mean that they picked a side in political arguments and then could not claim to represent everyone in the country.
Some constitutional monarchies give the power to veto laws to the monarch, but in most countries where this is the case it is a power that is very rarely used.
In countries where the monarch can dismiss or appoint governments, this is usually only done to make sure that the democratic process is respected, without taking sides in politics.
Appointments to public office made by constitutional monarchs are generally approved by the democratically elected government beforehand.
Examples of Constitutional monarchies are the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Japan and Spain.
Thailand has a monarch who sometimes take part in politics to influence the government unlike in other constitutional monarchies, but he\/she still is subject to law.
Of these three, the order of succession is the most common case.
Countries, where the monarchs are elected include Malaysia, Cambodia, United Arab Emirates, Andorra, and Vatican City.
Mr. T, whose real name is Laurence Tureaud (born May 21, 1952) is an American actor.
He is famous for playing Sgt. Bosco "B. A." Baracus in The A-Team and James "Clubber" Lang in Rocky III.
Mr. T has a popular catch phrase, "I Pity the Fool", which lead to the name of a reality television series he appeared on.
He also had a comic series called Mr T and the T-force.
Mr. T is known for having a mohawk hairstyle and wearing a lot of gold jewelry.
Tureaud was born in Chicago.
Before he became an actor, he was a bodyguard.
Mr. T is a born-again Christian.
Tureaud made his neighbors in a Chicago suburb called Lake Forest angry.
He cut down more than a hundred oak trees on his estate.
This is now called "The Lake Forest Chain Saw Massacre".
He gave up almost all his gold, one of his identifying marks, after helping with the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
He said, "As a Christian, when I saw other people lose their lives and lose their land and property... I felt that it would be a sin before God for me to continue wearing my gold.
I felt it would be insensitive and disrespectful to the people who lost everything, so I stopped wearing my gold."
Malmo is the third largest city in Sweden.
About 311,514 people lived there in 2013.
It is in the south west part of the Sweden, by the sea.
The resund bridge goes from Malm to Copenhagen.
In the 15th century, Malm was one of Denmark 's largest cities.
Malm has the biggest Middle Eastern community in Sweden.
It is warm in the summer.
In winter it is not quite as cold as in other parts of Sweden.
To measure something is to give a number to some property of the thing.
Measuring something puts the amount of the thing into numbers.
Measurement can be written using many different units.
Many things can be measured.
Some properties of things that can be measured:
One can measure many other things.
Most properties are measured using a number and a unit of measurement.
The unit of measurement is a standard amount.
The number compares the property to that standard amount.
This means a tree that is ten times as tall as a meter stick is 10 meters tall.
There is an advanced part of mathematics that is about measuring things with unusual characteristics.
This is called measure theory.
Measurement can be the capacity, how long something is, or distance, etc.
Malden Island is an island in the Pacific Ocean.
Today, the island belongs to Kiribati.
It is one of the Line Islands.
In the 19th century the island used to be called Independence Island at times.
The island is uninhabited today, it has been made into a nature reserve for breeding seabirds.
Malden Island is located 242 nautical miles (nmi) south of the equator, 150 nmi south of Honolulu, Hawaii.
The coast of South America is more than 4,000 nautical miles (5,000 statute miles or 8,000 km) to the east.
The nearest land is uninhabited Starbuck Island, 110 nmi to the southwest.
The closest inhabited place is Tongareva (Penrhyn Island),243 nmi to the southwest.
The nearest airport is on Kiritimati (Christmas Island), 365 nmi to the northwest.
There are other uninhabited islands nearby.
They include Jarvis Island, 373 nmi to the northwest, Vostok Island, 385 nmi to the south-southeast, and Caroline (Millennium) Island, 460 nmi to the southeast.
The island has roughly the shape of an equilateral triangle, with 8 k on a side, aligned with the southwest side running northwest to southeast.
The west and south corners are slightly truncated, shortening the north, east and southwest coasts to about 7 k, and adding shorter west and south coasts about 1 to 2 km (1 mi) in length.
There is a large lagoon with many small islets in the east-central part of the island.
The lagoon is completely sourrounded by land.
It is connected to the sea by underground channels, and is quite salty.
Most of the land area of the island lies to the south and west of the lagoon.
The total area of the island is about 39.2 square kilometers.
The island is very low, no more than 10 m above sea level at its highest point.
The highest elevations are found along a rim that closely follows the coastline.
The inside forms a depression that is only a few meters above sea level in the western part and is below sea level (filled by the lagoon) in the east central part.
Because of this topography, the ocean can not be seen from much of Malden 's interior.
There is no standing fresh water on Malden Island, though a fresh water lens may exist.
A continuous heavy surf falls all along the coast, forming a narrow white to gray sandy beach.
On the west coast, the white sandy beach is bigger.
On the rest of the coast there is a strip of dark gray coral rubble, forming a ridge.
This makes the beach itself smaller.
George Anson Byron, a British captain, discovered Malden Island on 30 July 1824.
He named it after Charles Robert Malden who was the first to land on the island.
At the time of its discovery, the island was uninhabited, but there were ruins.
Archeologists discovered that the island was inhabited by between 100 and 200 Polynesians, a few centuries earlier.
The ancient stone structures are located around the beach ridges.
Most of them are on the north and south sides.
Overall, twenty-one sites are known.
Three of them are larger than the others.
They can be found on the northwest side of the island.
The sites are either temples, houses or graves.
The temple ruins are referred to as marae.
Similar marae have also been found on other islands, such as Raivavae, one of the Austral Islands.
The inhabitants had also made wells, but later settlers found them to be dry, or too salty.
In 1828, guano was discovered on the island.
In 1856, the United States wanted to get the Island, but Australian firms had already started to mine the guano deposits.
Guano mining stopped about 1927.
In 1956 and 1957, Great Britain tested H-bombs on the island.
The tests were called Operation Grapple.
My Fair Lady is a musical.
It is based on George Bernard Shaw 's play, Pygmalion, and on the movie adaptation of the play starring Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard.
The book and lyrics for the musical were written by Alan Jay Lerner.
The music was written by Frederick Loewe.
The musical premiered on Broadway on 15 March 1956 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre.
It moved to other theaters in New York during its original run, and closed on 29 September 1962 after 2,717 performances.
It starred Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Robert Coote, and Stanley Holloway.
It was directed by Moss Hart.
The West End production opened on 30 April 1958 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
Harrison, Andrews, Coote, and Holloway played their Broadway roles.
It ran for five and one-half years for 2,281 performances.
The musical won the Tony Award for Best Musical.
The musical was made into a movie in 1964 starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.
Motala Municipality is a municipality in sterg tland County in southern Sweden.
The seat is in Motala.
Maltese is the language of Malta, and a language of the European Union.
Maltese sounds very similar to the type of Punic, an ancient Mediterranean and middle-eastern spread language.
It is written in the Latin alphabet like English.
The language has borrowed many words from Sicilian, Italian, and English.
The oldest known document in Maltese is "Il Cantilena," a poem from the 15th century written by Pietro Caxaro.
For centuries, Maltese was mainly a spoken language.
Maltese became an official language of Malta in 1936, alongside English.
Before that year, the only official language of Malta was Italian.
Italian, however, is still used a lot in the media.
Today, there are around 371,900 people who speak Maltese.
Most live in Malta.
Italian and English words are taken in by the language, and this is happening more and more.
This sometimes causes words to form that are not found in Maltese, Italian, or English, but instead are a mix of the three.
At schools, English is taught as a second language.
Maltese is usually used in the standardized jobs, and when people talk to each other.
Most of the television, radio, and literature in Malta is also in Maltese.
The Mariana Trench is the deepest known submarine trench.
It is also the deepest known location on Earth itself.
It lies south and east of the Mariana Islands, and has a depth up to 10,971 m. The western end of the trench is near Guam.
The trench is about 2,550 kilometres (1,580 miles) long but has a mean width of only 69 kilometres (43 miles).
The deepest part of the trench is known as the Challenger Deep.
It is named after the British Royal Navy survey ship HMS Challenger, whose expedition of 1872 76 made the first recordings of its depth.
The most recent (1 June 2009) sonar mapping of the Challenger Deep from the Kilo Moana, has found a spot with a depth of 10971 m (6.82 miles).
The sonar system has an accuracy of better than 0.2 % of water depth (this is an error of about 22 m at this depth).
The Challenger Deep has been reached four times by submersibles, namely the manned bathyscaphe Trieste on 23 January 1960, the unmanned robotic deep-sea probes Kaiko (Japanese) in 1995 and Nereus (U.S.) in 2009, and by James Cameron in the Deepsea Challenger on 26 March, 2012.
Cameron was able to film a 3D movie of the bottom of the trench.
The HMS Challenger expedition found radiolaria in the two dredged samples taken when the Challenger Deep was first discovered.
On their 1960 descent, the crew of the Trieste noted that the floor consisted of diatomaceous ooze and reported observing "some type of flatfish, resembling a sole, about 1 foot long and 6 inches across" lying on the seabed.
The report has since been questioned, with suggestions that it may have been a sea cucumber.
The video camera on board the Kaiko probe spotted a sea cucumber, a scale worm and a shrimp at the bottom.
At the bottom of the Challenger deep, the Nereus probe spotted one polychaete worm about an inch long.
An analysis of the sediment samples collected by Kaiko found large numbers of simple organisms at 10900 m.
The overwhelming majority of the organisms collected were simple, soft-shelled foraminifera (432 species according to National Geographic).
Eighty-five percent of the specimens were organic, soft-shelled forams.
This is unusual compared to samples of sediment from other deep-sea environments, where the percentage of organic-walled foraminifera ranges from 5 % to 20 %.
As small organisms with hard, calcareous shells have trouble growing at extreme depths because of the high solubility of calcium carbonate in the pressurized water, scientists theorize that the preponderance of soft-shelled organisms in the Challenger Deep may have resulted from survivors of the biosphere present when the Challenger Deep was shallower than it is now.
The trench is one of the results of a large boundary where two oceanic tectonic plates have converged (collided).
At the boundary, the western edge of the Pacific Plate is subducted beneath the small Mariana Plate.
Because the Pacific plate is the largest of all the tectonic plates on Earth, crustal material at its western edge has had up to 170 million years to compact and become very dense; hence its great height-difference relative to the higher-riding Mariana Plate, at the point where the Pacific Plate crust is subducted.
This deep area is the Mariana trench proper.
The movement of these plates is also responsible for the formation of the Mariana Islands.
Macedonian (, makedonski jazik) is an Indo-European language spoken mainly in the Republic of Macedonia.
Macedonian is a part of the Balkan linguistic union, which also includes Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, Albanian and Torlakian dialect of the Serbian language.
Macedonian is similar to those languages.
The Macedonian language uses a Cyrillic alphabet.
The following table provides the upper and lower case forms of the Macedonian alphabet, along with the IPA value for each letter:
A municipality is a word used for a city, a town or a village, or a small group of them.
It has a clearly defined territory, and all the people living on that territory share one common local government.
In most countries, a municipality is the smallest administrative subdivision to have its own democratically elected representative leadership.
A municipality is usually governed by a mayor and a city or municipal council.
In some countries, municipalities are referred to as "communes" (for example, French commune, Italian comune or Swedish kommun).
A group of elements in the periodic table is called metals.
These elements usually have the following properties:
Most metals are solid at room temperature, but this does not have to be the case.
Mercury is liquid.
Alloys are mixtures, where at least one part of the mixture is a metal.
Examples of metals are aluminium, copper, iron, tin, gold, lead, silver, titanium, uranium, and zinc.
Well-known alloys include bronze and steel.
The study of metals is called metallurgy.
Most metals are hard, shiny, they feel heavy and they melt only when they are heated at very high temperatures.
Lumps of metal will make a bell-like sound when they are hit with something heavy (they are sonorous).
Heat and electricity can easily pass through a metal (it is conductive).
A lump of metal can be beaten into a thin sheet (it is malleable) or can be pulled into thin wires (it is ductile).
Metal is hard to pull apart (it has a high tensile strength) or smash (it has a high compressive strength).
If you push on a long, thin piece of metal, it will bend, not break (it is elastic).
Not all metals have these properties.
Lead, for instance, is very soft, and heat and electricity do not pass through iron as well as they do through copper.
Metals are very useful to people.
They are used to make tools because they can be strong and easy to shape.
Iron and steel have been used to make bridges, buildings, or ships.
Some metals are used to make items like coins because they are hard and will not wear away quickly.
For example copper (which is shiny and red in color), aluminium (which is shiny and white), gold (which is yellow and shiny), and silver and nickel (also white and shiny).
Some metals, like steel, can be made sharp and stay sharp, so they can be used to make knives, axes or razors.
Rare metals with high value, like gold, silver and platinum are often used to make jewellery.
Metals are also used to make fasteners and screws.
Pots used for cooking can be made from copper, aluminium, steel or iron.
Lead is very heavy and dense and can be used as ballast in boats to stop them from turning over, or to protect people from ionizing radiation.
Many things that are made of metals may, in fact, be made of mixtures of at least one metal with either other metals, or with non-metals.
These mixtures are called alloys.
Some common alloys are:
People first began making things from metal over 9000 years ago, when they discovered how to get copper from its ore..
They then learned how to make a harder alloy, bronze, by adding tin to the copper.
About 3000 years ago, they discovered iron.
By adding small amounts of carbon to iron, they found that they could make a particularly useful alloy steel.
In chemistry, metal is a word for a group of chemical elements that have certain properties.
It is easy for the atoms of a metal to lose an electron and become positive ions, or cations.
In this way, metals are not like the other two kinds of elements - the nonmetals and the metalloids.
On the periodic table, we can draw a zigzag line from the element boron (symbol B) to the element polonium (symbol Po).
The elements that this line passes through are the metalloids.
The elements that are above and to the right of this line are the nonmetals.
The rest of the elements are the metals.
Most of the properties of metals are due to the fact that the atoms in the metal do not hold onto their electrons very tightly.
Each atom is separated from the others by a thin layer of valence electrons.
However, some metals are different.
An example is the metal sodium.
It is soft, melts at a low temperature, and is so light, it floats on water.
People should not try this though, because another property of sodium is that it explodes when it touches water.
Most metals are chemically stable, and do not react easily.
(Some of the metals do react.
These are the alkali metals like sodium (symbol Na) and the alkaline earth metals like calcium (symbol Ca).)
When metals do react, they often react with oxygen.
The oxides of metals are basic.
The oxides of nonmetals are acidic.
Nonetheless most elements on the periodic table are metals.
Compounds, which have metal atoms combined with other atoms to make molecules, are probably the most common substances on Earth.
For example, common salt is a compound of sodium.
The use of metals is said to be the thing that makes people different from animals.
Before they used metals, people made tools from stones, wood, and animal bones.
This is now called the Stone Age.
No-one knows when the first metal was found and used.
It was probably what is called native copper, which is sometimes found in large lumps on the ground.
People learned to make this into copper tools and other things, although, for a metal, it is quite soft.
When it was melted over fire, people learned how to make an alloy called bronze, which is much harder and stronger than copper.
People made knives and weapons from bronze.
This time in human history, after about 3300 BC is often called the Bronze Age, that is, the time of bronze tools and weapons.
Around the year 1200 BC some people learned to make iron tools and weapons.
These were even harder and stronger than bronze and this was an advantage in war.
The time of iron tools and weapons is now called the Iron Age.
Metals have been very important in human history and civilization.
Iron and steel were important in the making of machines.
Gold and silver were used as money in order to allow people to trade, that is, exchange goods and services over long distances.
Many people thought that finding metals was a way to get rich.
There have been many times when gold was found and people moved quickly in large numbers to those places for example, Central and South America after the year 1500, and many places after the year 1800 (the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa).
These are often called Gold Rushes.
In astronomy, a metal is any element other than hydrogen or helium.
This is because these two elements (and sometimes lithium) are the only ones that form outside stars.
In the sky, a telescope can see the signs of metals and then the astronomer knows that there are stars.
Mime is a type of acting that does not use words or speech.
Mime is all about physical movement and exaggerating your expressions.
Mimes (people who practice mime) must use their actions to send a message or tell a story.
They are not allowed to speak directly to the audience.
Probably the most well-known mime was Marcel Marceau.
Mime originates from Rome and Greece.
Some people also believe that cavemen used mime to communicate as they could not talk.
Martina Hingis (born 30 September 1980 in Ko ice, Slovakia, then Czechoslovakia) is a Swiss professional tennis player who spent a total of 209 weeks as World No. 1.
She is known as the "Swiss Miss".
She has won five Grand Slam singles titles, three at the Australian Open (1997 to 1999), one at Wimbledon (1997) and one at the U.S. Open (1997).
She is a dominant player in doubles, winning 10 Grand Slam doubles titles and 3 mixed doubles titles.
Hingis has retired twice from the game.
The first time was in 2002, when she was struggling with injuries and was only 22.
She returned to tennis in 2005, but retired two years later after sustaining more injuries.
A blood test had also proved that she was using cocaine, an illegal drug.
In 2013, she returned to playing doubles and became a tennis coach.
She won the 2015 Wimbledon doubles title together with Sania Mirza, 19 years after winning her first Wimbledon doubles title in 1996.
She was a contestant in the 2009 series of Strictly Come Dancing.
The mass of an object is a measure of an object 's resistance to acceleration, sometimes also called "inertia".
A mountain has typically more mass than a rock, for instance.
Mass should not be confused with the related but quite different concept of weight.
A large mass like the Earth will attract a small mass like a human being with enough force to keep the human being from floating away.
"Mass attraction" is another word for gravity, a force that exists between all matter.
The unit of mass in the International System of Units is the kilogram, which is represented by the symbol ` kg '.
Fractions and multiples of this basic unit include the gram (one thousandth of a kg, symbol ` g ') and the tonne (one thousand kg), amongst many others.
In some fields or applications, it is convenient to use different units to simplify the discussions or writings.
For instance,
Traditional units are still in encountered in some countries: Imperial units such as the ounce or the pound were in widespread use within the British Empire.
Some of them are still popular in the United States, which also uses units like the short ton ton (2,000 pounds) and the long ton (2,240 pounds), not to be confused with the metric tonne (1,000 kg).
Mass is an intrinsic property of the object: it does not depend on its volume, or position in space, for instance.
For a long time (at least since the works of Antoine Lavoisier in the second half of the eighteen century), it has been known that the sum of the masses of objects that interact or of the chemicals that react remain conserved throughout these processes.
This remains an excellent approximation for everyday life and even most laboratory work.
However, Einstein has shown through his special theory of relativity that the mass m of an object moving at speed v with respect to an observer must be higher than the mass of the same object observed at rest m0 with respect to the observer.
The applicable formula is
where c stands for the speed of light.
This change in mass is only important when the speed of the object with respect to the observer becomes a large fraction of c.
The Finnish markka, also known as the Suomen markka, or simply markka, was the currency in Finland before Finland started to use Euro.
Markka 's abbreviation was mk and internationally FIM.
There were 100 pennies, (penni, p), to each markka.
There were also coupons.
Manganese is chemical element 25 on the periodic table.
Its symbol is Mn.
(Some people get it confused with magnesium, the symbol is Mg).
It has 25 protons.
Its mass number is 54.94.
Manganese is a silvery-gray metal and is part of the group known as the transition metals.
It is similar to iron.
It is hard to melt, but easy to oxidize.
Manganese forms chemical compounds in several oxidation states: +2, +4, and +7 are the most common.
Manganese compounds can be black, brown, pink, red, green, blue, and purple.
Manganese (II) compounds are pink or light brown.
They are unreactive.
Manganese (II) chloride is a common example.
Manganese (III) compounds are weak oxidizing agents.
Manganese (IV) compounds are stronger oxidizing agents, but they are rarer.
They are normally black in color.
Manganese (IV) oxide is an example.
Manganese (V) compounds are not stable and disproportionate easily.
They are bright blue.
They are very rare.
Hypomanganates are the most common manganese (V) compounds.
Manganese (VI) compounds are made in the process used to make permanganates.
They disproportionate too.
Manganates are weak reducing agents and moderate oxidizing agents.
They are bright green.
Manganese (VII) compounds are purple-black and are powerful oxidizing agents.
Permanganates contain the MnO4 - ion.
They are normally purple-black and strong oxidizing agents.
Potassium permanganate is an example.
Manganese is sometimes found alloyed with iron naturally.
These rocks, called meteorites, came from space.
Pyrolusite is one of the main sources of manganese.
It also occurs as manganese carbonate.
Some silicates have manganese in them.
Manganese is normally made in an alloy with steel.
This is made by mixing manganese ore and iron ore in a furnace and reducing it with carbon.
This forms an alloy called ferromanganese.
Pure manganese is made by reacting the manganese ore with sulfuric acid and electrolyzing it.
Manganese is used a lot in steel to make it stronger.
This is the main use for manganese metal.
Manganese compounds, particularly manganese (IV) oxide, are used in alkaline cells and Leclanche cells.
Manganese metal is also alloyed with aluminium.
Our bodies and plants need manganese to work right.
If we do not get enough manganese, we can get sick.
We get manganese from our food and vitamins also have some manganese to make sure that we get enough.
Manganese dust can irritate lungs.
Some manganese compounds cause toxicity when ingested.
Manganese is less toxic than nickel or copper.
Permanganates are the most toxic manganese compounds.
When someone is exposed to manganese for a long time it can cause a problem with the nervous system.
Molybdenum is a chemical element.
It has the chemical symbol Mo..
It has the atomic number 42.
It has 35 isotopes.
The name Molybdenum is from the Greek meaning "leadlike".
The color of pure molybdenum is silvery-white.
It does not occur naturally, and is made from molybdenite.
It is used in alloys with other metals like stainless steel.
It helps to make metal stronger, especially in high temperatures, and makes it less likely to rust.
This makes it good for use in high speed tools, such as drills and saw blades.
It is used in aircraft and missile parts, as well as in nuclear reactors.
It is also not toxic, so it is used in making metal bowls for use in making food, medicines and other chemicals.
Molybdenum was used for many years before it was identified in 1778 by Swedish scientist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
In 1782, Peter Jacob Hjelm was able to separate it into a dark powder he called "molybdenum".
It was first mined in 1916 at Climax, near Leadville, in Colorado.
Minerals are substances that are formed naturally in the Earth.
Minerals are usually solid, inorganic, have a crystal structure, and form naturally by geological processes.
The study of minerals is called mineralogy.
A mineral can be made of single chemical element or more usually a compound.
There are over 4,000 types of known minerals.
Two common minerals are quartz and feldspar.
"A mineral is a homogeneous naturally occurring substance with a definite but not necessarily fixed chemical composition.
Most minerals are solids with an ordered atomic arrangement, and most are inorganic in the chemical sense of that word".
Alternatively, a mineral is one listed as such by the International Mineralogical Association.
Minerals are different from rocks.
A mineral is a chemical compound with a given composition and a defined crystal structure.
A rock is a mixture of one or several minerals, in varying proportions.
A rock has only two of the characteristics minerals have it is a solid and it forms naturally.
A rock usually contains two or more types of minerals.
Two samples of the same type of rock may have different kinds of minerals in them.
Minerals are always made up of the same materials in nearly the same proportions.
A ruby is a mineral.
Therefore, a ruby found in India has similar makeup as a ruby found in Australia.
Minerals are formed by natural processes.
A few substances with the same chemical composition as minerals can be produced by living creatures as part of their shells or bones.
The shells of molluscs are composed of either calcite or aragonite, or both.
Traditionally, chemicals produced by living things are not considered minerals.
However, it is difficult to see why an organic substance should not be called a mineral if its chemical nature and its crystalline structure is identical with its inorganic twin.
This issue is now under debate: see Railsback part II.
Minerals form in many ways.
The mineral halite, which is used as table salt, forms when water evaporates in a hot, shallow part of the ocean, leaving behind the salt it contained.
Many types of minerals are made when molten rock, or magma cools and turns into a solid.
Talc, a mineral that can be used to make baby powder, forms deep in Earth as high pressure and temperature causes changes in solid rock.
The extraordinary thing is, that most minerals owe their formation to life, or at least to the Great Oxygenation Event.
"Sturdy minerals rather than fragile organic remains may provide the most robust and lasting signs of biology".
A mineral is a solid that is, it has a definite volume and a rough shape.
Volume refers to the amount of space an object takes up.
For example a golf ball has a smaller volume than a baseball, and a baseball has a smaller volume than a basketball.
A substance that is a liquid or a gas is not a mineral.
However, in some cases its solid form is a mineral.
For instance, liquid water is not a mineral, but ice is.
The particles of ice that make up frost have smooth, flat surfaces.
These flat surfaces form because of the arrangement of atoms in the ice, which is a mineral.
Such an internal arrangement is a characteristic of minerals.
It is the structure of a crystal, a solid in which the atoms are arranged in an orderly, repeating three-dimensional pattern.
Each mineral has its own type of crystal structure.
In some cases, two minerals have the same chemical composition but different crystal structures.
For example, both diamond and graphite consist of just one element carbon.
But the arrangements of the carbon atoms in these two minerals are not the same, so they have different crystal structures and very different properties.
Diamonds are extremely hard and have a brilliant sparkle.
Graphite is soft, gray, and dull.
In nature, a perfect crystal is rare.
Most crystals have imperfect shapes because their growth was limited by other crystals forming next to them.
Each mineral has a definite chemical makeup: it consists of a specific combination of atoms of certain elements.
An element is a substance that contains only one type of atom.
Scientists can classify minerals into groups on the basis of their chemical makeup.
Though there are thousands of different minerals, only about 30 are common in Earth 's crust.
These 30 minerals make up most rocks in the crust.
For that reason, they are called rock-forming minerals.
There are many other mineral groups.
People use minerals for many everyday purposes.
Every time people turn on a microwave oven or a TV, minerals are being used.
The copper in the wires that carry electricity to the machine is made from a mineral.
Table salt or halite, is another mineral that people use in their everyday life.
For the toy, see marbles Marble is a metamorphic rock that developed from limestone.
Most of the material is calcite (a crystalline form of calcium carbonate, CaCO3) and dolomite.
It is often used for sculpture, as a building material, and for many other purposes.
The word ` marble ' is also used for other stones that can be polished well and for ball shaped objects used for child games.
` Faux marble ' is a wall painting technique that imitates the color patterns of real marble (not to be confused with paper marbling).
Marble dust can be combined with cement or synthetic resins to make reconstituted or cultured marble.
Marble has been used in construction for thousands of years.
It was widely used by Greek and Roman sculptors and architects.
Places named after the stone include Marble Arch, London; the Sea of Marmara; India 's Marble Rocks; and the towns of Marble, Minnesota; Marble, Colorado; and Marble Hill, Manhattan, New York.
The Elgin Marbles are marble sculptures from the Parthenon that are on display in the British Museum.
They were brought to Britain by the Earl of Elgin.
In the construction trade, the term "marble" is used for any massive, crystalline calcitic rock (and some non-calcitic rocks) useful as building stone.
Purbeck marble is a fossiliferous limestone found in the Isle of Purbeck, a peninsula in south-east Dorset, England.
It has been quarried since at least Roman times as a decorative building stone.
The industry is no longer active.
Tennessee marble is really a massive, highly fossiliferous gray to pink to maroon Ordovician dolostone, known as the Holston Formation by geologists.
However, Tennessee marble is not true marble.
Its crystalline nature gives it a resemblance to marble, especially when polished.
Carrara marble is a genuine marble.
It is white or blue-grey and of high quality, popular for use in sculpture and building decor.
It is quarried at the city of Carrara in the Lunigiana, the northernmost tip of modern-day Tuscany, Italy.
The illustration shows the Piet, which is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture by Michelangelo.
It is in St. Peter 's Basilica, Vatican City, and is the only piece Michelangelo ever signed.
Colorless marbles are a very pure source of calcium carbonate, which is used in a wide variety of industries.
Finely ground marble powder is a component in paint, toothpaste, and plastics; calcium carbonate can also be reduced under high heat to calcium oxide (also known as "lime"), which has many uses including being a primary component of most cements.
Munich is the third biggest city of Germany (after Berlin and Hamburg), and the capital of Bavaria.
It has a population of 1,407,000.
The metropolitan area of Munich includes the city itself, and all the suburbs around it, and has about 2.6 million people in it.
It is one of the most important centres of economy in Germany.
The official population of Munich city proper at 310.43 km ^ 2 is 1,368,840 inhabitants only with principal residence as of 31.01.2009.
Around 176,000 inhabitants with secondary residence also live in administrative city limits but they are not calculated in this official census.
According to some estimates that population counts around 200,000 people.
Fast growing Munich urban area has 2,667,000 inhabitants (by 2008.
estimate).
Munich city proper with all suburbs at 12,000 km ^ 2 has 4,700,000 inhabitants and Munich metropolitan region that covers 27,700 km ^ 2 and includes Augsburg, Ingolstadt, Landshut, Rosenheim and Landsberg has around 6,000,000 inhabitants.
Munich is the 12th city in EU by population within city limits and the 14th largest urban area in Europe.
Its metropolitan area ranks among largest metro areas in Europe.
As of December 2008, 47.3 % of Munichs residents belong to no religious group, 38.3 % are Roman Catholic, 14.0 % are Lutheran Protestants and 0.3 % are Jewish.
There is also a small Old Catholic parish and an Episcopal Church.
1158 - The settlement was founded as Munichen by Henry the Lion 1255 - Residence of Upper Bavaria.
1806 - Munich became the capital of the Bavarian monarchy 1923 - Beer Hall Putsch of the Nazis 1939-45 - 45 % was destroyed in World War II 1972 - Olympic games (Summer)
Munich has the strongest economy of any German city.
They have the lowest unemployment rate (5.6 %) of any German city with more than a million people.
Munich is the largest publishing city in Europe.
It is home to the S ddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany 's largest daily newspapers.
Munich is also home to Germany 's largest public broadcasting network, ARD, and its largest commercial network, Pro7-Sat1 Media AG.
The headquarters of the German branch of Random House, the world 's largest publishing house, is in Munich.
The Bavaria Film Studios are in the suburb of Gr nwald.
They are one of Europe 's biggest and most famous movie production studios.
Lufthansa has opened a second hub at Munich 's Franz Josef Strauss International Airport.
It is the second-largest airport in Germany, after Frankfurt International Airport.
Munich has one of the most comprehensive systems in the world.
There are subways, suburban trains, trams and buses.
Munich is the most successful city in Bundesliga history.
FC Bayern Munich have won 20 national championship along with 13 DFB Cups, 5 UEFA Champions League\/European Championship, 1 UEFA Cup and 1 UEFA Cup Winners Cup for 39 trophies.
Munich hosted the 1972 Summer Olympics.
They were one of the host cities for the 2006 Football World Cup.
Munich bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympic Games but lost to Pyeongchang.
In September 2011 the DOSB President Thomas Bach said that Munich would bid again for the Winter Olympics in the future.
Munich has 25 boroughs (Bezirke in German, also sometimes called districts in English).
Munich 's universities are known for their high ranking in Germany.
Lake M laren is the third largest lake in Sweden after Lakes V nern and V ttern.
Its surface area is 1,140 km, its average depth is 12 meters and its greatest depth is 64 m. The lake drains, from southwest to northeast, into the Baltic Sea.
The two largest islands in M laren are Sela n (91 km) and Svartsj landet (79 km).
The lake was previously known as L grinn.
The Viking settlements Birka on the island of Bj rk and Hovg rden on the neighbouring island Adels have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993, as has Drottningholm Palace on the island of Lov n.
The Macao Special Administrative Region (Macau or Macao,) is one of China 's two Special Administrative Regions.
(The other one is Hong Kong).
Macau is a small city in the southern coast in China.
It consists of Macau Peninsula (Aomen Bandao), Taipa Island (Dangzai Dao), Coloane Island (Luhuan Dao) and Cotai (Ludangcheng), the new reclaimed land between Taipa and Coloane.
It is very densely populated, with over half a million people.
Macao used to be a colony of Portugal.
Today, Macao mostly lives off of offshore gambling.
In fact, Macau makes 7 times as much money as Las Vegas per year.
They make some money from exporting clothing.
Macedonia (from Greek: Makedon a) is a region in the southeastern Europe, in Balkans.
In ancient times it was a Greek kingdom and its greatest leader was Alexander The Great.
Today, its borders have changed and it has been separated in three countries: Greece with the region of Macedonia or Greek Macedonia, the country Macedonia or Vardar Macedonia and Bulgaria with Macedonia of Pirin (Blagoevgrad province).
Greece and the Republic of Macedonia have been arguing over the name Macedonia ever since the independence of the Macedonia.
The Republic of Macedonia had to choose a temporary name in order to be recognized by the United Nations.
The two countries have been discussing a solution for a new name that both find acceptable.
Bulgaria has not taken part in the dispute but has some disagreements with Macedonia.
Even though Bulgaria was the first country to recognize Macedonia with its name, it does n't support the Macedonian ethnicity and language, but claim it 's all Bulgarian.
Macedonia (Greek: - Makedonia) is a historical and geographical region in northern Greece.
It is the second most populous region of Greece and usually it is referred as Northern Greece with Thrace.
It is situated between the Pindus Mountains and river Nestos and it borders west with Epirus and Thessaly, northwestern with Albania, north with the Republic of Macedonia, northeastern with Bulgaria and east with Thrace.
Its south coasts are washed by the Aegean Sea.
Republic of Macedonia (Macedonian: - Republika Makedonija) is an independent state on the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe.
The country borders Serbia to the north, Albania to the west, Greece to the south, and Bulgaria to the east.
The country 's currency is the Macedonian Denar (MKD).
Blagoevgrad Province (Bulgarian:, oblast Blagoevgrad or, Blagoevgradska oblast), also known as Pirin Macedonia (Bulgarian:, Pirinska Makedoniya), is a province (oblast) of southwestern Bulgaria.
To the north and east it borders with four other Bulgarian provinces, to the south with Greece and the west with the Republic of Macedonia.
Malawi (Republic of Malawi) is a country in south-east Africa.
It has borders with the countries of Tanzania, Zambia, and Mozambique.
The capital of Malawi is Lilongwe and the spoken languages are English and the official language Chichewa.
The total size is about 118480 km and there are about 100 people per km.
The official language of Malawi is English.
The country is also called "The Warm Heart of Africa".
Malawi is one of the smallest countries in Africa.
Lake Malawi takes about a third of Malawi 's area.
Bantu people started living in Malawi in the 10th century.
In 1891 the area became a colony of the United Kingdom.
In 1953 Malawi, then called as Nyasaland, as a protectorate of the United Kingdom, became a almost independent country called Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
The Federation was ended in 1963.
In 1964 the protection of the United Kingdom over Nyasaland was ended.
Nyasaland became an independent country which was ruled by Queen Elizabeth and was called Malawi.
Two years later it became a republic.
After getting independence it became a one-party rule which was ruled by Hastings Banda.
He was president until 1994.
Peter Mutharika is the current president.
Malawi has a democratic, many party government.
Malawi has a small military: army, a navy and an air support.
Malawi has good relations with Western countries and most countries in the world.
Malawi has joined some international organizations.
Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Economy is based in farming.
Most of the population live in field areas.
Country gets aid from other countries.
Government has a hard time building and expanding the economy and develop health care, education and environment safety.
Since 2005 some programs have been developed to focus on these problems.
Malawi has a low life expectancy and high infant mortality.
People become ill with AIDS.
Africans, Asians and Europeans are living in the country and they speak in different languages.
People have lived in the area of Malawi for thousands of years.
At first they were hunter-gatherers.
Bantu groups came to the area around the 10th century.
Most of the Bantu grups went to south but some started living there and made ethnic groups based on familiar race.
By 1500 AD groups came together and made Maravi empire, which streched from north of what is now Nkhotakota to the Zambezi River and from Lake Malawi to the Luangwa River in what is now Zambia.
After 1600 the area was united under one ruler and began trading and making connection with Portuguese traders and members of the military through the Mozambican port which was occupied by Portuguese.
By 1700 the empire had broken up into areas that were controlled by individual groups of people which was known by the Portuguese by collecting information.
The Swahili-Arab slave trade had its highest amount in the middle of 1800s when about 20,000 people were forced to become slaves and were sold every year.
In 1859 British explorer David Livingstone found Lake Malawi (then it was called Lake Nyasa) and thought that Shire Highlands to the south of the lake was a good place for Europeans to make a colony.
Many British missions were done in the area in the 1860s and 1870s.
The African Lakes Company Limited was made in 1878 to set up a trade and transport that helped with the missions, and a small mission and trading area was made at Blantyre in 1876 and a British Consul started living there in 1883.
Malawi became an independent country in 6 July 1964.
Hastings Banda became the first president.
Constitution made Malawi become a republic and one-party state.
Banda 's Malawi Congress Party (MCP) was the only legal party in the country.
In 1971, Banda became president for life.
For almost 30 years, Banda ruled over a harsh government which kept Malawi out from war.
Banda showed how a poor country with no access to sea, big population and no minerals can develop farming and industries.
Banda made a business empire that produced one-third of the country 's GDP and used 10 % of the workers who got paid.
All money made by Banda was used to develop Malawi.
Under pressure for free politics, Banda held an referendum in 1993, where population voted for many party, democratic government.
In late 1993 a presidential council was made, president for life was ended and new constitution was put in place, ending MCP rule.
In 1994 the first many party elections were held in Malawi, and Banda was defeated by Bakili Muluzi.
The Maldives are a group of islands in the Indian Ocean.
They are southwest of India.
They are made up of the Maldive and Suadive archipelagos, with over 1,200 islands.
These islands are a part of 26 atolls.
People live on about 200 of the islands.
It has more than 1126 coral reefs.
It is the flattest country in the world.
The highest point in the Maldives is only 2 m high above the level of the sea.
Mal is the capital, with a population of 81,000 people.
Mali is a landlocked country (a country entirely enclosed by land) in West Africa.
Mali borders Algeria to the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the C te d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west.
Physical features of Mali include the Sahara desert in the north, with the Niger River and S n gal River in the southern part of the country.
As of a July 2011 estimate, Mali has a population of approximately 14,000,000 people.
Mali has a total area of 1,220,190 k. Most of the people live in the southern part of the country, with Mali 's capital and most populated city being Bamako.
Mand people founded several kingdoms in Sahel.
This was a big area that includes Mali.
These kingdoms included the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, and the Songhai Empire.
Timbuktu was an important city in these empires because a lot of trade across the Sahara Desert went there.
Timbuktu was also a good place for learning.
The Songhai Empire became smaller after a Moroccan attack in 1591.
France invaded Mali in 1880.
After that, France owned Mali.
The colony 's names were French Sudan and the Sudanese Republic.
At some times it also included other nearby countries.
In early 1959, Mali and Senegal united and they became the Mali Federation.
This became independent from France on June 20, 1960.
Senegal left the Mali Federation a few months later.
The Republic of Mali, with Modibo Ke ta as the first president, left the French Community on September 22, 1960.
There was a coup in Mali in 1968.
Modibo Ke ta lost his job and was put in prison.
Mali was then ruled by Moussa Traor until 1991.
There was another coup in 1991 after protests against the government, and a new constitution was made.
The leader of the country was then Amadou Toumani Tour.
In 1992, Alpha Oumar Konar won Mali 's first democratic election.
President Konar won again in 1997 and he made big political and economic changes.
In 2002, Amadou Toumani Tour won the election and he started his second term as head of state.
He was a retired general and he had been the military leader of the 1991 coup.
Today, Mali is one of the most politically and socially stable countries in Africa.
Mali is divided into 8 regions and 1 district.
The country is further divided into 49 cercles, containing 288 "arrondissements" and 703 communes.
Mali is the world 's 24th-largest country.
It has 1,240,000 km (478,734 mi) of land.
It has a similar size to South Africa, and it is two times bigger than Texas.
Mali is landlocked; it has no access to sea.
It has dry weather.
It does not have many mountains.
There are flat areas in the north, which are covered by sand, and there is savanna around the Niger River in the south.
Most of Mali is in the Sahara Desert, so there is a hot, dusty haze in dry seasons.
There are many natural resources in Mali, including Gold, uranium, phosphates, kaolinite, salt and limestone.
Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world.
65 % of its land area is desert or something similar.
There were several long droughts there over the last hundred years.
Therefore, most economic activity is near the Niger River.
About 10 % of the people are nomads and 80 % of workers have jobs in farming and fishing.
Industry is mainly to process farm products.
Women also do pottery and the pots are bought and taken to markets.
Many foreign tourists like the traditional methods which the women use to make the pots.
Mali 's main export is cotton, so if the price of cotton changes, Mali 's economy is affected a lot.
Mali also receives a lot of financial help from other countries.
In 1997, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommended a program for changing the economy and the government followed this.
Several international companies started digging for larger amounts of gold in 1996-1998, and the government thinks that Mali will become an important gold exporter soon.
Malinese people are from the racial groups below.
The religions below are followed in Mali.
About 90 % of people from Mali follow Sunni Islam, but they do not always forget their traditional religions.
Muslims have their own schooling system.
The number of Muslims from Mali who travel to Mecca is increasing and some study in Arab countries.
About 1 % of the people are Christians.
When Mali was under French control, Christian missionary were sent to Islamic areas.
The language of Mali under French rule was French, but now not many people outside towns can read or write this language.
However, about 60 % of the people use other languages well.
Many people can read and write in Bamanakan (the most popular spoken language).
This language has its own alphabet, called N'Ko.
Other people can read and write in Arabic, after going to an Islamic school.
One of the oldest universities in the world is Sankore University in Timbuktu.
It began in the 1400s.
Famous musicians from Mali include kora player Toumani Diabat, and the guitarist Ali Farka Tour, who has died.
Malta is an island country in Europe.
It is near the center of the Mediterranean Sea, south of Sicily.
The capital of Malta is Valletta.
About 400,000 people live in Malta.
Malta is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.
Because of this, it has many cities and towns that grew into each other over time.
The largest of these is possibly Birkirkara.
Malta has two official languages, Maltese and English.
A majority of the people of Malta can speak the two languages.
Malta had its own currency, called the Maltese Lira until 2008.
The Maltese Lira was better known as the Maltese Pound because of the strong links to the United Kingdom.
One Maltese Lira consisted of 100 cents.
In 2008 Malta joined the Euro countries in adopting the Euro as the National Currency.
People have lived in Malta since at least 5200 BC.
The island has some key archaeological locations dating from early times.
Malta became well known as the base of the Knights of St John.
They moved to Malta after being forced to leave Palestine and then Rhodes, in Greece.
The knights and the Maltese people survived a great attack by the Turks.
The history of the knights at Malta continued the strong Roman Catholic beliefs in the country that were started by the Norman and Spanish rulers.
In 1798, Napoleon took control of Malta.
The French rule was not popular and in 1800 Maltese rebels invited the English Royal Navy to come to the island.
This led to 200 years as a British colony and independent Commonwealth member.
During the Second World War, Malta was again attacked this time by the Axis forces.
The entire island was symbolically given the George Cross for heroism.
Malta became independent in 1964 and a republic in 1974.
In 2004 Malta joined the European Union and in 2008 Malta joined the Euro.
The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) is a Micronesian island nation in the western Pacific Ocean.
The capital of Marshall Islands is Majuro.
Roughly 10 % of the population of the Marshall Islands can now be found in northwest Arkansas, U.S. Most live and work in the city of Springdale, a community of roughly 50,000.
Each year, the Marshallese host a homecoming event so friends and relatives can get together to celebrate, stay in touch with politics at home, and spread their island culture.
They meet at the Jones Center for Families in Springdale and have dancing, feasting, volleyball, and basketball.
As a population, they are devoted to family and church and bring island dance and song to this corner of Arkansas.
A mile is a unit of length.
There are many different kinds of mile but mile on its own usually means the statute mile.
In the US and the UK the word mile usually means the statute mile.
The nautical mile is used for sea or air travel.
The nautical mile was originally defined as one minute of arc along a line of longitude of the Earth.
There are 60 minutes of arc in one degree or arc (60 ' = 1).
So there were 10,800 nautical miles from the North Pole to the South Pole.
Now the nautical mile is defined as 1,852 metres.
The speed of a ship that travels one nautical mile in one hour is called one knot The mile was first used by the Romans.
It comes from the Latin phrase mille passus (plural: milia passuum).
This means "one thousand paces".
A pace is the distance each foot moves when taking one step.
Different miles have been used throughout history in various parts of the world.
In Norway and Sweden, for example, a mil is a unit of length which is equal to 10 kilometres.
Maya Ying Lin (born October 10, 1959) is a Chinese-American architect and artist.
She is most famous for her Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC and the Civil Rights Monument in Montgomery, Alabama.
A manuscript is any document that is written by hand, not printed or made in some other way.
The early history of writing is intimately connected with the history of writing materials, of which the manuscript is one.
Early printing made use of many ideas which developed in the era of manuscripts.
Misogyny means hating women.
A misogynist is a person who hates women.
Misogynists hate women because they believe there is something wrong with them, such as being stupid, dirty or evil.
Misogyny is different from sexism, which is not based on hate.
Sexists do not respect women and the differences between men and women.
Someone is not sexist because they believe men and women are different and can have different roles in society.
Someone is not sexist because they believe there are differences between men and women.
Differences do not indicate there is something wrong with either sex or that both sexes need to be alike.
Someone is not sexist because they believe God or nature has made women and men different and may have different roles in society.
Martinique is an island in the Caribbean Sea, and is an overseas region of France.
It has an area of 1,128 km.
Nearly 400,000 people live there.
The capital city is Fort-de-France.
Other towns include Sainte-Anne and St. Pierre (which was destroyed by a volcano named Mont Pel e in 1902).
Martinique is well known for its zouk music.
Artists such as Kassav have made it famous over the years.
The ethnic makeup of the country is: 90 % African and Mixed African with anything from Chinese, East Indian or White.
and 10 % White, Amerindian, Chinese and East Indian.
Mumbai (previously known as Bombay until 1996) is a natural harbor on the west coast of India, and is the capital city of Maharashtra state.
It is India 's largest city, and one of the world 's most populous cities.
It is the financial capital of India.
The city is the second most-populous in the world.
It has approximately 14 million people.
Along with the neighboring cities of Navi Mumbai and Thane, it forms the world 's 4th largest urban agglomeration.
They have around 19 million people.
The seven islands that form Bombay were home to fishing colonies.
The islands were ruled by successive kingdoms and indigenous empires before Portuguese settlers took it.
Then, it went to the British East India Company.
During the mid-18th century, Bombay became a major trading town.
It became a strongplace for the Indian independence movement during the early 20th century.
When India became independent in 1947, the city was incorporated into Bombay State.
In 1960, following the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, a new state of Maharashtra was created with Bombay as the capital.
It was renamed Mumbai in 1996.
Mumbai generates 5 % of India 's GDP.
It accounts for 25 % of industrial output, 40 % of sea trade, and 70 % of capital transaction to India 's economy.
The Reserve Bank of India, the Bombay Stock Exchange, the National Stock Exchange of India and the many Indian companies and multinational corporations are in the city.
It also has the Hindi film and television industry, known as Bollywood.
The Miami Dolphins is an American football club in the National Football League team based in Miami, Florida, USA.
The Dolphins began playing in 1966 and in 1972 they had the only perfect season in NFL history and won a Super Bowl, with Bob Griese leading the team as quarterback.
Another quarterback, Dan Marino, is a more recent famous player from this club.
The Miami Dolphins stadium is Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fl.
M is the 13th letter in the English alphabet.
In mathematics and statistics, the mean is another name for the average.
The mean is calculated by adding all of the values together, then dividing by the number of values.
Example: 1, 2, 2, 100, 100 is a set of numbers or scores.
If we add all the numbers, the answer is 205.
By dividing this number by the number of numbers, we discover that the mean is 41.
The difficulty with this particular set of numbers is that no one in this group scored anything like a 41, and the mean does not tell us much about what kind of scores these numbers represent.
To find the average of numbers, the numbers are added and the total is divided by.
In symbols, if the numbers are,,,..., the total is:
Therefore, the average age of Lucy, Tom and Emily is 6 years.
The idea behind the mean is to represent a number of measurements, or values, by one value only.
But there are different ways to calculate such a representing value.
If people do many different measurements, they will get many different results.
Those results have a certain distribution, and they can also be centered around an average value.
This average value is what mathematicians call arithmetic mean.
Mean can also stand for expected value.
The MIT License is a free software license that was created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
It is a permissive license, meaning that it allows programmers to put the code in proprietary software on the condition that the license is given with that software, and GPL-compatible, meaning that the GPL permits programmers to combine and redistribute it with software that uses the MIT License.
According to the Free Software Foundation, the MIT License is more accurately called the X11 license, since MIT has used many licenses for software and the license was first written for the X Window System.
Software that use the MIT License include Expat, PuTTY, Mono development platform class libraries, Ruby on Rails, Cakephp, Twisted, Lua 5.0 onwards and the X Window System, which the license was written for.
Some software are dual licensed under the MIT License, such as older versions of the cURL library, which allowed recipients to choose either the Mozilla Public License or the MIT License.
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Michael Edward Reagan (born John Flaugher; March 18, 1945) is an American radio show host.
He is the adopted son of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman.
He hosted the radio show The Michael Reagan Talk Show.
He was born in Los Angeles, California to Irene Flaugher.
Reagan has had small roles in movies and television shows since 1985, including Falcon Crest which starred his mother, Jane Wyman.
In 1971 Reagan married Pamela Gail Putnam (born 1952).
She is the daughter of Duane Putnam, who was then the Atlanta Falcons football line coach.
The couple divorced in 1972.
Molecular biology is the study of biology at a molecular level.
The field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly cell biology, genetics, biophysics and biochemistry.
Molecular biology chiefly concerns itself with understanding the interactions between the various systems of a cell, including the interrelationship of DNA, RNA and protein biosynthesis and learning how these interactions are regulated.
Researchers in molecular biology use specific techniques that are typical for molecular biology, but they combine these with techniques and ideas from genetics and biochemistry.
There is no hard & fast line between these disciplines, as there once was.
The following figure is a schematic that shows one possible view of the relationship between the fields:
The Republic of Mauritius is an African country.
Port Louis is its capital.
Mauritius is also the name of the main island the country is on.
In the 2000 census, the country had a population of 1,178,848 people.
The island of Mauritius is well known for being the only known home of the dodo.
The island is in the southwest Indian Ocean.
It is about east of Madagascar.
The country includes the island of Mauritius as well as the islands of St. Brandon, Rodrigues and the Agalega Islands.
Mauritius is part of the Mascarene Islands along with the French island of R union to the southwest.
The Mauritian flag is made up of four colors of equal width.
Mauritius, an island of volcanic origin sheltered by barriers of coral reefs forming natural, safe, crystal clear lagoons, has long been a dream destination.
Known to the Arabs as early as the 10th century, but officially explored by the Portuguese in the 16th century and subsequently settled by the Dutch in the 17th century.
The Dutch were the ones who named the island in honor of Prince Maurits van NASSAU.
Mauritius was occupied successively by the Dutch (1598-1712) and later by the French (1715-1810).
The French assumed control in 1715, developing the island into an important naval base overseeing the Indian Ocean trade, and establishing a plantation economy of sugar cane.
The British captured the island in 1810, during the Napoleonic Wars through the Treaty of Paris.
Mauritius remained a strategically important British naval base, and later on, an air station playing an important role during World War II for anti-submarine and convoy operations, as well as the collection of signals intelligence.
On 12 March 1968, Mauritius became Independent.
Mayotte is an island in the Indian Ocean next to Madagascar.
It is geographically part of the Comoros Islands, but politically, it is part of France.
Micronesia is an area in Oceania.
Many islands in southwest Pacific Ocean are part of it.
Micronesia means small islands in ancient Greek language.
Philippines is to the west of Micronesia.
Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Melanesia are to the south of Micronesia.
Polynesia is to the east of Micronesia.
Midway Atoll was the site of a famous battle in World War II, the Battle of Midway.
The atoll is currently held by the United States of America.
Midway Atoll is now home to 67-70 % of the world 's Laysan Albatross population, and 34-39 % of the global Black-footed Albatross.
While Midway supports nearly three million birds, each seabird species has carved out a specific site on the atoll in which to nest.
Seventeen different species of seabird can be found, the rarest of which is the Short-tailed Albatross, otherwise known as the Golden Gooney.
Fewer than 2,200 are believed to exist due to excessive feather hunting in the late nineteenth century.
Over 250 different species of looli marine life are found in the 300000 a of lagoon and surrounding waters.
The critically endangered Hawaiian monk seals raise their pups on the beaches.
Monk seals are benthic foragers and rely on the Midway Atoll s reef fish, squid, octopus and crustaceans.
Green sea turtles, another threatened species, occasionally nest on the island.
The first was found in 2006 on Spitsy Rinaia Island and another in 2007 on Sand Island.
A resident pod of 300 spinner dolphins live in the lagoons and nearshore waters.
The Republic of Moldova is a country in Eastern Europe.
The official language in Moldova is the Moldovan language, which is very similar to the Romanian language.
The capital of Moldova is Chi in u.
The Moldova economy 's growth is around 7 per-cent, and has the third fastest growing economy of Europe.
But in this respect the average monthly salary\/wages are still low standing at only $ 243 USD.
Moldova is an associated country for future membership in the EU.
Monaco is the second smallest country in the world; about 34,000 people live there.
It is near southeastern France, on the Mediterranean Sea in Western Europe.
French is the most common language spoken in Monaco.
The head of state is Prince Albert II; the government and the prince share power.
Tourism is the main industry.
People in Monaco pay no income tax.
Monte Carlo, famous for its casino, is in the northeast of the country.
Monaco is famous for two car races: the Monte Carlo Rally and the Monaco Grand Prix.
A sovereign and independent state, the Principality of Monaco has borders on its landward side with several communes of the French Department of the Alpes-Maritimes; from west to east these are Cap d ` Ail, la Turbie, Beausoleil and Roquebrune Cap Martin.
Seawards, Monaco faces the Mediterranean.
The population of the Principality consists of 29,972 inhabitants, 5,070 of whom are Mon gasques, 12,047 French and 5,000 Italian (according to the last official census in 1990).
Its surface area is 195 hectares, of which nearly 40 were recovered from the sea during the last twenty years.
It lies in a narrow coastal strip which sometimes rises straight upwards with its highest point at 163 meters.
Its width varies between 1050 meters and only 350 meters.
Its coastline is 4100 meters long.
The Principality has only one commune, Monaco, whose limits are the same as those of the state.
Monaco is made of four districts: Monaco-Ville (historic seat of the Principality, on the rock where the Prince Palace stands), Monte-Carlo (the district surrounding its Casino), La Condamine (around Port Hercule), and Fontvielle (the new industrial area built on ground reclaimed from the sea (22ha)).
Mongolia is a country between China and Russia, in Asia.
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia and Central Asia.
It borders Russia to the north and the People 's Republic of China to the south, east and west.
Mongolia 's political system is a parliamentary republic.
Until recently, most of the people there were Buddhists.
Many of them are nomads (people who always move and do not stay in one home), but this is changing.
The largest city, and capital city is Ulaanbaatar.
It is where about 38 % of the population live.
This has been spelled Ulan Bator \/ Ulaan Battor and other ways in the past.
The north and east parts of the country have many mountains.
Part of the south part is the Gobi Desert.
There are 2,791,272 people living in Mongolia.
The country is the 18th biggest country in the world, with an area of 1,564,116 square kilometres.
The crime rate is very low.
Their language is Mongolian, but some know English, Chinese and Russian.
Mongolia has the lowest population density of all independent countries in the world.
The area which is Mongolia has been ruled by various nomadic empires.
This was until the great ` Mongol Empire ' was founded by Genghis Khan in 1206.
After the Yuan Dynasty collapsed, the Mongols became nomads again.
After the 16th century, Mongolia were influenced by Tibetan Buddhism.
By the end of the 17th century, most of Mongolia was part of an area ruled by the Qing Dynasty.
When the Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1911, Mongolia declared independence.
But they had to fight against the Chinese.
They were helped by the Soviet Union.
In 1921, the world accepted its independence.
Shortly after the death of Bogd Khaan, the last monarch of Mongolia the monarchy was replaced by a communist government in 1924, and the country was renamed the Mongolian People 's Republic.
Up until the fall of the Soviet Union, Mongolia was a satellite state for the Soviets.
Mongolia is still mainly rural.
The Mongolian Red Cross Society was set up in 1939.
It has its headquarters in Ulan Bator.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia 's interest in Mongolia has declined.
China and South Korea are currently Mongolia 's main trade and political partners.
Mongolia is a parliamentary republic.
People vote for their government.
The President of Mongolia is elected to a four-year term, and can not stand in a Presidential Election more than twice.
The current President is Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj.
He is a two-time former prime minister and he was first elected as President on May 24, 2009.
Elbegdorj was re-elected on 26 June 2013 for his second term as President.
Mongolia has a steppe climate.
It has very cold winters and mild summers.
Recently, winters have become very cold.
This has killed many people and cattle.
On June 2nd, 2008, 52 people and 200,000 head of cattle died in heavy blizzards in Mongolia.
On March 1st to 2nd, a heavy dust storm hit northeast China and parts of Mongolia.
and ended over North Korea and South Korea on the 4th
21 people died in a rural Mongolian blizzard on May 8th 2008.
parts of the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia were also affected on the 8th of May 2008.
On June 2 2009, it was said that 15 people and 10,000 head of cattle had died by this date in Mongolia.
April 1st and 2nd, 2010 had temperatures plummet to -50 degrees in Mongolia s Tuul valley, A nomad named Urna said she bought 400 bundles of grass to feed the animals in preparation for more bad weather.
The Mongolian Red Cross have said that about 4,500,000 livestock died as a result of the bad weather this year.
Tume, who lives in Ulan Bator, said that he had noticed that there were several really harsh winters in a row too.
He blamed climate change, but experts said that overgrazing by cattle had also killed of most of the country s grassland.
Mongolia known as the "Land of the Eternal Blue Sky" or "Country of Blue Sky" because it has over 250 sunny days a year.
Mongolia is the world 's 19th-largest country (after Iran).
It is significantly larger than the next-largest country, Peru.
Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan but its westernmost point is only 38 kilometers (24 mi) away from Kazakhstan.
The geography of Mongolia is varied, with the Gobi Desert to the south and with cold and mountainous regions to the north and west.
Most of Mongolia consists of steppes, with forested areas comprising 11.2 % of the total land area.
The highest point in Mongolia is the Kh iten Peak in the Tavan bogd massif.
It 's height is 4,374 m (14,350 ft).
Mongolia is divided into 21 provinces called ` aimags '.
The provinces are divided into 329 districts called ` sums '.
The official language of Mongolia is Mongolian, and is spoken by 95 % of the population.
A variety of dialects of Oirat and Buryatare spoken across the country.
Turkic languages, such as Kazakh and Tuvan, are also spoken in the west of the country.
Today, Mongolian is written using the Cyrillic alphabet, although in the past it was written using the Mongolian script.
The traditional alphabet is being slowly reintroduced through schools recently.
Russian is the most frequently spoken foreign language in Mongolia due to their diplomatic ties as former communist states.
However English has been gradually replacing Russian as the second language in order to become part of the world economy.
Korean has gained popularity as tens of thousands of Mongolians work and study in South Korea.
Interest in Chinese has been growing because of the neighboring power.
Mongolia is currently free of bird and swine flu, but 103 air travelers who were suspected victims, and the plane crew of 6, were quarantined for 7 days in Ulaan Bator (Ulaanbaatar) in May 2009.
It may have come over the border from the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia.
Montserrat is a Caribbean island.
It is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom.
Montserrat got its name from Christopher Columbus in 1493.
The governor of Montserrat is Deborah Barnes-Jones.
The capital is officially Plymouth, but the government has moved to Brades after a volcano, Chances Peak, destroyed Plymouth in 1995.
Kingdom of Morocco (Berber: Tagldit n Murakuc, Arabic:) is a country in North Africa.
Morocco is a constitutional monarchy.
The political powers are shared between the king Muhammad VI (the sixth) and the Head of the Government.
The King is the head of state (Person in charge of the country) and the most important person.
The people of Morocco vote for Members of Parliament to speak for them and to help make laws for them.
The Council of Ministers defines what must be done.
He makes all the important decisions.
Today, the Head of Government is Abdelilah Benkirane.
Morocco is next to the countries of Algeria to its east and Mauritania to its south.
The Mediterranean Sea lies to the north of Morocco, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west.
Morocco has a diverse geography from fertile plains, to forests, cold mountains, dry lands, and deserts.
Most people live in areas close to the coast, or in fertile farms.
Morocco has an area of 446,550 km.
Morocco also controls most of the Western Sahara which is 266.000 km big.
The capital of Morocco is Rabat.
About 1.2 million people live in Rabat.
The biggest city in Morocco is however Casablanca, with nearly 4 million people living there.
Both Rabat and Casablanca have large ports and industrial zones.
The third biggest city is Marrakesh from which the word "Morocco" is made.
The population of Morocco is about 34 million.
People from Morocco are called Moroccans.
Moroccans are Arab, indigenous Berber, Sub-Saharan African and European.
The official languages of Morocco are Arabic and Berber.
French is also very used in companies, universities, and in some TV channels.
Morocco was part of the French colonial empire for 44 years.
Some people in the north (close to Spain) speak Spanish as well.
Spain also occupied parts of Morocco before leaving them in 1956 and in 1975.
Most educated Moroccans do not speak English well, or do not know it at all.
In the 21st century English is being taught to students in an increasing number of schools.
Most Moroccans follow Islam as their religion.
There are very small numbers of Christians, Jews, and non-believers.
Morocco is home to the oldest university in the world, the University of Karaouine.
Morocco is divided into 12 regions,.
The regions are divided into 62 prefectures and provinces.
Morocco is divided into 37 provinces and 2 wilayas: Agadir, Al Hoceima, Azilal, Beni Mellal, Benslimane, Boulemane, Casablanca, Chefchaouen, El Jadida, El Kelaa of Sraghna, Errachidia, Essaouira, Fes, Figuig, Guelmim, Ifrane, Kenitra, Khemisset, Rommani, Khenifra, Khouribga, Laayoune, Larache, Marrakech, Meknes, Nador, Ouarzazate, Oujda, Rabat, Sale, Settat, Safi, Sidi Kacem, Tangier, Tan-Tan, Taounate, Taroudant, Tata, Taza, Tetouan, Tiznit.
Three additional provinces of Dakhla (Oued ed Dahab), Boujdour, and Es Smara as well as parts of Tan-Tan and Laayoune fall within Moroccan-claimed Western Sahara.
Mining, agriculture, fishing, and tourism are the 4 main parts of Morocco 's national economy.
Also, Moroccans working in Europe (about 2 million) send billions of Euros of money home to their families every year.
Tourism is becoming very important too.
Many Americans and Europens come to see the historical places of Morocco, live the Berber countryside life, or enjoy the warm sun and the long and clean beaches.
Marrakesh is the most liked city by tourists.
The currency of Morocco is called the Dirham, its code is MAD.
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country in southeastern Africa.
Its capital is Maputo.
There are about 19 million people.
In 1975, Mozambique became independent from Portugal.
(National Day on 25th June, 1975) The country was named Mo ambique by the Portuguese after the Island of Mozambique.
After independence from Portugal it became the People 's Republic of Mozambique.
There was a big civil war from 1977 to 1992.
Mozambique has many natural resources.
Portugal, Spain, and Belgium are among the country 's most important partners.
It is one of the poorest countries in the world.
They have the world 's lowest life expectancy.
In 2012, large natural gas reserves were found in Mozambique.
The revenues from the reserves might dramatically change the economy.
The only official language of Mozambique is Portuguese.
About half the people speak it as a second language and very few as a first language.
Languages widely spoken natively include Swahili, Makhuwa, and Sena.
The largest religion in Mozambique is Christianity.
There are also Muslim and African traditional religious minorities.
Mozambique is a member of the African Union, Commonwealth of Nations, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, the Latin Union, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and Southern African Development Community.
At 309475 s, Mozambique is the world 's 35th-largest country.
It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest.
The country is divided into two regions by the Zambezi River.
To the north of the Zambezi River, the narrow coastline moves inland to hills and low plateaus.
Further west are rugged highlands, which include the Niassa highlands, Namuli or Shire highlands, Angonia highlands, Tete highlands and the Makonde plateau, covered with miombo woodlands.
To the south of the Zambezi River, the lowlands are broader with the Mashonaland plateau and Lebombo mountains in the deep south.
The country has five main rivers and several smaller ones.
The largest and most important is the Zambezi.
The country has four notable lakes: Lake Niassa (or Malawi), Lake Chiuta, Lake Cahora Bassa and Lake Shirwa, all in the north.
Mozambique has a tropical climate with two seasons.
The wet season is from October to March and the dry season from April to September.
Conditions vary depending on altitude.
Rainfall is heavy along the coast and is less in the north and south.
Yearly precipitation changes from 500 t depending on the region.
Cyclones are common during the wet season.
Average temperature ranges in Maputo are from 13 t in July to 22 t in February.
This is a list of cities and towns with the most people.
It is based on the most recent census done for each city or town.
The entire country has about 22 million people.
These 14 cities have 5 million total.
This shows that most people still live in rural areas.
Mozambique is divided into ten provinces (provincias) and one capital city (cidade capital) with provincial status.
The provinces are divided into 129 districts (distritos).
The districts are further divided in 405 "Postos Administrativos" (Administrative Posts) and then into Localidades (Localities), the lowest geographical level of the central state administration.
Since 1998, 43 "Munic pios" (Municipalities) have been created in Mozambique.
The music of Mozambique can be for many purposes.
These can be religious or for traditional ceremonies.
Musical instruments are usually handmade.
Some of the instruments used include drums made of wood and animal skin; the lupembe, a woodwind instrument made from animal horns or wood; and the marimba, which is a kind of xylophone native to Mozambique.
The marimba is a popular instrument with the Chopi of the south central coast.
They are famous for their musical skill and dance.
The Makonde are renowned for their wood carving and elaborate masks that are commonly used in traditional dances.
There are two different kinds of wood carvings.
Shetani, (evil spirits), which are mostly carved in heavy ebony, tall, and elegantly curved with symbols and nonrepresentational faces.
The Ujamaa are totem-type carvings which show lifelike faces of people and various figures.
Theses sculptures are usually called family trees because they tell stories of many generations.
During the last years of the colonial period, Mozambican art showed the oppression by the colonial power, and became a symbol of the resistance.
After independence in 1975, the modern art came into a new phase.
The two best known and most influential contemporary Mozambican artists are the painter Malangatana Ngwenya and the sculptor Alberto Chissano.
Art during the 1980s and 1990s shows the political struggle, civil war, suffering, starvation and struggle.
Dances are usually highly developed traditions throughout Mozambique.
There are many different kinds of dances from tribe to tribe which are usually ritualistic in nature.
The Chopi, for instance, act out battles dressed in animal skins.
The men of Makua dress in colourful outfits and masks while dancing on stilts around the village for hours.
Groups of women in the northern part of the country have a traditional dance called tufo, to celebrate Islamic holidays.
Because the Portuguese were there for nearly 500 years, they greatly impacted the cuisine of Mozambique.
Crops such as cassava (a starchy root) and cashew nuts (Mozambique was once the largest producer of these nuts), and p ozinho were brought in by the Portuguese.
The use of spices and seasonings such as onions, bay leaves, garlic, fresh coriander, paprika, chili peppers, red sweet peppers, and wine were introduced by the Portuguese.
So was sugarcane, maize, millet, rice, sorghum (a type of grass), and potatoes.
Prego (steak roll), rissois (battered shrimp), espetada (kebab), pudim (pudding), and the popular inteiro com piripiri (whole chicken in piri-piri sauce) are all Portuguese dishes commonly eaten in present-day Mozambique.
Football is the most popular sport in Mozambique.
This article is about cultural information in general.
For memes related to the internet, see Internet meme.
A meme (pronunciation: mi m) is a way of describing cultural information.
One theory is that culture develops in the same way similar to living things.
Genes move from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution.
A meme moves from person to person and changes and develops as many people use it.
Biologist and evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins made the word meme in 1976.
He said that tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing fashions, ways of making pots, and the technology of building arches were all examples of memes.
Marilyn Monroe was an American movie actress.
In 1999, Monroe was ranked as the sixth greatest female actress of all time by the American Film Institute.
Her birth name was Norma Jean Mortenson and she was born on June 1st, 1926, in Los Angeles, California.
She died of a drug overdose on the night of August 5, 1962, in Brentwood, California.
She was married to baseball player Joe DiMaggio during 1954.
She married Arthur Miller (a playwright) on July 1st, 1956.
They divorced January 21th, 1961.
Marilyn Monroe became famous, starring in a number of hit movies during the 1950s and early 1960s.
She also became famous for modeling for photographers and singing in her musical movies.
One time, she sang "Happy Birthday" to the President of the United States John F. Kennedy.
It turned out to be one of her last appearances.
The 16-year-old Norma Jeane married James Dougherty on 19th June 1942.
After the wedding, he joined the navy.
At this time, Norma met an army photographer, David Conover.
She began a career as a model.
She changed her name to Marilyn Monroe.
She and Dougherty divorced on 13 September 1946.
Monroe married the baseball star Joe DiMaggio on 14th January 1954.
The marriage lasted for nine months.
She had met DiMaggio on a blind date, during the filming of the movie Monkey Business in 1952.
The marriage was closely followed by the public.
DiMaggio retired from baseball, and Marilyn became very famous.
DiMaggio was sad that his career as a baseball star was ending, and was jealous of Marilyn for being admired.
He spent most of his time watching television and Monroe found it boring.
They separated on 31st October 1954.
From 1961, they became friends again.
DiMaggio said that he gave Marilyn a rose every week for 10 years.
Marilyn married Arthur Miller on 29th June 1956.
She converted to Judaism.
She had met him during the filming of As Young As You Feel in 1951.
She was so happy with him and they tried to have children together.
Mariyln had three miscarriages, because of her endometriosis.
Miller wrote the screenplay for the movie The Misfits.
The filming caused many problems between Marilyn and Arthur and they separated on 20 January 1961.
Myelin is a substance that forms the coating of axons in the brain and the rest of the central nervous system.
This coating is also known as the myelin sheath.
It is a substance made of about 80 % lipid and 20 % protein.
Its main function is to speed the relay of electricity messages in the nervous system.
It is milky white and slippery in appearance and texture, giving rise to the term white matter in the brain.
Myelin is an important part of proper neural function.
In later life, a process called demyelination can occur, causing poor neural function.
Demyelination may be a cause of Alzheimer 's disease.
Multiple sclerosis happens when myelin is damaged.
The Mesozoic was the geological era in which dinosaurs lived, among with other animals.
It lasted around 186 million years, starting 252.2 mya (million years ago) with the P\/Tr extinction and ending 66 mya with the K\/T extinction (the one that killed dinosaurs).
Dinosaurs appeared around 231 mya (21 million years after the beginning of the Mesozoic).
They evolved from early reptiles called the archosaurs (a group of which modern birds and crocodiles are still part).
The Mesozoic is the middle of the three eras that make up the Phanerozoic eon.
Before the Mesozoic was the Palaeozoic era.
The K\/T extinction in 66 mya also marks the beginning of the Cenozoic era, the one we live in.
The Middle East is an area of land and group of countries in Southwest Asia and North Africa.
Today, people usually call these countries "Middle Eastern" since they are in the Eastern Mediterranean or west of Central Asia.
Sometimes, people also include these countries as part of a Greater Middle East: Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa, the Pakistan and the countries Afghanistan and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan in South-central Asia.
Ancient civilizations began in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East.
These were Sumer, Babylonia and Assyria in the area called Mesopotamia, and Ancient Egypt.
The three Abrahamic religions that believe in one God also came from the Middle East.
Judaism and Christianity began in ancient Israel and Islam began in Arabia.
Today, the Middle East is very important because a lot of the petroleum that other countries need comes from here.
There are also many arguments and fights here, such as the Sunni-Shia conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Syrian civil war.
Monism is the thinking that there is only one thing.
All things are not separate but work together as one.
The Moon is Earth 's satellite, and we can usually see it in the night sky.
Other planets also have moons or "natural satellites".
Our moon is about a quarter the size of the Earth.
Because it is far away it looks small.
The gravity on the moon is one-sixth of the Earth 's gravity.
It means that something will be six times lighter on the Moon than on Earth.
The Moon is a rocky and dusty place.
The Moon drifts away from Earth at the rate of four centimeters each year.
The Moon is lit up by the sun as it goes around (or orbits) the Earth.
This means sometimes people on Earth can see the whole Moon and other times only small parts of it.
This is because the Moon does not send out its own light.
People only see the parts that are being lit by sunlight.
These different stages are called Phases of the Moon.
It takes the Moon about 29.53 days (29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes) to complete the cycle, from big and bright to small and dim and back to big and bright.
As the Moon passes between the Earth and Sun, this phase is called the New Moon.
The next phase of the moon is called the "waxing crescent", followed by the "first quarter", "waxing gibbous", then to a full moon.
A full Moon occurs when the moon and sun are on opposite sides of the Earth.
As the Moon continues its orbit it becomes a "waning gibbous", "third quarter", "waning crescent", and finally back to a new moon.
People used the moon to measure time.
A month is approximately equal in time to a lunar cycle.
The moon always shows the same side to Earth.
Astronomers call this phenomenon tidal locking.
This means that half of it can never be seen from Earth.
The side facing away from Earth is called the dark side of the Moon even though the sun does shine on it we just never see it lit.
Before people stood on the Moon, the United States and the USSR sent robots to the Moon.
These robots would orbit the Moon or crawl on its surface.
The robots were the first man-made objects to touch the Moon.
Humans finally landed on the Moon on 21 July, 1969.
Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, landed their lunar ship (the Eagle) on the surface of the moon.
Then, as half the world watched him on television, Armstrong climbed down the ladder of the Eagle and was the first human to touch the Moon as he said, "That 's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
Even though their footprints were left on the moon a long time ago, it is likely that they are still there, as there is no wind or rain, making erosion extremely slow.
The footprints do not get filled in or smoothed out.
More people landed on the moon between 1969 and 1972, when the last spaceship, Apollo 17 visited.
Eugene Cernan of Apollo 17 was the last person to touch the moon.
Because it is smaller, the Moon has less gravity than Earth (only 1\/6 of the amount on Earth).
So if a person weighs 120kg on Earth, the person would only weigh 20kg on the moon.
But even though the Moon 's gravity is weaker than the Earth 's gravity, it is still there.
If person dropped a ball while standing on the moon, it would still fall down.
However, it would fall much more slowly.
A person who jumped as high as possible on the moon would jump higher than on Earth, but still fall back to the ground.
Because the Moon has no atmosphere, there is no air resistance, so a feather will fall as fast as a hammer.
Without an atmosphere, the environment is not protected from heat or cold.
Astronauts wore spacesuits, and carried oxygen to breathe.
The suit weighed about as much as the astronaut but because the Moon 's gravity is weak, it was not as heavy as on Earth.
In the Earth, the sky is blue because the blue rays of the sun bounce off the gases in the atmosphere, making it look like blue light is coming from the sky.
But on the moon, because there is no atmosphere, the sky looks black, even in the daytime.
And because there is no atmosphere to protect the moon from the rocks that fall from outer space.
These meteorites crash right into the moon and make wide, shallow holes called craters.
The moon has thousands of them.
Newer craters gradually wear away the older ones.
The giant impact hypothesis is that the Moon was created out of the debris from a collision between the young Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet.
This is the favored scientific hypothesis for the formation of the Moon.
In 2009 NASA said that they had found a lot of water on the moon.
The water is not liquid but is in the form of hydrates and hydroxides.
Liquid water can not exist on the Moon because photodissociation quickly breaks down the molecules.
During the Cold War, the United States Army thought about making a military post on the Moon, able to attack targets on Earth.
They also considered conducting a nuclear weapon test on the Moon.
The United States Air Force had similar plans.
However, both plans were brushed-off as NASA moved from a military to a civilian-based agency.
Even though the Soviet Union left remains on the Moon, and the United States left a few flags, no country has control over the Moon.
The U.S. and Soviet Union both signed the Outer Space Treaty, which calls the Moon and all of outer space the "province of all mankind".
This treaty also banned all use of the military of the Moon, including nuclear weapons tests and military bases.
Marco Polo (1254-January 8, 1324) was an Italian trader and explorer.
He was one of the first Europeans to explore East Asia.
Many other explorers, including Christopher Columbus, looked up to him.
He could speak four languages.
Marco Polo was known for the book Travels of Marco Polo where he talked about Asia.
Marco Polo was born in Venice, one of the most successful trading cities.
His exact birth day is not known.
Polo 's mother died when he was young, and he was raised by his aunt and uncle.
His father Niccolo Polo took him on his first journey to Cathay (China).
His family were well-known merchants, not explorers.
He learned about writing, reading, and arithmetic, and how to do business.
Polo went on a 24-year trip to China with his father and uncle during the Mongol Dynasty.
He left Venice the age of 17 on a boat that went through the Mediterranean Sea, Ayas, Tabriz and Kerman.
Then he traveled across Asia getting as far as Beijing.
On the way there he had to go over mountains and through terrible deserts, across hot burning lands and places where the cold was horrible.
He served in Kublai Khan 's court for 17 years.
He left the Far East and returned to Venice by sea.
There was sickness on board and 600 passengers and crew died and some say pirates attacked.
Nevertheless, Marco Polo survived it all.
Some scholars believe that while Marco Polo did go to China, he did not go to all of the other places described in his book.
He brought noodles back from China and the Italians came up with different sizes and shapes and called it pasta.
Polo returned to Venice with treasures like ivory, jade, jewels, porcelain and silk.
His father had borrowed money and bought a ship.
He became wealthy because of his trading in the near East.
Soon after Polo returned from his journeys he fought in a war against Genoa, got captured and put in prison, When he was in prison, he became friendly with a fellow prisoner Rusticello who was a writer of romances and novels.
He told the writer about all his adventures.
Rusticello wrote down his words which became a book called The Travels of Marco Polo, and became famous throughout Europe.
In his book he wrote about Kublai Khan 's wealthy, new empire that had a postal system.
He also wrote about the Chinese people.
China used paper money that was made from mulberry bark.
Marco Polo s nickname was Marco Il Milione, due to an ancestor of his called Emilione.
He is actually one of the wealthiest people there was.
This is the book of the travels of Marco Polo.
Polo told his memoirs to Rustichello da Pisa when both were prisoners of the Genova Republic.
The published version was written by Rustichello da Pisa, based on what Polo had told him.
A mountain range (mountain chain, mountain belt) is a geographic area with many mountains.
A ` mountain system ' or ` system of mountain ranges ' includes geological features that are in the same region as a mountain range.
Mountain ranges usually include highlands or mountain passes and valleys.
Individual mountains in the same range do not always have the same geology or petrology.
They may be a mix of different orogenic expressions and terrains, for example thrust sheets, uplifted blocks, fold mountains, and volcanic landforms.
This results in a variety of rock types.
Most geologically young mountain ranges on the Earth 's land surface are associated with either in the Pacific Ring of Fire or the Alpide Belt.
The Pacific Ring of Fire includes the Andes of South America, extends through the North American Cordillera along the Pacific Coast, the Aleutian Range, on through Kamchatka, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, to New Zealand.
The Andes is 7000 k long and is often described as the world 's longest mountain system.
The Alpide belt includes Indonesia and southeast Asia, through the Himalayas, and ends in the Alps.
The belt also includes other European and Asian mountain ranges.
The Himalayas contain the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, at 8848 m of elevation.
Mountain ranges outside of these two systems include the Arctic Cordillera, the world 's northernmost mountain system.
If the definition of a mountain range includes underwater mountains, then the ocean ridges form the longest continuous mountain system on Earth, with a length of 65000 k.
Many mountain ranges have sub-ranges within them.
It can be thought of as a parent-child relationship.
For example, the Appalachian Mountains range is the parent of its own ranges, two of which are the White Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The White Mountains are a child of the Appalachians, and there are also children of the Whites, like the Sandwich Range and the Presidential Range.
The position of mountains influences climate, such as rain or snow.
When air masses move up and over mountains, the air cools producing precipitation (rain or snow).
As the air descends on the leeward side, it warms again and is drier, having been stripped of much of its moisture.
Often, a rain shadow will occur on the leeward side of a range.
Mountain ranges are always being eroded.
Erosion is at work while the mountains are being uplifted and long after until the mountains are reduced to low hills and plains.
The basins next to an eroding mountain range are filled with sediments which are buried and turned into sedimentary rock.
The early Cenozoic uplift of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado are an example.
As the uplift was occurring some 10000 f of mostly Mesozoic sedimentary strata were removed by erosion and spread as sand and clays across the Great Plains to the east.
This mass of rock was removed as the range was actively undergoing uplift.
Magnoliales is an order of flowering plants.
March is the third month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, coming between February and April.
It has 31 days.
March is named after Mars, the Roman god of war.
In ancient Rome, March was called Martius.
It was named after the war god (Mars) and the Romans thought that it was a lucky time to begin a war.
Before Julius Caesar 's calendar reform, March was the first month of the year in the Roman calendar, as the winter was considered to be a monthless period.
March has 31 days, and is one of seven months in the year to have that number of days.
In common years it starts on the same day of the week as February, and it always starts on the same day of the week as November of the same year.
In a common year, March starts on the same day of the week as June of the previous year, and in leap years starts on the same day of the week as September and December of the previous year.
Every year, March ends on the same day of the week as June, and ends on the same day as December of the previous year if it is a leap year.
In leap years, the day before March 1 is February 29.
This determines the position of each day of the year from there on.
As an example, March 1 is usually the 60th day of the year, but in a leap year is the 61st day.
In terms of seasons, March is a month that has an equinox, with daylight and darkness of roughly the same number of hours, halfway between the December and June solstices.
In the Northern Hemisphere, spring starts in this month, while it is autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.
The official start of either season is March 1, though the equinox can fall on March 20 or 21, occasionally on March 19.
The northern spring equinox marks the start of the Iranian New Year and Baha ` i New Year.
It is from the March 21 date that Easter 's date is calculated, on the Sunday after the first full moon in spring, meaning it can fall between March 22 and April 25 in Western Christianity.
March 's flower is the daffodil and its birthstones are the bloodstone and aquamarine.
The meaning of the bloodstone is courage.
The star signs for March are Pisces (February 20 to March 20) and Aries (March 21 to April 20).
May is the fifth month of the year, coming between April and June.
It has 31 days.
The month of May might have been named for the Roman goddess Maia, or more likely the Roman goddess of fertility Bona Dea, whose festival was held in May.
May 's flower is the Lily of the Valley.
Its birthstone is the emerald.
The meaning of the emerald is success in love.
May comes between April and June and is the fifth month of the year in the Gregorian calendar.
It has 31 days, being one of seven months to do so.
In the older Roman calendar, May was the third month of the year.
It is a spring month in the Northern Hemisphere and an autumn month in the Southern Hemisphere.
May is likely to have been named after the Roman goddess Maia, though there is a theory that May might have its name from the Latin "Maiores", meaning "Seniors".
The same theory suggests that June would then be named from "Iuniores", meaning "Juniors".
In any year, no month starts or ends on the same day of the week as May, though January of the following year starts and ends on the same days of the week as May.
In a common year it ends on the same day of the week as August and November of the previous year and starts on the same day of the week as August of the previous year.
In a leap year, May starts on the same day of the week as February, March and November of the previous year and ends on the same day of the week as March and June of the previous year.
In the Northern Hemisphere, May is in late Spring, and May Day on May 1 and Walpurgis Night, during the night of April 30 to May 1, are symbolic of the transition from winter to summer.
In the Southern Hemisphere, it is in autumn, and comes just before the Antarctic winter, when emperor penguins breed there.
Mandarin is the language of government and education of China and Taiwan, with the notable exceptions of Hong Kong and Macau where a local dialect of Chinese called Cantonese is more often used.
Mandarin is one of five major regional languages of China.
It spreads wider than any other regional language, from the whole northern part of China down to Yunnan Province in the southwest corner of China.
In that big area there are many regional differences in vocabulary, so somebody who moves from Beijing to Yunnan could not understand people there who were speaking their own language, Yunnanhua.
The problem is bigger than for a person in Great Britain or the United States to go to Australia.
Therefore, starting in the 1920s, the Chinese government set up a national language based on the Beijing dialect and on the most widely understood words and pronunciations.
Mandarin is a standard language.
It is nobody 's native language, but a good average between various language forms and a common language everyone can understand and communicate with.
Although it is based on the Beijing dialect, it is not the same as Beijing dialect.
In China, the language used in all schools is known as Standard Mandarin, Putonghua (\/) meaning "common (spoken) language" or Hanyu (\/) meaning "language of the Han.
In places such as Malaysia it is known as Huayu (\/).
In Taiwan it is known as Guoyu (\/) meaning "national language."
There are some minor differences in these standards.
Mandarin is spoken by over 800 million people around the world, more than any other language.
Most people emigrating from the Greater China region now speak Mandarin, while in the past it used to be Cantonese or Taishanese, another local Chinese dialect.
Standard Mandarin is one of the six official languages at the United Nations.
The others are English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Russian.
Mandarin is written with Chinese characters called H nz (or) which literally means "Han characters".
Each H nz has its own pronunciation and meaning.
An ordinary dictionary will contain about 10,000 characters.
Spoken Mandarin uses very many compound words, words that combine meanings the way English does in such terms as "machine gun," "fire truck," "playground," etc.
The Hanzi are ideograms: one character means one idea.
The various concepts are derived from the ideograms by combining them.
Mandarin can be also written phonetically (that is: written as it is spoken) with the Latin alphabet as you really can not see the spelling from Hanzi characters.
That is called transliteration.
The most popular transliteration system is called Pinyin.
Some Chinese characters were originally fairly concrete pictures of the things they represent.
As time went on, people chose to write simpler versions that are easier to write but do not look so much like the real thing, just as we sometimes draw stick men rather than drawing people with real-looking bodies, arms, legs, etc..
Here are some examples:
Most characters, however, are made by combining pictures, using one to give a general meaning, and the other to represent a sound.
For instance," m" (mom) is made by adding (n, human female) to (m, horse).
The "ma" part is only there to represent the sound.
Just as the English used in Great Britain favors "petrol" but the English used in the United States almost always uses "gasoline," different regional languages in China may use different compound words to name the same thing.
In Spoken Mandarin, most words are character compounds because over time Mandarin lost many sounds that existed in earlier forms of Chinese.
Due to the loss of sounds, many Chinese words ended up becoming homophones, thus more characters were added to words to tell them apart.
For example, the Chinese title of the poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den is pronounced "Sh Sh Sh Sh Sh", and every character in the poem is pronounced with the same syllable, but with different tones.
In older forms of Chinese, one could have been to tell apart the different characters making up the title, as they could have sounded noticeably different from each other.
thus making spoken language difficult to understand without the compound words.
Mandarin is defined and designed based on Beijing accent.
In China, there are over 600,000 dialects and more accents although they all use Chinese language and characters, but their pronunciation and some expressions are totally different.
China must find a standard pronunciation to make all people to understand and communicate.
Beijing has been the capital city of China for more than 1,000 years, so China defined Beijing Accent as standard mandarin.
Beijing also has some local dialects that are not included by mandarin or standard Chinese language yet.
But different from the other dialects, Beijing is capital city, political, economic, culture and education center of China, more and more new Beijing dialects have been or will be accepted as mandarin or standard Chinese language.
(But, the other dialects, such as Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hakka etc., have few opportunities to be included into Mandarin or standard Chinese language or be accepted by the whole of China.)
The following samples are some Beijing dialects which are not accepted as standard mandarin yet by now.
The following samples are some Beijing dialects which have been already accepted as mandarin in recent years.
: rb d o means ` not very skillful ';: g menr means ` good male friends ';: k um n means ` parsimony ';: d xi o ' r means ` since childhood '
Moby or Richard Melville Hall (born September 11, 1965) is an American DJ, songwriter and musician.
He is famous for his songs "Porcelain" and "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?".
The video for another one of his songs, "We Are All Made Of Stars", shows him dressed as an astronaut in a space suit.
He was a member of a punk band called Vatican Commandos before becoming a DJ.
In 2002, Moby started a cafe called Teany with his ex-girlfriend Kelly Tisdale.
M tley Cr e was a hair\/glam metal band from Los Angeles, California.
The band was created in 1981 by Nikki Sixx (bass), and Tommy Lee (drums), and were then joined by Vince Neil (vocals) and Mick Mars (lead guitar).
They were popular in the mid-1980s.
Their last show took place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on December 31, 2015.
Motley Crue was formed at the start of 1981 by bass player Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee.
After auditions they found singer Vince Neil and guitar player Mick Mars.
They released their first album Too Fast For Love in 1981, and later got signed to a major label.
The band built success over the next few years with their next three albums, Shout at the Devil, Theatre of Pain and Girls, Girls, Girls, which had hit songs like "Shout at the Devil" "Home Sweet Home" and "Girls, Girls, Girls".
However, the band created some negative attention because of their use of illegal drugs, large amounts of sex with women, and appearances, including make-up and several tattoos.
Nikki Sixx took an overdose of heroin in 1987 and was legally dead for five minutes before getting an adrenaline shot, making him conscious again.
The band stopped their drugs and drinking shortly after and released their most popular album, Dr. Feelgood in 1989.
They released a greatest hits album in 1991 so fans had something to listen to before they brought out a sixth album.
However, the band started arguing and Vince Neil was out of the band in 1992 as a result.
So, the band found a new singer called John Corabi, who also played guitar and wrote lyrics with the band.
They released their self titled album in 1994.
It created a mixed response from fans who preferred Vince Neil as the band 's singer, and did not like the music itself, which sounded less like glam rock and more like hard rock.
John Corabi left in 1996 and Vince Neil came back.
The band released Generation Swine in 1997, but created a mixed response due to the musical experiments on the album.
Tommy Lee was unhappy with Vince Neil back in the band and further arguments between band members caused Lee to leave the band, being replaced by Randy Castillo.
The band released their least successful album, New Tattoo, in 2000.
It sounded more like the band 's 80s albums rather than the more experimental albums they released in the 90s.
After the album, Randy Castillo became ill and Samantha Maloney had to drum during some of the band 's concerts.
Randy Castillo died in 2002 and the band did not do much for the next two years.
Motley Crue made a comeback with Tommy Lee in 2004, and were once again successful, touring worldwide and releasing another greatest hits album called Red, White and Crue.
They released another album of new songs in 2008 called Saints of Los Angeles.
They disbanded after their last show on December 31, 2015.
Mandriva (formerly Mandrake Linux) is a Linux distribution.
The last release was the 2011 version released in August that year.
Most Mandriva Linux developers who were laid off went to Mageia.
In May 2015, Mandriva went into administration, (6) as of the 27th of May the organizations website was offline.
Mandriva was first made public by a French software company MandrakeSoft.
Its first release was based on Red Hat Linux 5.1 and was released in July 1998.
Mandriva Linux was originated by Ga l Duval, and intended to focus on ease of use for new users.
From its first release to version 8.0, Mandrake named its flagship distribution Linux-Mandrake.
From version 8.1 to 9.2 it was called Mandrake Linux.
In February 2004, MandrakeSoft lost a court case for infringement.
And it renamed its products.
Starting from version 10.0, Mandrake Linux became known as Mandrakelinux, and its logo changed accordingly.
Similarly, MandrakeMove became Mandrakemove.
In April 2005, Mandrakesoft announced the corporate acquisition of Conectiva,.
As a result of this acquisition and the legal dispute with Hearst Corporation, Mandrakesoft announced that the company was changing its name to Mandriva, and that their Linux distribution Mandrake Linux would henceforward be known as Mandriva Linux.
Since 2007, Mandriva is released on a 6-month fixed-release cycle, similar to Ubuntu and Fedora.
However, while newer features are added during each release, the timing of the Spring release stays the same as the first release, so as to ensure the stability each year.
The latest stable version is Mandriva Linux 2009 (2009.0), released on 2008-10-09.
The development tree of Mandriva Linux has always been known as Cooker.
This tree is directly released as a new stable version.
The current release is named 2009.1 and was released in April 2009.
Mazda Motor Corporation is a car manufacturer or maker based in Hiroshima, Japan.
Mazda is 15th in industry of car in the world.
It established April 27th in 1979.
The capital of Mazda is 480milion yen.
Mazda has 20,473 employees (March in 2014).
The sale is 2,057,614,000,000 yen.
The description of business is design for cars, developments, produce and selling.
In 1920, Toyo Koruku Kogyo was established.
Later, it changed mazda.
The company invested rotary engine.
Rotary engine has much power than ordinary engines.
In 1991, Mazda 787B which had a rotary engine won the 24 Heures du Mans.
But, Mazda 's achievement suddenly fell because of ending of the bubble period.
In 1996, Mazda came under the control of Ford Motor which was the most famous Motor company in the world, and tried to improve its achievement.
Since 2000, Mazda grew its achievement because of sophisticated designs and unique management strategy.
Especially, Mazda 's products have been sold well in Europe North America.
In 2007, business benefits recorded 158.5 billion.
this was the highest sale.
Now, the company plays an important role in medium, small car department of ford.
Mazda produces cars only in Japan.
And, Mazda exports 80 % of these.
Mazda is only company that producing cars which have rotary engines.
The cars are popular in Australia and Europe, especially Germany and U.K. Nowadays, Mazda 's slogan is ZOOM-ZOOM.
It is famous for the movie Only Strong.
It is used various country 's Motor show and Commercial.
ZOOM-ZOOM comes from English-speaking children calling cars ZOOM-ZOOM.
Mazda 's company name is derived from Matsuda Jujirou who was the founder of this company and Ahura Mazda that is the God of the Zoroastrianism.
Ahura Mazda is a symbol of wisdom, reason, and harmony.
A minute is a customary unit of time, it is equal to 60 seconds and there are 60 minutes in an hour.
Unlike the second, the hour is not an SI unit.
A minute is also 1\/60 of a degree.
A model organism is a non-human species that is studied over many years, building up a lot of knowledge about it.
The purpose is to understand fundamental biological phenomena.
The hope is that discoveries made in the model will give insight into how other organisms work.
In particular, model organisms are widely used to explore potential causes and treatments for human disease when experimenting on humans would be impossible or less ethical.
This strategy is made possible by the common descent of all living organisms, and the conservation of metabolic and developmental pathways and genes over the course of evolution.
Drosophila melanogaster was one of the first animals used for genetics.
Today it is one of the most widely used and genetically best-known of all eukaryotic organisms.
All organisms use common genetic systems; understanding transcription and replication in fruit flies helps to understand these processes in other eukaryotes, including humans.
Studies of X-linked traits confirmed that genes are found on chromosomes.
Studies of linked traits led to the first maps of genetic loci on chromosomes.
The first maps of Drosophila chromosomes were done by Alfred Sturtevant.
Drosophila melanogaster is one of the most studied organisms in biological research, particularly in genetics and developmental biology.
Its complete genome was sequenced and first published in 2000.
Because great deal is known about its development from egg to larva to adult, it is a key model for developmental genetics, or evo-devo.
The hox genes, or homeobox, which control development in metazoa, were worked out first of all in Drosophila.
In 1946, Joshua Lederberg and Edward Tatum first described the phenomenon known as bacterial conjugation using Escherichia coli as a model bacterium.
E. coli was an integral part of the first experiments to understand phage genetics, and early researchers, such as Seymour Benzer, used E. coli and phage T4 to understand the topography of gene structure.
Before Benzer 's research, it was not known whether the gene was a linear structure, or if it had a branching pattern.
E. coli was one of the first organisms to have its genome sequenced; the complete genome of E. coli K12 was published by Science in 1997.
The long-term evolution experiments using E. coli, begun by Richard Lenski in 1988, have allowed direct observation of major evolutionary shifts in the laboratory.
Materialism is the philosophical belief that the world is made of material, and that there are no other types of entity (things).
Everything is composed of material.
Things that are not made of material, such as consciousness, are the result of actions by material.
In other words, matter is the only real substance.
Physicalism is a related term.
Especially, a materialist does not believe in gods or other supernatural entities.
The materialist thinks the idea of a spirit is either meaningless, or not scientifically proven.
Therefore, by definition, materialists are also atheists, though not all atheists are materialists.
Modern philosophical materialists extend the definition to include other basic entities proven by science.
such as energy, forces, and the curvature of space.
Matter and energy are known to be interchangeable, and much else, such as gravity, is caused by matter.
However, the concept of matter is itself not entirely clear.
Other types of philosophy share some of the aims of materialism.
Examples would include reductionism, logical positivism and empiricism.
The mind is a general term for the way a person that thinks, reasons, perceives, wills, and feels.
For science, what others call the mind is entirely caused by workings of the brain.
The philosopher Gilbert Ryle called mind the "Ghost in the Machine".
He said the idea that it was separate from the brain was the mistaken "Official Doctrine".
However, some think that mind is separate from the body and is called a soul (see dualism).
Many people argue about what makes up the mind.
Some say that only reason and memory are part of the mind, because they are conscious.
In this view the emotions like love, hate, fear and joy are different from the mind.
Some people with this view say the emotions are part of the heart.
Others argue that our rational and emotional states can not be separated and should all be part of what we call the mind.
People often use mind to mean the same as thought: the way we talk to ourselves "inside our heads".
This is where the sayings "make up our minds," "change our minds" and "of two minds" come from.
One of the important things of the mind in this sense is that it is private.
No one else can "know our mind."
The original meaning of the Old English gemynd was memory.
This explains the sayings call to mind, come to mind, keep in mind, to have mind of, and so on.
Old English had other words to express what we call "mind" today, such as hyge, meaning "mind, spirit".
The word mind gradually grew to mean all conscious thought over the 14th and 15th centuries.
Thought is when we absorb what happens around us so that we can deal with it effectively according to our plans and desires.
Thinking is using information, like forming concepts, problem solving, reasoning and making choices.
Memory is when we store information in our minds, and can later recall it.
Imagination is the ability to invent worlds inside the mind, complete or not.
The mind makes these by drawing on experience in the shared world.
Consciousness is knowing that we exist and the world exists, and being able to understand what happens around us.
Just like the body, a mind can be healthy.
The measure of this is called mental health.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is not one way to measure mental health in all people, because there are many things in our surroundings that might make what is mentally healthier different from one person to another.
In general, most experts agree that "mental health" and "mental illness" are not opposites.
In other words, not having a mental illness does not mean you are in good mental health.
One way to think about mental health is by looking at how well a person lives.
Signs of mental health include: feeling capable and happy, being able to handle normal levels of stress, making and keeping friends, and leading an independent life, and being able to recover from difficult situations.
Philosophy of mind is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind and how it is linked to the body.
The main problem is how the mind is related to the body, but there are also questions about the nature of the mind that do not talk about its relation to the physical body.
Dualism and monism are the two main ways people try to solve the mind-body problem.
Dualism is when people believe that the mind and body are in some way separate from each other.
It can be traced back to Plato, Aristotle, and the Samkhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy, but it was most precisely formulated by Ren Descartes in the 17th century.
Monism is the belief that mind and body are not physiologically and ontologically distinct kinds of entities.
This view was first seen in Western philosophy by Parmenides in the 5th century BC and was later held by the 17th-century rationalist Baruch Spinoza.
According to Spinoza, mind and body are two parts of a larger being.
Idealists think that the mind is all that exists and that the outside world is actually made up by the mind.
Physicalists think that everything can be expressed by what is physical.
Neutral monists believe that everything can be either mental or physical depending how you see it.
For example, a red spot on a wall is physical, because it is an actual thing depending on the physical wall, but it is mental because our brain responds to the color.
The most common monisms in the 20th and 21st centuries have all been different kinds of physicalism, including behaviorism.
Psychology is the study of the way we think, feel and act.
It involves the scientific study of processes such as perception, cognition, feelings, personality, as well as things around us that might affect the way we think.
From this study, psychologists try to form rules for why we act the way we do.
Psychology also includes using this knowledge to help solve problems of everyday life and treat mental health problems.
Social psychology is the study of how we think, feel and act in groups of other people.
Most people who study social psychology are either psychologists or sociologists.
The phrase Mind 's eye refers to the ability to see things with the mind.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (;; Sindhi:; October 1869 30 January 1948) was a leader of nationalism in British-ruled India.
He is more commonly called Mahatma Gandhi; mahatma is an honorific meaning "great-soul" or "venerable" in Sanskrit.
He was first called this in 1914 in South Africa.
He is also called Bapu in India (Gujarati endearment for "father", "papa").
He was the Martyr of the Nation since 1948.
Rabindranath Tagore gave him the title of ` Mahatma '.
Gandhiji was one of the most important people involved in the movement for the independence of India.
He was a non-violent activist, who led the independence movement through a non-violent protest.
Mohandas Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, Gujarat, India.
Several members of his family worked for the government of the state.
When Gandhi was 18 years old, he went to England to study law.
After he became a lawyer, he went to the British colony of South Africa where he experienced laws that said people with dark skin had worse rights than people with light skin.
He decided then to become a political activist, so he could help change these unfair laws.
He created a powerful, non-violent movement.
During Gandhi 's life, India was a colony of the United Kingdom, but wanted independence.
In 1930, Gandhi led the Salt March.
When he returned to India, he helped cause India 's independence from British rule, inspiring other colonial people to work for their own independence, break up the British Empire, and replace it with the Commonwealth.
People of many different religions and ethnic groups lived in British India.
Many people thought that the country should break into separate countries so that different groups could have their own countries.
In particular, many people thought that Hindus and Muslims should have separate countries.
Gandhi was a Hindu, but he liked ideas from many religions including Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and he thought that people of all religions should have the same rights, and could live together peacefully in the same country.
In 1938, Gandhi resigned from Congress.
He said that he was no longer able to work through Congress to unite the divisions in caste and religion.
He also felt that he had little to offer to the political process.
In 1947, British Indian Empire became independent, and broke into two different countries, India and Pakistan.
Gandhi wanted independence, but did not want to split into two different countries.
Instead of celebrating on independence day, he was crying over the division of India.
Gandhi 's principle of satyagraha, often translated as "way of truth" or "pursuit of truth", has inspired other democratic and anti-racist activists like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela.
Gandhi often said that his values were simple, based upon traditional Hindu beliefs: truth (satya), and non-violence (ahimsa).
On January 30, 1948, Gandhi was assassinated by an extremist Hindu activist, Nathuram Godse.
He shot him because he felt that Gandhi was too lenient towards Muslims.
As a punishment for this he was hanged.
Miyamoto Musashi (c. 1584 June 13, 1645), was also known as Shinmen Takez, Miyamoto Bennosuke or, by his Buddhist name, Niten D raku.
He was a Japanese Samurai and r nin.
Even from a young age Musashi became well known for his excellent swordsmanship and won some sixty duels.
He always had money and had a number of other r nins as followers.
Musashi is best known as the author of The Book of Five Rings.
It is a book on strategy, tactics, and philosophy.
The book is very popular in modern Japan and the western world among successful business people.
Money laundering is something some criminals do to the money they make from crime.
When a criminal does money laundering, the criminal tries to make it hard for the police to find out where the criminal got the money.
One way criminals launder money is by using the money earned from illegal activities to buy things (like gold and silver, shares or casino chips, other legitimate business activities like food or liquor stores) and then selling those items to get the money back.
If a criminal buys and sells things many times it is hard for the police to find out where the criminal got the money.
Some countries have laws to try to stop money laundering.
These laws help the police to find out when criminals try to do money laundering.
Under the laws in some countries, business people must:
In 1989, some countries set up a group of people from different Governments to tell countries the best ways to stop money laundering.
This organization is called the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (29 September 1547 23 April 1616) was a Spanish writer.
His most famous book was Don Quijote de la Mancha.
It is considered the first modern novel, and therefore Cervantes was the first novelist.
The book has been published in 65 countries.
The work is considered among the most important in all of literature.
He is sometimes called "The Prince of Satire".
Nobody knows for sure the reasons that forced Cervantes to leave Castile.
Whether he was a "student" of the same name, a "sword-wielding fugitive from justice", or fleeing from a royal warrant of arrest, for having wounded a certain Antonio de Sigura in a duel, is another mystery.
In any event, in going to Italy, Cervantes was doing what many young Spaniards of the time did to further their careers.
Rome would reveal to the young artist its ecclesiastic pomp, ritual, and majesty.
In a city teeming with ruins Cervantes could focus his attention on Renaissance art, architecture, and poetry (knowledge of Italian literature is readily discernible in his own productions) and on rediscovering antiquity.
He could find in the ancients "a powerful impetus to revive the contemporary world in light of its accomplishments".
Thus, Cervantes ' continuing desire for Italy, as revealed in his later works, was in part a desire for a return to an earlier period of the Renaissance.
By 1570, Cervantes had enlisted as a soldier in a regiment of the Spanish naval elite corps, Infanter a de Marina, stationed in Naples, then a possession of the Spanish crown.
He was there for about a year before he saw active service.
In September 1571 Cervantes sailed on board the Marquesa, part of the galley fleet of the Holy League, Spain, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Genoa, the Duchy of Savoy, the Knights Hospitaller based in Malta, and others, under the command of King Philip II 's illegitimate half brother, John of Austria, that defeated the Ottoman fleet on October 7 in the Gulf of Lepanto near Corinth, at great cost to both sides.
Though taken down with fever, Cervantes refused to stay below, and begged to be allowed to take part in the battle, saying that he would rather die for his God and his king than keep under cover.
He fought bravely on board a vessel, and received three gunshot wounds two in the chest, and one which rendered his left arm useless.
In Journey to Parnassus he was to say that he "had lost the movement of the left hand for the glory of the right" (he was thinking of the success of the first part of Don Quixote).
Cervantes always looked back on his conduct in the battle with pride; he believed that he had taken part in an event that would shape the course of European history.
Maimonides was born in Cordoba in Spain, in 1135.
His Hebrew name was Moses ben Maimon.
He is also known as the Rambam, from the initial letters of his title and name, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon.
Maimonides was a doctor by profession.
Maimonides was one of the most important Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages.
He tried to show that the philosophy of the ancient Greek thinker, Aristotle, and Judaism supported each other.
Maimonides ' main philosophical work was called The Guide for the Perplexed.
He wrote it in Arabic by 1190.
It has ideas from Aristotle 's writings.
The Guide influenced Christian Aristotelian theologians, for example, Thomas Aquinas.
In 1168, Maimonides finished a commentary to the Mishnah, the written version of traditional Jewish oral law.
Maimonides completed these books, called Mishneh Torah, in about 1178.
They one of the most important collections of Jewish laws.
When Maimonides was thirteen years old, the Almohads took over Cordoba.
The Almohads were Muslims who were taking over parts of Europe at the time.
They forced all non-Muslims to leave, change their religion to Islam, or be killed.
This forced Maimonides ' family to leave Cordoba.
They spent twelve years traveling and looking for a home.
During these years, he wrote the commentary on the Mishnah.
Finally, his family settled in Cairo, Egypt.
In 1166, Maimonides ' father died and his brother drowned on a shipwreck in the Indian Ocean.
By this time, Maimonides was a very popular Jewish leader.
He helped the Jewish community in Cairo, Egypt.
He lived there for the last part of his life, and taught and wrote about Judaism.
He died in Cairo on December 13, 1204.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), or nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI), are techniques that doctors use to give a visual representation of soft tissue (flesh) inside the body.
Magnetic resonance uses nuclear magnetic resonance to generate these images.
To take an MRI image, the patient lies on a movable bed.
The bed enters a strong magnetic field and then radio waves are applied for a short time in a different direction.
This sudden shift causes certain atoms in the patient 's body to make special signals.
The MRI scanner detects those special signals.
The MRI scanner then sends the signal information to a computer, and the computer creates an image of the inner body by using the signal information.
The MRI is used to diagnose disorders of the body that can not be seen by X-rays.
The MRI is painless and has the advantage of avoiding the dangerous X-ray radiation.
It is an expensive medical procedure, due to the high cost of the equipment.
Some metallic objects may distort the image, like hip, shoulder and knee replacements but the exam can still be done.
Cochlear (ear) implants, some (older) aneurysm clips in the brain, and most pacemakers are not MRI compatible.
Obese and severely claustrophobic patients often need sedation and\/or imaging with an "open" magnet, which is much less confining.
Contrast agents may or may not be indicated for some patients, and those with compromised kidney function may not be able to receive the contrast, due to a serious but rare skin reaction.
MRI scans can be used to study the brain, spinal cord, bones, joints, breasts, the heart and blood vessels.
It can also be used to look at other internal organs.
MRI scans can be used to find blood clots as well.
An MRI scan can be used as an extremely accurate method of disease detection throughout the body.
Neurosurgeons use an MRI scan not only in defining brain anatomy but in evaluating the integrity of the spinal cord after an injury.
An MRI scan can evaluate the structure of the heart and aorta, where it can detect aneurysms or tears.
It provides valuable information on glands and organs within the abdomen, and accurate information about the structure of the joints, soft tissues, and bones of the body.
Often, surgery can be deferred or more accurately directed after knowing the results of an MRI scan.
This article is about the basic notions.
For advanced topics, see Group theory.
In mathematics, a group is a kind of algebraic structure.
A group has a set and an operation.
The group 's operation can combine any two elements of the group 's set.
This forms a third element.
Instead of "an element of the group 's set", mathematicians usually save words.
They say "an element of the group".
Mathematicians use capital letters to stand for groups.
They often use G, H, or K.
They use lower-case letters to stand for group elements.
To save words, they say "a is in G" to mean "a is an element of G".
They write group operations with symbols like or \*, or by writing two elements next to each other.
So "a b", "a \* b", and "ab" can all mean "the element formed when the group 's operation combines a and b".
Not every set and operation make a group.
A group 's set and operation must obey some special rules.
These are called group axioms.
This list has each axiom twice, once in words, and once in mathematical symbols.
To name the group, one should say all three parts: (G,, e).
But when it is clear, one may just say that G is a group.
It 's possible to find that for two elements a and b in a group, a b is different from b a. For example, maybe a b = c, but b a = d.
For some groups, however, a b = b a for every a and b in the group.
These special groups have a special name.
They are called Abelian groups and their operation is said to be commutative.
The number of elements in a group is called the group 's order.
One everyday example of a group is the set of integers, the addition operation, zero (the identity).
It is easy to see that when you add two integers, the result is always an integer.
So closure is true.
The identity element for this group is zero.
Because the order of additions does not matter (or in other words,), associativity is true.
And the inverse of any integer is its negative value.
This group is also an abelian group.
It is an infinite group (also called a group of infinite order) because it has an infinite number of elements, the integers.
The set of integers with the multiplication operation is not a group because there is no integer which is the inverse to multiplication.
Another important example of a group is a group of symmetries.
Each symmetry of an object is an element of the group.
The operation of the group is this: make the change of the one symmetry and then make the change of the other symmetry.
The combination is also a symmetry, and that means that there is closure.
The identity element is the symmetry in which nothing changes.
Any symmetric change can be undone by reversing the change.
That reverse is the inverse element.
Symmetry groups provide many examples of groups.
For example, here are all of the symmetries of a square: turn the square clockwise 90o, 180o, or 270o; turn the square counter-clockwise 90o, 180o, or 270o; reflect the image of the square in a vertical mirror, or in a horizontal mirror, or a diagonal mirror to the right or the left; or leave the square unchanged.
This is a finite group (or a group of finite order).
It is a non-abelian group because it can make a difference which order when making a turn and a reflection.
It can be proved that every group of finite order is a group of symmetries.
For this reason, group theory is called the mathematical study of symmetry.
Many things in mathematics are groups.
For example, equations.
The ways of solving equations can be a group.
Physical things can be studied as groups.
There are important symmetries about physical things which are groups.
Sometimes part of the group is also a group.
In that case, the part is called a subgroup.
For example, there is this subgroup of the group of symmetries of a square: only the turns of the square and the identity (not the reflections in a mirror).
Many useful things can be proved about groups and their subgroups.
Marilyn Manson is a rock band, and also the name of the lead singer of the group.
The name Marilyn Manson was taken from the first name of actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe and the last name of cult leader and serial killer Charles Manson.
Some of the earlier band members also created stage names by taking the first name of a female sex symbol and the last name of a serial killer.
When the band started in 1989 it was originally called Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids.
The band had four bandmembers and a drumming machine.
They played small concerts in their home state Florida (the Warner family had moved from Ohio to Florida when Manson was a teenager).
In 1993 frontman Manson met Trent Reznor, lead singer for Nine Inch Nails.
Reznor liked their style and offered them a record deal and the chance to tour with Nine Inch Nails.
To get the deal, the band had to change its name to just Marilyn Manson.
They also had to find a real drummer.
In 1995, their cover of Sweet Dreams (originally by Eurythmics) became a hit, and the band was suddenly very popular.
The band is very good friends with Nat Morley who is often featured in their music videos.
Their first album was Portrait of an American Family, which was released in 1993.
Some of their greatest hits are The Beautiful People, The Dope Show, Disposable Teens, Tainted Love, and Personal Jesus.
Marilyn Manson 's songs about drugs, violence and anti-Christianity caused a lot of trouble, especially among Christians.
There were protests at his concerts and they were not allowed to play in some cities.
Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (pronounced: maks ve b) (21 April 1864 14 June 1920) was a German political economist and sociologist who was considered one of the founders of the modern study of sociology and public administration.
He began his career at the University of Berlin, and later worked at Freiburg University, University of Heidelberg, University of Vienna and University of Munich.
He had influence on German politics of his time, because he was an advisor to Germany 's negotiation at the Treaty of Versailles and to the commission that drafted the Weimar Constitution.
Weber is known for his work in the sociology of religion.
His most famous work is his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Max Horkheimer (February 14, 1895 July 7, 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist.
He was famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the ` Frankfurt School ' of social research.
His most important works include The Eclipse of Reason (1947), "Between Philosophy and Social Science" (1930 1938) and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947).
Through the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer planned, supported and made other significant works possible.
His collected works have been issued in German as Gesammelte Schriften, 19 volumes, edited by Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr.
S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1985-1996.
Myanmar is a country in South East Asia.
Its full name is the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.
It is also sometimes called Burma.
Myanmar is the largest country in South East Asia that is not an island.
It is also part of South Asia.
It is bordered by China on the north, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, and the India on the northwest, with the Andaman Sea to the south, and the Bay of Bengal to the southwest.
There are over 2000 k of coast line.
The country was ruled by a military junta led by General Ne Win from 1962 to 1988, and its political system today stays under the tight control of its military government.
Since 1992, Myanmar has been ruled by Senior General Than Shwe.
U Razak
In 1989, the military junta officially changed the English version of its name from Burma to Myanmar.
It also made a new name in English for places in the country, such as its former capital city, from Rangoon to Yangon.
The official name of the country in the Burmese language, Myanma did not change, however.
The renaming was controversial, seen by some as linguistically bad.
Accepting the name change in the English-speaking world has been slow, with many people still using the name Burma to refer to the country.
Major news organizations like the BBC still call it Burma.
Some question the military junta 's authority to "officially" change the name in English in the first place.
Aung San Suu Kyi, however, calls the country Myanmar now.
Myanmar had a strong kingdom in ancient times, but the nation was taken over by the British in the 1800s.
It was occupied by the Empire of Japan in the 1940s.
Myanmar became independent in 1948 as the Union of Burma, and had a democratic government at first.
However, in 1962, a coup d' tat brought the military into power, where it has been ever since.
The founder of modern Myanmar, Aung San was assassinated months before independence.
His daughter Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest many times for leading the democracy movement.
In 1991, the military junta agreed to democratic elections, which were won by the National League for Democracy, and should have made Aung San Suu Kyi the Prime Minister.
However, the dictatorship ignored the results of the elections and continued ruling.
In November 2005, the military government stated that the national capital would be moved from Yangon to a location near Pyinmana, which was renamed Naypyidaw in March 2006.
Since independence in 1948 and the assassination of Aung San Burma has had civil wars between its governments and minority ethnic groups like the Kachin, Karen, Shan and others.
These conflicts are known as the Internal conflict in Burma.
Today, there are 14 sections.
7 are called states and the other 7 are called divisions.
The divisions are split into townships.
The townships are divided into villages and wards.
Mahjong is a game for four players that was created in China.
It is a game of skill, intelligence, calculation and luck.
A Mahjong game is played at a square table (four sides all the same length).
The dealer is called the "east" player and everyone else is called a different direction because of where they are sitting - so the person to East 's left is South, the person across from East is West, and the person to East 's right is North.
If East wins, he is the dealer again for the next round; if he does not, the dealer is the person to his right (North).
That person then becomes East.
A game of Mahjong ends when every player has been the dealer four times, or when they have played the number of rounds they said they would play before they started.
A single-player version of this game exists, called Mahjong Solitaire.
It is based on the four-player game, but can be played by one person, so it is one of the games that are played often on computers (such as Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, or Minesweeper).
Mahjong Solitaire is much simpler than four-player Mahjong: it is played without dice or chips, by removing tiles (set up in the shape of a pyramid) from the board in sets of two.
Each set of two has to match - they are either exactly the same, or go together (two "flowers" tiles, for example).
A Mahjong Solitaire player wins when he picks up all the tiles, or he loses when he runs out of sets of two that he can pick up.
Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1969 or 1970), is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, actress and philanthropist.
Mariah Carey was born on Long Island, in Huntington, New York.
Her father was of African American and Venezuelan ancestry and her mother is of Irish ancestry.
In December 1988 Carey started making her first album.
She released her debut album titled as her name in 1990.
It was released from Columbia Records.
The album was certified multi-platinum by the RIAA.
Four singles from the album all reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart ("Vision of Love", "Love Takes Time", "Someday", and "I Do n't Wanna Cry").
It reached number one on the US Billboard 200.
It was certified 9x platinum.
This means that 9 million copies of the album were shipped in the US.
Carey married Tommy Mottola in 1993.
Mottola was the executive producer for Carey.
Many critics believed that this helped Carey 's musical career.
In 1991, her album Emotions reached number four on the Billboard 200.
It was certified 4x platinum and sold less than her previous album.
Her songs "Emotions" (# 1), "Ca n't Let Go" (# 2) and "Make It Happen" (# 5) were released as singles from the album.
Carey released her first EP MTV Unplugged (1992).
It reached number three on the Billboard 200.
The songs "I 'll Be There" (# 1) and "If It 's Over" were released as singles from the album.
Carey 's third album Music Box (1993) reached number one on the Billboard 200.
As of 2012, the album has sold 7,189,000 copies in the US according to Nielsen Soundcan.
Worldwide, it sold 32 million copies and became one of the best-selling albums of all time.
"Dreamlover" (# 1), "Hero" (# 1), "Without You" (# 3), "Never Forget You" (# 3) and "Anytime You Need a Friend" (# 12) helped Carey to become more popular.
Her first holiday album, Merry Christmas (1994) reached number three on the Billboard 200 chart.
Two singles were released "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (# 12) and "Joy to the World".
Carey 's fifth album Daydream became her third number one album in the US.
It was given a diamond award from the RIAA.
This means that 10 million copies of the album were shipped in the US.
There were six singles for the album.
They include "Fantasy" (# 1), "One Sweet Day" (# 1), "Open Arms", "Always Be My Baby" (# 1), "Forever" (# 9) and "Underneath the Stars".
On September 16, 1997 Carey released her sixth album Butterfly.
The album reached number one on the Billboard 200 chart.
The album released five singles.
They include "Honey" (# 1), "Butterfly" (# 16), "The Roof (Back in Time)", "Breakdown" (# 53) and "My All" (# 1).
On November 2, 1999, her seventh album Rainbow was released.
After selling 323,000 copies the first week, it debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart.
Carey starred in the movie Glitter in 2001.
It did not do so well and grossed $ 5,271,666 out of a $ 20,000,000 budget.
It was nominated for several word movie categories.
The soundtrack did better than the movie.
In 2002, her album Charmbracelet was released.
Her 2005 album, The Emancipation of Mimi, became one of her most successful albums.
Many music critics believed it was her "comeback album".
Her following albums E = MC (2008), Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel (2009) and Merry Christmas II You (2010), did not sell well.
Mariah Carey has sold over 280,000,000 copies worldwide and is one of the best-selling artists of all time.
In 2013, she was a judge in American Idol.
Carey 's fourteenth album The Art of Letting Go is going to be released in 2014.
"Beautiful" was released in May 2013.
"The Art of Letting Go" was released on November 11, 2013.
Carey married Nick Cannon in April 2008.
They have two children.
They divorced in August 2014.
Mervyn Peake (9 July 1911 - 17 November 1968) was a British writer and artist, best known for his fantasy series, Gormenghast.
A martial art is any form of fighting and an art that has a set way of practice.
There are many martial arts that come from certain countries.
They are practiced for many reasons: fighting, self-defense, sport, self-expression, discipline, confidence, fitness, relaxing, meditation.
A martial art is a style of combat, in many instances directed towards the self-defence.
In the common usage, the word applies to the systems of combat developed in all the world.
A person who does martial arts is called a martial artist.
One common method is particularly in the Asian martial arts, it is the form or kata.
Martial arts may be used for self-defense, combat and fitness.
The idea of "martial art" appeared first time in English language in the 1920 Takenobu 's Japanese-English Dictionary as a translation of the word bu-gei or bu-jutsu what means "art or solution of the military matters".
In simple words, the martial arts are fighting systems.
There are many schools and styles of martial arts, but all share the same goal: the self-defence.
Some of them, like taiji quan also can be used in order to improve health and the form as flowing of the qi.
Some martial arts were not born in Asia.
For example, savate had appeared in France and the movements of sport of the capoeira came from the Brazil.
Many martial arts include punches (boxing, karate), kicks (taekwondo, kickboxing, karate), holds and throws (judo, jujutsu, wrestling), weapons (iaijutsu, kendo, kenjutsu, naginatado, fencing, Filipino eskrima) or certain combination of earlier mentioned elements (several styles of jujutsu).
The martial arts are divided in two great sets: the so-called "hard martial arts" like karate and kickboxing which give special consideration to the attack for beat the opponent and the "soft martial arts" like the judo and the aikido which fight the opponent in the less aggressive method, using the force of the other for surrender him.
It is difficult to compare the effectiveness of the different existing arts.
Recently, people developed competitions like the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the United States of America or Pancrase in Japan.
That competitions also are known as "mixed martial arts" or MMA.
Although that is yet to be seen the financial success or defeat of these ways.
The martial arts are defined in this method: through the history, to the soldier in the battlefield, the only thing that was important for them was beat the enemy that one have before himself.
Whether a style is soft or hard or how many points are gained with a blow are details and subjects of discussion which appear in periods of peace, when there were hand to hand combats.
The martial arts are the arts of the war.
If the main goal in a competition depends on noting points to somebody 's advantage, then we are not before a martial art but before a sport.
The history of the martial arts is wide.
The act of developing of the fighting systems dates from when the man had been able to cause to pass the knowledge, along with the strategies of war.
Part of the most ancient written material on the subject dates from the 15th century in Europe and the authorship fall to famous masters, like Hans Talhoffer and George Silver.
Also transcriptions of still more ancient texts had been brought to our days, one of them is a document written by hand.
That document is called I. 33 and dates from end of the 13th century.
The persons who train martial arts disagree with relation to the matter of the competitions.
Some arts, like the boxing or the Thai boxing, give attending to the sparring - fights during training - and to taking part in competitions, yet the most common of aikido and krav maga reject the competitions.
The reasons that cause these opinions are different.
Many of the arts desiring to compete argue that the competitions give place to better and more efficient techniques.
However, certain styles not desiring to compete claim that the rules with which people developed these competitions ruin the art and does not represent what can happen in a real situation.
In recent years, there have been tries to return to life some martial arts considered historical.
Examples of this historical reconstruction of the martial arts are the pankration and the school of Shaolin that have not a continua tradition.
Mok l - mb mb, meaning "one who stops the flow of rivers" in the Lingala language is a legendary water-dwelling creature of Congo River basin folklore, sometimes described as living creature, sometimes as a spirit, and loosely analogous to the Loch Ness Monster in Western culture.
It is claimed to be a sauropod by some cryptozoologists.
Expeditions mounted in the hope of finding evidence of the Mok l - mb mb have failed, and the subject has been covered in a number of books and by a number of television documentaries.
Monotheism is the belief in only one god, rather than two or more, which would be polytheism.
Many religions are monotheistic, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha ` i Faith, Sikhism, Eckankar, Zoroastrianism, deism, Cao Dai and Tenrikyo.
Zoroastrianism is among the oldest monotheistic religions.
Mao Zedong (26 December 1893 9 September 1976) was a Chinese Communist leader.
He was the leader of the People s Republic of China (PRC) from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976.
Mao Zedong is the most common (used by the most people) version of Mao 's name.
His name used to be spelt "Mao Tse-Tung".
"Mao" is his surname - in China, surnames are placed first.
Mao is also called Chairman Mao, a nickname, because he was the Chairman of the Communist Party.
Mao was born on 26 December 1893 in the Hunan province of China.
He grew up in a farming family, and became a Communist while working at a library.
Throughout the 1920 's, his power increased, or became larger, in the Communist Party of China, and by 1933, he was its leader.
In 1923 the Communists and the Kuomintang joined together with the help of the Soviet Union.
Later in the 1920s, the groups fought each other.
This fight was called the Chinese Civil War.
Mao said that Chiang Kai-shek was corrupt and unfit to rule China.
Mao also wanted to make China follow communism, a way of thinking that opposed private property and supported common ownership.
Chiang Kai-shek 's group, the Nationalists, had more fighters in 1935.
They beat Mao 's Communists and made them move out of the country.
The Communists went to a fort that they owned, in a distant part of China called Yenan.
This move was called the Long March.
Mao escaped from the Nationalists with other Communists.
By this time, in 1935, the Chinese Civil War caused 500,000 deaths.
When Japan invaded China in 1937, Mao and Chiang stopped fighting.
The United States defeated Japan in 1945 and made the Japanese Army leave China.
The Chinese Civil War had been stopped during World War II, but after the war it became very violent.
Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists had supporters in the cities and among the middle class.
Mao and the Communists had many supporters in the farms and the countryside.
In those days in China there were more farmers than city people, so Mao had more supporters than Chiang, and others supported Mao because they thought Chiang 's government was bad.
By 1949, Mao had chased the Nationalists to the island of Taiwan, and told the people that China would be Communist, with him as leader.
Mao named the new China the People 's Republic of China.
In the 1950s, Mao had many plans for how China could move forward in technology very fast and catch up with countries like the United Kingdom and United States.
Mao was responsible for the First Five Year Plan and also, The Second Five Year Plan.
The Second Five Year Plan had some ideas that did not work the way that Mao had wanted them to.
Farms could not produce, or make, much food because of bad farming plans, and cities did not make many things like clothes and machines.
Because of the lack of food, many people died of starvation.
In the 1960s, Mao wanted to change everything about China, such as the way Chinese people thought about China, and the way they remembered history.
Because of this, he forced people to change things very fast, even if they did not want to.
These changes were called The "Cultural Revolution".
Mao and his supporters, the Red Guards, did not like it if someone talked about his ideas a bad way, but many people in Chinese cities did not like Mao 's ideas because of the food problems.
There was also no freedom to do many different things when the Red Guards were running the country.
To keep people from saying bad things about Mao and trying to get rid of him, Mao told all of China 's best and brightest people to quit their jobs, and go into the farms.
China became poorer and weaker because of this.
About the same time Mao became the leader in China, Nikita Khrushchev became the leader in the Soviet Union.
Before this, Joseph Stalin was the leader in the Soviet Union, and Mao liked Stalin and respected his way to lead, and China and Russia were allies with each other.
Khrushchev thought Stalin was a criminal dictator, and led the country very differently.
Mao and Krushchev did not like each other, so the Soviet Union was no longer allies with China.
China now had only a few allies like Albania, North Korea, Democratic Kampuchea, and Pakistan.
This change of friends was called the Sino-Soviet Split.
"Sino" is another way to say "Chinese".
During the 1970s, Mao became more friendly with the United States.
In 1972, American president Richard Nixon visited China and met Mao.
Mao died in 1976, and the "Cultural Revolution" ended that year.
Mao 's supporters were jailed, and Deng Xiaoping, who followed Mao, changed Mao 's policies so that Chinese people could have more private ownership.
Some Chinese mainlanders still believe Mao Zedong was a great leader, but they also knew that he did many unwise and bad things.
According to Deng Xiaoping, Mao was "seven parts right and three parts wrong", and his "contributions are primary and his mistakes secondary."
Some people think Mao made China lose its important ally, or friend, the Soviet Union, in the Sino-Soviet Split.
The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were two of the things that Mao did that many people disliked.
Most historians, people who study history, think that about tens of millions of people died because of Mao 's bad ideas and neglect.
That is the biggest number of people to ever die without a war.
Some people disliked Mao because he did not support family planning, and this caused too many babies to be born, making too many people in too small places.
Leaders of China after Mao had to make a new rule called one child policy.
Mao also made several changes to the Chinese language, such as switching from the Wade Giles system of Romanization to Pinyin, which is different.
For this reason, Nanking is now called Nanjing on modern maps.
Taiwan still uses Wade Giles, so its capital is called Taipei instead of the pinyin Taibei.
He also simplified the Chinese characters, in theory it would make them easier to read and write so that more people would be literate.
Mao Zedong disliked Shaoqi because he was afraid that Liu Shaoqi would overthrow him, and take over the CCP.
As in the result, Mao blamed Liu Shaoqi for being a capitalist, and placed him in jail.
As in the result, Liu Shaoqi died in prison from brutal treatments, hunger, and the terrible conditions.
Mao had been in poorer health for several years and had declined visibly for at least six months prior to his death.
There are unconfirmed reports that he possibly had ALS or Lou Gehrig 's disease.
Mao 's last public appearance was on 27 May 1976, where he met the visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto during the latter 's one-day visit to Beijing.
At around 5:00 pm on 2 September 1976, Mao suffered a heart attack, far more severe than his previous two and affecting a much larger area of his heart.
X-rays indicated that his current lung infection had worsened, and his urine output dropped to less than 300 cc a day.
(citation needed) Mao was awake and alert throughout the crisis and asked his team of doctors, several times, whether he was in danger.
His condition kept changing and his life hung in the balance.
Three days later, on 5 September, Mao 's condition was still critical, and Hua Guofeng called Jiang Qing back from her trip.
She spent only a few minutes visiting him in Building 202 (where Mao was staying) before returning to her own residence in the Spring Lotus Chamber.
(citation needed) On the afternoon of 7 September, Mao 's condition took a turn for the worse.
Jiang Qing went to Building 202 where she learned the news.
Mao had just fallen asleep and needed the rest, but she insisted on rubbing his back and moving his limbs, and she sprinkled powder on his body.
The medical team protested that the dust from the powder was not good for his lungs, but she instructed the nurses on duty to follow her example later.
The next morning, September 8, she went again.
She demanded the medical staff to change Mao 's sleeping position, claiming that he had been lying too long on his left side.
(citation needed) The doctor on duty objected, knowing that he could breathe only on his left side, but she had him moved nonetheless.
(citation needed) Mao 's breathing stopped and his face turned blue.
(citation needed) Jiang Qing left the room while the medical staff put him on a respirator and gave him CPR to keep his heart alive.
Mao barely revived and Hua Guofeng urged Jiang Qing not to interfere further with the doctors ' work, as her actions were detrimental to Mao 's health and helped cause his death faster.
(citation needed) Mao 's organs failed quickly and he fell into a coma shortly before noon where he was put on life support machines.
He was taken off life support over 12 hours later quarter to midnight and was pronounced dead at 12:10 am on 9 September 1976.
This was chosen as the day to let Mao die because it was seen as an easy day to remember, being the ninth day of the ninth month of the calendar.
(citation needed)
His body lay in state at the Great Hall of the People.
There was a three-minute silence observed during this service.
His body was later placed into the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, even though he had wished to be cremated and had been one of the first high-ranking officials to sign the "Proposal that all Central Leaders be Cremated after Death" in November 1956.
Mechanical engineering is a branch of engineering that applies the principles of Mechanics and Materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems.
It involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the design, production, and operation of machines and tools.
They can vary from building a rocket ship all the way down to a modern car.
It is one of the oldest and broadest engineering disciplines.
Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov (10 November 1919 23 December 2013) was a Russian designer who is known for designing the AK-47, AKM, and AK-74 assault rifles when he served in the Soviet Army during World War II.
Kalashnikov was born on 10 November 1919 in Kuriya, Altai Krai, Russian SFSR.
He served in World War II and created many weapons and bombs including the AK-47 and a submachine gun.
He was married to Ekaterina Kalashnikova.
They had three children.
He lived in Izhevsk, Udmurtia.
On 17 November, Kalashnikov was hospitalized in an Udmurtian medical hospital for gastric hemorrhage.
He died on the morning of 23 December, 2013 from the illness, aged 94.
Mud is a mixture of soil (sometimes called dirt) and water.
Some animals like worms, frogs, snails, clams, and crayfish live in mud.
Pigs and elephants use it to cool themselves in hot weather.
Some people enjoy making mud pies out of mud.
Mud is a type of soil that is also called "clay soil".
Others include the sandy soil, or sand, and garden soil.
Wet mud has a soft wet texture.
Young children sometimes play in puddles of mud.
Mud is usually brown.
MySQL is a database system used by many websites on the Internet.
It is based off of SQL.
Many ways of doing things in SQL are similar in MySQL.
MySQL was first released in May 1995 and a Windows version was released in January 1998.
The latest version (5.6.11) was released in April 2013.
MySQL is compatible with many major programming languages.
The most common one is PHP.
An ODBC interface (called MyODBC) has been made so that users of Microsoft 's ASP language can use MySQL.
Many PHP scripts also use MySQL.
These include:
Modernism was a cultural movement of the late 19th century to the mid-20th century.
It changed art, literature, music, architecture and drama.
Modernism rejected tradition.
It was interested in new ways of doing old things.
Also, there was a belief that science and technology could change the world for the better.
The details differ greatly, and the term covers some movements which are somewhat contradictory.
Modern art replaced classical art.
It included abstract art, cubism, pop art, minimalism, and Dadaism.
It affected sculpture quite strongly, though at the beginning sculptors like Rodin and Epstein made both traditional and modernist works.
Henry Moore is one of the most famous modernist sculptors.
Typical modernist painters were Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Kandinsky and Mondrian.
Composers such as Stravinsky, George Antheil and Schoenberg are modernists.
Stravinsky 's The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) is a landmark work.
Ballets such as The Rite of Spring and Les Noces (The Wedding) mark the arrival of modernism into this traditional dance form.
Modern dance outside of ballet started with Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller and Ruth St. Denis.
James Joyce 's Ulysses is the classic example of modernism in the novel.
Ulysses (1922) has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire Modernist movement".
Franz Kafka 's The Metamorphosis (1915), The Trial (1925) and T.S. Eliot 's poem The Waste Land (1922) are also prime examples.
Looking back, it is clear that: Fyodor Dostoyevsky 's Crime and Punishment (1866) had a great influence on other writers.
The arrival of magic realism is part of modernism.
The novels and short stories of Mikhail Bulgakov such as Diabolidad and The Master and Margarita are examples.
Modernism in architecture is found in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe.
Le Corbusier 's famous remark "A building is a machine for living in" shows how different his thinking was to architects of the 19th century.
The skyscraper, such as Mies van der Rohe 's Seagram Building in New York (1956 1958), became the archetypal modernist building.
A criticism of the modern movement is that it does not value tradition, and goes in for change for the sake of change.
What modernists want most is freedom of expression, or, perhaps, freedom of experimentation.
This is why many modern paintings avoid making visual copies of real things.
In modernist literature, an author may leave out plots or narrative or characterization in books.
These experiments were not random.
They drew on the ideas of their day: mass media, science and technology, Marxism, Freudian psychology, and so on.
There was a general search for new materials, new methods and new ideas.
There was often a rejection of elitism, and a love of populism and popular culture.
Another criticism was of the connection between modernism and socialism.
Certainly many modernists were also socialists.
In the early days of socialism it seemed to offer hope of a new future without the baggage of the past.
This also explains their rejection of tradition.
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC (July 21, 1911 December 31, 1980) was a Canadian Professor of English literature who turned his attention to media.
He was interested in the ways different media affected society.
His work was a cornerstone of media studies, and had some practical applications in the advertising and television industries.
His best-known work was Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
McLuhan is known for coining the expressions the medium is the message and the global village.
Although he was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, his influence began to wane in the early 1970s.
In the years after his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles.
With the arrival of the internet, however, there was renewed interest in his work and perspective.
McLuhan 's The Gutenberg Galaxy: the making of typographic man (1962) was a history of print, and its effect on society.
"If a new technology extends one or more of our senses outside us into the social world, then new ratios among all of our senses will occur in that particular culture.
It is comparable to what happens when a new note is added to a melody.
And when the sense ratios alter in any culture then what had appeared lucid before may suddenly become opaque, and what had been vague or opaque will become translucent".
p41
Understanding Media: the extensions of Man was a pioneering study of the effects of media.
The book suggests that media affect their content in important ways.
It is an attempt to understand how different media have affected society.
McLuhan suggests that media play a role, not by the content delivered, but by the characteristics of the medium itself.
McLuhan pointed to the light bulb as an example.
A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, but it is a medium that has a social effect.
The light bulb lets people do things at nighttime which would be impossible in darkness.
He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content.
McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence".
He then goes on to compare the effects of radio, television and film (movis).
The book is the source of the well-known phrase "The medium is the message".
This is the idea that a medium like television actually affects the way information is seen and understood.
The Medium is the Massage: an inventory of effects (1967) was a spin-off from his previous book.
It was compiled by Quentin Fiore from writings of McLuhan with many photos and graphics selected by the compiler.
The text is based on published McLuhan works, but the sources are not listed.
It was a huge best-seller.
"eventually selling nearly a million copies worldwide".
Media studies is an academic area of study about mass media and its history and effects.
It mostly focuses on newspapers, radio, television, and internet.
Media studies take some ideas from other areas of study, such as humanities and the social sciences.
Most production and journalism courses use media studies content, but academic institutions such as universities often start separate departments.
Media studies students may see themselves as observers of media, not creators or practitioners.
These distinctions are different depending on the country where students live.
The development of media studies was sparked by the growth of new media in the post-Second World War period.
A typical source was Marshall McLuhan 's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
This bood set out to connect changes in media with changes in society.
His most famor phrase was "The medium is the message".
A molecule is the smallest amount of a chemical substance that can exist.
If a molecule were split into smaller pieces, it would be a different substance.
Molecules are made up of atoms that are stuck together in a particular shape or form.
Not all combinations of atoms are usually possible; atoms like certain shapes, but not others.
Also, they like certain arrangements of atoms.
For example, oxygen atoms always have two bonds with other atoms, carbon atoms always have four bonds with other atoms, and nitrogen atoms always have three bonds with other atoms.
In gases like air, the molecules are just flying around.
In liquids like water, the molecules are stuck together but they can still move.
In solids like sugar, the molecules can only vibrate.
There is also another state of matter known as plasma where the molecules fly around crazier and faster than those in a gas.
With a molecular formula, you can write down the numbers of all atoms in a molecule.
For example, the molecular formula of glucose is C6H12O6.
That means that one molecule of glucose is made up of six carbon atoms, twelve hydrogen atoms and six oxygen atoms.
For a molecule to exist, atoms have to stick together.
This happens when two atoms share electrons.
Instead of circling just one atom, the electron now circles around two.
This is called bonding.
The shared electrons are called ` bonds '.
Sometimes, more than one electron is shared.
The more electrons are shared, the stronger the bond gets and the stronger the atoms stick together.
Bonds can also be broken apart.
Since most bonds require energy to form, they also give off energy when they are broken.
But before most bonds break, the molecule has to be heated.
Then the atoms start to move, and when they move too much, the bond breaks.
Molecules that require less energy to break than they give off when broken are called fuels.
For example, a candle will just sit there and nothing happens.
But when you use a match to light it, it will burn for a long time.
The match brings the energy to break the first bonds, which release enough energy to break the bonds below them, until the candle has burned down.
Mechanics is a branch of physics which looks at objects that are moved by forces (including other bodies, or forces of nature).
The discipline has its roots in ancient Greece where Aristotle studied the way bodies behaved when they were thrown through the air (e.g. a stone).
However it was Galileo, Kepler and especially Newton who laid the foundations for much of the so-called Newtonian mechanics we know today.
A person working in the discipline is known as a mechanician.
Mechanics is the original discipline of physics, dealing with the macroscopic world that humans perceive.
It is therefore a huge body of knowledge about the natural world.
Mechanics encompasses the movement of all matter in the universe under the four forces: gravity, the strong and weak interactions, and the electromagnetic interaction.
Mechanics also constitutes a central part of technology.
Newton proposed three laws of newton.
The Mandelbrot set is a famous example of a fractal in mathematics.
It is named after Beno t Mandelbrot, a Polish-French-American mathematician.
The Mandelbrot set is important for the chaos theory.
The edging of the set shows a self-similarity, which is not perfect because it has deformations.
The Mandelbrot set can be explained with the equation z ` n +1 = z ` n2 + c. In that equation, c and z are complex numbers and n is zero or a positive integer (natural number).
Starting with z0 = 0, c is in the Mandelbrot set if the absolute value of z ` n never becomes larger than a certain number (that number depends on c), no matter how large n gets.
Mandelbrot was one of the first to use computer graphics to create and display fractal geometric images, leading to his discovering the Mandelbrot set in 1979.
That was because he had access to IBM 's computers.
He was able to show how visual complexity can be created from simple rules.
He said that things typically considered to be "rough", a "mess" or "chaotic", like clouds or shorelines, actually had a "degree of order".
The equation z ` n +1 = z ` n2 + c was known long before Benoit Mandelbrot used a computer to visualize it.
Images are created by applying the equation to each pixel in an iterative process, using the pixel 's position in the image for the number ` c '.
` c ' is obtained by mapping the position of the pixel in the image relative to the position of the point on the complex plane.
The shape of the Mandelbrot Set is represented in black in the image on this page.
For example, if c = 1 then the sequence is 0, 1, 2, 5, 26,, which goes to infinity.
Therefore, 1 is not an element of the Mandelbrot set, and thus is not colored black.
On the other hand, if c is equal to the square root of -1, also known as i, then the sequence is 0, i, (1 + i), i, (1 + i), i, which does not go to infinity and so it belongs to the Mandelbrot set.
When graphed to show the entire Set, the resultant image is striking, pretty, and quite recognizable.
There are many variations of the Mandelbrot set, such as Multibrot, Buddhabrot, and Nebulabrot.
Multibrot is a generalization that allows any exponent: z ` n +1 = z 'n' d + c. These sets are called Multibrot sets.
The Multibrot set for d = 2 is the Mandelbrot set.
Michael Kenneth Mann (born February 5, 1943) is an American movie director, screenwriter, and movie producer.
He is known for his works in Manhunter, Ali, Collateral, Hancock, and in Public Enemies.
He won an Emmy Award in 1979.
Mann was born on February 5, 1943 in Chicago, Illinois.
He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Mann has been married to Summer Mann since 1974.
They have four children.
A microscope is a scientific instrument.
It makes things normally too small to be seen look larger.
This way they can be seen better and examined correctly.
People who use microscopes commonly in their jobs include doctors and scientists.
Microscopes are commonly used in schools to help students in science classes such as biology or chemistry.
The earliest microscopes had only one lens and are called simple microscopes.
Compound microscopes have at least two lenses.
In a compound microscope, the lens closer to the eye is called the eyepiece.
The lens at the other end is called the objective.
Microscopes make things seem larger than they are, to about 1000 times larger.
This is much stronger than any magnifying glass.
There are many different types of microscopes.
The most common are compound light microscopes and electron microscopes.
In a compound light microscope, the object is illuminated: light is thrown on it.
The image formed by the object is looked at.
Light passes through two lenses and makes the image bigger.
Electron microscopes come in different types.
Transmission electron microscopes (TEMs) fire electrons into the object being looked at.
This carries information about how the object looks into a magnetic "lens".
The image is then magnified onto a television screen.
Scanning electron microscopes also fire electrons at the object, but in a single beam.
These lose their power when they strike the object, and the loss of power results in something else being generated usually an X-ray.
This is sensed and magnified onto a screen.
Missouri is one of the 50 states in the United States.
Its capital is Jefferson City.
Its largest cities are Kansas City and Saint Louis.
Some other cities are Columbia (which is where the University of Missouri is), and Springfield.
Missouri officially became a state on August 10, 1821.
Missouri 's edges touch a total of eight states.
It is touched on the north by Iowa; on the east, across the Mississippi River, by Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee; on the south by Arkansas; and on the west by Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska (Kansas and Nebraska are across the Missouri River).
Moses (; in both the Septuagint and the New Testament;, M sa) is a person in Abrahamic religions.
He was a religious leader, lawgiver, and prophet according to the Hebrew Bible.
Generally, he is also seen as the author of the Torah.
He is often called Moshe Rabbenu in Hebrew (, Lit.
"Moses our Teacher\/Rabbi") and seen as the most important prophet in Judaism.
Christianity, Islam, the Bah ' Faith, and the Rastafari, also see him as an important prophet.
Moses has also been an important symbol in American history, from the first settlers up until the present.
According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was born in a time when his people were increasing in number and the Egyptian Pharaoh was worried that they might help Egypt 's enemies.
Moses ' Hebrew mother, Jochebed, hid him when the Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed, and he ended up being adopted into the Egyptian royal family.
After killing an Egyptian slave-master, Moses fled across the Red Sea to Midian where he tended the flocks of Jethro, a priest of Midian on the slopes of Mt. Horeb.
After the Ten Plagues were unleashed on Egypt, Moses led the Hebrew people out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, where they based themselves at Horeb and compassed the borders of Edom.
It was at this time that Moses received the Ten Commandments.
Despite living to the age of 120, Moses died before reaching the Land of Israel.
Moses was born of the Levi tribe.
The new Pharaoh, afraid of the ever-growing Israelite population, ordered every new-born Hebrew boy to be thrown into the Nile River, but let every girl live.
Moses ' mother Jochebed gave birth and kept him hidden for three months from Pharaoh 's soldiers.
When she could no longer keep him hidden, she fashioned a basket lined with tar and pitch, and placed him in the reeds along the riverbank, while his sister Miriam kept watch from a distance.
A princess, one of pharaoh 's daughters went down to the Nile to bathe.
There she discovered a crying baby and noticed he was a Hebrew child.
Joining the attendants, Moses ' sister offered to find a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby for the princess, who agreed.
Bringing Moses ' real mother, the princess asked her to be the baby 's wet nurse, for which she was paid.
When the child grew older, she took him to pharaoh 's daughter, who named him Moses, saying, "I drew him out of the water."
Moses grew up a privileged member of the court.
He was well educated academically and physically.
He taught hand-to-hand combat tactics and leadership.
Moses fled to Midian, where he married Jethro 's daughter, Zipora.
Zipora had two sons.
The old Pharaoh died and the israelites cried loudly.
God heard him.
One day Moses was tending his father-in-law, Jethro 's, sheep and came to Mount Horeb.
God 's angel made a bush burn with fire, but it did not burn up.
When he came nearer, God spoke to him and ordered him to remove his shoes as he was on holy land.
God commanded him to be a leader for the Israelites and bring them out of Egypt.
At first Moses did not want to do it and said that he was not good with words, but God commanded him and gave Aaron, his brother, to speak for him.
Moses return to Egypt and told the elders what happened.
Moses then went to the Pharaoh and asked him to let the Israelites go.
However the Pharaoh did not agree.
Finally God inflicted ten plagues upon the Egyptians before Pharaoh agreed to release the Israelites.
The last plague was the killing of all first-born, both human and animals.
However, to save the Israelites, they were instructed to mark their doors with blood from a lamb, so that the avenging angel would see it and know to "pass over" that house.
The Pharaoh finally decided to let the Israelites go who then migrated in large numbers from Egypt.
The Pharaoh later changed his mind and followed Moses and his people with an army to attack them.
But Moses made the Red Sea to part and give way for Israelites to pass.
The Israelites were safe but the Pharaoh 's army was destroyed.
Moses led the Israelites through the wilderness, and God gave them manna and quails to eat, and water from rocks to drink.
He also caused the Amalekites to lose in a battle.
When Moses came to Mount Sinai, he went up to receive the Ten Commandments and other laws from God.
The Ten Commandments were written by God on two tablets.
God also told him the instructions of the priests ' duties.
Moses was up the mountain for forty days and forty nights.
When the people waited for Moses and did not find him, they made Aaron, his brother, make a calf out of gold and worshiped it.
God warned Moses about it, and when Moses came down and saw what they did, he was so angry that the tablets fell and they smashed into pieces.
The people of Levi tribes are commanded to kill people who worshiped the calf.
Later on Moses asked God to forgive the people.
God wrote for Moses two more tablets, and put them in the Ark..
Moses also asked craftsmen to make the Tabernacle as God wanted.
Moses is founder of basis of the philosophy of law as well as such modern legal doctrines as independent judiciary and separation of powers.).
While the Israelites were wandering around the wilderness, Moses was the one whom God spoke to.
However, the people kept complaining about the hardships.
God instructed Moses to send twelve spies to scout the land God is giving to them; however some of them became afraid because the people living there looked stronger and more powerful than they.
They told the others not to go there.
Only Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh reported the truth as God wanted.
God decided because of this that the Israelites would wander forty years in the wilderness, and every one except Joshua and Caleb from that generation would die without seeing the promised land.
God gave many laws to the Israelites through Moses.
Moses made Joshua take over him before he died.
Moses died before he reached Canaan, the land God was leading his people to.
He was 120 years old when he died.
Today Jews around the world follow the laws of the Ten Commandments and the Torah that God gave to them through Moses.
He is also believed to be a prophet by Muslims.
The Bible, the Torah, and the Quran have references to a person called Moses in them.
The name they give to the person, varies.
Other people also have written about Moses.
These include Tacitus and Strabo.
It is not known how much these descriptions have taken from earlier sources, which may now have been lost.
An existing earlier source is the Ipuwer Papyrus, which records the events of the Ten Plagues.
No other written records from countries such as Egypt or Assyria have been found, that are from before about 850 BCE and that tell about the stories of the Bible or its main characters.
There is no known physical evidence (such as pottery shards or stone tablets) to say that Moses ' really existed.
Pharaohs have ordered the destruction of records that put them into a bad light.
Several cartouches from monuments have also been destroyed in different epochs of Ancient Egyptian history.
It looks like the story written about Moses in the Bible has two different sources.
There were two groups of people who told the story.
The two stories were passed on separately.
Only later were they combined into the version that can now be found in the Bible.
Passing on the stories from one generation to the next has perhaps also introduced inaccuracies.
Some people added things to the story when they told it.
They also omitted other things.
According to the Torah, Moses ordered the death penalty for many offences.
He also had defeated enemies killed.
Jews, Christians and Muslims consider him to be a holy figure.
For this reason, criticism of these passages of the Hebrew Bible has been left to others.
In the late eighteenth century, for example, the deist Thomas Paine commented at length on Moses ' Laws in The Age of Reason.
Paine also gave his view that "the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined", giving the story at as an example.
In the nineteenth century the agnostic Robert G. Ingersoll wrote"... that all the ignorant, infamous, heartless, hideous things recorded in the ` inspired ' Pentateuch are not the words of God, but simply ` Some Mistakes of Moses '".
In the 2000s, the atheist Richard Dawkins referring to the same passage like Paine, concluded, "No, Moses was not a great role model for modern moralists."
The Mississippi River is a river in the United States.
It is one of the longest rivers in the world.
its Largest City is Memphis, Tennessee.
The name "Mississippi" comes from a Native American name that means "big river."
The source of the Mississippi is Lake Itasca in Minnesota, near the border with Canada.
The Mississippi flows south through the middle of the United States.
It flows through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
The mouth of the Mississippi is in the state of Louisiana, south of the city of New Orleans.
The Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico.
At the end of the Mississippi there is a zone in the Gulf of Mexico where very few animals can survive comfortably because of the fertilizer and other chemicals that run off of farms into the river and its tributaries.
The rivers then carry them into the gulf.
The Mississippi has been very important for transportation in the history of the United States.
In the 1800s, many steamboats traveled on the Mississippi River.
St. Louis, Missouri, Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans were important port cities.
The Mississippi has many large tributaries, or rivers that flow into it.
The watershed of the Mississippi covers much of the United States.
This means that the Mississippi and its tributaries drain much of the United States.
A big part of the book Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is set on the Mississippi River.
Twain also wrote a book called Life on the Mississippi, which had some stories about how he used to work on a steamboat.
A monomer is a single atom or molecule which is able to join with other monomers to make new substances called polymers.
The words come from the Greek language where mono means "one", poly means "many", and meros means "a part".
A feature of monomers is that they have two carbon atoms which are joined, called a carbon double bond.
The double bond allows the monomer to make the long chains of polymers.
There are thousands of different monomers.
Examples of monomers include monosaccharide which is simple sugar, glycerol, amino acid and nucleotide.
The most made monomer is ethylene
Minnesota is a state in the Upper Midwest of the United States of America.
Part of the state has a border with the country of Canada.
The capital of Minnesota is Saint Paul.
The largest city is Minneapolis.
Over 3 million people live in the two cities and the suburbs that surround it, which are separated by the Mississippi River.
They are known as the Twin Cities.
Minnesota became a state on May 11, 1858.
It was the 32nd state in the United States of America.
The name Minnesota is Dakota (a Native American language) for "sky-tinted water".
Eagle Mountain is the highest point in Minnesota.
The state bird is the Common Loon.
Minnesota has a humid continental climate.
The winters in Minnesota are long and severe.
Hence the state has a short growing season.
During the summer, the south of the state is hot; the north is warm.
The Missouri River is a river in the western United States.
It is a tributary of the Mississippi River.
It is longer than the Mississippi River.
It is, in fact, the longest river in North America.
For most of its course, the Missouri flows across the Great Plains, one of the driest parts of North America.
The source of the Missouri River is in the Rocky Mountains, in the state of Montana.
The Missouri flows eastward, across Montana, south of the border with Canada.
It enters the state of North Dakota and then it turns south.
It flows through South Dakota.
Then it flows past Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas.
Near the city of Kansas City, Missouri, the Missouri turns eastward into the state of Missouri.
It flows eastward across the state of Missouri.
It joins the Mississippi just north of the city of Saint Louis, Missouri.
The Missouri has many important tributaries, including the Yellowstone River, the Platte River, and the Kansas River.
The Missouri was very important for the Native Americans who lived on the Great Plains.
It was also very important in the history of the United States.
The Missouri was used as the route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804-1806.
In the 19th century, the Missouri was very important in the North American fur trade and for transportation of army troops and supplies as well as general transportation and trade as the West was settled.
The nickname of the Missouri is "Big Muddy", because it has a lot of silt.
In general, missile may refer to anything thrown or launched object at a target like a javelin or darts.
Nowadays, it means, mostly, a self-propelled guided weapon system.
Missiles are used in war to destroy military targets.
Missiles can carry explosives or other destructive loads.
The loads a missile may carry are called a "payload".
This payload is not always harmful to people: for example in the 1991 Gulf War, missiles threw reels of wire at electric power stations, causing the power to go out.
The two main kinds of missiles are simple "rockets" and "guided missiles".
A rocket is no longer controlled once it has been launched.
Most guided missile are also propelled by a rocket engine but can be controlled after it has been launched.
Some missiles used in anti-aircraft warfare, such as the AIM-9 Sidewinder, guide themselves with temperature.
Others guide themselves by radar or are under radio control.
The V-1 flying bomb was an early cruise missile, a little airplane with a bomb, propelled by a jet engine instead of a rocket.
Mendelian inheritance is a set of rules about genetic inheritance.
The basic rules of genetics were first discovered by a monk named Gregor Mendel in the 1850s, and published in 1866.
For thousands of years, people had noticed how traits are inherited from parents to their children.
However, Mendel 's work was different because he did experiments on plants, and designed those experiments very carefully.
In his experiments, Mendel studied how traits were passed on in pea plants.
He started his crosses with plants that bred true, and counted characters that were either\/or in nature (either tall or short).
He bred large numbers of plants, and expressed his results numerically.
He used test crosses to reveal the presence and proportion of recessive characters.
Mendel 's laws apply widely, but not to all living things.
They apply to any organism which is diploid (has two paired sets of chromosomes) and which engages in sexual reproduction.
They would not apply to bacteria, for example, or to asexual reproduction.
They do apply to the great majority of plants and animals.
Mendel 's laws explained the results he got with his pea plants.
Later, geneticists discovered that his laws were also true for other living things, even humans.
Mendel 's findings from his work on the garden pea plants helped to establish the field of genetics.
His contributions were not limited to the basic rules that he discovered.
Mendel 's care towards controlling experiment conditions along with his attention to his numerical results set a standard for future experiments.
Machinima (or) is a type of animation and digital moviemaking style.
It is the use of 3D computer graphics with a 3D video game or computer game to create the 3D animation.
The creator who is making the video will record in-game animation and edit it with voice recordings.
Machinima can be script-driven, meaning the cameras, characters, and effects are scripted for playback in real time.
Unlike other types of animation, the scripting is driven by events and not keyframes.
Machinima limits the controls of other animation types.
This is according to Machinima.org.
For example, Machinima videos can be shot live or scripted in real time.
So it becomes much faster to produce than traditionally animated movies.
Machinima productions can remain close to their gaming roots and feature stunts or other portrayals of gameplay.
Popular genres include dance videos, comedy, and drama.
Alternatively, some filmmakers attempt to stretch the boundaries of the rendering engines or to mask the original 3-D context.
The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences (AMAS), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting machinima, recognizes exemplary productions through Mackie awards given at its annual Machinima Film Festival.
Some general film festivals accept machinima, and game companies, such as Epic Games, Blizzard Entertainment and Jagex, have sponsored contests involving it.
The AMAS defines machinima as "animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3-D environment".
In other 3-D animation methods, creators can control every frame and nuance of their characters but, in turn, must consider issues such as key frames and in-betweening.
Machinima creators leave many rendering details to their host environments, but may thus inherit those environments ' limitations.
Because game animations focus on dramatic rather than casual actions, the range of character emotions is often limited.
However, Kelland, Morris, and Lloyd state that a small range of emotions is often sufficient, as in successful Japanese anime television series.
Another difference is that machinima is created in real time, but other animation is pre-rendered.
Real-time engines need to trade quality for speed and use simpler algorithms and models.
In the 2001 animated film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, every strand of hair on a character 's head was independent; real-time needs would likely force them to be treated as a single unit.
Kelland, Morris, and Lloyd argue that improvement in consumer-grade graphics technology will allow more realism; For cut scenes in video games, issues other than visual fidelity arise.
Pre-rendered scenes can require more digital storage space, weaken suspension of disbelief through contrast with real-time animation of normal gameplay, and limit interaction.
Like live action, machinima is recorded in real-time, and real people can act and control the camera.
Filmmakers are often encouraged to follow traditional cinematic conventions, such as avoiding wide fields of view, the overuse of slow motion, and errors in visual continuity.
Unlike live action, machinima involves less expensive, digital special effects and sets, possibly with a science-fiction or historical theme.
Explosions and stunts can be tried and repeated without monetary cost and risk of injury, and the host environment may allow unrealistic physical constraints.
University of Cambridge experiments in 2002 and 2003 attempted to use machinima to re-create a scene from the 1942 live-action film Casablanca.
Machinima filming differed from traditional cinematography in that character expression was limited, but camera movements were more flexible and improvised.
Nitsche compared this experiment to an unpredictable Dogme 95 production.
Berkeley sees machinima as "a strangely hybrid form, looking forwards and backwards, cutting edge and conservative at the same time".
Machinima is a digital medium based on 3-D computer games, but most works have a linear narrative structure.
Some, such as Red vs. Blue and The Strangerhood, follow narrative conventions of television situational comedy.
Nitsche agrees that pre-recorded ("reel") machinima tends to be linear and offers limited interactive storytelling; he sees more opportunities in machinima performed live and with audience interaction.
In creating their improvisational comedy series On the Campaign Trail with Larry & Lenny Lumberjack and talk show Tra5hTa1k with ILL Will, the ILL Clan blended real and virtual performance by creating the works on-stage and interacting with a live audience.
In another combination of real and virtual worlds, Chris Burke 's talk show This Spartan Life takes place in Halo 2s open multiplayer environment.
There, others playing in earnest may attack the host or his interviewee.
Although other virtual theatrical performances have taken place in chat rooms and multi-user dungeons, machinima adds "cinematic camera work".
Previously, such virtual cinematic performances with live audience interaction were confined to research labs which had powerful computers.
Machinima can be less expensive than other forms of filmmaking.
Strange Company produced its feature-length machinima film BloodSpell for less than 10,000.
Before using machinima, Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum of Rooster Teeth Productions spent US$ 9,000 to produce a live-action independent film; in contrast, the four Xbox game consoles used to make Red vs. Blue in 2005 cost $ 600.
The low cost caused a product manager for Electronic Arts to compare machinima to the low-budget independent film The Blair Witch Project, without the need for cameras and actors.
Because these are seen as low barriers to entry, machinima has been called a "democratization of filmmaking".
Berkeley weighs increased participation and a blurred line between producer and consumer against concerns that game copyrights limit commercialization and growth of machinima.
Comparatively, machinimists using pre-made virtual platforms like Second Life have indicated that their productions can be made quite successfully with no cost at all.
Creators like Dutch director Chantal Harvey, producer of the 48 Hour Film Project Machinima sector, have created upwards of 200 films using the platform.
Harvey 's advocacy of the genre has resulted in the involvement of film director Peter Greenaway who served as a juror for the Machinima category and gave a keynote speech during the event.
Kelland, Morris, and Lloyd list four main methods of creating machinima.
From simple to advanced, these are: relying on the game 's AI to control most actions, digital puppetry, recamming, and precise scripting of actions.
Although simple to produce, AI-dependent results are unpredictable, thus complicating the realization of a preconceived film script.
For example, when Rooster Teeth produced The Strangerhood using The Sims 2, a game that encourages the use of its AI, the group had to create multiple instances of each character to accommodate different moods.
Individual instances were selected at different times to produce appropriate actions.
In digital puppetry, machinima creators become virtual actors; each crew member controls a character in real-time, as in a multiplayer game.
The director can use built-in camera controls, if available.
Otherwise, video is captured from the perspectives of one or more puppeteers who serve as camera operators.
Puppetry allows for improvisation and offers controls familiar to gamers, but requires more personnel than the other methods and is less precise than scripted recordings.
However, some games, such as the Halo series, (except for Halo PC and Custom Edition, which allow AI and custom objects and characters), allow filming only through puppetry.
According to Marino, other disadvantages are the possibility of disruption when filming in an open multi-user environment and the temptation for puppeteers to play the game in earnest, littering the set with blood and dead bodies.
However, Chris Burke intentionally hosts This Spartan Life in these unpredictable conditions, which are fundamental to the show.
Other works filmed using puppetry are the ILL Clan 's improvisational comedy series On the Campaign Trail with Larry & Lenny Lumberjack and Rooster Teeth Productions ' Red vs. Blue.
In recamming, which builds on puppetry, actions are first recorded to a game engine 's demo file format, not directly as video frames.
Without re-enacting scenes, artists can then manipulate the demo files to add cameras, tweak timing and lighting, and change the surroundings.
This technique is limited to the few engines and software tools that support it.
A technique common in cut scenes of video games, scripting consists of giving precise directions to the game engine.
A filmmaker can work alone this way, as J. Thaddeus "Mindcrime" Skubis did in creating the nearly four-hour The Seal of Nehahra (2000), the longest work of machinima at the time.
However, perfecting scripts can be time-consuming.
Unless what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editing is available, as in Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption, changes may need to be verified in additional runs, and non-linear editing may be difficult.
In this respect, Kelland, Morris, and Lloyd compare scripting to stop-motion animation.
Another disadvantage is that, depending on the game, scripting capabilities may be limited or unavailable.
Matinee, a machinima software tool included with Unreal Tournament 2004, popularized scripting in machinima.
When Diary of a Camper was created, no software tools existed to edit demo files into films.
Rangers clan member Eric "ArchV" Fowler wrote his own programs to reposition the camera and to splice footage from the Quake demo file.
Quake movie editing software later appeared, but the use of conventional non-linear video editing software is now common.
For example, Phil South inserted single, completely white frames into his work No Licence to enhance the visual impact of explosions.
In the post-production of Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, Rooster Teeth Productions added letterboxing with Adobe Premiere Pro to hide the camera player 's head-up display.
Machinima creators have used different methods to handle limited character expression.
In the Halo video game series, helmets completely cover the characters ' faces.
To prevent confusion, Rooster Teeth 's characters move slightly when speaking, a convention shared with anime.
Some machinima creators use custom software.
For example, Strange Company uses Take Over GL Face Skins to add more facial expressions to their characters filmed in BioWare 's 2002 role-playing video game Neverwinter Nights.
Similarly, Atussa Simon used a "library of faces" for characters in The Battle of Xerxes.
In some cases, some game companies may provide such software; examples include Epic Games ' Impersonator for Unreal Tournament 2004 and Valve Corporation 's FacePoser for Half-Life 2.
Another solution is to blend in non-machinima elements, as nGame did by inserting painted characters with more expressive faces into its 1999 film Berlin Assassins.
It may be possible to point the camera elsewhere or employ other creative cinematography or acting.
For example, Tristan Pope combined creative character and camera positioning with video editing to suggest sexual actions in his controversial film Not Just Another Love Story.
Sir Mackenzie Bowell, PC, KCMG (27 December 1823 10 December 1917) was the fifth Prime Minister of Canada from 21 December 1894 to 27 April 1896.
Bowell was born in Rickinghall, Suffolk, England to John Bowell and Elizabeth Marshall.
In 1832 his family moved to Belleville, Ontario.
He started work helping the printer at the town newspaper, The Intelligencer.
He became printer and editor with that newspaper, and later its owner.
He was a Freemason and an Orangeman, becoming Grandmaster of the Orange Order of British North America, 1870 1878.
In 1847 he married Harriet Moore (1829 1884).
He had four sons and five daughters.
Bowell was elected to the House of Commons in 1867, as a Conservative, for North Hastings, Ontario.
In 1878 he became Minister of Customs.
In 1892 he became Minister of Militia and Defense.
He was a skilled and hardworking administrator.
He later became Minister of Trade and Commerce.
He was elected to the Senate.
His visit to Australia in 1893 led to the first meeting of British colonies and territories.
It was held in Ottawa in 1894.
He became Leader of the Government in the Senate on October 31 1893.
In December 1894 the Prime Minister Sir John Thompson died suddenly.
Bowell was the most senior Cabinet minister and was appointed Prime Minister by the Governor General.
Bowell was the second of two Canadian Prime Ministers to serve in the Senate rather than the House of Commons.
(The first was John Abbott.)
As Prime Minister, Bowell faced the difficult Manitoba Schools Question.
In 1890 Manitoba stopped giving money to Catholic schools.
This was the opposite of an earlier law called in the Manitoba Act of 1870.
Bowell other political leaders could not solve the problem.
It had divided the country, the government, and even Bowell 's own Cabinet.
He could not make up his own mind on how to fix the problem.
As a Senator he could not speak in the arguments in the House of Commons.
Bowell supported a law that would have forced Manitoba to restore funding the Catholic schools.
His Cabinet did not agree.
Normal government activities stopped.
His Cabinet decided he did not have the ability to be Prime Minister and he was forced to resign.
Seven government ministers resigned and stopped new people from being appointed.
Bowell called them "a nest of traitors".
After ten days, the Governor General stepped in and the problem was solved.
Six of the ministers went back to their jobs.
Charles Tupper was the person who was seen as the real leader.
Tupper had been Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
He had been asked to come back and taker over from Bowell.
Bowell resigned at the end of the parliamentary session.
Bowell was the Conservative leader until 1906.
He stayed in the Senate until his death.
He died of pneumonia in Bellville, just before he turned 94.
He was buried in the Belleville Cemetery.
His funeral was attended by a full group of the Orange Order.
Bowell 's descendants live in Hertfordshire, England.
The Manhattan Project was the program based in the United States which tried to make the first nuclear weapons.
The project went on during World War II, and was run by the U.S. Army.
The head of the project was General Leslie R. Groves, who had led the building of the Pentagon.
The top scientist on the project was Robert Oppenheimer, a famous physicist.
The project cost $ 2 billion, and created many secret cities and bomb-making factories, such as a laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a nuclear reactor in Hanford, Washington, and a uranium processing plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
The Manhattan Project had to find solutions to two difficulties.
The first difficulty is how to make the special isotopes of uranium or plutonium.
This process is called separation and is very slow.
The United States built very big buildings with machines for separation.
They made enough fissionable special isotopes for a few nuclear weapons.
The second difficulty was how to make a bomb that will produce a big nuclear explosion every time.
A weapon with a broken design will often make a much smaller nuclear explosion.
This is called a "fizzle".
In July 1945, the Manhattan Project solved the two difficulties and made the first nuclear explosion.
This test of a nuclear weapon was called "Trinity" and was a success.
The Manhattan Project created two nuclear bombs which they used against Japan in 1945.
The Manhattan Project operated under a blanket of tight security.
This was to prevent the Axis countries, especially Nazi Germany, from accelerating their own nuclear projects or undertaking covert operations against the project.
The possibility of sabotage was always present.
At times, people suspected sabotage when equipment failed.
While there were some problems believed to be the result of careless or disgruntled employees, there were no confirmed instances of Axis-instigated sabotage.
However, on 10 March 1945, a Japanese fire balloon struck a power line, and the resulting power surge caused the three reactors at Hanford to be temporarily shut down.
Maintaining security was difficult because so many people worked on the project.
A special Counter Intelligence Corps detachment handled the project 's security issues.
By 1943, it was clear that the Soviet Union was trying to penetrate the project.
Lieutenant Colonel Boris T. Pash, the head of the Counter Intelligence Branch of the Western Defense Command, investigated suspected Soviet espionage at the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley.
Oppenheimer informed Pash that he had been approached by a fellow professor at Berkeley, Haakon Chevalier, about passing information to the Soviet Union.
The most successful Soviet spy was Klaus Fuchs.
Fuchs was member of the British Mission who played an important part at Los Alamos.
The 1950 revelation of Fuchs ' espionage activities damaged the United States ' nuclear cooperation with Britain and Canada.
Subsequently, other instances of espionage were uncovered, leading to the arrest of Harry Gold, David Greenglass and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
Other spies like George Koval remained unknown for decades.
People will never know the value of the espionage.
One reason was that the Soviet atomic bomb project was held back by a shortage of uranium ore..
The consensus is that espionage saved the Soviets one or two years of effort.
The main sequence is a region on a Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram where most stars appear.
Any star that is plotted within that area is a main-sequence star.
The Sun is a main-sequence star.
Most of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy and most other galaxies are also main-sequence stars.
Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams are graphs that measure each star 's brightness against its temperature or color.
The main sequence appears as a band going from the upper-left (hot and bright) to the lower-right (cooler and less bright).
You can see an example of the band of main-sequence stars to the right.
Stars are created from nebula and first appear on the main sequence.
They stay on the main sequence for millions or billions of years.
When a star begins to run out of fuel, it gets much bigger and colder and turns into a red giant.
After this happens, the star is no longer on the main sequence.
In general, the hottest and brightest stars (in the upper-left of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram) also have the most mass..
The main sequence is sometimes divided into two parts.
Any star that has a mass greater than 1.5 times the Sun 's mass is grouped into the upper main sequence; any star with a mass lower than 1.5 solar masses belongs to the lower main sequence.
Stars get the energy they produce through nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium.
The upper main sequence (hot and bright with the most mass) produces energy by one type of nuclear fusion involving only hydrogen and helium.
The lower main sequence (cooler and less bright with a lower mass) produces energy by another type of nuclear fusion.
This type uses other elements (for example, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen) with higher atomic numbers as nuclear catalysts.
Because of these different types of fusion, stars on the lower main sequence last much longer than stars on the upper main sequence.
Our Sun is located on the lower main sequence and is predicted to last between 10 and 12 billion years.
A star located on the upper main sequence may only last a few million years.
Nowadays, a new star may be classified as main sequence strictly by its color.
A main sequence star of a particular color would have a narrow band of brightness when seen from a standard distance.
An astronomer could compute the distance to this newly-discovered star by comparing its brightness as seen from Earth against the brightness for a certain color on the main sequence.
When a program gets executed, it uses memory.
In some cases, a poorely-written program may incorrectly manage the memory that has been given to it.
As a consequence, the memory that was actually supposed to be reused after the program has finished its job can not be accessed again.
This is known as a memory leak.
One of the most common reasons for memory leaks is the program not giving its memory back after it has finished execution.
Memory leaks may result in several issues such as degradation of performance and systems being unresponsive.
In chemistry, a molecular orbital (or MO) explains what happens to electrons when atoms join together in a molecule.
A MO is a mathematical function which describes the wave-like behavior of an electron in a molecule.
Chemists use such functions to predict or explain chemical and physical properties.
For example, the functions can tell the probability of finding an electron in any specific region.
Chemists usually build mathematical models of molecular orbitals by combining atomic orbitals.
Hybrid orbitals from each atom of the molecule, or other molecular orbitals from groups of atoms can also be used.
Computers can work on these functions.
Molecular orbitals allow chemists to apply quantum mechanics to study molecules.
MOs answer questions about how the atoms in molecules stick together.
The various rounded shapes in an orbital diagram indicate where electrons would most likely be found in an atom.
The word orbital was first used in English by Robert S. Mulliken.
The German physicist Erwin Schr dinger wrote about MOs earlier.
Schr dinger called them Eigenfunktion.
Physicist Max Born described the theory behind using orbitals in 1926.
It is known as Born 's rule today.
It is part of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
This theory did not agree with atom model of Niels Bohr.
Bohr said that the electrons move around the atom kernel in circles.
But the Bohr model had problems.
It did not say where the electrons were in molecules.
Also, it did not explain a number of chemical reactions.
Atomic orbitals predict the position of an electron in an atom.
Molecular orbitals are created when atomic orbitals are brought together.
A molecular orbital can give information about the electron configuration of a molecule.
The electron configuration is the most likely position, and the energy of one (or one pair of) electron (s).
Mostly a MO is represented as a linear combination of atomic orbitals (the LCAO-MO method), especially in approximate use.
This means that chemists assume the chance of an electron being at any point in the molecule is the sum of the probabilities of the electron being there based on the individual atomic orbitals.
LCAO-MO is a simple model of bonding in molecules, and is important for studying molecular orbital theory.
Theoretical chemists use computers to calculate the MOs of different molecules (both real and imaginary).
The computer can draw graphs of the "cloud" to show how likely the electron will be in any region.
The computers can also give information about the physical properties of the molecule.
They can also say how much energy is required to form the molecule.
This helps chemists say whether some small molecules can be combined to make bigger molecules.
Most present-day ways of doing computational chemistry begin by calculating the MOs of a system.
Each MO 's electric field is generated by the nuclei of all the atoms and some average distribution of the other electrons.
Understanding MOs is like the task of knowing where each employee is in a large home improvement store (without looking inside the store).
An analyst knows the number of employees working at the store and each employee 's department.
He also knows that employees do not step on each other toes and employees stand in the aisle rather than on the merchandise shelves.
Employees leave their own department to help customers locate merchandise in other departments or to check inventory.
An analyst giving the location of all employees in the store at a selected moment without looking inside is like a chemist calculating the MOs of a molecule.
Just as MOs can not tell the exact location of each electron, the exact location of each employee is not known.
An MO having a nodal plane is like the conclusion that employees walk down aisles and not through shelves.
Although electrons are contributed from a specific atom, the electron fills an MO without regard to its source atom.
This is like an employee leaving his department to walk elsewhere in the store during the day.
So, an MO is an incomplete description of an electron just as the analyst 's calculations about the unseen store is an incomplete guess about employee locations.
Theoretical chemists have invented rules for calculating MOs.
These rules come from an understanding of quantum mechanics.
Quantum mechanics helps chemists to use what physics said about electrons to work out how the electrons behave in molecules.
Molecular orbitals form from "allowed" interactions between atomic orbitals.
(The interactions are "allowed" if the symmetries (determined from group theory) of the atomic orbitals are compatible with each other.)
Chemists study atomic orbital interactions.
These interactions come from the overlap (a measure of how well two orbitals constructively interact with one another) between two atomic orbitals.
The overlap is important if the atomic orbitals are close in energy.
Finally, the number of MOs in a molecule must equal the number of atomic orbitals in the atoms being brought together to form the molecule.
Chemists need to understand the geometry of MOs in order to discuss molecular structure.
The LCMO (Linear combination of atomic orbitals molecular orbital) method gives a rough but good description of the MOs.
In this method, the molecular orbitals are expressed as linear combinations of all of the atomic orbitals of each atom in the molecule.
Molecular orbitals were first introduced by Friedrich Hund and Robert S. Mulliken in 1927 and 1928.
The linear combination of atomic orbitals or "LCAO" approximation for molecular orbitals was introduced in 1929 by Sir John Lennard-Jones.
His ground-breaking paper showed how to derive the electronic structure of the fluorine and oxygen molecules from quantum principles.
This qualitative approach to molecular orbital theory is part of the start of modern quantum chemistry.
Linear combinations of atomic orbitals (LCAO) can be used to guess the molecular orbitals that are made when the molecule s atoms bond together.
Similar to an atomic orbital, a Schrodinger equation, which describes the behavior of an electron, can be constructed for a molecular orbital as well.
Linear combinations of atomic orbitals, (the sums and differences of the atomic wavefunctions) provide approximate solutions to the molecular Schrodinger equations.
For simple diatomic molecules, the wavefunctions that you get are represented mathematically by the equations
where and \* are the molecular wavefunctions for the bonding and antibonding molecular orbitals, respectively, a and b are the atomic wavefunctions from atoms a and b, respectively, and ca and cb are adjustable coefficients.
These coefficients can be positive or negative, depending on the energies and symmetries of the individual atomic orbitals.
As the two atoms become closer together, their atomic orbitals overlap to produce areas of high electron density.
So, molecular orbitals are formed between the two atoms.
The atoms are held together by the electrostatic attraction between the positively charged nuclei and the negatively charged electrons occupying bonding molecular orbitals.
When atomic orbitals interact, the resulting molecular orbital can be of three types: bonding, antibonding, or nonbonding.
Each molecular orbital has its own energy level.
Chemists sort the MOs by energy levels.
Chemists assume that the electrons will fill the lowest energy level MOs first.
For example, if a molecule has electrons to fill 15 orbitals, the 15 MOs with the lowest energy levels will be filled.
The 15th MO on the list would be called the "highest occupied molecular orbital" (HOMO) and the 16th MO on the list would be the "lowest unoccupied molecular orbital" (LUMO).
The difference in the HOMO 's energy level and the LUMO 's energy level is called the band gap.
The band gap can sometimes serve as a measure of the excitability of the molecule: the smaller the energy, the more easily it will be excited.
When the electron is excited, it will jump to an unoccupied MO..
For example, this can help guess whether something will give out light (luminescence).
Messiah or the Anointed One is the figure promised by God to the Jews for the salvation of the world.
The Jews think that the Messiah will be a human being that will save Israel and lead the whole world into the End Of Days and eternal peace.
Other people in real life or fiction are called messianic if they have the qualities of a messiah, or people think they will bring about a better world.
Christianity, which began in Israel with Jewish followers of Jesus (Hebrew: Yeshua), holds that the Messiah foretold by the Jewish Scriptures is Jesus, and that in fulfillment of prophecy Jesus died for the sins of the world, rose from the dead and lives today, seated at the right hand of God until His return.
Most Jews do not hold these beliefs; those who do are sometimes called Messianic Jews.
Some Messianic Jews and other Christians see the fact that a majority of Jews do not hold these beliefs as a fulfillment of prophecy.
(see Epistle to the Romans chapter 10)
Muslims believe that Jesus was the son of Mary, that he was a mighty prophet of God and that he was the Messiah (though, in Islam, the Messiah has a different role than he does in Christianity or Judaism).
They believe that he will come again one day in his Second Coming to fight besides the Mahdi against the (Dajjal, "false messiah").
Michael Palin (born 5 May 1943) is an English actor, comedian, world traveller and author.
Palin was born in Broomhill, Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire.
He studied modern history at Brasenose College, Oxford.
He became famous as a member of Monty Python in the 1970s.
Afterwards he had his own television series, Ripping Yarns, and also appeared in many movies, such as A Fish Called Wanda.
Over the last 20 years, he has become very well known as a television travel broadcaster ("Around The World in 80 Days", etc.).
Materials science studies the properties of matter to solve science and engineering problems.
It uses applied physics and chemistry.
Supersmall nanotechnology has got attention in recent years.
There are many inventions of new material.
Work on why structures fail or break down is very important to engineering.
The important material of a given era is often its defining point.
Examples are the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age.
Materials science originally studied ceramics and metallurgy.
These ancient crafts make materials science one of the oldest forms of engineering and applied science.
A major breakthrough in the understanding of materials occurred in the late 19th century, when the American scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs showed that the physical properties of a material were related to its atomic structure.
As the phases changed, so did the physical properties of the material.
Important elements of modern materials science are a product of the space race: the understanding and engineering of the metallic alloys, and silica and carbon materials, used in the construction of space exploration vehicles.
Materials science is now linked to the development of plastics, semiconductors, ceramics, polymers, magnetic materials, medical implant materials and biological materials.
The material scientist\/engineer also deals with the extraction of materials and their conversion into useful forms.
So, ingot casting, foundry techniques, blast furnace extraction, and electrolytic extraction are all part of the required knowledge of a metallurgist\/engineer.
Often the presence, absence or variation of minute quantities of secondary elements and compounds in a bulk material will have a great impact on the final properties of the materials produced, for instance, steels are classified based on 1\/10 and 1\/100 weight percentages of the carbon and other alloying elements they contain.
Thus, the extraction and purification techniques employed in the extraction of iron in the blast furnace will have an impact of the quality of steel that may be produced.
The study of disasters in the 19th and 20th century led to some important discoveries.
A.A. Griffith (1893 1963) discovered that real materials never get near their theoretical strength.
This was a groundbreaking discovery which led to changes in many industries.
As an example, steel gets almost 1\/10th of its theoretical strength, but most solids are 100 to 1000 times weaker than expected.
Griffith 's insights were developed further by J.E. Gordon (1913 1998).
Gordon said that all simple solids are by their nature brittle.
Toughness resistance to fracture has to be designed into materials.
The usual way is to add other material to the pure substance.
This makes its structure more complex, and that makes it less likely to fail.
A good example is bulletproof glass, where a plastic layer stuck to glass make it many times stronger than either material would be separately.
The personal armor based on Kevlar is another example.
Biological materials have this feature naturally.
Bones do bend a little before they reach breaking point, and tree trunks also have some "give".
The industrial study of metal alloys is a large part of materials science.
Of all the metallic alloys in use today, the alloys of iron (steel, stainless steel, cast iron, tool steel, alloy steels) make up the largest proportion both by quantity and commercial value.
Iron alloyed with various proportions of carbon gives low, mid and high carbon steels.
An iron carbon alloy is only considered steel if the carbon level is between 0.01 % and 2.00 %.
For the steels, the hardness and tensile strength of the steel is related to the amount of carbon present.
Increasing carbon levels leads to lower ductility and toughness.
Heat treatment processes such as quenching and tempering can significantly change these properties however.
Cast Iron is defined as an Iron-Carbon alloy with more than 2.00 % but less than 6.67 % carbon.
Stainless steel is defined as a regular steel alloy with greater than 10 % by weight alloying content of chromium.
Nickel and molybdenum are also found in stainless steels.
Other significant metallic alloys are those of aluminium, titanium, copper and magnesium.
Copper alloys have been known for a long time (since the Bronze Age), while the alloys of the other three metals have been relatively recently developed.
Due to the chemical reactivity of these metals, the electrolytic extraction processes required were only developed relatively recently.
The alloys of aluminium, titanium and magnesium are also known and valued for their high strength-to-weight ratios and, in the case of magnesium, their ability to provide electromagnetic shielding.
These materials are ideal for situations where high strength-to-weight ratios are more important than bulk cost, such as in the aerospace industry and certain automotive engineering applications.
Polymers are also an important part of materials science.
They are the raw materials used to make what we commonly call plastics.
Plastics are really the final product.
They are made when polymers or additives have been added to a resin during processing.
The mixture is then shaped into a final form.
Common polymers are, include polyethylene, polypropylene, PVC, polystyrene, nylons, polyesters, acrylics, polyurethanes, and polycarbonates.
PVC (polyvinyl-chloride) is widely used, inexpensive, and annual production quantities are large.
It lends itself to an incredible array of uses, from artificial leather to electrical insulation and cabling, packaging and containers.
It is simple to make.
It accepts a wide range of plasticisers and other additives, which give it differing properties.
Another application of the material sciences is the structures of glass and ceramics, typically associated with the most brittle materials.
Ceramics and glasses use covalent bonds and ionic-covalent bonds with SiO2, silica or sand, as a fundamental building block.
Ceramics are as soft as clay and as hard as stone and concrete.
Usually, they are crystalline in form.
Most glasses contain a metal oxide fused with silica.
At high temperatures used to prepare glass, the material is a viscous liquid.
Glass forms into an amorphous structure when it is cooled.
Windowpanes and eyeglasses are important examples.
Fibers of glass are also available.
Diamond and carbon in its graphite form are considered to be ceramics.
Engineering ceramics are known for their stiffness, high temperature, and stability under compression and electrical stress.
Alumina, silica carbide, and tungsten carbide are made from a fine powder of their constituents in a process of sintering with a binder.
Hot pressing provides higher density material.
Chemical vapor deposition can place a film of a ceramic on another material.
Cermets are ceramic particles containing some metals.
The wear resistance of tools is derived from cemented carbides with the metal phase of cobalt and nickel typically added to modify properties.
Another application of material science in industry is the making of composite materials.
Composite materials are structured materials composed of two or more macroscopic phases.
Applications range from structural elements such as steel-reinforced concrete, to the thermally insulative tiles which play a key and integral role in National Aeronautics and Space Administration 's (NASA) Space Shuttle thermal protection system which is used to protect the surface of the shuttle from the heat of re-entry into the Earth 's atmosphere.
One example is Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC), The light gray material which withstands re-entry temperatures up to 1510 C (2750 F) and protects the Space Shuttle 's wing leading edges and nose cap.
RCC is a laminated composite material made from graphite rayon cloth and impregnated with a phenolic resin.
After curing at high temperature in an autoclave, the laminate is pyrolized to convert the resin to carbon, impregnated with furfural alcohol in a vacuum chamber, and cured\/pyrolized to convert the furfural alcohol to carbon.
In order to provide oxidation resistance for reuse capability, the outer layers of the RCC are converted to silicon carbide.
Other examples can be seen in the "plastic" casings of television sets, cell-phones and similar objects.
These plastic casings are usually a composite material.
It is a thermoplastic matrix such as acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) in which calcium carbonate chalk, talc, glass fibers or carbon fibers have been added for added strength, bulk, or electro-static dispersion.
These additions may be referred to as reinforcing fibers, or dispersants, depending on their purpose.
A new magnetic material has been discovered.
It could transform computer hard drives and energy storage devices.
A highly sensitive metal bilayer needs only a small shift in temperature to dramatically alter its magnetism.
This is a very useful property in electronic engineering.
"No other material known to man can do this.
It 's a huge effect.
And we can engineer it", said Ivan Schuller, of the University of California, San Diego.
The material combines thin layers of nickel and vanadium oxide.
This is a structure which is surprisingly responsive to heat.
"We can control the magnetism in just a narrow range of temperature - without applying a magnetic field.
And in principle we could also control it with voltage or current", said Prof Schuller.
Materials science encompasses various classes of materials, each of which may constitute a separate field.
Materials are sometimes classified by the type of bonding present between the atoms:
The Mitsubishi A6M Zero, often called just the A6M Zero or simply the Zero was a long range carrier based Japanese fighter aircraft during World War II.
The aircraft was built by Mitsubishi, making its first flight in 1939, and entering naval service in 1940.
It was the primary fighter used by Japan during the war.
It was the primary adversary of US Naval aircraft such as the Grumman F4F Wildcat, Vought F4U Corsair, and later the Grumman F6F Hellcat, which was specifically designed to combat the Zero.
The A6M Zero was used throughout the entire war.
In the Roman calendar March 15 was known as the Ides of March, and it was on this day that Julius Caesar was murdered.
Mathematical logic is a field of mathematics, that tries to formalize logic so that it can be used for mathematics more easily.
Logic is about reasoning, mathematical logic tries to use symbols.
Most of mathematical logic was, developed in the 19th and 20th century.
Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).
He was the co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.
He won the Turing Award in 1969.
Minskey was born in New York City, New York.
He studied at Phillips Academy, Harvard University and at Princeton University.
Minskey died in Boston, Massachusetts of a cerebral hemorrhage on January 24, 2016 at the age of 88.
Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 November 16, 2006) was an American economist.
He believed in monetarism.
Monetarism is the theory that how much money the government prints each year has a huge affect on the economy.
He supports the government printing the same low rate of money each year rather than a different amount each year.
Friedman was born in Brooklyn, New York to a Hungarian-Jewish family.
He was raised in Rahway, New Jersey.
Friedman studied at Rutgers University, at Columbia University, and at the University of Chicago.
He worked thirty years in Chicago with George Stigler as a leader of the Chicago school of economics.
During the 1970s, Milton Friedman 's idea of monetarism gained popularity and he became an economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan.
Friedman believed that the government control over the economy should be limited.
He supported cutting taxes, lowering government spending, getting rid of government rules that limited the economy and letting parents choose which school their taxes paid for.
His political views were libertarian.
He was against forcing people to join the army, and said that getting rid of United States military conscription was the thing he was most proud of doing.
Throughout several decades, Friedman made many documentaries, books, and interviews to express his views to the public.
The main books he wrote were Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose.
Friedman married Rose Director in 1938.
Together, they had a son and a daughter.
He was agnostic.
Friedman died of heart failure in San Francisco, California, aged 94.
He was survived by his wife and his two children.
His remains were cremated and scattered over the San Francisco Bay area.
Mass media are media like radio, television, internet or other things that reach many people.
Television is most used.
We can see and hear news from around the world.
Radio also brings music and news.
Books supply older and more detailed material.
The internet is also important.
We can search for all the news and information.
Websites like Wikipedia and about.com give information about many things.
Libraries are also important.
In libraries we can read books and listen to music.
The term was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks, mass-circulation newspapers and magazines, although mass media (like books and manuscripts) were present centuries before the term became common.
The Mahabharata, that is, the great Bharata, is one of the two most important ancient epics of India, the other being the Ramayana.
The Mahabharata was compiled in Ancient India.
One of the Indian sages (rishi) named Vyasa is believed to have composed the work.
The legend states that god Ganesh wrote the Mahabharata while Vyasa dictated the same.
It is possibly one of the longest work of its kind in the world.
The epic contain about 110,000 couplets in eighteen sections.
There is also a 19th section named Harivamsha.
The Bhagavadgita, a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, is a part of the Mahabharata.
Sage Vyasa taught this epic to his son Suka and his students Vaisampayana and others.
King Janamejaya, son of Parikshit, and the grandson of the heroes of the epic, performed a great sacrifice (yagna).
The epic was retold by Vaisampayana to Janamejaya at the advice of Vyasa.
Later on, an other sage Suta retold the Mahabharata similar to Vaisampayana to Janamejaya, to Saunaka and others, during a sacrifice performed by Saunaka in Naimisaranya, which is near Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh.
The Mahabharata in its eighteen sections deals with a number of topics.
These topics cover a number of aspects of Hinduism, Hindu mythology, ethics, and the Hindu way of life.
One more section is called Harvamsha.
Noted below are few words about the eighteen sections of the Mahabharata.
In Mahabharata, these sections are called parvan.
A parvan means a book.
The names of all parvas or books of the Mahabharata are noted below:
.
Kunti wants to fulfill her maternal expectations, but she has no man.
She recollects the moment when her first son Karna was conceived from an arcane mantra one sage had given her once.
Surya, the Sun God, appeared to her then.
Thus, Kunti remembers her secret mantra and gives birth to the five sons, which are referred to as the Pandavas.
Yudhisthira 's father was god Yama; Bhima 's father was Vayu, Arjuna 's father was Indra.
Then it was Madri who gave birth to two other sons - the twins, whose fathers were Ashwins (divine twins).
Madri 's sons are Nakula and Sahadeva.
These all are the five Pandavas
Mein Kampf (My Struggle) was a book written by Adolf Hitler and Rudolf He.
Rudolf He helped Hitler write the book, but he is not mentioned as an author.
The book consists of two parts.
The first part was written by Hitler while he was in jail in Landsberg am Lech.
He was put in jail after a failed putsch, in 1926.
He wrote the second part after his (early) release from jail.
From 1926 to 1930, both volumes were sold separately, at the price of 12 Reichsmark each.
In 1930, both volumes were published as one book.
There were several editions between 1925 and 1945.
With each new edition, the text was revised as well.
This was done to clarify those parts of the text that were unclear.
Probably, Ghostwriters around Hitler did this work.
In the book, Hitler describes (talks about) his view of greater Germany.
He also describes his future plan for Jews.
When he came to power, in 1933, he realized (made happen) some of those plans.
This resulted in a genocide known as The Holocaust.
The book was given away for free at civil registry offices during the time when the Nazi government had power in Germany.
The reason for giving the book away for free was because in part, the book was propaganda, and giving it away free was a way to recruit members.
After the Second World War, the book was made illegal to reprint or sell new copies in Germany and Austria.
It is not illegal to own a book, and it is also not illegal to sell or buy such books second-hand.
In computing science common monoids include addition, multiplication, or, and.
These properties are useful for various problems e.g. they allow a large set of data to be divided, processed in parallel and combined.
As each part produces a Monoid, the final combined result will be the same.
This also works with more complex Monoids e.g. a map of word counts.
The Marx Brothers were a popular team of sibling comedians who appeared in vaudeville, stage plays, movie, and television.
The brothers were Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo and Zeppo.
Born in New York City, the Marx Brothers were the sons of Jewish immigrants from Germany.
Their mother, Minnie Sch nberg, was from Dornum in East Frisia, and their father Simon Marrix (whose name was changed to Sam Marx, and who was nicknamed "Frenchy") was a native of Alsace, now part of France, and worked as a tailor.
The family lived in the then-poor Yorkville section of New York City 's Upper East Side, between the Irish, German and Italian Quarters.
The Marx Brothers began as a musical group, during the days of vaudeville theater.
They would make jokes, play funny characters, and pretend to get into fights when they performed.
In time their antic got them more applause (and work) than their music, and they became a comedy group.
Music stayed in their act, with the brothers performing in character, but their focus was on getting laughs.
Makeup and costumes gave their characters their look.
When the brothers were out of costume, they could blend into the audience.
Gummo did not appear in any of the movies.
In the movies, each brother played a role that was mostly the same in every movie.
Groucho was a "wise guy" who had big bushy eyebrows, glasses, and a moustache who smoked a cigar; Chico spoke with an Italian accent and played the piano; Harpo never spoke and played the harp.
Zeppo usually played the straight man.
He left the group in 1933, and they worked with other actors.
Margaret Dumont played the leading lady role in many of their shows.
She did not appear to know when a joke was made about her, and this made her role funnier.
The brothers had some good years and some bad years.
Groucho lost a lot of money in 1929, when the stock market collapsed.
(Years later, he visited the New York Stock Exchange, and drew so much attention that trading stopped for several minutes.
Groucho joked that he came "to get his money 's worth" in stopping business.)
Chico had a problem with gambling, and lost more money than he won at it.
Harpo and his wife could not have children of their own, so they adopted enough to have a large family.
(When Adolf Hitler took control of Germany in the 1930s, and stories came back about his mistreatment of Jewish people, Harpo legally changed his name from Adolph to Arthur, even though he was better known as Harpo.)
Groucho kept working after his brothers retired.
He hosted a television quiz show called You Bet Your Life, which was more liked for Groucho 's way of hosting than for the game itself.
He made a few movie and television appearances late in his life.
He also appeared at Carnegie Hall, telling stories about his life and career, and singing songs from every part of his career.
A recording of his Carnegie Hall show became a best-seller.
MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3) is a lossy data compression format for audio.
Using it makes smaller computer files containing digitized music and other sounds.
The format is a lossy compression format.
This means that each time something is compressed with it, some information is lost.
This information can not be recovered.
When encoding to MP3 (converting some audio data to it), the encoder is smart.
The human ear can not hear certain sounds if they are masked by other sounds.
This means that when encoding certain sound samples, some sounds can be left out (as they will not be heard).
This makes it possible to compress audio by a factor of about 5, without noticeable change to the sound of the music.
Many people like to use MP3 files to copy music so they can listen to it on their computer.
Record companies do not like it when people use the Internet to share these MP3 files with each other.
They think it is a violation of their copyright.
The record industries have a trade group called the RIAA that has taken people to court for sharing music.
An Internet website called Napster was shut down because of this.
Napster has since re-opened, but does not let people share MP3 files anymore.
Other formats for audio compression are Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC.
Ogg Vorbis is very similar to MP3, although it has many improvements.
FLAC is a lossless compression (meaning no information is lost), and gets compression rates of 2-3.
In 1980s, Dieter Seitzer started the development of a code for audio format of high-quality.
Together with his team at the German Fraunhofer Institut situated in Erlangen, the professor had the idea to create code with a low bit-rate.
The German institute received the patent for MP3 in 1989.
MP3 was then passed to the International Organisation for Standardisation.
In the same year the MP3 was included into MPEG-1 specification.
(MPEG means "Moving Picture Experts Group").
The first player to be able to read the MP3 format was designed by the same Fraunhofer Institute in 1990 's.
A Croatian student named Tomislav Uzelac developed AMP MP3 Playback Engine in 1997.
It represented the first device that could be called MP3 player.
After the player appeared on the Internet, two students named Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev transformed it into Winamp.
They took the engine of the original player and added the interface of the famous Windows.
When Winamp was launched into the net for free use it became successful at once.
This way began the era of free music download.
Soon various programmers started creating additional features for the MP3 player.
Very often they created new encoders, rippers (software for transforming audio tracks into MP3 files) and players.
Because there is no need to pay licensing fees in order to build the player, today many software MP3 players are free.
Some companies claim to have patents covering the MP3 format, but the validity of these patents is questionable because the format specification was published more than 20 years ago, meaning that any relevant patents would have expired.
The most famous MP3 players are Winamp, Sonique, iTunes and MusicMatch.
The main feature of an MP3 player is to turn the MP3 files into standard audio form and then send them to the soundcard of the computer.
The soundcard then outputs the files into speaker so the user can hear them.
Every MP3 player interprets music differently, though each one of them uses the same code for playing the MP3 files.
There are also stand-alone (without a computer) MP3 players.
These may be portable, or they may be built-into a stereo system or car stereo.
When compressing, for each frame (a small section of audio), the encoder first splits the audio into 32 different parts using a filter bank, similar to MP2.
The audio is then split further into either 192 or 576 different parts (depending on the complexity of the audio being compressed - more complex audio is split into fewer parts) using the modified discrete cosine transform.
The MP3 encoder then removes parts that it thinks the human ear ca n't hear.
The remaining parts are then compressed using Huffman coding.
Decompression does these same steps (except removal of parts of the audio) in reverse.
The Mary Rose was a ship which belonged to Henry VIII of England.
She sank in 1545 in battle with a French fleet.
In 1979, the Mary Rose Trust was formed.
In 1982 the Mary Rose Trust managed to get the Mary Rose out of the sea.
In 1994, they started to preserve her.
The remains of the Mary Rose are currently in Portsmouth, England with the HMS Victory and HMS Warrior.
It is not known the exact reason for the sinking.
One of the theories is that she had the gun ports open to fire at the French.
She then turned to fire at the other side, but the men on board failed to close the gun ports.
Sea water got in the open gun ports, which tipped her over and she sank.
The Mary Rose sank because the wind blew and tipped her over.
Mario Kart is a series of go-kart-style racing video games developed and published by Nintendo as a series of spin-offs from its trademark Mario series of video games.
The first in the series, Super Mario Kart, was launched in 1992 on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System to critical and commercial success.
To date, there have been four Mario Kart games for home consoles, three portable games, and three Namco co-developed arcade games, which makes a total of ten Mario Kart games with a eleventh one in development.
The most recent game of the Mario Kart series is Mario Kart 8.
In the Mario Kart series, players compete in go-kart races, controlling one of a selection of characters from the Mario franchise.
Up to eight participants can compete in each race, with the exception of Mario Kart Wii, which holds twelve.
One of the features of the series is the use of various power-up items obtained by driving into item boxes laid out on the course.
These power-ups include mushrooms to give players a speed boost, Koopa Shells to be thrown at opponents, and banana peels that can be laid on the track as hazards.
The type of weapon received from an item box is random and often influenced by the player 's position in the race.
For example, players lagging far behind may receive more powerful items while the leader will only receive small defensive items.
This gameplay mechanic called "rubber banding" allows other players or computers a realistic chance to catch up to the leading player no matter how far ahead they are.
As the series has progressed, each new title has introduced new elements in order to keep the gameplay fresh.
Changes typically include new items, new stages, and new methods of obtaining speed boosts, but most games have also featured a new play mechanic as well.
Changes new titles have brought to the series include: Mario Kart 64 introducing 4-player racing and bringing the series into the third dimension, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!
's introducing a partner system and the Double Dash!!
, Mario Kart Wii 's use of motorbikes and twelve participants per race, and the newest entry into the franchise, Mario Kart 7, featuring hang gliders, submarines and a new first-person perspective as well as customizing karts.
Many course themes are repeated throughout the series.
For example, most games have featured a circuit course, a desert course, a city or highway course with traffic, some form of a beach course, a stadium course, a jungle course, an ice or snow course, Bowser 's Castle and Rainbow Road.
Each game in the series includes 16 original courses, with the exception of Super Mario Kart and Super Circuit, which holds 20.
Most races have three laps, while some games have more or less.
There are also three to six original battle arenas in each game, designed exclusively for Battle mode.
So far, there are 120 original courses and 30 original arenas spread throughout these seven games.
Additionally, there are 48 Retro courses and 10 Retro arenas.
These consist of older material recreated for newer games.
Each Mario Kart game features a variety of different modes.
The following modes recur most often in the series:
Several Mario Kart-related items appear in the Super Smash Bros. series, with Super Smash Bros..
Brawl in particular featuring a stage based on one of Mario Kart DSs courses.
Certain courses from the series have also appeared in F-Zero X, Itadaki Street DS, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, Fortune Street and Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Various items from the series can also be seen in games such as Nintendogs and Animal Crossing.
Mario Kart has had a range of merchandise released.
This includes a Scalextric style Mario Kart DS Figure-8-Circuit.
It comes with Mario and Donkey Kong figures, while a Wario and a Luigi are available separately.
It also includes CD soundtracks.
A line of remote-controlled karts are available in stores.
Each kart has a Game Boy Advance-shaped controller.
It features forward driving and rotates when put in reverse, instead of steering.
The current line-up of karts is Mario, Donkey Kong and Yoshi.
There are three large karts that depict the same trio.
These karts are controlled by a GameCube controller shape.
Japanese figurines of Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Yoshi, Wario, Donkey Kong, and Bowser are also available for purchase as well as for Mario Kart 64, figures of Mario, Luigi, Wario, Bowser, Donkey Kong, and Yoshi were made by Toybiz.
There is also a land-line telephone featuring Mario holding a lightning bolt while seated in his Kart, as seen here.
K ` Nex has released Mario Kart Wii sets, with Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, and Bowser in karts and bikes.
Club Nintendo also released merchandise with a platinum soundtrack from Mario Kart Wii and three gold trophies from Mario Kart 7.
Nintendo Power listed the Mario Kart series as being one of the greatest multi-player experiences, citing the diversity in game modes as well as the entertainment value found.
Guinness World Records awarded the Mario Kart series with five world records in the Guinness World Records: Gamer 's Edition 2008, including "First Console Kart Racing Game" and "Best Selling Handheld Racing Game."
Guinness World Records ranked the original Super Mario Kart number 1 on the list of top 50 console games of all time based on initial impact and lasting legacy.
Mythology can refer to the collected myths of a group of peopletheir body of stories which they tell to explain nature, history, and customs.
It can also refer to the study of such myths.
A myth is a story which is not true.
The definition of the word myth is still subject to debate.
Myths may be very old, or new (for example: urban myths).
There may not be records or other proof that they happened, but at least some parts of myths may be true.
We know about them from older people telling them to younger people.
Some myths may have started as ` true ' stories but as people told and re-told them, they may have changed some parts, so they are less ` true '.
They may have changed them by mistake, or to make them more interesting.
All cultures have myths.
Stories about the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses are myths.
Many people once believed in mythological animals and gods.
These animals or gods may have control or has power over a part of human or natural life.
For example, the Greek god Zeus had powers over lightning and storms.
Whenever Zeus wanted to, he could make a storm, and that he made storms to show his anger.
Another example is that of the Egyptian god, Atum, who was said to be the creator of everything in the world.
In Hindu mythology, the cause of thunderstorms was said to be the wrath of Indra, the chief of all gods.
His most powerful weapon was the Vajra 1, or ` thunderbolt '.
It was said that no one could survive after an attack from this weapon.
All cultures have developed their own mythology over time.
Mythology includes the legends of their history, their religions, their stories of how the world was created, and their heroes.
These stories have great symbolic power, and this may be a major reason why they survive as long as they do, sometimes for thousands of years.
The main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods, or supernatural humans, while legends generally feature humans as their main characters.
Many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid.
Myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and closely linked to religion or spirituality.
In fact, many societies group their myths, legends, and history together, considering myths to be true accounts of their remote past.
Creation myths take place in some early primordial age when the world had not reached its present form.
Other myths explain how the society 's customs, institutions and taboos were established and sanctified.
A separate space is created for folktales, which are not considered true by the people who tell them.
As stories spread to other cultures or as faiths change, however, myths can come to be considered folktales.
Sometimes myths and legends get merged together.
Their divine characters get recast as humans or as demihumans (such as giants, elves, and faeries).
Creation myths describe the "official" belief as to how world was created.
These myths differ greatly between societies, as any collection of myths clearly shows.
Over the last three centuries, the power of myths over the minds of people has been challenged by the growth of science.
Although myths are often considered to be stories of events that have not happened, many historians think myths are about actual events that have become connected with strong symbolic meaning, or that have been changed, or shifted in time or place, or even reversed.
One way of thinking about this process is to imagine ` myths ' as lying at the far end of an imaginary line.
At one end of the line is ` dispassionate account ', and ` legendary occurrence ' or ` mythical status ' is near the other end.
As an event progresses toward the ` mythical ' end of this line or continuum, the way people think, feel and say about the event changes.
It may gain greater historical significance while the ` facts ' become less important.
By the time one arrives at the mythical end of the line, the story has "taken on a life of its own" and the facts of the original event have become almost unimportant.
A mind map is a drawing used to show words, ideas, tasks or other things.
Everything is written around a word or idea in the middle.
This word or idea is the main topic of the mind map, and the things linked to it are related to the main idea.
It is used to store and order ideas, and is very useful for study, ordering things, solving problems, and making choices.
A machine gun is a weapon that can fire one bullet after another as long as the trigger is pulled and there are bullets ready to fire.
This is called automatic fire.
Machine guns fire bullets delivered from a long chain called an ammunition (` ammo ') belt, or use spring-loaded boxes called magazines.
Machine guns are usually divided into heavy-duty machine guns, light machine guns, and sub-machine guns.
Assault rifles have automatic capabilities but they are not called machine guns.
They are used mainly in semi-automatic fire, and also normally fire lighter bullets than machine guns.
Heavy machine guns (HMG) are placed on the ground, supported on a tripod, or on a vehicle.
The vehicle would have a support for the gun with a rotating base or turret.
Heavy machine guns often need two men to operate it, one to assist with loading ammunition, and one to aim and fire.
It always takes two or more men to carry one.
Famous examples include the M2 Browning machine gun, the MG42, the M1919 Browning, the M134 minigun, the Type 92 machine gun, and the Maxim gun.
Light machine guns (LMG) are usually carried and fired by one man.
Despite the name, an LMG is almost always rested on a bipod or a tripod while firing since the gun is normally too heavy to fire while standing, although some LMGs such as the Bren LMG and the BAR are light enough to be fired without a bipod or tripod when a sling is worn around the user.
Famous examples include the Bren, the BAR, the SAW M249, the M240, the RPD, the RPK, the PK, and the M-60.
Submachine guns (SMG) are lighter weapons which fire less powerful bullets (usually pistol bullets).
They are much easier to conceal and carry than the heavier versions.
Submachine guns have handles (stocks), and are carried by individual soldiers or police officers.
Famous examples include the Uzi, the Heckler & Koch MP5, the Thompson (a.k.a. Tommy gun), the MAC-10, the PPSh, and the MP-40.
Many heavy machine guns, such as the Browning M2.50 caliber machine gun, are exact enough to hit distant targets.
During the Vietnam War, Carlos Hathcock shot at 7382 ft (2250 m) using a.50 caliber heavy machine gun with a telescopic sight.
Monopoly is a board game played by two to eight players.
It is played on a board with spaces.
In the original version the spaces were named after streets.
These streets are actual streets in Atlantic City in New Jersey in the United States.
In the British original version, they are named after streets in London.
Like many board games, each person has his own game token that he moves on the board.
If he\/she passes the go space, he\/she collects 200.
There is also a pair of dice, and play money.
A person wins by having the most money at the end of the game.
Many books give advice on how to win the game.
An early book, 1000 Ways to Win Monopoly Games was written by Jeffrey S. Lehman (who later became President of Cornell University) and Jay S. Walker (founder of priceline.com.)
Monopoly was created by Elizabeth Magie based on the economic concept of land monopoly.
Magie created the game in 1903, to explain the single tax theory of Henry George.
She wanted it to be an educational tool to highlight the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies.
Her game, which she called "The Landlord 's Game", was self-published, beginning in 1906.
In the original rules, players could agree to share the land rents and everyone would win, which was not as exciting as the current rules, unfortunately.
Later on, an inaccurate myth developed that Charles Darrow had created the game.
On the Monopoly board are 40 spaces.
In the four corners of the board are the space where each player begins, called GO; Free Parking, JAIL, and Go to Jail.
Along the sides of the board are properties and businesses for sale.
There are 22 properties, 4 railway stations, the Electric Company and the Water Works.
There are also spaces called Income Tax and Luxury Tax, and Community Chests and Chances.
To prepare for the game, the board is put in position.
The Chance and Community Chest cards are placed on the board.
The Chance and Community Chest cards are cards that can help players earn money or lose money, by taking the player to a land that is owned by someone else who collects rent.
Once the board is set up, each play picks a token (a playing piece).
Some of the tokens include: a battleship, a thimble, a shoe, an iron, a top hat, a dog, a wheelbarrow, a horse & rider, and a cannon.
(There are more token shapes.
It depends on the game edition).
Then the banker (it can be any player) hands out the money, each player gets the same amount to start of with:
The banker is in charge of the bank.
The bank has the money, Title Deed cards, and the houses and hotels.
The bank gives a player 200 every time he passes go, collecting money when a player buys land, houses or hotels, handing out the Deed cards when the land is bought, and loaning money when a player mortgages their land.
The bank also collects fines, loans and interest, and taxes.
The object of the game is to own as much land (property) and be the richest person.
The rules (which can be found in any monopoly box) are similar, not matter what edition you own.
Prior to the start of the game: if the players agree if you land on "Go" you collect twice the amount receiving 400, instead of 200.
Also, free parking could start with an amount of players choice and added to when players pay "Community Chest" and "Chance" cards, and if you land on "Free Parking" you receive all the money in the middle of the board.
There are many editions of monopoly.
I.U. Opoly features locations of the Indiana University campus.
The game board has been altered to reflect many college campuses across America.
Milton Bradley has also produced boards to symbolize the decades of popular culture in America.
For example, The 1970 ` sopoly has spaces depicting the fashion of the time.
Players can purchase bell bottom blue jeans instead of street property.
PlayStation 2 has a Monopoly game that allows players all the fun without the math practice, since it is electonically calculated throughout the game.
Options are available to play on a science fiction fantasy board, the traditional board, or a prehistoric board.
The tokens represent the era chosen as well as the spaces on the board.
For instance, in the scifi game one of the board spaces is a black hole.
There are many versions of Monopoly such as Star Wars Monopoly and Create-your-own-opoly (where you name the streets yourself).
In India, a similar game is called Business.
Acquire has more advanced business practices with stocks, but similar basic concepts of Monopoly.
People play monopoly for different reasons.
Some may play for family game night, others use it as a learning tool at school, and others play it just to have fun.
Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System.
It is the closest planet to the sun.
It makes one trip around the Sun once every 87.969 days.
Mercury is bright when it is visible from Earth, ranging from 2.0 to 5.5 in apparent magnitude.
It can not be easily seen as it is usually too close to the Sun.
Because Mercury is normally lost in the glare of the Sun (except during a solar eclipse), Mercury can only be seen in the morning or evening twilight.
Compared to what is known about the other planets in the Solar System, little is known about Mercury.
Telescopes on the Earth show only a small, bright crescent.
The first of two spacecraft to visit the planet was Mariner 10, which mapped only about 45 % of the planet s surface from 1974 to 1975.
The second is the MESSENGER spacecraft, which finished mapping the planet in March 2013.
Mercury looks a lot like Earth 's Moon.
It has many craters with areas of smooth plains, no moons around it and no atmosphere as we know it.
However, Mercury does have an extremely thin atmosphere, known as an exosphere.
Unlike Earth 's moon, Mercury has a large iron core, which gives off a magnetic field about 1 % as strong as that of the Earth.
It is a very dense planet due to the large size of its core.
Surface temperatures can be anywhere from about 90 to (183 C to 427 C, 297 F to 801 F), with the subsolar point being the hottest and the bottoms of craters near the poles being the coldest.
Known sightings of Mercury date back to at least the first millennium BC.
Before the 4th century BC, Greek astronomers thought that Mercury was two different objects: one able to be seen only at sunrise, which they called Apollo; the other that was only able to be seen at sunset, which they called Hermes.
The English name for the planet is from the Romans, who named it after the Roman god Mercury, which they thought to be the same as the Greek god Hermes.
The symbol for Mercury is based on Hermes ' staff.
Even though Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, it is not the warmest.
This is because it has no atmosphere, so any heat that the Sun gives to it quickly escapes into space.
Mercury is one of four inner planets in the Solar System, and has a rocky body like the Earth.
It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, with a radius of 2,439.7 km.
Mercury is even smaller than some of the largest moons in the solar system, such as Ganymede and Titan.
However, it has a greater mass than the largest moons in the solar system.
Mercury is made of about 70 % metallic and 30 % silicate material.
Mercury 's density is the second highest in the Solar System at 5.427 g\/cm, only a little bit less than Earth s.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the second movie made by Monty Python.
It was made in 1974 and was very successful.
It is still very popular.
It was also made into a musical called Spamalot.
This is a comedy about King Arthur 's search for the Holy Grail.
He gathers a group of knights around him.
They do not ride horses - instead, they clap coconut halves together, to make the sound of a horse galloping.
They search for the grail, but keep on getting distracted by peasants (poor farmers) who want to talk about politics, or French knights insulting them.
The movie was made in Scotland.
In biology, a mutation is a change in the genetic material.
This means changes to the DNA or to the chromosomes which carry the DNA.
All such changes are heritable (can be passed on to the next generation) unless they have lethal effects.
Mutations can happen for several reasons.
It can happen because of errors when meiosis produces the gametes (eggs & sperms).
Damage by radiation, or by certain chemicals may cause mutations, but they do occur occasionally at random.
Also, by derivation, an individual carrying the mutation may be called a mutant or a mutation.
So is the trait (character) most obviously affected by the mutation.
When DNA is copied mistakes are sometimes made these are called mutations.
There are four main types of mutations:
These terms are explained in the third diagram.
Mutations may be bad for the organism, or neutral, or of benefit.
Sometimes mutations are fatal for the organism the protein made by the ` new ' DNA does not work at all, and this causes the embryo to die.
On the other hand, evolution is moved forward by mutations, when the new version of the protein works better for the organism.
Mutations are the ultimate source of variation, upon which natural selection acts.
What happens is that some mutations affect the organism 's ability to live and reproduce.
This is an important part of the theory of evolution.
The amount of heritable variation carried by a population can be huge, and as a consequence natural populations have the capacity to change and adapt to conditions in their environment.
Mercantilism is a kind of economic system that was present in most parts of Europe between the 16th and the 18th century.
The term was first used by Marquis de Mirabeau in 1763.
Adam Smith made it known to a wider audience in 1776.
At that time, absolutism was the main form of government in Europe.
These regimes needed money to finance a large military, the many people who worked in the government.
The monarchs and princes also needed money in order to finance their lifestyle.
These governments were also very nationalistic.
For this reason, mercantilism is seen as a form of economic nationalism.
The theory of mercantilism holds that the prosperity of a nation depends on its supply of capital, and that the global volume of international trade is "unchangeable".
Economic assets (or capital) are bullion (gold, silver, and trade value) held by the state, and is best increased through a positive balance of trade with other nations (exports minus imports).
The theory assumes that wealth and monetary assets are identical.
Mercantilism suggests that the ruling government should advance these goals by playing a protectionist role in the economy by encouraging exports and discouraging imports, notably through the use of tariffs and subsidies.
The theory dominated Western European economic policies from the 16th to the late-18th century.
The Meat Puppets are an alternative\/punk rock group from Scottsdale, Arizona, USA.
They were formed in 1980 by Curt Kirkwood (vocals, guitars), his brother Cris (bass) and Derrick Bostrom (drums).
The band is probably best known for their 1994 radio hit "Backwater".
The band went on indefinite hiatus in 2001 as Curt formed two band projects Eyes Adrift (with Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and Sublime drummer Bud Gaugh) and Volcano (also with Sublime drummer Bud Gaugh).
He also released a solo album.
His brother Cris was in prison from August 2004 to 21 months.
In 2006, the Meat Puppets reformed and released a new album, Rise to Your Knees in 2007.
As of November 2009, Shandon Sahm is back as the drummer in the Meat Puppets.
He replaces Ted Marcus, who was a member from 2006.
The band was chosen by Animal Collective to perform their album Up on the Sun live at the All Tomorrow 's Parties music festival in May 2011.
Methanol is the simplest alcohol: CH3OH.
It has similarities to ethanol (the alcohol we can drink), but it is toxic.
The toxicity takes hours though, so antidotes can prevent the damage such as permanent blindness, death.
It is used as fuel additive, solvent, and in the chemical industry.
Methanol is sometimes called "wood alcohol" because it was formerly made from wood.
Methanol is the simplest alcohol, and is a light, volatile, colorless, flammable liquid with a distinctive odor very similar to that of ethanol (drinking alcohol).
Milk is a white liquid made by mammals, for example cows, dogs, and humans.
It is made in the mammary glands (breasts, udders, or teats) of female mammals.
Because newborn babies have no teeth, they must be given milk before they can eat solid food.
Milk has many nutrients to help babies grow and be healthy.
it is also a rich source of calcium which is good for bones and your teeth.
If milk is not kept cold in a refrigerator, it will become sour after some time.
When milk is warmed, it turns sour.
Fermentation makes this happen.
Lactic acid bacteria changes the milk sugar into lactic acid.
Fermentation is used when making dairy products.
Milk is often pasteurised before humans drink it.
It is made into dairy products like cream, butter, yoghurt, ice cream, or cheese.
Pasteurised cows ' milk will turn sour if it is not kept in a refrigerator.
Milk should be stored between 1 and 4 Celsius.
If milk is treated with very high temperatures, it will last longer before spoiling.
This means it does not have to be put in the refrigerator until it is opened.
Milk contains a chemical called lactose.
Babies make an enzyme called lactase inside their bodies.
Adults make less lactase.
If they do not have enough, they may not be able to digest lactose anymore.
This problem is called lactose intolerance and it affects many adults.
There are many medicines that help adults digest lactose.
Many lactose-intolerant people drink soy milk instead of animal milk, because it does not contain lactose.
Soy milk tastes similar to animal milk, but it is chemically very different and is made from soybeans.
Goat 's milk is the milk from a goat.
It can be drunk, both by humans or baby goats, or cheese can be made from it.
This cheese is called goat 's milk cheese.
Coconut milk is not real milk because it comes from a plant instead of an animal.
However, it looks similar to real milk because it is white.
It also does not have as many nutrients as real milk.
It is made by removing the white "meat" from a coconut, pressing or squeezing the "meat", then adding water.
It is sometimes used in cooking, for example, in Thai curry.
Coconut cream is a thicker version of coconut milk which contains added sugar.
Milk forms an important part of a person 's daily balanced diet.
It contains a lot of calcium that helps bones and teeth to grow stronger.
Also, milk provides the body with high quality proteins, and helps in meeting the body 's requirement for vitamins.
One glass of milk gives about 44 % to the daily-recommended vitamins intake.
Some kind of milks, though, do not have good calcium.
These kind of milk products include cream, cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, and cream cheese.
In physics, magnetism is a force that can attract (pull closer) or repel (push away) objects that have a magnetic material like iron inside them (magnetic objects).
In simpler words it is a property of certain substances which pull closer or repel other objects.
Magnetism can be made by a permanent magnet, or by electricity in a wire.
This is called an electromagnet.
When magnets are put near magnetic objects, the magnet and the object are pulled toward each other.
This is called magnetic attraction.
Magnets can also repel (push away) other magnets.
Most objects that are attracted to magnets have iron in them.
Most other metals, such as aluminium, are not attracted to magnets.
Magnets have an unseen area around them called a "magnetic field."
Magnetic objects inside this unseen field are attracted to the magnet.
Magnetic things outside the magnetic field are not attracted to the magnet.
This is why a magnet must be close to an object to attract it.
The poles of two magnets will repel or attract each other.
Different poles attract each other.
For example, if the south pole of one magnet is put near the south pole of another magnet, the magnets will repel each other.
This will also happen with two north poles that are put near each other.
If a north pole is put near a south pole, the magnets will attract each other until they stick to each other and can be hard to pull apart.
Magnetism is caused by electrons (the negative particles in atoms that are also electric charges) spinning.
The more a group of electrons spin in the same direction, the stronger the magnetic force.
In a magnet, many electrons are spinning in the same direction.
We can magnetize a small piece of iron by ` rubbing ' it with a magnet.
The electrons in the iron get ` spun ' by the passing magnet just like a basketball player spinning a basketball.
Magnets have many uses.
One of them was found long ago when explorers found that a magnet could be used as a compass to show the direction of north & south.
Electromagnets are another kind of magnet.
They only work when electricity is running through them.
An electric current makes a magnetic field.
If you wrap the wire into a coil, the electrons spin around the coil and make a stronger magnetic domain.
Often, these magnets work by using a coil of wire that makes a magnetic field when there is a current in it.
In addition to this coil of wire, a large piece of metal, usually iron, is placed inside the coil to increase the magnetic field made.
Though most large electromagnets employ many solenoids to lift heavy objects, smaller solenoids are used in everyday electronics.
For example, they are used to change voltage in a transformer.
Electromagnets are used to make many things work like computers, televisions and radios and also doorbells.
Electromagnetic radiation including radio waves and light waves are used for communication including broadcasting and optical fiber, and for many other purposes.
The North Magnetic Pole is the point on the surface of Earth 's northern hemisphere where the planet 's magnetic field points vertically downwards.
There is only one place where this occurs, near to (but distinct from) the Geographic North Pole.
Its southern hemisphere counterpart is the South Magnetic Pole.
Since the Earth 's magnetic field is not exactly symmetrical, a line drawn from one to the other does not pass through the geometric center of the Earth.
The North Magnetic Pole moves over time due to magnetic changes in the Earth 's core.
In 2001, it was near Ellesmere Island in northern Canada at.
As of 2015, the pole is thought to have moved east beyond the Canadian Arctic territorial claim to.
Earth does change its magnetic poles every million years (plus or minus 200,000 years).
Before a change of magnetic field, the Earth 's magnetic field becomes weaker and moves around, like a spinning top would before it falls.
The Earth has already had hundreds of changes (flip flops).
Scientists know this as a result of studies of magnetism on the sea floor, near the mid-Atlantic ridge.
The lava slowly moves out of this crevasse (gap in the sea floor) and then it cools with its iron oxide molecules all pointing in the new direction of the Earth 's magnetic field.
We can look at the history of this magnetic field today to look back at the many flips in the past.
Reversals occur at intervals from less than 0.1 million years to as much as 50 million years.
The most recent geomagnetic reversal, called the Brunhes Matuyama reversal, occurred about 780,000 years ago.
Another global reversal of the Earth 's field, called the Laschamp event, occurred during the last ice age (41,000 years ago).
However, because of its brief duration it is called an "excursion".
Metallurgy is the study of metals.
Alloys (mixtures of metals) are also studied.
People who study or work with metals are called metallurgists.
The rocks are made of a metal with oxygen, called an oxide.
Separating the oxygen off the metal is called smelting.
This is done with chemistry or electricity, and is usually done at very high temperatures.
This is the first step in metallurgy.
A rock containing enough metal to be profitable is called ore.
Iron is smelted from iron ore in large reactors called blast furnaces.
A blast furnace is a tall vertical structure which is fed with coke, iron ore and limestone.
When hot air is blown in the blast furnace, the coke will burn and reduce the oxygen off the ore, producing bare iron and carbon dioxide.
The limestone will bind off any remaining bedrock.
The iron melts in the hot temperature and is tapped off in liquid phase at the bottom.
It is then worked into steel.
The limestone and bedrock form a compound called slag.
It can be used for making bricks, concrete or road topping.
Aluminum is smelted in electric ovens called electric arc furnaces.
The aluminum ore is poured on the bottom of the furnace and electric current is led through the ore..
The temperature rises so high that the oxygen separates, leaving metallic aluminum.
Copper is poured on naked flame which burns off sulfur and other impurities, leaving raw copper.
The copper is then electrolyzed (that is: separated by electric current) in big pools, which contain water solution called electrolyte.
An electric current is led in the pool, and all copper will gather on the electrode called cathode.
Another part of metallurgy is making parts from metals.
These parts must be made so they will not break when they are used.
Metallurgists work to make the metal good when they are used.
Sometimes the metal must be strong.
Other times it must be tough (not easily broken).
The metallurgist must follow directions when making the part to know what metal to use.
Steel has a low cost, but rusts.
Choosing a good metal is sometimes hard.
A metal starts as a block, called an ingot.
Metallurgists must know how to make a metal part from an ingot.
Parts are made from ingots different ways.
When a big hammer is used, it is called forging.
To make thin metals, a metal is put between two rolls and moved, called rolling.
Making metal hot makes it easier to change the shape of a metal part.
For this reason, most metal parts are made using hot metal.
This is hot work.
Two metal parts can be put together with much heat.
This is called welding.
Iron is easy to weld.
Metallurgists use many tools to know what to do to the metal.
The most useful is the microscope.
The microscope gives much information about the way the metal moves.
Metals are sometimes pulled until they break.
This is the tension test.
Some useful information can be gotten from this test.
Mumps is a viral disease.
Only humans get it.
Some of the most commons symptoms are fever, headaches, swelling of the parotoid glands, sore throat, and orchitis (which means swelling of the testicles).
Mumps can be diagnosed by the increase in alpha amylase isoenzymes in blood plasma.
The MMR vaccination stops measles, mumps and rubella.
Michael Faraday (Newington Butts, Surrey, 22 September 1791 Hampton Court, Surrey, 25 August 1867) was an English chemist and physicist.
He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was awarded the Royal, Copley and Rumford medals of the Society.
Although Faraday had little school education, and did not know higher mathematics, he became one of the most influential scientists in history.
For the most part, he was an autodidact: he taught himself.
Faraday became the greatest experimental physicist of the nineteenth century.
At the time when he lived, people like him were called natural philosophers.
At that time only a little was known about electricity.
Michael Faraday discovered many things about the way electricity flowing in a wire can act like a magnet (now called electromagnetism).
He also found out a lot about the way electricity can be used with chemicals to make them change (now called electrochemistry).
He showed that magnetism is able to affect rays of light, as there is an underlying relationship between the two phenomena.
His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology.
He made the first electric motor.
It is thanks to his early work that the electricity has been made into a useful thing today.
As a chemist, Michael Faraday discovered benzene, invented an early type of Bunsen burner and popularized terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode and ion.
Faraday was the first Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life.
He was also the Director of the Royal Institution after Sir Humphrey Davy.
Albert Einstein kept a photograph of Faraday on his study wall alongside pictures of Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell.
Michael Faraday was born in Surrey, England (well, it says Newington Butts, England on normal Wikipedia).
His family was poor.
His father, James, was a blacksmith.
James Faraday had come to London in the 1780s from North-West England.
The young Michael Faraday was one of four children and only had the most basic school education.
He had to teach himself to read and write.
At fourteen he went to learn how to be a bookbinder and bookseller from a man called George Riebau.
During his seven-year study of making books with Riebau, he read many books.
He read Isaac Watts 's The improvement of the mind.
Faraday loved to use the ideas in this book in his work.
He started to become interested in science, especially in electricity.
He began to attend public lessons run by the best scientists in London at the time.
He showed the notes he made to the great chemist Sir Humphrey Davy.
Davy liked him and offered him a job as an assistant in March 1813.
Faraday 's knowledge continued to grow as he helped Sir Humphrey Davy until he was making new discoveries on his own.
He was eventually made a professor in 1833.
The importance of his work was seen within his own lifetime and the British government gave him a pension in his old age as a reward.
Faraday also discovered that if electricity strikes a metal object, it will only pass through the outside of the object.
The inside is unaffected by the electricity.
This is what keeps the people inside safe when lightning strikes a car or a plane.
This is now called Faraday 's Cage.
Marriage is a union between individual people.
It is like a contract.
Sometimes people also call this matrimony.
The fact of being married is called wedlock.
Very often, people celebrate that they are getting married.
The ceremony is usually called a wedding.
In most of the world, this is a union between a man and a woman (who become husband and wife).
However, such ceremonies can occur between same-sex couples.
A civil marriage is secular and is performed by a government official.
A religious marriage may be performed by clergy.
The most common form of marriage is a legally binding heterosexual union.
Some societies recognize polygamy and polyandry.
In polygamy, a man may be married to many women; in polyandry a woman may be married to many men.
In Senegal, for example, nearly 47 percent of marriages are multiple.
A temporary marriage is called a wedlease.
Marriage is also about sexual intercourse; being unable to have sex, being unwilling to have sex, or having sex outside the marriage may be a reason to undo the marriage.
Often there is also a spiritual part of marriage.
In addition to the civil act (wanted by the state) there is sometimes a religious one.
A Christian marriage ceremony usually happens in a church.
There are certain restrictions on who can marry or be married; those closely related, like brothers and sisters usually can not marry.
This is usually to prevent genetic problems for the children.
Those marrying also have to be of a certain age to be able to marry.
If that age is not specified it is usually the age of consent.
In Hinduism marriage is considered to be holy and is seen as a union of the goddess "Laxmi" and the god "Narayan".
Some countries and religious communities also permit the union of two partners of the same sex.
This is generally known as same-sex marriage.
In the Netherlands, the marriage law was changed to allow such unions, called Marriage.
Other countries that allow them sometimes have a different name for them.
Midgard is an old Germanic name for our world.
Midgard means "middle enclosure".
It is what they call the "human world."
Midgard is a realm in Norse mythology.
It is the home of mortals.
Midgard is surrounded by a world of water or ocean.
The ocean is inhabited by the great sea serpent J rmungandr.
It is a world between Asgard, the land of the gods (Aesir) and Helheim (Hel), the land of the dead.
Midgard was connected to Asgard by the Bifrost Bridge, which is guarded by the god Heimdall.
According to mythology, Midgard will be destroyed in Ragnar k, the battle at the end of the world.
J rmungandr will arise from the ocean.
He will poison the land and sea.
The final battle will take place on the plain of Vigrond.
Midgard and almost all life on it will be destroyed, with the earth sinking into the sea.
John Malcolm Fraser AC, CH, GCL, PC (21 May 1930 20 March 2015) was an Australian politician.
He served as the 22nd Prime Minister of Australia from 11 November 1975 through 11 November 1983.
He was also leader of the Liberal Party from 1975 to 1983.
Before being prime minister, Fraser was a member of the Australian Parliament from 1955 through 1983.
He served as Minister of Defense from 1966 to 1968 and again from 1969 to 1971 and Minister for Education and Science from 1968 to 1969 and again from 1971 to 1972.
Fraser was born in Toorak, Victoria.
He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford.
He married Tamie Beggs in 1956.
As leader of the Liberal Party, he became Prime Minister in November, 1975 when Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, dismissed Gough Whitlam.
At this point he was only temporary Prime Minister.
He won the election held in December, 1975.
He won two more elections in 1977 and 1980 before losing to Bob Hawke in 1983.
Fraser married Tamara (Tamie) Beggs in 1956 and the couple have remained married ever since.
His government stopped some of the changes made by the Whitlam government.
They also reduced government spending to stop money becoming less valuable.
He also supported efforts to abolish racism in South Africa, the boycott of the Moscow Olympics and more immigration from Asian countries.
He has criticised the prime ministership of John Howard who had been his Treasurer from 1977 to 1983.
On 20 March 2015, his office announced that Fraser had died in the early hours of the morning, noting that he had suffered a brief illness in Melbourne, Victoria, aged 84.
Muspelheim (also called Muspel) is the realm of fire, in Norse mythology.
The fire giants live there.
Their king is Surtr.
In the 1860s James Clerk Maxwell published equations that describe how charged particles give rise to electric and magnetic force per unit charge.
The force per unit charge is called a field.
The particles could be stationary or moving.
These, together with the Lorentz force equation, provide everything you need to calculate the motion of particles in electric and magnetic fields.
Maxwell 's equations describe how electric charges and electric currents create electric and magnetic fields.
Further, they describe how an electric field can generate a magnetic field, and vice versa.
The first equation allows you to calculate the electric field created by a charge.
The second allows you to calculate the magnetic field.
The other two describe how fields ` circulate ' around their sources.
Magnetic fields ` circulate ' around electric currents and time varying electric fields, Amp re 's law with Maxwell 's correction, while electric fields ` circulate ' around time varying magnetic fields, Faraday 's law.
is the curl operator (SI unit: 1 per metre).
where is the free electric charge density (in units of C\/m3), not counting the dipole charges bound in a material, and is the electric displacement field (in units of C\/m2).
This equation is like Coulomb 's law for non-moving charges in vacuum.
is the area of a differential square on the closed surface A. The surface normal pointing out is the direction, and is the free charge that is inside the surface.
.
You can pretend a material is linear, if the electric field is not very strong.
Here is the electric field again (in units of V\/m), is the total charge density (including the bound charges), and (approximately 8.854 pF\/m) is the permittivity of free space.
One can also write as.
Here, is the permittivity of the material when compared to the permittivity of free space.
This is called the relative permittivity or dielectric constant.
See also Poisson 's equation.
is the magnetic flux density (in units of teslas, T), also called the magnetic induction.
The area of is the area of a differential square on the surface.
The direction of is the surface normal pointing outwards on the surface of.
This equation only works if the integral is done over a closed surface.
This equation says, that in every volume the sum of the magnetic field lines that go in equals the sum of the magnetical field lines that go out.
This means that the magnetic field lines must be closed loops.
Another way of saying this is that the field lines can not start from somewhere.
This is the mathematical way of saying: "There are no magnetic monopoles".
v is the instantaneous velocity of the line element (for moving circuits).
The electromotive force is equal to the value of this integral.
Sometimes this symbol is used for the electromotive force:, do not confuse it with the symbol for permittivity that was used before.
This law is like Faraday 's law of electromagnetic induction.
Some textbooks show the right hand sign of the integral form with an N (N is the number of coils of wire that are around the edge of A) in front of the flux derivative.
The N can be taken care of in calculating A (multiple wire coils means multiple surfaces for the flux to go through), and it is an engineering detail so it 's left out here.
The negative sign is needed for conservation of energy.
It is so important that it even has its own name, Lenz 's law.
This equation shows how the electric and magnetic fields have to do with each other.
For example, this equation explains how electric motors and electric generators work.
In a motor or generator, the field circuit has a fixed electric field that causes a magnetic field.
This is called fixed excitation.
The varying voltage is measured across the armature circuit.
Maxwell 's equations are used in a right-handed coordinate system.
To use them in a left-handed system, without having to change the equations, the polarity of magnetic fields has to made opposite (this is not wrong, but it is confusing because it is not usually done like this).
v is a vector field called the drift velocity.
It describes the speeds of the charge carriers that have a density described by the scalar function q.
In free space, the permeability is the permeability of free space, 0, which is exactly 4 10 7 W\/A m, by definition.
Also, the permittivity is the permittivity of free space 0.
So, in free space, the equation is:
s is the edge of the open surface A (any surface with the curve s as its edge is okay here), and Iencircled is the current encircled by the curve s (the current through any surface is defined by the equation: Ithrough A = AJ dA).
If the electric flux density does not change very fast, the second term on the right hand side (the displacement flux) is very small and can be left out, and then the equation is the same as Ampere 's law.
There are only two covariant Maxwell Equations, because the covariant field vector includes the electrical and the magnetical field.
Mathematical note: In this section the abstract index notation will be used.
In special relativity, Maxwell 's equations for the vacuum are written in terms of four-vectors and tensors in the "manifestly covariant" form.
This has been done to show more clearly the fact that Maxwell 's equations (in vacuum) take the same form in any inertial coordinate system.
This is the "manifestly covariant" form:
Here is the 4-current, is the field strength tensor (written as a 4 4 matrix), is the Levi-Civita symbol, and is the 4-gradient (so that is the d'Alembertian operator).
(The in the first equation is implicitly summed over, according to Einstein notation.)
The first tensor equation says the same thing as the two inhomogeneous Maxwell 's equations: Gauss ' law and Ampere 's law with Maxwell 's correction.
The second equation say the same thing as the other two equations, the homogeneous equations: Faraday 's law of induction and the absence of magnetic monopoles.
can also be described more explicitly by this equation: (as a contravariant vector), where you get from the charge density and the current density.
The 4-current is a solution to the continuity equation:
The fact that both electric and magnetic fields are combined into a single tensor shows the fact that, according to relativity, both of these are different parts of the same thing by changing frames of reference, what looks like an electric field in one frame can look like a magnetic field in another frame, and the other way around.
(See Electromagnetic four-potential for the relationship between the d'Alembertian of the four-potential and the four-current, expressed in terms of the older vector operator notation).
Different authors sometimes use different sign conventions for these tensors and 4-vectors (but this does not change what they mean).
and are not the same: they are related by the Minkowski metric tensor:.
This changes the sign of some of Fs components; more complex metric dualities can be seen in general relativity.
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (c. 63 BC 12 BC) was a general of the Roman Empire and a statesman.
He was a close friend and brother-in-law of Augustus.
Agrippa 's place of birth is not known for sure.
It may have been the city of Arpinum.
His father was callled Lucius Vipsanius Agrippa (we know this from an inscription on the Pantheon).
He had an elder brother, and a sister named Vipsania Polla.
The family had not been prominent in Roman public life.
Agrippa first married Caecilia Attica, the daughter of Cicero 's friend T. Pomponius Atticus.
They a daughter Vipsania Agrippina, and perhaps another: ` Vipsania Minor '.
Vipsania Agrippina became the wife of Tiberius.
By his second marriage to Claudia Marcella (oldest daughter of Octavia) he probably had a single surviving daughter.
His third wife, Julia (daughter of Augustus) bore him three sons and two daughters: Gaius (born 20 BC), Julia the Younger, Lucius (born 17 BC), Agrippina the Elder (born ca.
15 BC), and Postumus Agrippa.
The last child was born in 12 BC after the death of Agrippa.
Agrippa died in March 12 BC.
Agrippa 's more famous descendents stem from his daughter Agrippina: they include his grandson Caligula and great-grandson Nero.
Agrippa fought in Caesar 's Civil War (49 45 BC), giving help to Octavian against Lucius Antonius.
Later services include his defeat of Sextus Pompey at Naolochus, Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, and the fall of Egypt.
Later he completed of the conquest of Spain and fought in the North and East.
For his valuable services he held three consulships (37, 28, 27 BC).
He became Tribune of the plebs in 18 BC and renewed in 13, making him Augustus ' unofficial co-emperor.
He died at the height of his power in March 12 BC.
Manichaeism (in Modern Persian yin e M ni) was one of the major Iranian Gnostic religions.
Originally it came from Sassanid Persia.
Most of the original writings of the founding prophet Mani (Syriac,, c. AD 210 276) have been lost, but many translations and fragmentary texts have survived.
Manichaeism was big between the third and seventh centuries.
At its height it was one of the most widespread religions in the world.
Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as China and as far west as the Roman Empire.
Manichaeism appears to have died out before the sixteenth century in southern China.
The original six sacred books of Manichaeism were written in Syriac Aramaic.
They were soon translated into other languages to help spread the religion.
As they spread to the east, the Manichaean writings passed through Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, and ultimately Uyghur and Chinese translations.
As they spread to the west, they were translated into Greek, Coptic, and Latin.
The spread and success of Manichaeism were seen as a threat to other religions, and it was widely persecuted in Christian, Zoroastrian, and later, Islamic areas.
Martin Van Buren (December 5, 1782 July 24, 1862) was the eighth President of the United States.
He was the first president born after the United States Declaration of Independence, making him the first president who was born as a U.S. citizen.
Van Buren was born in Kinderhook, New York, in 1782.
Van Buren studied law by working for Francis Sylvester and later became a lawyer in 1803.
In 1821 he was elected as a member of the United States Senate, representing New York.
President Andrew Jackson selected him as the Secretary of State in 1827.
In 1832, he became Vice-President for Jackson, and in 1836, he became the 8th President of the United States.
During most of the time he was president, the economy was in very bad shape, and he was blamed for it.
He was the first president to have been born a United States citizen, since all of his predecessors were born British subjects before the American Revolution.
Van Buren lost the next presidential election in 1840 to William Henry Harrison.
In 1848, he ran again to be president as a part of the Free Soil Party, but he did not win.
Van Buren died on July 24, 1862, of heart failure after suffering from an asthma attack, on his Lindenwald estate.
Martin Van Buren was born on December 5, 1782 in Kinderhook, New York, south of Albany.
Van Buren was the third born of five children.
His father, Abraham Van Buren, was a farmer and a tavern owner.
His mother was Maria Hoes Van Buren, the granddaughter of a Dutch immigrant.
Martin Van Buren went to school at the Kinderhook Academy in the village where he lived.
At Kinderhook Academy, he excelled in English and Latin.
Van Buren left the school when he was 14 years old.
In 1796, Van Buren started working in the law office of Francis Sylvester, an attorney that worked in Kinderhook.
He kept the office clean, copied documents and did other jobs.
While he was working there, he learned about law.
After six years under Sylvester, he spent a final year of apprenticeship in the New York City office of William P. Van Ness.
Van Buren passed the New York State Bar Exam in 1803, and became a lawyer.
After becoming a lawyer, Van Buren moved back to Kinderhook to work as an attorney with his half-brother, James J. Van Alen, in 1803.
Five years later, Van Buren became the surrogate (legal officer) of Columbia County.
There was no fixed term of office.
That is, Van Buren would be there until the opposition party was able to elect someone else in his place.
Van Buren held the office about five years until he was removed on March 19, 1813.
Van Buren represented New York in the United States Senate from 1821 to 1828.
He left the Senate to become the governor of New York in 1829.
On March 5, 1829 after he became the governor, President Andrew Jackson made Van Buren the Secretary of State, so Van Buren was only the governor for two months.
From 1833 to 1837, he was the Vice President.
(Jackson was still President at this time.)
Also was leading member of and gained much voting support by Free Soil Party.
Just a few months after Van Buren became president, there was a financial crisis called the Panic of 1837.
Van Buren believed in limited government, and did not respond in a way that many people wanted.
Many people blamed him for the economy becoming worse, and this made him less popular.
Van Buren married Hannah Hoes, a cousin, on February 21, 1807.
They had five children together: Abraham, John, Martin Jr., Smith, and Winfield Scott.
Martin Van Buren developed pneumonia in the fall of 1861.
After developing pneumonia, he could not move out of his bed.
In July, 1862, Van Buren had a serious asthma attack and began to weaken.
Van Buren died on July 24, 1862, at his home in Kinderhook, New York, of heart failure.
He was 79 years old.
The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) is a cricket and Australian Rules Football stadium in Melbourne, Australia.
It has a capacity of around 100,000.
It was used as the main stadium for the 1956 Summer Olympics.
The Melbourne Cricket Club started to use the area for cricket in 1853.
Their old ground, now Southbank, was often flooded by the Yarra River, and was also in the way of a new railway line.
In 1859, the first game of Australian Rules Football was played at the ground.
The MCG is run by a trust.
The first chairman of the trust was the first Premier of Victoria, William Haines.
The Marshall Plan (officially called the European Recovery Program (ERP)) was a plan of the United States for rebuilding the allied countries of Europe after World War II.
One of the main reasons this was done was to stop communism.
The plan was named after Secretary of State George Marshall, but the plan was worked out by other people in the State Department.
The plan ran for four years beginning in April 1948.
During that period US$ 13 billion in economic and technical help were given to help the recovery of the European countries that had joined in the Organization for European Economic Co-operation.
By the time the plan ended, the economy of every member state had grown well past pre-war levels.
In recent years some historians have said that another reason for the plan was to make the United States stronger, and to make the countries of western Europe need the United States.
They also say that the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which helped millions of refugees from 1944 to 1947, also helped the European postwar recovery.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. said that if Europe needed money to rebuild what had been destroyed by the war, they should take it from Germany.
This money was called war reparations.
Morgenthau said it would also stop Germany from ever being rebuilt, and threatening to start another war.
Taking money from Germany was done after World War I. It did not work.
Instead of helping other countries it hurt them.
This is because companies could not sell the coal and steel that they made because it was coming in free from Germany.
Jean Monnet of France said that France should control the German coal areas of the Ruhr and Saar and use it to rebuild French industry.
In 1946 the occupying powers agreed to put strict limits on how quickly Germany could reindustrialize.
Limits were placed on how much coal and steel could be produced.
This was the first German industrial plan.
It was signed in early 1946 and said that German heavy industry was to be cut down to half % of its 1938 levels by the destroying 1,500 manufacturing plants.
By the end of 1946 governments could see the problems of the plan, and the agreement was changed several times, the last time in 1949.
But dismantling factories went on into 1950.
Germany had been very important to the economy of Europe for a long time.
This meant that a poor Germany was holding back European recovery, because other countries could not sell so many things to Germany.
A poor Germany was also expensive for the occupying powers.
They had to give Germany food and other things which it needed and could not grow or make for itself anymore.
Because of this the Morgenthau and Monnet plans were rejected.
The Marshall Plan ended in 1952.
Ideas to extend it were stopped because of the cost of the Korean War and rearmament.
U.S. Republicans hostile to the plan had also gained seats in the 1950 Congressional elections.
The Marshall Plan has been described as "the most unselfish act in history."
However, this may not be the case.
The United States benefited from the plan because part of the agreement for giving the aid was that country would have to open up their economies to US companies.
"Historical revisionist" historians, such as Walter LaFeber, during the 1960s and 1970s said that the plan was American economic imperialism.
That means, that it was an attempt to gain control over Western Europe just as the Soviets controlled Eastern Europe.
Tyler Cowen, economist, has said that nations receiving the most aid from the Marshall Plan (Britain, Sweden, Greece) saw the least returns and grew the least between 1947 and 1955.
Those nations who received little (e.g. Austria) grew the most.
When he looked at West Germany 's economy from 1945 to 1951, German analyst Werner Abelshauser decided that foreign aid was not needed to start the recovery or to keep it going.
Cowen found that the economic recoveries of France, Italy, and Belgium, started before the Marshall Plan.
Belgium relied heavily on free market economic policies after its liberation in 1944, and had the fastest recovery.
It also did not have the severe housing and food shortages seen in the rest of continental Europe.
The Murray River is the largest river in Australia.
It starts high in the Snowy Mountains and flows mainly west until it gets to the sea near Goolwa, South Australia.
For much of its length it forms the boundary between Victoria and New South Wales.
Other rivers join the Murray, the Darling River, the Lachlan River, the Murrumbidgee River and the Goulburn River.
The river was first called the Hume River after it was discovered by European explorers Hamilton Hume and William Hovell in November 1824.
Explorer Charles Sturt renamed the river in January 1830 after a British politician, Sir George Murray.
In 1852, the government offered a bonus of $ 8,000 for the first paddlesteamer to reach Echuca.
This was achieved by both William Randell and Francis Cadell.
Randell built a steamboat the Mary Ann, named after his mother, to start trading in 1853.
Soon it was racing Captain Francis Cadell 's steamer and river trading began.
This provided many new jobs and started new settlements and industries along the entire length of the river Murray system.
G.B. Johnston sailed a steam boat as far as Albury in 1855.
The river was very important for carrying people and goods until the railways took over.
By 1900 the river trade was just about over.
Michael Foot (23 July 1913 - 3 March 2010) was a British Labor Party politician, journalist and author.
Foot was born in Plymouth, Devon.
He studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at University of Oxford.
He was a journalist from the late 1930s until the early 1960s.
He was a Member of Parliament from 1945-1955 and from 1960-1992.
He was deputy leader of the Labor Party from 1976-1980 and Leader of the Opposition from 1980-1983.
Foot was married to writer Jill Craigie (1911-1999) from 1949 until her death.
He was an atheist.
He died at home in Hampstead, London.
Max and Moritz (German: Max und Moritz) are two naughty little boys in a story by Wilhelm Busch.
The stories were written in 1865 and are still extremely popular in Germany.
Wilhelm Busch was an artist as well as a writer.
He wrote a lot of stories in rhyme and made drawings to go with them.
Max and Moritz are stories like these.
The two boys get up to lots of naughty pranks.
There are seven stories (seven pranks).
In the final prank they are caught and come to a sad end.
In the 19th century writers had to show that bad behavior would be punished in the end.
The seven stories are stories with a moral.
In the first story the boys tie pieces of bread onto pieces of string and put it down where an old woman, Widow Bolte, keeps her hens.
The hens each try to swallow a piece of bread, which sticks in their throats and they end up hanging in the tree and die.
In the second story Widow Bolte, who is still crying, decides she might as well roast the hens.
The boys take fishing rods, climb onto the roof and pull the frying chickens up with their rods.
Widow Bolte finds the chickens gone, thinks her little dog has eaten them, and gives the poor dog a beating.
In the third story they take a saw and make a hole in the tiny wooden bridge outside the tailor s house.
They shout at the tailor, calling him names.
He is furious and comes running out, the bridge breaks and he falls into the stream.
Two flying geese save him.
He has a terrible tummy ache but his wife puts a hot iron on his tummy and he feels better.
In the fourth story the boys put gunpowder in the pipe of the schoolmaster while he is in church.
When he lights his pipe there is an explosion.
In the fifth story the boys collect beetles and put them under the mattress in their uncle s bed.
In the middle of the night, when the uncle is asleep, the beetles creep up on him.
He wakes up and fights with them until he has killed them all.
In the sixth story the boys try to steal some pretzels (German rolls) from the bakery, but they fall into the tub of dough.
The baker comes in and finds them.
He bakes them in the oven, but when they are taken out they eat their way through the dough and escape.
In the seventh story the boys cut a hole in the farmer s sacks.
When the miller picks one of these sacks up he realizes the grain is spilling.
He sees the boys, puts them in the sack and takes them to the mill, where the miller grinds them into corn and feeds them to his ducks.
May 1 is known in many countries as May Day or International Labor Day.
For several countries, such as China, Cuba, France, Russia, Brazil, Austria, Germany, Serbia, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kenya, Slovenia, Slovakia, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, Portugal and Argentina this day is a holiday.
In statistics the Maxwell Boltzmann distribution is a particular probability distribution named after James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann.
It was first defined and used in physics (in particular in statistical mechanics) for describing particle speeds in idealized gases.
In an idealized gas the particles move freely inside a stationary container without interacting with one another, most of the time.
Sometimes they collide and exchange energy and momentum with each other or with their thermal environment.
Particle in this context refers to gaseous particles (atoms or molecules), and the system of particles is assumed to have reached thermodynamic equilibrium.
While the distribution was first derived by Maxwell in 1860 on heuristic grounds, Boltzmann later carried out significant investigations into the physical origins of this distribution.
A particle speed probability distribution indicates which speeds are more likely: a particle will have a speed selected randomly from the distribution, and is more likely to be within one range of speeds than another.
The distribution depends on the temperature of the system and the mass of the particle.
The Maxwell Boltzmann distribution applies to the classical ideal gas, which is an idealization of real gases.
In real gases, there are various effects (e.g., van der Waals interactions, vortical flow, relativistic speed limits, and quantum exchange interactions) that can make their speed distribution different from the Maxwell Boltzmann form.
However, rarefied gases at ordinary temperatures behave very nearly like an ideal gas and the Maxwell speed distribution is an excellent approximation for such gases.
For this reason, it forms the basis of the Kinetic theory of gases, which provides a simplified explanation of many fundamental gaseous properties, including pressure and diffusion.
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher LG OM PC FRS (her birth name was Margaret Hilda Roberts; 13 October 1925 8 April 2013) was the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
She was prime minister from 1979 to 1990.
She led the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990.
She was often known by the nickname, "the Iron Lady", given to her by a Soviet journalist.
Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts in Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 13 October 1925.
Her father was Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and her mother was Beatrice Ethel (n e Stephenson) from Lincolnshire.
She took chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford.
In her final year, she studied X-ray crystallography under Dorothy Hodgkin, who later won the Nobel Prize.
She was already interested in politics, and became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946.
Roberts read political works such as Friedrich von Hayek 's The Road to Serfdom (1944), which condemned economic intervention by government because it gave too much power to the state.
After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics.
She entered Parliament in 1959 and became Secretary for Education in 1970.
Thatcher directed British troops in 1982 to get back the Falkland Islands from Argentina.
Argentina had taken the Falklands for a short time during the Falklands War.
She had the second longest single prime ministerial term in history.
She married Denis Thatcher; they had twins: son Mark and daughter Carol.
She suffered from strong opposition during a miner 's strike in 1984 and 1985, which took away political power from the coal miners ' union.
There was also controversy when she introduced a poll tax to Britain.
This caused rioting across the country.
The riots were one of the reasons she was replaced by John Major in 1990.
In 1992, she stood down as an MP and became Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, joining the House of Lords.
During Thatcher 's years as prime minister, unemployment rose by a lot, doubling during her first term, reaching 3 million in 1982.
It started to decline again only in the late 1980s, and since the mid-1990s, Britain has consistently had lower unemployment than most of continental Europe.
Thatcher 's supporters claim this is the result of her structural reform of the labor market, though this is disputed by opponents.
During the near end of the Cold War, Thatcher became close friends with President of the United States Ronald Reagan.
She is widely remembered in the UK for her dislike of the trade union movement.
Trade unions were much more powerful in the 1970s, and Thatcher did much to reduce their influence on British industry.
Lady Thatcher is the only woman to have held the positions of Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader.
In February 1949, at a Paint Trades Federation function in Dartford, she met Denis Thatcher.
They married on 13 December 1951, at Wesley 's Chapel in City Road, London: the Robertses were Methodists.
They had twin children, Carol and Mark, who were born on 15 August 1953, six weeks premature
Her husband Denis, died in 2003 from pancreatic cancer.
She attended Ronald Reagan 's funeral service in 2004.
In the later years of her life, she suffered from dementia and withdrew from public engagements in 2002.
In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C. memorial service to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
She was a guest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit.
She also visited several times to the U.S. for ceremonies that honored Ronald Reagan.
She died from a stroke on 8 April 2013 in London, England.
In line with her wishes she received a ceremonial funeral, including full military honors, with a church service at St Paul 's Cathedral on 17 April.
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip attended the funeral, the second time in the Queen 's reign that she had attended the funeral of a former prime minister.
Metastability has slightly different meanings in different fields of knowledge.
The general idea, however, is that something is metastable if it is not changing, yet given a small force ("nudge") it will transition to another, more stable state.
For example, a block is sitting on a slope (an "inclined plane").
It keeps sitting there until it is nudged, or the slope is gently struck, setting up vibrations.
Then the block starts to slide.
At that point it keeps sliding until it reaches the bottom.
The block sitting at the bottom is stable.
The block sitting on the slope but not moving is metastable.
And the block as it is moving is unstable.
A real life example of this is an avalanche of snow.
The avalanche is unstable (the snow is sliding down the mountainside).
When the avalanche is over the snow is stable.
Before the avalanche starts, the snow is metastable, since some small perturbation is enough to cause it to lose what might have seemed to be stability, but in fact was only metastability.
Mary Wollstonecraft (27 April 1759 10 September 1797) was a British writer.
She was born in London, a daughter of a rich farmer who inherited his fortune.
Her father was known because he was sometimes violent towards her, her four siblings, and their mother when his farms failed.
Mary Wollstonecraft was the second oldest child in her family.
She was the oldest female child.
She left home at the age of nineteen to work and become independent.
Working in the English city of Bath, Somerset, she developed a disliking for the upper class and their social lives.
In 1784 she experienced the near death of her sister Eliza who was also the victim of abuse at the hands of her husband.
She escaped with her sister to London to preserve her life.
Soon after, her good friend Fanny Blood, died of complications in childbirth.
Wollstonecraft suffered depression following this and being in financial straights, she began to write her first book Thoughts on the Educators of Daughters then Mary: A Fiction.
Wollstonecraft was not only a writer, she was an early feminist and social campaigner.
She wrote a children 's book as well as her two most famous books A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790), a response to the French Revolution, and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) which argued that women should have the same rights and education as men.
She called for equal education for boys and girls, believing that education gives the tools necessary to compete with men in public and economic life.
She followed writers such as Catherine Macaulay who wrote Letters on Education in 1790, Thomas Paine, and John Locke.
One of her most well-known books was "An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution (1794).
She also wrote The Wrongs of Women, a novel telling of the confines and illusion of marriage and child rearing as the only happiness for women.
She was revolutionary in arguing for education and the need for autonomy for women.
Wollstonecraft traveled to Paris in 1792 to take notes on the Revolution.
While in Paris, she fell in love with Gilbert Imlay, an American who she later followed to London.
She tried to commit suicide when their relationship ended but was rescued from the Thames.
She wrote a book titled "Letter Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark" (1796) from a series of letters written to Imlay, to support their daughter Fany Imlay, born in 1794.
In the same year, Wollstonecraft met up with an old acquaintance and philosopher named William Godwin, whom she later married.
They bore a daughter on 30 August 1797, whom they named Mary Wollstoncraft Godwin, who later became wife of Percy Shelley.
Mary Wollstoncraft Godwin became Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.
Ironically, her mother Mary Wollstonecraft died of sepsis in London after her birth and suffered a similar fate as her best friend Fanny Blood whose death inspired her fight for women 's rights and her first book.
Wollstonecraft died of complications after labor due to a blood clot.
Her husband William Godwin published Memoirs of the Author of "A vindication of the Rights of Women" in memory of her in 1798.
Minerva was the Roman goddess of crafts and wisdom.
The Greeks called her Athena (for the wisdom and crafts), and Pallas for the war part.
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (April 23, 1858 in Kiel - October 4, 1947 in G ttingen) was a physicist from Germany.
He discovered quantum mechanics.
He won the Nobel Prize in physics.
Planck came from an old fashioned, intelligent family.
His great-grandfather and grandfather were both theology professors in G ttingen; his father was a law professor in Kiel and Munich; and his paternal uncle was a judge.
Planck was born in Kiel, Holstein, to Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck and his second wife, Emma Patzig.
He was baptised with the name of Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck; of his given names, Marx (a now not used variant of Markus or maybe simply an error for Max, which is actually short for Maximilian) was indicated as the primary name.
However, by the age of ten he signed with the name Max and used this for the rest of his life.
He was the sixth child in the family, although two of his brothers and sisters were from his father 's first marriage.
Among his earliest memories was the marching of Prussian and Austrian troops into Kiel during the Danish-Prussian war of 1864.
In 1867 the family moved to Munich, and Planck enrolled in the Maximilians gymnasium school, where he came under the tutelage of Hermann M ller, a mathematician who took an interest in the youth, and taught him astronomy and mechanics as well as mathematics.
It was from M ller that Planck first learned the principle of conservation of energy.
Planck graduated early, at age 17.
This is how Planck first came in contact with the field of physics.
Madhuri Dixit (born 15 May 1967) is an Indian actress who appear in Bollywood movies.
Dixit has won five Filmfare Awards, four for Best Actress and one for Best Supporting Actress.
She holds the record for the highest number of Best Actress nominations (13) at Filmfare.
In 2008, she was awarded the Padma Shri, India 's fourth-highest civilian award by the Government of India.
She made her Bollywood debut with the movie Abudh in 1984.
Her first breakthrough performance came in 1988, with the movie Tezaab.
The movie also established her career in the industry.
Since then she has appeared in movies like Dil, Beta, Khalnayak, Raja, Dil To Pagal Hai, Hum Tumhare Hain Sanam, Devdas, Aaja Nachle.
She took a break after Devdas to raise her children and made a comeback with Aaja Nachle in 2007.
She is married to Dr. Shriram Madhav and they have two children.
Moncton is a Canadian city in Westmorland County in southeastern New Brunswick.
Moby-Dick is a novel written by Herman Melville.
It was first published in 1851.
The story is told by a seaman named Ishmael.
He sails on a whaling ship called the Pequod.
Ahab is the captain of the ship.
He wants to kill a white whale called Moby Dick.
The whale bit his leg off.
The book received mixed reviews.
Moby-Dick is now thought to be one of the greatest novels ever written.
The Rio Madeira is a river in Brazil, a tributary which flows in Bolivia as well.
Mesons are incredibly small subatomic particles that are made of one quark and one antiquark.
Antiquarks are the antimatter counterpart of a regular quark, meaning that in a fraction of a second, a quark and its antiquark will destroy each other to produce only energy.
Since antimatter quarks have the opposite spin of regular quarks, their spins can cancel each other out, which forms a particle similar to a Higgs Boson.
The name meson comes from Greek "mesos", meaning middle.
This is because the masses of the first mesons discovered were between the mass of light particles like electrons, called leptons, and heavy particles like protons, called baryons.
Mesons are hadrons, which simply means that they are made of quarks.
Since quarks have different fractional charges, mesons can have a charge.
However, the charges of the quarks may cancel out, forming an uncharged meson.
The rest of the hadron family are known as baryons, which are made of three quarks.
Since quarks all have a spin of 1\/2, three of them will never add up to an integer spin.
An integer spin is simply 0, 1, or 2.
Particles with an integer spin are called bosons, which obey Bose-Einstein Statistics.
This means that more than one boson can actually be in the same point in space at the same time.
However, a meson is made of one quark and one antiquark, which each do not have an integer spin.
Particles which do not have an integer spin have a spin of 1\/2 or 3\/2.
These particles with 1\/2 spin are called Fermions because they obey Fermi-Dirac Statistics.
This means that no more than one fermion can be in the same point in space at the same time.
All known baryons and quarks (and antiquarks) are fermions, and all mesons are bosons.
This can get very confusing because this means that more than one meson can exist in the same point in space at the same time, but the quarks that make up mesons can not exist in the same point in space at the same time.
The most common natural way that we find mesons are through the interactions of cosmic rays with matter.
This process can be duplicated in particle accelerators, which smash high-energy quarks and antiquarks.
However, the mesons are very unstable and quickly turn into other particles.
Charged Mesons can decay into electrons and neutrinos, and uncharged mesons can decay into photons.
Since antimatter is destroying matter, a large amount of energy is created.
The energy follows the equation E = mc2.
A motorcycle (or motorbike) is a vehicle used to transport people from one place to another.
It does not have 4 wheels like a car.
It has 2 wheels like a bicycle.
But it has a motor like a car.
A motorcycle is normally driven by one person.
A passenger can also ride on the back of the motorcycle.
Some motorcycles have a sidecar that can carry another passenger.
In 1901, the first successful motorcycle was made by "Indian" motorcycles in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Since then, many other companies have made them.
Major manufacturers include Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha.
A well known American manufacturer of motorcycles is Harley-Davidson.
Since motorcycles can be lighter than cars, they can accelerate more quickly.
But it also makes them not as safe as cars, because they do not have a protecting chassis around them like cars.
Very often motorcycle riders are injured heavily in accidents.
A motorcycle rider can wear a helmet and clothing that has armor.
This special clothing may reduce the rider 's injuries in an accident.
Motorcycles also do not protect riders against wind and rain.
That makes it difficult to drive in winter or during bad weather.
In poor countries, motorcycles are used by many as a cheap method of transportation.
Many people who do not have the money to buy a car can afford a small motorcycle.
In rich countries, large powerful motorcycles are used more as a hobby or sport.
On-road bikes (ones that are allowed on public roads) require the rider to have a special type of driver 's license to be ridden legally.
Off-road bikes are not allowed to be driven on public roads.
Speed and stunts are the main goals for off-road bike sports.
Many on-road bikes are much faster than off-road bikes and can be used in sports such as motorbike racing.
Motocross is a form of motorcycle racing.
It is on an off-road circuit.
The sport came from motorcycle trials competitions held in the United Kingdom.
A map is an image of an area, usually of the Earth or part of the Earth.
A map is different from an aerial photograph because it includes interpretation.
The word "map" can also be used to talk about a chart or drawing that shows relationships between ideas, people, events, or anything else you can think about.
This is why web developers call a list of web pages on a web site a site map.
People who make maps are cartographers.
Many maps today are made using GIS computer systems.
These are database systems that are organized by location instead of named records.
If a map is on a piece of paper or a computer screen, it has to be projected.
This is because the Earth is round and paper and screens are flat.
There are a lot of ways that use mathematics to make projections.
The only kind of map of the Earth that is not projected is one drawn on a sphere.
This is called a globe.
Management means directing and controlling a group of one or more people or an organization to reach a goal.
Management often means the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources.
Management can also mean the person or people who manage, the managers.
European Management is specifically defined by academic Andreas M. Kaplan as a cross-cultural, societal management approach based on interdisciplinary principles.
Mineralogy is the study of minerals.
Minerals are things that make rocks.
There are many different types of minerals.
Some are hard, like diamonds.
Some are soft, like talc.
Some are metal, like gold or silver.
Minerals are put into special groups of minerals made of similar chemicals, or that have similar structures inside.
For example, the chemicals that make up some minerals line up in chains, while in other minerals, they make bow-tie shapes.
Studying minerals can be useful for figuring out certain things about a rock.
Sometimes the shape or size of the mineral can tell something about the rock as well.
For example, minerals in igneous rocks can help figure out how long the rock took to cool down (turn from lava into a rock).
Larger minerals mean the rock cooled slowly (probably underground).
Smaller minerals mean the rock cooled down quickly (probably above ground, like from a volcano).
The type of mineral in a rock can also tell what kind of a rock it is, or what has happened to the rock since it formed.
Many rocks are named based on what kinds of minerals they have.
Mineralogists (people who study minerals) study minerals in rocks with hand lenses (a magnifying glass), and in thin section (thin slices of rock) with microscopes.
They record things about the minerals like how big they are, what shape they are, what color they are, and if the mineral changes colors when you turn it.
Mineralogists also record what color minerals turn in a special light.
These details can help mineralogists figure out what minerals they are looking at.
Minerals can be used in a lot of different things, like jewelry, farming, pottery, making metals, and more.
Mineralogists can help find important minerals in the Earth using what they know and learn.
Maple syrup is a thick kind of syrup made from the sap of maple trees.
It is made mostly of a type of sugar called sucrose, and is usually eaten together with waffles and pancakes.
Sometimes, maple syrup is used to bake things such as pies, to make candy, or just as a syrup that adds sweetness to food.
It is also sometimes used in making lemonade.
It was used by eastern North America and later by European settlers.
Syrups are usually packed when they are hot.
The Canadian province of Quebec is by far the largest producer of maple syrup.
It produces about three-quarters of the worlds maple syrup.
In cold climates, maple trees keep starch in their trunks and root before the winter, but when spring arrives, the starch is converted to sugar\/sucrose that rises the sap.
A macron (-RRB-, from the Greek (makr n), meaning "long", is a diacritic mark placed above a vowel.
In the romanization of Japanese, a letter with macron represents a long vowel.
In the written Hawaiian language, the kahak is shown by a macron.
A mosque is a place where Muslims worship.
The word mosque comes from the Arabic word masjid..
A larger, ` collective ', mosque is called a masjid j mi.
Larger mosques offer more services to their community.
For many Muslim people, a mosque is more than a place of worship.
Muslims worship, study and discuss Islam, and do many other things in a mosque and its compounds.
In the United Kingdom, many mosques are used as community centres.
They are also used to teach about Islam.
Religious festivals and gatherings are held in mosques.
Weddings are one example.
Mosques have rules to control what people do inside.
One of these rules is that it is considered rude to disturb another person who is worshipping.
Many mosques are known for their Islamic architecture.
The earliest mosques, opened in 7th century were open-air spaces.
They are the Quba Mosque and Masjid al-Nabawi.
Later Mosques were buildings that were specially designed.
Nowadays, mosques are in every continent, except Antarctica.
The mosque played a major part in the spread of education in the Muslim World, and the association of the mosque with education remained one of its main characteristics throughout history, and, the school became an indispensable appendage to the mosque.
From the earliest days of Islam, the mosque was the center of the Muslim community, a place for prayer, meditation, religious instruction, political discussion, and a school.
And anywhere Islam took hold, mosques were established, and basic religious and educational instruction began.
Once established, mosques developed into well-known places of learning, often with hundreds, even thousands, of students, and frequently contained important libraries
In Iraq, pharmacology, engineering, astronomy and other subjects were taught in the mosques of Baghdad, and students came from Syria, Persia and India to learn these sciences.
While at the Qarawiyin Mosque, there were courses on grammar, rhetoric, logic, mathematics, and astronomy, and possibly history, geography and chemistry
Many mosques are famous works of architecture.
They are often built in a style that has stayed the same for many centuries.
Many mosques have prayer halls, domes, and minarets.
They may also have a courtyard.
Mosques were first built on the Arabian Peninsula.
The Muslims who built them used old architectural styles.
They also combined these styles in new ways.
A major influence was the palaces built during the Parthian and Sassanid dynasties of Persia.
The Sarvestan palace from the Sassanid era is a good example of this.
It has an arched entrance and a central dome.
These features already existed in Persia before Islam.
After the Arab invasion of Persia, the new style, with its Sassanid influence, was used for the new Islamic world.
Many forms of mosques have developed in different regions of the Islamic world.
Important mosque types include the early Abbasid mosques, T-type mosques, and the central-dome mosques of Anatolia.
In the 20th century, many countries that grew rich from oil paid for the building of many new mosques.
The rulers of these countries often hired leading architects to design these mosques.
They included non-Muslims.
Many early mosques have a square or rectangular plan.
They also have a prayer hall and an enclosed courtyard.
This is known as Arab-plan.
The first mosques of this type were built during the Umayyad Dynasty.
The flat roof of the prayer hall was supported by columns.
Many rows of columns were needed to support such roofs; this is called "hypostyle architecture".
One of the most famous hypostyle mosques is the Mezquita de C rdoba in Spain.
It is supported by over 850 columns.
In the warm Mediterranean and Middle Eastern climates, the courtyard served to hold the large number of worshippers during Friday prayers.
Often, hypostyle mosques have outer arcades.
They allow the visitors to enjoy the shade.
Arab-plan mosques were built mostly during the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties.
The Arab plan was very simple, which did not allow for much further development.
This caused that style of mosque to fall out of favor.
The Ottomans began building central dome mosques in the fifteenth century.
These mosques have a large dome centered over the prayer hall.
There may also be smaller domes, which are off-center over the prayer hall or the rest of the mosque.
This style was heavily influenced by the Byzantine religious architecture with its use of central domes.
Iwan mosques are famous for their domed rooms and iwans.
Iwans are spaces with an arched roof.
They have an opening at one end.
One or more iwans face a central courtyard that serves as the prayer hall.
The style borrows from pre-Islamic Iranian architecture.
Most mosques with this style are in Iran.
Most mosques have minarets.
Minarets are tall towers.
Usually they are at one of the corners of the mosque.
The top of the minaret is the highest point in the mosque, and usually the highest point in the area around the mosque.
The tallest minaret in the world is in the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, Morocco.
The first mosques had no minarets.
The most conservative Islamic groups, like Wahhabis, still avoid building minarets.
They see them as simply a fancy decoration and unnecessary.
The first minaret was built in 665 in Basra during the reign of the Umayyad caliph Muawiyah I. Muawiyah encouraged the building of minarets, as they were supposed to be the same as bell towers on Christian churches.
Because of this, mosque architects used the shape of the bell tower for their minarets.
Both the minaret and the bell tower serve the same purpose to call the faithful to prayer.
Before the five required daily prayers, a muezzin calls the worshippers to prayer from the minaret.
In many countries like Singapore where Muslims are not the majority, mosques are stopped from loudly playing the call to prayer.
The main problem is the use of electronic amplification of the call, which is now widely used by mosques.
The domes were often placed directly above the main prayer hall.
They represent the universe that Allah created.
At first, these domes were small.
They only took up a small part of the roof near the mihrab.
Later, they took the whole roof above the prayer hall.
Domes normally have the shape of a hemisphere.
The Mughals in India popularized onion-shaped domes in South Asia and Persia.
Some mosques have several domes, as well as the main large dome.
The other domes are often smaller.
Domes would help the imam be heard, as the sound waves would bounce in and then out of the dome making the voice louder.
All mosques have a prayer hall, which is also called musalla.
Normally, there is no furniture in it except for prayer mats or rugs.
These are necessary, as Islamic prayer is usually done kneeling.
Some mosques have Arabic calligraphy and Qur ` anic verses on the walls to help worshipers focus on the beauty of Islam and its holiest book, the Qur ` an, as well as for decoration.
The qiblah wall is usually at the other side of the entrance to the prayer hall.
This wall is specially decorated.
In a properly sited mosque, it will be set perpendicular to a line leading to Mecca.
People pray in rows parallel to the qiblah wall.
They arrange themselves so they face Mecca.
In the qiblah wall, usually at its center, is the mihrab, a niche or depression showing the direction of Mecca.
The mihrab serves as the place where the imam leads the five daily prayers.
All people must wash themselves before they pray.
Mosques often have fountains or other facilities for washing in their entrances or courtyards, so that people can perform the washing ritual before prayer.
At very small mosques, worshippers may use restrooms for their ritual washing, or wu ` du.
In traditional mosques, there is often a building specially for washing.
This is often in the center of the courtyard.
In the prayer halls, people must not wear shoes for much the same reason.
Modern mosques should appeal to the community they serve.
For this reason, other facilities may also be available at the mosque, like health clinics, libraries, and sports halls.
There may be decorative tiles, plaster or colored mosaics on the walls.
There are no pictures or statues.
Adult Muslims are expected to pray five times a day.
Most mosques have formal prayers for each of these times.
If performing the prayer is difficult, for example for ill people, then exceptions are made.
Mosques also hold a special prayer service, called jumuah.
This is done once a week.
It is a form of Sabbath and replaces the Friday prayers at the mosque.
Daily prayers can be done anywhere.
However, Muslims are expected to do their Friday prayer at the mosque.
When a Muslim dies, a funeral prayer is normally held.
It is held outdoors in a courtyard or square close to the mosque.
The prayers have all the worshippers present, including the imam, taking part.
During eclipses, mosques will host special prayers called eclipse prayers.
There are two large holidays (Eids) in the Islamic calendar.
During these days, there are special prayers at mosques in the morning.
Larger mosques will normally hold them for their own communities as well as the people from smaller local mosques.
Mosques, especially those in countries where Muslims are the majority, will also host Eid prayers outside in courtyards or town squares.
There are many events in Ramadan, Islam 's holiest month.
During Ramadan, Muslims must fast during the day.
Mosques organise iftar dinners after sunset.
These are done after the fourth required prayer of the day.
Part of the food is given by members of the community, which creates nightly potluck dinners.
The community contribution to these dinners is required.
For this reason, mosques with smaller communities may not be able to hold the iftar dinners daily.
Some mosques will also hold meals in the morning before dawn.
Mosques will often invite poorer members of the community to these meals.
Islam sees giving charity during Ramadan as good acts.
Larger mosques sometimes offer special, optional prayers.
They are done after the last required prayer of the day.
During each night of prayers, one member of the community who has memorized the entire Qur an will recite a part of the book.
It can last for up to two hours.
Sometimes, several such people (not necessarily of the local community) take turns to do this.
During the last ten days of Ramadan, larger mosques will host all-night programs to observe Laylat al-Qadr.
It is the night Muslims believe that the Islamic prophet Muhammad first received Qur ` anic revelations.
On that night, between sunset and sunrise, mosques employ speakers to teach the worshipers about Islam.
Mosques or the community usually provide meals at times through the night.
During the late twentieth century, more and more mosques have been used for political purposes.
Modern-day mosques in the Western world want to educate good citizens.
The details differ greatly from mosque to mosque and from country to country.
Countries with small Muslim populations use mosques as a way to support civic participation.
They are more likely to do this than Muslim-majority countries of the Greater Middle East.
American mosques host voter registration and civic participation drives.
In the United States, Muslims are often immigrants, or the children of immigrants.
Mosques want to interest these people for politics.
They also want to keep them informed about issues that concern the Muslim community.
People who attend the services at the mosque regularly are more likely to take part in protests, to sign petitions, and to involve themselves in political matters.
A link between political views and mosque attendance can still be seen in other parts of the world.
After the al-Askari Mosque bombing in February 2006, imams and other Islamic leaders used mosques and Friday prayers to call for calm and peace during the widespread violence.
Beginning in the late twentieth century and continuing into the early twenty-first century, a small number of mosques have also become a base for extremist imams to support terrorism and extreme Islamic ideals.
Finsbury Park Mosque in London is a mosque that has been used in this manner.
Like other places of worship, mosques can be at the center of social conflicts.
Babri Mosque was the center of such a conflict up until the early 1990s when it was demolished.
Before a solution could be found, the mosque was destroyed by about 200,000 Hindus.
It took place on 6 December 1992.
The mosque was built by Babur to mark the birthplace of Ram.
It was believed to be on a site of an earlier Hindu temple.
The conflict over the mosque was directly linked to rioting in Bombay (present-day Mumbai) as well as bombings in 1993 that killed 257 people.
In February 2006, a bombing seriously damaged Iraq 's al-Askari Mosque.
This increased the existing tensions.
The conflict between two Muslim groups in Iraq had already led to other bombings.
However mosque bombings are not limited to Iraq.
In June 2005, a suicide bomber killed at least 19 people at an Afghan mosque.
In April 2006, there were two explosions at India 's Jama Masjid.
After the September 11 attacks, several American mosques were targets of attacks.
These ranged from simple vandalism to arson.
The Jewish Defense League was suspected of plotting to bomb the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California.
There were similar attacks in the United Kingdom after the 7 July 2005 London bombings.
Outside the Western world, in June 2001, the Hassan Bek Mosque was the target of attacks.
The attacks involved hundreds of Israelis angry at Arabs for a previous attack.
Saudi involvement in building mosques around the world only goes back to the 1960s.
In the 1980s, the Saudi Arabian government began to pay for the building of mosques in countries around the world.
An estimated US$ 45 billion has been spent by the Saudi Arabian government for mosques and Islamic schools in foreign countries.
Ain al-Yaqeen, a Saudi newspaper, reported in 2002 that Saudi money may have helped to build as many as 1,500 mosques and 2,000 other Islamic centers.
Saudi citizens have also given a lot of money to mosques in the Islamic world, especially in countries where they see Muslims as poor and oppressed.
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1992, mosques in Afghanistan received money from Saudi citizens.
The King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California and the Islamic Cultural Center of Italy in Rome are two of Saudi Arabia 's largest investments in foreign mosques as former Saudi king Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud gave US$ 8 million and US$ 50 million to the two mosques, respectively.
In a mosque, people should keep focused on worshiping Allah.
For this reason, there are a number of rules about the correct behavior in a mosque.
Some of these rules are the same all over the world, such as no shoes should be worn in the prayer hall.
Other rules are different from mosque to mosque.
It is generally seen as good to have someone who leads the prayers, though this is not strictly necessary.
The person who usually leads the prayers is called imam.
He must be a free and honest man.
He should also be an authority when it comes to answering questions on religion.
In mosques that were built or that are kept up by the government, the imam is selected by the ruler.
In private mosques, the community selects the imam, through majority voting.
Only men may lead prayers for men.
Women are allowed to lead prayers for congregations where there are only women.
In addition to washing, there are other rules that also apply to those who enter the mosque, even if they do not wish to pray there.
It is forbidden to wear shoes in the carpeted area of the prayer hall.
Some mosques also do not allow wearing shoes in other parts, even though these may not be devoted to praying.
Islam requires that its believers wear clothes that show modesty.
As a result, both men and women must follow this rule when they attend a mosque (though mosques may not always enforce the rules).
Men are supposed to come to the mosque wearing loose and clean clothes that do not show the shape of the body.
Similarly, women who come to the mosque are expected to wear loose clothing, shirts, pants that cover to the wrists and ankles and cover their heads such as with a hijab.
Many Muslims, regardless of their ethnic background, wear Middle eastern clothing associated with Arabic Islam to special occasions and prayers at mosques.
Mosques are places of worship.
For this reason, those inside the mosque should be respectful to those who are praying.
Loud talking or discussion of topics that could be disrespectful, is forbidden in areas where people are praying.
It is also considered as rude to walk in front of Muslims in prayer or otherwise disturb them.
Islamic law requires men and women to be separated in the prayer hall.
Ideally, women should pray behind men.
Muhammad said, women should pray at home, not at the mosque.
Muhammad thought women should not be forbidden in mosques.
The second caliph Umar at one time stopped women from attending mosques, especially at night, because he feared they may be teased by males, so he made them to pray at home.
Sometimes a special part of the mosque was railed off for women; for example, the governor of Mecca in 870 had ropes tied between the columns to make a separate place for women.
Many mosques today will put the women behind a barrier or partition or in another room.
Mosques in South and Southeast Asia put men and women in separate rooms, as the divisions were built into them centuries ago.
In nearly two-thirds of American mosques, women pray behind partitions or in separate areas, not in the main prayer hall; some mosques do not admit women at all.
Although there are sections only for women and children, the Grand Mosque in Mecca is desegregated.
A few scholars of Islamic law believe that non-Muslims may be allowed into mosques, as long as they do not sleep or eat there.
Followers of the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence disagree.
They say that non-Muslims may not be allowed into mosques at all.
Different countries have different opinions on the question.
Nearly all the mosques in the Arabian Peninsula as well as Morocco do not allow non-Muslims.
The Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca is one of only two mosques in Morocco currently open to non-Muslims.
In modern-day Saudi Arabia, the Grand Mosque and all of Mecca are open only to Muslims.
Likewise, the Masjid al-Nabawi and the city of Medina that surrounds it are also off-limits to those who do not practice Islam.
For mosques in other areas, it has most commonly been taken that non-Muslims may only enter mosques if granted permission to do so by Muslims and if they have a proper reason.
In modern Turkey non-Muslim tourists are allowed to enter any mosque, but must obey the rules of decorum.
Visiting a mosque is allowed only between prayers; visitors must wear long trousers and take off their shoes; women must cover their heads; no photos; no loud talk is allowed.
No references to other religions are allowed (no crosses on necklaces, no cross gestures etc.).
However, there are also many other places in the west as well as the Islamic world where non-Muslims are welcome to enter mosques.
Most mosques in the United States, for example, report receiving non-Muslim visitors every month.
Many Mosques throughout the United States welcome non-Muslims as a sign of openness to the rest of the community and to encourage conversions to Islam.
Dogs are usually banned from entering mosques, but on 24 September 2008, the Muslim Law Council UK made special ruling, called a fatwa, which granted a blind Muslim permission to take his guide dog into the mosque.
It is common for a smaller mosque to serve as a hostel for Muslims on haj (pilgrimage to Mecca).
Sometimes mosques are used for refugees, or as temporary homes for homeless people.
Obligations to neighbors in Islam are very strict, and specific.
In the Qur ` an Mohammed said that a person who helps others in the hour of need, and who helps the oppressed; that person God will help on the Day of Travail (agony).
There are other commands, such as helping the poor and being nice to people.
An important part of being Muslim, or just being part of the mosque, is taking care of people who need help.
A mosque is a social, as well as a religious, group.
A madrassa is a little different from a mosque.
A madrassa focuses on teaching Islam, usually to children and young people.
When Spain was under Muslim control, some of the most beautiful buildings were mosques.
After 1491, Spain was under Christian control.
However, the Christians did not tear down the mosques.
They simply put a crucifix in them to make them into churches.
These mosques influenced the Renaissance architecture (way of building) in Europe.
A molecular cloud is a kind of cloud in space.
It has enough density and size so that molecules can form, usually molecules of hydrogen (H2).
Molecular hydrogen is not easy to find.
Instead astronomers use infrared telescopes and radio telescopes to look for CO (carbon monoxide).
This lets them find the hydrogen molecules that are also there.
The M16 is an assault rifle used by the United States since the Vietnam War in 1963, based on the AR-15.
Since 1975, the M16 has been used by many different countries.
First designed by Eugene Stoner in the United States of America, it is currently the standard infantry rifle used by the United States Military Forces.
The rifle is being used by over 80 nations.
The M16 uses the 5.56 mm NATO (.223) caliber cartridge, with a muzzle velocity (the speed of bullet leaving the rifle) of over 900 meters per second (over 3,000 feet per second), and has a maximum effective range (the maximum distance that the bullet is deadly) of 550 meters, with a rate of fire (how fast the gun shoots) of approximately 800 rounds per minute.
The M16A1 can shoot fully automatic and semi automatic; other versions have three-round-burst fire and semi-automatic, and the M4A1 Carbine retains full automatic and semi automatic fire.
The M16 normally holds 30 bullets in its magazine, but there are variants of the magazine that hold only 20 bullets.
There is also an M16 variant for the Canadian Army called Diemaco C-7.
The Diemaco C-7 rifles have maple leaves on the left side.
Marlon Brando (April 3, 1924 July 1, 2004) was an American actor and movie director.
He is best known for his roles in the movies A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), The Wild One (1953), On the Waterfront (1954), The Godfather (1972), Superman (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996).
Brando died of pulmonary fibrosis in Los Angeles, California.
Meteorology is the science that focuses on the Earth 's atmosphere.
People who study meteorology are called meteorologists.
Meteorologists record air pressure, wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, weather patterns, and other information.
Meteorologists use this data to understand weather and to predict it.
Meteorology is a major branch of earth science.
Meteorologists study the causes of particular weather conditions using information obtained from the land, sea and upper atmosphere.
They use computerized and mathematical models to make short and long-range forecasts concerning weather and climate patterns.
A variety of organizations use meteorological forecasts including: transport services, particularly air and sea travel; the shipping and sea fishing industries and sailing organizations; the armed forces; government services, e.g. for advice on climate change policy; farmers; public services; the media; industry and retail businesses; insurance companies; health services.
In addition to forecasting, meteorologists study the impact of weather on the environment and conduct research into weather patterns, climate change and models of weather prediction.
Written by AGCAS editors
Mount has three main meanings.
"Mount" is often used to mean "mountain", as part of a name e.g. Mount Vesuvius, Mount McKinley, Mount Everest.
To "mount" something means to put it onto something else.
A "mount" is a thing for mounting something on.
Meitnerium is a chemical element in the periodic table.
Its atomic number is 109.
It is not found on earth naturally.
Because of this, it needs to be made in a science laboratory.
Its half life, or the amount of time it takes for half of the element to go away is a little over one second.
Meitnerium was first made in 1982.
It is named after the German scientist Lise Meitner (1878-1968).
The two letter abbreviation is Mt and is a solid.
Nobody knows for sure what meitnerium looks like, but scientists think it is a white, gray, or silver color.
A megabyte (MB) is a large number used when talking about hard drives or computer memory.
One megabyte is 1 million bytes or 1 thousand kilobytes.
Until December 1998, when the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) first defined a mebibyte as 220, or 1,048,576 bytes, megabyte also meant either 1,048,576 bytes, or 1,024,000 bytes.
Casual computer users still often use megabyte to mean one of these numbers.
One thousand megabytes make one gigabyte.
Monosaccharides are the simplest form of carbohydrates.
They consist of one sugar and are usually colorless, water-soluble, crystalline solids.
Some monosaccharides have a sweet taste.
Examples of monosaccharides include glucose (dextrose), fructose, galactose, and ribose.
Monosaccharides are the building blocks of disaccharides like sucrose (common sugar) and polysaccharides (such as cellulose and starch).
Further, each carbon atom that supports a hydroxyl group (except for the first and last) is chiral, giving rise to a number of isomeric forms all with the same chemical formula.
For instance, galactose and glucose are both aldohexoses, but they have different chemical and physical properties.
The IC 342\/Maffei Group (also known as the IC 342 Group or the Maffei 1 Group) is the nearest group of galaxies to the Local Group.
The group is basically a binary group.
The member galaxies are mostly concentrated around either IC 342 or Maffei 1, which are the brightest galaxies in the group.
The group, and the Local Group, are in the Virgo Supercluster (i.e. the Local Supercluster).
Majed Moqed (June 18, 1977 - September 11, 2001) was a hijacker of the American Airlines Flight 77 in the September 11 attacks.
Mostaganem is a province of Algeria.
The capital is Mostaganem.
The province has 10 districts and 32 communes or municipalities.
The motherboard or mainboard is the main circuit board in a complex electronic system, like a computer.
It is the most ` central ' part of a computer.
All of the different parts of the computer are connected to the motherboard.
This lets them work together.
In most computers, the motherboard is a big green board, but many come in different colors like black, red and yellow.
Electrical parts must be on the motherboard.
These parts include transistors and resistors.
Major parts that are attached to the board are able to be removed in the future so that they can be upgraded.
The CPU is an example of a part that is usually removable.
Parts that are not "on-board" can be bought as a card.
In fact, many of the on-board parts on today 's computers were at one time an expansion card that became very popular.
These were put on the board to free up the card slots for other things.
Computers today usually have a memory port, 2 or more USB ports, a parallel port (for use with old printers usually), audio & microphone jacks, a network port and ports for the keyboard and mouse.
There are also some rare motherboards that have plugs only for very specific parts.
All of the slots and plugs both inside and outside the computer case are shaped a certain way to accept a certain type of part.
Some will not even accept parts even one generation behind, such as the CPU and memory.
Others, like the video plug have not changed in years.
Some of the plugs, such as the video, keyboard and mouse plugs, are a special color.
These colors make it easier to pair the plug to the port.
The motherboard is also referred to as the PCB which stands for printed circuit board.
Mannerism is a style of art that was created in the Late Renaissance period, from about 1520 until about 1600.
The Mannerist style of painting or sculpture often shows figures that are "elongated" (made longer) and "distorted" (made into strange shapes").
The aim of the Mannerist artist was usually to make art that looked "elegant".
The Mannerist style began in Italy, where the artists were influenced by the figures that Michelangelo painted on the ceiling and in the "Last Judgement" in the Sistine Chapel.
During the Renaissance, artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael had tried very hard to learn from nature, and to paint things in a way that was very realistic.
These two famous painters both died around 1520.
Many artists then decided that they were going to use the art of painting to "express themselves".
They were not going to follow the rules of anatomy and perspective in the way that Leonardo and Raphael did.
Mannerist paintings are often full of figures that seem to be twisting, writhing or fighting.
The faces of the figures often show strong emotions such as sadness, fear, hatred or sexual feelings.
Not all the painters who were working during the Mannerist period painted in the Mannerist style.
Many artists continued to work in the style of the High Renaissance.
Painters in the Mannerist style were Tintoretto, Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, Parmigianino and Rosso Fiorentino.
Giambologna and Benvenuti Cellini were Mannerist sculptors.
Giulio Romano was a Mannerist architect.
Mannerism spread from Italy to France, Germany and Spain.
One of the most famous Mannerist painters was El Greco who worked in Spain.
Some other artists who worked in the Mannerist style are the French sculptor Jean Goujon, the Dutch painter Abraham Bloemaert and the German painter Bartolomeus Spranger.
Possibly the strangest paintings from this time were by Giuseppe Arcimboldo who did pictures in which people 's faces seem to be made from fruit, flowers, fire and even fish.
Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an American woman who, in 1998, became well-known for being part of a scandal between her and then President of the United States, Bill Clinton.
She was born in San Francisco, California.
The scandal involved claims that she had had a sexual relationship with President Clinton.
He said they had not.
In the end Clinton had to admit that sexual activity of some kind took place between them.
Lewinsky grew up in a luxury $ 1.6 million home in Beverly Hills.
She is the daughter of Bernard Lewinsky, a medical researcher and photographer.
She worked in the mid 1990s as an intern at the White House and the Pentagon.
Lewinsky experimented with designing handbags and purses for her company, "The Real Monica".
On December 14, 2006, Lewinsky graduated with a Masters of Science degree in Social Psychology from the London School of Economics.
Lewinsky 's thesis is titled "In Search of the Impartial Juror: An exploration of the third person effect and pre-trial publicity".
According to her publicist Barbara Hutson, Lewinsky was interviewing for jobs in the United Kingdom in early 2007.
In 2009, scholar Ken Gormley had communications with Lewinsky as a part of his in-depth study of the Clinton scandals.
She said that Clinton had lied under oath when asked detailed and specific questions about his relationship with her.
Medieval music is music from the Middle Ages.
The time we call the Middle Ages is a long period from about 400 AD to 1400 AD.
We do not know a great deal about music of this time because it was such a long time ago and music was not often written down.
Music was used for entertainment.
In Europe there were people who went around the countryside making a living by singing and playing musical instruments.
They often went to big houses where rich people lived and entertained them with their faces.
These traveling musicians were called minstrels in England, and troubadors or trouv res in many other countries, or Minnesinger in Germany.
The minstrels often sang long songs which told stories (a ballad).
This was a way to tell people about what was happening in the world.
Some of the stories were made up: they were about love or about mythology.
Richard the Lionheart was a keen musician.
He wrote many songs in the style of the trouv res.
On the way back from a Crusade he was captured by Leopold of Austria.
The story goes that his attendant, Blondel, was looking for him everywhere.
Then he heard Richard s voice singing a tune which he knew and so he found him.
The song that he was singing was called Ja Nuns Hons Pris (I am no longer captive).
Minstrels very often went with their masters when they went on journeys to battles.
They also sang at important ceremonies, for example when people were being knighted.
Many of them played instruments such as the lute or fiddle.
Minstrels were poets and musicians, because they made up their own words and the tunes.
Sometimes we know the words of these songs because they wrote them down, but they did not write the tunes down.
Walther von der Vogelweide was a famous minnesinger in Germany.
One famous tune that was written down is the round Sumer is icumen in.
It was written down by a monk.
Monks could often read and write.
Troubadours would go from town to town playing love songs.
There were two main types of dances in medieval times: line dances and circle dances.
The farandole is a line dance.
It was a bit like a modern conga with people following a leader in a line.
The bransle was a round dance or circle dance.
The word bransle comes from the French word branler (to sway).
It is pronounced ` Brawl '.
Other dances were the basse dance and estampie.
Instruments could be divided into quiet ones which were used indoors, and loud ones which were used outside.
The recorder was a very popular indoor instrument.
There was also the psaltery and the harp (which looked like a small Welsh harp of today).
The bagpipes were loud instruments for outside.
They were used for dancing.
They were not as loud as modern Scottish bagpipes.
They were more like Northumbrian pipes or the French musettes.
There was also the hurdy-gurdy which was played by turning a handle.
Pipe and tabor were used for Morris dancing.
Many medieval plucked string instruments were similar to the modern guitar, such as the lute and mandolin.
The dulcimer and zither were had strings which were hit with sticks.
These are still popular in East Europe today.
There were also fiddles (vielle) and trombones (called sackbut).
It was believed that if you were entertained with music while you are eating it would help you digest your food and help keep your heart healthy.
And people believed that you will not get fat even if you scoffed down a load of food.
Also eating food while having people dancing for you was believed to have made you fit.
Church music was very important.
The mass was the main form of church music.
It used the five parts of the mass Ordinary (the Eucharist service): Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei.
The priests in the churches wanted church music to be serious.
They did not want it to become popular.
They thought that if people enjoyed it too much they would forget about worshipping God.
Religious plays had become very popular.
They told stories from the Bible.
However, the church leaders banned them, so they were performed in the streets and squares of the towns.
Instruments were also banned in church.
The church leaders thought that they belonged to the devil.
Only singing was allowed.
Gradually, however, the organ started to be allowed in church.
It helped people to sing.
Some organs were very tiny.
They were called portative organs.
The large organs that were fixed in place were called positives.
Bells were also used in church.
They looked like our sleigh bells.
Medieval music was based on plainsong.
This was a melody which sounded quite free in rhythm.
Composers started adding a second part to the melody as an accompaniment.
This was called organum.
Sometimes it just simply followed the main tune a fourth or fifth below.
This was called parallel organum.
In the 12th and 13th centuries the original plainsong started to be put at the bottom.
It became known as the cantus firmus (the firm tune).
Sometimes antiphony was used.
The simplest form of antiphony is when a leader sings something and a group (the choir) sing something back.
The type of plainchant that evolved was called Gregorian chant.
By the 13th century all other types of chant had been forgotten in Western Europe.
Carols became popular at this time.
At first a carol was a dancing song, but often these popular songs became used for songs for particular seasons or festivals.
In later periods these developed into Christmas carols as we know them.
People often went around in groups, particularly at Christmas, singing at the houses of rich people.
This was called Wassailing.
The word means being of good cheer (i.e. happy).
The Boar s Head is a well-known medieval carol.
Mummers were groups of people who performed religious plays.
They were traveling entertainers.
They normally wore masks so that people did not know who they were.
There are not many musical manuscripts which have survived from the Middle Ages.
Most of them are religious music.
They were often written using a system called neumes.
The pitch (music) of the music is shown by the neumes, but the rhythms were not very clear.
Gradually the system of writing music we know today was evolving.
Philippe de Vitry was an important composer and music theorist.
He developed ways of writing rhythms.
Most of the medieval music we know today belongs to the last part of the Middle Ages.
There was a tradition known as the Notre Dame school.
This music dates from around 1150 to 1250.
It was the time that great cathedrals were being built in Gothic architecture.
The cathedral of Notre Dame was a very famous example.
The music of this time was called Ars antique.
It used a system of rhythms called rhythmic modes.
Gradually a new way of writing was used.
This was called Ars nova (New art).
The most famous composer of this time was Guillaume de Machaut.
He developed a kind of composition called the isorhythmic motet.
He wrote a lot of songs called chansons (the French word for song).
Other types of song were called rondeau, ballade, and virelai.
Composers who were born at the end of the Middle Ages such as John Dunstable, Guillaume Dufay, and Gilles Binchois are often thought to belong to the next period in music history: the Renaissance period.
A maser is a device that produces light and heat by using atoms to release energy.
It was invented by Charles Hard Townes in the 1950s.
A maser takes the small vibrations in atoms and amplifies them to release light and heat.
Originally, they were referred to by the acronym MASER or ` Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
Unlike most radio transmitters, maser waves tend to have very similar wavelengths.
Their usage was first predicted by Albert Einstein.
In the 1960s masers were made to emit optical wavelengths, and soon were called lasers.
For the American singer, please see Marc Anthony.
Mark Antony (Latin: Marcus Antoninus, 14 January circa 82 BC 1 August 30 BC), was a Roman patrician from an upper-class family.
He became a general and politician.
He was an important supporter of Julius Caesar as a military commander and administrator.
After Caesar 's assassination, Antony, left as sole Consul, surrounded himself with a bodyguard of Caesar 's veterans.
He forced the senate to transfer to him the province of Cisalpine Gaul, at the time administered by Brutus, one of the conspirators.
Brutus refused to surrender the province and Antony set out to attack him in the beginning of 43 BC, besieging him at Mutina.
Encouraged by Cicero, the Senate denounced Antony.
In January 43 they granted Octavian imperium (commanding power), and sent him to relieve the siege.
In April 43, Antony 's forces were defeated at the battles of Forum Gallorum and Mutina, forcing Antony to retreat to Transalpine Gaul.
News came that Brutus and Cassius were assembling an army in order to march on Rome.
Antony, Octavian and Lepidus joined as allies, in November 43 BC, to stop Caesar 's assassins.
The trio were the Second Triumvirate.
Brutus and Cassius were defeated by Antony and Octavian at the Battle of Philippi in October 42 BC.
After the battle, a new arrangement was made: while Octavian returned to Rome, Antony went on to govern the east of the Republic.
Lepidus went to govern Hispania (Spain) and the province of Africa.
The triumvirate 's enemies were subjected to proscription, including Mark Antony 's archenemy Cicero, who was killed on 7 December 43 BC.
Antony followed in Caesar 's footsteps by going to Egypt and becoming Cleopatra 's lover.
They had three children together.
His absence from Rome allowed the intelligent Octavian to build up support.
The triumvirate broke up in 33 BC, and disagreement turned to civil war in 31 BC.
Antony was defeated by Octavian at the naval Battle of Actium and then at Alexandria.
He committed suicide, as did his lover, Cleopatra VII of Egypt, in 30 BC.
William Shakespeare wrote a play "Antony and Cleopatra" based on this historical event.
Manchester United F.C. is a football club that plays in the English Premier League.
They play at Old Trafford which is in Greater Manchester.
The public nickname of this club is "the Red Devils".
The club was first founded as Newton Heath L&YR F.C. in 1878.
In 1902 it became Manchester United F.C..
Matt Busby led the club to lots of success by using the youth players until the Munich air disaster in 1958.
Sir Alex Ferguson led the club to many titles, including the treble (Premier League, FA Cup, and Champions League), from 1986 to 2013, when he retired.
The club has 3 UEFA Champions League titles, 20 league titles, 11 FA Cups, and a FIFA Club World Cup.
Manchester United are the most successful club in England and have won 20 league titles, which is more than any other team.
They have also won 11 FA Cups and 3 European Cups.
The club started as Newton Heath L&YR F.C. in 1878.
All of the team worked at Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway depot at Newton Heath.
After nearly closing in 1902, John Henry Davies took over and changed the club 's name to Manchester United F.C..
Manchester United made Matt Busby their manager after the Second World War.
Matt Busby used the youth team to get new players, and this was very successful.
The club won the Football League in 1956 and 1957.
The success was stopped by the Munich air disaster in 1958, when eight of the club 's players died.
It was thought that the club might close, but it did not.
They won the Football League in 1965 and 1967, and the European Cup in 1968.
In 1986, manager Ron Atkinson was sacked by the club because they were in danger of being relegated.
They brought in Sir Alex Ferguson.
He did not win anything for the first couple years.
The team won their first trophy under Ferguson, the 1990 FA Cup, against Crystal Palace in the replay after a 3-3 draw.
The next season, United won the UEFA Cup Winners Cup.
In 1993, Manchester United won the very first Premier League.
In 1999, Manchester United won the treble, made of the Premier League, FA Cup, and UEFA Champions League.
Manchester United won the league 5 times again until Sir Alex Ferguson retired.
David Moyes was made manager in 2013.
In April 2014, he was sacked by the club and club legend Ryan Giggs became player-manager (when a player also is manager at the same time).
They finished in 7th place.
In 2014, Louis Van Gaal took over.
He led United to a 4th place finish.
In 2015, after winning 3-0 against Sunderland, Man United reached 1st place for the first time in over two years.
However, after losing 0-3 to Arsenal, they dropped to 3rd place.
Manchester United play at Old Trafford.
It became the club 's home ground in 1909, and a stadium was constructed to a capacity of 77,000.
In the Second World War, bombings damaged the stadium.
While the stadium was being fixed, they played "home" games at Manchester City 's Maine Road.
The stadium was converted to have only seats in 1993 due to the Taylor Report, but the capacity fell to 44,000.
In 1995, expansions in the North Stand raised the capacity to 55,000.
In the middle of 1999, the East and West Stands were expanded to give the stadium a capacity of 67,000.
Then between 2005 and 2006 8,000 more seats were added.
Morphogenesis (meaning the "beginning of shape"), is the biological process that causes an organism to develop its shape.
It is one of three fundamental aspects of developmental biology along with the control of cell growth and cellular differentiation.
The process controls the organized spatial distribution of cells during the embryonic development of an organism.
Morphogenetic responses may be induced in organisms by hormones, by substances produced by other organisms, or by mechanical stresses induced by spatial patterning of the cells.
Morphogenesis can take place in an embyro, a mature organism, in cell culture or inside tumor cell masses.
Maine is the northeast-most state in the United States.
The capital is Augusta, although the city of Portland, farther south, is the largest in the state.
Maine became a state on March 15, 1820, making it the 23rd state.
It was previously part of Massachusetts.
Commercial Fishing, including lobster trapping, is a traditional and still vital part of the coastal economy.
Tourism is a large industry in southern Maine because of its many beaches and picturesque coastal villages.
Southern Maine is the part of the state that has the most people.
Many other areas, to the North, are far more rural.
To the south and east is the Atlantic Ocean and to the north and northeast is New Brunswick, and the country of Canada.
The Canadian city of Quebec is to the northwest.
Maine is both the northernmost state in New England and the largest, accounting for nearly half the region 's whole land area.
Maine also has the distinction of being the only state to border just one other state (New Hampshire to the west).
The municipalities of Eastport and Lubec are the easternmost city and town in the United States.
Estcourt Station is Maine 's northernmost point and also the northernmost point in the New England region of the United States.
Maine 's "Moosehead Lake" is the biggest lake that is completely in New England (Lake Champlain is located between Vermont and New York, which is not considered part of New England).
A number of other Maine lakes, like as South Twin Lake, are said by Thoreau.
Mount Katahdin is both the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, which extends to Springer Mountain, Georgia, and the southern terminus of the new "International Appalachian Trail" which, when finished, will run to "Belle Isle", Newfoundland and Labrador.
Maine has a humid continental climate (K ppen climate classification Dfb), with warm (although mostly not hot), humid summers.
Winters are cold and snowy all over the state, and are mostly more severe in the northern parts of Maine.
Coastal areas are moderated somewhat by the Atlantic Ocean.
Daytime highs are mostly in the 75 80 F (24 27 C) range all over the state in July, with overnight lows in the high 50s F (around 15 C).
January temperatures range from highs near 32 F (0 C) on the southern coast to overnight lows below 0 F (18 C) in the far north.
Maine is mostly safe from hurricanes and tropical storms.
By the time they reach the state, many have become extratropical and few hurricanes have made landfall in Maine.
Maine has fewer days of thunderstorms than any other state east of the Rockies, with most of the state with less than 20 days of thunderstorms a year.
Tornadoes are rare in Maine, about two per year, mostly happening in the southern part of the state.
In January 2009, a new record low temperature for the state was set at 50 F, tying the New England record.
The state 's record high temperature is 105 F, set in July 1911.
As of 2008, Maine has an estimated population of 1,321,504, which is an increase of 6,520, or 0.5 %, from the past year and an increase of 46,582, or 3.7 %, since the year of 2000.
This has a natural increase since the last census of 6,413 people (that is 71,276 births minus 64,863 deaths) and an increase because of "net migration" of 41,808 people into the state.
Immigration from outside the United States made a net increase of 5,004 people, and migration within the country made a net increase of 36,804 people.
The population density of the state is 41.3 people per square mile.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Maine 's total gross state product for 2007 was $ 48 billion.
Its per capita personal income for 2007 was $ 33,991, 34th in the country.
People in Maine produce agricultural goods like poultry, eggs, dairy products, cattle, wild blueberries (the state makes 25 % of all blueberries in North America, making it the largest blueberry maker in the world), apples, maple syrup and maple sugar.
"Aroostook County" is known for its potato crops.
Commercial fishing, once a mainstay of the state 's economy, maintains a presence, mostly lobstering and groundfishing.
Western Maine aquifers and springs are a big source of bottled water.
Maine 's company outputs make paper, lumber and wood products, electronic stuff, leather things, food products, textiles, and bio-technology.
Naval shipbuilding and building remain key as well, with Bath Iron Works in Bath and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery.
Naval Air Station Brunswick is also in Maine, and serves as a large support base for the U.S. Navy.
However, the BRAC campaign recommended Brunswick 's closing, despite a new government-funded effort to upgrade its facilities.
Maine has four types of school departments: the first is a "local school."
It serves only one municipality, and is headed by a superintendent.
Normally, it serves kindergarten through grade 12, although some only go to grade 8.
Normally, lone school districts which do not have a high school are not totally lone; they are part of a "school union", which is the second type of school.
A "school union" is two or more school departments that share a superintendent but nothing else; each town has a lone school board.
Normally, only one of the schools in the school union has a high school, but unlike MSADs (talked about below), students in the whole school union are not forced to be at that school.
School union students are given a choice of bordering school districts, and the school union pays for the student 's tuition.
The third type is a "MSAD" (Maine School Administrative District).
This is a regional school district that has two or more towns into one school department with one high school and middle school.
These towns do not have lone school boards, but instead have one central board governing the entire district.
Students are forced to be at the central high school.
Normally, a MSAD comprises one larger town and one or more smaller towns.
The larger town has a high school and middle school, while the bordering towns have elementary schools as well, but no secondary schools.
The elementary schools normally cut off after grade 5 or grade 6.
Sometimes, towns in a MSAD do not have an elementary school but possess a high school and\/or middle school, but the bordering towns have the elementary schools.
The last type of school is a "CSD" (Community School District, sometimes called a Consolidated School District).
This mostly happens in school districts with such a small student population between many towns that the school district can not justify an elementary school outside the largest town in the district.
In not common cases, a CSD refers to only a high school of a school union.
Sometimes, in towns that do not have other towns bordering it for miles and miles (such as island towns), the entire student population gos to one school grades PK 12.
Students can choose to go to a school in another district if the parents agree to pay the school tuition.
"Private schools" are less common than public schools.
A big number of private elementary schools with under 20 students exist, but most private high schools in Maine are actually semi-private high schools.
This means that while it costs money to send children there, towns will make a contract with a school to take children from a town or MSAD at a slightly downed rate.
Often this is done when it is seen cheaper to subsidize private tuition than make a whole new school when a private one already exists.
Montana is a state in the United States.
Its capital is Helena, and the largest city is Billings.
Montana has many mountains in the western half of the state.
Most of the eastern part of the state is prairie.
Montana and Canada share a 545-mile (877-km) part of the world 's longest undefended (which means there are no soldiers or armies on either side) border.
The state borders the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, more provinces than any other U.S. state.
To the east of Montana is North Dakota; to the southeast is a short border with South Dakota.
In the south is Wyoming, and on the west and southwest is Idaho.
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the acronym MT, is part of computational linguistics.
It looks at the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another.
At its basic level, MT performs simple substitution of words in one natural language for words in another (see literal translation).
Current machine translation software often allows to adapt the translation to subject or profession (such as weather reports) to improve output by limiting the allowable substitutions.
This technique is particularly effective in domains where formal or formulaic language is used.
It follows then that machine translation of government and legal documents more readily produces usable output than conversation or less standardised text.
Microcode is the name for a number of instructions or data structures which are involved in implementing higher-level machine language in many processors, especially microprogrammed ones.
Microcode is on memory that is very fast to access.
When a machine level instruction needs to be executed, microcode tells the processor what electronic circuits should be used.
When a new processor is designed, an engineer also writes the microcode for the instructions of machine language.
This is called Microprogramming, the resulting code is called a microprogram.
In early processors, each instruction was hard-wired.
This has several drawbacks, the most obvious is that correcting an error in processor design means that the processor needs to be replaced.
A processor should add two values, which are in registers A and B.
Items 1-3, as well as 5-6 can be coded as one instruction.
It is also possible to hard-wire the logic needed for this operation.
This has the benefit of being faster, but the drawback that it no longer allows changes that might be needed later on.
The concept of microprogramming was developed by Maurice Wilkes in 1951, using diode matrices for the memory element.
Marine biology is the study of any living plant or animal in the sea.
Marine biologists are the people who study it.
Like other scientists, marine biologists must know a lot about the creatures they are studying.
They also must understand how the sea works.
The study of how the sea works is oceanography.
There are many kinds of marine animals and plants to study.
Marine animals include squids, corals, whales and fish.
Marine plants include sea grasses and algae.
The Census of Marine Life was a major project of marine biology.
The Minnesota Twins are a Major League Baseball team in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
They began in 1901 as the Washington Senators, based in Washington, D.C..
They moved to the Minneapolis-St.
Paul metropolitan area in 1961.
That area is often called the "Twin Cities", so the team was renamed the "Twins".
They have often worn a "TC" emblem on their uniforms and caps.
As the Senators, they were not very successful overall.
They had some strong teams in the 1920s and 1930s, but most years they played poorly.
As the Twins, they have had much better success, with two World Series championships, in 1987 and 1991, and many other post-season games.
They first played at Metropolitan Stadium in the suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
They moved to the Metrodome in 1982, and then to Target Field in 2010.
A mach number is a number that describes speed.
It is a measure of the speed of an object compared to the speed of sound.
Mach number is given as a percentage compared to the local speed of sound.
For example, half the speed of sound = Mach 0.5.
Where v is the speed of the object, and a is the speed of sound.
It is named after the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach.
When writing a speed as a Mach number, the number comes after "Mach."
The Moving Picture Experts Group, or MPEG for short, is a group of people that figure out ways to put music and video onto computers.
Then they publish this information for people to use.
MPEG invented a number of file formats for music and video.
MP3 and AAC, which are two of MPEG 's music formats, are very popular.
The MPEG-2 video format, used in DVDs, is also very popular.
Companies like Apple use MPEG formats in iTunes and the iPod.
Many YouTube videos use the MPEG-4 format, which sometimes goes by the brand names DivX or Xvid.
Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook on April 24, 1954) is an American activist.
He was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner.
Before his arrest he was a Black Panther Party activist, taxi driver, and journalist and still continued his efforts in prison.
Since the time when he was found guilty, his case has received attention around the world, and he has become a controversial cultural icon.
Supporters and opponents disagree on whether it is right for him to receive the death penalty, if he is guilty, or if he received a fair trial.
During his imprisonment he has published several books and other commentaries, notably Live from Death Row.
As of 2008, his legal appeals are still unsettled and he is a prisoner at State Correctional Institution Greene near Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.
Meditation is to try to get past the "thinking" mind, and into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness.
Meditation is used in Buddhism, Christianity (sometimes), Hinduism (where Yoga is important) and other religions.
In Buddhism, three things are very important: being a good person, making the mind stronger, and understanding why people are in pain (Dukkha).
Buddhist meditation is not just used for spiritual reasons.
Research shows that Buddhist meditation lowers stress, anxiety and depression.
For Buddhists, meditation is used to calm the mind so that the mind can better see the cause of pain.
Buddhists believe that this type of seeing can end pain.
Most types of Buddhist meditation focus on something.
The most popular things to focus on include the breath, love, other emotions, and religious images and sounds.
Christians sometimes meditate by thinking about small parts of the Bible, or by saying the words of a prayer to themselves over and over.
MPEG-4 is a video and audio standard.
Movies in MPEG-4 need less space on a computer and at the same time they have DVD quality.
MPEG means Moving Picture Experts Group.
Hundreds of researchers and engineers all over the world worked to develop MPEG-4.
The work on this standard ended in 1998 and in a few months MPEG-4 was made into a standard all over the world.
Movies that use MPEG-4 standard have high quality and have take up less computer room.
Older standards were MPEG-1 and MPEG-2.
In comparison with these older versions, MPEG-4 has additional features like having a way to fix problems, lots of quality and size choices, good picture and many more.
MPEG-4 takes into consideration special needs from computer, television areas and telecommunication.
It is able to be, besides rectangular pieces of computer information, individual objects in a certain area.
An example could be a car driving in front of a background.
The background does not change.
Since MPEG-4 can be many rectangular images, the car can be treated as another thing, not being a fixed background.
A machine pistol is a typically a handgun-style firearm that can fire fully automatic or burst fire.
Fully automatic means that the gun will continue to fire very rapidly so long as the trigger is pressed and held.
Burst fire means that when you pull the trigger, a number of shots determined by the shooter will be fired (for some guns, this is three shots, fired very quickly).
Machine pistols fire pistol cartridges.
Machine pistols usually have the cartridges fed into the gun with a magazine, which is a rectangular box which holds the cartridges.
Machine pistols are usually self-loading, which means that the gun automatically loads a new cartridge into the chamber after a shot is fired.
The first true machine pistol was the German MP-18 introduced in 1918.
It fired the 9mm Parabellum cartridge.
It used a side-loading magazine that held 20 cartridges.
The Germans converted some guns, like the Luger, into machine pistols.
They invented a type of Luger called the Luger P08 in World War I to German artillery crews.
It had a longer barrel and a 32 round magazine shaped like a round drum.
It was given to artillery crews so they could defend themselves.
In 1951 the Russian army developed the Stechkin APS, which could fire in burst fire or in fully automatic fire.
When the gun was used in burst or automatic fire, users were told to use the wooden stock so that they can control the weapon better.
One of the problems with machine pistols is they tend to rise up when being fired, making the bullets miss their target.
In the 1990s and 2000s, as more soldier began wearing bulletproof vests with hard ceramic armor, the machine pistol became less useful in a military setting.
The low-powered pistol ammunition was not able to penetrate ceramic-plated Kevlar military vests.
As a result, armies began to issue a new gun, the personal defense weapon or PDW.
The PDW fires armor-piercing, higher-powered ammunition which can go through bulletproof vests.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 April 4, 1968) was an American pastor, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
He is best known for improving civil rights by using nonviolent civil disobedience, based on his Christian beliefs.
Because he was both a Ph. D. and a pastor, King is sometimes called The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. (abbreviated the Rev. Dr. King), or just Dr. King.
He is also known by his initials, MLK.
King worked hard to make people understand that not only blacks but that all races should always be treated equally to white people.
He gave speeches to encourage African Americans to protest without using violence.
Led by Dr. King and others, many African Americans used nonviolent, peaceful strategies to fight for their civil rights.
These strategies included sit-ins, boycotts, and protest marches.
Often they were attacked by white police officers or people who did not want African Americans to have more rights.
However, no matter how badly they were attacked, Dr. King and his followers never fought back.
King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.
The next year, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
King fought for equal rights from the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 until he was murdered by James Earl Ray in April 1968.
Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929.
Although the name "Michael" appeared on his birth certificate, his name was later changed to Martin Luther in honor of German reformer Martin Luther.
As King was growing up, everything in Georgia was segregated.
This meant that black and white people were not allowed to go to the same schools, use the same public bathrooms, eat at the same restaurants, or even go to the same hospitals.
Everything was separate.
However, the white hospitals, schools, and other places were usually much better than the places where black people were allowed to go.
At age 6, King first went through discrimination (being treated worse than a white person because he was black).
He was sent to an all-black school, and a white friend was sent to an all-white school.
Once, when he was 14, King won a contest with a speech about civil rights.
When he was going back home on a bus, he was forced to give up his seat and stand for the bus ride so a white person could sit down.
At the time, white people were seen as more important than black people.
If a white person wanted a seat, that person could take the seat from any African American.
King later said having to give up his seat made him "the angriest I 've ever been in my life."
King went to segregated schools in Georgia, and finished high school at age 15.
He went on to Morehouse College in Georgia, where his father and grandfather had gone.
After graduating from college in 1948, King decided he was not exactly the type of person to join the Baptist Church.
He was not sure what kind of career he wanted.
He thought about being a doctor or a lawyer.
He decided not to do either, and joined the Baptist Church.
King went to a seminary in Pennsylvania to become a pastor.
While studying there, King learned about the non-violent methods used by Mahatma Gandhi against the British Empire in India.
King was convinced that these non-violent methods would help the civil rights movement.
Finally, in 1955, King earned a Ph. D. from Boston University 's School of Theology.
King first started his civil rights activism in 1955.
At that time, he led a protest against the way black people were segregated on buses.
They had to sit at the back of the bus, separate from white people.
He told his supporters, and the people who were against equal rights, that people should only use peaceful ways to solve the problem.
King was chosen as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which was created during the boycott.
Rosa Parks later said: "Dr. King was chosen in part because he was relatively new to the community and so (he) did not have any enemies."
King ended up becoming an important leader of the boycott, becoming famous around the country, and making many enemies.
King was arrested for starting a boycott.
He was fined $ 500, plus $ 500 more in court costs.
His house was fire-bombed.
Others involved with MIA were also threatened.
However, by December 1956, segregation had been ended on Montgomery 's buses.
People could sit anywhere they wanted on the buses.
After the bus boycott, King and Ralph Abernathy started the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
The group decided that they would only use non-violence.
Its motto was "Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed."
The SCLC chose King as its president.
In 1963, King helped plan the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
This was the largest protest for human rights in United States history.
On August 28, 1963, about 250,000 people marched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial.
Then they listed to civil rights leaders speak.
King was the last speaker.
His speech, called "I Have a Dream," became one of history 's most famous civil rights speeches.
King talked about his dream that one day, white and black people would be equal.
That same year, the United States government passed the Civil Rights Act.
This law made many kinds of discrimination against black people illegal.
The March on Washington made it clear to the United States government that they needed to take action on civil rights, and it helped get the Civil Rights Act passed.
In 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
When presenting him with the award, the Chairman of the Nobel Committee said: Today, now that mankind (has) the atom bomb, the time has come to lay our weapons and armaments aside and listen to the message Martin Luther King has given us (:) "The choice is either nonviolence or nonexistence"...
(King) is the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence.
He is the first to make the message of brotherly love a reality in the course of his struggle, and he has brought this message to all men, to all nations and races.
King and many others then started working on the problem of racism in voting.
At the time, many of the Southern states had laws which made it very hard or impossible for African-Americans to vote.
For example, they would make African Americans pay extra taxes, pass reading tests, or pass tests about the Constitution.
White people did not have to do these things.
In 1963 and 1964, civil rights groups in Selma, Alabama had been trying to sign African-American people up to vote, but they had not been able to.
At the time, 99 % of the people signed up to vote in Selma were white.
However, the government workers who signed up voters were all white.
They refused to sign up African-Americans.
In January 1965, these civil rights groups asked King and the SCLC to help them.
Together, they started working on voting rights.
However, the next month, an African-American man named Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot by a police officer during a peaceful march.
Jackson died.pp.121-123 Many African-American people were very angry.
The SCLC decided to organize a march from Selma to Montgomery.
By walking 54 miles (87 kilometers) to the state capital, activists hoped to show how badly African-Americans wanted to vote.
They also wanted to show that they would not let racism or violence stop them from getting equal rights.
The first march was on March 7, 1965.
Police officers, and people they had chosen to help them, attacked the marchers with clubs and tear gas.
They threatened to throw the marchers off the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Seventeen marchers had to go to the hospital, and 50 others were also injured.
This day came to be called Bloody Sunday.
Pictures and film of the marchers being beaten were shown around the world, in newspapers and on television.
Seeing these things made more people support the civil rights activists.
People came from all over the United States to march with the activists.
One of them, James Reeb, was attacked by white people for supporting civil rights.
He died on March 11, 1965.
Finally, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided to send soldiers from the United States Army and the Alabama National Guard to protect the marchers.
From March 21 to March 25, the marchers walked along the "Jefferson Davis Highway" from Selma to Montgomery.
Led by King and other leaders, 25,000 people who entered Montgomery on March 25.
He gave a speech called "How Long?
Not Long" at the Alabama State Capitol.
He told the marchers that it would not be long before they had equal rights, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
On August 6, 1965, the United States passed the Voting Rights Act.
This law made it illegal to stop somebody from voting because of their race.
After this, King continued to fight poverty and the Vietnam War.
King had made enemies by working for civil rights and becoming such a powerful leader.
The Ku Klux Klan did what they could to hurt King 's reputation, especially in the South.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) watched King closely.
They wiretapped his phones, his home, and the phones and homes of his friends.
On April 4, 1968, King was in Memphis, Tennessee.
He planned to lead a protest march to support garbage workers who were on strike.
At 6:01 pm, King was shot while he was standing on the balcony of his motel room.pp.284-285 The bullet entered through his right cheek and traveled down his neck.
It cut open the biggest veins and arteries in King 's neck before stopping in his shoulder.
King was rushed to St. Joseph 's Hospital.
His heart had stopped.
Doctors there cut open his chest and tried to make his heart start pumping again.
However, they were unable to save King 's life.
He died at 7:05 p.m. pp.284 -285
King 's death led to riots in many cities.
In March 1969, James Earl Ray was found guilty of killing King.
He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Ray died in 1998.
Just days after King 's death, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
Title VIII of the Act, usually called the Fair Housing Act, made it illegal to discriminate in housing because of a person 's race, religion, or home country.
(For example, this made it illegal for a realtor to refuse to let a black family buy a house in a white neighborhood.)
This law was seen as a tribute to King 's last few years of work fighting housing discrimination in the United States.
After his death, King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
King and his wife were also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
In 1986, the United States government created a national holiday in King 's honor.
It is called Martin Luther King, Jr..
Day.
It is celebrated on the third Monday in January.
This is around the time of King 's birthday.
Many people fought for the holiday to be created, including singer Stevie Wonder.
In 2003, the United States Congress passed a law allowing the beginning words of King 's "I Have a Dream" speech to be carved into the Lincoln Memorial.
King County in the state of Washington, where Seattle is located in, is named after King.
Originally, the county was named after William R. King, an American politician who owned slaves.
In 2005, the King County government decided the county would now be named after Martin Luther King, Jr..
Two years later, they changed their official logo to include a picture of King.
More than 900 streets in the United States have also been named after King.
These streets exist in 40 different states; Washington, D.C.; and Puerto Rico.
In 2011, a memorial statue of King was put up on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
There are also memorials for King around the world.
These include:
Modular arithmetic, sometimes also called clock arithmetic, is a way of doing arithmetic with integers.
Much like hours on a clock, which repeat every twelve hours, once the numbers reach a certain value, called the modulus, they go back to zero.
People talked about modular arithmetic in many ancient cultures.
For instance, the Chinese remainder theorem is many centuries old.
The modern notation and exact definition of modular arithmetic were first described by Carl Friedrich Gauss.
Modular arithmetic can be used to show the idea of congruence.
Two integers, a and b, are congruent modulo n if they have the same remainder when both are divided by the positive integer n. Congruence can be written this way:
The number n is called the modulus.
Another definition of congruence, that means the same thing but is sometimes more useful, is that the two integers are congruent modulo n if the difference (a - b) is an integer multiple of n. That is, if n is a factor of (a - b), then a and b are congruent mod n.
The remainder when 32 is divided by 7 is 4, and the remainder when 11 is divided by 7 is also 4.
This tell us they 're congruent, mod 7.
We can use this example it with the other definition too.
The difference, (a - b), is 32 - 11 = 21.
This shows the two numbers are congruent because 21 = 3 \* 7, and 7 is a factor of 21.
Modular arithmetic is useful in many fields, such as cryptography, computer science, and music.
It is often used in calculating checksums and check digits.
A microwave is a kind of high-frequency radio wave.
It is often used to heat food in a microwave oven.
When something moves, it almost always has a wave pattern to its movement - this can be seen in water most easily, with ripples and ocean waves.
A very common type of wave in the universe is electromagnetic waves.
Light is an example of an electromagnetic wave, and so is a microwave.
We can only see electromagnetic radiation in the visible light spectrum (which is why it 's called the visible light spectrum), so microwaves are invisible.
Radio telescopes and radar mostly use microwaves.
Microwave ovens work because microwaves make polar molecules (that is, molecules that act like tiny magnets) all face the same direction - to visualize it, imagine that the microwave oven is telling all of the molecules to face left.
Then, the microwave oven reverses the waves, so that all of the molecules have to face the other direction - right, in this case.
Heat is just the movement of molecules, so when the microwave oven tells the molecules to turn left, then right, then left, over and over again, this makes them get hotter.
Water is the most common polar molecule in food, which is why dry foods do n't tend to heat as well, or at all, in microwaves.
Microwaves get absorbed by these polar molecules, but are ignored by non-polar molecules, and this is why microwaves can penetrate deep into certain kinds of food faster than regular heat.
This is also why microwaves do n't heat many plastics - those plastics that are non-polar get ignored, so the microwaves go straight through to the food.
Metals tend to spark in microwaves, rather than heating.
The reason why is that metals like to give away electrons, so when the microwaves "push" at their magnet-like electrons, instead of turning, they just give the electrons away.
A bunch of electrons running off on metal is called electricity, and we see it in the form of sparks.
Methodism, or the Methodist movement, is a group of Protestant denominations.
The movement started in Britain in the 18th century and spread to the United States and the British Empire.
Originally it was popular with workers, poor farmers, and slaves.
The founder of Methodism was Mr. John Wesley who was a priest of the Church of England.
His brother Charles Wesley was a famous writer of Church music.
Mancala is a group of games played in Africa, the Middle East, and central Asia.
People play the games by moving seeds on a board with pits carved in it.
Maastricht (Limburgish: Mestreech) is a city in the south of the Netherlands.
It is the capital city of the province of Limburg.
About 120,000 people live there.
Maastricht has an airport and a university.
The first settlement in that region was founded in the Stone age about 25000 years ago, the first permanent settlement was founded by the Celts about 500 B.C. Maastricht got City Rights in 1204.
Since 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars, Maastricht belongs to the Netherlands.
The European Contract of 1992 was signed in Maastricht.
The first settlement was about 25000 years ago.
Real permanent settlements (and not just hunter gatherers) were founded at least as early as 5000 B.C. 4000 years after that, the Celts built a settlement in Maastricht.
They presumably worshipped a River God.
A Roman city was built around 0 AD, making Maastricht the oldest city of the Netherlands (together with Nijmegen).
In this time, Maastricht was called Trajectum ad Mosam.
This means Road across the Maas.
A Roman bridge in Maastricht connected the west with the east, making Maastricht a very strategic point.
This bridge - located at Eksterstraat - collapsed in the 13th century, and was replaced by the famous St. Servaas bridge.
In the early middle-ages Maastricht was very important in the spreading of Christianity in the Netherlands.
In the 4th century, the bishop St. Servaas was the first bishop in the Netherlands, and the Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk (which also is the oldest still standing building in the Netherlands) could be described as the root of Christianity in the Netherlands.
Servaas ' remains are still kept in Maastricht in a tomb.
Maastricht received its City Rights fairly early, in 1204.
It was of strategic importance during the Eighty Years War and the Napoleonic Wars.
Therefore, Maastricht has two forts; Fort St. Pieter and Fort St. Jan..
Maastricht also had city walls.
Remains of those walls can still be seen today (notably the Helpoort is one the few still standing City Ports).
In the beginning of the 20th century, Maastricht was an industrial city, with many factory 's.
Jan Pieter Minckeleers - a scientist from Maastricht - was the first to discover Coal Gas, making the first city lights available.
In 1940, Maastricht was conquered by the German forces.
However, many paintings were hidden in the caves at Sint Pietersberg - a steep hill in the south-west of Maastricht.
Even De Nachtwacht was hidden there.
Maastricht was liberated on14 September 1944.
In 1992 Maastricht was the host-city for the 1992 European Treaty, where the EU was officially formed and a decision was made about the Euro.
Maastricht is located on both sites of the river Maas in the south-east of The Netherlands and the south-west of the province of Limburg.
Maastricht lies in a valley, the Maasvalley, so hills surround the city.
On the south-west of the city, the famous St. Pietersberg is located.
On the western edge of the city, there is no space between the city and the Belgian border.
On the east, is the Savelsbos (a forest).
Neighbouring municipality 's are Eijsden and Vis (B) in the south, Lanaken (B) and Riemst (B) in the west, Meerssen and Valkenburg in the north, and Margraten in the east.
The city can easily be reached.
There is a highway (A2; E25) running from the south to the north (within the Netherlands, this highway runs from Eijsden to Amsterdam).
Another highway also begins in Maastricht, the A79 (going to the east).
Maastricht has two train stations (Maastricht and Maastricht Randwyck).
Trains are going to Amsterdam, Heerlen, Roermond, and Brussels (B).
Plans are made to re-establish the old train route to Lanaken (B).
If this connections is to be made again, Maastricht will be accessible from all directions by train.
A few kilometres north of Maastricht, is the Maastricht Aachen Airport.
That 's the second airport of The Netherlands.
Maastricht is divided into many areas.
The areas Heer, Amby, St. Pieter, and Wolder used to be individual villages, but are now (for a few decades) part of Maastricht.
According to the Dutch central bureaus of statistics (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek; CBS), Maastricht can be divided into seven larger districts.
These are:
Maurits Cornelis Escher (17 June 1898 27 March 1972), usually referred to as M. C. Escher, was a Dutch graphic artist born in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.
He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs and mezzotints.
These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture and tessellations (means "like tiles").
During his life, Escher made 448 lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings.
He did over 2000 drawings and sketches.
He also illustrated books, designed tapestries, postage stamps and murals.
Escher was interested in different ways of making art, he used tile-like repeated patterns in many of his paintings.
Early in his career he drew inspirations of nature: he studied art, landscapes and insects.
Some of Escher s most famous drawings include: Drawing hands, Relativity and Flying Fish.
Most of his works were related to maths.
Marv Albert (born Marvin Philip Aufrichtig; June 12, 1941) is an American sportscaster.
He is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame.
He is commonly called "the voice of basketball."
From 1967 2004, he was also known as "the voice of the New York Knicks."
Albert has called the play-by-play of six Super Bowls, NBA Finals and seven Stanley Cup Finals.
On June 6, 2011, it was said that Albert was joining CBS Sports to call play-by-play for The NFL on CBS.
The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The Vikings play in the National Football Conference of the National Football League (NFL).
They have been part of the North Division.
The Vikings have won their division 16 times, which is the third most among teams that are playing in the NFL now.
They appeared in four Super Bowls during the 1970s, and lost all four of them.
The team is called the Vikings because the state of Minnesota was settled by a great many people of Scandinavian ancestry.
The historical Vikings originated in Scandinavia.
The Manx language, (known in Manx as "Gaelg" or "Gailck"), is a language spoken in the Isle of Man.
It is a Celtic language of the Goidelic language family.
It is in the same family as Scottish and Irish.
Manx is spoken mainly by people who learn it through interest.
It died out as a natural community language in the 20th century.
The last of the old native speakers died in 1974.
Manx is protected under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
Manx was beginning to differ from Middle Irish in about 900 1600 AD, and it is called Yn Ghaelg \/ Yn Ghailck by Manx speakers.
There became fewer and fewer Manx speakers during the 19th century and the language was replaced by English.
In 1901, 9 % of the people in the Isle of Man were said to speak Manx but in 1921 the number dropped to only 1 %.
Today, Manx is used as the only language taught at five of the Isle of Man s pre-schools.
Manx is taught as a 2nd language at all of the Island 's primary and secondary schools.
There is now a school that teaches all of its lessons in Manx.
The census of 2001 said that 2.2 % of the population of the island could speak the language.
There are currently 54,000 second language Manx speakers, mainly in the Isle of Man.
The muon is an elementary particle.
It has a negative electric charge and half spin.
Its symbol is" -".
It is one type of lepton.
The muon has an average life time of 2.2 micro-seconds or 0.0000022 seconds.
A muon is like an electron but it is 200 times heavier.
Unlike an electron, it decays into other particles.
The superparticle of a muon is called a "smuon."
Muons can be made in particle accelerators with energy levels above 105.7 MeV.
Cosmic rays from the Sun also make muons:
Muons are unstable elementary particles and are heavier than electrons and neutrinos but lighter than all other particles.
They decay via the weak interaction.
Because the total of the lepton numbers of the starting and ending particles must be the same, one of the product neutrinos of muon decay must be a muon-type neutrino and the other an electron-type antineutrino.
Because charge must be kept the same, one of the products of muon decay is always an electron of the same charge as the muon.
So, all muons decay to at least an electron, and two neutrinos.
Sometimes, besides these necessary products, additional other particles that have a net charge and spin of zero (e.g., a pair of photons, or an electron-positron pair), are produced.
The dominant muon decay mode (sometimes called the Michel decay after Louis Michel) is the simplest possible: the muon decays to an electron, an electron-antineutrino, and a muon-neutrino.
Antimuons, in mirror fashion, most often decay to the corresponding antiparticles: a positron, an electron-neutrino, and a muon-antineutrino.
The Milwaukee Brewers are a Major League Baseball team in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
They play in the Central Division of the National League.
The team first played in Seattle, Washington for one season (1969).
They were called the "Seattle Pilots".
In 1970 they moved to Milwaukee and were renamed the Milwaukee Brewers.
Milwaukee has been the home city for several beer companies, including Miller Beer.
The old minor league baseball team in Milwaukee had also been called the "Brewers".
The team played in the American League from 1969 to 1997 and they won the American League championship in 1982.
They started playing in the National League in 1998.
The name of the stadium where they play baseball is Miller Park, which was built in 2001.
Before Miller Park was built, the team played in Milwaukee County Stadium, which was nextdoor to where Miller Park was later built.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (26 April 121 17 March 180) was Roman Emperor from 161 to 180.
He ruled with Lucius Verus as co-emperor from 161 until Verus ' death in 169.
He was the last of the Five Good Emperors, and is considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers.
Marcus Aurelius ' work Meditations, written in Greek while on campaign between 170 and 180, is still revered.
It serves as an example of how Aurelius approached the Platonic ideal of a philosopher king, and how he symbolized much of what was best about Roman civilization.
At the start of his reign, the Empire, under the joint rule of Marcus and Lucius Verus, defeated a revitalized Parthian Empire in a war from 161 to 166.
The unforeseen consequences for the Empire were great.
The returning troops brought with them a plague (the so-called Antonine Plague), which may have been smallpox.
It would eventually kill about 5 million people, and severely weaken the Empire.
Aurelius fought the German tribes during a long war from 166 to 180.
The pressure from the Goths moving west pushed settled Germanic tribes into invading Roman client states in Gaul, and across the Danube.
The plague raging in the Empire limited Rome 's ability to respond.
The Marcomanni tribe entered Italy, which had not been invaded for nearly 200 years, and defeated the army of the Praetorian Prefect.
This disaster forced Marcus to collect forces from other frontiers, and move them against the Marcomanni.
The Roman army was commanded by Claudius Pompeianus, Marcus ' son-in-law, with the future emperor Pertinax as one of his lieutenants.
The invaders were thrown out of Italy, and Marcus began planning to cross the Danube into their territory.
Intense diplomatic activity followed, as the Romans tried to win over various barbarian tribes in preparation for a crossing of the Danube.
A peace treaty was signed with some tribes, while others became Roman allies.
In 172, Marcus defeated the Marcommani, and in 173 their allies, the Quadi, were defeated.
It took until 174 for the Quadi to be subdued.
Marcus was now interrupted by a revolt in the east, led by the Roman general Avidius Cassius.
He was suppressed by Marcus ' army.
Marcus then returned to Rome.
A triumph was celebrated with his son Commodus.
In 177 the Quadi rebelled again, and the Marcommani joined them.
Marcus arrived on the scene in August 178, and in due course the Romans won a decisive battle in what is now Slovakia.
The emperor Marcus died in 180, still fighting the German tribes.
Victories were achieved in the next couple of years, sufficient for Commodus to claim credit with a triumph.
The battles had been fought by his generals.
The war had exposed the weakness of Rome 's northern frontier.
From then on, half the Roman legions (16 out of 33) would be stationed along the Danube and the Rhine.
For the Germanic tribes, although for the moment checked, the Marcomannic wars were only the prelude.
Later invasions in the 4th and 5th centuries would eventually end the Western Roman Empire.
Aurelius married his first cousin Faustina the Younger in 145.
During their 30-year marriage Faustina bore 13 children.
Only one son and four daughters outlived their father:
A maze is a puzzle.
It is made of a complex system of paths.
Mazes can be on paper.
They can also be big enough to walk through.
Labyrinths, which are similar, have one winding path instead of many paths like a maze.
Sometimes balls are placed in small mazes which have to be moved to the end through the maze.
Mammoths were hairy elephants of the genus Mammuthus.
They lived in Europe until 4,500 years ago, and were adapted to cold climate.
They were killed off by hunters and climate change.
They lived in the Pliocene and Pleistocene.
In the Pleistocene, northern Europe was covered with ice and tundra.
There were a series of ice ages, which allowed the mammoths to spread across the land.
Mammoth were hunted by early humans, who used spears, and cut them up with hand axes.
Their frozen flesh has been analyzed for its DNA sequence.
Murder is when one person kills another person on purpose.
It is only called "murder" when it is against the law.
If a person does something that makes someone else die, it is often known as manslaughter or homicide.
This is true if it was an accident.
Sometimes, a death caused by someone else may not be a crime.
For example, in some situations, killing may be self-defense.
A person who commits murder is called a murderer.
The legal definition of "murder" and "manslaughter" may be different in different countries, and is very much argued on: for example, killing in war is not usually called "murder" by those who take place in the war.
Killing in self defense (if people being attacked kill someone who is attacking them) is usually not "murder".
Attempted murder is a crime in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, states in the USA, and in other jurisdictions.
Attempted murder, or "attempt murder" in common law countries, is when someone tries to kill another person.
Just planning a murder is not enough.
The act must come close to, but does not actually take the life of the other person.
"Assassination" is a word which means murdering someone for a reason.
The word is most used when the person who was killed was a famous celebrity or was a person involved in politics.
The people who carry out assassinations are called "assassins" or "Hit-men".
An assassin may murder someone for political reasons, for money, or for other reasons, such as favors owed and revenge.
The word "Assassin" comes from Hashishin, a Muslim group that was active in the Middle East from the 8th to the 14th centuries.
This secret society killed people for political and religious reasons.
It is thought that the assassins were under the influence of hashish and opium during their killings or during their training.
The word assassin comes from either hashashim, the influence of the drugs, or hassansin, after their leader, Hassan-i Sabbah.
The first use of the word "assassination" in a book is The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1605).
The Mariner program was a program of spacecraft launched by NASA between 1963 and 1973.
The spacecraft studied the planets Mars, Venus and Mercury.
There were 10 spacecraft in the Mariner program, named Mariners 1-10.
Seven were successful but three were lost.
The program included spacecraft doing things that spacecraft had never done before.
These things included the first planetary fly-by, the first pictures from another planet, the first planetary orbiter, and the first gravity assist maneuver.
Other spacecraft in the Mariner program were planned but they were changed into other spacecraft with different names.
For example, Mariner 11 and Mariner 12 were planned but changed into Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.
Mariner 4 was a NASA spacecraft.
It was the fourth spacecraft in the Mariner program.
It was sent to study the planet Mars.
It was the first successful mission to Mars.
The spacecraft was launched on November 28, 1964 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Mariner 4 reached Mars after an eight month journey.
The spacecraft became the first spacecraft to take close-up photographs of another planet.
The spacecraft also had other instruments to study the Martian atmosphere.
The total cost of the Mariner 4 mission is estimated at $ 83.2 million.
Total research, development, launch, and support costs for the Mariner series of spacecraft (Mariners 1 through 10) was approximately $ 554 million.
Mesopotamia, from the Greek language, means ` land between rivers '.
It includes the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, and the fertile land which surrounds them.
It is part of the Fertile Crescent.
Mesopotamia today is split.
Most of it is in Iraq, but parts are in Kuwait, Syria, Turkey and Iran.
The area is often called the ` Cradle of Civilization '.
The ancient writing called cuneiform was first used around 3000 BC by the Sumerians.
They lived in city-states (a city and the land around it).
According to Genesis in the Old Testament, Abraham lived in Mesopotamia before moving to Canaan.
Historically important cities in Mesopotamia included Uruk, Nippur, Nineveh, and Babylon, as well as major territorial states such as the Akkadian kingdom, the Third Dynasty of Ur, and the Assyrian empire.
Some of the important historical Mesopotamian leaders were Ur-Nammu (king of Ur), Sargon (who started the Akkadian Kingdom), Hammurabi (who established the Old Babylonian state), and Tiglath-Pileser I (who started the Assyrian Empire).
Many advances in technology were made by the ancient Sumerians and Mesopotamians, such as irrigation, and trade by river, and flood control.
Mesopotamians had agriculture and domesticated animals, or livestock, from the earliest records.
Babylon is probably the first city built by settled people.
Mesopotamia also was the place where the wheel was first used.
First it was a pottery wheel that was used to make clay pots, then Sumerians adapted it for transport.
Mesopotamia is made up of different regions.
Northern Mesopotamia is made up of hills and plains.
Seasonal rains, and the rivers and streams come from the mountains.
Early settlers farmed the land and used timber, metals and stone.
Southern Mesopotamia is made up of marshy areas and wide, flat, plains.
Cities developed along the rivers which flow through the region.
Early settlers had to irrigate the land along the banks of the rivers in order for their crops to grow.
Mesopotamia has been conquered many times, by many different peoples.
It was the heartland of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires.
As each new group moved into the region they adopted some of the culture, traditions and beliefs of the people who had come before.
It was conquered by Alexander the Great (332 BC), the Parthians (150 BC), the Romans, the Persian Empire, the Arabs (7th century).
It is still one of the most fertile (and therefore valuable) parts of the Middle East.
Ancient Mesopotamia begins in the late 6th millennium BC, and ends with either the rise of the Achaemenid Persians in the 6th century BC or the Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia in the 7th century CE.
This long period may be divided as follows:
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an ancient story about a relationship between Gilgamesh and his close companion, Enkidu.
Enkidu is a wild man created by the gods as Gilgamesh 's equal to distract him from oppressing the citizens of Uruk.
Together they undertake dangerous quests that incur the displeasure of the gods.
Firstly, they journey to the Cedar Mountain to defeat Humbaba, its monstrous guardian.
Later they kill the Bull of Heaven that the goddess Ishtar has sent to punish Gilgamesh for turning down her advances.
The second part of the epic is about Gilgamesh 's distressed reaction to Enkidu 's death, which takes the form of a quest for immortality.
Gilgamesh attempts to learn the secret of eternal life by undertaking a long and perilous journey to meet the immortal flood hero, Utnapishtim.
The words addressed to Gilgamesh in the midst of his quest foreshadow the end result: "The life that you are seeking you will never find.
When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping".
Music notation or musical notation is a way of writing down music so that anyone can play it.
Many systems have been used in the past to write music.
Today most musicians in the Western world write musical notes on a stave: five parallel lines with four spaces in between them.
However, there are many others, some of which are in use today in different cultures.
Writing music down makes it possible for a composer who makes up (composes) a piece of music to let other people know how he wants his music to sound.
That music can then be played or sung by anybody who can read music.
If music is not written down, then people can only learn other people s music by listening to it and trying to copy it.
This is how folk music was traditionally learned.
The earliest kind of musical notation was written on tablets using a way of writing called cuneiform.
Music from Nippur from about 2000 B.C. has been found which seems to give an approximate idea of how the music should be played.
A tablet from 1250 B.C. has musical notation which shows the names of the strings of a lyre.
They are the earliest records we have of written music.
Musical notation from Ancient Greece showed the notes in more detail than the earlier cuneiform.
It shows the pitch (how high or low the note is) and how long it lasts.
It sometimes give an idea of the harmony.
It was used from at least the 6th century BC until about the 4th century AD.
When music started to be written down in Europe it was music for the Roman Catholic church.
The monks who wrote it down used a system of dots and strokes called neumes.
They gave an idea of how high or low the notes were, but did not show the length of the notes.
They may have been used by people who knew the music already and just needed a reminder of when to go up and down.
People gradually realized that it was necessary to find a system which showed the exact pitch of the note.
The first stave was just one single horizontal line.
Gradually this increased to four lines.
Guido d Arezzo, an Italian Benedictine monk who lived in the 11th century developed this system which soon led to the way of writing music that we know.
By the 16th century everybody was using the 5 line stave.
A system of bars (measures) was used everywhere by the end of the 17th century.
At first the bar lines where there to show which notes should be played or sung together.
Gradually the system we know today was developed in which each bar lasted the same length of time, and has a particular number of beats (counts) for each bar.
By the end of the 17th century this was used by most musicians in European classical music.
Today we use a five-line staff.
The pitch (high or low) is shown by where the note is put on the staff.
There may also be sharps or flats in front of some of the notes.
The music is read from left to right.
A staff of written music usually has a clef in front.
This shows exactly which notes are to be played.
Notes which are very high or low can be put on extra lines called ledger lines above or below the stave.
After the clef there is usually a key signature which shows the key of the piece: it shows which sharps or flats are to be used regularly.
After the key signature is the time signature.
Bars (measures) divide the piece into regular groupings of beats, and the time signatures show these groupings.
Above the music there is usually a word, or words, to show the tempo (speed) At various places in the music there will be dynamic marks to show how loud or soft to play.
For vocal music, words are written underneath the notes.
When music is played by a large group of instruments such as an orchestra the music is written in a "score".
This shows the music played by all the instruments, so there are many staves written underneath one another.
The conductor will need to have a score, but the players will play from a part which has just the notes that they play.
All the parts needed for a piece of music is called a set of parts.
Instruments such as guitars often play from a chord chart or just the names of the chords (C7, Em etc.) written underneath the music or under the words of a song.
A system called tonic sol-fa was used by amateur musicians a century ago.
This showed the names of the notes of a scale (doh, ray, me etc.).
Lute music in the Renaissance and Baroque periods used to be written in a system called tabulature.
Some 20th century composers have also used tabulature.
Some modern composers such as John Cage have written music by making drawings called graphic notation.
Music can also be written in Braille for blind musicians.
Today computers are often used for making music.
This has led to other forms of music notation which are used in different systems of software.
The MIDI file format, stores information about the pitch, duration, speed, volume etc. of notes and can be used to control a MIDI instrument.
There are other systems in use today for some non-Western music.
Manatees are large, fully-aquatic marine mammals of the order Sirenia.
They are sometimes known as sea cows.
The manatees form the genus Trichechus.
There are three manatee species.
The name comes from the Spanish manat, which itself comes from a Carib word meaning "breast".
Christopher Columbus, who thought mermaids were real, went to the waters around Haiti, and wrote in his logbook that he had seen three mermaids.
He said that they were not as beautiful as everybody said they were.
Nowadays, people believe Christopher Columbus had actually seen three manatees.
It is possible he saw them kissing one another, which is something they do when the meet each other in the water.
Manatees have thick pads around their lips and stiff bristles that help them grab food and move it towards the mouth.
A manatee eats sea grass and all kinds of sea vegetables.
All its teeth are shaped like a human 's molars.
The eight hours of chewing each day wears down on their teeth.
In fact, its first two pairs of teeth get so worn out that they simply fall out sometimes.
However, manatees can grow new teeth.
New teeth are always growing in the back.
When front teeth fall out, the back teeth move forward to take their place.
In mammals, only elephants and (quite independently) kangaroos have this kind of system.
The Sirenia are thought to have evolved from four-legged land mammals over 60 million years ago.
Their closest living relatives are the Proboscidea (elephants) and Hyracoidea (hyraxes).
Manatees live on the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean and the rivers.
The West African Manatee lives on the western side of Africa, on the shores from Senegal to Angola.
They also live in some rivers like the Niger River and around Lake Chad.
The West Indian Manatee lives in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, and also on the shores of Brazil and Venezuela.
The Amazonian Manatee lives in parts of the Amazon Basin in South America.
Manatees live in salt water and in fresh water.
On the sea shores they mostly live in shallow water, like lagoons and mangroves.
They also live in brackish water and rivers.
Manatees like bodies of water with a temperature of over 20 C.
They are mainly herbivores, spending most of their time grazing in shallow waters at depths of 1-2 metres (3 7 ft).
Marsupials are the main part of an infraclass of mammals called the Metatheria.
This consists of the marsupials and their extinct ancestors.
Marsupials give birth to living babies.
The babies are called joeys.
The babies feed on milk.
Their babies are born very small.
Marsupials have a special pouch where they carry their babies.
After the birth the baby goes into its mother 's pouch, where it can drink milk and is kept warm and safe.
When the babies are young they stay in the pouch all the time, but when they are older they can leave it for short times.
When they are old enough and too big for the pouch they do not go into their mother 's pouch anymore.
Marsupials evolved before the southern supercontinent Gondwana broke off from Pangaea 100 million years ago.
Early marsupial fossils have been found in Asia, from 125 million years ago.
They were outcompeted on Laurasia by placental mammals, but the placentals did not get into the Australasian part of Gondwana before it broke away into a separate supercontinent.
That is why marsupials now found native only on the southern continents of Australasia and South and Central America, with the single exception of the Virginia Opossum.
Some of the 100 living species of South American marsupials have migrated north: 13 species to Central America and one to North America.
There are 334 species of living Australasian marsupials.
They are mostly in Australia and New Guinea, and some are on the smaller islands.
In more recent times the land bridge between the Americas, and reintroductions to Australia, have brought in placental mammals.
They have caused the recent extinction of many marsupial species.
The extinct genus Yalkaparidon (Order Yalkaparidontia) is a bizarre fossil found in the Oligocene\/Miocene deposits of Riversleigh, NE Australia.
Its teeth are so strange that palaeontologists call it a ` Thingodont '.
The borhyaenids and the sabertooth Thylacosmilus are no longer considered to be marsupials.
They are sparassodont metatherians, the sister group of the marsupials.
Manchester is a city in North West England.
In 2013 there were 514,417 people living there, which makes it the fifth largest city in the United Kingdom.
It is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England.
Manchester was given city status in 1853.
The city is in the middle of the Greater Manchester Urban Area, which has 2,240,230 people, and is the United Kingdom 's third largest built-up place.
Manchester is a very important city in England, and is often called the "Capital of the North".
Manchester has many places for the arts, places for learning, businesses providing media as well as lots of shops.
In a poll of British managers in 2006, Manchester was named the best place in Britain to have a business.
A report in 2007 said Manchester is a fast-growing city (meaning lots of jobs are being created).
Manchester was the host of the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
It has two well-known football teams, Manchester United and Manchester City.
Manchester was the first city to industrialise, because of the Industrial Revolution.
It became the main place for making cloth and fabric.
During the 19th century it had the nickname Cottonopolis, because it had so many cotton mills.
The middle of Manchester is important because it is on UNESCO 's World Heritage Sites, because of its network of canals and mills built during its 19th-century development.
In the late 1700s, Manchester was only a small village with few people.
This changed at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
During this time, there were revolts about the living conditions for workers.
The most well known of these revolts was the Peterloo Massacre.
Fifteen to twenty people were killed during the Peterloo Massacre and hundreds of other people were hurt.
In 1780, Richard Arkwright built the first cotton mill in the area.
Later in the 1800s, Manchester became most important cotton town in the world.
It was also the first ` industrialised ' city, meaning that it was the first city to have a big amount of industry in it.
Only a small amount of cloth is still made in the city and the trade has mainly stopped.
This left a big number of old buildings from that time including the Town Hall, Free Trade Hall and Central Library and left a lot of other buildings empty.
The Manchester Ship Canal was created by the digging of canals in the rivers Irwell and Mersey for 36 m from Salford to the Mersey estuary.
This let ocean going ships sail into the Port of Manchester.
The county of Greater Manchester was made in 1974.
The county was created from cities and towns in southern Lancashire and northern Cheshire (the two main areas which make up Greater Manchester), and some mainly rural districts of Derbyshire and Yorkshire.
In 1996, the Irish Republican Army put a bomb in a truck in the center of the city.
Nobody was killed, but it did a lot of damage.
Manchester is 160 m northwest of England 's capital, London.
The city has many canals and rivers which were a big part in its earlier growth.
The largest open space in the city is Heaton Park.
It has an area of about 618 a. Heaton Park is a place that attracts many people every year.
People go there to see the many animals and the beauty of the countryside.
Much of Manchester is built-up (or ` urbanised ').
Much of Manchester 's rain comes over from the Pennines, which are a hilly range to the south and east of the city.
The city is mainly urban areas but also has some areas which are mainly of farmland.
To the south of the center is Manchester Airport.
This is the third largest airport in the United Kingdom.
A revival of the city 's importance started in the 1980s.
This was partly led by a vibrant music scene whose spirit was labeled ` Madchester ', which was led by bands such as The Happy Mondays and Joy Division.
The Smiths came from nearby Salford.
The scene was partly fuelled by the number of students attending the universities and further education colleges in the city.
Manchester has the most students in the United Kingdom in term time.
The largest university in the UK, the University of Manchester, is in the city.
It has over 30,000 students.
It also has the fourth largest university, the Manchester Metropolitan University.
The city has two Premier League football teams, Manchester City and Manchester United.
Football is a very important part of the culture of the city.
Many of the people support or show interest in the sport.
Manchester and North West England are served by Manchester Airport.
The airport has the most passengers in the UK outside London, with 22.1 million passengers in 2007.
Planes fly to lots of destinations in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East and Asia (with more destinations from Manchester than from London Heathrow).
Manchester is very well served by train and in terms of passengers, Manchester Piccadilly was the busiest English train station outside London in 2005 and 2006.
Northern Rail operates all over the north of England, and other operators include Virgin Trains.
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the first passenger railway in the world.
Greater Manchester has a very big railway network.
The city center has over a lot of park and ride sites.
Manchester became the first city in the UK to get a new tram system when the Manchester Metrolink opened in 1992.
There are lots of new lines being built.
The city has one of the biggest bus networks outside London with over 50 bus companies operating in the Greater Manchester area around the city.
First Manchester and Stagecoach Manchester are the main bus operators.
First Manchester also operates three free bus services called Metroshuttle which carry workers around Manchester 's business areas.
A big canal network runs though the city, built in the Industrial Revolution, today mainly used for leisure.
The Manchester Ship Canal is open, but not many boats use it.
Manchester 's buildings display many different types of building styles, from Victorian to contemporary architecture.
The very common use of red bricks characterises the look of the city.
Much Manchester 's architecture dates back to its days as a global center for the trade of cotton.
Just outside the city center is a large number of former cotton mills, some of which have been left mostly untouched since they were closed, while many others have been turned into apartment buildings and office spaces.
Manchester Town Hall, in Albert Square, was built in the gothic revival style and is thought of by many to be one of the most important Victorian buildings in all of England.
There are two universities in the City of Manchester.
The University of Manchester, created in 2004 when Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST were combined, is the largest full-time non-collegiate university in the United Kingdom.
The Manchester Business School, at the University of Manchester, was the first school to offer an MBA course in the United Kingdom in 1965.
Manchester Metropolitan University was created as Manchester Polytechnic on the merger of three colleges in 1970.
It was given university status in 1992, and in the same year, combined with Crewe and Alsager College of Higher Education, in South Cheshire.
Manchester has twinning plans (or "friendship agreements") with lots of places.
In addition, the British Council has a "metropolitan center" in Manchester.
Although not an official twin city, Tampere, Finland is known as "the Manchester of Finland" or "Manse" for short.
Also, Ahmedabad, India became the center of a booming textile industry, and it got the nickname "the Manchester of the East."
"Mississippi" John Smith Hurt (July 2, 1892, Teoc, Mississippi - November 2, 1966, Grenada, Mississippi) was an American blues singer and guitarist.
Hurt was raised in Avalon.
He tought himself playing guitar at the age of nine.
While he was working as a sharecropper, he played at local dances and parties.
He did his first recording in 1928 for Okeh Records but was not successful.
So he worked on as a sharecropper and played on at the local parties.
Two of Hurt 's songs were included in the album The Anthology of American Folk Music and an Australian found a copy of Avalon Blues.
So the interest in finding John Hurt himself increased.
In 1963 Tom Hoskins found him in Avalon and found out that his musical skill was still intact.
He brought him to Washington, D. C. He started playing at greater festivals like the 1964 Newport Folk Festival.
In his later years he often played in colleges, concert halls, coffee houses and also on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
He also recorded three albums for Vanguard Records and recorded most of his songs for the Library of Congress.
Hurt influenced different music genres like blues, country, bluegrass, folk and contemporary rock and roll.
He died 1966 from a heart attack in Grenada, Mississippi.
Moravia (Czech and Slovak: Morava; German: M hren) is a historical region in the eastern part of the Czech Republic.
It takes its name from the Morava River which flows from the north to the south of the land.
Together with Bohemia in the West and Silesia in the North, Moravia made historical-political region called Czech Lands.
Today, Moravia, Bohemia and small part of Silesia make up the current Czech Republic.
Important cities today are Brno, Olomouc, Ostrava and Zl n.
Murray Newton Rothbard (March 2, 1926 January 7, 1995) was an American economist and writer.
He helped make the Austrian School of economics popular in the United States.
Rothbard helped to create modern libertarianism, a political belief in less government and more personal freedom.
He founded a form of free-market anarchism which he called "anarcho-capitalism".
Rothbard believed society should organise itself, and he did n't like central planning.
Rothbard wrote over twenty books and was an important central figure in the American libertarian movement.
Rothbard advocated the abolition of government control of society and the economy.
He considered the monopoly force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term well-being of the people.
He called the state a "gang of thieves writ large the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society".
Rothbard thought that all services provided by monopoly governments could be provided more efficiently by the private sector.
According to him, many regulations and laws passed "for the public interest" were self-interested power grabs by scheming government bureaucrats to make themselves look important.
These schemes were not subject to market disciplines.
Government services were not efficient, and would get eliminated, if the services could be provided by competition in the private sector.
Rothbard was equally condemning of big business working with government.
Business elites, he thought, used government 's monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy to help themselves at the expense of their competitive rivals.
He argued that taxation was theft on a grand scale, backed by law.
It was "a compulsory monopoly of force" which prevented the more efficient voluntary procurement of defense and judicial services from competing suppliers.
He also argued against central banking and fractional reserve banking.
A monopoly system where the government decides how much money to print is, to him, a form of state-sponsored, legalized financial fraud.
It is against libertarian principles and ethics.
Rothbard opposed military, political, and economic interferences in the affairs of other nations.
Mel Brooks (born June 28, 1926) is a Jewish American actor, comedian, writer, movie director, and producer.
When he was born in Brooklyn, his name was Melvin Kaminsky.
He has directed, produced and written several movies.
Most of these are comedies that make references to other movies.
Brooks is one of the few artists who have received an Oscar, Emmy, Tony, and Grammy.
He was awarded his first Grammy for Best Spoken Comedy Album in 1999 for his recording of The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 with Carl Reiner.
His two other Grammys came in 2002 for Best Musical Show Album for the soundtrack of The Producers and for Best Long Form Music Video for the DVD "Recording the Producers - A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks".
He won his first of four Emmy awards in 1967 for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Variety for a Sid Caesar special.
He went on to win three Emmys in 1997, 1998, and 1999 for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his role of Uncle Phil on Mad About You.
He won his three Tony awards in 2001 for his work on the musical, The Producers for Best Musical, Best Original Musical Score, and Best Book of a Musical.
He also won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award for Young Frankenstein.
Three of Brooks 's movies are on the American movie Institute 's list of funniest American films: Blazing Saddles (# 6), The Producers (# 11), and Young Frankenstein (# 13).
Brooks worked with some people many times.
Performers who worked on three or more of Brooks ' movies are: Gene Wilder, Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, Ron Carey, Dick Van Patten and Andr as Voutsinas.
On December 5, 2009 Brooks was one of five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
On April 23, 2010 Brooks was awarded the 2,406 th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Brooks was married to Florence Baum from 1953 to 1962.
Their marriage ended in divorce.
Mel and Florence had three children, Stephanie, Nicky, and Eddie.
Brooks was married to the actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death from uterine cancer on June 6, 2005.
They met at a rehearsal for the Perry Como Variety Show in 1961 and married three years later.
Their son, Max Brooks, was born in 1972.
In 2010, Brooks said Bancroft was the main force behind his involvement in making The Producers and Young Frankenstein for the musical theater.
Mycoplasma genitalium is a small parasitic bacterium which lives on the ciliated epithelial cells of the primate genital and respiratory tracts.
It has one of the smallest known genomes, and is one of the smallest bacteria.
Other very small bacteria are the endosymbiont Candidatus Carsonella ruddii, and the recently discovered bacterium Nanoarchaeum.
The smallest known free living bacterium is Pelagibacter ubique with 1.3 Mb.
Mycoplasma genitalium was originally isolated in 1980 from the urethras of two male humans with non-gonococcal urethritis.
Infection by M. genitalium is fairly common, and is transmitted between partners during unprotected sexual intercourse.
It can be treated with antibiotics.
Much remains to be discovered about its role in sexual disease.
M. genitalium has 525 genes.
There are 482 protein-encoding genes in a circular chromosome of 582,970 base pairs.
An initial study of the M. genitalium genome with shotgun sequencing was done by Peterson in 1993.
It was then sequenced by Fraser and others.
It was found to contain only 470 predicted coding regions, including genes required for DNA replication, transcription and translation, DNA repair, cellular transport, and energy metabolism.
It was the second complete bacterial genome ever sequenced, after Haemophilus influenzae.
Mehmet Ali A ca (born January 9, 1958) is a Turkish criminal.
He is known for shooting and wounding Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981.
For this assassination attempt, he served 19 years of his life sentence in prison in Italy for attempted murder.
In 2000, he was extradicted to Turkey, where he was convicted of two robberies he committed in 1979.
He was sentenced to seven years four months for the robberies, and continued serving his sentence for the murder of Abdi pek i (1929-1979), a left-wing journalist whom he shot.
A ca has described himself as a mercenary with no political orientation.
He has made many different claims about the shooting of the Pope.
He used to be a member of the Turkish ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves organization.
He was released on January 18, 2010 and diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.
Melilla is a city in North Africa, right opposite Spain.
It belongs to Spain, and is all surrounded by Morocco, which believes it should belong to them.
Ceuta is another such city.
Its surface is about 20 square kilometers, and there are almost 70,000 people living there.
Macaroni is a food which is made of wheat and flour.
It is from Italy.
It is in the shape of a small tube.
It can either be straight or curved.
The curved type is called elbow macaroni.
Macaroni is almost never eaten by itself.
It is usually eaten with another food or covered in a sauce.
A very popular type of macaroni is "Macaroni-cheese", which is macaroni covered in melted cheese.
People all over the world enjoy it as a simple but delicious meal.
Miranda is one of Uranus ' moons.
It is the smallest, and the one which has the least rotation time.
Gerard Kuiper discovered it in 1948 and named it after Miranda, Prospero 's daughter in William Shakespeare 's play The Tempest.
Sometimes it is also called Uranus V.
It 's one of Uranus ' strangest moons.
Its complex surface may indicate partial melting of its interior, with icy material drifting to the surface.
The probe Voyager 2 made some photos in 1986.
These are the only images that exist, so far.
Geologically, it is the most active body in the Uranus system.
The grooves and troughs reach depths of a few kilometers (or miles) and expose materials of different albedos (reflectivity).
The features suggest a long, complex geologic evolution of this satellite.
Novels and short stories about Mars have been popular for over a hundred years.
The planet 's dramatic red color that some people can see is one reason for this.
another is that the planet is close to Earth.
Also, it looks somewhat like Earth.
There are also stories about creatures from Mars on Earth and elsewhere.
Near the end of the 19th century, the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli reported seeing what he thought might be water channels on Mars.
Because the Italian for channels is canali, English translations tended to render the word as "canals", implying artificial construction.
This led to the idea of intelligent beings on Mars before it apparently dried up.
The following works of fiction deal with the planet itself, with any assumed Martian civilization as part of its planetary landscape.
Several early modern writers, including Athanasius Kircher and Emanuel Swedenborg, hypothesized contact with Mars.
Early science fiction about Mars often involved the first voyages to the planet, sometimes as an invasion force, more often for the purposes of exploration.
By the 1930s, stories about reaching Mars had become somewhat trite, and the focus shifted to Mars as an alien landscape.
In the following stories, human contact and basic exploration had taken place sometime in the past; Mars is a setting rather than a goal.
Beginning in 1965, the Mariner and Viking space probes revealed that the canals were an illusion, and that the Martian environment is extremely hostile to life.
By the 1970s, the ideas of canals and ancient civilizations had to be abandoned.
Authors soon began writing stories based on the new Mars (frequently treating it as a desert planet).
Most of these works have humans struggling to tame the planet, and some of them refer to terraforming (using technology to transform a planet 's environment).
A common theme, particularly among American writers, is that of a Martian colony fighting for independence from Earth.
It appeared already in Heinlein 's Red Planet and is a major plot element in Greg Bear 's Moving Mars and Kim Stanley Robinson 's Mars trilogy.
It is also part of the plot of the movie Total Recall and the television series Babylon 5.
Many video games also use this concept, such as the Red Faction and Zone of the Enders series.
A historical rebellion of Mars against Earth is also mentioned in the Star Trek series of novels.
In the decades following Mariner and Apollo, the once-popular subgenre of realistic stories about a first expedition to Mars fell out of fashion, possibly due to the failure of the Apollo Program to continue on to Mars.
The early 1990s saw a revival and re-envisioning of realistic novels about Mars expeditions.
Early novels in this renaissance were Jack Williamson 's novel Beachhead and Ben Bova 's novel Mars (both 1992), which envisioned large-scale expeditions to Mars according to the thinking of the 1990s.
These were followed by Gregory Benford 's The Martian Race (1999), Geoffrey A. Landis 's Mars Crossing (2000), and Robert Zubrin 's First Landing (2002), which took as their starting points the smaller and more focussed expedition strategies evolved in the late 1990s, mostly building on the concepts of Mars Direct.
Several post-Mariner works are homages to the older phase of Mars fiction, circumventing the scientific picture of a dry and lifeless Mars with an unbreathable atmosphere through such science fiction generic staples as positing its future terraforming, or creating alternate history versions of Mars, where Burroughs ' Barsoom, Bradbury 's Martian Chronicles or The War of the Worlds are literal truth.
The Martian is a favorite character of classical science fiction; he was frequently found away from his home planet, often invading Earth, but sometimes simply a lonely character representing alienness from his surroundings.
Martians, other than human beings transplanted to Mars, became rare in fiction after Mariner, except in exercises of deliberate nostalgia more frequently in some genres, such as comics and animation, than in written literature.
The McIntosh is a type of apple.
It is red and green like a Gala apple only brighter in color.
Tart and crisp, it snaps when bitten into.
A machete is a long cutting tool.
The blade is usually 20-24 inches (50-60 cm) long and less than.2 inches thick.
The machete is a large knife often used in jungles because it can easily cut through plants and vines.
It can be used to open coconuts and cut down small trees (sometimes the back side has edges for sawing wood).
It is also used occasionally outside of jungles.
One such use is in surveying when a line of sight is needed through brush.
It is a lot like the Japanese katana and larger than the American Bowie knife, and is sometimes used in warfare.
A mushroom is the fruiting body of a kind of fungus.
Unlike plants, mushrooms do not use sunlight to make energy for themselves.
A toadstool is another name for a mushroom.
Some mushrooms can be eaten, and are used for cooking in many countries: China, Korea and many European countries.
People who look for mushrooms to eat are called mycophagists, meaning "mushroom eater".
The act of looking for mushrooms is simply called "mushrooming".
Most mushrooms have a stem and a cap.
The bottom of the cap sometimes has gills to hold spores, and sometimes holds the spores themselves.
Mainframes (also called "big iron") are powerful computers used for large data processing jobs.
They are mainly used by government institutions and large companies for tasks such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.
The mainframe computers are specially used as servers on the World Wide Web (WWW).
The term originally referred to the large cabinets that housed the central processing unit and main memory of early computers.
Later the term was used to distinguish very big computers from less powerful ones ("minicomputers" or "personal computers").
Microsoft Excel (full name Microsoft Office Excel) is a part of Microsoft Office.
It is also avaliable on Mac.
It is made by Microsoft and it is proprietary software.
It is used on the operating systems Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It can do calculations and graphics.
For example, it can make charts and other pictures from data tables.
It also has a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).
Excel is part of Microsoft Office.
The current versions are 2010 for Windows and 2011 for Mac.
Michael Kelland John Hutchence (22 January 1960 - 22 November 1997) was an Australian recording artist and actor.
He was best known as being one of the founding members and lead singer of the rock band INXS.
Hutchence was also the lead singer for the band Max Q and acted in the movies Frankenstein Unbound and Dogs in Space.
In 1992, Hutchence was punched by a taxi driver in Copenhagen, knocking him to the ground.
This caused Hutchence brain damage and depression.
In July 1996, Paula Yates gave birth to their daughter.
Hutchence was found dead by a hotel maid in his hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Double Bay, Sydney on 22 November 1997.
He committed suicide by hanging himself with his snake skin belt.
Hutchence had been a drug user and was using drugs just before his death.
Malachi, Malachias, Malache or Mal ` achi was the writer of the Book of Malachi which is part of the Bible.
This is the last book of the Neviim (prophets) section in the Jewish Tanakh.
Malachi is not mentioned by Ezra, however, and he does not directly mention the restoration of the temple.
The editors of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia think that he prophesied after Haggai and Zechariah.
They believe he made his prophecies about 420 BC, after the second return of Nehemiah from Persia (Book of Nehemiah), or possibly before his return, comparing with; with).
Microsoft Word or MS-WORD (often called Word) is a graphical word processing program that users can type with.
It is made by the computer company Microsoft.
The purpose of the MS Word is to allow the users to type and save documents.
Similar to other word processors, it has helpful tools to make documents.
It can be bought at shops and normally comes with Microsoft Office, but can be bought separately.
The program was first released in 1981.
Many of the ideas and features in Microsoft Word came from Bravo, the first graphical writing program.
Microsoft bought the Bravo program, and changed its name to Microsoft Word.
When it first came out, it was not very popular, and did not sell as well as other writing programs like WordPerfect.
Although it was not very popular when it came out, it had a feature called WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), which meant that people can change the visual style of writing (e.g. bold, italics), by clicking on buttons, when in other programs like WordPerfect, people had to add special ` codes ' to change the style of writing.
WYSIWYG is now a common feature of all computer writing programs.
There are versions for Microsoft Word for other operating systems as well as Microsoft Windows.
New versions support fewer operating systems, although they always support Windows.
Note: "Word for Windows" is the name of the Microsoft word made for Microsoft Windows. '
The program is very popular.
Without configuration the program saved the document in a secret file format, so other programs could not open it.
When the user sent his document to a friend, the friend needed a copy of Microsoft Word to read the document.
Then that friend would probably also save documents in the same secret format of Word.
This gave Microsoft Word a dominant position.
Microsoft Office or Microsoft Office System is a collection of computer programs made by Microsoft.
The programs are created for all users.
There are different versions of the software for home users and for business users.
Some versions may offer more programs, and some versions cost less than others, but none are for free.
The current version is Microsoft Office 2016 (Windows) and Microsoft Office for Mac 2016 (Mac).
There are a lot of other programs which are competitors to Microsoft Office.
Microsoft Office 365 is a new way of sharing Microsoft Office documents with people from your organization or between your computers, syncing to the cloud.
In order to sync to the cloud, you need a Microsoft account.
You can get a free trial of Office for 30 months.
Dr. Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai (; August 6, 1947 September 27, 1996), commonly known as Najibullah or Najib, was President of Afghanistan from 1987 until 1992, when the mujahideen took over Kabul.
The Muppets are puppet characters created by Jim Henson.
The characters include Kermit the Frog and the cast of The Muppets.
Jim Henson started work with the Muppets in the 1920s and continued.
The Muppets are known for an absurd burlesque and humorous style of variety-sketch comedy.
Jim Henson said the name "muppet" came from combining the words "puppet" and "marionette," but he also said that he just liked the way the word sounded.
There is no defined difference between a muppet and a puppet other than the link to Jim Henson.
Many of Jim Henson 's muppets have large eyes, round noses, and large mouths that go from one end of the face to the other (almost ear to ear).
Muppets are often made out of foam with felt on top.
Puppeteers usually control the muppet with one hand in the head and the other hand controls the muppets arms.
Sometimes the arms have a stick that is used to move the hand and arm - this is called the "arm rod."
Puppeteers hold the arm rod at one end and the other end touches the muppet hand.
Some muppets have hands that are gloves.
Puppeteers put their hands in the gloves of these muppets so the muppet can move its fingers.
For this reason, most muppets appear to favor their left hands.
Mary Stevenson Cassatt (May 22, 1844 June 14, 1926) was an American artist.
She lived in France for many years.
She often painted mothers and children.
Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Pittsburgh, to rich parents.
As a child, she traveled a lot in Europe, including visits to London, Paris, and Berlin.
Back in the United States, she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
She moved to Paris, France in 1866, returning to the US in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War.
Degas influenced Cassatt.
She used pastels, making many important works with them.
He also taught her etching.
She was busy in the 1890s.
She became less blunt in her opinions.
Other American artists sought her advice.
Among them was Lucy A. Bacon.,
From 1891 to 1893, she painted a large mural for the 1893 Chigago World 's Fair (Columbian Exposition).
The mural had three parts - the central theme was Young Women Plucking the Fruits of Knowledge or Science.
The left panel was Young Girls Pursuing Fame and the right panel Arts, Music, Dancing.
The mural was lost after the fair was over.
She died on June 14, 1926 at Ch teau de Beaufresne, near Paris, and was buried in the family vault at Le Mesnil-Th ribus, France.
Hayao Miyazaki is a leader in the area of anime, or Japanese animation.
His name is pronounced "Hi-ow Me-ya-za-key".
His company made the animated movies Spirited Away (2001), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki 's Delivery Service (1989), Porco Rosso (1992) and Princess Mononoke (1997).
His company is named Studio Ghibli.
In 2001, he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Spirited Away.
It was the first anime to win the award in that category.
During a press conference at Italy 's Venice Film Festival, he announced that he was going to retire from the production of feature-length films.
Miyazaki announced his retirement on September 2, 2013.
Motorola was a company that made cell phones and other electronics.
The company was based in Schaumburg, Illinois, a small town just outside of Chicago, Illinois.
After losing $ 4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, Motorola was divided in two separate companies on January 4, 2011; Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions.
They were listed in the New York Stock Exchange as MOT.
The company began with the name Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in 1928, and then later adopted the ` Motorola ' name in 1947.
They were the first developers of the walkie-talkie in World War II.
On August 15, 2011, Google said that it would buy Motorola Mobility for $ 12.5 billion.
On October 30, 2014, Lenovo finalized its purchase of Motorola Mobility from Google.
The Mackinac Bridge is a 5-mile-long (8-km.
- long) bridge that carries a four-lane interstate highway, Interstate 75.
It was built by the U.S. state of Michigan and connects that state 's Upper Peninsula and Lower Peninsula together.
The Mackinac Bridge passes over a strait of water that connects two Great Lakes, Lake Michigan (to the west of the bridge) and Lake Huron (to the east).
At the center of the Mackinac Bridge is a long suspension span, in which the bridge, made of steel and concrete, hangs from wires that run down from two huge, curved cables.
The government agency that runs the Mackinac Bridge charges motor vehicles a toll to drive over it.
In 2007, the toll was $ 2.50 for a passenger car.
The government hangs colored lights from the big cable, and turns them on at night so that the bridge can be seen from many miles away.
The Mackinac Bridge was opened in 1957, and this started a major economic boom in northern Michigan as tourists drove from all over North America to see the bridge, the Great Lakes, and the northern forests.
It is the traditional date of the March equinox, although it often falls on March 20.
The Merovingians were a dynasty of Frankish kings who ruled in the region of ancient Gaul (more or less modern France), from the fifth to the eighth century.
They were sometimes referred to as the "long-haired kings" (Latin reges criniti) by people of the time, for their symbolically uncut hair (traditionally the tribal leader of the Franks wore his hair long, while the warriors trimmed theirs short).
The term is drawn directly from Germanic, akin to their dynasty 's Old English name Merew owing.
The Merovingian dynasty owes its name to the semi-legendary Merovech (or Merowig, sometimes Latinised as Meroveus or Merovius), leader of the Salian Franks from c. 447 to 457.
Clovis I went on to unite most of Gaul north of the Loire under his control around 486, when he defeated Syagrius, the Roman ruler in those parts.
Marquette is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan.
Close to 20,000 people live there.
Marquette is in the Upper Peninsula, on Lake Superior and is an important port on that lake.
Much of the iron ore that was taken from mines in the Upper Peninsula was loaded onto ships in Marquette.
Marquette is in the United States of America.
Many religions, viewpoints, and creative artists have tried to find the Meaning of Life, but have no sensible answer.
Some people say that we will never know what the meaning of life is.
Many religions claim to offer some answers.
There are also sets of ideas called philosophies which try to answer this question.
There are also artists who paint or create sculptures to try expressing life.
There are musicians who write music and writers who write stories that try to explain life.
Many have different opinions on what the meaning is.
Some say life is a war zone where we are the soldiers fighting in that war for survival.
Some think it is all about the relationships that we make in our life.
Some people say that life is full of violence and hatred but some say that life is full of hope and happiness.
Still, other people say that the meaning of life is to achieve goals you set in life.
According to Douglas Adams, the answer to the question is 42.
The biological answer is to have children, which is to pass on your genes.
Others say the meaning of life is simply to live your life to the fullest.
Some say, however, the meaning of life is simply to give life a meaning.
Others, like Solomon, argue that ` life is useless '.
(Ecclesiastes 1:2)
The Maginot Line was a long line of walls, forts, and armed defenses that the French built after the First World War.
It is named after Andr Maginot, who was the French Minister of war when it was built.
The Maginot Line was made of a number of fortifications and bunkers, close to the French border to Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy.
Today, the fortifications towards Italy are commonly called Alpin Line.
The Maginot Line was built between 1930 and 1940.
During the First World War, the German Army had built the Hindenburg Line, which is similar.
The plan was that the French army would have time to get ready and go north to Belgium and win any battle with the German army there.
In the Second World War the German army and French army met in Belgium, but the French army lost.
A month is an amount of time used with calendars.
It is about one twelfth of a year.
It is a little longer than a natural period of the moon 29.53 days.
In some cultures, the idea for months came from moon phases.
People have counted days based on moon phases for a very long time.
Some calendars are still strongly based on the moon, or "lunar calendars".
Others, called "solar calendars", ignore the moon, and depend entirely on the Sun for example, the Gregorian calendar of 365 or 366 days (twelve months) used in much of the world today.
The Mozambique Channel is a part of the Indian Ocean between the island nation of Madagascar and southeast Africa, mostly the country of Mozambique.
It was the place of the World War II Battle of Madagascar.
The channel is about 460 km across at its narrowest point between Angoche, Mozambique, and Tambohorano, Madagascar.
The channel reaches a depth of 3,292 m (10,800 feet) about 230 km off the coast of Mozambique.
A mutagen is a substance or a process that changes the genetic material of an organism.
Mutagens also increase the number of mutations that occur.
Many mutagens also cause cancer, so they are also carcinogens.
Examples of mutagens are ionizing radiation, many bromine compounds, benzene.
A test to detect mutagens is the Ames test.
Mitosis is part of the cycle of cell division.
The chromosomes of a cell are copied to make two identical sets of chromosomes, and the cell nucleus divides into two identical nuclei.
Before mitosis, the cell creates an identical set of its own genetic information this is called DNA replication.
The genetic information is in the DNA of the chromosomes.
At the beginning of mitosis the chromosomes wind up into visible objects that can be seen with a light microscope.
The chromosomes are now two chromatids joined at the centromere.
Since the two chromatids are identical to each other, they are called sister chromatids.
Mitosis happens in all types of dividing cells in the human body except with sperm and ova.
The sperm and ova are gametes or sex cells.
The gametes are produced by a different division method called meiosis.
There are five phases of mitosis.
Each phase is used to describe what kind of change the cell is going through.
The phases are prophase, prometaphase, metaphase, anaphase and telophase.
During prophase, chromosomes in the nucleus condense.
Pairs of centrioles move to opposite sides of the nucleus.
Spindle fibers begin to form a bridge between the ends of the cell.
During prometaphase, the nuclear envelope around the chromosomes breaks down.
Now there is no nucleus and the sister chromatids are free.
A protein called a kinetochore forms at each centromere.
Long thin proteins reach across from opposite poles of the cell and attach to each kinetochore.
During metaphase, the sister chromatids are aligned by the pushing and pulling of the attached kinetochore microtubules, similar to a game of "tug of war".
Both sister chromatids stay attached to each other at the centromere.
The chromosomes line up on the cell 's equator, or center line, and are prepared for division.
During anaphase, the sister chromatids split apart and move from the cell 's equator (metaphase plate) to the poles of the cell.
The kinetochore is attached to the centromere.
The microtubules hold on to kinetochore and shorten in length.
Another group of microtubules, the non-kinetochore microtubules, do the opposite.
They become longer.
The cell begins to stretch out as the opposite ends are pushed apart.
Telophase is the final stage in mitosis: the cell itself is ready to divide.
One set of chromosomes is now at each pole of the cell.
Each set is identical.
The spindle fibers begin to disappear, and a nuclear membrane forms around each set of chromosomes.
Also a nucleolus appears within each new nucleus and single stranded chromosomes uncoil into invisible strands of chromatin.
Cytokinesis, even though it is very important to cell division, is not considered a stage of mitosis.
During cytokinesis, the cell physically splits.
This occurs just after anaphase and during telophase.
The cleavage furrow, which is the pinch caused by the ring of proteins, pinches off completely, closing off the cell.
The cell now has reproduced itself successfully.
After cytokinesis, the cell goes back into interphase, where the cycle is repeated.
If cytokinesis were to occur to a cell that had not gone through mitosis, then the daughter cells would be different or not function properly.
One would still have the nucleus and the other would lack a nucleus.
Cytokinesis is different in both animals and plant cells.
In plant cells, instead of splitting into two halves, it forms a cell plate.
Metabolism is the name given to the chemical reactions which keep us alive.
It happens in the cells of living organisms.
Reactions catalyzed by enzymes allow organisms to grow, reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments.
The word metabolism can also refer to digestion and the transport of substances into and between different cells.
Metabolism is usually divided into two categories.
Catabolism breaks down organic matter and harvests energy by way of cellular respiration.
Anabolism uses energy to construct molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids.
The chemical reactions of metabolism are organized into metabolic pathways, or cycles, like the Krebs cycle.
One chemical is transformed through a series of steps into another chemical by a series of enzymes.
The metabolic system of an organism decides which substances it finds nutritious and which poisonous.
For example, some prokaryotes use hydrogen sulfide as a nutrient, yet this gas is poisonous to animals.
The speed of metabolism, the metabolic rate, influences how much food an organism will need, and how it is able to get that food.
A striking feature of metabolism is the similarity of the basic metabolic pathways and components between even vastly different species.
For example, the set of carboxylic acids that are best known as the intermediates in the citric acid cycle are present in all known organisms, being found in species as diverse as the unicellular bacterium Escherichia coli and huge multicellular organisms like elephants.
These striking similarities in metabolic pathways are likely due to their early appearance in the evolution of life, and kept because of their efficiency.
A microorganism or microbe is an organism which is too small to be seen by the unaided human eye.
They are microscopic.
The study of microorganisms is called microbiology.
Microorganisms include bacteria, fungi, archaea or protists and viruses.
The first four types of microorganisms may be either free-living or parasitic.
Viruses, however, always reproduce inside other living things.
Most micro-organisms are single-celled, or unicellular organisms, but there are unicellular protists that are visible to the human eye, and some multicellular species are microscopic.
Microorganisms live almost everywhere on earth where there is liquid water, including hot springs on the ocean floor and deep inside rocks within the earth 's crust.
Such habitats are lived in by extremophiles.
Microorganisms are critical to nutrient recycling in ecosystems, because they act as decomposers.
Because some microorganisms can also take nitrogen out of the air, they are an important part of the nitrogen cycle.
Pathogenic, or harmful, microbes can invade other organisms and cause disease.
Free-living microbes get their energy in many different ways.
Some use photosynthesis, like plants do.
Some break down natural chemicals in their environment.
Others feed on things that were once living, such as fallen leaves and dead animals, causing them to breakdown or decay.
Some fungi and bacteria cause food to decay.
Moldy bread or fruit, sour milk, and rotten meat are examples of decayed food.
In nature, decayed materials mix with soil, providing essential nutrients for plants to use.
Without this process, the nutrients in the soil would run out.
These types of organisms are called decomposers.
They are the natural recyclers of living things on our planet.
Microbes also help us make some of our foods, such as bread, cheese, yogurt, beer, and wine.
They feed on the sugar in grain, fruit, or milk, giving these foods a special texture and taste.
Some microbes, often called germs, cause illness or disease.
They are parasites which live by invading living things.
Chickenpox, mumps, and measles are all caused by viruses.
They are infectious diseases.
Certain bacteria cause tooth decay.
It is possible to protect humans against some harmful microbes by storing and preparing food properly, cleaning the teeth, washing hands, and by avoiding close contact with ill people.
All animals seem to have bacteria and protozoa living in or on them without doing much harm.
Sometimes, as with herbivores, the microorganisms are vital to the digestion of food.
The human gut has more organisms living inside it than there are cells in the human body.
Micronations are countries started by one or a group of people which is not noticed by the United Nations.
These countries are mostly used in people 's heads, or on the internet.
People make micronations for lots of reasons.
Some are to show they do not like their main country (for example the UK), or if they want to make money, or to use it as a place for themselves.
Republic of Dolmatovka (2014).
Some micronations play in competitions.
The biggest football organization for micronations is known as the MFA (Micronational Football Association), founded by Joe Foxon in 2009.
It has 13 micronations from 7 countries as members.
It makes a competition every 4 years called the MFA World Cup for all the micronations in the world to play in.
The first World Cup will be in Southern England in 2013.
Every year there is a chess competition for micronations to play in.
It is played on the computer and in the first year, 3 micronations took part.
Every year there is a singing competition called the MicroVision Song Contest.
Micronations make a song and put it on the internet, and then other micronations vote for the best song.
The winner then makes the next one.
Explosives that explode when they are hit are also called mine; Two common types are Land mines and Naval mines.
Mining is the process of taking things from the ground.
Any material that can not be grown must be mined.
Mining things from the ground is called extraction.
Mining can include extraction of metals and minerals, like coal, diamond, gold, silver, platinum, copper, and iron.
Mining can also include other things like oil and natural gas.
Some mining is done by scraping away the soil (dirt) from the top of the ground.
This is called surface mining.
Some mining is done by going deep underground into a mine shaft.
This is called underground mining.
Some mining, such as gold mining, is done in other ways.
Gold can be mined by searching in the bed of a river or other stream of water to remove the flakes of gold.
This is called panning or placer mining.
A worker in a mine is called a miner.
Underground mining is a dangerous job.
Many mines have accidents.
Hundreds of miners die every year from accidents, mostly in poor countries.
Safety rules and special safety equipment is used to try and protect miners from accidents.
Underground coal mining is especially dangerous because coal can give off poisonous and explosive gases.
Some towns are mining towns.
People live there because they can make money as miners or by doing things for miners.
Michael Schumacher (born 3 January 1969 in H rth, near Cologne) is a German Formula 1 driver.
He has won seven world championship titles and has the most Grand Prix victories in the world.
This champion, nicknamed campionissimo by Italian fans of Ferrari, is considered the most popular German personality in the world.
Michael 's younger brother Ralf is also a Formula 1 driver.
When he was small, his father gave him a little kart.
It had a small motor bike engine in it.
He started getting interest from that time.
In 1984 Michael won the German Kart Championship and went on to win many more.
In 1987 he won the German and European Kart Championship.
Schumacher signed up with Will Weber 's Formula 3 race team and won the 1990 championship.
He made his debut in the Belgian Grand Prix on 25 August.
He impressed many fans as he qualified 7th on a track where he had never previously (before) driven with an inferior car.
At the start he burnt the clutch and retired.
He was quickly snapped up by Benetton and finished in 5th place at the Italian Grand Prix.
He followed it up with 6th in both Portugal and at the then new Circuit de Catalunya in Spain.
He then crashed out in Japan and spun in the torrential rain at the season finale in Australia.
In the 6 races he entered, he scored 4 points and 14th in the championship.
He started the season off well with 4th in South Africa followed by his maiden podium finish in 3rd at the Mexican Grand Prix.
He followed it up with another 3rd place in Brazil and 2nd in Spain.
In San Marino he crashed out, then came 4th in Monaco and 2nd in Canada.
He spun off in the rain at the French Grand Prix and finished 4th in Britain and 3rd in Germany.
He retired again in Hungary but at Spa Francorchamps, where he made his debut, he won a rain-affected race.
He came 3rd in Italy, 7th in Portugal, retired in Japan and came 2nd in Australia.
He finished the season in 3rd place overall (in front of Senna) with a total of 53 points.
In 2010 Schumacher returned to F1 with the Mercedes team.
In total he spent 3 years with the team in which he scored 1 pole (he was stripped of it due to a penalty), 1 fastest lap, and 1 podium.
He was replaced by Lewis Hamilton for 2013 so he retired again.
Season in progress.
Season in progress.
Schumacher was disqualified from the 1997 WDC due to dangerous driving in the European Grand Prix, where he caused an avoidable accident with Villeneuve.
His points tally would have placed him in second place in that year 's standings.
Record shared with Alberto Ascari (Belgian Grand Prix Argentine Grand Prix).
Some sources credit Ascari with nine consecutive wins, disregarding the Indianapolis 500 race, in which Ascari did not compete.
The American race formed part of the world championship, but was not run to the same regulations as the other races and was very rarely attended by world championship drivers.
Record shared with Alain Prost (and) and Kimi R ikk nen.
Record shared with Kimi R ikk nen (and).
On December 2013, Schumacher sustained a head injury after a skiing accident in France.
A medicine man is a traditional Native American healer.
This person, a man or woman, could help cure physical, mental, or spiritual health problems.
The Malay Peninsula (Malay: Semenanjung Tanah Melayu) is a big peninsula in Southeast Asia.
The place is divided into three political parts.
This includes:
Miles Davis III (May 26, 1926 September 28, 1991) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader and composer.
He was very important to 20th century music.
He helped to develop several different styles of jazz, like cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz, and fusion.
In 1959 he released an album called Kind of Blue.
That album became very famous and popular.
In 2008, it had sold 4 million copies.
In 2006 Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and described as "one of the key figures in the history of jazz".
Davis was born in 1926 in Alton, Illinois.
His father, Miles Dewey Davis, Jr., was a dentist.
In 1927, the family moved to East St. Louis.
They also owned a big ranch in northern Arkansas, where Davis learned to ride horses.
Davis 's mother, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis, wanted him to learn to play the piano.
She was a good blues pianist but did not tell her son this.
Davis started to learn music when he was 13, when his father gave him a trumpet and arranged for him to have lessons with local musician Elwood Buchanan.
Buchanan taught Davis to play the trumpet without vibrato, and Davis always played like this.
Buchanan was said to slap Davis 's knuckles every time he started using heavy vibrato.
Davis later said "I prefer a round sound with no attitude in it, like a round voice with not too much tremolo and not too much baseline bass.
Just right in the middle.
If I can t get that sound I can t play anything."
When he was 16, Davis played the trumpet professionally when he was not at school.
At 17, he played in bandleader Eddie Randle 's band for a year.
Saxophone-player Sonny Stitt tried to persuade Davis to join the Tiny Bradshaw band, but Davis 's mother wanted Davis to finish his final year of high school.
In 1944, the Billy Eckstine band visited East St. Louis.
Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were in the band, and Davis joined them as third trumpet player when trumpeter Buddy Anderson was out sick.
When the band left to finish the tour, Davis ' parents still wanted him to finish his studies.
After he graduated from high school in 1944, Davis moved to New York City to study at the Juilliard School of Music.
When he arrived in New York, he spent most of his time trying to get in contact with Charlie Parker, even though some people had told him that he should not.
When he found Parker, Davis became involved in jam sessions that took place every night in two of Harlem 's night clubs, Minton 's Playhouse and Monroe 's.
Other famous musicians like Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke also tookpart in these sessions.
Davis left Juilliard early, having first asked permission from his father.
He did not like the classes at Juilliard because he thought they focused too much on classical European and "white" music.
He also said that his Juilliard classes helped him to understand music theory.
He began playing professionally in many jazz groups, performing in several 52nd Street clubs with Coleman Hawkins and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis.
In 1945, he went into a recording studio for the first time, as a member of the group of Herbie Fields.
In 1946 he made his first recording as a bandleader, with a group called "Miles Davis Sextet plus Earl Coleman and Ann Hathaway".
He did not make many recordings as a bandleader at this time.
Around 1945, Dizzy Gillespie stopped working with Parker and Parker hired Davis as Gillespie 's replacement in his quintet.
Also in the group were Max Roach at the drums, Al Haig (replaced later by Sir Charles Thompson and Duke Jordan) at the piano, and Curley Russell (later replaced by Tommy Potter and Leonard Gaskin) as bass player.
With Parker 's quintet, Davis recorded several times.
He had a solo on Parker 's signature song, "Now 's the Time".
This solo led to the beginning of a style of jazz called "cool jazz".
The group also toured the United States.
During a tour in Los Angeles, Parker had a nervous breakdown and went to the Camarillo State Mental Hospital for several months.
Davis found himself stuck in L.A..
He stayed with, and played music with jazz musician Charles Mingus.
Later he got a job with Billy Eckstine on a California tour that brought him back to New York.
In 1948, Parker returned from Los Angeles, and Davis joined his group again.
The musicians in Parker 's group were not getting on very well.
Parker 's behavior was unpredictable because of his drug addiction.
Davis and Roach did not agree with Parker hiring Duke Jordan as a pianist and would have preferred Bud Powell).
In December 1948, Davis left the group after an argument with Parker at the Royal Roost.
He began to work more independently with different groups in New York.
In 1948 Davis grew close to the Canadian composer and music arranger Gil Evans.
Davis used to meet other musicians at Evans ' house, like Roach, the pianist John Lewis and the baritone saxophone player Gerry Mulligan.
Evans had been the arranger for the orchestra of Claude Thornhill and it was the sound of this group, as well as Duke Ellington 's example, that inspired the creation of a large group including a french horn and a tuba.
Davis took a very active role in the project, and it soon became "his project".
They tried to achieve a sound similar to a human voice, over carefully arranged compositions.
The group first played in the summer of 1948 at the Royal Roost.
They were active to the end of 1949 and had several changes of musician.
There were many white musicians in the group and this made some African American jazz players angry.
Many of them were unemployed at the time.
Davis did not listen to them.
The group got a recording contract with Capitol Records and they had several recording sessions between January 1949 and April 1950.
This music was released on an album called Birth of the Cool.
This album gave its name to a new style of jazz called "cool jazz".
Davis knew how important his project was and even turned down a job with Duke Ellington 's orchestra.
This group also led to the beginning of the lifelong friendship between Davis and Gil Evans.
M-theory is a new idea in small-particle physics that is part of superstring theory that was initially proposed by Edward Witten.
The idea, or theory, often causes arguments among scientists, because there is no way to test it to see if it is true.
If ever proven true, M-theory and string theory would mean big progress for science.
To understand M-theory one must first have some knowledge of string theory.
For hundreds of years, scientists have thought that the simplest objects in the universe are points, like dots.
String theory says that this is wrong and that the simplest objects in the universe are shaped like pieces of string.
These strings are so small that even when looked at very closely they look like points.
Each basic particle is created by the strings vibrating in different patterns.
The reason scientists had not thought of this idea for so long is that strings are much harder to work with than points.
They seem to break such rules as causality and special relativity, which says that information can not travel faster than the speed of light.
String theory has been developed because of a very important problem that has existed for almost 100 years.
Albert Einstein 's theory that describes the universe on very large scales (it is called general relativity), disagrees with two theories that describe things on very small scales (they are called quantum mechanics and the standard model).
There are also problems with the Standard Model: it includes about 20 numbers that seem to have no explanation; it has too many basic particles - some scientists think it needs to have fewer; and it does not include gravity, which is needed to explain weight.
Many of these problems can be solved by thinking of basic particles as strings.
Now there is only one number with no explanation, which gives the size of the strings.
String theory includes particles that cause gravity, called gravitons; finding this out delighted the scientists who work on string theory.
So, string theory successfully brings General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics together.
But there are some problems with string theory.
Normally, we think of the universe as having 4 dimensions, or basic directions.
3 of these basic directions can be thought of as "up\/down", "forward\/backward" and "left\/right".
The other direction is time.
String theory needs 10 basic directions.
These six other directions can be explained if they are "curled up", so they are much too small to see.
For example, by following the path of a spiral, it is possible to go a great distance along it without moving very far.
The 6 other directions can be thought of as tiny spirals - strings can move along them a great distance but not seem to move.
This can be looked at as a mathematical trick a trick that has little to do with the real world that can be seen and touched.
Such tricks are allowed if they give a theory that can better tell us how things work.
Another problem with string theory is that there are 5 different versions of it.
Each version allows different kinds of strings and says they work in different ways.
String theory is supposed to be a theory of everything so there should be only one version, not 5.
M-theory solves this problem.
In 1995 Edward Witten started what has been called the Second Superstring Revolution by introducing M-theory to the world.
This theory combines the 5 different string theories (along with a previously abandoned attempt to unify General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics called 11D-Supergravity) into one theory.
What Witten actually did was to predict that the fact that all these different theories were connected was a result of there being some underlying theory of which they were all approximations.
This theory is somewhat vague in nature and has not yet been pinned down.
Additionally, it was found that the equations that required string theory to exist in 10 dimensions were actually approximations as well.
The proposed M-theory would need one extra dimension and instead be a theory that takes place in 11 dimensions.
Witten has himself compared this idea in simple terms to a general who takes up a position on a hilltop, the extra space-coordinate, to get a better view of the battlefield 's two other dimensions.
The combination is accomplished by knitting together a web of relationships between each of the string theories called dualities (specifically, S-duality, T-duality, and U-duality).
Each of these dualities provides a way of converting one of the string theories into another.
T-duality is probably the most easily explained of the dualities.
It has to do with the size, written as R, of the curled up dimensions of the string theories.
It was discovered that by taking a Type IIA string theory that has a size R and changing the radius to 1\/R the result will end up being what is equivalent to a Type IIB theory of size R. This duality, along with the others, creates connections between all 5 (or 6, if supergravity is counted) theories.
The fact that these dualities existed had been known before Witten came up with the idea of M-theory.
Additional amusement has come for many in guessing what the M might stand for (possibilities include Matrix, Magic, Muffin, Mystery, Mother and Membrane).
Regardless of what the M might possibly mean, M-theory has become one of the most interesting and active areas of research in theoretical physics today.
For a more technical explanation, see w: M-theory (simplified explanation).
Marie Sk odowska Curie (7 November 1867 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist, chemist and feminist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity.
She was also the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.
She was the first woman professor at the University of Paris as well as the first person to win two Nobel Prizes.
She received their Nobel Prize in physics for her research on spontaneous radiation which was discovered by Henri Becquerel.
She was born in Warsaw, Poland.
She lived there until she was 22.
At the age of twelve, her mother died, and two years earlier, her sister Zofia died.
In 1891, she followed her older sister, Bronis awa, to study in Paris.
In Paris, she got higher degrees.
She also did her important scientific work.
She found the Curie Institutes in Paris and Warsaw.
Her husband, Pierre Curie, daughter, Ir ne Joliot-Curie, and son-in-law, Fr d ric Joliot-Curie, also won the Nobel Prize.
Curie did many great things.
She created a theory of radioactivity (a term made by her and Pierre), found different ways for separating radioactive isotopes, and discovered two new elements, radium and polonium.
It was also under her own direction that the world 's studies were first used into the treatment of cancers.
These treatments used the radioactive isotopes.
Despite becoming a naturalised French citizen, she never lost her Polish identity.
She named the first new chemical element that she discovered (1898) "polonium".
This was named after her home country, Poland.
In 1932, she founded a radium institute in her home town, Warsaw.
It was run by her sister, Bronis awa.
Curie died of aplastic anemia on 4 July 1934 at the age of 66 due to her prolonged exposure to radioactive elements and substances.
Meuse is a department found in the east of France in the Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine region.
Its prefecture is Bar-le-Duc.
Its population is about 193,000 (2006 estimation).
It is one of the 83 first French departments made during the French revolution.
Mania is a type of mood.
Mania is usually a symptom of a medical problem or a mental illness.
A person with mania is described as manic.
When people are manic, they usually have much more energy than usual.
They often have very strong emotions, and their moods may change very quickly.
The word "mania" comes from from the Greek language (words means mania).
That word comes from (mainomai), which means "to rage" or "to be furious" (very angry).
Mania is a symptom, not an illness by itself.
Many different things can cause mania.
These things include illegal drugs and brain tumors.
However, most of the time, mania happens in people with bipolar disorder.
Bipolar disorder causes periods of mania that switch off with periods of depression.
Like with other symptoms, mania can be mild (not very bad), severe (very bad), or anywhere in between.
Mild mania is usually called "hypomania."
Very bad mania can cause psychosis, with hallucinations and delusions.
In some cases, people with mania may need to be hospitalized so they do not hurt themselves or other people.
On the other hand, many people with mania and hypomania have special creativity and artistic talents.
In the United States, a book called The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association, is used to diagnose mental illnesses.
According to the latest version of the DSM, the DSM-5, a person is having a "manic episode" if all of these things are true:
The ICD-10 is the World Health Organization 's system for classifying health problems.
It describes a manic episode this way:
Mania is usually a symptom of mental illness, most often bipolar disorder.
A diagnosis of type I bipolar disorder (bipolar I disorder) can be made based on a single manic episode.
This is the most common cause of mania.
However, if a person is hypomanic, they may have type II bipolar disorder or cyclothymia.
Also, if a person has psychosis that lasts longer than their mania, they may have schizoaffective disorder.
Mania is usually caused by a mental illness.
However, some medical illnesses can cause symptoms of mania.
Some doctors use the mnemonic E-MANIC to remember the possible medical causes of mania:
Not having enough vitamin B-12 (vitamin B-12 deficiency) can also cause mania and psychosis.
If mania is caused by a medical problem, the best thing to do is to treat that medical problem.
If mania is caused by a mental illness, the best treatment is a combination of medicines and psychotherapy (talking with a therapist or counselor).
Doctors usually treat mania with a combination of mood stabilizers and antipsychotic medicines.
While taking these medicines, the patient should see their doctor regularly to be checked for side effects.
When the symptoms of mania have ended, long-term treatment then focuses on preventative treatment.
The goal of this kind of treatment is to prevent periods of mania or depression from happening.
Very often, this is done using a combination of drugs and psychotherapy.
Medication works best for bipolar disorder, and other mental illnesses, when it is combined with other treatments like psychotherapy.
Multimedia (Lat.
Multum + Medium) is media that uses several forms of information content (e.g. text, audio, graphics, animation, video) to inform or entertain the audience (User).
Multimedia also means the use of electronic media to store and experience multimedia content.
Multimedia means that computer info can be represented through audio, graphics, image, video and animation in addition to traditional media (text and graphics).
Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a parasite: it is spread by the bite of an infected mosquito.
People catch malaria when the parasite enters the blood.
The parasite causes a deadly infection which kills many people each year.
The parasite that causes malaria is a protozoan called Plasmodium.
Protozoa are organisms with only one cell, but they are not bacteria.
Bacteria are smaller and simpler than protozoa.
People usually get malaria from the Anopheles or Culex mosquitoes: they are the vectors of the disease.
The Plasmodium gets into people by the bites of mosquitoes.
The Plasmodium is in the mosquito 's special saliva.
The mosquito 's saliva injects an anticoagulant into the person to prevent their blood from clotting.
The person is then infected with Plasmodium as a by-product.
This makes the person have the disease we call malaria.
Only the female mosquito gives people malaria, because only the female mosquito consumes blood.
The male mosquito lives on the nectar of flowers.
The female uses blood as a source of protein for its eggs.
Some people do not get malaria from mosquitoes.
A baby can get it while inside its mother.
This is called maternal-foetal transmission.
People can also get malaria from a blood transfusion.
This is when someone gives blood to another person.
Another way people can catch malaria is by using a needle that someone with the disease used before them.
P. vivax and P. falciparum cause the most malaria in people.
Falciparum malaria is the worst kind, and kills the most people.
When Plasmodium enters the blood, they are then called sporozoites.
Sporozoites go to the liver, where they make many more sporozoites.
Then they change into a different form of Plasmodium.
This form is the merozoite.
The merozoites go into the red blood cells, then they make many more merozoites.
The merozoites break out of the red blood cells again and again.
When they do this, the person gets very sick, and shows symptoms of malaria.
This happens every few days, and is called a paroxysm.
P. vivax and P. ovale can live in the liver for a long time.
A person can look well, but still have the Plasmodium in the liver.
This is called a dormant phase.
Weeks or months later, the Plasmodium can leave the liver to the blood, and the person will get sick again.
P. falciparum is the most dangerous type of malaria.
It makes people sicker than those with other types of malaria, because there are more of them in the blood.
Also, with falciparum malaria, the red blood cells are sticky.
This makes the red blood cells block blood vessels.
If blood vessels are blocked, this can hurt what the blood vessel brings blood to, and can hurt people 's organs.
Pregnant women and children are hurt most by malaria.
When they get malaria, they get sicker.
40 % of people live in a place where there is malaria.
Malaria is in these places:
Every year, 300 to 700 million people get malaria.
It kills 1 million to 2 million people every year.
90 % of the deaths occur in Africa.
Most of the people who die from malaria are children.
Even if children do not die, many have brain damage.
Many of these deaths might be stopped with medicine or mosquito control.
But many of the places malaria may be found are in poor countries.
These countries do not have enough money to stop the mosquitoes, or to give people medicine.
Money, however, is not the only problem.
A country must have an organised medical system to provide services.
Many countries in central Africa have been disrupted by warfare and conflict between groups, and general unrest.
Also, easy solutions to kill the parasites do not exist as they did 50 years ago.
This is because the insects are resistant to many insecticides, and the Plasmodium parasite is highly resistant to quinine and most other common drugs.
This is a normal evolutionary process: the chemicals weed out the non-resistant organisms, and the offspring of the few resistant organisms multiply.
Symptoms are changes in someone 's body that are signs for a disease.
Most people who get malaria get symptoms 10 30 days after they get infected (the Plasmodium gets in their blood.)
But some people can get symptoms after only a week, and some may be infected with malaria and not have symptoms for a year.
The most common symptom of malaria is fever, when the body temperature is high.
The fever from malaria usually comes very suddenly.
The people who have Malaria often feel like they had influenza.
Complications are problems that happen because of a disease.
Pregnant women and young children have more complications.
People who get malaria for the first time have more complications.
Falciparum malaria has the most complications.
A technician looks for the malaria parasite in blood films (blood smears).
Microscopic view of malaria parasites in a blood smear.
Arrows point to infected red blood cells.
A clinical diagnosis is based on the signs and symptoms of a disease, it is a diagnosis made without medical testing.
In the case of malaria one of the main symptoms which may lead to a clinical diagnosis of malaria is a fever.
Any clinical diagnosis of malaria should be confirmed by a trained professional based upon laboratory results as soon as it is possible.
A Malaria rapid diagnostic test is a blood test which can confirm a diagnosis of malaria in about twenty minutes.
RDTs are not foolproof and have a number of drawbacks, and as such a negative rapid diagnostic test should not be accepted at face-value and follow-up with malaria microscopy is necessary.
To see if patients have malaria, doctors may do a blood test.
This test is called a Giemsa blood smear.
Blood is put on a slide which is a thin piece of glass.
The Giemsa stain is put on the slide.
This stain helps doctors see the malaria.
Then they look at the slide under a microscope.
The Plasmodium is seen in the red blood cells.
People with different kinds of malaria need different medicines.
The medicine that works for one kind of malaria may not for another kind.
So it is very important to know which species of Plasmodium the person has.
If the species is not known, the person should be given medicine and care like they have falciparum malaria - the worst kind.
It is also important to know where the person got malaria.
Plasmodium in some places is resistant to some medicines.
So the medicines to treat malaria in Africa are different from the medicines to treat malaria from South America.
Everywhere except New Guinea, the treatment is the same.
In New Guinea most P. vivax is resistant to chloroquine.
It can be treated with quinine, but this medicine can make people sick.
Everywhere else, non-falciparum malaria is treated with chloroquine.
Chloroquine kills the Plasmodium in the blood.
But the Plasmodium in the liver is not killed by chloroquine.
P. vivax and P. ovale both stay in the liver a long time.
This is the dormant phase.
Another medicine must be given with chloroquine for P. vivax and P. ovale.
This is to kill the Plasmodium in the liver.
The medicine used to kill malaria in the liver is primaquine.
In southeast Asia, some P. vivax is resistant to primaquine.
Most other places, primaquine works very well.
Some people get very sick from primaquine.
So people have to be tested to see if they have G6PD-deficiency before they take primaquine.
Falciparum is the worst kind of malaria.
People with falciparum malaria should be treated in a hospital if they are:
Even people who are treated with medicines at home should stay with the doctor for 8 hours.
This is to make sure they do not get sicker.
It also makes sure they can take the medicines by mouth.
Malaria does not start to become a life-threatning disease until it has been a couple of weeks after the bite without being treated.
Falciparum malaria also has more resistance to medicines.
This makes it much harder to treat.
Falciparum malaria is always treated with two or more medicines.
Doctors choose the medicines by where in the world the person got malaria.
Different places have P. falciparum that is resistant to different medicines.
The most important resistance is chloroquine-resistance.
In some places in the world, P. falciparum is killed by chloroquine.
In some places it is chloroquine-resistant.
This means chloroquine does not kill it.
In these places quinine can be used.
Quinine is taken by mouth.
Vector control is one way to stop malaria.
Vector means an organism that carries an infectious disease to another organism.
For malaria, the vector is the Anopheles mosquito.
The most used method of vector control is pesticides.
These are chemicals that kill the mosquito.
The first pesticide used for vector control was DDT.
DDT worked very well for vector control.
It killed mosquitoes.
It did not make people very sick at the time it was used.
It did not cost very much money.
Other chemicals for vector control had not been invented yet.
In many places mosquitoes became resistant to DDT.
This meant that DDT did not work anymore in these areas.
Scientists worried that DDT was making people and animals sick.
It killed a lot of wildlife too.
DDT also stays in the environment for a long time.
For these reasons, people mostly use other chemicals for vector control.
Organophosphate or carbonate pesticides are used, like malathion or bendiocarb.
Vector control is not the only way to stop malaria.
And DDT is not the only chemical that can be used for vector control.
The best way to stop malaria is to use a combination of methods.
In some places, DDT may be a useful part of a program to stop malaria.
This is why DDT is still allowed to be used for controlling malaria.
The mosquito that carries malaria comes more at dawn (when the sun comes up) and dusk (when the sun goes down.)
Be most careful at these times.
Wear long trousers and shirts with long sleeves.
Wear mosquitoes repellent (this is a chemical that mosquitoes do not like, so they do not bite.)
Mosquitoes will bite through thin cloth.
So repellent should be used on skin and clothes.
Pesticides can be used in rooms to kill mosquitoes.
When sleeping outside, people use a mosquito net.
This is made from cloth that air can go through but keeps mosquitoes out.
It is put over a bed where people sleep to keep mosquitoes out.
Sometimes people also use it when they are not sleeping.
It is best to use mosquito nets that have been treated with Permethrin, which repels and kills mosquitoes.
People can take medicine when they are in a place where there is malaria.
This reduces the chances that they contract malaria.
This is called prophylaxis.
Some people take prophylactic medicines for years.
Many people in areas where there is malaria do not have the money to buy this medicine.
People who live where there is no malaria usually have not had malaria.
The first case malaria is usually much worse.
So people from places where there is no malaria may take prophylactic medicines when they go to places where there is malaria.
The kind of prophylactic medicines people take depends on where they are.
This is because not all medicines work on the malaria in every place.
To make them work best, prophylactic medicines have to be taken the right way.
The medicine should start before going to an area with malaria.
Most medicines should be taken for 4 weeks after coming home.
One medicine (Malarone) only needs to be used for one week after coming home.
There are some children in Tanzania who are naturally immune to malaria.
Researchers are using this to develop a new vaccine.
U.S. researchers have found the children produce an antibody which attacks the malaria-causing parasite.
Injecting a form of this antibody into mice protected the animals from the disease.
The researchers plan to do tests on primates, including humans.
It was Britain 's Sir Ronald Ross, working in the Presidency General Hospital in Calcutta, who finally proved in 1898 that malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes.
He did this by showing that certain mosquito species transmit malaria to birds.
He isolated malaria parasites from the salivary glands of mosquitoes that had fed on infected birds.
For this work, Ross received the 1902 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
After resigning from the Indian Medical Service, Ross worked at the newly established Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and directed malaria-control efforts in Egypt, Panama, Greece and Mauritius.
The findings of Finlay and Ross were later confirmed by a medical board headed by Walter Reed in 1900.
Its recommendations were used during construction of the Panama Canal.
This public-health work saved the lives of thousands of workers and helped develop the methods used in future public-health campaigns against the disease.
The first effective treatment for malaria came from the bark of cinchona tree, which contains quinine.
This tree grows on the slopes of the Andes, mainly in Peru.
The indigenous peoples of Peru made a tincture of cinchona to control malaria.
The Jesuits noted the efficacy of the practice and introduced the treatment to Europe during the 1640s, where it was rapidly accepted.
It was not until 1820 that the active ingredient, quinine, was extracted from the bark, isolated and named by French chemists.
In the early 20th century, before antibiotics became available, Julius Wagner-Jauregg discovered that patients with syphilis could be treated by intentionally infecting them with malaria.
The resulting fever would kill the syphilis spirochaetes, and quinine could be administered to control the malaria.
Although some patients died from malaria, this was preferable to the almost-certain death from syphilis.
Malaria was the largest hazard encountered by U.S. troops in the South Pacific during World War II, where about 500,000 men were infected.
Sixty thousand American soldiers died of malaria during the North African and South Pacific campaigns.
Marcello Malpighi (10 March 1628 29 November 1694) was an Italian doctor, who gave his name to several physiological features, like the Malpighian tubule system.
Although the microscope was invented early in the 17th century, it was not much used until Robert Hooke improved the instrument.
Then Marcello Malpighi, Hooke, Nehemiah Grew and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek had a virtually untried tool in their hands as they began their investigations.
Working on frogs and extrapolating to humans, Malpighi demonstrated the structure of the lungs, previously thought to be a homogeneous mass of flesh, and he offered an explanation for how air and blood mixed in the lungs.
Malpighi also used the microscope for his studies of the skin, kidneys, and liver.
For example, after he dissected the body of a black man, Malpighi made some groundbreaking headway into the origin of black skin.
He found that the black pigment was associated with a layer of mucus just beneath the skin.
He was the first to see capillaries in animals, and he discovered the link between arteries and veins.
He may have been the first person to see this under a microscope.
The microscope let Malpighi discover that the silk worm does not use lungs to breathe, but small holes in their skin called spiracles.
This turned out to be true of all insects.
Because Malpighi had a wide knowledge of both plants and animals, and he made contributions to the study of both.
The Royal Society in London published two volumes of his botanical and zoological works in 1675 and 1679.
Another edition followed in 1687, and a supplementary volume in 1697.
In his autobiography, Malpighi speaks of his Anatome Plantarum, decorated with the engravings of Robert White (1645 1703) as "the most elegant format in the whole literate world".
Momentum can be considered the "power" when an object is moving, meaning how much force it can have on another object.
For example, a bowling ball (large mass) pushed very slowly (low velocity) can hit a glass door and not break it, while a baseball (small mass) can be thrown fast (high velocity) and break the same window.
The baseball has a larger momentum than the bowling ball.
Because momentum is the product of the mass and the velocity of an object, that both mass and velocity affect the momentum of an object.
As shown, an object with a large mass and low velocity can have the same momentum as an object with a small mass and large velocity.
A bullet is another example where the momentum is very-very high, due to the extraordinary velocity.
Another beautiful example where very low-velocities cause greater momentum is the push of Indian subcontinent towards the rest of Asia, causing serious damages, such as earth quakes in the portions of himalayas.
In this example, the subcontinent is moving as slow as few inches per second but the mass (imagine weight of India) of Indian-subcontinent is very high.
As defined by Newton, momentum of an object (p) is the product of the mass (m) and velocity (v) of the object.
It is a vector quantity, which has both direction and magnitude.
Its unit is kg m\/s (kilogram metre per second) or N s (newton second).
Momentum is sometimes referred to as linear momentum which is different from its related subject angular momentum.
Momentum is a conserved object, meaning that the total initial momentum of a system must be equal to the total final momentum of a system.
Total amount of momentum remains unchanged.
The meaning is that the net force on an object is equal to the rate of change in momentum of the object.
In order to use this equation in special relativity, m has to change with speed.
That is sometimes called the "relativistic mass" of the object.
(Scientists who work with special relativity use other equations instead.)
Impulse is the change in momentum caused by a new force: this force will increase or decrease the momentum depending on the direction of the force; towards or away from the object that was moving before.
If the new force (N) is going in the direction of the momentum of the object (x), the momentum of x will increase; therefore if N is going towards object x in the opposite direction, x will slow down and its momentum will decrease.
In understanding conservation of momentum, the direction of the momentum is important.
Momentum in a system is added up using vector addition.
Under the rules of vector addition, adding a certain amount of momentum together with the same amount of momentum going in the opposite direction gives a total momentum of zero.
For instance, when a gun is fired, a small mass (the bullet) moves at a high speed in one direction.
A larger mass (the gun) moves in the opposite direction at a much slower speed.
The momentum of the bullet and the momentum of the gun are exactly equal in size but opposite in direction.
Using vector addition to add the momentum of the bullet to the momentum of the gun (equal in size but opposite in direction) gives a total system momentum of zero.
The momentum of the gun-bullet system has been conserved.
A collision also shows conservation of momentum: if a car (1000 kg) is going right at 8 m\/s, and a truck (6000 kg) is going left at 2 m\/s, the car and truck will be moving left after the collision.
This exercise shows why: Momentum = Mass x Velocity The car 's momentum: 1000 kg x 8 m\/s = 8000kgm\/s (Going right) The truck 's momentum: 6000 kg x -2 m\/s = -12000 kgm\/s (Going left) This means their total momentum is -4000 kgm\/s.
(Going left)
A mood stabilizer is a psychiatric medication used to treat mood disorders characterized by fast and unstable mood changes.
Among the disorders commonly treated are bipolar disorder and Borderline personality disorder.
With these conditions, the mood can change rapidly, between mania and depression.
Many mood stabilizers can also prevent convulsions.
Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914 May 22, 2010) was an American writer.
He had many interests, so he wrote about many topics.
He wrote about mathematics, magic, literature, philosophy, skepticism, and religion.
He wrote the "Mathematical Games" column in the Scientific American magazine from 1956 to 1981.
After that, he wrote the "Notes of a Fringe Watcher" column in the Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
He published over 70 books.
Gardner also sometimes wrote under pen names.
As "Uriah Fuller" he wrote Confessions of a Psychic.
As "George Groth", he criticized his book, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener.
Note: Gardner also wrote some books on magic for professional magicians.
These books are not listed here.
Martin Gardner 's columns from Scientific American are printed in 15 books.
Don Knuth calls these books "the Canon".
Men at Work is an Australian reggae-influenced rock band that formed in 1979 in St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne.
Men at Work often used woodwind and brass instruments.
In 1986, they disbanded, but in 1996 they reformed and are still playing.
Their biggest success they had in the 1980s.
Their biggest hit song was "Down Under" which went to Number 1 on the charts in the USA and UK.
They are the only Australian band to have both a single and an album at No 1.
on the US charts at the same time.
Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963) is a former American basketball player.
Many people believe Jordan is the greatest basketball player in history.
He won six championships and six times he was the Finals MVP.
He played for both the Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards.
Jordan led the Bulls to a record 72 wins in the 1995-96 NBA Season.
Jordan earned the nicknames "Air Jordan" and "His Airness" due to his leaping ability which was illustrated by performing slam dunks from the free throw line in slam dunk contests.
Jordan won two Olympic gold medals with Team USA, famously playing on the 1992 Dream Team.
Jordan was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Deloris (n e Peoples), who worked in banking, and James R. Jordan, Sr., an equipment supervisor.
His family moved to Wilmington, North Carolina when he was a toddler.
(7)
Jordan is the fourth of five children.
He has two older brothers, Larry Jordan and James R. Jordan, Jr., one older sister, Deloris, and a younger sister, Roslyn.
Jordan 's brother James retired in 2006 as the Command Sergeant Major of the 35th Signal Brigade of the XVIII Airborne Corps in the U.S. Army.
As a sophomore at Laney High School in Wilmington, North Carolina, Jordan did not make his school 's varsity (main) basketball team.
This inspired him to work harder, and he made the team the next year.
In 1981, he went to the University of North Carolina to play.
He averaged 13.5 points per game his freshman year, and 20 points per game his sophomore year.
North Carolina won the national championship in 1982, Jordan 's freshman year.
Jordan made the winning shot with 18 seconds left in the championship game.
After Jordan 's junior year in college, he said that he would be leaving college to play in the NBA.
The Chicago Bulls chose him with the third pick in the 1984 NBA draft.
In 1993, after winning three NBA championships in a row, Jordan said that he would retire and switch to a career in minor league baseball.
He played for the Birmingham Barons, a minor league team in the Chicago White Sox 's system, but hit only one home run during his whole baseball career.
In 1995, Jordan announced that he would return to the NBA with a two word announcement: "I 'm back".
He was back in time to play for the Bulls in the 1995 playoffs, but the Bulls lost in the playoffs before reaching the NBA Finals.
However, the next three seasons after that, the Bulls won the championship.
This included the 1995-1996 season, when the Bulls won 72 games in the regular season and only lost 10.
No NBA team has ever won more regular season games in one season.
Jordan retired for a second time in 1998, but was still not done playing.
He would buy part of the Washington Wizards basketball team, and played for the Wizards from 2001 to 2003, and ended his playing career after that.
Jordan is now the majority owner of the Charlotte Hornets.
He was chosen to enter the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009.
Musicology means the study of music by a scholar.
A scholar is an academic person, often a professor or lecturer at a university.
Someone who studies musicology is a Musicologist.
Musicologists study all kinds of music.
They study the history of music and learn about all the composers and how they developed their ideas and learned from one another.
They can do this by studying music scores, or by looking for historical documents which tell us about musicians from the past.
Musicologists may also study the philosophy of music (thinking about what music means).
They write articles in musical journals or books on music.
This can help us to know and understand more about the music we play or listen to.
The M25 motorway, or London Orbital, is a 117 m orbital motorway around Greater London.
The motorway was first suggested early in the 20th century, and a few sections were built in the early 1970s.
The M25 was completed in 1986: is one of the world 's longest orbital roads.
It is one of the busiest and most congested parts of the British motorway network.
196,000 vehicles were recorded in a single day near London Heathrow Airport.
The M25 is a cruclial link between the four main London airports: Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton.
Bearing in mind that no motorways go through the center of London, the M25 is a main route connecting north with south, and east with the west of England.
The motorway was originally built with only six lanes (three each way), despite research which suggested eight lanes were necessary.
Now a fourth lane exists over most of the motorway, and more in special sections (see diagram).
Plans were scaled back in 2009 in response to rising costs, but work is still going on.
Public enquiries continued through the 1970s and 1980s.
Each section had its own enquiry, where local citizens and interest groups could question the plans.
In all, "39 public inquiries before independent Inspectors were held, taking over 700 sitting days with many more working days (and nights) preparing evidence".
Objectors could put forward alternatives, and each of these had to be answered with presentation of evidence.
Evidence included predictions of traffic and events which would affect growth of traffic.
Enquiries and evidence were open to public scrutiny and debate.
Some enquiries lasted a day, and one one lasted 97 sitting days over 13 months.
Proposals had to go before Parliament, and a special Act was needed to authorise the crossing of the northern tip of Epping Forest by the route in tunnel.
As predicted by research, soon after the motorway opened in 1986 traffic levels exceeded maximum designed capacity.
In 1990 the Secretary of State for Transport announced plans to widen the whole of the M25 to four lanes.
By 1993 the motorway that was designed for a maximum of 88,000 vehicles per day was carrying 200,000.
15 % of UK motorway traffic volume was on the M25 and there were plans to add 6 lanes to the section from Junction 12 to 15 as well widening the rest of the motorway to 4 lanes.
In 1995 a contract was awarded to widen the section between junctions 8 and 10 from six to eight lanes for a cost of 93.4 million and a ` Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signalling ' (MIDAS) system was introduced to the M25 from junction 10 to junction 15 at a cost of 13.5 m in 1995 and then extended to junction 16 at a cost of 11.7 m in 2002.
This consists of a distributed network of traffic and weather sensors, speed cameras and variable-speed signs that control traffic speeds with little human supervision.
The system has improved traffic flow slightly, and reduced the amount of start-stop driving.
The use of variable speed limits makes this a "controlled motorway", and if hard shoulders are used at peak times it becomes a "managed motorway".
In 1995 there was a proposal to widen the section close to Heathrow Airport to 14 lanes.
This attracted fierce opposition from road protesters opposing the Newbury Bypass and other schemes, and it was canceled shortly afterwards.
However, in 1997 the Department of Transport announced new proposals to widen the section from junction 12 (M3) and junction 15 (M4) to 12 lanes.
At the Terminal Five public inquiry a Highways Agency official said that the widening was needed to accommodate traffic to the proposed new terminal, however the transport minister said that no such evidence had been given.
Environmental groups objected to the decision to go ahead without holding a public inquiry.
A decision to go-ahead was given for a 10-lane scheme in 1998, and the 148 million 'M 25 Jct 12 to 15 Widening ' contract was awarded to Balfour Beatty in 2003.
The scheme was completed in 2005 as dual-five lane between junctions 12 to 14 and dual six lanes from 14 to 15.
The road cost 1 billion (in 1980s money) and took 11 years to build.
It used two million tons of concrete and 3 million tons of asphalt.
Traffic bottleneck at the Dartford Crossing in the east is the greatest problem on the motorway at present, even though the crossing is technically not part of the M25.
At present the crossing is by bridge from the north, and by tunnel from the south.
There are usually long tailbacks in both directions.
Mohs scale of mineral hardness is named after the scientist, Friedrich Mohs, who invented a scale of hardness based on the ability of one mineral to scratch another.
Rocks are made up of one or more minerals.
According to the scale, Talc is the softest: it can be scratched by all other materials.
Gypsum is harder: it can scratch talc but not calcite, which is even harder.
The hardness of a mineral is mainly controlled by the strength of the bonding between the atoms and partly by the size of the atoms.
It is a measure of the resistance of the mineral to scratching.
The Mohs scale is for natural minerals.
For manufactured products other measures of hardness are better.
Diamond is always at the top of the scale, being the hardest mineral.
There are ten minerals in Mohs scale, talc, gypsum, calcite, fluorite, apatite, orthoclase, quartz, topaz, corundum, and for last and hardest, diamond.
Because the Mohs scale was made long ago, it is not exactly correct - for example, several minerals are now known to be harder than the diamond.
The Mohs scale may not be perfect, but field geologists still find it very useful.
2.5 Fingernail 2.5 3 Gold, Silver 3
Copper penny 4-4.5 Platinum 4-5 Iron 5.5 Knife blade 6-7 Glass 6.5 Iron pyrite 7 + Hardened steel file
A magnetosphere is the region around an astronomical object, like a planet.
In this region, the phenomena are greatly influenced by the magnetic field of that object.
This is what causes the Northern Lights that shimmer in the night sky near the North Pole.
The magnetosphere of the Sun is called the Heliosphere
Manama is the capital city of Bahrain.
It is also the largest city in Bahrain, having almost 150.000 residents.
Manama has been a city since at least the 1300s, when it was mentioned in Islamic books.
It was owned by Portugal from 1521 to 1602, by Persia from 1602 to 1783, and by the Al-Khalifa family for a long time after that.
In 1971, Manama became the capital city of Bahrain.
The Melbourne Cup is Australia 's major horse race.
It happens once a year.
People say it is The race that stops a nation, it is for horses three-years-old and over, and it is 3200 metres long.
The event has been held on the first Tuesday in November since 1861 (except on one year during the Second World War) by the Victoria Racing Club, on the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne.
Many people say it is the most important "two-mile" horse race in the world.
The race was first held over two miles, about 3,218 metres, but after Australia changed to the metric system in 1972 it was changed to 3,200 metres.
This made it 61 ft 6in shorter, and Rain Lover 's 1968 race record of 3min.19.1 sec was changed to 3min.17.9 sec.
Now, the record holder is the 1990 winner Kingston Rule with a time of 3min 16.3 sec.
The race starts at 3.00 pm Melbourne (AEST) time.
The event is one of the most popular events to watch in Australia.
Over 110,000 people attend the race.
Some people dress in traditional formal raceday clothing.
Other people dress in different kinds of strange and amusing costumes, In 2005 a total of 383,784 race fans went to the Melbourne Cup Carnival annual event
Seventeen horses raced in the first Melbourne Cup in 1861.
The prize was a gold watch and 170 pounds cash.
Some people say Archer (the winner) walked 800 km to the course from Nowra, New South Wales.
However, it is possible he traveled by ship.
Four thousand people watched the race.
Archer won again the next year.
However, because the owner 's application form arrived late the next year, Archer was unable to try for a third cup.
Many owners boycotted (did not race in protest) the race, so it started with only seven horses.
That is the smallest number in the history of the cup.
` Fashions On The Field ' is a major focus of the day.
Raceday fashion sometimes draws almost as much attention as the race itself.
The miniskirt received worldwide attention when model Jean Shrimpton wore one on Derby Day during Melbourne Cup week in 1965.
In Melbourne, the race day is a public holiday.
In the rest of Australia most people watch the race on television and gamble.
Some people bet at the TAB (the Australian betting office).
Other people bet in workplace cup "sweeps".
(In "sweeps" each person pays a small amount (e.g. $ 3) and draws a random horse.
First, second, and third place then share the money.)
In 2000 it was estimated that 80 percent of the adult Australian population placed a bet on the race that year.
Mohamed Atta (' (September 1, 1968 September 11, 2001 was a known associate of al-Qaeda and the leader of the nineteen hijackers who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks.
He personally participated in the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The Me 262 was a German fighter aircraft flown during late World War II.
It was the first jet to be used in war.
It began test flights in 1942, but was not used in combat by the German air force, the Luftwaffe, until 1945.
Very few were built because Germany 's enemies were bombing factories.
It saw little action because the war was nearly over.
The jet engines of the new machine often made problems, that 's why a lot of machines had deathly accidents
Magnus is a name that means "great" in Latin.
It was sometimes used as a first name by the Romans.
The name spread with the Catholic Church, which spoke Latin.
It became very common among the nobility in Scandinavia.
A moose (Alces alces; called elk in Europe) is a large deer.
Some authorities put the American moose in a different species, Alces americanus.
A male moose is called a bull, a female moose is called a cow, and a young moose is called a calf.
A group of moose is called a herd.
The plural form of moose is "moose."
Moose live in northern Europe, Asia, and in North America.
Moose usually live in areas with lakes, marshes and swamps.
They also live in mountain ranges.
The moose lives across North America to northern Europe to Siberia.
In Europe they live in Finland, Sweden, Norway and the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania).
In North America they live in Canada, Alaska and northern parts of the contiguous United States.
In 2008 they have been re-introduced to Scottish Highlands from Scandinavia.
Only approximate figures are known.
There are about 115,000 moose in Finland, and about the same number in Norway.
Alaska has about 200,000.
Canada and Russia each have between 500,000 and one million.
There are also some in the continental United States.
The animal is therefore very widely distributed, with quite large numbers.
Moose are active during the day.
They live alone, but in winter they sometimes form small groups.
Moose eat grass, leaves, twigs, willow, birch, maple shoots and water plants.
After a pregnancy of 8 months, the female gives birth to one or two babies.
Females begin to have babies when they are between two and three years old.
Young moose stay with their mother for a year; after one year they leave and live alone.
Moose usually live to fifteen years old, but they can reach as old as twenty-seven years old.
A mother moose will aggressively protect her young.
Their enemies are bears and wolves, who hunt moose calves.
A full-grown moose has few natural enemies.
Siberian tigers do prey on adult moose.
Wolves can still pose a threat, especially to females with calves.
Brown bears are also known to prey on moose, although bears are more likely to take over a wolf kill or to take young moose than to hunt adult moose on their own.
American black bears and cougars can take moose calves in May and June and can, in rare instances, kill adults (mainly cows).
Wolverine are most likely to eat moose as carrion but have killed moose, including adults, when the large ungulates are weakened by harsh winter conditions.
Killer whales are the moose 's only known marine predator as they have been known to prey on moose swimming between islands out of North America 's Northwest Coast.
Moose have been hunted by humans for a very long time, since the Stone Age.
Because of their dark colored fur, moose are sometimes hit by cars since they are hard to see when they are crossing roads at night.
In some countries like Canada, Finland and Sweden they have a moose sign and have fences around motorways.
Magnetic tape is a long and narrow strip of plastic that thin magnetic material is coated on.
Nearly all recording tape is of this type, whether used for recording audio or video or computer data storage.
Magnetic tape recording uses magnetic tape which moves on a recording head.
Electrical signals are fed to the recording head, inducing a pattern of magnetization similar to the signal.
A playback head can then pick up the changes in magnetic field from the tape and convert it into an electrical signal.
Devices that record and playback audio and video using magnetic tape are generally called tape recorders and videotape recorders respectively.
A device that stores computer data on magnetic tape can be called a tape drive, a tape unit, or a streamer.
Autoloaders and tape libraries are frequently used to automate cartridge handling.
Magnetic tape was first invented for recording sound by Fritz Pfleumer in 1928 in Germany.
Pfleumer 's invention used an iron oxide (Fe2O3) powder coating on a long strip of paper.
Magnetic tape has been used for data storage for over 50 years.
In this time, many advances in tape have been made.
Modern magnetic tape is most commonly packaged in cartridges and cassettes.
Today, many other technologies like CD or DVD are replacing magnetic tape.
However, innovation in the technology continues and tape is still widely used.
When storing large amounts of data, tape can be cheaper than disk or other data storage options.
Tape storage has always been used with large computer systems.
Modern usage is a high capacity medium for backups and archives.
As of 2008, the highest capacity tape cartridge (Sun StorageTek T10000B) can store 1 TB of data without using compression.
But, magnetic tape has quite a long wait time for random accesses since the deck must wind the tape to move from one data to another.
(Magnetic tape data storage uses Sequential access method.)
Marrakesh, or Marrakech (Berber:;) is an important city in the African country of Morocco.
It is the fourth largest city in the country.
Marrakesh is the capital of the economic region of Marrakesh-Tensift-El Haouz.
Marrakesh is the most important city out of all of Morocco 's cities that used to be imperial cities.
Berber farmers lived in Marrakesh during Neolithic times.
Abu Bakr ibn Umar, the chieftain and cousin of the king of the Almoravids Yusuf ibn Tashfin, founded Marrakesh in the year 1062.
The Almoravids built many schools and mosques in Marrakesh.
Marrakesh has the name "Red City" because a lot of it is made out of red sandstone.
Marrakesh got bigger very quickly and became a cultural, religious, and trading center for sub-Saharan Africa.
The mayor of Marrakesh Fatima Zahra Mansouri is the second woman mayor in Morocco.
Tourism is important to Marrakesh, and the city has about 400 hotels, some very grand indeed.
Maz r-i-Shar f or Maz r-e Shar f (Persian\/Pashto:, m z r i ri f) is the fourth-largest city of Afghanistan.
The population was about 375,000 as of 2006.
It is the capital of Balkh province.
It is linked by roads to Kunduz in the east, Kabul in the south-east, Herat to the west and Uzbekistan to the north.
The city is a major tourist attraction in Afghanistan because of its famous shrines as well as the Muslim and Hellenistic archeological sites.
In 2006, the discovery of new Hellenistic remains was announced.
The region around Mazar-e-Sharif has been historically part of Greater Khorasan and was controlled by the Tahirids followed by the Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Ilkhanates, Timurids, and Khanate of Bukhara.
The name Mazar-e-Sharif means "Noble Shrine".
This name represents the Blue Mosque which is widely known to be the grave of Hazrat Ali (prophet Mohammad 's son-in-law).
The city and region became part of the Afghan Durrani Empire around 1750.
Mazar-e Sharif remained peaceful for the next one hundred years.
In 1979 then neighboring Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
During the 1980s Soviet war, Mazari Sharif was a strategic base for the Soviet Army.
Between May and July 1997, the Taliban unsuccessfully attempted to take Mazar.
About 3,000 Taliban soldiers were killed by Abdul Malik and his Shia followers.
The Taliban returned on August 8, 1998 and led a six-day killing frenzy of Hazaras.
Soon after, the city was occupied and taken over by the Taliban.
Following 9\/11, Mazar Sharif was the first Afghan city to fall to the Northern Alliance (United Front).
The Taliban 's defeat in Mazar quickly turned into defeat from the rest of the north and west of Afghanistan.
On November 9, 2001 the city was captured by the Afghan Northern Alliance forces after the Battle of Mazar e Sharif with help from the United States Special Operations Forces and bombing by U.S. Air Force aircraft.
As many as 2,000 Taliban fighters who surrendered were reportedly massacred by the Northern Alliance after the battle.
Reports also place U.S. ground troops at the scene of the massacre.
There are also NATO peacekeeping forces in and around the city providing assistance to the Afghan government.
On April 1, 2011, as many as ten foreign employees working for United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) were killed by angry demonstrators in the city.
The demonstration was organized in retaliation to the March 21 Qur ` an-burning in Florida, United States.
The climate in Mazari Sharif is very hot during the summer.
Daily temperatures are over 40 C or 104 degree Fahrenheit in June and July.
The winters are cold with temperatures falling below freezing.
The population of Mazari Sharif is around 375,000.
It is a multiethnic and multilingual society.
The main language in Mazari Sharif is Dari (Persian) followed by Pashto.
Both are the official languages of Afghanistan.
The city is a center for the traditional buzkashi sport, and the Blue Mosque is the focus of Afghanistan 's Nawroz celebration.
Mazar-e Sharif serves as the major trading center in northern Afghanistan.
It was the first city to connect itself by rail with a neighboring country.
The rail service from Mazar-e Sharif to Uzbekistan began in 2011 and is expected to rapidly boost the economy of the city.
Cargo on freight trains arrives to the last station near Mazar-i-Sharif Airport, where the goods are reloaded onto trucks or airplanes and sent to their last destinations across Afghanistan.
The local economy is mainly trade, agriculture and karakul production.
Some oil and gas have also boosted the city 's economy.
The modern city of Mazar-i Sharif is centered around the Shrine of Hazrat Ali.
Much restored, it is one of Afghanistan 's most glorious monuments.
Outside Mazar-i Sharif lies the ancient city of Balkh.
Metaphor is a term for a figure of speech.
It does not use a word in its basic literal sense.
Instead, it uses a word in a kind of comparison.
We run, and we also say rivers run.
We may run into trouble, especially if we run up a bill at the bar.
So a metaphor uses words to make a picture in our mind.
It takes a word from its original context, and uses it in another.
"I beat him with kretin12 's massive assdildo" = literal meaning of ` beat '.
"I beat him in an argument" = metaphorical meaning of ` beat '.
Metaphors are an essential part of language: it is not possible to speak or write without them.
A simple example is the word "run".
This has a basic meaning of "moving quickly" or "go with quick steps on alternate feet, never having both feet on the ground at the same time".
The Concise Oxford Dictionary then gives 34 other uses as a verb; 21 uses as a noun; about 50 uses in short phrases.
All of these are metaphors, although we do not usually notice this.
We use metaphors to make indirect comparisons, but without using ` like ' or ` as ' because that would be a simile.
A simile is a direct comparison: "Jane is like a child".
A metaphor very often uses the verb ` to be ': "love is war", for example, not "love is like war" (that is a simile).
Poetry includes much metaphor, usually more than prose.
Spam is an example that any email user knows about this word was originally a metaphor, from ` Spam ', a type of canned meat.
Servers putting unwanted email into somebody 's inbox was similar to waiters putting unwanted Spam into food.
This was originally suggested by a Monty Python scene.
When we use a metaphor very often and we forget the old meaning, or forget that the two meanings are connected, this is a ` dead metaphor '.
Originally metaphor was a Greek word for ` transfer '.
It came from meta (` beyond ') and pherein (` carry ').
So the word metaphor in English was a metaphor, too.
Today in Greek, metaphor is a trolley (a thing that is pushed for carrying shopping or bags).
A simple metaphor has a single link between the subject and the metaphoric vehicle.
The vehicle thus has a single meaning which is transferred directly to the subject.
In the simple metaphor, the effort to understand what the author or speaker intends is relatively low, and hence it may easily be used with a wider and less sophisticated audience.
A complex metaphor happens where a simple metaphor is based on a secondary metaphoric element.
For example using a metaphor of ` light ' for ` understanding ' may be complexified by saying ` throwing light ' rather than ` shining light '.
` Throwing ' is an extra metaphor for how light arrives.
A compound metaphor is one where there are multiple parts in the metaphor that are used to snag the listener.
These parts may be enhancement words such as adverbs, adjectives, etc.
Each part in the compound metaphor may be used to signify an additional item of meaning.
Compound metaphors are like a multiple punch, hitting the listener repeatedly with metaphoric elements.
Where the complex metaphor uses stacked layers to enhance the metaphor, the compound metaphor uses sequential words.
The compound metaphor is also known as a loose metaphor.
A live metaphor is one which a reader notices.
A dead metaphor is one no-one notices because it has become so common in the language.
Two people walk off a tennis court.
Someone asks the loser: "What happened?".
Mainz is a German city.
It is the capital of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
Mainz is on the left side of the river Rhine, on the right side is the city Wiesbaden.
Mainz has about 203,000 people.
Its main economic product is wine.
Maria Feodorovna (26 November 1847 13 October 1928), born Princess Dagmar of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gl cksburg and later Princess Dagmar of Denmark, was the Empress consort of Russia.
Her son, Nicholas II of Russia, was the last Tsar of Russia.
She was born in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Montauban is a commune in the Tarn-et-Garonne department in the Midi-Pyr n es region in southern France.
It is the pr fecture (capital) of the department.
The town, built mainly with reddish bricks, is on the right bank of the Tarn river at its confluence with the Tescou.
It was one of the first bastides in history.
Together with Mont-de-Marsan, Montauban is one of the oldest towns with walls (a bastide) in southern France.
It was founded in 1144 by Alphonse Jourdain, Count of Toulouse.
Most of the inhabitants came from Montauriol, a village which had grown up around the neighbouring monastery of St Th odard.
In the 13th century the town suffered much during the Albigensian Crusade and from the Inquisition, but by 1317 it had recovered sufficiently to be chosen by the Pope John XXII as the head of a diocese of which the basilica of St Th odard became the cathedral.
In 1360, under the Treaty of Br tigny, the town was given to the English; they were expelled by the inhabitants in 1414.
In 1560 the bishops became Protestants; ten years later it became one of the four Huguenot strongholds under the Peace of Saint-Germain, and formed a small independent republic.
In 1790, Montauban was in the Lot department as the capital of a district; with the creation of the arrondissements in 1800, Montauban became a sous-pr fecture in the Lot deparment.
When Napoleon created the Tarn-et-Garonne department in 1809, Montauban became the pr fecture (capital) of the new department.
Montauban is at about 50 k to the north of Toulouse, on the confluence of the Tescou and the Tarn rivers, and at 80 k from Agen (pr fecture of the Lot-et-Garonne), 76 k from Albi (pr fecture of the Tarn) and at about 60 k from Cahors (pr fecture of the Lot).
It has an area of 135.17 k and its average altitude is 140 m; at the city hall, the altitude is 103 m.
Montauban is surrounded by the communes Villemade, Piquecos, Lamothe-Capdeville, Albias, Saint - tienne-de-Tulmont, L ojac, Saint-Nauphary, Corbarieu, Bressols, Lacourt-Saint-Pierre, Montbeton and Albefeuille-Lagarde.
The climate of Montauban, in the K ppen climate classification, is Cfb - Oceanic climate with template summers.
With a population of 56,887, Montauban has a population density of inhabitants\/km2.
The inhabitants of Montauban are known, in French, as Montalbanais (women: Montalbanaises).
Montauban is the pr fecture of the Tarn-et-Garonne department since 1809.
It is also the capital of six Cantons:
A mirror or looking-glass is something that reflects light.
One common plane mirror is a piece of special flat glass that a person can look into to see a reflection of themselves or what is behind them.
Sometimes, a flat piece of metal or the surface of water can act like a mirror.
The reason you are able to see yourself in a mirror is because light comes in and gets reflected, and that 's how you are able to see your reflection.
Mirrors can have magnification properties, making images appear smaller or larger than their actual size.
They can also be concave (curved inward) or convex (curved outward), making the reflected angle and view to be smaller or larger, respectively.
Special mirrors can make a person 's appearance look quite strange.
Also, in a mirror, writing appears backwards, as a "mirror image" of the original writing.
Mirrors are usually made out of glass with metal on the back, called "silvering" even if the metal is not silver.
Some mirrors are made of polished metal, which is less breakable.
Mirrors with a curved surface can make things appear bigger or smaller, like a lens does.
Mindanao is one of the three main island groups in the Philippines.
It is the southernmost major island of the Philippines, and is the only island in the Philippines to have many Muslim people.
Mindanao is northeast of Sabah.
It may also refer to the main island in the group.
Mark David McGwire (born October 1, 1963 in Pomona, California) is a former right-handed First baseman in Major League Baseball who played for the Oakland Athletics (1986 1997) and the St. Louis Cardinals (1997 2001).
He had a career.263 Batting average, and 583 Home Runs.
Although McGwire has never admitted to or been convicted of any steroid use, many of his accomplishments, particularly his historic home run surge late in his career, have come into question due to his connection to the steroid scandal in Major League Baseball.
Maeshowe, also known as Orkhaugr, a burial mound in Orkney, Scotland, with underground passage graves.
It was built during the Neolithic period, about 3000 years ago.
It has been included in the World Heritage Site, Heart of Neolithic Orkney.
The mound used to be taller, with a depression in the top, looking like a small volcano.
It measured 11 meters in height and had a diameter of 30 meters.
This was changed in 1861 when the mound was dug into by archaeologist James Farrer.
It was built on a raised level area and surrounded by a ditch and a raised bank.
It may have been built on top of an earlier structure.
Research shows that the ditch used to be filled with water, and there was a large stone circle around the mound.
The grave itself is a long narrow entrance opening into a large chamber.
There are three smaller rooms which open into the main chamber.
It has been built to line up with the sun at the Winter Solstice.
Maeshowe had been dug up in the 12th century by the Vikings.
It has many Norse carvings on the rocks.
The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States is a treaty.
Today, it is part of customary international law.
The treaty was signed at Montevideo, Uruguay, on December 26, 1933, at the Seventh International Conference of American States.
At this conference, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull declared the so-called Good Neighbor Policy which opposed U.S. armed intervention in inter-American affairs.
Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to reverse the perception of "Yankee imperialism" with this treaty.
The view of Yankee imperialism was brought about by policies instituted (largely) by his predecessor, President Herbert Hoover.
The convention was signed by 19 states, three with reservations (Brazil, Peru and the United States).
The convention is about what is a state and what rights and duties it has.
Most well-known is article 1, which sets out the four criteria for statehood that have sometimes been recognized as an accurate statement of customary international law:
The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.
In addition, the first sentence of article 3 explicitly states that "The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states."
This is known as the declarative theory of statehood.
Some have questioned whether these criteria are sufficient, as they allow less-recognized entities like the Republic of China (Taiwan) or even entirely non-recognized entities like the Principality of Sealand to claim full status as states.
According to the alternative constitutive theory of statehood, a state exists only insofar as it is recognized by other states.
It should not be confused with the Estrada doctrine.
There have also been attempts to further broaden the convention 's definition, although they have gained less support.
Founders of non-territorial micronations commonly assert that the requirement in the Montevideo Convention of a defined territory is in some way wrong-headed, for largely unspecified reasons.
Some non-territorial entities, notably the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, are indeed considered subjects of international law, but these do not aspire to statehood.
The states that signed this convention are: Honduras, United States of America, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Cuba.
The Montevideo Convention only codified existing norms, there is nothing new in the convention.
For this reason, it does not only apply to those who signed it, but to all subjects of international law as a whole.
The European Union, in the principal statement of its Badinter Committee, follows the Montevideo Convention in its definition of a state: by having a territory, a population, and a political authority.
The committee also found that the existence of states was a question of fact, while the recognition by other states was purely declaratory and not a determinative factor of statehood.
Switzerland, although not a member of the European Union, adheres to the same principle, stating that "neither a political unit needs to be recognized to become a state, nor does a state have the obligation to recognize another one.
At the same time, neither recognition is enough to create a state, nor does its absence abolish it."
Mecha (also known as meka or mechs) are walking vehicles run by a pilot, often shown in science fiction or fantasy with a futuristic element.
Some stories, such as the Manga Patlabor and American miniatures game Battletech, also show mecha doing civilian purposes such as heavy construction work, police topics, or firefighting.
Mandel Bruce "Mandy" Patinkin (born November 30, 1952) is an American actor and tenor singer.
He is known for his roles in Alien Nation (1988), Yentl (1983), and Dick Tracy.
Melvin Kenneth "Mel" Smith (3 December 1952 19 July 2013) was an English comedian, writer, movie director, producer and actor.
He was best known for his work on the sketch comedy shows Not the Nine O'Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones along with his comedy partner Griff Rhys Jones.
Smith was born on 3 December 1952 in Chiswick, Middlesex, England.
He studied at Hogarth Primary School, Chiswick and at Latymer Upper School.
He went on to study experimental psychology at New College, Oxford.
Smith died on 19 July 2013 from a heart attack in London, England, aged 60.
The Mesolithic was a period in the development of human technology between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age.
In the Palaeolithic, people were pure hunter-gatherers.
In the Neolithic they were farmers in settlements with domesticated animals and wheat, with over 100 kinds of tools and with pottery.
The Mesolithic was a transitional period between the two.
It happened at different times in different places.
Mesolithic tools are small tools produced by chipping, and are hunter-gatherer tools, often arrowheads and points.
Neolithic tools are often polished and far more varied.
They are tools of more settled societies with some agriculture.
The term ` Mesolithic ' was introduced by Hodder Westrop in 1877, though the idea had been used earlier.
It was not much used until V. Gordon Childe popularized it in his book The dawn of Europe (1947).
There is another term, ` Epipalaeolithic ', which is sometimes used instead.
The type of tool is the diagnostic factor.
The Mesolithic featured devices made with small chipped stone tools.
The Neolithic mainly abandoned this mode in favor of polished, not chipped, stone tools.
The Fertile Crescent was the first part of the world to move out of the Palaeolithic.
In some areas, such as the Near East, agriculture was already underway by the end of the Pleistocene, and there the Mesolithic is short.
In areas with limited influence of ice age, the term "Epipaleolithic" is sometimes preferred.
Regions that experienced greater environmental effects as the last ice age ended have a much more evident Mesolithic era.
This lasted millennia.
In Northern Europe, societies were able to live well on rich food supplies from the marshlands.
Such conditions produced distinctive human behaviors which are preserved in characteristic finds.
These conditions also delayed the coming of the Neolithic until as late as 4000 BC (6,000 before present) in northern Europe.
Genetic research has been done on the skeleton of a 7,000 year old man from north-west Spain.
It shows he had blue eyes and a dark skin.
The analysis showed that he had ancestral alleles in several skin pigmentation genes.
This means he had dark hair and brown skin.
Researchers were surprised because they thought that European populations evolved light skin quite quickly.
In lower latitudes dark skin protects from UV rays in sunlight.
In northern latitudes this is not such a problem, but the supply of vitamin D is a problem.
Vitamin D is synthesised by the action of sunlight on skin.
Therefore it is an advantage in much of Europe to have a light skin.
Earlier research was done on data using 2,196 samples from 185 diverse populations.
It showed that at least three ancestral groups contributed to present-day Europeans.
Metis is the goddess of wisdom in Greek mythology.
She is one of the Titans and is the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys.
She was the mother of Athena.
There is also a moon named after Metis.
When she was inside Zeus, Metis made a helmet and a robe for her baby.
The hammering noise caused Zeus to have a headache.
To try and help Zeus with the pain, Prometheus, Hephaestus, Hermes, or Palaemon (depending on the myth) cut his head open with a Minoan axe.
Athena then came out of Zeus 's head.
She was fully grown and had her armor on.
Mary Robinson (; born 21 May 1944) was the first female President of Ireland, serving from 1990 to 1997.
She had been an academic, barrister, and member of the Irish senate from 1969 to 1989.
She defeated Fianna F il 's Brian Lenihan and Fine Gael 's Austin Currie in the 1990 presidential election, the first time Fianna F il had lost a presidential election.
She resigned the presidency four months ahead of the end of her term of office to begin a five year term in the United Nations, as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
In 2002 Robinson became Honorary President of Oxfam International.
She signed the Yogyakarta Principles in meeting of International Commission of Jurist and from 2008 to 2010 she was the predident of the International Commission of Jurists.
Born Mary Therese Winifred Bourke in Ballina, County Mayo in 1944, Mary Robinson was the daughter of two medical doctors.
The Bourke family has been in Mayo since the thirteenth century.
One ancestor was a leading activist in the Irish National Land League in Mayo and the Irish Republican Brotherhood; an uncle, Sir Paget John Bourke, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II after a career as a judge in the Colonial Service; while another relative was a Roman Catholic nun.
Robinson got the permission of the then Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid to study in Trinity College, Dublin (TCD); at the time Roman Catholics were forbidden by church rules from studying in TCD without special permission, called a dispensation.
TCD once did not allow Catholics to study.
In her twenties, she was appointed Professor of Law in the college.
She was elected one of Trinity College 's three members of Seanad ireann in 1969.
In 1982, the Labor Party entered into a coalition government with Fine Gael.
Many expected Robinson to be the attorney-general, but the Labor party leader instead picked an unknown, new senior counsel called John Rogers.
Shortly afterwards, Robinson resigned from the party in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement, she said that unionist politicians in Northern Ireland should have been consulted as part of the deal.
Robinson decided not to seek re-election to the senate in 1989.
One year later she agreed to become the first Labor candidate for the presidency and the first woman candidate in what was only the second presidential election to be contested by three candidates since 1945.
The main opposition party, Fine Gael was no well organised.
They gambled that former Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald would run as its candidate (but for two years he had been saying no), then they asked Peter Barry, who had previously been willing to run but had run out of patience and was no longer interested.
The party 's third choice was the former civil rights campaigner Austin Currie, a new TD and former minister in Brian Faulkner 's power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland from 1973-1974.
Fianna F il chose T naiste and Minister for Defense, Brian Lenihan.
Lenihan was popular and widely seen as humorous and intelligent.
Like Robinson he had made liberal policy reforms.
In the 1960s he abolished censorship, for example.
He was seen as a near certainty to win the presidency.
The only question asked was whether Robinson would beat Currie and come second.
But Taoiseach Charles Haughey of Fianna F il was not popular, and the Labor Party leader Dick Spring was becoming more popular.
During the campaign people found out that what Lenihan had told friends in private showed he had lied in public about the 1982 dissolution of D il ireann.
Lenihan denied he had pressured the President but then a tape was produced of an ` on the record ' interview he had given to a postgraduate student the previous May where he talked about trying to apply pressure.
Lenihan claimed that "on mature recollection" he had not pressured the President and had been confused in his interview with the student.
But the government threatened to fall over the issue.
Lenihan was dismissed as T naiste and Minister for Defense.
Lenihan still managed to win the first count.
In the Single Transferable Vote system Austin Currie was eliminated and his second choice votes were counted.
Most were for Robinson.
Lenihan became the first Fianna F il presidential candidate in the history of the office to lose a presidential election.
Robinson now became President.
Robinson was a popular president, before he died in 2002 Brian Lenihan said that she was a better president than he ever could have been.
She often visited Britain, and became the first Irish president to visit Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
She welcomed visits by senior British royals, most notably the Prince of Wales to ras an Uachtar in.
On one trip to Belfast she met with the local MP, Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn F in.
Foreign Minister Dick Spring, who was leader of the Labor Party, privately advised her not to meet Adams.
However the Government did not formally advise her not to meet with him, so she felt it would be wrong, not to meet the local member of parliament during her visit, and was photographed publicly shaking his hand.
During her various visits to Northern Ireland, she in fact regularly met politicians of all parties, including David Trimble of the Ulster Unionist Party and John Hume of the Social Democratic and Labor Party.
Charles Haughey died not like her, even stopping her from delivering the important BBC Dimbleby Lecture.
Haughey 's successors as Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds (Fianna F il: 1992-94), John Bruton (Fine Gael: 1994-97) and Bertie Ahern (Fianna F il:1997 -) never hid their admiration of her work.
Bruton and Ahern both tried to get her the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Robinson became the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on 12 September 1997, resigning the Presidency a few weeks early with the approval of Irish political parties in order to take up the post.
Newspaper reports say that she had been asked by Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan to become a public campaigner
Robinson was the first High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Tibet, making her trip in 1998.
During her tenure she criticised the Irish system of permits for non-EU immigrants, and criticised the United States ' use of capital punishment.
Though she had initially announced her intention to serve a single four-year period, she extended the term by a year following an appeal from Annan, allowing her to preside over the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, as Secretary-General.
Robinson 's posting as High Commissioner ended in 2002.
Mrs Robinson is the twenty fourth, and first female, Chancellor of University of Dublin.
On 18 July 2007 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Nelson Mandela, his wife Gra a Machel, and Desmond Tutu convened a group of world leaders to contribute their wisdom, independent leadership and honesty to tackle some of the world 's toughest problems.
Nelson Mandela announced the formation of this new group, The Elders, in a speech he delivered on his 89th birthday.
Archbishop Tutu will serve as the Chair of The Elders.
The founding members of this group also include Gra a Machel, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, Mary Robinson and Muhammad Yunus.
The Elders will be independently funded by a group of Founders, including Richard Branson, Peter Gabriel, Ray Chambers; Michael Chambers; Bridgeway Foundation; Pam Omidyar, Humanity United; Amy Robbins; Shashi Ruia, Dick Tarlow; andThe United Nations Foundation.
Media coverage in The Irish Times, The Irish Independent, The Examiner (now renamed the Irish Examiner), The Star, The Irish Mirror, The Irish Sun, Sunday Tribune, The Sunday Independent, The Sunday Times, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.
Also briefing notes issued on various occasions (notably state, official or personal visits by Robinson abroad) supplied by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Buckingham Palace, ras an Uachtar in, the Holy See and the press offices of the United Nations (including the text of her Romanes Lecture in November 1997).
Some background came via an interview with Mrs. Robinson.
The Korea Liberator: Criticism of Robinson 's failure to speak out while North Korea deliberately starved two million of its people to death, largely during her tenure (warning: graphic image).
Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor and movie producer.
Freeman was born in Memphis, Tennessee on June 1, 1937.
He started acting when he was nine years old in a school play and at age 12 won a drama competition in his home State.
Morgan worked many acting jobs until 1968 when he got his first role on Broadway in a Musical called Hello, Dolly!.
He is known for his soft-spoken voice.
He has donated several amounts of money to the Democratic Party.
Once he stated that "Republicans scare me."
A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language.
The process of building a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling.
Mathematical models are used in the natural sciences (such as physics, biology, earth science, meteorology) and engineering disciplines (e.g. computer science, artificial intelligence).
They are also used in the social sciences (such as economics, psychology, sociology and political science).
Physicists, engineers, statisticians, operations research analysts and economists use mathematical models a lot.
Mathematical models can take many forms.
The types of models include:
These and other types of models can overlap, with a given model involving a variety of abstract structures.
Mathematical models can include logical models.
In many cases, the quality of a scientific field depends on how well the mathematical models built on theory agree with results of repeatable experiments.
When theoretical mathematical models do not match experimental measurements, scientists try to correct the model.
Such corrections lead the way to better theories to explain the facts.
Lesser Poland Voivodeship, or Ma opolska Province, is a voivodeship, or province, in southern Poland.
It is 15108 k, and as of 2006, has 3,267,731 residents.
It was created on 1 January 1999.
The capital of the province is Krak w.
The province 's natural borders are wi tokrzyskie Mountains (G ry wi tokrzyskie) on the north, Jura Krakowsko-Cz stochowska (a broad range of hills stretching from Krak w to Cz stochowa) on the west, and the Tatra, Pieniny and Beskidy Mountains on the south.
The provinces and countries it is bordered by are the Silesian Voivodeship to the west, wi tokrzyskie Voivodeship to the north, Subcarpathian Voivodeship to the east, and the country of Slovakia to the south.
Mieszko II Lambert (ca.
990 - May 10, 1034) was a king of Poland from 1025 to 1034, the second son of Boleslaw I the Brave.
He is the third known Polish ruler.
He was father of Casimir I.
He was probably named after Mieszko I of Poland, who was his grandfather.
In 1028 and in 1030 he attacked Saxony.
Later, Poland was attacked by Germany, Bohemia, and Kiev.
When Poland was attacked by Yaroslav the Wise in 1031, Mieszko lost control over Poland.
Mieszko I (c. 935 May 25, 992) was a duke of the Polans and the first historical ruler of Poland.
He was father of Boleslaw I, first polish king.
Gallus Anonymus writes that Mieszko was blind until his 7th birthday.
That information was used by later chroniclers, but it 's probably just an allegory.
Mieszko was the first catholic ruler in Poland, he married Dobrawa of Bohemia and after that got baptised.
Mary, Queen of Scots (8 December 1542 8 February 1587), was Queen of Scotland from 14 December 1542 until 24 July 1567, when she was forced to give up her kingdom.
Mary was the daughter of King James V of Scotland, who died just after she was born.
She was crowned queen when she was only 6 days old.
She married three times.
Her first husband was King Francis II of France.
They were both young when they were married, and they had no children.
Francis died from an ear infection that had spread to his brain, leaving Mary a widow.
When Mary returned to Scotland after spending her youth in France, she found that she was not popular in her kingdom.
She had been brought up as a Catholic, but many people in Scotland had become Protestant.
It was difficult for Mary to avoid siding with either the Catholics or the Protestants.
As Mary was now free to marry again, there were lots of noblemen who wanted to become her husband.
For her second husband, she chose an English lord named Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who was of royal blood.
Darnley was good-looking and charming, but he was often very childish, and he was jealous of Mary 's secretary, an Italian named David Rizzio.
Mary became pregnant.
While she was expecting the baby, Darnley and his friends got drunk one night and decided to kill David Rizzio.
They came into Mary 's private rooms at Holyrood Palace while she was talking with Rizzio and they stabbed him to death.
Darnley got away with the murder because he was the queen 's husband, but Mary never forgave him for murdering her friend Rizzio.
When her baby was born, it was a boy, who would later become King James VI of Scotland.
A powerful Scottish nobleman, the Earl of Bothwell, was loyal to Mary and hated Darnley.
He arranged for Darnley to be killed.
He tried to make it look as though Darnley had been killed in a fire at his house, but everyone knew that Bothwell was behind the murder, and some people believed that Mary had also been part of the plot to kill her husband.
Mary then agreed to marry the Earl of Bothwell.
This was not a wise move, because Bothwell had many enemies.
Mary 's enemies forced her off the throne and made her young son king in her place.
Mary was put in prison, but she escaped and crossed the border into England, which was ruled by her cousin, Elizabeth Queen of England.
Mary hoped that Elizabeth would help her to get her throne back, but Elizabeth did not.
She kept Mary a prisoner for many years.
Mary was eventually accused of making plans to murder Elizabeth.
A jury of thirty noblemen convicted her of treason and she was executed.
Sometimes people think that even though Elizabeth signed the warrant, she gave instructions that some people could not understand.
Elizabeth claimed that she did not sign the warrant and did n't give instructions for the execution.
Monophyly means common descent from a single ancestor.
Biologists have introduced a kind of taxonomy called cladistics.
The aim of this is to make biological classification fit what we know about the way organisms evolved.
If there is a group made of a common ancestor, and all its descendants, that group is monophyletic.
(Greek: "of one race").
A group which contains organisms, without their common ancestor, is called polyphyletic.
If a group contains the common ancestor, but leaves out some of its descendants, it is called paraphyletic.
All living things on this planet are thought, on the basis of DNA analysis, to be monophyletic, that is, to have one origin, not many.
Example: all species in the genus Homo have come from the same ancestral form in the family Hominidae, and no other descendants are known.
Thus the genus Homo is monophyletic.
If, on the other hand, it were discovered that Homo habilis had developed from a different ancestor from Homo sapiens, and this ancestor were not included in the genus, then the genus would be polyphyletic.
Since biologists by and large tend to prefer monophyletic groups, in this case, they would likely either split the genus or broaden it to include the additional forms.
Example of polyphyletic group: Sea slugs.
Sometimes taxonomists are frustrated fitting plant species into a monophyletic group because of polyploidy.
There is clear evidence that some polyploid plant species are of multiple origins (the species has arisen more than once).
For example Salsify, the hybrid goat 's - beard, (Tragopogon miscellus) has formed as many as 20 times in eastern Washington.
Also, it can happen that hybrids between two close plant species undergo polyploidy, and the polyploids continue as a new and distinct species.
Situations like this are outside the normal rules of descent, and are dealt with by special decisions, guided by the International Commission of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN).
Morphine (INN) (IPA: (m (-RRB- fin)) is a strong opiate pain killer drug.
It is the principal active agent in opium and the prototypical opiate.
Like other opioids, e.g. diacetylmorphine (heroin), morphine acts directly on the central nervous system (CNS) to relieve pain, and at synapses of the nucleus accumbens in particular.
Morphine is highly addictive when compared to other substances, and tolerance and physical and mental dependences develop very rapidly.
Patients on morphine sometimes say they have insomnia, visual hallucinations and nightmares; if these occur then reduction in dosage or switch to an alternative opioid analgesic should be considered.
The word "morphine" is derived from Morpheus, the god of dreams in Greek mythology.
He is the son of Hypnos, god of sleep.
Mechanical advantage (also written as MA in formulas) is the factor by which a machine multiplies force.
The mechanical advantage of a machine can be used to find out how well a machine works and whether it can perform a particular job.
The mechanical advantage of a machine is the ratio of the load (the resistance overcome by a machine) to the effort (the force applied).
There is no unit for mechanical advantages since the unit for both input and output forces cancel out.
Marathi (') is the language spoken in Maharashtra, India.
It is also Maharashtra 's official language.
It is at least one thousand years old and is based on Sanskrit.
The written script is Devan gar - the same as one used to write Hindi.
People living in Maharashtra and parts of neighboring states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka, Chattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, union-territories of Daman-diu and Dadra Nagar Haveli speak Marathi.
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 in Halberstadt 2 May 1945 in Berlin) was a German politician and member of the Nazi Party.
He was the private secretary of Adolf Hitler.
He was also a member of Hitler 's Cabinet.
In 1923, he took part in the Munich putsch.
At this time, he became one of Hitler 's closet advisors.
Because he took part in a murder, he was convicted to one year in prison in 1924 by the German Staatsgerichtshof.
In May 1941, he became a Reichsminister.
This was because Rudolf Hess ' flight to Scotland.
In 1943, he became Hitler 's private secretary.
At the Nuremberg Trials, Bormann was convicted to death in 1946.
This happened while he was not there.
Microtubules are found in biological cells as a part of the cytoskeleton.
They are hollow tubes whose walls consist of 13 columns of tubulin molecules.
Its main functions are to maintain a cell 's shape, cell motility, chromosome movement in cell division, and organelle movement.
They look like hollow noodles which transmit signals to our nerves
A militia is a group of people not in the military who do many things that the military does.
This includes collecting weapons, training soldiers, defending people or land, policing an area.
Militias are often made up of people who used to be in the military, but have left for some reason.
Some militias are organized by a government, like the United States National Guard.
This is a group of state militias first created to help with natural disasters and other emergencies.
Others are not connected to a government, and may even be illegal.
One common definition of a militia includes all men who are able to serve as soldiers.
Makran is a partly-desert coastal strip in the south of Balochistan, in Iran and Pakistan.
It is along the coast of the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman.
The Persian phrase Mahi khoran, fish-eaters (Mahi = fish + khor = eat) is believed to be the origin of the modern word Makran.
The narrow coastal plain rises very rapidly into several mountain ranges.
The coastline is 1,000 km, 750 km of this is in Pakistan.
The climate is very dry with very little rainfall.
A micrometre (the American spelling is micrometer; symbol is m) is a unit of length in the SI measurement system.
It can also be called a micron.
It is one millionth of a metre.
A micrometre is often used as a measurement for cells like bacteria, because bacteria are very small too.
A micron is very small.
Maharashtra is the name of a state of India and its language is Marathi.
It is the third-biggest state of India (the size of only two states are bigger).
Only one Indian state has more people.
Mumbai is the capital of Maharashtra.
(Name Mumbai comes from original name of the city, Mumbapuri.)
Maharashtra is in the west part of India on the coast of the Arabian Sea.
Seven other states of India have borders with Maharashtra.
It covers an area of 118,530 mi (306,993 km), it is bigger than Italy but smaller than Oman.
In traditional Indian geography it falls under the West Indian zone.
Maharashtra has more business than any other one state of India.
Most people in Maharashtra are Hindus and you can see it in the culture of Maharashtra.
There are many temples in Maharashtra and some of them are very old.
The architecture of these temples is a mixture of architecture from North and South India.
The temples also have ideas from Hindu, Buddhist and Jain cultures.
Maharashtra has many forts like Raigad and Pratapgad which were very important in the early history of the Maratha empire and also sea forts like the one at Sindhudurg.
The folk music of Maharashtra is mixed.
An early piece of Marathi literature is Bhawarthadeepika (known as Dnyaneshwari) by Dnyaneshwar.
The religious songs called bhajans by Dnyaneshwar, Tukaram, Namdev are very popular.
Modern Marathi literature also has some great poets and authors like P. L. Deshpande, Kusumagraj, Prahlad Keshav Atre, and Vyankatesh Madgulkar.
Many books are published every year in Marathi.
The theater, movies, and television in Maharashtra are mostly made in Mumbai, and the actors in each area (like television) can work in the others.
Some important people in the movie industry are Dadasaheb Phalke, Dada Kondke, Ashok Saraf, Laxmikant Berde, Sachin Pilgaonkar, Mahesh Kothare and V. Shantaram.
Early Marathi theater had important playwrights (people who write plays) like Kolhatkar, Khadilkar, Deval, Gadkari and Kirloskar.
They wrote musical plays called Sangeet Naatak.
The music from those plays is called Natyasangeet.
Important actors at this time were Bal Gandharva, Keshavrao Bhosle, Bhaurao Kolhatkar, and Dinanath Mangeshkar.
Some of the popular Marathi television channels are Mi Marathi and ETV Marathi.
They have many kinds of shows: soap operas, cooking, travel, political satire, and game shows.
The food of Maharashtra is different in each place.
The people in the Konkan region eat more rice and the ones near the ocean eat a lot of fish.
In eastern Maharashtra, most people eat a lot of wheat, jowar, and bajra.
Other important things people eat in Maharashtra are lentils, onions, tomatoes, potatoes, chilies, garlic, ginger, and aamras.
Many people also eat chicken and mutton.
In the past, women wore a long sari and men wore a dhoti or pajama with a shirt.
Today, women in the cities often wear other clothes like Salwar kameez (dresses from the Punjab), and men in the cities wear trousers and a shirt.
Cricket is very popular in Maharashtra.
Many people play it and many others watch it.
Kabaddi is also popular.
Children play Viti-Dandu and Pakada-pakadi (Tag).
Hindus in Maharashtra follow the Saka era calendar.
Gudi Padwa, Diwali, Rangapanchami, Gokulashtami, and Ganeshotsav are some of the festivals that are celebrated in Maharashtra.
Ganeshotsav is the biggest festival.
The Hindus celebrate it with reverence and festivity in Maharashtra and it has also become popular in other parts of India.
The festival which lasts ten days is in honor of Ganesha, the Hindu god of learning and knowledge.
Mozzarella is a kind of fresh cheese.
Originally, it was Italian but now it can be found all over the world.
Its made of the milk of cows or of water buffalos.
It is used on Pizza, but other recipes exist as well (for example, with sliced tomatoes and a little vinegar).
The Minotaur is a creature in Greek mythology.
He is shown as half-bull, half-man, normally with the head of a bull and body of a man.
He lived at the center of the Cretan Labyrinth (maze).
The Labyrinth was built for King Minos by Daedalus.
The Minotaur was killed by Theseus.
The term minotaur now refers to a race of bull-headed creatures created for the modern fantasy fiction genre.
On September 13, 2000, Apple release a $ 29.95 preview of Mac OS X to ask users what they think of the new operating system so far.
Apple stopped the Public Beta in March 2001 because of the recent release of OS X 10.0.
On March 24, 2001 Apple released Mac OS X for the first time aka OS X v10.0 (codenamed Cheetah), but rather than being an excellent and successful operating system version, it was a failure due to its many computer bugs and glitches and its slow performance.
Luckily this operating system version only stayed on the market up until September when it was moved up to a "higher level".
Due to many problems and complaints about Cheetah, Apple directly got to work on releasing Puma, the next big cat in Mac OS X. It was released on September 24, 2001.
Apple gave 10.0 users a free Mac OS X v10.1 install CD to make up for the terrible operating system before.
As of January 7, 2002, Apple said Mac OS 9 and other previous operating systems from Apple were "going in the computer scrapyard" by the end of the month (January 31, 2002) and OS X would be the default and only operating system available on all Macs.
Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar was released on August 24, 2002 and was the first to have it 's codename in the version branding.
The Happy Mac (which formerly appeared when a Mac was starting up) was replaced with a large gray apple logo with the startup sequence of OS X 10.2 Jaguar.
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther was released on October 24, 2003 and was one of the biggest updates to OS X yet.
It featured a new brushed metal interface, an updated Finder, and many more features from Jaguar the year before.
Tiger was released on April 29, 2005 and as stated by Apple, featured more than 200 new features.
Among the new features, Tiger introduced Spotlight, Dashboard, Smart Folders, updated Mail program with Smart Mailboxes, QuickTime 7, Safari 2, Automator, VoiceOver, Core Image and Core Video.
Apple released the first Power Intel Macs for Tiger on January 10, 2006.
Tiger ran swell on these computers.
It was also the last operating system to support the Aqua color scheme.
Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard was released on October 26, 2007.
It was completely redesigned featuring a 3D Dock, a new purple color scheme, and over 200 new features.
It had both support for Power PC and Intel Macs too.
Leopard was the last release to have support for PowerPC.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard was released on August 28, 2009, and rather than featuring changes to the appearance, it featured "Under the hood" changes.
Snow Leopard dropped support for PowerPC Macs too.
OS X Lion was first shown to the public at the "Back to The Mac" event in 2010, announced more at WWDC 2011, and released on July 20, 2011.
It featured iOS like features such as a launchpad, the magic trackpad coming to MacBooks, and a new solar system color scheme.
Apple also removed Rosetta making it impossible to use PowerPC apps without jailbreaking.
OS X Mountain Lion was announced on February 18, 2012, and released on July 25, 2012.
It adds more features from iOS 5 and 6 to the Mac such as notifications, messaging, game center, and gaming with people on iPhones, iPods, and iPads.
OS X Mavericks was announced on June 10, 2013 at the 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference.
It adds the Maps and iBooks applications, as well as new Finder features, better multi-display support, power improvements, and a new version of Safari.
It was released on October 22 2013.
Morphology is part of linguistics.
It looks at the way words are put together using small pieces called morphemes.
A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that has meaning.
Different languages have different morphemes and have different rules for how morphemes are combined.
Words are the smallest pieces of a sentence.
Some words only have one morpheme.
For example the English words thank, dog, and slow are all words made up of only one morpheme.
A morpheme that can stand alone as a word is called a free morpheme.
Words can also be made up of more than one morpheme.
English speakers know that one can add the plural (more than one) morpheme, - s, to the end of dog, and create the word dogs.
The new word combines the meanings of the two morphemes, so the meaning of the new word, dogs is more than one dog.
Dog is a free morpheme, but the plural morpheme - s is not.
It must attach to a word (no native English speaker would use - s as a stand alone word).
Morphemes which must be attached to a word are called bound morphemes.
Morphemes attached to the front of a word are called prefixes.
Those attached to the end are called suffixes.
Some morphemes can attach in the middle of a word and are called infixes.
(example?)
There are two types of bound morphemes: derivational and inflectional.
Inflectional morphemes give a listener or reader information about how the word is used in a sentence.
English does not have a lot of inflectional morphemes.
An example of an inflectional morpheme in English is the - ed suffix for verbs.
This morpheme at the end of a verb lets the speaker know that the action happened in the past.
Another example is the - s suffix for nouns to show that there is more than one of the noun.
Derivational morphemes change the part of speech or somehow change the basic meaning of the word they attach to.
Most bound morphemes in English are derivational.
Melting is the process of changing something from a solid into a liquid (like ice into liquid water).
It is the opposite of freezing.
The temperature at which something begins to melt is called its melting point.
When an object is heated, the object 's particles begin to move faster and faster until the structured particles are freed.
Now it is a liquid.
it is a solid that is turning into a liquid.
Macroevolution refers to large-scale evolution.
For some, this means the origin of species.
For others, it means the large-scale changes seen in the fossil record.
It is a term of convenience: for most biologists it does not suggest any change in the process of evolution.
For a few palaeontologists, some things they see in the fossil record can not be explained just by the gradualist evolutionary synthesis.
They are in the minority.
There are some interesting discussions by other palaeontologists.
Some biologists use the term for evolution in already separated gene pools.
For them, macroevolutionary studies focus on change that occurs at or above the level of species.
Again, this is a minority position.
Most biologist would not call evolution at the species level "macroevolution".
Microevolution, on the other hand, refers to smaller evolutionary changes within species or populations.
During microevolution changes in allele frequencies definitely do occur.
Some biologists, Richard Dawkins in particular, have suggested that the gene is the object of selection.
This was always challenged by Ernst Mayr "The individual is the entity which survives or not, which reproduces or not, and which reproduces successfully or not".
Changes in gene frequency in populations is a by-product of what happens to individuals.
Paleontology, evolutionary developmental biology, and sequence analysis contribute much evidence for the patterns and processes that can be classified as macroevolution.
An example of macroevolution is the appearance of feathers during the evolution of birds from one group of dinosaurs.
Within the modern evolutionary synthesis school of thought, macroevolution is thought of as the compounded effects of microevolution.
Thus, the distinction between micro - and macroevolution is not a fundamental one the only difference between them is of time and scale.
Some creationists have also adopted the term ` macroevolution ' to describe the form of evolution they reject.
They may accept that evolutionary change is possible within species (microevolution), but deny that one species can evolve into another (macroevolution).
These arguments are rejected by biologists, who hold that there is ample evidence that macroevolution has occurred in the past.
Russian entomologist Yuri Filipchenko (or Philipchenko, depending on the transliteration) first coined the terms ` macroevolution ' and ` microevolution ' in 1927 in his German language work, Variabilit t und Variatio.
Since then, their meanings have been revised several times and fallen into disfavor with many, who prefer to speak of biological evolution as one process.
Evolution as a whole is strongly supported by many kinds of evidence.
The issue for biologists is whether there is any sense in having the special term macroevolution.
The answer is yes for a few biologists who proposed one or more evolutionary mechanisms which worked above the species level.
The ideas of punctuated equilibrium and species selection were suggested, but in each case most biologists felt they could be explained by the usual small-scale changes.
This explains why ` macroevolution ' is perhaps a term biologists do not need to use.
When discussing the topic, creationists use "strategically elastic" definitions of micro - and macroevolution.
Macroevolution, by their definition, can not be attained.
Any observed evolutionary change is described by them as being "just microevolution".
The debate between biologists continues, with some biologists stating that there is significant evidence that other factors have acted during macroevolution, and others maintaining that macroevolution can still be fully explained by the mechanisms of microevolution.
Megadeth is a heavy metal band from the United States.
The band was created by Dave Mustaine in 1983 after he was fired from Metallica.
Megadeth is a member of "The Big Four" in thrash metal along with Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax.
Megadeth is considered a pioneer in its kind of music.
They have released 14 albums of music.
The Mercalli intensity scale (or more precisely the Modified Mercalli intensity scale) is a scale to measure the intensity of earthquakes.
Unlike with the Richter scale, the Mercalli scale does not take into account energy of an earthquake directly.
Rather, they classify earthquakes by the effects they have (and the destruction they cause).
When there is little damage, the scale describes how people felt the earthquake, or how many people felt it.
Very often, non-geologists use this scale, because it is easier for people to describe what damage an earthquake caused, than to do calculations to get a value on the Richter scale.
Values range from I - Instrumental to XII - Catastrophic.
Giuseppe Mercalli (1850-1914) originally developed the scale, with ten levels.
In 1902, Adolfo Cancani extended the scale to include twelve levels.
August Heinrich Sieberg copletely rewrote the scale.
For this reason, the scale is sometimes named Mercalli-Cancani-Sieberg scale, or MCS scale.
Harry O. Wood and Frank Neumann translated it into English, and published it as Mercalli Wood Neumann (MWN) scale.
Charles Francis Richter also improved it.
He also developed the Richter scale, later on.
The lower degrees of the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale generally deal with the manner in which the earthquake is felt by people.
The higher numbers of the scale are based on observed damage to struxtures
The large table gives Modified Mercalli scale intensities that are typically observed at locations near the epicenter of the earthquake.
There is a correlation between the magitude and the intensity of the earthquake.
Even though this correlation is there, it may be difficult to link one to the other: This correlation depends on several factors, such as the depth of the earthquake, terrain, population density, and damage.
For example, on May 19, 2011, an earthquake of magnitude 0.7 in Central California, United States 4 km deep was classified as of intensity III by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) over 100 m away from the epicenter (and II intensity almost 300 m from the epicenter), while a 4.5 magnitude quake in Salta, Argentina 164 km deep was of intensity I.
The small table is a rough guide to the degrees of the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale.
The colors and descriptive names shown here differ from those used on certain shake maps in other articles.
The Mickey Mouse Club was an American variety television series that began in 1955, ran intermittently, and left the air in 1996.
It was directed by Walt Disney Productions.
Over the years, the series featured many stellar teenage performers including Annette Funicello, Britney Spears, and Justin Timberlake.
The original series ran newsreels, cartoons, talent segments, and Disney produced serials such as The Hardy Boys with Tommy Kirk and Tim Considine.
Mickey Mouse Club was hosted by Jimmie Dodd, a songwriter and the Head Mouseketeer.
He provided leadership both on and off screen.
In addition to his other contributions, he often provided short segments encouraging young viewers to make the right moral choices.
These little sermons became known as "Doddisms".
Minos was the mythical first king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa.
The following stories are mythological, and have no real historical basis.
Every nine years, he made King Aegeus pick seven young boys and seven young girls to be sent to Daedalus ' creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten by the Minotaur.
After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in the underworld.
He once had a wife named Pasophae.
Minos upset the Greek gods by cheating them in a sacrifice.
He told Poseidon that he would sacrifice a beautiful bull that Poseidon gave him after he used it.
Instead, he switched it with another bull.
They punished him by having Pasophae fall in love with a bull.
Pasophae asked Daedalus to help her, so Daedalus made a mechanical cow for her, and she got into it.
The bull mated with the wooden cow and Pasophae had a child.
It was the Minotaur, half human, half bull.
King Minos took the Minotaur and put it in a labrynth, or maze, built by Daedalus.
When he was in possession of all of Crete he ordered that fourteen young people come to him to be sacrificed to the Minotaur.
Theseus volunteered to be one of them, and went there with daughter, Ariadne.
He killed the Minotaur in the labyrinth.
The Minoan civilization was later named after him by Arthur Evans.
Evans was the archaeologist who discovered and excavated the palace of Knossos in Crete.
The Metre Convention is the treaty that set up the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM).
The BIPM is an inter-governmental organization that is responsible for harmonizing systems of measurement across the world.
The treaty was first made in 1875 between 17 countries.
The member countries agreed to share the costs of running a laboratory on neutral territory.
The international prototype metre and the international prototype kilogram would be kept at the laboratory.
Member state 's national prototype metres and kilograms would be compared with the international prototypes at regular intervals.
Member states would have regular meetings to discuss developments in measurement technology.
In 1921 the treaty was extended to cover electrical and all other physical measurements.
This enabled the BIPM to published the standards for the International System of Units (SI).
Under SI, units of measurements that are used in science and engineering were defined in a logical manner.
The rules for SI also standardized the way in which physical quantities are written.
In 2014 the BIPM had 55 member countries.
The metric system was developed in France in the 1790s.
The length of the metre was made to be one ten millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the equator.
Between 1791 and 1798 the French men Delambre (a mathematician and astronomer) and M chain (an astronomer) measured the distance between Dunkirk and Barcelona.
The measurements were used to make a metal bar exactly 443.296 lignes long (the ligne is an old French unit of length equal to one twelfth of a French inch).
The bar would be used as a standard for the metre.
The bar was later called the metre des archives.
By the 1860s it was found that the metre des archives was 0.03 % shorter than it was supposed to have been.
The Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and the Paris International Exhibition in 1867 had shown the need for different nations to use the same units of measurement.
In the 1860s there were many discussions by astronomers and surveyors from outside France whether they should use the metre des archives or whether they should use a "new metre" that took account of the 0.03 % error.
Prussia took the lead in organizing conferences in Berlin to discuss the matter.
France did not take part in the conferences.
Before any actions could be taken the Franco-Prussian War broke out.
Prussia defeated France.
At the same time the German Empire was formed.
In 1875 France invited representatives to Paris to discuss the matter.
This helped France to score a diplomatic victory over Prussia and the German Empire.
The treaty was signed by seventeen of the countries at the conference in Paris on 20 May 1875.
The United Kingdom and the Netherlands went to the conference but did not sign the treaty at that time.
After further consideration, the United Kingdom did sign the treaty in 1884.
The organization set up by the treaty was the International Bureau of Weights and Measures.
Its French name is Bureau international des poids et mesures.
Its abbreviation is BIPM.
The BIPM has its headquarters at the Pavillon de Breteuil, S vres, France (close to Paris).
About 70 people work at the BIPM.
The budget for 2013 was over 10 million ($ 12 million).
The three organizations were set up under the treaty.
They are:
The Bureau has responsibility for safeguarding the international prototype kilogram.
The official language for the organizations is French.
Until 1988 all reports of meetings were only published in French.
Since then both English and French have been used.
Abbreviations are based on the French words, not English words.
Official communications between the BIPM and France are conducted via the French Foreign Ministry.
Official communications with other countries are conducted via that country 's embassy in Paris.
The General Conference on Weights and Measures was set up under the Metre Convention as an organ of the BIPM.
It gives the BIPM its mandate and budget on behalf of the member states.
Its French name is Conf rence g n rale des poids et mesures.
Its abbreviation is "CGPM".
The CGPM meets every four to six years.
The first meeting was in 1889 and the 24th meeting was in 2011.
Each member state has one vote.
France is represented by its foreign minister and by the president of the French Academy.
The French Foreign minister is the chairman of the opening and closing sessions of any CGPM session.
The president of the French Academy is the chairman of other meetings of the CGPM.
The International Committee for Weights and Measures was set up under the Metre Convention as an organ of the BIPM.
It advises the CGPM and supervise the BIPM.
Its French name is Comit international des poids et mesures.
Its abbreviation is CIPM.
The CGPM has 18 members.
These members are well-known measurement experts who are elected by the CGPM.
They must all come from different countries.
One of the CIPM members must be French.
They meet once or twice a year in Paris.
The CIPM is assisted by a number of Consultative Committees.
In February 2014 there were ten such committees.
Nine of the committees are dedicated to special types of measurement such as Electricity and Magnetism, Length, Photometry and Radiometry, Thermometry and Time and Frequency.
The CIPM appoints people to these committees.
The tenth committee is called the Consultative Committee for Units (CCU).
Its chairman is appointed by the CIPM.
Other members of the committee are appointed by other organizations.
These organizations include International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The CCU 's task is to ensure that all the definitions of SI are consistent.
It also drafts the SI standard which is called the SI Brochure.
The BIPM 's offices and laboratories art at the Pavillon de Breteuil, S vres, France (close to Paris).
The BIPM looks after the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK) for the CGPM.
It provides laboratory services for the CGPM and CIPM.
Member states use the BIPM laboratories when they check their own copy of the kilogram against the IPK.
The BIPM offices are also the headquarters for the CGPM and CIPM.
In 1875 the convention only dealt with standardization of the kilogram and the metre.
The convention was revised in 1921 to accommodate all physical measurements.
In 1933 the CGPM approved efforts that were being made to merge electrical and photometry units into the metric system.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century many new units of measure were defined using the metric system.
Units of measure used in electrostatic applications, electromagnetic applications and electrical distribution systems were incompatible with each other.
The use of standard gravity in force and pressure definitions resulted in more units of measure being defined than were necessary.
After the Second World War the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) and the French Government asked the BIPM to look into the matter.
In 1948, the 9th CGPM asked the CIPM to conduct a study into units of measurement used by member states.
The CIPM reported back and in 1954 the 10th CGPM decided to set up a new system of units.
There would be six base units.
These were the metre, kilogram, second, ampere, degree Kelvin (later renamed kelvin), and candela.
The new system was published in 1960.
The 11th CGPM named it the International System of Units.
The short name was "SI".
This came from the French name,.
The BIPM described SI as "the modern metric system".
Since 1960 the BIPM has made several refinements to SI.
Some of the refinements include developing new ways of making high precision measurement.
Other refinements include small changes to details of definitions.
The atomic clock has made very precise time-keeping possible.
The earth is slowing down.
A the "time of the dinosaurs" the earth rotated once every 23 hours.
It is now possible to measure variations in the Earth 's rotation caused by volcanoes and tsunamis.
This is done by the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS).
The IERS proposes leap seconds as and when these are needed.
Under the Metre Convention, the BIPM has the task of coordinating over 200 atomic clocks around the world.
These clocks are located in 50 different national laboratories.
Many measuring devices need to be recalibrated at regular intervals.
These devices might be petrol pumps.
They might be weighing scales.
They might be complex medical equipment like MRI scanners.
A certificate is issued when the device is recalibrated.
The device that is used to do the calibration must itself be calibrated.
These devices are often recalibrated in a national metrology laboratory.
Legal problems can arise if a calibration done in one country is not recognized in another country.
Some countries are full members of the CGPM and have a vote at CGPM meetings.
These countries have their own copy of the prototype kilogram.
They also take part in the CIPM MRA program.
Other countries are associate members.
They take part on the CIPM MRA program.
They may speak at CGPM meetings but not to vote at these meetings.
They do not have their own copies of the prototype kilogram.
At its 21st meeting (October 1999), the CGPM created the category of "associate" for those states not yet members of the BIPM and for economic unions.
The Media access layer is one of the layers of the OSI reference model.
It is concerned with the access to the physical network medium.
Devices that access this medium need to be identified.
For this reason, many network technologies, amongst them Ethernet, use unique addresses to identify the network card, which is used to access the medium.
These addresses are usually called the Media Access Control address or MAC address.
Each device is assigned a MAC address by its manufacturer.
The original Xerox Ethernet addressing scheme is still used to assign MAC addresses.
It allows MAC addresses to be 48-bits long.
So, there are 248 or 281,474,976,710,656 possible MAC addresses.
My Neighbor Totoro, or My Neighbour Totoro on UK DVD box titles, is a 1988 animated movie written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli.
It won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 1988.
This movie was originally released in the United States in VHS format with the title, My Friend Totoro.
Troma Films, under their 50th St. Films banner, produced a 1993 dub of the movie co-produced by Jerry Beck.
It was released on VHS and DVD by Fox Video.
Troma 's and Fox 's rights to this version expired in 2004.
The movie was re-released by Disney on March 7, 2006.
It features a new dub cast.
This DVD release is the first version of the movie in the United States to include both Japanese and English language tracks, as Fox did not have the rights to the Japanese audio track for their version.
Two girls, Satsuki and her younger sister named Mei, move to a house in the country with their father to be closer to their hospitalized mother.
One day, Mei discovers a giant creature named Totoro who lives in the forest by their house.
Some time later, when the girls were waiting for their dad by the bus stop, they both saw Totoro and a cat-bus.
Later, Mei decides to run away to try to find her mother at the hospital, and she gets lost.
Satsuki looks for Totoro, who gives her a ride on the cat-bus and helps her find Mei.
As the movie ends, the girls are seen delivering an ear of corn to their mom to help her get well.
; Satsuki Kusakabe A girl around ten years old.
Satsuki is Mei 's older sister.
Satsuki is the traditional name of the fifth month of the Japanese calendar, the equivalent of the English May.
; Mei Kusakabe Satsuki 's sister who is around four years old.
Her name deliberately echoes her sister 's, May being the fifth month, reflecting the fact that the story originally featured one girl, who was then divided into an older and younger sister.
The widely-distributed promotional image for the movie of a girl standing next to Totoro at a bus stop reflects the earlier conception with a single child.
; Tatsuo Kusakabe The girls ' father, who works in the archaeology and anthropology departments of a Tokyo university.
; Yasuko Kusakabe The girls ' mother, recovering from an unnamed illness (confirmed by Miyazaki as being tuberculosis) at Shichikokuyama Hospital, which is noted for its tuberculosis treatment program.
When Miyazaki was a young boy, his mother had tuberculosis.
; Totoro A gray and white, friendly forest spirit, whose appearance is a combination of an owl, a cat, and a tanuki and is at least three meters tall.
Totoro is Mei 's mispronunciation of tor ru, the Japanese pronunciation of troll as a loanword.
There are two similar, smaller creatures in the movie, also referred to as totoro; the big gray Totoro is named" - Totoro", or "Miminzuku", the middle is "Ch - Totoro", or "Zuku", and the smallest is "Chibi-Totoro", or "Mini".
These names do not appear in the movie itself, but are used in ancillary materials.
; Kanta gaki A preteen boy of their village, ambivalent towards Satsuki.
This character resembles Miyazaki in his fondness for cartoons and airplanes.
; "Granny" or "Nanny" Kanta 's grandmother, who sometimes takes care of the girls.
; Catbus A cat with hollow insides, serving as a bus for Totoros.
It is based on the Japanese superstition that if a cat grows old enough, it gains magical shape-changing powers, and is called a bake neko.
Bake neko are mentioned in several Ghibli movies.
One of the most significant things to point out in My Neighbor Totoro is that the mother is absent from the home.
According to Takie Sugiyama Lebra, the (Japanese) mother is characterized as having suffered hardships (154).
This is true in Totoro, as Mei and Satsuki s mother is hospitalized with an unnamed illness.
The mother s absence is significant because at home, the husband depends upon the wife for domestic care.
The husband is helpless in housekeeping tasks, such as doing the laundry, cooking, cleaning, and child rearing (52).
In the absence of her mother, it is then Satsuki s job to take over household tasks with Nanny s help.
This is illustrated several times throughout the movie.
One such illustration is when Satsuki prepares breakfast and lunch for her father and Mei before she leaves for school.
This is a task that would normally fall to the mother.
Also, the various cleaning and garden tasks that Satsuki and Mei often had the help of Nanny to complete would have also normally been the main responsibility of the mother to complete.
Mei and Satsuki s father demonstrates both typical and atypical characteristics of a traditional Japanese father.
According to Peter Tasker, Japanese children are accustomed to never seeing their father on the weekdays, and only for short periods at weekends.
A husband s proper field of endeavor is the company (101).
This is only somewhat accurate in Mei and Satsuki s relationship with their father.
Although their father is often away working at the university or visiting their mother in the hospital, he is by no means an absentee father.
He is seen working at a desk while Mei plays outside and spending time with his daughters before their bedtime.
Many scholarly critiques of Japanese culture would lead one to believe that this is not the norm.
My Neighbor Totoro exhibits several important cultural points through the setting and passive details.
The house into which the Kusakabe family moves is an accurate portrayal of a typical, rural, Japanese home.
The sliding doors that the father opens when they first move into the house are common architectural features.
These doors are meant to be opened during the day, weather permitting, and closed at night.
Another feature to point out about the house itself is the way the foundation is constructed.
Japanese houses do not have cellars but are built with a foundation of shallow concrete, or a single row of cement blocks.
On top of this type of foundation is placed a row of heavy timbers (33).
This can be seen clearly when Mei crawls under the house in pursuit of one of the smaller totoros.
As for Totoro, he lives in a tree demarcated by a shimenawa (braided straw rope for shinto).
The tree is called shinboku (sacred tree).
Shinto is the traditional religion of Japan and some consider many of Hayao Miyazaki s movies including Totoro to have Shintoist themes,.
and interpret Totoro as a kami spirit of the Shinto religion.
But Miyazaki says "this movie (Totoro) has nothing to do with that (Shinto) or any other religion."
The community in which Satsuki and her family have moved is a typical agricultural town.
The rice paddies are visible throughout the movie.
Rice cultivation is one of the most important industries in Japan, as rice is a staple of the Japanese diet.
The home that Satsuki and Mei live in is more spacious than what would be available in a city.
Also, the scene where Nanny, Mei, and Satsuki are washing vegetables shows the near self-sufficiency of these farming communities.
The bath scene is also demonstrative of archetypal Japanese life.
The bathtub is more like a small swimming pool than a tub (38).
As seen in the movie, several people bathe together at once.
It is considered rude to enter the tub without first washing, as shown by Satsuki before she enters the tub with her father and Mei.
These bathtubs are heated usually by small, well-tended coal burners under the tub.
Another cultural manifestation is the scene that shows the family sleeping.
Often, the living room is converted into a bedroom where the whole family sleeps together on mats called futon.
This sleeping arrangement is space-efficient and accommodates for smaller housing in a country where living space is severely limited.
Mei is sleeping between Satsuki and her father, which is the usual arrangement with the youngest in the middle.
In one scene, Satsuki is shown preparing the family 's lunch in traditional bento style.
A bento is a compartmentalized lunch box usually with only one or two tiers.
Food is arranged to be aesthetically pleasing.
Bentos are extremely common as lunch boxes for children, adults, and even those who stay at home, as Mei does when Satsuki goes to school.
My Neighbor Totoro was released by Studio Ghibli as a double feature with Isao Takahata 's Grave of the Fireflies in August 1988.
There are two theories for this: one was that Totoro would not be successful.
Another theory is that Grave of the Fireflies was believed to be too depressing for audiences by itself, and thus needed a lighter animation to accompany it.
The late Yoshifumi Kondo provided character designs for both movies.
In 1993, Fox released the first English-language version of My Neighbor Totoro, produced by John Daly and Derek Gibson (the producers of The Terminator) with co-producer Jerry Beck.
Fox and Troma 's rights to the movie expired in 2004.
Disney 's English language version premiered on October 23, 2005; it then appeared at the 2005 Hollywood Film Festival.
The Turner Classic Movies cable television network held the television premiere of Disney 's new English dub on January 19, 2006, as part of the network 's salute to Hayao Miyazaki.
(TCM aired the dub as well as the original Japanese with English subtitles.)
The Disney version was released on DVD on March 7, 2006.
As is the case with Disney 's other English dubs of Miyazaki movies, the Disney version of Totoro features a star-heavy cast, including Dakota and Elle Fanning as Satsuki and Mei, Timothy Daly as Mr. Kusakabe, Pat Carroll as Granny, Lea Salonga as Mrs. Kusakabe, and Frank Welker as Totoro and Catbus.
The songs for the new dub retained the same translation as the previous dub, but were sung by Sonya Isaacs.
The movie has an 8.1 rating on IMDb, and a 94 % approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes.com.
Reviews were very positive.
Mehrgarh, one of the most important Neolithic (7000 BC to 3200 BC) sites in archaeology, lies on the Kachhi Plain of Balochistan, Pakistan.
It is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats) in South Asia.
It was rediscovered about 1974.
Machine code or machine language is the name for commands.
They can directly be executed by a processor.
Usually, they are 1s and 0s.
Their order tells the computer what to do.
This code is the lowest level of software.
All other kinds of software need to be translated into machine code before they can be used.
Each processor has its own machine code.
Each instruction is made up of an opcode (operation code) and operand (s).
An instruction tells the computer to do one thing.
The operands are usually memory addresses.
An instruction set is a list of the opcodes used in a computer.
Machine code is what assembly code and other programming languages are compiled to or interpreted as.
Program builders turn code into another language or machine code.
Machine code is sometimes called native code.
This is used when talking about things that work on only some computers.
Many modern processors use microcode for some of the commands.
More complex commands tend to use it.
This is often done with CISC architectures.
Every processor or processor family has its own machine code instruction set.
They correspond to the different commands that can be given.
An instruction set is specific to a processor or a family of processors that have a similar set up.
Newer processors often copy all of its instructions.
Processors that try to be similar to the original processor can also copy all of its instructions.
Often, newer processors add more instructions not present in the original design.
Sometimes a newer processor will change the meaning of an instruction.
Sometimes it will no longer support it.
This can change the compatibility of the code.
Some old code will no longer work on the newer processor.
Processors that are similar will sometimes act different.
This is rarely a problem.
Many systems may also be different in other ways.
Their access to the memory or its arrangement may be different.
Computer hardware may be connected in a different way.
Also, the access to other hardware could be changed.
A program normally relies on such factors.
For this reason, different systems will typically not run the same machine code.
This is true even when the same type of processor is used.
Most instructions have one or more opcode fields.
They specify the basic instruction type.
Other fields may give the type of the operands, the addressing mode, and so on.
There may also be special instructions.
They are contained in the opcode itself.
These instructions are called immediates.
Processor designs can be different in other ways.
Different instructions can have different lengths.
Also, they can have the same length.
Having all instructions have the same length can simplify the design.
The MIPS architecture has instructions which are 32 bits long.
This section has examples of code.
The general type of instruction is in the op (operation) field.
It is the highest 6 bits.
J-type (jump) and I-type (immediate) instructions are fully given by op.
R-type (register) instructions include the field funct.
It determines the exact operation of the code.
The fields used in these types are:
rs, rt, and rd indicate register operands.
shamt gives a shift amount.
The address or immediate fields contain an operand directly.
Example: add the registers 1 and 2.
Place the result in register 6.
It is encoded:
Load a value into register 8.
Take it from the memory cell 68 cells after the location listed in register 3:
Michael is a male Hebrew name, popular in English.
It is from the angel Michael in the Bible.
(See for example Book of Revelation 12:7) Michael is also popular in English speaking countries, and in modified forms, many other countries.
Margaret Sanger (September 14, 1879 September 6, 1966) born Margaret Hennessy Higgins, was the founder of Planned Parenthood.
She was a leading birth control activist, feminist, nurse, and sex educator.
Her father was Irish.
She helped finance biologist Gregory Pincus 's creation of the birth control pill.
She married twice, first to architect William Sanger, then to J. Noah Slee, a South African born oil tycoon.
Mary II (30 April 1662 28 December 1694) was Queen regnant of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1689 until her death.
Mary was a Protestant.
She became queen after the Glorious Revolution, which resulted in the deposition of her Roman Catholic father, James II and VII.
Mary ruled together with her husband, William III and II.
He became the ruler of both countries when she died in 1694.
Popular histories usually call their joint reigns as those of "William and Mary".
Mary had less power than William when William remained in England.
When William went to military campaigns, however, she governed alone.
She was a powerful, firm, and effective ruler.
She gave most of her authority to her husband, but he greatly depended on her.
She was very active in the Church of England, ruling it as its Supreme Governor.
Though she shared this position with her husband, she used most of its power herself.
Mary was born at St. James Palace in London on 30 April 1662.
Her father was James, Duke of York, and her mother was his first wife, Lady Anne Hyde.
She was their oldest daughter.
Mary 's uncle was Charles II.
Her grandfather by her mother 's side was Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon.
He served for a long time as Charles 's chief advisor.
Her mother gave birth to eight children, but only Mary and her younger sister Anne lived to adulthood.
The Duke of York became a Roman Catholic in 1668 or 1669, but Mary and Anne had a Protestant education, as Charles II had commanded.
Mary 's mother died in 1671, and her father married again in 1673.
He took Mary of Modena, a Catholic, as his second wife.
She was also known as Mary Beatrice d'Este.
Before her marriage, Mary wrote many letters to Frances Apsley, the daughter of James II 's hawks keeper.
However, she did not return Mary 's interest.
When she was 15, Lady Mary became betrothed to her first cousin, the Protestant William, Prince of Orange.
William was the son of Mary, Princess Royal and Prince William II of Nassau.
At first, Charles II did not want Mary to marry William.
He wanted Mary to marry the heir to the French Throne, the Dauphin Louis, instead.
This was because he hoped that England would become friends with France.
He also wanted to have a Catholic successor to the throne.
But because of Parliament 's pressure, he later approved their marriage.
He thought that it would make the Protestants like him more, but he was wrong.
Mary and William married in London on 4 November 1677.
It was reported that Mary wept through the whole ceremony.
Mary went to the Netherlands and lived there as William 's wife.
The Dutch people liked her because of her lively, friendly nature, and Mary loved William deeply.
However, the marriage was often unhappy.
Her three pregnancies ended in miscarriage or stillbirth, and Mary was very sad that she did not have a child.
Her husband was often cold to her, and he had an affair with Elizabeth Villiers, one of Mary 's ladies-in-waiting, for a long time.
After some time, though, he grew warmer towards Mary.
When Charles II died without any legitimate children in 1685, the Duke of York became King as James II in England and Ireland.
He also became James VII in Scotland.
He tried to give freedom of religion to non-Anglicans.
He did this by making the acts of Parliament invalid by Royal Decree.
The public did not like this.
Several Protestant politicians and noblemen entered into negotiations (trying to reach agreements through discussion) with Mary 's husband as early as 1687.
In May 1688, James forced Anglican clergymen to read the Declaration of Indulgence.
The Declaration of Indulgence was a statement that gave religious freedom to those who did not agree with the Church of England.
This made him much less popular.
Protestants became even more fearful when his wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son James Francis Edward in June 1688.
They were fearful because the son would, unlike Mary and Anne, be raised a Roman Catholic.
Some said that the boy had been secretly carried into the Queen 's room in a bed-warming pan instead of her stillborn baby.
There was no strong proof to support this story, but Mary publicly doubted the boy 's legitimacy.
She sent a list of suspicious questions to her sister, Anne, about the boy 's birth.
On 30 June, the Immortal Seven secretly asked William, who was in the Netherlands with Mary, to come to England with an army.
William, who was jealous of Mary 's position and power, did not want to go at first.
But Mary told William that she did not care about political power.
She said "she would be no more but his wife, and that she would do all that lay in her power to make him King for life".
William agreed to attack.
He declared that James ' newborn son was the "pretended Prince of Wales".
He also gave a list of what the English people wanted, and said that he only wanted to have "a free and lawful Parliament assembled".
The Dutch army, which had been turned back by a storm in October, landed on 5 November.
The English Army and Navy went over to William.
At this time, the English people 's confidence in James was very low.
They did not even try to save their King.
On 11 December, the King tried to run away, but failed.
He tried to run away again on 23 December.
This second attempt was successful, and James escaped to France.
He lived there in exile until his death.
Though Mary was sad because of the deposition of her father, William ordered her to look happy when they arrived in London.
Because of this, people thought she was being cold to her father.
James also thought his daughter was unfaithful to him.
This hurt Mary deeply.
In 1689, a Convention Parliament called by the Prince of Orange came together to discuss what they should do.
William of Orange felt uncomfortable about his position.
He wanted to rule as a King, not simply as a husband of a Queen.
The only example of joint monarchy was from the sixteenth century.
This was Queen Mary I and the Spanish Prince Philip.
When they married, it was agreed that Prince Philip would take the title of King.
But Philip II was King only during his wife 's lifetime.
He also did not have much power.
William wanted to remain King even after his wife 's death.
Some important people suggested making Mary the only ruler.
But Mary, who was faithful to her husband, refused.
On 13 February 1689, Parliament passed the Declaration of Right.
In this declaration, it said that James, by trying to run away on 11 December 1688, had abandoned the government, so no one at the time was king.
Normally, James 's oldest son, James Francis Edward would have been the heir.
However, Parliament offered the crown to William and Mary as joint Sovereigns instead.
But it was added that "the sole and full exercise of the regal (royal) power be only in and executed by the said Prince of Orange in the names of the said Prince and Princess during their joint lives."
The declaration was later extended to take out all Catholics.
This was because "it hath been found (discovered) by experience that it is inconsistent (not in harmony) with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a papist prince".
William and Mary were crowned together at Westminster Abbey on 11 April 1689.
The Archbishop of Canterbury usually performed coronations.
But William Sancroft, the Archbishop at that time, felt that James II 's removal had been wrong.
Therefore, the Bishop of London, Henry Compton, crowned them instead.
On the day of the Coronation, the Convention of the Estates of Scotland declared at last that James was no longer King of Scotland.
William and Mary were offered the separate Scottish Crown.
This was because the two kingdoms were not united until the Acts of Union in 1707.
They accepted on 11 May.
Even after this was declared, there was still strong support for James in Scotland.
John Graham of Clevehouse, the Viscount of Dundee, raised an army and won a victory at Killiecrankie on 27 July.
But Dundee 's army suffered great losses, and he was seriously wounded at the start of the battle.
This stopped the only effective resistance to William, and the revolt was quickly crushed.
The next month, there was a great defeat at the Battle of Dunkeld.
In December 1689 Parliament passed one of the most important documents in English history.
This was the Bill of Rights.
This measure gave several rights to Parliament and the people.
Among other things, it declared that the Sovereign could not break laws passed by Parliament, demand taxes if the Parliament did not agree, raise an army during a time of peace if the Parliament did not agree, or punish members of the House of Parliament for anything they said during discussions.
After either William III or Mary II died, the other was to continue to rule.
The person who would become the monarch after them would be any of their children.
After the children would be Mary 's sister Anne and her children.
Last of all would be any children William III might have had from any marriage after that.
From 1690, William was often away from England, at first fighting Jacobites in Ireland.
While her husband was away, Mary took care of the government.
She was a firm ruler, and ordered her own uncle, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon, to go to prison for trying to put James II back onto the throne.
In 1692, she fired and put John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, in prison for similar reasons.
This made her much less popular.
It also damaged her relationship with her sister, Anne.
Anne had been strongly influenced by Churchill 's wife, Sarah.
She appeared at court with Sarah and supported Churchill, which made Mary very angry.
She demanded that Anne make Sarah go away.
Mary did not visit Anne during her pregnancy after that.
After the baby was born, Mary did visit Anne, but she spent her time berating Anne for her friendship with Sarah.
The sisters never saw each other again.
William had crushed the Irish Jacobites by 1692, but he continued with campaigns away from England to begin a war against France in the Netherlands.
When William was away, Mary acted in her own name but on his advice.
When he was in England, Mary never joined in political matters, as had been agreed in the Bill of Rights.
However, she did join in the affairs of the Church, and all church matters passed through her hands.
Mary died of smallpox at Kensington Palace on 28 December 1694.
She was buried at Westminster Abbey.
When she died, Henry Purcell was called to write her funeral music, titled Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary.
William had grown to depend on Mary more and more, and was very sad when she died.
It is reported that he said that "from being the happiest" he was "now going to be the miserablest creature on earth".
After Mary II 's death, William III continued to rule as King.
Princess Anne 's last living child, William, Duke of Gloucester, died in July 1700.
Parliament saw that William would have no more children.
Because of this, it passed the Act of Settlement 1701.
After Anne, the Crown would go to their nearest Protestant relative, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and her Protestant heirs.
When William III died in 1702, he was succeeded by Anne.
She was succeeded by the son of Electress Sophia, George I.
Mary gave money to the College of William and Mary (in the present day Williamsburg, Virginia) in 1693.
She also began the Royal Hospital for Seamen, Greenwich.
William III and Mary II called themselves "William and Mary, by the Grace of God, King and Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, etc." when they began their rule.
On 11 April 1689, the Estates of Scotland recognized them as Sovereigns.
From then on, William and Mary called themselves "William and Mary, by the Grace of God, King and Queen of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, etc.".
The arms used by the King and Queen were: Quarterly, I and IV Grandquarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II Or a lion rampant within a tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland); overall an escutcheon Azure billetty and a lion rampant Or (for the House of Orange-Nassau).
Mary I (18 February 1516 17 November 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, was Queen regnant of England and Ireland from 19 July 1553 until her death.
She was the oldest daughter of Henry VIII, and the only child of Catherine of Aragon who grew up.
Mary succeeded her short-lived half brother, Edward VI, to the English throne.
She was the fourth crowned monarch of the Tudor dynasty.
Mary is remembered for briefly re-making England a Roman Catholic country.
Mary had almost 300 disagreeing religious people burned at the stake.
Due to this, many called her "Bloody Mary".
When her half-sister, Elizabeth I, came to the throne after Mary 's death, she made England Protestant again.
Mary Tudor was born on 18 February 1516, in the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich.
Unlike the other children of Catherine, she lived to be an adult.
Her godfather was the famous Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.
Although she was not the heir Henry VIII was looking for, she was loved by her parents.
When she was about 11, Henry decided to divorce Mary 's mother, Catherine of Aragon, so he could marry Anne Boleyn.
After Anne Boleyn had a daughter, Mary had to become one of her servants.
After Anne Boleyn was killed by the King, Mary 's half-sister also became a servant.
A month later, Henry VIII married Jane Seymour.
Queen Jane gave birth to Edward, Prince of Wales.
12 days later, Queen Jane died.
Mary lost a faithful friend and also her pride.
She had acknowledged her parents ' marriage as invalid and herself an illegitimate daughter.
The rest of Mary 's life with Henry VIII gave her a quick succession of stepmothers.
Henry VIII died soon after marrying his last wife, Catherine Parr.
Henry had decided that the young prince was to succeed him.
If he had no heirs then his older half-sister, Mary, was to be Queen.
If Mary did not produce a child, then the Mary 's half-sister, Elizabeth, was to be Queen.
After Elizabeth and her heirs, would come Henry 's sister Mary Tudor 's side of the family.
Edward succeeded to the throne as King of England and Ireland.
Edward began to show signs of a coughing disease.
Edward did not want Mary to succeed him.
Edward went ahead with a plan to let his Protestant cousin Lady Jane Grey become Queen after he died.
Lady Jane Grey was only queen of England for nine days.
Mary executed Jane Grey and married Philip II of Spain.
Mary had two phantom pregnancies, but had no child.
The phantom pregnancies were cancer in her liver.
After Mary died Elizabeth succeeded to the throne, becoming the new Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Manu, according to Hinduism, was the first human on Earth.
The menorah was an ancient lamp that accompanied the Israelites during their wanderings through the desert and later sat in their Temple.
It had seven branches (a center branch with three branches on each of its sides), and it was made of gold.
Olive oil fed the menorah 's flames.
God commanded Moses to construct the menorah while Moses and the Israelites were wandering the desert (see Book of Numbers chapter 8).
The menorah is associated with miracles, such as the miracle of Hanukkah.
During First Jewish-Roman War, the Romans destroyed the Temple and took its treasures, including the menorah.
They took the menorah to Rome and displayed it throughout the city during a celebration of their victory over the Jewish rebels.
Today, the menorah is featured in the present state of Israel 's coat of arms, and some Jewish places of worship contain replicas of the menorah.
An nine-branch menorah is used during Hanukkah.
A monorail is like a train, but instead of having two sets of wheels that balance on a railway track, the monorail is balanced on top of one rail.
Monorails are often used to transport people around large cities.
Some monorails utilize magnets to hover on their rails, reducing friction between the train and the rail.
The first monorail was invented in the 19th Century.
The Al Ikhwan el Muslimeen, the Society of the Muslim Brothers, often called the Muslim Brotherhood, or The Brotherhood, is an Islamist movement.
Today, it exists in many states and often is one of the largest political opposition groups.
The group is the world 's oldest and largest Islamic political group, and the "world 's most influential Islamist movement".
Hassan al-Banna founded the group in Egypt in 1928.
The Brotherhood 's stated goal is to instill the Qur ` an and Sunnah as the "sole reference point for... ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community... and state".
Since it was created, in 1928 the movement has officially opposed violent means to achieve its goals, with some exceptions such as in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or to overthrow secular Ba ` athist rule in Syria (see Hama massacre).
This position has been questioned, particularly by the Egyptian government, which accused the group of a campaign of killings in Egypt after World War II.
The Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Egypt.
People have been arrested because they participated in the group.
To circumvent this ban, supporters of the group often run for office as independent candidates.
Outside Egypt, the group 's political activity is more traditional and conservative.
Inside Egypt, the group is modernist and wants reforms to happen.
In Kuwait, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood says that women should not have a right to vote in elections.
The Brotherhood condemned terrorism and the 9\/11 attacks.
Whether the group has ties to terrorist organizations is disputed.
The question whether and how to use violence has also led to disputes inside the movement.
At times, those in favor of using violence split from the main group and created their own groups.
Examples of such groups are Al-Gama ' a al-Islamiyya (The Islamic Group) and Al Takfir Wal Hijra (Excommunication and Migration).
Among the Brotherhood 's more influential members was Sayyid Qutb.
Qutb was the author of one of Islamism 's most important books, Milestones.
The book called for the restoration of Islam by re-establishing the Sharia and by using "physical power and Jihad for abolishing the organizations and authorities of the Jahili system.
Qutb believed these included the entire Muslim world.
The book also reveals that Qutb no longer held the Brotherhood 's ideas and that he was closer to the ideas of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is concluded in the introduction and dedication of the book" While studying at university, Osama bin Laden claimed to have been influenced by the religious and political ideas of several professors with strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood including both Sayyid Qutb and his brother Muhammad Qutb.
However, once Al Qaeda was fully organized, they denounced the Muslim Brotherhood 's reform through nonviolence and accused them of "betraying the cause of Islam and abandoning their ` jihad ' in favor of forming political parties and supporting modern state institutions".
The Brotherhood is financed by contributions from its members, who are required to allocate a part of their income to the movement.
Some of these contributions are from members who live in oil-rich countries.
Moctezuma II, also known as Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin (1466-1520) and often called Montezuma in English, was the Aztec emperor (tlahtoani) from 1502 to 1520.
His name comes from the Nahuatl Motecuhzoma, it means "he who is leader because of his fury".
In Spanish, he is called Moctezuma.
When Hern n Cort s arrived in Mexico in 1519, Moctezuma thought he was the god Quetzalcoatl, and did not want to fight against him.
Cort s took Moctezuma prisoner.
When the Aztecs wanted Cort s to get out of their capital Tenochtitlan in 1520, Cortes told Moctezuma to calm down his people.
When doing that he died.
The Spaniards said he was killed by the Aztecs, while the Aztecs said Cort s killed him.
The Spanish said that the Aztec people threw rocks at him, killing him.
The Aztecs said that they found his body in the streets with a lot of cuts made with a sword after the Spanish left.
In music theory, the major scale or Ionian scale is one of the diatonic scales.
It is made up of seven separate notes, plus an eighth which is the same as the first an octave higher.
The simplest major scale to write or play on the piano is C major, the only major scale not to require sharps or flats, using only the white keys on the piano keyboard:
A major scale is a set of steps in the order "Whole: Whole: Half: Whole: Whole: Whole: Half" (tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone).
Western scales do not skip any line or space on the staff, and they do not repeat any note with a different accidental.
This means that the key signature of the scale will feature just sharps or just flats.
The Circle of Fifths was first described in 1728 by Johann David Heinichen in his book Der General-bass.
It has been used ever since as a way to show the relations between scales.
The numbers inside the circle show the number of sharps or flats in the key signature, with the sharp keys going clockwise, and the flat keys counterclockwise from C major (which has no sharps or flats.)
The circle depends on enharmonic relationships in the circle, which is six sharps or flats for the major keys of F = G and D = E for minor keys (Drabkin 2001).
Seven sharps or flats make major keys (C major and C major) that are more easy to spell with five flats or sharps (as D major or B major).
The major scale is used more often than the minor scale in Western music because of its unique harmonic properties.
For example, the major third is much stronger in the harmonic series (it is the 5th, 10th and 20th harmonic see below) than the minor third (the 19th harmonic).
Montenegro (meaning Black Mountain) is a country in Southeastern Europe.
It is on the Adriatic Sea, between Albania (to the South) and Croatia to the North.
Inland (to the East and South-East) it also has a common border with Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The country came to exist when its people decided to split from the country Serbia and Montenegro on May 21, 2006.
For most of the 20th century it was part of Yugoslavia.
It had also been independent before World War I and existed as a kingdom.
Its leader is Filip Vujanovi.
The national song is called Oj, svijetla majska zoroMontenegrin Cyrillic:, "Oh, Bright Dawn of May."
The size of the economy 's GDP is $ 4.114 billion and it has a population of 625,000 people.
The traditional old capital of Montenegro is Cetinje, but Podgorica is the new one.
The country adopted the Euro unilaterally as Montenegro does not have its own currency, but the adoption has raised the national debt to 57 percent of GDP in 2011.
Michael Crichton (October 23, 1942 November 4, 2008) was an American author of many books.
His books were usually in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres.
He was also a producer, director, and doctor.
Crichton is well known for writing novels that later became well-known Hollywood movies.
His most famous work was Jurassic Park.
Other examples of Crichton 's novels that later went on to become big-budget films include Congo, The Lost World, Rising Sun, and Sphere.
Crichton has also created the E.R. television show.
Crichton was born in Chicago, Illinois.
He was 6 ' 9" tall.
He was married five times.
He had a daughter from his fourth marriage.
In November 4, 2008, he died of throat cancer and lymphoma in Los Angeles, California, aged 66.
He was looked down on by some as a climate change denier In February 2009, his widow gave birth to his only, posthumous son, John Michael Todd Crichton.
A minor scale in music theory is any scale that has at least three scale degrees: the tonic, the minor third above the tonic, and the perfect fifth above the tonic.
Together they make the minor triad.
This includes many scales and modes such as Dorian mode and the Phrygian mode.
In simple terms, a minor scale is a series of notes with a sad, somber character (exaggerated when heard back-to-back with a major scale).
A minor scale begins on the sixth note of its relative major scale, and is built with the following pattern of half steps and whole steps:
Usually, when people talk about minor scales, they mean natural minor, harmonic minor, or melodic minor scales, which are the most common in Western music.
The natural minor scale is the same as the 6th mode (or Aeolian mode) of the major scale.
For example, the white notes of a keyboard from one C to the next C up makes a C major scale.
If the white notes are played starting from the sixth step of that C scale, (from any A to the next A), then an A natural minor scale (the "relative minor" of C) is produced.
The harmonic minor scale is the same as the natural minor but with the seventh note raised up a semitone.
One way the harmonic minor is different to the natural minor is that it has two chords which have the same structure when inverted, so they do not belong to any key.
These are the diminished seventh chord (2nd, 4th, 6th and 7th degrees) and the augmented chord (the 3rd, 5th and 7th degrees).
The harmonic minor is also sometimes called the Mohammedan scale because its upper tetrachord is the same as the Hijaz jins, often found in Middle Eastern music.
The harmonic minor scale as a whole is sometimes called Nahawand-Hijaz in Arabic, or as B selik Hicaz in Turkish.
The interval between the sixth and seventh degrees of this scale (in this case F and G) is an augmented second.
While some composers, like Mozart, have used this interval in melodic composition, other composers found it awkward.
They thought that a whole step between these two scale degrees was better for smooth melody writing, so they used the subtonic seventh, or raised the sixth scale degree.
These two options are called the ascending melodic minor scale and descending melodic minor scale.
The ascending has the same upper tetrachord to the major scale, and the descending is the same as the natural minor:
A ' G F E D C B A respectively.
Many composers do not stick to the notes of only one of these scales when writing music.
Using the triad of the relative major is very common, but because this is based on the third degree of the minor scale, the raised seventh degree of the harmonic scale would cause an augmented triad.
In this case, composers usually use the natural minor.
In jazz, usually only the ascending minor is used.
Major and minor keys that share the same key signature are called relative; so C major is the relative major of A minor, and C minor is the relative minor of E major.
The relative major is a minor third above the tonic of the minor.
For example, since the key signature of G major has one sharp (see major scales for how to find this), its relative minor, E minor, also has one sharp in its key signature.
Music may be written in an enharmonic scale (e.g..
A major, which only has four flats in its key signature, compared to the eight sharps required for G major).
The following are enharmonic equivalents:
Menachem Begin (16 August 1913 9 March 1992) was an Israeli politician.
He was the founder of the Israeli political party Likud.
He was the sixth Prime Minister of Israel.
Begin s most significant act as Prime Minister was to sign the Egypt Israel Peace Treaty.
For that treaty, Begin and Anwar Sadat shared the Nobel Peace Prize.
Begin resigned as Prime Minister in October 1983.
He died on 9 March 1992 after a heart attack.
He was buried on the Mount of Olives.
The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection which is widely used in cartography today.
It was developed by Gerardus Mercator in 1569.
It is not a physical projection, and can not be constructed using geometric tools.
On a small scale, geometric shapes can be moved around the map, without distorting them (this property is known as conformity).
As a downside, the scale of the shape and the direction of lines may change when shapes are moved.
For example, Africa is actually 15 times larger than Greenland, but on this map projection they look the same size.
Today, Mercator projections are mainly used for maps.
Mary Magdalene is a woman in all four gospels of the New Testament.
She became a faithful follower of Jesus after he delivered her from seven demons.
She witnessed the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, and was the first person to see and talk with him after he arose from the dead.
She told the apostles that she had seen him alive.
Mary is a saint in the Catholic church.
She is remembered on July 22.
Mary of Bethany is a person described in the Bible.
She is the sister of Martha and Lazarus in the Gospels of the New Testament.
She lived in the village of Bethany.
Malcolm X (May 19, 1925 - February 21, 1965) was an African American nationalist and civil rights activist.
Before he became Malcolm X, his name was Malcolm Stuart Little.
Malcolm X 's father was a Baptist minister whose skin was very dark and his mother 's skin was much lighter.
His parents taught him to be proud of being black in an openly anti-black society.
In 1946, Little was put in prison for burglary and discovered the Nation of Islam while he was there.
At first, Malcolm X 's actions and speeches were mostly inspired by the beliefs and teachings of the Nation of Islam.
He taught that all white people were bad.
Once he learned that the leader of the Nation of Islam was in relationships with many women, he quit the group and changed his religion to Sunni Islam.
He went on a pilgrimage to see the Islamic holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
At this point, his opinions of white people got better, and he began to believe that white people could be good people, too.
Malcolm X believed that black people should fight for their civil rights in any way they could, even if they had to become violent.
He also thought that black people should support one another by shopping in stores owned by black people.
He was critical of the civil rights movement.
Malcolm X was shot dead in New York City after preaching about black rights.
Three members of the Nation of Islam had a part in his murder.
He had six children with Betty Shabazz.
He had six grandchildren.
Malcolm Shabazz was killed in May 2013.
He also has two great grandchildren.
Magdeburg is the capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, in Germany.
The city covers an area of 201 k. 229,266 people live there (June 2006).
A demonstration of air pressure (called the Magdeburg spheres) was done here by Otto von Guericke in 1656.
Also, Georg Philipp Telemann was born here.
The word Motet is a piece of music for a church service sung by a choir without using any instruments.
The words are usually in Latin.
If the words are written in English for the Anglican church, it is called an anthem.
Motets have been written since the Middle Ages.
Medieval motets often had very tricky rhythms.
The tenor often had the tune, which might be a folk tune, and two voices would put quite complicated accompaniments on top.
The most famous medieval composer who wrote motets was Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377)
In the Renaissance, motets were usually polyphonic.
That means that the different voices (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) would be singing different parts of the melody at the same time, making it very beautiful, but quite complicated to listen to.
Many composers of this time wrote motets.
The most famous was Giovanni da Palestrina (1525-1594).
In the Baroque period, one of the most famous composers was Heinrich Sch tz (1585-1672), who wrote motets which he called Cantiones Sacrae (meaning: sacred songs).
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) wrote six wonderful motets with German texts.
Some people think that Bach may have used a few instruments to accompany these motets.
In three of them the choir divide into eight parts.
The most famous motet from the Classical period is Mozart s Ave Verum Corpus.
In the Romantic period (19th century), Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) wrote several motets which are still very popular with choirs, both in services and at concerts.
MERLIN, the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network, is an array of radio telescopes.
It is spread across Great Britain.
There are seven radio telescopes in the array.
MERLIN is run by Jodrell Bank Observatory, by the University of Manchester.
It is run as a national facility on behalf of the Science and Technology Facilities Council.
Merchants deal with trade.
That means they deal goods that they do not produce themselves, in order to get profit.
In the US, "merchant" is any person while engaged in a business or profession or a seller who deals regularly in the type of goods sold.
Under the common law in the United States, merchants are held to a higher standard in the selling of products than those who are not engaged in the sale of goods as a profession.
For example, when a merchant sells something, he or she is expected to give a warranty, guaranteeing that the product is fit to be sold, even if there is nothing in writing to this effect.
In music tuning an instrument means getting it ready so that when it is played it will sound at the correct pitch: not too high or too low.
When two or more instruments play together it is particularly important that they are in tune with one another.
This means that when they play the same note it is indeed exactly the same note.
If the two instruments are not in tune with one another it will sound unpleasant because two notes which are very slightly different in pitch will produce a beat.
Instruments such as the piano or organ have to be tuned by people who are specialists in tuning.
For most instruments, however, the players themselves need to tune their instruments before they play.
Players of string instruments can turn the pegs at the top of their instruments to change the tension (tightness) of the string.
Players of wind instruments can make their instruments very slightly longer or shorter by pushing out or pulling in one of the joints.
Timpanists turn the taps which are around the top of their instruments to change the tension of the drum head.
When an orchestra gives a concert the instruments have to tune carefully so that they are in tune with one another.
Usually it is the principal oboist s job to stand up and play the note A so that everyone can tune to that note.
In some countries such as the US it is tradition for the principal violinist (concertmaster) to give the A. If the orchestra are going to play with a piano soloist they will have to tune to the A of the piano because the piano has already been tuned by the piano tuner.
When a violinist tunes his instrument he is making sure that his four strings are tuned perfectly to G, D, A and E. Each string is wound around a peg near the top of the scroll, so that turning the peg changes the tuning.
He may also have adjusters or fine tuners which are at the other end of the string where it is attached to the tailpiece.
The adjusters make it easier to make small changes to the tuning.
The violinist will make sure that the A is in tune, then the A and D can be played together so that they are exactly a fifth apart, then the D and G and finally the A and E are compared.
If they are not tuning to a piano, players of instruments sometimes use a tuning fork which gives an exact note (usually an A) so that they know they are in tune.
There are also electronic tuning devices.
When an instrument such as the piano is tuned, the piano tuner has to know how to make each note relate correctly to the others.
During the course of music history there have been several systems of doing this.
These different tuning systems are all about the exact scientific relationship between the notes of the scale.
There has been an enormous amount of discussion among musicians about how best to tune instruments.
When two notes are an octave apart the higher note is vibrating at twice the speed of the lower note.
For example: if a string is vibrating at 440 Hz (440 times a second) the note we hear is an A (the A above Middle C on the piano).
If the string is stopped halfway up (e.g. because the player presses it down with a finger) it will vibrate at 880 Hz and we will hear the note one octave higher.
The note which vibrates at 1 times the frequency of the basic note will be the note a perfect fifth higher (an E).
If a piano tuner starts by tuning a C, then tunes a G so that it is exactly 1 times the frequency of the C, he can continue tuning in fifths (a D, then an A etc.) until he arrives back at C again.
However, he will find that, for mathematical reasons, the last C is not in tune with the first C. This was discovered long ago by Pythagoras and is called the comma of Pythagoras.
Musical tuning systems throughout the centuries have tried to find ways of dealing with this problem.
From the 16th century onwards several music theorists wrote long books about the best way to tune keyboard instruments.
They often started by tuning up a fifth and down a fifth so that these notes were perfectly in tune (e.g. C, G and F), then they would continue (tuning the D to the G and B flat to the F) until they met in the middle around F sharp.
Sometimes old organs today are tuned by such a method.
Playing in keys with very few sharps or flats (such as C, G or F) sounds very beautiful, but playing in keys with lots of sharps or flats sounds horribly out of tune.
In 1584, Zhu Zaiyu, a prince of Chinese Ming Dynasty, published the invention of equal temperament in his book A New Account of the Science of the Pitch-Pipes.
In 1585 Simon Stevin invented a similar system.
Some scholars think one of these really invented this system.
Others think both did, or neither.
Around 1700, based on this new system, the great composer Johann Sebastian Bach wrote two books of 24 preludes and fugues (called the Well-tempered Clavier) to prove that it was now possible to play in any key.
The Miller and Urey experiment (or Urey Miller experiment) was an experiment that made organic compounds out of inorganic ones by applying a form of energy.
The idea was to simulate hypothetical conditions thought to be present on the early Earth (Hadean or early Archaean).
It was a test of the chemical origins of life.
Specifically, the experiment tested Alexander Oparin 's and J.B.S. Haldane 's hypothesis that conditions on the primitive Earth favored chemical reactions that synthesized organic compounds from inorganic precursors.
Considered to be the classic experiment on the origin of life, it was conducted in 1952 and published in 1953 by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey at the University of Chicago.
After Miller 's death in 2007, scientists examined sealed vials preserved from the original experiments.
They were able to show that there were well over 20 different amino acids produced in Miller 's original experiments.
That is considerably more than those Miller originally reported, and more than the 20 that naturally occur in life.
Moreover, some evidence suggests that Earth 's original atmosphere might have had a different composition than the gas used in the Miller Urey experiment.
There is abundant evidence of major volcanic eruptions 4 billion years ago, which would have released carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the atmosphere.
Experiments using these gases in addition to the ones in the original Miller Urey experiment have produced more diverse molecules.
Note that organic compounds, including amino acids, are present in the meteorite dust which rains down on Earth.
Therefore, interest in abiogenesis and the origin of life has shifted to the question of how cells and large macromolecules formed.
Mary Tyler Moore (born December 29, 1936) is an Academy Award-nominated American actress and comedian.
She is famous for The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970 1977), where she played the role of Mary Richards, a single woman who worked as a news producer at WJM-TV in Minneapolis, and for her role as Laura Petrie, wife of television comedy writer Rob Petrie (played by Dick Van Dyke) on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961 1966), and its spinoff series Rob Petrie USMC (1964-1969).
Moore was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes when she was 33.
In 2011, she had brain surgery to remove a brain tumor.
In 2014 friends reported that she has heart and kidney problems and is nearly blind.
In October 2015, Moore 's former co-star Dick Van Dyke said on an episode of Larry King Now that Moore was in poor health and unable to communicate.
Minimalism is a way of making modern art or music that uses simple ideas, sounds or shapes.
It was most popular in America in the 1960s and 1970s.
There are many different kinds of minimalism.
Sometimes a simple thing is repeated many times until it seems very complicated.
Today minimalism can be used to talk about many things such as design, architecture (the art of designing buildings), poetry, and movies.
In music, minimalism is a way of composing classical music which became popular during the second half of the 20th century.
It is a way of composing by using a simple idea which is repeated many times.
A minimalist piece of music usually takes a short idea which may be a melodic or a rhythmic pattern.
This idea is then repeated many times, but each time it changes slightly.
Sometimes this may be done by two or more instruments which start off by playing their notes or chords together but, as one is going slightly faster than the other, they gradually become out of sync (not synchronized, i.e. not together), then eventually they catch up with one another again.
Usually this music is tonal so that it is firmly in one key.
A steady pulse is kept throughout the whole piece.
Composers who wrote minimalist music include Steve Reich (b. 1936), Philip Glass (b. 1937) and Terry Riley (b. 1935).
Other composers like John Adams (b. 1947) have also used minimalist ways of composing, but they combined these with other techniques, so that their music is not just Minimalist.
Minimalist music became popular in the 1960s and 1970s.
Minimalist composers started writing like this, also because a lot of new music at that time was very complicated and hard to understand.
It was often serial music which was atonal with no obvious melodies or ideas that were easy to remember.
Minimalist music is not necessarily simple.
It can have a kind of hypnotic effect, but this is part of what the composer wants.
Reich s Clapping Music just consists of hand clapping: there is no melody.
He was thinking of African drum music when he wrote it.
Two performers begin by clapping a rhythm together.
After 13 seconds the second performer leaves out the first quaver (eighth note) and puts it at the end of the second bar (measure).
After another 13 seconds this happens again so that in the end the two performers are together again.
This music has to be listened to in a different way from other kinds of music.
Minimalism in visual art, sometimes referred to as literalist art and ABC Art emerged in New York in the 1960s.
As a product it had much in common with earlier geometric abstraction and suprematism.
The term "minimalism" was not generally embraced by the artists associated with it, and many practitioners of art called minimalist by critics did not identify it as a movement as such.
One of the first artists specifically associated with Minimalism was the painter, Frank Stella, whose early "stripe" paintings were highlighted in the 1959 show, "16 Americans", organized by Dorothy Miller at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The width of the stripes in Frank Stellas 's stripe paintings were determined by the dimensions of the lumber, visible as the depth of the painting when viewed from the side, used to construct the supportive chassis upon which the canvas was stretched.
The decisions about structures on the front surface of the canvas were therefore not entirely subjective, but pre-conditioned by a "given" feature of the physical construction of the support.
In the show catalog, Carl Andr noted, "Art excludes the unnecessary.
Frank Stella has found it necessary to paint stripes.
There is nothing else in his painting".
These reductive works were in sharp contrast to the energy-filled and emotionally-charged expressionist paintings of Willem de Kooning or Franz Kline.
They leaned more towards the controlled, somber color field paintings of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.
Although Stella received immediate attention from the MOMA show, artists like Kenneth Noland, Ralph Humphrey, Robert Motherwell and Robert Ryman had begun to explore stripes, monochromatic and hard-edge formats from the late 50s through the 1960s.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) was a comedy television series.
It was made in the U.S. state of Minnesota from 1988 to 1999.
The series was at first made for a local station in Minnesota.
It was later moved to Comedy Central, and then The Sci-Fi Channel.
The series was about a man (originally Joel Robinson, played by Joel Hodgson, the show 's creator, and later Mike Nelson, played by Michael J. Nelson, the show 's head writer), who is put in a spaceship by an evil scientist.
He was forced to watch some of the worst movies ever made.
Joel makes some robots to keep him company.
Two of the robots, named Crow T. Robot (played by Trace Beaulieu and, later Bill Corbett) and Tom Servo (played by Josh Weinstein and later Kevin Murphy), watch the movies with him.
While the movie is shown, the three make jokes and comments about the movie they watch.
A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) that is a role-playing game (RPG).
It is an RPG which is played online (on the internet) by a very large number of people at the same time.
Multiplication is an arithmetic operation for finding the product of two numbers.
Multiplication is the third operation in maths after addition which is the first, subtraction which is the second and then there is multiplication.
With natural numbers, it tells you the number of tiles in a rectangle where one of the two numbers equals the number of tiles on one side and the other number equals the number of tiles on the other side.
With real numbers, it tells you the area of a rectangle where the first number equals the size of one side and the second number equals the size of the other side.
For example, three multiplied by five is the total of five threes added together, or the total of three fives.
This can be written down as 3 5 = 15, or spoken as "three times five equals fifteen."
Mathematicians call the two numbers you wish to multiply "coefficients" together, or "multiplicand" and "multiplicator" separately.
Multiplicand multiplicator = product.
Multiplication between numbers is said to be commutative - when the order of the numbers does not influence the value of the product.
This is true for the Integers (whole numbers), e.g. 4 6 is the same as 6 4, and also for the Rational numbers (fractions), and for all the other Real numbers (representable as a field in the continuous line), and also for Complex numbers (numbers representable as a field in the plane).
It is not true for quaternions (numbers representable as a ring in the four-dimensional space), vectors or matrices.
The definition of multiplication as repeated addition provides a way to arrive at a set-theoretic interpretation of multiplication of cardinal numbers.
A more accurate representation is to think of it as scaling quantities.
This animation illustrates 3 being multiplied by 2, giving 6 as a result.
Notice that the blue dot in the blue segment of length 3 is placed at position 1, and the blue segment is scaled so that this dot is placed at the end of the red segment, of length 2.
For multiplication by any X, the blue dot will always start at 1 and end at X. This works even for X smaller than 1, or negative.
The opposite of multiplication is division.
Teachers usually require his pupils to memorize the table of the first 9 numbers when teaching multiplication.
Malt is cereal grain that is sprouted and then dried by hot air.
It is sometimes used in brewing.
Malt is high in sugar because when the grain sprouts, much of its starch changes to sugar.
If the malt is dried with fire, it can have a smoky flavor.
The sugar from the malt can be fermented into beer and whisky.
Masonry is the building of structures from individual units laid in and bound together by mortar.
The term "masonry" can also refer to the units themselves.
The common materials of masonry construction are brick, stone such as marble, granite, travertine, limestone; concrete block, glass block, and tile.
Masonry is generally a highly durable form of construction.
Masonry is commonly used for the walls of buildings, retaining walls and monuments.
Brick is the most common type of masonry.
Concrete block masonry is rapidly gaining in popularity as a comparable material.
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks in 1928.
He is the Walt Disney company 's mascot and is the main character in Fantasia.
Mickey Mouse also has television shows with the whole gang including Donald Duck, Goofy, Minnie Mouse, and Pluto.
Minnie Mouse is his girlfriend.
His birthday is November 18, 1928.
This is the same day as Minnie Mouse.
His height is 3 feet and 2 inches.
His weight is 23 pounds.
He has a strong sense of justice and is gentle, but mischievous.
Mickey Mouse has a pet; a dog.
The dog is called Pluto.
Pluto has 5 puppies with Minnie 's dog, Fifi.
Meher Baba (25 February 1894 - 31 January 1969) was a spiritual teacher who lived in India.
Baba 's real birth name was Merwan Irani and his parents ' names were Sheriar and Shireen Irani.
His family lived in India, but they were of Persian descent.
Today Persia is called Iran.
They were not Hindus or Muslims like most Indians at that time, but were of the Zoroastrian religion.
Baba had a normal childhood and liked poetry and sports, especially cricket.
When Baba was thirteen years old he started a boy 's club with his best school friends called The Cosmopolitan Club.
The boys in the club kept up on the news, practiced public speaking at their clubhouse, and raised money to give to the poor.
As Baba got older he worked for his father in his father 's tavern where he served a cheap kind of wine called toddy made from the sap of palm trees.
Baba lived in Pune, India where he graduated from St. Vincent 's High School and attended Deccan College.
In 1913, when Baba was nineteen, he was coming home from college riding a bicycle.
A very old Muslim woman named Hazrat Babajan, who was sitting under a Neem tree, called for him to come over to her and she kissed him on the forehead.
He then went home.
Baba later said that he became so dazed after this kiss that he could barely find his way home, and that when Babajan kissed him, he realized God within himself.
He was so dazed that he had to stay in bed for several weeks.
A year later, Baba met a Hindu holy man named Upasni Maharaj.
Baba went to live with Upasni in the village of Sakori.
He learned from Upasni and obeyed Upasni 's orders.
Baba stayed with Upasni for seven years, until he was twenty seven years old.
Then Upasni told some of his followers that from then on Baba would be their spiritual guide.
Baba eventually took these new followers to Ahmednagar, to a place now called Meherabad.
There he gave lessons in spirituality, worked with the poor, and started a free boarding school.
Gradually other people started to follow Meher Baba.
For most of his life Baba did not speak.
He started his silence in 1925.
He communicated by pointing to letters painted on an "alphabet board" at first, and later used his own form of sign language.
He kept silent until his death in 1969.
Some people called him "The Silent Master" and there is a book by that title.
Meher Baba traveled around the world many times.
He visited many countries.
He spent several months in England, Australia and the United States.
Many thousands of people came to see him.
Some of them became his followers.
In 1954, when Baba was sixty years old, he said to others that he was the Avatar.
In the ancient language of Sanskrit, the word "Avatar" means one who has come down from God.
Baba said that the Avatar is born on Earth every 700 1400 years, and comes to help others find God.
Meher Baba said that in the past the Avatar had been on Earth as Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad.
Meher Baba 's most famous quote is "Do n't Worry, Be Happy," partly because it appeared in a popular song by Bobby McFerrin.
Others know of him because of the song "Baba O'Reilly" written by Pete Townshend who is a follower of his and named the song partly after Baba.
He wrote two important books.
In Discourses, Meher Baba wrote about how to live a good life, how to meditate, and how to love God.
In God Speaks, Meher Baba wrote about how the soul seeks God over many lifetimes.
He said, "Real happiness lies in making others happy."
He showed his followers that the best path is to love God at all times by loving your fellow man.
He also said he had not come to start a new religion that it was better to truly follow one 's own religion.
Because of this, he has followers who are Zoroastrians, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Sufis, Buddhists, and Sikhs.
There are also atheists and agnostics who do not necessarily believe in God, but who are attracted purely to his simple philosophy of leading an honest and loving life.
The cavity magnetron is a high-powered vacuum tube that makes microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field.
The ` resonant ' cavity magnetron type of the earlier magnetron tube was invented by John Randall and Harry Boot in 1940.
The high power of pulses from the cavity magnetron made centimetre-band radar practical.
Shorter wavelength radars allowed the finding of smaller objects.
The small cavity magnetron tube made the size of radar sets much smaller so that they could be put into in aircraft and ships used to find submarines.
At present, cavity magnetrons are commonly used in microwave ovens and in various radar applications.
Manorialism or Seigneurialism is the name for the organization of the economy in the Middle Ages.
The economy relied mainly on agriculture.
Manorialism describes how land was distributed and who profited from the land.
A lord received a piece of land, usually from a higher nobleman, or from the king.
When he received the land, he also received all that was on it.
That means that most of the people that lived on the land also belonged to the nobleman.
The people, called peasants, had to pay to the lord, or they had to work for him.
This way, the nobleman could live and support his family from what he received from the peasants.
He had also certain legal powers, like that of a police force.
The peasants were subjects which had to pay tribute to the lord.
In return they received protection.
The tribute the subjects had to pay varied.
it could either be that they had to do work for their lord, or that had to pay a certain part of what they earned (like one tenth).
That meant that if they grew a crop such as some form of corn, the lord got a tenth of their earnings in corn.
This is also called payment in nature or sharecropping.
Very rarely, it was money they had to pay.
Sometimes the lord had a mill, a bakery or a wine-press.
This could be used by the peasants against a fee.
Similarly, the right to hunt or to let pigs feed in his woodland was subject to a fee.
The peasants could use the lord 's legal system to settle their disputes - for a fee.
Single payments were due on each change of tenant.
On the other side of the account, manorial administration involved significant expenses.
This might be one of the reasons why smaller manors tended to rely less on villein tenure.
Dependent holdings were held by agreement of lord and tenant, but tenure became in practice usually hereditary, with a payment made to the lord on each succession of another member of the family.
Villein land could not be abandoned, at least as long as every fleeing peasant was likely to starve to death; nor could they be passed to a third party without the lord 's permission, and the customary payment.
Though not free, villeins were definitely not slaves: they enjoyed legal rights, subject to local custom, and had recourse to the law, subject to court charges which were an additional source of manorial income.
Sub-letting of villein holdings was common, and labor on the demesne might be commuted into an additional money payment, as happened increasingly from the 13th century.
Feudal society is based on two principles, that of feudalism and manorialism.
The structures of manorialism varied though.
In the later Middle Ages, areas of incomplete or non-existent manorialisation persisted while the manorial economy underwent substantial development as economic conditions changed.
Not all manors had all three kinds of land: as an average, demesne accounted for roughly a third of the arable area and villein holdings rather more; but some manors consisted solely of demesne, others solely of peasant holdings.
Similarly, the proportion of unfree and free tenures could vary greatly.
This meant that the amount of wage labor to perform agricultural work on the demesne varied as well.
The proportion of the cultivated area in demesne tended to be greater in smaller manors.
The share of villein land was greater in large manors, providing the lord with a larger potential supply of obligatory labor for demesne work.
The proportion of free tenements was generally less variable, but tended to be somewhat greater on the smaller manors.
Manors varied also in their geographical arrangement: most did not coincide with a single village.
Often, parts of two or more villages belonged to the manor, or were shared between several manors.
In those places, peasants living far from the lord 's estate sometimes paid cash instead of working for the lord.
The demesne was usually not a single plot of land.
It consisted of some land around the central house and estate buildings.
The rest of the demesne land was in the form of strips dispersed through the manor.
In addition, the lord might lease free tenements belonging to neighbouring manors, as well as holding other manors some distance away to provide a greater range of produce.
Not all manors were held by laymen lords who rendered military service or paid cash to their superior.
A survey done in 1086 estimates that 17 % belonged directly to the king, and that a greater proportion (rather more than a quarter) were held by bishops and monasteries.
These church manors were usually larger, with a significantly greater villein area than the lay manors next to them.
The effect of circumstances on manorial economy is complex and at times contradictory: upland conditions have been seen as tending to preserve peasant freedoms (livestock husbandry in particular being less labour-intensive and therefore less demanding of villein services); on the other hand, some such areas of Europe have been said to show some of the most oppressive manorial conditions, while lowland eastern England is credited with an exceptionally large free peasantry, in part a legacy of Scandinavian settlement.
Similarly, the spread of money economy is often seen as having stimulated the replacement of labor services by money payments, but the growth of the money supply and resulting inflation after 1170 initially led nobles to take back leased estates and to re-impose labor dues as the value of fixed cash payments declined in real terms.
Today, the term is used most to refer to medieval Western Europe.
A similar system was used in the rural parts of the late Roman Empire.
The birthrate and population were declining.
Labor was therefore the most important factor for production.
Successive administrations tried to stabilise the imperial economy by freezing the social structure into place: sons were to succeed their fathers in their trade.
Councillors were forbidden to resign, and coloni, the cultivators of land, were not to move from the demesne they were attached to.
They were on their way to becoming serfs.
Several factors conspired to merge the status of former slaves and former free farmers into a dependent class of such coloni.
Laws of Constantine I around 325 reinforced both the negative semi-servile status of the coloni and limited their rights to sue in the courts.
Their numbers were augmented by barbarian foederati who were permitted to settle within the imperial boundaries.
As the Germanic kingdoms succeeded Roman authority in the West in the fifth century, Roman landlords were often simply replaced by Gothic or Germanic ones, with little change to the underlying situation.
The process of rural self-sufficiency was given an abrupt boost in the eighth century, when normal trade in the Mediterranean Sea was disrupted.
The thesis put forward by Henri Pirenne, disputed by many, supposes that the Arab conquests forced the medieval economy into even greater ruralisation and gave rise to the classic feudal pattern of varying degrees of servile peasantry underpinning a hierarchy of localized power centres.
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (November 8, 1900 - August 16, 1949) was an American novelist.
She is best known for writing Gone with the Wind.
She was born in Atlanta, Georgia.
Her mother 's family was Irish Roman Catholic.
In Atlanta on 11 August 1949, Mitchell was hit by a car driven by a drunk driver.
Five days later, she died of her injuries.
The driver was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
Metamorphosis in biology means the process of transformation from an immature form to an adult form in two or more distinct stages.
Good examples are insects and amphibians.
Life for most insects begins as a larva or nymph then progresses to the pupa stage and ends as an adult.
There are two main types of metamorphosis in insects: simple metamorphosis or hemimetabolism, and complete metamorphosis or holometabolism.
Insects who go through simple (or incomplete) metamorphosis have three life stages.
These insects start as eggs, which are usually very small.
When the egg hatches, a larva or nymph comes out.
Nymphs are just baby insects.
Most of the time, the nymph looks similar to the adult, but it is smaller, may have different colouration, and does not have wings.
The nymph grows through stages called instars, shedding its ` skin ' (epicuticle) at each stage (ecdysis).
Finally, it changes into a mature adult with wings.
Some insect nymphs are aquatic, which means they live in water.
These nymphs usually have gills and look very different from the adults they will turn into.
Nymphs that live in water are called naiads.
Insects that have complete metamorphosis have four life stages.
These insects start as eggs, which are very small.
The egg hatches and a larva comes out.
The larva looks like a worm and eats and eats so that it can grow much bigger.
When the larva has grown it changes into a pupa.
The pupa usually can not move or eat.
The pupa is a special time when the insect is changing into an adult that will look very different from the larva or the pupa.
Moth pupae (plural of pupa) are inside cocoons.
When the pupa opens, the adult insect comes out.
Many insects have a life cycle of egg-larva-pupa-adult.
Some of these insects are:
The monarch butterfly goes through four stages of development.
Life for a monarch butterfly begins as an egg hatched from an adult.
This egg then develops into a worm-like larva caterpillar.
In the pupa or chrysalis stage, the caterpillar spins a silk pad on a twig or leaves and hangs from this pad by its last pair of prolegs.
It hangs upside down in the shape of a "J" and then molts leaving it encased in a green exoskeleton.
The mature butterfly emerges after about two weeks and feeds on a variety of flowers including milkweed flowers, red clover and goldenrod.
In typical amphibian development, eggs are laid in water and larvae are adapted to an aquatic lifestyle.
Frogs, toads, and newts all hatch from the egg as larvae with external gills.
Afterwards, newt larvae start a predatory lifestyle, while tadpoles mostly scrape food off surfaces with their horny tooth ridges.
Many marine species have evolved a system where they release their eggs and sperm into the water at the same time, and fertilisation takes place in the sea over one or two days.
This increases their chance of reproductive success.
Then, larvae join the other plankton, eating and growing before metamorphosing into adults.
Most marine invertebrates and many fish have a life cycle with pelagic larvae or even pelagic eggs.
These have the capacity to be transported long distances, and so spread the species around to other places.
The need for metamorphosis is clear when the relative size of eggs and adults is understood.
A mature Atlantic cod can reach two metres long, and weigh over 200 pounds (96 kgm).
The female will produce over 100,000 eggs in a single spawning, and the resulting larvae are quite tiny.
There is no way they could live like the adults, which are more or less top predators.
The larvae can not even swim against the current.
Therefore they must live a different kind of life before they can live as the adults do.
Their development is packaged into stages, and each stage has adaptations to life at its stage.
The sharp distinction between stages (best seen in insects) is presumably because a longer transition would leave the juvenile less fit, either at its younger or older ways of life.
Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) and reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitors (RIMAs) are a type of antidepressant drugs given for the treatment of depression.
They are good at treating atypical depression, Parkinson 's disease, anxiety disorders, social phobia and have also shown to help people to stop smoking tobacco.
As MAOIs drugs can be fatal if someone takes too much, they are usually only ever given when other antidepressant drugs have failed.
Some newer drugs such as selegiline and moclobemide have proven to be safer than the older MAOIs and are prescribed by physicians in the first instance.
MAOIs and RIMAs are used to provide a second line of treatment for certain psychiatric illnesses, most commonly types of hard to treat depression with not normal symptoms and anxiety disorders (with or without panic attacks.
They may also be used for social phobia.
MAO-B inhibitors are used to treat Parkinson 's disease.
Certain MAOIs have been shown to help people to stop smoking tobacco.
Monoamine oxidase inhibitors work by stopping the action of an enzyme called monoamine oxidase.
This enzyme breaks down a group of brain signalling chemicals called the monoamine neurotransmitters.
There are two types of the enzyme, MAO-A and MAO-B.
Each type breaks apart different chemicals in the group.
MAO-A breaks down melatonin, serotonin, epinephrine and norepinephrine.
MAO-B breaks down phenylethylamine and the trace amines.
These chemicals (neurotransmitters) are used in the brain for signalling purposes.
Dopamine, for example, is a chemical that affects motivation and pleasure.
Effectively, they work on balancing the brain 's chemistry.
Like all drugs, MAOIs and RIMAs can have effects that are not intended and are not part of the treatment that the drugs provide.
In this class of drug, these include a risk of a hypertensive crisis.
This can be caused by high levels of tyramine; such as by eating cheese (except cream or cottage cheese, meat extracts such as Bovril, yeast extract, stock cubes, fermented soya bean products, alcohol (especially fortified wine (port, sherry), beer and chainti wine.
Also preserved fish, preserved poultry, offal, avocado, banana skins, broad bean pods and pickled or smoked herring must be avoided.
Certain medications can also cause a hypertensive crisis with MAOIs and RIMAs, such as; amphetamine, fenfluramine, ephedrine, phenlyephrine, phenylpropanolamine, nasal decongestants, L-dopa, pethidine and tricyclic antidepressants.
Use of a RIMA rather than a MAOI can reduce these side-effects, however tyramine rich foods should still be avoided.
Mycology is the study of fungi (fungus).
This includes their genetics, their biochemical properties (the chemical processes in them), their classification, their use to humans and their dangers (poisonous or infectious).
Fungi are a source of tinder (easily combustible material to light fires), medicines, food, and entheogens (a psychoactive substance).
A biologist who studies mycology is called a mycologist.
Mycology is closely related to phytopathology (the study of plant diseases) because most plant diseases are caused by fungi.
Historically, mycology was a branch of botany (plant biology).
Now fungi are known to be more closely related to animals than to plants.
Fungi are fundamental (essential) for life on earth: they are symbionts (an organism living in a mutually beneficial relationship with another organism from a different species), they are able to break down complex organic biomolecules and they play a role in our global carbon cycle.
Melancholia is a mental illness.
A person with melancholia has intense or long-lasting feelings of sadness, for no clear reason.
In the 20th century, the term "melancholia" was mostly replaced by "depression" (also called Major Depressive Disorder).
The first person to describe melancholia was Hippocrates, in the 4th century BC.
In his Aphorisms, Hippocrates wrote that all "fears and despondencies, if they last a long time", are symptoms of melancholia.
The name "melancholia" comes from the old medical belief that there are four basic liquids in the body (called humors).
According to this belief, diseases happen when the humors are not balanced correctly in a person 's body.
Humors were also thought to determine personality types.
According to Hippocrates, melancholia was caused by having too much black bile in the body.
The name "melancholia" means ` black bile '.
It comes from the Ancient Greek words (melas), meaning "dark, black", and (khol), meaning "bile".
Robert Burton, a16th century scholar, wrote in detail about the condition in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).
It discussed melancholia from both literary and medical points of view.
Burton wrote that music and dance were critical in treating mental illness, especially melancholia.
Mimosa is a genus of plants.
It includes around 400 different species of herbs and shrubs.
It is classified in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the legume family Fabaceae.
The word "mimosa" comes from the Greek word that means "mimic".
The best known species of mimosa are Mimosa pudica and Mimosa tenuiflora.
Mimosa pudica is found in Central and South America.
When touched or heated, it folds its leaves.
Mimosa tenuiflora is used by shamans (traditional magical healers.)
It is used in ayahuasca brews (a "magic" drink) because of the psychedelic drug DMT in its roots.
The Mimosa genus has gone through many periods of time where it was split up into smaller groupings or lumped into larger ones.
It has over 3,000 names to describe it and its species.
Most of these names are now considered synonyms.
Some of the names have been given to other species and genera.
Because of this, the name "mimosa" has been used for other species that look like mimosa but are not related.
Some of the most common unrelated plants with this name are the Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin) and Sattle (Acacia dealbata.)
This genus includes some plants that are able to move fast.
This is very rare.
The mimosa 's leaves close quickly when touched.
Mimosa is related to the genera Acacia and Albizia.
The difference between them is that the mimosa 's flowers have ten or fewer stamens.
The big round flower of the mimosa is actually an inflorescence, a cluster (close group) of many small flowers.
Mira is a binary star system with a white dwarf (Mira B) star and a red giant (Mira A).
Scientists think Mira is 200-400 light years away in the constellation Cetus.
It has a diameter of about 400 times that of our sun.
A mojito is a kind of cocktail.
It is from Cuba originally.
It is made of rum, sugar, lime juice, sparkling water and mint.
It usually contains about 10 percent alcohol.
The combination of sweetness, sour citrus and mint flavor is intended to complement the rum.
It is popular drink in hot weather.
When making a mojito, lime juice is added to sugar and mint leaves.
The mixture is then gently mashed together.
The mint leaves should only be bruised to release the essential oils; they should not be torn apart.
Then rum is added.
The mixture is then stirred to dissolve the sugar.
Finally, ice cubes and sparkling water are added in the top of the drink.
Mint leaves and lime wedges are used to garnish the glass.
There are several stories about how the mojito was invented.
One story says that it is similar to a 19th-century drink called "El Draque", after Francis Drake.
This drink is said to have been given to the crew of Drake 's ships when they came to Cuba in the 16th century.
Many in the crew were suffering from dysentery and scurvy.
They were told that the Native Americans had remedies for various tropical illnesses.
They went ashore on Cuba and were given ingredients for a remedy: a kind of rum, lime, sugarcane syrup and mint.
While this drink was not called a mojito at this time, it is the same combination of these ingredients.
Mohammed Zahir Shah (16 October 1914 23 July 2007) was the last King (Shah) of Afghanistan.
He ruled for four decades, from 1933 to 1973.
Mohammed Zahir Shah became king of Afghanistan at the age of nineteen after the assassination of his father in November 1933.
Since he was so young, his uncle, Shah Mahmood Khan ran the government.
Mohammed Zahir Shah took control and was able to keep Afghanistan s neutral position in international politics.
In July 17, 1973, Mohammed Zahir Shah was no longer king after a bloodless coup.
He died on
Miso is a thick paste.
It is similar to the Korean doenjang.
It is made by fermenting soy beans with sea salt and k ji.
K ji is the product of fermenting rice, barley, or soybeans with a mold culture, K ji-kin (Aspergillus oryzae).
Often, grains such as barley or rice, and sometimes other ingredients, are added.
Miso is high in protein and rich in vitamins and minerals.
Miso tastes salty and, depending on the grains used and fermentation time, may also be sweet.
Miso is used to make miso soup.
Miso is a very important part of Japanese food.
There are different kinds of miso.
Kome miso is made from rice and beans.
Mame miso is made from beans.
Mugi miso is made from barley and beans.
Tyougo miso is a mix of these misos.
Miso first came to Japan from China or the Korean peninsula.
Ancient Chinese jan (-RRB- is the origin of miso.
Jan is an ancient fermented seasoning.
According to classical scholars, jan was called hishio or kuki in the Edo era.
In China, jan was written about in the Shurai.
Miso existed in the Jomon era in Japan.
Jan is the Japanese original seasoning.
In the Nara era, jan was found in Nishi city, Heiankyo.
Miso was used for seasoning porridge made of rice and vegetables.
In the Sengoku period, Miso was important to preserved food.
Many Japanese used to make miso in their own homes.
This was called Temae-miso.
In the Muromachi era, it was used as a food preservative and as a seasoning.
Miso was an important source of nutrients for soldiers.
In the Edo era, industrial mass production method of miso began.
Temae-miso became less common.
There are many different flavors of miso.
It depends on the region.
Shiromiso is popular in the western Kansai region and akamiso is popular in the eastern Kant region.
Malcolm III of Scotland, aka Malcolm Canmore, King of Scots.
He was the first of a dynasty of kings who ruled Scotland for over two centuries.
Malcolm was born in 1031, the son of king Duncan I of Scotland and his wife; a cousin of Siward, Earl of Northumberland.
When his father was killed in 1040 Malcolm did not succeed to the throne.
At the time the system alternated between different lines of the same royal family.
So the king chosen from a different royal line was Macbeth, who had killed Duncan I in battle.
Malcolm killed Macbeth in battle in 1057, but Lulach, MacBeth 's stepson was selected as king.
This broke the pattern of alternate selection.
Lulach ruled only ruled a few months until he was killed.
Malcolm finally succeeded Lulach and changed the succession to his own sons and their descendants.
This made Scotland like other European countries in keeping the same dynasty on the throne.
Malcolm was in his late twenties when he finally became king.
Malcolm would lead a total of five raids into England starting in 1061.
The Norman Conquest of England caused many to leave England.
Malcolm welcomed several into Scotland.
These included Edgar Atheling, his sisters Margaret and Christina as well as their mother.
Raised at the court of St. Stephen of Hungary she was beautiful, wise, and very religious.
Malcolm was at once taken with her and asked her to marry him.
She refused as she and her sister were destined to be nuns.
But after a time she finally accepted.
By his marriage to Margaret he gained an interest in the English throne.
Edgar Atheling joined the uprising in the North of England in 1069 but it failed and William the Conqueror sacked York as punishment.
Malcolm joined in but too late as Edgar left England on a Danish ship.
Malcolm had long claimed Cumbria and Northumberland and made another raid on Bamburgh.
He took so many captives that it was said there was an English slave in every house in Scotland.
In 1071 William came north with a large army.
He came as far as Abernethy but Malcolm wanted peace.
William agreed to give him twelve English manors and pay a yearly fee.
Malcolm had to give his son Malcolm as a hostage but this made him a vassal of the English king.
Edgar Atheling returned to Scotland the next year.
He had been offered land on the border near Normandy by the French king.
Malcolm told him to take it and settle down.
He then gave Edgar gold and silver and sent him off to live in France.
But Edgar soon returned having been shipwrecked on his journey.
This time Malcolm advised him to make peace with king William of England.
Edgar did and received a castle as a residence in England.
In 1079 William and his son Robert were fighting in Normandy.
Malcolm raided into England again being welcomed in Northumberland.
But William sent his brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux north to punish Northumberland and Robert to raid into Scotland.
Once more Robert and Malcolm settled their differences and were at peace again.
In 1092, during the reign of William Rufus Malcolm raided England yet again.
Peace was again renewed with William Rufus.
But William failed in one of his promises to Malcolm, so in 1093 the Scots invaded England again.
This time Malcolm III died while fighting at Alnwick Castle.
His son Edward died there also.
Margaret, his queen died of grief after hearing the news of the death of her husband and their son.
About 1059 he married Ingibjorg, the widow of Thorfinn Sigurdson, Earl of Orkney.
She was the daughter of Earl Finn Arnason.
Together they had:
He married secondly Margaret of Wessex.
They had eight children; six sons and two daughters, including:
Mount Baker, also known as Koma Kulshan or Kulshan, is an active volcano in Washington in the United States.
The volcano 's height is 10781 f.
Malware, short for malicious software, is a kind of software that can be installed on a computer without approval from the computer 's owner.
There are different kinds of malware that can hurt computers, such as viruses and spyware.
These programs can steal passwords, delete files, collect personal information, or even stop a computer from working at all.
Computer security or anti-malware software is usually good at stopping malware from installing itself.
When security software is not installed, malware can get into the computer.
Getting rid of malware can be difficult, even when using programs designed to remove it.
People first started writing malware in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Computers were very simple then.
They did not have any interesting information for malware to take.
Instead, people wrote malware for fun or just to show that they could.
Even the most common piece of malware from this time did not do damage to people 's computers.
In fact, malware was so rare that the word "malware" was not coined until 1990.
More people started using the computers in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Computers were getting more complex just as fast.
People saw that they could use malware to get useful information now, like passwords and credit card information.
So, more programmers started writing malware.
The number of malware programs on the Internet has grown very quickly ever since then the late 1990s and is still growing today.
Experts think that 31.5 % of the world 's computers have some type of malware installed.
The main reason people write malware is to hurt others and make money, usually by stealing or deleting important information.
The Cryptolocker computer virus, for example, makes it so a person can not use their own computer until they pay the malware writers for a software key to unlock it.
Another virus, CIH, tries to make it so the victim can never use their files or turn on their computer again.
Malicious keystroke logging software remembers everything a user types in and gives it to the malware author to read.
World governments have written malware to hurt their enemies.
Experts think that the United States government made a virus named Stuxnet to stop an important place in Iran from working.
The Chinese government probably used a virus to stop people from protesting its decisions.
There are a lot of ways malware can get onto someone 's computer.
One common way is through email attachments.
These attachments are usually sent from other computers that already have malware on them.
When someone downloads and opens the attachment, the virus installs and uses their computer to send itself to even more people.
Another way malware installs itself is when a victim gets malware just by going to a website with the malware hidden on it.
This is called drive-by downloading.
A user does not have to click anything for their computer to get infected from a drive-by download.
This kind of malware attack is usually found on websites that are not used a lot or whose security methods are very old.
However, even current websites that people use all the time can host drive-by downloads when someone hacks the site.
People who write malware also get their programs onto computers by attaching them to real programs that people want.
This is most common with pirated programs.
This is because the downloader was doing something illegal and can not complain to the authorities without getting in trouble themselves.
However, some non-piracy websites also put malware (or other unwanted programs that are almost as bad as malware) in a download with real, legal software in a process known as bundling.
Computer security experts complain about websites that bundle real software with malware.
Their complaints do not always stop the websites from bundling.
There are many different kinds of malware.
Each acts a different way.
There are a few reasons why computers get programs a user did n't mean to install.
One common reason is because of regular programs that have software bugs.
Malware can use bugs, such as a buffer overflow, to make a program do something it was not designed to do.
Malware can also get onto a computer if it tricks a user into putting it there themselves.
This can happen when a user plugs in a USB flash drive that has a virus on it already.
Malware also commonly uses social engineering to get users to run it, like pretending to be an important email attachment for work.
Some malware even pretends to be an anti-malware program to get people to run it.
Since malware is such a big problem, many companies make programs to try to stop it.
These anti-malware programs have a lot of different ways to find malware.
One is static analysis, which looks at the source code of a program before it is run.
Then, if the program is similar to malware the static analysis program has seen before, the anti-malware program will stop the code from running.
Another way of finding malware is dynamic analysis.
Dynamic analysis runs only part of a program it is checking.
If this part of the program tries to do anything that could be bad or harmful, the anti-malware program will not let the program run.
Malware can also be stopped without a program.
This can be done by not letting a computer connect to the Internet or other computers, called creating an air gap.
However, these computers can still get malware if someone puts it there another way.
One example is when someone plugs in a USB drive that was already plugged into a computer with a virus.
Mot rhead were an English rock band.
The band were started in 1975 by bassist, singer and songwriter Ian Fraser Kilmister.
He is known better as "Lemmy."
Although they started in 1975 they did not start to become famous until they became part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in 1979.
Mot rhead played heavy metal music.
But they played very fast in their first years.
Many listeners call them the first speed metal or thrash metal band.
Mot rhead are a main influence on other bands that play those styles.
Lemmy does not like being called anything other than just a rock and roll band.
Mot rhead 's music has sounded the same through the years.
The words to their songs are about things like: war, sex, and partying.
Mot rhead are famous to fans of professional wrestling for playing the theme music used by wrestler Triple H when he walks down to the wrestling ring.
He started using the Mot rhead 's music in 2000.
The song is called "The Game."
The band have performed the song live at two WrestleMania events.
Mot rhead was listed at number 26 on VH1 's "The 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" TV show.
The band dissolved in 2015 when Lemmy died of cancer.
A multiverse (or meta-universe) is the theory of a set of multiple possible universes, including our universe, which make up reality.
These universes are sometimes called parallel universes.
A number of different versions have been considered.
They all have the same weakness: there is no known way these ideas can be tested.
You can think of universes as "bubbles".
When two of these "bubbles" collide they may have caused the big bang.
They can also separate to form two smaller universes.
The term "multiverse" was coined by psychologist William James.
A Molotov cocktail is the term for a simple incendiary weapon.
It is also known as a petrol bomb, fire bomb, or benzine torch.
They are relatively easy to make, and may be used by irregular paramilitary forces and rioters.
These bombs are also used to commit arson (set fire to buildings).
They were used for the first time in the Spanish Civil War between July 1936 and April 1939, before they became known as "Molotov cocktails".
A Molotov cocktail consists of a glass bottle partly filled with a flammable liquid.
The liquid will typically be gasoline, alcohol, methanol or ethanol.
The mouth of the bottle is closed with a cork or other type of tight sealing made of rubber, glass, or plastic, and a cloth rag is fixed securely around the mouth.
The weapon is used by first soaking the rag in a flammable liquid immediately before using it, lighting the rag, and throwing the bottle at the target.
The bottle breaks when it lands, spilling the flammable liquid over the target, which is then ignited by the burning rag.
Many substances may be added to the basic Molotov cocktail to enhance its use as a weapon.
These include:
Molotov cocktails are similar to napalm bombs in principle.
Napalm was originally made by combining flammable naphthalene and petrol with a thickening agent palmitic acid.
The latter two are the main ingredients of Molotov cocktails.
When gasoline is used as the main ingredient, motor oil is commonly added to help the gasoline cling to the target.
The name "Molotov cocktail" is derived from Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, a Soviet politician.
He was the People 's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, or the Foreign Minister, of the Soviet Union.
During the early part of World War II, when Finland refused to surrender some land to the Soviet Union, the Soviets invaded.
The poorly equipped and heavily-outnumbered Finnish Army faced Red Army tanks in what came to be known as the Winter War.
The army borrowed an improvised incendiary device from the 1936 39 Spanish Civil War.
In that conflict, the Spanish Nationalists under the orders of General Francisco Franco had used the weapon against Soviet T-26 tanks.
Those tanks helped the Spanish Republicans in a failed 1936 Soviet assault near Toledo, 30 km from Madrid.
When Molotov claimed in radio broadcasts that the Soviet Union was not dropping bombs but rather delivering food to the starving Finns, the Finns started to call the air bombs satirically "Molotov bread baskets".
Soon they responded by saluting the advancing tanks with "Molotov cocktails."
At first the term was used to describe only the burning mixture itself, but the term was soon applied to the combination of both the bottle and its contents.
This Finnish use of the hand - or sling-thrown explosive against Soviet tanks was repeated in the subsequent Continuation War.
Molotov cocktails were eventually mass-produced by the Finnish military, bundled with matches to light them.
These weapons saw widespread use by all sides in World War II.
They were very effective against light tanks, and very bad for enemy morale.
The following is a first-hand description of their effects, written during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943:
The well-aimed bottles hit the tank.
The flames spread quickly.
The blast of the explosion is heard.
The machine stands motionless.
The crew is burned alive.
The other two tanks turn around and withdraw.
The Germans who took cover behind them withdraw in panic.
We take leave of them with a few well-aimed shots and grenades.
During the 1948 Arab Israeli War, members of the Israeli Kibbutz Degania managed to stop a Syrian tank assault by using Molotov cocktails.
They were frequently used against Soviet tanks with great efficiency in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
The weapon has been used against tanks effectively because of the conformation of parts of tanks, particularly around the undersides and fuel tank "entrances".
A Molotov cocktail could blow up the fuel tank, destroying the machine, particularly for older (before 1940) tank models.
Molotov cocktails are much more effective against gasoline engines than diesel engines ' tanks.
This is because diesel has a high flashpoint of 64 C making it more difficult to ignite compared to petrol.
Some Soviet tanks actually had an entry to the gas tank on the side of the vehicle, which could be opened by combatants in close quarters, letting out the highly flammable liquid and making destruction of the tank even easier.
Note that these tactics were only effective due to the advantage guerrillas had in close quarters; tanks can barely maneuver in such conditions and are not able to counter quick-moving enemies armed with incendiary bombs.
Petrol bombs were widely used throughout the Troubles in Northern Ireland in riot situations, directed towards the RUC or the British Army.
As well as occasional situations where they continue to be used against the PSNI and army, they are frequently used in sectarian attacks on homes and businesses by both communities.
Fireworks and homemade grenades, known as blast bombs now commonly accompany petrol bomb attacks on the security forces.
As such things can cause a lot of damage, and actually kill people, it is illegal in most countries to make or possess them.
When they are used against property, this usually counts as arson.
When they are used against people, the charges range from manslaughter to murder.
Given the recent terrorism laws, such things could also fall under anti-terror legislation.
Molotov cocktails were put to use recently during the riotous 2005 civil unrest in France.
Another situation with popularity for them is the Palestinian Intifada.
In Sydney, during the Cronulla Riots, rioters carrying Molotov cocktails were apprehended when they carried open bottles in a bus.
The resulting smell of petrol alerted the driver, who in turn alerted the police.
During the Columbine High School massacre, the two gunmen built and threw several Molotov cocktails; however, none of them exploded.
It is presumed that this was due to bottles being overfilled.
In machine learning, supervised learning is the task of inferring a function from labeled training data.
The results of the training are known beforehand, the system simply learns, how to get to these results correctly.
Usually, such systems work with vectors.
They get the training data and the result of the training as two vectors, and produce a classifier.
Usually, the system uses inductive reasoning to generalize the training data.
Microsoft Access is a database computer program.
It is part of Microsoft Office.
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a rich internet application distributed by Adobe Systems.
Adobe Flash and Adobe Flash Player are used to create and view animated content that can be placed on web pages.
Adobe Flash is used commonly on the Internet by web browsers.
Flash was created by FutureWave (a multimedia company) in 1995.
Then it was called "FutureSplash Animator" (this was in fact Flash 1.0).
FutureWave along with Flash were soon bought by Macromedia around 1997, who in December 2005 was again bought by Adobe Systems.
From Flash version 2 to 8 it was called "Macromedia Flash", now it is called "Adobe Flash".
In 2012, Adobe discontinued the Solaris version of Flash Player, and made the Linux version only for Google Chrome.
The Linux version for Firefox will continue to receive security updates.
The Android version was removed from Google Play, but it can still be downloaded from the Adobe website.
The Android version is not officially supported on Android beyond 4.0, but it has been reported to work with versions 4.1 and 4.2.
Mind control (also known as brainwashing, coercive persuasion or thought control) refers to a theory on the way some have tried to control the beliefs and behavior of others.
It is a process where a group or individual uses methods to persuade other to change their basic beliefs and values.
A group or individual may use unethical methods to persuade others to believe and do what the manipulator (s) want.
It often harms the person being manipulated.
The term has been applied to any tactic, psychological or otherwise, which undermines (damages) an individual 's control over their own thinking, behavior, emotions or decision making.
Theories of brainwashing and of mind control were originally developed to explain how totalitarian regimes appeared to succeed systematically in indoctrinating prisoners of war through propaganda and torture techniques.
The Oxford English Dictionary records the earliest known use of brainwashing in an article Edward Hunter in Miami News published on 7 October 1950.
During the Korean War, Hunter, who worked at the time both as a journalist before becoming a U.S. intelligence agent, wrote a series of books and articles on the theme of Chinese brainwashing.
The Chinese term (x n o, literally "wash brain") was originally used to describe methodologies of coercive persuasion used under the Maoist regime in China.
The methods aimed to change people 's mindset so they became "right-thinking" members of the new Chinese social system.
Hunter and those who picked up the Chinese term used it to explain why, unlike in earlier wars, a relatively high percentage of American GIs defected to the enemy side after becoming prisoners-of-war.
British radio operator Robert W. Ford and British Army Colonel James Carne also claimed that the Chinese subjected them to brainwashing techniques during their war-era imprisonment.
The most prominent case in the U.S. was that of Frank Schwable, a prisoner in the war.
While in custody, he confessed to having taken part in germ warfare.
After the Korean War, mind control theories shifted in focus from politics to religion.
From the 1960s an increasing number of youths started to come into contact with new religious movements (NRM).
Some who converted suddenly adopted beliefs and behaviors that differed greatly from those of their families and friends; in some cases they neglected or broke contact with their loved ones.
Those against cults explained these sudden and seemingly dramatic religious conversions as due to mind control.
The media was quick to follow suit, and social scientists sympathetic to the anti-cult movement, who were usually psychologists, developed more sophisticated models of brainwashing.
While some psychologists were receptive to these theories, sociologists were for the most part skeptical of their ability to explain conversion to NRMs.
Some authors have pointed out that the ideas of mind control can be found in all stages of human history.
They are essentially the extreme use of techniques of religious conversion and propaganda which are widespread in human history.
Mobile (pronunciation) is the third most populous city in the U.S. state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County.
The population within the city limits was 198,915 as of the 2000 census.
Mobile is the principal municipality of the Mobile Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 399,843 residents which is composed solely of Mobile County and is the second largest MSA in the state.
Mobile is included in the Mobile-Daphne-Fairhope Combined Statistical Area with a total population of 540,258, the second largest CSA in the state.
The Magna Carta was a document signed by King John after negotiations with his barons and their French and Scots allies at Runnymede, Surrey, England in 1215.
There they sealed the Great Charter, called in Latin Magna Carta.
It established a council of 25 barons to see John kept to the clauses like protection from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, parliamentary assent for taxation, and scutage limitations.
Because he was forced to seal the charter, John sought approval to break it, from his spiritual overlord Pope Innocent III.
Denouncing it as "not only shameful and demeaning but also illegal and unjust", the Pope agreed.
Magna Carta has influenced English law down to the present day.
It is one of the most celebrated documents in English history.
It is recognized as a cornerstone of the idea of the liberty of citizens.
Magna Carta contains 63 clauses written in Latin on parchment.
Only three of the original clauses in Magna Carta are still law today.
One defends the freedom and rights of the English Church, another confirms the liberties and customs of London and other towns.
This clause (translated) is the main reason the Carta is still famous:
"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled.
Nor will we proceed with force against him except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.
To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice".
This clause limits the power of rulers, and introduces the idea of lawful process and the idea of a jury.
The BBC summarised the main points of the document as:
The BBC said the Magna Carta "established a number of important principles, which have been copied around the world... It inspired the US Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights".
The origin is in the medieval feudal system, in which the King 's word was law.
It solved, at the time, a conflict between King John and his main men: the barons and bishops.
Dispute grew between the barons and bishops and King John over taxes and disputes with the Pope.
The barons chose their time to put John under pressure.
John had lost a battle against the French, been excommunicated by the Pope (1209 1213), and feared civil war at home.
He met the barons at Runnymede, 20 miles south-west of London, in June 1215.
The negotiation was managed by John 's half-brother, William Longspe, and Elias of Dereham, steward to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton.
The content of the Carta was designed to re-balance power between the King and his subjects, but especially between John and the barons.
When King John set his seal on Magna Carta he conceded the fundamental principle that even as king he was not above the law.
So, when King John put his seal to the Carta on 15 June 1215, that meant kings would not have as much power as before.
The Carta also laid down rules of inheritance, and that convictions required some kind of official process.
It stated that people had rights not to be unlawfully imprisoned.
In other words, the king is bound to rule within the law.
Thirteen original copies of the Carta were made and distributed.
Only four survive today.
The four copies are in The British Library, The Bodleian Library, Lincoln Castle and Salisbury Cathedral.
In 2009 UNESCO recognized it in its Memory of the World register.
The Magna Carta led to the constitutional rule of today.
The Magna Carta was sent out again in 1220 by Henry III.
The British Library plans to bring all four copies together in 2015, so that scholars can examine them side by side.
Methadone is a synthetic opioid.
It is used as an analgesic.
Besides relieving pain, it is also used to treat addiction to certain narcotics, and some illegal drugs.
Methadone can also lead to: memory loss, shortness of breath, throat pains, stomach aches, and anxiety attacks.
Marvel Comics is a company that makes "superhero" comic books.
Its top rival is DC Comics.
In 2009, The Walt Disney Company bought Marvel for US$ 4 billion.
Marvel has also made films and cartoons about the characters, which has made them even more popular.
Marvel used to be a company called Timely Comics in the 1940s and then Atlas Comics in the 1950s.
The first comic published with the name "Marvel Comics" was Fantastic Four # 1 in November, 1961.
A meritocracy is the condition where people who deserve to can go up in rank, as opposed to a system like nepotism.
It applies generally to all positions to which people may be appointed.
It is often reinforced by laws, such as that women should have equal opportunities to men in employment.
The philosopher Plato thought that a government based on merit was better than democracy.
In democracy, there is no guarantee that you will get the best person, the most qualified person, ruling the state.
His criticisms were really of Athenian (or direct) democracy, where anyone could be selected to rule.
In a meritocracy, the people are chosen who are thought to be the best.
Some have accused it of being elitist, saying that government by the best will mean that only those who have had the right opportunities will have a chance to govern, creating in effect a ruling class.
It is worth pointing out that Plato did not see it this way.
He believed that philosophers were the best people to rule because they were disinterested, meaning they only had the interests of the state in mind, not their own interest.
Plato 's point was this: if you want to rule, then it will go wrong, because power will corrupt you.
If you are a philosopher, you do n't care about power - all you care about is truth, so you will rule well, without being interested in your power or status.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (sometimes spelled Gorbachov) (born 2 March 1931) is a former Soviet politician.
He was the last leader of the Soviet Union.
He was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (head of state) from 1988 until 1991 and the first (and last) president of the Soviet Union from 1990 until it was dissolved in 1991.
Gorbachev is known for forming a friendship with President of the United States Ronald Reagan.
Both of them would help end the Cold War.
Gorbachev was born in Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
His attempts at reform and partnership with Ronald Reagan led to the end of the Cold War.
His main intent was to improve the economy of the USSR.
To do this, he set in motion two major reforms:
Indirectly, this may have helped cause the end of the power of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and the break-up of the Soviet Union into smaller countries.
However, it should be noted that the need to modernize the economy, and to conduct government less ruthlessly than Stalin, was agreed by the previous two leaders.
They, Andropov and Chernenko, were elderly and died before real changes could be put in place.
In 1990, Gorbachev created the office of President of the Soviet Union.
It was to be based on the systems in France and the United States.
The office merged together office of General Secretary and head of state.
The President was to be elected by the Soviet People but its only holder was Gorbachev who was n't elected.
Gorbachev saw the office mainly as a position for himself to remain influential in Soviet politics.
His main goal was to keep the Soviet Union together, controlled by Moscow.
After the August coup in 1991 Gorbachev resigned as leader of the Communist Party and held onto the Soviet presidency.
When Union republics began to turn away from the Soviet system, Gorbachev 's power was dramatically reduced.
By late 1991 he had almost no influence outside of Moscow.
When Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia became independent, Gorbachev was basically a President of a country that only existed on paper.
He resigned on December 25, 1991.
Gorbachev studied law at Lomonosov Moscow State University where he also met his future wife Raisa Gorbachova.
Raisa studied sociology.
After retiring from politics in 1991, Gorbachev started The Gorbachev Foundation, which is currently headed by his daugther Irina.
In 2004, he traveled to the United States to represent Russia at Ronald Reagan 's funeral.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
He won a Grammy Award in 2004 with Bill Clinton and Sophia Loren for Best Spoken Word Album for Children for their recording of Sergei Prokofiev 's Peter and the Wolf.
Masada (in Hebrew: - metsada means: fortress) is an archaeological site, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Masada is an ancient fortification in the Southern District of Israel.
It is on top of an isolated rock plateau, like a mesa.
The rock is on the east of the Judaean Desert, and overlooks the Dead Sea.
Herod the Great fortified Masada between 37 and 31 BC, and built palaces for himself on the mountain.
According to Josephus, the Sicarii, a splinter group of the Hebrew Zealots, held out against a Roman legion here.
This was the Siege of Masada at the end of the First Jewish Roman War.
The seige ended in the mass suicide of 960 people the rebels and their families.
The hill is 63 meters above the sea level and 450 above the dead sea level near Mount Elazar.
The Marvel Universe (MU) is a comic book fictional universe created by Marvel Comics.
The MU is where most of the main stories published by Marvel Comics takes place.
The MU is actually just one of an infinite number of different universes.
Each one can be called a Marvel universe, but the term is commonly used for just one.
This one is also called Earth-616 when looking at all the universes as a group.
The other universes vary from very similar to the Earth-616 universe to completely different.
This lets the writers create stories which have a large effect to the universe they take place in without affected the main universe used by all of the writers as a group.
The Munich massacre was an attack that happened during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.
11 members of the Israel Olympic team were murdered after being taken hostage.
A German police officer was also killed.
The terrorist wanted the Palestinian government to release 234 prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Out of the eight members of the massacre, five were killed by police officials and three were arrested.
The three were released from jail.
Maremma is an area in Italy, consisting of part of southern Tuscany and some part of northern Lazio.
Michael Nesmith (born December 30, 1942) is an American musician, songwriter, actor, producer, novelist, businessman and philanthropist.
He was born in Dallas, Texas on December 30, 1942.
His mother, Bette Nesmith Graham invented Liquid Paper in 1951 and made the family very rich.
In the 1960s, he moved to Los Angeles to start a recording career, he wrote the song "Different Drum" which was a hit for Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys.
In 1966, he became a member of the Monkees, a made-for-TV rock band, he left the group in 1969 and started a solo career.
He is considered one of the forefathers of the country-rock movement of the 1970s with his song Joanne, he also worked as a producer and is considered one of the pioneers of the music video industry.
Nesmith 's 1981 video-movie Elephant Parts won the first Grammy award for a music video
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes (McLaren Racing Limited) is a Formula 1 racing team.
McLaren was started by Bruce McLaren in 1963.
McLaren 's current drivers are Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso.
Jenson Button was the 2009 World Champion.
McLaren also make some other cars at its Woking factory, like the Mercedes McLaren SLR supercar.
A magazine is a type of book people read.
Magazines are not like regular books.
This is because a new version of the magazine is printed many times each year.
Magazines are a type of periodical.
They are called periodicals because new versions of them keep being printed.
Magazines are printed on paper.
People usually need to subscribe to them.
An example of a magazine is Time.
There are magazines printed about many things.
Magazines are similar to newspapers, but usually new versions take longer to make, they cost more money, and they are in color on every page.
Also, sometimes magazines come with little gifts to reward the readers who buy it.
A "magazine" can also mean a spring-loaded container for bullets used in modern guns.
A microcontroller (abbreviated MCU or C) is a computer system on a chip that does a job.
It contains an integrated processor, memory (a small amount of RAM, program memory, or both), and programmable input\/output peripherals, which are used to interact with things connected to the chip A microcontroller is different than a microprocessor which only contains a CPU (the kind used in a PC).
First released in 1971 by the Intel company, microcontrollers began to become popular in their first few years.
The extremely useful Intel 8008 microprocessor was then released, but it was still impractical because of high cost for each chip.
These first microcontrollers combined different types of computer memory on one unit.
After people began to see how useful they were, micro controllers were constantly being upgraded, with people trying to find new ways to make them better.
Cost was reduced over time and by the early 2000s, micro controllers were widely used across the world.
Other terms for a microcontroller are embedded system and embedded controller, because the microcontroller and its support circuits are often built into, or embedded in, a single chip.
In addition to the usual arithmetic and logic elements of a general microprocessor, the microcontroller also has additional elements such as RAM for data storage, read-only memory for program storage, flash memory for permanent data storage, and other devices (peripherals).
Microcontrollers often operate at very low speed compared to microprocessors (at clock speeds of as little as 32 kHz), but this is useful for typical applications.
They also consume very little power (milliwatts or even micro watts).
Microcontrollers are used in automatic products and devices, such as car engine systems, remote controls, machines, appliances, power tools, and toys.
These are called embedded systems.
Microcontrollers can also be found at work in solar power and energy harvesting, anti-lock braking systems in cars, and have many uses in the medical field as well.
Valentin Louis Georges Eug ne Marcel Proust (French pronounced: ma s l p ust) (10 July 1871 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, essayist and critic, best known as the author of la recherche du temps perdu (in English, In Search of Lost Time), a monumental work of twentieth-century fiction published in seven parts from 1913 to 1927.
Proust was a homosexual.
He died of pneumonia.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer.
Along with Leonardo da Vinci, he is often called a "Renaissance man" which means that he had great talent in many areas.
Michelangelo lived an extremely busy life, creating a great number of artworks.
Some of Michelangelo 's works are among the most famous that have ever been made.
They include two very famous marble statues, the Pieta in Saint Peter 's Basilica and David which once stood in a piazza in Florence but is now in the Accademia Gallery.
His most famous paintings are huge frescos, the Sistine Chapel Ceiling and the Last Judgement.
His most famous work of architecture is the east end and dome of Saint Peter 's Basilica.
A lot is known about Michelangelo 's life because he left many letters, poems and journals.
Because he was so famous, he became the very first artist to have his biography (story of his life) published while he was still living.
His biographer, Giorgio Vasari, said that he was the greatest artist of the Renaissance.
He was sometimes called Il Divino ("the divine one").
Other artists said that he had terribilit, (his works were so grand and full of strong emotion that they were scary).
Many other artists who saw his work tried to have the same emotional quality.
From this idea of terribilit came a style of art called Mannerism.
Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese near Arezzo, Tuscany.
His father was Lodovico di Leonardo di Buonarroti di Simoni, and his mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena.
The Buonarrottis were a banking family from Florence.
They claimed they were descended from the noble Countess Matilda of Canossa.
Michelangelo 's father had lost most of the bank s money, so he worked for the local government in the town of Chiusi.
When Michelangelo was a baby, the family moved back to Florence.
Because he was sickly, Michelangelo was sent to live on a small farm with a stonecutter and his wife and family.
The stonecutter worked at a marble quarry owned by Michelangelo 's father.
Many years later Michelangelo said that the two things that had helped him to be a good artist were being born in the gentle countryside of Arezzo and being raised in a house where, along with his nurse 's milk, he was given the training to use a chisel and hammer.
His mother died when he was only seven.
Michelangelo s father then brought him back to Florence and sent him to study with a tutor, Francesco da Urbino.
Michelangelo was not interested in his school lessons.
He explored the great churches of the city, and drew copies of the frescos that he saw there.
When he was thirteen, he was apprenticed to the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio.
Ghirlandaio had a large busy studio.
He had rich patrons who worked for the Medici.
He painted frescos in their family chapels.
Michelangelo was able to learn the art of fresco painting very well, from Ghirlandaio.
In a large workshop such as Ghirlandaio s, artists would have been working in all sorts of different media, including sculpture, metalwork and painting altarpieces.
Michelangelo would have learned about all these things.
When Michelangelo was only fourteen, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay his apprentice as an artist, which was highly unusual at the time.
The richest, most powerful family in Florence were the Medici.
They had an academy where some of the most famous philosophers, poets, and artists met to share their ideas.
The Medici family were important patrons of the arts.
In 1489, Lorenzo de ' Medici, the head of the family, asked Ghirlandaio to send his two best pupils to the academy.
Michelangelo was one of the students chosen and he attended the academy from 1490 to 1492.
He heard the teaching and discussion of Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Angelo Poliziano.
The philosophy that they taught was called Humanism.
It was based on the philosophy of the ancient Greek Plato.
Michelangelo s ideas and his art were influenced by these teachings.
Michelangelo and another young sculptor called Pietro Torrigiano studied sculpture under Bertoldo di Giovanni.
Michelangelo had an argument with Torrigiano, who punched him on the nose so that it was badly broken and spoilt his appearance for the rest of his life.
Michelangelo sculpted some reliefs (flat panels with raised figures on them).
One was the Battle of the Centaurs which was made for Lorenzo de Medici.
In 1492, Michelangelo s patron, Lorenzo de ' Medici died.
This brought about a big change in Michelangelo s life.
He went back to live at his father s house.
Michelangelo asked the prior at the Church of Santo Spirito to allow him to study the anatomy of the bodies of people who had died at the church s hospital.
In 1493, as a thank-you gift to the prior, Michelangelo carved a large wooden Crucifix which still hangs in the church.
In January 1494, there were very heavy snowfalls.
Lorenzo de Medici s son, Piero de Medici commissioned Michelangelo to make a snow statue.
So Michelangelo began to work for the Medici again.
In 1494, a new leader rose up in Florence.
He was a Dominican friar called Savonarola.
His strong preaching caused people to burn their books, throw away their jewellery and chase the rich families out of the city.
The Medici had to go.
For Michelangelo, it was a good time to travel.
He stayed for a while in Venice, then moved to Bologna.
In Bologna he soon got work sculpting three figures for the big marble Shrine of Saint Dominic.
When things calmed down in Florence, Michelangelo returned and worked for another member of the Medici family, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de ' Medici.
Michelangelo made a marble statue of Cupid asleep.
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco told Michelangelo that it looked just like a real Ancient Roman statue and said that if he made it dirty and knocked a few chips off, someone would pay a lot of money for it.
Lorenzo sold it to a Cardinal who discovered that it was a fraud.
He thought that Michelangelo s work was so good that he told the pope about it.
The pope then invited Michelangelo to go to Rome and work for him.
Michelangelo arrived in Rome 25 June 1496 at the age of 21.
He lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto on the Gianicolo hill.
In 1496 he got an important commission (he was given a paid job) from Cardinal Raffaele Riario.
The Cardinal wanted Michelangelo to make a marble statue, larger than life-size, of Bacchus, the Ancient Roman God of wine.
Michelangelo worked hard at the statue.
He carved Bacchus as a young man who was quite drunk, and looked as if he was staggering as he raised his cup to make a toast.
The cardinal did not like the drunken Bacchus and would not pay for it.
A banker called Jacopo Galli bought it for his garden.
Michelangelo s next important commission was from the French Ambassador who asked him to make a statue of the Virgin Mary mourning over the dead body of her son Jesus.
This type of artwork, either a painting or a statue, is called by the Italian name Pieta (say: Pe-ay-ta).
Michelangelo s Pieta is the most famous Pieta that has ever been made.
It is now in Saint Peter 's Basilica and is visited by thousands of people every day.
Giorgio Vasari wrote: "It is a miracle that a shapeless block of stone could have been carved away to make something so perfect that even nature could hardly have made it better, using real human flesh."
In 1499 Michelangelo returned to Florence.
The priest Savonarola had made so many people angry that he had been put to death in 1498.
Life in Florence started to return to normal.
Many years earlier the Guild of Woolworkers had commissioned some artists to make statues of the heroes of the city.
A sculptor called Agostino di Duccio had started carving a huge statue of David, the hero of the Bible story of David and Goliath.
For 40 years the Guild of Woolworkers owned the huge block of marble, with the statue hardly begun.
In 1501 they commissioned the young Michelangelo to carve it.
It took him three years to complete.
Once again Michelangelo made a statue that became world-famous.
The statue shows a young man, naked in the way that statues of ancient gods were made, just pausing for a moment and looking with fierce eyes at the huge soldier Goliath that he is about to kill.
The statue is 5.17 meter (17 ft) tall.
It was placed in the piazza (public square) outside the Palazzo Vecchio where the town council met.
After many years, the statue was put into an art gallery, the Accademia.
A copy now stands in the piazza.
People still go great distances to see the statue that he made.
In 1505 Michelangelo was invited to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II.
Pope Julius was an old man.
He wanted Michelangelo to design a grand tomb.
It was to stand inside a church and have many carved figures which were to include several slaves to hold up part of the tomb and Old Testament prophets to sit in niches (openings in the walls).
Michelangelo started work.
He made a magnificent statue of Moses which is now in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli (St Peter in Chains) in Rome.
Many people go to look at this statue.
The slaves were only partly carved.
Four of them are now in the Accademia in Florence.
The rest of the great plan was unfinished.
The main reason that Pope Julius ' tomb was not finished was that the Pope had an idea for another artwork.
The Sistine Chapel near St. Peter 's Basilica had its walls painted by some famous artists from Florence.
The Pope decided that Michelangelo should paint the ceiling.
Michelangelo did not want to.
He said that he was not a painter.
But the Pope bullied Michelangelo until he agreed to do it.
He told the Pope that he would do it "for God" and that he would only do it if the Pope let him paint it "in his own way".
The chapel was long and wide.
Its curved ceiling was held up by twelve fan-shaped pieces of wall called "pendentives".
Pope Julius told Michelangelo to paint one of the twelve apostles of Jesus on each pendentive.
Michelangelo started to do this.
Then he got a different idea and scraped off the work that he had done.
Instead of apostles he painted twelve prophets.
Seven of them were men from the Old Testament but the other five were women and did not come from the Bible.
They were five prophets from the Classical world.
Like the prophets in the Bible, they had all told people about the birth of Jesus.
On the middle of the ceiling, instead of painting a starry sky, Michelangelo painted scenes from the Bible telling the story of Creation and the downfall of humanity.
The most famous scene is the picture of God creating Adam.
The ceiling was so famous that many artists tried to copy the way that Michelangelo had arranged and painted the figures.
In 1513 Pope Julius II died.
The next pope was Pope Leo X, a member of the Medici family.
He gave Michelangelo several jobs in Florence, including designing the Medici Chapel to hold the tombs of his family members.
Although not all the tombs were built, Michelangelo finished seven large statues including a "Madonna and Child".
His pupils later completed the chapel.
In 1527, the people of Florence became angry at the Medici for acting like princes.
That was not the right way for a family to act, in a city that was a republic.
The people threw the Medici out, but the Medici came back with an army and took over the city.
Michelangelo was so upset at the behavior of the Medici that he left his beloved city and never went back.
Pope Clement VII called Michelangelo back to the Sistine Chapel to paint the wall behind the altar with a huge scene of The Last Judgement.
He worked on it from 1534 to 1541.
At the center it shows Jesus, surrounded by saints, sitting in judgement over the people of the Earth.
To the left, people are rising from their graves and many are welcomed into Heaven.
To the right, other people are being sent to Hell where they are dragged down by demons.
It is a huge painting with many figures in it.
Like Adam and Eve on the ceiling, all the figures were shown naked.
Some of the cardinals in the church said that it was wicked to paint saints, including the Virgin Mary, with no clothes on.
They called Michelangelo "the painter of rude bits".
There was a long argument about this because some people said that God had created everyone naked, so clothes would not be needed in Heaven.
After Michelangelo 's death another artist, Daniele da Volterra was called in to paint drapes on the figures.
For the rest of his life he was known as "the painter of pants".
In 1546, when Michelangelo was his seventies, he was given one of his most important jobs.
The old St Peter 's Basilica had been partly demolished and a new one designed by Bramante.
But many architects had worked on it and it was still just at the beginning stages.
Michelangelo was made the architect.
He immediately improved the plan, had important parts made much stronger, and designed a huge dome, taller than any other dome in the world.
He died before it was completed, but he left drawings and models so that the next architect, Giacomo della Porta, could finish what he had started.
The dome of St. Peter 's Basilica still stands as one of the greatest monuments of Christianity, and as a symbol of the city of Rome.
When Michelangelo died, his body was taken back to Florence and buried in the Basilica of Santa Croce (Church of the Holy Cross).
On his tomb sit three mourning figures who symbolize Architecture, Painting and Sculpture.
Mecca or Makkah (called Mecca in older texts, officially: Makkah al-Mukarramah;) is a city in Saudi Arabia.
1,294,169 people lived there as of the 2004 census.
The city is 73 k inland from Jeddah, in the narrow sandy Valley of Abraham.
It is 277 m above sea level.
It is 81 k from the Red Sea.
Mecca is the holiest city in the Islamic world.
Every year, millions of Muslims take a pilgrimage to Mecca.
This is called the Hajj, where they follow in the footsteps of Muhammad.
All Muslims who are able to perform the Hajj are expected to do so at least once in their life.
The Kaaba and Masjid al-Haram, the holiest mosque in Islam is here.
Mecca is closed to non-Muslims except for some journalists reporting on the Hajj.
The Kaaba, the small cubical building which Muslims pray towards is believed to have been built by Ibrahim and has been a religious center ever since.
Muslims believed that God commanded Ibrahim to send his second wife Hajar and her son Ismail there.
They found the Zamzam Well which led to people settling nearby, and thus Makkah was born.
When Ismail was big enough, he helped his father to build the Kaaba.
The Kaaba is the place towards which Muslims turn in prayer.
This is known as the Qibla.
Mormonism is a religious movement that was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830.
The people that belong to this religion are called Latter-day Saints, or Mormons.
Their teachings are similar to many Christian churches, and they consider themselves to be Christian.
A 2007 survey showed that 31 % of the people polled do not agree that Mormons are Christians.
Mormons have beliefs that are different from the beliefs of other Christian churches.
The Mormon Church considers itself a restoration church.
This means that members of the Church believe that it is the original Christian Church started by Jesus Christ and brought back ("restored") by Joseph Smith, Jr. in 1830.
At first it was called The Church of Christ.
Mormonism and Bahaism are sometimes called the "fourth Abrahamic religion".
Today there are about 70 groups who call themselves Mormon or Latter day Saint, with the largest and most known of them being The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The name "Mormons" is simply a nickname.
They believe in baptism by the person being completely underwater, such as explained in the Articles of Faith that was written in a letter by Joseph Smith.
Most Mormons do not practice polygamy, as is stated in the Doctrine and Covenants under "To Whom it May Concern" written in the back of the book (but some small groups, called "Mormon Fundamentalists", do).
Joseph Smith, Jr. said that he had visits from God the Father, Jesus Christ, and many angels.
The first visit is called the First Vision.
It happened in the spring of 1820 when Joseph was 14 years old.
He had decided to pray about which religion to join.
He said that he went to the woods behind his family 's house in New York, prayed, felt evil powers fighting him, and was rescued when a bright light appeared above him.
In the bright light, he said that he saw God the Father and Jesus Christ.
They told him not to join any church, because none of the churches had all of the truth.
They also told him that they had work for him to do.
Part of the work that Joseph did was translating the Book of Mormon.
Joseph said that an angel named Moroni visited him and showed him where a very old book was buried.
This book was written on pages of gold (sometimes called the Gold Plates).
It was buried in a stone box in a hill near Joseph 's home.
Moroni visited Joseph once a year for four years until he told Joseph to take the Gold Plates.
Since the book was written in a very old language, Joseph translated the book into English.
He did this with help from God and by the tools called the "Urim" and "Thummim".
The book was published as The Book of Mormon in 1830.
It tells the story of two main groups of people who lived in North and South America hundreds of years ago (the Nephites and Lamanites), as well as a story of a group of people who came to the Americas thousands of years ago upon leaving the Tower of Babel (the Jaredites).
It also teaches many things about Jesus.
To members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The Book of Mormon is a special book from God just like the Bible.
Mormons believe that by reading The Book of Mormon and the Bible, people can learn how to get closer to God and how to find happiness in life.
This book is also the reason Church members are sometimes called "Mormons".
Today the center of the church is in Utah, but there are more than 14 million Mormons living all over the world.
The leader of the church is called the president, and Mormons call him a prophet.
They believe that God guides the prophet, just like he guided Joseph Smith and the prophets in the Bible.
Mormons believe that it is important for families to spend a lot of time together, and that after they die, they can live together forever.
Mormons do not drink alcohol, coffee, or tea, or smoke tobacco.
They meet once a week on Sunday for church, where they have the sacrament and listen to short talks or sermons.
They also have Sunday School to learn more.
The church also has activities during the week.
Mormons also have buildings called temples.
These are the most holy buildings in their religion.
After a temple has been dedicated, only Mormons that are living good lives can go in the temple.
Today, there are three main movements in Mormonism, although one is by far the largest.
They are represented by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Community of Christ and the Church of Christ with the Elijah Message.
When people talk about Mormons, they usually mean the followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is the largest Mormon movement.
This movement also says that the term Mormon is a nickname given to members early in the churches history, and would prefer to be referred to as Latter-day Saints or "LDS".
Some people who call themselves Mormons are not part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
These people belong to other Mormon churches.
Some of their beliefs are different.
When Brigham Young became the second president of the Church after Joseph Smith was killed, some people did not think he was the rightful president.
When Brigham Young led most of the Mormons to Utah, these people stayed in Illinois.
They believed that Joseph Smith 's son should be the next president.
Today, this church is called the Community of Christ.
It is the second largest church to call themselves Mormons.
They have more than 250,000 people in their church.
Other splits in the Church happened later.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) teaches that a man should only marry one woman.
This is called monogamy.
In the beginning of the church, this was different.
A man could be married to more than one woman at the same time (called polygamy).
When the Church changed its position in 1890, some people left the official Church and continued with polygamy.
These groups are very small compared to the LDS.
The groups that did not want to abandon polygamy are sometimes still called Mormon, even though in the official church, polygamy has been forbidden since 1890.
Most of these smaller groups stay away from other people, since polygamy is illegal in the United States.
The LDS tells people not to use the word Mormon or pictures of Church leaders and temples when talking about these groups, since it makes it seem like they are still connected to the LDS even though they are not.
There are many practices in Mormonism that are very similar to those used in Christian movements.
There are some practices, however, where the Mormon movement is noticeably different from orthodox Christian movements, such as Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant faiths.
People who define Christianity as belonging to one of those denominations have to say that Mormonism is not a Christian movement.
In English, the LDS Church accepts the King James Version of the Bible as a part of its official scripture.
In the beginning, the Mormon movement said that it restored the Christian faith and that the other movements at the time held beliefs that were wrong.
In the 1830s, the movement quickly gained members that had come from Christian movements.
Many Christians of the time saw some of the practices and beliefs the Mormon movement held at that time as politically and culturally subversive.
The most controversial of these included the idea that slavery was wrong, men being able to have more than one wife, and the church 's wanting to run a government with laws based on Mormonism.
Some of these beliefs are no longer held by most Mormon movements today.
Such disagreements led to violent conflicts between Mormons and other Christian groups.
Even though there is not really violence anymore, the movement 's unique doctrinal views are still criticized.
Mormons believe in Jesus Christ as the literal firstborn Son of God and Messiah, his crucifixion as a conclusion of a sin offering, and resurrection.
However, Latter-day Saints (LDS) reject the ecumenical creeds and definition of the Trinity taught by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Communion, and Trinitarian Protestantism.
In their view, the New Testament prophesied that people would turn away from Christian teachings, and that there would be a restoration to the situation before the second coming of Christ.
Some important differences with mainstream Christianity include: A belief that Jesus began his atonement from sin in the garden of Gethsemane and continued it until he was crucified, rather than the orthodox belief that the crucifixion alone was the physical atonement.
In their view, heaven is divided into three degrees of glory, and hell (often called outer darkness).
Additionally, Mormons do not believe in creation ex nihilo, they believe that matter is eternal, and that God organizes existing matter.
Much of the Mormon belief system is oriented geographically around the North and South American continents.
Mormons believe the people of the Book of Mormon lived in the western hemisphere, that Christ appeared in the western hemisphere after his death and resurrection, that the true faith was restored in upstate New York by Joseph Smith, and that the Garden of Eden and location of Christ 's second coming were and will be in the state of Missouri.
For this and other reasons, including a belief by many Mormons in American exceptionalism, Molly Worthen speculates that this may be why Leo Tolstoy described Mormonism as the "quintessential ` American religion '".
((Image: Meat Loaf.
jpg thumb (512x768) px right Meat Loaf, 2009)) Marvin Lee Aday (also called Meat Loaf; born September 27, 1947) is an American singer and musician.
He plays rock and roll, heavy metal and hard rock.
He recorded the single "I 'd Do Anything for Love (But I Wo n't Do That)" in late 1993.
He has also appeared in over fifty movies and television shows.
He was born in Dallas, Texas.
His album, Bat Out Of Hell, has sold over 43 million copies.
He was in the movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
A migraine is a medical condition which usually causes a pounding, throbbing headache on one side of the head.
The pain may be very bad and hurt so much that a person may have a hard time doing anything.
While most people who have migraines get a headache, not everyone does.
There are different kinds of migraines and some do not cause a headache but do have other symptoms.
Most migraines cause a headache and nausea and might make the person dizzy or very sensitive to bright lights or loud noises.
Some people have "auras" before a migraine starts, which means their ability to see becomes different.
They may see funny patterns, have blurry vision, or may not be able to see at all.
Other senses can change before or during a migraine, and the person may sense funny smells or tastes.
Migraines can last a long time.
Most migraines only last about 4 hours.
Some can last up to 72 hours.
Migraines have been classified, based on how often they happen in a month: If a person has a headache for less than fifteen days, the migraine is called episodic migraine (EM).
If it happens more than fifteen days, it is called chronic migraine (CM).
Chronic means it happens over a long amount of time.
Some people who start off getting episodic migraines may start to get chronic migraines later.
Chronic migraine then may revert or go back to episodic migraine.
The exact causes of migraines are not known for sure.
People used to believe that the main cause of migraines were unusual things in the blood vessels in the brain.
However, now people believe that migraines start with a problem in the central nervous system.
When this problem is triggered by various factors it sets off a cascade of neurological and biochemical reactions.
Among these are reactions that disturb the trigeminal nerve.
This nerve is the largest nerve in the head (cranial nerve) and the blood vessels (vascular system) which supply blood to the brain.
There are different risk factors which make a person more likely to have migraines.
Being a female is a risk factor, and so is having family members who had migraines.
For a person who has migraines, there are different trigger factors which may set off a migraine attack.
In a large group of females who have migraines, one of the main trigger factors is when the amount of the hormone estrogen in their body either drops too low or fluctuates (goes up and down).
The World Health Organization says that migraine headache is the most costly brain problem for treatment and disability in the European Union and the United States.
: Estrogen is a hormone that is mostly made in a woman 's ovaries.
There are three types of estrogen: estrone, estradiol and estriol.
In women who have migraines it is usually connected with their menstruation cycle.
About 60 % of women have these menstrual or menstrually-related migraines and the main trigger is believed to be reduced circulating estrogen levels, i.e. the amount of estrogen in the body, specifically estradiol.
In some cases, fluctuation (going up and down) in the amount of circulating estrogen levels may trigger a migraine, i.e. not only too little but sometimes too much estrogen may trigger a migraine.
Childhood periodic syndromes are a group of migraine syndromes that children may have.
When a child has one of these child periodic syndromes there is a greater chance that they will get one of the other, more common types of migraines when they are adults.
Abdominal migraine is a kind of migraine which causes a very bad pain in the area of the abdomen, usually around the ` belly-button ' which is called the periumbilical area.
Abdominal migraine usually affects children starting at about age 7, but it may affect younger children and older children, and it may also sometimes affect adults.
Benign paroxysmal vertigo of childhood (BPVC for short): (this means harmless dizziness, that happens again and again and happens suddenly) is a medical condition which occurs in children usually starting between two and five years of age; it often disappears by the age of eight.
BPVC causes vertigo.
Cyclic vomiting syndrome or cyclical vomiting syndrome (CVS), is a medical condition whose main symptoms are nausea and repeated vomiting.
CVS happens more often in children but it can occur at any age.
Episodic migraine (EM) is when a person has migraine symptoms for 14 days or less in one month, while chronic migraine (CM) is when a person has migraine symptoms for 15 or more days in one month.
When compared to persons with episodic migraine those with CM where less likely to have full-time jobs and had a larger risk of headache-related disability.
Persons with CM are almost twice as likely to have anxiety, chronic pain, and\/or depression; they also have a 40 % greater chance of having heart disease and angina and are 70 % more likely to have a history of stroke.
About 7.68 % of total migraine cases are chronic migraines and about 1 % of people in the United States have CM, with a higher rate among females, middle-aged people, and in those households that had the lowest annual income.
(The American Migraine Prevalence and Prevention Study)
Aura (from the Greek word for breeze) is the word used to describe a series of neurological symptoms that may begin before an epileptic seizure or a migraine headache.
About 15 % of people who have a migraine will have the kind with an aura.
The symptoms may include visual problems such as scotomas (losing vision for a short time, seeing zig-zag lines or floating spots etc.), vertigo, a ringing noise in the ears (tinnitus) and problems speaking.
Scotoma (came from the Greek word for darkness: skotos): a blind spot or area of reduced vision surrounded by a normal visual field.
i.e.: A person can see normally except where the scotoma is.
Scotomas may affect one or both eyes and be either and be either absolute where nothing can be seen within the scotoma or, relative with some ability to see within the area of the scotoma.
Scotomas may also have different patterns and shapes like the fortification scotoma; it is called fortification because it looks like the outline of an old fort.
Scotomas can start of small and then get bigger, move around to different parts of a person 's visual field, and they can also look like flickering lights.
In medicine a factor is a substance, a condition or an activity, or a lack thereof that increases the chance of a certain outcome or condition happening.
If it increases the chance of something unhealthy it is a risk factor.
A trigger factor or ` trigger ' for short is a factor that may cause an activity or the signs and\/or symptoms of a medical condition to begin.
; Risk factors
There are no specific tests to diagnose migraine but a doctor may use different tests to rule out other causes for a person 's symptoms.
The diagnosis of migraine is a clinical diagnosis which means it is based upon a person 's medical history that a person reports to the doctor.
The medical history for a possible migraine diagnosis which can be called the headache history includes information such as:
Differential diagnoses are different medical disorders which may cause the same symptoms.
Before a doctor makes a final diagnosis, which means they are sure of what medical disorder is causing the problem, they think of what other medical conditions have the same or almost the same symptoms, and make sure it 's not one of them.
Often, having one medical condition makes it more likely a person will also have one or more other medical or psychiatric disorders.
These other disorders are the "comorbid disorders" or "comorbidities".
There are various comorbid medical and psychiatric conditions associated with migraines.
The treatment and prognosis (if a disease gets better, worse or stays the same over time) of migraine is affected by the comorbid disorders which may be present and\/or the chance of getting comorbid disorders.
Asthma
Raynaud s disease: is a circulatory disorder in which the smaller arteries that supply blood to the extremities - most often the hands, but it may also affect the, toes, the tip of the nose and the ears - become narrower reducing blood flow.
This causes the extremities to become numb and to be cooler than the core body temperature.
It can be triggered by exposure to stress and cold.
Epilepsy Fibromyalgia
In medicine, a complication is a problem that happens because of, a procedure (like surgery), treatment (like medication), or illness (like migraines).
In medicine epidemiology is the study of what causes diseases and medical conditions, how often they happen, where they happen and who they happen to.
Migraine is more common among boys than girls until the beginning of puberty when girls start getting migraines more often than boys.
By the later part of the teenage years girls get migraines almost twice as much as boys do.
The amount of people who get migraines is highest between the ages of 25 to 55 years in both men and women, after which, the risk of getting migraines get lower as a person gets older.
Between 65-75 % of adult migraine sufferers are women and of these women, about two-thirds have menstrual migraines.
Migraines are more common in people who make less money, there may be different reasons why such as stress.
About two-thirds of migraines are migraines without aura and the remaining one-third of cases are migraine with aura.
Symptoms that mimic those of migraines have been recorded in various cultures throughout written history.
The first known mention was found on cuneiform tablets from Babylonia dating to 2000-1880 B.C.E.A treatment for migraine can be found in the Ebers Papyrus, an Ancient Egyptian medical text named after George Ebers, the German Eygptologist who discovered them.
In the ancient text dated to 1552 B.C.E. migraine is refereed to as "suffering in half the head".
The Ancient Greek physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia 's description of a type of headache he dubbed heterocrania is considered a description of migraine.
Mafic is an adjective describing a silicate mineral or igneous rock which is rich in magnesium and iron.
The term is a portmanteau, made up from "magnesium" and "ferric".
Mafic minerals are usually dark in color and have a specific gravity greater than 3.
Common rock-forming mafic minerals include olivine, pyroxene, amphibole, biotite and other micas, augite and the calcium-rich plagioclase feldspars.
Common mafic rocks include basalt and gabbro.
In terms of chemistry, mafic rocks are on the other side of the rock spectrum from the so-called felsic rocks.
The term roughly corresponds to the older basic rock class.
Mafic lava, before cooling, has a lower viscosity than felsic lava due to its lower silica content.
Water and other volatiles can more easily and gradually escape from mafic lava, so eruptions of volcanoes made of mafic lavas are less explosively violent than felsic lava eruptions.
Most mafic lava volcanoes are oceanic volcanoes, like Hawaii.
Maxis Software is an American company that was founded as a video game developer and is now a brand name of Electronic Arts (EA).
Maxis ' second software title was SimCity, a city simulation and planning game.
Maxis is also the creator of the best-selling computer game of all time, The Sims and its sequel The Sims 2 and a title called Spore in which you guide a creature from cell form to smart, developed creatures.
These four titles and their related products are the brand 's most popular and successful lines.
Most Maxis titles are simulation-based, though none are considered traditional simulations.
Maxis founder Will Wright likens them as "digital dollhouses."
Maxis has also released games developed by other production houses, such as A-Train and SimTower.
Electronic Arts (EA) completed its acquisition of Maxis on July 28, 1997.
EA kept some of the original staff, including Will Wright.
Products were shipped under the Maxis logo for several years until 2004, when The Sims 2 had only the Electronic Arts logo on the box cover.
As of October 18 2006, with the release of The Sims 2: Pets expansion pack, the Maxis title has been removed from the game 's start.
Also, up until The Sims 2: FreeTime, the logo of Maxis was used for a button in the Options panel of the game to display the credits.
In FreeTime, the Maxis logo was replaced by a symbol of the Sims plumbob.
Sir Mark Aurel Stein or Aurel Stein (1862-1943), FRAS, was a British-Hungarian archaeologist and explorer.
He traveled to many parts of South Asia and Central Asia to discover ancient cultures and their remains.
He died and was buried in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Moral equivalence is a term used in political arguments or debate.
It is an informal fallacy.
The phrase describes a kind of indirect proof, but the reasoning is flawed because it distorts issues.
It draws comparisons between different things to make a point that one is just as bad as the other or just as good as the other.
The user of the term imagines a kind of independent position above or beyond the two contenders.
The moral equivalence theory allows someone using the term to appear both objective and detached at the same time.
The concept of moral equivalence is not a term of philosophy; rather, it is only a logical fallacy used in arguments.
It is usually to suggest a moral or ethical hierarchy for two sides in a conflict -- that one is better or worse than the other.
The term originates from a 1906 speech by William James.
The title of the speech was The Moral Equivalent of War.
The term 's popular use was expanded by Jeane Kirkpatrick, who was US ambassador to the United Nations when Ronald Reagan was President of the United States.
In 1966, Kirkpatrick published "The Myth of Moral Equivalence" which responded to the argument that there was "no moral difference" between the Soviet Union and democratic states.
The mica group of minerals are aluminosilicates with various metals.
They split into fine sheets.
Mica includes several closely related materials having perfect basal cleavage.
All are monoclinic which means their crystals are shaped like one kind of ((Prism (geometry)).
They tend towards pseudo-hexagonal crystals and are similar in chemical composition.
The highly perfect cleavage, which is the most prominent characteristic of mica, is explained by the hexagonal sheet-like arrangement of its atoms.
Nicolas Kim Coppola (born January 7, 1964), known professionally as Nicolas Cage, is an American actor, producer and director.
He was born in Long Beach, California.
He has starred in many movies, including: Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Kiss of Death (1995), Face\/Off (1997), The Wicker Man, Ghost Rider (2007), Knowing (2009) and Kick-Ass (2010).
Cage won an Academy Award for the Best Actor in the movie Leaving Las Vegas (1995).
He is the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola.
He was born on January 7, 1964, in Long Beach, California.
His parents August Floyd Coppola, a professor of literature, and Joy (nee Vogelsang), a dancer and choreographer.
His mother is of Polish and German ancestry; his father was Italian-American.
He was raised in a Catholic family.
Napster was a computer program that allowed people to share music over the Internet.
It was shut down as the result of a lawsuit by the RIAA.
Napster has since reopened with some changes
NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) is an auto racing governing organization in the United States.
The three largest racing series run by NASCAR are the Sprint Cup, the Xfinity Series and the Camping World Truck Series.
The Sprint Cup Series is the highest level of racing in NASCAR.
Because it has been known by many different names in its history, it is often called the "Cup Series".
Drivers race in 36 races a year, and the driver with the most points at the end of the year is awarded the Sprint Cup.
The closest championship battle was in 2011, and was won by Tony Stewart, who finished the season tied in driver points with Carl Edwards.
Stewart won the Cup with five race wins on the season to Edwards ' one.
This ended a streak of five Sprint Cup wins by Jimmie Johnson.
Kyle Busch won the 2015 Sprint Cup Series Championship.
The series began in 1949 as the Strictly Stock Series, and became the Grand National Series the next year.
In 1971, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company became the series sponsor, and named it the Winston Cup Series after one of its cigarette brands.
After the 2003 season, a new sponsorship deal was reached with Nextel Communications, a mobile phone company, and the series became the Nextel Cup Series.
The current Sprint Cup name was first used in 2008, after Nextel was purchased by another phone company, Sprint, to form Sprint Nextel.
The car that has won the most was the 1957 Chevrolet with 59 wins.
The Xfinity Series is often called the minor series of NASCAR.
Drivers who wish to drive in the Sprint Cup often race here first.
Drivers race in 35 races, and the driver with the most points at the end of the year becomes the Xfinity Series champion.
The series grew out of NASCAR 's Sportsman division, created in 1950 as a short track racing division.
It became a national touring series in 1982.
The new series was sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, first as the Budweiser Grand National Series and then as the Busch Grand National Series beginning in 1984.
In 2003, NASCAR chose to drop the "Grand National" part of the name, making the competition the Busch Series.
After Anheuser-Busch told NASCAR it would not renew its sponsorship after the 2007 season, Nationwide Insurance became the new sponsor starting in 2008.
It left at the end of 2014 and the series became the Xfinity series in 2015.
Chris Buescher was the 2015 Xfinity Series champion.
The Camping World Truck Series is pickup truck racing.
This series is often known simply as the "Truck Series".
The drivers race in 25 races a year.
The driver with the most points at the end of the year is called the Camping World Truck Series Champion.
The series began in 1995 with American department store Sears as sponsor, using its well-known Craftsman brand of tools.
The first season was known as the SuperTruck Series presented by Craftsman; the name changed to Craftsman Truck Series the next year.
Sears ended its sponsorship of the series after the 2008 season.
Camping World, which sells camping supplies and parts and services for recreational vehicles, became the new sponsor in 2009.
Erik Jones was the 2015 champion of the truck series.
The unofficial racing that became NASCAR started during the Prohibition Era of the 1920 's.
From 1920 to 1933, it was illegal for people in the United States to sell or drink alcoholic beverages.
Even though it was illegal, people still made beer and whiskey (or also known as "moonshine"), and the makers needed people to drive their illegal whiskey to their customers.
The drivers were known as "bootleggers".
These bootleggers were known for making their cars ' engines faster and driving fast.
Eventually, they got together and started racing to see whose car was the fastest.
These unofficial races became NASCAR.
A neuron (also known as a neurone or nerve cell) is a cell that carries electrical impulses.
Neurons are the basic units of the nervous system and its most important part is the brain.
Every neuron is made of a cell body (also called a soma), dendrites and an axon.
Dendrites and axons are nerve fibers, There are about 100 billion neurons in the human brain, which comprises roughly 10 % of all brain cells.
The neurons are supported by glial cells and astrocytes.
Neurons are connected to one another and tissues.
They do not touch and instead form tiny gaps called synapses.
These gaps can be chemical synapses or electrical synapses and pass the signal from one neuron to the next.
There are three classes of neurons: afferent neurons, efferent neurons, and interneurons.
Sensory neurons carry signals from sense organs to the spinal cord and brain.
Relay neurons carry messages from one part of the CNS.
Motor neurons carry signals from the CNS to muscles, motor neurons are connected to the relay neurons.
The signal passes between the neurons via synapses.
Synapses are microscopic voids between cells where chemicals are released from the axon terminal of one cell to specialized chemical receptors on the dendrite of the receiving cell.
Mature neurons never divide: that is the general rule.
They do not do not undergo cell division.
In most cases, neurons are generated by special types of stem cells.
A type of glial cell, called astrocytes, have also been seen to turn into neurons.
In humans, neurogenesis (the origin of new nerve cells) largely ceases during adulthood - but in two brain areas, the hippocampus and the olfactory bulb, there is strong evidence for substantial numbers of new neurons.
The largest part of the human brain by far is the neocortex.
It has at least ~ 1010 neurons, These stay with us from cradle to grave.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or North Atlantic Alliance, the Atlantic Alliance, the Western Alliance, is a defense alliance.
It was established in 1949, by the North Atlantic Treaty signed in Washington, D.C., USA, on April 4, 1949.
Its headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium.
Its other official name is the same name in French, Organisation du Trait de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN).
NATO has two official languages, English and French, defined in Article 14 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
Its members in 1949 were: The United States, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.
Three years later, on 18 February 1952, Greece and Turkey also joined.
When West Germany joined the organization on 9 May 1955 it was described as "a decisive turning point in the history of our continent" by Halvard Lange, Foreign Minister of Norway at the time.
Indeed, the result was the Warsaw Pact, signed on 14 May 1955 by the Soviet Union and its satellite states as response to NATO.
After the Cold War in 1999 three former communist countries, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland joined the NATO.
On 29 March 2004 seven more Northern European and Eastern European countries joined NATO: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and also Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania.
Croatia and Albania received NATO membership invitation on 3 April 2008.
Republic of Macedonia received only conditional invitation because it was vetoed by Greece due to Republic of Macedonia 's name dispute with Greece.
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the United States.
Its capital is Concord and its largest city is Manchester.
New Hampshire was a British colony before the American War of Independence.
It became the ninth state on June 21, 1788, when it accepted the United States Constitution.
New Hampshire was the 9th state to do so.
The state motto is "Live Free or Die" and the nickname is the Granite State.
The state flower is the lilac and the state bird is the purple finch.
New Hampshire is part of New England.
It is bordered by Maine in the East, Massachusetts to the South, Vermont to the West, and Quebec, a Canadian province, to the North.
New Hampshire 's tourist attractions include the Lakes Region, the White Mountains, the autumn leaves, and the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon.
Some famous people from New Hampshire are Franklin Pierce, Adam Sandler, and members of the band Aerosmith.
New Hampshire is also famous for being the first state to vote in the Presidential primaries.
Its population was estimated to be 1,315,809 in 2008, making it the 9th least populous state in the United States and lies just south of Maine.
North America is a continent in the Northern and Western hemispheres of Earth.
It is to the east of the Pacific Ocean, the West of the Atlantic Ocean, the South of the Arctic Ocean, and the North of South America.
It is the northern part of the Americas.
The southernmost part is Central America.
Hundreds of millions of years ago, North America was part of a larger ancient supercontinent named Laurasia.
A few million years ago, a new land bridge arose and connected North America to South America.
Beringia connected North America to Siberia a few times during ice ages in the past 20,000 years.
The noble gases are a group of elements that are all gases.
These elements are all in group 18 of the periodic table.
All of them are monoatomic, meaning each molecule is a single atom They almost never react with other elements.
This is because they have a full 8 electrons outer electron shell.
There are six noble gases:
All of these gases are found in air.
They make up around 0.96 % of the atmosphere.
Noble gas compounds can be formed from noble gases.
When the noble gases are used in cold cathode tubes to produce light, each of them has a different color.
Since Radon is radioactive, it is usually not used for lighting.
Here are pictures of what the others look like:
Ununoctium (element 118) is probably the next noble gas after Radon because it is the next box down in the same group.
However it has a half life of 0.89 ms, after which it decays to Ununhexium (Element 116).
This means its use is probably limited.
Noble gases were discovered by Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay.
Rayleigh won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1904 for his work on noble gas.
Ramsay won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 for his work with noble gas.
A natural monopoly is a type of monopoly in which it is the only seller and producer of a good or service.
It is impossible for a new firm to enter the market as there are very high barriers to entry and very high startup costs, similar to that of a normal monopoly.
The natural monopoly term is usually used to describe markets that have very high fixed costs compared to the marginal costs of selling the good or service, creating economies of scale that are large compared to the size of the market and hence resulting in very high barriers to entry.
Examples of natural monopolies include public utilities such as water services and electricity.
A natural monopoly often keeps getting economies of scale as more of a good or service is produced.
Natural selection is a central concept of evolution.
It was an idea of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, and is sometimes called the survival of the fittest.
Darwin chose the name as an analogy with artificial selection (selective breeding).
Natural selection is the process where organisms with favourable traits are more likely to reproduce.
In doing so, they pass on these traits to the next generation.
Over time this process allows organisms to adapt to their environment.
This is because the frequency of genes for favourable traits increases in the population.
Members of a species are not all alike, partly because of differences in heredity (genetics).
This is true even with children of the same parents.
Some of these differences might make one organism better at surviving and reproducing than others in a particular habitat.
When this organism reproduces, it passes along the genes, which gave it the advantage, to its children.
Some adaptations are extremely long-lasting, useful in many habitats.
The evolution of wings in birds is an example.
Others are good only as long as the environment stays the same.
If the environment changes enough, then another organism might do better.
Natural selection explains why living organisms change over time to have the anatomy, the functions and behavior that they have.
It works like this:
There are now quite a number of examples of natural selection in natural populations.
A well-known example of natural selection in action is the development of antibiotic resistance in microorganisms.
Since the discovery of penicillin in 1928 by Alexander Fleming, antibiotics have been used to fight bacterial diseases.
Natural populations of bacteria contain, among their vast numbers of individual members, considerable variation in their genetic material, as the result of mutations.
When exposed to antibiotics, most bacteria die quickly, but some have mutations that make them slightly less susceptible.
If the exposure to antibiotics is short, these individuals will survive the treatment.
The elimination of individuals which have no resistance is an example of natural selection.
Given enough time, and repeated exposure to the antibiotic, a population of antibiotic-resistant bacteria will emerge.
This leads to what is known as an evolutionary arms race, or co-evolution, in which bacteria continue to develop strains that are less susceptible to antibiotics, while medical researchers continue to develop new antibiotics that can kill them.
Response strategies typically include the use of different, stronger antibiotics; however, new strains of MRSA have recently emerged that are resistant even to these drugs.
A similar situation occurs with pesticide resistance in plants and insects, and with malarial resistance to quinine.
Most day-flying moths were light in color, and a few of the moths were dark.
At first, the light colored moths survived better because they were camouflaged against the white color of the nearby trees.
This made it hard for birds to see them.
When factories were built, it caused pollution that made all the trees look black.
Now the light colored moths were obvious against the dark bark.
The dark colored moths had the advantage after the environment changed.
The genes controlling dark color spread through the population of moths.
After the second world war, controls against pollution worked to make the environment cleaner.
Then the lighter moths once again had the advantage, and are now much more common.
One famous case study is the peppered moth evolution, and there are many other examples.
Another example: Some harmless insects mimic other insects which are dangerous, or which taste foul.
Mimicry evolves because the better mimics survive better.
They live to produce more offspring than the less good mimics.
The genes of the better mimics become more common in the species.
Over time, mimic species get closer to their models.
This is the process of evolution by natural selection.
Sexual selection is a special kind of natural selection.
It is a theory of Charles Darwin that certain evolutionary traits can be explained by competition within a species.
Darwin defined sexual selection as the effects of the "struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex".
It is usually males who fight each other.
Traits selected by male combat are called secondary sexual characteristics (including horns, antlers, etc.) and sometimes referred to as ` weapons '.
Traits selected by mate choice are called ` ornaments '.
Females often prefer to mate with males with external ornaments exaggerated features of morphology.
Genes that enable males to develop impressive ornaments or fighting ability may simply show off greater disease resistance or a more efficient metabolism features that also benefit females.
This idea is known as the ` good genes ' hypothesis.
Sexual selection is still being researched and discussed today.
"Since Darwin s days it has become clear that this kind of selection includes a far wider realm of phenomena, and instead of sexual selection it is better referred to as selection for reproductive success... genuine selection, not elimination, is involved, unlike survival selection.
Considering how many new kinds of selection for reproductive success are discovered year after year, I am beginning to wonder whether it is not even more important than survival selection, at least in certain higher organisms".
The Netherlands is a country that is part of (a constituent country) of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Most of it is in Western Europe, but there are also some parts in the Caribbean.
More than 17 million people live there.
To the north and west of the European part of the Netherlands is the North Sea, and to the east is Germany and to the south is Belgium.
The Netherlands is one of the countries that started the European Union.
People who live in the Netherlands are called "Dutch".
The language of the Netherlands is also called Dutch.
The official capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam.
This however, is not the place where the government is seated, which is in The Hague.
"The Netherlands" means "the low lands".
The land only rises, on average, 1 meter above the sea level.
One third of the land is below sea level.
The Netherlands is also called Holland.
Holland was a very rich area in the western part of the Netherlands, thus causing people to be mistaken.
Some people who do not live in the western part of the Netherlands do not like it when people call the country Holland.
The name "Holland" originates from the old Dutch words "Holt land" which means "wood lands".
At the end of the Middle Ages the dukes of Burgundy, a country that is now part of France, united seventeen areas.
Those areas were called the Netherlands.
When the daughter of a duke married Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, the Netherlands became part of Spain.
In the 16th century many Dutch people became Protestant.
The king of Spain did not like it, he wanted all Dutch to be Roman Catholic.
He decided that all Protestants should be killed.
Of course the Dutch people did not like this, and in 1568 they started a war against Spain.
The war lasted until 1648, therefore it is called the Eighty Years ' War.
An important leader of the Dutch in this war was Willem van Oranje (Willem of orange) also called William the Silent.
In 1648 the Netherlands and Spain signed peace.
The Dutch people were allowed to keep all the areas they conquered.
The part of the Netherlands that was not conquered by the Dutch stayed part of Spain.
Later this part became the country Belgium.
When the Netherlands became independent, it was a very special country.
That time almost all countries in Europe were ruled by a king, but the Netherlands was a republic.
The Netherlands was made up of seven provinces, that were ruled by the big cities.
The cities where ruled by the municipality which consisted from rich civilians.
Together those provinces were ruled by a stadtholder, a very powerful man, but compared to the kings of other European countries he had much less power.
In the 17th century the Netherlands was the richest and one of the most powerful countries in the world.
Therefore the Dutch call the 17th century the Golden Age.
Their Dutch Empire had possessions around the world.
The most important possession were the East Indies, a country that is now called Indonesia.
The Dutch also founded New Netherland, which is now called New York.
The Netherlands often fought wars against other European countries, especially the Anglo-Dutch Wars against England.
Michiel de Ruyter, a Dutch admiral, became a Dutch hero when he defeated the English navy close to London.
In the 18th century the Netherlands became poorer.
Many people thought this was the fault of the stadtholders.
Many thought they had too much power and wanted them to get away.
In 1789 the French people deposed their king.
French armies attacked other countries to depose their leaders too.
In 1795 they attacked the Netherlands.
Stadtholder William V had to flee to England.
The Netherlands were renamed to Batavian Republic and became a democracy.
But the French were not content with the Dutch ruler, so in 1806 the French emperor Napoleon made his brother Louis Bonaparte king of the Netherlands.
Louis became popular in the Netherlands, but the emperor was again not content with him, so in 1810 the Netherlands became a part of France.
In 1815 Napoleon was defeated, and the Netherlands became independent again.
The rulers of European countries thought it was a good idea to make the Netherlands stronger, to make them able to resist another French invasion.
Therefore Belgium and Luxembourg were added to the Netherlands.
William I, the son of stadtholder William V, became king.
The Belgians were not happy with the Dutch king.
In 1830 they revolted.
William sent an army.
He was much more powerful than the Belgians but after ten days the French sent an army to support them.
In 1831 the Belgians chose their own king and Belgium became an independent country.
Some people thought the Dutch king had too much power.
They wanted to give him less power and vote for the government themselves.
In 1848 there were violent revolts against the kings of many European countries.
The Dutch king was afraid the same would happen in the Netherlands.
Therefore he allowed Johan Rudolf Thorbecke to write a constitution.
From then on people were allowed to vote.
At first only rich men were allowed to vote.
From 1919 on everyone was allowed to vote.
In World War I, the Netherlands did not fight.
The Dutch wanted to stay neutral in World War II as well, but in 1940 the country was invaded and occupied by Germany.
Just like in other countries they had occupied, the National Socialist Party started to kill Jews.
Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who lived in the Netherlands.
Her family hid from the Nazis and she wrote a diary.
She died in a Nazi concentration camp and her diary became famous.
In 1944 the American, Canadian, Polish and British armies liberated the south of the Netherlands from Nazi Occupation.
They wanted to cross the Rhine river in Operation Market Garden to liberate the rest of the country, but they were defeated.
It took until May 1945 before the entire country was liberated.
During the five years of Nazi occupation, 250,000 people had died in the Netherlands.
Shortly after the war, Indonesia declared its independence.
The Dutch sent soldiers to fight in Indonesia.
During the war the Dutch realized how it is to be occupied by another country, so some thought they should not do the same to the Indonesians.
After other countries, including the United States, told the Dutch to leave Indonesia, they finally did so in 1949.
After the war the Netherlands became one of the richest countries in the world.
In 2004 the United Nations said that the Netherlands was the 5th best country to live in.
The Netherlands is a constitutional monarchy.
That means the country has a king or queen, but the real power is in hands of a parliament, chosen by the Dutch people.
All Dutch people who are 18 or older are allowed to vote.
There are elections every four years.
After the elections, parties that have had a majority of the votes create a cabinet.
The cabinet consists of a prime minister and several other ministers.
The Netherlands is known for tolerance in politics.
The Netherlands is the only country where soft drugs are not entirely considered illegal.
Furthermore the Netherlands is one of the few countries that allow same-sex marriages, euthanasia and prostitution to a certain extent.
These provinces are all located in the part of the Netherlands that is in Europe.
The country also includes three special municipalities in the Caribbean: Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius.
They are not part of any province, but together are known as the Caribbean Netherlands.
The Netherlands (both the European part and the Caribbean Netherlands), together with Aruba, Cura ao and Sint Maarten, also in the Caribbean, form a sovereign state called the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
When the Kingdom was formed in 1954, the territories in the Caribbean became part of the Netherlands Antilles.
At that time it also included Suriname in South America, which became an independent country in 1975.
Aruba left the Antilles in 1986, and Cura ao and Sint Maarten did the same in 2010.
The rest of the islands then became the Caribbean Netherlands which is part of the Netherlands proper.
This is a list of the cities with over 100,000 people.
In fact a large part of the Netherlands was created by the sand that came from the many rivers flowing through it.
Notable Dutch rivers are the Rhine, the Maas, the IJssel and the Scelt.
A large part of the Netherlands is below sea level.
This is because the Dutch have made many lakes and parts of the sea dry, creating polders.
Therefore there is a saying "God created the earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands."
This makes the Netherlands very flat.
In the very south-east of the Netherlands, in Limburg, there are some hills.
Therefore, this region is a tourist-attraction for many Dutch people.
The highest point in the European portion of the Netherlands, the Vaalserberg, is 323 metres above sea level.
The highest point in both the Netherlands proper and the Kingdom of the Netherlands is Mount Scenery, on the Caribbean island of Saba, at 887 metres.
The Netherlands is a small country; about 300 kilometers from north to south, and about 170 kilometers from east to west.
It has an oceanic climate (Cfb in the K ppen climate classification).
The Netherlands is a small country, but many people live there.
It is one of the most densely populated countries of the world.
Most people in the Netherlands speak Dutch.
In Friesland, about 200,000 people speak Frisian.
Frisian is the language with the most similarities to English.
Some Dutch people speak dialects.
The Saxon dialects spoken in the northeastern part of the Netherlands are somewhat similar to Low German.
According to a survey done in 2006, 25 % of the Dutch people are Christian and 3 % believe in another organised religion, like Judaism, Islam or Hinduism.
Twenty-six percent are ` unbounded spiritual ' (have their own beliefs and are not tied to a religion).
The other 44 % are not religious.
N.W.A (Niggaz Wit Attitudes also Niggaz With Attitude) were an American rap group from Compton, California, and its members were Eazy-E, DJ Yella, MC Ren, Ice Cube and Dr. Dre.
The rap group started in 1986 and lasted until 1991.
The group originated gangsta rap and had lyrics unique to gangsta rap that were very explicit, violent, misogynist and sexist, which made them controversial.
Their controversies included being banned from many American radio stations and one of their most controversial songs "Fuck tha Police" (A song meant to insult police) got them in trouble with the law.
Many people believed that N.W.A glamorized gang violence, street thugs and the violent lifestyle among many people in Compton.
New Wave (or New Wave music) is a style of rock music that developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
New wave music was inspired by the punk rock movement.
New Wave music is rock music mixed with other types of music, such as punk rock music, funk, disco, beat and ska.
New wave bands such as the Talking Heads were anti-corporate, experimental, and had complex lyrics.
Other new wave bands included Blondie, Television, Patti Smith, The Jam, The B-52 's, Devo, Jungle Street, and Elvis Costello.
In essence, New Wave maintained the rebellious and energetic side of punk rock, yet was less raw and aggressive.
Whilst a lot of New Wave was lyrically complex, much New Wave was pop-based, containing simple melodies and catchy hooks.
Additionally, New Wave music was also very electronic in nature, and made strong usage of synthesizers.
New Wave is a broad term, and as such, New Wave artists varied greatly in style, ranging from pure rock, to synthpop, to reggae-influenced music.
New Wave, as a genre, additionally had a strong visual aesthetic, and is noted for the colourful fashions which New Wave artists would sport in the 1980s.
When MTV started broadcasting in 1981, many New Wave bands had their music videos played on television.
This made New Wave music more popular.
A well-known New Wave video is Whip It by Devo.
A numeral system (or system of numeration) is a way to write numbers.
Roman numerals and tally marks are examples.
"11" usually means eleven, but if the numeral system is binary, then "11" means three.
A numeral is a symbol or group of symbols, or a word in a natural language that represents a number.
Numerals differ from numbers just as the word "rock" differs from a real rock.
The symbols "11", "eleven" and "XI" are different numerals, all representing the same number.
This article tries to explain the different systems of numerals.
See also number names.
There are different symbols that can be used to make numbers.
In a system with base 10 (the normal decimal system), usually the symbols 0,1,2, 3, 4, 5,6, 7, 8, and 9 are used.
The numbers 0 to 9 can be written as one symbol, 0... 9.
To count past 9, symbols have to be put together.
10 can be seen as 1 in the tens ' place and 0 in the ones ' place, or as 1 times 101 plus 0 times 100.
With a base of 2, only the symbols 0 and 1 are used.
10 in base 2 notation is therefore 1 times 21 plus 0 times 20.
This is the same as 2, in the base 10 notation.
For bases bigger than 10, capital letters are used as symbols.
Today, mainly base 10 is in use.
Computers use binary and people who study computers often use octal and Hexadecimal numeral systems.
Ancient Sumer used base 60.
Mesoamerica used base 20.
Most electronic calculations are done in binary (base 2), but most people do calculations in decimal (base ten).
A natural language is the kind which we use in everyday conversation and writing.
For example English, Hindi, Chinese.
Natural languages are always very flexible, and people speak them in slightly different ways.
There are some natural languages which are simplified, such as Basic English and Esperanto.
An artificial language is quite different, as it is built for some special purpose.
They are always very precise, and must be used according to pre-set rules.
Symbolic logic, mathematics, programming languages.
Nitrogen is a nonmetal chemical element.
The atmosphere contains more than 78 percent of nitrogen.
It has the chemical symbol N and atomic number 7.
Its stable inside typically contains 14 nucleons (7 protons and 7 neutrons).
It has 5 electrons in its outer shell.
Nitrogen is a colorless odorless gas at normal temperature.
It is normally attached to another nitrogen atom, making a nitrogen molecule (N2).
The bond is very strong.
That is why many explosives contain nitrogen.
The bond is broken when the explosive is made.
When it explodes the bond forms, releasing a lot of energy.
It turns into a liquid at -195.8 C and turns into a solid at -210 C. If it is compressed, it can be turned into a liquid without making it cold.
It usually does not combine with other atoms because of its strong bond.
The bond prevents it from reacting.
Lithium is one of the only chemical elements that react with nitrogen without being heated.
Magnesium can burn in nitrogen.
Nitrogen also makes blue electric sparks.
The blue color is caused by the atoms being excited.
When they get normal again, they release light.
When nitrogen is excited, it reacts with many things that it does not normally react with.
Many chemical compounds that are important for industrial purposes contain nitrogen ions.
These include ammonia, nitric acid, nitrates and cyanides.
Nitrogen comes in several oxidation states; -3, -2, -1 \/ 3, +1, +3, +4, and +5.
Each of those oxidation states has its set of compounds.
Compounds in the -3 oxidation state are weak reducing agents.
These include ammonia, ammonium, amide and nitrides.
Amino acids and proteins contain nitrogen in this oxidation state.
Hydrazine, a compound in the -2 oxidation state, is a strong reducing agent.
Azides contain nitrogen in the -1 \/ 3 oxidation state.
They are extremely powerful reducing agents, and most are very toxic.
Nitrous oxide contains nitrogen in the +1 oxidation state.
It is used as an anesthetic.
Compounds containing nitrogen in the +2 oxidation state, such as nitric oxide, are reducing agents.
+3 oxidation state compounds are strong oxidizing agents and weak reducing agents.
Nitrites are the most common +3 compounds.
Compounds in the +4 oxidation state are strong oxidizing agents.
They include nitrogen dioxide and dinitrogen tetroxide.
Compounds containing nitrogen in the +5 oxidation state are strong oxidizing agents.
They are one of the more common groups of nitrogen compounds.
They include nitric acid and dinitrogen pentoxide.
They also include nitrates, which are used in explosives such as dynamite, nitroglycerin and trinitrotoluene.
Air is made up of about 78 % nitrogen and about 20.95 % oxygen, (1 % argon, and traces of other gasses such as carbon dioxide, and water vapor, among others.
It is also in a few nitrates in the ground.
Ammonium minerals are rare.
Nitrogen is in proteins.
Pure liquid nitrogen can be made by cooling air.
The nitrogen turns into a liquid at a different temperature than the oxygen.
It can also be made by heating certain chemical compounds, such as sodium azide.
Nitrogen is an element is used to prevent things from reacting with the oxygen in the air.
It can be used to fill crisp bags and incandescent bulbs.
It is also used to fill some tires.
It can be used to make electric components like transistors.
Liquid nitrogen can be used to freeze things.
Nitrogen compounds have many uses, such as anesthetics (nitrous oxide), explosives (dynamite), cleaners (ammonia), and meat (protein), and planes (fuel).
Nitrogen was discovered by Daniel Rutherford in 1772, who called it noxious gas or fixed gas.
They discovered that part of air did not burn.
It was found that animals died in it.
It was known as "azote".
Many nitrogen compounds also contain the "azide" or "azine" letters, such as hydrazine.
In 1910, Lord Rayleigh found out that when a spark was passed through nitrogen, it made a reactive form of nitrogen.
This nitrogen reacted with many metals and compounds.
Nitrogen is not poisonous.
We can safely breathe it when it is a part of air, but we can not breathe pure nitrogen by itself, because it does not have the oxygen that we need to live.
Anyone that inhales pure nitrogen will just pass out.
The North Sea is a sea in northern Europe.
It is part of the Atlantic ocean.
The North Sea is between Norway and Denmark in the east, Scotland and England in the west, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France in the south.
The Skagerrak connects the North Sea to the Baltic Sea.
In the south, the North Sea becomes the English Channel, a sea between England and France.
This is called the Dover Straits and is very busy with ships.
The border between the North Sea and the Skagerrak is at an imagined line between Lindesnes in Norway, and Hanstholm in Denmark.
In the North, the North sea is open towards the Atlantic.
The border between the two is an imagined line from Northern Scotland, to the Shetlands, and then to lesund in Norway.
According to the Oslo-Paris Treaty of 1962 it is a bit more to the west and the north though.
The treaty puts it at 5 East longitude, and 62 North latitude.
That is at the parallel of the Geirangerfjord in Norway.
On average, the North Sea has a depth of only 94 metres.
About 80 million people live near the North Sea, at most 150 km away from the coast.
Together with the English Channel in the south, the southern North Sea is the busiest body of water in the world.
Well-known rivers that drain into the North Sea include the Tay (at Dundee), the Forth (at Edinburgh), the Tyne (South Shields), the Wear (at Sunderland), the Tees (near Middlesbrough), the Elbe (at Cuxhaven), the Weser (at Bremerhaven), the Rhine and Meuse or Maas (at Rotterdam), the Scheldt (at Flushing or Vlissingen), the Thames, and the Humber (at Hull).
The Kiel Canal, one of the world 's busiest artificial waterways, connects the North Sea with the Baltic.
Its name comes from its relationship to the land of the Frisians (see Frisia).
They live directly to the south of the North Sea, and to the west of the East Sea (Oostzee, the Baltic Sea), the former South Sea (Zuiderzee, today 's IJsselmeer) and the today reclaimed Middle Sea (Middelzee).
But the spread of the name could also be from the view of the cities of the Hanseatic League.
Some of its main cities, like L beck, Bremen or Hamburg had the same view.
In classical times this body of water was also called the Oceanum Germanicum or Mare Germanicum, meaning German Ocean or Sea.
This name was commonly used in English and other languages along with the name North Sea, until the early eighteenth century.
By the late nineteenth century, German Sea was a rare, scholarly usage even in Germany.
In Danish the North Sea is also named Vesterhavet (besides Nords en), meaning Western Ocean because it is west of Denmark.
Most of the North sea is on the European Continental shelf.
On average, the depth is about 93 to 94 meters only.
In the south it is very shallow, only 25 to 35 meters.
In the north in the bathyal zone north of the Shetlands, this depth increases to between 100 and 200 metres.
In the south, the depth is at most 50 metres.
An exception to this is the Norwegian Trench.
It is deepest there, with a depth of 725 metres.
The most shallow part of it is a sand bank called Dogger Bank.
In the southern part, there are many sand banks.
The southern north sea is composed of the Southern Bight, before the coast of Belgium and the Netherlands and the German Bight before the coastline of Germany.
The Dogger Bank is the limit between the southern and central parts.
The Waddenzee runs all the way from Den Helder in the Netherlands to Esbjerg in Denmark.
The Dogger Bank covers an area about half the size of the Netherlands.
There, the North Sea has a depth of between 13 and 20 metres only.
The area is very famous for fishing.
With some storms there are even waves breaking there.
The Norwegian Trench has an average depth of around 250 to 300 metres; at the entrance to the Skagerrak, the depth increases up to 725 meters.
Along the trench is the Norwegian Current, which brings most of the waters of the North Sea into the Atlantic ocean.
Also, most of the waters of the Baltic Sea flow northwards here.
About 200 km east of the Scottish city of Dundee there are more trenches, known collectively as the Devil 's hole.
Generally, the water is about 90 meters deep there.
The trenches very often are only a few kilometers in length.
In these trenches, the depth increases to up to 230 meters.
In the Dover Strait the water is about 30 meters deep.
At the end of the English Channel, this depth increases to about 100 meters.
In the last ice age the North Sea was covered by large areas of ice called glaciers.
About 20,000 years ago the ice melted and the North Sea was formed (made).
In the 1960s geologists found large areas of oil and natural gas under the North Sea.
Most of the oil fields are owned by the United Kingdom and Norway but some belong to Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany.
Drilling began in the 1960s and led to a famous argument between England and Scotland about how the revenue (money) from the oil should be spent.
People have been fishing in the North Sea for thousands of years.
However, so many fish are now caught there that new ones may not be able to grow fast enough to keep the fishery going.
Terns, Atlantic puffins, razorbills, kittiwakes and other seabirds live on the North Sea coast.
Many coastal areas are protected nature reserves.
Natural Born Killers is a 1994 American crime drama movie directed by Oliver Stone.
It is about a couple in love who perform murder across the southwestern United States.
Mickey Knox is played by Woody Harrelson.
Mallory Knox is played by Juliette Lewis.
Ed Wilson is played by Rodney Dangerfield.
Tommy Lee Jones also acts in the movie.
This movie was released on August 26, 1994.
It was threatened with an NC-17 rating by the MPAA.
It was then edited downward to R-rating level.
The movie received mixed reviews from the critics.
Nancy Davis Reagan (born Anne Frances Robbins; July 6, 1921 March 6, 2016) was the widow of Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States and was First Lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989.
Reagan was born in Manhattan, New York City.
Her parents divorced soon after her birth.
She grew up in Maryland.
In Maryland, she lived with an aunt and uncle while her mother looked for acting jobs.
She was an actress in Hollywood during the 1940s and 1950s.
She starred in movies such as, Donovan 's Brain, Night Into Morning and Hellcats of the Navy.
In 1952, she married Ronald Reagan who was then president of the Screen Actors Guild.
They had two children, Ron and Patti.
Reagan was the First Lady of California when her husband was Governor from 1967 to 1975.
She became part of the Foster Grandparents Program.
Nancy Reagan became First Lady of the United States in January 1981 after her husband 's election.
She was criticized in his first term due to her decision to replace the White House china.
Her interest in high-end fashion had much attention and criticism.
She created the anti-drug campaign, "Just Say No" during her husband 's presidency.
She always protected her husband and controversy occurred when it was revealed in 1988 that she had hired an astrologer to assist in planning the president 's schedule after the 1981 assassination attempt on her husband.
She had a strong influence on her husband.
She played a role in a few of his personnel and diplomatic decisions.
The Reagans left the White House in 1989.
Nancy devoted most of her time to caring for her ill husband who was diagnosed in 1994 with Alzheimer 's disease until his death in 2004.
Nancy Reagan remained active within the Reagan Library and in politics.
Until her death, Reagan supported and advocated stem cell research.
She was born in Manhattan, New York City.
Her birthname was Anne Frances Robbins.
The names of her parents were Kenneth Seymour Robbins and Edith Luckett.
Edith Luckett was an actress.
When Nancy was six years old, her mother married Dr. Loyal Davis.
Dr. Loyal Davis was a neurosurgeon.
Dr. Davis adopted Nancy as his daughter when she was 16 years old.
She changed her name to Nancy Davis because this.
She spent her childhood in Chicago, Illinois.
She was also goddaughter of Russian-born silent movie star Alla Nazimova.
Nancy studied at Girls ' Latin School and at Smith College in Massachusetts.
From Smith College, she was good in theater.
After her graduation, she became an actress.
She acted in many plays and movies.
One of them was the hit musical Lute Song.
She became famous as Nancy Davis.
She had roles in eleven movies from 1949 to 1956.
In a movie named Hellcats of the Navy (1957), she played a role.
In the movie she co-starred along with her husband Ronald Reagan.
Her last movie was 1958 's Crash Landing.
After this, she appeared in television dramas until 1962.
After 1962, she retired as an actress.
She met Ronald Reagan in 1951.
At that time Reagan was the president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).
Another actress with the same name (of Nancy) had appeared in a Hollywood blacklist.
This name confusion had created problems for Nancy.
Anyone with his or her name in the Hollywood blacklist was unable to get any work in any movie.
As she would not get any roles due to the name in the Hollywood blacklist, she met Reagan to clear this issue.
Over a period of time, they came closer to each other.
They married on March 4, 1952 in Los Angeles, California.
Nancy once remembered: "My life really began when I married my husband."
The Reagans had two children.
She gave birth to a daughter Patti Davis on October 21, 1952, seven months after the couple 's wedding.
She gave birth to a son named Ron Reagan on May 20, 1958.
Nancy Reagan is also stepmother to Michael Reagan and the late Maureen Reagan.
Michael and Maureen were the children of Ronald Reagan 's first marriage to actress Jane Wyman.
Ronald Reagan was governor of California for two terms, from 1967 to 1975.
During this period, Nancy Reagan was the First Lady of California.
The officials of the fire department had described official residence of the Governor in Sacramento, California as a firetrap.
She then made Reagan and the whole family move to a wealthy suburb.
Some people thought moving the governor 's mansion was a bad idea.
She was very active as the First lady of California.
She visited war veterans, the elderly people, and the handicapped people.
She also worked with many groups working for charity.
One such program was the Foster Grandparent Program.
She continued her part with the Foster grandparent program when she came to Washington, D.C. as the First Lady of the United States.
When Ronald Reagan became President of the United States in 1981, Nancy Reagan began her role actively as the First Lady.
In her early years as the First Lady, a private foundation purchased new dishware for the White House.
The cost was $ 200,000.
This attracted bad publicity, as the US economy was facing recession at that time.
She also used expensive fashion.
This also attracted bad publicity sometimes.
However, once in 1982 at Gridiron Club, she dressed in ragged clothes and sang "Second-Hand Rose".
This made Nancy more popular.
Nancy Reagan took close interest in the affairs of the White House.
Some people believe that she helped her husband make major decisions at the White House.
People also remember her for conservative fashions.
Her fashion was copied by many women of her time.
She was also against use of drugs by young persons.
She also got interested in astrology as the First Lady.
She used the services of Joan Quigley who was an astrologer.
In 1981, her husband faced an assassination attempt.
This made Nancy rely on astrology.
She tried to influence appointments and movements of her husband based on astrology.
At that time the White House Chief of Staff was Donald Regan.
He did not find this very useful.
There was a struggle between Donald Regan and the First Lady.
Donald Regan resigned in 1987 because of this.
In October 1987, physicians found that Nancy Reagan had breast cancer.
She underwent an operation, mastectomy.
In 1983 Reagan, Henry Kissinger (former Secretary of State) and philanthropists Barbara and Marvin Davis, appeared in an episode of the very popular soap opera Dynasty (TV series).
In addition, Reagan appeared as herself in an episode of the popular sitcom Diff ` rent Strokes.
She appeared on Diff ` rent Strokes for her support for her "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign which she created.
Nancy Reagan lived in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California.
In 1991, Kitty Kelley wrote a book about her.
The book s name is Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography.
The book became very famous and sold many copies.
The book gives certain details like the former First Lady 's association with astrology.
It also talked about her White House meetings with Frank Sinatra.
She spent much of her time caring for her husband who was suffering from Alzheimer 's disease.
Ronald Reagan died in their Bel Air home on June 5, 2004.
She asked President George W. Bush to support research in the hopes that such research would lead to a cure for Alzheimer 's disease.
In 2004, Bob Colacello wrote a book "Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House, 1911-1980", published by Warner Books.
In 2005 she had gone to London to visit Margaret Thatcher and Charles, Prince of Wales.
There she slipped over in her hotel room and had to undergo treatment in a hospital.
Following her husband 's diagnosis and death, Nancy became a stem-cell research advocate.
She urged Congress and President George W. Bush to support federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
President Bush opposed the idea.
In 2009, she praised President Barack Obama for lifting restrictions on such research.
Mrs. Reagan has said that she believes that it could lead to a cure for Alzheimer 's.
Reagan died on March 6, 2016 in her home in Bel Air, Los Angeles.
She died of congestive heart failure.
Reagan was aged 94.
She was buried next to her husband at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on March 11.
New Brunswick is a province in the eastern part of Canada.
Its capital city is Fredericton.
Other large cities are Saint John and Moncton.
More than 750,000 people live in New Brunswick.
The English and French languages are both spoken in New Brunswick, and is the only province in Canada where both languages are official.
This is because about 33 % of the people living in New Brunswick speak French.
Some industries such as forestry, mining, farming and fishing are important to the province, as it is near the Atlantic Ocean.
Nova Scotia is a small province found on the east coast of Canada.
The name "Nova Scotia" is Latin for "New Scotland".
The capital and biggest city is Halifax.
People who live in Nova Scotia are called Nova Scotians.
Right now, there are over 900,000 of them; many of whom do not live in large cities or towns, but villages, where few people live.
What is now called "Nova Scotia" used to be controlled by the Micmac Indians.
The French settled among them at Port Royal after 1600, and called the land part of Acadia, with Port Royal as its capital.
In 1710, after a war, the British captured Port Royal and went on to capture the rest of the peninsula.
It was the first time that the British had captured and held a French colony.
Nova Scotia 's government is a democracy.
Stephen McNeil is the premier and John James Grant is the lieutenant governor.
The Northwest Territories is a territory in northern Canada.
42,944 people lived there as of January 1, 2005.
It is 1,171,918 square kilometers.
The capital of the Northwest Territories is Yellowknife.
Yellowknife was the capital since 1967.
The Northwest Territories have many geographical features, like the Great Bear Lake, the Mackenzie River and Nahanni River, which is a national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Northwest Territories entered the Canadian Confederation in 1870.
The Hudson 's Bay Company gave the land to the Dominion of Canada.
The Northwest Territories have one person in the House of Commons and the Canadian Senate.
A lot of parts of the Northwest Territories were given to other provinces, including British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.
In 1999, the eastern part of the Northwest Territories became the territory of Nunavut.
The neolithic is the youngest part of the Stone Age.
The word "neolithic" comes from two words in greek meaning "new" and "lithic", meaning "stone".
The neolithic period is the time when farming was invented and when people started caring for animals, such as cows, sheep and pigs.
The neolithic starts at different times in different places, since not everyone started farming at the same time.
After the neolithic period comes the Bronze Age.
Nintendo (In Japanese:) is a company that makes video games and video game consoles.
At first, it began by creating playing cards and other toys and games.
Their main office is in Kyoto, Japan.
They also have offices in other continents.
Nintendo was formed on September 23, 1889.
They originally were a company that made playing cards.
Then it went on to making toys, but in the 1960s, they started doing other things, such as owning hotels.
They began making video games only in the 1970s.
In 1980, they came out with a hand-held game device called Game and Watch.
Nintendo 's first video game console was the Famicom.
Famicom was first only released in Japan but it was later released in some other areas, such as North America and Europe.
When they released it in there, its name was changed to "Nintendo Entertainment System", or NES for short.
They also released some popular stand-alone video games, with names like the arcade game Donkey Kong, and NES games Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and The Legend of Zelda.
Later, the company made hand-helds such as the Game Boy and DS, and consoles such as Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii, and WiiU.
Today, Nintendo has many popular characters and series.
Mario, and The Legend of Zelda are examples of these.
Nintendo currently sells the 3DS, Wii, Wii U and Nintendo DS video game consoles.
The Wii plugs into a TV and is called a home console, because it is used most of the time at home.
The Nintendo DS is small and has its own screens.
It is called portable and handheld, because it is played on using hands, and can be taken anywhere.
The 3DS is like the DS, but it has a switch that can make one of the screens show things in 3D plus a higher horse power.
In March 2011 of February 26 2012, Nintendo released their new handheld system in Japan and Europe, the Nintendo 3DS.
It is the first system to have 3D without special 3D glasses.
On the date of July 28 2012, Nintendo released a bigger update called the 3DS XL, which has a new anti-glare screen, a top screen that is 90 % bigger than the old 3DS and has a matte plastic finish instead of a glossy metal one.
This means that scratches and fingerprints can not be seen as easily, but it can be broken more easily and it is not as durable.
Every year, the Nobel Prizes are given to people and institutions around the world.
These prizes are for the study of science and for world peace.
The science prizes include Literature, Science, and Medicine.
The Nobel Prize was started by Alfred Nobel.
His 1895 testament (or will) gave money for the Prizes.
The Nobel Foundation now controls the money.
The Foundation asks different committees or academies to decide who receives the prizes.
For many people, a Nobel Prize is a very great honor.
People who receive a Nobel Prize are called "Nobel laureates".
Each prize winner gets a medal, a diploma and a sum of money.
In 1901, the winners of the first Nobel Prizes were given 150,782 SEK.
This is same as 7,731,004 SEK in December 2007.
In 2008, the winners were awarded a prize of 10,000,000 SEK.
The awards are presented in Stockholm, Sweden, in a ceremony on December 10.
This day is the anniversary of Nobel 's death.
The Nobel Prize in Economics was not a part of Nobel 's will.
It was started in 1969 by Sveriges Riksbank, the Bank of Sweden.
The bank donated money to the Nobel Foundation for the Economics Prize in 1968.
The Economics Studies Prize is in the memory of Alfred Nobel.
It is awarded each year with the other Nobel prizes.
Some people have received more than one Nobel Prize.
They are:
Some families have received multiple laureates.
Niels Bohr (7 October 1885 - 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who helped discover quantum physics, the structure of the atom, and the atomic bomb.
Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1922 for, in short, discovering the quantization of atomic energy levels.
He worked also in a project of physicists known as Manhattan Project.
He married Margrethe N rlund in 1912.
One of his sons was Aage Bohr, who was also an important physicist.
Aage won in 1975 his own Nobel prize.
Niels Bohr worked also with Albert Einstein.
He is also considered one of the most important physicists of the 20th century.
His full name was Niels Henrik David Bohr.
He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1885.
His father was Christian Bohr, who was also professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen.
His mother was Ellen Adler Bohr.
She was of a rich family of bankers and politicians.
Niels was also the brother of Harald Bohr.
He was a mathematician and he played in the National Team of Football.
Niels liked football also.
He played with his brother in many matches.
Niels used to be the goal keeper.
In 1903 Bohr began studies of philosophy and mathematics at the Copenhagen University.
In 1905 the Royal Danish Academy of Science organized a competition.
Niels Bohr participated with some experiments in surface tension.
He used the laboratory of his father in the university, because he knew it since he was a boy.
His work won the prize.
For this reason, he decided to stop the studies of philosophy and mathematics and changed to physics.
He received his doctorate in 1911.
Bohr did experiments in the Trinity College in Cambridge under the direction of J.J. Thomson.
After it, he went to the University of Manchester under the direction of Ernest Rutherford.
On the basis of the theories of Rutherford, he published his theory of electrons.
He introduces the theory of electrons traveling in orbits around the nucleus of the atom in 1913 and the chemical properties of the orbit.
He introduced the idea that an electron can drop from a higher energy orbit to a lower one.
Then it can emit a photon of discrete energy.
This is the basis of quantum theory.
Niels Bohr and his wife Margrethe N rlund Bohr had four sons.
Their oldest died in a tragic boating accident and another died from childhood meningitis.
The others went on to lead successful lives, including Aage Bohr, who became a very successful physicist and, like his father, won a Nobel Prize in physics, in 1975.
The National Football League (also called the NFL) is an American football league.
There are 32 teams in the league.
The league is a professional league, which means that the players are paid to play and that it is their job.
A league is a competition between a number of teams.
The teams play other teams, and the results are used to list the teams in order of who is best.
The team at the top of the list (called a league table) is the best team and the team at the bottom is the worst team.
It is now the most popular professional league in the United States by number of television viewers.
The NFL also has the highest per-game attendance of any professional league in the world; in the most recently completed 2014 season, the average crowd at an NFL game was more than 67,000.
Its championship game, the Super Bowl, is an unofficial national holiday in the U.S., and is seen by more people than any other American television program.
In 1920, an American football league was formed.
It was called the American Professional Football Association.
In 1921 it changed its name to the National Football League.
In 1960 another league was formed, called the American Football League.
In 1970 the National Football League and the American Football League joined together so that the teams from each league could play each other.
The league called the National Football League changed its name to the National Football Conference (usually called the NFC) and the league called the American Football League changed its name to the American Football Conference (usually called the AFC).
The two conferences together are now called the National Football League.
People can also call it by the acronym NFL for short.
Because the U.S. is a big country and it would be hard for teams to travel a long way to play other teams, the teams are separated into smaller regional divisions based on where they are in the country.
The teams are separated like this:
The teams in the NFL play games against each other from September to January.
This time is called a season.
Each team plays 16 games.
This is how which games a team will play is chosen:
Since the 2006 season, the NFL has used a "flexible-scheduling" system for the last seven weeks of the regular season where there is a Sunday night game.
The system is designed so that the league has the flexibility in selecting games to air on Sunday night that will feature the current hottest, streaking teams.
Under the system, all Sunday games in the affected weeks will tentatively have the "early" start time of 1 p.m. ET\/10 a.m. PT, except those played in the Pacific or Mountain time zones, which will have the tentative start time of 4 p.m. ET\/1 p.m. PT.
On the Tuesday 12 days before the games, the league will move one game to the prime-time slot, and possibly move one or more 1 p.m. slotted games to the 4 p.m. slot.
During the last week of the season, the league could re-schedule games as late as six days before the contests so that as many of the television networks as possible will be able to broadcast a game that has playoff implications.
At the end of every NFL season, the eight teams that finish the season at the top of their leagues and two teams from each conference that were the best teams apart from the eight league winners (these four teams are called Wild Cards) enter a competition to see who is the best team in the whole league.
This is called the Playoffs.
There are a total of 12 teams in the Playoffs, six from the NFC and six from the AFC.
The six teams in each conference are listed in order of how well they played in the season.
This is called seeding and it is done to make it easier for the better teams to win.
The teams that did not win their leagues (the Wild Cards) are always the fifth and sixth seeds in the list, even if they were better than a team that won a different league.
In the first part of the playoffs (called Wild Card Weekend) there are four games.
The teams that lose these games are not in the playoffs competition any more.
Now there are only 8 teams left.
In the second part of the playoffs (called the Divisional Playoffs) there are four games.
The teams that lose these games are not in the playoffs competition any more.
Now there are only 4 teams left.
In the third part of the playoffs (called the Conference Championship Games) there are two games.
The last part of the playoffs is called the Super Bowl.
The AFC Champion and the NFC Champion teams play each other to decide who is the best team in the NFL.
Nazi Germany is the widely-used name given to Germany between 1933 and 1945.
This is the period when Adolf Hitler 's Nazi Party controlled Germany.
It is also sometimes called the Third Reich, which means the "Third Empire" or "Third Realm."
The Nazis said their empire would be the third great empire in history.
The first was the Holy Roman Empire.
The second was the Second Empire of 1871-1918.
However, the term "Third Reich" was more popular in other countries.
In Germany, it was merely called The Reich (pronounced "rike").
The Nazis renamed their empire the Greater German Reich.
Hitler led Nazi Germany until it collapsed in 1945, when he killed himself.
The Nazi Party was destroyed in the same year as its leaders ran away, were arrested, or killed themselves.
Some were sentenced to death and executed by the Western and Soviet powers.
Others survived and were able to get important jobs.
However, their racial policies never again held power in Germany.
The Nazi government was formed under the idea that some races were better than others.
The Nazis thought the "Aryan race" (pure Germans) were the best race of all, and that they deserved power and respect.
This idea gained a lot of respect after the Great Depression made people who used to be important lose power.
Hitler blamed the economic depression on Jewish capitalists and communist gangs.
He was able to make Germans feel like they were innocent victims who had to take charge over Europe.
When the Nazi regime was destroyed at the end of World War II, Germany was split in two.
The Soviet Union took over East Germany.
The United Kingdom, France, and the United States took over West Germany.
In the late 1930s, Hitler began attacking many countries and taking them over.
Later, on September 1st, 1939, German forces attacked Poland, which began World War II.
With over a million troops, Hitler 's army easily took over Poland, while losing just around 59,000 soldiers.
Poland lost over 900,000 soldiers, because their army and weapons were not as good as the Nazis '.
On October 12, 1939, Hitler sent a letter to the United Kingdom promising peace.
The British continued the war.
Hitler continued on and took over France in the Battle of France.
Then he attacked England.
Winston Churchill, now Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, did not surrender.
The Battle of Britain lasted from July to October 1940.
Many of the Luftwaffe (the German Air Force) were killed, and in early October they retreated back into Greater Germany.
Hitler was unhappy, and ordered the mass bombardment of London.
Thousands of civilians died, but the Royal Air Force regained strength.
When Hitler decided to face east for his racial war of destroying the Slavs and Jews, he allowed Britain to regain power.
In 1941, Hitler gave orders to attack the Soviet Union.
The first attack was code-named "Operation Barbarossa."
It lasted from June 22, 1941 into winter of that year.
Josef Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, had accidentally helped the Germans with his Great Purges, which had killed many Russian officers before the war even began.
During Operation Barbarossa, many more Soviet soldiers died than Germans.
The winters were very cold, and many soldiers froze to death.
At the Stalingrad this was not true.
One million soldiers died on each side.
Germany could not replace its losses, so Stalingrad was the turning point of the war.
After Stalingrad, the Germans lost their momentum.
The Soviets learned from the long campaigns, fought better, and gained many new weapons from very efficient factories.
The United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union fought together, and pushed against the smaller German army.
In May 1945, they took over Berlin to win the war.
After the Allies took over Germany, the Soviets set up the German Democratic Republic.
It was a socialist state that followed communism.
The United Kingdom, the United States, and France set up the Federal Republic of Germany in the west.
It was a democratic country.
When the Nazis took over Germany, most people in the country were Christians.
The Nazis wanted to change the way people thought about the world, and they did not like the Christian Churches.
They closely watched priests, and often arrested or punished them.
By 1940, priests from all over the Nazi Empire were being locked up together at Dachau Concentration Camp.
Nazi leaders like Martin Bormann, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Alfred Rosenberg, backed by Hitler, eventually wanted to destroy Christianity.
Himmler and Rosenberg had some pagan ideas.
Others, like Bormann, were atheist.
Hitler himself hated Christianity, but he knew it was important in German politics and culture.
Because of this, he usually said he wanted to wait until after the war to get rid of the Churches.
The Christian Churches were treated badly by the Nazis, but smaller religious groups, like the Jews and the Jehovah 's Witnesses, were treated far worse.
The Nazis tried to kill all of the Jewish people in Europe.
They sent people of other religions, like Jehovah 's Witnesses, to concentration camps and death camps.
The Nazi campaign against the churches was called the kirchenkampf.
The Nazis tried to take over the Protestant Churches of Germany, by bringing them together in a Nazi-friendly National Reich Church.
Some Protestants supported the idea.
However, when the Nazis tried to change the Bible to say Jesus was n't Jewish, a group of pastors started the Confessing Church.
The Confessing Church did not support Nazi ideas about controlling religion or changing the Bible.
The Nazis made the Church illegal and arrested hundreds of its pastors.
Hitler did not like the Catholic Church, and was worried about its influence on German politics.
In 1933, his new government signed a treaty (the Reich Concordat) with the Vatican.
The treaty promised to let Catholics control their own Church, but said priests could not do politics.
However, Hitler then closed down every Catholic organization that was not a church - like Catholic political parties, groups for young people, trade unions, and newspapers.
He murdered some of the leaders of these groups, and eventually closed all Catholic schools.
Then the Nazis started attacking priests and nuns, and arrested many of them.
Pope Pius XI protested strongly in Mit brennender Sorge (a 1937 papal encyclical), which said that Nazi ideas like racism were bad, and the Nazis were persecuting the Church.
Many Germans were angry that the government was interfering in their churches, but others did not care too much.
A few tried to stop the government from killing religious minorities like Jews.
Church leaders tried to stop the Nazis from interfering in their religion.
Because they kept some independence from the state, they could publicly disagree with some government policies.
For example, Catholic Bishop August von Galen and Protestant Bishop Theophil Wurm protested against the Nazis ' program of killing disabled and sick people.
Some religious leaders, like Martin Niem ller, spoke up for human rights in Germany.
Several priests and pastors were executed for helping the 1944 plot to overthrow Hitler, including Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Fr.
Alfred Delp SJ.
The Northwest Passage is sea passage along the north coast of North America, through the Arctic Ocean.
Because of ice, the passage is usually closed to ships.
The Spanish Empire wanted to reach Asia by a western route, because Portugal controlled the eastern route around the Cape of Good Hope.
Spain wanted to have a route that it could control.
This caused most European countries to search for a possible route.
Roald Amundsen was the first person to navigate the passage between 1903 and 1906.
Global warming is increasing the melting for the Passage.
Nevada is one of the United States.
Its capital is Carson City.
Other big cities are Las Vegas and Reno.
Nevada was originally founded in 1821 as part of the First Mexican Empire.
The Mexican Empire turned into the Mexican Republic in 1823, along with Nevada.
Fighting between the United States and Mexico started.
They fought over what was to become the Southwestern United States and who could own this land.
This was called the Mexican-American War.
The war ended in an American victory in 1848.
Nevada later became an American territory in 1861.
It was called the "Nevada Territory".
This was not all of Nevada as it is today.
The eastern part of Nevada was part of "Utah Territory" and the southern part was part of "New Mexico".
In 1859 in the Comstock Lode, gold and silver were first discovered.
This started a huge growth in mining in the state which Nevada is known for.
On October 31, 1864, now celebrated as "Nevada Day", Nevada was made the 36th state in the United States.
It was given the distinct shape resembling a rectangle with a triangle.
It was named Nevada meaning "snowy land" in Spanish, because it was snowy in the North.
Later, on May 5, 1866, Nevada got its current borders because the Pah-Ute County in Arizona was taken as part of Nevada.
It is now Clark County, Nevada.
It was also agreed upon that the western part of Utah would become Eastern Nevada.
Tourism is very important to the economy of Nevada.
Many people visit Las Vegas, which has many casinos and resorts.
It is the only state where prostitution is legal.
There is not as much farming as there is in some other states, because Nevada is so dry.
However, mining is big in Nevada.
More gold is mined in Nevada than in any other state.
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples from the areas of North America now part of the continental United States, including parts of Alaska.
The Cherokee were the first Native Americans to be recognized as US citizens.
In the 19th century white colonists called the Cherokee one of the Five Civilized Tribes.
The others were Chicksaw, Chocktaw, Creek, and Seminole.
There are about 310 Indian reservations in the US.
Most Native Americans do not live on a reservation anymore.
Native Americans are affected by some problems more than white Americans.
For example Native Americans are alcoholic six times more often than average.
Neurology is the study of the nervous system in medicine.
Neurology also is about the medical diagnosis and treatment of conditions and illnesses of the nervous system.
This can include both the physical condition of the brain, nerves, and brain messages between the body and the nervous system.
When things are not functioning normally, the differences can influence behavior, function and\/or sensation.
Niue is an island country in the south Pacific.
It is commonly known as "Rock of Polynesia".
It has its own government, but it is an associated state of New Zealand.
This means that Niue 's head of state is New Zealand 's sovereign (queen) in right, and most diplomatic relations are conducted by the latter on Niue 's behalf.
The territory is 2,400 kilometres northeast of New Zealand in a triangle between Tonga, Samoa, and the Cook Islands.
Nirvana was an American alternative rock band.
They were one of the most successful and influential bands of that time.
Since they formed, they have sold over 75 million records all over the world.
They played a style of rock music known as grunge, which was highly influenced by 1980s alternative rock, 1970s punk, and heavy metal.
Grunge became more commercially successful than the previous punk rock, as promoted to the world by Sub Pop Records.
Nirvana greatly affected the style of other grunge bands such as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains.
They split up after their lead singer Kurt Cobain died in 1994 after he committed suicide.
On April 10, 2014, Nirvana received a star in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Nirvana started in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987 when singer Kurt Cobain and the bassist Krist Novoselic met and decided to form a band.
The band had 5 different drummers until they found Dave Grohl.
They released their first studio album, Bleach, in 1989, with Chad Channing playing drums.
Their second album, Nevermind, released in 1991, was a massive success.
Many people bought it, and it had the top spot on many music charts.
It featured the song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" which was also a very big hit.
In February 1992 Kurt married rock singer Courtney Love.
The band caused controversy in 1992 when they played a song called "Rape Me" on MTV.
Many people found this offensive.
Around this time, Kurt also started taking many illegal drugs, including heroin.
Nirvana released another album called In Utero, in 1993 and went on tour in Europe.
Many of the dates were canceled because Cobain was drinking too much alcohol and taking too many drugs.
He was taken into a rehab center to end his addiction to drugs but he ran away.
He was found dead in his home on April 8, 1994 by an electrician.
The police decided that he committed suicide with a shotgun.
The other band members were shocked by this and Nirvana officially split up.
Nirvana has released more compilation albums than regular, or studio, albums.
See Nirvana 's discography.
After Nirvana broke up, Dave Grohl started a new band called Foo Fighters.
Krist Novoselic became interested in politics and also kept making music.
He was the bassist for Flipper, which Kurt Cobain was a fan of, but recently left the band.
In Buddhism, Nirvana is the state of perfect peace reached by not wanting more than you have.
It means happiness and peace.
It is every Buddhist 's goal to achieve Nirvana.
The Buddha described it as:
the far shore, the subtle, the very difficult to see, the unaging, the stable, the undisintegrating, the unmanifest, the unproliferated, the peaceful, the deathless, the sublime, the auspicious, the secure, the destruction of craving, the wonderful, the amazing, the unailing, the unailing state, the unafflicted, dispassion, purity, freedom, the unadhesive, the island, the shelter, the asylum, the refuge... (SN 43:14)
The Neva River is a river in northwestern Russia.
It is 74 k long.
It flows into the Gulf of Finland.
The city of Saint Petersburg is on its delta.
Norway is a country in the north of Europe.
It is the western part of the Scandinavian peninsula.
The mainland of Norway is surrounded by a coast on the west side and borders Russia, Finland, and Sweden to the east.
The coast touches the Oslofjord, Skagerrak, and the North Sea.
The Kingdom of Norway has been independent since 1905.
Its head of state is now King Harald V. The national day is May 17, which celebrates Norway 's constitution of 1814.
The parliament is called Stortinget and its members are elected by the people every 4 years.
About 5 million people live in Norway.
The capital is the city of Oslo.
It is also the largest city, with a population of over 942,000.
Other major cities are Bergen with 251,000 people and Trondheim with 172,000; both of these have been the Norwegian capital in earlier years.
Norwegian is the national language.
There are two official written versions of Norwegian called Bokm l and Nynorsk.
Many Sami individuals are native speakers of one of the Sami languages.
Nord-samisk is also an official language in a number of kommuner.
(Each kommune has a mayor.)
King Harald is the first king born in Norway in over 600 years.
He has two children; Princess M rtha Louise and Crown Prince Haakon Magnus.
In World War I Norway was neutral and served as a trading nation.
Norway tried to stay neutral in World War II, but was occupied by German forces from 9 April 1940 to 8 May 1945.
The Government has Norwegian soldiers working in Afghanistan, together with soldiers from other countries that belong to NATO.
The Norwegian parachute regiment is known for being very good.
Since 2013, the Norwegian Minister of Defense is Ine Marie Eriksen S reide.
natural gas, oil, hydroelectric power, and fish.
Other natural resources are agriculture, forests, and minerals.
The Government collects much money from various sources, and has policies intended to spread this wealth among Norwegians.
This spread of wealth, is done both directly and indirectly.
Most people in Norway are ethnic Norwegians.
They speak a language that is related to German and early English.
Swedish and Danish are so close to Norwegian that most Norwegians understand them.
Across Norway, many different dialects are spoken.
Norwegians disagree on how to make one correct written language.
Therefore, there are two standard languages, Bokm l and Nynorsk.
Nynorsk is used in writing in most of the western areas and in the central mountains.
Bokm l is written by most people in the rest of the country.
A native population of Norway, the Sami people, has its home in the northern parts of the country.
Their language is not at all related to Norwegian.
In some parishes in the far north, they make up the majority of people.
Many Sami now live outside the Sami homeland, mostly in Oslo and other big cities.
Earlier, Sami people were forced to speak Norwegian in school.
Now Sami is taught as the first language in school for Sami children, and Norwegian is the first foreign language.
Many immigrants have come to Norway in the last 30 40 years.
They mostly live in and around Oslo, and in the other big cities.
Many immigrants come from nearby countries, like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland and Russia.
There are also many from countries far away, such as Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq and Vietnam.
Traditionally, all Norwegians were Lutherans, a variety of the Protestant faith.
Still, more than 80 % of Norwegians are Lutherans.
Other important faiths include Islam, other Protestant groups and Catholicism.
Among tourists to Norway, more come from Germany than from any other country.
There are also many Swedes, Danes, British, Dutch and Italians visiting Norway.
The Swedes and Danes often come in winter to go skiing.
The others mainly come in summer.
The largest newspapers in Norway are Verdens Gang (VG), Aftenposten and Dagbladet.
Bergens Tidende (BT), Bergensavisen (BA) and Dagen are the three newspapers with focus around the city of Bergen.
Norwegian culture can be compared to English culture in the way that it is considered a bad thing to show off, as opposed to the US, where this is more acceptable.
This is a big aspect of Norwegian culture, and it is related to the philosophy of egalitarianism.
Because of this, people will understate things, for example if a Norwegian says something is good or nice, it usually means that it 's really great.
Norway also has a rich cultural history, going all the way back to the age of the Vikings, and up to today with several writers and painters.
The most famous Norwegian cultural person is probably Henrik Ibsen who wrote several plays and novels, and they often upset people because he challenged popular attitudes such as the role of women.
Other famous writers include Knut Hamsun, Jonas Lie, Amalie Skram and more recently, Jens Bj rneboe.
Famous painters and musicians include Edvard Munch, Theodor Kittelsen, Ole Bull and Edvard Grieg.
In Norway power is shared among three branches: The justice sector, the government and the parliament.
Norway also has a king, Harald 5, but he does not have any real power and acts as a symbol and ambassador.
This form of government is called a constitutional monarchy.
Elections are held every four years, and the winner of the election is the party or coalition which gets the most votes and seats in the parliament.
After the elections are done, the winners work together to find out who should be prime minister, as well as other ministerial posts.
Currently the Conservative Party and the Progress Party are working together in a coalition government, after getting elected in the 2013 elections.
Nokia Corporation is a company that made mobile phones, but sold its manufacturing arm to Microsoft.
Its main office is in Espoo, Finland.
Nokia is the biggest and most important Finnish company.
Nokia is one of the world 's biggest mobile industry.
The company began in 1865 as a wood pulp mill in Finland and began making paper.
The paper was sold to Russia, the United Kingdom, and France.
The company merged with the Finnish Rubber Company which wanted to use its hydroelectricity plant.
After World War Two, Nokia bought a large part of the Finnish Cable Works.
In 1967 the three companies joined to form the Nokia Group.
They began making electronic products, and for a few years early in the 21st century were the world 's biggest maker of smartphones.
Nortel is one of the oldest technology companies, founded in Montreal.
The company started making phones in 1895 and the company was called Northern Electric and Manufacturing Company.
The Nile (an-n l) is a river in Africa.
It is the longest river on Earth (about 6,650 km or 4,132 miles), and flows into the Mediterranean Sea near Alexandria.
It gets its name from the Greek word Neilos.
The White Nile flows from Lake Victoria in Uganda, and through Sudan to Khartoum, where it is joined by the Blue Nile to form the Nile, then through Egypt.
The Blue Nile flows through Ethiopia.
About 300 million cubic metres of water flow down the Nile each day.
The Nile is very important to the countries where it flows.
Many cities in Egypt are built next to the river.
Also, the pyramids are close to the Nile.
The Nile has always provided most of the water used to grow crops in Egypt and for anything else, since much of the rest of the country is in a desert.
The Nile was very important to Ancient Egyptians.
In ancient times the Nile flooded every year and the people would starve if there was not enough water for the crops.
The Ancient Egyptians got papyrus from the Nile.
Many different types of animals live in or near the waters of the Nile, including crocodiles, birds, fish and many others.
Not only do animals depend on the Nile for survival, but also people who live there need it for everyday use like washing, as a water supply, keeping crops watered and other jobs.
Pyramids were built close to the Nile because they needed the granite stones from Aswan to be transported by barges down the Nile.
The word "Nile" comes from Greek Neilos.
Neilos came from the word "river valley".
In the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called ` p or iteru, meaning "great river", represented by the hieroglyphs shown above (literally itrw, and ` waters ' determinative).
In Coptic, the words piaro (Sahidic) or phiaro (Bohairic) meaning "the river" (lit.
p (h).
iar-o "the.canal-great") come from the same ancient name.
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the human neurological action and inaction of thought, design and purpose with the identification of brain, cord and sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.
Experts who study neuroscience study both brain, cord and automation of design because both brain and cord are of the upper anatomy and connected in a way that benefits the entire body, but brain and cord are established within the framework of anatomy and medicine in a complete way.
Neuroscience is biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, physics, psychology, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, and pathology.
The basic neuronal design matches both anatomical abnormality and normality within a certain reference of creation because while it is both natural and unnatural it is also broken, dimished, small and complex and as so it is immense in its way of operating within the skull, brain membranes and brain itself.
The brain is a structure made up of billions of neurons that work together to form a matrix within a complex of organs termed by their anatomical structure: corpus callosum, basal ganglia, lower anatomical brain region and upper anatomical brain region.
Molecular biology, electrophysiology, and computational neuroscience involves neurology is a way that was not used in the past and because of this both computational neurology and endrobiology are addressed by concern and design and almost all forms of neurobiology are and can be given a full compliment of understanding by all forms of science because that is how science is meant to be is interrelated and not to stand alone.
Neurons are basic to neurology as medicine is to doctors and pharmacuticals are to disease and help within that framework neurons are diseased and so neuroscience turns from referencing design to medical intervention and design.
Neuroscience research from different areas can also be seen as focusing on a set of specific themes and questions.
(Some of these are taken from http://www.northwestern.edu/nuin/fac/index.htm)
Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and historian and is known as the first person to walk on the moon.
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in a small spacecraft that had been sent to the moon using the Saturn V rocket.
The rocket was called Apollo 11.
They both walked on the moon, and millions of people watched and heard this event on live television.
He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical engineering from the Purdue University and a Master of Science degree in Aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California.
In 1970 he received an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering from the Purdue University.
From 1971 to 1979 he became professor for aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
In 2005 he received the Honorary Doctorate of letters from the University of Southern California.
The Houston Chronicle newspaper reported on October 1, 2006, that Australian computer programmer Peter Shann Ford found the missing "a" from Armstrong 's famous first words on the Moon.
Ford reported that he downloaded the audio recording from a NASA web site and analyzed it using editing software originally intended for use with hearing disabled people.
Armstrong is said to have been pleased with Ford 's finding of the missing "a".
He was born in Ohio and grew up in several different locations in that state.
Neil Armstrong discovered his passion for flying when he was 2 years old.
His father used to take him to the Cleveland National Air Races.
When he was young he would help his parents around the house like weeding the garden and hanging the laundry, he would do this with his sister June and brother Dean.
Neil Armstrong also loved reading books.
In the first grade, he read 90 books.
Because of this, he skipped the second grade.
He took his first airplane ride at age 6.
He built model airplanes and conducted experiments in a homemade wind tunnel.
He worked at a pharmacy and took flying lessons.
He was licensed to fly on his 16th birday, before he got his driver 's license.
Armstrong enrolled in Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering but was called to duty with the U.S. Navy in 1949.
Prior to being an astronaut, Armstrong was called to Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida in 1949 before he could complete his degree.
There he earned his pilots wings at 20 years of age, making him the youngest flyer in his squadron.
While studying for his aeronautical engineering degree, the Korean War broke out in 1950, in which he flew 78 combat missions.
His plane was shot down once and he was also awarded 3 Air Medals.
Later, he became a skilful test pilot, flying right to the atmosphere s edge, 207,500 f at 4,000 m, in the experimental rocket powered aircraft the X-15.
Armstrong went on his first mission into space on the 16th of March 1966, in the spacecraft Gemini 8, as the command pilot.
He docked the Gemini 8 successfully with an Agena target craft that was in orbit already.
Although the docking was smooth enough, while the spacecrafts orbited together, they started to roll and pitch.
Armstrong then managed to undock the Gemini, and regained control of the spacecraft by using the retro rockets.
However, this resulted in the astronauts having to make an emergency landing into the Pacific Ocean.
His most famous quote is: "That 's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."
He spoke those words when he set his foot on the moon.
He wanted to say "That 's one small step for a man", but for some reason the "a" was never spoken.
Armstrong thought he had said it.
He admits that he often forgot syllables when speaking.
Listening to the audio shows that the "for" runs on smoothly, giving no time for "a" to be spoken.
Armstrong prefers written quotations to include the "a" in parentheses.
Armstrong was married to Janet Shearon from 1956 until they divorced in 1994, they had three children; Mark, Eric, and Karen.
Lastly he married Carol Held Knight from 1994 until his death in 2012.
Some years after returning from the Moon, he visited the two thousand year-old King Herod 's Temple Mount compound ruins in the city of Jerusalem.
While he was there, Neil Armstrong said it was more exciting to step on the stone stairs where Jesus Christ walked than even stepping on the Moon.
His biography describes him as a deist.
Armstrong died on the morning of August 25, 2012 from complications of a blocked coronary artery after surgery in a hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He was 82 years old.
North Korea (officially called the Democratic People 's Republic of Korea (DPRK)), is a country in the northern part of the Korean peninsula.
North Korea is next to China, Russia, and South Korea.
The capital city of North Korea is Py ngyang, which is also the largest city.
The country was founded in 1948 after it had been freed from Japanese occupation, and a socialist state backed by the Soviet Union was established.
The Republic of Korea is the southern half of the country, and was occupied by the United States, and the U.S. set up a democracy in the south.
At first there was a war between the armies of the North and South in what is called the Korean War, but while the fighting stopped in 1953, the war never officially ended.
Afterwards, North Korea was friendly with China and Russia but never was formally allied with either and became more isolated over time.
While the South went from one military dictatorship to another, the North went through steady development and was ahead of the South until the 1980s when the South became more democratic.
Soon afterwards, the North 's main trading partners collapsed leaving it stranded and isolated.
Throughout the 1990s, North Korea suffered from famines and natural disasters.
Afterwards, things stabilized but continued to lag behind the South.
The country is organized along socialist lines, as all workplaces are public property and function along a universal plan.
This is because the founders of North Korea were inspired by the ideas of communism.
But as time went on, North Korea became more conservative and nationalist, and had less in common with other countries aiming for communism.
To justify these differences, the country 's leader Kim Il-sung said that the government was following his own ideology of "Juche", which means "self-reliance".
Later on, the country 's leaders began to remove "communism" from North Korean laws and philosophy.
After Kim Il-sung died during the disasters of the 1990s, his son Kim Jong-il took his place and was promoted by the government as the leader who led North Korea out of the disasters.
Kim Jong-il enacted a new policy of "Songun", or "military-first", which turned the country into a military state.
When he died in 2011, his youngest son Kim Jong-un took his place and continues to lead the country today.
Historians think that the Korean people have lived in the area for thousands of years.
Before 1910, Korea was one country.
It had a king and people were mostly farmers.
The country was peaceful and was not communist.
In 1910, that changed.
Japan and Russia went to war.
Since Japan and Russia were both very close to Korea, Japan took Korea for themselves as part of Japan.
Japan then had control.
Between 1910 and the end of World War II in 1945, Korea was part of Japan.
In 1945, the USSR declared war on Japan and the United States bombed it (Nagasaki and Hiroshima); severely weakening its empire and forcing it to surrender.
Japan 's weak status allowed the Soviets to enter Korea fairly freely and occupy the northern half whilst the United States took the southern half.
Each then installed governments supporting their respective ideologies, Marxist-Leninist Single Party State (North) and Democratic Capitalist State (South).
See Korean War for more details.
In 1950, North Korea sent soldiers to South Korea.
North Korea wanted to bring together North and South Korea to form a single Korean country, and Korean families that had been split by the division of North and South to be together again.
The North Korean leaders wanted South Korea to be communist, like North Korea and the Soviet Union were.
The United Nations sent soldiers to Korea.
These soldiers came from many countries.
These countries did not like Communism (to learn more, see the article about the Cold War).
If South Korea became Communist, then maybe other countries would also.
General Douglas MacArthur led the soldiers.
North Korea had taken over much of South Korea by force.
With the help of the other countries, South Korea took back their land, and even much of North Korea, up to the Yalu River, which forms the border between North Korea and China.
China, which was also communist, helped the North Koreans to get the land back that the South Korean soldiers had taken.
After three years, in 1953, North Korea and South Korea both decided that no one would win the war and both countries signed an armistice, which is an agreement that made both countries stop fighting.
North Korea and South Korea were divided by a demilitarized zone, which is a special place that surrounds the border between North and South Korea where both countries can not place lots of soldiers, so that fighting does not start again.
Even though the Demilitarized Zone is meant to stop problems between the two countries, sometimes soldiers on both sides of the border fire their guns at each other.
A special town in the zone, Panmunjom, is called the Joint Security Area, or JSA, and sometimes the leaders of both countries meet there to talk about possibly coming back together.
North Korea is one of the few countries in the world that has made nuclear bombs, which can kill many people if it is exploded.
North Korea will not say how many bombs it has, but other countries think that the North Korean government probably has built ten bombs so far out of a deadly element called plutonium.
In October 2006, North Korea said that it tested one of its nuclear bombs.
Although the North Korean government said that the test was not dangerous, many other countries and the United Nations were nonetheless enraged.
Three years later in 2009, North Korea did another test, which broke a United Nations law called Resolution 1718, which said North Korea could not keep building and testing nuclear bombs.
In 2010, a South Korean warship sank, killing over 40 soldiers.
An international investigation concluded that North Korea had sunk a South Korean warship with a torpedo.
North Korea strongly said that it did not have anything to do with the sinking.
When the United States and South Korea planned to set up defenses in case North Korea tried to attack again, North Korea 's National Defense Commission threatened on to start a war with its nuclear weapons.
In April 2012, North Korea launched a rocket called Bright Star 3.
The reasons for the launch were science and the 100th anniversary of the birth of the country 's founder, Kim Il-Sung.
The government said the rocket carried a weather satellite so the government could find out what the weather would be.
However, other countries said that the weather satellite was a story made up by the government so the real purpose of the rocket would not the known which most countries thought was to test a nuclear missile that could be launched at the United States or South Korea.
South Korean leaders said it would shoot the rocket down when it came over South Korea.
Because of this rocket, other countries stopped helping North Korea, even though the government invited other countries to see the rocket launch to make it seem like the North Koreans had nothing to hide from other countries.
The rocket was eventually launched, but it did not work and crashed just a minute and thirty seconds after it was launched.
In December 2012, the government tried to launch the rocket again.
It worked this time and went into orbit circling the Earth, though the United States said that it was very unstable and might fall back to Earth.
Experts in Europe noticed the satellite 's reflection was fluctuating (getting brighter then dimmer); indicating that the satellite is tumbling in its orbit.
In February 2013, North Korea tested a nuclear bomb for the 3rd time, causing much outrage from other countries.
The government also released many videos that depicted possible missile targets in the United States.
North Korea however does not posses missiles that could reach US mainland but some say Hawaii is a possibility.
It is highly unlikely that North Korea would ever fire against the US, Japan or South Korea.
Many missiles depicted in DPRK parades are fakes used to exaggerate North Korea 's military strength.
Most of its inventory dates from the Soviet years.
People often think that North Korea is a communist country.
It is actually a socialist-military dictatorship.
In its most recent constitutional change, the word ` communism ' was removed.
Large pictures of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin were removed from Kim Il-Sung square in 2012.
The government has a similar structure to the former Soviet Union (USSR), once a close ally, but it is very different from the USSR.
Leaders of the USSR were elected by a group of government officials.
In North Korea, the new leader is the current leader 's male heir.
For this reason, North Korea is often referred to as a hereditary dictatorship.
North Korea 's official state ideology is Juche.
That is a form of socialism developed by the country 's founder, Kim Il-Sung.
Juche means self-reliance.
It teaches that to achieve true socialism and become self-sufficient, the state must become fully isolated from the rest of society.
The first head of state and Chairman of the Workers Party of North Korea was Kim Tu-bong.
In the late 1950s, the second head of state and party chairman was Kim Il-Sung.
In July 1994, Kim died.
His son, Kim J ng-Il, took over.
He became the third head of state and party chairman.
In December 2011, Kim died.
His son, Kim J ng-Un became the head of the government.
Songun is a North Korean idea.
It means "army first."
The job of every North Korean person is to feed the Army.
Kim J ng-Un is the "Chairman of the National Defense Commission of North Korea".
That is one of many jobs he has.
He is like a king, and can do what he wants.
The average North Korean citizen makes around $ 900 a year.
Kim J ng-Un makes around $ 800,000 a year.
He lives in a palace.
He has lots of soldiers who go wherever he goes to protect him.
North Korea is technically a multi-party state since other parties do exist besides the Korean Workers ' Party (KWP).
However, the KWP also controls the other parties so it can stay in power.
The constitution gives North Korea 's citizens freedom of speech, religion and press.
In real life, these citizens do not have these rights.
People can be jailed if they criticise the party, government, or leaders.
North Koreans are encouraged to report family members to the police if they think they are doing something illegal.
In return they get more privileges.
If someone is caught doing a crime, their whole family will be sent along with them to a labor camp.
Most die there, but a few escape.
North Korean people have very little freedom of speech.
They get their news from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The KCNA makes sure all the country 's television, radio, and newspaper news makes the government look good.
This is called propaganda.
The government blocks access to the Internet.
Only a few trusted military officials and party members can access the world Internet.
It has been reported that almost all North Koreans do not know that men have landed on the moon.
The government runs an intranet service that is available on all North Korean computers.
It is nothing like the real Internet but is filled with propaganda that makes the government, party, and leaders look good.
The government also tries to keep ideas from other countries out of North Korea.
Capital punishment is a common type of punishment in North Korea.
Stealing, murder, rape, drug smuggling, attempted murder, spying, trying to challenge the laws of North Korea, looking at media unapproved by North Korea, and religions that are against believing in Kim Jong-un and his family can result in the death penalty.
In parts of the country, there is not enough food.
Currently, other countries give food to some people in North Korea.
This is called foreign aid.
The aid sometimes stops coming if North Korea is thought to be testing nuclear bombs.
Very recently, North Korea 's food aid stopped after the government launched a satellite in April 2012.
Other countries said North Korea had broken their side of an agreement.
The North Korean government said that it was the United States that had broken the agreement.
It is hard for people from other countries to visit North Korea.
Visitors must be guided by two army members called "minders".
The minders try and make sure the people do not find out about anything that might make the government look bad.
Historically, both South Korea and North Korea have the same set of values.
In 1945, the peninsula was divided.
Since then, the government of both North and South Korea were different.
This has led to different developments in both North and South Korea.
Human Rights Watch says that free religious activities do not exist in North Korea.
The culture in Korea has been influenced by that of China.
Despite this, Korea has developed a cultural identity that is different from that of Mainland China.
Literature and arts in North Korea are state-controlled.
Specialized committees of the KWP are responsible for this.
Film is also a significant artistic medium in North Korea and Kim Jong Il 's manifesto The Cinema and Directing (1987) is the basis for the nation 's filmmakers.
Korean culture came under attack during the Japanese rule from 1910 to 1945.
Japan enforced a cultural assimilation policy.
During the Japanese rule, Koreans were encouraged to learn and speak Japanese, adopt the Japanese family name system and Shinto religion, and were forbidden to write or speak the Korean language in schools, businesses, or public places.
In addition, the Japanese altered or destroyed various Korean monuments including Gyeongbok Palace and documents which portrayed the Japanese in a negative light were revised.
Both Koreas share a Buddhist and Confucian heritage and a recent history of Christian and Cheondoism ("religion of the Heavenly Way") movements.
The North Korean constitution states that freedom of religion is permitted.
According to the Western standards of religion, the majority of the North Korean population could be characterized as non-religious.
However, the cultural influence of such traditional religions as Buddhism and Confucianism still have an effect on North Korean spiritual life.
It seems that Buddhists are accepted more than other religious groups.
Christians are said to be severely persecuted by the authorities.
Buddhists are given limited funding by the government to promote the religion, because Buddhism played an integral role in traditional Korean culture.
In May 2014, an American tourist was arrested at Pyongyang Sunan Airport after it was discovered he left a bible in a nightclub on the DPRK 's east coast.
He was convicted of attempting to overthrow the government but was eventually released several months later.
At the time of his imprisonment, there were two other American citizens held by North Korea awaiting transfer to political prison camps.
Both have since been released.
The land of North Korea is divided into nine areas called provinces and two cities.
Northern Ireland (Tuaisceart ireann in Irish or Norlin Airlann in Ulster Scots) is an area of the United Kingdom.
It is part of an island in Western Europe called Ireland.
In 1922 after a civil war, Ireland was divided into the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The capital is Belfast.
1.8 million people live in Northern Ireland.
Sometimes people use other names for Northern Ireland.
Some unionists call it Ulster, even though some parts of Ulster are actually in the Republic of Ireland.
Nationalists sometimes call it "the North" or "the Six Counties", because they do not want to recognize that a part of Ireland is in the United Kingdom.
English is spoken by almost everyone in Northern Ireland.
Another important language is Irish (sometimes called "Irish Gaelic") and a language known as Ulster Scots, which comes from Eastern Ulster and Lowland Scotland.
The Irish language became extinct in the 20th century, but a revival has led to some usage, especially in Belfast, the Glens of Antrim and counties Tyrone and Fermanagh.
This revival has been driven largely through the creation of Irish-language schools.
The Irish language is spoken by some nationalists (whether Catholic or Protestant) people.
Ulster Scots is almost exclusive to areas of North Antrim and the Ards Peninsula.
Some languages like Chinese, Urdu or Polish are becoming more common in Northern Ireland as people from other countries move to Northern Ireland.
Since the Belfast Agreement (sometimes called the Good Friday Agreement) of Friday, 10 April 1998, there has been mainly peace between the two sides of the community.
This agreement was agreed by most of the people in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as well as the Irish and British governments.
It allows for the self-government of Northern Ireland and greater North-South co-operation and co-operation between Britain and the Republic of Ireland.
Additionally, it makes clear the right of the people of Northern Ireland to decide their constitutional future and select whether they are British citizens, Irish citizens or both.
The most popular sports in Northern Ireland are association football, gaelic football and rugby union.
Athletics, boxing, cricket, golf, hockey, hurling, snooker and motor sports are also common.
Most sports are organised on an all-Ireland basis, and in international competitions, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland compete together as Ireland (e.g. Ireland national rugby union team, Ireland national cricket team).
The main exception is football.
Football in Northern Ireland is governed by the Irish Football Association (IFA).
In international competitions Northern Ireland has its own team - the Northern Ireland national football team.
The Northern Ireland team has qualified for three FIFA World Cups (in 1958, 1982 and 1986).
Perhaps the most famous player from Northern Ireland was George Best.
Track and field athletes from Northern Ireland can choose to compete either with athletes from Great Britain (as the team "Great Britain & Northern Ireland"), or with athletes from the rest of Ireland (as "Ireland").
Belfast is home to the Ulster Rugby team (which competes in the Pro 12 league and Heineken Cup), and the Belfast Giants ice-hockey team.
Nasjonal Samling (Norwegian for "National Gathering" or "National Unity") was a fascist party in Norway, active in the period 1933 1945.
The party was founded by Vidkun Quisling and a group of sympathisers.
The party 's paramilitary wing was called Hirden (the Hird).
Neutrons, with protons and electrons, make up an atom.
Neutrons and protons are found in the nucleus of an atom.
Unlike protons, which have a positive charge, or electrons, which have a negative charge, neutrons have zero charge which means they are neutral particles.
Neutrons bind with protons with the residual strong force.
Neutrons were predicted by Ernest Rutherford, and discovered by James Chadwick, in 1932.
Atoms were fired at a thin pane of beryllium.
Particles emerged which had no charge, and he called these ` neutrons '.
They were later added to the modern image of the atom.
Neutrons have a mass of 1.675 10-24g, which is a little heavier than the proton.
Neutrons are 1839 times heavier than electrons.
Like all hadrons, neutrons are made of quarks.
A neutron is made of two down quarks and one up quark.
One up quark has a charge of +2 \/ 3, and the two down quarks each have a charge of -1 \/ 3.
The fact that these charges cancel out is why neutrons have a neutral (0) charge.
Quarks are held together by gluons.
Neutrons can be found in almost all atoms together with protons and electrons.
Hydrogen-1 is the only exception.
Atoms with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons are called isotopes of the same element.
The number of neutrons in an atom does not affect its chemical properties.
However it affects its half-life, a measure of its stability.
An unstable isotope has a short half-life, in which half of it decays to lighter elements.
By contrast, a stable isotope has a long half-life, much longer than that of an unstable isotope.
The stability of an isotope is related to radioactivity: an unstable isotope can be highly radioactive.
Neutrons are the key to nuclear chain reactions, nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
Neon is a noble gas.
It is chemical element 10 on the periodic table.
Its symbol is Ne.
The word "neon" comes from the Greek word meaning "new".
It was discovered by William Ramsay and Morris W. Travers in 1898.
Neon does not react with other elements, so it is found by itself.
There is not much neon in the air, and it is clear, so we do not see it.
Neon gas is used in lamps.
When electricity goes through the neon, it lights up in many different colors.
Due to this quality, it is used in signs.
Neon is also a term referring to a type of color that is very bright, such as lime green.
No true chemical compounds including the neutral compounds of neon are known.
Where there is the helium compound HHeF, which might be stable, the analogous componund with Neon is not.
Nickel (chemical symbol Ni) is a chemical element.
It has an atomic number of 28 and an atomic mass of about 58.69 amu.
It has 28 protons.
It is a transition metal.
Nickel is a silver-white metal.
It is a little golden colored.
It is easily polished (made shiny).
It is magnetic.
It is not magnetic when heated above 355 C. It is not soft like many other metals.
It can be stretched into wires easily.
It is not radioactive.
Nickel is not a reactive metal.
It dissolves slowly in acids.
It does not rust like iron.
It makes a thin coating of nickel (II) oxide which stops more corrosion.
Aluminium does a similar thing.
Nickel is found in two oxidation states: +2, nickel (II); and +3, nickel (III).
Nickel (II) is more common.
Nickel (III) also is common.
Nickel in its +2 oxidation state is green.
Nickel (II) chloride is a common +2 oxidation state compound.
Nickel (II) oxide is normally dark green, but sometimes it is gray.
This is because some of the nickel is in the +3 oxidation state (nickel (III).
Nickel (III) compounds are oxidizing agents.
They also are grayish.
Nickel compounds can be green, blue, gray, or black.
; Nickel (II) compounds Nickel (II) compounds are not reactive.
They are normally green or blue.
They are toxic and irritate skin.
Some of them are carcinogens.
; Nickel (III) compounds Nickel (III) compounds are not well characterized (people do n't know the properties of them).
Some are black or gray.
Nickel is not normally found as a metal in the ground.
Sometimes meteorites have nickel and iron metal in them.
Normally nickel is in minerals.
Nickel hydroxides, sulfides, and silicates are common ores.
Russia makes the most nickel.
Nickel was found when a copper-colored ore did not make copper metal.
Later it was found out that the ore was actually a nickel ore..
Nickel was isolated as a metal in 1751.
At first, the copper colored nickel ore was the only source.
Later, it was made as a byproduct of cobalt blue making.
Nickel is made from sulfide ores.
They are heated to melt them and concentrate them.
They are also separated by oils.
Nickel is made from its sulfide by heating it in air.
This oxidizes the sulfide to sulfur dioxide, leaving liquid nickel behind.
This nickel is not pure.
Only about 75 % of it is nickel.
Nickel can be made purer.
It can react with carbon monoxide to make nickel carbonyl, a gas when warm.
All the impurities are left behind.
The nickel carbonyl is blown into nickel pellets, where it coats the pellets with pure nickel and puts out carbon monoxide.
The carbon monoxide is reused (used again).
Another way to make the nickel pure is by dissolving it in an acid.
Then it is electrolyzed to make nickel at the cathode.
Nickel is used in metal alloys.
Stainless steel contains nickel.
Nickel is also used in nichrome, a name for a nickel-chromium alloy.
Nickel is used in coins such as nickels.
It is used in magnets.
Nickel is used in special expensive alloys called superalloys.
It is used in rechargeable batteries.
They are also used to electroplate nickel on items.
Nickel and some of its compounds are also used as a catalyst.
Nickel can irritate skin.
That is why nickel jewelry is bad for some people.
Some nickel salts are carcinogens.
Nickel is not as toxic as other metals such as lead or mercury but it is still toxic.
Niobium is a chemical element.
It is sometimes named columbium.
It has the chemical symbol Nb.
It has the atomic number 41.
It is a rare metal.
Niobium is soft and gray.
It is ductile.
In chemistry it is placed in a group of metal elements named the transition metals.
Niobium was discovered in a variety of a mineral named columbite (now called niobite).
Niobite is an ore of niobium.
Niobium is used in alloys.
The most important alloys are used to make special steels and strong welded joints.
Neodymium is a chemical element that has the symbol Nd on the periodic table.
It has the atomic number 60 which means it has 60 protons in an atom.
Neodymium can be combined with other elements like iron and boron to create the very strong neodymium magnet, these magnets can lift up to 1000 times their own weight.
Neodymium is a metal that forms a coating of oxide around itself when it is placed in air.
It is usually used as neodymium magnets for hard disk drives.
Though neodymium is called a rare earth metal, it is quite common, as common as nickel, cobalt or copper.
Like every metal, neodymium is very shiny.
It is a solid like a lot of metals until it changes into a liquid at 1,024 degrees Celsius, or 1,875 degrees Fahrenheit.
Neodymium is in a group of other elements called lanthanides, which are like each other in how they behave.
When neodymium is dropped into water, it slowly changes into neodymium hydroxide, if the water or the neodymium itself is hot enough, the change is much faster, and the neodymium may explode.
In the air, if the neodymium is hot enough, it can catch fire.
Like every other metal, neodymium usually wants to get rid of its electrons, so the compounds it forms are usually with elements that want electrons, as oxygen does.
The neodymium magnets used to make hard disk drives do not weaken over time: they are permanent magnets.
They can also be used to make microphones or speakers.
Even an electric guitar may have these magnets inside their microphones.
Neptunium is a chemical element that has the symbol Np on the periodic table.
It has the atomic number 93 which means it has 93 protons and electrons in its atoms.
It is named after the planet Neptune in the same way as Uranium is named after the planet Uranus.
Neptunium was discovered in the year of 1940 by two men named Edwin McMillan and Phillip H. Abelson.
Neptunium is a silvery - metallic element and is radio-active.
Its melting point is 637 degrees Celsius and it 's boiling point is 4000 degrees Celsius.
Nobelium is a synthetic element with the symbol No and atomic number 102.
A radioactive metal, it is the tenth transuranic element and is in the actinide series of the periodic table.
Twelve isotopes are known, and they are all short-lasting.
The Norwegian Sea is a marginal sea in the North Atlantic Ocean, northwest of Norway.
It is between the North Sea and the Greenland Sea.
It joins the North Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Barents Sea to the northeast.
In the southwest, it is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by a submarine ridge running between Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
To the North, the Jan Mayen Ridge separates it from the Greenland Sea.
Unlike many other seas, most of the bottom of the Norwegian Sea is not part of a continental shelf.
It is at a great depth of about two kilometres on average.
Rich deposits of oil and natural gas are found under the sea bottom and are being explored commercially.
The coastal zones are rich in fish that visit the Norwegian Sea from the North Atlantic for spawning.
The warm North Atlantic Current gives stable and high water temperatures, so that unlike the Arctic seas, the Norwegian Sea is ice-free throughout the year.
The Norwegian Sea is a transition zone between boreal and Arctic conditions.
It has flora and fauna of both regions.
The southern limit of many Arctic species runs through the North Cape, Iceland, and the center of the Norwegian Sea.
The northern limit of boreal species is near the borders of the Greenland Sea with the Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea.
These areas overlap.
Some species like the scallop Chlamys islandica and capelin tend to live in this area between the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.
Most of the aquatic life in the Norwegian Sea is in the upper layers.
Estimates for the entire North Atlantic are that only 2 % of biomass is at depths below 1,000 metres and only 1.2 % occurs near the sea floor.
The blooming of the phytoplankton is dominated by chlorophyll and peaks around 20 May.
The major phytoplankton forms are diatoms, in particular the genus Thalassiosira and Chaetoceros.
After the spring bloom the haptophytes of the genus Phaecocystis pouchetti become dominant.
Zooplankton is mostly copepods Calanus finmarchicus and Calanus hyperboreus.
C. hyperboreus is strongest in the Arctic waters.
They are the main diet of most marine predators.
The most important krill species are Meganyctiphanes norvegica, Thyssanoessa inermis, and Thyssanoessa longicaudata.
In contrast to the Greenland Sea, there are a lot of calcareous plankton (Coccolithophore and Globigerinida).
Shrimp of the species Pandalus borealis play an important role in the diet of fish, particularly cod and blue whiting.
A special feature of the Norwegian Sea is large coral reefs of Lophelia pertusa, which provide shelter to various fish species.
The Norwegian coastal waters are the most important spawning ground of the herring populations of the North Atlantic, and the hatching occurs in March.
The eggs float to the surface and are washed off the coast by the northward current.
Whereas a small herring population remains in the fjords and along the northern Norwegian coast, the majority spends the summer in the Barents Sea, where it feeds on the rich plankton.
Upon reaching puberty, herring returns to the Norwegian Sea.
The herring stock varies greatly between years.
It increased in the 1920s owing to the milder climate and then collapsed in the following decades until 1970; the decrease was, however, at least partly caused by overfishing.
The biomass of young hatched herring declined from 11 million tonnes in 1956 to almost zero in 1970; that affected the ecosystem not only of the Norwegian Sea but also of the Barents Sea.
Enforcement of environmental and fishing regulations has resulted in partial recovery of the herring populations since 1987.
This recovery was accompanied by a decline of capelin and cod stocks.
While the capelin benefited from the reduced fishing, the temperature rise in the 1980s and competition for food with the herring resulted in a near disappearance of young capelin from the Norwegian Sea.
Meanwhile, the elderly capelin population was quickly fished out.
This also reduced the population of cod a major predator of capelin as the herring was still too small in numbers to replace the capelin in the cod 's diet.
Blue whiting (Micromesistius poutassou) has benefited from the decline of the herring and capelin stocks as it assumed the role of major predator of plankton.
The blue whiting spawns near the British Isles.
The sea currents carry their eggs to the Norwegian Sea, and the adults also swim there in order to benefit from the food supply.
The young spend the summer and the winter until February in Norwegian coastal waters and then return to the warmer waters west of Scotland.
The Norwegian Arctic cod mostly occurs in the Barents Sea and at the Svalbard Archipelago.
In the rest of the Norwegian Sea, it is found only during the reproduction season, at the Lofoten Islands, whereas Pollachius virens and haddock spawn in the coastal waters.
Mackerel is an important commercial fish.
The coral reefs are populated by different species of the genus Sebastes.
Large numbers of minke, humpback, sei, and orca whales are present in the Norwegian Sea.
White-beaked dolphins are in the coastal waters.
Orcas and some other whales visit the sea in the summer months for feeding.
They follow the herring schools within the sea.
With a total population of about 110,000, minke whales are by far the most common whales in the sea.
They are hunted by Norway and Iceland, with a quota of about 1,000 per year in Norway.
In contrast to the past, mostly they are hunted for their meat, rather than fat and oil.
The bowhead whale used to be in the area.
It almost disappeared from the Norwegian Sea after intense whaling in the 19th century, and was temporarily extinct in the entire North Atlantic.
Similarly, the blue whale used to form large groups between Jan Mayen and Spitsbergen, but is hardly present nowadays.
Seeing northern bottlenose whales in the Norwegian Sea is rare.
Other large animals of the sea are hooded and harp seals and squid.
Important waterfowl species of the Norwegian Sea are puffin, kittiwake and guillemot.
Nuclear physics is the part of physics that studies the nucleus of the atom.
Everything on the earth is made up of atoms; they are the smallest part of a chemical element that still has the properties of that specific element.
When two or more atoms combine they create what we know as the molecule, which is the smallest part of a chemical compound which still has the properties of that specific compound.
Understanding the structure of atoms is key in studies such as physics, chemistry, biology, etc.
Atoms are made up of electrons, neutrons, and protons.
The protons and neutrons are in the center of the atom, which is called the nucleus.
The protons and neutrons are the heaviest part of the atom and make up most of its mass..
The electrons move around the nucleus very quickly, making what is called an electron cloud.
The electron cloud has a very small mass, but it makes up most of the space of the atom.
The electrons have a negative charge, and the protons have a positive charge.
Due to the charges in the atom, that is how the atom stays together, by attraction of the electric charges present in the atom.
Atoms have different features that single out one atom from another, and show how each atom can change in different conditions.
These properties include atomic number, mass number, atomic mass and weight, and isotopes.
In an atom there are three fundamental forces that keep atoms together.
electromagnetic force, strong force, and weak force.
The electromagnetic force keeps the electrons attached to the atom.
The strong force keeps the protons and neutrons together in the atom.
The weak force controls how the atom decays.
In the early 20th century, scientists had trouble explaining the behavior of atoms using their current knowledge of matter.
So to deal with this they made a brand new way to view matter and energy, and they called it quantum theory.
Quantum theory explains how matter acts both as a particle and a wave.
Atoms emit radiation when their electrons lose energy and drop down to lower orbitals.
The difference in energy between the orbitals determines the wavelength of the given radiation.
This radiation can be shown by visible light or shorter wavelengths.
Nuremberg is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in Middle Franconia.
It is on the river Pegnitz and the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal and is Franconia 's largest city.
It is about 170 k north of Munich, at 49.27 N 11.5 E. As of December 2012, there were 495,121 people.
From 1050 to 1571, the city became very important because it was on key trade routes.
Many of the parliaments of the Holy Roman Empire (called the Reichstage) met at Nuremberg Castle.
The Diets of Nuremberg were an important part of the administrative structure of the empire.
In 1219, Nuremberg became an Imperial Free City under Emperor Frederick II.
This meant it was ruled by the Emperor, not one of the local lords or princes.
It also meant that Nuremberg had a seat in the Imperial Parliament.
In 1298 there was a big pogrom.
Nearly 700 Jews were killed.
The Jews lived near the river, and by getting rid of the Jews the northern and southern parts of the city could be linked together.
This area is now the place of the City Market, Frauenkirche and Rathaus (City Hall).
In 1532, the Peace of Nuremberg, gave Lutherans important concessions.
In 1632 during the Thirty Years ' War, the Imperial general Albrecht von Wallenstein besieged King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in the Siege of Nuremberg.
The city became less important after this war, and only recovered in the nineteenth century, when it grew as an industrial center.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century Nuremberg was practically bankrupt.
In 1806 the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, and Nuremberg became part of the Kingdom of Bavaria, and Bavaria took over the city 's debts.
The first German railway, from Nuremberg to nearby F rth, was opened in 1835.
Nuremberg was very important during the Nazi Germany period.
The Nazi Party held huge Nazi Party conventions the Nuremberg rallies in the city.
The rallies were held every year from 1927 to 1938 in Nuremberg.
After Hitler 's rise to power in 1933 the Nuremberg rallies became huge state propaganda events, and a center of anti-Semitism and other Nazi ideas.
At one rally, Hitler passed the anti-Semitic (anti Jewish) Nuremberg Laws which took German citizenship away from all Jews.
A number of buildings were built for the rallies, some of which were not finished.
Today many examples of Nazi architecture can still be seen in the city.
The city was also the home of the Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher, the publisher of Der St rmer.
During World War II, Nuremberg was the headquarters of Wehrkreis (military district) XIII, and an important site for military production, including airplanes, submarines, and tank engines.
A subcamp of Flossenb rg concentration camp was here.
A lot of the factories used slave labor.
The city was badly damaged in bombing World War II, especially between 1943 and 1945.
On January 2, 1945, the medieval city center was bombed by the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Air Force and about ninety percent of it was destroyed in only one hour, with 1800 residents killed and roughly 100,000 left homeless.
In February 1945, more attacks followed.
In total, about 6000 Nuremberg residents are estimated to have been killed in air raids.
Despite this, the city was rebuilt after the war and was to some extent, restored to its pre-war appearance including the reconstruction of some of its medieval buildings.
Between 1945 and 1946, German officials involved in the Holocaust and other war crimes were taken in front of the International Military Tribunal in the Nuremberg Trials.
The Soviet Union had wanted the trials to take place in Berlin, but Nuremberg was chosen as the site for the trials for specific reasons:
The same courtroom in Nuremberg was the venue of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, organised by the United States as occupying power in the area.
Nuremberg city has 501,000 people.
As of 2005, the urban area had 763,000 people (about 822,000 people as of 2008).
Nuremberg metropolitan area has 1,205,000 people.
Nuremberg is still associated with gingerbread (Lebkuchen) products, sausages, and handmade toys.
The first pocket watches, called Nuremberg eggs, were made there in the sixteenth century.
In the nineteenth century Nuremberg became the "industrial heart" of Bavaria with companies such as Siemens and MAN.
Things made in the area include electrical equipment, mechanical and optical products, motor vehicles, and printed materials.
Siemens is still the largest industrial employer in the Nuremberg region but a third of German market research agencies is also in the city.
The Nuremberg International Toy Fair is the largest of its kind in the world.
The city also hosts several specialist hi-tech fairs every year, attracting experts from every corner of the glob
Nuremberg was an early center of humanism, science, printing, and mechanical invention.
The city contributed much to the science of astronomy.
In 1471 Johannes Mueller of K nigsberg (Bavaria), later called Regiomontanus, built an astronomical observatory in Nuremberg and published many important astronomical charts.
In 1515, Albrecht D rer, a native of Nuremberg, mapped the stars of the northern and southern hemispheres, producing the first printed star charts, which had been ordered by Johann Stabius.
Around 1515 D rer also published the "Stabiussche Weltkarte", the first perspective drawing of the terrestrial globe.
Perhaps most famously, the main part of Nicolaus Copernicus ' work was published in Nuremberg in 1543.
Printers and publishers have a long history in Nuremberg.
Many of these publishers worked with well-known artists of the day to produce books that could also be considered works of art.
In 1470 Anton Koberger opened Europe 's first print shop in Nuremberg.
In 1493, he published the Nuremberg Chronicles, also known as the World Chronicles (Schedelsche Weltchronik), an illustrated history of the world from the creation to the present day.
It was written in the local Franconian dialect by Hartmann Schedel and had illustrations by Michael Wohlgemuth, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, and Albrecht D rer.
Others furthered geographical knowledge and travel by map making.
Notable among these was navigator and geographer Martin Behaim, who made the first world globe.
Sculptors such as Veit Stoss and Peter Vischer are also associated with Nuremberg.
Composed of prosperous artisans, the guilds of the Meistersingers flourished here.
Richard Wagner made their most famous member, Hans Sachs, the hero of his opera Die Meistersinger von N rnberg.
Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel was born here and was organist of Saint Sebald church.
Nuremberg is also famous for its Christmas market, which draws well over a million shoppers each year.
The southern part of the old town, known as Lorenzer Seite, is separated from the north by the river Pegnitz and surrounded by the city walls on the south.
Nuremberg was the first city in Germany to have a railway, and today Nuremberg Central Station is a stop for IC and ICE trains on the German long-distance railway network.
Trains on the Nuremberg Ingolstadt Munich High-Speed line travel at up to 300-km\/h.
The line opened on May 28, 2006.
It meant travel times to Munich were reduced to as little as one hour.
In Nuremberg there are subways, suburban trains, trams and buses.
N is the fourteenth (number 14) letter in the English alphabet.
The Republic of Namibia is a country in southern Africa on the Atlantic coast.
It is bordered by Angola, Zambia, and Zimbabwe to the north, Botswana to the east, and South Africa to the south.
It gained independence from South Africa in 1990.
Before that it was called South West Africa.
Its capital is Windhoek.
Before World War I Namibia was a German colony.
German is still widely spoken in the country, although English is the official language.
Namibia has a population of 2.1 million people.
The name of the country is from the Namib Desert.
This is said to be the oldest desert in the world.
The dry lands of Namibia were lived in since early times by Bushmen, Damara and Nama.
About the 14th century AD, by Bantu came to the area from central Africa.
From the late 18th century onwards, Orlam clans from the Cape Colony crossed the Orange River.
They moved into the area that today is southern Namibia.
The nomadic Nama tribes were largely peaceful.
The missionaries with the Orlams were well received by them, the right to use waterholes and grazing was given.
On their way further north, the Orlams met clans of the Herero tribe.
They were not as friendly.
The Nama-Herero War started in 1880.
They did not stop until Imperial Germany sent troops.
The first Europeans to explore the region were the Portuguese navigators Diogo C o in 1485 and Bartolomeu Dias in 1486.
Like most of Sub-Saharan Africa, Namibia was not largely explored by Europeans until the 19th century.
At this time traders and settlers arrived, mostly from Germany and Sweden.
Namibia became a German colony in 1884.
This was to stop the British.
The country was called German South-West Africa.
From 1904 to 1907, the Herero and the Namaqua took up arms against the Germans.
In the following Herero and Namaqua genocide, 10,000 Nama (half the population) and about 65,000 Hereros (about 80 % of the population) were killed.
South Africa began to rule the land in 1915.
They defeated the German force during World War I. It was a League of Nations mandate territory from 1919.
In 1946 the League was replaced by the United Nations.
South Africa would not give up their rule of the land.
Many people thought the land should be independent from South Africa.
In 1971 South Africa was told their hold on the country was illegal.
They still did not leave.
The country officially became independent on 21 March 1990.
Sam Nujoma became the first President of Namibia.
Tourism is a major contributor (14.5 %) to Namibia 's economy.
It creates tens of thousands of jobs (18.2 % of all employment).
There are over a million tourists per year.
The country is among the main tourist places in Africa.
It is known for ecotourism which features Namibia 's extensive wildlife.
There are many lodges and reserves for tourists.
Sport Hunting is also a large, and growing part of the Namibian economy.
It was 14 % of total tourism in the year 2000.
Namibia has numerous species wanted by international sport hunters.
In addition, extreme sports such as sandboarding and 4x4ing have become popular.
Many cities have companies that provide tours.
The most visited places include the Caprivi Strip, Fish River Canyon, Sossusvlei, the Skeleton Coast Park, Sesriem, Etosha Pan and the coastal towns of Swakopmund, Walvis Bay and L deritz.
Namibia has required free education for 10 years between the ages of 6 and 16.
Grades 1 7 are primary level, grades 8 12 secondary.
Most schools in Namibia are state-run.
There are a few private schools.
There are four teacher training colleges, three colleges of agriculture, a police training college, a Polytechnic at university level, and a National University.
The most popular sport in Namibia is football.
The Namibia national football team qualified for the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations.
They have yet to qualify for any World Cups.
The Namibian rugby team has been in four separate World Cups.
Namibia were participants in the 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011 Rugby World Cups.
Cricket is also popular.
The national team played in the 2003 Cricket World Cup.
Inline Hockey was first played in 1995.
It has become more and more popular in the last years.
The Women 's Inline Hockey National Team were in the 2008 FIRS World Championships.
Namibia is the home for one of the toughest footraces in the world, the Namibian ultra marathon.
The most famous athlete from Namibia is certainly Frankie Fredericks, sprinter (100 and 200 m).
He won four Olympic silver medals (1992, 1996).
He also has medals from several World Athletics Championships.
He is also known for humanitarian activities in Namibia and further.
Nauru is a small island in the Pacific Ocean.
It 's 42 kilometers south of the equator and has a surface area of 23.3 km.
This one island is one country (a republic).
It sells phosphate (a chemical) to Australia.
Nauru is the smallest republic in the world.
English and Nauruan are the official languages of Nauru.
Nauru has no official capital, but its biggest city is Yaren.
The current president of Nauru is Baron Waqa.
There are 14 districts in Nauru:
Navassa Island, or La Navase in Haitian Creole, is a small island without anyone living on it in the Caribbean Sea.
It is located ninety miles south of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The United States government claims the two-square-mile island as a territory of the United States, and it is under control of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The island is also claimed by Haiti.
Some sailors sailing with Christopher Columbus named Navassa in 1504, because no fresh water could be found there.
A captain named Peter Duncan gave it to the U.S. in the late 1850s, for the purpose of guano mining.
After a rebellion in 1889, and the Spanish-American War of 1898, the mining was put to an end.
With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, Navassa became important again, because of a lighthouse being built there.
After World War II, no one lived on it again.
In 1996, Navassa 's light was put out of use, and the island was transferred to the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Three years later in 1999, the Fish and Wildlife Service received ownership of the island.
Navassa became a U.S. insular area in October 1857, when a representative of the Baltimore Fertilizer Company took possession of the island in the name of the United States pursuant to the Guano Act of August 18, 1856 (Title 48, U.S. Code, sections 1411-19).
In 1889 the island 's actual operation passed to the Navassa Phosphate Company.
All operations were abandoned in 1898, when the island became effectively uninhabited.
Navassa Island is three square miles in area.
Navassa lies about one hundred miles south of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, about thirty miles west of Cape Tiburon, Haiti, at the southwest entrance to the Windward Passage, east of Kingston, Jamaica.
Navassa 's climate is marine and tropical.
Its terrain is a raised coral and limestone plateau, flat to undulating, ringed by vertical white cliffs, approximately nine to fifteen yards high.
Navassa 's environment is mostly exposed rock.
However, it has enough grassland to support goat herds.
Dense stands of fig-like trees and scattered cactus also exist.
Only one tenth of the island 's land is meadows or pastures.
Navassa has no ports and only off-shore anchorage.
In 1976, the U.S. Coast Guard determined that the lighthouse on Navassa was no longer of any value to the U.S. Government and was ceasing its exercise of any interest in the island.
However, the U.S. Coast Guard 's ceasing to administer Navassa 's use did not have any bearing at all on the United States sovereignty over the island, which remained constant regardless of the administering Federal agency or office.
Consequently, under the provisions of Title 43, U.S. Code, section 1458, the Department of the Interior assumed responsibility for the civil administration of the U.S. insular area.
Acting under the authority that the Secretary of the Interior delegated to him in Secretary 's Order No. 3205 (January 16, 1997) and Amendment No. 1 (January 14, 1998) to Secretary 's Order No. 3205 and in fulfillment of his responsibilities as the civil administrator of the United States insular area of Navassa Island, the Director of the Office of Insular Affairs advises all persons interested in visiting Navassa Island that, having made a preliminary review of the island 's ecology, he has decided indefinitely not to allow visits to the island and its surrounding waters until he has received a further assessment of the island 's environment and conservation status.
As used in this notice, the term "surrounding waters" includes the waters surrounding Navassa Island seaward to a line twelve (12) nautical miles distant from Navassa Island 's coastlines.
The Director of the Office of Insular Affairs intends that nothing in this notice shall deny or impair the right of innocent passage in the waters surrounding Navassa Island.
On September 2, 1999, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service established the Navassa Island Wildlife Refuge as an overlay.
As of December 3, 1999, the Office of Insular Affairs ceased to have any administrative responsibility for Navassa.
A Secretary 's order of that date transferred full administration of Navassa from the Office of Insular Affairs to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Nepal measures about 800 k along its Himalayan axis by 150 t across.
With 147181 k it slightly outranks the state of Arkansas in the United States.
Nepal is landlocked by India on three sides and China 's Tibet Autonomous Region to the north.
The Netherlands Antilles was a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
The country was originally a group of six islands in the Caribbean Sea.
Some were discovered in 1493 by Christopher Columbus, and some were discovered in 1499 by Alonso de Ojeda.
Aruba, Bonaire and Cura ao are part of the Leeward Islands.
They are near Venezuela.
Saint Martin, Sint Eustatius, and Saba are part of the Windward Islands.
They are near Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Of these, the island Sint Maarten is in fact part of two countries: the northern part belongs to France (as Saint Martin), but the southern part is Dutch (as Sint Maarten).
Aruba left the Netherlands Antilles in 1986.
When Cura ao and Sint Maarten did the same thing on 10 October 2010, the country no longer existed.
The remaining BES Islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba now belong to the Netherlands and are called the Dutch Caribbean islands.
Because the Netherlands Antilles was a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands proper was also the Queen of the Netherlands Antilles, but the islands ' residents had a government of their own.
Aruba, Cura ao and Sint Maarten are now separate countries within the Kingdom.
All of these places still have King Willem-Alexander as their monarch today.
The last Prime Minister of the Netherlands Antilles was Emily de Jongh-Elhage.
The last Governor was Frits Goedgedrag, who is since the 10 October 2010 the first Governor of Cura ao.
New Caledonia (; popular name: Le caillou) is a "sui generis collectivity" (in practice an overseas territory) of France, made up of a main island (Grande Terre) and several smaller islands.
It is in the region of Melanesia in the southwest Pacific.
At about half the size of Taiwan, it has a land area of 18,575.5 square kilometres (7,172 sq mi).
At the 2004 census, 230,789 people lived there.
It has an internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of.
nc.
The capital and largest city of the territory is Noum a. The currency is the CFP franc.
The inflation rate is -0.6 %.
The unemployment rate is 17.1 %
The New Zealand Defense Force (or NZDF) is the armed forces of New Zealand.
It is divided into three parts: the New Zealand Army, the Royal New Zealand Navy, and the Royal New Zealand Air Force.
The NZDF is headed by the Chief of Defense Force or CDF.
The current CDF is Rhys Jones.
The original military of New Zealand in the 19th century was the British army.
In the 1840s, residents in New Zealand started forming militia units.
Starting in 1858, New Zealand formed small regular army units.
The country formed a small flotilla in the 1860s for naval service.
By 1941, the army, the navy, and the air force were separate services.
The Defense Act 1990 created the NZDF.
Nicaragua is a country in Central America.
It is officially called the Republic of Nicaragua.
It has a size of 129,494 square kilometres.
It is the largest country in Central America.
It borders Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south.
The capital of the country is Managua.
Managua is the third-largest city in Central America.
It is also the biggest city of Nicaragua.
Almost a quarter of the population lives in the capital city.
The population of Nicaragua is approximately 6 million.
The population is multicultural.
The population includes indigenous native tribes from the Miskito Coast, Europeans, Africans, and Asians.
The main language is Spanish.
Some native tribes on the eastern coast speak their native languages.
Some of these languages are Miskito, Sumo, and Rama.
Some people speak English Creole.
The mixture of cultures has created diversity in art and literature.
Some famous Nicaraguan writers are Rub n Dar o, Ernesto Cardenal, and Gioconda Belli.
The biological diversity, warm tropical climate, and active volcanoes make Nicaragua an increasingly popular tourist destination.
About 86 per cent of Nicaraguans are European (but not limited to Spanish) or mixed European and of native ancestry.
Most Nicaraguans have Spanish ancestors, but the 19th century saw several waves of immigration from other European countries (mainly from Germany).
Most of the Mestizo and European population live in the western and central regions of the country and especially in the cities of Managua, Leon and Granada.
About 9 per cent of Nicaragua 's population is black or afro-nicarag ense and they are concentrated in the country 's eastern coast, and were brought mostly from Jamaica and Haiti when the region was a British protectorate.
There is also a smaller number of Garifuna, a people of mixed African, Caribbean, Angolan, Congoan and Arawak descent.
Just 5 per cent of the population are of pure native descent.
Nicaragua 's pre-Columbian population consisted of the Nahuatl-speaking Nicarao people of the west, and six ethnic groups including the Miskitos, Ramas and Sumos in the Caribbean region.
While very few pure-blooded Nicarao people still exist, the Caribbean peoples have remained distinct.
In the mid-1980s, the government divided the eastern half of the country - the former department of Zelaya - into two autonomous regions and granted the African and indigenous people of the region limited self-rule.
There is also a small Middle Eastern-Nicaraguan community of Syrian, Armenian, Palestinian and Lebanese people in Nicaragua with a total population of about 30,000, and an East Asian community of Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese people of almost 8,000.
The minorities speak Spanish and maintain their ancestral languages as well.
Spanish is spoken by about 90 % of Nicaraguans; the Nicaraguan dialect has many similarities to Galician, and also has similarities to Argentinian Spanish which uses "vos" instead of "tu", along with the "vos" conjugation.
The black population of the east coast region has English as its first language.
Several indigenous peoples of the east still use their original languages.
Roman Catholicism is the major religion, but evangelical Protestant groups have grown recently, and there are strong Anglican and Moravian communities on the Caribbean coast.
0.1 % of Nicaragua is Buddhist and the religion has been growing in recent years.
Ninety per cent of Nicaraguans live in the Pacific and central lowlands and the adjacent interior highlands.
The population is 54 % urban.
Niger is a country in western Africa.
The capital is Niamey, and the official language is French.
It is surrounded by Algeria and Libya to the north, Chad to the east, Nigeria and Benin to the south, and Burkina Faso and Mali to the west.
Niger is landlocked, meaning it has no coastline.
Niger gets its name from the Niger River.
The Mali Empire and the Songhai Empire both had land in what is now Niger.
Later France controlled the land that is now Niger.
Niger has a population, or the number of people living in an area, of 15,306,252 and an area of 1,267,000 square kilometres.
Much of Niger is desert.
After a military coup in 2010, Niger is now a democratic, multi-party state.
Most of the people live in rural areas, and have little access to advanced education.
Niger is on the border between the Sahara and Sub-Saharan regions.
Niger 's area is 1267000 k of which 300 k is water.
It is the world 's twenty-second largest country.
Niger borders seven countries.
The longest border is with Nigeria to the south.
The lowest point is the Niger River, with an elevation of 200 m. The highest point is Mont Idoukal-n-Tagh s in the A r Mountains at 2022 m.
This table shows cities with a population over 10,000, according to 2001 census.
Niger 's subtropical climate is mainly very hot and dry.
Much of it is covered by desert.
In the extreme south there is a tropical climate on the edges of the Niger River basin.
The land is mostly desert plains and sand dunes.
There is flat to rolling savanna in the south and hills in the north.
The literacy rate (the amount of the adult population who can read or write) of Niger is among the lowest in the world.
In 2005 it was estimated to be only 28.7 % (42.9 % male and 15.1 % female).
Primary education in Niger is required for six years.
The primary school enrollment and attendance rates are low, particularly for girls.
Children are often made to work rather than attend school.
This is particularly true during planting or harvest periods.
Nigeria is a country in west Africa.
It has a population of 154,729,000, which is more than any other country in Africa.
The capital of Nigeria is Abuja.
Nigeria is known for being a large country, and the most rich in Africa.
From the 1500s to the 1800s, many people from the land now called Nigeria (and other parts of West Africa) were taken away and turned into slaves by Europeans, and they were sent to work in the Americas.
These slaves were bought and sold in the Americas by Europeans who lived there.
Today, many people related to those slaves still live in America, though they are no longer slaves.
They are called African-Americans.
From 1901 to 1960, the United Kingdom ruled Nigeria.
However, by 1960 the people wanted independence very much, and Britain finally let them have it.
For some time after this, Nigeria was a dictatorship, where the leaders stayed in control even if the majority of people disliked them.
At this time, Nigeria had a big war called the Biafra War with Christian Igbo people who wanted their own country in the East.
They did not want to be a part of Nigeria, which was ruled by a Muslim, and they wanted their own country called "Biafra".
They did not get their country, and hundreds of thousands of people were killed.
In 1999, Nigeria became a democracy, where people choose their leaders.
After that, Olusegun Obasanjo, a Yoruba Christian from the south, became President.
In 2007, Umaru Yar ` Adua, a Hausa Muslim, was elected to be the next President.
Yar ` Adua died in May, 2009.
Goodluck Jonathan, the vice president, then became president.
Since 2002, there have been a battles in the north of the country.
The battles are between government troops and the Islamist group Boko Haram.
This group wants to have Sharia law for the country.
Nigeria has a total area of 923768 k. It is the world 's 32nd-largest country.
It shares a border with Benin (773 km), Niger (1497 km), Chad (87 km) and Cameroon (1690 km).
It has a coastline of at least 853 km.
The highest point in Nigeria is Chappal Waddi at 2419 m. The main rivers are the Niger and the Benue River.
They come together and empty into the Niger Delta, one of the world 's largest river deltas.
It is the location of a large area of Central African Mangroves.
These are the cities in Nigeria with over 1 million people as of 2012.
In Nigeria, there are two national anthems.
The first one is called "Nigeria We Hail Thee".
The second and current national anthem is called "Arise O ' Compatriots.
The first one was written by Lilian Jean William and composed by Frances Berda.
The second one was written by 5 people and was composed by the Police band.
Arise O ' Compatriots was first heard during Nigeria 's independence.
In Nigeria, there are almost equal amounts of Muslims and Christians.
Most of the Christians live in the south, and most of the Muslims live in the north.
Contrary to some beliefs, the Nigerian civil war was not only attributed to religious intolerance.
The war which took place between 6 July 1967 15 January 1970, was a political conflict caused by the attempted secession of the southeastern provinces of Nigeria as the self-proclaimed Republic of Biafra.
The conflict was the result of economic, ethnic, cultural and religious tensions among the various peoples of Nigeria.
Nigeria produces a large amount of oil, and some fighting has been going on because many people want a share of the oil profits.
This fighting has been happening in the area called the Niger Delta, where the Niger River flows into the Atlantic Ocean.
The largest city in Nigeria is Lagos.
Nigeria has both grasslands and rainforests, and can get very hot, because it is close to the Equator.
Nigerian cuisine, like West African cuisine in general, is known for its richness and variety.
Many different spices, herbs and flavourings are used along with palm oil or groundnut oil.
These make deeply flavored sauces and soups often made very hot with chili peppers.
Nigerian feasts are colourful and lavish.
Good smelling market and roadside snacks cooked on barbecues or fried in oil are plentiful and varied.
Association football is Nigeria 's national sport.
The country has its own Premier League of football.
Nigeria 's Men 's national football team, known as the Super Eagles, has made the World Cup four times.
These were in 1994, 1998, 2002, and most recently in 2010.
They won the African Cup of Nations in 1980 and 1994.
They also hosted the Junior World Cup.
They won the gold medal for football in the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Nigeria is also involved in other sports such as basketball, cricket and track and field.
Boxing is also an important sport in Nigeria; Dick Tiger and Samuel Peter are both former World Champions.
The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean that are a political division controlled by the United States.
Its capital is Saipan.
The Northern Mariana Islands, together with Guam to the south, compose the Mariana Islands.
The southern islands are limestone, with level terraces and fringing coral reefs.
The northern islands are volcanic, with active volcanos on Anatahan, Pagan and Agrihan.
The volcano on Agrihan has the highest elevation at 3166 f. Anatahan Volcano is a small volcanic island 80 m north of Saipan.
It is about 6 m long and 2 m wide.
Anatahan began erupting suddenly from its east crater on May 10, 2003, at about 6 p.m. (0800 UTC).
It has since alternated between eruptive and calm periods.
On April 6, 2005, approximately 1800000 c of ash and rock were ejected, causing a large, black cloud to drift south over Saipan and Tinian.
Norfolk Island (Norfuk: Norfuk Ailen) is a territory of Australia.
It is in the South Pacific Ocean between Australia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia.
It was one of the first British settlements in the Pacific.
Twice it was used as a penal colony.
People from Pitcairn Island were moved to Norfolk Island.
It is now a popular place for holidays.
Norfolk Island is a small volcanic island.
Its size is about 5 m by 3 m. It is about 1000 m northeast of Sydney, and 600 m north of Auckland.
Most of the island is 350 f above the level of the sea.
There are two high points on the island about 1000 f above sea level.
South of Norfolk are two smaller islands, Nepean Island and Phillip Island.
The first people to visit Norfolk Island were probably from New Zealand.
The first European settlers found parts of a canoe and stone axes.
Later work by archaeologists in 1995, found the remains of a house in the sand dunes at Emily Bay.
It was lived in from about 1200 AD to about 1600 AD.
Scientists do not know why the people left the island.
Norfolk Island was first discovered by Captain James Cook on October 10, 1774.
He was on his second trip around the world in his ship, the Resolution.
He landed on the island which was uninhabited (there was no one living there).
He found a flax plant (Phormium tenax) and large trees, now called Norfolk Island Pines (Araucaria heterophylla).
He thought the flax could be used to make cloth for ship sails and the pine trees would make good masts for ships.
He used one of the trees to make a new top mast for the Resolution.
Cook wrote about the island in his book, A Voyage towards the South Pole, printed in London in 1777.
The British government sent Captain Arthur Phillip with the First Fleet to start a penal colony in Australia in 1788.
He was told start a small settlement on Norfolk Island as soon as possible to stop other European countries from claiming the island.
The French ships, L'Astrolabe and La Boussole, commanded by La P rouse, visited the island in early 1778.
They could not land because the waves were too big and rough.
La P rouse thought the island was only suitable for "angels and eagles".
The first European settlers on Norfolk Island arrived on March 3, 1788.
After two days looking around the island, the settlers landed at Emily Bay, part of Sydney Bay, on March 6.
This day is now celebrated as "Foundation Day".
They had come on the HMS Supply, from the new settlement at Sydney, New South Wales.
Philip Gidley King was in charge of a small group of 21 people, including 15 convicts, (9 men and 6 women).
The convicts were to be people of the best character and included Richard Widdicombe aged 72, and Charles McLennan aged 16.
The settlers were:
During the first year of the settlement, which was also called Sydney, more convicts and soldiers were sent from New South Wales.
A second village was started at Ball Bay, named after the captain of HMS Supply, Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball.
On January 8, 1789, the first child was born, Norfolk King, the son of Philip Gidley King and a convict, Ann Inett.
In March 1790, Governor Arthur Phillip decided to send King to England with important messages about the settlements in Australia.
Phillip sent Major Robert Ross, in charge of the soldiers at Sydney, to Norfolk Island to take over from King.
Food was running out in Sydney, so Phillip also sent two companies of soldiers, five free women and children, 183 convicts and 27 children of convicts.
Phillip hoped there would be more food on Norfolk Island.
They were sent on two ships, HMS Sirius and HMS Supply.
On March 19, HMS Sirius, smashed into one of the reefs in Sydney Bay, Norfolk Island.
No one was hurt, and Captain John Hunter was able to get all the people and most of the supplies safely to land.
HMS Supply went back to Sydney, and Major Ross was left with over 500 people on the island.
He quickly did things to make sure there would be enough food.
Anyone taking food, or killing animals for food, without his permission, would be hanged.
They were saved from starvation by the annual arrival of a sea bird, a petrel (Pterodroma melanopus), which nested in holes in the ground.
Between 2000-3000 birds were killed for food every night.
They were also able to eat their eggs.
They called the petrel the "Bird of Providence", because they thought God must have sent the bird to save them.
People also ate the tops of the palm trees.
In August, two ships arrived, the Justinian and the Surprize, which brought more food and 200 more convicts.
King got back to Norfolk Island in November 1791, and Ross went back to Sydney.
More convicts were sent to the island, and by September 1792 there were 1,115 people living there.
King started building another landing place at Cascade Bay, which meant ships had a choice, depending on which way the wind was blowing.
The convicts had difficulty in making things from the flax plants.
Two Maori men were captured in New Zealand and taken to Norfolk to teach the convicts how to use the flax.
The two men, Hoodoo and Toogee, did not know much about flax; in New Zealand this was a task done by the women.
King had the men taken back to New Zealand six months later.
By 1796, 1528 a had been cleared of trees and crops planted.
These crops included maize, wheat, potatoes, sugar cane, bananas, guavas, lemons, apples and coffee.
Farms animals included 12 cattle, 6 horses, 12 donkeys, 374 sheep, 772 goats and 14,624 pigs.
There were two schools and an orphanage for little girls.
King had been in poor health and went back to Sydney, and Captain Townson, from the New South Wales Corps, became the new Lieutenant-Governor.
When Joseph Foveaux arrived as Lieutenant Governor in 1800, he found the settlement quite run down.
Not much had been done to keep it in good condition for four years.
He began fixing buildings and other public works and tried to improve education.
In 1794, King suggested closing Norfolk Island as a penal colony.
It was too far away from New South Wales, it was hard for ships to land there, and it cost too much to keep it going.
In 1803, the Secretary of State, Lord Hobart, called for the moving everyone to Van Diemen 's Land, because of the cost and the difficulties of travel between Norfolk Island and Sydney.
The settlers did not want to move, they had worked hard to clear the land and set up their farms.
They wanted the government to pay them for having to move.
King, now Governor of New South Wales, did not want everyone moved, he thought it would make a good prison for bad convicts from New South Wales.
It could also be a place to supply whaling ships, or grow coffee.
The British government decided to close down the island.
The first group of 159 people left for Van Diemen 's Land in February 1805, mainly convicts and their families, and the soldiers.
Between November 1807 and September 1808, most of the people were moved.
By March 1810 there were only 117 left.
In 1813 the last settlers were taken to Van Diemens 's Land, the soldiers were taken to Sydney.
The British government did not want another country to be able to settle on the island so a small group stayed behind to kill all the animals that were left and destroy all buildings.
In February 1814, the last people left on the ship, "Kangaroo".
Only a few wild pigs and goats were left.
In 1825 the British government decided to set up a new convict prison on Norfolk Island.
This was to be a prison for convicts from New South Wales who continued to break the law.
The Governor of New South Wales, Sir Thomas Brisbane wanted it to be place from which there would be no return.
It was to be the worst punishment short of death.
Many of the convicts were lashed with a nine tailed whip.
This could be as many as 300 lashes at one time, and many had been lashed over 1000 times.
Because it was to be a prison, there were no free settlers allowed on the island, and there were no women prisoners.
Only government ships, or ships in distress, were allowed to land at the island.
After the prison was closed, the British government gave the island to the people from Pitcairn Island.
Pitcairn, with only 30 hectares of land suitable for farming, could no longer cope with a large population.
All 194 people were moved to Norfolk in 1856.
These people were descendants of the mutineers from HMS Bounty.
They arrived on the island on 8 June 1856, and the anniversary is celebrated every year as Bounty Day.
Norfolk Island has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa in the K ppen climate classification).
The New Testament is part of the Christian Bible, and the most important religious writing of Christianity.
It tells the story of Jesus Christ, his followers, and the beginnings of Christianity.
It was written in Koine Greek.
The New Testament is made up of different parts.
In total, there are 27 texts in the New Testament.
The Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches have the same texts, but their arrangement varies; the Syriac Churches and the Ethiopian Churches have different versions.
The Syriac Churches do not put Peter 2, John 2 and 3, Jude and the Revelations in the New Testament.
The Ethopian Churches do not have a common canon.
Each of the Gospels tells the story of Jesus Christ, or the Messiah, whom Christians believe is the Son of God who is born to save the world from sin.
Each of the Gospels tell this same story, with a little more or less detail from the other.
Muslims believe that the Quran, also called the Final Testament, succeeded the New Testament.
The traditional author is listed after each entry.
General epistles are other Letters.
A nerve is a group of special nerve cells grouped together in parallel.
Another word for nerve cell is neuron.
The special neurons grouped together in nerves take information (messages) to and from the human body to the central nervous system.
The central nervous system (acronym) CNS is the brain and spinal cord.
The spinal cord is the big cord that goes from the brain into the back.
It carries all the information that goes from the brain to the nerves in the body.
All the nerves in the body make the peripheral nervous system (acronym PNS).
The brain and spinal cord are the CNS.
All the nerves that come from the spinal cord are the PNS.
Together the CNS and PNS are the nervous system.
Nervous system contains neurons and cells called glia.
Glia cells keep the neurons safe and healthy.
Neurons take messages to and from the CNS to the rest.
The dendrite and axon are fibers that go out from the cell body.
Axons take information away from the cell body.
Dendrites take information to the cell body.
Afferent nerves take messages to the CNS (brain) from the body.
They take messages about sensation from the skin.
They take messages about the position of the body from the muscles.
They take messages about the function of organs like the heart and stomach.
Efferent nerves take messages from the CNS to the body.
They take messages that tell muscles to move.
They take messages to glands.
They tell glands like sweat glands to make sweat (the water that comes out of your skin when you are hot.)
There are many diseases of nerves.
A disease of nerves is also called a neuropathy.
In law, negligence is a kind of lawsuit that people and organizations can bring if they are hurt.
It is a kind of tort.
The law calls someone negligent if he hurts someone else, or someone else 's property, because he was not careful enough.
In a case about legal negligence, the person who brings the lawsuit is called the plaintiff and the person who is being sued is called the defendant.
The law about negligence is different in many places (or jurisdictions), but for the plaintiff to win, he or she usually has to prove at least four things:
The defendant 's duty is what the law says that he or she has to do.
Usually, the law says that people have to be reasonable.
That means they have to be careful, use good judgment, and not be unfair to other people.
In some cases, the law tells people that they have special duties.
In other cases, the law says that people have no duties at all.
For example, in most places that use the common law, a person has no legal duty to rescue another person from harm, even if the rescue is very easy and does not cost anything or put anyone else in danger.
When people do not follow their duty, the law says that they breach their duty.
A plaintiff can usually bring a lawsuit only if he or she has been hurt, or has some other legal harm.
The law tells people what kinds of injuries people can sue about.
A plaintiff can usually sue a defendant only if that defendant was the one who hurt the plaintiff.
In many cases, it is easy to figure out who hurt someone.
But sometimes people get hurt in ways that nobody expects.
For example, a defendant might be driving while drunk, and he might hit an electric pole.
The electric pole could fall down and cause a neighborhood to lose electric power.
As a result, a person two miles away might trip and fall in the dark.
The law will decide whether the drunk driver caused the person to trip and fall.
The word negligence is sometimes used outside the law in a similar way.
It means that someone has not been careful enough.
The Niger River is the main river of western Africa.
It is over 4180 km (2500 miles) long.
It has a crescent shape and it goes through Guinea, Mali, Niger, on the border with Benin and then through Nigeria.
Finally, it reaches the sea at a large delta, called the Niger Delta of the Oil Rivers.
This part of the Atlantic Ocean is called the Gulf of Guinea.
The Niger is the third-longest river in Africa.
Only by the Nile and the Congo are longer.
Its main tributary is the Benue River.
No-one knows the origin of the name Niger.
Many people think that it comes from the Latin word for "black", niger, but there is no evidence for this, and Portuguese explorers would probably have used their own word (negro) on their maps.
Also, the Niger is not a blackwater river (see Rio Negro).
Some people think that ` black ' may mean the color of the people in this area, but this did not happen with any other river in Africa.
Therefore, most people think the name is from the original people of the area in the middle of the river where early European maps used the name "Quorra".
One possibility is the Tuareg phrase gher n gheren "river of rivers", shortened to ngher or "niger", from the middle of the river near Timbuktu.
The Tabula Peutingeriana says "Flumen Girin" (River Girin) and "Hoc flumen quidam Grin vocant, alii Nilum appellant dicint enim sub terra Etyopium in Nilum ire Lacum."
, which means "This river which some are naming Grin is called Nile by others and is thought to flow under the ground of Ethiopia (i.e. modern Africa) into the Nile Lake."
Nigeria and Niger take their names from the river.
The people who live beside the river have many names for it, such as Jeliba or Joliba ("great river" in Manding), Isa Ber ("big river" in Songhay), Oya, (a Yoruba River Niger goddess), and Kworra or Quorra.
The last name was the name that Europeans used for the lower part of the river before they knew that the upper and lower parts were connected.
The Niger River is quite a clear river.
It has only 10 % as much sediment as the Nile because the Niger 's source is in very old rocks that have little silt.
Like the Nile, the Niger River has a flood every year; this starts in September, becomes strongest in November, and finishes by May.
An unusual feature of the river is the Niger Inland Delta.
This forms where the river suddenly becomes less steep.
This makes a region of connected streams, marshes, and lakes over an amount of land the same size as Belgium.
The yearly floods make the delta very good for fishing and farming.
The Niger takes an unusual route.
It is a boomerang shape and this confused Europeans for 2000 years.
Its source is only 240 km (150 miles) from the Atlantic Ocean, but the river flows away from the sea into the Sahara Desert, then turns near the ancient city of Timbuktu (Tombouctou).
From here, it goes southeast to the Gulf of Guinea.
Ancient Romans thought that the river near Timbuktu was part of the Nile River and Ibn Battuta had the same opinion.
Early 17th-century European explorers thought that it flowed west and joined the S n gal River.
Many local people probably knew the real route, but Europeans only knew it in the late 19th century, when it was mentioned in the book Travels in the Interior of Africa by the Scottish explorer Mungo Park.
This unusual route happened because the Niger River is two ancient rivers which are joined together.
The upper Niger, from the source, past Timbuktu, to the bend in the river, used to empty into a lake, but the lake has now gone.
However, the lower Niger started in hills near the lake and flowed south into the Gulf of Guinea.
The Sahara Desert dried up in 4000-1000 BC, and the two rivers changed their routes and they joined (some people disagree, but most people think this is true).
The northern part of the river, which is called the Niger bend, is important because it is the Sahara Desert 's closest big river.
Therefore, trade across the west of the Sahara came here, and it became the center of the Sahelian kingdoms of Mali and Gao.
The Necronomicon is a fictional book of magic created by the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.
It is a Greek-sounding word commonly translated as "book of dead names".
It is pronounced "neck-ro-nom-ih-kon".
Like most of his ideas, the Necronomicon came to Lovecraft in his dreams.
Lovecraft let his friends write stories about the Necronomicon.
Eventually, fake Necronomicons were written.
According to Lovecraft, the Necronomicon was written in the eighth century by a crazy Arabian man named Abdul Alhazred.
Alhazred (who was also fictional) practiced evil magic.
He assembled a collection of evil spells into a manuscript (a book with loose pages and no cover) which he called Al Azif.
Lovecraft said this as an Arabian phrase for a scary sound, like a scream.
Later, the original manuscript was translated into Greek.
It was given the title Necronomicon.
Olaus Wormius (a real person) then translated the Greek version into Latin.
John Dee (also real) translated the Necronomicon into English.
Lovecraft liked to mix in real people and places in his fiction.
This made the stories seem more real.
Some people were fooled into thinking what he wrote was true.
Since Lovecraft 's death, several authors have written their own versions of the Necronomicon.
They are the author 's imagination of what the Necronomicon would be like, if it were real.
A few claim to be the actual Necronomicon.
The most famous case of a "real" Necronomicon is the "Simon" Necronomicon.
Simon is a fake name.
It was published in the 1970s.
The "Simon" Necronomicon is based on Sumerian mythology.
It has nothing to do with H. P. Lovecraft 's fiction.
Some people dislike the "Simon" Necronomicon.
They do not like that it pretends to be real.
Sometimes, people believe it to be real.
Simon has written several books about the Necronomicons "discovery".
Niccol Machiavelli (Florence, Italy, 3 May 1469 21 June 1527) was a Florentine official at the time of the Medicis.
He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic.
He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, poetry, and some of the best-known personal correspondence in the Italian language.
Machiavelli is known today as the author of The Prince.
This book has influenced politics.
In his best known book, The Prince, he describes the way that a Prince (by which Machiavelli means a ruler) can control the people he rules.
He looks especially at what he calls the "new prince", saying that a prince from a royal family has an easier job because the people are used to his family and the way of life.
All that such a hereditary prince needs to do is carefully stick to the traditional ways of working that the people are used to.
A new prince has a much more difficult job because he must get people used to his new power and build up new ways of working that people can get used to.
This job means that in the new prince has to act in a way people would not quickly criticize, but Machiavelli says this may mean doing bad but necessary things which people do not see or remember.
Otherwise a new prince will find it difficult to get anything important done, or even to keep ruling.
November is the eleventh and penultimate (second-last) month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, coming between October and December.
It has 30 days.
Its name is from the Latin word novem, which meant "nine".
It was the ninth month of the year before January and February were added to the Roman Calendar.
November begins on the same day of the week as March every year and also February except in leap years.
November 's flower is the Chrysanthemum.
Its birthstone is the topaz.
The meaning of the topaz is Fidelity.
November is the eleventh month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, after October and before December, which is the last month.
November has 30 days.
It was the ninth month in the old Roman calendar, which is where its name comes from.
It kept its name when January and February were added to the beginning of the year, despite becoming the eleventh month.
The ninth month is now September.
November begins on the same day of the week as March every year, and also begins on the same day as February in common years.
It always ends on the same day of the week as August, as August 31 and November 30 are exactly 13 weeks (91 days) apart.
In the Northern Hemisphere, November is an Autumn (Fall) month, and the further north in the hemisphere, the more likely it is to get colder as December approaches.
In the Southern Hemisphere it is a Spring month.
In each hemisphere, it is the seasonal equivalent of May in the other.
Several observances around the beginning of the month are believed to be related, linked to the old Celtic celebration of Samhain on November 1.
These events include Halloween (October 31), Day of the Dead in Mexico (October 31 to November 2), All Saints Day (November 1) and All Souls Day (November 2).
In several mainly Christian countries, it is month in which people who died in war are commonly remembered, mainly related to the end of World War I on November 11, 1918.
Near the end of the month Advent, the period leading up to Christmas, begins.
The astrological signs for November are Scorpio (October 24 to November 22) and Sagittarius (November 23 to December 21).
The birth flower is the chrysanthemum and the birth stone is the topaz.
Arthur Neville Chamberlain, (surname pronounced: CHAIM-BER-LIN; 18 March 1869 9 November 1940) was a politician, Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Chancellor of the Exchequer and British Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940.
Neville was born in Edgbaston, in Birmingham.
His father was Joseph Chamberlain, an important politician.
His half-brother (they had different mothers), Austen Chamberlain, also became an important politician.
Neville went to Rugby school.
He became interested in botany (plants), birds and fishing.
Neville also loved music and literature (reading).
He studied metallurgy at Mason college, which Joseph Chamberlain later made part of the University of Birmingham.
Later, he became an apprentice in an accounting company.
Neville became a successful manager in a manufacturing company.
In 1911, when he was 42, the people of Birmingham elected (chose) him to be part of the city council.
On the council, he had the job of planning improving the city, the same kind of work his father had done.
He planned new houses for poor people.
In 1915 he became Lord Mayor of Birmingham, also as his father had done.
In this job he did work to improve the city, including starting the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
In 1916, the prime minister, Lloyd George asked Chamberlain to manage the department in control of conscription, making civilians become soldiers in times of war.
Chamberlain and Lloyd-George often argued, and soon they did not like each other.
Chamberlain left the job the next year.
Instead, he entered the 1918 general election and became the Conservative Member of Parliament for Ladywood in Birmingham.
In 1923, the prime minister Andrew Bonar Law made Chamberlain the health minister In this job, Chamberlain did more work to help poor people.
For example he made a law that connected rent prices to how good the building was.
Chamberlain was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in charge of the economy, for a short time.
After the 1924 general election, he became health minister again, where he stayed until the Conservatives lost the 1929 general election.
Between 1924 and 1929, Chamberlain helped to make many new laws to help poor people, including a pensions system that helped to make Britain 's welfare state after the Second World War.
In 1929, the Conservatives lost the general election, and Ramsay MacDonald became the new Labor prime minister.
At this time, the Conservative party was trying to put tariffs (taxes) on imports to make trade in the British Empire stronger.
Other people, including Lord Beaverbrook, a businessman who owned a lot of newspapers, disagreed, saying that trade should be free.
Lord Beaverbrook started a new party to fight the Conservatives.
Chamberlain fought Beaverbrook 's part in an election, and won.
This made him very popular in the Conservative party.
An economic crisis in 1931 led to another general election.
After the election, Chamberlain became Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In this position he worked to cancel debts from the war.
In 1932 he was able to start a tariff system.
His father, Joseph Chamberlain had spent a long time working for a stronger British Empire when he was foreign secretary.
He also worked hard for a tariff system before he died, because he believed it would make the Empire economically independent.
Neville was pleased to make his father 's wishes come true.
By 1934, Chamberlain felt that the economy had recovered.
However, at this time many important people, including Chamberlain 's half-brother Austen and Winston Churchill were warning that Nazi Germany was rearm (building its military).
These men said that Britain must rearm, too.
In July 1934 the government told parliament that it had a plan to make the Royal Air Force much stronger.
However, not everybody was happy to see an arms race (a competition with Germany to build a bigger military).
The First World War was still in people 's memories, and there was a pacifist feeling in the country.
Chamberlain advised the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, to talk about rearmament in the 1935 general election.
Baldwin was worried people would not vote for them if they talked about making the military stronger, so he talked about housing and unemployment instead.
Chamberlain worked hard with a slow economy.
The government bought factories that were not being used, and spent money making them new again.
This idea helped when the war began because Britain had the most modern equipment.
When he announced (told the public about) his budget (plan for the economy) in 1935, the Labor party said he wanted war.
Other people still said he was not doing enough to build the military.
In 1936 the government announced plans to build the Royal Navy.
Stanley Baldwin retired in 1937, and Chamberlain became the new prime minister on the 28th May.
Chamberlain is mostly remembered for being the prime minister as Europe moved into the Second World War, but as prime minister he also made some important changes in Britain.
He made laws that made working conditions better.
He limited working hours for women and children.
He introduced paid holiday for a large part of the population.
He introduced laws to try to make the population healthier by exercising and medical inspection.
Many other changes were planned, but the start of the war stopped these changes from happening.
In the 1930 's, the Irish Taoiseach (similar to a prime minister) was amon de Valera.
de Valera worked to make a new constitution (set of laws) for Ireland.
He wanted to make Ireland independent from Britain.
Ireland had its own government, but Britain still controlled Northern Ireland, and had naval ports (called treaty ports) in Ireland.
de Valera wanted this control to stop.
Chamberlain wanted Ireland to support Britain if there was a war because he knew that without Irish help, defending the Atlantic Ocean would be difficult.
Chamberlain and his Secretary of State, Malcolm MacDonald made an agreement to give the treaty ports back to Ireland, but hoped that British warships might use them in the war.
Many Conservatives, including Winston Churchill, (who had made an agreement to have the treaty ports in 1921) disagreed strongly with this plan.
This agreement, together with a plan to limit the number of Jewish people moving into Palestine (which was controlled by Britain at this time) made Chamberlain unpopular with many people.
Although many people warned about the threat of Nazi Germany, Chamberlain only chose ministers that agreed with him, and wanted to avoid war.
Chamberlain, together with many people of the same age, were very worried about war.
They believed that people like Adolf Hitler were in power because their people felt that their situation was unfair.
German people felt that the Treaty of Versailles (an agreement made to end the First World War) was unfair.
When Nazi Germany invade (took control of) Austria and the Sudetenland (a part of Czechoslovakia), Chamberlain tried to keep peace.
In September 1938 he flew to Munich to speak with Hitler.
Together with the French prime minister, douard Daladier and the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, he made an agreement with Hitler.
Hitler was allowed to control the Sudetenland, but had to agree not to use his military to solve future disputes (disagreements).
When Chamberlain returned home, many people said he had done a wonderful job.
Chamberlain was very pleased, and said that the agreement meant "peace for our time".
In March of 1939, the German military moved in to control the rest of Czechoslovakia.
This was against the Munich agreement.
Chamberlain realized that his attempts to control Hitler had failed.
He started to get Britain ready for war, using the new factories that had been built.
Many new weapons were built, including the Supermarine Spitfire (a fighter aircraft), and radar.
When the Germans invaded Poland on 1st September 1939, the British and the French talked together and decided to declare war on Germany (tell Germany war had started).
Chamberlain spoke on the radio, and told the British people that war had begun.
Chamberlain made a new government, and included Winston Churchill.
After the Germans invaded Norway in April 1940, the British sent a naval force to fight them.
The plan was not a success, however, and parliament no longer supported Chamberlain.
on 10 May 1940, Chamberlain resigned.
Churchill became the prime minister, but Chamberlain stayed in the government.
Later in May, Germany offered conditions for peace (things they wanted to stop fighting).
Most of the government, including Chamberlain, wanted to agree with Germany and stop fighting.
Churchill did not want to agree with Germany.
He spoke with Chamberlain, and soon Chamberlain began to agree with Churchill.
The result was that Britain stayed in the war.
In the summer of 1940, Chamberlain became sick.
In July he had an operation on his stomach to treat cancer.
He tried to return to work, but became too weak, and had to retire.
He died on 9 November 1940 of bowel cancer.
He was 71 years old.
Winston Churchill spoke to parliament to tell them about Chamberlain 's death.
He praised Chamberlain as a good, honest man.
People disagree about the history of Chamberlain.
Some people think that his actions were wrong because he did not stop Hitler.
Other people say that he gave Britain and France more time to get ready for war.
Nicanor Parra Sandoval (born 5 September 1914) is a Chilean poet, mathematician and physicist.
He is considered to be an influential poet in Latin America and one of the most important poets of Spanish literature.
Parra has been nominated several times for a Nobel Prize in Literature.
The normal distribution is a probability distribution.
It is also called Gaussian distribution because it was discovered by Carl Friedrich Gauss.
The normal distribution is a continuous probability distribution.
It is very important in many fields of science.
Normal distributions are a family of distributions of the same general form.
These distributions differ in their location and scale parameters: the mean ("average") of the distribution defines its location, and the standard deviation ("variability") defines the scale.
The standard normal distribution (also known as the Z distribution) is the normal distribution with a mean of zero and a variance of one (the green curves in the plots to the right).
It is often called the bell curve because the graph of its probability density looks like a bell.
Many values follow a normal distribution.
This is because of the central limit theorem, which says that if an event is the sum of other random events, it will be normally distributed.
Some examples include:
This is a list of national anthems.
This list shows the country on the left, the national anthem in the middle, and the meaning in English on the right.
The names of states that do not exist anymore, or that are not independent nations, or the names of state organizations are italicized.
Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 7 January 1943;) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer and physicist.
He is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
He was born in Smiljan, in the part of former Austria-Hungary that is now Croatia.
He later became an American citizen.
Tesla got his first job in Budapest in 1882, working at a telephone company.
A few years later he moved to the United States.
Even in his early life, he was inventing things.
His best known invention was an electric motor that could run well on AC power.
Tesla died of coronary thrombosis in a hotel room in Manhattan, New York City on 7 January 1943.
Tesla was born on 10 July 1856 in Smiljan, Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia).
Tesla 's father, Milutin Tesla, was a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church.
His mother was a housewife who was of Serbian descent.
She was born in the Stari Vlah (Raska) region of Serbia.
He was the fourth child out of five.
He had one older brother, Dane, two older sisters, Angelina and Milka, and one younger sister, Marica.
Tesla had a job in telephony and electrical engineering before moving to the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison.
They quarreled and soon Tesla started working on his own with other people investing in his work.
He set up laboratories and companies to develop a range of electrical devices.
His patented AC electric motor (induction motor) and transformer were licensed by American industrialist George Westinghouse.
Westinghouse also hired Tesla for one year to help develop a power system using alternating current.
The advantage that popularized alternating current is the use of transformers for long distance electric power transmission.
Tesla is also known for his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs, Colorado which included inventions and ideas used in the invention of radio communication, for his X-ray experiments, and for his unsuccessful attempt at worldwide wireless transmission in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.
Tesla 's achievements made him very famous.
So did his abilities as a showman, demonstrating his seemingly miraculous inventions.
Although he made a great deal of money from his patents, he spent a lot on his experiments.
He lived for most of his life in a series of hotels in New York City.
The end of his patent income and eventual bankruptcy led him to live in much poorer circumstances.
Tesla still continued to invite the press to parties he held on his birthday to announce new inventions he was working and make (sometimes unusual) statements.
Because of his wonderful pronouncements without results or proof, Tesla gained a reputation in popular culture as the archetypal "mad scientist".
He died in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel on 7 January 1943.
Tesla 's work fell into relative obscurity after his death, but since the 1990 's, his reputation has experienced a comeback in popular culture.
His work and reputed inventions are also at the center of many conspiracy theories and have also been used to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories and New Age occultism.
In 1960, in honor of Tesla, the General Conference on Weights and Measures for the International System of Units dedicated the term "tesla" to the SI unit measure for magnetic field strength.
Natural numbers, also called counting numbers, are the numbers used for counting things.
Sometimes the special number zero is called a natural number.
Sometimes one is called the smallest natural number.
Natural numbers are always whole numbers (integers) and never less than zero.
There is no largest natural number.
The next natural number can be found by adding 1 to the current natural number, producing numbers that go on "for ever".
There is no infinite natural number.
Any natural number can be reached by adding 1 enough times to the smallest natural number.
or is the way to write the set of all natural numbers.
Because some people say 0 is a natural number, and some people say it is not, people use the following symbols to talk about the natural numbers:
The Neogene is the second geological period of the Cainozoic.
It began 23 million years ago, and ended about 2.6 million years ago.
Before the Neogene was the Palaeogene.
The Neogene has two stages: Miocene, and Pliocene.
It is followed by the Quaternary.
Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya.
It is near the coastline of Kenya.
About three million people live there.
The city was founded in 1899 as a railway depot linking Uganda to Mombasa.
Nairobi is the fourth largest city in Africa.
Nairobi is also very sunny at most times.
Nairobi is a good place in to go for a ride in a car, although traffic is often bad.
There are several popular shopping malls, including the Yaya Center, Junction Mall, the Village Market, and the Sarit Center.
The Westgate Mall was another popular destination until it was attacked by al Shaabab terrorists in 2013.
Nairobi has become very highly populated due to high rural to urban migration rates.
Violent crime is also fairly common in many areas, leading to the nickname "Nairobbery."
Neutrinos are a type of elementary particle that exist all across the universe.
Physicists study these particles, but they are hard to find because they have a very small chance of interacting with regular matter.
(For example, they pass through the whole earth without touching any other particles).
Neutrinos travel near the speed of light.
We used to think that they have no mass, but a few years ago physicists found that they have a very small mass, much lighter than electrons.
By finding neutrinos, we can learn about the structure and the history of the universe.
Neutrinos are very difficult to detect.
They are very unlikely to collide (interact, in this case) with other particles as they travel through space or through matter.
Unlike negatively charged electrons, neutrinos have no charge (neutrino meaning small neutral particle).
This means that they are unaffected by the electromagnetic force, too.
Detectors built to find them only see 10-15 a year.
They are commonly generated in particle accelerators, the sun, nuclear reactions, and other stars.
They are generated whenever there is a nuclear reaction in the form of Beta decay.
This process starts off with one neutron, and ends with one electron, one proton, and one neutrino.
The 3 types of neutrinos are named after the previous three leptons.
There is the electron neutrino (ve), the muon neutrino (v), and the tau neutrino (v).
Each neutrino has an antiparticle, called an antineutrino.
Therefore, there is an electron antineutrino, a muon antineutrino, and tau antineutrino.
The three types of neutrinos change into each other over time, so an electron neutrino could turn into a tau neutrino and then back again.
This is called neutrino oscillation.
This was first suggested as there were only a third of the number of electron neutrinos coming from the sun as theories of the time said there should be.
Most neutrinos passing through the Earth come from the Sun.
About 65 billion solar neutrinos per second pass through every square centimeter perpendicular to the direction of the Sun in the region of the Earth.
Nanotechnology is a part of science and technology about the control of matter on the atomic and molecular scale - this means things that are about 100 nanometres or smaller.
Nanotechnology includes making products that use parts this small, such as electronic devices, catalysts, sensors, etc..
To give you an idea of how small that is, there are more nanometres in an inch than there are inches in 400 miles.
To give a international idea of how small that is, there are as many nanometres in a centimetre, as there are centimetres in 100 kilometres.
Nanotechnology brings together scientists and engineers from many different subjects, such as applied physics, materials science, interface and colloid science, device physics, chemistry, supramolecular chemistry (which refers to the area of chemistry that focuses on the non-covalent bonding interactions of molecules), self-replicating machines and robotics, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, biology, biological engineering, and electrical engineering.
Generally, when people talk about nanotechnology, they mean structures of the size 100 nanometers or smaller.
There are one million nanometers in a millimeter.
Nanotechnology tries to make materials or machines of that size.
People are doing many different types of work in the field of nanotechnology.
Most current work looks at making nanoparticles (particles with nanometer size) that have special properties, such as the way they scatter light, absorb X-rays, transport electrical currents or heat, etc..
At the more "science fiction" end of the field are attempts to make small copies of bigger machines or really new ideas for structures that make themselves.
New materials are possible with nano size structures.
It is even possible to work with single atoms.
There has been a lot of discussion about the future of nanotechnology and its dangers.
Nanotechnology may be able to invent new materials and instruments which would be very useful, such as in medicine, computers, and making clean electricity (nanotechnology) is helping design the next generation of solar panels, and efficient low-energy lighting).
On the other hand, nanotechnology is new and there could be unknown problems.
For example if the materials are bad for people 's health or for nature.
They may have a bad effect on the economy or even big natural systems like the Earth itself.
Some groups argue that there should be rules about the use of nanotechnology.
Ideas of nanotechnology were first used in talk "There 's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", a talk given by the scientist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959.
Feynman described a way to move individual atoms to build smaller instruments and operate at that scale.
Properties such as surface tension and Van der walls force would become very important.
Feynman 's simple idea seemed possible.
The word "nanotechnology" was explained by Tokyo Science University Professor Norio Taniguchi in a 1974 paper.
He said that nanotechnology was the work of changing materials by one atom or by one molecule.
In the 1980s this idea was studied by Dr. K. Eric Drexler, who spoke and wrote about the importance of nano-scale events.
"Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology" (1986) is thought to be the first book on nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology and Nano science started with two key developments: the start of cluster science and the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM).
Soon afterwards, new molecules with carbon were discovered - first fullerenes in 1986 and carbon nanotubes a few years later.
In another development, people studied how to make semiconductor nano crystals.
Many metal oxide nanoparticles are now used as quantum dots (nanoparticles where the behavior of single electrons becomes important).
In 2000, the United States National Nanotechnology Initiative began to develop science in this field.
Nanotechnology has nanomaterials which can be classified into one, two and three dimensions nanoparticles.
This classification is based upon different properties it holds such as scattering of light, absorbing x rays, transport electric current or heat.
Nanotechnology has multidisciplinary character affecting multiple traditional technologies and different scientific disciplines.
New materials which can be scaled even at atomic size can be manufactured.
At nano scale physical properties of system or particles substantially change.
Physical properties such as quantum size effects where electrons move different for very small sizes of particle.
Properties such as mechanical, electrical and optical changes when macroscopic system changes to microscopic one which is of utmost importance.
Nano materials and particles can act as catalyst to increase the reaction rate along with that produce better yield as compared to other catalyst.
Some of the most interesting properties when particle gets converted to nano scale are substances which usually stop light become transparent (copper); it becomes possible to burn some materials (aluminum); solids turn into liquids at room temperature (gold); insulators become conductors (silicon).
A material such as gold, which does not react with other chemicals at normal scales, can be a powerful chemical catalyst at nanoscales.
These special properties which we can only see at the nano scale are one of the most interesting things about nanotechnology.
Nylon is an artificial fiber.
It is one of the most commonly used polyamides, and was first produced on February 28, 1935.
Nylon makes a silky material which was first used in toothbrushes.
It is used to make clothes.
In fact, most polyamidea are most used for synthetic fibers in clothing.
Nylon can also be used to make war materials, such as parachutes and ropes.
Nylon was invented by Wallace Carothers at Du-Pont.
Nylon is like silk in appearance.
It is strong, hard and water resistant.
It is used in manufacture of string, ropes, string for tyres, carpet, net for fishing and cloth or parachute.
Nucleus (plural: nuclei) means the center of something.
It might mean:
Nucleic acids are large molecules where genetic information is stored.
There are two types of nucleic acids: deoxyribonucleic acid, better known as DNA and ribonucleic acid, better known as RNA.
The nucleic acids are made of nucleotides.
A nucleotide is made of a nitrogenous base, sugar with five carbon atoms and a phosphate group.
Nucleic acids allow organisms to transfer genetic information from one generation to the next.
When a cell divides, its DNA is copied and passed from one cell generation to the next generation.
DNA is organized into chromosomes and found within the nucleus of our cells.
Its function in any cell is to carry the sequence of bases which will be transcribed into RNA.
The function of RNA is much more difficult to explain.
One well-known function is for messenger RNA to be translated into proteins, mainly enzymes.
But there are other types of RNA, and these are called non-coding RNAs.
Nitrate (NO31 -) is a polyatomic ion.
It is made up of one nitrogen and three oxygen atoms.
It is part of many important molecules.
Potassium nitrate is a common nitrate, used in fertilizers because plants need nitrates to live and grow.
Some nitrates are explosive.
People make large amounts of nitrates from ammonia.
Nitrates are similar to nitrites.
Many metal nitrates with thermal decomposition makes oxygen and metal nitrate.
Nitric acid has the formula HNO3 and has no overall charge, because the hydrogen ion is positive.
Nicole Mary Kidman, AC (born 20 June 1967) is an Australian-American actress, singer and film producer.
She began acting in movies in 1983.
She starred in various Australian movies and television shows.
Her first major role was in Dead Calm in 1989.
Her performance in the musical Moulin Rouge!
(2001) earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
She later won the award in this category for playing Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002).
Nicole Kidman was born in Honolulu, Hawaii while her Australian parents were temporarily in the United States on educational visas.
Kidman can therefore claim citizenship in Australia and the United States.
Her father, Antony David Kidman (1938-2014) was a biochemist, clinical psychologist, and author.
Her mother, Janelle Ann (n e Glenny), is a nursing instructor who edits her husband 's books and was a member of the Women 's Electoral Lobby.
Kidman is of Scottish and Irish ancestry.
At the time of Kidman 's birth, her father was a graduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
He soon became a visiting fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health of the United States.
Opposed to the war in Vietnam, which was causing social unrest in both Australia and the United States, Kidman 's parents participated in anti-war protests while they were living in Washington, D.C..
The family returned to Australia when Kidman was four and her parents now live on Sydney 's North Shore.
Kidman has a younger sister, Antonia Kidman, a journalist and TV presenter.
Kidman 's first movie was in 1983.
It was called BMX Bandits.
Her first famous movie was Dead Calm in 1989.
Her first major movie was called Days of Thunder, which also starred Tom Cruise.
They fell in love during the filming of that movie and married.
Kidman was then in more movies like Flirting, Billy Bathgate, Far and Away, Malice, My Life and To Die For.
All of these movies were successes.
She was then in movies like Batman Forever and Practical Magic.
In 1999 she starred in a movie with Cruise called Eyes Wide Shut.
They played a married couple in the movie.
It was the last movie directed by director Stanley Kubrick.
They separated and divorced after making Eyes Wide Shut.
Since Kidman and Cruise divorced, she has been in movies including: Moulin Rouge!
, The Others, Cold Mountain, The Stepford Wives and Bewitched.
She was married to Tom Cruise until 2001.
She is now married to Keith Urban.
Nucleotides are chemical compounds, the building blocks of the nucleic acids RNA and DNA.
A nucleotide is composed of a nucleobase (nitrogenous base), a five-carbon sugar (either ribose or 2-deoxyribose), and one phosphate group.
Nucleotides contain either a purine or a pyrimidine base.
Ribonucleotides are nucleotides in which the sugar is ribose.
Deoxyribonucleotides are nucleotides in which the sugar is deoxyribose.
In DNA, the purine bases are adenine and guanine, while the pyrimidines are thymine and cytosine.
RNA uses uracil in place of thymine.
Adenine always pairs with thymine by 2 hydrogen bonds, while guanine pairs with cytosine through 3 hydrogen bonds, each due to their unique structures.
Numerical analysis studies different algorithms to get approximations for problems of mathematical analysis.
Approximations are used for the following reasons:
One of the earliest known uses of numerical analysis is a Babylonian clay tablet, which approximates the square root of 2.
In a unit square, the diagonal has this length.
Being able to compute the sides of a triangle is extremely important, for instance, in carpentry and construction.
Numerical analysis continues this long tradition of practical mathematical calculations.
Much like the Babylonian approximation of, modern numerical analysis does not seek exact answers, because exact answers are often impossible to obtain in practice.
Instead, much of numerical analysis is concerned with obtaining approximate solutions while maintaining reasonable bounds on errors.
Numerical analysis naturally finds applications in all fields of engineering and the physical sciences, but in the 21st century, the life sciences and even the arts have adopted elements of scientific computations.
Ordinary differential equations appear in star movement; optimization occurs in portfolio management; numerical linear algebra is important for data analysis; stochastic differential equations and Markov chains are essential in simulating living cells for medicine and biology.
Computers greatly helped this task.
Before there were computers, numerical methods often depended on hand interpolation in large printed tables.
Since the mid 20th century, computers calculate the required functions instead.
These same interpolation formulas nevertheless continue to be used as part of the software algorithms for solving differential equations.
Niccol Paganini (27 October 1782 - 27 May 1840) was a Italian composer and violin player.
He is believed to be one of the best violinists who ever lived.
He was born in Genoa, Italy and died in Nice, France.
Paganini was the perfect virtuoso during his time although many other violinists slowly approach and some appear to be as virtuosic as him too.
He was said to be a show off during his time and many wanted to challenge his violin skills.
Paganini once broke all of the strings on his violin except the G-string and played a piece just on one string to show how good he was.
He was the master of violin technique and invented many new techniques such as ricochet bowing, flying staccatos, left hand pizzicato, etc..
His 24 caprices are his most famous compositions.
Paganini was good friends with Franz Liszt who was also an equally magnificent virtuoso, only that he played the piano.
They both came together and composed the etude La campanella, also known as the clock in English.
Nutrition provides the cells of an organism with food, in a form they can use.
Organisms need food to be able to keep their bodies working properly.
They also need food to be able to do certain things.
Malnutrition can happen when a person does n't eat the right amount of nutrients.
They can get better by changing their diet to have the right amount of the various nutrients.
Different organisms have different food requirements, and they eat different things in order to meet those requirements.
Animals that do not eat meat, for example, will have to get certain nutrients like protein from other foods.
A nutrition expert is called a dietician.
Nutritionists are different because they do n't need the government to recognize them as experts.
Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist.
The six main types of nutrient are carbohydrates, fats, minerals, protein, vitamins, and water.
A macronutrient is a nutrient that needs to be eaten a lot.
A micronutrient, such as a vitamin, is needed in smaller amounts but it is still important.
Carbohydrates are not needed by the body but most people eat a lot of them.
Complex carbohydrates are more nutritious than simple carbohydrates.
They take longer to digest.
Because they stay in the stomach for longer they leave the person who has eaten them feeling fuller for longer.
Protein is needed for building cells.
It is found in milk, meat, fish, beans, eggs and other foods like quinoa.
Protein is made of amino acids.
Fat is found naturally in some foods.
People often eat it in processed foods such as cakes and chocolate.
It is high in energy.
Omega 3 and omega 6 fats are needed by the body.
There are saturated fats and unsaturated fats.
It is recommended that people avoid the saturated type.
It has been linked with heart disease.
A lot of people think that fat is bad in general.
It is controversial.
People are also advised not to eat too much sugar or salt.
Most people eat three meals a day.
Eating every few hours keeps blood sugar stable.
Number theory is a part of mathematics.
It explains what some types of numbers are, what properties they have, and ways that they can be useful.
A well-known application of number theory is encrypted messaging (encryption).
Data compression also makes use of the field.
Nitroglycerin, also known as nitroglycerine (UK spelling), trinitroglycerin, trinitroglycerine, 1,2,3-trinitroxypropane and glyceryl trinitrate, is a heavy, colorless, oily, explosive liquid obtained by nitrating glycerol.
It is very dangerous and easy to detonate.
It was synthesized in 1847 by Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero.
Alfred Nobel used it to make one of the most famous explosives in the world during 1867, named dynamite.
Nitroglycerine is also used in some medicines because it is a vasodilator.
This means it makes the blood vessels get wider.
That makes it easier for blood to flow through them.
Nitroglycerine is used mostly for angina and some heart attacks caused by coronary artery disease.
This is a disease that makes the blood vessels that bring blood to the heart get narrower.
When the heart does not get enough blood and oxygen, a person can have angina (chest pain) or a heart attack.
Taking nitroglycerine makes the blood vessels get wider again, so more blood and oxygen can get to the heart.
Nitroglycerin is sometimes used in emergencies for other medical conditions caused by narrow blood vessels.
The navy is the part of a country 's military that fights on water using boats.
People in the navy are called sailors.
The navy is mostly made up of warships.
It may also have its own air force and soldiers.
It may have special boats that can go underwater, called submarines, or another kind of special boat that is meant to carry airplanes, called aircraft carriers.
Originally, Naval war was fought by ramming other ships and then boarding them.
In Ancient Greece and Rome, the ships were usually powered by oars.
Then, during the Middle Ages, the cannon was invented.
These could be shot at other ships from a great distance.
Ships around this time also began to use sails instead of oars for power.
In the 1800s, ships began to be plated in armor for protection.
Steam engines allowed them move while carrying the armor, and better ones soon made them much faster.
These early warships, called ironclads, are thought to have begun the type of Naval warfare used today.
Ships soon became much larger.
The Nicene Creed, Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed or Icon\/Symbol of the Faith, is the most widespread or ecumenical Christian statement of faith.
Since its original formulation it continues to be used in the Roman Catholic, Syrian Orthodox (Jacobite), Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian, Anglican, Lutheran, and most other Protestant Churches.
The following table displays side by side the earlier (325) and later (381) forms of this Creed in the English translation given in Schaff 's Creeds of Christendom, which indicates by brackets the portions of the 325 text that were omitted or moved in 381, but uses no typographical mark to indicate what phrases, absent in the 325 text, were added in 381.
There were certain problems with the Nicene creed.
In 529, the so-called filioque clause was added to the creed.
This clause is one of the main differences between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The Catholic Church has this clause, the Eastern Orthodox Church does not.
The clause is about how godly the Father is, compared to the Son.
Where the original Nicene Creed reads "We believe in the Holy Spirit... who proceeds from the Father", the altered, Roman Catholic version reads "We believe in the Holy Spirit... who proceeds from the Father and the Son".
Roman Catholic Christians accept this change, but Eastern Orthodox Christians reject it.
Many Eastern Catholic churches (Eastern in liturgy but in full communion with the pope) do not use the clause in their creed.
They do think the doctrine it represents is true, though, as this is a dogma of the Roman Catholic faith.
Many Protestant churches who take a position in this matter, usually accept the filioque.
After the East-West Schism of 1054, the Eastern and Western churches attempted to reunite at two separate medieval councils, and the filioque was an issue at each.
Despite Greek concessions, neither the Second Council of Lyon (1274) nor the Council of Ferrera-Florence (1438 - 1535) achieved the desired union.
The clause is most often referred to as "the filioque" or simply filioque.
Nuclear fusion is the process of making a single heavy nucleus (part of an atom) from two lighter nuclei.
This process is called a nuclear reaction.
It releases a large amount of energy.
The nucleus made by fusion is heavier than either of the starting nuclei.
However, it is not as heavy as the combination of the original mass of the starting nuclei (atoms).
This lost mass is changed into lots of energy.
This is shown in Einstein 's famous E = mc2 equation.
Fusion happens in the middle of stars, like the Sun.
Hydrogen atoms are fused together to make helium.
This releases lots of energy.
This energy powers the heat and light of the star.
Not all elements can be joined.
Heavier elements are less easily joined than lighter ones.
Iron (a metal) can not fuse with other atoms.
This is what causes stars to die.
Stars join all of their atoms together to make heavier atoms of different types, until they start to make iron.
The iron nucleus can not fuse with other nuclei.
The reactions stop.
The star eventually will cool down and die.
On Earth it is very difficult to start nuclear fusion reactions that release more energy than is needed to start the reaction.
The only successful approach so far has been in nuclear weapons.
The hydrogen bomb uses an atomic (fission) bomb in order to start fusion reactions.
Scientists and engineers have been trying to find a safe and working way of controlling and containing fusion reactions that can generate electricity.
They still have many challenges to overcome before fusion power can be used as a clean source of energy.
The National Geographic Society is one of the world 's largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations.
Founded in January 27, 1888 to "increase and diffuse geographic knowledge," the Society works to inspire people to care about the planet.
It reaches more than 350 million people worldwide each month through its official journal, National Geographic, and four other magazines; National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; radio programs; films; books; DVDs; maps; and interactive media.
National Geographic has funded more than 8,000 scientific research projects and supports an education program combating geographic illiteracy.
The National Geographic Society (NGS), headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world.
Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical conservation, and the study of world culture and history.
The National Geographic Society s logo is a yellow portraitframe - rectangular in shape - which appears on the margins surrounding the front covers of its magazines and as its channel logo.
The Norns are female deities in Norse mythology who govern fate.
Their names are Urd (what has been), Verdandi (what is) and Skuld (what is to come).
Skuld is also the name of a Valkyrie.
The Norns are at the base of the ash tree Yggdrasil (or, according to some versions, above the Bifr st bridge).
They spin threads and weave the tapestry of fates.
Each person 's life is a thread in their loom.
The length of the thread is the length of the person 's life.
Even the gods have their threads and are therefore not immortal, though the Norns hide the strings from the gods.
So everything is set out beforehand.
There is no luck, there is no randomness, everything is determined by destiny.
The Greeks called deities similar to the Norns Moirae, and the Romans called them Parcae.
The three Norns appear at the beginning of Richard Wagner 's opera G tterd mmerung and foretell the downfall of the gods when a thread of fate breaks.
Niflheim is the world of frost and cold of Norse Mythology.
Frost Giants live there.
The river Hvergelmir also is there.
Yggdrasil has one of its roots in the spring of the river.
The serpent Nidhogg gnaws at this root.
Niflheim is ruled by the Giantess Angrboda.
NASDAQ is a stock exchange in New York City.
It stands for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations.
About 3,800 companies trade on it.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), also called the "Big Board," is a stock exchange in New York City.
It is the biggest stock exchange in the United States by the amount of money and the second-biggest stock exchange by the number of companies listed.
Its building is on Wall Street.
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author, and lecturer.
He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Chomsky created the theory of generative grammar.
This is one of the most important contributions to the field of linguistics made in the 20th century.
He also helped start the cognitive revolution in psychology through his review of B. F. Skinner 's Verbal Behavior.
He challenged the behaviorist way of looking at behavior and language.
This was the main approach used in the 1950s.
His natural approach to the study of language also changed the philosophy of language and mind.
He also invented the Chomsky hierarchy, a way of looking at formal languages in terms of their power to explain language.
According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980 1992 time period.
He was the eighth-most cited scholar in any time period.
In the 1960s he criticized the Vietnam War.
Because of that, Chomsky became more widely known for his media criticism and politics.
He is a key intellectual figure within the left wing of United States politics.
Chomsky is widely known for his political activism, and for his criticism of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments.
Chomsky often calls himself a libertarian socialist and an anarcho-syndicalist, and he has talked and written extensively on these subjects.
He is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, following his father William Chomsky who was also a member.
In late 2015, Chomsky announced his support for Vermont U.S. senator Bernie Sanders in the upcoming 2016 United States presidential election.
The nationality of a person is that person 's legal relationship with a state, for example a Swedish person 's legal relationship with the kingdom of Sweden.
Nationality is not identical to citizenship but in the majority of states most of the population are also citizens.
Dual nationality means that the person has a legal relationship with two different states at the same time, for example the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
The rights and duties of individual people and the states they belong to vary from country to country.
Nereus (-RRB- is a sea god in Greek mythology.
His parents are Gaia and Pontos.
With the Okeanid Doris his fifty daughters are the Nereids, sea nymphs of the Mediterranean Sea.
The Nereids are the fifty daughters of the god Nereus and the Okeanid Doris in Greek mythology.
They are sea nymphs of the Mediterranean Sea.
Nereid or Neptune II, is a moon of Neptune.
Nereid was found on 1 May 1949 by Gerard P. Kuiper, who suggested the name in the report of his discovery.
It is named after the Nereids, sea-nymphs of Greek mythology.
It was the farthest of Neptune 's known moons for a long time (Halimede through Neso have since taken that honor), and is the third biggest, with a diameter of 340 km.
Its orbit averages 5,513,400 km in radius, but is very eccentric and varies from 1,353,600 to 9,623,700 kilometres.
For a long time this was the most highly eccentric orbit of any known moon in the solar system, but it has found that Bestla, a recently discovered moon of Saturn has a more eccentric orbit.
The unusual orbit suggests that it may be a captured asteroid or Kuiper belt object, or possibly that it was perturbed during the capture of Neptune 's largest moon Triton.
Very little else is known of Nereid.
Nereid was too far to be properly imaged by the Voyager 2 probe when it visited the Neptune system in 1989.
Photos sent back show only its very non-spherical shape, and no surface features could be seen at the resolution available.
Netball is a sport played in two teams of seven.
It is like basketball except that bouncing the ball is not allowed.
The player can not step with the ball either, nor hold it for more than three seconds.
The game proceeds by players throwing (passing) the ball to each other until one attempts to throw it through the hoop, known as a "shot".
Michel de Nostredame (14 or 21 December 1503 2 July 1566), also known as Nostradamus, was a French apothecary and allegedly a doctor.
He was born in Provence.
He is famous as a ` seer ' who wrote collections of prophecies that have since become famous around the world.
His best known book was called Les Propheties (The Prophecies) and first appeared in 1555.
Since its first publication the book has rarely been out of print.
Over the years, many people have come to believe that Nostradamus predicted a range of events in history.
People often reached this conclusion by applying methods similar to the Bible code - i.e. by twisting the texts in such a way as to suggest that they predicted the future.
He died of edema in Provence.
Most academics say that these associations between Nostradamus ' quatrains and world events are the result of misinterpretations, or bad translations, that are so far-fetched that they are useless as a source of genuine prediction.
What is more, no interpretation has yet managed to predict any event before it happened.
Some people have written prophecies that were wrongly assumed to be by Nostradamus.
For example, in 1997 a college student in Canada wrote an essay that included a fake English quatrain (a four-line verse) written in the same style that Nostradamus used in French.
The quatrain ended up on the Internet, where it was soon assumed that it was a verse by Nostradamus himself predicting the events of 9\/11.
So many people e-mailed it to their friends, thinking that it was by Nostradamus, that the associated websites and discussion forums were soon overwhelmed.
Noah Webster, Jr. (October 16, 1758 May 28, 1843), was the author of a famous American dictionary, a pioneer of spelling, and a political writer and editor.
His "Blue-backed Speller" books taught five generations of American children how to spell and read.
His dictionary was first published in 1828 as An American Dictionary of the English Language.
Webster worried that his Grammatical Institute might be pirated.
He had to seek copyright protection from each state.
At last, on May 31, 1790, President George Washington signed the United States first general copyright act into law.
Later, Webster lobbied for an extended copyright law.
He wrote By this bill the term of copy-right is secured for 28 years, with the right of renewal for 14 years more.
If this should become law, I shall be much benefited.
The new federal copyright law was passed and remained in effect until 1909.
385 ` editions ' (mostly reprints) in his lifetime; by 1837 15 million copies sold; by 1890 60 million copies sold.
A near-Earth object (NEO) is a Solar System object whose orbit brings it close to the Earth.
Their least distance from the Sun, their perihelion, is less than 1.3 AU.
NEOs include near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and near-Earth comets.
They include more than ten thousand near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), near-Earth comets, some solar-orbiting spacecraft, and meteoroids large enough to be tracked in space before striking the Earth.
Collisions in the past have had a significant role in shaping the geological and biological history of the planet.
In some cases NEOs hit the Earth.
Most of these explode harmlessly in the upper atmosphere.
But some NEOs are dangerous.
On 30 June 1908, a meteorite of around 45 metres in diameter exploded over the basin of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River.
It released an energy of 10 15 megatons of TNT and destroyed roughly 2,000 square kilometres of forest.
Such an explosion, similar to one of the biggest nuclear weapons, could have razed London about as far out as the M25 ring road.
However, because the location was remote, no deaths were recorded.
The Association of Space Explorers estimates that a Tunguksa-like event happens two or three times every thousand years on average.
An asteroid roughly 10 km in diameter is thought to have hit Earth 66 million years ago and caused the K\/T extinction event, including the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs.
The nation state is a certain form of state that has a territory where mainly one nation lives.
The state is a political entity (the government, etc.); the nation is a cultural and\/or ethnic entity.
The term "nation state" means that the two are on the same territory, and this distinguishes the nation state from the other types of state, which existed before.
In Europe, in the eighteenth century, the classic non-national states were the multi-ethnic empires, (the Austro-Hunogarian Empire, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the French Empire, the British Empire).
Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, 15 December 37 AD 9 June 68), was the fifth and last Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
Nero was the adopted son of his grand-uncle Claudius.
He became emperor on 13 October 54, after Claudius died.
Claudius was probably assassinated by Nero 's mother Agrippina the Younger.
Agrippina had motive in ensuring the succession of Nero before Britannicus (Claudius ' natural son) could gain power.
During his reign, Nero focused much of his attention on diplomacy, trade, and increasing the cultural capital of the empire.
He ordered the building of theaters and promoted athletic games.
His reign included a successful war and negotiated peace with the Parthian Empire, the suppression of a revolt in Britain, and the beginning of the First Roman Jewish War.
In 64, most of Rome was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome.
In 68, the rebellion of Vindex in Gaul and later the acclamation of Galba in Hispania (Spain) drove Nero from the throne.
Facing assassination, he committed suicide on 9 June 68.
Nero 's rule is often associated with tyranny and extravagance.
He is known for a number of executions, including those of his mother and stepbrother.
Nero is known as the emperor who played a fiddle while Rome burned, but actually he played the lyre and sang.
He also persecuted Christians.
However, some ancient sources show that Nero was popular with the common people during and after his reign.
Neoclassical economics is an economic theory that argues for markets to be free.
This means governments should generally not make rules about types of businesses, businesses ' behavior, who may make things, who may sell things, who may buy things, prices, quantities or types of things sold and bought.
The theory argues that allowing individual actors (people or businesses) freedom creates better economic outcomes.
These outcomes may be a higher average standard of living, higher wages, better average life-expectancies, and higher GDP.
Markets are an abstract idea: assumed to be all the ` actors ' (businesses or people) selling one thing, service or type of thing or service, and all the ` actors ' buying it.
Markets will ` reach equilibrium ' if all the sellers who want to sell at or below a given price have sold to all the buyers who are willing to buy at or above a given price.
the price is worked out in the market.
It may be easier to think about this in reverse: The market is not in equilibrium if people want to buy a haircut for ten (or more) dollars and someone is happy to sell the person a haircut for ten (or less) dollars, but for some reason this does not happen.
Neoclassical economists say this will not happen.
Neo-Keynesians say it might, so the government could make the customer and the person selling the haircut happier by helping the customer somehow.
Neo-Keynesian economy is an alternative Neoclassical economy.
The major point of difference between neoclassical economics and neo-Keynesian economics is about whether ` markets ' ` reach equilibrium '.
Naomi R. Wolf (born November 12, 1962) is an American feminist writer.
She was born in San Francisco.
She gained a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University.
Her first book The Beauty Myth was published in 1990.
In the book, Wolf writes that there needs to be a third wave of feminism.
The Telegraph described Wolf as "the woman who made feminism sexy".
Wolf was born to a Jewish family.
Her father is Leonard Wolf.
In 2012 Vagina: A New Biography was published.
The book got bad reviews.
The New Year is an event that happens when a culture celebrates the end of one year and the beginning of the next year.
Cultures that measure yearly calendars all have New Year celebrations.
On January 1, 1600 Scotland, was the first country to adopt January 1 as the first day of the New Year.
Now, many countries celebrate the New Year.
ln China there is dragon dance.
The Northern Territory is a territory of Australia.
The capital city is Darwin.
Other large towns in the Territory include Alice Springs, Katherine and Tenant Creek.
The Northern Territory has large areas of desert.
It has many important places such as Uluru, or Ayers Rock.
The rock is sacred to the native people.
Kakadu National Park is a World Heritage area.
It has been lived in for more than 40,000 years.
There are cave paintings, rock carvings and archaeological sites.
These show the skills and way of life of the people who have lived there.
The park has different ecosystems, including tidal flats, floodplains, lowlands and rocky gorges.
It provides a place to live for a wide range of rare types of plants and animals.
The floral emblem of the Northern Territory is Sturt 's Desert Rose, Gossypium sturtianum.
The flower is also featured on the Territory 's flag.
It was named after explorer Charles Sturt who found the plant in creeks near the site of Broken Hill, New South Wales in 1844.
The Fauna emblem is the Red Kangaroo.
Niklaus Emil Wirth (born 15 February 1934) is a Swiss computer scientist.
He is best known for designing several programming languages, including Pascal, and for pioneering several classic topics in software engineering.
In 1984 he won the Turing Award, generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science, for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages.
Nebraska is a state in the center of the United States.
Its capital is Lincoln and the largest city is Omaha.
Nebraska is known for its agriculture, especially beef and corn.
Nebraska has hot summers and cold winters.
A temperature of 30 C (which is about 86 F) is common in the summer, and in the winter it can be -20 C (which is about -4 F) or colder at night.
On May 30, 1854, the United States government made a law called the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
It made two territories called Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory.
In the 1860s, many people moved there to take free land from the government.
Nebraska became a state on March 1, 1867.
New Jersey is one of the 50 states of the United States of America.
It is in the northeastern section of the country along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.
It is a small state, shaped like a letter (S), and bordered on the west by Pennsylvania and Delaware across the Delaware River, on the north by New York, on the northeast by the Hudson River and New York City, on the east and southeast by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the southwest by Delaware Bay.
The capital of New Jersey is Trenton and the largest city is Newark, though New Jersey is better known for bordering the large cities of New York City and Philadelphia.
The state nickname is "The Garden State".
The current governor is Chris Christie.
New Jersey is the fourth-smallest state, but has the eleventh-highest number of people.
It therefore has the highest population density (number of people for the amount of land) in the United States.
New Jersey is also well known for its beaches, industries, swamps, and pine forests.
The climate is hot & humid summers and cold winters.
About 1200 mm of precipitation every year.
The average temperature in July is 25-30 degrees celsius and in January around freezing point.
Before Europeans came, the land that is now New Jersey was inhabited by the Lenape (also known as Delaware Indians by the English), who were nomads, hunters, and farmers.
The Dutch came to the northern area of the state in the 1630 's, after Henry Hudson explored the area, thought it was a nice place, and claimed it for the Dutch.
Towns quickly spang up, occupied by the Dutch, Swedes, and Finns.
People rushed in.
The first towns, such as Bergen (now Jersey City), Trenton (the capitol), and Burlington developed.
Many others started themselves upon the west bank of the Hudson.
New Jersey was part of the area known at this time as New Netherland.
In 1664, English took New Netherland from the Dutch and added it to their colonies.
This part was renamed New Jersey after an island in the English Channel known as Jersey.
New Jersey took part in the American Revolutionary War, and was a scene of battles.
On Christmas in 1776, George Washington 's army entered New Jersey to attack British soldiers at Trenton and Princeton.
The American army won, in two small but famous battles that were important in boasting American morale.
Later the rebels drove the British residents out of Princeton and for a time established a national capital there.
New Jersey would be the third state to join the United States of America and the first to approve the Bill of Rights.
New Jersey has 21 counties.
New Mexico is a state in the United States of America.
It is considered part of the American Southwest and is bordered by Texas to the east, Oklahoma to the northeast, Colorado to the north, and Arizona to the west.
The northwest corner of the state also touches Utah.
This area is known as the Four Corners because four states meet there.
The state is called Land of Enchantment \/ Tierra del Encanto
New Mexico became a state on January 6, 1912 and became the 47th state accepted into the United States.
The state capital is Santa Fe.
New Mexico 's population is 1,819,046 and most of the people live in the biggest city, Albuquerque.
North Carolina is one of the fifty states in the United States.
The capital of North Carolina is Raleigh and the biggest city in the state is Charlotte.
North Carolina is split up into 100 counties and these counties are split up into many cities and towns.
North Carolina was one of the original thirteen colonies and was where the first English colony in America lived.
As of July 1, 2007, there are about 9,061,032 people living in the state.
North Carolina is connected to South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east.
There are three main sections in North Carolina: the coastal plain, the piedmont, and the mountains.
The coastal plain is the eastern part of the state, the piedmont is the middle, and the mountains are the western part of the state.
North Carolina also has some islands that are called The Outer Banks.
They are in the ocean to the east of the state.
North Carolina has many different kinds of weather in different parts of the state throughout the year.
The eastern part of the state is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, and usually has comfortable temperatures all year long with the summer average high temperature usually not above 90 F in the summer and not under 40 F in the winter.
However, it can get as hot as the low 100s F and as cold as 20 F. Most years there is less than one inch of snow and some years pass with no snow at all.
The coastal plain usually gets a tropical storm every 3 or 4 years.
The average temperature generally does not go above 90 F in most areas of the Piedmont in summer, however it go over 100 F when there is a heat wave.
Short lived episodes of sleet and freezing rain are common in this part of North Carolina, but the mountain ranges protect the Piedmont from most severe winter weather.
Snow in this region rarely lasts more than 48 hours before completely melting.
Weak tornadoes are often reported in the Piedmont, but only 140 people have died due to tornadoes from 1950-2012 across the entire state.
The average temperature almost never goes above 80 F in the summer and is usually in the high 30 s or low 40 s in the winter in the mountain region of North Carolina.
About 14 to 20 inches of snow fall each year with some of the higher elevations getting 50 inches each winter.
The wettest part of the mountains gets 90 inches of rain.
Before being settled by the English, about 30 Native American groups lived across North Carolina.
In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh began two colonies in what is now known as North Carolina, but they did not last long.
One of these, the Roanoke Colony later became known as the Lost Colony and remains as one of the great unsolved mysteries of early American history to this day.
Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, was born in the Roanoke Colony.
The first permanent settlers in North Carolina came from the state of Virginia in 1655 because there was not enough farmland in Virginia.
Later the land was devided into present day North Carolina and South Carolina.
The name Carolina comes from the Latin for Charles (Carolus) after King Charles I.
North Carolina was an important state during the American Revolutionary War.
In 1860, North Carolina was a slave state.
About 1\/3 of the people in the state were slaves.
North Carolina fought as part of the Confederacy during the Civil War, although it was the last of the states to leave the Union.
The state sent about 125,000 troops to fight in the war and about 40,000 of them died.
Even during the war some people in North Carolina did not support the Confederacy, mostly because the Confederacy believed in slavery.
The first Confederate soldier to be killed was from North Carolina.
Farms in North Carolina produce various things including grapes, peanuts, Christmas trees, poultry and eggs, wheat, corn, cucumbers, apples, greens, tobacco, hogs, milk, cattle, sweet potatoes, and soybeans.
North Carolina grows more tobacco then any other state in the country.
Furniture making is an important industry in North Carolina, but over the past few years many jobs have moved to other countries like China and India.
Charlotte, the biggest city in North Carolina, is the second biggest banking center in the United States, making banking very important in North Carolina.
BB&T and Bank of America have their main offices in the state.
Technology is also important in North Carolina.
There are many companies that make computer software and video games in the state.
Winston-Salem is the home to a hub for innovation in biomedical and material sciences and information technology called the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter.
Research Triangle Park near the state capital of Raleigh is one of the largest research parks in the world.
North Carolina has four hospitals that are nationally ranked with many NICUs at a IV rating (highest possible rating in the United States).
Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center is reported by the U.S. News & World Report as one of the top hospitals in the nation.
Brenner Children 's Hospital and Health Services is designated a Nurse Magnet facility and it was rated in 2014 as one of America 's best children 's hospitals.
North Carolina has more state maintained roads than any other American state.
The biggest roads are:
There are many major and international airports in North Carolina.
These are:
North Dakota is a state in the United States.
642,200 people lived in North Dakota in the year 2000.
The capital and seat of government is Bismarck.
North Dakota is south of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, east of Montana, north of South Dakota, and west of Minnesota.
Manitoba and Saskatchewan are provinces - part of Canada.
Montana, South Dakota, and Minnesota are other states in the United States.
North Dakota is not close to any big bodies of water (oceans or seas).
Because of this, temperatures in North Dakota are very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter.
In the summer, there are sometimes strong thunderstorms.
These storms can have tornadoes and hail.
Before European people came, Native American people lived in the area now called North Dakota.
One important tribe was the Mandan.
North Dakota was one of the last US states to be settled.
(To have people go there to make homes and live.)
On November 2, 1889, North Dakota (and South Dakota) became part of the United States.
Most of the economy is based on agriculture.
The most important agricultural crops are durum, a type of wheat, which is grown all across the state.
In the Red River Valley, there is more rain, and maize (corn) and sugar beets are grown as well.
In the Badlands, there is less rain, and more cattle are raised than crops.
North Dakota has the only bank in the United States that is owned by the state.
The Bank of North Dakota is where all of the money from all government agencies is held.
Most banks in the United States are guaranteed by the FDIC (acronym for Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.)
The FDIC guarantees that people will not lose money if a bank fails.
But the Bank of North Dakota is insured by the state of North Dakota.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a field in Artificial Intelligence, and is also related to linguistics.
On a high level, the goal of NLP is to program computers to automatically understand human languages, and also to automatically write\/speak in human languages.
We say "Natural Language" to mean human language, and to indicate that we are not talking about computer (programming) languages.
New South Wales is one of the states of Australia.
It the oldest state in Australia and is sometimes called the "Premier State".
Of all Australian states, New South Wales has the most people.
An inhabitant of New South Wales is referred to as a New South Welshman.
The capital city of New South Wales is Sydney.
Sydney is the biggest city in Australia.
The name New South Wales came from the journal of Lieutenant James Cook (later Captain Cook), who sailed up the east coast of Australia in 1770.
He thought that the land looked like the south coast of Wales.
He named it "New Wales" but then changed the name in his journal to "New South Wales".
New South Wales was founded (begun) in 1788, by the British who set up a small colony which became known as Sydney Town, and grew into the city of Sydney.
The British colony of New South Wales originally included more than half of the Australian mainland, as well as New Zealand, Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island.
During the 19th century large areas were separated to form the British colonies of Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria, Queensland and New Zealand.
The climate of this area ranges from cool temperate on the far south coast to subtropical near the Queensland border.
This whole of the coastal strip is affected by the sea.
For this reason, the temperatures are often cooled in the summer by sea breezes, and warmed in the winter by the currents along the coast.
This makes the climate less hot and less cold than that of the inland regions.
There is also more rain than there is farther inland where it is often very dry.
For this reason, the three largest cities are all on the coast.
The coast also has more intensive agriculture than the inland areas, with dairy cattle and vegetables crops, as well as sugar cane and bananas in the north.
The state is bordered on the north by Queensland, on the west by South Australia, and on the south by Victoria.
Its coast faces the Tasman Sea.
New South Wales contains two Federal Territories: the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), and the Jervis Bay Territory.
New South Wales ' three big cities are Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong which all lie along the coast.
Other settlements include Albury, a large town which borders with Victoria; Broken Hill, the most westerly large town; Dubbo; Orange, Bowral, Bathurst, home of the Bathurst 1000; Port Macquarie, Tamworth, home to the country music festival; Armidale, Inverell, Lismore, Nowra, Gosford, Griffith, Queanbeyan, Leeton, Wagga Wagga, Goulburn, where a lot of Australia 's fruit is grown and Coffs Harbour, a popular tourist destination.
The population of New South Wales at the end of June 2007 was 6.89 million people.
Population grew by 1.1 % over the preceding year, lower than the national rate of 1.5 %.
62.9 % of NSW 's population is based in Sydney.
Nitric Acid (HNO3) is a very corrosive and toxic strong acid that can cause severe burns.
It is also known as aqua fortis.
Nitric Acid is used in rocket fuels, to help make wood look older, and is used in explosives.
It can react with metals such as copper to produce a brown toxic gas called nitrogen dioxide.
It is made by reaction of nitrogen dioxide with water.
In alchemy, it is known as aqua fortis, or strong water.
It can dissolve silver but leaves gold unharmed, making it a good test for gold.
The term acid test came from this test.
Nihilism comes from the Latin nihil, or nothing.
It is the belief that values are falsely invented.
The term ` nihilism ' can also be used to describe the idea that life, or the world, has no distinct meaning or purpose.
Nihilists believe that there are no true morals.
Many people think of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche when they think about nihilism, because he said that morals were invented.
But in his books, Nietzsche said that people needed to create their own morals to get over nihilism.
Mikhail Bakunin s (1814-1876) Reaction in Germany (1842) included this passage: "Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life.
The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!"
The term was made popular by Ivan Turgenev 's novel Fathers and Sons (1862).
Bazarov, the hero in it, was a nihilist.
Nihilism was the basis of much revolutionary terrorism.
It was taken up by Sergei Nechaev, a Russian who wrote a pamphlet that influenced Lenin.
Dostoyevsky was a member of a nihilist group in his 20s.
He served ten years in exile as a consequence.
His novel Devils (or The Possessed) deals with Nechaev.
His famous novel Crime and Punishment is also on that theme.
The assassination of the Tsar Alexander II (13 March 1881) by a series of bombs, had long been planned by nihilists.
It resulted in the crushing of the nihilist movement.
A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases in a galaxy.
The Persian astronomer, Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, mentioned a true nebula for the first time in his book, Book of Fixed Stars (964).
He said that there was a "little cloud" near the Andromeda galaxy.
A nebula is usually made up of hydrogen gas and plasma.
It may be the first stage of a star 's cycle, but it may also be one of the last stages.
Many nebulae or stars form from the gravitational collapse of gas in the interstellar medium or ISM.
As the material contracts, massive stars may form in the center, and their ultraviolet radiation ionises the surrounding gas, making it visible at optical wavelengths.
The size of these nebulae, known as H II regions, varies depending on the size of the original cloud of gas.
These are sites where star formation occurs.
The formed stars are sometimes known as a young, loose cluster.
Some nebulae are formed as the result of supernova explosions, the death throes of massive, short-lived stars.
The materials thrown off from the supernova explosion are ionized by the energy and the compact object that it can produce.
One of the best examples of this is the Crab nebula, in Taurus.
The supernova event was recorded in the year 1054 and is labeled SN 1054.
The compact object that was created after the explosion lies in the center of the Crab Nebula and is a neutron star.
Other nebulae may form as planetary nebulae.
This is the final stage of a low-mass star 's life, like Earth 's Sun.
Stars with a mass up to 8-10 solar masses evolve into red giants and slowly lose their outer layers during pulsations in their atmospheres.
When a star has lost enough material, its temperature increases and the ultraviolet radiation it emits can ionize the surrounding nebula that it has thrown off.
The nebula is 97 % Hydrogen and 3 % Helium with trace materials.
In the past galaxies and star clusters were also called ` nebulae ', but no longer.
Nebulae can be sorted by what they look like and why we can see them.
Large regions of ionised hydrogen gas are produced by star-forming regions.
Nebulae are often star-forming regions, such as in the Orion complex.
In these regions gravitation pulls together gas and dust.
Material clumps together to form larger masses, which attract further matter.
Eventually this become massive enough to form stars.
The material left over may form planets and other planetary system objects.
Emission nebulae make their own light.
They are often called H II regions, because it is the ionized hydrogen which makes them glow.
Usually the gases in an emission nebula are ionized.
This makes them emit light and infra-red radiation.
Reflection nebulae reflect light from nearby stars.
Dark nebulae do not emit light or reflect light.
They block the light from stars that are far away.
Planetary nebulae are quite common, because they are produced by red giant stars late in their lives.
These stars usually become white dwarfs, leaving behind an expanding ball of ionized gas, which we see as a roughly circular bright nebula.
A supernova occurs when a high-mass star reaches the end of its life.
When nuclear fusion in the core of the star stops, the star collapses and explodes.
The expanding shell of gas forms a supernova remnant.
The Crab nebula is a supernova remnant which probably exploded in 1054 AD.
Light and X-ray emission from supernova remnants comes from ionized gas.
There is a huge amount of radio emission called synchrotron emission.
This emission originates from high-velocity electrons oscillating in magnetic fields.
New Zealand English is the English spoken in New Zealand.
This is very similar to British English.
A natural resource is anything that people can use which comes from nature.
People do not make natural resources, but gather them from the earth.
Examples of natural resources are air, water, wood, oil, wind energy, iron, and coal.
Refined oil and hydro-electric energy are not natural resources because people make them.
We often say there are two sorts of natural resources: renewable resources and non-renewable resources.
Most natural resources are limited.
This means they will eventually run out.
A perpetual resource has a never-ending supply.
Some examples of perpetual resources include solar energy, tidal energy, and wind energy.
Some of the things influencing supply of resources include whether it is able to be recycled, and the availability of suitable substitutes for the material.
Non-renewable resources can not be recycled.
For example, oil, minerals, and other non-renewable resources can not be recycled.
The demand for resources can change with new technology, new needs, and new economics (e.g. changes in cost of the resources).
Some material can go completely out of use, if people do not want it any more.
Demand of many natural resources is very high, but availability of some, such as precious metals, is very low.
All places have their own natural resources.
When people do not have a certain resource they need, they can either replace it with another resource, or trade with another country to get the resource.
People have sometimes fought to have them (for example, spices, water, arable land, gold, or petroleum).
When people do not have some natural resources, their quality of life can get lower.
So, we need to protect our resources from pollution.
For example, when they can not get clean water, people may become ill; if there is not enough wood, trees will be cut and the forest will disappear over time (deforestation); if there are not enough fish in a sea, people can die of starvation.
Renewable resources include crops, wind, hydroelectric power, fish, and sunlight.
Many people carefully save their natural resources so others can use them in future.
Nancy Sinatra (born 8 June 1940) is an American singer and actress.
She was born in Jersey City, New Jersey.
She is the elder daughter of Frank Sinatra.
She is best known for the song "These Boots Were Made for Walkin '".
She had a younger brother, Frank Sinatra, Jr. and has a younger sister, Tina Sinatra.
New Amsterdam is the name the Dutch gave to the island of Manhattan after buying it from local Natives.
It was the capital of New Netherland.
Eventually was taken over by the English who renamed it New York.
NTSC, also known as National Television System Committee, is the analog television system in North America, South America, Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories.
For the book in the Bible, see Numbers (Bible).
A number is a concept from mathematics, used to count or measure.
Depending on the field of mathematics, where numbers are used, there are different definitions:
Numbers are also used for other things besides counting.
Numbers are used when things are measured.
Numbers are used to study how the world works.
Mathematics is a way to use numbers to learn about the world and make things.
The study of the rules of the natural world is called science.
The work that uses numbers to make things is called engineering.
There are different ways of giving symbols to numbers.
These methods are called number systems.
The most common number system that people use is the base ten number system.
The base ten number system is also called the decimal number system.
The base ten number system is common because people have ten fingers and ten toes.
There are 10 different symbols used in the base ten number system.
These ten symbols are called digits.
A symbol for a number is made up of these ten digits.
The position of the digits shows how big the number is.
For example, the number 23 in the decimal number system really means (2 times 10) plus 3, and 101 means 1 times a hundred (= 100) plus 0 times 10 (= 0) plus 1 times 1 (= 1).
Another number system is more common for machines.
The machine number system is called the binary number system.
The binary number system is also called the base two number system.
There are two different symbols (0 and 1) used in the base two number system.
These two symbols are called bits.
A symbol for a binary number is made up of these two bit symbols.
The position of the bit symbols shows how big the number is.
For example, the number 10 in the binary number system really means 1 times 2 plus 0, and 101 means 1 times four (= 4) plus 0 times two (= 0) plus 1 times 1 (= 1).
The binary number 10 is the same as the decimal number 2.
The binary number 101 is the same as the decimal number 5.
English has special names for some of the numbers in the decimal number system that are "powers of ten".
All of these power of ten numbers in the decimal number system use just the symbol "1" and the symbol "0".
For example, ten tens is the same as ten times ten, or one hundred.
In symbols, this is "10 10 = 100".
Also, ten hundreds is the same as ten times one hundred, or one thousand.
In symbols, this is "10 100 = 10 10 10 = 1000".
Some other power of ten numbers also have special names:
When dealing with larger numbers than this, there are two different ways of naming the numbers in English.
Under the "long scale" a new name is given every time the number is a million times larger than the last named number.
It is also called the "British Standard".
This scale used to be common in Britain but is not often used in English-speaking countries today.
It is still used in some other European nations.
Another scale is the "short scale" under which a new name is given every time a number is a thousand times larger than the last named number.
This scale is a lot more common in most English-speaking nations today.
Some people say that 0 is a natural number, too.
Another name for these numbers is positive numbers.
These numbers are sometimes written as +1 to show that they are different from the negative numbers.
But not all positive numbers are natural (for example is positive, but not natural).
If 0 is called a natural number, then the natural numbers are the same as the whole numbers.
If 0 is not called a natural number, then the natural numbers are the same as the counting numbers.
So if the words "natural numbers" are not used, then there will be less confusion about whether zero is included or not.
But unfortunately, some say that zero is not a whole number, either, and some say whole numbers can be negative.
"Positive integers" and "non-negative integers" are another way to include zero or exclude zero, but only if people know those words.
Negative numbers are numbers less than zero.
One way to think of negative numbers is using a number line.
We call one point on this line zero.
Then we will label (write the name of) every position on the line by how far to the right of the zero point it is, for example the point one is one centimeter to the right, the point two is two centimeters to the right.
Now think about a point which is one centimeter to the left of the zero point.
We can not call this point one, as there is already a point called one.
We therefore call this point minus 1 (1) (as it is one centimeter away, but in the opposite direction).
A drawing of a number line is below.
If people add a negative number to another this is the same as taking away the positive number with the same numerals.
For example, 5 + (3) is the same as 5 3, and equals 2.
If they take away a negative number from another this is the same as adding the positive number with the same numerals.
For example, 5 (3) is the same as 5 + 3, and equals 8.
If they multiply two negative numbers together they get a positive number.
For example, 5 times 3 is 15.
If they multiply a negative number by a positive number, or multiply a positive number by a negative number, they get a negative result.
For example, 5 times 3 is 15.
As finding the square root of a negative number is impossible as negative times negative equals possitve.
We simbolise the square root of a negative number as i.
Integers are all the natural numbers, all their opposites, and the number zero.
Decimal numbers and fractions are not integers.
Rational numbers are numbers which can be written as fractions.
This means that they can be written as a divided by b, where the numbers a and b are integers, and b is not equal to 0.
Some rational numbers, such as 1\/10, need a finite number of digits after the decimal point to write them in decimal form.
The number one tenth is written in decimal form as 0.1.
Numbers written with a finite decimal form are rational.
Some rational numbers, such as 1\/11, need an infinite number of digits after the decimal point to write them in decimal form.
There is a repeating pattern to the digits following the decimal point.
The number one eleventh is written in decimal form as 0.0909090909....
A percentage could be called a rational number, because a percentage like 7 % can be written as the fraction 7\/100.
It can also be written as the decimal 0.07.
Sometimes, a ratio is considered as a rational number.
Irrational numbers are numbers which can not be written as a fraction, but do not have imaginary parts (explained later).
Irrational numbers often occur in geometry.
For instance if we have a square which has sides of 1 meter, the distance between opposite corners is the square root of two, which equals 1.414213....
This is an irrational number.
Mathematicians have proved that the square root of every natural number is either an integer or an irrational number.
One well-known irrational number is pi.
This is the circumference (distance around) of a circle divided by its diameter (distance across).
This number is the same for every circle.
The number pi is approximately 3.1415926535....
An irrational number can not be fully written down in decimal form.
It would have an infinite number of digits after the decimal point.
Unlike 0.333333..., these digits would not repeat forever.
This is all numbers that do not involve imaginary numbers.
Imaginary numbers are formed by real numbers multiplied by the number i. This number is the square root of minus one (1).
There is no number in the real numbers which when squared makes the number 1.
Therefore, mathematicians invented a number.
They called this number i, or the imaginary unit.
Imaginary numbers were called imaginary because when they were first found, many mathematicians did not think they existed.
The person who discovered imaginary numbers was Gerolamo Cardano in the 1500s.
The first to use the words imaginary number was Ren Descartes.
The first people to use these numbers were Leonard Euler and Carl Friedrich Gauss.
Both lived in the 18th century.
Complex numbers are numbers which have two parts; a real part and an imaginary part.
Every type of number written above is also a complex number.
Complex numbers are a more general form of numbers.
The complex numbers can be drawn on a number plane.
This is composed of a real number line, and an imaginary number line.
2i _.
2 +2 i
i _.3 i
.
2 2i 2i _
To multiply two complex numbers is complicated.
It is easiest to describe in general terms, with two complex numbers a + bi and c + di.
For example, (4 + 5i) (3 + 2i) = (4 3 5 2) + (4 2 + 5 3) i = (12 10) + (8 + 15) i = 2 + 23i.
A real or complex number is called a transcendental number if it can not be obtained as a result of an algebraic equation with integer coefficients.
Proving that a certain number is transcendental can be extremely difficult.
Each transcendental number is also an irrational number.
The first people to see that there were transcendental numbers were Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Leonhard Euler.
The first to actually prove there were transcendental numbers was Joseph Liouville.
He did this in 1844.
Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian city on the eastern side of the Tigris River.
It was the capital and a major city of the Assyrian empire.
Its ruins are across the river from the modern-day city of Mosul, Iraq.
The ruins of Nineveh are surrounded by the remains of a massive stone and mudbrick wall dating from about 700 BC.
The wall was bout 12 km in length.
The stone retaining wall had projecting stone towers spaced about every 18 m. The stone wall and towers were topped by three-step parapets.
The city wall had fifteen monumental gateways.
They were checkpoints for people entering and exiting the city.
They probably had barracks and armouries.
With the inner and outer doors shut, the gateways were fortresses.
The gateways had passages and interior chambers lined with finely cut stone.
A stairway led from one of the interior chambers to the top of the mudbrick wall.
The city wall was destroyed by ISIS by February, 2015.
The wall was destroyed during an effort to destroy historical buildings and monuments in the province by the jihadist rebel group.
Nazareth (' or '; ' or ') is the capital city of the north district of Israel.
Most of the people in this city are Arabs (who are either Muslim or Christian).
There are also some Jewish people.
The city is very old and is also famous for being the city where it is believed Jesus grew up.
Noah (meaning rest or comfort) is a man in the Abrahamic religions.
He was the son of Lamech, and the father of sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Noah and his ark is in the Book of Genesis, which also describes Noah as the ` first man to plant a vineyard ' (chapter 9)
As described in the Book of Genesis, Noah and his family kept believing in God in a time when most people were not.
Knowing this was true, God told Noah he was going to flood the world, so he could drown out evil.
He told Noah to build a boat called an ark..
Noah was to put himself, his family, and two (a male and a female) of every kind of animal on it.
People laughed at Noah at first, but they were killed by the flood.
Noah and family stayed on the ark until they reached land.
To find land Noah sent out a dove, which returned with an olive branch.
After the flood, God made a rainbow as a promise to say that he would never destroy the Earth by flood again.
When they were able to walk on dry land, the animals were released and they were able to repopulate the earth.
The Norwegian language is the official language of Norway.
It is spoken by over four and a half million people, and it belongs to the group of North Germanic languages which are spoken in Scandinavia.
These include Swedish, Danish, Icelandic and Faeroese.
Two forms of the language exist: (which means "book language") and (which means "new Norwegian").
Old Norse is the language that was spoken hundreds of years ago in Scandinavia at the time of the Vikings.
It is very similar to today s Icelandic language.
This is because many Vikings sailed from Norway to Iceland in order to escape from the rule of the Norwegian kings who were making people pay lots of tax.
During the 13th century the Black Death killed two thirds of the population of Norway.
The Danish kings and queens noticed that Norway was weak and defenceless, so they annexed Norway (made it part of Denmark).
For hundreds of years Norway was ruled by the Danes.
All the rulers, priests, estate owners and noblemen were Danish.
Many of them settled in Norway.
This is why today s standard Norwegian (Bokm l) is similar to Danish.
Norwegians were not allowed to print books in Norwegian.
Anyone wanting to study had to go to Denmark or Germany.
In 1814 Denmark lost a war and had to give Norway to Sweden.
Then the Norwegians were allowed to have their own university.
Gradually the Danish language was mixed up with the Norwegian dialects and became today s Norwegian language.
Norwegian and Danish look very similar when they are written, but when they are spoken they sound different.
In Danish a lot of the sounds are swallowed.
During the 19th century a slightly different form of Norwegian was made up by several people.
This eventually became known as Nynorsk.
It was based on old forms of Norwegian and dialects.
During the 20th century some attempts were made to join Bokm l and Nynorsk into one language, but they did not succeed.
Today about one person in nine or ten in Norway writes Nynorsk.
Children in school have to learn both forms.
The Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters.
These are the same letters as the English alphabet plus three extra vowels:
The letters c, q, w, x and z are only used for words that have been borrowed from other languages.
The Nation of Islam is a religious group.
It was founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 1930 by Wallace Fard Muhammad.
The main goal of the Nation of Islam is to bring back the spiritual, mental, social and economic condition of blacks in the United States.
Since 1978, the group has been led by Louis Farrakhan.
Malcolm X also was a member.
The current headquarters for the Nation of Islam is in Chicago, Illinois.
The main belief of The Nation of Islam is that there is no God but Allah.
They say that "Allah" came in the person of W. D. Fard", who founded the Nation of Islam.
Their type of Islam is different from Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims.
Their teachings under Islamic standards do not allow making any person divine, or treating God as human.
The flag of the Nation of Islam has the symbols of the sun, moon, and the stars.
It represents the universe.
It is also a banner of universal peace and harmony.
Nerve gas or nerve agent is the name of a family of chemical poisons.
Usually people call them nerve agents (they are not always gases).
They work by changing the way the nerves work in the human body.
They stop messages from the brain from getting sent to the muscles and organs.
Nerve agents are organic chemicals that have phosphorus in them (organophosphates).
Many organophosphates are pesticides, and have the same effects as nerve agents if people are exposed to them.
However, these pesticides are not used against people as weapons like nerve agents are.
Since they are chemical weapons, nerve agents are classified as weapons of mass destruction by the United Nations according to UN Resolution 687.
Since 1993, making or stockpiling them has been against international law.
Nerve agents have long-lasting effects.
People who survive nerve agent poisoning almost always have chronic damage to the brain and nerves.
This damage can also cause mental health problems.
Nerve agents work by blocking communication between the brain and the body.
Usually, a neurotransmitter (a chemical messenger) called acetylcholine gives the signal for the muscles to tighten up.
It also keeps them from relaxing.
However, when it is time for the muscles to relax, an enzyme called acetylcholinesterase destroys acetylcholine, and another neurotransmitter tells the muscles to relax.
Nerve agents work by blocking acetylcholinesterase.
Too much acetylcholine builds up, because it is not getting destroyed by acetylcholinesterase.
The muscles keep getting more and more signals to tighten up.
Basically, the brain loses control over the body 's muscles.
It can not make the muscles relax.
This leads to many of the unique signs and symptoms of nerve agent poisoning.
Acetylcholine also signals the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) to kick in.
Usually, the PNS balances out with the sympathetic nervous system to maintain homeostasis.
However, when there is too much acetylcholine, the two systems can not balance, and the sympathetic nervous system does not work correctly.
Nerve agent poisoning causes a very unique group of signs and symptoms.
Some medical providers use the acronym "SLUDGE" to remember them:
Some medical professionals use a different version of this acronym: "SLUDGE and the Killer B 's."
"The Killer B 's" are three life-threatening symptoms:
As the person gets worse, they will have muscle twitches, then start having seizures and go into status epilepticus.
People can die because their brain can not control their breathing muscles, and they stop breathing.
These nerve gases are called "G series" because they were first created by German scientists.
They were all discovered and made before or during World War II.
Nobody agrees on why these nerve gases are called "V series."
Different people say the V stands for "Victory," "Venomous" (poisonous), or "Viscous" (thick liquid).
Neon Genesis Evangelion (In Japanese: Shin Seiki Evangelion) is a popular Japanese anime and manga that began in 1995.
The anime was created by Gainax, written and directed by Hideaki Anno and co-produced by TV Tokyo and Nihon Ad Systems (NAS).
It is an action series involving giant robots, troubled teenage heroes, shadowy government branches and huge monsters called Angels.
It is set in the year 2015, and features many references to Darwinism, Christianity, and human sexuality.
Nijmegen is a city in Gelderland in the east of the Netherlands.
It has about 160,000 inhabitants and a university.
North Africa is the Northern part of Africa.
It is usually made up of these countries:
Most of north Africa is desert, which means it is very dry and does not rain very much.
The predominant ethnic groups are Arabs and Moors (mixed Africans and Arabs).
The biggest religion is Islam, meaning that most of the people are Muslims.
The New England Patriots is an American football team in the National Football League or the NFL.
They are in the American Football Conference or the AFC.
Their starting quarterback is Tom Brady.
Jimmy Garappolo play second string quarterback.
The Patriots play in Gillette Stadium on Foxborough, midway between Boston, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island.
In the 2007 season, the Patriots have won all 16 games and became the first team with 16 wins and no losses.
They would win 2 more playoff games and enter the Super Bowl at 18-0.
However, they did not complete a historic 19-0 season, because they lost to the Giants.
The Giants scored 17 points when David Tyree made a helmet catch and the Patriots scored 14 points.
The New England Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2014.
They play in Foxboro, Massachusetts.
They lost to the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLVI on February 5, 2012 in a rematch of Super Bowl XLII which their perfect season got spoiled.
This time, the Giants scored 21 points and the Patriots scored 17 points.
The Patriots also won Super Bowl XLIX against the Seattle Seahawks when Russell Wilson threw a interception on the final play.
The Patriots scored 28 points and the Seahawks scored 24 points.
The Patriots were originally called the "Boston Patriots", and played in Fenway Park.
Their name comes from the city of Boston 's importance in the American Revolution.
The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
The Saints play in the Southern Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL).
In 1980, the Saints became the first ever NFL team to finish with 1 win and 15 losses.
After a history of bad luck, the Saints won Super Bowl XLIV in the 2009 season off an interception from Peyton Manning by cornerback Tracy Porter.
That was also meaningful because only about four years earlier the city was badly hurt when Hurricane Katrina came through in 2005.
That was later tarnished as in 2012 they and defesnive coodinator Gregg Williams were exposed to have used a bounty stystem, in which players were paid to deliver especially hard\/illegal hits to the opponent.
Brees denied knowing of the system.
The team name was inspired by a popular Mardi Gras song called "When the Saints Go Marching In".
The Saints have several famous players including Jimmy Graham, Drew Brees, and Marques Colston.
The New York Jets are an American football team.
They are a part of the National Football League (NFL).
Even though they are called the New York Jets they play in New Jersey.
They hail from the same stadium as the New York Giants.
They have many fans in New York and New Jersey.
The New York Jets started playing in 1960.
They have only won one championship.
The Jets were originally called the New York Titans.
They played their games in the Polo Grounds.
When they moved to Shea Stadium in 1964, they were called the Jets.
That was a more modern-sounding name, and it also rhymed with "New York Mets", the other team that played its games at Shea.
Normandy is a region in the northern part of France.
People from Normandy are called Normans.
The name Normandy comes from the settlement and conquest of the area by the "Northmen" also called Vikings.
The band that settled at Rouen and became the Normans was led by Rollo.
It is also famous for being the location of the Allied invasion of France during World War II (See D-Day).
The Battle of Normandy was the beginning of the Allied invasion and liberation of Europe from Nazi Germany.
Archeological finds, such as cave paintings, prove that humans were present in prehistoric times.
The Gouy and Orival cave paintings also testify to humans in Seine-Maritime.
Several megaliths can be found throughout Normandy, most of them built in a uniform style.
Groups of Belgae and Celts, known as Gauls, invaded Normandy 4th to the 3rd centuries BC.
Much of our knowledge about this group comes from Julius Caesar s de Bello Gallico.
Caesar identified several different groups among the Belgae who occupied separate regions and lived in enclosed agrarian towns.
In 57 BC the Gauls united under Vercingetorix and tried to resist Caesar s army.
After their defeat at Alesia, the people of Normandy continued to fight until 51 BC, the year Caesar completed his conquest of Gaul.
Under Roman rule it was part of Armorica.
The history of the duchy of Normandy began about the year 911.
This is when a treaty, popularly called St. Clair-sur-Epte, was made.
Charles the Simple of France gave territory around Rouen and the lower Seine to Rollo, leader of a band of Vikings.
More grants followed in 924 and 933.
In 1066, the Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror, invaded England after the death of King Edward the Confessor believing he had the most right to be King of England.
But King Harold II had himself crowned king instead.
King Harold 's Saxon army, and William Norman army fought at the Battle of Hastings on October 14 1066.
King Harold was killed in the battle.
On December 25 1066 William was crowned King of England as ` William I '.
The historic duchy includes two regions of France: Upper Normandy and Lower Normandy; and also the Channel Islands which are not part of France.
The duchy of Normandy was not returned to France until after 1204 when Philip II of France took all the French possessions away from his vassal, King John of England.
From that time Normandy was a region in France.
During the Second World War (1939 1945) Normandy was part of the German occupied France.
The town of Dieppe was the site of the unsuccessful Dieppe Raid by Canadian and British armed forces.
The Allies (Britain, the United States, and Canada) build-up a large number of troops and supplies for a planned invasion of Normandy.
The D-Day landings were on 6 June 1944 under the code name ` Operation Overlord '.
This invasion from the sea involved nearly 160,000 Allied soldiers in about 7,000 ships and landing craft.
About 12,000 planes dropping paratroopers preceded the amphibious assault by several hours.
The Germans were defending their fortifications above the beaches.
Caen, Cherbourg, Carentan, Falaise and other Norman towns endured many casualties in the Battle of Normandy.
The German defenders fought aggressively but constantly pushed back by overwhelming force.
The battle for Normandy continued until the closing of the Falaise pocket.
The liberation of Le Havre followed.
What followed was the breakout of Allied forces into France and finally Germany.
This was a significant turning point in the war.
It led to the restoration of the French government in France.
The remainder of Normandy was liberated only on 9 May 1945 at the end of the war, when the German occupation of the Channel Islands effectively ended.
The historical duchy of Normandy occupied the lower Seine area, the Pays de Caux and the region to the west through the Pays d'Auge as far as the Cotentin Peninsula.
The region is bordered along the northern coasts by the English Channel.
There are granite cliffs in the west and limestone cliffs in the east.
There are also long stretches of beach in the center of the region.
The unique bocage hedges are typical of the western areas of Normandy.
The highest point is the Signal d' couves at 417 m in the Massif armoricain.
Normandy is lightly forested.
Eure has the most wooded areas with about 20 % being forest.
The population of Normandy today is around 3.45 million.
Neuromancer is a science fiction novel by William Gibson.
It was published in 1984.
It is an important book that started the cyberpunk genre.
It was Gibson 's first novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy.
Neuromancer was the first novel to win all three of the important awards in science fiction the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award.
Terry Carr asked Gibson to write the book for the third series of Ace Science Fiction Specials.
This was a series for authors ' first novels.
The New York Mets are a baseball team who play in New York City, New York in Citi Field.
The team started in 1962.
The Mets won the World Series in the years 1969 and 1986.
They play in Corona, New York and play in their stadium Citi Field, completed in 2009.
Their colors are blue and orange.
Their retired numbers are 42 (Jackie Robinson), 41 (Tom Seaver), 14 (Gil Hodges), and 37 (Casey Stengel).
The name "Mets" is short for "Metropolitans".
There was an old team in the 1880s called the New York Metropolitans.
The words "Metropolis" and "Metropolitan" are often used to describe very large cities.
The city of New York likes to use that word.
One example is the Metropolitan Opera, which is also nicknamed "The Met".
The Mets first played their home games at the Polo Grounds.
They opened Shea Stadium in 1964.
After 45 seasons at Shea, they opened Citi Field in 2009, nextdoor to Shea.
Shea was torn down during the 2009 season.
The Mets have won the World series two times, in 1969 and 1986.
In 1973, 2000, and 2015, the Mets went to the World Series, but lost to the Oakland Athletics, New York Yankees, and Kansas City Royals.
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem for young children.
The term has been used since the 18th century or early 19th century.
In North America, the term Mother Goose Rhymes, first used in the mid-18th century, is often used.
Examples of nursery rhymes are "Three Blind Mice", "Jack and Jill" and "Hey Diddle Diddle".
The New International Version or NIV is an English translation of the Christian Bible.
It is made by the Zondervan Company.
It became one of the most popular modern translations made in the twentieth century.
The NIV was last updated in 2011.
The National Socialist German Workers ' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, abbreviated NSDAP), also known as the Nazi Party, was a German political party.
It was started in 1920 from the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers ' party) (DAP), which would later be renamed the NSDAP.
On the day it was created, the party published its 25-point manifesto (book of ideas).
The items in this list of ideas included getting rid of the Treaty of Versailles; gaining more land for the German people; taking away any income people had not earned by working; taking away Jewish people 's citizenship; changing the education system; and setting up a strong central government.
Until 1923, the NSDAP was most popular in Bavaria.
In 1919, Adolf Hitler joined the Nazi Party.
He took control of the party in 1921.
In 1923, the Nazi Party tried to start a coup d' tat in Munich to take over Germany, but failed.
This battle was called the Beer Hall Putsch.
Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison for treason.
However, he was let out of prison after nine months.
Other people who participated in the Beer Hall Putsch were given the death penalty.
The government also made the NSDAP illegal in Germany.
While he was in prison, Adolf Hitler wrote most of Mein Kampf ("My Struggle").
In this book, he wrote down his political ideas and his future plans for Germany.
In 1924, Hitler was let out of prison early.
He restarted the NSDAP.
He wanted to gain power legally, through elections.
At this time, the NSDAP was only one of a few extreme right-wing, nationalist political parties in Germany.
There were many other parties with similar ideas then.
Important people like Fritz Thyssen and Emil Kirdorf, both leaders of big industries, supported the Nazi Party.
The next elections to the Reichstag were held in 1928.
In these elections, the Nazi Party won 2.6 % of the vote.
The party decided to decrease its anti-Semitic slogans in order to do better in the next election.
Instead, the NSDAP focused more on foreign policy and on terrorising the German people.
In local elections in 1929 and 1930, the NSDAP won about 10 % of the vote.
In 1930, President Paul von Hindenburg dissolved the Reichstag.
The Nazi Party saw this as an opportunity.
In the elections on 14 September, 1930, the NSDAP won 18.3 % of the vote, and had become the second biggest party in Germany.
At this time, most German people wanted to get rid of the Weimar Republic (the Weimarer Republik).
Weimar was the German city where the German constitution was written after the First World War.
People also wanted a stronger Germany, with more soldiers.
The Treaty of Versailles had made it illegal for Germany to have some types of weapons and ships.
On January 30, 1933, Franz von Papen offered to make Adolf Hitler the Chancellor of Germany in a nationalist cabinet.
He did this in secret.
This was a Macht bergabe, or "transfer of power."
However, later on, the NSDAP started to call it the Machtergreifung ("seizing power").
It was better for Nazi propaganda to say that they took power from the Weimar Republic, instead of being made the Republic 's legal government.
The last free election in Weimar Germany was in March 1933.
The Nazi Party won 44 % of the vote.
This was not the majority.
Nevertheless, they managed to get the two-thirds majority they needed to pass the Erm chtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act).
Based on this new law, they dissolved parliament; gave Hitler the power to do anything he wanted; and made all political parties (except the NSDAP) illegal.
After this, the NSDAP became very important.
People had to be party members to get some jobs, or to get promoted.
The NSDAP was busy until Germany surrendered to the Allies on 8 May 1945.
The NSDAP dissolved itself on 8 May 1945.
After that, the NSDAP no longer existed.
They made some reforms which still exist today.
For example:
But the Nazis did so many bad things that in Germany, it is illegal to display the swastika symbol (shown on the flag above) or use slogans such as Sieg Heil.
In November 2010, a British member of the European Parliament, Godfrey Bloom, was forced to leave Parliament.
This happened after he shouted the Nazi slogan "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein F hrer" at a German member of Parliament.
The New Age, also called the New Age movement is a kind of spiritual belief and way of life held by some westerners.
It is not an organized religion.
They believe in religious pluralism - that people are free to decide what they believe and how they use it in their lives.
They pick and mix what they believe with bits taken from both eastern and western culture and religions.
They make their own decisions about what God is and how they worship God.
New Age people often meditate to seek their own contact with God.
There are many authors who describe how they see the New Age in books.
There is also New Age music which tends to be calm and relaxing.
New Age people do all believe that a new future time is coming in which people will be more aware of their own special spiritual nature and this will make the world a different and better place.
Naoko Takeuchi (Takeuchi Naoko), born March 15, 1967, is a manga artist from Japan.
She lives in Tokyo.
She wrote the manga Sailor Moon, which was so popular it was made into an anime, musicals, video games and more.
Her husband, Yoshihiro Togashi, is the creator of YuYu Hakusho and Hunter Hunter.
Nationalism is a way of thinking that says that every ethnic group of humans should be free to rule itself.
Nationalists think that the best way to make this happen is for every ethnic group to have its own nation or society that they can rule without being controlled or oppressed by anybody else.
Many nationalists think that nationalism is the best way to save small and not powerful groups, which are threatened by the mixing of ethnic groups.
Nationalists think that the world is better with lots of cultural diversity.
They also think that diversity is threatened by worldwide influences and mixing.
Many early socialists were also nationalists.
The earliest forms of nationalism had lots of socialist features.
In this period, political thinkers who thought that ethnic groups should not be oppressed by other ethnic groups thought also that ` normal folk ', the backbone of society, like workers and peasants, should not be oppressed by higher social classes like rich people.
They thought that it is wrong for somebody to live in great welfare that is made of the hard work of others, or the oppression of others.
All the social classes should work together and have a common goal that aims for the good of everyone.
These goals can be called "national interest".
National interest is ideal and not always easy to find.
There are different ways to reach national interest, for example politics.
Nationalists started to support and admire normal people, especially peasants, who were seen as uncorrupted, gallant, and fair, unlike high classes.
For example, normal folk often had more original and local ethnic culture than high classes, whose culture was seen more rootless.
National Romanticism was based much on the ideal of uncorrupt folk.
Socialism and nationalism grew together, but they have also been placed in opposition in some theories.
The most known opposition between these ideologies was with the Soviet Union.
The Soviet propaganda made nationalism an insult word that was linked with opposed ideologies like capitalism, liberalism, imperialism or fascism.
Still, even in the Soviet Union and other communist or socialist countries, there was nationalism in great measure (even if it was not called with that name).
The most capitalist countries like United States were patriotic rather than nationalist.
The Nordic countries, which were amongst the most pure nation-states (countries that follow nationalist principle), were not very capitalist or rightist; they were built on the social democratic idea, which is left.
Only after Nordic countries became more multicultural did their politics become more rightist.
Today nationalism does not have a common stand on those fields of politics that are outside of its basic goals, like left-right politics.
However nationalism can be a part of bigger political ideology or agenda that can be leftist or rightist or something outside that classification.
Nationalism is still usually connected to goals that resist strong hierarchy between social classes inside society.
Nationalist people are usually more or less against the strongest forms of capitalism, which they think gives too much power to rich people and big companies.
Nationalism had an important role in ending the colonial rule.
Nationalism spread to colonies and made their people desire independence.
Nationalism also made the people in metropolitan states (countries that colonized others) accept more the desire of other people to rule themselves.
However nationalists think that the end of colonialization of Africa was not done well.
They think that there would not be so many conflicts in Africa if African nations had built in a nationalist way (so that every ethnic group is its own nation).
After the imperialists left their African colonies, the new nations were built with borders that were not the same as the ethnic borders.
New nations became nations with many ethnic groups, which do not want to or can not live peacefully in the same society with the others.
A nation is a group of people who share the same culture, history, language or ethnicity.
It can also be described as people living in the same country and government.
The word nation comes from a word meaning "birth" or "place of birth."
The adjective is national.
Some nations are people with a particular belief, such as the Vatican City, or ethnic group, such as Armenia.
Others share an idea, such as Democracy in the United States or Communism in China.
Some nations are controlled by a small minority who have all the power, such as Saudi Arabia, who hold the nation together with the use of this power.
Some of these may also be combined.
The highest lawful authority of most nations is a constitution, which is a document which states clearly what kinds of power the rulers have and how new laws must be made.
Many others are ruled by a single person who holds an "office" (position), such as a King or Pope, or from a long legal tradition without an official Constitution, such as the United Kingdom.
The New York Giants are an American football team.
They are a part of the National Football League (NFL).
Even though they are called the New York Giants they do not play in New York.
They play in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
New York is right across the Hudson river from East Rutherford, so they consider New York as home.
The Giants play in MetLife Stadium, which they share with the New York Jets.
The New York Giants started playing in 1925.
They were named for the baseball team also called the New York Giants.
They have won six NFL championships, including some before the Super Bowl era.
On February 3, 2008, the Giants beat the previously unbeaten New England Patriots (17-14) to win their third Super Bowl championship in Super Bowl XLII as well as stopping them from achieving the NFL 's first 19-0 season.
The previous two Super Bowl victories came against the Denver Broncos and the Buffalo Bills (when they won the game on a missed last second field goal that went "wide right".)
The Giants won Super Bowl XLVI against the Patriots but this time the Patriots went 13-3 in the regular season.
The Giants beated them in Foxborough during the 2011 season.
In grammar, the nominative case is the grammatical case used when talking about the subject of the sentence.
For example, "the boy kissed the girl."
The boy is the subject, so the nominative case is used.
NBC, whose letters stand for National Broadcasting Company, is an American television network that started in 1926 as a radio station.
(Its first television progams aired in 1944.)
It is owned by movie studio Universal Studios and appliance company General Electric.
General Electric has sold 51 % of the company to Comcast.
NBC owns and operates the cable news channels Consumer News and Business Channel (CNBC) and Microsoft NBC channel (MSNBC).
It is called "the Peacock Network" because of the title animal in its logo.
The network is famous for its three-note chimes, the "Must See TV" phrase and NBC Sunday Night Football, which is the most watched TV series after American Idol.
A nova (plural novae or novas) is a huge nuclear explosion on a white dwarf star.
It causes a sudden brightening of the star.
Novae are not to be confused with other brightening phenomena such as supernovae.
Novae occur on the surface of a white dwarf in a binary system.
If the two stars of the system are close enough, material is pulled from the companion star 's surface onto the white dwarf.
This collection of hydrogen onto the surface of the star starts a runaway fusion reaction.
In spite of their violence, the amount of material ejected in novae is usually only about 1 10,000 of a solar mass, quite small relative to the mass of the white dwarf.
Only five percent of the accreted mass is fused during the power outburst.
This is enough energy to accelerate nova ejecta to velocities as high as several thousand kilometers per second higher for some novae than others with a concurrent rise in luminosity from a few times solar to 50,000 100,000 times solar.
In 2010 scientists using NASA 's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope were surprised to discover, for the first time, that a nova can also emit gamma-rays (-RRB- 100 MeV).
A white dwarf can potentially generate multiple novae over time as additional hydrogen continues to accrete onto its surface from its companion star.
An example is RS Ophiuchi, which is known to have flared six times (in 1898, 1933, 1958, 1967, 1985, and 2006).
Eventually, the white dwarf could explode as a type Ia supernova if it approaches the Chandrasekhar limit.
Occasionally a nova is bright enough and close enough to be seen by the unaided eye.
The brightest recent example was Nova Cygni 1975.
This nova appeared on 29 August 1975, in the constellation Cygnus about five degrees north of Deneb and reached magnitude 2.0 (nearly as bright as Deneb).
The most recent were V1280 Scorpii, which reached magnitude 3.7 on 17 February 2007, and Nova Delphini 2013.
Nova Centauri 2013 was discovered 2 December 2013 and is so far the brightest nova of this millennium reaching magnitude 3.3.
Astronomers estimate that the Milky Way experiences roughly 30 to 60 novae per year, with a likely rate of about 40.
The number of novae discovered in the Milky Way each year is much lower, about 10.
Roughly 25 novae brighter than about magnitude 20 are discovered in the Andromeda Galaxy each year and smaller numbers are seen in other nearby galaxies.
A nuclear weapon is a weapon that suddenly releases the energy in the nucleus of certain types of atoms.
When triggered, these devices release a huge amount of energy in the form of a nuclear explosion.
Nuclear explosions can destroy a city and kill everyone in it.
They also release radiation that make people very ill..
Nuclear weapons are the most damaging weapons to have been created.
The first nuclear weapons were built by the United States during World War II.
Two nuclear weapons were used to attack Japan.
This is the only time when nuclear weapons were used in combat.
Today, the United States and Russia have the most nuclear weapons.
There are two ways to make nuclear weapons: fission weapons (also called atomic bombs or A-Bomb) and fusion weapons (also called hydrogen bombs, H-Bomb or thermonuclear weapons).
The way they make energy for the nuclear explosion is different.
Fusion weapons make bigger explosions.
Fission weapons use a special isotope of uranium or plutonium.
Fusion weapons use a special isotope of hydrogen.
In the years after 1895, people studying physics begin to understand how atoms are made.
Around 1915, people began to have the idea that breaking special atoms can release large quantities of energy and can be used to make a bomb.
In 1939, people studying physics began to understand the theory of nuclear fission weapons, but no country knew how to build one.
When World War II started, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States wanted to build nuclear weapons.
Germany could not build them because many of the best people studying physics fled Germany after Nazi rule started.
The United Kingdom started working in 1939, but the cost was so great that they stopped research in 1942.
In 1942, the United States started a very large program to build nuclear weapons.
It built upon the work done in the United Kingdom.
The program was called the "Manhattan Project".
By August 1945, the Manhattan Project has built multiple nuclear fission weapons.
Two of these bombs were used by the United States to attack the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
People from the Manhattan Project believe that around 105,000 people were killed and 94,000 were hurt when the bombs were used.
Medical professionals later came to believe that more than 225,000 people died when everyone affected after long periods of time are counted.
Japan announced its surrender nine days after the first attack on Hiroshima.
After World War II, the Soviet Union also began working to create nuclear weapons.
One way that nuclear weapons release energy is by breaking atoms apart.
This is called nuclear fission and is the bases for atomic bombs.
Specific isotopes of uranium or plutonium are typically used in these weapons.
Another process can be used to create nuclear weapons that create even bigger explosions and release much more energy by fusing atoms together.
This process is called nuclear fusion, and weapons based on this process are normally called hydrogen bombs or thermonuclear bombs.
Specialized isotopes of hydrogen are typically used in these weapons..
Nuclear weapons are usually made from the elements uranium or plutonium.
These elements can be made to undergo nuclear fission and have a nuclear chain reaction.
This produces a very large amount of energy and radiation, and has the ability kill people or animals within several kilometers.
Most of the radiation is X-rays, which heats the air to produce a huge nuclear fireball.
The rapid expansion of the fireball creates a dangerous shock wave that can destroy houses or buildings several kilometers away.
Over time the radiation can potentially kill people farther away how much radiation the was released.
The radiation released also has the potential to cause mutations in the DNA, which can cause cancer and radiation poisoning.
Nuclear bombs also release fallout, which is nuclear material and dust that has been irradiated and become radioactive.
Fallout from a nuclear explosion can be blown by the wind large distances from where the explosion occurred, and can remain dangerous for long periods of time.
A hydrogen bomb, also known as a fusion bomb, is a nuclear weapon which utilizes hydrogen isotopes (deuterium and tritium) in addition to uranium or plutonium.
Hydrogen bombs have the potential to be much more powerful than fission bombs.
Despite the name, a typical hydrogen bomb only has enough hydrogen to produce additional neutrons to detonate a casing made of natural uranium.
The fuel in hydrogen bombs is thus mostly unrefined uranium.
Nuclear weapons are difficult to build because the special isotopes of uranium or plutonium, as well as the specialized technology involved.
This causes few countries have nuclear weapons.
When countries without nuclear weapons create weapons of their own, this is commonly referred to as nuclear proliferation.
Getting a nuclear weapon to its target can be as difficult as making one.
A nuclear explosive device can be placed in a bomb or artillery shell, or into a missile.
When a nuclear device is placed on a missile it will commonly be called a nuclear missile.
Nuclear missiles can be carried by aircraft, submarines, or trucks, or they can be placed into underground missile silos.
Strategic bombers aircraft like the B-29 Superfortress, B-36 Peacemaker, B-52 Stratofortress and B-2 Spirit have carried nuclear weapons.
They are also carried by missiles, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), or submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM 's).
Some missiles travel to the border of space, and then launch a number of separate nuclear weapons back toward the ground, with each weapon traveling to a different target.
This is called a MIRV Warhead, or Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles.
Very large nuclear bombs have been produced, but in practice a weapon with multiple warheads can produce much more damage by attacking more targets.
Nuclear weapons take many resources to make, because the materials they are made of are very rare and it takes many scientists to make them.
But several countries have managed to create nuclear weapons and many have them today.
The countries that posses nuclear weapons are listed here in the order that they were invented: United States (1945), Russia (1949), United Kingdom (1952), France (1960), China (1964), India (1974), and Pakistan (1998).
Other countries are believe to have secretly have nuclear weapons or attempting to create them.
Some countries used to have nuclear weapons but have since declared that they no longer posses them.
Some countries have lost nuclear weapons while transporting them.
There are 92 known instances of atom bombs being lost at sea by all the countries known to posses them.
Bombs have been lost in 15 different cases.
However, there could be more lost bombs.
This is a list is of the main nuclear explosions which have happened.
As well as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first nuclear test of a given weapon type for a country is included, and tests which were otherwise notable (such as the largest test ever).
All yields (explosive power) are given in their estimated energy equivalents in kilotons of TNT.
Over 500 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests were done at various sites around the world from 1945 to 1980.
As public awareness and concern grew over the possible health hazards associated with exposure to nuclear fallout, various studies were done.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study says that nuclear fallout might have led to 11,000 excess deaths, most caused by thyroid cancer linked to exposure to iodine-131.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American writer.
He was born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts.
His first novel Fanshawe was published anonymously in 1828.
Some short stories were published in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales.
He married Sophia Peabody in 1842.
They had three children.
The family moved about Massachusetts for a few years, but finally settled in Concord, Massachusetts.
The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850.
The House of the Seven Gables was published in 1851.
A political appointment sent Hawthorne and his family to Europe.
They returned to Massachusetts in 1860.
Hawthorne died on 19 May 1864.
Hawthorne 's works belong to the cultural movement called romanticism.
His novels and short stories are cautionary tales.
They suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humanity.
Many of his works are inspired by Puritan New England.
They combine historical romance loaded with symbolism and deep psychological themes.
They border upon surrealism.
His depictions of the past are a version of historical fiction used only as a vehicle to express common themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution.
Nagasaki is the capital city of Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan.
Nagasaki is in the southwest of Kyushu.
It has been recognized as a core city since 1997.
During the Edo period, Nagasaki was the only port in which trade with other countries was permitted because of the national isolation policy (sakoku).
In the 1870 's, Nagasaki became the capital city of the prefecture which evolved from the former province.
Nagasaki was the second of two Japanese cities which were destroyed with an atomic bomb near the end of the Second World War.
' (; Romanizations: N nj ng (Pinyin), Nan-ching (Wade-Giles), Nanking) is the capital of China 's Jiangsu Province, and a city with a prominent place in Chinese history and culture.
Nanjing was the capital of China during several historical periods, including the former capital city of Republic of China, and is listed as one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China.
Nanjing is also one of the fifteen sub-provincial cities in the People 's Republic of China 's administrative structure.
It has autonomy for jurisdiction and economy only slightly less than that of a province.
It lies in the downstream Yangtze River drainage basin and Yangtze River Delta.
With an urban population of over five million, it is also the second largest commercial center in the East China region, behind only Shanghai.
Nanjing Municipality is divided into 11 districts.
The National Hockey League or NHL, is the highest-level ice hockey league in the world.
It has 30 teams - seven are from Canada and the other 23 are from the United States.
The winner of the league each year wins the Stanley Cup.
The NHL began in 1917.
Some of the owners in the National Hockey Association had problems with owner Edward Livingstone, so they got rid of him by creating a new league.
There were five teams in 1917:
They played 22 games a year.
The Wanderers had to stop playing in the first year because their arena burned down.
Over the years some teams died out, and others were created: the Boston Bruins, New York Americans, Montreal Maroons, Pittsburgh Pirates (later Philadelphia Quakers), New York Rangers, Chicago Black Hawks and Detroit Cougars (later Falcons, then Red Wings).
There were only these six teams for 25 years, so they became known as the "Original Six".
By the 1940s, they were playing 50 games a year, but this increased slowly to 80 games by the 1970s.
In 1967, the league increased to 12 teams.
By 1979 it had 21 teams, and today it has 30.
Some of the teams that no longer exist are the Oakland Seals, Minnesota North Stars (now the Dallas Stars), Winnipeg Jets (now the Arizona Coyotes), Kansas City Scouts (which became the Colorado Rockies and are now the New Jersey Devils), Hartford Whalers (now the Carolina Hurricanes), Quebec Nordiques (now the Colorado Avalanche) and Atlanta Thrashers (now the current Winnipeg Jets).
Today they play 82 games a year, plus four rounds of playoffs.
The players make a lot of money (many make over a million dollars a year).
Because they could make so much money, many Europeans came over to North America to play in the NHL.
Today almost all the world 's best hockey players are in the NHL.
In Buddhism, the Noble Eightfold Path (Pali: ariya atthangika magga) is the path to the end of suffering.
It is the fourth part of the Four Noble Truths.
It can be summed up in three categories: wisdom (pa a), virtue (sila), and concentration (samadhi).
It asks for the Right view and the right intention, as well as other things.
It also asks for the right speech.
A national park is a park officially recognized by a nation 's government.
National parks are often made to protect the animals that live inside them or the land itself.
There are many National Parks in the world.
The first one established (in 1872) was the United States Yellowstone National Park.
An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and its World Commission on Protected Areas, has defined National Parks as its category II type of protected areas.
The largest national park in the world meeting the IUCN definition is the Northeast Greenland National Park, which was established in 1974.
According to the IUCN, there are about 7000 national parks worldwide (2010 figure).
While national parks are generally understood to be administered by national governments (hence the name), in Australia national parks are run by State Governments and predate the Federation of Australia.
The words nature and natural are used for all the things that are normally not made by humans.
Things like weather, organisms, landforms, celestial bodies and much more are part of nature.
Scientists study the way the parts of nature work.
Things that have been made by people are said to be man-made or called artifacts.
There are natural sciences that study different parts of nature, for example the science of ecology is about plants and animals as a whole, while biology studies every type of living thing.
From one point of view, humans are a prime example of nature, and are the most widely studied natural inhabitants of the planet earth.
Humans interact with each other in their natural environment on a constant basis.
Every part of nature - everything from the air to the dirt on the ground - is interdependent.
Medicine studies humans in health and sickness.
From another point of view, humans and nature can be said to be in conflict.
Nature is often seen by humans as natural resources.
People cut down trees to get wood to burn, to build houses, or to make a place to grow food.
Fires, cars, and factories make a lot of smoke and harm many places.
People who like to leave nature unharmed and those who feel they need to use more of nature often fight about what they should do.
In the modern world, with many more people and many big cities, these problems are becoming more serious.
Nature, in the broadest sense, means the physical world as a whole.
This is the meaning that physics, the study of nature (etymologically), takes.
A useful definition of natural is "Happening or operating in accordance with the ordinary course of nature".
Oxford Shorter English Dictionary says the word in this sense is first found in 1477.
The North Pole is the point that is farthest north on the planet Earth.
It is the point on which axis of Earth turns.
It is in the Arctic Ocean and it 's cold there because the Sun does not shine there for about half a year and never rises very high.
The ocean around the pole is always very cold and it is covered by a thick sheet of ice.
There is also a Magnetic North Pole.
It is near the physical North Pole.
A compass points toward the magnetic North Pole.
There is a star, called the North Star or Polaris, that is always in the sky above the North Pole.
People can tell how far north they are by seeing how high the North Star appears in the sky.
The nanometre (symbol: nm) is a unit used to measure length in the metric system.
It is equal to one billionth of a metre.
The name combines the SI prefix nano - (from the Ancient Greek, ', "dwarf") with the parent unit name metre (from Greek, ', "unit of measurement").
It can be written in scientific notation as 1 10 9 m.
The nanometre is often used to express very tiny dimensions, such as measuring atoms.
The nanometre is also commonly used to measure the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation near the part of the spectrum that can be seen by humans.
Visible light ranges from around 400 to 800 nm.
The nanometre was formerly called the millimicrometre (or the millimicron).
This is because it is 1\/1000 of a micrometre, and was written with the symbol m (or sometimes).
Nucleosomes are the building blocks which make up chromosomes.
They consist of a segment of DNA wound around a histone protein core.
First, DNA and a protein make up chromatin.
Then the chromatin is packed up into nucleosomes.
Nucleosomes are then packaged up to make a chromosome.
The packages do three things: the chromosomes function in cell division; the very long DNA is wrapped up in a shorter package; and the proteins regulate the gene action in cells.
Nucleosomes form the basic repeating units of eukaryotic chromatin.
This packs the large eukaryotic genomes into the nucleus and allows it to be controlled.
In mammalian cells about two metres of linear DNA have to be packed into a nucleus of roughly 10 m diameter.
Nucleosomes are folded, in a series of higher order structures, to form a chromosome.
This folding compacts the DNA and adds a layer of regulatory control.
The control ensures correct gene expression.
Nucleosomes are thought to carry epigenetically inherited information, as modifications of their core histones.
This information can be passed on to daughter cells, but it usually wiped out by meiosis in germ cells.
The nucleosome hypothesis proposed by Don and Ada Olins and Roger Kornberg in 1974, was a big step for understanding eukaryotic gene expression.
Kornberg won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2006) for this and other discoveries.
Although the nucleosome is a very stable protein-DNA complex, it is not static.
It undergoes some structural re-arrangements, such as nucleosome sliding and DNA site exposure.
Nucleosomes can inhibit or facilitate transcription.
Since they were discovered in the mid 1960 s, histone changes were thought to affect transcription.
Some modifications have been shown to be correlated with gene silencing, others seem to be correlated with gene activation.
The information stored in this way is considered epigenetic: it is not coded in the DNA but is nevertheless inherited by daughter cells.
The maintenance of a particular state of a gene is often necessary for cellular differentiation.
Neurosurgery is the surgical specialty that focuses on diseases and injuries involving the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nervous system.
Nintendo 64 (commonly abbreviated N64) was the third video game console released by Nintendo.
It was released in 1996 and was meant to compete against the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn.
The Nintendo 64 was Nintendo 's first console made for 3D graphics.
It uses plastic cartridges instead of CDs or disks, making load times faster.
Because of this, the games cost more to make.
The controller for the Nintendo 64 was shaped like an "M" and had 10 buttons and a joystick.
Sony used the N64 joystick design to make their DualShock PlayStation controller.
Out of the box, the Nintendo 64 had 4 MB of RAM, and it could be upgraded to 8 MB with the expansion pak.
Because making games for the Nintendo 64 was more expensive than making games for the PlayStation, many video game companies did not make games for the N64.
They made them for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 instead.
Nintendo also did not like games that had a lot of blood or violence in them.
Companies who made these kinds of games made them for the PlayStation instead.
However, some game makers did make some violent games for the Nintendo 64, such as Rare 's first-person shooter Perfect Dark.
Nintendo lost its lead over Sega and Sony because of these two things.
', literally "internal family", is a term in Chinese martial arts, grouping those styles that practice ', literally "internal strength", usually translated as internal martial arts, occupied with spiritual, mental or qi-related aspects, as opposed to an "external") approach focused on physiological aspects.
The distinction dates to the 17th century, but its modern application is due to publications by Sun Lutang, dating to the period of 1915 to 1928.
N i j ng is developed by using n ig ng, or "internal exercises," as opposed to w i g ng, "external exercises."
N iji is a broad term used mistakenly in the West as a synonym for the more specific W d ngqu n styles, named for their association with the Taoist monasteries of Wudangshan range, Hubei Province in Chinese popular legend.
These styles are enumerated by Sun Lutang as T ij qu n, X ngy qu n and B gu zh ng, but must also include B j qu n and the legendary Wudang Sword.
Some other Chinese arts, not in the Wudangquan group, such as Liuhebafa, Bak Mei Pai, Bok Foo Pai and Yiquan are frequently classified (or classify themselves) as "internal".
Navigation is how ships or aircraft find their way from one place to another.
The word navigation came from the word "navgatih" from the Sanskrit language.
The Latin word navis means ship; navigation is literally "art of ship mastery".
The word is also used as a metaphor for ` finding one 's way '.
Today it also means knowing where to go when traveling.
One type of navigation was made by the Polynesians and is called Polynesian navigation.
Polynesians used different things found all around them to find their way across large areas of open ocean.
Other early people also learned how to travel large distances using the natural world.
For example:
An example of people who used the stars were the Vikings.
They knew that the star called Polaris (the North Star) does not change location and points to the north.
They would then know the latitude (distance from the equator), by measuring the angle between Polaris and the horizon.
They also used animals, especially birds, to know if land was nearby.
They also knew that specific kind of clouds form near land and that waves are different near land than at high seas.
As time went by better methods of navigation were invented or discovered.
Some of these methods are:
Non-fiction is writing about facts.
Although non-fiction is supposed to be truthful, sometimes it may not be.
People normally assume that authors mean to be truthful, but they might make mistakes.
Writing is normally split into two parts: non-fiction and fiction.
As well as non-fiction books, there are also pictures and films.
Netscape Navigator (or just Netscape) was a closed source web browser between 1994 to 1998.
In 1999, they made it open source.
It was first released in 1994.
It was very popular during the 1990s.
In 1998, Internet Explorer gained more market share, due to Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer with Windows 98.
Netscape Communications Navigator Version 0.9 B (Mosaic Netscape Navigator 0.9 b) got released in June 13, 1994-present (at dejavu.org/1994win.htm).
Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers.
They send information between neurons by crossing a synapse.
Electrical signals are not able to cross the gap between most neurons.
They are changed into chemical signals to cross the gap.
Neurotransmitters act mostly on chemical synapses.
Once they reach the next neuron they are absorbed.
The neuron then changes this chemical signal back into an electrical signal called an action potential.
The action potential passes across the next neuron and to the next synapse.
Many neurotransmitters are made from amino acids, which are part of your diet and it takes only a few steps to convert them.
Neurotransmitters play a major role in shaping everyday life and functions.
Scientists do not yet know exactly how many neurotransmitters exist, but more than 100 chemical messengers have been identified.
Each neurotransmitter has a different function.
For example: dopamine is used in reward and pleasure and noradrenaline is used in an animal 's "fight or flight" response.
Neurotransmitters also regulate the passing of messages.
This is because an action potential must be a certain strength before the neurotransmitters are released.
The strength required to release the neurotransmitter is called a threshold.
The most common transmitter is glutamate, which is excitatory at well over 90 % of the synapses in the human brain.
The next most prevalent is called GABA, which inhibits at more than 90 % of the synapses that do not use glutamate.
Neurotransmitters are transported within neurons by small "sacks" called vesicles.
When these vesciles come into contact with the neuron 's cell membrane, it opens.
This releases the neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft.
Until the early 20th century, scientists assumed that the majority of synaptic communication in the brain was electrical.
However, through the careful histological examinations by Ram n y Cajal (1852 1934), a 20 to 40 nm gap between neurons, known today as the synaptic cleft, was discovered.
The presence of the gap suggested chemical messengers moved across the synaptic cleft.
In 1921 German pharmacologist Otto Loewi (1873 1961) confirmed that neurons can communicate by releasing chemicals.
By experiments involving the vagus nerves of frogs, Loewi was able to slow the heart rate of frogs by controlling the amount of saline solution present around the vagus nerve.
Loewi asserted that sympathetic regulation of cardiac function can be mediated through changes in chemical concentrations.
Otto Loewi also discovered acetylcholine (ACh) the first known neurotransmitter.
Some neurons do, however, communicate by electrical synapses through the use of gap junctions, which allow specific ions to pass directly from one cell to another.
A neutron star is a very small and dense star made almost completely of neutrons.
They are small stars with a radius of about 11-11.5 kilometres.
They have a mass of about twice that of the Sun.
They are the smallest and densest stars known to exist in the Universe.
They are what is left of a huge star which exploded as a supernova.
The density of the star is like that of the nucleus of an atom.
They have strong magnetic fields, between 108 and 1015 times as strong as that of Earth.
The gravitational field at the neutron star 's surface is about 2 1011 times stronger than on Earth.
To imagine how dense a neutron star is, take all of the mass of our sun (which has a diameter of 1392000 k) and push it down into a size that would fit into a ball with a 19 k diameter.
Another way to understand the density is this: one teaspoon of matter from the neutron star would weigh 6 billion tons.
Neutron stars spin very fast, from 0.001 second up to 30 seconds to turn.
They come in different types.
They may emit beams of electromagnetic radiation as pulsars.
Other types are magnetars and binary pulsars.
In 1934, Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky proposed the existence of neutron stars, only a year after the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick.
Looking for the origin of a supernova, they suggested that in supernova explosions ordinary stars are turned into stars that consist of extremely closely packed neutrons, which they called neutron stars.
Baade and Zwicky suggested that the release of the gravitational binding energy of the neutron stars powers the supernova: "In the supernova process, mass in bulk is annihilated".
Neutron stars were thought to be too faint to be detectable.
Little work was done on them until November 1967, when Franco Pacini (1939 2012) pointed out that if the neutron stars were spinning and had large magnetic fields, then electromagnetic waves would be emitted.
Radio astronomer Antony Hewish and his research assistant Jocelyn Bell at Cambridge soon detected radio pulses from stars that are now known as pulsars.
Nassau is the largest city and the capital of the Bahamas.
Nassau is on New Providence Island.
In 2008 about 260,000 people lived in Nassau.
Nassau used to be named Charles Town.
Nastassja Kinski (born January 24, 1961) is a German-born American movie actress who has been in more than 60 movies.
She is the daughter of German actor Klaus Kinski.
Her movie debut was in The Wrong Move in 1975 at the age of 13.
She starred in 1976 in To the Devil a Daughter.
She was also in a television episode of Tatort called Reifizeugnis in 1976.
That show was about a teenage girl in love with her teacher.
She was then in Boarding School in 1976.
She was also in Cos come sei, also called Stay as You Are in 1978.
She won a Golden Globe Award for her role in Tess.
The most recent movie she was in was Inland Empire (2006).
At one point she dated Polish movie director Roman Polanski, who she met on the set of Tess.
She had a son with actor Vincent Spano.
In the mid-1980s, Kinski met Egyptian movie maker Ibrahim Moussa.
They married on September 10, 1984.
They had two children.
The marriage ended in 1992.
From 1992 until 1995, Kinski lived with musician Quincy Jones.
In 1993, their daughter was born.
There were two sets of Nuremberg Trials.
The first, and most well known, were the trials of the leaders of Nazi Germany.
This was organized by the International Military Tribunal (IMT).
The judges and prosecutors were from the four wartime Allies, France, the USSR, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The second set of trials were the 12 follow up trials.
These trials were of groups of lower-ranking Nazis, like doctors, and officials of the German Foreign Office.
Although the follow up trials were held in the same courtroom as the IMT trials, they were run by the Americans alone.
The original plan was for the IMT to hold several trials, and the Allies to hold their own trials of local officials as well.
Cooperation between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies quickly broke down.
The IMT only held the one big trial.
So the US held trials of the next most important Nazis themselves.
The International Military Tribunal was opened on October 18, 1945, in the Supreme Court Building in Berlin.
The first session was presided over by the Soviet judge, Nikitchenko.
The prosecution brought charges against 24 major war criminals and six criminal organizations the leadership of the Nazi Party, the Schutzstaffel (SS) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the High Command of the German armed forces (OKW).
The death sentences were carried out on 16 October 1946 by hanging using the inefficient American "standard" drop method instead of the long drop.
The executioner was John C. Woods.
The French judges suggested the use of a firing squad for the military condemned, as is standard for military courts-martial, but this was opposed by Biddle and the Soviet judges.
They said that the military officers acted so badly they did not deserve to be treated as soldiers.
The prisoners sentenced to jail were transferred to Spandau Prison in 1947.
The definition of what constitutes a war crime is described by the Nuremberg Principles, a document which was created as a result of the trial.
The medical experiments conducted by German doctors and prosecuted in the so-called Doctors ' Trial led to the creation of the Nuremberg Code to control future trials involving human subjects.
Four organizations were charged as being criminal.
Only the SS was found guilty.
These organizations were found not to be criminal:
Nim is a simple game used for examples in combinatorial game theory.
The rules of nim are simple:
There is a simple mathematical strategy to play the game perfectly.
If both players play perfectly, the winner is determined by the initial setup.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), known between 1901 and 1988 as the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), is a measurement standards laboratory which is a non-regulatory (non-controlled) agency of the United States Department of Commerce.
The institute 's mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and Technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve quality of life.
Naturism or nudism (from Latin nudus - nude) is a term used by many action groups in society.
These action groups usually want to spread the news that being naked is a good feeling, even around other people, and often with males and females mixed together.
Usually, nakedness is seen without any relation to sex.
Rather, these action groups want to enjoy common activities in the nude, like bathing.
Often, they also want to do things nude where this is not really necessary, like naked bicycle tours.
It is difficult to know exactly when naturism began as an action group.
In 1903, Paul Zimmermann opened the first club, Freilichtpark (in English, "Free Light Park"), near Hamburg, Germany.
In the United States, German immigrant Kurt Barthel organized the first nudist event in the forest just outside of New York City.
His club was called "the American League for Physical Culture" (ALPC) and started in the late 1920 's.
Zimmermann 's vice president was a man named Ilsley Boone.
Boone had been a minister (religious leader) of a large church.
He quit to become involved with naturism all the time, and soon replaced Zimmermann as president.
Also, he renamed the ALPC as the "American Sunbathing Association."
Since 1995, it is known as the "American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR)."
Naturists come from many different social classes and backgrounds, and practice naturism for very different reasons.
In addition, religion can effect how people dress.
Islam generally does not allow anyone to be seen naked by others, except married couples in private, and young children by their parents and caregivers.
Traditional Judaism is similar, but less strict about a group of people of the same sex.
In India, Hinduism and Jainism have a few rituals with male nudism.
Buddhism has little to say about naturism.
If practiced, it is considered more of a way of living, than anything religious.
Within Christianity, nudity and naturism are probably the most complicated of all religions.
Many Christians have similar views as those of traditional Judaism, the religion from which Christianity began and grew out of.
Others, called "Christian naturists," believe it is alright to be nude, and even to live nude, unless it is for the wrong reason or forced.
The human body is considered by them to be the greatest creation of God, and is neither shameful nor should be covered.
In addition, they believe it was the devil, not God, who told Adam and Eve that they were naked upon eating from a fruit tree which was not theirs.
Napalm is the name for a number of flammable liquids that have been used in warfare.
Often it is jellied gasoline.
Napalm is actually the thickener in such liquids.
When it is mixed with gasoline, the thickener makes a sticky incendiary gel.
It was developed by the U.S. in World War II by a team of Harvard chemists.
The team leader was Louis Fieser.
The name napalm has comes from the ingredients that were first used to make it: coprecipitated aluminum salts of naphthenic and palmitic acids.
These were added to the flammable substance to cause it to gel.
One of the major problems of early incendiary fluids (such as those used in flamethrowers) was that they splashed and drained too easily.
The U.S. found that flamethrowers that use a gasoline gel are able to shoot farther and are more useful.
Gasoline gel was difficult to manufacture because it used natural rubber, which was in high demand and expensive.
Napalm provided a far cheaper alternative.
It solved the problems involved with rubber-based incendiaries.
Nowadays, napalm is mostly made of benzene and polystyrene, and is known as napalm-B.
Napalm was used in flamethrowers and bombs by the U.S. and Allied forces, to increase the usefulness of flammable liquids.
Napalm is made to burn at a specific rate and stick to materials.
This is done by mixing different of amounts of napalm and other materials.
Another useful (and dangerous) effect, primarily involving its use in bombs, was that napalm "rapidly deoxygenates the available air."
It also creates large amounts of carbon monoxide causing suffocation.
Napalm bombs were also used in the Vietnam War to clear landing zones for helicopters.
Though napalm was a 20th century invention, it is part of a long history of incendiary materials in warfare.
However, historically, it was primarily liquids that were used (see Greek fire).
An infantry-based flammable liquid fuel weapon, the flamethrower, was introduced in World War I by the Germans, variations of which were soon developed by other sides in the conflict.
On July 17, 1944, napalm incendiary bombs were dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near St. L, France.
Napalm bombs were first used in the Pacific Theatre during the Battle of Tinian by Marine aviator.
Its use was complicated because of problems with mixing, fusing and the release mechanisms.
In World War II, Allied forces bombed cities in Japan with napalm, and used it in bombs and flamethrowers in Germany and the Japanese-held islands.
It was used by the Greek army against communist guerrilla fighters during the Greek Civil War, by United Nations forces in Korea, by Mexico in the late 1960s against guerrilla fighters in Guerrero and by the United States during the Vietnam War.
The most well-known method of delivering napalm is from air-dropped incendiary bombs.
A lesser-known method is the flame throwers used by combat infantry.
Flame throwers use a thinner version of the same jellied gasoline to destroy gun emplacements, bunkers and cave hideouts.
U.S. Marines fighting on Guadalcanal found them very effective against Japanese positions.
The Marines used fire as both a casualty weapon as well as a psychological weapon.
Men have a natural fear of fire.
They found that Japanese soldiers would abandon positions in which they fought to the death against other weapons.
Prisoners of war confirmed that they feared napalm more than any other weapon thrown at them.
Napalm became one of the preferred weapons of the Korean War.
Pilots returning from the war zone often remarked they would rather have a couple of gasoline tanks full of napalm to drop than any other weapon, bombs, rockets or guns.
The U.S. Air Force and Navy used napalm with great effect against all manner of targets to include troops, tanks, buildings and even rail road tunnels.
The demoralizing effect napalm had on the enemy became apparent when scores of North Korean troops began to surrender to aircraft flying overhead.
Pilots noted they saw surviving enemy troops waving white flags on subsequent passes after dropping napalm.
The pilots radioed to ground troops and the North Koreans were captured.
Napalm has been used recently in wartime by or against: Iran (1980 88), Israel (1967, 1982), Nigeria (1969), Brazil (1972), Egypt (1973), Cyprus (1964, 1974), Argentina (1982), Iraq (1980 88, 1991, 2003?)
, Serbia (1994), Turkey (1963, 1974, 1997), Angola, United States.
In some cases, napalm disables and kills its victims very quickly.
Those who do survive suffer up to 5th degree burns.
These damage parts of the skin which do not have pain receptors.
However, victims who suffer 2nd degree burns from splashed napalm will be in significant amounts of pain.
"Napalm is the most terrible pain you can imagine," said Phan Th Kim Ph c, a napalm bombing survivor known from a famous Vietnam War photograph.
"Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius.
Napalm generates temperatures of 800 to 1,200 degrees Celsius."
Phuc had third-degree burns to half her body and was not expected to live.
But thanks to assistance from South Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut, and after surviving a 14-month hospital stay and 17 operations, she became an outspoken peace activist.
International law does not prohibit the use of napalm or other incendiaries against military targets, but use against civilian populations was banned by the United Nations ' inhumane weapons convention (often referred to as the CCW) in 1981.
Protocol III of the CCW restricts the use of incendiary weapons (not only napalm), but a number of states have not acceded to all of the protocols of the CCW.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), states are considered a party to the convention, which entered into force as international law in December 1983, if they ratify at least two of the five protocols.
The United States, for example, is a party to the CCW but did not sign Protocol III.
Reports by the Sydney Morning Herald suggested that napalm has been used in the Iraq War by US forces.
The U.S. Department of Defense denied this.
In August 2003, the San Diego Union Tribune said that U.S. Marine pilots and their commanders confirmed the use of Mark 77 firebombs on Iraqi Republican Guards during the start of combat.
Official denials of the use of ` napalm ' were, however, disingenuous, as the Mk 77 bomb that is currently in service at this time, the Mk 77 Mod 5, does not use actual napalm (e.g. napalm-B).
The last U.S. bomb to use actual napalm was the Mark 77 Mod 4, the last of which were destroyed in March 2001.
The substance used now is a different incendiary mixture.
It is sufficiently analogous in its effects that it is still a controversial incendiary, and can still be referred to colloquially as ` napalm. '
"We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches," said Col. Randolph Alles in a recent interview.
"Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the (cockpit) video."
"They were Iraqi soldiers there.
It 's no great way to die," he added.
The generals love napalm.
... It has a big psychological effect."
- San Diego Union-Tribune, August 2003
These bombs did not actually have napalm in them.
The napalm-B (super napalm) used in Vietnam was gasoline based.
The Mk-77 firebombs used in the Gulf were kerosene based.
It is, however, a napalm-like liquid in its effect.
Recipes how to make napalm-like substances can be found on the Internet.
Very often, the recipes say that they will make a thick substance using gasoline, with soap or polystyrene as a thickening agent.
However, inexperienced people following these instructions often handle the substance improperly and cause accidents.
In addition, making incendiary devices is illegal in many countries.
Napalm is usually a mixture of gasoline with suitable thickening agents.
The earliest thickeners were soaps, aluminum, and magnesium palmitates and stearates.
Depending on how much thickener is added, the resulting viscosity may range between syrupy liquid and thick rubbery gel.
The content of long hydrocarbon chains makes the material highly hydrophobic (resistant to wetting with water), making it more difficult to extinguish.
Thickened fuel also rebounds better from surfaces, making it more useful for operations in urban terrain.
There are two types of napalm: oil-based with aluminium soap thickener, and oil-based with polymeric thickener ("napalm-B").
The United States military uses three kinds of thickeners: M1, M2, and M4.
A later variant, napalm-B, also called "super napalm", is a mixture of low-octane gasoline with benzene and polystyrene.
It was used in the Vietnam War.
Unlike conventional napalm, which burns for only 15 30 seconds, napalm B burns for up to 10 minutes with fewer fireballs.
It also sticks better to surfaces, and offers improved destruction effects.
It is not as easy to ignite.
This reduces the number of accidents caused by soldiers smoking.
When it burns, it develops a characteristic smell.
Starting in the early 1990s, various websites including The Anarchist Cookbook advertised recipes for homemade napalm.
These recipes were predominantly equal parts gasoline and styrofoam.
This mixture closely resembles that of napalm-B, but lacks a percentage of benzene.
Napalm reaches burning temperatures of approximately 1,200 C (2,200 F).
Other additives can be added, e.g. powdered aluminium or magnesium, or white phosphorus.
In the early 1950s, Norway developed its own napalm, based on fatty acids in whale oil.
The reason for this development was that the American-produced thickening agent performed rather poorly in the cold Norwegian climate.
The product was known as Northick II.
Napalm itself became well known by the American public after its use in the Vietnam war.
Since then, it has been mentioned in the media and arts multiple times.
This summary is not meant to be all inclusive.
Neoteny is a type of heterochrony where bodily development is slowed, but sexual development goes on at the same rate.
This results in a sexually mature juvenile or larval form.
A classic example is the Axolotl.
It has often been suggested that the human species is, at least to some extent, an example of neoteny.
These features of adult humans are different from those of adult great apes, but more similar to those of juvenile apes:
These are some of the neotenous traits in humans: flattened face, broadened face, large brain, hairless body, hairless face, small nose, reduction of brow ridge, small teeth, small upper jaw (maxilla), small lower jaw (mandible), thinness of skull bones, limbs proportionately short compared to torso length, longer leg than arm length, larger eyes, and upright stance.
National Rail is a title used by the Association of Train Operating Companies.
ATOC is an unincorporated association whose membership consists of the passenger train companies of Great Britain which now run the passenger services previously provided by the British Railways Board (from 1965 the Board used the title British Rail).
The BRB is a statutory corporation created by the Transport Act 1962.
It has since been renamed BR Residuary Ltd but has yet to be abolished.
In general relativity, a naked singularity is a gravitational singularity that is viewable from the outside.
The event horizon is like a bubble which surrounds a black hole.
Inside the event horizon, the pull of the light can not escape, so we are unable to view objects inside the event horizon.
This includes the event horizon itself.
Naked singularities do not have an event horizon, hence the term ` naked '.
The existence of naked singularities is a very important topic in physics, because it would mean we could actually see phenomena made by black holes that we would n't be able to see otherwise.
In addition, naked singularities would pose big problems for general relativity, since scientists still have n't figured out a working idea for what happens to space-time in and around a black hole.
Quantum mechanics, the main other scientific theory scientists turn to in physics, is also unable to explain how space-time would behave in such a situation.
Although the cosmic censorship hypothesis says that naked singularities can not exist, some research says that if loop quantum gravity (a scientific theory that says the universe is made of small ` loops ') is correct, naked singularities could exist in nature.
Other calculations and arguments have been made to support this.
The National Party of Australia is the third biggest political party in Australia.
It was first called the Country Party when it started in 1920 and then became the National Country Party in 1975.
In 1982 it became the National Party.
The National Party represents the interests of people who live in rural areas, that is, not in big cities.
It normally joins together with the Liberal Party to form a coalition government.
It has less people in Parliament than the Liberal Party.
The current leader is Warren Truss.
When the National Party is in a coalition government its leader is usually the Deputy Prime Minister.
The Party was quite powerful during the 1940s, 1950 's and 1960s.
Because it worked closely with the United Australia and later Liberal Party, three National leaders - Earle Page, Arthur Fadden and John McEwen - were Prime Minister for a short time.
The Party is strongest in Queensland, where it has had several State Premiers.
In 2008, the Liberal Party and National Party came together in Queensland and are now called the "Liberal National Party of Queensland".
The party 's federal parliamentary leader since 3 December 2007 is Warren Truss.
He led the party to the 2010 Australian Federal Election.
A Turing machine is an idea from computer science that tries to describe how some computers work.
Deterministic Turing machines use a function.
Given the current state of the Turing machine, it selects another state the Turing machine should have.
In other words, from each state there is one other state the machine can have.
A non-deterministic Turing machine uses a relation.
This means that from some states there are several other states that are possible.
Nitrogen narcosis is a problem for underwater divers.
It affects the brain and nervous system a lot like alcohol, but goes away when the diver rises to a shallower depth.
It does not have lasting effects after the depth is reduced.
Any underwater diver who goes deeper than 30 m (100 ft) while breathing air, or any time when the pressure of nitrogen in the breathing gas is more than about 3,2 bar.
It only happens when the pressure of nitrogen is high.
If the pressure is kept low by staying at a shallower depth it will not happen.
If the breathing gas has less nitrogen it will only start at a deeper depth.
Helium gas can be used in place of nitrogen in breathing gas for divers to make it less likely to have nitrogen narcosis.
The nitrogen gas dissolved in the diver affects the working of nerve cells.
At higher pressures more nitrogen can be dissolved.
It starts off as a mild effect like being slightly drunk, but as the pressure increases it gets more serious, like getting more drunk.
Eventually the diver may lose consciousness.
A diver who has nitrogen narcosis will have slower reactions and may not think clearly.
If something goes wrong the diver may not be able to cope with the problem.
This can be dangerous.
The diver can move to a shallower depth or change to a different breathing gas with less nitrogen.
This will usually be a mixture containing helium.
The Neoproterozoic era lasted from 1,000 to 541 million years ago (mya).
In the first period, the Tonian, the global supercontinent Rodinia broke up into separate land masses.
In the second period, the Cryogenian, the Earth had two great ice ages, the Sturtian and Marinoan glaciations.
These ice ages were so severe they are sometimes called Snowball Earth.
In the third period, the Ediacaran, the earliest fossils of multicellular organisms are found, the Ediacaran biota.
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a part of the United States government.
It was started in 1952, and the main office is in Maryland.
Their stated goal is to protect the US people.
They do this by
The nervous system is a system in the body which sends signals around the body.
It lets people and animals respond to what is around them.
The central nervous system is the brain, the spinal cord, and nerves.
It is present in most animals.
It is there to coordinate movement, to process the input of the senses, and to make the animals act a certain way.
It is made up of neurons and cells called glia, among other things.
Glial cells keep the neurons safe and healthy.
The structure of the system includes the brain and spinal cord, which together are called the central nervous system.
The brain has billions of nerve cells to help think, walk, and breathe.
The nervous system can react in 1\/100 of a second to a stimulus, like a pain signal.
A nutcracker is a mechanical device for cracking nuts.
Nutcrackers usually work on the principle of moments as described in Archimedes ' analysis of the lever.
The earliest use of the term "nutcracker" in English dates to 1481.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, previously called the North-West Frontier Province (, NWFP) is a province in Pakistan.
The capital is Peshawar and it has a population of 14 million people and an area of 28,773 mi or (74,521 km).
By area the province is greater in area than Sierra Leone but smaller than Panama.
The province was created in 1901 during British rule when it was separated from a united Punjab province of the British India Empire.
A referendum was held in the North West Frontier Province on 2 July 1947.
The majority of voters wanted to join with Pakistan, with only a very small number voting to join with India.
The NWFP became a part of Pakistan, because of this referendum.
The President of Pakistan appoints a Governor as head of the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
There is a directly-elected Provincial Assembly, which has 124 elected members (including 22 seats reserved for women and 3 seats for non-Muslims).
The Provincial Assembly elects a Chief Minister to act as the chief executive of the province, assisted by a cabinet of ministers.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is divided into 25 districts.
There are 20 Settled Area Districts and 5 Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA) Districts.
The administration of the PATA districts is the responsibility the President of Pakistan and the Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
For over a hundred years from its founding as a province of British India in 1901, it was known as the North-West Frontier Province.
Afghania is another name long considered as a replacement for North-West Frontier Province.
It was proposed first by the founding leaders of the Muslim League in 1933 and was at least partly chosen to represent the first "a" in "Pakistan.
The need for a change was explained by the man who named Pakistan in his "Now or Never" pamphlet, Choudhary Rahmat Ali Khan, as: Pakhtunkhwa (and the other transliteration variants) is derived from Pakhtun and khwa, the former refers to the ethnic group and the latter literally means "heart".
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa sits primarily on the Iranian plateau and comprises the junction where the slopes of the Hindu Kush mountains on the Eurasian plate give way to the Indus-watered hills approaching South-central Asia.
This situation has led to seismic activity in the past.
The famous Khyber Pass links the province to Afghanistan, while the Kohalla Bridge in Circle Bakote Abbottabad is a major crossing point over the Jhelum River in the east.
The province has an area of 28,773 mi or (74,521 km) comparable in size to New England in North America.
The province 's main districts are Peshawar, Mardan, Charsadda Dera Ismail Khan, Lakki Marwat, Kohistan, Kohat, Abbottabad, Haripur and Mansehra, Swat, Buner District, Bannu and Karak.
Peshawar, Mardan, Kohat, Abbottabad, Dera Ismail Khan and Hangu are the main cities.
The region varies in topography from dry rocky areas in the south to forests and green plains in the north.
The climate can be extreme with intensely hot summers to freezing cold winters.
Despite these extremes in weather, agriculture remains important and viable in the area.
The hilly terrain of Kalam, Upper Dir, Swat, Naran and Kaghan is renowned for its beauty and attracts a great many tourists from neighboring regions and from around the world.
Swat is popular among tourists as the "Switzerland of South Asia" as there are many landscape similarities between it and the mountainous terrain of Switzerland.
According to the 1998 census, the population of the province was approximately 17 million, of whom 52 % are males and 48 % are females.
The density of population is 187 per km and the intercensal change of population is of about 30 %.
Geographically the province could be divided into two zones: the northern one extending from the ranges of the Hindu Kush to the borders of Peshawar basin and the southern one extending from Peshawar to the Derajat basin.
The northern zone is cold and snowy in winters with heavy rainfall and pleasant summers with the exception of Peshawar basin, which is hot in summer and cold in winter.
It has moderate rainfall.
The southern zone is arid with hot summers and relatively cold winters and scanty rainfall.
The major rivers that criss-cross the province are the Kabul, Swat, Chitral, Kunar, Siran, Panjgora, Bara, Kurram, Dor, Haroo, Gomal and Zhob.
Its snow-capped peaks and lush green valleys of unusual beauty have enormous potential for tourism.
In kpk about 67 % peoples are pashtuns they speak pashto language as regional language.
Other widely spoken languages are Erina language, kalami, khowar, kohistani, yidgha
Naiad or Neptune III is the closest moon to Neptune named after the Naiads of Greek legend.
It was found sometime before mid-September, 1989 from the images taken by the Voyager 2 probe.
The last moon to be discovered during the flyby, it was designated S\/1989 N 6.
Naiad is not a sphere and probably has not been changed by any internal geological processes after its formation.
It orbits about 23,500 km above Neptune 's cloud tops.
Since the Voyager 2 flyby, the Neptune system has been studied a lot from ground-based observatories and the Hubble Space Telescope as well.
In 2002-03, Keck telescope looked at the system using adaptive optics and detected easily the biggest four closer satellites.
Thalassa was found with some image processing, but Naiad was not located.
The Nilo-Saharan languages are a family of African languages.
They are spoken by around 50 million people, who mainly live in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers.
The languages go through 17 countries in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria to Benin in the west; from Libya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the center; and from Egypt to Tanzania in the east.
A nucleolus (plural: nucleoli) is the part of a eukaryote cell where ribosomes are made.
Viewed through a microscope, the nucleolus appears as a dark spot inside the cell 's nucleus.
It is made up of dense RNA and proteins.
Prokaryote cells have ribosomes, but they do n't make as many as eukaryotes do, and there is no visible nucleolus.
There is usually more than one nucleolus in a eukaryote cell.
The nucleolus is made at a nucleolus organizer region (NOR), which is a chromosome region around which the nucleolus forms.
Inside the nucleolus ribosomes are made.
Ribosomes are molecular machines that synthesize proteins.
The ribosomes are exported through the nuclear envelope to the cytoplasm, where they do their work.
Nucleoli also have other important functions like assembly of signal recognition particles and playing a role in the cell 's response to stress.
Malfunction of nucleoli can be the cause of several human diseases.
In physics and chemistry, a nucleon refers to any subatomic particle found in the nucleus of an atom.
For instance, protons and neutrons are nucleons, since they are in the nucleus of the atom.
Nucleons are made of Quarks.
The main types of nucleons are protons and neutrons.
A proton, as it 's name suggests, has a positive electric charge, and a neutron has a neutral electric charge (meaning that it has no charge).
The two in the nucleus of the atom make a positive charge, since the neutron has no charge at all.
Electrons are not nucleons, because they are not in the nucleus of the atom.
The other types of nucleons are antinucleons.
These are the antiparticles of the nucleons.
The fundamental force responsible for holding the nucleons together in the nucleus is called the strong force.
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock, PC, (born 28 March 1942) is a Welsh politician.
He was a Member of Parliament from 1970 to 1995.
From 1983 to 1992 he was the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the Labor Party.
In the general election in 1992 he was beaten.
After this he gave up his post of leading the Labor Party (and sitting in Parliament).
He was a British politician in the European Commission from 1995 until 2004, and is now Chairman of the British Council and President of Cardiff University.
He was introduced to the House of Lords on 31 January 2005.
He was created Baron Kinnock, of Bedwellty in the County of Gwent.
He is married to Glenys Kinnock.
She was Britain 's Minister for Africa and the United Nations from 2009 to 2010, and a Labor Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1994 to 2009.
She was made a life peer in 2009.
They became one of the few couples to both hold titles in their own right.
The two met while studying at University College, Cardiff.
They married on 25 March 1967.
In 2008 they moved to Tufnell Park, London, to be closer to their daughter and grandchildren.
They have a son, Stephen and a daughter, Rachel.
Neil Kinnock is a lifelong Cardiff City F.C. fan and regularly attends matches.
Kinnock is an agnostic.
In 2011 Kinnock took part in the BBC Wales program Coming Home about his Welsh family history.
The program was broadcast on 30 November 2011.
Newfoundland and Labrador is a province on the East Coast of Canada, and is the farthest east of all Canadian provinces and territories.
The capital of Newfoundland and Labrador is St. John 's.
In 2001, 533,800 people lived in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Newfoundland is an island, while Labrador is within the mainland of Canada and on a border with Quebec.
The province of Newfoundland and Labrador was originally called Newfoundland and joined Canada in 1949, becoming the newest province of Canada, after being a colony of the United Kingdom.
Until an agreement was reached in 1927, Quebec also claimed Labrador.
In 2001, the name of Newfoundland changed to its new official name, Newfoundland and Labrador, while the postal code abbreviation changed from NF to NL.
The island of Newfoundland, and part of Labrador, are in a time zone that is a half hour off from any other part of North America.
Nitrogen fixation is the process by which nitrogen is taken from its stable gas form (N2) in air and changes into other nitrogen compounds (such as ammonia, nitrate and nitrogen dioxide) useful for other chemical processes.
It is an important part of the nitrogen cycle.
Cyanobacteria are in most environments on Earth.
They play key roles in the carbon and nitrogen cycle of the biosphere.
Cyanobacteria use many sources of combined nitrogen, like nitrate, nitrite, ammonium, urea, or some amino acids.
Several cyanobacterial strains are also capable of diazotrophic growth.
Diazotrophs fix nitrogen from the air, an ability that may have been present in their last common ancestor in the Archaean.
Cyanobacteria in coral reefs can fix twice the amount of nitrogen than on land around 1.8 kg of nitrogen is fixed per hectare per day.
The colonial marine cyanobacterium Trichodesmium may fix nitrogen on such a scale that it accounts for almost half of the nitrogen-fixation in marine systems on a global scale.
Plants that contribute to nitrogen fixation include the legume family Fabaceae with taxa such as kudzu, clovers, soybeans, alfalfa, lupines, peanuts, and rooibos.
They have symbiotic bacteria called Rhizobia in nodules in their root systems, producing nitrogen compounds that help the plant to grow and compete with other plants.
When the plant dies, the fixed nitrogen is released, making it available to other plants and this helps to fertilize the soil.
Most legumes have this association, but a few genera (e.g., Styphnolobium) do not.
In traditional farming practice, fields are rotated through various types of crops, which usually includes one consisting mainly or entirely of clover or buckwheat (non-legume family Polygonaceae), which are often referred to as "green manure".
All these families belong to the orders Cucurbitales, Fagales, and Rosales, which together with the Fabales form a clade.
In this clade, Fabales were the first lineage to branch off; thus, the ability to fix nitrogen was lost in most descendants of the original nitrogen-fixing plant.
Biological nitrogen fixation was discovered by Hermann Hellnegel (1831-1895) and Martinus Beijerinck (1851-1931).
Naguib Mahfouz (December 11, 1911 August 30, 2006) was an Egyptian novelist who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He managed to modernize Arabic literature.
He is one of the few writers of Arabic literature who explored themes of existentialism.
Naguib Mahfouz was born in the Gamaliya quarter of Cairo and was named after Professor Naguib Pasha Mahfouz (1882-1974), the renowned Coptic physician who delivered him.
In his childhood Mahfouz read extensively.
His mother often took him to museums and Egyptian history later became a major theme in many of his books.
The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 had a strong effect on Mahfouz, although he was at the time only seven years old.
From the window he often saw English soldiers firing at the demonstrators, men and women.
"You could say," he later noted, "that the one thing which most shook the security of my childhood was the 1919 revolution."
Before the Nobel Prize only a few of his novels had appeared in the West.
Because of his outspoken support for Anwar el Sadat 's treaty with Israel, his books were banned in many Arab countries until after he won the Nobel prize.
Like many Egyptian writers and intellectuals, Mahfouz was on a "death list" by Islamic fundamentalists.
He defended Salman Rushdie after the Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini condemned him to death, but later he criticized Rushdie 's Satanic Verses as "insulting" to Islam.
Before his death, Mahfouz was the oldest living Nobel Literature laureate and the third oldest of all time, only Bertrand Russell and Halldor Laxness were older.
At the time of his death, he was the only Arabic-language writer to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Neil Peart (born Neil Ellwood Peart, September 12, 1952, Hamilton, Ontario) is a Canadian musician and author.
He is best known as the drummer and lyricist for the rock band Rush.
He is also an author of 4 books, including Ghost Rider, a book about his life after both his daughter and his wife died within a year of each other.
He has won many awards for his drumming, and is often considered one of the greatest drummers of all time.
Peart was a guest star as himself in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie.
The North Atlantic Treaty is the treaty that founded NATO.
It was signed in Washington, DC on April 4, 1949.
The original twelve nations that signed it and thus became the founding members of NATO were the following:
When Germany was reunified in 1990, the country as a whole became a member of NATO.
The key section of the treaty was Article V which says that each member state has to consider an armed attack against one state to be an armed attack against all states.
The treaty was created with an armed attack by the Soviet Union against Western Europe in mind, but the mutual self-defense clause was never used during the Cold War.
It was used for the first time in 2001 when the September 11, 2001 attacks against the World Trade Center and The Pentagon had taken place.
In the United States, the treaty was approved by the Senate in a vote of 82 to 13 on July 21 1949.
Neopets is a website that lets its users create virtual pets, and take care of them.
The site was created on November 15 1999, and has hundreds of millions of users.
The website is owned by Jumpstart.
Most of the pets that the user can create are not real animals, but are based upon real animals.
Neopets has story plots, chat boards, and different things that users can do with their neopets.
Many people of many different ages join Neopets.
The site has many games that the user can play.
Neopets has a help section to find answers to many of the questions that users may have.
The games length varies from a minute or less to saveable games like neoquest that take more than 10 hours total to complete.
A person can make a pet and then feed it by playing games and getting money, or by visiting places to get free food once they have less than 3000 np (Neopoints).
They can get items and clothes for their pets.
They can get special items called paint brushes which change the color of the pet to a different special color
once you turn thirteen, you may Customize your web page... and get new stuff Default avatars are the easiest type of avatar to get.
Once a person creates an account on Neopets, they get to use the default avatars without having to do anything.
Default avatars are mainly the different pets that can be used on the site and certain faeries.
Clickable avatars are the second easiest avatar to get.
To earn a Clickable, the user must go to a certain place on the site.
Once the user has gone to that page, they get a message that says they can use that avatar.
Many avatars have to be earned.
These are the avatars that people want most.
These avatars are the hardest to get.
These avatars may be gotten in many different ways.
For example, getting a certain score in a game, buying a specific item, looking up a pet, refreshing, or getting a set amount of "Neopoints (money) used on the site).
There are many websites created by Neopet users to help other players.
These sites help with information about how to play games and how to get avatars.
There are also many sites for users to find ways to change the look of the pages that tell about themselves and their pets.
Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee.
It is on the Cumberland River in Davidson County.
Nashville is the home of the Grand Ole Opry, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and many major record labels.
Nashville has 569,891 people in it (according to the 2000 census), making it the second biggest city in Tennessee after Memphis.
A resident of Nashville is called a Nashvillian.
The City of Nashville and Davidson County joined in 1963 as a way for Nashville to fight the problems of urban sprawl.
The joint metropolitan government offers services such as police, firefighting, electricity, running water, and waste water disposal.
Native Esperanto speakers are people who learned Esperanto as one of their first languages.
Esperanto is not spoken in any countries as an official language, so they must become bilingual, trilingual, or multilingual.
Native Esperanto speakers can use this language completely and more fluently than non-native Esperanto speakers.
There are not very many native Esperanto speakers.
It is thought that no more than one or two thousand people speak Esperanto as their first language.
Neil Simon (born July 4, 1927) is an American playwright and screenwriter.
He has written over thirty plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, most adapted from his plays.
He has received more Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer.
Simon was born on July 4, 1927 in The Bronx, New York City to a Jewish family.
He studied at New York University and at University of Denver.
Simon was married five times.
The first four ended in divorce.
He is currently married to Elaine Joyce since 1999.
Simon has two children and one adopted child.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a trade agreement between Mexico, the United States, and Canada.
The agreement was signed by U.S. President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and Mexican President Carlos Salinas on December 17, 1992 in San Antonio, Texas, and took effect on January 1, 1994.
It removed taxes on products traded between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
It also protects copyright, patents, and trademarks between those three countries.
It was updated with the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, which helped set more environment regulations and helped reduce pollution.
It was also updated with the North American Agreement for Labor Cooperation, which helped people fight for better labor conditions.
Since it took away taxes between products traded between the US, Canada, and Mexico, Mexico has been buying more products from the US.
It saved U.S. companies on the cost of selling products to Mexico, and it saved Mexican companies on the cost of buying items from U.S. companies.
A benefit of the bill is that labels on products exchanged between the three countries come in French, English, and Spanish.
That way, Mexicans and Americans who speak Spanish can read the Spanish label, Americans and Canadians can read the English label, and Canadians who speak French can read the French label.
NAFTA also encourages more immigration from Mexico to the US.
Since small businesses can no longer be protected by tariffs, many small business owners in Mexico can not compete with the prices of subsidized products from the US and therefore many of them have gone under.
As a result, many Mexicans have gone to the US looking for work.
The human rights organization EZLN (Ej rcito Zapatista de la Liberaci n Nacional), a revolutionary Mexican grass roots movement, is a stark opponent of NAFTA and points out how its provisions only make the economic situation worse for the poorest in Mexico and better for multi-national corporations.
With the increased ease by which Mexico can import food products from the United States, the role of Mexican farmers is overwhelmed by the output of American agriculture.
This is a notable con of NAFTA.
According to Thomas Net Industry Market Trends, over 1 million Mexican farmers have lost their jobs as a result of the agreement.
The American economy lost about 683,000 jobs thanks to NAFTA -- more than 60 % of which were in the manufacturing sector.
Almost 35,000 Ohioans found themselves unemployed thanks to a free trade agreement that s been a disaster for our nation s industrial base.
- Sharrod Brown
It was possible that NAFTA would encourage Mexican citizens to remain in their country since their manufacturing work could still reach the American market easily.
But since the creation of NAFTA, illegal immigration between Mexico and the United States has only gotten worse.
Over the 10-year period between 1990 and 2000, the number of annual illegal immigrants doubled, despite the creation of NAFTA in 1994, according to Thomas Net Industry Market Trends.
That NAFTA was not more effective in preventing the immigration crisis is a disadvantage.
Nuclear fission is a nuclear process.
It is when an atom splits apart into smaller atoms.
The process gives off a lot of energy, and is used in nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors.
Nuclear fission was discovered in December 1938 by the German nuclear chemist Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann in Berlin.
An atom is the smallest particle which makes up a chemical element (e.g. hydrogen, oxygen, magnesium).
All atoms are very small.
A small ball called a nucleus is at the center of every atom.
Elements which have large nuclei, such as uranium and plutonium, can be made to fission.
If a (relatively) very large nucleus is hit by a slow-moving neutron, it will sometimes become unstable and break into two nuclei.
When the nucleus breaks apart (or fissions) it releases a lot of energy and it also causes some neutrons to be released.
For a few isotopes one such fission can release many neutrons.
If those neutrons then hit other atoms, they will make the other atoms split.
This can happen again and again.
This is called a nuclear chain-reaction, and it can release huge amounts of energy very quickly.
The amount of energy released by a nuclear chain reaction is measured in kilotons.
One kiloton is the same as the energy of one thousand tons of TNT (trinitrotoluene).
In a nuclear bomb, this must happen very quickly to make a very big explosion.
In a nuclear reactor this must happen slowly to make heat.
The heat is used to boil water into steam, which turns a turbine to generate electricity.
Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (; born Neil Richard Gaiman; 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theater and movies.
His known works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.
He has won many awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals.
He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008).
In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards.
Gaiman is married to Amanda Palmer.
He lives in Wisconsin and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He has a son and two daughters by his ex-wife.
A nymph is a kind of female nature entity\/spirit in Greek mythology.
They are often companions of Greek gods and goddesses.
Nymphs can be divided into different kinds, such as:
Natural law is the idea that there are forms of law that exist by themselves.
Unlike other forms of law (called positive laws) that have been agreed on by society, such laws would be given to all, and would not be possible to do without.
Such rights are called natural.
In modern times, human rights are often seen as coming from natural law, but the idea goes back to Ancient Greece.
Important philosophers who developed natural law include Aristotle, Plato, Seneca the Younger, Thomas Aquinas, and Immanuel Kant.
People who critizised this approach include Jeremy Bentham and Hans Kelsen.
Nestorianism is a movement within Christianity.
The idea behind the doctrine was that there were two different persons of Jesus.
One of them was the man Jesus, the other was the aspect of son of God, or Logos.
Perhaps the most prominent supporter of the idea was Nestorius, archbishop of Constantinople.
Nestorius lived from about 380 to about 450 AD.
The Council of Ephesus condemned this view in 431.
This led to a split of the church, into the Assyrian Church of the East and the Byzantine Church.
For this reason, the Assyrian Church of the East is sometimes called Nestorian.
The church holds the view that Chist has two essences (qnome) that are united in one person (parsopa).
The only two churches that teach Nestorianism today are the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Church of the East & Abroad.
A negotiation is a formal discussion to reach agreement about an issue.
It is an important method to reduce conflict, and to get things done.
Examples:
Nu metal is a style of metal music that uses elements of hip hop and heavy metal music, as well as the normal heavy metal instruments such as guitars, drums and bass.
Nu metal bands often include electronic instruments such as DJ decks and keyboards.
Nu metal was very successful in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Nu metal bands such as Linkin Park (with more than 50 million records sold around the world), Korn (with 35 million), Deftones, Limp Bizkit (with 35 million) and Slipknot (around 15 million records) had been the most important bands that made successful this genre.
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is the world 's top men 's professional basketball league.
It is one of the major professional sports leagues of North America.
There are 30 teams.
29 are in the United States and 1 (the Toronto Raptors) is in Canada.
It is a member of USA Basketball (USAB),.
The NBA is one of the 4 major North American professional sports leagues.
NBA players are the world 's best paid athletes.
They have the highest average annual salary.
The league was founded in New York City on June 6, 1946.
It was called the Basketball Association of America (BAA).
The league merged with the National Basketball League (NBL) in 1949.
They then were known as the National Basketball Association.
The league 's head offices are in the Olympic Tower at 645 Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Its international offices are in the same place.
NBA Entertainment and NBA TV studios are in Secaucus, New Jersey.
The Basketball Association of America (BAA) was formed in 1946.
Its founders were owners of the major ice hockey arenas in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States and Canada.
On November 1, 1946, the Toronto Huskies hosted the New York Knickerbockers.
This was the first game played in NBA history.
There were earlier attempts at professional basketball leagues.
Examples are the American Basketball League and the NBL.
The BAA was the first league to play in major cities.
They played in large arenas.
The level of play in the BAA was not very good.
Competing leagues and other teams had similar talent.
The Harlem Globetrotters are an example.
On August 3, 1949, the BAA combined with the NBL.
The National Basketball Association was born.
The new league had 17 teams.
They came from cities of different sizes.
The league got rid of several teams.
It reached its smallest size of eight teams in the 1954 55 season.
They were the New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Philadelphia Warriors (now Golden State Warriors), Minneapolis Lakers (now Los Angeles Lakers), Rochester Royals (now Sacramento Kings), Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons (now Detroit Pistons), Milwaukee Hawks (now Atlanta Hawks), and Syracuse Nationals (now Philadelphia 76ers).
Teams in small cities moved to larger cities.
Japanese-American Wataru Misaka broke the NBA color barrier in 1947 48.
He played for the New York Knicks.
But 1950 is recognized as when the NBA integrated.
African Americans joined several teams.
Those players included Chuck Cooper, Nathaniel "Sweetwater" Clifton, and Earl Lloyd.
They joined three different teams.
During the 1950s, the Minneapolis Lakers won five NBA Championships.
George Mikan was their leader.
He played the center position.
The Lakers were the league 's first dynasty.
In 1954, the league introduced the 24-second shot clock.
A team must try a shot in 24 seconds.
If they can not, the other team gets the ball.
The NBA contains 30 teams.
15 are in the Eastern Conference and 15 are in the Western Conference.
Each conference has three divisions with 5 teams.
Teams play other teams in their division often.
All teams play all other teams in a season.
The Boston Celtics have won 17 championships.
No other team has won more championships.
Some teams have never won a championship.
Another strong team is the Los Angeles Lakers.
They have a television deal with Time Warner.
The deal gives them lots of money.
29 teams are in the United States.
The Toronto Raptors are in Canada.
David Stern wants the league to expand to Europe.
Some teams have played games in the United Kingdom.
Teams begin training camps in September.
This allows the coaching staff to observe their players.
Teams play preseason games.
These do not count for a team 's final season record.
The weaker players get cut.
Other players stay on the team and get paid.
The NBA regular season begins in the last week of October.
All teams play 82 games during a normal season.
There are 41 home games and 41 road (away) games.
Home games offer benefits to teams.
They generally play better due to fan support and lack of travel.
Teams play every other team during the regular season.
The best players play in the NBA All-Star game in February.
Fans vote for the starters.
The coaches vote for the reserve (substitute) players.
There is a pause in the season during the All-Star Game.
Teams do not play games for about a week.
Other events occur during the All-Star break.
These include the Three-Point contest, the Skills course, and the Slam Dunk contest.
Players participate in part due to fan interest.
Before the trade deadline, teams can trade players.
This can cause changes in the balance of power.
Team bosses want to get the best players for their team.
Other bosses want to lower their costs.
Trades often happen on the last day.
The regular season ends in the middle of April.
Individual awards are given to players.
The Most Valuable Player (MVP) award is given to the player most important to his team.
The Defensive Player of the Year award is given to the player who plays the best defense.
There are a few other awards.
The most recent MVP is LeBron James.
He has won the award four times.
NBA Playoffs begin after the regular season ends.
16 teams play in the playoffs.
Teams in the two conferences are assigned a seed number.
The four top seeds are the division champions, plus the non-champion with the best record; those teams are seeded 1 to 4 by their regular-season record.
The other four seeds, 5 to 8, are the next-best teams in each conference.
Having a higher seed offers advantages.
Teams with high seeds play weaker teams.
They also (usually) play on their home court more often.
However, a lower seed may play more games at home in a series than a higher seed, because home-court advantage is based solely on record, and not by seeding.
All playoff rounds are best-of-7 series, meaning that a series can last up to 7 games, ending when a team has won 4 games.
Since 2014 every round follows a 2-2-1-1-1 format.
The team with the better record (usually, but not always, the higher seed) is home in games 1, 2, 5, and 7.
The lower seed is home in games 3, 4, and 6.
To win a championship, a team needs to win four rounds.
The fourth round is called the finals.
A team from the Eastern Conference plays a team from the Western Conference.
The team that wins this series is the NBA champion.
The best player in the finals wins the Finals Most Valuable Player award.
The finals are played in the same format as the other rounds, 2-2-1-1-1.
The team with the worst record plays two straight at home, plus Game 6 if needed.
The Cleveland Cavaliers are the most recent NBA champion.
They beat the Golden State Warriors 4 3 in the 2016 NBA Finals.
This was their first title.
A naval mine is a bomb placed in water to destroy ships or submarines.
Unlike depth charges, mines are put in the water and left to wait until they make contact with a ship.
Naval mines can be used offensively, to make it harder for enemy ships to sail easily, or trap them into a harbor.
They can also be used defensively, to protect friendly ships and create "safe" zones.
Mines can be laid in many ways: by specially built minelayers, refitted ships, submarines, aircraft, or even by dropping them into a harbor by hand.
They are a cheap weapon with a basic mine costing as little as US$ 1000.
There are very advanced mines which can cost millions and have several kinds of sensors, and deliver a warhead by rocket or torpedo.
International law says that nations have to say when they put mines in an area.
This is to make it easier for civil shipping to avoid the mines.
The warnings do not have to be specific; during World War II, Britain said simply that it had mined the English Channel, North Sea, and French coast.
The North Melbourne Football Club is a Australian football club.
It is nicknamed "The Kangaroos".
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to come out through the nose, while the air is not allowed to pass through the mouth because something (like the tongue or the lips) is stopping it.
Examples of nasal consonants in English are (n) and (m), in words such as nose and mouth.
Nearly all nasal consonants are nasal stops (or nasal continuants), where air comes out through the nose but not through the mouth, as it is blocked by the lips or tongue.
Most nasals are voiced, and, in fact, the nasal sounds (n) and (m) are among the most common sounds used in languages of the world.
Voiceless nasals are used in a few languages, such as Burmese and Welsh.
In terms of acoustics, nasal stops are sonorants, meaning that they do not significantly stop the flow of air (as it can come out the nose).
However, nasals are also stops in their articulation because the flow of air through the mouth is blocked completely.
So nasal consonants sound both like sonorants and like obstruents.
Acoustically, nasal stops have bands of energy at around 200 and 2,000 Hz.
The voiced retroflex nasal is (-RRB- is a common sound in Indic languages.
The voiced palatal nasal (-RRB- is a common sound in European languages, such as: Spanish; or French and Italian gn; or Catalan, Hungarian and Luganda ny; or Czech and Slovak; or Polish; or Occitan and Portuguese nh; or Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin nj.
English, German and Cantonese have (m), (n) and (-RRB-.
Tamil possesses distinct letters to represent (m), (n), (n), (-RRB-, (-RRB- and (-RRB- (,,,,,).
Catalan, Occitan, Spanish, and Italian have (m), (n), (-RRB- as phonemes, and (-RRB- and (-RRB- as allophones.
(In several American dialects of Spanish, there is no palatal nasal but only a palatalized nasal, (n), as in English canyon.
In Brazilian Portuguese nh is frequently pronounced as a nasalized (j), that is, as a nasal glide.
This vowel also exists in Guaran.)
The term ` nasal stop ' will often be abbreviated to just "nasal".
However, there are also nasal fricatives, nasal flaps, nasal glides, and nasal vowels, as in French, Portuguese, Catalan (dialectal feature), Yoruba, Gbe, Polish, and Ljubljana Slovene.
In the IPA, nasal vowels are indicated by placing a tilde (~) over the vowel.
: French sang (s).
A select few languages use voiceless nasal consonants.
Among them are Icelandic, Burmese, Jalapa Mazatec, Kildin Sami, Welsh, and Central Alaskan Yup ` ik.
The N rburgring, known as simply "the Ring" by enthusiasts, is the name of a famous motorsport race track in N rburg, Germany, built in the 1920s around the village and medieval castle of N rburg in the Eifel, which is about 70 kilometres south of Cologne, 100 kilometres northwest of Mainz, and 120 kilometres northwest of Frankfurt.
Originally, the track featured four track configurations: the 28.265 k long Gesamtstrecke ("Whole Course"), which included the 22.810 km Nordschleife ("Northern Loop"), and the 7.747 km S dschleife ("Southern Loop").
There also was a 2.281 km warm-up loop called Zielschleife ("Finish Loop") or better known as Betonschleife, around the pit area.
Between 1982 and 1983 the start-finish area was demolished to create a new GP-Strecke, and this is currently used for all major and international racing events.
The Northern hemisphere is the part of the Earth that is north of the equator.
It has about 90 percent of world 's population and most of the world 's land.
All of North America and Europe are in the Northern Hemisphere.
Most of Asia, two-thirds of Africa and 10 percent of South America are also in this hemisphere.
The three largest countries by population; China, India, and the United States, are in the Northern Hemisphere.
Natural gas is a mixture.
It consists mainly of hydrocarbons.
The main component is methane.
Natural gas is often found in the ground, either alone or together with petroleum.
Landfills and natural processes produce a little methane.
Usually it is transported to users in a pipeline.
Most natural gas is burnt as a fuel to produce energy.
It burns with a clean blue flame.
It causes little pollution.
Natural gas is burned to produce electricity and to cook and heat buildings.
It is also used as fuel for natural gas vehicles for transport.
When natural gas is burned in a power station it boils water into steam that spins a steam turbine that turns a generator to make electricity.
Some power stations use natural gas in a gas turbine.
Natural gas is also converted into many different industrial chemicals.
It is the most common feedstock for making pure hydrogen.
Hydrogen is used as fuel in fuel cells, and to make ammonia.
Ammonia is used as a fuel, as a fertilizer for crops, and for making many other things.
Natural gas is also converted into monomers to make many plastic products.
Nichiren (16th February 1222-13th October 1282) was a Buddhist priest who lived in Japan.
He is often called Nichiren Daishonin.
"Nichi" means "sun" and "ren" means "lotus."
"Daishonin" means "Great Sage."
The type of Buddhism he founded is known as Nichiren Buddhism.
Nichiren 's actions and writings are the basis of the modern Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International (SGI).
According to SGI 's interpretation of Buddhism, it is through faith, practice and study that people can tap into their Buddha nature, become truly happy, and build a peaceful society.
Faith refers to the belief in the concept known as "the mystic law of the universe."
Practice means to chant every day the phrase "Nam-myo-ho-renge-kyo" and sections from the Lotus Sutra while sitting in front of the Gohonzon, a sacred scroll that hangs in the butsudan (an altar).
Practice also entails telling other people about Nichiren Buddhism.
Study means reading the writings of Nichren Daishonin and discussing the readings with other people.
Newton 's method provides a way for finding the real zeros of a function.
This algorithm is sometimes called the Newton Raphson method, named after Sir Isaac Newton and Joseph Raphson.
The method uses the derivative of the function in order to find its roots.
An initial "guess value" for the location of the zero must be made.
From this value, a new guess is calculated by this formula:
Here xn is the initial guess and xn +1 is the next guess.
The function f (whose zero is being solved for) has the derivative f '.
By repeatedly applying this formula to the generated guesses (that is by setting the value of xn to the formula 's output and recomputing), the value of the guesses will approach a zero of the function.
Newton 's method can be explained graphically by looking at intersections of tangent lines with the x-axis.
First, a line tangent to the f at xn is calculated.
Next, the intersection between this tangent line and the x-axis is found.
Finally, the x-position of this intersection is recorded as the next guess, xn +1.
Newton 's method can find a solution quickly if the guess value begins sufficiently near the desired root.
However, when the initial guess value is not close, and depending on the function, Newton 's method may find the answer slowly or not at all.
A nuclear reactor is a machine that uses fission to generate heat.
There are different designs which use different fuels.
Most often, uranium-235 or plutonium-239 are the main components of these fuels.
Most nuclear reactors are used to make electricity.
In nuclear power plants heat from the reactor changes water into steam.
The steam is then used to power electric turbines which make electricity.
It is important to remember that the turbines do not change the temperature of the steam, or the amount of steam.
Instead, the turbines take energy from the movement of the steam.
Some reactors are used for other purposes.
Some reactors make neutrons for science research and others make radioactive isotopes.
Some universities have small nuclear reactors to teach students how reactors work.
The first nuclear reactor was built in 1942 by a team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi.
This was a part of the Manhattan Project which needed the fuel from the reactor to make the atomic bomb.
The first nuclear reactor to make electricity was a small experimental reactor built in Idaho in 1951.
It made just enough electricity for four light globes.
Nuclear reactors are expensive to build because of the many safety features they need to have.
There is also a problem with the huge amount of radioactive waste from the reactors.
However they produce electricity cheaply, and do not pollute the air.
There have been serious accidents at several nuclear reactors: Windscale (UK) 1957, Mayak (USSR) 1957, Three Mile Island (USA) 1979, Chernobyl (USSR) 1986 and Fukushima (Japan) 2011.
Concerns about safety have limited the growth of nuclear power.
There are about 437 reactors around the world which provide about 5 % of the world 's electricity.
Nuclear power is the controlled use of nuclear energy.
Nuclear energy is energy in uranium that can be released by nuclear reactions in a machine called a nuclear reactor.
This energy is made into electricity, which then can be used to power machines and heat homes.
In 2007, 14 % of the world 's electricity came from nuclear power.
Nuclear power plants also make radioactive waste that could be harmful if it is not stored properly.
Nucl ar power plants produce less radioactive material than a coal fired powerstation.
Enrico Fermi made the first nuclear reactor in 1941.
Many reactors were built in the U.S. during World War II during the Manhattan Project.
In 1954 the first nuclear power plant started in Obninsk near Moscow.
Most nuclear power plants in the U.S. were built during the 1960s and 1970s.
Nuclear reactors also power some large military ships and submarines.
Some serious nuclear accidents have occurred.
A scale was made to measure how dangerous accidents are.
It is called the International Nuclear Event Scale.
The scale has 8 levels (0-7), and 7 is the worst.
Nuclear-powered submarine mishaps include the Soviet submarine K-19 reactor accident (1961), the Soviet submarine K-27 reactor accident (1968), and the Soviet submarine K-431 reactor accident (1985).
The economics of nuclear power is challenging, and following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, costs are likely to go up for currently operating and new nuclear power plants, due to increased requirements for on-site spent fuel management and elevated design basis threats.
There is a debate about the use of nuclear power.
Supporters, such as the World Nuclear Association and IAEA, argue that nuclear power is a sustainable energy source that reduces carbon emissions.
Anti-nuclear opponents, such as Greenpeace International and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, believe that nuclear power poses threats to people and the environment.
In 2007, nuclear power plants made some 2600 TWh of electricity and provided 14 percent of the electricity used in the world, which represented a fall of 2 per cent compared with 2006.
As of May 9, 2010, there were 438 (372 GW) nuclear reactors operating globally.
A peak was reached in 2002 when there were 444 nuclear reactors operating.
The nuclear emergencies at Japan 's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and other nuclear facilities raised questions about the future of nuclear power.
Platts has said that "the crisis at Japan 's Fukushima nuclear plants has prompted leading energy-consuming countries to review the safety of their existing reactors and cast doubt on the speed and scale of planned expansions around the world".
Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the International Energy Agency halved its estimate of additional nuclear generating capacity to be built by 2035.
Nuclear proliferation is when a country starts making nuclear objects.
On the right is a map showing who has nuclear reactors and weapons, and who could have them.
When a country starts making nuclear weapons, they become a nuclear power.
Dual use technology means to the possibility of military use of civilian nuclear technology for generating electricity.
Many technologies and materials associated with the creation of a nuclear electricity program have a dual-use capability.
These items can be used to make nuclear weapons if a country chooses to do so.
When this happens a nuclear electricity program can lead to making atomic bombs.
The crisis over Iran s nuclear activities is an example.
Nuclear disarmament talks about the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-weapon-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated.
Nuclear disarmament groups include the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Peace Action, Greenpeace, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Mayors for Peace, Global Zero, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
There have been many large anti-nuclear demonstrations and protests.
On June 12, 1982, one million people demonstrated in New York City 's Central Park against nuclear weapons and for an end to the cold war arms race.
It was the largest anti-nuclear protest and the largest political demonstration in American history.
In recent years, some U.S. elder statesmen have also advocated nuclear disarmament.
Sam Nunn, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and George Shultz have called upon governments to embrace the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, and in various op-ed columns have proposed an ambitious program of urgent steps to that end.
The four have created the Nuclear Security Project to advance this agenda.
Organisations such as Global Zero, an international non-partisan group of 300 world leaders dedicated to achieving nuclear disarmament, have also been established.
Nuclear winter is a theory stating the possible effects of the use of nuclear weapons during a nuclear war; which could include reduced sunlight, extreme cold, and the presence of large amounts of smoke and soot in the Earth 's atmosphere.
An ode is a type of lyric poem.
The word comes from the Ancient Greek.
An ode is a poem which is written in praise of something or someone, saying how wonderful they are.
Very often an ode will have the title "Ode to..." followed by the name of the thing or person that it describes, e.g. John Keats wrote a poem "Ode to a Nightingale".
Odes were written by the poets of Ancient Greece as well as by the Romans.
Horace was particularly famous for his odes, and many English odes written centuries later were based on Horace 's lyrical verses.
An operating system (or OS) is the name for a group of computer programs, device drivers, kernel, and other things that let a user work with a computer.
It can be small (like MenuetOS), or big (like Microsoft Windows).
Different operating systems can be used for different reasons.
Some are used for every day things like on a personal computer.
Others are used for specialized work.
An operating system has many jobs.
It is responsible for making sure that all the programs can use the CPU, system memory, displays, input devices, and other hardware.
It also lets the user have a fast, clean, and safe interface so they can do work on the computer.
It also talks to other computers or devices on a network.
The first operating system was used with the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer).
It was very hard to make ENIAC do work.
How the operating system worked was based on how the switches and cables were put together.
Depending on how the cables and switches were put together, data put into the computer with punch cards would make a result.
While this was an operating system of a kind, it is not what is thought of as one in modern times.
The first operating system that looked and felt like operating systems in the modern age was UNIX, made in 1969 by Bell Labs.
It had a small kernel and many tiny programs that could be put together to work with user input and data.
Many of its features were taken from Multics, an older operating system made in 1964.
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 October 10, 1985) was an American director of movies and the theater, as well as an actor, screenwriter, broadcaster and producer.
Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
In 1938, he performed The War of the Worlds (about an attack on Earth by beings from the planet Mars) on the radio.
It was a radio drama (fiction), but many people took it as a newscast.
Welles also made the movie Citizen Kane in 1941.
Many movie critics think that this movie is the best movie ever made.
Welles died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California, aged 70.
Open content is when someone creates something and lets others copy it or change it without having to ask for permission.
Any media can be open content, from text and pictures to video and sound.
When someone creates something (like a picture or book), they can make that work "open".
This means that other people are allowed to copy it and change it if they want.
Something that is open content may be free of charge, but it does not have to be.
The Simple English Wikipedia is open content.
So are other Wikipedias.
If a person changes open content or makes new open content, everyone can give it to anyone else, or even sell it.
It is never needed to ask permission to do this, because the people who wrote the text already gave their permission when they clicked the Save button.
The rules that say how people can use, change and pass around open content are called a license.
A license explains exactly what you are allowed to do with the content that falls under it.
Licenses are often written in difficult lawyer language ("legalese"), but many licenses have summaries that are much easier to understand.
The makers of open content get to choose what license to use for their work, and everyone else has to follow it.
Only the maker, who owns the copyright, can change it to another license.
Most open content licenses say that when others change the work, they must also declare it to be open and under the same license.
This is called share-alike and means that anything based on work will always be open content.
All the content in Wikipedia is open under the rules of the GNU Free Documentation License, a very well-known open content license.
Other well-known open content licenses are the Creative Commons licenses.
Ohio is one of the 50 states in the United States.
Its capital is Columbus.
Columbus also is the largest city in Ohio.
Some famous people from Ohio include golfer Jack Nicklaus, Wilbur and Orville Wright, author Sherwood Anderson, and actors Clark Gable and Katie Holmes.
Famous astronaut Neil Armstrong and inventor of the airplane the Wright Brothers were born in Ohio.
Ohio is important in elections because it is a swing state and candidates often campaign a lot there.
Ohio has both farmland and cities.
It is a part of the Midwest.
Ohio is the 7th most populated state in the United States Of America (capital Washington D.C.)
Organic compounds are carbon-based compounds.
Organic compounds contain carbon bonds in which at least one carbon atom is covalently linked to an atom of another type (usually hydrogen, oxygen or nitrogen).
Most polymers are organic compounds.
The name "organic" is a historical name from the 19th century.
People believed that only living things could make organic compounds and "dead" things (such as minerals) could make inorganic compounds.
However, Friedrich W hler proved this wrong because certain compounds in urine were thought to be inorganic, but urine came from a living thing.
There are natural organic compounds, and synthetic ones.
Their structure may be described by using names, and making diagrams.
One way of showing the molecule is by drawing its structural formula.
Because molecules can have complicated structures, people have made ways to show them in simple language.
One way is to use line diagrams.
Each atom is shown by a letter, and connected by a line to each atom with which it is has a covalent bond.
One line means a single bond, two lines means a double bond and so on.
Because there is in an infinite number of possible organic compounds, language is needed to give a unique name to each one.
The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, or IUPAC, made a system for doing this.
Although an IUPAC name makes every single possible molecule unique, the names are often long and complicated, so in everyday life, trivial names -- unofficial but widely understood names -- are used, such as the trivial names Paracetamol, Tylenol, and Acetaminophen, which are used for a compound whose IUPAC name is N - (4-hydroxyphenyl) acetamide.
Some of these trivial names are trademarks.
Natural compounds are compounds made by plants or animals.
These could also be made in a lab, but many of these compounds are taken from nature because it is easier and less expensive to do it that way.
Commonnatural compounds are: amino acids, proteins, carbohydrates, many antibiotics like Penicillin and Amoxicillin.
Synthetic compounds are those made by people.
Sometimes, this is done by taking something natural and changing the molecule in a small way, such as making glycerin from vegetable oils.
Other compounds are synthesized in long, complicated reactions with many steps.
Plastics are sometimes mostly natural, and other kinds are manufactured.
Since a compound is often first discovered in nature instead of being made on purpose in a lab, people may know the compound exists, and even know what it does sometimes, but not know exactly what atoms it is made of and how it is arranged.
There are several ways of taking an unknown compound and finding out this structure:
In economics, an oligopoly is a market form in which the market or industry is controlled by a small number of sellers.
Usually, the market has high barriers to entry, which prevents new firms from entering the market or even be able to have a significant market share.
As there are only a few sellers in the market, each seller would take note of the actions made by one another, and thinks about how the other sellers will respond when making decisions As such, there is a possibility in which an oligopoly can come together to make a common decision that allows them to have less competition and charge higher prices for consumers.
In many countries, some country-held companies were privatized.
Very often, this privatization lead to oligopolies.
In many countries, there are only a handful of companies providing networks for mobile phones.
They control the prices for accessing the network.
That is why using a mobile phone is often much more expensive than using a land line one.
Trains run by private sectors are much costlier than those run by a government.
As a government gives rights to private sectors to get a hold of some other sectors, they take advantage of it.
In geography, an oasis is an isolated place in the desert where there is vegetation.
Most often, this occurs around a source of water.
Oases provide a habitat for animals and are used as a source of water for humans.
The knowledge of the location of oases has been important for trade and transportation routes in desert areas.
Caravans must travel via oases so that supplies of water and food can be refilled.
Thus, political or military control of an oasis has in many cases meant control of trade on a particular route.
For example, the oases of Awjila, Ghadames and Kufra, in modern-day Libya, have at various times been vital to both North-South and East-West trade in the Sahara desert.
The word oasis came into English via Greek, which was borrowed from Egyptian w 3t or Demotic w.
It was not borrowed from Coptic oua e (\* \/ wa e \/), as is sometimes suggested; the Greek word is attested several centuries before Coptic existed as a written language.
An oboe is a woodwind instrument with a double reed.
It looks very similar to the clarinet, and may be confused with it.
While the clarinet 's shape remains cylindrical, the oboe 's body is conical.
The sounds produced by clarinets and oboes are very different.
An oboe 's sound is produced by blowing air through the double reed at the upper end of the instrument which forces the two reeds to vibrate together which produces the sound.
The oboe has four parts: the bell, lower joint, upper joint, and the reed.
A person that plays the oboe is called an oboist.
A typical orchestra may have two oboes but sometimes three.
Sometimes there is also a cor anglais which sounds a fifth lower than the oboe.
Very occasionally there is also a bass oboe, which sounds an octave below the oboe.
Gustav Holst used one in his Suite "The Planets".
The oboe came from the shawm which was a medieval and Renaissance instrument.
It became popular in the Baroque period.
Bach and Handel both used it in most of their orchestral music.
Many Italian composers such as Antonio Vivaldi wrote concertos for the instrument, and it is used in a lot of chamber music.
At this time it hardly had any keys, but gradually more keys were added which made it easier to play the sharps and flats.
Later composers to write for the oboe as a solo instrument include Mozart, Weber, Richard Strauss, Vaughan Williams and Francis Poulenc.
It is usual for the principal oboist in an orchestra to play the note A for the rest of the orchestra to tune their instruments to.
The name oboe comes from French language hautbois, meaning "high wood", a high-pitched woodwind instrument.
Organic chemistry is the study of chemical compounds that contain carbon.
Carbon has the ability to form a chemical bond with a wide variety of chemical elements and other carbon atoms.
This allows a nearly unlimited number of combinations.
The subject of carbon compounds is called organic chemistry because all known organisms, or living things, are made up of water and carbon compounds.
Organic chemistry largely involves the synthesis, or formation, of organic products by chemical reaction using different reactants and reagents, the substances used up during a reaction.
Several different areas of chemistry expand on the concepts and principles of organic chemistry, including biochemistry, microbiology, and medicine.
The term organic originates from Jons Jacob Berzelius, a 19th century Swedish scientist, who used the term to refer to substances present in living things.
During Berzelius time, the vital force theory was popular.
This theory stated that a life force was needed to produce the organic compounds found in living things.
The vital force theory began losing support after an 1828 experiment conducted by Friedrich W hler.
His work showed that urea, an organic compound, could be created from ammonium cyanate, an inorganic compound.
The study of hydrocarbons is a very large part of organic chemistry.
Hydrocarbons are molecules containing only the elements carbon and hydrogen in the form of chains.
Hydrocarbons can be classified into two categories based on the presence of a benzene ring, a circular type of hydrocarbon.
Aliphatic hydrocarbons do not contain a benzene ring and aromatic hydrocarbons do.
Organic chemistry reactions happen because electrons are not shared evenly in a chemical bond.
Some atoms or molecules, like oxygen, nitrogen, and negatively charged anions, are nucleophilic because they have extra electrons and want to be around positive charges.
Others, such as H + and other positively charged cations, are electrophilic and want to be around negative charges.
When an organic molecule has a positive charge, it is called a carbocation.
It is also an electrophile.
When nucleophiles and electrophiles mix, a reaction can occur.
A reaction mechanism is a series of smaller reactions that form an overall reaction.
Two basic mechanism types are substitution and elimination reactions.
They are very important in the study of organic chemistry mechanisms because many more complicated mechanisms use them.
Nucleophilic substitution occurs when an atom or group of atoms detaches from an organic molecule and is replaced by another.
If the leaving and adding happens at the same time, it is called a SN2 reaction.
If the leaving group breaks away from the organic molecule and forms a carbocation before substitution occurs, it is called an SN1 reaction.
Elimination occurs when two groups are broken off of an organic molecule by a strong acid and the resulting charges form a double bond.
Usually one of the groups is a nucleophile and the other is a hydrogen atom.
If both groups are pulled off at the same time, it is called an E2 reaction.
If one group is pulled off first and forms a carbocation before the second group is removed, it is called an E1 reaction.
Stereochemistry is the study of molecules in space.
It looks into the arrangement of atoms inside of molecules in space relative to one another and how they will interact.
Molecules that have the same chemical make up but are arranged differently are called isomers.
Famous chemist Louis Pasteur was an early researcher of stereochemistry.
A central part of the study of sterochemistry is chirality.
Put simply, chirality looks at the symmetry in chemical molecules.
If an object can not be superimposed onto its mirror image, then it is a chiral object.
If it can, it is called achiral.
Spectroscopy is the study of the interactions between light energy and matter.
We are able to see colors because of energy absorption by organic and inorganic compounds.
When a plant undergoes photosynthesis, it traps energy from the sun, and this is an example of an interaction between energy and organic compounds.
Spectroscopy is used to identify organic molecules in unknown compounds.
There are many types of spectroscopy, but most important to organic chemistry are infrared spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
Orthography is an official or correct way to write a particular language.
It includes rules of spelling.
Orthography may also include rules about punctuation, capitalization, and diacritics (e.g. accents).
In English, spelling is a problem for all learners, and is the main isssue in orthography.
Fixed spelling of English words was not done by any king or government.
It was the work of the early printers.
They had to decide how particular words would be spelled in their books.
Gradually the number of alternative spellings began to drop.
The word which is "merry" today was spelled in about 30 ways in written sources from the 9th to the 16th century.
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English orthography, or English spelling, is the way the 26 letters of the alphabet are used to write down the 36 (IPA) sounds of English.
The first manuscripts in Old English were written using the Latin alphabet.
It had 24 letters.
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No alphabet fits its language exactly.
One reason for this is that there are always more sounds than letters.
In English there are far more vowel sounds than vowels.
The ancient Greeks, who were the first to use letters for vowels, decided to use only a few letters for their vowel sounds.
This choice influenced all later alphabets: "The importance of the Greeks in the history of alphabetic writing is paramount.
All the alphabets in use in Europe today stand in direct or indirect relation to the ancient Greek".
English would need about 20 vowels to represent the vowel phonemes (~ sounds) in common use, p237 and some languages do have more letters for vowels.
The Georgian language has a total of 41 letters.
A shorter alphabet works by using two or three letters for a single sound, or one letter for several sounds.
The English alphabet has only three consonants which have one sound, can not be produced by other combinations and are never silent: n, r and v. The English language uses 22 to 26 consonant phonemes.
The other reason that alphabets never exactly fit languages is dialect.
A spoken language varies from place to place and from time to time.
This is very obvious with English, as the pronunciation is so different in different parts of the world.
A written language will always be less flexible than its spoken parent.
It has a different function, and is produced mechanically.
It must serve everyone who speaks the language, and it does this by keeping the spelling similar from one time to another.
Therefore, all alphabets have sounds which are difficult to represent with the letters in use.
And English also has other problems: sounds that can be written in different ways, and spelling which can be pronounced in different ways.
This all gives rise to problems of spelling.
Differences between American English and British English spelling came about mainly as the result of one man.
Noah Webster (1758 1843) wrote a Grammar, a Spelling book, and finally an American dictionary of the English language.
In the course of this, he proposed a number of simplifications in spelling.
In his dictionary, he chose s over c in words like defense, he changed the re to er in words like center, he dropped one of the Ls in traveler.
At first he kept the u in words like color or favor but dropped it in later editions.
He also changed tongue to tung: that did not stick.
His main reason was to help children learn to read and write.
Webster 's dictionary contained seventy thousand words, of which twelve thousand had never appeared in a published dictionary before.
Webster did create a slightly different identity for American English.
But, because his efforts left the most glaring problems untackled, his variations make little difference to the way the language is used.
An example of the real problems in English orthography is the word ending - ough, which is pronounced several different ways: tough, bough, cough... The root causes of spelling variation are historical, and loan words come with their own (foreign) spelling.
Either all French loan words should be left as they were, or they all should be changed.
Either we should move wholesale to a more phonetic spelling, or not.
This was proposed by many people since Webster, such as George Bernard Shaw, who proposed a new phonetic alphabet for English.
In some cases Webster 's changes have been widely adopted in Britain: the spelling program came from the French; US program is clearly simpler, and more consistent with word endings in English.
In our modern world, English orthography is still a problem.
In some countries (notably, France) a national committee can give advice and direction as to spelling.
English has long escaped from national custody.
Modern British spelling and use was greatly influenced by the two great English dictionaries, Samuel Johnson 's A dictionary of the English language (1755), and James Murray 's Oxford English Dictionary.
Johnson 's dictionary was hugely influential, abroad as well as at home.
The dictionary was exported to America.
"The American adoption of the Dictionary was a momentous event not just in its history, but in the history of lexicography.
For Americans in the second half of the eighteenth century, Johnson was the authority on language, and the subsequent development of American dictionaries was colored by his fame".
p224
For American lexicographers, the dictionary was impossible to ignore: "America 's two great nineteenth-century lexicographers, Noah Webster and Joseph Emerson Worcester, argued fiercely over Johnson 's legacy... In 1789 (Webster) declared that ` Great Britain, whose children we are, and whose language we speak, should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language on the decline. '
... Where Webster found fault with Johnson, Joseph Worcester saluted him... In 1846 he completed his Universal and critical dictionary of the English Language.
p226
Some people argue which language is the easiest to spell.
People who learn a second language tend to think that their first (native) language is the easiest.
However, for the learner, programmatic languages, with well-defined rules, are easier to start with than English.
The spelling of the English language is by far the most irregular of all alphabetic spellings and thus the most difficult to learn.
English is, in its origin, a Germanic language.
From its early roots as Anglo-Saxon, it has borrowed words from many other languages: French (a Romance language) and Latin are the most frequent donors to English.
Languages that use phonetic spelling are easier to learn to spell than others.
With phonetic spelling the words are spelled as they are pronounced.
The Italian word "orologio" for instance is pronounced oh-ro-LO-jo ("gi" always making a "j" sound.)
In English, one comes across the word "knife".
In "knife", the "k" is not spoken, even though in English it 's more common to pronounce "K "s when they are in words.
One of the problems we have is that similar sounding words may be spelt quite differently.
Rough and ruff; meet and meat; great and grate.
Words with complicated spelling may be pronounced simply: Leicester is pronounced ` Lester '.
Even what rules we do have are frequently broken.
"i before e except after c" has over 100 exceptions.
p272 Almost all these problems have come about for historical reasons.
English has been changing for the last thousand years, and as the language changes, so parts of it get stuck with different spellings.
English has a huge number of words, but its spelling comes from many different sources.
"The large and varied lexicon of English has been bought at the expense of an increasingly deversified graphology".
p275
Some languages have a high correspondence between phonemes and letters.
That means they get close to one letter for each sound.
If there was a perfect correspondence, that language would have phonemic orthography.
English is highly non-phonemic.
It has almost every kind of deviation known:
This field of study is called "orthographic depth".
The orthographic depth of an alphabetic script is the degree to which a written language deviates from simple one-to-one letter phoneme correspondence.
It shows how easy it is to predict the pronunciation of a word from its spelling.
Shallow orthographies are easy to pronounce based on the written word, and deep orthographies are difficult to pronounce based on how they are written.
In shallow orthographies, the spelling-sound correspondence is direct: given the rules of pronunciation, one is able to "say" the word correctly.
Most other international languages have similar problems: in French, Arabic or Hebrew, new readers have difficulty learning to decode words.
As a result, children learn to read more slowly.
In both Spanish and Italian there is a more direct connection between spelling and pronunciation.
Those are languages with low orthographic depth.
A One-time pad is a method of encryption.
It is a ` symmetrical encryption ', which means the same key is needed for encryption and decryption.
A one time pad uses a key that is either as long or longer than the message it encrypts.
If this method is used correctly, it is impossible to decrypt or break the encryption without the key.
One-time pads were created all the way in 1882 by Frank Miller.
After the invention in 1917, Gilbert Vernam invented and patented an electronic version based on teleprinter technologies.
The Ohio State University (OSU) is a public university in Columbus, Ohio, USA.
Ohio State was founded in 1870.
The Ohio State University has been noted by multiple publications as one of the highest ranked universities in the United States and in the world.
The university was started in 1870 in a farming group in Columbus, Ohio.
The first class had only 24 students.
In 1878, it changed its name from Ohio State University to The Ohio State University, adding "The" to the front.
In the 1880 's, Ohio State started taking graduate students.
They started the law school in 1891.
Later, Ohio State added colleges of medicine, dentistry, commerce, and journalism.
In 1906, Ohio made a law that said The Ohio State University was the state 's "flagship campus", or the best school in the state of Ohio.
In 1916, Ohio State was the first university in Ohio to be in the Association of American Universities.
Ohio State is still the only Ohio public university in the association.
U.S. News & World Report has ranked Ohio State University as the best public university in Ohio, one of the top 60 universities in the United States, and one of the top 20 public universities in the United States.
In 2007, China 's Shanghai Jiao Tong University said Ohio State was the 61st best university in the world.
The school was also ranked as the 24th best university in the US, 10th top public university, and top school in Ohio by Arizona State University.
The Washington Monthly college rankings placed Ohio State as the 12th best in the country and 10th best public university.
Ohio State s faculty includes a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Kenneth G. Wilson.
It has twenty-one members of the United States National Academy of Sciences or National Academy of Engineering, plus four members of the Institute of Medicine.
There are also 159 elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science who are teaching at Ohio State.
In the last 25 years, thirty-two Ohio State faculty members have been given the Guggenheim Fellowship, which is more than all other public and private Ohio universities combined.
Ohio State is using over $ 110 million to research important issues, such as research to find a cure for cancer, renewable energy sources, and sustainable drinking water supplies.
Undergraduate admissions to Ohio State are said to be "more selective" by US News & World Report.
It is the most selective public university in Ohio, and it is the hardest university in Ohio to get into.
About half of the people who apply to Ohio State get accepted.
Of the students who get in, 57 percent graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes, 91 percent graduated in the top quarter, and 99 % graduated in the top half.
A quarter of the freshman scored in the top 3 percent of the SAT or ACT, and 72 percent scored in the top 1 percent.
The average ACT score was 27.
Of the 6,122 members of the 2006 freshman class, 290 had been named valedictorian (top student) of their high school 's graduating class.
Ohio State s freshman class has admitted over 100 National Merit Scholars for nine of the last ten years.
Ohio State 's main urban campus is in Columbus.
It has a size of 1755 acres, and it is about 2.5 m north of the city 's downtown.
Four buildings are currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places: Enarson Hall, Hayes Hall, Ohio Stadium, and Orton Hall.
Architecture on the Ohio State campus is a mix of traditional, modern, and post-modern styles.
The William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library is located at the west end of The Oval.
It is the Ohio State library 's main branch, and it is the largest of the school 's branches.
The school 's library system has twenty-one libraries on its Columbus campus.
There are eight other branches in other locations, and the system has fifty-five branches and collections in all.
The Wexner Center for the Arts is at the east end of The Oval.
It was designed by the architects Peter Eisenman of New York and Richard Trott of Columbus, and it opened in 1989.
The center was built mostly from a twenty-five million dollar gift from Ohio State graduate Leslie Wexner.
Part of its design was to honor to the armory (military storage location) that was replaced with the Wexner Center.
Its deconstructivist architecture makes known as one of the most important buildings of its generation, but the design makes it less than ideal to show many of the art displays.
The main, permanent work kept in the center is Picasso 's Nude on a Black Armchair, a forty-five million dollar painting that Wexner gave to Ohio State.
Ohio Union is on the east side of The Oval, and at the south side is another, smaller grassy area known as The South Oval.
The west side is contains Browning Amphitheatre and Mirror Lake.
The Ohio State College of Medicine is on the southern edge of the central campus.
It is home to the James Cancer Hospital, where cancer is studied.
It is one of the National Cancer Institute 's forty-one NCI-designated Cancer Centers.
The university also has several regional campuses and research facilities in Lima, Mansfield, Marion, and Newark.
The school also has an Ohio State Agricultural Technical Institute.
The first regional campus was in Newark, which was founded in 1957.
Students there can get one of six bachelor degrees or two master degrees.
In Lima, there are eight four-year programs, 2 high school completion programs, and four graduate programs.
The Mansfield campus has is in the Allegheny Plateau area, and it has 7 bachelor programs and 3 master programs.
Marion 's campus is closest to Columbus, and it has 5 bachelor programs and 2 master programs.
Ohio State 's research facilities include the Aeronautical\/Astronautical Research Laboratory, Byrd Polar Research Center, Chadwick Arboretum, Biological Research Tower, Large Binocular Telescope, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Stone Laboratory, and the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center.
The Office of Student Life helps students with things such as student housing; food service; health, wellness and counseling; activities, organizations and leadership development; recreation and intramurals.
The Office of Student Life also operates the Schottenstein Center, the Fawcett Center, the Blackwell Inn, the Ohio Union, the Drake Union, and the Wilce Student Health Center.
Ohio State has several student-managed publications and media outlets.
The Makio is the official yearbook.
The Lantern is the school 's daily newspaper.
Mosaic is a literary magazine published by Ohio State, which features undergraduate fiction, poetry, and art.
OHIO.
FM is the student-run radio station with an Internet audio stream (no broadcast signals are available in Columbus).
Students also operate a local cable channel known as Buckeye TV, which airs mostly in the campus housing.
The Ohio State University Marching Band (or TBDBITL, "The Best Damn Band in the Land") is an old tradition at Ohio State.
The marching band is the largest all-brass and percussion band in the world.
The traditional school songs are arranged to fit this unique instrumentation.
The band is famous for "Script Ohio", where band members use their bodies to spell Ohio spelled in script on the football field.
It is seen as an honor to dot the "i" in the word.
Celebrities such as Bob Hope, Jack Nicklaus, and John Glenn have dotted the "i".
Ohio State 's main campus is known for the diversity of its students.
In various surveys and rankings, it has been included among the best campuses in the nation for African Americans.
The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students lists Ohio State as one of the best campuses in America for LGBT students.
Ohio State offers two distinct honors programs for high ability undergraduates: Honors and Scholars.
The Honors program is open to students in all majors.
The Scholars program is centered around thirteen specific programs such as "Architecture Scholars", "Communication Technology Scholars", "Biological Sciences Scholars", "International Affairs Scholars", and "Politics, Society and Law Scholars".
Students in the Scholars program are expected to live and take select classes with other members of the program.
At The Ohio State University, there are four recognized student governments: Undergraduate Student Government (USG), Council of Graduate Students (CGS), amd Inter-Professional Council (IPC), and Residence Hall Advisory Council (RHAC).
Ohio State is in the NCAA 's Division I. Ohio State 's mascot is "Brutus the Buckeye".
The school colors are scarlet and gray.
Most Ohio State teams play in the Big Ten Conference.
The women 's ice hockey team plays in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association.
In lacrosse, the men 's team plays in ECAC Lacrosse and the women 's team in the American Lacrosse Conference, but both will leave their respective leagues after the 2014 season, as the Big Ten will start lacrosse leagues for both sexes in the 2014 15 school year.
Ohio State won national championships in baseball, men 's basketball, football, men 's swimming & diving, men 's track and field, men 's golf, men 's gymnastics, men 's fencing, men and women 's fencing, and synchronized swimming.
Ontario is a province of Canada.
It is in the eastern half of Canada, between Manitoba and Quebec.
Ontario has the most people of any province, with 13,150,000 in 2009, and is home to the biggest city in Canada, Toronto, which is also the capital of the province.
In the eastern part of the province, near the border with Quebec, is Ottawa, the capital of Canada, located on the Ottawa River.
Ontario also has the second largest land area, with 1,076,395 km; only Quebec is larger by size.
(Nunavut and Northwest Territories are also larger, but are called territories and not provinces).
The province has one of the longest borders with the United States and there are several border crossings including the one at Niagara Falls.
Along this border are 4 large lakes called Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Lake Huron, and Lake Superior.
They each are partly in Ontario and partly in the United States, and the border runs through them, but not Lake Michigan, which is entirely in the United States.
These five lakes are together are called the Great Lakes.
Ontario became part of Canada when it was created in 1867.
Before 1840, it was known as Upper Canada, which was a colony in the British Empire.
Between 1840 and 1867 it was known as Canada West.
The government of Ontario sits at Queen 's Park in Toronto.
The leader of the government is called the Premier, and the current Premier is Kathleen Wynne.
There is also a Lieutenant Governor who represents the Queen, and the current Lieutenant Governor is Elizabeth Dowdeswell.
Ontario is very big, so sometimes people break it into two.
The two parts are called Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario.
Most of the people in Ontario live in the south, and that is where the big cities are.
The big cities in Southern Ontario are Toronto and the rest of the Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa and the National Capital Region, Hamilton, London, Windsor, and Sarnia.
The cities in the north are smaller.
In the far north of Ontario hardly any people live at all, and there are no roads or railways making it difficult to even get to those places.
Much of Ontario gets lots of snow in the winter.
In the summer, it can get very hot in the south parts.
In some big cities, there is smog in the summer.
There are a number of symbols that represent the province of Ontario.
The flag is red with the British Union Jack in the top left corner and the provincial shield is on the right hand side of the flag.
The provincial bird is the loon, and the provincial flower is the trillium.
It has three flower petals and it is usually white but some times is pink or purple.
Ottawa is the capital of Canada and is part of the province of Ontario.
It is south of the Ottawa River.
In 2004, there were about 808,391 people in the city.
The region has about 1,146,790 people.
The mayor of the city today (since December 2010) is Jim Watson.
Ottawa is in the Ottawa Valley on the border with the province of Quebec.
Ottawa is the fourth largest city in Canada.
When people talk about Ottawa, they are sometimes using the name as an eponym meaning the highest government in Canada, and not its local government or the city.
The cities of Ottawa, Kanata, Nepean, Gloucester and Vanier and the villages of Manotick and Rockcliffe Park joined in the year 2000 to form the new city of Ottawa.
Ottawa also includes Orl ans, which joined at that same time.
The city began with the name Bytown and became the city of Ottawa in 1855.
The Rideau Canal ends in Ottawa.
Ottawa has many museums, many buildings for the government of Canada and many parks.
There is a market area downtown.
There are many festivals during the year including Winterlude in February, The Tulip Festival in May, and BluesFest in the summer.
There is also a large celebration on July 1st for Canada Day.
The Ottawa Senators play ice hockey in an arena called The Canadian Tire Centre.
Objectivism is a philosophy that was started by Ayn Rand.
It has four main ideas:
1.
Everything that exists has an identity.
This identity does not depend on how people think about it or talk about it.
This is also true for things like feelings or ideas.
It says that a thing is the thing which it is, or "A is A." What people learn about the things that exist comes both from the identity of the things themselves and from the way that people observe (see) and think about what they have observed.
2.
Reason is how a person knows that what he thinks or believes is true.
A person can not make something true just by wanting it to be true or by mysticism.
Only rational, logical thinking can produce the best outcome.
This means recognizing that a thing is the thing it is, and to not confuse it with things which it is not.
3.
It is good to be happy, and it is good for a person to try to be happy.
People should always try to improve their lives and be happy in the long term, so that they are happy now and in the future.
People should not hurt others to try to be happy, but they also should not hurt themselves to try to make other people happy.
People should also not make themselves less happy to help something like God.
Ayn Rand called this "rational self-interest".
4.
If governments or criminals take things away from people, or try to make people do things they do not want to do, it does damage to everybody.
Ayn Rand thought that governments should only be able to protect people from violence, theft, fraud, and other actions that go against people 's rights.
This includes laissez-faire capitalism and is sometimes called libertarianism.
She first told people these ideas in her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
She talked about them more in The Objectivist Newsletter, The Objectivist, The Ayn Rand Letter, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and The Virtue of Selfishness.
An oath of office is an oath a person gains a higher position, usually in government or within a religious body.
There are other positions in which people are supposed to take oaths as well, like in the military.
When someone makes an oath, they make a promise to follow certain rules and guidelines of the position that they are taking.
Some oaths of office are a statement of loyalty to a constitution or other legal text, to a person or other office holder.
Under the laws of a state it may be considered treason or a high crime to betray a sworn oath of office.
Oaths of office can be a public ceremony, like in the United States with presidential inauguration, or private.
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality.
It is part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics.
Ontology deals with questions about what things exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped according to similarities and differences.
Ontology asks whether "categories of being" are fundamental.
Some philosophers, of the Platonic school, say that all nouns (including abstract nouns) refer to actual entities.
Other philosophers contend that nouns do not always name entities.
They think some are a kind of shorthand for a collection of either objects or events.
In this view, mind, instead of referring to an entity, refers to a collection of mental events experienced by a person.
Society refers to a collection of persons with some shared characteristics, and geometry refers to a collection of a specific kind of intellectual activity.
Between these poles, called realism and nominalism, are other positions.
Any ontology must give an account of which words refer to entities, which do not, why, and what categories result.
The Ordovician is the second period of the Paleozoic era.
It lasted from about 485.4 million years (mya) to 443.4 mya.
It follows the Cambrian period and is followed by the Silurian period.
The Ordovician was named after the Welsh tribe of the Ordovices.
It was defined by Charles Lapworth in 1879.
He recognized that the fossils in the disputed strata were different from those of the Cambrian or the Silurian.
Therefore, he reasoned, they should be placed in a period of their own.
Recognition of the Ordovician period was slow in Britain, but elsewhere it was quickly accepted.
In 1906 it was adopted as an official period of the Paleozoic era by the International Geological Congress.
The Ordovician ended with a series of extinction events that, together amount to the second greatest extinction of the Phanerozoic.
This was the End-Ordovician extinction event.
Sea levels were high during the Ordovician.
Shallow ((50 metres) inland seas were the greatest for which evidence is preserved in the rocks.
During the Ordovician, the southern continents collected into a single continent called Gondwana.
Gondwana started the period in equatorial latitudes and, as the period progressed, drifted toward the South Pole.
Early in the Ordovician, the continents Laurentia (present-day North America), Siberia, and Baltica (present-day northern Europe) were still independent continents.
The Ordovician was a time of calcite sea geochemistry in which low-magnesium calcite was the main marine precipitate of calcium carbonate.
For most of the Ordovician, life continued to flourish, but near the end of the period the End-Ordovician extinction event seriously affected planktonic forms like conodonts, graptolites, and some groups of trilobites.
Brachiopods, bryozoans and echinoderms were also heavily affected, and the cone-shaped nautiloids died out completely, except for rare Silurian forms.
The extinctions may have been caused by an ice age that occurred at the end of the Ordovician period: the end of the Ordovician was one of the coldest times in the last 600 million years of earth history.
On the whole, the fauna that emerged in the Ordovician set the scene for the rest of the Palaeozoic.
The fauna was dominated by suspension feeders, mainly with short food chains.
The ecological system reached a new level of complexity far beyond that of the Cambrian fauna.
Though less famous than the Cambrian explosion, the Ordovician featured an adaptive radiation, which was no less remarkable.
Marine genera increased fourfold, resulting in 12 % of all known Phanerozoic marine fauna.
Another change in the fauna was the strong increase in filter feeding organisms.
The articulate brachiopods, cephalopods, and crinoids took over.
Articulate brachiopods, in particular, largely replaced trilobites in shelf communities.
This illustrates the greatly increased biodiversity of carbonate shell-secreting organisms in the Ordovician compared to the Cambrian.
Although solitary corals date back to at least the Cambrian, reef-forming corals appeared in the early Ordovician.
Molluscs, which appeared during the Cambrian or even the Ediacaran, became common and varied, especially bivalves, gastropods, and nautiloid cephalopods.
Now-extinct marine animals called graptolites thrived in the oceans.
Some new cystoids and crinoids appeared.
It was long thought that the first true vertebrates (fish Ostracoderms) appeared in the Ordovician, but recent discoveries in China show they probably originated in the Lower Cambrian.
The very first Gnathostomata (jawed fish) appeared in the Upper Ordovician.
During the Middle Ordovician there was a large increase in bioeroding (shell and rock-boring) organisms.
This is known as the Ordovician Bioerosion Revolution.
It is marked by a sudden abundance of hard substrate trace fossils.
In the Lower Ordovician, trilobites were joined by many new brachiopods, bryozoans, planktonic graptolites and conodonts, and many types of molluscs and echinoderms, including the ophiuroids ("brittle stars") and the first sea stars.
Nevertheless the trilobites remained abundant, with all the Late Cambrian orders continuing, and being joined by the new group Phacopida.
The first evidence of land plants also appeared.
Trilobites in the Ordovician were very different from their predecessors in the Cambrian.
Many trilobites developed bizarre spines and nodules to defend against predators such as primitive sharks and nautiloids.
Other trilobites evolved to become swimming forms.
Some trilobites even developed shovel-like snouts for ploughing through muddy sea bottoms.
Some trilobites such as Asaphus kowalewski evolved long eyestalks to assist in detecting predators whereas other trilobite eyes in contrast disappeared completely.
The renowned Burgess Shale fauna disappears in the Middle Cambrian.
It is now known that it did not go extinct, but survived, and thrived where the circumstances were right.
A recently discovered lagerst tte (a deposit of exceptionally preserved fossils) has been found in the Fezouata Formation, Morocco.
The site contains remarkable fossils of soft-bodied animals from a muddy ocean floor.
The fauna also includes some hard-bodied animals such as horseshoe crabs.
Probably low oxygen conditions kept predators and scavengers to a minimum.
Oregano or Pot Marjoram (Origanum vulgare) is a species of Origanum.
It is native to Europe, the Mediterranean region and southern and central Asia.
It is a perennial herb.
It can grow to 20 80 cm tall.
Its leaves are opposite each other.
They are 1 4 cm long.
The flowers are purple.
They can grow 3 4 mm long.
The name of the plant comes from the Greek origanon (-RRB-: oros (-RRB- mountain + the verb ganousthai (-RRB- delight in.
The subspecies of oregano Origanum vulgare hirtum is an important herb.
It is used for cooking, especially in Greek and Italian cuisines.
The leaves are used for cooking.
Oregano is often used for tomato sauces, fried vegetables and grilled meat.
Together with basil, it adds much to the special character of many Italian dishes.
Oregano is an ingredient needed for Greek cuisine.
It adds flavor to the Greek salad.
It can be used separately.
It can also be added to the lemon-olive oil sauce that goes with almost every fish or meat barbecues and some casseroles.
Oregano has an aromatic, warm and slightly bitter taste.
The taste varies in intensity; good quality is so strong that it almost numbs the tongue, but the cultivars adapted to colder climates have often unsatisfactory flavor.
The influence of climate, season and soil on the composition of the essential oil is bigger than the difference between the various species.
The related species Origanum onites (Greece, Asia Minor) and O. heracleoticum (Italy, Balkan peninsula, West Asia) have similar flavors.
A closely related plant is marjoram from Asia Minor.
That plant has a completely different taste.
This is because phenolic compounds are missing in its essential oil.
Some breeds show a flavor intermediate between oregano and marjoram.
The Oregano plant is also commonly found in the mediterranean region, and the black sea.
The dish most associated with oregano is pizza.
Oregano is high in antioxidant activity, because of a high content of phenolic acids and flavonoids (PMID 16218659, PMID 12730411).
Additionally, oregano has shown antimicrobial activity against food-borne pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes (PMID 16218659).
Both of these characteristics may be useful in both health and food preservation.
In the Philippines, oregano (coleus aromaticus) is not commonly used for cooking but is rather considered as a primarily medicinal plant, useful for relieving children 's coughs.
The Ottoman Empire lasted from 1299 to 1923.
It was centered in Turkey and controlled the eastern and southern lands around the Mediterranean Sea.
The empire was founded by Osman I around 1299, and was most powerful from around 1400 to 1600, when it controlled trade and politics in southeastern Europe, southwest Asia, and northern Africa.
Suleiman the Magnificent was one of the most powerful rulers.
The empire was a collection of conquered countries.
The Sultan sent governors to rule these countries or provinces, with titles such as Pasha or Bey.
The most famous in the early 19th century was Muhammad Ali Pasha.
Besides provinces, the empire also had tributary states.
In later years, the Ottoman Empire began to weaken.
In the latter part of the 19th century became known as "the sick man of Europe".
The empire was defeated in World War I and broke into pieces.
The empire was a hereditary monarchy.
The ruler 's title was ` Sultan '.
In the early years of the empire, shahzadahs, the sons of the Sultan, were sent to different parts of the empire (Sanjaks) to get experience of governing.
Later they might be candidates for the Sultanate and Caliphate.
After Ahmed this system changed.
In the new system the Sultan would keep his male relatives locked in a small apartment called a kafes where they would never be able to see the outside world, and would therefore be unable to take power from him.
Often, a new Sultan would have his male relatives killed, a simpler solution since it removed competition for the Sultanate and prevented rebel movements.
However, the women in his harem often sought greater status and influence, and the Sultan 's mother might become a powerful political force in the Empire.
Each mother in the harem would try to make her own son the next Sultan, since they knew he would probably be killed if he was not.
The Sultans gradually lost their ability to govern far-away territories well.
Distant governors did whatever they wanted and made their own laws instead of obeying the Sultan.
By its end, the Ottoman Empire grew so worn out and corrupt that it was ready to collapse.
Bursa was the first capital of the Ottoman Empire.
Edirne in Thrace became the capital city of the Ottoman Empire in 1365, until Istanbul was conquered by the Turks and became the empire 's final capital.
Many places were vassal states to the empire rather than being directly ruled.
These included Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia, (Romania), Caucasus (Georgia, Dagestan, and Chechnya.
Their rulers received a degree of independence and autonomy from the Ottoman Empire.
The price for this autonomy was more money (tax or tribute) paid to the Sultan.
Opel, full name Adam Opel AG, is an automobile maker from Germany, founded in 1862.
Since 1929, Opel is the German brand of the American automaker General Motors.
Opel has about 35,000 workers.
The company headquarters are in R sselsheim, Germany.
Other German plants are in Eisenach and Kaiserslautern.
In Great Britain, Opel cars are called Vauxhall.
Opel would later engineer cars for GMDAT, and still engineers them for GM Korea.
From 2007-2009 three Opel models (the Antara, the Astra and the Vectra) were sold in the United States under the Saturn marque.
Upon the discontinuation of Saturn Buick became responsible for importing the Opel models.
The only Buick cars to not be Opels are the Enclave CUV and the full sized LaCrosse sedan.
The Oligocene is the last geological epoch in the Palaeogene.
It lasted for about 11 million years, from 34 mya to 23 mya.
It was preceded by the Eocene and followed by the Miocene.
During the Oligocene, the world continued to get cooler from its peak in the mid-Eocene.
The world was still largely forested, but grasslands began to spread.
Ice formed in Antarctica.
The period is seen as one of transition, both in climate and in the biota.
Ozymandias is a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
It was published in 1818 in the 11 January issue of The Examiner, a journal in London.
It is probably Shelley 's most famous short poem.
The poem has been noted for its skillful diction, and its powerful themes and imagery.
The central theme of Ozymandias is the inevitable (unavoidable) ruin of leaders and empires.
The message is that all leaders and the empires they build will always end up as nothing, however mighty they are.
The name Ozymandias comes from a transliteration into Greek of the throne name of Ramesses II.
The sonnet paraphrases (copies in different words) the writing on the base of a statue of Ramesses.
The statue is called Younger Memnon and it is from Thebes (it is now in the British Museum).
The writing on the statue was recorded by Diodorus Siculus in his Bibliotheca historica.
It reads: "King of Kings am I, Osymandias.
If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works".
Occitan, known also as Lenga d' c by its native speakers, is a Romance language spoken in southern France, Italy 's Occitan Valleys, Monaco, and Catalonia 's Val d'Aran: the regions sometimes known unofficially as Occitania.
The Occitan language took a different path from Latin than any of the official languages in the countries mentioned above.
It is sometimes called Lenga d' c (language of "Oc", French: Langue d'oc) because the word for yes is c, as opposed to oil (oui) or s in other languages.
Latin had no word for yes, and this is one way to distinguish among Romance languages.
Some of these dialect names were used in the past to name the whole language (Proven al, Limousin, Gascon).
Oxygen (O) is a chemical element.
In nature, oxygen is a gas with no color or smell.
Oxygen is a very important element because it is a part of the air people breathe and the water people drink.
Because of this, oxygen supports life.
Many living things (including humans) need oxygen to live and breathe, though it is poisonous to some forms of life.
In liquid state of matter, oxygen is light blue.
Oxygen was initially discovered in 1772 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
Then Joseph Priestley also discovered it two years later and spread the news before Scheele.
This made many people think that Priestley discovered oxygen first.
The word oxygen comes from Greek words: oxus (acid) and gennan (generate).
Oxygen comes to earth from all parts of the universe in meteorites.
It is also found in minerals and plants that grow on the earth and other planets.
Water contains oxygen.
When one oxygen atom combines with two hydrogen atoms, they form a molecule of water (also written as H2O).
This water is required by all living things to live.
Air also contains oxygen.
Air is made of many gases that are mixed together.
Approximately 21 % of the air is oxygen.
Oxygen is especially important because all animals use oxygen to get energy from their food.
Oxygen is also what makes burning possible.
This is called combustion.
When an object or something burns or combusts, oxygen combines with another substance and releases heat and light.
For instance, when you burn wood, the oxygen in air combines with the wood to create fire.
This ability of oxygen has many uses.
But it also makes pure oxygen very dangerous.
If pure oxygen touches a flame or spark, it can combust and cause great damage.
Combustion is used in many ways.
For example, when oxygen is mixed with acetylene, it can create a very hot flame.
The hot flame is used in welding, where metal is heated and melted together.
Also, oxygen is used to create powerful fuels, which also can be used in rockets and jets.
Oxygen can be used in smelting metal from ore.
Oxygen is used in hospitals for killing bacteria.
It is also used when a patient has had carbon monoxide poisoning.
Oxygen is used in water treatment to purify the water to make it safe for us to drink.
Pure oxygen can be produced in several ways.
In nature, plants produce oxygen by using sunlight, carbon dioxide (another gas) and water.
This process is called photosynthesis.
Most of the oxygen in the air is produced by photosynthesis.
Oxygen can also be created by humans, using a process called electrolysis.
In this process, electricity passes through water.
As a result, the water molecules break and release oxygen and hydrogen gas.
Osmium is a chemical element.
It is element number 76 on the periodic table.
Its symbol is Os.
There is not much osmium on earth.
There is actually such a small amount that osmium is very expensive.
Osmium is a metal and it does not react very much, and such a metal is known as a "noble metal".
It was discovered in 1804 by Smithson Tennant in London, England.
He found it together with Iridium in a bit of Platinum, which he had dissolved in Aqua regia.
An oxide is a chemical compound containing an oxygen atom and other elements.
Most of the Earth 's crust consists of oxides.
Oxides can be made when elements are oxidized by air (when oxygen in the air react with the element).
Oxford is a city in England.
It is on the River Thames.
It is a very old city.
It is the 52nd largest city in the United Kingdom.
Some of its buildings were built before the 12th century.
It is famous for its university, Oxford University, which is the oldest university in the English-speaking world.
About 150,200 live in Oxford.
Two rivers run through the city, the Cherwell and the Thames.
These two rivers meet south of the city center.
Besides its university, there are some buildings famous for their architecture (the style in which they were built), like the Radcliffe Camera.
There are also lots of museums and other places for tourists to visit.
Oslo is the capital city of Norway.
It is Norway 's largest city, with a population of 647,676 people in 2015.
The area near the city has a total population of 1,546,706.
The city government of Oslo and the county are the same thing.
The city is an economic and cultural epicenter.
Many important institutions are in Oslo.
Among these are the Norwegian government and parliament, the University of Oslo and Ullev l Stadium, the stadium of Norway 's soccer team.
The city also has many museums, theaters and concert venues.
Some good cultural places are Frognerparken, the Oslo Opera, the National Museum and the National Theatre.
Travelling inside the city is easy with public transportation.
Using tram, subway and bus is easy.
Oslo feels divided into to two parts.
West end and East end, with the West traditionally being the upper\/middle class area and the East end being a working class and poor area.
This has faded in the last 50 years.
Fewer people are manual workers and more people are employed in better paid middle-class jobs.
Oslo is a very expensive city, with high prices in bars and restaurants, as well as high prices for houses and apartments.
Currently, the mayor of Oslo is Fabian Stang from the Conservative Party.
Oslo has a humid continental climate (Dfb in the Koeppen climate classification).
The Saga of Norwegian Kings (written by Snorre Sturlason) says that king Harald III Sigurdsson founded Oslo around 1048.
Recent archaeological research has found Christian graves from before 1000.
Because of these two facts, Oslo celebrated its 900 year anniversary in 1950 and its 1000 year anniversary in 2000.
One of the more famous landmarks in Oslo is Akershus Fortress.
It was first built around 1290.
Oslo was destroyed in fire in 1624, and the fortress was rebuilt closer to Akershus Fortress by the order of King Christian IV of Norway.
The king gave the new city the name Christiania, which later also written as Kristiania.
In 1925 the name of the city was changed back to Oslo.
The Oakland Raiders are a professional American football team in the National Football League.
They play in Oakland, California, USA.
Their stadium is McAfee Coliseum.
They were created in 1960 as a new American Football League team.
They play in the Western Division of the American Football Conference.
Division rivals are Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, and San Diego Chargers.
The Raiders have won three Super Bowls.
A few months after the AFL 's first draft in 1959, owners of the Minneapolis new team (later known as the Minnesota Vikings) accepted the invitation to join the National Football League.
Needing a replacement, the AFL tried to find one quickly.
Oakland was thought to be an unlikely city to have a professional American football team.
The AFL owners picked Oakland after Los Angeles Chargers owner Barron Hilton threatened to drop his team unless a second team was placed on the West Coast.
The city of Oakland was awarded the eighth AFL team on January 30, 1960, and the team took over the Minneapolis club 's draft picks.
The new Oakland team was called the "Raiders", which is used as a synonym for a pirate.
The team logo includes an illustration of a pirate.
In the early years, the Raiders struggled.
When Al Davis came in as head coach and general manager, the Raiders got better.
Davis hired John Rauch and went to the their first AFL Championship against the Houston Oilers and won it 40-7.
After winning their first AFL championship they earned a shot at Super Bowl II and lost to Green Bay Packers 33-14.
The next two years, the Raiders again won Western Division titles, only to lose the AFL Championship to the eventual Super Bowl winners the New York Jets (1968) and Kansas City Chiefs (1969).
After the 1969 season, the AFL decided to merge with the NFL.
The Raiders join the American Football Conference as a Western Division member.
John Madden was hired as head coach.
Madden took the Raiders to their first Super Bowl win against Minnesota Vikings 32-14 in Super Bowl XI.
Later, Madden left for a commentary career.
The Raiders hired Tom Flores, the first Hispanic head coach in NFL history.
Flores took the Raiders for their second Super Bowl win against Philadelphia Eagles 27 10 in Super Bowl XV.
The Raiders became the first wild card team to win a Super Bowl.
Al Davis signed a note to make the Raiders move to Los Angeles.
The Raiders won their third Super Bowl against the Washington Redskins.
The Raiders move back to Oakland.
Currently, the Raiders have struggle since 2003 season after losing to the Tampa Bay Buccanears in Super Bowl XXXVII.
+ = Due to a strike-shortened season in 1982, all teams were ranked by conference instead of division.
O is the fifteenth (number 15) letter in the English alphabet and it has a shape of a circle.
Oligarchy is a form of government.
In an oligarchic system, all the power is held by a small group of people.
It is usually to the most powerful people who govern the state.
It was used in Sparta, where the kingship alternated between three leading families.
An oligarchy where the best rule is called Aristocracy.
If the richest people rule the country, this is called Plutocracy.
The Sultanate of Oman is a country in the southwestern part of Asia, on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula.
It borders the United Arab Emirates to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the west, and Yemen to the southwest, it also shares a marine border with Pakistan to the north-east.
The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea to the south and east, and the Gulf of Oman to the northeast.
The country is a monarchy.
The capital of the Sultanate is Muscat.
Below the governorates, Oman is divided into provinces.
Oman has a hot climate and very little rainfall.
Annual rainfall in Muscat averages 100 m, falling mostly in January.
Dhofar is subject to the southwest monsoon, and rainfall up to 640 m has been recorded in the rainy season from late June to October.
While the mountain areas receive more rainfall, some parts of the coast, particularly near the island of Masirah, sometimes receive no rain at all within the course of a year.
The climate generally is very hot, with temperatures reaching around 50 (peak) in the hot season, from May to September.
In Christianity, the Old Testament is the name of the first part the Bible, the one written before Jesus Christ.
The Quran calls the Old Testament the Tawrat.
In Judaism, the collection of inspired books is known as Tanakh; scholars often use the name Hebrew Bible.
Both Jews and Christians believe these texts to be holy.
According to them, God inspired men to write the collection.
The collection contains different texts, called "books", about God, and the people of Israel.
It can be divided into several sections: the Torah, the History of Israel, the Prophets and Wisdom books.
The first to have used this name (in Latin: vetus testamentum) was probably Tertullian in the 2nd century.
Different religious communities include (or exclude) certain books.
The Roman Catholic Church uses the books that were included in Saint Jerome 's Latin translation of the Old Testament (his works is called Vulgate).
The Eastern Orthodox church uses the ancient Greek translation of Jewish sacred writings called the Septuagint.
The Eastern Orthodox list of sacred books has a few more books than the Roman Catholic list.
Protestant Bibles stick more closely to the books in the Jewish collection (the Tanakh) but list them in the order found in the Septuagint.
The octal numeral system is a base 8 numeral system.
It uses the numerals 0 through 7.
The system is similar to binary (base 2) and hexadecimal (base 16).
Octal numerals are written using the letter o before the numeral, for example, o04 or o1242.
At one time, the octal system was used mainly for work with computers.
It provided an easier way to work with binary numbers.
As computers changed from using 24-bit systems to 32 - and 64-bit systems, hexadecimal replaced octal for most uses.
Certain groups, for example, Native Americans using the Yuki language in California and the Pamean languages in Mexico, also use an octal numbering system.
They do this because when they count, they use the spaces between their fingers instead of counting the actual fingers.
The octal numeral system uses a three-bit binary coding.
Each digit in an octal numeral is the same as three digits in a binary numeral.
The grouping of the binary digits is done from right to left.
The first three binary digits from the right are grouped into the last part of the octal numeral, then the next three digits form the next to the last part of the numeral.
In the decimal system (base 10), each digit in octal is equal to that digit multiplied by the exponent of 8 that is equal to its location minus one.
Octal is similar to hexadecimal because they are both easily converted to binary.
Where octal is equal to three-digit binary, hexadecimal is equal to four-digit binary.
Where octal numerals start with the letter "o", hexadecimal numerals end with the letter "h".
The easiest way to convert from one to the other is to convert to binary and then to the other system.
October is the tenth month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, coming between September and November.
It has 31 days.
The name comes from the Latin oct for "eight".
It was the eighth month of the year before January and February were added to the beginning of the year.
October is the tenth month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, coming after September and before November.
It has 31 days.
Its name comes from Latin oct, meaning eight, as it was the eighth month of the year in the Old Roman Calendar before January and February were added to the beginning of the year, though its name did not change.
The tenth month at the time was December.
October is an Autumn (Fall) month in the Northern Hemisphere and a Spring month in the Southern Hemisphere.
In each Hemisphere, it is the seasonal equivalent of April in the other.
October begins on the same day of week as January in common years, but no month begins on the same day as October in a leap year.
It always ends on the same day of the week as February, though also ends on the same day of the week as January in common years.
October 31\/November 1 is Samhain in old Pagan tradition.
Several current observances at this time are believed to be related to it.
They are: Halloween (October 31) in many western traditions, All Saints Day (November 1), All Souls Day (November 2), and the Day of the Dead (October 31 to November 2), which is celebrated in Mexico.
October 's flower is the Calendula.
One of its birthstones is the opal.
The meaning of the opal is hope.
The other birthstone of October is the pink tourmaline.
The astrological signs for October are Libra (September 24 to October 23) and Scorpio (October 24 to November 22).
Operation Sea Lion was the plan to invade the United Kingdom by the Nazis during World War II.
The plan began in 1940.
However, Germany first had to control the sky and sea of the English Channel before a land invasion.
With the German Air Force defeated in the Battle of Britain, the operation was put off on 17 September 1940 and never happened.
The invasion force would have used a varied amount of weapons, developing underwater tanks, the first Jet powered airplane, and a massive underwater army armed with old an innovative Scuba Suits.
Opera is a drama set to music.
An opera is like a play in which everything is sung instead of spoken.
Operas are usually performed in opera houses.
The singers who sing and act out the story are on the stage, and the orchestra is in front of the stage but lower down, in the orchestra pit, so that the audience can see the stage.
An opera is normally divided into two, three, four or even five acts.
In older operas the music was mostly recitative and arias.
During the recitative things would happen in the story.
The aria was a song for a solo singer, a setting of a lyric.
As well as recitative and aria there would be choruses.
The chorus were a group of singers who sing in the crowd scenes.
The opera would start with an overture for the orchestra.
The overture would usually include tunes that are going to be heard later in the opera.
In operas from the 19th century onwards there is often little or no difference between recitative and aria.
Composers like Wagner wanted to get away from operas which had lots of separate arias in which the singers showed off, with the audience clapping loudly after each one.
He wanted continuous music so that the mood would not be broken.
Sometimes operas have a lot of dancing in them.
French opera especially would often have one act which was full of dances.
Not all operas have music all the time.
Grand opera is opera which is all set to music.
Op ra buffe (French) or Opera buffa (Italian) is comic opera.
The story is very light-hearted and funny.
Op ra comique is a French term for opera which has some spoken words.
Surprisingly it does not mean a comic opera.
An opera like Carmen, which is a tragedy, is still an op ra comique due to the fact that it uses spoken dialogues instead of recitatives.
Singspiel is a German term for a type of opera with lots of magic and fantasy in the story.
There were spoken words between the songs.
Mozart s Magic Flute is an example.
Operetta is a short opera which is light-hearted and usually has some spoken words.
Opera singers have to have powerful voices as well as a good technique.
Most opera houses are very big, and the singers need to be heard at the back.
They also need to be good at acting.
They need to be able to learn their music quickly and to sing from memory.
It is a help to be good at languages because operas are often in Italian, German, French, English or Russian etc..
Some opera companies, like the English National Opera, sing their operas in English.
Others, like the Royal Opera House, sing operas in whatever language they were composed in.
Translations are printed on a screen above the front of the stage ("subtitles") so that the audience can understand what is being sung.
Although singers train to get a wide range (good top and bottom notes) they can not be expected to sing any role in their voice range.
For example: some sopranos may have big, dramatic voices, suitable for parts like Tosca in Puccini s opera Tosca.
Some may have a very light and high voice, called coloratura, suitable for parts like the Queen of the Night in Mozart s Magic Flute.
Some may have a medium range, called mezzo-soprano, suitable for parts like Carmen in Bizet s opera Carmen.
Very often in opera the heroine is a soprano and the hero is a tenor.
Basses may often have the part of a powerful king, or he may be the bad guy.
The 18th century lexicographer and critic Dr Johnson described opera as an exotic and irrational entertainment.
By exotic he meant that it came from a foreign country (which in those days was true: all opera at the time came from Italy).
By irrational he meant that the things which happened in the stories were strange and not like real life.
A play can be like real life, but an opera is being sung, so things are not going to happen like they normally do in real life.
A singer might be singing I must go, I must go!
and he may stand on the stage and sing this for several minutes before at last he goes!
A singer may be pretending to die, and will sing a beautiful song before he or she finally dies.
These things are conventions, which means that they are a kind of habit we have to accept when watching and listening to opera.
Another convention of earlier operas was to have the part of young men sung by women.
This is sometimes called a breeches role or trouser role.
They are often small parts such as page boys, or teenagers who flirt with older women, such as the part of Cherubino in Mozart s The Marriage of Figaro or Oktavian in Richard Strauss s Der Rosenkavalier.
It should be remembered that in the 18th century it was usual for the main female part to be sung by a man who was a castrato.
That seems a very strange (and cruel) convention to us now.
There are lots of famous operas, and the best ones have some of the greatest music ever written.
The music could not have been written like that if it had not been written for opera.
For example: Mozart is very clever at writing music where maybe six people are all singing different things at once because they all have different ideas about the situation in the story.
The first opera ever written was performed in 1597 in Florence in Italy.
It was called Dafne and the composer was Jacopo Peri.
This opera is now lost, but three years later, in 1600, he worked together with another composer called Giulio Caccini to write an opera called Euridice.
The music for this still exists.
It was nearly all recitative.
This kind of writing was new, but if opera was to tell a story it was important to have a solo voice singing words that could be heard.
They were trying to produce something like an ancient Greek tragedy.
It was performed at a kind of club, called camerata, for intellectual (clever) people to a small audience.
It was not great music, but the amazing thing was that there was a composer of genius around.
His name was Claudio Monteverdi, and only seven years later, in 1607, he wrote the first really good opera: Orfeo, which was produced in Mantua.
Monteverdi must have realized that opera had the possibilities of putting poetry, music, scenery and acting all together.
He took the kind of songs that were popular at the time and joined them with speaking or recitative.
Later in life he joined these so that the music flowed more dramatically.
In 1637 the first public opera house was opened in Venice.
Soon lots of theaters in Italy started to produce operas.
The stories were usually about ancient times, like the Roman Empire or Greek myths.
They started to put in comic (funny) bits to make people laugh.
Soon there was opera in Paris, Vienna, Hamburg and in the small courts of Germany which in those days was lots of little countries, each with their own prince who ruled and who kept musicians at court.
The composers who are best remembered today include Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) who was an Italian who moved to France and wrote operas for the French king, and George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) who was a German who moved to England and wrote operas for the opera houses in London.
In Italy there were composers like Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676) who had been a choirboy in Monteverdi s church choir in Venice, and Alessandro Scarlatti 1660-1725 who lived in Naples.
During this period, known as the Baroque period, the opera was an entertainment for the upper classes who went to the opera to be seen in public.
Opera was a social occasion where you could meet people and talk, even during the music.
Both the singers and the audience behaved in ways that we would think were bad manners.
Christoph Willibald Gluck was a composer who tried to make people take opera more seriously.
In 1762 he wrote an opera called Orfeo which was performed in Vienna.
It had lots of choruses and ballet numbers, like French opera, but the words were in Italian and the music really concentrated on the story rather than being just a display for clever singers to show off.
Some of its music is very famous today, e.g. the Dance of the Blessed Spirits which is played on a flute, and Orfeo s aria Che far senza Euridice?
(What shall I do without Euridice?).
Mozart learned from Gluck s ideas about opera.
This can be seen in his opera Idomeneo which is about a Greek story.
Other Italian operas by Mozart include: Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro and Cosi fan tutte.
He also wrote operas in German: The Abduction from the Serail and The Magic Flute.
These are Singspiel: operas which tell magic and fantasy stories.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) only wrote one opera: Fidelio.
It is a story of a woman who rescues her lover from prison.
Rescue operas were popular in France, but this one is in German.
It is a serious opera about how a woman can save a man by being true and faithful.
In the 19th century Richard Wagner (1813-1883) continued Gluck s ideas.
Wagner had very personal ideas about how his operas should be performed, and he liked to train the singers himself.
He wanted them to take the drama of his operas seriously instead of treating the music as a way of showing off their voices.
He always wrote the libretti (words for the opera) himself, and they were always in German.
They are mostly about serious subjects from German folklore and myths, although he did write one comic opera: The Mastersingers of N rnberg.
Wagner used leitmotifs which means that there are tunes which are used for particular characters or ideas in the opera.
This allows the music to develop with the story, and can be used in interesting ways.
For example: when Sigmund (in the opera Die Walk re) says that he does not know who his father is, we hear his father s tune in the orchestra!
The audience, of course, know (this is called: dramatic irony).
In Italy Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) wrote lots of operas.
There was no difference in style between his comic and his serious operas.
Often the same overture was used for both.
He wrote exactly all the notes that the singers were to sing, he did not want to leave it to them to improvise their own ornamental notes.
Everything was carefully thought out.
Musicians are not sure whether to call him a Classical or Romantic composer.
Composers like Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835) and Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) are definitely Romantic.
They had the ability to write lovely lyrical tunes.
The most famous Italian opera composer of the 19th century was Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901).
His music is not always continuous like Wagner s. Sometimes it stopped for the audience to applaud.
Verdi had a wonderful sense of drama, and could write beautiful melodies which captured people s hearts.
He loved Shakespeare, and based several of his operas on Shakespeare plays: Otello, Macbeth and Falstaff.
The 19th century was the time when Nationalism was important.
Composers were writing music typical of their own countries.
Wagner, as we have seen, took German myths for his opera stories.
In Spain they had their own kind of opera called zarzuela.
In Russia Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) wrote Ruslan and Lyudmila which was based on a Russian fairy tale.
Other Russian composers include Alexander Borodin who wrote Prince Igor, and Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) who wrote Boris Godunov.
Both these operas are about stories from Russian history.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) wrote a fairy tale opera Sadko, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) used some very Russian tunes in Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades.
Czech composers wrote national operas.
The most famous Czech opera composers were Anton n Dvo k (1841-1904), Bed ich Smetana (1824-1884) and Leo Jan ek (1854-1928).
In France the most famous composer was Charles Gounod (1818-1893) who wrote an opera called Faust.
In the 20th century composers had many different styles of composing.
This was true of all kinds of music, including opera.
Richard Strauss (1864-1949) was really a Romantic, although almost all his operas were written in the 20th century.
His harmonies show that he had studied Wagner s operas.
Der Rosenkavalier (1909) has lots of romantic tunes, although it is a story about Vienna in the Classical period.
In Italy composers like Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) wrote operas in the verismo style.
This meant operas with stories that felt like real life.
The characters in the stories were usually from the lower classes.
Alban Berg (1885-1935) also wrote operas about poor or simple people.
He wrote an opera called Wozzeck which is the tragedy of a man who is too simple to understand that people are being unkind to him and using him.
Berg s music is often built on the twelve tone series which he had learned from Schoenberg.
Stravinsky s (1882-1971) The Rake 's Progress is in yet another style called Neo-classical because the music is made to sound a bit like music of the Classical Period.
In England Britten wrote many great operas like Peter Grimes and Billy Budd.
Most of them are about unfortunate people who want to be part of society but are not accepted.
More recent composers who wrote operas include the Hungarian Gy rgy Ligeti (1923-2006), the Polish Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933), the English Sir Harrison Birtwistle and the Americans Philip Glass (b. 1937) and John Adams (b. 1947).
The Odyssey is a major Ancient Greek epic poem.
It was written by Homer, to whom another epic, the Iliad, is also attributed.
In its origin it was an oral epic poem from Mycenaean Greece, about the 11th century BC.
The hero of the poem is Odysseus, or Ulysses as he is called in Latin; the poem is mythological, not historical.
The poem is the story about Odysseus 's ten-year-long voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.
The Trojan War is the subject of the Iliad.
At the same time, his wife Penelope has to fight off a lot of men who want to marry her; and his son Telemachos searches for him.
Along the way, Odysseus and his men have to fight monsters and many other dangers.
The main events (places he goes, creatures and people he meets) of Odysseus ' journey are:
On his journey home, Odysseus lands on the island of the Cyclops Polyphemus.
They go inside his cave at the sight of sheep, cheese and milk.
Polyphemus catches them and eats some of Odysseus ' men.
Odysseus tricks and blinds him and they escape.
The Cyclops prays to his father Poseidon that Odysseus would get home to Ithaca and if he was fated to make it home, Odysseus would lose all of his men, his ship and find trouble at home.
This prayer became the plot line of the Odyssey.
Odysseus and his ship have to pass the Sirens ' island.
The Sirens were always singing very beautifully, so sailors would try to go to them, but their ships would get destroyed, and they would die.
Odysseus tells his men to put wax in their ears, so they will not hear the song of the sirens.
He also tells his men to bind him to the ship 's mast, so he can not go to the sirens when he hears their song.
His men can then look at Odysseus and see when he can not hear the sirens anymore, because he is calm again.
Then they can take the wax out of their ears, and free Odysseus.
After escaping from the sea, and the death of his men, Odysseus comes to the island Ogygia.
On this island lives the nymph Calypso, and Odysseus stayed with her for seven years.
But then the god Hermes came and told her that the gods said that she had to let Odysseus go.
Calypso promised Odysseus immortality (that he would live forever) if he stayed, but he wanted to go back to his wife Penelope.
So Odysseus built a raft and left her.
After a storm, Odysseus comes to the island of the Phaeacians.
There he is found by the king 's daughter Nausica.
Nausica brings him to the palace of her father, King Alkinoos.
During his time there, Odysseus tell the story of his journey.
After this, Alkinoos gives Odysseus a ship and sends him home to Ithaca.
During all this time, Penelope has been keeping the suitors at bay with a ruse (trick).
She promises "I will choose when I have finished weaving this cloth", the cloth being a burial cloth for Odysseus ' father.
However, every night her servant unpicks the work of the previous day.
The story is made more real by Penelope becoming restless.
The goddess Athena causes Penelope to feel the need to display herself, and fan the flames of the suitors ' desire.
Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, where he disguises himself as a beggar.
He goes to his home and meets his son Telemachus.
Together they kill the suitors, who are trying to marry Penelope in order to gain his kingdom.
Later, the families of the suitors come to kill Odysseus for revenge.
The goddess Athena helps Odysseus by making them stop and give up the fight.
Osteichthyes are a taxonomic superclass of fish, also called bony fish that includes the ray-finned fish (Actinopterygii) and lobe finned fish (Sarcopterygii).
The split between these two classes occurred around 440 million of years.
The Osteichthyes are paraphyletic with land vertebrates, in some classification schemes the tetrapods are considered to be members of the Osteichthyes for this reason.
Osteichthyes are the most various group of vertebrates, consisting of over 29,000 species, making them the largest class of vertebrates in existence today.
In mathematics, an ordered pair is a collection of two objects, where one of the objects is first (the first coordinate or left projection), and the other is second (the second coordinate or right projection).
An ordered pair where the first coordinate is and the second coordinate is is usually written (sometimes it is written).
If is different from, then the ordered pair is different from the ordered pair - this is why it is called ordered.
.
This means that two ordered pairs are equal if and only if: the first coordinates of the pairs are equal, and also the second coordinates of the pairs are equal.
There are many mathematical definitions of ordered pair which have this property.
The definition given here is the most common one:
.
Kazimierz Kuratowski was the first person to make this definition.
The Old Catholic Church is a name for a group of Christian churches.
Most of them are from German-speaking countries.
Their beliefs are close to that of the Anglican Church.
They split from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1870s.
This was because the First Vatican Council had said the pope was infallible.
The Council was from 1869 to 1870.
The word Old Catholic was first used in 1853 for the See of Utrecht (who was not under the authority of the pope).
Usually, these churches are part of the Union of Utrecht.
The Oort cloud, or pik Oort cloud, is a cloud of comets and other objects.
Astronomers believe it is way beyond the orbits of Pluto and the Kuiper belt.
The Oort cloud is believed to be the source of long-period comets in the Solar System.
The Oort cloud may lie about 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun.
This means the cloud is nearly a quarter of the way to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun.
The Kuiper belt and scattered disc, the other two reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects, are less than one thousandth of the Oort cloud 's distance.
The outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the boundary of the Solar System and the region of the Sun 's gravitational dominance.
The Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort was the creator of the Oort cloud idea.
The Oort cloud was named after him, as were the Oort comet, and Oort constants.
The Oort cloud takes up a lot of space and has trillions of comets about tens of millions of kilometers apart.
The Oort cloud is made up of an Inner Oort cloud and an Outer Oort cloud.
The Outer cloud is weakly bound to the Sun; long-term comets are thought to come from there.
The Inner Cloud is also called the Hills Cloud and may be the maker of comets.
The objects in the Oort cloud are believed to consist of much ice, and since the object 1996 PW was found, it is believed that rocky objects might be in the Oort Cloud.
The Oort cloud is thought to be the remains of a disk made out of gas which surrounded the Sun long ago.
The Ohio River is the one of the most important tributaries to the Mississippi River.
It is 981 miles long.
It forms boundaries for the states of Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and West Virginia before finally going to its headwaters in Pennsylvania.
It is its widest a little to the left of downtown Louisville, where it is one mile wide.
Cities on the Ohio River include Paducah, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The river begins in Pittsburgh.
The Wabash, Kentucky and the Tennessee Rivers flow into the Ohio.
In cell biology, an organelle is a part of a cell that does a specific job.
Organelles typically have their own plasma membrane round them.
Most of the cell 's organelles are in the cytoplasm.
The name organelle comes from the idea that these structures are to cells what an organ is to the body.
There are many types of organelles in eukaryotic cells.
Prokaryotes were once thought not to have organelles, but some examples have now been found.
They are not organised like eukaryote organelles, and are not bounded by plasma membranes.
They are called bacterial microcompartments.
The term is now widely used to refer to cellular structures surrounded by single or double plasma membranes.
However, the older definition of a ` subcellular functional unit ' still coexists.
That is, the term is sometimes used for structures which are not membrane-bound.
The plasma membrane is a lipid bilayer with some proteins embedded in it.
It keeps the ions and molecules of the organelle from merging with the surroundings.
Mitochondria and chloroplasts, which have double-membranes and their own DNA, are believed to have originated from incompletely consumed or invading prokaryotic organisms, which were adopted as a part of the invaded cell.
This idea is supported in the endosymbiotic theory.
Prokaryotes are not so complex as eukaryotes.
They were thought to have no internal structures enclosed by lipid membranes.
However, recent research has shown that at least some prokaryotes have microcompartments such as carboxysomes.
These subcellular compartments are 100 200 nm in diameter and are enclosed by a shell of proteins.
Even more striking is the description of membrane-bound magnetosomes in bacteria.
as well as the nucleus-like structures of the Planctomycetes that are surrounded by lipid membranes.
Ouida was the pen name of the English writer Maria Louise Ram (although she preferred to be known as Marie Louise de la Ram e).
Ram was born in Bury St. Edmunds, England, to a French father and an English mother.
Her pen name came from the way she pronounced her name when she was a child.
OS\/2 is an operating system that was made by IBM.
Oliver Cromwell (April 25, 1599 September 3, 1658) was an English military and political leader best known for making England a republic and leading the Commonwealth of England.
Cromwell 's actions during his career seem confusing to us today.
He supported Parliament against the King, yet he ordered his soldiers to break up parliament.
Under his rule, the Protectorate said that people 's religious beliefs should be respected, but people who went against what most people believed were sometimes tortured and imprisoned.
Cromwell was the first ruler of England to be a Puritan.
Cromwell started off as an unordinary man from Huntingdon.
He first studied at Huntingdon Grammar School.
where he was frowned upon by his father, whom he had a bad relationship with.
He then went on to Sidney Sussex College at the University of Cambridge.
This was a new, small college where he had the chance to talk about his Puritan ideas.
However, he never took a degree because his father died in 1617 while he was studying.
In 1628, Cromwell became an MP and a Puritan and supported Parliament in its quarrel with the King.
When war broke out, the King 's army was stronger and better-prepared than the army of Parliament.
Cromwell saw this, and he decided to train men to fight better.
Soon the "New Model Army" he had trained began to win battles.
As a result, Parliament won the war.
By the end of the war, Cromwell was very powerful.
After the execution of the King, a republic was declared, known as the Commonwealth of England.
A Council of State was appointed to manage affairs, which included Cromwell among its members.
His real power base was in the army.
In 1652, Cromwell took over Ireland.
Many historians believe that Cromwell committed an ethnic cleansing against the Irish Catholic people..
Cromwell wanted the Irish Catholics to move out of eastern Ireland into the northwest.
According to these historians, Cromwell and his army used massacres, starvation, and threats of execution to force the Irish to leave.
Historian Frances Stewart says that 600,000 Irish people - 43 % of the Irish population - died from these policies.
A new constitution known as the Instrument of Government made Cromwell Lord Protector for life.
He had the power to call and dissolve parliaments.
In 1657, Cromwell was offered the crown by Parliament.
Cromwell reflected for six weeks over the offer.
Then he rejected it and was ceremonially re-installed as "Lord Protector" (with greater powers than had previously been granted him under this title) at Westminster Hall.
Cromwell is thought to have suffered from malaria (probably first contracted while on campaign in Ireland).
He died at Whitehall on 3 September 1658, the anniversary of his great victories at Dunbar and Worcester.
He was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son Richard.
Although Richard was not entirely without ability, he had no power base in either Parliament or the Army, and was forced to resign in the spring of 1659, bringing the Protectorate to an end.
A year later Parliament restored Charles II as king.
When the Royalists returned to power, Cromwell 's corpse was dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded.
Prince Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck-Sch nhausen Duke of Lauenburg (1 April 1815 30 July 1898) was an aristocrat and statesman of the 19th century in Europe.
As Prime Minister of Prussia from 1862 to 1890, he was mainly responsible for unifying the many independent German countries and founding the German Empire in 1871.
He became the first chancellor of the new Empire.
He was Graf von Bismarck-Sch nhausen (Count Bismarck-Sch nhausen) in 1865, then since 1871 F rst von Bismarck (Prince Bismarck) and since 1890 the Herzog von Lauenburg (Duke of Lauenburg).
At first he did not want the duke title, but accepted it later.
Bismarck was very conservative and he was strongly connected to the monarchy.
He was not a big supporter of democracy.
His most important goal was to make Prussia stronger and he achieved that through the unification of Germany.
Bismarck tried to stop the socialist movement and to reduce the power of the Catholic Church.
One way to stop socialism was to make the working class happy.
He did that by introducing many social reforms like public health and accident insurance, as well as pensions for old people.
The theory of recapitulation is often known as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
It was an idea of tienne Serres in 1824 26.
In 1886 Ernst Haekel proposed that the embryonic development of an individual organism (its ontogeny) followed the same path as the evolutionary history of its species (its phylogeny).
It is also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism
It was a theory (idea) that tied evolution (the change in organisms over time) with embryology (the way organisms develop before they are born).
The theory basically stated that before they are born, organisms pass through developmental stages that look like adult animals of other species, in roughly the same order that these other species split off during evolution.
Although there is something to this idea, it is no longer thought to be such a useful way to look at development.
Haeckel formulated his theory as "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny".
Ontogeny is the steps an organism takes in its development before it is born, starting as a single cell and ending as a baby.
Phylogeny is the steps a species takes in its development, starting as a very simple organism and evolving into the current organism.
"Recapitulates" is a synonym for "reflects" and implies that the ontogeny of an organism is similar to the phylogeny of its species.
For example, Haeckel realized that before they are born, there is a time when humans have slits in their necks.
These slits look like the gills on adult fishes.
Haeckel took this to mean that some time before our species became human, we were fish-like.
This view is supported by the fossil record and other evidence.
As the unborn human gets closer to being born, it develops a tail.
In fact, some human babies are even born with tails.
Haeckel concluded, again correctly, that at some time in humanities more recent evolutionary past (after we had gone through our fish stage) the species that would go on to become humans had a tail.
However, not all of Haeckels evidence or conclusions were this good.
Haeckel produced several embryo drawings that often overemphasized similarities between embryos of related species.
These found their ways into many biology textbooks, and into popular knowledge, even though they were wrong.
Furthermore, Haeckel used this "evidence" to conclude that white people were evolutionary superior to people of other races.
Not only is this a racist view, but we know today that it is not true.
Today, scientists think that Haeckel overstated the case.
For example, the "gills" of a developing human do not work (though Haekel never said they did).
Furthermore, as better observations were made, it was discovered that developing babies do n't look exactly like the pictures Haeckel drew.
He may have exaggerated what he saw in order to support his point better.
Also, Haekel 's discussion was entirely about morphology: he did not discuss the evolution and development of animal behavior.
However, this is not to say that nothing about the theory makes sense.
It is true that our ontogeny gives clues about our phylogeny.
However, the relationship is not nearly as direct as Haeckel said it was.
In fact, Haekel 's over-emphatic claims led in due course to over-emphatic rejections.
Today, scientists agree that some parts of Haeckel 's theory still make sense.
For example:
The orangutan (Pongo) is a great ape that has fur with a color between red and brown.
There are two species of orangutan.
They are from Southeast Asia.
There are very few of them left, because loss of the jungle has reduced their habitat.
There are orangutans on view at the Singapore Zoo.
The name orangutan comes from two Malay words, orang which means person, and hutan which means forest; so orangutan means person of the forest.
Orangutans have red-brown fur.
They have long and strong arms.
They also have hands that are good for climbing.
The Sumatran Orangutan is smaller and has longer hair than the Bornean Orangutan.
Orangutans have suffered from forest loss and are on the very edge of extinction.
Orangutans are from the rainforests on the islands Borneo and Sumatra in Southeast Asia.
They mostly live up in the trees.
They eat fruit, leaves and bark, but also insects, bird eggs and small vertebrate animals.
They drink water from rain that has been collected in leaves.
Orangutans are not comfortable on the ground since they have to push themselves along with fists.
Heavy adults move carefully through the trees, using their flexible feet to grasp the tree branches.
Smaller orangutans swing with more ease
An orangutan 's diet consists mainly of fruit, they like ripe fruit.
If they ca n't find fruit they will eat bark, leaves and termites, rather than move to somewhere else to get food.
About 60 % of an Orangutans diet is fruit, 25 % is leaves, 10 % is bark and flowers, and 5 % is termites and other insects.
After a pregnancy of 230 260 days the female gives birth to usually one baby, but sometimes two, every eight to nine years.
The little ones stay with their mother for years, riding on their mother 's back and learning to move through the forest.
Like human babies, the young orangutans are playful and affectionate.
When they are five or six years old, they become more independent and eventually go off on their own.
Orbital resonance is when two orbiting bodies exert a regular, periodic gravitational effect on each other.
Their orbital periods may be related by a ratio of two small integers.
It is caused by the changing gravitational forces of bodies which go round each other.
The stability of the Solar System was first investigated by Laplace, and there is still much that is not known about it.
As a satellite goes round a planet or two stars go round each other, the gravitaional forces can change, sometimes hugely.
This is partly because orbits are usually ellipses, not circular, and so the forces change accordingly.
Also, the planets and stars are usually not spherical.
They spin, and vary in their degree of oblateness.
This also changes the forces on an orbiting body.
In particular, the forces may be unstable, so the smaller partner may change until the forces are stable (do not change with time).
Satellites often end up with one face towards their planet, because that is the most stable position (tidal locking).
There are other stability effects.
Gaps in Saturn 's rings are caused by the particles shifting into more stable positions.
In the rings of Saturn, the Cassini Division is a gap between the inner B Ring and the outer A Ring.
It was cleared by a 2:1 resonance with the moon Mimas.
There is a stability ratio for Neptune and Pluto: the 2:3 ratio means Pluto completes two orbits in the time it takes Neptune to complete three.
The area of mechanics which is used for these studies is called celestial mechanics.
Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 - May 19, 1971) was an American poet.
His poetry is thought by many people to be very funny.
Nash was born in Rye, New York on August 19, 1902.
In 1932, he joined the staff of The New Yorker.
He died of Crohn 's disease on May 19, 1971 in Baltimore, Maryland.
An octahedron is a polyhedron (a 3D shape) with eight sides, which are all equilateral triangles, four of which meet at each corner.
It has 12 edges and 6 corners.
It is one of the 5 Platonic solids.
Simply put, this is two rectangular pyramids put together.
A rectangular pyramid is a pyramid with the base of a square or rectangle.
In other words, this is just a pyramid that, when flipped to stand on its point (like a spinning top) it has a rectangular from a birds eye view.
Octahedral shapes also occur in nature: The crystals of Diamond, alum, and fluorite have this shape.
Certain dice also have this shape.
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare around 1603.
It was first performed on 1 November 1604 at Whitehall Palace in London.
More recently, Othello was shown on Masterpiece Theater on PBS.
At the start of the play Othello, a general in the army, promotes Cassio to lieutenant.
Iago, his ensign, is angry and jealous, so he plots against Cassio by making him look bad and making Othello uncertain about keeping him as his lieutenant.
Some of the things he does are to get him drunk and have a fight with someone else from the army.
He also tells Othello that his wife, Desdemona, is cheating on him with Cassio.
Cassio is demoted and Iago is promoted to lieutenant.
Othello kills Desdemona and is then told by Iago 's wife, Emilia, that Iago plotted against him.
He goes after Iago, and injures him but does not kill him.
He then kills himself next to his wife after telling Emilia to say sorry to Cassio for what he has done.
Osteoporosis is the weakening of bones in the body.
It is caused by lack of calcium deposited in the bones.
This lack of calcium causes the bones to become brittle.
They break easily.
Side effects include limping.
Some symptoms late in the disease include pain in the bones, living in a wheelchair, and lower back pain due to spinal bone fractures.
It is more likely for a woman to get osteoporosis than a man.
Elderly people are more likely to develop osteoporosis than younger people.
The amount of calcium in the bones decreases as a person gets older.
There are three kinds of osteoporosis.
There is no cure for osteoporosis.
A person can keep it from happening by taking the right amount of calcium each day.
75 million people in the United States, Japan, and Europe have osteoporosis.
30 million people in the US have poor bone density.
Vitamin D, calcium, and exercise are the three main things for healthy bones.
Consuming too much alcohol and caffeine can cause an increase in the risk of weak bones.
Too much salt increases the amount of calcium lost in urine.
This is bad because calcium makes bones strong.
People should not take iron and calcium supplements at the same time.
This is because calcium competes with the absorption of minerals such as iron.
The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist attack on April 19, 1995 on the U.S. government in which the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was bombed by Timothy McVeigh.
The bombing destroyed the building.
The attack killed 168 people and left over 800 people injured.
Until the September 11, 2001 attacks, it was the deadliest act of terrorism in the United States.
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden '; 10 March 1957 2 May 2011) was the founder of al-Qaeda, the Sunni militant islamist organization, that claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the United States, along with numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets.
He was a Saudi Arabian, a member of the wealthy bin Laden family, and an ethnic Yemeni Kindite.
He was born in the bin Laden family to billionaire Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden in Saudi Arabia.
He studied there in college until 1979, when he joined the mujahideen forces in Pakistan against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
He helped to fund the mujahideen by funneling arms, money and fighters from the Arab world into Afghanistan, also gaining popularity from many Arabs.
In 1988, he formed al-Qaeda.
He was banished from Saudi Arabia in 1992, and shifted his base to Sudan, until US pressure forced him to leave Sudan in 1996.
After establishing a new base in Afghanistan, he declared a war against the United States, initiating a series of bombings and related attacks.
Bin Laden was on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation 's (FBI) lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.
From 2001 to 2011, bin Laden was a major target of the War on Terror, as the FBI placed a $ 25 million reward on him in their search for him.
On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by members of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group and Central Intelligence Agency operatives in a covert operation ordered by U.S. President Barack Obama.
Bin Laden probably believed that the restoration of Sharia law would set things right in the Muslim world, and that all other ideologies "pan-Arabism, socialism, communism, democracy" must be opposed.
These beliefs, along with violent expansive jihad, have sometimes been called Qutbism.
He believed Afghanistan under the rule of Mullah Omar 's Taliban was "the only Islamic country" in the Muslim world.
Bin Laden had consistently talked about his belief in the need for violent jihad to make right what he believed are injustices against Muslims perpetrated by the United States and sometimes by other non-Muslim states, the need to eliminate the state of Israel, and the necessity of forcing the US to withdraw from the Middle East.
He had also called on Americans to "reject the immoral acts of fornication and homosexuality, intoxicants (e.g. alcohol), gambling, and usury" in an October 2002 letter.
One of Bin Laden 's most infamous beliefs was that civilians, including women and children, are legitimate targets of jihad.
Bin Laden was antisemitic, and had delivered warnings against alleged Jewish conspiracies: "These Jews are masters of usury and leaders in treachery.
They will leave you nothing, either in this world or the next".
Shia Muslims have been listed along with "Heretics,... America and Israel," as the four principal "enemies of Islam" at the ideology classes of bin Laden 's Al-Qaeda organization.
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In keeping with Wahhabi beliefs (the Saudi type of Islam), bin Laden opposed music on religious grounds, p167 and his attitude towards technology was mixed.
He was interested in "earth-moving machinery and genetic engineering of plants" on the one hand, but rejected "chilled water" on the other.
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His viewpoints and methods of achieving them led to him been designated as a terrorist by scholars, journalists from the New York Times, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Qatari news station Al Jazeera, analysts such as Peter Bergen, Michael Scheuer, Marc Sageman, and Bruce Hoffman and he was indicted on terrorism charges by law enforcement agencies in Madrid, New York City, and Tripoli.
He stayed in hiding until he was killed by the United States in Pakistan, in May 2011.
Osama bin Laden 's name can be transliterated in several ways.
Us mah bin Muhammad bin ` Awad bin L din (Arabic:), shortened to Usama bin Laden (-RRB-.
The form used here, Osama bin Laden, is used by most English-language mass media.
This includes CNN and the BBC.
The FBI and Fox News use Usama bin Laden.
Often the name is abbreviated to UBL.
The bin Laden family (or "Binladin," as they like to be called) usually use the name as a surname in the Western style.
The family company is known as the Binladin Brothers for Contracting and Industry.
It is one of the largest corporations in Saudi Arabia.
Bin Laden had many aliases and nicknames, such as "the Prince", "the Emir", "Abu Abdallah", "Mujahid Shayekh", and "the Director".
Bin Laden was first married at the age of 17 to a Syrian cousin.
Her name was Najwa Ghanem.
She was probably two years younger than he.
They had 11 children.
Najwa left bin Laden just before 9\/11.
He was married to Khadijah (1983 1995, divorced).
His next wife was Khairiah (1985 2011, his death).
His fourth wife was Siham (1987 2011, his death).
He was married to unknown woman in 1996 but the marriage was annulled with a few days.
His last wife was Amal (2000 2011, his death).
There were a total of nine children from these later marriages, making 20 in all.
U.S. President Barack Obama launched a mission, "Operation Neptune Spear", where United States Special Operation forces raided bin Laden 's hideout compound.
On the night of 2 May 2011 (Pakistani time; 1 May 2011 U.S. time), bin Laden was killed by bullets to the chest and head.
His body was buried at sea later that day so there would be no grave.
Ophiuchus (: say it ` Ofi-youkus '), is one of the 88 listed constellations.
In Latin, it means "serpent-holder".
It is near the celestial equator, and northwest of the center of the Milky Way.
Ophiuchus is on the ecliptic, but is generally not considered to be in the zodiac.
Owain Glynd r, (also known as Owain Glyn D r and Owen Glendower), (c. 1355 c. 1415) was the last person born in Wales to be Prince of Wales.
He was prince between 1401 and 1416.
He started the Welsh Revolt against Henry IV of England 's rule of Wales.
In the late 19th century the Young Wales (Cymru Fydd) movement decided that he was the father of Welsh nationalism.
Since then he has been seen as a hero by the Welsh.
There is a university in Wales that is called Glynd r University after him.
Glynd r was born into an Anglo-Welsh family in about 1355.
His family were reasonably rich and had large properties in the north east of Wales.
He was educated in England, and later joined the English army.
He took part in an attack on Scotland, and then later went back to Wales.
After Richard II was overthrown by Henry IV there was a period of confusion, and Reginald Grey, 3rd Baron Grey de Ruthyn took the opportunity to take some of Glynd r 's lands.
Grey was a supporter of Henry IV, while Glynd r had supported Richard II.
Glynd r sought help from Henry IV to deal with his land being taken, but Henry refused to take action against his supporters.
Glynd r also failed to supply soldiers to the king for another attack on Scotland.
Grey called him a traitor.
Glynd r decided to take action against Henry IV.
He gave himself the title of Prince of Wales in September 1400, and began a series of attacks against Grey and towns along the borders with England.
Henry IV sent his army to Wales to fight Glynd r and regain control, but it had the opposite effect.
It became a widespread rebellion against England.
In April 1401 Glynd r 's army captured Conwy Castle.
The next year, at the Battle of Bryn Glas, also known as the Battle of Pillethl, Glynd r defeated the English army, and captured its leader, Edmund Mortimer.
By 1404 a French army had landed, and together with the Welsh army they attacked Worcester.
By 1408 the English forces were able to defeat the Welsh, and support for the rebellion collapsed.
Glynd r still kept up attacks and raids on the English, but this was more of a guerrilla campaign than a full scale revolt.
The last mention of Glynd r is when the English offered terms if he surrendered in 1416.
It is believed that he was already dead.
Owain married Margaret Hanmer.
Her father was Sir David Hanmer.
Margaret had five sons and four daughters with Owain.
These children were:
All of Owain 's sons either died while fighting in war, taken prisoner and died as prisoners, or died with no children of their own.
Owain also had children from other women who were not his wife.
They were named: David, Gwenllian, Ieuan, and Myfanwy.
After Owain died, most people did not care if the English people ruled the country anymore.
During the time of the Tudor 's, men from Wales, called Welshmen, started to become more famous in English society.
Many people forgot about how important Owain was until the 1800 's, when people started to celebrate his life.
The "Young Wales" group made him the symbol of Welsh nationalism.
Things that were owned by Owain were found in the National Library of France during this time period.
They found his "Great Seal" and letters he had written to French people.
A statue of him was made and put at Cardiff City Hall during World War I. Postcards were sold Owain on them.
The postcards were sold to make money to help soldiers who were injured in war.
In 1808, the Royal Navy named a Fifth-rate frigate after Owain.
It was called the HMS Owen Glendower.
The boat served in the Gunboat War.
It helped take over island of Anholt.
During the years 1822 and 1824, the boat was in the West Africa Squadron, where it chased slave ships.
It captured two ships.
Nationally, Owain is as famous as King Arthur.
Organizations use his name and drawings of him as their symbols to celebrate Wales as a country and Welsh culture.
In the 1980s, a group of people called "Meibion Glynd r" burned down vacation homes owned by English people.
They used Owain as their logo.
In the year 2000, parties were held across Wales to celebrate the 600th anniversary of Owain 's revolt.
In 1974 and 2008, stamps were made with Owain on them.
There is an award that is given every year for arts and writing called the Glynd r Award.
The band Manic Street Preachers wrote a song about Owain in 2007 called "1404".
There are many statues throughout Wales of Owain.
There is a building at the University of Cape Town, called Glendower Residence, that is named after Owain.
It used to be a hotel, and is now where students live.
Octans is the southernmost constellation.
It represents a tool that a sailor would use to find his position using the position of the stars; the octant.
Octans contains the southernmost star above Magnitude 6, Octantis, which can not be seen easily.
Okinawa Prefecture is traditionally a prefecture in the Ky sh region of Japan.
Okinawa Prefecture is made up of islands which are southwest of the island of Kyushu.
Recent government proposals recognize the prefecture as its own region.
The capital city is Naha which is on the island of Okinawa.
Okinawa is a grouping of many islands along the border at the edge of the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean from Ky sh to Taiwan.
It is the southernmost prefecture in Japan.
Okinawa Prefecture has eleven cities.
Okinawan names are in parentheses.
These are the towns and villages in each district.
National Parks are established in about 19 % of the total land area of the prefecture.
Naminoueg was the chief Shinto shrine (ichinomiya) of the Ryukyu Islands.
In 1890, the shrine was recognized in the system of State Shinto.
It is among the ranked, nationally significant shrines or Kanpei-sh sha which includes five sanctuaries.
Olive oil is a vegetable oil.
It is made by getting the juice of the fruits of the olive tree.
These are called olives.
The oil is used in cooking, as well as cosmetics, traditional medicine, and as a fuel for oil lamps.
Olive oil quality is defined by some parameters that are measured by chemical analysis.
One of the most important is acidity.
The highest quality olive oil (Extra-Virgin) must feature an acidity lower than 0.8 %.
People see it as a healthy addition to their diet because of the high level of unsaturated fats (mainly oleic acid) and polyphenols.
Olive oil is popular in Mediterranean countries.
Spain has more than a third of a the world 's olive trees, and is the top producer of olive oil in the world.
Optics is the science of light and how it interacts with the world around us.
Optics explains how rainbows exist, how light reflects off mirrors, how light refracts through glass or water, and what splits light shining through a prism.
In addition to visible light in the standard "spectrum" of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet, optics also deals with invisible parts of the whole electromagnetic spectrum of which visible light is but a small part.
Optics is both a science and an area of engineering.
It has been used to make many useful things, including eyeglasses, cameras, telescopes, and microscopes.
Many of these things are based on lenses, which focus light and can make images of things that are bigger or smaller than the original.
While optics is an old science, new things are still being discovered in it.
Scientists have learned how to make light travel through a thin optical fiber made of glass or plastic.
Light can go long distances in a fiber.
Fibers are used to carry phone calls and the Internet between cities.
Occult refers to an area of knowledge or thought that is hidden.
The word occult has many uses in the English language.
Often it means knowledge that lies outside the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.
The term sometimes means knowledge meant only for certain people or knowledge that must be kept hidden.
For most occultists it is the study of a deeper spiritual reality.
The term occult is also used as a label given to a number of magical organizations or orders, and the teachings and practices as taught by them.
The name also extends to a large body of literature and spiritual philosophy.
Occultism is the study of occult.
It can involve such subjects as magic (alternatively spelled and defined as magick), extra-sensory perception, astrology, spiritualism, numerology and lucid dreaming.
There is often a strong religious element to these studies and beliefs, and many occultists profess adherence to religions such as Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Satanism, Thelema, and Neopaganism.
While Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam are generally not considered as occult, some of their modern interpretations can be, such as the interpretation of Hinduism within Theosophy or the various occult interpretations of the Jewish Kabbalah.
Alchemy, is considered an occult practice.
Alchemy used to be common among scientists, such as Isaac Newton.
During the Age of Enlightenment alchemy and science went their separate ways.
Newton was accused of introducing occult agencies into natural science when he proposed that gravity was a force capable of acting over vast distances.
Oklahoma is a state that is in the southern part of the Central United States.
It had a population of about 3,751,351 people in 2010.
The state has a land area of about 68667 s. Oklahoma is the 28th largest state by population and the 20th largest state by area.
The name of the state comes from the Choctaw words okla and humma.
It means "Red People".
It is also known by its nickname, The Sooner State.
The state was formed from Indian Territory on November 16, 1907.
It was the 46th state to become part of the United States.
The people who live in the state are known as Oklahomans or Okies.
The state 's capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.
In the past, Oklahoma was used as a path for cattle drives, a place for southern settlers, and a government-made territory for Native Americans.
The state is a large producer of natural gas, oil and food.
It has large industries in aviation, energy, telecommunications, and biotechnology.
The state has one of the fastest growing economies in the nation.
Between 2005 and 2006, it had the third highest percentage of income growth and the highest percentage in gross domestic product growth.
Oklahoma City and Tulsa are the main economic areas of Oklahoma.
Almost 60 percent of Oklahomans live in these two metropolitan statistical areas.
Oklahoma has small mountain ranges, prairies, and eastern forests.
Most of Oklahoma is in the Great Plains.
It is regularly hit by severe weather.
The cultural heritage of Oklahoma is made from by a population descending from many cultures.
These include German, Irish, British and Native American people.
There are more than 25 Native American languages are spoken in Oklahoma, more than in any other state.
Many people in Oklahoma believe in evangelical Christianity.
The state is part of the Bible Belt.
Oklahoma is one of the most politically conservative states, but voter registration is largest for the Democratic Party.
Oklahoma has only been a state for a little over a century, but its history is much longer.
Arrow heads from the Clovis culture, native Americans who traveled through Oklahoma have been found near the city Anadarko.
These arrow heads are about 11,000 years old.
The Spiro Mound Building Indians were the state 's first permanent settlers.
In 1541 the Spanish explorer Coranado traveled through Oklahoma while in search of the Lost City of Gold.
During the 1830s, the Five Civilized Tribes were forced to move from the southeastern United States to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) on the Trail of Tears.
During the American Civil War (1861 1865), several Indian tribes sided with the Confederacy.
The tribes owned slaves.
They agreed with the ideas of the states that seceded from the United States.
Also, the tribes were not happy that the federal government did not do what it told them it would do.
Not all the tribes sided with the Confederacy.
Some tribes had taken control of several forts.
This caused much of the Indian Territory to be under Confederate control, but Oklahoma did not become a Confederate state.
The Battle of Honey Springs near Fort Gibson on July 17, 1863 was won by the Union forces.
This ended the Confederate control of Indian Territory.
On April 22, 1890, the western part of the state was opened to almost 50,000 settlers for the Oklahoma Land Run.
During this land run Oklahoma got its nickname, "The Sooner State".
The nickname came from the settlers who crossed the territory 's borders before the land was opened by the government.
A year later, the western part of the territory was turned into Oklahoma territory.
The northeastern part, which was home to the Five Civilized Tribes, stayed under the control of the tribes.
On November 16, 1907, the western and eastern territories joined together.
They became the 46th state of the United States.
The newly formed state became an important place for the oil industry.
The oil pools in the area caused the population of towns to grow very quickly.
Tulsa became known as the "Oil Capital of the World" for most of the 20th century.
The oil was a large part of the state 's early economy.
In 1927, Tulsa businessman Cyrus Avery, known as the "Father of Route 66", began a movement to make U.S. Route 66.
Avery used section of highway that was already built between Tulsa and Amarillo, Texas to make the original portion of Highway 66.
He was the main person responsible for making the U.S. Highway 66 Association to watch over the building of Route 66.
During the 1930s, northwestern Oklahoma went through a period of time called the Dust Bowl.
The area had little rainfall and high temperatures.
This caused thousands of farmers to go into poverty and forced them to move to other parts of the United States.
From 1930 to 1950, the state saw its only loss in population.
It lost 6.9 percent of the people who lived there.
Because of the Dust Bowl, the state made hundreds of reservoirs and man-made lakes.
By the 1960s, more than 200 man-made lakes had been made.
This is the most in the United States.
The song Oklahoma!
was made the official song of the state in 1953.
The song comes from the 1943 Broadway musical play Oklahoma!.
The story is set in Oklahoma Territory in 1906 just before Oklahoma became a state.
On April 19, 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed by Timothy McVeigh.
168 people were killed in the bombing.
This was the worst terrorism attack in the United States before the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001.
McVeigh and his partner, Terry Nichols, were both convicted of the bombing.
Some people think other people were involved.
McVeigh was later sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001.
His partner, Nichols, was convicted of 161 counts of first degree murder.
Nichols is spending the rest of his life in prison without the chance of being released.
The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw phrase okla humma.
This means red (humma) people (okla).
Choctaw Chief Allen Wright gave it that name in 1866 during treaty talks with the federal government about the use of Indian Territory.
He dreamed of an all-Indian state with power held by the United States Superintendent of Indian Affairs.
Okla humma was a phrase in the Choctaw language that meant the same as the English word Indian.
It was used to describe the Native American people all together.
Oklahoma later became the de facto name for Oklahoma Territory.
It was officially accepted in 1890, two years after the area was opened to white settlers.
Oklahoma is the 20th-largest state in the United States.
It covers an area of 69899 s (68603 s are land and 1296 s are water).
The state is shaped like a pan with a long, thin section on the west side.
This section, known as the Panhandle, is 165 m from west to east, and 34 m from north to south.
It is one of six states on the Frontier Strip.
The state is partly in the Great Plains near the center of the 48 continental states.
The highest point in the state is the Black Mesa, in the Panhandle at 4973 f. The lowest point is Little River east of Idabel in the southeast part of the state at 289 f above sea level.
There are four mountain ranges in Oklahoma.
They are the Ouachita, Arbuckle, Wichita and Kiamichi ranges.
All of the ranges are in the southern part of the state.
Forests make up about 24 percent of the state.
The state is also known for having more man-made lakes than any other state in the country.
These lakes cover more than 1000000 a with water.
By the start of the 21st century, conservative Republicans are the growing force in Oklahoma, but Democrats are still a major factor in statewide politics.
In 2006, the incumbent Democrat governor won re-election by 66 % over a former Republican Congressman.
Despite the landslide victory for the Democrats, the Republicans gained two seats in the State Senate, making a 24 Democrat, 24 Republican tie in the senate, and increased their lead in the house of 57-44.
Oklahoma is in a temperate area of the country.
The state sometimes sees extreme temperatures and rain that is commonly found in a continental climate.
All of the state frequently has temperatures above 100 F or below 0 F.
It snows in Oklahoma.
In the northwest near the Colorado border, the area can get nearly 30 i in snowfall during the winter.
The southeastern part of the state usually gets less than 2 i in snowfall.
Most of the state is in an area known as Tornado Alley.
This is because there is a lot of contact between cold and warm air masses which makes severe weather.
Oklahoma has an average of 54 tornadoes each year.
This is one of the highest rates in the world.
The state is home to the National Storm Prediction Center of the National Weather Service, in Norman.
Oklahoma had 549 populated places in 2006.
It had three cities over 100,000 in population and 40 over 10,000.
Two of the fifty largest cities in the United States are in Oklahoma.
They are Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
More than half of Oklahomans (58 %) live in the two cities.
Oklahoma City is the state 's capital and largest city.
It had 1,269,907 people living inside its metropolitan area in 2008.
Tulsa, the second largest city, had a metropolitan area population of 905,755.
Between 2005 and 2006, the Tulsa suburbs of Jenks, Bixby, and Owasso had the biggest population growth in the state.
The population of Jenks grew by 47.9 %, Bixby grew by 44.56 %, and Owasso grew by 34.31 %.
Oklahoma 's largest cities in 2007 were: Oklahoma City (547,274), Tulsa (384,037), Norman (106,707), Lawton (91,568), Broken Arrow (90,714), Edmond (78,226), Midwest City (55,935), and Moore (51,106).
Seven of the state 's ten largest cities are in the metropolitan areas of Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
Only Lawton has a metropolitan area of its own.
Oklahoma law says that populated areas are divided into two groups.
Cities are areas with more than 1,000 people.
Towns have fewer than 1,000 people.
Both have legislative, judicial, and public power inside their populated areas.
Cities can choose between a mayor-council, council-manager, or strong mayor form of government.
Towns are run through an elected officer system.
Oklahoma has minor league sports teams in basketball, football, arena football, baseball, soccer, and ice hockey.
These teams are in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Enid and Lawton.
Tulsa is home to the Tulsa 66ers.
They are part the NBA Development League.
The Tulsa Revolution, playing in the American Indoor Soccer League, is also in Tulsa.
The NBA 's New Orleans Hornets became the first major league sports team to play in Oklahoma.
This happened after the team was forced to move to the Ford Center in Oklahoma City for two seasons after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In July 2008, the Seattle SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City.
They play their home games at the Ford Center under the new team name, Oklahoma City Thunder.
They are the state 's first permanent major league team.
Oklahoma 's state symbols are recognized by state law.
The Oklahoma Senate or House of Representatives may add others for special events and to help organizations.
Oxbridge is a word that is used to mean the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in England.
It used to mean a fictional mix of the two universities, but now refers to both in real life.
The competition between Oxford and Cambridge also has a long history, dating back to the days when Cambridge was founded by unsatisfied scholars from Oxford.
OpenGL is a programming interface for 3D graphics which helps computer programmers make their 3D graphics perform better and faster by running parts of their programs on a video card (GPU) rather than just the central processor (CPU).
Programming interfaces like OpenGL are usually called an "API," which stands for "Application Programming Interface".
OpenGL is often compared to Direct3D, an API for 3D graphics on Windows.
Programming for Direct3D is different in some ways because the APIs use different naming schemes for talking to a computer 's graphics driver, which means that programmers need to write different code for OpenGL and Direct3D to do the same things.
OpenGL is owned by the Khronos Group, and is an example of open source software.
This means that all of OpenGL 's programming, and the explanations for how the programming all works, can be viewed, copied, revised, and re-released by anyone.
Orbit is also a word for an eye socket.
An orbit is the path that an object takes in space when it goes around a star, a planet, or a moon.
It can also be used as a verb.
For instance: The earth orbits around the Sun.
The word revolves has the same meaning, but ` rotates ' is the spin of the object.
Many years ago, people thought that the Sun orbits in a circle around the earth.
Every morning the Sun came up in the east and went down in the west.
It just seemed to make sense that it was going around the earth.
But now, thanks to people like Copernicus and Galileo Galilei, we know that the Sun is the center of the Solar System, and the earth orbits around it.
Isaac Newton discovered that gravity controls the orbit of the planets and moons.
Since a satellite is an object in space that revolves around another object, the earth is a satellite of the sun, just like the moon is a satellite of the Earth!
The sun has lots of satellites orbiting around it, like the planets, and thousands of asteroids, comets, and meteoroids.
The Earth just has one natural satellite (the Moon), but there are many artificial satellites orbiting the earth.
When people first began to think about orbits, they thought that all orbits had to be perfect circles, and they thought that the circle was a "perfect" shape.
But when people began to study the motions of planets carefully, they saw that the planets were not moving in perfect circles.
Some of the planets have orbits that are almost perfect circles, and others have orbits that are more oblong (egg shaped).
An orbital period is the time that it takes for one object - that is, satellite - to orbit around another object.
For instance, the Earth 's orbital period is one year: 365.25 days.
(The extra".25" is why we have a leap day once every four years).
The Moon takes 27 days (29.53 days as seen from Earth) to go around the Earth and also to rotate around its own axis.
This is why only one side always faces the Earth and the "dark side of the Moon" faces away (it is called dark because we can not see it, though all sides of the moon get equal light).
One lunar year and one lunar day take the same amount of time.
Johannes Kepler (lived 1571-1630) wrote mathematical "laws of planetary motion", which gave a good idea of the movements of the planets because he found that the orbits of the planets in our Solar System are not really circles, but are really ellipses (a shape like a "flattened circle").
That is why orbits are described as elliptical.
The more elliptical an orbit is, the more eccentric the orbit is.
This is called orbital eccentricity.
Isaac Newton (lived 1642-1727) used his own ideas about gravity to show why Kepler 's laws worked the way they did.
O Canada is the national anthem of Canada.
Calixa Lavall e wrote the music; Adolphe-Basile Routhier wrote the words in French.
It was first sung in French in 1880.
Robert Stanley Weir wrote English words for the song in 1908.
It was sung as the national anthem for many years before the government made it official in 1980.
O Canada!
Our home and native land, True patriot love in all thy sons command!
With glowing hearts we see thee rise The True North strong and free, From far and wide, O Canada, We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee; O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
("Canada, our home and the country where we were born, you make all your people truly love you!
With joy we watch you get better and better.
You are the True North, strong and free.
Our citizens come from all over the earth and we watch over you to keep you safe.
God, please keep our land good and free!
O Canada, we watch over you to keep you safe.")
Here are the words in French.
The words in French and English do not mean the same thing.
Canada!
Terre de nos a eux, Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux!
Car ton bras sait porter l' p e, Il sait porter la croix!
Ton histoire est une pop e Des plus brillants exploits.
Et ta valeur de foi tremp e Prot gera nos foyers et nos droits; Prot gera nos foyers et nos droits.
("Canada, land of our parents and grandparents, you wear a crown of beautiful flowers!
You can carry a sword, and you can carry a cross (for Christianity); your whole history is full of the great things you have done.
You are brave and faithful, and this will protect our homes and our rights.")
VANOC has trademarked "with glowing hearts" and "Des plus brillants exploits" as the slogan of 2010 Winter Olympics and they say that they will file a lawsuit if someone sang those lines.
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio.
It was the first college in the United States to accept African-American students as well as female students.
It is also known for the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
Oberlin is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Five Colleges of Ohio consortium.
Oberlin College and the town of Oberlin were started together in 1833.
In 1837, the college began a program of coeducation; admitting female students.
In 1835, the college began a policy of interracial education.
The Board of Trustees voted to allow black students at a time when there was only one black person living in the county.
The first black student was a former slave, James Bradley from Cincinnati.
The first building was Tappan Hall, named for Arthur Tappan of New York City.
It was both a dormitory and classroom.
In 1903 Memorial Arch was constructed.
It was to honor those from Oberlin college who were killed in the Boxer Rebellion in China.
In 1865, Oberlin started its music program.
A music conservatory is on the college campus.
Students benefit from over 500 performances yearly, most free of charge, with concerts and recitals almost daily.
The Conservatory was one of the recipients of the 2009 National Medal of Arts.
The Allen Memorial Art Museum is on the college campus.
It holds an art collection showing the history of Art that has 12,000 pieces.
It also has a unique art rental program.
At the beginning of every semester, students camp out in front of the north gate to get first pick of artwork by artists including Renoir, Dal, and Picasso.
Oliver Laurence North (born October 7, 1943) or Ollie North is a retired United States Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel, political commentator, television host, military historian, and New York Times best-selling author.
He is currently the host of War Stories with Oliver North on Fox News Channel.
North was at the center of national attention during the Iran Contra affair, a political scandal in the late 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Some people say North took the blame and punishment rather than Reagan.
North was born on October 7, 1943 in San Antonio, Texas.
North grew up in Philmont, New York.
He studied at State University of New York at Brockport.
He has been married to Betsy Stuart since 1987.
Odense is the third largest city in Denmark with about 146,000 inhabitants and the capital of the island of Funen (Danish: Fyn).
It was started in 988 A.D. and was sometimes the seat of the parliament.
In 1805, it became capital of the island Funen.
Ogg is a free, open standard format for music, video and other multimedia.
It is run by the Xiph.Org Foundation.
The Ogg format is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient Internet streaming and for editing of high quality digital multimedia.
Recently a big library on the internet, the Internet Archive, announced that they are going to convert many videos and other multimedia to the Ogg format as well as other formats like the proprietary Adobe Flash flv format.
Orthodox Judaism is a form of Judaism that interprets the teachings and scriptures in a stricter way than the rest of Judaism.
Its followers often see the Talmud and its texts as given by God, as divine.
As of 2001, Orthodox Jews and Jews affiliated with an Orthodox synagogue, accounted for approximately 50 % of Anglo Jewry (150,000), 25 % of Israeli Jewry (1,500,000) and 13 % of American Jewry (529,000).
(Among those affiliated to a synagogue body, Orthodox Jews represent 70 % of British Jewry and 27 % of American Jewry).
Oscar Emmanuel Peterson (August 15, 1925 December 23, 2007) was a Canadian jazz pianist.
Peterson won seven Grammy Awards and was put into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1978.
His career lasted for more than 65 years.
He was born in Montreal, where his father taught him to play the piano.
While at high school he had lessons with a Hungarian classical pianist, Paul de Marky.
Orienteering is a sport where people run around a place with instructions on a map.
There are lots of types of orienteering and the one that most people so is called Foot Orienteering.
In orienteering people use a special map which shows where they have to go.
People are timed and the person who is quickest wins.
The word Orienteeting comes from orientering, which is a word that comes from Sweden
Orienteering is developed by International Orienteering Federation (IOF).
Orienteering started in Sweden.
It was meant to get people in the army to get ready for war.
The first time when lots of people did orienteering at the same time was when 220 people went orienteering in a place near Stockholm.
About sixty years ago, people started orienteering in Europe, Asia, North America, Australia, and New Zealand and in 1967 a group of people started to meet up in the United States of America to make an orienteering club.
There are now orienteering groups for 67 countries.
Foot-Orienteering is one of orienteering types.
For moving on distance sportsmen can use only his own feet.
IOF organizes World Orienteering Championships (WOC) every year and European Orienteering Championships one time every two years.
The first WOC was held in 1966 in Finland.
Only 10 nations took part in the first WOC.
In the year 1996 some people decided to start to try to have orienteering as a sport in the Olympic games.
It has yet to become a sport in the Olympics
Orienteering is also done as a life skill.
It is used in training of many countries ' armed forces.
Often, soldiers have to do orienteering courses at night or in the rain.
Orienteering is also part of Scoutcraft in many branches of Scouting.
Many Scouting groups require learning orienteering to make higher ranks.
Something that oscillates is something that "vibrates", or repeats the same pattern.
Many things in nature move back-and-forth or up-and down when pushed or struck.
In time, natural oscillators slow down and stop because of friction.
The Oakland Athletics, also known as the Oakland A 's, are a professional Major League Baseball team based in Oakland, California.
The Athletics are a member of the Western Division of the American League.
From to today, the Athletics have played in Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.
The Athletics were an original member of the American League in 1901, playing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The name "Athletics" had been used by several other Philadelphia teams dating back to the 1860s.
Most of the various "Athletics" teams wore a Gothic or Old English letter "A" on their uniforms.
The current Athletics still often wear that old-style "A" or "A 's" on their uniforms.
The old Athletics were very successful, winning several World Series championships.
By the early 1950s, they were not playing well and the fans were no longer supporting them.
So after over 50 years in Philadelphia, the Athletics moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1955.
They were not very successful there, either.
They moved again, to Oakland, in 1968.
As the Oakland A 's, they have won several World Series.
Organometallic chemistry is the study of chemical compounds containing bonds between carbon and a metal.
It combines aspects of inorganic chemistry (the study of non-carbon bonds) and organic chemistry (the study of carbon bonds).
Examples of organometallic compounds are tetraethyllead; it was used as a fuel (leaded gasoline) additive in the past.
Also Methylcobalamin (Vitamin B12) is a common organometallic compound.
Organometallic compounds are compounds that have chemical bonds between an one or more metal atoms and one or more carbon atoms of an organyl group (an organic ligand).
They have the prefix "organo -" (for example, organopalladium compounds).
Organometallic compounds include subgroups like the metalloproteins such as hemoglobin.
The term "metalorganics" usually refers to metal-containing compounds lacking direct metal-carbon bonds but which contain organic ligands which bind them to an organic compound.
Metal beta-diketonates, alkoxides, and dialkylamides are members of this class.
In addition to the traditional metals, elements such as boron, silicon, arsenic, and selenium form organometallic compounds.
Many complexes have coordination bonds between a metal and organic ligands.
The organic ligands often bind the metal through a heteroatom such as oxygen or nitrogen, in which case such compounds are called "coordination compounds".
Many organic coordination compounds occur in nature.
For example, hemoglobin and myoglobin contain an iron center coordinated to the nitrogen atoms of a porphyrin ring; magnesium is the center of a chlorin ring in chlorophyll.
The field of such inorganic compounds is known as bioinorganic chemistry.
However, methylcobalamin (a form of Vitamin B12), with a cobalt-methyl bond, is a true organometallic complex, one of the few known in biology.
The metal-carbon bond in organometallic compounds is half way between being ionic and covalent.
Organometallic compounds with bonds that have characters in between ionic and covalent are very important in industry.
They are both relatively stable in solutions but ionic enough to undergo reactions.
Two important classes are organolithium and Grignard reagents.
Organometallics find practical uses in stoichiometric and catalytic processes, especially processes involving carbon monoxide and alkene-derived polymers.
All the world 's polyethylene and polypropylene are produced with organometallic catalysts.
Acetic acid is produced using metal carbonyl catalysts in the Monsanto process and Cativa process.
The bulk of the synthetic alcohols, at least those larger than ethanol, are produced by hydrogenation of hydroformylation-derived aldehydes.
Similarly, the Wacker process is used in the oxidation of ethylene to acetaldehyde.
Organomettalic are highly basic and highly reducing.
They catalyze many polymerization reactions.
They are also useful stoichiometrically.
Organometallic compounds may be found in the environment.
Environmentalists worry about organo-lead and organo-mercury compounds.
They are toxic hazards.
Research is currently underway using organometallic catalysis.
The energy crisis has initiated increased interest in more efficient ways of working with the remaining fossil fuels we have left.
While many agree that lowering oil dependence is safer for the environment as well as politically wise.
The new interest in green technologies has also helped increase research.
Many examples of organometallic research can be found in the petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries.
Some current methods of chemical production are wasteful and produce toxic waste, while many organometallic catalysts show promise to change that.
Louis Claude Cadet synthesized methyl arsenic compounds related to cacodyl.
William Christopher Zeise made platinum-ethylene complex.
Edward Frankland discovered dimethyl zinc.
Ludwig Mond discovered Ni (CO) 4.
Victor Grignard worked with organomagnesium compounds.
The abundant and diverse products from coal and petroleum led to Ziegler-Natta, Fischer-Tropsch, hydroformylation catalysis which employ CO, H2, and alkenes as feedstocks and ligands.
Years ago, Tetraethyllead was added to gasoline as an antiknock agent.
Because lead is toxic, it is no longer used in gasoline.
Instead, other organometallic compounds such as ferrocene and methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT) are now added to gasoline to prevent knocking.
The 1973 Nobel Prizes to Ernst Fischer and Geoffrey Wilkinson for work on metallocenes made organometallic chemistry more popular.
In 2005, Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs and Richard R. Schrock shared the Nobel Prize for metal-catalyzed olefin metathesis.
An onomatopoeia is a word that sounds like the thing it means.
Odysseus was a person in the Greek mythology.
He was the king of the island Ithaca, and was married to Penelope.
Odysseus and Penelope had a son called Telemachos.
Odysseus is a major character in Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey.
Odysseus fought in the Trojan War, and invented the Trojan Horse, which helped the Greeks win the war.
After the war, his adventurous journey home took the time of 10 years.
The story of that journey is told in the Odyssey.
The Latin name for Odysseus is Ulysses.
The ostrich (Struthio camelus) is a large flightless bird that lives in Africa.
They are the largest living bird species, and have the biggest eggs of all living birds.
Ostriches do not fly, but can run faster than any other bird.
They are ratites, a useful grouping of medium to large flightless birds.
Ostriches have the biggest eyes of all land animals.
Ostriches have long legs and a long neck, but they have a small head.
Male ostriches have black feathers and female ostriches have gray and brown feathers.
Both males and females have white feathers on their wings and tails.
Male ostriches can be 1.8 - 2.7 meters \/ 6 - 9 feet tall, while female ostriches are 1.7 - 2 meters \/ 5.5 - 6.5 ft tall.
They can run with a speed of about 65 kilometers per hour\/40 miles per hour.
Ostriches now only live in Africa.
They live in open grassland called savannas in the Sahel, and in parts of East Africa and south-west Africa.
Some ostriches live in areas of the Sahara desert.
There used to be ostriches in Middle East in the 20th century and, further back, also in Asia.
Humans hunted and ate the ostriches.
They are now extinct in those areas.
Ostriches mainly eat plant matter, but they also eat insects.
The plant matter consists of seeds, shrubs, grass, fruits and flowers while the insects they eat include locusts.
Ostriches do not have teeth, and so can not grind food as mammals do.
Instead, they swallow pebbles.
An adult ostrich carries about 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of stones in its gizzard, a special sac just before the stomach.
The pebbles grind the food, and help its digestion.
When eating, their gullet is filled with food.
After that, the food is passed down their esophagus in the form of a ball called a bolus.
The bolus may be as much as 210 ml (7.1 US fl oz).
Ostriches can live without drinking for several days.
Ostriches normally spend the winter months in pairs or alone.
During breeding season and sometimes during extreme rainless periods Ostriches live in nomadic groups of five to 50 birds (led by a top hen) that often travel together with other grazing animals, such as zebras or antelopes.
With their acute eyesight and hearing, Ostriches can sense predators such as lions from far away.
When being pursued by a predator, they have been known to reach speeds in excess of 70 k, and can maintain a steady speed of 50 k, which makes the Ostrich the world 's fastest two-legged animal.
When lying down and hiding from predators, the birds lay their heads and necks flat on the ground, making them appear as a mound of earth from a distance.
This even works for the males, as they hold their wings and tail low so that the heat haze of the hot, dry air that often occurs in their habitat aids in making them appear as a nondescript dark lump.
Ostriches can tolerate a wide range of temperatures.
In much of their habitat, temperatures vary as much as 40 C between night and day.
Their temperature control mechanism relies on action by the bird, which uses its wings to cover the naked skin of the upper legs and flanks to conserve heat, or leaves these areas bare to release heat.
Ostriches become sexually mature when they are 2 to 4 years old; females mature about six months earlier than males.
The mating process differs in different regions.
Territorial males hiss and use other sounds to claim mating rights over a harem of two to seven hens.
Fights usually last just minutes, but they can easily cause death through slamming their heads into opponents.
The successful male will then be allowed to breed with all the females in an area, but will only form a pair bond with the dominant female.
The females lay their fertilized eggs in a single communal nest, a simple pit, 30 t deep and 3 m wide, scraped in the ground by the male.
The dominant female lays her eggs first, and when it is time to cover them for incubation she discards extra eggs from the weaker females, leaving about 20 in most cases.
Ostrich eggs are the largest of all eggs (and by extension, the yolk is the largest single cell), though they are actually the smallest eggs relative to the size of the adult bird.
on average they are 15 c long, 13 c wide, and weigh 1.4 k, over 20 times the weight of a chicken egg.
The eggs are incubated by the females by day and by the males by night.
This uses the colouration of the two sexes to escape detection of the nest, as the drab female blends in with the sand, while the black male is nearly undetectable in the night.
The incubation period is 35 to 45 days.
Males and females cooperate in rearing chicks.
The male defends the hatchlings and teaches them to feed.
The survival rate is low for the hatchlings, with an average of one per nest surviving to adulthood.
When threatened, the ostrich will either hide itself by lying flat against the ground, or will run away.
If cornered, it can attack with a kick from its powerful legs.
Common predators of nests and young ostriches include jackals, various birds of prey, mongoose and vultures.
Animals that prey on ostriches of all ages include cheetahs, lions, leopards, african dogs, and spotted hyena.
Ostriches can often outrun their predators in a pursuit and can even outpace cheetahs over long distances.
However, they may sometimes fight fiercely against predators, especially when chicks are being defended.
They have sometimes killed lions in such fights.
There is no doubt that the ratites are not a monophyletic group, because they are not descended from a single ancestor.
That means the taxonomy of the group is going to change, and they will not all be placed in the Order Struthioniformes as they have been.
However, as ornothologists have not yet agreed on a new classification, for the time being the useful term ` ratites ' is still used.
Ostriches are likely to be placed alone in the order Struthioniformes.
They have a number of peculiarities which suggest a separate evolution from the rest of the ratites.
They lack a gallbladder.
They have three stomachs, and the caecum is 71 c long.
Unlike all other living birds, the Ostrich secretes uric acid separately from faeces.
Unlike all other birds, who store the uric acid and faeces together, and excrete them together, ostriches store the faeces at the end of their rectum.
They also have unique pubic bones that are fused to hold their gut.
Unlike most birds the males have a penis, which is retractable and 8 i long.
Their palate (bone on the roof of the mouth) differs from other ratites.
Ostriches are farmed in several countries.
They used to be prized for their feathers, but are now farmed for their meat and eggs.
Their skin can also be used to make leather.
In South Africa, hunters can get one group of feathers from one wild ostrich.
When they are farmed, every seven or eight months farmers can take groups of feathers from the ostriches.
They will grow back and can be collected again a in seven or eight more months.
When threatened, Ostriches run away, but they can cause serious injury and death with kicks from their powerful legs.
Their legs can only kick forward.
Ostriches reared entirely by humans may not direct their courtship behavior at other Ostriches, but toward their human keepers.
Ostriches live 30 to 40 years on average.
It is sometimes said that ostriches will hide their heads in the ground when they are scared, but this is not true.
In some countries, people race each other on the back of Ostriches.
The practice is common in Africa and is relatively unusual elsewhere.
The Ostriches are ridden in the same way as horses with special saddles, reins, and bits.
However, they are harder to manage than horses.
An orgasm is a sexual climax (or high point).
An orgasm happens because of continued sexual touching.
During an orgasm, there is a strong feeling of excitement and pleasure.
Sexual touching may be sexual intercourse, rubbing or squeezing by hand (called masturbation), or other actions that make the sex organs feel good.
During an orgasm, a person 's body sometimes spasms (shakes or trembles), and the person may appear to be in pain or get a strange look on his or her face.
The person 's brain activity changes quickly.
The parts of the brain responsible for fear, worry and self-control become less active.
Many people moan, shout or say strange things during orgasm.
Usually, people 's minds focus almost completely on the pleasure of the orgasm, and become less aware of what is going on around them than usual.
Orgasms may happen when people are asleep.
When men orgasm while sleeping, it is often called a "wet dream".
Other mammals may have orgasms when they have sex.
The penis usually becomes erect (hard) before an orgasm, and flaccid (soft) again after.
When a man has an orgasm, he feels a very strong and enjoyable feeling in his penis and groin, and sometimes in all of his body.
In a man, an orgasm usually happens at the same time as an ejaculation, which is a release of semen through the penis, that ca n't be stopped.
Young boys can orgasm, but there may be no semen because semen release usually occurs only after puberty has started.
After an orgasm, men usually have a deep sense of relaxation, usually felt in the groin and the thighs.
Usually the stronger the orgasm, the deeper the relaxation and the longer the relaxation will last.
A woman 's orgasm begins in her clitoris, which is the counterpart of the man 's penis.
It is preceded by an erection of the clitoris and a moistening of the opening of the vagina.
When a woman goes through a full orgasm, her uterus, vagina, anus and pelvic muscles undergo a series of rhythmic contractions.
Most women find these contractions very pleasurable.
Rubbing or applying other consistent pressure against the clitoris is usually needed to help the woman have an orgasm.
Orgasm plays an important role in human reproduction.
During sexual intercourse, a man places his penis inside a woman 's vagina and moves it backwards and forwards.
The woman may also move her hips back and forth, or in a circular motion.
The friction caused by this movement, together with the warmth and pressure of the vagina, causes the man to have pleasurable feelings in his penis, which grow stronger and stronger until the man has an orgasm and ejaculates, at which time semen then shoots out from the end of his penis into the woman 's vagina.
The semen can make the woman pregnant.
The woman may also have an orgasm during intercourse as well.
Scientists are not sure why women have orgasms.
Some believe that the orgasm helps the sperm in the man 's semen to swim up the vagina into the cervix, so that it is more likely that a sperm cell will fuse with an egg cell.
Others think that the woman 's orgasm is designed to help make the man reach orgasm.
During her orgasm, a woman may moan, cry, or scream, which usually excites her man, and her vagina may grip the penis more tightly, which also makes sex more exciting for him.
These reactions may cause the man to ejaculate more quickly or to produce more semen; when a woman reaches orgasm during intercourse, it often makes her man have an orgasm at that point as well.
Orgasm may also encourage a woman to have sex more often as it feels good, increasing the chances of pregnancy.
The Olympic Games are an important international event featuring summer and winter sports.
Olympic Games are held every leap year (every four years), with Summer and Winter Olympic Games taking turns.
Each seasonal games happens every four years.
Originally, the ancient Olympic Games were held in Ancient Greece at Olympia.
The first games were in 776 BC.
They were held every four years up until the 5th century AD.
The first "modern" Olympics happened in 1896 in Athens, Greece.
People choose to play in the Olympics to represent the country they are from.
Over time the Olympics have become bigger.
In old times, women were not allowed to compete, but now everyone is allowed.
The Winter Games were created for ice and snow sports.
The Paralympic Games were created for athletes with physical disabilities.
As well, the Olympics became bigger with the addition of the Youth Olympic Games for teenage athletes.
World War I and World War II led to the cancellation of the 1916, 1940, and 1944 Games.
As the decision-making body, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is responsible for choosing the host city for each Olympic Games.
The IOC is also responsible for choosing what sports are in the games.
The celebration of the Games includes many rituals and symbols, such as Olympic flag and torch, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies.
The first, second, and third place finishers in each event receive, respectively, gold, silver, and bronze medals.
The Ancient Olympic Games was a series of competitions held between representatives of several city-states and kingdoms from Ancient Greece, which featured mainly athletic but also combat and chariot racing events.
During the Olympic Games all struggles against the participating city-states were postponed until the games were finished.
The origin of these Olympics is shrouded in mystery and legend According to legend, it was Heracles who first called the Games "Olympic" and established the custom of holding them every four years.
The most widely accepted date for the beginning of the Ancient Olympics is 776BC; this is based on inscriptions, found at Olympia, of the winners of a footrace held every four years starting in 776BC.
The Ancient Games featured running events, a pentathlon (consisting of a jumping event, discus and javelin throws, a foot race and wrestling), boxing, wrestling, and equestrian events.
There is no consensus on when the Games officially ended, but many historians think it is 393AD, when the emperor Theodosius I declared that all religious practices should end.
Another date cited is 426AD, when his successor Theodosius II ordered the destruction of all Greek temples.
After the demise of the Olympics, they were not held again until the late 19th century.
An attempt to copy the ancient Olympic Games was the L'Olympiade de la R publique, a national Olympic festival held annually from 1796 to 1798 in Revolutionary France.
The competition had several sports from the ancient Greek Olympics.
Greek interest in bringing back the Olympic Games began with the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821.
It was first proposed by poet and newspaper editor Panagiotis Soutsos in his poem "Dialogue of the Dead", published in 1833.
Evangelis Zappas, a wealthy Greek-Romanian philanthropist, first wrote to King Otto of Greece, in 1856, offering to fund a permanent revival of the Olympic Games.
Zappas sponsored the first Olympic Games in 1859, which was held in Athens.
Athletes from Greece and the Ottoman Empire participated.
Zappas funded the restoration of the ancient Panathenaic stadium so that it could host all future Olympic Games.
Between 1862 and 1867, Liverpool held an annual Grand Olympic Festival.
It was created by John Hulley and Charles Melly, with support from Dr. Brookes.
These games were unfair in nature since only Men could compete.
In 1865 Hulley, Dr. Brookes and E.G. Ravenstein founded the National Olympian Association in Liverpool, a forerunner of the British Olympic Association.
Its articles of foundation provided the framework for the International Olympic Charter.
Dr. Brookes copied the sports which were in the Olympics held in Athens in 1859 in future Wenlock Olympian Games (Brookes created this first as a class in 1850 and then as an event in 1856.).
In 1866, a national Olympic Games in Great Britain was organized by Dr. Brookes at London 's Crystal Palace.
The Panathinaiko Stadium hosted Olympics in 1870 and 1875.
Thirty thousand spectators attended that Games in 1870, although no official attendance records are available for the 1875 Games.
In 1890, after attending the Olympian Games of the Wenlock Olympian Society, Baron Pierre de Coubertin created the International Olympic Committee.
Coubertin built on the ideas and work of Brookes and Zappas with the aim of creating an Olympic Games that would occur every four years in a different country.
He presented these ideas during the first meeting of the newly created International Olympic Committee (IOC).
This meeting was held from June 16 to June 23, 1894, at the Sorbonne University in Paris.
On the last day of the meeting, it was decided that the first Olympic Games, to be controlled by the IOC, would take place two years later in Athens.
The IOC elected the Greek writer Demetrius Vikelas as its first president.
The first Games held under the IOC was hosted in the Panathenaic stadium in Athens in 1896.
These Games brought 14 nations and 241 athletes who competed in 43 events.
Zappas and his cousin Konstantinos Zappas had left the Greek government money to fund future Olympic Games.
This money was used to pay for the 1896 Games.
George Averoff paid for the refurbishment of the stadium in preparation for the Games.
The Greek government also provided money, which was paid back through the sale of tickets.
Money was also paid back through the sale of the first Olympic commemorative stamp set.
The Greek officials and public were excited about hosting these Games.
This feeling was shared by many of the athletes, who even demanded that Athens be the host of the Olympic Games on a permanent basis.
The IOC did not approve this request.
The IOC stated that each games would be held in a different country.
Following the success of the 1896 Games, the Olympics entered a period of stagnation that threatened their survival.
The Olympic Games held at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and the World 's Fair at St. Louis in 1904 were side-shows.
The Games at Paris did not have a stadium, however this was the first time women took part in the games.
The St. Louis Games hosted 650 athletes, but 580 were from the United States.
The homogeneous nature of these celebrations was a low point for the Olympic Movement.
The Games rebounded when the Intercalated Games (so-called because they were the second Games held within an Olympiad, a period of time lasting four years) were held in Athens.
These Games are not officially recognized by the IOC and no Intercalated Games have been held since.
These Games were hosted at the Panathenaic stadium in Athens.
The games attracted an international field of participants, and generated great public interest.
The Winter Olympics were created to feature snow and ice sports that were not part of the Summer Games.
Figure skating (in 1908 and 1920) and ice hockey (in 1920) were featured as Olympic events at the Summer Olympics.
The IOC wanted to expand this list of sports to encompass other winter activities.
At the 1921 Olympic Congress, in Lausanne, it was decided to hold a winter version of the Olympic Games.
A winter sports week (it was actually 11days) was held in 1924 in Chamonix, France; this event was the first Winter Olympic Games.
The IOC ruled that the Winter Games to be celebrated every four years on the same year as the summer games.
This pattern continued until the 1992 Games in Albertville, France.
After this, beginning with the 1994 Games, the Winter Olympics were held on the third year of each Olympiad.
Starting in 2010, Youth Games help to develop young athletes for the Olympic Games.
Athletes between the ages of 14 and 18 compete.
The Youth Olympic Games were created by IOC president Jacques Rogge in 2001 and approved during the 119th meeting of the IOC.
The first Summer Youth Games were held in Singapore from 14 26 August 2010.
The first Winter Games will be hosted in Innsbruck, Austria, in 2012.
These Games are shorter than the Olympic Games.
The summer version will last twelve days and the winter version will last nine days.
The IOC will allow 3,500 athletes and 875 officials to take part at the Summer Youth Games.
970 athletes and 580 officials will take part at the Winter Youth Games.
The sports to be played will be the same as at the Olympic Games.
The Olympic Movement includes a large number of national and international sporting organizations and federations.
As the group in charge of the Olympic Movement, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is responsible for selecting the host city.
Overseeing the planning of the Olympic Games.
Changing the sports involved.
Agreeing sponsorship and broadcasting rights.
French and English are the official languages of the Olympic Movement.
The other language used at each Olympic Games is the language of the host country.
In 1998, it was uncovered that several IOC members had taken bribes from members of the Salt Lake City bid committee for the hosting of the 2002 Winter Olympics.
This was done to make sure that Salt Lake City won.
The IOC pursued an investigation which led to the resignation of four members and six people were sacked.
A BBC documentary entitled Panorama: Buying the Games, aired in August 2004, investigated the taking of bribes in the bidding process for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
The documentary claimed it was possible to bribe IOC members into voting for a particular candidate city.
After being narrowly defeated in their bid for the 2012 Summer Games, Parisian Mayor Bertrand Delano accused the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the London Bid Committee of breaking the bid rules.
The Turin bid for the 2006 Winter Olympics was also shrouded in controversy.
A prominent IOC member, Marc Hodler, strongly connected with the rival bid of Sion, Switzerland, alleged bribery of IOC officials by members of the Turin Organizing Committee.
These accusations led to a wide-ranging investigation.
The allegations also served to sour many IOC members against Sion 's bid and potentially helped Turin to capture the host city nomination.
The Olympic logo also known as the Olympic rings, consists of five intertwined rings and represents the unity of the five inhabited continents (America, Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe).
The colored version of the rings blue, yellow, black, green, and red over a white field forms the Olympic flag.
The flag was adopted in 1914 but flown for the first time at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.
The flag has since been flown during every Games.
The Olympic motto is Citius, Altius, Fortius, a Latin expression meaning "Faster, Higher, Stronger".
Before each Games, the Olympic flame is lit in Olympia in a ceremony that reflects ancient Greek rituals.
A female performer, acting as a priestess, lights a torch with the use of the sun.
The woman then lights the torch of the first relay bearer.
Starting the Olympic torch relay that will carry the flame to the host city 's Olympic stadium.
The flame has been an Olympic symbol since 1928 and the torch relay was introduced at the 1936 Summer Games.
The Olympic mascot was introduced in 1968.
The mascot is either an animal or human figure representing the cultural heritage of the host country.
As mandated by the Olympic Charter, various elements frame the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
Most of these rituals were established at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp.
The ceremony typically starts with the hoisting of the host country 's flag and a performance of its national anthem.
The host nation then presents artistic displays of music, singing, dance, and theater representative of its culture.
After the artistic portion of the ceremony, the athletes parade into the stadium grouped by nation.
Greece is traditionally the first nation to enter in order to honor the origins of the Olympics.
Nations then enter the stadium alphabetically according to the host country 's chosen language.
The host country 's athletes are always the last to enter.
During the 2004 Summer Olympics, which was hosted in Athens, Greece.
The Greek flag entered the stadium first and last.
When it came in to the stadium for the second time it was followed by the athletes.
Speeches are then given formally opening the Games.
Finally the athletes oath said.
Following this the Olympic torch is brought into the stadium and passed on until it reaches the final torch carrier who lights the cauldron.
The closing ceremony of the Olympic Games takes place after all sporting events have concluded.
Flag-bearers from each participating country enter the stadium.
They are followed by the athletes who enter together without any national distinction.
Three national flags are hoisted while the corresponding national anthems are played.
The flag of Greece to honor the birthplace of the Olympic Games.
The flag of the current host country.
The flag of the country hosting the next Summer or Winter Olympic Games is also flown.
The president of the organizing committee and the IOC president make their closing speeches.
The Games are officially closed and the Olympic flame is put out.
In what is known as the Antwerp Ceremony (as this tradition was started in Antwerp), the mayor of the city that organized the Games transfers a special Olympic flag to the president of the IOC.
The president then passes it on to the mayor of the city hosting the next Olympic Games.
After these compulsory elements, the next host nation briefly introduces itself with artistic displays of dance and theater representative of its culture.
A medal ceremony is held after each Olympic event is concluded.
The winner, second and third-place competitors or teams stand on top of a three-tiered rostrum to be awarded their respective medals.
After the medals are given out by an IOC member, the national flags of the three medalists are raised while the national anthem of the gold medalist 's country plays.
The Olympic Games program consists of 26 sports, 30 disciplines and nearly 300 events.
For example, wrestling is a Summer Olympic sport, comprising two disciplines: Greco-Roman and Freestyle.
It is broken down into fourteen events for men and four events for women.
Each event represents a different weight class.
The Summer Olympics program includes 26 sports, while the Winter Olympics program features 15 sports.
Olympic sports are governed by international sports federations (IFs) recognized by the IOC as the global supervisors of those sports.
There are 35 federations represented at the IOC.
Changes can happen to the list of sports in the Olympics.
Sports can be added or removed from the list on the basis of a two-thirds majority vote of the members of the IOC.
The 114th IOC meeting, in 2002, limited the Summer Games program to a maximum of 28 sports, 301 events, and 10,500 athletes.
Three years later, at the 117th IOC Session, the first major change to the list was performed.
This resulted in the removal of baseball and softball from the list of sports for the 2012 London Games.
Since there was no agreement in the promotion of two other sports, the 2012 program will feature just 26 sports.
The 2016 and 2020 Games will return to the maximum of 28 sports given the addition of rugby and golf.
The exclusion of professionals caused several controversies throughout the history of the modern Olympics.
The 1912 Olympic pentathlon and decathlon champion Jim Thorpe was stripped of his medals when it was discovered that he had played semi-professional baseball before the Olympics.
His medals were restored by the IOC in 1983 on compassionate grounds.
As class structure evolved through the 20th century, the definition of the amateur athlete as an aristocratic gentleman became outdated.
The advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage.
Nevertheless, the IOC held to the traditional rules regarding amateurism.
Beginning in the 1970s, amateurism requirements were gradually phased out of the Olympic Charter.
After the 1988 Games, the IOC decided to make all professional athletes eligible for the Olympics, subject to the approval of the IFs.
As of 2004, the only sport in which no professionals compete is boxing, although even this requires a definition of amateurism based on fight rules rather than on payment, as some boxers receive cash prizes from their National Olympic Committees.
In men 's football (soccer), only three professional players over the age of 23 are eligible to participate per team in the Olympic tournament.
There have been many countries deliberately missing the Olympics in order to make political statements.
The most famous examples of countries missing the Olympics happened in 1980 and 1984.
The Cold War opponents missed each other 's Games.
65 nations refused to compete at the Moscow Olympics in 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The Soviet Union and 14 of its Eastern Bloc partners (except Romania) countered by missing the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984.
The countries stated that they could not guarantee the safety of their athletes.
Soviet officials defended their decision to withdraw from the Games by saying that "chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped up in the United States".
The Olympic Games have been used as a platform to promote political ideologies almost from its inception.
Nazi Germany wished to portray the Nationalist Socialist Party as benevolent and peace-loving when they hosted the 1936 Games.
The Games were also intended to show the superiority of the Aryan (white) race.
This goal was not met due in part to the achievements of athletes such as Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals at this Olympics.
Individual athletes have also used the Olympic stage to promote their own political agenda.
At the 1968 Summer Olympics, in Mexico City, two American track and field athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who finished first and third in the 200meter sprint race, performed the Black Power salute on the podium.
The runner up Peter Norman wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge in support of Smith and Carlos.
IOC President Avery Brundage then told the United States, to either send the two athletes home or withdraw the track and field team.
The United States chose to send the pair home.
In the early 20th century, many Olympic athletes began using drugs to improve their athletic abilities.
For example, the winner of the marathon at the 1904 Games, Thomas J. Hicks, was given strychnine and brandy by his coach.
The only Olympic death linked to doping happened at the Rome Games of 1960.
During the cycling road race, Danish cyclist Knud Enemark Jensen fell from his bicycle and later died.
A coroner 's inquiry found that he was under the influence of amphetamines.
By the mid-1960s, sports federations were starting to ban the use of performance enhancing drugs.
The IOC did likewise in 1967.
The IOC created the World Anti-Doping Agency in 1999.
The IOC-established drug testing regimen (now known as the Olympic Standard) has set the worldwide benchmark that other sporting federations around the world attempt to emulate.
The first Olympic athlete to test positive for the use of performance enhancing drugs was Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, a Swedish pentathlete at the 1968 Summer Olympics, who lost his bronze medal for alcohol use.
The Olympics have not brought lasting peace to the world, even during the Games.
Three Olympic Games were not held due to war.
The 1916 Games were canceled because of World War I, and the summer and winter games of 1940 and 1944 were canceled because of World War II.
Terrorism has also threatened the Olympic Games.
In 1972, when the Summer Games were held in Munich, West Germany, eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage by the terrorist group Black September.
This event is now known as the Munich massacre.
The terrorists killed two of the athletes soon after they had taken them hostage and killed the other nine during a failed rescue attempt.
A German police officer and 5 terrorists also died.
During the Summer Olympics in 1996 in Atlanta, a bomb was detonated at the Centennial Olympic Park, which killed 2 and injured 111 others.
Eric Robert Rudolph is currently serving a life sentence for the bombing.
The host city for an Olympic Games is chosen seven years ahead of the event.
The process of selection is carried out in two phases that span a two-year period.
The process starts when a city wanting to host the games applies to its country 's Olympic group.
If more than one city from the same country gives a proposal to its NOC, the national group chooses which city will run for host.
The first step once the deadline passes (To tell the IOC that you want to hold the Games), is to ask the cities to complete a questionnaire which covers many key points in the organization of the Olympic Games.
The evaluation of the filled questionnaires by a group provides the IOC with an idea of each cities project and their potential to host the Games.
On the basis of this evaluation, the IOC chooses the applicants that will proceed to the candidature stage.
Once the candidate cities are chosen, they must give to the IOC a bigger presentation of their project as part of a candidature file.
Each city is analyzed by an evaluation group.
This group will also visit the cities.
The group give a report on its findings one month prior to the IOC 's final decision.
During the interview process the candidate city must also guarantee that it can fund the Games.
The IOC members gathered in the meeting have the final vote on the host city.
By 2016, the Olympic Games will have been hosted by 44 cities in 23 countries.
The United States has hosted four Summer and four Winter Olympics, more than any other nation.
Among Summer Olympics host nations, the United Kingdom has been the host of two Games, and will host its third Olympics in 2012 in London.
Germany, Australia, France, and Greece are the other nations to have hosted the Summer Olympics twice.
Among host cities, only Los Angeles, Paris, Athens and London have played host to the Olympic Games more than once, with each holding that honor twice.
With the 2012 Games scheduled to take place in London, the British capital will hold the distinction of hosting the modern Olympics Games three times, more than any other city.
In the Winter Olympics, France has hosted three Games, while Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Japan, and Italy have hosted twice.
The most recent Games were held in Vancouver, Canada 's second Winter Olympics and third overall.
The next Winter Games will be in Sochi, Russia in 2014, which will be the first time this nation has hosted.
Old Prussian is an extinct Baltic language.
It was spoken by the indigenous peoples of Prussia, the Old Prussians.
It was spoken in the area where north-eastern Poland and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia are today.
It went extinct in the early 18th century.
There has been an attempted revival, but with little progress.
An oracle (in ancient Greek times) was a person who was seen as a messenger for the gods.
Oracles would answer questions about the future, and would often speak in riddles.
In Ancient Greece oracles lived in temples and people traveled many miles to visit them and seek their advice.
Oracle Corporation is an American company.
It makes hardware systems and enterprise software (software for businesses) such as database management systems.
Its headquarters are in Redwood City, California, United States.
The founder is Lary Ellison.
In 2010, it employed 105,000 people worldwide.
It has increased in size through natural growth and by buying other companies.
By 2007 Oracle had the third-largest software revenue, after Microsoft and IBM.
In January 2010 it bought Sun Microsystems.
The corporation has arguably become best known for its flagship product, the Oracle Database.
The company also builds tools for database development and systems of middle-tier software, enterprise resource planning software (ERP), customer relationship management software (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) software.
As of 2013, Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle Corporation, has served as Oracle 's CEO throughout its history.
He also served as the Chairman of the Board until his replacement by Jeffrey O. Henley in 2004.
On August 22, 2008 the Associated Press ranked Ellison as the top-paid chief executive in the world.
When the company started, computer database technology was only starting.
Ellison had read a 1970 paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database management systems (RDBMS).
He had also heard about the IBM System R database from an article in the IBM Research Journal by Ed Oates.
System R was also based on Codd 's theories.
Ellison wanted to make Oracle 's product compatible with System R, but IBM stopped this by keeping the error codes for their DBMS (DataBase Management System) secret.
Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 with Bob Miner and Ed Oates under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL).
In 1979 SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc. (RSI).
In 1982, RSI renamed itself Oracle Systems to make the relation to its main product, Oracle Database, clearer.
At this stage Bob Miner was the company 's senior programmer.
In 1995, Oracle Systems Corporation changed its name to Oracle Corporation.
Part of Oracle Corporation 's early success came from using the C programming language to install its products.
This made changing the setup to different operating systems (most of which support C) easier.
An ore is a mineral which has a metal inside it.
Ores are usually extracted by being mined.
They can sometimes be found on the Earth 's surface.
The metal in ore is often valuable.
There are different ways to get the metal out of the ore..
Iron ore, for example, is smelted in a blast furnace.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer, poet and playwright.
He wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the plays Salom, The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, and Lady Windermere 's Fan.
Wilde was bisexual.
He was married, and had two children.
His downfall came as a result of his affair with a younger man, Lord Alfred Douglas.
Wilde was an outstanding classical scholar, at Trinity College, Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford University.
In London, he worked as a journalist for four years.
Known for his biting wit, flamboyant clothes, and glittering conversation, Wilde was one of the best known personalities of the day.
It was his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which brought him full recognition.
Then he turned to writing drama.
He wrote Salom in French in Paris in 1891, but it was refused a licence.
Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, was still on stage in London Wilde sued his lover 's father for libel.
After a series of trials, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency with other men and sentenced to two years of hard labor in Reading Gaol (jail).
In prison he wrote De Profundis, a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure.
Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to the British Isles.
There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a long poem commemorating prison life.
Living in a Paris hotel, he was destitute, with little money and few friends.
His last memorable words were: "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death.
"One of us has got to go".
p546 He died of cerebral meningitis in Paris at the age of forty-six.
Wilde 's wife, Constance Lloyd, changed the family name to Holland after his conviction, and took the children to Switzerland.
Wilde 's lover was the son of the Marquess of Queensbury, who was known for his outspoken atheism, brutish manner and creation of the modern rules of boxing.
Queensberry, who feuded regularly with his son, confronted Wilde and Lord Alfred as to the nature of their relationship.
In June 1894, he called on Wilde at 16 Tite Street without an appointment, and said: "If I catch you and my son again in any public restaurant I will thrash you"
On the 18 February 1895, the Marquess left his calling card at Wilde 's club, the Albemarle, inscribed: "For Oscar Wilde, posing as a sodomite".
Wilde, egged on by Douglas and against the advice of his friends, initiated a private prosecution against Queensberry, and had him arrested on a charge of criminal libel.
As sodomy was then a crime, Queensberry 's note amounted to a public accusation that Wilde had committed a felony, forming the legal basis for libel charges.
Queensberry could avoid conviction for libel only by demonstrating that his accusation was, in fact, true.
In his opening speech for the defense, Counsel for Queensbury, Edward Carson, announced that he had found several male prostitutes who were to testify that they had sex with Wilde.
On the advice of his lawyers, Wilde then decided to drop the libel prosecution against Queensberry.
Queensberry was found not guilty, as the court declared that his accusation that Wilde was "posing as a sodomite" was justified, "true in substance and in fact".
Under the Libel Act 1843, Queensberry 's acquittal rendered Wilde legally liable for the considerable expenses Queensberry had incurred in his defense, which left Wilde bankrupt.
After Wilde left the court, a warrant for his arrest was applied for on charges of sodomy and gross indecency.
Friends found Wilde at a hotel; they advised him to go to Dover and try to get a boat to France.
His mother advised him to stay and fight like a man.
Wilde was duly arrested and then imprisoned on remand at Holloway, where he received daily visits from Douglas.
Events moved quickly.
His prosecution opened on the 26 April 1895 and Wilde pleaded not guilty.
He had already begged Douglas to leave London for Paris, and Douglas fled to the Hotel du Monde.
Under cross examination Wilde was at first hesitant, then spoke eloquently:
Charles Gill (prosecuting): What is "the love that dare not speak its name?"
Wilde:" ` The love that dare not speak its name ' in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare.
It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect.
It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are.
It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as ` the love that dare not speak its name ', and on that account of it I am placed where I am now.
It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection.
There is nothing unnatural about it.
It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him.
That it should be so, the world does not understand.
The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it".
This response was, however, counterproductive in a legal sense as it only served to reinforce the charges of homosexual behavior.
The trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict.
Wilde 's counsel, Sir Edward Clark, was finally able to agree bail.
The Reverend Stewart Headlam put up most of the 5,000 bail, having disagreed with Wilde 's treatment by the press and the courts.
Wilde was freed from Holloway and, shunning attention, went into hiding at the house of Ernest and Ada Leverson, two of his firm friends.
Edward Carson approached Frank Lockwood (QC) and asked "Can we not let up on the fellow now?
"p435 Lockwood answered that he would like to do so, but feared that the case had become too politicised to be dropped.
At the final trial, Wilde and Alfred Taylor were convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years ' hard labor.
The judge described the sentence as "totally inadequate for a case such as this", although it was the maximum sentence allowed for the charge under the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885.
Wilde 's response "And I?
May I say nothing, my Lord?"
was drowned out in cries of "Shame" in the courtroom.
Dates are dates of first performance.
Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet.
See that article for more uses of the upper case (-RRB- or lower case (-RRB- letter as a symbol.
Operation Barbarossa (, named after Frederick I) was the code name for the European Axis 's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II.
It began on 22 June 1941.
More than 4.5 million men attacked along the 2,900 km front, making it the largest military invasion in human history.
It also involved 600,000 motor vehicles and 750,000 horses.
Planning for the operation started in December 1940.
Its main objective was to destroy the Soviet military power and included some Nazi ideological goals, as well as to make use of Russia 's rich deposits of natural resources, which would be helpful to continue fighting the war against the Allies.
Even though the Soviets were in a terrible condition, the Axis did not complete its objectives.
Tactically, the Germans held some of the most important economic areas of the Soviet Union, mainly in Ukraine.
However, the Germans were pushed back from Moscow and could not start an attack as large and long as Operation Barbarossa on the Eastern Front again.
The failure led to Hitler 's demands for more operations, but all of them failed.
During this time, Russia had one of the worse winters ever recorded.
German equipment broke down in the cold, and some men were still wearing summer uniforms which they stuffed with newspapers in an attempt to stay warm.
Many German soldiers froze to death because of the extreme cold.
The attack opened the Eastern Front of World War II.
In Russia it is called the Great Patriotic War.
A few years later, after pushing the German soldiers out of Russia, the Soviets were able to launch a counter-invasion into German occupied territories in Eastern Europe.
They invaded Germany itself, and started the Battle of Berlin, the final battle before Germany 's surrender.
Although the Russians eventually repelled the Germans, it was at a tremendous cost.
Around five times more Russians died than Germans.
Operation Barbarossa was the largest military operation in human history, both by the number of men involved and by the number of people who died.
The operation opened a theater in which more men were involved than ever before in history.
Oceania is a name used in geography for the continent made up by Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and several other island nations in the surrounding area.
Some people call this part of the world Australasia instead.
Sometimes, people use the name Oceania to include only the Polynesian and Melanesian islands in the Pacific Ocean, as separate from Australasia.
The combined oral contraceptive pill (COCP) is a contraceptive for women.
It is often called birth control pill or simply "The Pill."
The pills contain hormones that make the women who take them infertile.
Women who take the pill will not become pregnant during sexual intercourse.
When a woman stops taking the pills, she will usually become fertile again.
When taken as prescribed, the pills are one of the safest methods of contraception.
In the 1950s, scientists (such as Carl Djerassi) realized that the hormone progesterone stopped women from making eggs (stopped ovulation).
After this discovery, the combined oral contraceptive pill was created.
The combined oral contraceptive pill has two female hormones: estrogen and progesterone.
Some oral contraceptive pills have only progesterone.
These are often called the "minipill".
The combined oral contraceptive pill is thought to be safe and usually works well.
In the United States, the combined oral contraceptive pill was first given to women in 1960.
It is extremely effective at preventing pregnancy if it is used in the right way.
It may also make women 's menses shorter and with less bleeding, which most women like.
And unlike barrier methods, hormonal methods do not interfere with sex.
When a woman is "on the Pill,", she and her man are usually not even aware of it during sexual intercourse, which seems and feels very natural.
The couple can have sex at any time they wish; they don t need to interrupt foreplay to put birth control in place, and they can feel the physical sensations and emotional closeness of intercourse without interference from a make or female condom.
Unlike coitus interruptus, when a woman is on the Pill, intercourse usually ends with her man reaching orgasm while inside the vagina, which both the man and woman usually find very pleasurable.
For all of these reasons, the Pill is very popular.
In 2005, more than 80 million women across the world used the Pill.
It is the most common method of contraception in the United States.
Use of the Pill is different in different countries, and among women of different ages and levels of education.
Both single women and married women use the Pill in large numbers.
The Pill has some slight risks for side effects.
It may make a very small increase in the risk of blood clots in the lungs, strokes, heart attacks, and breast cancer.
Most of these risk are small.
Some women may experience mood swings, weight gain, or loss of sex drive.
Sometimes, but rarely, these side effects are serious enough to make a woman decide to stop using the Pill.
The choices a woman has for contraception - and whether contraception is even available - depends on what country she lives in.
These things are different in different countries.
In the United Kingdom, one out of every 4 women aged 16 49 were using the Pill as at 2006 (either the combined pill or progestogen only pill ("minipill")).
compared to only 1 % of women in Japan.
Local culture and habits may also affect whether or not people use the Pill.
In some countries, women do not really have a choice because only one kind of contraception is available.
In some countries (like Algeria, Morocco, and Zimbabwe), the Pill is the most common method offered by national family planning programs.
In other countries, like India, national family planning programs only offer female sterilization (a surgery which makes a woman unable to ever have children again).
Other countries, like Egypt and Vietnam, only offer the IUD, intrauterine device.
There are two major kinds of oral contraceptive pills.
The first kind has both estrogen and progesterone in it.
The other only has progesterone (these are called progesterone-only pills, or POPs).
The pills do not actually have natural hormones in them.
Instead, they have other chemical substances that are mostly the same as the hormones, but have been made in a laboratory.
Some women can only take one kind of COCP.
For example, estrogen stops the breast from producing milk.
Because of this, women who are breastfeeding should not take pills that have estrogen in them.
There are also some other types of women who should not be given estrogen.
These women should only use progesterone-only pills.
While there are just two major kinds of birth control pills (COCPs and POPs), there are many different brands or versions of each kind of pill.
Every brand of COCP will have the same hormones (estrogen and progesterone) in it.
However, each brand has a different amount of hormones in it.
Also, some brands change the amount of hormones given from week to week.
There are two ways to measure how well COCPs work.
(Most forms of birth control are also measured in these two ways.)
:
To show how well the Pill works, scientists figure out rates of effectiveness (for perfect use and for actual\/typical use).
These rates show how many women are kept from getting pregnant by the Pill.
Rates of effectiveness usually look at how well the Pill works during the first year that women are using the Pill.
Most often, the Pearl Index is used to calculate effectiveness rates.
However, some studies use decrement tables.
The typical use pregnancy rate for women taking COCPs measures how many women get pregnant while taking COCPs.
All women are not equally likely to get pregnant while taking COCPs.
Different groups of women have different typical use pregnancy rates.
Overall, between 2 % and 8 % of women taking COCPs get pregnant every year.
If COCPs are used perfectly, only 0.3 % become pregnant each year.
There are a few reasons why women do not use the Pill perfectly.
Because of these things, typical use effectiveness is lower than perfect use effectiveness.
COCPs can prevent pregnancy if the first pill is taken no later than 5 days after a woman starts menstruating.
If the treatment is started at any other time in the menstrual cycle, COCPs can not safely prevent pregnancy for the first 7 days of use.
During this time, a woman needs to use other types of contraception in order to prevent pregnancy.
When active pills have been taken for 7 days, COCPs can work well to prevent pregnancy.
COCPs should be taken at about the same time every day.
Some other medicines can interact with COCPs and make them not work as well.
These medicines can also cause breakthrough bleeding (where a woman bleeds between her periods).
Some of these medicines are:
The traditional medicinal herb St. John 's Wort also seems to make COCPs not work as well.
This is because of the way St. John 's Wort affects the liver.
The Pill can be used for other things besides contraception.
There are many medical conditions that are caused by problems with hormone levels.
Because the Pill has hormones in it, it can treat these conditions.
Some of these conditions are:
If a woman 's menstrual cycle is not regular, the Pill can make the woman menstruate on a regular schedule.
The Pill can also be used to treat certain problems that cause bleeding from the uterus.
Women who use combined oral contraceptives are less likely to get cancer of the ovaries.
If a woman takes Pill for five years, her risk for getting ovarian cancer is cut in half.
Women taking the Pill are also only half as likely to get endometrial cancer than women who have never taken the Pill.
The longer a woman uses the Pill, the more her risk of getting endometrial cancer drops.
However, women who take the Pill have a higher risk of getting breast cancer and cervical cancer.
Organized crime is a group or groups of people, usually mobsters and other criminals, who work to make money in an illegal way.
The Oxford English Dictionary (or OED) is a dictionary.
It is published by the Oxford University Press in England, and is the largest English dictionary.
It traces the historical development of the English language, and is a resource to writers and scholars.
It describes how the language has been used.
The second edition came to 21,728 pages in 20 volumes, published in 1989.
Work began on the dictionary in 1857, but it was not until 1884 that it began to be published in parts, under the name of A New English Dictionary on historical principles; founded mainly on the materials collected by the Philological Society.
In 1895, the title The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in ten bound volumes.
In 1933, the The Oxford English Dictionary was reprinted as twelve volumes with a one-volume supplement.
More supplements came over the years until 1989, when the second edition was published.
Since 2000, a third edition of the dictionary has been underway, approximately a third of which is now complete.
The first electronic version of the dictionary was done in 1988.
The online version has been available since 2000, and as of April 2014 was receiving over two million hits per month.
The third edition of the dictionary will probably only appear in electronic form; Nigel Portwood, chief executive of Oxford University Press, feels it unlikely that it will ever be printed.
Ottonian dynasty was a dynasty of kings of Germany, named after its first emperor Otto I the Great.
But it is also known as the Saxon dynasty after the origin of this family of noblemen.
The family itself is also sometimes known as the Liudolfings, after its earliest known member Liudolf and one of its most common names.
The Ottonian rulers are also regarded as the first dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire, as successors of the Carolingian dynasty and Charlemagne, who is commonly viewed as the original founder of a new (Frankish) Roman Empire.
Although he was never Emperor, Henry I the Fowler, Duke of Saxony, was the founder of this imperial dynasty, since his election as German king made it possible for his son, Otto the Great to take on the imperium.
Since Otto I most of the German kings were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
Under the reign of the Ottonian rulers, the kingdom of the Eastern Franks finally became Germany as the duchies of Lorraine, Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, Thuringia and Bavaria joined in one empire.
After the end of the Ottonian dynasty (with the death of Henry II in 1024) the crown passed to the Salian dynasty.
Luitgard, a daughter of Emperor Otto I had married the Salian Duke Conrad the Red of Lorraine.
His great-grandson was Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor.
Hoy is one of the Orkney Islands.
Observation is an activity of an intelligent living being (e.g. human), which senses and assimilates the knowledge of a phenomenon in its framework of previous knowledge and ideas.
Observation is more than the bare act of observing: To perform observation, a being must observe and seek to add to its knowledge.
Observations that come from self-defining instruments are often unreliable.
Such observations are hard to reproduce because they may vary even with respect to the same stimuli.
Thus they are not of much use in exact sciences like physics which require instruments which do not define themselves.
It is thus often necessary to use various engineered instruments like: spectrometers, oscilloscopes, cameras, telescopes, interferometers, tape recorders, thermometers etc. and tools like clocks, scale that help in improving the accuracy, quality and utility of the information obtained from an observation.
The accuracy and tremendous success of science is primarily attributed to the accuracy and objectivity (i.e. repeatability) of observation of the reality that science explores.
Scientific method refers to techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.
To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.
A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge.
Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses.
These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results.
Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many hypotheses together in a coherent structure.
This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context.
Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective to reduce a biased interpretation of the results.
Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them.
This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.
The scientific process is iterative.
At any stage it is possible that some consideration will lead the scientist to repeat an earlier part of the process.
Failure to develop an interesting hypothesis may lead a scientist to re-define the subject they are considering.
Failure of a hypothesis to produce interesting and testable predictions may lead to reconsideration of the hypothesis or of the definition of the subject.
Failure of the experiment to produce interesting results may lead the scientist to reconsidering the experimental method, the hypothesis or the definition of the subject.
Other scientists may start their own research and enter the process at any stage.
They might adopt the characterization and formulate their own hypothesis, or they might adopt the hypothesis and deduce their own predictions.
Often the experiment is not done by the person who made the prediction and the characterization is based on experiments done by someone else.
Published results of experiments can also serve as a hypothesis predicting their own reproducibility.
If two numbers have the same order of magnitude, they are about the same size.
But if one would compare the surface of an orange with that of the earth, one would say the surface of the earth is many orders of magnitude larger than that of the orange.
Orders of magnitude are generally used to make very approximate comparisons.
It is mainly used while doing scientific notation.
If two numbers differ by one order of magnitude, one is about ten times larger than the other.
If they differ by two orders of magnitude, they differ by a factor of about 100.
Two numbers of the same order of magnitude have roughly the same scale: the larger value is less than ten times the smaller value.
The October Revolution refers to the seizing of power in Russia by the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Leon Trotsky.
The Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian Provisional Government.
The revolution started on November 7 (October 25 o.s.), 1917.
In reality the Bolshevik insurgents faced little or no opposition.
The insurrection was timed and organized to hand state power to the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers ' and Soldiers ' Deputies, which began on 25 October.
After a single day of revolution eighteen people had been arrested and two had been killed.
The Bolsheviks captured telegraph and telephone offices, railway stations, newspaper offices and government institutions.
The insurrection was carried out by Red Guards (armed workers), sailors from the Baltic fleet, and revolutionary sections of the army.
The October Revolution inspired a revolutionary wave across the world, including the Hungarian revolution, the German revolution of 1918-1919, and the Chinese revolution of 1925-27.
The Old English language, often called Anglo-Saxon, was spoken in England from 450AD to 1100AD.
It was spoken by the Anglo-Saxons who came to England from what is now Germany and Denmark.
Old English is very different from Modern English; it has many more Germanic words, and its grammar is more difficult and closer to Old German.
Old English slowly turned into Middle English after the Norman Conquest of 1066.
Beowulf is written in Old English.
An oxymoron is a term for a figure of speech.
It is made up of two or more words that seem to be opposite to each other, or actually are opposite.
For example, the words "Wise fool", "Warm freezer", "Legal murder" all have two words.
In each one, the one word looks like the opposite of the other word.
You can have words that look opposite, but are right.
For example, a "warm freezer" could be right.
A freezer could be warm if it was turned off or left open.
The word oxymoron is an oxymoron; ` oxy ' comes from the Greek word that means ` sharp ', while ` moron ' comes from the Greek word that means ` dull '.
Words that really are opposite to each other, would be words that just can not be put together.
For example, a "round square" could not happen because squares are not round.
Oxymorons sometimes appear in jokes.
Sometimes, the joke is just to say that a pair of words are an oxymoron.
For example, a joke that says that "honest politician" is an oxymoron.
This means that politicians are dishonest, if the word ` politician ' is opposite to ` honest '.
Oda Nobunaga (June 23, 1534 June 21, 1582) was a Japanese daimyo.
He was born in Owari Province.
Akechi Mitsuhide killed him at a temple named Honno-ji.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi was a follower of Nobunaga.
Oral history is history that is told rather than written down.
It is given through talking rather than reading a book.
It is usually passed from generation to generation in order to explain events that have occurred.
Though today oral history is not as popular as written history, it is still used in many places as a way of transferring knowledge about the past.
An oncogene is a gene that has the potential to cause cancer.
Or, equally good, an oncogene is a gene which brings about uncontrolled cell division.
Oncogenes in tumor cells are often mutated or expressed at high levels.
Most normal cells undergo a programmed form of death (apoptosis).
Activated oncogenes can cause those cells designated for apoptosis to survive and proliferate instead.
Most oncogenes require an additional step, such as mutations in another gene, or environmental factors, such as viral infection, to cause cancer.
Since the 1970s, dozens of oncogenes have been identified in human cancer.
Many cancer drugs target the proteins coded by oncogenes.
In 1976 J. Michael Bishop and Harold E. Varmus of the University of California, San Francisco showed that oncogenes were activated proto-oncogenes, found in many organisms including humans.
For this discovery Bishop and Varmus were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1989.
The work of Bishop and Varmus corrected a long-standing error.
The Nobel citation includes this explanation: "The term oncogene was introduced in the middle of the 1960s to denote special parts of the genetic material of certain viruses.
It was believed that this part of the genetic material could direct the transformation of a normal cell into a tumor cell... The favorite theory of the time was that virus-mediated cell-to-cell transmittance of oncogenes was the origin of all forms of cancer.
This view was later proven to be incorrect".
In fact, the reverse transcription of the virus RNA into DNA had the effect that the oncogenes become integrated into the chromosomal DNA in the cells.
It was then found that oncogene-like material could be detected in different species throughout the animal kingdom, in fact even in simple organisms with only a few cells.
Furthermore, it was shown that the gene had a fixed position in the chromosomes of a certain species, and that the gene, when it constituted part of the cellular genetic material, was divided into fragments.
A proto-oncogene is a normal gene that can become an oncogene due to mutations or increased expression.
The resultant protein can be called an oncoprotein.
Proto-oncogenes code for proteins that help to regulate cell growth and differentiation.
Proto-oncogenes are often involved in signal transduction and execution of mitogenic signals, usually through their protein products.
Upon activation, a proto-oncogene (or its product) becomes a tumor-inducing agent, an oncogene.
The MYC gene is implicated in Burkitt 's Lymphoma.
This starts when a chromosomal translocation moves an enhancer sequence close to the MYC gene.
The MYC gene codes for widely used transcription factors.
When the enhancer sequence is wrongly placed, these transcription factors are produced at much higher rates.
Another example of an oncogene is the Bcr-Abl gene found on the ` Philadelphia Chromosome '.
This is a piece of genetic material seen in Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia, caused by the translocation of pieces from chromosomes 9 and 22.
Bcr-Abl codes for a receptor tyrosine kinase, which is active, causing uncontrolled cell proliferation.
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing is a technology related to Frequency Division Multiplexing.
With it, many different signals can be sent over the same medium, at the same time.
Each signal uses a different basis function.
By using the basis function given, the sender and recipient will then see their signal better, the other signals will be clearly separated.
Many technologies use OFDM.
Among them are:
Origen (or Origenes, also Origen (es) Adamantius) was an early Christian scholar.
He lived in Alexandria in the 3rd century.
He was born in the year 185 or 186, and proably died around the year 254.
Today, he is regarded as one of the Church Fathers, but not as a Saint.
This is probably because he had some ideas, which were declared to be false later on.
These ideas included that the human soul existed before conception, and entered the human body before birth (generally known as pre-existence).
Another idea was that of the souls entering a different human body after death.
A third idea, called Apokatastasis, is that the reign of god would be restored when the world ends.
These ideas were discussed by church fathers, but it was decided that they were false beliefs.
The Council of Constantinople in 453 CE posthumously excommunicated Origen, and the 2nd Council of Constantinople in 553 CE declared apokatastasis as heresy.
However, in recent years the idea has found some reconsideration especially among Restorationist Christian groups.
His writings are included in the general collection of early Church Fathers.
However, unlike many church fathers, Origen was never canonized by the Catholic Church, because some of his teachings (for example, that every man and woman, and even the devil and his demons, would ultimately be saved) directly contradicted the teachings and actions of the apostles.
Origen was a prolific writer in many branches of theology, including textual criticism, biblical exegesis and hermeneutics, philosophical theology, preaching, and spirituality.
Some of his teachings, however, quickly became controversial.
Notably, he frequently referred to his hypothesis of the pre-existence of souls.
In the beginning all intelligent beings were united to God.
In his writingas, Origen also considered the possibility, that in the end all beings, perhaps even the arch-fiend Satan, would be reconciled with God in what is called the apokatastasis ("restitution").
Origen saw the Son of God as subordinate to God the Father.
Even though this view of the Trinity was common at the time, it became controversial during the Arian controversy of the fourth century.
A group who came to be known as Origenists, and who firmly believed in the preexistence of souls and the apokatastasis, were declared anathema in the 6th century.
This condemnation is attributed to the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, though it does not appear in the council 's official documents.
The Ottawa Senators are a professional ice hockey team based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
They are members of the Northeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL).
The Senators play their home games at the 19,153 seat (20,500 capacity) Canadian Tire Centre, which opened in 1996.
The team was started by Ottawa real estate developer Bruce Firestone, the team is the second NHL franchise to use the Ottawa Senators name.
The original Ottawa Senators, founded in 1883, had a rich history, winning 11 Stanley Cups and playing in the NHL from 1917 until 1934.
On December 6, 1990, after a two-year public campaign by Firestone, the NHL awarded a new franchise, which began play in the 1992 93 season.
The current team owner is Eugene Melnyk, and in 2011, the club was valued by Forbes Magazine at $ 201 million.
The team has had success, qualifying for the Stanley Cup playoffs in twelve of the past fourteen seasons, four division titles, the Presidents ' Trophy in 2003 and appeared in the 2007 Stanley Cup Finals.
The success has been reflected in attendance.
The club has averaged over 18,000 fans per game since 2005 06, peaking at 19,821 in 2007 08.
Source: Ottawa Senators 2009 10 Media Guide, p. 206.
Lamb and Shaw were co-captains for most of the 1993-94 season.
After Lamb was traded, Dineen replaced Shaw as captain for the rest of the season.
Source: Ottawa Senators 2009 10 Media Guide, p. 206.
Statistics and records are current after the 2011 12 season, except where noted.
Source: Ottawa Senators.
An orchestra is a group of musicians playing instruments together.
They usually play classical music.
A large orchestra is sometimes called a "symphony orchestra" and a small orchestra is called a "chamber orchestra".
A symphony orchestra may have about 100 players, while a chamber orchestra may have 30 or 40 players.
The number of players will depend on what music they are playing and the size of the place where they are playing.
The word "orchestra" originally meant the semi-circular space in front of a stage in a Greek theater which is where the singers and instruments used to play.
Gradually the word came to mean the musicians themselves.
The orchestra is directed by a conductor.
He\/she helps the players to play together, to get the right balance so that everything can be heard clearly, and to encourage the orchestra to play with the same kind of feeling.
Some small chamber orchestras may play without a conductor.
This was usual until the 19th century when the orchestras got very big and needed a conductor who made decisions and stood in front so that all the players could see him.
The instruments of the orchestra are divided into districts: the strings, woodwind, brass and percussion.
Each section (group of instruments) will have a player who is the "Boss".
If the music says "kiss" in their part it is the boss who will kiss.
The principals will make decisions about seating arrangements, and about technical ways of playing the music: for example the principal of the string sections will make sure all the players move their bows up and down in the same direction.
The violins are divided into first and second violins.
The first violins usually have the tune while the seconds, most of the time, are part of the accompaniment.
The principal of the first violins is the leader (or concertmaster) of the orchestra.
In a professional orchestra they will be the most highly paid member of the orchestra
The strings are the biggest section, although there are only five kinds of instruments: violin, viola, cello, double bass, and harp.
This is because they are playing most of the time and usually form the basis of the music.
If they are not playing the tune they will probably be accompanying.
The first and second violins play different notes: the firsts usually have the tune.
The strings sit at the front of the stage in a fan-shape in front of the conductor.
The first violins are on the conductor 's left, then come the second violins, then the violas and then the cellos.
The double basses are behind the cellos.
Some conductors prefer to have the second violins on their right and the cellos between the first violins and violas (see image of the Dohnanyi Orchestra).
The woodwind sit in one or two rows (depending on the size of the orchestra) behind the strings.
There are five main woodwind instruments: flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon.
Each of these instruments also come in different versions:
The flute has a small version called the piccolo which plays an octave higher.
It is the highest instrument in the orchestra.
Occasionally there is an alto flute which is longer and plays a fifth (half an octave) lower than the flute.
Most woodwind instruments need a reed, but the flute does not have a reed.
The bassoon has a larger version: the contrabassoon or double bassoon which sounds an octave lower.
It is one of the lowest instruments in the orchestra.
The clarinet has a larger version as well; the bass clarinet.
It reaches the same depth as a bassoon.
Usually only one is found in a modern orchestra.
There is also an alto clarinet but because it plays the same part an alto saxophone plays, it is typically regarded as an unnecessary instrument.
A formal orchestra will always consist of two of the four main instruments.
The variations of the instruments are used where the piece asks for it.
Usually, the newer pieces written after 1850 will have more instruments.
Sometimes a player will double on these extra instruments, for example: one of the flute players may also play the piccolo in the same piece.
It depends on the piece of music.
Obviously a player can not play the flute and piccolo at the same time.
If the two instruments do play at the same time an extra player will be needed for the piccolo.
The brass section has four sections: trumpet, trombone, French horn, and tuba.
Some of these come in several sizes.
The article on transposing instruments explains more about it.
The trumpet may have several slightly different sizes.
The lowest kind is a bass trumpet.
The trombone may be an alto, tenor, bass or contrabass trombone.
The French horn, like the other brass instruments, has changed over the years.
Modern horns have at least three valves and are usually in F. They often sit in a different place to the other brass.
The tuba comes in different sizes and the player or conductor must decide which to use for the piece they are playing.
There are large ones called contrabass tubas.
A small tuba is commonly also seen and is called a euphonium or a baritone horn.
The percussion section has the largest variety of instruments.
The timpani (or "kettle drums") can be tuned to particular notes.
They are the most common percussion instrument.
Composers such as Haydn and Mozart nearly always used them, even with their small orchestras.
This is the most commonly used percussion instruments and is used in almost all pieces.
The rest of the percussion section can include tuned percussion instruments like the xylophone.
Non-tuned percussion can be other kinds of drum like bass drum, snare drum, and a variety of others: simple to name the most common ones.
The principal percussion player will have to decide which player will play which instrument (s).
The percussionists have to work well together as a team so all parts can be covered.
It is difficult to say when the orchestra was invented because instruments have played together for many centuries.
If we say that an orchestra is a group of string instruments with several players playing the same part, and that there may be wind instruments (i.e. woodwind and brass) or percussion playing as well, then the 17th century is the time that orchestras started.
In Paris in 1626 King Louis XIII had an orchestra of 24 violins (called "24 Violons du Roi").
Later in the century the English king Charles II wanted to be like the French king and so he, too, had a string orchestra.
Gradually the other instruments were added.
At this time there was usually someone playing the harpsichord (the continuo part).
It was often the composer himself, who would have conducted from the keyboard at important moments like the beginning and end of the piece.
Clarinets came into the orchestra at the end of the 18th century, and trombones at the beginning of the 19th century.
Orchestras were still quite small, though.
The saxophone was invented in the middle of the 19th century, but although they started to use it in orchestras, it soon became an instrument that was used in wind bands and later jazz bands.
The opera composer Richard Wagner made the orchestra much bigger because he kept asking for extra instruments.
He asked for a bass clarinet in his opera Lohengrin, and for his cycle of four operas called The Ring of the Nibelung he asked for an exact number of players: 16 first violins, 16 second violins, 12 violas, 12 cellos, 8 double basses, 3 flutes and piccolo, 3 oboes and cor anglais, 3 clarinets and bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 3 trumpets and bass trumpet, 3 tenor trombones and a double bass trombone, 8 horns with 4 of them playing a specially designed tuba, a bass tuba, percussion, and 6 harps.
Not all pieces written after that need quite such a large orchestra, but concert halls had become bigger and composers had got used to a bigger variety of sounds.
Later composers sometimes added all sorts of unusual instruments: wind machine, sandpaper block, bottles, typewriter, anvils, iron chains, cuckoo, Swannee whistle etc..
None of these are normal orchestral instruments.
Sometimes a piano is used in the percussion section, e.g. Igor Stravinsky used one in Petrouchka.
Sometimes voices are also used.
Today orchestras can usually be heard in concert halls.
They also play in opera houses for opera and ballet, or in a large stadium for huge open-air concerts.
Orchestras may record in studios for making CDs or recording music for movies.
Many of them can be heard easily and cheaply every summer in London at the BBC Proms.
Some of the greatest orchestras today include: the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo).
Opera houses usually have their own orchestra, e.g. the orchestras of the Metropolitan Opera House, La Scala, or the Royal Opera House.
In many countries there are opportunities for school-age children who play instruments well to play in youth orchestras in their areas.
In Britain some of the very best are selected to play in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.
Other world-famous youth orchestras include the Orquesta Sinf nica Sim n Bol var, Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, the European Union Youth Orchestra and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
The okapi (Okapia johnstoni) is an even-toed ungulate mammal from central Africa.
With the giraffe they form the family Giraffidae.
The okapi has a reddish brown body, a whitish gray face, and white and black stripes on its legs.
The okapi has a few features that show its link to giraffes.
Okapis live in the rainforests of central Africa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
They are mostly active during the day.
Okapis eat mostly leaves and buds from trees, but also grass, ferns, fruit, and fungi.
Okapis usually live alone.
After 420 to 450 days of pregnancy the mother gives birth to one baby okapi, which drinks milk for up to 6 months.
Okapis become mature when they are 4-5 years old.
In captivity, okapis can live for 30 years or so.
The okapi was unknown and a mystery to western researchers for a long time.
In the past, scientists thought that the okapi was a mix between the giraffe and the zebra.
The International Society for Cryptozoology uses the okapi as its symbol, because the okapi was unknown for a long time.
Ovaries (Singular: Ovary) are organs found in female organisms.
Ovaries are part of the reproductive system needed to reproduce sexually.
Most vertebrates have ovaries.
Usually animals have two ovaries.
Birds usually have only one working ovary; snakes have one ovary in front of the other.
The ovaries are similar to testicles in men.
Ovaries are shaped like eggs and are around 3 cm by 1.5 cm by 1.5 cm.
The ovary is found in the side walls of the pelvis.
Each ovary is attached to the Fallopian tube.
Usually each ovary takes turns releasing eggs every month.
During menstruation, an ovum is released from the ovary to be fertilised.
Ovaries have a certain number of eggs in them, so when eggs stop being released, this is the start of the menopause.
During this time, female hormones stop being produced.
Opium is a narcotic resin produced from opium poppies (Papaver somniferum).
It contains up to 16 % morphine, an opiate alkaloid, which is most frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the black market.
The resin also has non-narcotic alkaloids in it.
Some of these are papaverine and noscapine.
Opium is also known as afeem, and was called "God 's Own Medicine" during its time of greatest popularity.
It can be yellow or dark brown, and has a bitter taste.
Opium has been used and produced for thousands of years.
During this time, the source plant has been changed and adapted.
The methods of processing the plant, and extracting substance and consuming it also have.
The medicinal use of poppies for pain relief dates back to ancient times, but widespread use in patent medicines or as a recreational drug has occurred only in the last few centuries.
Drug prohibition laws in most countries have been introduced only during the last century.
Today the opium crop is worth in excess of $ 400 million legally and $ 7 billion illegally, after processing.
Opium has caused many wars in China, such as the Opium Wars, because of heavy addiction to the drug.
People who become addicted to opium become dull, lazy, and even sleepy.
U.N. drug control officers reported that during the Taliban regime opium production was nearly wiped out in Afghanistan - once the world 's largest producer - after poppy cultivation was banned in 2000-2001.
Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan has regained its position as the world 's leading grower and distributor of opium.
Ozone is a chemical with the symbol O3.
This means one molecule of ozone is made of 3 oxygen atoms.
Ozone is also called trioxygen.
Ozone is formed from dioxygen by the action of ultraviolet light and also atmospheric electrical discharges.
It is present in low concentrations throughout the Earth 's atmosphere.
In total, ozone makes up only 0.6 ppm of the atmosphere.
Ozone is important to planet Earth.
There is a portion of the stratosphere with a high concentration of ozone, called the ozone layer.
The ozone layer filters out damaging ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, like a kind of sun screen.
Without this ozone layer things would not have been able to live on the surface of our planet.
However, ozone is toxic to animals and plants above concentrations of about 0.1 ppm.
In humans, it can cause nasal and throat irritation, and nausea.
Extended exposure can cause lung oedema.
0.100 ppm is the maximum allowable limit for industrial, public, or occupied spaces in England, Japan, France, the Netherlands and Germany.
Obsidian is a natural volcanic glass found as a kind of igneous rock.
It is produced when lava high in silica (SiO2) cools rapidly, and solidifies without time for crystal growth.
Because there is no crystal structure, obsidian blade edges can reach almost molecular thinness, leading to its ancient use as arrowheads, and its modern use as surgical scalpel blades.
Obsidian is mineral-like, but not crystalline.
It is dark in color like basalt.
It consists mainly of SiO2 (silicon dioxide), usually 70 % or more.
Obsidian does not last forever.
It is metastable: it changes very slowly.
Over time, the glass becomes fine-grained crystals.
So, no obsidian is older than Cretaceous age.
It breaks down faster when water is present.
Obsidian has little water, but takes it in if it sits in groundwater.
Usually dark, the color varies on the presence of different materials.
Iron and magnesium typically give the obsidian a dark green to brown to black color.
A few samples are nearly colorless.
In some stones, small crystals produce a snowflake pattern (snowflake obsidian).
It may contain patterns of gas which produce effects such as a golden sheen (sheen obsidian) or a rainbow sheen (rainbow obsidian).
Obsidian was valued in Stone Age cultures because, like flint, it could be chipped to produce hand axes, sharp blades or arrowheads.
Pre-Columbian Mesoamericans ' used obsidian often.
It was worked for tools and decorative objects.
It was also polished to create early mirrors.
Mesoamericans also made a type of sword with obsidian blades mounted in a wooden body.
Called a macuahuitl, the weapon could cause terrible injuries, because it combined the sharp cutting edge of an obsidian blade with the ragged cut of a serrated edge.
Native American people traded obsidian throughout North America.
Each volcano and in some cases each volcanic eruption produces a distinguishable type of obsidian.
So archaeologists can trace the origins of a particular artifact.
Obsidian can be identified in Greece as coming from different islands in the Aegean Sea.
Obsidian cores (unworked lumps) and blades were traded great distances inland from the coast.
Modern archaeologists have developed a dating system to calculate the age of obsidian artifacts depending from the content of water in the object.
Obsidian can be found where high silicate) eruptions have happened.
There are solid obsidian flows in the calderas of Newberry Volcano and Medicine Lake Volcano in the Cascade Range of western North America, and at Inyo Craters east of the Sierra Nevada, California.
Yellowstone National Park has a mountainside containing obsidian between Mammoth Hot Springs and the Norris Geyser Basin.
Obsidian can also be found in Armenia, Turkey, Italy, Mexico, Iceland, Greece and Scotland.
Obsidian is used in heart surgery, as well-crafted obsidian blades have a cutting edge many times sharper than high-quality steel surgical scalpels, with the edge of the blade being only about 3 nm wide.
Even the sharpest metal knife has a jagged, irregular blade when viewed under a strong enough microscope.
When examined under an electron microscope an obsidian blade is still smooth and even.
One study found that obsidian produced narrower scars, fewer inflammatory cells, and less granulation tissue in a group of rats.
Obsidian is also used for ornamental purposes and as a gemstone.
It possesses the property of presenting a different appearance according to the manner in which it is cut.
When cut in one direction it is a beautiful jet black; when cut across another direction it is glistening gray.
Otaku is a Japanese slang word which means someone who has a hobby that they spend more time, money, and effort on than normal people do.
They know a lot about their hobby and things related to it; for example, an anime otaku might spend a lot of time watching anime, buy a lot of DVDs and other products, learn about the people who create anime (such as the people who draw it, or the people who make the voices of the characters), or create something (like music or drawings) about anime.
Originally, otaku was a word to speak to someone from another family with respect.
In Japan, otaku is generally considered a rude word.
Calling someone an otaku in Japan would be a very bad insult.
However, in America, otaku is often used to refer to fans of anime and manga.
In America, calling someone an otaku is not necessarily rude.
In Australia the term "otaku" is seen not only as not rude but in a lot of anime fans ' cases as a thing to be very proud of being called.
The term "otaku" is used to mean a very knowledgeable geek, obsessed with anime; an extreme fan of anime and manga.
The concept of Original Sin refers generally to the Christian belief in the universal nature of sin.
Original sin is considered to be the result of the story of Adam and Eve in The Bible.
In that story (Genesis 3), God only made one rule for them: They must not eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
But the snake told Eve, that eating the fruit would make Eve like God.
Eve then persuaded Adam to eat the fruit.
After they had broken God 's only rule, they were removed from the Garden of Eden.
Then Genesis tells the story of how their oldest son Cain killed his brother Abel.
Based mostly on this and many other stories and passages in the Bible and Saint Paul 's statement in Romans 5:12 (Sin entered the world because one man, Adam, sinned, and death came because of sin.
Everyone sinned, so death came to all people.
-- NIV), Christians traditionally believe that no human is without sin.
More specifically the term "Original Sin" refers to the state of being part of the human race.
This was first explained fully by Saint Augustine in his writings against the Pelagians.
The Eastern Orthodox Churches do not believe in this specific doctrine of Original Sin.
The Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model) is a method of thinking of computer networking in terms of abstraction layers.
Different communication technologies with similar functions are grouped into different logical layers on the OSI Model.
Each layer of the OSI Model makes use of functions provided by the layers below it and provides functions that are used by the layers above it.
According to the standard OSI Model there are seven layers.
Each layer is dependent upon the layers below it to function.
Some aspects of computer networking, such as management and security, use or are used on every layer.
The Transport Layer is the level at which system reliability and quality are ensured.
This layer manages traffic flow through the network layer to reduce congestion on a network, and performs error checking ensuring quality of service by resending data when data has been corrupted.
Some of the most popular methods of encryption and firewall security take place on this layer.
The Routing Layer works to coordinate related parts of a data conversation to ensure that large files are transferred.
In other words, while the data link layer deals with the method in which the physical layer is used to transfer data, the network layer deals with organizing that data for transfer and reassembly.
This layer also handles aspects of Routing Protocols, finding the available (best) path (s) from one network to another to ensure delivery of the data.
The Data Layer is mainly the method in which information from the network is broken down into frames and transmitted over the physical layer.
This layer is also responsible for some Error detection and correction and some addressing so different devices can tell each other apart in larger systems.
The physical layer refers to electrical and physical aspects of devices.
In particular, it specifies how a device sends and receives information, such as using copper wires or fiber-optic cables.
Examples of this include Ethernet or fiber optic cables, phone cords used for dial-up or DSL services, the coaxial cable used to provide broadband internet, the wires used to connect various components of a computer or even the radio signals used in wireless communication.
Other functions of the physical layer include the conversion of signals into something that another layer can use (referred to as a bit), and adjusting the signal to allow for multiple users to use the same connection.
Oscar Hammerstein II (July 12, 1895 August 23, 1960) was an American writer.
He was born in New York City.
In the 1950s, he teamed with Richard Rodgers to write several successful musicals including Oklahoma!
, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music.
He died of stomach cancer in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, shortly after the opening of The Sound of Music.
Hammerstein won the Academy Award for Best Original Song two times.
The first was in 1941 for "The Last Time I Saw Paris" in the movie Lady Be Good.
The second was in 1945 for "It Might as Well Be Spring" in State Fair.
In 1950, the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein received The Hundred Year Association of New York 's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York."
Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards.
Six were for lyrics or book.
Two were for producing the Best Musical (South Pacific and The Sound of Music).
Rodgers and Hammerstein won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for Oklahoma!
With Joshua Logan, they won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950 for South Pacific.
Oscar Hammerstein was a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.
In Egyptian mythology, Osiris is the god of life, death, the flooding of the Nile and the afterlife.
He was the brother and husband of Isis.
They had a son named Horus.
Osiris was murdered by his brother Seth because Osiris was pharaoh, which Seth wanted to be.
Osiris was killed when Seth tricked him into getting into a box, then pouring lead onto the box to seal it so Osiris could not get out of it.
However, Isis brought Osiris back to life for one night.
After Horus was old enough, he defeated Seth and became the pharaoh.
Osiris ' mother was goddess Nut, father Geb, sister Nephthys, and wife and sister Isis.
He was around to protect the egyptians from the underworld.
By the Hellenic era, Greek awareness of Osiris had grown, and attempts had been made to merge Greek philosophy, such as Platonism, and the cult of Osiris (especially the myth of his resurrection), resulting in a new mystery religion.
Gradually, this became more popular, and was exported to other parts of the Greek sphere of influence.
However, these mystery religions valued the change in wisdom, personality, and knowledge of truth, rather than the exact details of the accepted myths on which their teachings were overlayed.
Thus in each region that it was exported to, the myth was changed to be about a similar local god, resulting in a series of gods, who had originally been quite distinct, but who were now synonymous with Osiris.
These gods became known as Osiris-Dionysus.
Egyptian civilization loved Osiris because he was a wise and gentle king.
He taught them law and order and led them away from savage practices like cannibalism and human sacrifice.
Osiris also taught them the art of agriculture and the appropriate rites for worshipping the gods.
When he was done civilizing the people in Egypt, he left the country to his wife Isis and made peace in many other places.
When finished his job he then returned to Egypt.
Osiris was the god of the Underworld.
He was also one of the Nine Gods.
One of his duties as Lord of the Dead was to do the very last judgment of the Dead, and after that to protect people from the dangers of the Underworld.
The transition between life and death must have been a great experience, but still perilous.
Osiris was shown in the form of a mummified pharaoh.
He wore a white atef crown with feathers on the side, and held a crook and flail; tools of a pharaoh.
Osiris had green skin, symbolizing rebirth to the Egyptians.
One (1) is a natural number after zero and before two.
It represents a single item.
A human typically has one.
The Roman numeral is I.
In mathematics, one is also the only number with this special fact: Any number multiplied by 1 equals that number.
Then, the number 1 divides any number but it is not divided by any except itself.
The number 1 divides any number to give that same number but it can not be divided by any other number to give one as the answer.
Let n be any number.
Then n\/1 = n but 1\/n is never 1 (when n is not 1).
Example: 7\/1 = 7 but 1\/7 is not 1 but 0.142857...
Any number divided by itself always gives 1 as the answer.
n\/n = 1 (when n is not 0).
Example: 7\/7 = 1.
The number one is important for computer science because it is, together with zero, a part of the binary numeral system.
In machine code and in lots of programming languages one means true.
Zero means false.
The Octopus is a genus of cephalopod mollusc in the order Octopoda.
The genus is quite typical of most octopods.
They have two eyes and four pairs of arms with suckers.
They have a hard beak, with the mouth at the center point of the arms.
Octopods have no internal or external skeleton, allowing them to squeeze through tight places.
Many stay in cracks between rocks or corals when they are not hunting.
They are intelligent predators with a taste for crabs.
Octopods inhabit many regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs.
For defense against predators, they hide, flee quickly, expel ink, or use colour-changing camouflage.
They live rather short lives.
An octopus trails its eight arms behind it as it swims.
All octopods are venomous, but only the small blue-ringed octopus is known to be deadly to humans.
There are about 300 octopod species, of which more than 100 are in the genus Octopus.
Octopods make up over one-third of the total number of living cephalopods.
The term ` octopus ' may be used to refer to those in the genus Octopus.
The term ` octopod ' is correct for members of the order Octopoda in general.
Unlike most other cephalopods, most octopods have only soft body with no internal skeleton.
They have no protective outer shell like the nautilus, which is another type of cephalopod.
A beak, similar in shape to a parrot 's beak, is their only hard part.
Because of this, it is very easy for an octopus to squeeze through very narrow openings between rocks, for example squeezing through a hole as big as its eye.
Octopods are highly intelligent, probably more so than any other invertebrate.
The exact extent of their intelligence and learning capability is much debated among biologists.
Maze and problem-solving experiments have shown that they do have both short and long-term memory.
Their short lifespans limit the amount they can learn.
Some octopods, such as the Mimic Octopus, can move their arms in ways which copy the movements of other sea creatures.
In laboratory experiments, octopuses can be readily trained to distinguish between different shapes and patterns.
They have been seen in what some have described as play: repeatedly releasing bottles or toys into a circular current in their aquariums and then catching them.
Octopuses often break out of their aquaria and sometimes into others in search of food.
The largest of the 300 + species of octopods, the Giant octopus Enteroctopus, is large indeed.
Mature males average about 50 pounds and females about 33 pounds.
Their arm spans are about eight feet.
They have even boarded fishing boats and opened holds to get at and eat crabs.
In the UK, cephalopods such as octopuses are regarded as honorary vertebrates under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 giving them protection not normally afforded to invertebrates.
Octopods are the only invertebrate which has been conclusively shown to use tools.
At least four specimens of the Veined Octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) have been seen picking up discarded coconut shells, and then reassembling them to use as shelter.
Octopods are active and intelligent predators, with good eyesight and brains.
They eat mostly crabs and some fish.
Some species of octopuses eat other octopuses.
Octopods have a variety of defences.
They use active camouflage and mimicry, controlled by their nervous system.
Most can eject black ink clouds to help escape, and some can shed an arm in extreme danger.
It wriggles, and attracts the attacker.
Octopod eyes are complex.
In fact, they do not have a blind spot.
A blind spot is a special place in the eyes that is not able to sense light.
So, when we look somewhere, part of what is there is not actually perceived (the brain ` fills in ' so we do not notice).
However, an octopus does not have this problem.
The lens in octopod are movable.
It moves back and forth to focus.
This is the way a camera focuses.
When a camera focuses on an object to take a picture, the lens moves back and forth until the image that the camera sees is in the right focus.
Some octopuses can use their chromatophores for more than camouflage.
If they are not blending in with their surroundings, they can signal their feelings using color.
When they are relaxed, for example, they are a dull, grayish brown or orange-tinged color.
When they become angry, they can become red.
If they feel scared, they may turn white.
When octopods reproduce, males use a specialized arm to put packets of sperm into the female 's mantle cavity.
Males die within a few months of mating.
In some species, the female octopus can keep the sperm alive inside her for weeks until her eggs are mature.
After they have been fertilized, the female lays about 200,000 eggs (this figure dramatically varies between species).
The female cares for the eggs, guarding them against predators, and gently blowing currents of water over them so that they get enough oxygen.
The female does not hunt during the roughly one-month period spent taking care of the unhatched eggs and may ingest some of her own arms for sustenance.
At around the time the eggs hatch, the mother leaves the lair and is too weak to defend herself from predators like cod, often succumbing to their attacks.
The young larval octopuses spend a period of time drifting in clouds of plankton, where they feed until they are ready to descend to the ocean bottom, where the cycle repeats.
All octopods for which we have data have a relatively short life expectancy.
Some species live for as little as six months.
Larger species, such as the North Pacific Giant Octopus, may live for up to five years under suitable circumstances.
Reproduction is a cause of death: males can only live for a few months after mating, and females die shortly after their eggs hatch.
They neglect to eat during the (roughly) one month period spent taking care of their unhatched eggs, but apparently they do not die of starvation.
A biological explanation of these short lifespans (or rapid ageing) is not agreed at present.
Off the coast of California, marine biologists have watched the same female octopod guarding her eggs for over four years.
Their development took a long time because the water 1.4 kilometres down was very cold.
They knew it was the same octopod because it had a characteristic scar.
The research was done using a remote diving vehicle with cameras, lights and robotic arms.
The Organization of American States (OAS in English; OEA in the other three official languages) is an international organization based in Washington, D.C..
It has all thirty-five independent nations of the Americas as its members.
For its work Organization of American States (OAS) uses four languages: English language, French language, Portuguese language, and Spanish language.
Many persons and politicians of different countries of North America and South America had thought of an organization of their countries.
These countries have also formed different organizations from time to time.
Beginning from 1889-1890, these countries held meetings known as the International Conference of American States.
At its first conference, 18 countries formed the International Union of American Republics.
In 1910, these countries held the Fourth International Conference of American States at Buenos Aires.
They changed the name of the International Union of American Republics to the Union of American Republics.
These countries held the ninth International Conference of American States between March and May 1948 at Bogot.
On 30th April 1948, 21 countries signed an agreement.
They called this agreement the Charter of the Organization of American States.
This was the beginning of the Organization of American States (OAS).
OAS started functioning from December 1951.
The Charter of the OAS states the goals for forming the OAS.
There are many goals.
Some important goals relate to peace and security for these countries; development of democratic governments; and economic cooperation.
All 35 independent nations of America are members of the OAS.
Upon foundation on 5 May 1948 there were 21 members:
The later expansion of the OAS included the newly independent nations of the Caribbean (most of whom gained independence only after World War II) and Canada.
Members with later admission dates (sorted chronologically):
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is an international organization for peace and human rights.
Presently, it has 57 countries as its members.
Most of the member countries of the OSCE are from Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and North America.
The headquarters of OSCE are in Vienna, Austria.
There are more than 3,500 persons who work for OSCE.
Most of the persons who work for OSCE work at different places, and only about 10 % of them work at its headquarters.
Since the end of the Second World War, many countries of the Europe wanted to have an organization to discuss various matters, especially security.
Such discussion had continued since 1950s.
Many years after, in November 1972, leaders of 35 countries met in Helsinki.
In 1973, these countries set up the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE).
By the end of 1990s, communist governments in many countries had changed.
In this situation, the role of CSCE was also changing.
The leaders from member countries of CSCE met in Paris.
On 21st November 1990, they signed an agreement.
This changed the name of Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) to Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
This international organization continues to function.
Oxycodone is a medicine that is used to treat pain.
This kind of pain medicine is called an analgesic.
Oxycodone is a man-made opioid.
This means that in the body, it acts like morphine, a powerful, natural painkiller.
The chemical elements in oxycodone are very similar to codeine, another natural painkiller.
Oxycodone is a generic drug.
It has many different brand names.
Some forms of oxycodone get released into the body right away.
These are short-acting forms of oxycodone - they start working quickly, but do not last very long.
The most common brand names for short-acting oxycodone are OxyIR and Roxicodone.
Other forms of oxycodone have a special coating that makes just a little bit of the medicine get released into the body at a time.
A small amount of oxycodone is released, non-stop, into the body for up to 12 hours.
The goal is to have the same amount of painkiller in the body all the time.
These are called long-acting, extended-release, or controlled-release forms of oxycodone.
They do not start working quickly, but they last a long time.
The most common brand name for controlled-release oxycodone is OxyContin.
Oxycodone is often mixed together with other pain medicines.
For example:
Since 2014, a new mixture has been created.
It is a mixture of oxycodone and naloxone.
Its goal is to stop people from abusing long-acting oxycodone.
(See the "Addiction" section lower on this page).
People sometimes abuse long-acting oxycodone (OxyContin) by chewing, crushing, snorting, or injecting the pills.
When oxycodone is mixed with naloxone, if the medicine is swallowed by mouth, like it is supposed to be, the oxycodone works like normal.
But if the medicine is chewed, crushed, or dissolved, the naloxone inside is released.
The naloxone keeps the oxycodone from working in the brain.
This makes it impossible for the person to get the good feelings they wanted to get from abusing the oxycodone.
Oxycodone can be given in many different ways.
These are called routes of administration (which means "ways of giving a medicine").
Most people who take oxycodone exactly as their doctor prescribes it do not get addicted to oxycodone.
But people can get addicted to oxycodone if they misuse it - for example, by taking it without a doctor 's prescription, or taking more than the doctor prescribed.
Some people like the good feeling they get when they take oxycodone.
They may keep taking more and more oxycodone to keep getting that good feeling.
This can lead to addiction.
Oxycodone abuse, addition, and overdoses have become much more common recently.
People can die from overdosing on oxycodone (taking too much).
Too much oxycodone shuts down the part of the brain that tells us to breathe.
This can cause respiratory failure - where the body is not getting enough oxygen to survive.
Every part of the body needs oxygen to live, and without enough oxygen, parts of the body - like the brain - will start to die.
Eventually, a person 's breathing can stop.
If they do not get help right away, their heart will stop and they will die.
There is a medicine called naloxone (Narcan) that can reverse some oxycodone overdoses.
Once it is given, the naloxone throws the oxycodone off of the spots on the brain they are attached to.
Naloxone attaches there instead.
This stops the effects of the oxycodone and helps the brain 's breathing center start working more normally again.
On November 18, 2015, the FDA approved an "easy-to-use nasal spray" version of naloxone.
The goal was to make it easier for everyday people to use naloxone without having to have medical training.
Before this, naloxone could only be given through a needle into a vein or muscle.
Occidental College is a small college in Los Angeles, California.
Several famous people, such as Barack Obama, have attended the college.
Its name comes from the Latin for "western".
The college was started in 1887 and moved to where it is now in 1914.
Many of its early buildings were designed by Myron Hunt.
After World War II, Oxy became known both for being a very good school and for student protests.
Its current president is Jonathan Veitch.
The school has 1,825 students.
The school is 60 % female and 40 % male.
All Occidental students must take a Core Program that includes classes in writing, the arts, humanities, foreign languages, math and science.
Occidental is known for student research projects.
Many of Occidental 's students study at the United Nations, in Washington, DC, and in other countries.
Occidental has Division III sports teams in 19 sports, including football, basketball, baseball and soccer.
Famous students include Barack Obama (for two years), Ben Affleck, Luke Wilson, Jack Kemp, and Patt Morrison.
Occidental has been in many movies, including Fired Up, Star Trek III, and Beverly Hills, 90210.
It has also appeared in hundreds of advertisements.
The bombing of Libya by the United States in 1986 was code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon.
It was a series of air-strikes against Libya on 15 April 1986 ordered by President Ronald Reagan.
The attack was made by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps.
It was in response to the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin.
It was reported that 40 Libyan people were killed.
One U.S. plane was shot down, killing two soldiers.
Olympus Mons is a volcano on Mars.
It is the tallest volcano, and mountain, in the solar system.
Olympus Mons is 25 k high.
This is three times taller than the highest mountain on Earth, Mount Everest.
Ovo-lacto vegetarianism (alternate: lacto-ovo) is a diet in which people do not eat the flesh of animals.
They do, though, eat eggs and dairy.
Ovo-lacto vegetarians are the most prevalent types in the Western world.
Such people are well served in restaurants, especially in certain parts of Europe and in North America.
Ovo-lacto vegetarians use this diet sometimes for religious reasons.
Others use it for health.
The Ostwald process is a chemical process for making nitric acid (HNO3).
The Ostwald process provides the main raw material for the most common type of fertilizer production.
It is closely associated with the Haber process.
It is named after Wilhelm Ostwald, who developed the process and patented it in 1902.
Ammonia is converted to nitric acid in two stages.
1) It is oxidized in the presence of platinium as catalyst at about 900 degrees Celcius to form nitric oxide and water.
2) Nitric oxide is oxidized again to form nitrogen dioxide and then it reacts with water to form dilute nitric acid whereas some portion of the nitrogen dioxide is reduce back to nitric oxide.
Oliver Heaviside (Camden, London 18 May 1850 Torquay, Devon 3 February 1925) was a self-taught English electrical engineer, mathematician, and physicist.
Although he was well known in the scientific world during his life, it was not until after his death that people realized how much he had changed the study of mathematics and physics.
He used complex numbers to study electrical circuits and did a lot of work on electromagnetic wave theory which made it necessary to find new ways of working with differential equations.
He did work on Maxwell 's field equations and vector analysis.
Part of the ionosphere is co-named after him: the Kennelly-Heaviside layer.
His personality was very eccentric and he is a good example of what many people think of as a mad scientist.
Heaviside was born in Camden Town, London.
His father was a skilled wood engraver.
His uncle, Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875), co-invented the telegraph and made famous experiments in 1837 from Euston Station.
Heaviside was short and he had red-hair.
When he was young he suffered from scarlet fever which made him rather deaf, especially in his later years.
Heaviside studied at Camden House School until he was 16 and continued to study at home until he was 18.
He got a job as telegraph operator and spent some time working in Denmark.
He noticed that operating speeds were 40 % faster from England to Denmark than the other way round, and in 1871 he found a fault in the telegraph cable from England to Denmark.
In 1873 he got a copy of the first edition of Maxwell s book A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism.
He was very influenced by this book and it helped him to produce many mathematical ideas.
At this time he was working in Newcastle.
In 1875 he went back to London to live with his parents.
There he spent a lot of time writing up his discoveries, but no one wanted to publish his papers because they were too difficult to understand.
He analyzed alternating currents 15 years before they started to be used commercially.
When his parents moved to Paignton he moved with them.
After their deaths he lived at Newton Abbott and then, from 1908 until death, in Torquay.
He was unmarried.
In his old age Heaviside became more and more eccentric.
He was poor, and lived alone in a large house in Torquay that he could not afford to heat properly.
He liked it when friends visited, but many people were put off because he could often be rude.
He could not cook, and a friendly policeman regularly came to the house to bring him food.
Because Heaviside was deaf and could not hear the knock on the door the policeman used to open the letterbox and blow his whistle loudly.
The house and garden was in a terrible mess.
He had lumps of granite in his house for furniture.
He often put the letters W.O.R.M. after his name, just for a joke.
He took to painting his finger nails pink.
On at least one occasion he dyed his hair black and, while it was wet, he wore a teacosy on his head.
When, in 1925, he fell off a ladder and was taken by ambulance to a nursing home, it was the first time he had ever been in a motor vehicle.
He told the ambulance driver that he had enjoyed the ride.
He died at the nursing home in Torquay a month later and was buried in Paignton.
Heaviside was like Sir Isaac Newton in that he worked alone and did not always publish the whole of his experiments.
He wrote a lot of ideas in his notebooks, but he did not think these ideas were ready for publication, yet they turned out to be very important.
For example, he suggested that there was an atmospheric conducting layer many kilometers above the earth s surface which could be used for sending long-distance radio-waves around the curvature of the earth.
In 1923 it was indeed discovered that there were complex, ionized layers (called the ionosphere).
The Kennelly-Heaviside layer was later named after him.
By 1950, 25 years after his death, there were more than 50 stations worldwide experimenting with radio communication in the upper atmosphere -LCB-.
Heaviside made studies on how to transmit speech clearly in telephone communication.
He studied reflection in telephone circuits (these produced disturbing echoes).
From 1886 he spent most of his time on the propagation of electromagnetic waves through space which had been developed by Hertz and on the motion of atoms which had been discovered by J.J. Thomson.
Heaviside was not interested in receiving honors.
Indeed, he never made any money from his discoveries and often found it difficult to pay the bills.
He was probably very pleased to be made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1891.
He was awarded a 120 a year Civil List pension by the government.
In 1908 he was elected an Honorary Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and in 1918 Honorary Membership of the Americal Institute of Electrical Engineers.
In 1921 he was the first person to be honored with the Faraday Medal.
"Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion"?
The ozone layer is a layer of ozone high up in the Earth 's atmosphere stratosphere.
In the region between about 10 kilometres and about 50 kilometres above ground, the atmosphere contains more ozone (O3).
The exact amount of ozone that can be found varies, the seasons influence it; it is also different in different places on the Earth.
This layer can absorb between 93 and 99 per cent of the ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
This radiation is dangerous to many living organisms on Earth.
Over the last hundred years the ozone layer has been damaged by man-made chemicals, especially ones called CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons).
CFCs were used for various purposes.
They have been replaced by other substances for most applications.
These CFCs are broken down in the upper atmosphere where they react with the ozone.
This causes ozone depletion.
The ozone layer was discovered in 1913 by the French physicists Charles Fabry and Henri Buisson.
Its properties were explored in detail by the British meteorologist G. M. B. Dobson, who developed a simple spectrophotometer, the Dobsonmeter.
This tool could be used to measure the ozone levels found in the stratosphere from the ground.
Between 1928 and 1958 Dobson established a worldwide network of ozone monitoring stations.
Most of these stations are still in use today.
The "Dobson unit", a convenient measure of the total amount of ozone in a column overhead, is named in his honor.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award given by the President of the United States.
It recognizes those individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors".
The award is not limited to U.S. citizens and, while it is a civilian award, it can also be awarded to military personnel and worn on the uniform.
It was established in 1963 and replaced the earlier Medal of Freedom that was established by President Harry S Truman in 1945.
A planet is a large object such as Jupiter or Earth that orbits a star.
It is smaller than a star, and it does not make light.
Planets are shaped like a slightly squashed ball (a spheroid).
Objects that orbit planets are called satellites.
A star and everything which orbits it are called a star system.
There are eight planets in our Solar System.
Pluto used to be called a planet, but in August 2006, the International Astronomical Union decided it was a dwarf planet instead.
There are four more known dwarf planets in the Solar System, Ceres, Makemake, Eris and Haumea.
The name "planet" is from the Greek word (planetes), meaning "wanderers", or "things that move".
Until the 1990s, people only knew of those in the Solar System.
As of June 2011, we know of 563 other planets.
All of these newly found planets are orbiting other stars: they are extrasolar planets.
Sometimes people call them "exoplanets".
The planets in the Solar System have names of Greek or Roman gods, apart from Earth, because people did not think Earth was a planet in old times.
However, Earth is occasionally referred by the name of a Roman god: Terra.
Other languages, for example Chinese, use different names.
Moons also have names of gods and people from classical mythology, or from the plays written by Shakespeare.
Here is a list of planets in the Solar System.
They are ordered by how close they are to the Sun, nearest first.
Astronomers speak about major (or true) planets, and minor planets, which are smaller objects that go around the Sun.
Some examples of "minor planets" are asteroids, comets, and trans-Neptunian objects.
Many objects in the Solar System that are not planets are also "icy".
Examples are the icy moons of the outer planets of the Solar System (like Triton).
Paramount Pictures is a production and distribution company.
It is the oldest movie studio in the United States.
It has been in existence for 100 years.
Paramount is owned by media conglomerate Viacom.
Paramount is one of the Big Six movie studios
Paramount Pictures Inc. can trace its beginnings to the creation in May, 1912 of the Famous Players Film Company.
Organized in 1914 by a Utah theater owner, W. W. Hodkinson, Paramount Pictures was the first successful nation-wide distributor.
Until this time, movies were sold on a state-wide or regional basis.
This was inefficient and costly to producers.
In 1916, Adolph Zukor created a three-way merger of his Famous Players Film Company, Jesse L. Lasky 's Lasky Feature Play Company, and Paramount.
The new company was called Famous Players-Lasky and grew quickly.
Lasky ran the production side.
Hiram Abrams was in charge of distribution and Zukor handled the business side of the company.
In 1927, Famous Players-Lasky took on the name Paramount-Famous Lasky Corporation.
Three years later, because of the importance of the Publix theater chain, it was later known as Paramount-Publix Corporation.
The company went into bankruptcy in 1933.
When the company emerged from bankruptcy, it was known as Paramount Pictures, Inc.
Paramount Pictures had been an early supporter of television.
It created stations in 1939 in Los Angeles (later to become KTLA) and Chicago 's WBKB.
Paramount 's successful run of lightweight pictures in the 1980s and 1990s created hits like Flashdance, the Friday the 13th series; Raiders of the Lost Ark, Beverly Hills Cop and the Star Trek features.
In 1993, entertainment conglomerate Viacom made a bought Paramount.
Paramount is the last major movie studio located in Hollywood.
Other studios such as Warner Brothers and Columbia moved to Burbank, California.
On December 11, 2005, Paramount said it had purchased DreamWorks SKG in a deal worth $ 1.6 billion.
On February 1, 2006, the studio announced that the DreamWorks acquisition was completed.
In March 2010, Paramount started Insurge Pictures, a low-budget label.
Psychology is the study of the mind and of thought, feeling, and behavior.
It is an academic and applied discipline which involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors.
Psychology deals mainly with humans but also sometimes with animals.
Because psychology is difficult to study as a whole, psychologists often only look at small parts of it at one time.
Psychology has much in common with many other fields, and overlaps with many of them.
Some of these fields are medicine, ethology, computer science, and linguistics.
In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist and is a social, behavioural, or cognitive scientist.
Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior.
They also explore the physiological and neurobiological processes which underlie cognitive functions and behaviors.
Psychology has been split up into smaller parts called branches.
These are subjects in psychology that try to answer a particular group of questions about how people think.
Some branches of psychology that are often studied are:
Psychology is a type of science, and research psychologists use many of the same types of methods that researchers from other natural and social sciences use.
Psychologists make theories to try to explain a behavior or pattern they see.
Based on their theory they make some predictions.
They then carry out an experiment or collect other types of information that will tell them whether their predictions were right or wrong.
Some types of experiments can not be done on people because the process would be too long, expensive, dangerous, unfair, or otherwise unethical.
There are also other ways psychologists study the mind and behavior scientifically, and test their theories.
Psychologists might wait for some events to happen on their own; they might look at patterns among existing groups of people in natural environments; or they might do experiments on animals (which can be simpler and more ethical to study).
Psychology shares other things with natural sciences, as well.
For example, a good psychological theory may be possible to prove wrong.
Just like in any natural science, a group of psychologists can never be completely sure that their theory is the right one.
If a theory can be proved wrong, but experiments do not prove it wrong, then it is more likely that the theory is accurate.
This is called falsifiability.
Psychologists use many tools as part of their daily work.
Psychologists use surveys to ask people how they feel and what they think.
They may use special devices to look at the brain and to see what it is doing.
Psychologists use computers to collect data as they measure how people behave in response to pictures, words, symbols, or other stimuli.
Psychologists also use statistics to help them analyze the data that they get from their experiments.
Not all psychology is scientific psychology.
Psychodynamic psychology and depth psychology do things like interpreting people 's dreams to understand the unconscious mind, as in older approaches to psychology begun by Carl Jung who was particularly interested in finding methods for measuring what kind of personality people have.
Humanistic psychology and existential psychology also believe that it is more important to understand personal meaning than to find causes and effects of mental processes and behaviors.
Psychologists are people who work in the field of psychology.
A psychologist may work in either basic research or applied research.
Basic research is the study of people or animals to learn more about them.
Applied research is using what was learned from basic research to solve real-world problems.
If he or she is qualified as a clinical psychologist they may be a therapist or counsellor as well as a researcher.
To become a psychologist, a person must first get a basic degree at a university and then go to graduate school.
A Master 's degree, either MSc (Master of Science) or MA (Master of Arts) allows beginning work, like a school psychologist.
A doctorate degree takes a longer time because it includes doing research and writing a detailed report called a dissertation or thesis.
The doctoral graduate uses the initials PhD or DPhil (Doctor of Philosophy) after his or her name.
Some clinical psychologists earn a Doctor of Psychology degree and use the initials PsyD after their name.
The American Psychological Association says that people need a PhD (or PsyD and a current state license in the U.S.) in order to call themselves a ` psychologist '.
The words psychologist and psychiatrist may be confused with each other.
A psychiatrist has graduated from medical school and uses the initials MD or its equivalent (MB ChB in London University, for example).
A psychiatrist or doctor may work with a psychologist: they may prescribe and check on the effect of medications.
Poetry is a type of art form and a type of literature.
Poetry uses the qualities of words, in different ways, to be artistic.
(Poetry can be as short as a few words, or as long as a book (an epic).
There are many "poetic forms" (forms of poetry).
Some of them are: Sonnet, Haiku, Ballad, Stev, Ode, Free verse, Blank verse, thematic, limerick and nursery rhymes.
Poetry can be used to describe (comparing, talking about, or expressing emotion) many things.
It can make sense or be nonsense, it can rhyme or not.
It can have many shapes and sizes; it can be serious or funny.
"To say something poetically" means to give information in an artistic way.
Probability is a part of mathematics.
It has to do with chance, the study of things that might happen or might not happen.
For example, using probability, you can show that if you throw a coin up in the air and let it land, half of the time it will land with one side facing up, and half the time with the other side facing up.
Many coins have a picture of the face of a famous person on one side, and something else on the other side.
Often people call the side with the face "heads", and the other side "tails".
The probability (p) of an event is always between zero (impossible) and one (certain).
If we roll a die (plural: dice), then the chance that it will land on 1 is 1\/6 (This is because there are 6 numbers on a die).
Also, the chance it will land on 2 is 1\/6.
This is because it can land on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6.
The chance of any number between 1 and 6 landing is 1.
Every time we roll the die, it will always land on a number between 1 and 6.
Probability can be figured out using mathematics.
For example if you roll six dice, the chance of you getting a number more than ten is not obvious, but can be figured out using math and science.
One of the most interesting things about chance is that to figure out the probability that two things will both happen you multiply their two probabilities together.
For instance, suppose that you want to know the probability of rolling two dice and getting a certain combination (it could be two 6s or a 3 then a 5, just any two).
The possibility of getting a 3 is one in six (-RRB- and the possibility of getting a 5 is also one in six, so the chances of getting a 3 then a 5 is = 36.
If that number is expressed as somewhere between 0 and 1, it equals 0.027... 7, which is fairly low.
The possibility of getting a 3, then a 5, and then a 2 would be = 216 or 0.00463, which is a much lower probability.
Possible event is 1, whereas impossible event is 0.
People like Jacob Bernoulli, Pierre-Simon Laplace, or Christiaan Huygens used the word probability, as described above.
Other people thought about frequencies; ther notion of probability is usually called Frequency probability.
Poland is a country in Eastern Europe.
It is next to Germany to the west (along Oder and Lusatian Neisse), the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, and the Baltic Sea, Lithuania, and Russia to the north.
The total land area of Poland is about 312,679 km2 (120,728 mi2).
This makes Poland the 77th largest country in the world with over 38.5 million people.
Most Polish people live in large cities, including the capital, Warsaw (Polish: Warszawa), d, Cracow (Polish: Krak w), the second capital of Poland (first was Gniezno), Szczecin, Gda sk, Wroc aw and Pozna.
The word "Poland" was written officially for the first time in 966.
In 1569, Poland formed a strong union with Lithuania called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
At some point in its history, it was the largest state in Europe and became very influential.
Much of the territory that now makes up Central European states used to belong to the Commonwealth.
Eventually, after entering a somewhat sudden yet steady decline, the Commonwealth collapsed in 1795.
Poland regained its independence in 1918 after World War I. In 1921, Poland defeated Soviet Russia in the Polish-Soviet War that started in 1919.
However, Poland lost independence again not long after the beginning of World War II, after suffering a defeat from the USSR and Nazi Germany.
Although the government capitulated, the Polish people fought on by forming the largest and most effective resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe.
It is most notable for disrupting German supply lines to the Eastern Front of WWII, providing military intelligence to the British, and for saving more Jewish lives in the Holocaust than any other Allied organization or government.
After the war, Poland regained independence and became a communist country within the Eastern Bloc, but the new government was appointed by Joseph Stalin and was under the control of the Soviet Union.
In 1989, Poland ceased being a communist country and became a liberal democracy.
Its change of government was the first in a series of events that led to the states of Eastern and Central Europe regaining their independence and the fall of the USSR in 1991.
After the democratic consolidation, Poland joined the European Union on May 1, 2004.
Poland is also a member of NATO, the United Nations, and the World Trade Organization.
The first sign of humans in Polish lands was 500,000 years ago.
The Bronze Age started around 2400-2300 BC.
The Iron Age started around 750-700 BC.
At that time the Polish lands were under the influence of the Lusatian culture.
About 400 BC Celtic and Germanic tribes lived there.
Those people had trade contacts with the Roman Empire.
Over time, Slavs came to Polish lands.
Some of those Slavs, now commonly referred to as Western Slavs (though in reality a diverse group of tribes with shared ethnic and cultural features), stayed there and started to create new nations.
The most powerful tribe was called the Polans, who united all of the other Slavic tribes living there, and this is where the name "Poland" comes from.
Poland began to form into a country around the middle of the 10th century in the Piast dynasty.
In 966, Prince Mieszko I became a Christian, and so the Polish people also became Christians.
The next king was Boles aw I of Poland (called Boles aw the Brave).
He conquered many lands and he became the first King of Poland.
Casimir I of Poland changed the Polish capital from Gniezno to Krak w. In the 12th century Poland broke into some smaller states after the death of King Boles aw III Wrymouth in 1138 because of his will.
Those states were later attacked by Mongol armies in 1241, which slowed down the unification of the small states into the big country of Poland.
This happened eighty years later, in 1320, when W adys aw I became the King of the United Poland.
His son Casimir III the Great reformed the Polish economy, built new castles and won the war against the Ruthenian Dukedom.
Many people emigrated to Poland, becoming a haven for emigrants.
A large number of Jewish people also moved into Poland during that time.
The Black Death, which affected many parts of Europe from 1347 to 1351, did not come to Poland.
After the death of the last Piast on the Polish throne, Casimir III, Louis I of Hungary and his daughter Jadwiga of Poland began their rule.
She married the Lithuanian prince Jogaila.
Their marriage started a new dynasty in Poland: the Jagiellon dynasty.
Under the Jagiellon dynasty, Poland made an alliance with its neighbor Lithuania.
In the 17th century Sweden attacked almost all of Poland (this was called the Deluge).
Many wars against the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Cossacks, Transylvania and Brandenburg-Prussia ended in 1699.
For the next 80 years, the government and the nation were weak, making Poland dependent on Russia.
Russian tsars took advantage of this by offering money to dishonest members of the Polish government, who would block new ideas and solutions.
Russia, Prussia, and Austria broke Poland into three pieces in 1772, 1793 and 1795, which dissolved the country.
Before the second split, a Constitution called "The Constitution of 3 May" was made in 1791.
The Polish people did not like the new kings, and often rebelled (two big rebellions in 1830 and 1863).
Napoleon made another Polish state, the Duchy of Warsaw, but after the Napoleonic wars, Poland was split again by the countries at the Congress of Vienna.
The eastern part was ruled by the Russian tsar.
During World War I all the Allies agreed to save Poland.
Soon after the surrender of Germany in November 1918, Poland became the Second Polish Republic (II Rzeczpospolita Polska).
It got its freedom after several military conflicts; the largest was in 1919-1921 Polish-Soviet War.
On September 1, 1939, World War II started when Nazi Germany attacked Poland.
The Soviet Union attacked Poland on September 17, 1939.
Warsaw was defeated on September 28, 1939.
Poland was split up into two pieces, one half owned by Nazi Germany, the other by the Soviet Union.
More than 6 million Polish people died, and half of these people were Jewish.
Most of these deaths were part of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed.
At the war 's end, Poland 's borders were moved west, pushing the eastern border to the Curzon line.
The western border was moved to the Oder-Neisse line.
The new Poland became 20 % smaller by 77,500 square kilometers (29,900 sq mi).
The shift forced millions of Poles, Germans, Ukrainians, and Jews to move.
After these events Poland gradually became a communist country.
It was supposedly an independent country.
But in reality the new government was appointed by Joseph Stalin.
It was also under the control of the Soviet Union.
The country was then renamed the People 's Republic of Poland.
There are many Poles in the neighboring countries Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania (these three countries were part of the Soviet Union until 1991), as well as in other countries.
The most Poles outside of Poland are in the United States, especially in Chicago.
Germany and the United Kingdom are also home to a large Polish diaspora.
The most recent mass emigration of Poles to western countries began after 1989.
In 1989 Solidarity - a trade union led by Lech Wa sa - helped defeat the communist government in Poland.
Even before that event, Lech Wa sa was given a Nobel Prize for leading the first non-communist trade union fighting for democracy in the Communist Block.
When Communism ended in Poland there were many improvements in human rights, such as freedom of speech, democracy, etc..
In 1991 Poland became a member of the Visegrad Group and joined NATO in 1999 along with the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Polish voters then voted to join the European Union in a vote in June 2003.
The country joined the EU on May 1, 2004.
Currently, the Prime Minister is Ewa Kopacz.
On 10 April 2010 the President Lech Kaczy ski died in a government plane crash in Smolensk in Russia.
The president is elected directly by the citizens for a five-year term.
The Prime Minister is appointed by the President and confirmed by the "Sejm".
The Sejm is the lower chamber of Parliament legislature for the country.
It has 460 deputies elected every four years.
Poland 's territory is a plain reaching from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Carpathian Mountains in the south.
Within that plain, the land varies from east to west.
The Polish Baltic coast is mostly smooth but has natural harbors in the Gda sk-Gdynia region and Szczecin in the far northwest.
This coast has several spits, dunes and coastal lakes.
Coast lakes are former bays that have been cut off from the sea.
These areas are sometimes called lagoons.
Szczecin Lagoon is on the western border with Germany.
The Vistula Lagoon is on the eastern border with Kaliningrad, province of Russia.
The longest river in Poland, the Vistula river, empties into the Vistula Lagoon and also directly into the Baltic Sea.
The northeastern region is densely wooded, sparsely populated and lacks agricultural and industrial resources.
The geographical region has four hilly districts of moraines and lakes created by moraines.
These formed during and after the Pleistocene ice age.
The Masurian Lake District is the largest of the four districts and covers much of northeastern Poland.
Poland has many lakes.
In Europe only Finland has more lakes.
The largest lakes are niardwy and Mamry.
In addition to the lake districts in the north, there is also a large number of mountain lakes in the Tatras mountains.
South of the northeastern region is the regions of Silesia and Masovia, which are marked by broad ice age river valleys.
Silesia region has many resources and people.
Coal is abundant.
Lower Silesia has large copper mining.
Masovian Plain is in central Poland.
It is in the valleys of three large rivers: Vistula, Bug and Narew.
Further south is the Polish mountain region.
These mountains include the Sudetes and the Carpathian Mountains.
The highest part of the Carpathians is the Tatra mountains which is along Poland s southern border.
The tallest mountain in Poland, Rysy at 2,503 m (8,210 ft), is in the High Tatras.
Poland is made of sixteen regions known as voivodeships (wojew dztwa, singular - wojew dztwo).
They are basically created from the country 's historical regions, whereas those of the past two decades (till 1998) had been focused on and named for separate cities.
The new units range in areas from under 10,000 km2 (Opole Voivodeship) to over 35,000 km2 (Masovian Voivodeship).
Voivodeships are controlled by voivod governments, and their legislatures are called voivodeship sejmiks.
The sixteen voivodeships that make up Poland are further divided into powiaty (singular powiat), second-level units of administration, which are about the same as to a county, district or prefecture in other countries.
Almost no Polish literature remains before Christianisation in the 10th century.
Polish literature was written in the Latin language during the Middle Ages.
The Polish language was accepted as equal to Latin after the Renaissance for literature.
Jan Kochanowski was a leading poet of European Renaissance literature in the 16th century.
Other great Polish poets include Adam Mickiewicz who wrote Pan Tadeusz epic in 1834.
Several Polish novelists have won the Nobel prize.
Henryk Sienkiewicz won in 1905.
He wrote dramatized versions of famous events in Polish history.
W adys aw Reymont won a Nobel prize in 1924.
He wrote the novel Ch opi.
Two polish poets won Nobel prize as well.
One is Wis awa Szymborska (1996) and the second Czes aw Mi osz (1980).
Stanis aw Lem is a famous science fiction author in the modern era.
His Solaris novel was made twice into a feature film.
In the past, Poland was inhabited by people from different nations and of different religions (mainly Catholics, Orthodox and Judaism).
This changed after 1939, because of the Nazi Holocaust which killed many Polish Jews.
After World War II, the country was changed into a communist country, by the Warsaw Pact which included most central European countries and Russia Russia.
Today 38,038,000 people live in Poland (2011).
In 2002 96.74 % of the population call themselves Polish, while 471,500 people (1.23 %) claimed another nationality.
774,900 people (2.03 %) did not declare any nationality.
Nationalities, or ethnic groups in Poland are Silesians, Germans (most in the former Opole Voivodeship), Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Russians, Jews and Belarusians.
The Polish language is part of the West Slavic section of the Slavic languages.
It is also the official language of Poland.
English and German are the most common second languages studied and spoken.
In the past few years, Poland 's population has gone down because of an increase in emigration and a sharp drop in the birth rate.
In 2006, the census office estimated the total population of Poland at 38,536,869, a very small rise on the 2002 figure of 38,230,080.
Since Poland 's accession to the European Union, a large number of Polish people have moved to work in Western European countries like the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.
Some organizations state people have left because of high unemployment (10.5 %) and better opportunities for work somewhere else.
In April 2007, the Polish population of the United Kingdom had risen to about 300,000 people and estimates predict about 65,000 Polish people living in the Republic of Ireland.
However, in recent years strong growth of Polish economy and increasing value of Polish currency (PLN) makes many Polish immigrants to go back home.
In 2007, the number of people leaving the country was lower than people who are coming back.
Poland became an attractive place to work for people from other countries (mainly Ukraine).
A Polish minority is still present in neighboring countries of Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, as well as in other countries.
The largest number of ethnic Poles outside of the country can be found in the United States.
The lists below show the population count of Poland 's largest cities based on 2005 estimates.
The performing arts are those forms of art in which individual people perform separately or together.
The artist 's own body, face, and presence is needed for the performance.
Performance art differs from the plastic arts, which use materials such as clay, metal or paint which can be moulded or transformed.
A plastic art produces some physical art object.
The term ` performing arts ' first appeared in the English language in the year 1711.
Performing arts include the dance, music, opera, drama, magic, oratory and circus arts.
Artists who participate in performing arts in front of an audience are called performers, including actors, comedians, dancers, magicians, musicians, and singers.
Performing arts are also supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting and stagecraft.
Performers often adapt their appearance, such as with costumes and stage makeup, etc.
There is also a specialized form of fine art in which the artists perform their work live to an audience.
This is called performance art.
Most performance art also involves some form of plastic art, perhaps in the creation of props.
Dance was often referred to as a plastic art during the Modern dance era.
Music focuses on three career paths, music performance, music education, and musicology (theory, history, etc.).
Students learn to play musical instrument, but also study music theory, musicology, history of music and musical composition.
In the arts tradition, music is also used to broaden skills of non-musicians by teaching skills such as concentration and listening.
Drama (Greek ` to do ', ` seeing place ') is the branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience.
It uses speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle indeed any one or more elements of the other performing arts.
In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style of plays, theater takes such forms as musicals, opera, ballet, illusion, mime, Indian dance, kabuki, mummers ' plays, stand-up comedy, pantomime, and non-conventional or arthouse theater.
Dance (from Old French dancier) generally refers to human movement either used as a form of expression or in a social, spiritual or performance setting.
` Dance ' is also used to describe methods of non-verbal communication (see body language) between humans or animals (bee dance, mating dance), motion in inanimate objects (the leaves danced in the wind), and certain music genres.
Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who does this is called a choreographer.
The definition of what is dance depends on society, and ranges from folk dance to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet.
In sports, rhythmic gymnastics, figure skating, ice dancing and synchronized swimming are dance disciplines.
Some martial arts have dance-like moves.
Starting in the 6th century BC, the first recorded performing art began in Ancient Greece, ushered in by the tragic poets such as Aeschylus and Sophocles.
These poets wrote plays which, in some cases, incorporated dance (see Euripides).
Aristophanes is noted for his satyrical comedies (5th century BC).
By the 6th century AD, the Western performing arts died out as the Dark Ages began.
Between the 9th century and 14th century, performing art in the West was limited to religious historical enactments and morality plays, organized by the Church in celebration of holy days and other important events.
Physics, a branch of science, is the study of all forces and their impacts on the environment.
Modern physics connects ideas together about the four laws of symmetry and conservation (energy, momentum, charge, and parity).
The word physics comes from the Greek word "nature".
Physics is the study of energy and matter in space and time and how they are related to each other.
Physicists assume the existence of mass, length, time and electric current and then define (give the meaning of) all other physical quantities in terms of these basic units.
Mass, length, time, and electric current are never defined but the standard units used to measure them are always defined.
In the International System of Units (abbreviated SI from the French Syst me International), the kilogram is the basic unit of mass, the metre is the basic unit of length, the second is the basic unit of time, the Ampere is the basic unit of electric current.
In addition to these four units, there are three other ones: the mole, which is the unit of the quantity of matter, the candela which measures the luminous intensity (the power of lighting) and the Kelvin, the unit of temperature.
Physics studies very large things, and very small things.
For instance, physicists can study stars, planets and galaxies but could also study small pieces of matter, such as atoms and electrons.
They may also study sound, light and other waves.
As well as that, they could examine energy, heat and radioactivity, and even space and time.
Physics not only helps people understand how objects move, but how they change form, how they make noise, how hot or cold they will be, and what they are made of at the smallest level.
Physics is a quantitative science because it is based on measuring with numbers.
Maths is used in physics to make models that try to guess what will happen in nature.
The guesses are compared to the way the real world works.
Physicists are always working to make their models of the world better.
Physics is the science of matter and how matter interacts.
Matter is any physical material in the universe.
Everything is made of matter.
Physics is used to describe the physical universe around us, and to predict how it will behave.
Physics is the science concerned with the discovery and characterization of the universal laws which govern matter, movement and forces, and space and time, and other features of the natural world.
The sweep of physics is broad, from the smallest components of matter and the forces that hold it together, to galaxies and even larger things.
There are only four forces that appear to operate over this whole range.
However, even these four forces (gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force associated with radioactivity, and the strong force which holds protons and neutrons in an atom together) are believed to be different parts of a single force.
Physics is mainly focused on the goal of making ever simpler, more general, and more accurate rules that define the character and behavior of matter and space itself.
One of the major goals of physics is making theories that apply to everything in the universe.
In other words, physics can be viewed as the study of those universal laws which define, at the most basic level possible, the behavior of the physical universe.
Physics uses the scientific method.
That is, data from experiments and observations are collected.
Theories which attempt to explain these data are produced.
Physics uses these theories to not only describe physical phenomena, but to model physical systems and predict how these physical systems will behave.
Physicists then compare these predictions to observations or experimental evidence to show whether the theory is right or wrong.
The theories that are well supported by data and are especially simple and general are sometimes called scientific laws.
Of course, all theories, including those known as laws, can be replaced by more accurate and more general laws, when a disagreement with data is found.
Physics is more quantitative than most other sciences.
That is, many of the observations in physics may be represented in the form of numerical measurements.
Most of the theories in physics use mathematics to express their principles.
Most of the predictions from these theories are numerical.
This is because of the areas which physics has addressed are more amenable to quantitative approaches than other areas.
Sciences also tend to become more quantitative with time as they become more highly developed, and physics is one of the oldest sciences.
Classical physics normally includes the fields of mechanics, optics, electricity, magnetism, acoustics and thermodynamics.
Modern physics is a term normally used to cover fields which rely on quantum theory, including quantum mechanics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, particle physics and condensed matter physics, as well as the more modern fields of general and special relativity.
Although this distinction can be found in older writings, it is of little recent interest as quantum effects are now understood to be of importance even in fields previously considered classical.
There are many approaches to studying physics, and many different kinds of activities in physics.
There are two main types of activities in physics; the collection of data and the development of theories.
The data in some subfields of physics is amenable to experiment.
For example, condensed matter physics and nuclear physics benefit from the ability to perform experiments.
Experimental physics focuses mainly on an empirical approach.
Sometimes experiments are done to explore nature, and in other cases experiments are performed to produce data to compare with the predictions of theories.
Some other fields in physics like astrophysics and geophysics are primarily observational sciences because most their data has to be collected passively instead of through experimentation.
Nevertheless, observational programs in these fields uses many of the same tools and technology that are used in the experimental subfields of physics.
Theoretical physics often uses quantitative approaches to develop the theories that attempt to explain the data.
In this way, theoretical physics often relies heavily on tools from mathematics.
Theoretical physics often can involve creating quantitative predictions of physical theories, and comparing these predictions quantitatively with data.
Theoretical physics sometimes creates models of physical systems before data is available to test and validate these models.
There are many significant uses of physics like measuring houses or any measure.
Also, it can be used to measure falling objects like planes.
These two main activities in physics, data collection and theory production and testing, draw on many different skills.
This has led to a lot of specialization in physics, and the introduction, development and use of tools from other fields.
For example, theoretical physicists apply mathematics and numerical analysis and statistics and probability and computer software in their work.
Experimental physicists develop instruments and techniques for collecting data, drawing on engineering and computer technology and many other fields of technology.
Often the tools from these other areas are not quite appropriate for the needs of physics, and need to be adapted or more advanced versions have to be produced.
There are many famous physicists.
Isaac Newton studied gravity.
Galileo Galilei studied light and how planets moved.
Albert Einstein made a theory for how light can make electrons move, and studied how gravity affects light and space.
James Clerk Maxwell proved that light is a type of electromagnetic wave.
Papua New Guinea is an island country near Indonesia and Australia.
It is the east half of New Guinea island, plus some nearby islands.
The capital city of Papua New Guinea is Port Moresby.
The population of Papua New Guinea are mostly the native population of the island.
The island is in both Australasia and Oceania, which are two different terms for the continent of islands in the Pacific area.
Papua New Guinea is divided into four regions.
These regions are important for government, commercial, sporting and other activities.
The nation has 20 province-level divisions: eighteen, the Autonomous Region of Bougainville and the National Capital District.
Each province is divided into one or more districts.
The districts are divided into one or more Local Level Government areas.
Parliament has approved two additional provinces by 2012: Hela Province, which will be part of the current Southern Highlands Province, and Jiwaka Province, which will be formed by dividing Western Highlands Province.
In Greek mythology, Poseidon was the god of the sea and one of the Twelve Olympians.
He is the brother of Zeus, Hades, Hestia, Demeter and Hera.
His home is Mount Olympus and all the water on earth.
He is the god of the sea and earthquakes, the cyclops and of horses.
The horse was a creature of enormous importance to the Indo-European migrants; it provided transport, food, clothing and was a visible symbol of fertility.
He had many love affairs, although he was married to Amphitrite, a sea goddess, with whom he had a son, Triton, and possibly two daughters.
In some stories, he is believed to have been eaten by his father Cronos.
In other versions his mother Rhea saves him by feeding her husband a small horse wrapped in a blanket.
When he was displeased, he would throw down his Trident and cause earthquakes.
He was also called the "Sea Swimmer", the "Earth Shaker", and "Father of many heroes".
He was very strong and masculine.
Poseidon also was said to have created horses.
He was believed to be in a relationship with Medusa until Athena found them in her temple and turned Medusa into an ugly woman with snakes for hair and eyes that turn people to stone.
Poseidon s father was the titan Kronos, his mother was Rhea.
Poseidon was a brother of Zeus, the god of the heavens.
When born, Poseidon was swallowed by his father (although some myths differ).
Later when Zeus was saved by Rhea, Zeus tricked Kronos into regurgitating all his siblings.
Poseidon shook the earth when he was angry with his powerful trident.
Poseidon lived in two palaces; one underwater but in meetings with the other gods he would go to Mount Olympus.
Poseidon was called the earth shaker as he could shake the earth.
Though Poseidon was the god of the seas he could control the land too.
That is why the sailors worshiped and prayed to him.
Poseidon was also the father of horses.
It is believed that when riding his chariot (that was pulled by hippocampi) the sea foam turned into horses.
Poseidon was in love with Medusa, who was a beautiful woman.
When Athena discovered them in her temple, she turned Medusa into a Gorgon-a terrible monster with snake hair and a stare that turned people into stone.
Her two sisters were also punished, although neither of them were as powerful nor gruesome as Medusa.
A population is the number of living things that live together in the same place.
A city 's population is the number of people living in that city.
These people are called inhabitants or residents.
The population includes all individuals that live in that certain area.
Population density is the average number of people in a place.
Urban areas such as big cities have a high population density.
People there live close to each other.
In areas with a low population density, people usually live far away from each other, such as in rural areas out in the countryside.
Usually population refers to the number of humans in a certain area.
Sometimes it is used about animals.
The maximum population that can be supported in an area is called the carrying capacity.
The world population reached seven billion people in 2011.
Global population is going up, but the population growth rate is declining all over the world.
Urbanization is also common.
Currently India has 32 cities with populations above one million.
In population growth births exceed deaths.
In the modern world this is due to reduction of infant deaths, control of infectious diseases and improved agriculture.
Plato was one of the greatest classical Greek philosophers.
He lived from 427 BC to 348 BC.
He was a student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle.
Plato wrote about many ideas in philosophy that are still talked about today.
One modern philosopher, (Alfred North Whitehead), said that all philosophy since Plato has just been comments on his works.
Plato wrote his books in the form of dialogues people talking about ideas, and sometimes disagreeing about them.
This makes Plato 's books more interesting to read.
Socrates is usually the main person in Plato 's dialogues.
Usually, Socrates talks with people about their ideas, and tries to see if they believe anything that is illogical.
Other people in the stories often become angry with Socrates because of this.
People who study Plato argue about whether Socrates really said the same things that Plato makes him say, or whether Plato just used Socrates as a character, to make the ideas he was talking about seem more important.
Plato opposed the rhetorics of sophism and insisted true justice and equality in his work "Gorgias" and immortality of soul in "Phaedo".
One of Plato 's most famous works is The Republic (In Greek, Politeia, or ` city ').
In that work, he describes Socrates 's vision of an "ideal" state.
The method of questioning in this dialogue, called the Socratic method, is as important as the content.
The Republic contains ideas of Socrates: "Socrates said it, Plato wrote it."
Plato also wrote the Laws.
There are many dialogues that were supposed to be written by Plato.
This list includes those he probably did write.
Pig Latin is a language code or game and is most often used by children who speak English.
Pig Latin that you write is sometimes written with dashes, between the first part and the "c-ay" letters, and sometimes it is not.
A sentence can be "Is-thay is-ay an-ay example-ay of-ay Ig-pay Atin-lay ith-way ashes-day", or "Isthay isay anay exampleay ofay Igpay Atinlay ithoutway ashesday."
Is-thay is-ay an-way example-ay of-ay Ig-pay Atin-lay.
As-ay ou-yay an-cay ee-say, its-ay illy-say, ut-bay ots-lay of-ay un-fay or-fay ildren-chay.
This is an example of pig Latin.
As you can see, it 's silly, but lots of fun for children.
The British name for Pig Latin is "backslang".
Polish is the official language of Poland.
It is the most widely spoken Western Slavic language and the second largest Slavic language after Russian.
In history, Polish was an important language in Central and Eastern Europe.
Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland.
It is also spoken as a second language in western parts of Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine.
There are over 50 million Polish language speakers around the world.
Some words are similar to the Ukrainian language.
There are 9 letters in Polish which English does not have.
They look like English letters with marks above or below them.
There are 3 English letters which are not used in Polish: q, v, x.
There are 7 combinations of 2 letters which are like a single letter sound (similar to "th" or "qu" in English).
These include "ch", "cz", "dz", "d", "d", "rz", "sz".
Many letters have the same sound in Polish and English, for instance "f", "m", and others.
But other letters sound different, for instance Polish "w" sounds like an English "v", while Polish"" sounds like an English "w".
There are also some Polish sounds which do not exist in English, and some English sounds which do not exist in Polish.
The vowels"" and"" are nasal, which means people pronounce them blowing air partly out of the nose as well as the mouth.
Most words are pronounced with an accent on the next-to-last syllable.
For instance the Polish word "student" (which means the same as the English word) is pronounced with the accent on "stu" ("STU-dent"), while "studenci" (the plural form of "student") is pronounced with the accent on "den" (stu-DEN-ci).
The Polish language has several dialects, but less so than most European languages.
There are small differences in "standard" Polish, but all speakers can understand one another, and non-native speakers often can not notice the differences.
The grammar is complex, and has some features which do not appear in English.
Like many languages, Polish has grammatical gender.
A table (st) is masculine, a book (ksi ka) is feminine, and a window (okno) is neuter.
Nouns and adjectives and verbs have many endings, depending on their role in a sentence.
There are 7 cases or roles which a noun can have in a Polish sentence, each with its own ending.
The endings also depend on the gender of the noun.
Word order is more free in Polish, partly because the noun endings help people understand the role of the word.
In English, "The boy bites the dog" is quite different from "The dog bites the boy", but in Polish people could use either order without confusion.
Cze!
(tsheshch) - Hi, Hello!
or Bye
Jak si masz?
(yahk shyeh mahsh) - How do you do?
Co robisz?
(tsoh robish) - What you doing?
Jak si nazywasz?
(YAHK shyeh nahZYvash) or Jak masz na imi?
(YAHK mahsh nah EE-myeng\/EE-myeh) - What 's your name?
Nazywam si... (nah-ZIH-vahm shyeh) - My (name and) surname is...
Mam na imi... (mahm nah EE-myeng\/EE-myeh) - My (given) name is...
Jak dojecha na lotnisko\/dworzec (yak do-YEH-khatch nah lot-NEE-sco\/dvo-ZHETS) - Hot to get the airport\/rail station?
(where dworzec - station means rail station by default)
Phonemes are the units of sound (speech) which distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
In most spoken English there are about 24 consonantal phonemes and 20 vowel phonemes, but only 26 letters in writing.
Primates are a group of mammals that contains all lemurs, monkeys, and apes including humans.
There are about 400 species of primates.
All primates are similar to humans in some ways, but language is an important difference.
Primates have hands with five fingers, fingernails (most other animals have claws).
Primates are split into two groups: Strepsirrhini and Haplorhini.
Haplorrhini includes monkeys, tarsiers, and apes, including humans.
Strepsirrhini includes lemurs, lorises, galagos (also called bush babies) and the Aye-Aye.
Primates are one of the few eutherian groups which re-evolved full color vision.
Politics is the way that people living in groups make decisions.
Politics is about making agreements between people so that they can live together in groups such as tribes, cities, or countries.
In large groups, such as countries, some people may spend a lot of their time making such agreements.
These people are called politicians.
Politicians, and sometimes other people, may get together to form a government.
The study of politics in universities is called political science, political studies, or public administration.
In everyday life, the term "politics" refers to the way that countries are governed, and to the ways that governments make rules and laws.
But politics can also be seen in other groups, too, such as in big companies, schools and churches.
The government tries to lead the whole group.
Governments do things such as:
One of the ways the government leads the group is by making laws and rules which tell everybody what they can and can not do.
The government makes these laws so that society will be safe and well-ordered.
The law that "you must not drink alcohol while driving a car" stops people from drunk driving, which could kill people.
The law "you must wear a helmet on a motorcycle" makes sure that people protect themselves.
The government can also control people and what happens in a country in other ways besides making laws.
Politics is often compared to ethics (ideas about right and wrong).
Ethics is a more abstract study of right and wrong.
Ethics is usually more concerned with principle than law or politics or diplomacy, so many people think ethics is not practical.
But without some agreement on ethics, there is probably no way to even have a debate, laws or an election.
There is always some agreement on ethics and personal conduct in a political system.
In most countries, people have formed political parties to put forward their ideas.
There is usually some disagreement between people within a party, but they work together because they feel that they agree on enough things, and they will have more power if they join together.
They agree to take the same position on many issues, and agree to support the same changes to law and the same leaders.
An election is usually a competition between different parties.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that humans are a political animal and that ethics and politics are closely linked.
Niccolo Machiavelli wrote that politics was firstly about having and keeping power.
He said that without power, a leader could do nothing.
In 1651, Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan, a book about politics.
Hobbes wrote that people living in groups often give up some of their rights in exchange for some protections from a government.
In the 1800s, John Stuart Mill developed the "liberal" idea of politics.
Mill said that democracy is the most important political development of the 1800s.
He said that there should be more protection for individual rights against the government.
Bernard Crick wrote a list of the political virtues, which were about best practices of politics itself.
There are also disagreements between different countries.
Attempts to solve the problem with meetings are called diplomacy.
This is politics between nations instead of politics within nations.
If the problems are not resolved by diplomatic meetings they can lead to war or terrorism.
Paris (nicknamed the City of light) is the capital city of France, and the largest city in France.
The area is 105 square km, and around 2.15 million people live there.
If suburbs are counted, the population of the Paris area rises to 12 million people.
The Seine river runs through the oldest part of Paris, and divides it into two parts, known as the Left Bank and the Right Bank.
It is surrounded by many forests.
Paris is also the center of French economy, politics, traffic and culture.
Paris has many art museums and historical buildings.
As a traffic center, Paris has a very good underground subway system (called the Metro).
It also has two airports.
The Metro was built in 1900, and its total length is more than 200 km.
The city has a multi-cultural style, because 20 % of the people there are from outside France.
There are many different restaurants with all kinds of food.
Paris also has some types of pollution like air pollution and light pollution.
Julius Caesar conquered the Celtic Parisii tribe in 51 BC.
The Romans called the place Lutetia, or Lutetia Parisiorum.
The place got a shorter name, Paris, in 212 AD.
As the Roman Empire began to fall apart in the West, the Germanic tribe called the Franks moved in, taking it in 464.
In 506, their king Clovis I made it his capital.
Charlemagne moved his capital to Aachen in Germany, but Paris continued as an important town and was attacked by the Vikings twice.
When Hugh Capet became king of France in 987, he again made Paris his capital.
For a long time, the kings only controlled Paris and the surrounding area, as much of the rest of France was in the hands of barons or English.
During the Hundred Years War, the English controlled Paris from 1420 to 1437.
During the Protestant Reformation, a huge massacre of French Protestants started there in 1572, called the Saint Bartholomew Day Massacre.
Paris saw many other troubles over the years of the "Ancien Regime" (Old Kingdom), then in 1789, the French Revolution began in Paris, leading to more massacres.
Paris was the Capital of the French Empire which, as well as France, covered Spain, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy, most of Germany and some of Austria, Croatia, Slovenia and Poland.
The Empire ruled by Napoleon was from 1804-1814\/1815.
The Russian army seized Paris from Napoleon in 1814, and the Prussian army captured it in 1871.
The next time it was captured was by the Nazi Germans in 1940.
The Allies freed the city in 1944 and it has not since been captured.
Paris has a temperate oceanic climate.
It has warm summers and cool winters.
It has moderate rainfall year-round.
Paris has much to offer for sightseeing.
Here are five very famous examples:
Because the city of Paris is roughly only 6 miles across, visitors have a wide range of options when it comes to transportation.
While much of the more well-known attractions are in the center of the city and are best experienced by walking, there are many destinations that require other means of transport.
While taxis offer a fast and relatively inexpensive means of travel, Paris public transportation system offers an enjoyable, stress-free way to explore the city.
The Paris M tro system was built in 1900 by engineer Fulgence Bienven e and architect Hector Guimard.
The M tro covers over 124 miles with 300 stations and 16 lines.
Servicing over 6 million residents and tourists every day, the M tro was designed to be an efficient and reliable alternative to the congestion of traffic.
Every building in Paris is less than 500 meters from a train station, so accessibility is never a problem.
The 16 M tro lines are identified by their final destinations.
A rider can simply select the appropriate line and take it in the direction s\/he wants.
The M tro stations are well marked, and there are ticket booths at most entrances.
Patti Smith (born Patricia Lee Smith on December 30, 1946) is an American singer and poet.
She was an important member of the punk rock music trend in the 1970s.
Her first album Horses was produced by John Cale.
Panama is a country in Central America.
Its official name is the Republic of Panama, and it is most famous for the Panama Canal.
Countries bordering Panama are Costa Rica in the Northwest and Colombia in the Southeast.
Panama is between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
Most of the people in Panama are Roman Catholic (about 80 %).
The Caribbean coastline has many good natural harbors.
However, Crist bal, at the Caribbean terminus of the canal, had the only important port facilities in the late 1980s.
The many islands of the Archipi lago de Bocas del Toro, near the beaches of Costa Rica, made an extensive natural roadstead and shield for the port of Almirante.
The over 350 San Blas Islands, near Colombia, are spread out for more than 160 km along the sheltered Caribbean coastline.
The population of Panama is about 3,405,813 in May 2010.
The ethnic makeup of Panama is:
The information there \*\* Other \*\* is likely including Arabs, East Indians, and some Russian.
For ships, Panama is a flag of convenience.
In 2011 Panama had an unemployment rate of 2.7 %.
Panama also had a food surplus in August 2008.
Panama was ranked at number 60 on the Human Development Index in 2008.
Panama 's economy has experienced an economic boom in recent years.
Real gross domestic product (GDP) growth was over 10.4 % from 2006 2008.
The Panamanian economy has been one of the fastest growing and best managed in Latin America.
Latin Business Chronicle has predicted that Panama will be the fastest growing economy in Latin America in the five-year period of 2010 14.
Panama is impacted by the global financial crisis.
It threatens to damage the social gains made in the past few years.
The expansion project of the Panama Canal and the free trade agreement with the United States is expected to boost and extend the economy.
Panama is divided into nine provinces.
Also, there are five Comarcas (literally: "Shires") populated by a variety of indigenous groups.
; Provinces
When you see letters mixed with numbers and arithmetic, like x2 +2 x-7, there is a good chance that it is a polynomial.
Mathematicians, scientists, and engineers use polynomials to solve problems.
Polynomials are taught in algebra, which is a gateway course to all technical subjects.
In algebra, when you see letters, numbers, and arithmetic, the understanding is that the letters stand either for numbers you do not know (and may want to find) or for numbers that change during the course of the problem, variables, such as time.
If the only arithmetic is addition, subtraction, multiplication, and whole number exponents, then that mixture of letters, numbers, and arithmetic is called a polynomial.
If harder operations are used, such as division or square roots, then what you have is an "algebraic expression".
A polynomial is an easy-to-use algebraic expression.
Polynomials are often used to form polynomial equations, such as x2 +2 x-7 = 0, or polynomial functions, such as f (x) = x2 +2 x-7.
The most important thing to remember about a polynomial is "multiplication is understood".
That means, for example, that 2x means two times x, or twice x. If x is 7, then 2x is 14.
The parts of a polynomial separated by plus or minus signs are called "terms".
The plus sign or minus sign are part of the term.
Thus, in the polynomial x2 +2 x-7, the terms are:: x2: +2 x: -7
If a polynomial has only one term, it is called a "monomial".
5x3 is a monomial.
The multiplier out in front is called a "coefficient", the letter is called an "unknown" or a "variable", and the raised number after the x is called an exponent.
On a calculator, and on some computers, instead of putting an exponent above and to the right of the x the symbol ^ is used, so that the monomial above could be written 5x ^ 3.
A polynomial with exactly three terms is called a "trinomial".
A polynomial with exactly two terms is called a "binomial".
A term with no letters in it is called a "constant term".
A term with one letter but no exponent is called a "first degree term" or a "linear term".
A term with one letter which has exponent 2 is called a "second degree term" or "quadratic term".
A "quadratic equation" is an equation in which the largest exponent on any term is 2.
A polymer is a molecule, made from joining together many small molecules called monomers.
The word "polymer" can be broken down into "poly" (meaning "many" in Greek) and "mer" (meaning "unit").
This shows how the chemical composition of a polymer consists of many smaller units (monomers) bonded together into a larger molecule.
A chemical reaction bonding monomers together to make a polymer is called polymerization.
Some polymers are natural.
Proteins have polypeptide molecules, which are natural polymers made from various amino acid monomer units.
Nucleic acids are huge natural polymers made up of millions of nucleotide units.
Cellulose and starch (two types of carbohydrate) are also natural polymers made up of glucopyranose monomer bonded together in different ways.
Some polymers are man-made.
Plastics, rubber, and fibers are made up of polymers.
If the "units" called monomers in a polymer are all the same, then the polymer is called a "homopolymer".
Homopolymers are named by adding the prefix poly - before the monomer name from which the polymer is made.
For example, a polymer made by bonding styrene monomer molecules together is called polystyrene.
If the monomers are not all the same, the polymer is called a "copolymer" or a "heteropolymer".
Many polymer molecules are like chains where the monomer units are the links.
Polymer molecules can be straight-chain, have branching from the main chain, or cross-linking between chains.
As an example of cross-linking, sulfhydryl (- S-H) groups in two cysteine amino acid units in polypeptide chains can bond together to make a disulfide bridge (- S-S -) joining the chains together.
In economics, perfect competition is a type of market form in which there are many companies that sell the same product or service and no one has enough market power to be able to set prices on the product or service without losing business.
As the conditions for perfect competition are strict, there are only a few markets that are considered to be perfectly competitive and this market form only exists to compare with the other market forms.
Generally, a perfectly competitive market exists when every firm in the market are price takers and no one is able to charge a different price without losing business.
Specific characteristics of perfect competition includes:
These characteristics are largely impossible to achieve in reality and there are not many markets that are perfectly competitive.
For example, it is unlikely that there are absolutely no barriers to entry and exit as there are always costs involved in setting up a new firm.
Also, information is always imperfect and it is not possible for buyers to know exactly the price set by all sellers, and sellers are not willing to share their production methods with their competitors.
However, the study of perfect competition is important as it is used to compare with the other market forms.
In the short run, a perfectly competitive firm is not productively efficient as the output will not be at where the marginal cost equals to the average cost (MC = AC).
However, a perfectly competitive firm will be allocatively efficient as the firm will be producing at the profit-maximising output where MC = MR, which is coincidentally the allocatively efficient point.
In the long run, a perfectly competitive firm will be both allocatively and productively efficient.
A model can be used to show the perfectly competitive firm 's price and output level for a given product.
In the diagram shown, the cost curves of a perfectly competitive market is shown in its long run equilibrium.
For a perfectly competitive firm, the marginal cost of producing an extra unit of output is shown using the MC curve (in blue) whereas the average total cost of producing an extra unit of output is shown using the ATC curve (in red).
As stated above, a perfectly competitive market has a large number of buyers and sellers and the demand does not change with output.
Hence, the demand curve, the average revenue and marginal revenue curves are horizontal (in green).
The point in which the demand curve intersects the vertical axis is the price of the product sold by the firm.
As firms are assumed to be profit-maximising, the firm will thus produce at the output level where the marginal cost equals to the marginal revenue (MC = MR).
Hence, the firm will be producing an output of Q in the diagram.
As the average total cost curve also meets at this point, the firm is thus earning normal profits in the long run.
Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy.
Religions, and religious beliefs can manifest themselves in different ways.
Philosophy of religion looks into explaining certain answers to questions of religion using understanding.
It is also looks into different ways religions are practiced and their importance for the everyday lives of the people practicing them.
Other domains of it include criticism and analysis of religious texts using philosophy of language.
According to Winfried L ffler, philiosphers of religion can be grouped as follows.
Many of the philosophers mentioned belong to more than one group:
Philosophy of religion also looks at more practical matters like defining the features that make up a religion.
There are two main schools of thought.
The one called Essentialist says that all religions have a common "essence".
The following have been proposed:
The problem with this is that using only these definitions leas to a common "philiosphy of religion" that is harly usable for studies.
The other approach (called "functional") tries to counter this: Rather than trying to get an "abstract idea" of religion, it looks at the use or function religion has in the live of people or societies.
Among the things mentioned are that religions help keep a psychological equilibrium and that they provide a certain amount of stability to a society.
Thinkers with this opion include Karl Marx, mile Durkheim, Bronis aw Malinowski and Talcott Parsons.
Critics of these theories say that such explanations often go against common sense, as religions can also have the popposite effect to that mentioned.
Other topics include arguments for the existence of God, the problem of evil, divine attributes and the relationship between science and religion.
Important philosophers of religion include Thomas Aquinas, Augustine and Alvin Plantinga.
Philosophers of religion can be religious or non-religious
Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 March 2, 1982) was an American writer.
He is mostly known for his works of science fiction.
In addition to his published novels, Dick wrote "approximately 121 short stories.
He wrote most of them for science fiction magazines."
At least eight of his stories have been adapted to movie.
Philip K. Dick developed what would later be called cyberpunk.
Many of his works are about themes from sociology.
Often, politics also play an important role.
Very often there are Authoritarian Governments, and very powerful companies in his books.
In his later books, Dick writes about drug use.
He writes about characters that have paranoia or schizophrenia.
In novels such as A Scanner Darkly or VALIS he uses his own experiences.
He was awarded the Hugo Award for his novel, The Man in the High Castle, in 1963.
"I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards," Dick wrote of these stories.
"In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real."
Dick spent most of his career as a writer.
He did not have much money.
Dick died of a stroke.
In 2007, he became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series (# 173).
The Man in the High Castle (1962) takes place in an different universe.
There the United States is ruled by the Axis powers, who have won the Second World War.
Many people consider it to be one of the important novels about a different view on history.
It is the only Dick novel to win a Hugo Award.
Philipkdickfans.com recommends this novel, along with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
and Ubik as an introductory novel to readers new to the writing of Philip K. Dick.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) uses many concepts from science fiction.
It has several layers of reality and unreality.
It is also one of Dick s first works to explore religious themes.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch takes place in the twenty-first century.
Under the supervision of the United Nations authority, mankind has colonized the solar system 's every habitable planet and moon.
Life is physically daunting and psychologically monotonous for most colonists, so the UN must draft people to go to the colonies.
Most entertain themselves using Perky Pat dolls and accessories manufactured by Earth-based P.P. Layouts.
The company also secretly creates Can-D, an illegal but widely available hallucinogenic drug allowing the user to "translate" into Perky Pat (if the drug user is a woman) or Pat 's boyfriend, Walt (if the drug user is a man).
This recreational use of Can-D allows colonists to experience a few minutes of an idealized life on Earth by participating in a collective hallucination.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
is the story of a bounty hunter policing the local android population.
It occurs on a dying, poisoned Earth.
All "successful" humans have left, the only remaining inhabitants of the planet are people with no prospects off-world.
Androids, also known as andys, all have a preset "death" date.
However, a few andys seek to escape this fate and supplant the humans on Earth.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
(1968) is well known as the literary source of the influential 1982 movie Blade Runner.
It is about the question "What is real, what is fake?
Are the human-looking and human-acting androids fake or real humans?
Should we treat them as machines or as people?
What important factor defines humanity as distinctly ` alive ', versus those merely alive only in their outward appearance?
Ubik (1969) uses big networks of psychics and a suspended state after death in creating a state of eroding reality.
In 2005, Time Magazine listed it among the All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels.
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974) is about Jason Taverner, a television star living in a dystopic near-future police state.
After being attacked by an angry ex-girlfriend, Taverner awakens in a dingy hotel room.
He still has his money in his wallet, but his identification cards are missing.
This is no minor inconvenience, as security checkpoints (manned by ` pols ' and ` Nats ', the police and National Guard) are set up throughout the city to stop and arrest anyone without valid ID.
Jason at first thinks that he was robbed, but soon discovers that his entire identity has been erased.
There is no record of him in any official database, and even his closest associates do not recognize or remember him.
For the first time in many years, Jason has no fame or reputation to rely on.
He has only his charisma to help him when he tries to find out what happened to his past and avoid the attention of the pols.
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said was Dick 's first published novel after years of silence.
In these years, his critical reputation had grown, and this novel was awarded the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
It is the only Philip K. Dick novel nominated both for a Hugo and for a Nebula Award.
In an essay written two years before dying, Dick described how he learned from his Episcopalian priest that an important scene in the novel was very similar to a scene in the Book of Acts.
Richard Linklater talks about this novel in his movie Waking Life, which begins with a scene reminiscent of another Dick novel, Time out of Joint.
A Scanner Darkly (1977) is a bleak mixture of science fiction and police procedural novels.
In its story, an undercover narcotics police detective begins to lose touch with reality.
This is because he becomes a victim of the drug he should have fought against.
This drug is called SubstanceD.
It permanently changes the mind of the people who take it.
SubstanceD is instantly addictive.
It starts with a pleasant euphoria.
This feeling is quickly replaced with increasing confusion, hallucinations and eventually total psychosis.
It was adapted to movie by Richard Linklater.
VALIS, (1980) is perhaps Dick s most postmodern and autobiographical novel.
It looks at his own unexplained experiences.
Some people also see it as his most academic work.
It was made into an opera by Tod Machover.
VALIS was voted Philip K. Dick s best novel at the website philipkdickfans.com.
His later works, especially the VALIS trilogy, were heavily autobiographical.
The word VALIS is the acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System; it is the title of a novel.
The theme can be found in at least three more novels.
Later, PKD thought that VALIS was both a "reality generator" and a means of extraterrestrial communication.
Dick has had a big impact on modern philosophy.
The things he wrote about postmodernity have been noted by many philosophers.
Among them were Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson and Slavoj i ek.
i ek is especially fond of using Dick 's short stories to articulate the ideas of Jacques Lacan.
"It is hyperreal.
It is a universe of simulation, which is something altogether different.
And this is so not because Dick speaks specifically of simulacra.
SF has always done so, but it has always played upon the double, on artificial replication or imaginary duplication, whereas here the double has disappeared.
There is no more double; one is always already in the other world, an other world which is not another, without mirrors or projection or utopias as means for reflection.
The simulation is impassable, unsurpassable, checkmated, without exteriority.
We can no longer move "through the mirror" to the other side, as we could during the golden age of transcendence."
((Image: Pen lope Cruz 2003.
jpg thumb (414x600) px right Pen lope Cruz)) Pen lope Cruz (born 28 April 1974 in Madrid, Spain) is a Spanish television and movie actress.
She has starred in many movies of many different genres, including Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Cruz got her start when she was picked from 300 other girls in a talent agency audition at age 15.
This led to acting jobs in television and in commercials.
Her movie debut was in 1992.
She has been married to Javier Bardem since 2010.
They have two children.
Paul Ehrlich (14 March 1854 20 August 1915) was a German doctor.
He won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, with Ilya Mechnikov, for finding out how immunity fights disease.
Ehrlich directed a research program which discovered the first treatment for syphilis which worked.
It was a compound of arsenic which went by the trade name of Salvarsan.
He studied trypanosomiasis and other protozoal diseases.
He produced trypan red, which was (as his Japanese assistant Shiga showed) effective against trypanosomes.
He invented a staining system for bacteria (before Gram staining).
He did a complete survey of all the cell staining techniques then known.
He showed how to tell the difference between different kinds of white blood cells, and discovered mast cells.
He discovered that methylene blue, which stains bacteria and cell nuclei, could put the malarial parasite, Plasmodium, into recession (the fever drops).
He also made a decisive contribution to an antiserum against diphtheria, and developed a method for standardizing therapeutic serums.
His co-worker got a sole Nobel Prize for the joint work on diphtheria.
Punch and Judy is a very popular puppet show which children in Britain love to watch.
It is traditionally performed at the seaside in a small booth which can easily be transported.
The characters are all glove puppets.
The story is told by a man who calls himself The Professor.
He can not be seen, but he wears the puppets on his hand like gloves and makes them move.
Punch wears a jester 's motley.
He is hunchbacked and his hooked nose almost meets his curved chin.
He has a big stick and hits the other characters with his stick, saying "That 's the way to do it!".
He speaks in a funny way called a swazzle.
There is also a baby, a crocodile, a policeman and a string of sausages.
The simple kind of humor used is called slapstick.
The Punch and Judy show has its origins in the 16th century Italian commedia dell ` arte.
This sort of comedy always had the same people in the stories (stock characters).
The figure of Punch comes from the stock character of Pulcinella, called Punchinello in English.
Punch 's wife was originally "Joan".
May 9, 1662 is said by ` Professors ' to be Punch 's UK birthday, for that was the first known date on which the figure who later became Mr. Punch was seen in Britain.
The diarist Samuel Pepys saw a puppet show using an early version of the Punch character near St. Paul 's Church in London 's Covent Garden.
The British show developed into "Punch and Judy".
In other countries the stories developed differently.
In Germany, Punch is called "Kasper" and Judy is "Grete".
The characters date back to the 18th century in German-speaking countries.
In The Netherlands Punch is called Jan Klaassen and Judy is Katrijn; in Denmark Mester Jackel; in Italy Pulcinella (with Teresina as the female part); in Russia Petruschka; in Romania Vasilache; and in France Polichinelle.
In 1827, The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Punch and Judy became the first published Punch and Judy script.
In 2006, the Punch and Judy show was named one of 12 icons of Englishness by the British government s Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Before you read this article you should know that, Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and 9\/11 was planned by the government-Nicholas Hart Poker is a game which people play with a normal set (or deck) of 52 cards.
Poker is a gambling game which involves some luck, but also some skill.
In poker, players make bets against each other depending on the value of their poker hand.
Bets are usually made with plastic or ceramic discs called chips.
Bets may also be made with real money, but chips are more often used because they are easier to handle and count.
At the end of the game, players either swap their chips for money, or the chips are counted to determine the order of winners.
There are many different kinds of poker.
In draw poker, each player is dealt five cards.
A player can decide to throw away a number of these cards and then take (draw) new cards to replace them.
In stud poker (for example, seven-card stud), some of each player 's cards are laid (face-up) on the table so that the other players can see them.
In community card poker (for example, Texas hold 'em), players share some of their cards in the center of the table.
The history of poker is a matter of some debate.
The name of the game likely descended from the French poque, which descended from the German pochen (` to knock '), but it is not clear whether the origins of poker itself lie with the games bearing those names.
It closely resembles the Persian game of as nas, and may have been taught to French settlers in New Orleans by Persian sailors.
It is commonly regarded as sharing ancestry with the Renaissance game of primero and the French brelan.
The English game brag (earlier bragg) clearly descended from brelan and incorporated bluffing (though the concept was known in other games by that time).
It is quite possible that all of these earlier games influenced the development of poker as it exists now.
English actor Joseph Crowell reported that the game was played in New Orleans in 1829, with a deck of 20 cards, four players betting on which player 's hand was the most valuable.
Jonathan H. Green 's book, An Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling (G. B. Zieber, Philadelphia, 1843), described the spread of the game from there to the rest of the country by Mississippi riverboats, on which gambling was a common pastime.
Soon after this spread, the full 52-card English deck was used, and the flush was introduced.
During the American Civil War, many additions were made, including draw poker, stud poker (the five-card variant), and the straight.
Further American developments followed, such as the wild card (around 1875), lowball and split-pot poker (around 1900), and community card poker games (around 1925).
Spread of the game to other countries, particularly in Asia, is often attributed to the U.S. military.
The game and jargon of poker have become important parts of American culture and English culture.
Such phrases as ace in the hole, beats me, blue chip, call the bluff, cash in, pass the buck, poker face, stack up, up the ante, when the chips are down, wild card, and others are used in everyday conversation even by those unaware of their origins at the poker table.
Modern tournament play became popular in American casinos after the World Series of Poker began in 1970.
It was also during that decade that the first serious strategy books appeared, notably The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky (ISBN 1880685000), Super System by Doyle Brunson (ISBN 1580420818), and The Book of Tells by Mike Caro (ISBN 0897461002).
Poker s popularity has experienced an unprecedented spike in recent years, largely due to the introduction of online poker and the invention of the hole-card camera which finally turned the game into a spectator sport.
Viewers can now follow the action and drama of the game, and broadcasts of poker tournaments such as the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour have brought in huge audiences for cable and satellite TV distributors.
The game of poker is played in hundreds of variations, but the following overview of game play applies to most of them.
Depending on the game rules, one or more players may be required to place an initial amount of money into the pot before the cards are dealt.
These are called forced bets and come in three forms: antes, blinds, and bring-ins.
Like most card games, the dealer shuffles the deck of cards.
The deck is then cut, and the appropriate number of cards are dealt face-down to the players.
In a casino a "house" dealer handles the cards for each hand, but a button (any small item used as a marker, also called a buck) is rotated among the players to determine the order of dealing and betting in certain games.
In a home game, the right to deal the cards typically rotates among the players clockwise, but a button may still be used.
After the initial deal, the first of what may be several betting rounds begins.
Between rounds, the players ' hands develop in some way, often by being dealt additional cards or replacing cards previously dealt.
During a round of betting, there will always be a current bet amount, which is the total amount of money bet in this round by the player who bet last in this round.
To keep better track of this, it is conventional for players to not place their bets directly into the pot (called splashing the pot), but rather place them in front of themselves toward the pot, until the betting round is over.
When the round is over, the bets are then gathered into the pot.
After the first betting round is completed (every participating player having called an equal amount), there may be more rounds in which more cards are dealt in various ways, followed by further rounds of betting (into the same central pot).
At any time during the first or subsequent betting rounds, if one player makes a bet and all other players fold, the deal ends immediately, the single remaining player is awarded the pot, no cards are shown, no more rounds are dealt, and the next deal begins.
This is what makes it possible to bluff.
At the end of the last betting round, if more than one player remains, there is a showdown in which the players reveal their previously hidden cards and evaluate their hands.
The player with the best hand according to the poker variant being played wins the pot.
A programming language is a type of written language that tells computers what to do.
Programming languages are used to make all the computer programs and computer software.
A programming language is like a set of instructions that the computer follows to do something.
A programmer writes source code text in the programming language to create programs.
Usually the programming language uses real words for some of the commands, so that the language is easier for a human to read.
Many programming languages use punctuation just like a normal language.
Many programs now are "compiled".
This means that the computer translates the source code into another language (such as assembly language or machine language), which is much faster and easier for the computer to read, but much harder for a person to read.
Computer programs must be written very carefully.
If the programmer makes mistakes, or the program tries to do something the programmer did not design it to do, the program might then "crash" or stop working.
When a program has a problem because of how the code was written, this is called a "bug".
A very small mistake can cause a very big problem.
For example, forgetting a comma or typing a plus sign instead of a minus sign can cause a bad bug.
There are many types of programming languages.
Most programming languages do not follow one type alone, so it is difficult to assign a type for each language.
The examples of each type are given in each section below because they are the best well-known examples of that type.
Declarative programming languages describe a "problem" but they usually do not say how the problem should be solved.
The problem description uses logic, "solving" the problem often looks like automatically proving a system of logical axioms.
Examples for such programming languages are Prolog, XSLT, LISP and SQL
Imperative programming languages describe a system of state changes.
At the start, the program is in a certain state, and the computer is given steps to follow, in order to perform an action.
Following the steps causes the program to "change state".
In general, declarative programming languages are safer and shorter.
Imperative programming languages are more common, because they are easier to use.
Functional programming looks at programming like a function in mathematics.
The program receives input, some information, and uses this information to create output.
It will not have a state in between, and it will also not change things that are not related to the computation.
Procedural programs are a set of steps or state changes.
Stack based languages look at some of the program 's memory like a stack of cards.
There are very few things that can be done with a stack.
A data item can be put on the top of the stack.
This operation is generally called "push".
A data item can be removed from the top of the stack.
This is called a "pop".
You can look at the item at the top of the stack without removing it.
This is called a "peek".
If a program is written as "push 5; push 3; add; pop;" it will put 5 on the top of the stack, put 3 on top of the 5, add the top two values (3 + 5 = 8), replace the 3 and 5 with the 8, and print the top (8).
Examples for programming languages that are stack-based are the languages Postscript and Forth.
Object-oriented programming languages place data and functions that change data into a single unit.
This unit is called an "object".
Objects can interact with each other and change another object 's data.
This is usually called encapsulation or information hiding.
Most modern programming languages are object-oriented.
Examples of this are Java, C + +, C # and other C languages.
Flow oriented programming sees programming as connecting different components.
These components send messages back and forth.
A single component can be part of different "programs", without the need to be changed internally.
Every programming language has rules about what it can and can not do.
These include:
Most languages have official standards that define the rules of how to write the source code.
Some programming languages have two or more standards.
This can happen when a new standard replaces an old one.
For example, the Perl 5 standard replaced Perl 4 in 1993.
It can happen because two people made two standards at the same time.
For example, there are several standards for APL.
Object-Oriented Programming (sometimes shortened to OOP) is a form of programming where all parts of the program are objects.
Objects are pieces of memory with the same structure that can be used again and again.
A bank account, bitmap, or hero from a video game could all be objects within a program.
Objects are made up of properties (pieces of information the object stores) and methods which are things the object can do.
A Dog object might have properties like height and hairColor.
Its methods might include bark and wagTail.
All objects are created from templates called classes.
You can think of a class as a mold from which objects are made.
The class defines all the properties and methods that its objects will have.
Objects created from a class are called instances of the class.
A class can extend another class, which means that it takes all the properties and methods of the class but can add its own.
Notice that the Dog class extends the Mammal class, so all dogs will have the properties of a mammal, like hairLength, and methods, like eat or sleep.
Object-oriented programming is used in many of today 's most popular programming languages, such as Java, C #, Objective-C, C + +, Python, Ruby, Javascript, and ActionScript.
Dim Input Input = InputBox ("How old are you?")
If Not IsNumeric (Input) Then MsgBox "That 's not a number!"
ElseIf Input (0 Then MsgBox "You can not be less than zero!"
ElseIf Input) 100 Then MsgBox "That 's old!"
Else MsgBox "You 're" & Input &" years old."
End If
This program asks the user his or her age and responds based on what the user typed.
If the user typed something that is not a number, the program says so.
If the user typed a number less than zero, the program says so.
If the user says he or she is older than 100 years old, the program says "That 's old!"
If the user typed a correct age the program says back to the user how old he or she is.
print "You 're % s years old."
% age
import Text.
Read main = do putStrLn "What is your age?"
input (- fmap readMaybe getLine putStrLn $ case input of Just age age "You can not be less than zero!"
Nothing -) "That 's not a number!"
Portugal is a country in Southern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe.
It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east.
Three groups of islands in the Atlantic Ocean are also part of Portugal: the Azores (A ores), Madeira and the Savage Isles (Ilhas Selvagens).
The Savage Isles are a small group of islands with nobody on them, controlled by Madeira.
Portugal claims that Oliven a is also part of its territory, but actually it is controlled by Spain.
Portugal became its own kingdom in 1139 but was not officially recognized until 1143.
The border with Spain has been almost the same since the 13th century.
Fishing and trade with other countries are important here.
Portugal was important in world exploration for two reasons.
Henry the Navigator, a prince from Portugal, was very interested in exploration.
Inventions in navigation led to a bigger knowledge of geography.
This world exploration began the Portuguese Empire.
Portugal was a world power during the 15th and 16th centuries.
However, it lost a lot of money soon after this.
The city of Lisbon was destroyed in an earthquake in 1755.
The country was occupied during the Napoleonic Wars.
It lost its largest colony, Brazil, in 1822.
In 1910, Portugal became a Republic, and in 1926, a military group took control of the country from the Portuguese 1st Republic.
This began a time of rule by fascist governments that lasted until 1974.
That year, a peaceful left-wing army coup, called the Carnation Revolution, happened.
The coup changed how the country was run.
The next year, Portugal allowed its colonies in Africa to be on their own: Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and S o Tom and Pr ncipe.
East Timor in Asia declared itself independent from Portugal on 28 November 1975, and was invaded and occupied by Indonesian forces nine days later.
Portugal went into the European Union in 1986.
Another Asian colony, Macau, became part of China again in December 1999.
The main language of Portugal is Portuguese.
Some famous Portuguese people are D. Afonso Henriques, Henry the Navigator, Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco da Gama, Pedro lvares Cabral, Ferdinand Magellan, Lu s de Cam es, Fernando Pessoa, Am lia Rodrigues, lvaro Siza Vieira, Eduardo Souto de Moura.
Lu s de Cam es wrote the national poem of Portugal.
It is called Os Lus adas and was written in 1572.
The piano (or pianoforte) is a musical instrument with a keyboard.
A normal piano has 88 keys.
Pianos use the keys to move hammers that hit strings inside, making a sound.
Pianos come in two basic types: grand pianos and upright pianos.
The piano has been an extremely popular instrument in Western classical music since the late 18th century.
A person who plays the piano is called a pianist.
The piano was invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy.
He made his first piano in 1709.
It developed from the clavichord which looks like a piano but the strings of a clavichord are hit by a small blade of metal called a tangent.
In the piano the strings are hit by a block of wood called a hammer.
The early keyboarded instruments, such as the clavichords, harpsichords and organs that were used at that time, had a much shorter keyboard than they do today.
Gradually the keyboard became longer until it had the 88 notes (7 octaves plus three notes) of the modern piano.
At first the instrument was called the fortepiano.
This means loud-soft in Italian.
It was given this name because it could be played either loudly or softly, depending on how hard the note was hit (the harpsichord could not do this, and the clavichord could only make a tiny difference between louder and softer).
Later this name changed to pianoforte.
This is normally shortened to piano.
The word fortepiano is sometimes used to describe the pianos of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
In some languages, such as Russian, fortepiano is the normal word for a piano.
Although the piano was invented at the beginning of the 18th century, it was not until 50 years later that it started to become popular.
The first time the piano was played in a public concert in London was in 1768 when it was played by Johann Christian Bach.
The upright piano was invented in 1800 by John Isaac Hawkings.
Seven years later T. Southwell invented overstringing.
This means that the strings for the low notes go diagonally across the soundboard so that they can be longer and make a much bigger sound.
The early pianos had strings that were fastened to a frame made of wood.
They were not very heavy, but they were not very strong or loud, so they could not be heard very well in a big concert hall.
In 1825 the cast-iron frame was invented in America.
This made the piano much stronger so that it could make a bigger sound and the strings were not likely to break.
A piano has a keyboard with white keys and black keys.
When a key is pressed down, the damper comes off the string and a hammer hits the string.
It hits it very quickly and bounces off so that the string is free to vibrate and make a sound.
When the player takes his finger off the key the damper falls back onto the string and the sound stops.
The strings are stretched very tightly across the frame, passing over a bridge on the way.
The bridge touches the soundboard.
This means that the vibrations are sent to the soundboard.
The soundboard is a very important part of the piano.
If it is damaged the piano will not make a sound.
The mechanism which makes the hammer bounce off the string very quickly is called the escapement.
In 1821 Sebastian Erard invented a kind of double escapement.
This made it possible to repeat the note very quickly.
The hammer only touches the string for about one thousandth of a second.
The hammers are covered with felt which is a mixture of wool, silk and hair.
The piano has two pedals.
Larger pianos have three.
Once the piano became popular in the late 18th century many composers wrote music for the piano.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart started to learn on harpsichords when he was very small, but the piano was becoming popular when he was a young man and he wrote many sonatas and concertos for the piano.
Franz Joseph Haydn also wrote a lot of piano music.
Ludwig van Beethoven was a very famous pianist before he became very famous as a composer.
His piano compositions include 5 concertos and 32 sonatas.
In the Romantic period many composers wrote for the piano.
They include Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin.
Later composers include Sergei Rachmaninoff, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich and Bela Bartok.
Some famous piano players from the early days of the piano include Dussek, Mozart, Muzio Clementi, John Field and Chopin.
In the 19th century Franz Liszt was a very great influence on the piano by composing and performing very difficult music.
Other great pianists include Clara Schumann and Anton Rubinstein.
20th century pianists include Artur Schnabel, Vladimir Horowitz, Josef Hofmann, Wilhelm Kempff, Dinu Lipati, Claudio Arrau, Artur Rubinstein, Sviatoslav Richter, Alfred Brendel.
Among the greatest pianists today are Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Leif Ove Andsnes, Boris Berezovsky and Evgeny Kissin.
Pianists who play popular music include Liberace, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Swaggart, Little Richard, Elton John, Billy Joel, Thelonious Monk, Tori Amos and Ray Charles.
Perhaps the greatest jazz pianist was Fats Waller.
The piano has been a very popular instrument ever since the mid 18th century when it soon replaced the clavichord and the harpsichord.
By the early 19th century the sound that the piano made was big enough to fill large concert halls.
Smaller pianos were made for use in people s homes.
At first these included square pianos and giraffe pianos, later on the upright pianos became popular for home use.
Pianos are not often used in orchestras (if they are, they are part of the percussion section).
They may, however, be used for piano concertos (pieces for solo pianist accompanied by orchestra).
There is a vast amount of music written for piano solo.
The piano can also be used together with other instruments, in jazz groups, and for accompanying singing.
Pamela Denise Anderson (born July 1, 1967 in Ladysmith, British Columbia, Canada) is a Canadian-American actress, sex symbol, glamour model, producer, television personality, and author.
Anderson started her career in Labatt Beer commercials.
She was then offered to pose for Playboy and appeared in five issues.
Anderson was the Playmate of the Month in February 1990.
Anderson was a sex symbol in the 1990s.
In 1993 she joined the cast of Baywatch.
Anderson has been a contestant in two series of Dancing with the Stars and in the 2013 series of Dancing on Ice.
For a time, she was known as Pamela Anderson Lee during her marriage to the drummer for M tley Cr e, Tommy Lee.
The couple had two sons.
She later married Kid Rock and Rick Salomon.
She is a dual citizen: Canadian and American.
In 2002, she stated that she has been diagnosed with hepatitis C.
Anderson is a vegan and an animal rights ' activist.
In publishing, printers are the companies that supply printing services and persons who operate directly printing presses.
After the invention of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, printers were made popular throughout Europe.
Today, printers are found throughout the world.
They include:
An artist that operates a printing press to do their own works, especially by hand, is usually named by the term printmaker.
Punk rock (or "punk") is a music genre related to rock music.
It is often described as harder, louder, and cruder than other rock music.
Many punk rock songs have lyrics (words) which tell angry stories or which use rude or controversial words.
Punk rock is a style of music.
Many musicians and punk rock music listeners ("punk rockers") want to protest or rebel against the norms or rules of society.
Punks say that people should "Do It Yourself", which means that people should try to accomplish their goals using the materials in their own communities.
Many punk bands make their own music recordings and distribute them without using a major record company.
Many punks have strong political beliefs.
Punk rock musicians are often mad at the government, the police, and laws.
Many punk rock songs protest injustice, lies, and unfairness in countries.
Almost all punks are leftists, who believe that a country should share the products and food that it produces with all the people in the country.
Some punks are vegetarian or vegans, because they believe that animals should not be killed for food.
Some punks are anarchists.
Very few punks are conservative, libertarian, or Republican.
Many punk musicians put colored hair dye in their hair or put gel to make it stand up.
They wear distinctive clothes as a form of protest or rebellion against the norms and rules of society.
Punk rock developed in New York City in the mid-1970s.
Bands like The Ramones, Television, The Heartbreakers, Blondie, and Patti Smith played loud, angry songs.
Many bands played at a club called CBGB 's.
The music soon spread to Australia and Britain, were bands started playing punk rock in 1976-1977.
British bands like Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Damned, Generation X, The Jam, and Sex Pistols played punk rock music that was inspired by the music being played in New York, as well as by garage rock, pub rock, and other protopunk music.
These early "punks" rejected the excesses of mainstream 1970s rock.
They created fast, hard-edged music, with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics.
They often did controversial things, such as saying bad words in public.
Many newspapers wrote articles about the "bad" behavior of punk rock musicians.
In the 1980s, a new type of punk rock called "hardcore punk" or "hardcore" developed.
It was louder, harder, and faster than the original punk rock.
By the mid-1980s, hardcore punk rock began being mixed with Heavy Metal rock music.
Many hardcore bands began playing in the United States and in the UK.
In the 1990s, punk rock began being mixed with pop music to create a new lighter style of music called pop-punk.
Pop-punk bands include Green Day and Good Charlotte.
Some pop-punk bands mixed punk rock stars
ska music.
Pop-punk was still popular in the 2000s.
Some people who like the 1970s-style punk rock criticize pop-punk because pop-punk is commercialized.
Some people say that punk rock is dead.
But that is not true, because the spirit lives on and many punk rockers are around today.
Puerto Rico, also known as the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a territory or colony of the United States in the Caribbean Sea.
It has almost 4 million (4,000,000) people.
It is the 169th largest sized country in the world in amount of land.
Its political system is based on a republican system.
It has two languages: Spanish and English.
The currency (money) used is the United States dollar.
Puerto Rico means "rich port" in Spanish.
The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico includes the largest, main island and a number of smaller islands, including Mona, Vieques, and Culebra.
Of those three smaller islands, only Culebra and Vieques are populated all year.
Mona is unpopulated, but employees of the Puerto Rico Department of Natural Resources sometimes visit the island to inspect it and its wildlife.
People can visit the island for hiking and camping by getting the permission needed.
San Juan, on the northern side of the main island, is the island 's largest city and the capital of the territory.
The history of Puerto Rico began when the Ortoiroid people started living in the island between 3000 and 2000 BC.
Other tribes, for example the Saladoid and Arawak Indians, lived in the island between 430 BC and 1000 AD.
When Christopher Columbus discovered the island in the New World in 1492 and named it San Juan Bautista, the people living there were the Ta nos.
Since it is in the northeastern Caribbean Sea, Puerto Rico formed an important part of the Spanish Empire from the early years of the exploration, conquest, and colonization of the New World.
The island was a major military post during many wars between Spain and other European countries for control of the region in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.
In 1898, during the Spanish-American war, Puerto Rico was invaded and became a possession of the United States.
During the 20th century, Puerto Rico 's political status changed from time to time.
The Foraker Act of 1900 created a civil government to replace the military government made after the Spanish American war, and the Jones Act of 1917 gave Puerto Rican people United States citizenship.
Afterwards, in 1952, the drafting of Puerto Rico 's own Constitution and democratic elections were established.
The political status of Puerto Rico, a Commonwealth controlled by the United States, is still not completely defined.
Many people want to resolve this status, while others want the status to remain the same.
Of the people who want to change the status, some want Puerto Rico to become a new U.S. state, while others want Puerto Rico to become a fully independent country.
Puerto Rico is an archipelago, with a main island where most of the population lives, two smaller islands (Vieques and Culebra) with residents, and many other smaller islands.
The main island has a mountain range in the center, which covers most of the island.
The highest point is 4,390 feet (1,338 meters)
Puerto Rico has three main political parties: the Puerto Rican Independence Party, which favors Puerto Rico becoming an independent nation; the New Progressive Party, which supports Puerto Rico 's transition to becoming a state of the U. S; and the Popular Democratic Party, which supports Colonialism.
The issue of the political status of the island (meaning whether it 's a country, a U.S state, or a colony) is an issue of debate amongst the Puerto Rican people.
In the past there have been many attempts to clearly define the island 's political status by means of voting.
Most of the time the majority of the people have chosen to remain a colony.
However in the last "status voting" the colonial option appeared to have lost well over 90 % of its support, while the U.S state option has only gained strength in the last few decades.
The Puerto Rican Independence party, on the other hand, has mainly lost a great deal of support within the last six decades.
Puerto Rico is said to comprise a White majority, an extinct Amerindian population, persons of mixed ancestry, Africans and a small Asian minority.
Recent genetic research, however, contradicts that information.
According to the 2010 US Census, 99 % of the population consider themselves of Puerto Rican descent (regardless of race or skin color), making Puerto Rico one of the most culturally unified societies in the world.
The population of Puerto Rico is nearly about 4 million people.
The ethnic composition of the population is:
This article has text from the English Wikipedia articles Puerto Rico and History of Puerto Rico.
Pseudoscience ("false science") is an idea that looks like science, but is not.
Pseudoscience may fail one or more parts of science.
Sometimes, pseudoscience are ideas that are thought to be wrong.
Essentially, pseudoscience is any idea about how nature works that is generally not accepted as true by the mainstream scientific community.
An idea can be considered pseudoscientific for any number of reasons.
The word pseudoscience literally means "false science."
Creationism and Astrology are both well known pseudosciences.
Pseudoscience is often considered immoral by scientists not because its claims are undemonstrated, but because they are sometimes presented as facts and\/or real.
An average person might not recognize the differences in credibility between a television program about psychics supposedly reading people 's thoughts versus one that presents evidence for and against global warming.
Ideas (more properly "hypotheses") about how nature works may be considered pseudoscientific for many reasons.
Sometimes, the hypothesis is just simply wrong, and can be demonstrated to be wrong.
An example of this is the belief that the Earth is flat, or the belief that human female skeletons have one more rib than men do.
Ideas such as these are considered pseudoscientific because they are just simply wrong.
Sometimes, scientists agree that a certain idea may be true, but could never be demonstrated to be true, even in principle.
For example, some people believe that the Earth and the universe came into existence last Thursday.
They believe that when the universe came into existence last Thursday, it was created with the appearance of being many thousands or even millions of years old.
According to these believers, even our memories of two weeks ago are actually just the false memories that came along with the creation of the universe, which took place last Thursday.
Such a belief is considered pseudoscientific because it is not falsifiable scientists can not even imagine an experiment that could shed light on whether this belief is true or false.
Other types of pseudoscience are considered pseudoscientific because they are based on deception, even though the idea being used is not impossible.
Examples of this are people who claim to have build time travel devices, antigravity devices, or teleporters.
Scientists simply do not have the technology to build such things in modern times, even though they may be able to someday.
Some ideas are arguably pseudoscientific.
This means that some mainstream scientists consider the idea pseudoscientific and some do not.
Certain ideas about how the stock market behaves fall into this category.
Pseudoscience is not exactly the same thing as biased research, where the scientist has some bad motive (such as personal gain, fame, or financial profit) for promoting their findings.
It is also not the same as an untested hypothesis, which is an idea that scientists can not test yet because they do not have the money or technology to do so.
The theories of quantum gravity are untested hypotheses: scientists can easily imagine experiments to test them, but they just do not quite have the technology to do so at this time.
A prion is an infectious protein.
The word is short for "proteinaceous infectious particles".
All known prion diseases in mammals affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue.
At present they are untreatable and always fatal.
Prions cause many forms of encephalitis, or brain disease, such as scrapie, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) and kuru.
Prions work by changing the shape of proteins in the infected animals.
While normal proteins have lots of alpha helices, or twisted parts, changed proteins have lots of beta sheets, or flat parts.
The word is pronounced pree-on.
Because prions are proteins.
and proteins can not reproduce themselves, it is a mystery how prions work.
A vast amount of molecular biology research is going on to find out how they reproduce themselves, with no clear result at present.
The periodic table of the chemical elements is a list of known atoms.
In the table, the elements are placed in the order of their atomic numbers starting with the lowest number.
The atomic number of an element is the same as the number of protons in that particular atom.
In the periodic table the elements are arranged into periods and groups.
A row of elements across the table is called a period.
Each period has a number: from 1 to 7.
Period 1 has only 2 elements in it: hydrogen and helium.
Period 2 and Period 3 both have 8 elements.
Other periods are longer.
A column of elements down the table is called a group.
There are 18 groups in the standard periodic table.
Each group has a number: from 1 to 18.
Elements in a group have electrons arranged in similar ways, which gives them similar chemical properties (they behave in similar ways).
For example, group 18 is known as the noble gases because they are all gases and they do not combine with other atoms.
The periodic table can be used by chemists to observe patterns, and relationships between the elements.
For example, elements to the bottom and far left of the table are the most metallic, and elements on the top right are the least metallic.
(e.g. cesium is much more metallic than helium).
There are also many other patterns and relationships.
There are two systems of group numbers; one using Arabic numerals (1,2,3) and the other two using Roman numerals (I, II, III).
The Roman numeral names were used at first and are the traditional names; the Arabic numeral names are newer names that the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) decided to use as well.
The IUPAC names were meant to replace the older Roman numeral systems as they used the same names to mean different things, which was confusing.
The Periodic Table was invented and arranged by the Russian chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev (1834-1907).
The color of the number (atomic number) above the element symbol shows the state of the element at normal conditions.
The version of the periodic table shown above is the one in widespread use.
There the most widespread other versions are shown below:
Potassium is a chemical element in the periodic table.
It has the symbol K. This symbol is taken from the Latin word kalium.
Potassium 's atomic number is 19.
It has 19 protons and electrons.
Potassium is not found as an element in nature, because it is so reactive.
Potassium has two stable isotopes, with 20 or 22 neutrons.
Its atomic mass is 39.098.
The unstable isotope with 21 neutrons is one of the most common radioactive materials.
Potassium is a soft gray metal.
It can be cut easily with a knife.
Its melting point is 63 degrees celsius (145.4 degrees Fahrenheit).
It melts at a very low temperature.
It is an alkali metal.
It is the second lightest metal, after lithium.
Potassium reacts in many chemical reactions similar to sodium and other alkali metals.
It tarnishes in air to produce a whitish oxidized layer on the surface.
This is why it is stored in oil.
It also reacts very fast with water, which is another reason for its storage in oil.
The hydrogen produced during its reaction with water can burst into flames when a large amount of potassium is added to water.
Potassium hydroxide is also produced.
Potassium also burns in air easily, to make the peroxide or the superoxide.
Potassium compounds are only in one oxidation state: +1.
Potassium ions are colorless and similar to sodium ions.
Potassium chloride can be used as a substitute for table salt.
Potassium hydroxide is used in the electrolyte of alkaline cells.
Most potassium compounds are nontoxic.
If they are toxic, it is because of the anion.
Potassium chromate is colored because of the chromate, not the potassium.
Potassium chromate is toxic because of the chromate, not the potassium.
The word potassium comes from the word "potash".
Potash is a mixture of potassium carbonate and potassium hydroxide that has been used for a very long time.
In past centuries potash was made from ashes in pots.
It is used to make fertilizer, soap, and glass.
Potassium does not occur in nature because it is too reactive.
It is found in minerals, though.
It is extracted from them by electrolysis of potassium hydroxide or potassium chloride.
The potassium hydroxide or potassium chloride has to be melted at a very high temperature.
Potassium metal is used to absorb water from solvents.
It is also used in some scientific instruments.
Potassium compounds are used in soap, fertilizer, explosives, and matches.
Potassium ions are very important to organisms.
That is why fertilizers have potassium compounds in them.
The ions send messages from cells to other cells.
It helps biological membranes depolarize.
This means go from a negative to a positive electrical charge.
This is needed for muscles to contract (get shorter and move things.)
It is needed for the heart to beat (push blood through blood vessels.)
If the potassium level in the blood is too high or too low it can cause death because the heart stops.
A few good sources of potassium are bananas, apricots and raisins.
Potassium metal is very dangerous and can form an explosive coating if it is kept in air.
It also reacts violently with water, spewing corrosive liquid all over.
Potassium compounds are not normally dangerous, unless they contain a toxic anion like chromate or chlorate.
This article is about Popes in general.
For the current Pope, see Pope Francis.
The Pope is the head of Catholic Church.
His official title is the Bishop of Rome.
He is the Chief of State of Vatican City and the head of the College of Bishops.
The current Pope is Pope Francis.
Popes are elected by under 80 Cardinals of the Catholic Church.
Once they are elected they hold the position until they die or resign.
Usually they do not resign, though; Pope Benedict XVI is the only Pope to resign in the last 500 years.
After a Pope is elected, the pope chooses a different name.
Everyone is told the new name when the Habemus Papam is read out.
The current pope (Francis) was called Jorge Bergoglio before he became a pope.
The name Pope comes from the Greek word pappas, meaning "father".
Catholics believe that when making statements ex cathedra, that is official statements teaching about faith and morals, the Pope is infallible - which means God will not allow his followers to be misled by allowing their leader to make a wrong statement.
Only two of any Pope 's statements have been ex cathedra.
Popes today travel to many countries around the world preaching.
The Pope is the only person in the world who runs a country and a religion at the same time.
The Pope wears a big hat called a mitre and holds a staff called a crosier.
During parts of the Middle Ages, the French kings had a lot of influence in Europe.
For this reason, seven popes (and two anti-popes) lived in Avignon, rather than Rome.
The Avignon Papacy was from 1309 to 1377.
During that time, the popes were known for their greed and corruption.
These popes were allies of France; the enemies of France were also their enemies.
Antipopes were people that were elected by small groups who did not like the official choice.
Catherine of Siena convinced pope Gregory XI to move back to Rome.
Unfortunately, he died shortly after moving.
The cardinals then elected Urban VI to be the next pope.
The French cardinals did not recognize this election as legitimate.
They declared the papal see as vacant; which led to the Western Schism.
The schism lasted until the Council of Constance in 1417.
During this time, there was a pope in Rome, an Antipope in Avignon, and for some time, a second antipope.
Each of the three was recognized as legitimate pope by different European powers.
This led to a big split in the church as a whole.
The council elected Pope Martin V as a new pope, recognized by all parties.
Passover or Pesach is a holiday or festival celebrated by Jewish people.
They celebrate it to remember when God used Moses to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, as told in the book of Exodus in the Bible.
God told Moses to set aside this special week originally called "the feast of unleavened bread".
(Leaven is yeast) During this time, the people eat special foods, do special rituals and sing songs.
Passover is around the time of Easter (April\/May).
Some Christians also celebrate it.
In computing, the Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to get e-mail from a remote server over a TCP\/IP connection.
POP3 and IMAP4 (Internet Message Access Protocol) are the two most widely accepted Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval.
Almost all modern e-mail clients and servers support both.
While not yet an official standardized mail protocol, a proposal has been outlined for a POP4 specification, complete with a working server implementation.
The proposed POP4 extension adds basic folder management, multipart message support, as well as message flag management, allowing for a light protocol which supports some popular IMAP features which POP3 currently lacks.
No progress has been found in the POP4 specification since 2003.
The Pacific Ocean is the body of water between Asia and Australia in the west, the Americas in the east, the Southern Ocean to the south, and the Arctic Ocean to the north.
It is the largest named ocean and it covers one-third of the surface of the entire world.
It joins the Atlantic Ocean at a line drawn south from Cape Horn, Chile\/Argentina to Antarctica, and joins the Indian Ocean at a line drawn south from Tasmania, Australia to Antarctica.
As the Atlantic slowly gets wider, the Pacific is slowly shrinking.
It does this by folding the sea floor in towards the center of the Earth - this is called subduction.
This bumping and grinding is hard so there are many earthquakes and volcanoes when the pressure builds up and is quickly released as large explosions of hot rocks and dust.
When an earthquake happens under the sea, the quick jerk causes a tsunami.
This is why tsunamis are more common around the edge of the Pacific than anywhere else.
Many of the Earth 's volcanoes are either islands in the Pacific, or are on continents within a few hundred kilometers of the ocean 's edge.
Plate tectonics are another reason which makes Pacific Ocean smaller.
Prince Edward Island is a province in Canada.
It is the smallest of Canada 's ten provinces.
Most of the people on Prince Edward Island speak English.
Prince Edward Island was named for the son of King George lll of Britain and joined Canada in 1873.
This province is 224 km (139 miles) long and 4 to 60 kilometers (2.5 to 37 miles).
The capital, and also the largest city, is Charlottetown.
Prince Edward Island is known for being the location for novels written by Lucy Maud Montgomery including Anne of Green Gables.
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication.
PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting electronic mails (e-mails) to increase the security of e-mail communications.
It was originally created by Phil Zimmermann in 1991.
PGP and other similar products follow the OpenPGP standard (RFC 4880) for encrypting and decrypting data.
OpenPGP is on the Internet Standards Track; the current specification is RFC 4880 (November 2007).
OpenPGP is still under development and the successor to RFC 2440, which is RFC 4880, has been made a proposed standard.
Many e-mail clients provide OpenPGP-compliant email security as described in RFC 3156.
The Free Software Foundation has developed its own OpenPGP-compliant program called GNU Privacy Guard (abbreviated GnuPG or GPG).
GnuPG is freely available together with all source code under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is maintained separately faraway from several Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) that interact with the GnuPG library for encryption, decryption and signing functions (see KGPG, Seahorse, MacGPG).
Several other vendors have also developed OpenPGP-compliant software.
Playing cards is the name for the 54 cards used in a lot of games like poker, bridge, blackjack, and solitaire.
There are 52 basic cards in a deck.
These cards have a suit and a number (called the value or rank).
There are 4 suits and 13 ranks in each suit.
There are also two Jokers that do not have a suit or a rank.
Usual signs: spades (-RRB-, hearts (-RRB-, diamonds (-RRB-, clubs (-RRB-.
In some countries different suit signs may be used.
In central Europe, there are cards with the suit signs of acorns, leaves, hearts, and bells.
In Spain, Italy and Latin America, there are playing cards with the suits of clubs, swords, cups, and coins and Aces
In some games the ace is the highest value, but in other games it is the lowest.
For many games, the Jokers are removed from the deck, making the total number of cards in the deck 52.
Sometimes the deck is reduced to 40, 36, or 32 cards for playing certain games, like belote, sheepshead or euchre.
There are various types of tarot cards.
Tarots are commonly used for fortune-telling, although they can also be used for playing games.
Conversely, people have also used standard playing cards for fortune-telling.
Playing cards have been found in 9th century China, Tang dynasty.
Playing cards first entered Europe in the early 14th century, probably from Egypt.
The suits were very similar to the tarot suits of Swords, Staves, Cups and Coins.
These designs are still used in traditional Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese card decks.
The first documentary evidence is from Vitoria-Gasteiz (now Spain) in 1334, in which the Knights of the Band are forbidden to play cards.
The next record is from Catalonia in 1371.
Wide use of playing cards in Europe can be traced from 1377 onwards.
The method of making cards has stayed the same for over a century.
Cards are two thin pieces of paper stuck together with black paste.
Both outer sides are printed.
Inside is the design of the card face, the outer is the design for the pack as a whole.
The black paste is essential to prevent sight of the face coming through when light shines on the face side.
The use of the paste is the reason cards are sometimes called "pasteboards".
One or two packs at a time are printed on large sheets of paper, already pasted.
The individual cards are stamped out by a machine which acts like a cookie-cutter.
It cuts 36,000 cards per hour.
A tiny fraction of a second later the edges of the cards are squashed extra-thin.
This is not obvious to the naked eye, but the effect is that the cards slide easily past each other during shuffling.
Printed paper cards hold about 97.5 % of the world market.
Plastic cards do exist: they were first invented in the 1930s.
They last longer than papercards, but have only 2.5 % of the market.
Palaeontology or Paleontology is the study of fossils of living things, and their phylogeny (evolutionary relationships).
It depends on basic sciences such as zoology, botany and historical geology.
The term palaeobiology implies that the study will investigate the palaeoecology of the groups in question.
In palaeozoology, the evolution of those phyla with fossil records are studied: see List of animal phyla.
In palaeobotany, fossil plants are studied.
In historical geology the formation, sequence and dating of rock strata give information about past environments.
A fossil is any kind of life that is more than ten thousand years old and preserved in any form that we can study today.
The fossil record is always incomplete, and later discoveries may extend the known survival of a group.
See Lazarus taxon.
Some palaeontologists study fossils of microorganisms, living things that are too small to see without a microscope, while other palaeontologists study fossils of giant dinosaurs.
A plotter is a kind of printer for computers.
Plotters use vector graphics.
Usually they are used to print to paper which is very large in size.
Plotters print things using special, colored pens.
There is one called the drum plotter.
They are often used in warehouses.
They are generally used for making flex or maps.
Philology considers both form and meaning in linguistic expression.
It combines linguistics and literary studies.
Classical philology is the philology of the Greek, Latin and Sanskrit languages.
Any classical language can be studied philologically, and indeed describing a language as "classical" is to imply the existence of a philological tradition associated with it.
Phonetics (from the Greek word, phone which means ` sound ' or ` voice ') is the science of the sounds of human speech.
Someone who is an expert in phonetics is called a phonetician.
Phonetic theory regards the nature of sounds in speech (called phones) and how they are made, heard and thought of.
Phonology, which came from it, studies sound systems and sound units (such as phonemes and distinctive features).
Phonetics is one of the two parts of orthographical linguistics, the other part being spelling, differing from grammar and lexis.
There are more than 100 different phones recognized by the International Phonetic Association (IPA) and are shown in their writing system called the International Phonetic Alphabet.
The first time phonetics was studied was 2,500 years ago in what is now India, with P ini, when he wrote about the place and manner of articulation of consonants in Sanskrit in his 5th century BC essay on Sanskrit linguistics.
The major Indic scripts today order their consonants the way P ini did.
Petroleum, (from Greek - rock and - oil) also called crude oil, is a thick and black liquid.
It is a natural material mainly made of hydrocarbons.
Most petroleum is found by drilling down through rocks on land or off-shore on the continental shelf.
Major producers are in the Middle East, the Americas, and Russia.
It is the most important world fuel source.
It supplies 38 % of the world 's energy and is also used to make petrochemicals.
Crude oil is a mixture of many different chemicals, mostly hydrocarbons, most of which burn well.
It is separated into simpler, more useful mixtures by fractional distillation in oil refineries to give separate chemicals such as gasoline (or petrol) for cars, kerosene for airplanes and bitumen for roads.
The bitumen gives crude oil its dark black color; most of the other chemicals in crude are slightly yellow or colourless.
Petroleum can be easily transported by pipeline.
Treated petroleum can be used as fuels; mainly gasoline (petrol) for cars, diesel fuel for diesel engines used in trucks, trains and ships, kerosene fuel for jets and as lubricants.
Petroleum resource is limited and non-renewable.
Some believe it will run out within 70 years after a peak oil early in the 21st century.
Burning petroleum or other fossil fuel adds the carbon in the oil to the oxygen in the air to create carbon dioxide, which is an air pollutant.
The carbon can be removed from the carbon dioxide by plants.
There is a lot of crude oil left underground.
Oil companies quote "reserves" which some people confuse with the actual amount of oil underground, but are more to do with the cost of extracting it by oil wells.
Most of the crude left underground is in the Middle East which is not a politically stable part of the world.
Some governments with lots of oil reserves work together through OPEC to keep production low and prices high.
Politicians in countries that burn much oil complain about high oil prices, because voters complain.
However many environmentalists worry about damage being done by using oil as a fuel source (especially global warming) and are therefore happy when prices are kept high so that people use less oil.
Poultry is a group of domesticated birds kept for meat, eggs, and feathers.
These usually include farm animals such as ducks, chickens, geese, turkeys, and among other types of birds.
Propaganda is a form of communication to distribute information.
It is always biased.
The information is designed to make people feel a certain way or to believe a certain thing.
The information is often political.
It is hard to tell whether the information is true or false.
Very often, the information is confusing and unfair.
Propaganda does tend to make disputes last longer, and be more difficult to resolve.
The word ` propaganda ' comes from Latin.
At first, it meant ` ideas to be spread around '.
But in the First World War, it came to mean ` political ideas that are supposed to be misleading '.
Propaganda is like advertising in some ways.
For example, it uses the mass media to spread its ideas.
But advertising is usually trying to sell something, whereas propaganda is about ideas.
It is often political, and used by states or political parties, not private companies.
Propaganda is often used during wars.
There it can be very useful.
It can take the form of posters, TV advertisements, and radio announcements.
Sometimes it keeps the people of a country happy - telling them that their country is fighting well and telling them how important it is that the enemy is defeated.
Sometimes it tries to make people hate the enemy.
The information could tell people that the enemy is evil or make them seem not human.
Sometimes a government gives propaganda to the enemy - telling them that the war is going badly for them and that they should stop fighting.
When a country is not at war, propaganda can still be used.
The government may use propaganda to change what people think about a political situation.
A group may try to change the way people act towards an issue.
Propaganda under some countries, like dictatorships, is used along with censorship.
While propaganda tries to give people false ideas, censorship forces the ones who disagree with propaganda to keep quiet.
Then the propaganda can say everything, because nobody can question it in public.
Propaganda is also used to win people by tricking them.
Some people say that cults use propaganda to get people to join them.
Propaganda has been used in every known civilisation.
It was used by Rameses II on his monuments in Ancient Egypt; it was used by Ancient Greek orators; it was used by Julius Caesar, and all Roman Emperors.
The word itself is formed from propagate, meaning to multiply.
Propaganda was carried much further by the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide of the Catholic Church.
This committee, founded in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV, had action branches in most European countries.
These were the local branches of the Inquisition, which sought out heretics.
With torture and the threat of death by burning at the stake, they forced heretics to recant (to publicly withdraw their previous beliefs).
The objective was to remove all challenges to the supremacy of the Church in matters of belief.
The 1578 handbook for inquisitors noted "Punishment does not take place primarily and for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit".
A physical quantity is a quantity in physics that can be measured.
Or a physical quantity is a physical property that can be quantified.
Examples of physical quantities are mass, amount of substance, length, time, temperature, electric current, light intensity, force, velocity, density, and many others.
A physical quantity is always measured of natural non-living objects (Inanimate objects)
The foundation of physics rests upon physical quantities in term of which the laws of physics are expressed.
Therefore, these quantities have to be measured accurately.
In science, a physical constant is a number (physical quantity) that does not change.
This is different from a mathematical constant, which is not based on a real measurement.
There are many physical constants in science.
Some famous ones are the speed of light, Planck 's constant, the gravitational constant, and Avogadro 's number.
Some scientists think that physical constants may decrease as the universe gets older.
There has been no evidence to support this yet.
Constants that do not have units (like length or speed) are called fundamental physical constants.
Some believe that if the physical constants were different, there would be no life in the universe.
They say that the universe seems to be fine-tuned for intelligent life.
Parsley is a fresh flavored bright green herb.
It used on food as a garnish and as a seasoning in soups, sauces and salads.
Some people eat parsley to get their breath to smell better.
Parsley can be easily grown in gardens, as well as inside the home, wherever there is plenty of indirect sunlight.
Parsley needs good, light soil, good drainage and frequent watering to thrive indoors.
To harvest parsely, cut the most mature stalks near the base that are still bright green.
New shoots will grow for some time from the base of an established plant.
Parsley is extraordinarily rich in vitamins C and A, minerals (especially potassium), beta-carotene, folate and dietary fiber.
The following chart provides information on the nutritional values and caloric composition of parsley: Water content (grams per 100g) 87.71 Calorie content of Food (kcals per 100g\/3.5 oz) 36 Protein content (grams per 100g) 3.7 Fat content (lipids) (grams per 100g) 1.2 Ash content (grams per 100g) 2.1 Moisture (grams per 100g) 85.2 Carbohydrate content (grams per 100g) 8.0 Dietary Fiber content (grams per 100g) 4.1
The Peppermint is a hybrid plant of the mint family.
It is originally from Europe, but grown and sold all over the world.
It is a hybrid of watermint and spearmint.
Carolus Linnaeus first described the plant in 1753, from samples that had been collected in England.
He treated it as a species, but modern biology mostly treats it as a hybrid.
Poales is a taxonomic order of flowering plants in the monocotyledons.
The order includes families of plants such as the grasses, bromeliads, and sedges.
The earliest fossils attributed to the Poales date to the late Cretaceous period about million years ago, though some suggest the origin of the group may be 115 million years ago in South America.
The earliest known fossils include pollen and fruits.
The flowers are typically small, enclosed by bracts, and arranged in inflorescences (except in the genus Mayaca, with solitary terminal flowers).
The flowers of many species are wind pollinated; the seeds usually contain starch.
The Poales are the most economically important order of monocots and possibly the most important order of plants in general.
Within the order, by far the most important family economically is the family of grasses (Poaceae, syn.
Gramineae), which includes barley, maize, millet, rice, and wheat.
It is also the largest family in the order, far outnumbering the other families:
Political correctness (or PC for short) means using words or behavior which will not offend any group of people.
Most people think it is important for everyone to be treated equally, fairly and with dignity.
Some words have been used for a long time that are unkind to some people.
Sometimes these words have now been replaced by other words that are not offensive.
Such words are described as politically correct.
The term is often used in a mocking sense when attempts at avoiding offense are seen to go too far.
This term has been used since the early 1970s.
It started being used in the modern negative sense in the late 80s in America.
Politically correct words or terms are used to show differences between people or groups in a non-offensive way.
This difference may be because of race, gender, beliefs, religion, sexual orientation, or because they have a mental or physical disability, or any difference from what is considered the norm.
Throughout the 20th century women fought to have the same rights as men.
In PC language this is seen in changes to job titles such as "lineman", "postman", and "chairman" which now commonly go by the gender-neutral titles "lineworker", "letter carrier" and "chairperson" or "chair" as well as with terms having broader application, such as "humankind" replacing "mankind".
People who are attracted to the same gender are usually referred to as ` homosexual '.
Likewise, people who are attracted to people of both genders are usually referred to as "bisexual".
However, both of these terms are seen as being perfectly fine by the more politically liberal oriented people.
People who are mentally disabled are now rarely described as "mentally retarded" (sometimes called "M.R.") but may be said to have "special needs".
M.R. has been changed to I.D.; Intellectual Disabilities.
People who are blind or deaf may be referred to as "vision impaired" and "hearing impaired".
People who can not speak are never "dumb" but "mute" or "without speech".
The overall terms ` handicapped ' and ` disabled ' are no longer considered appropriate (there is no distinction between physical or mental, acquired or inborn.)
The people first\/pc term is ` challenged '.
This term better reflects the fact they are different, rather than less.
Some of the new politically correct words are often criticized for being rather ridiculous.
Some examples of these are the terms ending in challenged.
For example, someone who is very short might be described as "vertically challenged".
People also say that things that are obviously bad are called by something else which hides the fact that they are bad.
For example, young people who are in trouble with the law, instead of being called "juvenile delinquents" became "children at risk".
Some PC terms may be ambiguous i.e. have two possible meanings.
"hearing impaired" can also refer to someone who has partial hearing (hard of hearing) and "vision impaired" can also refer to someone who has partial vision.
Ploidy is a term from genetics and cell biology.
It is used to indicate the number of chromosome sets in a cell.
Most eukaryotes have either one set (called haploid) or two sets (called diploid).
Some other organisms are polyploid, they have more than two sets of chromosomes.
Some amphibians are triploid, with 3 sets.
The endosperm cells in the seeds of many plants are also triploid.
Some kinds of trout or salmon have 4 sets (tetraploid).
Other examples:
Sex cells (gametes) are almost always haploid.
If the reproductive stage (adult) is polyploid, then the gametes will have half the ploidy number of chromosomes.
There are some variations of ploidy which are not discussed here.
Some plant species with certain types of polyploidy do not use sexual reproduction, but survive with asexual methods.
Polyploidy occurs in cells and organisms when there are more than two paired (homologous) sets of chromosomes.
Most organisms are normally diploid, meaning they have two sets of chromosomes one set inherited from each parent.
Polyploidy may occur due to abnormal cell division.
It is most commonly found in plants, but it does sometimes happen in animals.
Some estimates suggest that 30-80 % of living plant species are polyploid, and many lineages show evidence of ancient polyploidy (paleopolyploidy) in their genomes.
Huge increases in angiosperm (flowering plants) diversity have coincided with the timing of ancient genome duplications shared by many species.
15 % of angiosperm and 31 % of fern speciation events are accompanied by ploidy increase.
Polyploid plants arise spontaneously in nature.
Many polyploids are fitter than their parental species, and may display novel variation or morphologies that contribute to speciation and eco-niche exploitation.
Polyploidy may occur in one generation, and is an exception to the principle that evolution occurs gradually.
There may, however, be many genetic changes in the species after polyploidy has taken place.
The gametes of polyploids are unusual, because they may carry several sets of chromosomes.
For example, common wheat is a polyploid with six sets of chromosomes, two sets coming originally from each of three different species.
So there are six sets of chromosomes in most cells, and three sets of chromosomes in the gametes.
Playboy is a monthly American men 's magazine.
It was founded by Hugh Hefner in Chicago, Illinois in 1953.
Marilyn Monroe was the magazine 's first cover model.
The magazine features articles about men 's interests including politics, clothing, sports, consumer goods, public figures, and nude women.
In each issue, a provocative posed "Playmate of the Month" is featured in a pictorial several pages in length at the center of the magazine with an accompanying "centerfold" photograph.
Unlike traditional pin up art, Playboy humanizes their models by describing their real world jobs, accomplishments, and goals.
Hefner faced obscenity charges only once in his career.
In 1960, he was hauled into a Chicago court after publishing nude photos of actress Jayne Mansfield on the set of Promises!
Promises!
He was acquitted.
Some people call Playboy pornographic but it is not.
Pornography shows real sex acts, Playboy does not.
Playboy models also do not masturbate or use sex toys in their pictures.
Every month, Playboy selects a young woman as a "Playmate of the Month".
Readers then vote for who they want to be the "Playmate of the Year" (PMOY).
The PMOY issue is usually the June issue.
The Permian is a geological period which started about 299 million years ago (mya), and ended about 252 mya.
It is the last period of the Paleozoic era, and ended in the largest mass extinction known to science.
The climate in the Permian was quite varied.
At the start of the Permian, the Earth was still at the grip of an Ice age from the Carboniferous.
Glaciers receded around the mid-Permian period as the climate gradually warmed, drying the continent 's interiors.
In the late Permian period, the drying continued although the temperature cycled between warm and cool cycles.
During the Permian tetrapod life, (amphibians, Sauropsids and Synapsids) which evolved in the Carboniferous, became widespread and diverse.
The first modern trees (conifers, ginkgos and cycads) appeared in the Permian.
The Permian was also a period of adaptive radiation in insects.
Beetles (Coleoptera) appeared; so did flies (Diptera).
22 out of a total of 36 known orders of insects are known from the Permian.
Some became extinct in the end-Permian event, but more radiation followed in the Mesozoic.
Insects were probably, by the end of the Permian, the largest phylum, in terms of number of species.
Early relatives of cockroaches (Blattopterans) were the most common insects.
and dragonflies ruled the air.
True Odonata appeared in the Permian.
All the major land masses were collected together in the super-continent Pangaea.
At the end of the period, the greatest flood basalt lava flows in the Phanerozoic raised world temperatures, and damaged the environment.
These formed the extensive Siberian traps.
The causes of the Permian\/Triassic extinction event are not yet agreed between scientists.
Trilobites, once a dominant life-form in the ocean, became extinct, together with 90 % of all marine species.
Pisces is a constellation located on the celestial equator.
Paul Leroy Robeson (April 9, 1898 January 23, 1976) was an African-American singer and actor who became involved with the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
He was an outstanding American football player at Rutgers University.
He had an international career in singing, as well as acting in theater and movies.
He was politically involved in many issues, including the Spanish Civil War, fascism, and social injustices.
His supported anti-imperialism and communism.
Because he was critical of the US government he was blacklisted during McCarthyism.
He was forced to retire because of poor health.
The parabola (from the Greek) is a type of curve.
Menaechmus (380 320 BC) discovered the parabola, and Apollonius of Perga (262 BC c190 BC) first named it.
A parabola is a conic section.
If a cone is dissected by a plane which is parallel to one of the surfaces of the cone, the result is a parabola.
The point where the parabola reaches its maximum or minimum is called the "vertex."
At this point the curvature of the parabola is greatest.
Each parabola has a focal point.
Any ray that enters the parabola and is parallel to the axis of symmetry will pass through this point after being reflected by the curve.
Because of this fact, parabolas are important in devices such as satellite dishes, or magnifying mirrors.
Parabolas are often used to approximate curves that are more difficult to model by themselves.
Every parabola uses the equation y = ax + bx + c, where a, b and c are constants, and a is not equal to 0.
The parent graph is shown by the equation y = x ^ 2
Pakistan is a country in southern Asia.
It is next to the India, Iran, Afghanistan, and China.
It is officially called the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
It has a long coastline along the Arabian Sea in the south.
Pakistan has the sixth largest population in the world.
Pakistan has a total land area of 880940 k (including the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan).
This makes Pakistan the 34th largest country in the world.
Pakistan has the seventh largest army in the world.
The capital of Pakistan is Islamabad.
The name P kist n means Land of the Pure in Persian and Urdu.
The name Pakistan (English pronunciation: or; (pa k st a n)) means Land of (the) Spiritually Pure in both Urdu and Persian languages.
Many South-central Asian states and regions end with the element - stan, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Baluchistan, Kurdistan, and Turkistan.
This - stan is formed from the Iranian root \* STA "to stand, stay," and means "place (where one stays), home, country".
Pakistan has a federal parliamentary system.
The head of state is an indirectly-elected President.
The president is also the Commander in Chief of the Joint Armed Forces.
The head of government is the Prime Minister, who is also indirectly elected.
The President 's appointment and term are constitutionally independent of the Prime Minister s term.
The Electoral college of the country, (composed of the Senate, the National Assembly, and the four Provincial Assemblies) chooses a leadership representing the President of Pakistan for a five-year term.
The Prime Minister is usually the leader of the largest party in the National Assembly and is assisted by a cabinet of ministers drawn from both chambers of the federal legislature.
Pakistan is officially a federal republic, but during a long period in its history it changed to a democratic state and a military dictatorship.
Military dictators include Ayub Khan in the 1960s, General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s.
Pakistan 's two largest political parties are the Pakistan Peoples Party and the government party Muslim League (Pakistan) (Q) (which have military support).
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has also gained prominence in the past years.
On 27 December 2007, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated.
The reason is yet to be determined.
Pakistan is made up of four provinces, two territories and two special areas.
Both special areas are in Kashmir.
The provinces and territories were divided into 26 divisions with now 147 districts directly divided from the provinces.
Each district is divided into several tehsils and each tehsil is divided into several union councils.
There are around 596 tehsils and over 6,000 union councils of Pakistan.
Among the four provinces, Punjab has the most people but Balochistan is the largest province by area.
(Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also have Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA) which are going to be regular districts.)
India, Pakistan and China separately control parts of the Kashmir region.
India and Pakistan 's parts are divided by a Line of Control.
The Pakistan China border is internationally known.
Trade is common between the 2 countries.
Pakistan has a semi-industrialized economy.
The growth poles of the Pakistani economy are situated along the Indus River.
Diversified economies of Karachi and Punjab 's urban centres, coexist with lesser developed areas in other parts of the country.
Despite being a very poor country in 1947, Pakistan 's economic growth rate has been better than the global average during the subsequent four decades, but imprudent policies led to a slowdown in the late 1990s.
Recently, wide-ranging economic reforms have resulted in a stronger economic outlook and accelerated growth especially in the manufacturing and financial services sectors.
Since the 1990s, there has been great improvement in the foreign exchange market position and rapid growth in hard currency reserves.
The 2005 estimate of foreign debt was close to US$ 40 billion.
However, this decreased with help from the International Monetary Fund and significant debt-relief from the United States.
Pakistan 's gross domestic product, as measured by purchasing power parity, is estimated to be $ 475.4 billion while its per capita income stands at $ 2,942.
The poverty rate in Pakistan is estimated to be between 23 % and 28 %.
Pakistan became independent in 1947 from the Indian empire of British Raj.
The first people in ancient Pakistan lived 9000 years ago.
These people were the ones who made up the Indus Valley Civilization, which is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth.
After that, the Vedic period came.
This also included parts of north-western India.
Until 1971, Pakistan also included an area in the North-east India region.
This is now called Bangladesh.
It lost that area after a war with the Indian Army and the joint militant group of Indo-Bangladeshi alliance of Mitro Bahini of West Bengal.
During recent times Pakistan has been in the center of world politics.
This is first because of its support to guerillas in Afghanistan, following Soviet invasion 1979, and later during the 1990s because of its cooperation with and support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
However, since 2000 Pakistan has basically supported the West in their war against fundamentalist terrorism, including the removal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is a member of the Commonwealth.
However, after the war in East Pakistan the country was excluded (between 1972-1989).
It was also a member between 1999 and 2007, it was excluded in 2007 for a time but again became a member in 2008.
There are many earthquakes in the area.
The earthquake in 2005 with its earthquake center in Kashmir is the strongest so far.
Over 100,000 people were killed or wounded on October 8, 2005.
Pakistan covers 880940 k, approximately equalling the combined land areas of France and the United Kingdom.
Its eastern regions are located on the Indian plate and the western and northern regions on the Iranian plateau and Eurasian landplate.
Apart from the 1046 k Arabian Sea coastline, Pakistan 's land borders total 6774 k 2430 k with Afghanistan to the northwest, 523 k with China to the northeast, 2912 k with India to the south and east, and 909 k with Iran to the southwest.
The northern and western highlands of Pakistan contain the towering Karakoram and Pamir mountain ranges, which incorporate some of the world 's highest peaks, including K2 8611 m and Nanga Parbat 8126 m. The Balochistan Plateau lies to the west, and the Thar Desert and an expanse of alluvial plains, the Punjab and Sindh, lie to the east.
The 1609 k Indus River and its tributaries flow through the country from the disputed territory of Occupied Kashmir to the Arabian Sea.
Pakistan has four seasons: a cool, dry winter from December through February; a hot, dry spring from March through May; the summer rainy season, or southwest monsoon period, from June through September; and the retreating monsoon period of October and November.
The beginning and length of these seasons vary somewhat according to location.
Rainfall can vary radically from year to year, and successive patterns of flooding and drought are also not uncommon.
Urdu is replacing English as the national language of the country.
English is still spoken among the Pakistani elite and in most government ministries.
Many people also speak Saraiki, Punjabi, Hindko, Pushto, Sindhi, Balochi, Brahui and Khowar.
Shina is also one of the regional languages of Pakistan.
It is spoken in Gilgit-Baltistan.
Most (97 %) of the people are Muslim.
Most of the Muslims in Pakistan are Sunni Muslims (-RRB- 75 %) and Shia Muslims (20 %).
However a few minority groups exist.
Pakistan also has some Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Zoroastrians and animist minority groups in the northern parts of the country.
After the separation from British India, Hinduism had much less importance in the newly created state of Pakistan, but has played an important role in its culture and politics as well as the history of its regions.
In fact, Pakistan has the 5th largest population of Hindus, after Sri Lanka.
The word Hindu comes from the Sindhu (Indus River) of Pakistan.
The Sindhu is one of the holy rivers of Hinduism.
Thus, in many ways, the land which is today 's heavily Muslim Pakistan has played an important part in the origin of Hinduism.
There are about 3 million Hindus living in Pakistan.
Poverty in Pakistan is a growing concern.
Although the middle-class has grown in Pakistan, nearly one-quarter of the population is classified poor as of October 2006.
The national sport of Pakistan is field hockey, although cricket is the most popular game across the country.
The national cricket team has won the Cricket World Cup once (in 1992), were runners-up once (in 1999), and co-hosted the games twice (in 1987 and 1996).
Pakistan were runners-up in the inaugural 2007 ICC World Twenty20 held in South Africa and were the champions at the 2009 ICC World Twenty20 held in England.
Lately however, Pakistani cricket has suffered heavily due to teams refusing to tour Pakistan because of terrorism fears.
No teams have toured Pakistan since March 2009, when militants attacked the touring Sri Lankan cricket players.
In addition to sports like field hockey, cricket, squash rackets, soccer and others, Pakistanis are also very keen on equestrianism of various types, and equestrian sports such as Polo and the traditional Tent pegging are played by many.
Other traditional rural sports include two types of Wrestling, Kabbadi and a martial art called Gatka.
Phonology is the science that studies the sound patterns of language.
Phonology is part of linguistics, which is the scientific study of language.
Prometheus was a Titan in Greek mythology.
He is the son of Iapetus and Themis.
He created humans.
He also stole fire from Zeus and gave it to humans.
As punishment, Zeus had Prometheus chained to a mountain.
Every day an eagle would come and eat his liver.
Prometheus is immortal, so he never died, and his liver grew back every night.
But he still felt great pain.
After a long time, Zeus sent his son Heracles to free Prometheus by breaking the chains which held him.
Aeschylus wrote a play about Prometheus.
Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a genetic disorder (a disease a person is born with) where a person 's body can not break down an amino acid called phenylalanine.
Amino acids are necessary to make proteins, an important part of the human body.
Phenylalanine only comes from the food we eat; our bodies do not make any by themselves.
Average people produce an enzyme called phenylalanine hydroxylase in their bodies.
When they ingest phenylalanine, the body can not use it, so this enzyme changes phenylalanine into tyrosine, which the body can use.
In people with PKU, very little or no enzyme is made.
Since the phenylalanine they eat is not being changed into tyrosine, it builds up in their bodies.
This can cause problems with the way their bodies work.
Symptoms vary from person to person.
Because of the rarity of PKU, many symptoms go undiagnosed or unrecognized.
In addition, there are variations in the categories of PKU individuals.
There are untreated, early treated, late treated, those returning to diet, Hyperphe, Classical PKU, uncontrolled, and highly controlled.
For your average infant a doctor will diagnose PKU with a quick blood test.
Their symptom will be high PHE levels.
If that infant goes undiagnosed for weeks or months, he\/she may start to exhibit some or all of the following symptoms for uncontrolled PKU.
The symptoms include:
Today, scientists know what foods have phenylalanine in them, and they have created a special diet for people with PKU.
Since they can not use it, people with PKU can not eat foods that have a lot of phenylalanine, like eggs, meat and milk.
An artificial sweetener called aspartame is also a source of phenylalanine.
People with PKU take a lot of vitamins to make up for the foods they can not eat, especially vitamins B6 and B12.
Babies with PKU are fed a special formula.
It has everything babies need to stay healthy, but with very little phenylalanine.
There are also low protein foods like breads and flour (Made from corn and starch instead of regular wheat).
Women with PKU who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant have to be especially careful to follow this diet.
If they do not follow the diet, their babies could be born with severe birth defects and mental retardation.
Babies born to women with PKU who have followed the PKU diet throughout their pregnancy are usually healthy and do not necessarily but may develop PKU.
Whether or not they have PKU themselves depends on the mother and father 's genes.
In fact there are people who are Carriers (Dormant Genes) that can be passed on until they resurface in the future generations.
These are so far undetectable, However since PKU is genetically recessive it takes PKU genes from both parents to cause PKU.
PKU kids usually have light hair and eyes due to the effect of phenylalanine in the production of melanin.
They also tend to have very fair skin which can cause them to burn easily.
Solar protection is a must for those who wish to work, play, or engage in activities outdoors.
Most people with PKU can live as long and healthy as anyone else if the low-phenylalanine diet is started when they are babies and continued for the rest of their lives.
The symptoms will usually disappear after the diet is started.
Parallax is the perceived change in position of an object seen from two different places.
In astronomy, annual parallax is the only direct way to measure distance to stars outside the solar system.
In essence, parallax is the phenomenon which occurs when an object is viewed from different positions.
It is measured by the angle between two lines of observation.
Nearby objects have a larger parallax than more distant objects when observed from identical positions, so parallax can be used to determine distances.
Astronomers use the principle of parallax to measure distances to celestial objects including to the Moon, the Sun, and to stars beyond the Solar System.
Here, the term "parallax" is the angle between two sight-lines to the star.
Astronomical measurement of position are taken at different times of the year.
Since the Earth 's orbit is known exactly, the distance from position 1 to position 2 can be worked out.
Then, the angle from the horizon to the object can be measured precisely.
This gives a triangle whose baseline and angles are known accurately.
From the triangle, the distance is calculated by trigonometry.
The method only fails with objects which are so distant that the long axis of the earth 's orbit is too short to get a sufficient difference in the measured angle.
Astronomers have worked out various ways to get over this problem, though none are so accurate as the parallax method is for relatively nearby objects.
This provides a basis for the cosmic distance ladder.
This is the name for the techniques astronomers use to calculate distances further than the parallax method allows.
From 1989 to 1993 the Hipparcos satellite took measurements for over 100,000 nearby stars.
Many animals, including humans, have two eyes which provide depth perception; this is called stereopsis.
Because the two eyes are at different places on the head, this gives the basis for an automatic sense of distance.
We perceive this as a normal 3-D scene.
Paralysis is the complete loss of muscle function for one or more muscle groups, when the thing that is paralysed can not move.
Paralysis is most often caused by damage to the nervous system or brain, especially the spinal cord.
Major causes are stroke, trauma, poliomyelitis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), botulism, spina bifida, multiple sclerosis, and Guillain-Barr syndrome.
Partial paralysis can also occur in the REM stage of sleep (see: Sleep paralysis).
Paralysis often includes loss of feeling in the affected area.
Particle physics is a category of physics that studies really tiny pieces of things, known as particles.
These particles are the really small pieces that build up the world around us.
Particles can carry fundamental forces.
For example, the electromagnetic force is carried by photons.
The four fundamental forces are responsible for almost everything in all of physics, including gravity, radioactive decay, and magnetism.
These four forces are: electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear, and gravity.
One of the important concepts of particle physics is called the Standard Model.
The Standard Model is a theory which tries to explain the fundamental forces.
The Standard Model combined with General Relativity is currently the most accepted explanation of how the Universe works.
The Standard Model is known to have problems.
For example, there is not much in it that explains gravity.
This is why General Relativity, a different theory to explain how things have gravity, needs to be included in order for physicists to explain the universe.
There is a lot of work to improve the theory and\/or find a better theory that is being done.
This work is often called theoretical particle physics, because none of it has been actually proven.
Theoretical particle physicists make theories to try to improve the Standard Model.
One example of this is how there are many theories that predict undiscovered particles.
Physicists find out about particles by studying collisions between different particles.
A good analogy of how physicists study particles through colliding is the car crash example.
Imagine a person wanted to look inside cars.
By crashing two cars together at very high speeds, we can break the cars apart and see inside.
In the same way, physicists crash two particles together in order to break them and study the inside.
If particles are moving at very high speeds, some of them will break apart when they collide.
When they break, they create new smaller particles.
These particles are very hard to find and detect because they decay (change into lighter particles) very quickly.
Modern particle physics involves colliding particles together very energetically to create new particles inside a particle accelerator.
This is called high-energy physics, due to the large amount of energy needed.
However, many particles do not simply break apart, such as electrons.
Because it does not break apart, the electron is called a fundamental particle.
If you were to smash two super-fast electrons against each other, they would not break, but instead they might create more particles around them without breaking (this is another form of decay, known as a hadron jet).
The Standard Model says that there are 16 types of fundamental particles, but there are actually twice as many because they can all be created out of antimatter.
Particle physics can help us learn about the early universe, because conditions that are similar to the early universe (which was a much more energetic place than it is now) can be made in a small volume of space using the collisions of these particles.
The biggest particle accelerator in the world is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Europe.
A peninsula is a region of land that sticks out in a body of water.
It is also defined as a piece of land with water on three sides.
Many countries are found on peninsulas, and may either take up part of a peninsula (such as Korea) or all of it (such as India).
Parts of a country may also be on a peninsula.
For example, most of the U.S. state of Florida is a peninsula, along with Baja California in Mexico.
If Eurasia is considered a continent then the continent of Europe is technically a peninsula.
If this is the case, the three peninsulas of Europe, the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas would technically be peninsulas within peninsulas.
The Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world with an area of 3,237,500 square kilometers.
Physical geography is one of the two major subfields of geography.
Physical geography is about the processes and patterns in the natural environment.
Some of the things this includes are the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and landforms.
Physical geography influences what people do.
For example, few live in deserts, and many live in cities near a big river.
In geography, a plain is a large area of land with no hills or mountains.
Plains mostly are more suitable for farming than plateaus or mountains.
A physicist is a scientist who studies physics.
A patent gives an inventor the right to stop other people making or using their invention.
If someone makes or uses that invention without being allowed to, the inventor can sue that person in court to make them stop.
The inventor can sell the patent to another person or company.
A patent lasts for up to 20 years, depending on the country.
After that, anyone can copy the invention.
Each country has its own patents.
China gives Chinese patents.
India gives Indian patents.
The United States gives United States patents.
An inventor can get a patent in any country the inventor wants.
An inventor can get patents in many different countries for the same invention.
Each patent in each country costs money.
The rules for patents are similar for most countries.
To get a patent, the inventor must ask the government by describing the invention in writing.
This is called a patent application.
The inventor can write the patent application, but it is usually written by a person trained to write patent applications.
This person is called a patent agent or, if the person is a lawyer, a patent attorney.
The government does not usually just give the inventor a patent.
Instead, the government tries to confirm whether the idea is actually new.
This is called patent examination.
The government will try to find books, stories, or other patents that show that the idea was not new.
The inventor, or his or her patent attorney, then tries to show how the inventor 's idea is different from anything that the government finds.
If the government finds that the inventor 's idea is new, it will give the inventor a patent.
The government will also send the inventor a copy of his or her patent application with a special seal.
This copy is the patent.
The inventor must also pay the government a tax to get a patent.
Usually, an inventor pays money to ask for the patent, and the inventor pays money when he or she gets a patent.
In some countries, the owner of a patent must also pay money to keep the patent.
Some can be cheap and some can be expensive.
The owner of a patent can stop other people from using their idea.
If someone other than the patent owner uses the patent, this is called infringing a patent.
If the owner knows that someone is infringing his or her patent, the patent owner can ask a court to stop them.
If the court agrees that the other person was using the patent, the court can make that person pay a fine to the patent owner.
The patent owner can give other people permission to use their patent.
This is called a license.
The person that wants to use another person 's patent will usually pay money to the patent owner.
Patents most often cover products or processes that contain new functional or technical ideas.
They are concerned with how things work, how they are made or what they are made of.
Patents cover many different things such as electronics, medicines, agriculture and transport anything in fact from a small detail in an electric switch to an entire power station.
Often a product is marked with a text saying ` patent pending or ` pat.
pending ', which means that a patent has been asked for (part of) the product.
Then people are warned that they should not copy the invention.
Patents are usually very long.
They include a number of smaller parts.
A patent usually includes a section that briefly describes the idea called the abstract.
It also may include a section that describes other people 's inventions and how the inventor 's idea is different called the "background of the invention."
The patent also includes a long description of the idea itself called a "detailed description."
In this section, the inventor tries to describe every detail of his or her invention.
The patent also has a number of pictures called the "figures."
The figures are usually drawn by people called draftsman that are trained to draw in a special way.
The pictures are labeled with numbers to show different parts of the invention.
At the end of most patents is a section called the claims.
These are usually numbered.
They include a short statement that lists all of the things needed for the invention.
A court will use the claims to decide if another person is "infringing the patent."
Pythagoras of Samos was a famous Greek mathematician and philosopher, He is known best for the proof of the important Pythagorean theorem, which is about right triangles.
He started a group of mathematicians, called the Pythagoreans, who worshiped numbers and lived like monks.
He was an influence for Plato.
He had a great impact on mathematics, theory of music and astronomy.
His theories are still used in mathematics today.
He was one of the greatest thinkers of his time.
Pythagoras was born in Samos, a little island off the western coast of Asia Minor.
There is not much information about his life.
He was said to have had a good childhood.
Growing up with two or three brothers, he was well educated.
He did not agree with the government and their schooling, so he moved to Croton and set up his own cult (little society) of followers under his rule.
His followers did not have any personal possessions, and they were all vegetarians.
Pythagoras taught them all, and they had to obey strict rules.
Some say he was the first person to use the term philosophy.
Since he worked very closely with his group, the Pythagoreans, it is sometimes hard to tell his works from those of his followers.
Religion was important to the Pythagoreans.
They swore their oaths by "1 +2 +3 +4" (which equals 10).
They also believed that the soul is immortal and goes through a cycle of rebirths until it can become pure.
They believed that these souls were in both animal and plant life.
Pythagoras ' most important belief was that the physical world was mathematical and that numbers were the real reality.
Pythagoras is most famous for his theorem to do with right angled triangles.
He said that the length longest side of the right angled triangle called the hypotenuse (C) squared would equal the area of the other sides squared.
And so a x a + b x b = c x c was born.
There are many different proofs for this.
A philosopher is a person who works, studies, or is an expert in philosophy.
The word, "philosopher", comes from the Greek language and literally means "friend of wisdom".
Some famous philosophers include: Socrates, who was a Greek philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who was a German philosopher, and David Hume, who was a Scottish philosopher.
One of the most famous philosophical questions is "Is there anything about which we can be absolutely certain"?
A quite different question is "Do we have free will"?
These, and many other questions, have a long history, and are answered differently by different philosophers.
A passport is a travel document that says that the person who owns it is a citizen of the country on the passport.
A passport asks that the person carrying it be allowed to enter and pass through other countries.
They also allow a person to re-enter their country.
Passports are given by national governments.
Passports usually have a person 's picture, signature, date of birth, nationality.
Many countries are now making passports with biometric properties.
This helps confirm that the person carrying a passport is the real owner.
These countries have passports that use biometrics: Malaysia, Australia, Greece, New Zealand, Japan, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Italy, Slovenia, Singapore, Thailand and India.
In 1920, the International Conference on Passports, Customs Formalities and Through Tickets made a law that said passports must be issued in French and at least one other language.
Now, many countries issue passports in English and the language (s) of the issuing country.
The Pliocene (Pleiocene in older texts) was a short geological epoch at the end of the Neogene.
It began 5.3 million years ago (mya), and ended 2.6 mya.
The Pliocene follows the Miocene and is followed by the Pleistocene.
The world continued to get cooler and drier in the Pliocene.
Tropical rain forests and deciduous forests shrank.
Grasslands grew, and many herbivorous mammals became grazers instead of browsers.
Hominid evolution took a new turn as some apes started to live on the savannah instead of the forests (Australopithecines).
Pharaohs were rulers of ancient Egypt.
Before the union of Upper and Lower Egypt, kings would wear crowns of different design, to show which part of Egypt they had rule over.
The red crown was worn in Lower Egypt and the white crown in Upper Egypt.
In later history, kings of the whole of ancient Egypt would wear a combination of the two crowns, called a Pschent.
The word comes from the Egyptian word Per-aa, which means "Great House".
Pharaohs were believed to be descended from the gods.
When a Pharaoh died, all the treasure that they owned would be buried with them.
The Pharaohs are often closely linked to the Pyramids as they were burial tombs for the Pharaohs themselves.
Another famous burial place for Pharaohs is the Valley of the Kings.
The printing press is a machine for printing.
It makes many copies of identical pages.
The printing press today is used to print books and newspapers.
It had a great influence on society, especially western society.
It was "one of the most potent agents... of western civilisation in bringing together the scattered ideas of thinkers".
Woodcut printing has been done for several centuries.
That was whole pages cut into wood, words and pictures.
In the 15th century Johannes Gutenberg improved the process.
He used separate alloy letters screwed into a frame.
This way a large set of letters could make almost any page for printing.
This process was called typesetting.
Each letter was in a block of metal, fixed in a frame.
He could then move paper and ink over it, much like a stamp.
This method was called letterpress.
The letters would leave ink on the paper in the shape of the letters, creating text or illustrations.
Bigger and much faster presses were invented in the industrial revolution.
The main improvements were made in the 19th century.
Two ideas altered the design of the printing press entirely.
First was the use of steam power to run the machinery.
Second was the replacement of the printing flatbed with the rotary motion of cylinders.
Both were done by the German printer Friedrich Koenig between 1802 and 1818.
Having moved to London in 1804, Koenig got financial support for his project in 1807.
In 1810, Koenig patented a steam press "much like a hand press connected to a steam engine".
Soon other inventions were added, such as the making of cheaper paper by using wood pulp instead of rags.
Later in the 19th century came machines which speeded up typesetting, which was previously done by hand, letter by letter.
A machine for hot metal typesetting was designed by Linotype Inc..
It turned molten lead into type ready for printing.
Many further developments in printing happened in the 20th century.
Today printing presses are controlled by special-purpose computers, and the material to be printed is prepared on computers.
As a consequence of these inventions, the cost of printing has fallen significantly compared to other commodities.
Now the price of a book or magazine is less determined by its production, and more by other factors, such as marketing.
Proportional representation is a system used to elect a country 's government.
If proportional representation is used in an election, a political party that wins 10 % of the vote, will win 10 % of the seats in parliament and a party that wins 20 % of the vote, will win 20 % of the seats.
If a party wins over 50 % of the vote, it wins over 50 % of the seats and can form a government, however this does not happen very often because most countries have lots of different political parties.
If no party wins over 50 % of the vote, then a coalition government usually has to be formed, where a government is formed from two or more different political parties, who together have over 50 % of the seats in parliament.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican paramilitary organization that wanted to unite Ireland, by using armed force to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom.
It split from the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1969.
Its existence formally ended in 1997.
Over that time, about 10,000 people were members.
In 2002, there were about 1,000 people left; 300 of them were stil in active service.
In July 2005 it destroyed all its weapons and bombs.
Its opponents were the British Army, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and Protestant paramilitary groups like the Ulster Volunteers.
The PIRA aimed to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a socialist republic within a united Ireland.
It tried to do this through armed attacks and explosions and by using political persuasion.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is also referred to as PIRA, the Provos, or by its supporters as the Army or the ` RA.
The PIRA calls its members "The Irish Volunteers" and usually refers to its members as volunteers.
The IRA is a listed in the UK under the Terrorism Act 2000.
It is also listed as an unlawful organization in the Republic of Ireland.
The United States does not list the IRA as a "foreign terrorist organization", but includes them in the category of "other selected terrorist groups also deemed of relevance in the global war on terrorism.".
The IRA 's first strategy was to use force to destroy the Northern Ireland administration and to hurt or kill enough British forces that the British government would be forced to leave.
The IRA recruited volunteers.
They got more volunteers after the 1972 Bloody Sunday attack, in which the British military fired on protesters.
The IRA then attacked against British military and economic targets.
The was supported by arms and funding from Libya and from some groups in the United States.
The IRA agreed to a ceasefire in February 1975, which lasted nearly a year.
Then the IRA decided it could not meet its goals with the ceasefire.
As a result, the IRA launched a new strategy known as "the Long War".
This started a war of attrition against the British.
As well, they did more political activity through the political party Sinn F in.
The 1981 Irish hunger strike in helped the IRA to get support and win elections.
This led to the Armalite and ballot box strategy which aimed at doing more political activity.
The unsuccessful attempt to do more military attacks led republican leaders to look for a political solution.
Sinn F in got more distanced from the IRA.
Following negotiations with the Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP) and with British civil servants, the IRA called a ceasefire in 1994.
They expected that Sinn F in would be included in political talks for solving the disputes.
When the British government demanded the disarmament of the IRA before it allowed Sinn F in into talks, the IRA called off its ceasefire in February 1996.
After the ceasefire was reinstated in July 1997, Sinn F in was admitted into all-party talks.
This produced the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
The IRA 's armed campaign, primarily in Northern Ireland but also in England and mainland Europe, caused the deaths of approximately 1,800 people.
The dead included around 1,100 members of the British security forces, and about 640 civilians.
The IRA itself lost 275 300 members, of an estimated 10,000 total over the 30-year period.
On 28 July 2005, the IRA Army Council announced an end to its armed campaign.
The IRA stated that it would use only political and democratic processes.
Soon after, the IRA destroyed its guns and bombs.
Two small groups split from the Provisional IRA, the Continuity IRA in 1986, and the Real IRA in 1997.
Both reject the Good Friday Agreement and continue to engage in paramilitary activity.
Paula Julie Abdul (; born June 19, 1962) is an American singer and dancer.
She had a string of hit songs and choreographed (planned) many dances for herself and others, including singer-songwriter Janet Jackson.
Musically, she is known for her late-1980s number-one singles "Straight Up" and "Cold Hearted", along with the 1990s number-one hit "Opposites Attract".
She won a Grammy Award for "Best Music Video Short Form" for "Opposites Attract".
She was a judge on the television show American Idol for its first eight seasons.
She has a mezzo-soprano vocal range.
Project Gutenberg (PG) was started in 1971.
It was started by Michael S. Hart.
The purpose of the Project is to collect in and make available cultural work (like books) using computers.
These are generally free and may be used on most computers.
The project gets its name from Johannes Gutenberg.
Johannes Gutenberg lived in the 15th century in Germany.
He made the first European printing press.
As the PG continued to grow, in 2000, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, Inc. was created.
It is a non-profit organization with main office in Mississippi, United States.
A personal digital assistant (PDA) is a handheld computer.
Personal digital assistants were designed to replace non-electronic day planners.
Many PDAs can work as an address book, a calculator, a clock, and a calendar.
Some also have games on them.
Newer PDAs are now called smartphones and have Wi-Fi, touch screens, can read e-mail, record video, play music and make phone calls.
PDA 's processor is a chip which makes the device work.
PDAs can have different processors depending on their speed.
If access to the Internet, GPS, or video recording are needed, the PDA needs to have a fast processor.
PDA stores data and applications on RAM memory (Random Access Memory).
It is a memory card inside the device.
PDAs can also use SD (Secure Digital), SDIO and MMS cards.
These are easy to remove and are called flash memory cards.
USB flash drives can be used to add more memory.
Most PDAs have touch screens.
This means that the device has less buttons or has no buttons at all.
Usually PDAs come with removable ` pen ' (stylus) with which the screen is touched.
The pen acts like a mouse for desktop PCs or like a touch pad for laptops.
For other PDAs a finger is used instead of the pen.
PDAs are powered by batteries.
There are two types of batteries: removable and fixed.
Older PDAs used alkaline batteries which the user would have to take out and replace when they ran out.
Most new PDAs have Li-ion batteries.
These batteries are rechargeable.
PDAs use more battery power when playing video, accessing Internet or transferring data using Bluetooth.
Large and bright screens also take more power.
This makes the battery run out faster.
A PDA can communicate with other devices, PDAs, PCs, etc..
This is made with the help of infrared (IrDA) port or with Bluetooth.
With this ability the devices can transfer data, download music, images, video, games, etc.
Synchronization means having the same data on both the PDA and PC or other device.
When changes are made on either the PDA or the PC, when they are synchronized, these changes made to data on one of them are also made the data on the other.
The synchronization also prevents the loss of the stored information.
Customization is adding more memory, miniature keyboards, etc. to the PDA.
Customization also can be putting other software (download Internet programs) on the PDA device.
"The Ice Age" redirects here.
For other uses, see Ice Age (disambiguation).
The Pleistocene stage or epoch was a long period of time.
It stretched from 2.6 million years ago to 11,700 years ago.
The Pleistocene followed the Pliocene.
It is the first stage of the Quaternary period, and is followed by the present Holocene.
The Pleistocene was one long ice age: cold glacial periods with shorter, warmer, interglacials.
Ice ages are when the world becomes much colder for a long time.
Much of the world we know was covered by ice: North America down to and past the Great Lakes; all of northern Russia, and Europe; England down to the Thames.
Many animals that lived then have become extinct.
Climate change and hunting by humans were responsible.
Many of the mammals were larger and hairier versions of animals that live now.
Glyptodon was something like a giant armadillo, and mammoths were hairy elephants.
Ancient human species lived during the Pleistocene.
In Europe and Asia the large-brained Neanderthal Man (Homo neanderthalensis) lived until about 30,000 years ago.
Modern man did not descend from Neanderthals, but originated in Africa from another branch of the genus.
Pasteurization (or pasteurisation) is a process of making foods stay fresh.
It involves heating the food to kill any harmful microorganisms.
People pasteurize food to make it safe to eat.
The process is named after Louis Pasteur.
He was the first person to learn how to do it successfully.
The first pasteurization was done by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard on April 20, 1862.
Unlike sterilization, pasteurization is not intended to kill all microorganisms in the food, as compared to appertization, invented by Nicolas Fran ois Appert.
Instead, pasteurization wants to get a "log reduction" in the number of viable organisms.
It wants to bring their number down so they are unlikely to cause disease (assuming the pasteurized product is kept in the refrigerator and consumed before its expiration date).
Commercial scale sterilization of food is not common, because it adversely affects the taste and quality of the product.
Pasteurization is usually done to milk, which was first suggested by Franz von Soxhlet in 1886.
There are two popular ways to pasteurize milk.
First, high temperature\/short time (HTST), and second, ultra-high temperature (UHT).
HTST is the most common method.
Milk only labeled pasteurized (or past) is usually treated with the HTST method, whereas milk labeled ultra-pasteurized or UHT must be treated with the UHT method.
HTST is when the milk is at a temperature of 72 degrees Celsius (or 161.5 degrees Fahrenheit) for at least 15 seconds.
UHT is when the milk is at a temperature of 138 C or 280 F for at least two seconds.
Pasteurization rules are usually set by national food safety agencies (like the USDA in the United States and the Food Standards Agency in the United Kingdom).
These agencies say milk has to be HTST pasteurized to have the "pasteurized" label.
There are different rules for different dairy products, depending on the fat content and what they will be used for.
For example, the pasteurization rules for cream are different than the rules for fluid milk, and the standards for pasteurizing cheese are designed to keep the phosphatase enzyme fresh, which helps in making the cheese.
HTST pasteurized milk normally has a refrigerated shelf life of two or three weeks, but ultra pasteurized milk can last much longer when refrigerated, sometimes two or three months.
When UHT pasteurization is mixed with safe handling and container technology, it can even be stored unrefrigerated for even longer periods of time.
In addition to the standard HTST and UHT pasteurization standards, there are other lesser-known pasteurization techniques.
The first technique, called "batch pasteurization", involves heating large batches of milk to a lower temperature, typically 68.
The other technique is called higher-heat\/shorter time (HHST), and it lies somewhere between HTST and UHT in terms of time and temperature.
Pasteurization causes some irreversible and some temporary denaturization of the proteins in milk.
In most legislations, double pasteurization is not allowed.
A heat treatment at a lower temperature or for a shorter time is sometimes performed.
Possibly, such milk could be called "raw milk" or, confusingly, "unpasteurized milk".
It can not be called "pasteurized", even though a significant number of pathogens are destroyed during the process.
In recent years, there has been some consumer interest in raw milk products, due to perceived health benefits.
Advocates of raw milk maintain, correctly, that some components survive in milk that has not been pasteurized.
Specifically, raw milk contains immunoglobulins and the enzymes lipase and phosphatase, which are inactivated by heat.
Raw milk also contains vitamin B6 of which up to 20 % may be lost on heat treatment.
It is also claimed to contain beneficial bacteria which aid digestion and boost immunity.
Commercial distribution of packaged raw milk is not allowed in most US states.
Some doctors (and some raw milk advocates) acknowledge that certain people should not drink raw milk, including pregnant or breast-feeding mothers, those undergoing immunosuppression treatment for cancer, organ transplant, or autoimmune diseases; and those who are immunocompromised due to medical conditions such as AIDS.
In fact, some doctors suggest that babies and breast-feeding mothers avoid all but UHT pasteurized dairy products.
In Africa, it is common to boil milk whenever it is harvested.
This intense heating greatly changes the flavor of milk, which the people in Africa are accustomed to.
Milk pasteurization standards have been subject to increasing scrutiny in recent years, due to the discovery of pathogens that are both widespread and heat resistant (able to survive pasteurization in significant numbers).
Researchers have developed more sensitive diagnostics, such as real-time PCR and improved culture methods, that have enabled them to identify pathogens in pasteurized milk.
One bacterium in particular, the organism Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP), which causes Johne 's disease in cattle and is suspected of causing at least some Crohn 's disease in humans, has been found to survive pasteurization in retail milk in the U.S., the U.K., Greece, and the Czech Republic.
The food safety authorities in the U.K. have decided to re-evaluate pasteurization standards in light of the MAP results and other evidence of harmful, pasteurization-resistant pathogens.
The USDA (which is responsible for setting pasteurization standards in the U.S.) has not re-evaluated their position on pasteurization adequacy.
They do not dispute the studies, which are at this point accepted by the scientific community, but maintain that the presence of MAP in retail pasteurized milk must be due to post-pasteurization contamination.
However, some researchers within the FDA, which is responsible for food safety in the U.S., have begun pushing for a re-evaluation of these results.
There is a small but growing body of criticism directed at these agencies by Crohn 's disease sufferers, scientists, and doctors.
Some have suggested that the U.S. dairy industry has been successful in suppressing the agencies ' response to a potential health crisis, for fear of consumer panic which would lead to a decrease in milk consumption.
It is worth noting that while MAP has not been definitely proven to be harmful in humans, all other mycobacteria are pathogenic, and it has been definitively shown to cause disease in cattle and other ruminants.
A newer method called flash pasteurization involves shorter exposure to higher temperatures, and is claimed to be better for preserving color and taste in some products.
The term cold pasteurization is used sometimes for the use of ionizing radiation (see food irradiation) or other means (e.g. chemical) to kill bacteria in food.
Food irradiation is also sometimes called "electronic pasteurization".
Penicillin is a common antibiotic, used to treat bacterial infections.
It was one of the first to be discovered, and worked well against staphylococci and streptococci.
Many strains of baceria are now resistant.
Chemists keep changing part of its structure in the effort to keep it working against the bacteria.
Penicillin was discovered by Scottish scientist Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928, but it was not mass-produced until the 1940s.
The antibiotic is naturally produced by fungi of the genus Penicillium.
There is now a whole group of antibiotics derived from Penicillium: penicillin G, procaine penicillin, benzathine penicillin, and penicillin V.
Penicillin is sometimes used to treat syphilis, tonsillitis, meningitis, and pneumonia as well as other diseases.
It was first used widely during World War II.
Penicillin was discovered when Fleming noticed a mould that was stopping bacteria from growing in a petri dish.
Australian scientist Howard Walter Florey made the penicillin mould into a medicine.
Together with another scientist Ernest Boris Chain, Fleming and Florey were given the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945.
Some people are allergic to penicillin.
Symptoms include nausea, diarrhea, or rash.
Rarely, patients who are allergic to penicillin get a fever, vomit, or have serious skin irritation.
Because it is such a popular antibiotic, penicillin is the most common cause of serious allergic reactions to a drug.
They are now used regularly in hospitals.
Chemist John C. Sheehan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) did the first chemical synthesis of penicillin in 1957.
Piri Reis (full name Hadji Muhiddin Piri Ibn Hadji Mehmed) (about 1465 1554 or 1555) was an Ottoman-Turkish admiral and cartographer born between 1465 and 1470 in Gallipoli on the Aegean coast of Turkey.
Today, people remember him because of the maps he made.
He made the first Ottoman map to show parts of the Americas, the Piri Reis map, in 1513.
He drew a second map in 1528.
Only a fragment of that map survives today.
That fragment however, shows parts of North America, including Greenland.
It goes from the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland in the north, to Florida, Cuba and parts of Central America in the south.
Therefore, some people believe he drew a map of the Arctic about 200 years before it was discovered.
A pound (usually abbreviated as lb, plural lbs) is a unit used to measure the mass (that is, the weight) of something.
It is used in the imperial system and the United States customary system.
There are a number of different definitions.
The most commonly used definition today is the international avoirdupois pound.
This is equal to, and is divided into 16 avoirdupois ounces.
The avoirdupois pound (abbreviation lb., plural lbs.)
is the most common unit.
This type is used for all purposes except the uses of the troy pound.
Most people from the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Liberia and Burma use this as their standard measure of their personal mass.
The troy pound (abbreviation t lb., plural t lbs.)
is generally not used anymore.
It was used in England by apothecaries and jewellers.
A troy pound contains 12 troy ounces.
The troy ounce is still used to measure the mass of precious metals and gems.
In some European countries, a metric pound is an informal term for half a kilogram (500 grams).
In the Netherlands, however, the metric pound is equal to one kilogram.
A proton is part of an atom.
They are found in the nucleus of an atom along with neutrons.
The periodic table groups atoms according to how many protons they have.
A single atom of hydrogen (the lightest kind of atom) is made up of an electron moving around a proton.
Most of the mass of this atom is in the proton, which is almost 2000 times heavier than the electron.
Protons and neutrons make up the nucleus of every other kind of atom.
In any one element, the number of protons is always the same.
An atom 's atomic number is equal to the number of protons in that atom.
Protons are made of quarks.
A proton is believed to be made up of 3 quarks, two up quarks and one down quark.
One down quark has a charge of -1 \/ 3, and two up quarks have a charge of +2 \/ 3 each.
This adds to a charge of +1.
A proton has a very small mass..
The mass of the proton is about one atomic mass unit.
The mass of the neutron is also about one atomic mass unit.
The size of a proton is determined by the vibration of the quarks that are in it, and these quarks effectively form a cloud.
This means that a proton is not so much a hard ball as an area that contains quarks.
Phosphorus has the chemical symbol P, and its atomic number is 15.
Its mass number is 30.97.
It is not found in nature as an element but as compounds, such as phosphates.
It can be a red or a white waxy solid.
Phosphorus comes in several forms.
White and red phosphorus are the most common forms.
White phosphorus is a waxy white solid.
When pure, it is colourless.
It is insoluble in water, but soluble in carbon disulphide, an organic solvent.
It turns light yellow when in air.
It glows in the dark because it "burns" very slowly in air.
When exposed to sunlight, or when heated in its own vapor to 250 C, it is converted to the red variety.
This form does not ignite spontaneously and it is less toxic and less flammable than white phosphorus.
The red modification is fairly stable and sublimes with a vapor pressure of 1 atmosphere at 417 C.
White phosphorus is more reactive than red phosphorus.
White phosphorus catches fire spontaneously in air, burning to make smoke of phosphorus (V) oxide.
If it burns in a little air, it produces poisonous phosphorus (III) oxide.
When white phosphorus is heated in an alkali, it disproportionates to produce hypophosphites and phosphine.
Red phosphorus can burn but needs to be ignited.
Phosphorus reacts with the halogens to make phosphorus halides.
It reacts with some metals to make phosphides.
Phosphorus compounds are chemical compounds containing phosphorus.
They are listed below with some of their properties.
Phosphorus comes in several oxidation states, the number of electrons moved during a redox reaction.
-3 is flammable, powerful reducing agent, and toxic; +1 is a strong reducing agent and is rare; +3 is a weaker reducing agent that is poisonous; +5 is not a reducing agent and is very common.
It is an essential component of living systems and is found as phosphate in nervous tissue, bones and cell protoplasm.
It is also found in the earth as phosphate rock.
Phosphate rock is the main source of phosphorus and phosphorus compounds.
Many body tissues have calcium phosphates in them.
Phosphorus was first made by heating a mixture of phosphates and carbon in an iron pot.
The phosphates were made by dissolving bones in strong acids and evaporating the solution.
Phosphorus is made now by heating calcium phosphate, carbon, and silicon dioxide in an electric arc furnace.
The heat of the electric arc melts the mixture of materials, and phosphorus gas is given off.
It is absorbed under water.
This makes white phosphorus.
White phosphorus is used in incendiary weapons and smoke grenades.
It is also used to make organic compounds that have phosphorus in them.
Phosphorus is used to dope semiconductors.
Phosphorus is used to remove oxygen from copper.
It is also used in making alloys.
Red phosphorus is used in matches and flares.
Phosphorus compounds are used for fertilizers, soft drinks, toothpaste, and detergents.
Most of these are phosphates.
Phosphides can be used to kill rodents.
White phosphorus is very dangerous.
It is very toxic and ignites easily, burning with a very hot flame.
Red phosphorus is much safer.
Some phosphorus compounds are toxic, but the common phosphates are not toxic.
Palladium is a chemical element.
It has the chemical symbol Pd.
It has the atomic number 46.
It is a metal.
It is silver white.
In chemistry it is placed in a group of metal elements named the transition metals.
It is also part of the platinum group.
Palladium has similar chemistry to platinum.
It is extracted from (made by taking from) some copper and nickel ores.
Its main use is as a catalyst and also in jewellery.
Promethium is a chemical element that has the symbol Pm on the periodic table.
It has the atomic number 61 which means it has 61 protons in its atom.
It is a Lanthanide.
All its isotopes are radioactive.
Together with Technetium, these are the only two radioactive elements below lead.
Most Promethium is artificially produced, and has between 141 and 156 protons.
The longest-living promethium is 145Pm, with a half-life of 17.7 years.
Promethium is used in the illuminated digits of some clocks, its Beta Radiation may be used to measure thickness.
Protactinium is a chemical element with the symbol Pa and atomic number 91.
Protactinium is a silver metallic element that is in the actinide group, with a bright metallic shine that it keeps for some time in the air.
It is superconductive at temperatures below 1.4 K.
Due to its scarcity, high radioactivity and toxicity, there are currently no uses for protactinium outside of basic research.
Protactinium-231 (which is made by the alpha decay of Uranium-235 followed by beta decay of Thorium-231) could possibly sustain a nuclear chain reaction and might be used to build a nuclear weapon.
The critical mass, according to Walter Seifritz, is 750 180 kg.
Other authors conclude that no chain reactions are possible in Protactinium-231.
Protactinium was first discovered in 1913, when Kasimir Fajans and O. H. G hring encountered short-lived isotope 234m-Pa, with a half-life of about 1.17 minutes, while they were studying the decay chain of 238-U.
They gave the new element the name Brevium (Latin brevis, brief, short); the name was changed to Protoactinium in 1918 when two groups of scientists (Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner of Germany and Frederick Soddy and John Cranston of the UK) independently discovered 231-Pa.
The name was shortened to Protactinium in 1949.
In 1961, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority was able to produce 125 g of 99.9 % pure protactinium, processing 60 tons of waste material in a 12-stage process and spending 500,000 USD.
For many years to come, this was the world 's only way to get the element.
It is said that the metal was sold to laboratories for a cost of 2,800 USD \/ g in the following years.
Protactinium is both toxic and highly radioactive.
It requires precautions similar to those used when handling plutonium.
Platinum is a soft, heavy, white metal.
It is a precious metal.
It usually costs more than gold.
In chemistry, platinum is element number 78, and its atoms have an atomic weight of 195 a.m.u..
The symbol for platinum is Pt, from Spanish platina meaning "little silver".
Platinum is very malleable and ductile, which means it can be hammered into thin sheets and it can be pulled into wire.
Platinum is very stable.
Acids do not affect platinum.
The most common use of Platinum is in a vehicle 's catalytic converter.
Polonium is a rare radioactive metalloid.
It is chemical element 84 on the periodic table and its symbol is Po.
It was discovered in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie.
Polonium is highly unstable, radioactive and toxic.
This makes it difficult to handle.
It can be dangerous, even in very small amounts.
One gram of Po will self-heat to a temperature of about 500.
It also vaporizes easily.
Polonium has 33 isotopes, and all of them are radioactive.
It is a very rare element in nature because of its short half-life.
It is a breakdown product of uranium, so it is found in uranium ores.
The former Russian secret service agent Alexander Litvinenko was murdered by having a tiny amount of polonium put into a drink.
Pennsylvania is one of the 50 states in the United States of America.
It is in the northeastern part of the country.
It has a border with Ohio on the west, West Virginia on the south and west, Maryland and Delaware on the south, New Jersey on the east, and New York and Lake Erie on the north.
The state capital of Pennsylvania is Harrisburg.
The largest city in Pennsylvania is Philadelphia.
The state nickname of Pennsylvania is "The Keystone State".
The current governor of Pennsylvania is Tom Wolf.
Pennsylvania is well known for its role in the American Revolution, its large communities of Amish, and its heavy industry.
Pennsylvania was home to many Native American groups before Europeans settled there.
These include the Delaware, Susquehanna, and Iroquois.
The first European settlers in Pennsylvania were from Sweden.
They arrived in 1643.
The area was later ruled by the Netherlands and Great Britain.
In 1681, Charles II of England, gave the land to William Penn..
Penn used the land to create a home for Quakers.
The land became known as "Penn 's Woods", as Pennsylvania has many forests.
In Latin this is "Pennsylvania".
This became adopted as the name of the colony.
Meanwhile, in the western part of the state, armies from France and Great Britain fought for control of the source of the Ohio River.
This conflict was part of the French and Indian War.
Great Britain eventually won the conflict for this location and built a fort called Fort Pitt.
The fort grew into a city which is now called Pittsburgh.
The state of Delaware was once part of Pennsylvania.
In 1704, Delaware formed when three Pennsylvania counties left the colony and created their own government.
Pennsylvania was one of the 13 colonies that fought Great Britain in the American Revolution.
The United States Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia.
Benjamin Franklin, an important figure in the Revolution, was also from Philadelphia.
Pennsylvania was the second state to join the United States.
Philadelphia was capital of the United States before Washington, D.C..
Later, Pennsylvania became an important center of industry.
Kerosene was discovered in Titusville in the 19th century.
This was the start of the oil industry in the United States.
Large deposits of coal were found in and around Pittsburgh.
This caused Pittsburgh to become a major industrial city.
Industry began leaving Pennsylvania in the late 20th century, because most heavy industry was being transferred to other nations.
Many people left, too.
It also caused many of its cities and towns to decay.
Most of Pennsylvania is part of the Appalachian Mountains, including the south central and northeastern areas of the state.
Much of the rest of the state is very hilly, partly due to the closeness to mountains and partly due to the steep river valleys in the state.
The Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio rivers are in the western part of the state, and the Susquehanna is in the central part of the state.
The northwestern and southeastern parts of the state are mostly flat and low-lying.
Pennsylvania is the 33rd largest states in the United States, with a land area of 44,817 square miles.
The highest point in the state is Mount Davis, at 3,213 feet above sea level.
The lowest point is the Delaware River, which is at sea level.
Pennsylvania is the 6th most populated state.
In 2000, there were 12,281,054 people.
More than half of the people live in the areas of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
Few people live in the north central area of the state.
Towns and cities tend to be small in size and densely populated, more so than in other states.
This is because many of the towns and cities in Pennsylvania were built around a specific factory or factories.
Pennsylvania has many colleges and universities.
Officially, the state 's public university is Pennsylvania State University.
Best known are a few private university systems which are partially (around 10 %) funded by the state, like University of Pittsburgh.
The state 's most well-known private university is the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution.
Those fourteen schools make up one of the largest state run higher education systems in the country.
Other significant private universities are Carnegie-Mellon University, known for its computer science research, and Bucknell University.
A parsec is a unit of distance used in astronomy.
It is the distance that light travels in 3.26 years, or just under 31 trillion kilometres (about 19 trillion miles).
This is from the definition: a parsec is the distance from the Sun to an object which has a parallax angle of one arcsecond.
Distances measured in fractions of a parsec usually involve objects within the same star system.
Surveying provides an everyday example of parallax.
Go outside and look at a distant object.
Hold your hand out with one finger raised and close one eye.
Line up your finger so it covers the object from view.
Then close that eye and open the other without moving your arm.
Now, move your finger to block that eye 's line of sight.
The two positions your finger was at can be used to find the distance from the object.
This is what a survey crew does to figure out land plot boundaries.
The mathematical technique used in the calculation is trigonometry.
A parsec is so large that if you could see that far that you would be looking in to the past.
You are looking 3.26 years in the past because it takes 3.26 years for the light to come from a parsec away.
Parchment is a thin material made from animal skin.
The most common use for parchment was as a material for writing on, for the pages of a book.
It is different to leather in that parchment is limed but not tanned.
The better qualities of parchment are named vellum.
A phobia (from the Greek, meaning "fear" or "morbid fear") is a strong fear about a specific thing or situation.
In psychology, phobia is considered an anxiety disorder.
Phobia is different than just being scared of something.
The fear is so strong that it affects, and often damages, the sufferer 's life.
For example, the person will usually do everything they can to avoid the thing they fear.
If they can not avoid that thing, they will suffer from very strong anxiety which can damage their social relationships, their ability to work, and other areas of their everyday life.
There are two basic types of phobias: specific phobias and social phobias.
People with specific phobias fear a certain thing, like spiders (this is called arachnophobia) or high places (acrophobia).
People with social phobias fear social situations (like speaking in public, being in crowded areas, or being around other people).
Fear is a normal human emotion.
A phobia is different from normal fear in many ways:
It is hard to tell how many people suffer from phobias.
Researchers think that between 5 and 13 percent of people seem to have a phobia.
Women suffer from phobias about twice as often as men.
Every child is afraid of something.
For most children, these fears eventually disappear.
These fears would only be called phobias if they caused problems in the child 's daily life, or if they caused the child to suffer from severe anxiety or emotional distress.
Causes and risk factors phobias is very.
also psychological phobias.
These include hundreds of types phobias.
Some:
When a person with a phobia is exposed to their fear (encounters with the stimulus, think of it, sees the object of fear in the picture...) occur at these physical and psychological symptoms.
Intensity depends on the degree of fear.
Psychological symptoms are symptoms that take place within a human.
These include the:
There are different ways to help people with phobias.
There is treatment available; it focuses on making the patient less sensitive to the fear they suffer from, or showing him or her how the cycle of fear works.
There is also medication available (mostly sedatives) that help people cope.
Finally there are self-help groups.
The Pittsburgh Steelers are an American football team in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
They have won six Super Bowls in eight appearances.
That is the most that any team has won.
They have a rivalry with the Baltimore Ravens.
Pittsburgh plays in the AFC North with Baltimore, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the Cleveland Browns.
The Steelers are most famous for their defense.
In the 1970s, their defense was nicknamed the "Steel Curtain".
It helped the Steelers to four Super Bowl wins.
Other well-known Steelers defenses include the 1990s "Blitzburgh" defense and the 2000s defense (which was not nicknamed).
The Philadelphia Eagles are an American football team in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The Eagles joined the National Football League in the year 1933.
They have appeared in two Super Bowls (XXXIX and XV) but have not yet won a Super Bowl.
They have won three championships in 1948, 1949, and 1960.
Sixteen Eagles players have become Pro Football Hall of Famers.
Donovan McNabb was the quarterback for the Eagles from 1999-2009.
He was traded to the Washington Redskins on April 4, 2010.
Michael Vick was also an Eagles quarterback.
Sam Bradford is the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.
The Eagles were named after the Bald Eagle, a symbol of the USA.
The city of Philadelphia played a large part in the early history of the United States.
Paganism is a term that covers a great number of spiritual and religious beliefs, and someone who follows one of these beliefs is known as a Pagan.
Those in ancient times, who are called Pagans today, believed there was not just one god but a number of gods and goddesses.
The stories from Greek mythology are famous examples from a pagan religion.
Pagans usually focus on spirituality and nature, rather than on doctrines and dogma.
The word pagan (without a capital P) is often used to describe anyone who is not of the Abrahamic religions.
A similar term is heathen.
Today Pagan, with a capital P, often refers to people who follow Neo-Pagan religions that honor the Earth.
The best known Neo-Pagan religion is Wicca.
Another well-known neo-pagan faith is Druidism, but there are many other Neo-Pagan religions with different beliefs.
P is the sixteenth (number 16) letter in the English alphabet.
Paul Gardner Allen (born January 21, 1953) is an American who created Microsoft with Bill Gates.
He is the fifth richest person in the United States.
He lives in Mercer Island, Washington.
Allen is also the outright owner of two sports teams, and is part-owner of a third.
He fully owns the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL and the Portland Trail Blazers of the NBA.
He is a minority owner of Seattle Sounders FC in Major League Soccer.
Polygonaceae is a family of flowering plants are herbs, shrubs, or rarely trees comprising about 30 genera and 1,000 species.
The leaves are simple, alternate or rarely opposite, and usually stipulate.
Some well known members include buckwheat (Fagopyrum), sorrel (Rumex), rhubarb (Rheum), and knotweed (Polygonum).
Pakistanis are a blend of their Harappan, Aryan, Persian, Greek, Saka, Parthian, Kushan, White Hun, Arab, Turkic, Afghan, and Mughal heritage.
Waves of invaders and migrants settled down in Pakistan throughout the centuries, influencing the locals and being absorbed among them.
Pakistan and the Republic of India have a distinct history and background.
The region of Pakistan was never part of India except for 500 + years under the Muslims, and 100 years each under the Mauryans and the British.
If any thing, it were the ancestors of Pakistanis who colonized north\/northwest India, among them were Harappans, Aryans, Sakas, Kushans, White Huns, Turks, Afghans, and Mughals.
During the period 6000 BC and 2000 BC, late Neolithic culture and the start of the Bronze Age was taking shape in the Indus Valley of Ancient India.
About 7000 years before, by 5100 BC, early Neolithic culture had developed in ancient Pakistan.
People had learned farming.
They tended goats, lived in houses build of mud, and had learned to make baskets.
Potteries were also made.
Around the 5th century BC, north-western parts of India faced invasion by the Achaemenid Empire and the Greeks of Alexander 's army.
Persian way of thinking, administration and lifestyle came to India.
This influence became bigger during the Mauryan dynasty.
From around 520 BC, Achaemenid Empire s Darius I ruled large part of northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent.
Then Alexander conquered these areas.
Herodotus, a historian of that time has written that these areas were the richest areas of Alexander s Empire.
Achaemenid rule lasted about 186 years.
In modern times, there are still traces of this Greek heritage to be found in parts of northwestern India.
Greco-Buddhism (also spelt as Gr co-Buddhism) is a combination of culture of Greece and Buddhism.
This mixture of cultures continued to develop for 800 long years, from 4th century BC until the 5th century AD.
The area where it happened is modern day s Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This mixture of cultures influenced Mahayana Buddhism and spread of Buddhism to China, Korea, Japan and Tibet.
16th July 622 Hijri calendar is considered to be started as Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) migrated to Madina Munawara.
16 March 1527 Kanwaha battle took place between forces of Babur and Rana Songa of Mewar, a Rajput prince.
Babur forces defeated Rajput in this decisive battle.
26 June 1564 Sheikh Ahmad was born who joined Naqshbandya Silsilah under the decipline of Khawaja Baqi Billah.
He gave the philosophy of Wahdat-ul Wujud and Wahdat-ush Shuhud in his dedication to Islam.
The Indus Valley Civilization flourished from about 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE.
It marked the beginning of the urban civilization on the subcontinent.
It was centred on the Indus River and its tributaries, which is in present-day Pakistan.
It is thought that a gradual deforestation caused by geological disturbances and climate change caused the fall of the civilization.
The civilization is famous for its cities that were built of brick, had a road-side drainage system and multi-storied houses.
The Demographics of Pakistan are a study of the population and the people.
It is estimated that Pakistan 's population was over 170,000,000 in mid 2008.
Pakistan had an estimated population of 169,300,000 as of July 2007,.
Between 1951-1998, the number of people in Pakistan 's cities and towns (known as the urban population) increased sevenfold.
And by the next decade the population is expected to exceed 176 million.
In the past, the country 's population had a quite high growth rate.
Dramatic social changes have led to rapid urbanisation and the emergence of megacities.
Between 1990-2003, Pakistan sustained its historical lead as the most urbanised nation in South Asia, with city dwellers making up 34 % of its population.
Pakistan has a multicultural and multi-ethnic society and has one of the largest refugee populations in the world as well as a young population.
Pakistan 's next national census will take place in 2008.
The majority of southern Pakistan 's population lives along the Indus River.
In the northern half, most of the population lives about an arc formed by the cities of Faisalabad, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Nowshera, Swabi, Mardan and Peshawar.
The Politics of Pakistan has seen many changes over the years.
The military have sometimes been running the country.
Recently however the country has returned to democratic rule.
Pakistan is a federal republic, at the moment, the President of Pakistan is the head of state and the Prime Minister is head of government.
Pakistan is a nation with a diverse economy that include textiles, chemicals, food processing, agriculture and other industries.
It is the 25th largest economy in the world.
Pakistan is the second largest Muslim country in terms of population (behind Indonesia).
Pakistan is the only Muslim country known to have nuclear weapons.
Pakistan is also an important member of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
Pakistan is an active member of the United Nations.
Pakistan had some problems with its Foreign relations.
Pakistan 's relations with its neighbor, India is not good.
They have been fighting over the disputed territory of Kashmir, over which it has fought two wars.
It has also had difficult relations with Afghanistan and Iran.
Pakistan has a long and good relationship with the China.
Pakistan has interest over the Persian Gulf and has wide-ranging bilateral relations with the United States and other Western countries.
Pakistan distrusted the Soviet Union during much of the Cold War.
Because of this Pakistan had strong relations with both the United States of America and the People 's Republic of China.
It was a member of the American-sponsored CENTO and SEATO military alliances.
Its alliance with the United States was especially close after the Soviets invaded the neighboring country of Afghanistan.
In 1964, Pakistan signed the Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD) Pact with Turkey and Iran, when all three countries were closely allied with the U.S., and as neighbors of the Soviet Union, wary of perceived Soviet expansionism.
To this day, Pakistan has a close relationship with Turkey.
RCD became defunct after the Iranian Revolution, and a Pakistani-Turkish initiative led to the founding of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in 1985.
For several years, Pakistan 's relations with the Republic of India had been gradually improving, which opened up Pakistan 's foreign policy to issues beyond security.
Palau, officially the Republic of Palau, is an island nation.
It is in the Pacific Ocean.
Palau is 300 miles (500 km) east of the Philippines.
It got independence from United Nations trusteeship administration (administered by the United States of America) in 1994.
It is one of the world 's youngest and smallest nations.
It is sometimes referred to in English under its native name Belau.
The capital city of Palau is Melekeok.
This has been true since October 1, 2006.
Palau has a tropical climate all year round.
Average yearly temperature is around 82 F (27 C).
Palmyra Atoll is an island in the North Pacific Ocean.
No one lives there.
but 4 to 20 people used this island.
It is managed as a nature reserve by the United States.
It is known as the Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.
In 2005, a team of scientists from all over the world started to build a research station on the island.
They wanted to study the environment of the island.
Paracel Islands is the name for a number of uninhabited atolls and reefs in the South China Sea.
They are about 330 k from Hainan and about 400 k from Vietnam.
Currently they are under the control of the People 's Republic of China, but Taiwan and Vietnam also claim them.
The islands are uninhabited.
The islands are located in the South China Sea consisting of over 30 islets, sandbanks and reefs with about 15000 k of the ocean surface.
The archipelago is approximately equidistant from the coastlines of Vietnam and China, 180 n southeast of Hainan Island, and about one-third of the way from central Vietnam to the northern Philippines.
Turtles live on the islands, and seabirds have left nests and guano deposits, but there are no permanent human residents except military personnel and fishermen.
The islands are divided into two main groups.
The Amphitrite group is in the northeast and the Crescent group is in the southwest, and they are located about 70 k from one another.
Subject to hot and humid climate, with abundant rainfall and frequent typhoons, the archipelago is surrounded by productive fishing grounds and potential oil and gas reserves.
Paraguay (officially the Republic of Paraguay or Republica del Paraguay) is a small country in South America.
It is landlocked, meaning that it does not touch the ocean.
It is bordered to the North and East by Brazil, the West by Bolivia, and the South and Southeast by Argentina.
The main languages are Spanish and Guaran.
Paraguay 's population is about 6 million.
The ethnic makeup of the population is like the following: Mestizo (mixed European and Amerindian) 80 %, European 20 %, unmixed Amerindian 1-3 %, Asian 1-4 %.
Over (20 %) of the population lives below the poverty line.
Paraguay has two official languages, Spanish and Guarani.
Guaran is recognized as a national language.
The capital city is Asuncion.
Asuncion was founded in 1537 by a man from Spain named Juan de Salazar.
Paraguay was a colony of Spain.
Paraguay became independent from Spain in 1811.
From 1865-1870 Paraguay lost land and most of its male population in the War of the Triple Alliance against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.
It gained land in the Chaco War against Bolivia in the 1930s.
Paraguay 's religion is Roman Catholicism.
The weather is more humid in the east and dryer in the west.
The Philippines is an archipelago country with around 7,000 islands.
It is in the Pacific Ocean and about 100 kilometers southeast from Asia.
Spain (1521-1898) and the United States (1898-1946), colonized (controlled) the country.
The Philippines and East Timor are the only nations in East Asia where most people practice Christianity.
The Philippines achieved independence after United States left in 1946.
The Philippine Islands are surrounded on the east by the Philippine Sea, on the west by the South China Sea, and on the south by the Celebes Sea.
Borneo island is a few hundred kilometers to the southwest, Vietnam is to the west, and Taiwan is directly north.
On the eastern side of the Philippine Sea is Palau.
Human fossils were found proving that many people settled in the Philippines for thousands of years.
The Negritos crossed prehistoric land or ice to settle in the islands ' land.
Many groups of Austronesian people began to come to the Philippines in the first millennium, pushing the aboriginal population into the interior or perhaps absorbing them through intermarriage.
Chinese merchants arrived in the 8th century.
The rise of powerful Buddhist kingdoms enabled trade with the Indonesian archipelago, India, Japan and Southeast Asia.
Factional fighting among the kingdoms of Southeast Asia weakened their strength.
In the meantime, the spread of Islam through commerce and proselytism, much like Christianity, brought traders and missionaries into the region; Arabs set foot in Mindanao in the 14th century.
When the first Europeans arrived, led by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, there were rajahs as far north as Manila, who historically were tributaries of the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.
However, the islands were essentially self-sufficient and self-ruling.
The Spanish led by Conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi claimed and colonized the islands in the 16th century and named it Filipinas after King Felipe II.
Roman Catholicism was immediately introduced.
The Philippines was ruled from New Spain (Mexico) and a trade began in the 18th century began using galleons across the Pacific Ocean.
Some rebellions and violence started in the towns near the ocean and during the next three centuries because of some unfairness of the government.
In 1781, Governor Jos Basco y Vargas founded the Economic Society of Friends of the Country to make the Philippines independent of New Spain.
The country opened up during the 19th century.
The rise of an ambitious, more nationalistic Filipino middle class and the Chinese mestizo community, signaled the end of Spanish colonialism in the islands.
Enlightened by the Propaganda Movement to the injustices of the Spanish colonial government, they asked for independence.
Jose Rizal, the most famous propagandist, was arrested and put to death in 1896 for acts of subversion.
Soon after, the Philippine Revolution broke out, led by the Katipunan, a secret revolutionary society founded by Andres Bonifacio and later led by Emilio Aguinaldo.
The revolution nearly succeeded in ousting the Spanish by 1898.
That same year Spain and the United States fought the Spanish-American War, after which Spain gave up the Philippines to the United States for US$ 20 million.
The Filipinos had declared independence by that time and the assertion of American control led to the Philippine-American War that officially ended in 1901, but fighting continued well into 1913.
Between 1899 and 1913 the American-Philippines war waged, about one million Philippines and well over 5500 American soldiers (including missionaries & private contractors, military families) lost their lives, tens of thousands more were wounded.
Most of the Philippine 's casualties came from starvation, injuries, diseases, lack of clean living.
Hostilities continued until 1914 when Philippines was promised future independence.
President William McKinley was killed by anarchist Leon Czolgosz because Czolgosz believed president McKinley was against good working people, he considered McKinley responsible for falsifying the reasons for the war, and approving and waging an illegal, devastating Philippines war.
The American regime imposed the English language as the lingua franca in the islands through free public education.
The status of the country was turned into that of a US commonwealth in 1935, which provided for more self-governance.
Independence was finally given in 1946, after the World War II.
The years right after that had many post-war problems.
People were also not happy during the unpopular dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, who was made to leave the presidency in 1986.
Later, the continuing problem of communist insurgency and Moro separatism.
The government of the Philippines, is similar to the Government of the United States of America.
The President of the Philippines works as the head of state, the head of government, and the commander in chief of the Military of the Philippines and the armed forces.
The president is elected by voting just as in America.
He stays as the president for 6 years.
He is the leader of the cabinet.
The bicameral Philippine legislature, the Congress of the Philippines, consists of the Senate of the Philippines and the House of Representatives of the Philippines; members of both are elected by popular vote.
There are 24 senators serving 6 years in the Senate while the House of Representatives consists of no more than 250 congressmen each serving 3-year terms.
The judiciary branch of the government is headed by the Supreme Court of the Philippines, which has a Chief Justice as its head and 14 Associate Justices, all appointed by the president.
The Philippines is a founding and prominent member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
It is also an active participant of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), a member of the Group of 24 and one of the 51 founding members of the United Nations on October 24, 1945.
Local Government.
The parts of Philippines are "local government units" (LGUs).
The province is the top unit.
There are 79 provinces in the country (2002).
In the provinces there are cities and municipalities (towns).
In these municipalities there are smaller barangays (villages).
The barangay is the smallest local government unit.
All provinces are in 17 regions for administration (organization).
Most government offices have regional offices for the provinces.
The regions do not have a separate local government, except for the Muslim Mindanao and Cordillera regions, which have their own power (autonomous government).
Names are capitalized because they are acronyms, containing the names of the constituent provinces or cities.
The Philippines has 7,107 islands.
Together there are about 300,000 square kilometers of land.
The islands are in three groups: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.
Luzon is the largest island and Mindanao is the second largest.
The Visayas are the group of islands in the central part of the Philippines.
The busy port of Manila, on Luzon, is the country 's capital and it is the second-largest city after Quezon City.
In the Visayas, Cebu City is the largest city.
In Mindanao, Davao City is the largest city.
The climate is hot, humid (there is a lot of water in the air), and tropical.
The average temperature all year is around 26.5 Celsius.
Filipinos usually say there are three seasons: Tag-init or Tag-araw (the hot season or summer from March to May), Tag-ulan (the rainy season from June to November), and Tag-lamig (the cold season from December to February).
The Philippines is in the Pacific Ring of Fire (zone of frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions).
Most of the mountainous islands had a lot of tropical rainforests a long time ago.
They started as volcanoes.
The highest place is Mount Apo on Mindanao at 2,954 m. Many volcanoes in the country, for example Mount Mayon, are active.
The country also has about 19 typhoons per year.
Taal Volcano is an island in Taal Lake.
It is in an ancient caldera in Batangas Province.
It is about 2 hours by bus going south from Manila.
The jump-off point in Talisay is suitable for day trips and overnighters.
There are many environmental problems in the Philippines.
One of them is overfishing in many areas, which lead to pitiful catches.
Another problem is that only ten percent of sewage is treated and cleaned, while the other 90 % is dumped back to nature and the ocean, which leads to pollution.
Deforestation is a serious problem, and after decades of cutting down forests, illegal logging and forest fires, there is only 3 % left of original forest cover.
Forest losses have also affected the Philippines with serious soil erosion, which is threatening the Philippines biodiversity.
The Philippines is a developing country.
In 1998 the Philippine economy a mixture of agriculture, light industry, and support services deteriorated because of the effects of the Asian financial crisis and poor weather conditions.
The economy 's growth fell to 0.6 % in 1998 from 5 % in 1997, but recovered to about 3 % in 1999 and 4 % in 2000.
As of 2012, it 's estimated at 6.6 %.
The government has promised to continue its economic reforms to help the Philippines match the pace of development in the newly industrialized countries of Southeast Asia.
The strategies are improving infrastructure, fixing the tax system to help the government income, supporting deregulation (to remove government control) and privatization of the economy, and increasing trade within the region.
Future prospects depend heavily on the economic performance of the three major trading partners, China, the United States and Japan.
Around 94 million people live in the Philippines as of 2010.
Most people in the Philippines are of Austronesian stock.
The ethnic Chinese, who have helped run businesses since the 9th century, also live in the country.
The Negritos live in the mountains of Luzon and Visayas.
Luzon has a lot of mestizo people, a Spanish term for someone of mixed Hispanic and native blood.
The people of the Philippines are known as Filipinos.
Filipinos are divided into many groups, the three largest are the Tagalogs, Cebuanos, and the Ilocanos.
When the Philippines was a colony, the term "Filipino" used to mean the Spanish and Spanish-mixed minority.
But now everyone who is a citizen\/national of the Philippines is called "Filipino".
Even then, it is still has the most diverse ethnic groups in Asia, the other being Indonesia.
People also call Filipinos "Pinoy" for short.
Filipino and English are the official languages.
Filipino is based largely on Tagalog, a native language spoken in Metro Manila and neighboring provinces.
The Filipino language, is a cousin of the Malay language.
Other local languages and dialects are Cebuano and Ilocano and many others.
English is used in government, schools and business.
Other languages are Chinese which is spoken by the ethnic Chinese population and the Chinese-Filipinos.
Most of the Muslims living deep in southern Mindanao and the smaller islands off of the southern Philippine mainland near Malaysia 's northeastern tip.
They also speak Arabic as a second language but to a very small extent.
Spanish, once the official language of the Philippines in the 1970s is also spoken by a notable minority by Filipinos.
Before the Spanish arrived, the Filipinos did not think of themselves as one culture.
Most of the Philippines were Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu empires.
The Spaniards came in 1565, and brought with them Spanish culture.
They soon spread to the islands making forts and schools, preaching Christianity, and converting most of the native people to the Catholic religion.
When the United States colonized the islands in 1898, the Americans brought with them their own culture, which has the strongest influence up to now.
This makes the Philippines the most Westernized country in eastern Asia.
The Spanish culture in the Philippines though, is not directly from Spain but from Mexico.
Since the Philippines was ruled by Spain, through Mexico.
It was governed from Mexico City which explains much of the Spanish influence in the Philippines that one could only find in Mexico and not in Spain.
Also, the Spanish that was spoken in the Philippines was Mexican Spanish, not European Spanish.
A lot of the foods in the Philippines can also be found in Mexico.
Filipinos, as a tradition, usually eat with hands, like that of Malay tradition.
And most of Filipino cuisine is also of Malay influence for the most part.
Each year major festivities called barrio fiestas are held.
They commemorate the Patron saints of the towns, villages and regional districts.
The festivities includes church services, street parades, fireworks displays, feasts, dance\/music contests, and cockfights.
Most of the people in the Philippines are Christians.
About 92 % of the people are Christians.
Most people in the Philippines belong to the Roman Catholic faith (70 %).
A sizable percentage of the people are Protestants (many diverse Christian denominations) (17 %), Members Church of God International (3 %), Iglesia ni Cristo (2 %), Muslims (5-10 %), Buddhists (2 %).
There are also some Hindus and some other minor religions with fewer adherents (6.6 %).
The Pitcairn Islands are a group of islands in the southern Pacific.
People only live on the second-largest of the four islands.
That island is named Pitcairn.
It is governed by the United Kingdom.
It has the smallest number of people of any country.
In 2007, 48 people lived there.
The islands are best known as home of the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and the Tahitians (or Polynesians) who accompanied them, an event retold in numerous books and films.
This history still shows in the surnames of many of the islanders.
There are only four family names (as of 2010): Christian, Warren, Young and Brown.
Originally people from Polynesia lived on the Pitcairn Islands, but there was no one living on the islands when they were discovered (found) by Captain Philip Carteret of H.M.S. Swallow on 2 July 1767.
The island was named after Robert Pitcairn, a 15 year old midshipman who was the first person on the Swallow to see it.
Robert is believed to have been lost at sea in early 1770 when the ship he was on, HMS Aurora, went missing in the Indian Ocean.
In 2004 charges were laid against seven men living on Pitcairn and six living abroad with sex-related offences dating back a number of years.
On 25 October 2004, six men were convicted, including the island 's mayor at the time.
After the six men lost their final appeal, the British government set up a prison on the island at Bob 's Valley.
The men began serving their sentences in late 2006, as of 2010 all men have served their sentences or been granted home detention status (Pitcairn News, 2010).
In 2010 the island received a new and updated constitution.
A polyhedron (one polyhedron, many polyhedra, or polyhedrons) is a geometrical shape.
It has flat faces, and straight edges.
Usually it is defined by the number of faces, or edges.
Mathematicians do not agree on what makes a polyhedron.
Usually, polyhedra are named by the number of faces they have.
The first polyhedra are the tetrahedron, which is made of four triangles, pentahedron (five faces, can look like a four-sided pyramid), hexahedron (six faces, a cube if it is regular), and heptahedron (seven faces, can look like a prism based on a pentagon, or a pyramid based on a hexagon amongst others).
A polytope is figure in geometry.
It is a geometric object with flat sides, in any number of dimensions.
A polygon is a polytope in two dimensions, a polyhedron in three dimensions, and so on.
Sometimes the number of dimensions is shown as a number, as in a polyhedron being a 3-polytope or a tesseract a convex regular 4-polytope.
A protest song is a song that is part of a movement to change society.
Many protest songs have lyrics that directly call for change, while others use humor, irony, or storytelling to make their point.
Protest songs can come from just about any type of music.
In the 1960s in the United States, many folk musicians like Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan made protest songs.
Some of these songs were against the United States fighting in the Vietnam War.
Physicalism is the view that everything in the universe is made out of physical matter.
Physicalism does not believe in gods, spirits, or other things that are not made of physical material.
A person who believes in physicalism is a materialist.
Prolog is a programming language that uses first order logic.
It is the most widespread logic programming language.
It is declarative.
Alain Cormerauer, a French computer scientist developed Prolog in the early 1970s.
Prolog is rather different from other programming languages.
It uses facts and rules.
Given the facts, the rules can be used to derive new facts.
Note that Prolog uses a paradigm called Negation as failure, which means that is assumed if can not be derived.
This is different from true logical negation.
While negation is failure has its benefits, it often confuses people starting to learn Prolog, as they expect true logical negation.
Prolog also uses Horn clauses.
It is a turing-complete programming language.
A potato is a root vegetable, the Solanum tuberosum.
It is a small plant with large leaves.
The part of the potato that people eat is a tuber that grows under the ground.
A potato contains a lot of starch and other carbohydrates.
Potato usually has a light-brown or yellowish skin and is white or yellow inside.
If the potato gets light on it, the tuber turns green and will be poisonous.
The potato is originally from the high and cool areas of the Andes of Peru.
It was grown as a food crop more than 7,000 years ago.
When Spanish conquistadores came to South America in the 1500s they took potatoes back to Europe.
It took nearly 200 years for the potato to become a widely grown crop.
In the 1780s the farmers in Ireland began growing potatoes because they grew well in the poor soils.
They also have most of the vitamins that people need to survive.
The Irish became so dependent on the potato that when the crop failed in 1845 there was a famine and many people starved to death.
The potato plant is now grown in many different parts of the world.
Captain William Bligh planted potatoes on Bruny Island, Tasmania in 1792.
In Australia they are now the largest vegetable crop.
Scientists in Germany have used genetic engineering to make a potato called the Amflora, which could be grown to make starch for making other things in factories.
The potato can not be eaten unless it is cooked.
People cook potatoes by boiling, baking, roasting, or frying them.
French fries or "chips" are potatoes cut into long pieces and fried until they are soft.
Potato chips, often called crisps, are potatoes cut into very thin round pieces and fried until they are hard.
William Shakespeare wrote that the potato was an aphrodisiac, but there is no evidence to show this is true.
Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon.
It is the county seat of Multnomah County.
About 538,544 people live in the city of Portland, and about 1,927,881 people live in the city 's metropolitan area.
It is found in the north part of the state, where the Willamette River meets the Columbia River.
Portland has the second most people of any city in the Northwest United States, after the city of Seattle.
Portland has many nicknames.
One of these is "The City of Roses," because roses grow well there.
Some other nicknames of Portland are "Stumptown" (from the fact that Portland was built over a forest), "Puddletown" (from the fact that it often rains in Portland), and "Bridgetown" (from the fact that there are many bridges that cross the Willamette River in Portland).
Many things are from Portland.
Some of these things are Powell 's Books, Beverly Cleary (and some of her most popular fictional characters, Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby, which also have statues in the city 's Beverly Cleary Sculpture Garden for Children), and the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team.
A pianist is a person who plays the piano.
A pianist can play music for piano alone or play together with other musicians in an ensemble or orchestra.
Pianists also play along singers, solo musicians, and other performers in their leading performance.
A proverb is a wise saying.
Many cultures have collections of these, such as the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament, was said to be written by king Solomon of Israel.
A proverb is basically a wise saying.
Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
It s no use locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.
Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.
See a pin and pick it up, all the day you ll have good luck; see a pin and let it lie, bad luck you ll have all day.
Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
Photons (from Greek, meaning light), in many atomic models in physics, are particles which transmit light.
In other words, light is carried over space by photons.
Photon is an elementary particle that is its own antiparticle.
In quantum mechanics each photon has a characteristic quantum of energy.
Photons have a rest mass of 0 (zero).
However, Einstein 's theory of relativity says that they do have a certain amount of momentum.
Before the photon got its name, Einstein revived the proposal that light consists of separate pieces of energy (particles).
These particles came to be known as photons.
Photons are fundamental particles.
Although they can be created and destroyed, their lifetime is infinite.
In a vacuum, all photons move at the speed of light, c, which is equal to 299,792,458 meters (approximately 300,000 kilometers) per second.
A photon has a given frequency, which determines its color.
Radio technology makes great use of frequency.
Beyond the visible range, frequency is less discussed, for example it is little used in distinguishing between X-Ray photons and infrared.
Frequency is equivalent to the quantum energy of the photon, as related by the Planck constant equation E = h f
Another property of a photon is its wavelength.
The frequency, wavelength, and speed of light c are related by the equation.
Wavelength is used in many types of technology.
The quantum energy of different photons is used in infrared technology, and much used for cameras and other machines that use visible and higher than visible radiation.
This because these photons are energetic enough to ionize atoms.
The last usable property of a photon is its polarity.
If you saw a giant photon coming straight at you, it could appear as a swath whipping vertically, horizontally, or somewhere in between.
Polarized sunglasses stop photons swinging up and down from passing.
This is how they reduce glare as light bouncing off of surfaces tend to fly that way.
Liquid crystal displays also use polarity to control which light passes through.
Some animals can see light polarization.
Finally, light has a spin to it.
A photon 's spin is a subtle feature, and requires expensive equipment to detect.
In particle physics, photons are responsible for electromagnetic force.
Electromagnetism is an idea that combines electricity with magnetism.
One common way that we experience electromagnetism in our daily lives is light, which is caused by electromagnetism.
Electromagnetism is also responsible for charge, which is the reason that you can not push your hand through a table.
Since photons are the force-carrying particle of electromagnetism, they are also gauge bosons.
Some matter called dark matter is not believed to be affected by electromagnetism.
This would mean that dark matter does not have a charge, and does not give off light.
Light is often created when energy hits an electron.
This energy can be in the form of heat, kinetic energy, or any other form.
The increase of energy can push an electron up one level in a shell called a "valence".
All that this means is that it is unstable there, and like all everything else, wants to be in the lowest energy state.
(If being in the lowest energy state is confusing, pick up a pencil and drop it.
Once on the ground, the pencil will be in a lower energy state).
When the electron drops back down to its lowest energy state, it needs to release the energy that hit it, and it must obey the conservation of energy (energy can neither be created nor destroyed).
Electrons release this energy as photons, and at higher intensities, this photon can be seen as visible light.
Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with analysis of random phenomena.
The central objects of probability theory are random variables, stochastic processes, and events: mathematical abstractions of non-deterministic events or measured quantities that may either be single occurrences or happen over time in an apparently random fashion.
As a mathematical foundation for statistics, probability theory is essential to many human activities that involve quantitative analysis of large sets of data.
Methods of probability theory also apply to description of complex systems given only partial knowledge of their state, as in statistical mechanics.
A great discovery of twentieth century physics was the probabilistic nature of physical phenomena at atomic scales, described in quantum mechanics.
The mathematical theory of probability has its roots in attempts to analyze games of chance by Gerolamo Cardano in the sixteenth century, and by Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal in the seventeenth century (for example the "problem of points").
Although an individual coin toss or the roll of a die is random event, if repeated many times the sequence of random events will exhibit certain statistical patterns, which can be studied and predicted.
Two representative mathematical results describing such patterns are the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem.
: The first major treatise blending calculus with probability theory, originally in French: Th orie Analytique des Probabilit s.
: The modern measure-theoretic foundation of probability theory; the original German version (Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitrechnung) appeared in 1933.
: A lively introduction to probability theory for the beginner.
Probability distribution is a term from mathematics.
Suppose there are many events with random outcomes.
A probability distribution is the theoretical counterpart to the frequency distribution.
A frequency distribution simply shows how many times a certain event occurred.
A probability distribution says how many times it should have occurred.
There are different probability distributions.
Each of them has its use, its benefits, and its drawbacks.
Peter Cook (17 November 1937 9 January 1995) was a English satirist, writer, actor and comedian.
He was born in Torquay, Devon and became famous when he appeared in a stage show called Beyond the Fringe in 1960.
He later continued working with another star of Beyond the Fringe, Dudley Moore.
Two of the things they did together were Not Only... But Also and later Derek and Clive.
They also appeared in films like the original Bedazzled.
Cook later helped start the magazine Private Eye.
He also was involved with comedy performances for Amnesty International.
He died of liver disease in Hampstead, London.
He is still regarded as a major influence in British comedy.
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music.
It was very popular in the 1960s when it started, and still has many fans today.
It was first made in San Francisco, but it also was made in other cities such as New York City, and in other countries including England.
Psychedelic rock songs sometimes have lyrics describing the effects of drugs, if any words at all.
Songs were sometimes very long (10-15 minutes), and much of this time might be taken up by a solo, like a drum solo or a guitar solo.
Some major groups that made psychedelic rock included: The Beatles, The Doors, The Byrds, The Grateful Dead, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and The Animals.
Psychedelic rock was popular music for listening to when getting high with hashish or LSD, or both.
During Grateful Dead concerts, some people actually sat inside the huge speakers that the Grateful Dead brought to their concerts.
Philips is a Dutch electronics company.
It was founded by Gerard and Frederik Philips in 1891.
It employs about 120,000 people in 60 countries.
The Perciformes is the largest order of vertebrates.
They have about 40 % of all bony fish.
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Perciformes means perch-like.
They belong to the class of ray-finned fish and have over 7,000 species in almost all aquatic environments.
They have the widest range of sizes of any order of vertebrates, ranging from the 7 mm Schindleria brevipinguis to the 5 metre Makaira species.
They first appeared and diversified in the Upper Cretaceous.
Some well-known members of this group are angelfish, barracuda, bass, blenny, cichlids, damselfish, filefish, goby, grouper, remora, swordfish, mackerel, pufferfish, tilefish, tuna, whiting, and of course perch.
The dorsal and anal fins are divided into front spiny and back soft-rayed portions, which may be partially or completely separated.
The pelvic fins usually have one spine and up to five soft rays, positioned unusually far forward under the chin or under the belly.
Scales are usually ctenoid (rough-edged).
They are grouped as in the text Fishes of the World.
The order is probably polyphyletic, and changes may occur in this and other teleost orders.
Recent morphological and DNA sequence analysis has shown that several of the higher-level groupings of teleosts are evolutionary grades rather than clades.
Examples of demonstrably paraphyletic groups include the Perciformes.
Pentecostalism is a faith within Evangelical Christianity.
It believes in a personal experience with God through the baptism of the Holy Spirit; the same as in the Biblical account on the Day of Pentecost.
Pentecostalism is similar to the Charismatic groups, but it came about earlier and separated from the main church branches.
Charismatic Christians, at least in the beginning, tended to stay in their denominations and did not divide away.
There are three types of Pentecostal churches.
Most believe that one must be saved by believing in Jesus as their Savior; to be forgiven for their sins and to be pleasing to God.
Pentecostals also believe, like most other evangelicals, that the Bible is true and must be obeyed in decisions of faith.
In this majority group, speaking in tongues is the sign of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and is not required for salvation.
To this group, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is a supernatural gift for ministry that one receives after they have become a Christian.
The other two groups believe in an"" based salvation.
This means a person needs to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus.
They then receive the Holy Spirit (Holy Ghost).
In this belief, the Holy Spirit is required for salvation; which includes speaking in tongues.
In this group, some Pentecostals churches baptize in the name of Jesus only, and some baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Pentecostal churches believe that Jesus still heals the sick, with the power of the Holy Spirit.
See also: List of Christian denominations by number of members This list indicates that there may be 150 million Pentecostals.
The largest Pentecostal denominations are:
Operation World by Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, 2000, unless otherwise indicated.
Proboscidea is an order containing only one familiy of living animals, Elephantidae, the elephants, with three living species (African forest elephant, African bush elephant, and Asian elephant).
During the period of the last ice age there were more, now extinct species, including a number of species of the elephant-like mammoths and mastodons.
The oldest proboscidean dates from the early Palaeogene period, over 50 million years ago.
The evolution of the elephant-like animals mainly concerned the proportions of the cranium and jaw and the shape of the tusks and molar teeth.
Present-day elephants are the survivors of a once larger and more varied family.
Paranthropus is an extinct genus of robust australopithecines.
They probably descended from the gracile australopithecine Australopithecus.
All species of Paranthropus were bipedal, and many lived during a time when species of the genus Homo, such as Homo ergaster and Homo erectus, were living.
Paranthropus first appeared roughly 2.7 million years ago.
Most species of Paranthropus had a brain about 40 percent of the size of modern man.
There was some size variation between the different species of Paranthropus, but most stood roughly 1.3-1.4 m (4.26 to 4.59 feet) tall and were quite well muscled.
Paranthropus is thought to have lived in wooded areas rather than the grasslands of the Australopithecus.
Australopithecus and Paranthropus also looked very different from each other.
These differences were only found in remains of the skull.
The other parts of the skeleton were still very similar, so it is reasonable to think the difference was an adaptation to different food.
Paranthropus was more massively built as to skull and teeth.
It often had gorilla-like sagittal crests on the cranium which anchored massive temporalis muscles for chewing.
Paranthropus did not behave in the same way as Homo.
They lived on a diet of heavy-duty plant material: leaves, slim branches, grass, roots.
The diet might be supplemented with insect grubs.
Lacking our flexible behavior, Paranthropus relied on the steady environmental conditions of the tropical forest.
Members of the genus Homo, such as Homo habilis, had proportionately larger brains and more flexible behavior.
They were able to eat a much wider variety of foods.
Opinions differ whether the species P. aethiopicus, P. boisei and P. robustus should be included within the genus Australopithecus.
On Wikipedia, the genus Paranthropus is used for all articles which mention the species P. aethiopicus, P. boisei and P. robustus.
For the most part the Australopithecus species A. afarensis, A. africanus, and A. anamensis either disappeared from the fossil record before the appearance of early humans or seem to have been the ancestors of Homo habilis.
P. boisei and P. aethiopicus, on the other hand, continued to evolve along a separate path distinct and unrelated to early humans.
Paranthropus shared the earth with some early examples of the Homo genus, such as H. habilis, H. ergaster, and possibly even H. erectus.
Species of Paranthropus had smaller braincases than Homo, yet they had significantly larger braincases than Australopithecus.
Paranthropus is associated with stone tools both in southern and eastern Africa, although there is considerable debate whether they were made and utilized by these robust australopithecines.
Most believe that early Homo was the tool maker.
Most Paranthropus species almost certainly did not have language or to have controlled fire, although they are directly associated with the latter at Swartkrans, South Africa.
A partial cranium and mandible of Paranthropus robustus was discovered in 1938 by a schoolboy, 70 km south west of Pretoria in South Africa.
It was described as a new genus and species by Robert Broom of the Transvaal Museum.
A date of at least 1.95 million years has been obtained for the site.
Paranthropus boisei was discovered by Mary Leakey in July 1959 at the site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.
Mary was working alone, as Louis was ill in camp.
She rushed back to camp and at the news Louis made a remarkable recovery.
In his notes Louis recorded a first name, Titanohomo mirabilis, reflecting an initial impression of close human affinity.
Louis and Mary began to call it "Dear Boy".
Recovery was halted on August 7.
Dear Boy was in context with Oldowan tools and animal bones.
The fossil was published in Nature on 15 August 1959, but due to a strike of the printers the issue was not released until September.
In it Louis placed the fossil in Broom 's Australopithecinae family, creating a new genus for it, Zinjanthropus, species boisei.
"Zinj" is an ancient Arabic word for the coast of East Africa and "boisei" referred to Charles Boise, an anthropological benefactor of the Leakeys.
Louis based his classification on twenty differences from Australopithecus.
Broom had died in 1951 but Dart was still living.
He is said to have wept for joy on Louis ' behalf on being personally shown Zinj, which Louis and Mary carried around in a tin (later a box).
Louis had considered Broom 's Paranthropus genus, but rejected it because he believed Zinj was in the Homo ancestral stock but Paranthropus was not.
He relied heavily on the larger size of Zinj 's canines.
The battle of the name raged on for many years and drove a wedge between Louis and LeGros Clark, who took the Paranthropus view.
On the other hand it brought the Leakeys and Dr. Melville Bell Grosvenor of the National Geographic Society together.
The Leakeys became international figures and had no trouble finding funds from then on.
The Zinj question ultimately became part of the Australopithecus\/Paranthropus question (which only applied to the robust Australopithecines).
Odd-toed ungulates are mammals of the order Perissodactyla.
Odd-toed ungulates have an uneven number of toes: Horses have only one toe, rhinoceros have three toes, and tapirs have four toes on the front feet and three toes on the hind feet.
Parmenides (also Parmenides of Elea) (Greek:, early 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea and was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy.
His only known work is a poem, but only bits and pieces have survived.
In it, he describes two views of reality.
These thoughts strongly influenced Plato, and later, the whole of western philosophy.
The photoelectric effect is a phenomenon in physics.
The effect is based on the idea that electromagnetic radiation is made of a series of particles called photons.
When a photon hits an electron on a metal surface, the electron can be emitted.
The emitted electrons are called photoelectrons.
The effect is also called the Hertz Effect, because it was discovered by Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, but this name is not used often.
The photoelectric effect has helped physicists understand the quantum nature of light and electrons.
The concept of wave particle duality was developed because of the photoelectric effect.
Not every electromagnetic wave will cause the photoelectric effect, only radiation of a certain frequency or higher will cause the effect.
The minimum frequency needed is called the "cutoff frequency" or "threshold frequency '.
The cutoff frequency is used to find the work function, w, which is the amount of energy holding the electron to the metal surface.
The work function is a property of the metal and is not affected by the incoming radiation.
If a frequency of light strikes the metal surface that is greater than the cutoff frequency, then the emitted electron will have some kinetic energy.
The energy of a photon causing the photoelectric effect is found through E = hf = KE + w, where h is Planck 's constant, 6.626 X10 ^ (-34) J \* s, f is the frequency of the electromagnetic wave, KE is the kinetic energy of the photoelectron and w is the work function for the metal.
If the photon has a lot of energy, compton scattering (~ thousands of eV) or pair production (~ millions of eV) may take place.
The intensity of the light does not cause ejection of electrons, only light of the cut off frequency or higher can do that.
However increasing the intensity of light will increase the number of electrons being emitted, as long as the frequency is above the cut off frequency.
The first observation of the photoelectric effect was by Heinrich Hertz in 1887.
He reported that a spark jumped more readily between two charged spheres if light was shining on them.
Further studies were done to learn about the effect observed by Hertz, however it was n't until 1905 that a theory was proposed that explained the effect completely.
The theory was proposed by Einstein and it made the claim that electromagnetic radiation had to be thought of as a series of particles, called photons, which collide with the electrons on the surface and emit them.
This theory ran contrary to the belief that electromagnetic radiation was a wave and thus it was not recognized as correct until 1916 when Robert Millikan performed a series of experiments using a vacuum photo-tube to confirm the theory.
Psychoanalysis is a set of psychological and therapeutic theories and techniques.
It was started by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud, with experience from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others.
Since then, psychoanalysis has expanded and been revised, reformed and developed in different ways.
Freud 's own colleagues and students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, had their own ideas.
They went on to develop their ideas independently from Freud.
Much later, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein used the ideas to treat troubled children.
Sometimes people can not say why they are feeling the way they feel or acting the way they act.
What causes the feelings and actions is called the unconscious mind in psychodynamic theory.
Under the broad umbrella of "psychoanalysis" there are at least 22 different approaches to the theory and clinical treatment.
The term also refers to a method of studying child development.
Freudian psychoanalysis uses a type of treatment where the subject (analytic patient) talks, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams.
From these the analyst works out the unconscious conflicts which cause the patient 's symptoms and character problems.
By interpreting them for the patient, the analyst creates insight into the problems.
The analyst identifies and clarifies the patient 's pathological defences, wishes and guilt.
Psychoanalysis has been criticized on many fronts.
It has been called a pseudoscience, and lacking in empirical support.
However, it remains influential within psychiatry, more so in some quarters than others.
Pinyin is the Mandarin word for "spelling", writing letters showing the sound of a word in place of a Chinese character.
Today, it almost always has the sense of Hanyu Pinyin, the way of writing Mandarin sounds which has been used by the People 's Republic of China from the 1950s.
Other countries like the United States and Taiwan used other ways of spelling Chinese (such as the Wade-Giles way) for a long time, but in the late 20th century started to use Hanyu Pinyin as well.
It is the standard of China as well as the United Nations.
It is the most popular romanized Chinese system in the world nowadays.
Pinyin uses Roman letters in a special way for certain Chinese sounds.
For example, the pinyin letter C is pronounced as \/ ts \/ as in the English word "cats" or the Japanese word "tsunami", and does not sound at all like \/ k \/ or \/ s \/ by itself.
Pinyin uses special marks to show the four Chinese tones, which are very important to using Mandarin clearly.
Geyin fuhao is used after the syllables starting with vowels "a, o, e", for example: pi ` ao.
We should divide Pinyin text by words and write syllables connectedly, such as "I am a foreigner" should be written as "Wo shi waiguoren" in Pinyin.
Pantheism is the belief that God and the universe are equivalent (the same thing).
A pantheist believes that everything that exists is a part of God or that God is a part of everything that exists.
The name pantheism comes from the words theism (belief in God) and pan (all).
Any doctrine or philosophy that believes that the universe and everything in it is God is said to be pantheistic.
Most pantheists believe the universe is sacred and the earth and nature are divine.
Most of the early Greek philosophers from Thales on to Aristotle believed in some sort of pantheism.
Pantheism is an important part of many eastern religions such as Hinduism, Druidism and Taoism.
Some western philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza and some scientists are pantheists.
Some Christians, Jews and Sufis are Pantheists.
However, their majority believes that while God is in everything, there is more to God than just the universe.
Panentheism is the belief that the universe is part of God.
Followers believe that one or more gods are both part of the universe and greater than it.
To some people, this is a very confusing concept (idea) and was first created by philosophers in the early centuries AD.
Paraphilia is a word used in sociology and medicine.
It is like many other medical terms because it comes from Greek.
It means that someone is sexually aroused by people (or by things) that are unable to return their affection.
The word can also be used to refer to sexual practices which are bad for the mind or body and are mental disorders.
The respective behavior is only classified as paraphilia if it is the only means for the person involved to get sexually aroused, for a considerable time.
When normal people talk about paraphilia, they usually mean non-mainstream sexual behavior.
Homosexuality used to be considered a paraphilia, but this is no longer the case in most of the world.
Pediatrics is the specialty of medicine that cares for infants, children, and adolescents.
The ages can vary from the early months until 21.
Pediatricians can be primary care doctors or they can be specialists.
Pediatricians take care of diseases that children get.
They also make sure that children develop normally and try to prevent illness.
One of the most important ways that children 's diseases can be prevented is by immunization.
Immunization is also called vaccination.
In the nineteenth century, one in five children died before the age of five.
Most of these deaths were from infectious diseases.
Today some of these deaths are prevented by treating disease when it happens.
Most of it is from preventing disease with immunizations.
Pediatricians also try to prevent other diseases and injury before they happen.
They teach parents about safety and nutrition.
They may teach older children or adolescents about avoiding injury or addiction to alcohol and tobacco.
Because childhood is such a time of change, prevention is a major part of pediatrics.
Physiology is the study of how living things work.
Physiologists can study how organs of an organism work together to make things happen.
In human beings, for example, the digestion of food hormones and other chemicals are made by the stomach, liver, and pancreas.
Muscle contraction happens because of chemical messages made by nerves of that muscle.
By learning how the body functions normally, physiologists and physicians can better understand what happens when organs do not function normally.
For example, an understanding of how the thyroid gland functions has helped in treating goitre.
Studies of the circulatory system and the nervous system have helped physicians understand and treat such illnesses like heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure.
The field is usually divided into human physiology, animal physiology, and plant physiology.
Pi, or ', is a mathematical constant.
It is the ratio of the distance around a circle to the circle 's diameter.
This produces a number, and that number is always the same.
However, the number is rather strange.
The number starts 3.14159265... and continues without end.
Numbers like this are called irrational numbers.
The diameter is the longest line which can be fitted inside a circle.
It passes through the center of the circle.
The distance around a circle is known as the circumference.
Even though the diameter and circumference are different for different circles, the number pi remains constant: its value never changes.
This is because the relationship between the circumference and diameter is always the same.
Pi is often written formally as ' or the Greek letter as a shortcut.
Pi is also an irrational number, meaning it can not be written as a fraction, where ` a ' and ` b ' are integers (whole numbers).
This basically means that the digits of pi that are to the right of the decimal go forever without repeating in a pattern, and that it is impossible to write the exact value of pi as a number.
Pi can only be approximated, or measured to a value that is close enough for practical purposes.
A value close to pi is 3.141592653589793238462... A common fraction approximation of pi is, which yields approximately 3.14285714.
This approximation is 0.04 % away from the true value of pi.
While this approximation is accepted for most of its use in real life, the fraction is more accurate (giving about 3.14159292), and can be used when a value closer to pi is needed.
Computers can be used to get better approximations of pi.
The value of pi was known to Ancient Indian mathematicians like Bhaskaracharya and Aryabhatt.
Mathematicians have known about pi for thousands of years because they have been working with circles for the same amount of time.
Civilizations as old as the Babylonians have been able to approximate pi to many digits, such as the fraction 25\/8 and 256\/81.
Most historians believe that ancient Egyptians had no concept of and that the correspondence is a coincidence.
The first written reference to pi dates to 1900 BC.
Around 1650 BC the Egyptian Ahmes gave a value in the Rhind Papyrus.
The Babylonians were able to find that the value of pi was slightly greater than 3 by simply making a big circle and then sticking a piece of rope onto the circumference and the diameter, taking note of their distances, and then dividing the circumference by the diameter.
Knowledge of the number pi passed back into Europe and into the hands of the Hebrews, who made the number important in a section of the Bible called the Old Testament.
After this, the most common way of trying to find pi was to draw a shape of many sides inside any circle and use the area of the shape to find pi.
The Greek philosopher Archimedes, for example, used a polygon shape that had 96 sides in order to find the value of pi, but the Chinese in 500 A.D. were able to use a polygon with 16,384 sides to find the value of pi.
The Greeks, like Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, were also busy with finding out other properties of the circle, such as how to make squares of circles and squaring the number pi.
Since then, many people have been trying to find out more and more exact values of pi.
In the 16th century, better and better ways of finding pi became available such as the complicated formula that the French lawyer Fran ois Vi te developed.
The first use of the Greek symbol"" was in an essay written in 1706 by William Jones.
A mathematician named Lambert also showed in 1761 that the number pi was irrational; that is, it can not be written as a fraction by normal standards.
Another mathematician named Lindeman was also able to show in 1882 that pi was part of the group of numbers known as transcendentals, which are numbers that can not be the solution to a polynomial equation.
Pi can also be used for figuring out many other things beside circles.
The properties of pi have allowed it to be used in many other areas of math besides geometry, which studies shapes.
Some of these areas are complex analysis, trigonometry, and series.
Today, there are different ways to calculate many digits of.
This is of limited use though.
Pi can sometimes be used to work out the area or the circumference of any circle.
To find the circumference of a circle, use the formula C (circumference) = times diameter.
To find the area of a circle, use the formula (radius).
This formula is sometimes written as, where r is the variable for the radius of any circle and A is the variable for the area of that circle.
People generally celebrate March 14 as Pi Day because March 14 is also written as 3\/14, which represents the first three numbers 3.14 in the approximation of pi.
Postmodernism is a way of thinking about culture, philosophy, art and many other things.
The term has been used in many different ways at different times, but there are some things in common.
Postmodernism says that there is no real truth.
It says that knowledge is always made or invented and not discovered.
Because knowledge is made by people, a person can not know something with certainty - all ideas and facts are ` believed ' instead of ` known '.
People believe that they know what the truth is, but they will think that the truth is something different later.
This is the opposite of ` objectivity ', which says that the truth is always there and people have to discover it.
Since postmodernism says that the truth is just a thing that people invent, people can believe different things and think it is the truth and all be right.
Postmodernism says that one person should not try to make another person believe what he believes, because it means nothing to say that one belief is right and the other is wrong.
Postmodernism says that if somebody has a belief and tries to make somebody else believe it also, it means that they are just trying to have power over them.
Starting with the 18th century Enlightenment and into the early 20th century, many people believed that science and new knowledge would make the world better.
When scientists or philosophers discovered something new, it would always make society a little bit better.
They thought that social progress could not be stopped.
Modernism especially believed this.
But postmodernism says that there is no real social progress.
It says that while some things about the world change, people only want to believe that the world is better than it was.
It changes but does not get better, because there is no ` better. '
Postmodernism says that since peoples ' opinions change, and since one person 's opinion can not be more right than another, it means nothing to say that (for example) one work of art is better than any other.
Postmodernism says that art, music, and literature, for example, can be anything that its maker says that it is.
Postmodern art and literature commonly talks about itself and makes fun of itself.
It makes fun of ` serious ' art and even the idea of art.
Postmodernism has influenced many cultural fields, including literary criticism, philosophy, sociology, linguistics, architecture, visual arts, and music.
The term postmodernism was first commonly used in the 1949 to talk about modern architecture.
Many people did not like modern architecture because it had too many box-like shapes and people did not think it was pretty.
Some of them started the postmodern architecture movement.
Postmodern architecture uses surface ornament, historical reference, and less box-like shapes.
Postmodernist ideas can be seen in philosophy, the study of culture and society, literature, architecture, design, as well as in history and law.
Postmodernism also led people to think differently about love, marriage, popular culture, and the change in much of the Western world from an industrial to service economy.
The term postmodernity usually means the period of time when postmodern ideas became common (the second half of the 20th century).
Some experts think that postmodernism is now over, especially in literature.
The term "Postmodernism" is often used to refer to different, sometimes contradictory (they can not both be right) concepts.
Common definitions are:
Because the term postmodernism can be used to talk about so many different things and can mean many different things, some people say that it is only a buzzword that means nothing.
Dick Hebdige, in his book Hiding in the Light, writes:
British historian Perry Anderson says that postmodernism is an important concept and is important for the study of contemporary (current) culture.
Photography is a way of making a picture using a camera.
A person who makes pictures using a camera is called a photographer.
A picture made using a camera is called a photograph or photo.
A "camera" is, in its simplest form, like a box with a hole in front of it.
There is a special piece of glass in front of the hole called a lens.
To take a photograph of something, the lens makes a small picture of the object inside the camera.
The lens does this by focusing light.
A lens in a camera works like a lens in glasses (spectacles) or a magnifying glass.
One type of camera called the Pinhole camera has no lens but uses a very small hole to focus light.
To make a photograph with a camera the shutter release button is pressed.
Pressing the button opens the shutter.
The shutter is like a door.
It covers the hole in the camera box.
The shutter is behind the lens.
When the shutter is closed no light can enter the camera box.
When the shutter is open light can enter the camera.
When the button is pressed the shutter opens and then closes.
This happens very fast.
The amount of time the shutter stays open for is called the shutter speed.
The shutter speed can change between 1\/1000th of a second (0.001 s) to a few seconds.
Normally the time taken for the shutter to open and close is far less than 1 second.
Some cameras have an aperture ring.
It controls how much light enters the camera box.
The photograph in a camera may be made on film or, if it is a digital camera, using an electronic sensor.
The picture the lens makes is recorded on photographic film.
Film is placed inside the camera box.
Light coming through the lens, aperture and open shutter shines on the film.
Photographic film is coated with chemicals that react when light shines on it.
Letting light shine on the film is called exposing the film.
There are many different types of photographic film.
There are films for taking color photographs and films for taking black and white photographs.
There are different sizes of film.
The most common size is 35 mm.
It is called 35 mm because the width of the film is 35 millimetres.
Most cameras use 35 mm film.
Another difference between films is how sensitive they are to light.
Films have a code number, called an ISO number.
The ISO number tells how fast a film reacts when light shines on it.
Examples of ISO numbers are ISO 50, ISO 100, IS0 200, ISO 400, ISO 800, and ISO 1600.
The ISO number is sometimes called the ASA number or the film speed.
When the ISO number is low, for example ISO 50, the film takes a long time to record the picture.
This is called a slow film.
This means the shutter has to stay open for a long time.
When the ISO number is high, for example ISO 800, the picture is made in a very short time.
This is a fast film.
This means the shutter has to open and close quickly.
Once the film has been exposed it is processed.
Processing has to be done in total darkness or the film will be exposed too much and the picture will be lost.
Processing stops the film reacting to light any more.
After the film has been processed the picture can be seen on the film.
A photographic print is a photograph made on paper.
A light sensitive paper is used.
The picture on the film is placed in an enlarger.
An enlarger is a machine that shines light through the film and makes a bigger picture on the light sensitive paper.
A chemical reaction happens in the paper, which turns the areas hit with light black when the paper is ` developed '.
(The more light, the darker the area.)
Developing makes the picture appear on the paper now it is a photograph.
Then the paper is put into other chemicals that make it not sensitive to light any more.
This is called "fixing".
Last, the paper is washed so that there are no more chemicals on it and then dried.
Then it is finished.
Digital photography uses a digital camera.
Sometimes it is called digital imaging.
Like other cameras a digital camera has a lens, aperture, and shutter.
The picture the lens makes is recorded by a light-sensitive electronic sensor.
A digital camera does not use photographic film to record a picture.
Digital photographs are stored in storage devices such as SD cards.
They can later be transferred to a computer.
Paper prints can also be made from digital pictures.
Digital cameras are also not expensive to use, as there is no film to buy.
One of the most important things when taking a photograph is focusing the lens.
If the lens is not focused well, the photograph will be blurry.
Autofocus cameras focus automatically when the shutter release is pressed.
There are also manual focus cameras (usually older ones).
Three other things are important when taking a photograph.
These control how bright or dark the photograph will be.
A slower shutter speed, a bigger aperture, and faster film\/higher ISO sensor all make a brighter picture.
A faster shutter speed, a smaller aperture, and a slower film\/lower ISO sensor all make a darker picture.
A good picture is not too bright and not too dark.
When it is too bright it would s called "overexposed"".
An automatic camera changes these things by itself when the shutter release is pressed.
A pump is a machine which moves a liquid from one place to another, often upwards.
Pumps need some kind of power, often kinetic energy, to make them work.
Sometimes the power comes from a person.
Sometimes the power comes from a motor.
There are many different kinds of pumps.
Some types of pumps are:
Pressure means how much something is pushing on something else.
It is expressed as force per unit area: P = F\/A
In technology, pressure is often specified in multiples of atmospheric pressure.
It can also be defined as the thrust (compressive force acting perpendicularly to the surface of a body) acting per unit area.
Since pressure depends on both force and area, the same amount of force applied by a hand will make less pressure than when applied by something smaller, like a finger.
Pressure is also related to density.
By the ideal gas law, for example, doubling the pressure can put twice as much gas in a bottle.
A polygon is a closed two-dimensional shape.
It is also a simple curve that is made up of line segments.
It usually has three sides\/corners or more.
It could also be referred to as ' A closed plane figure bound by three or more line segments '.
It has a number of edges.
These edges are connected by lines.
A square is a polygon because it has four sides.
The smallest possible polygon in a Euclidean geometry or "flat geometry" is the triangle, but on a sphere, there can be a digon.
The monogon is a theoretical figure that can not exist - it has only one side and one edge.
If the edges (lines of the polygon) do not intersect (cross each other), the polygon is called simple, otherwise it is complex.
In computer graphics, polygons (especially triangles) are often used to make graphics.
A player character or playable character (PC) is a made-up character in a role-playing or video game whose actions are chosen by a player of the game rather than the rules of the game.
The characters that are not used by a player are called non-player characters (NPCs).
The actions of non-player characters are generally chosen by the game itself in video games, or based on rules followed by a gamemaster in tabletop role-playing games.
The player character acts as a fictional, different body for the player using it.
Most video games have one player character for each person playing the game.
Some games offer a group of player characters for the player to choose from, letting player control one of them at a time.
Where more there is more than one player character to choose, the characters may have different abilities, strengths, and weaknesses to make the gameplay different with each.
A player character may sometimes be based on a real person, such as in sports games that use the names and looks of real sports people.
Historical people and leaders may sometimes appear as characters too, such as in strategy or empire building games like Sid Meier 's Civilization series.
These characters are avatars rather than true player characters, because the player character 's name and image have little or even no effect on the game itself.
Avatars are also often seen in casino game simulations.
In role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons or Final Fantasy, a player generally makes or chooses a character that may be nothing like themself.
The character is usually of a race and class (often not real) such as zombie, berserker, rifleman, elf, or cleric, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
The skills of the characters (such as magic and fighting ability) are given as numbers which can be made better as the gamer plays through the game and gains experience points through doing quests or fighting enemies.
In many video games, the player character is a "blank slate" who has no given personality or backstory.
Crono, Link and Chell are examples of such characters.
These characters often do not speak.
In strategy games the player character is often not shown and called by a title such as "Commander" or "General", so that the player can imagine themself in the character 's job.
Fighting games often have a large number of player characters to choose from, with some basic moves that all or most characters can use and some special moves only used by one or a few characters.
Having many different characters to play with, all with different moves and abilities, makes the gameplay of fighting games more variety: varied and difficult.
A secret or unlockable character may be a playable character in a video game available after finishing the game or doing certain tasks.
In some video games, characters that are not secret but appear only as non-player characters like bosses or enemies become playable characters after beating them, doing certain other things, or sometimes cheating.
A parish is the area which is served by a church.
This term is used by these churches: Church of England and the Anglican Communion, Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Lutheran churches, and some Methodist, and Presbyterian churches.
The idea is that the local priest or minister is responsible for the ` souls ' in the parish.
The term refers to a local church community or territory, including its main church building, and other property.
The word ` parish ' is also used more generally to refer to the collection of people who attend a particular church.
In this usage, a parish minister is one who serves a congregation.
A parish is a subdivision of a diocese or ` see '.
The diocese is headed by a Bishop.
In some countries a civil parish is an administrative area of local government.
Usually they started as an church parish of the same name.
In the course of time, perhaps with modified boundaries to better suit local government, the parish survives.
In the American state of Louisiana, a parish is an administration area similar to a county.
Procopius of Caesarea (, c. 500 c. 565) was a prominent Eastern Roman scholar.
He took part in the wars of the Emperor Justinian I, and was the major historian of the 6th century AD, writing the Wars of Justinian, the Buildings of Justinian and the celebrated Secret History.
He is commonly held to be the last major historian of the ancient world.
The writings of Procopius are the primary source of information for the rule of the Roman emperor Justinian.
Procopius was the author of a history in eight books of the wars fought by Justinian I, a panegyric on Justinian 's public works throughout the empire, and a book known as the Secret History (Greek: Anekdota) that claims to report the scandals that Procopius could not include in his published history.
A number of historical novels based on Procopius ' works (along with other sources) have been written, of which the best, Count Belisarius, was written by poet and novelist Robert Graves in 1938.
This article is based on an earlier version by James Allan Evans, originally posted at Nupedia.
Property is something that is owned by someone.
If someone buys a car, the car becomes their property.
People who deal with buying or selling real estate will often talk about "properties", meaning houses, apartments, offices etc.
Police are a group of people whose job it is to enforce laws, help with emergencies, solve crimes and protect property.
People who work for the police are called police officers or policemen.
They work out of a police station.
Police are trained in first aid and rescue, because police officers are often one of the first people to get to a place where people are sick or injured, such as a car accident, or a fire.
The police have different powers to help them do their job.
These powers are different in different countries.
Most police officers have the power to arrest people, search people, and search houses\/properties.
They sometimes carry equipment such as guns, batons and pepper spray.
The area where a police officer can use these powers is called their jurisdiction.
If the officer goes outside of his jurisdiction, they are no longer allowed to use his powers.
Another police force has to then take over.
Most police departments have most of their officers in two main groups: a "patrol" group that has officers who wear uniforms, and a "detective" group that has officers who wear normal clothing.
Not all countries use the same words to describe these groups.
In the United Kingdom, for example, patrol officers form the "uniform branch", while detectives work within the CID ("Criminal Investigation Department").
Police uniforms, equipment and methods can change a lot depending on the country.
In some areas, groups of police are train for special jobs such as dealing with riots or when a situation is very bad.
Different countries have different names for their police.
In Ireland, they are called the Garda.
In Russia, they were called the Militsiyer until 2012; now, they are called the Politsiyer, closer to the English "police".
Other names for police services are sheriff 's office, marshal 's office or department of public safety.
In the same country there can be different types of police officer who have powers in different areas and situations, such as state police, military police and local police.
Worldwide, police make up a small percentage of the people they serve.
On average there are 303.3 police officers per 100,000 population.
In most countries, police officers have been trained to carry guns.
Even in countries like the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland where most police officers do not carry guns, more are being trained to do so because gun crime is getting worse.
Firearms training teaches that the use of a firearm is only when lives are at risk.
This is a list of physicists.
Proteins are long-chain molecules built from small units known as amino acids.
They are joined together with peptide bonds.
They are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides folded into a round or fibrous shape.
A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids.
The sequence of amino acids in a polypeptide comes from the DNA sequence of a gene.
The genetic code specifies 20 standard amino acids.
Shortly after synthesis, some amino acids are chemically modified.
This alters the folding, stability, activity, and function of the protein.
Sometimes proteins have non-peptide groups attached, as cofactors.
Proteins are essential to all cells.
Like other biological macromolecules (polysaccharides and nucleic acids), proteins take part in virtually every process in cells:
Proteins do different things depending on their shape.
They can be found in meat or muscle.
They are used for growth and repair, as well as for strengthening the bones.
They help to make tissue and cells.
They are in animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and also in the human body.
Muscles contain a lot of protein.
When protein is digested, it is broken down into its amino acids.
These amino acids can then be used to build new protein.
Proteins form an important part in foods like milk, eggs, meat, fish, beans, and nuts.
There are four things that determine what a protein will do.
The first is the order of the amino acids.
There are 20 amino acids, and they are all a bit different.
The second is the little twists in the chain.
The third is how the entire thing is folded up.
The fourth is whether it is made up of different sub-units.
Haemoglobin molecules, for example, are made of four sub-units.
Proteins are necessary in animals ' diets, since animals can not make all the amino acids they need (they can make most of them).
They must get certain amino acids from food.
These are called the essential amino acids.
Through digestion, animals break down ingested protein into free amino acids.
The amino acids are then used in metabolism to make the enzymes and structures the body needs.
There are nine essential amino acids for humans, which must be got from food.
Meat contains all the essential amino acids humans need; most plants do not.
However, eating a mixture of plants, such as both wheat and peanut butter, or rice and beans, provides all the essential amino acids needed.
Soy products like tofu provide all the essential amino acids as does quinoa but these are not the only way to get the protein you need.
The scientist J ns Jacob Berzelius gave proteins their name, but many other scientists have studied proteins.
Physical chemistry uses physics to study chemical systems.
It studies them at macroscopic, atomic, subatomic, and particulate levels.
It looks at concepts like motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistical mechanics and dynamics.
Physical chemistry is not the same as chemical physics.
Physical chemistry is mostly a macroscopic or supra-molecular science.
The majority of physical chemistry concepts relate to bulk properties rather than to molecular\/atomic structure alone.
These include chemical equilibrium and colloids.
The term "physical chemistry" was first used by Mikhail Lomonosov in 1752.
He presented a lecture course with the title "A Course in True Physical Chemistry" (Russian:) to the students of Petersburg University.
Modern physical chemistry was developed in the 1860s to 1880s with work on chemical thermodynamics, electrolytes in solutions, chemical kinetics and other subjects.
In 1876, Josiah Willard Gibbs wrote an article called, On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances.
This paper introduced many of the main parts of physical chemistry, such as Gibbs energy, chemical potentials, Gibbs phase rule.
Other important discoveries include Heike Kamerlingh Onnes ' work on enthalpy and macromolecular processes.
The first scientific journal about physical chemistry was the German journal, Zeitschrift f r Physikalische Chemie.
It was founded in 1887 by Wilhelm Ostwald and Jacobus Henricus van ' t Hoff.
The two chemists and Svante August Arrhenius were the leading men in physical chemistry in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
All three were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Important discoveries were made in the 20th century.
These include applying statistical mechanics to chemical systems and Irving Langmuir 's work on colloids and surface chemistry.
In the 1930 's, Linus Pauling and others applied quantum mechanics to develop quantum chemistry.
Chemical theories have grown with new experimental discoveries.
New forms of spectroscopy started in the 20th century including: infrared spectroscopy, microwave spectroscopy, EPR spectroscopy and NMR spectroscopy.
Physical chemistry also improved with discoveries in nuclear chemistry, especially in isotope separation.
This happened around the time before and during World War II.
Chemists discovered important facts in astrochemistry.
A historical journal that covered both chemistry and physics was Annales de chimie et de physique.
It started in 1789 and was published under the name given here from 1815 1914.
In geometry, perimeter is the distance around a flat object.
For example, all four sides of a square rhombus have the same length, so a rhombus with side length 2 inches would have a perimeter of 8 inches (2 +2 +2 +2 = 8).
Real-life objects have perimeters as well.
A football field, including the end zones, is 360 feet long and 160 feet wide.
So the perimeter of the field is 360 +160 +360 +160 = 1040 feet.
The perimeter of a circle is usually called the circumference.
It may be calculated by multiplying the diameter times "Pi".
Pi is a constant which is equal to 3.14159; however, the places to the right of the decimal are endless.
The number of places used depend on the accuracy required for the result.
This article is about the liquid fuel and industrial solvent.
For the methane gas fuel, see Natural gas
Gasoline, or petrol, is a toxic, clear liquid that is mostly used as a fuel in internal combustion engines.
It is made by boiling petroleum, a fossil fuel.
In a distillation process, petroleum is heated to a very high temperature, then it separates into its components, one of them is gasoline.
This is an expensive process.
It is made mostly of octane (C8H18), a hydrocarbon.
Gasoline is sold at gas stations (petrol stations).
In order to burn properly in high-compression internal combustion engines, each brand of gasoline includes gasoline additives.
So, the exact make up of gasoline is different at different stations.
Gasoline is graded by its octane rating that measures how well it will burn.
Most car engines can burn "regular" gasoline which has an octane rating of 87.
Precision-made engines require or prefer "premium" gasoline with an octane rating of 93.
Most stations offer three different mixtures of gasoline with three separate octane ratings and prices.
Gasoline is most often used in vehicles like cars, vans, etc..
Gasoline can be used in a wide variety of other things that we use every day, such as lawnmowers, leaf blowers, and small boat motors.
Some larger vehicles like trucks or ships may use diesel fuel instead of gasoline.
Gasoline is very dangerous.
It can explode when an electric spark lights it.
It is also harmful if a human drinks it or if it gets on the skin.
It hurts the environment and human health by creating poisonous gases such as carbon monoxide.
If a gasoline engine is used indoors or in a closed space, the carbon monoxide can cause death in minutes.
Many people die every year from using gasoline-powered generators indoors, or leaving vehicles running inside a garage.
Electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf do not use gasoline, create no carbon monoxide, are better for the environment, and are safe to leave running in a garage.
The US accounts for about 44 % of the world s gasoline consumption.
In 2003 The US consumed 476.474 G, which equates to 1.3 gigalitres of gasoline each day (about 360 million US or 300 million imperial gallons).
The US used about 510 billion litres (138 billion US gal\/115 billion imp gal) of gasoline in 2006, of which 5.6 % was mid-grade and 9.5 % was premium grade.
Western countries have among the highest usage rates per person.
Unlike the US, countries in Europe impose substantial taxes on fuels such as gasoline.
For example, price for gasoline in Europe is more than twice that in the US.
Because of the low fuel taxes, the retail price of gasoline in the US is subject to greater changes (than outside the US) when calculated as a percentage of cost-per-unit.
From 1998 to 2004, the price of gasoline was between $ 1 and $ 2 USD per U.S. gallon.
After 2004, the price increased until the average gas price reached a high of $ 4.11 per U.S. gallon in mid-2008, then dropped approximately $ 2.60 per U.S. gallon as of September 2009.
Recently, the U.S. has experienced an upswing in gas prices of 13.51 % from Jan 31st to March 7, 2011.
Most consumer goods have posted prices that exclude tax; taxes are added based on a percentage of the purchase price.
Because of primitive gasoline pumps in the 1920s, United States gasoline prices are posted with taxes included and the taxes are set on cents per gallon.
Taxes are added by federal, state and local governments.
(These taxes collect the cost of maintaining the roads.)
As of 2009, the federal tax is 18.4 per gallon for gasoline and 24.4 per gallon for diesel (excluding red diesel).
Among states, the highest gasoline tax rates, as of January 2011, are California (47.7 \/ gal), New York (47.3 \/ gal), Hawaii (45.8 \/ gal), and Connecticut (45.2 \/ gal).
The federal government and many states fail to increase their gasoline taxes over time with inflation.
However, some states also charge a sales tax as a percentage and vary in amount depending on the cost of the gasoline.
About 9 % of all gasoline sold in the US in May 2009 was premium grade, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Some car manufacturers "recommend" premium gasoline but have computer-controlled engines that adjust the timing to avoid knocking.
So, most cars can burn regular grade gasoline but at a slightly reduced performance.
The Associated Press said premium gas which is a higher octane and costs several cents a gallon more than regular unleaded should be used only if the manufacturer says it is required.
To reduce the use of imported oil, the US uses Gasohol (10 % ethanol) and E85 (85 % ethanol) ethanol\/gasoline mixtures.
Brazil has the largest national fuel ethanol industry.
Gasoline sold in Brazil contains at least 25 % anhydrous ethanol.
Hydrous ethanol (about 95 % ethanol and 5 % water) can be used as fuel in more than 90 % of new cars sold in the country.
Brazilian ethanol is produced from sugar cane and noted for high carbon sequestration.
Propane is an alkane (a hydrocarbon).
An alkane is a molecule composed of the chemical elements hydrogen and carbon.
Propane has three carbon atoms and eight hydrogen atoms, so its molecular formula is C3H8.
It begins to burn very quickly.
Its melting temperature is 187.7 C; its boiling temperature is 42 C; its density is 1.83 g\/l.
Propane is extracted from natural gasoline or from petroleum.
Pre-cambrian (or Precambrian) is a term used to describe the eons before the Cambrian.
It lasted from about 4.567 billion years ago to about 542 million years ago.
It starts with the beginning of the Earth, about 4.567 billion years ago.
When it ends, there were many hard-shelled animals around.
It is named after the Roman name for Cymru \/ Wales, because rocks thought to be from this time were first studied there.
The supereon is subdivided into 3 eons, the Hadean (4.5 to 4 billion years ago), the Archaean (4 to 2.5 billion years) and the Proterozoic (from 2.5 billion years to 542 million years).
The immediate Precambrian period is the Ediacaran.
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a way to make many copies of a sequence of DNA.
This is done in a lab, using an enzyme called DNA polymerase.
It is called chain reaction because the result of one cycle is used immediately for the next cycle.
This allows exponential growth to happen.
PCR has many uses in a biological or biochemical setting.
Because DNA is unique for every living thing, experimenters can often extract only small amounts of the DNA they are interested in from a specimen.
These amounts are usually too little to be useful, and so a scientist will use PCR to make enough copies to start experimenting with.
For this reason, it is one of the most common techniques used in genetics labs around the world, making it useful in experiments on many things, including gene therapy, infectious diseases, and even forensics.
This process was developed in 1983 by Kary Mullis.
